26321	----	"'Attraction' and 'repulsion' seem to be the sources of _will_--that momentous element of the soul which determines the character of the individual" (p. 45). "The positive ponderable matter, the element with the feeling of like or desire, is continually striving to complete the process of condensation, and thus collecting an enormous amount of _potential_ energy; the negative imponderable matter, on the other hand, offers a perpetual and equal resistance to the further increase of its strain and of the feeling of dislike connected therewith, and thus gathers the utmost amount of _actual_ energy. "I think that this pyknotic theory of substance will prove more acceptable to every biologist who is convinced of the unity of nature than the kinetic theory which prevails in physics to-day" (p. 78). In other words, he appeals to a presumed sentiment of biologists against the knowledge of the physicist in his own sphere--a strange attitude for a man of science. After this it is less surprising to find him ignoring the elementary axiom that "action and reaction are equal and opposite," _i.e._ that internal forces can have no motive power on a body as a whole, and making the grotesque assertion that matter is moved, not by external forces, but by internal likes and desires:-- "I must lay down the following theses, which are involved in Vogt's pyknotic theory, as indispensable for a truly monistic view of substance, and one that covers the whole field of organic and inorganic nature:-- "1. The two fundamental forms of substance, ponderable matter and ether, are not dead and only moved by extrinsic force, but they are endowed with sensation and will (though, naturally, of the lowest grade); they experience an inclination for condensation, a dislike of strain; they strive after the one and struggle against the other" (p. 78). My desire is to criticise politely, and hence I refrain from characterising this sentence as a physicist should. "Every shade of inclination, from complete indifference to the fiercest passion, is exemplified in the chemical relation of the various elements towards each other" (p. 79). "On those phenomena we base our conviction that even the _atom_ is not without a rudimentary form of sensation and will, or, as it is better expressed, of feeling (_æsthesis_) and inclination (_tropesis_)--that is, a universal 'soul' of the simplest character" (p. 80). "I gave the outlines of _cellular_ psychology in 1866 in my paper on 'Cell-souls and Soul-cells'" (p. 63). Thus, then, in order to explain life and mind and consciousness by means of matter, all that is done is to assume that matter possesses these unexplained attributes. What the full meaning of that may be, and whether there be any philosophic justification for any such idea, is a matter on which I will not now express an opinion; but, at any rate, as it stands, it is not science, and its formulation gives no sort of conception of what life and will and consciousness really are. Even if it were true, it contains nothing whatever in the nature of explanation: it recognises the inexplicable, and relegates it to the atoms, where it seems to hope that further quest may cease. Instead of tackling the difficulty where it actually occurs; instead of associating life, will, and consciousness with the organisms in which they are actually in experience found, these ideas are foisted into the atoms of matter; and then the properties which have been conferred on the atoms are denied in all essential reality to the fully developed organisms which those atoms help to compose! I show later on (Chapters V. and X.) that there is no necessary justification for assuming that a phenomenon exhibited by an aggregate of particles must be possessed by the ingredients of which it is composed; on the contrary, wholly new properties may make their appearance simply by aggregation; though I admit that such a proposition is by no means obvious, and that it may be a legitimate subject for controversy. But into that question our author does not enter; and even when he has conferred on the atoms these astounding properties, he abstains from what would seem a natural development: for his doctrine is that our power is actually less than that of the atoms,--that instead of utilising the attractions and repulsions, or "likes and dislikes," of our constituent particles, and directing them by the aggregate of conscious will-power to some preconceived end, we ourselves, on the contrary, are dominated and controlled by _them_; so that freedom of the will is an illusion. Freedom being thus disposed of, Immortality presents no difficulty; a soul is the operation of a group of cells, and so the existence of man clearly begins and ends with that of his terrestrial body:-- "The most important moment in the life of every man, as in that of all other complex animals, is the moment in which he begins his individual existence [coalescence of sperm cell and ovum] ... the existence of the personality, the independent individual, commences. This ontogenetic fact is supremely important, for the most far-reaching conclusions may be drawn from it. In the first place, we have a clear perception that man, like all the other complex animals, inherits all his personal characteristics, bodily and mental, from his parents; and further, we come to the momentous conclusion that the new personality which arises thus can lay no claim to 'immortality'" (p. 22). Others beside Haeckel have held this kind of view at one time or another; but, unlike him, most of them have recanted and seen the error of their ways. He is, indeed, aware that several of his great German contemporaries have been through this phase of thought and come out on the other side, notably the physiologist-philosopher Wundt, and he refers to them fairly and instructively thus:-- "What seems to me of special importance and value in Wundt's work is that he 'extends the law of the persistence of force for the first time to the psychic world.' "Thirty years afterwards, in a second edition, Wundt emancipated himself from the fundamental errors of the first, and says that he 'learned many years ago to consider the work a sin of his youth'; it 'weighed on him as a kind of crime, from which he longed to free himself as soon as possible.' In the first, psychology is treated as a _physical_ science, on the same laws as the whole of physiology, of which it is only a part; thirty years afterwards he finds psychology to be a _spiritual_ science, with principles and objects entirely different from those of physical science. "I myself," says Haeckel, "naturally consider the 'youthful sin' of the young physiologist Wundt to be a correct knowledge of nature, and energetically defend it against the antagonistic view of the old philosopher Wundt. This entire change of philosophical principles, which we find in Wundt, as we found it in Kant, Virchow, du Bois-Reymond, Carl Ernst Baer, and others, is very interesting" (p. 36). So it is: very interesting! Professor Haeckel is so imbued with biological science that he loses his sense of proportion; and his enthusiasm for the work of Darwin leads him to attribute to it an exaggerated scope, and enables him to eliminate the third of the Kantian trilogy:-- "Darwin's theory of the natural origin of species at once gave us the solution of the mystic 'problem of creation,' the great 'question of all questions'--the problem of the true character and origin of man himself" (p. 28) [_cf._ p. 19 above]. It is a great deal more than that patient observer and deep thinker Charles Darwin ever claimed, nor have his wiser disciples claimed it for him. It is familiar that he explained how variations once arisen would be clinched, if favourable in the struggle, by the action of heredity and survival; but the source or origin of the variations themselves he did not explain. Do they arise by guidance or by chance? Is natural selection akin to the verified and practical processes of artificial selection? or is it wholly alien to them and influenced by chance alone? The latter view can hardly be considered a complete explanation, though it is verbally the one adopted by Professor Haeckel, and it is of interest to see what he means by chance:-- "Since impartial study of the evolution of the world teaches us that there is no definite aim and no special purpose to be traced in it, there seems to be no alternative but to leave everything to 'blind chance.' "One group of philosophers affirms, in accordance with its teleological conception, that the whole cosmos is an orderly system, in which every phenomenon has its aim and purpose; there is no such thing as chance. The other group, holding a mechanical theory, expresses itself thus: The development of the universe is a monistic mechanical process, in which we discover no aim or purpose whatever; what we call design in the organic world is a special result of biological agencies; neither in the evolution of the heavenly bodies nor in that of the crust of our earth do we find any trace of a controlling purpose--all is the result of chance. Each party is right--according to its definition of chance. The general law of causality, taken in conjunction with the law of substance, teaches us that every phenomenon has a mechanical cause; in this sense there is no such thing as chance. Yet it is not only lawful, but necessary, to retain the term for the purpose of expressing the simultaneous occurrence of two phenomena, which are not causally related to each other, but of which each has its own mechanical cause, independent of that of the other. "Everybody knows that chance, in this monistic sense, plays an important part in the life of man and in the universe at large. That, however, does not prevent us from recognising in each 'chance' event, as we do in the evolution of the entire cosmos, the universal sovereignty of nature's supreme law, _the law of substance_" (p. 97). _Illegitimate Negations._ With regard to the possibility of Revelation, or information derived from super-human sources, naturally he ridicules the idea; but in connection with the mode of origin and development of life on this planet he makes the following sensible and noteworthy admission:-- "It is very probable that these processes have gone on likewise on other planets, and that other planets have produced other types of the higher plants and animals, which are unknown on our earth; perhaps from some higher animal stem, which is superior to the vertebrate in formation, higher beings have arisen who far transcend us earthly men in intelligence." Exactly; it is quite probable. It is, in fact, improbable that man is the highest type of existence. But if Professor Haeckel is ready to grant that probability or even possibility, why does he so strenuously exclude the idea of revelation, _i.e._, the acquiring of imparted information from higher sources? Savages can certainly have "revelation" from civilised men. Why, then, should it be inconceivable that human beings should receive information from beings in the universe higher than themselves? It may or may not be the case that they do; but there is no scientific ground for dogmatism on the subject, nor any reason for asserting the inconceivability of such a thing. Professor Haeckel would no doubt reply to some of the above criticism that he is not only a man of science, but also a philosopher, that he is looking ahead, beyond ascertained fact, and that it is his philosophic views which are in question rather than his scientific statements. To some extent it is both, as has been seen; but if even the above be widely known--if it be generally understood that the most controversial portions of his work are mainly speculative and hypothetical, it can be left to its proper purpose of doing good rather than harm. It can only do harm by misleading, it can do considerable good by criticising and stimulating and informing; and it is an interesting fact that a man so well acquainted with biology as Professor Haeckel is should have been so strongly impressed with the truth of some aspect of the philosophic system known as Monism. Many men of science have likewise been impressed with the probability, or possibility, of some such ultimate unification. The problem to be solved--and an old-world problem indeed it is--is the range, and especially the nature, of the connection between mind and matter; or, let us say, between the material universe on the one hand, and the vital, the mental, the conscious and spiritual universe or universes, on the other. It would be extremely surprising if any attempt yet made had already been thoroughly successful, though the attack on the idealistic side appears to many of us physicists to be by far the most hopeful line of advance. An excessively wide knowledge of existence would seem to be demanded for the success of any such most ambitious attempt; but, though none of us may hope to achieve it, many may strive to make some contribution towards the great end; and those who think they have such a contribution to make, or such a revelation entrusted to them, are bound to express it to the best of their ability, and leave it to their contemporaries and successors to assimilate such portions of it as are true, and to develop it further. From this point of view Professor Haeckel is no doubt amply justified in his writings; but, unfortunately, it appears to me that although he has been borne forward on the advancing wave of monistic philosophy, he has, in its specification, attempted such precision of materialistic detail, and subjected it to so narrow and limited a view of the totality of experience, that the progress of thought has left him, as well as his great English exemplar, Herbert Spencer, somewhat high and dry, belated and stranded by the tide of opinion which has now begun to flow in another direction. He is, as it were, a surviving voice from the middle of the nineteenth century; he represents, in clear and eloquent fashion, opinions which then were prevalent among many leaders of thought--opinions which they themselves in many cases, and their successors still more, lived to outgrow; so that by this time Professor Haeckel's voice is as the voice of one crying in the wilderness, not as the pioneer or vanguard of an advancing army, but as the despairing shout of a standard-bearer, still bold and unflinching, but abandoned by the retreating ranks of his comrades as they march to new orders in a fresh and more idealistic direction. CHAPTER IV MEMORANDA FOR WOULD-BE MATERIALISTS The objection which it has been found necessary to express concerning Materialism as a complete system is based not on its assertions, but on its negations. In so far as it makes positive assertions, embodying the results of scientific discovery and even of scientific speculation based thereupon, there is no fault to find with it; but when, on the strength of that, it sets up to be a philosophy of the universe--all inclusive, therefore, and shutting out a number of truths otherwise perceived, or which appeal to other faculties, or which are equally true and are not really contradictory of legitimately materialistic statements--then it is that its insufficiency and narrowness have to be displayed. It will be probably instructive, and it may be sufficient, if I show that two great leaders in scientific thought (one the greatest of all men of science who have yet lived), though well aware of much that could be said positively on the materialistic side, and very willing to admit or even to extend the province of science or exact knowledge to the uttermost, yet were very far from being philosophic Materialists or from imagining that other modes of regarding the universe were thereby excluded. Great leaders of thought, in fact, are not accustomed to take a narrow view of existence, or to suppose that one mode of regarding it, or one set of formulæ expressing it, can possibly be sufficient and complete. Even a sheet of paper has two sides: a terrestrial globe presents different aspects from different points of view; a crystal has a variety of facets; and the totality of existence is not likely to be more simple than any of these--is not likely to be readily expressible in any form of words, or to be thoroughly conceivable by any human mind. It may be well to remember that Sir Isaac Newton was a Theist of the most pronounced and thorough conviction, although he had a great deal to do with the reduction of the major Cosmos to mechanics, _i.e._ with its explanation by the elaborated machinery of simple forces; and he conceived it possible that, in the progress of science, this process of reduction to mechanics would continue till it embraced nearly all phenomena. (See extract below.) That, indeed, has been the effort of science ever since, and therein lies the legitimate basis for materialistic statements, though not for a materialistic philosophy. The following sound remarks concerning Newton are taken from Huxley's _Hume_, p. 246:-- "Newton demonstrated all the host of heaven to be but the elements of a vast mechanism, regulated by the same laws as those which express the falling of a stone to the ground. There is a passage in the preface to the first edition of the _Principia_, which shows that Newton was penetrated, as completely as Descartes, with the belief that all the phenomena of nature are expressible in terms of matter and motion:-- "'WOULD THAT THE REST OF THE PHENOMENA OF NATURE COULD BE DEDUCED BY A LIKE KIND OF REASONING FROM MECHANICAL PRINCIPLES. FOR MANY CIRCUMSTANCES LEAD ME TO SUSPECT THAT ALL THESE PHENOMENA MAY DEPEND UPON CERTAIN FORCES, IN VIRTUE OF WHICH THE PARTICLES OF BODIES, BY CAUSES NOT YET KNOWN, ARE EITHER MUTUALLY IMPELLED AGAINST ONE ANOTHER, AND COHERE INTO REGULAR FIGURES, OR REPEL AND RECEDE FROM ONE ANOTHER; WHICH FORCES BEING UNKNOWN, PHILOSOPHERS HAVE AS YET EXPLORED NATURE IN VAIN. BUT I HOPE THAT, EITHER BY THIS METHOD OF PHILOSOPHISING, OR BY SOME OTHER AND BETTER, THE PRINCIPLES HERE LAID DOWN MAY THROW SOME LIGHT UPON THE MATTER.'" Here is a full-blown anticipation of an intelligible exposition of the Universe in terms of matter and force: the substantial basis of what smaller men call materialism and develop into what they consider to be a materialistic philosophy. But there is no necessity for anything of the kind; a systematic expression of facts in terms of one of their aspects does not exclude expression in terms of other and totally different aspects also. Denial of all sides but one, is a poor kind of unification. Denial of this sort is the weakness and delusion of the people who call themselves 'Christian Scientists': they have hold of one side of truth--and that should be granted them,--but they hold it in so narrow and insecure a fashion that, in self-defence, they think it safest strenuously to deny the existence of all other sides. In this futile enterprise they are imitating the attitude of the philosophic Materialists, on the other side of the controversy. And then, again, Professor Huxley himself, who is commonly spoken of by half-informed people as if he were a philosophic materialist, was really nothing of the kind; for although, like Newton, fully imbued with the mechanical doctrine, and, of course, far better informed concerning the biological departments of Nature and the discoveries which have in the last century been made, and though he rightly regarded it as his mission to make the scientific point of view clear to his benighted contemporaries, and was full of enthusiasm for the facts on which materialists take their stand, he saw clearly that these alone were insufficient for a philosophy. The following extracts from the 'Hume' volume will show, first, that he entirely repudiated materialism as a satisfactory or complete scheme of things; and, secondly, that he profoundly disagreed with the position which now appears to be occupied by Professor Haeckel. Especially is he severe on gratuitous denials applied to provinces beyond our scope, saying:-- "that while it is the summit of human wisdom to learn the limit of our faculties, it may be wise to recollect that we have no more right to make denials, than to put forth affirmatives, about what lies beyond that limit. Whether either mind or matter has a 'substance' or not is a problem which we are incompetent to discuss; and it is just as likely that the common notions upon the subject should be correct as any others.... 'The same principles which, at first view, lead to scepticism, pursued to a certain point, bring men back to common sense'" (p. 282). And on p. 286 he speaks concerning "substance"--that substance which constitutes the foundation of Haeckel's philosophy--almost as if he were purposely confuting that rather fly-blown production:-- "Thus, if any man think he has reason to believe that the '_substance_' of matter, to the existence of which no limit can be set either in time or space, is the infinite and eternal substratum of all actual and possible existences, which is the doctrine of philosophical materialism, as I understand it, I have no objection to his holding that doctrine; and I fail to comprehend how it can have the slightest influence upon any ethical or religious views he may please to hold.... "Moreover, the ultimate forms of existence which we distinguish in our little speck of the universe are, possibly, only two out of infinite varieties of existence, not only analogous to matter and analogous to mind, but of kinds which we are not competent so much as to conceive--in the midst of which, indeed, we might be set down, with no more notion of what was about us, than the worm in a flower-pot, on a London balcony, has of the life of the great city. "That which I do very strongly object to is the habit, which a great many non-philosophical materialists unfortunately fall into, of forgetting all these very obvious considerations. They talk as if the proof that the 'substance of matter' was the 'substance' of all things cleared up all the mysteries of existence. In point of fact, it leaves them exactly where they were.... Your religious and ethical difficulties are just as great as mine. The speculative game is drawn--let us get to practical work" (p. 286). And again on pp. 251 and 279:-- "It is worth any amount of trouble to ... know by one's own knowledge the great truth ... that the honest and rigorous following up of the argument which leads us to 'materialism' inevitably carries us beyond it" (p. 251). "To sum up. If the materialist affirms that the universe and all its phenomena are resolvable into matter and motion, Berkeley replies, True; but what you call matter and motion are known to us only as forms of consciousness; their being is to be conceived or known; and the existence of a state of consciousness, apart from a thinking mind, is a contradiction in terms. "I conceive that this reasoning is irrefragable. And, therefore, if I were obliged to choose between absolute materialism and absolute idealism, I should feel compelled to accept the latter alternative" (p. 279). Let the jubilant but uninstructed and comparatively ignorant amateur materialist therefore beware, and bethink himself twice or even thrice before he conceives that he understands the universe and is competent to pour scorn upon the intuitions and perceptions of great men in what may be to him alien regions of thought and experience. Let him explain, if he can, what he means by his own identity, or the identity of any thinking or living being, which at different times consists of a totally different set of material particles. Something there clearly is which confers personal identity and constitutes an individual: it is a property characteristic of every form of life, even the humblest; but it is not yet explained or understood, and it is no answer to assert gratuitously that there is some fundamental "substance" or material basis on which that identity depends, any more than it is an explanation to say that it depends upon a "soul." These are all forms of words. As Hume says, quoted by Huxley with approval in the work already cited, p. 194:-- "It is impossible to attach any definite meaning to the word 'substance,' when employed for the hypothetical substratum of soul and matter.... If it be said that our personal identity requires the assumption of a substance which remains the same while the accidents of perception shift and change, the question arises what is meant by personal identity?... A plant or an animal, in the course of its existence, from the condition of an egg or seed to the end of life, remains the same neither in form, nor in structure, nor in the matter of which it is composed: every attribute it possesses is constantly changing, and yet we say that it is always one and the same individual" (p. 194). And in his own preface to the 'Hume' volume Huxley expresses himself forcibly thus,--equally antagonistic as was his wont to both ostensible friend and ostensible foe, as soon as they got off what he considered the straight path:-- "That which it may be well for us not to forget is, that the first-recorded judicial murder of a scientific thinker [Socrates] was compassed and effected, not by a despot, nor by priests, but was brought about by eloquent demagogues.... Clear knowledge of what one does not know just as important as knowing what one does know.... "The development of exact natural knowledge in all its vast range, from physics to history and criticism, is the consequence of the working out, in this province, of the resolution to 'take nothing for truth without clear knowledge that it is such'; to consider all beliefs open to criticism; to regard the value of authority as neither greater nor less, than as much as it can prove itself to be worth. The modern spirit is not the spirit 'which always denies,' delighting only in destruction; still less is it that which builds castles in the air rather than not construct; it is that spirit which works and will work 'without haste and without rest,' gathering harvest after harvest of truth into its barns, and devouring error with unquenchable fire" (p. viii.). The harvesting of truth is a safe enough enterprise, but the devouring of error is a more dangerous pastime, since flames are liable to spread beyond our control; and though, in a world overgrown with weeds and refuse, the cleansing influence of fire is a necessity, it would be cruel to apply the same agency again at a later stage, when a fresh young crop is springing up in the cleared ground. CHAPTER V RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY The aphorism sometimes encountered, that "whatever properties appertain to a whole must essentially belong to the parts of which it is composed," is a fallacy. A property can be possessed by an aggregation of atoms which no atom possesses in the slightest degree. Those who think otherwise are unacquainted with mathematical laws other than simple proportion or some continuous or additive functions; they are not aware of discontinuities; they are not experienced in critical values, above which certain conditions obtain, while below them there is suddenly nothing. To refute them an instance must suffice:-- A meteoric stone may seem to differ from a planet only in size, but the difference in size involves also many other differences, notably the fact that the larger body can attract and hold to itself an atmosphere--a circumstance of the utmost importance to the existence of life on its surface. In order, however, that a planet may by gravitative attraction control the roving atoms of gas, and confine their excursions to within a certain range of itself, it must have a very considerable mass. The earth is big enough to do it; the moon is not. By simply piling atoms or stones together into a mighty mass there comes a critical point at which an atmosphere becomes possible; and directly an atmosphere exists, all manner of phenomena may spring into existence, which without it were quite impossible. So, also, it may be said that a sun differs from a dark planet only in size; for it is just the fact of great size which enables its gravitative-shrinkage and earthquake-subsidence to generate an immense quantity of heat and to maintain the mass for æons at an excessively high temperature, thereby fitting it to become the centre of light and life to a number of worlds. The blaze of the sun is a property which is the outcome of its great mass. A small permanent sun is an impossibility. Wherefore, properties can be possessed by an aggregate or assemblage of particles which in the particles themselves did not in the slightest degree exist. If, however, we reverse the aphorism and say that whatever is in a part must be in the whole, we are on much safer ground. I do not say that it cannot be pressed into illegitimate extremes, but in one and that the simplest sense it is little better than a platitude. The fact that an apple has pips legitimises the assertion that an apple-tree has pips, and that the peculiar property of pips represents a faculty enjoyed by the vegetable kingdom as a whole; but it would be a childish misunderstanding to expect to find actual pips in the trunk of a tree or in all vegetables. There is a tendency to call the argument or statement that whatever faculty man possesses the Deity must have also; by the name Anthropomorphism; but it seems to me a misnomer, and to convey quite wrong ideas. The argument represented by "He that formed the eye, shall he not see? he that planted the ear, shall he not hear?" need not assume for a moment that God has sense organs akin to those of man, or that He appreciates ethereal and aerial vibrations in the same sort of way. It is not an assertion of similarity between God and man, but merely a realisation that what belongs to a part _must_ be contained in the whole. It is not even necessarily pantheistic: it would hold equally well on a Theistic interpretation. Regarded pantheistically it is obvious and requires no stating: regarded Theistically, it is a perception that faculties and powers which have come into existence, and are actually at work in the universe, cannot have arisen without the knowledge and sympathy and full understanding of the Sustainer and Comprehender of it all. Nor can functions be expected in the creature which transcend the power of the Creator. All our faculties, sensations, and emotions must therefore be understood, and in a sense possessed, in some transcendental and to us unimaginable form, by the Deity. I know that it is possible to deny His existence, just as it is possible to deny the existence of an external world or to maintain that reality is limited to our sensations. If the Deity has a sense of humour, as undoubtedly He has, He must be amused at the remarkable philosophising faculty recently developed by the creature which on this planet has become most vigorously selfconscious and is in the early stages of progress towards higher things--a philosophising faculty so acute as to lead him to mistrust and throw away information conveyed to him by the very instruments which have enabled him to become what he is; so that having become keenly alive to the truth that all we are directly aware of is the fruit of our own sensations and consciousness, he proceeds to the grotesque supposition that these sensations and consciousness may be all that really exists, and that the information which for ages our senses have conveyed to us concerning external things may be illusory, not only in form and detail and appearance, but in substantial fact. He must be pleased, also, with the enterprise of those eager philosophers who are so strenuously impressed with the truth of some ultimate monistic unification, as to be unwilling to concede the multifariousness of existence--who decline to speak of mind and matter, or of body and spirit, or of God and the world, as in any sense separate entities--who stigmatise as dualistic anything which does not manifestly and consciously strain after an ultimate monistic view--and who then, as a climax, on the strength of a few years' superficial experience on a planet, by the aid of the sense organs which they themselves perceive to be illusory whenever the actual reality of things is in contemplation, proceed to develop the theory that the whole has come into being without direct intelligence and apart from spiritual guidance, that it is managed so well (or so ill) that it is really not managed at all, that no Deity exists, and that it is absurd to postulate the existence of a comprehensive and all-inclusive guiding Mind. To be able to perceive comprehensively and state fully not only what is, but also what is not, is a wonderful achievement. I do not think that such a power has yet been acquired by any of the sons of men; nor will the semi-educated readers of this country be wise if they pin their faith and build their hopes on the utterances of any man, however eminent, who makes this superhuman claim. Now, in all charity, it must be admitted that in some passages Professor Haeckel puts himself under the ban implied by the above paragraph, inasmuch as he conducts a sort of free and easy attack on religion, especially on what he conceives to be the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. But, after all, it can be perceived that his attack, so far as it is really an attack on religion, is evidently inspired by his mistrust and dislike, and to some extent fear, of Ecclesiasticism, especially of the Ultramontane movement in Germany, against which he says Prince Bismarck began a struggle in 1872. It is this kind of semi-political religion that he is really attacking, more than the pure essence of Christianity itself. He regards it as a bigoted system hostile to knowledge--which, if true, would amply justify an attack--and he says on page 118:-- "The great struggle between modern science and orthodox Christianity has become more threatening; it has grown more dangerous for science in proportion as Christianity has found support in an increasing mental and political reaction." This may seem an exaggerated fear; but the following extract from a Pastoral address by the Bishop of Newport, which accidentally I saw reported in _The Tablet_, shows that the danger is not wholly imaginary, if unwise opinions are pressed to their logical practical issue:-- "If the formulas of modern science contradict the science of Catholic dogma, it is the former that must be altered, not the latter."[2] [2] In case it is unfair to wrench a sentence like this from its context, I quote the larger portion of that instructive report in this note:-- _Extract from "The Tablet," Aug. 27th, 1904--An Address by the Bishop of Newport._ "If the Abbé Loisy has followers within the Church, as we are informed he has, it cannot be doubted that the danger for Catholics is by no means imaginary. For Loisy teaches that the dogmatic definitions of the Church [on the Incarnation], although the best that could be given at the time and under the circumstances, are only a most inadequate expression of the real truth, which they represent merely relatively and imperfectly. These definitions, he says, should now be stated afresh, because the traditional formula no longer corresponds to the way in which the mystery is regarded by contemporary thought. In his view, our present knowledge of the universe should suggest to the Church a new examination of the dogma of Creation; our knowledge of history should make her revise her ideas of revelation; and our progress in psychology and moral philosophy should suggest to her to re-state her theology of the Incarnation. Every one can see that there is a grain of truth in this kind of talk. But it is, on the whole, a pestilent and dangerous heresy. If the formulas of modern science contradict the science of Catholic dogma, it is the former that must be altered, not the latter. If modern metaphysics are incompatible with the metaphysical terms and expressions adopted by councils and explained by the Catholic schools, then modern metaphysics must be rejected as erroneous. The Church does not change her Christian philosophy to suit the world's speculations; she teaches the world, by her theological definitions, what true and sound philosophy is. Whilst every effort should be made by Catholic apologists to smooth the way for a genuine understanding of the Church's dogmatic terminology, two things must never be lost sight of, first, that this terminology expresses real objective truth (however inadequate the expression may be to the full meaning, as God sees it, of any given mystery); and, secondly, that such truth is expressed in terms of sound philosophy which will not be given up, and which may be called the Christian philosophy." Professor Haeckel continues his criticism of Official Christianity in the following vein:-- "The so-called 'Peace between Church and State' is never more than a suspension of hostilities. The modern Papacy, true to the despotic principles it has followed for the last 1600 years, is determined to wield sole dominion over the credulous souls of men; it must demand the absolute submission of the cultured State, which, as such, defends the rights of reason and science. True and enduring peace there cannot be until one of the combatants lies powerless on the ground. Either the Church wins, and then farewell to all 'free science and free teaching'--then are our universities no better than gaols, and our colleges become cloistral schools; or else the modern rational State proves victorious--then, in the twentieth century, human culture, freedom, and prosperity will continue their progressive development until they far surpass even the height of the nineteenth century. "In order to compass these high aims, it is of the first importance that modern science not only shatter the false structures of superstition and sweep their ruins from the path, but that it also erect a new abode for human emotion on the ground it has cleared--a 'palace of reason,' in which, under the influence of our new monistic views, we do reverence to the real trinity of the nineteenth century--the trinity of 'the true, the good, and the beautiful'" (p. 119). These are the bases of religion, adopted from Goethe, which in Haeckel's view should entirely replace what he calls the Trinity of Kant, viz., God, Freedom, and Immortality--three ideas which he regards as mere superstition or as so enveloped in superstition as to be worthless. Occasionally, however, he attacks not solely ecclesiastical Christianity--in which enterprise he is entirely within his rights,--but he goes further and abuses some of its more primitive forms, and to some extent its practical fruits also. For instance:-- "Primitive Christianity preached the worthlessness of earthly life, regarding it merely as a preparation for an eternal life beyond. Hence it immediately followed that all we find in the life of a man here below, all that is beautiful in art and science, in public and in private life, is of no real value. The true Christian must avert his eyes from them; he must think only of a worthy preparation for the life beyond. Contempt of nature, aversion from all its inexhaustible charms, rejection of every kind of fine art, are Christian duties; and they are carried out to perfection when a man separates himself from his fellows, chastises his body, and spends all his time in prayers in the cloister or the hermit's cell.... A Christian art is a contradiction in terms" (p. 120). I think it may without offence be said that if he means by "Primitive Christianity" the teachings of Christ, he is mistaken, and has something to learn as to what those teachings really were. If he means the times of persecution under the Roman empire, he could hardly expect much concentration on artistic pursuits or much enjoyment of terrestrial existence when it was liable to be violently extinguished at any moment: sufficient that the early Church survived its struggle for existence. But if he is referring to mediæval Christianity, of any other than a debased kind,--common knowledge concerning mediæval art and architecture sufficiently rebuts the indictment. So much so, that one may almost wonder if by chance he happened to be thinking of "Mohammedanism" rather than of Christianity. But he continues, in a more practical and observant vein:-- "Christianity has no place for that well-known love of animals, that sympathy with the nearly-related and friendly mammals (dogs, horses, cattle, etc.) which is urged in the ethical teaching of many of the older religions, especially Buddhism. (Unfortunately, Descartes gave some support to the error in teaching that man only has a sensitive soul, not the animal.) Whoever has spent much time in the south of Europe must have often witnessed those frightful sufferings of animals which fill us friends of animals with the deepest sympathy and indignation. And when one expostulates with these brutal 'Christians' on their cruelty, the only answer is, with a laugh: 'But the beasts are not Christians'" (p. 126). This, if true, and I have heard it from other sources, does constitute rather a serious indictment against the form of practical Christianity understood by the ignorant classes among the Latin races. To return, however, to the concluding paragraph of the extract quoted above (on page 81) from his page 119:-- No one can have any objection to raise against the dignity and worthiness of the three great attributes which excite Professor Haeckel's, as they excited Goethe's, worship and admiration, viz., the three "goddesses," as he calls them: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty; but there is no necessary competition or antagonism between these and the other three great conceptions which aroused the veneration of Kant: God, Freedom, and Immortality; nor does the upholding of the one triad mean the overthrow of the other: they may be all co-eternal together and co-equal. Nor are either of these triplets inconsistent with some reasonable view of what may be meant by the Christian Trinity. The total possibility of existence is so vast that no simple formula, nor indeed any form of words, however complex, is likely to be able to sum it up and express its essence to the exclusion of all other modes of expression. It is a pity, therefore, that Professor Haeckel should think it necessary to decry one set of ideas in order to support another set. There is room for all in this large universe--room for everything, except downright lies and falseness. Concerning Truth there is no need to speak: it cannot but be the breath of the nostrils of every genuine scientific man; but his ideas of truth should be large enough to take into account possibilities far beyond anything of which he is at present sure, and he should be careful to be undogmatic and docile in regions of which at present he has not the key. The meaning of Goodness, the whole domain of ethics, and the higher possibilities of sainthood of which the human spirit has shown itself capable, are at present outside his domain; and if a man of science seeks to dogmatise concerning the emotions and the will, and asserts that he can reduce them to atomic forces and motions, because he has learnt to recognise the undoubted truth that atomic forces and motions must accompany them and constitute the machinery of their manifestation here and now,--he is exhibiting the smallness of his conceptions and gibbeting himself as a laughing-stock to future generations. The atmosphere and full meaning of Beauty also he can only dimly grasp. If he seeks to explain it in terms of sexual selection, or any other small conception which he has recently been able to form in connection with vital procedure on this planet, he is explaining nothing: he is merely showing how the perception of beauty may operate in certain cases; but the inner nature of beauty and the faculty by which it is perceived are utterly beyond him. He cannot but feel that the unconscious and unobtrusive beauty of field and hedgerow must have originated in obedience to some primal instinct or in fulfilment of some immanent desire, some lofty need quite other than anything he recognises as human. And if a poet witnessing the colours of a sunset, for instance, or the profusion of beauty with which snow mountains seem to fling themselves to the heavens in districts unpeopled and in epochs long before human consciousness awoke upon the earth: if such a seer feels the revelation weigh upon his spirit with an almost sickening pressure, and is constrained to ascribe this wealth and prodigality of beauty to the joy of the Eternal Being in His own existence, to an anticipation as it were of the developments which lie before the universe in which He is at work, and which He is slowly tending towards an unimaginable perfection--it behooves the man of science to put his hand upon his mouth, lest in his efforts to be true, in the absence of knowledge, he find himself uttering, in his ignorance, words of lamentable folly or blasphemy. _Man and Nature._ Consider our own position--it is surely worth considering. We are a part of this planet; on one side certainly and distinctly a part of this material world, a part which has become self-conscious. At first we were a part which had become alive; a tremendous step that--introducing a number of powers and privileges which previously had been impossible, but that step introduced no responsibility; we were no longer, indeed, urged by mere pressure from behind, we were guided by our instincts and appetites, but we still obeyed the strongest external motive, almost like electro-magnetic automata. Now, however, we have become conscious, able to look before and after, to learn consciously from the past, to strive strenuously towards the future; we have acquired a knowledge of good and evil, we can choose the one and reject the other, and are thus burdened with a sense of responsibility for our acts. We still obey the strongest motive doubtless, but there is something in ourselves which makes it a motive and regulates its strength. We _can_ drift like other animals, and often do; but we can also obey our own volition. I would not deny the rudiments of self-consciousness, and some of what it implies, to certain domestic animals, notably the dog; but domestication itself is a result of humanity, and undoubtedly the attributes we are discussing are chiefly and almost solely human, they can hardly be detected in wild nature. No other animal can have a full perception of its own individuality and personality as separate from the rest of existence. Such ideas do not occur in the early periods of even human infancy: they are a later growth. Self-consciousness must have become prominent at a certain stage in the evolutionary process. How it all arose is a legitimate problem for genetic psychology, but to the plain man it is a puzzle; our ancestors invented legends to account for it--legends of apples and serpents and the like; but the fact is there, however it be accounted for. The truth embedded in that old Genesis legend is deep; it is the legend of man's awakening from a merely animal life to consciousness of good and evil, no longer obeying his primal instincts in a state of thoughtlessness and innocency--a state in which deliberate vice was impossible and therefore higher and purposed goodness also impossible,--it was the introduction of a new sense into the world, the sense of conscience, the power of deliberate choice; the power also of conscious guidance, the management of things and people external to himself, for preconceived ends. Man was beginning to cease to be merely a passenger on the planet, controlled by outside forces; it is as if the reins were then for the first time being placed in his hands, as if he was allowed to begin to steer, to govern his own fate and destiny, and to take over some considerable part of the management of the world. The process of handing over the reins to us is still going on. The education of the human race is a long process, and we are not yet fit to be fully trusted with the steering gear; but the words of the old serpent were true enough: once open our eyes to the perception and discrimination of good and evil, once become conscious of freedom of choice, and sooner or later we must inevitably acquire some of the power and responsibility of gods. A fall it might seem, just as a vicious man sometimes seems degraded below the beasts, but in promise and potency a rise it really was. The oneness between ourselves and Nature is not a thing to be deplored; it is a thing to rejoice at, when properly conceived. It awakens a kind of religious enthusiasm even in Haeckel, who clearly perceives but a limited aspect of it; yet the perception is vivid enough to cause him, this so-called Atheist, to close his _Confession of Faith_ with words such as these:-- "Now, at last, it is given to the mightily advancing human mind to have its eyes opened; it is given to it to show that a true knowledge of nature affords full satisfaction and inexhaustible nourishment not only for its searching understanding, but also for its yearning spirit. "Knowledge of the true, training for the good, pursuit of the beautiful: these are the three great departments of our monism; by the harmonious and consistent cultivation of these we effect at last the truly beatific union of religion and science, so painfully longed after by so many to-day. The True, the Beautiful, and the Good, these are the three august Divine Ones before which we bow the knee in adoration.... "In the hope that free research and free teaching may always continue, I conclude my monistic _Confession of Faith_ with the words: 'May God, the Spirit of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True, be with us.'" This is clearly the utterance of a man to whose type I unconsciously referred in an article written two years ago (_Hibbert Journal_, January 1903), from which I now make the following appropriate extract:-- Looking at the loom of nature, the feeling not of despair, but of what has been called atheism, one ingredient of atheism, has arisen: atheism never fully realised, and wrongly so called--recently it has been called severe Theism, indeed; for it is joyful sometimes, interested and placid always, exultant at the strange splendour of the spectacle which its intellect has laid bare to contemplation, satisfied with the perfection of the mechanism, content to be a part of the self-generated organism, and endeavouring to think that the feelings of duty, of earnest effort, and of faithful service, which conspicuously persist in spite of all discouragement, are on this view intelligible as well as instinctive, and sure that nothing less than unrepining unfaltering unswerving acquiescence is worthy of our dignity as man. The above 'Confession of Faith,' then, is very well; for the man himself very well indeed, but it is not enough for the race. Other parts of Haeckel's writings show that it is not enough, and that his conception of what he means by Godhead is narrow and limited to an extent at which instinct, reason, and experience alike rebel. No one can be satisfied with conceptions below the highest which to him are possible: I doubt if it is given to man to think out a clear and consistent system higher and nobler than the real truth. Our highest thoughts are likely to be nearest to reality: they must be stages in the direction of truth, else they could not have come to us and been recognised as highest. So, also, with our longings and aspirations towards ultimate perfection, those desires which we recognise as our noblest and best: surely they must have some correspondence with the facts of existence, else had they been unattainable by us. Reality is not to be surpassed, except locally and temporarily, by the ideals of knowledge and goodness invented by a fraction of itself; and if we could grasp the entire scheme of things, so far from wishing to "shatter it to bits and then Remould it nearer to the heart's desire," we should hail it as better and more satisfying than any of our random imaginings. The universe is in no way limited to our conceptions: it has a reality apart from them; nevertheless, they themselves constitute a part of it, and can only take a clear and consistent character in so far as they correspond with something true and real. Whatever we can clearly and consistently conceive, that is _ipso facto_ in a sense already existent in the universe as a whole; and that, or something better, we shall find to be a dim foreshadowing of a higher reality. * * * * * EXPLANATORY NOTE ON CONSTRUCTIVE THOUGHT AND OPTIMISM. (_Partly reprinted from "Mind."_) It may be worth while to explain how it is that, to a physicist unsmitten with any taint of solipsism, a well-elaborated scheme which is consistent with already known facts necessarily seems to correspond, or have close affinity, with the truth. It is the result of experience of a mathematical theorem concerning unique distributions. For instance, it can be shown that in an electric field, however complicated, any distribution of potential which satisfies boundary conditions, and one or two other essential criteria, must be the actual distribution; for it has been rigorously proved that there cannot be two or more distributions which satisfy those conditions, hence if one is arrived at theoretically, or intuitively, or by any means, it must be the correct one; and no further proof is required. So, also, in connection with analogies and working models: although they must necessarily be imperfect, so long as they are only analogies, yet the making or imagining of models (not necessarily or usually a material model, but a conceptual model) is a recognised way of arriving at an understanding of recondite and ultra-sensual processes, occurring say in the ether or elsewhere. As an addition to evidence derived from such experiments as have been found possible, and as a supplement to the experience out of which, as out of a nucleus, every conception must grow, the mind is set to design and invent a self-coherent scheme which shall imitate as far as possible the results exhibited by nature. By then using this as a working hypothesis, and pressing it into extremes, it can be gradually amended until it shows no sign of discordance or failure anywhere, and even serves as a guide to new and previously unsuspected phenomena. When that stage is reached, it is provisionally accepted and tentatively held as a step in the direction of the truth; though the mind is always kept ready to improve and modify and enlarge it, in accordance with the needs of more thorough investigation and fresh discovery. It was so, for instance, with Maxwell's electromagnetic theory of light; and there are a multitude of other instances. In the transcendental or ultra-mundane or supersensual region there is the further difficulty to be encountered, that we are not acquainted with anything like all the 'boundary conditions,' so to speak; we only know our little bit of the boundary, and we may err egregiously in inferring or attempting to infer the remainder. We may even make a mistake as to the form of function adapted to the case. Nevertheless there is no better clue, and the human mind is impelled to do the best it can with the confessedly imperfect data which it finds at its disposal. The result, therefore, in this region, is no system of definite and certain truth, as in Physics, but is either suspense of judgment altogether, or else a tentative scheme or working hypothesis, to be held undogmatically, in an attitude of constant receptiveness for further light, and in full readiness for modification in the direction of the truth. So far concerning the ascertainment of truth alone, in intangible regions of inquiry. The further hypothesis that such truth when found will be most satisfactory, or in other words higher and better than any alternative plan,--the conviction that faith in the exceeding grandeur of reality shall not be confounded,--requires further justification; and its grounds are not so easy to formulate. Perhaps the feeling is merely human and instinctive; but it is existent and customary I believe among physicists, possibly among men of Science in general, though I cannot speak for all; and it must be based upon familiarity with a mass of experience in which, after long groping and guess-work, the truth has ultimately been discovered, and been recognised as 'very good.' It is illustrated, for instance, by the words in which Tyndall closes the first edition of his book on Sound, wherein, after explaining Helmholtz's brilliant theory of Corti's organ and the musical mechanism of the ear,--a theory which, amid the difficulties of actual observation, was necessarily at first saturated with hypothesis, and is not even yet fully verified,--he says:-- "Within the ears of men, and without their knowledge or contrivance, this lute of 3000 strings has existed for ages, accepting the music of the outer world, and rendering it fit for reception by the brain.... I do not ask you to consider these views as established, but only as probable. They present the phenomena in a connected and intelligible form; and should they be doomed to displacement by a more correct or comprehensive theory, it will assuredly be found that the wonder is not diminished by the substitution of the truth." CHAPTER VI MIND AND MATTER What, then, is the probable essence of truth in Professor Haeckel's philosophy? for it is not to be supposed that the speculations of an eminent man are baseless, or that he has been led to his view of what he conceives to be the truth by some wholly erroneous path; his intuitive convictions are to be respected, for they are based on a far wider experience and knowledge of fact than is given to the average man; and for the average man to consider it likely that there is no foundation whatever for the life convictions of a great specialist is as foolish as to suppose it probable that they are certain and infallible, or that they are uncritically to be accepted even in regions beyond those over which his jurisdiction extends. First as to the "law of substance," by which he sets so much store; the fact which he is really, though indistinctly, trying to emphasise, is what I have preferred to formulate as "the persistence of the really existent," see page 34; and, with that modification, we can agree with Haeckel, or with what I take to be his inner meaning, to some extent. We may all fairly agree, I think, that whatever really and fundamentally _exists_ must, so far as bare existence is concerned, be independent of time. It may go through many changes, and thus have a history; that is to say, must have definite time-relations, so far as its changes are concerned; but it can hardly be thought of as either going out of existence, or as coming into existence, at any given period, though it may completely change its form and accidents; everything basal must have a past and a future of some kind or other, though any special concatenation or arrangement may have a date of origin and of destruction. A crowd, for instance, is of this fugitive character: it assembles and it disperses, its existence as a crowd is over, but its constituent elements persist; and the same can be said of a planet or a sun. Yet for some "soul" or underlying reality even in these temporary accretions there is permanence of a sort:--Tyndall's "streak of morning cloud," though it may have "melted into infinite azure," has not thereby become non-existent, although as a visible object it has disappeared from our ken and become a memory only. It is true that it was a mere aggregate or accidental agglomeration--it had developed no self-consciousness, nothing that could be called personality or identity characterised it,--and so no individual persistence is to be expected for it; yet even it--low down in the scale of being as it is--even it has rejoined the general body of aqueous vapour whence, through the incarnating influence of night, it arose. The thing that _is_, both _was_ and _shall be_, and whatever does not satisfy this condition must be an accidental or fugitive or essentially temporary conglomeration or assemblage, and not one of the fundamental entities of the universe. It is interesting to remember that this was one of the opinions strongly held by the late Professor Tait, who considered that persistence or conservation was the test or criterion of real existence. The question, How many fundamental entities in this sense there are, and what they are, is a difficult one. Many people, including such opposite thinkers as Tait and Haeckel, would say "matter" and "energy"; though Haeckel chooses, on his own account, to add that these two are one. (Perhaps Professor Ostwald would agree with him there; though to me the meaning is vague.) Physical science, pushed to the last resort, would probably reply that, within its sphere of knowledge at the present stage, the fundamental entities are _ether_ and _motion_; and that of other things at present it knows next to nothing. If physical science is interrogated as to the probable persistence, _i.e._, the fundamental existence, of "life" or of "mind," it ought to reply that it does not know; if asked about "personality," or "souls," or "God,"--about all of which Professor Haeckel has fully-fledged opinions--it would have to ask for a definition of the terms, and would speak either not at all or with bated breath concerning them. The possibility that "life" may be a real and basal form of existence, and therefore persistent, is a possibility to be borne in mind. It may at least serve as a clue to investigation, and some day may bear fruit; at present it is no better than a working hypothesis. It is one that on the whole commends itself to me; for I conceive that though we only know of it as a function of terrestrial matter, yet that it has another aspect too, and I say this because I see it arriving and leaving--animating matter for a time and then quitting it, just as I see dew appearing and disappearing on a plate. Apart from a solid surface, dew cannot exist as such; and to a savage it might seem to spring into and to go out of existence--to be an exudation from the solid, and dependent wholly upon it; but we happen to know more about it: we know that it has a permanent and continuous existence in an imperceptible, intangible, supersensual form, though its visible manifestation in the form of mist or dew is temporary and evanescent. Perhaps it is permissible to trace in that elementary phenomenon some superficial analogy to an incarnation. The fact concerning life which lies at the root of Professor Haeckel's doctrine about its origin, is that living beings have undoubtedly made their appearance on this planet, where at one time they cannot be suspected of having existed. Consequently that whatever life may be, it is something which can begin to interact with the atoms of terrestrial matter, at some period, or state of aggregation, or other condition of elaboration,--a condition which may perhaps be rather definite, if only we were aware of what it was. But that undoubted fact is quite consistent with any view as to the nature of "life," and even with any view as to the mode of its terrestrial commencement; there is nothing in that to say that it is a function of matter alone, any more than the wind is a function of the leaves which dance under its influence; there is nothing even to contradict the notion that it sprang into existence suddenly at a literal word of command. The improbability or absurdity of such a conception as this last, except in the symbolism of poetry, is extreme, and it is unthinkable by any educated person; but its improbability depends upon other considerations than biologic ones, and it is as repugnant to an enlightened Theology as to any other science. The mode in which biological speculation as to the probable development of living out of dead matter, and the general relation of protoplasm to physics and chemistry, can be surmised or provisionally granted, without thereby concurring in any destructive criticism of other facts and experiences, is explained in Chapter X. on "Life," further on: and there I emphasise my agreement with parts of the speculative contentions of Professor Haeckel on the positive side. _Soul and Body._ Let us consider what are the facts scientifically known concerning the interaction between mind and matter. Fundamentally they amount to this: that a complex piece of matter, called the brain, is the organ or instrument of mind and consciousness; that if it be stimulated mental activity results; that if it be injured or destroyed no manifestation of mental activity is possible. Moreover, it is assumed, and need not be doubted, that a portion of brain substance is consumed, oxidised let us say, in every act of mentation: using that term in the vaguest and most general sense, and including in it unconscious as well as conscious operations. Suppose we grant all this, what then? We have granted that brain is the means whereby mind is made manifest on this material plane, it is the instrument through which alone we know it, but we have not granted that mind is _limited_ to its material manifestation; nor can we maintain that without matter the things we call mind, intelligence, consciousness, have no sort of existence. Mind may be incorporate or incarnate in matter, but it may also transcend it; it is through the region of ideas and the intervention of mind that we have become aware of the existence of matter. It is injudicious to discard our primary and fundamental _awareness_ for what is after all an instinctive inference or interpretation of certain sensations. The realities underlying those sensations are only known to us by inference, but they have an independent existence: in their inmost nature they may be quite other than what they seem, and are in no way dependent upon our perception of them. So, also, our actual personality may be something considerably unlike that conception of it which is based on our present terrestrial consciousness--a form of consciousness suited to, and developed by, our temporary existence here, but not necessarily more than a fraction of our total self. Take an analogy: the eye is the organ of vision; by it we perceive light. Stimulate the retina in any way, and we are conscious of the sensation of light; injure or destroy the eye, and vision becomes imperfect or impossible. If eyes did not exist we should probably know nothing about light, and we might be tempted to say that light did not exist. In a sense, to a blind race, light would not exist--that is to say, there would be no sensation of light, there would be no sight; but the underlying physical cause of that sensation--the ripples in the ether--would be there all the time. And it is these ethereal ripples which a physicist understands by the term "light." It is quite conceivable that a race of blind physicists would be able to devise experimental means whereby they could make experiments on what to us is luminous radiation, just as we now make experiments on electric waves, for which we have no sense organ. It would be absurd for a psychologist to inform them that light did not exist because sight did not. The _term_ might have to be reconsidered and redefined; indeed, most likely a polysyllabic term would be employed, as is unfortunately usual when a thing of which the race in general has no intimate knowledge requires nomenclature. But the thing would be there, though its mode of manifestation would be different; a term like "vision" might still be employed, to signify our mode of perceiving and experiencing the agency which now manifests itself to us through our eyes; and plants might grow by the aid of that agency just as they do now. So, also, brain is truly the organ of mind and consciousness, and to a brainless race these terms, and all other terms, would be meaningless; but no one is at liberty to assert, on the strength of that fact, that the realities underlying our use of those terms have no existence apart from terrestrial brains. Nor can we say with any security that the stuff called "brain" is the only conceivable machinery which they are able to utilise: though it is true that we know of no other. Yet it would seem that such a proposition must be held by a materialist, or by what can be implied by the term "monist," used in its narrowest and most unphilosophic sense--a sense which would be better expressed by the term materialistic-monist, with a limitation of the term matter to the terrestrial chemical elements and their combinations, _i.e._, to that form of substance to which the human race has grown accustomed--a sense which tends to exclude ethereal and other generalisations and unknown possibilities such as would occur to a philosophic monist of the widest kind. For that it may ultimately be discovered that there is some intimate and necessary connection between a generalised form of matter and some lofty variety of mind is not to be denied; though also it cannot be asserted. It has been surmised, for instance, that just as the corpuscles and atoms of matter, in their intricate movements and relations, combine to form the brain cell of a human being; so the cosmic bodies, the planets and suns and other groupings of the ether, may perhaps combine to form something corresponding as it were to the brain cell of some transcendent Mind. The idea is to be found in Newton. The thing is a mere guess, it is not an impossibility, and it cannot be excluded from a philosophic system by any negative statement based on scientific fact. In some such sense as that, matter and mind may be, for all we know, eternally and necessarily connected; they can be different aspects of some fundamental unity; and a lofty kind of monism can be true, just as a lofty kind of pantheism can be true. But the miserable degraded monism and lower pantheism, which limits the term "god" to that part of existence of which we are now aware--sometimes, indeed, to a fraction only of that--which limits the term "mind" to that of which we are ourselves conscious, and the term "matter" to the dust of the earth and the other visible bodies, is a system of thought appropriate, perhaps, to a fertile and energetic portion of the nineteenth century, but not likely to survive as a system of perennial truth. The term "organ" itself should have given pause to anyone desirous of promulgating a scheme such as that. "Organ" is a name popularly given to an instrument of music. Without it, or some other instrument, no material manifestation or display of music is possible; it is an instrument for the incarnation of music--the means whereby it interacts with the material world and throws the air and so our ears into vibration, it is the means whereby we apprehend it. Injure the organ and the music is imperfect; destroy it and it ceases to be possible. But is it to be asserted on the strength of that fact that the term "music" has no significance apart from its material manifestation? Have the ideas of Sir Edward Elgar no reality apart from their record on paper and reproduction by an orchestra? It is true that without suitable instruments and a suitable sense-organ we should know nothing of music, but it cannot be supposed that its underlying essence would be therefore extinct or non-existent and meaningless. Can there not be in the universe a multitude of things which matter as we know it is incompetent to express? Is it not the complaint of every genius that his material is intractable, that it is difficult to coerce matter as he knows it into the service of mind as he is conscious of it, and that his conceptions transcend his powers of expression? The connection between soul and body, or more generally between spiritual and material, has been illustrated by the connection between the meaning of a sentence and the written or spoken word conveying that meaning. The writing or the speaking may be regarded as an incarnation of the meaning, a mode of stating or exhibiting its essence. As delivered, the sentence must have time relations; it has a beginning, middle, and end; it may be repeated, and the same general meaning may be expressed in other words; but the intrinsic meaning of the sentence itself need have no time relations, it may be true _always_, it may exist as an eternal "now," though it may be perceived and expressed by humanity with varying clearness from time to time. The soul of a thing is its underlying permanent reality--that which gives it its meaning and confers upon it its attributes. The body is an instrument or mechanism for the manifestation or sensible presentation of what else would be imperceptible. It is useless to ask whether a soul is immortal--a soul is always immortal "where a soul can be discerned": the question to ask concerning any given object is whether it has a soul or meaning or personal underlying reality at all. Those who think that reality is limited to its terrestrial manifestation doubtless have a philosophy of their own, to which they are entitled and to which at any rate they are welcome; but if they set up to teach others that monism signifies a limitation of mind to the potentialities of matter as at present known; if they teach a pantheism which identifies God with nature in this narrow sense; if they hold that mind and what they call matter are so intimately connected that no _transcendence_ is possible; that, without the cerebral hemispheres, consciousness and intelligence and emotion and love, and all the higher attributes towards which humanity is slowly advancing, would cease to be; that the term "soul" signifies "a sum of plasma-movements in the ganglion cells"; and that the term "God" is limited to the operation of a known evolutionary process, and can be represented as "the infinite sum of all natural forces, the sum of all atomic forces and all ether vibrations," to quote Professor Haeckel (_Confession of Faith_, p. 78); then such philosophers must be content with an audience of uneducated persons, or, if writing as men of science, must hold themselves liable to be opposed by other men of science, who are able, at any rate in their own judgment, to take a wider survey of existence, and to perceive possibilities to which the said narrow and over-definite philosophers were blind. _Life and Guidance._ Matter possesses energy, in the form of persistent motion, and it is propelled by force; but neither matter nor energy possesses the power of automatic guidance and control. Energy has no directing power (this has been elaborated by Croll and others: see, for instance, p. 24, and a letter in _Nature_, vol. 43, p. 434, thirteen years ago, under the heading "Force and Determinism"). Inorganic matter is impelled solely by pressure from behind, it is not influenced by the future, nor does it follow a preconceived course nor seek a predetermined end. An organism animated by mind is in a totally different case. The intangible influences of hunger, of a call, of perception of something ahead, are then the dominant feature. An intelligent animal which is being pushed is in an ignominious position and resents it; when led, or when voluntarily obeying a call, it is in its rightful attitude. The essence of mind is design and purpose. There are some who deny that there is any design or purpose in the universe at all: but how can that be maintained when humanity itself possesses these attributes? (_cf._ pp. 54, 74). Is it not more reasonable to say that just as we are conscious of the power of guidance in ourselves, so guidance and intelligent control may be an element running through the universe, and may be incorporated even in material things? A traveller who has lost his way in a mountain district, coming across a path, may rejoice, saying, "This will guide me home." A materialist, if he were consistent, should laugh such a traveller to scorn, saying, "What guidance or purpose can there be in a material object? there is no guidance or purpose in the universe; things _are_ because they cannot be otherwise, not because of any intention underlying them. How can a path, which is little better than the absence of grass or the wearing down of stones, know where you live or guide you to any desired destination? Moreover, whatever knowledge or purpose the path exhibits must be _in the path_, must be a property of the atoms of which it is composed. To them some fraction of will, of power, of knowledge, and of feeling _may_ perhaps be attributed, and from their aggregation something of the same kind may perhaps be deduced. If the traveller can decipher that, he may utilise the material object to his advantage; but if he conceives the path to have been made with any teleological object or intelligent purpose, he is abandoning himself to superstition, and is as likely to be led by it to the edge of a precipice as to anywhere else. Let him follow his superstition at his peril!" This is not a quotation, of course: but it is a parable. Matter is the instrument and vehicle of mind; incarnation is the mode by which mind interacts with the present scheme of things, and thereby the element of guidance is supplied; it can, in fact, be embodied in an intelligent arrangement of inert inorganic matter. Even a mountain path exhibits the property of guidance, and has direction: it is an incorporation of intelligence, though itself inert. Direction is not a function of energy. The energy of sound from an organ is supplied by the blower of the bellows, which may be worked by a mechanical engine; but the melody and harmony, the sequence and co-existence of notes, are determined by the dominating mind of the musician: not necessarily of the executant alone, for the composer's mind may be evoked to some extent even by a pianola. The music may be said to be incarnate in the roll of paper which is ready to be passed through the instrument. So also can the conception of any artist receive material embodiment in his work, and if a picture or a beautiful building is destroyed it can be made to rise again from its ashes provided the painter or the architect still lives: in other words, his thought can receive a fresh incarnation; and a perception of the beautiful form shall hereafter, in a kindred spirit, arouse similar ideas. There is thus a truth in materialism, but it is not a truth readily to be apprehended and formulated. Matter may become imbued with life, and full of vital association; something of the personality of a departed owner seems to cling sometimes about an old garment, its curves and folds can suggest him vividly to our recollection. I would not too blatantly assert that even a doll on which much affection had been lavished was wholly inert and material in the inorganic sense. The tattered colours of a regiment are sometimes thought worthy to be hung in a church. They are a symbol truly, but they may be something more. I have reason to believe that a trace of individuality can cling about terrestrial objects in a vague and almost imperceptible fashion, but to a degree sufficient to enable those traces to be detected by persons with suitable faculties. There is a deep truth in materialism; and it is the foundation of the material parts of worship--sacraments and the like. It is possible to exaggerate their efficacy, but it is also possible to ignore it too completely. The whole universe is metrical, everything is a question of degree. A property like radio-activity or magnetism, discovered conspicuously in one form of matter, turns out to be possessed by matter of every kind, though to very varying extent. So it would appear to be with the power possessed by matter to incarnate and display mind. There are grades of incarnation: the most thorough kind is that illustrated by our bodies; in them we are incarnate, but probably not even in that case is the incarnation complete. It is quite credible that our whole and entire personality is never terrestrially manifest. There are grades of incarnation. Some of the personality of an Old Master is locked up in a painting: and whoever wilfully destroys a great picture is guilty of something akin to murder, namely, the premature and violent separation of soul and body. Some of the soul of a musician can be occluded in a piece of manuscript, to be deciphered thereafter by a perceptive mind. Matter is the vehicle of mind, but it is dominated and transcended by it. A painting is held together by cohesive forces among the atoms of its pigments, and if those forces rebelled or turned repulsive the picture would be disintegrated and destroyed; yet those forces did not make the picture. A cathedral is held together by inorganic forces, and it was built in obedience to them, but they do not explain it. It may owe its existence and design to the thought of someone who never touched a stone, or even of someone who was dead before it was begun. In its symbolism it represents One who was executed many centuries ago. Death and Time are far from dominant. Are we so sure that when we truly attribute a sunset, or the moonlight rippling on a lake, to the chemical and physical action of material forces--to the vibrations of matter and ether as we know them, that we have exhausted the whole truth of things? Many a thinker, brooding over the phenomena of Nature, has felt that they represent the thoughts of a dominating unknown Mind partially incarnate in it all. CHAPTER VII PROFESSOR HAECKEL'S CONJECTURAL PHILOSOPHY _A reply to Mr M'Cabe._ Part of the preceding, so far as it is a criticism of Haeckel, was given by me in the first instance as a Presidential Address to the Members of the Birmingham and Midland Institute; and the greater portion of this Address was printed in the _Hibbert Journal_ for January 1905. Mr M'Cabe, the translator of Haeckel, thereupon took up the cudgels on behalf of his Chief, and wrote an article in the following July issue; to the pages of which references will be given when quoting. A few observations of mine in reply to this article emphasise one or two points which perhaps previously were not quite clear; and so this reply, from the October number of the _Hibbert Journal_, may be conveniently here reproduced. I have no fault to find with the tone of Mr M'Cabe's criticism of my criticism of Haeckel, and it is satisfactory that one who has proved himself an enthusiastic disciple, as well as a most industrious and competent translator, should stand up for the honour and credit of a foreign Master when he is attacked. But in admitting the appropriateness and the conciliatory tone of his article, I must not be supposed to agree with its contentions; for although he seeks to show that after all there is but little difference between myself and Haeckel--and although in a sense that is true as regards the fundamental facts of science, distinguishing the facts themselves from any hypothetical and interpretative gloss--yet with Haeckel's interpretations and speculative deductions from the facts, especially with the mode of presentation, and the crude and unbalanced attacks on other fields of human activity, my feeling of divergence occasionally becomes intense. And it is just these superficial, and as Mr M'Cabe now admits hypothetical, and as they seem to me rather rash, excursions into side issues, which have attracted the attention of the average man, and have succeeded in misleading the ignorant. If it could be universally recognised that "it is expressly as a hypothesis that Haeckel formulates his conjecture as to manner of the origin of life" (p. 744), and if it could be further generally admitted that his authority outside biology is so weak that "it is mere pettiness to carp at incidental statements on matters on which Haeckel is known to have or to exercise no peculiar authority, or to labour in determining the precise degree of evidence for the monism of the inorganic or the organic world" (p. 748), I should be quite content, and hope that I may never find it necessary to carp at these things again. Also I entirely agree with Mr M'Cabe, though I have some doubt whether Professor Haeckel would equally agree with him, that "there remain the great questions whether this mechanical evolution of the universe needed intelligent control, and whether the mind of man stands out as imperishable amidst the wreck of worlds. These constitute the serious controversy of our time in the region of cosmic philosophy or science. These are the rocks that will divide the stream of higher scientific thought for long years to come. To many of us it seems that a concentration on these issues is as much to be desired as sympathy and mutual appreciation" (p. 748). This is excellent; but then it is surely true that Professor Haeckel has taken great pains to state forcibly and clearly that these great questions cannot by him be regarded as open; in fact Mr M'Cabe himself says-- "Haeckel's position, if expressed at times with some harshness, and not always with perfect consistency, is well enough known. He rejects the idea of intelligent and benevolent guidance, chiefly on the ground of the facts of dysteleology, and he fails to see any evidence for exempting the human mind from the general law of dissolution" (p. 748). Ultimately, however, he appears to have been driven to a singularly unphilosophic view, of which Mr M'Cabe says-- "It is interesting to note that in his latest work Haeckel regards sensation (or unconscious sentience) as an ultimate and irreducible attribute of substance, like matter (or extension) and force (or spirit)" (p. 752). I call this unphilosophical because--omitting any reference here to the singular parenthetical explanations or paraphrases, for which I suppose Haeckel is not to be held responsible--this is simply abandoning all attempt at explanation; it even closes the door to inquiry, and is equivalent to an attitude proper to any man in the street, for it virtually says: "Here the thing is anyhow, I cannot explain it." However legitimate and necessary such an attitude may be as an expression of our ignorance, we ought not to use the phrase "ultimate and irreducible," as if no one could ever explain it. Moreover, if it be true that-- "Haeckel does not teach--never did teach--that the spiritual universe is an aspect of the material universe, as his critic makes him say, it is his fundamental and most distinctive idea that both are attributes or aspects of a deeper reality" (p. 745)-- in that case there is, indeed, but little difference between us. But no reader of Haeckel's _Riddle_ would have anticipated that such a contention could be made by any devout disciple; and I wonder whether Mr M'Cabe can adduce any passage adequate to support so estimable a position. Surely it is difficult to sustain in face of quotations such as these:-- "The peculiar phenomenon of consciousness is ... a physiological problem, and as such must be reduced to the phenomena of physics and chemistry" (p. 65). "I therefore consider Psychology a branch of natural science--a section of physiology.... We shall give to the material basis of all psychic activity, without which it is inconceivable, the provisional name of psychoplasm" (p. 32). _Life and Energy._ The one and only point on which I think it worth while to express decided dissidence is to be found in the paragraph where Mr M'Cabe makes a statement concerning what he calls "vital force,"--a term I do not remember to have ever used in my life. He claims for Haeckel what is represented by the following extracts from his article (pp. 745, 6, 7):-- "He does not say that life is 'knocked out of existence' when the material organism decays. He says that the vital energy no longer exists _as such_, but is resolved into the inorganic energies associated with the gases and relics of the decaying body. Thus the matter looks a little different when Sir Oliver comes to 'challenge him to say by what right he gives that answer.' He gives it on this plain right, that _science always finds these inorganic energies to reappear on the dissolution of life_, and has never in a single instance found the slightest reason to suspect (if we make an exception for the moment of psychical research) that the vital force as such has continued to exist." The italics are mine. A little further on he continues:-- "There is no serious scientific demur to Haeckel's assumption of a monism of the physical world, and his identification of vital force with ordinary physical and chemical forces. "Sir Oliver seems to admit, indeed, that the vital force is not in its nature distinct from physical force, but holds that it needs 'guidance.'" "On all sides we hear the echo of Professor Le Conte's words: 'Vital force may now be regarded as so much force withdrawn from the general fund of chemical and physical forces.'" Very well then, here is no conflict on a matter of opinion or philosophic speculation, but divergence on a downright question of scientific fact (let it be noted that I do not wish to hold Professor Haeckel responsible for these utterances of his disciple: he must surely know better), and I wish to oppose the fallacy in the strongest terms. If it were true that vital energy turned into or was anyhow convertible into inorganic energy, if it were true that a dead body had more inorganic energy than a live one, if it were true that "these inorganic energies" always or ever "reappear on the dissolution of life," then undoubtedly _cadit quæstio_; life would immediately be proved to be a form of energy, and would enter into the scheme of physics. But inasmuch as all this is untrue--the direct contrary of the truth--I maintain that life is _not_ a form of energy, that it is _not_ included in our present physical categories, that its explanation is still to seek. And I have further stated--though there I do not dogmatise--that it appears to me to belong to a separate order of existence, which interacts with this material frame of things, and, while there, exerts guidance and control on the energy which already here exists (_cf._ p. 24); for, though they alter the quantity of energy no whit, and though they merely utilise available energy like any other machine, live things are able to direct inorganic terrestrial energy along new and special paths, so as to achieve results which without such living agency could not have occurred--_e.g._ forests, ant-hills, birds' nests, Forth bridge, sonatas, cathedrals. I have never taught, nor for a moment thought, that "vital force is akin to physical force, but that it needs guidance" (p. 747); the phrase sounds to me nonsense. I perceive, not as a theory, but as a fact, that life is _itself_ a guiding principle, a controlling agency, _i.e._ that a live animal or plant can and does guide or influence the elements of inorganic nature. The fact of an organism possessing life enables it to build up material particles into many notable forms--oak, eagle, man,--which material aggregates last until they are abandoned by the guiding principle, when they more or less speedily fall into decay, or become resolved into their elements, until utilised by a fresh incarnation; and hence I say that whatever life is or is not, it is certainly this: it is a guiding and controlling entity which interacts with our world according to laws so partially known that we have to say they are practically unknown, and therefore appear in some respects mysterious. If it be thought that I mean by this something superstitious, and for ever inexplicable or unintelligible, I have no such meaning. I believe in the ultimate intelligibility of the universe, though our present brains may require considerable improvement before we can grasp the deepest things by their aid; but this matter of "vitality" is probably not hopelessly beyond us; and it does not follow, because we have no theory of life or death now, that we shall be equally ignorant a century hence. My chief objection to Professor Haeckel's literary work is that he is dogmatic on such points as these, and would have people believe, what doubtless he believes himself, that he already knows the answer to a number of questions in the realms of physical nature and of philosophy. He writes in so forcible and positive and determined a fashion, from the vantage ground of scientific knowledge, that he exerts an undue influence on the uncultured among his readers, and causes them to fancy that only benighted fools or credulous dupes can really disagree with the historical criticisms, the speculative opinions, and philosophical, or perhaps unphilosophical, conjectures, thus powerfully set forth. CHAPTER VIII HYPOTHESIS AND ANALOGIES CONCERNING LIFE The view concerning Life which I have endeavoured to express is that it is neither matter nor energy, nor even a function of matter or of energy, but is something belonging to a different category; that by some means at present unknown it is able to interact with the material world for a time, but that it can also exist in some sense independently; although in that condition of existence it is by no means apprehensible by our senses. It is dependent on matter for its phenomenal appearance--for its manifestation to us here and now, and for all its terrestrial activities; but otherwise, I conceive that it is independent, that its essential existence is continuous and permanent, though its interactions with matter are discontinuous and temporary; and I conjecture that it is subject to a law of evolution--that a linear advance is open to it--whether it be in its phenomenal or in its occult state. It may be well to indicate what I mean by conceiving of the possibility that life has an existence apart from its material manifestations as we know them at present. (Remember note on p. 40.) It is easy to imagine that such a view is a mere surmise, having no intelligible meaning, and that it is merely an attempt to clutch at human immortality in an emotional and unscientific spirit. To this, however, I in no way plead guilty. My ideas about life may be quite wrong, but they are as cold-blooded and free from bias as possible; moreover, they apply not to human life alone, but to all life--to that of all animals, and even of plants; and they are held by me as a working hypothesis, the only one which enables me to fit the known facts of ordinary vitality into a thinkable scheme. Without it, I should be met by all the usual puzzles:--(1) as to the stage at which existence begins, if it can be thought of as "beginning" at all;[3] (2) as to the nature of individuality, in the midst of diversity of particles, and the determination of form irrespective of variety of food; (3) the extraordinary rapidity of development, which results in the production of a fully endowed individual in the course of some fraction of a century. [3] I doubt whether _existence_ can be "begun" at all, save as the result of a juxtaposition of elements, or of a conveyance of motion. We can put things together, and we can set things in motion,--statics and kinetics,--can we do more? Ether can be strained, matter can be moved: I doubt whether we see more than this happening in the whole material universe. This dictum is elaborated elsewhere. With it, I cannot pretend that all these things are thoroughly intelligible, but the lines on which an explanation may be forthcoming seem to be laid down:--the notion being that what we see is a temporary apparition or incarnation of a permanent entity or idea. It is easiest to explain my meaning by aid of analogues,--by the construction, as it were, of "models," just as is the custom in Physics whenever a recondite idea has to be grasped before it can be properly formulated and before a theory is complete. I will take two analogies: one from Magnetism and one from Politics. "Parliament," or "the Army," is a body which consists of individual members constantly changing, and its existence is not dependent on their existence: it pre-existed any particular set of them, and it can survive a dissolution. Even after a complete slaughter, the idea of the Army would survive, and another would come into being, to carry on the permanent traditions and life. Except as an idea in some sentient mind, it could not be said to exist at all. The mere individuals composing it do not make it: without the idea they would be only a disorganised mob. Abstractions like the British Constitution, and other such things, can hardly be said to have any incarnate existence. These exist _only_ as ideas. Parliament exists fundamentally as an idea, and it can be called into existence or re-incarnated again. Whether it is the same Parliament or not after a general election is a question that may be differently answered. It is not identical, it may have different characteristics, but there is certainly a sort of continuity; it is still a British Parliament, for instance, it has not changed its character to that of the French Assembly or the American Congress. It is a permanent entity even when disembodied; it has a past and it has a future; it has a fundamentally continuous existence though there are breaks or dislocations in its conspicuous activity, and though each incarnation has a separate identity or personality of its own. It is larger and more comprehensive than any individual representation of it; it may be said to have a "subliminal self," of which any septennial period sees but a meagre epitome. Some of those epitomes are more, some less, worthy; sometimes there appears only a poor deformity or a feeble-minded attempt, sometimes a strong and vigorous embodiment of the root idea. As to its technical continuity of existence and actual mode of reproduction, I suppose it would be merely fanciful to liken the "Crown" to those germ-cells or nuclei, whose existence continues without break, which serve the purpose of collecting and composing the somatic cells in due season. Other illustrations of the temporary incarnation of a permanent idea are readily furnished from the domain of Art; but, after all, the best analogy to life that I can at present think of is to be found in the subject of Magnetism. At one time it was possible to say that magnetism could not be produced except by antecedent magnetism; that there was no known way of generating it spontaneously; yet that, since it undoubtedly occurs in certain rocks of the earth, it must have come into existence somehow, at date unknown. It could also be said, and it can be said still, that, given an initial magnet, any number of others can be made, without loss to the generating magnet. By influence or induction exerted by proximity on other pieces of steel, the properties of one magnet can be excited in any number of such pieces,--the amount of magnetism thus producible being infinite; that is, being strictly without limit, and not dependent at all on the very finite strength of the original magnet, which indeed continues unabated. It is just as if magnetism were not really manufactured at all, but were a thing called out of some infinite reservoir: as if something were brought into active and prominent existence from a previously dormant state. And that indeed is the fact. The process of magnetisation, as conducted with a steel magnet on other pieces of previously inert steel, in no case really generates new lines of magnetic force, though it appears to generate them. We now know that the lines which thus spring into corporeal existence, as it were, are essentially closed curves or loops, which cannot be generated; they can be expanded or enlarged to cover a wide field, and they can be contracted or shrunk up into insignificance, but they cannot be created, they must be pre-existent; they were in the non-magnetised steel all the time, though they were so small and ill-arranged that they had no perceptible effect whatever; they constituted a potentiality for magnetism; they existed as molecular closed curves or loops, which, by the operation called magnetisation, could, some of them, be opened out into loops of finite area and spread out into space, where they are called "lines of force." They then constitute the region called a magnetic field, which remains a seat of so-called "permanent" magnetic activity, until by lapse of time, excessive heat, or other circumstance, they close up again; and so the magnet, as a magnet, dies. The magnetism itself, however, has not really died, it has a perpetual existence; and a fresh act of magnetisation can recall it, or something indistinguishable from it, into manifest activity again; so that it, or its equivalent, can once more interact with the rest of material energies, and be dealt with by physicists, or subserve the uses of humanity. Until that time of re-appearance its existence can only be inferred by the thought of the mathematician: it is indeed a matter of theory, not necessarily recognised as true by the practical man. Our present view is that the act of magnetisation consists in a re-arrangement and co-ordination of previously existing magnetic elements, lying dormant, so to speak, in iron and other magnetic materials; only a very small fraction of the whole number being usually brought into activity at any one time, and not necessarily always the same actual set. Only a small and indiscriminate selection is made from all the molecular loops; and it can be a different group each time, or some elements may be different and some the same, whenever a fresh individual or magnet is brought into being. All this can be said concerning the old process of magnetisation--the process as it was doubtless familiar to the unknown discoverer of the lodestone, to the ancient users of the mariner's compass, and to Dr Gilbert of Colchester, the discoverer of the magnetised condition of the Earth. But within the nineteenth century a fresh process of magnetisation has been discovered, and this new or electrical process is no longer obviously dependent on the existence of antecedent magnetism, but seems at first sight to be a property freshly or spontaneously generated, as it were. The process was discovered as the result of setting electricity into motion. So long as electricity was studied in its condition at rest on charged conductors, as in the old science of electrostatics or frictional electricity, it possessed no magnetic properties whatever, nor did it encroach on the magnetic domain: only vague similarities in the phenomena of attraction and repulsion aroused attention. But directly electricity was set in motion, constituting what is called an electric current, magnetic lines of force instantly sprang into being, without the presence of any steel or iron; and in twenty years they were recognised. These electrically generated lines of force are similar to those previously known, but they need no matter to sustain them. They need matter to display them, but they themselves exist equally well in perfect vacuum. How did they manage to spring into being? Can it be said that they too had existed previously in some dormant condition in the ether of space? That they too were closed loops opened out, and their existence thus displayed, by the electric current? That is an assertion which might reasonably be made: it is not the only way of regarding the matter, however, and the mode in which a magnetic field originates round the path of a moving charge--being generated during the acceleration-period by a pulse of radiation which travels with the speed of light, being maintained during the steady-motion period by a sort of inertia as if in accordance with the first law of motion, and being destroyed only by a return pulse of re-radiation during a retardation-period when the moving charge is stopped or diverted or reversed--all this can hardly be fully explained until the intimate nature of an electric charge has been more fully worked out; and the subject now trenches too nearly on the more advanced parts of Physics to be useful any longer as an analogue for general readers. Indeed it must be recollected that no analogy will bear pressing too far. All that we are concerned to show is that known magnetic behaviour exhibits a very fair analogy to some aspects of that still more mysterious entity which we call "life"; and if anyone should assert that all magnetism was pre-existent in some ethereal condition, that it would never go out of essential existence, but that it could be brought into relation with the world of matter by certain acts,--that while there it could operate in a certain way, controlling the motion of bodies, interacting with forms of energy, producing sundry effects for a time, and then disappearing from our ken to the immaterial region whence it came,--he would be saying what no physicist would think it worth while to object to, what many indeed might agree with. Well, that is the kind of assertion which I want to make, as a working hypothesis, concerning life. An acorn has in itself the potentiality not of one oak-tree alone, but of a forest of oak-trees, to the thousandth generation, and indeed of oak-trees without end. There is no sort of law of "conservation" here. It is not as if something were passed on from one thing to another. It is not analogous to energy at all, it is analogous to the magnetism which can be excited by any given magnet: the required energy, in both cases, being extraneously supplied, and only transmuted into the appropriate form by the guiding principle which controls the operation. We do not know how to generate life without the action of antecedent life at present, though that may be a discovery lying ready for us in the future; but even if we did, it would still be true (as I think) that the life was in some sense pre-existent, that it was not really created _de novo_, that it was brought into actual practical every-day existence doubtless, but that it had pre-existed in some sense too: being called out, as it were, from some great reservoir or storehouse of vitality, to which, when its earthly career is ended, it will return. Indeed, it cannot in any proper sense be said ever to have left that storehouse, though it has been made to interact with the world for a time; and, if we might so express it, it may be thought of as carrying back with it, into the general reservoir, any individuality, and any experience and training or development, which it can be thought of as having acquired here. Such a statement as this last cannot be made of magnetism, to which no known law of evolution and progress can be supposed to apply; but of life, of anything subject to continuous evolution or linear progress embodied in the race, of any condition not cyclically determinate and returning into itself, but progressing and advancing--acquiring fresh potentialities, fresh powers, fresh beauties, new characteristics such as perhaps may never in the whole universe have been displayed before--of everything which possesses such powers as these, a statement akin to the above may certainly be made. To all such things, when they reach a high enough stage, the ideas of continued personality, of memory, of persistent individual existence, not only may, but I think must, apply; notwithstanding the admitted return of the individual after each incarnation to the central store from which it was differentiated and individualised. Even so a villager, picked out as a recruit and sent to the seat of war, may serve his country, may gain experience, acquire a soul and a width of horizon such as he had not dreamt of; and when he returns, after the war is over, may be merged as before in his native village. But the village is the richer for his presence, and his individuality or personality is not really lost; though to the eye of the world, which has no further need for it, it has practically ceased to be. CHAPTER IX WILL AND GUIDANCE (_Partially read to the Synthetic Society in February 1903._) The influence of the divine on the human, and on the material world, has been variously conceived in different ages, and various forms of difficulty have been at different times felt and suggested; but always some sort of analogy between human action and divine action has had perforce to be drawn, in order to make the latter in the least intelligible to our conception. The latest form of difficulty is peculiarly deep-seated, and is a natural outcome of an age of physical science. It consists in denying the possibility of any guidance or control,--not only on the part of a Deity, but on the part of every one of his creatures. It consists in pressing the laws of physics to what may seem their logical and ultimate conclusion, in applying the conservation of energy without ruth or hesitation, and so excluding, as some have fancied, the possibility of free-will action, of guidance, of the self-determined action of mind or living things upon matter, altogether. The appearance of control has accordingly been considered illusory, and has been replaced by a doctrine of pure mechanism, enveloping living things as well as inorganic nature. And those who for any reason have felt disinclined or unable to acquiesce in this exclusion of non-mechanical agencies, whether it be by reason of faith and instinct or by reason of direct experience and sensation to the contrary, have thought it necessary of late years to seek to undermine the foundation of Physics, and to show that its much-vaunted laws rest upon a hollow basis, that their exactitude is illusory,--that the conservation of energy, for instance, has been too rapid an induction, that there may be ways of eluding many physical laws and of avoiding submission to their sovereign sway. By this sacrifice it has been thought that the eliminated guidance and control can philosophically be reintroduced. This, I gather, may have been the chief motive of a critical examination of the foundations of Physics by an American author, J. B. Stallo, in a little book called the _Concepts of Physics_. But the worst of that book was that Judge Stallo was not fully familiar with the teachings of the great physicists; he appears to have collected his information from popular writings, where the doctrines were very imperfectly laid down; so that some of his book is occupied in demolishing constructions of straw, unrecognisable by professed physicists except as caricatures at which they also might be willing to heave an occasional missile. The armoury pressed into the service of Professor James Ward's not wholly dissimilar attack on Physics is of heavy calibre, and his criticism cannot in general be ignored as based upon inadequate acquaintance with the principles under discussion; but still his Gifford lectures raise an antithesis or antagonism between the fundamental laws of mechanics and the possibility of any intervention whether human or divine. If this antagonism is substantial it is serious; for Natural Philosophers will not be willing to concede fundamental inaccuracy or uncertainty about their recognised and long-established laws of motion, when applied to ordinary matter; nor will they be prepared to tolerate any the least departure from the law of the conservation of energy, when all forms of energy are taken into account. Hence, if guidance and control can be admitted into the scheme by no means short of undermining and refuting those laws, there may be every expectation that the attitude of scientific men will be perennially hostile to the idea of guidance or control, and so to the efficacy of prayer, and to many another practical outcome of religious belief. It becomes therefore an important question to consider whether it is true that life or mind is incompetent to disarrange or interfere with matter at all, except as itself an automatic part of the machine,--whether in fact it is merely an ornamental appendage or phantasmal accessory of the working parts. Now experience--the same kind of experience as gave us our scheme of mechanics--shows us that to all appearance live animals certainly can direct and control mechanical energies to bring about desired and preconceived results; and that man can definitely will that those results shall occur. The way the energy is provided is understood, and its mode of application is fairly understood; what is not understood is the way its activity is _determined_. Undoubtedly our body is material and can act on other matter; and the energy of its operations is derived from food, like any other self-propelled and fuel-fed mechanism; but mechanism is usually controlled by an attendant. The question is whether our will or mind or life can direct our body's energy along certain channels to attain desired ends, or whether--as in a motor-car with an automaton driver--the end and aim of all activity is wholly determined by mechanical causes. And a further question concerns the mode whereby vital control, if any, is achieved. Answers that might be hazarded are: (_a_) That life is itself a latent store of energy, and achieves its results by imparting to matter energy that would not otherwise be in evidence: in which case life would be a part of the machine, and as truly mechanical as all the rest. Experiment lends no support to this view of the relation between life and energy, and I hold that it is false; because the essential property of energy is that it can transform itself into other forms, remaining constant in quantity, whereas life does not add to the stock of any known form of energy, nor does death affect the sum of energy in any known way. (_b_) That life is something outside the scheme of mechanics--outside the categories of matter and energy; though it can nevertheless control or direct material forces--timing them and determining their place of application,--subject always to the laws of energy and all other mechanical laws; supplementing or accompanying these laws, therefore, but contradicting or traversing them no whit. This second answer I hold to be true; but in order to admit its truth we must recognise that force can be exerted and energy directed, by suitable adjustment of existing energy, without any introduction of energy from without; in other words, that the energy of operations automatically going on in any active region of the universe--any region where transformation and transference of energy are continuously occurring whether life be present or not--can be guided along paths that it would not automatically have taken, and can be directed so as to produce effects that would not otherwise have occurred; and this without any breakage or suspension of the laws of dynamics, and in full correspondence with both the conservation of energy and the conservation of momentum. That is where I part company with Professor James Ward in the second volume of _Naturalism and Agnosticism_; with whom nevertheless on many broad issues I find myself in fair agreement. Those who find a real antinomy between "mechanism and morals" must either throw overboard the possibility of interference or guidance or willed action altogether, which is one alternative, or must assume that the laws of Physics are only approximate and untrustworthy, which is the other alternative--the alternative apparently favoured by Professor James Ward. I wish to argue that neither of these alternatives is necessary, and that there is a third or middle course of proverbial safety: all that is necessary is to realise and admit that the laws of Physical Science are _incomplete_, when regarded as a formulation and philosophical summary of the universe in general. No Laplacian calculator can be supplied with all the data. On a stagnant and inactive world life would admittedly be powerless: it could only make dry bones stir in such a world if itself were a form of energy; I do not suppose for a moment that it could be incarnated on such a world; it is only potent where inorganic energy is mechanically "available"--to use Lord Kelvin's term,--that is to say, is either potentially or actually in process of transfer and transformation. In other words, life can generate no trace of energy, it can only guide its transmutations. It has gradually dawned upon me that the reason why Philosophers who are well acquainted with Physical or Dynamical Science are apt to fall into the error of supposing that mental and vital interference with the material world is impossible, in spite of their clamorous experience to the contrary (or else, on the strength of that experience, to conceive that there is something the matter with the formulation of physical and dynamical laws), is because all such interference is naturally and necessarily excluded from scientific methods and treatises. In pure Mechanics, "force" is treated as a function of configuration and momentum: the positions, the velocities, and the accelerations of a conservative system depend solely on each other, on initial conditions, and on mass; or, if we choose so to express it, the co-ordinates, the momenta, and the kinetic energies, of the parts of any dynamical system whatever, are all functions of time and of each other, and of nothing else. In other words, we have to deal, in this mode of regarding things, with a definite and completely determinate world, to which prediction may confidently be applied. But this determinateness is got by refusing to contemplate anything outside a certain scheme: it is an internal truth within the assigned boundaries, and is quite consistent with psychical interference and indeterminateness, as soon as those boundaries are ignored; determinateness is not part of the _essence_ of dynamical doctrine, it is arrived at by the tacit assumption that no undynamical or hyperdynamical agencies exist: in short, by that process of abstraction which is invariably necessary for simplicity, and indeed for possibility, of methodical human treatment. Everyone engaged in scientific research is aware that if exuberant charwomen, or intelligent but mischievous students (who for the moment may be taken to represent life and mind respectively) are admitted into a laboratory and given full scope for their activities, the subsequent scientific results--though still, no doubt, in some strained sense, concordant with law and order--are apt to be too complicated for investigation; wherefore there is usually an endeavour to exclude these incalculable influences, and to make a tacit assumption that they have not been let in. There is a similar tacit assumption in treatises on Physics and Chemistry; viz., that the laws of automatic nature shall be allowed unrestricted and unaided play, that nothing shall intervene in any operation from start to finish save mechanical sequent and antecedent,--that it is permissible in fact to exercise abstraction, as usual, to the exclusion of agents not necessarily connected with the problem, and not contemplated by the equations. In text-books of Dynamics and in treatises of Natural Philosophy that is a perfectly legitimate procedure;[4] but when later on we come to philosophise, and to deal with the universe as a whole, we must forgo the ingrained habit of abstraction, and must remember that for a _complete_ treatment _nothing_ must permanently be ignored. So if life and mind and will, and curiosity and mischief and folly, and greed and fraud and malice, and a whole catalogue of attributes and things not contemplated in Natural Philosophy--if these are known to have any real existence in the larger world of total experience, and if there is any reason to believe that any one of them may have had some influence in determining an observed result, then it is foolish to exclude these things from philosophic consideration, on the ground that they are out of place in the realm of Natural Philosophy, that they are not allowed for in its scheme, and therefore cannot possibly be supposed capable of exerting any effective interference, any real guidance or control. [4] It is on a similar basis that there is a science of rigid dynamics, with elasticity and fluidity excluded; and thus also can there be a hydrodynamics in which the consequences of viscosity are ignored. My contention then is--and in this contention I am practically speaking for my brother physicists--that whereas life or mind can neither generate energy nor directly exert force, yet it can cause matter to exert force on matter, and so can exercise guidance and control: it can so prepare any scene of activity, by arranging the position of existing material, and timing the liberation of existing energy, as to produce results concordant with an idea or scheme or intention: it can, in short, "aim" and "fire." Guidance of _matter_ can be affected by a passive exertion of force without doing work; as a quiescent rail can guide a train to its destination, provided an active engine propels it. But the analogy of the rail must not be pressed: the rail "guides" by exerting force perpendicular to the direction of motion, it does no work but it sustains an equal opposite reaction.[5] The guidance exercised by life or mind is managed in an unknown but certainly different fashion: "determination" can sustain no reaction--if it could it would be a straightforward mechanical agent--but it can utilise the mechanical properties both of rail and of engine; it arranged for the rail to be placed in position so that the lateral force thereby exerted should guide all future trains to a desired destination, and it further took steps to design and compose locomotives of sufficient power, and to start them at a prearranged time. It "employs" mechanical stress, as a capitalist employs a labourer, not doing anything itself, but directing the operations. It is impossible to explain all this fully by the laws of mechanics alone, that is to say, no mechanical analysis can be complete and all-embracing, though the whole procedure is fully subject to those laws. [5] It is well to bear in mind the distinction between "force" and "energy." These terms have been so popularly confused that it may be difficult always to discriminate them, but in Physics they are absolutely discriminated. We have a direct sense of "force," in our muscles, whether they be moving or at rest. A force in motion is a "power," it "does work" and transfers energy from one body to another, which is commonly though incorrectly spoken of as "generating" energy. But a force at rest--a mere statical stress, like that exerted by a pillar or a watershed--does no work, and "generates" or transfers no energy; yet the one sustains a roof which would otherwise fall, thereby screening a portion of ground from vegetation; while the other deflects a rain-drop into the Danube or the Rhine. This latter is the kind of force which constrains a stone to revolve in a circle instead of a straight line; a force like that of a groove or slot or channel or "guide." To every force there is an equal opposite force or reaction, and a reaction may be against a live body, but it is never suspected of being against the abstraction life or mind--that would indeed be enlarging the scope of mechanics!--the reaction is always against some other body. All stresses as a matter of fact occur in the ether; and they all have a material terminus at each end (or in exceptional cases a wave-front or some other recondite etherial equivalent), that is to say something possessing inertia; but the timed or _opportune_ existence of a particular stress may be the result of organisation and control. Mechanical operations can be thus dominated by intelligence and purpose. When a stone is rolling over a cliff, it is all the same to "energy" whether it fall on point A or point B of the beach. But at A it shall merely dent the sand, whereas at B it shall strike a detonator and explode a mine. Scribbling on a piece of paper results in a certain distribution of fluid and production of a modicum of heat: so far as energy is concerned it is the same whether we sign Andrew Carnegie or Alexander Coppersmith, yet the one effort may land us in twelve months' imprisonment or may build a library, according to circumstances, while the other achieves no result at all. John Stuart Mill used to say that our sole power over Nature was to _move_ things; but strictly speaking we cannot do even that: we can only arrange that things shall move each other, and can determine by suitably preconceived plans the kind and direction of the motion that shall ensue at a given time and place. Provided always that we include in this category of "things" our undoubtedly material bodies, muscles and nerves. But here is just the puzzle: at what point does will or determination enter into the scheme? Contemplate a brain cell, whence originates a certain nerve-process whereby energy is liberated with some resultant effect; what pulled the detent in that cell which started the impulse? No \doubt some chemical process: combination or dissociation, something atomic, occurred; but what made it occur just then and in that way? I answer, not anything that we as yet understand, but apparently the same sort of pre-arrangement that determined whether the stone from the cliff should fall on point A or point B--the same sort of process that guided the pen to make legible and effective writing instead of illegible and ineffective scrawls--the same kind of control that determines when and where a trigger shall be pulled so as to secure the anticipated slaughter of a bird. So far as energy is concerned, the explosion and the trigger-pulling are the same identical operations whether the aim be exact or random. It is intelligence which directs; it is physical energy which is directed and controlled and produces the result in time and space. It will be said _some_ energy is needed to pull a hair-trigger, to open the throttle-valve of an engine, to press the button which shall shatter a rock. Granted: but the work-concomitants of that energy are all familiar, and equally present whether it be arranged so as to produce any predetermined effect or not. The opening of the throttle-valve for instance demands just the same exertion, and results in just the same imperceptible transformation of fully-accounted-for energy, whether it be used to start a train in accordance with a time-table and the guard's whistle, or whether it be pushed over, as if by the wind, at random. The shouting of an order to a troop demands vocal energy and produces its due equivalent of sound; but the intelligibility of the order is something superadded, and its result may be to make not sound or heat alone, but History. Energy must be _available_ for the performance of any physical operation, but the energy is independent of the determination or arrangement. Guidance and control are not forms of energy, nor need they be themselves phantom modes of force: their superposition upon the scheme of Physics need perturb physical and mechanical _laws_ no whit, and yet it may profoundly affect the consequences resulting from those same laws. The whole effort of civilisation would be futile if we could not guide the powers of nature. The powers are there, else we should be helpless; but life and mind are outside those powers, and, by pre-arranging their field of action, can direct them along an organised course. * * * * * And this same life or mind, as we know it, is accessible to petition, to affection, to pity, to a multitude of non-physical influences; and hence, indirectly, the little plot of physical universe which is now our temporary home has become amenable to truly spiritual control. I lay stress upon a study of the nature and mode of human action of the interfering or guiding kind, because by that study we must be led if we are to form any intelligent conception of divine action. True, it might be feasible to admit divine agency and yet to deny the possibility of any human power of the same kind,--though that would be a nebulous and at least inconclusive procedure; but if once we are constrained to admit the existence and reality of human guidance and control, superposed upon the physical scheme, we cannot deny the possibility of such power and action to any higher being, nor even to any totality of Mind of which ours is a part. I do not see how the function claimed can be resented, except by those who deny "life" to be anything at all. If it exists, if it is not mere illusion, it appears to me to be something whose full significance lies in another scheme of things, but which touches and interacts with this material universe in a certain way, building its particles into notable configurations for a time--without confounding any physical laws,--and then evaporating whence it came. This language is vague and figurative undoubtedly, but, I contend, appropriately so, for we have not yet a theory of life--we have not even a theory of the essential nature of gravitation; discoveries are waiting to be made in this region, and it is absurd to suppose that we are already in possession of all the data. We can wait; but meanwhile we need not pretend that because we do not understand them, therefore life and will can accomplish nothing; we need not imagine that "life"--with its higher developments and still latent powers--is an impotent nonentity. The philosophic attitude, surely, is to observe and recognise its effects, both what it can and what it cannot achieve, and to realise that our present knowledge of it is extremely partial and incomplete. * * * * * NOTE ON FREE WILL AND FOREKNOWLEDGE. In the above chapter I must not be understood as pretending to settle the thorny question of a reconciliation between freedom of choice and pre-determination or prevision. All I there contend for is that no mechanical or scientific determinism, subject to special conditions in a limited region, can be used to contradict freedom of the will, under generalised conditions, in the Universe as a whole. Nevertheless there are things which may perhaps be usefully said, even on the larger and much-worn topic of the present note. If we still endeavour to learn as much as possible from human analogies, examples are easy:-- An architect can draw in detail a building that is to be; the dwellers in a valley can be warned to evacuate their homesteads because a city has determined that a lake shall exist where none existed before. Doubtless the city is free to change its mind, but it is not expected to; and all predictions are understood to be made subject to the absence of disturbing, _i.e._ unforeseen, causes. Even the prediction of an eclipse is not free from a remote uncertainty, and in the case of the return of meteoric showers and comets the element of contingency is not even remote. But it will be said that to higher and superhuman knowledge all possible contingencies would be known and recognised as part of the data. That is quite possibly, though not quite certainly, true: and there comes the real difficulty of reconciling absolute prediction of events with real freedom of the actors in the drama. I anticipate that a complete solution of the problem must involve a treatment of the subject of _time_, and a recognition that "time," as it appears to us, is really part of our human limitations. We all realise that "the past" is in some sense not non-existent but only past; we may readily surmise that "the future" is similarly in some sense existent, only that we have not yet arrived at it; and our links with the future are less understood. That a seer in a moment of clairvoyance may catch a glimpse of futurity--some partial picture of what perhaps exists even now in the forethought of some higher mind--is not inconceivable. It may be after all only an unconscious and inspired inference from the present, on an enlarged and exceptional scale; and it is a matter for straightforward investigation whether such prevision ever occurs. The following article, on the general subject of "Free Will and Determinism," reprinted from the _Contemporary Review_ for March 1904, may conveniently be here reproduced:-- The conflict between Free Will and Determinism depends on a question of boundaries. We occasionally ignore the fact that there must be a subjective partition in the Universe separating the region of which we have some inkling of knowledge from the region of which we have absolutely none; we are apt to regard the portion on our side as if it were the whole, and to debate whether it must or must not be regarded as self-determined. As a matter of fact any partitioned-off region is in general not completely self-determined, since it is liable to be acted upon by influences from the other side of the partition. If the far side of the boundary is ignored, then an observer on the near side will conclude that things really initiate their own motion and act without stimulation or motive, in some cases, whereas the fact is that no act is performed without stimulus or motive; even irrational acts are caused by something, and so also are rational acts. Madness and delirium are natural phenomena amenable to law. But in actual life we are living on one side of a boundary, and are aware of things on one side only; the things on this side appear to us to constitute the whole universe, since they are all of which we have any knowledge, either through our senses or in other ways. Hence we are subject to certain illusions, and feel certain difficulties,--the illusion of unstimulated and unmotived freedom of action, and the difficulty of reconciling this with the felt necessity for general determinism and causation. If we speak in terms of the part of the universe that we know and have to do with, we find free agencies rampant among organic life; so that "freedom of action" is a definite and real experience, and for practical convenience is so expressed. But if we could seize the entirety of things and perceive what was occurring beyond the range of our limited conceptions we should realise that the whole was welded together, and that influences were coming through which produced the effects that we observe. Those philosophers, if there are any, who assert that we are wholly chained bound and controlled by the circumstances of that part of the Universe of which we are directly aware--that we are the slaves of our environment and must act as we are compelled by forces emanating from things on our side of the boundary alone,--those philosophers err. This kind of determinism is false; and the reaction against it has led other philosophers to assert that we are _lawlessly_ free, and able to initiate any action without motive or cause,--that each individual is a capricious and chaotic entity, not part of a Cosmos at all! It may be doubted whether anyone has clearly and actually maintained either of these theses in all its crudity; but there are many who vigorously and cheaply deny one or other of them, and in so denying the one conceive that they are maintaining the other. Both the above theses are false; yet Free Will and Determinism are both true, and in a completely known universe would cease to be contradictories. The reconciliation between opposing views lies in realising that the Universe of which we have a kind of knowledge is but a portion or an aspect of the whole. We are free, and we are controlled. We are free, in so far as our sensible surroundings and immediate environment are concerned; that is, we are free for all practical purposes, and can choose between alternatives as they present themselves. We are controlled, as being intrinsic parts of an entire cosmos suffused with law and order. No scheme of science based on knowledge of our environment can confidently predict our actions, nor the actions of any sufficiently intelligent live creature. For "mind" and "will" have their roots on the other side of the partition, and that which we perceive of them is but a fraction of the whole. Nevertheless, the more developed and consistent and harmonious our character becomes, the less liable is it to random outbreaks, and the more certainly can we be depended on. We thus, even now, can exhibit some approximation to the highest state--that conscious unison with the entire scheme of existence which is identical with perfect freedom. If we could grasp the totality of things we should realise that everything was ordered and definite, linked up with everything else in a chain of causation, and that nothing was capricious and uncertain and uncontrolled. The totality of things is, however, and must remain, beyond our grasp; hence the actual working of the process, the nature of the links, the causes which create our determinations, are frequently unknown. And since it is necessary for practical purposes to treat what is utterly beyond our ken as if it were non-existent, it becomes easily possible to fall into the erroneous habit of conceiving the transcendental region to be completely inoperative. CHAPTER X FURTHER SPECULATION AS TO THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE[6] _Preliminary Remarks on Recent Views in Chemistry._ It is a fact extremely familiar to chemists that the groupings possible to atoms of carbon are exceptionally numerous and complicated, each carbon atom having the power of linking itself with others to an extraordinary extent, so that it is no exceptional thing to find a substance which contains twenty or thirty atoms of carbon as well as other elements linked together in its molecule in a perfectly definite way, the molecule being still classifiable as that of a definite chemical compound. But there are also some non-elementary bodies which, although they are chemically complete and satisfied, retain a considerable vestige of power to link their molecules together so as to make a complex and massive compound molecule; and these are able not only to link similar molecules into a more or less indefinite chain, but to unite and include the saturated molecules of many other substances also into the unwieldy aggregate. [6] An article reprinted from the _North American Review_ for May 1905. Of the non-elementary bodies possessing this property, _water_ appears to be one of the chief; for there is evidence to show that the ordinary H-2-O molecule of water, although it may be properly spoken of as a saturated or satisfied compound, seldom exists in the simple isolated shape depicted by this formula, but rather that a great number of such simple molecules attach themselves to each other by what is called their residual or outstanding affinity, and build themselves up into a complex aggregate. The doctrine of residual affinity has been long advocated by Armstrong; and the present writer has recently shown that it is a necessary consequence of the electrical theory of chemical affinity,[7] and that the structure of the resulting groupings, or compound aggregates, may be partially studied by means of floating magnets, somewhat after the manner of Alfred Mayer.[8] [7] See _Nature_, vol. 70, p. 176, June 23, 1904. [8] See an article on "Modern Views of Chemical Affinity" by the present writer in a magazine called _Technics_, for September 1904. It may be well here to explain to students that one of the lines of argument which lead to the conclusion that the water molecule, as it ordinarily exists, is really complex and massive, is based upon measurements of the Faraday dielectric constant for water; for this constant, or "specific inductive capacity," is found to be very large, something like 50 times that of air or free ether; whereas for glass it is only 5 or 6 times that of free space. The dielectric constant of a substance generally increases with the density or massiveness of its molecule,--indeed, the value of this constant is one of the methods whereby matter displays its interaction with and loading of the free ether of space,--and any such density as the conventional nine times that of hydrogen for the molecule of water would be wholly unable to explain its immense dielectric constant. The influence of the massiveness of a water molecule is also displayed in its power of tearing asunder or dissociating any salts or other simple chemical substance introduced into it; common salt, for instance, is found always to have a certain percentage of its molecules knocked or torn asunder directly it is dissolved in water, so that, in addition to a number of salt molecules in solution, there are a few positively charged sodium atoms and a few negatively charged chlorine atoms, existing in a state of loose attraction to the water aggregate, and amenable to the smallest electric force; which, when applied, urges the chlorine one way and the sodium the other way, so that they can be removed at an electrode and their place supplied by freshly dissociated molecules of salt, thus bringing about its permanent electro-chemical decomposition, and enabling the water to behave as an electrolytic conductor directly a little salt or acid is dissolved in it. The power of the water molecule to associate itself with molecules of other substances is illustrated by the well-known fact that water is an almost universal solvent. It is its residual affinity which enables it to enter into weak chemical combination with a large number of other substances, and thus to dissolve those substances. The dissolving power usually increases when the temperature is raised, possibly because the self-contained or self-sufficient groupings of the water molecules are then to some extent broken up and the fragments enabled to cling on to the foreign or introduced matter instead of only to each other. The foreign substance is apt to be extruded again when the liquid cools, and when the affinity of the water-aggregates for each other resumes its sway. Very hot water can dissolve not only the substances familiarly known to be soluble in water, but it can dissolve things like glass also; so that glass vessels are unable to retain water kept under high pressure at a very high temperature, approaching a red heat. Another material which also seems to have the power of combining with a number of other bodies, under the influence of the loose mode of chemical combination spoken of as residual affinity, is carbon; so that a block of charcoal can absorb hundreds of times its own bulk of certain gases. Indeed, Sir James Dewar has recently employed this absorbing power of very cold carbon to produce a perfect kind of vacuum, which may, perhaps, be the nearest approach to absolute vacuum that has yet been attained: probably higher than can be attained by any kind of mechanical or mercury pump. _Unexpected Influence of Size._ Suppose now a substance contains a great number of carbon molecules and a great number of water molecules, each of which has this residual affinity or power of clinging together well developed, what may be expected to be the result? Surely, the formation of a molecule consisting of thousands or hundreds of thousands of atoms, constituting substances more complex even than those already known to or analysable by organic chemistry; and if these complex molecules likewise possess the adhesive faculty, a grouping of millions or even billions of atoms may ultimately be formed. (A billion, that is a million millions, of atoms is truly an immense number, but the resulting aggregate is still excessively minute. A portion of substance consisting of a billion atoms is only barely visible with the highest power of a microscope; and a speck or granule, in order to be visible to the naked eye, like a grain of lycopodium-dust, must be a million times bigger still.) Such a grouping is likely to have properties differing not only in degree but in kind from the properties of simple substances. For it must not be thought that aggregation only produces quantitative change and leaves quality unaltered. Fresh qualities altogether are liable to be introduced or to make their appearance at certain stages--certain critical stages--in the building up of a complex mass (_cf._ p. 71). The habitability of a house, for instance, depends on its possessing a cavity of a certain size; there is a critical size of brick-aggregate which enables it to serve as a dwelling. Nothing much smaller than this would do at all. The aggregate retains this property, thus conferred upon it by size, however big it may be made after that; until it becomes a palace or a cathedral, when it may perhaps reach an upper limit of size at which it would be crushed by its own weight, or at which the span of roof is too great to be supported. But the difference, as regards habitability, between a palace and a hovel is far less than that between a hovel and one of the air-holes in a brick or loaf, or any other cavity too small to act as a human habitation. The difference as regards habitability is then an infinite difference. To take a less trivial instance; a planet which is large enough to retain an atmosphere by its gravitative attraction differs utterly, in potentiality and importance, from the numerous lumps of matter scattered throughout space, which, though they may be as large as a haystack or a mountain or as the British Isles, or even Europe, are yet too small to hold any trace of air to their surface, and therefore cannot in any intelligible sense of the word be regarded as habitable. One of the lumps of matter in space can become a habitable planet only when it has attained a certain size, which conceivably it might do by falling together with others into a complex aggregate under the influence of gravitative attraction. The asteroids have not succeeded in doing this, but the planets have; and, accordingly, one of them, at any rate, has become a habitable world. But observe that the great size and the consequent retention of an atmosphere did not generate the inhabitants; it satisfied one of the conditions necessary for their existence. How they arose is another matter. All that we have seen so far is that an aggregate of bodies may possess properties and powers which the separate bodies themselves possess in no kind or sort of way. It is not a question of degree, but of kind. So also, further, if the aggregate is large enough, very much larger than any planet, as large as a million earths aggregated together, it acquires the property of conspicuous radio-activity, it becomes a self-heating and self-luminous body, able to keep the ether violently agitated in all space round it, and thus to supply the radiation necessary for protecting the habitable worlds from the cold of space to which they are exposed, for maintaining them at a temperature appropriate to organic existence, and likewise for supplying and generating the energy for their myriad activities. It has become in fact a central sun, and source of heat, solely because of its enormous size combined with the fact of the mutual gravitative attraction of its own constituent particles. No body of moderate size could perform this function, nor act as a perennial furnace to the rest. _Application to Protoplasm._ Very well then, return now to our complex molecular aggregate, and ask what new property, beyond the province of ordinary chemistry and physics, is to be expected of a compound which contains millions or billions of atoms attached to each other in no rigid, stable, frigid manner, but by loose unstable links, enabling them constantly to re-arrange themselves and to be the theatre of perpetual change, aggregating and reaggregating in various ways and manifesting ceaseless activities. Such unstable aggregates of matter may, like the water of a pond or a heap of organic refuse, serve as the vehicle for influences wholly novel and unexpected. Too much agitation--that is, too high a temperature--will split them up and destroy the new-found potentiality of such aggregates; too little agitation--that is, too low a temperature--will permit them to begin to cohere and settle down into frozen rigid masses insusceptible of manifold activities. But take them just at the right temperature, when sufficiently complex and sufficiently mobile; take care of them, so to speak, for the structure may easily be killed; and what shall we find? We could not infer or guess what would be the result, but we can observe the result as it is. The result is that the complexes group themselves into minute masses visible in the microscope, each mass being called by us a "cell"; that these cells possess the power of uniting with or assimilating other cells, or fragments of cells, as they drift by and come into contact with them; and that they absorb into their own substance such portions as may be suitable, while the insufficiently elaborated portions--the grains of inorganic or over-simple material--are presently extruded. They thus begin the act of "feeding." Another remarkable property also can be observed; for a cell which thus grows by feeding need not remain as one individual, but may split into two, or into more than two, which may cohere for a time, but will ultimately separate and continue existence on their own account. Thus begins the act of "reproduction." But a still more remarkable property can be observed in some of the cells, though not in all; they can not only assimilate a fragment of matter which comes into contact with them, but they can sense it, apparently, while not yet in contact, and can protrude portions of their substance or move their whole bodies towards the fragment, thus beginning the act of "hunting"; and the incipient locomotory power can be extended till light and air and moisture and many other things can be sought and moved towards, until locomotion becomes so free that it sometimes seems apparently objectless--mere restlessness, change for the sake of change, like that of human beings. The power of locomotion is liable, however, to introduce the cell to new dangers, and to conditions hostile to its continued aggregate existence. So, in addition to the sense of food and other desirable things ahead, it seems to acquire, at any rate when still further aggregated and more developed, a sense of shrinking from and avoidance of the hostile and the dangerous,--a sense as it were of "pain." And so it enters on its long career of progress, always liable to disintegration or "death"; it begins to differentiate portions of itself for the feeding process, other portions for the reproductive process, other portions again for sensory processes, but retaining the protective sense of pain almost everywhere; until the spots sensitive to ethereal and aerial vibrations--which, arriving as they do from a distance, carry with them so much valuable information, and when duly appreciated render possible perception and prediction as to what is ahead--until these sensitive spots have become developed into the special organs which we now know as the "eye" and the "ear." Then, presently, the power of communication is slowly elaborated, speech and education begin, and the knowledge of the individual is no longer limited to his own experience, but expands till it embraces the past history and the condensed acquisition of the race. And thus gradually arises a developed self-consciousness, a discrimination between the self and the external world, and a realisation of the power of choice and freedom,--a stage beyond which we have not travelled as yet, but a stage at which almost all things seem possible. The first two properties, assimilation and reproduction, overshadowed by the possibility of _death_, are properties of life of every kind, plant life as of all other. The power of locomotion and special senses, over-shadowed by the sense of _pain_, are the sign of a still further development into what we call "animal life." The further development, of mind, consciousness, and sense of freedom, overshadowed by the possibility of wilful error or _sin_, is the conspicuous attribute of life which is distinctively human. Thus, our complex molecular aggregate has shown itself capable of extraordinary and most interesting processes, has proved capable of constituting the material vehicle of life, the natural basis of living organisms, and even of mind; very much as a planet of certain size proved capable of possessing an atmosphere. But is it to be supposed that the complex aggregate _generated_ the life and mind, as the planet generated its atmosphere? That is the so-called materialistic view, but to the writer it seems an erroneous one, and it is certainly one that is not proven. It is not even certain that every planet generated all the gases of its own atmosphere: some of them it may have swept up in its excursion through space. What is certain is that it possesses the power of retaining an atmosphere; it is by no means so certain how all the constituents of that atmosphere arrived. _Questions concerning the Origin and Nature of Life._ All that we have actually experienced and verified is that a complex molecular aggregate is capable of being the vehicle or material basis of life; but to the question _what life is_ we have as yet no answer. Many have been the attempts to generate life _de novo_, by packing together suitable materials and keeping them pleasantly warm for a long time; but, if all germs of pre-existing life are rigorously excluded, the attempt hitherto has been a failure: so far, no life has made its appearance under observation, except from antecedent life. But, to exclude all trace of antecedent life, it is necessary not only to shut out floating germs, but to kill all germs previously existing in the material we are dealing with. This killing of previous life is usually accomplished by heat; but it has been argued that strong heat will destroy not only the life but the potentiality for life, will break up the complex aggregate on which life depends, will deprive the incubating solution not only of life but of livelihood. There is some force in the objection, and it is an illustration of the difficulty surrounding the subject. But Tyndall showed that antecedent life could be destroyed, without any very high temperature, by gentle heat periodically applied: heat insufficient to kill the germs, but sufficient to kill the hatched or developed organisms. Periodic heating enables the germs of successive ages to hatch, so to speak, and the product to be slain; and, although some each time may have reproduced germs before slaughter--eggs capable of standing the warmth--yet a succession of such warmings would ultimately be fatal to all, and that without necessarily breaking up the protoplasmic complex aggregates on the existence of which the whole vital potentiality depends. So far, however, all effort at spontaneous generation has been a failure; possibly because some essential ingredient or condition was omitted, possibly because great lapse of time was necessary. But suppose it was successful; what then? We should then be reproducing in the laboratory a process that must at some past age have occurred on the earth; for at one time the earth was certainly hot and molten and inorganic, whereas now it swarms with life. Does that show that the earth generated the life? By no means; no more than it need necessarily have generated all the gases of its atmosphere, or the meteoric dust which lies upon its snows. Life may be something not only ultra-terrestrial, but even immaterial, something outside our present categories of matter and energy; as real as they are, but different, and utilising them for its own purpose. What is certain is that life possesses the power of vitalising the complex material aggregates which exist on this planet, and of utilising their energies for a time to display itself amid terrestrial surroundings; and then it seems to disappear or evaporate whence it came. It is perpetually arriving and perpetually disappearing. While it is here, if it is at a sufficiently high level, the animated material body moves about and strives after many objects, some worthy, some unworthy; it acquires thereby a certain individuality, a certain character. It may realise _itself_, moreover, becoming conscious of its own mental and spiritual existence; and it then begins to explore the Mind which, like its own, it conceives must underlie the material fabric--half displayed, half concealed, by the environment, and intelligible only to a kindred spirit. Thus the scheme of law and order dimly dawns upon the nascent soul, and it begins to form clear conceptions of truth, goodness, and beauty; it may achieve something of permanent value, as a work of art or of literature; it may enter regions of emotion and may evolve ideas of the loftiest kind; it may degrade itself below the beasts, or it may soar till it is almost divine. Is it the material molecular aggregate that has of its own unaided latent power generated this individuality, acquired this character, felt these emotions, evolved these ideas? There are some who try to think that it is. There are others who recognise in this extraordinary development a contact between this material frame of things and a universe higher and other than anything known to our senses; a universe not dominated by Physics and Chemistry, but utilising the interactions of matter for its own purposes; a universe where the human spirit is more at home than it is among these temporary collocations of atoms; a universe capable of infinite development, of noble contemplation, and of lofty joy, long after this planet--nay, the whole solar system--shall have fulfilled its present spire of destiny, and retired cold and lifeless upon its endless way. * * * * * PRINTED BY NEILL AND CO., LTD., EDINBURGH. 
17862	----	DREAM LIFE: A FABLE OF THE SEASONS BY DONALD G. MITCHELL ---- We are such stuff As dreams are made of; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep Tempest. NEW YORK SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG, AND COMPANY 1876. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, by Charles Scribner & Co., In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY H.O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY _A NEW PREFACE._ Twelve years ago, this autumn, when I had finished the concluding chapters of this little book, I wrote a letter of Dedication to Washington Irving, and, forwarding it by mail to Sunnyside, begged his permission to print it. I think I shall gratify a rational curiosity of my readers (however much they may condemn my vanity) if I give his reply in full. "My dear Sir,-- "Though I have a great disinclination in general to be the object of literary oblations and compliments, yet in the present instance I have enjoyed your writings with such peculiar relish, and been so drawn toward the author by the qualities of head and heart evinced in them, that I confess I feel gratified by a dedication, over-flattering as I may deem it, which may serve as an outward sign that we are cordially linked together in sympathies and friendship. "I would only suggest that in your dedication you would omit the LL.D., a learned dignity urged upon me very much 'against the stomach of my sense,' and to which I have never laid claim. "Ever, my dear sir, "Yours, very truly, "Washington Irving "Sunnyside, Nov. 1851." I had been personally presented to Mr. Irving for the first time, only a year before, under the introduction of my good friend, Mr. Clark (the veteran Editor of the old Knickerbocker in its palmy days). Thereafter I had met him from time to time, and had paid a charming visit to his delightful home of Sunnyside. But it was after the date of the publication of this book and during the summer of 1852, that I saw Mr. Irving more familiarly, and came to appreciate more fully that charming _bonhomie_ and geniality in his character which we all recognize so constantly in his writings. And if I set down here a few recollections of that pleasant intercourse, they will, I am sure, more than make good the place of the old letter of Dedication, and will serve to keep alive the association I wish to cherish between my little book and the name of the distinguished author who so kindly showed me his favor. For the first time, after many years, Mr. Irving made a stay of a few weeks at Saratoga, in the summer of 1852. By good fortune, I chanced to occupy a room upon the same corridor of the hotel, within a few doors of his, and shared very many of his early morning walks to the "Spring." What at once struck me very forcibly in the course of these walks, was the rare alertness and minuteness of his observation: not a fair young face could dash past us in its drapery of muslin, but the eye of the old gentleman drank in all its freshness and beauty with the keen appetite and the grateful admiration of a boy; not a dowager brushed past us bedizened with finery, but he fastened the apparition in my memory with some piquant remark,--as the pin of an entomologist fastens a gaudy fly. No rheumatic old hero-invalid, battered in long wars with the doctors,--no droll marplot of a boy, could appear within range, but I could see in the changeful expression of my companion the admeasurement and quiet adjustment of the appeal which either made upon his sympathy or his humor. A flower, a tree, a burst of music, a country market-man hoisted upon his wagon of cabbages,--all these by turns caught and engaged his attention, however little they might interrupt the flow of his talk. I ventured to ask on one occasion, if he had depended solely upon his memory for the thousand little descriptions of natural objects which occur in his books. "Not wholly," he replied; and went on to tell me it had been his way, in the earlier days of his authorship, to carry little tablets with him into the country, and whenever he saw a scene specially picturesque,--a cottage of marked features, a noticeable tree, any picture, in short, which promised service to him,--to note down its distinguishing points, and hold it in reserve. "This," said he, "is one among those small arts and industries which a person who writes much must avail himself of: they are equivalent to the little thumb-sketches from which a painter makes up his larger compositions." On our way to the church on a certain Sunday morning, he tapped my shoulder as we entered the little gate, and called my attention to a lithe young Indian girl, who had strolled down from the campment on the plains, and was standing proudly erect upon the church-porch, with finger to her lips, scanning curiously the worshippers as they passed in. "What a splendid figure of a woman!" said he, "she is puzzling over the extravagances and devotions of the white-faces." The black, straight elf-locks, the swart face, the great wondering eye, with the gay blanket, short gown of woollen-stuff, and brilliant moccasins, made a striking picture to be sure; and I could not help thinking, that if the apparition had chanced upon him earlier, she might have figured in some story of Pokanoket or of the Prairies. I took occasion one morning to ask if he was always able to control the "humors of writing," and to put himself resolutely to work, whatever might be the state of his feeling. "No," he said, very decidedly,--"unfortunately I cannot: there are men who do, I believe. I always envied them; but there was a period of a month or more, after I had finally decided upon literary labors, and had declined a lucrative position under Government, when it seemed as if I was utterly bereft of all the fancies I ever had; for weeks I could do nothing; but at last the clouds lifted, and I wrote off the first numbers of the 'Sketch-Book,' and dispatched them to my good friends in this country, to make the most of. I feared it would not be much. "And the worst of it is," continued he, "the good people do not allow for these periods of depression; if a man does a thing tolerably well in his happy moods, they see no reason why he should not be always in a happy mood." I asked if he had never found relief, and a stimulant to work, in the reading aloud of some favorite old author. "Often," said he; "and none are more effective with me for this service than the sacred writers; I think I have waked a good many sleeping fancies by the reading of a chapter in Isaiah." In answer to inquiries of mine in regard to the incomplete state of several of the stories of "Wolfert's Roost," he said: "Yes, we do not get through all we lay out. Some of those sketches had lain in my mind for a great many years; they made a sort of garret-trumpery, of which I thought I would make a general clearance, leaving the odds and ends to take care of themselves. "There was a novel too, I once laid out, in which an English lad, being a son of one of the old Regicide Judges, was to come over to New England in search of his father: he was to meet with a throng of adventures, and to arrive at length upon a Saturday night, in the midst of a terrible thunder-storm, at the house of a stern old Massachusetts Puritan, who comes out to answer to the rappings; and by a flash of lightning which gleams upon the harsh, iron visage of the old man, the son fancies he recognizes his father." And as he told it, the old gentleman wrinkled his brow, and tried to put on the fierce look he would describe. "It's all there is of it," said he. "If you want to make a story, you can furbish it up." There were among other notable people at Saratoga, during the summer of which I speak, the well-known Mrs. Dr. R----, of Philadelphia, since deceased,--a woman of great eccentricities, but of a wonderfully masculine mind, and of great cultivation. It was a fancy of hers to give special, social patronage to foreign artists; and among those just then at Saratoga, and the recipients of her favor, were a distinguished violinist--whose name I do not now recall--and the newly married Mme. Alboni. Mr. Irving, in common with her other acquaintances, she was inclined to make contributory to her attentions. To this Mr. Irving was not averse, both from his extreme love of music, and his kindliness toward the artists themselves; yet, in his own quiet way, I think he fretted considerably at being pounced upon at odd hours to give them French talk. "It's very awkward," said he to me one day; "I have had large occasion for practice to be sure; but I rather fancy, after all, our own language; it's heartier and easier." He was utterly incapable of being lionized. Time and again, under the trees in the court of the hotel, did I hear him enter upon some pleasant story, lighted up with that rare turn of his eye, and by his deft expressions, when, as chance acquaintances grouped about him,--as is the way of watering-places,--and eager listeners multiplied, his hilarity and spirit took a chill from the increasing auditory, and drawing abruptly to a close, he would sidle away with a friend and be gone. Among the visitors was a tall, interesting young girl--from Louisiana, if I mistake not--who had the reputation of being a great heiress, and who was, of course, beset by a host of admirers. There was something very attractive in her air, and Mr. Irving was never tired of gazing on her as she walked, with what he called a "faun-like step," across the lawn, or up and down the corridors. Her eyes too--"dove-like," he termed them--were his special admiration. He watched with an amused interest the varying fortunes of the rival lovers, and often met me with--"Well, who is in favor to-day?" And he discussed very freely the varying chances. One brusque, heavy man, who thought to carry the matter through by a _coup de main_, he was sure could never succeed. A second, who was most assiduous, but whose brazen confidence was unyielding, he counted still less upon. But a quiet, somewhat older gentleman, whose look was ever full of tender appeal, and who bore himself with a modest dignity, he reckoned the probable winner. "He will feel a Nay grievously," said he; "but for the others, they will forget it in a supper." I believe it eventually proved that no one of those present was the successful suitor. I know only that the fair girl was afterward a bride; and (what we all so little anticipated) her home is now a scene of desolation, her fortune very likely a wreck, her family scattered or slain, and herself, maybe, a fugitive. I saw Mr. Irving afterward repeatedly in New York, and passed two delightful days at Sunnyside. I can never forget a drive with him upon a crisp autumn morning through Sleepy Hollow, and all the notable localities of his neighborhood, in the course of which he kindly called my attention, in the most unaffected and incidental way, to those which had been specially illustrated by his pen; and with a rare humor recounted to me some of his boyish adventures among the old Dutch farmers of this region. Most of all, it is impossible for me to forget the rare kindliness of his manner, his friendly suggestions, and the beaming expression of his eye. I met it last at the little stile from which I strolled away to the station at Dearman; and when I saw the kind face again, it was in the coffin, at the little church where he attended service. But the eyes were closed, and the wonderful radiance of expression gone. It seemed to me that death never took away more from a living face; it was but a cold shadow lying there, of the man who had taught a nation to love him. Edgewood, _Sept._ 1863. CONTENTS. _INTRODUCTORY._ page I. With my Aunt Tabithy 1 II. With my Reader 9 _DREAMS OF BOYHOOD._ Spring 21 I. Rain in the Garret 26 II. School-Dreams 33 III. Boy Sentiment 43 IV. A Friend made and Friend lost 49 V. Boy Religion 60 VI. A New-England Squire 67 VII. The Country Church 78 VIII. A Home Scene 86 _DREAMS OF YOUTH._ Summer 97 I. Cloister Life 104 II. First Ambition 115 III. College Romance 120 IV. First Look at the World 132 V. A Broken Home 142 VI. Family Confidence 151 VII. A Good Wife 159 VIII. A Broken Hope 167 _DREAMS OF MANHOOD._ Autumn 179 I. Pride of Manliness 184 II. Man of the World 191 III. Manly Hope 198 IV. Manly Love 207 V. Cheer and Children 213 VI. A Dream of Darkness 221 VII. Peace 229 _DREAMS OF AGE._ Winter 239 I. What is Gone 243 II. What is Left 249 III. Grief and Joy of Age 255 IV. The End of Dreams 261 _INTRODUCTORY._ I. _With my Aunt Tabithy._ "Pshaw!" said my Aunt Tabithy, "have you not done with dreaming?" My Aunt Tabithy, though an excellent and most notable person, loves occasionally a quiet bit of satire. And when I told her that I was sharpening my pen for a new story of those dreamy fancies and half-experiences which lie grouped along the journeying hours of my solitary life, she smiled as if in derision. ----"Ah, Isaac," said she, "all that is exhausted; you have rung so many changes on your hopes and your dreams, that you have nothing left but to make them real--if you can." It is very idle to get angry with a good-natured old lady. I did better than this,--I made her listen to me. ----Exhausted, do you say, Aunt Tabithy? Is life then exhausted; is hope gone out; is fancy dead? No, no. Hope and the world are full; and he who drags into book-pages a phase or two of the great life of passion, of endurance, of love, of sorrow, is but wetting a feather in the sea that breaks ceaselessly along the great shore of the years. Every man's heart is a living drama; every death is a drop-scene; every book only a faint foot-light to throw a little flicker on the stage. There is no need of wandering widely to catch incident or adventure; they are everywhere about us; each day is a succession of escapes and joys,--not perhaps clear to the world, but brooding in our thought, and living in our brain. From the very first, Angels and Devils are busy with us, and we are struggling against them and for them. No, no, Aunt Tabithy; this life of musing does not exhaust so easily. It is like the springs on the farmland, that are fed with all the showers and the dews of the year, and that from the narrow fissures of the rock send up streams continually; or it is like the deep well in the meadow, where one may see stars at noon when no stars are shining. What is Reverie, and what are these Day-dreams, but fleecy cloud-drifts that float eternally, and eternally change shapes, upon the great over-arching sky of thought? You may seize the strong outlines that the passion-breezes of to-day shall throw into their figures; but to-morrow may breed a whirlwind that will chase swift, gigantic shadows over the heaven of your thought, and change the whole landscape of your life. Dream-land will never be exhausted, until we enter the land of dreams, and until, in "shuffling off this mortal coil," thought will become fact, and all facts will be only thought. As it is, I can conceive no mood of mind more in keeping with what is to follow upon the grave, than those fancies which warp our frail hulks toward the ocean of the Infinite, and that so sublimate the realities of this being, that they seem to belong to that shadowy realm whither every day's journey is leading. --It was warm weather, and my aunt was dozing. "What is this all to be about?" said she, recovering her knitting-needle. "About love, and toil, and duty, and sorrow," said I. My aunt laid down her knitting, looked at me over the rim of her spectacles, and--took snuff. I said nothing. "How many times have you been in love, Isaac?" said she. It was now my turn to say, "Pshaw!" Judging from her look of assurance, I could not possibly have made a more satisfactory reply. My aunt finished the needle she was upon, smoothed the stocking-leg over her knee, and looking at me with a very comical expression, said, "Isaac, you are a sad fellow!" I did not like the tone of this; it sounded very much as if it would have been in the mouth of any one else--"bad fellow." And she went on to ask me, in a very bantering way, if my stock of youthful loves was not nearly exhausted; and she cited the episode of the fair-haired Enrica, as perhaps the most tempting that I could draw from my experience. A better man than myself, if he had only a fair share of vanity, would have been nettled at this; and I replied somewhat tartly, that I had never professed to write my experiences. These might be more or less tempting; but certainly if they were of a kind which I have attempted to portray in the characters of Bella, or of Carry, neither my Aunt Tabithy nor any one else should have learned such truth from any book of mine. There are griefs too sacred to be babbled to the world; and there may be loves which one would forbear to whisper even to a friend. No, no; imagination has been playing pranks with memory; and if I have made the feeling real, I am content that the facts should be false. Feeling, indeed, has a higher truth in it than circumstance. It appeals to a larger jury for acquittal; it is approved or condemned by a better judge. And if I can catch this bolder and richer truth of feeling, I will not mind if the types of it are all fabrications. If I run over some sweet experience of love, (my Aunt Tabithy brightened a little,) must I make good the fact that the loved one lives, and expose her name and qualities to make your sympathy sound? Or shall I not rather be working upon higher and holier ground, if I take the passion for itself, and so weave it into words, that you and every willing sufferer may recognize the fervor, and forget the personality? Life, after all, is but a bundle of hints, each suggesting actual and positive development, but rarely reaching it. And as I recall these hints, and in fancy trace them to their issues, I am as truly dealing with life as if my life had dealt them all to me. This is what I would be doing in the present book. I would catch up here and there the shreds of feeling which the brambles and roughnesses of the world have left tangling on my heart, and weave them out into those soft and perfect tissues which, if the world had been only a little less rough, might now perhaps enclose my heart altogether. "Ah," said my Aunt Tabithy, as she smoothed the stocking-leg again, with a sigh, "there is, after all, but one youth-time; and if you put down its memories once, you can find no second growth." My Aunt Tabithy was wrong. There is as much growth in the thoughts and feelings that run behind us as in those that run before us. You may make a rich, full picture of your childhood to-day; but let the hour go by, and the darkness stoop to your pillow with its million shapes of the past, and my word for it, you shall have some flash of childhood lighten upon you, that was unknown to your busiest thought of the morning. Let a week go by, and in some interval of care, as you recall the smile of a mother, or some pale sister who is dead, a new crowd of memories will rush upon your soul, and leave their traces in such tears as will make you kinder and better for days and weeks. Or you shall assist at some neighbor funeral, where the little dead one (like one you have seen before) shall hold in its tiny grasp (as you have taught little dead hands to do) fresh flowers, laughing flowers, lying lightly on the white robe of the dear child,--all pale, cold, silent-- I had touched my Aunt Tabithy: she had dropped a stitch in her knitting. I believe she was weeping. --Aye, this brain of ours is a master-worker, whose appliances we do not one half know; and this heart of ours is a rare storehouse, furnishing the brain with new material every hour of our lives; and their limits we shall not know, until they shall end--together. Nor is there, as many faint-hearts imagine, but one phase of earnestness in our life of feeling. One train of deep emotion cannot fill up the heart: it radiates like a star, God-ward and earth-ward. It spends and reflects all ways. Its force is to be reckoned not so much by token as by capacity. Facts are the poorest and most slumberous evidences of passion or of affection. True feeling is ranging everywhere; whereas your actual attachments are too apt to be tied to sense. A single affection may indeed be true, earnest, and absorbing; but such an one, after all, is but a type--and if the object be worthy, a glorious type--of the great book of feeling: it is only the vapor from the caldron of the heart, and bears no deeper relation to its exhaustless sources than the letter, which my pen makes, bears to the thought that inspires it,--or than a single morning strain of your orioles and thrushes bears to that wide bird-chorus which is making every sunrise a worship, and every grove a temple! My Aunt Tabithy nodded. Nor is this a mere bachelor fling against constancy. I can believe, Heaven knows, in an unalterable and unflinching affection, which neither desires nor admits the prospect of any other. But when one is tasking his brain to talk for his heart,--when he is not writing positive history, but only making mention, as it were, of the heart's capacities,--who shall say that he has reached the fulness, that he has exhausted the stock of its feeling, or that he has touched its highest notes? It is true, there is but one heart in a man to be stirred; but every stir creates a new combination of feeling, that like the turn of a kaleidoscope will show some fresh color or form. A bachelor, to be sure, has a marvellous advantage in this; and with the tenderest influences once anchored in the bay of marriage, there is little disposition to scud off under each pleasant breeze of feeling. Nay, I can even imagine--perhaps somewhat captiously--that after marriage, feeling would become a habit, a rich and holy habit certainly, but yet a habit, which weakens the omnivorous grasp of the affections, and schools one to a unity of emotion that doubts and ignores the promptness and variety of impulse which we bachelors possess. My aunt nodded again. Could it be that she approved what I had been saying? I hardly knew. Poor old lady,--she did not know herself. She was asleep! II. _With my Reader._ Having silenced my Aunt Tabithy, I shall be generous enough, in my triumph, to offer an explanatory chat to my reader. This is a history of Dreams; and there will be those who will sneer at such a history, as the work of a dreamer. So indeed it is; and you, my courteous reader, are a dreamer too! You would perhaps like to find your speculations about wealth, marriage, or influence called by some better name than Dreams. You would like to see the history of them--if written at all--baptized at the font of your own vanity, with some such title as--life's cares, or life's work. If there had been a philosophic naming to my observations, you might have reckoned them good; as it is, you count them all bald and palpable fiction. But is it so? I care not how matter-of-fact you may be, you have in your own life at some time proved the very truth of what I have set down; and the chances are, that even now, gray as you may be, and economic as you may be, and devotional as you pretend to be, you light up your Sabbath reflections with just such dreams of wealth, of per centages, or of family, as you will find scattered over these pages. I am not to be put aside with any talk about stocks, and duties, and respectability: all these, though very eminent matters, are but so many types in the volume of your thought; and your eager resolves about them are but so many ambitious waves breaking up from that great sea of dreamy speculation that has spread over your soul from its first start into the realm of Consciousness. No man's brain is so dull, and no man's eye so blind, that they cannot catch food for dreams. Each little episode of life is full, had we but the perception of its fulness. There is no such thing as blank in the world of thought. Every action and emotion have their development growing and gaining on the soul. Every affection has its tears and smiles. Nay, the very material world is full of meaning, and by suggesting thought is making us what we are and what we will be. The sparrow that is twittering on the edge of my balcony is calling up to me this moment a world of memories that reach over half my lifetime, and a world of hope that stretches farther than any flight of sparrows. The rose-tree which shades his mottled coat is full of buds and blossoms; and each bud and blossom is a token of promise that has issues covering life, and reaching beyond death. The quiet sunshine beyond the flower and beyond the sparrow,--glistening upon the leaves, and playing in delicious waves of warmth over the reeking earth,--is lighting both heart and hope, and quickening into activity a thousand thoughts of what has been and of what will be. The meadow stretching away under its golden flood,--waving with grain, and with the feathery blossoms of the grass, and golden buttercups, and white, nodding daisies,--comes to my eye like the lapse of fading childhood, studded here and there with the bright blossoms of joy, crimsoned all over with the flush of health, and enamelled with memories that perfume the soul. The blue hills beyond, with deep-blue shadows gathered in their bosom, lie before me like mountains of years, over which I shall climb through shadows to the slope of Age, and go down to the deeper shadows of Death. Nor are dreams without their variety, whatever your character may be. I care not how much in the pride of your practical judgment, or in your learned fancies, you may sneer at any dream of love, and reckon it all a poet's fiction: there are times when such dreams come over you like a summer-cloud, and almost stifle you with their warmth. Seek as you will for increase of lands or moneys, and there are moments when a spark of some giant mind will flash over your cravings, and wake your soul suddenly to a quick and yearning sense of that influence which is begotten of intellect; and you task your dreams--as I have copied them here--to build before you the pleasures of such a renown. I care not how worldly you may be: there are times when all distinctions seem like dust, and when at the graves of the great you dream of a coming country, where your proudest hopes shall be dimmed forever. Married or unmarried, young or old, poet or worker, you are still a dreamer, and will one time know, and feel, that your life is but a dream. Yet you call this fiction: you stave off the thoughts in print which come over you in reverie. You will not admit to the eye what is true to the heart. Poor weakling, and worldling, you are not strong enough to face yourself! You will read perhaps with smiles; you will possibly praise the ingenuity; you will talk with a lip schooled against the slightest quiver of some bit of pathos, and say that it is--well done. Yet why is it well done?--only because it is stolen from your very life and heart. It is good, because it is so common; ingenious, because it is so honest; well-conceived, because it is not conceived at all. There are thousands of mole-eyed people who count all passion in print a lie,--people who will grow into a rage at trifles, and weep in the dark, and love in secret, and hope without mention, and cover it all under the cloak of what they call--propriety. I can see before me now some gray-haired old gentleman, very money-getting, very correct, very cleanly, who reads the morning paper with unction, and his Bible with determination,--who listens to dull sermons with patience, and who prays with quiet self-applause; and yet there are moments belonging to his life, when his curdled affections yearn for something that they have not,--when his avarice oversteps all the commandments,--when his pride builds castles full of splendor; and yet put this before his eye, and he reads with the most careless air in the world, and condemns as arrant fiction, what cannot be proved to the elders. We do not like to see our emotions unriddled: it is not agreeable to the proud man to find his weaknesses exposed; it is shocking to the disappointed lover to see his heart laid bare; it is a great grief to the pining maiden to witness the exposure of her loves. We do not like our fancies painted; we do not contrive them for rehearsal: our dreams are private, and when they are made public, we disown them. I sometimes think that I must be a very honest fellow for writing down those fancies,--which every one else seems afraid to whisper. I shall at least come in for my share of the odium in entertaining such fancies: indeed I shall expect the charge of entertaining them exclusively, and shall scarce expect to find a single fellow-confessor, unless it be some pure and innocent-thoughted girl, who will say _peccavi_ to--here and there--a single rainbow fancy. Well, I can bear it; but in bearing it, I shall be consoled with the reflection that I have a great company of fellow-sufferers, who lack only the honesty to tell me of their sympathy. It will even relieve in no small degree my burden to watch the effort they will take to conceal what I have so boldly divulged. Nature is very much the same thing in one man that it is in another; and, as I have already said, Feeling has a higher truth in it than circumstance. Let it only be touched fairly and honestly, and the heart of humanity answers; but if it be touched foully or one-sidedly, you may find here and there a lame-souled creature who will give response, but there is no heart-throb in it. Of one thing I am sure:--if my pictures are fair, worthy, and hearty, you _must_ see it in the reading; but if they are forced and hard, no amount of kindness can make you feel their truth, as I want them felt. I make no self-praise out of this: if feeling has been honestly set down, it is only in virtue of a native impulse, over which I have altogether too little control, but if it is set down badly, I have wronged Nature, and (as Nature is kind) I have wronged myself. A great many inquisitive people will, I do not doubt, be asking, after all this prelude, if my pictures are true pictures? The question--the courteous reader will allow me to say--is an impertinent one. It is but a shabby truth that wants an author's affidavit to make it trustworthy. I shall not help my story by any such poor support. If there are not enough elements of truth, honesty, and nature in my pictures to make them believed, they shall have no oath of mine to bolster them up. I have been a sufferer in this way before now; and a little book that I had the whim to publish a year since, has been set down by many as an arrant piece of imposture. Claiming sympathy as a Bachelor, I have been recklessly set down as a cold, undeserving man of family! My story of troubles and loves has been sneered at as the sheerest gammon. But among this crowd of cold-blooded critics, it was pleasant to hear of one or two pursy old fellows who railed at me for winning the affections of a sweet Italian girl, and then leaving her to pine in discontent! Yet in the face of this, an old companion of mine in Rome, with whom I accidentally met the other day, wondered how on earth I could have made so tempting a story out of the matronly and black-haired spinster with whom I happened to be quartered in the Eternal City! I shall leave my critics to settle such differences between themselves; and consider it far better to bear with slanders from both sides of the house, than to bewray the pretty tenderness of the pursy old gentlemen, or to cast a doubt upon the practical testimony of my quondam companion. Both give me high and judicious compliment,--all the more grateful because only half deserved. For I never yet was conscious--alas, that the confession should be forced from me!--of winning the heart of any maiden, whether native or Italian; and as for such delicacy of imagination as to work up a lovely damsel out of the withered remnant that forty odd years of Italian life can spare, I can assure my middle-aged friends, (and it may serve as a _caveat_,) I can lay no claim to it whatever. The trouble has been, that those who have believed one passage, have discredited another; and those who have sympathized with me in trifles, have deserted me when affairs grew earnest. I have had sympathy enough with my married griefs, but when it came to the perplexing torments of my single life--not a weeper could I find! I would suggest to those who intend to believe only half of my present book, that they exercise a little discretion in their choice. I am not fastidious in the matter, and only ask them to believe what counts most toward the goodness of humanity, and to discredit--if they will persist in it--only what tells badly for our common nature. The man, or the woman, who believes well, is apt to work well; and Faith is as much the key to happiness here, as it is the key to happiness hereafter. I have only one thing more to say before I get upon my story. A great many sharp-eyed people, who have a horror of light reading,--by which they mean whatever does not make mention of stocks, cottons, or moral homilies,--will find much fault with my book for its ephemeral character. I am sorry that I cannot gratify such: homilies are not at all in my habit; and it does seem to me an exhausting way of disposing of a good moral, to hammer it down to a single point, so that there shall be only one chance of driving it home. For my own part, I count it a great deal better philosophy to fuse it, and rarefy it, so that it shall spread out into every crevice of a story, and give a color and a taste, as it were, to the whole mass. I know there are very good people, who, if they cannot lay their finger on so much doctrine set down in old-fashioned phrase, will never get an inkling of it at all. With such people, goodness is a thing of understanding, more than of feeling, and all their morality has its action in the brain. God forbid that I should sneer at this terrible infirmity, which Providence has seen fit to inflict; God forbid too, that I should not be grateful to the same kind Providence for bestowing upon others among his creatures a more genial apprehension of true goodness, and a hearty sympathy with every shade of human kindness. But in all this I am not making out a case for my own correct teaching, or insinuating the propriety of my tone. I shall leave the book, in this regard, to speak for itself; and whoever feels himself growing worse for the reading, I advise to lay it down. It will be very harmless on the shelf, however it may be in the hand. I shall lay no claim to the title of moralist, teacher, or romancist: my thoughts start pleasant pictures to my mind; and in a garrulous humor I put my finger in the button-hole of my indulgent friend, and tell him some of them,--giving him leave to quit me whenever he chooses. Or, if a lady is my listener, let her fancy me only an honest, simple-hearted fellow, whose familiarities are so innocent that she can pardon them;--taking her hand in his, and talking on; sometimes looking in her eyes, and then looking into the sunshine for relief; sometimes prosy with narrative, and then sharpening up my matter with a few touches of honest pathos;--let her imagine this, I say, and we may become the most excellent friends in the world. _SPRING;_ OR, _DREAMS OF BOYHOOD._ _DREAMS OF BOYHOOD._ _Spring._ The old chroniclers made the year begin in the season of frosts; and they have launched us upon the current of the months from the snowy banks of January. I love better to count time from spring to spring; it seems to me far more cheerful to reckon the year by blossoms than by blight. Bernardin de St. Pierre, in his sweet story of Virginia, makes the bloom of the cocoa-tree, or the growth of the banana, a yearly and a loved monitor of the passage of her life. How cold and cheerless in the comparison would be the icy chronology of the North;--So many years have I seen the lakes locked, and the foliage die! The budding and blooming of spring seem to belong properly to the opening of the months. It is the season of the quickest expansion, of the warmest blood, of the readiest growth; it is the boy-age of the year. The birds sing in chorus in the spring--just as children prattle; the brooks run full--like the overflow of young hearts; the showers drop easily--as young tears flow; and the whole sky is as capricious as the mind of a boy. Between tears and smiles, the year, like the child, struggles into the warmth of life. The old year--say what the chronologists will--lingers upon the very lap of spring, and is only fairly gone when the blossoms of April have strown their pall of glory upon his tomb, and the bluebirds have chanted his requiem. It always seems to me as if an access of life came with the melting of the winter's snows, and as if every rootlet of grass, that lifted its first green blade from the matted _débris_ of the old year's decay, bore my spirit upon it, nearer to the largess of Heaven. I love to trace the break of spring step by step: I love even those long rain-storms, that sap the icy fortresses of the lingering winter,--that melt the snows upon the hills, and swell the mountain-brooks,--that make the pools heave up their glassy cerements of ice, and hurry down the crashing fragments into the wastes of ocean. I love the gentle thaws that you can trace, day by day, by the stained snow-banks, shrinking from the grass; and by the gentle drip of the cottage-eaves. I love to search out the sunny slopes by a southern wall, where the reflected sun does double duty to the earth and where the frail anemone, or the faint blush of the arbutus, in the midst of the bleak March atmosphere, will touch your heart, like a hope of Heaven in a field of graves! Later come those soft, smoky days, when the patches of winter grain show green under the shelter of leafless woods, and the last snow-drifts, reduced to shrunken skeletons of ice, lie upon the slope of northern hills, leaking away their life. Then the grass at your door grows into the color of the sprouting grain, and the buds upon the lilacs swell and burst. The peaches bloom upon the wall, and the plums wear bodices of white. The sparkling oriole picks string for his hammock on the sycamore, and the sparrows twitter in pairs. The old elms throw down their dingy flowers, and color their spray with green; and the brooks, where you throw your worm or the minnow, float down whole fleets of the crimson blossoms of the maple. Finally the oaks step into the opening quadrille of spring, with grayish tufts of a modest verdure, which by-and-by will be long and glossy leaves. The dogwood pitches his broad, white tent in the edge of the forest; the dandelions lie along the hillocks, like stars in a sky of green; and the wild cherry, growing in all the hedge-rows, without other culture than God's, lifts up to Him thankfully its tremulous white fingers. Amid all this come the rich rains of spring. The affections of a boy grow up with tears to water them; and the year blooms with showers. But the clouds hover over an April sky timidly, like shadows upon innocence. The showers come gently, and drop daintily to the earth,--with now and then a glimpse of sunshine to make the drops bright--like so many tears of joy. The rain of winter is cold, and it comes in bitter scuds that blind you; but the rain of April steals upon you coyly, half reluctantly,--yet lovingly--like the steps of a bride to the Altar. It does not gather like the storm-clouds of winter, gray and heavy along the horizon, and creep with subtle and insensible approaches (like age) to the very zenith; but there are a score of white-winged swimmers afloat, that your eye has chased as you lay fatigued with the delicious languor of an April sun;--nor have you scarce noticed that a little bevy of those floating clouds had grouped together in a sombre company. But presently you see across the fields the dark gray streaks, stretching like lines of mists from the green bosom of the valley to that spot of sky where the company of clouds is loitering; and with an easy shifting of the helm the fleet of swimmers come drifting over you, and drop their burden into the dancing pools, and make the flowers glisten, and the eaves drip with their crystal bounty. The cattle linger still, cropping the new-come grass; and childhood laughs joyously at the warm rain, or under the cottage-roof catches with eager ear the patter of its fall. ----And with that patter on the roof,--so like to the patter of childish feet,--my story of boyish dreams shall begin. I. _Rain in the Garret._ It is an old garret with big brown rafters; and the boards between are stained darkly with the rain-storms of fifty years. And as the sportive April shower quickens its flood, it seems as if its torrents would come dashing through the shingles upon you, and upon your play. But it will not; for you know that the old roof is strong, and that it has kept you, and all that love you, for long years from the rain and from the cold; you know that the hardest storms of winter will only make a little oozing leak, that trickles down the brown stains--like tears. You love that old garret-roof; and you nestle down under its slope with a sense of its protecting power that no castle-walls can give to your maturer years. Aye, your heart clings in boyhood to the roof-tree of the old family garret with a grateful affection and an earnest confidence, that the after-years--whatever may be their successes, or their honors--can never re-create. Under the roof-tree of his home the boy feels SAFE: and where in the whole realm of life, with its bitter toils and its bitterer temptations, will he feel _safe_ again? But this you do not know. It seems only a grand old place; and it is capital fun to search in its corners, and drag out some bit of quaint old furniture, with a leg broken, and lay a cushion across it, and fix your reins upon the lion's claws of the feet, and then--gallop away! And you offer sister Nelly a chance, if she will be good; and throw out very patronizing words to little Charlie, who is mounted upon a much humbler horse,--to wit, a decrepit nursery-chair,--as he of right should be, since he is three years your junior. I know no nobler forage-ground for a romantic, venturesome, mischievous boy, than the garret of an old family mansion on a day of storm. It is a perfect field of chivalry. The heavy rafters, the dashing rain, the piles of spare mattresses to carouse upon, the big trunks to hide in, the old white coats and hats hanging in obscure corners, like ghosts,--are great! And it is so far away from the old lady who keeps rule in the nursery, that there is no possible risk of a scolding for twisting off the fringe of the rug. There is no baby in the garret to wake up. There is no "company" in the garret to be disturbed by the noise. There is no crotchety old Uncle, or Grand-Ma, with their everlasting "Boys, boys!" and then a look of such horror! There is great fun in groping through a tall barrel of books and pamphlets, on the look-out for startling pictures; and there are chestnuts in the garret drying, which you have discovered on a ledge of the chimney; and you slide a few into your pocket, and munch them quietly,--giving now and then one to Nelly, and begging her to keep silent,--for you have a great fear of its being forbidden fruit. Old family garrets have their stock, as I said, of castaway clothes of twenty years gone by; and it is rare sport to put them on; buttoning in a pillow or two for the sake of good fulness; and then to trick out Nelly in some strange-shaped head-gear, and old-fashioned brocade petticoat caught up with pins; and in such guise to steal cautiously down-stairs, and creep slyly into the sitting-room,--half afraid of a scolding, and very sure of good fun,--trying to look very sober, and yet almost ready to die with the laugh that you know you will make. And your mother tries to look harshly at little Nelly for putting on her grandmother's best bonnet; but Nelly's laughing eyes forbid it utterly; and the mother spoils all her scolding with a perfect shower of kisses. After this you go, marching very stately, into the nursery, and utterly amaze the old nurse; and make a deal of wonderment for the staring, half-frightened baby, who drops his rattle, and makes a bob at you as if he would jump into your waistcoat-pocket. But you grow tired of this; you tire even of the swing, and of the pranks of Charlie; and you glide away into a corner with an old, dog's-eared copy of "Robinson Crusoe." And you grow heart and soul into the story, until you tremble for the poor fellow with his guns behind the palisade; and are yourself half dead with fright when you peep cautiously over the hill with your glass, and see the cannibals at their orgies around the fire. Yet, after all, you think the old fellow must have had a capital time with a whole island to himself; and you think you would like such a time yourself, if only Nelly and Charlie could be there with you. But this thought does not come till afterward; for the time you are nothing but Crusoe; you are living in his cave with Poll the parrot, and are looking out for your goats and man Friday. You dream what a nice thing it would be for you to slip away some pleasant morning,--not to York, as young Crusoe did, but to New York,--and take passage as a sailor; and how, if they knew you were going, there would be such a world of good-byes; and how, if they did not know it, there would be such a world of wonder! And then the sailor's dress would be altogether such a jaunty affair; and it would be such rare sport to lie off upon the yards far aloft, as you have seen sailors in pictures, looking out upon the blue and tumbling sea. No thought now, in your boyish dreams, of sleety storms, and cables stiffened with ice, and crashing spars, and great icebergs towering fearfully around you! You would have better luck than even Crusoe; you would save a compass, and a Bible, and stores of hatchets, and the captain's dog, and great puncheons of sweetmeats, (which Crusoe altogether overlooked;) and you would save a tent or two, which you could set up on the shore, and an American flag, and a small piece of cannon, which you could fire as often as you liked. At night you would sleep in a tree,--though you wonder how Crusoe did it,--and would say the prayers you had been taught to say at home, and fall to sleep, dreaming of Nelly and Charlie. At sunrise, or thereabouts, you would come down, feeling very much refreshed; and make a very nice breakfast off of smoked herring and sea-bread, with a little currant jam, and a few oranges. After this you would haul ashore a chest or two of the sailors' clothes, and putting a few large jackknives in your pocket, would take a stroll over the island, and dig a cave somewhere, and roll in a cask or two of sea-bread. And you fancy yourself growing after a time very tall and corpulent, and wearing a magnificent goat-skin cap trimmed with green ribbons, and set off with a plume. You think you would have put a few more guns in the palisade than Crusoe did, and charged them with a little more grape. After a long while you fancy a ship would arrive which would carry you back; and you count upon very great surprise on the part of your father and little Nelly, as you march up to the door of the old family mansion, with plenty of gold in your pocket, and a small bag of cocoa-nuts for Charlie, and with a great deal of pleasant talk about your island far away in the South Seas. ----Or perhaps it is not Crusoe at all, that your eyes and your heart cling to, but only some little story about Paul and Virginia;--that dear little Virginia! how many tears have been shed over her--not in garrets only, or by boys only! You would have liked Virginia, you know you would; but you perfectly hate the beldame aunt who sent for her to come to France; you think she must have been like the old schoolmistress, who occasionally boxes your ears with the cover of the spelling-book, or makes you wear one of the girls' bonnets, that smells strongly of pasteboard and calico. As for black Domingue, you think he was a capital old fellow; and you think more of him and his bananas than you do of the bursting, throbbing heart of poor Paul. As yet Dream-life does not take hold on love. A little maturity of heart is wanted to make up what the poets call sensibility. If love should come to be a dangerous, chivalric matter, as in the case of Helen Mar and Wallace, you can very easily conceive of it, and can take hold of all the little accessories of male costume and embroidering of banners; but as for pure sentiment, such as lies in the sweet story of Bernardin de St. Pierre, it is quite beyond you. The rich, soft nights, in which one might doze in his hammock, watching the play of the silvery moonbeams upon the orange-leaves and upon the waves, you can understand; and you fall to dreaming of that lovely Isle of France, and wondering if Virginia did not perhaps have some relations on the island, who raise pine-apples, and such sort of things, still? ----And so with your head upon your hand in your quiet garret-corner, over some such beguiling story, your thought leans away from the book into your own dreamy cruise over the sea of life. II. _School-Dreams._ It is a proud thing to go out from under the realm of a schoolmistress, and to be enrolled in a company of boys, who are under the guidance of a master. It is one of the earliest steps of worldly pride, which has before it a long and tedious ladder of ascent. Even the advice of the old mistress, and the ninepenny book that she thrusts into your hand as a parting gift, pass for nothing; and her kiss of adieu, if she tenders it in the sight of your fellows, will call up an angry rush of blood to the cheek, that for long years shall drown all sense of its kindness. You have looked admiringly many a day upon the tall fellows who play at the door of Dr. Bidlow's school; you have looked with reverence--second only to that felt for the old village church--upon its dark-looking, heavy brick walls. It seemed to be redolent of learning; and stopping at times to gaze upon the gallipots and broken retorts at the second-story window, you have pondered in your boyish way upon the inscrutable wonders of Science, and the ineffable dignity of Dr. Bidlow's brick school! Dr. Bidlow seems to you to belong to a race of giants; and yet he is a spare, thin man, with a hooked nose, a large, flat, gold watch-key, a crack in his voice, a wig, and very dirty wristbands. Still you stand in awe at the mere sight of him,--an awe that is very much encouraged by a report made to you by a small boy, that "Old Bid" keeps a large ebony ruler in his desk. You are amazed at the small boy's audacity; it astonishes you that any one who had ever smelt the strong fumes of sulphur and ether in the Doctor's room, and had seen him turn red vinegar blue, (as they say he does,) should call him "Old Bid!" You however come very little under his control; you enter upon the proud life, in the small boy's department, under the dominion of the English master. He is a different personage from Dr. Bidlow: he is a dapper little man, who twinkles his eye in a peculiar fashion, and who has a way of marching about the schoolroom with his hands crossed behind him, giving a playful flirt to his coat-tails. He wears a pen tucked behind his ear; his hair is carefully set up at the sides and upon the top, to conceal (as you think later in life) his diminutive height; and he steps very springily around behind the benches, glancing now and then at the books,--cautioning one scholar about his dog's-ears, and startling another from a doze by a very loud and odious snap of his forefinger upon the boy's head. At other times he sticks a hand in the armlet of his waistcoat; he brandishes in the other a thickish bit of smooth cherry-wood, sometimes dressing his hair withal; and again giving his head a slight scratch behind the ear, while he takes occasion at the same time for an oblique glance at a fat boy in the corner, who is reaching down from his seat after a little paper pellet that has just been discharged at him from some unknown quarter. The master steals very cautiously and quickly to the rear of the stooping boy, dreadfully exposed by his unfortunate position, and inflicts a stinging blow. A weak-eyed little scholar on the next bench ventures a modest titter, at which the assistant makes a significant motion with his ruler,--on the seat, as it were, of an imaginary pair of pantaloons,--which renders the weak-eyed boy on a sudden very insensible to the recent joke. You meantime profess to be very much engrossed with your grammar--turned upside-down; you think it must have hurt, and are only sorry that it did not happen to a tall, dark-faced boy, who cheated you in a swop of jackknives. You innocently think that he must be a very bad boy, and fancy--aided by a suggestion of the old nurse at home on the same point--that he will one day come to the gallows. There is a platform on one side of the schoolroom, where the teacher sits at a little red table; and they have a tradition among the boys, that a pin properly bent was one day put into the chair of the English master, and that he did not wear his hand in the armlet of his waistcoat for two whole days thereafter. Yet his air of dignity seems proper enough in a man of such erudition, and such grasp of imagination, as he must possess. For he can quote poetry,--some of the big scholars have heard him do it; he can parse the whole of "Paradise Lost," and he can cipher in Long Division, and the Rule of Three, as if it was all Simple Addition; and then, such a hand as he writes, and such a superb capital B! It is hard to understand how he does it. Sometimes lifting the lid of your desk, where you pretend to be very busy with your papers, you steal the reading of some brief passage of "Lazy Lawrence," or of the "Hungarian Brothers," and muse about it for hours afterward to the great detriment of your ciphering; or, deeply lost in the story of the "Scottish Chiefs," you fall to comparing such villains as Menteith with the stout boys who tease you; and you only wish they could come within reach of the fierce Kirkpatrick's claymore. But you are frighted out of this stolen reading by a circumstance that stirs your young blood very strangely. The master is looking very sourly on a certain morning, and has caught sight of the little weak-eyed boy over beyond you, reading "Roderick Random." He sends out for a long birch rod, and having trimmed off the leaves carefully,--with a glance or two in your direction,--he marches up behind the bench of the poor culprit,--who turns deathly pale,--grapples him by the collar, drags him out over the desks, his limbs dangling in a shocking way against the sharp angles, and having him fairly in the middle of the room, clinches his rod with a new, and, as it seems to you, a very sportive grip. You shudder fearfully. "Please don't whip me," says the boy, whimpering. "Aha!" says the smirking pedagogue, bringing down the stick with a quick, sharp cut,--"you don't like it, eh?" The poor fellow screams, and struggles to escape; but the blows come faster and thicker. The blood tingles in your finger-ends with indignation. "Please don't strike me again," says the boy, sobbing, and taking breath, as he writhes about the legs of the master; "I won't read another time." "Ah, you won't, sir,--won't you? I don't mean you shall, sir;" and the blows fall thick and fast, until the poor fellow crawls back, utterly crestfallen and heartsick, to sob over his books. You grow into a sudden boldness; you wish you were only large enough to beat the master; you know such treatment would make you miserable; you shudder at the thought of it; you do not believe he would dare; you know the other boy has got no father. This seems to throw a new light upon the matter, but it only intensifies your indignation. You are sure that no father would suffer it; or, if you thought so, it would sadly weaken your love for him. You pray Heaven, that it may never be brought to such proof. ----Let a boy once distrust the love or the tenderness of his parents, and the last resort of his yearning affections--so far as the world goes--is utterly gone. He is in the sure road to a bitter fate. His heart will take on a hard, iron covering, that will flash out plenty of fire in his after contact with the world, but it will never--never melt! There are some tall trees, that overshadow an angle of the schoolhouse; and the larger scholars play some very surprising gymnastic tricks upon their lower limbs: one boy, for instance, will hang for an incredible length of time by his feet with his head down; and when you tell Charlie of it at night, with such additions as your boyish imagination can contrive, the old nurse is shocked, and states very gravely that it is dangerous, and that the blood all runs to the head, and sometimes bursts out of the eyes and mouth. You look at that particular boy with astonishment afterward, and expect to see him some day burst into bleeding from the nose and ears, and flood the schoolroom benches. In time however you get to performing some modest experiments yourself upon the very lowest limbs, taking care to avoid the observation of the larger boys, who else might laugh at you; you especially avoid the notice of one stout fellow in pea-green breeches, who is a sort of "bully" among the small boys, and who delights in kicking your marbles about very accidentally. He has a fashion too of twisting his handkerchief into what he calls a "snapper," with a knot at the end, and cracking at you with it, very much to the irritation of your spirits and of your legs. Sometimes, when he has brought you to an angry burst of tears, he will very graciously force upon you the handkerchief, and insist upon your cracking him in return; which, as you know nothing about his effective method of making the knot bite, is a very harmless proposal on his part. But you have still stronger reason to remember that boy. There are trees, as I said, near the school; and you get the reputation, after a time, of a good climber. One day you are well in the tops of the trees, and being dared by the boys below, you venture higher--higher than any boy has ever gone before. You feel very proudly, but just then catch sight of the sneering face of your old enemy of the snapper; and he dares you to go upon a limb that he points out. The rest say,--for you hear them plainly,--"It won't bear him." And Frank, a great friend of yours, shouts loudly to you not to try. "Pho," says your tormentor,--"the little coward!" If you could whip him, you would go down the tree, and do it willingly; as it is, you cannot let him triumph; so you advance cautiously out upon the limb; it bends and sways fearfully with your weight; presently it cracks; you try to return, but it is too late; you feel yourself going; your mind flashes home--over your life, your hope, your fate--like lightning; then comes a sense of dizziness, a succession of quick blows, and a dull, heavy crash! You are conscious of nothing again, until you find yourself in the great hall of the school, covered with blood, the old Doctor standing over you with a phial, and Frank kneeling by you, and holding your shattered arm, which has been broken by the fall. After this come those long, weary days of confinement, when you lie still through all the hours of noon, looking out upon the cheerful sunshine only through the windows of your little room. Yet it seems a grand thing to have the whole household attendant upon you. The doors are opened and shut softly, and they all step noiselessly about your chamber; and when you groan with pain, you are sure of meeting sad, sympathizing looks. Your mother will step gently to your side and lay her cool, white hand upon your forehead; and little Nelly will gaze at you from the foot of your bed with a sad earnestness, and with tears of pity in her soft hazel eyes. And afterward, as your pain passes away, she will bring you her prettiest books, and fresh flowers, and whatever she knows you will love. But it is dreadful when you wake at night from your feverish slumber, and see nothing but the spectral shadows that the sick-lamp upon the hearth throws aslant the walls; and hear nothing but the heavy breathing of the old nurse in the easy-chair, and the ticking of the clock upon the mantel! Then silence and the night crowd upon your soul drearily. But your thought is active. It shapes at your bedside the loved figure of your mother, or it calls up the whole company of Dr. Bidlow's boys and weeks of study or of play group like magic on your quickened vision; then a twinge of pain will call again the dreariness, and your head tosses upon the pillow, and your eye searches the gloom vainly for pleasant faces; and your fears brood on that drearier, coming night of Death--far longer, and far more cheerless than this. But even here the memory of some little prayer you have been taught, which promises a Morning after the Night, comes to your throbbing brain; and its murmur on your fevered lips, as you breathe it, soothes like a caress of angels, and woos you to smiles and sleep. As the days pass, you grow stronger; and Frank comes in to tell you of the school, and that your old tormentor has been expelled; and you grow into a strong friendship with Frank, and you think of yourselves as a new Damon and Pythias, and that you will some day live together in a fine house, with plenty of horses, and plenty of chestnut-trees. Alas, the boy counts little on those later and bitter fates of life, which sever his early friendships like wisps of straw! At other times, with your eye upon the sleek, trim figure of the Doctor, and upon his huge bunch of watch-seals, you think you will some day be a Doctor; and that with a wife and children, and a respectable gig, and gold watch, with seals to match, you would needs be a very happy fellow. And with such fancies drifting on your thought, you count for the hundredth time the figures upon the curtains of your bed; you trace out the flower-wreaths upon the paper-hangings of your room; your eyes rest idly on the cat playing with the fringe of the curtain; you see your mother sitting with her needle-work beside the fire; you watch the sunbeams, as they drift along the carpet, from morning until noon; and from noon till night you watch them playing on the leaves, and dropping spangles on the lawn; and as you watch--you dream. III. _Boy Sentiment._ Weeks and even years of your boyhood roll on, in the which your dreams are growing wider and grander,--even as the Spring, which I have made the type of the boy-age, is stretching its foliage farther and farther, and dropping longer and heavier shadows on the land. Nelly, that sweet sister, has grown into your heart strangely; and you think that all they write in their books about love cannot equal your fondness for little Nelly. She is pretty, they say; but what do you care for her prettiness? She is so good, so kind, so watchful of all your wants, so willing to yield to your haughty claims! But, alas! it is only when this sisterly love is lost forever,--only when the inexorable world separates a family, and tosses it upon the waves of fate to wide-lying distances, perhaps to graves,--that a man feels, what a boy can never know,--the disinterested and abiding affection of a sister. All this that I have set down comes back to you long afterward, when you recall with tears of regret your reproachful words, or some swift outbreak of passion. Little Madge is a friend of Nelly's,--a mischievous, blue-eyed hoiden. They tease you about Madge. You do not of course care one straw for her, but yet it is rather pleasant to be teased thus. Nelly never does this; oh no, not she. I do not know but in the age of childhood the sister is jealous of the affections of a brother, and would keep his heart wholly at home, until, suddenly and strangely, she finds her own wandering. But after all Madge is pretty, and there is something taking in her name. Old people, and very precise people, call her Margaret Boyne. But you do not: it is only plain Madge; it sounds like her, very rapid and mischievous. It would be the most absurd thing in the world for you to like her, for she teases you in innumerable ways: she laughs at your big shoes, (such a sweet little foot as she has!) and she pins strips of paper on your coat-collar; and time and again she has worn off your hat in triumph, very well knowing that you--such a quiet body, and so much afraid of her--will never venture upon any liberties with her gypsy bonnet. You sometimes wish in your vexation, as you see her running, that she would fall and hurt herself badly; but the next moment it seems a very wicked wish, and you renounce it. Once she did come very near it. You were all playing together by the big swing; (how plainly it swings in your memory now!) Madge had the seat, and you were famous for running under with a long push, which Madge liked better than anything else;--well, you have half run over the ground when, crash! comes the swing, and poor Madge with it! You fairly scream as you catch her up. But she is not hurt,--only a cry of fright, and a little sprain of that fairy ankle; and as she brushes away the tears and those flaxen curls, and breaks into a merry laugh,--half at your woe-worn face, and half in vexation at herself,--and leans her hand (such a hand!) upon your shoulder, to limp away into the shade, you dream your first dream of love. But it is only a dream, not at all acknowledged by you; she is three or four years your junior,--too young altogether. It is very absurd to talk about it. There is nothing to be said of Madge, only--Madge! The name does it. It is rather a pretty name to write. You are fond of making capital M's; and sometimes you follow it with a capital A. Then you practise a little upon a D, and perhaps back it up with a G. Of course it is the merest accident that these letters come together. It seems funny to you--very. And as a proof that they are made at random, you make a T or an R before them, and some other quite irrelevant letters after it. Finally, as a sort of security against all suspicion, you cross it out,--cross it a great many ways, even holding it up to the light to see that there should be no air of intention about it. ----You need have no fear, Clarence, that your hieroglyphics will be studied so closely. Accidental as they are, you are very much more interested in them than any one else. ----It is a common fallacy of this dream in most stages of life, that a vast number of persons employ their time chiefly in spying out its operations. Yet Madge cares nothing about you, that you know of. Perhaps it is the very reason, though you do not suspect it then, why you care so much for her. At any rate she is a friend of Nelly's, and it is your duty not to dislike her. Nelly too, sweet Nelly, gets an inkling of matters,--for sisters are very shrewd in suspicions of this sort, shrewder than brothers or fathers,--and, like the good, kind girl that she is, she wishes to humor even your weakness. Madge drops in to tea quite often: Nelly has something _in particular_ to show her, two or three times a week. Good Nelly! perhaps she is making your troubles all the greater. You gather large bunches of grapes for Madge--because she is a friend of Nelly's--which she doesn't want at all, and very pretty bouquets, which she either drops or pulls to pieces. In the presence of your father one day you drop some hint about Madge in a very careless way,--a way shrewdly calculated to lay all suspicion,--at which your father laughs. This is odd; it makes you wonder if your father was ever in love himself. You rather think that he has been. Madge's father is dead, and her mother is poor; and you sometimes dream how--whatever your father may think or feel--you will some day make a large fortune, in some very easy way, and build a snug cottage, and have one horse for your carriage and one for your wife, (not Madge, of course--that is absurd,) and a turtleshell cat for your wife's mother, and a pretty gate to the front yard, and plenty of shrubbery; and how your wife will come dancing down the path to meet you,--as the Wife does in Mr. Irving's "Sketch-Book,"--and how she will have a harp in the parlor, and will wear white dresses with a blue sash. ----Poor Clarence, it never occurs to you that even Madge may grow fat, and wear check aprons, and snuffy-brown dresses of woollen stuff, and twist her hair in yellow papers! Oh, no, boyhood has no such dreams as that! I shall leave you here in the middle of your first foray into the world of sentiment, with those wicked blue eyes chasing rainbows over your heart, and those little feet walking every day into your affections. I shall leave you, before the affair has ripened into any overtures, and while there is only a sixpence split in halves, and tied about your neck and Maggie's neck, to bind your destinies together. If I even hinted at any probability of your marrying her, or of your not marrying her, you would be very likely to dispute me. One knows his own feelings, or thinks he does, so much better than any one can tell him. IV. _A Friend made and Friend lost._ To visit, is a great thing in the boy calendar;--not to visit this or that neighbor,--to drink tea, or eat strawberries, or play at draughts,--but to go away on a visit in a coach, with a trunk, and a great-coat, and an umbrella--this is large! It makes no difference that they wish to be rid of your noise, now that Charlie is sick of a fever: the reason is not at all in the way of your pride of visiting. You are to have a long ride in a coach, and eat a dinner at a tavern, and to see a new town almost as large as the one you live in; and you are to make new acquaintances. In short, you are to see the world: a very proud thing it is to see the world! As you journey on, after bidding your friends adieu, and as you see fences and houses to which you have not been used, you think them very odd indeed: but it occurs to you that the geographies speak of very various national characteristics, and you are greatly gratified with this opportunity of verifying your study. You see new crops too, perhaps a broad-leaved tobacco-field, which reminds you pleasantly of the luxuriant vegetation of the tropics, spoken of by Peter Parley, and others. As for the houses and barns in the new town, they quite startle you with their strangeness: you observe that some of the latter, instead of having one stable-door have five or six,--a fact which puzzles you very much indeed. You observe further that the houses many of them have balustrades upon the top, which seems to you a very wonderful adaptation to the wants of boys who wish to fly kites, or to play upon the roof. You notice with special favor one very low roof, which you might climb upon by a mere plank, and you think the boys whose father lives in that house are very fortunate boys. Your old aunt, whom you visit, you think, wears a very queer cap, being altogether different from that of the old nurse, or of Mrs. Boyne,--Madge's mother. As for the house she lives in, it is quite wonderful. There are such an immense number of closets, and closets within closets, reminding you of the mysteries of "Rinaldo Rinaldini." Beside which there are immensely curious bits of old furniture--so black and heavy, and with such curious carving!--and you think of the old wainscot in the "Children of the Abbey". You think you will never tire of rambling about in its odd corners, and of what glorious stories you will have to tell of it when you go back to Nelly and Charlie. As for acquaintances, you fall in the very first day with a tall boy next door, called Nat, which seems an extraordinary name. Besides, he has travelled; and as he sits with you on the summer nights under the linden-trees, he tells you gorgeous stories of the things he has seen. He has made the voyage to London; and he talks about the ship (a real ship) and starboard and larboard, and the spanker, in a way quite surprising; and he takes the stern-oar in the little skiff, when you row off in the cove abreast of the town, in a most seaman-like way. He bewilders you, too, with his talk about the great bridges of London,--London Bridge specially, where they sell kids for a penny; which story your new acquaintance unfortunately does not confirm. You have read of these bridges, and seen pictures of them in the "Wonders of the World"; but then Nat has seen them with his own eyes: he has literally walked over London Bridge, on his own feet! You look at his very shoes in wonderment, and are surprised you do not find some startling difference between those shoes and your shoes. But there is none,--only yours are a trifle stouter in the welt. You think Nat one of the fortunate boys of this world,--born, as your old nurse used to say, with a gold spoon in his mouth. Beside Nat there is a girl lives over the opposite side of the way, named Jenny,--with an eye as black as a coal, and a half a year older than you, but about your height,--whom you fancy amazingly. She has any quantity of toys, that she lets you play with as if they were your own. And she has an odd old uncle, who sometimes makes you stand up together, and then marries you after his fashion,--much to the amusement of a grown-up house-maid, whenever she gets a peep at the performance. And it makes you somewhat proud to hear her called your wife; and you wonder to yourself, dreamily, if it won't be true some day or other. ----Fie, Clarence, where is your split sixpence, and your blue ribbon! Jenny is romantic, and talks of "Thaddeus of Warsaw" in a very touching manner, and promises to lend you the book. She folds billets in a lover's fashion, and practises love-knots upon her bonnet-strings. She looks out of the corners of her eyes very often, and sighs. She is frequently by herself, and pulls flowers to pieces. She has great pity for middle-aged bachelors, and thinks them all disappointed men. After a time she writes notes to you, begging you would answer them at the earliest possible moment, and signs herself--"your attached Jenny." She takes the marriage farce of her uncle in a cold way, as trifling with a very serious subject, and looks tenderly at you. She is very much shocked when her uncle offers to kiss her; and when he proposes it to you, she is equally indignant, but--with a great change of color. Nat says one day in a confidential conversation that it won't do to marry a woman six months older than yourself; and this, coming from Nat who has been to London, rather staggers you. You sometimes think that you would like to marry Madge and Jenny both, if the thing were possible, for Nat says they sometimes do so the other side of the ocean, though he has never seen it himself. ----Ah, Clarence, you will have no such weakness as you grow older; you will find that Providence has charitably so tempered our affections, that every man of only ordinary nerve will be amply satisfied with a single wife. All this time--for you are making your visit a very long one, so that autumn has come, and the nights are growing cool, and Jenny and yourself are transferring your little coquetries to the chimney-corner--poor Charlie lies sick at home. Boyhood, thank Heaven! does not suffer severely from sympathy when the object is remote. And those letters from the mother, telling you that Charlie cannot play,--cannot talk even as he used to do,--and that perhaps his "Heavenly Father will take him away to be with him in the better world," disturb you for a time only. Sometimes however they come back to your thought on a wakeful night, and you dream about his suffering, and think--why it is not you, but Charlie, who is sick? The thought puzzles you; and well it may, for in it lies the whole mystery of our fate. Those letters grow more and more discouraging, and the kind admonitions of your mother grow more earnest, as if (though the thought does not come to you until years afterward) she was preparing herself to fasten upon you that surplus of affection which she fears may soon be withdrawn forever from the sick child. It is on a frosty, bleak evening, when you are playing with Nat, that the letter reaches you which says Charlie is growing worse, and that you must come to your home. It makes a dreamy night for you--fancying how Charlie will look, and if sickness has altered him much, and if he will not be well by Christmas. From this you fall away in your reverie to the odd old house and its secret cupboards, and your aunt's queer caps; then come up those black eyes of "your attached Jenny," and you think it a pity that she is six month's older than you; and again--as you recall one of her sighs--you think that six months are not much after all! You bid her good-bye, with a little sentiment swelling in your throat, and are mortally afraid Nat will see your lip tremble. Of course you promise to write, and squeeze her hand with an honesty you do not think of doubting--for weeks. It is a dull, cold ride, that day, for you. The winds sweep over the withered cornfields with a harsh, chilly whistle, and the surfaces of the little pools by the roadside are tossed up into cold blue wrinkles of water. Here and there a flock of quail, with their feathers ruffled in the autumn gusts, tread through the hard, dry stubble of an oatfield; or, startled by the snap of the driver's whip, they stare a moment at the coach, then whir away down the cold current of the wind. The blue jays scream from the roadside oaks, and the last of the blue and purple asters shiver along the wall. And as the sun sinks, reddening all the western clouds to the color of the frosted maples, light lines of the Aurora gush up from the northern hills, and trail their splintered fingers far over the autumn sky. It is quite dark when you reach home, but you see the bright reflection of a fire within, and presently at the open door Nelly clapping her hands for welcome. But there are sad faces when you enter. Your mother folds you to her heart; but at your first noisy outburst of joy puts her finger on her lip, and whispers poor Charlie's name. The Doctor you see too, slipping softly out of the bedroom-door, with glasses in his hand; and--you hardly know how--your spirits grow sad, and your heart gravitates to the heavy air of all about you. You cannot see Charlie, Nelly says;--and you cannot in the quiet parlor tell Nelly a single one of the many things, which you had hoped to tell her. She says,--"Charlie has grown so thin and so pale, you would never know him." You listen to her, but you cannot talk: she asks you what you have seen, and you begin, for a moment joyously; but when they open the door of the sick-room, and you hear a faint sigh, you cannot go on. You sit still, with your hand in Nelly's, and look thoughtfully into the blaze. You drop to sleep after that day's fatigue, with singular and perplexed fancies haunting you; and when you wake up with a shudder in the middle of the night, you have a fancy that Charlie is really dead: you dream of seeing him pale and thin, as Nelly described him, and with the starched grave-clothes on him. You toss over in your bed, and grow hot and feverish. You cannot sleep; and you get up stealthily, and creep down-stairs. A light is burning in the hall: the bedroom-door stands half open, and you listen--fancying you hear a whisper. You steal on through the hall, and edge around the side of the door. A little lamp is flickering on the hearth, and the gaunt shadow of the bedstead lies dark upon the ceiling. Your mother is in her chair with her head upon her hand--though it is long after midnight. The Doctor is standing with his back toward you, and with Charlie's little wrist in his fingers; and you hear hard breathing, and now and then a low sigh from your mother's chair. An occasional gleam of firelight makes the gaunt shadows stagger on the wall, like something spectral. You look wildly at them, and at the bed where your own brother--your laughing, gay-hearted brother--is lying. You long to see him, and sidle up softly a step or two; but your mother's ear has caught the sound, and she beckons you to her, and folds you again in her embrace. You whisper to her what you wish. She rises, and takes you by the hand, to lead you to the bedside. The Doctor looks very solemnly as we approach. He takes out his watch. He is not counting Charlie's pulse, for he has dropped his hand, and it lies carelessly, but oh, how thin! over the edge of the bed. He shakes his head mournfully at your mother; and she springs forward, dropping your hand, and lays her fingers upon the forehead of the boy, and passes her hand over his mouth. "Is he asleep, Doctor?" she says in a tone you do not know. "Be calm, madam." The Doctor is very calm. "I am calm," says your mother; but you do not think it, for you see her tremble very plainly. "Dear madam, he will never waken in this world!" There is no cry,--only a bowing down of your mother's head upon the body of poor dead Charlie!--and only when you see her form shake and quiver with the deep, smothered sobs, your crying bursts forth loud and strong. The Doctor lifts you in his arms, that you may see that pale head,--those blue eyes all sunken,--that flaxen hair gone,--those white lips pinched and hard!--Never, never will the boy forget his first terrible sight of Death! In your silent chamber, after the storm of sobs has wearied you, the boy-dreams are strange and earnest. They take hold on that awful Visitant,--that strange slipping away from life, of which we know so little, and yet know, alas, so much! Charlie that was your brother, is now only a name: perhaps he is an angel; perhaps (for the old nurse has said it when he was ugly--and now you hate her for it) he is with Satan! But you are sure this cannot be: you are sure that God, who made him suffer, would not now quicken and multiply his suffering. It agrees with your religion to think so; and just now you want your religion to help you all it can. You toss in your bed, thinking over and over of that strange thing--Death; and that perhaps it may overtake you before you are a man; and you sob out those prayers (you scarce know why) which ask God to keep life in you. You think the involuntary fear, that makes your little prayer full of sobs, is a holy feeling;--and so it is a holy feeling,--the same feeling which makes a stricken child yearn for the embrace and the protection of a Parent. But you will find there are those canting ones trying to persuade you, at a later day, that it is a mere animal fear, and not to be cherished. You feel an access of goodness growing out of your boyish grief; you feel right-minded; it seems as if your little brother in going to Heaven had opened a path-way thither, down which goodness comes streaming over your soul. You think how good a life you will lead; and you map out great purposes, spreading themselves over the school-weeks of your remaining boyhood; and you love your friends, or seem to, far more dearly than you ever loved them before; and you forgive the boy who provoked you to that sad fall from the oak, and you forgive him all his wearisome teasings. But you cannot forgive yourself for some harsh words that you have once spoken to Charlie; still less can you forgive yourself for having once struck him in passion with your fist. You cannot forget his sobs then;--if he were only alive one little instant to let you say,--"Charlie, will you forgive me?" Yourself you cannot forgive; and sobbing over it, and murmuring "Dear, dear Charlie!" you drop into a troubled sleep. V. _Boy Religion._ Is any weak soul frightened, that I should write of the Religion of the boy? How indeed could I cover the field of his moral or intellectual growth, if I left unnoticed those dreams of futurity and of goodness, which come sometimes to his quieter moments, and oftener to his hours of vexation and trouble? It would be as wise to describe the season of Spring with no note of the silent influences of that burning Day-god which is melting day by day the shattered ice-drifts of Winter,--which is filling every bud with succulence, and painting one flower with crimson, and another with white. I know there is a feeling--by much too general as it seems to me--that the subject may not be approached except through the dicta of certain ecclesiastic bodies, and that the language which touches it must not be that every-day language which mirrors the vitality of our thought, but should have some twist of that theologic mannerism, which is as cold to the boy as to the busy man of the world. I know very well that a great many good souls will call levity what I call honesty, and will abjure that familiar handling of the boy's lien upon Eternity which my story will show. But I shall feel sure, that, in keeping true to Nature with word and with thought, I shall in no way offend against those highest truths to which all truthfulness is kindred. You have Christian teachers, who speak always reverently of the Bible; you grow up in the hearing of daily prayers; nay, you are perhaps taught to say them. Sometimes they have a meaning, and sometimes they have none. They have a meaning when your heart is troubled, when a grief or a wrong weighs upon you: then the keeping of the Father, which you implore, seems to come from the bottom of your soul; and your eye suffuses with such tears of feeling as you count holy, and as you love to cherish in your memory. But they have no meaning when some trifling vexation angers you, and a distaste for all about you breeds a distaste for all above you. In the long hours of toilsome days little thought comes over you of the morning prayer; and only when evening deepens its shadows, and your boyish vexations fatigue you to thoughtfulness, do you dream of that coming and endless night, to which--they tell you--prayers soften the way. Sometimes upon a Summer Sunday, when you are wakeful upon your seat in church, with some strong-worded preacher who says things that half fright you it occurs to you to consider how much goodness you are made of; and whether there be enough of it after all to carry you safely away from the clutch of Evil? And straightway you reckon up those friendships where your heart lies; you know you are a true and honest friend to Frank; and you love your mother, and your father; as for Nelly, Heaven knows, you could not contrive a way to love her better than you do. You dare not take much credit to yourself for the love of little Madge,--partly because you have sometimes caught yourself trying--not to love her; and partly because the black-eyed Jenny comes in the way. Yet you can find no command in the Catechism to love one girl to the exclusion of all other girls. It is somewhat doubtful if you ever do find it. But as for loving some half-dozen you could name, whose images drift through your thought, in dirty, salmon-colored frocks, and slovenly shoes, it is quite impossible; and suddenly this thought, coupled with a lingering remembrance of the pea-green pantaloons, utterly breaks down your hopes. Yet you muse again,--there are plenty of good people, as the times go, who have their dislikes, and who speak them too. Even the sharp-talking clergyman you have heard say some very sour things about his landlord, who raised his rent the last year. And you know that he did not talk as mildly as he does in the church, when he found Frank and yourself quietly filching a few of his peaches through the orchard fence. But your clergyman will say perhaps, with what seems to you quite unnecessary coldness, that goodness is not to be reckoned in your chances of safety; that there is a Higher Goodness, whose merit is All-Sufficient. This puzzles you sadly; nor will you escape the puzzle, until, in the presence of the Home altar, which seems to guard you, as the Lares guarded Roman children, you _feel_--you cannot tell how--that good actions must spring from good sources; and that those sources must lie in that Heaven toward which your boyish spirit yearns, as you kneel at your mother's side. Conscience too is all the while approving you for deeds well done; and--wicked as you fear the preacher might judge it--you cannot but found on those deeds a hope that your prayer at night flows more easily, more freely, and more holily toward "Our Father in Heaven." Nor indeed later in life--whatever may be the ill-advised expressions of human teachers--will you ever find that _Duty performed_, and _generous endeavor_ will stand one whit in the way either of Faith or of Love. Striving to be good is a very direct road toward Goodness and if life be so tempered by high motive as to make actions always good, Faith is unconsciously won. Another notion that disturbs you very much, is your positive dislike of long sermons, and of such singing as they have when the organist is away. You cannot get the force of that verse of Dr. Watts which likens heaven to a never-ending Sabbath; you _do_ hope--though it seems a half wicked hope--that old Dr. ---- will not be the preacher. You think that your heart in its best moments craves for something more lovable. You suggest this perhaps to some Sunday teacher, who only shakes his head sourly, and tells you it is a thought that the Devil is putting in your brain. It strikes you oddly that the Devil should be using a verse of Dr. Watts to puzzle you! But if it be so, he keeps it sticking by your thought very pertinaciously, until some simple utterance of your mother about the Love that reigns in the other world seems on a sudden to widen Heaven, and to waft away your doubts like a cloud. It excites your wonder not a little to find people, who talk gravely and heartily of the excellence of sermons and of church-going, sometimes fall asleep under it all. And you wonder--if they really like preaching so well--why they do not buy some of the minister's old manuscripts, and read them over on week-days, or invite the clergyman to preach to them in a quiet way in private. ----Ah, Clarence, you do not yet know the poor weakness of even maturest manhood, and the feeble gropings of the soul toward a soul's paradise in the best of the world! You do not yet know either, that ignorance and fear will be thrusting their untruth and false show into the very essentials of Religion. Again you wonder, if the clergymen are all such very good men as you are taught to believe, why it is that every little while people will be trying to send them off, and very anxious to prove that, instead of being so good, they are in fact very stupid and bad men. At that day you have no clear conceptions of the distinction between stupidity and vice, and think that a good man must necessarily say very eloquent things. You will find yourself sadly mistaken on this point, before you get on very far in life. Heaven, when your mother peoples it with friends gone, and little Charlie, and that better Friend who, she says, took Charlie in his arms, and is now his Father above the skies, seems a place to be loved and longed for. But to think that Mr. Such-an-one, who is only good on Sundays, will be there too,--and to think of his talking as he does of a place which you are sure he would spoil if he were there,--puzzles you again; and you relapse into wonder, doubt, and yearning. --And there, Clarence, for the present, I shall leave you. A wide, rich heaven hangs above you, but it hangs very high. A wide, rough world is around you, and it lies very low! I am assuming in these sketches no office of a teacher. I am seeking only to make a truthful analysis of the boyish thought and feeling. But having ventured thus far into what may seem sacred ground, I shall venture still farther, and clinch my matter with a moral. There is very much religious teaching, even in so good a country as New England, which is far too harsh, too dry, too cold for the heart of a boy. Long sermons, doctrinal precepts, and such tediously-worded dogmas as were uttered by those honest but hard-spoken men, the Westminster Divines, fatigue, and puzzle, and dispirit him. They may be well enough for those strong souls which strengthen by task-work, or for those mature people whose iron habit of self-denial has made patience a cardinal virtue; but they fall (_experto crede_) upon the unfledged faculties of the boy like a winter's rain upon spring flowers,--like hammers of iron upon lithe timber. They may make deep impression upon his moral nature, but there is great danger of a sad rebound. Is it absurd to suppose that some adaptation is desirable? And might not the teachings of that Religion, which is the ægis of our moral being, be inwrought with some of those finer harmonies of speech and form which were given to wise ends,--and lure the boyish soul by something akin to that gentleness which belonged to the Nazarene Teacher, and which provided not only meat for men, but "milk for babes"? VI. _A New-England Squire._ Frank has a grandfather living in the country, a good specimen of the old-fashioned New-England farmer. And--go where one will the world over--I know of no race of men who, taken as a whole, possess more integrity, more intelligence, and more of those elements of comfort which go to make a home beloved and the social basis firm, than the New-England farmers. They are not brilliant, nor are they highly refined; they know nothing of arts, histrionic or dramatic; they know only so much of older nations as their histories and newspapers teach them; in the fashionable world they hold no place;--but in energy, in industry, in hardy virtue, in substantial knowledge, and in manly independence, they make up a race that is hard to be matched. The French peasantry are, in all the essentials of intelligence and sterling worth, infants compared with them; and the farmers of England are either the merest 'ockeys in grain, with few ideas beyond their sacks, samples, and market-days,--or, with added cultivation, they lose their independence in a subserviency to some neighbor patron of rank; and superior intelligence teaches them no lesson so quickly as that their brethren of the glebe are unequal to them, and are to be left to their cattle and the goad. There are English farmers indeed, who are men in earnest, who read the papers, and who keep the current of the year's intelligence; but such men are the exceptions. In New England, with the school upon every third hill-side, and the self-regulating, free-acting church to watch every valley with week-day quiet, and to wake every valley with Sabbath sound, the men become, as a class, bold, intelligent, and honest actors, who would make again, as they have made before, a terrible army of defence,--and who would find reasons for their actions as strong as their armies. Frank's grandfather has silver hair, but is still hale, erect, and strong. His dress is homely but neat. Being a thorough-going Protectionist, he has no fancy for the gewgaws of foreign importation, and makes it a point to appear always in the village church, and on all great occasions, in a sober suit of homespun. He has no pride of appearance, and he needs none. He is known as the Squire throughout the township; and no important measure can pass the board of selectmen without the Squire's approval;--and this from no blind subserviency to his opinion,--because his farm is large, and he is reckoned "forehanded,"--but because there is a confidence in his judgment. He is jealous of none of the prerogatives of the country parson, or of the schoolmaster, or of the village doctor; and although the latter is a testy politician of the opposite party, it does not all impair the Squire's faith in his calomel; he suffers all his Radicalism with the same equanimity that he suffers his rhubarb. The day-laborers of the neighborhood, and the small farmers, consider the Squire's note-of-hand for their savings better than the best bonds of city origin; and they seek his advice in all matters of litigation. He is a Justice of the Peace, as the title of Squire in a New-England village implies; and many are the sessions of the country courts that you peep upon with Frank, from the door of the great dining-room. The defendant always seems to you in these important cases--especially if his beard is rather long--an extraordinary ruffian, to whom Jack Sheppard would have been a comparatively innocent boy. You watch curiously the old gentleman sitting in his big arm-chair, with his spectacles in their silver case at his elbow, and his snuffbox in hand, listening attentively to some grievous complaint; you see him ponder deeply,--with a pinch of snuff to aid his judgment,--and you listen with intense admiration as he gives a loud preparatory "Ahem!" and clears away the intricacies of the case with a sweep of that strong practical sense which distinguishes the New-England farmer,--getting at the very hinge of the matter, without any consciousness of his own precision, and satisfying the defendant by the clearness of his talk as much as by the leniency of his judgment. His lands lie along those swelling hills, which in southern New England carry the chain of the White and Green Mountains in gentle undulations to the borders of the sea. He farms some fifteen hundred acres,--"suitably divided," as the old-school agriculturists say, into "woodland, pasture, and tillage." The farm-house--a large, irregularly-built mansion of wood--stands upon a shelf of the hills looking southward, and is shaded by century-old oaks. The barns and out-buildings are grouped in a brown phalanx a little to the northward of the dwelling. Between them a high timber gate opens upon the scattered pasture lands of the hills; opposite to this and across the farmyard, which is the lounging-place of scores of red-necked turkeys and of matronly hens, clucking to their callow brood, another gate of similar pretensions opens upon the wide meadow-land, which rolls with a heavy "ground-swell" along the valley of a mountain river. A veteran oak stands sentinel at the brown meadow-gate, its trunk all scarred with the ruthless cuts of new-ground axes, and the limbs garnished in summer-time with the crooked snathes of murderous-looking scythes. The high-road passes a stone's-throw away; but there is little "travel" to be seen; and every chance passer will inevitably come under the range of the kitchen windows, and be studied carefully by the eyes of the stout dairy-maid,--to say nothing of the stalwart Indian cook. This last you cannot but admire as a type of that noble old race, among whom your boyish fancy has woven so many stories of romance. You wonder how she must regard the white interlopers upon her own soil; and you think that she tolerates the Squire's farming privileges with more modesty than you would suppose. You learn however that she pays very little regard to white rights--when they conflict with her own; and further learn, to your deep regret, that your Princess of the old tribe is sadly addicted to cider-drinking; and having heard her once or twice with a very indistinct "Goo-er night, Sq-quare" upon her lips, your dreams about her grow very tame. The Squire, like all very sensible men, has his hobbies and peculiarities. He has a great contempt, for instance, for all paper money, and imagines banks to be corporate societies skilfully contrived for the legal plunder of the community. He keeps a supply of silver and gold by him in the foot of an old stocking, and seems to have great confidence in the value of Spanish milled dollars. He has no kind of patience with the new doctrines of farming. Liebig, and all the rest, he sets down as mere theorists, and has far more respect for the contents of his barnyard than for all the guano deposits in the world. Scientific farming, and gentleman farming, may do very well, he says, "to keep idle young fellows from the city out of mischief; but as for real, effective management, there's nothing like the old stock of men, who ran barefoot until they were ten, and who count the hard winters by their frozen toes." And he is fond of quoting in this connection--the only quotation, by the by, that the old gentleman ever makes--that couplet of "Poor Richard,"-- "He, that by the plough would thrive, Himself must either hold or drive." The Squire has been in his day connected more or less intimately with turnpike enterprise, which the railroads of the day have thrown sadly into the background; and he reflects often in a melancholy way upon the good old times when a man could travel in his own carriage quietly across the country, without being frightened with the clatter of an engine, and when turnpike stock paid wholesome yearly dividends of six per cent. An almost constant hanger-on about the premises, and a great favorite with the Squire, is a stout, middle-aged man, with a heavy-bearded face, to whom Frank introduces you as "Captain Dick"; and he tells you moreover that he is a better butcher, a better wall-layer, and cuts a broader "swathe," than any man upon the farm. Beside all which he has an immense deal of information. He knows in the spring where all the crows'-nests are to be found; he tells Frank where the foxes burrow; he has even shot two or three raccoons in the swamps; he knows the best season to troll for pickerel; he has a thorough understanding of bee-hunting; he can tell the ownership of every stray heifer that appears upon the road: indeed scarce an inquiry is made, or an opinion formed, on any of these subjects, or on such kindred ones as the weather, or potato crop, without previous consultation with "Captain Dick." You have an extraordinary respect for Captain Dick: his gruff tones, dark beard, patched waistcoat, and cowhide boots, only add to it: you can compare your regard for him only with the sentiments you entertain for those fabulous Roman heroes, led on by Horatius, who cut down the bridge across the Tiber, and then swam over to their wives and families! A superannuated old greyhound lives about the premises, and stalks lazily around, thrusting his thin nose into your hands in a very affectionate manner. Of course, in your way, you are a lion among the boys of the neighborhood: a blue jacket that you wear, with bell buttons of white metal, is their especial wonderment. You astonish them moreover with your stories of various parts of the world which they have never visited. They tell you of the haunts of rabbits, and great snake stories, as you sit in the dusk after supper under the old oaks; and you delight them in turn with some marvellous tale of South-American reptiles out of Peter Parley's books. In all this your new friends are men of observation; while Frank and yourself are comparatively men of reading. In ciphering, and all schooling, you find yourself a long way before them; and you talk of problems, and foreign seas, and Latin declensions, in a way that sets them all agape. As for the little country girls, their bare legs rather stagger your notions of propriety; nor can you wholly get over their out-of-the-way pronunciation of some of the vowels. Frank however has a little cousin,--a toddling, wee thing, some seven years your junior, who has a rich eye for an infant. But, alas, its color means nothing; poor Fanny is stone-blind! Your pity leans toward her strangely, as she feels her way about the old parlor; and her dark eyes wander over the wainscot, or over the clear, blue sky, with the same sad, painful vacancy. And yet--it is very strange!--she does not grieve: there is a sweet, soft smile upon her lip,--a smile, that will come to you in your fancied troubles of after-life with a deep voice of reproach. Altogether you grow into a liking of the country: your boyish spirit loves its fresh, bracing air, and the sparkles of dew that at sunrise cover the hills with diamonds; and the wild river, with its black-topped, loitering pools; and the shaggy mists that lie in the nights of early autumn like unravelled clouds, lost upon the meadow. You love the hills, climbing green and grand to the skies, or stretching away in distance their soft, blue, smoky caps, like the sweet, half-faded memories of the years behind you. You love those oaks, tossing up their broad arms into clear heaven with a spirit and a strength that kindles your dawning pride and purposes, and that makes you yearn, as your forehead mantles with fresh blood, for a kindred spirit and a kindred strength. Above all you love--though you do not know it now--the BREADTH of a country life. In the fields of God's planting there is ROOM. No walls of brick and mortar cramp one; no factitious distinctions mould your habit. The involuntary reaches of the spirit tend toward the True and the Natural. The flowers, the clouds, and the fresh-smelling earth, all give width to your intent. The boy grows into manliness, instead of growing to be like men. He claims--with tears almost of brotherhood--his kinship with Nature; and he feels in the mountains his heirship to the Father of Nature! This delirium of feeling may not find expression upon the lip of the boy; but yet it underlies his thought, and will without his consciousness give the spring to his musing dreams. ----So it is, that, as you lie there upon the sunny greensward, at the old Squire's door, you muse upon the time when some rich-lying land, with huge granaries, and cosy old mansion sleeping under the trees, shall be yours,--when the brooks shall water your meadows, and come laughing down your pasture-lands,--when the clouds shall shed their spring fragrance upon your lawns, and the daisies bless your paths. You will then be a Squire, with your cane, your lean-limbed hound, your stocking-leg of specie, and your snuffbox. You will be the happy and respected husband of some tidy old lady in black, and spectacles,--a little phthisicky, like Frank's grandmother,--and an accomplished cook of stewed pears and Johnny-cakes! It seems a very lofty ambition at this stage of growth to reach such eminence, as to convert your drawer in the wainscot, that has a secret spring, into a bank for the country people; and the power to send a man to jail seems one of those stretches of human prerogative to which few of your fellow-mortals can ever hope to attain. ----Well, it may all be. And who knows but the Dreams of Age, when they are reached, will be lighted by the same spirit and freedom of nature that is around you now? Who knows, but that after tracking you through the spring and the summer of Youth, we shall find frosted Age settling upon you heavily and solemnly in the very fields where you wanton to-day? This American life of ours is a tortuous and shifting impulse. It brings Age back from years of wandering to totter in the hamlet of its birth; and it scatters armies of ripe manhood to bleach far-away shores with their bones. That Providence, whose eye and hand are the spy and the executioner of the Fateful changes of our life, may bring you back in Manhood, or in Age, to this mountain home of New England; and that very willow yonder, which your fancy now makes the graceful mourner of your leave, may one day shadow mournfully your grave! VII. _The Country Church._ The country church is a square old building of wood without paint or decoration, and of that genuine Puritanic stamp which is now fast giving way to Greek porticos and to cockney towers. It stands upon a hill, with a little churchyard in its rear, where one or two sickly-looking trees keep watch and ward over the vagrant sheep that graze among the graves. Bramble-bushes seem to thrive on the bodies below, and there is no flower in the little yard, save a few golden-rods, which flaunt their gaudy inodorous color under the lee of the northern wall. New England country-livers have as yet been very little inoculated with the sentiment of beauty; even the doorstep to the church is a wide flat stone, that shows not a single stroke of the hammer. Within, the simplicity is even more severe. Brown galleries run around three sides of the old building, supported by timbers, on which you still trace, under the stains from the leaky roof, the deep scoring of the woodman's axe. Below, the unpainted pews are ranged in square forms, and by age have gained the color of those fragmentary wrecks of cigar-boxes which you see upon the top shelves in the bar-rooms of country taverns. The minister's desk is lofty, and has once been honored with a coating of paint;--as well as the huge sounding-board, which to your great amazement protrudes from the wall at a very dangerous angle of inclination over the speaker's head. As the Squire's pew is the place of honor to the right of the pulpit, you have a little tremor yourself at sight of the heavy sounding-board, and cannot forbear indulging in a quiet feeling of relief when the last prayer is said. There are in the Squire's pew long, faded, crimson cushions, which, it seems to you, must date back nearly to the commencement of the Christian era in this country. There are also sundry old thumb-worn copies of Dr. Dwight's Version of the Psalms of David,--"appointed to be sung in churches by authority of the General Association of the State of Connecticut." The sides of Dr. Dwight's Version are, you observe, sadly warped and weather-stained; and from some stray figures which appear upon a fly-leaf you are constrained to think, that the Squire has sometimes employed a quiet interval of the service with reckoning up the contents of the old stocking-leg at home. The parson is a stout man, remarkable in your opinion chiefly for a yellowish-brown wig, a strong nasal tone, and occasional violent thumps upon the little, dingy, red velvet cushion, studded with brass tacks, at the top of the desk. You do not altogether admire his style; and by the time he has entered upon his "Fourthly," you give your attention in despair to a new reading (it must be the twentieth) of the preface to Dr. Dwight's Version of the Psalms. The singing has a charm for you. There is a long, thin-faced, flax-haired man, who carries a tuning-fork in his waistcoat-pocket, and who leads the choir. His position is in the very front rank of gallery benches facing the desk; and by the time the old clergyman has read two verses of the psalm, the country chorister turns around to his little group of aids--consisting of the blacksmith, a carroty-headed schoolmaster, two women in snuff-colored silks, and a girl in pink bonnet--to announce the tune. This being done in an authoritative manner, he lifts his long music-book--glances again at his little company,--clears his throat by a powerful ahem, followed by a powerful use of a bandanna pocket-handkerchief,--draws out his tuning-fork, and waits for the parson to close his reading. He now reviews once more his company,--throws a reproving glance at the young woman in the pink hat, who at the moment is biting off a stout bunch of fennel,--lifts his music-book,--thumps upon the rail with his fork,--listens keenly,--gives a slight _ahem_,--falls into the cadence,--swells into a strong _crescendo_,--catches at the first word of the line as if he were afraid it might get away,--turns to his company,--lifts his music-book with spirit, gives it a powerful slap with the disengaged hand, and with a majestic toss of the head soars away, with half the women below straggling on in his wake, into some such brave old melody as--LITCHFIELD! Being a visitor, and in the Squire's pew, you are naturally an object of considerable attention to the girls about your age, as well as to a great many fat old ladies in iron spectacles, who mortify you excessively by patting you under the chin after church; and insist upon mistaking you for Frank; and force upon you very dry cookies spiced with caraway seeds. You keep somewhat shy of the young ladies, as they are rather stout for your notions of beauty, and wear thick calf-skin boots. They compare very poorly with Jenny. Jenny, you think, would be above eating gingerbread between service. None of them, you imagine, ever read "Thaddeus of Warsaw," or ever used a colored glass seal with a Cupid and a dart upon it. You are quite certain they never did, or they could not surely wear such dowdy gowns, and suck their thumbs as they do! The farmers you have a high respect for,--particularly for one weazen-faced old gentleman in a brown surtout, who brings his whip into church with him, who sings in a very strong voice, and who drives a span of gray colts. You think, however, that he has got rather a stout wife; and from the way he humors her in stopping to talk with two or three other fat women, before setting off for home, (though he seems a little fidgety,) you naively think that he has a high regard for her opinion. Another townsman who attracts your notice is a stout old deacon, who, before entering, always steps around the corner of the church, and puts his hat upon the ground, to adjust his wig in a quiet way. He then marches up the broad aisle in a stately manner, and plants his hat and a big pair of buckskin mittens on the little table under the desk. When he is fairly seated in his corner of the pew, with his elbow upon the top rail,--almost the only man who can comfortably reach it,--you observe that he spreads his brawny fingers over his scalp in an exceedingly cautious manner; and you innocently think again that it is very hypocritical in a deacon to be pretending to lean upon his hand when he is only keeping his wig straight. After the morning service they have an "hour's intermission," as the preacher calls it; during which the old men gather on a sunny side of the building, and, after shaking hands all around, and asking after the "folks" at home, they enjoy a quiet talk about the crops. One man, for instance, with a twist in his nose, would say, "It's raether a growin' season;" and another would reply, "Tolerable, but potatoes is feelin' the wet badly." The stout deacon approves this opinion, and confirms it by blowing his nose very powerfully. Two or three of the more worldly-minded ones will perhaps stroll over to a neighbor's barnyard, and take a look at his young stock, and talk of prices, and whittle a little; and very likely some two of them will make a conditional "swop" of "three likely ye'rlings" for a pair of "two-year-olds." The youngsters are fond of getting out into the graveyard, and comparing jackknives, or talking about the schoolmaster or the menagerie, or, it may be, of some prospective "travel" in the fall,--either to town, or perhaps to the "sea-shore." Afternoon service hangs heavily; and the tall chorister is by no means so blithe, or so majestic in the toss of his head, as in the morning. A boy in the next box tries to provoke you into familiarity by dropping pellets of gingerbread through the bars of the pew; but as you are not accustomed to that way of making acquaintance, you decline all overtures. After the service is finished, the wagons, that have been disposed on either side of the road, are drawn up before the door. The old Squire meantime is sure to have a little chat with the parson before he leaves; in the course of which the parson takes occasion to say that his wife is a little ailing,--"a slight touch," he thinks, "of the rheumatiz." One of the children too has been troubled with the "summer complaint" for a day or two; but he thinks that a dose of catnip, under Providence, will effect a cure. The younger and unmarried men, with red wagons flaming upon bright yellow wheels, make great efforts to drive off in the van; and they spin frightfully near some of the fat, sour-faced women, who remark in a quiet, but not very Christian tone, that they "fear the elder's sermon hasn't done the young bucks much good." It is much to be feared in truth that it has not. In ten minutes the old church is thoroughly deserted; the neighbor who keeps the key has locked up for another week the creaking door; and nothing of the service remains within except--Dr. Dwight's Version,--the long music-books,--crumbs of gingerbread, and refuse stalks of despoiled fennel. And yet under the influence of that old, weather-stained temple are perhaps growing up--though you do not once fancy it--souls possessed of an energy, an industry, and a respect for virtue, which will make them stronger for the real work of life than all the elegant children of a city. One lesson, which even the rudest churches of New England teach,--with all their harshness, and all their repulsive severity of form,--is the lesson of Self-Denial. Once armed with that, and manhood is strong. The soul that possesses the consciousness of mastering passion, is endowed with an element of force that can never harmonize with defeat. Difficulties it wears like a summer garment, and flings away at the first approach of the winter of Need. Let not any one suppose, then, that in this detail of the country life through which our hero is led, I would cast obloquy or a sneer upon its simplicity, or upon its lack of refinement. Goodness and strength in this world are quite as apt to wear rough coats as fine ones. And the words of thorough and self-sacrificing kindness are far more often dressed in the uncouth sounds of retired life than in the polished utterance of the town. Heaven has not made warm hearts and honest hearts distinguishable by the quality of the covering. True diamonds need no work of the artificer to reflect and multiply their rays. Goodness is more within than without; and purity is of nearer kin to the soul than to the body. ----And, Clarence, it may well happen that later in life--under the gorgeous ceilings of Venetian churches, or at some splendid mass in Nôtre Dame, with embroidered coats and costly silks around you--your thoughts will run back to that little storm-beaten church, and to the willow waving in its yard, with a Hope that _glows_, and with a tear that you embalm! VIII. _A Home Scene._ And now I shall not leave this realm of boyhood, or suffer my hero to slip away from this gala-time of his life, without a fair look at that Home where his present pleasures lie, and where all his dreams begin and end. Little does the boy know, as the tide of years drifts by, floating him out insensibly from the harbor of his home upon the great sea of life,--what joys, what opportunities, what affections, are slipping from him into the shades of that inexorable Past, where no man can go save on the wings of his dreams. Little does he think--and God be praised that the thought does not sink deep lines in his young forehead!--as he leans upon the lap of his mother, with his eye turned to her in some earnest pleading for a fancied pleasure of the hour, or in some important story of his griefs, that such sharing of his sorrows, and such sympathy with his wishes, he will find nowhere again. Little does he imagine that the fond Nelly, ever thoughtful of his pleasure, ever smiling away his griefs, will soon be beyond the reach of either, and that the waves of the years, which come rocking so gently under him, will soon toss her far away upon the great swell of life. But _now_ you are there. The firelight glimmers upon the walls of your cherished home, like the Vestal fire of old upon the figures of adoring virgins, or like the flame of Hebrew sacrifice, whose incense bore hearts to Heaven. The big chair of your father is drawn to its wonted corner by the chimney-side; his head, just touched with gray, lies back upon its oaken top. Little Nelly leans upon his knee, looking up for some reply to her girlish questionings. Opposite sits your mother: her figure is thin, her look cheerful, yet subdued; her arm perhaps resting on your shoulder, as she talks to you in tones of tender admonition of the days that are to come. The cat is purring on the hearth; the clock, that ticked so plainly when Charlie died, is ticking on the mantel still. The great table in the middle of the room with its books and work waits only for the lighting of the evening lamp, to see a return to its stores of embroidery, and of story. Upon a little stand under the mirror, which catches now and then a flicker of the firelight, and makes it play wantonly over the ceiling, lies that big book reverenced of your New-England parents,--the Family Bible. It is a ponderous square volume, with heavy silver clasps that you have often pressed open for a look at its quaint old pictures, or for a study of those prettily bordered pages which lie between the Testaments, and which hold the Family Record. There are the Births,--your father's, and your mother's; it seems as if they were born a long time ago; and even your own date of birth appears an almost incredible distance back. Then there are the marriages,--only one as yet; and your mother's maiden name looks oddly to you: it is hard to think of her as any one else than your doting parent. You wonder if your name will ever come under that paging; and wonder, though you scarce whisper the wonder to yourself, how another name would look, just below yours,--such a name, for instance, as Fanny, or as Miss Margaret Boyne! Last of all come the Deaths,--only one. Poor Charlie! How it looks?--"Died 12 September 18--Charles Henry, aged four years." You know just how it looks. You have turned to it often; there you seem to be joined to him, though only by the turning of a leaf. And over your thoughts, as you look at that page of the record, there sometimes wanders a vague shadowy fear, which _will_ come,--that your own name may soon be there. You try to drop the notion, as if it were not fairly your own; you affect to slight it, as you would slight a boy who presumed on your acquaintance, but whom you have no desire to know. It is a common thing, you will find, with our world to decline familiarity with those ideas that fright us. Yet your mother--how strange it is!--has no fears of such dark fancies. Even now as you stand beside her, and as the twilight deepens in the room, her low, silvery voice is stealing upon your ear, telling you that she cannot be long with you; that the time is coming when you must be guided by your own judgment, and struggle with the world unaided by the friends of your boyhood. There is a little pride, and a great deal more of anxiety, in your thoughts now, as you look steadfastly into the home blaze, while those delicate fingers, so tender of your happiness, play with the locks upon your brow. ----To struggle with the world,--that is a proud thing; to struggle alone,--there lies the doubt! Then crowds in swift upon the calm of boyhood the first anxious thought of youth; then chases over the sky of Spring the first heated and wrathful cloud of Summer. But the lamps are now lit in the little parlor, and they shed a soft haze to the farthest corner of the room; while the firelight streams over the floor, where puss lies purring. Little Madge is there; she has dropped in softly with her mother, and Nelly has welcomed her with a bound and with a kiss. Jenny has not so rosy a cheek as Madge. But Jenny with her love-notes, and her languishing dark eye, you think of as a lady; and the thought of her is a constant drain upon your sentiment. As for Madge,--that girl Madge, whom you know so well,--you think of her as a sister; and yet--it is very odd--you look at her far oftener than you do at Nelly! Frank too has come in to have a game with you at draughts; and he is in capital spirits, all brisk and glowing with his evening's walk. He--bless his honest heart!--never observes that you arrange the board very adroitly, so that you may keep half an eye upon Madge, as she sits yonder beside Nelly. Nor does he once notice your blush as you catch her eye when she raises her head to fling back the ringlets, and then with a sly look at you bends a most earnest gaze upon the board, as if she were especially interested in the disposition of the men. You catch a little of the spirit of coquetry yourself,--(what a native growth it is!)--and if she lift her eyes when you are gazing at her, you very suddenly divert your look to the cat at her feet, and remark to your friend Frank in an easy off-hand way--how still the cat is lying! And Frank turns--thinking probably, if he thinks at all about it, that cats are very apt to lie still when they sleep. As for Nelly, half neglected by your thought as well as by your eye, while mischievous-looking Madge is sitting by her, you little know as yet what kindness, what gentleness, you are careless of. Few loves in life, and you will learn it before life is done, can balance the lost love of a sister. As for your parents, in the intervals of the game you listen dreamily to their talk with the mother of Madge,--good Mrs. Boyne. It floats over your mind, as you rest your chin upon your clenched hand, like a strain of old familiar music,--a household strain that seems to belong to the habit of your ear,--a strain that will linger about it melodiously for many years to come,--a strain that will be recalled long time hence, when life is earnest and its cares heavy, with tears of regret and with sighs of bitterness. By-and-by your game is done; and other games, in which join Nelly (the tears come when you write her name _now_!) and Madge, (the smiles come when you look on her _then_,) stretch out that sweet eventide of Home, until the lamp flickers, and you speak your friends--adieu. To Madge, it is said boldly,--a boldness put on to conceal a little lurking tremor; but there is no tremor in the home good-night. ----Aye, my boy, kiss your mother,--kiss her again; fondle your sweet Nelly; pass your little hand through the gray locks of your father; love them dearly while you can! Make your good-nights linger and make your adieus long, and sweet, and often repeated. Love with your whole soul,--Father, Mother, and Sister,--for these loves shall die! ----Not indeed in thought,--God be thanked! Nor yet in tears,--for He is merciful! But they shall die, as the leaves die,--die, as Spring dies into the heat and ripeness of Summer, and as boyhood dies into the elasticity and ambition of youth. Death, Distance, and Time shall each one of them dig graves for your affections; but this you do not know, nor can know, until the story of your life is ended. The dreams of riches, of love, of voyage, of learning, that light up the boy age with splendor, will pass on and over into the hotter dreams of youth. Spring buds and blossoms, under the glowing sun of April, nurture at their heart those firstlings of fruit which the heat of summer shall ripen. You little know--and for this you may well thank Heaven--that you are leaving the Spring of life, and that you are floating fast from the shady sources of your years into heat, bustle, and storm. Your dreams are now faint, flickering shadows, that play like fire-flies in the coppices of leafy June. They have no rule but the rule of infantile desire; they have no joys to promise greater than the joys that belong to your passing life; they have no terrors but such terrors as the darkness of a Spring night makes. They do not take hold on your soul as the dreams of youth and manhood will do. Your highest hope is shadowed in a cheerful, boyish home. You wish no friends but the friends of boyhood; no sister but your fond Nelly; none to love better than the playful Madge. You forget, Clarence, that the Spring with you is the Spring with them, and that the storms of Summer may chase wide shadows over your path and over theirs. And you forget that Summer is even now lowering with its mist, and with its scorching rays, upon the hem of your flowery May! * * * * * ----The hands of the old clock upon the mantel, that ticked off the hours when Charlie sighed and when Charlie died, draw on toward midnight. The shadows that the fire-flame makes grow dimmer and dimmer. And thus it is that Home, boy home, passes away forever,--like the swaying of a pendulum,--like the fading of a shadow on the floor! _SUMMER;_ OR, _THE DREAMS OF YOUTH._ _DREAMS OF YOUTH._ _Summer._ I feel a great deal of pity for those honest but misguided people who call their little, spruce suburban towns, or the shaded streets of their inland cities,--the country and I have still more pity for those who reckon a season at the summer resorts--country enjoyment. Nay, my feeling is more violent than pity; and I count it nothing less than blasphemy so to take the name of the country in vain. I thank Heaven every summer's day of my life, that my lot was humbly cast within the hearing of romping brooks, and beneath the shadow of oaks. And from all the tramp and bustle of the world into which fortune has led me in these latter years of my life, I delight to steal away for days, and for weeks together, and bathe my spirit in the freedom of the old woods; and to grow young again, lying upon the brook-side, and counting the white clouds that sail along the sky softly and tranquilly--even as holy memories go stealing over the vault of life. I am deeply thankful that I could never find it in my heart so to pervert truth as to call the smart villages with the tricksy shadow of their maple avenues--the Country. I love these in their way, and can recall pleasant passages of thought, as I have idled through the Sabbath-looking towns, or lounged at the inn-door of some quiet New-England village. But I love far better to leave them behind me, and to dash boldly out to where some out-lying farm-house sits--like a sentinel--under the shelter of wooded hills, or nestles in the lap of a noiseless valley. In the town, small as it may be, and darkened as it may be with the shadows of trees, you cannot forget--men. Their voice, and strife, and ambition come to your eye in the painted paling, in the swinging signboard of the tavern, and--worst of all--in the trim-printed "ATTORNEY AT LAW." Even the little milliner's shop, with its meagre show of leghorns, and its string across the window all hung with tabs and with cloth roses, is a sad epitome of the great and conventional life of a city neighborhood. I like to be rid of them all, as I am rid of them this midsummer's day. I like to steep my soul in a sea of quiet, with nothing floating past me, as I lie moored to my thought, but the perfume of flowers, and soaring birds, and shadows of clouds. Two days since I was sweltering in the heat of the City, jostled by the thousand eager workers, and panting under the shadow of the walls. But I have stolen away; and for two hours of healthful regrowth into the darling Past I have been lying this blessed summer's morning upon the grassy bank of a stream that babbled me to sleep in boyhood.--Dear old stream, unchanging, unfaltering,--with no harsher notes now than then,--never growing old,--smiling in your silver rustle, and calming yourself in the broad, placid pools,--I love you as I love a friend! But now that the sun has grown scalding hot, and the waves of heat have come rocking under the shadow of the meadow-oaks, I have sought shelter in a chamber of the old farm-house. The window-blinds are closed; but some of them are sadly shattered, and I have intertwined in them a few branches of the late-blossoming white azalia, so that every puff of the summer air comes to me cooled with fragrance. A dimple or two of the sunlight still steals through my flowery screen, and dances (as the breeze moves the branches) upon the oaken floor of the farm-house. Through one little gap indeed I can see the broad stretch of meadow, and the workmen in the field bending and swaying to their scythes. I can see too the glistening of the steel, as they wipe their blades, and can just catch floating on the air the measured, tinkling thwack of the rifle-stroke. Here and there a lark, scared from his feeding-place in the grass, soars up, bubbling forth his melody in globules of silvery sound, and settles upon some tall tree, and waves his wings, and sinks to the swaying twigs. I hear too a quail piping from the meadow fence, and another trilling his answering whistle from the hills. Nearer by, a tyrant king-bird is poised on the topmost branch of a veteran pear-tree, and now and then dashes down, assassin-like, upon some homebound, honey-laden bee, and then with a smack of his bill resumes his predatory watch. A chicken or two lie in the sun, with a wing and a leg stretched out,--lazily picking at the gravel, or relieving their _ennui_ from time to time with a spasmodic rustle of their feathers. An old, matronly hen stalks about the yard with a sedate step, and with quiet self-assurance she utters an occasional series of hoarse and heated clucks. A speckled turkey, with an astonished brood at her heels, is eying curiously, and with earnest variations of the head, a full-fed cat, that lies curled up, and dozing, upon the floor of the cottage porch. As I sit thus, watching through the interstices of my leafy screen the various images of country life, I hear distant mutterings from beyond the hills. The sun has thrown its shadow upon the pewter dial two hours beyond the meridian line. Great cream colored heads of thunder-clouds are lifting above the sharp, clear line of the western horizon; the light breeze dies away, and the air becomes stifling, even under the shadow of my withered boughs in the chamber-window. The white-capped clouds roll up nearer and nearer to the sun, and the creamy masses below grow dark in their seams. The mutterings, that came faintly before, now spread into wide volumes of rolling sound, that echo again and again from the eastward heights. I hear in the deep intervals the men shouting to their teams in the meadows; and great companies of startled swallows are dashing in all directions around the gray roofs of the barn. The clouds have now wellnigh reached the sun, which seems to shine the fiercer for his coming eclipse. The whole west, as I look from the sources of the brook to its lazy drift under the swamps that lie to the south, is hung with a curtain of darkness; and like swift-working, golden ropes, that lift it toward the zenith, long chains of lightning flash through it; and the growing thunder seems like the rumble of the pulleys. I thrust away my azalia-boughs, and fling back the shattered blinds, as the sun and the clouds meet, and my room darkens with the coming shadows. For an instant the edges of the thick, creamy masses of cloud are gilded by the shrouded sun, and show gorgeous scallops of gold, that toss upon the hem of the storm. But the blazonry fades as the clouds mount; and the brightening lines of the lightning dart up from the lower skirts, and heave the billowy masses into the middle heaven. The workmen are urging their oxen fast across the meadow, and the loiterers come straggling after with rakes upon their shoulders. The matronly hen has retreated to the stable-door; and the brood of turkeys stand dressing their feathers under the open shed. The air freshens, and blows now from the face of the coming clouds. I see the great elms in the plain swaying their tops, even before the storm-breeze has reached me; and a bit of ripened grain upon a swell of the meadow waves and tosses like a billowy sea. Presently I hear the rush of the wind; and the cherry-and pear-trees rustle through all their leaves; and my paper is whisked away by the intruding blast. There is a quiet of a moment, in which the wind even seems weary and faint, and nothing finds utterance save one hoarse tree-toad, doling out his lugubrious notes. Now comes a blinding flash from the clouds, and a quick, sharp clang clatters through the heavens, and bellows loud and long among the hills. Then--like great grief spending its pent agony in tears--come the big drops of rain,--pattering on the lawn and on the leaves, and most musically of all upon the roof above me,--not now with the light fall of the Spring shower, but with strong steppings, like the first proud tread of Youth! I. _Cloister Life._ It has very likely occurred to you, my reader, that I am playing the wanton in these sketches, and am breaking through all the canons of the writers in making You my hero. It is even so; for my work is a story of those vague feelings, doubts, passions, which belong more or less to every man of us all; and therefore it is that I lay upon your shoulders the burden of these dreams. If this or that one never belonged to your experience, have patience for a while. I feel sure that others are coming which will lie like a truth upon your heart, and draw you unwittingly--perhaps tearfully even--into the belief that You are indeed my hero. The scene now changes to the cloister of a college; not the gray, classic cloisters which lie along the banks of the Cam or the Isis,--huge, battered hulks, on whose weather-stained decks great captains of learning have fought away their lives,--nor yet the cavernous, quadrangular courts that sleep under the dingy walls of the Sorbonne. The youth-dreams of Clarence begin under the roof of one of those long, ungainly piles of brick and mortar which make the colleges of New England. The floor of the room is rough, and divided by wide seams. The study-table does not stand firmly without a few spare pennies to prop it into solid footing. The bookcase of stained fir-wood, suspended against the wall by cords, is meagrely stocked with a couple of Lexicons, a pair of Grammars, a Euclid, a Xenophon, a Homer, and a Livy. Beside these are scattered about here and there a thumb-worn copy of British ballads, an odd volume of the "Sketch-Book," a clumsy Shakspeare, and a pocket edition of the Bible. With such appliances, added to the half-score of professors and tutors who preside over the awful precincts, you are to work your way up to that proud entrance upon our American life which begins with the Baccalaureate degree. There is a tingling sensation in first walking under the shadow of those walls, uncouth as they are, and in feeling that you belong to them,--that you are a member, as it were, of the body-corporate, subject to an actual code of printed laws, and to actual moneyed fines varying from a shilling to fifty cents! There is something exhilarating in the very consciousness of your subject state, and in the necessity of measuring your hours by the habit of such a learned community. You think back upon your respect for the lank figure of some old teacher of boy-days as a childish weakness; even the little coteries of the home fireside lose their importance when compared with the extraordinary sweep and dignity of your present position. It is pleasant to measure yourself with men; and there are those about you who seem to your untaught eye to be men already. Your chum, a hard-faced fellow of ten more years than you, digging sturdily at his tasks, seems by that very community of work to dignify your labor. You watch his cold, gray eye bending down over some theorem of Euclid, with a kind of proud companionship in what so tasks his manliness. It is nothing for him to quit sleep at the first tinkling of the alarm-clock that hangs in your chamber, or to brave the weather in that cheerless run to the morning prayers of winter. Yet with what a dreamy horror you wake on mornings of snow to that tinkling alarum!--and glide in the cold and darkness under the shadow of the college-walls, shuddering under the sharp gusts that come sweeping between the buildings,--and afterward, gathering yourself up in your cloak, watch in a sleepy, listless maze the flickering lamps that hang around the dreary chapel! You follow half unconsciously some tutor's rhetorical reading of a chapter of Isaiah; and then, as he closes the Bible with a flourish, your eye, half open, catches the feeble figure of the old Dominie as he steps to the desk, and, with his frail hands stretched out upon the cover of the big book, and his head leaning slightly to one side, runs through in gentle and tremulous tones his wonted form of invocation. Your Division room is steaming with foul heat, and there is a strong smell of burnt feathers and oil. A jaunty tutor with pug nose and consequential air steps into the room--while you all rise to show him deference--and takes his place at the pulpit-like desk. Then come the formal loosing of his camlet cloak-clasp,--the opening of his sweaty Xenophon to where the day's _parasangs_ begin,--the unsliding of his silver pencil-case,--the keen, sour look around the benches, and the cool pinch of his thumb and forefinger into the fearful box of names! How you listen for each as it is uttered,--running down the page in advance,--rejoicing when some hard passage comes to a stout man in the corner; and what a sigh of relief--on mornings after you have been out late at night--when the last paragraph is reached, the ballot drawn, and--you, safe! You speculate dreamily upon the faces around you. You wonder what sort of schooling they may have had, and what sort of homes. You think one man has got an extraordinary name, and another a still more extraordinary nose. The glib, easy way of one student, and his perfect _sang-froid_, completely charm you: you set him down in your own mind as a kind of Crichton. Another weazen-faced, pinched-up fellow in a scant cloak, you think must have been sometime a schoolmaster: he is so very precise, and wears such an indescribable look of the ferule. There is one big student, with a huge beard and a rollicking good-natured eye, whom you would quite like to see measure strength with your old usher, and on careful comparison rather think the usher would get the worst of it. Another appears as venerable as some fathers you have seen; and it seems wonderfully odd that a man old enough to have children should recite Xenophon by morning candle-light! The class in advance you study curiously; and are quite amazed at the precocity of certain youths belonging to it, who are apparently about your own age. The Juniors you look upon with a quiet reverence for their aplomb and dignity of character; and look forward with intense yearnings to the time when you too shall be admitted freely to the precincts of the Philosophical chamber, and to the very steep benches of the Laboratory. This last seems, from occasional peeps through the blinds, a most mysterious building. The chimneys, recesses, vats, and cisterns--to say nothing of certain galvanic communications, which, you are told, traverse the whole building in a way capable of killing a rat at an incredible remove from the bland professor--utterly fatigue your wonder! You humbly trust--though you have doubts upon the point--that you will have the capacity to grasp it all, when once you shall have arrived at the dignity of a Junior. As for the Seniors, your admiration for them is entirely boundless. In one or two individual instances, it is true, it has been broken down by an unfortunate squabble with thick-set fellows in the Chapel aisle. A person who sits not far before you at prayers, and whose name you seek out very early, bears a strong resemblance to some portrait of Dr. Johnson; you have very much the same kind of respect for him that you feel for the great lexicographer, and do not for a moment doubt his capacity to compile a dictionary equal, if not superior, to Johnson's. Another man with very bushy, black hair, and an easy look of importance, carries a large cane, and is represented to you as an astonishing scholar and speaker. You do not doubt it; his very air proclaims it. You think of him as presently--(say four or five years hence)--astounding the United States Senate with his eloquence. And when once you have heard him in debate, with that ineffable gesture of his, you absolutely languish in your admiration for him, and you describe his speaking to your country friends as very little inferior, if at all, to Mr. Burke's. Beside this one are some half dozen others, among whom the question of superiority is, you understand, strongly mooted. It puzzles you to think, what an avalanche of talent will fall upon the country at the graduation of those Seniors! You will find however that the country bears such inundations of college talent with a remarkable degree of equanimity. It is quite wonderful how all the Burkes, and Scotts, and Peels, among college Seniors, do quietly disappear, as a man gets on in life. As for any degree of fellowship with such giants, it is an honor hardly to be thought of. But you have a classmate--I will call him Dalton--who is very intimate with a dashing Senior; they room near each other outside the college. You quite envy Dalton, and you come to know him well. He says that you are not a "green-one,"--that you have "cut your eye-teeth"; in return for which complimentary opinions you entertain a strong friendship for Dalton. He is a "fast" fellow, as the Senior calls him; and it is a proud thing to happen at their rooms occasionally, and to match yourself for an hour or two (with the windows darkened) against a Senior at "old sledge." It is quite "the thing," as Dalton says, to meet a Senior familiarly in the street. Sometimes you go, after Dalton has taught you "the ropes," to have a cosy sit-down over oysters and champagne,--to which the Senior lends himself with the pleasantest condescension in the world. You are not altogether used to hard drinking; but this you conceal--as most spirited young fellows do--by drinking a great deal. You have a dim recollection of certain circumstances--very unimportant, yet very vividly impressed on your mind--which occurred on one of these occasions. The oysters were exceedingly fine, and the champagne exquisite. You have a recollection of something being said, toward the end of the first bottle, of Xenophon, and of the Senior's saying in his playful way, "Oh, d--n Xenophon!" You remember Dalton laughed at this; and you laughed--for company. You remember that you thought, and Dalton thought, and the Senior thought, by a singular coincidence, that the second bottle of champagne was better even than the first. You have a dim remembrance of the Senior's saying very loudly, "Clarence--(calling you by your family name)--is no spooney;" and drinking a bumper with you in confirmation of the remark. You remember that Dalton broke out into a song, and that for a time you joined in the chorus; you think the Senior called you to order for repeating the chorus in the wrong place. You think the lights burned with remarkable brilliancy; and you remember that a remark of yours to that effect met with very much such a response from the Senior as he had before employed with reference to Xenophon. You have a confused idea of calling Dalton--Xenophon. You think the meeting broke up with a chorus, and that somebody--you cannot tell who--broke two or three glasses. You remember questioning yourself very seriously as to whether you were, or were not, tipsy. You think you decided that you were not, but--might be. You have a confused recollection of leaning upon some one, or something, going to your room; this sense of a desire to lean, you think, was very strong. You remember being horribly afflicted with the idea of having tried your night-key at the tutor's door, instead of your own; you remember further a hot stove,--made certain indeed by a large blister which appeared on your hand next day. You think of throwing off your clothes by one or two spasmodic efforts,--leaning in the intervals against the bedpost. There is a recollection of an uncommon dizziness afterward, as if your body was very quiet, and your head gyrating with strange velocity, and a kind of centrifugal action, all about the room, and the college, and indeed the whole town. You think that you felt uncontrollable nausea after this, followed by positive sickness,--which waked your chum, who thought you very incoherent, and feared derangement. A dismal state of lassitude follows, broken by the college-clock striking three, and by very rambling reflections upon champagne, Xenophon, "Captain Dick," Madge, and the old deacon who clinched his wig in the church. The next morning (ah, how vexatious that all our follies are followed by a "next morning!") you wake with a parched mouth, and a torturing thirst; the sun is shining broadly into your reeking chamber. Prayers and recitations are long ago over; and you see through the door in the outer room that hard-faced chum with his Lexicon and Livy open before him, working out with all the earnestness of his iron purpose the steady steps toward preferment and success. You go with some story of sudden sickness to the tutor,--half fearful that the bloodshot, swollen eyes will betray you. It is very mortifying too to meet Dalton appearing so gay and lively after it all, while you wear such an air of being "used up." You envy him thoroughly the extraordinary capacity that he has. Here and there creeps in, amid all the pride and shame of the new life, a tender thought of the old home; but its joys are joys no longer: its highest aspirations even have resolved themselves into fine mist,--- like rainbows that the sun drinks with his beams. The affection for a mother, whose kindness you recall with a suffused eye, is not gone, or blighted; but it is woven up, as only a single adorning tissue, into the growing pride of youth: it is cherished in the proud soul rather as a redeeming weakness than as a vital energy. And the love for Nelly, though it bates no jot of fervor, is woven into the scale of growing purposes rather as a color to adorn than as a strand to strengthen. As for your other loves, those romantic ones which were kindled by bright eyes, and the stolen reading of Miss Porter's novels, they linger on your mind like perfumes; and they float down your memory--with the figure, the step, the last words of those young girls who raised them--like the types of some dimly shadowed but deeper passion, which is some time to spur your maturer purposes and to quicken your manly resolves. It would be hard to tell, for you do not as yet know, but that Madge herself--hoidenish, blue-eyed Madge--is to be the very one who will gain such hold upon your riper affections as she has held already over your boyish caprice. It is a part of the pride--I may say rather an evidence of the pride--which youth feels in leaving boyhood behind him, to talk laughingly and carelessly of those attachments which made his young years so balmy with dreams. II. _First Ambition._ I believe that sooner or later there come to every man dreams of ambition. They may be covered with the sloth of habit, or with the pretence of humility; they may come only in dim, shadowy visions, that feed the eye like the glories of an ocean sunrise; but you may be sure that they will come: even before one is aware, the bold, adventurous goddess, whose name is Ambition, and whose dower is Fame, will be toying with the feeble heart. And she pushes her ventures with a bold hand; she makes timidity strong, and weakness valiant. The way of a man's heart will be foreshadowed by what goodness lies in him,--coming from above, and from around;--but a way foreshadowed is not a way made. And the making of a man's way comes only from that quickening of resolve which we call Ambition. It is the spur that makes man struggle with Destiny: it is Heaven's own incentive, to make Purpose great, and Achievement greater. It would be strange if you, in that cloister life of a college, did not sometimes feel a dawning of new resolves. They grapple you indeed oftener than you dare to speak of. Here you dream first of that very sweet, but very shadowy success called Reputation. You think of the delight and astonishment it would give your mother and father, and most of all little Nelly, if you were winning such honors as now escape you. You measure your capacities by those about you, and watch their habit of study; you gaze for a half-hour together upon some successful man who has won his prizes, and wonder by what secret action he has done it. And when in time you come to be a competitor yourself, your anxiety is immense. You spend hours upon hours at your theme. You write and rewrite; and when it is at length complete and out of your hands, you are harassed by a thousand doubts. At times, as you recall your hours of toil, you question if so much has been spent upon any other; you feel almost certain of success. You repeat to yourself some passages of special eloquence at night. You fancy the admiration of the professors at meeting with such a wonderful performance. You have a slight fear that its superior goodness may awaken the suspicion that some one out of the college, some superior man, may have written it. But this fear dies away. The eventful day is a great one in your calendar you hardly sleep the night previous. You tremble as the chapel-bell is rung; you profess to be very indifferent, as the reading and the prayer close; you even stoop to take up your hat, as if you had entirely overlooked the fact that the old President was in the desk for the express purpose of declaring the successful names. You listen dreamily to his tremulous, yet fearfully distinct enunciation. Your head swims strangely. They all pass out with a harsh murmur along the aisles and through the doorways. It would be well if there were no disappointments in life more terrible than this. It is consoling to express very depreciating opinions of the Faculty in general,--and very contemptuous ones of that particular officer who decided upon the merit of the prize-themes. An evening or two at Dalton's room go still farther toward healing the disappointment, and--if it must be said--toward moderating the heat of your ambition. You grow up however, unfortunately, as the college years fly by, into a very exaggerated sense of your own capacities. Even the good, old, white-haired Squire, for whom you once entertained so much respect, seems to your crazy, classic fancy a very humdrum sort of personage. Frank, although as noble a fellow as ever sat a horse, is yet--you cannot help thinking--very ignorant of Euripides; even the English master at Dr. Bidlow's school, you feel sure, would balk at a dozen problems you could give him. You get an exalted idea of that uncertain quality which turns the heads of a vast many of your fellows, called--Genius. An odd notion seems to be inherent in the atmosphere of those college chambers, that there is a certain faculty of mind--first developed, as would seem, in colleges--which accomplishes whatever it chooses without any special painstaking. For a time you fall yourself into this very unfortunate hallucination; you cultivate it after the usual college fashion, by drinking a vast deal of strong coffee and whiskey-toddy, by writing a little poor verse in the Byronic temper, and by studying very late at night with closed blinds. It costs you however more anxiety and hypocrisy than you could possibly have believed. ----You will learn, Clarence, when the Autumn has rounded your hopeful Summer, if not before, that there is no Genius in life like the Genius of energy and industry. You will learn, that all the traditions so current among very young men that certain great characters have wrought their greatness by an inspiration, as it were, grow out of a sad mistake. And you will further find, when you come to measure yourself with men, that there are no rivals so formidable as those earnest, determined minds which reckon the value of every hour, and which achieve eminence by persistent application. Literary ambition may inflame you at certain periods and a thought of some great names will flash like a spark into the mine of your purposes; you dream till midnight over books; you set up shadows, and chase them down,--other shadows, and they fly. Dreaming will never catch them. Nothing makes the "scent lie well" in the hunt after distinction, but labor. And it is a glorious thing, when once you are weary of the dissipation, and the _ennui_ of your own aimless thought, to take up some glowing page of an earnest thinker, and read--deep and long, until you feel the metal of his thought tinkling on your brain, and striking out from your flinty lethargy flashes of ideas that give the mind light and heat. And away you go in the chase of what the soul within is creating on the instant, and you wonder at the fecundity of what seemed so barren, and at the ripeness of what seemed so crude. The glow of toil wakes you to the consciousness of your real capacities: you feel sure that they have taken a new step toward final development. In such mood it is that one feels grateful to the musty tomes, which at other hours stand like wonder-making mummies with no warmth and no vitality. Now they grow into the affections like new-found friends, and gain a hold upon the heart, and light a fire in the brain, that the years and the mould cannot cover nor quench. III. _College Romance._ In following the mental vagaries of youth, I must not forget the curvetings and wiltings of the heart. The black-eyed Jenny, with whom a correspondence at red heat was kept up for several weeks, is long before this entirely out of your regard,--not so much by reason of the six months' disparity of age, as from the fact, communicated quite confidentially by the travelled Nat, that she has had a desperate flirtation with a handsome midshipman. The conclusion is natural that she is an inconstant, cruel-hearted creature, with little appreciation of real worth; and furthermore, that all midshipmen are a very contemptible--not to say dangerous--set of men. She is consigned to forgetfulness and neglect; and the late lover has long ago consoled himself by reading in a spirited way that passage of Childe Harold commencing,-- "I have not loved the world, nor the world me." As for Madge, the memory of her has been more wakeful, but less violent. To say nothing of occasional returns to the old homestead, when you have met her Nelly's letters not unfrequently drop a careless half-sentence that keeps her strangely in mind. "Madge," she says, "is sitting by me with her work;" or, "You ought to see the little silk purse that Madge is knitting;" or,--speaking of some country rout,--"Madge was there in the sweetest dress you can imagine." All this will keep Madge in mind; not, it is true, in the ambitious moods, or in the frolics with Dalton; but in those odd half-hours that come stealing over one at twilight, laden with sweet memories of the days of old. A new romantic admiration is started by those pale lady-faces which light up on a Sunday the gallery of the college chapel. An amiable and modest fancy gives to them all a sweet classic grace. The very atmosphere of these courts, wakened with high metaphysic discourse, seems to lend them a Greek beauty and fineness; and you attach to the prettiest, that your eye can reach, all the charms of some Sciote maiden, and all the learning of her father--the professor. And as you lie half-wakeful and half-dreaming, through the long Divisions of the Doctor's morning discourse, the twinkling eyes in some corner of the gallery bear you pleasant company as you float down those streaming visions which radiate from you far over the track of the coming life. But following very closely upon this comes a whole volume of street romance. There are prettily shaped figures that go floating at convenient hours for college observation along the thoroughfares of the town. And these figures come to be known, and the dresses, and the streets; and even the door-plate is studied. The hours are ascertained, by careful observation and induction, at which some particular figure is to be met,--or is to be seen at some low parlor-window, in white summer dress, with head leaning on the hand, very melancholy, and very dangerous. Perhaps her very card is stuck proudly into a corner of the mirror in the college-chamber. After this may come moonlight meetings at the gate, or long listenings to the plaintive lyrics that steal out of the parlor-windows, and that blur wofully the text of the Conic Sections. Or perhaps she is under the fierce eye of some Cerberus of a schoolmistress, about whose grounds you prowl piteously, searching for small knot-holes in the surrounding board fence, through which little _souvenirs_ of impassioned feeling may be thrust. Sonnets are written for the town papers, full of telling phrases, and with classic allusions and foot-notes which draw attention to some similar felicity of expression in Horace or Ovid. Correspondence may even be ventured on, enclosing locks of hair, and interchanging rings, and paper oaths of eternal fidelity. But the old Cerberus is very wakeful: the letters fail; the lamp that used to glimmer for a sign among the sycamores is gone out; a stolen wave of a handkerchief, a despairing look, and tears,--which you fancy, but do not see,--make you miserable for long days. The tyrant teacher, with no trace of compassion in her withered heart, reports you to the college authorities. There is a long lecture of admonition upon the folly of such dangerous practices; and if the offence be aggravated by some recent joviality with Dalton and the Senior, you are condemned to a month of exile with a country clergyman. There are a few tearful regrets over the painful tone of the home letters; but the bracing country air, and the pretty faces of the village girls, heal your heart--with fresh wounds. The old Doctor sees dimly through his spectacles; and his pew gives a good look-out upon the smiling choir of singers. A collegian wears the honors of a stranger, and the country bucks stand but poor chance in contrast with your wonderful attainments in cravats and verses. But this fresh dream, odorous with its memories of sleigh-rides or lilac-blossoms, slips by, and yields again to the more ambitious dreams of the cloister. In the prouder moments that come when you are more a man and less a boy,--with more of strategy and less of faith,--your thought of woman runs loftily; not loftily in the realm of virtue or goodness, but loftily on your new world-scale. The pride of intellect, that is thirsting in you, fashions ideal graces after a classic model. The heroines of fable are admired; and the soul is tortured with that intensity of passion which gleams through the broken utterances of Grecian tragedy. In the vanity of self-consciousness one feels at a long remove above the ordinary love and trustfulness of a simple and pure heart. You turn away from all such with a sigh of conceit, to graze on that lofty but bitter pasturage where no daisies grow. Admiration may be called up by some graceful figure that you see moving under those sweeping elms; and you follow it with an intensity of look that makes you blush, and straightway hide the memory of the blush by summing up some artful sophistry, that resolves your delighted gaze into a weakness, and your contempt into a virtue. But this cannot last. As the years drop off, a certain pair of eyes beam one day upon you that seem to have been cut out of a page of Greek poetry. They have all its sentiment, its fire, its intellectual reaches: it would be hard to say what they have not. The profile is a Greek profile, and the heavy chestnut hair is plaited in Greek bands. The figure, too, might easily be that of Helen, or of Andromache. You gaze, ashamed to gaze; and your heart yearns, ashamed of its yearning. It is no young girl who is thus testing you: there is too much pride for that. A ripeness and maturity rest upon her look and figure that completely fill up that ideal which exaggerated fancies have wrought out of the Grecian heaven. The vision steals upon you at all hours,--now rounding its flowing outline to the mellifluous metre of Epic hexameter, and again with its bounding life pulsating with the glorious dashes of tragic verse. Yet with the exception of stolen glances and secret admiration, you keep aloof. There is no wish to fathom what seems a happy mystery. There lies a content in secret obeisance. Sometimes it shames you, as your mind glows with its fancied dignity; but the heart thrusts in its voice; and, yielding to it, you dream dreams like fond old Boccaccio's upon the olive-shaded slopes of Italy. The tongue even is not trusted with the thoughts that are seething within: they begin and end in the voiceless pulsations of your nature. After a time--it seems a long time, but it is in truth a very short time--you find who she is who is thus entrancing you. It is done most carelessly. No creature could imagine that you felt any interest in the accomplished sister--of your friend Dalton. Yet it is even she who has thus beguiled you; and she is at least some ten years Dalton's senior, and by even more years--your own! It is singular enough, but it is true, that the affections of that transition state from youth to manliness run toward the types of maturity. The mind in its reaches toward strength and completeness creates a heart-sympathy--which in its turn craves fulness. There is a vanity too about the first steps of manly education, which is disposed to underrate the innocence and unripened judgment of the other sex. Men see the mistake as they grow older; for the judgment of a woman, in all matters of the affections, ripens by ten years faster than a man's. In place of any relentings on such score you are set on fire anew. The stories of her accomplishments, and of her grace of conversation, absolutely drive you mad. You watch your occasion for meeting her upon the street. You wonder if she has any conception of your capacity for mental labor, and if she has any adequate idea of your admiration for Greek poetry, and for herself. You tie your cravat poet-wise, and wear broad collars turned down, wondering how such disposition may affect her. Her figure and step become a kind of moving romance to you, drifting forward and outward into that great land of dreams which you call the world. When you see her walking with others, you pity her, and feel perfectly sure, that, if she had only a hint of that intellectual fervor which in your own mind blazes up at the very thought of her, she would perfectly scorn the stout gentleman who spends his force in tawdry compliments. A visit to your home wakens ardor by contrast as much as by absence. Madge, so gentle, and now stealing sly looks at you in a way so different from her hoidenish manner of school-days, you regard complacently as a most lovable, fond girl,--the very one for some fond and amiable young man whose soul is not filled, as yours is, with higher things! To Nelly, earnestly listening, you drop only exaggerated hints of the wonderful beauty and dignity of this new being of your fancy. Of her age you scrupulously say nothing. The trivialities of Dalton amaze you: it is hard to understand how a man within the limit of such influences as Miss Dalton must inevitably exert, can tamely sit down to a rubber of whist, and cigars! There must be a sad lack of congeniality;--it would certainly be a proud thing to supply that lack! The new feeling, wild and vague as it is,--for as yet you have only most casual acquaintance with Laura Dalton,--invests the whole habit of your study; not quickening overmuch the relish for Dugald Stewart, or the miserable skeleton of college Logic, but spending a sweet charm upon the graces of Rhetoric and the music of Classic Verse. It blends harmoniously with your quickened ambition. There is some last appearance that you have to make upon the college stage, in the presence of the great worthies of the State, and of all the beauties of the town,--Laura chiefest among them. In view of it you feel dismally intellectual. Prodigious faculties are to be brought to the task. You think of throwing out ideas that will quite startle His Excellency the Governor, and those very distinguished public characters whom the college purveyors vote into their periodic public sittings. You are quite sure of surprising them, and of deeply provoking such scheming, shallow politicians as have never read Wayland's "Treatise," and who venture incautiously within hearing of your remarks. You fancy yourself in advance the victim of a long leader in the next day's paper, and the thoughtful but quiet cause of a great change in the political programme of the State. But crowning and eclipsing all the triumph, are those dark eyes beaming on you from some corner of the church their floods of unconscious praise and tenderness. Your father and Nelly are there to greet you. He has spoken a few calm, quiet words of encouragement, that make you feel--very wrongfully--that he is a cold man, with no earnestness of feeling. As for Nelly, she clasps your arm with a fondness, and with a pride, that tell at every step her praises and her love. But even this, true and healthful as it is, fades before a single word of commendation from the new arbitress of your feeling. You have seen Miss Dalton! You have met her on that last evening of your cloistered life in all the elegance of ball-costume; your eye has feasted on her elegant figure, and upon her eye sparkling with the consciousness of beauty. You have talked with Miss Dalton about Byron, about Wordsworth, about Homer. You have quoted poetry to Miss Dalton; you have clasped Miss Dalton's hand! Her conversation delights you by its piquancy and grace; she is quite ready to meet you (a grave matter of surprise!) upon whatever subject you may suggest. You lapse easily and lovingly into the current of her thought, and blush to find yourself vacantly admiring when she is looking for reply. The regard you feel for her resolves itself into an exquisite mental love, vastly superior, as you think, to any other kind of love. There is no dream of marriage as yet, but only of sitting beside her in the moonlight during a countless succession of hours, and talking of poetry and nature, of destiny and love. Magnificent Miss Dalton! ----And all the while vaunting youth is almost mindless of the presence of that fond Nelly whose warm sisterly affection measures itself hopefully against the proud associations of your growing years,--and whose deep, loving eye, half suffused with its native tenderness, seems longing to win you back to the old joys of that Home-love, which linger on the distant horizon of your boyhood like the golden glories of a sinking day. As the night wanes, you wander for a last look toward the dingy walls that have made for you so long a home. The old broken expectancies, the days of glee, the triumphs, the rivalries, the defeats, the friendships, are recalled with a fluttering of the heart that pride cannot wholly subdue. You step upon the chapel-porch in the quiet of the night as you would step on the graves of friends. You pace back and forth in the wan moonlight, dreaming of that dim life which opens wide and long from the morrow. The width and length oppress you: they crush down your struggling self-consciousness like Titans dealing with Pygmies. A single piercing thought of the vast and shadowy future, which is so near, tears off on the instant all the gewgaws of pride, strips away the vanity that doubles your bigness, and forces you down to the bare nakedness of what you truly _are_! With one more yearning look at the gray hulks of building, you loiter away under the trees. The monster elms, which have bowered your proud steps through four years of proudest life, lift up to the night their rounded canopy of leaves with a quiet majesty that mocks you. They kiss the same calm sky which they wooed four years ago; and they droop their trailing limbs lovingly to the same earth, which has steadily and quietly wrought in them their stature and their strength. Only here and there you catch the loitering footfall of some other benighted dreamer, strolling around the vast quadrangle of level green, which lies, like a prairie-child, under the edging shadows of the town. The lights glimmer one by one; and one by one, like breaking hopes, they fade away from the houses. The full-risen moon, that dapples the ground beneath the trees, touches the tall church-spires with silver, and slants their loftiness--as memory slants grief--in long, dark, tapering lines upon the silvered Green. IV. _First Look at the World._ Our Clarence is now fairly afloat upon the swift tide of Youth. The thrall of teachers is ended, and the audacity of self-resolve is begun. It is not a little odd, that, when we have least strength to combat the world, we have the highest confidence in our ability. Very few individuals in the world possess that happy consciousness of their own prowess which belongs to the newly-graduated collegian. He has most abounding faith in the tricksy panoply that he has wrought out of the metal of his Classics. His Mathematics, he has not a doubt, will solve for him every complexity of life's questions; and his Logic will as certainly untie all Gordian knots, whether in politics or ethics. He has no idea of defeat; he proposes to take the world by storm; he half wonders that quiet people are not startled by his presence. He brushes with an air of importance about the halls of country hotels; he wears his honor at the public tables; he fancies that the inattentive guests can have little idea that the young gentleman, who so recently delighted the public ear with his dissertation on the "General Tendency of Opinion," is actually among them, and quietly eating from the same dish of beef and of pudding! Our poor Clarence does not know--Heaven forbid he should!--that he is but little wiser now than when he turned his back upon the old Academy, with its gallipots and broken retorts; and that with the addition of a few Greek roots, a smattering of Latin, and some readiness of speech, he is almost as weak for breasting the strong current of life as when a boy. America is but a poor place for the romantic book-dreamer. The demands of this new, Western life of ours are practical and earnest. Prompt action, and ready tact, are the weapons by which to meet it, and subdue it. The education of the cloister offers at best only a sound starting-point from which to leap into the tide. The father of Clarence is a cool, matter-of-fact man. He has little sympathy with any of the romantic notions that enthrall a youth of twenty. He has a very humble opinion--much humbler than you think he should have--of your attainments at college. He advises a short period of travel, that by observation you may find out more fully how that world is made up with which you are henceforth to struggle. Your mother half fears your alienation from the affections of home. Her letters all run over with a tenderness that makes you sigh, and that makes you feel a deep reproach. You may not have been wanting in the more ordinary tokens of affection; you have made your periodic visits; but you blush for the consciousness that fastens on you of neglect at heart. You blush for the lack of that glow of feeling which once fastened to every home-object. [Does a man indeed outgrow affections as his mind ripens? Do the early and tender sympathies become a part of his intellectual perceptions, to be appreciated and reasoned upon as one reasons about truths of science? Is their vitality necessarily young? Is there the same ripe, joyous burst of the heart at the recollection of later friendships, which belonged to those of boyhood; and are not the later ones more the suggestions of judgment, and less the absolute conditions of the heart's health?] The letters of your mother, as I said, make you sigh: there is no moment in our lives when we feel less worthy of the love of others, and less worthy of our own respect, than when we receive evidences of kindness which we know we do not merit,--and when souls are laid bare to us, and we have too much indifference to lay bare our own in return. "Clarence,"--writes that neglected mother,--"you do not know how much you are in our thoughts, and how often you are the burden of my prayers. Oh, Clarence, I could almost wish that you were still a boy,--still running to me for those little favors which I was only too happy to bestow,--still dependent in some degree on your mother's love for happiness. "Perhaps I do you wrong, Clarence, but it does seem from the changing tone of your letters, that you are becoming more and more forgetful of us all; that you are feeling less need of our advice, and--what I feel far more deeply--less need of our affection. Do not, my son, forget the lessons of home. There will come a time, I feel sure, when you will know that those lessons are good. They may not indeed help you in that intellectual strife which soon will engross you; and they may not have fitted you to shine in what are called the brilliant circles of the world, but they are such, Clarence, as make the heart pure and honest and strong! "You may think me weak to write you thus, as I would have written to my light-hearted boy years ago; indeed I am not strong, but growing every day more feeble. "Nelly, your sweet sister, is sitting by me. 'Tell Clarence,' she says, 'to come home soon.' You know, my son, what hearty welcome will greet you; and that, whether here or away, our love and prayers will be with you always; and may God in his infinite mercy keep you from all harm!" A tear or two--brushed away as soon as they come--is all that youth gives to embalm such treasure of love! A gay laugh, or the challenge of some companion of a day, will sweep away into the night the earnest, regretful, yet happy dreams that rise like incense from the pages of such hallowed affection. The brusque world too is to be met, with all its hurry and promptitude. Manhood, in our swift American world, is measured too much by forgetfulness of all the sweet bonds which tie the heart to the home of its first attachments. We deaden the glow that nature has kindled, lest it may lighten our hearts into an enchanting flame of weakness. We have not learned to make that flame the beacon of our purposes and the warmer of our strength. We are men too early. But an experience is approaching Clarence, that will drive his heart home for shelter, like a wounded bird! ----It is an autumn morning, with such crimson glories to kindle it as lie along the twin ranges of mountain that guard the Hudson. The white frosts shine like changing silk in the fields of late-growing clover; the river-mists curl, and idle along the bosom of the water, and creep up the hill-sides, and at noon float their feathery vapors aloft in clouds; the crimson trees blaze in the side valleys, and blend their vermilion tints under the fairy hands of our American frost-painters with the dark blood of the ash-trees and the orange-tinted oaks. Blue and bright under the clear Fall heaven, the broad river shines before the surging prow of the boat like a shield of steel. The bracing air lights up rich dreams of life. Your fancy peoples the valleys and the hill-tops with its creations; and your hope lends some crowning beauty of the landscape to your dreamy future. The vision of your last college year is not gone. That figure, whose elegance your eyes then feasted on, still floats before you; and the memory of the last talk with Laura is as vivid as if it were only yesterday that you listened. Indeed this opening campaign of travel--although you are half ashamed to confess it to yourself--is guided by the thought of her. Dalton with a party of friends, his sister among them, is journeying to the north. A hope of meeting them--scarce acknowledged as an intention--spurs you on. The eye rests dreamily and vaguely on the beauties that appear at every turn: they are beauties that charm you, and charm you the more by an indefinable association with that fairy object that floats before you, half unknown, and wholly unclaimed. The quiet towns with their noonday stillness, the out-lying mansions with their stately splendor, the bustling cities with their mocking din, and the long reaches of silent and wooded shore, chime with their several beauties to your heart, in keeping with the master-key that was touched long weeks before. The cool, honest advices of the father drift across your memory in shadowy forms, as you wander through the streets of the first northern cities; and all the need for observation, and the incentives to purpose, which your ambitious designs would once have quickened, fade dismally when you find that _she_ is not there. All the lax gayety of Saratoga palls on the appetite; even the magnificent shores of Lake George, though stirring your spirit to an insensible wonder and love, do not cheat you into a trance that lingers. In vain the sun blazons every isle, and lights every shaded cove, and at evening stretches the Black Mountain in giant slumber on the waters. Your thought bounds away from the beauty of sky and lake, and fastens upon the ideal which your dreamy humors cherish. The very glow of pursuit heightens your fervor,--a fervor that dims sadly the new-wakened memories of home. The southern gates of Champlain, those fir-draped Trosachs of America, are passed, and you find yourself, upon a golden evening of Canadian autumn, in the quaint old city of Montreal. Dalton with his party has gone down to Quebec. He is to return within a few days on his way to Niagara. There is a letter from Nelly awaiting you. It says:--"Mother is much more feeble: she often speaks of your return in a way that I am sure, if you heard, Clarence, would bring you back to us soon." There is a struggle in your mind: old affection is weaker than young pride and hope. Moreover, the world is to be faced; the new scenes around you are to be studied. An answer is penned full of kind remembrances, and begging a few days of delay. You wander, wondering, under the quaint old houses, and wishing for the return of Dalton. He meets you with that happy, careless way of his,--the dangerous way which some men are born to, and which chimes easily to every tone of the world,--a way you wondered at once; a way you admire now; and a way that you will distrust as you come to see more of men. Miss Dalton--(it seems sacrilege to call her Laura)--is the same elegant being that entranced you first. They urge you to join their party. But there is no need of urging: those eyes, that figure, the whole presence indeed of Miss Dalton, attract you with a power which you can neither explain nor resist. One look of grace enslaves you; and there is a strange pride in the enslavement. ----Is it dream, or is it earnest,--those moonlit walks upon the hills that skirt the city, when you watch the stars, listening to her voice, and feel the pressure of that jewelled hand upon your arm?--when you drain your memory of its whole stock of poetic beauties to lavish upon her ear? Is it love, or is it madness, when you catch her eye as it beams more of eloquence than lies in all your moonlight poetry, and feel an exultant gush of the heart that makes you proud as a man, and yet timid as a boy, beside her? Has Dalton, with that calm, placid, _nonchalant_ look of his, any inkling of the raptures which his elegant sister is exciting? Has the stout, elderly gentleman, who is so prodigal of his bouquets and attentions, any idea of the formidable rival that he has found? Has Laura herself--you dream--any conception of that intensity of admiration with which you worship? ----Poor Clarence! it is his first look at Life! The Thousand Isles with their leafy beauties lie around your passing boat, like the joys that skirt us, and pass us, on our way through life. The Thousand Isles rise sudden before you, and fringe your yeasty track, and drop away into floating spectres of beauty, of haze, of distance, like those dreams of joy that your passion lends the brain. The low banks of Ontario look sullen by night; and the moon, rising tranquilly over the tops of vast forests that stand in majestic ranks over ten thousand acres of shore-land, drips its silvery sparkles along the rocking waters, and flashes across your foamy wake. With such attendance, that subdues for the time the dreamy forays of your passion, you draw toward the sound of Niagara; and its distant, vague roar, coming through great aisles of gloomy forest, bears up your spirit, like a child's, into the Highest Presence. The morning after, you are standing with your party upon the steps of the hotel. A letter is handed to you. Dalton remarks in a quizzical way, that "it shows a lady's hand." "Aha, a lady!" says Miss Dalton,--and _so_ gayly! "A sister," I say; for it is Nelly's hand. "By the by, Clarence," says Dalton, "it was a very pretty sister you gave us a glimpse of at Commencement." "Ah, you think so;" and there is something in your tone that shows a little indignation at this careless mention of your fond Nelly; and from those lips! It will occur to you again. A single glance at the letter blanches your cheek. Your heart throbs--throbs harder--throbs tumultuously. You bite your lip, for there are lookers-on. But it will not do. You hurry away; you find your chamber; you close and lock the door, and burst into a flood of tears. V. _A Broken Home._ It is Nelly's own fair hand, yet sadly blotted,--blotted with her tears, and blotted with yours. ----"It is all over, dear, dear Clarence! Oh, how I wish you were here to mourn with us! I can hardly now believe that our poor mother is indeed dead." ----Dead!--It is a terrible word! You repeat it with a fresh burst of grief. The letter is crumpled in your hand. Unfold it again, sobbing, and read on. "For a week she had been failing every day; but on Saturday we thought her very much better. I told her I felt sure she would live to see you again. "'I shall never see him again, Nelly,' said she, bursting into tears." ----Ah, Clarence, where is your youthful pride, and your strength now?--with only that frail paper to annoy you, crushed in your grasp! "She sent for father, and taking his hand in hers, told him she was dying. I am glad you did not see his grief. I was kneeling beside her, and she put her hand upon my head, and let it rest there for a moment, while her lips moved as if she were praying. "'Kiss me, Nelly,' said she, growing fainter: kiss me again for Clarence.' "A little while after she died." For a long time you remain with only that letter, and your thought, for company. You pace up and down your chamber: again you seat yourself, and lean your head upon the table, enfeebled by the very grief that you cherish still. The whole day passes thus: you excuse yourself from all companionship: you have not the heart to tell the story of your troubles to Dalton,--least of all, to Miss Dalton. How is this? Is sorrow too selfish, or too holy? Toward nightfall there is a calmer and stronger feeling. The voice of the present world comes to your ear again. But you move away from it unobserved to that stronger voice of God in the Cataract. Great masses of angry cloud hang over the west; but beneath them the red harvest sun shines over the long reach of Canadian shore, and bathes the whirling rapids in splendor. You stroll alone over the quaking bridge, and under the giant trees of the Island, to the edge of the British Fall. You go out to the little shattered tower, and gaze down, with sensations that will last till death, upon the deep emerald of those awful masses of water. It is not the place for a bad man to ponder; it is not the atmosphere for foul thoughts, or weak ones. A man is never better than when he has the humblest sense of himself: he is never so unlike the spirit of Evil as when his pride is utterly vanished. You linger, looking upon the stream of fading sunlight that plays across the rapids, and down into the shadow of the depths below, lit up with their clouds of spray;--yet farther down, your sight swims upon the black eddying masses, with white ribbons streaming across their glassy surface; and your dizzy eye fastens upon the frail cockle-shells--their stout oarsmen dwindled to pygmies--that dance like atoms upon the vast chasm, or like your own weak resolves upon the whirl of Time. Your thought, growing broad in the view, seems to cover the whole area of life: you set up your affections and your duties; you build hopes with fairy scenery, and away they all go, tossing like the relentless waters to the deep gulf that gapes a hideous welcome! You sigh at your weakness of heart, or of endeavor, and your sighs float out into the breeze, that rises ever from the shock of the waves, and whirl, empty-handed, to Heaven. You avow high purposes, and clench them with round utterance; and your voice, like a sparrow's, is caught up in the roar of the fall, and thrown at you from the cliffs, and dies away in the solemn thunders of nature. Great thoughts of life come over you--of its work and destiny--of its affections and duties, and roll down swift--like the river--into the deep whirl of doubt and danger. Other thoughts, grander and stronger, like the continuing rush of waters, come over you, and knit your purposes together with their weight, and crush you to exultant tears, and then leap, shattered and broken, from the very edge of your intent into mists of fear! The moon comes out, and gleaming through the clouds, braids its light fantastic bow upon the waters. You feel calmer as the night deepens. The darkness softens you; it hangs--like the pall that shrouds your mother's corpse--low and heavily to your heart. It helps your inward grief with some outward show. It makes the earth a mourner; it makes the flashing water-drops so many attendant mourners. It makes the Great Fall itself a mourner, and its roar a requiem! The pleasure of travel is cut short. To one person of the little company of fellow-voyagers you bid adieu with regret; pride, love, and hope point toward her, while all the gentler affections stray back to the broken home. Her smile of parting is very gracious, but it is not, after all, such a smile as your warm heart pines for. Ten days after, you are walking toward the old homestead with such feelings as it never called up before. In the days of boyhood there were triumphant thoughts of the gladness and the pride with which, when grown to the stature of manhood, you would come back to that little town of your birth. As you have bent with your dreamy resolutions over the tasks of the cloister life, swift thoughts have flocked on you of the proud step, and prouder heart, with which you would one day greet the old acquaintances of boyhood; and you have regaled yourself on the jaunty manner with which you would meet old Dr. Bidlow, and the patronizing air with which you would address the pretty, blue-eyed Madge. It is late afternoon when you come in sight of the tall sycamores that shade your home; you shudder now, lest you may meet any whom you once knew. The first keen grief of youth seeks little of the sympathy of companions: it lies--with a sensitive man--bounded within the narrowest circles of the heart. They only who hold the key to its innermost recesses can speak consolation. Years will make a change;--as the Summer grows in fierce heats, the balminess of the violet banks of Spring is lost in the odors of a thousand flowers;--the heart, as it gains in age, loses freshness, but wins breadth. ----Throw a pebble into the brook at its source, and the agitation is terrible, and the ripples chafe madly their narrowed banks;--throw in a pebble when the brook has become a river, and you see a few circles, widening and widening and widening, until they are lost in the gentle every-day murmur of its life! You draw your hat over your eyes, as you walk toward the familiar door: the yard is silent; the night is falling gloomily; a few katydids are crying in the trees. The mother's window, where at such a season as this it was her custom to sit watching your play, is shut, and the blinds are closed over it. The honeysuckle, which grew over the window, and which she loved so much, has flung out its branches carelessly; and the spiders have hung their foul nets upon its tendrils. And she, who made that home so dear to your boyhood, so real to your after-years,--standing amid all the flights of your youthful ambition, and your paltry cares (for they seem paltry now), and your doubts, and anxieties and weaknesses of heart, like the light of your hope--burning ever there under the shadow of the sycamores,--a holy beacon, by whose guidance you always came to a sweet haven, and to a refuge from all your toils,--is gone, gone forever! The father is there indeed,--beloved, respected, esteemed; but the boyish heart, whose old life is now reviving, leans more readily and more kindly into that void where once beat the heart of a mother. Nelly is there,--cherished now with all the added love that is stricken off from her who has left you forever. Nelly meets you at the door. ----"Clarence!" ----"Nelly!" There are no other words; but you feel her tears as the kiss of welcome is given. With your hand joined in hers, you walk down the hall into the old, familiar room,--not with the jaunty college step,--not with any presumption on your dawning manhood,--oh, no,--nothing of this! Quietly, meekly, feeling your whole heart shattered, and your mind feeble as a boy's, and your purposes nothing, and worse than nothing,--with only one proud feeling you fling your arm around the form of that gentle sister,--the pride of a protector,--the feeling--"_I_ will care for you now, dear Nelly!"--that is all. And even that, proud as it is, brings weakness. You sit down together upon the lounge; Nelly buries her face in her hands, sobbing. "Dear Nelly!" and your arm clasps her more fondly. There is a cricket in the corner of the room, chirping very loudly. It seems as if nothing else were living,--only Nelly, Clarence, and the noisy cricket. Your eye on the chair where she used to sit; it is drawn up with the same care as ever beside the fire. "I am _so_ glad to see you, Clarence," says Nelly, recovering herself; there is a sweet, sad smile now And sitting there beside you, she tells you of it all,--of the day, and of the hour,--and how she looked,--and of her last prayer, and how happy she was. "And did she leave no message for me, Nelly?" "Not to forget us, Clarence; but you could not!" "Thank you, Nelly. And was there nothing else?" "Yes, Clarence,--to meet her one day!" You only press her hand. Presently your father comes in: he greets you with far more than his usual cordiality. He keeps your hand a long time, looking quietly in your face, as if he were reading traces of some resemblance that had never struck him before. The father is one of those calm, impassive men, who shows little upon the surface, and whose feelings you have always thought cold. But now there is a tremulousness in his tones that you never remember observing before. He seems conscious of it himself, and forbears talking. He goes to his old seat, and after gazing at you a little while with the same steadfastness as at first, leans forward, and buries his face in his hands. From that very moment you feel a sympathy and a love for him, that you have never known until then. And in after-years, when suffering or trial come over you, and when your thoughts fly as to a refuge to that shattered home, you will recall that stooping image of the father,--with his head bowed, and from time to time trembling convulsively with grief,--and feel that there remains yet by the household fires a heart of kindred love and of kindred sorrow! Nelly steals away from you gently, and stepping across the room, lays her hand upon his shoulder with a touch that says, as plainly as words could say it,--"We are here, father!" And he rouses himself,--passes his arm around her,--looks in her face fondly,--draws her to him, and prints a kiss upon her forehead. "Nelly, we must love each other now more than ever." Nelly's lips tremble, but she cannot answer; a tear or two go stealing down her cheek. You approach them; and your father takes your hand again with a firm grasp,--looks at you thoughtfully,--drops his eyes upon the fire, and for a moment there is a pause;--"We are quite alone now, my boy!" ----It is a Broken Home! VI. _Family Confidence._ Grief has a strange power in opening the hearts of those who sorrow in common. The father, who has seemed to you, not so much neglectful, as careless of your aims and purposes,--toward whom there have been in your younger years yearnings of affection which his chilliness of manner has seemed to repress, now grows under the sad light of the broken household into a friend. The heart feels a joy it cannot express, in its freedom to love and to cherish. There is a pleasure wholly new to you in telling him of your youthful projects, in listening to his questionings, in seeking his opinions, and in yielding to his judgment. It is a sad thing for the child, and quite as sad for the parent, when this confidence is unknown. Many and many a time with a bursting heart you have longed to tell him of some boyish grief, or to ask his guidance out of some boyish trouble; but at the first sight of that calm, inflexible face, and at the first sound of his measured words, your enthusiastic yearnings toward his love and his counsels have all turned back upon your eager and sorrowing heart, and you have gone away to hide in secret the tears which the lack of his sympathy has wrung from your soul. But now over the tomb of her, for whom you weep in common, there is a new light breaking; and your only fear is lest you weary him with what may seem a barren show of your confidence. Nelly too is nearer now than ever; and with her you have no fears of your extravagance; you listen delightfully there by the evening flame to all that she tells you of the neighbors of your boyhood. You shudder somewhat at her genial praises of the blue-eyed Madge,--a shudder that you can hardly account for, and which you do not seek to explain. It may be that there is a clinging and tender memory yet--wakened by the home atmosphere--of the divided sixpence. Of your quondam friend, Frank, the pleasant recollection of whom revives again under the old roof-tree, she tells you very little,--and that little in a hesitating and indifferent way that utterly surprises you. Can it be, you think, that there has been some cause of unkindness? ----Clarence is still very young! The fire glows warmly upon the accustomed hearth-stone, and--save that vacant place never to be filled again--a home cheer reigns even in this time of your mourning. The spirit of the lost parent seems to linger over the remnant of the household; and the Bible upon its stand--the book she loved so well--the book so sadly forgotten--seems still to open on you its promises in her sweet tones, and to call you, as it were, with her angel-voice to the land that she inherits. And when late night has come, and the household is quiet, you call up in the darkness of your chamber that other night of grief which followed upon the death of Charlie. That was the boy's vision of death; and this is the youthful vision. Yet essentially there is but little difference. Death levels the capacities of the living as it levels the strength of its victims. It is as grand to the man as to the boy, its teachings are as deep for age as for infancy. You may learn its manner, and estimate its approaches; but when it comes, it comes always with the same awful front that it wore to your boyhood. Reason and Revelation may point to rich issues that unfold from its very darkness; yet all these are no more to your bodily sense, and no more to your enlightened hope, than those foreshadowings of peace which rest like a halo on the spirit of the child as he prays in guileless tones--OUR FATHER, WHO ART IN HEAVEN! It is a holy and a placid grief that comes over you,--not crushing, but bringing to life from the grave of boyhood all its better and nobler instincts. In their light your wild plans of youth look sadly misshapen and in the impulse of the hour you abandon them; holy resolutions beam again upon your soul like sunlight, your purposes seem bathed in goodness. There is an effervescence of the spirit that carries away all foul matter, and leaves you in a state of calm that seems kindred to the land and to the life whither the sainted mother has gone. This calm brings a smile in the middle of tears, and an inward looking and leaning toward that Eternal Power which governs and guides us;--with that smile and that leaning, sleep comes like an angelic minister, and fondles your wearied frame and thought into that repose which is the mirror of the Destroyer. ----Poor Clarence, he is like the rest of the world,--whose goodness lies chiefly in the occasional throbs of a better nature, which soon subside, and leave them upon the old level of _desire_. As you lie between waking and sleeping, you have a fancy of a sound at your door;--it seems to open softly, and the tall figure of your father, wrapped in his dressing-gown, stands over you, and gazes--as he gazed at you before;--his look is very mournful; and he murmurs your mother's name--and sighs--and looks again--and passes out. At morning you cannot tell if it was real or a dream. Those higher resolves too, which grief and the night made, seem very vague and shadowy. Life with its ambitious and cankerous desires wakes again. You do not feel them at first; the subjugation of holy thoughts and of reaches toward the Infinite, leave their traces on you, and perhaps bewilder you into a half-consciousness of strength. But at the first touch of the grosser elements about you,--on your very first entrance upon those duties which quicken pride or shame, and which are pointing at you from every quarter,--your holy calm, your high-born purpose, your spiritual cleavings, pass away, like the electricity of August storms drawn down by the thousand glittering turrets of a city! The world is stronger than the night; and the bindings of sense are tenfold stronger than the most exquisite delirium of soul. This makes you feel, or will one day make you feel, that life,--strong life and sound life,--that life which lends approaches to the Infinite, and takes hold on Heaven, is not so much a PROGRESS as it is a RESISTANCE! There is one special confidence which, in all your talk about plans and purposes, you do not give to your father: you reserve that for the ear of Nelly alone. Why happens it that a father is almost the last confidant that a son makes in any matter deeply affecting the feelings? Is it the fear that a father may regard such matter as boyish? Is it a lingering suspicion of your own childishness; or of that extreme of affection which reduces you to childishness? Why is it always that a man, of whatever age or condition, forbears to exhibit to those whose respect for his judgment and mental abilities only he seeks, the most earnest qualities of the heart, and those intenser susceptibilities of love which underlie his nature, and which give a color in spite of him to the habit of his life? Why is he so morbidly anxious to keep out of sight any extravagances of affection, when he blurts officiously to the world his extravagances of action and of thought? Can any lover explain me this? Again, why is a sister the one of all others to whom you first whisper the dawnings of any strong emotion,--as if it were a weakness that her charity alone could cover? However this may be, you have a long story for Nelly's ear. It is some days after your return: you are strolling down a quiet, wooded lane,--a remembered place,--when you first open to her your heart. Your talk is of Laura Dalton. You describe her to Nelly with the extravagance of a glowing hope. You picture those qualities that have attracted you most; you dwell upon her beauty, her elegant figure, her grace of conversation, her accomplishments. You make a study that feeds your passion as you go on. You rise by the very glow of your speech into a frenzy of feeling that she has never excited before. You are quite sure that you would be wretched and miserable without her. "Do you mean to marry her?" says Nelly. It is a question that gives a swift bound to the blood of youth. It involves the idea of possession, and of the dependence of the cherished one upon your own arm and strength. But the admiration you entertain seems almost too lofty for this; Nelly's question makes you diffident of reply; and you lose yourself in a new story of those excellencies of speech and of figure which have so charmed you. Nelly's eye on a sudden becomes full of tears. ----"What is it, Nelly?" "Our mother, Clarence." The word and the thought dampen your ardor; the sweet watchfulness and gentle kindness of that parent for an instant make a sad contrast with the showy qualities you have been naming; and the spirit of that mother--called up by Nelly's words--seems to hang over you with an anxious love that subdues all your pride of passion. But this passes; and now--half believing that Nelly's thoughts have run over the same ground with yours--you turn special pleader for your fancy. You argue for the beauty which you just now affirmed; you do your utmost to win over Nelly to some burst of admiration. Yet there she sits beside you, thoughtfully and half sadly, playing with the frail autumn flowers that grow at her side. What can she be thinking? You ask it by a look. She smiles,--takes your hand, for she will not let you grow angry,-- "I was thinking, Clarence, whether this Laura Dalton would, after all, make a good wife,--such an one as you would love always?" VII. _A Good Wife._ The thought of Nelly suggests new dreams that are little apt to find place in the rhapsodies of a youthful lover. The very epithet of a good wife mates tamely with the romantic fancies of a first passion. It is measuring the ideal by too practical a standard. It sweeps away all the delightful vagueness of a fairy dream of love, and reduces one to a dull and economic estimate of actual qualities. Passion lives above all analysis and estimate, and arrives at its conclusions by intuition. Did Petrarch ever think if Laura would make a good wife; did Oswald ever think it of Corinne? Nay, did even the more practical Waverley ever think it of the impassioned Flora? Would it not weaken faith in their romantic passages, if you believed it? What have such vulgar, practical issues to do with that passion which sublimates the faculties, and makes the loving dreamer to live in an ideal sphere where nothing but goodness and brightness can come? Nelly is to be pitied for entertaining such a thought; and yet Nelly is very good and kind. Her affections are without doubt all centred in the remnant of the shattered home; she has never known any further and deeper love; never once fancied it even-- --Ah, Clarence, you are very young! And yet there are some things that puzzle you in Nelly. You have found accidentally, in one of her treasured books,--a book that lies almost always on her dressing-table,--a little withered flower with its stem in a slip of paper, and on the paper the initials of--your old friend Frank. You recall, in connection with this, her indisposition to talk of him on the first evening of your return. It seems--you scarce know why--that these are the tokens of something very like a leaning of the heart. It does occur to you that she too may have her little casket of loves; and you try one day very adroitly to take a look into this casket. ----You will learn later in life that the heart of a modest, gentle girl is a very hard matter for even a brother to probe; it is at once the most tender and the most unapproachable of all fastnesses. It admits feeling by armies, with great trains of artillery,--but not a single scout. It is as calm and pure as polar snows; but deep underneath, where no footsteps have gone, and where no eye can reach but one, lies the warm and the throbbing earth. Make what you will of the slight, quivering blushes, and of the half broken expressions,--more you cannot get. The love that a delicate-minded girl will tell is a short-sighted and outside love; but the love that she cherishes without voice or token is a love that will mould her secret sympathies, and her deepest, fondest yearnings, either to a quiet world of joy, or to a world of placid sufferance. The true voice of her love she will keep back long and late, fearful ever of her most prized jewel,--fearful to strange sensitiveness; she will show kindness, but the opening of the real floodgates of the heart, and the utterance of those impassioned yearnings which belong to its nature, come far later. And fearful, thrice fearful is the shock, if these flow out unmet! That deep, thrilling voice, bearing all the perfume of the womanly soul in its flow, rarely finds utterance; and if uttered vainly,--if called out by tempting devices, and by a trust that is abused,--desolate indeed is the maiden heart, widowed of its chastest thought! The soul shrinks affrighted within itself. Like a tired bird lost at sea, fluttering around what seem friendly boughs, it stoops at length, and finding only cold, slippery spars, with no bloom and no foliage,--its last hope gone,--it sinks to a wild ocean grave! Nelly--and the thought brings a tear of sympathy to your eye--must have such a heart; it speaks in every shadow of her action. And this very delicacy seems to lend her a charm that would make her a wife to be loved and honored. Ay, there is something in that maidenly modesty--retiring from you as you advance, retreating timidly from all bold approaches, fearful and yet joyous--which wins upon the iron hardness of a man's nature like a rising flame. To force of action and resolve he opposes force; to strong will he mates his own; pride lights pride; but to the gentleness of the true womanly character he yields with a gush of tenderness that nothing else can call out. He will never be subjugated on his own ground of action and energy; but let him be lured to that border country over which the delicacy and fondness of a womanly nature presides, and his energy yields, his haughty determination faints, he is proud of submission! And with this thought of modesty and gentleness to illuminate your dream of an ideal wife, you chase the pleasant phantom to that shadowy home--lying far off in the future--of which she is the glory and the crown. I know it is the fashion nowadays with many to look for a woman's excellencies and influence--away from her home; but I know too that a vast many eager and hopeful hearts still cherish the belief that her virtues will range highest and live longest within those sacred walls. Where, indeed, can the modest and earnest virtue of a woman tell a stronger story of its worth than upon the dawning habit of a child? Where can her grace of character win a higher and a riper effect than upon the action of her household? What mean those noisy declaimers who talk of the feeble influence, and of the crushed faculties, of a woman? What school of learning, or of moral endeavor, depends more on its teacher, than the home upon the mother? What influence of all the world's professors and teachers tells so strongly on the habit of a man's mind as those gentle droppings from a mother's lips, which, day by day and hour by hour, grow into the enlarging stature of his soul, and live with it forever? They can hardly be mothers who aim at a broader and noisier field; they have forgotten to be daughters; they must needs have lost the hope of being wives! Be this how it may, the heart of a man with whom affection is not a name, and love a mere passion of the hour, yearns toward the quiet of a home as toward the goal of his earthly joy and hope. And as you fasten there your thought, an indulgent yet dreamy fancy paints the loved image that is to adorn it and to make it sacred. ----She is there to bid you God speed! and an adieu that hangs like music on your ear as you go out to the every-day labor of life. At evening she is there to greet you, as you come back wearied with a day's toil; and her look so full of gladness cheats you of your fatigue; and she steals her arm around you with a soul of welcome that beams like sunshine on her brow, and that fills your eye with tears of a twin gratitude--to her and Heaven! She is not unmindful of those old-fashioned virtues of cleanliness and of order which give an air of quiet, and which secure content. Your wants are all anticipated: the fire is burning brightly; the clean hearth flashes under the joyous blaze; the old elbow-chair is in its place. Your very unworthiness of all this haunts you like an accusing spirit, and yet penetrates your heart with a new devotion toward the loved one who is thus watchful of your comfort. She is gentle,--keeping your love, as she has won it, by a thousand nameless and modest virtues which radiate from her whole life and action. She steals upon your affections like a summer wind breathing softly over sleeping valleys. She gains a mastery over your sterner nature by very contrast, and wins you unwittingly to her lightest wish. And yet her wishes are guided by that delicate tact which avoids conflict with your manly pride; she subdues by seeming to yield. By a single soft word of appeal she robs your vexation of its anger; and, with a slight touch of that fair hand, and one pleading look of that earnest eye, she disarms your sternest pride. She is kind,--shedding her kindness as heaven sheds dew. Who indeed could doubt it?--least of all you, who are living on her kindness day by day, as flowers live on light? There is none of that officious parade which blunts the point of benevolence; but it tempers every action with a blessing. If trouble has come upon you, she knows that her voice, beguiling you into cheerfulness, will lay your fears; and as she draws her chair beside you, she knows that the tender and confiding way with which she takes your hand, and looks up into your earnest face, will drive away from your annoyance all its weight. As she lingers, leading off your thought with pleasant words, she knows well that she is redeeming you from care, and soothing you to that sweet calm which such home and such wife can alone bestow. And in sickness,--sickness that you almost covet for the sympathy it brings,--that hand of hers resting on your fevered forehead, or those fingers playing with the scattered locks, are more full of kindness than the loudest vaunt of friends; and when your failing strength will permit no more, you grasp that cherished hand with a fulness of joy, of thankfulness, and of love, which your tears only can tell. She is good; her hopes live where the angels live. Her kindness and gentleness are sweetly tempered with that meekness and forbearance which are born of Faith. Trust comes into her heart as rivers come to the sea. And in the dark hours of doubt and foreboding you rest fondly upon her buoyant Faith, as the treasure of your common life; and in your holier musings you look to that frail hand, and that gentle spirit, to lead you away from the vanities of worldly ambition to the fulness of that joy which the good inherit. ----Is Laura Dalton such an one? VIII. _A Broken Hope._ Youthful passion is a giant. It overleaps all the dreams, and all the resolves of our better and quieter nature; and drives madly toward some wild issue, that lives only in its frenzy. How little account does passion take of goodness! It is not within the cycle of its revolution: it is below; it is tamer; it is older; it wears no wings. And your proud heart flashing back to the memory of that sparkling eye which lighted your hope--full-fed upon the vanities of cloister learning, drives your soberer visions to the wind. As you recall those tones, so full of brilliancy and pride, the quiet virtues fade, like the soft haze upon a spring landscape driven westward by a swift, sea-born storm. The pulse bounds; the eyes flash; the heart trembles with its sharp springs. Hope dilates, like the eye, fed with swift blood leaping to the brain. Again the image of Miss Dalton, so fine, so noble, so womanly, fills and bounds the Future. The lingering tears of grief drop away from your eye, as the lingering loves of boyhood drop from your scalding passion, or drip into clouds of vapor. You listen to the calm, thoughtful advice of the father, with a deep consciousness of something stronger than his counsels seething in your bosom. The words of caution, of instruction, of guidance, fall upon your heated imagination like the night-dews upon the crater of an �tna. They are beneficent and healthful for the straggling herbage upon the surface of the mountain, but they do not reach or temper the inner fires that are rolling their billows of flame beneath! You drop hints from time to time, to those with whom you are most familiar, of some prospective change of condition. There is a new and cheerful interest in the building-plans of your neighbors,--a new and cheerful study of the principles of domestic architecture,--in which very elegant boudoirs, adorned with harps, hold prominent place; and libraries with gilt-bound books, very rich in lyrical and dramatic poetry; fine views from bay-windows; graceful pots of flowers; sleek-looking Italian greyhounds; cheerful sunlight; musical goldfinches chattering on the wall; superb pictures of princesses in peasant dresses; soft Axminster carpets; easy-acting bell-pulls; gigantic candelabrums; porcelain vases of classic shape; neat waiters in white aprons; luxurious lounges; and, to crown them all with the very height of your pride,--the elegant Laura, the mistress, and the guardian of your soul, moving amid the scene like a new Duchess of Vallière! You catch chance sights here and there of the blue-eyed Madge: you see her in her mother's household, the earnest and devoted daughter,--gliding gracefully about her mother's cottage, the very type of gentleness and of duty. Yet withal there are sparks of spirit in her that pique your pride, lofty as it is. You offer flowers, which she accepts with a kind smile, not of coquetry, but of simplest thankfulness. She is not the girl to gratify your vanity with any half-show of tenderness. And if there lived ever in her heart an old girlish liking for the schoolboy Clarence, it is all gone before the romantic lover of the elegant Laura; or at most it lies in some obscure corner of her soul, never to be brought to light. You enter upon the new pursuits, which your father has advised, with a lofty consciousness, not only of the strength of your mind, but of your heart. You relieve your opening professional study with long letters to Miss Dalton, full of Shakspearean compliments, and touched off with very dainty elaboration. And you receive pleasant, gossiping notes in answer,--full of quotations, but meaning very little. Youth is in a grand flush, like the hot days of ending summer; and pleasant dreams thrall your spirit, like the smoky atmosphere that bathes the landscape of an August day. Hope rides high in the heavens, as when the summer sun mounts nearest to the zenith. Youth feels the fulness of maturity before the second season of life is ended; yet is it a vain maturity, and all the glow is deceitful. Those fruits that ripen in summer do not last. They are sweet; they are glowing with gold; but they melt with a luscious sweetness upon the lip. They do not give that strength and nutriment which will bear a man bravely through the coming chills of winter. * * * * * The last scene of summer changes now to the cobwebbed ceiling of an attorney's office. Books of law, scattered ingloriously at your elbow, speak dully to the flush of your vanities. You are seated at your side-desk, where you have wrought at those heavy, mechanic labors of drafting which go before a knowledge of your craft. A letter is by you, which you regard with strange feelings: it is yet unopened. It comes from Laura. It is in reply to one which has cost you very much of exquisite elaboration. You have made your avowal of feeling as much like a poem as your education would admit. Indeed it was a pretty letter,--promising not so much the trustful love of an earnest and devoted heart, as the fervor of a passion which consumed you, and glowed like a furnace through the lines of your letter. It was a confession in which your vanity of intellect had taken very entertaining part, and in which your judgment was too cool to appear at all. She must needs break out into raptures at such a letter; and her own will doubtless be tempered with even greater passion. It is well to shift your chair somewhat, so that the clerks of the office may not see your emotion as you read. It would be silly to manifest your exuberance in a dismal, dark office of your instructing attorney. One sighs rather for woods, and brooks, and sunshine, in whose company the hopes of youth stretch into fulfilment. We will look only at a closing passage:-- * * * * * ----"My friend Clarence will, I trust, believe me, when I say that his letter was a surprise to me. To say that it was very grateful, would be what my womanly vanity could not fail to claim. I only wish that I was equal to the flattering portrait which he has drawn. I even half fancy that he is joking me, and can hardly believe that my matronly air should have quite won his youthful heart. At least I shall try not to believe it; and when I welcome him one day, the husband of some fairy who is worthy of his love, we will smile together at the old lady who once played the Circe to his senses. Seriously, my friend Clarence, I know your impulse of heart has carried you away, and that in a year's time, you will smile with me at your old _penchant_ for one so much your senior, and so ill-suited to your years, as your true friend, LAURA." * * * * * ----Magnificent Miss Dalton! Read it again. Stick your knife in the desk:--tut!--you will break the blade! Fold up the letter carefully, and toss it upon your pile of papers. Open Chitty again;--pleasant reading is Chitty! Lean upon your hand--your two hands, so that no one will catch sight of your face. Chitty is very interesting,--how sparkling and imaginative!--what a depth and flow of passion in Chitty! The office is a capital place--so quiet and sunny. Law is a delightful study--so captivating, and such stores of romance! And then those trips to the Hall offer such relief and variety,--especially just now. It would be well not to betray your eagerness to go. You can brush your hat a round or two, and take a peep into the broken bit of looking-glass over the wash-stand. You lengthen your walk, as you sometimes do, by a stroll upon the Battery,--though rarely upon such a blustering November day. You put your hands in your pockets, and look out upon the tossing sea. It is a fine sight--very fine. There are few finer bays in the world than New York Bay,--either to look at, or, for that matter, to sleep in. The ships ride up thickly, dashing about the cold spray delightfully; the little cutters gleam in the November sunshine like white flowers shivering in the wind. The sky is rich--all mottled with cold, gray streaks of cloud. The old apple-women, with their noses frostbitten, look cheerful and blue. The ragged immigrants, in short trousers and bell-crowned hats, stalk about with a very happy expression, and very short-stemmed pipes; their yellow-haired babies look comfortably red and glowing. And the trees with their scant, pinched foliage have a charming, summer-like effect! Amid it all the thoughts of the boudoir, and harpsichord, and goldfinches, and Axminster carpets, and sunshine, and Laura, are so very, very pleasant! How delighted you would be to see her married to the stout man in the red cravat, who gave her bouquets, and strolled with her on the deck of the steamer upon the St. Lawrence! What a jaunty, self-satisfied air he wore; and with what considerate forbearance he treated you--calling you once or twice Master Clarence! It never occurred to you before, how much you must be indebted to that pleasant, stout man. You try sadly to be cheerful; you smile oddly; your pride comes strongly to your help, but yet helps you very little. It is not so much a broken heart that you have to mourn over, as a broken dream. You seem to see in a hundred ways, that had never occurred to you before, the marks of her superior age. Above all it is manifest in the cool and unimpassioned tone of her letter. Yet how kindly withal! It would be a relief to be angry. New visions come to you, wakened by the broken fancy which has just now eluded your grasp. You will make yourself, if not old, at least gifted with the force and dignity of age. You will be a man, and build no more castles until you can people them with men! In an excess of pride you even take umbrage at the sex; they can have little appreciation of that engrossing tenderness of which you feel yourself to be capable. Love shall henceforth be dead, and you will live boldly without it. ----Just so, when some dark, eastern cloud-bank shrouds for a morning the sun of later August, we say in our shivering pride--the winter is come early! But God manages the seasons better than we; and in a day, or an hour perhaps, the cloud will pass, and the heavens glow again upon our ungrateful heads. * * * * * Well it is even so, that the passionate dreams of youth break up and wither. Vanity becomes tempered with wholesome pride; and passion yields to the riper judgment of manhood,--even as the August heats pass on, and over, into the genial glow of a September sun. There is a strong growth in the struggles against mortified pride; and then only does the youth get an ennobling consciousness of that manhood which is dawning in him, when he has fairly surmounted those puny vexations which a wounded vanity creates. Now your heart is driven home; and that cherished place, where so little while ago you wore your vanities with an air that mocked even your grief, and that subdued your better nature, seems to stretch toward you over long miles of distance its wings of love, and to welcome back to the sister's and the father's heart, not the self-sufficient and vaunting youth, but the brother and son--the schoolboy Clarence. Like a thirsty child, you stray in thought to that fountain of cheer, and live again--your vanity crushed, your wild hope broken--in the warm and natural affections of the boyish home. Clouds weave the SUMMER into the season of AUTUMN; and YOUTH rises from dashed hopes into the stature of a MAN. _AUTUMN;_ OR, _THE DREAMS OF MANHOOD._ _DREAMS OF MANHOOD._ _Autumn._ There are those who shudder at the approach of Autumn, and who feel a light grief stealing over their spirits, like an October haze, as the evening shadows slant sooner, and longer, over the face of an ending August day. But is not Autumn the Manhood of the year? Is it not the ripest of the seasons? Do not proud flowers blossom,--the golden-rod, the orchis, the dahlia, and the bloody cardinal of the swamp-lands? The fruits too are golden, hanging heavy from the tasked trees. The fields of maize show weeping spindles, and broad rustling leaves, and ears half glowing with the crowded corn; the September wind whistles over their thick-set ranks with whispers of plenty. The staggering stalks of the buckwheat grow red with ripeness, and tip their tops with clustering tricornered kernels. The cattle, loosed from the summer's yoke, grow strong upon the meadows new-starting from the scythe. The lambs of April, rounded into fulness of limb, and gaining day by day their woolly cloak, bite at the nodding clover-heads; or, with their noses to the ground, they stand in solemn, circular conclave under the pasture oaks, while the noon-sun beats with the lingering passion of July. The Bob-o'-Lincolns have come back from their Southern rambles among the rice, all speckled with gray; and, singing no longer as they did in spring, they quietly feed upon the ripened reeds that straggle along the borders of the walls. The larks, with their black and yellow breastplates, and lifted heads, stand tall upon the close-mown meadow, and at your first motion of approach spring up, and soar away, and light again, and with their lifted heads renew the watch. The quails, in half-grown coveys, saunter hidden through the underbrush that skirts the wood, and only when you are close upon them, whir away, and drop scattered under the coverts of the forest. The robins, long ago deserting the garden neighborhood, feed at eventide in flocks upon the bloody berries of the sumac; and the soft-eyed pigeons dispute possession of the feast. The squirrels chatter at sunrise, and gnaw off the full-grown burrs of the chestnuts. The lazy blackbirds skip after the loitering cow, watchful of the crickets that her slow steps start to danger. The crows in companies caw aloft, and hang high over the carcass of some slaughtered sheep lying ragged upon the hills. The ash-trees grow crimson in color, and lose their summer life in great gouts of blood. The birches touch their frail spray with yellow; the chestnuts drop down their leaves in brown, twirling showers. The beeches, crimped with the frost, guard their foliage until each leaf whistles white in the November gales. The bittersweet hangs its bare and leafless tendrils from rock to tree, and sways with the weight of its brazen berries. The sturdy oaks, unyielding to the winds and to the frosts, struggle long against the approaches of the winter, and in their struggles wear faces of orange, of scarlet, of crimson, and of brown; and finally, yielding to swift winds, as youth's pride yields to manly duty, strew the ground with the scattered glories of their summer strength, and warm and feed the earth with the _débris_ of their leafy honors. The maple in the lowlands turns suddenly its silvery greenness into orange scarlet, and in the coming chilliness of the autumn eventide seems to catch the glories of the sunset, and to wear them--as a sign of God's old promise in Egypt--like a pillar of cloud by day, and of fire by night. And when all these are done,--and in the paved and noisy aisles of the city the ailantus, with all its greenness gone, lifts up its skeleton fingers to the God of Autumn and of storms,--the dogwood still guards its crown; and the branches, which stretched their white canvas in April, now bear up a spire of bloody tongues, that lie against the leafless woods like a tree on fire! Autumn brings to the home the cheerful glow of "first fires." It withdraws the thoughts from the wide and joyous landscape of summer, and fixes them upon those objects which bloom and rejoice within the household. The old hearth, that has rioted the summer through with boughs and blossoms, gives up its withered tenantry. The fire-dogs gleam kindly upon the evening hours; and the blaze wakens those sweet hopes and prayers which cluster around the fireside of home. The wantoning and the riot of the season gone are softened in memory, and supply joys to the season to come,--just as youth's audacity and pride give a glow to the recollections of our manhood. At mid-day the air is mild and soft; a warm, blue smoke lies in the mountain gaps; the tracery of distant woods upon the upland hangs in the haze with a dreamy gorgeousness of coloring. The river runs low with August drought, and frets upon the pebbly bottom with a soft, low murmur, as of joyousness gone by. The hemlocks of the river-bank rise in tapering sheens, and tell tales of Spring. As the sun sinks, doubling his disk in the October smoke, the low south-wind creeps over the withered tree-tops, and drips the leaves upon the land. The windows, that were wide open at noon, are closed; and a bright blaze--to drive off the easterly dampness that promises a storm--flashes lightly and kindly over the book-shelves and busts upon my wall. As the sun sinks lower and lower, his red beams die in a sea of great gray clouds. Slowly and quietly they creep up over the night-sky. Venus is shrouded. The western stars blink faintly, then fade in the mounting vapors. The vane points east of south. The constellations in the zenith struggle to be seen, but presently give over, and hide their shining. By late lamp-light the sky is all gray and dark; the vane has turned two points nearer east. The clouds spit fine rain-drops, that you only feel with your face turned to the heavens. But soon they grow thicker and heavier; and as I sit, watching the blaze, and--dreaming--they patter thick and fast under the driving wind upon the window, like the swift tread of an army of Men! I. _Pride of Manliness._ And has manhood no dreams? Does the soul wither at that Rubicon which lies between the Gallic country of youth and the Rome of manliness? Does not fancy still love to cheat the heart, and weave gorgeous tissues to hang upon that horizon which lies along the years that are to come? Is happiness so exhausted that no new forms of it lie in the mines of imagination, for busy hopes to drag up to day? Where then would live the motives to an upward looking of the eye and of the soul; where the beckonings that bid us ever onward? But these later dreams are not the dreams of fond boyhood, whose eye sees rarely below the surface of things; nor yet the delicious hopes of sparkling-blooded youth: they are dreams of sober trustfulness, of practical results, of hard-wrought world-success, and, maybe, of Love and of Joy. Ambitious forays do not rest where they rested once: hitherto the balance of youth has given you, in all that you have dreamed of accomplishment, a strong vantage against age; hitherto in all your estimates you have been able to multiply them by that access of thought and of strength which manhood would bring to you. Now this is forever ended. There is a great meaning in that word--manhood. It covers all human growth. It supposes no extensions or increase; it is integral, fixed, perfect,--the whole. There is no getting beyond manhood; it is much to live up to it; but once reached, you are all that a man was made to be in this world. It is a strong thought--that a man is perfected, so far as strength goes; that he will never be abler to do his work than under the very sun which is now shining on him. There is a seriousness that few call to mind in the reflection that whatever you do in this age of manhood is an unalterable type of your whole bigness. You may qualify particulars of your character by refinements, by special studies, and practice; but, once a man, and there is no more manliness to be lived for! This thought kindles your soul to new and swifter dreams of ambition than belonged to youth. They were toys; these are weapons. They were fancies; these are motives. The soul begins to struggle with the dust, the sloth, the circumstance, that beleaguer humanity, and to stagger into the van of action. Perception, whose limits lay along a narrow horizon, now tops that horizon, and spreads, and reaches toward the heaven of the Infinite. The mind feels its birth, and struggles toward the great birth-master. The heart glows; its humanities even yield and crimple under the fierce heat of mental pride. Vows leap upward, and pile rampart upon rampart to scale all the degrees of human power. Are there not times in every man's life when there flashes on him a feeling--nay, more, an absolute conviction--that this soul is but a spark belonging to some upper fire; and that, by as much as we draw near by effort, by resolve, by intensity of endeavor, to that upper fire, by so much we draw nearer to our home, and mate ourselves with angels? Is there not a ringing desire in many minds to seize hold of what floats above us in the universe of thought, and drag down what shreds we can to scatter to the world? Is it not belonging to greatness to catch lightning from the plains where lightning lives, and curb it for the handling of men? Resolve is what makes a man manliest;--not puny resolve, not crude determination, not errant purpose, but that strong and indefatigable will which treads down difficulties and danger as a boy treads down the heaving frost-lands of winter,--which kindles his eye and brain with a proud pulse-beat toward the unattainable. Will makes men giants. It made Napoleon an emperor of kings, Bacon a fathomer of nature, Byron a tutor of passion, and the martyrs masters of Death! In this age of manhood you look back upon the dreams of the years that are past: they glide to the vision in pompous procession; they seem bloated with infancy. They are without sinew or bone. They do not bear the hard touches of the man's hand. It is not long, to be sure, since the summer of life ended with that broken hope; but the few years that lie between have given long steps upward. The little grief that threw its shadow, and the broken vision that deluded you, have made the passing years long in such feeling as ripens manhood. Nothing lays the brown of autumn upon the green of summer so quick as storms. There have been changes too in the home scenes; these graft age upon a man. Nelly--your sweet Nelly of childhood, your affectionate sister of youth--has grown out of the old brotherly companionship into the new dignity of a household. The fire flames and flashes upon the accustomed hearth. The father's chair is there in the wonted corner; he himself--we must call him the old man now, though his head shows few white honors--wears a calmness and a trust that light the failing eye. Nelly is not away; Nelly is a wife; and the husband yonder, as you may have dreamed,--your old friend Frank. Her eye is joyous; her kindness to you is unabated; her care for you is quicker and wiser. But yet the old unity of the household seems broken; nor can all her winning attentions bring back the feeling which lived in Spring under the garret-roof. The isolation, the unity, the integrity of manhood make a strong prop for the mind, but a weak one for the heart. Dignity can but poorly fill up that chasm of the soul which the home affections once occupied. Life's duties and honors press hard upon the bosom that once throbbed at a mother's tones, and that bounded in a mother's smiles. In such home, the strength you boast of seems a weakness; manhood leans into childish memories, and melts--as Autumn frosts yield to a soft south-wind coming from a Tropic spring. You feel in a desert, where you once felt at home,--in a bounded landscape, that was once the world! The tall sycamores have dwindled to paltry trees; the hills that were so large, and lay at such grand distance to the eye of childhood, are now near by, and have fallen away to mere rolling waves of upland. The garden-fence, that was so gigantic, is now only a simple paling; its gate that was such a cumbrous affair--reminding you of Gaza--you might easily lift from its hinges. The lofty dove-cote, which seemed to rise like a monument of art before your boyish vision, is now only a flimsy box upon a tall spar of hemlock. The garret even, with its lofty beams, its dark stains, and its obscure corners, where the white hats and coats hung ghost-like, is but a low loft darkened by age,--hung over with cobwebs, dimly lighted with foul windows,--its romping Charlie--its glee--its swing--its joy--its mystery--all gone forever. The old gallipots and retorts are not anywhere to be seen in the second-story window of the brick schoolhouse. Dr. Bidlow is no more! The trees that seemed so large, the gymnastic feats that were so extraordinary, the boy that made a snapper of his handkerchief,--have all lost their greatness and their dread. Even the springy usher, who dressed his hair with the ferule, has become the middle-aged father of five curly-headed boys, and has entered upon what once seemed the gigantic commerce of "stationery and account-books." The marvellous labyrinth of closets at the old mansion where you once paid a visit--in a coach--is all dissipated. They have turned out to be the merest cupboards in the wall. Nat, who had travelled and seen London, is by no means so surprising a fellow to your manhood as he was to the boy. He has grown spare, and wears spectacles. He is not so famous as he was. You would hardly think of consulting him now about your marriage, or even about the price of goats upon London Bridge. As for Jenny,--your first, fond flame!--lively, romantic, black-eyed Jenny,--the reader of "Thaddeus of Warsaw,"--who sighed and wore blue ribbons on her bonnet,--who wrote love-notes,--who talked so tenderly of broken hearts,--who used a glass seal with a Cupid and a dart,--dear Jenny!--she is now the plump and thriving wife of the apothecary of the town! She sweeps out every morning at seven the little entry of the apothecary's house; she buys a "joint" twice a week from the butcher, and is particular to have the "knuckle" thrown in for soups; she wears a sky-blue calico gown, and dresses her hair in three little flat quirls on either side of her head, each one pierced through with a two-pronged hair-pin. She does not read "Thaddeus of Warsaw" now. II. _Man of the World._ Few persons live through the first periods of manhood without strong temptations to be counted "men of the world." The idea looms grandly among those vanities that hedge a man's approach to maturity. Clarence is in good training for the acceptance of this idea. The broken hope, which clouded his closing youth, shoots over its influence upon the dawn of manhood. Mortified pride had taught--as it always teaches--not caution only, but doubt, distrust, indifference. A new pride grows up on the ruins of the old, weak, and vain pride of youth. Then it was a pride of learning, or of affection; now it is a pride of indifference. Then the world proved bleak and cold, as contrasted with his shining dreams; and now he accepts the proof, and wins from it what he can. The man of the world puts on the method and measure of the world: he studies its humors. He gives up the boyish notion of a sincerity among men like that of youth: he lives to seem. He conquers such annoyances as the world may thrust upon him, in the shape of grief or losses, like a practical athlete of the ring. He studies moral sparring. With somewhat of this strange vanity growing on you, you do not suffer the heart to wake into life except in such fanciful dreams as tempt you back to the sunny slopes of childhood. In this mood you fall in with Dalton, who has just returned from a year passed in the French capital. There is an easy suavity and graceful indifference in his manner that chimes admirably with your humor. He is gracious, without needing to be kind. He is a friend, without any challenge or proffer of sincerity. He is just one of those adepts in world tactics which match him with all men, but which link him to none. He has made it his art to be desired and admired, but rarely to be trusted. You could not have a better teacher! Under such instruction you become disgusted for the time with any effort, or pulse of affection, which does not have immediate and practical bearing upon that success in life by which you measure your hopes. The dreams of love, of romantic adventure, of placid joy, have all gone out with the fantastic images to which your passionate youth had joined them. The world is now regarded as a tournament, where the gladiatorship of life is to be exhibited at your best endeavor. Its honors and joys lie in a brilliant pennon and a plaudit. Dalton is learned in those arts which make of action, not a duty, but a conquest; and sense of duty has expired in you with those romantic hopes to which you bound it, not as much through sympathy as ignorance. It is a cold and a bitterly selfish work that lies before you,--to be covered over with such borrowed show of smiles as men call affability. The heart wears a stout, brazen screen; its inclinations grow to the habit of your ambitious projects. In such mood come swift dreams of wealth,--not of mere accumulation, but of the splendor and parade which in our Western world are, alas! its chiefest attractions. You grow observant of markets, and estimate percentages. You fondle some speculation in your thought, until it grows into a gigantic scheme of profit; and if the venture prove successful, you follow the tide tremulously, until some sudden reverse throws you back upon the resources of your professional employ. But again as you see this and that one wearing the blazonry which wealth wins, and which the man of the world is sure to covet,--your weak soul glows again with the impassioned desire, and you hunger, with brute appetite and bestial eye, for riches. You see the mania around you, and it is relieved of odium by the community of error. You consult some gray old veteran in the war of gold, scarred with wounds, and crowned with honors, and watch eagerly for the words and the ways which have won him wealth. Your fingers tingle with mad expectancies; your eyes roam, lost in estimates. Your note-book shows long lines of figures. Your reading of the news centres in the stock-list. Your brow grows cramped with the fever of anxiety. Through whole church-hours your dreams range over the shadowy transactions of the week or the month to come. Even with old religious habit clinging fast to your soul, you dream now only of nice conformity, comfortable faith, high respectability; there lies very little in you of that noble consciousness of Duty performed,--of living up to the Life that is in you,--of grasping boldly and stoutly at those chains of Love which the Infinite Power has lowered to our reach. You do not dream of being, but of seeming. You spill the real essence, and clutch at the vial which has only a label of Truth. Great and holy thoughts of the Future,--shadowy, yet bold conceptions of the Infinite,--float past you dimly, and your hold is never strong enough to grapple them to you. They fly, like eagles, too near the sun; and there lies game below for your vulture beak to feed upon. [Great thoughts belong only and truly to him whose mind can hold them. No matter who first puts them in words, if they come to a soul and fill it, they belong to it,--whether they floated on the voice of others, or on the wings of silence and the night.] To be up with the fashion of the time, to be ignorant of plain things and people, and to be knowing in brilliancies, is a kind of Pelhamism that is very apt to overtake one in the first blush of manhood. To hold a fair place in the after-dinner table-talk, to meet distinction as a familiarity, to wear _salon_ honors with aplomb, to know affection so far as to wield it into grace of language, are all splendid achievements with a man of the world. Instruction is caught without asking it; and no ignorance so shames as ignorance of those forms by which natural impulse is subdued to the tone of civilian habit. You conceal what tells of the man, and cover it with what smacks of the _roué_. Perhaps under such training, and with a slight memory of early mortification to point your spirit, you affect those gallantries of heart and action which the world calls flirtation. You may study brilliancies of speech to wrap their net around those susceptible hearts whose habit is too _naïve_ by nature to wear the leaden covering of custom. You win approaches by artful counterfeit of earnestness, and dash away any _naïveté_ of confidence with some brave sophism of the world. A doubt or a distrust piques your pride, and makes attentions wear a humility that wins anew. An indifference piques you more, and throws into your art a counter-indifference,--lit up by bold flashes of feeling,--sparkling with careless brilliancies, and crowned with a triumph of neglect. It is curious how ingeniously a man's vanity will frame apologies for such action.--It is pleasant to give pleasure; you like to see a joyous sparkle of the eye, whether lit up by your presence or by some buoyant fancy. It is a beguiling task to weave words into some soft, melodious flow, that shall keep the ear and kindle the eye; and to strew it over with half-hidden praises, so deftly couched in double terms that their aroma shall only come to the heart hours afterward, and seem to be the merest accidents of truth. It is a happy art to make such subdued show of emotion as seems to struggle with pride, and to flush the eye with a moisture, of which you seem ashamed, and yet are proud. It is a pretty practice to throw an earnestness into look and gesture, that shall seem full of pleading, and yet--ask nothing! And yet it is hard to admire greatly the reputation of that man who builds his triumphs upon womanly weakness; that distinction is not over-enduring whose chiefest merit springs out of the delusions of a too trustful heart. The man, who wins it, wins only a poor sort of womanly distinction. Without power to cope with men, he triumphs over the weakness of the other sex only by hypocrisy. He wears none of the armor of Romans, and he parleys with Punic faith. ----Yet even now there is a lurking goodness in you that traces its beginning to the old garret-home,--there is an air in the harvest heats that whispers of the bloom of spring. And over your brilliant career as man of the world, however lit up by a morbid vanity, or galvanized by a lascivious passion, there will come at times the consciousness of a better heart, struggling beneath your cankered action,--like the low Vesuvian fire, reeking vainly under rough beds of tufa and scoriated lava. And as you smile in _loge_ or _salon_, with daring smiles, or press with villain fondness the hand of those lady-votaries of the same god you serve, there will gleam upon you over the waste of rolling years a memory that quickens again the nobler and bolder instincts of the heart. Childish recollections, with their purity and earnestness,--a sister's love,--a mother's solicitude, will flood your soul once more with a gushing sensibility that yearns for enjoyment. And the consciousness of some lingering nobility of affection, that can only grow great in mating itself with nobility of heart, will sweep off your puny triumphs, your Platonic friendships, your dashing coquetries, like the foul smoke of a city before a fresh breeze of the country autumn. III. _Manly Hope._ You are at home again; not your own home,--that is gone,--but at the home of Nelly and of Frank. The city heats of summer drive you to the country. You ramble, with a little kindling of old desires and memories, over the hill-sides that once bounded your boyish vision. Here you netted the wild rabbits, as they came out at dusk to feed; there, upon that tall chestnut, you cruelly maimed your first captive squirrel. The old maples are even now scarred with the rude cuts you gave them in sappy March. You sit down upon some height overlooking the valley where you were born; you trace the faint, silvery line of river; you detect by the leaning elm your old bathing-place upon the Saturdays of Summer. Your eye dwells upon some patches of pasture-wood which were famous for their nuts. Your rambling and saddened vision roams over the houses; it traces the familiar chimney-stacks; it searches out the low-lying cottages; it dwells upon the gray roof sleeping yonder under the sycamores. Tears swell in your eye as you gaze; you cannot tell whence or why they come. Yet they are tears eloquent of feeling. They speak of brother-children,--of boyish glee,--of the flush of young health,--of a mother's devotion,--of the home affections,--of the vanities of life,--of the wasting years,--of the Death that must shroud what friends remain, as it has shrouded what friends have gone,--and of that Great Hope, beaming on your seared manhood dimly from the upper world! Your wealth suffices for all the luxuries of life; there is no fear of coming want; health beats strong in your veins; you have learned to hold a place in the world with a man's strength, and a man's confidence. And yet in the view of those sweet scenes which belonged to early days, when neither strength, confidence, nor wealth were yours,--days never to come again,--a shade of melancholy broods upon your spirit, and covers with its veil all that fierce pride which your worldly wisdom has wrought. You visit again with Frank the country homestead of his grandfather: he is dead; but the old lady still lives; and blind Fanny, now drawing toward womanhood, wears yet through her darkened life the same air of placid content, and of sweet trustfulness in Heaven. The boys, whom you astounded with your stories of books, are gone, building up now with steady industry the queen cities of our new western land. The old clergyman is gone from the desk, and from under his sounding board; he sleeps beneath a brown stone slab in the churchyard. The stout deacon is dead; his wig and his wickedness rest together. The tall chorister sings yet; but they have now a bass-viol--handled by a new schoolmaster--in place of his tuning-fork; and the years have sown feeble quavers in his voice. Once more you meet at the home of Nelly the blue-eyed Madge. The sixpence is all forgotten; you cannot tell where your half of it is gone. Yet she is beautiful, just budding into the full ripeness of womanhood. Her eyes have a quiet, still joy, and hope beaming in them, like angel's looks. Her motions have a native grace and freedom that no culture can bestow. Her words have a gentle earnestness and honesty that could never nurture guile. You had thought after your gay experiences of the world to meet her with a kind condescension, as an old friend of Nelly's. But there is that in her eye which forbids all thought of condescension. There is that in her air which tells of a high womanly dignity, which can only be met on equal ground. Your pride is piqued. She has known--she must know your history; but it does not tame her. There is no marked and submissive appreciation of your gifts as a man of the world. She meets your happiest compliments with a very easy indifference; she receives your elegant civilities with a very assured brow. She neither courts your society, nor avoids it. She does not seek to provoke any special attention. And only when your old self glows in some casual kindness to Nelly, does her look beam with a flush of sympathy. This look touches you. It makes you ponder on the noble heart that lives in Madge. It makes you wish it were yours. But that is gone. The fervor and the honesty of a glowing youth is swallowed up in the flash and splendor of the world. A half-regret chases over you at nightfall, when solitude pierces you with the swift dart of gone-by memories. But at morning the regret dies in the glitter of ambitious purposes. The summer months linger; and still you linger with them. Madge is often with Nelly; and Madge is never less than Madge. You venture to point your attentions with a little more fervor; but she meets the fervor with no glow. She knows too well the habit of your life. Strange feelings come over you,--feelings like half-forgotten memories,--musical, dreamy, doubtful. You have seen a hundred faces more brilliant than that of Madge; you have pressed a hundred jewelled hands that have returned a half-pressure to yours. You do not exactly admire; to love you have forgotten; you only--linger! It is a soft autumn evening, and the harvest-moon is red and round over the eastern skirt of woods. You are attending Madge to that little cottage-home where lives that gentle and doting mother, who, in the midst of comparative poverty, cherishes that refined delicacy which never comes to a child but by inheritance. Madge has been passing the day with Nelly. Something--it may be the soft autumn air, wafting toward you the freshness of young days--moves you to speak as you have not ventured to speak, as your vanity has not allowed you to speak before. "You remember, Madge, (you have guarded this sole token of boyish intimacy,) our split sixpence?" "Perfectly;" it is a short word to speak, and there is no tremor in her tone,--not the slightest. "You have it yet?" "I dare say I have it somewhere;"--no tremor now; she is very composed. "That was a happy time;"--very great emphasis on the word happy. "Very happy;"--no emphasis anywhere. "I sometimes wish I might live it over again." "Yes?"--inquiringly. "There are, after all, no pleasures in the world like those." "No?"--inquiringly again. You thought you had learned to have language at command; you never thought, after so many years' schooling of the world, that your pliant tongue would play you truant. Yet now you are silent. The moon steals silvery into the light flakes of cloud, and the air is soft as May. The cottage is in sight. Again you risk utterance:-- "You must live very happily here." "I have very kind friends;"--the very is emphasized. "I am sure Nelly loves you very much." "Oh, I believe it!"--with great earnestness. You are at the cottage-door.-- "Good night, Maggie;"--very feelingly. "Good night, Clarence;"--very kindly; and she draws her hand coyly, and half tremulously, from your somewhat fevered grasp. You stroll away dreamily, watching the moon,--running over your fragmentary life,--half moody, half pleased, half hopeful. You come back stealthily, and with a heart throbbing with a certain wild sense of shame, to watch the light gleaming in the cottage. You linger in the shadows of the trees until you catch a glimpse of her figure gliding past the window. You bear the image home with you. You are silent on your return. You retire early, but you do not sleep early. ----If you were only as you were: if it were not too late! If Madge could only love you, as you know she will and must love one manly heart, there would be a world of joy opening before you. But it is too late! You draw out Nelly to speak of Madge: Nelly is very prudent. "Madge is a dear girl," she says. Does Nelly even distrust you? It is a sad thing to be too much a man of the world! You go back again to noisy, ambitious life: you try to drown old memories in its blaze and its vanities. Your lot seems cast beyond all change, and you task yourself with its noisy fulfilment. But amid the silence and the toil of your office-hours, a strange desire broods over your spirit,--a desire for more of manliness,--that manliness which feels itself a protector of loving and trustful innocence. You look around upon the faces in which you have smiled unmeaning smiles: there is nothing there to feed your dawning desires. You meet with those ready to court you by flattering your vanity, by retailing the praises of what you may do well, by odious familiarity, by brazen proffer of friendship, but you see in it only the emptiness and the vanity which you have studied to enjoy. Sickness comes over you, and binds you for weary days and nights,--in which life hovers doubtfully, and the lips babble secrets that you cherish. It is astonishing how disease clips a man from the artificialities of the world! Lying lonely upon his bed, moaning, writhing, suffering, his soul joins on to the universe of souls by only natural bonds. The factitious ties of wealth, of place, of reputation, vanish from his bleared eyes; and the earnest heart, deep under all, craves only heartiness! The old craving of the office silence comes back,--not with the proud wish only of being a protector, but--of being protected. And whatever may be the trust in that beneficent Power who "chasteneth whom he loveth," there is yet an earnest, human yearning toward some one, whose love--most, and whose duty--least, would call her to your side; whose soft hands would cool the fever of yours, whose step would wake a throb of joy, whose voice would tie you to life, and whose presence would make the worst of Death--an Adieu! As you gain strength once more, you go back to Nelly's home. Her kindness does not falter; every care and attention belong to you there. Again your eye rests upon that figure of Madge, and upon her face, wearing an even gentler expression as she sees you sitting pale and feeble by the old hearth-stone. She brings flowers--for Nelly: you beg Nelly to place them upon the little table at your side. It is as yet the only taste of the country that you can enjoy. You love those flowers. After a time you grow strong, and walk in the fields. You linger until nightfall. You pass by the cottage where Madge lives. It is your pleasantest walk. The trees are greenest in that direction; the shadows are softest; the flowers are thickest. It is strange--this feeling in you. It is not the feeling you had for Laura Dalton. It does not even remind of that. That was an impulse, but this is growth. That was strong, but this is strength. You catch sight of her little notes to Nelly; you read them over and over; you treasure them; you learn them by heart. There is something in the very writing that touches you. You bid her adieu with tones of kindness that tremble,--and that meet a half-trembling tone in reply. She is very good. ----If it were not too late! IV. _Manly Love._ And shall pride yield at length! ----Pride!--and what has love to do with pride? Let us see how it is. Madge is poor; she is humble. You are rich; you are a man of the world; you are met respectfully by the veterans of fashion; you have gained perhaps a kind of brilliancy of position. Would it then be a condescension to love Madge? Dare you ask yourself such a question? Do you not know--in spite of your worldliness--that the man or the woman, who _condescends_ to love, never loves in earnest? But again Madge is possessed of a purity, a delicacy, and a dignity that lift her far above you,--that make you feel your weakness and your unworthiness; and it is the deep and the mortifying sense of this unworthiness that makes you bolster yourself upon your pride. You _know_ that you do yourself honor in loving such grace and goodness; you know that you would be honored tenfold more than you deserve in being loved by so much grace and goodness. It scarce seems to you possible; it is a joy too great to be hoped for; and in the doubt of its attainment your old, worldly vanity comes in, and tells you to--beware; and to live on in the splendor of your dissipation and in the lusts of your selfish habit. Yet still underneath all there is a deep, low, heart-voice,--quickened from above,--which assures you that you are capable of better things; that you are not wholly lost; that a mine of unstarted tenderness still lies smouldering in your soul. And with this sense quickening your better nature, you venture the wealth of your whole heart-life upon the hope that now blazes on your path. ----You are seated at your desk, working with such zeal of labor as your ambitious projects never could command. It is a letter to Margaret Boyne that so tasks your love, and makes the veins upon your forehead swell with the earnestness of the employ. * * * * * ----"DEAR MADGE,--May I not call you thus, if only in memory of our childish affections; and might I dare to hope that a riper affection, which your character has awakened, may permit me to call you thus always? "If I have not ventured to speak, dear Madge, will you not believe that the consciousness of my own ill-desert has tied my tongue; will you not at least give me credit for a little remaining modesty of heart? You know my life, and you know my character,--what a sad jumble of errors and of misfortunes have belonged to each. You know the careless and the vain purposes which have made me recreant to the better nature which belonged to that sunny childhood, when we lived and grew up together. And will you not believe me when I say, that your grace of character and kindness of heart have drawn me back from the follies in which I lived, and quickened new desires which I thought to be wholly dead? Can I indeed hope that you will overlook all that has gained your secret reproaches, and confide in a heart which is made conscious of better things by the love you have inspired? "Ah, Madge, it is not with a vain show of words, or with any counterfeit of feeling, that I write now; you know it is not; you know that my heart is leaning toward you with the freshness of its noblest instincts; you know that--I love you! "Can I, dare I hope, that it is not spoken in vain? I had thought in my pride never to make such avowal,--never again to sue for affection; but your gentleness, your modesty, your virtues of life and heart, have conquered me! I am sure you will treat me with the generosity of a victor. "You know my weaknesses; I would not conceal from you a single one,--even to win you. I can offer nothing to you which will bear comparison in value with what is yours to bestow. I can only offer this feeble hand of mine--to guard you; and this poor heart--to love you! "Am I rash? Am I extravagant, in word, or in hope? Forgive it then, dear Madge, for the sake of our old childish affection; and believe me, when I say, that what is here written--is written honestly and tearfully. Adieu." * * * * * It is with no fervor of boyish passion that you fold this letter: it is with the trembling hand of eager and earnest manhood. They tell you that man is not capable of love: so the September sun is not capable of warmth! It may not indeed be so fierce as that of July; but it is steadier. It does not force great flaunting leaves into breadth and succulence, but it matures whole harvests of plenty! There is a deep and earnest soul pervading the reply of Madge that makes it sacred; it is full of delicacy, and full of hope. Yet it is not final. Her heart lies intrenched within the ramparts of Duty and of Devotion. It is a citadel of strength in the middle of the city of her affections. To win the way to it, there must be not only earnestness of love, but earnestness of life. Weeks roll by, and other letters pass and are answered,--a glow of warmth beaming on either side. You are again at the home of Nelly; she is very joyous; she is the confidante of Madge. Nelly feels, that with all your errors you have enough inner goodness of heart to make Madge happy; and she feels--doubly--that Madge has such excess of goodness as will cover your heart with joy. Yet she tells you very little. She will give you no full assurance of the love of Madge; she leaves that for yourself to win. She will even tease you in her pleasant way, until hope almost changes to despair, and your brow grows pale with the dread--that even now your unworthiness may condemn you. It is summer weather; and you have been walking over the hills of home with Madge and Nelly. Nelly has found some excuse to leave you,--glancing at you most teasingly as she hurries away. You are left sitting with Madge upon a bank tufted with blue violets. You have been talking of the days of childhood, and some word has called up the old chain of boyish feeling, and joined it to your new hope. What you would say crowds too fast for utterance, and you abandon it. But you take from your pocket that little, broken bit of sixpence,--which you have found after long search,--and without a word, but with a look that tells your inmost thought, you lay it in the half-opened hand of Madge. She looks at you with a slight suffusion of color,--seems to hesitate a moment,--raises her other hand, and draws from her bosom by a bit of blue ribbon a little locket. She touches a spring, and there falls beside your relique--another, that had once belonged to it. Hope glows now like the sun. ----"And you have worn this, Maggie?" ----"Always!" "Dear Madge!" "Dear Clarence!" ----And you pass your arm now, unchecked, around that yielding, graceful figure, and fold her to your bosom with the swift and blessed assurance that your fullest and noblest dream of love is won! V. _Cheer and Children._ What a glow there is to the sun! What warmth--yet it does not oppress you: what coolness--yet it is not too cool. The birds sing sweetly; you catch yourself watching to see what new songsters they can be: they are only the old robins and thrushes, yet what a new melody is in their throats! The clouds hang gorgeous shapes upon the sky,--shapes they could hardly ever have fashioned before. The grass was never so green, the buttercups were never so plentiful; there was never such a life in the leaves. It seems as if the joyousness in you gave a throb to nature that made every green thing buoyant. Faces, too, are changed: men look pleasantly; children are all charming children; even babies look tender and lovable. The street-beggar at your door is suddenly grown into a Belisarius, and is one of the most deserving heroes of modern times. Your mind is in a continued ferment; you glide through your toil--dashing out sparkles of passion--like a ship in the sea. No difficulty daunts you: there is a kind of buoyancy in your soul that rocks over danger or doubt, as sea-waves heave calmly and smoothly over sunken rocks. You grow unusually amiable and kind; you are earnest in your search of friends; you shake hands with your office-boy as if he were your second cousin. You joke cheerfully with the stout washerwoman, and give her a shilling over-change, and insist upon her keeping it, and grow quite merry at the recollection of it. You tap your hackman on the shoulder very familiarly, and tell him he is a capital fellow; and don't allow him to whip his horses, except when driving to the post-office. You even ask him to take a glass of beer with you upon some chilly evening. You drink to the health of his wife. He says he has no wife; whereupon you think him a very miserable man, and give him a dollar by way of consolation. You think all the editorials in the morning papers are remarkably well written,--whether upon your side, or upon the other. You think the stock-market has a very cheerful look, even with Erie--of which you are a large holder--down to seventy-five. You wonder why you never admired Mrs. Hemans before, or Stoddard, or any of the rest. You give a pleasant twirl to your fingers as you saunter along the street, and say,--but not so loud as to be overheard,--"She is mine; she is mine!" You wonder if Frank ever loved Nelly one half as well as you love Madge. You feel quite sure he never did. You can hardly conceive how it is that Madge has not been seized before now by scores of enamored men, and borne off, like the Sabine women in Roman history. You chuckle over your future, like a boy who has found a guinea in groping for sixpences. You read over the marriage service,--thinking of the time when you will take _her_ hand, and slip the ring upon _her_ finger,--and repeat, after the clergyman, "for richer--for poorer; for better--for worse!" A great deal of "worse" there will be about it, you think! Through all, your heart cleaves to that sweet image of the beloved Madge, as light cleaves to day. The weeks leap with a bound; and the months only grow long when you approach that day which is to make her yours. There are no flowers rare enough to make bouquets for her; diamonds are too dim for her to wear; pearls are tame. ----And after marriage the weeks are even shorter than before: you wonder why on earth all the single men in the world do not rush tumultuously to the Altar; you look upon them all as a travelled man will look upon some conceited Dutch boor who has never been beyond the limits of his cabbage-garden. Married men, on the contrary, you regard as fellow-voyagers; and look upon their wives--ugly as they may be--as better than none. You blush a little at first telling your butcher what "your wife" would like; you bargain with the grocer for sugars and teas, and wonder if he _knows_ that you are a married man. You practise your new way of talk upon your office-boy: you tell him that "your wife" expects you home to dinner; and are astonished that he does not stare to hear you say it! You wonder if the people in the omnibus know that Madge and you are just married; and if the driver knows that the shilling you hand to him is for "self and wife." You wonder if anybody was ever so happy before, or ever will be so happy again. You enter your name upon the hotel books as "Clarence ---- and Wife"; and come back to look at it, wondering if anybody else has noticed it,--and thinking that it looks remarkably well. You cannot help thinking that every third man you meet in the hall wishes he possessed your wife; nor do you think it very sinful in him to wish it. You fear it is placing temptation in the way of covetous men to put Madge's little gaiters outside the chamber-door at night. Your home, when it is entered, is just what it should be,--quiet, small,--with everything she wishes, and nothing more than she wishes. The sun strikes it in the happiest possible way; the piano is the sweetest-toned in the world; the library is stocked to a charm;--and Madge, that blessed wife, is there, adorning and giving life to it all. To think even of her possible death is a suffering you class with the infernal tortures of the Inquisition. You grow twin of heart and of purpose. Smiles seem made for marriage; and you wonder how you ever wore them before! * * * * * So a year and more wears off of mingled home-life, visiting, and travel. A new hope and joy lightens home: there is a child there. ----What a joy to be a father! What new emotions crowd the eye with tears, and make the hand tremble! What a benevolence radiates from you toward the nurse,--toward the physician,--toward everybody! What a holiness and sanctity of love grows upon your old devotion to that wife of your bosom--the mother of your child! The excess of joy seems almost to blur the stories of happiness which attach to heaven. You are now joined, as you were never joined before, to the great family of man. Your name and blood will live after you; nor do you once think (what father can?) but that it will live honorably and well. With what a new air you walk the streets! With what a triumph you speak, in your letter to Nelly, of "your family!" Who, that has not felt it, knows what it is to be "a man of family!" How weak now seem all the imaginations of your single life; what bare, dry skeletons of the reality they furnished! You pity the poor fellows who have no wives or children--from your soul; you count their smiles as empty smiles, put on to cover the lack that is in them. There is a freemasonry among fathers that they know nothing of. You compassionate them deeply; you think them worthy objects of some charitable association; you would cheerfully buy tracts for them, if they would but read them,--tracts on marriage and children. ----And then "the boy,"--_such_ a boy! There was a time when you thought all babies very much alike;--alike? Is your boy like anything, except the wonderful fellow that he is? Was there ever a baby seen, or even read of, like that baby! ----Look at him: pick him up in his long, white gown: he may have an excess of color,--but such a pretty color! he is a little pouty about the mouth,--but such a mouth! His hair is a little scant, and he is rather wandering in the eye,--but, Good Heavens, what an eye! There was a time when you thought it very absurd for fathers to talk about their children; but it does not seem at all absurd now. You think, on the contrary, that your old friends, who used to sup with you at the club, would be delighted to know how your baby is getting on, and how much he measures around the calf of the leg! If they pay you a visit, you are quite sure they are in an agony to see Frank; and you hold the little squirming fellow in your arms, half conscience-smitten for provoking them to such envy as they must be suffering. You make a settlement upon the boy with a chuckle,--as if you were treating yourself to a mint-julep, instead of conveying away a few thousands of seven per cents. ----Then the boy develops astonishingly. What a head,--what a foot,--what a voice! And he is so quiet withal,--never known to cry, except under such provocation as would draw tears from a heart of adamant; in short, for the first six months he is never anything but gentle, patient, earnest, loving, intellectual, and magnanimous. You are half afraid that some of the physicians will be reporting the case, as one of the most remarkable instances of perfect moral and physical development on record. But the years roll on, in the which your extravagant fancies die into the earnest maturity of a father's love. You struggle gayly with the cares that life brings to your door. You feel the strength of three beings in your single arm; and feel your heart warming toward God and man with the added warmth of two other loving and trustful beings. How eagerly you watch the first tottering step of that boy; how you riot in the joy and pride that swell in that mother's eyes, as they follow his feeble, staggering motions! Can God bless his creatures more than he has blessed that dear Madge and you? Has Heaven even richer joys than live in that home of yours? By-and-by he speaks; and minds tie together by language, as the hearts have long tied by looks. He wanders with you feebly, and with slow, wandering paces, upon the verge of the great universe of thought. His little eye sparkles with some vague fancy that comes upon him first by language. Madge teaches him the words of affection and of thankfulness; and she teaches him to lisp infant prayer; and by secret pains (how could she be so secret?) instructs him in some little phrase of endearment that she knows will touch your heart; and then she watches your coming; and the little fellow runs toward you, and warbles out his lesson of love in tones that forbid you any answer,--save only those brimming eyes, turned first on her, and then on him,--and poorly concealed by the quick embrace, and the kisses which you shower in transport! Still slip on the years, like brimming bowls of nectar! Another Madge is sister to Frank; and a little Nelly is younger sister to this other Madge. ----Three of them! a charmed and mystic number, which, if it be broken in these young days,--as, alas, it may be!--will only yield a cherub angel to float over you, and to float over them,--to wean you, and to wean them, from this world, where all joys do perish, to that seraph world where joys do last forever. VI. _A Dream of Darkness._ Is our life a sun, that it should radiate light and heat forever? Do not the calmest and brightest days of autumn show clouds, that drift their ragged edges over the golden disk, and bear down swift with their weight of vapors, until the sun's whole surface is shrouded; and you can see no shadow of tree or flower upon the land, because of the greater and gulping shadow of the cloud? Will not life bear me out; will not truth, earnest and stern, around me make good the terrible imagination that now comes swooping, heavily and darkly, upon my brain? You are living in a little village not far away from the city. It is a graceful and luxurious home that you possess. The holly and the laurel gladden its lawn in winter; and bowers of blossoms sweeten it through all the summer. You know each day of your return from the town, where first you will catch sight of that graceful figure flitting like a shadow of love beneath the trees; you know well where you will meet the joyous and noisy welcome of stout Frank, and of tottling Nelly. Day after day and week after week they fail not. A friend sometimes attends you; and a friend to you is always a friend to Madge. In the city you fall in once more with your old acquaintance Dalton,--the graceful, winning, yet dissolute man that his youth promised. He wishes to see your cottage home. Your heart half hesitates; yet it seems folly to cherish distrust of a boon companion in so many of your revels. Madge receives him with that sweet smile which welcomes all your friends. He gains the heart of Frank by talking of his toys and of his pigeons; and he wins upon the tenderness of the mother by his attentions to the child. Even you repent of your passing shadow of dislike, and feel your heart warming toward him as he takes little Nelly in his arms and provokes her joyous prattle. Madge is unbounded in her admiration of your friend: he renews, at your solicitation, his visit: he proves kinder than ever; and you grow ashamed of your distrust. Madge is not learned in the arts of a city life; the accomplishments of a man-of-the world are almost new to her; she listens with eagerness to Dalton's graphic stories of foreign _fêtes_ and luxury; she is charmed with his clear, bold voice, and with his manly execution of little operatic airs. ----She is beautiful,--that wife who has made your heart whole by its division,--fearfully beautiful! And she is not cold, or impassive: her heart, though fond and earnest, is yet human;--we are all human. The accomplishments and graces of the world must needs take hold upon her fancy. And a fear creeps over you that you dare not whisper,--that those graces may cast into the shade your own yearning and silent tenderness. But this is a selfish fear, that you think you have no right to cherish. She takes pleasure in the society of Dalton,--what right have you to say her--nay? His character indeed is not altogether such as you could wish; but will it not be selfish to tell her even this? Will it not be even worse, and show taint of a lurking suspicion, which you know would wound her grievously? You struggle with your distrust by meeting him more kindly than ever; yet at times there will steal over you a sadness, which that dear Madge detects, and sorrowing in her turn, tries to draw away from you by the touching kindness of sympathy. Her look and manner kill all your doubt; and you show that it is gone, and piously conceal the cause by welcoming in gayer tones than ever the man who has fostered it by his presence. Business calls you away to a great distance from home: it is the first long parting of your real manhood. And can suspicion, or a fear, lurk amid those tearful embraces? Not one,--thank God,--not one! Your letters, frequent and earnest, bespeak your increased devotion; and the embraces you bid her give to the sweet ones of your little flock, tell of the calmness and sufficiency of your love. Her letters too are running over with affection;--what though she mentions the frequent visits of Dalton, and tells stories of his kindness and attachment? You feel safe in her strength; and yet--yet there is a brooding terror, that rises out of your knowledge of Dalton's character. And can you tell her this; can you stab her fondness, now that you are away, with even a hint of what would crush her delicate nature? What you know to be love, and what you fancy to be duty, struggle long; but love conquers. And with sweet trust in her, and double trust in God, you await your return. That return will be speedier than you think. You receive one day a letter: it is addressed in the hand of a friend, who is often at the cottage, but who has rarely written to you. What can have tempted him now? Has any harm come near your home? No wonder your hands tremble at the opening of that sheet; no wonder that your eyes run like lightning over the hurried lines. Yet there is little in them, very little. The hand is stout and fair. It is a calm letter, a friendly letter; but it is short, terribly short. It bids you come home--"_at once!_" ----And you go. It is a pleasant country you have to travel through; but you see very little of the country. It is a dangerous voyage, perhaps, you have to make; but you think very little of the danger. The creaking of the timbers, and the lashing of the waves, are quieting music compared with the storm of your raging fears. All the while you associate Dalton with the terror that seems to hang over you; and yet, your trust in Madge is true as Heaven! At length you approach that home: there lies your cottage resting sweetly upon its hill-side; and the autumn winds are soft; and the maple-tops sway gracefully, all clothed in the scarlet of their frost-dress. Once again as the sun sinks behind the mountain with a trail of glory, and the violet haze tints the gray clouds like so many robes of angels, you take heart and courage, and with firm reliance on the Providence that fashions all forms of beauty, whether in heaven or in heart, your fears spread out, and vanish with the waning twilight. She is not at the cottage-door to meet you; she does not expect you; and yet your bosom heaves, and your breathing is quick. Your friend meets you, and shakes your hand.--"Clarence," he says, with the tenderness of an old friend,--"be a man!" Alas, you are a man;--with a man's heart, and a man's fear, and a man's agony! Little Frank comes bounding toward you joyously--yet under traces of tears:--"Oh, papa, mother is gone!" ----"Gone!" And you turn to the face of your friend; it is well he is near by, or you would have fallen. He can tell you very little; he has known the character of Dalton; he has seen with fear his assiduous attentions--tenfold multiplied since your leave. He has trembled for the issue: this very morning he observed a travelling carriage at the door;--they drove away together. You have no strength to question him. You see that he fears the worst: he does not know Madge so well as you. ----And can it be? Are you indeed widowed with that most terrible of widowhoods? Is your wife living, and yet--lost! Talk not to such a man of the woes of sickness, of poverty, of death; he will laugh at your mimicry of grief. ----All is blackness; whichever way you turn, it is the same; there is no light; your eye is put out; your soul is desolate forever! The heart by which you had grown up into the full stature of joy and blessing, is rooted out of you, and thrown like something loathsome, at which the carrion dogs of the world scent and snuffle! They will point at you, as the man who has lost all that he prized; and she has stolen it, whom he prized more than what was stolen! And he, the accursed miscreant----. But no, it can never be! Madge is as true as Heaven! Yet she is not there: whence comes the light that is to cheer you? ----Your children? Ay, your children,--your little Nelly,--your noble Frank,--they are yours,--doubly, trebly, tenfold yours, now that she, their mother, is a mother no more to them forever! Ay, close your doors; shut out the world; draw close your curtains; fold them to your heart,--your crushed, bleeding, desolate heart! Lay your forehead to the soft cheek of your noble boy;--beware, beware how you dampen that damask cheek with your scalding tears: yet you cannot help it; they fall--great drops--a river of tears, as you gather him convulsively to your bosom! "Father, why do you cry so?" says Frank, with the tears of dreadful sympathy starting from those eyes of childhood. ----"Why, papa?"--mimes little Nelly. ----Answer them, if you dare! Try it;--what words--blundering, weak words--choked with agony--leading nowhere--ending in new and convulsive clasps of your weeping, motherless children! Had she gone to her grave, there would have been a holy joy, a great and swelling grief indeed,--but your poor heart would have found a rest in the quiet churchyard; and your feelings, rooted in that cherished grave, would have stretched up toward Heaven their delicate leaves, and caught the dews of His grace, who watcheth the lilies. But now,--with your heart cast underfoot, or buffeted on the lips of a lying world,--finding no shelter and no abiding place!--alas, we do guess at infinitude only by suffering! ----Madge, Madge! can this be so? Are you not still the same sweet, guileless child of Heaven? VII. _Peace._ It is a dream,--fearful, to be sure, but only a dream! Madge _is_ true. That soul is honest; it could not be otherwise. God never made it to be false; He never made the sun for darkness. And before the evening has waned to midnight, sweet day has broken on your gloom;--Madge is folded to your bosom, sobbing fearfully,--not for guilt, or any shadow of guilt, but for the agony she reads upon your brow, and in your low sighs. The mystery is all cleared by a few lightning words from her indignant lips, and her whole figure trembles, as she shrinks within your embrace, with the thought of that great evil that seemed to shadow you. The villain has sought by every art to beguile her into appearances which should compromise her character and so wound her delicacy as to take away the courage for return; he has even wrought upon her affection for you as his master-weapon: a skilfully contrived story of some accident that had befallen you, had wrought upon her--to the sudden and silent leave of home. But he has failed. At the first suspicion of his falsity, her dignity and virtue shivered all his malice. She shudders at the bare thought of that fiendish scheme which has so lately broken on her view. "Oh, Clarence, Clarence, could you for one moment believe this of me?" "Dear Madge, forgive me if a dreamy horror did for an instant palsy my better thought;--it is gone utterly; it will never, never come again!" And there she leans with her head pillowed on your shoulder, the same sweet angel that has led you in the way of light, and who is still your blessing and your pride. He--and you forbear to name his name--is gone,--flying vainly from the consciousness of guilt with the curse of Cain upon him,--hastening toward the day when Satan shall clutch his own! A heavenly peace descends upon you that night,--all the more sacred and calm for the fearful agony that has gone before. A Heaven, that seemed lost, is yours. A love, that you had almost doubted, is beyond all suspicion. A heart, that in the madness of your frenzy you had dared to question, you worship now, with blushes of shame. You thank God for this great goodness, as you never thanked him for any earthly blessing before; and with this twin gratitude lying on your hearts, and clearing your face to smiles, you live on together the old life of joy and of affection. * * * * * Again with brimming nectar the years fill up their vases. Your children grow into the same earnest joyousness, and with the same home faith, which lightened upon your young dreams, and toward which you seem to go back, as you riot with them in their Christmas joys, or upon the velvety lawn of June. Anxieties indeed overtake you, but they are those anxieties which only the selfish would avoid,--anxieties that better the heart with a great weight of tenderness. It may be that your mischievous Frank runs wild with the swift blood of boyhood, and that the hours are long which wait his coming. It may be that your heart echoes in silence the mother's sobs, as she watches his fits of waywardness, and showers upon his very neglect excess of love. Danger perhaps creeps upon little, joyous Nelly, which makes you tremble for her life; the mother's tears are checked that she may not deepen your grief; and her care guards the little sufferer like a Providence. The nights hang long and heavy; dull, stifled breathing wakes the chamber with ominous sound; the mother's eye scarce closes, but rests with fond sadness upon the little struggling victim of sickness; her hand rests like an angel touch upon the brow, all beaded with the heats of fever; the straggling, gray light of morning breaks through the crevices of the closed blinds,--bringing stir and bustle to the world, but in your home--lighting only the darkness. Hope, sinking in the mother's heart, takes hold on Faith in God; and her prayer, and her placid look of submission,--more than all your philosophy,--add strength to your faltering courage. But little Nelly brightens; her faded features take on bloom again; she knows you; she presses your hand; she draws down your cheek to her parched lip; she kisses you, and smiles. The mother's brow loses its shadow; day dawns within as well as without, and on bended knees God is thanked! Perhaps poverty faces you;--your darling schemes break down. One by one, with failing heart, you strip the luxuries from life. But the sorrow which oppresses you is not the selfish sorrow which the lone man feels: it is far nobler; its chiefest mourning is over the despoiled home. Frank must give up his promised travel; Madge must lose her favorite pony; Nelly must be denied her little _fête_ upon the lawn. The home itself, endeared by so many scenes of happiness and by so many of suffering, must be given up. It is hard, very hard, to tear away your wife from the flowers, the birds, the luxuries, that she has made so dear. Now she is far stronger than you. She contrives new joys; she wears a holy calm; she cheers by a new hopefulness; she buries even the memory of luxury in the riches of the humble home that her wealth of heart endows. Her soul, catching radiance from that heavenly world where her hope lives, kindles amid the growing shadows, and sheds balm upon the little griefs,--like the serene moon, slanting the dead sun's life, upon the night! Courage wakes in the presence of those dependent on your toil. Love arms your hand and quickens your brain. Resolutions break large from the swelling soul. Energy leaps into your action like light. Gradually you bring back into your humble home a few traces of the luxury that once adorned it. That wife, whom it is your greatest pleasure to win to smiles, wears a half-sad look as she meets these proofs of love; she fears that you are perilling too much for her pleasure. ----For the first time in life you deceive her. You have won wealth again; you now step firmly upon your new-gained sandals of gold. But you conceal it from her. You contrive a little scheme of surprise, with Frank alone in the secret. You purchase again the old home; you stock it, as far as may be, with the old luxuries; a new harp is in the place of that one which beguiled so many hours of joy; new and cherished flowers bloom again upon the windows; her birds hang, and warble their melody where they warbled it before. A pony--like as possible to the old--is there for Madge; a fête is secretly contrived upon the lawn. You even place the old, familiar books upon the parlor-table. The birthday of your own Madge is approaching,--a _fête_ you never pass by without home rejoicings. You drive over with her upon that morning for another look at the old place; a cloud touches her brow,--but she yields to your wish. An old servant--whom you had known in better days--throws open the gates. ----"It is too, too sad," says Madge. "Let us go back, Clarence, to our own home;--we are happy there." ----"A little farther, Madge." The wife steps slowly over what seems the sepulchre of so many pleasures; the children gambol as of old, and pick flowers. But the mother checks them. "They are not ours now, my children!" You stroll to the very door; the goldfinches are hanging upon the wall; the mignonette is in the window. You feel the hand of Madge trembling upon your arm; she is struggling with her weakness. A tidy waiting-woman shows you into the old parlor:--there is a harp; and there, too, such books as we loved to read. Madge is overcome; now she entreats:--"Let us go away, Clarence!" and she hides her face. ----"Never, dear Madge, never! it is yours--all yours!" She looks up in your face; she sees your look of triumph; she catches sight of Frank bursting in at the old hall-door all radiant with joy. ----"Frank!--Clarence!"--the tears forbid any more. "God bless you, Madge! God bless you!" * * * * * And thus in peace and in joy MANHOOD passes on into the third season of our life--even as golden AUTUMN sinks slowly into the tomb of WINTER. _WINTER_; OR, _THE DREAMS OF AGE_ _DREAMS OF AGE._ _Winter._ Slowly, thickly, fastly, fall the snow-flakes,--like the seasons upon the life of man. At the first they lose themselves in the brown mat of herbage, or gently melt, as they fall upon the broad stepping-stone at the door. But as hour after hour passes, the feathery flakes stretch their white cloak plainly on the meadow, and chilling the doorstep with their multitude, cover it with a mat of pearl. The dried grass-tips pierce the mantle of white, like so many serried spears; but as the storm goes softly on, they sink one by one to their snowy tomb, and presently show nothing of all their army, save one or two straggling banners of blackened and shrunken daisies. Across the wide meadow that stretches from my window, I can see nothing of those hills which were so green in summer; between me and them lie only the soft, slow-moving masses, filling the air with whiteness I catch only a glimpse of one gaunt and bare-armed oak, looming through the feathery multitude like a tall ship's spars breaking through fog. The roof of the barn is covered; and the leaking eaves show dark stains of water that trickle down the weather-beaten boards. The pear-trees, that wore such weight of greenness in the leafy June, now stretch their bare arms to the snowy blast, and carry upon each tiny bough a narrow burden of winter. The old house-dog marches stately through the strange covering of earth, and seems to ponder on the welcome he will show,--and shakes the flakes from his long ears, and with a vain snap at a floating feather he stalks again to his dry covert in the shed. The lambs that belonged to the meadow flock, with their feeding-ground all covered, seem to wonder at their losses; but take courage from the quiet air of the veteran sheep, and gambol after them, as they move sedately toward the shelter of the barn. The cat, driven from the kitchen-door, beats a coy retreat, with long reaches of her foot, upon the yielding surface. The matronly hens saunter out at a little lifting of the storm, and eye curiously, with heads half turned, their sinking steps, and then fall back, with a quiet cluck of satisfaction, to the wholesome gravel by the stable-door. By-and-by the snow-flakes pile more leisurely: they grow large and scattered, and come more slowly than before. The hills, that were brown, heave into sight--great, rounded billows of white. The gray woods look shrunken to half their height, and stand waving in the storm. The wind freshens, and scatters the light flakes that crown the burden of the snow; and as the day droops, a clear, bright sky of steel color cleaves the land and clouds, and sends down a chilling wind to bank the walls and to freeze the storm. The moon rises full and round, and plays with a joyous chill over the glistening raiment of the land. I pile my fire with the clean-cleft hickory; and musing over some sweet story of the olden time, I wander into a rich realm of thought, until my eyes grow dim, and dreaming of battle and of prince, I fall to sleep in my old farm-chamber. At morning I find my dreams all written on the window in crystals of fairy shape. The cattle, one by one, with ears frost-tipped, and with frosted noses, wend their way to the watering-place in the meadow. One by one they drink, and crop at the stunted herbage which the warm spring keeps green and bare. A hound bays in the distance; the smoke of cottages rises straight toward heaven; a lazy jingle of sleigh-bells wakens the quiet of the high-road; and upon the hills the leafless woods stand low, like crouching armies, with guns and spears in rest; and among them the scattered spiral pines rise like bannermen, uttering with their thousand tongues of green the proud war-cry--"God is with us!" But the sky of winter is as capricious as the sky of spring, even as the old wander in thought, like the vagaries of a boy. Before noon the heavens are mantled with a leaden gray; the eaves, that leaked in the glow of the sun, now tell their tale of morning's warmth in crystal ranks of icicles. The cattle seek their shelter; the few lingering leaves of the white-oaks rustle dismally; the pines breathe sighs of mourning. As the night darkens, and deepens the storm, the house-dog bays; the children crouch in the wide chimney-corners; the sleety rain comes in sharp gusts. And as I sit by the light leaping blaze in my chamber, the scattered hail-drops beat upon my window, like the tappings of an OLD MAN'S cane. I. _What is Gone._ Gone! Did it ever strike you, my reader, how much meaning lies in that little monosyllable--gone? Say it to yourself at nightfall, when the sun has sunk under the hills, and the crickets chirp,--"gone." Say it to yourself when the night is far over, and you wake with some sudden start from pleasant dreams,--"gone." Say it to yourself in some country churchyard, where your father, or your mother, sleeps under the blooming violets of spring,--"gone." Say it in your sobbing prayer to Heaven, as you cling lovingly, but oh, how vainly, to the hand of your sweet wife,--"gone!" Ay, is there not meaning in it? And now, what is gone,--or rather what is not gone? Childhood is gone, with all its blushes and fairness,--with all its health and wantoning,--with all its smiles like glimpses of heaven, and all its tears which were but the suffusion of joy. Youth is gone,--bright, hopeful youth, when you counted the years with jewelled numbers, and hung lamps of ambition on your path, which lighted the palace of renown; when the days were woven into weeks of blithe labor, and the weeks were rolled into harvest months of triumph, and the months were bound into golden sheaves of years,--all gone! The strength and pride of manhood is gone; your heart and soul have stamped their deepest dye; the time of power is past; your manliness has told its tale henceforth your career is _down_;--hitherto you have journeyed _up_. You look back upon a decade as you once looked upon a half score of months; a year has become to your slackened memory, and to your dull perceptions, like a week of childhood. Suddenly and swiftly come past you great whirls of gone-by thought, and wrecks of vain labor, eddying upon the stream that rushes to the grave. The sweeping outlines of life, that lay once before the vision,--rolling into wide billows of years, like easy lifts of a broad mountain-range,--now seem close-packed together as with a Titan hand, and you see only crowded, craggy heights,--like Alpine fastnesses,--parted with glaciers of grief, and leaking abundant tears! Your friends are gone; they who counselled and advised you, and who protected your weakness, will guard it no more forever. One by one they have dropped away as you have journeyed on; and yet your journey does not seem a long one. Life at the longest is but a bubble that bursts so soon as it is rounded. Nelly--your sweet sister, to whom your heart clung so fondly in the young days, and to whom it has clung ever since in the strongest bonds of companionship--is gone--with the rest! Your thought--wayward now, and flickering--runs over the old days with quick and fevered step; it brings back, faintly as it may, the noisy joys, and the safety, that belonged to the old garret-roof; it figures again the image of that calm-faced father,--long since sleeping beside your mother; it rests like a shadow upon the night when Charlie died; it grasps the old figures of the schoolroom, and kindles again (how strange is memory) the fire that shed its lustre upon the curtains, and the ceiling, as you lay groaning with your first hours of sickness. Your flitting recollection brings back with gushes of exultation the figure of that little, blue-eyed hoiden,--Madge,--as she came with her work to pass the long evenings with Nelly; it calls again the shy glances that you cast upon her, and your _naïve_ ignorance of all the little counter-play that might well have passed between Frank and Nelly. Your mother's form too, clear and distinct, comes upon the wave of your rocking thought; her smile touches you now in age as it never touched you in boyhood. The image of that fair Miss Dalton, who led your fancy into such mad captivity, glides across your vision like the fragment of a crazy dream long gone by. The country home, where lived the grandfather of Frank, gleams kindly in the sunlight of your memory; and still,--poor, blind Fanny--long since gathered to that rest where her closed eyes will open upon visions of joy--draws forth a sigh of pity. Then comes up that sweetest and brightest vision of love, and the doubt and care which ran before it,--when your hope groped eagerly through your pride and worldliness toward the sainted purity of her whom you know to be--all too good,--when you trembled at the thought of your own vices and blackness in the presence of her who seemed virtue's self. And even now your old heart bounds with joy as you recall the first timid assurance that you were blessed in the possession of her love, and that you might live in her smiles. Your thought runs like floating melody over the calm joy that followed you through so many years,--to the prattling children, who were there to bless your path. How poor seem now your transports, as you met their childish embraces, and mingled in their childish employ; how utterly weak the actual, when compared with that glow of affection which memory lends to the scene! Yet all this is gone; and the anxieties are gone, which knit your heart so strongly to those children, and to her--the mother,--anxieties which distressed you,--which you would eagerly have shunned, yet whose memory you would not now bargain away for a king's ransom! What were the sunlight worth, if clouds did not sometimes hide its brightness; what were the spring, or the summer, if the lessons of the chilling winter did not teach us the story of their warmth? The days are gone too, in which you may have lingered under the sweet suns of Italy,--with the cherished one beside you, and the eager children, learning new prattle in the soft language of those Eastern lands. The evenings are gone, in which you loitered under the trees with those dear ones under the light of a harvest-moon, and talked of your blooming hopes, and of the stirring plans of your manhood. There are no more ambitious hopes, no more sturdy plans! Life's work has rounded into the evening that shortens labor. And as you loiter in dreams over the wide waste of what is gone,--a mingled array of griefs and of joys, of failures and of triumphs,--you bless God that there has been so much of joy belonging to your shattered life; and you pray God, with the vain fondness that belongs to a parent's heart, that more of joy, and less of toil, may come near to the cherished ones who bear up your hope and name. And with your silent prayer come back the old teachings, and vagaries of the boyish heart in its reaches toward Heaven. You recall the old church-reckoning of your goodness: is there much more of it now than then? Is not Heaven just as high, and the world as sadly broad? Alas, for the poor tale of goodness which age brings to the memory! There may be crowning acts of benevolence, shining here and there; but the margin of what has not been done is very broad. How weak and insignificant seems the story of life's goodness and profit, when Death begins to slant his shadow upon our souls! How infinite in the comparison seems that Eternal goodness which is crowned with mercy. How self vanishes, like a blasted thing, and only lives--if it lives at all--in the glow of that redeeming light which radiates from the CROSS and the THRONE! II. _What is Left._ But much as there is gone of life, and of its joys, very much remains,--very much in earnest, and very much more in hope. Still you see visions, and you dream dreams, of the times that are to come. Your home and heart are left; within that home, the old Bible holds its wonted place, which was the monitor of your boyhood; and now, more than ever, it prompts those reverent reaches of the spirit, which go beyond even the track of dreams. That cherished Madge, the partner of your life and joy, still lingers, though her step is feeble, and her eyes are dimmed;--not as once attracting you by any outward show of beauty; your heart, glowing through the memory of a life of joy, needs no such stimulant to the affections. Your hearts are knit together by a habit of growth, and a unanimity of desire. There is less to remind of the vanities of earth, and more to quicken the hopes of a time when body yields to spirit. Your own poor, battered hulk wants no jaunty-trimmed craft for consort; but twin of heart and soul, as you are twin of years, you float tranquilly toward that haven which lies before us all. Your children, now almost verging on maturity, bless your hearth and home. Not one is gone. Frank indeed--that wild fellow of a youth, who has wrought your heart into perplexing anxieties again and again, as you have seen the wayward dashes of his young blood--is often away. But his heart yet centres where yours centres; and his absence is only a nearer and bolder strife with that fierce world whose circumstances every man of force and energy is born to conquer. His return from time to time with that proud figure of opening manliness, and that full flush of health, speaks to your affections as you could never have believed it would. It is not for a man, who is the father of a man, to show any weakness of the heart, or any over-sensitiveness, in those ties which bind him to his kin. And yet--yet, as you sit by your fireside, with your clear, gray eye feasting in its feebleness on that proud figure of a man who calls you "father,"--and as you see his fond and loving attentions to that one who has been your partner in all anxieties and joys, there _is_ a throbbing within your bosom that makes you almost wish him young again,--that you might embrace him now, as when he warbled in your rejoicing ear those first words of love!--Ah, how little does a son know the secret and craving tenderness of a parent,--how little conception has he of those silent bursts of fondness and of joy which attend his coming, and which crown his parting! There is young Madge too,--dark-eyed, tall, with a pensive shadow resting on her face,--the very image of refinement and of delicacy. She is thoughtful;--not breaking out, like the hoiden, flax-haired Nelly, into bursts of joy and singing,--but stealing upon your heart with a gentle and quiet tenderness that diffuses itself throughout the household like a soft zephyr of summer. There are friends too yet left, who come in upon your evening hours, and light up the loitering time with dreamy story of the years that are gone. How eagerly you listen to some gossiping veteran friend, who with his deft words calls up the thread of some by-gone years of life; and with what a careless, yet grateful recognition you lapse, as it were, into the current of the past, and live over again by your hospitable blaze the stir, the joy, and the pride of your lost manhood. The children of friends too have grown upon your march, and come to welcome you with that reverent deference which always touches the heart of age. That wild boy Will,--the son of a dear friend,--who but a little while ago was worrying you with his boyish pranks, has now shot up into tall and graceful youth, and evening after evening finds him making part of your little household group. ----Does the fond old man think that _he_ is all the attraction! It may be that in your dreamy speculations about the future of your children, (for still you dream,) you think that Will may possibly become the husband of the sedate and kindly Madge. It worries you to find Nelly teasing him as she does; that mad hoiden will never be quiet; she provokes you excessively: and yet she is a dear creature; there is no meeting those laughing blue eyes of hers without a smile and an embrace! It pleases you however to see the winning frankness with which Madge always receives Will. And with a little of your old vanity of observation you trace out the growth of their dawning attachment. It provokes you to find Nelly breaking up their quiet _tête-à-têtes_ with her provoking sallies, and drawing away Will to some saunter in the garden, or to some mad gallop over the hills. At length upon a certain summer's day Will asks to see you. He approaches with a doubtful and disturbed look; you fear that wild Nell has been teasing him with her pranks. Yet he wears not so much an offended look as one of fear. You wonder if it ever happened to you to carry your hat in just that timid manner, and to wear such a shifting expression of the eye, as poor Will wears just now? You wonder if it ever happened to you to begin to talk with an old friend of your father's in just that abashed way? Will must have fallen into some sad scrape.--Well, he is a good fellow, and you will help him out of it! You look up as he goes on with his story;--you grow perplexed yourself;--you scarce believe your own ears. ----"Nelly?"--Is Will talking of Nelly? "Yes, sir,--Nelly." ----"What!--and you have told all this to Nelly--that you love her?" "I have, sir." "And she says"-- "That I must speak with you, sir." "Bless my soul!--But she's a good girl;"--and the old man wipes his eyes. ----"Nell!--are you there?" And she comes,--blushing, lingering, yet smiling through it all. ----"And you could deceive your old father, Nell"--(very fondly.) Nelly only clasps your hand in both of hers. "And so you loved Will all the while?" ----Nelly only stoops to drop a little kiss of pleading on your forehead. ----"Well, Nelly," (it is hard to speak roundly,) "give me your hand;--here, Will,--take it:--she's a wild girl;--be kind to her, Will." "God bless you, sir!" And Nelly throws herself, sobbing, upon your bosom. ----"Not here,--not here now, Nell!--Will is yonder!" ----Sobbing, sobbing still! Nelly, Nelly,--who would have thought that your merry face covered such a heart of tenderness! III. _Grief and Joy of Age._ The Winter has its piercing storms,--even as Autumn hath. Hoary age, crowned with honor and with years, bears no immunity from suffering. It is the common heritage of us all: if it come not in the spring or in the summer of our day, it will surely find us in the autumn, or amid the frosts of winter. It is the penalty humanity pays for pleasure; human joys will have their balance. Nature never makes false weight. The east wind is followed by a wind from the west; and every smile will have its equivalent in a tear! You have lived long and joyously with that dear one who has made your life a holy pilgrimage. She has seemed to lead you into ways of pleasantness, and has kindled in you--as the damps of the world came near to extinguish them--those hopes and aspirations which rest not in life, but soar to the realm of spirits. You have sometimes shuddered with the thought of parting; you have trembled even at the leave-taking of a year, or of months, and have suffered bitterly as some danger threatened a parting forever. That danger threatens now. Nor is it a sudden fear to startle you into a paroxysm of dread: nothing of this. Nature is kinder,--or she is less kind. It is a slow and certain approach of danger which you read in the feeble step,--in the wan eye, lighting up from time to time into a brightness, that seems no longer of this world. You read it in the new and ceaseless attentions of the fond child, who yet blesses your home, and who conceals from you the bitterness of the coming grief. Frank is away--over-seas; and as the mother mentions that name with a tremor of love and of regret, that he is not now with you all,--you recall that other death, when you too were not there. Then, you knew little of a parent's feeling; now, its intensity is present! Day after day, as summer passes, she is ripening for that world where her faith and her hope have so long lived. Her pressure of your hand at some casual parting for a day is full of a gentle warning, as if she said,--prepare for a longer adieu! Her language, too, without direct mention steeps your thought in the bitter certainty that she foresees her approaching doom, and that she dreads it only so far as she dreads the grief that will be left in her broken home. Madge--the daughter--glides through the duties of that household like an angel of mercy: she lingers at the sick-bed,--blessing, and taking blessings. * * * * * The sun shines warmly without, and through the open casement beats warmly upon the floor within. The birds sing in the joyousness of full-robed summer; the drowsy hum of the bees, stealing sweets from the honeysuckle that bowers the window, lulls the air to a gentle quiet. Her breathing scarce breaks the summer stillness. Yet, she knows it is nearly over. Madge, too,--with features saddened, yet struggling against grief,--feels--that it is nearly over. It is very hard to think it; how much harder to know it! But there is no mistaking her look now--so placid, so gentle, so resigned! And her grasp of your hand--so warm--so full of meaning! ----"Madge, Madge, must it be?" And a pleasant smile lights her eye; and her grasp is warmer; and her look is--upward! ----"Must it--must it be, dear Madge?"--A holier smile,--loftier,--lit up of angels, beams on her faded features. The hand relaxes its clasp, and you cling to it faster--harder,--joined close to the frail wreck of your love,--joined tightly--but oh, how far apart! She is in Heaven;--and you, struggling against the grief of a lorn, old man! But sorrow, however great it be, must be subdued in the presence of a child. Its fevered outbursts must be kept for those silent hours when no young eyes are watching, and no young hearts will "catch the trick of grief." When the household is quiet and darkened,--when Madge is away from you, and your boy Frank slumbering--as youth slumbers upon sorrow,--when you are alone with God and the night,--in that room so long hallowed by her presence, but now--deserted--silent,--then you may yield yourself to such frenzy of tears as your strength will let you! And in your solitary rambles through the churchyard you can loiter of a summer's noon over _her_ fresh-made grave, and let your pent heart speak, and your spirit lean toward the Rest where her love has led you! Thornton, the clergyman, whose prayer over the dead has dwelt with you, comes from time to time to light up your solitary hearth with his talk of the Rest for all men. He is young, but his earnest and gentle speech win their way to your heart, and to your understanding. You love his counsels; you make of him a friend, whose visits are long and often repeated. Frank only lingers for a while; and you bid him again--adieu. It seems to you that it may well be the last; and your blessing trembles on your lip. Yet you look not with dread, but rather with a firm trustfulness toward the day of the end. For your darling Madge, it is true, you have anxieties; you fear to leave her lonely in the world with no protector save the wayward Frank. * * * * * It is later August when you call to Madge one day to bring you the little _escritoire_, in which are your cherished papers; among them is your last will and testament. Thornton has just left you, and it seems to you that his repeated kindnesses are deserving of some substantial mark of your regard. "Maggie," you say, "Mr. Thornton has been very kind to me." "Very kind, father." "I mean to leave him here some little legacy, Maggie." "I would not, father." "But Madge, my daughter!" "He is not looking for such return, father." "But he has been very kind, Madge; I must show him some strong token of my regard. What shall it be, Maggie?" Madge hesitates,--Madge blushes,--Madge stoops to her father's ear as if the very walls might catch the secret of her heart;--"Would you give _me_ to him, father?" "But--my dear Madge--has he asked this?" "Eight months ago, papa." "And you told him"-- "That I would never leave you, so long as you lived!" ----"My own dear Madge,--come to me,--kiss me! And you love him, Maggie?" "With all my heart, sir." ----"So like your mother,--the same figure,--the same true, honest heart! It shall be as you wish, dear Madge. Only you will not leave me in my old age,--eh, Maggie?" ----"Never, father,--never." * * * * * ----And there she leans upon his chair;--her arm around the old man's neck,--her other hand clasped in his,--and her eyes melting with tenderness as she gazes upon his aged face,--all radiant with joy and with hope! IV. _The End of Dreams._ A feeble old man, and a young lady who is just now blooming into the maturity of womanhood, are toiling up a gentle slope, where the spring sun lies warmly. The old man totters, though he leans heavily upon his cane; and he pants as he seats himself upon a mossy rock that crowns the summit of the slope. As he recovers breath, he draws the hand of the lady in his, and with a trembling eagerness he points out an old mansion that lies below under the shadow of tall sycamores; and he says,--feebly and brokenly,--"That is it, Maggie,--the old home--the sycamores--the garret--Charlie--Nelly"-- The old man wipes his eyes. Then his hand shifts: he seems groping in darkness; but soon it rests upon a little cottage below, heavily overshadowed. "That was it, Maggie;--Madge lived there--sweet Madge--your mother"-- Again the old man wipes his eyes, and the lady turns away. Presently they walk down the hill together. They cross a little valley with slow, faltering steps. The lady guides him carefully, until they reach a little graveyard. "This must be it, Maggie, but the fence is new. There it is, Maggie, under the willow,--my poor mother's grave!" The lady weeps. "Thank you, Madge; you did not know her, but you weep for me. God bless you!" * * * * * The old man is in the midst of his household. It is some festive day. He holds feebly his place at the head of the board. He utters in feeble tones--a Thanksgiving. His married Nelly is there with two blooming children. Frank is there with his bride. Madge--dearest of all--is seated beside the old man, watchful of his comfort, and assisting him as with a shadowy dignity he essays to do the honors of the board. The children prattle merrily: the elder ones talk of the days gone by; and the old man enters feebly, yet with floating glimpses of glee, into the cheer and the rejoicings. ----Poor old man, he is near his tomb! Yet his calm eye, looking upward, seems to show no fear. * * * * * The same old man is in his chamber; he cannot leave his chair now. Madge is beside him; Nelly is there too with her eldest-born. Madge has been reading to the old man: it was a passage of promise--of the Bible promise. "A glorious promise!" says the old man, feebly;--"a promise to me,--a promise to her, poor Madge!" ----"Is her picture there, Maggie?" Madge brings it to him: he turns his head; but the light is not strong. They wheel his chair to the window. The sun is shining brightly: still the old man cannot see. "It is getting dark, Maggie." Madge looks at Nelly--wistfully--sadly. The old man murmurs something; and Madge stoops.--"Coming," he says,--"coming!" Nelly brings the little child to take his hand. Perhaps it will revive him. She lifts her boy to kiss his cheek. The old man does not stir: his eyes do not move: they seem fixed above. The child cries as his lips touch the cold cheek.--It is a tender Spring flower upon the bosom of the dying WINTER! * * * * * ----The old man is gone: his dream-life is ended. THE END. 
15877	----	THE THOUGHTS OF THE EMPEROR MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS [Illustration: MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS] CONTENTS. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 9 PHILOSOPHY OF MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS 45 THE THOUGHTS 99 INDEX OF TERMS 305 GENERAL INDEX 311 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS. M. Antoninus was born at Rome, A.D. 121, on the 26th of April. His father, Annius Verus, died while he was praetor. His mother was Domitia Calvilla, also named Lucilla. The Emperor T. Antoninus Pius married Annia Galeria Faustina, the sister of Annius Verus, and was consequently the uncle of M. Antoninus. When Hadrian adopted Antoninus Pius and declared him his successor in the empire, Antoninus Pius adopted both L. Ceionius Commodus, the son of Aelius Caesar, and M. Antoninus, whose original name was M. Annius Verus. Antoninus then took the name of M. Aelius Aurelius Verus, to which was added the title of Caesar in A.D. 139: the name Aelius belonged to Hadrian's family, and Aurelius was the name of Antoninus Pius. When M. Antoninus became Augustus, he dropped the name of Verus and took the name of Antoninus. Accordingly he is generally named M. Aurelius Antoninus, or simply M. Antoninus. The youth was most carefully brought up. He thanks the gods (i. 17) that he had good grandfathers, good parents, a good sister, good teachers, good associates, good kinsmen and friends, nearly everything good. He had the happy fortune to witness the example of his uncle and adoptive father Antoninus Pius, and he has recorded in his word (i. 16; vi. 30) the virtues of the excellent man and prudent ruler. Like many young Romans he tried his hand at poetry and studied rhetoric. Herodes Atticus and M. Cornelius Fronto were his teachers in eloquence. There are extant letters between Fronto and Marcus,[A] which show the great affection of the pupil for the master, and the master's great hopes of his industrious pupil. M. Antoninus mentions Fronto (i. 11) among those to whom he was indebted for his education. [A] M. Cornelii Frontonis Reliquiae, Berlin, 1816. There are a few letters between Fronto and Antoninus Pius. When he was eleven years old, he assumed the dress of philosophers, something plain and coarse, became a hard student, and lived a most laborious, abstemious life, even so far as to injure his health. Finally, he abandoned poetry and rhetoric for philosophy, and he attached himself to the sect of the Stoics. But he did not neglect the study of law, which was a useful preparation for the high place which he was designed to fill. His teacher was L. Volusianus Maecianus, a distinguished jurist. We must suppose that he learned the Roman discipline of arms, which was a necessary part of the education of a man who afterwards led his troops to battle against a warlike race. Antoninus has recorded in his first book the names of his teachers, and the obligations which he owed to each of them. The way in which he speaks of what he learned from them might seem to savor of vanity or self-praise, if we look carelessly at the way in which he has expressed himself; but if any one draws this conclusion, he will be mistaken. Antoninus means to commemorate the merits of his several teachers, what they taught, and what a pupil might learn from them. Besides, this book, like the eleven other books, was for his own use; and if we may trust the note at the end of the first book, it was written during one of M. Antoninus' campaigns against the Quadi, at a time when the commemoration of the virtues of his illustrious teachers might remind him of their lessons and the practical uses which he might derive from them. Among his teachers of philosophy was Sextus of Chaeroneia, a grandson of Plutarch. What he learned from this excellent man is told by himself (i. 9). His favorite teacher was Q. Junius Rusticus (i. 7), a philosopher, and also a man of practical good sense in public affairs. Rusticus was the adviser of Antoninus after he became emperor. Young men who are destined for high places are not often fortunate in those who are about them, their companions and teachers; and I do not know any example of a young prince having had an education which can be compared with that of M. Antoninus. Such a body of teachers distinguished by their acquirements and their character will hardly be collected again; and as to the pupil, we have not had one like him since. Hadrian died in July A.D. 138, and was succeeded by Antoninus Pius. M. Antoninus married Faustina, his cousin, the daughter of Pius, probably about A.D. 146, for he had a daughter born in 147. He received from his adoptive father the title of Caesar, and was associated with him in the administration of the state. The father and the adopted son lived together in perfect friendship and confidence. Antoninus was a dutiful son, and the emperor Pius loved and esteemed him. Antoninus Pius died in March, A.D. 161. The Senate, it is said, urged M. Antoninus to take the sole administration of the empire, but he associated with himself the other adopted son of Pius, L. Ceionius Commodus, who is generally called L. Verus. Thus Rome for the first time had two emperors. Verus was an indolent man of pleasure, and unworthy of his station. Antoninus however bore with him, and it is said Verus had sense enough to pay to his colleague the respect due to his character. A virtuous emperor and a loose partner lived together in peace, and their alliance was strengthened by Antoninus giving to Verus for wife his daughter Lucilla. The reign of Antoninus was first troubled by a Parthian war, in which Verus was sent to command; but he did nothing, and the success that was obtained by the Romans in Armenia and on the Euphrates and Tigris was due to his generals. This Parthian war ended in A.D. 165. Aurelius and Verus had a triumph (A.D. 166) for the victories in the East. A pestilence followed, which carried off great numbers in Rome and Italy, and spread to the west of Europe. The north of Italy was also threatened by the rude people beyond the Alps, from the borders of Gallia to the eastern side of the Hadriatic. These barbarians attempted to break into Italy, as the Germanic nations had attempted near three hundred years before; and the rest of the life of Antoninus, with some intervals, was employed in driving back the invaders. In 169 Verus suddenly died, and Antoninus administered the state alone. During the German wars Antoninus resided for three years on the Danube at Carnuntum. The Marcomanni were driven out of Pannonia and almost destroyed in their retreat across the Danube; and in A.D. 174 the emperor gained a great victory over the Quadi. In A.D. 175, Avidius Cassius, a brave and skilful Roman commander who was at the head of the troops in Asia, revolted, and declared himself Augustus. But Cassius was assassinated by some of his officers, and so the rebellion came to an end. Antoninus showed his humanity by his treatment of the family and the partisans of Cassius; and his letter to the Senate, in which he recommends mercy, is extant. (Vulcatius, Avidius Cassius, c. 12.) Antoninus set out for the East on hearing of Cassius' revolt. Though he appears to have returned to Rome in A.D. 174, he went back to prosecute the war against the Germans, and it is probable that he marched direct to the East from the German war. His wife Faustina, who accompanied him into Asia, died suddenly at the foot of the Taurus, to the great grief of her husband. Capitolinus, who has written the life of Antoninus, and also Dion Cassius, accuses the empress of scandalous infidelity to her husband, and of abominable lewdness. But Capitolinus says that Antoninus either knew it not or pretended not to know it. Nothing is so common as such malicious reports in all ages, and the history of imperial Rome is full of them. Antoninus loved his wife, and he says that she was "obedient, affectionate, and simple." The same scandal had been spread about Faustina's mother, the wife of Antoninus Pius, and yet he too was perfectly satisfied with his wife. Antoninus Pius says after her death, in a letter to Fronto, that he would rather have lived in exile with his wife than in his palace at Rome without her. There are not many men who would give their wives a better character than these two emperors. Capitolinus wrote in the time of Diocletian. He may have intended to tell the truth, but he is a poor, feeble biographer. Dion Cassius, the most malignant of historians, always reports, and perhaps he believed, any scandal against anybody. Antoninus continued his journey to Syria and Egypt, and on his return to Italy through Athens he was initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries. It was the practice of the emperor to conform to the established rites of the age, and to perform religious ceremonies with due solemnity. We cannot conclude from this that he was a superstitious man, though we might perhaps do so if his book did not show that he was not. But that is only one among many instances that a ruler's public acts do not always prove his real opinions. A prudent governor will not roughly oppose even the superstitions of his people; and though he may wish they were wiser, he will know that he cannot make them so by offending their prejudices. Antoninus and his son Commodus entered Rome in triumph, perhaps for some German victories, on the 23d. of December, A.D. 176. In the following year Commodus was associated with his father in the empire, and took the name of Augustus. This year A.D. 177 is memorable in ecclesiastical history. Attalus and others were put to death at Lyon for their adherence to the Christian religion. The evidence of this persecution is a letter preserved by Eusebius (E.H. V. I; printed in Routh's Reliquiae Sacrae, vol. i, with notes). The letter is from the Christians of Vienna and Lugdunum in Gallia (Vienna and Lyon) to their Christian brethren in Asia and Phrygia; and it is preserved perhaps nearly entire. It contains a very particular description of the tortures inflicted on the Christians in Gallia, and it states that while the persecution was going on, Attalus, a Christian and a Roman citizen, was loudly demanded by the populace and brought into the amphitheatre; but the governor ordered him to be reserved, with the rest who were in prison, until he had received instructions from the emperor. Many had been tortured before the governor thought of applying to Antoninus. The imperial rescript, says the letter, was that the Christians should be punished, but if they would deny their faith, they must be released. On this the work began again. The Christians who were Roman citizens were beheaded; the rest were exposed to the wild beasts in the amphitheatre. Some modern writers on ecclesiastical history, when they use this letter, say nothing of the wonderful stories of the martyrs' sufferings. Sanctus, as the letter says, was burnt with plates of hot iron till his body was one sore and had lost all human form; but on being put to the rack he recovered his former appearance under the torture, which was thus a cure instead of a punishment. He was afterwards torn by beasts, and placed on an iron chair and roasted. He died at last. The letter is one piece of evidence. The writer, whoever he was that wrote in the name of the Gallic Christians, is our evidence both for the ordinary and the extraordinary circumstances of the story, and we cannot accept his evidence for one part and reject the other. We often receive small evidence as a proof of a thing we believe to be within the limits of probability or possibility, and we reject exactly the same evidence, when the thing to which it refers appears very improbable or impossible. But this is a false method of inquiry, though it is followed by some modern writers, who select what they like from a story and reject the rest of the evidence; or if they do not reject it, they dishonestly suppress it. A man can only act consistently by accepting all this letter or rejecting it all, and we cannot blame him for either. But he who rejects it may still admit that such a letter may be founded on real facts; and he would make this admission as the most probable way of accounting for the existence of the letter; but if, as he would suppose, the writer has stated some things falsely, he cannot tell what part of his story is worthy of credit. The war on the northern frontier appears to have been uninterrupted during the visit of Antoninus to the East, and on his return the emperor again left Rome to oppose the barbarians. The Germanic people were defeated in a great battle A.D. 179. During this campaign the emperor was seized with some contagious malady, of which he died in the camp at Sirmium (Mitrovitz), on the Save, in Lower Pannonia, but at Vindebona (Vienna), according to other authorities, on the 17th of March, A.D. 180, in the fifty-ninth year of his age. His son Commodus was with him. The body, or the ashes probably, of the emperor were carried to Rome, and he received the honor of deification. Those who could afford it had his statue or bust; and when Capitolinus wrote, many people still had statues of Antoninus among the Dei Penates or household deities. He was in a manner made a saint. Commodus erected to the memory of his father the Antonine column which is now in the Piazza Colonna at Rome. The _bassi rilievi_ which are placed in a spiral line round the shaft commemorate the victories of Antoninus over the Marcomanni and the Quadi, and the miraculous shower of rain which refreshed the Roman soldiers and discomfited their enemies. The statue of Antoninus was placed on the capital of the column, but it was removed at some time unknown, and a bronze statue of St. Paul was put in the place by Pope Sixtus the fifth. The historical evidence for the times of Antoninus is very defective, and some of that which remains is not credible. The most curious is the story about the miracle which happened in A.D. 174, during the war with the Quadi. The Roman army was in danger of perishing by thirst, but a sudden storm drenched them with rain, while it discharged fire and hail on their enemies, and the Romans gained a great victory. All the authorities which speak of the battle speak also of the miracle. The Gentile writers assign it to their gods, and the Christians to the intercession of the Christian legion in the emperor's army. To confirm the Christian statement it is added that the emperor gave the title of Thundering to this legion; but Dacier and others, who maintain the Christian report of the miracle, admit that this title of Thundering or Lightning was not given to this legion because the Quadi were struck with lightning, but because there was a figure of lightning on their shields, and that this title of the legion existed in the time of Augustus. Scaliger also had observed that the legion was called Thundering ([Greek: keraunobolos], or [Greek: keraunophoros]) before the reign of Antoninus. We learn this from Dion Cassius (Lib. 55, c. 23, and the note of Reimarus), who enumerates all the legions of Augustus' time. The name Thundering of Lightning also occurs on an inscription of the reign of Trajan, which was found at Trieste. Eusebius (v. 5), when he relates the miracle, quotes Apolinarius, bishop of Hierapolis, as authority for this name being given to the legion Melitene by the emperor in consequence of the success which he obtained through their prayers; from which we may estimate the value of Apolinarius' testimony. Eusebius does not say in what book of Apolinarius the statement occurs. Dion says that the Thundering legion was stationed in Cappadocia in the time of Augustus. Valesius also observes that in the Notitia of the Imperium Romanum there is mentioned under the commander of Armenia the Praefectura of the twelfth legion named "Thundering Melitene;" and this position in Armenia will agree with what Dion says of its position in Cappadocia. Accordingly Valesius concludes that Melitene was not the name of the legion, but of the town in which it was stationed. Melitene was also the name of the district in which this town was situated. The legions did not, he says, take their name from the place where they were on duty, but from the country in which they were raised, and therefore what Eusebius says about the Melitene does not seem probable to him. Yet Valesius, on the authority of Apolinarius and Tertullian, believed that the miracle was worked through the prayers of the Christian soldiers in the emperor's army. Rufinus does not give the name of Melitene to this legion, says Valesius, and probably he purposely omitted it, because he knew that Melitene was the name of a town in Armenia Minor, where the legion was stationed in his time. The emperor, it is said, made a report of his victory to the Senate, which we may believe, for such was the practice; but we do not know what he said in his letter, for it is not extant. Dacier assumes that the emperor's letter was purposely destroyed by the Senate or the enemies of Christianity, that so honorable a testimony to the Christians and their religion might not be perpetuated. The critic has however not seen that he contradicts himself when he tells us the purport of the letter, for he says that it was destroyed, and even Eusebius could not find it. But there does exist a letter in Greek addressed by Antoninus to the Roman people and the sacred Senate after this memorable victory. It is sometimes printed after Justin's first Apology, but it is totally unconnected with the apologies. This letter is one of the most stupid forgeries of the many which exist, and it cannot be possibly founded even on the genuine report of Antoninus to the Senate. If it were genuine, it would free the emperor from the charge of persecuting men because they were Christians, for he says in this false letter that if a man accuse another only of being a Christian, and the accused confess, and there is nothing else against him, he must be set free; with this monstrous addition, made by a man inconceivably ignorant, that the informer must be burnt alive.[A] [A] Eusebius (v. 5) quotes Tertullian's Apology to the Roman Senate in confirmation of the story. Tertullian, he says, writes that letters of the emperor were extant, in which he declares that his army was saved by the prayers of the Christians; and that he "threatened to punish with death those who ventured to accuse us." It is possible that the forged letter which is now extant may be one of those which Tertullian had seen, for he uses the plural number, "letters." A great deal has been written about this miracle of the Thundering Legion, and more than is worth reading. There is a dissertation on this supposed miracle in Moyle's Works, London, 1726. During the time of Antoninus Pius and Marcus Antoninus there appeared the first Apology of Justinus, and under M. Antoninus the Oration of Tatian against the Greeks, which was a fierce attack on the established religions; the address of Athenagoras to M. Antoninus on behalf of the Christians, and the Apology of Melito, bishop of Sardes, also addressed to the emperor, and that of Apolinarius. The first Apology of Justinus is addressed to T. Antoninus Pius and his two adopted sons, M. Antoninus and L. Verus; but we do not know whether they read it.[A] The second Apology of Justinus is entitled "to the Roman Senate;" but this superscription is from some copyist. In the first chapter Justinus addresses the Romans. In the second chapter he speaks of an affair that had recently happened in the time of M. Antoninus and L,. Verus, as it seems; and he also directly addresses the emperor, saying of a certain woman, "she addressed a petition to thee, the emperor, and thou didst grant the petition." In other passages the writer addresses the two emperors, from which we must conclude that the Apology was directed to them. Eusebius (E.H. iv. 18) states that the second Apology was addressed to the successor of Antoninus Pius, and he names him Antoninus Verus, meaning M. Antoninus. In one passage of this second Apology (c. 8), Justinus, or the writer, whoever he may be, says that even men who followed the Stoic doctrines, when they ordered their lives according to ethical reason, were hated and murdered, such as Heraclitus, Musonius in his own times, and others; for all those who in any way labored to live according to reason and avoided wickedness were always hated; and this was the effect of the work of daemons. [A] Orosius, vii. 14, says that Justinus the philosopher presented to Antonius Pius his work in defence of the Christian religion, and made him merciful to the Christians. Justinus himself is said to have been put to death at Rome, because he refused to sacrifice to the gods. It cannot have been in the reign of Hadrian, as one authority states; nor in the time of Antoninus Pius, if the second Apology was written in the time of M. Antoninus; and there is evidence that this event took place under M. Antoninus and L. Verus, when Rusticus was praefect of the city.[A] [A] See the Martyrium Sanctorum Justini, &c., in the works of Justinus, ed. Otto, vol. ii. 559. "Junius Rusticus Praefectus Urbi erat sub imperatoribus M. Aurelio et L. Vero, id quod liquet ex Themistii Orat. xxxiv Dindorf. p. 451, et ex quodam illorum rescripto, Dig. 49. 1. I, § 2" (Otto). The rescript contains the words "Junium Rusticum amicum nostrum Praefectum Urbi." The Martyrium of Justinus and others is written in Greek. It begins, "In the time of the wicked defenders of idolatry impious edicts were published against the pious Christians both in cities and country places, for the purpose of compelling them to make offerings to vain idols. Accordingly the holy men (Justinus, Chariton, a woman Charito, Paeon, Liberianus, and others) were brought before Rusticus, the praefect of Rome." The Martyrium gives the examination of the accused by Rusticus. All of them professed to be Christians. Justinus was asked if he expected to ascend into heaven and to receive a reward for his sufferings, if he was condemned to death. He answered that he did not expect: he was certain of it. Finally, the test of obedience was proposed to the prisoners; they were required to sacrifice to the gods. All refused, and Rusticus pronounced the sentence, which was that those who refused to sacrifice to the gods and obey the emperor's order should be whipped and beheaded according to the law. The martyrs were then led to the usual place of execution and beheaded. Some of the faithful secretly carried off the bodies and deposited them in a fit place. The persecution in which Polycarp suffered at Smyrna belongs to the time of M. Antoninus. The evidence for it is the letter of the church of Smyrna to the churches of Philomelium and the other Christian churches, and it is preserved by Eusebius (E.H. iv. 15). But the critics do not agree about the time of Polycarp's death, differing in the two extremes to the amount of twelve years. The circumstances of Polycarp's martyrdom were accompanied by miracles, one of which Eusebius (iv. 15) has omitted, but it appears in the oldest Latin version of the letter, which Usher published, and it is supposed that this version was made not long after the time of Eusebius. The notice at the end of the letter states that it was transcribed by Caius from the copy of Irenaeus, the disciple of Polycarp, then transcribed by Socrates at Corinth; "after which I Pionius again wrote it out from the copy above mentioned, having searched it out by the revelation of Polycarp, who directed me to it," &c. The story of Polycarp's martyrdom is embellished with miraculous circumstances which some modern writers on ecclesiastical history take the liberty of omitting.[A] [A] Conyers Middleton, An Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers, &c. p. 126. Middleton says that Eusebius omitted to mention the dove, which flew out of Polycarp's body, and Dodwell and Archbishop Wake have done the same. Wake says, "I am so little a friend to such miracles that I thought it better with Eusebius to omit that circumstance than to mention it from Bp. Usher's Manuscript," which manuscript however, says Middleton, he afterwards declares to be so well attested that we need not any further assurance of the truth of it. In order to form a proper notion of the condition of the Christians under M. Antoninus we must go back to Trajan's time. When the younger Pliny was governor of Bithynia, the Christians were numerous in those parts, and the worshipers of the old religion were falling off. The temples were deserted, the festivals neglected, and there were no purchasers of victims for sacrifice. Those who were interested in the maintenance of the old religion thus found that their profits were in danger. Christians of both sexes and all ages were brought before the governor who did not know what to do with them. He could come to no other conclusion than this, that those who confessed to be Christians and persevered in their religion ought to be punished; if for nothing else, for their invincible obstinancy. He found no crimes proved against the Christians, and he could only characterize their religion as a depraved and extravagant superstition, which might be stopped if the people were allowed the opportunity of recanting. Pliny wrote this in a letter to Trajan (Plinius, Ep. x. 97). He asked for the emperor's directions, because he did not know what to do. He remarks that he had never been engaged in judicial inquiries about the Christians, and that accordingly he did not know what to inquire about, or how far to inquire and punish. This proves that it was not a new thing to examine into a man's profession of Christianity and to punish him for it.[A] [A] Orosius (vii. 12) speaks of Trajan's persecution of the Christians, and of Pliny's application to him having led the emperor to mitigate his severity. The punishment by the Mosaic law for those who attempted to seduce the Jews to follow new gods was death. If a man was secretly enticed to such new worship, he must kill the seducer, even if the seducer were brother, son, daughter, wife, or friend. (Deut. xiii.) Trajan's rescript is extant. He approved of the governor's judgment in the matter, but he said that no search must be made after the Christians; if a man was charged with the new religion and convicted, he must not be punished if he affirmed that he was not a Christian, and confirmed his denial by showing his reverence to the heathen gods. He added that no notice must be taken of anonymous informations, for such things were of bad example. Trajan was a mild and sensible man; and both motives of mercy and policy probably also induced him to take as little notice of the Christians as he could, to let them live in quiet if it were possible. Trajan's rescript is the first legislative act of the head of the Roman state with reference to Christianity, which is known to us. It does not appear that the Christians were further disturbed under his reign. The martyrdom of Ignatius by the order of Trajan himself is not universally admitted to be an historical fact.[A] [A] The Martyrium Ignatii, first published in Latin by Archbishop Usher, is the chief evidence for the circumstances of Ignatius' death. In the time of Hadrian it was no longer possible for the Roman government to overlook the great increase of the Christians and the hostility of the common sort to them. If the governors in the provinces were willing to let them alone, they could not resist the fanaticism of the heathen community, who looked on the Christians as atheists. The Jews too, who were settled all over the Roman Empire, were as hostile to the Christians as the Gentiles were.[A] With the time of Hadrian begin the Christian Apologies, which show plainly what the popular feeling towards the Christians then was. A rescript of Hadrian to Minucius Fundanus, the Proconsul of Asia, which stands at the end of Justin's first Apology,[B] instructs the governor that innocent people must not be troubled, and false accusers must not be allowed to extort money from them; the charges against the Christians must be made in due form, and no attention must be paid to popular clamors; when Christians were regularly prosecuted and convicted of illegal acts, they must be punished according to their deserts; and false accusers also must be punished. Antoninus Pius is said to have published rescripts to the same effect. The terms of Hadrian's rescript seem very favorable to the Christians; but if we understand it in this sense, that they were only to be punished like other people for illegal acts, it would have had no meaning, for that could have been done without asking the emperor's advice. The real purpose of the rescript is that Christians must be punished if they persisted in their belief, and would not prove their renunciation of it by acknowledging the heathen religion. This was Trajan's rule, and we have no reason for supposing that Hadrian granted more to the Christians than Trajan did. There is also printed at the end of Justin's first Apology a rescript of Antoninus Pius to the Commune of ([Greek: to koinon tês Asias]), and it is also in Eusebius (E.H. iv. 13). The date of the rescript is the third consulship of Antoninus Pius.[C] The rescript declares that the Christians--for they are meant, though the name Christians does not occur in the rescript--were not to be disturbed unless they were attempting something against the Roman rule; and no man was to be punished simply for being a Christian. But this rescript is spurious. Any man moderately acquainted with Roman history will see by the style and tenor that it is a clumsy forgery. [A] We have the evidence of Justinus (ad Diognetum, c. 5) to this effect: "The Christians are attacked by the Jews as if they were men of a different race, and are persecuted by the Greeks; and those who hate them cannot give the reason of their enmity." [B] And in Eusebius (E.H. iv. 8, 9). Orosius (vii. 13) says that Hadrian sent this rescript to Minucius Fundanus, proconsul of Asia after being instructed in books written on the Christian religion by Quadratus, a disciple of the Apostles, and Aristides, an Athenian, an honest and wise man, and Serenus Granius. In the Greek text of Hadrian's rescript there is mentioned Serenius Granianus, the predecessor of Minucius Fundanus in the government of _Asia_. This rescript of Hadrian has clearly been added to the Apology by some editor. The Apology ends with the words: [Greek: ho philon tô Oeô, touto genesthô] [C] Eusebius (E.H. iv. 12), after giving the beginning of Justinus' first Apology, which contains the address to T. Antoninus and his two adopted sons, adds: "The same emperor being addressed by other brethren in Asia, honored the Commune of Asia with the following rescript." This rescript, which is in the next chapter of Eusebius (E.H. iv. 13) is in the sole name of Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus Armenius, though Eusebius had just before said that he was going to give us a rescript of Antoninus Pius. There are some material variations between the two copies of the rescript besides the difference in the title, which difference makes it impossible to say whether the forger intended to assign this rescript to Pius or to M. Antoninus. The author of the Alexandrine Chronicum says that Marcus, being moved by the entreaties of Melito and other heads of the church, wrote an Epistle to the Commune of Asia in which he forbade the Christians to be troubled on account of their religion. Valesius supposes this to be the letter or rescript which is contained in Eusebius (iv. 13), and to be the answer to the Apology of Melito, of which I shall soon give the substance. But Marcus certainly did not write this letter which is in Eusebius, and we know not what answer he made to Melito. In the time of M. Antoninus the opposition between the old and the new belief was still stronger, and the adherents of the heathen religion urged those in authority to a more regular resistance to the invasions of the Christian faith. Melito in his Apology to M. Antoninus represents the Christians of Asia as persecuted under new imperial orders. Shameless informers, he says, men who were greedy after the property of others, used these orders as a means of robbing those who were doing no harm. He doubts if a just emperor could have ordered anything so unjust; and if the last order was really not from the emperor, the Christians entreat him not to give them up to their enemies.[A] We conclude from this that there were at least imperial rescripts or constitutions of M. Antoninus which were made the foundation of these persecutions. The fact of being a Christian was now a crime and punished, unless the accused denied their religion. Then come the persecutions at Smyrna, which some modern critics place in A.D. 167, ten years before the persecution of Lyon. The governors of the provinces under M. Antoninus might have found enough even in Trajan's rescript to warrant them in punishing Christians, and the fanaticism of the people would drive them to persecution, even if they were unwilling. But besides the fact of the Christians rejecting all the heathen ceremonies, we must not forget that they plainly maintain that all the heathen religions were false. The Christians thus declared war against the heathen rites, and it is hardly necessary to observe that this was a declaration of hostility against the Roman government, which tolerated all the various forms of superstition that existed in the empire, and could not consistently tolerate another religion, which declared that all the rest were false and all the splendid ceremonies of the empire only a worship of devils. [A] Eusebius, iv. 26; and Routh's Reliquiae Sacrae, vol. I, and the notes. The interpretation of this Fragment is not easy. Mosheim misunderstood one passage so far as to affirm that Marcus promised rewards to those who denounced the Christians; an interpretation which is entirely false. Melito calls the Christian religion "our philosophy," which began among barbarians (the Jews), and flourished among the Roman subjects in the time of Augustus, to the great advantage of the empire, for from that time the power of the Romans grew great and glorious. He says that the emperor has and will have as the successor to Augustus' power the good wishes of men, if he will protect that philosophy which grew up with the empire and began with Augustus, which philosophy the predecessors of Antoninus honored in addition to the other religions. He further says that the Christian religion had suffered no harm since the time of Augustus, but on the contrary had enjoyed all honor and respect that any man could desire. Nero and Domitian, he says, were alone persuaded by some malicious men to calumniate the Christian religion, and this was the origin of the false charges against the Christians. But this was corrected by the emperors who immediately preceded Antoninus, who often by their rescripts reproved those who attempted to trouble the Christians. Hadrian, Antoninus' grandfather, wrote to many, and among them to Fundanus, the governor of Asia. Antoninus Pius, when Marcus was associated with him in the empire, wrote to the cities that they must not trouble the Christians; among others, to the people of Larissa, Thessalonica, the Athenians, and all the Greeks. Melito concluded thus: "We are persuaded that thou who hast about these things the same mind that they had, nay rather one much more humane and philosophical, wilt do all that we ask thee."--This Apology was written after A.D. 169, the year in which Verus died, for it speaks of Marcus only and his son Commodus. According to Melito's testimony, Christians had only been punished for their religion in the time of Nero and Domitian, and the persecutions began again in the time of M. Antoninus, and were founded on his orders, which were abused, as he seems to mean. He distinctly affirms "that the race of the godly is now persecuted and harassed by fresh imperial orders in Asia, a thing which had never happened before." But we know that all this is not true, and that Christians had been punished in Trajan's time. If we had a true ecclesiastical history, we should know how the Roman emperors attempted to check the new religion; how they enforced their principle of finally punishing Christians, simply as Christians, which Justin in his Apology affirms that they did, and I have no doubt that he tells the truth; how far popular clamor and riots went in this matter, and how far many fanatical and ignorant Christians--for there were many such--contributed to excite the fanaticism on the other side and to embitter the quarrel between the Roman government and the new religion. Our extant ecclesiastical histories are manifestly falsified, and what truth they contain is grossly exaggerated; but the fact is certain that in the time of M. Antoninus the heathen populations were in open hostility to the Christians, and that under Antoninus' rule men were put to death because they were Christians. Eusebius, in the preface to his fifth book, remarks that in the seventeenth year of Antoninus' reign, in some parts of the world, the persecution of the Christians became more violent, and that it proceeded from the populace in the cities; and he adds, in his usual style of exaggeration, that we may infer from what took place in a single nation that myriads of martyrs were made in the habitable earth. The nation which he alludes to is Gallia; and he then proceeds to give the letter of the churches of Vienna and Lugdunum. It is probable that he has assiged the true cause of the persecutions, the fanaticism of the populace, and that both governors and emperor had a great deal of trouble with these disturbances. How far Marcus was cognizant of these cruel proceedings we do not know, for the historical records of his reign are very defective. He did not make the rule against the Christians, for Trajan did that; and if we admit that he would have been willing to let the Christians alone, we cannot affirm that it was in his power, for it would be a great mistake to suppose that Antoninus had the unlimited authority which some modern sovereigns have had. His power was limited by certain constitutional forms, by the Senate, and by the precedents of his predecessors. We cannot admit that such a man was an active persecutor, for there is no evidence that he was,[A] though it is certain that he had no good opinion of the Christians, as appears from his own words.[B] But he knew nothing of them except their hostility to the Roman religion, and he probably thought that they were dangerous to the state, notwithstanding the professions, false or true, of some of the Apologists. So much I have said, because it would be unfair not to state all that can be urged against a man whom his contemporaries and subsequent ages venerated as a model of virtue and benevolence. If I admitted the genuineness of some documents, he would be altogether clear from the charge of even allowing any persecutions; but as I seek the truth and am sure that they are false, I leave him to bear whatever blame is his due.[C] I add that it is quite certain that Antoninus did not derive any of his ethical principles from a religion of which he knew nothing.[D] [A] Except that of Orosius (vii. 15), who says that during the Parthian war there were grievous persecutions of the Christians in Asia and Gallia under the orders of Marcus (praecepto ejus), and "many were crowned with the martyrdom of saints." [B] See xi. 3. The emperor probably speaks of such fanatics as Clemens (quoted by Gataker on this passage) mentions. The rational Christians admitted no fellowship with them. "Some of these heretics," says Clemens, "show their impiety and cowardice by loving their lives, saying that the knowledge of the really existing God is true testimony (martyrdom), but that a man is a self-murderer who bears witness by his death. We also blame those who rush to death; for there are some, not of us, but only bearing the same name, who give themselves up. We say of them that they die without being martyrs, even if they are publicly punished; and they give themselves up to a death which avails nothing, as the Indian Gymnosophists give themselves up foolishly to fire." Cave, in his primitive Christianity (ii. c. 7), says of the Christians: "They did flock to the place of torment faster than droves of beasts that are driven to the shambles. They even longed to be in the arms of suffering. Ignatius, though then in his journey to Rome in order to his execution, yet by the way as he went could not but vent his passionate desire of it 'Oh that I might come to those wild beasts that are prepared for me; I heartily wish that I may presently meet with them; I would invite and encourage them speedily to devour me, and not be afraid to set upon me as they have been to others; nay, should they refuse it, I would even force them to it;'" and more to the same purpose from Eusebius. Cave, an honest and good man, says all this in praise of the Christians; but I think that he mistook the matter. We admire a man who holds to his principles even to death; but these fanatical Christians are the Gymnosophists whom Clemens treats with disdain. [C] Dr. F.C. Baur, in his work entitled "Das Christenthum und die Christliche Kirche der drei ersten Jahrhunderte," &c., has examined this question with great good sense and fairness, and I believe he has stated the truth as near as our authorities enable us to reach it. [D] In the Digest, 48, 19, 30, there is the following excerpt from Modestinus: "Si quis aliquid fecerit, quo leves hominum animi superstitione numinis terrerentur, divus Marcus hujusmodi homines in insulam relegari rescripsit." There is no doubt that the Emperor's Reflections--or his Meditations, as they are generally named--is a genuine work. In the first book he speaks of himself, his family, and his teachers; and in other books he mentions himself. Suidas (v.[Greek: Markos]) notices a work of Antoninus in twelve books, which he names the "conduct of his own life;" and he cites the book under several words in his Dictionary, giving the emperor's name, but not the title of the work. There are also passages cited by Suidas from Antoninus without mention of the emperor's name. The true title of the work is unknown. Xylander, who published the first edition of this book (Zürich, 1558, 8vo, with a Latin version), used a manuscript which contained the twelve books, but it is not known where the manuscript is now. The only other complete manuscript which is known to exist is in the Vatican library, but it has no title and no inscriptions of the several books: the eleventh only has the inscription, [Greek: Markou autokratoros] marked with an asterisk. The other Vatican manuscripts and the three Florentine contain only excerpts from the emperor's book. All the titles of the excerpts nearly agree with that which Xylander prefixed to his edition, [Greek: Markou Antôninou Autokratoros tôn eis heauton biblia ib.] This title has been used by all subsequent editors. We cannot tell whether Antoninus divided his work into books or somebody else did it. If the inscriptions at the end of the first and second books are genuine, he may have made the division himself. It is plain that the emperor wrote down his thoughts or reflections as the occasions arose; and since they were intended for his own use, it is no improbable conjecture that he left a complete copy behind him written with his own hand; for it is not likely that so diligent a man would use the labor of a transcriber for such a purpose, and expose his most secret thoughts to any other eye. He may have also intended the book for his son Commodus, who however had no taste for his father's philosophy. Some careful hand preserved the precious volume; and a work by Antoninus is mentioned by other late writers besides Suidas. Many critics have labored on the text of Antoninus. The most complete edition is that by Thomas Gataker, 1652, 4to. The second edition of Gataker was superintended by George Stanhope, 1697, 4to. There is also an edition of 1704. Gataker made and suggested many good corrections, and he also made a new Latin version, which is not a very good specimen of Latin, but it generally expresses the sense of the original, and often better than some of the more recent translations. He added in the margin opposite to each paragraph references to the other parallel passages; and he wrote a commentary, one of the most complete that has been written on any ancient author. This commentary contains the editor's exposition of the more difficult passages, and quotations from all the Greek and Roman writers for the illustration of the text. It is a wonderful monument of learning and labor, and certainly no Englishman has yet done anything like it. At the end of his preface the editor says that he wrote it at Rotherhithe near London, in a severe winter, when he was in the seventy-eighth year of his age, 1651--a time when Milton, Selden, and other great men of the Commonwealth time were living; and the great French scholar Saumaise (Salmasius), with whom Gataker corresponded and received help from him for his edition of Antoninus. The Greek test has also been edited by J. M. Schultz, Leipzig, 1802, 8vo; and by the learned Greek Adamantinus Corais, Paris, 1816, 8vo. The text of Schultz was republished by Tauchnitz, 1821. There are English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish translations of M. Antoninus, and there may be others. I have not seen all the English translations. There is one by Jeremy Collier, 1702, 8vo, a most coarse and vulgar copy of the original. The latest French translation by Alexis Pierron in the collection of Charpentier is better than Dacier's, which has been honored with an Italian version (Udine, 1772). There is an Italian version (1675), which I have not seen. It is by a cardinal. "A man illustrious in the church, the Cardinal Francis Barberini the elder, nephew of Pope Urban VIII., occupied the last years of his life in translating into his native language the thoughts of the Roman emperor, in order to diffuse among the faithful the fertilizing and vivifying seeds. He dedicated this translation to his soul, to make it, as he says in his energetic style, redder than his purple at the sight of the virtues of this Gentile" (Pierron, Preface). I have made this translation at intervals after having used the book for many years. It is made from the Greek, but I have not always followed one text; and I have occasionally compared other versions with my own. I made this translation for my own use, because I found that it was worth the labor; but it may be useful to others also; and therefore I determined to print it. As the original is sometimes very difficult to understand and still more difficult to translate, it is not possible that I have always avoided error. But I believe that I have not often missed the meaning, and those who will take the trouble to compare the translation with the original should not hastily conclude that I am wrong, if they do not agree with me. Some passages do give the meaning, though at first sight they may not appear to do so; and when I differ from the translators, I think that in some places they are wrong, and in other places I am sure that they are. I have placed in some passages a +, which indicates corruption in the text or great uncertainty in the meaning. I could have made the language more easy and flowing, but I have preferred a ruder style as being better suited to express the character of the original; and sometimes the obscurity which may appear in the version is a fair copy of the obscurity of the Greek. If I should ever revise this version, I would gladly make use of any corrections which may be suggested. I have added an index of some of the Greek terms with the corresponding English. If I have not given the best words for the Greek, I have done the best that I could; and in the text I have always given the same translation of the same word. The last reflection of the Stoic philosophy that I have observed is in Simplicius' Commentary on the Enchiridion of Epictetus. Simplicius was not a Christian, and such a man was not likely to be converted at a time when Christianity was grossly corrupted. But he was a really religious man, and he concludes his commentary with a prayer to the Deity which no Christian could improve. From the time of Zeno to Simplicius, a period of about nine hundred years, the Stoic philosophy formed the characters of some of the best and greatest men. Finally it became extinct, and we hear no more of it till the revival of letters in Italy. Angelo Poliziano met with two very inaccurate and incomplete manuscripts of Epictetus' Enchiridion, which he translated into Latin and dedicated to his great patron Lorenzo de' Medici, in whose collection he had found the book. Poliziano's version was printed in the first Bâle edition of the Enchiridion, A.D. 1531 (apud And. Cratandrum). Poliziano recommends the Enchiridion to Lorenzo as a work well suited to his temper, and useful in the difficulties by which he was surrounded. Epictetus and Antoninus have had readers ever since they were first printed. The little book of Antoninus has been the companion of some great men. Machiavelli's Art of War and Marcus Antoninus were the two books which were used when he was a young man by Captain John Smith, and he could not have found two writers better fitted to form the character of a soldier and a man. Smith is almost unknown and forgotten in England, his native country, but not in America, where he saved the young colony of Virginia. He was great in his heroic mind and his deeds in arms, but greater still in the nobleness of his character. For a man's greatness lies not in wealth and station, as the vulgar believe, nor yet in his intellectual capacity, which is often associated with the meanest moral character, the most abject servility to those in high places, and arrogance to the poor and lowly; but a man's true greatness lies in the consciousness of an honest purpose in life, founded on a just estimate of himself and everything else, on frequent self-examination, and a steady obedience to the rule which he knows to be right, without troubling himself, as the emperor says he should not, about what others may think or say, or whether they do or do not do that which he thinks and says and does. THE PHILOSOPHY OF MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONIUS It has been said that the Stoic philosophy first showed its real value when it passed from Greece to Rome. The doctrines of Zeno and his successors were well suited to the gravity and practical good sense of the Romans; and even in the Republican period we have an example of a man, M. Cato Uticensis, who lived the life of a Stoic and died consistently with the opinions which he professed. He was a man, says Cicero, who embraced the Stoic philosophy from conviction; not for the purpose of vain discussion, as most did, but in order to make his life conformable to the Stoic precepts. In the wretched times from the death of Augustus to the murder of Domitian, there was nothing but the Stoic philosophy which could console and support the followers of the old religion under imperial tyranny and amidst universal corruption. There were even then noble minds that could dare and endure, sustained by a good conscience and an elevated idea of the purposes of man's existence. Such were Paetus Thrasae, Helvidius Priscus, Cornutus, C. Musonius Rufus,[A] and the poets Persius and Juvenal, whose energetic language and manly thoughts may be as instructive to us now as they might have been to their contemporaries. Persius died under Nero's bloody reign; but Juvenal had the good fortune to survive the tyrant Domitian and to see the better times of Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian.[B] His best precepts are derived from the Stoic school, and they are enforced in his finest verses by the unrivalled vigor of the Latin language. [A] I have omitted Seneca, Nero's preceptor. He was in a sense a Stoic, and he has said many good things in a very fine way. There is a judgment of Gellius (xii. 2.) on Seneca, or rather a statement of what some people thought of his philosophy, and it is not favorable. His writings and his life must be taken together, and I have nothing more to say of him here. The reader will find a notice of Seneca and his philosophy in "Seekers after God," by the Rev. P. W. Farrar. Macmillan and Co. [B] Ribbeck has labored to prove that those Satires, which contain philosophical precepts, are not the work of the real, but of a false Juvenal, a Declamator. Still the verses exist, and were written by somebody who was acquainted with the Stoic doctrines. The best two expounders of the later Stoical philosophy were a Greek slave and a Roman emperor. Epictetus, a Phrygian Greek, was brought to Rome, we know not how, but he was there the slave and afterwards the freedman of an unworthy master, Epaphroditus by name, himself a freedman and a favorite of Nero. Epictetus may have been a hearer of C. Musonius Rufus, while he was still a slave, but he could hardly have been a teacher before he was made free. He was one of the philosophers whom Domitian's order banished from Rome. He retired to Nicopolis in Epirus, and he may have died there. Like other great teachers he wrote nothing, and we are indebted to his grateful pupil Arrian for what we have of Epictetus' discourses. Arrian wrote eight books of the discourses of Epictetus, of which only four remain and some fragments. We have also from Arrian's hand the small Enchiridion or Manual of the chief precepts of Epictetus. This is a valuable commentary on the Enchiridion by Simplicius, who lived in the time of the emperor Justinian.[A] [A] There is a complete edition of Arrian's Epictetus with the commentary of Simplicius by J. Schweighaeuser, 6 vols. 8vo. 1799, 1800. There is also an English translation of Epictetus by Mrs. Carter. Antoninus in his first book (i. 7), in which he gratefully commemorates his obligations to his teachers, says that he was made acquainted by Junius Rusticus with the discourses of Epictetus, whom he mentions also in other passages (iv. 41; xi. 34, 36). Indeed, the doctrines of Epictetus and Antoninus are the same, and Epictetus is the best authority for the explanation of the philosophical language of Antoninus and the exposition of his opinions. But the method of the two philosophers is entirely different. Epictetus addressed himself to his hearers in a continuous discourse and in a familiar and simple manner. Antoninus wrote down his reflections for his own use only, in short, unconnected paragraphs, which are often obscure. The Stoics made three divisions of philosophy,--Physic ([Greek: phusikon]), Ethic ([Greek: êthikon]), and Logic ([Greek: logikon]) (viii. 13). This division, we are told by Diogenes, was made by Zeno of Citium, the founder of the Stoic sect, and by Chrysippus; but these philosophers placed the three divisions in the following order,--Logic, Physic, Ethic. It appears, however, that this division was made before Zeno's time, and acknowledged by Plato, as Cicero remarks (Acad. Post. i. 5). Logic is not synonymous with our term Logic in the narrower sense of that word. Cleanthes, a Stoic, subdivided the three divisions and made six,--Dialectic and Rhetoric, comprised in Logic; Ethic and Politic; Physic and Theology. This division was merely for practical use, for all Philosophy is one. Even among the earliest Stoics Logic, or Dialectic, does not occupy the same place as in Plato: it is considered only as an instrument which is to be used for the other divisions of Philosophy. An exposition of the earlier Stoic doctrines and of their modifications would require a volume. My object is to explain only the opinions of Antoninus, so far as they can be collected from his book. According to the subdivision of Cleanthes, Physic and Theology go together, or the study of the nature of Things, and the study of the nature of the Deity, so far as man can understand the Deity, and of his government of the universe. This division or subdivision is not formally adopted by Antoninus, for, as already observed, there is no method in his book; but it is virtually contained in it. Cleanthes also connects Ethic and Politic, or the study of the principles of morals and the study of the constitution of civil society; and undoubtedly he did well in subdividing Ethic into two parts. Ethic in the narrower sense and Politic; for though the two are intimately connected, they are also very distinct, and many questions can only be properly discussed by carefully observing the distinction. Antoninus does not treat of Politic. His subject is Ethic, and Ethic in its practical application to his own conduct in life as a man and as a governor. His Ethic is founded on his doctrines about man's nature, the Universal Nature, and the relation of every man to everything else. It is therefore intimately and inseparably connected with Physic, or the Nature of Things, and with Theology, or the Nature of the Deity. He advises us to examine well all the impressions on our minds ([Greek: phantasiai]) and to form a right judgment of them, to make just conclusions, and to inquire into the meanings of words, and so far to apply Dialectic; but he has no attempt at any exposition of Dialectic, and his philosophy is in substance purely moral and practical. He says (viii. 13), "Constantly and, if it be possible, on the occasion of every impression on the soul,[A] apply to it the principles of Physic, of Ethic, and of Dialectic:" which is only another way of telling us to examine the impression in every possible way. In another passage (iii. 11) he says, "To the aids which have been mentioned, let this one still be added: make for thyself a definition or description of the object ([Greek: to phantaston]) which is presented to thee, so as to see distinctly what kind of a thing it is in its substance, in its nudity, in its complete entirety, and tell thyself its proper name, and the names of the things of which it has been compounded, and into which it will be resolved." Such an examination implies a use of Dialectic, which Antoninus accordingly employed as a means toward establishing his Physical, Theological, and Ethical principles. [A] The original is [Greek: epi pasês phantasias]. We have no word which expresses [Greek: phantasia], for it is not only the sensuous appearance which comes from an external object, which object is called [Greek: to phantaston], but it is also the thought or feeling or opinion which is produced even when there is no corresponding external object before us. Accordingly everything which moves the soul is [Greek: phantaston], and produces a [Greek: phantasia]. In this extract Antoninus says [Greek: physiologein, pathologein, dialektikeuesthai]. I have translated [Greek: pathologein] by using the word Moral (Ethic), and that is the meaning here. There are several expositions of the Physical, Theological, and Ethical principles, which are contained in the work of Antoninus; and more expositions than I have read. Ritter (Geschichte der Philosophie, iv. 241), after explaining the doctrines of Epictetus, treats very briefly and insufficiently those of Antoninus. But he refers to a short essay, in which the work is done better.[A] There is also an essay on the Philosophical Principles of M. Aurelius Antoninus by J.M. Schultz, placed at the end of his German translation of Antoninus (Schleswig, 1799). With the assistance of these two useful essays and his own diligent study, a man may form a sufficient notion of the principles of Antoninus; but he will find it more difficult to expound them to others. Besides the want of arrangement in the original and of connection among the numerous paragraphs, the corruption of the text, the obscurity of the language and the style, and sometimes perhaps the confusion in the writer's own ideas--besides all this, there is occasionally an apparent contradiction in the emperor's thoughts, as if his principles were sometimes unsettled, as if doubt sometimes clouded his mind. A man who leads a life of tranquillity and reflection, who is not disturbed at home and meddles not with the affairs of the world, may keep his mind at ease and his thoughts in one even course. But such a man has not been tried. All his Ethical philosophy and his passive virtue might turn out to be idle words, if he were once exposed to the rude realities of human existence. Fine thoughts and moral dissertations from men who have not worked and suffered may be read, but they will be forgotten. No religion, no Ethical philosophy is worth anything, if the teacher has not lived the "life of an apostle," and been ready to die "the death of a martyr." "Not in passivity (the passive effects) but in activity lie the evil and the good of the rational social animal, just as his virtue and his vice lie not in passivity, but in activity" (ix. 16). The emperor Antoninus was a practical moralist. From his youth he followed a laborious discipline, and though his high station placed him above all want or the fear of it, he lived as frugally and temperately as the poorest philospher. Epictetus wanted little, and it seems that he always had the little that he wanted and he was content with it, as he had been with his servile station! But Antoninus after his accession to the empire sat on an uneasy seat. He had the administration of an empire which extended from the Euphrates to the Atlantic, from the cold mountains of Scotland to the hot sands of Africa; and we may imagine, though we cannot know it by experience, what must be the trials, the troubles, the anxiety, and the sorrows of him who has the world's business on his hands, with the wish to do the best that he can, and the certain knowledge that he can do very little of the good which he wishes. [A] De Marco Aurelio Antonino ... ex ipsius Commentariis. Scriptio Philologica. Instituit Nicolaus Bachius, Lipsiae, 1826. In the midst of war, pestilence, conspiracy, general corruption, and with the weight of so unwieldy an empire upon him, we may easily comprehend that Antoninus often had need of all his fortitude to support him. The best and the bravest men have moments of doubt and of weakness; but if they are the best and the bravest, they rise again from their depression by recurring to first principles, as Antoninus does. The emperor says that life is smoke, a vapor, and St. James in his Epistle is of the same mind; that the world is full of envious, jealous, malignant people, and a man might be well content to get out of it. He has doubts perhaps sometimes even about that to which he holds most firmly. There are only a few passages of this kind, but they are evidence of the struggles which even the noblest of the sons of men had to maintain against the hard realities of his daily life. A poor remark it is which I have seen somewhere, and made in a disparaging way, that the emperor's reflections show that he had need of consolation and comfort in life, and even to prepare him to meet his death. True that he did need comfort and support, and we see how he found it. He constantly recurs to his fundamental principle that the universe is wisely ordered, that every man is a part of it and must conform to that order which he cannot change, that whatever the Deity has done is good, that all mankind are a man's brethren, that he must love and cherish them and try to make them better, even those who would do him harm. This is his conclusion (ii. 17): "What then is that which is able to conduct a man? One thing and only one, Philosophy. But this consists in keeping the divinity within a man free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures, doing nothing without a purpose nor yet falsely and with hypocrisy, not feeling the need of another man's doing or not doing anything; and besides, accepting all that happens and all that is allotted, as coming from thence, wherever it is, from whence he himself came; and finally waiting for death with a cheerful mind as being nothing else than a dissolution of the elements of which every living being is compounded. But if there is no harm, to the elements themselves in each continually changing into another, why should a man have any apprehension about the change and dissolution of all the elements [himself]? for it is according to nature; and nothing is evil that is according to nature." The Physic of Antoninus is the knowledge of the Nature of the Universe, of its government, and of the relation of man's nature to both. He names the universe ([Greek: hê tôn hylôn ousia], vi. 1),[A] "the universal substance," and he adds that "reason" ([Greek: logos]) governs the universe. He also (vi. 9) uses the terms "universal nature" or "nature of the universe." He (vi. 25) calls the universe "the one and all, which we name Cosmos or Order" ([Greek: kosmos]). If he ever seems to use these general terms as significant of the All, of all that man can in any way conceive to exist, he still on other occasions plainly distinguishes between Matter, Material things ([Greek: hylê, hylikon]), and Cause, Origin, Reason ([Greek: aitia, aitiôdes, logos]).[B] This is conformable to Zeno's doctrine that there are two original principles ([Greek: archai]) of all things, that which acts ([Greek: to poioun]) and that which is acted upon ([Greek: to paschon]). That which is acted on is the formless matter ([Greek: hylê]): that which acts is the reason ([Greek: logos]), God, who is eternal and operates through all matter, and produces all things. So Antoninus (v. 32) speaks of the reason ([Greek: logos])which pervades all substance ([Greek: ousia]), and through all time by fixed periods (revolutions) administers the universe ([Greek: to pan]). God is eternal, and Matter is eternal. It is God who gives form to matter, but he is not said to have created matter. According to this view, which is as old as Anaxagoras, God and matter exist independently, but God governs matter. This doctrine is simply the expression of the fact of the existence both of matter and of God. The Stoics did not perplex themselves with the in-soluble question of the origin and nature of matter.[C] Antoninus also assumes a beginning of things, as we now know them; but his language is sometimes very obscure. I have endeavored to explain the meaning of one difficult passage (vii. 75, and the note). [A] As to the word [Greek: ousia], the reader may see the Index. I add here a few examples of the use of the word; Antoninus has (v. 24), [Greek: hê sumpasa ousia], "the universal substance." He says (xii. 30 and iv. 40), "there is one common substance" ([Greek: ousia]), distributed among countless bodies. In Stobaeus (tom. 1, lib. 1, tit. 14) there is this definition, [Greek: ousian de phasin tôn ontôn hapantôn tên prôtên hylên]. In viii. II, Antoninus speaks of [Greek: to ousiôdes kai hyulikon], "the substantial and the material;" and (vii. 10) he says that "everything material" ([Greek: enulon]) disappears in the substance of the whole ([Greek: tê tôn holôn ousia]). The [Greek: ousia] is the generic name of that existence which we assume as the highest or ultimate, because we conceive no existence which can be coordinated with it and none above it. It is the philosopher's "substance:" it is the ultimate expression for that which we conceive or suppose to be the basis, the being of a thing. "From the Divine, which is substance in itself, or the only and sole substance, all and everything that is created exists" (Swedenborg, Angelic Wisdom, 198). [B] I remark, in order to anticipate any misapprehension, that all these general terms involve a contradiction. The "one and all," and the like, and "the whole," imply limitation. "One" is limited; "all" is limited; the "whole" is limited. We cannot help it. We cannot find words to express that which we cannot fully conceive. The addition of "absolute" or any other such word does not mend the matter. Even the word God is used by most people, often unconsciously, in such a way that limitation is implied, and yet at the same time words are added which are intended to deny limitation. A Christian martyr, when he was asked what God was, is said to have answered that God has no name like a man; and Justin says the same (Apol. ii. 6), "the names Father, God, Creator, Lord, and Master are not names, but appellations derived from benefactions and acts." (Compare Seneca, De Benef. iv. 8.) We can conceive the existence of a thing, or rather we may have the idea of an existence, without an adequate notion of it, "adequate" meaning coextensive and coequal with the thing. We have a notion of limited space derived from the dimensions of what we call a material thing, though of space absolute, if I may use the term, we have no notion at all; and of infinite space the notion is the same--no notion at all; and yet we conceive it in a sense, though I know not how, and we believe that space is infinite, and we cannot conceive it to be finite. [C] The notions of matter and of space are inseparable. We derive the notion of space from matter and form. But we have no adequate conception either of matter or space. Matter in its ultimate resolution is as unintelligible as what men call mind, spirit, or by whatever other name they may express the power which makes itself known by acts. Anaxagoras laid down the distinction between intelligence [Greek: nous] and matter, and he said that intelligence impressed motion on matter, and so separated the elements of matter and gave them order; but he probably only assumed a beginning, as Simplicius says, as a foundation of his philosophical teaching. Empedocles said, "The universe always existed." He had no idea of what is called creation. Ocellus Lucanus (i, § 2) maintained that the Universe ([Greek: to pan]) was imperishable and uncreated. Consequently it is eternal. He admitted the existence of God; but his theology would require some discussion. On the contrary, the Brachmans, according to Strabo (p. 713, ed. Cas.), taught that the universe was created and perishable; and the creator and administrator of it pervades the whole. The author of the book of Solomon's Wisdom says (xi. 17): "Thy Almighty hand made the world of matter without form," which may mean that matter existed already. The common Greek word which we translate "matter" is [Greek: hylê]. It is the stuff that things are made of. Matter consists of elemental parts ([Greek: stoicheia]) of which all material objects are made. But nothing is permanent in form. The nature of the universe, according to Antoninus' expression (iv. 36), "loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them. For everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be. But thou art thinking only of seeds which are cast into the earth or into a womb: but this is a very vulgar notion." All things then are in a constant flux and change; some things are dissolved into the elements, others come in their places; and so the "whole universe continues ever young and perfect" (xii. 23). Antoninus has some obscure expressions about what he calls "seminal principles" ([Greek: spermatikoi logoi]). He opposes them to the Epicurean atoms (vi. 24), and consequently his "seminal principles" are not material atoms which wander about at hazard, and combine nobody knows how. In one passage (iv. 21) he speaks of living principles, souls ([Greek: psychahi]) after the dissolution of their bodies being received into the "seminal principle of the universe." Schultz thinks that by "seminal principles Antoninus means the relations of the various elemental principles, which relations are determined by the Deity and by which alone the production of organized beings is possible." This may be the meaning; but if it is, nothing of any value can be derived from it.[A] Antoninus often uses the word "Nature" ([Greek: physis]), and we must attempt to fix its meaning, The simple etymological sense of [Greek: physis] is "production," the birth of what we call Things. The Romans used Natura, which also means "birth" originally. But neither the Greeks nor the Romans stuck to this simple meaning, nor do we. Antoninus says (x. 6): "Whether the universe is [a concourse of] atoms or Nature [is a system], let this first be established, that I am a part of the whole which is governed by nature." Here it might seem as if nature were personified and viewed as an active, efficient power; as something which, it not independent of the Deity, acts by a power which is given to it by the Deity. Such, if I understand the expression right, is the way in which the word Nature is often used now, though it is plain that many writers use the word without fixing any exact meaning to it. It is the same with the expression Laws of Nature, which some writers may use in an intelligible sense, but others as clearly use in no definite sense at all. There is no meaning in this word Nature, except that which Bishop Butler assigns to it, when he says, "The only distinct meaning of that word Natural is Stated, Fixed, or Settled; since what is natural as much requires and presupposes an intelligent agent to render it so, _i.e._, to effect it continually or at stated times, as what is supernatural or miraculous does to effect it at once." This is Plato's meaning (De Leg., iv. 715) when he says that God holds the beginning and end and middle of all that exists, and proceeds straight on his course, making his circuit according to nature (that is by a fixed order); and he is continually accompanied by justice, who punishes those who deviate from the divine law, that is, from the order or course which God observes. [A] Justin (Apol. ii. 8) has the words [Greek: kata spermatikou logou meros], where he is speaking of the Stoics; but he uses this expression in a peculiar sense (note II). The early Christian writers were familiar with the Stoic terms, and their writings show that the contest was begun between the Christian expositors and the Greek philosophy. Even in the second Epistle of St. Peter (ii. I, v. 4) we find a Stoic expression, [Greek: Ina dia toutôn genêsthe theias koinônoi physeôs.] When we look at the motions of the planets, the action of what we call gravitation, the elemental combination of unorganized bodies and their resolution, the production of plants and of living bodies, their generation, growth, and their dissolution, which we call their death, we observe a regular sequence of phenomena, which within the limits of experience present and past, so far as we know the past, is fixed and invariable. But if this is not so, if the order and sequence of phenomena, as known to us, are subject to change in the course of an infinite progression,--and such change is conceivable,--we have not discovered, nor shall we ever discover, the whole of the order and sequence of phenomena, in which sequence there may be involved according to its very nature, that is, according to its fixed order, some variation of what we now call the Order or Nature of Things. It is also conceivable that such changes have taken place,--changes in the order of things, as we are compelled by the imperfection of language to call them, but which are no changes; and further it is certain that our knowledge of the true sequence of all actual phenomena, as for instance the phenomena of generation, growth, and dissolution, is and ever must be imperfect. We do not fare much better when we speak of Causes and Effects than when we speak of Nature. For the practical purposes of life we may use the terms cause and effect conveniently, and we may fix a distinct meaning to them, distinct enough at least to prevent all misunderstanding. But the case is different when we speak of causes and effects as of Things. All that we know is phenomena, as the Greeks called them, or appearances which follow one another in a regular order, as we conceive it, so that if some one phenomenon should fail in the series, we conceive that there must either be an interruption of the series, or that something else will appear after the phenomenon which has failed to appear, and will occupy the vacant place; and so the series in its progression may be modified or totally changed. Cause and effect then mean nothing in the sequence of natural phenomena beyond what I have said; and the real cause, or the transcendent cause, as some would call it, of each successive phenomenon is in that which is the cause of all things which are, which have been, and which will be forever. Thus the word Creation may have a real sense if we consider it as the first, if we can conceive a first, in the present order of natural phenomena; but in the vulgar sense a creation of all things at a certain time, followed by a quiescence of the first cause and an abandonment of all sequences of Phenomena to the laws of Nature, or to the other words that people may Use, is absolutely absurd.[A] [A] Time and space are the conditions of our thought; but time infinite and space infinite cannot be objects of thought, except in a very imperfect way. Time and space must not in any way be thought of when we think of the Deity. Swedenborg says, "The natural man may believe that he would have no thought, if the ideas of time, of space, and of things material were taken away; for upon those is founded all the thought that man has. But let him know that the thoughts are limited and confined in proportion as they partake of time, of space, and of what is material; and that they are not limited and are extended, in proportion as they do not partake of those things; since the mind is so far elevated above the things corporeal and worldly" (Concerning Heaven and Hell, 169). [Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF PALLAS] Now, though there is great difficulty in understanding all the passages of Antoninus, in which he speaks of Nature, of the changes of things and of the economy of the universe, I am convinced that his sense of Nature and Natural is the same as that which I have stated; and as he was a man who knew how to use words in a clear way and with strict consistency, we ought to assume, even if his meaning in some passages is doubtful, that his view of Nature was in harmony with his fixed belief in the all-pervading, ever present, and ever active energy of God. (ii. 4; iv. 40; x. 1; vi. 40; and other passages. Compare Seneca, De Benef., iv. 7. Swedenborg, Angelic Wisdom, 349-357.) There is much in Antoninus that is hard to understand, and it might be said that he did not fully comprehend all that he wrote; which would however be in no way remarkable, for it happens now that a man may write what neither he nor anybody can understand. Antoninus tells us (xii. 10) to look at things and see what they are, resolving them into the material [Greek: hylê], the casual [Greek: aition], and the relation [Greek: anaphora], or the purpose, by which he seems to mean something in the nature of what we call effect, or end. The word Caus ([Greek: aitia]) is the difficulty. There is the same word in the Sanscrit (hétu); and the subtle philosophers of India and of Greece, and the less subtle philosophers of modern times, have all used this word, or an equivalent word, in a vague way. Yet the confusion sometimes may be in the inevitable ambiguity of language rather than in the mind of the writer, for I cannot think that some of the wisest of men did not know what they intended to say. When Antoninus says (iv. 36), "that everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be," he might be supposed to say what some of the Indian philosophers have said, and thus a profound truth might be converted into a gross absurdity. But he says, "in a manner," and in a manner he said true; and in another manner, if you mistake his meaning, he said false. When Plato said, "Nothing ever is, but is always becoming" ([Greek: aei gignetai]), he delivered a text, out of which we may derive something; for he destroys by it not all practical, but all speculative notions of cause and effect. The whole series of things, as they appear to us, must be contemplated in time, that is in succession, and we conceive or suppose intervals between one state of things and another state of things, so that there is priority and sequence, and interval, and Being, and a ceasing to Be, and beginning and ending. But there is nothing of the kind in the Nature of Things. It is an everlasting continuity (iv. 45; vii. 75). When Antoninus speaks of generation (x. 26), he speaks of one cause ([Greek: aitia]) acting, and then another cause taking up the work, which the former left in a certain state, and so on; and we might perhaps conceive that he had some notion like what has been called "the self-evolving power of nature;" a fine phrase indeed, the full import of which I believe that the writer of it did not see, and thus he laid himself open to the imputation of being a follower of one of the Hindu sects, which makes all things come by evolution out of nature or matter, or out of something which takes the place of Deity, but is not Deity. I would have all men think as they please, or as they can, and I only claim the same freedom which I give. When a man writes anything, we may fairly try to find out all that his words must mean, even if the result is that they mean what he did not mean; and if we find this contradiction, it is not our fault, but his misfortune. Now Antoninus is perhaps somewhat in this condition in what he says (x. 26), though he speaks at the end of the paragraph of the power which acts, unseen by the eyes, but still no less clearly. But whether in this passage (x. 26) lie means that the power is conceived to be in the different successive causes ([Greek: aitiai]), or in something else, nobody can tell. From other passages, however, I do collect that his notion of the phenomena of the universe is what I have stated. The Deity works unseen, if we may use such language, and perhaps I may, as Job did, or he who wrote the book of Job. "In him we live and move and are," said St. Paul to the Athenians; and to show his hearers that this was no new doctrine, he quoted the Greek poets. One of these poets was the Stoic Cleauthes, whose noble hymn to Zeus, or God, is an elevated expression of devotion and philosophy. It deprives Nature of her power, and puts her under the immediate government of the Deity. "Thee all this heaven, which whirls around the earth, Obeys, and willing follows where thou leadest. Without thee, God, nothing is done on earth, Nor in the ethereal realms, nor in the sea, Save what the wicked through their folly do." Antoninus' conviction of the existence of a divine power and government was founded on his perception of the order of the universe. Like Socrates (Xen. Mem., iv. 3, 13, etc.) he says that though we cannot see the forms of divine powers, we know that they exist because we see their works. "To those who ask, Where hast thou seen the gods, or how dost thou comprehend that they exist and so worshipest them? I answer, in the first place, that they may be seen even with the eyes; in the second place, neither have I seen my own soul, and yet I honor it. Thus then with respect to the gods, from what I constantly experience of their power, from this I comprehend that they exist, and I venerate them." (xii. 28, and the note. Comp. Aristotle de Mundo, c. 6; Xen. Mem. i. 4, 9; Cicero, Tuscul. i. 28, 29; St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, i. 19, 20; and Montaigne's Apology for Raimond de Sebonde, ii. c. 12.) This is a very old argument, which has always had great weight with most people, and has appeared sufficient. It does not acquire the least additional strength by being developed in a learned treatise. It is as intelligible in its simple enunciation as it can be made. If it is rejected, there is no arguing with him who rejects it: and if it is worked out into innumerable particulars, the value of the evidence runs the risk of being buried under a mass of words. Man being conscious that he is a spiritual power, or that he has such a power, in whatever way he conceives that he has it--for I wish simply to state a fact--from this power which he has in himself, he is led, as Antoninus says, to believe that there is a greater power, which, as the old Stoics tell us, pervades the whole universe as the intellect[A] ([Greek: nous]) pervades man. (Compare Epictetus' Discourses, i. 14; and Voltaire à Mad^e. Necker, vol. lxvii., p. 278, ed. Lequien.) [A] I have always translated the word [Greek: nous], "intelligence" or "intellect." It appears to be the word used by the oldest Greek philosophers to express the notion of "intelligence" as opposed to the notion of "matter." I have always translated the word [Greek: logos] by "reason," and [Greek: logikos] by the word "rational," or perhaps sometimes "reasonable," as I have translated [Greek: noeros] by the word "intellectual." Every man who has thought and has read any philosophical writings knows the difficulty of finding words to express certain notions, how imperfectly words express these notions, and how carelessly the words are often used. The various senses of the word [Greek: logos] are enough to perplex any man. Our translators of the New Testament (St. John, c. 1.) have simply translated [Greek: ho logos] by "the word," as the Germans translated it by "das Wort;" but in their theological writings they sometimes retain the original term Logos. The Germans have a term Vernunft, which seems to come nearest to our word Reason, or the necessary and absolute truths which we cannot conceive as being other than what they are. Such are what some people have called the laws of thought, the conceptions of space and of time, and axioms or first principles, which need no proof and cannot be proved or denied. Accordingly the Germans can say, "Gott ist die höchste Vernunft," the Supreme Reason. The Germans have also a word Verstand, which seems to represent our word "understanding," "intelligence," "intellect," not as a thing absolute which exists by itself, but as a thing connected with an individual being, as a man. Accordingly it is the capacity of receiving impressions (Vorstellungen, [Greek: phantasiai],) and forming from them distinct ideas (Begriffe), and perceiving differences. I do not think that these remarks will help the reader to the understanding of Antoninus, or his use of the words [Greek: nous] and [Greek: logos]. The emperor's meaning must be got from his own words, and if it does not agree altogether with modern notions, it is not our business to force it into agreement, but simply to find out what his meaning is, if we can. Justinus (ad Diognetum, c. vii.) says that the omnipotent, all-creating, and invisible God has fixed truth and the holy, incomprehensible Logos in men's hearts; and this Logos is the architect and creator of the Universe. In the first Apology (c. xxxii.), he says that the seed ([Greek: sperma]) from God is the Logos, which dwells in those who believe in God. So it appears that according to Justinus the Logos is only in such believers. In the second Apology (c. viii.) he speaks of the seed of the Logos being implanted in all mankind; but those who order their lives according to Logos, such as the Stoics, have only a portion of the Logos ([Greek: kata spermatikou logou meros]), and have not the knowledge and contemplation of the entire Logos, which is Christ. Swedenborg's remarks (Angelic Wisdom, 240) are worth comparing with Justinus. The modern philosopher in substance agrees with the ancient; but he is more precise. God exists then, but what do we know of his nature? Antoninus says that the soul of man is an efflux from the divinity. We have bodies like animals, but we have reason, intelligence, as the gods. Animals have life ([Greek: psychê]) and what we call instincts or natural principles of action: but the rational animal man alone has a rational, intelligent soul ([Greek: psychê logikê noera]). Antoninus insists on this continually: God is in man,[A] and so we must constantly attend to the divinity within us, for it is only in this way that we can have any knowledge of the nature of God. The human soul is in a sense a portion of the divinity, and the soul alone has any communication with the Deity; for as he says (xii. 2): "With his intellectual part alone God touches the intelligence only which has flowed and been derived from himself into these bodies." In fact he says that which is hidden within a man is life, that is, the man himself. All the rest is vesture, covering, organs, instrument, which the living man, the real[B] man, uses for the purpose of his present existence. The air is universally diffused for him who is able to respire; and so for him who is willing to partake of it the intelligent power, which holds within it all things, is diffused as wide and free as the air (viii. 54). It is by living a divine life that man approaches to a knowledge of the divinity.[C] It is by following the divinity within [Greek: daimôn] or [Greek: theos], as Antonius calls it, that man comes nearest to the Deity, the supreme good; for man can never attain to perfect agreement with his internal guide ([Greek: to hêgemonikon]). "Live with the gods. And he does live with the gods who constantly shows to them that his own soul is satisfied with that which is assigned to him, and that it does all the daemon ([Greek: daimôn]) wishes, which Zeus hath given to every man for his guardian and guide, a portion of himself. And this daemon is every man's understanding and reason" (v. 27). [A] Comp. Ep. to the Corinthians, i. 3, 17, and James iv. 8, "Drawnigh to God and he will draw nigh to you." [B] This is also Swedenborg's doctrine of the soul. "As to what concerns the soul, of which it is said that it shall live after death, it is nothing else but the man himself, who lives in the body, that is, the interior man, who by the body acts in the world and from whom the body itself lives" (quoted by Clissold, p. 456 of "The Practical Nature of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, in a Letter to the Archbishop of Dublin (Whately)," second edition, 1859; a book which theologians might read with profit). This is an old doctrine of the soul, which has been often proclaimed, but never better expressed than by the "Auctor de Mundo," c. 6, quoted by Gataker in his "Antoninus," p. 436. "The soul by which we live and have cities and houses is invisible, but it is seen by its works; for the whole method of life has been devised by it and ordered, and by it is held together. In like manner we must think also about the Deity, who in power is most mighty, in beauty most comely, in life immortal, and in virtue supreme: wherefore though he is invisible to human nature, he is seen by his very works." Other passages to the same purpose are quoted by Gataker (p. 382). Bishop Butler has the same as to the soul: "Upon the whole, then, our organs of sense and our limbs are certainly instruments, which the living persons, ourselves, make use of to perceive and move with." If this is not plain enough, be also says: "It follows that our organized bodies are no more ourselves, or part of ourselves, than any other matter around us." (Compare Anton, x. 38). [C] The reader may consult Discourse V., "Of the existence and nature of God," in John Smith's "Select Discourses." He has prefixed as a text to this Discourse, the striking passage of Agapetus, Paraenes. § 3: "He who knows himself will know God; and he who knows God will be made like to God; and he will be made like to God, who has become worthy of God; and he becomes worthy of God, who does nothing unworthy of God, but thinks the things that are his, and speaks what he thinks, and does what he speaks." I suppose that the old saying, "Know thyself," which is attributed to Socrates and others, had a larger meaning than the narrow sense which is generally given to it. (Agapetus, ed. Stephan. Schoning, Franeker, 1608. This volume contains also the Paraeneses of Nilus.) There is in man, that is in the reason, the intelligence, a superior faculty which if it is exercised rules all the rest. This is the ruling faculty ([Greek: to hêgemonikon]), which Cicero (De Natura Deorum, ii. 11) renders by the Latin word Principatus, "to which nothing can or ought to be superior." Antoninus often uses this term and others which are equivalent. He names it (vii. 64) "the governing intelligence." The governing faculty is the master of the soul (v. 26). A man must reverence only his ruling faculty and the divinity within him. As we must reverence that which is supreme in the universe, so we must reverence that which is supreme in ourselves; and this is that which is of like kind with that which is supreme in the universe (v. 21). So, as Plotinus says, the soul of man can only know the divine so far as it knows itself. In one passage (xi. 19) Antoninus speaks of a man's condemnation of himself when the diviner part within him has been overpowered and yields to the less honorable and to the perishable part, the body, and its gross pleasures. In a word, the views of Antoninus on this matter, however his expressions may vary, are exactly what Bishop Butler expresses when he speaks of "the natural supremacy of reflection or conscience," of the faculty "which surveys, approves, or disapproves the several affections of our mind and actions of our lives." Much matter might be collected from Antoninus on the notion of the Universe being one animated Being. But all that he says amounts to no more, as Schultz remarks, than this: the soul of man is most intimately united to his body, and together they make one animal, which we call man; so the Deity is most intimately united to the world, or the material universe, and together they form one whole. But Antoninus did not view God and the material universe as the same, any more than he viewed the body and soul of man as one. Antoninus has 110 speculations on the absolute nature of the Deity. It was not his fashion to waste his time on what man cannot understand.[A] He was satisfied that God exists, that he governs all things, that man can only have an imperfect knowledge of his nature, and he must attain this imperfect knowledge by reverencing the divinity which is within him, and keeping it pure. [A] "God, who is infinitely beyond the reach of our narrow capacities" (Locke, Essay concerning the Human Understanding, ii. chap. 17). From all that has been said, it follows that the universe is administered by the Providence of God ([Greek: pronoia]), and that all things are wisely ordered. There are passages in which Antoninus expresses doubts, or states different possible theories of the constitution and government of the universe; but he always recurs to his fundamental principle, that if we admit the existence of a deity, we must also admit that he orders all things wisely and well (iv. 27; vi. 1; ix. 28; xii. 5; and many other passages). Epictetus says (i. 6) that we can discern the providence which rules the world, if we possess two things,--the power of seeing all that happens with respect to each thing, and a grateful disposition. But if all things are wisely ordered, how is the world so full of what we call evil, physical and moral? If instead of saying that there is evil in the world, we use the expression which I have used, "what we call evil," we have partly anticipated the emperor's answer. We see and feel and know imperfectly very few things in the few years that we live, and all the knowledge and all the experience of all the human race is positive ignorance of the whole, which is infinite. Now, as our reason teaches us that everything is in some way related to and connected with every other thing, all notion of evil as being in the universe of things is a contradiction; for if the whole comes from and is governed by an intelligent being, it is impossible to conceive anything in it which tends to the evil or destruction of the whole (viii. 55; x. 6). Everything is in constant mutation, and yet the whole subsists; we might imagine the solar system resolved into its elemental parts, and yet the whole would still subsist "ever young and perfect." All things, all forms, are dissolved, and new forms appear. All living things undergo the change which we call death. If we call death an evil, then all change is an evil. Living beings also suffer pain, and man suffers most of all, for he suffers both in and by his body and by his intelligent part. Men suffer also from one another, and perhaps the largest part of human suffering comes to man from those whom he calls his brothers. Antoninus says (viii. 55), "Generally, wickedness does no harm at all to the universe; and particularly, the wickedness [of one man] does no harm to another. It is only harmful to him who has it in his power to be released from it as soon as he shall choose." The first part of this is perfectly consistent with the doctrine that the whole can sustain no evil or harm. The second part must be explained by the Stoic principle that there is no evil in anything which is not in our power. What wrong we suffer from another is his evil, not ours. But this is an admission that there is evil in a sort, for he who does wrong does evil, and if others can endure the wrong, still there is evil in the wrong-doer. Antoninus (xi. 18) gives many excellent precepts with respect to wrongs and injuries, and his precepts are practical. He teaches us to bear what we cannot avoid, and his lessons may be just as useful to him who denies the being and the government of God as to him who believes in both. There is no direct answer in Antoninus to the objections which may be made to the existence and providence of God because of the moral disorder and suffering which are in the world, except this answer which he makes in reply to the supposition that even the best men may be extinguished by death. He says if it is so, we may be sure that if it ought to have been otherwise, the gods would have ordered it otherwise (xii. 5). His conviction of the wisdom which we may observe in the government of the world is too strong to be disturbed by any apparent irregularities in the order of things. That these disorders exist is a fact, and those who would conclude from them against the being and government of God conclude too hastily. We all admit that there is an order in the material world, a Nature, in the sense in which that word has been explained, a constitution ([Greek: kataskeuê]), what we call a system, a relation of parts to one another and a fitness of the whole for something. So in the constitution of plants and of animals there is an order, a fitness for some end. Sometimes the order, as we conceive it, is interrupted, and the end, as we conceive it, is not attained. The seed, the plant, or the animal sometimes perishes before it has passed through all its changes and done all its uses. It is according to Nature, that is a fixed order, for some to perish early and for others to do all their uses and leave successors to take their place. So man has a corporeal and intellectual and moral constitution fit for certain uses, and on the whole man performs these uses, dies, and leaves other men in his place. So society exists, and a social state is manifestly the natural state of man--the state for which his nature fits him, and society amidst innumerable irregularities and disorders still subsists; and perhaps we may say that the history of the past and our present knowledge give us a reasonable hope that its disorders will diminish, and that order, its governing principle, may be more firmly established. As order then, a fixed order, we may say, subject to deviations real or apparent, must be admitted to exist in the whole nature of things, that which we call disorder or evil, as it seems to us, does not in any way alter the fact of the general constitution of things having a nature or fixed order. Nobody will conclude from the existence of disorder that order is not the rule, for the existence of order both physical and moral is proved by daily experience and all past experience. We cannot conceive how the order of the universe is maintained: we cannot even conceive how our own life from day to day is continued, nor how we perform the simplest movements of the body, nor how we grow and think and act, though we know many of the conditions which are necessary for all these functions. Knowing nothing then of the unseen power which acts in ourselves except by what is done, we know nothing of the power which acts through what we call all time and all space; but seeing that there is a nature or fixed order in all things known to us, it is conformable to the nature of our minds to believe that this universal Nature has a cause which operates continually, and that we are totally unable to speculate on the reason of any of those disorders or evils which we perceive. This I believe is the answer which may be collected from all that Antoninus has said.[A] [A] Cleanthes says in his Hymn:-- "For all things good and bad to One thou formest, So that One everlasting reason governs all." See Bishop Butler's Sermons. Sermon XV., "Upon the Ignorance of Man." The origin of evil is an old question. Achilles tells Priam (Iliad, 24, 527) that Zeus has two casks, one filled with good things, and the other with bad, and that he gives to men out of each according to his pleasure; and so we must be content, for we cannot alter the will of Zeus. One of the Greek commentators asks how must we reconcile this doctrine with what we find in the first book of the Odyssey, where the king of the gods says, Men say that evil comes to them from us, but they bring it on themselves through their own folly. The answer is plain enough even to the Greek commentator. The poets make both Achilles and Zeus speak appropriately to their several characters. Indeed, Zeus says plainly that men do attribute their sufferings to their gods, but they do it falsely, for they are the cause of their own sorrows. [Illustration: THE APPIAN WAY, ROME] Epictetus in his Enchiridion (c. 27) makes short work of the question of evil. He says, "As a mark is not set up for the purpose of missing it, so neither does the nature of evil exist in the universe." This will appear obscure enough to those who are not acquainted with Epictetus, but he always knows what he is talking about. We do not set up a mark in order to miss it, though we may miss it. God, whose existence Epictetus assumes, has not ordered all things so that his purpose shall fail. Whatever there may be of what we call evil, the nature of evil, as he expresses it, does not exist; that is, evil is not a part of the constitution or nature of things. If there were a principle of evil ([Greek: archê]) in the constitution of things, evil would no longer be evil, as Simplicius argues, but evil would be good. Simplicius (c. 34, [27]) has a long and curious discourse on this text of Epictetus, and it is amusing and instructive. One passage more will conclude this matter. It contains all that the emperor could say (ii. 11): "To go from among men, if there are gods, is not a thing to be afraid of, for the gods will not involve thee in evil; but if indeed they do not exist, or if they have no concern about human affairs, what is it to me to live in a universe devoid of gods or devoid of providence? But in truth they do exist, and they do care for human things, and they have put all the means in man's power to enable him not to fall into real evils. And as to the rest, if there was anything evil, they would have provided for this also, that it should be altogether in a man's power not to fall into it. But that which does not make a man worse, how can it make a man's life worse? But neither through ignorance, nor having the knowledge but not the power to guard against or correct these things, is it possible that the nature of the universe has overlooked them; nor is it possible that it has made so great a mistake, either through want of power or want of skill, that good and evil should happen indiscriminately to the good and the bad. But death certainly and life, honor and dishonor, pain and pleasure, all these things equally happen to good and bad men, being things which make us neither better nor worse. Therefore they are neither good nor evil." The Ethical part of Antoninus' Philosophy follows from his general principles. The end of all his philosophy is to live conformably to Nature, both a man's own nature and the nature of the universe. Bishop Butler has explained what the Greek philosophers meant when they spoke of living according to Nature, and he says that when it is explained, as he has explained it and as they understood it, it is "a manner of speaking not loose and undeterminate, but clear and distinct, strictly just and true." To live according to Nature is to live according to a man's whole nature, not according to a part of it, and to reverence the divinity within him as the governor of all his actions. "To the rational animal the same act is according to nature and according to reason"[A] (vii. 11). That which is done contrary to reason is also an act contrary to nature, to the whole nature, though it is certainly conformable to some part of man's nature, or it could not be done. Man is made for action, not for idleness or pleasure. As plants and animals do the uses of their nature, so man must do his (v. 1). [A] This is what Juvenal means when he says (xiv. 321),-- "Nunquam aliud Natura aliud Sapientia dicit." Man must also live conformably to the universal nature, conformably to the nature of all things of which he is one; and as a citizen of a political community he must direct his life and actions with reference to those among whom, among other purposes, he lives.[A] A man must not retire into solitude and cut himself off from his fellow-men. He must be ever active to do his part in the great whole. All men are his kin, not only in blood, but still more by participating in the same intelligence and by being a portion of the same divinity. A man cannot really be injured by his brethren, for no act of theirs can make him bad, and he must not be angry with them nor hate them: "For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away" (ii. 1). [A] See viii. 52; and Persius iii. 66 Further he says: "Take pleasure in one thing and rest in it in passing from one social act to another social act, thinking of God" (vi. 7). Again: "Love mankind. Follow God" (vii. 31). It is the characteristic of the rational soul for a man to love his neighbor (xi. 1). Antoninus teaches in various passages the forgiveness of injuries, and we know that he also practised what he taught. Bishop Butler remarks that "this divine precept to forgive injuries and to love our enemies, though to be met with in Gentile moralists, yet is in a peculiar sense a precept of Christianity, as our Saviour has insisted more upon it than on any other single virtue." The practice of this precept is the most difficult of all virtues. Antoninus often enforces it and gives us aid towards following it. When we are injured, we feel anger and resentment, and the feeling is natural, just, and useful for the conservation of society. It is useful that wrong-doers should feel the natural consequences of their actions, among which is the disapprobation of society and the resentment of him who is wronged. But revenge, in the proper sense of that word, must not be practised. "The best way of avenging thyself," says the emperor, "is not to become like the wrong-doer." It is plain by this that he does not mean that we should in any case practise revenge; but he says to those who talk of revenging wrongs, Be not like him who has done the wrong. Socrates in the Crito (c. 10) says the same in other words, and St. Paul (Ep. to the Romans, xii. 17). "When a man has done thee any wrong, immediately consider with what opinion about good or evil he has done wrong. For when thou hast seen this, thou wilt pity him and wilt neither wonder nor be angry" (vii. 26). Antoninus would not deny that wrong naturally produces the feeling of anger and resentment, for this is implied in the recommendation to reflect on the nature of the man's mind who has done the wrong, and then you will have pity instead of resentment; and so it comes to the same as St. Paul's advice to be angry and sin not; which, as Butler well explains it, is not a recommendation to be angry, which nobody needs, for anger is a natural passion, but it is a warning against allowing anger to lead us into sin. In short the emperor's doctrine about wrongful acts is this: wrong-doers do not know what good and bad are: they offend out of ignorance, and in the sense of the Stoics this is true. Though this kind of ignorance will never be admitted as a legal excuse, and ought not to be admitted as a full excuse in any way by society, there may be grievous injuries, such as it is in a man's power to forgive without harm to society; and if he forgives because he sees that his enemies know not what they do, he is acting in the spirit of the sublime prayer, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." The emperor's moral philosophy was not a feeble, narrow system, which teaches a man to look directly to his own happiness, though a man's happiness or tranquillity is indirectly promoted by living as he ought to do. A man must live conformably to the universal nature, which means, as the emperor explains it in many passages, that a man's actions must be conformable to his true relations to all other human beings, both as a citizen of a political community and as a member of the whole human family. This implies, and he often expresses it in the most forcible language, that a man's words and actions, so far as they affect others, must be measured by a fixed rule, which is their consistency with the conservation and the interests of the particular society of which he is a member, and of the whole human race. To live conformably to such a rule, a man must use his rational faculties in order to discern clearly the consequences and full effect of all his actions and of the actions of others: he must not live a life of contemplation and reflection only, though he must often retire within himself to calm and purify his soul by thought,[A] but he must mingle in the work of man and be a fellow laborer for the general good. [A] Ut nemo in sese tentat descendere, nemo.--_Persius_, iv. 21. A man should have an object or purpose in life, that he may direct all his energies to it; of course a good object (ii. 7). He who has not one object or purpose of life, cannot be one and the same all through his life (xi. 21). Bacon has a remark to the same effect, on the best means of "reducing of the mind unto virtue and good estate; which is, the electing and propounding unto a man's self good and virtuous ends of his life, such as may be in a reasonable sort within his compass to attain." He is a happy man who has been wise enough to do this when he was young and has had the opportunities; but the emperor seeing well that a man cannot always be so wise in his youth, encourages himself to do it when he can, and not to let life slip away before he has begun. He who can propose to himself good and virtuous ends of life, and be true to them, cannot fail to live conformably to his own interest and the universal interest, for in the nature of things they are one. If a thing is not good for the hive, it is not good for the bee (vi. 54). One passage may end this matter. "If the gods have determined about me and about the things which must happen to me, they have determined well, for it is not easy even to imagine a deity without forethought; and as to doing me harm, why should they have any desire towards that? For what advantage would result to them from this or to the whole, which is the special object of their providence? But if they have not determined about me individually, they have certainly determined about the whole at least; and the things which happen by way of sequence in this general arrangement I ought to accept with pleasure and to be content with them. But if they determine about nothing--which it is wicked to believe, or if we do believe it, let us neither sacrifice nor pray nor swear by them, nor do anything else which we do as if the gods were present and lived with us; but if however the gods determine about none of the things which concern us, I am able to determine about myself, and I can inquire about that which is useful: and that is useful to every man which is conformable to his own constitution ([Greek: kataskeuê]) and nature. But my nature is rational and social; and my city and country, so far as I am Antoninus, is Rome; but so far as I am a man, it is the world. The things then which are useful to these cities are alone useful to me" (vi. 44). It would be tedious, and it is not necessary, to state the emperor's opinions on all the ways in which a man may profitably use his understanding towards perfecting himself in practical virtue. The passages to this purpose are in all parts of his book, but as they are in no order or connection, a man must use the book a long time before he will find out all that is in it. A few words may be added here. If we analyze all other things, we find how insufficient they are for human life, and how truly worthless many of them are. Virtue alone is indivisible, one, and perfectly satisfying. The notion of Virtue cannot be considered vague or unsettled, because a man may find it difficult to explain the notion fully to himself, or to expound it to others in such a way as to prevent cavilling. Virtue is a whole, and no more consists of parts than man's intelligence does; and yet we speak of various intellectual faculties as a convenient way of expressing the various powers which man's intellect shows by his works. In the same way we may speak of various virtues or parts of virtue, in a practical sense, for the purpose of showing what particular virtues we ought to practice in order to the exercise of the whole of virtue, that is, as man's nature is capable of. The prime principle in man's constitution is social. The next in order is not to yield to the persuasions of the body, when they are not conformable to the rational principle, which must govern. The third is freedom from error and from deception. "Let then the ruling principle holding fast to these things go straight on, and it has what is its own" (vii. 55). The emperor selects justice as the virtue which is the basis of all the rest (x. 11), and this had been said long before his time. It is true that all people have some notion of what is meant by justice as a disposition of the mind, and some notion about acting in conformity to this disposition; but experience shows that men's notions about justice are as confused as their actions are inconsistent with the true notion of justice. The emperor's notion of justice is clear enough, but not practical enough for all mankind. "Let there be freedom from perturbations with respect to the things which come from the external cause; and let there be justice in the things done by virtue of the internal cause, that is, let there be movement and action terminating in this, in social acts, for this is according to thy nature" (ix. 31). In another place (ix. 1) he says that "he who acts unjustly acts impiously," which follows of course from all that he says in various places. He insists on the practice of truth as a virtue and as a means to virtue, which no doubt it is: for lying even in indifferent things weakens the understanding; and lying maliciously is as great a moral offense as a man can be guilty of, viewed both as showing an habitual disposition, and viewed with respect to consequences. He couples the notion of justice with action. A man must not pride himself on having some fine notion of justice in his head, but he must exhibit his justice in act, like St. James' notion of faith. But this is enough. The Stoics, and Antoninus among them, call some things beautiful ([Greek: kala]) and some ugly ([Greek: aischra]), and as they are beautiful so they are good, and as they are ugly so they are evil, or bad (ii. 1). All these things, good and evil, are in our power, absolutely, some of the stricter Stoics would say; in a manner only, as those who would not depart altogether from common sense would say; practically they are to a great degree in the power of some persons and in some circumstances, but in a small degree only in other persons and in other circumstances. The Stoics maintain man's free will as to the things which are in his power; for as to the things which are out of his power, free will terminating in action is of course excluded by the very terms of the expression. I hardly know if we can discover exactly Antoninus' notion of the free will of man, nor is the question worth the inquiry. What he does mean and does say is intelligible. All the things which are not in our power ([Greek: aproaireta]) are indifferent: they are neither good nor bad, morally. Such are life, health, wealth, power, disease, poverty, and death. Life and death are all men's portion. Health, wealth, power, disease, and poverty happen to men, indifferently to the good and to the bad; to those who live according to nature and to those who do not.[A] "Life," says the emperor, "is a warfare and a stranger's sojourn, and after fame is oblivion" (ii. 17). After speaking of those men who have disturbed the world and then died, and of the death of philosophers such as Heraclitus and Democritus, who was destroyed by lice, and of Socrates whom other lice (his enemies) destroyed, he says: "What means all this? Thou hast embarked, thou hast made the voyage, thou art come to shore; get out. If indeed to another life, there is no want of gods, not even there. But if to a state without sensation, thou wilt cease to be held by pains and pleasures, and to be a slave to the vessel which is as much inferior as that which serves it is superior: for the one is intelligence and Deity; the other is earth and corruption" (iii. 3). It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live according to nature (xii. 1). Every man should live in such a way as to discharge his duty, and to trouble himself about nothing else. He should live such a life that he shall always be ready for death, and shall depart content when the summons comes. For what is death? "A cessation of the impressions through the senses, and of the pulling of the strings which move the appetites, and of the discursive movements of the thoughts, and of the service to the flesh" (vi. 28). Death is such as generation is, a mystery of nature (iv. 5). In another passage, the exact meaning of which is perhaps doubtful (ix. 3), he speaks of the child which leaves the womb, and so he says the soul at death leaves its envelope. As the child is born or comes into life by leaving the womb, so the soul may on leaving the body pass into another existence which is perfect. I am not sure if this is the emperor's meaning. Butler compares it with a passage in Strabo (p. 713) about the Brachmans' notion of death being the birth into real life and a happy life, to those who have philosophized; and he thinks Antoninus may allude to this opinion.[B] [A] "All events come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked: to the good and to the clean and to the unclean," &c. (Ecclesiastes, ix. v. 2); and (v. 3), "This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that there is one event unto all." In what sense "evil" is meant here seems rather doubtful. There is no doubt about the emperor's meaning. Compare Epictetus, Enchiridion, c. i., &c.; and the doctrine of the Brachmans (Strabo p. 713, ed. Cas.): [Greek: agathon de ê kakon mêden einai tôn sumbainontôn anthrôpois]. [B] Seneca (Ep. 102) has the same, whether an expression of his own opinion, or merely a fine saying of others employed to embellish his writings, I know not. After speaking of the child being prepared in the womb to live this life, he adds, "Sic per hoc spatium, quod ab infantia patet in senectutem, in alium naturae sumimur partum. Alia origo nos expectat, alius rerum status." See Ecclesiastes, xii. 7; and Lucan, i. 457:-- "Longae, canitis si cognita, vitae Mors media est." Antoninus' opinion of a future life is nowhere clearly expressed. His doctrine of the nature of the soul of necessity implies that it does not perish absolutely, for a portion of the divinity cannot perish. The opinion is at least as old as the time of Epicharmus and Euripides; what comes from earth goes back to earth, and what comes from heaven, the divinity, returns to him who gave it. But I find nothing clear in Antoninus as to the notion of the man existing after death so as to be conscious of his sameness with that soul which occupied his vessel of clay. He seems to be perplexed on this matter, and finally to have rested in this, that God or the gods will do whatever is best, and consistent with the university of things. Nor, I think, does he speak conclusively on another Stoic doctrine, which some Stoics practised,--the anticipating the regular course of nature by a man's own act. The reader will find some passages in which this is touched on, and he may make of them what he can. But there are passages in which the emperor encourages himself to wait for the end patiently and with tranquillity; and certainly it is consistent with all his best teaching that a man should bear all that falls to his lot and do useful acts as he lives. He should not therefore abridge the time of his usefulness by his own act. Whether he contemplates any possible cases in which a man should die by his own hand, I cannot tell; and the matter is not worth a curious inquiry, for I believe it would not lead to any certain result as to his opinion on this point. I do not think that Antoninus, who never mentions Seneca, though he must have known all about him, would have agreed with Seneca when he gives as a reason for suicide, that the eternal law, whatever he means, has made nothing better for us than this, that it has given us only one way of entering into life and many ways of going out of it. The ways of going out indeed are many, and that is a good reason for a man taking care of himself.[A] [A] See Plinius H.N. ii., c. 7; Seneca, De Provid. c. 6; and Ep. 70: "Nihil melius aeterna lex," &c. Happiness was not the direct object of a Stoic's life. There is no rule of life contained in the precept that a man should pursue his own happiness. Many men think that they are seeking happiness when they are only seeking the gratification of some particular passion, the strongest that they have. The end of a man is, as already explained, to live conformably to nature, and he will thus obtain happiness, tranquillity of mind, and contentment (iii. 12; viii. 1, and other places). As a means of living conformably to nature he must study the four chief virtues, each of which has its proper sphere: wisdom, or the knowledge of good and evil; justice, or the giving to every man his due; fortitude, or the enduring of labor and pain; and temperance, which is moderation in all things. By thus living conformably to nature the Stoic obtained all that he wished or expected. His reward was in his virtuous life, and he was satisfied with that. Some Greek poet long ago wrote:-- "For virtue only of all human things Takes her reward not from the hands of others. Virtue herself rewards the toils of virtue." Some of the Stoics indeed expressed themselves in very arrogant, absurd terms, about the wise man's self-sufficiency; they elevated him to the rank of a deity.[A] But these were only talkers and lecturers, such as those in all ages who utter fine words, know little of human affairs, and care only for notoriety. Epictetus and Antoninus both by precept and example labored to improve themselves and others; and if we discover imperfections in their teaching, we must still honor these great men who attempted to show that there is in man's nature and in the constitution of things sufficient reason for living a virtuous life. It is difficult enough to live as we ought to live, difficult even for any man to live in such a way as to satisfy himself, if he exercises only in a moderate degree the power of reflecting upon and reviewing his own conduct; and if all men cannot be brought to the same opinions in morals and religion, it is at least worth while to give them good reasons for as much as they can be persuaded to accept. [A] J. Smith in his Select Discourses on "the Excellency and Nobleness of True Religion" (c. vi.) has remarked on this Stoical arrogance. He finds it in Seneca and others. In Seneca certainly, and perhaps something of it in Epictetus; but it is not in Antoninus. THE THOUGHTS OF MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONIUS. I. From my grandfather Verus[A] [I learned] good morals and the government of my temper. 2. From the reputation and remembrance of my father,[B] modesty and a manly character. 3. From my mother,[C] piety and beneficence, and abstinence, not only from evil deeds, but even from evil thoughts; and further, simplicity in my way of living, far removed from the habits of the rich. 4. From my great-grandfather,[D] not to have frequented public schools, and to have had good teachers at home, and to know that on such things a man should spend liberally. [A] Annius Verus was his grandfather's name. There is no verb in this section connected with the word "from," nor in the following sections of this book; and it is not quite certain what verb should be supplied. What I have added may express the meaning here, though there are sections which it will not fit. If he does not mean to say that he learned all these good things from the several persons whom he mentions, he means that he observed certain good qualities in them, or received certain benefits from them, and it is implied that he was the better for it, or at least might have been: for it would be a mistake to understand Marcus as saying that he possessed all the virtues which he observed in his kinsmen and teachers. [B] His father's name was Annius Verus. [C] His mother was Domitia Calvilla, named also Lucilla. [D] Perhaps his mother's grandfather, Catilius Severus. 5. From my governor, to be neither of the green nor of the blue party at the games in the Circus, nor a partisan either of the Parmularius or the Scutarius at the gladiators' fights; from him too I learned endurance of labor, and to want little, and to work with my own hands, and not to meddle with other people's affairs, and not to be ready to listen to slander. 6. From Diognetus,[A] not to busy myself about trifling things, and not to give credit to what was said by miracle-workers and jugglers about incantations and the driving away of daemons and such things; and not to breed quails [for fighting], nor to give myself up passionately to such things; and to endure freedom of speech; and to have become intimate with philosophy; and to have been a hearer, first of Bacchius, then of Tandasis and Marcianus; and to have written dialogues in my youth; and to have desired a plank bed and skin, and whatever else of the kind belongs to the Grecian discipline. [A] In the works of Justinus there is printed a letter to one Diognetus, whom the writer names "most excellent." He was a Gentile, but he wished very much to know what the religion of the Christians was, what God they worshipped, and how this worship made them despise the world and death, and neither believe in the gods of the Greeks nor observe the superstition of the Jews; and what was this love to one another which they had, and why this new kind of religion was introduced now and not before. My friend Mr. Jenkins, rector of Lyminge in Kent, has suggested to me that this Diognetus may have been the tutor of M. Antoninus. 7. From Rusticus[A] I received the impression that my character required improvement and discipline; and from him I learned not to be led astray to sophistic emulation, nor to writing on speculative matters, nor to delivering little hortatory orations, nor to showing myself off as a man who practises much discipline, or does benevolent acts in order to make a display; and to abstain from rhetoric, and poetry, and fine writing; and not to walk about in the house in my outdoor dress, nor to do other things of the kind; and to write my letters with simplicity, like the letter which Rusticus wrote from Sinuessa to my mother; and with respect to those who have offended me by words, or done me wrong, to be easily disposed to be pacified and reconciled, as soon as they have shown a readiness to be reconciled; and to read carefully, and not to be satisfied with a superficial understanding of a book; nor hastily to give my assent to those who talk overmuch; and I am indebted to him for being acquainted with the discourses of Epictetus, which he communicated to me out of his own collection. [A] Q. Junius Rusticus was a Stoic philosopher, whom Antoninus valued highly, and often took his advice (Capitol. _M. Antonin_. iii). Antoninus says, [Greek: tois Epiktêteiois hypomnêmasin] which must not be translated, "the writings of Epictetus," for Epictetus wrote nothing. His pupil Arrian, who has preserved for us all that we know of Epictetus, says, [Greek: tauta epeirathên hypomnêmata emautô diaphylaxai tês ekeinou dianoias] (_Ep. ad. Gell_.) 8. From Apollonius[A] I learned freedom of will and undeviating steadiness of purpose; and to look to nothing else, not even for a moment, except to reason; and to be always the same, in sharp pains, on the occasion of the loss of a child, and in long illness; and to see clearly in a living example that the same man can be both most resolute and yielding, and not peevish in giving his instruction; and to have had before my eyes a man who clearly considered his experience and his skill in expounding philosophical principles as the smallest of his merits; and from him I learned how to receive from friends what are esteemed favors, without being either humbled by them or letting them pass unnoticed. [A] Apollonius of Chalcis came to Rome in the time of Pius to be Marcus' preceptor. He was a rigid Stoic. 9. From Sextus,[A] a benevolent disposition, and the example of a family governed in a fatherly manner, and the idea of living conformably to nature; and gravity without affectation, and to look carefully after the interests of friends, and to tolerate ignorant persons, and those who form opinions without consideration:+ he had the power of readily accommodating himself to all, so that intercourse with him was more agreeable than any flattery; and at the same time he was most highly venerated by those who associated with him: and he had the faculty both of discovery and ordering, in an intelligent and methodical way, the principles necessary for life; and he never showed anger or any other passion, but was entirely free from passion, and also most affectionate; and he could express approbation without noisy display, and he possessed much knowledge without ostentation. 10. From Alexander[B] the grammarian, to refrain from fault-finding, and not in a reproachful way to chide those who uttered any barbarous or solecistic or strange-sounding expression; but dexterously to introduce the very expression which ought to have been used, and in the way of answer or giving confirmation, or joining in an inquiry about the thing itself, not about the word, or by some other fit suggestion. 11. From Fronto[C] I learned to observe what envy and duplicity and hypocrisy are in a tyrant, and that generally those among us who are called Patricians are rather deficient in paternal affection. 12. From Alexander the Platonic, not frequently nor without necessity to say to any one, or to write in a letter, that I have no leisure; nor continually to excuse the neglect of duties required by our relation to those with whom we live, by alleging urgent occupations. 13. From Catulus[D] not to be indifferent when a friend finds fault, even if he should find fault without reason, but to try to restore him to his usual disposition; and to be ready to speak well of teachers, as it is reported of Domitius and Athenodotus; and to love my children truly. [A] Sextus of Chaeronea, a grandson of Plutarch, or nephew, as some say; but more probably a grandson. [B] Alexander was a Grammaticus, a native of Phrygia. He wrote a commentary on Homer; and the rhetorician Aristides wrote a panegyric on Alexander in a funeral oration. [C] M. Cornelius Fronto was a rhetorician, and in great favor with Marcus. There are extant various letters between Marcus and Fronto. [D] Cinna Catulus, a Stoic philosopher. 14. From my brother[A] Severus, to love my kin, and to love truth, and to love justice; and through him I learned to know Thrasea, Helvidius, Cato, Dion, Brutus;[B] and from him I received the idea of a polity in which there is the same law for all, a polity administered with regard to equal rights and equal freedom of speech, and the idea of a kingly government which respects most of all the freedom of the governed; I learned from him also + consistency and undeviating steadiness in my regard for philosophy; and a disposition to do good, and to give to others readily, and to cherish good hopes, and to believe that I am loved by my friends; and in him I observed no concealment of his opinions with respect to those whom he condemned, and that his friends had no need to conjecture what he wished or did not wish, but it was quite plain. [A] The word brother may not be genuine. Antoninus had no brother. It has been supposed that he may mean some cousin. Schultz in his translation omits "brother," and says that this Severus is probably Claudius Severus, a peripatetic. [B] We know, from Tacitus (_Annal._ xiii., xvi. 21; and other passages), who Thrasea and Helvidius were. Plutarch has written the lives of the two Catos, and of Dion and Brutus. Antoninus probably alludes to Cato of Utica, who was a Stoic. 15. From Maximus[A] I learned self-government, and not to be led aside by anything; and cheerfulness in all circumstances, as well as in illness; and a just admixture in the moral character of sweetness and dignity, and to do what was set before me without complaining. I observed that everybody believed that he thought as he spoke, and that in all that he did he never had any bad intention; and he never showed amazement and surprise, and was never in a hurry, and never put off doing a thing, nor was perplexed nor dejected, nor did he ever laugh to disguise his vexation, nor, on the other hand, was he ever passionate or suspicious. He was accustomed to do acts of beneficence, and was ready to forgive, and was free from all falsehood; and he presented the appearance of a man who could not be diverted from right, rather than of a man who had been improved. I observed, too, that no man could ever think that he was despised by Maximus, or ever venture to think himself a better man. He had also the art of being humorous in an agreeable way.+ [A] Claudius Maximus was a Stoic philosopher, who was highly esteemed also by Antoninus Pius, Marcus' predecessor. The character of Maximus is that of a perfect man. (See viii. 25.) 16. In my father[A] I observed mildness of temper, and unchangeable resolution in the things which he had determined after due deliberation; and no vain-glory in those things which men call honors; and a love of labor and perseverance; and a readiness to listen to those who had anything to propose for the common weal; and undeviating firmness in giving to every man according to his deserts; and a knowledge derived from experience of the occasions for vigorous action and for remission. And I observed that he had overcome all passion for boys; and he considered himself no more than any other citizen;[B] and he released his friends from all obligation to sup with him or to attend him of necessity when he went abroad, and those who had failed to accompany him, by reason of any urgent circumstances, always found him the same. I observed too his habit of careful inquiry in all matters of deliberation, and his persistency, and that he never stopped his investigation through being satisfied with appearances which first present themselves; and that his disposition was to keep his friends, and not to be soon tired of them, nor yet to be extravagant in his affection; and to be satisfied on all occasions, and cheerful; and to foresee things a long way off, and to provide for the smallest without display; and to check immediately popular applause and all flattery; and to be ever watchful over the things which were necessary for the administration of the empire, and to be a good manager of the expenditure, and patiently to endure the blame which he got for such conduct; and he was neither superstitious with respect to the gods, nor did he court men by gifts or by trying to please them, or by flattering the populace; but he showed sobriety in all things, and firmness, and never any mean thoughts or action, nor love of novelty. And the things which conduce in any way to the commodity of life, and of which fortune gives an abundant supply, he used without arrogance and without excusing himself; so that when he had them, he enjoyed them without affectation, and when he had them not, he did not want them. No one could ever say of him that he was either a sophist or a [home-bred] flippant slave or a pedant; but every one acknowledged him to be a man ripe, perfect, above flattery, able to manage his own and other men's affairs. Besides this, he honored those who were true philosophers, and he did not reproach those who pretended to be philosophers, nor yet was he easily led by them. He was also easy in conversation, and he made himself agreeable without any offensive affectation. He took a reasonable care of his body's health, not as one who was greatly attached to life, nor out of regard to personal appearance, nor yet in a careless way, but so that through his own attention he very seldom stood in need of the physician's art or of medicine or external applications. He was most ready to give without envy to those who possessed any particular faculty, such as that of eloquence or knowledge of the law or of morals, or of anything else; and he gave them his help, that each might enjoy reputation according to his deserts; and he always acted conformably to the institutions of his country, without showing any affectation of doing so. Further, he was not fond of change nor unsteady, but he loved to stay in the same places, and to employ himself about the same things; and after his paroxysms of headache he came immediately fresh and vigorous to his usual occupations. His secrets were not many, but very few and very rare, and these only about public matters; and he showed prudence and economy in the exhibition of the public spectacles and the construction of public buildings, his donations to the people, and in such things, for he was a man who looked to what ought to be done, not to the reputation which is got by a man's acts. He did not take the bath at unseasonable hours; he was not fond of building houses, nor curious about what he ate, nor about the texture and color of his clothes, nor about the beauty of his slaves.[C] His dress came from Lorium, his villa on the coast, and from Lanuvium generally.[D] We know how he behaved to the toll-collector at Tusculum who asked his pardon; and such was all his behavior. There was in him nothing harsh, nor implacable, nor violent, nor, as one may say, anything carried to the sweating point; but he examined all things severally, as if he had abundance of time, and without confusion, in an orderly way, vigorously and consistently. And that might be applied to him which is recorded of Socrates,[E] that he was able both to abstain from, and to enjoy, those things which many are too weak to abstain from, and cannot enjoy without excess. But to be strong enough both to bear the one and to be sober in the other is the mark of a man who has a perfect and invincible soul, such as he showed in the illness of Maximus. [A] He means his adoptive father, his predecessor, the Emperor Antoninus Pius. Compare vi. 30. [B] He uses the word [Greek: koinonoêmosunê]. See Gataker's note. [C] This passage is corrupt, and the exact meaning is uncertain. [D] Lorium was a villa on the coast north of Rome, and there Antoninus was brought up, and he died there. This also is corrupt. [E] Xenophon, Memorab. i. 3, 15. 17. To the gods I am indebted for having good grandfathers, good parents, a good sister, good teachers, good associates, good kinsmen and friends, nearly everything good. Further, I owe it to the gods that I was not hurried into any offence against any of them, though I had a disposition which, if opportunity had offered, might have led me to do something of this kind; but, through their favor, there never was such a concurrence of circumstances as put me to the trial. Further, I am thankful to the gods that I was not longer brought up with my grandfather's concubine, and that I preserved the flower of my youth, and that I did not make proof of my virility before the proper season, but even deferred the time; that I was subjected to a ruler and father who was able to take away all pride from me, and to bring me to the knowledge that it is possible for a man to live in a palace without wanting either guards or embroidered dresses, or torches and statues, and such-like show; but that it is in such a man's power to bring himself very near to the fashion of a private person, without being for this reason either meaner in thought, or more remiss in action, with respect to the things which must be done for the public interest in a manner that befits a ruler. I thank the gods for giving me such a brother,[A] who was able by his moral character to rouse me to vigilance over myself, and who at the same time pleased me by his respect and affection; that my children have not been stupid nor deformed in body; that I did not make more proficiency in rhetoric, poetry, and the other studies, in which I should perhaps have been completely engaged, if I had seen that I was making progress in them; that I made haste to place those who brought me up in the station of honor, which they seemed to desire, without putting them off with hope of my doing it some other time after, because they were then still young; that I knew Apollonius, Rusticus, Maximus; that I received clear and frequent impressions about living according to nature, and what kind of a life that is, so that, so far as depended on the gods, and their gifts, and help, and inspirations, nothing hindered me from forthwith living according to nature, though I still fall short of it through my own fault, and through not observing the admonitions of the gods, and, I may almost say, their direct instructions; that my body has held out so long in such a kind of life; that I never touched either Benedicta or Theodotus, and that, after having fallen into amatory passions, I was cured, and, though I was often out of humor with Rusticus, I never did anything of which I had occasion to repent; that, though it was my mother's fate to die young, she spent the last years of her life with me; that, whenever I wished to help any man in his need, or on any other occasion, I was never told that I had not the means of doing it; and that to myself the same necessity never happened, to receive anything from another; that I have such a wife,[B] so obedient, and so affectionate, and so simple; that I had abundance of good masters for my children; and that remedies have been shown to me by dreams, both others, and against bloodspitting and giddiness[C]...; and that, when I had an inclination to philosophy, I did not fall into the hands of any sophist, and that I did not waste my time on writers [of histories], or in the resolution of syllogisms, or occupy myself about the investigation of appearances in the heavens; for all these things require the help of the gods and fortune. Among the Quadi at the Granua.[D] [A] The emperor had no brother except L. Verus, his brother by adoption. [B] See the _Life of Antoninus_. [C] This is corrupt. [D] The Quadi lived in the southern part of Bohemia and Moravia; and Antoninus made a campaign against them. (See the _Life_.) Granua is probably the river Graan, which flows into the Danube. If these words are genuine, Antoninus may have written this first book during the war with the Quadi. In the first edition of Antoninus, and in the older editions, the first three sections of the second book make the conclusion of the first book. Gataker placed them at the beginning of the second book. II. Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin to me; not [only] of the same blood or seed, but that it participates in [the same] intelligence and [the same] portion of the divinity, I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him. For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth.[A] To act against one another, then, is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away. [A] Xenophon, Mem. ii. 3. 18. 2. Whatever this is that I am, it is a little flesh and breath, and the ruling part. Throw away thy books; no longer distract thyself: it is not allowed; but as if thou wast now dying, despise the flesh; it is blood and bones and network, a contexture of nerves, veins, and arteries. See the breath also, what kind of a thing it is; air, and not always the same, but every moment sent out and again sucked in. The third, then, is the ruling part; consider thus: Thou art an old man; no longer let this be a slave, no longer be pulled by the strings like a puppet to unsocial movements, no longer be either dissatisfied with thy present lot, or shrink from the future. 3. All that is from the gods is full of providence. That which is from fortune is not separated from nature or without an interweaving and involution with the things which are ordered by providence. From thence all things flow; and there is besides necessity, and that which is for the advantage of the whole universe, of which thou art a part. But that is good for every part of nature which the nature of the whole brings, and what serves to maintain this nature. Now the universe is preserved, as by the changes of the elements so by the changes of things compounded of the elements. Let these principles be enough for thee; let them always be fixed opinions. But cast away the thirst after books, that thou mayest not die murmuring, but cheerfully, truly, and from thy heart thankful to the gods. 4. Remember how long thou hast been putting off these things, and how often thou hast received an opportunity from the gods, and yet dost not use it. Thou must now at last perceive of what universe thou art a part, and of what administrator of the universe thy existence is an efflux, and that a limit of time is fixed for thee, which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind, it will go and thou wilt go, and it will never return. 5. Every moment think steadily as a Roman and a man to do what thou hast in hand with perfect and simple dignity, and feeling of affection, and freedom, and justice, and to give thyself relief from all other thoughts. And thou wilt give thyself relief if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last, laying aside all carelessness and passionate aversion from the commands of reason, and all hypocrisy, and self-love, and discontent with the portion which has been given to thee. Thou seest how few the things are, the which if a man lays hold of, he is able to live a life which flows in quiet, and is like the existence of the gods; for the gods on their part will require nothing more from him who observes these things. 6. Do wrong[A] to thyself, do wrong to thyself, my soul; but thou wilt no longer have the opportunity of honoring thyself. Every man's life is sufficient.+ But thine is nearly finished, though thy soul reverences not itself, but places thy felicity in the souls of others. [A] Perhaps it should be, "thou art doing violence to thyself." [Greek: hybrizeis] not [Greek: hybrize]. 7. Do the things external which fall upon thee distract thee? Give thyself time to learn something new and good, and cease to be whirled around. But then thou must also avoid being carried about the other way; for those too are triflers who have wearied themselves in life by their activity, and yet have no object to which to direct every movement, and, in a word, all their thoughts. 8. Through not observing what is in the mind of another a man has seldom been seen to be unhappy; but those who do not observe the movements of their own minds must of necessity be unhappy. 9. This thou must always bear in mind, what is the nature of the whole, and what is my nature, and how this is related to that, and what kind of a part it is of what kind of a whole, and that there is no one who hinders thee from always doing and saying the things which are according to the nature of which thou art a part. 10. Theophrastus, in his comparison of bad acts--such a comparison as one would make in accordance with the common notions of mankind--says, like a true philosopher, that the offenses which are committed through desire are more blamable than those which are committed through anger. For he who is excited by anger seems to turn away from reason with a certain pain and unconscious contraction; but he who offends through desire, being overpowered by pleasure, seems to be in a manner more intemperate and more womanish in his offences. Rightly, then, and in a way worthy of philosophy, he said that the offence which is committed with pleasure is more blamable than that which is committed with pain; and on the whole the one is more like a person who has been first wronged and through pain is compelled to be angry, but the other is moved by his own impulse to do wrong, being carried towards doing something by desire. 11. Since it is possible[A] that thou mayest depart from life this very moment, regulate every act and thought accordingly.[B] But to go away from among men, if there are gods, is not a thing to be afraid of, for the gods will not involve thee in evil; but if indeed they do not exist, or if they have no concern about human affairs, what is it to me to live in a universe devoid of gods or devoid of providence? But in truth they do exist, and they do care for human things, and they have put all the means in man's power to enable him not to fall into real evils. And as to the rest, if there was anything evil, they would have provided for this also, that it should be altogether in a man's power not to fall into it. Now that which does not make a man worse, how can it make a man's life worse? But neither through ignorance, nor--having the knowledge but not the power to guard against or correct these things, is it possible that the nature of the universe has overlooked them; nor is it possible that it has made so great a mistake, either through want of power or want of skill, that good and evil should happen indiscriminately to the good and the bad. But death certainly, and life, honor and dishonor, pain and pleasure,--all these things equally happen to good men and bad, being things which make us neither better nor worse. Therefore they are neither good nor evil. [A] Or it may mean, "since it is in thy power to depart;" which gives a meaning somewhat different. [B] See Cicero, Tuscul., i. 49. 12. How quickly all things disappear,--in the universe the bodies themselves, but in time the remembrance of them. What is the nature of all sensible things, and particularly those which attract with the bait of pleasure or terrify by pain, or are noised abroad by vapory fame; how worthless, and contemptible, and sordid, and perishable, and dead they are,--all this it is the part of the intellectual faculty to observe. To observe too who these are whose opinions and voices give reputation; what death is, and the fact that, if a man looks at it in itself, and by the abstractive power of reflection resolves into their parts all the things which present themselves to the imagination in it, he will then consider it to be nothing else than an operation of nature; and if any one is afraid of an operation of nature, he is a child. This, however, is not only an operation of nature, but it is also a thing which conduces to the purposes of nature. To observe too how man comes near to the Deity, and by what part of him, and when this part of man is so disposed+ (vi. 28). 13. Nothing is more wretched than a man who traverses everything in a round, and pries into the things beneath the earth, as the poet[A] says, and seeks by conjecture what is in the minds of his neighbors, without perceiving that it is sufficient to attend to the daemon within him, and to reverence it sincerely. And reverence of the daemon consists in keeping it pure from passion and thoughtlessness, and dissatisfaction with what comes from gods and men. For the things from the gods merit veneration for their excellence; and the things from men should be dear to us by reason of kinship; and sometimes even, in a manner, they move our pity by reason of men's ignorance of good and bad; this defect being not less than that which deprives us of the power of distinguishing things that are white and black. [A] Pindar, in the Theaetetus of Plato. See xi. 1. 14. Though thou shouldest be going to live three thousand years and as many times ten thousand years, still remember that no man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses. The longest and shortest are thus brought to the same. For the present is the same to all, though that which perish is not the same;+[A] and so that which is lost appears to be a mere moment. For a man cannot lose either the past or the future: for what a man has not, how can any one take this from him? These two things then thou must bear in mind; the one, that all things from eternity are of like forms and come round in a circle, and that it makes no difference whether a man shall see the same things during a hundred years, or two hundred, or an infinite time; and the second, that the longest liver and he who will die soonest lose just the same. For the present is the only thing of which a man can be deprived, if it is true that this is the only thing which he has, and that a man cannot lose a thing if he has it not. [A] See Gataker's note. 15. Remember that all is opinion. For what was said by the Cynic Monimus is manifest: and manifest too is the use of what was said, if a man receives what may be got out of it as far as it is true. 16. The soul of man does violence to itself, first of all, when it becomes an abscess, and, as it were, a tumor on the universe, so far as it can. For to be vexed at anything which happens is a separation of ourselves from nature, in some part of which the natures of all other things are contained. In the next place, the soul does violence to itself when it turns away from any man, or even moves towards him with the intention of injuring, such as are the souls of those who are angry. In the third place, the soul does violence to itself when it is overpowered by pleasure or by pain. Fourthly, when it plays a part, and does or says anything insincerely and untruly. Fifthly, when it allows any act of its own and any movement to be without an aim, and does anything thoughtlessly and without considering what it is, it being right that even the smallest things be done with reference to an end; and the end of rational animals is to follow the reason and the law of the most ancient city and polity. 17. Of human life the time is a point, and the substance is in a flux, and the perception dull, and the composition of the whole body subject to putrefaction, and the soul a whirl, and fortune hard to divine, and fame a thing devoid of judgment. And, to say all in a word, everything which belongs to the body is a stream, and what belongs to the soul is a dream and vapor, and life is a warfare and a stranger's sojourn, and after fame is oblivion. What then is that which is able to conduct a man? One thing, and only one, philosophy. But this consists in keeping the daemon within a man free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures, doing nothing without a purpose, nor yet falsely and with hypocrisy, not feeling the need of another man's doing or not doing anything; and besides, accepting all that happens, and all that is allotted, as coming from thence, wherever it is, from whence he himself came; and, finally, waiting for death with a cheerful mind, as being nothing else than a dissolution of the elements of which every living being is compounded. But if there is no harm to the elements themselves in each continually changing into another, why should a man have any apprehension about the change and dissolution of all the elements? For it is according to nature, and nothing is evil which is according to nature. This in Carnuntum.[A] [A] Carnuntum was a town of Pannonia, on the south side of the Danube, about thirty miles east of Vindobona (Vienna). Orosius (vii. 15) and Eutropius (viii. 13) say that Antoninus remained three years at Carmuntum during his war with the Marcomanni. III. We ought to consider not only that our life is daily wasting away and a smaller part of it is left, but another thing also must be taken into the account, that if a man should live longer, it is quite uncertain whether the understanding will still continue sufficient for the comprehension of things, and retain the power of contemplation which strives to acquire the knowledge of the divine and the human. For if he shall begin to fall into dotage, perspiration and nutrition and imagination and appetite, and whatever else there is of the kind, will not fail; but the power of making use of ourselves, and filling up the measure of our duty, and clearly separating all appearances, and considering whether a man should now depart from life, and whatever else of the kind absolutely requires a disciplined reason,--all this is already extinguished. We must make haste, then, not only because we are daily nearer to death, but also because the conception of things and the understanding of them cease first. 2. We ought to observe also that even the things which follow after the things which are produced according to nature contain something pleasing and attractive. For instance, when bread is baked some parts are split at the surface, and these parts which thus open, and have a certain fashion contrary to the purpose of the baker's art, are beautiful in a manner, and in a peculiar way excite a desire for eating. And again, figs, when they are quite ripe, gape open; and in the ripe olives the very circumstance of their being near to rottenness adds a peculiar beauty to the fruit. And the ears of corn bending down, and the lion's eyebrows, and the foam which flows from the mouth of wild boars, and many other things,--though they are far from being beautiful if a man should examine them severally,--still, because they are consequent upon the things which are formed by nature, help to adorn them, and they please the mind; so that if a man should have a feeling and deeper insight with respect to the things which are produced in the universe, there is hardly one of those which follow by way of consequence which will not seem to him to be in a manner disposed so as to give pleasure. And so he will see even the real gaping jaws of wild beasts with no less pleasure than those which painters and sculptors show by imitation; and in an old woman and an old man he will be able to see a certain maturity and comeliness; and the attractive loveliness of young persons he will be able to look on with chaste eyes; and many such things will present themselves, not pleasing to every man, but to him only who has become truly familiar with Nature and her works. 3. Hippocrates, after curing many diseases, himself fell sick and died. The Chaldaei foretold the deaths of many, and then fate caught them too. Alexander and Pompeius, and Caius Caesar, after so often completely destroying whole cities, and in battle cutting to pieces many ten thousands of cavalry and infantry, themselves too at last departed from life. Heraclitus, after so many speculations on the conflagration of the universe, was filled with water internally and died smeared all over with mud. And lice destroyed Democritus; and other lice killed Socrates. What means all this? Thou hast embarked, thou hast made the voyage, thou art come to shore; get out. If indeed to another life, there is no want of gods, not even there; but if to a state without sensation, thou wilt cease to be held by pains and pleasures, and to be a slave to the vessel, which is as much inferior as that which serves it is superior:+ for the one is intelligence and deity; the other is earth and corruption. 4. Do not waste the remainder of thy life in thoughts about others, when thou dost not refer thy thoughts to some object of common utility. For thou losest the opportunity of doing something else when thou hast such thoughts as these,--What is such a person doing, and why, and what is he saying, and what is he thinking of, and what is he contriving, and whatever else of the kind makes us wander away from the observation of our own ruling power. We ought then to check in the series of our thoughts everything that is without a purpose and useless, but most of all the over-curious feeling and the malignant; and a man should use himself to think of those things only about which if one should suddenly ask, What hast thou now in thy thoughts? with perfect openness thou mightest immediately answer, This or That; so that from thy words it should be plain that everything in thee is simple and benevolent, and such as befits a social animal, and one that cares not for thoughts about pleasure or sensual enjoyments at all, nor has any rivalry or envy and suspicion, or anything else for which thou wouldst blush if thou shouldst say that thou hadst it in thy mind. For the man who is such, and no longer delays being among the number of the best, is like a priest and minister of the gods, using too the [deity] which is planted within him, which makes the man uncontaminated by pleasure, unharmed by any pain, untouched by any insult, feeling no wrong, a fighter in the noblest fight, one who cannot be overpowered by any passion, dyed deep with justice, accepting with all his soul everything which happens and is assigned to him as his portion; and not often, nor yet without great necessity and for the general interest, imagining what another says, or does, or thinks. For it is only what belongs to himself that he makes the matter for his activity; and he constantly thinks of that which is allotted to himself out of the sum total of things, and he makes his own acts fair, and he is persuaded that his own portion is good. For the lot which is assigned to each man is carried along with him and carries him along with it.+ And he remembers also that every rational animal is his kinsman, and that to care for all men is according to man's nature; and a man should hold on to the opinion not of all, but of those only who confessedly live according to nature. But as to those who live not so, he always bears in mind what kind of men they are both at home and from home, both by night and by day, and what they are, and with what men they live an impure life. Accordingly, he does not value at all the praise which comes from such men, since they are not even satisfied with themselves. 5. Labor not unwillingly, nor without regard to the common interest, nor without due consideration, nor with distraction; nor let studied ornament set off thy thoughts, and be not either a man of many words, or busy about too many things. And further, let the deity which is in thee be the guardian of a living being, manly and of ripe age, and engaged in matter political, and a Roman, and a ruler, who has taken his post like a man waiting for the signal which summons him from life, and ready to go, having need neither of oath nor of any man's testimony. Be cheerful also, and seek not external help nor the tranquillity which others give. A man then must stand erect, not be kept erect by others. 6. If thou findest in human life anything better than justice, truth, temperance, fortitude, and, in a word, anything better than thy own mind's self-satisfaction in the things which it enables thee to do according to right reason, and in the condition that is assigned to thee without thy own choice; if, I say, thou seest anything better than this, turn to it with all thy soul, and enjoy that which thou hast found to be the best. But if nothing appears to be better than the Deity which is planted in thee, which has subjected to itself all thy appetites, and carefully examines all the impressions, and, as Socrates said, has detached itself from the persuasions of sense, and has submitted itself to the gods, and cares for mankind; if thou findest everything else smaller and of less value than this, give place to nothing else, for if thou dost once diverge and incline to it, thou wilt no longer without distraction be able to give the preference to that good thing which is thy proper possession and thy own; for it is not right that anything of any other kind, such as praise from the many, or power, or enjoyment of pleasure, should come into competition with that which is rationally and politically [or, practically] good. All these things, even though they may seem to adapt themselves [to the better things] in a small degree, obtain the superiority all at once, and carry us away. But do thou, I say, simply and freely choose the better, and hold to it.--But that which is useful is the better.--Well, then, if it is useful to thee as a rational being, keep to it; but if it is only useful to thee as an animal, say so, and maintain thy judgment without arrogance: only take care that thou makest the inquiry by a sure method. 7. Never value anything as profitable to thyself which shall compel thee to break thy promise, to lose thy self-respect, to hate any man, to suspect, to curse, to act the hypocrite, to desire anything which needs walls and curtains: for he who has preferred to everything else his own intelligence and daemon and the worship of its excellence, acts no tragic part, does not groan, will not need either solitude or much company; and, what is chief of all, he will live without either pursuing or flying from [death];[A] but whether for a longer or a shorter time he shall have the soul enclosed in the body, he cares not at all: for even if he must depart immediately, he will go as readily as if he were going to do anything else which can be done with decency and order; taking care of this only all through life, that his thoughts turn not away from anything which belongs to an intelligent animal and a member of a civil community. [A] Comp. ix. 3. 8. In the mind of one who is chastened and purified thou wilt find no corrupt matter, nor impurity, nor any sore skinned over. Nor is his life incomplete when fate overtakes him, as one may say of an actor who leaves the stage before ending and finishing the play. Besides, there is in him nothing servile, nor affected, nor too closely bound [to other things], nor yet detached[A] [from other things], nothing worthy of blame, nothing which seeks a hiding-place. [A] viii. 34. 9. Reverence the faculty which produces opinion. On this faculty it entirely depends whether there shall exist in thy ruling part any opinion inconsistent with nature and the constitution of the rational animal. And this faculty promises freedom from hasty judgment, and friendship towards men, and obedience to the gods. 10. Throwing away then all things, hold to these only which are few; and besides, bear in mind that every man lives only this present time, which is an indivisible point, and that all the rest of his life is either past or it is uncertain. Short then is the time which every man lives; and small the nook of the earth where he lives; and short too the longest posthumous fame, and even this only continued by a succession of poor human beings, who will very soon die, and who know not even themselves, much less him who died long ago. 11. To the aids which have been mentioned let this one still be added: Make for thyself a definition or description of the thing which is presented to thee, so as to see distinctly what kind of a thing it is in its substance, in its nudity, in its complete entirety, and tell thyself its proper name, and the names of the things of which it has been compounded, and into which it will be resolved. For nothing is so productive of elevation of mind as to be able to examine methodically and truly every object which is presented to thee in life, and always to look at things so as to see at the same time what kind of universe this is, and what kind of use everything performs in it, and what value everything has with reference to the whole, and what with reference to man, who is a citizen of the highest city, of which all other cities are like families; what each thing is, and of what it is composed, and how long it is the nature of this thing to endure which now makes an impression on me, and what virtue I have need of with respect to it, such as gentleness, manliness, truth, fidelity, simplicity, contentment, and the rest. Wherefore, on every occasion a man should say: This comes from god; and this is according to the apportionment + and spinning of the thread of destiny, and such-like coincidence and chance; and this is from one of the same stock, and a kinsman and partner, one who knows not, however, what is according to his nature. But I know; for this reason I behave towards him according to the natural law of fellowship with benevolence and justice. At the same time, however, in things indifferent[A] I attempt to ascertain the value of each. [A] Est et horum quae media appellamus grande discrimen.--_Seneca_, Ep. 82. 12. If thou workest at that which is before thee, following right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything else to distract thee, but keeping thy divine part pure, as if thou shouldst be bound to give it back immediately; if thou holdest to this, expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with thy present activity according to nature, and with heroic truth in every word and sound which thou utterest, thou wilt live happy. And there is no man who is able to prevent this. 13. As physicians have always their instruments and knives ready for cases which suddenly require their skill, so do thou have principles ready for the understanding of things divine and human, and for doing everything, even the smallest, with a recollection of the bond which unites the divine and human to one another. For neither wilt thou do anything well which pertains to man without at the same time having a reference to things divine; nor the contrary. 14. No longer wander at hazard; for neither wilt thou read thy own memoirs,[A] nor the acts of the ancient Romans and Hellenes, and the selections from books which thou wast reserving for thy old age.[B] Hasten then to the end which thou hast before thee, and, throwing away idle hopes, come to thy own aid, if thou carest at all for thyself, while it is in thy power. [A] [Greek: hypomnêmata]: or memoranda, notes, and the like. See i. 17. [B] Compare Fronto, ii. 9; a letter of Marcus to Fronto, who was then consul: "Feci tamen mihi per hos dies excerpta ex libris sexaginta in quinque tomis." But he says some of them were small books. 15. They know not how many things are signified by the words stealing, sowing, buying, keeping quiet, seeing what ought to be done; for this is not effected by the eyes, but by another kind of vision. 16. Body, soul, intelligence: to the body belong sensation, to the soul appetites, to the intelligence principles. To receive the impressions of forms by means of appearances belongs even to animals; to be pulled by the strings[A] of desire belongs both to wild beasts and to men who have made themselves into women, and to a Phalaris and a Nero: and to have the intelligence that guides to the things which appear suitable belongs also to those who do not believe in the gods, and who betray their country, and do their impure deeds when they have shut the doors. If then everything else is common to all that I have mentioned, there remains that which is peculiar to the good man, to be pleased and content with what happens, and with the thread which is spun for him; and not to defile the divinity which is planted in his breast, nor disturb it by a crowd of images, but to preserve it tranquil, following it obediently as a god, neither saying anything contrary to the truth, nor doing anything contrary to justice. And if all men refuse to believe that he lives a simple, modest, and contented life, he is neither angry with any of them, nor does he deviate from the way which leads to the end of life, to which a man ought to come pure, tranquil, ready to depart, and without any compulsion perfectly reconciled to his lot. [A] Compare Plato, De Legibus, i. p. 644, [Greek: oti tauta ta pathê] etc.; and Antoninus, ii. 2; vii. 3; xii. 19. IV. That which rules within, when it is according to nature, is so affected with respect to the events which happened, that it always easily adapts itself to that which is possible and is presented to it. For it requires no definite material, but it moves towards its purpose,[A] under certain conditions, however; and it makes a material for itself out of that which opposes it, as fire lays hold of what falls into it, by which a small light would have been extinguished; but when the fire is strong, it soon appropriates to itself the matter which is heaped on it, and consumes it, and rises higher by means of this very material. [A] [Greek: pros tha hêgoumena] literally "towards that which leads." The exact translation is doubtful. See Gataker's note. 2. Let no act be done without a purpose, nor otherwise than according to the perfect principles of art. 3. Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores, and mountains; and thou too art wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquillity; and I affirm that tranquillity is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind. Constantly then give to thyself this retreat, and renew thyself; and let thy principles be brief and fundamental, which, as soon as thou shalt recur to them, will be sufficient to cleanse the soul completely, and to send thee back free from all discontent with the things to which thou returnest. For with what art thou discontented? With the badness of men? Recall to thy mind this conclusion, that rational animals exist for one another, and that to endure is a part of justice, and that men do wrong involuntarily; and consider how many already, after mutual enmity, suspicion, hatred, and fighting, have been stretched dead, reduced to ashes; and be quiet at last.--But perhaps thou art dissatisfied with that which is assigned to thee out of the universe.--Recall to thy recollection this alternative; either there is providence or atoms [fortuitous concurrence of things]; or remember the arguments by which it has been proved that the world is a kind of political community [and be quiet at last].--But perhaps corporeal things will still fasten upon thee.--Consider then further that the mind mingles not with the breath, whether moving gently or violently, when it has once drawn itself apart and discovered its own power, and think also of all that thou hast heard and assented to about pain and pleasure [and be quiet at last].--But perhaps the desire of the thing called fame will torment thee.--See how soon everything is forgotten, and look at the chaos of infinite time on each side of [the present], and the emptiness of applause, and the changeableness and want of judgment in those who pretend to give praise, and the narrowness of the space within which it is circumscribed [and be quiet at last]. For the whole earth is a point, and how small a nook in it is this thy dwelling, and how few are there in it, and what kind of people are they who will praise thee. This then remains: Remember to retire into this little territory of thy own,[A] and above all do not distract or strain thyself, but be free, and look at things as a man, as a human being, as a citizen, as a mortal. But among the things readiest to thy hand to which thou shalt turn, let there be these, which are two. One is that things do not touch the soul, for they are external and remain immovable; but our perturbations come only from the opinion which is within. The other is that all these things, which thou seest, change immediately and will no longer be; and constantly bear in mind how many of these changes thou hast already witnessed. The universe is transformation: life is opinion. [A] Tecum habita, noris quam sit tibi curta supellex.--_Perseus_, iv. 52. 4. If our intellectual part is common, the reason also, in respect of which we are rational beings, is common: if this is so, common also is the reason which commands us what to do, and what not to do; if this is so, there is a common law also; if this is so, we are fellow-citizens; if this is so, we are members of some political community; if this is so, the world is in a manner a state.[A] For of what other common political community will any one say that the whole human race are members? And from thence, from this common political community, comes also our very intellectual faculty and reasoning faculty and our capacity for law; or whence do they come? For as my earthly part is a portion given to me from certain earth, and that which is watery from another element, and that which is hot and fiery from some peculiar source (for nothing comes out of that which is nothing, as nothing also returns to non-existence), so also the intellectual part comes from some source. [A] Compare Cicero De Legibus, i. 7. 5. Death is such as generation is, a mystery of nature; composition out of the same elements, and a decomposition into the same; and altogether not a thing of which any man should be ashamed, for it is not contrary to [the nature of] a reasonable animal, and not contrary to the reason of our constitution. 6. It is natural that these things should be done by such persons, it is a matter of necessity; and if a man will not have it so, he will not allow the fig-tree to have juice. But by all means bear this in mind, that within a very short time both thou and he will be dead; and soon not even your names will be left behind. 7. Take away thy opinion, and then there is taken away the complaint, "I have been harmed." Take away the complaint, "I have been harmed," and the harm is taken away. 8. That which does not make a man worse than he was, also does not make his life worse, nor does it harm him either from without or from within. 9. The nature of that which is [universally] useful has been compelled to do this. 10. Consider that everything which happens, happens justly, and if thou observest carefully, thou wilt find it to be so. I do not say only with respect to the continuity of the series of things, but with respect to what is just, and as if it were done by one who assigns to each thing its value. Observe then as thou hast begun; and whatever thou doest, do it in conjunction with this, the being good, and in the sense in which a man is properly understood to be good. Keep to this in every action. 11. Do not have such an opinion of things as he has who does thee wrong, or such as he wishes thee to have, but look at them as they are in truth. 12. A man should always have these two rules in readiness; the one to do only whatever the reason of the ruling and legislating faculty may suggest for the use of men; the other, to change thy opinion, if there is any one at hand who sets thee right and moves thee from any opinion. But this change of opinion must proceed only from a certain persuasion, as of what is just or of common advantage, and the like, not because it appears pleasant or brings reputation. 13. Hast thou reason? I have.--Why then dost not thou use it? For if this does its own work, what else dost thou wish? 14. Thou hast existed as a part. Thou shalt disappear in that which produced thee; but rather thou shalt be received back into its seminal principle by transmutation. 15. Many grains of frankincense on the same altar: one falls before, another falls after; but it makes no difference. 16. Within ten days thou wilt seem a god to those to whom thou art now a beast and an ape, if thou wilt return to thy principles and the worship of reason. 17. Do not act as if thou wert going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good. 18. How much trouble he avoids who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only to what he does himself, that it may be just and pure; or, as Agathon+ says, look not round at the depraved morals of others, but run straight along the line without deviating from it. 19. He who has a vehement desire for posthumous fame does not consider that every one of those who remember him will himself also die very soon; then again also they who have succeeded them, until the whole remembrance shall have been extinguished as it is transmitted through men who foolishly admire and perish. But suppose that those who will remember are even immortal, and that the remembrance will be immortal, what then is this to thee? And I say not what is it to the dead, but what is it to the living? What is praise, except + indeed so far as it has + a certain utility? For thou now rejectest unseasonably the gift of nature, clinging to something else ... +. 20. Everything which is in any way beautiful is beautiful in itself, and terminates in itself, not having praise as part of itself. Neither worse then nor better is a thing made by being praised. I affirm this also of the things which are called beautiful by the vulgar, for example, material things and works of art. That which is really beautiful has no need of anything; not more than law, not more than truth, not more than benevolence or modesty. Which of these things is beautiful because it is praised, or spoiled by being blamed? Is such a thing as an emerald made worse than it was, if it is not praised? or gold, ivory, purple, a lyre, a little knife, a flower, a shrub? [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE PARTHENON] 21. If souls continue to exist, how does the air contain them from eternity?--But how does the earth contain the bodies of those who have been buried from time so remote? For as here the mutation of these bodies after a certain continuance, whatever it may be, and their dissolution, make room for other dead bodies, so the souls which are removed into the air after subsisting for some time are transmuted and diffused, and assume a fiery nature by being received into the seminal intelligence of the universe, and in this way make room for the fresh souls which come to dwell there. And this is the answer which a man might give on the hypothesis of souls continuing to exist. But we must not only think of the number of bodies which are thus buried, but also of the number of animals which are daily eaten by us and the other animals. For what a number is consumed, and thus in a manner buried in the bodies of those who feed on them! And nevertheless this earth receives them by reason of the changes [of these bodies] into blood, and the transformations into the aerial or the fiery element. What is the investigation into the truth in this matter? The division into that which is material and that which is the cause of form [the formal], (vii. 29.) 22. Do not be whirled about, but in every movement have respect to justice, and on the occasion of every impression maintain the faculty of comprehension [or understanding]. 23. Everything harmonizes with me, which is harmonious to thee, O Universe. Nothing for me is too early nor too late, which is in due time for thee. Everything is fruit to me which thy seasons bring, O Nature: from thee are all things, in thee are all things, to thee all things return. The poet says, Dear city of Cecrops; and wilt not thou say, Dear city of Zeus? 24. Occupy thyself with few things, says the philosopher, if thou wouldst be tranquil.--But consider if it would not be better to say, Do what is necessary, and whatever the reason of the animal which is naturally social requires, and as it requires. For this brings not only the tranquillity which comes from doing well, but also that which comes from doing few things. For the greatest part of what we say and do being unnecessary, if a man takes this away, he will have more leisure and less uneasiness. Accordingly, on every occasion a man should ask himself, Is this one of the unnecessary things? Now a man should take away not only unnecessary acts, but also unnecessary thoughts, for thus superfluous acts will not follow after. 25. Try how the life of the good man suits thee, the life of him who is satisfied with his portion out of the whole, and satisfied with his own just acts and benevolent disposition. 26. Hast thou seen those things? Look also at these. Do not disturb thyself. Make thyself all simplicity. Does any one do wrong? It is to himself that he does the wrong. Has anything happened to thee? Well; out of the universe from the beginning everything which happens has been apportioned and spun out to thee. In a word, thy life is short. Thou must turn to profit the present by the aid of reason and justice. Be sober in thy relaxation. 27. Either it is a well-arranged universe[A] or a chaos huddled together, but still a universe. But can a certain order subsist in thee, and disorder in the All? And this too when all things are so separated and diffused and sympathetic. [A] Antoninus here uses the word [Greek: kosmos] both in the sense of the Universe and of Order; and it is difficult to express his meaning. 28. A black character, a womanish character, a stubborn character, bestial, childish, animal, stupid, counterfeit, scurrilous, fraudulent, tyrannical. 29. If he is a stranger to the universe who does not know what is in it, no less is he a stranger who does not know what is going on in it. He is a runaway, who flies from social reason; he is blind, who shuts the eyes of understanding; he is poor, who has need of another, and has not from himself all things which are useful for life. He is an abscess on the universe who withdraws and separates himself from the reason of our common nature through being displeased with the things which happen, for the same nature produces this, and has produced thee too: he is a piece rent asunder from the state, who tears, his own soul from that of reasonable animals, which is one. 30. The one is a philosopher without a tunic, and the other without a book: here is another half naked: Bread I have not, he says, and I abide by reason--and I do not get the means of living out of my learning, + and I abide [by my reason]. 31. Love the art, poor as it may be, which thou hast learned, and be content with it; and pass through the rest of life like one who has intrusted to the gods with his whole soul all that he has, making thyself neither the tyrant nor the slave of any man. 32. Consider, for example, the times of Vespasian. Thou wilt see all these things, people marrying, bringing up children, sick, dying, warring, feasting, trafficking, cultivating the ground, flattering, obstinately arrogant, suspecting, plotting, wishing for some to die, grumbling about the present, loving, heaping up treasure, desiring consulship, kingly power. Well, then, that life of these people no longer exists at all. Again, remove to the times of Trajan. Again, all is the same. Their life too is gone. In like manner view also the other epochs of time and of whole nations, and see how many after great efforts soon fell and were resolved into the elements. But chiefly thou shouldst think of those whom thou hast thyself known distracting themselves about idle things, neglecting to do what was in accordance with their proper constitution, and to hold firmly to this and to be content with it. And herein it is necessary to remember that the attention given to everything has its proper value and proportion. For thus thou wilt not be dissatisfied, if thou appliest thyself to smaller matters no further than is fit. 33. The words which were formerly familiar are now antiquated: so also the names of those who were famed of old, are now in a manner antiquated, Camillus, Caeso, Volesus, Leonnatus, and a little after also Scipio and Cato, then Augustus, then also Hadrianus and Antoninus. For all things soon pass away and become a mere tale, and complete oblivion soon buries them. And I say this of those who have shone in a wondrous way. For the rest, as soon as they have breathed out their breath they are gone, and no man speaks of them. And, to conclude the matter, what is even an eternal remembrance? A mere nothing. What then is that about which we ought to employ our serious pains? This one thing, thoughts just, and acts social, and words which never lie, and a disposition which gladly accepts all that happens, as necessary, as usual, as flowing from a principle and source of the same kind. 34. Willingly give thyself up to Clotho [one of the fates], allowing her to spin thy thread + into whatever things she pleases. 35. Everything is only for a day, both that which remembers and that which is remembered. 36. Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are and to make new things like them. For everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be. But thou art thinking only of seeds which are cast into the earth or into a womb: but this is a very vulgar notion. 37. Thou wilt soon die, and thou art not yet simple, nor free from perturbations, nor without suspicion of being hurt by external things, nor kindly disposed towards all; nor dost thou yet place wisdom only in acting justly. 38. Examine men's ruling principles, even those of the wise, what kind of things they avoid, and what kind they pursue. 39. What is evil to thee does not subsist in the ruling principle of another; nor yet in any turning and mutation of thy corporeal covering. Where is it then? It is in that part of thee in which subsists the power of forming opinions about evils. Let this power then not form [such] opinions, and all is well. And if that which is nearest to it, the poor body, is cut, burnt, filled with matter and rottenness, nevertheless let the part which forms opinions about these things be quiet; that is, let it judge that nothing is either bad or good which can happen equally to the bad man and the good. For that which happens equally to him who lives contrary to nature and to him who lives according to nature, is neither according to nature nor contrary to nature. 40. Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul; and observe how all things have reference to one perception, the perception of this one living being; and how all things act with one movement; and how all things are the co-operating causes of all things which exist; observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the contexture of the web. 41. Thou art a little soul bearing about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say (i. c. 19). 42. It is no evil for things to undergo change, and no good for things to subsist in consequence of change. 43. Time is like a river made up of the events which happen, and a violent stream; for as soon as a thing has been seen, it is carried away, and another comes in its place, and this will be carried away too. 44. Everything which happens is as familiar and well known as the rose in spring and the fruit in summer; for such is disease, and death, and calumny, and treachery, and whatever else delights fools or vexes them. 45. In the series of things, those which follow are always aptly fitted to those which have gone before: for this series is not like a mere enumeration of disjointed things, which has only a necessary sequence, but it is a rational connection: and as all existing things are arranged together harmoniously, so the things which come into existence exhibit no mere succession, but a certain wonderful relationship (vi. 38; vii. 9; vii. 75, note). 46. Always remember the saying of Heraclitus, that the death of earth is to become water, and the death of water is to become air, and the death of air is to become fire, and reversely. And think too of him who forgets whither the way leads, and that men quarrel with that with which they are most constantly in communion, the reason which governs the universe; and the things which they daily meet with seem to them strange: and consider that we ought not to act and speak as if we were asleep, for even in sleep we seem to act and speak; and that + we ought not, like children who learn from their parents, simply to act and speak as we have been taught. + 47. If any god told thee that thou shalt die to-morrow, or certainly on the day after to-morrow, thou wouldst not care much whether it was on the third day or on the morrow, unless thou wast in the highest degree mean-spirited; for how small is the difference! So think it no great thing to die after as many years as thou canst name rather than to-morrow. 48. Think continually how many physicians are dead after often contracting their eyebrows over the sick; and how many astrologers after predicting with great pretensions the deaths of others; and how many philosophers after endless discourses on death or immortality; how many heroes after killing thousands; and how many tyrants who have used their power over men's lives with terrible insolence, as if they were immortal; and how many cities are entirely dead, so to speak, Helice[A] and Pompeii and Herculaneum, and others innumerable. Add to the reckoning all whom thou hast known, one after another. One man after burying another has been laid out dead, and another buries him; and all this in a short time. To conclude, always observe how ephemeral and worthless human things are, and what was yesterday a little mucus, to-morrow will be a mummy or ashes. Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and end thy journey in content, as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew. [A] Ovid, Met. xv. 293:-- "Si quaeras Helicen et Burin Achaidas urbes, Invenies sub aquis." 49. Be like the promontory against which the waves continually break, but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it. Unhappy am I because this has happened to me? Not so, but happy am I, though this has happened to me, because I continue free from pain, neither crushed by the present nor fearing the future. For such a thing as this might have happened to every man; but every man would not have continued free from pain on such an occasion. Why then is that rather a misfortune than this a good fortune? And dost thou in all cases call that a man's misfortune which is not a deviation from man's nature? And does a thing seem to thee to be a deviation from man's nature, when it is not contrary to the will of man's nature? Well, thou knowest the will of nature. Will then this which has happened prevent thee from being just, magnanimous, temperate, prudent, secure against inconsiderate opinions and falsehood; will it prevent thee from having modesty, freedom, and everything else, by the presence of which man's nature obtains all that is its own? Remember too on every occasion which leads thee to vexation to apply this principle; not that this is a misfortune, but that to bear it nobly is good fortune. 50. It is a vulgar, but still a useful help towards contempt of death, to pass in review those who have tenaciously stuck to life. What more then have they gained than those who have died early? Certainly they lie in their tombs somewhere at last, Cadicianus, Fabius, Julianus, Lepidus, or any one else like them, who have carried out many to be buried, and then were carried out themselves. Altogether the interval is small [between birth and death]; and consider with how much trouble, and in company with what sort of people, and in what a feeble body, this interval is laboriously passed. Do not then consider life a thing of any value. + For look to the immensity of time behind thee, and to the time which is before thee, another boundless space. In this infinity then what is the difference between him who lives three days and him who lives three generations?[A] [A] An allusion to Homer's Nestor, who was living at the war of Troy among the third generation, like old Parr with his hundred and fifty-two years, and some others in modern times who have beaten Parr by twenty or thirty years if it is true; and yet they died at last. The word is [Greek: trigerêniou] in Antoninus. Nestor is named [Greek: trigerôn] by some writers; but here perhaps there is an allusion to Homer's [Greek: Gerênios hippota Nestôr]. 51. Always run to the short way; and the short way is the natural: accordingly say and do everything in conformity with the soundest reason. For such a purpose frees a man from trouble,+ and warfare, and all artifice and ostentatious display. V. In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present,--I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world? Or have I been made for this, to lie in the bed-clothes and keep myself warm?--But this is more pleasant.--Dost thou exist then to take thy pleasure, and not at all for action or exertion? Dost thou not see the little plants, the little birds, the ants, the spiders, the bees working together to put in order their several parts of the universe? And art thou unwilling to do the work of a human being, and dost thou not make haste to do that which, is according to thy nature? But it is necessary to take rest also.--It is necessary. However, Nature has fixed bounds to this too: she has fixed bounds to eating and drinking, and yet thou goest beyond these bounds, beyond what is sufficient; yet in thy acts it is not so, but thou stoppest short of what thou canst do. So thou lovest not thyself, for if thou didst, thou wouldst love thy nature and her will. But those who love their several arts exhaust themselves in working at them unwashed and without food; but thou valuest thy own nature less than the turner values the turning art, or the dancer the dancing art, or the lover of money values his money, or the vain-glorious man his little glory. And such men, when they have a violent affection to a thing, choose neither to eat nor to sleep rather than to perfect the things which they care for. But are the acts which concern society more vile in thy eyes and less worthy of thy labor? 2. How easy it is to repel and to wipe away every impression which is troublesome or unsuitable, and immediately to be in all tranquillity. 3. Judge every word and deed which are according to nature to be fit for thee; and be not diverted by the blame which follows from any people, nor by their words, but if a thing is good to be done or said, do not consider it unworthy of thee. For those persons have their peculiar leading principle and follow their peculiar movement; which things do not thou regard, but go straight on, following thy own nature and the common nature; and the way of both is one. 4. I go through the things which happen according to nature until I shall fall and rest, breathing out my breath into that element out of which I daily draw it in, and falling upon that earth out of which my father collected the seed, and my mother the blood, and my nurse the milk; out of which during so many years I have been supplied with food and drink; which bears me when I tread on it and abuse it for so many purposes. 5. Thou sayest, Men cannot admire the sharpness of thy wits.--Be it so: but there are many other things of which thou canst not say, I am not formed from them by nature. Show those qualities then which are altogether in thy power, sincerity, gravity, endurance of labor, aversion to pleasure, contentment with thy portion and with few things, benevolence, frankness, no love of superfluity, freedom from trifling, magnanimity. Dost thou not see how many qualities thou art immediately able to exhibit, in which there is no excuse of natural incapacity and unfitness, and yet thou still remainest voluntarily below the mark? or art thou compelled through being defectively furnished by nature to murmur, and to be stingy, and to flatter, and to find fault with thy poor body, and to try to please men, and to make great display, and to be so restless in thy mind? No, by the gods; but thou mightest have been delivered from these things long ago. Only if in truth thou canst be charged with being rather slow and dull of comprehension, thou must exert thyself about this also, not neglecting it nor yet taking pleasure in thy dullness. 6. One man, when he has done a service to another, is ready to set it down to his account as a favor conferred. Another is not ready to do this, but still in his own mind he thinks of the man as his debtor, and he knows what he has done. A third in a manner does not even know what he has done, but he is like a vine which has produced grapes, and seeks for nothing more after it has once produced its proper fruit. As a horse when he has run, a dog when he has tackled the game, a bee when it has made the honey, so a man when he has done a good act does not call out for others to come and see, but he goes on to another act, as a vine goes on to produce again the grapes in season.--Must a man then be one of these, who in a manner act thus without observing it?--Yes.--But this very thing is necessary, the observation of what a man is doing: for, it may be said, it is characteristic of the social animal to perceive that he is working in a social manner, and indeed to wish that his social partner also should perceive it.--It is true that thou sayest, but thou dost not rightly understand what is now said: and for this reason thou wilt become one of those of whom I spoke before, for even they are misled by a certain show of reason. But if thou wilt choose to understand the meaning of what is said, do not fear that for this reason thou wilt omit any social act. 7. A prayer of the Athenians: Rain, rain, O dear Zeus, down on the ploughed fields of the Athenians and on the plains.--In truth we ought not to pray at all, or we ought to pray in this simple and noble fashion. 8. Just as we must understand when it is said, That Aesculapius prescribed to this man horse-exercise, or bathing in cold water, or going without shoes, so we must understand it when it is said, That the nature of the universe prescribed to this man disease, or mutilation, or loss, or anything else of the kind. For in the first case Prescribed means something like this: he prescribed this for this man as a thing adapted to procure health; and in the second case it means, That which happens[A] to [or suits] every man is fixed in a manner for him suitably to his destiny. For this is what we mean when we say that things are suitable to us, as the workmen say of squared stones in walls or the pyramids, that they are suitable, when they fit them to one another in some kind of connection. For there is altogether one fitness [harmony]. And as the universe is made up out of all bodies to be such a body as it is, so out of all existing causes necessity [destiny] is made up to be such a cause as it is. And even those who are completely ignorant understand what I mean; for they say, It [necessity, destiny] brought this to such a person.--This then was brought and this was prescribed to him. Let us then receive these things, as well as those which Aesculapius prescribes. Many as a matter of course even among his prescriptions are disagreeable, but we accept them in the hope of health. Let the perfecting and accomplishment of the things which the common nature judges to be good, be judged by thee to be of the same kind as thy health. And so accept everything which happens, even if it seem disagreeable, because it leads to this, to the health of the universe and to the prosperity and felicity of Zeus [the universe]. For he would not have brought on any man what he has brought, if it were not useful for the whole. Neither does the nature of anything, whatever it may be, cause anything which is not suitable to that which is directed by it. For two reasons then it is right to be content with that which happens to thee; the one, because it was done for thee and prescribed for thee, and in a manner had reference to thee, originally from the most ancient causes spun with thy destiny; and the other, because even that which comes severally to every man is to the power which administers the universe a cause of felicity and perfection, nay even of its very continuance. For the integrity of the whole is mutilated, if thou cuttest off anything whatever from the conjunction and the continuity either of the parts or of the causes. And thou dost cut off, as far as it is in thy power, when thou art dissatisfied, and in a manner triest to put anything out of the way. [A] In this section there is a play on the meaning of [Greek: sumbainein]. [Illustration: THE CAPITOL AND TEMPLE OF JUPITER] 9. Be not disgusted, nor discouraged, nor dissatisfied, if thou dost not succeed in doing everything according to right principles, but when thou hast failed, return back again, and be content if the greater part of what thou doest is consistent with man's nature, and love this to which thou returnest; and do not return to philosophy as if she were a master, but act like those who have sore eyes and apply a bit of sponge and egg, or as another applies a plaster, or drenching with water. For thus thou wilt not fail to + obey reason, and thou wilt repose in it. And remember that philosophy requires only things which thy nature requires; but thou wouldst have something else which is not according to nature.--It may be objected, Why, what is more agreeable than this [which I am doing]? But is not this the very reason why pleasure deceives us? And consider if magnanimity, freedom, simplicity, equanimity, piety, are not more agreeable. For what is more agreeable than wisdom itself, when thou thinkest of the security and the happy course of all things which depend on the faculty of understanding and knowledge? 10. Things are in such a kind of envelopment that they have seemed to philosophers, not a few nor those common philosophers, altogether unintelligible; nay even to the Stoics themselves they seem difficult to understand. And all our assent is changeable; for where is the man who never changes? Carry thy thoughts then to the objects themselves, and consider how short-lived they are and worthless, and that they may be in the possession of a filthy wretch or a whore or a robber. Then turn to the morals of those who live with thee, and it is hardly possible to endure even the most agreeable of them, to say nothing of a man being hardly able to endure himself. In such darkness then and dirt, and in so constant a flux both of substance and of time, and of motion and of things moved, what there is worth being highly prized, or even an object of serious pursuit, I cannot imagine. But on the contrary it is a man's duty to comfort himself, and to wait for the natural dissolution, and not to be vexed at the delay, but to rest in these principles only: the one, that nothing will happen to me which is not conformable to the nature of the universe; and the other, that it is in my power never to act contrary to my god and daemon: for there is no man who will compel me to this. 11. About what am I now employing my own soul? On every occasion I must ask myself this question, and inquire, What have I now in this part of me which they call the ruling principle? and whose soul have I now,--that of a child, or of a young man, or of a feeble woman, or of a tyrant, or of a domestic animal, or of a wild beast? 12. What kind of things those are which appear good to the many, we may learn even from this. For if any man should conceive certain things as being really good, such as prudence, temperance, justice, fortitude, he would not after having first conceived these endure to listen to anything+ which should not be in harmony with what is really good.+ But if a man has first conceived as good the things which appear to the many to be good, he will listen and readily receive as very applicable that which was said by the comic writer. +Thus even the many perceive the difference.+ For were it not so, this saying would not offend and would not be rejected [in the first case], while we receive it when it is said of wealth, and of the means which further luxury and fame, as said fitly and wittily. Go on then and ask if we should value and think those things to be good, to which after their first conception in the mind the words of the comic writer might be aptly applied,--that he who has them, through pure abundance has not a place to ease himself in. 13. I am composed of the formal and the material; and neither of them will perish into non-existence, as neither of them came into existence out of non-existence. Every part of me then will be reduced by change into some part of the universe, and that again will change into another part of the universe, and so on forever. And by consequence of such a change I too exist, and those who begot me, and so on forever in the other direction. For nothing hinders us from saying so, even if the universe is administered according to definite periods [of revolution]. 14. Reason and the reasoning art [philosophy] are powers which are sufficient for themselves and for their own works. They move then from a first principle which is their own, and they make their way to the end which is proposed to them; and this is the reason why such acts are named Catorthoseis or right acts, which word signifies that they proceed by the right road. 15. None of these things ought to be called a man's, which do not belong to a man, as man. They are not required of a man, nor does man's nature promise them, nor are they the means of man's nature attaining its end. Neither then does the end of man lie in these things, nor yet that which aids to the accomplishment of this end, and that which aids toward this end is that which is good. Besides, if any of these things did belong to man, it would not be right for a man to despise them and to set himself against them; nor would a man be worthy of praise who snowed that he did not want these things, nor would he who stinted himself in any of them be good, if indeed these things were good. But now the more of these things a man deprives himself of, or of other things like them, or even when he is deprived of any of them, the more patiently he endures the loss, just in the same degree he is a better man. 16. Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of thy mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts. Dye it then with a continuous series of such thoughts as these: for instance, that where a man can live, there he can also live well. But he must live in a palace; well then, he can also live well in a palace. And again, consider that for whatever purpose each thing has been constituted, for this it has been constituted, and towards this it is carried; and its end is in that towards which it is carried; and where the end is, there also is the advantage and the good of each thing. Now the good for the reasonable animal is society; for that we are made for society has been shown above.[A] Is it not plain that the inferior exists for the sake of the superior? But the things which have life are superior to those which have not life, and of those which have life the superior are those which have reason. [A] ii. 1. 17. To seek what is impossible is madness: and it is impossible that the bad should not do something of this kind. 18. Nothing happens to any man which he is not formed by nature to bear. The same things happen to another, and either because he does not see that they have happened, or because he would show a great spirit, he is firm and remains unharmed. It is a shame then that ignorance and conceit should be stronger than wisdom. 19. Things themselves touch not the soul, not in the least degree; nor have they admission to the soul, nor can they turn or move the soul: but the soul turns and moves itself alone, and whatever judgments it may think proper to make, such it makes for itself the things which present themselves to it. 20. In one respect man is the nearest thing to me, so far as I must do good to men and endure them. But so far as some men make themselves obstacles to my proper acts, man becomes to me one of the things which are indifferent, no less than the sun or wind or a wild beast. Now it is true that these may impede my action, but they are no impediments to my affects and disposition, which have the power of acting conditionally and changing: for the mind converts and changes every hindrance to its activity into an aid; and so that which is a hindrance is made a furtherance to an act; and that which is an obstacle on the road helps us on this road. 21. Reverence that which is best in the universe; and this is that which makes use of all things and directs all things. And in like manner also reverence that which is best in thyself; and this is of the same kind as that. For in thyself also, that which makes use of everything else is this, and thy life is directed by this. 22. That which does no harm to the state, does no harm to the citizen. In the case of every appearance of harm apply this rule: if the state is not harmed by this, neither am I harmed. But if the state is harmed, thou must not be angry with him who does harm to the state. Show him where his error is. 23. Often think of the rapidity with which things pass by and disappear, both the things which are and the things which are produced. For substance is like a river in a continual flow, and the activities of things are in constant change, and the causes work in infinite varieties; and there is hardly anything which stands still. And consider this which is near to thee, this boundless abyss of the past and of the future in which all things disappear. How then is he not a fool who is puffed up with such things or plagued about them and makes himself miserable? for they vex him only for a time, and a short time. 24. Think of the universal substance, of which thou hast a very small portion; and of universal time, of which a short and indivisible interval has been assigned to thee; and of that which is fixed by destiny, and how small a part of it thou art. 25. Does another do me wrong? Let him look to it. He has his own disposition, his own activity. I now have what the universal nature now wills me to have; and I do what my nature now wills me to do. 26. Let the part of thy soul which leads and governs be undisturbed by the movements in the flesh, whether of pleasure or of pain; and let it not unite with them, but let it circumscribe itself and limit those affects to their parts. But when these affects rise up to the mind by virtue of that other sympathy that naturally exists in a body which is all one, then thou must not strive to resist the sensation, for it is natural: but let not the ruling part of itself add to the sensation the opinion that it is either good or bad. 27. Live with the gods. And he does live with the gods who constantly shows to them that his own soul is satisfied with that which is assigned to him, and that it does all that the daemon wishes, which Zeus hath given to every man for his guardian and guide, a portion of himself. And this is every man's understanding and reason. 28. Art thou angry with him whose armpits stink? art thou angry with him whose mouth smells foul? What good will this anger do thee? He has such a mouth, he has such armpits: it is necessary that such an emanation must come from such things: but the man has reason, it will be said, and he is able, if he takes pains, to discover wherein he offends; I wish thee well of thy discovery. Well then, and thou hast reason: by thy rational faculty stir up his rational faculty; show him his error, admonish him. For if he listens, thou wilt cure him, and there is no need of anger. [+ Neither tragic actor nor whore. +][A] [A] This is imperfect or corrupt, or both. There is also something wrong or incomplete in the beginning of S. 29, where he says [Greek: hôs exelthôn zên dianoê], which Gataker translates "as if thou wast about to quit life;" but we cannot translate [Greek: exelthôn] in that way. Other translations are not much more satisfactory. I have translated it literally and left it imperfect. 29. As thou intendest to live when them art gone out, ... so it is in thy power to live here. But if men do not permit thee, then get away out of life, yet so as if thou wert suffering no harm. The house is smoky, and I quit it.[A] Why dost thou think that this is any trouble? But so long as nothing of the kind drives me out, I remain, am free, and no man shall hinder me from doing what I choose; and I choose to do what is according to the nature of the rational and social animal. [A] Epictetus, i. 25, 18. 30. The intelligence of the universe is social. Accordingly it has made the inferior things for the sake of the superior, and it has fitted the superior to one another. Thou seest how it has subordinated, co-ordinated, and assigned to everything its proper portion, and has brought together into concord with one another the things which are the best. 31. How hast thou behaved hitherto to the gods, thy parents, brethren, children, teachers, to those who looked after thy infancy, to thy friends, kinsfolk, to thy slaves? Consider if thou hast hitherto behaved to all in such a way that this may be said of thee,-- "Never has wronged a man in deed or word." And call to recollection both how many things thou hast passed through, and how many things thou hast been able to endure, and that the history of thy life is now complete and thy service is ended; and how many beautiful things thou hast seen; and how many pleasures and pains thou hast despised; and how many things called honorable thou hast spurned; and to how many ill-minded folks thou hast shown a kind disposition. 32. Why do unskilled and ignorant souls disturb him who has skill and knowledge? What soul then has skill and knowledge? That which knows beginning and end, and knows the reason which pervades all substance, and though all time by fixed periods [revolutions] administers the universe. 33. Soon, very soon, thou wilt be ashes, or a skeleton, and either a name or not even a name; but name is sound and echo. And the things which are much valued in life are empty and rotten and trifling, and [like] little dogs biting one another, and little children quarreling, laughing, and then straightway weeping. But fidelity and modesty and justice and truth are fled Up to Olympus from the wide-spread earth. HESIOD, _Works, etc_. v. 197. What then is there which still detains thee here, if the objects of sense are easily changed and never stand still, and the organs of perception are dull and easily receive false impressions, and the poor soul itself is an exhalation from blood? But to have good repute amid such a world as this is an empty thing. Why then dost thou not wait in tranquillity for thy end, whether it is extinction or removal to another state? And until that time comes, what is sufficient? Why, what else than to venerate the gods and bless them, and to do good to men, and to practise tolerance and self-restraint;[A] but as to everything which is beyond the limits of the poor flesh and breath, to remember that this is neither thine nor in thy power. [A] This is the Stoic precept [Greek: anechou kai apechou]. The first part teaches us to be content with men and things as they are. The second part teaches us the virtue of self-restraint, or the government of our passions. 34. Thou canst pass thy life in an equable flow of happiness, if thou canst go by the right way, and think and act in the right way. These two things are common both to the soul of God and to the soul of man, and to the soul of every rational being: not to be hindered by another; and to hold good to consist in the disposition to justice and the practice of it, and in this to let thy desire find its termination. 35. If this is neither my own badness, nor an effect of my own badness, and the common weal is not injured, why am I troubled about it, and what is the harm to the common weal? 36. Do not be carried along inconsiderately by the appearance of things, but give help [to all] according to thy ability and their fitness; and if they should have sustained loss in matters which are indifferent, do not imagine this to be a damage; for it is a bad habit. But as the old man, when he went away, asked back his foster-child's top, remembering that it was a top, so do thou in this case also. When thou art calling out on the Rostra, hast thou forgotten, man, what these things are?--Yes; but they are objects of great concern to these people--wilt thou too then be made a fool for these things? I was once a fortunate man, but I lost it, I know not how.--But fortunate means that a man has assigned to himself a good fortune: and a good fortune is good disposition of the soul, good emotions, good actions.[A] [A] This section is unintelligible. Many of the words may be corrupt, and the general purport of the section cannot be discovered. Perhaps several things have been improperly joined in one section. I have translated it nearly literally. Different translators give the section a different turn, and the critics have tried to mend what they cannot understand. VI. The substance of the universe is obedient and compliant; and the reason which governs it has in itself no cause for doing evil, for it has no malice, nor does it do evil to anything, nor is anything harmed by it. But all things are made and perfected according to this reason. 2. Let it make no difference to thee whether thou art cold or warm, if thou art doing thy duty; and whether thou art drowsy or satisfied with sleep; and whether ill-spoken of or praised; and whether dying or doing something else. For it is one of the acts of life, this act by which we die; it is sufficient then in this act also to do well what we have in hand (vi. 22, 28). 3. Look within. Let neither the peculiar quality of anything nor its value escape thee. 4. All existing things soon change, and they will either be reduced to vapor, if indeed all substance is one, or they will be dispersed. 5. The reason which governs knows what its own disposition is, and what it does, and on what material it works. 6. The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like [the wrong-doer]. 7. Take pleasure in one thing and rest in it, in passing from one social act to another social act, thinking of God. 8. The ruling principle is that which rouses and turns itself, and while it makes itself such as it is and such as it wills to be, it also makes everything which happens appear to itself to be such as it wills. 9. In conformity to the nature of the universe every single thing is accomplished; for certainly it is not in conformity to any other nature that each thing is accomplished, either a nature which externally comprehends this, or a nature which is comprehended within this nature, or a nature external and independent of this (xi. 1; vi. 40; viii. 50). 10. The universe is either a confusion, and a mutual involution of things, and a dispersion, or it is unity and order and providence. If then it is the former, why do I desire to tarry in a fortuitous combination of things and such a disorder? and why do I care about anything else than how I shall at last become earth? and why am I disturbed, for the dispersion of my elements will happen whatever I do? But if the other supposition is true, I venerate, and I am firm, and I trust in him who governs (iv. 27). 11. When thou hast been compelled by circumstances to be disturbed in a manner, quickly return to thyself, and do not continue out of tune longer than the compulsion lasts; for thou wilt have more mastery over the harmony by continually recurring to it. 12. If thou hadst a step-mother and a mother at the same time, thou wouldst be dutiful to thy step-mother, but still thou wouldst constantly return to thy mother. Let the court and philosophy now be to thee step-mother and mother: return to philosophy frequently and repose in her, through whom what thou meetest with in the court appears to thee tolerable, and thou appearest tolerable in the court. 13. When we have meat before us and such eatables, we receive the impression that this is the dead body of a fish, and this the dead body of a bird or of a pig; and again, that this Falernian is only a little grape-juice, and this purple robe some sheep's wool dyed with the blood of a shell-fish: such then are these impressions, and they reach the things themselves and penetrate them, and so we see what kind of things they are. Just in the same way ought we to act all through life, and where there are things which appear most worthy of our approbation, we ought to lay them bare and look at their worthlessness and strip them of all the words by which they are exalted. For outward show is a wonderful perverter of the reason, and when thou art most sure that thou art employed about things worth thy pains, it is then that it cheats thee most. Consider then what Crates says of Xenocrates himself. 14. Most of the things which the multitude admire are referred to objects of the most general kind, those which are held together by cohesion or natural organization, such as stones, wood, fig-trees, vines, olives. But those which are admired by men, who are a little more reasonable, are referred to the things which are held together by a living principle, as flocks, herds. Those which are admired by men who are still more instructed are the things which are held together by a rational soul, not however a universal soul, but rational so far as it is a soul skilled in some art, or expert in some other way, or simply rational so far as it possesses a number of slaves. But he who values a rational soul, a soul universal and fitted for political life, regards nothing else except this; and above all things he keeps his soul in a condition and in an activity conformable to reason and social life, and he co-operates to this end with those who are of the same kind as himself. 15. Some things are hurrying into existence, and others are hurrying out of it; and of that which is coming into existence part is already extinguished. Motions and changes are continually renewing the world, just as the uninterrupted course of time is always renewing the infinite duration of ages. In this flowing stream then, on which there is no abiding, what is there of the things which hurry by on which a man would set a high price? It would be just as if a man should fall in love with one of the sparrows which fly by, but it has already passed out of sight. Something of this kind is the very life of every man, like the exhalation of the blood and the respiration of the air. For such as it is to have once drawn in the air and to have given it back, which we do every moment, just the same is it with the whole respiratory power, which thou didst receive at thy birth yesterday and the day before, to give it back to the element from which thou didst first draw it. 16. Neither is transpiration, as in plants, a thing to be valued, nor respiration, as in domesticated animals and wild beasts, nor the receiving of impressions by the appearances of things, nor being moved by desires as puppets by strings, nor assembling in herds, nor being nourished by food; for this is just like the act of separating and parting with the useless part of our food. What then is worth being valued? To be received with clapping of hands? No. Neither must we value the clapping of tongues; for the praise which comes from the many is a clapping of tongues. Suppose then that thou hast given up this worthless thing called fame, what remains that is worth valuing? This, in my opinion: to move thyself and to restrain thyself in conformity to thy proper constitution, to which end both all employments and arts lead. For every art aims at this, that the thing which has been made should be adapted to the work for which it has been made; and both the vine-planter who looks after the vine, and the horse-breaker, and he who trains the dog, seek this end. But the education and the teaching of youth aim at something. In this then is the value of the education and the teaching. And if this is well, thou wilt not seek anything else. Wilt thou not cease to value many other things too? Then thou wilt be neither free, nor sufficient for thy own happiness, nor without passion. For of necessity thou must be envious, jealous, and suspicious of those who can take away those things, and plot against those who have that which is valued by thee. Of necessity a man must be altogether in a state of perturbation who wants any of these things; and besides, he must often find fault with the gods. But to reverence and honor thy own mind will make thee content with thyself, and in harmony with society, and in agreement with the gods, that is, praising all that they give and have ordered. 17. Above, below, all around are the movements of the elements. But the motion of virtue is in none of these: it is something more divine, and advancing by a way hardly observed, it goes happily on its road. 18. How strangely men act! They will not praise those who are living at the same time and living with themselves; but to be themselves praised by posterity, by those whom they have never seen nor ever will see, this they set much value on. But this is very much the same as if thou shouldst be grieved because those who have lived before thee did not praise thee. 19. If a thing is difficult to be accomplished by thyself, do not think that it is impossible for man: but if anything is possible for man and conformable to his nature, think that this can be attained by thyself too. 20. In the gymnastic exercises suppose that a man has torn thee with his nails, and by dashing against thy head has inflicted a wound. Well, we neither show any signs of vexation, nor are we offended, nor do we suspect him afterwards as a treacherous fellow; and yet we are on our guard against him, not however as an enemy, nor yet with suspicion, but we quietly get out of his way. Something like this let thy behavior be in all the other parts of life; let us overlook many things in those who are like antagonists in the gymnasium. For it is in our power, as I said, to get out of the way, and to have no suspicion nor hatred. 21. If any man is able to convince me and show me that I do not think or act right, I will gladly change; for I seek the truth, by which no man was ever injured. But he is injured who abides in his error and ignorance. 22. I do my duty: other things trouble me not; for they are either things without life, or things without reason, or things that have rambled and know not the way. 23. As to the animals which have no reason, and generally all things and objects, do thou, since thou hast reason and they have none, make use of them with a generous and liberal spirit. But towards human beings, as they have reason, behave in a social spirit. And on all occasions call on the gods, and do not perplex thyself about the length of time in which thou shalt do this; for even three hours so spent are sufficient. 24. Alexander the Macedonian and his groom by death were brought to the same state; for either they were received among the same seminal principles of the universe, or they were alike dispersed among the atoms. 25. Consider how many things in the same indivisible time take place in each of us,--things which concern the body and things which concern the soul: and so thou wilt not wonder if many more things, or rather all things which come into existence in that which is the one and all, which we call Cosmos, exist in it at the same time. 26. If any man should propose to thee the question, how the name Antoninus is written, wouldst thou with a straining of the voice utter each letter? What then if they grow angry, wilt thou be angry too? Wilt thou not go on with composure and number every letter? Just so then in this life also remember that every duty is made up of certain parts. These it is thy duty to observe, and without being disturbed or showing anger towards those who are angry with thee, to go on thy way and finish that which is set before thee. 27. How cruel it is not to allow men to strive After the things which appear to them to be suitable to their nature and profitable! And yet in a manner thou dost not allow them to do this, when thou art vexed because they do wrong. For they are certainly moved towards things because they suppose them to be suitable to their nature and profitable to them. But it is not so. Teach them then, and show them without being angry. 28. Death is a cessation of the impressions through the senses, and of the pulling of the strings which move the appetites, and of the discursive movements of the thoughts, and of the service to the flesh (ii. 12). 29. It is a shame for the soul to be first to give way in this life, when thy body does not give way. 30. Take care that thou art not made into a Caesar, that thou art not dyed with this dye; for such things happen. Keep thyself then simple, good, pure, serious, free from affectation, a friend of justice, a worshipper of the gods, kind, affectionate, strenuous in all proper acts. Strive to continue to be such as philosophy wished to make thee. Reverence the gods, and help men. Short is life. There is only one fruit of this terrene life--a pious disposition and social acts. Do everything as a disciple of Antoninus. Remember his constancy in every act which was conformable to reason, and his evenness in all things, and his piety, and the serenity of his countenance, and his sweetness, and his disregard of empty fame, and his efforts to understand things; and how he would never let anything pass without having first most carefully examined it and clearly understood it; and how he bore with those who blamed him unjustly without blaming them in return; how he did nothing in a hurry; and how he listened not to calumnies, and how exact an examiner of manners and actions he was; and not given to reproach people, nor timid, nor suspicious, nor a sophist; and with how little he was satisfied, such as lodging, bed, dress, food, servants; and how laborious and patient; and how he was able on account of his sparing diet to hold out to the evening, not even requiring to relieve himself by any evacuations except at the usual hour; and his firmness and uniformity in his friendships; and how he tolerated freedom of speech in those who opposed his opinions; and the pleasure that he had when any man showed him anything better; and how religious he was without superstition. Imitate all this, that thou mayest have as good a conscience, when thy last hour comes, as he had (i. 16). 31. Return to thy sober senses and call thyself back; and when thou hast roused thyself from sleep and hast perceived that they were only dreams which troubled thee, now in thy waking hours look at these [the things about thee] as thou didst look at those [the dreams]. 32. I consist of a little body and a soul. Now to this little body all things are indifferent, for it is not able to perceive differences. But to the understanding those things only are indifferent which are not the works of its own activity. But whatever things are the works of its own activity, all these are in its power. And of these however only those which are done with reference to the present; for as to the future and the past activities of the mind, even these are for the present indifferent. 33. Neither the labor which the hand does nor that of the foot is contrary to nature, so long as the foot does the foot's work and the hand the hand's. So then neither to a man as a man is his labor contrary to nature, so long as it does the things of a man. But if the labor is not contrary to his nature, neither is it an evil to him. 34. How many pleasures have been enjoyed by robbers, patricides, tyrants. 35. Dost thou not see how the handicrafts-men accommodate themselves up to a certain point to those who are not skilled in their craft--nevertheless they cling to the reason [the principles] of their art, and do not endure to depart from it? Is it not strange if the architect and the physician shall have more respect to the reason [the principles] of their own arts than man to his own reason, which is common to him and the gods? 36. Asia, Europe, are corners of the universe; all the sea a drop in the universe; Athos a little clod of the universe: all the present time is a point in eternity. All things are little, changeable, perishable. All things come from thence, from that universal ruling power, either directly proceeding or by way of sequence. And accordingly the lion's gaping jaws, and that which is poisonous, and every harmful thing, as a thorn, as mud, are after-products of the grand and beautiful. Do not then imagine that they are of another kind from that which thou dost venerate, but form a just opinion of the source of all (vii. 75). 37. He who has seen present things has seen all, both everything which has taken place from all eternity and everything which will be for time without end; for all things are of one kin and of one form. 38. Frequently consider the connection of all things in the universe and their relation to one another. For in a manner all things are implicated with one another, and all in this way are friendly to one another; for one thing comes in order after another, and this is by virtue of the + active movement and mutual conspiration and the unity of the substance (ix. 1). 39. Adapt thyself to the things with which thy lot has been cast: and the men among whom thou hast received thy portion, love them, but do it truly [sincerely]. 40. Every instrument, tool, vessel, if it does that for which it has been made, is well, and yet he who made it is not there. But in the things which are held together by nature there is within, and there abides in them the power which made them; wherefore the more is it fit to reverence this power, and to think, that, if thou dost live and act according to its will, everything in thee is in conformity to intelligence. And thus also in the universe the things which belong to it are in conformity to intelligence. 41. Whatever of the things which are not within thy power thou shalt suppose to be good for thee or evil, it must of necessity be that, if such a bad thing befall thee, or the loss of such a good thing, thou wilt not blame the gods, and hate men too, those who are the cause of the misfortune or the loss, or those who are suspected of being likely to be the cause; and indeed we do much injustice because we make a difference between these things [because we do not regard these things as indifferent+].[A] But if we judge only those things which are in our power to be good or bad, there remains no reason either for finding fault with God or standing in a hostile attitude to man.[B] [A] Gataker translates this "because we strive to get these things," comparing the use of [Greek: diapheresthai] in v. I, and x. 27, and ix. 38, where it appears that his reference should be xi. 10. He may be right in his interpretation, but I doubt. [B] Cicero, De Natura Deorum. iii. 32. 42. We are all working together to one end, some with knowledge and design, and others without knowing what they do; as men also when they are asleep, of whom it is Heraclitus, I think, who says that they are laborers and co-operators in the things which take place in the universe. But men co-operate after different fashions: and even those co-operate abundantly, who find fault with what happens and those who try to oppose it and to hinder it; for the universe had need even of such men as these. It remains then for thee to understand among what kind of workmen thou placest thyself; for he who rules all things will certainly make a right use of thee, and he will receive thee among some part of the co-operators and of those whose labors conduce to one end. But be not thou such a part as the mean and ridiculous verse in the play, which Chrysippus speaks of.[A] [A] Plutarch, adversus Stoicos, c. 14. 43. Does the sun undertake to do the work of the rain, or Aesculapius the work of the Fruit-bearer [the earth]? And how is it with respect to each of the stars--are they not different and yet they work together to the same end? 44. If the gods have determined about me and about the things which must happen to me, they have determined well, for it is not easy even to imagine a deity without forethought; and as to doing me harm, why should they have any desire towards that? for what advantage would result to them from this or to the whole, which is the special object of their providence? But if they have not determined about me individually, they have certainly determined about the whole at least, and the things which happen by way of sequence in this general arrangement I ought to accept with pleasure and to be content with them. But if they determine about nothing,--which it is wicked to believe, or if we do believe it, let us neither sacrifice nor pray nor swear by them, nor do anything else which we do as if the gods were present and lived with us,--but if however the gods determine about none of the things which concern us, I am able to determine about myself, and I can inquire about that which is useful; and that is useful to every man which is conformable to his own constitution and nature. But my nature is rational and social; and my city and country, so far as I am Antoninus, is Rome, but so far as I am a man, it is the world. The things then which are useful to these cities are alone useful to me. 45. Whatever happens to every man, this is for the interest of the universal: this might be sufficient. But further thou wilt observe this also as a general truth, if thou dost observe, that whatever is profitable to any man is profitable also to other men. But let the word profitable be taken here in the common sense as said of things of the middle kind [neither good nor bad]. 46. As it happens to thee in the amphitheatre and such places, that the continual sight of the same things, and the uniformity, make the spectacle wearisome, so it is in the whole of life; for all things above, below, are the same and from the same. How long then? 47. Think continually that all kinds of men and all kinds of pursuits and of all nations are dead, so that thy thoughts come down even to Philistion and Phoebus and Origanion. Now turn thy thoughts to the other kinds [of men]. To that place then we must remove, where there are so many great orators, and so many noble philosophers, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Socrates; so many heroes of former days, and so many generals after them, and tyrants; besides these, Eudoxus, Hipparchus, Archimedes, and other men of acute natural talents, great minds, lovers of labor, versatile, confident, mockers even of the perishable and ephemeral life of man, as Menippus and such as are like him. As to all these consider that they have long been in the dust. What harm then is this to them; and what to those whose names are altogether unknown? One thing here is worth a great deal, to pass thy life in truth and justice, with a benevolent disposition even to liars and unjust men. 48. When thou wishest to delight thyself, think of the virtues of those who live with thee; for instance, the activity of one, and the modesty of another, and the liberality of a third, and some other good quality of a fourth. For nothing delights so much as the examples of the virtues, when they are exhibited in the morals of those who live with us and present themselves in abundance, as far as is possible. Wherefore we must keep them before us. 49. Thou art not dissatisfied. I suppose, because thou weighest only so many litrae and not three hundred. Be not dissatisfied then that thou must live only so many years and not more; for as thou art satisfied with the amount of substance which has been assigned to thee, so be content with the time. 50. Let us try to persuade them [men]. But act even against their will, when the principles of justice lead that way. If however any man by using force stands in thy way, betake thyself to contentment and tranquillity, and at the same time employ the hindrance towards the exercise of some other virtue; and remember that thy attempt was with a reservation [conditionally], that thou didst not desire to do impossibilities. What then didst thou desire?--Some such effort as this.--But thou attainest thy object, if the things to which thou wast moved are [not] accomplished. + 51. He who loves fame considers another man's activity to be his own good; and he who loves pleasure, his own sensations; but he who has understanding considers his own acts to be his own good. 52. It is in our power to have no opinion about a thing, and not to be disturbed in our soul; for things themselves have no natural power to form our judgments. 53. Accustom thyself to attend carefully to what is said by another, and as much as it is possible, be in the speaker's mind. 54. That which is not good for the swarm, neither is it good for the bee. 55. If sailors abused the helmsman, or the sick the doctor, would they listen to anybody else? or how could the helmsman secure the safety of those in the ship, or the doctor the health of those whom he attends? 56. How many together with whom I came into the world are already gone out of it. 57. To the jaundiced honey tastes bitter, and to those bitten by mad dogs water causes fear; and to little children the ball is a fine thing. Why then am I angry? Dost thou think that a false opinion has less power than the bile in the jaundiced or the poison in him who is bitten by a mad dog? 58. No man will hinder thee from living according to the reason of thy own nature: nothing will happen to thee contrary to the reason of the universal nature. 59. What kind of people are those whom men wish to please, and for what objects, and by what kind of acts? How soon will time cover all things, and how many it has covered already. VII. What is badness? It is that which thou hast often seen. And on the occasion of everything which happens keep this in mind, that it is that which thou hast often seen. Everywhere up and down thou wilt find the same things, with which the old histories are filled, those of the middle ages and those of our own day; with which cities and houses are filled now. There is nothing new: all things are both familiar and short-lived. 2. How can our principles become dead, unless the impressions [thoughts] which correspond to them are extinguished? But it is in thy power continuously to fan these thoughts into a flame. I can have that opinion about anything which I ought to have. If I can, why am I disturbed? The things which are external to my mind have no relation at all to my mind.--Let this be the state of thy affects, and thou standest erect. To recover thy life is in thy power. Look at things again as thou didst use to look at them; for in this consists the recovery of thy life. 3. The idle business of show, plays on the stage, flocks of sheep, herds, exercises with spears, a bone cast to little dogs, a bit of bread into fishponds, laborings of ants and burden-carrying, runnings about of frightened little mice, puppets pulled by strings--[all alike]. It is thy duty then in the midst of such things to show good humor and not a proud air; to understand however that every man is worth just so much as the things are worth about which he busies himself. 4. In discourse thou must attend to what is said, and in every movement thou must observe what is doing. And in the one thou shouldst see immediately to what end it refers, but in the other watch carefully what is the thing signified. 5. Is my understanding sufficient for this or not? If it is sufficient, I use it for the work as an instrument given by the universal nature. But if it is not sufficient, then either I retire from the work and give way to him who is able to do it better, unless there be some reason why I ought not to do so; or I do it as well as I can, taking to help me the man who with the aid of my ruling principle can do what is now fit and useful for the general good. For what-soever either by myself or with another I can do, ought to be directed to this only, to that which is useful and well suited to society. 6. How many after being celebrated by fame have been given up to oblivion; and how many who have celebrated the fame of others have long been dead. 7. Be not ashamed to be helped; for it is thy business to do thy duty like a soldier in the assault on a town. How then, if being lame thou canst not mount up on the battlements alone, but with the help of another it is possible? 8. Let not future things disturb thee, for thou wilt come to them, if it shall be necessary, having with thee the same reason which now thou usest for present things. 9. All things are implicated with one another, and the bond is holy; and there is hardly anything unconnected with any other thing. For things have been co-ordinated, and they combine to form the same universe [order]. For there is one universe made up of all things, and one god who pervades all things, and one substance,[A] and one law, [one] common reason in all intelligent animals, and one truth; if indeed there is also one perfection for all animals which are of the same stock and participate in the reason. [A] "One substance," p. 42, note 1. 10. Everything material soon disappears in the substance of the whole; and everything formal [causal] is very soon taken back into the universal reason; and the memory of everything is very soon overwhelmed in time. 11. To the rational animal the same act is according to nature and according to reason. 12. Be thou erect, or be made erect (iii. 5). 13. Just as it is with the members in those bodies which are united in one, so it is with rational beings which exist separate, for they have been constituted for one co-operation. And the perception of this will be more apparent to thee if thou often sayest to thyself that I am a member [Greek: melos] of the system of rational beings. But if [using the letter _r_] thou sayest that thou art a part [Greek: meros], thou dost not yet love men from thy heart; beneficence does not yet delight thee for its own sake;[A] thou still doest it barely as a thing of propriety, and not yet as doing good to thyself. [A] I have used Gataker's conjecture [Greek: katalêktikôs] instead of the common reading [Greek: katalêptikôs]: compare iv. 20; ix. 42. 14. Let there fall externally what will on the parts which can feel the effects of this fall. For those parts which have felt will complain, if they choose. But I, unless I think that what has happened is an evil, am not injured. And it is in my power not to think so. 15. Whatever any one does or says, I must be good; just as if the gold, or the emerald, or the purple, were always saying this. Whatever any one does or says, I must be emerald and keep my color. 16. The ruling faculty does not disturb itself; I mean, does not frighten itself or cause itself pain.+ But if any one else can frighten or pain it, let him do so. For the faculty itself will not by its own opinion turn itself into such ways. Let the body itself take care, if it can, that it suffer nothing, and let it speak, if it suffers. But the soul itself, that which is subject to fear, to pain, which has completely the power of forming an opinion about these things, will suffer nothing, for it will never deviate+ into such a judgment. The leading principle in itself wants nothing, unless it makes a want for itself; and therefore it is both free from perturbation and unimpeded, if it does not disturb and impede itself. 17. Eudaemonia [happiness] is a good daemon, or a good thing. What then art thou doing here, O imagination? Go away, I entreat thee by the gods, as thou didst come, for I want thee not. But thou art come according to thy old fashion. I am not angry with thee: only go away. 18. Is any man afraid of change? Why, what can take place without change? What then is more pleasing or more suitable to the universal nature? And canst thou take a bath unless the wood undergoes a change? and canst thou be nourished, unless the food undergoes a change? And can anything else that is useful be accomplished without change? Dost thou not see then that for thyself also to change is just the same, and equally necessary for the universal nature? 19. Through the universal substance as through a furious torrent all bodies are carried, being by their nature united with and co-operating with the whole, as the parts of our body with one another. How many a Chrysippus, how many a Socrates, how many an Epictetus has time already swallowed up! And let the same thought occur to thee with reference to every man and thing (v. 23; vi. 15). 20. One thing only troubles me, lest I should do something which the constitution of man does not allow, or in the way which it does not allow, or what it does not allow now. 21. Near is thy forgetfulness of all things; and near the forgetfulness of thee by all. 22. It is peculiar to man to love even those who do wrong. And this happens, if when they do wrong it occurs to thee that they are kinsmen, and that they do wrong through ignorance and unintentionally, and that soon both of you will die; and above all, that the wrong-doer has done thee no harm, for he has not made thy ruling faculty worse than it was before. 23. The universal nature out of the universal substance, as if it were wax, now moulds a horse, and when it has broken this up, it uses the material for a tree, then for a man, then for something else; and each of these things subsists for a very short time. But it is no hardship for the vessel to be broken up, just as there was none in its being fastened together (viii. 50). 24. A scowling look is altogether unnatural; when it is often assumed,[A] the result is that all comeliness dies away, and at last is so completely extinguished that it cannot be again lighted up at all. Try to conclude from this very fact that it is contrary to reason. For if even the perception of doing wrong shall depart, what reason is there for living any longer? [A] This is corrupt. 25. Nature which governs the whole will soon change all things thou seest, and out of their substance will make other things, and again other things from the substance of them, in order that the world may be ever new (xii. 23). 26. When a man has done thee any wrong, immediately consider with what opinion about good or evil he has done wrong. For when thou hast seen this, thou wilt pity him, and wilt neither wonder nor be angry. For either thou thyself thinkest the same thing to be good that he does, or another thing of the same kind. It is thy duty then to pardon him. But if thou dost not think such things to be good or evil, thou wilt more readily be well disposed to him who is in error. 27. Think not so much of what thou hast not as of what thou hast: but of the things which thou hast select the best, and then reflect how eagerly they would have been sought, if thou hadst them not. At the same time, however, take care that thou dost not through being so pleased with them accustom thyself to overvalue them, so as to be disturbed if ever thou shouldst not have them. 28. Retire into thyself. The rational principle which rules has this nature, that it is content with itself when it does what is just, and so secures tranquillity. 29. Wipe out the imagination. Stop the pulling of the strings. Confine thyself to the present. Understand well what happens either to thee or to another. Divide and distribute every object into the causal [formal] and the material. Think of thy last hour. Let the wrong which is done by a man stay there where the wrong was done (viii. 29). 30. Direct thy attention to what is said. Let thy understanding enter into the things that are doing and the things which do them (vii. 4). 31. Adorn thyself with simplicity and modesty, and with indifference towards the things which lie between virtue and vice. Love mankind. Follow God. The poet says that law rules all--+ And it is enough to remember that law rules all.+[A] [A] The end of this section is unintelligible. 32. About death: whether it is a dispersion, or a resolution into atoms, or annihilation, it is either extinction or change. 33. About pain: the pain which is intolerable carries us off; but that which lasts a long time is tolerable; and the mind maintains its own tranquillity by retiring into itself, and the ruling faculty is not made worse. But the parts which are harmed by pain, let them, if they can, give their opinion about it. 34. About fame: look at the minds [of those who seek fame], observe what they are, and what kind of things they avoid, and what kind of things they pursue. And consider that as the heaps of sand piled on one another hide the former sands; so in life the events which go before are soon covered by those which come after. 35. From Plato:[A] The man who has an elevated mind and takes a view of all time and of all substance, dost thou suppose it possible for him to think that human life is anything great? It is not possible, he said.--Such a man then will think that death also is no evil.--Certainly not. 36. From Antisthenes: It is royal to do good and to be abused. 37. It is a base thing for the countenance to be obedient and to regulate and compose itself as the mind commands, and for the mind not to be regulated and composed by itself. 38. It is not right to vex ourselves at things, For they care nought about it.[B] 39. To the immortal gods and us give joy. 40. Life must be reaped like the ripe ears of corn. One man is born; another dies.[C] [A] Plato, Pol. vi. 486. [B] From the Bellerophon of Euripides. [C] From the Hypsipyle of Euripides. Cicero (Tuscul. iii. 25) has translated six lines from Euripides, and among them are these two lines,-- "Reddenda terrae est terra: tum vita omnibus Metenda ut fruges: Sic jubet necessitas." 41. If gods care not for me and my children, There is a reason for it. 42. For the good is with me, and the just.[A] 43. No joining others in their wailing, no violent emotion. 44. From Plato:[B] But I would make this man a sufficient answer, which is this: Thou sayest not well, if thou thinkest that a man who is good for anything at all ought to compute the hazard of life or death, and should not rather look to this only in all that he does, whether he is doing what is just or unjust, and the works of a good or bad man. 45. [C]For thus it is, men of Athens, in truth: wherever a man has placed himself thinking it the best place for him, or has been placed by a commander, there in my opinion he ought to stay and to abide the hazard, taking nothing into the reckoning, either death or anything else, before the baseness [of deserting his post]. [A] See Aristophanes, Acharnenses, v. 661. [B] From the Apologia, c. 16. [C] From the Apologia, c. 16. 46. But, my good friend, reflect whether that which is noble and good is not something different from saving and being saved; for+ as to a man living such or such a time, at least one who is really a man, consider if this is not---a thing to be dismissed from the thoughts:+ and there must be no love of life: but as to these matters a man must intrust them to the Deity and believe what the women say, that no man can escape his destiny, the next inquiry being how he may best live the time that he has to live.[A] 47. Look round at the courses of the stars, as if thou wert going along with them; and constantly consider the changes of the elements into one another, for such thoughts purge away the filth of the terrene life. 48. This is a fine saying of Plato:[B] That he who is discoursing about men should look also at earthly things as if he viewed them from some higher place; should look at them in their assemblies, armies, agricultural labors, marriages, treaties, births, deaths, noise of the courts of justice, desert places, various nations of barbarians, feasts, lamentations, markets, a mixture of all things and an orderly combination of contraries. [A] Plato, Gorgias, c. 68 (512). In this passage the text of Antoninus has [Greek: eateon], which is perhaps right; but there is a difficulty in the words [Greek: mê gar touto men, to zên hoposondê chronon tonge hôs alêthos andra eateon esti, kai ou] &C. The conjecture [Greek: eukteon] for [Greek: eateon] does not mend the matter. [B] It is said that this is not in the extant writings of Plato. 49. Consider the past,--such great changes of political supremacies; thou mayest foresee also the things which will be. For they will certainly be of like form, and it is not possible that they should deviate from the order of the things which take place now; accordingly to have contemplated human life for forty years is the same as to have contemplated it for ten thousand years. For what more wilt thou see? 50. That which has grown from the earth to the earth, But that which has sprung from heavenly seed, Back to the heavenly realms returns.[A] This is either a dissolution of the mutual involution of the atoms, or a similar dispersion of the unsentient elements. 51. With food and drinks and cunning magic arts Turning the channel's course to 'scape from death.[B] The breeze which heaven has sent We must endure, and toil without complaining. [A] From the Chrysippus of Euripides. [B] The first two lines are from the Supplices of Euripides, v. 1110. 52. Another may be more expert in casting his opponent; but he is not more social, nor more modest, nor better disciplined to meet all that happens, nor more considerate with respect to the faults of his neighbors. 53. Where any work can be done conformably to the reason which is common to gods and men, there we have nothing to fear; for where we are able to get profit by means of the activity which is successful and proceeds according to our constitution, there no harm is to be suspected. 54. Everywhere and at all times it is in thy power piously to acquiesce in thy present condition, and to behave, justly to those who are about thee, and to exert thy skill upon thy present thoughts, that nothing shall steal into them without being well examined. 55. Do not look around thee to discover other men's ruling principles, but look straight to this, to what nature leads thee, both the universal nature through the things which happen to thee, and thy own nature through the acts which must be done by thee. But every being ought to do that which is according to its constitution; and all other things have been constituted for the sake of rational beings, just as among irrational things the inferior for the sake of the superior, but the rational for the sake of one another. The prime principle then in man's constitution is the social. And the second is not to yield to the persuasions of the body,--for it is the peculiar office of the rational and intelligent motion to circumscribe itself, and never to be overpowered either by the motion of the senses or of the appetites, for both are animal: but the intelligent motion claims superiority, and does not permit itself to be overpowered by the others. And with good reason, for it is formed by nature to use all of them. The third thing in the rational constitution is freedom from error and from deception. Let then the ruling principle holding fast to these things go straight on, and it has what is its own. 56. Consider thyself to be dead, and to have completed thy life up to the present time; and live according to nature the remainder which is allowed thee. 57. Love that only which happens to thee and is spun with the thread of thy destiny. For what is more suitable? 58. In everything which happens keep before thy eyes those to whom the same things happened, and how they were vexed, and treated them as strange things, and found fault with them: and now where are they? Nowhere. Why then dost thou too choose to act in the same way? and why dost thou not leave these agitations which are foreign to nature to those who cause them and those who are moved by them; and why art thou not altogether intent upon the right way of making use of the things which happen to thee? For then thou wilt use them well, and they will be a material for thee [to work on]. Only attend to thyself, and resolve to be a good man in every act which thou doest: and remember ...[A] [A] This section is obscure, and the conclusion is so corrupt that it is impossible to give any probable meaning to it. It is better to leave it as it is than to patch it up, as some critics and translators have done. 59. Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig. 60. The body ought to be compact, and to show no irregularity either in motion or attitude. For what the mind shows in the face by maintaining in it the expression of intelligence and propriety, that ought to be required also in the whole body. But all these things should be observed without affectation. 61. The art of life is more like the wrestler's art than the dancer's, in respect of this, that it should stand ready and firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unexpected. 62. Constantly observe who those are whose approbation thou wishest to have, and what ruling principles they possess. For then thou wilt neither blame those who offend involuntarily, nor wilt thou want their approbation, if thou lookest to the sources of their opinions and appetites. 63. Every soul, the philosopher says, is involuntarily deprived of truth; consequently in the same way it is deprived of justice and temperance and benevolence and everything of the kind. It is most necessary to bear this constantly in mind, for thus thou wilt be more gentle towards all. 64. In every pain let this thought be present, that there is no dishonor in it, nor does it make the governing intelligence worse, for it does not damage the intelligence either so far as the intelligence is rational[A] or so far as it is social. Indeed in the case of most pains let this remark of Epicurus aid thee, that pain is neither intolerable nor everlasting, if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination: and remember this too, that we do not perceive that many things which are disagreeable to us are the same as pain, such as excessive drowsiness, and the being scorched by heat, and the having no appetite. When then thou art discontented about any of these things, say to thyself that thou art yielding to pain. 65. Take care not to feel towards the inhuman as they feel towards men.[B] 66. How do we know if Telauges was not superior in character to Socrates? For it is not enough that Socrates died a more noble death, and disputed more skilfully with the sophists, and passed the night in the cold with more endurance, and that when he was bid to arrest Leon[C] of Salamis, he considered it more noble to refuse, and that he walked in a swaggering way in the streets[D]--though as to this fact one may have great doubts if it was true. But we ought to inquire what kind of a soul it was that Socrates possessed, and if he was able to be content with being just towards men and pious towards the gods, neither idly vexed on account of men's villainy, nor yet making himself a slave to any man's ignorance, nor receiving as strange anything that fell to his share out of the universal, nor enduring it as intolerable, nor allowing his understanding to sympathize with the affects of the miserable flesh. [A] The text has [Greek: hylikê], which it has been proposed to alter to [Greek: logikê], and this change is necessary. We shall then have in this section [Greek: logikê] and [Greek: koinônikê] associated, as we have in s. 68 [Greek: logikê] and [Greek: politikê], and in s. 72. [B] I have followed Gataker's conjecture [Greek: ohi apanthrôpoi] instead of the MSS. reading [Greek: ohi anthrôpoi] [C] Leon of Salamis. See Plato, Epist. 7; Apolog. c. 20; Epictetus, iv. I, 160; iv. 7, 30. [D] Aristophan. Nub. 362. [Greek: hoti brenthuei t' en taisis hodois kai tô ophthalmô paraballei.] 67. Nature has not so mingled+ [the intelligence] with the composition of the body, as not to have allowed thee the power of circumscribing thyself and of bringing under subjection to thyself all that is thy own; for it is very possible to be a divine man and to be recognized as such by no one. Always bear this in mind; and another thing too, that very little indeed is necessary for living a happy life. And because thou hast despaired of becoming a dialectician and skilled in the knowledge of nature, do not for this reason renounce the hope of being both free and modest, and social and obedient to God. 68. It is in thy power to live free from all compulsion in the greatest tranquillity of mind, even if all the world cry out against thee as much as they choose, and even if wild beasts tear in pieces the members of this kneaded matter which has grown around thee. For what hinders the mind in the midst of all this from maintaining itself in tranquillity and in a just judgment of all surrounding things and in a ready use of the objects which are presented to it, so that the judgment may say to the thing which falls under its observation: This thou art in substance [reality], though in men's opinion thou mayest appear to be of a different kind; and the use shall say to that which falls under the hand: Thou art the thing that I was seeking; for to me that which presents itself is always a material for virtue both rational and political, and in a word, for the exercise of art, which belongs to man or God. For everything which happens has a relationship either to God or man, and is neither new nor difficult to handle, but usual and apt matter to work on. 69. The perfection of moral character consists in this, in passing every day as the last, and in being neither violently excited nor torpid nor playing the hypocrite. 70. The gods who are immortal are not vexed because during so long a time they must tolerate continually men such as they are and so many of them bad; and besides this, they also take care of them in all ways. But thou, who art destined to end so soon, art thou wearied of enduring the bad, and this too when thou art one of them? 71. It is a ridiculous thing for a man not to fly from his own badness, which is indeed possible, but to fly from other men's badness, which is impossible. 72. Whatever the rational and political [social] faculty finds to be neither intelligent nor social, it properly judges to be inferior to itself. 73. When thou hast done a good act and another has received it, why dost thou still look for a third thing besides these, as fools do, either to have the reputation of having done a good act or to obtain a return? 74. No man is tired of receiving what is useful. But it is useful to act according to nature. Do not then be tired of receiving what is useful by doing it to others. 75. The nature of the All moved to make the universe. But now either everything that takes place comes by way of consequence or [continuity]; or even the chief things towards which the ruling power of the universe directs its own movement are governed by no rational principle. If this is remembered, it will make thee more tranquil in many things (vi. 44; ix. 28).[A] [A] It is not easy to understand this section. It has been suggested that there is some error in [Greek: ê alogista] &c. Some of the translators have made nothing of the passage, and they have somewhat perverted the words. The first proposition is, that the universe was made by some sufficient power. A beginning of the universe is assumed, and a power which framed an order. The next question is, How are things produced now? Or, in other words, by what power do forms appear in continuous succession? The answer, according to Antoninus, may be this: It is by virtue of the original constitution of things that all change and succession have been effected and are effected. And this is intelligible in a sense, if we admit that the universe is always one and the same, a continuity of identity; as much one and the same as man is one and the same--which he believes himself to be, though he also believes, and cannot help believing, that both in his body and in his thoughts there is change and succession. There is no real discontinuity then in the universe; and if we say that there was an order framed in the beginning, and that the things which are now produced are a consequence of a previous arrangement, we speak of things as we are compelled to view them, as forming a series of succession, just as we speak of the changes in our own bodies and the sequence of our own thoughts. But as there are no intervals, not even intervals infinitely small, between any two supposed states of any one thing, so there are no intervals, not even infinitely small, between what we call one thing and any other thing which we speak of as immediately preceding or following it. What we call time is an idea derived from our notion of a succession of things or events, an idea which is a part of our constitution, but not an idea which we can suppose to belong to an infinite intelligence and power. The conclusion then is certain that the present and the past, the production of present things and the supposed original order, out of which we say that present things now come, are one, and the present productive power and the so-called past arrangement are only different names for one thing. I suppose then that Antoninus wrote here as people sometimes talk now, and that his real meaning is not exactly expressed by his words. There are certainly other passages from which I think that we may collect that he had notions of production something like what I have expressed. We now come to the alternate: "or even the chief things ... principle." I do not exactly know what he means by [Greek: ta kureôtata] "the chief," or "the most excellent," or whatever it is. But as he speaks elsewhere of inferior and superior things, and of the inferior being for the use of the superior, and of rational beings being the highest, he may here mean rational beings. He also in this alternative assumes a governing power of the universe, and that it acts by directing its power towards these chief objects, or making its special, proper motion towards them. And here he uses the noun ([Greek: hormê]) "movement," which contains the same notion as the verb ([Greek: ôrmêse]) "moved," which he used at the beginning of the paragraph, when he was speaking of the making of the universe. If we do not accept the first hypothesis, he says, we must take the conclusion of the second, that the "chief things towards which the ruling power of the universe directs its own movement are governed by no rational principle." The meaning then is, if there is a meaning in it, that though there is a governing power which strives to give effect to its efforts, we must conclude that there is no rational direction of anything, if the power which first made the universe does not in some way govern it still. Besides, if we assume that anything is now produced or now exists without the action of the supreme intelligence, and yet that this intelligence makes an effort to act, we obtain a conclusion which cannot be reconciled with the nature of a supreme power, whose existence Antoninus always assumes. The tranquillity that a man may gain from these reflections must result from his rejecting the second hypothesis and accepting the first--whatever may be the exact sense in which the emperor understood the first. Or, as he says elsewhere, if there is no Providence which governs the world, man has at least the power of governing himself according to the constitution of his nature; and so he may be tranquil if he does the best that he can. If there is no error in the passage, it is worth the labor to discover the writer's exact meaning--for I think that he had a meaning, though people may not agree what it was. (Compare ix. 28.) If I have rightly explained the emperor's meaning in this and other passages, he has touched the solution of a great question. VIII. This reflection also tends to the removal of the desire of empty fame, that it is no longer in thy power to have lived the whole of thy life, or at least thy life from thy youth upwards, like a philosopher; but both to many others and to thyself it is plain that thou art far from philosophy. Thou hast fallen into disorder then, so that it is no longer easy for thee to get the reputation of a philosopher; and thy plan of life also opposes it. If then thou hast truly seen where the matter lies, throw away the thought, How thou shall seem [to others], and be content if thou shalt live the rest of thy life in such wise as thy nature wills. Observe then what it wills, and let nothing else distract thee; for thou hast had experience of many wanderings without having found happiness anywhere,--not in syllogisms, nor in wealth, nor in reputation, nor in enjoyment, nor anywhere. Where is it then? In doing what man's nature requires. How then shall a man do this? If he has principles from which come his affects and his acts. What principles? Those which relate to good and bad: the belief that there is nothing good for man which does not make him just, temperate, manly, free; and that there is nothing bad which does not do the contrary to what has been mentioned. 2. On the occasion of every act ask thyself, How is this with respect to me? Shall I repent of it? A little time and I am dead, and all is gone. What more do I seek, if what I am now doing is the work of an intelligent living being, and a social being, and one who is under the same law with God? 3. Alexander and Caius[A] and Pompeius, what are they in comparison with Diogenes and Heraclitus and Socrates? For they were acquainted with things, and their causes [forms], and their matter, and the ruling principles of these men were the same [or conformable to their pursuits]. But as to the others, how many things had they to care for, and to how many things were they slaves! [A] Caius is C. Julius Caesar, the dictator; and Pompeius is Cn. Pompeius, named Magnus. 4. [Consider] that men will do the same things nevertheless, even though thou shouldst burst. 5. This is the chief thing: Be not perturbed, for all things are according to the nature of the universal; and in a little time thou wilt be nobody and nowhere, like Hadrianus and Augustus. In the next place, having fixed thy eyes steadily on thy business, look at it, and at the same time remembering that it is thy duty to be a good man, and what man's nature demands, do that without turning aside; and speak as it seems to thee most just, only let it be with a good disposition and with modesty and without hypocrisy. 6. The nature of the universal has this work to do,--to remove to that place the things which are in this, to change them, to take, them away hence, and to carry them there. All things are change, yet we need not fear anything new. All things are familiar [to us]; but the distribution of them still remains the same. 7. Every nature is contented with itself when it goes on its way well; and a rational nature goes on its way well when in its thoughts it assents to nothing false or uncertain, and when it directs its movements to social acts only, and when it confines its desires and aversions to the things which are in its power, and when it is satisfied with everything that is assigned to it by the common nature. For of this common nature every particular nature is a part, as the nature of the leaf is a part of the nature of the plant; except that in the plant the nature of the leaf is part of a nature which has not perception or reason, and is subject to be impeded; but the nature of man is part of a nature which is not subject to impediments, and is intelligent and just, since it gives to everything in equal portions and according to its worth, times, substance, cause [form], activity, and incident. But examine, not to discover that any one thing compared with any other single thing is equal in all respects, but by taking all the parts together of one thing and comparing them with all the parts together of another. 8. Thou hast not leisure [or ability] to read. But thou hast leisure [or ability] to check arrogance: thou hast leisure to be superior to pleasure and pain: thou hast leisure to be superior to love of fame, and not to be vexed at stupid and ungrateful people, nay even to care for them. 9. Let no man any longer hear thee finding fault with the court life or with thy own (v. 16). 10. Repentance is a kind of self-reproof for having neglected something useful; but that which is good must be something useful, and the perfect good man should look after it. But no such man would ever repent of having refused any sensual pleasure. Pleasure then is neither good nor useful. 11. This thing, what is it in itself, in its own constitution? What is its substance and material? And what its causal nature [or form]? And what is it doing in the world? And how long does it subsist? 12. When thou risest from sleep with reluctance, remember that it is according to thy constitution and according to human nature to perform social acts, but sleeping is common also to irrational animals. But that which is according to each individual's nature is also more peculiarly its own, and more suitable to its nature, and indeed also more agreeable (v. 1). 13. Constantly, and, if it be possible, on the occasion of every impression on the soul, apply to it the principles of Physic, of Ethic, and of Dialectic. 14. Whatever man thou meetest with, immediately say to thyself: What opinions has this man about good and bad? For if with respect to pleasure and pain and the causes of each, and with respect to fame and ignominy, death and life, he has such and such opinions, it will seem nothing wonderful or strange to me if he does such and such things; and I shall bear in mind that he is compelled to do so.[A] [A] Antoninus v. 16. Thucydides, iii 10: [Greek: en gar tô diallassonti tês gnômês kai ai diaphorai tôn ergôn kathistantai]. 15. Remember that as it is a shame to be surprised if the fig-tree produces figs, so it is to be surprised if the world produces such and such things of which it is productive; and for the physician and the helmsman it is a shame to be surprised if a man has a fever, or if the wind is unfavorable. 16. Remember that to change thy opinion and to follow him who corrects thy error is as consistent with freedom as it is to persist in thy error. For it is thy own, the activity which is exerted according to thy own movement and judgment, and indeed according to thy own understanding too. 17. If a thing is in thy own power, why dost thou do it? but if it is in the power of another, whom dost thou blame,--the atoms [chance] or the gods? Both are foolish. Thou must blame nobody. For if thou canst, correct [that which is the cause]; but if thou canst not do this, correct at least the thing itself; but if thou canst not do even this, of what use is it to thee to find fault? for nothing should be done without a purpose. 18. That which has died falls not out of the universe. If it stays here, it also changes here, and is dissolved into its proper parts, which are elements of the universe and of thyself. And these too change, and they murmur not. 19. Everything exists for some end,--a horse, a vine. Why dost thou wonder? Even the sun will say, I am for some purpose, and the rest of the gods will say the same. For what purpose then art thou,--to enjoy pleasure? See if common sense allows this. 20. Nature has had regard in everything no less to the end than to the beginning and the continuance, just like the man who throws up a ball. What good is it then for the ball to be thrown up, or harm for it to come down, or even to have fallen? and what good is it to the bubble while it holds together, or what harm when it is burst? The same may be said of a light also. 21. Turn it [the body] inside out, and see what kind of thing it is; and when it has grown old, what kind of thing it becomes, and when it is diseased. Short lived are both the praiser and the praised, and the rememberer and the remembered: and all this in a nook of this part of the world; and not even here do all agree, no, not any one with himself: and the whole earth too is a point. 22. Attend to the matter which is before thee, whether it is an opinion or an act or a word. Thou sufferest this justly: for thou choosest rather to become good to-morrow than to be good to-day. 23. Am I doing anything? I do it with reference to the good of mankind. Does anything happen to me? I receive it and refer it to the gods, and the source of all things, from which all that happens is derived. 24. Such as bathing appears to thee,--oil, sweat, dirt, filthy water, all things disgusting,--so is every part of life and everything. 25. Lucilla saw Verus die, and then Lucilla died. Secunda saw Maximus die, and then Secunda died. Epitynchanus saw Diotimus die, and then Epitynchanus died. Antoninus saw Faustina die, and then Antoninus died. Such is everything. Celer saw Hadrianus die, and then Celer died. And those sharp-witted men, either seers or men inflated with pride, where are they,--for instance the sharp-witted men, Charax and Demetrius the Platonist, and Eudaemon, and any one else like them? All ephemeral, dead long ago. Some indeed have not been remembered even for a short time, and others have become the heroes of fables, and again others have disappeared even from fables. Remember this then, that this little compound, thyself, must either be dissolved, or thy poor breath must be extinguished, or be removed and placed elsewhere. 26. It is satisfaction to a man to do the proper works of a man. Now it is a proper work of a man to be benevolent to his own kind, to despise the movements of the senses, to form a just judgment of plausible appearances, and to take a survey of the nature of the universe and of the things which happen in it. 27. There are three relations [between thee and other things]: the one to the body[A] which surrounds thee; the second to the divine cause from which all things come to all; and the third to those who live with thee. [A] The text has [Greek: aition], which in Antoninus means "form," "formal." Accordingly Schultz recommends either Valkenaer's emendation [Greek: angeion], "body," or Coraïs' [Greek: sômation]. Compare xii. 13; x. 38. 28. Pain is either an evil to the body--then let the body say what it thinks of it--or to the soul; but it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquillity, and not to think that pain is an evil. For every judgment and movement and desire and aversion is within, and no evil ascends so high. 29. Wipe out thy imaginations by often saying to thyself: Now it is in my power to let no badness be in this soul, nor desire, nor any perturbation at all; but looking at all things I see what is their nature, and I use each according to its value.--Remember this power which thou hast from nature. 30. Speak both in the senate and to every man, whoever he may be, appropriately, not with any affectation: use plain discourse. 31. Augustus' court, wife, daughter, descendants, ancestors, sister, Agrippa, kinsmen, intimates, friends; Areius,[A] Maecenas, physicians, and sacrificing priests,--the whole court is dead. Then turn to the rest, not considering the death of a single man [but of a whole race], as of the Pompeii; and that which is inscribed on the tombs,--The last of his race. Then consider what trouble those before them have had that they might leave a successor; and then, that of necessity some one must be the last. Again, here consider the death of a whole race. [A] Areius ([Greek: Areios]) was a philosopher, who was intimate with Augustus; Sueton. Augustus, c. 89; Plutarch, Antoninus, 80; Dion Cassius, 51, c. 16. 32. It is thy duty to order thy life well in every single act; and if every act does its duty as far as is possible, be content; and no one is able to hinder thee so that each act shall not do its duty.--But something external will stand in the way. Nothing will stand in the way of thy acting justly and soberly and considerately.--But perhaps some other active power will be hindered. Well, but by acquiescing in the hindrance and by being content to transfer thy efforts to that which is allowed, another opportunity of action is immediately put before thee in place of that which was hindered, and one which will adapt itself to this ordering of which we are speaking. 33. Receive [wealth or prosperity] without arrogance; and be ready to let it go. 34. If thou didst ever see a hand cut off, or a foot, or a head, lying anywhere apart from the rest of the body, such does a man make himself, as far as he can, who is not content with what happens, and separates himself from others, or does anything unsocial. Suppose that thou hast detached thyself from the natural unity,--for thou wast made by nature a part, but now thou hast cut thyself off,--yet here there is this beautiful provision, that it is in thy power again to unite thyself. God has allowed this to no other part, after it has been separated and cut asunder, to come together again. But consider the kindness by which he has distinguished man, for he has put it in his power not to be separated at all from the universal; and when he has been separated, he has allowed him to return and to be united and to resume his place as a part. 35. As the nature of the universal has given to every rational being all the other powers that it has, + so we have received from it this power also. For as the universal nature converts and fixes in its predestined place everything which stands in the way and opposes it, and makes such things a part of itself, so also the rational animal is able to make every hindrance its own material, and to use it for such purposes as it may have designed.[A] 36. Do not disturb thyself by thinking of the whole of thy life. Let not thy thoughts at once embrace all the various troubles which thou mayest expect to befall thee: but on every occasion ask thyself, What is there in this which is intolerable and past bearing? for thou wilt be ashamed to confess. In the next place remember that neither the future nor the past pains thee, but only the present. But this is reduced to a very little, if thou only circumscribest it, and chidest thy mind if it is unable to hold out against even this. 37. Does Panthea or Fergamus now sit by the tomb of Verus?[B] Does Chaurias or Diotimus sit by the tomb of Hadrianus? That would be ridiculous. Well, suppose they did sit there, would the dead be conscious of it? and if the dead were conscious, would they be pleased? and if they were pleased, would that make them immortal? Was it not in the order of destiny that these persons too should first become old women and old men and then die? What then would those do after these were dead? All this is foul smell and blood in a bag. [A] The text is corrupt at the beginning of the paragraph, but the meaning will appear if the second [Greek: logikôn] is changed into [Greek: holôn] though this change alone will not establish the grammatical completeness of the text. [B] "Verus" is a conjecture of Saumaise, and perhaps the true reading. 38. If thou canst see sharp, look and judge wisely, + says the philosopher. 39. In the constitution of the rational animal I see no virtue which is opposed to justice; but I see a virtue which is opposed to love of pleasure, and that is temperance. 40. If thou takest away thy opinion about that which appears to give thee pain, thou thyself standest in perfect security.--Who is this self?--The reason.--But I am not reason.--Be it so. Let then the reason itself not trouble itself. But if any other part of thee suffers, let it have its own opinion about itself (vii. 16). 41. Hindrance to the perceptions of sense is an evil to the animal nature. Hindrance to the movements [desires] is equally an evil to the animal nature. And something else also is equally an impediment and an evil to the constitution of plants. So then that which is a hindrance to the intelligence is an evil to the intelligent nature. Apply all these things then to thyself. Does pain or sensuous pleasure affect thee? The senses will look to that. Has any obstacle opposed thee in thy efforts towards an object? If indeed thou wast making this effort absolutely [unconditionally, or without any reservation], certainly this obstacle is an evil to thee considered as a rational animal. But if thou takest [into consideration] the usual course of things, thou hast not yet been injured nor even impeded. The things however which are proper to the understanding no other man is used to impede, for neither fire, nor iron, nor tyrant, nor abuse, touches it in any way. When it has been made a sphere, it continues a sphere (xi. 12). 42. It is not fit that I should give myself pain, for I have never intentionally given pain even to another. 43. Different things delight different people; but it is my delight to keep the ruling faculty sound without turning away either from any man or from any of the things which happen to men, but looking at and receiving all with welcome eyes and using everything according to its value. 44. See that thou secure this present time to thyself: for those who rather pursue posthumous fame do not consider that the men of after time will be exactly such as these whom they cannot bear now; and both are mortal. And what is it in any way to thee if these men of after time utter this or that sound, or have this or that opinion about thee? 45. Take me and cast me where thou wilt; for there I shall keep my divine part tranquil, that is, content, if it can feel and act comformably to its proper constitution. Is this [change of place] sufficient reason why my soul should be unhappy and worse than it was, depressed, expanded, shrinking, affrighted? and what wilt thou find which is sufficient reason for this?[A] [A] [Greek: oregomenê] in this passage seems to have a passive sense. It is difficult to find an apt expression for it and some of the other words. A comparison with xi. 12, will help to explain the meaning. 46. Nothing can happen to any man which is not a human accident, nor to an ox which is not according to the nature of an ox, nor to a vine which is not according to the nature of a vine, nor to a stone which is not proper to a stone. If then there happens to each thing both what is usual and natural, why shouldst thou complain? For the common nature brings nothing which may not be borne by thee. 47. If thou art pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs thee, but thy own judgment about it. And it is in thy power to wipe out this judgment now. But if anything in thy own disposition gives thee pain, who hinders thee from correcting thy opinion? And even if thou art pained because thou art not doing some particular thing which seems to thee to be right, why dost thou not rather act than complain?--But some insuperable obstacle is in the way?--Do not be grieved then, for the cause of its not being done depends not on thee.--But it is not worth while to live, if this cannot be done.--Take thy departure then from life contentedly, just as he dies who is in full activity, and well pleased too with the things which are obstacles. 48. Remember that the ruling faculty is invincible, when self-collected it is satisfied with itself, if it does nothing which it does not choose to do, even if it resist from mere obstinacy. What then will it be when it forms a judgment about anything aided by reason and deliberately? Therefore the mind which is free from passions is a citadel, for man has nothing more secure to which he can fly for refuge and for the future be inexpugnable. He then who has not seen this is an ignorant man; but he who has seen it and does not fly to this refuge is unhappy. 49. Say nothing more to thyself than what the first appearances report. Suppose that it has been reported to thee that a certain person speaks ill of thee. This has been reported; but that thou hast been injured, that has not been reported. I see that my child is sick. I do see; but that he is in danger, I do not see. Thus then always abide by the first appearances, and add nothing thyself from within, and then nothing happens to thee. Or rather add something like a man who knows everything that happens in the world. 50. A cucumber is bitter--Throw it away.--There are briers in the road--Turn aside from them.--This is enough. Do not add, And why were such things made in the world? For thou wilt be ridiculed by a man who is acquainted with nature, as thou wouldst be ridiculed by a carpenter and shoemaker if thou didst find fault because thou seest in their workshop shavings and cuttings from the things which they make. And yet they have places into which they can throw these shavings and cuttings, and the universal nature has no external space; but the wondrous part of her art is that though she has circumscribed herself, everything within her which appears to decay and to grow old and to be useless she changes into herself, and again makes other new things from these very same, so that she requires neither substance from without nor wants a place into which she may cast that which decays. She is content then with her own space, and her own matter, and her own art. 51. Neither in thy actions be sluggish nor in thy conversation without method, nor wandering in thy thoughts, nor let there be in thy soul inward contention nor external effusion, nor in life be so busy as to have no leisure. Suppose that men kill thee, cut thee in pieces, curse thee. What then can these things do to prevent thy mind from remaining pure, wise, sober, just? For instance, if a man should stand by a limpid pure spring, and curse it, the spring never ceases sending up potable water; and if he should cast clay into it or filth, it will speedily disperse them and wash them out, and will not be at all polluted. How then shalt thou possess a perpetual fountain [and not a mere well]? By forming + thyself hourly to freedom conjoined with contentment, simplicity, and modesty. 52. He who does not know what the world is, does not know where he is. And he who does not know for what purpose the world exists, does not know who he is, nor what the world is. But he who has failed in any one of these things could not even say for what purpose he exists himself. What then dost thou think of him who [avoids or] seeks the praise of those who applaud, of men who know not either where they are or who they are? 53. Dost thou wish to be praised by a man who curses himself thrice every hour? wouldst thou wish to please a man who does not please himself? Does a man please himself who repents of nearly everything that he does? 54. No longer let thy breathing only act in concert with the air which surrounds thee, but let thy intelligence also now be in harmony with the intelligence which embraces all things. For the intelligent power is no less diffused in all parts and pervades all things for him who is willing to draw it to him than the aerial power for him who is able to respire it. 55. Generally, wickedness does no harm at all to the universe; and particularly the wickedness [of one man] does no harm to another. It is only harmful to him who has it in his power to be released from it as soon as he shall choose. 56. To my own free will the free will of my neighbor is just as indifferent as his poor breath and flesh. For though we are made especially for the sake of one another, still the ruling power of each of us has its own office, for otherwise my neighbor's wickedness would be my harm, which God has not willed, in order that my unhappiness may not depend on another. 57. The sun appears to be poured down, and in all directions indeed it is diffused, yet it is not effused. For this diffusion is extension: Accordingly its rays are called Extensions [[Greek: aktines]] because they are extended [[Greek: apo tou ekteinesthai]].[A] But one may judge what kind of a thing a ray is, if he looks at the sun's light passing through a narrow opening into a darkened room, for it is extended in a right line, and as it were is divided when it meets with any solid body which stands in the way and intercepts the air beyond; but there the light remains fixed and does not glide or fall off. Such then ought to be the outpouring and diffusion of the understanding, and it should in no way be an effusion, but an extension, and it should make no violent or impetuous collision with the obstacles which are in its way; nor yet fall down, but be fixed, and enlighten that which receives it. For a body will deprive itself of the illumination, if it does not admit it. [A] A piece of bad etymology. 58. He who fears death either fears the loss of sensation or a different kind of sensation. But if thou shalt have no sensation, neither wilt thou feel any harm; and if thou shalt acquire another kind of sensation, thou wilt be a different kind of living being and thou wilt not cease to live. 59. Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then, or bear with them. 60. In one way an arrow moves, in another way the mind. The mind indeed, both when it exercises caution and when it is employed about inquiry, moves straight onward not the less, and to its object. 61. Enter into every man's ruling faculty; and also let every other man enter into thine.[A] [A] Compare Epictetus, iii. 9, 12. IX. He who acts unjustly acts impiously. For since the universal nature has made rational animals for the sake of one another, to help one another according to their deserts, but in no way to injure one another, he who transgresses her will is clearly guilty of impiety towards the highest divinity. And he too who lies is guilty of impiety to the same divinity; for the universal nature is the nature of things that are; and things that are have a relation to all things that come into existence.[A] And further, this universal nature is named truth, and is the prime cause of all things that are true. He then who lies intentionally is guilty of impiety, inasmuch as he acts unjustly by deceiving; and he also who lies unintentionally, inasmuch as he is at variance with the universal nature, and inasmuch as he disturbs the order by fighting against the nature of the world; for he fights against it, who is moved of himself to that which is contrary to truth, for he had received powers from nature through the neglect of which he is not able now to distinguish falsehood from truth. And indeed he who pursues pleasure as good, and avoids pain as evil, is guilty of impiety. For of necessity such a man must often find fault with the universal nature, alleging that it assigns things to the bad and the good contrary to their deserts, because frequently the bad are in the enjoyment of pleasure and possess the things which procure pleasure, but the good have pain for their share and the things which cause pain. And further, he who is afraid of pain will sometimes also be afraid of some of the things which will happen in the world, and even this is impiety. And he who pursues pleasure will not abstain from injustice, and this is plainly impiety. Now with respect to the things towards which the universal nature is equally affected--for it would not have made both, unless it was equally affected towards both--towards these they who wish to follow nature should be of the same mind with it, and equally affected. With respect to pain, then, and pleasure, or death and life, or honor and dishonor, which the universal nature employs equally, whoever is not equally affected is manifestly acting impiously. And I say that the universal nature employs them equally, instead of saying that they happen alike to those who are produced in continuous series and to those who come after them by virtue of a certain original movement of Providence, according to which it moved from a certain beginning to this ordering of things, having conceived certain principles of the things which were to be, and having determined powers productive of beings and of changes and of such like successions (vii. 75). [A] "As there is not any action or natural event, which we are acquainted with, so single and unconnected as not to have a respect to some other actions and events, so possibly each of them, when it has not an immediate, may yet have a remote, natural relation to other actions and events, much beyond the compass of this present world." Again: "Things seemingly the most insignificant imaginable are perpetually observed to be necessary conditions to other things of the greatest importance, so that any one thing whatever may, for aught we know to the contrary, be a necessary condition to any other."--Butler's Analogy, Chap. 7. See all the chapter. Some critics take [Greek: ta hyparchonta] in this passage of Antoninus to be the same as [Greek: ta honta]: but if that were so he might have said [Greek: pros allêla] instead of [Greek: pros ta hyparchonta]. Perhaps the meaning of [Greek: pros ta hyparchonta] may be "to all prior things." If so, the translation is still correct. See vi. 38. 2. It would be a man's happiest lot to depart from mankind without having had any taste of lying and hypocrisy and luxury and pride. However, to breathe out one's life when a man has had enough of these things is the next best voyage, as the saying is. Hast thou determined to abide with vice, and hast not experience yet induced thee to fly from this pestilence? For the destruction of the understanding is a pestilence, much more, indeed, than any such corruption and change of this atmosphere which surrounds us. For this corruption is a pestilence of animals so far as they are animals; but the other is a pestilence of men so far as they are men. 3. Do not despise death, but be well content with it, since this too is one of those things which nature wills. For such as it is to be young and to grow old, and to increase and to reach maturity, and to have teeth and beard and gray hairs, and to beget and to be pregnant and to bring forth, and all the other natural operations which the seasons of thy life bring, such also is dissolution. This, then, is consistent with the character of a reflecting man--to be neither careless nor impatient nor contemptuous with respect to death, but to wait for it as one of the operations of nature. As thou now waitest for the time when the child shall come out of thy wife's womb, so be ready for the time when thy soul shall fall out of this envelope.[A] But if thou requirest also a vulgar kind of comfort which shall reach thy heart, thou wilt be made best reconciled to death by observing the objects from which thou art going to be removed, and the morals of those with whom thy soul will no longer be mingled. For it is no way right to be offended with men, but it is thy duty to care for them and to bear with them gently; and yet to remember that thy departure will not be from men who have the same principles as thyself. For this is the only thing, if there be any, which could draw us the contrary way and attach us to life,--to be permitted to live with those who have the same principles as ourselves. But now thou seest how great is the trouble arising from the discordance of those who live together, so that thou mayst say, Come quick, O death, lest perchance I, too, should forget myself. [A] Note 1 of the Philosophy, p. 76. 4. He who does wrong does wrong against himself. He who acts unjustly acts unjustly to himself, because he makes himself bad. 5. He often acts unjustly who does not do a certain thing; not only he who does a certain thing. 6. Thy present opinion founded on understanding, and thy present conduct directed to social good, and thy present disposition of contentment with everything which happens+--that is enough. 7. Wipe out imagination; check desire: extinguish appetite: keep the ruling faculty in its own power. 8. Among the animals which have not reason one life is distributed; but among reasonable animals one intelligent soul is distributed: just as there is one earth of all things which are of an earthly nature, and we see by one light, and breathe one air, all of us that have the faculty of vision and all that have life. 9. All things which participate in anything which is common to them all, move towards that which is of the same kind with themselves. Everything which is earthy turns towards the earth, everything which is liquid flows together, and everything which is of an aerial kind does the same, so that they require something to keep them asunder, and the application of force. Fire indeed moves upwards on account of the elemental fire, but it is so ready to be kindled together with all the fire which is here, that even every substance which is somewhat dry is easily ignited, because there is less mingled with it of that which is a hindrance to ignition. Accordingly, then, everything also which participates in the common intelligent nature moves in like manner towards that which is of the same kind with itself, or moves even more. For so much as it is superior in comparison with all other things, in the same degree also is it more ready to mingle with and to be fused with that which is akin to it. Accordingly among animals devoid of reason we find swarms of bees, and herds of cattle, and the nurture of young birds, and in a manner, loves; for even in animals there are souls, and that power which brings them together is seen to exert itself in a superior degree, and in such a way as never has been observed in plants nor in stones nor in trees. But in rational animals there are political communities and friendships, and families and meetings of people; and in wars, treaties, and armistices. But in the things which are still superior, even though they are separated from one another, unity in a manner exists, as in the stars. Thus the ascent to the higher degree is able to produce a sympathy even in things which are separated. See, then, what now takes place; for only intelligent animals have now forgotten this mutual desire and inclination, and in them alone the property of flowing together is not seen. But still, though men strive to avoid [this union], they are caught and held by it, for their nature is too strong for them; and thou wilt see what I say, if thou only observest. Sooner, then, will one find anything earthy which comes in contact with no earthy thing, than a man altogether separated from other men. 10. Both man and God and the universe produce fruit; at the proper seasons each produces it. But and if usage has especially fixed these terms to the vine and like things, this is nothing. Reason produces fruit both for all and for itself, and there are produced from it other things of the same kind as reason itself. 11. If thou art able, correct by teaching those who do wrong; but if thou canst not, remember that indulgence is given to thee for this purpose. And the gods, too, are indulgent to such persons; and for some purposes they even help them to get health, wealth, reputation; so kind they are. And it is in thy power also; or say, who hinders thee? 12. Labor not as one who is wretched, nor yet as one who would be pitied or admired; but direct thy will to one thing only--to put thyself in motion and to check thyself, as the social reason requires. 13. To-day I have got out of all trouble, or rather I have cast out all trouble, for it was not outside, but within and in my opinions. 14. All things are the same, familiar in experience, and ephemeral in time, and worthless in the matter. Everything now is just as it was in the time of those whom we have buried. 15. Things stand outside of us, themselves by themselves, neither knowing aught of themselves, nor expressing any judgment. What is it, then, which does judge about them? The ruling faculty. 16. Not in passivity but in activity lie the evil and the good of the rational social animal, just as his virtue and his vice lie not in passivity but in activity.[A] [A] Virtutis omnis laus in actione consistit.--_Cicero_, De Off., 1. 6. 17. For the stone which has been thrown up it is no evil to come down, nor indeed any good to have been carried up (viii. 20). 18. Penetrate inwards into men's leading principles, and thou wilt see what judges thou art afraid of, and what kind of judges they are of themselves. 19. All things are changing: and thou thyself art in continuous mutation and in a manner in continuous destruction, and the whole universe too. 20. It is thy duty to leave another man's wrongful act there where it is (vii. 29; ix. 38). 21. Termination of activity, cessation from movement and opinion, and in a sense their death, is no evil. Turn thy thoughts now to the consideration of thy life, thy life as a child, as a youth, thy manhood, thy old age, for in these also every change was a death. Is this anything to fear? Turn thy thoughts now to thy life under thy grandfather, then to thy life under thy mother, then to thy life under thy father; and as thou findest many other differences and changes and terminations, ask thyself, Is this anything to fear? In like manner, then, neither are the termination and cessation and change of thy whole life a thing to be afraid of. [Illustration: THE FORUM] 22. Hasten [to examine] thy own ruling faculty and that of the universe and that of thy neighbor: thy own, that thou mayst make it just: and that of the universe, that thou mayst remember of what thou art a part; and that of thy neighbor, that thou mayst know whether he has acted ignorantly or with knowledge, and thou mayst also consider that his ruling faculty is akin to thine. 23. As thou thyself art a component part of a social system, so let every act of thine be a component part of social life. Whatever act of thine then has no reference either immediately or remotely to a social end, this tears asunder thy life, and does not allow it to be one, and it is of the nature of a mutiny, just as when in a popular assembly a man acting by himself stands apart from the general agreement. 24. Quarrels of little children and their sports, and poor spirits carrying about dead bodies [such is everything]; and so what is exhibited in the representation of the mansions of the dead[A] strikes our eyes more clearly. [A] [Greek: to tês Nekuias] may be, as Gataker conjectures, a dramatic representation of the state of the dead. Schultz supposes that it may be also a reference to the [Greek: Nekuia] of the Odyssey (lib. xi.). 25. Examine into the quality of the form of an object, and detach it altogether from its material part, and then contemplate it; then determine the time, the longest which a thing of this peculiar form is naturally made to endure. 26. Thou hast endured infinite troubles through not being contented with thy ruling faculty when it does the things which it is constituted by nature to do. But enough + [of this]. 27. When another blames thee or hates thee, or when men say about thee anything injurious, approach their poor souls, penetrate within, and see what kind of men they are. Thou wilt discover that there is no reason to take any trouble that these men may have this or that opinion about thee. However, thou must be well disposed towards them, for by nature they are friends. And the gods too aid them in all ways, by dreams, by signs, towards the attainment of those things on which they set a value.+ 28. The periodic movements of the universe are the same, up and down from age to age. And either the universal intelligence puts itself in motion for every separate effect, and if this is so, be thou content with that which is the result of its activity; or it puts itself in motion once, and everything else comes by way of sequence[A] in a manner; or indivisible elements are the origin of all things.--In a word, if there is a god, all is well; and if chance rules, do not thou also be governed by it (vi. 44; vii. 75). [A] The words which immediately follow [Greek: kat' epakolouthêsin] are corrupt. But the meaning is hardly doubtful. (Compare vii. 75.) Soon will the earth cover us all: then the earth, too, will change, and the things also which result from change will continue to change forever, and these again forever. For if a man reflects on the changes and transformations which follow one another like wave after wave and their rapidity, he will despise everything which is perishable (xii. 21). 29. The universal cause is like a winter torrent: it carries everything along with it. But how worthless are all these poor people who are engaged in matters political, and, as they suppose, are playing the philosopher! All drivellers. Well then, man: do what nature now requires. Set thyself in motion, if it is in thy power, and do not look about thee to see if any one will observe it; nor yet expect Plato's Republic:[A] but be content if the smallest thing goes on well, and consider such an event to be no small matter. For who can change men's opinions? and without a change of opinions what else is there than the slavery of men who groan while they pretend to obey? Come now and tell me of Alexander and Philippus and Demetrius of Phalerum. They themselves shall judge whether they discovered what the common nature required, and trained themselves accordingly. But if they acted like tragedy heroes, no one has condemned me to imitate them. Simple and modest is the work of philosophy. Draw me not aside to insolence and pride. [A] Those who wish to know what Plato's Republic is may now study it in the accurate translation of Davies and Vaughan. 30. Look down from above on the countless herds of men and their countless solemnities, and the infinitely varied voyagings in storms and calms, and the differences among those who are born, who live together, and die. And consider, too, the life lived by others in olden time, and the life of those who will live after thee, and the life now lived among barbarous nations, and how many know not even thy name, and how many will soon forget it, and how they who perhaps now are praising thee will very soon blame thee, and that neither a posthumous name is of any value, nor reputation, nor anything else. 31. Let there be freedom from perturbations with respect to the things which come from the external cause; and let there be justice in the things done by virtue of the internal cause, that is, let there be movement and action terminating in this, in social acts, for this is according to thy nature. 32. Thou canst remove out of the way many useless things among those which disturb thee, for they lie entirely in thy opinion; and thou wilt then gain for thyself ample space by comprehending the whole universe in thy mind, and by contemplating the eternity of time, and observing the rapid change of every several thing, how short is the time from birth to dissolution, and the illimitable time before birth as well as the equally boundless time after dissolution! 33. All that thou seest will quickly perish, and those who have been spectators of its dissolution will very soon perish too. And he who dies at the extremest old age will be brought into the same condition with him who died prematurely. 34. What are these men's leading principles, and about what kind of things are they busy, and for what kind of reasons do they love and honor? Imagine that thou seest their pool souls laid bare. When they think that they do harm by their blame or good by their praise, what an idea! 35. Loss is nothing else than change. But the universal nature delights in change, and in obedience to her all things are now done well, and from eternity have been in like form, and will be such to time without end. What, then, dost thou say,--that all things have been and all things always will be bad, and that no power has ever been found in so many gods to rectify these things, but the world has been condemned to be bound in never ceasing evil (iv. 45, vii. 18)? 36. The rottenness of the matter which is the foundation of everything! water, dust, bones, filth: or again, marble rocks, the callosities of the earth; and gold and silver, the sediments; and garments, only bits of hair; and purple dye, blood; and everything else is of the same kind. And that which is of the nature of breath is also another thing of the same kind, changing from this to that. 37. Enough of this wretched life and murmuring and apish tricks. Why art thou disturbed? What is there new in this? What unsettles thee? Is it the form of the thing? Look at it. Or is it the matter? Look at it. But besides these there is nothing. Towards the gods then, now become at last more simple and better. It is the same whether we examine these things for a hundred years or three. 38. If a man has done wrong the harm is his own. But perhaps he has not done wrong. 39. Either all things proceed from one intelligent source and come together as in one body, and the part ought not to find fault with what is done for the benefit of the whole; or there are only atoms, and nothing else than mixture and dispersion. Why, then, art thou disturbed? Say to the ruling faculty, Art thou dead, art thou corrupted, art thou playing the hypocrite, art thou become a beast, dost thou herd and feed with the rest?[A] [A] There is some corruption at the end of this section, but I think that the translation expresses the emperor's meaning. Whether intelligence rules all things or chance rules, a man must not be disturbed. He must use the power that he has and be tranquil. 40. Either the gods have no power or they have power. If, then, they have no power, why dost thou pray to them? But if they have power, why dost thou not pray for them to give thee the faculty of not fearing any of the things which thou fearest, or of not desiring any of the things which thou desirest, or not being pained at anything, rather than pray that any of these things should not happen or happen? for certainly if they can co-operate with men, they can co-operate for these purposes. But perhaps thou wilt say the gods have placed them in thy power. Well, then, is it not better to use what is in thy power like a free man than to desire in a slavish and abject way what is not in thy power? And who has told thee that the gods do not aid us, even in the things which are in our power? Begin, then, to pray for such things, and thou wilt see. One man prays thus: How shall I be able to lie with that woman? Do thou pray thus: How shall I not desire to lie with her? Another prays thus: How shall I be released from this? Pray thou: How shall I not desire to be released? Another thus: How shall I not lose my little son? Thou thus: How shall I not be afraid to lose him? In fine, turn thy prayers this way, and see what comes. 41. Epicurus says, In my sickness my conversation was not about my bodily sufferings, nor, says he, did I talk on such subjects to those who visited me; but I continued to discourse on the nature of things as before, keeping to this main point, how the mind, while participating in such movements as go on in the poor flesh, shall be free from perturbations and maintain its proper good. Nor did I, he says, give the physicians an opportunity of putting on solemn looks, as if they were doing something great, but my life went on well and happily. Do, then, the same that he did both in sickness, if thou art sick, and in any other circumstances; for never to desert philosophy in any events that may befall us, nor to hold trifling talks either with an ignorant man or with one unacquainted with nature, is a principle of all schools of philosophy; but to be intent only on that which thou art now doing and on the instrument by which thou doest it. 42. When thou art offended with any man's shameless conduct, immediately ask thyself, Is it possible, then, that shameless men should not be in the world? It is not possible. Do not, then, require what is impossible. For this man also is one of those shameless men who must of necessity be in the world. Let the same considerations be present to thy mind in the case of the knave, and the faithless man, and of every man who does wrong in any way. For at the same time that thou dost remind thyself that it is impossible that such kind of men should not exist, thou wilt become more kindly disposed towards every one individually. It is useful to perceive this, too, immediately when the occasion arises, what virtue nature has given to man to oppose to every wrongful act. For she has given to man, as an antidote against the stupid man, mildness, and against another kind of man some other power. And in all cases it is possible for thee to correct by teaching the man who is gone astray; for every man who errs misses his object and is gone astray. Besides, wherein hast thou been injured? For thou wilt find that no one among those against whom thou art irritated has done anything by which thy mind could be made worse; but that which is evil to thee and harmful has its foundation only in the mind. And what harm is done or what is there strange, if the man who has not been instructed does the acts of an uninstructed man? Consider whether thou shouldst not rather blame thyself, because thou didst not expect such a man to err in such a way. For thou hadst means given thee by thy reason to suppose that it was likely that he would commit this error, and yet thou hast forgotten and art amazed that he has erred. But most of all when thou blamest a man as faithless or ungrateful, turn to thyself. For the fault is manifestly thy own, whether thou didst trust that a man who had such a disposition would keep his promise, or when conferring thy kindness thou didst not confer it absolutely, nor yet in such way as to have received from thy very act all the profit. For what more dost thou want when thou hast done a man a service? art thou not content that thou hast done something conformable to thy nature, and dost thou seek to be paid for it? just as if the eye demanded a recompense for seeing, or the feet for walking. For as these members are formed for a particular purpose, and by working according to their several constitutions obtain what is their own;[A] so also as man is formed by nature to acts of benevolence, when he has done anything benevolent or in any other way conducive to the common interest, he has acted conformably to his constitution, and he gets what is his own. [A] [Greek: Apechei to idion]. This sense of [Greek: apechein] occurs in xi. 1, and iv. 49; also in St. Matthew, vi. 2, [Greek: apechousi ton misthon], and in Epictetus. X. Wilt thou, then, my soul, never be good and simple and one and naked, more manifest than the body which surrounds thee? Wilt thou never enjoy an affectionate and contented disposition? Wilt thou never be full and without a want of any kind, longing for nothing more, nor desiring anything, either animate or inanimate, for the enjoyment of pleasures? nor yet desiring time wherein thou shalt have longer enjoyment, or place, or pleasant climate, or society of men with whom thou mayst live in harmony? but wilt thou be satisfied with thy present condition, and pleased with all that is about thee, and wilt thou convince thyself that thou hast everything, and that it comes from the gods, that everything is well for thee, and will be well whatever shall please them, and whatever they shall give for the conservation of the perfect living being,[A] the good and just and beautiful, which generates and holds together all things, and contains and embraces all things which are dissolved for the production of other like things? Wilt thou never be such that thou shalt so dwell in community with gods and men as neither to find fault with them at all, nor to be condemned by them? [A] That is, God (iv. 40), as he is defined by Zeno. But the confusion between gods and God is strange. 2. Observe what thy nature requires, so far as thou art governed by nature only: then do it and accept it, if thy nature, so far as thou art a living being, shall not be made worse by it. And next thou must observe what thy nature requires so far as thou art a living being. And all this thou mayst allow thyself, if thy nature, so far as thou art a rational animal, shall not be made worse by it. But the rational animal is consequently also a political [social] animal. Use these rules, then, and trouble thyself about nothing else. 3. Everything which happens either happens in such wise as thou art formed by nature to bear it, or as thou art not formed by nature to bear it. If, then, it happens to thee in such way as thou art formed by nature to bear it, do not complain, but bear it as thou art formed by nature to bear it. But if it happens in such wise as thou art not formed by nature to bear it, do not complain, for it will perish after it has consumed thee. Remember, however, that thou art formed by nature to bear everything, with respect to which it depends on thy own opinion to make it endurable and tolerable, by thinking that it is either thy interest or thy duty to do this. 4. If a man is mistaken, instruct him kindly and show him his error. But if thou art not able, blame thyself, or blame not even thyself. 5. Whatever may happen to thee, it was prepared for thee from all eternity; and the implication of causes was from eternity spinning the thread of thy being, and of that which is incident to it (iii. 11; iv. 26). 6. Whether the universe is [a concourse of] atoms, or nature [is a system], let this first be established, that I am a part of the whole which is governed by nature; next, I am in a manner intimately related to the parts which are of the same kind with myself. For remembering this, inasmuch as I am a part, I shall be discontented with none of the things which are assigned to me out of the whole; for nothing is injurious to the part if it is for the advantage of the whole. For the whole contains nothing which is not for its advantage; and all natures indeed have this common principle, but the nature of the universe has this principle besides, that it cannot be compelled even by any external cause to generate anything harmful to itself. By remembering, then, that I am a part of such a whole, I shall be content with everything that happens. And inasmuch as I am in a manner intimately related to the parts which are of the same kind with myself, I shall do nothing unsocial, but I shall rather direct myself to the things which are of the same kind with myself, and I shall turn all my efforts to the common interest, and divert them from the contrary. Now, if these things are done so, life must flow on happily, just as thou mayst observe that the life of a citizen is happy, who continues a course of action which is advantageous to his fellow-citizens, and is content with whatever the state may assign to him. 7. The parts of the whole, everything, I mean, which is naturally comprehended in the universe, must of necessity perish; but let this be understood in this sense, that they must undergo change. But if this is naturally both an evil and a necessity for the parts, the whole would not continue to exist in a good condition, the parts being subject to change and constituted so as to perish in various ways. For whether did Nature herself design to do evil to the things which are parts of herself, and to make them subject to evil and of necessity fall into evil, or have such results happened without her knowing it? Both these suppositions, indeed, are incredible. But if a man should even drop the term Nature [as an efficient power], and should speak of these things as natural, even then it would be ridiculous to affirm at the same time that the parts of the whole are in their nature subject to change, and at the same time to be surprised or vexed as if something were happening contrary to nature, particularly as the dissolution of things is into those things of which each thing is composed. For there is either a dispersion of the elements out of which everything has been compounded, or a change from the solid to the earthy and from the airy to the aerial, so that these parts are taken back into the universal reason, whether this at certain periods is consumed by fire or renewed by eternal changes. And do not imagine that the solid and the airy part belong to thee from the time of generation. For all this received its accretion only yesterday and the day before, as one may say, from the food and the air which is inspired. This, then, which has received [the accretion], changes, not that which thy mother brought forth. But suppose that this [which thy mother brought forth] implicates thee very much with that other part, which has the peculiar quality [of change], this is nothing in fact in the way of objection to what is said.[A] [A] The end of this section is perhaps corrupt. The meaning is very obscure. I have given that meaning which appears to be consistent with the whole argument. The emperor here maintains that the essential part of man is unchangeable, and that the other parts, if they change or perish, do not affect that which really constitutes the man. See the Philosophy of Antoninus, p. 56, note 2. Schultz supposed "thy mother" to mean nature, [Greek: hê physis]. But I doubt about that. 8. When thou hast assumed these names, good, modest, true, rational, a man of equanimity, and magnanimous, take care that thou dost not change these names; and if thou shouldst lose them, quickly return to them. And remember that the term Rational was intended to signify a discriminating attention to every several thing, and freedom from negligence; and that Equanimity is the voluntary acceptance of the things which are assigned to thee by the common nature; and that Magnanimity is the elevation of the intelligent part above the pleasurable or painful sensations of the flesh, and above that poor thing called fame, and death, and all such things. If, then, thou maintainest thyself in the possession of these names, without desiring to be called by these names by others, thou wilt be another person and wilt enter on another life. For to continue to be such as thou hast hitherto been, and to be torn in pieces and defiled in such a life, is the character of a very stupid man and one over-fond of his life, and like those half-devoured fighters with wild beasts, who though covered with wounds and gore, still intreat to be kept to the following day, though they will be exposed in the same state to the same claws and bites.[A] Therefore fix thyself in the possession of these few names: and if thou art able to abide in them, abide as if thou wast removed to certain islands of the Happy.[B] But if thou shalt perceive that thou fallest out of them and dost not maintain thy hold, go courageously into some nook where thou shalt maintain them, or even depart at once from life, not in passion, but with simplicity and freedom and modesty, after doing this one [laudable] thing at least in thy life, to have gone out of it thus. In order, however to the remembrance of these names, it will greatly help thee if thou rememberest the gods, and that they wish not to be flattered, but wish all reasonable beings to be made like themselves; and if thou rememberest that what does the work of a fig-tree is a fig-tree, and that what does the work of a dog is a dog, and that what does the work of a bee is a bee, and that what does the work of a man is a man. [A] See Seneca, Epp. 70, on these exhibitions which amused the people of those days. These fighters were the Bestiarri, some of whom may have been criminals; but even if they were, the exhibition was equally characteristic of the depraved habits of the spectators. [B] The islands of the Happy, or the Fortunatae Insulae, are spoken of by the Greek and Roman writers. They were the abode of Heroes, like Achilles and Diomedes, as we see in the Scolion of Harmodius and Aristogiton. Sertorius heard of the islands at Cadiz from some sailors who had been there; and he had a wish to go and live in them and rest from his troubles (Plutarch, Sertorius, c. 8). In the Odyssey, Proteus told Menelaus that he should not die in Argos, but be removed to a place at the boundary of the earth where Rhadamanthus dwelt (Odyssey, iv. 565):-- "For there in sooth man's life is easiest: Nor snow nor raging storm nor rain is there But ever gently breathing gales of Zephyr Oceanus sends up to gladden man." It is certain that the writer of the Odyssey only follows some old legend, without having any knowledge of any place which corresponds to his description. The two islands which Sertorius heard of may be Madeira and the adjacent island. Compare Pindar, Ol. ii. 129. 9. Mimi,[A] war, astonishment, torpor, slavery, will daily wipe out those holy principles of thine. + How many things without studying nature dost thou imagine, and how many dost thou neglect?[B] But it is thy duty so to look on and so to do everything, that at the same time the power of dealing with circumstances is perfected, and the contemplative faculty is exercised, and the confidence which comes from the knowledge of each several thing is maintained without showing it, but yet not concealed. For when wilt thou enjoy simplicity, when gravity, and when the knowledge of every several thing, both what it is in substance, and what place it has in the universe, and how long it is formed to exist, and of what things it is compounded, and to whom it can belong, and who are able both to give it and take it away? [A] Corais conjectured [Greek: misos] "hatred" in place of Mimi, Roman plays in which action and gesticulation were all or nearly all. [B] This is corrupt. See the addition of Schultz. 10. A spider is proud when it has caught a fly, and another when he has caught a poor hare, and another when he has taken a little fish in a net, and another when he has taken wild boars, and another when he has taken bears, and another when he has taken Sarmatians. Are not these robbers, if thou examinest their opinions?[A] 11. Acquire the contemplative way of seeing how all things change into one another, and constantly attend to it, and exercise thyself about this part [of philosophy]. For nothing is so much adapted to produce magnanimity. Such a man has put off the body, and as he sees that he must, no one knows how soon, go away from among men and leave everything here, he gives himself up entirely to just doing in all his actions, and in everything else that happens he resigns himself to the universal nature. But as to what any man shall say or think about him or do against him, he never even thinks of it, being himself contented with these two things--with acting justly in what he now does, and being satisfied with what is now assigned to him; and he lays aside all distracting and busy pursuits, and desires nothing else than to accomplish the straight course through the law[B] and by accomplishing the straight course to follow God. [A] Marcus means to say that conquerors are robbers. He himself warred against Sarmatians, and was a robber, as he says, like the rest. But compare the life of Avidius Cassius, c. 4, by Vulcatius. [B] By the law he means the divine law, obedience to the will of God. 12. What need is there of suspicious fear, since it is in thy power to inquire what ought to be done? And if thou seest clear, go by this way content, without turning back; but if thou dost not see clear, stop and take the best advisers. But if any other things oppose thee, go on according to thy powers with due consideration, keeping to that which appears to be just. For it is best to reach this object, and if thou dost fail, let thy failure be in attempting this. He who follows reason in all things is both tranquil and active at the same time, and also cheerful and collected. 13. Inquire of thyself as soon as thou wakest from sleep whether it will make any difference to thee if another does what is just and right. It will make no difference (vi. 32; viii. 55). Thou hast not forgotten, I suppose, that those who assume arrogant airs in bestowing their praise or blame on others are such as they are at bed and at board, and thou hast not forgotten what they do, and what they avoid, and what they pursue, and how they steal and how they rob, not with hands and feet, but with their most valuable part, by means of which there is produced, when a man chooses, fidelity, modesty, truth, law, a good daemon [happiness] (vii. 17)? 14. To her who gives and takes back all, to nature, the man who is instructed and modest says, Give what thou wilt; take back what thou wilt. And he says this not proudly, but obediently, and well pleased with her. 15. Short is the little which remains to thee of life. Live as on a mountain. For it makes no difference whether a man lives there or here, if he lives everywhere in the world as in a state [political community]. Let me see, let them know a real man who lives according to nature. If they cannot endure him, let them kill him. For that is better than to live thus [as men do]. 16. No longer talk at all about the kind of man that a good man ought to be, but be such. 17. Constantly contemplate the whole of time and the whole of substance, and consider that all individual things as to substance are a grain of a fig, and as to time the turning of a gimlet. 18. Look at everything that exists, and observe that it is already in dissolution and in change, and as it were putrefaction or dispersion, or that everything is so constituted by nature as to die. 19. Consider what men are when they are eating, sleeping, generating, easing themselves, and so forth. Then what kind of men they are when they are imperious + and arrogant, or angry and scolding from their elevated place. But a short time ago to how many they were slaves and for what things; and after a little time consider in what a condition they will be. 20. That is for the good of each thing, which the universal nature brings to each. And it is for its good at the time when nature brings it. 21. "The earth loves the shower;" and "the solemn ether loves;" and the universe loves to make whatever is about to be. I say then to the universe, that I love as thou lovest. And is not this too said that "this or that loves [is wont] to be produced?"[A] 22. Either thou livest here and hast already accustomed thyself to it, or thou art going away, and this was thy own will; or thou art dying and hast discharged thy duty. But besides these things there is nothing. Be of good cheer, then. 23. Let this always be plain to thee, that this piece of land is like any other; and that all things here are the same with things on the top of a mountain, or on the sea-shore, or wherever thou choosest to be. For thou wilt find just what Plato says, Dwelling within the walls of a city as in a shepherd's fold on a mountain. [The three last words are omitted in the translation.][B] [A] These words are from Euripides. They are cited by Aristotle, Ethic. Nicom. viii. 1. Athenaeus (xiii. 296) and Stobaeus quote seven complete lines beginning [Greek: era men ombrou gaia]. There is a similar fragment of Aeschylus, Danaides, also quoted by Athenaeus. It was the fashion of the Stoics to work on the meanings of words. So Antoninus here takes the verb [Greek: philei], "loves," which has also the sense of "is wont," "uses," and the like. He finds in the common language of mankind a philosophical truth, and most great truths are expressed in the common language of life; some understand them, but most people utter them without knowing how much they mean. [B] Plato, Theaet. 174 D.E. But compare the original with the use that Antoninus has made of it. 24. What is my ruling faculty now to me? and of what nature am I now making it? and for what purpose am I now using it? is it void of understanding? is it loosed and rent asunder from social life? is it melted into and mixed with the poor flesh so as to move together with it? 25. He who flies from his master is a runaway; but the law is master, and he who breaks the law is a runaway. And he also who is grieved or angry or afraid, + is dissatisfied because something has been or is or shall be of the things which are appointed by him who rules all things, and he is Law and assigns to every man what is fit. He then who fears or is grieved or is angry is a runaway.[A] [A] Antoninus is here playing on the etymology, of [Greek: nomos], law, assignment, that which assigns ([Greek: nemei]) to every man his portion. 26. A man deposits seed in a womb and goes away, and then another cause takes it and labors on it, and makes a child. What a thing from such a material! Again, the child passes food down through the throat, and then another cause takes it and makes perception and motion, and in fine, life and strength and other things; how many and how strange! Observe then the things which are produced in such a hidden way, and see the power, just as we see the power which carries things downwards and upwards, not with the eyes, but still no less plainly (vii. 85). 27. Constantly consider how all things such as they now are, in time past also were; and consider that they will be the same again. And place before thy eyes entire dramas and stages of the same form, whatever thou hast learned from thy experience or from older history; for example, the whole court of Hadrianus, and the whole court of Antoninus, and the whole court of Philippus, Alexander, Croesus; for all those were such dramas as we see now, only with different actors. 28. Imagine every man who is grieved at anything or discontented to be like a pig which is sacrificed and kicks and screams. Like this pig also is he who on his bed in silence laments the bonds in which we are held. And consider that only to the rational animal is it given to follow voluntarily what happens; but simply to follow is a necessity imposed on all. 29. Severally on the occasion of everything that thou dost, pause and ask thyself if death is a dreadful thing because it deprives thee of this. 30. When thou art offended at any man's fault, forthwith turn to thyself and reflect in what like manner thou dost err thyself; for example, in thinking that money is a good thing, or pleasure, or a bit of reputation, and the like. For by attending to this thou wilt quickly forget thy anger, if this consideration also is added, that the man is compelled: for what else could he do? or, if thou art able, take away from him the compulsion. 31. When thou hast seen Satyron[A] the Socratic,+ think of either Eutyches or Hymen, and when thou hast seen Euphrates, think of Eutychion or Silvanus, and when thou hast seen Alciphron think of Tropaeophorus, and when thou hast seen Xenophon, think of Crito[B] or Severus, and when thou hast looked on thyself, think of any other Caesar, and in the case of every one do in like manner. Then let this thought be in thy mind, Where then are those men? Nowhere, or nobody knows where. For thus continuously thou wilt look at human things as smoke and nothing at all; especially if thou reflectest at the same time that what has once changed will never exist again in the infinite duration of time. But thou, in what a brief space of time is thy existence? And why art thou not content to pass through this short time in an orderly way? What matter and opportunity [for thy activity] art thou avoiding? For what else are all these things, except exercises for the reason, when it has viewed carefully and by examination into their nature the things which happen in life? Persevere then until thou shalt have made these things thy own, as the stomach which is strengthened makes all things its own, as the blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it. 32. Let it not be in any man's power to say truly of thee that thou are not simple or that thou art not good; but let him be a liar whoever shall think anything of this kind about thee; and this is altogether in thy power. For who is he that shall hinder thee from being good and simple? Do thou only determine to live no longer unless thou shalt be such. For neither does reason allow [thee to live], if thou art not such.[C] [A] Nothing is known of Satyron or Satyrion; nor, I believe, of Eutyches or Hymen. Euphrates is honorably mentioned by Epictetus (iii. 15, 8; iv. 8, 17). Pliny (Epp. i. 10) speaks very highly of him. He obtained the permission of the Emperor Hadrian to drink poison, because he was old and in bad health (Dion Cassius, 69, c. 8). [B] Crito is the friend of Socrates; and he was, it appears, also a friend of Xenophon. When the emperor says "seen" ([Greek: idôn]), he does not mean with the eyes. [C] Compare Epictetus, i. 29, 28. 33. What is that which as to this material [our life] can be done or said in the way most conformable to reason? For whatever this may be, it is in thy power to do it or to say it, and do not make excuses that thou art hindered. Thou wilt not cease to lament till thy mind is in such a condition that what luxury is to those who enjoy pleasure, such shall be to thee, in the matter which is subjected and presented to thee, the doing of the things which are conformable to man's constitution; for a man ought to consider as an enjoyment everything which it is in his power to do according to his own nature. And it is in his power everywhere. Now, it is not given to a cylinder to move everywhere by its own motion, nor yet to water nor to fire, nor to anything else which is governed by nature or an irrational soul, for the things which check them and stand in the way are many. But intelligence and reason are able to go through everything that opposes them, and in such manner as they are formed by nature and as they choose. Place before thy eyes this facility with which the reason will be carried through all things, as fire upwards, as a stone downwards, as a cylinder down an inclined surface, and seek for nothing further. For all other obstacles either affect the body only, which is a dead thing; or, except through opinion and the yielding of the reason itself, they do not crush nor do any harm of any kind; for if they did, he who felt it would immediately become bad. Now, in the case of all things which have a certain constitution, whatever harm may happen to any of them, that which is so affected becomes consequently worse; but in the like case, a man becomes both better, if one may say so, and more worthy of praise by making a right use of these accidents. And finally remember that nothing harms him who is really a citizen, which does not harm the state; nor yet does anything harm the state, which does not harm law [order]; and of these things which are called misfortunes not one harms law. What then does not harm law does not harm either state or citizen. 34. To him who is penetrated by true principles even the briefest precept is sufficient, and any common precept, to remind him that he should be free from grief and fear. For example:-- "Leaves, some the wind scatters on the ground-- So is the race of men."[A] Leaves, also, are thy children; and leaves, too, are they who cry out as if they were worthy of credit and bestow their praise, or on the contrary curse, or secretly blame and sneer; and leaves, in like manner, are those who shall receive and transmit a man's fame to after-times. For all such things as these "are produced in the season of spring," as the poet says; then the wind casts them down; then the forest produces other leaves in their places. But a brief existence is common to all things, and yet thou avoidest and pursuest all things as if they would be eternal. A little time, and thou shalt close thy eyes; and him who has attended thee to thy grave another soon will lament. [A] Homer, II., vi. 146. 35. The healthy eye ought to see all visible things and not to say, I wish for green things; for this is the condition of a diseased eye. And the healthy hearing and smelling ought to be ready to perceive all that can be heard and smelled. And the healthy stomach ought to be with respect to all food just as the mill with respect to all things which it is formed to grind. And accordingly the healthy understanding ought to be prepared for everything which happens; but that which says, Let my dear children live, and let all men praise whatever I may do, is an eye which seeks for green things, or teeth which seek for soft things. 36. There is no man so fortunate that there shall not be by him when he is dying some who are pleased with what is going to happen.[A] Suppose that he was a good and wise man, will there not be at least some one to say to himself, Let us at last breathe freely, being relieved from this schoolmaster? It is true that he was harsh to none of us, but I perceived that he tacitly condemns us.--This is what is said of a good man. But in our own case how many other things are there for which there are many who wish to get rid of us? Thou wilt consider this, then, when thou art dying, and thou wilt depart more contentedly by reflecting thus: I am going away from such a life, in which even my associates in behalf of whom I have striven so much, prayed, and cared, themselves wish me to depart, hoping perchance to get some little advantage by it. Why then should a man cling to a longer stay here? Do not, however, for this reason go away less kindly disposed to them, but preserving thy own character, and friendly and benevolent and mild, and on the other hand not as if thou wast torn away; but as when a man dies a quiet death, the poor soul is easily separated from the body, such also ought thy departure from men to be, for nature united thee to them and associated thee. But does she now dissolve the union? Well, I am separated as from kinsmen, not however dragged resisting, but without compulsion; for this, too, is one of the things according to nature. [A] He says [Greek: kakon], but as he affirms in other places that death is no evil, he must mean what others may call an evil, and he means only "what is going to happen." 37. Accustom thyself as much as possible on the occasion of anything being done by any person to inquire with thyself, For what object is this man doing this? But begin with thyself, and examine thyself first. 38. Remember that this which pulls the strings is the thing which is hidden within: this is the power of persuasion, this is life, this, if one may so say, is man. In contemplating thyself never include the vessel which surrounds thee and these instruments which are attached about it. For they are like to an axe, differing only in this, that they grow to the body. For indeed there is no more use in these parts without the cause which moves and checks them than in the weaver's shuttle, and the writer's pen, and the driver's whip.[A] [A] See the Philosophy of Antoninus, p. 72, note. XI. These are the properties of the rational soul: it sees itself, analyzes itself, and makes itself such as it chooses; the fruit which it bears itself enjoys--for the fruits of plants and that in animals which corresponds to fruits others enjoy--it obtains its own end, wherever the limit of life may be fixed. Not as in a dance and in a play and in such like things, where the whole action is incomplete if anything cuts it short; but in every part, and wherever it may be stopped, it makes what has been set before it full and complete, so that it can say, I have what is my own. And further it traverses the whole universe, and the surrounding vacuum, and surveys its form, and it extends itself into the infinity of time, and embraces and comprehends the[A] periodical renovation of all things, and it comprehends that those who come after us will see nothing new, nor have those before us seen anything more, but in a manner he who is forty years old, if he has any understanding at all, has seen by virtue of the uniformity that prevails all things which have been and all that will be. This too is a property of the rational soul, love of one's neighbor, and truth and modesty, and to value nothing more than itself, which is also the property of Law.[B] Thus the right reason differs not at all from the reason of justice. [A] [Greek: Tên periodikên palingenesian]. See v. 13, 32; x. 7. [B] Law is the order by which all things are governed. 2. Thou wilt set little value on pleasing song and dancing and the pancratium, if thou wilt distribute the melody of the voice into its several sounds, and ask thyself as to each, if thou art mastered by this; for thou wilt be prevented by shame from confessing it: and in the matter of dancing, if at each movement and attitude thou wilt do the same; and the like also in the matter of the pancratium. In all things, then, except virtue and the acts of virtue, remember to apply thyself to their several parts, and by this division to come to value them little: and apply this rule also to thy whole life. 3. What a soul that is which is ready, if at any moment it must be separated from the body, and ready either to be extinguished or dispersed or continue to exist; but so that this readiness comes from a man's own judgment, not from mere obstinacy, as with the Christians,[A] but considerately and with dignity and in a way to persuade another, without tragic show. [A] See the Life of Antoninus. This is the only passage in which the emperor speaks of the Christians. Epictetus (iv. 7, 6) names them Galilaei. 4. Have I done something for the general interest? Well then, I have had my reward. Let this always be present to thy mind, and never stop [doing such good]. 5. What is thy art? To be good. And how is this accomplished well except by general principles, some about the nature of the universe, and others about the proper constitution of man? 6. At first tragedies were brought on the stage as means of reminding men of the things which happen to them, and that it is according to nature for things to happen so, and that, if you are delighted with what is shown on the stage, you should not be troubled with that which takes place on the larger stage. For you see that these things must be accomplished thus, and that even they bear them who cry out,[A] "O Cithaeron." And, indeed, some things are said well by the dramatic writers, of which kind is the following especially:-- "Me and my children if the gods neglect, This has its reason too."[B] And again,-- "We must not chafe and fret at that which happens." And,-- "Life's harvest reap like the wheat's fruitful ear." And other things of the same kind. After tragedy the old comedy was introduced, which had a magisterial freedom of speech, and by its very plainness of speaking was useful in reminding men to beware of insolence; and for this purpose too Diogenes used to take from these writers. [A] Sophocles, Oedipus Rex. [B] See vii. 41, 38, 40. But as to the middle comedy, which came next, observe what it was, and again, for what object the new comedy was introduced, which gradually sank down into a mere mimic artifice. That some good things are said even by these writers, everybody knows: but the whole plan of such poetry and dramaturgy, to what end does it look? 7. How plain does it appear that there is not another condition of life so well suited for philosophizing as this in which thou now happenest to be. 8. A branch cut off from the adjacent branch must of necessity be cut off from the whole tree also. So too a man when he is separated from another man has fallen off from the whole social community. Now as to a branch, another cuts it off; but a man by his own act separates himself from his neighbor when he hates him and turns away from him, and he does not know that he has at the same time cut himself off from the whole social system. Yet he has this privilege certainly from Zeus, who framed society, for it is in our power to grow again to that which is near to us, and again to become a part which helps to make up the whole. However, if it often happens, this kind of separation, it makes it difficult for that which detaches itself to be brought to unity and to be restored to its former condition. Finally, the branch, which from the first grew together with the tree, and has continued to have one life with it, is not like that which after being cut off is then ingrafted, for this is something like what the gardeners mean when they say that it grows with the rest of the tree, but+ that it has not the same mind with it. 9. As those who try to stand in thy way when thou art proceeding according to right reason will not be able to turn thee aside from thy proper action, so neither let them drive thee from thy benevolent feelings toward them, but be on thy guard equally in both matters, not only in the matter of steady judgment and action, but also in the matter of gentleness to those who try to hinder or otherwise trouble thee. For this also is a weakness, to be vexed at them, as well as to be diverted from thy course of action and to give way through fear; for both are equally deserters from their post,--the man who does it through fear, and the man who is alienated from him who is by nature a kinsman and a friend. 10. There is no nature which is inferior to art, for the arts imitate the natures of things. But if this is so, that nature which is the most perfect and the most comprehensive of all natures, cannot fall short of the skill of art Now all arts do the inferior things for the sake of the superior; therefore the universal nature does so too. And, indeed, hence is the origin of justice, and in justice the other virtues have their foundation: for justice will not be observed, if we either care for middle things [things indifferent], or are easily deceived and careless and changeable (v. 16. 30; vii. 55). 11. If the things do not come to thee, the pursuits and avoidances of which disturb thee, still in a manner thou goest to them. Let then thy judgment about them be at rest, and they will remain quiet, and thou wilt not be seen either pursuing or avoiding. 12. The spherical form of the soul maintains its figure when it is neither extended towards any object, nor contracted inwards, nor dispersed, nor sinks down, but is illuminated by light, by which it sees the truth,--the truth of all things and the truth that is in itself (viii. 41, 45; xii. 3). 13. Suppose any man shall despise me. Let him look to that himself. But I will look to this, that I be not discovered doing or saying anything deserving of contempt. Shall any man hate me? Let him look to it. But I will be mild and benevolent towards every man, and ready to show even him his mistake, not reproachfully, nor yet as making a display of my endurance, but nobly and honestly, like the great Phocion, unless indeed he only assumed it. For the interior [parts] ought to be such, and a man ought to be seen by the gods neither dissatisfied with anything nor complaining. For what evil is it to thee, if thou art now doing what is agreeable to thy own nature, and art satisfied with that which at this moment is suitable to the nature of the universe, since thou art a human being placed at thy post in order that what is for the common advantage may be done in some way? 14. Men despise one another and flatter one another; and men wish to raise themselves above one another, and crouch before one another. 15. How unsound and insincere is he who says, I have determined to deal with thee in a fair way!--What are thou doing, man? There is no occasion to give this notice. It will soon show itself by acts. The voice ought to be plainly written on the forehead. Such as a man's character is,+ he immediately shows it in his eyes, just as he who is beloved forthwith reads everything in the eyes of lovers. The man who is honest and good ought to be exactly like a man who smells strong, so that the bystander as soon as he comes near him must smell whether he choose or not. But the affectation of simplicity is like a crooked stick.[A] Nothing is more disgraceful than a wolfish friendship [false friendship]. Avoid this most of all. The good and simple and benevolent show all these things in the eyes, and there is no mistaking. [A] Instead of [Greek: skalmê] Saumaise reads [Greek: skambê]. There is a Greek proverb, [Greek: skambon xylon oudepot orthon]: "You cannot make a crooked stick straight." The wolfish friendship is an allusion to the fable of the sheep and the wolves. 16. As to living in the best way, this power is in the soul, if it be indifferent to things which are indifferent. And it will be indifferent, if it looks on each of these things separately and all together, and if it remembers that not one of them produces in us an opinion about itself, nor comes to us; but these things remain immovable, and it is we ourselves who produce the judgments about them, and, as we may say, write them in ourselves, it being in our power not to write them, and it being in our power, if perchance these judgments have imperceptibly got admission to our minds, to wipe them out; and if we remember also that such attention will only be for a short time, and then life will be at an end. Besides, what trouble is there at all in doing this? For if these things are according to nature, rejoice in them and they will be easy to thee: but if contrary to nature, seek what is conformable to thy own nature, and strive towards this, even if it bring no reputation; for every man is allowed to seek his own good. 17. Consider whence each thing is come, and of what it consists, + and into what it changes, and what kind of a thing it will be when it has changed, and that it will sustain no harm. 18. [If any have offended against thee, consider first]: What is my relation to men, and that we are made for one another; and in another respect I was made to be set over them, as a ram over the flock or a bull over the herd. But examine the matter from first principles, from this. If all things are not mere atoms, it is nature which orders all things: if this is so, the inferior things exist for the sake of the superior, and these for the sake of one another (ii. 1; ix. 39; v. 16; iii. 4). Second, consider what kind of men they are at table, in bed, and so forth; and particularly, under what compulsions in respect of opinions they are; and as to their acts, consider with what pride they do what they do (viii. 14; ix. 34). Third, that if men do rightly what they do, we ought not to be displeased: but if they do not right, it is plain that they do so involuntarily and in ignorance. For as every soul is unwillingly deprived of the truth, so also is it unwillingly deprived of the power of behaving to each man according to his deserts. Accordingly men are pained when they are called unjust, ungrateful, and greedy, and in a word wrong-doers to their neighbors (vii. 62, 63; ii. 1; vii. 26; viii. 29). Fourth, consider that thou also doest many things wrong, and that thou art a man like others; and even if thou dost abstain from certain faults, still thou hast the disposition to commit them, though either through cowardice, or concern about reputation, or some such mean motive, thou dost abstain from such faults (i. 17). Fifth, consider that thou dost not even understand whether men are doing wrong or not, for many things are done with a certain reference to circumstances. And in short, a man must learn a great deal to enable him to pass a correct judgment on another man's acts (ix. 38; iv. 51). Sixth, consider when thou art much vexed or grieved, that man's life is only a moment, and after a short time we are all laid out dead (vii. 58; iv. 48). Seventh, that it is not men's acts which disturb us, for those acts have their foundation in men's ruling principles, but it is our own opinions which disturb us. Take away these opinions then, and resolve to dismiss thy judgment about an act as if it were something grievous, and thy anger is gone. How then shall I take away these opinions? By reflecting that no wrongful act of another brings shame on thee: for unless that which is shameful is alone bad, thou also must of necessity do many things wrong, and become a robber and everything else (v. 25; vii. 16). Eighth, consider how much more pain is brought on us by the anger and vexation caused by such acts than by the acts themselves, at which we are angry and vexed (iv. 39, 49; vii. 24). Ninth, consider that a good disposition is invincible if it be genuine, and not an affected smile and acting a part. For what will the most violent man do to thee, if thou continuest to be of a kind disposition towards him, and if, as opportunity offers, thou gently admonishest him and calmly correctest his errors at the very time when he is trying to do thee harm, saying, Not so, my child: we are constituted by nature for something else: I shall certainly not be injured, but thou art injuring thyself, my child.--And show him with gentle tact and by general principles that this is so, and that even bees do not do as he does, nor any animals which are formed by nature to be gregarious. And thou must do this neither with any double meaning nor in the way of reproach, but affectionately and without any rancor in thy soul; and not as if thou wert lecturing him, nor yet that any bystander may admire, but either when he is alone, and if others are present ...[A] [A] It appears that there is a defect in the text here. Remember these nine rules, as if thou hadst received them as a gift from the Muses, and begin at last to be a man while thou livest. But thou must equally avoid nattering men and being vexed at them, for both are unsocial and lead to harm. And let this truth be present to thee in the excitement of anger, that to be moved by passion is not manly, but that mildness and gentleness, as they are more agreeable to human nature, so also are they more manly; and he who possesses these qualities possesses strength, nerves, and courage, and not the man who is subject to fits of passion and discontent. For in the same degree in which a man's mind is nearer to freedom from all passion, in the same degree also is it nearer to strength: and as the sense of pain is a characteristic of weakness, so also is anger. For he who yields to pain and he who yields to anger, both are wounded and both submit. But if thou wilt, receive also a tenth present from the leader of the Muses [Apollo], and it is this,--that to expect bad men not to do wrong is madness, for he who expects this desires an impossibility. But to allow men to behave so to others, and to expect them not to do thee any wrong, is irrational and tyrannical. 19. There are four principal aberrations of the superior faculty against which thou shouldst be constantly on thy guard, and when thou hast detected them, thou shouldst wipe them out and say on each occasion thus: This thought is not necessary: this tends to destroy social union: this which thou art going to say comes not from the real thoughts; for thou shouldst consider it among the most absurd of things for a man not to speak from his real thoughts. But the fourth is when thou shalt reproach thyself for anything, for this is an evidence of the diviner part within thee being overpowered and yielding to the less honorable and to the perishable part, the body, and to its gross pleasures (iv. 24; ii. 16). 20. Thy aerial part and all the fiery parts which are mingled in thee, though by nature they have an upward tendency, still in obedience to the disposition of the universe they are overpowered here in the compound mass [the body]. And also the whole of the earthy part in thee and the watery, though their tendency is downward, still are raised up and occupy a position which is not their natural one. In this manner then the elemental parts obey the universal; for when they have been fixed in any place, perforce they remain there until again the universal shall sound the signal for dissolution. Is it not then strange that thy intelligent part only should be disobedient and discontented with its own place? And yet no force is imposed on it, but only those things which are conformable to its nature: still it does not submit, but is carried in the opposite direction. For the movement towards injustice and intemperance and to anger and grief and fear is nothing else than the act of one who deviates from nature. And also when the ruling faculty is discontented with anything that happens, then too it deserts its post: for it is constituted for piety and reverence towards the gods no less than for justice. For these qualities also are comprehended under the generic term of contentment with the constitution of things, and indeed they are prior[A] to acts of justice. [A] The word [Greek: presbytera], which is here translated "prior," may also mean "superior;" but Antoninus seems to say that piety and reverence of the gods precede all virtues, and that other virtues are derived from them, even justice, which in another passage (xi. 10) he makes the foundation of all virtues. The ancient notion of justice is that of giving to every one his due. It is not a legal definition, as some have supposed, but a moral rule which law cannot in all cases enforce. Besides, law has its own rules, which are sometimes moral and sometimes immoral; but it enforces them all simply because they are general rules, and if it did not or could not enforce them, so far Law would not be Law. Justice, or the doing what is just, implies a universal rule and obedience to it; and as we all live under universal Law, which commands both our body and our intelligence, and is the law of our nature, that is, the law of the whole constitution of a man, we must endeavor to discover what this supreme Law is. It is the will of the power that rules all. By acting in obedience to this will, we do justice, and by consequence everything else that we ought to do. 21. He who has not one and always the same object in life, cannot be one and the same all through his life. But what I have said is not enough, unless this also is added, what this object ought to be. For as there is not the same opinion about all the things which in some way or other are considered by the majority to be good, but only about some certain things, that is, things which concern the common interest, so also ought we to propose to ourselves an object which shall be of a common kind [social] and political. For he who directs all his own efforts to this object, will make all his acts alike, and thus will always be the same. 22. Think of the country mouse and of the town mouse, and of the alarm and trepidation of the town mouse.[A] 23. Socrates used to call the opinions of the many by the name of Lamiae,--bugbears to frighten children. 24. The Lacedaemonians at their public spectacles used to set seats in the shade for strangers, but themselves sat down anywhere. 25. Socrates excused himself to Perdiccas[B] for not going to him, saying, It is because I would not perish by the worst of all ends; that is, I would not receive a favor and then be unable to return it. 26. In the writings of the [Ephesians][C] there was this precept, constantly to think of some one of the men of former times who practiced virtue. [A] The story is told by Horace in his Satires (ii. 6), and by others since but not better. [B] Perhaps the emperor made a mistake here, for other writers say that it was Archelaus, the son of Perdiccas, who invited Socrates to Macedonia. [C] Gataker suggested [Greek: Epekoureiôn] for [Greek: Ephesiôn]. 27. The Pythagoreans bid us in the morning look to the heavens that we may be reminded of those bodies which continually do the same things and in the same manner perform their work, and also be reminded of their purity and nudity. For there is no veil over a star. 28. Consider what a man Socrates was when he dressed himself in a skin, after Xanthippe had taken his cloak and gone out, and what Socrates said to his friends who were ashamed of him and drew back from him when they saw him dressed thus. 29. Neither in writing nor in reading wilt thou be able to lay down rules for others before thou shalt have first learned to obey rules thyself. Much more is this so in life. 30. A slave thou art: free speech is not for thee. 31. And my heart laughed within. _Odyssey_, ix. 413. 32. And virtue they will curse, speaking harsh words. HESIOD, _Works and Days_, 184. 33. To look for the fig in winter is a mad-man's act: such is he who looks for his child when it is no longer allowed (Epictetus, iii. 24, 87). 34. When a man kisses his child, said Epictetus, he should whisper to himself, "To-morrow perchance thou wilt die."--But those are words of bad omen.--"No word is a word of bad omen," said Epictetus, "which expresses any work of nature; or if it is so, it is also a word of bad omen to speak of the ears of corn being reaped" (Epictetus, iii. 24, 88). 35. The unripe grape, the ripe bunch, the dried grape, are all changes, not into nothing, but into something which exists not yet (Epictetus, iii. 24). 36. No man can rob us of our free will (Epictetus, iii. 22, 105). 37. Epictetus also said, a man must discover an art [or rules] with respect to giving his assent; and in respect to his movements he must be careful that they be made with regard to circumstances, that they be consistent with social interests, that they have regard to the value of the object; and as to sensual desire, he should altogether keep away from it; and as to avoidance [aversion], he should not show it with respect to any of the things which are not in our power. 38. The dispute then, he said, is not about any common matter, but about being mad or not. 39. Socrates used to say, What do you want, souls of rational men or irrational?--Souls of rational men.--Of what rational men, sound or unsound?--Sound.--Why then do you not seek for them?--Because we have them.--Why then do you fight and quarrel? XII. All those things at which thou wishest to arrive by a circuitous road thou canst have now, if thou dost not refuse them to thyself. And this means, if thou wilt take no notice of all the past, and trust the future to providence, and direct the present only conformably to piety and justice. Conformably to piety that thou mayest be content with the lot which is assigned to thee, for nature designed it for thee and thee for it. Conformably to justice, that thou mayst always speak the truth freely and without disguise, and do the things which are agreeable to law and according to the worth of each. And let neither another man's wickedness hinder thee, nor opinion nor voice, nor yet the sensations of the poor flesh which has grown about thee; for the passive part will look to this. If, then, whatever the time may be when thou shalt be near to thy departure, neglecting everything else thou shalt respect only thy ruling faculty and the divinity within thee, and if thou shalt be afraid not because thou must some time cease to live, but if thou shalt fear never to have begun to live according to nature--then thou wilt be a man worthy of the universe which has produced thee, and thou wilt cease to be a stranger in thy native land, and to wonder at things which happen daily as if they were something unexpected, and to be dependent on this or that. 2. God sees the minds [ruling principles] of all men bared of the material vesture and rind and impurities. For with his intellectual part alone he touches the intelligence only which has flowed and been derived from himself into these bodies. And if thou also usest thyself to do this, thou wilt rid thyself of thy much trouble. For he who regards not the poor flesh which envelops him, surely will not trouble himself by looking after raiment and dwelling and fame and such like externals and show. 3. The things are three of which thou art composed: a little body, a little breath [life], intelligence. Of these the first two are thine, so far as it is thy duty to take care of them; but the third alone is properly thine. Therefore if thou shalt separate from thyself, that is, from thy understanding, whatever others do or say, and whatever thou hast done or said thyself, and whatever future things trouble thee because they may happen, and whatever in the body which envelops thee or in the breath [life], which is by nature associated with the body, is attached to thee independent of thy will, and whatever the external circumfluent vortex whirls round, so that the intellectual power exempt from the things of fate can live pure and free by itself, doing what is just and accepting what happens and saying the truth: if thou wilt separate, I say, from this ruling faculty the things which are attached to it by the impressions of sense, and the things of time to come and of time that is past, and wilt make thyself like Empedocles' sphere, "All round and in its joyous rest reposing;"[A] and if thou shalt strive to live only what is really thy life, that is, the present,--then thou wilt be able to pass that portion of life which remains for thee up to the time of thy death free from perturbations, nobly, and obedient to thy own daemon [to the god that is within thee] (ii. 13, 17; iii. 5, 6; xi. 12). 4. I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others. If then a god or a wise teacher should present himself to a man and bid him to think of nothing and to design nothing which he would not express as soon as he conceived it, he could not endure it even for a single day.[B] So much more respect have we to what our neighbors shall think of us than to what we shall think of ourselves. [A] The verse of Empedocles is corrupt in Antoninus. It has been restored by Peyron from a Turin manuscript, thus:-- [Greek: Sphairos kykloterês moniê perigêthei gaiôn.] [B] iii. 4. 5. How can it be that the gods, after having arranged all things well and benevolently for mankind, have overlooked this alone, that some men, and very good men, and men who, as we may say, have had most communion with the divinity, and through pious acts and religious observances have been most intimate with the divinity, when they have once died should never exist again, but should be completely extinguished? But if this is so, be assured that if it ought to have been otherwise, the gods would have done it. For if it were just, it would also be possible; and if it were according to nature, nature would have had it so. But because it is not so, if in fact it is not so, be thou convinced that it ought not to have been so: for thou seest even of thyself that in this inquiry thou art disputing with the Deity; and we should not thus dispute with the gods, unless they were most excellent and most just; but if this is so, they would not have allowed anything in the ordering of the universe to be neglected unjustly and irrationally. 6. Practise thyself even in the things which thou despairest of accomplishing. For even the left hand, which is ineffectual for all other things for want of practice, holds the bridle more vigorously than the right hand; for it has been practised in this. 7. Consider in what condition both in body and soul a man should be when he is overtaken by death; and consider the shortness of life, the boundless abyss of time past and future, the feebleness of all matter. 8. Contemplate the formative principles [forms] of things bare of their coverings; the purposes of actions; consider what pain is, what pleasure is, and death, and fame; who is to himself the cause of his uneasiness; how no man is hindered by another; that everything is opinion. 9. In the application of thy principles thou must be like the pancratiast, not like the gladiator; for the gladiator lets fall the sword which he uses and is killed; but the other always has his hand, and needs to do nothing else than use it. 10. See what things are in themselves, dividing them into matter, form, and purpose. 11. What a power man has to do nothing except what God will approve, and to accept all that God may give him. 12. With respect to that which happens conformably to nature, we ought to blame neither gods, for they do nothing wrong either voluntarily or involuntarily, nor men, for they do nothing wrong except involuntarily. Consequently we should blame nobody (ii. 11, 12, 13; vii. 62; 18 viii. 17). 13. How ridiculous and what a stranger he is who is surprised at anything which happens in life. 14. Either there is a fatal necessity and invincible order, or a kind providence, or a confusion without a purpose and without a director (iv. 27). If then there is an invincible necessity, why dost thou resist? But if there is a providence which allows itself to be propitiated, make thyself worthy of the help of the divinity. But if there is a confusion without a governor, be content that in such a tempest thou hast in thyself a certain ruling intelligence. And even if the tempest carry thee away, let it carry away the poor flesh, the poor breath, everything else; for the intelligence at least it will not carry away. 15. Does the light of the lamp shine without losing its splendor until it is extinguished? and shall the truth which is in thee and justice and temperance be extinguished [before thy death]? 16. When a man has presented the appearance of having done wrong [say], How then do I know if this is a wrongful act? And even if he has done wrong, how do I know that he has not condemned himself? And so this is like tearing his own face. Consider that he who would not have the bad man do wrong, is like the man who would not have the fig-tree to bear juice in the figs, and infants to cry, and the horse to neigh, and whatever else must of necessity be. For what must a man do who has such a character? If then thou art irritable, + cure this man's disposition.[A] 17. If it is not right, do not do it: if it is not true, do not say it. [For let thy efforts be--][B] [A] The interpreters translate [Greek: gorgos] by the words "acer, validusque," and "skilful." But in Epictetus (ii. 16, 20; iii. 12, 10) [Greek: gorgos] means "vehement," "prone to anger," "irritable." [B] There is something wrong here, or incomplete. 18. In everything always observe what the thing is which produces for thee an appearance, and resolve it by dividing it into the formal, the material, the purpose, and the time within which it must end. 19. Perceive at last that thou hast in thee something better and more divine than the things which cause the various affects, and as it were pull thee by the strings. What is there now in my mind,--is it fear, or suspicion, or desire, or anything of the kind (v. 11)? 20. First, do nothing inconsiderately, nor without a purpose. Second, make thy acts refer to nothing else than to a social end. 21. Consider that before long thou wilt be nobody and nowhere, nor will any of the things exist which thou now seest, nor any of those who are now living. For all things are formed by nature to change and be turned and to perish, in order that other things in continuous succession may exist (ix. 28). 22. Consider that everything is opinion, and opinion is in thy power. Take away then, when thou choosest, thy opinion, and like a mariner who has doubled the promontory, thou wilt find calm, everything stable, and a waveless bay. 23. Any one activity, whatever it may be, when it has ceased at its proper time, suffers no evil because it has ceased; nor he who has done this act, does he suffer any evil for this reason, that the act has ceased. In like manner then the whole, which consists of all the acts, which is our life, if it cease at its proper time, suffers no evil for this reason, that it has ceased; nor he who has terminated this series at the proper time, has he been ill dealt with. But the proper time and the limit nature fixes, sometimes as in old age the peculiar nature of man, but always the universal nature, by the change of whose parts the whole universe continues ever young and perfect.[A] And everything which is useful to the universal is always good and in season. Therefore the termination of life for every man is no evil, because neither is it shameful, since it is both independent of the will and not opposed to the general interest, but it is good, since it is seasonable, and profitable to and congruent with the universal. For thus too he is moved by the Deity who is moved in the same manner with the Deity, and moved towards the same thing in his mind. [A] vii. 25. 24. These three principles thou must have in readiness: In the things which thou doest, do nothing either inconsiderately or otherwise than as justice herself would act; but with respect to what may happen to thee from without, consider that it happens either by chance or according to providence, and thou must neither blame chance nor accuse providence. Second, consider what every being is from the seed to the time of its receiving a soul, and from the reception of a soul to the giving back of the same, and of what things every being is compounded, and into what things it is resolved. Third, if thou shouldst suddenly be raised up above the earth, and shouldst look down on human things, and observe the variety of them how great it is, and at the same time also shouldst see at a glance how great is the number of beings who dwell all around in the air and the ether, consider that as often as thou shouldst be raised up, thou wouldst see the same things, sameness of form and shortness of duration. Are these things to be proud of? 25. Cast away opinion: thou art saved. Who then hinders thee from casting it away? 26. When thou art troubled about anything, thou hast forgotten this, that all things happen according to the universal nature; and forgotten this, that a man's wrongful act is nothing to thee; and further thou hast forgotten this, that everything which happens, always happened so and will happen so, and now happens so everywhere; forgotten this too, how close is the kinship between a man and the whole human race, for it is a community, not of a little blood or seed, but of intelligence. And thou hast forgotten this too, that every man's intelligence is a god and is an efflux of the Deity;[A] and forgotten this, that nothing is a man's own, but that his child and his body and his very soul came from the Deity; forgotten this, that everything is opinion; and lastly thou hast forgotten that every man lives the present time only, and loses only this. [A] See Epictetus, ii. 8, 9, etc. 27. Constantly bring to thy recollection those who have complained greatly about anything, those who have been most conspicuous by the greatest fame or misfortunes or enmities or fortunes of any kind: then think where are they all now? Smoke and ash and a tale, or not even a tale. And let there be present to thy mind also everything of this sort, how Fabius Catellinus lived in the country, and Lucius Lupus in his gardens, and Stertinius at Briae, and Tiberius at Capreae, and Velius Rufus [or Rufus at Velia]; and in fine think of the eager pursuit of anything conjoined with pride;[A] and how worthless everything is after which men violently strain; and how much more philosophical it is for a man in the opportunities presented to him to show himself just, temperate, obedient to the gods, and to do this with all simplicity: for the pride which is proud of its want of pride is the most intolerable of all. [A] [Greek: met' oiêseôs. Oiêsis kai typhos], Epict. i. 8, 6. 28. To those who ask, Where hast thou seen the gods, or how dost thou comprehend that they exist and so worshippest them, I answer, in the first place, they may be seen even with the eyes;[A] in the second place, neither have I seen even my own soul, and yet I honor it. Thus then with respect to the gods, from what I constantly experience of their power, from this I comprehend that they exist, and I venerate them. [A] "Seen even with the eyes." It is supposed that this may be explained by the Stoic doctrine, that the universe is a god or living being (iv. 40), and that the celestial bodies are gods (viii. 19). But the emperor may mean that we know that the gods exist, as he afterwards states it, because we see what they do; as we know that man has intellectual powers, because we see what he does, and in no other way do we know it. This passage then will agree with the passage in the Epistle to the Romans (i. _v_. 20), and with the Epistle to the Colossians (i. _v_. 15), in which Jesus Christ is named "the image of the invisible god;" and with the passage in the Gospel of St. John (xiv. _v_. 9). Gataker, whose notes are a wonderful collection of learning, and all of it sound and good, quotes a passage of Calvin which is founded on St. Paul's language (Rom. i. _v_. 20): "God by creating the universe [or world, mundum], being himself invisible, has presented himself to our eyes conspicuously in a certain visible form." He also quotes Seneca (De Benef. iv. c. 8): "Quocunque te flexeris, ibi illum videbis occurrentem tibi: nihil ab illo vacat, opus suum ipse implet." Compare also Cicero, De Senectute (c. 22), Xenophon's Cyropaedia (viii. 7), and Mem. iv. 3; also Epictetus, i. 6, de Providentia. I think that my interpretation of Antoninus is right. 29. The safety of life is this, to examine everything all through, what it is itself, that is its material, what the formal part; with all thy soul to do justice and to say the truth. What remains, except to enjoy life by joining one good thing to another so as not to leave even the smallest intervals between? 30. There is one light of the sun, though it is interrupted by walls, mountains, and other things infinite. There is one common substance,[A] though it is distributed among countless bodies which have their several qualities. There is one soul, though it is distributed among infinite natures and individual circumscriptions [or individuals]. There is one intelligent soul, though it seems to be divided. Now in the things which have been mentioned, all the other parts, such as those which are air and matter, are without sensation and have no fellowship: and yet even these parts the intelligent principle holds together and the gravitation towards the same. But intellect in a peculiar manner tends to that which is of the same kin, and combines with it, and the feeling for communion is not interrupted. [A] iv. 40. 31. What dost thou wish--to continue to exist? Well, dost thou wish to have sensation, movement, growth, and then again to cease to grow, to use thy speech, to think? What is there of all these things which seems to thee worth desiring? But if it is easy to set little value on all these things, turn to that which remains, which is to follow reason and God. But it is inconsistent with honoring reason and God to be troubled because by death a man will be deprived of the other things. 32. How small a part of the boundless and unfathomable time is assigned to every man, for it is very soon swallowed up in the eternal! And how small a part of the whole substance; and how small a part of the universal soul; and on what a small clod of the whole earth thou creepest! Reflecting on all this, consider nothing to be great, except to act as thy nature leads thee, and to endure that which the common nature brings. 33. How does the ruling faculty make use of itself? for all lies in this. But everything else, whether it is in the power of thy will or not, is only lifeless ashes and smoke. 34. This reflection is most adapted to move us to contempt of death, that even those who think pleasure to be a good and pain an evil still have despised it. 35. The man to whom that only is good which comes in due season, and to whom it is the same thing whether he has done more or fewer acts conformable to right reason, and to whom it makes no difference whether he contemplates the world for a longer or a shorter time--for this man neither is death a terrible thing (iii. 7; vi. 23; x. 20; xii. 23). 36. Man, thou hast been a citizen in this great state [the world];[A] what difference does it make to thee whether for five years [or three]? for that which is conformable to the laws is just for all. Where is the hardship then, if no tyrant nor yet an unjust judge sends thee away from the state, but nature, who brought thee into it? the same as if a praetor who has employed an actor dismisses him from the stage.[B]--"But I have not finished the five acts, but only three of them."--Thou sayest well, but in life the three acts are the whole drama; for what shall be a complete drama is determined by him who was once the cause of its composition, and now of its dissolution: but thou art the cause of neither. Depart then satisfied, for he also who releases thee is satisfied. [A] ii. 16; iii. 11; iv. 29. [B] iii. 8; xi. 1. INDEXES. INDEX OF TERMS. [Greek: adiaphora] (indifferentia, Cicero, Seneca, Epp. 82); things indifferent, neither good nor bad; the same as [Greek: mesa]. [Greek: aischros] (turpis, Cic.), ugly; morally ugly. [Greek: aitia], cause. [Greek: aitiôdes], [Greek: aition], [Greek: to], the formal or formative principle, the cause. [Greek: akoinônêtos], unsocial. [Greek: anaphora], reference, relation to a purpose. [Greek: anypexairetôs], unconditionally. [Greek: aporroia], efflux. [Greek: aproaireta], [Greek: ta], the things which are not in our will or power. [Greek: archê], a first principle. [Greek: atomoi] (corpora individua, Cic.), atoms. [Greek: autarkeia] est quae parvo contenta omne id respuit quod abundat (Cic.); contentment. [Greek: autarkes], sufficient in itself; contented. [Greek: aphormai], means, principles. The word has also other significations in Epictetus. Index ed. Schweig. [Greek: gignomena], [Greek: ta], things which are produced, come into existence. [Greek: daimôn], god, god in man, man's intelligent principle. [Greek: diathesis], disposition, affection of the mind. [Greek: diairesis], division of things into their parts, dissection, resolution, analysis. [Greek: dialektikê], ars bene disserendi et vera ac falsa dijudicandi (Cic.). [Greek: dialysis], dissolution, the opposite of [Greek: sygkrisis]. [Greek: dianoia], understanding; sometimes, the mind generally, the whole intellectual power. [Greek: dogmata] (decreta, Cic.), principles. [Greek: dynamis noera], intellectual faculty. [Greek: enkrateia], temperance, self-restraint. [Greek: eidos] in divisione formae sunt, quas Graeci [Greek: eidê] vocant; nostri, si qui haec forte tractant, species appellant (Cic.). But [Greek: eidos] is used by Epictetus and Antoninus less exactly and as a general term, like _genus_. Index Epict. ed. Schweig.--[Greek: Hôs de ge ahi prôtai ousiai pros ta alla echousin, outô kai to eidos pros to genos echei hypokeitai gar to eidos tô genei]. (Aristot. Cat. c. 5.) [Greek: eimarmenê] (fatalis necessitas, fatum, Cic.), destiny, necessity. [Greek: ekkliseis], aversions, avoidance, the turning away from things; the opposite of [Greek: orexeiz.] [Greek: empsycha, ta] things which have life. [Greek: energeia], action, activity. [Greek: ennoia], [Greek: ennoiai], notio, notiones (Cic.), or "notitiae rerum;" notions of things. (Notionem appello quam Graeci tum [Greek: ennoian], tum [Greek: prolêpsin], Cic.). [Greek: enôsis], [Greek: ê], the unity. [Greek: epistrophê], attention to an object. [Greek: euthymia], animi tranquillitas (Cic.). [Greek: eumenes], [Greek: to], [Greek: eumeneia], benevolence; [Greek: eumenês] sometimes means well-contented. [Greek: eunoia], benevolence. [Greek: exousia], power, faculty. [Greek: epakolouthêsin], [Greek: kata], by way of sequence. [Greek: hêgemonikon], [Greek: to], the ruling faculty or part; principatus (Cic.). [Greek: theôrêmata], percepta (Cic.), things perceived, general principles. [Greek: kathêkein], [Greek: to], duty, "officium." [Greek: kalos], beautiful. [Greek: katalêpsis], comprehension; cognitio, perceptio, comprehensio (Cic.). [Greek: kataskeuê], constitution. [Greek: katorthôseis, katorthômata]; recta, recte facta (Cic.); right acts, those acts to which we proceed by the right or straight road. [Greek: kosmos], order, world, universe. [Greek: kosmos, ho olos], the universe, that which is the One and the all (vi. 25). [Greek: krima], a judgment. [Greek: kyrieuon, to endon], that which rules within (iv. 1), the same as [Greek: to hêgemonikon]. Diogenes Laertius vii., Zeno. [Greek: hêgemonikon de einai to kyriôtaton tês psychês]. [Greek: logika, ta], the things which have reason. [Greek: logikos], rational. [Greek: logos], reason. [Greek: logos spermatikos], seminal principle. [Greek: mesa, ta], things indifferent, viewed with respect to virtue. [Greek: noeros], intellectual. [Greek: nomos], law. [Greek: nous], intelligence, understanding. [Greek: oiêsis], arrogance, pride. It sometimes means in Antoninus the same as [Greek: typhos]; but it also means "opinion." [Greek: oikonomia] (dispositio, ordo, Cic.) has sometimes the peculiar sense of artifice, or doing something with an apparent purpose different from the real purpose. [Greek: holon, to], the universe, the whole: [Greek: hê tôn olôn physis]. [Greek: onta, ta], things which exist; existence, being. [Greek: orexis], desire of a thing, which is opposed to [Greek: ekklisis], aversion. [Greek: hormê], movement towards an object, appetite; appetitio, naturalis appetitus, appetitus animi (Cic.). [Greek: ousia], substance (vi. 49). Modern writers sometimes incorrectly translate it "essentia." It is often used by Epictetus in the same sense as [Greek: hylê]. Aristotle (Cat. c. 5) defines [Greek: ousia], and it is properly translated "substantia" (ed. Jul. Pacius). Porphyrius (Isag. c. 2): [Greek: hê ousia anôtatô ousa tô mêden pro autês genos hên to genikôtaton]. [Greek: parakolouthêtikê dynamis, hê], the power which enables us to observe and understand. [Greek: peisis], passivity, opposed to [Greek: energeia]: also, affect. [Greek: peristaseis], circumstances, the things which surround us; troubles, difficulties. [Greek: peprômenê, hê], destiny. [Greek: proairesis], purpose, free will (Aristot. Rhet. i. 13). [Greek: proaireta, ta], things which are within our will or power. [Greek: proairetikon, to], free will. [Greek: prothesis], a purpose, proposition. [Greek: pronoia] (providentia, Cic.), providence. [Greek: skopos], object, purpose. [Greek: stoicheion], element. [Greek: synkatathesis] (assensio, approbatio, Cic.), assent; [Greek: synkatatheseis] (probationes, Gellius, xix. 1). [Greek: synkrimata], things compounded (ii. 3). [Greek: synkrisis], the act of combining elements out of which a body is produced, combination. [Greek: synthesis], ordering, arrangement (compositio). [Greek: systêma], system, a thing compounded of parts which have a certain relation to one another. [Greek: hylê], matter, material. [Greek: hylikon, to], the material principle. [Greek: hypexairesis], exception, reservation; [Greek: meth' hypexaireseôs], conditionally. [Greek: hypothesis], material to work on; thing to employ the reason on; proposition, thing assumed as matter for argument and to lead to conclusions. (Quaestionum duo sunt genera; alterum infinitum, definitum alterum. Definitum est, quod [Greek: hypothesin] Graeci, nos _causam_: infinitum, quod [Greek: thesin] illi appellant, nos _propositum_ possumus nominare. Cic. See Aristot. Anal. Post. i. c. 2). [Greek: hypokeimena, ta], things present or existing, vi. 4; or things which are a basis or foundation. [Greek: hypolêpsis], opinion. [Greek: hypostasis], basis, substance, being, foundation (x. 5). Epictetus has [Greek: to hypostatikon kai ousiôdes]. (Justinus ad Diogn. c. 2.) [Greek: hyphistasthai], to subsist, to be. [Greek: phantasiai] (visus, Cic.); appearances, thoughts, impressions (visa animi, Gellius, xix. 1): [Greek: phantasia esti typôsis en psychê]. [Greek: phantasma], seems to be used by Antoninus in the same sense as [Greek: phantasia]. Epictetus uses only [Greek: phantasia]. [Greek: phantaston], that which produces a [Greek: phantasia: phantaston to tepsiêkos tên phantasian aisthêton] [Greek: physis], nature. [Greek: physis hê tôn olôn], the nature of the universe. [Greek: psychê], soul, life, living principle. [Greek: psychê logikê, noera], a rational soul, an intelligent soul GENERAL INDEX. *** The paragraphs (par.) and lines (l.) are those of the sections. Active, man is by nature, ix. 16. Advice from the good to be taken, vii. 21; viii. 16. Affectation, vii. 60; viii. 30; xi. 18 (par. 9), 19. Anger discouraged, vi. 26, 27; xi. 18. Anger, offenses of, ii. 10. Anger, uselessness of, v. 28; viii. 4. Appearances not to be regarded, v. 36; vi. 3, 13. Astonishment should not be felt at any thing that happens, viii. 15; xii. 1 (sub fine), 13. Attainment, what is within every one's, vii. 67; viii. 8. Attention to what is said or done, vi. 53; vii. 4, 30; viii. 22. Bad, the, ii. 1. Beautiful, the, ii. 1. Casual. _See_ Formal. Change keeps the world ever new, vii. 25; viii. 50 (l. 13); xii. 23 (l. 10). Change, law of, iv. 3 (sub f.), 36, v. 13, 23; vi. 4, 15, 36; vii. 18; viii. 6; ix. 19, 28 (par. 2), 35; x. 7, 18; xii. 21. Change, no evil in, iv. 42. Christians, the xi. 3. Circle, things come round in a, ii. 14. Comedy, new, xi. 6. Comedy, Old, xi. 6. Complaining, uselessness of, viii. 17, 50. Connection. _See_ Universe. Conquerers are robbers, x. 10. Contentment. _See_ Resignation. Co-operation. _See_ Mankind and Universe. Daemon, the, ii. 13, 17; iii. 6 (l. 8), 7, 16 (l. 18); v. 10 (sub f.) 27; xii. 3 (sub. f.). Death, ii. 11, 12, 17; iii. 3, 7; iv. 5; v. 33; vi. 2, 24, 28; vii. 32; viii. 20, 58; ix. 3, 21; x. 36; xii. 23, 34, 35. Death inevitable, iii. 3; iv. 3 (l. 22), 6, 32, 48, 50; v. 33; vi. 47; viii. 25, 31. Desire, offenses of, ii. 10. Destiny, iii. 11 (l. 19); iv. 26; v. 8 (l. 13, etc.), 24; vii. 57; x. 5. Discontent. _See_ Resignation. Doubts discussed, vi. 10; vii. 75; ix. 28, 39; xii. 5, 14. Duty, all-importance of, vi. 2, 22; x. 22. Earth, insignificance of the, iii. 10; iv. 3 (par. 1, sub f.); vi. 36; viii. 21; xii. 32. Earthly things, transitory nature of, ii. 12, 17; iv. 32, 33, 35, 48; v. 23; vi. 15, 36; vii. 21, 34; viii. 21, 25; x. 18, 31; xii. 27. Earthly things, worthlessness of, ii. 12; v. 10, 33; vi. 15; vii. 3; ix. 24, 36; xi. 2; xii. 27. Equanimity, x. 8. Example, we should not follow bad, vi. 6; vii. 65. Existence, meanness of, viii. 24. Existence, the object of, v. 1; viii. 19. External things cannot really harm a man, or affect the soul, ii, 11 (l. 22); iv. 3 (par. 2, sub f.); 8, 39, 49 (par. 2); v. 35; vii. 64; viii. 1 (sub f.); 32, 51 (par. 2); ix. 31; x. 33. Failure, x. 12. Fame, worthlessness of, iii. 10; iv. 3 (l. 45), 19, 33 (l. 10); v. 33; vi. 16, 18; vii. 34; viii. 1, 44; ix. 30. Fear, what we ought to, xii. 1 (l. 18). Fellowship. _See_ Mankind. Few things necessary for a virtuous and happy life, ii. 5; iii. 10; vii. 67; x. 8 (l. 22). Flattery, xi. 18 (par. 10). Formal, the, and the material, iv. 21 (par. 2); v. 13; vii. 10, 29; viii. 11; ix. 25; xii. 8, 10, 18. Future, we should not be anxious about the, vii. 8; viii. 11; ix. 25; xii. 1. Gods, perfect justice of the, xii. 5 (par. 2). Gods, the, vi. 44; xii. 28. Gods, the, cannot be evil, ii. 11; vi. 44. Good, the, ii. 1. Habit of thought, v. 16. Happiness, what is true, v. 9 (sub f.), 34; viii. 1; x. 33. Help to be accepted from others, xii. 7. Heroism, true, xi. 18 (par. 10). Ignorance. _See_ Wrong-doing. Independence. _See_ Self-reliance. Indifferent things, ii. 11 (sub f.); ix. 39; vi 32; ix, 1; (l. 30). Individual, the. _See_ Interests. Infinity. _See_ Time. Ingratitude. _See_ Mankind. Injustice, ix. 1. Intelligent soul, rational beings participate in the same, iv. 40; ix. 8, 9; x. 1 (l. 15); xii. 26, 30. Interests of the whole and the individual identical, iv. 23; v. 8 (l. 34); vi. 45, 54; x. 6, 20, 33 (sub f.); xii. 23 (l. 12). Justice, v. 34; x. 11; xi. 10. Justice and reason identical, xi. 1 (sub f.). Justice prevails everywhere, iv. 10. Leisure, we ought to have some, viii. 51. Life, a good, everywhere possible, v. 16. Life can only be lived once, ii. 14; x. 31 (l. 11). Life, shortness of, ii. 4, 17; iii. 10, 14; iv. 17, 48 (sub f.). 50; vi. 15, 36, 56; x. 31, 34. Life to be made a proper use of, without delay, ii. 4; iii. 1, 14; iv. 17, 37; vii. 56; viii. 22; x. 31 (l. 14); xii. 1 (l. 18). Life, whether long or short, matters not, vi. 49; ix. 33; xii. 36. Magnanimity, x. 8. Mankind, co-operation and fellowship of, one with another; ii. 1 (l. 11), 16; iii. 4 (sub f.); 11 (sub f.); iv. 4, 33 (sub f.); v. 16 (l. 11), 20; vi. 7, 14 (sub f.), 23, 39; vii. 5, 13, 22, 55; viii. 12, 26, 34, 43, 59; ix. 1, 9 (sub f.), 23, 31, 42 (sub. f.); x. 36, (l. 16); xi. 8, 21; xii. 20. Mankind, folly and baseness of, v. 10 (l. 9); ix. 2, 3 (l. 13), 29; x. 15, 19. Mankind, ingratitude of, x. 36. Material, the. _See_ Formal. Nature, after products of, iii. 2; vi. 36. Nature, bounds fixed by, v. 1. Nature, man formed by, to bear all that happens to him, v. 18; viii. 46. Nature, nothing evil, which is according to, ii. 17 (sub f.); vi. 33. Nature of the universe. _See_ Universe, nothing that happens is contrary to the nature of the. Nature, perfect beauty of, iii. 2; vi. 36. Nature, we should live according to, iv. 48 (sub. f.), 51; v. 3. 25; vi. 16 (l. 12); vii. 15, 55; viii. 1, 54; x. 33. New, nothing, under the sun, ii. 14 (l. 11); iv. 44; vi. 37, 46; vii. 1, 49; viii. 6; ix. 14; x. 27; xi. 1. Object, we should always act with a view to some, ii. 7, 16 (l. 12); iii. 4; iv. 2; viii. 17; x. 37; xi. 21; xii. 20. Obsolete, all things become, iv. 33. Omissions, sins of, ix. 5. Opinion, iv. 3 (par. 2) (sub f.), 7, 12, 39; vi. 52, 57; vii. 2, 14, 16, 26, 68; viii. 14, 29, 40, 47, 49; ix. 13, 29 (l. 12), 32, 42 (l. 21); x. 3; xi. 16, 18; xii. 22, 25. Others' conduct not to be inquired into, iii. 4; iv. 18; v. 25. Others, opinion of, to be disregarded, viii. 1 (l. 12); x. 8 (l. 12), 11; xi. 13; xii. 4. Others, we should be lenient towards, ii. 13 (sub f.); iii. 11 (sub f.); iv. 3 (l. 16); v. 33 (l. 17); vi. 20, 27; vii. 26, 62, 63, 70; ix. 11, 27; x. 4; xi. 9, 13, 18; xii. 16. Others, we should examine the ruling principles of; iv. 38; ix. 18, 22, 27, 34. Ourselves often to blame for expecting men to act contrary to their nature, ix. 42 (l. 31). Ourselves, reformation should begin with, xi. 29. Ourselves, we should judge, x. 30; xi. 18 (par. 4). Pain, vii. 33, 64; viii. 28. Perfection not to be expected in this world, ix. 29 (l. 7). Perseverance, v. 9; x. 12. Persuasion, to be used, vi. 50. Perturbation, vi. 16 (sub f.); viii. 58; ix. 31. Pessimism, ix. 35. Philosophy, v. 9; vi. 12; ix. 41 (l. 15). Pleasure, he who pursues, is guilty of impiety, ix. 1 (l. 24). Pleasures are enjoyed by the bad, vi. 34; ix. 1 (l. 30). Power, things in our own, v. 5, 10 (sub f.); vi. 32, 41, 52, 58; vii. 2, 14, 54, 68; x. 32, 33. Power, things not in our own, v. 33 (sub f.); vi. 41. Practice is good, even in things which we despair of accomplishing, xii. 6. Praise, worthlessness of, iii. 4 (sub f.); iv. 20: vi. 16, 59; vii. 62; viii. 52, 53; ix. 34. Prayer, the right sort of, v. 7; ix. 40. Present time the only thing a man really possesses, ii. 14; iii. 10; viii. 44; xii. 3 (sub f.) Procrastination, _See_ Life to be made a proper use of, etc. Puppet pulled by strings of desire, ii. 2; iii. 16; vi. 16, 28; vii. 3, 29; xii. 19. Rational soul. _See_ Ruling part. Rational soul, spherical form of the, viii. 41 (sub f.); xi. 12; xii. 3 (and _see_ Ruling part). Reason, all-prevailing, v. 32; vi. 1, 40. Reason and nature identical, vii. 11. Reason the, can adapt everything that happens to its own use, v. 20; vi. 8; vii. 68 (l. 16); viii. 35; x. 31 (sub f.). Reason, we should live according to. _See_ Nature. Repentance does not follow renouncement of pleasure, viii. 10. Resignation and contentment, iii. 4 (l. 27, etc.), 16 (l. 10, etc.); iv. 23, 31, 33 (sub f.), 34; v. 8 (sub f.), 33 (l. 16); vi. 16 (sub f.), 44, 49; vii. 27, 57; ix. 37; x. 1, 11, 14, 25, 28, 35. Revenge, best kind of, vi. 6. Rising from bed, v. 1; viii. 11. Ruling part, the, ii. 2; iv. 11, 19, 21, 26; vi. 14, 35; vii. 16, 55 (par. 2); viii. 45, 48, 56, 57, 60, 61; ix. 15, 26; x. 24, 33 (l. 21), 38; xi. 1, 19, 20; xii. 3, 14. Self-reliance and steadfastness of soul, iii. 5 (sub f.), 12; iv. 14, 29 (l. 5), 49 (par. 1); v. 3, 34 (l. 5); vi. 44 (l. 15); vii. 12, 15; ix. 28 (l. 8), 29 (sub f.); xii. 14. Self-restraint, v. 33 (sub f.). Self, we should retire into, iv. 3 (l. 4 and par. 2); vii. 28, 33, 59; viii. 48. Senses, movements of the, to be disregarded, v. 31 (l. 10); vii. 55 (par. 2); viii. 26, 39; x. 8 (l. 13); xi. 19; xii. 1 (l. 18). Sickness, behavior in, ix. 41. Social. _See_ Mankind. Steadfastness of soul. _See_ Self-reliance. Substance, the universal, iv. 40; v. 24; vii. 19, 23; xii. 30. Suicide, v. 29; viii. 47 (sub f.); x. 8 (l. 35). Time compared to a river, iv. 43. Time, infinity of, iv. 3 (l. 35), 50 (sub f.); v. 24; ix. 32; xii. 7, 32. Tragedy, xi. 6. Tranquillity of soul, iv. 3; vi. 11; vii. 68; viii. 28. Ugly, the, ii. 1. Unintelligible things, v. 10. Universe, harmony of the, iv. 27, 45; v. 8 (l. 14). Universe, intimate connection and co-operation of all things in the, one with another, ii. 3, 9; iv. 29; v. 8, 30; vi. 38, 42, 43; vii. 9, 19, 68 (sub f.); viii. 7; ix. 1; x. 1. Universe, nothing that dies falls out of the, viii. 18, 50 (l. 13); x. 7 (l. 25). Universe, nothing that happens is contrary to the nature of the, v. 8, 10 (sub f.); vi. 9, 58; viii. 5; xii. 26. Unnecessary things, v. 45. Unnecessary thoughts, words, and actions, iii. 4; iv. 24. Vain professions, x. 16; xi. 15. Virtue, vi. 17. Virtue its own reward, v. 6; vii. 73; ix. 42 (l. 47); xi. 4. Virtue, omnipotence of, iv. 16. Virtue, pleasure in contemplating, vi. 48. Whole, integrity of the, to be preserved, v. 8 (sub f.). Whole, the. _See_ Interests. Wickedness has always existed, vii. 1. Wickedness must exist in the world, viii. 15, 50; ix. 42; xi. 18 (par. ii); xii. 16. Worst evil, the, ix. 2 (l. 9.) Worth and importance, things of real, iv. 33 (sub f.); v. 10 (l. 16); vi. 16, 30 (l. 7), 47 (sub f.); vii. 20, 44, 46, 58, 66; viii. 2, 3, 5; ix. 6, 12; x. 8 (l. 27), 11; xii. 1, 27, 31, 33. Wrong-doing cannot really harm any one, vii. 22; viii. 55; ix. 42 (l. 25); x. 13 (par. 1); xi. 18 (par. 7). Wrong-doing injures the wrong-doer, iv. 26; ix. 4, 38; xi. 18 (par. 3). Wrong-doing owing to ignorance, ii. 1, 13; vi. 27; vii. 22, 26, 62, 63; xi. 18 (par. 3); xii. 22. Wrong-doing to be left where it is, vii. 29; ix. 20. THE END. 
17201	----	IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? BY WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK AUTHOR OF 'THE NEW REPUBLIC' ETC. * * * * * 'Man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain.' 'How dieth the wise man? As the fool.... That which befalleth the sons of men befalleth the beasts, even one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth so dieth the other, yea they have all one breath; so that man hath no preeminence above a beast; for all is vanity.' '[Greek: talaipôros egô anthrôpos, tis me rudetai ek tou sômatos tou thanatou toutou];' * * * * * NEW YORK G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS 182 Fifth Avenue 1879 I INSCRIBE THIS BOOK TO JOHN RUSKIN _TO JOHN RUSKIN._ My dear Mr. Ruskin,--You have given me very great pleasure by allowing me to inscribe this book to you, and for two reasons; for I have two kinds of acknowledgment that I wish to make to you--first, that of an intellectual debtor to a public teacher; secondly, that of a private friend to the kindest of private friends. The tribute I have to offer you is, it is true, a small one; and it is possibly more blessed for me to give than it is for you to receive it. In so far, at least, as I represent any influence of yours, you may very possibly not think me a satisfactory representative. But there is one fact--and I will lay all the stress I can on it--which makes me less diffident than I might be, in offering this book either to you or to the world generally. The import of the book is independent of the book itself, and of the author of it; nor do the arguments it contains stand or fall with my success in stating them; and these last at least I may associate with your name. They are not mine. I have not discovered or invented them. They are so obvious that any one who chooses may see them; and I have been only moved to meddle with them, because, from being so obvious, it seems that no one will so much as deign to look at them, or at any rate to put them together with any care or completeness. They might be before everybody's eyes; but instead they are under everybody's feet. My occupation has been merely to kneel in the mud, and to pick up the truths that are being trampled into it, by a headstrong and uneducated generation. With what success I have done this, it is not for me to judge. But though I cannot be confident of the value of what I have done, I am confident enough of the value of what I have tried to do. From a literary point of view many faults may be found with me. There may be faults yet deeper, to which possibly I shall have to plead guilty. I may--I cannot tell--have unduly emphasized some points, and not put enough emphasis on others. I may be convicted--nothing is more likely--of many verbal inconsistencies. But let the arguments I have done my best to embody be taken as a whole, and they have a vitality that does not depend upon me; nor can they be proved false, because my ignorance or weakness may here or there have associated them with, or illustrated them by, a falsehood. I am not myself conscious of any such falsehoods in my book; but if such are pointed out to me, I shall do my best to correct them. If what I have done prove not worth correction, others coming after me will be preferred before me, and are sure before long to address themselves successfully to the same task in which I perhaps have failed. What indeed can we each of us look for but a large measure of failure, especially when we are moving not with the tide but against it--when the things we wrestle with are principalities and powers, and spiritual stupidity in high places--and when we are ourselves partly weakened by the very influences against which we are struggling? But this is not all. There is in the way another difficulty. Writing as the well-wishers of truth and goodness, we find, as the world now stands, that our chief foes are they of our own household. The insolence, the ignorance, and the stupidity of the age has embodied itself, and found its mouthpiece, in men who are personally the negations of all that they represent theoretically. We have men who in private are full of the most gracious modesty, representing in their philosophies the most ludicrous arrogance; we have men who practise every virtue themselves, proclaiming the principles of every vice to others; we have men who have mastered many kinds of knowledge, acting on the world only as embodiments of the completest and most pernicious ignorance. I have had occasion to deal continually with certain of these by name. With the exception of one--who has died prematurely, whilst this book was in the press--those I have named oftenest are still living. Many of them probably are known to you personally, though none of them are so known to me; and you will appreciate the sort of difficulty I have felt, better than I can express it. I can only hope that as the falsehood of their arguments cannot blind any of us to their personal merits, so no intellectual demerits in my case will be prejudicial to the truth of my arguments. To me the strange thing is that such arguments should have to be used all; and perhaps a thing stranger still that it should fall to me to use them--to me, an outsider in philosophy, in literature, and in theology. But the justification of my speaking is that there is any opening for me to speak; and others must be blamed, not I, if the lyre so long divine Degenerates into hands like mine. At any rate, however all this may be, what I here inscribe to you, my friend and teacher, I am confident is not unworthy of you. It is not what I have done; it is what I have tried to do. As such I beg you to accept it, and to believe me still, though now so seldom near you, Your admiring and affectionate friend, W.H. MALLOCK. P.S.--Much of the substance of the following book you have seen already, in two Essays of mine that were published in the 'Contemporary Review,' and in five Essays that were published in the 'Nineteenth Century.' It had at one time been my intention, by the kindness of the respective Editors, to have reprinted these Essays in their original form. But there was so much to add, to omit, to rearrange, and to join together, that I have found it necessary to rewrite nearly the whole; and thus you will find the present volume virtually new. Torquay, _May, 1879_. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. THE NEW IMPORT OF THE QUESTION. PAGE The question may seem vague and useless; but if we consider its real meaning we shall see that it is not so 1 In the present day it has acquired a new importance 2 Its exact meaning. It does not question the fact of human happiness 3 But the nature of happiness, and the permanence of its basis 4 For what we call the higher happiness is essentially a complex thing 5 We cannot be sure that all its elements are permanent 7 Without certain of its elements it has been declared by the wisest men to be valueless 8 And it is precisely the elements in question that modern thought is eliminating 11 It is contended that they have often been eliminated before; and that yet the worth of life has not suffered 13 But this contention is entirely false. They were never before eliminated as modern thought is eliminating them now 17 The present age can find no genuine parallels in the past 19 Its position is made peculiar by three facts 19 Firstly, by the existence of Christianity 19 Secondly, the insignificance to which science has reduced the earth 23 Thirdly, the intense self-consciousness that has been developed in the modern world 25 It is often said that a parallel to our present case is to be found in Buddhism 27 But this is absolutely false. Buddhist positivism is the exact reverse of Western positivism 29 In short, the life-problem of our day is distinctly a new and an as yet unanswered one 31 CHAPTER II. MORALITY AND THE PRIZE OF LIFE. The worth the positive school claim for life, is essentially a moral worth 33 As its most celebrated exponents explicitly tell us 34 This means that life contains some special prize, to which morality is the only road 34 And the value of life depends on the value of this prize 35 J.S. Mill, G. Eliot, and Professor Huxley admit that this is a correct way of stating the case 36 But all this language as it stands at present is too vague to be of any use to us 38 The prize in question is to be won in this life, if anywhere; and must therefore be more or less describable 39 What then is it? 40 Unless it is describable it cannot be a moral end at all 41 As a consideration of the _raison d'être_ of all moral systems will show us 42 The value of the prize must be verifiable by positive methods 43 And be verifiably greater, beyond all comparison, than that of all other prizes 44 Has such a prize any real existence? This is our question 44 It has never yet been answered properly 45 And though two sets of answers have been given it, neither of them are satisfactory 45 I shall deal with these two questions in order 47 CHAPTER III. SOCIOLOGY AS THE FOUNDATION OF MORALITY. The positive theory is that the health of the social organism is the real foundation of morals 49 But social health is nothing but the personal health of all the members of the society 51 It is not happiness itself, but the negative conditions that make happiness for all 51 Still less is social health any _high_ kind of happiness 54 It can only be maintained to be so, by supposing 55 Either, that all kinds of happiness are equally _high_ that do not interfere with others 55 Or, that it is only a _high_ kind of happiness that can be shared by all 56 Both of which suppositions are false 57 The conditions of social health are a moral end only when we each feel a personal delight in maintaining them 58 In this case they will supply us with a _small portion_ of the moral aid needed 59 But this case is not a possible one 60 There is indeed the natural impulse of sympathy that might tend to make it so 61 But this is counterbalanced by the corresponding impulse of selfishness 63 And this impulse of sympathy itself is of very limited power 63 Except under very rare conditions 63 The conditions of general happiness are far too vague to do more than very slightly excite it 64 Or give it power enough to neutralise any personal temptation 66 At all events they would excite no enthusiasm 67 For this purpose there must be some prize before us, of recognised positive value, more or less definite 67 And before all things, to be enjoyed by us individually 67 Unless this prize be of great value to begin with, its value will not become great because great numbers obtain it 71 Nor until we know what it is, do we gain anything by the hope that men may more completely make it their own in the future 72 The modern positive school requires a great general enthusiasm for the general good 73 They therefore presuppose an extreme value for the individual good 74 Our first enquiry must be therefore what the higher individual good is 76 CHAPTER IV. GOODNESS AS ITS OWN REWARD. What has been said in the last chapter is really admitted by the positive school themselves 77 As we can learn explicitly from George Eliot 78 In _Daniel Deronda_ 78 That the fundamental moral question is, '_In what way shall the individual make life pleasant?_' 79 And the right way, for the positivists, as for the Christians, is an inward way 80 The moral end is a certain inward state of the heart, and the positivists say it is a sufficient attraction in itself, without any aid from religion 81 And they support this view by numerous examples 82 But all such examples are useless 83 Because though we may get rid of religion in its pure form 83 There is much that we have not got rid of, embodied still in the moral end 84 To test the intrinsic value of the end, we must sublimate this religion out of it 86 For this purpose we will consider, first, the three general characteristics of the moral end, viz. 88 Its inwardness 88 Its importance 89 And its absolute character 91 Now all these three characteristics can be explained by religion 93 And cannot be explained without it 96 The positive moral end must therefore be completely divested of them 100 The next question is, will it be equally attractive then? 100 CHAPTER V. LOVE AS A TEST OF GOODNESS. The positivists represent love as a thing whose value is self-dependent 101 And which gives to life a positive and incalculable worth 103 But this is supposed to be true of one form of love only 104 And the very opposite is supposed to hold good of all other forms 105 The right form depends on the conformity of each of the lovers to a certain inward standard 105 As we can see exemplified in the case of Othello and Desdemona, etc. 107 The kind and not the degree of the love is what gives love its special value 108 And the selection of this kind can be neither made nor justified on positive principles 109 As the following quotations from Théophile Gautier will show us 110 Which are supposed by many to embody the true view of love 110 According to this view, purity is simply a disease both in man and woman, or at any rate no merit 116 If love is to be a moral end, this view must be absolutely condemned 117 But positivism cannot condemn it, or support the opposite view 117 As we shall see by recurring to Professor Huxley's argument 118 Which will show us that all moral language as applied to love is either distinctly religious or else altogether ludicrous 122 For it is clearly only on moral grounds that we can give that blame to vice, which is the measure of the praise we give to virtue 123 The misery of the former depends on religious anticipations 124 And so does also the blessedness of the latter 125 As we can see in numerous literary expressions of it 126 Positivism, by destroying these anticipations, changes the whole character of the love in question 128 And prevents love from supplying us with any moral standard 131 The loss sustained by love will indicate the general loss sustained by life 131 CHAPTER VI. LIFE AS ITS OWN REWARD. We must now examine what will be the practical result on life in general of the loss just indicated 132 To do this, we will take life as reflected in the mirror of the great dramatic art of the world 134 And this will show us how the moral judgment is the chief faculty to which all that is great or intense in this art appeals 136 We shall see this, for instance, in _Macbeth_ 137 In _Hamlet_ 137 In _Antigone_ 137 In _Measure for Measure_, and in _Faust_ 138 And also in degraded art just as well as in sublime art 139 In profligate and cynical art, such as Congreve's 140 And in concupiscent art 141 Such as _Mademoiselle de Maupin_ 141 Or such works as that of Meursius, or the worst scenes in Petronius 142 The supernatural moral judgment is the chief thing everywhere 143 Take away this judgment, and art loses all its strange interest 144 And so will it be with life 145 The moral landscape will be ruined 145 Even the mere sensuous joy of living in health will grow duller 146 Nor will culture be of the least avail without the supernatural moral element 148 Nor will the devotion to truth for its own sake, which is the last refuge of the positivists when in despair 149 For this last has no meaning whatever, except as a form of concrete theism 152 The reverence for Nature is but another form of the devotion to truth, and its only possible meaning is equally theistic 157 Thus all the higher resources of positivism fail together 161 And the highest positive value of life would be something less than its present value 161 CHAPTER VII. THE SUPERSTITION OF POSITIVISM. From what we have just seen, the visionary character of the positivist conception of progress becomes evident 163 Its object is far more plainly an illusion than the Christian heaven 164 _All_ the objections urged against the latter apply with far more force to the former 165 As a matter of fact, there is no possible object sufficient to start the enthusiasm required by the positivists 167 To make the required enthusiasm possible human nature would have to be completely changed 168 Two existing qualities, for instance, would have to be magnified to an impossible extent--imagination 169 And unselfishness 170 If we state the positive system in terms of common life, its visionary character becomes evident 172 The examples which have suggested its possibility are quite misleading 173 The positive system is really far more based on superstition than any religion 175 Its appearance can only be accounted for by the characters and circumstances of its originators 175 And a consideration of these will help us more than anything to estimate it rightly 178 And will let us see that its only practical tendency is to deaden all our present interests, not to create any new ones 179 CHAPTER VIII. THE PRACTICAL PROSPECT. It is not contended that the prospect just described will, as a fact, ever be realised 183 But only that it will be realised _if_ certain other prospects are realised 185 Which prospects may or may not be visionary 186 But the progress towards which is already begun 187 And also the other results, that have been described already 187 Positive principles have already produced a moral deterioration, even in places where we should least imagine it 187 As we shall see if we pierce beneath the surface 189 In the curious condition of men who have lost faith, but have retained the love of virtue 189 The struggle was hard, when they had all the helps of religion 190 It is harder now 190 Conscience still survives, but it has lost its restraining power 191 Temptation almost inevitably dethrones it 192 And its full prestige can never be recovered 193 It can do nothing but deplore; it cannot remedy 194 In such cases the mind's decadence has begun; and its symptoms are 194 Self-reproach 195 Life-weariness 195 And indifference 195 The class of men to whom this applies is increasing, and they are the true representatives of the work of positive thought 196 It is hard to realise this ominous fact 197 But by looking steadily and dispassionately at the characteristics of the present epoch we may learn to do so 198 We shall see that the opinions now forming will have a weight and power that no opinions ever had before 199 And their tendency, as yet latent, towards pessimism is therefore most momentous 200 If it is to be cured, it must be faced 200 It takes the form of a suppressed longing for the religious faith that is lost 200 And this longing is wide-spread, though only expressed indirectly 201 It is felt even by men of science 202 But the longing seems fruitless 203 This dejection is in fact shared by the believers 203 And is even authoritatively recognised by Catholicism 204 The great question for the world now, and the one on which its whole future depends, is, will the lost faith ever be recovered? 205 The answer to this will probably have to be decisive, one way or the other 206 CHAPTER IX. THE LOGIC OF SCIENTIFIC NEGATION. What gives the denials of positivism their general weight, is the impression that they represent reason 208 They are supported by three kinds of arguments: physical, moral, and historical 209 The two first bear upon all religion; the latter only on special revelations 210 Natural religion is the belief in God, immortality, and the possibility of miracles generally 210 Physical science prefers to destroy natural religion by its connection of mind with matter 210 1st. Making conscious life a function of the brain. 2nd. Evolving the living organisms from lifeless matter. 3rd. Making this material evolution automatic 210 Thus all external proofs of God are destroyed 212 And also of the soul's immortality 213 External proof is declared to be the test of reality 213 And therefore all religion is set down as a dream 215 But we believe that proof _is_ the test of reality, not because it is proved to be so, but because of the authority of those who tell us so 215 But it will be found that these men do not understand their own principle 216 And, that in what they consider their most important conclusions they emphatically disregard it 217 One or other, therefore, of their opinions is worthless--their denial of religion or their affirmation of morality 219 But we shall see this more clearly in considering the question of consciousness and will 220 We shall see that, as far as science can inform us, man is nothing but an automaton 220 But the positive school are afraid to admit this 221 And not daring to meet the question, they make a desperate effort to confuse it 222 Two problems are involved in the matter: 1st. How is brain action connected with consciousness 223 2nd. Is the consciousness that is connected with it something separable from, and independent of it 223 The first of these problems has no bearing at all on any moral or religious question. It is insoluble. It leaves us not in doubt but in ignorance 224 The doubt, and the religious question is connected solely with the second problem 228 To which there are two alternative solutions 228 And modern science is so confused that it will accept neither 228 As Dr. Tyndall's treatment of the subject very forcibly shows us 230 And Dr. Tyndall in this way is a perfect representative of the whole modern positive school 231 Let us compare the molecules of the brain to the six moving billiard-balls 231 The question is, are these movements due to the stroke of one cue or of two 233 The positive school profess to answer this question both ways 234 But this profession is nonsense 236 What they really mean is, 1st. That the connection of consciousness with matter is a mystery; as to _that_ they _can_ give no answer. 2nd. That as to whether consciousness is wholly a material thing or no, they _will_ give no answer 237 But why are they in this state of suspense? 238 Though their system does not in the least require the hypothesis of an immaterial element in consciousness 239 They see that the moral value of life does 239 The same reasons that will warrant their saying it _may_ exist, will constrain them to say it _must_ 240 Physical science, with its proofs, can say nothing in the matter, either as to will, immortality, or God 242 But, on the other hand, it will force us, if we believe in will, to admit the reality of miracles 243 So far as science goes, morality and religion are both on the same footing 243 CHAPTER X. MORALITY AND NATURAL THEISM. Supposing science not to be inconsistent with theism, may not theism be inconsistent with morality? 247 It seems to be so; but it is no more so than is morality with itself. Two difficulties common to both:--1st. The existence of evil; 2nd. Man's free will and God's free will 248 James Mill's statement of the case represents the popular anti-religious arguments 249 But his way of putting the case is full of distortion and exaggeration 250 Though certain of the difficulties he pointed out were real 251 And those we cannot explain away; but if we are to believe in our moral being at all, we must one and all accept 252 We can escape from them by none of the rationalistic substitutes for religion 252 A similar difficulty is the freedom of the will 257 This belief is an intellectual impossibility 258 But at the same time a moral necessity 260 It is typical of all the difficulties attendant on an assent to our own moral nature 260 The vaguer difficulties that appeal to the _moral imagination_ we must meet in the same way 261 CHAPTER XI. THE HUMAN RACE AND REVELATION. Should the intellect of the world return to theism, will it ever again acknowledge a special revelation? 264 We can see that this is an urgent question 265 By many general considerations 265 Especially the career of Protestantism 267 Which is visibly evaporating into a mere natural theism 268 And, as such, is losing all restraining power in the world 271 Where then shall we look for a revelation? Not in any of the Eastern creeds 275 The claims of the Roman Church are the only ones worth considering 276 Her position is absolutely distinct from that of Protestantism, and she is not involved in its fall 277 In theory she is all that the enlightened world could require 279 The only question is, is she so in practice? This brings us to difficulties 282 1st. The partial success of her revelation; and her supposed condemnation of the virtues of unbelievers. But her partial success is simply the old mystery of evil 282 And through her infinite charity, she does nothing to increase that difficulty 283 The value of orthodoxy is analogous to the value of true physical science 285 All should try to learn the truth who can; but we do not condemn others who cannot 286 Even amongst Catholics generally no recondite theological knowledge is required 287 The facts of the Catholic _religion_ are simple. Theology is the complex scientific explanation of them 288 Catholicism is misunderstood because the outside world confuses with its religion--1st. The complex explanations of it 289 2nd. Matters of discipline, and practical rules 290 3rd. The pious opinions, or the scientific errors of private persons, or particular epochs 291 None of which really are any integral part of the Church 293 Neither are the peculiar exaggerations of moral feeling that have been prevalent at different times 293 The Church theoretically is a living, growing, self-adapting organism 295 She is, in fact, the growing, moral sense of mankind organised and developed under a supernatural tutelage 295 CHAPTER XII. UNIVERSAL HISTORY AND THE CLAIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. We must now consider the Church in relation to history and external historical criticism 297 1st. The history of Christianity; 2nd. The history of other religions 298 Criticism has robbed the Bible of nearly all the supposed internal evidences of its supernatural character 298 It has traced the chief Christian dogmas to non-Christian sources 300 It has shown that the histories of other religions are strangely analogous to the history of Christianity 300 And to Protestantism these discoveries are fatal 302 But they are not fatal to Catholicism, whose attitude to history is made utterly different by the doctrine of the perpetual infallibility of the Church 305 The Catholic Church teaches us to believe the Bible for her sake, not her for the Bible's 305 And even though her dogmas may have existed in some form elsewhere, they become new _revelations_ to us, by her supernatural selection of them 306 The Church is a living organism, for ever selecting and assimilating fresh nutriment 307 Even from amongst the wisdom of her bitterest enemies 309 All false revelations, in so far as they have professed to be infallible, are, from the Catholic standpoint, abortive Catholicisms 311 Catholicism has succeeded in the same attempt in which they have failed 313 CHAPTER XIII. BELIEF AND WILL. The aim of this book 315 Has been to clear the great question as to man's nature, and the proper way of regarding him, from the confusion at present surrounding it 317 And to show that the answer will finally rest, not on outer evidence, but on himself, and on his own _will_, if he have a will 319 NOTE. In this book the words '_positive_,' '_positivist_,' and '_positivism_' are of constant occurrence as applied to modern thought and thinkers. To avoid any chance of confusion or misconception, it will be well to say that these words as used by me have no special reference to the system of Comte or his disciples, but are applied to the common views and position of the whole scientific school, one of the most eminent members of which--I mean Professor Huxley--has been the most trenchant and contemptuous critic that 'positivism' in its narrower sense has met with. Over 'positivism' in this sense Professor Huxley and Mr. Frederic Harrison have had some public battles. Positivism in the sense in which it is used by me, applies to the principles as to which the above writers explicitly agree, not to those as to which they differ. W.H.M. Is Life Worth Living? CHAPTER I. THE NEW IMPORT OF THE QUESTION. _A change was coming over the world, the meaning and direction of which even still is hidden from us, a change from era to era._--Froude's _History of England_, ch. i. What I am about to deal with in this book is a question which may well strike many, at first sight, as a question that has no serious meaning, or none at any rate for the sane and healthy mind. I am about to attempt inquiring, not sentimentally, but with all calmness and sobriety, into the true value of this human life of ours, as tried by those tests of reality which the modern world is accepting, and to ask dispassionately if it be really worth the living. The inquiry certainly has often been made before; but it has never been made properly; it has never been made in the true scientific spirit. It has always been vitiated either by diffidence or by personal feeling; and the positive school, though they rejoice to question everything else, have, at least in this country, left the worth of life alone. They may now and then, perhaps, have affected to examine it; but their examination has been merely formal, like that of a customs-house officer, who passes a portmanteau, which he has only opened. They have been as tender with it as Don Quixote was with his mended helmet, when he would not put his card-paper vizor to the test of the steel sword. I propose to supply this deficiency in their investigations. I propose to apply exact thought to the only great subject to which it has not been applied already. To numbers, as I have just said, this will of course seem useless. They will think that the question never really was an open one; or that, if it ever were so, the common sense of mankind has long ago finally settled it. To ask it again, they will think idle, or worse than idle. It will express to them, if it expresses anything, no perplexity of the intellect, but merely some vague disease of the feelings. They will say that it is but the old ejaculation of satiety or despair, as old as human nature itself; it is a kind of maundering common to all moral dyspepsia; they have often heard it before, and they wish they may never hear it again. But let them be a little less impatient. Let them look at the question closer, and more calmly; and it will not be long before its import begins to change for them. They will see that though it may have often been asked idly, it is yet capable of a meaning that is very far from idle; and that however old they may think it, yet as asked by our generation it is really completely new--that it bears a meaning which is indeed not far from any one of them, but which is practical and pressing--I might almost say portentous--and which is something literally unexampled in the past history of mankind. I am aware that this position is not only not at first sight obvious, but that, even when better understood, it will probably be called false. My first care, therefore, will be to explain it at length, and clearly. For this purpose we must consider two points in order; first, what is the exact doubt we intend to express by our question; and next, why in our day this doubt should have such a special and fresh significance. Let us then make it quite plain, at starting, that when we ask 'Is life worth living?' we are not asking whether its balance of pains is necessarily and always in excess of its balance of pleasures. We are not asking whether any one has been, or whether any one is happy. To the unjaundiced eye nothing is more clear than that happiness of various kinds has been, and is, continually attained by men. And ingenious pessimists do but waste their labour when they try to convince a happy man that he really must be miserable. What I am going to discuss is not the superfluous truism that life has been found worth living by many; but the profoundly different proposition that it ought to be found worth living by all. For this is what life is pronounced to be, when those claims are made for it that at present universally are made; when, as a general truth, it is said to be worth living; or when any of those august epithets are applied to it that are at present applied so constantly. At present, as we all know, it is called sacred, solemn, earnest, significant, and so forth. To withhold such epithets is considered a kind of blasphemy. And the meaning of all such language is this: it means that life has some deep inherent worth of its own, beyond what it can acquire or lose by the caprice of circumstance--a worth, which though it may be most fully revealed to a man, through certain forms of success, is yet not destroyed or made a minus quantity by failure. Certain forms of love, for instance, are held in a special way to reveal this worth to us; but the worth that a successful love is thus supposed to reveal is a worth that a hopeless love is supposed not to destroy. The worth is a part of life's essence, not a mere chance accident, as health or riches are; and we are supposed to lose it by no acts but our own. Now it is evident that such a worth as this, is, in one sense, no mere fancy. Numbers actually have found it; and numbers actually still continue to find it. The question is not whether the worth exists, but on what is the worth based. How far is the treasure incorruptible; and how far will our increasing knowledge act as moth and rust to it? There are some things whose value is completely established by the mere fact that men do value them. They appeal to single tastes, they defy further analysis, and they thus form, as it were, the _bases_ of all pleasures and happiness. But these are few in number; they are hardly ever met with in a perfectly pure state; and their effect, when they are so met, is either momentary, or far from vivid. As a rule they are found in combinations of great complexity, fused into an infinity of new substances by the action of beliefs and associations; and these two agents are often of more importance in the result than are the things they act upon. Take for instance a boy at Eton or Oxford, who affects a taste in wine. Give him a bottle of gooseberry champagne; tell him it is of the finest brand, and that it cost two hundred shillings a dozen. He will sniff, and wink at it in ecstasy; he will sip it slowly with an air of knowing reverence; and his enjoyment of it probably will be far keener, than it would be, were the wine really all he fancies it, and he had lived years enough to have come to discern its qualities. Here the part played by belief and associations is of course evident. The boy's enjoyment is real, and it rests to a certain extent on a foundation of solid fact; the taste of the gooseberry champagne is an actual pleasure to his palate. Anything nauseous, black dose for instance, could never raise him to the state of delight in question. But this simple pleasure of sense is but a small part of the pleasure he actually experiences. That pleasure, as a whole, is a highly complex thing, and rests mainly on a basis that, by a little knowledge, could be annihilated in a moment. Tell the boy what the champagne really is, he has been praising; and the state of his mind and face will undergo a curious transformation. Our sense of the worth of life is similar in its complexity to the boy's sense of the worth of his wine. Beliefs and associations play exactly the same part in it. The beliefs in this last case may of course be truer. The question that I have to ask is, are they? In some individual cases certainly, they have not been. Miss Harriet Martineau, for instance, judging life from her own experience of it, was quite persuaded that it was a most solemn and satisfactory thing, and she has told the world as much, in no hesitating manner. But a part at least of the solemn satisfaction she felt in it was due to a grotesque over-estimate of her own social and intellectual importance. Here, then, was a worth in life, real enough to the person who found it, but which a little knowledge of the world would have at once taken away from her. Does the general reverence with which life is at present regarded rest in any degree upon any similar misconception? And if so, to what extent does it? Will it fall to pieces before the breath of a larger knowledge? or has it that firm foundation in fact that will enable it to survive in spite of all enlightenment, and perhaps even to increase in consequence of it? Such is the outline of the question I propose to deal with. I will now show why it is so pressing, and why, in the present crisis of thought, it is so needful that it should be dealt with. The first impression it produces, as I have said, is that it is superfluous. Our belief in life seems to rest on too wide an experience for us to entertain any genuine doubt of the truth of it. But this first impression does not go for much. It is a mere superficial thing, and will wear off immediately. We have but to remember that a belief that was supposed to rest on an equally wide basis--the belief in God, and in a supernatural order--has in these days, not been questioned only, but has been to a great degree, successfully annihilated. The only philosophy that belongs to the present age, the only philosophy that is a really new agent in progress, has declared this belief to be a dissolving dream of the past. And this belief, as we shall see presently, is, amongst civilized men at least, far older than the belief in life; it has been far more widely spread, and experience has been held to confirm it with an equal certainty. If this then is inevitably disintegrated by the action of a widening knowledge, it cannot be taken for granted that the belief in life will not fare likewise. It may do so; but until we have examined it more closely we cannot be certain that it will. Common consent and experience, until they are analysed, are fallacious tests for the seekers after positive truth. The emotions may forbid us to ask our question; but in modern philosophy the emotions play no part as organs of discovery. They are facts in themselves, and as such are of course of value; but they point to no facts beyond themselves. That men loved God and felt his presence close to them proves nothing, to the positive thinker, as to God's existence. Nor will the mere emotion of reverence towards life necessarily go any farther towards proving that it deserves reverence. It is distinctly asserted by the modern school that the right state in which to approach everything is a state of enlightened scepticism. We are to consider everything doubtful, until it is proved certain, or unless, from its very nature, it is not possible to doubt it. Nor is this all; for, apart from these modern canons, the question of life's worth has, as a matter of fact, been always recognised as in a certain sense an open one. The greatest intellects of the world, in all ages, have been at times inclined to doubt it. And these times have not seemed to them times of blindness; but on the contrary, of specially clear insight. Scales, as it were, have fallen from their eyes for a moment or two, and the beauty and worth of existence has appeared to them as but a deceiving show. An entire book of the Hebrew Scriptures is devoted to a deliberate exposition of this philosophy. In '_the most high and palmy state_' of Athens it was expressed fitfully also as the deepest wisdom of her most triumphant dramatist.[1] And in Shakspeare it appears so constantly, that it must evidently have had for him some directly personal meaning. This view, however, even by most of those who have held it, has been felt to be really only a half-view in the guise of a whole one. To Shakspeare, for instance, it was full of a profound terror. It crushed, and appalled, and touched him; and there was not only implied in it that for us life does mean little, but that by some possibility it might have meant much. Or else, if the pessimism has been more complete than this, it has probably been adopted as a kind of solemn affectation, or has else been lamented as a form of diseased melancholy. It is a view that healthy intellects have hitherto declined to entertain. Its advocates have been met with neglect, contempt, or castigation, not with arguments. They have been pitied as insane, avoided as cynical, or passed over as frivolous. And yet, but for one reason, to that whole European world whose progress we are now inheriting, this view would have seemed not only not untenable, but even obvious. The emptiness of the things of this life, the incompleteness of even its highest pleasures, and their utter powerlessness to make us really happy, has been, at least for fifteen hundred years, a commonplace, both with saints and sages. The conception that anything in this life could of itself be of any great moment to us, was considered as much a puerility unworthy of a man of the world, as a disloyalty to God. Experience of life, and meditation on life, seemed to teach nothing but the same lesson, seemed to preach a sermon _de contemptu mundi_. The view the eager monk began with, the sated monarch ended with. But matters did not end here. There was something more to come, by which this view was altogether transmuted, and which made the wilderness and the waste place at once blossom as the rose. Judged of by itself, this life would indeed be vanity; but it was not to be judged of by itself. All its ways seemed to break short aimlessly into precipices, or to be lost hopelessly in deserts. They led to no visible end. True; but they led to ends that were invisible--to spiritual and eternal destinies, to triumphs beyond all hope, and portentous failures beyond all fear. This all men might see, if they would only choose to see. The most trivial of our daily actions became thus invested with an immeasurable meaning. Life was thus evidently not vanity, not an idiot's tale, not unprofitable; those who affected to think it was, were naturally disregarded as either insane or insincere: and we may thus admit that hitherto, for the progressive nations of the world, the worth of life has been capable of demonstration, and safe beyond the reach of any rational questioning. But now, under the influence of positive thought, all this is changing. Life, as we have all of us inherited it, is coloured with the intense colours of Christianity; let us ourselves be personally Christians or not, we are instinct with feelings with regard to it that were applicable to it in its Christian state: and these feelings it is that we are still resolved to retain. As the most popular English exponent of the new school says: '_All positive methods of treating man, of a comprehensive kind, adopt to the full all that has ever been said about the dignity of man's moral and spiritual life._' But here comes the difficulty. This adoption we speak of must be justified upon quite new reasons. Indeed it is practically the boast of its advocates that it must be. An extreme value, as we see, they are resolved to give to life; they will not tolerate those who deny its existence. But they are obliged to find it in the very place where hitherto it has been thought to be conspicuous by its absence. It is to be found in no better or wider future, where injustice shall be turned to justice, trouble into rest, and blindness into clear sight; for no such future awaits us. It is to be found in life itself, in this earthly life, this life between the cradle and the grave; and though imagination and sympathy may enlarge and extend this for the individual, yet the limits of its extension are very soon arrived at. It is limited by the time the human race can exist, by the space in the universe that the human race occupies, and the capacities of enjoyment that the human race possesses. Here, then, is a distinct and intelligible task that the positive thinkers have set themselves. They have taken everything away from life that to wise men hitherto has seemed to redeem it from vanity. They have to prove to us that they have not left it vain. They have to prove those things to be solid that have hitherto been thought hollow; those things to be serious that have hitherto been thought contemptible. They must prove to us that we shall be contented with what has never yet contented us, and that the widest minds will thrive within limits that have hitherto been thought too narrow for the narrowest. Now, of course, so far as we can tell without examining the matter, they may be able to accomplish this revolution. There is nothing on the face of it that is impossible. It may be that our eyes are only blinded to the beauty of the earth by having gazed so long and so vainly into an empty heaven, and that when we have learnt to use them a little more to the purpose, we shall see close at hand in this life what we had been looking for, all this while, in another. But still, even if this revolution be possible, the fact remains that it is a revolution, and it cannot be accomplished without some effort. Our positive thinkers have a case to be proved. They must not beg the very point that is most open to contradiction, and which, when once duly apprehended, will be most sure to provoke it. If this life be not incapable of satisfying us, let them show us conclusively that it is not. But they can hardly expect that, without any such showing at all, the world will deliberately repel as a blasphemy what it has hitherto accepted as a commonplace. This objection is itself so obvious that it has not escaped notice. But the very fact of its obviousness has tended to hide the true force of it, and coming so readily to the surface, it has been set down as superficial. It is, however, very constantly recognised, and is being met on all sides with a very elaborate answer. It is this answer that I shall now proceed to consider. It is a very important one, and it deserves our most close attention, as it contains the chief present argument for the positive faith in life. I shall show how this argument is vitiated by a fundamental fallacy. It is admitted that to a hasty glance there may certainly seem some danger of our faith in life's value collapsing, together with our belief in God. It is admitted that this is not in the least irrational. But it is contended that a scientific study of the past will show us that these fears are groundless, and will reassure us as to the future. We are referred to a new branch of knowledge, the philosophy of history, and we are assured that by this all our doubts will be set at rest. This philosophy of history resembles, on an extended scale, the practical wisdom learnt by the man of the world. As long as a man is inexperienced and new to life, each calamity as it comes to him seems something unique and overwhelming, but as he lives on, suffers more of them, and yet finds that he is not overwhelmed, he learns to reduce them to their right dimensions, and is able, with sufficient self-possession, to let each of them teach some useful lesson to him. Thus we, it is said, if we were not better instructed, might naturally take the present decline of faith to be an unprecedented calamity that was ushering in an eve of darkness and utter ruin. But the philosophy of history puts the whole matter in a different light. It teaches us that the condition of the world in our day, though not normal, is yet by no means peculiar. It points to numerous parallels in former ages, and treats the rise and fall of creeds as regular phenomena in human history, whose causes and recurrence we can distinctly trace. Other nations and races have had creeds, and have lost them; they have thought, as some of us think, that the loss would ruin them: and yet they have not been ruined. Creeds, it is contended, were imaginative, provisional, and mistaken expressions of the underlying and indestructible sense of the nobility of human life. They were artistic, not scientific. A statue of Apollo, for instance, or a picture of the Madonna, were really representations of what men aimed at producing on earth, not of what actually had any existence in heaven. And if we look back at the greatest civilisations of antiquity, we shall find, it is said, that what gave them vigour and intensity were purely human interests: and though religion may certainly have had some reflex action on life, this action was either merely political or was else injurious. It is thus that intense Greek life is presented to us, the influence of which is still felt in the world. Its main stimulus we are told was frankly human. It would have lost none of its keenness if its theology had been taken from it. And there, it is said, we see the positive worth of life; we see already realised what we are now growing to realise once more. Christianity, with its supernatural aims and objects, is spoken of as an '_episode of disease and delirium_;' it is a confusing dream, from which we are at last awaking; and the feelings of the modern school are expressed in the following sentence of a distinguished modern writer:[2] '_Just as the traveller_,' he says, '_who has been worn to the bone by years of weary striving among men of another skin, suddenly gazes with doubting eyes upon the white face of a brother, so if we travel backwards in thought over the darker ages of the history of Europe we at length reach back with such bounding heart to men who had like hopes with ourselves, and shake hands across that vast with ... our own spiritual ancestors._' Nor are the Greeks the only nation whose history is supposed to be thus so reassuring to us. The early Jews are pointed to, in the same way, as having felt pre-eminently the dignity of this life, and having yet been absolutely without any belief in another. But the example, which for us is perhaps the most forcible of all, is to be found in the history of Rome, during her years of widest activity. We are told to look at such men as Cicero or as Cæsar--above all to such men as Cæsar--and to remember what a reality life was to them. Cæsar certainly had little religion enough; and what he may have had, played no part in making his life earnest. He took the world as he found it, as all healthy men have taken it; and, as it is said, all healthy men will still continue to take it. Nor was such a life as Cæsar's peculiar to himself. It represents that purely human life that flourished generally in such vigour amongst the Romans. And the consideration of it is said to be all the more instructive, because it flourished in the face of just the same conditions that we think so disheartening now. There was in those times, as there is in ours, a wide disintegration of the old faiths; and to many, then as now, this fact seemed at once sad and terrifying. As we read Juvenal, Petronius, Lucian, or Apuleius, we are astounded at the likeness of those times to these. Even in minute details, they correspond with a marvellous exactness. And hence there seems a strange force in the statement that history repeats itself, and that the wisdom learnt from the past can be applied to the present and the future. But all this, though it is doubtless true, is in reality only half the truth; and as used in the arguments of the day, it amounts practically to a profound falsehood. History in a certain sense, of course, does repeat itself; and the thing that has been is in a certain sense the thing that shall be. But there is a deeper and a wider sense in which, this is not so. Let us take the life of an individual man, for instance. A man of fifty will retain very likely many of the tastes and tricks that were his, when a boy of ten: and people who have known him long will often exclaim that he is just the same as he always was. But in spite of this, they will know that he is very different. His hopes will have dwindled down; the glow, the colour, and the bright haze will have gone from them; things that once amused him will amuse him no more: things he once thought important, he will consider weary trifles; and if he thinks anything serious at all, they will not be things he thought serious when a boy. The same thing is true of the year, and its changing seasons. The history of a single year may be, in one sense, said to repeat itself every day. There is the same recurrence of light and darkness, of sunrise and of sunset: and a man who had lived only for a month or two, might fancy that this recurrence was complete. But let him live a little longer, and he will come to see that this is not so. Slowly through the summer he will begin to discern a change; until at last he can contrast the days and nights of winter with the days and nights of summer, and see how flowers that once opened fresh every morning, now never open or close at all. Then he will see that the two seasons, though in many points so like each other, are yet, in a far deeper way, different. And so it is with the world's history. Isolate certain phenomena, and they do, without doubt, repeat themselves; but it is only when isolated that they can be said to do so. In many points the European thought and civilisation of to-day may seem to be a repetition of what has been before; we may fancy that we recognise our brothers in the past, and that we can, as the writer above quoted says, shake hands with them across the intervening years. But this is really only a deceiving fancy, when applied to such deep and universal questions as those we have now to deal with--to religion, to positive thought, and to the worth of life. The positivists and the unbelievers of the modern world, are not the same as those of the ancient world. Even when their language is identical, there is an immeasurable gulf between them. In our denials and assertions there are certain new factors, which at once make all such comparisons worthless. The importance of these will by-and-by appear more clearly, but I shall give a brief account of them now. The first of these factors is the existence of Christianity, and that vast and undoubted change in the world of which it has been at once the cause and the index. It has done a work, and that work still remains: and we all feel the effects of it, whether we will or no. Described in the most general way, that work has been this. The supernatural, in the ancient world, was something vague and indefinite: and the classical theologies at any rate, though they were to some extent formal embodiments of it, could embody really but a very small part. Zeus and the Olympian hierarchies were dimly perceived to be encircled by some vaster mystery; which to the popular mind was altogether formless, and which even such men as Plato could only describe inadequately. The supernatural was like a dim and diffused light, brighter in some places, and darker in others, but focalised and concentrated nowhere. Christianity has focalised it, united into one the scattered points of brightness, and collected other rays that were before altogether imperceptible. That vague '_idea of the good_,' of which Plato said most men dimly augured the existence, but could not express their augury, has been given a definite shape to by Christianity in the form of its Deity. That Deity, from an external point of view, may be said to have acquired His sovereignty as did the Roman Cæsar. He absorbed into His own person the offices of all the gods that were before him, as the Roman Cæsar absorbed all the offices of the state; and in His case also, as has been said of the Roman Cæsar, the whole was immeasurably greater than the mere sum of the parts. Scientifically and philosophically He became the first cause of the world; He became the father of the human soul, and its judge; and what is more, its rest and its delight, and its desire. Under the light of this conception, man appeared an ampler being. His thoughts were for ever being gazed on by the great controller of all things; he was made in the likeness of the Lord of lords; he was of kin to the power before which all the visible world trembled; and every detail in the life of a human soul became vaster, beyond all comparison, than the depths of space and time. But not only did the sense of man's dignity thus develop, and become definite. The accompanying sense of his degradation became intenser and more definite also. The gloom of a sense of sin is to be found in Æschylus, but this gloom was vague and formless. Christianity gave to it both depth and form; only the despair that might have been produced in this way was now softened by hope. Christianity has, in fact, declared clearly a supernatural of which men before were more or less ignorantly conscious. The declaration may or may not have been a complete one, but at any rate it is the completest that the world has yet known. And the practical result is this: when we, in these days, deny the supernatural, we are denying it in a way in which it was never denied before. Our denial is beyond all comparison more complete. The supernatural, for the ancient world, was like a perfume scenting life, out of a hundred different vessels, of which only two or three were visible to the same men or nations. They therefore might get rid of these, and yet the larger part of the scent would still remain to them. But for us, it is as though all the perfume had been collected into a single vessel; and if we get rid of this, we shall get rid of the scent altogether. Our air will be altogether odourless. The materialism of Lucretius is a good instance of this. In many ways his denials bear a strong resemblance to ours. But the resemblance ceases a little below the surface. He denied the theology of his time as strongly as our positive thinkers deny the theology of ours. But the theology he denied was incomplete and puerile. He was not denying any 'All-embracer and All-sustainer,' for he knew of none such. And his denial of the gods he did deny left him room for the affirmation of others, whose existence, if considered accurately, was equally inconsistent with his own scientific premisses. Again, in his denial of any immortality for man, what he denied is not the future that we are denying. The only future he knew of was one a belief in which had no influence on us, except for sadness. It was a protraction only of what is worst in life; it was in no way a completion of what is best in it. But with us the case is altogether different. Formerly the supernatural could not be denied completely, because it was not known completely. Not to affirm is a very different thing from to deny. And many beliefs which the positivists of the modern world are denying, the positivists of the ancient world more or less consciously lived by. Next, there is this point to remember. Whilst during the Christian centuries, the devotion to a supernatural and extramundane aim has been engendering, as a recent writer has observed with indignation, a degrading '_pessimism as to the essential dignity of man_,'[3] the world which we have been to a certain extent disregarding has been changing its character for us. In a number of ways, whilst we have not been perceiving it, its objective grandeur has been dwindling; and the imagination, when again called to the feat, cannot reinvest it with its old gorgeous colouring. Once the world, with the human race, who were the masters of it, was a thing of vast magnitude--the centre of the whole creation. The mind had no larger conceptions that were vivid enough to dwarf it. But now all this has changed. In the words of a well-known modern English historian, _'The floor of heaven, inlaid with stars, has sunk back into an infinite abyss of immeasurable space; and the firm earth itself, unfixed from its foundations, is seen to be but a small atom in the awful easiness of the universe.'_[4] The whole position, indeed, is reversed. The skies once seemed to pay the earth homage, and to serve it with light and shelter. Now they do nothing, so far as the imagination is concerned, but spurn and dwarf it. And when we come to the details of the earth's surface itself, the case is just the same. It, in its extent, has grown little and paltry to us. The wonder and the mystery has gone from it. A Cockney excursionist goes round it in a holiday trip; there are no _Golden cities, ten months journey deep, In far Tartarian wilds_;[5] nor do the confines of civilisation, melt as they once did, into any unknown and unexplored wonderlands. And thus a large mass of sentiment that was once powerful in the world is now rapidly dwindling, and, so far as we can see, there is nothing that can ever exactly replace it. Patriotism, for instance, can never again be the religion it was to Athens, or the pride it was to Rome. Men are not awed and moved as once they were by local and material splendours. The pride of life, it is true, is still eagerly coveted; but by those at least who are most familiar with it, it is courted and sought for with a certain contempt and cynicism. It is treated like a courtesan, rather than like a goddess. Whilst as to the higher enthusiasm that was once excited by external things, the world in its present state could no more work itself up to this than a girl, after three seasons, could again go for dissipation to her dolls. She might look back to the time of dolls with regret. She might see that the interest they excited in her was, perhaps, far more pleasing than any she had found in love. But the dolls would never rival her lovers, none the less. And with man, and his aims and objects, the case is just the same. And we must remember that to realise keenly the potency of a past ideal, is no indication that practically it will ever again be powerful. Briefly, then, the positive school of to-day we see thus far to be in this position. It has to make demands upon human life that were never made before; and human life is, in many ways, less able than it ever was to answer to them. But this is not all. There is a third matter yet left to consider--a third factor in the case, peculiar to the present crisis. That is the intense self-consciousness that is now developed in the world, and which is something altogether new to it. During the last few generations man has been curiously changing. Much of his old spontaneity of action has gone from him. He has become a creature looking before and after; and his native hue of resolution has been sickled over by thought. We admit nothing now without question; we have learnt to take to pieces all motives to actions. We not only know more than we have done before, but we are perpetually chewing the cud of our knowledge. Thus positive thought reduces all religions to ideals created by man; and as such, not only admits that they have had vast influence, but teaches us also that we in the future must construct new ideals for ourselves. Only there will be this difference. We shall now know that they are ideals, we shall no longer mistake them for objective facts. But our positive thinkers forget this. They forget that the ideals that were once active in the world were active amongst people who thought that they were more than ideals, and who very certainly did mistake them for facts; and they forget how different their position will be, as soon as their true nature is recognised. There is no example, so far as I know, to be found in all history, of men having been stimulated or affected in any important way--none, at any rate, of their having been restrained or curbed--by a mere ideal that was known to have no reality to correspond to it. A child is frightened when its nurse tells it that a black man will come down the chimney and take it away. The black man, it is true, is only an ideal; and yet the child is affected. But it would cease to be affected the instant it knew this. As we go on with our enquiry these considerations will become plainer to us. But enough has even now been said to show how distinct the present position is from any that have gone before it, and how little the experience of the past is really fitted to reassure us. Greek and Roman thought was positive, in our sense of the word, only in a very small degree. The thought of the other ancient empires was not positive at all. The oldest civilisation of which any record is left to us--the civilisation of Egypt--was based on a theism which, of all other theisms, most nearly approaches ours. And the doctrine of a future life was first learnt by the Jews from their masters during the Captivity. We search utterly in vain through history for any parallel to our own negations. I have spoken hitherto of those peoples only whose history more or less directly has affected ours. But there is a vast portion of the human race with which, roughly speaking, our progress has had no connection; and the religions of these races, which are now for the first time beginning to be accurately studied, are constantly being appealed to in support of the positive doctrines. Thus it is urged by Mr. Leslie Stephen that _'the briefest outline of the religious history of mankind shows that creeds which can count more adherents than Christianity, and have flourished through a longer period, have omitted all that makes the Christian doctrine of a future state 'valuable in the eyes of the supporters_;' and Dr. Tyndall points with the same delighted confidence to the gospel of Buddhism, as one of '_pure human ethics, divorced not only from Brahma and the Brahminic Trinity, but even from the existence of God_.'[6] Many other such appeals are made to what are somewhat vaguely called '_the multitudinous creeds of the East_;' but it is to Buddhism, in its various forms, that they would all seem to apply. Let us now consider the real result of them. Our positivists have appealed to Buddhism, and to Buddhism they shall certainly go. It is one of the vastest and most significant of all human facts. But its significance is somewhat different from what it is popularly supposed to be. That the Buddhist religion has had a wide hold on the world is true. Indeed, forty per cent. of the whole human race at this moment profess it. Except the Judaic, it is the oldest of existing creeds; and beyond all comparison it numbers most adherents. And it is quite true also that it does not, in its pure state, base its teaching on the belief in any personal God, or offer as an end of action any happiness in any immortal life. But it does not for this reason bear any real resemblance to our modern Western positivism, nor give it any reason to be sanguine. On the contrary, it is most absolutely opposed to it; and its success is due to doctrines which Western positivism most emphatically repudiates. In the first place, so far from being based on exact thought, Buddhism takes for its very foundation four great mysteries, that are explicitly beyond the reach either of proof or reason; and of these the foremost and most intelligible is the transmigration and renewal of the existence of the individual. It is by this mystical doctrine, and by this alone, that Buddhism gains a hold on the common heart of man. This is the great fulcrum of its lever. Then further--and this is more important still--whereas the doctrine of Western positivism is that human life is good, or may be made good; and that in the possibility of the enjoyment of it consists the great stimulus to action; the doctrine of Buddhism is that human life is evil, and that man's right aim is not to gratify, but to extinguish, his desire for it. Love, for instance, as I have said before, is by most Western positivists held to be a high blessing. Buddhism tells us we should avoid it '_as though it were a pit of burning coals_.' The most influential positive writer in England[7] has said: '_I desire no future that will break the ties of the past_.' Buddhism says that we should desire no present that will create any ties for the future. The beginning of the Buddhist teaching is the intense misery of life; the reward of Buddhist holiness is to, at last, live no longer. If we die in our sins, we shall be obliged to live again on the earth; and it will not be, perhaps, till after many lives that the necessity for fresh births will be exhausted. But when we have attained perfection, the evil spell is broken; and '_then the wise man_,' it is said, '_is extinguished as this lamp_.' The highest life was one of seclusion and asceticism. The founder of Buddhism was met, during his first preaching, with the objection that his system, if carried out fully, would be the ruin and the extermination of humanity. And he did not deny the charge; but said that what his questioners called ruin, was in reality the highest good. It is then hard to conceive an appeal more singularly infelicitous than that which our modern positivists make to Buddhism. It is the appeal of optimists to inveterate pessimists, and of exact thinkers to inveterate mystics. If the consideration of it tells us anything of importance, it tells us this--that by far the largest mass of mankind that has ever been united by a single creed has explicitly denied every chief point that our Western teachers assert. So far then from helping to close the question we are to deal with--the question as to the positive worth of life, the testimony of Buddhism, if it be of any weight at all, can only go to convince us that the question is at once new and open--new, because it has never yet been asked so fully; and open, because in so far as it has been asked, nearly half mankind has repudiated the answer that we are so desirous of giving it. Mr. Leslie Stephen calls Buddhism 'a stupendous fact,' and I quite agree with him that it is so; but taken in connection with the present philosophy of Europe, it is hardly a fact to strengthen our confidence in the essential dignity of man, or the worth of man's life. In short, the more we consider the matter, and the more various the points from which we do so, the more plain will it become to us that the problem the present age is confronted by is an altogether unanswered one; and that the closest seeming parallels to be found amongst other times and races, have far less really of parallelism in them than of contrast. The path of thought, as it were, has taken a sudden turn round a mountain; and our bewildered eyes are staring on an undreamed-of prospect. The leaders of progress thus far have greeted the sight with acclamation, and have confidently declared that we are looking on the promised land. But to the more thoughtful, and to the less impulsive, it is plain that a mist hangs over it, and that we have no right to be sure whether it is the promised land or no. They see grave reasons for making a closer scrutiny, and for asking if, when the mist lifts, what we see will be not splendour, but desolation. Such, in brief outline, is the question we are to deal with. We will now go on to approach it in a more detailed way. FOOTNOTES: [1] Vide Sophocles, _OEdipus Coloneus_. [2] Professor Clifford, whose study of history leads him to regard Catholicism as nothing more than an 'episode' in the history of Western progress. [3] Mr. Frederic Harrison. [4] Mr. Froude, _History of England_, chap. i. [5] Wordsworth. [6] Quoted by Dr. Tyndall from Professor Blackie. [7] George Eliot. CHAPTER II. THE PRIZE OF LIFE. '_The kingdom of heaven is like unto a treasure hid in a field._' Having thus seen broadly what is meant by that claim for life that we are about to analyse, we must now examine it more minutely, as made by the positive school themselves. This will at once make evident one important point. The worth in question is closely bound up with what we call _morality_. In this respect our deniers of the supernatural claim to be on as firm a footing as the believers in it. They will not admit that the earnestness of life is lessened for them; or that they have opened any door either to levity or to licentiousness. It is true indeed that it is allowed occasionally that the loss of a faith in God, and of the life in a future, may, under certain circumstances, be a real loss to us. Others again contend that this loss is a gain. Such views as these, however, are not much to the purpose. For those even, according to whom life has lost most in this way, do not consider the loss a very important, still less a fatal one. The _good_ is still to be an aim for us, and our devotion to it will be more valuable because it will be quite disinterested. Thus Dr. Tyndall informs us that though he has now rejected the religion of his earlier years, yet granting him proper health of body, there is '_no spiritual experience_,' such as he then knew, '_no resolve of duty, no word of mercy, no act of self-renouncement, no solemnity of thought, no joy in the life and aspects of nature, that would not still be_' his. The same is the implicit teaching of all George Eliot's novels; whilst Professor Huxley tells us that come what may to our '_intellectual beliefs and even education_,' '_the beauty of holiness and the ugliness of sin_' will remain for those that have eyes to see them, '_no mere metaphors, but real and intense feelings_.' These are but a few examples, but the view of life they illustrate is so well known that these few will suffice. The point on which the modern positivist school is most vehement, is that it does not destroy, but that on the contrary it intensifies, the distinction between right and wrong. And now let us consider what, according to all positive theories, this supremacy of morality means. It means that there is a certain course of active life, and a certain course only, by which life can be made by everyone a beautiful and a noble thing: and life is called earnest, because such a prize is within our reach, and solemn because there is a risk that we may fail to reach it. Were this not so, right and wrong could have no general and objective meaning. They would be purely personal matters--mere misleading names, in fact, for the private likes and the dislikes of each of us; and to talk of right, and good, and morality, as things that we ought all to conform to, and to live by, would be simply to talk nonsense. What the very existence of a moral system implies is, that whatever may be our personal inclinations naturally, there is some common pattern to which they should be all adjusted; the reason being that we shall so all become partakers in some common happiness, which is greater beyond comparison than every other kind. Here we are presented with two obvious tasks: the first, to enquire what this happiness is, what are the qualities and attractions generally ascribed to it; the second, to analyse it, as it is thus held up to us, and to see if its professed ingredients are sufficient to make up the result. To proceed then, all moral systems must, as we have just seen, postulate some end of action, an end to which morality is the only road. Further, this end is the one thing in life that is really worth attaining; and since we have to do with no life other than this one, it must be found amongst the days and years of which this short life is the aggregate. On the adequacy of this universal end depends the whole question of the positive worth of life, and the essential dignity of man. That this is at least one way of stating the case has been often acknowledged by the positive moralists themselves. The following passage, for instance, is from the autobiography of J.S. Mill. '_From the winter of 1821_,' he writes, '_when I first read Bentham.... I had what might truly be called an object in life, to be a reformer of the world.... I endeavoured to pick up as many flowers as I could by the way; but as a serious and permanent personal satisfaction to rest upon, my whole reliance was placed on this.... But the time came when I awakened from this as from a dream.... It occurred to me to put the question directly to myself: "Suppose that all your objects in life realised; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you were looking forward to, could be completely effected in this very instant, would this be a very great joy and happiness to you?" And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered "No!" At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down.... The end had ceased to charm, and how could there ever again be any interest in the means? I seemed to have nothing left to live for.... The lines in Coleridge's "Dejection" exactly describe my case_:-- "_O grief without a pang, void, dark and drear, A dreary, stifled, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet nor relief In word, or sigh, or tear. * * * * * Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve, And life without an object cannot live._"' And the foregoing confession is made more significant by the author's subsequent comment on it. '_Though my dejection,' he says, 'honestly looked at, could not be called other than egotistical, produced by the ruin, as I thought, of my fabric of happiness, yet the destiny of mankind was ever in my thoughts, and could not be separated from my own. I felt that the flaw in my life must be a flaw in life itself; and that the question was whether, if the reformers of society and government could succeed in their objects, and every person in the community were free, and in a state of physical comfort, the pleasures of life being no longer kept up by struggle and privation, would cease to be pleasures. And I felt that unless I could see some better hope than this for human happiness in general, my dejection must continue.'_ It is true that in Mill's case the dejection did not continue; and that in certain ways at which it is not yet time to touch, he succeeded, to his own satisfaction, in finding the end he was thus asking for. I only quote him to show how necessary he considered such an end to be. He acknowledged the fact, not only theoretically, or with his lips, but by months of misery, by intermittent thoughts of suicide, and by years of recurring melancholy. Some ultimate end of action, some kind of satisfying happiness--this, and this alone, he felt, could give any meaning to work, or make possible any kind of virtue. And a yet later authority has told us precisely the same thing. He has told us that the one great question that education is of value for answering, is this very question that was so earnestly asked by Mill. '_The ultimate end of education_,' says Professor Huxley, '_is to promote morality and refinement, by teaching men to discipline themselves, and by leading them to see that the highest, as it is the only content, is to be attained not by grovelling in the rank and steaming valleys of sense, but by continually striving towards those high peaks, where, resting in eternal calm, reason discerns the undefined but bright ideal of the highest good--"a cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night_."' And these words are an excellent specimen of the general moral exhortations of the new school. Now all this is very well as far as it goes; and were there not one thing lacking, it would be just the answer that we are at present so anxious to elicit. But the one thing lacking, is enough to make it valueless. It may mean a great deal; but there is no possibility of saying exactly what it means. Before we can begin to strive towards the 'highest good,' we must know something of what this 'highest good' is. We must make this 'higher ideal' stand and unfold itself. If it cannot be made to do this, if it vanishes into mist as we near it, and takes a different shape to each of us as we recede from it; still more, if only some can see it, and to others it is quite invisible--then we must simply set it down as an illusion, and waste no more time in pursuit of it. But that it is not an illusion is the great positivist claim for it. Heaven and the love of God, we are told, were illusions. This 'highest good' we are offered, stands out in clear contradistinction to these. It is an actual attainable thing, a thing for flesh and blood creatures; it is to be won and enjoyed by them in their common daily life. It is, as its prophets distinctly and unanimously tell us, some form of happiness that results in this life to us, from certain conduct; it is a thing essentially for the present; and '_it is obviously_,' says Professor Huxley, '_in no way affected by abbreviation or prolongation of our conscious life_.' This being the case, it is clearly not unreasonable to demand some explicit account of it; or if no sound account of it be extant, to enquire diligently what sort of account of it is possible. And let it be remembered that to make this demand is in no way to violate the great rule of Aristotle, and to demand a greater accuracy than the nature of the subject will admit of. The 'highest good,' it is quite possible, may be a vague thing; not capable, like a figure in Euclid, of being defined exactly. But many vague things can be described exactly enough for all practical purposes. They can be described so that we at once know what is meant, and so that we can at once find and recognise them. Feelings, characters, and personal appearance are things of this sort; so too is the taste of food, the style of furniture, or the general tone and tenour of our life, under various circumstances. And the 'good' we are now considering can surely be not less describable than these. When therefore our exact thinkers speak to us about the highest happiness, we want to know what meaning they attach to the words. Has Professor Huxley, for instance, ever enjoyed it himself, or does he ever hope to do so? If so, when, where, and how? What must be done to get it, and what must be left undone? And when it is got, what will it be like? Is it something brief, rapturous, and intermittent, as the language often used about it might seem to suggest to one? Is it known only in brief moments of Neoplatonic ecstasy, to which all the acts of life should be stepping stones? It certainly cannot be that. Our exact thinkers are essentially no mystics, and the highest happiness must be something far more solid than transcendental ecstasies. Surely, therefore, if it exists at all we must be able somewhere to lay our hands upon it. It is a pillar of fire by night; surely then it will be visible. It is to be lifted up, and is to draw all men unto it. It is nothing if not this: and we shall see more clearly if we consider the matter further. This chief good, or this highest happiness, being the end of moral action, one point about it is at once evident. Its value is of course recognised by those who practise morality, or who enunciate moral systems. Virtuous men are virtuous because the end gained by virtue is an end that they desire to gain. But this is not enough; it is not enough that to men who are already seeking the good the good should appear in all its full attractiveness. It must be capable of being made attractive for those who do not know it, and who have never sought it, but who have, on the contrary, always turned away from everything that is supposed to lead to it. It must be able, in other words, not only to satisfy the virtuous of the wisdom of their virtue, it must be able to convince the vicious of the folly of their vice. Vice is only bad in the eye of the positive moralist because of the precious _something_ that we are at the present moment losing by it. He can only convince us of our error by giving us some picture of our loss. And he must be able to do this, if his system is worth anything; and in promulgating his system he professes that he can do it. The physician's work is to heal the sick; his skill must not end in explaining his own health. It is clear that if a morality is incapable of being preached, it is useless to say that it is worthy of being practised. The statement will be meaningless, except to those for whom it is superfluous. It is therefore essential to the moral end that in some way or other it be generally presentable, so that its excellence shall appeal to some common sense in man. And again, be it observed, that we are demanding no mathematical accuracy. We demand only that the presentation shall be accurate enough to let us recognise its corresponding fact in life. Now what is a code of morals, and why has the world any need of one? A code of morals is a number of restraining orders; it rigorously bids us walk in certain paths. But why? What is the use of bidding us? Because there are a number of other paths that we are naturally inclined to walk in. The right path is right because it leads to the highest kind of happiness; the wrong paths are wrong because they lead to lower kinds of happiness. But when men choose vice instead of virtue, what is happening? They are considering the lower or the lesser happiness better than the greater or the higher. It is this mistake that is the essence and cause of immorality; it is this mistake that mankind is ever inclined to make, and it is only because of this inclination that any moral system is of any general value. Were we all naturally inclined to morality, the analysis of it, it is true, might have great speculative interest; but a moral system would not be needed as it is for a great practical purpose. The law, as we all know, has arisen because of transgressions, and the moralist has to meddle with human nature mainly because it is inconstant and corrupted. It is a wild horse that has not so much to be broken, once for all, as to be driven and reined in perpetually. And the art of the moralist is, by opening the mind's eye to the true end of life, to make us sharply conscious of what we lose by losing it. And the men to whom we shall chiefly want to present this end are not men, let us remember, who desire to see it, or who will seek for it of their own accord, but men who are turned away from it, and on whose sight it must be thrust. It is not the righteous but the sinners that have to be called to repentance. And not this only: not only must the end in question be thus presentable, but when presented it must be able to stand the inveterate criticism of those who fear being allured by it, who are content as they are, and have no wish to be made discontented. These men will submit it to every test by which they may hope to prove that its attractions are delusive. They will test it with reason, as we test a metal by an acid. They will ask what it is based upon, and of what it is compounded. They will submit it to an analysis as merciless as that by which their advisers have dissolved theism. Here then is a fact that all positive morality presupposes. It presupposes that life by its very nature contains the possibility in it of some one kind of happiness, which is open to all men, and which is better than all others. It is sufficiently presentable even to those who have not experienced it; and its excellence is not vaguely apparent only, but can be exactly proved from obvious and acknowledged facts. Further, this happiness must be removed from its alternatives by some very great interval. The proudest, the serenest, the most successful life of vice, must be miserable when compared with the most painful life of virtue, and miserable in a very high degree; for morality is momentous exactly in proportion to the interval between the things to be gained and escaped by it. And unless this interval be a very profound one, the language at present current as to the importance of virtue, the dignity of life, and the earnestness of the moral struggle, will be altogether overstrained and ludicrous. Now is such a happiness a reality or is it a myth? That is the great question. Can human life, cut off utterly from every hope beyond itself--can human life supply it? If it cannot, then evidently there can be no morality without religion. But perhaps it can. Perhaps life has greater capacities than we have hitherto given it credit for. Perhaps this happiness may be really close at hand for each of us, and we have only overlooked it hitherto because it was too directly before our eyes. At all events, wherever it is let it be pointed out to us. It is useless, as we have seen, if not generally presentable. To those who most need it, it is useless until presented. Indeed, until it is presented we are but acting on the maxim of its advocates by refusing to believe in its existence. '_No simplicity of mind_,' says Professor Clifford, '_no obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we believe_.' The question, then, that we want answered has by this time, I think, been stated with sufficient clearness, and its importance and its legitimacy been placed beyond a doubt. I shall now go on to explain in detail how completely unsatisfactory are the answers that are at present given it; how it is evaded by some and begged by others; and how those that are most plausible are really made worthless, by a subtle but profound defect. These answers divide themselves into two classes, which, though invariably confused by those that give them, are in reality quite distinct and separable. Professor Huxley, one of the most vigorous of our positive thinkers, shall help us to understand these. He is going to tell us, let us remember, about the '_highest good_'--the happiness, in other words, that we have just been discussing--the secret of our life's worth, and the test of all our conduct. This happiness he divides into two kinds.[8] He says that there are two things that we may mean when we speak about it. We may mean the happiness of a society of men, or we may mean the happiness of the members of that society. And when we speak of morality, we may mean two things also; and these two things must be kept distinct. We may mean what Professor Huxley calls '_social morality_,' and of this the test and object is the happiness of societies; or we may mean what he calls '_personal morality_,' and of this the test and object is the happiness of individuals. And the answers which our positive moralists make to us divide themselves into two classes, according to the sort of happiness they refer to. It is before all things important that this division be understood, and be kept quite clear in our minds, if we would see honestly what our positive modern systems amount to. For what makes them at present so very hard to deal with, is the fact that their exponents are perpetually perplexing themselves between these two classes of answers, first giving one, and then the other, and imagining that, by a kind of confusion of substance, they can both afford solutions of the same questions. Thus they continually speak of life as though its crowning achievement were some kind of personal happiness; and then being asked to explain the nature and basis of this, they at once shift their ground, and talk to us of the laws and conditions of social happiness. Professor Huxley will again supply us with a very excellent example. He starts with the thesis that _both_ sorts of morality are strong enough to hold their own, without supernatural aid; and when we look to see on what ground he holds they are, we find it to consist in the following explanation that _one_ is. '_Given_,' he says, '_a society of human beings under certain circumstances, and the question whether a particular action on the part of one of its members will tend to increase the general happiness or not, is a question of natural knowledge, and as such is a perfectly legitimate subject of scientific inquiry.... If it can be shown by observation or experiment, that theft, murder, and adultery do not tend to diminish the happiness of society, then, in the absence of any but natural knowledge, they are not social immoralities._' Now, in the above passage we have at least one thing. We have a short epitome of one of those classes of answers that our positive moralists are offering us. It is with this class that I shall deal in the following chapter; and point out as briefly as may be its complete irrelevance. After that, I shall go on to the other. FOOTNOTES: [8] Vide _Nineteenth Century_, No. 3, pp. 536, 537. CHAPTER III. SOCIOLOGY AS THE FOUNDATION OF MORALITY. Society, says Professor Clifford, is the highest of all organisms;[9] and its organic nature, he tells us, is one of those great facts which our own generation has been the first to state rationally. It is our understanding of this that enables us to supply morals with a positive basis. It is, he proceeds, because society is organic, '_that actions which, as individual, are insignificant, are massed together into ... important movements. Co-operation or_ band-work _is the life of it_.' And '_it is the practice of band-work_,' he adds, that, unknown till lately though its nature was to us, has so moulded man as '_to create in him two specially human faculties, the conscience and the intellect_;' of which the former, we are told, gives us the desire for the good, and the latter instructs us how to attain this desire by action. So too Professor Huxley, once more to recur to him, says that that state of man would be '_a true_ civitas Dei, _in which each man's moral faculty shall be such as leads him to control all those desires which run counter to the good of mankind_.' And J.S. Mill, whose doubts as to the value of life we have already dwelt upon, professed to have at last satisfied himself by a precisely similar answer. He had never '_wavered in the conviction_,' he tells us, even all through his perplexity, that, if life had any value at all, '_happiness_' was its one '_end_,' and the '_test of its rule of conduct_;' but he now thought that this end was to be attained by not making it the direct end, but '_by fixing the mind on some object other than one's own happiness; on the happiness of others--on the improvement of mankind_.' The same thing is being told us on all sides, and in countless ways. The common name for this theory is Utilitarianism; and its great boast, and its special professed strength, is that it gives morals a positive basis in the acknowledged science of sociology. Whether sociology can really supply such a basis is what we now have to enquire. There are many practical rules for which it no doubt can do so; but will these rules correspond with what we mean by morals? Now the province of the sociologist, within certain limits, is clear enough. His study is to the social body what the study of the physician is to the individual body. It is the study of human action as productive, or non-productive, of some certain general good. But here comes the point at issue--What is this general good, and what is included by it? The positive school contend that it is general happiness; and there, they say, is the answer to the great question--What is the test of conduct, and the true end of life? But though, as we shall see in another moment, there is some plausibility in this, there is really nothing in it of the special answer we want. Our question is, What is the true happiness? And what is the answer thus far?--That the true happiness is general happiness; that it is the happiness of men in societies; that it is happiness equally distributed. But this avails us nothing. The coveted _happiness_ is still a locked casket. We know nothing as yet of its contents. A happy society neither does nor can mean anything but a number of happy individuals, so organised that their individual happiness is secured to them. But what do the individuals want? Before we can try to secure it for them, we must know that. Granted that we know what will make the individuals happy, then we shall know what will make society happy. And then social morality will be, as Professor Huxley says, a perfectly legitimate subject of scientific enquiry--then, but not till then. But this is what the positive school are perpetually losing sight of; and the reason of the confusion is not far to seek. Within certain limits, it is quite true, the general good is a sufficiently obvious matter, and beyond the reach of any rational dispute. There are, therefore, certain rules with regard to conduct that we can arrive at and justify by strictly scientific methods. We can demonstrate that there are certain actions which we must never tolerate, and which we must join together, as best we may, to suppress. Actions, for instance, that would tend to generate pestilence, or to destroy our good faith in our fellows, or to render our lives and property insecure, are actions the badness of which can be scientifically verified. But the _general good_ by which these actions are tested is something quite distinct from happiness, though it undoubtedly has a close connection with it. It is no kind of happiness, high or low, in particular; it is simply those negative conditions required equally by every kind. If we are to be happy in any way, no matter what, we must of course have our lives, and, next to our lives, our health and our possessions secured to us. But to secure us these does not secure us happiness. It simply leaves us free to secure it, if we can, for ourselves. Once let us have some common agreement as to what this happiness is, we may then be able to formulate other rules for attaining it. But in the absence of any such agreement, the only possible aim of social morality, the only possible meaning of the _general good_, is not any kind or any kinds of happiness, but the security of those conditions without which all happiness would be impossible. Suppose the human race were a set of canaries in a cage, and that we were in grave doubt as to what seed to give them--hemp-seed, rape-seed, or canary-seed, or all three mixed in certain proportions. That would exactly represent the state of our case thus far. There is the question that we want the positive school to answer. It is surely evident that, in this perplexity, it is beside the point to tell us that the birds must not peck each other's eyes out, and that they must all have access to the trough that we are ignorant how to fill. The fault then, so continually committed by the positive school, is this. They confuse the negative conditions of happiness with the positive materials of it. Professor Huxley, in a passage I have already quoted, is caught, so to speak, in the very act of committing it. '_Theft, murder, and adultery_,' all these three, it will be remembered, he classes together, and seems to think that they stand upon the same footing. But from what has just been pointed out, it is plain that they do not do so. We condemn theft and murder for one reason. We condemn adultery for quite another. We condemn the former because they are incompatible with any form of happiness. We condemn the latter because it is the supposed destruction of one particular form; or the substitution, rather, of a form supposed to be less complete, for another form supposed to be more complete. If the '_highest good_,' if the best kind of happiness, be the end we are in search of, the truths of sociology will help us but a very short way towards it. By the practice of '_band-work_' alone we shall never learn to construct a '_true_ Civitas Dei.' Band-work with the same perfection may be practised for opposite ends. Send an army in a just war or an unjust one, in either case it will need the same discipline. There must be order amongst thieves, as well as amongst honest men. There can be an orderly brothel as well as an orderly nunnery, and all order rests on co-operation. We presume co-operation. We require an end for which to co-operate. I have already compared the science of sociology to that of medicine; and the comparison will again be a very instructive one. The aim of both sciences is to produce health; and the relation of health to happiness is in both cases the same. It is an important condition of the full enjoyment of anything: but it will by no means of itself give or guide us to the best thing. A man may be in excellent health, and yet, if he be prudent, be leading a degrading life. So, too, may a society. The Cities of the Plain may, for all we know to the contrary, have been in excellent social health; indeed, there is every reason to believe they were. They were, apparently, to a high degree strong and prosperous; and the sort of happiness that their citizens set most store by was only too generally attainable. There were not ten men to be found in them by whom the _highest good_ had not been realised. There are, however, two suppositions, on which the general good, or the health of the social organism, can be given a more definite meaning, and made in some sense an adequate test of conduct. And one or other of these suppositions is apparently always lurking in the positivist mind. But though, when unexpressed, and only barely assented to, they may seem to be true, their entire falsehood will appear the moment they are distinctly stated. One of these suppositions is, that for human happiness health is alone requisite--health in the social organism including sufficient wealth and freedom; and that man's life, whenever it is not interfered with, will be moral, dignified, and delightful naturally, no matter how he lives it. But this supposition, from a moralist, is of course nonsense. For, were it true, as we have just seen, Sodom might have been as moral as the tents of Abraham; and in a perfect state there would be a fitting place for both. The social organism indeed, in its highest state of perfection, would manifest the richest variety in the development of such various parts. It might consist of a number of motley communes[10] of monogamists and of free-lovers, of ascetics and sybarites, of saints and [Greek: paiderastai]--each of them being stones in this true _Civitas Dei_, this holy city of God. Of course it may be contended that this state of things would be desirable; that, however, is quite a different question. But whatever else it was, it would certainly not be moral, in any sense in which the word has yet been used. The second supposition I spoke of, though less openly absurd than this one, is really quite as false. It consists of a vague idea that, for some reason or other, happiness can never be distributed in an equal measure to all, unless it be not only equal in degree but also the same in kind; and that the one kind that can be thus distributed is a kind that is in harmony with our conceptions of moral excellence. Now this is indeed so far true, that there are doubtless certain kinds of happiness which, if enjoyed at all, can be enjoyed by the few alone; and that the conditions under which alone the few can enjoy them disturb the conditions of all happiness for the many. The general good, therefore, gives us at once a test by which such kinds of happiness can be condemned. But to eliminate these will by no means leave us a residue of virtue; for these so far from being co-extensive with moral evil, do in reality lie only on the borders of it; and the condemnation attached to them is a legal rather than a moral one. It is based, that is, not so much on the kind of happiness itself as on the circumstances under which we are at present obliged to seek it. Thus the practice of seduction may be said to be condemned sufficiently by the misery brought by it to its victims, and its victims' families. But suppose the victims are willing, and the families complacent, this ground of condemnation goes; though in the eye of the moralist, matters in this last will be far worse than in the former. It is therefore quite a mistake to say that the kind of happiness which it is the end of life to realise is defined or narrowed down appreciably by the fact that it is a general end. Vice can be enjoyed in common, just as well as virtue; nor if wisely regulated will it exhaust the tastes that it appeals to. Regulated with equal skill, and with equal far-sightedness, it will take its place side by side with virtue; nor will sociology or social morality give us any reason for preferring the one to the other. We may observe accordingly, that if happiness of some certain kind be the moral test, what Professor Huxley calls '_social morality_'--the rule that is, for producing the negative conditions of happiness, it is not in itself morality at all. It may indeed become so, when the consciousness that we are conforming to it becomes one of the factors of our own personal happiness. It then suffers a kind of apotheosis. It is taken up into ourselves, and becomes part and parcel of our own personal morality. But it then becomes quite a different matter, as we shall see very shortly; and even then it supplies us with but a very small part of the answer. Thus far what has been made plain is this. General, or social happiness, unless explained farther, is simply for moral purposes an unmeaning phrase. It evades the whole question we are asking; for happiness is no more differentiated by saying that it is general, than food is by saying that everyone at a table is eating it; or than a language is by saying that every one in a room is talking it. The social happiness of all of us means nothing but the personal happiness of each of us; and if social happiness have any single meaning--in other words, if it be a test of morals--it must postulate a personal happiness of some hitherto unexplained kind. Else sociology will be subsidiary to nothing but individual license; general law will be but the protection of individual lawlessness; and the completest social morality but the condition of the completest personal un-morality. The social organism we may compare to a yew-tree. Science will explain to us how it has grown up from the ground, and how all its twigs must have fitting room to expand in. It will not show us how to clip the yew-tree into a peacock. Morality, it is true, must rest ultimately on the proved facts of sociology; and this is not only true but evident. But it rests upon them as a statue rests upon its pedestal, and the same pedestal will support an Athenè or a Priapus. The matter, however, is not yet altogether disposed of. The type of personal happiness that social morality postulates, as a whole, we have still to seek for. But a part of it, as I just pointed out, will, beyond doubt, be a _willing_ obedience by each to the rules that make it in its entirety within the reach of all. About this obedience, however, there is a certain thing to remember: it must be willing, not enforced. The laws will of course do all they can to enforce it; but not only can they never do this completely, but even if they could, they would not produce morality. Conduct which, if willing, we should call highly moral, we shall, if enforced only, call nothing more than legal. We do not call a wild bear tame because it is so well caged that there is no fear of its attacking us; nor do we call a man good because, though his desires are evil, we have made him afraid to gratify them. Further, it is not enough that the obedience in question be willing in the sense that it does not give us pain. If it is to be a moral quality, it must also give us positive pleasure. Indeed, it must not so much be obedience to the law as an impassioned co-operation with it. Now this, if producible, even though no further moral aim was connected with it, would undoubtedly be of itself a moral element. Suppose two pigs, for instance, had only a single wallowing-place, and each would like naturally to wallow in it for ever. If each pig in turn were to rejoice to make room for his brother, and were consciously to regulate his delight in becoming filthy himself by an equal delight in seeing his brother becoming filthy also, we should doubtless here be in the presence of a certain moral element. And though this, in a human society, might not carry us so far as we require to be carried, it would, without doubt, if producible, carry us a certain way. The question is, Is this moral element, this impassioned and unselfish co-operation with the social law, producible, in the absence of any farther end to which the social law is to be subordinate? The positive school apparently think it is; and this opinion has a seeming foundation in fact. We will therefore carefully examine what this foundation is, and see how far it is really able to support the weight that is laid upon it. That fact, in itself a quite undoubted one, is the possession by man of a certain special and important feeling, which, viewed from its passive side, we call sympathy, and from its active side, benevolence. It exists in various degrees in different people, but to some degree or other it probably exists in all. Most people, for instance, if they hear an amusing story, at once itch to tell it to an appreciative friend; for they find that the amusement, if shared, is doubled. Two epicures together, for the same reason, will enjoy a dinner better than if they each dined singly. In such cases the enjoyment of another plays the part of a reflector, which throws one's own enjoyment back on one. Nor is this all. It is not only true that we often desire others to be pleased with us; we often desire others to be pleased instead of us. For instance, if there be but one easy chair in a room, one man will often give it up to another, and prefer himself to stand, or perhaps sit on the table. To contemplate discomfort is often more annoying than to suffer it. This is the fact in human nature on which the positive school rely for their practical motive power. It is this sympathy and benevolence that is the secret of the social union; and it is by these that the rules of social morality are to be absorbed and attracted into ourselves, and made the directors of all our other impulses. The feelings, however, that are thus relied on will be found, on consideration, to be altogether inadequate. They are undoubted facts, it is true, and are ours by the very constitution of our nature; but they do not possess the importance that is assigned to them, and their limits are soon reached. They are unequal in their distribution; they are partial and capricious in their action; and they are disturbed and counterbalanced by the opposite impulse of selfishness, which is just as much a part of our nature, and which is just as generally distributed. It must be a very one-sided view of the case that will lead us to deny this; and by such eclectic methods of observation we can support any theory we please. Thus there are many stories of unselfish heroism displayed by rough men on occasions such as shipwrecks, and displayed quite spontaneously. And did we confine our attention to this single set of examples, we might naturally conclude that we had here the real nature of man bursting forth in all its intense entirety--a constant but suppressed force, which we shall learn by-and-by to utilise generally. But if we extend our observations a little farther, we shall find another set of examples, in which selfishness is just as predominant as unselfishness was in the first set. The sailor, for instance, who might struggle to save a woman on a sinking ship, will trample her to death to escape from a burning theatre. And if we will but honestly estimate the composite nature of man, we shall find that the sailor, in this latter case, embodies a tendency far commoner, and far more to be counted on, than he does in the former. No fair student of life or history will, I think, be able to deny this. The lives of the world's greatest men, be they Goethes or Napoleons, will be the first to show us that it is so. Whilst the world's best men, who have been most successful in conquering their selfish nature, will be the first to bear witness to the persistent strength of it. But even giving these unpromising facts the least weight possible, the case will practically be not much mended. The unselfish impulses, let them be diffused never so widely, will be found, as a general rule, to be very limited in power; and to be intense only for short periods, and under exceptional circumstances. They are intense only--in the absence of any further motive--when the thing to be won for another becomes invested for the moment with an abnormal value, and the thing to be lost by oneself becomes abnormally depreciated; when all intermediate possibilities are suddenly swept away from us, and the only surviving alternatives are shame and heroism. But this never happens, except in the case of great catastrophes, of such, for instance, as a shipwreck; and thus the only conditions under which an impassioned unselfishness can be counted on, are amongst the first conditions that we trust to progress to eliminate. The common state of life, then, when the feelings are in this normal state of tension, is all that in this connection we can really be concerned in dealing with. And there, unselfishness, though as sure a fact as selfishness, is, spontaneously and apart from a further motive, essentially unequal to the work it is asked to do. Thus, though as I observed just now, a man may often prefer to sit on a table and give up the arm-chair to a friend, there are other times when he will be very loth to do so. He will do so when the pleasure of looking at comfort is greater than the pleasure of feeling it. And in certain states of mind and body this is very often the case. But let him be sleepy and really in need of rest, the selfish impulse will at once eclipse the unselfish, and, unless under the action of some alien motive, he will keep the arm-chair for himself. So, too, in the case of the two epicures, if there be sufficient of the best dainties for both, each will feel that it is so much the better. But whenever the dainties in question cannot be divided, it will be the tendency of each to take them furtively for himself. And when we come to the conditions of happiness the matter will be just the same. If without incommoding ourselves we can, as Professor Huxley says, repress '_all those desires which run counter to the good of mankind_,' we shall no doubt all willingly do so; only in that case little more need be said. The '_Civitas Dei_' we are promised may be left to take care of itself, and it will doubtless very soon begin '_to rise like an exhalation_.' But if this self-repression be a matter of great difficulty, and one requiring a constant struggle on our part, it will be needful for us to intensely realise, when we abstain from any action, that the happiness it would take from others will be far greater than the happiness it would give to ourselves. Suppose, for instance, a man were in love with his friend's wife, and had engaged on a certain night to take her to the theatre. He would instantly give the engagement up could he know that the people in the gallery would be burnt to death if he did not. He would certainly not give it up because by the sight of his proceedings the moral tone of the stalls might be infinitesimally lowered; still less would he do so because another wife's husband might be made infinitely jealous. Whenever we give up any source of personal happiness for the sake of the happiness of the community at large, the two kinds of happiness have to be weighed together in a balance. But the latter, except in very few cases, is at a great disadvantage: only a part of it, so to speak, can be got into the scale. What adds to my sense of pleasure in the proportion of a million pounds may be only taxing society in the proportion of half a farthing a head. Unselfishness with regard to society is thus essentially a different thing from unselfishness with regard to an individual. In the latter case the things to be weighed together are commensurate: not so is the former. In the latter case, as we have seen, an impassioned self-devotion may be at times produced by the sudden presentation to a man of two extreme alternatives; but in the former case such alternatives are not presentable. I may know that a certain line of conduct will on the one hand give me great pleasure, and that on the other hand, if it were practised by everyone, it would produce much general mischief; but I shall know that my practising it, will, as a fact, be hardly felt at all by the community, or at all events only in a very small degree. And therefore my choice is not that of the sailor's in the shipwreck. It does not lie between saving my life at the expense of a woman's, or saving a woman's life at the expense of mine. It lies rather, as it were, between letting her lose her ear-ring and breaking my own arm. It will appear, therefore, that the general conditions of an entirely undefined happiness form an ideal utterly unfitted to counterbalance individual temptation or, to give even willingness, let alone ardour, to the self-denials that are required of us. In the first place the conditions are so vague that even in the extremest cases the individual will find it difficult to realise that he is appreciably disturbing them. And in the second place, until he knows that the happiness in question is something of extreme value he will be unable to feel much ardour in helping to make it possible. If we knew that the social organism in its state of completest health had no higher pleasure than sleep and eating, the cause of its completest health would hardly excite enthusiasm. And even if we did not rebel against any sacrifices for so poor a result as this, we should at the best be resigned rather than blest in making them. The nearest approach to a moral end that the science of sociology will of itself supply to us is an end that, in all probability, men will not follow at all, or that will produce in them, if they do, no happier state than a passionless and passive acquiescence. If we want anything more than this we must deal with happiness itself, not with the negative conditions of it. We must discern the highest good that is within the reach of each of us, and this may perhaps supply us with a motive for endeavouring to secure the same blessing for all. But the matter depends entirely on what this highest good is--on the end to which, given the social health, the social health will be directed. The real answer to this question can be given, as I have said before, in terms of the individual only. Social happiness is a mere set of ciphers till the unit of personal happiness is placed before it. A man's happiness may of course depend on other beings, but still it is none the less contained in himself. If our greatest delight were to see each other dance the _can-can_, then it might be morality for us all to dance. None the less would this be a happy world, not because we were all dancing, but because we each enjoyed the sight of such a spectacle. Many young officers take intense pride in their regiments, and the character of such regiments may in a certain sense be called a corporate thing. But it depends entirely on the personal character of their members, and all that the phrase really indicates is that a set of men take pleasure in similar things. Thus it is the boast of one young officer that the members of his regiment all spend too much, of another that they all drink too much, of another that they are distinguished for their high rank, and of another that they are distinguished for the lowness of their sensuality. What differentiates one regiment from another is first and before all things some personal source of happiness common to all its members. And as it is with the character of a regiment, so too is it with the character of life in general. When we say that Humanity may become a glorious thing as a whole, we must mean that each man may attain some positive glory as an individual. What shall I get? and I? and I? and I? What do you offer me? and me? and me? This is the first question that the common sense of mankind asks. '_You must promise something to each of us_,' it says, '_or very certainly you will be able to promise nothing to all of us_.' There is no real escape in saying that we must all work for one another, and that our happiness is to be found in that. The question merely confronts us with two other facets of itself. What sort of happiness shall I secure for others? and what sort of happiness will others secure for me? What will it be like? Will it be worth having? In the positivist Utopia, we are told, each man's happiness is bound up in the happiness of all the rest, and is thus infinitely intensified. All mankind are made a mighty whole, by the fusing power of benevolence. Benevolence, however, means simply the wishing that our neighbours were happy, the helping to make them so, and lastly the being glad that they are so. But happiness must plainly be something besides benevolence; else, if I know that a man's highest happiness is in knowing that others are happy, all I shall try to procure for others is the knowledge that I am happy; and thus the Utopian happiness would be expressed completely in the somewhat homely formula, '_I am so glad that you are glad that I am glad_.' But this is, of course, not enough. All this gladness must be about something besides itself. Our good wishes for our neighbours must have some farther content than that they shall wish us well in return. What I wish them and what they wish me must be something that both they and I, each of us, take delight in for ourselves. It will certainly be no delight to men to procure for others what they will take no delight in themselves, if procured by others for them. '_For a joyful life, that is to say a pleasant life_,' as Sir Thomas More pithily puts it, '_is either evil; and if so, then thou shouldest not only help no man thereto, but rather as much as in thee lieth withdraw all men from it as noisome and hurtful; or else if thou not only mayest, but also of duty art bound to procure it for others, why not chiefly for thyself, to whom thou art bound to show as much favour and gentleness as to others?_' The fundamental question is, then, what life should a man try to procure for himself? How shall he make it most joyful? and how joyful will it be when he has done his utmost for it? It is in terms of the individual, and of the individual only, that the value of life can at first be intelligibly stated. If the coin be not itself genuine, we shall never be able to make it so by merely shuffling it about from hand to hand, nor even by indefinitely multiplying it. A million sham bank notes will not make us any richer than a single one. Granting that the riches are really genuine, then the knowledge of their diffusion may magnify for each of us our own pleasure in possessing them. But it will only do this if the share that is possessed by each be itself something very great to begin with. Certain intense kinds of happiness may perhaps be raised to ecstasy by the thought that another shares them. But if the feeling in question be nothing more than cheerfulness, a man will not be made ecstatic by the knowledge that any number of other people are cheerful as well as he. When the happiness of two or more people rises to a certain temperature, then it is true a certain fusion may take place, and there may perhaps be a certain joint result, arising from the sum of the parts. But below this melting point no fusion or union takes place at all, nor will any number of lesser happinesses melt and be massed together into one great one. Two great wits may increase each other's brilliancy, but two half-wits will not make a single whole one. A bad picture will not become good by being magnified, nor will a merely readable novel become more than readable by the publication of a million copies of it. Suppose it were a matter of life and death to ten men to walk to York from London in a day. Were this feat a possible one, they might no doubt each do their best to help the others to accomplish it. But if it were beyond the power of each singly, they would not accomplish it as a body, by the whole ten leaving Charing Cross together, and each of them walking one tenth of the way. The distance they could all walk would be no greater than the distance they could each walk. In the same way the value of human life, as a whole, depends on the capacities of the individual human being, as an enjoying animal. If these capacities be great, we shall be eager in our desire to gratify them--certainly for ourselves, and perhaps also for others; and this second desire may perhaps be great enough to modify and to guide the first. But unless these capacities _be_ great, and the means of gratifying them definite, our impulses on our own behalf will become weak and sluggish, whilst those on behalf of others will become less able to control them. It will be apparent farther from this, that just as happiness, unless some distinct positive quality, gains nothing as an end of action, either in value or distinctness, by a mere diffusion in the present--by an extension, as it were, laterally--so will it gain nothing further by giving it another dimension, and by prospectively increasing it in the future. We must know what it is first, before we know whether it is capable of increase. Apart from this knowledge, the conception of progress and the hope of some brighter destiny can add nothing to that required _something_, which, so far as sociology can define it for us, we have seen to be so utterly inadequate. Social conditions, it is true, we may expect will go on improving; we may hope that the social machinery will come gradually to run more smoothly. But unless we know something positive to the contrary, the outcome of all this progress may be nothing but a more undisturbed ennui or a more soulless sensuality. The rose-leaves may be laid more smoothly, and yet the man that lies on them may be wearier or more degraded. _To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death._ This, for all that sociology can inform us to the contrary, may be the lesson really taught us by the positive philosophy of progress. But what the positivists themselves learn from it, is something very different. The following verses are George Eliot's: _Oh may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In lives made better by their presence. So To live is heaven.... To make undying music in the world, Breathing us beauteous order that controls With growing sway the growing life of man. So we inherit that sweet purity For which we struggled, groaned, and agonised With widening retrospect, that bred despair.... That better self shall live till human time Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb Unread for ever. This is life to come, Which martyred men have made more glorious For us who strive to follow. May I reach That purest heaven, and be to other souls That cup of strength in some great agony, Enkindle generous ardour, feed pure love, Beget the smiles that have no cruelty, Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, And in diffusion ever more intense; So shall I join that choir invisible Whose music is the gladness of the world._ Here is the positive religion of benevolence and progress, as preached to the modern world in the name of exact thought, presented to us in an impassioned epitome. Here is hope, ardour, sympathy, and resolution, enough and to spare. The first question is,--How are these kindled, and what are they all about? They must, as we have seen, be about something that the science of sociology will not discover for us. Nor can they last, if, like an empty stomach, they prey only upon themselves. They must have some solid content, and the great thing needful is to discern this. It is quite true that to suffer, or even to die, will often seem _dulce et decorum_ to a man; but it will only seem so when the end he dies or suffers for is, in his estimation, a worthy one. A Christian might be gladly crucified if by so doing he could turn men from vice to virtue; but a connoisseur in wine would not be crucified that his best friend might prefer dry champagne to sweet. All the agony and the struggles, then, that the positivist saint suffers with such enthusiasm, depend alike for their value and their possibility on the object that is supposed to cause them. And in the verses just quoted this object is indeed named several times; but it is named only incidentally and in vague terms, as if its nature and its value were self-evident, and could be left to take care of themselves; and the great thing to be dwelt upon were the means and not the end: whereas the former are really only the creatures of the latter, and can have no more honour than the latter is able to bestow upon them. Now the only positive ends named in these verses are '_the better self_,' '_sweet purity_,' and '_smiles that have no cruelty_.' The conditions of these are _beauteous order_,' and the result of them is the '_gladness of the world_.' The rest of the language used adds nothing to our positive knowledge, but merely makes us feel the want of it. The purest heaven, we are told, that the men of any generation can look forward to, will be the increased gladness that their right conduct will secure for a coming generation: and that gladness, when it comes, will be, as it were, the seraphic song of the blessed and holy dead. Thus every present, for the positivist, is the future life of the past; earth is heaven perpetually realising itself; it is, as it were, an eternal choir-practice, in which the performers, though a little out of tune at present, are becoming momently more and more perfect. If this be so, there is a heaven of some sort about us at this moment. There is a musical gladness every day in our ears, our actual delight in which it might have been a heaven to our great-grandfathers to have anticipated in the last century. Now it is plain that this alleged music is not everywhere. Where, then, is it? And will it, when we have found it, be found to merit all the praise that is bestowed upon it? Sociology, as we have seen, may show us how to secure to each performer his voice or his instrument; but it will not show us how to make either the voice or the instrument a good one; nor will it decide whether the orchestra shall perform Beethoven or Offenbach, or whether the chorus shall sing a penitential psalm or a drinking song. When we have discovered what the world's highest gladness can consist of, we will again come to the question of how far such gladness can be a general end of action. FOOTNOTES: [9] Vide _Nineteenth Century_, October, 1877. [10] '_As Mr. Spencer points out, society does not resemble those organisms which are so highly centralised that the unity of the whole is the important thing, and every part must die if separated from the rest; but rather those that will bear separation and reunion; because, although there is a certain union and organisation of the parts in regard to one another, yet the far more important fact is the life of the parts separately. The true health of society depends upon the communes, the villages and townships, infinitely more than on the form and pageantry of an imperial government. If in them there is band-work, union for a common effort, converse in the working out of a common thought, there the Republic is._'--Professor Clifford, _Nineteenth Century_, October, 1877. CHAPTER IV. GOODNESS AS ITS OWN REWARD. '_Who chooses me must give, and hazard all he hath._' Inscription on the Leaden Casket. _Merchant of Venice._ What I have been urging in the last chapter is really nothing more than the positivists admit themselves. It will be found, if we study their utterances as a whole, that they by no means believe practically in their own professions, or consider that the end of action can be either defined and verified by sociology, or made attractive by sympathy. On the contrary, they confess plainly how inadequate these are by themselves, by continually supplementing them with additions from quite another quarter. But their fault is that this confession is, apparently, only half conscious with them; and they are for ever reproducing arguments as sufficient which they have already in other moments implicitly condemned as meaningless. My aim has been, therefore, to put these arguments out of court altogether, and safely shut the doors on them. Hitherto they have played just the part of an idle populace, often turned out of doors, but as often breaking in again, and confusing with their noisy cheers a judgment that has not yet been given. Let us have done, then, with the conditions of happiness till we know what happiness is. Let us have done with enthusiasm till we know if there is anything to be enthusiastic about. I have quoted George Eliot's cheers already, as expressing what this enthusiasm is. I will now quote her again, as showing how fully she recognises that its value depends upon its object, and that its only possible object must be of a definite, and in the first place, of a personal nature. In her novel of _Daniel Deronda_, the large part of the interest hangs on which way the heroine's character will develop itself; and this interest, in the opinion of the authoress, is of a very intense kind. Why should it be? she asks explicitly. And she gives her answer in the following very remarkable and very instructive passage: '_Could there be a slenderer, more insignificant thread,_' she says, '_in human history, than this consciousness of a girl, busy with her small inferences of the way in which she could make her life pleasant? in a time too, when ideas were with fresh vigour making armies of themselves, and the universal kinship was declaring itself fiercely: when women on the other side of the world would not mourn for the husbands and sons who died bravely in a common cause; and men, stinted of bread, on one side of the world, heard of that willing loss and were patient; a time when the soul of man was waking the pulses which had for centuries been beating in him unheard, until their full sense made a new life of terror or of joy._ '_What in the midst of that mighty drama are girls and their blind visions? They are the Yea or Nay of that good for which men are enduring and fighting. In these delicate vessels is borne onward through the ages the treasure of human affections._' Now here we come to solid ground at last. Here is an emphatic and frank admission of all that I was urging in the last chapter; and the required end of action and test of conduct is brought to a focus and localized. It is not described, it is true; but a narrow circle is drawn round it, and our future search for it becomes a matter of comparative ease. We are in a position now to decide whether it exists, or does not exist. It consists primarily and before all things in the choice by the individual of one out of many modes of happiness--the election of a certain '_way_,' in George Eliot's words, '_in which he will make his life pleasant_.' There are many sets of pleasure open to him; but there is one set, it is said, more excellent, beyond comparison, than the others; and to choose these, and these alone, is what will give us part in the holy value of life. The choice and the refusal of them is the Yea and the Nay of all that makes life worth living; and is the source, to the positivists, of the solemnity, the terrors, and sweetness of the whole ethical vocabulary. '_What then are the alternative pleasures that life offers_ me? _In how many ways am_ I _capable of feeling_ my _existence a blessing? and in what way shall_ I _feel the blessing of it most keenly_?' This is the great life-question; it may be asked indifferently by any individual; and in the positivist answer to it, which will be the same for all, and of universal application, must lie the foundation of the positive moral system. And that system, as I have said before, professes to be essentially a _moral_ one, in the old religious sense of the word. It retains the old ethical vocabulary; and lays the same intense stress on the old ethical distinctions. Nor is this a mere profession only. We shall see that the system logically requires it. One of its chief virtues--indeed the only virtue in it we have defined hitherto--is, as has been seen, an habitual self-denial. But a denial of what? Of something, plainly, that if denied to ourselves, can be conveyed as a negative or positive good to others. But the good things that are thus transferable cannot plainly be the '_highest good_,' or morality would consist largely of a surrender of its own end. This end must evidently be something inward and inalienable, just as the religious end was. It is a certain inward state of the heart, and of the heart's affections. For this inward state to be fully produced, and maintained generally, a certain sufficiency of material well-being may be requisite; but without this inward state such sufficiency will be morally valueless. Day by day we must of course have our daily bread. But the positivists must maintain, just as the Christians did, that man does not live by bread alone; and that his life does not consist in the abundance of the things that he possesses. And thus when they are brought face to face with the matter, we find them all, with one consent, condemning as false the same allurements that were condemned by Christianity; and pointing, as it did, to some other treasure that will not wax old--some water, the man who drinks of which will never thirst more. Now what is this treasure--this inward state of the heart? What is its analysis, and why is it so precious? As yet we are quite in the dark as to this. No positive moralist has as yet shown us, in any satisfactory way, either of these things. This statement, I know, will be contradicted by many; and, until it is explained further, it is only natural that it should be. It will be said that a positive human happiness of just the kind needed has been put before the world again and again; and not only put before it, but earnestly followed and reverently enjoyed by many. Have not truth, benevolence, purity, and, above all, pure affection, been, to many, positive ends of action for their own sakes, without any thought, as Dr. Tyndall says, '_of any reward or punishment looming in the future_'? Is not virtue followed in the noblest way, when its followers, if asked what reward they look for, can say to it, as Thomas Aquinas said to Christ, '_Nil nisi te, Domine_'? And has not it so been followed? and is not the positivist position, to a large extent at any rate, proved? Is it not true, as has been said by a recent writer, that[11] '_lives nourished, and invigorated by_ [a purely human] _ideal have been, and still may be, seen amongst us, and the appearance of but a single example proves the adequacy of the belief_?' I reply that the fact is entirely true, and the inference entirely false. And this brings me at once to a point I have before alluded to--to the most subtle source of the entire positivist error--the source secret and unsuspected, of so much rash confidence. The positive school can, and do, as we have seen, point to certain things in life which have every appearance, at first sight, of adequate moral ends. Their adequacy seems to be verified by every right feeling, and also by practical experiment. But there is one great fact that is forgotten. The positive school, when they deal with life, profess to exhibit its resources to us wholly free from the false aids of religion. They profess (if I may coin a word) to have _de-religionized_ it before they deal with it. But about this matter they betray a most strange ignorance. They think the task is far simpler than it is. They seem to look on religion as existing nowhere except in its pure form, in the form of distinct devotional feeling, or in the conscious assents of faith; and, these once got rid of, they fancy that life is de-religionized. But the process thus far is really only begun; indeed, as far as immediate results go, it is hardly even begun; for it is really but a very small proportion of religion that exists pure. The greater part of it has entered into combination with the acts and feelings of life, thus forming as it were, a kind of amalgam with them, giving them new properties, a new colour, a new consistence. To _de-religionize_ life, then, it is not enough to condemn creeds and to abolish prayers. We must further sublimate the beliefs and feelings, which prayers and creeds hold pure, out of the lay life around us. Under this process, even if imperfectly performed, it will soon become clear that religion in greater or less proportions is lurking everywhere. We shall see it yielded up even by things in which we should least look for it--by wit, by humour, by secular ambition, by most forms of vice, and by our daily light amusements. Much more shall we see it yielded up by heroism, by purity, by affection, and by love of truth--by all those things that the positivists most specially praise. The positivists think, it would seem, that they had but to kill God, and that his inheritance shall be ours. They strike out accordingly the theistic beliefs in question, and then turn instantly to life: they sort its resources, count its treasures, and then say, '_Aim at this, and this, and this. See how beautiful is holiness; see how rapturous is pleasure. Surely these are worth seeking for their own sakes, without any "reward or punishment looming in the future."_' They find, in fact, the interests and the sentiments of the world's present life--all the glow and all the gloom of it--lying before them like the colours on a painter's palette, and think they have nothing to do but set to work and use them. But let them wait a moment; they are in far too great a hurry. The palette and its colours are not nearly ready for them. One of the colours of life--religion, that is--a colour which, by their own admission, has been hitherto an important one, they have swept clean away. They have swept it clean away, and let them remember why they have done so. It may be a pleasing colour, or it may not: that is a matter of taste. But the reason why it is to be got rid of is that it is not a fast colour. It is found to fade instantly in the spreading sunlight of knowledge. It is rapidly getting dim and dull and dead. When once it is gone, we shall never be able to restore it, and our future pictures of life must be tinted without its aid. They therefore profess loudly that they will employ it no longer. But there is this point, this all-important point, that quite escapes them. They sweep the colour, in its pure state, clean off the palette; and then profess to show us by experiment that they can get on perfectly well without it. But they never seem to suspect that it may be mixed up with the colours they retain, and be the secret of their depth and lustre. Let them see whether religion be not lurking there, as a subtle colouring principle in all their pigments, even a grain of it producing effects that else were quite impossible. Let them only begin this analysis, and it will very soon be clear to them that to cleanse life of religion is not so simple a process as they seem to fancy it. Its actual dogmas may be readily put away from us; not so the effect which these dogmas have worked during the course of centuries. In disguised forms they are around us everywhere; they confront us in every human interest, in every human pleasure. They have beaten themselves into life; they have eaten their way into it. Like a secret sap they have flavoured every fruit in the garden. They are like a powerful drug, a stimulant, that has been injected into our whole system. If then we could appraise the vigour and value of life independent of religion, we can draw no direct conclusions from observing it in its present state. Before such observations can teach us anything, there is a great deal that will have to be made allowance for: and the positive school, when they reason from life as it is, are building therefore on an utterly unsound foundation. It is emphatically untrue to say that a single example in the present day, or for matter of that any number of examples, either goes or can go any way towards proving the adequacy of any non-religious formula. For all such formulæ have first to be further analysed before we know how far they are really non-religious; and secondly the religious element that will be certainly found existing in them will have, hypothetically, to be removed. It would be well if the positive school would spend in this spiritual analysis but a little of that skill they have attained to in their analysis of matter. In their experiments, for instance, on spontaneous generation, what untold pains have been taken! With what laborious thought, with what emulous ingenuity, have they struggled to completely sterilise the fluids in which they are to seek for the new production of life! How jealously do they guard against leaving there any already existing germs! How easily do they tell us their experiments may be vitiated by the smallest oversight! Surely spiritual matters are worthy of an equally careful treatment. For what we have here to study is not the production of the lowest forms of animal life, but the highest forms of human happiness. These were once thought to be always due to religion. The modern doctrine is that they are producible without such aid. Let us treat, then, the beauty of holiness, the love of truth, '_the treasure of human affection_,' and so forth, as Dr. Tyndall has treated the infusions in which life is said to originate. Let us boil them down, so to speak, and destroy every germ of religion in them, and then see how far they will generate the same ecstatic happiness. And let us treat in this way vice no less than virtue. Having once done this, we may honestly claim whatever yet remains to us. Then, we shall see what materials of happiness we can, as positive thinkers, call our own. Then, a positive moral system, if any such be possible, will begin to have a real value for us--then, but not till then. Such an analysis as this must be naturally a work of time; and much of it must be performed by each one of us for ourselves. But a sample of the operation can be given here, which will show plainly enough its nature, and the ultimate results of it. I shall begin, for this purpose, with reconsidering the moral end generally, and the three primary characteristics that are ascribed, by all parties, to it, as essentials. I shall point out, generally also, how much of religion is embodied in all these; and shall then proceed to one or two concrete examples, taken from the pleasures and passions that animate the life around us. These three characteristics of the moral end are its inwardness, its importance, and, within certain limits, its absolute character. I begin with its inwardness. I have spoken of this several times already, but the matter is so important that it will well bear repetition. By calling the moral end inward, I mean that it resides primarily not in action, but in motives to action; in the will, not in the deed; not in what we actually do, but in what we actually endeavour to do; in the love we give, rather than in the love that we receive. What defiles a man is that which comes out of his heart--evil thoughts, murders, adulteries. The thoughts may never find utterance in a word, the murders and adulteries may never be fulfilled in act; and yet, if a man be restrained, not by his own will, but only by outer circumstances, his immorality will be the same. The primary things we are '_responsible for_,' observes a recent positive writer,[12] are '_frames of mind into which we knowingly and willingly work ourselves_': and when these are once wrong, he adds, '_they are wrong for ever: no accidental failure of their good or evil fruits can possibly alter that_.' And as with what is wrong or vicious, so with what is right or virtuous; this in a like manner proceeds out of the mind or heart. '_The gladness of true heroism_,' says Dr. Tyndall, '_visits the heart of him who is really competent to say, "I court truth."_' It is not, be it observed, the objective attainment of truth that creates the gladness. It is the subjective desire, the subjective resolution. The moral end, for the positivist just as much as for the believer, is a certain inward state of the heart, or mind--a state which will of necessity, if possible, express itself in action, but whose value is not to be measured by the success of that expression. The battle-ground of good and evil is within us; and the great human event is the issue of the struggle between them. And this leads us on to the second point. The language used on all hands respecting this struggle, implies that its issue is of an importance great out of all proportion to our own consciousness of the results of it, nay, even that it is independent of our consciousness. It is implied that though a man may be quite ignorant of the state of his own heart, and though no one else can so much as guess at it, what that state is is of great and peculiar moment. If this were not so, and the importance of our inner state had reference only to our own feelings about it, self-deception would be as good as virtue. To believe we were upright, pure, and benevolent would be as good as to be so. We might have all the pleasures of morality with none of its inconveniences; for it is easy, if I may borrow a phrase of Mr. Tennyson's, to become _so false that we take ourselves for true_; and thus, tested by any pain or joy that we ourselves were conscious of, the results of the completest falsehood would be the same as those of the completest virtue. But let a man be never so perfect an instance of a result like this, no positivist moralist would contend that he was virtuous, or that he could be said, at his death, to have found the true treasure of life. On the contrary his career would be regarded as, in the profoundest sense, a tragedy. It is for this reason that such a value is set at present upon feminine purity, and that we are accustomed to call the woman ruined that has lost it. The outer harm done may not be great, and may lead to no ill consequences. The harm is all within: the tragedy is in the soul itself. But--and this is more important still--even here the harm may not be recognised: the act in question may lead to no remorse; and yet despite this, the case will be made no better. On the contrary it will be made a great deal worse. Any father or husband would recognise this, who was not professedly careless about all moral matters altogether. It would not, for instance, console a positivist for his daughter's seduction to know that the matter was hushed up, and that it gave the lady herself no concern whatever. It is implied in the language of all who profess to regard morality, that whether the guilty person be conscious or no of any remorse or sorrow, the same harm has been done by what we call guilt. There is, however (and this brings us to the third point), a very large part of the world that, as a fact, no matter what it professes, really sets upon morality no true value whatever. If it has ever realised at all what morality is, it has done so only partially; it has been more impressed with its drawbacks than with its attractions, and it becomes practically happier and more contented, the more it forgets the very idea of virtue. But it is implied, as we have seen, in the usual language of all of us that, let the vicious be as happy as possible, they have no right to such a happiness, and that if they choose to take it, it will in some way or other be the worse for them. This language evidently implies farther that there is some standard by which happiness is to be measured, quite apart from its completeness, and from our individual desire for it. That standard is something absolute, beyond and above the taste of any single man or of any body of men. It is a standard to which the human race can be authoritatively ordered to conform, or be despised, derided, and hated, if it refuse to do so. It is implied that those who find their happiness in virtue have a right to order and to force, if possible, all others to do the same. Unless we believed this there would be no such thing as moral earnestness in the propagation of any system. There could, indeed, be no such thing as propagandism at all. If a man (to use an example of Mill's) preferred to be a contented pig rather than a discontented Socrates, we should have no positive reason for thinking him wrong; even did we think so we should have no motive for telling him so; even if we told him, we should have no means of convincing him. Those, then, who regard morality as the rule of action, and the one key that can unlock for each of us the true treasure of life, who talk of things being noble and sacred and heroic, who call our responsibilities and our privileges[13] awful, and who urge on a listless world the earnestness and the solemnity of existence--all those, I say, who use such language as this, imply of the moral end three necessary things: first, that its essence is inward, in the heart of man; secondly, that its value is incalculable, and its attainment the only true happiness for us; thirdly, that its standard is something absolute, and not in the competence of any man or of all men to alter or abolish. That this is true may be very easily seen. Deny any one of these propositions; say that the moral end consists in something outward and alienable, not in something inward and inalienable; that its importance is small, and second to many other things; that its standard is not absolute, but varies according to individual taste; and morality becomes at once impossible to preach, and not worth preaching. Now for all these characteristics of the end of life, the theism that modern thought is rejecting could offer a strictly logical basis. And first, as to its importance. Here it may be said, certainly, that theism cuts the knot, and does not untie it. But at all events it gets rid of it; and in the following way. The theist confesses freely that the importance of the moral end is a thing that the facts of life, as we now know them, will never properly explain to us. It can at present be divined and augured only; its value is one of promise rather than of performance; and the possession itself is a thing that passes understanding. It belongs to a region of mystery into which neither logic nor experiment will ever suffice to carry us; and whose secrets are beyond the reach of any intellectual aeronaut. But it is a part of the theistic creed that such a region is; and that the things that pass understanding are the most important things of life. Nothing would be gained, however, by postulating merely a mystery--an unknowable. This must be so far known by the theist, that he knows its connection with himself. He must know, too, that if this connection is to have any effect on him, it must be not merely temporary, but permanent and indissoluble. Such a connection he finds in his two distinctive doctrines--the existence of a personal God, which _gives_ him the connection; and his own personal immortality, which _perpetuates_ it. Thus the theist, upon his own theory, has an eye ever upon him. He is in constant relationship with a conscious omnipotent Being, in whose likeness he is in some sort formed, and to which he is in some sort kin. To none of his actions is this Being indifferent; and with this Being his relations for good or evil will never cease. Thus, though he may not realise their true nature now, though he may not realise how infinitely good the good is, or how infinitely evil the evil, there is a day in store for him when his eyes will be opened, and what he now sees only through a glass darkly, he will see face to face. The objectivity of the moral end--or rather the objective standard of the subjective end--is explained in the same way. The standard is God's will, not man's immediate happiness. And yet to this will, as soon as, by natural or supernatural means, we discern it, the Godlike part of our nature at once responds: it at once acknowledges it as eternal and divine, although we can give no logical reasons for such acknowledgment. By the light, too, of these same beliefs, the inwardness of the moral end assumes an explicable meaning. Man's primary duty is towards God; his secondary duty is towards his brother men; and it is only from the filial relation that the fraternal springs. The moral end, then, is so precious in the eyes of the theist, because the inward state that it consists of is agreeable to what God wills--a God who reads the heart, and who cannot be deceived. And the theist's peace or gladness in his highest moral actions springs not so much from the consciousness of what he does or is, as of the reasons why he does or is it--reasons that reach far away beyond the earth and its destinies, and connect him with some timeless and holy mystery. Thus theism, whether it be true or no, can give a logical and a full account of the supposed nature of the moral end, and of its supposed importance. Let us turn now to positivism, and consider what is its position. The positivist, we must remember, conceives of the moral end in the same way, and sets upon it the same value. Let us see how far his own premisses will give him any support in this. These premisses, so far as they differ from those of theism, consist of two great denials: there is no personal God, and there is no personal immortality. We will glance rapidly at the direct results of these. In the first place, they confine all the life with which we can have the least moral connection to the surface of this earth, and to the limited time for which life and consciousness can exist upon it. They isolate the moral law, as I shall show more clearly hereafter, from any law or force in the universe that may be wider and more permanent. When the individual dies, he can only be said to live by metaphor, in the results of his outward actions. When the race dies, in no thinkable way can we say that it will live at all. Everything will then be as though it never had been. Whatever humanity may have done before its end arrives, however high it may have raised itself, however low it may have sunk itself, _The event Will trammel up the consequence, and catch With its success surcease_. All the vice of the world, and all its virtue, all its pleasures and all its pains, will have effected nothing. They will all have faded like an unsubstantial pageant, and not left a wrack behind. Here, then, the importance of morality at once changes both its dimensions and its kind. It is confined within narrow limitations of space and time. It is no longer a thing we can talk vaguely about, or to which any sounding but indefinite phrases will be applicable. We can no longer say either to the individual or the race, _Choose well, and your choice is Brief, but yet endless._[14] We can only say that it is brief, and that bye and bye what it was will be no matter to anyone. Still within these limits it may be said, certainly, that it is a great thing for us that we should be happy; and if it be true that the moral end brings the greatest happiness, then it is man's greatest achievement to attain to the moral end. But when we say that the greatest happiness resides in the moral end, we must be careful to see what it is we mean. We may mean that as a matter of fact men generally give a full assent to this, and act accordingly, which is the most obvious falsehood that could be uttered on any subject; or we may mean--indeed, if we mean anything we must mean--that they would give a full assent, and act accordingly, could their present state of mind undergo a complete change, and their eyes be opened, which at present are fast closed. But according to the positivist theory, this hypothesis is in most cases an impossibility. The moral end, as we have seen, is an inward state of the heart; and the heart, on the showing of the positivists, is for each man an absolute solitude. No one can gain admission to it but by his assistance; and to the larger part no one can ever gain admission at all. _Thus in the seas of life enisled, With echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild, We mortal myriads live alone._ So says Mr. Matthew Arnold; and the gentle Keble utters the same sentiment, remarking, with a delicate pathos, how seldom those even who have known us best and longest _Know half the reason why we smile or sigh._ Thus in the recesses of his own soul each man is, for the positivist, as much alone as if he were the only conscious thing in the universe; and his whole inner life, when he dies, will, to use some words of George Eliot's that I have already quoted, _Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb, Unread for ever._ No one shall enquire into his inward thoughts, much less shall anyone judge him for them. To no one except himself can he in any way have to answer for them. Such is the condition of the individual according to the positivist theory. It is evident, therefore, that one of the first results of positivism is to destroy even the rudiments of any machinery by which one man could govern, with authority, the inward kingdom of another; and the moral imperative is reduced to an empty vaunt. For what can be an emptier flourish than for one set of men, and these a confessed minority, to proclaim imperious laws to others, which they can never get the others to obey, and which are essentially meaningless to the only people to whom they are not superfluous? Suppose that, on positive grounds, I find pleasure in humility, and my friend finds pleasure in pride, and so far as we can form a judgment the happiness of us both is equal; what possible grounds can I have for calling my state better than his? Were I a theist, I should have the best of grounds, for I should believe that hereafter my friend's present contentment would be dissipated, and would give place to despair. But as a positivist, if his contentment do but last his lifetime, what can I say except this, that he has chosen what, for him, was his better part for ever, and no God or man will ever take it away from him? To say then that his immoral state was worse than my moral state would be a phrase incapable of any practical meaning. It might mean that, could my friend be made to think as I do, he would be happier than he is at present; but we have here an impossible hypothesis, and an unverifiable conclusion. It is true enough that I might present to my friend some image of my own inward state, and of all the happiness it gave me; but if, having compared his happiness and mine as well as he could, he still liked his own best, exhortation would have no power, and reproach no meaning. Here, then, are three results--simple, immediate, and necessary--of positivism, on the moral end. Of the three characteristics at present supposed essential to it, positivism eliminates two and materially modifies the third. In the first place, the importance of the moral end is altogether changed in character. It has nothing in it whatever of the infinite, and a scientific forecast can already see the end of it. In the second place, it is nothing absolute, and not being absolute is incapable of being enforced. In the third place, its value, such as it is, is measured only by the _conscious_ happiness that its possession gives us, or the conscious pains that its loss gives us. Still it may be contended with plausibility that the moral end, when once seen, is sufficient to attract us by its own inalienable charm, and can hold its own independently of any further theories as to its nature and its universality. It remains now to come to practical life, and see if this really be so; to see if the pleasures in life that are supposed the highest will not lose their attractiveness when robbed of the three characteristics of which the positive theory robs them. FOOTNOTES: [11] Vide _Pessimism_, by James Sully. [12] Professor Clifford; 'Ethics of Belief,' _Contemporary Review_, Jan. 1877. [13] '_An awful privilege, and an awful responsibility, that we should help to create a world in which posterity will live!_'--Professor Clifford. [14] Goethe, translated by Carlyle. CHAPTER V. LOVE AS A TEST OF GOODNESS. [Greek: Erôta de, ton tyrannon andrôn, Ton tas Aphroditas Philtatôn thalamôn Klêdouchon, ou sebizomen, Perthonta.]--_Euripides._ I will again re-state, in other words than my own, the theory we are now going to test by the actual facts of life. '_The assertion_,' says Professor Huxley, '_that morality is in any way dependent on certain philosophical problems, produces the same effect on my mind as if one should say that a man's vision depends on his theory of sight, or that he has no business to be sure that ginger is hot in his mouth, unless he has formed definite views as to the nature of ginger_.' Or, to put the matter in slightly different language, the sorts of happiness, we are told, that are secured to us by moral conduct are facts, so far as regards our own consciousness of them, as simple, as constant and as universal, as is the perception of the outer world secured to us by our eyesight, or as the sensation formed on the palate by the application of ginger to it. Love, for instance, according to this view, is as simple a delight for men in its highest forms as it is for animals in its lowest. What George Eliot calls '_the treasure of human affection_' depends as little for its value on any beliefs outside itself as does the treasure of animal appetite; and just as no want of religious faith can deprive the animals of the last, so no want of religious faith can deprive mankind of the first. It will remain a stable possession to us, amid the wreck of creeds, giving life a solemn and intense value of its own. It will never fail us as a sure test of conduct. Whatever guides us to this treasure we shall know is moral; whatever tends to withdraw us from it we shall know is immoral. Such is the positivist theory as to all the higher pleasures of life, of which affection confessedly is one of the chief, and also the most obviously human. Let us proceed now from generalities to special concrete facts, and see how far this theory is borne out by them. And we can find none better than those which are now before us--the special concrete facts of affection, and of sexual affection in particular. The affection of man for woman--or, as it will be best to call it, love--has been ever since time was, one of the chief elements in the life of man. But it was not till Christianity had very fully developed itself that it assumed the peculiar importance that is now claimed for it. For the ancient world it was a passion sure to come to most men, and that would bring joy or sorrow to them as the case might be. The worldly wisdom of some convinced them that it gave more joy than sorrow; so they took and used it as long as it chanced to please them. The worldly wisdom of others convinced them that it gave more sorrow than joy, so they did all they could, like Lucretius, to school themselves into a contempt for it. But for the modern world it is on quite a different footing, and its value does not depend on such a chance balance of pains and pleasures. The latter are not of the same nature as the former, and so cannot be outweighed by them. In the judgment of the modern world, '_Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all_. To love, in fact, though not exactly said to be incumbent upon all men, is yet endowed with something that is almost of the nature of a duty. If a man cannot love, it is looked on as a sort of moral misfortune, if not as a moral fault in him. And when a man can love, and does love successfully, then it is held that his whole nature has burst out into blossom. The imaginative literature of the modern world centres chiefly about this human crisis; and its importance in literature is but a reflection of its importance in life. It is, as it were, the sun of the world of sentiment--the source of its lights and colours, and also of its shadows. It is the crown of man's existence; it gives life its highest quality; and, if we can believe what those who have known it tell us, earth under its influence seems to be melting into, and to be almost joined with, heaven. All this language, however, about love, no matter how true in a certain sense it may be, is emphatically true about it in a certain sense only, and is by no means to be taken without reserve. It is emphatically not true about love in general, but only about love as modified in a certain special way. The form of the affection, so to speak, is more important than the substance of it. It will need but little consideration to show us that this is so. Love is a thing that can take countless forms; and were not the form, for the modern world, the thing of the first importance, the praise bestowed upon all forms of it would be equal, or graduated only with reference to intensity. But the very reverse of this is the case really. In our estimate of an affection, its intensity, though doubtless of great importance, is yet of an importance that is clearly secondary. Else things that the modern world regards as the most abominable might be on a level with the things it regards as most pure and holy; the lovers of Athens might even put to shame with their passion the calm sacramental constancy of many a Christian pair; and the whole fabric of modern morals would be undermined. For, according to the modern conception of morals, love can not only give life its highest quality, but its lowest also. If it can raise man to the angels, it can also sink him below the beasts; and as to its intensity, it is a force which will carry him in the one direction just as well as the other. Kind and not degree is the first thing needful. It is the former, and not the latter, that essentially separates David and Jonathan from Harmodius and Aristogeiton, St. Elizabeth from Cleopatra, the beloved disciple from Antinous. How shall we love? is the great question for us. It comes long before, How much shall we love? Let us imagine a bride and bridegroom of the type that would now be most highly reverenced, and try to understand something of what their affection is. It is, of course, impossible here to treat such a subject adequately; for, as Mr. Carlyle says, '_except musically, and in the language of poetry, it can hardly be so much as spoken about_.' But enough for the present purpose can perhaps be said. In the first place, then, the affection in question will be seen to rest mainly upon two things--firstly, on the consciousness of their own respective characters on the part of each; and, secondly, on the idea formed by each of the character of the other. Each must have a faith, for instance, in his or her own purity, and each must have a like faith, also in the purity of the other. Thus, to begin with the first requisites, a man can only love a woman in the highest sense when he does so with a perfectly clear conscience. There must be no obstacle between them which shocks his sense of right, or which, if known by the woman, would shock hers. Were the affection indulged in, in spite of such an obstacle, its fine quality would be injured, no matter how great its intensity; and, instead of a moral blessing, it would become a moral curse. An exquisite expression of the necessity of this personal sense of rightness may be read into the well-known lines, _I could not love thee, dear, so well, Loved I not honour more._ Nor shall we look on _honour_ here as having reference only to external acts and conditions. It has reference equally, if not more, to the inward state of the heart. The man must be conscious not only that he is loving the right woman, but that he is loving her in the right way. '_If I loved not purity more than you_,' he would say to her, '_I were not worthy of you_.' And further, just as he requires to possess this taintless conscience himself, so does he require to be assured that the like is possessed by her. Unless he knows that she loves purity more than him, there is no meaning in his aspiration that he may be found worthy of her. The gift of her affection that is of such value to him, is not of value because it is affection simply, but because it is affection of a high kind; and its elevation is of more consequence to him than its intensity, or even than its continuance. He would sooner that at the expense of its intensity it remained pure, than that at the expense of its purity it remained intense. Othello was certainly not a husband of the highest type, and yet we see something of this even in his case. His sufferings at his wife's supposed inconstancy have doubtless in them a large selfish element. Much of them is caused by the mere passion of jealousy. But the deepest sting of all does not lie here. It lies rather in the thought of what his wife has done to herself, than of what she has done to him. This is what overcomes him. _The bawdy wind, that kisses all it meets, Is hushed within the hollow mine of earth, And will not hear it_. He could have borne anything but a soul's tragedy like this: _Alas! to make me A fixed figure for the time of scorn To point his slow unmoving finger at! Yet I could bear that too, well--very well: But there, where I have garnered up my heart, Where I must either live, or bear no life; The fountain from the which my current runs Or else dries up; to be discarded thence! Or keep it as a cistern for foul toads To knot and gender in!_ Whenever he was with her, Desdemona might still be devoted to him. She might only give to Cassio what she could not give to her husband. But to Othello this would be no comfort. The fountain would be polluted '_from which his current runs_'; and though its waters might still flow for him, he would not care to touch them. If this feeling is manifest in such a love as Othello's, much more is it manifest in love of a higher type. It is expressed thus, for instance, by the heroine of Mrs. Craven's '_Récit d'une Soeur_.' '_I can indeed say_,' she says, '_that we never loved each other so much as when we saw how we both loved God:_' and again, '_My husband would not have loved me as he did, if he had not loved God a great deal more._' This language is of course distinctly religious; but it embodies a meaning that is appreciated by the positive school as well. In positivist language it might be expressed thus: '_My husband would not have loved me as he did, if he would not, sooner than love me in any other way, have ceased to love me altogether._' It is clear that this sentiment is proper, nay essential, to positivist affection, just as well as to Christian. Any pure and exalted love would at once change its character, if, without any further change, it merely believed it were free to change it. Its strongest element is the consciousness, not that it is of such a character only, but that this character is the right one. The ideal bride and bridegroom, the ideal man and wife, would not value purity as they are supposed to do, did they not believe that it was not only different from impurity, but essentially and incalculably better than it. For the positivist, just as much as the Christian, this sense of rightness in love is interfused with the affection proper, and does as it were give wings to it. It far more than makes good for the lovers any loss of intensity that may be created by the chastening down of passion: and figuratively at least, it may be said to make them conscious that '_underneath them are the everlasting arms_.' Here then in love, as the positive school at present offer it to us, are all these three characteristics to which that school, as we have seen, must renounce all right. It is characterised as conforming to some special and absolute standard, of which no positive account can be given; the conformity is inward, and so cannot be enforced; and for all that positive knowledge can show us, its importance may be a dream. We shall realise this better if we consider a love from which these three characteristics have, as far as possible, been abstracted--a love which professes frankly to rest upon its own attractions, and which repudiates all such epithets as worse or better. This will at once show us not only of what various developments the passion of love is capable, but also how false it is to imagine that the highest kind need naturally be the most attractive. I have quoted Othello, and Mrs. Craven's heroine as types of love when religionized. We will go to the modern Parisian school for the type of love when de-religionized--a school which, starting from the same premisses as do the positive moralists, yet come to a practical teaching that is singularly different. And let us remember that just as the ideal we have been considering already, is the ideal most ardently looked to by one part of the world, so is the ideal we are going to consider now, looked to with an equal ardour by another part of the world. The writer in particular from whom I am about to quote has been one of the most popular of all modern romancers; and has been hailed by men of the most fastidious culture as a preacher to these latter generations of a bolder and more worthy gospel. '_This_,'[15] says one of the best known of our living poets, of the work that I select to quote from-- _This is the golden book of spirit and sense, The holy writ of beauty._ Of this '_holy writ_' the chief theme is love. Let us go on to see how love is there presented to us. '_You know_,' says Théophile Gautier's best-known hero, in a letter to a friend, '_you know the eagerness with which I have sought for physical beauty, the importance I attach to outward form, and how the world I am in love with is the world that the eyes can see: or to put the matter in more conventional language, I am so corrupt and blasé that my faith in moral beauty is gone, and my power of striving after it also. I have lost the faculty to discern between good and evil, and this loss has well nigh brought me back to the ignorance of the child or savage. To tell the plain truth, nothing seems to me to be worthy either of praise or blame, and I am but little perturbed by even the most abnormal actions. My conscience is deaf and dumb. Adultery seems to me the most commonplace thing possible. I see nothing shocking in a young girl selling herself.'... 'I find that the earth is all as fair as heaven, and virtue for me is nothing but the perfection of form.' 'Many a time and long_,' he continues farther on, '_have I paused in some cathedral, under the shadow of the marble foliage, when the lights were quivering in through the stained windows, when the organ unbidden made a low murmuring of itself, and the wind was breathing amongst the pipes; and I have plunged my gaze far into the pale blue depths of the almond-shaped eyes of the Madonna. I have followed with a tender reverence the curves of that wasted figure of hers, and the arch of her eyebrows, just visible and no more than that. I have admired her smooth and lustrous brow, her temples with their transparent chastity, and her cheeks shaded with a sober virginal colour, more tender than the colour of a peach-flower. I have counted one by one the fair and golden lashes that threw their tremulous shade upon it. I have traced out with care in the subdued tone that surrounds her, the evanescent lines of her throat, so fragile and inclined so modestly. I have even lifted with an adventuring hand the folds of her tunic, and have seen unveiled that bosom, maiden and full of milk, that has never been pressed by any except divine lips. I have traced out the rare clear veins of it, even to their faintest branchings. I have laid my finger on it, to draw the white drops forth, of the draught of heaven. I have so much as touched with my lips the very bud of the_ rosa mystica. '_Well, and I confess it honestly, all this immaterial beauty, this thing so winged and so aerial that one knows well enough it is soon going to fly away from one, has never moved me to any great degree. I love the Venus Anadyomene better, better a thousand times. These old-world eyes, slightly raised at the corners! these lips so pure and so firmly chiselled, so amorous, and so fit for kissing! this low, broad brow! these tresses with the curves in them of the sea water, and bound behind her head in a knot, negligently! these firm and shining shoulders! this back, with its thousand alluring contours! all these fair and rounded outlines, this air of superhuman vigour in a body so divinely feminine--all this enraptures and enchants me in a way of which you can have no idea--you the Christian and the philosopher._ '_Mary, despite the humble air affected by her, is a deal too haughty for me. It is as much as her foot does, swathed in its white coverings, if it just touches the earth, now purpling where the old serpent writhes. Her eyes are the loveliest eyes in the world; but they are always turned heavenwards, or else they are cast down. They never look you straight in the face. They have never served as the mirror of a human form.... Venus comes, from the sea to take possession of the world, as a goddess who loves men should--quite naked and quite alone. Earth is more to her liking than is Olympus, and amongst her lovers she has more men than gods. She drapes herself in no faint veils of mystery. She stands straight upright, her dolphin behind her, and her foot upon her opal-coloured shell. The sun strikes full upon her smooth limbs, and her white hand holds in air the waves of her fair locks, which old father Ocean has sprinkled with his most perfect pearls. One can see her. She hides nothing; for modesty was only made for those who have no beauty. It is an invention of the modern world; the child of the Christian contempt for form and matter._ '_Oh ancient world! all that you held in reverence is held in scorn by us. Thine idols are overthrown in the dust; fleshless anchorites clad in rags and tatters, martyrs with the blood fresh on them, and their shoulders torn by the tigers of thy circuses, have perched themselves on the pedestals of thy fair desirable gods. The Christ has enveloped the whole world in his winding-sheet.... Oh purity, plant of bitterness, born on a blood-soaked soil, and whose degenerate and sickly blossom expands with difficulty in the dank shade of cloisters, under a chill baptismal rain; rose without scent, and spiked all round with thorns, thou hast taken the place for us of the glad and gracious roses, bathed with nard and wine, of the dancing girls of Sybaris!_ '_The ancient world knew thee not, oh sterile flower! thou wast never enwoven in its chaplets of delirious perfume. In that vigorous and healthy society they would have spurned thee under foot disdainfully. Purity, mysticism, melancholy--three words unknown to thee, three new maladies brought into our life by the Christ!... For me, I look on woman in the old world manner, like a fair slave, made only for our pleasures. Christianity, in my eyes, has done nothing to rehabilitate her.... To say the truth, I cannot conceive for what reason there should be this desire in woman to be looked on as on a level with men.... I have made some love-verses in my time, or at least something that aspired to pass for such ... and there is not a vestige in them of the modern feeling of love.... There is nothing there, as in all the love-poetry since the Christian era, of a soul which, because it loves, begs another soul to love it back again; nothing there of a blue and shining lake, which begs a stream to pour itself into its bosom, that both together they may mirror the stars of heaven; nothing there of a pair of ring-doves, opening their wings together, that they may both together fly to the same nest._'[16] Such is the account the hero gives of the nature of his love for woman. Nor does he give this account regretfully, or think that it shows him to be in any diseased condition. It shows rather a return, on his part, to a health that others have lost. As he looks round upon the modern world and the purity that George Eliot says in her verses she would die for, '_Woman_,' he exclaims mournfully, '_is become the symbol of moral and physical beauty. The real fall of man was on the birthday of the babe of Bethlehem_.'[17] It will be instructive to notice further that these views are carried out by him to their full legitimate consequences, even though this, to some degree, is against his will. '_Sometimes_,' he says, '_I try to persuade myself that such passions are abominable, and I say as much to myself in as severe a way as I can. But the words come only from my lips. They are arguments that I make. They are not arguments that I feel. The thing in question really seems quite natural to me, and anyone else in my place would, it seems to me, do as I do._'[18] Nor is this conception of love peculiar to the hero only. The heroine's conception is its exact counterpart, and exactly fits it. The heroine as completely as the hero has freed herself from any discernment between good and evil. She recoils from abnormal impurity no more than from normal, and the climax of the book is her full indulgence in both. Now here we have a specimen of love raised to intensity, but divested as far as possible of the religious element. I say divested as far as possible, because even here, as I shall prove hereafter, the process is not complete, and something of religion is still left fermenting. But it is quite complete enough for our present purpose. It will remind us in the sharpest and clearest way that love is no force which is naturally constant in its development, or which if left to itself can be in any way a moral director to us. It will show us that many of its developments are what the moralist calls abominable, and that the very worst of these may perhaps be the most attractive, and be deliberately presented to us as such by men of the most elaborate culture. We shall thus see that love as a test of conduct, as an aim of life, or as an object of any heroic devotion, is not love in general, but love of a special kind, and that to fulfil this function it must not only be selected from the rest, but also removed from them, and set above them at a quite incalculable distance. And the kind thus chosen, let me repeat again (for this, though less obvious, is more important still), is not chosen because it is naturally intense, but it becomes intense because it is the chosen one. Here then lies the weak point in the position of the positive moralists, when they hold up such love to us as so supreme a treasure in life. They observe, and quite correctly, that it is looked upon as a treasure; but the source of its preciousness is something that their system expressly takes from it. That choice amongst the loves, so solemn and so imperious and yet so tender, which descends like a tongue of flame upon the love it delights to honour; which fixes on a despised and a weak affection, taking it like Elisha from his furrows, or like David from his pastures, setting it above all its fellows, and making it at once a queen and prophetess--this is a choice that positivism has no power to make; or which, if it makes, it makes only a caprice, or a listless preference. It does not, indeed, confound pure love with impure, but it sets them on an equal footing; and those who contend that the former under these conditions is intrinsically more attractive to men than the latter, betray a most naïve ignorance of what human nature is. Supposing, for argument's sake, that to themselves it may be so, this fact is not of the slightest use to them. It is merely the possession on their part of a certain personal taste, which those who do not share it may regard as disease or weakness, and which they themselves can neither defend nor inculcate. It is true they may call their opponents hard names if they choose; but their opponents can call them hard names back again; but in the absence of any common standard, the recriminations on neither side can have the least sting in them. Could, however, any argument on such a matter be possible, it is the devotees of impurity that would have the strongest case; for the pleasures of indulgence are admitted by both sides, while the merits of abstention are admitted by only one. Let us go back, for instance, in connection with this matter, to what Professor Huxley has told us is the grand result of education. It leads us away, he says, from '_the rank and steaming valleys of sense_,' up to the '_highest good_,' which is '_discerned by reason_,' '_resting in eternal calm_.' And let us ask him again, what, as uttered by a positivist, these words can by any possibility mean. '_The rank and steaming valleys of sense_'! Why are they rank and steaming? Or, if they are, why is that any condemnation of them? Or, if we do condemn them, what else are we to praise? The entire raw material, not of our pleasures only, but of our knowledge also, is given us, say the positive school, by the senses. Surely then to condemn the senses must be to condemn life. Let us imagine Professor Huxley talking in this way to Théophile Gautier. Let us imagine him frowning grimly at the licentious Frenchman, and urging him with all vehemence to turn to the _highest good_. The answer will at once be, '_That is exactly, my dear Professor, what I do turn to. And, listen_,' he might say--the following is again a passage from his own writings--'_to the way in which I figure the highest good to myself. It is a huge building, with its outer walls all blind and windowless; a huge court within, surrounded by a colonnade of white marble; in the midst a musical fountain with a jet of quick-silver in the Arabian fashion; leaves of orange-trees and pomegranates placed alternately; overhead the bluest of skies and the mellowest of suns; great long-nosed greyhounds should be sleeping here and there; from time to time barefoot negresses with golden ankle-rings, fair women servants white and slender, and clad in rich strange garments, should pass between the hollow arches, basket on arm, or urn poised on head._[19] _Three things give me pleasure, gold, marble, and purple--brilliance, mass, and colour. These are the stuffs out of which my dreams are made; and all my ideal palaces are constructed of these materials._'[20] What answer could Professor Huxley make to this that would not seem to the other at once barbarous and nonsensical? The best answer he could make would be simply, '_I do not agree with you_.' And to this again the answer would at once be, '_That is because you are still hampered by prejudices, whose only possible foundations we have both removed; and because I am a man of culture, and you are not._' Let us also consider again that other utterance of Professor Huxley's, with which I began this chapter. According to the positive view of morals, he says, those special sets of happiness that a moral system selects for us, have no more to do with any theory as to the reason of their selection, than a man's sight has to do with his theory of vision, or than the hot taste of ginger has to do with a knowledge of its analysis. That is a most clear and succinct statement of the whole positive position; and we shall now be able to profit by its clearness, and to see how all that it does is to reveal confusion. In the first place, Professor Huxley's comparisons really illustrate the very fact that he designs them to invalidate. It is precisely on his theory of vision that a man's sight practically does depend. All sight, so far as it conveys any meaning to him, is an act of inference; and though generally this process may be so rapid that it is not perceived by him, yet the doubt often felt about distant or unusual objects will make him keenly conscious of it. Whilst as to ginger and the taste produced by it, the moral question is not whether it is hot or not; but whether or no it will be for our advantage to eat it; and this resolves itself into two further questions; firstly, whether its heat is pleasant, and secondly whether its heat is wholesome. On the first of these Professor Huxley throws no light whatever; whilst as to the second, it really hangs entirely on the very point that he cited as indifferent. We must have some knowledge, even though it be only vague and negative, of the nature of a food, before we know whether it will be well for us in the long run to habitually eat it, or to abstain from it. Let us apply this illustration to love. Professor Huxley's ginger shall stand for the sort of love he would most approve of; and love, as a whole, will be represented by a varied dessert, of which ginger is one of the dishes. Now what Professor Huxley has to do is to recommend this ginger, and to show that it is divided by an infinite gulf--say from prunes or from Huntley and Palmer's biscuits. But how is he to do this? To say that ginger is hot is to say nothing. To many, that may condemn instead of recommending it: and they will have as much to say for their own tastes if they rejoin that prunes and biscuits are sweet. If he can prove to them that what they choose is unwholesome, and that if they eat it they will be too unwell to say their prayers, then, supposing they want to say their prayers, he will have gained his point. But if he cannot prove that it is unwholesome, or if his friends have no prayers to say, his entire recommendation dwindles to a declaration of his own personal taste. But in this case his whole tone will be different. There will be nothing in it of the moral imperative. He will be only laughed at and not listened to, if he proclaims his own taste in sweetmeats with all the thunders of Sinai. And the choice between the various kinds of love is, on positive principles, only a choice between sweetmeats. It is this, and nothing more, than this, avowedly; and yet the positivists would keep for it the earnest language of the Christian, for whom it is a choice, not between sweetmeats and sweetmeats, but between a confectioner's wafer and the Host. It may perhaps be urged by some that, according to this view of it, purity is degraded into a bitter something, which we only accept reluctantly, through fear of the consequences of its alternatives. And it is quite true that a fear of the consequences of wrong love is inseparably connected with our sense of the value of right love. But this is a necessity of the case; the quality of the right love is in no way lowered by it, and it will lead us to consider another important point. It is impossible to hold that one thing is incalculably better than others, without holding also that others are incalculably worse than it. Indeed, the surest test we can give of the praise we bestow on what we choose, is the measure of condemnation we bestow on what we reject. If we maintain that virtuous love constitutes its own heaven, we must also maintain that vicious love constitutes its own hell. If we cannot do the last we certainly cannot do the first. And the positive school can do neither. It can neither elevate one kind of love nor depress the others; and for this reason. The results of love in both cases are, according to their teaching, bounded by our present consciousness; and our present consciousness, divorced from all future expectation, has no room in it for so vast an interval as all moral systems postulate between the right love and the wrong. Indeed, if happiness be the test of right, it cannot, as a general truth, be said that they are practically separable at all. It is notorious that, as far as the present life goes, a man of even the vilest affections may effectually elude all pain from them. Sometimes they may injure his health, it is true; but they need not even do that; and if they do, it necessitates no moral condemnation of them, for many heroic labours would do just the same. Injury to the health, at any rate, is a mere accident; so is also injury to the reputation; and conditions are easily conceivable by which both these dangers would be obviated. The supposed evils of impurity have but a very slight reference to these. They depend, not on any present consciousness, but on the expectations of a future consciousness--a consciousness that will reveal things to us hereafter which we can only augur here. _I do not know them now, but after death God knows I know the faces I shall see: Each one a murdered self with last low breath, 'I am thyself; what hast thou done to me?' 'And I, and I thyself!' lo each one saith, 'And thou thyself, to all eternity.'_[21] Such is the expectation on which the supposed evils of impurity depend. According to positive principles, the expectation will never be fulfilled; the evils therefore exist only in a diseased imagination. And with the beauty of purity the case is just the same. According to the view which the positivists have adopted, so little counting the cost of it, a pure human affection is a union of two things. It is not a possession only, but a promise; not a sentiment only, but a _pre_-sentiment; not a taste only, but a foretaste; and the chief sweetness said to be found in the former, is dependent altogether upon the latter. '_Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God_,' is the belief which, whether true or false as a fact, is implied in the whole modern cultus of love, and the religious reverence with which it has come to be regarded. In no other way can we explain either its eclecticism or its supreme importance. Nor is the belief in question a thing that is implied only. Continually it is expressed also, and this even by writers who theoretically repudiate it. Goethe, for instance, cannot present the moral aspects of Margaret's love-story without assuming it. And George Eliot has been obliged to presuppose it in her characters, and to exhibit the virtues she regards as noblest, on the pedestal of a belief that she regards as most irrational. But its completest expression is naturally to be found elsewhere. Here, for instance, is a verse of Mr. Robert Browning's, who, however we rank him otherwise, is perhaps unrivalled for his subtle analysis of the emotions: _Dear, when our one soul understands The great soul that makes all things new, When earth breaks up, and heaven expands, How will the change strike me and you, In the house not made with hands?_ Here, again, is another, in which the same sentiment is presented in a somewhat different form: _Is there nought better than to enjoy? No deed which done, will make time break, Letting us pent-up creatures through Into eternity, our due-- No forcing earth teach heaven's employ?_ _No wise beginning, here and now, Which cannot grow complete (earth's feat) And heaven must finish there and then? No tasting earth's true food for men, Its sweet in sad, its sad in sweet?_ To the last of these verses a singular parallel may be found in the works of a much earlier, and a very different writer, only the affection there dealt with is filial and not marital. In spite of this difference, however, it will still be much in point. '_The day was fast approaching_,' says Augustine, '_whereon my mother was to depart this life, when it happened, Lord, as I believe by thy special ordinance, that she and I were alone together, leaning in a certain window that looked into the garden of the house, where we were then staying at Ostia. We were talking together alone, very sweetly, and were wondering what the life would be of God's saints in heaven. And when our discourse was come to that point, that the highest delight and brightest of all the carnal senses seemed not fit to be so much as named with that life's sweetness, we, lifting ourselves yet more ardently to the Unchanging One, did by degrees pass through all things bodily--beyond the heaven even, and the sun and stars. Yea, we soared higher yet by inward musing. We came to our own minds, and we passed beyond them, that we might reach that place of plenty, where Thou feedest Israel for ever with the food of truth, and where life is the Wisdom by which all these things are made. And whilst we were discoursing and panting after her, we slightly touched on her with the whole effort of our heart; and we sighed, and there left bound the first fruits of the spirit, and came back again to the sounds of our own mouths--to our own finite language. And what we then said was in this wise: If to any the tumult of the flesh were hushed, hushed the images of the earth and air and waters, hushed too the poles of heaven, yea the very soul be hushed to herself, and by not thinking on self transcend self, hushed all dreams and imaginary revelations, every tongue and every sign, and whatever exists only in transition--if these should all be hushed, having only roused our ears to Him that made them, and He speak alone, not by them but by Himself, that we might hear His word, not through any tongue of flesh, nor angel's voice, nor sound of thunder, nor in the dark riddle of a similitude, but might hear Him, whom in these things we love--His very self without any aid from these (even as we two for that brief moment had touched the eternal Wisdom)--could this be continued on, and other visions, far unlike it, be withdrawn, and this one ravish and absorb and wrap up its beholders amid these inward joys, so that life might be for ever like that one moment of understanding, were not this, Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord? And when shall that be? Shall it be when we rise again, but shall not all be changed?_'[22] In this exceedingly striking passage we have the whole case before us. The belief on which modern love rests, and which makes it so single and so sacred is, as it were, drawn for us on an enlarged scale: and we see that it is a belief to which positivism has no right. The belief, indeed, is by no means a modern thing. Rudiments of it on the contrary are as old as man himself, and may represent a something that inheres in his very nature. But none the more for this will it be of any service to the positivist; for this something can only be of power or value if the prophecy it inevitably developes into be regarded as a true one. In the consciousness of the ancient world it lay undeciphered like the dark sentence of an oracle; and though it might be revered by some, it could not be denied by any. But its meaning is now translated for us, and there is a new factor in the case. We now can deny it; and if we do, its whole power is paralysed. This when once recognised must be evident enough. But a curious confusion of thought has prevented the positive school from seeing it. They have imagined that what religion adds to love is the hope of prolongation only, not of development also; and thus we find Professor Huxley curtly dismissing the question by saying that the quality of such a pleasure '_is obviously in no way affected by the abbreviation or prolongation of our conscious life_.' How utterly this is beside the point may be shown instantly by a very simple example. A painter, we will say, inspired with some great conception, sets to work at a picture, and finds a week of the intensest happiness in preparing his canvas and laying his first colours. Now the happiness of that week is, of course, a fact for him. It would not have been greater had it lasted a whole fortnight; and it would not have been less had he died at the week's end. But though obviously, as Professor Huxley says, it in no way depends on its prolongation, what it does depend on is the belief that it will be prolonged, and that in being prolonged it will change its character. It depends on the belief on the painter's part that he will be able to continue his painting, and that as he continues it, his picture will advance to completion. The positivists have confused the true saying that the pleasure of painting one picture does not depend on the fact that we shall paint many, with the false saying that the pleasure of beginning that one does not depend on the belief that we shall finish it. On this last belief it is plain that the pleasure does depend, largely if not entirely; and it is precisely this last belief that positivism takes away. To return again, then, to the subject of human love--we are now in a position to see that, as offered us at present by the positive school of moralists, it cannot, properly speaking, be called a positive pleasure at all, but that, it is still essentially a religious one; and that when the religious element is eradicated, its entire character will change. It may be, of course, contended that the religious element is ineradicable: but this is simply either to call positivism an impossibility, or religion an incurable disease. Here, however, we are touching on a side issue, which I shall by and by return to, but which is at present beside the point. My aim now is not to argue either that positivism can or cannot be accepted by humanity, but to show what, if accepted, it will have to offer us. I wish to point out the error, for instance, of such writers as George Eliot, who, whilst denying the existence of any sun-god in the heavens, are yet perpetually adoring the sunlight on the earth; who profess to extinguish all fire on principle, and then offer us boiling water to supply its place; or who, sending love to us as a mere Cassandra, continue to quote as Scripture the prophecies they have just discredited. Thus far what we have seen is this. Love as a positive pleasure, if it be ever reduced to such, will be a very different thing from what our positivist moralists at present see it to be. It will perform none of those functions for which they now look to it. It will no longer supply them, as now, with any special pinnacle on which human life may raise itself. The one type of it that is at present on an eminence will sink to the same level as the others. All these will be offered to us indiscriminately, and our choice between them will have no moral value. None of the ethical epithets by which these varieties are at present so sharply distinguished from each other will have any virtue left in them. Morality in this connection will be a word without a meaning. I have as yet dealt only with one of those resources, which have been supposed to impart to life a positive general value. This one, however, has been the most important and the most comprehensive of all; and its case will explain that of the others, and perhaps, with but few exceptions, include them. One or two of these others I shall by and by treat separately; but we will first enquire into the results on life of the change we have been considering already. FOOTNOTES: [15] Mr. A.C. Swinburne. [16] _Mademoiselle de Maupin_, pp. 213-222. Ed. Paris. 1875. [17] _Mademoiselle de Maupin_, p. 223. [18] _Ibid._, p. 225. [19] _Mademoiselle de Maupin_, p. 222. [20] _Ibid._, p. 211. [21] Dante Gabriel Rosetti. [22] Aug. Conf., lib. ix. In the earlier part of the passage the extreme redundancy of the original has been curtailed somewhat. In the rendering here given I have to a great extent followed Dr. Pusey. CHAPTER VI. LIFE AS ITS OWN REWARD. '_If in this life only we have hope_--' What we have now before us is a certain subtraction sum. We have to take from life one of its strongest present elements; and see as well as we can what will then be the remainder. An exact answer we shall, of course, not expect; but we can arrive at an approximate one without much difficulty. What we have to subtract has been shown in the previous chapter; but it may again be described briefly in the following way. Life in its present state, as we have just seen, is a union of two sets of feelings, and of two kinds of happiness, and is partly the sum of the two, and partly a compromise between them. Its resources, by one classification, are separable into two groups, according as in themselves they chance to repel or please us; and the most obvious measure of happiness would seem to be nothing more than our gain of what is thus pleasant, and our shirking of what is thus painful. But if we examine life as it actually exists about us, we shall see that this classification has been traversed by another. Many things naturally repellent have received a supernatural blessing; many things naturally pleasant have received a supernatural curse; and thus our highest happiness is often composed of pain, and our profoundest misery is nearly always based on pleasure. Accordingly, whereas happiness naturally would seem the test of right, right has come supernaturally to be the test of happiness. And so completely is this notion engrained in the world's consciousness, that in all our deeper views of life, no matter whether we be saints or sinners, right and wrong are the things that first appeal to us, not happiness and misery. A certain supernatural moral judgment, in fact, has become a primary faculty with us, and it mixes with every estimate we form of the world around us. It is this faculty that positivism, if accepted fully, must either destroy or paralyse; it is this, therefore, that in imagination we must now try to eliminate. To do this--to see what will be left in life to us, without this faculty, we must first see in general, how much is at present dependent on it. This might at first sight seem a hard task to perform; the interests we shall have to deal with are so many and so various. But the difficulty may be eluded. I have already gone to literature for examples of special feelings on the part of individuals, and under certain circumstances. We will now go to it for a kindred, though not for the same assistance; and for this end we shall approach it in a slightly different way. What we did before was this. We took certain works of literary art, and selecting, as it were, one or two special patches of colour, we analysed the composition of these. What we shall now do will be to take the pictures as organic wholes, with a view to analysing the effect of them as pictures--the harmony or the contrast of their colours, and the massing of their lights and shadows. If we reflect for a moment what art is--literary and poetical art in particular--we shall at once see how, examined in this way, it will be of use to us. In the first place, then, what is art? and what is the reason that it pleases us? It is a reflection, a reproduction of the pleasures of life, and is altogether relative to these, and dependent on them. We should, for instance, take no interest in portraits unless we took some interest in the human face. We should take none in statues if we took none in the human form. We must know something of love as a feeling, or we should never care for love-songs. Art may send us back to these with intenser appreciation of them, but we must bring to art from life the appreciation we want intensified. Art is a factor in common human happiness, because by its means common men are made partakers in the vision of uncommon men. Great art is a speculum reflecting life as the keenest eyes have seen it. All its forms and imagery are of value only as this. Taken by themselves, '_the best in this kind are but shadows_.' We have to '_piece out their imperfections, with our thoughts_;' '_imagination has to amend them_,' and '_it must be our imagination, not theirs_.'[23] In examining a work of art, then, we are examining life itself; or rather, in examining the interest which we take in a work of art, in examining the reasons why we think it beautiful, or great, or interesting, we are examining our own feelings as to the realities represented by it. And now remembering this, let us turn to certain of the world's greatest works of art--I mean its dramas: for just as poetry is the most articulate of all the arts, so is the drama the most comprehensive form of poetry. In the drama we have the very thing we are now in want of. We have life as a whole--that complex aggregate of details, which forms, as it were, the mental landscape of existence, presented to us in a '_questionable shape_,' at once concentrated and intensified. And it is no exaggeration to say that the reasons why men think life worth living, can be all found in the reasons why they think a great drama great. Let us turn, then, to some of the greatest works of Sophocles, of Shakespeare, and of Goethe, and consider briefly how these present life to us. Let us take _Macbeth_, _Hamlet_, _Measure for Measure_, and _Faust_. We have here five presentations of life, under what confessedly are its most striking aspects, and with such interests as men have been able to find in it, raised to their greatest intensity. Such, at least, is the way in which these works are regarded, and it is only in virtue of this estimate that they are called great. Now, in producing this estimate, what is the chief faculty in us that they appeal to? It will need but little thought to show us that they appeal primarily to the supernatural moral judgment; that this judgment is perpetually being expressed explicitly in the works themselves; and, which is far more important, that it is always pre-supposed in us. In other words, these supreme presentations of life are presentations of men struggling, or failing to struggle, not after natural happiness, but after supernatural right; and it is always pre-supposed on our part that we admit this struggle to be the one important thing. And this importance, we shall see further, is based, not on the external and the social consequences of conduct, but essentially and primarily on its internal and its personal consequences. In _Macbeth_, for instance, the main incident, the tragic-colouring matter of the drama, is the murder of Duncan. But in what aspect of this does the real tragedy lie? Not in the fact that Duncan is murdered, but in the fact that Macbeth is the murderer. What appals us, what purges our passions with pity and with terror as we contemplate it, is not the external, the social effect of the act, but the personal, the internal effect of it. As for Duncan, he is in his grave; after life's fitful fever he sleeps well. What our minds are made to dwell upon is not that Duncan shall sleep for ever, but that Macbeth shall sleep no more; it is not the extinction of a dynasty, but the ruin of a character. We see in _Hamlet_ precisely the same thing. The action there that our interest centres in, is the hero's struggle to conform to an internal personal standard of right, utterly irrespective of use to others, or of natural happiness to himself. In the course of this struggle, indeed, he does nothing but ruin the happiness around him; and this ruin adds greatly to the pathos of the spectacle. But we are not indignant with Hamlet, as being the cause of it. We should have been indignant rather with him if the case had been reversed, and if, instead of sacrificing social happiness for the sake of personal right, he had sacrificed personal right for the sake of social happiness. In _Antigone_ the case is just the same, only there its nature is yet more distinctly exhibited. We have for the central interest the same personal struggle after right, not after use or happiness; and one of the finest passages in that whole marvellous drama is a distinct statement by the heroine that this is so. The one rule she says, that she is resolved to live by, and not live by only, but if needs be to die for, is no human rule, is no standard of man's devising, nor can it be modified to suit our changing needs; but it is _The unwritten and the enduring laws of God, Which are not of to-day nor yesterday, But live from everlasting, and none breathes Who knows them, whence begotten._ In _Measure for Measure_ and _Faust_ we can see the matter reduced to a narrower issue still. In both these plays we can see at once that one moral judgment at least, not to name others, is before all things pre-supposed in us. This is a hard and fixed judgment with regard to female chastity, and the supernatural value of it. It is only because we assent to this judgment that Isabella is heroic to us; and primarily for the same reason that Margaret is unfortunate. Let us suspend this judgment for a moment, and what will become of these two dramas? The terror and the pity of them will vanish instantly like a dream. The fittest name for both of them will be '_Much Ado about Nothing_.' It will thus be seen, and the more we consider the matter the more plain will it become to us--that in all such art as that which we have been now considering, the premiss on which all its power and greatness rests is this: The grand relation of man is not first to his brother men, but to something else, that is beyond humanity--that is at once without and also beyond himself; to this first, and to his brother men through this. We are not our own; we are bought with a price. Our bodies are God's temples, and the joy and the terror of life depends on our keeping these temples pure, or defiling them. Such are the solemn and profound beliefs, whether conscious or unconscious, on which all the higher art of the world has based itself. All the profundity and solemnity of it is borrowed from these, and exists for us in exact proportion to the intensity with which we hold them. Nor is this true of sublime and serious art only. It is true of cynical, profligate, and concupiscent art as well. It is true of Congreve as it is true of Sophocles; it is true of _Mademoiselle de Maupin_ as it is true of _Measure for Measure_. This art differs from the former in that the end presented in it as the object of struggle is not only not the morally right, but is also to a certain extent essentially the morally wrong. In the case of cynical and profligate art this is obvious. For such art does not so much depend on the substitution of some new object, as in putting insult on the present one. It does not make right and wrong change places; on the contrary it carefully keeps them where they are; but it insults the former by transferring its insignia to the latter. It is not the ignoring of the right, but the denial of it. Cynicism and profligacy are essentially the spirits that deny, but they must retain the existing affirmations for their denial to prey upon. Their function is not to destroy the good, but to keep it in lingering torture. It is a kind of spiritual bear-baiting. They hate the good, and its existence piques them; but they must know that the good exists none the less. '_I'd no sooner_,' says one of Congreve's characters, '_play with a man that slighted his ill-fortune, than I'd make love to a woman who undervalued the loss of her reputation_.' In this one sentence is contained the whole secret of profligacy; and profligacy is the same as cynicism, only it is cynicism sensualized. Now we have in the above sentence the exact counterpart to the words of Antigone that I have already quoted. For just as her life lay in conformity to '_The unwritten, and the enduring laws of God_,' so does the life of the profligate lie in the violation of them. To each the existence of laws is equally essential. For profligacy is not merely the gratification of the appetites, but the gratification of them at the expense of something else. Beasts are not profligate. We cannot have a profligate goat. In what I have called concupiscent art, the case might seem different, and to a certain extent it is so. The objects of struggle that we are there presented with are meant to be presented as pleasures, not in defiance of right and wrong, but independently of them. The chief of these, indeed, as Théophile Gautier has told us, are the physical endearments of a man and a woman, with no other qualification than that they are both of them young and beautiful. But though this art professes to be thus independent of the moral judgment, and to trust for none of its effects to the discernment between good and evil, this really is very far from being the case. Let us turn once again to the romance we have already quoted from. The hero says, as we have seen already, that he has completely lost the power of discernment in question. Now, even this, as might be shown easily, is not entirely true; for argument's sake, however, we may grant him that it is so. The real point in the matter to notice is that he is at any rate conscious of the loss. He is a man tingling with the excitement of having cast off some burden. The burden may be gone, but it is still present in the sharp effects of its absence. He is a kind of moral poacher, who, though he may not live by law, takes much of his life's tone from the sense that he is eluding it. His pleasures, though pleasurable in themselves, yet have this quality heightened by the sense of contrast. '_I am at any rate not virtuous_,' his mistress says to him, '_and that is always something gained_.' George Eliot says of Maggie Tulliver, that she liked her aunt Pullet chiefly because she was not her aunt Gleg. Théophile Gautier's hero likes the Venus Anadyomene, partly at least, because she is not the Madonna. Nay, let us even descend to worse spectacles--to the sight of men struggling for enjoyments that are yet more obviously material, more devoid yet of any trace of mind or morals, and we shall see plainly, if we consult the mirror of art, that the moral element is present even here. We shall trace it even in such abnormal literature of indulgence as the erotic work commonly ascribed to Meursius. We shall trace it in the orgies of Tiberius at Capri; or of Quartilla, as Petronius describes them, at Neapolis. It is like a ray of light coming in at the top of a dark cavern, whose inmates see not _it_, but _by_ it; and which only brings to them a consciousness of shadow. It is this supernatural element that leavens natural passion, and gives its mad rage to it. It creates for it '_a twilight where virtues are vices_.' The pleasures thus sought for are supposed to enthral men not in proportion to their intensity (for this through all their varieties would be probably nearly equal) but in proportion to their lowness--to their sullying power. Degradation is the measure of enjoyment; or rather it is an increasing numeral by which one constant figure of enjoyment is multiplied. _Ah, where shall we go then, for pastime, If the_ worst _that can be has been done?_ This is the great question of the votaries of such joys as these.[24] Thus if we look at life in the mirror of art, we shall see how the supernatural is ever present to us. If we climb up into heaven it is there; if we go down into hell it is there also. We shall see it at the bottom of those two opposite sets of pleasures, to the one or the other of which all human pleasures belong. The source of one is an impassioned struggle after the supernatural right, or an impassioned sense of rest upon attaining it; the source of the other is the sense of revolt against it, which in various ways flatters or excites us. In both cases the supernatural moral judgment is the sense appealed to, primarily in the first case, and secondarily if not primarily in the second. All the life about us is coloured by this, and naturally if this be destroyed or wrecked, the whole aspect of life will change for us. What then will this change be? Looking still into the mirror of art, the general character of it will be very readily perceptible. I noticed just now, in passing, how _Measure for Measure_ and _Faust_ would suffer in their meaning and their interest, by the absence on our part of a certain moral judgment. They would become like a person singing to a deaf audience--a series of dumb grimaces with no meaning in them. The same thing is equally true in all the other cases. Antigone's heroism will evaporate;[25] she will be left obstinate only. The lives of Macbeth and Hamlet will be tales of little meaning for us, though the words are strong. They will be full of sound and fury, but they will signify nothing. What they produce in us will be not interest but a kind of wondering weariness--weariness at the weary fate of men who could '_think so brainsickly of things_.' So in like manner will all the emphasis and elaboration in the literature of sensuality become a weariness without meaning, also. Congreve's caustic wit will turn to spasmodic truism; and Théophile Gautier's excess of erotic ardour, into prolix and fantastic affectation. All its sublimity, its brilliance, and a large part of its interest, depend in art on the existence of the moral sense, and would in its absence be absolutely unproducible. The reason of this is plain. The natural pains and pleasures of life, merely manipulated by the imagination and the memory, have too little variety or magnitude in them without further aid. Art without the moral sense to play upon, is like a pianist whose keyboard is reduced to a single octave. And exactly the same will be the case with life. Life will lose just the same qualities that art will--neither more nor less. There will be no introduction of any new interests, but merely the elimination of certain existing ones. The subtraction of the moral sense will not revolutionise human purposes, but simply make them listless. It will reduce to a parti-coloured level the whole field of pains and pleasures. The moral element gives this level a new dimension. Working underneath it as a subterranean force, it convulses and divides its surface. Here vast areas subside into valleys and deep abysses; there mountain peaks shoot up heavenwards. Mysterious shadows begin to throng the hollows; new tints and half-tints flicker and shift everywhere; mists hang floating over ravines and precipices; the vegetation grows more various, here slenderer, there richer and more luxuriant; whilst high over all, bright on the topmost summits, is a new strange something--the white snows of purity, catching the morning streaks on them of a brighter day, that has never as yet risen upon the world below. With the subtraction, or nullifying, of the moral force, all this will go. The mountains will sink, the valleys be filled up; all will be once more dead level--still indeed parti-coloured, but without light and shadow, and with the colours reduced in number, and robbed of all their vividness. The chiaro-oscuro will have gone from life; the moral landscape, whose beauty and grandeur is at present so much extolled, will have dissolved like an insubstantial pageant. Vice and virtue will be set before us in the same grey light; every deeper feeling either of joy or sorrow, of desire or of repulsion, will lose its vigour, and cease any more to be resonant. It may be said indeed, and very truly, that under favourable circumstances there must always remain a joy in the mere act of living, in the exercising of the bodily functions, and in the exciting and appeasing of the bodily appetites. Will anything, it may be asked, for instance, rob the sunshine of its gladness, or deaden the vital influence of a spring morning?--when the sky is a cloudless blue, and the sea is like a wild hyacinth, when the pouring brooks seem to live as they sparkle, and the early air amongst the woodlands has the breath in it of unseen violets? All this, it is quite true, will be left to us; this and a great deal more. This, however, is but one side of the picture. If life has its own natural gladness which is expressed by spring, it has also its own natural sadness which is expressed by winter; and the worth of life, if this is all we trust to, will be as various and as changing as the weather is. But this is not all. Even this worth, such as it is, depends for us at present, in a large measure, upon religion--not directly indeed, but indirectly. This life of air, and nerve, and muscle, this buoyant consciousness of joyous and abounding health, which seems so little to have connection with faiths or theories, is for us impregnated with a life that is impregnated with these, and thus their subtle influence pervades it everywhere. There is no impulse from without which stirs or excites the senses, that does not either bring to us, or send us on to, a something beyond itself. In each of these pleasures that seems to us so simple, floats a swarm of hopes and memories, like the gnats in a summer twilight. There is not a sight, a sound, a smell, not a breath from sea or garden, that is not full of them, and on which, busy and numberless, they are not wafted into us. And each of these volatile presences brings the notions of right and wrong with it; and it is these that make sensuous life tingle with so strange and so elaborate an excitement. Indirectly then, though not directly, the mere joy in the act of living will suffer from the loss of religion, in the same manner, though perhaps not in the same degree, as the other joys will. It will not lose its existence, but it will lose zest. The fabric of its pleasures will of course remain what it ever was; but its brightest inhabitants will have left it. It will be as desolate as Mayfair in September, or as a deserted college during a long vacation. We may here pause in passing, to remark on the shallowness of that philosophy of culture, to be met with in certain quarters, which, whilst admitting all that can be said as to the destruction for us of any moral obligation, yet advises us still to profit by the variety of moral distinctions. '_Each moment_,' says Mr. Pater for instance, '_some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement, is irresistibly real and attractive for us_.' And thus, he adds, '_while all melts under our feet, we may well catch at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge, that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange flowers, and curious odours, or the work of the artist's hand, or the face of one's friend_.' It is plain that this positive teaching of culture is open to the same objections, and is based on the same fallacy, as the positive teaching of morals. It does not teach us, indeed, to let right and wrong guide us in the choice of our pleasures, in the sense that we should choose the one sort and eschew the other; but teaching us to choose the two, in one sense indifferently, it yet teaches us to choose them as distinct and contrasted things. It teaches us in fact to combine the two fruits without confusing their flavours. But in the case of good and evil, as has been seen, this is quite impossible; for good is only good as the thing that ought to be chosen; evil is only evil as the thing that ought not to be chosen; and the only reasons that could justify us in combining them would altogether prevent our distinguishing them. The teachings of positive culture, in fact, rest on the naïve supposition that shine and shadow, as it were, are portable things; and that we can take bright objects out of the sunshine, and dark objects out of the shadow, and setting them both together in the diffused grey light of a studio, make a magical mosaic out of them, of gloom and glitter. Or such teachings, to put the matter yet more simply, are like telling us to pick a primrose at noonday, and to set it by our bed-side for a night-light. It is plain therefore that, in that loss of zest and interest, which the deadening of the moral sense, as we have seen, must bring to life, we shall get no help there. The massy fabric of which saints and heroes were the builders, will never be re-elected by this mincing moral dandyism. But there is another last resource of the modern school, which is far more worthy of attention, and which, being entirely _sui generis_, I have reserved to treat of here. That resource is the devotion to truth as truth; not for the sake of its consequences, but in scorn of them. Here we are told we have at least one moral end that can never be taken away from us. It will still survive to give life a meaning, a dignity, and a value, even should the pursuit of it prove destructive to all the others. The language used by the modern school upon this subject is very curious and instructive. I will take two typical instances. The common argument, says Dr. Tyndall, in favour of belief is the comfort and the gladness that it brings us, its redemption of life, in fact, from that dead and dull condition we have been just considering. '_To this,_' he says, '_my reply is that I choose the nobler part of Emerson when, after various disenchantments, he exclaimed "I covet_ truth!" _The gladness of true heroism, visits the heart of him who is really competent to say this._' The following sentences are Professor Huxley's: '_If it is demonstrated to me,_' he says, '_that without this or that theological dogma the human race will lapse into bipedal cattle, more brutal than the beasts by reason of their greater cleverness, my next question is to ask for the proof of the dogma. If this proof is forthcoming, it is my conviction that no drowning sailor ever clutched a hen-coop more tenaciously than mankind will hold by such dogma, whatever it may be. But if not, then I verily believe that the human race will go its own evil way; and my only consolation lies in the reflection that, however bad our posterity may become, so long as they hold by the plain rule of not pretending to believe what they have no reason to believe, because it may be to their advantage so to pretend, they will not have reached the lowest depths of immorality._' I will content myself with these two instances, but others of a similar kind might be multiplied indefinitely. Now by a simple substitution of terms, such language as this will reveal at once one important fact to us. According to the avowed principles of positive morality, morality has no other test but happiness. Immorality, therefore, can have no conceivable meaning but unhappiness, or at least the means to it, which in this case are hardly distinguishable from the end; and thus, according to the above rigid reasoners, the human race will not have reached the lowest depths of misery so long as it rejects the one thing which _ex hypothesi_ might render it less miserable. Either then all this talk about truth must really be so much irrelevant nonsense, or else, if it be not nonsense, the test of conduct is something distinct from happiness. The question before us is a plain one, which may be answered in one of two ways, but which positivism cannot possibly answer in both. Is truth to be sought only because it conduces to happiness, or is happiness only to be sought for when it is based on truth? In the latter case truth, not happiness, is the test of conduct. Are our positive moralists prepared to admit this? If so, let them explicitly and consistently say so. Let them keep this test and reject the other, for the two cannot be fused together. [Greek: oxos t' aleipha t' egcheas tautô kutei dichostatount an ou philoin prosennepois.] This inconsistency is here, however, only a side point--a passing illustration of the slovenliness of the positivist logic. As far as my present argument goes, we may let this pass altogether, and allow the joint existence of these mutually exclusive ends. What I am about to do is to show that on positive grounds the last of these is more hopelessly inadequate than the first--that truth as a moral end has even more of religion in its composition than happiness, and that when this religion goes, its value will even more hopelessly evaporate. At first sight this may seem impossible. The devotion to truth may seem as simple as it is sacred. But if we consider the matter further, we shall soon think differently. To begin then; truth, as the positivists speak of it, is plainly a thing that is to be worshipped in two ways--firstly by its discovery, and secondly by its publication. Thus Professor Huxley, however much it may pain him, will not hide from himself the fact that there is no God; and however bad this knowledge may be for humanity, his highest and most sacred duty still consists in imparting it. Now why should this be? I ask. Is it simply because the fact in question is the truth? That surely cannot be so, as a few other examples will show us. A man discovers that his wife has been seduced by his best friend. Is there anything very high or very sacred in that discovery? Having made it, does he feel any consolation in the knowledge that it is the entire truth? And will the '_gladness of true heroism_' visit him if he proclaims it to everyone in his club? A chattering nurse betrays his danger to a sick man. The sick man takes fright and dies. Was the discovery of the truth of his danger very glorious for the patient? or was its publication very sacred in the nurse? Clearly the truths that it is sacred to find out and to publish are not all truths, but truths of a certain kind only. They are not particular truths like these, but the universal and eternal truths that underlie them. They are in fact what we call the truths of Nature, and the apprehension of them, or truth as attained by us, means the putting ourselves _en rapport_ with the life of that infinite existence which surrounds and sustains all of us. Now since it is this kind of truth only that is supposed to be so sacred, it is clear that its sacredness does not depend on itself, but on its object. Truth is sacred because Nature is sacred; Nature is not sacred because truth is; and our supreme duty to truth means neither more nor less than a supreme faith in Nature. It means that there is a something in the Infinite outside ourselves that corresponds to a certain something within ourselves; that this latter something is the strongest and the highest part of us, and that it can find no rest but in communion with its larger counterpart. Truth sought for in this way is evidently a distinct thing from the truth of utilitarianism. It is no false reflection of human happiness in the clouds. For it is to be sought for none the less, as our positivists decidedly tell us, even though all other happiness should be ruined by it. Now what on positive principles is the groundwork of this teaching? All ethical epithets such as sacred, heroic, and so forth--all the words, in fact, that are by implication applied to Nature--have absolutely no meaning save as applied to conscious beings; and as a subject for positive observation, there exists no consciousness in the universe outside this earth. By what conceivable means, then, can the positivists transfer to Nature in general qualities which, so far as they know, are peculiar to human nature only? They can only do this in one of two ways--both of which they would equally repudiate--either by an act of fancy, or by an act of faith. Tested rigidly by their own fundamental common principles, it is as unmeaning to call the universe sacred as to say that the moon talks French. Let us however pass this by; let us refuse to subject their teaching to the extreme rigour of even their own law; and let us grant that by some mixed use of fancy or of mysticism, they can turn to Nature as to some vast moral hieroglyph. What sort of morality do they find in it? Nature, as positive observation reveals her to us, is a thing that can have no claim either on our reverence or our approbation. Once apply any moral test to her conduct, and as J.S. Mill has so forcibly pointed out, she becomes a monster. There is no crime that men abhor or perpetrate that Nature does not commit daily on an exaggerated scale. She knows no sense either of justice or mercy. Continually indeed she seems to be tender, and loving, and bountiful; but all that, at such times, those that know her can exclaim to her, is _Miseri quibus Intentata nites_. At one moment she will be blessing a country with plenty, peace, and sunshine; and she will the next moment ruin the whole of it by an earthquake. Now she is the image of thrift, now of prodigality; now of the utmost purity, now of the most revolting filth; and if, as I say, she is to be judged by any moral standard at all, her capacities for what is admirable not only make her crimes the darker, but they also make her virtues partake of the nature of sin. How, then, can an intimacy with this eternal criminal be an ennobling or a sacred thing? The theist, of course, believes that truth _is_ sacred. But his belief rests on a foundation that has been altogether renounced by the positivists. He values truth because, in whatever direction it takes him, it takes him either to God or towards Him--God, to whom he is in some sort akin, and after whose likeness he is in some sort made. He sees Nature to be cruel, wicked, and bewildering when viewed by itself. But behind Nature he sees a vaster power--his father--in whom mysteriously all contradictions are reconciled. Nature for him is God's, but it is not God; and '_though God slay me_,' he says, '_yet will I trust in Him_.' This trust can be attained to only by an act of faith like this. No observation or experiment, or any positive method of any kind, will be enough to give it us; rather, without faith, observation and experiment will do nothing but make it seem impossible. Thus a belief in the sacredness of Nature, or, in other words, in the essential value of truth, is as strictly an act of religion, as strictly a defiance of the whole positive formula, as any article in any ecclesiastical creed. It is simply a concrete form of the beginning of the Christian symbol, '_I believe in God the Father Almighty_.' It rests on the same foundation, neither more nor less. Nor is it too much to say that without a religion, without a belief in God, no fetish-worship was ever more ridiculous than this cultus of natural truth. This subject is so important that it will be well to dwell on it a little longer. I will take another passage from Dr. Tyndall, which presents it to us in a slightly different light, and which speaks explicitly not of truth itself, but of that sacred Object beyond, of which truth is only the sacramental channel to us. '"_Two things," said Imanuel Kant_' (it is thus Dr. Tyndall writes), '"_fill me with awe--the starry heavens, and the sense of moral responsibility in man." And in the hours of health and strength and sanity, when the stroke of action has ceased, and when the pause of reflection has set in, the scientific investigator finds himself overshadowed by the same awe. Breaking contact with the hampering details of earth, it associates him with a power which gives fulness and tone to his existence, but which he can neither analyse nor comprehend._' This, Dr. Tyndall tells us, is the only rational statement of the fact of that '_divine communion_,' whose nature is '_simply distorted and desecrated_' by the unwarranted assumptions of theism. Now let us try to consider accurately what Dr. Tyndall's statement means. Knowledge of Nature, he says, associates him with Nature. It withdraws him from '_the hampering details of earth_,' and enables the individual human being to have communion with a something that is beyond humanity. But what is communion? It is a word with no meaning at all save as referring to conscious beings. There could be no communion between two corpses; nor, again, between a corpse and a living man. Dr. Tyndall, for instance, could have no communion with a dead canary. Communion implies the existence on both sides of a common something. Now what is there in common between Dr. Tyndall and the starry heavens, or that '_power_' of which the starry heavens are the embodiment? Dr. Tyndall expressly says that he not only does not know what there is in common, but that he '_dare_' not even say that, as conscious beings, they two have anything in common at all.[26] The only things he can know about the power in question are that it is vast, and that it is uniform; but a contemplation of these qualities by themselves, must tend rather to produce in him a sense of separation from it than of union with it. United with it, in one sense, he of course is; he is a fraction of the sum of things, and everything, in a certain way, is dependent upon everything else. But in this union there is nothing special. Its existence is an obvious fact, common to all men, whether they dwell upon it or no: and though by a knowledge of Nature we may grow to realise it more keenly, it is impossible to make the union in the least degree closer, or to turn it into anything that can be in any way called a communion. Indeed, for the positivists to talk about communion or association with Nature is about as rational as to talk about communion or association with a steam-engine. The starry skies at night are doubtless an imposing spectacle; but man, on positive principles, can be no more raised by watching them than a commercial traveller can by watching a duke--probably far less: for if the duke were well behaved, the commercial traveller might perhaps learn some manners from him; but there is nothing in the panorama of the universe that can in any way be any model for the positivist. There are but two respects in which he can compare himself to the rest of nature--firstly, as a revealed force; and, secondly, as a force that works by law. But the forces that are revealed by the stars, for instance, are vast, and the force revealed in himself is small; and he, as he considers, is a self-determining agent, and the stars are not. There are but two points of comparison between the two; and in these two points they are contrasts, and not likenesses. It is true, indeed, as I said just now, that a sense of awe and of hushed solemnity is, as a fact, born in us at the spectacle of the starry heavens--world upon luminous world shining and quivering silently; it is true, too, that a spontaneous feeling connects such a sense somehow with our deepest moral being. But this, on positive principles, must be feeling only. It means absolutely nothing: it can have no objective fact that corresponds to it. It is an illusion, a pathetic fallacy. And to say that the heavens with their stars declare to us anything high or holy, is no more rational than to say that Brighton does, which itself, seen at night from the sea, is a long braid of stars descended upon the wide horizon. All that the study of nature, all that the love of truth, can do for the positivist is not to guide him to any communion with a vaster power, but to show him that no such communion is possible. His devotion to truth, if it mean anything--and the language he often uses about it betrays this--let us know the worst, not let us find out the best:--a wish which is neither more nor less noble than the wish to sit down at once in a slop upon the floor rather than sustain oneself any longer above it on a chair that is discovered to be rickety. Here then again, in this last resource of positivism we have religion embodied as a yet more important element than in any of the others; and when this element is driven out of it, it collapses yet more hopelessly than they do. By the whole positive system we are bound to human life. There is no mystical machinery by which we can rise above it. It is by its own isolated worth that this life must stand or fall. And what, let us again ask, will this worth, be? The question is of course, as I have said, too vague to admit of more than a general answer, but a general answer, as I have said also, may be given confidently enough. Man when fully imbued with the positive view of himself, will inevitably be an animal of far fewer capacities than he at present is. He will not be able to suffer so much; but also he will not be able to enjoy so much. Surround him, in imagination, with the most favourable circumstances; let social progress have been carried to the utmost perfection; and let him have access to every happiness of which we can conceive him capable. It is impossible even thus to conceive of life as a very valuable possession to him. It would at any rate be far less valuable than it is to many men now, under outer circumstances that are far less favourable. The goal to which a purely human progress is capable of conducting us, is thus no vague condition of glory and felicity, in which men shall develop new and ampler powers. It is a condition in which, the keenest life attainable has continually been far surpassed already, without anything having been arrived at that in itself seemed of surpassing value. FOOTNOTES: [23] 'Hippolyta.--_This is the silliest stuff I ever heard._ Theseus.--_The best in this kind are but shadows, and the worst no worse, if imagination amend them._ Hippolyta.--_It must be your imagination then, not theirs._'--Midsummer's Night's Dream, Act V. '_Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts._'--Prologue to Henry V. [24] Seneca says of virtue, '_Non quia delectat placet, sed quia placet delectat_.' Of vice in the same way we may say, '_Non quia delectat_ pudet, _sed quia_ pudet _delectat_.' [25] It will be of course recollected that in this abstraction of the moral sense, we have to abstract it from the characters as well as ourselves. [26] '_When I attempt to give the power which I see manifested in the universe an objective form, personal or otherwise, it slips away from me, declining all intellectual manipulation. I dare not, save poetically, use the pronoun_ "He" _regarding it. I dare not call it a_ "Mind." _I refuse even to call it a_ "Cause." _Its mystery overshadows me; but it remains a mystery, while the objective frames which my neighbours try to make it fit, simply distort and desecrate it._'--Dr. Tyndall, '_Materialism and its Opponents_.' CHAPTER VII. THE SUPERSTITION OF POSITIVISM. Glendower. _I can call spirits from the vasty deep._ Hotspur. _Why so can I, or so can any man, But will they come when you do call for them?_ Henry IV. Part 1. General and indefinite as the foregoing considerations have been, they are quite definite enough to be of the utmost practical import. They are definite enough to show the utter hollowness of that vague faith in progress, and the glorious prospects that lie before humanity, on which the positive school at present so much rely, and about which so much is said. To a certain extent, indeed, a faith in progress is perfectly rational and well grounded. There are many imperfections in life, which the course of events tends manifestly to lessen if not to do away with, and so far as these are concerned, improvements may go on indefinitely. But the things that this progress touches are, as has been said before, not happiness, but the negative conditions of it. A belief in this kind of progress is not peculiar to positivism. It is common to all educated men, no matter what their creed may be. What is peculiar to positivism is the strange corollary to this belief, that man's subjective powers of happiness will go on expanding likewise. It is the belief not only that the existing pleasures will become more diffused, but that they will, as George Eliot says, become '_more intense in diffusion_.' It is this belief on which the positivists rely to create that enthusiasm, that impassioned benevolence, which is to be the motive power of their whole ethical machinery. They have taken away the Christian heaven, and have thus turned adrift a number of hopes and aspirations that were once powerful. These hopes and aspirations they acknowledge to be of the first necessity; they are facts, they say, of human nature, and no higher progress would be possible without them. What the enlightened thought is to do is not to extinguish, but to transfer them. They are to be given a new object more satisfactory than the old one; not our own private glory in another world, but the common glory of our whole race in this. Now let us consider for a moment some of the positive criticisms on the Christian heaven, and then apply them to the proposed substitute. The belief in heaven, say the positivists, is to be set aside for two great reasons. In the first place there is no objective proof of its existence, and in the second place there is subjective proof of its impossibility. Not only is it not deducible, but it is not even thinkable. Give the imagination _carte blanche_ to construct it, and the imagination will either do nothing, or will do something ridiculous. '_My position [with regard to this matter]_' says a popular living writer,[27] '_is this--The idea of a glorified energy in an ampler life, is an idea utterly incompatible with exact thought, one which evaporates in contradictions, in phrases, which when pressed have no meaning._' Now if this criticism has the least force, as used against the Christian heaven, it has certainly far more as used against the future glories of humanity. The positivists ask the Christians how they expect to enjoy themselves in heaven. The Christians may, with far more force, ask the positivists how they expect to enjoy themselves on earth. For the Christians' heaven being _ex hypothesi_ an unknown world, they do not stultify their expectations from being unable to describe them. On the contrary it is a part of their faith that they are indescribable. But the positivists' heaven is altogether in this world; and no mystical faith has any place in their system. In this case, therefore, whatever we may think of the other, it is plain that the tests in question are altogether complete and final. To the Christians, indeed, it is quite open to make their supposed shame their glory, and to say that their heaven would be nothing _if_ describable. The positivists have bound themselves to admit that theirs is nothing _unless_ describable. What then, let us ask the enthusiasts of humanity, will humanity be like in its ideally perfect state? Let them show us some sample of the general future perfection; let them describe one of the nobler, ampler, glorified human beings of the future. What will he be like? What will he long for? What will he take pleasure in? How will he spend his days? How will he make love? What will he laugh at? And let him be described in phrases which _when pressed_ do not _evaporate in contradictions_, but which have some _distinct meaning_, and _are not incompatible with exact thought_. Do our exact thinkers in the least know what they are prophesying? If not, what is the meaning of their prophecy? The prophecies of the positive school are rigid scientific inferences; they are that or nothing. And one cannot infer an event of whose nature one is wholly ignorant. Let these obvious questions be put to our positive moralists--these questions they have themselves suggested, and the grotesque unreality of this vague optimism will be at once apparent. Never was vagary of mediæval faith so groundless as this. The Earthly Paradise that the mediæval world believed in was not more mythical than the Earthly Paradise believed in by our exact thinkers now; and George Eliot might just as well start in a Cunard steamer to find the one, as send her faith into the future to find the other. Could it be shown that these splendid anticipations were well founded, they might perhaps kindle some new and active enthusiasm; though it is very doubtful, even then, if the desire would be ardent enough to bring about its own accomplishment. This, however, it is quite useless to consider, the anticipations in question being simply an empty dream. A certain kind of improvement, as I have said, we are no doubt right in looking for, not only with confidence, but with complacency. But positivism, so far from brightening this prospect, makes it indefinitely duller than it would be otherwise. The practical results therefore to be looked for from a faith in progress may be seen at their utmost already in the world around us; and the positivists may make the sobering reflection that their system can only change these from what they already see them, not by strengthening, but by weakening them. Take the world then as it is at present, and the sense, on the individual's part, that he personally is promoting its progress, can belong to, and can stimulate, exceptional men only, who are doing some public work; and it will be found even in these cases that the pleasure which this sense gives them is largely fortified (as is said of wine) by the entirely alien sense of fame and power. On the generality of men it neither has, nor can have, any effect whatever, or even if it gives a glow to their inclinations in some cases, it will at any rate never curb them in any. The fact indeed that things in general do tend to get better in certain ways, must produce in most men not effort but acquiescence. It may, when the imagination brings it home to them, shed a pleasing light occasionally over the surface of their private lives: but it would be as irrational to count on this as a stimulus to farther action, as to expect that the summer sunshine would work a steam-engine. If we consider, then, that even the present condition of things is far more calculated to produce the enthusiasm of humanity than the condition that the positivists are preparing for themselves, we shall see how utterly chimerical is their entire practical system. It is like a drawing of a cathedral, which looks magnificent at the first glance, but which a second glance shows to be composed of structural impossibilities--blocks of masonry resting on no foundations, columns hanging from the roofs, instead of supporting them, and doors and windows with inverted arches. The positive system could only work practically were human nature to suffer a complete change--a change which it has no spontaneous tendency to make, which no known power could ever tend to force on it, and which, in short, there is no ground of any kind for expecting. There are two characteristics in men, for instance, which, though they undoubtedly do exist, the positive system requires to be indefinitely magnified--the imagination, and unselfishness. The work of the imagination is to present to the individual consciousness the remote ends to which all progress is to be directed; and the desire to work for these is, on the positive supposition, to conquer all mere personal impulses. Now men have already had an end set before them, in the shape of the joys of heaven, which was far brighter and far more real to them than these others can ever be; and yet the imagination has so failed to keep this before them, that its small effect upon their lives is a commonplace with the positivists themselves. How then can these latter hope that their own pale and distant ideal will have a more vivid effect on the world than that near and glowing one, in whose place they put it? Will it incite men to virtues to which heaven could not incite them? or lure them away from vices from which hell-fire would not scare them? Before it can do so, it is plain that human nature must have completely changed, and its elements have been re-mixed, in completely new proportions. In a state of things where such a result was possible, a man would do a better day's work for a penny to be given to his unborn grandson, than he would now do for a pound to be paid to himself at sunset. For argument's sake, however, let us suppose such a change possible. Let us suppose the imagination to be so developed that the remote end of progress--that happier state of men in some far off century--is ever vividly present to us as a possibility we may help to realise. Another question still remains for us. To preserve this happiness for others, we are told, we must to a large extent sacrifice our own. Is it in human nature to make this sacrifice? The positive moralists assure us that it is, and for this reason. Man, they say, is an animal who enjoys vicariously with almost as much zest as in his own person; and therefore to procure a greater pleasure for others makes him far happier than to procure a less one for himself. In this statement, as I have observed in an earlier chapter, there is no doubt a certain general truth; but how far it will hold good in particular instances depends altogether on particular circumstances. It depends on the temperament of the person who is to make the sacrifice, on the nature of his feelings towards the person for whom he is to make it, and on the proportion between the pleasure he is to forego himself, and the pleasure he is to secure for another. Now if we consider human nature as it is, and the utmost development of it that on positive grounds is possible, the conditions that can produce the requisite self-sacrifice will be found to be altogether wanting. The future we are to labour for, even when viewed in its brightest light, will only excel the present in having fewer miseries. So far as its happiness goes it will be distinctly less intense. It will, as we have seen already, be but a vapid consummation at its best; and the more vividly it is brought before us in imagination, the less likely shall we be to '_struggle, groan, and agonize_,' for the sake of hastening it in reality. It will do nothing, at any rate, to increase the tendency to self-sacrifice that is now at work in the world; and this, though startling us now and then by some spasmodic manifestation, is not strong enough to have much general effect on the present; still less will it have more effect on the future. Vicarious happiness as a rule is only possible when the object gained for another is enormously greater than the object lost by self; and it is not always possible even then: whilst when the gains on either side are nearly equal, it ceases altogether. And necessarily so. If it did not, everything would be at a dead-lock. Life would be a perpetual holding back, instead of a pushing forward. Everyone would be waiting at the door, and saying to everyone else, '_After you_.' But all these practical considerations are entirely forgotten by the positivists. They live in a world of their own imagining, in which all the rules of this world are turned upside down. There, the defeated candidate in an election would be radiant at his rival's victory. When a will was read, the anxiety of each relative would be that he or she should be excluded in favour of the others; or more probably still that they should be all excluded in favour of a hospital. Two rivals, in love with the same woman, would be each anxious that his own suit might be thwarted. And a man would gladly involve himself in any ludicrous misfortune, because he knew that the sight of his catastrophe would rejoice his whole circle of friends. The course of human progress, in fact, would be one gigantic donkey-race, in which those were the winners who were farthest off from the prize. We have but to state the matter in terms of common life, to see how impossible is the only condition of things that would make the positive system practicable. The first wonder that suggests itself, is how so grotesque a conception could ever have originated. But its genesis is not far to seek. The positivists do not postulate any new elements in human nature, but the reduction of some, elimination of others, and the magnifying of others. And they actually find cases where this process has been effected. But they quite forget the circumstances that have made such an event possible. They forget that in their very nature they have been altogether exceptional and transitory; and that it is impossible to construct a Utopia in which they shall exist at all. We can, for instance, no doubt point to Leonidas and the three hundred as specimens of what human heroism can rise to; and we can point to the Stoics as specimens of human self-control. But to make a new Thermopylæ we want a new Barbarian; and before we can recoil from temptation as the Stoics did, we must make pleasure as perilous and as terrible as it was under the Roman emperors. Such developments of humanity are at their very essence abnormal; and to suppose that they could ever become the common type of character, would be as absurd as to suppose that all mankind could be kings. I will take another instance that is more to the point yet. A favourite positivist parable is that of the miser. The miser in the first place desires gold because it can buy pleasure. Next he comes to desire it more than the pleasure it can buy. In the same way, it is said, men can be taught to desire virtue by investing it with the attractions of the end, to which, strictly speaking it is no more than the means. But this parable really disproves the very possibility it is designed to illustrate. It is designed to illustrate the possibility of our choosing actions that will give pleasure to others, in contradistinction to actions that will give pleasure to ourselves. But the miser desires gold for an exactly opposite reason. He desires it as potential selfishness, not as potential philanthropy. Secondly, we are to choose the actions in question because they will make us happy. But the very name we give the miser shows that the analogous choice in his case makes him miserable. Thirdly, the material miser is an exceptional character; there is no known means by which it can be made more common; and with the moral miser the case will be just the same. Lastly, if such a character be barely producible even in the present state of the world, much less will it be producible when human capacities shall have been curtailed by positivism, when the pleasures that the gold of virtue represents are less intense than at present, and the value of the coveted coin is indefinitely depreciated. Much more might be added to the same purpose, but enough has been said already to make these two points clear:--firstly, that the positive system, if it is to do any practical work in the world, requires that the whole human character shall be profoundly altered; and secondly, that the required alteration is one that may indeed be dreamt about, but which can never possibly be made. Even were it made, the results would not be splendid; but no matter how splendid they might be, this is of no possible moment to us. There are few things on which it is idler to speculate than the issues of impossible contingencies. And the positivists would be talking just as much to the purpose as they do now, were they to tell us how fast we should travel supposing we had wings, or what deep water we could wade through if we were twenty-four feet high. These last, indeed, are just the suppositions that they do make. Between our human nature and the nature they desiderate there is a deep and fordless river, over which they can throw no bridge, and all their talk supposes that we shall be able to fly or wade across it, or else that it will dry up of itself. _Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis, at ille Labitur et labetur, in omne volubilis ævum._ So utterly grotesque and chimerical is this whole positive theory of progress, that, as an outcome of the present age, it seems little short of a miracle. Professing to embody what that age considers its special characteristics, what it really embodies is the most emphatic negation of these. It professes to rest on experience, and yet no Christian legend ever contradicted experience more. It professes to be sustained by proof, and yet the professions of no conjuring quack ever appealed more exclusively to credulity. Its appearance, however, will cease to be wonderful, and its real significance will become more apparent, if we consider the class of thinkers who have elaborated and popularised it. They have been men and women, for the most part, who have had the following characteristics in common. Their early training has been religious;[28] their temperaments have been naturally grave and earnest; they have had few strong passions; they have been brought up knowing little of what is commonly called the world; their intellects have been vigorous and active; and finally they have rejected in maturity the religion by which all their thoughts have been coloured. The result has been this. The death of their religion has left a quantity of moral emotions without an object; and this disorder of the moral emotions has left their mental energies without a leader. A new object instantly becomes a necessity. They are ethical Don Quixotes in want of a Dulcinea; the best they can find is happiness and the progress of Humanity; and to this their imagination soon gives the requisite glow. Their strong intellects, their activity, and their literary culture each supplements the power that it undoubtedly does give, with a sense of knowing the world that is altogether fictitious. They imagine that their own narrow lives, their own feeble temptations, and their own exceptional ambitions represent the universal elements of human life and character; and they thus expect that an object which has really been but the creature of an impulse in themselves, will be the creator of a like impulse in others; and that in the case of others, it will revolutionise the whole natural character, whereas it has only been a symbol of it in their own. Most of our positive moralists, at least in this country, have been and are people of such excellent character, and such earnest and high purpose, that there is something painful in having to taunt them with an ignorance which is not their own fault, and which must make their whole position ridiculous. The charge, however, is one that it is quite necessary to make, as we shall never properly estimate their system if we pass it over. It will be said, probably, that the simplicity as to worldly matters I attribute to them, so far from telling against them, is really essential to their character as moral teachers. And to moral teachers of a certain kind it may be essential. But it is not so to them. The religious moralist might well instruct the world, though he knew little of its ways and passions; for the aim of his teaching was to withdraw men from the world. But the aim of the positive moralist is precisely opposite; it is to keep men in the world. It is not to teach men to despise this life, but to adore it. The positions of the two moralists are in fact the exact converses of each other. For the divine, earth is an illusion, heaven a reality; for the positivist, earth is a reality, and heaven an illusion. The former in his retirement studied intensely the world that he thought real, and he could do this the better for being not distracted by the other. The positivists imitate the divine in neglecting what they think is an illusion; but they do not attempt to imitate him in studying what they think is the reality. The consequence is, as I have just been pointing out, that the world they live in and to which alone their system could be applicable, is a world of their own creation, and its bloodless populations are all of them _idola specûs_. If we will but think all this calmly over, and try really to sympathise with the position of these poor enthusiasts, we shall soon see their system in its true light, and shall learn at once to realise and to excuse its fatuity. We shall see that it either has no meaning whatever, or that its meaning is one that its authors have already repudiated, and only do not recognise now, because they have so inadequately re-expressed it. We shall see that their system has no motive power at all in it, or that its motive power is simply the theistic faith they rejected, now tied up in a sack and left to flounder instead of walking upright. We shall see that their system is either nothing, or that it is a mutilated reproduction of the very thing it professes to be superseding. Once set it upon its own professed foundations, and the entire quasi-religious structure, with its visionary hopes, its impossible enthusiasms--all its elaborate apparatus for enlarging the single life, and the generation that surrounds it, falls to earth instantly like a castle of cards. We are left simply each of us with our own lives, and with the life about us, amplified indeed to a certain extent by sympathy, but to a certain extent only--an extent whose limits we are quite familiar with from experience, and which positivism, if it tends to move them at all, can only narrow, and can by no possibility extend. We are left with this life, changed only in one way. It will have nothing added to it, but it will have much taken from it. Everything will have gone that is at present keenest in it--joys and miseries as well. In this way positivism is indeed an engine of change, and may inaugurate if not complete a most momentous kind of progress. That progress is the gradual de-religionizing of life, the slow sublimating out of it of its concrete theism--the slow destruction of its whole moral civilisation. And as this progress continues there will not only fade out of the human consciousness the things I have before dwelt on--all capacity for the keener pains and pleasures, but there will fade out of it also that strange sense which is the union of all these--the white light woven of all these rays; that is, the vague but deep sense of some special dignity in ourselves--a sense which we feel to be our birthright, inalienable except by our own act and deed; a sense which, at present, in success sobers us, and in failure sustains us, and which is visible more or less distinctly in our manners, in our bearing, and even in the very expression of the human countenance: it is, in other words, the sense that life is worth living, not accidentally but essentially. And as this sense goes its place will be taken by one precisely opposite--the sense that life, in so far as it is worth living at all, is worth living not essentially, but accidentally; that it depends entirely upon what of its pleasures we can each one of us realise; that it will vary as a positive quantity, like wealth, and that it may become also a various quantity, like poverty; and that behind and beyond these vicissitudes it can have no abiding value. To realise fully a state of things like this is for us not possible. But we can, however, understand something of its nature. I conceive those to be altogether wrong who say that such a state would be one of any wild license, or anything that we should call very revolting depravity. Offences, certainly, that we consider the most abominable would doubtless be committed continually and as matters of course. Such a feeling as shame about them would be altogether unknown. But the normal forms of passion would remain, I conceive, the most important; and it is probable, that though no form of vice would have the least anathema attached to it, the rage for the sexual pleasures would be far less fierce than it is in many cases now. The sort of condition to which the world would be tending would be a condition rather of dulness than what we, in our parlance, should now call degradation. Indeed the state of things to which the positive view of life seems to promise us, and which to some extent it is actually now bringing on us, is exactly what was predicted long ago, with an accuracy that seems little less than inspired, at the end of Pope's _Dunciad_. _In vain, in vain: the all-composing hour Resistless falls! the muse obeys the power. She comes! she comes! the sable throne behold Of night primæval and of chaos old. Before her, fancy's gilded clouds decay, And all its varying rainbows die away. Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires, The meteor drops, and in a flash expires. As one by one, at dread Medea's strain, The sickening stars fade off the ethereal plain; As Argus' eyes, by Hermes' wand oppress'd Clos'd one by one to everlasting rest; Thus, at her felt approach and secret might, Art after art goes out, and all is night. See skulking truth to her old cavern fled, Mountains of casuistry heap'd o'er her head. Philosophy, that lean'd on heaven before, Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more._ _Physic of metaphysic begs defence, And metaphysic calls for aid on sense! See mystery to mathematics fly. In vain: they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die. Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires; And, unawares, morality expires. Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine, Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine. Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos! is restor'd, Light dies before thy uncreating word, Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall; And universal darkness buries all._ Dr. Johnson said that these verses were the noblest in English poetry. Could he have read them in our day, and have realised with what a pitiful accuracy their prophecy might soon begin to fulfil itself, he would probably have been too busy with dissatisfaction at the matter of it to have any time to spare for an artistic approbation of the manner. FOOTNOTES: [27] Mr. Frederic Harrison. [28] The case of J.S. Mill may seem at first sight to be an exception to this. But it is really not so. Though he was brought up without any religious teaching, yet the severe and earnest influences of his childhood would have been impossible except in a religious country. He was in fact brought up in an atmosphere (if I may borrow with a slight change a phrase of Professor Huxley's) of Puritanism minus Christianity. It may be remembered farther that Mill says of himself, '_I am one of the very few examples of one who has not thrown off religious belief, but never had it_.' CHAPTER VIII. THE PRACTICAL PROSPECT. _Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck.... Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell._ Shakespeare, _Sonnet XIV_. The prospects I have been just describing as the goal of positive progress will seem, no doubt, to many to be quite impossible in its cheerlessness. If the future glory of our race was a dream, not worth dwelling on, much more so, they will say, is such a future abasement of it as this. They will say that optimism may at times have perhaps been over-sanguine, but that this was simply the exuberance of health; whereas pessimism is, in its very nature, the gloom and languor of a disease. Now with much of this view of the matter I entirely agree. I admit that the prospect I have described may be an impossible one; personally, I believe it is so. I admit also that pessimism is the consciousness of disease, confessing itself. But the significance of these admissions is the very opposite of what it is commonly supposed to be. They do not make the pessimism I have been arguing one whit less worthy of attention; on the contrary, they make it more worthy. This is the point on which I may most readily be misunderstood. I will therefore try to make my meaning as clear as possible. Pessimism, then, represents, to the popular mind, a philosophy or view of life the very name of which is enough to condemn it. The popular mind, however, overlooks one important point. Pessimism is a vague word. It does not represent one philosophy, but several; and before we, in any case, reject its claims on our attention, we should take care to see what its exact meaning is. The views of life it includes may be classified in two ways. In the first place, they are either what we may call critical pessimisms or prospective pessimisms: of which the thesis of the first is that human life is essentially evil; and of the second, that whatever human life may be now, its tendency is to get worse instead of better. The one is the denial of human happiness; the other the denial of human hope. But there is a second classification to make, traversing this one, and far more important. Pessimism may be either absolute or hypothetical. The first of these maintains its theses as statements of actual facts; the second, which is, of its nature, prospective mainly, only maintains them as statements of what will be facts, in the event of certain possible though it may be remote contingencies. Now, absolute pessimism, whether it be critical or prospective, can be nothing, in the present state of the world, but an exhibition of ill temper or folly. It is hard to imagine a greater waste of ingenuity than the attempts that have been made sometimes to deduce from the nature of pain and pleasure, that the balance in life must be always in favour of the former, and that life itself is necessarily and universally an evil. Let the arguments be never so elaborate, they are blown away like cobwebs by a breath of open-air experience. Equally useless are the attempts to predict the gloom of the future. Such predictions either mean nothing, or else they are mere loose conjectures, suggested by low spirits or disappointment. They are of no philosophic or scientific value; and though in some cases they may give literary expression to moods already existing, they will never produce conviction in minds that would else be unconvinced. The gift of prophecy as to general human history is not a gift that any philosophy can bestow. It could only be acquired through a superhuman inspiration which is denied to man or through a superhuman sagacity which is never attained by him. The hypothetical pessimism that is contained in my arguments is a very different thing from this, and far humbler. It makes no foolish attempts to say anything general about the present, or anything absolute about the future. As to the future, it only takes the absolute things that have been said by others; and not professing any certainty about their truth, merely explains their meaning. It deals with a certain change in human beliefs, now confidently predicted; but it does not say that this prediction will be fulfilled. It says only that if it be, a change, not at present counted on, will be effected in human life. It says that human life will degenerate if the creed of positivism be ever generally accepted; but it not only does not say that it ever will be accepted by everybody: rather, it emphatically points out that as yet it has been accepted fully by nobody. The positive school say that their view of life is the only sound one. They boast that it is founded on the rock of fact, not on the sand-bank of sentiment; that it is the final philosophy, that will last as long as man lasts, and that very soon it will have seen the extinction of all the others. It is the positivists who are the prophets, not I. My aim has been not to confirm the prophecy, but to explain its meaning; and my arguments will be all the more opportune at the present moment, the more reason we have to think the prophecy false. It may be asked why, if we think it false, we should trouble our heads about it. And the answer to this is to be found in the present age itself. Whatever may be the future fate of positive thought, whatever confidence may be felt by any of us that it cannot in the long run gain a final hold upon the world, its present power and the present results of it cannot be overlooked. That degradation of life that I have been describing as the result of positivism--of what the age we live in calls the only rational view of things--may indeed never be completed; but let us look carefully around us, and we shall see that it is already begun. The process, it is true, is at present not very apparent; or if it is, its nature is altogether mistaken. This, however, only makes it more momentous; and the great reason why it is desirable to deal so rudely with the optimist system of the positivists is that it lies like a misty veil over the real surface of facts, and conceals the very change that it professes to make impossible. It is a kind of moral chloroform, which, instead of curing an illness, only makes us fatally unconscious of its most alarming symptoms. But though an effort be thus required to realise our true condition, it is an effort which, before all things, we ought to make; and which, if we try, we can all make readily. A little careful memory, a little careful observation, will open the eyes of most of us to the real truth of things; it will reveal to us a spectacle that is indeed appalling, and the more candidly we survey it, the more shall we feel aghast at it. To begin, then, let us once more consider two notorious facts: first, that over all the world at the present day a denial is spreading itself of all religions dogmas, more complete than has ever before been known; and, secondly, that in spite of this speculative denial, and in the places where it has done its work most thoroughly, a mass of moral earnestness seems to survive untouched. I do not attempt to deny the fact; I desire, on the contrary, to draw all attention to it. But the condition in which it survives is commonly not in the least realised. The class of men concerned with it are like soldiers who may be fighting more bravely perhaps than ever; but who are fighting, though none observe it, with the death-wound under their uniforms. Of all the signs of the times, these high-minded unbelievers are thought to be the most reassuring; but really they are the very reverse of this. The reason why their true condition has passed unnoticed is, that it is a condition that is naturally silent, and that has great difficulty in finding a mouthpiece. The only two parties who have had any interest in commenting on it have been the very parties least able to understand, and most certain to distort it. They have been either the professed champions of theism, or else the visionary optimists of positivism; the former of whom have had no sympathy with positive principles, and the latter no discernment of their results. The class of men we are considering are equally at variance with both of these; they agree with each in one respect, and in another they agree with neither. They agree with the one that religious belief is false; they agree with the other that unbelief is miserable. What wonder then that they should have kept their condition to themselves? Nearly all public dealing with it has been left to men who can praise the only doctrines that they can preach as true, or who else can condemn as false the doctrines that they deplore as mischievous. As for the others, whose mental and moral convictions are at variance, they have neither any heart to proclaim the one, nor any intellectual standpoint from which to proclaim the other. Their only impulse is to struggle and to endure in silence. Let us, however, try to intrude upon their privacy, even though it be rudely and painfully, and see what their real state is; for it is these men who are the true product of the present age, its most special and distinguishing feature, and the first-fruits of what we are told is to be the philosophy of the enlightened future. To begin, then, let us remember what these men were when Christians; and we shall be better able to realise what they are now. They were men who believed firmly in the supreme and solemn importance of life, in the privilege that it was to live, despite all temporal sorrow. They had a rule of conduct which would guide them, they believed, to the true end of their being--to an existence satisfying and excellent beyond anything that imagination could suggest to them; they had the dread of a corresponding ruin to fortify themselves in their struggle against the wrong; and they had a God ever present, to help and hear, and take pity on them. And yet even thus, selfishness would beset the most unselfish, and weariness the most determined. How hard the battle was, is known to all; it has been the most prominent commonplace in human thought and language. The constancy and the strength of temptation, and the insidiousness of the arguments it was supported by, has been proverbial. To explain away the difference between good and evil, to subtly steal its meaning out of long-suffering and self-denial, and, above all, to argue that in sinning '_we shall not surely die_,' a work which was supposed to belong especially to the devil, has been supposed to have been accomplished by him with a success continually irresistible. What, then, is likely to be the case now, with men who are still beset with the same temptations, when not only they have no hell to frighten, no heaven to allure, and no God to help them; but when all the arguments that they once felt belonged to the father of lies, are pressed on them from every side as the most solemn and universal truths? Thus far the result has been a singular one. With an astonishing vigour the moral impetus still survives the cessation of the forces that originated and sustained it; and in many cases there is no diminution of it traceable, so far as action goes. This, however, is only true, for the most part, of men advanced in years, in whom habits of virtue have grown strong, and whose age, position, and circumstances secure them from strong temptation. To see the real work of positive thought we must go to younger men, whose characters are less formed, whose careers are still before them, and on whom temptation of all kinds has stronger hold. We shall find such men with the sense of virtue equally vivid in them, and the desire to practise it probably far more passionate; but the effect of positive thought on them we shall see to be very different. Now, the positive school itself will say that such men have all they need. They confessedly have conscience left to them--the supernatural moral judgment, that is, as applied to themselves--which has been analysed, but not destroyed; and the position of which, we are told, has been changed only by its being set on a foundation of fact, instead of a foundation of superstition. Mill said that having learnt what the sunset clouds were made of, he still found that he admired them as much as ever; '_therefore_,' he said, '_I saw at once that there was nothing to be feared from analysis_.' And this is exactly what the positive school say of conscience. A shallower falsehood, however, it is not easy to conceive. It is true that conscience in one way may, for a time at least, survive any kind of analysis. It may continue, with undiminished distinctness, its old approvals and menaces. But that alone is nothing at all to the point. Conscience is of practical value, not only because it says certain things, but because it says them, as we think, with authority. If its authority goes, and its advice continues, it may indeed molest, but it will no longer direct us. Now, though the voice of conscience may, as the positive school say, survive their analysis of it, its authority will not. That authority has always taken the form of a menace, as well as of an approval; and the menace at any rate, upon all positive principles, is nothing but big words that can break no bones. As soon as we realise it to be but this, its effect must cease instantly. The power of conscience resides not in what we hear it to be, but in what we believe it to be. A housemaid may be deterred from going to meet her lover in the garden, because a howling ghost is believed to haunt the laurels; but she will go to him fast enough when she discovers that the sounds that alarmed her were not a soul in torture, but the cat in love. The case of conscience is exactly analogous to this. And now let us turn again to the case in question. Men of such a character as I have been just describing may find conscience quite equal to giving a glow, by its approval, to their virtuous wishes; but they will find it quite unequal to sustaining them against their vicious ones; and the more vigorous the intellect of the man, the more feeble will be the power of conscience. When a man is very strongly tempted to do a thing which he believes to be wrong, it is almost inevitable that he will test to the utmost the reasons of this belief; or if he does not do this before he yields to the temptation, yet if he does happen to yield to it, he will certainly do so after. Thus, unless we suppose human nature to be completely changed, and all our powers of observation completely misleading, the inward condition of the class in question is this. However calm the outer surface of their lives may seem, under the surface there is a continual discord; and also, though they alone may perceive it, a continued decadence. In various degrees they all yield to temptation; all men in the vigour of their manhood do; and conscience still fills them with its old monitions and reproaches. But it cannot enforce obedience. They feel it to be the truth, but at the same time they know it to be a lie; and though they long to be coerced by it, they find it cannot coerce them. Reason, which was once its minister, is now the tribune of their passions, and forbids them, in times of passion, to submit to it. They are not suffered to forget that it is not what it says it is, that _It never came from on high, And never rose from below_: and they cannot help chiding themselves with the irrepressible self-reproach, _Am I to be overawed By what I cannot but know, Is a juggle born of the brain?_ Thus their conscience, though not stifled, is dethroned; it is become a fugitive Pretender; and that part of them that would desire its restoration is set down as an intellectual _malignant_, powerless indeed to restore its sovereign. _Invalidasque tibi tendens, heu non tua, palmas._ Conscience, in short, as soon as its power is needed, is like their own selves dethroned within themselves, wringing its hands over a rebellion it is powerless to suppress. And then, when the storm is over, when the passions again subside, and their lives once more return to their wonted channels, it can only come back humbly and dejected, and give them in a timid voice a faint, dishonoured blessing. Such lives as these are all of them really in a state of moral consumption. The disease in its earlier stage is a very subtle one; and it may not be generally fatal for years, or even for generations. But it is a disease that can be transmitted from parent to child; and its progress is none the less sure because it is slow; nor is it less fatal and painful because it may often give a new beauty to the complexion. On various constitutions it takes hold in various ways, and its presence is first detected by the sufferer under various trials, and betrayed to the observer by various symptoms. What I have just been describing is the action that is at the root of it; but with the individual it does not always take that form. Often indeed it does; but oftener still perhaps it is discovered not in the helpless yet reluctant yielding to vice, but in the sadness and the despondency with which virtue is practised--in the dull leaden hours of blank endurance or of difficult endeavour; or in the little satisfaction that, when the struggle has ceased, the reward of struggle brings with it. An earlier, and perhaps more general symptom still, is one that is not personal. It consists not in the way in which men regard themselves, but in the way in which they regard others. In their own case, their habitual desire of right, and their habitual aversion to wrong, may have been enough to keep them from any open breach with conscience, or from putting it to an open shame. But its precarious position is revealed to them when they turn to others. Sin from which they recoil themselves they see committed in the life around them, and they find that it cannot excite the horror or disapproval, which from its supposed nature it should. They find themselves powerless to pass any general judgment, or to extend the law they live by to any beyond themselves. The whole prospect that environs them has become morally colourless; and they discern in their attitude towards the world without, what it must one day come to be towards the world within. A state of mind like this is no dream. It is a malady of the modern world--a malady of our own generation, which can escape no eyes that will look for it. It is betraying itself every moment around us, in conversation, in literature, and in legislation. Such, then, is the condition of that large and increasing class on which modern thought is beginning to do its work. Its work must be looked for here, and not in narrower quarters; not amongst professors and lecturers, but amongst the busy crowd about us; not on the platforms of institutions, or in the lay sermons of specialists, but amongst politicians, artists, sportsmen, men of business, lovers--in '_the tides of life, and in the storm of action_'--amongst men who have their own way to force or choose in the world, and their daily balance to strike between self-denial and pleasure--on whom the positive principles have been forced as true, and who have no time or talent to do anything else but live by them. It is amongst these that we must look to see what such principles really result in; and of these we must choose not those who would welcome license, but those who long passionately to live by law. It is the condition of such men that I have been just describing. Its characteristics are vain self-reproach, joyless commendation, weary struggle, listless success, general indifference, and the prospect that if matters are going thus badly with them, they will go even worse with their children. Such a spectacle certainly is not one that has much promise for the optimist; and the more we consider it, the more sad and ominous will it appear to us. Indeed, when the present age shall realise its own condition truly, the dejection of which it is slowly growing conscious may perhaps give way to despair. This condition, however, is so portentous that it is difficult to persuade ourselves that it is what it seems to be, and that it is not a dream. But the more steadily we look at it, the more real will its appalling features appear to us. We are literally in an age to which history can show no parallel, and which is new to the experience of humanity; and though the moral dejection we have been dwelling on may have had many seeming counterparts in other times, this is, as it were, solid substance, whereas they were only shadows. I have pointed out already in my first chapter how unexampled is the state in which the world now finds itself; but we will dwell once again upon its more general features. Within less than a century, distance has been all but annihilated, and the earth has practically, and to the imagination, been reduced to a fraction of its former size. Its possible resources have become mean and narrow, set before us as matters of every-day statistics. All the old haze of wonder is melting away from it; and the old local enthusiasms, which depended so largely on ignorance and isolation, are melting likewise. Knowledge has accumulated in a way never before dreamed of. The fountains of the past seem to have been broken up, and to be pouring all their secrets into the consciousness of the present. For the first time man's wide and varied history has become a coherent whole to him. Partly a cause and partly a result of this, a new sense has sprung up in him--an intense self-consciousness as to his own position; and his entire view of himself is undergoing a vague change: whilst the positive basis on which knowledge has been placed, has given it a constant and coercive force, and has made the same change common to the whole civilised world. Thought and feeling amongst the western nations are conforming to a single pattern: they are losing their old chivalrous character, their possibilities of isolated conquest and intellectual adventure. They are settling down into a uniform mass, that moves or stagnates like a modern army, and whose alternative lines of march have been mapped out beforehand. Such is the condition of the western world; and the western world is beginning now, at all points, to bear upon the east. Thus opinions that the present age is forming for itself have a weight and a volume that opinions never before possessed. They are the first beginnings, not of natural, or of social, but of human opinion--an oecumenical self-consciousness on the part of man as to his own prospects and his own position. The great question is, what shape finally will this dawning self-consciousness take? Will it contain in it that negation of the supernatural which our positive assertions are at present supposed to necessitate? If so, then it is not possible to conceive that this last development of humanity, this stupendous break from the past which is being accomplished by our understanding of it, will not be the sort of break which takes place when a man awakes from a dream, and finds all that he most prized vanished from him. It is impossible to conceive that this awakening, this discovery by man of himself, will not be the beginning of his decadence; that it will not be the discovery on his part that he is a lesser and a lower thing than he thought he was, and that his condition will not sink till it tallies with his own opinion of it. If this be really the case, we shall not be able to dispose of pessimism by calling it a disease; for the disease will be real and universal, and pessimism will be nothing but the scientific description of it. The pessimist is only silenced by being called diseased, when it is meant that the disease imputed to him is either hypochondriacal or peculiar to himself. But in the present case the disease is real, deep-seated, and extending steadily. The only question for us is, is it curable or incurable? This the event alone can answer: but as no future can be produced but through the agency of the present, the event, to a certain extent, must be in our own hands. For us, at any rate, the first thing to be done is to face boldly our own present condition, and the causes that are producing it. To become alive to our danger is the one way to escape from it. But the danger is at present felt rather than known. The class of men we are considering are conscious, as Mr. Matthew Arnold says, '_of a void that mines the breast_;' but each thinks that this is a fancy only, and hardly dares communicate it to his fellows. Here and there, however, by accident, it is already finding unintended expression; and signs come to the surface of the vague distrust and misgiving that are working under it. The form it takes amongst the general masses that are affected by it is, as might be expected, practical rather than analytical. They are conscious of the loss that the loss of faith is to them; and more or less coherently they long for its recovery. Outwardly, indeed, they may often sneer at it; but outward signs in such matters are very deceiving. Much of the bitter and arrogant certitude to be found about us in the expression of unbelief, is really like the bitterness of a woman against her lover, which has not been the cause of her resolving to leave him, but which has been caused by his having left her. In estimating what is really the state of feeling about us, we must not look only at the surface. We must remember that deep feeling often expresses itself by contradicting itself; also that it often exists where it is not expressed at all, or where it betrays rather than expresses itself; and, further, that during the hours of common intercourse, it tends, for the time being, to disappear. People cannot be always exclaiming in drawing-rooms that they have lost their Lord; and the fact may be temporarily forgotten because they have lost their portmanteau. All serious reflections are like reflections in water--a pebble will disturb them, and make a dull pond sparkle. But the sparkle dies, and the reflection comes again. And there are many about us, though they never confess their pain, and perhaps themselves hardly like to acknowledge it, whose hearts are aching for the religion that they can no longer believe in. Their lonely hours, between the intervals of gaiety, are passed with barren and sombre thoughts; and a cry rises to their lips but never passes them. Amongst such a class it is somehow startling to find the most unlikely people at times placing themselves. Professor Clifford, for instance, who of all our present positivists is most uproarious in his optimism, has yet admitted that the religion he invites us to trample on is, under certain forms, an ennobling and sustaining thing; and for such theism as that of Charles Kingsley's he has expressed his deepest reverence. Again, there is Professor Huxley. He denies with the most dogmatic and unbending severity any right to man to any supernatural faith; and he '_will not for a moment admit_' that our higher life will suffer in consequence.[29] And yet '_the lover of moral beauty_,' he says wistfully, '_struggling through a world of sorrow and sin, is surely as much the stronger for believing that sooner or later a vision of perfect peace and goodness will burst upon him, as the toiler up a mountain for the belief that beyond crag and snow lie home and rest_.' And he adds, as we have seen already, that could a faith like what he here indicates be placed upon a firm basis, mankind would cling to it as '_tenaciously as ever a drowning sailor did to a hen-coop_.' But all this wide-spread and increasing feeling is felt at present to be of no avail. The wish to believe is there; but the belief is as far off as ever. There is a power in the air around us by which man's faith seems paralysed. The intellect, we were thinking but now, had acquired a new vigour and a clearer vision; but the result of this growth is, with many, to have made it an incubus, and it lies upon all their deepest hopes and wishes _Like a weight Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life._ Such is the condition of mind that is now spreading rapidly, and which, sooner or later, we must look steadily in the face. Nor is it confined to those who are its direct victims. Those who still cling, and cling firmly, to belief are in an indirect way touched by it. Religion cannot fail to be changed by the neighbourhood of irreligion. If it is persecuted, it may burn up with greater fervour; but if it is not persecuted, it must in some measure be chilled. Believers and unbelievers, separated as they are by their tenets, are yet in these days mixed together in all the acts and relations of life. They are united by habits, by blood, and by friendship, and they are each obliged continually to ignore or excuse what they hold to be the errors of the other. In a state of things like this, it is plain that the conviction of believers can have neither the fierce intensity that belongs to a minority under persecution, nor the placid confidence that belongs to an overwhelming majority. They can neither hate the unbelievers, for they daily live in amity with them, nor despise altogether their judgment, for the most eminent thinkers of the day belong to them. By such conditions as these the strongest faith cannot fail to be affected. As regards the individuals who retain it, it may not lose its firmness, but it must lose something of its fervour; and as regards its own future hold upon the human race, it is faith no longer, but is anxious doubt, or, at best, a desperate trust. Dr. Newman has pointed out how even the Pope has recognised in the sedate and ominous rise of our modern earth-born positivism some phenomenon vaster and of a different nature from the outburst of a petulant heresy; he seems to recognise it as a belligerent rather than a rebel.[30] '_One thing_,' says Dr. Newman, '_except by an almost miraculous interposition, cannot be; and that is a return to the universal religious sentiment, the public opinion, of the mediæval time. The Pope himself calls those centuries "the ages of faith." Such endemic faith may certainly be decreed for some future time; but_ _as far as we have the means of judging at present, centuries must run out first._'[31] In this last sentence is indicated the vast and universal question, which the mind of humanity is gathering itself together to ask--will the faith that we are so fast losing ever again revive for us? And my one aim in this book has been to demonstrate that the entire future tone of life, and the entire course of future civilisation, depends on the answer which this question receives. There is, however, this further point to consider. Need the answer we are speaking of be definite and universal? or can we look forward to its remaining undecided till the end of time? Now I have already tried to make it evident that for the individual, at any rate, it must by-and-by be definite one way or the other. The thorough positive thinker will not be able to retain in supreme power principles which have no positive basis. He cannot go on adoring a hunger which he knows can never be satisfied, or cringing before fears which he knows will never be realised. And even if this should for a time be possible, his case will be worse, not better. Conscience, if it still remains with him, will remain not as a living thing--a severe but kindly guide--but as the menacing ghost of the religion he has murdered, and which comes to embitter degradation, not to raise it. The moral life, it is true, will still exist for him, but it will probably, in literal truth, _Creep on a broken wing Through cells of madness, haunts of horror and fear._ But a state of things like this can hardly be looked forward to as conceivably of any long continuance. Religion would come back, or conscience would go. Nor do I think that the future which Dr. Newman seems to anticipate can be regarded as probable either. He seems to anticipate a continuance side by side of faith and positivism, each with their own adherents, and fighting a ceaseless battle in which neither gains the victory. I venture to submit that the new forms now at work in the world are not forms that will do their work by halves. When once the age shall have mastered them, they will be either one thing or the other--they will be either impotent or omnipotent. Their public exponents at present boast that they will be omnipotent; and more and more the world about us is beginning to believe the boast. But the world feels uneasily that the import of it will be very different from what we are assured it is. One English writer, indeed, on the positive side, has already seen clearly what the movement really means, whose continuance and whose consummation he declares to us to be a necessity. '_Never_,' he says, '_in the history of man has so terrific a calamity befallen the race as that which all who look may now behold, advancing as a deluge, black with destruction, resistless in might, uprooting our most cherished hopes, engulfing our most precious creed, and burying our highest life in mindless desolation._'[32] The question I shall now proceed to is the exact causes of this movement, and the chances and the powers that the human race has of resisting it. FOOTNOTES: [29] '_For my own part, I do not for one moment admit that morality is not strong enough to hold its own._'--Prof. Huxley, _Nineteenth Century_, May, 1877. [30] These words may no doubt be easily pressed into a sense which Catholics would repudiate. But if not pressed unduly, they represent what will, I believe, be admitted to be a fact. [31] A letter to the Duke of Norfolk, by J.H. Newman, D.D., p. 35. Pickering: 1875. [32] A Candid Examination of Theism. By Physicus. Trübner & Co.: 1878. CHAPTER IX. THE LOGIC OF SCIENTIFIC NEGATION. _I am Sir Oracle, And when I ope my mouth let no dog bark._ Before beginning to analyse the forces that are decomposing religious belief, it will be well to remark briefly on the means by which these forces are applied to the world at large. To a certain extent they are applied directly; that is, many of the facts that are now becoming obvious the common sense of all men assimilates spontaneously, and derives, unbidden, its own doubts or denials from them. But the chief power of positivism is derived otherwise. It is derived not directly from the premisses that it puts before us, but from the intellectual prestige of its exponents, who, to the destruction of private judgment, are forcing on us their own personal conclusions from them. This prestige, indeed, is by no means to be wondered at. If men ever believed a teacher '_for his works' sake_,' the positive school is associated with enough signs and wonders. All those astonishing powers that man has acquired in this century are with much justice claimed by it as its works and gifts. The whole sensuous surroundings of our lives are its subjects, and are doing it daily homage; and there is not a conquest over distance, disease, or darkness that does not seem to bear witness to its intellectual supremacy. The opinion, therefore, that is now abroad in the world is that the positive school are the monopolists of unbiassed reason; that reason, therefore, is altogether fatal to religion; and that those who deny this, only do so through ignorance or through wilful blindness. As long as this opinion lasts, the revival of faith is hopeless. What we are now about to examine is, how far this opinion is well founded. The arguments which operate against religion with the leaders of modern thought, and through their intellectual example on the world at large, divide themselves into three classes, and are derived from three distinct branches of thought and study. They may be distinguished as physical, moral, and historical. Few of these arguments, taken separately, can be called altogether new. Their new power has been caused by the simultaneous filling up and completion of all of them; by their transmutation from filmy visions into massive and vast realities; from unauthorised misgivings into the most rigid and compelling of demonstrations: and still more, by the brilliant and sudden annihilation of the most obvious difficulties, which till very lately had neutralised and held their power in check. Of these three sets of arguments, the two first bear upon all religion, whilst the third bears upon it only as embodied in some exclusive form. Thus the physicist argues, for example, that consciousness being a function of the brain, unless the universe be a single brain itself, there can be no conscious God.[33] The moral philosopher argues that sin and misery being so prevalent, there can be no Almighty and all-merciful God. And the historian argues that all alleged revelations can be shown to have had analogous histories; and that therefore, even if God exists, there is no one religion through which He has specially revealed Himself. These are rough specimens solubly, _so far as observation can carry us_, mind with matter. The great gulf between the two has at last been spanned. The bridge across it, that was so long seen in dreams and despaired of, has been thrown triumphantly--a solid compact fabric, on which a hundred intellectual masons are still at work, adding stone on ponderous stone to it. Science, to put the matter in other words, has accomplished these three things. Firstly, to use the words of a well-known writer, '_it has established a functional relation to exist between every fact of thinking, willing, or feeling, on the one side, and some molecular change in the body on the other side_.' Secondly, it has connected, through countless elusive stages, this organic human body with the universal lifeless matter. And thirdly, it claims to have placed the universal matter itself in a new position for us, and to exhibit all forms of life as developed from it, through its own spontaneous motion. Thus for the first time, beyond the reach of question, the entire sensible universe is brought within the scope of the physicist. Everything that is, is matter moving. Life itself is nothing but motion of an infinitely complex kind. It is matter in its finest ferment. The first traceable beginnings of it are to be found in the phenomenon of crystallisation; we have there, we are told by the highest scientific authority, '_the first gropings of the so-called vital force_;' and we learn from the same quarter, that between these and the brain of Christ there is a difference in degree only, not in kind: they are each of them '_an assemblage of molecules, acting and re-acting according to law_.' '_We believe_,' says Dr. Tyndall, '_that every thought and every feeling has its definite mechanical correlative--that it is accompanied by a certain breaking up and re-marshalling of the atoms of the brain_.' And though he of course admits that to trace out the processes in detail is infinitely beyond our powers, yet '_the quality of the problem and of our powers_,' he says, '_are, we believe, so related, that a mere expansion of the latter would enable them to cope with the former_.' Nowhere is there any break in Nature; and '_supposing_,' in Dr. Tyndall's words, '_a planet carved from the sun, set spinning on an axis, and sent revolving round the sun at a distance equal to that of our earth_,' science points to the conclusion that as the mass cooled, it would flower out in places into just such another race as ours--creatures of as large discourse, and, like ourselves, looking before and after. The result is obvious. Every existing thing that we can ever know, or hope to know, in the whole inward as well as in the whole outward world--everything from a star to a thought, or from a flower to an affection, is connected with certain material figures, and with certain mechanical forces. All have a certain bulk and a certain place in space, and could conceivably be made the subjects of some physical experiment. Faith, sanctity, doubt, sorrow, and love, could conceivably be all gauged and detected by some scientific instrument--by a camera or by a spectroscope; and their conditions and their intensity be represented by some sort of diagram. These marvellous achievements, as I have said, have been often before dreamed of. Now they are accomplished. As applied to natural religion, the effect of them is as follows. Firstly, with regard to God, they have taken away every external proof of His existence, and, still more, every sign of His daily providence. They destroy them completely at a sudden and single blow, and send them falling about us like so many dead flies. God, as connected with the external world, was conceived of in three ways--as a Mover, as a Designer, and as a Superintendent. In the first two capacities He was required by thought; in the last, He was supposed to be revealed by experience. But now in none of these is He required or revealed longer. So far as thought goes, He has become a superfluity; so far as experience goes, He has become a fanciful suggestion. Secondly, with regard to man, the life and soul are presented to us, not as an entity distinct from the body, and therefore capable of surviving it, but as a function of it, or the sum of its functions, which has demonstrably grown with its growth, which is demonstrably dependent upon even its minutest changes, and which, for any sign or hint to the contrary, will be dissolved with its dissolution. A God, therefore, that is the master of matter, and a human soul that is independent of it--any second world, in fact, of alien and trans-material forces, is reduced, on physical grounds, to an utterly unsupported hypothesis. Were this all, however, it would logically have on religion no effect at all. It would supply us with nothing but the barren verbal proposition that the immaterial was not material, or that we could find no trace of it by merely studying matter. Its whole force rests on the following suppressed premiss, that nothing exists but what the study of matter conceivably could reveal to us; or that, in other words, the immaterial equals the nonexistent. The case stands thus. The forces of thought and spirit were supposed formerly to be quite distinct from matter, and to be capable of acting without the least connection with it. Now, it is shown that every smallest revelation of these to us, is accomplished by some local atomic movement, which, on a scientific instrument fine enough, would leave a distinct impression; and thus it is argued that no force is revealed through matter that is not inseparable from the forms revealing it. Here we see the meaning of that great modern axiom, that verification is the test of truth; or that we can build on nothing as certain but what we can prove true. The meaning of the word '_proof_' by itself may perhaps be somewhat hazy; but the meaning that positive science attaches to it is plain enough. A fact is only proved when the evidence it rests upon leaves us no room for doubt--when it forces on every mind the same invincible conviction; that is, in other words, when, directly or indirectly, its material equivalent can be impressed upon our bodily senses. This is the fulcrum of the modern intellectual lever. Ask anyone oppressed and embittered by the want of religion the reason why he does not again embrace it, and the answer will still be this--that there is no proof that it is true. Granting, says Professor Huxley, that a religious creed would be beneficial, '_my next step is to ask for a_ proof _of its dogmas_.' And with contemptuous passion another well-known writer, Mr. Leslie Stephen, has classified all beliefs, according as we can prove or not prove them, into realities and empty dreams. '_The ignorant and childish_,' he says, '_are hopelessly unable to draw the line between dreamland and reality; but the imagery which takes its rise in the imagination as distinguished from the perceptions, bears indelible traces of its origin in comparative unsubstantiality and vagueness of outline_.' And '_now_,' he exclaims, turning to the generation around him, '_at last your creed is decaying. People have discovered that you know nothing about it; that heaven and hell belong to dreamland; that the impertinent young curate who tells me that I shall be burnt everlastingly for not sharing his superstition, is just as ignorant as I myself, and that I know as much as my dog._'[34] Such is that syllogism of the physical sciences which is now supposed to be so invincible against all religion, and which has already gone so far towards destroying the world's faith in it. Now as to the minor premiss, that there is no proof of religion, we may concede, _at least provisionally_, that it is completely true. What it is really important to examine is the major premiss, that we can be certain of nothing that we cannot support by proof. This it is plain does not stand on the same footing as the former, for it is of its very nature not capable of being proved itself. Its foundation is something far less definable--the general character for wisdom of the leading thinkers who have adopted it, and the general acceptance of its consequences by the common sense of mankind. Now if we examine its value by these tests, the result will be somewhat startling. We find that not only are mankind at large as yet but very partially aware of its consequences, but that its true scope and meaning has not even dawned dimly on the leading thinkers themselves. Few spectacles, indeed, in the whole history of thought are more ludicrous than that of the modern positive school with their great doctrine of verification. They apply it rigorously to one set of facts, and then utterly fail to see that it is equally applicable to another. They apply it to religion, and declare that the dogmas of religion are dreams; but when they pass from the dogmas of religion to those of morality, they not only do not use their test, but unconsciously they denounce it with the utmost vehemence. Thus Mr. Leslie Stephen, in the very essay from which I have just now quoted, not only has recourse, for giving weight to his arguments, to such ethical epithets as _low_, _lofty_, and even _sacred_, but he puts forward as his own motive for speaking, a belief which on his own showing is a dream. That motive, he says, is devotion to truth for its own sake--the only principle that is really worthy of man. His argument is simply this. It is man's holiest and most important duty to discover the truth at all costs, and the one test of truth is physical verification. Here he tells us we find the only high morality, and the men who cling to religious dream-dogmas which they cannot physically verify, can only answer their opponents, says Mr. Stephen, '_by a shriek or a sneer_.' '_The sentiment_,' he proceeds, '_which the dreamer most thoroughly hates and misunderstands, is the love of truth for its own sake. He cannot conceive why a man should attack a lie simply because it is a lie._' Mr. Stephen is wrong. That is exactly what the dreamer can do, and no one else but he; and Mr. Stephen is himself a dreamer when he writes and feels like this. Why, let me ask him, should the truth be loved? Do the '_perceptions_,' which are for him the only valid guides, tell him so? The perceptions tell him, as he expressly says, that the truths of nature, so far as man is concerned with them, are '_harsh_' truths. Why should '_harsh_' things be loveable? Or supposing Mr. Stephen does love them, why is that love '_lofty_'? and why should he so brusquely command all other men to share it? _Low_ and _lofty_--what has Mr. Stephen to do with words like these? They are part of the language of dreamland, not of real life. Mr. Stephen has no right to them. If he has, he must be able to draw a hard and fast line between them; for if his conceptions of them be '_vague in outline_' and '_unsubstantial_,' they belong by his own express definition to the land of dreams. But this is what Mr. Stephen, with the solemn imbecility of his school, is quite incapable of seeing. Professor Huxley is in exactly the same case. He says, as we have seen already, that, come what may of it, our highest morality is to follow truth; that the '_lowest depth of immorality_' is to _pretend to believe what we see no reason for believing_;' and that our only proper reasons for belief are some physical, some _perceptible_ evidence. And yet at the same time he says that to '_attempt to upset morality_' by the help of the physical sciences is about as rational or as possible as to '_attempt to upset Euclid by the help of the Rig Veda_.' Now on Professor Huxley's principles, this last sentence, though it sounds very weighty, is, if so ungracious a word may be allowed me, nothing short of nonsense. It would be the lowest depth of immorality, he says, to believe in God, when we see that there is no physical evidence to justify the belief. And physical science in this way he admits--he indeed proclaims--has upset religion. How then has physical science in the same way failed to upset morality? The foundation of morality, he says, is the belief that truth for its own sake is sacred. But what proof can he discover of this sacredness? Does any positive method of experience or observation so much as tend to suggest it? We have already seen that it does not. What Professor Huxley's philosophy really proves to him is that it is true that nothing is sacred; not that it is a sacred thing to discover the truth. We saw all this already when we were examining his comparison of the perception of moral beauty to the perception of the heat of ginger. It is the same thing with which we are again dealing now, only we are approaching it from a slightly different point of view. What we saw before, was that without an assent to the religious dogmas, the moral dogmas can have no logical meaning. We have now seen that even were the two logically independent, they yet belong both of them to the same order of things; and that if our tests of truth prove the former to be illusions, they will, with precisely the same force, prove the same thing of the latter. But the most crucial test of all we have still to come to, which will put this conclusion in a yet clearer and a more unmistakable light. Thus far what we have seen has amounted to only this--that if science can take from man his religious faith, it leaves him a being without any moral guidance. What we shall now see is that, by the same arguments, it will prove him to be not a moral being at all; that it will prove not only that he has no rule by which to direct his will, but also that he has no will to direct. To understand this we must return to physical science, and to the exact results that have been accomplished by it. We have seen how completely, from one point of view, it has connected mind with matter, and how triumphantly it is supposed to have unified the apparent dualism of things. It has revealed the brain to us as matter in a combination of infinite complexity, which it has reached at last through its own automatic workings; and it has revealed consciousness to us as a function of this brain, and as altogether inseparable from it. But for this, the old dualism now supposed to be obsolete would remain undisturbed. Indeed, if this doctrine were denied, such a dualism would be the only alternative. For every thought, then, that we think, and every feeling or desire that we feel, there takes place in the brain some definite material movement, on the force or figure of which the thoughts and feelings are dependent. Now if physical observations are to be the only things that guide us, one important fact will become at once evident. Matter existed and fermented long before the evolution of mind; mind is not an exhibition of new forces, but the outcome of a special combination of old. Mental facts are therefore essentially dependent on molecular facts; molecular facts are not dependent on mental. They may seem to be so, but this is only seeming. They are as much the outcome of molecular groupings and movements as the figures in a kaleidoscope are of the groupings and movements of the colored bits of glass. They are things entirely by the way; and they can as little be considered links in any chain of causes as can the figure in a kaleidoscope be called the cause of the figure that succeeds it. The conclusion, however, is so distasteful to most men, that but few of them can be brought even to face it, still less to accept it. There is not a single physicist of eminence--none at least who has spoken publicly on the moral aspects of life--who has honestly and fairly considered it, and said plainly whether he accepts it, rejects it, or is in doubt about it. On the contrary, instead of meeting this question, they all do their best to avoid it, and to hide it from themselves and others in a vague haze of mystery. And there is a peculiarity in the nature of the subject that has made this task an easy one. But the dust they have raised is not impenetrable, and can, with a little patience, be laid altogether. The phenomenon of consciousness is in one way unique. It is the only phenomenon with which science comes in contact, of which the scientific imagination cannot form a coherent picture. It has a side, it is true, that we can picture well enough--'_the thrilling of the nerves_,' as Dr. Tyndall says, '_the discharging of the muscles, and all the subsequent changes of the organism_.' But of how these changes come to have another side, we can form no picture. This, it is perfectly true, is a complete mystery. And this mystery it is that our modern physicists seize on, and try to hide and lose in the shadow of it a conclusion which they admit that, in any other case, a rigorous logic would force on them. The following is a typical example of the way in which they do this. It is taken from Dr. Tyndall. '_The mechanical philosopher, as such_,' he says, '_will never place a state of consciousness and a group of molecules in the position of mover and moved. Observation proves them to interact; but in passing from one to the other, we meet a blank which the logic of deduction is unable to fill.... I lay bare unsparingly the initial difficulty of the materialist, and tell him that the facts of observation which he considers so simple are "almost as difficult to be seized as the idea of a soul." I go further, and say in effect: "If you abandon the interpretation of grosser minds, who image the soul as a Psyche which could be thrown out of the window--an entity which is usually occupied we know not how, among the molecules of the brain, but which on due occasion, such as the intrusion of a bullet, or the blow of a club, can fly away into other regions of space--if abandoning this heathen notion you approach the subject in the only way in which approach is possible--if you consent to make your soul a poetic rendering of a phenomenon which--as I have taken more pains than anyone else to show you--refuses the ordinary yoke of physical laws, then I, for one, would not object to this exercise of ideality." I say it strongly, but with good temper, that the theologian who hacks and scourges me for putting the matter in this light is guilty of black ingratitude._' Now if we examine this very typical passage, we shall see that in it are confused two questions which, as regards our own relation to them, are on a totally different footing. One of these questions cannot be answered at all. The other can be answered in distinct and opposite ways. About the one we must rest in wonder; about the other we must make a choice. And the feat which our modern physicists are trying to perform is to hide the importunate nature of the second in the dark folds of the first. This first question is, Why should consciousness be connected with the brain at all? The second question is, What is it when connected? Is it simply the product of the brain's movement; or is the brain's movement in any degree produced by it? We only know it, so to speak, as the noise made by the working of the brain's machinery--as the crash, the roar, or the whisper of its restless colliding molecules. Is this machinery self-moving, or is it, at least, modulated, if not moved, by some force other than itself? The brain is the organ of consciousness, just as the instrument called an organ is an organ of music; and consciousness itself is as a tune emerging from the organ-pipes. Expressed in terms of this metaphor our two questions are as follows. The first is, Why, when the air goes through them, are the organ-pipes resonant? The second is, What controls the mechanism by which the air is regulated--a musician, or a revolving barrel? Now what our modern physicists fail to see is, not only that these two questions are distinct in detail, but that also they are distinct in kind; that a want of power to answer them means, in the two cases, not a distinct thing only, but also an opposite thing; and that our confessed impotence to form any conjecture at all as to the first, does not in the least exonerate us from choosing between conjectures as to the second. As to the first question, our discovery of the fact it is concerned with, and our utter inability to account for this fact, has really no bearing at all upon the great dilemma--the dilemma as to the unity or the dualism of existence, and the independence or automatism of the life and will of man. All that science tells us on this first head the whole world may agree with, with the utmost readiness; and if any theologian '_hacks and scourges_' Dr. Tyndall for his views thus far, he must, beyond all doubt, be a very foolish theologian indeed. The whole bearing of this matter modern science seems to confuse and magnify, and it fancies itself assaulted by opponents who in reality have no existence. Let a man be never so theological, and never so pledged to a faith in myths and mysteries, he would not have the least interest in denying that the brain, though we know not how, is the only seat for us of thought and mind and spirit. Let him have never so firm a faith in life immortal, yet this immortal has, he knows, put on mortality, through an inexplicable contact with matter; and his faith is not in the least shaken by learning that this point of contact is the brain. He can admit with the utmost readiness that the brain is the only instrument through which supernatural life is made at the same time natural life. He can admit that the moral state of a saint might be detected by some form of spectroscope. At first sight, doubtless, this may appear somewhat startling; but there is nothing really in it that is either strange or formidable. Dr. Tyndall says that the view indicated can, '_he thinks_,' be maintained '_against all attack_.' But why he should apprehend any attack at all, and why he should only '_think_' it would be unsuccessful, it is somewhat hard to conceive. To say that a spectroscope as applied to the brain might conceivably detect such a thing as sanctity, is little more than to say that our eyes as applied to the face can actually detect such a thing as anger. There is nothing in that doctrine to alarm the most mystical of believers. In the completeness with which it is now brought before us it is doubtless new and wonderful, and will doubtless tend presently to clarify human thought. But no one need fear to accept it as a truth; and probably before long we shall all accept it as a truism. It is not denying the existence of a soul to say that it cannot move in matter without leaving some impress in matter, any more than it is denying the existence of an organist to say that he cannot play to us without striking the notes of his organ. Dr. Tyndall then need hardly have used so much emphasis and iteration in affirming that '_every thought and feeling has its definite mechanical correlative, that it is accompanied by a certain breaking-up and re-marshalling of the atoms of the brain_.' And he is no more likely to be '_hacked and scourged_' for doing so than he would be for affirming that every note we hear in a piece of music has its definite correlative in the mechanics of the organ, and that it is accompanied by a depression and a rising again of some particular key. In his views thus far the whole world may agree with him; whilst when he adds so emphatically that in these views there is still involved a mystery, we shall not so much say that the world agrees with him as that he, like a good sensible man, agrees with the world. The passage from mind to matter is, Dr. Tyndall says, unthinkable. The common sense of mankind has always said the same. We have here a something, not which we are doubtful how to explain, but which we cannot explain at all. We have not to choose or halt between alternative conjectures, for there are absolutely no conjectures to halt between. We are now, as to this point, in the same state of mind in which we have always been, only this state of mind has been revealed to us more clearly. We are in theoretical ignorance, but we are in no practical perplexity. The perplexity comes in with the second question; and it is here that the issue lies between the affirmation and the denial of a second and a supernatural order. We will see, first, how this question is put and treated by Dr. Tyndall, and we will then see what his treatment comes to. Is it true, he asks, as many physicists hold it is, '_that the physical processes are complete in themselves, and would go on just as they do if consciousness were not at all implicated_,' as an engine might go on working though it made no noise, or as a barrel-organ might go on playing even though there were no ear to listen to it? Or do '_states of consciousness enter as links into the chain of antecedence and sequence which gives rise to bodily actions?_' Such is the question in Dr. Tyndall's own phrases; and here, in his own phrases also, comes his answer. '_I have no power_,' he says, '_of imagining such states interposed between the molecules of the brain, and influencing the transference of motion among the molecules. The thing_ eludes all mental presentation. _But_,' he adds, '_the production of consciousness by molecular motion is quite as unpresentable to the mental vision as the production of molecular motion by consciousness. If I reject one result, I reject both. I, however, reject neither, and thus stand in the presence of two Incomprehensibles, instead of one Incomprehensible._' Now what does all this mean? There is one meaning of which the words are capable, which would make them perfectly clear and coherent; but that meaning, as we shall see presently, cannot possibly be Dr. Tyndall's. They would be perfectly clear and coherent if he meant this by them--that the brain was a natural instrument, in the hands of a supernatural player; but that why the instrument should be able to be played upon, and how the player should be able to play upon it, were both matters on which he could throw no light. But elsewhere he has told us expressly that he does not mean this. This he expressly says is '_the interpretation of_ grosser _minds_,' and science will not for a moment permit us to retain it. The brain contains no '_entity usually occupied we know not how amongst its molecules_,' but at the same time separable from them. According to him, this is a '_heathen_' notion, and, until we abandon it, '_no approach_,' he says, '_to the subject is possible_.' What does he mean, then, when he tells us he rejects neither result; when he tells us that he believes that molecular motion produces consciousness, and also that consciousness in its turn produces molecular motion?--when he tells us distinctly of these two that '_observation proves them to interact_'? If such language as this means anything, it must have reference to two distinct forces, one material and the other immaterial. Indeed, does he not himself say so? Does he not tell us that one of the beliefs he does not reject is the belief in '_states of consciousness_ interposed between _the molecules of the brain, and influencing the transference of motion among the molecules_'? It is perfectly clear, then, that these states are not molecules; in other words, they are not material. But if not material, what are they, acting on matter, and yet distinct from matter? What can they belong to but that '_heathen_' thing the soul--that '_entity which could be thrown out of the window_,' and which, as Dr. Tyndall has said elsewhere, science forbids us to believe in? Surely for an exact thinker this is thought in strange confusion. '_Matter_,' he says, '_I define as that mysterious something by which all this is accomplished_;' and yet here we find him, in the face of this, invoking some second mystery as well. And for what reason? This is the strangest thing of all. He believes in his second Incomprehensible _because_ he believes in his first Incomprehensible. '_If I reject one result_,' he says, '_I_ must _reject both. I, however, reject neither_.' But why? Because one undoubted fact is a mystery, is every mystery an undoubted fact? Such is Dr. Tyndall's logic in this remarkable utterance: and if this logic be valid, we can at once prove to him the existence of a personal God, and a variety of other '_heathen_' doctrines also. But, applied in this way, it is evident that the argument fails to move him; for a belief in a personal God is one of the first things that his science rejects. What shall we say of him, then, when he applies the argument in his own way? We can say simply this--that his mind for the time being is in a state of such confusion, that he is incapable really of clearly meaning anything. What his position logically must be--what, on other occasions, he clearly avows it to be--is plain enough. It is essentially that of a man confronted by one Incomprehensible, not confronted by two. But, looked at in certain ways, or rather looked _from_ in certain ways, this position seems to stagger him. The problem of existence reels and grows dim before him, and he fancies that he detects the presence of two Incomprehensibles, when he has really, in his state of mental insobriety, only seen one Incomprehensible double. If this be not the case, it must be one that, intellectually, is even weaker than this. It must be that, not of a man with a single coherent theory which his intellect in its less vigorous moments sometimes relaxes its hold upon, but it must be that of a man with two hostile theories which he vainly imagines to be one, and which he inculcates alternately, each with an equal emphasis. If this bewilderment were peculiar to Dr. Tyndall, I should have no motive or meaning in thus dwelling on it. But it is no peculiarity of his. It is characteristic of the whole school he belongs to; it is inherent in our whole modern positivism--the whole of our exact and enlightened thought. I merely choose Dr. Tyndall as my example, not because there is more confusion in his mind than there is in that of his fellow-physicists, but because he is, as it were, the _enfant terrible_ of his family, who publicly lets out the secrets which the others are more careful to conceal. But I have not done with this matter yet. We are here dealing with the central problem of things, and we must not leave it till we have made it as plain as possible. I will therefore re-state it in terms of another metaphor. Let us compare the universal matter, with its infinity of molecules, to a number of balls on a billiard-table, set in motion by the violent stroke of a cue. The balls at once begin to strike each other and rebound from the cushions at all angles and in all directions, and assume with regard to each other positions of every kind. At last six of them collide or cannon in a particular corner of the table, and thus group themselves so as to form a human brain; and their various changes thereafter, so long as the brain remains a brain, represent the various changes attendant on a man's conscious life. Now in this life let us take some moral crisis. Let us suppose the low desire to cling to some pleasing or comforting superstition is contending with the heroic desire to face the naked truth at all costs. The man in question is at first about to yield to the low desire. For a time there is a painful struggle in him. At last there is a sharp decisive pang; the heroic desire is the conqueror, the superstition is cast away, and '_though truth slay me_,' says the man, '_yet will I trust in it_.' Such is the aspect of the question when approached from one side. But what is it when approached from the other? The six billiard balls have simply changed their places. When they corresponded to low desire, they formed, let us say, an oval; when they corresponded to the heroic desire, they formed, let us say, a circle. Now what is the cause and what the conditions of this change? Clearly a certain impetus imparted to the balls, and certain fixed laws under which that impetus operates. The question is what laws and what impetus are these? Are they the same or not the same, now the balls correspond to consciousness, as they were before, when the balls did not correspond to it? One of two things must happen. Either the balls go on moving by exactly the same laws and forces they have always moved by, and are in the grasp of the same invincible necessity, or else there is some new and disturbing force in the midst of them, with which we have to reckon. But if consciousness is inseparable from matter, this cannot be. Do the billiard-balls when so grouped as to represent consciousness generate some second motive power distinct from, at variance with, and often stronger than, the original impetus? Clearly no scientific thinker can admit this. To do so would be to undermine the entire fabric of science, to contradict what is its first axiom and its last conclusion. If then the motion of our six billiard balls has anything, when it corresponds to consciousness, distinct in kind from what it always had, it can only derive this from one cause. That cause is a second cue, tampering with the balls and interfering with them, or even more than this--a second hand taking them up and arranging them arbitrarily in certain figures. Science places the positive school on the horns of a dilemma. The mind or spirit is either arranged entirely by the molecules it is connected with, and these molecules move with the same automatic necessity that the earth moves with; or else these molecules are, partially at least, arranged by the mind or spirit. If we do not accept the former theory we must accept the latter: there is no third course open to us. If man is not an automaton, his consciousness is no mere function of any physical organ. It is an alien and disturbing element. Its impress on physical facts, its disturbance of physical laws, may be doubtless the only things through which we can perceive its existence; but it is as distinct from the things by which we can alone at present perceive it, as a hand unseen in the dark, that should arrest or change the course of a phosphorescent billiard-ball. Once let us deny even in the most qualified way that the mind in the most absolute way is a material machine, an automaton, and in that denial we are affirming a second and immaterial universe, independent of the material, and obeying different laws. But of this universe, if it exists, no natural proof can be given, because _ex hypothesi_ it lies quite beyond the region of nature. One theory then of man's life is that it is a union of two orders of things; another, that it is single, and belongs to only one. And of these theories--opposite, and mutually exclusive, Dr. Tyndall, and modern positivism with him, says '_I reject neither_.'[35] Now this statement of their position, if taken as they state it, is of course nonsense. It is impossible to consider matter as '_that mysterious something by which all that is is accomplished;_' and then to solve the one chief riddle of things by a second mysterious something that is not material. Nor can we '_reject_,' as the positivists say they do, an '_outside builder_' of the world, and then claim the assistance of an _outside_ orderer of the brain. The positivists would probably tell us that they do not do so, or that they do not mean to do so. And we may well believe them. Their fault is that they do not know what they mean. I will try to show them. First, they mean something, with which, as I have said already, we may all agree. They mean that matter moving under certain laws (which may possibly be part and parcel of its own essence) combines after many changes into the human brain, every motion of which has its definite connection with consciousness, and its definite correspondence to some state of it. And this fact is a mystery, though it may be questioned if it be more mysterious why matter should think of itself, than why it should move of itself. At any rate, thus far we are all agreed; and whatever mystery we may be dealing with, it is one that leaves us in ignorance but not in doubt. The doubt comes in at the next step. We have then not to wonder at one fact, but, the mystery being in either case the same, to choose between two hypotheses. The first is that there is in consciousness one order of forces only, the second is that there are two. And when the positive school say that they reject neither of these, what they really mean to say is that as to the second they neither dare openly do one thing or the other--to deny it or accept it, but that they remain like an awkward child when offered some more pudding, blushing and looking down, and utterly unable to say either yes or no. Now the question to ask the positive school is this. Why are they in this state of suspense? '_There is an iron strength in the logic_,' as Dr. Tyndall himself says, that rejects the second order altogether. The hypothesis of its existence explains no fact of observation. The scheme of nature, if it cannot be wholly explained without it, can, at any rate, be explained better without it than with it. Indeed from the standpoint of the thinker who holds that all that is is matter, it seems a thing too superfluous, too unmeaning, to be even worth denial. And yet the positive school announce solemnly that they will not deny it. Now why is this? It is true that they cannot prove its non-existence; but this is no reason for professing a solemn uncertainty as to its existence. We cannot prove that each time a cab drives down Regent Street a stick of barley-sugar is not created in Sirius. But we do not proclaim, to the world our eternal ignorance as to whether or no this is so. Why then should our positivists treat in this way the alleged immaterial part of consciousness? Why this emphatic protestation on their part that there may exist a something which, as far as the needs of their science go, is superfluous, and as far as the logic of their science goes is impossible? The answer is plain. Though their science does not need it, the moral value of life does. As to that value they have certain foregone conclusions, which they cannot resolve to abandon, but which their science can make no room for. Two alternatives are offered them--to admit that life has not the meaning they thought it had, or that their system has not the completeness they thought it had; and of these two alternatives they will accept neither. They could tell us '_with an iron strength of logic_' that all human sorrow was as involuntary and as unmeaning as sea-sickness; that love and faith were but distillations of what exists diluted in mutton-chops and beer; and that the voice of one crying in the wilderness was nothing but an automatic metamorphosis of the locusts and wild honey. They could tell us '_with an iron strength of logic_' that all the thoughts and moral struggles of humanity were but as the clanging whirr of a machine, which if a little better adjusted might for the future go on spinning in silence. But they see that the discovery on man's part that his life was nothing more than this would mean a complete change in its mechanism, and that thenceforward its entire action would be different. They therefore seek a refuge in saying it _may_ be more than this. But what do they mean by _may be_? Do they mean that in spite of all that science can teach them, in spite of that uniformity absolute and omnipresent which alone it reveals to them, which day by day it is forcing with more vividness on their imaginations, and which seems to have no room for anything besides itself--do they mean that in spite of this there may still be a second something, a power of a different order, acting on man's brain and grappling with its automatic movements? Do they mean that that '_heathen_' and '_gross_' conception of an immaterial soul is probably after all the true one? Either they must mean this or else they must mean the exact opposite. There is no third course open to them.[36] Their opinion, as soon as they form one, must rest either on this extreme or that. They will see, as exact and scientific thinkers, that if it be not practically certain that there is some supernatural entity in us, it is practically certain that there is not one. To say merely that it _may_ exist is but to put an ounce in one scale whilst there is a ton in the other. It is an admission that is utterly dead and meaningless. They can only entertain the question of its existence because its existence is essential to man as a moral being. The only reason that can tempt us to say it _may_ be forces us in the same moment to say that it _must_ be, and that it _is_. Which answer eventually the positive school will choose, and which answer men in general will accept, I make as I have said before, no attempt to answer. My only purpose to show is, that if man has any moral being at all, he has it in virtue of his _immaterial_ will--a force, a something of which physical science can give no account whatever, and which it has no shadow of authority either for affirming or for denying; and further, that if we are not prevented by it from affirming his immaterial will, we are not prevented from affirming his immortality, and the existence of God likewise. And now I come to that third point which I said I should deal with here, but which I have not yet touched upon. Every logical reasoner who admits the power of will must admit not only the possibility of miracles, but also the actual fact of their daily and hourly occurrence. Every exertion of the human will is a miracle in the strictest sense of the word; only it takes place privately, within the closed walls of the brain. The molecules of the brain are arranged and ordered by a supernatural agency. Their natural automatic movements are suspended, or directed and interfered with. It is true that in common usage the word _miracle_ has a more restricted sense. It is applied generally not to the action of man's will, but of God's. But the sense in both cases is essentially the same. God's will is conceived of as disturbing the automatic movements of matter without the skull, in just the same way as man's will is conceived of as disturbing those of the brain within it. Nor, though the alleged manifestations of the former do more violence to the scientific imagination than do those of the latter, are they in the eye of reason one whit more impossible. The erection of a pyramid at the will of an Egyptian king would as much disturb the course of nature as the removal of a mountain by the faith of a Galilean fisherman; whilst the flooding of the Sahara at the will of a speculating company would interfere with the weather of Europe far more than the most believing of men ever thought that any answer to prayer would. It will thus be seen that morality and religion are, so far as science goes, on one and the same footing--of one and the same substance, and that as assailed by science they either fall together or stand together. It will be seen too that the power of science against them resides not in itself, but in a certain intellectual fulcrum that we ourselves supply it with. That its methods can discover no trace of either of them, of itself proves nothing, unless we first lay down as a dogma that its methods of discovery are the only methods. If we are prepared to abide by this, there is little more to be said. The rest, it is becoming daily plainer, is a very simple process; and what we have to urge against religion will thenceforth amount to this. There is no supernatural, because everything is natural; there is no spirit, because everything is matter; or there is no air, because everything is earth; there is no fire, because everything is water; a rose has no smell because our eyes cannot detect any. This, in its simplest form, is the so-called argument of modern materialism. Argument, however, it is quite plain it is not. It is a mere dogmatic statement, that can give no logical account of itself, and must trust, for its acceptance, to the world's vague sense of its fitness. The modern world, it is true, has mistaken it for an argument, and has been cowed by it accordingly; but the mistake is a simple one, and can be readily accounted for. The dogmatism of denial was formerly a sort of crude rebellion, inconsistent with itself, and vulnerable in a thousand places. Nature, as then known, was, to all who could weigh the wonder of it, a thing inexplicable without some supernatural agency. Indeed, marks of such an agency seemed to meet men everywhere. But now all this has changed. Step by step science has been unravelling the tangle, and has loosened with its human fingers the knots that once seemed _deo digni vindice_. It has enabled us to see in nature a complete machine, needing no aid from without. It has made a conception of things rational and coherent that was formerly absurd and arbitrary. Science has done all this; but this is all that it has done. The dogmatism of denial it has left as it found it, an unverified and unverifiable assertion. It has simply made this dogmatism consistent with itself. But in doing this, as men will soon come to see, it has done a great deal more than its chief masters bargained for. Nature, as explained by science, is nothing more than a vast automaton; and man with all his ways and works is simply a part of Nature, and can, by no device of thought, be detached from or set above it. He is as absolutely automatic as a tree is, or as a flower is; and is an incapable as a tree or flower of any spiritual responsibility or significance. Here we see the real limits of science. It will explain the facts of life to us, it is true, but it will not explain the value that hitherto we have attached to them. Is that solemn value a fact or fancy? As far as proof and reason go, we can answer either way. We have two simple and opposite statements set against each other, between which argument will give us no help in choosing, and between which the only arbiter is a judgment formed upon utterly alien grounds. As for proof, the nature of the case does not admit of it. The world of moral facts, if it existed a thousand times, could give no more proof of its existence than it does now. If on other grounds we believe that it does exist, then signs, if not proofs of it, at once surround us everywhere. But let the belief in its reality fail us, and instantly the whole cloud of witnesses vanishes. For science to demand a proof that shall convince it on its own premisses is to demand an impossibility, and to involve a contradiction in terms. Science is only possible on the assumption that nature is uniform. Morality is only possible on the assumption that this uniformity is interfered with by the will. The world of morals is as distinct from the world of science as a wine is from the cup that holds it; and to say that it does not exist because science can find no trace of it, is to say that a bird has not flown over a desert because it has left no footprints in the sand. And as with morals, so it is with religion. Science will allow us to deny or to affirm both. Reason will not allow us to deny or affirm only one. FOOTNOTES: [33] The argument has been used in this exact form by Professor Clifford. [34] _Dreams and Realities_, by Leslie Stephen. [35] The feebleness and vacillation of Dr. Tyndall's whole views of things, as soon as they bear on matters that are of any universal moment, is so typical of the entire positive thought of the day, that I may with advantage give one or two further illustrations of it. Although in one place he proclaims loudly that the emergence of consciousness from matter must ever remain a mystery, he yet shows indication of a hope that it may yet be solved. He quotes with approval, and with an implication that he himself leans to the view expressed in them, the following words of Ueberweg, whom he calls '_one of the subtlest heads that Germany has produced_.' '_What happens in the brain_, says Ueberweg, '_would in my opinion not be possible if the process which here appears in its greatest concentration, did not obtain generally, only in a vastly diminished degree. Take a pair of mice, and a cask of flour. By copious nourishment the animals increase and multiply, and in the same proportion sensations and feelings augment. The quantity of these preserved by the first pair is not simply diffused among their descendants, for in that case the last would feel more fully than the first. The sensations and the feelings must necessarily be referred back to the flour, where they exist, weak and pale, it is true, and not concentrated, as in the brain._' '_We may not_,' Dr. Tyndall adds, by way of a gloss to this, '_be able to taste or smell alcohol in a tub of fermented cherries, but by distillation we obtain from them concentrated Kirschwasser. Hence Ueberweg's comparison of the brain to a still, which concentrates the sensation and feeling pre-existing, but diluted, in the food._' Let us now compare this with the following. '_It is no explanation_,' says Dr. Tyndall, '_to say that objective and subjective are two sides of one and the same phenomenon. Why should phenomena have two sides? There are plenty of molecular motions which do not exhibit this two-sidedness. Does water think or feel when it runs into frost-ferns upon a window pane? If not, why should the molecular motions of the brain be yoked to this mysterious companion consciousness?_' Here we have two views, diametrically opposed to each other, the one suggested with approval, and the other implied as his own, by the same writer, and in the same short essay. The first view is that consciousness is the general property of all matter, just as motion is. The second view is that consciousness is not the general property of matter, but the inexplicable property of the brain only. Here again we have a similar inconsistency. Upon one page Dr. Tyndall says that when we have '_exhausted physics, and reached its very rim, a mighty Mystery stills looms beyond us. We have made no step towards its solution. And thus it will ever loom._' And on the opposite page he says thus: '_If asked whether science has solved, or is likely in our day to solve, the problem of the universe, I must shake my head in doubt._' Further, I will remind the reader of Dr. Tyndall's arguments, on one occasion, against any outside builder or creator of the material universe. He argued that such did not exist, because his supposed action was not definitely presentable. '_I should enquire after its shape_,' he says:--'_Has it legs or arms? If not, I would wish it to be made clear to me how a thing without these appliances can act so perfectly the part of a builder?_ He challenged the theist (the theist addressed at the time was Dr. Martineau) to give him some account of his God's workings; and '_When he does this_,' said Dr. Tyndall, '_I shall "demand of him an immediate exercise" of the power "of definite mental presentation."_' If he fails here, Dr. Tyndall argues, his case is at once disproved; for nothing exists that is not thus presentable. Let us compare this with his dealing with the fact of consciousness. Consciousness, he admits, is not thus presentable; and yet consciousness, he admits, exists. Instances might be multiplied of the same vacillation and confusion of thought--the same feminine inability to be constant to one train of reasoning. But those just given suffice. What weight can we attach to a man's philosophy, who after telling us that consciousness may possibly be an inherent property of matter, of which '_the receit of reason is a limbec only_,' adds in the same breath almost, that matter generally is certainly not conscious, and that consciousness comes to the brain we know not whence nor wherefore? What shall we say of a man who in one sentence tells us that it is impossible that science can ever solve the riddle of things, and tells us in the next sentence that it is doubtful if this impossibility will be accomplished within the next fifty years?--who argues that God is a mystery, and therefore God is a fiction; who admits that consciousness is a fact, and yet proclaims that it is a mystery; and who says that the fact of matter producing consciousness being a mystery, proves the mystery of consciousness acting on matter to be a fact? [36] It is true that one of the favourite teachings of the positive school is, that as to this question the proper attitude is that of Agnosticism; in other words, that a state of perpetual suspense on this subject is the only rational one. They are asked, have we a soul, a will, and consequently any moral responsibility? And the answer is that they must shake their heads in doubt. It is true they tell us that it is but _as men of science_ that they shake their heads. But Dr. Tyndall tells us what this admission means. '_If the materialist is confounded_,' he says, '_and science rendered dumb_, who else is prepared with an answer? _Let us lower our heads and acknowledge our ignorance, priest and philosopher--one and all._' In like manner, referring to the feeling which others have supposed to be a sense of God's presence and majesty: this, for the '_man of science_,' he says is the sense of a '_power which gives fulness and force, to his existence, but which he can neither analyse nor comprehend_.' Which means, that because a physical specialist cannot analyse this sense, it is therefore incapable of analysis. A bishop might with equal propriety use just the same language about a glass of port wine, and argue with, equal cogency that it was a primary and simple element. What is meant is, that the facts of the materialist are the only facts we can be certain of; and because these can give man no moral guidance, that therefore man can have no moral guidance at all. Let us illustrate the case by some example that is mentally presentable. Some ruined girl, we will say, oppressed with a sense of degradation, comes to Dr. Tyndall and lays her case before him. '_I have heard you are a very wise man_,' she says to him, '_and that you have proved that the priest is all wrong, who prepared me a year ago for my confirmation. Now tell me, I beseech you tell me, is mine really the desperate state I have been taught to think it is? May my body be likened to the temple of the Holy Ghost defiled? or do I owe it no more reverence than I owe the Alhambra Theatre? Am I guilty, and must I seek repentance? or am I not guilty, and may I go on just as I please?' 'My dear girl_,' Dr. Tyndall replies to her, '_I must shake my head in doubt. Come, let its lower our heads, and acknowledge our ignorance as to whether you are a wretched girl or no. Materialism is confounded, and science rendered dumb by questions such as yours; they can, therefore, never be answered, and must always remain open. I may add, however, that if you ask me personally whether I consider you to be degraded, I lean to the affirmative. But I can give you no reason in support of this judgment, so you may attach to it what value you will._' Such is the position of agnostics, when brought face to face with the world. They are undecided only about one question, and this is the one question which cannot be left undecided. Men cannot remain agnostics as to belief that their actions must depend upon, any more than a man who is compelled to go on walking can refrain from choosing one road or other when there are two open to him. Nor does it matter that our believing may in neither case amount to a complete certitude. It is sufficient that the balance of probability be on one side or the other. Two ounces will out-weigh one ounce, quite as surely as a ton will. But what our philosophers profess to teach us (in so far as they profess to be agnostics, and disclaim being dogmatists) is, that there is no balance either way. The message they shout to us is, that they have no message at all; and that because they are without one, the whole world is in the same condition. CHAPTER X. MORALITY AND NATURAL THEISM. _Credo quia impossibile est._ If we look calmly at the possible future of human thought, it will appear from what we have just seen, that physical science of itself can do little to control or cramp it; nor until man consents to resign his belief in virtue and his own dignity altogether, will it be able to repress religious faith, should other causes tend to produce a new outbreak of it. But the chief difficulties in the matter are still in store for us. Let us see never so clearly that science, if we are moral beings, can do nothing to weaken our belief in God and immortality, but still leaves us free, if we will, to believe in them, it seems getting clearer and yet more clear that these beliefs are inconsistent with themselves, and conflict with these very moral feelings, of which they are invoked as an explanation. Here it is true that reason does confront us, and what answer to make to it is a very serious question. This applies even to natural religion in its haziest and most compliant form; and as applied to any form of orthodoxy its force is doubled. What we have seen thus far is, that if there be a moral world at all, our knowledge of nature contains nothing inconsistent with theism. We have now to enquire how far theism is inconsistent with our conceptions of the moral world. In treating these difficulties, we will for the present consider them as applying only to religion in general, not to any special form of it. The position of orthodoxy we will reserve for a separate treatment. For convenience' sake, however, I shall take as a symbol of all religion the vaguer and more general teachings of Christianity; but I shall be adducing them not as teachings revealed by heaven, but simply as developed by the religious consciousness of men. To begin then with the great primary difficulties: these, though they take various forms, can all in the last resort be reduced to two--the existence of evil in the face of the power of God, and the freedom of man's will in the face of the will of God. And what I shall try to make plain with respect to these is this: not that they are not difficulties--not that they are not insoluble difficulties; but that they are not difficulties due to religion or theism, nor by abandoning theism can we in any way escape from them. They start into being not with the belief in God, and a future of rewards and punishments, but with the belief in the moral law and in virtue, and they are common to all systems in which the worth of virtue is recognised. The vulgar view of the matter cannot be better stated than in the following account given by J.S. Mill of the anti-religious reasonings of his father. He looked upon religion, says his son, '_as the greatest enemy of morality; first, by setting up fictitious excellences--belief in creeds, devotional feelings, and ceremonies, not connected with the good of humankind, and causing them to be accepted as substitutes for genuine virtues_; but above all _by radically vitiating the standard of morals, making it consist in doing the will of a being, on whom, indeed, it lavishes all the phrases of adulation, but whom, in sober truth, it depicts as eminently hateful. I have a hundred times heard him say that_ all ages and nations have represented their gods as wicked _in a constantly increasing progression; that mankind had gone on adding trait after trait, till they reached the most perfect expression of wickedness which the human mind can devise, and have called this God, and prostrated themselves before it. The_ ne plus ultra _of wickedness he considered to be embodied in what is commonly presented to mankind as the creed of Christianity. Think (he used to say) of a being who would make a hell--who would create the human race with the infallible foreknowledge, and therefore with the intention, that the great majority of them, should be consigned to horrible and everlasting torment._' James Mill, adds his son, knew quite well that Christians were not, in fact, as demoralised by this monstrous creed as, if they were logically consistent, they ought to be. '_The same slovenliness of thought (he said) and subjection of the reason to fears, wishes, and affections, which enable them to accept a theory involving a contradiction in terms, prevent them from perceiving the logical consequence of the theory._' Now, in spite of its coarse and exaggerated acrimony, this passage doubtless expresses a great truth, which presently I shall go on to consider. But it contains also a very characteristic falsehood, of which we must first divest it. God is here represented as _making_ a hell, with the express intention of forcibly putting men into it, and His main hatefulness consists in this capricious and wanton cruelty. Such a representation is, however, an essentially false one. It is not only not true to the true Christian teaching, but it is absolutely opposed to it. The God of Christianity does not _make_ hell; still less does He deliberately put men into it. It is made by men themselves; the essence of its torment consists in the loss of God; and those that lose Him, lose Him by their own act, from having deliberately made themselves incapable of loving Him. God never wills the death of the sinner. It is to the sinner's own will that the sinner's death is due. All this rhetoric, therefore, about God's malevolence and wickedness is entirely beside the point, nor does it even touch the difficulty that, in his heart, James Mill is aiming at. His main difficulty is nothing more than this: How can an infinite will that rules everywhere, find room for a finite will not in harmony with itself? Whilst the only farther perplexity that the passage indicates, is the existence of those evil conditions by which the finite will, already so weak and wavering, is yet farther hampered. Now these difficulties are doubtless quite as great as James Mill thought they were; but we must observe this, that they are not of the same kind. They are merely intellectual difficulties. They are not moral difficulties at all. Mill truly says that they involve a contradiction in terms. But why? Not, as Mill says, because a wicked God is set up as the object of moral worship, but because, in spite of all the wickedness existing, the Author of all existences is affirmed not to be wicked. Nor, again, is Mill right in saying that this contradiction is due to '_slovenliness of thought_.' Theology accepts it with its eyes wide open, making no attempt to explain the inexplicable; and the human will it treats in the same way. It makes no offer to us to clear up everything, or to enable thought to put a girdle round the universe. On the contrary, it proclaims with emphasis that its first axioms are unthinkable; and its most renowned philosophic motto is, '_I believe because it is impossible_.' What shall it say, then, when assailed by the rational moralist? It will not deny its own condition, but it will show its opponent that his is really the same. It will show him that, let him give his morality what base he will, he cannot conceive of things without the same contradiction in terms. If good be a thing of any spiritual value--if it be, in other words, what every moral system supposes it to be--that good can co-exist with evil is just as unthinkable as that God can. The value of moral good is supposed to lie in this--that by it we are put _en rapport_ with something that is better than ourselves--some '_stream of tendency_,' let us say, '_that makes for righteousness_,' But if this stream of tendency be not a personal God, what is it? Is it Nature? Nature, we have seen already, is open to just the same objections that God is. It is equally guilty of all the evil that is contained in it. Is it Truth, then--pure Truth for its own sake? Again, we have seen already that as little can it be that. Is it Human Nature as opposed to Nature?--Man as distinct from, and holier than, any individual men? Of all the substitutes for God this at first sight seems the most promising, or, at any rate, the most practical. But, apart from all the other objections to this, which we have already been considering in such detail, it will very soon be apparent that it involves the very same inconsistency, the same contradiction in terms. The fact of moral evil still confronts us, and the humanity to which we lift our hearts up is still taxable with that. But perhaps we separate the good in humanity from the evil, and only worship the former as struggling to get free from the latter. This, however, will be of little help to us. If what we call humanity is nothing but the good part of it, we can only vindicate its goodness at the expense of its strength. Evil is at least an equal match for it, and in most of the battles hitherto it is evil that has been victorious. But to conceive of good in this way is really to destroy our conception of it. Goodness is in itself an incomplete notion; it is but one facet of a figure which, approached from other sides, appears to us as eternity, as omnipresence, and, above all, as supreme strength; and to reduce goodness to nothing but the higher part of humanity--to make it a wavering fitful flame that continually sinks and flickers, that at its best can but blaze for a while, and at its brightest can throw no light beyond this paltry parish of a world--is to deprive it of its whole meaning and hold on us. Or again, even were this not so, and could we believe, and be strengthened by believing, that the good in humanity would one day gain the victory, and that some higher future, which even we might partake in by preparing, was in store for the human race, would our conception of the matter then be any more harmonious? As we surveyed our race as a whole, would its brighter future ever do away with its past? Would not the depth and the darkness of the shadow grow more portentous as the light grew brighter? And would not man's history strike more clearly on us as the ghastly embodiment of a vast injustice? But it may be said that the sorrows of the past will hereafter be dead and done with; that evil will literally be as though it had never been. Well, and so in a short time will the good likewise; and if we are ever to think lightly of the world's sinful and sorrowful past, we shall have to think equally lightly of its sinless and cheerful future. Let us pass now to the secondary points. Opponents of theism, or of religion in general, are perpetually attacking it for its theories of a future life. Its eternal rewards and punishments are to them permanent stumbling-blocks. A future life of happiness they think an unmeaning promise; and a future life of misery they think an unworthy and brutal threat. And if reason and observation are to be our only guides, we cannot say that they do not argue with justice. If we believe in heaven, we believe in something that the imagination fails to grasp. If we believe in hell, we believe in something that our moral sense revolts at: for though hell may be nothing but the conscious loss of God, and though those that lose Him may have made their own hell for themselves, still their loss, if eternal, will be an eternal flaw and disease in the sum of things--the eternal self-assertion against omnipotence of some depraved and alien power. From these difficulties it is impossible to escape. All we can do here, as in the former case, is to show that they are not peculiar to the special doctrines to which they are supposed generally to be due; but that they are equally inseparable from any of the proposed substitutes. We can only show that they are inevitable, not that they are not insoluble. If we condemn a belief in heaven because it is unthinkable, we must for the same reason, as we have seen already, condemn a Utopia on earth--the thing we are now told we should fix our hopes upon, instead of it. As to the second question--that of eternal punishment, we may certainly here get rid of one difficulty by adopting the doctrine of a final restitution. But, though one difficulty will be thus got rid of, another equally great will take its place. Our moral sense, it is true, will no more be shocked by the conception of an eternal discord in things, but we shall be confronted by a fatalism that will allow to us no moral being at all. If we shall all reach the same place in the end--if inevitably we shall all do so--it is quite plain that our freedom to choose in the matter is a freedom that is apparent only. Mr. Leslie Stephen, it seems, sees this clearly enough. Once give morality its spiritual and supernatural meaning, and there is, he holds, '_some underlying logical necessity which binds_ [a belief in hell] _indissolubly with the primary articles of the faith_.' Such a system of retribution, he adds, is '_created spontaneously_' by the '_conscience. Heaven and hell are corollaries that rise and fall together.... Whatever the meaning of [Greek: aiônios], the_ fearful _emotion which is symbolised, is eternal or independent of time, by the same right as the_ ecstatic _emotion_.' He sees this clearly enough; but the strange thing is that he does not see the converse. He sees that the Christian conception of morality necessitates the affirmation of hell. He does not see that the denial of hell is the denial of Christian morality, and that in calling the former a dream, as he does, he does not call the latter a dream likewise. We can close our eyes to none of these perplexities. The only way to resist their power is not to ignore them, but to realise to the full their magnitude, and to see how, if we let them take away from us anything, they will in another moment take everything; to see that we must either set our foot upon their necks, or that they will set their feet on ours; to see that we can look them down, but that we can never look them through; to see that we can make them impotent if we will, but that if they are not impotent they will be omnipotent. But the strongest example of this is yet to come: and this is not any special belief either as to religion or morals, but a belief underlying both of these, and without which neither of them were possible. It is a belief which from one point of view we have already touched upon--the belief in the freedom of the will. But we have as yet only considered it in relation to physical science. What we have now to do is to consider it in relation to itself. What, then, let us ask, is the nature of the belief? To a certain extent the answer is very easy. When we speak and think of free-will ordinarily, we know quite well what we mean by it; and we one and all of us mean exactly the same thing. It is true that when professors speak upon this question, they make countless efforts to distinguish between the meaning which they attach to the belief, and the meaning which the world attaches to it. And it is possible that in their studies or their lecture-rooms they may contrive for the time being to distort or to confuse for themselves the common view of the matter. But let the professor once forget his theories, and be forced to buffet against his life's importunate and stern realities: let him quarrel with his housekeeper because she has mislaid his spectacles, or his night-cap, or, preoccupied with her bible, has not mixed his gruel properly; and his conception of free-will will revert in an instant to the universal type, and the good woman will discern only too plainly that her master's convictions as to it are precisely the same things as her own. Everywhere, indeed, in all the life that surrounds us--in the social and moral judgments on which the fabric of society has reared itself, in the personal judgments on which so much depends in friendship and antipathies--everywhere, in conduct, in emotion, in art, in language, and in law, we see man's common belief in will written, broad, and plain, and clear. There is, perhaps, no belief to which, for practical purposes, he attaches so important and so plain a meaning. Such is free-will when looked at from a distance. But let us look at it more closely, and see what happens then. The result is strange. Like a path seen at dusk across a moorland, plain and visible from a distance, but fading gradually from us the more near we draw to it, so does the belief in free-will fade before the near inspection of reason. It at first grows hazy; at last it becomes indistinguishable. At first we begin to be uncertain of what we mean by it; at last we find ourselves certain that so far as we trust to reason, we cannot possibly have any meaning at all. Examined in this way, every act of our lives--all our choices and refusals, seem nothing but the necessary outcome of things that have gone before. It is true that between some actions the choice hangs at times so evenly, that our _will_ may seem the one thing that at last turns the balance. But let us analyse the matter a little more carefully, and we shall see that there are a thousand microscopic motives, too small for us to be entirely conscious of, which, according to how they settle on us, will really decide the question. Nor shall we see only that this is so. Let us go a little further, and reason will tell us that it must be so. Were this not the case, there would have been an escape left for us. Though admitting that what controlled our actions could be nothing but the strongest motive, it might yet be contended that the will could intensify any motive it chose, and that thus motives really were only tools in its hands. But this does but postpone the difficulty, not solve it. What is this free-will when it comes to use its tools? It is a something, we shall find, that our minds cannot give harbour to. It is a thing contrary to every analogy of nature. It is a thing which is forever causing, but which is in itself uncaused. To escape from this difficulty is altogether hopeless. Age after age has tried to do so, but tried in vain. There have been always metaphysical experts ready to engage to make free-will a something intellectually conceivable. But they all either leave the question where they found it, or else they only seem to explain it, by denying covertly the fact that really wants explaining. Such is free-will when examined by the natural reason--a thing that melts away inevitably first to haze, and then to utter nothingness. And for a time we feel convinced that it really is nothing. Let us, however, again retire from it to the common distance, and the phantom we thought exorcised is again back in an instant. There is the sphinx once more, distinct and clear as ever, holding in its hand the scales of good and evil, and demanding a curse or a blessing for every human action. We are once more certain--more certain of this than anything--that we are, as we always thought we were, free agents, free to choose, and free to refuse; and that in virtue of this freedom, and in virtue of this alone, we are responsible for what we do and are. Let us consider this point well. Let us consider first how free-will is a moral necessity; next how it is an intellectual impossibility; and lastly how, though it be impossible, we yet, in defiance of intellect, continue, as moral beings, to believe in it. Let us but once realise that we do this, that all mankind universally do this and have done--and the difficulties offered us by theism will no longer stagger us. We shall be prepared for them, prepared not to drive them away, but to endure their presence. If in spite of my reason I can believe that my will is free, in spite of my reason I can believe that God is good. The latter belief is not nearly so hard as the former. The greatest stumbling-block in the moral world lies in the threshold by which to enter it. Such then are the moral difficulties, properly so called, that beset theism; but there are certain others of a vaguer nature, that we must glance at likewise. It is somewhat hard to know how to classify these; but it will be correct enough to say that whereas those we have just dealt with appeal to the moral intellect, the ones we are to deal with now appeal to the moral imagination. The facts that these depend on, and which are practically new discoveries for the modern world, are the insignificance of the earth, when compared with the universe, of which it is visibly and demonstrably an integral but insignificant fragment; the enormous period of his existence for which man has had no religious history, and has been, so far as we can tell, not a religious being at all; and the vast majority of the race that are still stagnant and semi-barbarous. Is it possible, we ask, that a God, with so many stars to attend to, should busy himself with this paltry earth, and make it the scene of events more stupendous than the courses of countless systems? Is it possible that of the swarms, vicious and aimless, that breed upon it, each individual--Bushman, Chinaman, or Negro--is a precious immortal being, with a birthright in infinity and eternity? The effect of these considerations is sometimes overwhelming. Astronomy oppresses us with the gulfs of space; geology with the gulfs of time; history and travel with a babel of vain existence. And here as in the former case, our perplexities cannot be explained away. We can only meet them by seeing that if they have any power at all, they are all-powerful, and that they will not destroy religion only, but the entire moral conception of man also. Religious belief, and moral belief likewise, involve both of them some vast mystery; and reason can do nothing but focalise, not solve it. All, then, that I am trying to make evident is this--and this must be sufficient for us--not that theism, with its attendant doctrines, presents us with no difficulties, necessitates no baffling contradictions in terms, and confronts us with no terrible and piteous spectacles, but that all this is not peculiar to theism. It is not the price we pay for rising from morality to religion. It is the price we pay for rising from the natural to the supernatural. Once double the sum of things by adding this second world to it, and it swells to such a size that our reason can no longer encircle it. We are torn this way and that by convictions, each of which is equally necessary, but each of which excludes the others. When we try to grasp them all at once, our mind is like a man tied to wild horses; or like Phaeton in the Sun's chariot, bewildered and powerless over the intractable and the terrible team. We can only recover our strength by a full confession of our weakness. We can only lay hold on the beliefs that we see to be needful, by asking faith to join hands with reason. If we refuse to do this, there is but one alternative. Without faith we can perhaps explain things if we will; but we must first make them not worth explaining. We can only think them out entirely by regarding them as something not worth thinking out at all. CHAPTER XI. THE HUMAN RACE AND REVELATION. '_The scandal of the pious Christian, and the fallacious triumph of the infidel, should cease as soon as they recollect not only_ by whom, _but likewise to whom, the Divine Revelation was given._'--Gibbon.[37] And now let us suppose ourselves convinced, at least for the sake of argument, that man will always believe in himself as a moral being, and that he will, under no compulsion, let this belief go. Granting this, from what we have just seen, thus much will be plain to us, that theism, should it ever tend to reassert itself, can have no check to fear at the hands of positive thought. Let us, therefore, suppose further, that such a revival of faith is imminent, and that the enlightened world, with its eyes wide open, is about to turn once again to religious desires and aims. This brings us face to face with the second question, that we have not as yet touched upon: will the religion thus turned to be a natural religion only, or is it possible that some exclusive dogmatism may be recognised as a supernatural re-statement of it? Before going further with this question it will be well to say a few words as to the exact position it occupies. This, with regard to the needs of man, is somewhat different to the position of natural theism. That a natural theism is essential to man's moral being is a proposition that can be more or less rigidly demonstrated; but that a revelation is essential as a supplement to natural theism can be impressed upon us only in a much looser way. Indeed, many men who believe most firmly that without religion human life will be dead, rest their hopes for the future not on the revival and triumph of any one alleged revelation, but on the gradual evanescence of the special claims of all. Nor can we find any sharp and defined line of argument to convince them that they are wrong. The objections, however, to which this position is open are, I think, none the less cogent because they are somewhat general; and to all practical men, conversant with life and history, it must be plain that the necessity of doing God's will being granted, it is a most anxious and earnest question whether that will has not been in some special and articulate way revealed to us. Take the mass of religious humanity, and giving it a natural creed, it will be found that instinctively and inevitably it asks for more. Such a creed by itself has excited more longings than it has satisfied, and raised more perplexities than it has set at rest. It is true that it has supplied men with a sufficient analysis of the worth they attach to life, and of the momentous issues attendant on the way in which they live it. But when they come practically to choose their way, they find that such religion is of little help to them. It never puts out a hand to lift or lead them. It is an alluring voice, heard far off through a fog, and calling to them, '_Follow me!_' but it leaves them in the fog to pick their own way out towards it, over rocks and streams and pitfalls, which they can but half distinguish, and amongst which they may be either killed or crippled, and are almost certain to grow bewildered. And even should there be a small minority, who feel that this is not true of themselves, they can hardly help feeling that it is true of the world in general. A purely natural theism, with no organs of human speech, and with no machinery for making its spirit articulate, never has ruled men, and, so far as we can see, never possibly can rule them. The choices which our life consists of are definite things. The rule which is to guide our choices must be something definite also. And here it is that natural theism fails. It may supply us with the major premiss, but it is vague and uncertain about the minor. It can tell us with sufficient emphasis that all vice is to be avoided; it is continually at a loss to tell us whether this thing or whether that thing is vicious. Indeed, this practical insufficiency of natural theism is borne witness to by the very existence of all alleged revelations. For, if none of these be really the special word of God, a belief in them is all the more a sign of a general need in man. If none of them represent the actual attainment of help, they all of them embody the passionate and persistent cry for it. We shall understand this more clearly if we consider one of the first characteristics that a revelation necessarily claims, and the results that are at this moment, in a certain prominent case, attending on a denial of it. The characteristic I speak of is an absolute infallibility. Any supernatural religion that renounces its claim to this, it is clear can profess to be a semi-revelation only. It is a hybrid thing, partly natural and partly supernatural, and it thus practically has all the qualities of a religion that is wholly natural. In so far as it professes to be revealed, it of course professes to be infallible; but if the revealed part be in the first place hard to distinguish, and in the second place hard to understand--if it may mean many things, and many of those things contradictory--it might just as well have been never made at all. To make it in any sense an infallible revelation, or in other words a revelation at all, _to us_, we need a power to interpret the testament that shall have equal authority with that testament itself. Simple as this truth seems, mankind have been a long time in learning it. Indeed, it is only in the present day that its practical meaning has come generally to be recognised. But now at this moment upon all sides of us, history is teaching it to us by an example, so clearly that we can no longer mistake it. That example is Protestant Christianity, and the condition to which, after three centuries, it is now visibly bringing itself. It is at last beginning to exhibit to us the true result of the denial of infallibility to a religion that professes to be supernatural. We are at last beginning to see in it neither the purifier of a corrupted revelation, nor the corrupter of a pure revelation, but the practical denier of all revelation whatsoever. It is fast evaporating into a mere natural theism, and is thus showing us what, as a governing power, natural theism is. Let us look at England, Europe, and America, and consider the condition of the entire Protestant world. Religion, it is true, we shall still find in it; but it is religion from which not only the supernatural element is disappearing, but in which the natural element is fast becoming nebulous. It is indeed growing, as Mr. Leslie Stephen says it is, into a religion of dreams. All its doctrines are growing vague as dreams, and like dreams their outlines are for ever changing. Mr. Stephen has pitched on a very happy illustration of this. A distinguished clergyman of the English Church, he reminds us, has preached and published a set of sermons,[38] in which he denies emphatically any belief in eternal punishment, although admitting at the same time that the opinion of the Christian world is against him. These sermons gave rise to a discussion in one of the leading monthly reviews, to which Protestant divines of all shades of opinion contributed their various arguments. '_It is barely possible_,' says Mr. Stephen, '_with the best intentions, to take such a discussion seriously. Boswell tells us how a lady interrogated Dr. Johnson as to the nature of the spiritual body. She seemed desirous, he adds, of "knowing more; but he left the subject in obscurity." We smile at Boswell's evident impression that Johnson could, if he had chosen, have dispelled the darkness. When we find a number of educated gentlemen seriously enquiring as to the conditions of existence in the next world, we feel that they are sharing Boswell's_ naïveté _without his excuse. What can any human being outside a pulpit say upon such a subject which does not amount to a confession of his own ignorance, coupled, it may be, with more or less suggestion of shadowy hopes and fears? Have the secrets of the prison-house really been revealed to Canon Farrar or Mr. Beresford Hope?... When men search into the unknowable, they naturally arrive at very different results._' And Mr. Stephen argues with perfect justice that if we are to judge Christianity from such discussions as these, its doctrines of a future life are all visibly receding into a vague '_dreamland_;' and we shall be quite ready to admit, as he says, in words I have already quoted, '_that the impertinent young curate who tells [him he] will be burnt everlastingly for not sharing such superstitions, is just as ignorant as [Mr. Stephen himself], and that [Mr. Stephen] knows as much as [his] dog_.' The critic, in the foregoing passages, draws his conclusion from the condition of but one Protestant doctrine. But he might draw the same conclusion from all; for the condition of all of them is the same. The divinity of Christ, the nature of his atonement, the constitution of the Trinity, the efficacy of the sacraments, the inspiration of the Bible--there is not one of these points on which the doctrines, once so fiercely fought for, are not now, among the Protestants, getting as vague and varying, as weak and as compliant to the caprice of each individual thinker, as the doctrine of eternal punishment. And Mr. Stephen and his school exaggerate nothing in the way in which they represent the spectacle. Protestantism, in fact, is at last becoming explicitly what it always was implicitly, not a supernatural religion which fulfils the natural, but a natural religion which denies the supernatural. And what, as a natural religion, is its working power in the world? Much of its earlier influence doubtless still survives; but that is a survival only of what is passing, and we must not judge it by that. We must judge it by what it is growing into, not by what it is growing out of. And judged in this way, its practical power--its moral, its teaching, its guiding power--is fast growing as weak and as uncertain as its theology. As long as its traditional moral system is in accordance with what men, on other grounds, approve of, it may serve to express the general tendency impressively, and to invest it with the sanction of many reverend associations. But let the general tendency once begin to conflict with it, and its inherent weakness in an instant becomes apparent. We may see this by considering the moral character of Christ, and the sort of weight that is claimed for His example. This example, so the Christian world teaches, is faultless and infallible; and as long as we believe this, the example has supreme authority. But apply to this the true Protestant method, and the authority soon shows signs of wavering. Let us once deny that Christ was more than a faultless man, and we lose by that denial our authority for asserting that he was as much as a faultless man. Even should it so happen that we do approve entirely of his conduct, it is we who are approving of him, not he who is approving of us. The old position is reversed: we become the patrons of our most worthy Judge eternal; and the moral infallibility is transferred from him to ourselves. In other words, the practical Protestant formula can be nothing more than this. The Protestant teacher says to us, '_Such a way of life is the best, take my word for it: and if you want an example, go to that excellent Son of David, who, take my word for it, was the very best of men._' But even in this case the question arises, how shall the Protestants interpret the character that they praise? And to this they can never give any satisfactory answer. What really happens with them is inevitable and obvious. The character is simply for them a symbol of what each happens to think most admirable; and the identity in all cases of its historical details does not produce an identity as of a single portrait, but an identity as of one frame applied to many. Mr. Matthew Arnold, for instance, sees in Jesus one sort of man, Father Newman another, Charles Kingsley another, and M. Renan another; and the _Imitatio Christi_, as understood by these, will be found in each case to mean a very different thing. The difference between these men, however, will seem almost unanimity, if we compare them with others who, so far as logic and authority go, have just as good a claim on our attention. There is hardly any conceivable aberration of moral licence that has not, in some quarter or other, embodied itself into a rule of life, and claimed to be the proper outcome of Protestant Christianity. Nor is this true only of the wilder and more eccentric sects. It is true of graver and more weighty thinkers also; so much so, that a theological school in Germany has maintained boldly '_that fornication is blameless, and that it is not interdicted by the precepts of the Gospel_.'[39] The matter, however, does not end thus. The men I have just mentioned agree, all of them, that Christ's moral example was perfect; and their only disagreement has been as to what that example was. But the Protestant logic will by no means leave us here. That alleged perfection, if we ourselves are to be the judges of it, is sure, by-and-by, to exhibit to us traces of imperfection. And this is exactly the thing that has already begun to happen. A generation ago one of the highest-minded and most logical of our English Protestants, Professor Francis Newman, declared that in Christ's character there were certain moral deficiencies;[40] and the last blow to the moral authority of Protestantism was struck by one of its own household. It is true that Professor Newman's censures were small and were not irreverent. But if these could come from a man of his intense piety, what will and what do come from other quarters may be readily conjectured. Indeed, the fact is daily growing more and more evident, that for the world that still calls itself Protestant, the autocracy of Christ's moral example is gone; and its nominal retention of power only makes its real loss of it the more visible. It merely reflects and focalises the uncertainty that men are again feeling--the uncertainty and the sad bewilderment. The words and the countenance, once so sure and steadfast, now change, as we look at, and listen to them, into new accents and aspects; and the more earnestly we gaze and listen, the less can we distinguish clearly what we hear or see. '_What shall we do to be saved?_' men are again crying. And the lips that were once oracular now merely seem to murmur back confusedly, '_Alas! what shall you do?_' Such and so helpless, even now, is natural theism showing itself; and in the dim and momentous changes that are coming over things, in the vast flux of opinion that is preparing, in the earthquake that is rocking the moral ground under us, overturning and engulfing the former landmarks, and re-opening the graves of the buried lusts of paganism, it will show itself very soon more helpless still. Its feet are on the earth, only. The earth trembles, and it trembles: it is in the same case as we are. It stretches in vain its imploring hands to heaven. But the heaven takes no heed of it. No divine hand reaches down to it to uphold and guide it. This must be the feeling, I believe, of most honest and practical men, with regard to natural religion, and its necessary practical inefficiency. Nor will the want it necessarily leaves of a moral rule be the only consideration that will force this conviction on them. The _heart_, as the phrase goes, will corroborate the evidence of the _head_. It will be felt, even more forcibly than it can be reasoned, that if there be indeed a God who loves and cares for men, he must surely, or almost surely, have spoken in some audible and certain way to them. At any rate I shall not be without many who agree with me, when I say that for the would-be religious world it is an anxious and earnest question whether any special and explicit revelation from God exist for us; and this being the case, it will be not lost time if we try to deal fairly and dispassionately with the question. Before going further, however, let us call to mind two things. Let us remember first, that if we expect to find a revelation at all, it is morally certain that it must be a revelation already in existence. It is hardly possible, if we consider that all the supernatural claims that have been made hitherto are false, to expect that a new manifestation, altogether different in kind, is in store for the world in the future. Secondly, our enquiries being thus confined to religions that are already in existence, what we are practically concerned with is the truth of Christianity only. It is true that we have heard, on all sides, of the superiority of other religions to the Christian. But the men who hold such language, though they may affect to think that such religions are superior in certain moral points, yet never dream of claiming for them the miraculous and supernatural authority that they deny to Christianity. No man denies that Christ was born of a virgin, in order to make the same claim for Buddha: or denies the Christian Trinity in order to affirm the Brahminic. There is but one alleged revelation that, _as a revelation_, the progressive nations of the world are concerned with, or whose supernatural claims are still worthy of being examined by us: and that religion is the Christian. These claims, it is true, are being fast discredited; but still, as yet they have not been silenced wholly; and what I propose to ask now is, what chance is there of their power again reviving. Now considering the way in which I have just spoken of Protestantism, it may seem to many that I have dismissed this question already. With the '_enlightened_' English thinker such certainly will be the first impression. But there is one point that such thinkers all forget: Protestant Christianity is not the only form of it. They have still the form to deal with which is the oldest, the most legitimate, and the most coherent--the Church of Rome. They surely cannot forget the existence of this Church or her magnitude. To suppose this would be to attribute to them too insular, or rather too provincial, an ignorance. The cause, however, certainly is ignorance, and an ignorance which, though less surprising, is far deeper. In this country the popular conception of Rome has been so distorted by our familiarity with Protestantism, that the true conception of her is something quite strange to us. Our divines have exhibited her to us as though she were a lapsed Protestant sect, and they have attacked her for being false to doctrines that were never really hers. They have failed to see that the first and essential difference which separates her from them lies, primarily not in any special dogma, but in the authority on which all her dogmas rest. Protestants, basing their religion on the Bible solely, have conceived that Catholics of course profess to do so likewise; and have covered them with invective for being traitors to their supposed profession. But the Church's primary doctrine is her own perpetual infallibility. She is inspired, she declares, by the same Spirit that inspired the Bible; and her voice is, equally with the Bible, the voice of God. This theory, however, upon which really her whole fabric rests, popular Protestantism either ignores altogether, or treats it as if it were a modern superstition, which, so far from being essential to the Church's system, is, on the contrary, inconsistent with it. Looked at in this way, Rome to the Protestant's mind has seemed naturally to be a mass of superstitions and dishonesties; and it is this view of her that, strangely enough, our modern advanced thinkers have accepted without question. Though they have trusted the Protestants in nothing else, they have trusted them here. They have taken the Protestants' word for it, that Protestantism is more reasonable than Romanism; and they think, therefore, that if they have destroyed the former, _à fortiori_ have they destroyed the latter.[41] No conception of the matter, however, could be more false than this. To whatever criticism the Catholic position may be open, it is certainly not thus included in Protestantism, nor is it reached through it. Let us try and consider the matter a little more truly. Let us grant all that hostile criticism can say against Protestantism as a supernatural religion: in other words, let us set it aside altogether. Let us suppose nothing, to start with, in the world but a natural moral sense, and a simple natural theism; and let us then see the relation of the Church of Rome to that. Approached in this way, the religious world will appear to us as a body of natural theists, all agreeing that they must do God's will, but differing widely amongst themselves as to what His will and His nature are. Their moral and religious views will be equally vague and dreamlike--more dreamlike even than those of the Protestant world at present. Their theories as to the future will be but '_shadowy hopes and fears_.' Their practice, in the present, will vary from asceticism to the widest license. And yet, in spite of all this confusion and difference, there will be amongst them a vague tendency to unanimity. Each man will be dreaming his own spiritual dream, and the dreams of all will be different. All their dreams, it will be plain, cannot represent reality; and yet the belief will be common to all that some common reality is represented by them. Men, therefore, will begin to compare their dreams together, and try to draw out of them the common element, so that the dream may come slowly to be the same for all; that, if it grows, it may grow by some recognizable laws; that it may, in other words, lose its character of a dream, and assume that of a reality. We suppose, therefore, that our natural theists form themselves into a kind of parliament, in which they may compare, adjust, and give shape to the ideas that were before so wavering, and which shall contain some machinery for formulating such agreements as may be come to. The common religious sense of the world is thus organized, and its conclusions registered. We have no longer the wavering _dreams_ of men; we have instead of them the constant _vision_ of man. Now in such a universal parliament we see what the Church of Rome essentially is, viewed from her natural side. She is ideally, if not actually, the parliament of the believing world. Her doctrines, as she one by one unfolds them, emerge upon us like petals from a half-closed bud. They are not added arbitrarily from without; they are developed from within. They are the flowers contained from the first in the bud of our moral consciousness. When she formulates in these days something that has not been formulated before, she is no more enunciating a new truth than was Newton when he enunciated the theory of gravitation. Whatever truths, hitherto hidden, she may in the course of time grow conscious of, she holds that these were always implied in her teaching, though before she did not know it; just as gravitation was implied in many ascertained facts that men knew well enough long before they knew that it was implied in them. Thus far, then, the Church of Rome essentially is the spiritual sense of humanity, speaking to men through its proper and only possible organ. Its intricate machinery, such as its systems of representation, its methods of voting, the appointment of its speaker, and the legal formalities required in the recording of its decrees, are things accidental only; or if they are necessary, they are necessary only in a secondary way. But the picture of the Church thus far is only half drawn. She is all this, but she is something more than this. She is not only the parliament of spiritual man, but she is such a parliament guided by the Spirit of God. The work of that Spirit may be secret, and to the natural eyes untraceable, as the work of the human will is in the human brain. But none the less it is there. _Totam infusa per artus Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet._ The analogy of the human brain is here of great help to us. The human brain is an arrangement of material particles which can become connected with consciousness only in virtue of such a special arrangement. The Church is theoretically an arrangement of individuals which can become connected with the Spirit of God only in virtue of an arrangement equally special. If this be a true picture of the Catholic Church, and the place which the only revelation we are concerned with ideally holds in the world, there can be no _à priori_ difficulty in the passage from a natural religion to such a supernatural one. The difficulties begin when we compare the ideal picture with the actual facts; and it is true, when we do this, that they at once confront us with a strength that seems altogether disheartening. These difficulties are of two distinct kinds; some, as in the case of natural theism, are moral; others are historical. We will deal with the former first, beginning with that which is at once the profoundest and the most obvious. The Church, as has been said already, is ideally the parliament of the whole believing world; but we find, as a matter of fact, that she is the parliament of a small part only. Now what shall we say to this? If God would have all men do His will, why should He place the knowledge of it within reach of such a small minority of them? And to this question we can give no answer. It is a mystery, and we must acknowledge frankly that it is one. But there is this to say yet--that it is not a new mystery. We already suppose ourselves to have accepted it in a simpler form: in the form of the presence of evil, and the partial prevalence of good. By acknowledging the claim of the special revelation in question, we are not adding to the complexity of that old world-problem. I am aware, however, that many think just the reverse of this. I will therefore dwell upon the subject for a few moments longer. To many who can accept the difficulty of the partial presence of good, the difficulty seems wantonly aggravated by the claims of a special revelation. These claims seem to them to do two things. In the first place, they are thought to make the presence of good even more partial than it otherwise would be; and secondly--which is a still greater stumbling-block--to oblige us to condemn as evil much that would else seem good of the purest kind. There are many men, as we must all know, without the Church, who are doing their best to fight their way to God; and orthodoxy is supposed to pass a cruel condemnation on these, because they have not assented to some obscure theory, their rejection or ignorance of which has plainly stained neither their lives nor hearts. And of orthodoxy under certain forms this is no doubt true; but it is not true of the orthodoxy of Catholicism. There is no point, probably, connected with this question, about which the general world is so misinformed and ignorant, as the sober but boundless charity of what it calls the anathematising Church. So little indeed is this charity understood generally, that to assert it seems a startling paradox. Most paradoxes are doubtless in reality the lies they at first sight seem to be; but not so this one. It is the simple statement of a fact. Never was there a religious body, except the Roman, that laid the intense stress she does on all her dogmatic teachings, and had yet the justice that comes of sympathy for those that cannot receive them. She condemns no goodness, she condemns even no earnest worship, though it be outside her pale. On the contrary, she declares explicitly that a knowledge of '_the one true God, our Creator and Lord_,' may be attained to by the '_natural light of human reason_,' meaning by '_reason_' faith unenlightened by revelation; and she declares those to be anathema who deny this. The holy and humble men of heart who do not know her, or who in good faith reject her, she commits with confidence to God's uncovenanted mercies; and these she knows are infinite; but, except as revealed to her, she can of necessity say nothing distinct about them. It is admitted by the world at large, that of her supposed bigotry she has no bitterer or more extreme exponents than the Jesuits; and this is what a Jesuit theologian says upon this matter: '_A heretic, so long as he believes his sect to be more or equally deserving of belief, has no obligation to believe the Church ... [and] when men who have been brought up in heresy, are persuaded from boyhood that we impugn and attack the word of God, that we are idolaters, pestilent deceivers, and are therefore to be shunned as pestilence, they cannot, while this persuasion lasts, with a safe conscience hear us._'[42] Thus for those without her the Church has one condemnation only. Her anathemas are on none but those who reject her with their eyes open, by tampering with a conviction that she really is the truth. These are condemned, not for not seeing that the teacher is true, but because having really seen this, they continue to close their eyes to it. They will not obey when they know they ought to obey. And thus the moral offence of a Catholic in denying some recondite doctrine, does not lie merely, and need not lie at all, in the immediate bad effects that such a denial would necessitate; but in the disobedience, the self-will, and the rebellion that must in such a case be both a cause and a result of it. In the light of these considerations, though the old perplexity of evil will still confront us, it will be seen that the claims of Catholic orthodoxy do nothing at all to add to it. If orthodoxy, however, admit so much good without itself, we may perhaps be inclined to ask what special good it claims within itself, and what possible motives can exist for either understanding or teaching it. But we might ask with exactly equal force, what is the good of true physical science, and why should we try to impress on the world its teachings? Such a question, we can at once see, is absurd. Because a large number of men know nothing of physical science, and are apparently not the worse for their ignorance, we do not for that reason think physical science worthless. We believe, on the whole, that a knowledge of the laws of matter, including those of our organisms and their environments, will steadily tend to better our lives, in so far as they are material. It will tend, for instance, to a better preservation of our health. But we do not for this reason deny that many individuals may preserve their health who are but very partially acquainted with the laws of it. Nor do we deny the value of a thorough study of astronomy and meteorology because a certain practical knowledge of the weather and of navigation may be attained without it. On the contrary, we hold that the fullest knowledge we can acquire on such matters it is our duty to acquire, and not acquire only, but as far as possible promulgate. It is true that the mass of men may never master such knowledge thoroughly; but what they do master of it we feel convinced should be the truth, and even what they do not, will, we feel convinced, be some indirect profit to them. And the case of spiritual science is entirely analogous to the case of natural science. A man to whom the truth is open is not excused from finding it because he knows it is not so open to all. A heretic who denies the dogmas of the Church has his counterpart in the quack who denies the verified conclusions of science. The moral condemnation that is given to the one is illustrated by the intellectual condemnation that is given to the other. If we will think this over carefully, we shall get a clearer view of the moral value claimed for itself by orthodoxy. Some of its doctrines, the great and picturable parts of them, that appeal to all, and that in some degree can be taken in by all, it declares doubtless to be saving, in their own nature. But for the mass of men the case is quite different with the facts underlying these. That we eat Christ's body in the Eucharist is a belief that, in a practical way, can be understood perfectly by anyone; but the philosophy that is involved in this belief would be to most men the merest gibberish. Yet it is no more unimportant that those who do understand this philosophy, should do so truly and transmit it faithfully, than it is unimportant that a physician should understand the action of alcohol, because anyone independent of such knowledge can tell that so many glasses of wine will have such and such an effect on him. Theology is to the spiritual body what anatomy and medicine are to the natural body. The parts they each play in our lives are analogous, and in their respective worlds their _raison d'être_ is the same. What then can be shallower than the rhetoric of such thinkers as Mr. Carlyle, in which natural religion and orthodoxy are held up to us as contrasts and as opposites, the former being praised as simple and going straight to the heart, and the latter described and declaimed against as the very reverse of this? '_On the one hand_,' it is said, '_see the soul going straight to its God, feeling His love, and content that others should feel it. On the other hand, see this pure and free communion, distracted and interrupted by a thousand tortuous reasonings as to the exact nature of it. What can obscure intellectual propositions,_' it is asked, '_have to do with a religion of the heart? And do not they check the latter by being thus bound up with it?_' But what really can be more misleading than this? Natural religion is doubtless simpler in one sense than revealed religion; but it is only simple because it has no authoritative science of itself. It is simple for the same reason that a boy's account of having given himself a headache is simpler than a physician's would be. The boy says merely, '_I ate ten tarts, and drank three bottles of ginger-beer._' The physician, were he to explain the catastrophe, would describe a number of far more complex processes. The boy's account would be of course the simplest, and would certainly go more home to the general heart of boyhood; but it would not for that reason be the correctest or the most important. And just like this will be the case of the divine communion, which the simple saint may feel, and the subtle theologian analyse. But it will be well to observe, further, that the simplicity of a religion can of itself be no test of the probable truth of it. And in the case of natural religion, what is called simplicity is in general nothing more than vagueness. If _simplicity_ used in this way be a term of praise, we might praise a landscape as simple because it was half-drowned in mist. As a matter of fact, however, the religion of the Catholic Church, putting out of the question its theology, is a thing far simpler than the outside world supposes; nor is there a doctrine in it without a direct moral meaning for us, and not tending to have a direct effect on the character. But the outside world misjudges of all this for various reasons. In the first place, it can reach it as a rule through explanations only; and the explanation or the account of anything is always far more intricate than the apprehension of the thing itself. Take, for instance, the practice of the invocation of saints. This seems to many to complicate the whole relation of the soul to God, to be introducing a number of new and unnecessary go-betweens, and to make us, as it were, communicate with God through a dragoman. But the case really is very different. Of course it may be contended that intercessory prayer, or that prayer of any kind, is an absurdity; but for those who do not think this, there can be nothing to object to in the invocation of saints. It is admitted by such men that we are not wrong in asking the living to pray for us. Surely, therefore, it is not wrong to make a like request of the dead. In the same way, to those who believe in purgatory, to pray for the dead is as natural and as rational as to pray for the living. Next, as to this doctrine of purgatory itself--which has so long been a stumbling-block to the whole Protestant world--time goes on, and the view men take of it is changing. It is becoming fast recognized on all sides that it is the only doctrine that can bring a belief in future rewards and punishments into anything like accordance with our notions of what is just or reasonable. So far from its being a superfluous superstition, it is seen to be just what is demanded at once by reason and morality; and a belief in it to be not an intellectual assent only, but a partial harmonising of the whole moral ideal. And the whole Catholic _religion_, if we only distinguish and apprehend it rightly, will present itself to us in the same light. But there are other reasons besides those just described, by which outsiders are hindered from arriving at such a right view of the matter. Not only does the intricacy of Catholicism _described_, blind them to the simplicity of Catholicism _experienced_, but they confuse with the points of faith, not only the scientific accounts the theologians give of them, but mere rules of discipline, and pious opinions also. It is supposed popularly, for instance, to be of Catholic faith that celibacy is essential to the priesthood. This as a fact, however, is no more a part of the Catholic faith than the celibacy of a college fellow is a part of the Thirty-nine Articles, or than the skill of an English naval officer depends on his not having his wife with him on shipboard. Nor again, to take another popular instance, is the headship of the Catholic Church connected essentially with Rome, any more than the English Parliament is essentially connected with Westminster. The difficulty of distinguishing things that are of faith, from mere pious opinions, is a more subtle one. From the confusion caused by it, the Church seems pledged to all sorts of grotesque stories of saints, and accounts of the place and aspect of heaven, of hell and purgatory, and to be logically bound to stand and fall by these. Thus Sir James Stephen happened once in the course of his reading to light on an opinion of Bellarmine's, and certain arguments by which he supported it, as to the place of purgatory. It is quite true that to us Bellarmine's opinion seems sufficiently ludicrous; and Sir James Stephen argued that the Roman Church is ludicrous in just the same degree. But if he had studied the matter a little deeper, he would soon have dropped his argument. He would have seen that he was attacking, not the doctrine of the Church, but simply an opinion, not indeed condemned by her, but held avowedly without her sanction. Had he studied Bellarmine to a little more purpose, he would have seen that that writer expressly states it to be '_a question where purgatory is, but that the Church has defined nothing on this point_.' He would also have learned from the same source that it is no article of Catholic faith, though it was of Bellarmine's opinion, that there is in purgatory any material fire; and that, '_as to the intensity of the pains of purgatory, though all admit that they are greater than anything that we suffer in this life, still it is doubtful how this is to be explained and understood_.' He would have learned too that, according to Bonaventura, '_the sufferings of purgatory are only severer than those of this life, inasmuch as the greatest suffering in purgatory is more severe than the greatest suffering endured in this life; though there may be a degree of punishment in purgatory less intense than what may sometimes be undergone in this world_.' And finally he would have learned--what in this connection would have been well worth his attention--that the duration of pains in purgatory is according to Bellarmine, '_so completely uncertain, that it is rash to pretend to determine anything about it_.' Here is one instance, that will be as good as many, of the way in which the private opinions of individual Catholics, or the transitory opinions of particular epochs, are taken for the unalterable teachings of the Catholic Church herself; and it is no more logical to condemn the latter as false because the former are, than it would be to say that all modern geography is false because geographers may still entertain false opinions about regions as to which they do not profess certainty. Mediæval doctors thought that purgatory might be the middle of the earth. Modern geographers have thought that there might be an open sea at the North Pole. But that wrong conjectures have been hazarded in both cases, can prove in neither that there have been no true discoveries. The Church, it is undeniable, has for a long time lived and moved amongst countless false opinions; and to the external eye they have naturally seemed a part of her. But science moves on, and it is shown that she can cast them off. She has cast off some already; soon doubtless she will cast off others; not in any petulant anger, but with a composed determined gentleness, as some new light gravely dawns upon her. Granting all this, however, there remains a yet subtler characteristic of the Church, which goes to make her a rock of offence to many; and that is, the temper and the intellectual tone which she seems to develop in her members. But here, again, we must call to our aid considerations similar to those we have just been dwelling on. We must remember that the particular tone and temper that offends us is not necessarily Catholicism. The temper of the Catholic world may change, and, as a matter of fact, does change. It is not the same, indeed, in any two countries, or in any two eras. And it may have a new and unsuspected future in store for it. It may absorb ideas that we should consider broader, bolder, and more rational than any it seems to possess at present. But if ever it does so, the Church, in the opinion of Catholics, will not be growing false to herself; she will only, in due time, be unfolding her own spirit more fully. Thus some people associate Catholic conceptions of extreme sanctity with a neglect of personal cleanliness; and imagine that a clean Catholic can, according to his own creed, never come very near perfection. But the Church has never given this view her sanction; she has never made it of faith that dirt is sacred; she has added no ninth beatitude in favour of an unchanged shirt. Many of the greatest saints were doubtless dirty; but they were dirty not because of the Church they belonged to, but because of the age they lived in. Such an expression of sanctity for themselves, it is probable, will be loathed by the saints of the future; yet they may none the less reverence, for all that, the saints who so expressed it in the past. This is but a single instance; but it may serve as a type of the wide circle of changes that the Church as a living organism, still full of vigour and power of self-adaptation, will be able to develop, as the world develops round her, and yet lose nothing of her supernatural sameness. To sum up, then; if we would obtain a true view of the general character of Catholicism, we must begin by making a clean sweep of all the views that, as outsiders, we have been taught to entertain about her. We must, in the first place, learn to conceive of her as a living, spiritual body, as infallible and as authoritative now as she ever was, with her eyes undimmed and her strength not abated, continuing to grow still as she has continued to grow hitherto: and the growth of the new dogmas that she may from time to time enunciate, we must learn to see are, from her own stand-point, signs of life and not signs of corruption. And further, when we come to look into her more closely, we must separate carefully the diverse elements we find in her--her discipline, her pious opinions, her theology, and her religion. Let honest enquirers do this to the best of their power, and their views will undergo an unlooked-for change. Other difficulties of a more circumstantial kind, it is true, still remain for them; and of these I shall speak presently. But putting these for the moment aside, and regarding the question under its widest aspects only--regarding it only in connection with the larger generalisations of science, and the primary postulates of man's spiritual existence--the theist will find in Catholicism no new difficulties. He will find in it the logical development of our natural moral sense, developed, indeed, and still developing, under a special and supernatural care--but essentially the same thing; with the same negations, the same assertions, the same positive truths, and the same impenetrable mysteries; and with nothing new added to them, but help, and certainty, and guidance. FOOTNOTES: [37] It is curious to reflect that what Gibbon said as a sarcasm, is really a serious and profound truth, and leads to conclusions exactly opposite to those drawn from it in that witty and most fascinating chapter from which the above words are quoted. [38] _Our Eternal Hope._ By Canon Farrar. [39] See Döllinger's _Continuation of Hortig's Church History_, quoted by Mr. J.B. Robertson, in his _Memoir of Dr. Moehler_. [40] See _Phases of my Faith_, by Francis Newman. [41] It is difficult on any other supposition to account for the marked fact that hardly any of our English rationalists have criticised Christianity, except as presented to them in a form essentially Protestant; and that a large proportion of their criticisms are solely applicable to this. It is amusing, too, to observe how, to men of often such really wide minds, all theological authority is represented by the various social types of contemporary Anglican or dissenting dignitaries. Men such as Professors Huxley and Clifford, Mr. Leslie Stephen, and Mr. Frederic Harrison, can find no representatives of dogmatism but in bishops, deans, curates, Presbyterian ministers--and, above all, curates. The one mouthpiece of the _Ecclesia docens_ is for them the parish pulpit; and the more ignorant be its occupant the more representative do they think his utterances. Whilst Mr. Matthew Arnold apparently thinks the whole cause of revealed religion stands and falls with the vagaries of the present Bishop of Gloucester. [42] Busenbaum, quoted by Dr. J.H. Newman, _Letter to the Duke of Norfolk_, p. 65. CHAPTER XII. UNIVERSAL HISTORY AND THE CLAIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. _Oh the little more, and how much it is, And the little less, and what worlds away!_--Robert Browning. And now we come to the last objections left us, of those which modern thought has arrayed against the Christian Revelation; and these to many minds are the most conclusive and overwhelming of all--the objections raised against it by a critical study of history. Hitherto we have been considering the Church only with reference to our general sense of the fitness and the rational probability of things. We have now to consider her with reference to special facts. Her claims and her character, as she exists at present, may make perhaps appeal overpoweringly to us; but she cannot be judged only by these. For these are closely bound up with a long earthly history, which the Church herself has written in one way, binding herself to stand or fall by the truth of it; and this all the secular wisdom of the world seems to be re-writing in quite another. This subject is so vast and intricate that even to approach the details of it would require volumes, not a single chapter. But room in a chapter may be found for one thing, of prior importance to any mass of detail; and that is a simple statement of the principles--unknown to, or forgotten by external critics--by which all this mass of detail is to be interpreted. Let us remember first, then, to take a general view of the matter, that history as cited in witness against the Christian Revelation, divides itself into two main branches. The one is a critical examination of Christianity, taken by itself--the authorship, and the authenticity of its sacred books, and the origin and growth of its doctrines. The other is a critical examination of Christianity as compared with other religions. And the result of both these lines of study is, to those brought up in the old faith, to the last degree startling, and in appearance at least altogether disastrous. Let us sum up briefly the general results of them; and first of these the historical. We shall begin naturally with the Bible, as giving us the earliest historical point at which Christianity is assailable. What then has modern criticism accomplished on the Bible? The Biblical account of the creation it has shown to be, in its literal sense, an impossible fable. To passages thought mystical and prophetic it has assigned the homeliest, and often retrospective meanings. Everywhere at its touch what seemed supernatural has been humanized, and the divinity that hedged the records has rapidly abandoned them. And now looked at in the common daylight their whole aspect changes for us; and stories that we once accepted with a solemn reverence seem childish, ridiculous, grotesque, and not unfrequently barbarous. Or if we are hardly prepared to admit so much as this, this much at least has been established firmly--that the Bible, if it does not give the lie itself to the astonishing claims that have been made for it, contains nothing in itself, at any rate, that can of itself be sufficient to support them. This applies to the New Testament just as much as to the Old; and the consequences here are even more momentous. Weighed as mere human testimony, the value of the Gospels becomes doubtful or insignificant. For the miracles of Christ, and for his superhuman nature, they contain little evidence, that even tends to be satisfactory; and even his daily words and actions it seems probable may have been inaccurately reported, in some cases perhaps invented, and in others supplied by a deceiving memory. When we pass from the Gospels to the Epistles, a kindred sight presents itself. We discern in them the writings of men not inspired from above; but, with many disagreements amongst themselves, struggling upwards from below, influenced by a variety of existing views, and doubtful which of them to assimilate. We discern in them, as we do in other writers, the products of their age and of their circumstances. The materials out of which they formed their doctrines we can find in the lay world around them. And as we follow the Church's history farther, and examine the appearance and the growth of her great subsequent dogmas, we can trace all of them to a natural and a non-Christian origin. We can see, for instance, how in part, at least, men conceived the idea of the Trinity from the teachings of Greek Mysticism; and how the theory of the Atonement was shaped by the ideas of Roman Jurisprudence. Everywhere, in fact, in the holy building supposed to have come down from God, we detect fragments of older structures, confessedly of earthly workmanship. But the matter does not end here. Historical science not only shows us Christianity, with its sacred history, in this new light; but it sets other religions by the side of it, and shows us that their course through the world has been strangely similar. They too have had their sacred books, and their incarnate Gods for prophets; they have had their priesthoods, their traditions, and their growing bodies of doctrine: there is nothing in Christianity that cannot find its counterpart, even to the most marked details, in the life of its founder. Two centuries, for instance, before the birth of Christ, Buddha is said to have been born without human father. Angels sang in heaven to announce his advent; an aged hermit blessed him in his mother's arms; a monarch was advised, though he refused, to destroy the child, who, it was predicted, should be a universal ruler. It is told how he was once lost, and was found again in a temple; and how his young wisdom astonished all the doctors. A woman in a crowd was rebuked by him for exclaiming, '_Blessed is the womb that bare thee_.' His prophetic career began when he was about thirty years old; and one of the most solemn events of it is his temptation in solitude by the evil one. Everywhere, indeed, in other religions we are discovering things that we once thought peculiar to the Christian. And thus the fatal inference is being drawn on all sides, that they have all sprung from a common and an earthly root, and that one has no more certainty than another. And thus another blow is dealt to a faith that was already weakened. Not only, it is thought, can Christianity not prove itself in any supernatural sense to be sacred, but other religions prove that even in a natural sense it is not singular. It has not come down from heaven: it is not exceptional even in its attempt to rise to it. Such are the broad conclusions which in these days seem to be forced upon us; and which knowledge, as it daily widens, would seem to be daily strengthening. But are these altogether so destructive as they seem? Let us enquire into this more closely. If we do this, it will be soon apparent that the so-called enlightened and critical modern judgment has been misled as to this point by an error I have already dwelt upon. It has considered Christianity solely as represented by Protestantism; or if it has glanced at Rome at all, it has ignorantly dismissed as weaknesses the doctrines which are the essence of her strength. Now, as far as Protestantism is concerned, the modern critical judgment is undoubtedly in the right. Not only, as I have pointed out already, has experience proved the practical incoherency of its superstructure, but criticism has washed away like sand every vestige of its supernatural foundation. If Christianity relies solely, in proof of its revealed message to us, on the external evidences as to its history and the source of its doctrines, it can never again hope to convince men. The supports of external evidence are quite inadequate to the weight that is put upon them. They might possibly serve as props; but they crush and crumble instantly, when they are used as pillars. And as pillars it is that Protestantism is compelled to use them. It will be quite sufficient, here, to confine our attention to the Bible, and the place which it occupies in the structure of the Protestant fabric. '_There--in that book,_' says Protestantism, '_is the Word of God; there is my unerring guide; I listen to none but that. All special Churches have varied, and have therefore erred; but it is my first axiom that that book has never erred. On that book, and on that book only, do I rest myself; and out of its mouth shall you judge me._' And for a long time this language had much force in it; for the Protestant axiom was received by all parties. It is true, indeed, as we have seen already, that in the absence of an authoritative interpreter, an ambiguous testament would itself have little authority. But it took a long time for men to perceive this; and all admitted meanwhile that the testament was there, and it at any rate meant something. But now all this is changed. The great Protestant axiom is received by the world no longer. To many it seems not an axiom, but an absurdity; at best it appears but as a very doubtful fact: and if external proof is to be the thing that guides us, we shall need more proof to convince us that the Bible is the Word of God, than that Protestantism is the religion of the Bible. We need not pursue the enquiry further, nor ask how Protestantism will fare at the hands of Comparative Mythology. The blow dealt by Biblical criticism is to all appearances mortal, and there is no need to look about for a second. But let us turn to Catholicism, and we shall see that the whole case is different. To its past history, to external evidence, and to the religions outside itself, Protestant Christianity bears one relation, and Roman Christianity quite another. Protestantism offers itself to the world as a strange servant might, bringing with it a number of written testimonials. It asks us to examine them, and by them to judge of its merits. It expressly begs us not to trust to its own word. '_I cannot_,' it says, '_rely upon my memory. It has failed me often; it may fail me again. But look at these testimonials in my favour, and judge me only by them._' And the world looks at them, examines them carefully; it at last sees that they look suspicious, and that they may, very possibly, be forgeries. It ask the Protestant Church to prove them genuine; and the Protestant Church cannot. But the Catholic Church comes to us in an exactly opposite way. She too brings with her the very same testimonials; but she knows the uncertainty that obscures all remote evidences, and so at first she does not lay much stress upon them. First she asks us to make some acquaintance with herself; to look into her living eyes, to hear the words of her mouth, to watch her ways and works, and to feel her inner spirit; and then she says to us, '_Can you trust me? If you can, you must trust me all in all; for the very first thing I declare to you is, I have never lied._ _Can you trust me thus far? Then listen, and I will tell you my history. You have heard it told one way, I know; and that way often goes against me. My career, I admit it myself, has many suspicious circumstances. But none of them positively condemn me: all are capable of a guiltless interpretation. And when you know me, as I am, you will give me the benefit of every doubt._' It is thus that the Catholic Church presents the Bible to us. '_Believe the Bible, for my sake_,' she says, '_not me for the Bible's_.' And the book, as thus offered us, changes its whole character. We have not the formal testimonials of a stranger; we have instead the memoranda of a friend. We have now that presumption in their favour that in the former case was wanting altogether; and all that we ask of the records now is, not that they contain any inherent evidence of their truth, but that they contain no inherent evidence of their falsehood. Farther, there is this point to remember. Catholic and Protestant alike declare the Bible to be inspired. But the Catholics can attach to _inspiration_ a far wider, and less assailable meaning: for their Church claims for herself a perpetual living power, which can always concentrate the inspired element, be it never so diffused; whereas for the Protestants, unless that element be closely bound up with the letter, it at once becomes intangible and eludes them altogether. And thus, whilst the latter have committed themselves to definite statements, now proved untenable, as to what inspiration is, the Catholic Church, strangely enough, has never done anything of the kind. She has declared nothing on the subject that is to be held of faith. The whole question is still, within limits, an open one. As the Catholic Church, then, stands at present, it seems hard to say that, were we for other reasons inclined to trust her, she makes any claims, on behalf of her sacred books, which, in the face of impartial history, would prevent our doing so. Let us now go farther, and consider those great Christian doctrines which, though it is claimed that they are all implied in the Bible, are confessedly not expressed in it, and were confessedly not consciously assented to by the Church, till long after the Christian Canon was closed. And here let us grant the modern critics their most hostile and extreme position. Let us grant that all the doctrines in question can be traced to external, and often to non-Christian sources. And what is the result on Romanism? Does this logically go any way whatever towards discrediting its claims? Let us consider the matter fairly, and we shall see that it has not even a tendency to do so. Here, as in the case of the Bible, the Church's doctrine of her infallibility meets all objections. For the real question here is, not in what storehouse of opinions the Church found her doctrines, but why she selected those she did, and why she rejected and condemned the rest. History and scientific criticism cannot answer this. History can show us only who baked the separate bricks; it cannot show us who made or designed the building. No one believes that the devil made the plans of Cologne Cathedral; but were we inclined to think he did, the story would be disproved in no way by our discovering from what quarries every stone had been taken. And the doctrines of the Church are but as the stones in a building, the letters of an alphabet, or the words of a language. Many are offered and few chosen. The supernatural action is to be detected in the choice. The whole history of the Church, in fact, as she herself tells it, may be described as a history of supernatural selection. It is quite possible that she may claim it to be more than that; but could she vindicate for herself but this one faculty of an infallible choice, she would vindicate to the full her claim to be under a superhuman guidance. The Church may be conceived of as a living organism, for ever and on all sides putting forth feelers and tentacles, that seize, try, and seem to dally with all kinds of nutriment. A part of this she at length takes into herself. A large part she at length puts down again. Much that is thus rejected she seems for a long time on the point of choosing. But however slow may be the final decision in coming, however reluctant or hesitating it may seem to be, when it is once made, it is claimed for it that it is infallible. And this claim is one, as we shall see when we understand its nature, that no study of ecclesiastical history, no study of comparative mythology can invalidate now, or even promise to invalidate. There is nothing rash in saying this. The Church knows the difficulties that her past records present to us, especially that of the divine character of the Bible. But she knows too that this divinity is at present protected by its vagueness; nor is she likely to expose it more openly to its enemies, till some sure plan of defence has been devised for it. Rigid as were the opinions entertained as to Biblical inspiration, throughout the greater part of the Church's history, the Church has never formally assumed them as articles of faith. Had she done so, she might indeed have been convicted of error, for many of these opinions can be shown to be at variance with fact. But though she lived and breathed for so many centuries amongst them, though for ages none of her members perhaps ever doubted their truth, she has not laid them on succeeding ages: she has left them opinions still. A Catholic might well adduce this as an instance, not indeed of her supernatural selection, but of its counterpart, her supernatural rejection. And now, to turn from the past to the future, her possible future conduct in this matter will give us a very vivid illustration of her whole past procedure. It may be that before the Church defines inspiration exactly (if she ever does so), she will wait till lay criticism has done all it can do. She may then consider what views of the Bible are historically tenable, and what not; and may faithfully shape her teaching by the learning of this world, though it may have been gathered together for the express purpose of overthrowing her. Atheistic scholars may be quoted in her councils; and supercilious and sceptical philologists, could they live another hundred years, might perhaps recognise their discoveries, even their words and phrases, embodied in an ecclesiastical definition. To the outer world such a definition would seem to be a mere natural production. But in the eyes of a Catholic it would be as truly supernatural, as truly the work of the Holy Spirit, as if it had come down ready-made out of heaven, with all the accompaniments of a rushing mighty wind, and of visible tongues of flame. Sanguine critics might expose the inmost history of the council in which the definition was made; they might show the whole conduct of it, from one side, to be but a meshwork of accident and of human motives; and they would ask triumphantly for any traces of the action of the divine spirit. But the Church, would be unabashed. She would answer in the words of Job, '_Behold I go forward, but He is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive Him; but He knoweth the way that I take; when He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold. Behold my witness is in heaven, and my champion is on high._' And thus the doctrine of the Church's infallibility has a side that is just the opposite of that which is commonly thought to be its only one. It is supposed to have simply gendered bondage; not to have gendered liberty. But as a matter of fact it has done both; and if we view the matter fairly, we shall see that it has done the latter at least as completely as the former. The doctrine of infallibility is undoubtedly a rope that tethers those that hold it to certain real or supposed facts of the past; but it is a rope that is capable of indefinite lengthening. It is not a fetter only; it is a support also; and those who cling to it can venture fearlessly, as explorers, into currents of speculation that would sweep away altogether men who did but trust to their own powers of swimming. Nor does, as is often supposed, the centralizing of this infallibility in the person of one man present any difficulty from the Catholic point of view. It is said that the Pope might any day make a dogma of any absurdities that might happen to occur to him; and that the Catholic would be bound to accept these, however strongly his reason might repudiate them. And it is quite true that the Pope _might_ do this any day, in the sense that there is no external power to prevent him. But he who has assented to the central doctrine of Catholicism knows that he never _will_. And it is precisely the obvious absence of any restraint from without that brings home to the Catholic his faith in the guiding power from within. Such, then, and so compacted is the Church of Rome, as a visible and earthly body, with a past and future history. And with so singular a firmness and flexibility is her frame knit together, that none of her modern enemies can get any lasting hold on her, or dismember her or dislocate her limbs on the racks of their criticism. But granting all this, what does this do for her? Does it do more than present her to us as the toughest and most fortunate religion, out of many co-ordinate and competing ones? Does it tend in any way to set her on a different platform from the others? And the answer to this is, that, so far as exact proof goes, we have nothing to expect or deal with in the matter, either one way or the other. The evidences at our disposal will impart a general tendency to our opinions, but no more than that. The general tendency here, however, is the very reverse of what it is vulgarly supposed to be. So far from the similarities to her in other religions telling against the special claims of the Catholic Church, they must really, with the candid theist, tell very strongly in her favour. For the theist, all theisms have a profound element of truth in them; and all alleged revelations will, in his eyes, be natural theisms, struggling to embody themselves in some authorised and authoritative form. The Catholic Church, as we have seen, is a human organism, capable of receiving the Divine Spirit; and this is what all other religious bodies, in so far as they have claimed authority for their teaching, have consciously or unconsciously attempted to be likewise; only the Catholic Church represents success, where the others represent failure: and thus these, from the Catholic stand-point, are abortive and incomplete Catholicisms. The Bethesda of human faith is world-wide and as old as time; only in one particular spot an angel has come down and troubled it; and the waters have been circling there, thenceforth, in a healing vortex. Such is the sort of claim that the Catholic Church makes for herself; and, if this be so, what she is, does not belie what she claims to be. Indeed, the more we compare her with the other religions, her rivals, the more, even where she most resembles them, shall we see in her a something that marks her off from them. The others are like vague and vain attempts at a forgotten tune; she is like the tune itself, which is recognised the instant it is heard, and which has been so near to us all the time, though so immeasurably far away from us. The Catholic Church is the only dogmatic religion that has seen what dogmatism really implies, and what will, in the long run, be demanded of it, and she contains in herself all appliances for meeting these demands. She alone has seen that if there is to be an infallible voice in the world, this voice must be a living one, as capable of speaking now as it ever was in the past; and that as the world's capacities for knowledge grow, the teacher must be always able to unfold to it a fuller teaching. The Catholic Church is the only historical religion that can conceivably thus adapt itself to the wants of the present day, without virtually ceasing to be itself. It is the only religion that can keep its identity without losing its life, and keep its life without losing its identity; that can enlarge its teachings without changing them; that can be always the same, and yet be always developing. All this, of course, does not prove that Catholicism _is_ the truth; but it will show the theist that, for all that the modern world can tell him, it may be. And thus much at least will by-and-by come to be recognised generally. Opinion, that has been clarified on so many subjects, cannot remain forever turbid here. A change must come, and a change can only be for the better. At present the so-called leaders of enlightened and liberal thought are in this matter, so far as fairness and insight go, on a level with the wives and mothers of our small provincial shopkeepers, or the beadle or churchwarden of a country parish. But prejudice, even when so virulent and so dogged as this, will lift and disappear some day like a London fog; and then the lineaments of the question will confront us clearly--the question: but who shall decide the answer? What I have left to say bears solely upon this. CHAPTER XIII. BELIEF AND WILL. '_Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness._' Arguments are like the seed, or like the soul, as Paul conceived of it, which he compared to seed. They are not quickened unless they die. As long as they remain for us in the form of arguments they do no work. Their work begins only, after a time and in secret, when they have sunk down into the memory, and have been left to lie there; when the hostility and distrust they were regarded with dies away; when, unperceived, they melt into the mental system, and, becoming part of oneself, effect a turning round of the soul. This is true, at least, when the matters dealt with are such as have engaged us here. It may be true, too, of those who discern and urge the arguments, just as well as of those upon whom they urge them. But the immediate barrenness of much patient and careful reasoning should not make us think that it is lost labour. One way or other it will some day bear its fruit. Sometimes the intellect is the servant of the heart. At other times the heart must follow slowly upon the heels of the intellect. And such is the case now. For centuries man's faith and all his loftier feelings had their way made plain before them. The whole empire of human thought belonged to them. But this old state of things endures no longer. Upon this Empire, as upon that of Rome, calamity has at last fallen. A horde of intellectual barbarians has burst in upon it, and has occupied by force the length and breadth of it. The result has been astounding. Had the invaders been barbarians only, they might have been repelled easily; but they were barbarians armed with the most powerful weapons of civilisation. They were a phenomenon new to history: they showed us real knowledge in the hands of real ignorance; and the work of the combination thus far has been ruin, not reorganisation. Few great movements at the beginning have been conscious of their own true tendency; but no great movement has mistaken it like modern Positivism. Seeing just too well to have the true instinct of blindness, and too ill to have the proper guidance from sight, it has tightened its clutch upon the world of thought, only to impart to it its own confusion. What lies before men now is to reduce this confusion to order, by a patient and calm employment of the intellect. Intellect itself will never re-kindle faith, or restore any of those powers that are at present so failing and so feeble; but it will work like a pioneer to prepare their way before them, if they are ever revived otherwise, encouraged in its labours, perhaps not even by hope, but at any rate by the hope of hope. As a pioneer, and not as a preacher, I have tried to indicate the real position in which modern knowledge has placed us, and the way in which it puts the problem of life before us. I have tried to show that, whatever ultimately its tendency may prove to be, it cannot be the tendency that, by the school that has given it to us, it is supposed to have been; and that it either does a great deal more than that school thinks it does, or a great deal less. History would teach us this, even if nothing else did. The school in question has proceeded from denial to denial, thinking at each successive moment that it had reached its final halting-place, and had struck at last on a solid and firm foundation. First, it denied the Church to assert the Bible; then it denied the Bible to assert God; then it denied God to assert the moral dignity of man: and there, if it could remain, it would. But what it would do is of no avail. It is not its own master; it is compelled to move onwards; and now, under the force of its own relentless logic, this last resting-place is beginning to fail also. It professed to compensate for its denials of God's existence by a freer and more convincing re-assertion of man's dignity. But the principles which obliged it to deny the first belief are found to be even more fatal to the substitute. '_Unless I have seen with my eyes I will not believe_,' expresses a certain mental tendency that has always had existence. But till Science and its positive methods began to dawn on the world, this tendency was vague and wavering. Positive Science supplied it with solid nutriment. Its body grew denser; its shape more and more definite; and now the completed portent is spreading its denials through the whole universe. So far as spirit goes and spiritual aspirations, it has left existence empty, swept and garnished. If spirit is to enter in again and dwell there, we must seek by other methods for it. Modern thought has not created a new doubt; it has simply made perfect an old one; and has advanced it from the distant regions of theory into the very middle of our hearts and lives. It has made the question of belief or of unbelief the supreme practical question for us. It has forced us to stake everything on the cast of a single die. What are we? Have we been hitherto deceived in ourselves, or have we not? And is every hope that has hitherto nerved our lives, melting at last away from us, utterly and for ever? Or are we indeed what we have been taught to think we are? Have we indeed some aims that we may still call high and holy--still some aims that are more than transitory? And have we still some right to that reverence that we have learnt to cherish for ourselves? Here lie the difficulties. The battle is to be fought here--here at the very threshold--at the entrance to the spiritual world. Are we moral and spiritual beings, or are we not? That is the decisive question, which we must say our Yes or No to. If, with our eyes open, and with all our hearts, it be given us to say Yes--to say Yes without fear, and firmly, and in the face of everything--then there will be little more to fear. We shall have fought the good fight, we shall have kept the faith; and whatever we lack more, will without doubt be added to us. From this belief in ourselves we shall pass to the belief in God, as its only rational basis and its only emotional completion; and, perhaps, from a belief in God, to a recognition of His audible voice amongst us. But at any rate, whatever after-difficulties beset us, they will not be new difficulties; only those we had braved at first, showing themselves more clearly. But that first decision--how shall we make it? Who or what shall help us, or give us counsel? There is no evidence that can do so in the sensible world around us. The universe, as positive thought approaches it, is blind and dumb about it. Science and history are sullen, and blind, and dumb. They await upon our decision before they will utter a single word to us: and that decision, if we have a will at all, it lies with our own will--with our will alone, to make. It may, indeed, be said that the will has to create itself by an initial exercise of itself, in an assent to its own existence. If it can do this, one set of obstacles is surmounted; but others yet confront us. The world into which the moral will has borne itself--not a material world, but a spiritual--a world which the will's existence alone makes possible, this world is not silent, like the other, but it is torn and divided against itself, and is resonant with unending contradictions. Its first aspect is that of a place of torture, a hell of the intellect, in which reason is to be racked for ever by a tribe of sphinx-like monsters, themselves despairing. Good and evil inhabit there, confronting each other, for ever unreconciled: _there_ is omnipotent power baffled, and omnipotent mercy unexercised. Is the will strong enough to hold on through this baffling and monstrous world, and not to shrink back and bid the vision vanish? Can we still resolve to say, 'I believe, although it is impossible'? Is the will to assert our own moral nature--our own birthright in eternity, strong enough to bear us on? The trial is a hard one, and whilst we doubt and hesitate under it the universal silence of the vast physical world itself disheartens us. Who are we, in the midst of this unheeding universe, that we can claim for ourselves so supreme a heritage; that we can assert for ourselves other laws than those which seem to be all-pervading, and that we can dream of breaking through them into a something else beyond? And yet it may be that faith will succeed and conquer sight--that the preciousness of the treasure we cling to will nerve us with enough strength to retain it. It may be that man, having seen the way that, unaided, he is forced to go, will change his attitude; that, finding only weakness in pride, he will seek for strength in humility, and will again learn to say, '_I believe, although I never can comprehend_.' Once let him say this, his path will again grow clearer for him. Through confusion, and doubt, and darkness, the brightness of God's countenance will again be visible; and by-and-by again he may hear the Word calling him. From his first assent to his own moral nature he _must_ rise to a theism, and he _may_ rise to the recognition of a Church--to a visible embodiment of that moral nature of his, as directed and joined to its one aim and end--to its delight, and its desire, and its completion. Then he will see all that is high and holy taking a distinct and helping form for him. Grace and mercy will come to him through set and certain channels. His nature will be redeemed visibly from its weakness and from its littleness--redeemed, not in dreams or in fancy, but in fact. God Himself will be his brother and his father; he will be near akin to the Power that _is_ always, and _is_ everywhere. His love of virtue will be no longer a mere taste of his own: it will be the discernment and taking to himself of the eternal strength and of the eternal treasure; and, whatever he most reveres in mother, or wife, or sister--this he will know is holy, everywhere and for ever, and is exalted high over all things in one of like nature with theirs, the Mother of grace, the Parent of sweet clemency, who will protect him from the enemy, and save him in the hour of death. Such is the conception of himself, and of his place in existence, that, always implicit in man, man has at last developed. He has at last conceived his race--the faithful of it--as the bride of God. Is this majestic conception a true one, or is it a dream only, with no abiding substance? Is it merely a misty vision rising up like an exhalation from the earth, or does a something more come down to it out of heaven, and strike into it substance and reality? This figure of human dreams has grown and grown in stature: does anything divine descend to it, and so much as touch its lips or its lifted hands? If so, it is but the work of a moment. The contact is complete. Life, and truth, and force, like an electric current, pass into the whole frame. It lives, it moves, it breathes: it has a body and a being: the divine and the eternal is indeed dwelling amongst us. And thus, though mature knowledge may seem, as it still widens, to deepen the night around us; though the universe yawn wider on all sides of us, in vaster depths, in more unfathomable, soulless gulfs; though the roar of the loom of time grow more audible and more deafening in our ears--yet through the night and through the darkness the divine light of our lives will only burn the clearer: and this speck of a world as it moves through the blank immensity will bear the light of all the worlds upon its bosom. Thinkers like Mr. Leslie Stephen say that such beliefs as these belong to dreamland; and they are welcome if they please to keep their names. Their terminology at least has this merit, that it recognises the dualism of the two orders of things it deals with. Let them keep their names if they will; and in their language the case amounts to this--that it is only for the sake of the dreams that visit it that the world of reality has any certain value for us. Will not the dreams continue, when the reality has passed away? G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS have in preparation a series of volumes, to be issued under the title of CURRENT DISCUSSION, A COLLECTION FROM THE CHIEF ENGLISH ESSAYS ON QUESTIONS OF THE TIME. The series will be edited by Edward L. 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Such papers naturally include three classes:--those which by their originality have recently led discussion into altogether new channels; those which have attracted deserved attention as powerful special pleas upon one side or the other in great current questions; and finally, purely critical and analytical dissertations. The series will aim to include the best representatives of each of these classes of expression. It is designed to arrange the essays included in the Series under such general divisions as the following, to each of which one or more volumes will be devoted:-- INTERNATIONAL POLITICS, NATURAL SCIENCE, RECENT ARCHÆOLOGICAL DISCOVERY, QUESTIONS OF BELIEF, ECONOMICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE, HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY, LITERARY TOPICS. Among the material selected for the first volume (International Politics), which will be issued immediately, are the following papers: Archibald Forbes's Essay on "The Russians, Turks, and Bulgarians;" Vsct. 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29904	----	THE HUMANISTS' LIBRARY Edited by Lewis Einstein I LEONARDO DA VINCI THOUGHTS ON ART AND LIFE THOUGHTS ON ART AND LIFE BY LEONARDO DA VINCI Translated by MAURICE BARING Boston The Merrymount Press 1906 Copyright, 1906, by D. B. Updike A TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ix I. Thoughts on Life 3 II. Thoughts on Art 59 III. Thoughts on Science 141 IV. Bibliographical Note 193 V. Table of References 194 {ix} INTRODUCTION * * * The long obscurity of the Dark Ages lifted over Italy, awakening to a national though a divided consciousness. Already two distinct tendencies were apparent. The practical and rational, on the one hand, was soon to be outwardly reflected in the burgher-life of Florence and the Lombard cities, while at Rome it had even then created the civil organization of the curia. The novella was its literary triumph. In art it expressed itself simply, directly and with vigour. Opposed to this was the other great undercurrent in Italian life, mystical, religious and speculative, which had run through the nation from the earliest times, and received fresh volume from mediaeval Christianity, encouraging ecstatic mysticism to drive to frenzy the population of its mountain cities. Umbrian painting is inspired by it, and the glowing words of Jacopone da Todi expressed in poetry the same religious fervour which the life of Florence and Perugia bore witness to in action. Italy developed out of the relation and conflict of these two forces the rational with the mystical. Their later union in the greater men was to {x} form the art temperament of the Renaissance. The practical side gave it the firm foundation of rationalism and reality on which it rested; the mystical guided its endeavour to picture the unreal in terms of ideal beauty. The first offspring of this union was Leonardo. Since the decay of ancient art no painter had been able to fully express the human form, for imperfect mastery of technique still proved the barrier. Leonardo was the first completely to disengage his personality from its constraint, and make line express thought as none before him could do. Nor was this his only triumph, but rather the foundation on which further achievement rested. Remarkable as a thinker alone, he preferred to enlist thought in the service of art, and make art the handmaid of beauty. Leonardo saw the world not as it is, but as he himself was. He viewed it through the atmosphere of beauty which filled his mind, and tinged its shadows with the mystery of his nature. To all this, his birthright as a painter, a different element was added. A keen desire for knowledge, guiding his action in life, spurred him onward. Conscious of this dominant impulse, he has fancifully described himself in a Platonic allegory. He had passed beneath overhanging cliffs on his way to a great cavern. On bended knees, peering through its darkness, fear and desire had overwhelmed him,--fear for the menacing darkness of the cavern; and desire {xi} to ascertain if there were wonders therein. From his earliest years, the elements of greatness were present in Leonardo. But the maturity of his genius came unaffected from without. He barely noticed the great forces of the age which in life he encountered. After the first promise of his boyhood in the Tuscan hills, his youth at Florence had been spent under Verrocchio as a master, in company with those whose names were later to brighten the pages of Italian art. He must then have heard Savonarola's impassioned sermons, yet, unlike Botticelli, remained dumb to his entreaties. He must have seen Lorenzo the Magnificent. But there was little opening in the Medicean circle for the young painter, who had first to gain fame abroad. The splendour of Milan under Il Moro, then the most brilliant court in Europe, attracted him. He went there, proclaiming his ability, in a remarkable letter, to accomplish much, but desiring chiefly to erect a great monument to the glory of the Sforza. He spent years at that court, taken up by his different ventures,--painting, sculpture, engineering, even arranging festivities--but his greater project was doomed to failure, enmeshed in the downfall of Ludovico. Even to this he remained impassive. "Visconti dragged to prison, his son dead, ... the duke has lost his state, his possessions, his liberty, and has finished nothing he undertook," was his only comment on his patron's end, written on the {xii} margin of a manuscript. After the overthrow of the Duke of Milan, began his Italian wanderings. At one time he contemplated entering the service of an Oriental prince. Instead, he entered that of Caesar Borgia, as military engineer, and the greatest painter of the age became inspector of a despot's strongholds. But his restless nature did not leave him long at this. Returning to Florence he competed with Michelangelo; yet the service of even his native city could not retain him. His fame had attracted the attention of a new patron of the arts, prince of the state which had conquered his first master. In this his last venture, he forsook Italy, only to die three years later at Amboise, in the castle of the French king. The inner nature of Leonardo remained as untouched by the men he encountered as by the events which were then stirring Europe. Alone, he influenced others, remaining the while a mystery to all. The most gifted of nations failed to understand the greatest of her sons. Isabella d'Este, the first lady of her time, seeking vainly to obtain some product of his brush, was told that his life was changeful and uncertain, that he lived for the day, intent only on his art. His own thoughts reveal him in another light. "I wish to work miracles," he wrote. And elsewhere he exclaimed, "Thou, O God, sellest us all benefits, at the cost of our toil.... As a day well spent makes sleep {xiii} seem pleasant, so a life well employed makes death pleasant. A life well spent is long." Leonardo's views of aesthetic are all important in his philosophy of life and art. The worker's thoughts on his craft are always of interest. They are doubly so when there is in them no trace of literary self-consciousness to blemish their expression. He recorded these thoughts at the instant of their birth, for a constant habit of observation and analysis had early developed with him into a second nature. His ideas were penned in the same fragmentary way as they presented themselves to his mind, perhaps with no intention of publishing them to the world. But his ideal of art depended intimately, none the less, on the system he had thrown out seemingly in so haphazard a manner. His method gives to his writings their only unity. It was more than a method: it was a permanent expression of his own life, which aided him to construct a philosophy of beauty characteristic of the new age. He had searched to find a scientific basis for art, and discovered it in the imitation of nature, based on rational experience. This idea was, in part, Aristotelian, imbibed with the spirit of the time; though in the ordinary acceptance of the word Leonardo was no scholar, least of all a humanist. His own innovation in aesthetic was in requiring a rational and critical experience as a necessary {xiv} foundation, the acquisition of which was to result from the permanent condition of the mind. He had trained his own faculties to critically observe all natural phenomena: first try by experience, and then demonstrate why such experiment is forced to operate in the way it does, was his advice. The eye, he gave as an instance, had been defined as one thing; by experience, he had found it to be another. But by imitation in art, Leonardo intended no slavish reproduction of nature. When he wrote that "the painter strives and competes with nature," he was on the track of a more Aristotelian idea. This he barely developed, using nature only partly in the Stagirite's sense, of inner force outwardly exemplified. The idea of imitation, in fad, as it presented itself to his mind, was two-fold. It was not merely the external reproduction of the image, which was easy enough to secure. The real difficulty of the artist lay in reflecting inner character and personality. It was Leonardo's firm conviction that each thought had some outward expression by which the trained observer was able to recognize it. Every man, he wrote, has as many movements of the body as of varieties of ideas. Thought, moreover, expressed itself outwardly in proportion to its power over the individual and his time of life. By thus employing bodily gesture to represent feeling and idea, the painter could affect the spectator whom he {xv} placed in the presence of visible emotion. He maintained that art was of slight use unless able to show what its subject had in mind. Painting should aim, therefore, to reproduce the inner mental state by the attitude assumed. This was, in other words, a natural symbolism, in which the symbol was no mere convention, but the actual outward projection of the inner condition of the mind. Art here offered an equation of inward purpose and outward expression, neither complete without the other. Further than this, influenced by Platonic thought, Leonardo's conception of painting was, as an intellectual state or condition, outwardly projected. The painter who practised his art without reasoning of its nature was like a mirror unconsciously reflecting what was before it. Although without a "manual act" painting could not be realized, its true problems--problems of light, of colour, pose and composition, of primitive and derivative shadow--had all to be grasped by the mind without bodily labour. Beyond this, the scientific foundation in art came through making it rest upon an accurate knowledge of nature. Even experience was only a step towards attaining this. "There is nothing in all nature without its reason," he wrote. "If you know the reason, you do not need the experience." In the history of art, as well, he urged that nature had been the test of its excellence. A {xvi} natural phenomenon had brought art into existence. The first picture in the world, he remarked in a happy epigram, had been "a line surrounding the shadow of a man, cast by the sun on the wall." He traced the history of painting in Italy during its stagnation after the decay of ancient art, when each painter copied only his predecessor, which lasted until Giotto, born among barren mountains, drew the movements of the goats he tended, and thus advanced farther than all the earlier masters. But his successors only copied him, and painting sank again until Masaccio once more took nature as his guide. A quite different and combative side to Leonardo's aesthetic, which forced him to state the broad principles of art, appears in his attacks on poetry and music as inferior to painting. In that age of humanistic triumph, literature had lorded it over the other arts in a manner not free from arrogance. There was still another cause for his onslaught on poetry. Leonardo resented the fact that painters, who were rarely men of education, had not defended themselves against the slurs cast on their art. His counter attack may have been intended to hide his own small scholarship. It served another end as well. His conception of the universal principles of beauty was made clear by this defence. His first principle stated broadly that the most useful art was the one which could most easily be communicated. {xvii} Painting was communicable to all since its appeal was made to the eye. While the painter proceeded at once to the imitation of nature, the poet's instruments were words which varied in every land. He took the Platonic view of poetry as a lying imitation, removed from truth. He called the poet a collector of other men's wares, who decked himself in their plumage. Where poetry presented only a shadow to the imagination, painting offered a real image to the eye; and the eye, as the window of the soul through which all earthly beauty was revealed, the sight, he exclaimed, which had discovered navigation, which had impelled men to seek the West, was the noblest of all the senses. Painting spoke only by what it accomplished, poetry ended in the very words with which it sang its own praises. If, then, poets called painting dumb poetry, he could retort by dubbing poetry blind painting. In common with his successors, Leonardo could not escape from this fallacy, which, in overlooking all save descriptive verse, was destined to burden aesthetic until demolished by Lessing. It was the opinion of Leonardo that the temporary nature of music caused its inferiority to painting. Although durability was in itself no absolute test,--else the work of coppersmiths would be the highest art,--yet in any final scale, permanence could not altogether be disregarded. Music perished in the very act of its creation, {xviii} while painting preserved the beautiful from the hand of time. "Helen of Troy, gazing in a mirror, in her old age, wondered how she had twice been ravished." Mortal beauty would thus vanish, if it were not rescued by art from destroying age and death. Leonardo contrasted painting with sculpture, for he had practised both, and thought himself peculiarly qualified to judge their merit. He considered the former the nobler art of the two, for sculpture involved bodily toil and fatigue, while by its very nature it lacked perspective and atmosphere, colour, and the feeling of space. Painting, on the other hand, caused by an illusion, was in itself the result of deeper thought. An even broader test served to convince him of its final superiority. That art was of highest excellence, he wrote, which possessed most elements of variety and universality. Painting contained and reproduced all forms of nature; it made its appeal by the harmonious balance of parts which gratified all the senses. By its very duality it fulfilled the highest purpose. The painter was able to visualize the beauty which enchanted him, to bring to reality the fancy of his dreams, and give outward expression to the ideal within. The genius of Leonardo as a painter came through unfolding the mystery of life. Like Miranda, he had gazed with wonder at the beauty of the world. "Look at the grace and sweetness {xix} of men and women in the street," he wrote. The most ordinary functions of life and nature amazed him most. He observed of the eye how in it form and colour, and the entire universe it reflected, were reduced to a single point. "Wonderful law of nature, which forced all effects to participate with their cause in the mind of man. These are the true miracles!" Elsewhere he wrote again: "Nature is full of infinite reasons which have not yet passed into experience." He conceived it to be the painter's duty not only to comment on natural phenomena as restrained by law, but to merge his very mind into that of nature by interpreting its relation with art. Resting securely on the reality of experienced truth, he felt the deeper presence of the unreal on every side. In the same way that he visualized the inner workings of the mind, his keen imagination aided him to make outward trifles serve his desire to find mysterious beauty everywhere. Oftentimes, in gazing on some ancient, time-stained wall, he describes how he would trace thereon landscapes, with mountains, rivers and valleys. The whole world was full of a mystery to him, which his work reflected. The smile of consciousness, pregnant of that which is beyond, illumines the expression of Mona Lisa. So, too, in the strange glance of Ann, of John the Baptist, and of the Virgin of the Rocks, one realizes that their thoughts dwell in another world. {xx} Leonardo had found a refuge in art from the pettiness of material environment. Like his own creations, he, too, had learned the secret of the inner life. The painter, he wrote, could create a world of his own, and take refuge in this new realm. But it must not be one of shadows only. The very mystery he felt so keenly had yet to rest on a real foundation; to treat it otherwise would be to plunge into mere vapouring. Although attempting to bridge the gulf which separated the real from the unreal, he refused to treat the latter supernaturally. That mystery which lesser minds found in the occult, he saw in nature all about him. He denied the existence of spirits, just as he urged the foolishness of the will-o'-the-wisps of former ages,--alchemy and the black art. In one sentence he destroyed the pretensions of palmistry. "You will see," he wrote, "great armies slaughtered in an hour's time, where in each individual the signs of the hands are different." His art took, thus, its guidance in realism, its purpose in spirituality. The search for truth and the desire for beauty were the twin ideals he strove to attain. The keenness of this pursuit saved him from the blemish of egoism which aloofness from his surroundings would otherwise have forced upon him. For his character presented the anomaly, peculiar to the Renaissance, of a lofty idealism coupled in action with {xxi} irresponsibility of duty. He stood on a higher plane, his attitude toward life recognizing no claims on the part of his fellowmen. In his desire to surpass himself, fostered by this isolation of spirit and spurred on by the eager wish to attain universal knowledge, he has been compared to Faust; but the likeness is only half correct. He was not blind to the limitations which encompassed him, his very genius making him realize their bounds. Of the ancients he said that in attempting to define the nature of the soul, they sought the impossible. He wrote elsewhere, "It is the infinite alone that cannot be attained, for if it could it would become finite." In Leonardo's personality was reflected both the strength and weakness of Renaissance Italy. So, to know him, it is necessary to understand the Italy of that age. Its brilliancy, its universality, its desire for beauty, are but one side of the medal. On its reverse, Italy lacked the solid vigour of a national purpose. The discord of political disunion, reacting on art, laid bare great weakness in the want of any constructive direction, toward which the strength of the Renaissance could aim. The energy was there, whether finding an outlet in statecraft or in discovery, in art or in letters. But it laboured for no common end; there was internal unity of force and method, but external divergence of purpose. The tyranny of petty despots could provide no adequate ideal toward {xxii} which to aim. No ruler, and no city save Venice, could long symbolize the nation's patriotism. Venetian painters alone glorified the state in their work, and thus felt the living force of a national ambition which raised them above themselves. But elsewhere there was little to inspire that devotion for a common country necessary as a background to sustain the greatest work. Hence Italian art, so living within certain limits, remained stunted beyond these. The conviction that art existed in order to express ideal beauty, that its main purpose was to please the eye and the senses in spite of the result attained, proved inadequate compensation for all that had been withdrawn. The art ideal tended more and more to become a conscience and a purpose in itself, an inward impulse for action and an outward goal. The artist's real greatness will depend at all times on his qualities as a representative. His true merit will arise from giving expression in ideal terms to his nation and to his age. In so far as he has been able to do this and the spirit of his country is reflected in his work, in so far as he has represented what is best therein and most enduring, he will have achieved greatness. Not that this is always, or even often, a conscious expression. It is unfair reading to search for deep thought in the work of either painter or poet. Neither art {xxiii} offers the best medium to convey the abstractions of the mind, since each has its own method of expression, independent of pure reason. But painter and poet, in the degree they attain greatness, express more than themselves. Ariosto, intent only to amuse, reflects with playful wit and skepticism the splendid luxury and joy of living in Renaissance court life. The care with which he chiselled each line proves that his real seriousness and conscience lay in his artistic purpose. Without Ariosto's wit, Paolo Veronese depicted a similar side in painting, though his Venetian birthright made him celebrate the glory of the Republic. Poet and painter alike expressed far more than either could know. If such a test be applied to the artists of the Renaissance, each in turn will respond to it,--just as the weakness of the later Bolognese as a school is that, beyond a certain technical merit, they meant and represented so little. But the noblest painters,--Michelangelo and Raphael, Titian and Leonardo,--in addition to possessing the solid grasp of technical mastery, reflected some aspect of their nation's life and civilization. In Michelangelo was realized the grandeur of Italy struggling vainly against crushing oppression. He expressed that which was highest in it, reflecting the loftiest side of its idealism mingled with deep pessimism in his survey over life; for, wrapped in austerity, he saw mankind in heroic terms of sadness. Raphael, on the {xxiv} other hand, found only beautiful sweetness everywhere. The tragedies of life failed to touch the young painter, who blotted from view all struggle and sorrow, and, in spite of the misery which had befallen his nation, could still rejoice in the sensuous beauty of the world. There was another side to the Renaissance, dependent neither on beauty nor heroic grandeur, yet sharing in both through qualities of its own. Titian, who painted the living man of action, the man of parts, susceptible alike to the appreciation of ideal beauty and heroic impulse, but guided withal by expediency, reflected this more practical aspect of life. In his portraiture he expressed the statecraft for which Italians found opportunity beyond the Alps, since in Italy it was denied them; and Titian found even Venice too narrow for the scope of his art. But before Titian, before Raphael, before Michelangelo, Leonardo reflected the rationalism and the mystery, the subtlety and the philosophical speculation, of the age. To find in his work only the individual thought of genius would be to mistake, perhaps, its most important side; for the expression of his mind, both by its brilliancy and its limitations, is typical of the spirit of his time. The Italian Renaissance was reflected in him as rarely a period has been expressed in the life-work of a single man. He represented its union of practice and theory, of thought placed in the {xxv} service of action. He summed up its different aspects in his own individuality. Intellectually, he represented its many-sidedness attained through penetration of thought, and a keenness of observation, profiting from experience, extended into every sphere. As an artist he possessed a vigour of imagination from which sprang his power of creating beauty. But, in spite of his practical nature, he remained a dreamer in an age which had in it more of stern reality than of golden dreams. His very limitations, his excess of individualism, his want of long-continued concentration, his lack of patriotism, his feeling of the superiority of art to nationality, are all characteristic of Renaissance Italy. The union in Leonardo of reality to mystery has often been shared by genius in other fields. His own peculiar greatness sprang from expressing in art the apparent contradiction of attaining the world of mystery through force of reality. Like Hamlet, it was the union of the real with the unreal which appealed to him, of the world as he saw it and the world as he imagined it to be. It was but another expression of the eternal ideal of truth and beauty. L. E. American Embassy London, 1906 {3} I THOUGHTS ON LIFE * * * [Sidenote: Of the Works of Leonardo] Begun at Florence in the house of Piero di Braccio Martelli, on the 22d day of March, 1508; and this is to be a collection without order, taken from many papers which I have copied here, hoping to arrange them later, each in its place, according to the various subjects treated. And I think that before I shall have finished this work, it will be necessary for me to repeat the same thing many times over; so, O reader, blame me not, because the subjects are many, and memory cannot retain them and say: This I will not write because I have already written it; and if I did not wish to fall into this error it would be necessary, every time that I wished to copy something, in order not to repeat myself, to read over all the preceding matter, all the more so since the intervals are long between one time of writing and another. [Sidenote: His Thirst after Knowledge] 2. Not louder does the tempestuous sea bellow when the north wind strikes its foaming waves between Scylla and Charybdis; nor Stromboli nor Mount Etna when the sulphurous flames, {4} shattering and bursting open the great mountain with violence, hurl stones and earth through the air with the flame it vomits; nor when the fiery caverns of Mount Etna, spitting forth the element which it cannot restrain, hurl it back to the place whence it issued, driving furiously before it any obstacle in the way of its vehement fury ... so I, urged by my great desire and longing to see the blending of strange and various shapes made by creating nature, wandered for some time among the dark rocks, and came to the entrance of a great cave, in front of which I long stood in astonishment and ignorance of such a thing. I bent my back into an arch and rested my left hand on my knee, and with my right hand shaded my downcast eyes and contracted eyebrows. I bent down first on one side and then on the other to see whether I could perceive anything, but the thick darkness rendered this impossible; and after having remained there some time, two things arose within me, fear and desire,--fear of the dark and threatening cave, desire to see whether there were anything marvellous within. 3. I discover for man the origin of the first and perhaps of the second cause of his being. [Sidenote: Leonardo's Studies] 4. Recognizing as I do that I cannot make use of {5} subject matter which is useful and delightful, since my predecessors have exhausted the useful and necessary themes, I shall do as the man who by reason of his poverty arrives last at the fair, and cannot do otherwise than purchase what has already been seen by others and not accepted, but rejected by them as being of little value. I shall place this despised and rejected merchandise, which remains over after many have bought, on my poor pack, and I shall go and distribute it, not in the big cities, but in the poor towns, and take such reward as my goods deserve. [Sidenote: Vain Knowledge] 5. All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life, with the exception of the written word: which is its mechanical part. 6. Avoid studies the result of which will die together with him who studied. [Sidenote: Value of Knowledge] 7. The intellect will always profit by the acquisition of any knowledge whatsoever, for thus what is useless will be expelled from it, and what is fruitful will remain. It is impossible either to hate or to love a thing without first acquiring knowledge of it. {6} 8. Men of worth naturally desire knowledge. 9. It is ordained that to the ambitious, who derive no satisfaction from the gifts of life and the beauty of the world, life shall be a cause of suffering, and they shall possess neither the profit nor the beauty of the world. [Sidenote: On his Contemners] 10. I know that many will say that this work is useless, and these are they of whom Demetrius said recked no more of the breath which made the words proceed from their mouth, than of the wind which proceeded from their body,--men who seek solely after riches and bodily satisfaction, men entirely denuded of that wisdom which is the food and verily the wealth of the soul; because insomuch as the soul is of greater value than the body, so much greater are the riches of the soul than those of the body. And often when I see one of these take this work in his hand, I wonder whether, like a monkey, he will not smell it and ask me if it is something to eat. [Sidenote: On the Vulgar] 11. Demetrius used to say that there was no difference between the words and the voice of the {7} unskilled ignorant and the sounds and noises of a stomach full of superfluous wind. And it was not without reason that he said this, for he considered it to be indifferent whence the utterance of such men proceeded, whether from their mouth or their body; both being of the same substance and value. 12. I do not consider that men of coarse and boorish habits and of slender parts deserve so fine an instrument nor such a complicated mechanism as men of contemplation and high culture. They merely need a sack in which their food may be held and whence it may issue, since verily they cannot be considered otherwise than as vehicles for food, for they seem to me to have nothing in common with the human race save the shape and the voice; as far as the rest is concerned they are lower than the beasts. 13. Knowledge of the past and of the places of the earth is the ornament and food of the mind of man. [Sidenote: Knowledge the supreme Good] 14. Cornelius Celsus: Knowledge is the supreme good, the supreme evil is physical pain. We are composed of two separate parts, the soul and the the body; the soul is the greater of these two, the body the lesser. Knowledge appertains to the {8} greater part, the supreme evil belongs to the lesser and baser part. Knowledge is an excellent thing for the mind, and pain is the most grievous thing for the body. Just as the supreme evil is physical pain, so is wisdom the supreme good of the soul, that is to say of the wise man, and no other thing can be compared with it. [Sidenote: Life and Wisdom] 15. In the days of thy youth seek to obtain that which shall compensate the losses of thy old age. And if thou understandest that old age is fed with wisdom, so conduct thyself in the days of thy youth that sustenance may not be lacking to thy old age. [Sidenote: Praise of Knowledge] 16. The fame of the rich man dies with him; the fame of the treasure, and not of the man who possessed it, remains. Far greater is the glory of the virtue of mortals than that of their riches. How many emperors and how many princes have lived and died and no record of them remains, and they only sought to gain dominions and riches in order that their fame might be ever-lasting. How many were those who lived in scarcity of worldly goods in order to grow rich in virtue; and as far as virtue exceeds wealth, even in the same degree the desire of the poor man proved more fruitful than that of the rich man. {9} Dost thou not see that wealth in itself confers no honour on him who amasses it, which shall last when he is dead, as does knowledge?--knowledge which shall always bear witness like a clarion to its creator, since knowledge is the daughter of its creator, and not the stepdaughter, like wealth. [Sidenote: The World] 17. Bountiful nature has provided that in all parts of the world you will find something to imitate. 18. [Sidenote: The Beauty of Life] Consider in the streets at nightfall the faces of men and women when it is bad weather, what grace and sweetness they manifest! 19. Just as iron which is not used grows rusty, and water putrefies and freezes in the cold, so the mind of which no use is made is spoilt. [Sidenote: Fruitless Study] 20. Just as food eaten without appetite is a tedious nourishment, so does study without zeal damage the memory by not assimilating what it absorbs. 21. Truth was the only daughter of time. {10} [Sidenote: In Praise of Truth] 22. So vile a thing is a lie that even if it spoke fairly of God it would take away somewhat from His divinity; and so excellent a thing is truth that if it praises the humblest things they are exalted. There is no doubt that truth is to falsehood as light is to darkness; and so excellent a thing is truth that even when it touches humble and lowly matters, it still incomparably exceeds the uncertainty and falsehood in which great and elevated discourses are clothed; because even if falsehood be the fifth element of our minds, notwithstanding this, truth is the supreme nourishment of the higher intellects, though not of disorderly minds. But thou who feedest on dreams dost prefer the sophistry and subterfuges in matters of importance and uncertainty to what is certain and natural, though of lesser magnitude. 23. Obstacles in the way of truth are finally punished. [Sidenote: Versus Humanists] 24. I am well aware that not being a literary man the presumptuous will think that they have the right to blame me on the ground that I am not a man of letters. Vainglorious people! Know they not that I could make answer as Marius did to the Roman people, and say: They who make a {11} display with the labours of others will not allow me mine? They will say that being unskilled in letters I cannot find true expression for the matters of which I desire to treat; they do not know that in my subjects experience is a truer guide than the words of others, for experience was the teacher of all great writers, and therefore I take her for guide, and I will cite her in all cases. 25. Although I may not be able to quote other authors, as they do, I can quote from a greater and more worthy source, namely, experience,--the teacher of their masters. They go about swelled with pride and pomposity, dressed up and bedight, not with their own labour, but with that of others; and they will not concede me mine. And if they despise me, who am a creator, far more are they, who do not create but trumpet abroad and exploit the works of other men, to be blamed. [Sidenote: Authority] 26. He who in reasoning cites authority is making use of his memory rather than of his intellect. [Sidenote: On Commentators] 27. Men who are creators and interpreters of nature to man, in comparison with boasters and exploiters of the works of others, must be judged {12} and esteemed like the object before the mirror as compared with its image reflected in the mirror.--one being something in itself, and the other nothing. Little to nature do they owe, since it is merely by chance they wear the human form, and but for it I might include them with herds of cattle. 28. A well lettered man is so because he is well natured, and just as the cause is more admirable than the effect, so is a good disposition, unlettered, more praiseworthy than a well lettered man who is without natural disposition. 29. Against certain commentators who disparage the inventors of antiquity, the originators of science and grammar, and who attack the creators of antiquity; and because they through laziness and the convenience of books have not been able to create, they attack their masters with false reasoning. 30. It is better to imitate ancient than modern work. [Sidenote: Experience] 31. Wisdom is the daughter of experience. [Sidenote: Experience never Errs] 32. Wrongly men complain of experience, which {13} with great railing they accuse of falsehood. Leave experience alone, and turn your lamentation to your ignorance, which leads you, with your vain and foolish desires, to promise yourselves those things which are not in her power to confer, and to accuse her of falsehood. Wrongly men complain of innocent experience, when they accuse her not seldom of false and lying demonstrations. 33. Experience never errs; it is only your judgements that err, ye who look to her for effects which our experiments cannot produce. Because given a principle, that which ensues from it is necessarily the true consequence of that principle, unless it be impeded. Should there, however, be any obstacle, the effect which should ensue from the aforesaid principle will participate in the impediment as much or as little as the impediment is operative in regard to the aforesaid principle. 34. Experience, the interpreter between creative nature and the human race, teaches the action of nature among mortals: how under the constraint of necessity she cannot act otherwise than as reason, who steers her helm, teaches her to act. 35. All our knowledge is the offspring of our perceptions. {14} [Sidenote: Origin of Knowledge] 36. The sense ministers to the soul, and not the soul sense; and where the sense which ministers ceases to serve the soul, all the functions of that sense are lacking in life, as is evident in those who are born dumb and blind. [Sidenote: Testimony of the Senses] 37. And if thou sayest that sight impedes the security and subtlety of mental meditation, by reason of which we penetrate into divine knowledge, and that this impediment drove a philosopher to deprive himself of his sight, I answer that the eye, as lord of the senses, performs its duty in being an impediment to the confusion and lies of that which is not science but discourse, by which with much noise and gesticulation argument is constantly conducted; and hearing should do the same, feeling, as it does, the offence more keenly, because it seeks after harmony which devolves on all the senses. And if this philosopher deprived himself of his sight to get rid of the obstacle to his discourses, consider that his discourses and his brain were a party to the act, because the whole was madness. Now could he not have closed his eyes when this frenzy came upon him, and have kept them closed until the frenzy consumed itself? But the man was mad, the discourse insane, and egregious the folly of destroying his eye-sight. {15} [Sidenote: Judgement prone to Error] 38. There is nothing which deceives us as much as our own judgement. 39. The greatest deception which men incur proceeds from their opinions. 40. Avoid the precepts of those thinkers whose reasoning is not confirmed by experience. [Sidenote: Intelligence of Animals] 41. Man discourseth greatly, and his discourse is for the greater part empty and false; the discourse of animals is small, but useful and true: slender certainty is better than portentous falsehood. 42. What is an element? It is not in man's power to define the quiddity of the elements, but a great many of their effects are known. 43. That which is divisible in fact is divisible in potentiality also; but not all quantities which are divisible in potentiality are divisible in fact. [Sidenote: Infinity incomprehensible] 44. What is that thing which is not defined and would {16} not exist if it were defined? It is infinity, which if it could be defined would be limited and finite, because that which can be defined ends with the limits of its circumference, and that which cannot be defined has no limits. 45. O contemplators of things, do not pride yourselves for knowing those things which nature by herself and her ordination naturally conduces; but rejoice in knowing the purposes of those things which are determined by your mind. [Sidenote: Insoluble Questions] 46. Consider, O reader, how far we can lend credence to the ancients who strove to define the soul and life,--things which cannot be proved; while those things which can be clearly known and proved by experience remained during so many centuries ignored and misrepresented! The eye, which so clearly demonstrates its functions, has been up to my time defined in one manner by countless authorities; I by experience have discovered another definition. [Sidenote: Beauty of Nature's Inventions] 47. Although human ingenuity may devise various inventions which, by the help of various instruments, answer to one and the same purpose, yet {17} will it never discover any inventions more beautiful, more simple or more practical than those of nature, because in her inventions there is nothing lacking and nothing superfluous; and she makes use of no counterpoise when she constructs the limbs of animals in such a way as to correspond to the motion of their bodies, but she puts into them the soul of the body. This is not the proper place for this discourse, which belongs rather to the subject of the composition of animated bodies; and the rest of the definition of the soul I leave to the minds of the friars, the fathers of the people, who know all secrets by inspiration. I leave the sacred books alone, because they are the supreme truth. [Sidenote: Completeness in Knowledge] 48. Those who seek to abbreviate studies do injury to knowledge and to love because the love of anything is the daughter of this knowledge. The fervency of the love increases in proportion to the certainty of the knowledge, and the certainty issues from a complete knowledge of all the parts, which united compose the totality of the thing which ought to be loved. Of what value, then, is he who abbreviates the details of those matters of which he professes to render a complete account, while he leaves behind the chief part of the things of which the whole is composed? It is true that impatience, the mother of {18} stupidity, praises brevity, as if such persons had not life long enough to enable them to acquire a complete knowledge of one subject such as the human body! And then they seek to comprehend the mind of God, in which the universe is included, weighing it and splitting it into infinite particles, as if they had to dissect it! O human folly! dost thou not perceive that thou hast been with thyself all thy life, and thou art not yet aware of the thing which more fully than any other thing thou dost possess, namely, thy own folly? And thou desirest with the multitude of sophists to deceive thyself and others, despising the mathematical sciences in which truth dwells and the knowledge of the things which they contain; and then thou dost busy thyself with miracles, and writest that thou hast attained to the knowledge of those things which the human mind cannot comprehend, which cannot be proved by any instance in nature, and thou deemest that thou hast wrought a miracle in spoiling the work of some speculative mind; and thou perceivest not that thy error is the same as that of a man who strips a plant of the ornament of its branches covered with leaves, mingled with fragrant flowers and fruits. Just as Justinius did when he abridged the stories written by Trogus Pompeius, who had written elaborately the noble deeds of his forefathers, which were full of wonderful beauties of style; and thus {19} he composed a barren work, worthy only of the impatient spirits who deem that they are wasting the time which they might usefully employ in studying the works of nature and mortal affairs. But let such men remain in company with the beasts; let dogs and other animals full of rapine be their courtiers, and let them be accompanied with these running ever at their heels! and let the harmless animals follow, which in the season of the snows come to the houses begging alms as from their master. [Sidenote: Nature] 49. Nature is full of infinite causes which are beyond the pale of experience. 50. Nature in creating first gives size to the abode of the intellect (the skull, the head), and then to the abode of the vital spirit (the chest). [Sidenote: Law of Necessity] 51. Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature. Necessity is the theme and inventress of nature, her curb and her eternal law. 52. When anything is the cause of any other thing, and brings about by its movement any effect, {20} the movement of the effect necessarily follows the movement of the cause. [Sidenote: Of Lightning in the Clouds] 53. O mighty and once living instrument of creative nature, unable to avail thyself of thy great strength thou must needs abandon a life of tranquillity and obey the law which God and time gave to Nature the mother. Ah! how often the frighted shoals of dolphins and great tunny fish were seen fleeing before thy inhuman wrath; whilst thou, fulminating with swift beating of wings and twisted tail, raised in the sea a sudden storm with buffeting and sinking of ships and tossing of waves, filling the naked shores with terrified and distracted fishes. [Sidenote: The Human Eye] 54. Since the eye is the window of the soul, the soul is always fearful of losing it, so much so that if a man is suddenly frightened by the motion or an object before him, he does not with his hands protect his heart, the source of all life; nor his head, where dwells the lord of the senses; nor the organs of hearing, smell and taste. But as soon as he feels fright it does not suffice him to close the lids of his eyes, keeping them shut with all his might, but he instantly turns in the opposite direction; and still not feeling secure he covers his eyes with one hand, stretching out the {21} other to ward off the danger in the direction in which he suspects it to lie. Nature again has ordained that the eye of man shall close of itself, so that remaining during his sleep without protection it shall suffer no hurt. [Sidenote: Universal Law] 55. Every object naturally seeks to maintain itself in itself. 56. The part always tends to reunite with its whole in order to escape from its imperfection; the soul desires to remain with its body, because without the organic instruments of that body it can neither act nor feel. 57. The lover is moved by the object he loves as the senses are by sensible things; and they unite and become one and the same. The work is the first thing which is born of this union; if the thing loved is base, the lover becomes base. When what is united is in harmony with that which receives it, delight, pleasure and satisfaction ensue. When the lover is united to the beloved he rests there; when the burden is laid down it finds rest there. 58. A natural action is accomplished in the briefest manner. {22} [Sidenote: Nature Variable and Infinite.] 59. To such an extent does nature delight and abound in variety that among her trees there is not one plant to be found which is exactly like another; and not only among the plants, but among the boughs, the leaves and the fruits, you will not find one which is exactly similar to another. 60. If nature had made one rule for the quality of limbs, the faces of men would resemble each other to such a degree that it would not be possible to distinguish one from the other; but she has varied the five features of the face in such a way that, although she has made an almost universal rule with regard to their size, she has not done so with regard to their quality, so that each one can be clearly distinguished from the other. 61. It is an easy matter for him who knows man to arrive at universal knowledge, since all terrestrial animals are similar in regard to their structure, that is to say, in regard to the muscles and bones, and they do not vary save in height and thickness; then there are the aquatic animals, and I will not persuade the painter that any rule can be made with regard to these because they are of infinite variety--so are the insects. {23} 62. The body of anything which is fed is continually dying and being reborn, since nourishment cannot enter save where the past nourishment is exhausted; and if it is exhausted, it no longer has life, and if you do not furnish it with nourishment equal to that which has been before, you will impair the health of the organism, and if you deprive it of this nourishment, life will be altogether destroyed. But if you supply it with so much as can be consumed in a day, then as much life will be restored as was consumed, like the light of the candle which is furnished to it by the fuel provided by the moisture of the candle, and this light with most speedy succour restores beneath what is consumed above as it dies in dusky smoke; and this death is continuous, likewise the continuity of the smoke is equal to the continuity of the fuel; and in the same moment the light dies and is born again together with the movement of its fuel. 63. Man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food, tombs of animals, hostels of Death, coverings that consume, deriving life by the death of others. [Sidenote: Light] 64. Look on light and consider its beauty. Shut your {24} eyes, and look again: that which you see was not there before, and that which was, no longer is. Who is he who remakes it if the producer is continually dying? 65. Anaxagoras: Everything proceeds from everything, and everything becomes everything, because that which exists in the elements is composed of those elements. [Sidenote: Nature] 66. Nature appears to have been the cruel stepmother rather than the mother of many animals, and in some cases not the stepmother, but the pitying mother. 67. Why did nature not ordain that one animal should not live by the death of the other? Nature, being inconstant and taking pleasure in continually creating and making lives and forms, because she knows that her earthly materials are thereby augmented, is more willing and swift to create than time is to destroy; and so she has ordained that many animals shall feed on each other. And as even thus her desire is not satisfied, she frequently sends forth certain poisonous and pestilential vapours upon the increasing multitude and congregation of animals, and especially upon men who increase to a great extent, because other animals do not feed on them; and since there is no cause, {25} there would follow no effect. This earth, therefore, seeks to lose its [animal] life, desiring only continual reproduction, and as, by the logical demonstration you adduce, effects often resemble their causes, animals are the image of the life of the world. [Sidenote: Life's Philosophy] 68. Now you see that the hope and the desire of returning home to one's former state is like the desire of the moth for the light, and the man who, with constant yearning and joyful expectancy, awaits the new spring and the new summer, and every new month and the new year, and thinks that what he longs for is ever too late in coming, and does not perceive that he is longing for his own destruction. But this desire is the quintessence, the spirit, of the elements, which, finding itself captive in the soul of the human body, desires always to return to its giver. And I would have you know that this same desire is the quintessence which is inseparable from nature, and that man is the model of the world. And such is the supreme folly of man that he labours so as to labour no more, and life flies from him while he forever hopes to enjoy the goods which he has acquired at the price of great labour. [Sidenote: The Senses and the Soul] 69. The soul seems to dwell in the intellect, and the intellect appears to dwell in that part where all {26} the senses meet which is called the brain, and the brain does not pervade the whole body, as many have thought; on the contrary, it dwells entirely in one part, because if it were all in all and the same in every part, it would not have been necessary for the instruments of the senses to combine among themselves in one single spot; but rather, it would have been sufficient for the eye to fulfil the function of its sensation on the surface without transmitting, by means of the optic nerves, the likeness of its vision to the brain, so that the soul, for the reason given above, might perceive it in the surface of the eye. Likewise, with regard to the sense of hearing, it would have been sufficient if the voice had sounded only in the porous cavity of the indurated bone which lies within the ear, without making any further transit from this bone to the brain, which is its destination and where it discourses with common judgement. The sense of smell, too, is likewise compelled by necessity to proceed to the intellect; the sense of touch passes through the nerves and is conveyed to the brain, and these nerves diverge with infinite ramification in the skin, which encloses the limbs of the body and the entrails. The nerves convey volition and sensation to the muscles, and these nerves and the tendons which lie between the muscles and the sinews give movement to them; the muscles and sinews obey, and this obedience takes effect by the decrease {27} of their thickness, for in swelling their length is reduced, and the tendons which are interwoven among the particles of the limbs shrink, and as they extend to the tips of the fingers they transmit to the brain the cause of the sense of touch which they feel. The tendons with their muscles obey the nerves as soldiers obey their officers, and the nerves obey the brain as the officers obey their captain; thus the joint of the bones obeys the tendon, and the tendons obey the muscles, and the muscles obey the nerves, and the nerves obey the brain, and the brain is the dwelling of the soul, and the memory is its ammunition and the perception is its refundary. [Sidenote: Of Sensation] 70. The brain is that which perceives what is transmitted to it by the other senses. The brain moves by means of that which is transmitted to it by the five senses. Motion is transmitted to the senses by objects, and these objects, transmitting their images to the five senses, are transferred by them to the perception, and by the perception to the brain; and there they are comprehended and committed to the memory, in which, according to their intensity, they are more or less firmly retained. The thinkers of ancient times concluded that the part of man which constitutes his intellect is caused by an instrument to which the other five {28} senses refer everything by means of the perception, and this instrument they have named the "common sense" or brain, and they say that this sense is situated in the centre of the head. And they have given it this name "common sense" solely because it is the common judge of the five other senses, that is to say, sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. The "common sense" is stirred by means of the perception which is placed between it and the senses. The perception is stirred by means of the images of things conveyed to it by the external instruments to the senses, and these are placed in the centre between the external things and the perception, and the senses likewise are stirred by objects. Surrounding objects transmit their images to the senses, and the senses transfer them to the perception, and the perception transfers them to the "common sense" (brain), and by it they are stamped upon the memory, and are there retained in a greater or lesser degree according to the importance and intensity of the impression. The sense which is most closely connected with the perception is the most rapid in action, and this sense is the eye, the highest and chief of the others; of this sense alone we will treat, and we will leave the others in order not to unduly lengthen our matter. [Sidenote: Automatic Movements] 71. Nature has ordained for man the ministering {29} muscles which exercise the sinews, and by means of which the limbs can be moved according to the will and desire of the brain, like to officers distributed by a ruler over many provinces and towns, who represent their ruler in these places, and obey his will. And this officer, who will in a single instance have most faithfully obeyed the orders he received from his master by word of mouth, will afterwards, in a similar way, of his own accord fulfil the wishes of his master. An example of this can be frequently seen in the fingers, which learn to perform on an instrument the things which the intellect commands, and the lesson once learnt they will perform it without the aid of the intellect. And do not the muscles which cause the legs to move perform their duty without man being conscious of it? 72. You will see palsied and shivering persons move, and their trembling limbs, such as their head and hands, quiver, without the permission of the soul, and the soul, though it expend all its might, cannot prevent these limbs from trembling. The same thing occurs in epilepsy or when limbs are partially truncated, as in the case of tails of lizards. [Sidenote: Intellect] 73. It happens that our intellect is that which prompts the hand to create the features of figures in {30} divine aspects until it finds satisfaction; and since the intellect is one of the tones of our soul, by means of the soul it composes the form of the body where it dwells, according to its volition. And when it has to reproduce a human body, it takes pleasure in repeating the body which it originally created; whence it follows that they who fall in love are prone to become enamoured of what resembles them. [Sidenote: Of the Senses] 74. There are the four powers: memory, intellect, sensuality and lust. The first two are intellectual, the others sensual. Of the five senses, sight, hearing, smell are with difficulty prevented; touch and taste not at all. Taste follows smell in the case of dogs and other greedy animals. 75. Why does the eye perceive things more clearly in dreams than with the imagination when one is awake? [Sidenote: Time] 76. Although time is included among continuous quantities, being indivisible and immaterial it does not altogether fall into the scope of geometry,--by which it is divided into figures and bodies of infinite variety, which are seen to be continuous inasmuch as they are visible and material,--but it agrees only with its first principles, {31} i.e. with the point and the line; the point in time may be compared to an instant, and the line to the length of a certain quantity of time. Just as the point is the beginning and end of a line, so is an instant the beginning and end of any given space of time; and just as a line is infinitely divisible, so can a given space of time be likewise divided, and as the divisions of the line are in proportion to each other, so likewise are the divisions of time. 77. In twelve whole figures the cosmography of the miniature world will be shown to you in the same manner as Ptolemy in his cosmography. And so I will divide it afterwards into limbs as he divided the world into provinces; then I will explain the function of the parts in every direction, and put before your eyes a description of the whole figure and substance of man as regards his movements by means of his limbs. And thus if it please our great author I will demonstrate the nature of man and his habits in the way I describe his form. [Sidenote: On the Human Body] 78. And thou, O man, who wilt gaze in this work of mine on the marvellous works of nature, if thou thinkest it would be an act of wickedness to destroy it, think how much more wicked it is to take the life of a man; and if this his structure appears to thee a miraculous work of art, remember that {32} it is nothing in comparison with the soul which inhabits this structure; for verily, whatever it may be, it is divine. Let it, then, dwell in His work and at His good will, and let not thy rage or malice destroy so great a thing as life, for he who does not value it does not deserve it. [Sidenote: The Experimental Method] 79. By these rules thou wilt be able to distinguish falsehood from truth by means of which knowledge men aim at possible things with greater moderation; and do not veil thyself in ignorance, for the result of this would be that thou wouldst be ineffectual and fall into melancholy and despair. [Sidenote: Of Navigation below the Waters] 80. How by the aid of a machine many may remain for some time under water. And how and why I do not describe my method of remaining under water and of living long without food; and I do not publish nor divulge these things by reason of the evil nature of man, who would use them for assassinations at the bottom of the sea and to destroy and sink ships, together with the men on board of them; and notwithstanding I will teach other things which are not dangerous.... [Sidenote: Of Physiognomy] 81. I will not dwell on false physiognomy and chiromancy {33} because there is no truth in them, and this is manifest because chimeras of this kind have no scientific foundation. It is true that the lineaments of the face partly reveal the character of men, their vices and temperaments; but in the face: (a) the features which separate the cheeks from the lips, and the nostrils and cavities of the eyes, are strongly marked if they belong to cheerful and good-humoured men, and if they are slightly marked it denotes that the men to whom they belong are given to meditation, (b) Those whose features stand out in great relief and depth are brutal and bad-tempered, and reason little, (c) Those who have strongly marked lines between the eyebrows are bad-tempered, (d) Those who have strongly marked lines on the forehead are men full of concealed or unconcealed bewailing. And we can reason thus about many features. But the hand? You will find that whole armies perished in the same hour by the sword in which no two men had similar marks in their hands, and the same argument applies to a shipwreck. [Sidenote: Of Pain] 82. Nature has placed in the front part of man, as he moves, all those parts which when struck cause him to feel pain; and this is felt in the joints of the legs, the forehead and the nose, and has been so devised for the preservation of man, because {34} if such pain were not felt in these limbs they would be destroyed by the many blows they receive. [Sidenote: Why Plants do not feel Pain] 83. While nature has ordained that animals should feel pain in order that the instruments which might be liable to be maimed or marred by motion may be preserved, plants do not come into collision with the objects which are before them; whence pain is not a necessity for them, and therefore when they are broken they do not feel pain, as animals do. 84. Lust is the cause of generation. Appetite is the support of life. Fear or timidity is the prolongation of life. Pain is the preserver of the instrument (of the human frame). [Sidenote: Fear] 85. Just as courage is the danger of life, so is fear its safeguard. [Sidenote: Body and Soul] 86. Let him who wishes to see how the soul inhabits its body observe what use the body makes of its daily habitation; that is to say, if the soul is full of confusion and disorder the body will be kept in disorder and confusion by the soul. {35} 87. The soul can never be corrupted with the corruption of the body, but it is like the wind which causes the sound of the organ, and which ceases to produce a good effect when a pipe is spoilt. [Sidenote: Memory] 88. Every loss which we incur leaves behind it vexation in the memory, save the greatest loss of all, that is, death, which annihilates the memory, together with life. [Sidenote: Spirit] 89. Our body is subject to Heaven, and Heaven is subject to the Spirit. [Sidenote: Sense and Reason] 90. The senses are earthly; reason lies outside them when in contemplation. 91. Where most feeling exists, there amongst martyrs is the greatest martyr. 92. That which can be lost cannot be deemed riches. Virtue is our true wealth and the true reward of its possessor; it cannot be lost, it never deserts us until life leaves us. Hold property and external riches with fear; they often leave their possessor scorned and mocked at for having lost them. {36} [Sidenote: Flight of Time] 93. Men wrongly lament the flight of time, blaming it for being too swift; they do not perceive that its passage is sufficiently long, but a good memory, which nature has given to us, causes things long past to seem present. [Sidenote: Illusions] 94. Our intellect does not judge events which happened at various intervals of time in their true proportion, because many things which happened years ago appear recent and close to the present, and often recent things appear old and seem to belong to our past childhood. The eye does likewise with regard to distant objects which in the light of the sun appear to be close to the eye, and many objects which are close appear to be remote. 95. Let us not lack ways and means of dividing and measuring these our wretched days, which we ought to take pleasure in spending and living not vainly and not without praise, nor without leaving any memory in the minds of men, so that this our miserable existence may not be spent in vain. [Sidenote: Virtuous Life] 96. The age which flies glides by in stealth and deceives others; and nothing is more swift than the years, and he who sows virtue reaps glory. {37} [Sidenote: Sleep and Death] 97. O sleeper, what is sleep? Sleep is like unto death. Why dost thou not work in such wise that after death thou mayst have the semblance of perfect life, just as during life thou hast in thy sleep the semblance of the hapless dead? 98. The water you touch in a river is the last of that which has gone, and the first of that which is coming: so it is with time present. 99. A long life is a life well spent. [Sidenote: Life] 100. As a well spent day affords happy sleep, so does a life profitably employed afford a happy death. [Sidenote: Time the Destroyer] 101. O time, consumer of things! O envious age! Thou dost destroy all things, and consumest all things with the hard teeth of old age, little by little in a slow death. Helen, when she looked in her mirror and saw the withered wrinkles made in her face by old age, wept, and wondered why she had twice been ravished. O time, devourer of things! O envious age, by which all is consumed! {38} [Sidenote: On Fault-finders] 102. There exists among the foolish a certain sect of hypocrites who continually seek to deceive themselves and others, but others more than themselves, though in reality they deceive themselves more than others. And these are they who blame the painters who study on feast-days the things which relate to the true knowledge of the forms of the works of nature, and sedulously strive to acquire knowledge of these things to the best of their ability. But such fault-finders pass over in silence the fact that this is the true manner of knowing the Artificer of such great and marvellous things, and that this is the true way in which to love so great an Inventor! For great love proceeds from the perfect knowledge of the thing loved; and if you do not know it you can love it but little or not at all; and if you love it for the gain which you anticipate obtaining from it and not for its supreme virtue, you are like the dog which wags its tail and shows signs of joy, leaping towards him who can give him a bone. But if you knew the virtue of a man you would love him more--if that virtue was in its place. [Sidenote: Prayer] 103. I obey Thee, Lord, first for the love which in reason I ought to bear Thee; secondly because Thou {39} hast the power to shorten or prolong the lives of men. 104. Thou, O God, dost sell us all good things at the price of labour. 105. And many make a trade deceiving the foolish multitude, and if no one comes to unmask their deceits, they punish it. 106. Pharisees,--that is to say, holy friars. 107. Nothing can be written by means of new researches. [Sidenote: Patience] 108. Patience serves against insults as clothes do against the cold; since if you multiply your clothes as the cold increases, the cold cannot hurt you. Similarly, let thy patience increase under great offences, and they will not be able to hurt your feelings. [Sidenote: Advice to a Speaker] 109. Words which do not satisfy the ear of the listener will always weary or annoy him; and you will often see signs of this in such listeners in their frequent yawns. Therefore, you who speak before men whose good opinion you seek, when you {40} observe such signs of vexation, shorten your speech or vary your argument; and if you do otherwise, then instead of the favour you seek you will incur hate and hostility. And if you would see what gives pleasure to a man speak to him on various themes, and when you see him intent, without yawning, or contracting his brow, or performing other actions, then be certain that the matter of which you are speaking is such as affords him pleasure. [Sidenote: Advice] 110. Here is a thing which the more it is needed the more it is rejected: and this is advice, which is unwillingly heeded by those who most need it, that is to say, by the ignorant. Here is a thing which the more you fear and avoid it the nearer you approach to it, and this is misery; the more you flee from it the more miserable and restless you will become. When the work comes up to the standard of the judgement, this is a bad sign for the judgement; and when the work excels the standard of the judgement, this is the worst sign, as occurs when a man marvels at having worked so well; and when the standard of the judgement exceeds that fulfilled by the work, this is a sign of perfection; and if the man is young and be thus disposed, he will without doubt grow into an excellent workman: he will only accomplish few works. But they will {41} be of a quality which will compel men to contemplate their perfection with admiration. [Sidenote: Proverbs] 111. Nothing should be so greatly feared as empty fame. This empty fame issues from vices. A broken vase of clay can be remodelled, but this is no longer possible when it has been baked. The vow is born when hope dies. The beautiful is not always the good. And the fine talkers labour under this error without any reason. He who wishes to grow rich in a day will be hanged in a year. The memory of benefits is a frail defence against ingratitude. Reprove your friend in secret and praise him in public. He who fears dangers will not perish by them. The evil which does me no harm is like the good which in no wise avails me. He who offends others is not himself secure. Be not false about the past. Folly is the shield of lies, just as unreadiness is the defence of poverty. Where there is liberty, there is no rule. {42} Here is a thing which the more it is heeded the more it is spurned,--advice. It is ill to praise, and worse to blame, the thing which you do not understand. On Mount Etna the words freeze in your mouth and you make ice of them. Threats are the only weapons of the threatened man. Ask advice of him who governs himself well. Justice needs power, intelligence and will, and is like the Queen Bee. Not to punish evil is equivalent to authorizing it. He who takes the snake by the tail will be bitten by it. The pit will fall in upon him who digs it. He who does not restrain voluptuousness is in the category of the beasts. You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself. He who thinks little errs much. It is easier to contend at the first than at the last. No counsel is more sincere than that given on ships which are in danger. Let him who acts on the advice of the young expect loss. You grow in reputation like bread in the hands of a child. {43} Cannot beauty and utility be combined--as appears in citadels and men? He who is without fear often incurs great losses, and is often full of regret. If you governed your body according to virtue you would not live in this world. Where good fortune enters, envy lays siege to her and attacks her, and when she departs sorrow and regret remain behind. When beauty exists side by side with ugliness, the one seems more powerful, owing to the presence of the other. He who walks straight rarely falls. O miserable race of man! of how many things you make yourself the slave for the sake of money! The worst evil which can befall the artist is that his work should appear good in his own eyes. To speak well of a bad man is the same as speaking ill of a good man. Truth ordains that lying tongues shall be punished by the lie. He who does not value life does not deserve it. The beautiful works of mortals pass and do not endure. Labour flies with fame almost hidden in its arm. The gold in ingots is refined in the fire. {44} The shuttle says: I will continue to move until the cloth is woven. Everything that is crooked is straightened. Great ruin proceeds from a slight cause. Fine gold is recognized when it is tested. The image will correspond to the die. The wall will fall on him who scrapes it. Ivy lives long. To the traitor, death is life, because if he makes use of others he is no longer believed. When fortune comes seize her in front firmly, because behind she is bald. Constancy means, not he who begins, but he who perseveres. I do not yield to obstacles. Every obstacle is overcome by resolve. He who is chained to a star does not change. [Sidenote: Truth] 112. Fire destroys falsehood,--that is to say, sophistry,--and rehabilitates truth, scattering the darkness. Fire must be represented as the consumer of all sophistry and the revealer of truth, because it is light and scatters darkness which conceals all essences. Fire destroys all sophistry,--that is to say, deceit,--and preserves truth alone, which is gold. {45} Truth cannot be concealed in the end, dissimulation is of no avail. Dissimulation is frustrated before so great a judge. Falsehood puts on a mask. There is nothing hidden under the sun. Fire must represent truth because it destroys all sophistry and lies, and the mask is for sophistry and lies, which conceal truth. 113. Rather privation of limbs than weariness of doing good. The power of using my limbs shall fail me before the power of being useful. Rather death than weariness. I cannot be satiated with serving. I do not weary of giving help. No amount of work is sufficient to weary me. This is a carnival motto: "Sine lassitudine." Hands in which ducats and precious stones abound like snow never grow weary of serving, but such a service is for its utility only and not for our profit. Nature has formed me thus. [Sidenote: Ingratitude] 114. This shall be placed in the hand of ingratitude: The wood nourishes the fire that consumes it. When the sun, the scatterer of darkness, shines, you put out the light which for you in particular, and for your need and convenience, expelled the darkness. [Sidenote: Physiological Inferiority of Man] 115. I have found that in the composition of the human body as compared with the bodies of {46} animals the senses are less subtle and coarser; it is thus composed of less ingenious machinery and of cells less capable of receiving the power of senses. I have seen that in the lion the sense of smell is connected with the substance of the brain and descends through the nostrils which form an ample receptacle for it; and it enters into a great number of cartilaginous cells which are provided with many passages in order to receive the brain. A large part of the head of the lion is given up to the sockets of the eyes, and the optic nerves are in immediate contact with the brain; the contrary occurs in man, because the sockets of the eyes occupy a small portion of the head, and the optic nerves are subtle and long and weak, and owing to the weakness of their action we see little by day and less at night; and the animals above mentioned see better at night than in the daytime; and the proof of this is that they seek their prey at night and sleep during the daytime, as do also the nocturnal birds. [Sidenote: Man's Ethical Inferiority] 116. Thou hast described him king of animals, but I would rather say, king of beasts, thou being the greatest--for hast thou not slain them in order that they may give thee their children to glut thy greed with which thou hast striven to make a sepulchre for all animals? And I would say still more if I might speak the whole truth. But let us {47} confine ourselves to human matters, relating one supreme infamy, which is not to be found among the animals of the earth; because among these you will not find animals who eat their young, except when they are utterly foolish (and there are few indeed of such among them), and this occurs only among the beasts of prey, such as the lions, and leopards, panthers, lynxes, cats and the like, which sometimes feed on their young; but thou, besides thy children, dost devour thy father, thy mother, thy brother and thy friends; and not satisfied with this, thou goest forth to hunt on the islands of others, seizing other men and these half naked ... thou fattenest and chasest them down thy own throat. Now does not nature produce enough vegetables for thee to satisfy thyself? And if thou art not content with vegetables, canst thou not by a mixture of them make infinite compounds as Platina wrote, and other writers on food? [Sidenote: Man in the Animal World] 117. The description of man, including that of such creatures belonging almost to the same species, such as apes, monkeys and the like, of which there are many. 118. The way of walking in man is similar in all cases to the universal way of walking in four-footed animals, because, just as they move their feet {48} crosswise, like a trotting horse, so man moves his four limbs crosswise, that is to say, in walking he puts forward his right foot simultaneously with his left arm, and so on vice versa. 119. Write a special treatise to describe the movements of four-footed animals, among which is man, who in his childhood also walks on four feet. [Sidenote: Fragment of a Letter] 120. There is one who having promised me much less than his due, and being disappointed of his presumptuous desire, has tried to deprive me of all my friends; and finding them wise and not pliable to his will, he has threatened me that he would bring accusations against me and alienate my benefactors from me: hence I have informed Your Lordship of this, so that this man, who wishes to sow the usual scandals, may not find a soil fit for sowing the thoughts and deeds of his evil nature; and that when he tries to make Your Lordship the tool of his infamous and malicious nature he may be disappointed of his desire. [Sidenote: Giacomo of Pupil of Leonardo] 121. On the 23d of April, 1490, I began this book; and started again on the horse. Giacomo came to live with me on Saint Mary Magdalen's day in 1490; {49} he was ten years old. He was a thief, a liar, obstinate, and a glutton. On the second day I had two shirts made for him, a pair of socks and a jerkin, and when I placed the money aside to pay for these things, he stole it out of the purse and I could never force him to confess the fact, though I was quite certain of it--4 lire. On the following day I went to sup with Giacomo Andrea, and this same Giacomo supped for two and did mischief for four, since he broke three bottles, spilled the wine, and after this came to sup where I... Item: on the 7th of September he stole a silver point, worth twelve soldi, from Marco, who was living with me, and took it from his studio; and when Marco had looked for it for some time he found it hidden in Giacomo's box--lire 1, soldi 2. Item: on the 26th of the following January, being in the house of Messer Galeazzo di San Severino, in order to arrange the festivity of his joust, and certain henchmen having undressed to try on the costumes of rustics who were to take part in the aforesaid festivity, Giacomo took the purse of one of them, which was on the bed with other clothes, and stole the money he found in it--2 lire, 4 soldi. Item: Maestro Agostino of Padua gave me while I was in the same house a Turkish hide to have a pair of shoes made of it, and Giacomo stole this from me within a month and sold it to a cobbler for 20 soldi, with which money by his own confession he bought sweets of aniseed. Item: {50} again, on the 2d of April, Giovanni Antonio left a silver point on one of his drawings, and Giacomo stole it; it was worth 24 soldi,--1 lire, 4 soldi. The first year a cloak, 2 lire; six shirts, 4 lire; three doublets, 6 lire: four pairs of socks, 7 lire, 8 soldi. 122. And in this case I know that I shall make not a few enemies, since no one will believe what I say of him; because there are but few whom his vices have disgusted, indeed they only disgusted those men whose natures are contrary to such vices; and many hate their fathers and break off friendship with those who reprove their vices, and they will have no examples brought up against them, nor tolerate any advice. And if you meet with any one who is good and virtuous drive him not away from you, do him honour, so that he may not have to flee from you and hide in hermitages, or caverns and other solitary spots, in order to escape from your treachery; and if there be such an one do him honour, because these are your gods upon earth, they deserve statues from you and images ... but remember that you are not to eat their images, as is practised still in some parts of India, where, when images have performed some miracle, the priests cut them in pieces (since they are of wood) and distribute them among the people of the country, not {51} without payment, and each one grates his portion very fine and puts it upon the first food he eats; and thus they believe that they have eaten their saint by faith, who will preserve them from all perils. What is thy opinion, O man, of thy own species? Art thou so wise as thou believest to be? Are these things to be done by men? [Sidenote: Pleasure and Pain] 123. This represents pleasure together with pain because one is never separated from the other; they are depicted back to back because they are opposed to each other; they are represented in one body because they have the same basis, because the source of pleasure is labour mingled with pain, and the pain issues from the various evil pleasures. And it is therefore represented with a reed in its right hand which is ineffectual and devoid of strength, and the wounds inflicted by it are poisonous. In Tuscany such reeds are placed to support beds, to signify that this is the place of idle dreams, that here a great part of life is consumed, here much useful time is wasted, that is, the morning hours when the mind is sober and rested and the body disposed to start on fresh labours; there, again, many vain pleasures are enjoyed by the mind, which pictures to itself impossible things, and by the body, which indulges in those pleasures that are so often the cause of the {52} failing of life; and for this reason the reed is used as their support. [Sidenote: Brain and Soul] 124. The spirit returns to the brain whence it had departed, with a loud voice and uttering these words: O blissful and fortunate spirit, whence comest thou? I have known this man well, against my will. He is a receptacle of villainy, he is a very heap of the highest ingratitude combined with all the other vices. But why should I tire myself with vain words? Nothing is to be found in him save the accumulation of all sins, and if there is to be found among them any that possess good, they will not be treated differently than I have been by other men; in short I have come to the conclusion that they are bad if they are enemies, and worse if they are friends. [Sidenote: Of the Eye] 125. The eye, which reflects the beauty of the universe to those who see, is so excellent a thing that he who consents to its loss deprives himself of the spectacle of the works of nature; and it is owing to this spectacle, effected by means of the eye, which enables the soul to behold the various objects of nature, that the soul is content to remain in the prison of the body; but he who loses his eyesight leaves the soul in a dark prison, where {53} all hope of once more beholding the sun, the light of the whole world, is lost.... And how many are they who feel great hatred for the darkness of night, although it is brief. Oh! what would they do were they constrained to abide in this darkness during the whole of their life? Certainly there is no one who would not rather lose his hearing or his sense of smell than his eyesight, and the loss of hearing includes the loss of all sciences which find expression in words; and this loss a man would incur solely so as not to be deprived of the sight of the beauty of the world which consists in the surfaces of bodies artificial as well as natural, which are reflected in the human eye. [Sidenote: The Eye in Animal Life] 126. Animals suffer greater loss in losing their sight than their hearing for many reasons: firstly, because it is by means of their sight that they find the food which is their nourishment, and is necessary for all animals; secondly, because by means of sight the beauty of created things is apprehended, especially those which lead to love, while he who is born blind cannot apprehend such beauty by hearing, because he has never received any knowledge as to what is beauty of any kind. There remains hearing, by which I mean only the human voice and speech; they contain the names of all things whatsoever. It is possible to live happily without the knowledge of these {54} words, as is seen in those who are born deaf, that is to say, the dumb, who take delight in drawing. [Sidenote: Ascension of Monte Rosa] 127. I say that the azure we see in the atmosphere is not its true colour, but is caused by warm moisture evaporated in minute and insensible atoms which the solar rays strike, rendering them luminous against the darkness of the infinite night of the fiery region which lies beyond and includes them. And this may be seen, as I saw it, by him who ascends Mounboso (Monte Rosa), a peak of the Alps which separates France from Italy. The base of this mountain gives birth to the four large rivers which in four different directions water the whole of Europe; and no mountain has its base at so great a height as this. It rises to such a height that it almost lifts itself up above the clouds; snow seldom falls on it, but only hail in summer, when the clouds are at their greatest height, and this hail is preserved there so that were it not for the absorption of the rising and falling clouds, which does not occur twice in an age, a great quantity of ice would be piled up there by the hail, which in the middle of July I found to be very considerable; and I saw above me the dark air, and the sun which struck the mountain shone far lighter than in the plains below, because a lesser quantity of atmosphere lay between the summit of the mountain and the sun. {55} [Sidenote: Prophecies] 128. Men will communicate with each other from the most distant countries, and reply. Many will abandon their own habitations and take with them their own goods, and go and inhabit other countries. Men will pursue the thing which they most greatly fear; that is to say, they will be miserable in order to avoid falling into misery. Men standing in separate hemispheres will converse with each other, embrace each other, and understand each other's language. 129. We should not desire the impossible. {59} II THOUGHTS ON ART * * * [Sidenote: Painting declines when aloof from Nature] The painter's work will be of little merit if he takes the painting of others as his standard, but if he studies from nature he will produce good fruits; as is seen in the case of the painters of the age after the Romans, who continued to imitate one another and whose art consequently declined from age to age. After these came Giotto the Florentine, who was born in the lonely mountains, inhabited only by goats and similar animals; and he, being drawn to his art by nature, began to draw on the rocks the doings of the goats of which he was the keeper; and thus he likewise began to draw all the animals which he met with in the country: so that after long study he surpassed not only all the masters of his age, but all those of many past centuries. After him art relapsed once more, because all artists imitated the painted pictures, and thus from century to century it went on declining, until Tomaso the Florentine, called Masaccio, proved by his perfect work that they who set up for themselves a standard other than nature, the mistress of all masters, labour in vain. {60} Thus I wish to say, in regard to these mathematical matters, that they who merely study the masters and not the works of nature are the grandchildren, and not the children, of nature, the mistress of good masters. I abhor the supreme folly of those who blame the disciples of nature in defiance of those masters who were themselves her pupils. [Sidenote: Its Origin] 2. The first picture was a single line, drawn round the shadow of a man cast by the sun on the wall. 3. Vastness of the field of painting: All that is visible is included in the science of painting. [Sidenote: Defence of Painting] 4. With due lamentation Painting complains that it has been expelled from the liberal arts, because it is the true daughter of nature and is practised by means of the most worthy of the senses. Whence wrongly, O writers, you have excluded painting from the liberal arts, since it not only includes in its range the works of nature, but also infinite things which nature never created. 5. Because writers have had no knowledge of the science of painting, they have not been able to {61} describe its gradations and parts, and since painting itself does not reveal itself nor its artistic work in words, it has remained, owing to ignorance, behind the sciences mentioned above, but it has thereby lost nothing of its divinity. And truly it is not without reason that men have failed to honour it, because it does honour to itself without the aid of the speech of others, just as do the excellent works of nature. And if the painters have not described the art of painting, and reduced it to a science, the fault must not be imputed to painting and it is no less noble on that account, since few painters profess a knowledge of letters, as their life would not be long enough for them to acquire such knowledge. Therefore we ask, Is the virtue of herbs, stones and plants non-existent because men have been ignorant of it? Certainly not; but we will say that these herbs remained noble in themselves without the aid of human tongues or letters. [Sidenote: Painting] 6. A science is more useful in proportion as its fruits are more widely understood, and thus, on the other hand, it is less useful in proportion as it is less widely understood. The fruits of painting can be apprehended by all the populations of the universe because its results are subject to the power of sight, and it does not pass by the ear to the brain, but by the same channel by which {62} sight passes. Therefore it needs no interpreters of diverse tongues, as letters do, and it has instantly satisfied the human race in the same manner as the works of nature have done. And not only the human race, but other animals; as was shown in a picture representing the father of a family to whom little children still in the cradle gave caresses, as did the dog and the cat in the same house; and it was a wonderful thing to see such a sight. 7. The arts which admit of exact reproduction are such that the disciple is on the same level as the creator, and so it is with their fruits. These are useful to the imitator, but are not of such high excellence as those which cannot be transmitted as an inheritance like other substances. Among these painting is the first. Painting cannot be taught to him on whom nature has not conferred the gift of receiving such knowledge, as mathematics can be taught, of which the disciple receives as much as the master gives him; it cannot be copied, as letters can be, in which the copy equals the original; it cannot be stamped, in the same way as sculpture, in which the impression is in proportion to the source as regards the quality of the work; it does not generate countless children, as do printed books. It alone remains noble, it alone confers honour on its author and remains precious {63} and unique, and does not beget children equal to itself. And it is more excellent by reason of this quality than by reason of those which are everywhere proclaimed. Now do we not see the great monarchs of the East going about veiled and covered up from the fear of diminishing their glory by the manifestation and the divulgation of their presence? and do we not see that the pictures which represent the divine deity are kept covered up with inestimable veils? their unveiling is preceded by great sacred solemnities with various chants and diverse music, and when they are unveiled, the vast multitude of people who are there flocked together, immediately prostrate themselves and worship and invoke those whom such pictures represent that they may regain their lost holiness and win eternal salvation, just as if the deity were present in the flesh. This does not occur in any other art or work of man. And if you say that is owing to the nature of the subject depicted rather than to the genius of the painter, the answer is that the mind of man could satisfy itself equally well in this case, were the man to remain in bed and not make pilgrimages to places which are perilous and hard of access, as we so often see is the case. But if such pilgrimages continually exist, what is then their unnecessary cause? You will certainly admit that it is an image of this kind, and all the writings in the world could not succeed in representing the {64} semblance and the power of such a deity. Therefore it appears that this deity takes pleasure in the pictures and is pleased that it should be loved and revered, and takes a greater delight in being worshipped in that rather than in any other semblance of itself, and by reason of this it bestows grace and gifts of salvation according to the belief of those who meet together in such a place. [Sidenote: Painting excels all the Works of Man] 8. The eye, which is called the window of the soul, is the principal means by which the brain can most abundantly and splendidly contemplate the infinite works of nature; and the ear is the next in order, which is ennobled by hearing the recital of the things seen by the eye. If you, historians and poets, or mathematicians, had not seen things with the eyes, you could not report of them in writing. If thou, O poet, dost tell a story with thy painting pen, the painter will more easily give satisfaction in telling it with his brush and in a manner less tedious and more easily understood. And if thou callest painting mute poetry, the painter can call poetry blind painting. Now consider which is the greater loss, to be blind or dumb? Though the poet is as free as the painter in his creations and compositions, they are not so satisfactory to men as paintings, because if poetry is able to describe forms, actions and places in words, the painter deals with the very {65} semblance of forms in order to represent them. Now consider which is nearer to man, the name of man or the image of man? The name of man varies in diverse countries, but death alone changes his form. If thou wast to say that painting is more lasting, I answer that the works of a coppersmith, which time preserves longer than thine or ours, are more eternal still. Nevertheless there is but little invention in it, and painting on copper with colours of enamel is far more lasting. We by our art can be called the grandsons of God. If poetry deals with moral philosophy, painting deals with natural philosophy; if poetry describes the action of the contemplative mind, painting represents the effect in motion of the action of the mind; if poetry terrifies people with the pictures of Hell, painting does the same by depicting the same things in action. If a poet challenges the painter to represent beauty, fierceness, or an evil, an ugly or a monstrous thing, whatever variety of forms he may produce in his way, the painter will cause greater satisfaction. Are there not pictures to be seen so like reality that they deceive men and animals? [Sidenote: Painting creates Reality] 9. The imagination is to the effect as the shadow to the opaque body which causes the shadow, and the proportion is the same between poetry and painting. Because poetry produces its results in the {66} imagination of the reader, and painting produces them in a concrete reality outside the eye, so that the eye receives its images just as if they were the works of nature; and poetry produces its results without images, and they do not pass to the brain through the channel of the visual faculty, as in painting. 10. Painting represents to the brain the works of nature with greater truth and accuracy than speech or writing, but letters represent words with greater truth, which painting does not do. But we say that the science which represents the works of nature is more wonderful than that which represents the works of the artificer, that is to say, the works of man, which consist of words--such as poetry and the like--which issue from the tongue of man. [Sidenote: The Painter goes to Nature] 11. Painting ministers to a nobler sense than poetry, depicts the forms of the works of nature with greater truth than poetry; and the works of nature are nobler than the words which are the works of man, because there is the same proportion between the works of man and those of nature as there is between man and God. Therefore it is a more worthy thing to imitate the works of nature, which are the true images embodied in reality, than to imitate the actions and the words of men. {67} And if thou, O poet, wishest to describe the works of nature by thine unaided art, and dost represent various places and the forms of diverse objects, the painter surpasses thee by an infinite degree of power; but if thou wishest to have recourse to the aid of other sciences, apart from poetry, they are not thy own; for instance, astrology, rhetoric, theology, philosophy, geometry, arithmetic and the like. Thou art not then a poet any longer. Thou transformest thyself, and art no longer that of which we are speaking. Now seest thou not that if thou wishest to go to nature, thou reachest her by the means of science, deduced by others from the effects of nature? And the painter, through himself alone, without the aid of aught appertaining to the various sciences, or by any other means, achieves directly the imitation of the things of nature. By painting, lovers are attracted to the images of the beloved to converse with the depicted semblance. By painting whole populations are led with fervent vows to seek the image of the deities, and not to see the books of poets which represent the same deities in speech; by painting animals are deceived. I once saw a picture which deceived a dog by the image of its master, which the dog greeted with great joy; and likewise I have seen dogs bark at and try to bite painted dogs; and a monkey make a number of antics in front of a painted monkey. I have seen swallows fly and alight on painted {68} iron-works which jut out of the windows of buildings. [Sidenote: Superiority of Painting to Philosophy] 12. Painting includes in its range the surface, colour and shape of anything created by nature; and philosophy penetrates into the same bodies and takes note of their essential virtue, but it is not satisfied with that truth, as is the painter, who seizes hold of the primary truth of such bodies because the eye is less prone to deception. [Sidenote: Painting & Poetry] 13. Poetry surpasses painting in the representation of words, and in the representation of actions painting excels poetry; and painting is to poetry as actions are to words, because actions depend on the eye and words on the ear; and thus the senses are in the same proportion one to another as the objects on which they depend; and on this account I consider painting to be superior to poetry. But since those who practised painting were for long ignorant as to how to explain its theory, it lacked advocates for a considerable time; because it does not speak itself, but reveals itself and ends in action, and poetry ends in words, which in its vainglory it employs for self-praise. [Sidenote: Painting is Mute Poetry] 14. What poet will place before thee in words, O {69} lover, the true semblance of thy idea with such truth as will the painter? Who is he who will show thee rivers, woods, valleys and plains, which will recall to thee the pleasures of the past, with greater truth than the painter? And if thou sayest that painting is mute poetry in itself, unless there be some one to speak for it and tell what it represents--seest thou not, then, that thy book is on a lower plane? Because even if it have a man to speak for it, nothing of the subject which is related can be seen, as it is seen when a picture is explained. And the pictures, if the action represented and the mental attributes of the figures are in the true proportion one to another, will be understood in the same way as if they spoke. 15. Painting is mute poetry, and poetry is blind painting. Therefore these two forms of poetry, or rather these two forms of painting, have exchanged the senses through which they should reach the intellect. Because if they are both of them painting, they must reach the brain by the noblest sense, namely, the eye; if they are both of them poetry, they must reach the brain by the less noble sense, that is, the hearing. Therefore we will appoint the man born deaf to be judge of painting, and the man born blind to be judge of poetry; and if in the painting the movements are appropriate {70} to the mental attributes of the figures which is are engaged in any kind of action, there is no doubt that the deaf man will understand the action and intentions of the figures, but the blind man will never understand what the poet shows, and what constitutes the glory of the poetry; since one of the noblest functions of its art is to describe the deeds and the subjects of stories, and adorned and delectable places with transparent waters in which the green recesses of their course can be seen as the waves disport themselves over meadows and fine pebbles, and the plants which are mingled with them, and the gliding fishes, and similar descriptions, which might just as well be made to a stone as to a man born blind, since he has never seen that which composes the beauty of the world, that is, light, darkness, colour, body, shape, place, distance, propinquity, motion and rest, which are the ten ornaments of nature. But the deaf man, lacking the less noble sense, although he has at the same time lost the gift of speech, since never having heard words spoken he never has been able to learn any language, will nevertheless perfectly understand every attribute of the human body better than a man who can speak and hear; and likewise he will know the works of painters and what is represented in them, and the action which is appropriate to such figures. {71} [Sidenote: Painting is Mute Poetry] 16. Painting is mute poetry, and poetry is blind painting, and both imitate nature to the best of their powers, and both can demonstrate moral principles, as Apelles did in his Calumny. And since painting ministers to the most noble of the senses, the eye, a harmonious proportion ensues from it, that is to say, that just as from the concord of many diverse voices at the same moment there ensues a well-proportioned harmony which will please the sense of hearing to such an extent that the listeners in dizzy admiration are like men half ravished of their senses, still greater will be the effect of the beautiful proportions of a celestial face in a picture from whose proportions a harmonious concord will ensue, which delights the eye in one moment, just as music delights the ear. And if this harmonious beauty is shown to one who is the lover of the woman from whom such great beauty has been copied, he will most certainly be struck dizzy with admiration and incomparable joy superior to that afforded by all the other senses. But with regard to poetry, which in order to afford the representation of a perfect beauty is obliged to describe each separate part in detail,--a representation which in painting produces the harmony described above,--no further charm is produced than would occur in music if each voice {72} were to be heard separately at various intervals of time, whence no concord would ensue; just as if we wished to show a countenance bit by bit, always covering up the parts already shown, forgetfulness would prevent the production of any harmonious concord, since the eye could not apprehend the parts with its visual faculty at the same moment. The same thing occurs in the beauty of any object created by the poet, for as its parts are related separately, at separate times the memory receives no harmony from it. [Sidenote: The Impression of Painting] 17. Painting reveals itself immediately to thee with the semblance given it by its creator, and affords to the chief of the senses as great a delight as any object created by nature. And the poet in this case reveals the same objects to the brain by the channel of the hearing, the inferior sense, and affords the eye no more pleasure than it derives from anything which is related. Now consider what a difference there is between hearing the recital of a thing which in the course of time gives pleasure to the eye, and perceiving it with the same velocity with which we apprehend the works of nature. And in addition to the fact that a long interval of time is necessary to read the works of the poets, it often occurs that they are not understood, and it is necessary to make diverse {73} comments on them, and it is exceedingly rare that the commentators are agreed as to the meaning of the poet; and often the readers peruse but a small portion of their works, owing to lack of time. But the works of the painter are immediately understood by those who behold them. 18. Painting manifests its essence to thee in an instant of time,--its essence by the visual faculty, the very means by which the perception apprehends natural objects, and in the same duration of time,--and in this space of time the sense-satisfying harmony of the proportion of the parts composing the whole is formed. And poetry apprehends the same things, but by a sense inferior to that of the eyesight, which bears the images of the objects named to the perception with greater confusion and less speed. Not in such wise acts the eye (the true intermediary between the object and the perception), for it immediately communicates the true semblance and image of what is represented before it with the greatest accuracy; whence that proportion arises called harmony, which with sweet concord delights the sense in the same way as the harmony of diverse voices delights the ear; and this harmony is less worthy than that which delights the eye, because for every part of it that is born a part dies, and it dies as fast as it is born. This {74} cannot occur in the case of the eye; because if thou presentest a beautiful living mortal to the eye, composed of a harmony of fair limbs, its beauty is not so transient nor so quickly destroyed as that of music; on the contrary it has permanent duration, and allows thee to behold and consider it; and it is not reborn as in the case of music which is played many times over, nor will it weary thee: on the contrary, thou becomest enamoured with it, and the result it produces is that all the senses, together with the eye, would wish to possess it, and it seems that they would wish to compete with the eye: it appears that the mouth desires it for itself, if the mouth can be considered as a sense; the ear takes pleasure in hearing its beauty; the sense of touch would like to penetrate into all its pores; the nose also would like to receive the air it exhales. Time in a few years destroys this harmony, but this does not occur in the case of beauty depicted by the painter, because time preserves it for long; and the eye, as far as its function is concerned, receives as much pleasure from the depicted as from the living beauty; touch alone is lacking to the painted beauty,--touch, which is the elder brother of sight; which after it has attained its purpose does not prevent the reason from considering the divine beauty. And in this case the picture copied from the living beauty acts for the greater part as a substitute; and the {75} description of the poet cannot accomplish this.--the poet who is now set up as a rival to the painter, but does not perceive that time sets a division between the words in which he describes the various parts of the beauty, and that forgetfulness intervenes and divides the proportions which he cannot name without great prolixity; he cannot compose the harmonious concord which is formed of divine proportions. And on this account beauty cannot be described in the same space of time in which a painted beauty can be seen, and it is a sin against nature to attempt to transmit by the ear that which should be transmitted by the eye. What prompts thee, O man, to abandon thy habitations in the city, to leave thy parents and friends, and to seek rural spots in the mountains and valleys, if it be not the natural beauty of the world, which, if thou reflectest, thou dost enjoy solely by means of the sense of sight? And if the poet wishes to be called a painter in this connection also, why didst thou not take the descriptions of places made by the poet and remain at home without exposing thyself to the heat of the sun? Oh! would not this have been more profitable and less fatiguing to thee, since this can be done in the cool without motion and danger of illness? But the soul could not enjoy the benefit of the eyes, the windows of its dwelling, and it could not note the character of joyous {76} places; it could not see the shady valleys watered by the sportiveness of the winding rivers; it could not see the various flowers, which with their colours make a harmony for the eye, and all the other objects which the eye can apprehend. But if the painter in the cold and rigorous season of winter can evoke for thee the landscapes, variegated and otherwise, in which thou didst experience thy happiness; if near some fountain thou canst see thyself, a lover with thy beloved, in the flowery fields, under the soft shadow of the budding boughs, wilt thou not experience a greater pleasure than in hearing the same effect described by the poet? Here the poet answers, admitting these arguments; but he maintains that he surpasses the painter, because he causes men to speak and reason in diverse fictions, in which he invents things which do not exist, and that he will incite men to take arms, and describe the heavens, the stars, nature, and the arts and everything. To which we reply that none of these things of which he speaks is his true profession; but if he wishes to speak and make orations, it can be shown that he is surpassed by the orator in this province; and if he speaks of astrology, that he has stolen the subject of the astrologer; and in the case of philosophy, of the philosopher; and that in reality poetry has no true position and merits no more consideration than a shopkeeper {77} who collects goods made by various workmen. As soon as the poet ceases to represent by means of words the phenomena of nature, he then ceases to act as a painter, because if the poet leaves such representation and describes the flowery and persuasive speech of him to whom he wishes to give speech, he then becomes an orator, and neither a poet nor a painter; and if he speaks of the heavens he becomes an astrologer, and a philosopher and a theologian if he discourses of nature or God; but if he returns to the description of any object he would rival the painter, if with words he could satisfy the eye as the painter does. But the spirit of the science of painting deals with all works, human as well as divine, which are terminated by their surfaces, that is, the lines of the limits of bodies by means of which the sculptor is required to achieve perfection in his art. She with her fundamental rules, i.e. drawing, teaches the architect how to work so that his building may be pleasant to the eye; she teaches the makers of diverse vases, the goldsmiths, weavers, embroiderers; she has found the characters with which diverse languages find expression; she has given symbols to the mathematicians; she has taught geometry its figures, and instructed the astrologers, the makers of machines and engineers. [Sidenote: Poet and Painter] 19. The poet says that his science consists of {78} invention and rhythm, and this is the simple body of poetry, invention as regards the subject matter and rhythm as regards the verse, which he afterwards clothes with all the sciences. To which the painter rejoins that he is governed by the same necessities in the science of painting, that is to say, invention and measure (fancy as regards the subject matter which he must invent, and measure as regards the matters painted), so that they may be in proportion, but that he does not make use of three sciences; on the contrary it is rather the other sciences that make use of painting, as, for instance, astrology, which effects nothing without the aid of perspective, the principal link of painting,--that is, mathematical astronomy and not fallacious astrology (let those who by reason of the existence of fools make a profession of it, forgive me). The poet says he describes an object, that he represents another full of beautiful allegory; the painter says he is capable of doing the same, and in this respect he is also a poet. And if the poet says he can incite men to love, which is the most important fact among every kind of animal, the painter can do the same, all the more so because he presents the lover with the image of his beloved; and the lover often does with it what he would not do with the writer's delineation of the same charms, i.e. talk with it and kiss it; so great is the painter's influence on the minds of men that he incites them to love and {79} become enamoured of a picture which does not represent any living woman. And if the poet pleases the sense by means of the ear, the painter does so by the eye, which is the superior sense. I will enlarge no further on this theme save to say that if a good painter were to represent the fury of a battle, and if the poet were to describe one, and both representations were put before the public together, you will see before which of the two most of the spectators will stop, to which of the two they will pay most attention, which of the two will be the most praised and give the greater satisfaction. Without any doubt, the painting, being infinitely the most beautiful and useful, will please the most. Write the name of God in some spot, and set up His image opposite, and you will see which will be the most reverenced. While painting embraces in itself all the forms of nature, you have nothing save words, which are not universal, like forms. If you have the effects of the representation, we have the representation of the effects. Take a poet who describes the charms of a woman to her lover, and a painter who represents her, and you will see whither nature leads the enamoured critic. Certainly the proof should rest on the verdict of experience. You have classed painting among the mechanical arts, but, truly, if painters were as apt at praising their own works in writing as you are, it would not lie under the stigma {80} of so unhonoured an name. If you call it mechanical because it is by manual work and that the hand represents the conception of the imagination, you writers put down with the pen the conceptions of your mind. And if you say that it is mechanical because it is done for money, who is more guilty of this error--if error it can be called--than you? If you lecture in the schools, do you not go to whomsoever rewards you most? Do you perform any work without some pay? Although I do not say this to blame such opinions, because all labour expects its reward; and if a poet were to say: "I will devise with my fancy a work which shall be pregnant with meaning," the painter can do the same, as Apelles did when he painted The Calumny. [Sidenote: King Matthias & the Poet] 20. On the birthday of King Matthias, a poet brought him a work made in praise of the royal birthday for the benefit of the world, and a painter presented him with a portrait of his lady-love. The king immediately shut the book of the poet and turned to the picture, and remained gazing on it with profound admiration. Then the poet, greatly slighted, said: "O king, read, read, and thou wilt hear something of far greater substance than a dumb picture!" Then the king, hearing himself blamed for contemplating a mute object, said: "O poet, be silent, thou knowest not what thou {81} sayest; this picture gratifies a nobler sense than thy work, which is for the blind. Give me an object which I can see and touch and not only hear, and blame not my choice in having placed thy work beneath my elbow, while I hold the work of the painter with both my hands before my eyes, because my very hands have chosen to serve a worthier sense than that of hearing. "And as for my self I consider that the same proportion exists between the art of the painter and that of the poet as that which exists between the two senses on which they respectively depend. "Knowest thou not that our soul is composed of harmony, and harmony can only be begotten in the moments when the proportions of objects are simultaneously visible and audible? Seest thou not that in thine art there is no harmony created in a moment, and that, on the contrary, each part follows from the other in succession, and the second is not born before its predecessor dies. For this reason I consider thy creation to be considerably inferior to that of the painter, simply because no harmonious concord ensues from it. It does not satisfy the mind of the spectator or the listener, as the harmony of the perfect features which compose the divine beauty of this face which is before me; for the features united all together simultaneously afford me a pleasure which I consider to be unsurpassed by any other thing on the earth which is made by man." {82} [Sidenote: Value of the Visible Universe] 21. There is no one so foolish who if offered the choice between everlasting blindness and deafness would not immediately elect to lose both his hearing and sense of smell rather than to be blind. Since he who loves his sight is deprived of the beauty of the world and all created things, and the deaf man loves only the sound made by the percussion of the air, which is an insignificant thing in the world. Thou sayest that science increases in nobility in proportion as the subjects with which it deals are more elevated, and, for this reason, a false rendering of the being of God is better than the portrayal of a less worthy object; and on this account we will say that painting, which deals alone with the works of God, is worth more than poetry, which deals solely with the lying imaginings of human devices. [Sidenote: Poet and Painter] 22. Thou sayest, O painter, that worship is paid to thy work, but impute not this power to thyself, but to the subject which such a picture represents. Here the painter makes answer: O thou poet, who sayest that thou also art an imitator, why dost thou not represent with thy words objects of such a nature that thy writings which contain these words may be worshipped also? But nature has favoured the painter more than the poet, {83} and it is fair that the works of the more greatly favoured one should be more honoured than those of the less favoured one. Therefore let us praise him who with words satisfies the hearing, and him who by painting affords perfect content to the eyes; but let the praise given to the worker in words be less, inasmuch as they are accidental and created by a less worthy author than the works of nature of which the painter is the imitator. And the existence of these works is confined within the forms of their surfaces. 23. Since we have concluded that the utmost extent of the comprehension of poetry is for the blind, and that of painting for the deaf, we will say that the value of painting exceeds that of poetry in proportion as painting gratifies a nobler sense than poetry does, and this nobility has been proved to be equal to that of three other senses, because we elect to lose our sense of hearing, smell and touch rather than our eyesight. For he who loses his sight is deprived of the beauty of the universe, and is like to one who is confined during his lifetime in a tomb, in which he enjoys life and motion. Now seest thou not that the eye comprehends the beauty of the whole world? It is the head of astrology; it creates cosmography; it gives counsel and correction to all the human arts; it impels {84} men to seek diverse parts of the world; it is the principle of mathematics; its science is most certain; it has measured the height and the magnitude of the stars; it has discovered the elements and their abodes; it has been able to predict the events of the future, owing to the course of the stars; it has begotten architecture and perspective and divine painting. O most excellent above all the things created by God! What praise is there which can express thy nobility? What peoples, what tongues, are they who can perfectly describe thy true working? It is the window of the human body, through which the soul gazes and feasts on the beauty of the world; by reason of it the soul is content with its human prison, and without it this human prison is its torment; and by means of it human diligence has discovered fire by which the eye wins back what the darkness has stolen from it. It has adorned nature with agriculture and pleasant gardens. But what need is there for me to indulge in long and elevated discourse? What thing is there which acts not by reason of the eye? It impels men from the East to the West; it has discovered navigation; and in this it excels nature, because the simple products of the earth are finite and the works which the eye makes over to the hands are infinite, as the painter shows in his portrayal of countless forms of animals, herbs, plants and places. {85} [Sidenote: Music the Sister of Painting] 24. Music should be given no other name than the sister of painting, inasmuch as it is subject to the hearing,--a sense inferior to the eye,--and it produces harmony by the unison of its proportioned parts, which are brought into operation at the same moment and are constrained to come to life and die in one or more harmonic times; and time is, as it were, the circumference of the parts which constitute the harmony, in the same way as the outline constitutes the circumference of limbs whence human beauty emanates. But painting excels and lords over music because it does not die as soon as it is born, as occurs with music, the less fortunate; on the contrary, it continues to exist and reveals itself to be what it is, a single surface. O marvellous science, thou givest lasting life to the perished beauty of mortals, which are thus made more enduring than the works of nature, for these undergo forever the changes of time, and time leads them to inevitable old age! And this science is to divine nature as its works are to the works of nature, and on this account it is worshipped. [Sidenote: Painting & Music] 25. The most worthy thing is that which satisfies the most worthy sense; therefore painting, which satisfies the sense of sight, is more worthy than {86} music, which merely satisfies the hearing. The most worthy thing is that which endures longest; therefore music, which is continually dying as soon as it is born, is less worthy than painting, which lasts eternally with the colours of enamel. The most excellent thing is that which is the most universal and contains the greatest variety of things; therefore painting must be set above all other arts, because it contains all the forms which exist and also those which are not in nature, and it should be glorified and exalted more than music, which deals with the voice only. With it images are made to the gods; around it divine worship is conducted, of which music is a subservient ornament; by means of it pictures are given to lovers of their beloved; by it the beauties are preserved which time, and nature the mother, render fitful; by it we retain the images of famous men. And if thou wert to say that by committing music to writing you render it eternal, we do the same with letters. Therefore, since thou hast included music among the liberal arts, thou must either exclude it, or include the art of letters. And if thou wast to say: Painting is used by base men, in the same way is music spoilt by him who knows it not. If thou sayest that sciences which are not mechanical are mental, I will answer that painting is mental. And just as music and geometry deal with the proportions of continuous quantities, and {87} arithmetic deals with discontinuous quantities, painting deals with all quantities and the qualities of the proportions of shadows, lights and distances, in its perspective. [Sidenote: Painter and Musician] 26. The musician says that his art can be compared with that of the painter because by the art of the painter a body of many members is composed, and the spectator apprehends its grace in as many harmonious rhythms ... as there are times in which it lives and dies; and by these rhythms ... its grace plays with the soul, which dwells in the body of the spectator. But the painter replies that the body composed of human limbs does not afford the delectable harmonious rhythms in which beauty must live and die, but renders it permanent for many years, and is of such great excellence that it preserves the life of this harmony of concordant limbs which nature with all her force could not preserve. How many pictures have preserved the semblance of divine beauty of which time or death had in a brief space destroyed the living example: and the work of the painter has become more honoured than that of nature, his master! If thou, O musician, sayest that painting is mechanical because it is wrought by the work of the hands, music is wrought by the mouth, but {88} not by the tasting faculties of the mouth; just and as the hand is employed indeed in the case of painting, but not for its faculties of touch. Words are less worthy than actions. But thou, writer of science, dost thou not copy with thy hand, and write what is in thy mind, as the painter does? And if thou wast to say that music is formed of proportion, by proportion have I wrought painting, as thou shalt see. [Sidenote: Poet Painter and Musician] 27. There is the same difference between the representation of the embodied works of the painter and those of the poet as there is between complete and dismembered bodies, because the poet in describing the beauty or the ugliness of any body reveals it to you limb by limb and at diverse times, and the painter shows the whole at the same time. The poet cannot express in words the true likeness of the limbs which compose a whole, as can the painter, who places it before you with the truth of nature. And the same thing befalls the poet as the musician, who sings by himself a song composed for four singers; and he sings the treble first, then the tenor, then the alto and then the bass, whence there results no grace of harmonious concord such as harmonious rhythms produce. And the poet is like a beautiful countenance which reveals itself to you feature by feature, that by so doing you may never be {89} satisfied by its beauty, which consists of the divine proportion of the limbs united one with another, and these compose of themselves and at one time the divine harmony of this union of limbs, and often deprives the gazer of his liberty. Music, again, by its harmonious rhythm, produces the sweet melodies formed by its various voices, and their harmonious division is lacking to the poet; and although poetry enters into the abode of the intellect by the channel of the hearing, as does music, the poet cannot describe the harmony of music, because it is not in his power to say various things in one and the same moment as can the harmonious concord of painting, which is composed of various members which exist simultaneously, and the beauty of these parts is apprehended at the same time, individually and collectively,--collectively with regard to the whole, individually with regard to the component parts of which the whole is formed; and for this reason the poet is, as far as the representation of bodily things is concerned, greatly inferior to the painter, and as far as invisible things are concerned he is far behind the musician. But if the poet borrows the aid of the other sciences, he can appear at the fair like the other merchants, bearers of divers goods made by many artificers; and the poet does this when he borrows the science of others, such as that of the orator, the philosopher, the astrologer, the cosmographer and {90} the like; and these sciences are altogether alien to the poet. Therefore he is an agent who brings together diverse persons in order to strike a bargain; and if you wish to know the true function of the poet, you will find that he is no other than an assembler of goods stolen from other sciences, with which he makes a deceptive mixture, or more honestly said, a fictitious mixture. And with regard to this fiction the poet is free to compete with the painter, since it constitutes the least part of the painting. 28. The painter emulates and competes with nature. [Sidenote: Painting a second Creation] 29. He who blames painting blames nature, because the works of the painter represent the works of nature, and for this reason he who blames in this fashion lacks feeling. [Sidenote: The Painter Lord of All] 30. If the painter wishes to see beautiful things which will enchant him he is able to beget them; if he wishes to see monstrous things which terrify, or grotesque and laughable things, or truly piteous things, he can dispose of all these; if he wishes to evoke places and deserts, shady or dark retreats in the hot season, he represents them, and likewise warm places in the cold season. If he wishes valleys, if he wishes to descry a great {91} plain from the high summits of the mountains, and if he wishes after this to see the horizon of the sea, he can do so; and from the low valleys he can gaze on the high mountains, or from the high mountains he can scan the low valleys and shores; and in truth all quantities of things that exist in the universe, either real or imaginary, he has first in his mind and then in his hands; and these things are of so great excellence that they beget a harmonious concord in one glance, as do the things of nature. 31. We can safely say that those people are under a delusion who call that painter a good master who can only draw well a head or a figure. Certainly there is no great merit if, after studying a single thing during a whole lifetime, you attain to a certain degree of perfection in it. But knowing, as we do, that painting includes and comprehends all the works produced by nature, or brought about by the fortuitous action of man, and in fact everything that the eye can see, he seems to me to be a poor master who can only do one thing well. Now seest thou not how many and diverse acts are performed by men? Seest thou not how many various animals there are, and likewise trees, plants and flowers; what a variety of mountainous or level places, fountains, rivers, cities, public and private buildings, {92} instruments suitable for human use; how many diverse costumes and ornaments and arts? All these things should be considered of equal effect and value when used by the man who can be called a good painter. [Sidenote: Painting and Nature] 32. If you despise painting, which is the only imitator of the visible works of nature, you will certainly despise a subtle invention which with philosophy and subtle speculation apprehends the qualities of forms, backgrounds, places, plants, animals, herbs and flowers, which are surrounded by light and shade. And truly this is knowledge and the legitimate offspring of nature, because painting is begotten by nature. But to be correct, we will say that it is the grandchild of nature, because all visible things are begotten by nature, and these her children have begotten painting. Therefore we shall rightly say that painting is the grandchild of nature and related to God. 33. Were a master to boast that he could remember all the forms and effects of nature, he would certainly appear to me to be graced with great ignorance, inasmuch as these effects are infinite and our memory is not sufficiently capacious to retain them. Therefore, O painter, beware lest in thee the lust of gain should overcome the honour of thy art, for the acquisition of honour is a much {93} greater thing than the glory of wealth. Thus, for this and for other reasons which could be given, first strive in drawing to express to the eye in a manifest shape the idea and the fancy originally devised by thy imagination; then go on adding or removing until thou art satisfied; then arrange men as models, clothed or nude, according to the intention of thy work, and see that, as regards dimension and size, in accordance with perspective there is no portion of the work which is not in harmony with reason and natural effects, and this will be the way to win honour in thy art. [Sidenote: Painting & Sculpture] 34. I have myself practised the art of sculpture as well as that of painting, and I have practised both arts in the same degree. I think, therefore, that I can give an impartial opinion as to which of the two is the most difficult: the most perfect requires the greater talent, and is to be preferred. In the first place sculpture requires a certain light, that is to say, a light from above, and painting carries everywhere with it its light and shade; sculpture owes its importance to light and shade. The sculptor is aided in this by the relief which is inherent in sculpture, and the painter places the light and shade, by the accidental quality of his art, in the places where nature would naturally produce it. The sculptor cannot diversify his work by the various colours of objects; painting {94} is complete in every respect. The perspective of the sculptor appears to be altogether untrue; that of the painter can give the idea of a distance of a hundred miles beyond the picture. The sculptors have no aerial perspective; they can neither represent transparent bodies nor reflections, nor bodies as lustrous as mirrors, and other translucent objects, neither mists nor dark skies, nor an infinity of objects which it would be tedious to enumerate. The advantage [of sculpture] is that it is provided with a better defence against the ravages of time, although a picture painted on thick copper and covered over with white enamel, painted with enamel colours and then put in the fire again and baked, is equally resistant. Such a work as far as permanence is concerned exceeds sculpture. They may say that where an error is made it is not easy to correct it. It is poor reasoning to try and prove that the irremediability of an oversight renders the work more honourable. But I say to you that it will prove more difficult to mend the mind of the master who commits such errors than to repair the work he has spoilt. We know well that an experienced and competent artist will not make mistakes of this kind; on the contrary, acting on sound rules, he will remove so little at a time that his work will be brought to a successful close. Again, the sculptor, if he works in clay or wax, can remove and add, and when the work is finished it can be easily {95} cast in bronze, and this is the last and most permanent operation of sculpture, inasmuch as that which is merely of marble is liable to destruction, but this is not the case with bronze. Therefore the picture painted on copper, which with the methods of painting can be reduced or added to, is like bronze, which when it was in the state of a wax model could be reduced or added to. And if sculpture in bronze is durable, this copper and enamel work is more imperishable still; and while the bronze remains black and ugly, this is full of various and delectable colours of infinite variety, as we have described above. If you wish to confine the discussion to painting on panel I am content to pronounce between it and sculpture, saying, that painting is the more beautiful, the more imaginative and the more copious, and that sculpture is more durable, but has no other advantage. Sculpture with little labour shows what in painting seems to be a miraculous thing to do: to make impalpable objects appear palpable, to give the semblance of relief to flat objects, and distance to objects that are near. In fact painting is full of infinite resources of which sculpture cannot dispose. 35. Sculpture is not a science, but a mechanical art, because it causes the brow of the artist who practises it to sweat, and wearies his body; and for {96} such an artist the simple proportions of the limbs, and the nature of movements and attitudes, are all that is essential, and there it ends, and shows to the eye what it is, and it does not cause the spectator to wonder at its nature, as painting does, which in a plane by its science shows vast countries and far-off horizons. 36. The only difference between painting and sculpture is that the sculptor accomplishes his work with the greater bodily fatigue, and the painter with the greater mental fatigue. This is proved by the fact that the sculptor in practising his art is obliged to exert his arms and to strike and shatter the marble or other stone, which remains over and above what is needed for the figure which it contains, by manual exercise, accompanied often by profuse sweating, mingled with dust and transforming itself into dirt; and his face is plastered and powdered with the dust of the marble, so that he has the appearance of a baker, and he is covered with minute chips, and it appears as if snow had fallen on him, and his dwelling is dirty and full of chips and the dust of stone. The contrary occurs in the case of the painter,--we are speaking of excellent painters and sculptors,--since the painter with great leisure sits before his work well clothed, and handles the light brush dipped in lovely colours. He wears {97} what garments he pleases; his dwelling is full of beautiful pictures, and it is clean; sometimes he has music or readers of diverse and pleasant works, which, without any noise of hammers or other confused sounds, are heard with great pleasure. 37. There can be no comparison between the talent, art and theory of painting and that of sculpture, which leaves perspective out of account,--perspective which is produced by the quality of the material and not of the artist. And if the sculptor says that he cannot restore the superabundant substance which has once been removed from his work, I answer that he who removes too much has but little understanding and is no master. Because if he has mastered the proportions he will not remove anything unnecessarily; therefore we will say that this disadvantage is inherent in the artist and not in the material. But I will not speak of such men, for they are spoilers of marble and not artists. Artists do not trust to the judgement of the eye, because it is always deceptive, as is proved by him who wishes to divide a line into two equal parts by the eye, and is often deceived in the experiment; wherefore the good judges always fear--a fear which is not shared by the ignorant--to trust to their own judgement, and on this account they proceed by continually checking the {98} height, thickness and breadth of each part, and by so doing accomplish no more than their duty. But painting is marvellously devised of most subtle analyses, of which sculpture is altogether devoid, since its range is of the narrowest. To the sculptor who says that his science is more lasting than that of painting, I answer that this permanence is due to the quality of the material and not to that of the sculptor, and the sculptor has no right to give himself the credit for it, but he should let it redound to nature which created the material. 38. Painting has a wider intellectual range and is more wonderful and greater as regards its artistic resources than sculpture, because the painter is by necessity constrained to amalgamate his mind with the very mind of nature and to be the interpreter between nature and art, making with art a commentary on the causes of nature's manifestations which are the inevitable result of its laws; and showing in what way the likenesses of objects which surround the eye correspond with the true images of the pupil of the eye, and showing among objects of equal size which of them will appear more or less dark, or more or less clear; and among objects equally low which of them will appear more or less low; or among those of the same height which of them will appear more or less high; or among objects of equal size {99} placed at various distances one from the other, why some will appear more clearly than others. And this art embraces and comprehends within itself all visible things, which sculpture in its poverty cannot do: that is, the colours of all objects and their gradations; it represents transparent objects, and the sculptor will show thee natural objects without the painter's devices; the painter will show thee various distances with the gradations of colour producing interposition of the air between the objects and the eye; he will show thee the mists through which the character of objects is with difficulty descried; the rains which clouded mountains and valleys bring with them; the dust which is inherent to and follows the contention between these forces; the rivers which are great or small in volume; the fishes disporting themselves on the surface or at the bottom of these waters; the polished pebbles of various colours which are collected on the washed sands at bottom of rivers surrounded by floating plants beneath the surface of the water; the stars at diverse heights above us; and in the same manner other innumerable effects to which sculpture cannot attain. 39. Sculpture lacks the beauty of colours, the perspective of colours; it lacks perspective and it confuses the limits of objects remote from the {100} eye, inasmuch as it represents the limits of objects that are near in the same way as those of distant objects; it does not represent the air which, interposed between the eye and the remote object, conceals that object but as the veils in draped figures, which reveal the naked flesh beneath them; it cannot represent the small pebbles of various colours beneath the surface of the transparent waters. [Sidenote: To the Painter] 40. And thou, painter, who desirest to achieve the highest excellence in practice, understand that unless thou build it on the solid foundations of nature, thou shalt reap but scant honour and gain by thy work; and if thy foundation is sound, thy works shall be many and good, and bring great honour to thee, and be of great profit. 41. When the work exceeds the ideal of the artist, the artist makes scant progress; and when the work falls short of his ideal it never ceases to improve, unless avarice be an obstacle. 42. He is a poor disciple who does not surpass his master. [Sidenote: Counsels] 43. He is a poor master whose work is exalted in his {101} own opinion, and he is on the road to perfection in art whose work falls short of his ideal. 44. Small rooms or dwellings help the mind to concentrate itself; large rooms are a source of distraction. 45. The painter should be solitary, and take note of what he sees and reason with himself, making a choice of the more excellent details of the character of any object he sees; he should be like unto the mirror, which takes the colours of the objects it reflects. And this proceeding will seem to him to be a second nature. [Sidenote: The Painter in his Studio] 46. In order that the favourable disposition of the mind may not be injured by that of the body, the painter or the draughtsman should be solitary, and especially when he is occupied with those speculations and thoughts which continually rise up before the eye, and afford materials to be treasured by the memory. If thou art alone, thou wilt belong to thyself only: if thou hast but one companion, thou wilt only half belong to thyself, and ever less in proportion to the indiscretion of his conduct; and if thou hast many companions, thou wilt encounter {102} the same disadvantage. And if thou shouldst say: "I will follow my own inclination, I will withdraw into seclusion in order the better to study the forms of natural objects"--I say thou wilt with difficulty be able to do this, because thou wilt not be able to refrain from constantly listening to their chatter; and, not being able to serve two masters, thou wilt play the part of a companion ill, and still worse will be the evil effect on thy studies in art. And if thou sayest: "I will withdraw myself, so that their words cannot reach and disturb me"--I, with regard to this, say thou wilt be regarded as a madman; but seest thou not that by so doing thou wilt be alone also? [Sidenote: Advice to the Painter] 47. The mind of the painter must be like unto a mirror, which ever takes the colour of the object it reflects, and contains as many images as there are objects before it. Therefore realize, O painter, that thou canst not succeed unless thou art the universal master of imitating by thy art every variety of nature's forms, and this thou canst not do save by perceiving them and retaining them in thy mind; wherefore when thou walkest in the country let thy mind play on various objects, observe now this thing and now that thing, making a store of various objects selected and chosen from those of lesser value. And thou shalt not do as some painters, who, when weary of plying {103} their fancy, dismiss their work from their mind and take exercise in walking for relaxation, but retain fatigue in the mind, which, though they see various objects, does not apprehend them, but often when they meet friends and relations and are saluted by them, they are no more conscious of them than if they had met empty air. [Sidenote: Precepts] 48. And thou, O painter, seek to bring about that thy works may attract those who gaze upon them and arrest them with great admiration and delight; and so that they may not attract and forthwith repel them, as the air does to him who in the night season leaps naked from his bed to gaze upon the cloudy and serene sky and forthwith is driven back by the cold, and returns to the bed whence he rose. But let thy works be like the air which draws men from their beds in the hot season, and retains them to taste with delight the cool of the summer; and he who will do well by his art will not strive to be more skilful than learned, nor let greed get the better of glory. Seest thou not among human beauties that it is the beautiful faces which stop the passers-by, and not the richness of their ornaments? And this I say to thee who adornest thy figures with gold and other rich ornaments: Seest thou not splendid, youthful beauties, who diminish their excellence by the excess and elaboration of their {104} ornaments? Hast thou not seen women of the mountains dressed in rough and poor clothes richer in beauty than those who are adorned? Make no use of the affected arrangements and headdresses such as those adopted by loutish maids, who, by placing one lock of hair more on one side than the other, credit themselves with having committed a great enormity, and think that the bystanders will forget their own thoughts to talk of them alone, and to blame them. For such persons have always the looking-glass and the comb, and the wind, which ruffles elaborate headdresses, is their worst enemy. In thy heads let the hair sport with the wind thou depictest around youthful countenances, and adorn them gracefully with various turns, and do not as those who plaster their faces with gum and make the faces seem as if they were of glass. This is a human folly which is always on the increase, and the mariners do not satisfy it who bring arabic gums from the East, so as to prevent the smoothness of the hair from being ruffled by the wind,--but they pursue their investigations still further in this direction. 49. I cannot but mention among these precepts a new means of study, which, although it may seem trivial and almost ridiculous, is nevertheless extremely useful in arousing the mind to {105} various inventions. It is as follows: when you look at walls mottled with various stains or stones made of diverse substances, if you have to invent some scene, you may discover on them the likeness of various countries, adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, great valleys and hills in diverse arrangement; again, you may be able to see battles and figures in action and strange effects of physiognomy and costumes, and infinite objects which you could reduce to complete and harmonious forms. And the effect produced by these mottled walls is like that of the sound of bells, in the vibrating of which you may recognize any name or word you choose to imagine. I have seen blots in the clouds and in mottled walls which have stimulated me to the invention of various objects, and although the blots themselves were altogether devoid of perfection in any one of their parts, they lacked not perfection in their movement and circumstance. 50. Obtain knowledge first, and then proceed to practice, which is born of knowledge. [Sidenote: Theory and Practice] 51. Knowledge is the captain, and practice the soldiers. 52. The painter who draws by practice and by the {106} eye, without the guide of reason, is like the mirror, which reflects all the objects which are placed before it and knows not that they exist. 53. Many will consider they can reasonably blame me by alleging that my proofs are contrary to the authority of many men held in great esteem by their inexperienced judgements: overlooking the fact that my works are solely and simply the offspring of experience, which is the veritable master. 54. They who are enamoured of practice without knowledge are like the mariner who puts to sea in a vessel without rudder or compass, and who navigates without a course. Practice should always be based on sound theory; perspective is the guide and the portal of theory, and without it nothing can be well done in the art of painting. [Sidenote: Course of Study] 55. The youth should first learn perspective, and then the measurements of every object; he should then copy from some good master to accustom himself to well-drawn forms, then from nature to acquire confirmation of the theories he has learnt; then he should study for a time the works of various masters, and finally attain the {107} habit of putting into practice and producing his art. 56. Mathematics, such as appertain to painting, are necessary to the painter, also the absence of companions who are alien to his studies: his brain must be versatile and susceptible to the variety of objects which it encounters, and free from distracting cares. And if in the contemplation and definition of one subject a second subject intervenes,--as happens when the mind is filled with an object,--in such cases he must decide which of the two objects is the more difficult of definition, and pursue that one until he arrives at perfect clearness of definition, and then turn to the definition of the other. And above all things his mind should be like the surface of the mirror, which shows as many colours as there are objects it reflects; and his companions should study in the same manner, and if such cannot be found he should meditate in solitude with himself, and he will not find more profitable company. [Sidenote: Perspective & Mathematics] 57. In the study of natural causes and reasons light affords the greatest pleasure to the student; among the great facts of mathematics the certainty of demonstration most signally elevates the mind of the student. Perspective must therefore be {108} placed at the head of all human study and discipline, in the field of which the radiant line is rendered complex by the methods of demonstration; in it resides the glory of physics as well as of mathematics, and it is adorned with flowers of both these sciences. The laws of those sciences which are capable of extensive analysis I will confine in brief conclusions, and according to the nature of the material I will interweave mathematical demonstrations, at times deducing results from causes, and at times tracing causes by results. I will add to my conclusions some which are not contained in these, but which can be deduced from them, if the Lord, the Supreme Light, illuminates me, so that I may treat of light. [Sidenote: Of the Method of Learning] 58. When you will have thoroughly mastered perspective and have learnt by heart the parts and forms of objects, strive when you go about to observe. Note and consider the circumstances and the actions or men, as they talk, dispute, laugh or fight together, and not only the behaviour of the men themselves, but that of the bystanders who separate them or look on at these things; and make a note of them, in this way, with slight marks in your little note-book. And you should always carry this note-book with you, and it should be of coloured paper, so that what you {109} write may not be rubbed out; but (when it is used up) change the old for a new one, since these things should not be rubbed out, but preserved with great care, because such is the infinity of the forms and circumstances of objects, that the memory is incapable of retaining them; wherefore keep these sketches as your guides and masters. 59. These rules are only to be used in correcting the figures, since every man makes some mistakes in his first composition, and he who is not aware of them cannot correct them; but thou being conscious of thine errors wilt correct thy work and amend errors where thou findest them, and take care not to fall into them again. But if thou attemptest to apply these rules in composition thou wilt never finish anything, and confusion will enter into thy work. Through these rules thou shalt acquire a free and sound judgement, since sound judgement and thorough understanding proceed from reason arising from sound rules, and sound rules are the offspring of sound experience, the common mother of all the sciences and arts. Hence if thou bearest in mind the precepts of my rules thou shalt be able, merely by thy corrected judgement, to judge and recognize any lack of proportion in a work, in perspective, in figures or anything else. {110} [Sidenote: Again of the Method of Learning] 60. I say that the first thing which should be learnt is the mechanism of the limbs, and when this knowledge has been acquired their actions should come next, according to the external circumstances of man, and thirdly the composition of subjects, which should be taken from natural actions, made fortuitously according to circumstances; and pay attention to them in the streets and public places and fields, and note them with a brief indication of outlines; that is to say, for a head make an O, and for an arm a straight or a bent line, and the same for the legs and body; and when thou returnest home work out these notes in a complete form. The adversary says that to acquire practice and to do a great deal of work, it is better that the first course of study should be employed in copying diverse compositions done on paper or on walls by various masters, and that thus rapidity of practice and a good method is acquired; to which I reply that this method will be good if it is based on works which are well composed by competent masters; and since such masters are so rare that but few of them are to be found, it is safer to go to nature, than to what to its deterioration is imitated from nature, and to fall into bad habits, since he who can go to the fountain does not go to the water-vessel. {111} [Sidenote: Counsel to the Painter] 61. Every bough and every fruit is born above the insertion of its leaf, which serves it as a mother, giving it water from the rain and moisture from the dew which falls on it from above in the night, and often it shields them from the heat of the sun's rays. Therefore, O painter, who lackest such rules, be desirous, in order to escape the blame of those who know, of copying every one of thy objects from nature, and despise not study after the manner of those who work for gain. [Sidenote: On Anatomy] 62. And you who say that it would be better to see practical anatomy than drawings of it, would be right if it were possible to see all the things which are shown in such drawings in a single drawing, in which you, with all your skill, will not see nor obtain knowledge of more than a few veins; and to obtain true and complete knowledge of these veins I have destroyed more than ten human bodies, destroying all the other limbs, and removing, down to its minutest particles, the whole of the flesh which surrounds these veins, without letting them bleed save for the insensible bleeding of the capillary veins. And as one body did not suffice for so long a time I had to proceed with several bodies by degrees until I finished by acquiring perfect knowledge, and this I {112} repeated twice to see the differences. And if you have a love for such things you may be prevented by disgust, and if this does not prevent you, you may be prevented by fear of living at night in company with such corpses, which are cut up and flayed and fearful to see; and if this does not prevent, you may not have a sufficient mastery of drawing for such a demonstration, and if you have the necessary mastery of drawing, it may not be combined with the knowledge of perspective; and if it were you might lack the power of geometrical demonstration, and the calculation of forces, and of the strength of the muscles, and perhaps you will lack patience and consequently diligence. As to whether these qualities are to be found in me or not the hundred and twenty books I have composed will pronounce the verdict Yes or No. Neither avarice nor negligence, but time has hindered me in these. Farewell. [Sidenote: On Study] 63. I have myself proved that it is useful when you are in bed in the dark to work with the imagination, summing up the external outlines of the forms previously studied or other noteworthy things apprehended by subtle speculation; and this is a laudable practice and useful in impressing objects on the memory. {113} [Sidenote: On judging Pictures] 64. We are well aware that faults are more easily recognized in the works of others than in our own, and often in blaming the small faults of others thou wilt ignore great ones in thyself. And to avoid such ignorance see that in the first place thy perspective be sound, then acquire a complete knowledge of the measurements of man and other animals, and of good architecture; that is to say, as far as the forms of buildings and other objects which are on the earth are concerned, and these are infinite in number. The more of them that thou knowest, the more praiseworthy will be thy work; and in cases where thou hast no experience do not refuse to draw them from nature. [Sidenote: Advice to the Painter] 65. Certainly while a man is painting he should not be loth to hear every opinion: since we know well that a man, although he be not a painter, is cognizant of the forms of another man, and will be able to judge them, whether he is hump-backed or has a shoulder too high or too low, or whether he has a large mouth or nose, or other defects. And if we know that men are capable of giving a correct judgement on the works of nature, much more ought we to acknowledge their competence to judge our faults, since we know how greatly a man may be deceived in {114} his own work; and if thou art not conscious of this in thyself, study it in others and thou wilt profit by their faults. Therefore be desirous to bear with patience the opinions of others, and consider and reflect well whether he who blames has good ground or not to blame thee, and if thou thinkest that he has, amend thy work; and if not, act as though thou hadst not heard him, and if he should be a man thou esteemest show him by reasoning where his mistake lies. 66. There is a certain generation of painters who, owing to the scantiness of their studies, must needs live up to the beauty of gold and azure, and with supreme folly declare that they will not give good work for poor payment, and that they could do as well as others if they were well paid. Now consider, foolish people! Cannot such men reserve some good work and say, "This is costly; this is moderate, and this is cheap work," and show that they have work at every price? [Sidenote: The Painter and the Mirror] 67. When thou wishest to see whether thy picture corresponds entirely with the objects thou hast drawn from nature, take a mirror and let the living reality be reflected in it, and compare the reflection with thy picture, and consider well {115} whether the subject of the two images are in harmony one with another. And above all thou shouldst take the mirror for thy master,--a flat mirror, since on its surface the objects in many respects have the same appearance as in painting. For thou seest that a painting done on a flat surface reveals objects which appear to be in relief, and the mirror consisting of a flat surface produces the same effect; the painting consists of one plane surface and the mirror likewise; the picture is impalpable, in so far as that which appears to be round and prominent cannot be grasped by the hands, and it is the same with the mirror; the mirror and the painting reveal the semblance of objects surrounded by light and shade; each of them appears to be at a distance from its surface. And if thou dost recognize that the mirror by means of outlines, lights and shadows gives relief to objects, and since thou hast in thy colours lights and shadows stronger than those of the mirror, there is no doubt that if thou composest thy picture well, it will also have the appearance of nature when it is reflected in a large mirror. [Sidenote: The Painter's Mind] 68. The mind of the painter should continually transmute the figure of the notable objects which come before him into so many discourses; and imprint them in his memory and classify them {116} and deduce rules from them, taking the place, the circumstances, the light and the shade into consideration. [Sidenote: The Variety of Nature] 69. I say that the universal proportions must be observed in the height of figures and not in their size, because in the admirable and marvellous things which appear in the works of nature there is no work of whatsoever character in which one detail is exactly similar to another; therefore, O thou imitator of nature, pay heed to the variety of features. 70. Radically wrong is the procedure of some masters who are in the habit of repeating the same themes in the same episodes, and whose types of beauty are likewise the same, for in nature they are never repeated, so that if all the beauties of equal excellence were to come to life again they would compose a larger population than that now existing in our century, and since in the present century no one person is precisely similar to another, so would it be among the beauties mentioned above. 71. You must depict your figures with gestures which will show what the figure has in his mind, otherwise your art will not be praiseworthy. {117} [Sidenote: Mind and Expression] 72. No figure will be admirable if the gesture which expresses the passion of the soul is not visible in it. The most admirable figure is that which best expresses the passion of its mind. 73. The good painter has two principal things to depict: man and the purpose of his mind. The first is easy, the second is difficult, since he must do it by the gestures and movements of the limbs, and this is to be learnt from the dumb, who more than all other men excel in it. [Sidenote: The Dumb Man guides the Painter] 74. The figures of men have gestures which correspond to what they are doing, so that in seeing them you understand what they are thinking of and saying; and these will be learned well by him who will copy the gestures of the dumb, for they speak by the gestures of their hands, their eyes, their brows and their whole person, when they wish to express the purpose of their mind. And do not mock me because I suggest a dumb teacher for the teaching of an art of which he is himself ignorant, because he will teach you better by his gestures than all the others with their words. And despise not such advice because they are the masters of gesture, and understand at a {118} distance what a man is talking of if he suits the actions of the hands to the words. [Sidenote: Advice to the Painter] 75. It is a great fault in painters to repeat the same movements, the same faces and manners of stuffs in one subject, and to let the greater part of his faces resemble their creator; and this has often been a source of wonder to me, for I have known some who in all their figures seem to have depicted themselves. And in the figures the actions and ways of the painter were visible. And if they are prompt in action and in their ways the figures are likewise prompt; and if the painter is pious, the figures with their twisted necks appear pious likewise, and if the painter is lazy the figures seem like laziness personified, and if the painter is deformed so are his figures, and if he is mad it is amply visible in figures of his subjects, which are devoid of intention and appear to be heedless of their action, some looking in one direction, some in another, as though they were dreaming; and therefore every manifestation in the picture corresponds to a peculiarity in the painter. And as I have often thought over the cause of this fault, it seems to me that we must conclude that the spirit which directs and governs everybody is that which forms our intellect, or rather, it is our intellect itself. It has {119} devised the whole figure of man according as it has thought fit that it should be, either with long or a short and turned-up nose, and thus it has determined its height and figure; and so powerful is the intellect that it gives motion to the arms of the painter and causes him to reproduce himself, since it appears to the spirit that this is the true method of portraying man, and he that does otherwise is in error. And should this spirit find any one who resembles its body, which it has formed, it loves it and becomes enamoured with it, and for this reason many men fall in love and marry wives which resemble themselves, and often the children which are born of the issue resemble their parents. 76. The painter should portray his figure according to the measurements of a natural body, which shall be of universal proper proportions; in addition to this he should measure himself and see in which part his own figure varies greatly or less from the aforesaid pattern of excellence, and when he has ascertained this he should try his utmost to avoid the defects which exist in his own person in the figures he portrays. And know that thou must contend with all thy might against this fault inasmuch as it is a defect which originated with the intellect; because the {120} spirit which governs thy body is that which is thine own intellect, and it is inclined to take pleasure in works similar to that which it accomplished in forming its body. And this is the reason that there is no woman, however ugly, who does not find a lover, unless she be monstrous. So remember to ascertain the defects of thy person and to avoid reproducing them in the figures thou dost compose. 77. That painter who has coarse hands will portray the like in his works, and the same thing will occur in every limb unless he avoids this pitfall by long study. Therefore, O painter, look well on that part of thy person which is most ugly, and by thy study make ample reparation for it, because if thou art bestial, bestial and without intellect will be thy figures, and similarly both the good and ill which thou hast in thee will be partially visible in thy compositions. 78. Men and words are already made, and thou, painter, who knowest not how to make thy figures move, art like the orator who knows not how to employ his words. 79. The movements of men are as varied as the {121} circumstances which pass through their minds; and men will be more or less actuated by every circumstance in itself according as they are more or less powerful and according to age; because in the same circumstance an old man or a youth will make a different movement. [Sidenote: Power of Expression in Painting] 80. The imagination does not perceive such excellent things as the eye, because the eye receives the images or semblances from objects, and transmits them to the perception, and from thence to the brain; and there they are comprehended. But the imagination does not issue forth from the brain, with the exception of that part of it which is transmitted to the memory, and in the brain it remains and dies, if the thing imagined is not of high quality. And in this case poetry is formed in the mind or in the imagination of the poet, who depicts the same objects as the painter, and by reason of the work of his fancy he wishes to rival the painter, but in reality he is greatly inferior to him, as we have shown above. Therefore with regard to the work of fancy we will say that there is the same proportion between the art of painting and that of poetry as exists between the body and the shadow proceeding from it, and the proportion is still greater, inasmuch as the shadow of such a body at least penetrates to {122} the brain through the eye, but the imaginative embodiment of such a body does not enter into the eye, but is born in the dark brain. Ah! What difference there is between imagining such a light in the darkness of the brain and seeing it in concrete shape set free from all darkness. If thou, O poet, dost represent the battle and its bloodshed enveloped by the obscure and dark air, amid the smoke of the terrifying and deadly engines, together with the thick dust which darkens the air, and the flight in terror of wretches panic-stricken by horrible death; in this case the painter will surpass thee, because thy pen will be used up before thou hast scarcely begun to describe what the art of the painter represents for thee immediately. And thy tongue shall be parched with thirst and thy body worn out with weariness and hunger before thou canst show what the painter will reveal in an instant of time. And in this painting there lacks nothing save the soul of the things depicted, and every body is represented in its entirety as far as it is visible in one aspect; and it would be a long and most tedious matter for poetry to enumerate all the movements of each soldier in such a war, and the parts of their limbs and their ornaments which the finished picture places before you with great accuracy and brevity; and to such a representation nothing is wanting save the noise of the engines, and the cries of the terrifying victors, {123} and the screams and lamentations of those awe-stricken; neither again can the poet convey these things to the hearing. We will say, therefore, that poetry is an art which is supremely potent for the blind, and the painting has the same result on the deaf. Painting, therefore, excels poetry in proportion as the sense to which it ministers is the nobler. The only true function of the poet is to represent the words of people who talk among each other, and these alone he represents to the hearing as if they were natural, because they are natural in themselves and created by the human voice; and in all other respects he is surpassed by the painter. Still more, incomparably greater is the width of range of painting than that of speech, because the painter can accomplish an infinity of things which speech will not be able to name for want of the appropriate terms. And seest thou not that if the painter wishes to depict animals and devils in Hell with what richness of invention he proceeds? And I once chanced to paint a picture which represented a divine subject, and it was bought by the lover of her whom it represented, and he wished to strip it of its divine character so as to be able to kiss it without offence. But finally his conscience overcame his desire and his lust and he was compelled to remove the picture from his house. Now go thou, poet, and describe a beautiful woman without giving the semblance of {124} the living thing, and with it arouse such desire in men! If thou sayest: I will describe then Hell and Paradise and other delights and terrors,--the painter will surpass thee, because he will set before thee things which in silence will [make thee] give utterance to such delight, and so terrify thee as to cause thee to wish to take flight. Painting stirs the senses more readily than poetry. And if thou sayest that by speech thou canst convulse a crowd with laughter or tears, I rejoin that it is not thou who stirrest the crowd, it is the pathos of the orator, and his mirth. A painter once painted a picture which caused everybody who saw it to yawn, and this happened every time the eye fell on the picture, which represented a person yawning. Others have painted libidinous acts of such sensuality that they have incited those who gazed on them to similar acts, and poetry could not do this. And if you write the description of certain deities the description will not be held in the same veneration as the picture of the Deity, because prayers and votive offerings will always be made to the picture, and many peoples from diverse countries and from across the Eastern seas will flock to it. And they will invoke the picture, and not the writing, for succour. Who is he who would not lose hearing, smell and touch rather than sight? Because he who loses his sight is like the man who is driven from the world, because {125} he sees neither it nor anything else any longer. And this life becomes the sister of Death. [Sidenote: Landscapes] 81. I have been to see a variety of cloud effects, and lately over Milan towards Lake Maggiore I saw a cloud in the form of a huge mountain full of fiery scales, because the rays of the sun, which was already reddening and close to the horizon, tinged the cloud with its own colour. And this cloud attracted to it all the lesser clouds which were around it; and the great cloud did not move from its place, but on the contrary retained on its summit the light of the sun till an hour and a half after nightfall, such was its immense size; and about two hours after nightfall a great, an incredibly tremendous wind arose. [Sidenote: Vegetation of a Hill] 82. The grasses and plants will be paler in proportion as the soil which nourishes them is leaner and devoid of moisture; the earth is leaner and less rich in moisture on the rocks of which the mountains are formed. And the trees will be smaller and thinner in proportion as they are nearer to the summit of the mountain; and the soil is leaner in proportion as it is nearer to the said summit, and it is richer in proportion as it is nearer the hollow valleys. Therefore, O painter, {126} thou shalt represent rocks on the summits of the mountains--for they are composed of rocks--for the greater part devoid of soil, and the plants which grow there are small and lean and for the greater part withered and dry from lack of moisture, and the sandy and lean earth is seen through the faded plants; and the small plants are stunted and aged, exiguous in size, with short and thick boughs and few leaves; they cover for the greater part the rust-coloured and dry roots, and are interwoven in the strata and the fissures of the rugged rocks, and issue from trunks maimed by men or by the winds; and in many places you see the rocks surmounting the summits of the high mountains, covered with a thin and faded moss; and in some places their true colour is laid bare and made visible owing to the percussion of the lightnings of Heaven, whose course is often obstructed to the damage of these rocks. And in proportion as you descend towards the base of the mountains the plants are more vigorous and their boughs and foliage are denser; and their vegetation varied according to the various species of the plants of which such woods are composed, and their boughs are of diverse arrangement and diverse amplitude of foliage, various in shape and size; and some have straight boughs like the cypress, and some have widely scattered and spreading boughs like the oak and the chestnut tree, and the like; some have very {127} small leaves, others have a spare foliage like the juniper and the plane tree, and others; some plants born at the same time are divided by wide spaces, and others are united with no division of space between them. [Sidenote: How to represent Night] 83. That which is entirely devoid of light is all darkness; as the night is like this and you wish to represent a night subject, represent a great fire, so that the object which is nearest to the fire may be tinged with its colour, since the object which is nearest the fire will participate most in its nature. And as you will make the fire red, all the objects which it illumines must be red also, and those which are farther off from the fire will be dyed to a greater extent by the dark colour of night. The figures which are between you and the fire appear dark from the obscurity of the night, not from the glow of the firelight, and those which are at the side are half dark and half ruddy, and those which are visible beyond the edge of the flames will be altogether lighted up by the red glow against a black background. As to their action, make those which are near shield themselves with their hands and cloaks against the intense heat with averted faces as though about to flee; with regard to those who are farther off, represent them chiefly in the act of raising their hands to their eyes, dazzled by the intense glare. {128} [Sidenote: How to represent Storm] 84. If you wish to represent well a storm, consider and weigh its effects when the wind, blowing across the surface of the sea and the earth, removes and carries with it those things which are not stable in the universal drift. And in order to represent this storm adequately, you must in the first place represent tattered and rent clouds rushing with the rushing wind, accompanied by sandy dust caught up from the seashores, and boughs and leaves torn up by the force and fury of the wind, and dispersed in the air with many other light objects. The trees and the plants bent towards the earth almost seem as though they wished to follow the rushing wind, with their boughs wrenched from their natural direction and their foliage all disordered and distorted. Of the men who are to be seen, some are fallen and entangled in their clothes and almost unrecognizable on account of the dust, and those who remain standing may be behind some tree, clutching hold of it so that the wind may not tear them away; others, with their hands over their eyes on account of the dust, stoop towards the ground, with their clothes and hair streaming to the wind. The sea should be rough and tempestuous, and full of swirling eddies and foam among the high waves, and the wind hurls the spray through the tumultuous air like a thick and swathing mist. {129} As regards the ships that are there, you will depict some with torn sails and tattered shreds fluttering through the air with shattered rigging; some of the masts will be split and fallen, and the ship lying down and wrecked in the raging waves; some men will be shrieking and clinging to the remnants of the vessel. You will make the clouds driven by the fury of the winds and hurled against the high summits of the mountains, and eddying and torn like waves beaten against rocks; the air shall be terrible owing to deep darkness caused by the dust and the mist and the dense clouds. [Sidenote: How to describe a Battle] 85. In the first place you must represent the smoke of the artillery mingled with the air, and the dust, and tossed up by the stampede of the horses and the combatants. And you must treat this confusion in this way: dust being an earthly thing has weight, and although owing to its fineness it is easily lifted up and mingled with the air, it nevertheless falls readily to the earth again, and it is its finest part which rises highest, therefore that part will be the least visible and will seem to be almost of the same colour as the air; the higher the smoke, which is mingled with the dusty air, rises towards a certain height, the more it will seem like a dark cloud, and at the summit the smoke will be more visible than the dust. {130} The smoke will assume a bluish colour, and the dust will retain its colour: this mixture of air, smoke and dust will seem much brighter on the side whence the light proceeds than on the opposite side; the more densely the combatants are enveloped in this confusion the less distinctly will their lights and shadows be visible. You must cast a glowing light on the countenances and the figures, the atmosphere, the musketeers and those who are near them, and this light diminishes in proportion as the distance between it and its cause increases; and the figures which are between you and the light will appear dark against a bright background, and their legs will be less visible in proportion as they are nearer to the earth, because the dust there is coarsest and thickest. And if you depict horses galloping beyond the crowd, make little clouds of dust, distant one from the other in proportion to the strides made by the horses, and the cloud which is farthest away from the horse will be the least visible; it must be high, scattered and thin, and the nearer clouds will be more conspicuous, smaller and denser. The air must be full of arrows falling in every direction: some flying upwards, some falling, some on the level plane; and smoke should trail after the flight of the cannon-balls. The foremost figures should have their hair and eyebrows clotted with dust; dust must be on every flat portion they offer capable of retaining it. {131} The conquerors you should make as they charge, with their hair and the other light things appertaining to them streaming to the wind, their brows contracted and the limbs thrust forward inversely, that is, if the right foot is thrust forward the left arm must be thrust forward also. And if you portray a fallen man you must show where he has slipped and been dragged through the blood-stained mud, and around in the wet earth you must show the imprint of the feet of men and the hoofs of horses that have passed there. You will also represent a horse dragging its dead master, and in the wake of the body its track, as it has been dragged along through the dust and the mud; you must make the vanquished and beaten pale, their brows knit and the skin surmounting the brow furrowed with lines of pain. On the sides of the nose there must be wrinkles forming an arch from the nostrils to the eyes and terminating at the commencement of the latter; the nostrils should be drawn up, whence the wrinkles mentioned above; the arched lips show the upper row of teeth. The teeth should be apart, as with crying and lamentation. One hand shields the frightened eyes, the palm being held towards the enemy; the other [hand] rests on the ground to sustain the raised body. You shall portray others shouting in flight with their mouths wide open; you must depict many kinds of weapons lying at the feet of the {132} combatants, such as broken shields, lances, shattered swords and other similar objects; you must portray dead men, some half covered, some entirely covered, by the dust which is mingled with the spilt blood and converted into red mud, and the blood is seen by its colour flowing in a sinuous stream from the body to the dust; others in their death-agony are grinding their teeth, rolling their eyes and clenching their fists against their bodies and their distorted legs. Some might be represented disarmed and thrown by the enemy, turning upon him with teeth and nails to wreak cruel and sharp revenge; a riderless horse might be represented charging with his mane streaming to the wind amidst the enemy, and inflicting great damage with his hoofs. Some maimed man might be seen fallen to the earth and protecting himself with his shield, while the enemy, bending over him, tries to kill him. You might show a number of men fallen together over a dead horse. You would see some of the conquerors leaving the battle and issuing from the crowd, clearing with their hands their eyes and cheeks of the mud made by the watering of their dust-bespattered eyes. You would see the reserves standing full of hope and caution, with brows alert, shading them with their hands and gazing through the thick and confused darkness, attentive to the orders of their captain; and likewise the captain, with his staff raised, is rushing towards these {133} reserves and points out to them the spot where they are needed; and you may add a river with horses charging into it and stirring up the water all round them into seething waves of mixed foam and water, which is spurted into the air and among the legs and bodies of the horses. And there must not be a level place that is not trampled with gory footsteps. [Sidenote: Envy] 86. Envy offends with false infamy, that is to say, by detraction which frightens virtue. Envy must be represented with the hands raised to heaven in contempt, because if she could she would use her power against God. Make her face covered with a goodly mark; show her as wounded in the eye by a palm-branch, and wounded in the ear by laurel and myrtle, to signify that victory and truth offend her. Draw many thunderbolts proceeding from her as a symbol of her evil-speaking. Make her lean and shrivelled up, because she is continual dissolution. Make her heart gnawed by a swelling serpent. Make her a quiver full of tongues for arrows, because she often offends with these. Make her a leopard's skin, because the leopard kills the lion through envy and by deceit. Place a vase in her hand full of flowers, and let it be full also of scorpions, toads and other reptiles. Let her ride Death, because Envy, which is undying, never wearies of sovereignty. {134} Make her a bridle loaded with divers arms, because her weapons are all deadly. As soon as virtue is born it begets envy which attacks it; and sooner will there exist a body without a shadow than virtue unaccompanied by envy. [Sidenote: Fame] 87. Fame alone rises towards heaven, because God looks with favour on virtuous things; infamy must be represented upside down, because its works are contrary to God and move towards hell. Fame should be depicted covered with tongues instead of with feathers and in the form of a bird. [Sidenote: The Expressive Picture] 88. A picture or a representation of human figures should be done in such a way that the spectator can easily recognize the purpose that is in their minds by their attitudes. If you have to represent a man of high character, let his gestures be such as harmonize with fair words; likewise, if you have to represent a man of low character, let his gestures be fierce, let him thrust his arms towards the listener, and let his head and chest be thrust forward in front of his feet, following the hands of the speaker. It is thus with a dumb man, who seeing two speakers, although he is deprived of hearing, nevertheless, owing to the attitudes and gestures of the speakers, understands the subject of their argument. I once saw at Florence a man who had become deaf by an accident, who, if you spoke loud to him, did not understand you, but if you spoke gently, without making any noise, he understood you merely by the movement of the lips. Now you can say, Does not one who talks loudly move his lips like one who talks softly? In regard to this I leave experiment to decide: make a man speak gently to you and note his lips. [Sidenote: The Ages of Man] 89. How the ages of man should be depicted: that is, infancy, childhood, youth, manhood, old age, decrepitude. How old men should be depicted with lazy and slow movements, their legs bent at the knees when they stand still, and their feet placed parallel and apart, their backs bent, their heads leaning forward and their arms only slightly extended. How women should be represented in modest attitudes, their legs close together, their arms folded together, their heads bent and inclined to one side. How old women should be represented with eager, vehement and angry gestures, like the furies of Hades; the movement of the arms and the head should be more violent than that of the legs. Little children with ready and twisted movements when sitting, and when standing up in shy and timid attitudes. {136} 90. You will do as follows if you wish to represent a man talking to a number of people: you must consider the matter which he has to treat, and suit his action to the subject; that is to say, if the matter is persuasive, let his action be appropriate to it; if the matter is argumentative, let the speaker hold one finger of the left hand with two fingers of the right hand, closing the two smaller ones, and with his face turned towards the people and his mouth half open, let him seem to be about to speak, and if he is sitting let him appear as though about to rise, with his head forward; if you represent him standing up, let him lean slightly forward, with his body and head towards the people. You must represent the people silent and attentive, looking at the orator's face with gestures of admiration, and depict some old men with the corners of their mouths pulled down in astonishment at what they hear, their cheeks drawn in and full of lines, their eyebrows raised, and thus causing a number of wrinkles on the forehead; again, some must be sitting with the fingers of their hands clasped and resting on their knee; another, a bowed old man, with one knee crossed over the other, and on the knee let him hold his hand, and let his other elbow rest on his hand, and let the hand support his bearded chin. {137} 91. You must represent an angry man holding some one by the ear, beating his head against the ground, with one knee on his ribs, his right arm raising his fist in the air; his hair must be dishevelled, his eyebrows low and narrow, his teeth clenched and the two corners of his mouth set, his neck swelled and [his brow] wrinkled and bent forward as he leans over his enemy. 92. The desperate man must hold a knife and must have torn open his garments, and with one hand he must be tearing open the wound; and you must represent him with extended feet and the legs slightly bent and his body leaning towards the earth, his hair flying and dishevelled. [Sidenote: Notes on the Last Supper] 93. One who was in the act of drinking leaves his glass in its place, and turns his head towards the speaker. Another, twisting the fingers of his hands together, turns with stern brows to his companions. Another, with his hands spread out, shows their palms, and shrugs his shoulders towards his ears; his mouth expresses amazement. Another speaks in the ear of his neighbour, and he, as he listens to him, turns towards him, lending him his ear, while he holds a knife in one hand and {138} a piece of bread in the other, half cut through by the knife. Another, in turning with a knife in his hand, has upset a glass on the table. Another lays his hands on the table and looks fixedly. Another puffs out his cheeks, his mouth full. Another leans forward to see the speaker, shading his eyes with his hand. Another draws back behind him who is leaning forward and sees the speaker between the wall and the man who is leaning forward. {141} III THOUGHTS ON SCIENCE * * * [Sidenote: Necessity of Experience in Science] There is no human experience that can be termed true science unless it can be mathematically demonstrated. And if thou sayest that the sciences which begin and end in the mind are true, this cannot be conceded, but must be denied for many reasons, and firstly because in such mental discourses experience is eliminated, and without experience there can be no certainty. [Sidenote: Theory and Practice] 2. You must first propound the theory and then explain the practice. 3. Let no man who is not a mathematician read the principles of my work. 4. In the course of scientific exposition the demonstration of a general rule derived from a previous conclusion is not to be censured. {142} [Sidenote: Certainty of Mathematics] 5. He who blames the supreme certainty of mathematics feeds on confusion and will never be able to silence the contradictions or sophistical sciences which lead to an everlasting clamour. [Sidenote: Of Science] 6. There is no certainty [in science] where one of the mathematical sciences cannot be applied, or in those [sciences] which are not in harmony with mathematics. [Sidenote: From Leonardo's Dictionary] 7. Syllogism: to speak doubtfully. Sophism: to speak confusedly; falsehood for truth. Theory: knowledge without practice. [Sidenote: Definition of Science] 8. Science is that discourse of the mind which derives its origin from ultimate principles beyond which nothing in nature can be found which forms a part of that science: as in the continued quantity, that is to say, the science of geometry, which, starting from the surfaces of bodies, has its origin in the line, which is the end of the superficies; and we are not satisfied by this, because we know that the line terminates in the point, and the point is that which is the least of things. Therefore the point is the first principle of geometry, and nothing else can exist either {143} in nature or in the human mind from which the point can issue. Because if you say that the contact between a surface and the extreme point of an iron instrument is the creation of the point, it is not true; but let us say that this point of contact is a superficies which surrounds its centre, and in the centre the point dwells. And such a point is not a part of the substance of the superficies, neither it nor all the points of the universe can, even if combined,--it being granted that they could be combined,--compose any part of a superficies. And granted, as you imagined, a whole composed of a thousand points, if we divide any part of this quantity of a thousand, we can very well say that this part shall equal its whole; and this we can prove by zero, or naught, that is, the tenth figure of arithmetic, which is represented by a cipher as being nothing, and placed after unity it will signify 10, and if two ciphers are placed after unity it will signify 100, and thus the number will go on increasing by ten to infinity whenever a cipher is added, and the cipher in itself is worth nothing more than naught, and all the naughts in the universe are equal to one naught alone, in regard to their substance and value. [Sidenote: True Science based on the Testimony of the Senses] 9. Knowledge which is the issue of experience is termed mechanical; that which is born and ends {144} in the mind is termed scientific; that which issues from science and ends in manual work is termed semi-mechanical. But I consider vain and full of error that science which is not the offspring of experience, mother of all certitude, and which does not result in established experience, that is to say, whose origin, middle and end do not pass through any of the five senses. And if we doubt of everything we perceive by the senses, should we not doubt much more of what is contrary to the senses, such as the existence of God and of the soul, and similar matters constantly under dispute and contention? And it is truly the case that where reason is lacking it is supplemented by noise, which never happens in matters of certainty. On account of this we will say that where there is noise there is no true science, because truth has one end only, which, when it is made known, eternally silences controversy, and should controversy come to life again, it is lying and confused knowledge which is reborn, and not certainty. But true science is that which has penetrated into the senses through experience and silenced the tongue of the disputers, and which does not feed those who investigate it with dreams, but proceeds from the basis of primary truths and established principles successively and by true sequence to the end; as, for instance, what comes under the heading of elementary mathematics, {145} that is, numeration and measurement, termed arithmetic and geometry, which treat with the highest truth of the discontinued and continued quantity. Here there will be no dispute as to whether twice three make more or less than six, nor whether two angles of a triangle are less than two right angles, but eternal silence shall ignore all controversy, and the devotees of the true science will finish their studies in peace, which the lying mental sciences cannot do. And if thou sayest that true and established science of this kind is a species of mechanics, because they can only be completed by the hand, I will say the same of all the arts, such as that which passes through the hand of the sculptor, which is a kind of drawing, a part of painting; and astrology and the other sciences pass through manual operation, but they are mental in the first place, as painting, which first of all exists in the mind of the composer, and cannot attain to fulfilment without manual labour. With regard to painting, its true and scientific principles must be established: what constitutes a shaded body, what constitutes a primary shade, a derivative shade, what constitutes light: that is, darkness, light, colour, size, shape, position, distance, propinquity, motion, rest, which are comprehended by the mind only, and without manual labour. And this is the science of painting which remains in the mind of those who meditate on it, from which {146} issues the work in due time, and is infinitely superior to the aforesaid contemplation or science. [Sidenote: Mechanics] 10. Mechanics are the paradise of scientific mathematics, because with them we arrive at the fruits of mathematics. [Sidenote: Mechanics and Experience] 11. Experience is indispensable for the making of any instrument. 12. Proportion is not only to be found in figures and measurements, but also in sound, weight, time and position, and in whatever power which exists. [Sidenote: Reason and Experience] 13. The power of the projecting force increases in proportion as the object projected is smaller; the acceleration of the motion increases to infinity proportionately to this diminution. It would follow that an atom would be almost as rapid as the imagination or the eye, which in a moment attains to the height of the stars, and consequently its voyage would be infinite, because the thing which can be infinitely diminished would have an infinite velocity and would travel on an infinite course (because every continuous quantity is divisible to infinity). And this opinion is {147} condemned by reason and consequently by experience. Thus, you who observe rely not on authors who have merely by their imagination wished to be interpreters between nature and man, but on those alone who have applied their minds not to the hints of nature but to the results of their experience. And you must realize the deceptiveness of experiments; because those which often appear to be one and the same are often different, as is shown here. [Sidenote: Effects correspond to the Force of their Cause] 14. A spherical body which possesses a dense and resisting superficies will move as much in the rebound resulting from the resistance of a smooth and solid plane as it would if you threw it freely through the air, if the force applied be equal in both cases. Oh, admirable justice of thine, thou first mover! thou hast not permitted that any tone should fail to produce its necessary effects, either as regards order or quantity. Seeing that a force impels an object which it overcomes a distance of one hundred arms' length, and if in obeying this law it meets with resistance, thou hast ordained that the force of the shock will cause afresh a further movement, which in its various bounds recuperates the whole sum of the distance it should have travelled. And if you measure the distance {148} accomplished by the aforesaid bounds you will find that they equal the length of distance through which a similar object set in motion by an equal force would travel freely through the air. 15. Every action must be caused by motion. 16. Motion is the cause of all life. [Sidenote: Of Force] 17. What is force? Force, I say, is a spiritual virtue, an invisible power, which by accidental external violence is caused by motion, and communicated and infused into bodies which are inert by nature, giving them an active life of marvellous power. 18. What is force? I say that force is a spiritual, incorporate and invisible power, which for a brief duration is produced in bodies that by accidental violence are displaced from their natural state of inertia. [Sidenote: Origin of Force] 19. Force arises from dearth or abundance; it is the child of physical motion and the grandchild of spiritual motion, and the mother and origin of gravity. Gravity is confined to the elements of {149} water and earth, and this force is infinite, because infinite worlds could be moved by it if instruments could be made by which the force could be generated. Force, with physical motion, and gravity, with resistance, are the four accidental powers by which all mortal things live and die. Force has its origin in spiritual motion, and this motion, flowing through the limbs of sentient animals, enlarges their muscles, and thus enlarged the muscles are shrunk in length and contract the tendons with which they are connected, and this is the cause of the strength in human limbs. The quality and quantity of the strength of a man can generate a further force, which will increase in proportion to the duration of the motions produced by them. [Sidenote: Aspects of Force] 20. Gravity, force and casual motion together with resistance are the four external powers by which all the visible actions of man live and die. [Sidenote: Of Inertia] 21. A motion tends to be continuous; a body set in motion continues to move as long as the impression of the motive power lasts in it. [Sidenote: Can Man imitate a Bird's Flight?] 22. The bird is an instrument which operates by mathematical laws, and man can reproduce all {150} the movements of this instrument, but cannot attain to the intensity of its power; and can only succeed in acquiring balance. Thus we will say that such an instrument constructed by man lacks only the soul of the bird, and the soul of man must counterfeit the soul of the bird. The spirit in the frame of the bird doubtless would respond to needs of that frame better than would the spirit of man, whose frame is different, more especially in the almost insensible motions of balance; and since we see the bird make provision for the many sensible varieties of movement, we can conclude by such experience that man can acquire knowledge of the more markedly sensible of these movements, and that he will be able to make ample provision against the destruction of that instrument of which he has made himself the spirit and the guide. [Sidenote: Of Inertia] 23. A natural and continuous motion seeks to preserve its course along the line of its starting-point, that is to say, let us call starting-point whatever place in which it varies. 24. Everything maintains itself by motion. And if it were possible to describe a diameter of air on the sphere of the earth, like to a well, which would extend from one superficies to the other, {151} and if a weighty body were dropped into this well, the body would seek to remain stationary at the centre, but so strong would be the impetus that for many years it would prevent it from so doing. [Sidenote: Transmission of Motion] 25. Impetus is a virtue created by motion and communicated by the motive force to the object moved, and this object acquires motion in proportion to the energy of the impetus. [Sidenote: Matter is Inert] 26. No lifeless matter moves of itself, but its motion is caused from without. 27. All elements displaced from their natural place seek to return to it, and more especially fire, water and earth. 28. All matter universally seeks to maintain itself in its natural state; hence, water in motion seeks to maintain its course according to the force by which it is propelled, and if it meets with opposition it finishes the length of the course it began in a circular and reflex motion. [Sidenote: Conception of Energy] 29. Impetus is the impression of motion conveyed by the motive power to the object moved. Every {152} impression tends to permanence or seeks to attain permanence. That every impression seeks after permanence is proved by the impression made by the sun on the eye which regards it, and in the impression of sound made by the hammer which strikes a bell. Every impression seeks after permanence, as is shown in the image of impetus communicated to the object moved. 30. A weight seeks to fall to the centre of the earth by the most direct way. [Sidenote: In Praise of the Sun] 31. If you look at the stars, warding off the rays (as may be done by looking through a small hole made by the extreme point of a fine needle placed so as almost to touch the eye), they will appear so small as to seem as though nothing could be smaller; it is owing to their great distance that they appear so small, for many of them are very many times larger than the star which is the earth with its water. Now reflect what appearance this our star must have from so great a distance, and then consider how many stars might be placed--both in longitude and latitude--between those stars which are sown in the dark space. I can never refrain from blaming many of the ancients who said that the size of the sun was no greater than {153} it appears; among whom was Epicurus. I believe he founded his reasoning on a light placed in our atmosphere equidistant from the centre of the earth, which, to any one looking at it, never appears to diminish in size from whatever distance it is seen. 32. I shall reserve the reasons of its size and power for later. But I greatly marvel that Socrates should have depreciated such a body, and that he should have said that it resembled an incandescent stone; and he who opposed him as regards this error acted rightly. But I wish I had words to blame those who seek to exalt the worship of men more than that of the sun, since in the universe there is no body of greater magnitude and power to be seen than the sun. And its light illumines all the celestial bodies which are distributed throughout the universe; and the vital spark descends from it, because the heat which is in living beings comes from the soul, and there is no other centre of heat and light in the universe, as will be shown later; and it is certain that those who have elected to worship men as gods--as Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, &c.--have fallen into a profound error, since even if a man were as great as our earth, he would have the appearance of a little star, which appears like a dot in the universe; and moreover these men are mortal, and decay and corrupt in their sepulchres. {154} 33. Epicurus perhaps saw the shadows of columns on the walls in front of them equal to the diameter of the column which cast the shadow; and since the breadth of the shadows are parallel from beginning to end he considered that he might infer that the sun also was directly opposite to this parallel, and consequently no broader than the column; and he did not perceive that the diminution of the shadow was insensibly small owing to the great distance of the sun. If the sun were smaller than the earth, the stars in a great portion of our hemisphere would be without light--in contradiction to Epicurus, who says the sun is only as large as it appears to be. 34. Epicurus says the sun is the size it seems to be; hence, as it seems to be a foot in breadth, we must consider that to be its size. It follows that when the moon eclipses the sun, the sun ought not to appear the larger, as it does; hence, the moon being smaller than the sun, the moon must be less than a foot in breadth, and consequently when the earth eclipses the moon it must be less than a foot by a finger's breadth; inasmuch as if the sun is a foot in breadth, and the earth casts a conical shadow on the moon, it is inevitable that the luminous cause of the conical shadow {155} must be greater than the opaque body which causes it. 35. Measure how many times the diameter of the sun will go into its course in twenty-four hours. And thus we can see whether Epicurus was correct in saying the sun was only as large as it appeared to be; for as the apparent diameter of the sun is about a foot, and as the sun would go a thousand times into its course in twenty-four hours, it would have travelled a thousand feet, that is, three hundred arms' length, which is the sixth of a mile. Thus the course of the sun during twenty-four hours would have been the sixth part of a mile, and this venerable snail, the sun, would have travelled twenty-five arms' length in an hour. [Sidenote: The Sun's Heat] 36. They say that the sun is not hot because it is not the colour of fire but whiter and clearer. And the answer to this is that when molten bronze is hottest it resembles the colour of the sun, and when it is less hot it has the colour of fire. 37. It is proved that the sun is by nature hot and not cold, as has already been stated. If rays of fire play on a concave mirror when it is cold, the rays refracted by the mirror will be hotter than {156} the fire. The rays emitted from a sphere of glass filled with cold water, which are reflected from a fire, will be warmer than the fire. It follows from these two experiments that the heat of the rays reflected by the mirror or the sphere of cold water are hot by virtue, and not because the mirror or the sphere is hot; and in this case it occurs that the sun, passing through these bodies, heats them by its virtue. And owing to this they have inferred that the sun is not hot,--which by the aforesaid experiments has been proved to be exceedingly hot, by the experiment of the mirror and the sphere, which are cold in themselves, and reflect the hot rays of the fire and render them hotter, because the first cause is hot; and the same thing occurs as regards the sun, which, being hot in itself, and passing through these cold mirrors, refracts great heat. It is not the light of the sun which gives warmth, but its natural heat. [Sidenote: Rays of the Sun] 38. The rays of the sun pass through the cold region of the air without any change being effected in their nature, they pass through glasses full of cold water without suffering change; through whatever transparent spot they pass, it is as though they passed through so much air. [Sidenote: Light of the Stars] 39. Some writers allege that the stars shine of {157} themselves, saying that if Venus and Mercury did not shine of themselves, when their light comes between them and the sun they would darken as much of the sun as they could hide from our eye; this is false, because it is proved that a dark body placed against a luminous body is enveloped and altogether covered by the lateral rays of the remaining part of that body, and thus remains invisible; as may be proved when the sun is seen through the boughs of a leafless tree at a long distance, the boughs do not hide any portion of the sun from our eyes. The same thing occurs with the above-mentioned planets, which, though they have no light in themselves, do not, as has been said, hide any portion of the sun from our eyes. Second proof. They say that the stars shine most brightly at night in proportion as they are high; and that, if they did not shine of themselves, the shadow cast by the earth between them and the sun would darken them, since they would not see nor be seen by the sun. But these have not taken into consideration that the conical shadow of the moon does not reach many of the stars, and even for those it does reach the shadow is diminished to such an extent that it covers very little of the star, and the remaining part is illumined by the sun. {158} [Sidenote: On the Nature of the Moon] 40. The moon having density and gravity, how does it stand? 41. i. No very light object is opaque. ii. Nothing light can remain beneath that which is heavier. iii. Whether the moon is the centre of its elements or not. And if it has no fixed position like the earth in the centre of its elements, why does it not fall to the centre of our elements? And if the moon is not in the centre of its elements and does not fall, it must then be lighter than any other element. And if the moon is lighter than the other elements, why is it opaque and not transparent? 42. No body which has density is lighter than the air. Having proved that the part of the moon which shines consists of water which mirrors the body of the sun and reflects for us the splendour it receives from the sun, and that if there were no waves in these waters, it would appear small, but almost as bright as the sun--it must now be shown whether the moon is a heavy or a light body; if it is a heavy body--admitting that from the earth upwards with every grade of distance lightness must increase, so that water is lighter than earth, air is lighter than water, and {159} fire lighter than air, and so on in succession--it would seem that if the moon had density, as it has, it must have gravity, and if it has gravity the space in which it lies could not contain it, and consequently it would fall towards the centre of the universe and be joined to the earth, or if not the moon itself, its waters would fall from the moon and strip it and fall towards the centre, leaving the moon bare and lustreless; whence, as this could not happen, as reason would tell us, it is manifest that the moon is surrounded by its elements, that is to say, water, air and fire, and thus it sustains itself by itself in that space as our earth is suspended with its elements in this part of space; heavy bodies act in their elements there just as other heavy bodies act in ours. [Sidenote: On the Harmony of the Spheres] 43. A sound is produced by the movement of the air in friction against a dense body, and should it be produced by two weighty bodies it is owing to the atmosphere which surrounds them, and this friction consumes the bodies, so that it follows that the spheres in their friction, owing to there being no atmosphere between them, do not generate sound. And if this friction were a fact, during the many centuries the spheres have revolved they would be consumed by the immense velocity expended daily; and even if they produce sound, the sound could not travel, {160} because the sound caused by percussion under water is scarcely noticeable, and it would be less than noticeable in the case of dense bodies. The friction of polished bodies produces no sound, and similar result would be produced in the contact or friction of the spheres; and if the spheres are not polished in their contact and friction, it follows that they are rough. Again, their contact is not continuous; this being the case a vacuum is produced, which it has been proved does not exist in nature. Therefore we conclude that friction would have consumed the ends of each sphere, and in proportion as a sphere has a greater velocity in the centre than at the poles, it would be consumed to a higher degree at the centre than at the poles; and then the friction would cease, and the sound would cease also, and the spheres would cease to revolve unless one sphere revolved eastward and the other northward. 44. Worlds gravitate in the midst of their own elements. The yellow or yolk of an egg remains in the middle of the albumen without moving on either side, and is lighter or heavier or equal to this albumen; and if it is lighter it ought to rise above all the albumen and stop in contact with the shell of the egg; and if it is heavier it ought {161} to sink; and if it is equal to it, it can stand at one of the ends as well as in the centre or below. [Sidenote: The Earth appears a Star] 45. The object of my book is to prove that the ocean, with the other seas, by means of the sun causes our world to shine like the moon and to appear as a star to other worlds; and this I will prove. [Sidenote: The Earth a Star] 46. In your discourse you must prove that the earth is a star like the moon, and thus you will bear witness to the glory of our universe! And thus you must discourse on the size of many stars. 47. How the earth is a star. The earth, in the midst of the sphere of water which clothes the greater part of it, taking its light from the sun and shining in the universe like the other stars, shows itself to be a star as well. [Sidenote: To prove the Earth a Star] 48. First of all define the eye; then show how the twinkling of a star exists really in the eye, and why one star should twinkle more than another, and how the rays of the stars are born in the eye. Say, that if the twinkling of the stars were, as it appears to be, really in the stars, that this {162} twinkling appears to extend in proportion to the body of the star. The star, therefore, being larger than the earth, this motion made in an instant of time would in its velocity double the size of the star. Then prove that the surface of the atmosphere, contiguous to fire and the surface of fire, where it ends, is the point in which the rays of the sun penetrate and bear the image of the celestial bodies which are large when they rise and set, and small when they are on the meridian. [Sidenote: Earth not the Center of Universe] 49. The earth is not the centre of the orbit of the sun, nor the centre of the universe, but in the centre of its companion elements and united with them; and if any one were to stand on the moon when the moon and the sun are beneath us, our earth, with its element of water, would appear and shine for him just as the moon appears and shines for us. 50. The earth, shining like the moon, has lost a great part of its ancient splendour by the decrease of the waters. 51. Nothing is generated in a place where is no sentient vegetable and rational life; feathers grow on birds and change every year; coats grow on animals and are changed every year, with some {163} exceptions, like the lion's beard and the cat's fur, and such; grass grows in the fields and leaves on the trees; and every year they are renewed in great part. Thus we can say that the spirit of growth is the soul of the earth, the soil its flesh, the ordered arrangement of rocks its bones, of which mountains are formed, the tufa its tendons; its blood the veins of water which surround its heart, which is the ocean; its breathing and increase and decrease of blood in the pulses the ebb and flood of the sea; and the heat of the spirit of the world is fire which pervades the earth, and the vital soul dwells in the fires which from various apertures of the earth issue in springs and sulphur minerals and volcanoes, as at Mount Etna in Sicily and in many other places. 52. The ancients called man the world in miniature, and certainly the name is a happy one, because man being composed of earth, water, air and fire, the body of the earth resembles the body of man. As man has in him bones for the support and framework of his flesh, likewise in the world the rocks are the supports of the earth; as man has in him a pool of blood in which the lungs rise and fall in their breathing, so the body of the earth has its ocean which rises and falls every six hours as if the world breathed; as from the aforesaid pool of blood veins issue which {164} ramify throughout the human body, so does the ocean fill the body of the earth with innumerable veins of water. The body of the earth lacks sinews, which do not exist because sinews are made for movement, and the world being in perpetual stability no movement occurs, and there being no movement, sinews are not necessary; but in all other points they resemble each other greatly. 53. Water is the driver of nature. [Sidenote: Experience the Basis of Science] 54. In explaining the action of water remember to cite experience first and then reason. 55. Do not forget that you must put forward propositions adducing the above-mentioned facts as illustrations, not as propositions,--that would be too simple. 56. Water in itself has no stability and cannot move of its own accord, save to descend. Water of its own accord does not cease to move unless it is shut in. 57. The body of the earth, like the body of animals, is intersected with ramifying veins, which are all {165} united and constructed for the nourishment and life of the earth and of its creatures. [Sidenote: Water is the Blood of the World] 58. The water which rises in the mountains is the blood which keeps the mountain alive, and through this conduit or vein, nature, the helper of her creatures, prompt in the desire to repair the loss of the moisture expended, proffers the desired aid abundantly; just as in a stricken spot in man you will see, owing to the aid which is brought, the blood abound under the skin in a swelling, so as to succour the spot which has been stricken; likewise, in the case of the vine, when it is cut at its extremity, nature causes its moisture to rise from the lowest root to the end of the extremity which has been cut, and when this moisture has been expended nature ceases not to supply it with vital moisture to the end of its life. 59. Water is that which is given to supply vital moisture to this arid earth; and the cause which propels it through its ramifications against the natural course of weighty matter is the same which stirs the humours in every kind of animal body. [Sidenote: Water on Mountains] 60. Water, the vital moisture of the earthly machine, moves by reason of its natural heat. {166} [Sidenote: On the Water of Rivers] 61. Rivers, with their ruinous inundations, seem to me the most potent of all causes of terrestrial losses, and not fire, as some have maintained; because the violence of fire is exhausted where there is nothing forthcoming to feed it. The flowing of water, which is maintained by sloping valleys, ends and dies at the lowest depth of the valley; but fire is caused by fuel and the movement of water by incline. The fuel of fire is disunited, and its damage is disunited and isolated, and fire dies where there is no fuel. The incline of valleys is united, and damage caused by water is collective, along with the ruinous course of the river, until with its valley it winds into the sea, the universal base and sole haven of the wandering waters of rivers. But what voice or words shall I find to express the disastrous ravages, the incredible upheavals, the insatiable rapacity, caused by the headstrong rivers? What can I say? Certainly I do not feel myself equal to such a demonstration, yet by experience I will try to relate the process of ruin of the rivers which destroy their banks and against which no mortal bastion can prevail. 62. The recesses of the bottom of the sea are perennial, the summits of mountains are transitory, whence it follows that the earth will become {167} spherical and covered with waters, and will be uninhabitable. [Sidenote: Transformations in Past and Future] 63. The shores of the sea continually increase in soil, towards the middle of the sea; the cliffs and promontories of the sea are continually being ruined and consumed; the mediterranean seas will dry up and all that will remain will be the channel of the greatest river which enters into them; this will flow to the ocean and pour out its waters together with that of all the rivers which are its tributaries. [Sidenote: On the Earth's Vibration] 64. The subterranean courses of water, like those which are made between the air and the earth, are those which continually consume and deepen the beds of their currents. The earth which is carried by rivers is discharged at the end of their course, that is to say, the earth carried from the highest part of the river's course is discharged at the lowest depth of its course. Where fresh water arises in the sea, the miracle of the creation of an island is manifest, which will be discovered sooner or later in proportion as the quantity of water is greater or less. And an island of this kind is formed by the deposit of earth and stones made by the subterranean current of water in the channels through which it passes. {168} [Sidenote: Nature's Law] 65. Nature never breaks her laws. 66. Nature is constrained by the cause of her laws which dwells inborn in her. 67. Without reason no effect is produced in nature; understand the reason and you will not need experience. [Sidenote: Cause discovered by Effect] 68. Before I proceed further I will make some experiments, because it is my intention to cite the experiment first and then to demonstrate by reasoning how such an experiment must necessarily take effect in such a manner. And this is the true rule by which investigations of natural phenomena must proceed; and although nature herself begins from the reason and ends in the result, we must pursue the contrary course and begin, as I said above, from experience and by it seek out the reason. [Sidenote: Repetition of Experiment] 69. Before deducing a general rule from this case repeat the experiment two or three times and see if the same results are produced. {169} [Sidenote: Example of preceding Rule] 70. It several bodies of equal weight and shape are dropped one after another at equal intervals of time, the distances between each successive body will be equally increased. The experiment to prove the above-mentioned theorem respecting motion must be made thus: Take two balls of equal weight and shape and let them fall from a great height so that when they start falling they touch one another, and let the investigator stand on the ground and watch whether the contact is maintained during their fall. This experiment must be repeated several times, so that the trial may not be marred by any accident and the experiment vitiated and the spectator deceived. [Sidenote: Necessity of Analysis] 71. We know definitely that sight is infinitely swift and in an instant of time perceives countless shapes, nevertheless it only sees one object at a time. Let us take an example. You, O reader, will see the whole of this written page at a glance, and you will instantly realize that it is full of various letters, but you will not realize at that moment what these letters are nor what they signify; wherefore you will have to proceed word by word and line by line to take cognizance of these letters. Again, if you wish to reach the summit of a building you must mount step by step, {170} otherwise it will be impossible for you to reach the summit. And therefore I say to you whom nature has drawn to this art, if you wish to attain to a thorough knowledge of the forms of objects, you will begin by studying the details, and not proceed to the second until you have committed the first to memory and mastered it in practice, and if you do otherwise you will be wasting your time and protracting your studies. And remember first of all to acquire diligence, which signifies speed. [Sidenote: Vision] 72. Of the nature of the eye. Here are the forms, here the colours, here the form of every part of the universe are concentrated in a point, and that point is so great a marvel! O marvellous and stupendous necessity! thou dost compel by thy law, and by the most direct path, every effect to proceed from its cause. These things are verily miracles! I wrote in my Anatomy how in so small a space the visual faculty can be reproduced and formed again in its whole expanse. 73. In many cases one and the same thing is attracted by two violent forces,--necessity and power. The water falls in rain and by necessity the earth absorbs the humidity; the sun causes it to evaporate, not of necessity, but by power. {171} [Sidenote: Unconscious Reasoning] 74. The pupil of the eye in the air expands and contracts according to every degree of motion made by the sun. And with every dilation or contraction the same object will appear of a different size, although frequently the relative scale of surrounding circumstances does not allow us to perceive these variations in any single object we look at. [Sidenote: The Eye] 75. The pupil of the eye dilates and contracts in proportion to the variety of bright and dark objects which are reflected in it. In this case nature has afforded compensation to the visual faculty by contracting the pupil of the eye when it is offended by excess of light and by causing it to dilate when offended by excess of darkness, like the opening of the purse. And nature here behaves like the man who has too much light in his house and closes half the window, or more or less of it according to need; and when night comes he opens the window altogether so as to see better inside his house, and nature here adopts a continued process of compensation, by continually regulating and readjusting the expansion and contracting of the pupil, in proportion to the aforesaid obscurity and light which are continually reflected in it. {172} [Sidenote: Water surrounding the Globe Spherical] 76. When you collect facts relating to the science of the motion of water, remember to place under every proposition the uses to which it may be applied, in order that this knowledge may not be fruitless. 77. This is a difficult question to answer, but I will nevertheless state my opinion. Water, which is clothed with air, desires naturally to cleave to its sphere because in this position it is without gravity. This gravity is twofold,--the gravity of the whole which tends to the centre of the elements, and the gravity which tends to the centre of the waters of the spherical orb; if this were not so the water would form a half sphere only, which is the sphere described from the centre upwards. But I see no means in the human mind of acquiring knowledge with regard to this. We must say, as we say of the magnet which attracts iron, that such a virtue is an occult property of which there is an infinite quantity in nature. 78. In the motion of earth against earth the repercussion of the portion struck is slight. Water struck by water, eddies in circles around the spot where the shock has taken place. The reverberation of the voice continues for a {173} great distance through the air; for a greater distance through fire. The mind travels for a still greater distance through the universe; but since it is finite it does not penetrate into infinity. 79. If the water which rises on the summits of the mountains comes from the sea, whence it is propelled by its weight to a greater height than that of the mountains, why has this portion of the element of water the power to elevate itself to such an altitude and to penetrate the earth by so great an expenditure of labour and time, when the residue of the element of water, whose only obstacle is the air which does not impede it, is not able to raise itself to a similar altitude? And thou who didst devise this theory, go and study nature, so that thou mayst cease to acquire such opinions of which thou hast made so great a collection, together with the capital and interest which thou dost possess. [Sidenote: On the Law of Gravity] 80. The sphere of the earth has gravity which increases in proportion to the lightness of the element which contains it. Fire is light in its sphere and its lightness increases in proportion to the weight of the element which contains it. {174} No primary element has gravity or lightness in its own sphere. 81. The motion made by bodies which possess gravity to the common centre is not produced by the tendency of the body to find this centre, nor is it caused by attraction made by the centre, as by a magnet, drawing the weight towards it. 82. Why does not the weight remain in its place? It does not remain because it has no resistance. And whither will it tend? It will tend to the centre of the earth. And why not along other lines? Because the weight which meets with no resistance will descend by the shortest way to the lowest depth, and the lowest depth is the centre of the earth. And how does a weight find the centre of the earth with such directness? Because it does not proceed at random, wandering by diverse courses. [Sidenote: Phenomena governed by Mechanical Laws] 83. Instrumental science, that is to say, mechanics, is the most noble and most useful of sciences, inasmuch as by means of it all living bodies which have movement act; and this movement has {175} its origin in the centre of gravity which is placed in the middle, dividing unequal weights, and it has dearth and wealth of muscles and lever also and counter-lever. 84. Since these things are far more ancient than letters, it is no wonder if in our day no records exist to tell how these seas filled so many countries. But if some record had existed, conflagrations, floods, wars, changes of tongues and laws have consumed all that is ancient; sufficient for us is the testimony of objects born in the salt waters and found again in the high mountains far off from the seas of those times. [Sidenote: Heat the Vital Principle] 85. Heat causes moisture to move, and cold arrests it; as is seen in a cold country which arrests the motion of the clouds in the air. Where there is life there is heat, where there is vital heat there is movement of moisture. [Sidenote: Against those desiring to correct Nature] 86. The act of cutting out the nostrils of a horse is a piece of ludicrous folly. And the foolish indulge in this practice as though they considered nature had failed to supply necessary wants, and man had therefore to supplement her work. Nature made two apertures in the nose, which each in {176} itself is half as large as the lung pipe whence breath proceeds, and if these apertures did not exist the mouth would abundantly suffice for breathing purposes. And if you said to me, Why has nature thus provided animals with nostrils if respiration through the mouth is sufficient?--I would answer that nostrils are made to be used when the mouth is employed in masticating its food. [Sidenote: Of Trees] 87. If a tree has been stripped of its bark in some spot, nature makes provision for this and gives a greater supply of nourishing sap to the stripped portion than to any other, so that in place of what has been taken away the bark grows thicker than in any other spot. And so impetuous is the motion of the sap that when it reaches the spot which is to be healed, it rises higher like a bounding ball, in bubbles, not unlike boiling water. [Sidenote: The Leaves of Plants] 88. Nature has so placed the leaves of the latest shoots of many trees that the sixth leaf is always above the first, and thus in continued succession unless the rule is obstructed. And this she has done for two useful purposes in the plant: firstly, since the branches and the fruit of the following year spring from the bud or eye which is above and in contact with the juncture of the leaves, {177} the water which feeds the shoot may be able to run down and nourish the bud, through the drop being caught in the hollow whence the leaf springs. And the second advantage is that as these buds shoot in the following year, one will not be covered by the other, since the five shoots spring on five different sides. [Sidenote: From Known to Unknown] 89. In order to arrive at knowledge of the motions of birds in the air, it is first necessary to acquire knowledge of the winds, which we will prove by the motions of water in itself, and this knowledge will be a step enabling us to arrive at the knowledge of beings that fly between the air and the wind. [Sidenote: On the Flight of Birds] 90. The reason of this is that small birds being without down cannot support the intense cold of the high altitudes in which the vultures and eagles or and other great birds, well supplied with down and clothed with many kinds of feathers, [fly]. Again, the small birds, having delicate and thin wings, support themselves in the low air, which is denser, and they could not bear up in the rarer air, which affords slighter resistance. [Sidenote: On the Structure of Wings] 91. The shafts formed in the shoulders of the wings of birds have been so devised by ingenious nature {178} as to occasion a convenient pliancy in the direct impetus which often occurs in the swift flight of birds, since she found it more practical to bend a small part of the wing in the direct flight than the whole of it. [Sidenote: On a Fossil Fish] 92. O time! swift devourer of all created things! How many kings, how many nations, thou hast overthrown, how great changes of kingdoms and diverse vicissitudes have succeeded one another, since the marvellous body of this fish, which perished in the caverns and intricate recesses [of the mountain]. Now undone by time, thou liest patient in this confined spot; with thy fleshless and bare bones thou hast built the framework and the support of the mountain that is above thee. [Sidenote: We live by Others' Death] 93. Unconscious life remains in what is dead, which when reunited to the stomach of living men, reacquires sentient and conscious life. [Sidenote: Against Doctors] 94. Men are chosen to be physicians in order to minister to diseases of which they are ignorant. 95. Every man wishes to amass money in order to give it to the physicians who are the destroyers of life; they ought therefore to be rich. {179} 96. Take pains to preserve thy health; and thou wilt all the more easily do this if thou avoidest physicians, because their drugs are a kind of alchemy, and there are as many books on this subject as there are on medicine. 97. Oh! meditators on perpetual motion, how many vain projects of similar character you have devised! Go and join the seekers of gold. [Sidenote: Against the Seekers of Perpetual Motion] 98. The water which flows in a river moves either because it is summoned or driven, or because it moves of its own accord. If it is summoned,--and I mean sought after,--who is the seeker? If it is driven, who is the driver? If it moves of its own accord, it gives evidence of reasoning; and reasoning in bodies which continually change their shape is impossible, because in such bodies there is no consciousness. [Sidenote: Against Occult Sciences] 99. I wish to work miracles. I may have less than other and less energetic men; and those who wish to grow rich in a day live a long time in great poverty, as happens, and will always happen, to alchemists, who seek to make gold and silver, and to the engineers who wish from still {180} water to obtain life and perpetual motion, and to the supreme fool,--the necromancer and the magician. [Sidenote: Of Astrology] 100. There is no part of astronomy which does not depend on the visual lines and on perspective, the daughter of painting; because the painter is he who by the necessity of his art has begotten perspective, and it is impossible to do without lines which include all the various figures of the bodies begotten by nature and without which the art of geometry is blind. And while the geometrist reduces every surface surrounded by lines to a square, and each body to the figure of the cube, and mathematics do the same with their cube roots and square roots, these two sciences deal only with the continuous and discontinuous quantity, but they do not deal with the quality which constitutes the beauty of the works of nature and the ornament of the world. 101. Here the adversary will say that he does not want so much knowledge, and the mere skill of depicting nature will suffice him. To which I make reply that there is no greater error than to trust to our judgement without other reasoning, as experience, the enemy of alchemists, necromancers and other foolish intellects, has in all times proved. {181} [Sidenote: Against Alchemists] 102. The lying interpreters of nature affirm that quicksilver is the common seed of all metals. They do not bear in mind that nature raises substances according to the diversity of things which she wishes to produce in the world. [Sidenote: Against Necromancy] 103. The belief in necromancy is reputed to be the most foolish of all human opinions. It is the sister of alchemy which gives birth to simple and natural things; but it is all the more reprehensible than alchemy, inasmuch as it brings forth nothing but what is like itself, that is, lies. This is not the case with alchemy, which is confined to the simple products of nature, and whose function cannot be performed by nature herself, because in it there are no organic instruments with which it can work, such as the hands are to man and which have enabled him to make glass, &c. But necromancy, the flag and flying banner, blown hither and thither by the winds, is the guide of the silly multitude, which constantly bears witness with gaping wonder to the countless effects of this art; and whole books are written which declare that incantations and spirits are efficacious and speak without tongues and without vocal organs, without which it is impossible to speak, and carry the heaviest weights, raising tempests and rain and {182} transforming men into cats, wolves and other beasts, although they who affirm such things are the first to be transformed into beasts. And certainly if such necromancy existed, as is believed by lower intellects, there is nothing on the earth which would be so effectual both as regards the service and detriment of man; because if it is true that this art has the power to disturb the calm serenity of the atmosphere, changing it into night and producing sparks and winds, with fearful thunder and lightnings that fly through the darkness, and overthrowing high buildings with violent winds and uprooting forests and striking armies and shattering and overwhelming them, and producing, in addition to this, devastating storms which rob the peasants of the fruits of their toil, what kind of warfare is there so deadly to the enemy? Who in naval warfare can be compared with him who commands the winds and generates storms which ruin and sink any fleet whatsoever? Certainly he who could dispose of such violent forces would be the lord of nations, and no human skill could resist his deadly power. The hidden treasures and gems concealed in the body of the earth would be manifest unto him. He would let himself be borne through the air from the east to the west, and through all the opposed regions of the universe. But why should I proceed further? What thing is there which could not be effected by such an art? Nothing, save {183} the discovery of immortality. And if it is true, why has it not remained among men who so greatly desired it, and led them to disregard any deity? And I know that there are many who to satisfy a whim would destroy God and the universe. And if necromancy has not remained with man in spite of its being so necessary to him it can never have existed, nor will it ever exist according to the definition of the spirit which is invisible in the body, for in the elements there are no incorporate things, for where there is no body there is a vacuum, and a vacuum cannot exist in the elements because it would be immediately filled by them. [Sidenote: Deceptiveness of the Senses] 104. The eye in its given distances and by its given means deceives itself in the performance of its functions less than any other sense, because it sees in straight lines which form a cone, the base of which is the object it perceives, and transmits it to the eye, as I intend to prove. But the ear greatly deceives itself as to the position and distance of the objects it apprehends, because the sonorous waves do not reach it in straight lines, like those of the eye, but by tortuous and reflex lines, and often the most remote seem to be nearest, owing to the peregrinations of such waves, although the voice of the echo is transmitted to the sense by straight lines only. The smell is less certain of the spot whence the odour arises, but {184} taste and touch alone come into direct contact with the object which they apprehend. [Sidenote: On the Conception of Nothingness] 105. The smallest natural point is larger than all mathematical points, and the proof of this is that the natural point has continuity, and everything which has continuity is infinitely divisible; but the mathematical point is indivisible because it is not a quantity. Every continuous quantity is mentally infinitely divisible. Among the magnitude of things which are among us, the chief of all is nothingness; and its function extends to matter that does not exist, and its essence is in time in the past or in the future, and it has nothing of the present. This nothingness has its part equal to the whole and the whole to the part, and the divisible to the indivisible, and produces the same result by addition or subtraction, or if it be divided or multiplied,--as is proved by arithmeticians by their tenth character, which represents nothing. And its power does not extend to the things of nature. That which is called nothingness is found only in time and in words: in time it is found in the past and future, and not in the present; and thus in words among things which are said to be nonexistent or impossible. In time nothingness dwells in the past and the future, and not at all in the present, and in nature it resides among the things {185} which are impossible. Whence from that which has been said, it has no being, because where there is nothingness there would be a vacuum. [Sidenote: On Spirits] 106. With regard to this matter, we have said on the previous page that the definition of a spirit is a power united with a body, because it cannot move of its own accord nor acquire any kind of motion. And if you say that it moves itself, this cannot be within the elements, because if the spirit is an incorporate quantity this quantity is a vacuum and the vacuum does not exist in nature, and if it did exist it would be immediately filled by the rushing in of the element in which the vacuum was formed. So according to the definition of weight which runs: "Gravity is an accidental power created by one element attracted to or suspended in another," it follows that no element, weighing nothing in its own element, can have weight in the element which is above it and lighter than it; for instance, no one part of water has no more gravity or lightness than any other part, but if you were to draw it up into the air, it would acquire weight, and this weight cannot sustain itself by itself; and it must therefore inevitably fall, and thus wherever there is a vacuum in water it will fall in. The same thing would happen with a spirit among the elements where it would continuously generate a vacuum {186} in whatever element it might find itself, for which reason it is inevitable that it would move in a constant flight to the sky until it had quitted these elements. [Sidenote: Has the Spirit a Body?] 107. We have proved that a spirit cannot exist in the elements without a body, nor move of itself by voluntary motion unless it be to rise upwards. But now we will say that if such a spirit took a body made of air it would inevitably melt into air, because if it remained united it would be separated and fall and form a vacuum, as we have described above. Therefore if it desired to remain in the air it is necessary that it should blend with a quantity of air, and if it were united with the air, two difficulties arise: that is, that it will rarefy that portion of air with which it is mingled, and this rarefied air will fly upwards and will not remain in the air which is heavier than itself; and besides this the ethereal spiritual essence is disunited, and its nature is changed, for which reason that nature loses some of its first virtue. There is in addition to these a third difficulty, and this is that a body of this kind, made of air and assumed by the spirits, is exposed to the penetrating winds which continually sunder and scatter the united portions of the air, eddying and whirling amidst the rest of the atmosphere; therefore the spirit who would pervade {187} this air would be dismembered or rent and broken up with the rending of the air of which it formed part. 108. It is impossible that the spirit, incorporated with a certain quantity of air, should move this air; and this is proved by the passage where it is said that "the spirit rarefies that portion of the air with which it is mingled." This air therefore will rise high above the other air, and the air will be set in motion by its own lightness and not by the volition of the spirit, and if this air encounters a wind, the air will be moved by the wind and not by the spirit which is incorporated in it. [Sidenote: Can the Spirit speak?] 109. In order to show whether the spirit can speak or not it is first necessary to define the voice and the manner of its origin. The following will be our definition: The voice is the movement of air in friction against a dense body, or a dense body in friction against the air (which is the same idea), and by this friction of the dense and the rare what is rare is condensed, and resistance is caused; and again, when the rare in swift motion and the rare in slow motion come into contact, they condense one another and produce sound, and a great noise is made. The sound or murmur made by the rare moving through the rare {188} with slow motion is like the great flame whence sounds issue in the air; the exceedingly great noise made by the rare, when the air which is rare and swift mingles with that which is rare and in [slow] motion, is like the flame of fire issuing from a great gun and striking against the air; likewise the flame when it issues from a cloud strikes the air as it begets the thunderbolt. Therefore we will say that the spirit cannot produce a voice unless the air be set in motion, but since there is no air within, it cannot discharge what it does not possess; and if it wishes to move that air in which it is incorporated, it is necessary that the spirit should multiply itself; but that which has no quantity cannot be multiplied. In the fourth place it is said, that no rare body can move if it has not a stable spot whence it may take its motion, and more especially is this the case when an element must move in its own element, which does not move of itself, excepting by uniform evaporation at the centre of the thing evaporated; as occurs in the case of the sponge squeezed in the hand under water, whence the water escapes in every direction with equal motion through the spaces between the fingers of the hand which squeezes it. As to whether the spirit has an articulate voice and can be heard, and as to what are hearing and sight--the wave of the voice travels through the air as the images of objects travel to the eye. {189} 110. O mathematicians, clear up this error! The spirit cannot have a voice, for where there is a voice there is a body, and where there is a body there is occupation of space, which prevents the eye seeing what is behind that space; therefore a body fills all the surrounding air, that is to say, with its own image. 111. There can be no voice where there is no motion or percussion of the air, there can be no percussion of the air where there is no instrument, there can be no such thing as an immaterial instrument; and this being so, a spirit can have neither voice, nor shape, nor force; and if it assumes a shape it can neither penetrate nor enter where the issues are closed. If any one were to say that a spirit may take bodies of various shapes by means of concentrated and compressed air, and by means of this instrument speak and move with force--I reply to this argument that where there are no nerves or bones, no force can be expended in any movement made by these imaginary spirits. {193} BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE AND TABLE OF REFERENCES BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE * * * Only of late years have the manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci seen the light and the many difficulties been overcome which long proved an obstacle to their publication. The labour of editing, deciphering and translating his many scattered and fragmentary codices was beyond the efforts of any single man. The gratitude of the cultivated world is therefore due to those who, like J. P. Richter, C. Kavaisson-Mollien, Luca Beltrami, Piumati, Sabachnikoff, and, last but not least, the scholars of the Academia del Lincei, have so faithfully devoted themselves to this task, which alone has made possible the present little work. It was unavoidable that the form in which these manuscripts have been published should practically restrict their possession to the great libraries. But an excellent volume of selections from the writings of Leonardo, which are found in so haphazard a manner scattered through his codices and intermingled with his drawings and diagrams, has been published in Italy (Leonardo da Vinci: Frammenti Letterari e Storici, Florence, 1900). By kind permission of its editor, Dr. Solmi, this has served as a basis for the text of the present translation. The references, however, have {194} been verified with the complete editions of Leonardo's works, while a different arrangement has been made of the text. L. E. [Sidenote: Table of References] TABLE OF REFERENCES [A] Les manuscrits de Léonard de Vinci. Le manuscrit A de la Bibliothèque de l'Institut. Edit. Ravaisson-Mollien, vol. i. Paris, 1880. [ASH I] Les manuscrits de Léonard de Vinci. Les manuscrits H de la Bibliothèque de l'Institut; 2038 (Ash I) et 2037 (Ash II) de la Bibliotheque Nationale. Edit. Ravaisson-Mollien, vol. vi. Paris, 1891. [ASH II] Idem. [B] Les manuscrits de Léonard de Vinci. Les manuscrits B et D de la Bibliothèque de l'Institut. Edit. Ravaisson-Mollien, vol. ii. Paris, 1883. [C] Les manuscrits de Leonard de Vinci. Les manuscrits C, E et K de la Bibliothèque de l'Institut. Edit. Ravaisson-Mollien, vol. iii. Paris, 1888. [C A] Il Codice Atlantico di Léonardo da Vinci nella Biblioteca Ambrosiana di Milano. Rome; Milan, 1891. (Still in course of publication.) [D] See B. [E] See C. [F] Les manuscrits de Léonard de Vinci. Les manuscrits F et I de la Bibliothèque de l'Institut. Edit. Ravaisson-Mollien, vol. iv. Paris, 1889. {195} [G] Les manuscrits de Léonard de Vinci. Les manuscrits G, L et M de la Bibliothèque de l'Institut. Edit. Ravaisson-Mollien, vol. v. Paris, 1890. [H] See Ash I. [I] See F. [L] See G. [Lu] Léonardo da Vinci: Das Buch vom Malerei. Herausgegeben v. H. Ludwig. 3 vols. Berlin, 1882. [M] See G. [R] The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci. Compiled and edited from the original manuscripts by J. P. Richter. 2 vols. London, 1883. [S] Leonardo da Vinci: Frammenti Letterari e Filosofici. Trasceiti dal Dr. Edmondo Solmi. Florence, 1900. [T] Il codice di Léonardo da Vinci nella Biblioteca del Principe Trivulzio. Edit. L. Beltrami. Milan, 1892. [V U] Leonardo da Vinci. Il codice del volo degli uccelli ed altre materie. Edit. Sabachnikoff e Piumati. Paris, 1893. [Sidenote: On Life] THOUGHTS ON LIFE Page. No. Reference. Page. No. Reference. 3 1 R 4 4 4 CA 119 r 3 2 R 1339 5 5 Lu 9 4 3 R 841 5 6 R 1169 {196} Page. No. Reference. Page. No. Reference. 5 7 S 69 14 36 R 838 6 8 C A 119 r 14 37 Lu 16 6 9 C A 91 v 15 38 Lu 65 6 10 C A 119 r 15 39 S 96 6 11 S 71 15 40 B 4 v 7 12 R 1178 15 41 F 96 v 7 13 S 72 15 42 C A 79 r 7 14 T 2 v 15 43 S 98 8 15 C A 112 r 15 44 S 99 8 l6 Lu 65 16 45 G 47 r 9 17 S 74 16 46 C A 119 v 9 l8 S 336 l6 47 R 837 9 19 S 74 17 48 R 1210 9 20 R ll75 19 49 I 18 r 9 21 M 58 v 19 50 S 67 10 22 V U 12 r 19 51 R 1135 10 23 S 76 19 52 C A 169 v 10 24 C A 119 r 20 53 S 114 11 25 C A 117 r 20 54 S 115 11 26 C A 76 r 21 55 Ash II 4 r 11 27 C A 117 r 21 56 C A 59 r 12 28 C A 76 r 21 57 T 6 r 12 29 F 27 v 21 58 G 74 v 12 30 S 83 22 58 S 121 12 31 R 1150 22 60 S 122 12 32 C A 154 r 22 61 S 123 13 33 C A 154 r 23 62 H 89 v 13 34 C A 86 r 23 63 S 168 13 35 T 20 v 23 64 F 49 v {197} Page. No. Reference. Page. No. Reference. 24 65 S 169 36 94 C A 29 v 24 66 R 846 36 95 C A 12 r 24 67 R 1219 36 96 C A 71 v 25 68 R 1187 37 97 S 205 25 69 R 838 37 98 T 34 R 27 70 C A 90 r 37 99 T 34 r 28 71 C A 119 v 37 100 T 27 r 29 72 R 839 37 101 C A 71 r 29 73 Lu 499 38 102 Lu 77 30 74 T 7 v 38 103 R 1132 30 75 S 180 39 104 R 1133 30 76 R 916 39 105 S 208 31 77 R 798 39 106 T 340 31 78 S 187 39 l07 T 14 v 32 79 C A 119 r 39 108 C 117 v 32 80 R 1 39 109 G 49 r 32 81 Lu 292 40 110 S 209 33 82 S 201 41 111 H passim 34 83 H 60 r 44 ll2 S 214 34 84 H 32 r 45 113 H 48 v 34 85 S 202 45 114 S 2l6 34 86 C A 76 r 45 115 R 827 35 87 S 202 46 116 R 844 35 88 H 33 v 47 117 R 8l6 35 89 S 203 47 118 S 221 35 90 T 33 v 48 119 S 221 35 91 T 23 v 48 120 S 229 35 92 Ash i 34 v 48 121 C 15 v 36 93 C A 76 r 50 122 R 1358 {198} Page. No. Reference. Page. No. Reference. 51 123 S 217 54 127 R 300 52 124 R 1355 55 128 S 382 52 125 Lu 24 55 129 S 199 53 126 Lu 16 [Sidenote: On Art] THOUGHTS ON ART 59 1 C A 141 v 85 24 Lu 29 60 2 S 274 85 25 Lu 31 60 3 Lu 438 87 26 Lu 30 60 4 Lu 27 88 27 Lu 32 60 5 Lu 34 90 28 S 276 61 6 Lu 7 90 29 Lu 9 62 7 Lu 8 90 30 Lu 13 64 8 Ash II 19 v 91 31 S 275 65 9 Lu 2 92 32 Ash II 20 r 66 10 Lu 7 92 33 Ash II 26 r 66 11 Lu 14 93 34 Ash II 25 r 24 v 68 12 Lu 10 68 13 Lu 46 95 35 Lu 35 68 14 Lu 18 96 36 Lu 36 69 15 Lu 20 97 37 Lu 38 71 16 Lu 21 98 38 Lu 40 72 17 Lu 22 99 39 Lu 41 73 18 S 251 100 40 Lu 405 77 19 S 257 100 41 Lu 62 80 20 Lu 27 100 42 R 498 82 21 Lu 27 100 43 Lu 57 82 22 Lu 26 101 44 Ash II 16 v 83 23 Lu 28 101 45 Lu 58 {199} Page. No. Reference. Page. No. Reference. 101 46 R 103 116 70 Lu 107 102 47 R 104 116 71 S 337 103 48 Lu 404 117 72 S 338 104 49 Ash II 22v 117 73 S 336 105 50 Lu 54 117 74 S 337 105 51 I 130 v 118 75 Lu 108 105 52 C A 76 v 119 76 Lu 109 106 53 C A 119 v 120 77 A 23 r 106 54 G 8 v 120 78 K 110 v 106 55 Ash II 17 v 120 79 S 338 107 56 C A 181 v 121 80 Lu 15, 25 107 57 S 200 125 81 R 1021 108 58 S 284 125 82 Lu 806 109 59 S 78 127 83 Ash I 18 v 111 60 S 283 128 84 Ash I 21 r 111 61 G 33 r v 129 85 Ash I 30 v 111 62 R 796 133 86 S 2l6 112 63 Ash II 26 r 134 87 Ash II 22 v 113 64 Ash II 28 r 134 88 S 335 113 65 Ash II 26 r 135 89 S 338 114 66 Ash II 25 r 136 90 S 339 114 67 Ash II 24 v 137 91 S 341 115 68 Lu 53 137 92 S 342 116 69 S 122 137 93 S 340 [Sidenote: On Science] THOUGHTS ON SCIENCE 141 1 Lu 1 141 3 R 3 141 2 R 110 141 4 R 6 {200} Page. No. Reference. Page. No. Reference. 142 5 R 1157 154 34 F 6 r 142 6 G 96 v 155 35 F 8 r 142 7 T 12 r 155 36 F 34 v 142 8 Lu 1 155 37 G 34 r 143 9 Lu 33 156 38 F 85 v 146 10 E 8 v 156 39 S 136 146 11 R 1156 158 40 S 141 146 12 K 49 r 158 41 S 139 146 13 I 102 r, v 158 42 S 140 147 14 A 24 r 159 43 S 128 148 15 S 124 160 44 R 902 148 l6 T 36 v 161 45 S 138 148 17 T 36 v 161 46 S 137 148 18 H 141 r 161 47 S 137 148 19 E 22 r 161 48 S 138 149 20 I 68 r 162 49 S 139 149 21 R 859 162 50 S 139 149 22 F 52 r 162 51 S 142 150 23 S 126 163 52 C A 80 r 150 24 S l27 164 53 H 95 r 151 25 B 63 r 164 54 H 90 r 151 26 S 125 164 55 S 88 151 27 C 26 v 164 56 F 30 v 151 28 A 60 r 164 57 R 1000 151 29 S 124 165 58 R 970 152 30 C 28 v 165 59 H 77 r 152 31 R 860 165 60 R 965 153 32 S 131 166 61 R 953 154 33 S 132 166 62 F 52 v {201} Page. No. Reference. Page. No. Reference. 167 63 G 49 v 176 88 S 118 167 64 K 22 177 89 E 54 r 168 65 S 113 177 90 C A 66 v 168 66 S 113 177 91 E 52 v 168 67 C A 147 v 178 92 S 148 168 68 E 55 v 178 93 S 167 168 69 S 88 178 94 S 200 169 70 M 57 r 178 95 S 200 169 71 R 107 179 96 S 200 170 72 C A 337 v 179 97 R 1206 170 73 T 39 r 179 98 K 101 v 171 74 I 202 179 99 R 796 171 75 D 5 r 180 100 Lu 17 172 76 F 2 v 180 101 S 66 172 77 C A 75 v 181 102 S 122 172 78 H 67 v 181 103 R 1213 173 79 F 2 v 183 104 S 181 173 80 F 69 v 184 105 Ash III 27 v 174 81 S 129 185 106 S 192 174 82 C A 153 v 186 107 R 1214 174 83 V U 3 v 187 108 R 1215 175 84 R 984 187 109 C A 187 v 175 85 S 142 189 110 S 196 175 86 C A 76 r 189 111 B 4 V 176 87 C A 76 r OF THIS VOLUME TRANSLATED BY MAURICE BARING AND EDITED BY LEWIS EINSTEIN WITH TYPES & DECORATIONS BY HERBERT P. HORNE CCCIII COPIES WERE PRINTED OPTIMUM VIX SATIS BY D. B. UPDIKE AT THE MERRYMOUNT PRESS BOSTON MASSACHUSETTS IN THE MONTH OF SEPTEMBER MCM VI 
12264	----	from images provided by the Million Book Project. FATHER PAYNE By Arthur Christopher Benson 1915 PREFACE Often as I have thought of my old friend "Father Payne," as we affectionately called him, I had somehow never intended to write about him, or if I did, it was "like as a dream when one awaketh," a vision that melted away at the touch of common life. Yet I always felt that his was one of those rich personalities well worth depicting, if the attitude and gesture with which he faced the world could be caught and fixed. The difficulty was that he was a man of ideas rather than of performance, suggestive rather than active: and the whole history of his experiment with life was evasive, and even to ordinary views fantastic. Besides, my own life has been a busy one, full of hard ordinary work: it was not until the war gave me, like many craftsmen, a most reluctant and unwelcome space of leisure, that I ever had the opportunity of considering the possibility of writing this book. I am too old to be a combatant, and too much of a specialist in literature to transmute my activities. I lately found myself with my professional occupations suddenly suspended, and moreover, like many men who have followed a wholly peaceful profession, plunged in a dark bewilderment as to the onset of the forces governing the social life of Europe. In the sad inactivity which followed, I set to work to look through my old papers, for the sake of distraction and employment, and found much material almost ready for use, careful notes of conversations, personal reminiscences, jottings of characteristic touches, which seemed as if they could be easily shaped. Moreover, the past suddenly revived, and became eloquent and vivid. I found in the beautiful memories of those glowing days that I spent with Father Payne--it was only three years--some consolation and encouragement in my distress. This little volume is the result. I am well aware that the busy years which have intervened have taken the edge off some of my recollections, while the lapse of time has possibly touched others with a sunset glow. That can hardly be avoided, and I am not sure that I wish to avoid it. I am not here concerned with either criticising or endorsing Father Payne's views. I see both inconsistencies and fallacies in them. I even detect prejudices and misinterpretations of which I was not conscious at the time. I have no wish to idealise my subject unduly, but it is clear to me, and I hope I have made it clear to others, that Father Payne was a man who had a very definite theory of life and faith, and who at all events lived sincerely and even passionately in the light of his beliefs. Moreover, when he came to put them to the supreme test, the test of death, they did not desert or betray him: he passed on his way rejoicing. He used, I remember, to warn us against attempting too close an analysis of character. He used to say that the consciousness of a man, the intuitive instinct which impelled him, his _attack_ upon experience, was a thing almost independent both of his circumstances and of his reason. He used to take his parable from the weaving of a tapestry, and say that a box full of thread and a loom made up a very small part of the process. It was the inventive instinct of the craftsman, the faculty of designing, that was all-important. He himself was a man of large designs, but he lacked perhaps the practical gift of embodiment. I looked upon him as a man of high poetical powers, with a great range of hopes and visions, but without the technical accomplishment which lends these their final coherence. He was fully aware of this himself, but he neither regretted it nor disguised it. The truth was that his interest in existence was so intense, that he lacked the power of self-limitation needed for an artistic success. What, however, he gave to all who came in touch with him, was a strong sense of the richness and greatness of life and all its issues. He taught us to approach it with no preconceived theories, no fears, no preferences. He had a great mistrust of conventional interpretation and traditional explanations. At the same time he abhorred controversy and wrangling. He had no wish to expunge the ideals of others, so long as they were sincerely formed rather than meekly received. Though I have come myself to somewhat different conclusions, he at least taught me to draw my own inferences from my own experiences, without either deferring to or despising the conclusions of others. The charm of his personality lay in his independence, his sympathy, his eager freshness of view, his purity of motive, his perfect simplicity; and it is all this which I have attempted to depict, rather than to trace his theories, or to present a philosophy which was always concrete rather than abstract, and passionate rather than deliberate. To use a homely proverb, Father Payne was a man who filled his chair! Of one thing I feel sure, and that is that wherever Father Payne is, and whatever he may be doing--for I have as absolute a conviction of the continued existence of his fine spirit as I have of the present existence of my own--he will value my attempt to depict him as he was. I remember his telling me a story of Dr. Johnson, how in the course of his last illness, when he could not open his letters, he asked Boswell to read them for him. Boswell opened a letter from some person in the North of England, of a complimentary kind, and thinking it would fatigue Dr. Johnson to have it read aloud, merely observed that it was highly in his praise. Dr. Johnson at once desired it to be read to him, and said with great earnestness, "_The applause of a single human being is of great consequence._" Father Payne added that it was one of Johnson's finest sayings, and had no touch of vanity or self-satisfaction in it, but the vital stuff of humanity. That I believe to be profoundly true: and that is the spirit in which I have set all this down. _September_ 30, 1915. CONTENTS I. FATHER PAYNE II. AVELEY III. THE SOCIETY IV. THE SUMMONS V. THE SYSTEM VI. FATHER PAYNE VII. THE MEN VIII. THE METHOD IX. FATHER PAYNE X. CHARACTERISTICS XI. CONVERSATION XII. OF GOING TO CHURCH XIII. OF NEWSPAPERS XIV. OF HATE XV. OF WRITING XVI. OF MARRIAGE XVII. OF LOVING GOD XVIII. OF FRIENDSHIP XIX. OF PHYLLIS XX. OF CERTAINTY XXI. OF BEAUTY XXII. OF WAR XXIII. OF CADS AND PHARISEES XXIV. OF CONTINUANCE XXV. OF PHILANTHROPY XXVI. OF FEAR XXVII. OF ARISTOCRACY XXVIII. OF CRYSTALS XXIX. EARLY LIFE XXX. OF BLOODSUCKERS XXXI. OF INSTINCTS XXXII. OF HUMILITY XXXIII. OF MEEKNESS XXXIV. OF CRITICISM XXXV. OF THE SENSE OF BEAUTY XXXVI. OF BIOGRAPHY XXXVII. OF POSSESSIONS XXXVIII. OF LONELINESS XXXIX. OF THE WRITER'S LIFE XL. OF WASTE XLI. OF EDUCATION XLII. OF RELIGION XLIII. OF CRITICS XLIV. OF WORSHIP XLV. OF A CHANGE OF RELIGION XLVI. OF AFFECTION XLVII. OF RESPECT OF PERSONS XLVIII. OF AMBIGUITY XLIX. OF BELIEF L. OF HONOUR LI. OF WORK LII. OF COMPANIONSHIP LIII. OF MONEY LIV. OF PEACEABLENESS LV. OF LIFE-FORCE LVI. OF CONSCIENCE LVII. OF RANK LVIII. OF BIOGRAPHY LIX. OF EXCLUSIVENESS LX. OF TAKING LIFE LXI. OF BOOKISHNESS LXII. OF CONSISTENCY LXIII. OF WRENS AND LILIES LXIV. OF POSE LXV. OF REVENANTS LXVI. OF DISCIPLINE LXVII. OF INCREASE LXVIII. OF PRAYER LXIX. THE SHADOW LXX. OF WEAKNESS LXXI. THE BANK OF THE RIVER LXXII. THE CROSSING LXXIII. AFTER-THOUGHTS LXXIV. DEPARTURE FATHER PAYNE I FATHER PAYNE It was a good many years ago, soon after I left Oxford, when I was twenty-three years old, that all this happened. I had taken a degree in Classics, and I had not given much thought to my future profession. There was no very obvious opening for me, no family business, no influence in any particular direction. My father had been in the Army, but was long dead. My mother and only sister lived quietly in the country. I had no prosaic and practical uncles to push me into any particular line; while on coming of age I had inherited a little capital which brought me in some two hundred a year, so that I could afford to wait and look round. My only real taste was for literature. I wanted to write, but I had no very pressing aspirations or inspirations. I may confess that I was indolent, fond of company, but not afraid of comparative solitude, and I was moreover an entire dilettante. I read a good many books, and tried feverishly to write in the style of the authors who most attracted me, I settled down at home, more or less, in a country village where I knew everyone; I travelled a little; and I paid occasional visits to London, where several of my undergraduate and school friends lived, with a vague idea of getting to know literary people; but they were not very easy to meet, and, when I did meet them, they did not betray any very marked interest in my designs and visions. I was dining one night at a restaurant with a College friend of mine, Jack Vincent, whose tastes were much the same as my own, only more strenuous; his father and mother lived in London, and when I went there I generally stayed with them. They were well-to-do, good-natured people; but, beyond occasionally reminding Jack that he ought to be thinking about a profession, they left him very much to his own devices, and he had begun to write a novel, and a play, and two or three other masterpieces. That particular night his father and mother were dining out, so we determined to go to a restaurant. And it was there that Vincent told me about "Father" Payne, as he was called by his friends, though he was a layman and an Anglican. He had heard all about him from an Oxford man, Leonard Barthrop, some years older than ourselves, who was one of the circle of men whom Father Payne had collected about him. Vincent was very full of the subject. He said that Father Payne was an elderly man, who had been for a good many years a rather unsuccessful teacher in London, and that he had unexpectedly inherited a little country estate in Northamptonshire. He had gradually gathered about him a small knot of men, mainly interested in literature, who were lodged and boarded free, and were a sort of informal community, bound by no very strict regulations, except that they were pledged to produce a certain amount of work at stated intervals for Father Payne's inspection. As long as they did this, they were allowed to work very much as they liked, and Father Payne was always ready to give criticism and advice. Father Payne reserved the right of dismissing them if they were idle, quarrelsome, or troublesome in any way, and exercised it decisively. But Barthrop had told him that it was a most delightful life; that Father Payne was a very interesting, good-natured, and amusing man; and that the whole thing was both pleasant and stimulating. There were certain rules about work and hours, and members of the circle were not allowed to absent themselves without leave, while Father Payne sometimes sent them off for a time, if he thought they required a change. "I gather," said Vincent, "that he is an absolute autocrat, and that you have to do what he tells you; but that he doesn't preach, and he doesn't fuss. Barthrop says he has never been so happy in his life." He went on to say that there were at least two vacancies in the circle--one of the number had lately married, and another had accepted a journalistic post. "Now what do you say," said Vincent, "to us two trying to go there for a bit? You can try it, I believe, without pledging yourself, for two or three months; and then if Father Payne approves, and you want to go on, you can regularly join." I confess that it seemed to me a very attractive affair, and all that Vincent told me of the place, and particularly of Father Payne, attracted me. Vincent said that he had mentioned me to Barthrop, and that Barthrop had said that I might have a chance of getting in. It appeared that we should have to go down to the place to be interviewed. We made up our minds to apply, and that night Vincent wrote to Barthrop. The answer was favourable. Two days later Vincent received a note from Father Payne, written in a big, finely-formed hand, to the effect that he would be glad to see Vincent any night that he could come down, and that I might also arrange an interview, if I wished, but that we were to come separately. "Mind," said the letter, "I can make no promises and can give no reasons; but I will not keep either of you waiting." Vincent went first. He spent a night at Aveley Hall, as the place was called. I continued my visit to his people, and awaited his return with great interest. He told me what had happened. He had been met at the station by an odd little trap, had driven up to the house--a biggish place, close to a small church, on the outskirts of a tiny village. It was dark when he arrived, and he had found Father Payne at tea with four or five men, in a flagged hall. There had been a good deal of talk and laughter. "He is a big man, Father Payne, with a beard, dressed rather badly, like a country squire, very good-natured and talkative. Everyone seemed to say pretty much what they liked, but he kept them in order, too, I could see that!" Then he had been carried off to a little study and questioned. "He simply turned me inside out," said Vincent, "and I told him all my biography, and everything I had ever done and thought of. He didn't seem to look at me much, but I felt he was overhauling me somehow. Then I went and read in a sort of library, and then we had dinner--just the same business. Then the men mostly disappeared, and Barthrop carried me off for a talk, and told me a lot about everything. Then I went to my room, a big, ugly, comfortable bedroom; and in the morning there was breakfast, where people dropped in, read papers or letters, did not talk, and went off when they had done. Then I walked about in a nice, rather wild garden. There seemed a lot of fields and trees beyond, all belonging to the house, but no park, and only a small stable, with a kitchen-garden. There were very few servants that I saw--an old butler and some elderly maids--and then I came away. Father Payne just came out and shook hands, and said he would write to me. It seemed exactly the sort of thing I should like. I only hope we shall both get in." It certainly sounded attractive, and it was with great curiosity that I went off on the following day, as appointed, for my own interview. II AVELEY The train drew up at a little wayside station soon after four o'clock on a November afternoon. It was a bare, but rather an attractive landscape. The line ran along a wide, shallow valley, with a stream running at the bottom, with many willows, and pools fringed with withered sedges. The fields were mostly pastures, with here and there a fallow. There were a good many bits of woodland all about, and a tall spire of pale stone, far to the south, overtopped the roofs of a little town. I was met by an old groom or coachman, with a little ancient open cart, and we drove sedately along pleasant lanes, among woods, till we entered a tiny village, which he told me was Aveley, consisting of three or four farmhouses, with barns and ricks, and some rows of stone-built cottages. We turned out of the village in the direction of a small and plain church of some antiquity, behind which I saw a grove of trees and the chimneys of a house surmounted by a small cupola. The house stood close by the church, having an open space of grass in front, with an old sundial, and a low wall separating it from the churchyard. We drove in at a big gate, standing open, with stone gate-posts. The Hall was a long, stone-built Georgian house, perhaps a hundred and fifty years old, with two shallow wings and a stone-tiled roof, and was obviously of considerable size. Some withered creepers straggled over it, and it was neatly kept, but with no sort of smartness. The trees grew rather thickly to the east of the house, and I could see to the right a stable-yard, and beyond that the trees of the garden. We drew up--it was getting dark--and an old manservant with a paternal air came out, took possession of my bag, and led me through a small vestibule into a long hall, with a fire burning in a great open fireplace. There was a gallery at one end, with a big organ in it. The hall was paved with black and white stone, and there were some comfortable chairs, a cabinet or two, and some dim paintings on the walls. Tea was spread at a small table by the fire, and four or five men, two of them quite young, the others rather older, were sitting about on chairs and sofas, or helping themselves to tea at the table. On the hearth, with his back to the fire, stood a great, burly man with a short, grizzled beard and tumbled gray hair, rather bald, dressed in a rough suit of light-brown homespun, with huge shooting boots, whom I saw at once to be my host. The talk stopped as I entered, and I was aware that I was being scrutinised with some curiosity. Father Payne did not move, but extended a hand, which I advanced and shook, and said: "Very glad to see you, Mr. Duncan--you are just in time for tea." He mentioned the names of the men present, who came and shook hands very cordially. Barthrop gave me some tea, and I was inducted into a chair by the fire. I thought for a moment that I was taking Father Payne's place, and feebly murmured something about taking his chair. "They're all mine, thanks!" he said with a smile, "but I claim no privileges." Someone gave a faint whistle at this, and Father Payne, turning his eyes but not his head towards the young man who had uttered the sound, said: "All right, Pollard, if you are going to be mutinous, we shall have a little business to transact together, as Mr. Squeers said." "Oh, I'm not mutinous, sir," said the young man--"I'm quite submissive--I was just betrayed into it by amazement!" "You shouldn't get into the habit of thinking aloud," said Father Payne; "at least not among bachelors--when you are married you can do as you like!--I hope you are polite?" he went on, looking round at me. "I think so," I said, feeling rather shy, "That's right," he said. "It's the first and only form of virtue! If you are only polite, there is nothing that you may not do. This is a school of manners, you know!" One of the men, Rose by name, laughed--a pleasant musical laugh. "I remember," he said, "that when I was a boy at Eton, my excellent but very bluff and rough old tutor called upon us, and was so much taken up with being hearty, that he knocked over the coal-scuttle, and didn't let anyone get a word in; and when he went off in a sort of whirlwind, my old aunt, who was an incisive lady, said in a meditative tone: 'How strange it is that the only thing that the Eton masters seem able to teach their boys is the only thing they don't themselves possess!'" Father Payne uttered a short, loud laugh at this, and said: "Is there any chance of meeting your aunt?" "No, sir, she is long since dead!" "Blew off too much steam, perhaps," said Father Payne. "That woman must have had the steam up! I should have liked to have known her--a remarkable woman! Have you any more stories of the same sort about her?" "Not to-day," said Rose, smiling. "Quite right," said Father Payne. "You keep them for an acceptable time. Never tell strings of stories--and, by the way, my young friends, that's the art of writing. Don't cram in good things--space them out, Barthrop!" "I think I can spread the butter as thin as anyone," said Barthrop, smiling. "So you can, so you can!" said Father Payne enthusiastically, "and very thin slices too! I give you full credit for that!" The men had begun to drift away, and I was presently left alone with Father Payne. "Now you come along of me!" he said to me; and when I got up, he took my arm in a pleasant fashion, led me to a big curtained archway at the far end of the hall, under the gallery, and along a flagged passage to the right. As we went he pointed to the doors--"Smoking-room--Library"--and at the end of the passage he opened a door, and led me into a small panelled room with a big window, closely curtained. It was a solid and stately place, wholly bare of ornament. It had a writing-table, a bookcase, two armchairs of leather, a fine fireplace with marble pillars, and an old painting let into the panelling above it. There was a bright, unshaded lamp on the table. "This is my room," he said, "and there's nothing in it that I don't use, except those pillars; and when I haul on them, like Samson, the house comes down. Now you sit down there, and we'll have a talk. Do you mind the light? No? Well, that's all right, as I want to have a good look at you, you know! You can get a smoke afterwards--this is business!" He sate down in the chair opposite me, and stirred the fire. He had fine, large, solid hands, the softness of which, like silk, had struck me when I shook hands with him; and, though he was both elderly and bulky, he moved with a certain grace and alertness. "Tell me your tale from the beginning," he said, "Don't leave out any details--I like details. Let's have your life and death and Christian sufferings, as the tracts say." He heard me with much patience, sometimes smiling, sometimes nodding, when I had finished, he said: "Now I must ask you a few questions--you don't mind if they are plain questions--rather unpleasant questions?" He bent his brows upon me and smiled. "No," I said, "not at all." "Well, then," he said, "where's the vocation in all this? This place, to be brief, is for men who have a real vocation for writing, and yet never would otherwise have the time or the leisure to train for it. You see, in England, people think that you needn't train for writing--that you have just got to begin, and there you are. Very few people have the money to wait a few years--they have to write, not what they want to write, but what other people want to read. And so it comes about that by the time that they have earned the money and the leisure, the spring is gone, the freshness is gone, there's no invention and no zest. Writing can't be done in a little corner of life. You have to give up your life to it--and then that means giving up your life to a great deal of what looks like pure laziness--loafing about, looking about, travelling, talking, mooning; that is the only way to learn proportion; and it is the only way, too, of learning what not to write about--a great many things that are written about are not really material for writing at all. And all this can't be done in a drivelling mood--you must pick your way if you are going to write. That's a long preface; but I mean this place to be a place to give men the right sort of start. I happen to be able to teach people, more or less, how to write, if they have got the stuff in them--and to be frank, I'm not sure that you have! You think this would be a pleasant sort of experience--so it can be; but it isn't done on slack and chattering lines. It is just meant to save people from hanging about at the start, a thing which spoils a lot of good writers. But it's deadly serious, and it isn't a dilettante life at all. Do you grasp all that?" "Yes," I said, "and I believe I can work! I know I have wasted my time, but it was not because I wanted to waste time, but because the sort of things I have always had to do--the classics--always seemed to me so absolutely pointless. No one who taught me ever distinguished between what was good and what was bad. Whatever it was--a Greek play, Homer, Livy, Tacitus--it was always supposed to be the best thing of the kind. I was always sure that much of it was rot, and some of it was excellent; but I didn't know why, and no one ever told me why." "You thought all that?" said he. "Well, that's more hopeful! Have you ever done any essay work?" "Yes," I said, "and that was the worst of all--no one ever showed me how to do it in my own way, but always in some one else's way." He sate a little in silence. Then he said: "But mind you, that's not all! I don't think writing is the end of life. The real point is to feel the things, to understand the business, to have ideas about life. I don't want people to learn how to write interestingly about things in which they are not interested--but to be interested first, and then to write if they can. I like to turn out a good writer, who can say what he feels and believes. But I'm just as pleased when a man tells me that writing is rubbish, and that he is going away to do something real. The real--that's what I care about! I don't want men to come and pick up grains of truth and reality, and work them into their stuff. I have turned out a few men like that, and those are my worst failures. You have got to care about ideas, if you come here, and to get the ideas into shape. You have got to learn what is beautiful and what is not, because the only business of a real writer is with beauty--not a sickly exotic sort of beauty, but the beauty of health and strength and generous feeling. I can't have any humbugs here, though I have sent out some humbugs. It's a hard life this, and a tiring life; though if you are the right sort of fellow, you will get plenty of fun out of it. But we don't waste time here; and if a man wastes time, out he goes." "I believe I can work as hard as anyone," I said, "though I have shown no signs of it--and anyhow, I should like to try. And I do really want to learn how to distinguish between things, how to know what matters. No one has ever shown me how to do that!" "That's all right!" he said, "But are you sure you don't want simply to make a bit of a name--to be known as a clever man? It's very convenient, you know, in England, to have a label. Because I want you clearly to understand that this place of mine has nothing whatever to do with that. I take no stock in what is called success. This is a sort of monastery, you know; and the worst of some monasteries is that they cultivate dreams. That's a beautiful thing in its way, but it isn't what I aim at. I don't want men to drug themselves with dreams. The great dreamers don't do that. Shelley, for instance--his dreams were all made out of real feeling, real beauty. He wanted to put things right in his own way. He was enraged with life because he was fine, while Byron was enraged with life because he was vulgar. Vulgarity--that's the one fatal complaint; it goes down deep to the bottom of the mind. And I may as well say plainly that that is what I fight against here." "I don't honestly think I am vulgar," I said. "Not on the surface, perhaps," he said, "but present-day education is a snare. We are a vulgar nation, you know. That is what is really the matter with us--our ambitions are vulgar, our pride is vulgar. We want to fit into the world and get the most we can out of it; we don't, most of us, just want to give it our best. That's what I mean by vulgarity, wanting to take and not wanting to give." He was silent for a minute, and then he said: "Do you believe in God?" "I hardly know," I said. "Not very much, I am afraid, in the kind of God that I have heard preached about." "What do you mean?" he said. "Well," I said, "it's rather a large question--but I used to think, both at school and at Oxford, that many of the men who were rather disapproved of, that did quite bad things, and tried experiments, and knocked up against nastiness of various kinds, but who were brave in their way and kind, and not mean or spiteful or fault-finding, were more the sort of people that the force--or whatever it is, behind the world--was trying to produce than many of the virtuous people. What was called virtue and piety had something stifling and choking about it, I used to think. I had a tutor at school who was a parson, and he was a good sort of man, too, in a way. But I used to feel suddenly dreary with him, as if there were a whole lot of real things and interesting things which he was afraid of. I couldn't say what I thought to him--only what I felt he wanted me to think. That's a bad answer," I went on, "but I haven't really considered it." "No, it isn't a bad answer," he said, "It's all right! The moment you feel stifled with anyone, whatever the subject is--art, books, religion, life--there is something wrong. Do you say any prayers?" "No," I said, "to be honest, I don't." "You must take to it again," he said. "You can't get on without prayer. And if you come here," he said, "you may expect to hear about God. I talk a good deal about God. I don't believe in things being too sacred to talk about--it's the bad things that ought not to be mentioned. I am interested in God, more than I am interested in anything else. I can't make Him out--and yet I believe that He needs me, in a way, as much as I need Him. Does that sound profane to you?" "No," I said, "it's new to me. No one ever spoke about God to me like that before." "We have to suffer with Him!" he said in a curious tone, his face lighting up. "That is the point of Christianity, that God suffers, because He wants to remake the world, and cannot do it all at once. That is the secret of all life and hope, that if we believe in God, we must suffer with Him. It's a fight, a hard fight; and He needs us on His side: But I won't talk about that now; yet if you don't want to believe in God, and to be friends with Him, and to fight and suffer with Him, you needn't think of coming here. That's behind all I do. And to come here is simply that you may find out where He needs you. Why writing is important is, because the world needs freer and plainer talk about God--about beauty and health and happiness and energy, and all the things which He stands for. Half the evil comes from silence, and the end of all my experiments is the word in the New Testament, Ephphatha--Be opened! That is what I try for, to give men the power of opening their hearts and minds to others, without fear and yet without offence. I don't want men to attack things or to criticise things, but just to speak plainly about what is beautiful and wholesome and true. So you see this isn't a place for lazy and fanciful people--not a fortress of quiet, and still less a place for asses to slake their thirst! We don't set out to amuse ourselves, but to perceive things, and to say them if we can. My men must be sound and serious, and they must be civil and amusing too. They have got to learn how to get on with each other, and with me, and with the village people--and with God! If you want just to dangle about, this isn't the place for you; but if you want to work hard and be knocked into shape, I'll consider it." There was something tremendous about Father Payne! I looked at him with a sense of terror. His face dissolved in a smile. "You needn't look at me like that!" he said. "I only want you to know exactly what you are in for!" "I would like to try," I said. "Well, we'll see!" he said. "And now you must be off!" he added. "We shall dine in an hour--you needn't dress. Here, you don't know which your room is, I suppose?" He rang the bell, and I went off with the old butler, who was amiable and communicative. "So, you think of becoming one of the gentlemen, sir?" he said. "If you'll have me," I replied. "Oh, that will be all right, sir," he said. "I could see that the Father took to you at first sight!" He showed me my room--a big bare place. It had a small bed and accessories, but it was also fitted as a sitting-room, with a writing-table, an armchair, and a bookcase full of books. The house was warmed, I saw, with hot water to a comfortable temperature. "Would you like a fire?" he said. I declined, and he went on: "Now if you lived here, sir, you would have to do that yourself!" He gave a little laugh. "Anyone may have a fire, but they have to lay it, and fetch the coal, and clean the grate. Very few of the gentlemen do it. Anything else, sir? I have put out your things, and you will find hot water laid on." He left me, and I flung myself into the chair. I had a good deal to think about. III THE SOCIETY A very quiet evening followed. A bell rang out above the roof at 8.15. I went down to the hall, where the men assembled. Father Payne came in. He had changed his clothes, and was wearing a dark, loose-fitting suit, which became him well--he always looked at home in his clothes. The others wore similar suits or smoking jackets. Father Payne appeared abstracted, and only gave me a nod. A gong sounded, and he marched straight out through a door by the fireplace into the dining-room. The dining-room was a rather grand place, panelled in dark wood, and with a few portraits. At each end of the room was a section cut off from the central portion by an oak column on each side. Three windows on one side looked into the garden. It was lighted by candles only. We were seven in all, and I sate by Father Payne. Dinner was very plain. There was soup, a joint with vegetables, and a great apple-tart. The things were mostly passed about from hand to hand, but the old butler kept a benignant eye upon the proceedings, and saw that I was well supplied. There was a good and simple claret in large flat-bottomed decanters, which most of the men drank. There was a good deal of talk of a lively kind. Father Payne was rather silent, though he struck in now and then, but his silence imposed no constraint on the party. He was pressed to tell a story for my benefit, which he did with much relish, but briefly. I was pleased at the simplicity of it all. There was only one man who seemed a little out of tune--a clerical-looking, handsome fellow of about thirty, called Lestrange, with an air of some solemnity. He made remarks of rather an earnest type, and was ironically assailed once or twice. Father Payne intervened once, and said: "Lestrange is perfectly right, and you would think so too, if only he could give what he said a more secular twist. 'Be soople in things immaterial,' Lestrange, as the minister says in _Kidnapped_." "But who is to judge if it _is_ immaterial?" said Lestrange rather pertinaciously. "It mostly is," said Father Payne. "Anything is better than being shocked! It's better to be ashamed afterwards of not speaking up than to feel you have made a circle uncomfortable. You must not rebuke people unless you really hate doing it. If you like doing it, you may be pretty sure that it is vanity; a Christian ought not to feel out of place in a smoking-room!" The whole thing did not take more than three-quarters of an hour. Coffee was brought in, very strong and good. Some of the party went off, and Father Payne disappeared. I went to the smoking-room with two of the men, and we talked a little. Finally I went away to my room, and tried to commit my impressions of the whole thing to my diary before I went to bed. It certainly seemed a happy life, and I was struck with the curious mixture of freedom, frankness, and yet courtesy about the whole. There was no roughness or wrangling or stupidity, nor had I any sense either of exclusion, or of being elaborately included in the life of the circle. I would call the atmosphere brotherly, if brotherliness did not often mean the sort of frankness which is so unpleasant to strangers. There certainly was an atmosphere about it, and I felt too that Father Payne, for all his easiness, had somehow got the reins in his hands. The next morning I went down to breakfast, which was, I found, like breakfast at a club, as Vincent had said. It was a plain meal--cold bacon, a vast dish of scrambled eggs kept hot by a spirit lamp and a hot-water arrangement. You could make toast for yourself if you wished, and there was a big fresh loaf, with excellent butter, marmalade, and jam--not an ascetic breakfast at all. There were daily papers on the table, and no one talked. I did not see Father Payne, who must have come in later. After breakfast, Barthrop showed me the rooms of the house. The library was fitted up with bookshelves and easy-chairs for reading, with a big round oak table in the centre. The floor was of stained oak boards and covered with rugs. There was also a capacious smoking-room, and I learned that smoking was not allowed elsewhere. It was, in fact, a solid old family mansion of some dignity. There were three or four oil paintings in all the rooms, portraits and landscapes. The general tone of decoration was dark--red wall-papers and fittings stained brown. It was all clean and simple, and there was a total absence of ornament, I went and walked in the garden, which was of the same very straightforward kind--plain grass, shrubberies, winding paths, with comfortable wooden seats in sheltered places; one or two big beds, evidently of old-fashioned perennials, and some trellises for ramblers. The garden was adjoined by a sort of wilderness, with big trees and ground-ivy, and open spaces in which aconites and snowdrops were beginning to show themselves. Father Payne, I gathered, was fond of the garden and often worked there; but there were no curiosities--it was all very simple. Beyond that were pasture-fields, with a good many clumps and hedgerow trees, running down to a stream, which had been enlarged into a deep pool at one place, where there was a timbered bathing-shed. The stream fed, through little sluices, a big, square pond, full, I was told, in summer of bulrushes and water-lilies. I noticed a couple of lawn-tennis courts, and there was a bowling-green by the house. Then there was a large kitchen-garden, with standards and espaliers, and box-edged beds. The stables, which were spacious, contained only a pony and the little cart I had driven up in, and a few bicycles. I liked the solid air of the big house, which had two wings at the back, corresponding to the wings in front; the long row of stone pedimented windows, with heavy white casements, was plain and stately, and there were some fine magnolias and wisterias trained upon the walls. It all looked stately, and yet home-like; there was nothing neglected about it, and yet it looked wholesomely left alone; everything was neat, but nothing was smart. I was strolling about, enjoying the gleams of bright sunshine and the cold air, when I saw Father Payne coming down the garden towards me. He gave me a pleasant nod: I said something about the beauty of the place; he smiled, and said "Yes, it is the kind of thing I like--but I am so used to it that I can hardly even see it! That's the worst of habit; but there is nothing about the place to get on your nerves. It's a well-bred old house, I think, and knows how to hold its tongue, without making you uncomfortable," Then he went on presently: "You know how I came by it? It's an odd story. It had been in my family, till my grandfather left it to his second wife, and cut my father out. There was a son by the second wife, who was meant to have it; but he died, and it went to a brother of the second wife, and his widow left it back to me. It was an entire surprise, because I did not know her, and the only time I had ever seen the house was once when I came down on the sly, just to look at the old place, little thinking I should ever come here. She had some superstition about it, I fancy! Anyhow, while I was grubbing away in town, fifteen years ago, and hardly able to make two ends meet, I suddenly found myself put in possession of it; and though I am poor, as squires go, the farms and cottages bring me in quite enough to rub along. At any rate it enabled me to try some experiments, and I have been doing so ever since. Leisure and solitude! Those are the only two things worth having that money can buy. Perhaps you don't think there's much solitude about our life? But solitude only means the power to think your own thoughts, without having other people's thoughts trailed across the track. Loneliness is quite a different thing, and that's not wholesome." He strolled on, looking about him. "Do you ever garden?" he said. "It's the best fun in the world--making plants do as _you_ like, while all the time they think they are doing as _they_ like. That's the secret of it! You can't bully these wild things, but they are very obedient, as long as they believe they are free. They are like children; they will take any amount of trouble as long as you don't call it work." Presently we heard the clatter of hoofs in the stable-yard. "That's for you!" he said. "Will you go and see that they have brought your things down? I'll meet you at the door." I went up and found my things had been packed by the old butler. I gave him a little tip, and he said confidentially: "I daresay we shall be seeing you back here, sir, one of these days." "I hope so," I said, to which he replied with a mysterious wink and nod. Father Payne shook hands. "Well, good-bye!" he said. "It's good of you to have come down, and I'm glad to have made acquaintance, whatever happens--I'll drop you a line." I drove away, and he stood at the door looking after me, till the little cart drove out of the gate. IV THE SUMMONS I must confess that I was much excited about my visit; the whole thing seemed to me to be almost too good to be true, and I hardly dared hope that I should be allowed to return. I went back to town and rejoined Vincent, and we talked much about the delights of Aveley. The following morning we each received a letter in Father Payne's firm hand. That to Vincent was very short. It ran as follows: DEAR VINCENT,--_I shall be glad to take you in if you wish to join us, for three months. At the end of that time, we shall both be entirely free to choose. I hope you will be happy here. You can come as soon as you like; and if Duncan, after reading my letter, decides to come too, you had better arrange to arrive together. It will save me the trouble of describing our way of life to each separately. Please let me have a line, and I will see that your room is ready for you.--Sincerely yours,_ C. PAYNE. "That's all right!" said Vincent, with an air of relief. "Now what does he say to you?" My letter was a longer one. It ran: MY DEAR YOUNG MAN,--_I am going to be very frank with you, and to say that, though I liked you very much, I nearly decided that I could not ask you to join us. I will tell you why. I am not sure that you are not too easy-going and impulsive. We should all find you agreeable, and I am sure you would find the whole thing great fun at first; but I rather think you would get bored. It does not seem to me as if you had ever had the smallest discipline, and I doubt if you have ever disciplined yourself; and discipline is a tiresome thing, unless you like it. I think you are quick, receptive, and polite--all that is to the good. But are you serious? I found in you a very quick perception, and you held up a flattering mirror with great spontaneity to my mind and heart--that was probably why I liked you so much. But I don't want people here to reflect me or anyone else. The whole point of my scheme is independence, with just enough discipline to keep things together, like the hem on a handkerchief._ _But you may have a try, if you wish; and in any case, I think you will have a pleasant three months here, and make us all sorry to lose you if you do not return. I have told your friend Vincent he can come, and I think he is more likely to stay than you are, because he is more himself. I don't suppose that he took in the whole place and the idea of it as quickly as you did. I expect you could write a very interesting description of it, and I don't expect he could._ _Still, I will say that I shall be truly sorry if, after this letter, you decide not to come to us. I like your company; and I shall not get tired of it. But to be more frank still, I think you are one of those charming and sympathetic people who is tough inside, with a toughness which is based on the determination to find things amusing and interesting--and that is not the sort of toughness I can do anything with. People like yourself are incapable as a rule of suffering, whatever happens to them. It's a very happy disposition, but it does not grow. You are sensitive enough, but I don't want sensitiveness, I want men who are not sensitive, and who yet can suffer at not getting nearer and more quickly than they can to the purpose ahead of them, whatever that may be. It is a stiff sort of thing that I want. I can help to make a stiff nature pliable; I'm not very good at making a pliable nature stiff. That's the truth._ _So I shall be delighted--more than you think--if you say "Yes." but in a way more hopeful about you if you say "No."_ _Come with Vincent, if you come; and as soon as you like.--Ever yours truly,_ C. PAYNE. "Does he want me to go, or does he not?" I said. "Is he letting me down with a compliment?" "Oh no," said Vincent, "it's all right. He only thinks that you are a butterfly which will flutter by, and he would rather like you to do a little fluttering down there." "But I'm not going to go there," I said, "to wear a cap and bells for a bit, and then to be spun when I have left my golden store, like the radiant morn; he puts me on my mettle. I _will_ go, and he _shall_ keep me! I don't want to fool about any more." "All right!" said Vincent. "It's a bargain, then! Will you be ready to go the day after to-morrow? There are some things I want to buy, now that I'm going to school again. But I'm awfully relieved--it's just what I want. I was getting into a mess with all my work, and becoming a muddled loafer." "And I an elegant trifler, it appears," I said. V THE SYSTEM We went off together on the Saturday, and I think we were both decidedly nervous. What were we in for? I had a feeling that I had plunged headlong into rather a foolish adventure. We did not talk much on the way down; it was all rather solemn. We were going to put the bit in our mouths again, and Father Payne was an unknown quantity. We both felt that there was something decidedly big and strong there to be reckoned with. We arrived, as before, at tea-time, and we both received a cordial greeting. After tea Father Payne took us away, and told us the rules of the house. They were simple enough; he described the day. Breakfast was from 8.30 to 9.15, and was a silent meal. "It's a bad thing to begin the day by chattering and arguing," said Father Payne. Then we were supposed to work in our own rooms or the library till one. We might stroll about, if we wished, but there was to be no talking to anyone else, unless he himself gave leave for any special reason. Luncheon was a cold meal, quite informal, and was on the table for an hour. There was to be no talk then either. From two to five we could do as we liked, and it was expected that we should take at least an hour's exercise, and if possible two. Tea at five, and work afterwards. At 8.15, dinner, and we could do as we wished afterwards, but we were not to congregate in anyone's room, and it was understood that no one was to go to another man's bedroom, which was also his study, at any time, unless he was definitely invited, or just to ask a question. The smoking-room was always free for general talk, but Father Payne said that on the whole he discouraged any gatherings or cliques. The point of the whole was solitary work, with enough company to keep things fresh and comfortable. He said that we were expected to valet ourselves entirely, and that if we wanted a fire, we must lay it and clean it up afterwards. If we wanted to get anything, or have anything done, we could ask him or the butler. "But I rather expect everyone to look after himself," he said. We were not to absent ourselves without his leave, and we were to go away if he told us to do so. "Sometimes a man wants a little change and does not know it," he said. Then he also said that he would ask us, from time to time, what we were doing--hear it read, and criticise it; and that one of the most definite conditions of our remaining was that he must be satisfied that we really were at work. If we wanted any special books, he said, we might ask him, and he could generally get them from the London Library; but that we should find a good many books of reference and standard works in the library. He told us, too, of certain conditions of which we had not heard--that we were to be away, either at home, or travelling wherever he chose to send us, for three months in the year, and that he supplied the funds if necessary. Moreover, for one month in the summer he kept open house. Half of us were to go away for the first fortnight in July, and the other half were to stay and entertain his guests, or even our own, if we wished to invite them; then the other half of the men returned, and had their guests to entertain, while the first half went away; and that during that time there was to be very little work done. We were not to be always writing, but there was to be reading, about which he would advise. Once a week there was a meeting, on Saturday evening, when one of the men had to read something aloud, and be generally criticised. "You see the idea?" he said. "It sounds complicated now, but it really is very simple. It is just to get solid work done regularly, with a certain amount of supervision and criticism, and, what is more important still, real intervals of travelling. I shall send you to a particular place for a particular purpose, and you will have to write about it on lines which I shall indicate. The danger of this sort of life is that of getting stale. That's why I don't want you to see too much of each other. And last of all," he said, rather gravely, "you must do what I tell you to do. There must be no mistake about that--but with all the apparent discipline of it, I believe you will find it worth while." Then he saw us each separately. He inquired into our finances. Vincent had a small allowance from his parents, about £50, which he was told to keep for pocket-money, but Father Payne said he would pay his travelling expenses. I gathered that he gave an allowance to men who had nothing of their own. He told me that I should have to travel at my own expense, but he was careful first to inquire whether my mother was in any way dependent on me. Then he said to me with a smile: "I am glad you decided to come--I thought my letter would have offended you. No? That's all right. Now, I don't expect heroic exertions--just hard work. Mind," he said, "I will add one thing to my letter, and that is that I think you _may_ make a success of this--if you _do_ take to it, you will do well; but you will have to be patient, and you may have a dreary time; but I want you to tell me exactly at any time how you are feeling about it. You won't be driven, and I think your danger is that you may try to make the pace too much." He further asked me exactly what I was writing. It happened to be some essays on literary subjects. He mentioned a few books, and told me it would do very well to start with. He was very kind and fatherly in his manner, and when I rose to go, he put his arm through mine and said: "Come, it will be strange if we can't hit it off together. I like your presence and talk, and am glad to think you are in the house. Don't be anxious! The difficulty with you is that you will foresee all your troubles beforehand, and try to bolt them in a lump, instead of swallowing them one by one as they come. Live for the day!" There was something magnetic about him, for by these few words he established a little special relation with me which was never broken. When he dismissed me, I went and changed my things, and then came down. I found that it was the custom for the men to go down to the hall about eight. Father Payne said that it was a great mistake to work to the last minute, and then to rush in to dinner. He said it made people nervous and dyspeptic. He generally strolled in himself a few minutes before, and sate silent by the fire. Just as it struck eight, and the hum of the clock in the hall died away, a little tune in harmony, like a gavotte, was played by softly-tingling tiny bells. I could not tell where the music came from; it seemed to me like the Ariel music in _The Tempest_, between earth and heaven, or the "chiming shower of rare device" in _The Beryl Stone_. Father Payne smiled at the little gesture I involuntarily made. "You're right!" he said, when it was over. "How _can_ people talk through that? It's the clock in the gallery that does it--they say it belonged to George III. I hope, if so, that it gave him a few happier moments! It is an ingenious little thing, with silver bells and hammers; I'll show it you some day. It rings every four hours." "I think I had rather not see the machinery," I said. "I never heard anything so delicious." "You're right again," said Father Payne; "'The isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.' Let it stay at that!" I little thought how much I should grow to connect that fairy gavotte with Aveley. It always seemed to me like a choir of spirits. I would awake sometimes on summer nights and hear it chiming in the silent house, or at noon it would come faintly through the passages. That, and the songs of the birds in the shrubberies, always flash into my mind when I think of the place; because it was essentially a silent house, more noiseless than any I have ever lived in; and I love the thought of its silence; and of its fragrance--for that was another note of the place. In the hall stood great china jars with pierced covers, which were always full of pot-pourri; there was another in the library, and another in Father Payne's study, and two more in the passage above which looked out by the little gallery upon the hall. Silence and fragrance always, in the background of all we did; and outlining itself upon the stillness, the little melody, jetting out like a fountain of silver sound. VI FATHER PAYNE That evening after dinner we two were left with Barthrop in the smoking-room, and we talked freely about Father Payne. Barthrop said that his past was a little mysterious. "He was at Marlborough, you know, and Oxford; and after that, he lived in town, took pupils, and tried to write--but he was not successful, and had much difficulty in getting along." "What is his line exactly?" said Vincent. "That's just it," said Barthrop, "he hasn't any line. He has a wide knowledge of things, and is quicker at picking up the drift of a subject than anyone I know; and he has a rare power of criticism. But he isn't anything in particular. He can't write a bit, he is not a speaker, he isn't learned, he can teach able people, but he couldn't teach stupid men--he hasn't enough patience. I can't imagine any line of life for which he would be exactly fitted: and yet he's the biggest person I have ever met; he carries us all along with him, like a river. You can't resist him, you can't contradict him. That is the one danger, that he exerts more influence than he knows, so that when you are with him, it is hard to be quite yourself. But he puts the wind into your sails; and, my word, he can take it out of your sails, if he likes! I have only seen him really angry about twice, and then it was really appalling. Once was when a man lied to him, and once was when a man was impertinent to him. He simply blasted them with his displeasure--that is the only word. He hates getting angry--I expect he had a bad temper once--and he apologises afterwards; but it's no use--it's like a thunderstorm apologising to a tree which has been struck. I don't think he knows his strength. He believes himself to be sensitive and weak-willed--I have heard him say so. The fact is that he dislikes doing an unpleasant thing or speaking severely; and he will take a lot of trouble to avoid a scene, or to keep an irritable man in a good temper. But if he lets himself loose! I can't express to you the sort of terror I have in thinking of those two occasions. He didn't say very much, but he looked as if he were possessed by any number of devils." "He was never married, I suppose?" I said. "No," said Barthrop, "and yet he seems to make friends with women very easily--in fact, they tend to fall in love with him, if I may say so. He has got a beautiful manner with them, and he is simply devoted to children. You will see that they really rather worship him in the village. He knows everyone in the place, and never forgets a fact about them." "What does he _do_ mostly?" I said. "I really don't know," said Barthrop. "He is rather a solitary man. He very often has one of us in for an hour in the evening or morning--but we don't see much of him in the afternoon; he gardens or walks about. He has a quick eye for things, birds and plants, and so on; and he can find more nests in an hour than any man I ever saw. Sometimes he will go and shut himself up in the church--he is rather fond of going to church; he always goes to the Communion." "Does he expect us to go?" I said. "No," said Barthrop. "He rather likes us to go, but he doesn't at all like us going to please him. 'I want you to want to go,' I heard him say once, 'but I don't want you to go _because_ I want you.' And he has no particular views, I think, about the whole thing--at least not for other people." "Tell me some more about him," I said. "What is there to say?" said Barthrop. "He is just there--the biggest fact on the horizon. Oh yes, there is one thing; he is tremendously devoted to music. We have some music in the evenings very often. You saw the organ in the gallery--it is rather a fine one, and he generally has someone here who can play. Lestrange is a first-rate musician. Father Payne can't play himself, but he knows all about it, and composes sometimes. But I think he looks on music as rather a dangerous indulgence, and does not allow himself very much of it. You can see how it affects him. And you mustn't be taken in by his manner. You might think him heavy and unperceptive, with that quiet and rather secret eye of his; yet he notices everything, always, and far quicker than anyone else. But it is hard to describe him, because he can't do anything much, and you might think he was indolent; and yet he is the biggest person I have ever seen, the one drawback being that he credits other people with being big too." "I notice that you call him 'Father Payne,'" said Vincent. "Does that mean anything in particular?" "No," said Barthrop, smiling. "It began as a sort of joke, I believe--but it seemed to fit him; and it's rather convenient. We can't begin by calling him 'Payne,' and 'Mr. Payne' is a little formal. Some of the men call him 'sir,' but I think he likes 'Father Payne' best, or simply 'Father,' You will find it exactly expresses him." "Yes," I said, "I am sure it does!" I did not sleep much that night. The great change in my life had all taken place with such rapidity and ease that I felt bewildered, and the thought of the time ahead was full of a vague excitement. But most of all the thought of Father Payne ran in my mind, I regarded him with a singular mixture of interest, liking, admiration, and dread. Yet he had contrived to kindle a curious flame in my mind. It was not that I fully understood what he was working for, but I was conscious of a great desire to prove to him that I could do something, exhibit some tenacity, approve myself to him. I wanted to make him retract what he had said about me; and, further on, I had a dim sense of an initiation into ideas, familiar enough, but which had only been words to me hitherto--power, purpose, seriousness. They had been ideas which before this had just vaguely troubled my peace, clouds hanging in a bright sky. I had the sense that there were some duties which I ought to perform, efforts to be made, ends to fulfil; but they had seemed to me expressed in rather priggish phrases, words which oppressed me, and ruffled the surface of my easy joy. Now they loomed up before me as big realities which could not be escaped, hills to climb, with no pleasant path round about their bases. I seemed in sight of some inspiring secret. I could not tell what it was, but Father Payne knew it, might show it me? Thus I drowsed and woke, a dozen times, till in the glimmer of the early light I rose and drew back my curtains. The dawn was struggling up fitfully in the east, among cloudy bars, tipping and edging them with smouldering flashes of light, and there was a lustrous radiance in the air. Then, to my surprise, looking down at the silent garden, pale with dew, I saw the great figure of Father Payne, bare-headed, wrapt in a cloak, pacing solidly and, I thought, happily among the shrubberies, stopping every now and then to watch the fiery light and to breathe the invigorating air--and I felt then that, whatever he might be doing, he at all events _was_ something, in a sense which applied to but few people I knew. He was not hard, unimaginative, fenced in by stupidity and self-righteousness from unhappiness and doubt, as were some of the men accounted successful whom I knew. No, it was something positive, some self-created light, some stirring of hidden force, that emanated from him, such as I had never encountered before. VII THE MEN I can attempt no sort of chronicle of our days, which indeed were quiet and simple enough. I have only preserved in my diary the record of a few scenes and talks and incidents. I will, however, first indicate how our party, as I knew it, was constituted, so that the record may be intelligible. First of us came Leonard Barthrop, who was, partly by his seniority and partly by his temperament, a sort of second-in-command in the house, much consulted and trusted by Father Payne. He was a man of about thirty-five, grave, humorous, pleasant. If one was in a minor difficulty, too trivial to take to Father Payne, it was natural to consult Barthrop; and he sometimes, too, would say a word of warning to a man, if a storm seemed to be brewing. It must not be denied that men occasionally got on Father Payne's nerves, quite unconsciously, through tactlessness or stupid mannerisms--and Barthrop was able to smooth the situation out by a word in season. He had a power of doing this without giving offence, from the obvious goodwill which permeated all he did. Barthrop was not very sociable or talkative, and he was occupied, I think, in some sort of historical research--I believe he has since made his name as a judicious and interesting historian; but I knew little of what he was doing, and indeed was hardly intimate with him, though always at ease in his company. He was not a man with strong preferences or prejudices, nor was he in any sense a brilliant or suggestive writer, I think he had merged himself very much in the life of our little society, and kept things together more than I was at first aware. Then came Kaye, one of the least conspicuous of the whole group, though he has since become perhaps the best known, by his poems and his beautiful critical studies in both art and literature. Kaye is known as one of those rare figures in literature, a creative critic. His rich and elaborate style, his exquisite sidelights, his poetical faculty of interpretation, make his work famous, though hardly popular. But I found that he worked very slowly and even painfully, deliberately secreting his honey, and depositing it cell by cell. He had a peculiar intimacy with Father Payne, who treated him with a marked respect. Kaye was by far the most absorbed of the party, went and came like a great moth, was the first to disappear, and generally the last to arrive. Neither did he make any attempt at friendship. He was a handsome and graceful fellow, now about thirty, with a worn sort of beauty in his striking features, curling hair, long languid frame, and fine hands. His hands, I used to think, were the most eloquent things about him, and he was ever making silent little gestures with them, as though they were accompanying unuttered trains of thought; but he had, too, a strained and impatient air, as if he found the pursuit of phrases a wearing and hazardous occupation. I used to feel Kaye the most attractive and impressive of our society; but he neither made nor noticed any signals of goodwill, though always courteous and kindly. Pollard was a totally different man: he was about twenty-eight, and he was writing some work of fiction. He was a small, sturdy, rubicund creature, with beady eyes and pink cheeks, cherubic in aspect, entirely good-natured and lively, full of not very exalted humour, and with a tendency to wild and even hysterical giggling. I used to think that Father Payne did not like him very much; but he was a quick and regular worker, and it was impossible to find fault with him. He was extremely sociable and appreciative, and I used to find his company a relief from the strain which at times made itself felt. Pollard had a way of getting involved in absurd adventures, which he related with immense gusto; and he had a really wonderful power of description--more so in conversation than in writing--and of humorous exaggeration, which made him a delightful companion. But he was never able to put the best of himself into his books, which tended to be sentimental and even conventional. Then there was Lestrange; and I think he was the least congenial of the lot. He was a handsome, rather clerical-looking man of about twenty-eight, who had been brought up to take orders, and had decided against doing so. He was very much in earnest, in rather a tiresome way, and his phrases were conventional and pietistic. I used to feel that he jarred a good deal on Father Payne, but much was forgiven him because of his musical talents, which were really remarkable. His organ-playing, with its verve, its delicacy, and its quiet mastery, was delicious to hear, he was engaged in writing music mainly, and had a piano all to himself in a little remote room beyond the dining-room, which looked out to the stable-yard and had formerly been an estate-office. We used to hear faint sounds wafted down the garden when the wind was in the west. He was friendly, but he had the absorption of the musician in his art, which is unlike all other artistic absorptions, because it seems literally to check the growth of other qualities and interests. In fact, in many ways Lestrange was like a pious child. He was apt to be snubbed by Father Payne, but he was wholly indifferent to all irony. I used to listen to him playing the organ in the evenings, and a language of emotions and visions certainly streamed from his fingers which he was never able to put into words. Father Payne treated him as one might treat an inspired fool, with a mixture of respect and sharpness. Then there was Rose, a man of twenty-five, a curious mixture of knowledge, cynicism, energy, and affectionateness. I found Rose a very congenial companion, though I never felt sure what he thought, and never aired my enthusiasms in his presence. He had great aplomb, and was troubled by no shyness nor hesitation. There was a touch of frostiness at times between him and Father Payne. Rose was paradoxical and whimsical, and was apt to support fantastic positions with apparent earnestness. But he was an extremely capable and sensible man, and had a knack of dropping his contentiousness the moment it began to give offence. He was by far the most mundane of us, and had some command of money. I used to fancy that Father Payne was a little afraid of him, when he displayed his very considerable knowledge of the world. His father was a wealthy man, a member of Parliament, and Rose really knew social personages of the day. I doubt if he was ever quite in sympathy with the idea of the place, but I used to feel that his presence was a wholesome sort of corrective, like the vinegar in the salad. I believe he was writing a play, but he has done nothing since in literature, and was in many ways more like a visitor than an inmate. Then came my friend Vincent, a solid, good-natured, hard-working man, with a real enthusiasm for literature, not very critical or even imaginative, but with a faculty for clear and careful writing. He was at work on a realistic novel, which made some little reputation; but he has become since, what I think he always was meant to be, an able journalist and an excellent leader-writer on political and social topics. Vincent was the most interested of all of us in current affairs, but at the same time had a quiet sort of enthusiasm, and a power of idealising people, ardently but unsentimentally, which made him the most loyal of friends. The only other person of whom we saw anything was the Vicar of the parish--a safe, decorous, useful man, a distant cousin of Father Payne's. His wife was a good-humoured and conventional woman. Their two daughters were pleasant, unaffected girls, just come to womanhood. Lestrange afterwards married one of them. We were not much troubled by sociabilities. The place was rather isolated, and Father Payne had the reputation of being something of an eccentric. Moreover, the big neighbouring domain, Whitbury Park, blocked all access to north and west. The owner was an old and invalid peer, who lived a very secluded life and entertained no one. To the south there was nothing for miles but farms and hamlets, while the only near neighbour in the east was a hunting squire, who thought Father Payne kept a sort of boarding-house, and ignored him entirely. The result was that callers were absolutely unknown, and the wildest form of dissipation was that Pollard and Rose occasionally played lawn-tennis at neighbouring vicarages. We were not often all there together, because Father Payne's scheme of travel was strictly adhered to. He considered it a very integral part of our life. I never quite knew what his plan was; but he would send a man off, generally alone, with a solid sum for travelling expenses. Thus Lestrange was sent for a month to Berlin when Joachim held court there, or to Dresden and Munich. I remember Pollard and Vincent being packed off to Switzerland together to climb mountains, with stern injunctions to be sociable. Rose went to Spain, to Paris, to St. Petersburg. Kaye went more than once to Italy; but we often went to different parts of England, and then we were generally allowed to go together; but Father Payne's theory was that we should travel alone, learn to pick up friends, and to fend for ourselves. He had acquaintances in several parts of the Continent, and we were generally provided with a letter of introduction to some one. We had a fortnight in June and a fortnight at Christmas to go home--so that we were always away for three months in the year, while Father Payne was apt to send us off for a week at a time, if he thought we needed a change. Barthrop, I think, made his own plans, and it was all reasonable enough, as Father Payne would always listen to objections. Some of us paid for ourselves on those tours, but he was always willing to supplement it generously. It used to be a puzzle to me how Father Payne had the command of so much money; his estate was not large; but in the first place he spent very little on himself, and our life was extremely simple. Moreover, I became aware that some of his former pupils and friends used to send him money at times for this express purpose. The staff consisted of the old butler, whose wife was cook. There were three other maid-servants; the gardener was also coachman. The house was certainly clean and well-kept; we looked after ourselves to a great extent; but there was never any apparent lack of money, though, on the other hand, there was every sign of careful economy. Father Payne never talked about money. "It's an interesting thing, money," I have heard him say, "and it's curious to see how people handle it--but we must not do it too much honour, and it isn't a thing that can be spoken of in general conversation." VIII THE METHOD I do not propose to make any history of events, or to say how, within a very short time, I fell into the life of the place. I will only say what were the features of the scheme, and how the rule, such as it was, worked out. First of all, and above all, came the personality of Father Payne, which permeated and sustained the whole affair. It was not that he made it his business to drive us along. It was not a case of "the guiding hand in front and the propelling foot behind." He seldom interfered, and sometimes for a considerable space one would have no very direct contact with him. He was a man who was always intent, but by no means always intent on shepherding. I should find it hard to say how he spent his time. He was sometimes to all appearances entirely indolent and good-natured, when he would stroll about, talk to the people in the village, and look after the little farm which he kept in his own hands under a bailiff. At another time he would be for long together in an abstracted mood, silent, absent-minded, pursuing some train of thought. At another time he would be very busy with what we were doing, and hold long interviews with us, making us read our work to him and giving us detailed criticisms. On these occasions he was extremely stimulating, for the simple reason that he always seemed to grasp what it was that one was aiming at, and his criticisms were all directed to the question of how far the original conception was being worked out. He did not, as a rule, point out a different conception, or indicate how the work could be done on other lines. He always grasped the plan and intention, and really seemed to be inside the mind of the contriver. He would say; "I think the theme is weak here--and you can't make a weak place strong by filling it with details, however good in themselves. That is like trying to mend the Slough of Despond with cartloads of texts. The thing is not to fall in, or, if you fall in, to get out." His three divisions of a subject were "what you say, what you wanted to say, what you ought to have wanted to say." Sometimes he would listen in silence, and then say: "I can't criticise that--it is all off the lines. You had better destroy it and begin again," Or he would say: "You had better revise that and polish it up. It won't be any good when it is done--these patched-up things never are; but it will be good practice," He was encouraging, because he never overlooked the good points of any piece of writing. He would say: "The detail is good, but it is all too big for its place, quite out of scale; it is like a huge ear on a small head," Or he would say: "Those are all things worth saying and well said, but they are much too diffuse." He used to tell me that I was apt to stop the carriage when I was bound on a rapid transit, and go for a saunter among fields. "I don't object to your sauntering, but you must _intend_ to saunter--you must not be attracted by a pleasant footpath." Sometimes he could be severe, "That's vulgar," he once said to me, "and you can't make it attractive by throwing scent about," Or he would say: "That's a platitude--which means that it may be worth thinking and feeling, but not worth saying. You can depend upon your reader feeling it without your help," Or he would say: "You don't understand that point. It is a case of the blind leading the blind. Cut the whole passage, and think it out again," Or he would say: "That is all too compressed. You began by walking, and now you are jumping." Or he would say: "There is a note of personal irritation about that; it sounds as if you had been reading an unpleasant review. It is like the complaint of the nightingale leaning her breast against a thorn in order to get the sensation of pain. You seem to be wiping your eyes all through--you have not got far enough away from your vexation. Your attempt to give it a humorous turn reminds me of Miss Squeers' titter--you must never titter!" Once or twice in early times I used to ask him how _he_ would do it. "Don't ask me!" he said. "I haven't got to do it--that's your business; it's no use your doing it in _my_ way; all I know is that you are not doing it in _your_ way." He was very quick at noticing any mannerisms or favourite words. "All good writers have mannerisms, of course," he would say, "but the moment that the reader sees that it is a mannerism the charm is gone." His praise was rarely given, and when it came it was generous and rich. "That is excellent," I can hear him say, "You have filled your space exactly, and filled it well. There is not a word to add or to take away." He was always prepared to listen to argument or defence. "Very well--read it again." Then, at the end, he would say: "Yes, there is something in that. You meant to anticipate? I don't mind that! But you have anticipated too much, made it too clear; it should just be a hint, no more, which will be explained later. Don't blurt! You have taken the wind out of your sails by explaining it too fully." Sometimes he would leave us alone for two or three weeks together, and then say frankly that one had been wasting time, or the reverse. "You must not depend upon me too much; you must learn to walk alone." Every week we had a meeting, at which some one read a fragment aloud. At these meetings he criticised little himself, but devoted his attention to our criticisms. He would not allow harshness or abruptness in what we said. "We don't want your conclusions or your impressions--we want your reasons." Or he would say: "That is a fair criticism, but unsympathetic. It is in the spirit of a reviewer who wants to smash a man. We don't want Stephen to be stoned here, we want him confuted." I remember once how he said with indignation: "That is simply throwing a rotten egg! And its maturity shows that it was kept for that purpose! You are not criticising, you are only paying off an old score!" But I think that the two ways in which he most impressed himself were by his conversation, when we were all together, and by his _tête-à-tête_ talks, if one happened to be his companion. When we were all together he was humorous, ironical, frank. He did not mind what was said to him, so long as it was courteously phrased; but I have heard him say: "We must remember we are fencing--we must not use bludgeons." Or: "You must not talk as if you were scaring birds away--we are all equal here." He was very unguarded himself in what he said, and always maintained that talkers ought to contribute their own impressions freely and easily. He used to quote with much approval Dr. Johnson's remark about his garrulous old school-fellow, Edwards. Boswell said, when Edwards had gone, that he thought him a weak man. "Why, yes, sir," said Johnson. "Here is a man who has passed through life without experiences; yet I would rather have him with me than a more sensible man who will not talk readily. This man is always willing to say what he has to say." Father Payne used to add: "The point is to talk; you must not consider your reputation; say whatever comes into your head, and when you have learnt to talk, you can begin to select." I have heard him say; "Go on, some one! It is everybody's business here to avoid a pause. Don't be sticky! Pauses are for a _tête-à-tête_." Or, again, I have heard him say: "You mustn't examine witnesses here! You should never ask more than three questions running." He did not by any means keep his own rules; but he would apologise sometimes for his shortcomings. "I'm hopeless to-day. I can't attend, I can't think of anything in particular. I'm diluted, I'm weltering--I'm coming down like a shower." The result of this certainly was that we most of us did learn to talk. He liked to thrash a subject out, but he hated too protracted a discussion. "Here, we've had enough of this. It's very important, but I'm getting bored. I feel priggish. Help, help!" On the other hand, he was even more delightful in a _tête-à-tête_. He would say profound and tender things, let his emotions escape him. He had with me, and I expect with others, a sort of indulgent and paternal way with him. He never forgot a confidence, and he used to listen delightedly to stories of one's home circle. "Tell me some stories about Aunt Jane," he would say to me. "There is something impotently fiery about that good lady that I like. Tell me again what she said when she found cousin Frank in a smoking-cap reading Thomas-à-Kempis." He had a way of quoting one's own stories which was subtly flattering, and he liked sidelights of a good-natured kind on the character of other members. "Why won't he say such things to me?" he used to say. "He thinks I should respect him less, when really I should admire him more. He won't let me see when his box is empty! I suspect him of reading Bartlett's _Familiar Quotations_ before he goes a walk with me!" Or he would say: "In a general talk you must think about your companions; in a _tête-à-tête_ you must only feel him." But the most striking thing about Father Payne was this. Though we were all very conscious of his influence, and indeed of his authority; though we knew that he meant to have his own way, and was quite prepared to speak frankly and act decisively, we were never conscious of being watched or censured or interfered with. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it was a pure pleasure to meet him and to be with him, and many a time have I seen him, in a moment of leisure, strolling in the garden, and hurried out just on the chance of getting a word or a smile, or, if he was in an expansive mood, having my arm taken by him for a little turn. In the hundredth case, it happened that one might have said or done something which one knew that he would disapprove. But, as he never stored things up or kept you waiting, you could be sure he would speak soon or not at all. Often, too, he would just say: "I don't think that your remark to Kaye gave a fair impression of yourself," or, "Why waste your powder as you did to-night?" I was only once or twice directly rebuked by him, and that was for a prolonged neglect. "You don't _care_," he once said to me emphatically. "I can't do anything for you if you don't care!" But he was the most entirely placable of men. A word of regret or apology, and he would say: "Don't give it another thought, my boy," or, "That's all right, then." The real secret of his influence was that he took not a critical or even a dispassionate view of each of us, but an enthusiastic view. He took no pleasure in our shortcomings; they were rather of the nature of an active personal disappointment. The result was simply that you were natural with him, but natural with the added sense that he liked you and thought well of you, and expected friendship and even brilliance from you. You felt that he knew you well, and recognised your faults and weaknesses, but that he knew your best side even better, and enjoyed the presence of it. I never knew anyone who was so appreciative, and though I said foolish things to him sometimes, I felt that he was glad that I should be my undisguised self. It was thus delicately flattering to be with him, and it gave confidence and self-respect. That was the basis of our whole life, the goodwill and affection of Father Payne, and the desire to please him. IX FATHER PAYNE Father Payne was a big solid man, as I have said, but he contrived to give the impression of being even bigger than he was. It was like the Irish estate, of which its owner said that it had more land to the acre than any place he knew. This was the result, I suppose, of what Barthrop once dryly called the "effortless expansion" of Father Payne's personality. I suppose he was about six-foot-two in height, and he must have weighed fifteen stone or even more. He was not stout, but all his limbs were solid, so that he filled his clothes. His hands were big, his feet were big. He wore a rather full beard: he was slightly bald when I knew him, but his hair grew rather long and curly. He always wore old clothes--but you were never conscious of what he wore: he never looked, as some people do, like a suit of clothes with a person inside them. Thinking it over, it seems to me that the reason why you noticed his clothes so little, when you were with him, was because you were always observing his face, or his hands, which were extremely characteristic of him, or his motions, which had a lounging sort of grace about them. Heavy men are apt on occasions to look lumbering, but Father Payne never looked that. His whole body was under his full control. When he walked, he swung easily along; when he moved, he moved impetuously and eagerly. But his face was the most remarkable thing about him. It had no great distinction of feature, and it was sanguine, often sunburnt, in hue. But, solid as it was, it was all alive. His big dark eyes were brimful of amusement and kindliness, and it was like coming into a warm room on a cold day to have his friendly glance directed upon you. As he talked, his eyebrows moved swiftly, and he had a look, with his eyes half-closed and his brows drawn up, as he waited for an answer, of what the old books call "quizzical"--a sort of half-caressing irony, which was very attractive. He had an impatient little frown which passed over his face, like a ruffle of wind, if things went too slowly or heavily for his taste; and he had, too, on occasions a deep, abstracted look, as if he were following a thought far. There was also another look, well known to his companions, when he turned his eyes upwards with a sort of resignation, generally accompanied by a deprecating gesture of the hand. Altogether it was a most expressive face, because, except in his abstracted mood, he always seemed to be entirely _there_, not concealing or repressing anything, but bending his whole mind upon what was being said. Moreover, if you said anything personal or intimate to him, a word of gratitude or pleasure, he had a quick, beautiful, affectionate look, so rewarding, so embracing that I often tried to evoke it--though an attempt to evoke it deliberately often produced no more than a half-smile, accompanied by a little wink, as if he saw through the attempt. His great soft white hands, always spotlessly clean--he was the cleanest-looking man I ever saw--were really rather extraordinary. They looked at first sight clumsy, and even limp; but he was unusually deft and adroit with his fingers, and his touch on plants, in gardening, his tying of strings--he liked doing up parcels--was very quick and delicate. He was fond of all sorts of little puzzles, toys of wood and metal, which had to be fitted together; and the puzzles took shape or fell to pieces under his fingers like magic. They were extremely sensitive to pain, his hands, and a little pinch or abrasion would cause him marked discomfort. His handwriting was rapid and fine, and he occasionally would draw a tiny sketch to illustrate something, which showed much artistic skill. He often deplored his ignorance of handicraft, which, he said would have been a great relief to him. His voice, again, was remarkable. It was not in ordinary talk either deep or profound, though it could and did become both on occasions, especially when he made a quotation, which he did with some solemnity. I used at first to think that there was a touch of rhetorical affectation about his quotations. They were made in a high musical tone, and as often as not ended with the tears coming into his eyes. He spoke to me once about this. He said that it was a mistake to think he was _deeply_ affected by a quotation. "In fact," he said, "I am not easily affected by passionate or tragic emotion--what does affect me is a peculiar touch of beauty, but it is a luxurious and superficial thing. It would entirely prevent me," he added, "from reading many poems or prose passages aloud which I greatly admire. I simply could not command myself! In fact," he went on, smiling, "I very often can only get to the end of a quotation by fixing my mind on something else. I add up the digits giving the number of the page, or I count the plates at the dinner-table. It's very absurd--but it takes me in just the same way when I am alone. I could not read the last chapter of the Book of Revelation aloud to myself, or the chapter on 'The Wilderness' in Isaiah, without shedding tears. But it doesn't mean anything; it is just the _hysterica passio_, you know!" His voice, when he first joined in a talk, was often low and even hesitating; but when he became interested and absorbed, it gathered volume and emphasis. Barthrop once said to me that Father Payne was the only person he knew who always talked in italics. But he very seldom harangued, though it is difficult to make that clear in recording his talks, because he often spoke continuously. Yet it was never a soliloquy: he always included the listeners. He used to look round at them, explore their faces, catch an eye and smile, indicate the particular person addressed by a darted-out finger; and he had many little free gestures with his hands as he talked. He would trace little hieroglyphics with his finger, as if he were writing a word, sweep an argument aside, bring his hands together as though he were shaping something. This was a little confusing at first, and used to divert my attention, because of the great mobility of his hands; but after a little it seemed to me to bring out and illustrate his points in a remarkably salient way. His habits were curious and a little mysterious. They were by no means regular. Sometimes for days together we hardly saw him. He often rose early and walked in the garden. If he found a book which interested him, he would read it with absorbed attention, quite unconscious of the flight of time. "I do love getting really _buried_ in a book," he would say; "it's the best of tests." Sometimes he wrote, sometimes he composed music, sometimes he would have his table covered with bits of paper full of unintelligible designs and patterns. He did not mind being questioned, but he would not satisfy one's curiosity. "It's only some nonsense of mine," he would say. He did not write many letters, and they were generally short. At times he would be very busy on his farm, at times occupied in the village, at times he took long walks alone; very occasionally he went away for a day or two. He was both uncommunicative and communicative. He would often talk with the utmost frankness and abandon about his private affairs; but, on the other hand, I always had the sense of much that was hidden in his life. And I have no doubt that he spent much time in prayer and meditation. He seldom spoke of this, but it played a large part in his life. He gave the impression of great ease, cheerfulness, and tranquillity, attained by some deliberate resolve, because he was both restless and sensitive, took sorrows and troubles hardly, and was deeply shocked and distressed by sad news of any kind. I have heard him say that he often had great difficulty in forcing himself to open a letter which he thought likely to be distressing or unpleasant. He was naturally, I imagine, of an almost neurotic tendency; but he did not seem so much to combat this by occupation and determination as to have arrived at some mechanical way of dealing with it. I remember that he said to me once: "If you have a bad business on hand, an unhappy or wounding affair, it is best to receive it fully and quietly. Let it do its worst, realise it, take it in--don't resist it, don't try to distract your mind: see the full misery of it, don't attempt to minimise it. If you do that, you will suddenly find something within you come to your rescue and say, 'Well, I can bear that!' and then it is all right. But if you try to dodge it, it's my experience that there comes a kind of back-wash which hurts very much indeed. Let the stream go over you, and then emerge. To fight against it simply prolongs the agony." He certainly recovered himself quicker than anyone I have ever known: indeed I think his recuperation was the best sign of his enormous vitality. "I'm sensitive," he said to me once, "but I'm tough--I have a fearful power of forgetting--it's much better than forgiving." But the thing which remains most strongly in my mind about him is the way in which he pervaded the whole place. It was fancy, perhaps, but I used to think I knew whether he was in the house or not. Certainly, if I wanted to speak to him, I used to go off to his study on occasions, quite sure that I should find him; while on other occasions--and I more than once put this to the test--I have thought to myself, "It's no use going--the Father is out." His presence at any sort of gathering was entirely unmistakable. It was not that you felt hampered or controlled: it was more like the flowing of some clear stream. When he was away, the thing seemed tame and spiritless; when he was there, it was all full of life. But his presence was not, at least to me, at all wearisome or straining. I have known men of great vitality who were undeniably fatiguing, because they overcame one like a whirlwind. But with Father Payne it always seemed as though he put wind into one's sails, but left one to steer one's own course. He did not thwart or deflect, or even direct: he simply multiplied one's own energy. I never had the sensation with him of suppressing any thought in my mind, or of saying to myself, "The Father won't care about that." He always did care, and I used to feel that he was glad to be inquired of, glad to have his own thoughts diverted, glad to be of use. He never nagged; or found petty fault, or "chivied" you, as the boys say. If you asked him a question, or asked him to stroll or walk, you always felt that he was delighted, that it was the one thing he enjoyed. He liked to have childish secrets. He and I had several little _caches_ in the holes of trees, or the chinks of buildings, where we concealed small coins or curious stones on our walks, and at a later date revisited them. We were frankly silly about certain things. He and I had some imaginary personages--Dr. Waddilove, supposed to be a rich beneficed clergyman of Tory views; Mr. McTurk, a matter-of-fact Scotsman; Henry Bland, a retired schoolmaster with copious stores of information; and others--and we used often to discourse in character. But he always knew when to stop. He would say to me suddenly: "Dr. Waddilove said to me yesterday that he never argued with atheists or radicals, because they always came round in the end." Or he would say, in Henry Bland's flute-like tones: "Your mention of Robert Browning induces me to relate an anecdote, which I think may prove not wholly uninteresting to you." At times we used to tell long stories on our walks, stopping short in the middle of a sentence, when the other had instantly to continue the narrative. I do not mean that the wit was very choice or the humour at all remarkable--it would not bear being written down--but it amused us both. "Come, what shall we do to-day?" I can hear him say. "Dr. Waddilove and Mr. Bland might have a walk and discuss the signs of the times?" And then the ridiculous dialogue would begin. That was the delightful thing about him, that he was always ready to fall in with a mood, always light of touch and gay. He could be tender and sympathetic, as well as incisive and sensible if it was needed; but he was never either contradictory or severe or improving. He would sometimes pull himself up and say: "Here, we must be business-like," but he was never reproachful or grieved or shocked by what we said to him. He could be decisive, stern, abrupt, if it was really needed. But his most pungent reproofs were inflicted by a blank silence, which was one of the most appalling things to encounter. He generally began to speak again a few moments later, on a totally different subject, while any such sign of displeasure was extremely rare. He never under any circumstances reminded anyone of his generosity, or the trouble he had taken, or the favours he had conferred, while he would often remind one of some trifling kindness done to him. "I often remember how good you were about those accounts, old boy! I should never have got through without you!" His demeanour was generally that of an indulgent uncle, with that particular touch of nearness which in England is apt to exist only among relations. He would consult us about his own private worries with entire frankness, and this more than anything made us ready to confide in him. He used to hand us cheques or money if required, with a little wink. "That's your screw!" he used to say; and he liked any thanks that seemed natural. "Natural,"--that is the word that comes before me all through. I can remember no one so unembarrassed, so easy, so transparent. His thought flowed into his talk; and his silences were not reticences, but the busy silence of the child who has "a plan." He gave himself away without economy and without disguise, and he accepted gratefully and simply whatever you cared to give him of thought or love. I think oftenest of how I sometimes went to see him in the evenings: if he was busy, as he often was, he used just to murmur half to himself, "Well, old man?" indicate a chair, put his finger on his lips, and go on with his work or his book; but at intervals he would just glance at me with a little smile, and I knew that he was glad to have me at hand in that simple companionship when there is no need of speech or explanation. And then the book or paper would be dropped, and he would say: "Well, out with it." If one said, "Nothing--only company," he would give one of his best and sweetest smiles. X CHARACTERISTICS But whatever may have been Father Payne's effect upon us individually or collectively, or however the result may have been achieved, there was no question of one thing, and that was the ardent and beautiful happiness of the place. Joy deliberately schemed for and planned is apt to evaporate. But we were not hunting for happiness as men dig for gold. We were looking for something quite different. We were all doing work for which we cared, with kind and yet incisive criticism to help us; and then the simplicity and regularity of the life, the total absence of all indulgence, the exercise, the companionship, the discipline, all generated a kind of high spirits that I have known in no other place and at no other time. I used to awake in the morning fresh and alert, free from all anxiety, all sense of tiresome engagements, all possibility of boredom. All staleness, weariness, all complications and conventional duties, all jealousies and envyings, were absent. We were not competing with each other, we were not bent on asserting ourselves, we had just each our own bit of work to do; moreover our spaces of travel had an invigorating effect, and sent us back to Aveley with the zest of returning to a beloved home. Of course there were little bickerings at times, little complexities of friendship; but these never came to anything in Father Payne's kindly present. Sometimes a man would get fretful or worried over his work; if so, he was generally despatched on a brief holiday, with an injunction to do no work at all; and I am sure that the prospect of even temporary banishment was the strongest of all motives for the suppression of strife. I remember spring mornings, when the birds began to sing in the shrubberies, and the beds were full of rising flower-blades, when one's whole mind and heart used to expand in an ecstasy of hope and delight; I remember long rambles or bicycle rides far into the quiet pastoral country, in the summer heat, alone or with a single companion, when life seemed almost too delicious to continue; then there would be the return, and a plunge into the bathing-pool, and another quiet hour or two at the work in hand, and the delight of feeling that one was gaining skill and ease of expression; or again there would be the quick tramp in winter along muddy roads, with the ragged clouds hurrying across the sky, with the prospect ahead of a fire-lit evening of study and talk; and best of all a walk and a conversation with Father Payne himself, when all that he said seemed to interpret life afresh and to put it in a new and exciting aspect. I never met anyone with such a power of linking the loose ends of life together, and of giving one so joyful a sense of connection and continuance. How it was done I cannot guess; but whereas other minds could cast light upon problems, Father Payne somehow made light shine through them, and gave them a soft translucence. But while he managed to give one a great love of life itself, it never rested there; he made me feel engaged in some sort of eternal business, and though he used no conventional expressions, I had in his presence a sense of vast horizons and shining tracks passing into an infinite distance full of glory and sweetness, and of death itself as a mystery of surprise and wonder. He taught me to look for beauty and harmony, not to waste time in mean controversy or in futile regret, but to be always moving forwards, and welcoming every sign of confidence and goodwill. He had a way, too, of making one realise the dignity and necessity of work, without cherishing any self-absorbed illusions about its impressiveness or its importance. His creed was the recognition of all beauty and vividness as an unquestionable sign of the presence of God, the Power that made for order and health and strength and peace; and the deep necessity of growing to understand one another with unsuspicious trustfulness and sympathy--the Fatherhood of God, and the Brotherhood of Man, these were the doctrines by which he lived. It used to be an extraordinary pleasure to me to accompany him about the village; he knew every one, and could talk with a simple directness and a quiet humour that was inimitable. I never saw so naturally pastoral a man. He carried good-temper about with him, and yet he could rebuke with a sharpness which surprised me, if there was need. He was curiously tolerant, I used to think, of sensual sins, but in the presence of cruelty or meanness or deliberate deceit he used to explode into the most violent language. I remember a scene which it is almost a terror to me now to recollect, when I was walking with him, and we met a tipsy farmer of a neighbouring village flogging his horse along a lane. He ran up beside the cart, he stopped the horse, he roared at the farmer, "Get out of your cart, you d--d brute, and lead it home." The farmer descended in a state of stupefaction. Father Payne snatched the whip out of his hand, broke it, threw it over the hedge, threatened him with all the terrors of the law, and reduced him to a state of abject submission. Presently he recovered somewhat, and in drunken wrath began to abuse Father Payne. "Very well," said Father Payne, "you can take your choice: either you lead the horse home quietly, and I'll see it done; or else I come with you to the village, and tell the people what I think of you in the open street. And if you put up your fist like that again, I'll run you home myself and hand you over to the policeman. I'll be d--d if I won't do it now. Here, Duncan," he said to me, "you go and fetch the policeman, and we'll have a little procession back." The ruffian thought better of it, and led the horse away muttering, while we walked behind until we were near the farm, "Now get in, and behave yourself," said Father Payne. "And if you choose to come over to-morrow and beg my pardon, you may; and if you don't, I'll have you up before the magistrates on Saturday next." I had never seen such wrath; but the tempest subsided instantly, and he walked back with me in high good-humour. The next day the man came over, and Father Payne said to me in the evening: "We had quite an affecting scene. I gave him a bit of my mind, and he thanked me for speaking straight. He's a low brute, but I don't think he'll do the same sort of thing in a hurry. I'll give him six weeks to get over his fright, and then I'll do a little patrolling!" His gentleness, on the other hand, with women and children was beautiful to see. It was as natural for Father Payne to hurry to a scene of disaster or grief as it was for others to wish to stay away. He used to speak to a sufferer or a mourner with great directness. "Tell me all about it," he would say, and he would listen with little nods and gestures, raising his eyebrows or even shutting his eyes, saying very little, except a word or two of sympathy at the end. He knew all the children, but he never petted them or made favourites, but treated them with a serious kind of gravity which he assured us they infinitely preferred. He used to have a Christmas entertainment for them at the Hall, as well as a summer feast. He encouraged the boys and young men to botanise and observe nature in all forms, and though he would never allow nests to be taken, or even eggs if he could help it, he would give little prizes for the noting of any rare bird or butterfly. "If you want men to live in the country, they must love the country," he used to say. He kept a village club going, but he never went there. "It's embarrassing," he used to say. "They don't want me strolling in any more than I want them strolling in. Philanthropists have no sense of privacy." He did not call at the villagers' houses, unless there was some special event, and his talks were confined to chance meetings. Neither was there any sense of duty about it. "No one is taken in by formal visiting," he said. "You must just do it if you like it, or else stay away. 'To keep yourself to yourself' is the highest praise these people can give. No one likes a fuss!" The same sort of principles regulated our own intercourse. "We are not monks," he used to say; "we are Carthusians, hermits, living together for comfort or convenience." The solitude and privacy of everyone was respected. We used to do our talking when we took exercise; but there was very little sitting and gossiping together _tête-à-tête._ "I don't want everyone to try to be intimate with everyone else," he used to say. "The point is just to get on amicably together; we won't have any cliques or coteries." He himself never came to any of our rooms, but sent a message if he wanted to see us. One small thing he strongly objected to, the shouting up from the garden to anyone's window: "Most offensive!" He disliked all loud shouting and calling or singing aloud. "You mustn't use the world as a private sitting-room." And the one thing which used to fret him was a voice stridently raised. "Don't rouse the echoes!" he would say. "You have no more right to make a row than you have to use a strong scent or to blow a post-horn--that's not liberty!" The result of this was that the house was a singularly quiet one, and this sense of silence and subdued sound lives in my memory as one of its most refreshing characteristics. "A row is only pleasant if it is deliberate and organised," he used to say. "Native woodnotes wild are all very well, but they are not civilisation. To talk audibly and quietly is the best proof of virtue and honour!" XI CONVERSATION I am going to try to give a few impressions of talks with Father Payne--both public and private talks. It is, however, difficult to do this without giving, perhaps, a wrong impression. I used to get into the habit of jotting down the things he had said, and I improved by practice. But he was a rapid talker and somewhat discursive, and he was often deflected from his main subject by a question or a discussion. Yet I do not want it to be thought that he was fond of monologue and soliloquy. He was not, I should say, a very talkative man; days would sometimes pass without his doing more than just taking a hand in conversation. He liked to follow the flow of a talk, and to contribute a remark now and then; sometimes he was markedly silent; but in no case was he ever oppressive. Occasionally, and more often in _tête-à-tête,_ he went ahead and talked copiously, but this was rather the exception than the rule. I have not thought it worth while to try to give the effect of our own talk. We were young, excitable, and argumentative, and, though it was at the time often delightful and stimulating, it was also often very crude and immature. Father Payne was good at helping a talker out, and would often do justice to a clumsily-expressed remark which he thought was interesting. But he was by far the most interesting member of the circle; he spoke easily and flowingly when he was moved, and there always seemed to me a sense of form about his talk which was absent from ours. But under no circumstance did he ever become tedious--indeed he was extremely sensitive to the smallest signs of impatience. We often tried, so to speak, to draw him out; but if he had the smallest suspicion that he was being drawn, he became instantly silent. There is more coherence about some of the talks I have recorded than was actually the case. He would diverge to tell a story, or he would call one's attention to some sight or sound. Moreover his face, his movements, his gestures, all added much to his talk. He had a way of wrinkling up his brows, of shaking his head, of looking round with an awestruck expression, his eyes wide open, his mouth pursed up, especially when he had reached some triumphantly absurd conclusion. He had two little quick gestures of the hands as he spoke, opening his fingers, waving a point aside, emphasizing an argument by a quick downward motion of his forefinger. He had, too, a quick, loud, ebullient laugh, sometimes shrill, sometimes deep; and he abandoned himself to laughter at an absurd story or jest as completely as anyone I have ever seen. Rose was an excellent mimic, and Father Payne used to fall into agonising paroxysms of laughter at many of his representations. But he always said that laughter was with him a social mood, and that he had never any inclination to laugh when he was alone. So the record of his talks must be taken not as typical of his everyday mood, but as instances of the kind of things he said when he was moved to speak at large; and even so they give, I am aware, too condensed an impression. He never talked as if he were playing on a party or a companion with a hose-pipe. There was never anyone who was more easily silenced or diverted. But to anyone who knew him they will give, I believe, a true impression of his method of talk; and perhaps they may give to those who never saw him a faint reflection of his lively and animated mind, the energy with which he addressed himself to small problems, and the firm belief which he always maintained, that any evidence of life, however elementary, was more encouraging and inspiring than the most elaborate logic or the profoundest intellectual grasp of abstract subjects. XII OF GOING TO CHURCH I had been to church one summer Sunday morning--a very simple affair it was, with nothing sung but a couple of hymns; but the Vicar read beautifully, neither emphatically nor lifelessly, with a little thrill in his voice at times that I liked to hear. It did not compel you to listen so much as invite you to join. Lestrange played the organ most divinely; he generally extemporised before the service, and played a simple piece at the end; but he never strained the resources of the little organ, and it was all simple and formal music, principally Bach or Handel. Father Payne himself was a regular attendant at church, and Sunday was a decidedly leisurely day. He advised us to put aside our writing work, to write letters, read, make personal jottings, talk, though there was no inquisition into such things. Father Payne was a somewhat irregular responder, but it was a pleasure to sit near him, because his deep, rapid voice gave a new quality to the words. He seemed happy in church, and prayed with great absorption, though I noticed that his Bible was often open before him all through the service. The Vicar's sermons were good of their kind, suggestive rather than provocative, about very simple matters of conduct rather than belief. I have heard Father Payne speak of them with admiration as never being discursive, and I gathered that the Vicar was a great admirer of Newman's sermons. We came away together, Father Payne and I, and we strolled a little in the garden. I felt emboldened to ask him the plain question why he went to church. "Oh, for a lot of reasons," he said, "none of them very conclusive! I like to meet my friends in the first place; and then a liturgy has a charm for me. It has a beauty of its own, and I like ceremony. It is not that I think it sacred--only beautiful. But I quite admit the weakness of it, which is simply that it does not appeal to everyone, and I don't think that our Anglican service is an ideal service. It is too refined and formal; and many people would feel it was more religious if it were more extempore--prayer and plain advice." I told him something of my old childish experience, saying that I used to regard church as a sort of calling-over, and that God would be vexed if one did not appear. He laughed at this. "Yes, I don't think we can insist on it as being a levée," he said, "where one is expected to come and make one's bow and pay formal compliments. That idea is an old anthropomorphic one, of course. It is superstitious--it is almost debasing to think of God demanding praise as a duty incumbent on us. 'To thee all angels cry aloud'--I confess I don't like the idea of heaven as a place of cheerful noise--that isn't attractive! "And also I think that the attention demanded in our service is a mistake--it's a mixture of two ideas; the liturgical ceremony which touches the eye and the emotion, rather than the reason; and the sermon and the prayer in which the reason is supposed to be concerned. I think the Catholic idea is a better one, a solemnity performed, in which you don't take part, but receive impressions. There's no greater strain on the mind than forcing it to follow a rapid and exalted train of intellectual and literary thought and expression. I confess I don't attempt that, it seems to me just a joyful and neighbourly business, where one puts the mind in a certain expectant mood, and is lucky if one carries a single thrill or aspiration away." "What do you _do_, then?" I said. "Well, I meditate," said Father Payne. "I believe in meditation very much, and in solitude it is very hard work. But the silent company of friends, and the old arches and woodwork, some simple music, a ceremony, and a little plan of thought going on--that seems to me a fruitful atmosphere. Some verse, some phrase, which I have heard a hundred times before, suddenly seems written in letters of gold. I follow it a little way into the dark, I turn it over, I wonder about it, I enjoy its beauty. I don't say that my thoughts are generally very startling or poignant or profound; but I feel the sense of the Fatherly, tolerant, indulgent presence of God, and a brotherly affection for my fellow-men. It's a great thing to be in the same place with a number of people, all silent, and on the whole thinking quiet, happy, and contented thoughts. It all brings me into line with my village friends, it gives me a social mood, and I feel for once that we all want the same things from life--and that for once instead of having to work and push for them, we are fed and comforted. 'Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it'--that's a wholesome, childlike verse, you know. The whole thing seems to me a simple device for producing a placid and expectant mood--I don't know anything else that produces it so well." "You mean it is something mystical--almost hypnotic?" I said. "Perhaps I should if I knew what those big words meant," said Father Payne, smiling. "No; church seems to me a thing that has really grown up out of human nature, not a thing imposed upon it. I don't like what may be called ecclesiasticism, partly because it emphasizes the intellectual side of belief, partly because it tries to cast a slur on the people who don't like ceremonial, and whom it does not suit--and most of all because ecclesiasticism aims at making you believe that other people can transact spiritual business on your account. In these democratic days, you can't have spiritual authority--you have got to find what people need, and help them to find it for themselves. The plain truth is that we don't want dogma. Of course it isn't to be despised, because it once meant something, even if it does not now. Dogmas are not unintelligible intellectual propositions imposed on the world. They are explanations, interpretations, attempts to link facts together. They have the sacredness of ideas which people lived by, and for which they were prepared to die. But many of them are scientific in form only, and the substance has gone out of them. We know more in one sense about life and God than we did, but we also know less, because we realise there is so much more to know. But now we want, I believe, two or three great ideas which everyone can understand--like Fatherhood and Brotherhood, like peace and orderliness and beauty. I think that a church service means all these things, or ought to. What people need is simplicity and beauty of life--joy and hope and kindness. Anything which helps these things on is fine; anything which bewilders and puzzles and gives a sense of dreariness is simply injurious. I want to be told to be quiet, to try again, not to be disheartened by failures, not to be angry with other people, to give up things, rather than to get them with a sauce of envy and spite--the feeling of a happy and affectionate family, in fact. The sort of thing I don't want is the Athanasian Creed. I can't regard it simply as a picturesque monument of ancient and ferocious piety. It seems to me an overhanging cloud of menace and mystification! It doesn't hurt the unintelligent Christian, of course--he simply doesn't understand it; but to the moderately intelligent it is like a dog barking furiously which may possibly get loose; a little more intelligence, and it is all right. You know the dog is safely tied up! Again, I don't mind the cursing psalms, because they give the parson the power of saying: 'We say this to remind ourselves that it was what people used to feel, and which Christ came to change.' I don't mind anything that is human--what I can't tolerate is anything inhuman or unintelligible. No one can misunderstand the Beatitudes; very few people can follow the arguments of St. Paul! You don't want only elaborate reasons for clever people, you want still more beautiful motives for simple people. It isn't perfect, our service, I admit, but it does me good." "Tell me," I said--"to go back for a moment--something more about meditating--I like that!" "Well," said Father Payne, "it's like anchoring to a thought. Thought is a fidgety thing, restless, perverse. It anchors itself very easily on to a grievance, or an unpleasant incident, or a squabble. Don't you know the misery of being jerked back, time after time, by an unpleasant thought? I think one ought to practise the opposite--and I know now by experience that it is possible. I will make a confession. I don't care for many of the Old Testament lessons myself. I think there's too much fact, or let us say incident, in them, and not enough poetry. Well, I take up my Bible, and I look at Job, or Isaiah, or the Revelation, and I read quietly on. Suddenly there's a gleam of gold in the bed of the stream--some splendid, deep, fine thought. I follow it out; I think how it has appeared in my own life, or in the lives of other people--it bears me away on its wings, I pray about it, I hope to be more like that--and so on. Sometimes it is a sharp revelation of something ugly and perverse in my own nature--I don't dwell long on that, but I see in imagination how it is likely to trouble me, and I hope that it will not delude me again; because these evil things delude one, they call noxious tricks by fine names. I say to myself, 'What you pretend is self-respect, or consistency, is really irritable vanity or stupid unimaginativeness.' But it is a mistake, I think, to dwell long on one's deficiencies: what one has got to do is to fill one's life full of positive, active, beautiful things, until there is no room for the ugly intruders. And, to put it shortly, a service makes me think about other people and about God; I fear it doesn't make me contrite or sorrowful. I don't believe in any sort of self-pity, nor do I think one ought to cultivate shame; those things lie close to death, and it is life that I am in search of--fulness of life. Don't let us bemoan ourselves, or think that a sign of grace!" "But if you find yourself grubby, nasty, suspicious, irritable, isn't it a good thing to rub it in sometimes?" I said. "No, no," said Father Payne, "life will do that hard enough. Turn your back on it all, look at the beautiful things, leave a thief to catch a thief, and the dead to bury the dead. Don't sniff at the evil thing; go and get a breath of fresh air." XIII OF NEWSPAPERS Father Payne was a very irregular reader of the newspaper; he was not greedy of news, and he was incurious about events, while he disliked the way in which they were professionally dished up for human consumption. At times, however, he would pore long and earnestly over a daily paper with knitted brows and sighs. "You seem to be suffering a good deal over your paper to-day, Father!" said Barthrop once, regarding him with amusement. Father Payne lifted up his head, and then broke into a smile. "It's all right, my boy!" he said. "I don't despair of the world itself, but I feel that if the average newspaper represents the mind of the average man, the human race is very feeble--not worth saving! This sort of thing"--indicating the paper with a wave of his hand--"makes me realise how many things there are that don't interest me--and I can't get at them either through the medium of these writers' minds. They don't seem to want simply to describe the facts, but to manipulate them; they try to make you uncomfortable about the future, and contented with the past. It ought to be just the other way! And then I ask myself, 'Ought I, as a normal human being, to be as one-sided, as submissive, as trivial, as sentimental as this?' These vast summaries of public opinion, do they represent anyone's opinion at all, or are they simply the sort of thing you talk about in a railway-carriage with a man you don't know? Does anyone's mind really dwell on such things and ponder them? The newspapers do not really know what is happening--everything takes them by surprise. The ordinary person is interested in his work, his amusements, the people he lives with--in real things. There seems to be nothing real here; it is all shadowy, I want to get at men's minds, not at what journalists think is in men's minds. The human being in the newspapers seems to me an utterly unreal person, picturesque, theatrical, fatuous, slobbering, absurd. Does not the newspaper-convention misrepresent us as much as the book-convention misrepresents us? We straggle irregularly along, we are capable of entertaining at the same moment two wholly contrary opinions, we do what we don't intend to do, we don't carry out our hopes or our purposes. The man in the papers is agitated, excited, wild, inquisitive--the ordinary person is calm, indifferent, and on the whole fairly happy, unless some one frightens him. I can't make it out, because it isn't a conspiracy to deceive, and yet it does deceive; and what is more, most people don't even seem to know that they are being misrepresented. It all seems to me to differ as much from real life as the Morning Service read in church differs from the thoughts of the congregation!" "How would you mend it?" said Barthrop. "It seems to me it must represent _something_." "Something!" said Father Payne. "I don't know! I don't believe we are so stupid and so ignoble! As to mending it, that's another question. Writing is such a curious thing--it seems to represent anything in the world except the current of a man's thoughts. Reverie--has anyone ever tried to represent that? I have been out for a walk sometimes, and reflected when I came in that if what has passed through my mind were all printed in full in a book, it would make a large octavo volume--and precious stuff, too! Yet the few thoughts which do stand out when it is all over, the few bright flashes, they are things which can hardly be written down--at least they never are written down." "But what would you do?" I said--"with the newspapers, I mean." "Well," said Father Payne, "a great deal of the news most worth telling can be told best in pictures. I believe very much in illustrated papers. They really do help the imagination. That's the worst of words--a dozen scratches on a bit of paper do more to make one realise a scene than columns of description. I would do a lot with pictures, and a bit of print below to tell people what to notice. Then we must have a number of bare facts and notices--weather, business, trade, law--the sort of thing that people concerned must read. But I would make a clean sweep of fashion, and all sensational intelligence--murders, accidents, sudden deaths. I would have much more biography of living people as well as dead, and a few of the big speeches. Then I would have really good articles with pictures about foreign countries--we ought to know what the world looks like, and how the other people live. And then I would have one or two really fine little essays every day by the very best people I could get, amusing, serious, beautiful articles about nature and art and books and ideas and qualities--some real, good, plain, wise, fine, simple thinking. You want to get people in touch with the best minds!" "And how many people would read such a paper?" I said. "Oh, I don't know, I'm sure," said Father Payne with a groan. "I would for one! I want to have the feeling of being in touch day by day with the clever, interesting, lively, active-minded people, as if I had been listening to good talk. Isn't that possible? Instead of which I sit here, day after day, overflowing with my own ridiculous thoughts--and the world discharging all its staleness and stupidity like a sewer in these horrible documents. Take it away from me, someone! I'm fascinated by the disgusting smell of it!" I withdrew the paper from under his hands. "Thank you," said Father Payne feebly. "That's the horror of it--that the world isn't a dull place or a sensational place or a nasty place--and those papers make me feel it is all three!" "I'm sorry you are so low about it," said Barthrop. "Yes, because journalism ought to be the finest thing in the world," said Father Payne. "Just imagine! The power of talking, without any of the inconveniences of personality, to half-a-million people." "But why doesn't it improve?" said Barthrop. "You always say that the public finds out what it wants, and will have it." "In books, yes!" said Father Payne; "but in daily life we are all so damnably afraid of the truth--that's what is the matter with us, and it is that which journalism caters for. Suppress the truth, pepper it up, flavour it, make it appetising--try to persuade people that the world is romantic--that's the aim of the journalist. He flies from the truth, he makes a foolish tale out of it, he makes people despise the real interests of life, he makes us all want to escape from life into something that never has been and never will be. I loathe romance with all my heart. The way of escape is within, and not without." "You had better go for a walk," said Barthrop soothingly. "I must," said Father Payne. "I'm drunk and drugged with unreality. I will go and have a look round the farm--no, I won't have any company, thank you. I shall only go on fuming and stewing, if I have sympathetic listeners. You are too amiable, you fellows. You encourage me to talk, when you ought to stop your ears and run from me." And Father Payne swung out of the room. XIV OF HATE It was at dinner, one frosty winter evening, and we were all in good spirits. Two or three animated conversations were going on at the table. Father Payne was telling one of his dreams to the three who were nearest to him, and, funny as most of his dreams were, this was unusually so. There was a burst of laughter and a silence--a sudden sharp silence, in which Vincent, who was continuing a conversation, was heard to say to Barthrop, in a tone of fierce vindictiveness, "I hate him like the devil!" Another laugh followed, and Vincent blushed. "Perhaps I ought not to say that?" he said in hurried tones. "You are quite right," said Father Payne to Vincent, encouragingly--"at least you may be quite right. I don't know of whom you were speaking." "Yes, who is it, Vincent?" said someone, leaning forwards. "No, no," said Father Payne, "that's not fair! It was meant to be a private confession." "But you don't hate people, Father?" said Lestrange, looking rather pained. "I, dear man?" said Father Payne. "Yes, of course I do! I loathe them! Where are your eyes and ears? All decent people do. How would the world get on without it?" Lestrange looked rather shocked. "I don't understand," he said. "I always gathered that you thought it our business to--well, to love people." "Our business, yes!" said Father Payne; "but our pleasure, no! One must begin by hating people. What is there to like about many of us?" "Why, Father," said Vincent, "you are the most charitable of men!" Father Payne gave him a little bow. "Come," he said, "I will make a confession. I am by nature the most suspicious of mankind. I have all the uncivilised instincts. There are people of whom I hate the sight and the sound, and even the scent. My natural impulse is to see the worst points of everyone. I admit that people generally improve upon acquaintance, but I have no weak sentiment about my fellow-men--they are often ugly, stupid, ill-mannered, ill-tempered, unpleasant, unkind, selfish. It is a positive delight sometimes to watch a thoroughly nasty person, and to reflect how much one detests him. It is a sign of grace to do so. How otherwise should one learn to hate oneself? If you hate nobody, what reason is there for trying to improve? It is impossible to realise how nasty you yourself can be until you have seen other people being nasty. Then you say to yourself, 'Come, that is the kind of thing that I do. Can I really be like that?'" "But surely," said Lestrange, "if you do not try to love people, you cannot do anything for them; you cannot wish them to be different." "Why not?" said Father Payne, laughing. "You may hate them so much that you may wish them to be different. That is the sound way to begin. I say to myself, 'Here is a truly dreadful person! I would abolish and obliterate him if I could; but as I cannot, I must try to get him out of this mess, that we may live more at ease,' It is simple humbug to pretend to like everyone. You may not think it is entirely people's fault that they are so unpleasant; but if you really love fine and beautiful things, you must hate mean and ugly things. Don't let there be any misunderstanding," he said, smiling round the table. "I have hated most of you at different times, some of you very much. I don't deny there are good points about you, but that isn't enough. Sometimes you are detestable!" "I see what you mean," said Barthrop; "but you don't hate people--you only hate things in them and about them. It is just a selection." "Not at all," said Father Payne. "How are you going to separate people's qualities and attributes from themselves? It is a process of addition and subtraction, if you like. There may be a balance in your favour. But when a bad mood is on, when a person is bilious, fractious, ugly, cross, you hate him. It is natural to do so, and it is right to do so. I do loathe this talk of mild, weak, universal love. The only chance of human beings getting on at all, or improving at all, is that they should detest what is detestable, as they abominate a bad smell. The only reason why we are clean is because we have gradually learnt to hate bad smells. A bad smell means something dangerous in the background--so do ugliness, ill-health, bad temper, vanity, greediness, stupidity, meanness. They are all danger signals. We have no business to ignore them, or to forget them, or to make allowances for them. They are all part of the beastliness of the world." "But if we believe in God, and in God's goodness--if He does not hate anything which He has made," said Lestrange rather ruefully, "ought we not to try to do the same?" "My dear Lestrange," said Father Payne, "one would think you were teaching a Sunday-school class! How do you know that God made the nasty things? One must not think so ill of Him as that! It is better to think of God as feeble and inefficient, than to make Him responsible for all the filth and ugliness of the world. He hates them as much as you do, you may be sure of that--and is as anxious as you are, and a great deal more anxious, to get rid of them. God is infinitely more concerned about it, much more disappointed about it, than you or me. Why, you and I are often taken in. We don't always know when things are rotten. I have made friends before now with people who seemed charming, and I have found out that I was wrong. But I do not think that God is taken in. It is a very mixed affair, of course; but one thing is clear, that something very filthy is discharging itself into the world, like a sewer into a river, I am not going to credit God with that; He is trying to get rid of it, you may be sure, and He cannot do it as fast as He would like. We have got to sympathise with Him, and we have got to help Him. Come, someone else must talk--I must get on with my dinner," Father Payne addressed himself to his plate with obvious appetite. "It is all my fault," said Vincent, "but I am not going to tell you whom I meant, and Barthrop must not. But I will tell you how it was. I was with this man, who is an old acquaintance of mine. I used to know him when I was living in London. I met him the other day, and he asked me to luncheon. He was pleasant enough, but after lunch he said to me that he was going to take the privilege of an old friend, and give me some advice. He began by paying me compliments; he said that he had thought a year ago that I was really going to do something in literature. 'You had made a little place for yourself,' he said; 'you had got your foot on the ladder. You knew the right people. You had a real chance of success. Then, in the middle of it all, you go and bury yourself in the country with an old'--no, I can't say it." "Don't mind me!" said Father Payne. "Very well," said Vincent, "if you _will_ hear it--'with an old humbug, and a set of asses. You sit in each others' pockets, you praise each others' stuff, you lead what you call the simple life. Where will you all be five years hence?' I told him that I didn't know, and I didn't care. Then he lost his temper, and, what was worse, he thought he was keeping it. 'Very well,' he said. 'Now I will tell you what you ought to be doing. You ought to have buckled to your work, pushed yourself quietly in all directions, never have written anything, or made a friend, or accepted an invitation, without saying, "Will this add to my consequence?" We must all nurse our reputations in this world. They don't come of themselves--they have to be made!' Well, I thought this all very sickening, and I said I didn't care a d--n about my reputation. I said I had a chance of living with people whom I liked, and of working at things I cared about, and I thought his theories simply disgusting and vulgar. He showed his teeth at that, and said that he had spoken as a true friend, and that it had been a painful task; and then I said I was much obliged to him, and came away. That's the story!" "That's all right," said Father Payne, "and I am much obliged to you for the sidelight on my character. But there is something in what he said, you know. You are rather unpractical! I shall send you back for a bit to London, I think!" "Why on earth do you say that?" said Vincent, looking a little crestfallen. "Because you mind it too much, my boy," said Father Payne. "You must not get soft. That's the danger of this life! It's all very well for me; I'm tough, and I'm moderately rich. But you would not have cared so much if you had not thought there _was_ something in what he said. It was very low, no doubt, and I give you leave to hate him; though, if you are going to lead the detached life, you must be detached. But now I have caught you up--and we will go back a little. The mistake you made, Vincent, if I may say so, was to be angry. You may hate people, but you must not show that you hate them. That is the practical side of the principle. The moment you begin to squabble, and to say wounding things, and to try to _hurt_ the person you hate, you are simply putting yourself on his level. And you must not be shocked or pained either. That is worse still, because it makes you superior, without making you engaging." "Then what _are_ you to do?" said Barthrop. "Try persuasion if you like," said Father Payne, "but you had better fall back on attractive virtue! You must ignore the nastiness, and give the pleasant qualities, if there are any, room to manoeuvre. But I admit it is a difficult job, and needs some practice." "But I don't see any principle about it," said Vincent. "There isn't any," said Father Payne;--"at least there is, but you must not dig it in. You mustn't use principles as if they were bayonets. Civility is the best medium. If you appear to be fatuously unconscious of other people's presence, of course they want to make themselves felt. But if you are good-humoured and polite, they will try to make you think well of them. That is probably why your friend calls me a humbug--he thinks I can't feel as polite as I seem." "But if you are dealing with a real egotist," said Vincent, "what are you to do then?" "Keep the talk firmly on himself," said Father Payne, "and, if he ever strays from the subject, ask him a question about himself. Egotists are generally clever people, and no clever people like being drawn out, while no egotists like to be perceived to be egotists. You know the old saying that a bore is a person who wants to talk about _himself_ when you want to talk about _yourself_. It is the pull against him that makes the bore want to hold his own. The first duty of the evangelist is to learn to pay compliments unobtrusively." "That's rather a nauseous prescription!" said Lestrange, making a face. "Well, you can begin with that," said Father Payne, "and when I see you perfect in it, I will tell you something else. Let's have some music, and let me get the taste of all this high talk out of my mouth!" XV OF WRITING There were certain days when Father Payne would hurry in to meals late and abstracted, with, a cloudy eye, that, as he ate, was fixed on a point about a yard in front of him, or possibly about two miles away. He gave vague or foolish replies to questions, he hastened away again, having heard voices but seen no one. I doubt if he could have certainly named anyone in the room afterwards. I had a little question of business to ask him on one such occasion after breakfast. I slipped out but two minutes after him, went to his study, and knocked. An obscure sound came from within. He was seated on his chair, bending over his writing-table. "May I ask you something?" I said. "Damnation!" said Father Payne. I apologised, and tried to withdraw on tiptoe, but he said, turning half round, somewhat impatiently, "Oh, come in, come in--it's all right. What do you want?" "I don't want to disturb you," I said. "Come in, I tell you!" he said, adding, "you may just as well, because I have nothing to do for a quarter of an hour." He threw a pen on the table. "It's one of my very few penances. If I swear when I am at work, I do no work for a quarter of an hour; so you can keep me company. Sit down there!" He indicated a chair with his large foot, and I sat down. My question was soon asked and sooner answered. Father Payne beamed upon me with an indulgent air, and I said: "May I ask what you were doing?" "You may," he said. "I rejoice to talk about it. It's my novel." "Your novel!" I said. "I didn't know you wrote novels. What sort of a book is it?" "It's wretched," he said, "it's horrible, it's grotesque! It's more like all other novels than any book I know. It's written in the most abominable style; there isn't a single good point about it. The incidents are all hackneyed, there isn't a single lifelike character in it, or a single good description, or a single remark worth making. I should think it's the worst book ever written. Will you hear a bit of it? Do, now! only a short bit. I should love to read it to you." "Yes, of course," I said, "there is nothing I should like better." He read a passage. It was very bad indeed, I couldn't have imagined that an able man could have written such stuff. I had an awful feeling that I had heard every word before. "There," he said at last, "that's rather a favourable specimen. What do you think of it? Come, out with it." "I'm afraid I'm not very much of a judge," I said. His face fell. "That's what everyone says," he said. "I know what you mean. But I'll publish it--I'll be d----d if I won't! Oh, dash it, that's five minutes more. No--I wasn't working, was I? Just conversing." "But why do you write it, if you are so dissatisfied with it?" I said feebly. "Why?" he said in a loud voice. "Why? Because I love it. I'm besotted by it. It's like strong drink to me. I doubt if there's a man in England who enjoys himself more than I do when I'm writing. The worst of it is, that it won't come out--it's beautiful enough when I think of it, but I can't get it down. It's my second novel, mind you, and I have got plans for three more. Do you suppose I'm going to sit here, with all you fellows enjoying yourselves, and not have my bit of fun? But it's hopeless, and I ought to be ashamed of myself. There simply isn't anything in the world that I should not be better employed in doing than in scribbling this stuff. I know that; but all the authors I know say that writing a book is the part they enjoy--they don't care about correcting proofs, or publishing, or seeing reviews, or being paid for it. Very disinterested and noble, of course! Now I should enjoy it all through, but I simply daren't publish my last one--I should be hooted in the village when the reviews appeared. But I am going to have my fun--the act of creation, you know! But it's too late to begin, and I have had no training. The beastly thing is as sticky as treacle. It's a sort of vomit of all the novels I have ever read, and that's the truth!" "I simply don't understand," I said. "I have heard you criticise books, I have heard you criticise some of our work--you have criticised mine. I think you one of the best critics I ever heard. You seem to know exactly how it ought to be done." "Yes," he said, frowning, "I believe I do. That's just it! I'm a critic, pure and simple. I can't look at anything, from a pigstye to a cathedral, or listen to anything, from a bird singing to an orchestra, or read anything, from Bradshaw to Shakespeare, without seeing when it is out of shape and how it ought to be done. I'm like the man in Ezekiel, whose appearance was like the appearance of brass, with a line of flax in his hand and a measuring reed. He goes on measuring everything for about five chapters, and nothing comes of it, as far as I can remember! I suppose I ought to be content with that, but I can't bear it. I hate fault-finding. I want to make beautiful things. I spent months over my last novel, and, as Aaron said to Moses, 'There came out this calf!' I'm a very unfortunate man. If I had not had to work so hard for many years for a bare living, I could have done something with writing, I think. But now I'm a sort of plumber, mending holes in other people's work. Never mind. I _will_ waste my time!" All this while he was eyeing the little clock on his table. "Now be off!" he said suddenly, "My penance is over, and I won't be disturbed!" He caught up his pen. "You had better tell the others not to come near me, or I'm blessed if I won't read the whole thing aloud after dinner!" And he was immersed in his work again. Two or three days later I found Father Payne strolling in the garden, on a bright morning. It was just on the verge of spring. There were catkins in the shrubbery. The lilacs were all knobbed with green. The aconite was in full bloom under the trees, and the soil was all pricked with little green blades. He was drinking it all in with delighted glances. I said something about his book. "Oh, the fit's off!" said he; "I'm sober again! I finished the chapter, and, by Jove, I think it's the worst thing I have done yet. It's simply infamous! I read it with strong sensations of nausea! I really don't know how I can get such deplorable rubbish down on paper. No matter, I get all the rapture of creation, and that's the best part of it. I simply couldn't live without it. It clears off some perilous stuff or other, and now I feel like a convalescent. Did you ever see anything so enchanting as that aconite? The colour of it, and the way the little round head is tucked down on the leaves! I could improve on it a trifle, but not much. God must have had a delicious time designing flowers--I wonder why He gave up doing it, and left it to the market-gardeners. I can't make out why new flowers don't keep appearing. I could offer a few suggestions. I dream of flowers sometimes--great banks of bloom rising up out of crystal rivers, in deep gorges, full of sunshine and scent. How nice it is to be idle! I'm sure I've earned it, after that deplorable chapter. It really is a miracle of flatness! You go back to your work, my boy, and thank God you can say what you mean! And then you can bring it to me, and I'll tell you to an inch what it is worth!" XVI OF MARRIAGE We were all at dinner one day, and Father Payne came in, in an excited mood, with a letter in his hand. "Here's a bit of nonsense," he said. "Here's my old friend Davenport giving me what he calls a piece of his mind--he can't have much left--about my 'celibate brotherhood,' as he calls it. It's all the other way! I am rather relieved when I hear that any of you people are happily engaged to be married. Celibacy is the danger of my experiment, not the object of it." "Do you wish us to be married?" said Kaye. "That's new to me. I thought this was a little fortress against the eternal feminine." "What rubbish!" said Father Payne. "The worst of using ridiculous words like feminine is that it blinds people to the truth. Masculine and feminine have nothing to do with sex. In the first place, intellectual people are all rather apt to be sexless; in the next place, all sensible people, men and women alike, are what is meant by masculine--that is to say, spirited, generous, tolerant, good-natured, frank. Thirdly, all suspicious, scheming, sensitive, theatrical, irritable, vain people are what is meant by feminine. And artistic natures are all prone to those failings, because they desire dignity and influence--they want to be felt. The real difference between people is whether they want to live, or whether they want to be known to exist. The worst of feminine people is that they are probably the people who ought not to marry, unless they marry a masculine person; and they are not, as a rule, attracted by masculinity." "But one can't get married in cold blood," said Vincent. "I often wish that marriages could just be arranged, as they do it in France. I think I should be a very good husband, but I shall never have the courage or the time to go in search of a wife." "That's why I send you all out into the world," said Father Payne. "Most people ought to be married. It's a normal thing--it isn't a transcendental thing. In my experience most marriages are successful. It does everyone good to be obliged to live at close quarters with other people, and to be unable to get away from them." "I didn't know you were interested in such matters," said someone. "I have gone into it pretty considerably, sir," said Father Payne, "The one thing that does interest me is human admixtures. It does no one any good to get too much attached to his own point of view." "But surely," said Rose, "there are some marriages which are obviously bad for all concerned--real incompatibilities? People who can't understand each other or their children--children who can't understand their parents? It always seems to me rather horrible that people should be shut up together like rats in a cage." "I expect we shall have legislation before long," said Father Payne, "for breaking up homes where some definite evil like drunkenness is at work--but I don't want industrial schools for children; that is even more inhuman than a bad home. We want more boarding out, but that's expensive. Someone has to pay, if children are to be planted out, and to pay well. There's no motive of duty so strong for an Englishman as good wages. People are honest about giving fair money's worth. But it is no good talking about these things, because they are all so far ahead of us. The question is whether anyone can suggest any practical means of filing away any of the roughnesses of marriage. I do not believe that the problem is very serious among workers. It is the marriage of idle people that is apt to be disastrous." "The thing that damages many marriages," said Rose, "is the fact that people have got to see so much of each other. What people really want is a holiday from each other." "Yes, but that is impossible financially," said Father Payne. "Apart from love and children, marriage is a small joint-stock company for cheap comfort. But it is of no use to go vapouring on about these big schemes, because in a democracy people won't do what philosophers wish, but what they want. Let's take a notorious case, known to everyone. Can anyone say what practical advice he could have given to either Carlyle or to Mrs. Carlyle, which would have improved that witches' cauldron? There were two high-principled Puritanical people, which is the same thing as saying that they both were disposed to consider that anyone who disagreed with them did so for a bad motive, and exalted their own whims and prejudices into moral principles; both of them irritable and sensitive, both able to give instantaneous and elaborate expression to their vaguest thoughts,--Carlyle himself with eloquence which he wielded like a bludgeon, and Mrs. Carlyle with incisiveness which she used like a sharp knife--Carlyle with too much to do, and Mrs. Carlyle with less than nothing to do--each passionately attached to the other as soon as they were separated, and both capable of saying the sweetest and most affectionate things by letter, which they could not for the life of them utter in talk. They did, as a matter of fact, spend an immense amount of time apart; and when they were together, Carlyle, having been trained as a peasant and one of a large family, roughly neglected Mrs. Carlyle, while Mrs. Carlyle, with a middle-class training, and moreover indulged as an only daughter, was too proud to complain, but not proud enough not to resent the neglect deeply. What could have been done for them? Were they impossible people to live with? Was it true, as Tennyson bluntly said, that it was as well that they married, because two people were unhappy instead of four?" "They wanted a child as a go-between!" said Barthrop. "Of course they did!" said Father Payne. "That would have pulled the whole ménage together. And don't tell me that it was a wise dispensation that they were childless! Cleansing fires? The fires in which they lived, with Carlyle raging about porridge and milk and crowing cocks, working alone, walking alone, flying off to see Lady Ashburton, sleeping alone; and Mrs. Carlyle, whom everyone else admired and adored, eating her heart out because she could not get him to value her company;--there was not much that was cleansing about all that! The cleansing came when she was dead, and when he saw what he had done." "I expect they have made it up by now," said Kaye. "You're quite right!" said Father Payne. "It matters less with those great vivid people. They can afford to remember. But the little people, who simply end further back than they began, what is to be done for them?" XVII OF LOVING GOD Father Payne suddenly said to me once in a loud voice, after a long silence--we were walking together--"Writers, preachers, moralists, sentimentalists, are much to blame for not explaining more what they mean by loving God--perhaps they do not know! Love is so large a word, and covers so great a range of feelings. What sort of love are we to give God--the love of the lover, or the son, or the daughter, or the friend, or the patriot, or the dog? Is it to be passion, or admiration, or reverence, or fidelity, or pity? All of these enter into love." "What do you think yourself?" I said. "How am I to tell?" said Father Payne. "I am in many minds about it--it cannot be passion, because, whatever one may say, something of physical satisfaction is mingled with that. It cannot be a dumb fidelity--that is irrational. It cannot be an equal friendship, because there is no equality possible. It cannot be that of the child for the mother, because the mind is hardly concerned in that. Can one indeed love the Unknown? Again, it cannot be all receiving and no giving. We must have something to give God which He desires to have and which we can withhold. To say that the answer is, 'My son, give Me thy heart,' begs the question, because the one thing certain about love is that we _cannot_ give it to whom we will--it must be evoked; and even if it is wanted, we cannot always give it. We may respect and reverence a person very much, but, as Charlotte Brontë said, 'our veins may run ice whenever we are near him.' "And then, too, can we love any one who knows us perfectly, through and through? Is it not of the essence of love to be blind? Is it possible for us to feel that we are worthy of the love of anyone who really knows us? "And then, too, if disaster and suffering and cruel usage and terror come from God, without reference to the sensitiveness of the soul and body on which they fall, can we possibly love the Power which behaves so? What child could love a father who might at any time strike him? I cannot believe that God wants an unquestioning and fatuous trust, and still less the sort of deference we pay to one who may do us a mischief if we do not cringe before him. All that is utterly unworthy of the mind and soul." "Is it not possible to believe," I said, "that all experience may be good for us, however harsh it seems?" "No rational man can think that," said Father Payne. "Suffering is not good for people if it is severe and protracted. I have seen many natures go utterly to pieces under it." "What do you believe, then?" I said. "Of course the only obvious explanation," said Father Payne, "is that suffering, misery, evil, disaster, disease do not come from God at all; that He is the giver of health and joy and light and happiness; that He gives us all He can, and spares us all He can; but that there is a great enemy in the world, whom He cannot instantly conquer; that He is doing all He can to shield us, and to repair the harm that befalls us--that we can make common cause with Him, and pity Him for His thwarted plans, His endless disappointments, His innumerable failures, His grievous sufferings. It would be easy to love God if He were like that--yet who dares to say it or to teach it? It is the dreadful doctrine of His Omnipotence that ruins everything. I cannot hold any communication with Omnipotence--it is a consuming fire; but if I could know that God was strong and patient and diligent, but not all-powerful or all-knowing, then I could commune with Him. If, when some evil mishap overtakes me, I could say to Him, 'Come, help me, console me, show me how to mend this, give me all the comfort you can,' then I could turn to Him in love and trust, so long as I could feel that He did not wish the disaster to happen to me but could not ward it off, and was as miserable as myself that it had happened. Not _so_ miserable, of course, because He has waited so long, suffered so much, and can discern so bright and distant a hope. Then, too, I might feel that death was perhaps our escape from many kinds of evil, and that I should be clasped to His heart for awhile, even though He sent me out again to fight His battles. That would evoke all my love and energy and courage, because I could feel that I could give Him my help; but if He is Almighty, and could have avoided all the sorrow and pain, then I am simply bewildered and frightened, because I can predicate nothing about Him." "Is not that the idea which Christianity aims at?" I said. "Yes," he said; "the suffering Saviour, who can resist evil and amend it, but cannot instantly subdue it; but, even so, it seems to set up two Gods for one. The mind cannot really _identify_ the Saviour with the Almighty Designer of the Universe. But the thought of the Saviour _does_ interpret the sense of God's failure and suffering, does bring it all nearer to the heart. But if there is Omnipotence behind, it all falls to the ground again--at least it does for me. I cannot pray to Omnipotence and Omniscience, because it is useless to do so. The limited and the unlimited cannot join hands. I must, if I am to believe in God, believe in Him as a warrior arriving on a scene of disorder, and trying to make all well. He must not have permitted the disorder to grow up, and then try to subdue it. It must be there first. It is a battle obviously--but it must be a real battle against a real foe, not a sham fight between hosts created by God. In that case, 'to think of oneself as an instrument of God's designs is a privilege one shares with the devil,' as someone said. I will not believe that He is so little in earnest as that. No, He is the great invader, who desires to turn darkness to light, rage to peace, misery to happiness. Then, and only then, can I enlist under His banner, fight for Him, honour Him, worship Him, compassionate Him, and even love Him; but if He is in any way responsible for evil, by design or by neglect, then I am lost indeed!" XVIII OF FRIENDSHIP "He is the sort of man who is always losing his friends," said Pollard at dinner to Father Payne, describing someone, "and I always think that's a bad sign." "And I, on the contrary," said Father Payne, "think that a man who always keeps his friends is almost always an ass!" He opened his mouth and drew in his breath. "Or else it means," said Barthrop, "that he has never really made any friends at all!" "Quite right," said Father Payne. "People talk about friendship as if it was a perfectly normal thing, like eating and drinking--it's not that! It's a difficult thing, and it is a rare thing. I do not mean mere proximities and easy comradeships and muddled alliances; there are plenty of frank and pleasant companionships about of a solid kind. Still less do I mean the sort of thing which is contained in such an expression as 'Dear old boy!' which is always a half-contemptuous phrase." "But isn't loyalty a fine quality?" said Lestrange. "Loyalty!" said Father Payne. "Of course you must play fair, and be ready to stick by a man, and do him a kindness, and help him up if he has a fall; but that is not friendship--at least it isn't what I mean by friendship. Friendship is a sort of passion, without anything sexual or reproductive about it. There is a physical basis about it, of course. I mean there are certain quite admirable, straightforward, pleasant people, whom you may meet and like, and yet with whom you could never be friends, though they may be quite capable of friendship, and have friends of their own. A man's presence and his views and emotions must be in some sort of tune with your own. There are certain people, not in the least repellent, genial, kindly, handsome, excellent in every way, with whom you simply are not comfortable. On the other hand, there are people of no great obvious attractiveness with whom you feel instantaneously at ease. There is something mysterious about it, some currents that don't mix, and some that do. A thousand years hence we shall probably know something about it we don't now." "I feel that very strongly about books," said Kaye. "There are certain authors, who have skill, charm, fancy, invention, style--all the things you value--who yet leave you absolutely cold. They have every qualification for pleasing except the power to please. It is simply a case of Dr. Fell! You can't give a single valid reason why you don't like them." "Yes, indeed," said Father Payne. "and then, again, there are authors whom you like at a certain age and under certain circumstances, and who end by boring you; and again, authors whom you don't like when you are young, and like better when you are old. Does your idea of loyalty apply also to books, Lestrange, or to music?" "No," said Lestrange, "to be frank, it does not; but I think that is different--a lot of technical things come in, and then one's taste alters." "And that is just the same with people," said Father Payne. "Why, what does loyalty mean in such a connection? You have admired a book or a piece of music; you cease to admire it. Are you to go on saying you admire it, or to pretend to yourself that you admire it? Of course not--that is simply hypocrisy--there is nothing real about that." "But what are you to do," said Vincent, "about people? You can't treat them like books or music. You need not go on reading a book which you have ceased to admire. But what if you have made a friend, and then ceased to care for him, and he goes on caring for you? Are you to throw him over?" "I admit that there is a difficulty," said Father Payne; "I agree that you must not disappoint people; but it is also somehow your duty to get out of a relation that is no longer a real one. It can't be wholesome to simulate emotions for the sake of loyalty. It must all depend upon which you think the finer thing--the emotion or the tie. Personally, I think the emotion is the more sacred of the two." "But does it not mean that you have made a mistake somehow," said Vincent, "if you have made a friend, and then cease to care about him?" "Not a bit," said Father Payne. "Why, people change very much, and some people change faster than others. A man may be exactly what you want at a certain time of life; he may be ahead of you in ideas, in qualities, in emotions; and what starts a friendship is the perception of something fine and desirable in another, which you admire and want to imitate. But then you may outstrip your friend. Take the case of an artist. He may have an admiration for another artist, and gain much from him; but then he may go right ahead of him. He can't go on admiring and deferring out of mere loyalty." "But must there not be in every real friendship a _purpose_ of continuance?" said Vincent. "It surely is a very selfish sort of business, if you say to yourself, 'I will make friends with this man because I admire him now, but when, I have got all I can out of him, I will discard him.'" "Of course, you must not think in that coldblooded way," said Father Payne, "but it can never be more than a _hope_ of continuance. You may _hope_ to find a friendship a continuous and far-reaching thing. It may be quite right to get to know a man, believing him to have fine qualities; but you can't pledge yourself to admire whatever you find in him. We have to try experiments in friendship as in everything else. It is purely sentimental to say, 'I am going to believe in this man blindfold, whatever I find him to be,' That's a rash vow! You must not take rash vows; and if you do, you must be prepared to break them. Besides, you can't depend upon your friend not altering. He may lose some of the very things you most admire. The mistake is to believe that anything can be consistent or permanent." "But if you _don't_ believe that," said Lestrange, "are you justified in entering upon intimate relations at all?" "Of course you are," said Father Payne; "you can't live life on prudent lines. You can't say, 'I won't engage in life, or take a hand in it, or believe in it, or love it, till I know more about it.' You can't foresee all contingencies and risks. You must take risks." "I expect," said Barthrop, "that we are meaning different things by friendship. Let us define our terms. What do _you_ mean by friendship, Father?" "Well," said Father Payne, "I will tell you if I can. I mean a consciousness, which generally comes rather suddenly, of the charm of a particular person. You have a sudden curiosity about him. You want to know what his ideas, motives, views of life are. It is not by any means always that you think he feels about things as you do yourself. It is often the difference in him which attracts you. But you like his manner, his demeanour, his handling of life. What he says, his looks, his gestures, his personality, affect you in a curious way. And at the same time you seem to discern a corresponding curiosity in him about yourself. It is a pleasurable surprise both to discover that he agrees with you, and also that he disagrees with you. There is a beauty, a mystery, about it all. Generally you think it rather surprising that he should find you interesting. You wish to please him and to satisfy his expectations. That is the dangerous part of friendship, that two people in this condition make efforts, sacrifices, suppressions in order to be liked. Even if you disagree, you both give hints that you are prepared to be converted. There is a sudden increase of richness in life, the sense of a moving current whose impulse you feel. You meet, you talk, you find a freshness of feeling, light cast upon dark things, a new range of ideas vividly present." "But isn't all that rather intellectual?" said Vincent, who had been growing restive. "The thing can surely be much simpler than that?" "Yes, of course it can," said Father Payne, "among simple people--but we are all complicated people here." "Yes," said Vincent, "we are! But isn't it possible for an intellectual man to feel a real friendship for a quite unintellectual man--not a desire to discuss everything with him, but a simple admiration for fine frank qualities?" "Oh yes," said Father Payne, "there can be all sorts of alliances; but I am not speaking of them. I am speaking of a sort of mutual understanding. In friendship, as I understand it, the two must not speak different languages. They must be able to put their minds fairly together--there can be a kind of man-and-dog friendship, of course, but that is more a sort of love and trust. Now in friendship people must be mutually intelligible. It need not be equality--it is very often far removed from that; but there must not be any condescension. There must be a _desire_ for equality, at all events. Each must lament anything, whether it is superiority or inferiority, which keeps the two apart. It must be a desire for unity above everything. There must not be the smallest shadow of contempt on either side--it must be a frank proffer of the best you have to give, and a knowledge that the other can give you something--sympathy, support, help--which you cannot do without. What breaks friendship, in my experience, is the loss of that sense of equality; and the moment that friends become critical--in the sense, I mean, that they want to alter or improve each other--I think a friendship is in danger. If you have a friend, you must be indulgent to his faults--like him, not in spite of them, but almost because of them, I think." "That's very difficult," said Vincent. "Mayn't you want a friend to improve? If he has some patent and obvious fault, I mean?" "You mustn't want to improve him," said Father Payne, smiling; "that's not your business--unless he _wants_ you to help him to improve; and even then you have to be very delicate-handed. It must _hurt_ you to have to wish him different." "But isn't that what you call sentimental?" said Vincent. "No," said Father Payne, "it is sentiment to try to pretend to yourself and others that the fault isn't there. But I am speaking of a tie which you can't risk breaking for anything so trivial as a fault. The moment that the fault stands out, naked and unpleasant, then you may know that the friendship is over. There must be a glamour even about your friend's faults. You must love them, as you love the dints and cracks in an old building." "That seems to me weak," said Vincent. "You will find that it is true," said Father Payne. "We can't afford to sit in judgment on each other. We must simply try to help each other along. We must not say, 'You ought not to be tired.'" "But surely we may pity people?" said Lestrange. "Not your friends," said Father Payne. "Pity is _fatal_ to friendship. There is always something complacent in pity--it means conscious strength. You can't both pity and admire. You can't separate people up into qualities--they all come out of the depth of a man; I am quite sure of this, that the moment you begin to differentiate a friend's qualities, that moment what I call friendship is over. It must simply be a case of you and me--not my weakness and your virtue, and still less your weakness and my virtue. And you must be content to lose friends and to be discarded by friends. What is sentimental is to believe that it can be otherwise." XIX OF PHYLLIS It was in the course of July, the month given to hospitality. Father Payne used to have guests of various kinds, quite unaccountable people, some of them, with whom he seemed to be on the easiest of terms, but whom he never mentioned at any other time. "It is a time when I have _old friends_ to stay with me," he once said, "and I decline to define the term. There are _reasons_--you must assume that there are _reasons_--which may not be apparent, for the tie. They are not all selected for intellectual or artistic brilliance--they are the symbols of undesigned friendships, which existed before I exercised the faculty of choice. They are there, uncriticised, unexplained, these friends of mine. The modest man, you will remember, finds his circle ready-made. I am attached to them, and they to me. They understand no language, some of them, as you will see, except the language of the heart; but you will help me, I know, to make them feel at home and happy." They certainly were odd people, several of them--dumb, good-natured, elderly men with no ostensible purpose in the world; elderly ladies, who called Father Payne "dear"; some simple and homely married couples, who seemed to be living in another century. But Father Payne welcomed them, chattered with them, jested with them, took them drives and walks, and seemed well-contented with their company, though I confess that I generally felt as though I were staying in a seaside boarding-house on such occasions. We used to speculate as to who they were, and how Father Payne had made their acquaintance: we gathered that they were mostly the friends and acquaintances of his youth, or people into whose company he had drifted when he lived in London. Sometimes, before a new arrival, he would touch off his or her character and circumstances in a few words. On one occasion he said after breakfast to Barthrop and me: "Arrivals to-day, Mr. and Mrs. Wetherall--the man a retired coal-merchant, rather wealthy, interested in foreign missions; the woman inert; daughter prevented from coming, and they bring a niece, Phyllis by name, understood to be charming. I undertake the sole charge of Wetherall himself, Mrs. Wetherall requires no specific attentions--placid woman, writes innumerable letters--Miss Phyllis an unknown quantity." The Wetheralls duly appeared, and proved very simple people. Father Payne, to our surprise, seemed to be soaked in mission literature, and drew out Mr. Wetherall with patient skill. But Miss Phyllis was a perfectly delightful girl, very simple and straightforward, extremely pretty in a boyish fashion, and quite used to the ways of the world. We would willingly have entertained her, and did our best; but she made fast friends with Father Payne, with the utmost promptitude, and the two were for ever strolling about or sitting out together. The talk at meals was of a sedate character, but Miss Phyllis used to intercept Father Payne's humorous remarks with a delighted little smile, and Father Payne would shake his head gravely at her in return. Miss Phyllis said to me one morning, as we were sitting in the garden: "You seem to have a very good time here, all of you--it feels like something in a book--it is too good to be true!" "Ah," I said, "but this is a holiday, of course! We work very hard in term-time, and we are very serious." Miss Phyllis looked at me with her blue eyes in silence for a moment, with an ironical little curve of her lips, and said: "I don't believe a word of it! I believe it is just a little Paradise, and I suspect it of being rather a selfish Paradise. Why do you shut everyone out?" "Oh, it is a case of 'business first'!" I said. "Father Payne keeps us all in very good order." "Yes," said Phyllis, "I expect he can do that. But do any of you men realise what an absolutely enchanting person he is? I have never seen anyone in the least like him! He understands everything, and sees everything, and cares for everything--he is so big and kind and clever. Why, isn't he something tremendous?" "He is," I said. "Oh yes, but you know what I mean," said Miss Phyllis; "he's a _great_ man, and he ought to have the reins in his hand. He ought not to potter about here!" "Well," I said, "I have wondered about that myself. But he knows his own mind--he's a very happy man!" Miss Phyllis pondered silently, and said: "I don't think you realise your blessings. Father Payne is like the boy in the story--the man born to be king, you know. He ought not to be wasted like this! He ought to be ruler over ten cities. Dear me, I don't often wish I were a man, but I would give anything to be one of you. Won't you tell me something more about him?" I did my best, and Phyllis listened absorbed, dangling a shapely little foot over her knee, and playing with a flower. "Yes," she said at last, "that is what I thought! I see you _do_ appreciate him after all. I won't make that mistake again." And she gave me a fine smile. I liked the company of this radiant creature, but at this moment Father Payne appeared at the other end of the garden. "Don't think me rude," said Miss Phyllis, "but I am going to talk to Father Payne. It's my last day, and I must get all I can out of him." She fled, and presently they went off together for a stroll, a charming picture. She carried him off likewise after dinner, and they sate long in the dusk. I could hear Father Payne's emphatic tones and Phyllis's refreshing laughter. The next morning the Wetheralls went off. Barthrop and I, with Father Payne, saw them go. The Wetheralls were serenely enjoying the prospect of returning home after a successful visit, but Miss Phyllis looked mournful, and as if she were struggling with concealed emotions. She kissed her hand to Father Payne as the carriage drove away. "Very worthy people!" said Father Payne cheerfully, as the carriage passed out of sight. "I am very glad to have seen them, and no less thankful that they are gone." "But the charming Phyllis?" said Barthrop, "Is that all you have to say about her? I never saw a more delightful girl!" "She is--quite delightful," said Father Payne. "Phyllis is my only joy! The sight of her and the sound of her make me feel as if I had been reading an Elizabethan song-book--'Sing hey, nonny nonny!' But why didn't one of you fellows make up to her?--that's a girl worth the winning!" "Why didn't we make up to her?" I said indignantly. "I wonder you have the face to ask, Father! Why, she was simply taken up with you, and she hadn't a word or a look for anyone else. I never saw such a case of love at first sight!" "She gave me a flower this morning," said Father Payne meditatively, "and I believe I kissed her hand. It was like a scene in one of my novels. It wasn't my fault--the woman tempted me, of course! But I think she is a charming creature, and as clever as she is pretty. I could have made love to her with the best will in the world! But that wouldn't do, and I just made friends with her. She wants an older friend, I think. She has ideas, the pretty Phyllis, and she doesn't strike out sparks from the Wetheralls much." Barthrop went off, smiling to himself, and I strolled about with Father Payne. "You really could hardly do better than be Phyllis's faithful shepherd," he said to me, smiling. "She's a fine creature, you know, full of fire and vitality, and eager for life. She must marry a nice man and have nice children. We want more people like Phyllis. You consider it, old man! I would like to see you happily married." "Why, Father," I said boldly, "if you feel like that, why don't you put in for her yourself? Phyllis is in love with you! You may not know it--she may not know it--but I know it. She could talk of nothing else." "Get thee behind me, Satan!" said Father Payne very emphatically. Don't say such things to me! The pretty Phyllis wants a father confessor--that's all I can, do for her." "I don't think that is so, Father," I said. "She would be prepared for something much closer than that, if you held out your hand." Father Payne smiled benignantly at me. "Yes, I know what you mean, old man," he said, "and I daresay it is true! But I mustn't allow myself to think of such things at my age. It wouldn't do. I'm old enough to be her father--and she has just had a pretty fancy, that's all. It's rather a romantic setting, this place, you know; and she is hungering and thirsting for all sorts of ideas and beautiful adventures; and she finds a good-humoured old bird like myself, who can give her something of what she wants. She is fitful and impetuous, and she wants something strong and fatherly to lean upon and to worship, perhaps. Bless you, I see it all clearly enough! But put the clock on for a few years: the charming Phyllis is made for better things than tying my muffler and walking beside my bath-chair. No, she must have a run for her money. And what's more, I'm not sure that I want the sole charge of that sweet nymph--she would want a lot of response and sympathy and understanding. It's altogether too big a job for me, and I don't feel the call. What do I want, then, with the pretty child? Why, I like to be with her, and to see her, and to hear her talk and laugh. I want to help her along if I can--she is a high-spirited creature, and will take things hardly. But I cannot be romantic, and take advantage of a romantic child. Mind you, I think that these friendships between men and women are good for both, if they aren't complicated by love: the worst of it is that passion is a tindery thing, and lights up suddenly when people least expect it. But I'm too old for all that; and one of the pleasures of growing old is that one can see a beautiful creature like Phyllis--high-spirited, vivid, full of grace and delight--without wanting to claim her for one's own or take her away into a corner. I'm just glad to be with her, glad to think she is in the world, glad to think she comes direct from the Divine hand. It moves me tremendously, that flashing and brightening charm of hers--but I see and feel it, I think, as something beyond and outside of her, which comes as a message to me. She's a darling! But I am not going to interfere with her or complicate her life. She must find a fit mate, and I am going to let her feel that she can depend on me for any service I can do for her. I don't mind saying, old man," added Father Payne, in a different tone, "that there isn't a touch of temptation about it all. I yield in imagination to it quite frankly--I think how jolly it would be to have a creature like that living in this old house, telling me all she thought about, making a home beautiful. I could make a very fair lover if I tried! But I have got myself well in hand, and I know better. It isn't what she wants, and it isn't really what I want. I have got my work cut out for me; but I'll give her all I can, and be thankful if she gives me a bit of her heart; and I shall love to think of her going about the world, and reminding everyone she meets of the best and purest sort of beauty. I love Phyllis with all my old heart--is that enough for you?--and a great deal too well to confiscate her, as I should certainly have tried to do twenty years ago." Father Payne stopped, and looked at me with one of his great clear smiles. "Well, I must say," I began-- "No, you mustn't," said Father Payne. "I know all the excellent arguments you would advance. Why shouldn't two people be happy and not look ahead, and all that? I do look ahead, and I'm going to make her happy if I can. Shall I use my influence in your favour, my boy? How does that strike you?" I laughed and reddened. Father Payne put his arm in mine, and said: "Now, I have turned my heart out for your inspection, and you can't convert me. Let the pretty child go her way! I only wish she was likely to get more fun out of the Wetheralls. Such excellent people too: but a lack of inspiration--not propelled from quite the central fount of beauty, I fancy! But it will do Phyllis good to make the best of them, and I fancy she is trying pretty hard. Dear me, I wish she were my niece! But I couldn't have her here--we should all be at daggers drawn in a fortnight: that's the puzzling thing about these beautiful people, that they light up such conflagrations, and make such havoc of divine philosophy, old boy!" XX OF CERTAINTY We were returning from a walk, Father Payne and I; as we passed the churchyard, he said: "Do you remember that story of Lamennais at La Chénaie? He was sitting behind the chapel under two Scotch firs which grew there, with some of his young disciples. He took his stick, and marked out a grave on the turf, and said: 'It is there I would wish to be buried, but no tombstone! Only a simple mound of grass. Oh, how well I shall be there!' That is what I call sentiment. If Lamennais really thought he would be confined in spirit to such a place, he would not tolerate it--least of all a combative fellow like Lamennais--it would be a perpetual solitary confinement. Such a cry is merely a theatrical way of saying that he felt tired. Yet it is such sayings which impress people, because men love rhetoric." Presently he went on: "It is strange that what one fears in death is the vagueness and the solitude of it--we are afraid of finding ourselves lost in the night. It would be agitating, but not frightful, if we were sure of finding company; and if we were _sure_ of meeting those whom we had loved and lost, death would not frighten us at all. Dying is simple enough, and indeed easy, for most of us. But I expect that something very precise and definite happens to us, the moment we die. It is probable, I think, that we shall set about building up a new body to inhabit at once, as a snail builds its shell. We are very definite creatures, all of us, with clearly apportioned tastes and energies, preferences and dislikes. The only puzzling thing is that we do not all of us seem to have the bodies which suit us here on earth: fiery spirits should have large phlegmatic bodies, and they too often have weak and inadequate bodies. Beautiful spirits cannot always make their bodies beautiful, and evil people have often very lovely shapes and faces. I confess I find all that very mysterious; heredity is quite beyond me. If it were merely confined to the body and even the mind, I should not wonder at it, but it seems to affect the soul as well. Who can feel free in will, if that is the case? And now, too, they say with some certainty that it seems as though all their own qualities need not be transmitted by parents but that no quality can be transmitted which is not present in the parents--that we can lose qualities, that is, but not gain them. If that is true, then all our qualities were present in primitive forms of life, and we are not really developing, we are only specialising. All this hurts one to think of, because it ties us hand and foot." Presently he went on: "How ludicrous, after all, to make up our mind about things as most of us do! I believe that the desire for certainty is one of the worst temptations of the devil. It means closing our eyes and minds and hearts to experience; and yet it seems the only way to accomplish anything. I trust," he said, turning to me with a look of concern, "that you do not feel that you are being formed or moulded here, by me or by any of the others?" "No," I said, "certainly not! I feel, indeed, since I came here, that I have got a wider horizon of ideas, and I hope I am a little more tolerant. I have certainly learnt from you not to despise ideas or experiences at first sight, but to look into them." He seemed pleased at this, and said: "Yes, to look into them--we must do that! When we see anyone acting in a way that we admire, or even in a way which we dislike, we must try to see why he acts so, what makes him what he is. We must not despise any indications. On the whole, I think that people behave well when they are happy, and ill when they are afraid. All violence and spite come when we are afraid of being left out; and we are happy when we are using all our powers. Don't be too prudent! Don't ever be afraid of uprooting yourself," he added with great emphasis. "Try experiments--in life, in work, in companionship. Have an open mind! That is why we should be so careful what we pray for, because in my experience prayers are generally granted, and often with a fine irony. The grand irony of God! It is one of the things that most reassures me about Him, to find that He can be ironical and indulgent; because our best chance of discovering the nature of things is that we should be given what we wish, just in order to find out that it was not what we wished at all!" "But," I said, "if you are for ever experimenting, always moving on, always changing your mind, don't you run the risk of never mixing with life at all?" "Oh, life will take care of that!" said Father Payne, smiling, "The time will come when you will know where to post your battery, and what to fire at. But don't try to make up your mind too early--don't try to fortify yourself against doubts and anxieties. That is the danger of all sensitive people. You can't attain to proved certainties in this life--at least, you can't at present. I don't say that there are not certainties--indeed, I think that it is all certainty, and that we mustn't confuse the unknown with the unknowable. As you go on, if you are fair-minded and sympathetic, you will get intuitions; you will discover gradually exactly what you are worth, and what you can do, and how you can do it best. But don't expect to know that too soon. And don't yield to the awful temptation of saying, 'So many good, fine, reasonable people seem certain of this and that; I had better assume it to be true.' It isn't better, it is only more comfortable. A great many more people suffer from making up their mind too early and too decisively than suffer from open-mindedness and the power to relate new experience to old experience. No one can write you out a prescription for life. You can't anticipate experience; and if you do, you will only find that you have to begin all over again." XXI OF BEAUTY Father Payne had been away on one of his rare journeys. He always maintained that a journey was one of the most enlivening things in the world, if it was not too often indulged in. "It intoxicates me," he said, "to see new places, houses, people." "Why don't you travel more, then?" said someone. "For that very reason," said Father Payne; "because it intoxicates me--and I am too old for that sort of self-indulgence!" "It's a dreadful business," he went on, "that northern industrial country. There's a grandeur about it--the bare valleys, the steep bleak fields, the dead or dying trees, the huge factories. Those great furnaces, with tall iron cylinders and galleries, and spidery contrivances, and black pipes, and engines swinging vast burdens about, and moving wheels, are fearfully interesting and magnificent. They stand for all sorts of powers and forces; they frighten me by their strength and fierceness and submissiveness. But the land is awfully barren of beauty, and I doubt if that can be wholesome. It all fascinates me, it increases my pride, but it makes me unhappy too, because it excludes beauty so completely. Those bleak stone-walled fields of dirty grass, the lines of grey houses, are fine in their way--but one wants colour and clearness. I longed for a glimpse of elms and water-meadows, and soft-wooded pastoral hills. It produces a shrewd, strong, good-tempered race, but very little genius. There is something harsh about Northerners--they haven't enough colour." "But you are always saying," said Rose, "that we must look after form, and chance colour." "Yes, but that is because you are _in statu pupillari_," said Father Payne, "If a man begins by searching for colour and ornament and richness, he gets clotted and glutinous. Colour looks after itself--but it isn't clearness that I am afraid of, it is shrewdness--I think that is, on the whole, a low quality, but it is awfully strong! What I am afraid of, in bare laborious country like that, is that people should only think of what is comfortable and sensible. Imagination is what really matters. It is not enough to have solid emotions; one ought not to be too reasonable about emotions. The thing is to care in an unreasonable and rapturous way about beautiful things, and not to know why one cares. That is the point of things which are simply beautiful and nothing else,--that you feel it isn't all capable of explanation." "But isn't that rather sentimental?" said Rose. "No, no, it's just the opposite," said Father Payne. "Sentiment is when one understands and exaggerates an emotion; beauty isn't that--it is something mysterious and inexplicable; it makes you bow the head and worship. Take the sort of thing you may see on the coast of Italy--a blue sea, with gray and orange cliffs falling steeply down into deep water; a gap, with a clustering village, coming down, tier by tier, to the sea's edge; fantastic castles on spires of rock, thickets and dingles running down among the clefts and out on the ledges, and perhaps a glimpse of pale, fantastic hills behind. No one could make it or design it; but every line, every blending colour, all combine to give you the sense of something marvellously and joyfully contrived, and made for the richness and sweetness of it. That is the sort of moment when I feel the overwhelming beauty and nearness of God--everything done on a vast scale, which floods mind and heart with utter happiness and wonder. Anything so overpoweringly joyful and delicious and useless as all that _must_ come out of a fulness of joy. The sharp cliffs mean some old cutting and slashing, the blistering and burning of the earth; and yet those old rents have been clothed and mollified by some power that finds it worth while to do it--and it isn't done for you or me, either--there must be treasures of loveliness going on hidden for centuries in tropic forests. It's done for the sake of doing it; and we are granted a glimpse of it, just to show us perhaps that we are right to adore it, and to try in our clumsy way to make beautiful things too. That is why I envy the musician, because he creates beauty more directly then any other mind--and the best kind of poetry is of the same order." "But isn't there a danger in all this?" said Lestrange. "No, I don't want to say anything priggish," he added, seeing a contraction of Father Payne's brows; "I only want to say what I feel. I recognise the fascination of it as much as anyone can--but isn't it, as you said about travelling, a kind of intoxication? I mean, may it not be right to interpose it, but yet not right to follow it? Isn't it a selfish thing, and doesn't it do the very thing which you often speak against--blind us to other experience, that is?" "Yes, there is something in that," said Father Payne. "Of course that is always the difficulty about the artist, that he appears to live selfishly in joy--but it applies to most things. The best you can do for the world is often to turn your back upon it. Philanthropy is a beautiful thing in its way, but it must be done by people who like it--it is useless if it is done in a grim and self-penalising way. If a man is really big enough to follow art, he had better follow it. I do not believe very much in the doctrine that service to be useful must be painful. No one doubts that Wordsworth gave more joy to humanity by living his own life than if he had been a country doctor. Of course the sad part of it is when a man follows art and does _not_ succeed in giving pleasure. But you must risk that--and a real devotion to a thing gives the best chance of happiness to a man, and is perhaps, too, his best chance of giving something to others. There is no reason to think that Shakespeare was a philanthropist." "But does that apply to things like horse-racing or golf?" said Rose. "No, you must not pursue comfort," said Father Payne; "but I don't believe in the theory that we have all got to set out to help other people. That implies that a man is aware of valuable things which he has to give away. Make friends if you can, love people if you can, but don't do it with a sense of duty. Do what is natural and beautiful and attractive to do. Make the little circle which surrounds you happy by sympathy and interest. Don't deal in advice. The only advice people take is that with which they agree. And have your own work. I think we are--many of us--afraid of enjoying work; but in any case, if we can show other people how to perceive and enjoy beauty, we have done a very great thing. The sense of beauty is growing in the world. Many people are desiring it, and religion doesn't cater for it, nor does duty cater for it. But it is the only way to make progress--and religion has got to find out how to include beauty in its programme, or it will be left stranded. Nothing but beauty ever lifted people higher--the unsensuous, inexplicable charm, which makes them ashamed of dull, ugly, greedy, quarrelsome ways. It is only by virtue of beauty that the world climbs higher--and if the world does climb higher by something which isn't obviously beautiful, it is only that we do not recognise it as beautiful. Sin and evil are signals from the unknown, of course; but they are danger signals, and we follow them with terror--but beauty is a signal too, and it is the signal made by peace and happiness and joy." XXII OF WAR The talk one evening turned on War; Lestrange said that he believed it was good for a nation to have a war: "It unites them with the sense of a common purpose, it evokes self-sacrifice, it makes them turn to God." "Yes, yes," said Father Payne, rather impatiently. "But you can't personify a nation like that; that personification of societies and classes and sections of the human race does no end of harm. It is all a matter of statistics, not of generalisation. Take your three statements. 'It is good for a nation to have a war.' You mean, I suppose, that, in spite of the loss of the best stock and the disabling of strong young men, and the disintegration of families, and the hideous waste of time and money--subtracting all that--there is a balance of good to the survivors?" "Yes, I think so," said Lestrange. "But are you sure about this?" said Father Payne. "How do you know? Would you feel the same if you yourself were turned out a helpless invalid for life with your occupation gone? Are you sure that you are not only expressing the feeling of relief in the community at having a danger over? Is it more than the sense of gratitude of a man who has not suffered unbearably, to the people who _have_ died and suffered? The only evidence worth having is that of the real sufferers. Take the case of the people who have died. You can't get evidence from them. It is an assumption that they are content to have died. Is not the glory which surrounds them--and how short a time that lasts!--a human attempt to make consciences comfortable, and to relieve human doubts? The worst of that theory is that it makes so light of the worth of life; and, after all, a soldier's business is to kill and not to be killed; while, generally speaking, the worst turn that a strong, healthy, and honest man can do to his country is to die prematurely. Of course war has a great and instinctive prestige about it; are we not misled by that into accepting it as an inevitable business?" "No, I believe there is a real gain," said Lestrange, "in the national sense of unity, in the feeling of having been equal to an emergency." "But are you speaking of a nation which conquers or a nation which is defeated?" said Father Payne. "Both," said Lestrange; "it unites a nation in any case." "But if a nation is defeated," said Father Payne, "are they the better for the common depression of _not_ having been equal to the emergency?" "It may make them set their teeth," said Lestrange, "and prepare themselves better." "Then it does not matter," said Father Payne, "whether they are united by the complacency of conquest or by the desire for revenge?" "I would not quite say that," said Lestrange. "But at all events a desire for revenge might teach them discipline." "I can't believe that," said Father Payne; "it seems to me to make all the difference what the purpose has been. I do not believe that a nation gains by being united for a predatory and aggressive purpose. I think the victory of the Germans in the Franco-Prussian war has been wholly bad for them. It has made them believe in aggressiveness. A nation naturally philosophical and moral, and also both energetic and stupid, acquires the sense of a divine mission like that. I don't believe that a belief in your own methods of virtue is a wholesome belief. That seems to me likely to perpetuate war--and I suppose that we should all believe that war was an evil, if we could produce the good results of it without war." We all agreed to this. "I will grant," said Father Payne, "that if a nation which sincerely believes in peace and wishes to cultivate goodwill, is wantonly and aggressively attacked, and repels that attack, it may gain much from war if it sticks to its theory, does not attempt reprisals, and leaves the conquered bully in a position to see its mistake and regain its self-respect. But it is a very dangerous kind of success for all that. I do not believe that complacency ever does anything but harm. The purpose must be a good one in the first place, the cause must be a great one, and it must be honestly pursued to the end, if it is to help a nation. But it lets all sorts of old and evil passions loose, and it makes slaughter glorious. No, I believe that at best it is a relapse into barbarism. Hardly any nation is strong enough and great enough to profit either by conquest or by defeat." "But what about the splendid self-sacrifice it all evokes?" said Lestrange. "People give up their comfort, their careers, they go to face the last risk--is that nothing?" "No," said Father Payne; "it is a very magnificent and splendid thing,--I don't deny that. But even so, that can't be preserved artificially. I mean that no one would think that, if there were no chance of a real war, it would be a good thing to evoke such self-sacrifice by having manoeuvres in which the best youth of the country were pitted against each other, to kill each other if possible. There must be a _real_ cause behind it. No one would say it was a noble thing for the youth of a country to fling themselves down over a cliff or to infect themselves with leprosy to show that they could despise suffering and death. If it were possible to settle the differences between nations without war, war would be a wholly evil thing. The only thing that one can say is that while there exists a strong nation which believes enough in war to make war aggressively, other nations are bound to resist it. But the nation which believes in war is _ipso facto_ an uncivilised nation." "But does not a war," said Lestrange, "clear the air, and take people away from petty aims and trivial squabbles into a sterner and larger atmosphere?" "Yes, I think it does," said Father Payne; "but a great pestilence might do that. We might be thankful for all the good we could get out of a pestilence, and be grateful for it; but we should never dream of artificially renewing it for that reason. I look upon war as a sort of pestilence, a contagion which spreads under certain conditions. But we disguise the evil of it from ourselves, if we allow ourselves to believe in its being intrinsically glorious. I can't believe that highway robbery has only to be organised on a sufficiently large scale to make it glorious. A man who resists highway robbery, and runs the risk of death, because he wants to put a stop to it, seems to me a noble person--quite different from the man who sees a row going on and joins in it because he does not want to be out of a good thing! Do you remember the story of the Irishman who saw a fight proceeding, and rushed into the fray wielding his shillelagh, and praying that it might fall on the right heads? We have all of us uncivilised instincts, but it does not make them civilised to join with a million other people in indulging them. I think that a man who refuses to join from conviction, at the risk of being hooted as a coward, is probably doing a braver thing still." "But I have often, heard you say that life must be a battle," said Lestrange. "Yes," said Father Payne, "but I know what I want to fight. I want the human race to join in fighting crime and disease, evil conditions of nurture, dishonesty and sensuality. I don't want to pit the finest stock of each country against each other. That is simple suicide, for two nations to kill off the men who could fight evil best. I want the nations to combine collectively for a good purpose, not to combine separately for a bad one." "I see that," said Lestrange; "but I regard war as an inevitable element in society as at present constituted. I don't think the world can be persuaded out of it. If it ever ceases, it will die a natural death because it will suddenly be regarded as absurd. Meantime, I think it is our duty to regard the benefits of it; and, as I said, it turns a nation to God--it takes them out of petty squabbles, and makes them recognise a power beyond and behind the world." "Yes, that is so," said Father Payne, "if you regard war as caused by God. But I rather believe that it is one of the things that God is fighting against! And I don't agree that it produces a noble temper all through. It does in many of the combatants; but there is nothing so characteristic at the outbreak of war as the amount of bullying that is done. Peaceful people are hooted at and shouted down; thousands of general convictions are over-ridden; the violent have it their own way; it seems to me to organise the unruly and obstreperous, and to force all gentler and more civilised natures into an unconvinced silence. Many of the people who do most for the happiness of the world can't face unpopularity. They are apt to think that there must be something wrong with themselves, something spiritless and abnormal, if they find themselves loathing the cruelties of which others seem to approve. I do not believe that war organises wholesome and sane opinion; I believe that it silences it. It is a time when base, heartless, cruel people can become heroes. It is true that it also gives serene, courageous, and calm people a great opportunity. But on the whole it is a bad time for sober, orderly, and peaceable people. I believe that it evokes a good many fine qualities--simplicity, uncomplaining patience, unselfishness, but it reveals them rather than creates them. It shows the worth of a nation, but it should want a great deal of evidence before I believe that it does more than prove to people that they are braver than they know. I can't believe vaguely in death and sorrow and disablement and waste being good things. It is merely a question of what you are paying so ghastly a price for. In the Napoleonic wars the price was paid for the liberties of Europe, to show a great nation that it must abandon the ideal of domination. That is a great cause; but it is great because men are evil, and not because they are good. War seems to me the temporary triumph of the old bad past over the finer and more beautiful future. Do not let us be taken in by the romance of it. That is the childish view, that loves the sight and sound of the marching column and the stirring music. People find it hard to believe that anything so strong and gallant and cheerful _can_ have a sinister side. And no doubt for a young, strong, and bold man the excitement of it is an intense pleasure. But what we have to ask is whether we are right in taking so heavy a toll from the world for all that: I do not think it right, though it may be inevitable. But then I belong to the future, and I think I should be more at home in the world a thousand years hence than I am to-day." "But I go back to my point," said Lestrange: "does not a great war like that send people to their knees in faith?" "Depend upon it," said Father Payne, "that anything which makes people acquiesce in preventable evil, and see the beautiful effects of death and pain and waste, is the direct influence of the devil. It is the last and most guileful subtlety that he practises, to make us solemnly mournful and patient in the presence of calamities for which we have ourselves to thank. The only prayer worth praying in the time of war is not, 'Help us to bear this,' but 'Help us to cure this'; and to behave with meek reverence is to behave like the old servant in _The Master of Ballantrae_, who bore himself like an afflicted saint under an illness, the root of which was drunkenness. The worst religion is that which keeps its sense of repentance alive by its own misdeeds!" He was silent for a moment, and then he said: "No, we mustn't make terms with war, any more than we must do with cholera. It's a great, heartbreaking evil, and it puts everything back a stage. Of course it brings out fine qualities--I know that--and so does a plague of cholera. It's the evil in both that brings out the fine things to oppose it. But we ought to have more faith, and believe that the fine qualities are there--war doesn't create them, it only shows you that they are present--and we believe in war because it reassures us about the presence of the great qualities. It shows them, and then blows them out, like the flame of a candle. But we want to keep them; we don't want just to be shown them, with a risk of extinguishing them. Example can do something, but not half as much as inheritance; and we sweep away the inheritance for the sake of the romantic delight of seeing the great virtues flare up. No," he said, "war is one of the evil things that is trying to hurt mankind, and disguising itself in shining armour; but it means men ill; it is for ever trying to bring their dreams to an end." XXIII OF CADS AND PHARISEES "There are only two sorts of people with whom it is impossible to live," said Father Payne one day, in a loud, mournful tone. "Elderly women and young women, I suppose he means," said Rose softly. "No," said Father Payne, "I protest! I adore sensible women, simple women, clever women, all non-predatory women--it is they who will not live with me. I forget they are not men, and they do not like that. And then they are so much more unselfish than men, that they have generally axes to grind, and I don't like that." "Whom do you mean, then?" said I. "Cads and Pharisees," said Father Payne, "and they are not two sorts really, but one. They are the people without imagination. It is that which destroys social life, the lack of imagination. The Pharisee is the cad with a tincture of Puritanism." "What is the cad, then?" said I. "Well," said Father Payne, "he is very easy to detect, and not very easy to define. He is the man who has got a perfectly definite idea of what he wants, and he suffers from isolation. He can't put himself into anyone's place, or get inside other people's minds. He is stupid, and he is unperceptive. He does not detect the little looks, gestures, tones of voice, which show when people are uncomfortable or disgusted. He is not uncomfortable or easily disgusted himself, and he does not much mind other people being so. He says what he thinks, and you have got to lump it. Sometimes he is good-natured enough, and even brave. There is an admirable sketch of a good-natured cad in one of Mrs. Walford's novels, who is the acme of kind indelicacy. The cad is dreadful to live with, because he is always making one ashamed, and ashamed of being ashamed, because many of the things he does do not really matter very much. Then, when he is out of sight and hearing, you cannot trust him. He makes mischief; he throws mud. If he is vexed with you, he injures you with other people. We are all criticised behind our backs, of course, and we have all faults which amuse and interest our friends; and it is not caddish to criticise friends if one is only interested in them. But the cad is not interested, except in clearing other people out of his way. He is treacherous and spiteful. He drops in upon you uninvited, and then he tells people he could not get enough to eat. He repeats things you have said about your friends to the people of whom you have spoken, leaving out all the justifications, and says that he thinks they ought to know how you abuse them. He borrows money of you, and if you ask him for repayment, he says he is not accustomed to be dunned. He never can bring himself to apologise for anything, and if you lose your temper with him, he says you are getting testy in your old age. His one idea is to be formidable, and he says that he does not let people take liberties with him. He takes a mean and solitary view of the world, and other people are merely channels for his own wishes, or obstacles to them. The only way is to keep him at arm's length, because he is not disarmed by any generosity or trustfulness; the discovery of caddishness in a man is the only excuse for breaking off a companionship. The worst of it is that cads are sometimes very clever, and don't let the caddishness appear till you are hooked. The mischief really is that the cad has no morals, no sense of social duty." "What about Pharisees?" said I. "Well, the Pharisee has too many morals," said Father Payne. "He is the person whose own tastes are a sort of standard. If you disagree with him, he thinks you must be wicked. If your tastes differ from his, they are of the nature of sin. You live under his displeasure. If he dresses for dinner, it is sloppy and middle-class not to do so. If he doesn't dress for dinner, the people who do are either wasting time or aping the manners of the great. He is always very strong about wasting time. If he likes gardening, he says it is the best sort of exercise; if he does not, he says that it is bilious work muddling about in a corner. Everything that he does is done on principle, but he uses his principles to bludgeon other people. If you make him the subject of a harmless jest, he says that he cannot bear personalities. You can please him only by deferring to him, and the only way to manage him is by gross flattery. A Pharisee can be a gentleman, and he isn't purely noxious like the cad; he is only unpleasant and discouraging. He is quite impervious to argument, and only says that he thought the principle he is contending for was generally accepted. The Pharisee wants in a heavy way to improve the world, and thinks meanly of it, while the cad thinks meanly of it, and wants to exploit it. The Pharisee is a tyrant, and hates freedom; but you can often make a friend of him by asking him a favour, if you are also prepared to be subsequently reminded of the trouble he took to serve you. "I think that the Pharisee perhaps does most harm in the end, because he hates all experiments. He does harm to the young, because he makes them dislike virtue and mistrust beauty. The cad does not corrupt--in fact, I think he rather improves people, because he is so ugly a case of what no one wishes to be--and it is better to hate people than to be frightened of them. If we got a cad and a Pharisee in here, for instance, it would be easier to get rid of the cad than the Pharisee." "I begin to breathe more freely," said Vincent. "I had begun to review my conscience." Father Payne laughed. "It's all blank cartridge," he said. XXIV OF CONTINUANCE I was walking with Father Payne in the garden one day of spring. I think I liked him better when I was alone with him than I did when we were all together. His mind expanded more tenderly and simply--less epigrammatically. He spoke of this once to me, saying: "I am at my best when alone; even one companion deflects me. I find myself wishing to please him, pinching off roughnesses, perfuming truth, diplomatising. This ought not to be, of course; and if one was not thorny, self-assertive, stupid, it would not be so; and every companion added makes me worse, because the strain of accommodation grows--I become vulgar and rough and boisterous in a large circle. I often feel: 'How these young men must be hating this gibbering and giggling ape, which after all is not really me!'" I tried to reassure him, but he shook his head, though with a smiling air. "Barthrop is not like that," he said, "the wise Barthrop! He is never suspicious or hasty--he does not think it necessary to affirm; yet you are never in any doubt what he thinks! He moves along like water, never anxious if he is held up or divided, creeping on as the land lies--that is the right way." Presently he stopped, and looked long at some daffodil blades which were thrusting up in a sheltered place. "Look at the gray bloom on those blades," he said; "isn't that perfect? Fancy thinking of that--each of them so obviously the same thought taking shape, yet each of them different. Do not you see in them something calm, continuous, active--happy, in fact--at work; often tripped up and imprisoned, and thwarted--but moving on?" He was silent a little, and then he said: "This force of _life_--what a fascinating mystery it is--never dying, never ceasing, always coming back to shape itself into matter. I wonder sometimes it is not content to exist alone; but no, it is always back again, arranging matter, manipulating it into beautiful shapes and creatures, never discouraged; even when the plant falls ill and begins to pine away, the happy life is within it--languid perhaps, but just waiting for the release, till the cage in which it has imprisoned itself is opened, and then--so I believe--back again in an instant somewhere else. "I am inclined to believe," he went on, "that that is what we are all about; it seems to me the only explanation for the fact that we care so much about the past and the future. If we are creatures of a day, why should we be interested? The only reason we care about the past is because we ourselves were there in it; and we care about the future because we shall be there in it again." "You mean a sort of re-incarnation," I said. "That's an ugly word for a beautiful thing," he said. "But this love of life, this impulse to live, to protect ourselves, to keep ourselves alive, must surely mean that we have always lived and shall always live. Some people think that dreadful. They think it is taking liberties with them. If they are rich and comfortable and dignified, they cannot bear to think that they may have to begin again, perhaps as a baby in a slum--or they grow tired, and think they want rest; but we can't rest--we must live again, we must be back at work; and of course the real hope in it all is that, when we do anything to make the world happier, it is our own future that we are working for. Who could care about the future of the world, if he was to be banished from it for ever? I was reading a book the other day, in which a wise and a good man said that he felt about the future progress of the world as Moses did about the promised land, 'not as of something we want to have for ourselves, but as of something which we want to exist, whether we exist or no,' I can't take so impersonal a view! If one really believed that one was going to be extinguished in death, one would care no more about the world's future than one cares where the passengers in a train are going to, when we get out at a station. Who, on arriving at home, can lose himself in wondering where his fellow-travellers have got to? We have better things to do than that! That is the sham altruism. It is as if a boy at school, instead of learning his own lesson, spent his time in imploring the other boys to learn theirs. That is what we are whipped for--for not learning our own lesson." "But if all this is so," I said, "why don't we _know_ that we shall live again? Why is the one thing which is important for us to know hidden from us?" "I think we do know it," said Father Payne, "deep down in ourselves. It is why it is worth while to go on living. If we believed our reason, which tells us that we come to an end and sink into silence, we could not care to live, to suffer, to form passionate ties which must all be severed, only to sink into nothingness ourselves. If we will listen to our instincts, they assure us that it _is_ all worth doing, because it all has a significance for us in the life that comes next." "But if we are to go on living," I said, "are we to forget all the love and interest and delight of life? There seems no continuance of identity without memory." "Oh," said Father Payne, "that is another delusion of reason. Our qualities remain--our power of being interested, of loving, of caring, of suffering. We practise them a little in one life, we practise them again in the next--that is why we improve. I forget who it was who said it, but it is quite true, that there are numberless people now alive, who, because of their orderliness, their patience, their kindness, their sweetness, would have been adored as saints if they had lived in mediaeval times. And that is the best reason we have for suppressing as far as we can our evil dispositions, and for living bravely and freely in happy energy, that we shall make a little better start next time. It is not the particular people we love who matter--it is the power of loving other people--and if we meet the same people as those we loved again, we shall love them again; and if we do not, why, there will be others to love. One of the worst limitations I feel is the fact that there are so many thousand people on earth whom I could love, if I could but meet them--and I am not going to believe that this wretched span of days is my only chance of meeting them. We need not be in a hurry--and yet we have no time to waste!" He stopped for a moment, and then added: "When I lived in London, and was very poor, and had either too much or not enough to do, and was altogether very unhappy, I used to wander about the streets and wonder how I could be so much alone when there were so many possible friends. Just above Ludgate Railway Viaduct, as you go to St. Paul's, there is a church on your left, a Wren church, very plain, of white and blackened stone, and an odd lead spire at the top. It has hardly any ornament, but just over the central doorway, under a sort of pediment, there is a little childish angel's head, a beautiful little baby face, with such an expression of stifled bewilderment. It seems to say, 'Why should I hang here, covered with soot, with this mob of people jostling along below, in all this noise and dirt?' The child looks as if it was just about to burst into tears. I used to feel like that. I used to feel that I was meant to be happy, and even to make people happy, and that I had been caught and pinned down in a sort of pillory. It's a grievous mistake to feel like that. Self-pity is the worst of all luxuries! But I think I owe all my happiness to that bad time. Coming here was like a resurrection; and I never grudged the time when I was face to face with a nasty, poky, useless life. And if that can happen inside a single existence, I am not going to despair about the possibility of its happening in many existences. I dreamed the other night that I saw a party of little angels singing a song together, all absorbed in making music, and I recognised the little child of Ludgate Hill in the middle of them singing loud and clear. He gave me a little smile and something like a wink, and I knew that he had got his promotion. We ought all of us, and always, to be expecting that. But we have got to earn it, of course. It does not come if we wait with folded hands." XXV OF PHILANTHROPY Father Payne told us an odd story to-day of a big house on the outskirts of London, with a great garden and some fields belonging to it, that was shut up for years and seemed neglected. It was inhabited by an old retired Colonel and his daughter: the daughter had become an invalid, and her mind was believed to be affected. No one ever came to the house or called there. A wall ran, round it, and the trees grew thick and tangled within; the big gates were locked. Occasionally the Colonel came out of a side-door, a tall handsome man, and took a brisk walk; sometimes he would be seen handing his daughter, much wrapped up, into a carriage, and they drove together. But the place had a sinister air, and was altogether regarded with a gloomy curiosity. When the Colonel died, it was discovered that the place was beautifully kept within, and the house delightfully furnished. It came out that, after a period of mental depression, the daughter had recovered her spirits, though her health was still delicate. The two were devoted to each other, and they decided that, instead of living an ordinary sociable life, they would just enjoy each other's society in peace. It had been the happiest life, simple, tenderly affectionate, the two living in and for each other, and one, moreover, of open-handed, secret benevolence. Apart from the expenses of the household, the Colonel's wealth had been used to support every kind of good work. Only one old friend of the Colonel's was in the secret, and he spoke of it as one of the most beautiful homes he had ever seen. Someone of us criticised the story, and asked whether it was not a case of refined selfishness. He added rather incisively that the expenditure of money on charitable objects seemed to him to show that the Colonel's conscience was ill at ease. Father Payne was very indignant. He said the world had gone mad on philanthropy and social service. Three-quarters of it was only fussy ambition. He went on to say that a beautiful and simple life was probably the thing most worth living in the world, and that two people could hardly be better employed than in making each other happy. He said that he did not believe in self-denial unless people liked it. Was it really a finer life to chatter at dinner-parties and tea-parties, and occasionally to inspect an orphanage? Perspiration was not the only evidence of godliness. Why, was it to be supposed that one could not live worthily unless one was always poking one's nose into one's neighbour's concerns? He said that you might as well say that it was refined selfishness to have a rose-tree in your garden, unless you cut off every bud the moment it appeared and sent it to a hospital. If the critic really believed what he said, Aveley was no place for him. Let him go to Chicago! XXVI OF FEAR I forget what led up to the subject; perhaps I did not hear; but Father Payne said, "It isn't for nothing that 'the fearful' head the list of all the abominable people--murderers, sorcerers, idolaters; and liars--who are reserved for the lake of fire and brimstone! Fear is the one thing that we are always wrong in yielding to: I don't mean timidity and cowardice, but the sort of heavy, mild, and rather pious sort of foreboding that wakes one up early in the morning, and that takes all the wind out of one's sails; fear of not being liked, of having given offence, of living uselessly, of wasting time and opportunities. Whatever we do, we must not lead an apologetic kind of life. If we on the whole intend to do something which we think may be wrong, it is better to do it--it is wrong to be cautious and prudent. I love experiments." "Isn't that rather immoral?" said Lestrange. "No, my dear boy," said Father Payne, "we must make mistakes: better make them! I am not speaking of things obviously wrong, cruel, unkind, ungenerous, spiteful things; but it is right to give oneself away, to yield to impulses, not to take advice too much, and not to calculate consequences too much. I hate the Robinson Crusoe method of balancing pros and cons. Live your own life, do what you are inclined to do, as long as you really do it. That is probably the best way of serving the world. Don't be argued into things, or bullied out of them. You need not parade it--but rebel silently. It is absolutely useless going about knocking people down. That proves nothing except that you are stronger. Don't show up people, or fight people; establish a stronger influence if you can, and make people see that it is happier and pleasanter to live as you live. Make them envy you--don't make them fear you. You must not play with fear, and you must not yield to fear." XXVII OF ARISTOCRACY Father Payne came into the hall one morning after breakfast when I was opening a parcel of books which had arrived for me. It was a fine, sunny day, and the sun lit up the portrait framed in the panelling over the mantelpiece, an old and skilful copy (at least I suppose it was a copy) of Reynolds' fine portrait of James, tenth Earl of Shropshire. Father Payne regarded the picture earnestly. "Isn't he magnificent?" he said. "But he was a very poor creature really, and came to great grief. My great-great-grandfather! His granddaughter married my grandfather. Now look at that--that's the best we can do in the way of breeding! There's a man whose direct ancestors, father to son, had simply the best that money can buy--fine houses to live in, power, the pick of the matrimonial market, the best education, a fine tradition, every inducement to behave like a hero; and what did he do--he gambled away his inheritance, and died of drink and bad courses. We can't get what we want, it would seem, by breeding human beings, though we can do it with cows and pigs. Where and how does the thing go wrong? His father and mother were both of them admirable people--fine in every sense of the word. "And then people talk, too, as if we had got rid of idolatry! We make a man a peer, we heap wealth upon him, and then we worship him for his magnificence, and are deeply affected if he talks civilly to us. We don't do it quite so much now, perhaps--but in that man's day, think what an aroma of rank and splendour is cast, even in Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, over a dinner-party where a man like that was present! If he paid Johnson the most trumpery of compliments, Johnson bowed low, and down it went on Boswell's cuff! Yet we go on perpetuating it. We don't require that such a man should be active, public-spirited, wise. If he is fond of field-sports, fairly business-like, kindly, courteous, decently virtuous, we think him a great man, and feel mildly elated at meeting him and being spoken to civilly by him. I don't mean that only snobs feel that; but respectable people, who don't pursue fashion, would be more pleased if an Earl they knew turned up and asked for a cup of tea than if the worthiest of their neighbours did so. I don't exaggerate the power of rank--it doesn't make a man necessarily powerful now, but a very little ability, backed up by rank, will go a long way. A great general or a great statesman likes to be made an Earl; and yet a good many people would like an Earl of long descent quite as much. There are a lot of people about who feel as Melbourne did when he said he liked the Garter so much because there was no d----d merit about it. I believe we admire people who inherit magnificence better than we admire people who earn it; and while that feeling is there, what can be done to alter it?" "I don't think I want to alter it," I said; "it is very picturesque!" "Yes, there's the mischief," said Father Payne, "it _is_ more picturesque, hang it all! The old aristocrat who feels like a prince and behaves like one, _is_ more picturesque than the person who has sweated himself into it. Think of the old Duke who was told he _must_ retrench, and that he need not have six still-room maids in his establishment, and said, after a brief period of reflection, 'D----n it, a man must have a biscuit!' We _like_ insolence! That is to say, we like it in its place, because we admire power. It's ten times more impressive than the meekness of the saint. The mischief is that we like anything from a man of power. If he is insolent, we think it grand; if he is stupid, we think it a sort of condescension; if he is mild and polite, we think it marvellous; if he is boorish, we think it is simple-minded. It is power that we admire, or rather success, and both can be inherited. If a man gets a big position in England, he is always said to grow into it; but that is because we care about the position more than we care about the man. "When I was younger," he went on, "I used to like meeting successful people--it was only rarely that I got the chance--but I gradually discovered that they were not, on the whole, the interesting people. Sometimes they were, of course, when they were big animated men, full of vitality and interest. But many men use themselves up in attaining success, and haven't anything much to give you except their tired side. No, I soon found out that freshness was the interesting thing, wherever it was to be found--and, mind you, it isn't very common. Many people have to arrive at success by resolute self-limitation; and that becomes very uninteresting. Buoyancy, sympathy, quick interests, perceptiveness--that's the supreme charm; and the worst of it is that it mostly belongs to the people who haven't taken too much out of themselves. When we have got a really well-ordered State, no one will have any reason to work too hard, and then we shall all be the happier. These gigantic toilers, it's a sort of morbidity, you know; the real success is to enjoy work, not to drudge yourself dry. One must overflow--not pump!" "But what is an artist to do," I said, "who is simply haunted by the desire to make something beautiful?" "He must hold his hand," said Father Payne; "he must learn to waste his time, and he must love wasting it. A habit of creative work is an awful thing." "Come out for a turn," he went on; "never mind these rotten books; don't get into a habit of reading--it's like endlessly listening to good talk without ever joining in it--it makes a corpulent mind!" We went and walked in the garden; he stopped before some giant hemlocks. "Just look at those great things," he said, "built up as geometrically as a cathedral, tier above tier, and yet not _quite_ regular. There must be something very hard at work inside that, piling it all up, adding cell to cell, carrying out a plan, and enjoying it all. Yet the beauty of it is that it isn't perfectly regular. You see the underlying scheme, yet the separate shoots are not quite mechanical--they lean away from each other, that joint is a trifle shorter--there wasn't quite room at the start in that stem, and the pressure goes on showing right up to the top, I suppose our lives would look very nearly as geometrical to anyone who _knew_--really knew; but how little geometrical we feel! I don't suppose this hemlock is cursed by the power of thinking it might have done otherwise, or envies the roses. We mustn't spend time in envying, or repenting either--or still less in renouncing life." "But if I want to renounce it," I said, "why shouldn't I?" "Yes, there you have me," said Father Payne; "we know so little about ourselves, that we don't always know whether we do better to renounce a thing or to seize it. Make experiments, I say--don't make habits." "But you are always drilling me into habits," I said. He gave me a little shake with his hand. "Yes, the habit of being able to do a thing," he said, "not the habit of being unable to do anything else! Hang these metaphysics, if that is what they are! What I want you young men to do is to get a firm hold upon life, and to feel that it is a finer thing than any little presentment of it. I want you to feel and enjoy for yourselves, and to live freely and generously. Bad things happen to all of us, of course; but we mustn't mind that--not to be petty or quarrelsome, or hidebound or prudish or over-particular, that's the point. To leave other people alone, except on the rare occasions when they are not letting other people alone; to be peaceable, and yet not to be afraid; not to be hurt and vexed; to practise forgetting; not to want to pouch things! It's all very well for me to talk," he said; "I made a sufficient hash of it, when I was poor and miserable and overworked; and then I was transplanted out of a slum window-box into a sunny garden, just in time; yet I'm sure that most of my old troubles were in a way of my own making, because I hated being so insignificant; but I fear that was a little poison lurking in me from the Earls of Shropshire. That is the odd thing about ambitions, that they seem so often like regaining a lost position rather than making a new one. The truth is that we are caged; and the only thing to do is to think about the cage as little as we can." XXVIII OF CRYSTALS One day I was strolling down the garden among the winding paths, when I came suddenly upon Father Payne, who was hurrying towards the house. He had in each of his hands a large roughly spherical stone, and looked at me a little shamefacedly. "You look, Father," I said, "as if you were going to stone Stephen." He laughed, and looked at the stones. "Yes," he said, "they are what the Greeks called 'hand-fillers,' for use in battle--but I have no nefarious designs." "What are you going to do with them?" I said "That's a secret!" he said, and made as if he were going in. Then he said, "Come, you shall hear it--you shall share my secret, and be a partner in my dreams, as the fisherman says in Theocritus." But he did not tell me what he was going to do, and seemed half shy of doing so. "It's like Dr. Johnson and the orange-peel," I said. "'Nay, Sir, you shall know their fate no further.'" "Well, the truth is," he said at last, "that I'm a perfect baby. I never can resist looking into a hole in the ground, and I happened to look into the pit where we dig gravel. I can't tell you how long I spent there." "What were you doing?" I said. "Looking for fossils," he said; "I had a great gift for finding them when I was a child. I didn't find any fossils to-day, but I found these stones, and I think they contain crystals. I am going to break them and see." I took one in my hand. "I think they are only fossil sponges," I said; "there will only be a rusty sort of core inside." "You know that!" he said, brightening up; "you know about stones too? But these are not sponges--they would rattle if they were--no, they contain crystals--I am sure of it. Come and see!" We went into the stable-yard. Father Payne fetched a hammer, and then selected a convenient place in the cobbled yard to break the stones. He put one of them in position, and aimed a blow at it, but it glanced off, and the stone flew off with the impact to some distance. "Lie still, can't you?" said Father Payne, apostrophising the stone, and adding, "This is for my pleasure, not for yours." I recovered the stone, and brought it back, and Father Payne broke it with a well-directed blow. He gathered up the pieces eagerly. "Yes," he said, "it's all right--they are blue crystals: better than I had hoped." He handed a fragment to me to look at. The inside of the stone was hollow. It had a coagulated appearance, and was thickly coated with minute bluish crystals, very beautiful. "I don't know that I ever saw a stone I liked as well as this," said Father Payne, musing over another piece. "Think what millions of years this has been like that,--before Abraham was! It has never seen the light of day before--it's a splash of some molten stone, which fell plop into a cool sea-current, I suppose. I wish I knew all about it. The question, is, why is it so beautiful? It couldn't help it, I suppose! But for whose delight?" Then he said, "I suppose this was a vacuum in here till it was broken? That is why it is so clear and fresh. Good Heavens, what would I not give to know why this thing cooled into these lovely little shapes. It's no use talking about the laws of matter--why are the laws of matter what they are, and not different? And odder still, why do I like the look of it?" "Perhaps that is a law of matter too," I said. "Oh, shut up!" said Father Payne to me. "But I understand--and of course the temptation is to believe that this was all done on your account and mine. That is as odd a thing as the stone itself, if you come to think of it, that we should be made so that we refer everything to ourselves, and to believe that God prepared this pretty show for us." "I suppose we come in somewhere?" I said. "Yes, we are allowed to see it," said Father Payne. "But it wasn't arranged for the benefit of a silly old man like me. That is the worst of our religious theories--that we believe that God is for ever making personal appeals to us. It is that sort of self-importance which spoils everything." "But I can hardly believe that we have this sense of self-importance only to get rid of it," I said. "It all seems to me a dreadful muddle--to shut up these lovely little things inside millions of stones, and then to give us the wish to break a couple, only that we may reflect that they were not meant for us to see at all." Father Payne gave a groan. "Yes, it is a muddle!" he said. "But one thing I feel clear about--that a beautiful thing like this means a sense of joy somewhere: some happiness went to the making of things which in a sense are quite useless, but are unutterably lovely all the same. Beauty implies consciousness--but come, we are neglecting our business. Give me the other stone at once!" I gave it him, and he cracked it. "Very disappointing!" he said. "I made sure there was a beautiful stone, but it is all solid--only a flaky sort of jelly--it's no use at all!" He threw it aside, but carefully gathered up the fragments of the crystalline stone. "Don't tell of me!" he said, looking at me whimsically. "This is the sort of nonsense which our sensible friends won't understand. But now that I know that you care about stones, we will have a rare hunt together one of these days. But mind--no stuff about geology! It's beauty that we are in search of, you and I." XXIX EARLY LIFE One day, to my surprise and delight, Father Payne indulged in some personal reminiscences about his early life. He did not as a rule do this. He used to say that it was the surest sign of decadence to think much about the past. "Sometimes when I wake early," he said, "I find myself going back to my childhood, and living through scene after scene. It's not wholesome--I always know I am a little out of sorts when I do that--it is only one degree better than making plans about the future!" However, on this occasion he was very communicative. He had been talking about Ruskin, and he said: "Do you remember in _Praeterita_ how Ruskin, writing about his sheltered and complacent childhood, describes how entirely he lived in the pleasure of _sight_? He noticed everything, the shapes and colours of things, the almond blossom, the ants that made nests in the garden walk, the things they saw in their travels. He was entirely absorbed in sense-impressions. Well, that threw a light on my own life, because it was exactly what happened to me as a child. I lived wholly in observation. I had no mind and very little heart. I suppose that I had so much to do looking at everything, getting the shapes and the textures and the qualities of everything by heart, that I had no time to think about ideas and emotions. I had a very lonely childhood, you know, brought up in the country by my mother, who was rather an invalid, my father being dead. I had no companions to speak of, and I didn't care about anyone or need anyone--it was all simply a collecting of impressions. The result is that I can visualise anything and everything--speak of a larch-bud or a fir-cone, and there it is before me--the little rosy fragrant tuft, or the glossy rectangular squares of the cone. Then I went to Marlborough, and I was dreadfully unhappy, I hated everything and everybody--the ugliness and slovenliness of it all, the noise, the fuss, the stink. I did not feel I had anything in common with those little brutes, as I thought them. I lived the life of a blind creature in a fright, groping aimlessly about. I joined in nothing--but I was always strong, and so I was left alone. No one dared to interfere with me; and I have sometimes wished I hadn't been so strong, that I had had the experience of being weak. I dare say that nasty things might have happened--but I should have known more what the world was like, I should have depended more upon other people, I should have made friends. As it was, I left school entirely innocent, very solitary, very modest, thinking myself a complete duffer, and everyone else a beast. It got a little better at the end of my time, and I had a companion or two--but I never dreamed of telling anyone what I was really thinking about." He broke off suddenly. "This is awful twaddle!" he said. "Why should you care to hear about all this? I was thinking aloud." "Do go on thinking aloud a little," I said; "it is most interesting!" "Ah," he said, "with the flatterers were busy mockers! You enjoy staring and looking upon me." "No, no," I said, rather nettled. "Father Payne, don't you understand? I want to hear more about you. I want to know how you came to be what you are: it interests me more than I can say. You asked me about myself when I came here, and I told you. Why shouldn't I ask you, for a change?" He smiled, obviously pleased at this. "Why, then," he said, "I'll go on. I'm not above liking to tell my tale, like the Ancient Mariner. You can beat your breast when you are tired of it." He was intent for a moment, and then went on. "Well, I went up to Oxford--to Corpus. A funny little place, I now think--rather intellectual. I could hardly believe my senses when I found how different it was from school, and how independent. Heavens, how happy I was! I made some friends--I found I could make friends after all--I could say what I liked, I could argue, I could even amuse them. I really couldn't make you realise how I adored some of those men. I used to go to sleep after a long evening of chatter, simply hating the darkness which separated me from life and company. There were two in particular, very ordinary young men, I expect. But they were fond of me, and liked being with me, and I thought them the most wonderful and enchanting persons, with a wide knowledge of the great mysterious world. The world! It wasn't, I saw, a nasty, jostling place, as I had thought at school, but a great beautiful affair, full of love and delight, of interest and ideas. I read, I talked, I flew about--it was simply a new birth! I felt like a prisoner suddenly released. Of course, the mischief was that I neglected my work. There wasn't time for that: and I fell in love, too, or thought I did, with the sister of one of those friends, with whom I went to stay. I wonder if anyone was ever in love like that! I daresay it's common enough. But I won't go into that; these raptures are for private consumption. I was roughly jerked up. I took a bad degree. My mother died--I had very little in common with her: she was an invalid without any hold on life, and I took no trouble to be kind to her--I was perfectly selfish and wilful. Then I had to earn my living. I would have given anything to stay at Oxford: and you know, even now, when I think of Oxford, a sort of electric shock goes through me, I love it so much. I daren't even set foot there, I'm so afraid of finding it altered. But when I think of those dark courts and bowery gardens, and the men moving about, and the fronts of blistered stone, and the little quaint streets, and the meadows and elms, and the country all about, I have a physical yearning that is almost a pain--a sort of home-sickness--" He broke off, and was silent for a moment, and I saw that his eyes were full of tears. "Then it was London, that accursed place! I had a tiny income: I got a job at a coaching establishment, I worked like the devil. That was a cruel time. I couldn't dream of marriage--that all vanished, and she married pretty soon, I couldn't get a holiday--I was too poor. I tried writing, but I made a hash of that. I simply went down into hell. One of my great friends died, and the other--well, it was awkward to meet, when I had had to break it off with his sister. I simply can't describe to you how utterly horrible it all was. I used to teach all the terms, and in the vacations I simply mooned about. I hadn't a club, and I used to read at the Museum--read just to keep my senses. Then, I suppose I got used to it. Of course, if I had had any adventurousness in me, I should have gone off and become a day-labourer or anything--but I am not that sort of person. "That went on till I was about thirty-three--and then quite suddenly, and without any warning, I had my experience. I suppose that something was going on inside me all the time, something being burnt out of me in those fires. It was a mixture of selfishness and stupidity and perverseness that was the matter with me. I didn't see that I could do anything. I was simply furious with the world for being such a hole, and with God for sticking me in the middle of it. The occasion of the change was simply too ridiculous. It was nothing else but coming back to my rooms and finding a big bowl of daffodils there. They had been left, my landlady told me, by a young gentleman. It sounds foolish enough--but it suddenly occurred to me to think that someone was interested in me, pitied me, cared for me. A sort of mist cleared away from my eyes, and I saw in a flash, what was the mischief--that I had walled myself in by my misery and bad temper, and by my expectation that something must be done for me. The next day I had to take a lot of pupils, one after another, for composition. One of them had a daffodil in his hand, which he put down carelessly on the table. I stared at it and at him, and he blushed. He wasn't an interesting young man to look at or to talk to--but it was just a bit of simple humanity. It all came out. I had been good to him--I looked as if I were having a bad time. It was just a little human, signal, and a beautiful one. It was there, then, all the time, I saw--human affection--if I cared to put out my hand for it. I can't describe to you how it all developed, but my heart had melted somehow--thawed like a lump of ice. I saw that there was no specific ill-will to me in the world. I saw that everything was there, if I only chose to take it. That was my second awakening--a glimmer of light through a chink--and suddenly, it was day! I had been growling over bones and straw in a filthy kennel, and I was not really tied up at all. Life was running past me, a crystal river. I was dying of thirst: and all because it was not given me in a clean glass on a silver tray, I would not drink it--and God smiling at me all the time." Father Payne walked on in silence. "The truth is, my boy," he said a minute later, "that I'm a converted man, and it isn't everyone who can say that--nor do I wish everyone to be converted, because it's a ghastly business preparing for the operation. It isn't everyone who needs it--only those self-willed, devilish, stand-off, proud people, who have to be braised in a mortar and pulverised to atoms. Then, when you are all to bits, you can be built up. Do you remember that stone we broke the other day? Well, I was a melted blob of stone, and then I was crystallised--now I'm full of eyes within! And the best of it is that they are little living eyes, and not sparkling flints--they see, they don't reflect! At least I think so; and I don't think trouble is brewing for me again--though that is always the danger!" I was very deeply moved by this, and said something about being grateful. "Oh, not that," said Father Payne; "you don't know what fun it has been to me to tell you. That's the sort of thing that I want to get into one of my novels, but I can't manage it. But the moral is, if I may say so: Be afraid of self-pity and dignity and self-respect--don't be afraid of happiness and simplicity and kindness. Give yourself away with both hands. It's easy for me to talk, because I have been loaded with presents ever since: the clouds drop fatness--a rich but expressive image that!" XXX OF BLOODSUCKERS "I'm feeling low to-night," said Father Payne in answer to a question about his prolonged silence. "I'm not myself: virtue has gone out of me--I'm in the clutches of a bloodsucker." "Old debts with compound interest?" said Rose cheerfully. "Yes," said Father Payne with a frown; "old emotional I.O.U.'s. I didn't know what I was putting my name to." "A man or a woman?" said Rose. "Thank God, it's a man!" said Father Payne. "Female bloodsuckers are worse still. A man, at all events, only wants the blood; a woman wants the pleasure of seeing you wince as well!" "It sounds very tragic," said Kaye. "No, it's not tragic," said Father Payne; "there would be something dignified about that! It's only unutterably low and degrading. Come, I'll tell you about it. It will do me good to get it off my chest. "It is one of my old pupils," Father Payne went on. "He once got into trouble about money, and I paid his debts--he can't forgive me that!" "Does he want you to pay some more?" said Rose. "Yes, he does," said Father Payne, "but he wants to be high-minded too. He wants me to press him to take the money, to prevail upon him to accept it as a favour. He implies that if I hadn't begun by paying his debts originally, he would not have ever acquired what he calls 'the unhappy habit of dependence.' Of course he doesn't think that really: he wants the money, but he also wants to feel dignified. 'If I thought it would make you happier if I accepted it,' he says, 'of course I should view the matter differently. It would give me a reason for accepting what I must confess would be a humiliation,' Isn't that infernal? Then he says that I may perhaps think that his troubles have coarsened him, but that he unhappily retains all his old sensitiveness. Then he goes on to say that it was I who encouraged him to preserve a high standard of delicacy in these matters." "He must be a precious rascal," said Vincent. "No, he isn't," said Father Payne, "that's the worst of it--but he is a frantic poseur. He has got so used to talking and thinking about his feelings, that he doesn't know what he really does feel. That's the part of it which bothers me: because if he was a mere hypocrite, I would say so plainly. One must not be taken in by apparent hypocrisy. It often represents what a man did once really think, but which has become a mere memory. One must not be hard on people's reminiscences. Don't you know how the mildest people are often disposed to make out that they were reckless and daring scapegraces at school? That isn't a lie; it is imagination working on very slender materials." We laughed at this, and then Barthrop said, "Let me write to him, Father. I won't be offensive." "I know you wouldn't," said Father Payne; "but no one can help me. It's not my fault, but my misfortune. It all comes of acting for the best. I ought to have paid his debts, and made myself thoroughly unpleasant about it. What I did was to be indulgent and sympathetic. It's all that accursed sentimentality that does it. I have been trying to write a letter to him all the morning, showing him up to himself without being brutal. But he will only write back and say that I have made him miserable, and that I have wholly misunderstood him: and then I shall explain and apologise; and then he will take the money to show that he forgives me. I see a horrible vista of correspondence ahead. After four or five letters, I shall not have the remotest idea what it is all about, and he will be full of reproaches. He will say that it isn't the first time that he has found how the increase of wealth makes people ungenerous. Oh, don't I know every step of the way! He is going to have the money, and he is going to put me in the wrong: that is his plan, and it is going to come off. I shall be in the wrong: I feel in the wrong already!" "Then in that case there is certainly no necessity for losing the money too!" said Rose. "It's all very well for you to talk in that impersonal way, Rose," said Father Payne. "Of course I know very well that you would handle the situation kindly and decisively; but you don't know what it is to suffer from politeness like a disease. I have done nothing wrong except that I have been polite when I might have been dry. I see right through the man, but he is absolutely impervious; and it is my accursed politeness that makes it impossible for me to say bluntly what I know he will dislike and what he genuinely will not understand. I know what you are thinking, every one of you--that I say lots of things that you dislike--but then you _do_ understand! I could no more tell this wretch the truth than I could trample on a blind old man." "What will you really do?" said Barthrop. "I shall send him the money," said Father Payne firmly, "and I shall compliment him on his delicacy; and then, thank God, I shall forget, until it all begins again. I am a wretched old opportunist, of course; a sort of Ally Sloper--not fit company for strong and concise young men!" XXXI OF INSTINCTS I do not remember what led to this remark of Father Payne's:--"It's a painful fact, from the ethical point of view, that qualities are more admired, and more beautiful indeed, the more instinctive they are. We don't admire the faculty of taking pains very much. The industrious boy at school is rather disliked than otherwise, while the brilliant boy who can construe his lesson without learning it is envied. Take a virtue like courage: the love of danger, the contempt of fear, the power of dashing headlong into a thing without calculating the consequences is the kind of courage we admire. The person who is timid and anxious, and yet just manages desperately to screw himself up to the sticking-point, does not get nearly as much credit as the bold devil-may-care person. It is so with most performances; we admire ease and rapidity much more than perseverance and tenacity, what obviously costs little effort rather than what costs a great deal. "We all rather tend to be bored by a display of regularity and discipline. Do you remember that letter of Keats, where he confesses his intense irritation at the way in which his walking companion, Brown, I think, always in the evening got out his writing-materials in the same order--first the paper, then the ink, then the pen. 'I say to him,' says Keats, 'why not the pen sometimes first?' We don't like precision; look at the word 'Methodist,' which originally was a nick-name for people of strictly disciplined life. We like something a little more gay and inconsequent. "Yet the power of forcing oneself by an act of will to do something unpleasant is one of the finest qualities in the world. There is a story of a man who became a Bishop. He was a delicate and sensitive fellow, much affected by a crowd, and particularly by the sight of people passing in front of him. He began his work by holding an enormous confirmation, and five times in the course of it he actually had to retire to the vestry, where he was physically sick. That's a heroic performance; but we admire still more a bland and cheerful Bishop who is not sick, but enjoys a ceremony." "Surely that is all right, Father Payne?" said Barthrop. "When we see a performance, we are concerned with appreciating the merit of it. A man with a bad headache, however gallant, is not likely to talk as well as a man in perfect health and high spirits; but if we are not considering the performance, but the virtues of the performer, we might admire the man who pumped up talk when he was feeling wretched more than the man from whom it flowed." "The judicious Barthrop!" said Father Payne. "Yes, you are right--but for all that we do not instinctively admire effort as much as we admire easy brilliance. We are much more inclined to imitate the brilliant man than we are to imitate the man who has painfully developed an accomplishment. The truth is, we are all of us afraid of effort; and instinct is generally so much more in the right than reason, that I end by believing that it is better to live freely in our good qualities, than painfully to conquer our bad qualities; not to take up work that we can't do from a sense of duty, but to take up work that we can do from a sense of pleasure. I believe in finding our real life more than in sticking to one that is not real for the sake of virtue. Trained inclination is the secret. That is why I should never make a soldier. I love being in a rage--no one more--it has all the advantages and none of the disadvantages of getting drunk. But I can't do it on the word of command." "Isn't that what is called hedonism?" said Lestrange. "You must not get in the way of calling names!" said Father Payne; "hedonism is a word invented by Puritans to discourage the children of light. It is not a question of doing what you like, but of liking what you do. Of course everyone has got to choose--you can't gratify all your impulses, because they thwart each other; but if you freely gratify your finer impulses, you will have much less temptation to indulge your baser inclinations. It is more important to have the steam up and to use the brake occasionally, than never to have the steam up at all." XXXII OF HUMILITY We had been listening to a paper by Kaye--a beautiful and fanciful piece of work; when he finished, Father Payne said: "That's a charming thing, Kaye--a little sticky in places, but still beautiful." "It's not so good as I had hoped," said Kaye mildly. "Oh, don't be humble," said Father Payne; "that's the basest of the virtues, because it vanishes the moment you realise it! Make your bow like a man. It may not be as good as you hoped--nothing ever is--but surely it is better than you expected?" Kaye blushed, and said, "Well, yes, it is." "Now let me say generally," said Father Payne, "that in art you ought never to undervalue your own work. You ought all to be able to recognise how far you have done what you intended. The big men, like Tennyson and Morris, were always quite prepared to praise their own work. They did it quite modestly, more as if some piece of good fortune had befallen them than as if they deserved credit. There's no such thing as taking credit to oneself in art. What you try to do is always bound to be miles ahead of what you can do--that is where the humility comes in. But a man who can't admire his own work on occasions, can't admire anyone's work. If you do a really good thing, you ought to feel as if you had been digging for diamonds and had found a big one. Hang it, you _intend_ to make a fine thing! You are not likely to be conceited about it, because you can't make a beautiful thing every day; and the humiliation comes in when, after turning out a good thing, you find yourself turning out a row of bad ones. The only artists who are conceited are those who can't distinguish between what is good and what is inferior in their own work. You must not expect much praise, and least of all from other artists, because no artist is ever very deeply interested in another artist's work, except in the work of the two or three who can do easily what he is trying to do. But it is a deep pleasure, which may be frankly enjoyed, to turn out a fine bit of work; though you must not waste much time over enjoying it, because you have got to go on to the next." "I always think it must be very awful," said Vincent, "when it dawns upon a man that his mind is getting stiff and his faculty uncertain, and that he is not doing good work any more. What ought people to do about stopping?" "It's very hard to say," said Father Payne. "The happiest thing of all is, I expect, to die before that comes; and the next best thing is to know when to stop and to want to stop. But many people get a habit of work, and fall into dreariness without it." "Isn't it better to go on with the delusion that you are just as good as ever--like Wordsworth and Browning?" said Rose. "No, I don't think that is better," said Father Payne, "because it means a sort of blindness. It is very curious in the case of Browning, because he learned exactly how to do things. He had his method, he fixed upon an abnormal personality or a curious incident, and he turned it inside out with perfect fidelity. But after a certain time in his life, the thing became suddenly heavy and uninteresting. Something evaporated--I do not know what! The trick is done just as deftly, but one is bored; one simply doesn't care to see the inside of a new person, however well dissected. There's no life, no beauty about the later things. Wordsworth is somehow different--he is always rather noble and prophetic. The later poems are not beautiful, but they issue from a beautiful idea--a passion of some kind. But the later Browning poems are not passionate--they remind one of a surgeon tucking up his sleeves for a set of operations. I expect that Browning was too humble; he loved a gentlemanly convention, and Wordsworth certainly did not do that. If you want to know how a poet should _live_, read Dorothy Wordsworth's journals at Grasmere; if you want to know how he should _feel_, read the letters of Keats." XXXIII OF MEEKNESS I had been having some work looked over by Father Payne, who had been somewhat trenchant. "You have been beating a broken drum, you know," he had said, with a smile. "Yes," I said. "It's poor stuff, I see. But I didn't know it was so bad when I wrote it; I thought I was making the best of a poor subject rather ingeniously. I am afraid I am rather stupid." "If I thought you really felt like that," said Father Payne, "I should be sorry for you. But I expect it is only your idea of modesty?" "No," I said, "it isn't modesty--it's humility, I think." "No one has any business to think himself humble," said Father Payne. "The moment you do that, you are conceited. It's not a virtue to grovel. A man ought to know exactly what he is worth. You needn't be always saying what you are, worth, of course. It's modest to hold your tongue. But humility is, or ought to be, extinct as a virtue. It belongs to the time when people felt bound to deplore the corruption of their heart, and to speak of themselves as worms, and to compare themselves despondently with God. That in itself is a piece of insolence; and it isn't a wholesome frame of mind to dwell on one's worthlessness, and to speak of one's righteousness as filthy rags. It removes every stimulus to effort. If you really feel like that, you had better take to your bed permanently--you will do less harm there than pretending to do work in the value of which you don't believe." "But what is the word for the feeling which one has when one reads a really splendid book, let us say, or hears a perfect piece of music?" I said. "Well, it ought to be gratitude and admiration," said Father Payne. "Why mix yourself up with it at all?" "Because I can't help it," I said; "I think of the way in which I muddle on with my writing, and I feel how hopeless I am." "That's all wrong, my boy," said Father Payne; "you ought to say to yourself--'So that is _his_ way of putting things and, by Jove, it's superb. Now I've got to find my way of putting things!' You had better go and work in the fields like an honest man, if you don't feel you have got anything to say worth saying. You have your own point of view, you know: try and get it down on paper. It isn't exactly the same as, let us say, Shakespeare's point of view: but if you feel that he has seen everything worth seeing, and said everything worth saying, then, of course, it is no good going on. But that is pure grovelling; no lively person ever does feel that--he says, 'Hang it, he has left _some_ things out!' After all, everyone has a right to his point of view, and if it can be expressed, why, it is worth expressing. We want all the sidelights we can get." "That's one comfort!" I said. "Yes," said Father Payne, "but you know perfectly well that you knew it before I told you. Why be so undignified? You need not want to astonish or amuse the whole civilised world. You probably won't do that; but you can fit a bit of the mosaic in, if you have it in you. Now look you here! I know exactly what I am worth. I can't write--though I think I can when I'm at it--but I can perceive, and see when a thing is amiss, and lay my finger on a fault; I can be of some use to a fellow like yourself--and I can manage an estate in my own way, and I can keep my tenants' spirits up. I have got a perfectly definite use in the world, and I'm going to play my part for all that I'm worth. I'm not going to pretend that I am a worm or an outcast--I don't feel one; and I am as sure as I can be of anything, that God does not wish me to feel one. He needs me; He can't get on without me just here; and when He can, He will say the word. I don't think I am of any far-reaching significance: but neither am I going to say that I am nothing but vile earth and a miserable sinner. I'm lazy, I'm cross, I'm unkind, I'm greedy: but I know when I am wasting time and temper, and I don't do it all the time. It's no use being abject. The mistake is to go about comparing yourself with other people and weighing yourself against them. The right thing to do is to be able to recognise generously and desirously when you see anyone doing something finely which you do badly, and to say, 'Come, that's the right way! I must do better.' But to be humble is to be grubby, because it makes one proud, in a nasty sort of way, of doing things badly. 'What a poor creature I am,' says the humble man, 'and how nice to know that I am so poor a creature; how noble and unworldly I am.' The mistake is to want to do a thing better than Smith or Jones: the right way is to want to do it better than yourself." "Yes," I said, "that's perfectly true, Father: and I won't be such a fool again." "You haven't been a fool, so far as I am aware," said Father Payne. "It is only that you are just a thought too polite. You mustn't be polite in mind, you know--only in manners. Politeness only consists in not saying all you think unless you are asked. But humility consists in trying to believe that you think less than you think. It's like holding your nose, and saying that the bad smell has gone--it is playing tricks with your mind: and if you get into the way of doing that, you will find that your mind has a nasty way of playing tricks upon you. Here! hold on! I am rapidly becoming like Chadband! Send me Vincent, will you--there's a good man? He comes next." XXXIV OF CRITICISM Father Payne had told me that my writing was becoming too juicy and too highly-scented. "You mustn't hide the underlying form," he said; "have plenty of plain spaces. This sort of writing is only for readers who want to be vaguely soothed and made to feel comfortable by a book--it's a stimulant, it's not a food!" "Yes," I said with a sigh, "I suppose you are right." "Up to a certain point, I am right," he replied, "because you are in training at present--and people in training have to do abnormal things: you can't _live_ as if you were in training, of course; but when you begin to work on your own account, you must find your own pace and your own manner: and even now you needn't agree with me unless you like." I determined, however, that I would give him something very different next time. He suggested that I should write an essay on a certain writer of fiction. I read the novels with great care, and I then produced the driest and most technical criticism I could. I read it aloud to Father Payne a month later. He heard it in silence, stroking his beard with his left hand, as his manner was. When I had finished, he said: "Well, you have taken my advice with a vengeance; and as an exercise--indeed, as a _tour-de-force_--it is good. I didn't think you had it in you to produce such a bit of anatomy. I think it's simply the most uninteresting essay I ever heard in my life--chip, chip, chip, the whole time. It won't do you any harm to have written it, but, of course, it's a mere caricature. No conceivable reason could be assigned for your writing it. It's like the burial of the dead--ashes to ashes, dust to dust!" "I admit," I said, "that I did it on purpose, to show you how judicious I could be." "Oh yes," he said, "I quite realise that--and that's why I admire it. If you had produced it as a real thing, and not by way of reprisal, I should think very ill of your prospects. It's like the work of an analytical chemist--I tell you what it's like, it's like the diagnosis of the symptoms of some sick person of rank in a doctor's case-book! But, of course, you know you mustn't write like that, as well as I do. There must be some motive for writing, some touch of admiration and sympathy, something you can show to other people which might escape them, and which is worth while for them to see. In writing--at present, at all events--one can't be so desperately scientific and technical as all that. I suppose that some day, when we treat human thought and psychology scientifically, we shall have to dissect like that; but even so, it will be in the interests of science, not in the interests of literature. One must not confuse the two, and no doubt, when we begin to analyse the development of human thought, its heredity, its genesis and growth, we shall have a Shelley-culture in a test-tube, and we shall be able to isolate a Browning-germ: but we haven't got there yet." "In that case," I said, "I don't really see what was so wrong with my last essay." "Why, it was a mere extemporisation," said Father Payne; "a phrase suggested a phrase, a word evoked a lot of other words--there was no real connection of thought. It was pretty enough, but you were not even roving from one place to another, you were just drifting with the stream. Now this last essay is purely business-like. You have analysed the points--but there's no beauty or pleasure in it. It is simply what an engineer might say to an engineer about the building of a bridge. Mind, I am not finding fault with your essay. You did what you set out to do, and you have done it well. I only say there is not any conceivable reason why it should have been written, and there is every conceivable reason why it should not be read." "It was just an attempt," I said, "to see the points and to disentangle them." "Yes, yes," said Father Payne; "I see that, and I give you full credit for it. But, after all, you must look on writing as a species of human communication. The one reason for writing is that the writer sees something which other people overlook, perceives the beauty and interest of it, gets behind it, sees the quality of it, and how it differs from other similar things. If the writer is worth anything, his subject must be so interesting or curious or beautiful to himself that he can't help setting it down. The motive of it all must be the fact that he is interested--not the hope of interesting other people. You must risk that, though the more you are interested, the better is your chance of interesting others. Then the next point is that things mustn't be presented in a cold and abstract light--you have done that here--it must be done as you see it, not as a photographic plate records it: and that is where the personality of the artist comes in, and where writers are handicapped, according as they have or have not a personal charm. That is the unsolved mystery of writing--the personal charm: apart from that there is little in it. A man may see a thing with hideous distinctness, but he may not be able to invest it with charm: and the danger of charm is that some people can invest very shallow, muddled, and shabby thinking with a sort of charm. It is like a cloak, if I may say so. If I wear an old cloak, it looks shabby and disgraceful, as it is. But if I lend it to a shapely and well-made friend, it gets a beauty from the wearer. There are men I know who can tell me a story as old as the hills, and yet make it fresh and attractive. Look at that delicious farrago of nonsense and absurdity, Ruskin's _Fors Clavigera_. He crammed in anything that came into his head--his reminiscences, scraps out of old dreary books he had read, paragraphs snipped out of the papers. There's no order, no sequence about it, and yet it is irresistible. But then Ruskin had the charm, and managed to pour it into all that he wrote. He is always _there_, that whimsical, generous, perverse, affectionate, afflicted, pathetic creature, even in the smallest scrap of a letter or the dreariest old tag of quotation. But you and I can't play tricks like that. You are sometimes there, I confess, in what you write, while I am never there in anything that I write. What I want to teach you to do is to be really yourself in all that you write." "But isn't it apt to be very tiresome," said I, "if the writer is always obtruding himself?" "Yes, if he obtrudes himself, of course he is tiresome," said Father Payne. "But look at Ruskin again. I imagine, from all that I read about him, that if he was present at a gathering, he was the one person whom everyone wanted to hear. If he was sulky or silent, it was everyone's concern to smoothe him down--if _only_ he would talk. What you must learn to do is to give exactly as much of yourself as people want. But it must be a transfusion of yourself, not a presentment, I don't imagine that Ruskin always talked about himself--he talked about what interested him, and because he saw five times as much as anyone else saw in a picture, and about three times as much as was ever there, it was fascinating: but the primary charm was in Ruskin himself. Don't you know the curious delight of seeing a house once inhabited by anyone whom one has much admired and loved? However dull and commonplace it is, you keep on saying to yourself, 'That was what his eyes rested on, those were the books he handled; how could he bear to have such curtains, how could he endure that wallpaper?' The most hideous things become interesting, because he tolerated them. In writing, all depends upon how much of what is interesting, original, emphatic, charming in yourself you can communicate to what you are writing. It has got to _live_; that is the secret of the commonplace and even absurd books which reviewers treat with contempt, and readers buy in thousands. They have _life!_" "But that is very far from being art, isn't it?" I said. "Of course!" said Father Payne, "but the use of art, as I understand it, is just that--that all you present shall have life, and that you should learn not to present what has not got life. Why I objected to your last essay was because you were not alive in it: you were just echoing and repeating things: you seemed to me to be talking in your sleep. Why I object to this essay is that you are too wide awake--you are just talking shop." "I confess I rather despair," I said. "What rubbish!" said Father Payne; "all I want you to do is to _live_ in your ideas--make them your own, don't just slop them down without having understood or felt them. I'll tell you what you shall do next. You shall just put aside all this dreary collection of formulae and scalpel-work, and you shall write me an essay on the whole subject, saying the best that you feel about it all, not the worst that a stiff intelligence can extract from it. Don't be pettish about it! I assure you I respect your talent very much. I didn't think it was in you to produce anything so loathsomely judicious." XXXV OF THE SENSE OF BEAUTY There had been some vague ethical discussion during dinner in which Father Payne had not intervened; but he suddenly joined in briskly, though I don't remember who or what struck the spark out. "You are running logic too hard," he said; "the difficulty with all morality is not to know where it is to begin, but where it is to stop." "I didn't know it had to stop," said Vincent; "I thought it had to go on." "Yes, but not as morality," said Father Payne; "as instinct and feeling--only very elementary people indeed obey rules, _because_ they are rules. The righteous man obeys them because on the whole he agrees with them." "But in one sense it isn't possible to be too good?" said Vincent. "No," said Father Payne, "not if you are sure what good is--but it is quite easy to be too righteous, to have too many rules and scruples--not to live your own life at all, but an anxious, timid, broken-winged sort of life, like some of the fearful saints in the _Pilgrim's Progress_, who got no fun out of the business at all. Don't you remember what Mr. Feeblemind says? I can't quote--it's a glorious passage." Barthrop slipped out and fetched a _Pilgrim's Progress_, which he put over Father Payne's shoulder. "Thank you, old man," said Father Payne, "that's very kind of you--that is morality translated into feeling!" He turned over the pages, and read the bit in his resonant voice: "'I am, as I said, a man of a weak and feeble mind, and shall be offended and made weak at that which others can bear. I shall like no Laughing: I shall like no gay Attire: I shall like no unprofitable Questions. Nay, I am so weak a man, as to be offended with that which others have a liberty to do. I do not know all the truth: I am a very ignorant Christian man; sometimes, if I hear some rejoice in the Lord, it troubles me, because I cannot do so too.'" "There," he said, "that's very good writing, you know--full of freshness--but you are not meant to admire the poor soul: _that's_ not the way to go on pilgrimage! There is something wrong with a man's religion, if it leaves him in that state. I don't mean that to be happy is always a sign of grace--it often is simply a lack of sympathy and imagination; but to be as good as Mr. Feeblemind, and at the same time as unhappy, is a clear sign that something is wrong. He is like a dog that _will_ try to get through a narrow gap with a stick in his mouth--he can't make out why he can't do his duty and bring the stick--it catches on both sides, and won't let him through. He knows it is his business to bring the thing back at once, but he is prevented in some mysterious way. It doesn't occur to him to put the stick down, get through himself, and then pull it through by the end. That is why our duty is often so hard, because we think we ought to do it simply and directly, when it really wants a little adjusting--we regard the momentary precept, not the ultimate principle." "But what is to tell us where to draw the line," said Vincent, "and when to disregard the precept?" "Ah," said Father Payne, "that's my great discovery, which no one else will ever recognise--that is where the sense of beauty comes in!" "I don't see that the sense of beauty has anything to do with morality," said Vincent. "Ah, but that is because you are at heart a Puritan," said Father Payne; "and the mistake of all Puritans is to disregard the sense of beauty--all the really great saints have felt about morality as an artist feels about beauty. They don't do good things because they are told to do them, but because they feel them to be beautiful, splendid, attractive; and they avoid having anything to do with evil things, because such things are ugly and repellent." "But when you have to do a thoroughly disagreeable thing," said Vincent, "there often isn't anything beautiful about it either way. I'll give you a small instance. Some months ago I had been engaged for a fortnight to go to a thoroughly dull dinner-party with some dreary relations of mine, and a man asked me to come and dine at his club and meet George Meredith, whom I would have given simply anything to meet. Of course I couldn't do it--I had to go on with the other thing. I had to do what I hated, without the smallest hope of being anything but fearfully bored: and I had to give up doing what would have interested me more than anything in the world. Of course, that is only a small instance, but it will suffice." "It all depends on how you behaved at your dinner-party when you got there," said Father Payne, smiling; "were you sulky and cross, or were you civil and decent?" "I don't know," said Vincent; "I expect I was pretty much as usual. After all, it wasn't their fault!" "You are all right, my boy," said Father Payne; "you have got the sense of beauty right enough, though you probably call it by some uncomfortable name. I won't make you blush by praising you, but I give you a good mark for the whole affair. If you had excused yourself, or asked to be let off, or told a lie, it would have been ugly. What you did was in the best taste: and that is what I mean. The ugly thing is to clutch and hold on. You did more for yourself by being polite and honest than even George Meredith could have done for you. What I mean by the sense of beauty, as applied to morality, is that a man must be a gentleman first, and a moralist afterwards, if he can. It is grabbing at your own sense of righteousness, if you use it to hurt other people. Your own complacency of conscience is not as important as the duty of not making other people uncomfortable. Of course there are occasions when it is right to stand up to a moral bully, and then you may go for him for all you are worth: but these cases are rare; and what you must not do is to get into the way of a sort of moral skirmishing. In ordinary life, people draw their lines in slightly different places according to preference: you must allow for temperament. You mustn't interfere with other people's codes, unless you are prepared to be interfered with. It is impossible to be severely logical. Take a thing like the use of money: it is good to be generous, but you mustn't give away what you can't afford, because then your friends have to pay your bills. What everyone needs is something to tell him when he must begin practising a virtue, and when to stop practising it. You may say that common sense does that. Well, I don't think it does! I know sensible people who do very brutal things: there must be something finer than common sense: it must be a mixture of sense and sympathy and imagination, and delicacy and humour and tact--and I can't find a better way of expressing it than to call it a sense of beauty, a faculty of judging, in a fine, sweet-tempered, gentle, quiet way, with a sort of instinctive prescience as to where the ripples of what you do and say will spread to, and what sort of effect they will produce. That's the right sort of virtue--attractive virtue--which makes other people wish to behave likewise. I don't say that a man who lives like that can avoid suffering: he suffers a good deal, because he sees ugly things going on all about him; but he doesn't cause suffering--unless he intends to--and even so he doesn't like doing it. He is never spiteful or jealous. He often makes mistakes, but he recognises them. He doesn't erect barriers between himself and other people. He isn't always exactly popular, because many people hate superiority whenever they see it: but he is trusted and loved and even taken advantage of, because he doesn't go in for reprisals." "But if you haven't got this sense of beauty," said Vincent, "how are you to get it?" "By admiring it," said Father Payne. "I don't say that the people who have got it are conscious of it--in fact they are generally quite unconscious of it. Do you remember what Shelley--who was, I think, one of the people who had the sense of beauty as strongly as anyone who ever lived--what he said to Hogg, when Hogg told him how he had shut up an impertinent young ruffian? 'I wish I could be as exclusive as you are,' said Shelley with a sigh, feeling, no doubt, a sense of real failure--'but I cannot!' Shelley's weakness was a much finer thing than Hogg's strength. I don't say that Shelley was perfect: his imagination ran away with him to an extent that may be called untruthful; he idealised people, and then threw them over when he discovered them to be futile; but that is the right kind of mistake to make: the wrong kind of mistake is to see people too clearly, and to take for granted that they are not as delightful as they seem." "You mean that if one must choose," said Vincent, "it is better to be a fool than a knave." "Why, of course," said Father Payne; "but don't call it 'a fool'--call it 'a child': that's the kind of beauty I mean, the unsuspicious, guileless, trustful, affectionate temper--that to begin with: and you must learn, as you go on, a quality which the child has not always got--a sense of humour. That is what experience ought to give you--a power, that is, of seeing what is really there, and of being more amused than shocked by it. That helps you to distinguish real knavishness from childish faults. A great many of the absurd, perverse, unkind, unpleasant things which people do are not knavish at all--they are silly, selfish little diplomacies, guileless obedience to conventions, unreasonable deference to imaginary authority. People don't mean any harm by such tricks--they are the subterfuges of weakness: but when you come upon real cynical deliberate knavishness--that is different. There's nothing amusing about that. But you must be indulgent to weakness, and only severe with strength." "I'm getting a little confused," said Vincent. "Not as much as I am," said Father Payne; "I don't know where I have got to, I am sure. I seem to have changed hares! But one thing does emerge, and that is, that a sort of inspired good taste is the only thing which can regulate morals. The root of all morals is ultimately beauty. Why are we not all as greedy and dirty as the old cave-men? For the simple reason that something, for which he was not responsible, began to work in the caveman's mind. He said to himself, 'This is not the way to behave: it would be nicer not to have killed Mary when I was angry.' And then, when that impulse is once started, human beings go too fast, and want to carry out their new discoveries of rules and principles too far: and you must have a regulating force: and if you can find a better force than the instinct for what is beautiful, tell me, and I'll undertake to talk for at least as long about it. I must stop! My sense of beauty warns me that I am becoming a bore." XXXVI OF BIOGRAPHY Father Payne broke out suddenly after dinner to two or three of us about a book he had been reading. "It's called a _Life_," he said, "at the top of every page almost. I don't wonder the author felt it necessary to remind you--or perhaps he was reminding himself? I can see him," said Father Payne, "saying to himself with a rueful expression, 'This is a Life, undoubtedly!' Why, the waxworks of Madame Tussaud are models of vivacity and agility compared to it. I never set eyes on such a book!" "Why on earth did you go on reading it?" said I. "Well may you ask!" said Father Payne. "It's one of my weaknesses; if I begin a book, I can put it down if it is moderately good; but if it is either very good or very bad, I can't get out of it--I feel like a wasp in a honey-pot. I make faint sticky motions of flight--but on I go." "Whose life was it?" I said, laughing. "I hardly know," said Father Payne. "It leaves on my mind the impression of his having been a decent old party enough. I think he must have been a general merchant--he seems to have had pretty nearly everything on hand. He wrote books, I gather"; and Father Payne groaned. "What were they about?" I said. "I don't know, I'm sure," said Father Payne. "History and stuff--literary essays, and people's influence, perhaps. He went in for accounting for things, I fancy, and explaining things away. There were extracts which alienated my attention faster than any extracts I ever read. I could not keep my mind on them. God preserve me from ever falling in with any of his books; I should spend days in reading them! He travelled too--he was always travelling. Why couldn't he leave Europe alone? He has left his trail all over Europe, like a snail. He has defiled all the finest scenery on the Continent. But, by Jove, he met his match in his biographer; he has been accounted for all right. And yet I feel that it was rather hard on him. If _he_ could have held his tongue about things in general, and if his biographer could have held his tongue about _him_, it would have been all right. He did no harm, so far as I can make out--he was honest and upright; he would have done very well as a trustee." Father Payne stopped, and looked round with a melancholy air. "I have gathered," he said, "after several hours' reading, three interesting facts about him. The first is that he wore rather loud checks--I liked that--I detected a touch of vanity in that. The second is that he was fond of quoting poetry, and the moment he did so, his voice became wholly inaudible from emotion--that's a good touch. And the third is that, if he had a guest staying with him, he used to talk continuously in the smoking-room, light his candle, go on talking, walk away talking--by Jove, I can hear him doing it--all up the stairs, along the passage to his bedroom--talk, talk, talk--in they went--then he used to begin to undress--no escape--I can hear his voice muffled as he pulled off his shirt--off went his socks--talking still--then he would actually get into bed--more explanations, more quotations, I wonder how the guest got away; that isn't related--in the intervals of an inaudible quotation, perhaps? What do you think?" We exploded in laughter, in which Father Payne joined. Then he said: "But look here, you know, it's not really a joke--it's horribly serious! A man ought really to be prosecuted for writing such a book. That is the worst of English people, that they have no idea who deserves a biography and who does not. It isn't enough to be a rich man, or a public man, or a man of virtue. No one ought to be written about, simply because he has _done_ things. He must be content with that. No one should have a biography unless he was either beautiful or picturesque or absurd, just as no one should have a portrait painted unless he is one of the three. Now this poor fellow--I daresay there were people who loved him--think what their feelings must be at seeing him stuffed and set up like this! A biography must be a work of art--it ought not to be a post-dated testimonial! Most of us are only fit, when we have finished our work, to go straight into the waste-paper basket. The people who deserve biographies are the vivid, rich, animated natures who lived life with zest and interest. There are a good many such men, who can say vigorous, shrewd, lively, fresh things in talk, but who cannot express themselves in writing. The curse of most biographies is the letters; not many people can write good letters, and yet it becomes a sacred duty to pad a Life out with dull and stodgy documents; it is all so utterly inartistic and decorous and stupid. A biography ought to be well seasoned with faults and foibles. That is the one encouraging thing about life, that a man can have plenty of failings and still make a fine business out of it all. Yet it is regarded as almost treacherous to hint at imperfections. Now if I had had our friend the general merchant to biographise, I would have taken careful notes of his talk while undressing--there's something picturesque about that! I would have told how he spent his day, how he looked and moved, ate and drank. A real portrait of an uninteresting man might be quite a treasure." "Yes, but you know it wouldn't do," said Barthrop; "his friends would be out at you like a swarm of wasps." "Oh, I know that," said Father Payne. "It is all this infernal sentimentality which spoils everything; as long as we think of the dead as elderly angels hovering over us while we pray, there is nothing to be done. If we really believe that we migrate out of life into an atmosphere of mild piety, and lose all our individuality at once, then, of course, the less said the better. As long as we hold that, then death must remain as the worst of catastrophes for everyone concerned. The result of it all is that a bad biography is the worst of books, because it quenches our interest in life, and makes life insupportably dull. The first point is that the biographer is infinitely more important than his subject. Look what an enchanting book Carlyle made out of the Life of Sterling. Sterling was a man of real charm who could only talk. He couldn't write a line. His writings are pitiful. Carlyle put them all aside with a delicious irony; and yet he managed to depict a swift, restless, delicate, radiant creature, whom one loves and admires. It is one of the loveliest books ever written. But, on the other hand, there are hundreds of fine creatures who have been hopelessly buried for ever and ever under their biographies--the sepulchre made sure, the stone sealed, and the watch set." "But there are some good biographies?" said Barthrop. "About a dozen," said Father Payne. "I won't give a list of them, or I should become like our friend the merchant. I feel it coming on, by Jove--I feel like accounting for things and talking you all up to my bedroom." "But what can be done about it all?" I said. "Nothing whatever, my boy," said Father Payne; "as long as people are not really interested in life, but in money and committees, there is nothing to be done. And as long as they hold things sacred, which means a strong dislike of the plain truth, it's hopeless. If a man is prepared to write a really veracious biography, he must also be prepared to fly for his life and to change his name. Public opinion is for sentiment and against truth; and you must change public opinion. But, oh dear me, when I think of the fascination of real personality, and the waste of good material, and the careful way in which the pious biographer strains out all the meat and leaves nothing but a thin and watery decoction, I could weep over the futility of mankind. The dread of being interesting or natural, the adoration of pomposity and full dress, the sickening love of romance, the hatred of reality--oh, it's a deplorable world!" XXXVII OF POSSESSIONS "I wonder," said Father Payne one day at dinner, "whether any nation's proverbs are such a disgrace to them as our national proverbs are to us. Ours are horribly Anglo-Saxon and characteristic. They seem to me to have been all invented by a shrewd, selfish, complacent, suspicious old farmer, in a very small way of business, determined that he will not be over-reached, and equally determined, too, that he will take full advantage of the weakness of others. 'Charity begins at home,' 'Possession is nine points of the law,' 'Don't count your chickens before they are hatched,' 'When poverty comes in at the door, love flies out of the window.' They are all equally disgraceful. They deride all emotion, they despise imagination, they are unutterably low and hard, and what is called sensible; they are frankly unchristian as well as ungentlemanly. No wonder we are called a nation of shopkeepers." "But aren't we a great deal better than our proverbs?" said Barthrop: "do they really express anything more than a contempt for weakness and sentiment?" "Yes," said Father Payne, "but I don't like them any better for that. Why should we be ashamed of all our better feelings? I admit that we have a sense of justice; but that only means that we care for material possessions so much that we are afraid not to admit that others have the right to do the same. The real obstacle to socialism in England is the sense of sanctity about a man's savings. The moment that a man has saved a few pounds, he agrees to any legislation that allows him to hold on to them." "But aren't we, behind all that," said Barthrop, "an intensely sentimental nation?" "Yes," said Father Payne, "but that's a fault really--we don't believe in real justice, only in picturesque justice. We are hopeless individualists. We melt into tears over a child that is lost, or a dog that howls; and we let all sorts of evil systems and arrangements grow and flourish. We can't think algebraically, only arithmetically. We can be kind to a single case of hardship; we can't take in a widespread system of oppression. We are improving somewhat; but it is always the particular case that affects us, and not the general principle." "But to go back to our sense of possession," I said, "is that really much more than a matter of climate? Does it mean more than this, that we, in a temperate climate inclining to cold, need more elaborate houses and more heat-producing food than nations who live in warmer climates? Are not the nations who live in warmer climates less attached to material things simply because they are less important?" "There is something in that, no doubt," said Father Payne. "Of course, where nature is more hostile to life, men will have to work longer hours to support life than where 'the spicy breezes blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle.' But it isn't that of which I complain--it is the awful sense of respectability attaching to possessions, the hideous way in which we fill our houses with things which we do not want or use, just because they are a symbol of respectability. We like hoarding, and we like luxuries, not because we enjoy them, but because we like other people to know that we can pay for them. I do not imagine that there is any nation in the world whose hospitality differs so much from the mode in which people actually live as ours does. In a sensible society, if we wanted to see our friends, we should ask them to bring their cold mutton round, and have a picnic. What we do actually do is to have a meal which we can't afford, and which our guests know is not in the least like our ordinary meals; and then we expect to be asked back to a similarly ostentatious banquet." "But isn't there something," said Barthrop, "in Dr. Johnson's dictum, that a meal was good enough to eat, but not good enough to ask a man to? Isn't it a good impulse to put your best before a guest?" "Oh, no doubt," said Father Payne, "but there's a want of simplicity about it if you only want to entertain people in order that they may see you do it, and not because you want to see them. It's vulgar, somehow--that's what I suspect our nation of being. Our inability to speak frankly of money is another sign. We do money too much honour by being so reticent about it. The fact is that it is the one sacred subject among us. People are reticent about religion and books and art, because they are not sure that other people are interested in them. But they are reticent about money as a matter of duty, because they are sure that everyone is deeply interested. People talk about money with nods and winks and hints--those are all the signs of a sacred mystery!" "Well, I wonder," said Barthrop, "whether we are as base as you seem to think!" "I will tell you when I will change my mind," said Father Payne; "all the talk of noble aims and strong purposes will not deceive me. What would convert me would be if I saw generous giving a custom so common that it hardly excited remark. You see a few generous _wills_--but even then a will which leaves money to public purposes is generally commented upon; and it almost always means, too, if you look into it, that a man has had no near relations, and that he has stuck to his money and the power it gives him during his life. If I could see a few cases of men impoverishing themselves and their families in their lifetime for public objects; if I saw evidence of men who have heaped up wealth content to let their children start again in the race, and determined to support the State rather than the family; if I could hear of a rich man's children beseeching their father to endow the State rather than themselves, and being ready to work for a livelihood rather than to receive an inherited fortune; if I could hear of a few rich men living simply and handing out their money for general purposes,--then I would believe! But none of these things is anything but a rare exception; a man who gives away his fortune, as Ruskin did, in great handfuls, is generally thought to be slightly crazy; and, speaking frankly, the worth of a man seems to depend not upon what he has given to the world, but upon what he has gained from the world. You may say it is a rough test;--so it is! But when we begin to feel that a man is foolish in hoarding and wise in lavishing, instead of being foolish in lavishing and wise in hoarding, then, and not till then, shall I believe that we are a truly great nation. At present the man whom we honour most is the man who has been generous to public necessities, and has yet retained a large fortune for himself. That is the combination which we are not ashamed to admire." XXXVIII OF LONELINESS We were walking together, Father Payne and I. It was in the early summer--a still, hot day. The place, as I remember it, was very beautiful. We crossed the stream by a little foot-bridge, and took a bypath across the meadows; up the slope you came to a beautiful bit of old forest country, the trees of all ages, some of them very ancient; there were open glades running into the heart of the woodland, with thorn thickets and stretches of bracken. Hidden away in the depth of the woods, and approached only by green rides, were the ruins of what must have been a big old Jacobean mansion; but nothing remained of it except some grassy terraces, a bit of a fine façade of stone with empty windows, half-hidden in ivy, and some tall stone chimney-stacks. The forest lay silent and still; and, along one of the branching rides, you could discern far away a glimpse of blue hills. The scene was so entirely beautiful that we had gradually ceased to talk, and had given ourselves up to the sweet and quiet influence of the place. We stood for awhile upon one of the terraces, looking at the old house, and Father Payne said, "I'm not sure that I approve of the taste for ruins; there is something to be said for a deserted castle, because it is a reminder that we do not need to safeguard ourselves so much against each others' ill-will; but a roofless church or a crumbling house--there's something sad about them. It seems to me a little like leaving a man unburied in order that we may come and sentimentalise over his bones. It means, this house, the decay of an old centre of life--there's nothing evil or cruel about it, as there is about a castle; and I am not sure that it ought not to be either repaired or removed-- "'And doorways where a bridegroom trode Stand open to the peering air.'" "I don't know," I said; "I'm sure that this is somehow beautiful. Can't one feel that nature is half-tender, half-indifferent to our broken designs?" "Perhaps," said Father Payne, "but I don't like being reminded of death and waste--I don't want to think that they can end by being charming--the vanity of human wishes is more sad than picturesque. I think Dr. Johnson was right when he said, 'After all, it is a sad thing that a man should lie down and die.'" A little while afterwards he said, "How strange it is that the loneliness of this place should be so delightful! I like my fellow-beings on the whole--I don't want to avoid them or to abolish them--but yet it is one of the greatest luxuries in the world to find a place where one is pretty sure of not meeting one of them." "Yes," I said, "it is very odd! I have been feeling to-day that I should like time to stand still this summer afternoon, and to spend whole days in rambling about here. I won't say," I said with a smile, "that I should prefer to be quite alone; but I shouldn't mind even that in a place like this. I never feel like that in a big town--there is always a sense of hostile currents there. To be alone in a town is always rather melancholy; but here it is just the reverse." "Indeed, yes," said Father Payne, "and it is one of the great mysteries of all to me what we really want with company. It does not actually take away from us our sense of loneliness at all. You can't look into my mind, nor can I look into yours; whatever we do or say to break down the veil between us, we can't do it. And I have often been happier when alone than I have ever been in any company." "Isn't it a sense of security?" I said; "I suppose that it is an instinct derived from old savage days which makes us dread other human beings. The further back you go, the more hatred and mistrust you find; and I suppose that the presence of a friend, or rather of someone with whom one has a kind of understanding, gives a feeling of comparative safety against attack." "That's it, no doubt," said Father Payne; "but if I had to choose between spending the rest of my life in solitude, or in spending it without a chance of solitude, I should be in a great difficulty. I am afraid that I regard company rather as a wholesome medicine against the evils of solitude than I regard solitude as a relief from company. After all, what is it that we want with each other?--what do we expect to get from each other? I remember," he said, smiling, "a witty old lady saying to me once that eternity was a nightmare to her.--'For instance,' she said, 'I enjoy sitting here and talking to you very much; but if I thought it was going on to all eternity, I shouldn't like it at all.' Do we really want the company of any one for ever and ever? And if so, why? Do we want to agree or to disagree? Is the point of it that we want similarity or difference? Do we want to hear about other people's experiences, or do we simply want to tell our own? Is the desire, I mean, for congenial company anything more than the pleasure of seeing our own thoughts and ideas reflected in the minds of others; or is it a real desire to alter our own thoughts and ideas by comparing them with the experiences of others? Why do we like books, for instance? Isn't it more because we recognise our own feelings than because we make acquaintance with unfamiliar feelings? It comes to this? Can we really ever gain an idea, or can we only recognise our own ideas?" "It is very difficult," I said; "if I answered hastily, I should say that I liked being with you because you give me many new ideas; but if I think about it, it seems to me that it is only because you make me recognise my own thoughts." "Yes," said Father Payne, "I think that is so. If I see another man behaving well where I should behave ill, I recognise that I have all the elements in my own mind for doing the same, but that I have given undue weight to some of them and not enough weight to others. I don't think, on the whole, that anyone can give one a new idea; he can only help one to a sense of proportion. But I want to get deeper than that. You and I are friends--at least I think so; but what exactly do we give each other? How do you affect my solitude, or I yours? I'm blessed if I know. It looks to me, indeed, as if you and I might be parts of one great force, one great spirit, and that we recognise our unity, through some material condition which keeps us apart. I am not sure that it isn't only the body that divides us, and that we are a part of the same thing behind it all." "But why, if that is so," said I, "do we feel a sense of unity with some people, and not at all with others? There are people, I mean, with whom I feel that I have simply nothing in common, and that our spirits could not possibly mix or blend. With you, to speak frankly, it is different. I feel as though I had known you far longer than a few months, and should never be in any real doubt about you. I recognise myself in you and yourself in me. But there are many people in whom I don't recognise myself at all." Father Payne put his arm through mine, "Well, old man," he said, "we must be content to have found each other, but we mustn't give up trying to find other people too. I think that is what civilisation means--a mutual recognition--we're only just at the start of it, you know. I'm in no doubt as to what you give me--it's a sense of trust. When I think about you, I feel, 'Come, there is someone at all events who will try to understand me and to forgive me and to share his best with me'--but even so, my boy, I shall enjoy being alone sometimes. I shall want to get away from everyone, even from you! There are thoughts I cannot share with you, because I want you to think better of me than I do of myself. I suppose that is vanity--but still old Wordsworth was right when he wrote: "'And many love me; but by none Am I enough beloved.'" XXXIX OF THE WRITER'S LIFE I was walking once with Father Payne in the fields, and he was talking about the difficulties of the writer's life. He said that the great problem for all industrious writers was how to work in such a way as not to be a nuisance to the people they lived with. "Of course men vary very much in their habits," he said; "but if you look at the lives of authors, they often seem tiresome people to get on with. The difficulty is mostly this," he went on, "that a writer can't write to any purpose for more than about three hours a day--if he works really hard, even that is quite enough to tire him out. Think what the brain is doing--it is concentrated on some idea, some scene, some situation. Take a novelist: he has to have a picture in his mind all the time--a clear visualisation of a place--a room, a garden, a wood; then he must know how his people move and look and speak, and he has to fly backwards and forwards from one to another; then he has the talk to create, and he has to be always rejecting thoughts and impressions and words, good enough in themselves, but not characteristic. It is a fearful strain on imagination and emotion, on phrase-making and word-finding. The real wonder is not that a few people can do it better than others, but that anyone can do it at all. The difference between the worst novelist and the best is much less than the difference between the worst novelist and the person who can't write at all. "Well, then, there is such a thing as inspiration; most creative writers get a book in their minds, and can think of nothing else, day and night, while it is on. The difficulty is to know what a writer is to do in the intervals between his books, and in the hours in which he is not writing. He has got to take it easy somehow, and the question is what is he to do. He can't, as a rule, do much in the way of hard exercise. Violent exercise in the open air is pleasant enough, but it leaves the brain torpid and stagnant. A man who really makes a business of writing has got to live through ten or twelve hours of a day when he isn't writing. He can't afford to read very much--at least he can't afford to read authors whom he admires, because they affect his style. There is something horribly contagious about style, because it is often much easier to do a thing in someone else's way than to do it in one's own. Pater was asked once if he had read Stevenson or Kipling, I forget which--'Oh no, I daren't!' he said, 'I have peeped into him occasionally, but I can't afford to read him. I have learnt exactly how I can approach and develop a subject, and if I looked to see how he does it, I should soon lose my power. The man with a style is debarred from reading fine books unless they are on lines entirely apart from his own.' That is perfectly true, I expect. There is nothing so dreadful as reading a writer whom one likes, and seeing that he has got deflected from his manner by reading some other craftsman. The effect is a very subtle one. If you really want to see that sort of sympathy at work, you should look at Ruskin's letters--his letters are deeply affected by the correspondent to whom he is writing. If he wrote to Carlyle or to Browning, he wrote like Carlyle and Browning, because, as he wrote, they were strongly in his mind. "With a painter or a musician it is different--a lot of hand-work comes in which relieves the brain, so that they can work longer hours. But a writer, as a rule, while he is writing, can't even afford to talk very much to interesting people, because talking is hard work too. "Well, then, a writer, as an artistic person, is rather easily bored. He likes vivid sensations and emphatic preferences--and it is not really good for him to be bored; a man may read the paper, write a few letters, stroll, garden, chatter--but if he takes his writing seriously, he must somehow be fresh for it. It isn't easy to combine writing with any other occupation, and it leaves many hours unoccupied. "Carlyle is a terrible instance, because he was wretched and depressed when he was not writing; he was melancholy, peevish, physically unwell; and when he was writing, he was wholly absorbed very impatient of his labour, and most intolerable. Indeed, it does not look as if the home lives of writers have generally been very happy--there is too often a patent conspiracy to keep the great irritable babyish giant amused--and that's a bad atmosphere for anyone to live in--an unreal, a royal sort of atmosphere, of deferential scheming." I said something about Walter Scott. "Ah yes," said Father Payne, "but Scott's work was amazing--it just seemed to overflow from a gigantic reservoir of vitality. He could do his day's work in the early hours, and then tramp about all day, chattering, farming, planting, entertaining--endlessly good-humoured. Of course he wore himself out at last by perfectly ghastly work--most of it very poor stuff. Browning and Thackeray were men of the same sort, sociable, genial, exuberant. They overflowed too--they didn't batter things out. "But, as a rule, most men who want to do good work, must be content to potter about, and seem lazy and even self-indulgent. And one of the reasons why many men who start as promising writers come to nothing is because they can't be inert, acquiescent, easy-going. I have often thought that a good novel might be written about the wife of a great writer, who marries him, dazzled by his brilliance and then finds him to be a petty, suspicious, wayward sort of child, with all his force lying in one supreme faculty of vision and expression. It must be a fiery trial to see deep, wise, beautiful things produced by a man who can't _live_ his thoughts--can only write them." "But what should a man _do_?" I said. "Well," said Father Payne, "I think, as a practical matter, it would be a good thing to cultivate a hobby of a manual kind--and also, above all, the power of genial loafing. Of course, the real pity is that we are not all taught to do some house-work as a matter of course--we depend too much on servants, and house-work is the natural and amusing outlet of our physical energies; as it is, we specialise too much, and half of our maladies and discomforts and miseries are due to that--that we work a part of ourselves too hard, and the other parts not hard enough. The thing to aim at is equanimity, and the existence of unsatisfied instincts in us is what poisons life for many people." He was silent for a little, and then he said, "And then, too, there is the great danger of all writers--the feeling that he has the power of giving people what they want, when he ought to remember that he has only the good fortune of expressing what people feel. Art oughtn't to be a thing sprinkled on life, as you shake sugar out on to a pudding--it is just a power of disentangling things; we suffer most of us from finding life too complicated--we don't understand it--it's a mass of confused impressions. Well, the artist puts it all in order, isolates the important things, makes the values distinct--he helps people to feel clearly--that's his only use. And then, if he succeeds, there come silly flatteries and adorations--until he gets to feel as if he were handing down pots of jam and bottles of wine from a high shelf out of reach--until he grows to believe that he put them there, when he only found them there. It's a dreadful thing for an artist never to succeed at all, because then his life appears the most useless business conceivable; but it is almost a worse thing to get to depend upon success--and it is undeniably pleasant to be a personage, to cause a little stir when you enter a room, to find that people know all about you and like meeting you, and saying they have met you. I never had any of that: and I have sometimes found myself with successful writers who made me thank God I couldn't write--such complacency, such lolling among praise, such vexation at not being deferred to! The best fate for a man is to be fairly successful, and to be at the same time pretty severely criticised. That keeps him modest, while it gives him a degree of confidence that he is doing something useful. The danger is of drifting right out of life into unreal civilities and compliments, which you don't wholly like and yet can't do without. The fact is that writing doesn't generally end in very much happiness, except perhaps the happiness of work. That's the solid part of it really, and no one can deprive you of that, whatever happens." XL OF WASTE We were discussing Keats and his premature death. Someone had said that, beside being one of the best, he was also one of the most promising of poets; and Father Payne had remarked that reading Keats's letters made him feel more directly in the presence of a man of genius than any other book he knew. Kaye had added that the death of Keats seemed to him the most ghastly kind of waste, at which Father Payne had smiled, and said that that presupposed that he was knocked out by some malign or indifferent force. "It is possible--isn't it?" he added, "that he was needed elsewhere and summoned away." "Then why was he so elaborately tortured first?" said Kaye. "Well," said Father Payne, "I can conceive that if he had recovered his health, and escaped from his engagement with Fanny Brawne, he might have been a much finer fellow afterwards. There were two weak points in Keats, you know--his over-sensuousness and a touch of commonness--I won't call it vulgarity," he added, "but his jokes are not of the best quality! I do not feel sure that his suffering might not have cleared away the poisonous stuff." "Perhaps," said Kaye; "but doesn't that make it more wasteful still? The world needs beauty--and for a man to die so young with his best music in him seems to me a clumsy affair." "I don't know," said Father Payne; "it seems to me harder to define the word _waste_ than almost any word I know. Of course there are cases when it is obviously applicable--if a big steamer carrying a cargo of wheat goes down in a storm, that is a lot of human trouble thrown away--and a war is wasteful, because nations lose their best and healthiest parental stock. But it isn't a word to play with. In a middle-class household it is applied mainly to such things as there being enough left of a nice dish for the servants to enjoy; and, generally speaking, I think it might be applied to all cases in which the toil spent over the making of a thing is out of all proportion to the enjoyment derived from it. But the difficulty underlying it is that it assumes a knowledge of what a man's duty is in this world--and I am not by any means sure that we know. Look at the phrase 'a waste of time.' How do we know exactly how much time a man ought to allot to sleep, to work, to leisure? I had an old puritanical friend who was very fond of telling people that they wasted time. He himself spent nearly two hours of every day in dressing and undressing. That is to say that when he died at the age of seventy-six, he had spent about six entire years in making and unmaking his toilet! Let us assume that everyone is bound to give a certain amount of time to doing the necessary work of the world--enough to support, feed, clothe, and house himself, with a margin to spare for the people who can't support themselves and can't work. Then there are a lot of outlying things which must be done--the work of statesmen, lawyers, doctors, writers--all the people who organise, keep order, cure, or amuse people. Then there are all the people who make luxuries and comforts--things not exactly necessary, but still reasonable indulgences. Now let us suppose that anyone is genuinely and sensibly occupied in any one of these ways, and does his or her fair share of the world's work: who is to say how such workers are to spend their margin of time? There are obviously certain people who are mere drones in the hive--rich, idle, extravagant people: we will admit that they are wasters. But I don't admit for a moment that all the time spent in enjoying oneself is wasted, and I think that people have a right to choose what they do enjoy. I am inclined to believe that we are here to live, and that work is only a part of our material limitations. A great deal of the usefulness of work is not its intrinsic value, but its value to ourselves. It isn't only what we perform that matters; it is the fact that work forces us into relations with other people, which I take to be the experience we all need. In the old dreary books of my childhood, the elders were always hounding the young people into doing something useful--useful reading, useful sewing, and so forth. But I am inclined to believe that sociability and talk are more useful than reading, and that solitary musing and dreaming and looking about are useful too. All activity is useful, all interchange, all perception. What isn't useful is anything which hides life from you, any habit that drugs you into inactivity and idleness, anything which makes you believe that life is romantic and sentimental and fatuous. I wouldn't even go so far as to say that _all_ the time spent in squabbling and quarrelling is useless, because it brings you up against people who think differently from yourself. That becomes wasteful the moment it leaves you with the impotent desire to hurt your adversary. No, I am inclined to think that the only thing which is wasteful is anything which suspends interest and animation and the love of life; and I don't blame idle and extravagant people who live with zest and liveliness for doing that. I only blame them for not seeing that their extravagance is keeping people at the other end of the scale in drudgery and dulness. Of course the difficulty of it is, that if we offered the lowest stratum of workers a great increase of leisure, they would largely misuse it; and that is why I believe that in the future a large part of the education of workers will be devoted to teaching them how to employ their leisure agreeably and not noxiously. And I believe that there are thousands of cases in the world which are infinitely worse than the case of Keats--who, after all, had more joy of the finest quality in his short life than most of us achieve. I mean the cases of men and women with fine and sensitive instincts, who by being born under base and down-trodden conditions are never able to get a taste of clean, wholesome, and beautiful life at all--that's a much darker problem." "But how do you fit that into your theories of life at all?" said Vincent. "Oh, it fits my theory of life well enough," said Father Payne. "You see, I believe it to be a real battle, and not a sham fight. I believe in God as the source of all the fine, beautiful, and free instincts, casting them lavishly into the world, against a horribly powerful and relentless but ultimately stupid foe. 'Who put the evil there?' you may say, 'and how did it get there first?' Ah, I don't know that--that is the origin of evil. But I don't believe that God put it there first, just for the interest of the fight. I don't believe that He is responsible for waste--I think it is one of the forces He is fighting. He pushes battalion after battalion to the assault, and down they go. It's cruel work, but it isn't anything like so cruel as to suppose that He arranged it all or even permitted it all. That would indeed sicken and dishearten me. No, I believe that God never wastes anything; but it's a fearful and protracted battle; and I believe that He will win in the end. I read a case in the paper the other day of a little child in a workhouse that had learnt a lot of infamous language, and cursed and swore if it was given milk instead of beer or brandy. Am I to believe that God was in any way responsible for putting a little child in that position?--for allowing things to take shape so, if He could have checked it? No, indeed! I do not believe in a God as helpless or as wicked as that! There is something devilish there, for which He is not responsible, and against which He is fighting as hard as He can." "But doesn't heredity come in there?" said Vincent. "It isn't the child's fault, and probably no amount of decent conditions would turn that child into anything respectable." "Yes," said Father Payne; "heredity is just one of the evil devices--but don't you see the stupidity of it? It stops progress, but it also helps it on--it hinders, but it also helps; and nothing in the world seems to me so Divine as the way in which God is using and mastering heredity for good. It multiplies evil, but it also multiplies good; and God has turned that weapon against the contriver of it. The wiser that the world grows, the more they will see how to use heredity for happiness, by preventing the tainted from continuing to taint the races. The slow civilisation of the world is the strongest proof I know that the battle is going the right way. The forces of evil are being slowly transformed into the forces of good. The waste of noble things is but the slow arrival of the new armies of light. There is something real in fighting for a General who has a very urgent and terrible business on hand. There is nothing real about fighting for one who has brought both the armies into the field. It doesn't do to sentimentalise about evil, and to say that it is hidden good! The world is a probation, I don't doubt--but it is testing your strength against something which is really there, and can do you a lot of harm, not against something which is only there for the purpose of testing what might have been made and kept both innocent and strong." XLI OF EDUCATION Father Payne generally declined to talk about education. "Teaching is one of the things, like golf and hunting, which is exciting to do and pleasant to remember, but intolerable to talk about," he said one evening. "Well," I said, "it is certainly intolerable to listen to people discussing education, or to read about it; but if you know anything about it, I should have thought it was good fun to talk about it." "Ah," said Father Payne, "you say, 'If you know anything about it.' The worst of it is that everybody knows everything about it. A man who is a success, thinks that his own education is the only one worth having; a man who is a failure thinks that all systems of education are wrong. And as for talking about teaching, you can't talk about it--you can only relate your own experience, and listen with such patience as you can muster to another man relating his. That's not talking!" "But it is interesting in a general way," said Vincent,--"the kind of thing you are aiming at, what you want to produce, and so on." "Yes, my dear Vincent," said Father Payne, "but education isn't that--it's an obstinate sort of tradition; it's a quest, like the Philosopher's Stone. Most people think that it is a sort of charm which, if you could discover it, would transmute all baser metals into gold. The justification of the Philosopher's Stone is, I suppose, that different metals are not really different substances, but only different arrangements of the same atoms. But we can't predicate that of human spirits as yet; and to attempt to find one formula of education is like planting the same crop in different soils. It is the ridiculous democratic doctrine of human equality which is the real difficulty. There is no natural equality in human nature, and the question really is whether you are going to try to reduce all human beings to the same level, which is the danger of discipline, or to let people follow their own instincts unchecked, which is the shadow of liberty. I'm all for liberty, of course." "But why 'of course'?" said Vincent. "Because I take the aristocratic view," said Father Payne, "which is that you do more for the human race by having a few fine people, than by having an infinite number of second-rate people. What the first-rate man thinks to-day, the second-rate people think to-morrow--that is how we make progress; and I would like to take infinite pains with the best material, if I could find it, and leave discipline for the second-rate. The Jews and the Greeks, both first-class nations, have done more for the world on the whole than the Romans and the Anglo-Saxons, who are the best of the second-rate stocks." "But how are you going to begin to sort your material?" said Barthrop. "Yes, you have me there," said Father Payne. "But I don't despair of our ultimately finding that out. At present, the worst of men of genius is that they are not always the most brisk and efficient boys. A genius is apt to be perceptive and sensitive. His perceptiveness makes him seem bewildered, because he is vaguely interested in everything that he sees; his sensitiveness makes him hold his tongue, because he gets snubbed if he asks too many questions. Men of genius are not as a rule very precocious--they are often shy, awkward, absent-minded. Genius is often strangely like stupidity in its early stages. The stupid boy escapes notice because he is stupid. The genius escapes notice because he is diffident, and _wants_ to escape notice." "But how would you set about discovering which was which?" said Barthrop. "Well," said Father Payne, "if you ask me, I don't think we discriminate; I think we go in for teaching children too much, and not trying to make them observe and think more. We give them things to do, and to get by heart; we imprison them in a narrow round of gymnastics. As Dr. Johnson said once, 'You teach your children the use of the globes, and when they get older you wonder that they do not seek your society!' The whole thing is so devilish dull, and it saves the teacher such a lot of trouble! I myself was fairly quick as a boy, and found that it paid to do what I was told. But I never made the smallest pretence to be interested in what I had to do--grammar, Euclid, tiny scraps of Latin and Greek. I used to thank God, in Xenophon lessons, when a bit was all about stages and parasangs, because there were fewer words to look out. The idea of teaching languages like that! If I had a clever boy to teach a language, I would read some interesting book with him, telling him the meaning of words, until he got a big stock of ordinary words; I would just teach him the common inflexions; and when he could read an easy book, and write the language intelligibly, then I would try to teach him a few niceties and idioms, and make him look out for differences of style and language. But we begin at the wrong end, and store his memory with exceptions and idioms and niceties first. No sensible human being who wanted, let us say, to know enough Italian to read Dante, would dream of setting to work as we set to work on classics. Well then," Father Payne went on, "I should cultivate the imagination of children a great deal more. I should try to teach them all I could about the world as it is--the different nations, and how they live, the distribution of plants and animals, the simpler sorts of science. I don't think that it need be very accurate, all that. But children ought to realise that the world is a big place, with all sorts of interesting and exciting things going on. I would try to give them a general view of history and the movement of civilisation. I don't mean a romantic view of it, with the pomps and shows and battles in the foreground; but a real view--how people lived, and what they were driving at. The thing could be done, if it were not for the bugbear of inaccuracy. To know a little perfectly isn't enough; of course, people ought to be able to write their own language accurately, and to do arithmetic. Outside of that, you want a lot of general ideas. It is no good teaching everything as if everyone was to end as a Professor." "That is a reasonable general scheme," said Barthrop, "but what about special aptitudes?" "Why," said Father Payne, "I should go on those general lines till boys and girls were about fourteen. And I should teach them with a view to the lives they were going to live. I should teach girls a good deal of house-work, and country boys about the country--we mustn't forget that the common work of the world has to be done. You must somehow interest people in the sort of work they are going to do. It is hopeless without that. And then we must gradually begin to specialise. But I'm not going into all that now. The general aim I should have in view would be to give people some idea of the world they were living in, and try to interest them in the part they were going to play; and I should try to teach them how to employ their leisure. That seems entirely left out at present. I want to develop people on simple and contented lines, with intelligent interests and, if possible, a special taste. The happy man is the man who likes his work, and all education is a fraud if it turns out people who don't like their work; and then I want people to have something to fall back upon which they enjoy. No one can live a decent life without having things to look forward to. But, of course, the whole thing turns on Finance, and that is what makes it so infernally dull. You want more teachers and better teachers; you want to make teaching a profession which attracts the best people. You can't do that without money, and at present education is looked upon as an expensive luxury. That's all part of the stodgy Anglo-Saxon mind. It doesn't want ideas--it wants positions which, carry high salaries; and really the one thing which blocks the way in all our education is that we care so much for money and property, and can't think of happiness apart from them. As long as our real aim in England is income, we shall not make progress; because we persist in thinking of ideas as luxuries in which a man can indulge if he has a sufficient income to afford to do so." "You take a gloomy view of our national ideals, Father," said Vincent. "Not a gloomy view, my boy," said Father Payne; "only a dull view! We are a respectable nation--we adore respectability; and I don't think it is a sympathetic quality. What I want is more sympathy and more imagination. I think they lead to happiness; and I don't think the Anglo-Saxon cares enough about happiness; if he is happy, he has an uneasy idea that he is in for a disaster of some kind." XLII OF RELIGION I found Father Payne one morning reading a letter with knitted brows. Presently he cast it down on the table with a gesture of annoyance. "What a fool one is to argue!" he said--and then stopping, he said, "But you wanted something--what is it?" It was a question about some books which was soon answered. Then he said: "Stay a few minutes, won't you, unless you are pressed? I have got a tiresome letter, and if you will let me pour out my complaint to you, I shall be all right--otherwise I shall go about grumbling and muttering all day, and inventing repartees." I sate down in a chair. "Yes, do tell me!" I said; "I have really very little to do this morning, but finish up a bit of work." He looked at me with a twinkle in his eye. "I expect you ought to be at work," he said, "and if I were conscientious, I should send you away--but this is rather interesting, I think." He meditated for a moment, and then went on. "It's this! I have got involved in an argument with an old friend of mine who is a stiff sort of High-Churchman--a parson. It's about religion, too, and it's no good arguing about religion. You only confirm your adversary in his opinion. He brings forth the bow, and makes ready the arrows within the quiver. I needn't go into the argument. It's the old story. He objected to something I said as 'vague,' and I was ass enough to answer him. He is one of those people who is very strong on dogma, and treats his religion as if it were a sort of trades' union. He thinks I am a kind of blackleg, not true to my principles; or rather he thinks that I am not a Christian at all, and only call myself one for the sake of the associations. Of course he triumphs over me at every point. He is entrenched in what he calls a logical system, and he fires off texts as if from a machine-gun. Of course my point is that all strict denominations have got a severely logical system, but that they can't all be sound, because they all deduce different conclusions from the same evidence. All denominational positions are drawn up by able men, and I imagine that an old theology like the Catholic theology is one of the most ingenious constructions in the world from the logical point of view. But the mischief of it all is that the data are incomplete, and many of them are not mathematically demonstrable at all. They are all coloured by human ideas and personalities and temperaments, and half of them are intuitions and experiences, which vary at different times and under different circumstances. All precise denominational systems are the outcome of the desire for a precise certainty in the minds of business-like people--the people who say that they wish to know exactly where they are. Now I don't go so far as to say, or even to think, that religion will always be as mysterious a thing as it is now. I fully expect that we shall know much more about it some day. But we don't at present know very much about the central things of all--the nature of God, the relation of good and evil, life after death, human psychology. We have not reached the point of being able definitely to identify the moral force of the world with the forces which do not appear to be moral, but are undoubtedly, active--with realities, that is, as we come into contact with them. There are no scientific certainties on these points--we simply have not reached that stage. My friend's view is that out of a certain number of denominations, one is undoubtedly right. My view is that all are necessarily incomplete. But the moment I say this, he says that my religion is so vague as not to be a religion at all. "Now my own position is this, that I think religion, by which I mean our relation to the Power behind the world, is the most important fact in the world, as well as the most absorbingly interesting. Whatever form of religion I study, I seem to see the same thing going on. The saints, however much they differ in dogma, seem to me to have a strong family likeness. Mysticism is a very definite thing indeed, and I have never any doubt that all mystics have the same or a very similar experience, namely, the perception of some perfectly definite force--as real a force as electricity, for instance--with which they are in touch. Something, which is quite clearly there, is affecting them in a particular way. "If you ask me what that something is, I don't know. I believe it to be a sort of life-force, which can and does mingle itself with our own life; and I believe that we are all affected by it, just as every drop of water on the earth is affected by the moon's attraction--though we can measure that effect in an ocean by observing the tides, when we can't measure it in a basin of water. We are not all equally conscious of it, and I don't know why that is. Sometimes I am aware of it myself, and sometimes not. But I have had enough experience of it to feel that something is making signals to me, affecting me, attracting me. And the reason why I am a Christian is because in Christianity and in the teaching of Christ I feel the influence of it in a way that I feel it nowhere else in the same degree. I feel that Christ was closer to what I recognise as God; knew God better than anyone that ever lived, and in a different kind of way--from inside, so to speak. But it's a _life_ that I find in the Gospel, and not a _creed_: and I believe that this is religion, to be somehow in touch with a higher life and a higher sort of beauty. "But I personally don't want this explained and defined and codified. That seems to me only to hem it in and limit it. The moment I find it reduced to dogma and rule, to definite channels of grace, to particular powers entrusted to particular persons, then I begin to be stifled and, what is worse, bored. I don't feel it to be a logical affair at all--I feel it to be a living force, the qualities of which are virtue, beauty, peace, enthusiasm, happiness; all the things which glow and sparkle in life, and make me long to be different--to be stronger, wiser, more patient, more interested, more serene. I want to share my secret with others, not to keep it to myself. But when I argue with my friend, I don't feel it is my secret but his, and that in his mind the force itself is missing, while a lot of rules and logical propositions and arrangements have taken its place. It is just as though I were in love with a girl, and were taken to task by someone, and informed of a score of conventions which I must observe if I wish to be considered really in love. I know what love means to me, and I know, how I want to make love; and the same sort of thing is happening to lovers all the world over, though they don't all make love in the same way. You can't codify the rules of love!" Presently he went on: "It seems to me like this--like seeing the reflection of the moon. You may see it in the marble basin of a fountain, clear and distinct. You may see it blurred into ripples on a wind-stirred sea. You may see it moulded into liquid curves on a swift stream. The changing shapes of it matter little--you are sure that it is the same thing which is being reflected, however differently it appears. I believe that human nature has a power of reflecting God, and the different denominations seem to me to reflect Him in different ways, like the fountain and the stream and the sea. But the same thing is there, though the forms seem to vary. And therefore we must not quarrel with the different attempts to reflect it--or even be vexed if the fountain tells the sea that it is not reflecting the moon at all. Take my advice, my boy," he added, smiling, "and never argue about religion--only try to make your own spirit as calm and true as you can!" XLIII OF CRITICS I came in from a stroll one day with Father Payne and Barthrop. Father Payne opened a letter which was lying on the hall table, and saying, "Hallo, Leonard, look at this. Gladwin is coming down for Sunday--that will be rather fun!" "I don't know about fun," said Barthrop; "at least I doubt if I should find it fun, if I had the responsibility of entertaining him." "Yes, it's a great responsibility," said Father Payne. "I feel that. Gladwin is a man who has to be taken as you find him, but who never makes any pretence of taking you as he finds you! But it will amuse me to put him through his paces a bit!" "Who on earth is Gladwin?" said I, consumed by curiosity. Father Payne and Barthrop laughed. "I should like Gladwin to hear that!" said Barthrop. "Only it would grieve him still more if Duncan _had_ heard of him," said Father Payne; "there would be a commonness about that!" Then turning to me, he said, "Gladwin? Well, he's about the most critical man in England, I suppose. He does a little work--a very little: and I think he might have been a great man, if he hadn't become so fearfully dry. He began by despising everyone else, and ended by despising himself--and now it's almost a torture to him to make up his mind. 'There's something base about a _decision_,' he once said to me. But 'despising' isn't the right word. He doesn't despise--that would be coarse. He only feels the coarseness of things in general. He has got too fine an edge on his mind--everything blunts it!" "Do you remember Rose's song about him?" said Barthrop. "Yes, what was it?" said Father Payne. "The refrain," said Barthrop, "was "'Not too much of whatever is best, That is enough for me!'" Father Payne laughed. "Yes, I remember!" he said; "'Not too much' is a good stroke!" I happened to be with Father Payne when Gladwin arrived. He was a small, trim, compact man, about forty, unembarrassed and graceful, but with an air of dejection. He had a short pointed beard and moustache, and his hair was growing grey. He had fine thin hands, and he was dressed in old but well-fitting clothes. He had an atmosphere of great distinction about him. I had expected something incisive and clear-cut about him, but he was conspicuously gentle, and even deprecating in manner. He greeted Father Payne smilingly, and shook hands with me, with a courteous little bow. We strolled a little in the garden. Father Payne did most of the talking, but Gladwin's silence was sympathetic and impressive. He listened to us tolerantly, as a man might listen to the prattle of children. "What are you doing just now?" said Father Payne after a pause. "Oh, nothing worth mentioning," said Gladwin softly. "I work more slowly than ever, I believe. It can hardly be called work, indeed. In fact, I want to consult you about a few little bits--they can hardly be called anything so definite as 'pieces'--but I am in doubt about their arrangement. The placing of independent pieces is such a difficulty to me, you know! One must secure some sort of a progression!" "Ah, I shall enjoy that," said Father Payne. "But you won't take my advice, you know--you never do!" "Oh, don't say that," said Gladwin. "Of course one must be ultimately responsible. It can't be otherwise. But I always respect your judgment. You always help me to the materials, at all events, for a decision!" Father Payne laughed, and said, "Well, I shall be at your service any time!" A little while after, Gladwin said he thought he would go to his room. "I know your ways here," he said to me with a smile; "one mustn't interfere with a system. Besides I like it! It is such a luxury to obliterate oneself!" When we met again before dinner, Gladwin walked across to a big picture, an old sea-piece, rather effectively painted, which Father Payne had found in a garret, and had had restored and framed. "What is this?" said Gladwin very gently; "I think this is new?" Father Payne told him the story of its discovery, adding, "I don't suppose it is worth much--but it has a certain breeziness about it, I think." Gladwin considered it in silence, and then turned away. "Do you like it?" said Father Payne--a little maliciously, I thought. "Like it?" said Gladwin meditatively, "I don't know that I can go as far as that! I like it in your house." Gladwin said very little at dinner. He ate and drank sparingly; and I noticed that he looked at any dish that was offered him with a quick scrutinising glance. He tasted his first glass of wine with the same air of suspense, and then appeared to be relieved from a preoccupation. But he joined little in the talk, and exercised rather a sobering effect upon us. Once or twice he spoke out. Mention was made of Gissing's _Papers of Henry Ryecroft_, and Father Payne asked him if he had read it. "Oh no, I couldn't _read_ it, of course," said Gladwin; "I looked into it, and had to put it away. I felt as if I had opened a letter addressed to someone else by mistake!" At a later period of the evening, a discussion arose about the laws of taste. Father Payne had said that the one phenomenon in art he could not understand was the almost inevitable reaction which seemed to take place in the way in which the work of a great writer or painter or musician is regarded a few years after his vogue declines. "I am not speaking," said Father Payne, "of poor, commonplace, merely popular work, but of work which was acclaimed as great by the best critics of the time, and which will probably return to pre-eminence," He instanced, I remember, Mendelssohn and Tennyson. "Of course," he said, "they both wrote a great deal--perhaps too much--and some kind of sorting is necessary. I don't mind the _Idylls of the King_, or the _Elijah_, being relegated to oblivion, because they both show signs of having been done with one eye on the public. But the progressive young man won't hear of Tennyson or Mendelssohn being regarded as serious figures in art at all. Yet I honestly believe that poems like 'Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal,' or 'Come down, O Maid,' have a high and permanent beauty about them; or, again, the overture to the _Midsummer Night's Dream_. I can't believe that it isn't a thing full of loveliness and delight. I can't for the life of me see what happens to cause such things to be forgotten. Tennyson and Mendelssohn seem to me to have been penetrated with a sense of beauty, and to have been great craftsmen too: and their work at its best not only satisfied the most exacting and trained critics, but thrilled all the most beauty-loving spirits of the time with ineffable content, as of a dream fulfilled beyond the reach of hope. And yet all the light seems to die out of them as the years go on. The new writers and musicians, the new critics, the new audience, are all preoccupied with a different presentment of beauty. And then, very slowly, the light seems to return to the old things--at least to the best of them: but they have to suffer an eclipse, during which they are nothing but symbols of all that is hackneyed and commonplace in music and literature. I think things are either beautiful or not: I can't believe in a real shifting of taste, a merely relative and temporary beauty. If it only happened to the second-rate kinds of goodness, it would be intelligible--but it seems to involve the best as well. What do you think, Gladwin?" Gladwin, who had been dreamily regarding the wine in his glass, gave a little start almost of pain, as if a thorn had pricked him. He glanced round the table, and then said in his gentlest voice, "Well, Payne, I don't quite know from what point of view you are speaking--from the point of view of serious investigation, or of edification, or of mere curiosity? I should have to be sure of that. But, speaking hurriedly and perhaps intemperately, I should be inclined to think that there was a sort of natural revolt against a convention, a spontaneous disgust at deference being taken for granted. Isn't it like what takes place in politics--though, of course, I know nothing about politics--the way, I mean, in which the electors get simply tired of a political party being in power, and give the other side a chance of doing better? I mean that the gross and unintelligent laudation of any artist who arrives at what is called assured fame, naturally turns one's mind on to the critical consciousness of his imperfections. I don't say it's noble or right--in fact, I think it is probably ungenerous--but I think it is natural." "Yes, there is a good deal in that," said Father Payne, "but ought not the trained critics to withstand it?" "The trained critic," said Gladwin, "the man who sells his opinion of a work of art for money, is, of course, the debased outcome of a degrading system. If you press me, I should consider that both the extravagant laudation and the equally extravagant reaction are entirely vulgar and horrible. Personally, I am not easily pleased: but then what does it matter whether I am pleased or not?" "But you sometimes bring yourself to form, and even express, an opinion?" said Father Payne with a smile. "An opinion--an opinion"--said Gladwin, shaking his head, "I don't know that I ever get so far as that. One has a kind of feeling, no doubt; but it is so far underground, that one hardly knows what its operations may be." "'Well said, old mole! Canst work i' the earth so fast? A worthy pioneer!'" said Payne, laughing. Gladwin gave a quick smile: "A good quotation!" he said, "that was very ready! I congratulate you on that! But there's more of the mole than the pioneer about my work, such as it is!" Gladwin drifted about the next day like a tired fairy. He had a long conference with Father Payne, and at dinner he seemed aloof, and hardly spoke at all. He vanished the next day with an air of relief. "Well, what did you think of our guest?" said Father Payne to me, meeting me in the garden before dinner. "Well," I said, "he seemed to me an unhappy, heavily-burdened man--but he was evidently extraordinarily able." "Yes," said Father Payne, "that's about it. His mind is too big for him to carry. He sees everything, understands everything, and passes judgment on everything. But he hasn't enough vitality. It must be an awful curse to have no illusions--to see the inferiority of everything so clearly. He's awfully lonely, and I must try to see more of him. But it is very difficult. I used to amuse him, and he appointed me, in a way he has, a sort of State Jester--Royal Letters Patent, you know. But then he began to detect the commonness of my mind and taste, and, one by one, all the avenues of communication became closed. If I liked a book which he disliked, and praised it to him, he became inflicted with a kind of mental nausea: and it's impossible to see much of a man, with any real comfort, when you realise that you are constantly turning him faint and sick. I had a dreary time with him yesterday. He produced some critical essays of his own, which he was thinking of making into a book. They were awfully dry, like figs which have been kept too long--not a drop of juice in them. They were hideously acute, I saw that. But there wasn't any reason why they should have been written. They were mere dissections: I suggested that he should call them 'Depreciations,' and he shivered, and I felt a brute. But that didn't last long, because he has a way of putting you in your place. I felt like something in a nightmare he was having. He annexes you, and he disapproves of you at the same time. I am awfully sorry for him, but I can't help him. The moment I try, I run up against his disapproval, and my vulgar spirit revolts. He's an aristocrat, through and through. He comes and hoists his flag over a place. I felt all yesterday as if I were a rather unwelcome guest in his house, you know. It's a stifling atmosphere. I can't breathe or speak, because I instantly feel myself suspected of crudity! The truth is that Gladwin thinks you can live upon light, and forgets that you also want air." "It seems rather a ghastly business," I said. "Yes," said Father Payne, "it's a wretched business! That combination of great sensitiveness and great self-righteousness is the most melancholy thing I know. You have to get rid of one or the other--and yet that is how Gladwin is made. Now, I have plenty of opinions of my own, but I don't consider them final or absolute. It ends, of course, in poor Gladwin knowing about a hundredth part of what is going on in the world, and thinking that it's d--d bad. Of course it is, if you neglect the other ninety-nine parts altogether!" XLIV OF WORSHIP It was one of those perfectly fine and radiant days of early summer, with a touch of easterly about the breeze, which means perhaps a drier air, and always seems to bring out the true colours of our countryside, as with a touch of ethereal golden-tinged varnish. The humid rain-washed days, so common in England, are beautiful enough, with their rolling cloud-ranges and their soft mistiness: but the clear sparkle of this brighter weather, summer without its haze, intensifying each tone of colour and sharply defining each several tint, has a special beauty of form as well as of hue. I walked with Father Payne far among the fields. He was at first in a silent mood, observing and enjoying. We passed a field carpeted with buttercups, and he said, "That's a beautiful touch, 'the flower-enamelled field'--it isn't just washed with colour, it is like hammered work of beaten gold, like the letters in old missals!" Presently he burst out into talk: "I don't want to say anything affected," he began, "but a day like this, out in the country, gives me a stronger feeling of what I can only describe as _worship_ than anything else in the world, because the scene holds the beauty of life so firmly up before you. Worship means the sense of the unmistakable presence of beauty, I am sure--a beauty great and overwhelming, which one has had no part in making--'The sea is His, and He made it, and His hands prepared the dry land. O come, let us worship and fall down, and kneel before the Lord our Maker'--it's that exactly--a sense of joyful abasement in the presence of something great and infinitely beautiful. I do wish that were more clearly stated and understood and believed. Religion, as we know it in its technical sense, is so faint-hearted about it all! It has limited worship to things beautiful enough, arches and music and ceremony: and it is so afraid of vagueness, so considerate of man's feeble grasp and small outlook, that it is afraid of recognising all the channels by which that sense is communicated, for fear of weakening a special effect. I'll tell you two or three of the experiences I mean. You know old Mrs. Chetwynd, who is fading away in that little cottage beyond the churchyard. She is poor, old, ill. She can hardly be said to have a single pleasure, as you and I reckon pleasures. She just lies there in that poky room waiting for death, always absolutely patient and affectionate and sweet-tempered, grateful for everything, never saying a hard or cross word. Well, I go to see her sometimes--not as often as I ought. She shakes hands with that old knotted-looking hand of hers which has grown soft enough now after its endless labours. She talks a little--she is interested in all the news, she doesn't regret things, or complain, or think it hard that she can't be out and about. After I have been with her for two minutes, with her bright old eyes looking at me out of such a thicket, so to speak, of wrinkles,--her face simply hacked and seamed by life,--I feel myself in the presence of something very divine indeed,--a perfectly pure, tender, joyful, human spirit, suffering the last extremity of discomfort and infirmity, and yet entirely radiant and undimmed. It is then that I feel inclined to kneel down before God, and thank Him humbly for having made and shown me so utterly beautiful a thing as that poor old woman's courage and sweetness. I feel as I suppose the devout Catholic feels before the reserved Sacrament in the shrine--in the presence of a divine mystery; and I rejoice silently that God is what He is, and that I see Him for once unveiled. "And then the sight of a happy and contented child, kind and spirited and affectionate, like little Molly Akers, never making a fuss, or seeming to want things for herself, or cross, or tiresome--that gives me the same feeling! Then flowers often give me the same feeling, with their cleanness and fresh beauty and pure outline and sweet scent--so useless in a way, often so unregarded, and yet so content just to be what they are, so apart from every stain and evil passion. "And then in the middle of that you see a man like Barlow stumbling home tipsy to his frightened wife and children, or you read a bad case in the papers, or a letter from a man of virtue finding fault with everybody and slinging pious Billingsgate about: or I lose my own temper about something, and feel I have made a hash of my life--and then I wonder what is the foul poison that has got into things, and what is the dismal ugliness that seems smeared all over life, so that the soul seems like a beautiful bird caught in a slime-pit, and trying to struggle out, with its pinions fouled and dabbled, wondering miserably what it has done to be so filthily hampered." He stopped for a minute, and I could see that his eyes were full of tears. "It is no good giving up the game!" he said. "We are in the devil of a mess, no doubt: and even if we try our best to avoid it, we dip into the slime sometimes! But we must hold fast to the beautiful things, and be on the look-out for them everywhere. Not shut our eyes in a rapture of sentiment, and think that we can: "'Walk all day, like the Sultan of old, in a garden of spice!' "That won't do, of course! We can't get out of it like that! But we must never allow ourselves to doubt the beauty and goodness of God, or make any mistake about which side He is on. The marvel of dear old Mrs. Chetwynd is just that beauty has triumphed, in spite of everything. With every kind of trouble, every temptation to be dispirited and spiteful and wretched, that fine spirit has got through--and, by George, I envy her the awakening, when that sweet old soul slips away from the cage where she is caught, and goes straight to the arms of God!" He turned away from me as he said this, and I could see that he struggled with a sob. Then he looked at me with a smile, and put his arm in mine. "Old man," he said, "I oughtn't to behave like this--but a day like this, when the world looks as it was meant to look, and as, please God, it _will_ look more and more, goes to my heart! I seem to see what God desires, and what He can't bring about yet, for all His pains. And I want to help Him, if I can! "'We too! We ask no pledge of grace, No rain of fire, no heaven-hung sign. Thy need is written on Thy face-- Take Thou our help, as we take Thine!' "That's what I mean by worship--the desire to be _used_ in the service of a Power that longs to make things pure and happy, with groanings that cannot be uttered. The worst of some kinds of worship is that they drug you with a sort of lust for beauty, which makes you afraid to go back and pick up your spade. We mustn't swoon in happiness or delight, but if we say 'Take me, use me, let me help!' it is different, because we want to share whatever is given us, to hand it on, not to pile it up. Of course it's little enough that we can do: but think of old Mrs. Chetwynd again--what has she to give? Yet it is more than Solomon in all his beauty had to offer. We must be simple, we mustn't be ambitious. Do you remember the old statesman who, praising a disinterested man, said that he was that rare and singular type of man who did public work for the sake of the public? That's what I want you to do--that is what a writer can do. He can remind the world of beauty and simplicity and purity. He can be 'a messenger, an interpreter, one among a thousand, _to show unto man his uprightness_!' That's what you have got to do, old boy! Don't show unto man his nastiness--don't show him up! Keep on reminding him of what he really is or can be." He went on after a moment. "I ought not to talk like this," he said, "because I have failed all along the line. 'I put in my thumb and pull out a plum,' like Jack Homer. I try a little to hand it on, but it is awfully nice, you know, that plum! I don't pretend it isn't." "Why, Father," I said, much moved at his kind sincerity, "I don't know anyone in the world who eats fewer of his plums than you!" "Ah, that's a friendly word!" said Father Payne. "But you can't count the plum-stones on my plate." We did not say much after this. We walked back in the summer twilight, and my mind began to stir and soar, as indeed it often did when Father Payne showed me his heart in all its strength and cleanness. No one whom I ever met had his power of lighting a flame of pure desire and beautiful hopefulness, in the fire of which all that was base and mean seemed to shrivel away. XLV OF A CHANGE OF RELIGION I was walking one day with Father Payne; he said to me, "I have been reading Newman's _Apologia_ over again--I must have read it a dozen times! It is surely one of the most beautiful and singular books in the whole world?--and I think that the strangest sentence in it is this,--'Who would ever dream of making the world his confidant?' Did Newman, do you suppose, not realise that he had done that? And what is stranger still, did he not know that he had told the world, not the trivial things, the little tastes and fancies which anyone might hear, but the most intimate and sacred things, which a man would hardly dare to say to God upon his knees. Newman seems to me in that book to have torn out his beating and palpitating heart, and set it in a crystal phial for all the world to gaze upon. And further, did Newman really not know that this was what he always desired to do and mostly did--to confide in the world, to tell his story as a child might tell it to a mother? It is clear to me that Newman was a man who did not only desire to be loved by a few friends, but wished everybody to love him. I will not say that he was never happy till he had told his tale, and I will not say that artist-like he loved applause: but he did _not_ wish to be hidden, and he earnestly desired to be approved. He craved to be allowed to say what he thought--it is pathetic to hear him say so often how 'fierce' he was--and yet he hated suspicion and hostility and misunderstanding: and though he loved a refined sort of quiet, he even more loved, I think, to be the centre of a fuss! I feel little doubt in my own mind that, even when he was living most retired, he wished people to be curious about what he was doing. He was one of those men who felt he had a special mission, a prophetical function. He was a dramatic creature, a performer, you know. He read the lessons like an actor: he preached like an actor; he was intensely self-conscious. Naturally enough! If you feel like a prophet, the one sign of failure is that your audience melts away." Father Payne paused a moment, lost in thought. "But," I said, "do you mean that Newman calculated all his effects?" "Oh, not deliberately," said Father Payne, "but he was an artist pure and simple--he was never less by himself than when he was alone, as the old Provost of Oriel said of him. He lived dramatically by a kind of instinct. The unselfconscious man goes his own way, and does not bother his head about other people: but Newman was not like that. When he was reading, it was always like the portrait of a student reading. That's the artist's way--he is always living in a sort of picture-frame. Why, you can see from the _Apologia_, which he wrote in a few weeks, and often, as he once said, in tears, how tenderly and eagerly he remembered all he had ever done or thought. His descriptions of himself are always romantic: he lived in memories, like all poets." "But that gives one a disagreeable sense of unreality--of pose," I said. "Ah, but that's very short-sighted," said Father Payne. "Newman's was a beautiful spirit--wonderfully tender-hearted, self-restrained, gentle, sensitive, beauty-loving. He loved beauty as much as any man who ever lived--beautiful conduct, beautiful life--and then his gift of expression! There's a marvellous thing. It's pure poetry, most of the _Apologia_: look at the way he flashes into metaphor, at his exquisite pictures of persons, at his irony, his courtesy, his humour, his pathos. He and Ruskin knew exactly how to confide in the world, how to humiliate themselves gracefully in public, how to laugh at themselves, how to be gay--it's all so well-bred, so delicate! Depend upon it, that's the way to make the world love you--to tell it all about yourself like a charming child, without any boasting or bragging. The world is awfully stupid! It adores well-bred egotism. We are all deeply inquisitive about _people_; and if you can reveal yourself without vanity, and are a lovable creature, the world will overwhelm you with love. You can't pay the world a greater compliment than to open your heart to it. You must not bore it, of course, nor must you seem to be demanding its applause. You must just seem to be in need of sympathy and comfort. You must be a little sad, a little tired, a little bewildered. I don't say that is easy to do, and a man must not set out to do it. But if a man has got something childlike and innocent about him, and a naïve way with him, the world will take him to its heart. The world loves to pity, to compassionate, to sympathise, much more than it loves to admire." "But what about the religious side of it all?" I said. "Ah," said Father Payne, "I think that is more touching still. The people who change their religion, as it is called,--there is something extremely captivating about them as a rule. To want to change your form of religion simply means that you are unhappy and uneasy. You want more beauty, or more assurance, or more sympathy, or more antiquity. Have you never noticed how all converts personify their new Church in feminine terms? She becomes a Madonna, something at once motherly and young. It is the passion with which the child turns away from what is male and rough, to the mother, the nurse, the elder sister. The convert isn't really in search of dogmas and doctrines: he is in love with a presence, a shape, something which can clasp and embrace and love him. I don't feel any real doubt of that. The man who turns away to some other form of faith wants a home. He sees the ugliness, the spite, the malice, the contentiousness of his own Church. He loathes the hardness and uncharitableness of it; he is like a boy at school sick for home. To me Newman's logic is like the effort of a man desperately constructing a bridge to escape to the other side of the river. The land beyond is like a landscape seen from a hill, a scene of woods and waters, of fields and hamlets--everything seems peaceful and idyllic there. He wants the wings of a dove, to flee away and be at rest. It is the same feeling which makes people wish to travel. When you travel, the new land is a spectacular thing--it is all a picture. It is not that you crave to live in a foreign land: you merely want the luxury of seeing life without living life. No ordinary person goes to live in Italy because he has studied the political constitution and organisation of Italy, and prefers it to that of England. So, too, the charm of a religious conversion is that it doesn't seem unpatriotic to do it--but you get the feel of a new country without having to quit your own. And the essence of it is a flight from conditions which you dread and dislike. Of course Newman does not describe it so--that is all a part of his guilelessness--he speaks of the shadow of a hand upon the wall: but I don't doubt that his subconscious mind thrilled with the sense of a possible escape that way. His heart was converted long before his mind. What he hated in the English Church was having to decide for himself--he wanted to lean on something, to put himself inside a stronghold: he wanted to obey. Some people dislike the way in which he made himself obey,--the way he argued himself into holding things which were frankly irrational. But I don't mind that! It is the pleasure of the child in being told what to do instead of having to amuse itself." He was silent for a little, and then he said: "I see it all so clearly, and yet of course it is in a sense inconceivable to me, because to my mind all the Churches have got a burden of belief which they can't carry. The Gospel is simple enough, and it is as much as I can do to live on those lines. Besides, I don't want to obey--I want to obey as little as I can! The ecclesiastical and the theological tradition is all a world of shadows to me. I can't be bound by the pious fancies of men who knew no science, and very little about evidence of any kind. What I want is just a simple and beautiful principle of living, such as I feel thrills through the words of Christ. The Prodigal Son--that's almost enough for me! It is simplification that I want, and independence. Of course I see that if that isn't what a man wants, if he requires that something or someone should be infallible, then he does require a good deal of argument and information and history. But though I don't object to people who want all that, it isn't what I am in search of. I want as much strong emotion and as little system as I can get. By emotion I don't mean sentiment, but real motives for acting or not acting. I want to hear someone saying, 'Come up hither,' and to see something in his face which makes me believe he sees something that I don't see and that I wish to see. I don't feel that with Newman! He is fifty times better than myself, but I couldn't do the thing in his way, though I love him with all my heart: it's a quiet sort of brotherhood that I want, and not too many rules. In fact, it is _laws_ I want, and not _rules_, and to feel the laws rather than to know them, I can't help feeling that Newman spent too much of his time in the law-court, pleading and arguing: and it's stuffy in there! But he will remain for ever one of those figures whom the world will love, because it can pity him as well as admire him. Newman goes to one's head, you know, or to one's heart! And I expect that it was exactly what he wanted to do all the time!" XLVI OF AFFECTION Father Payne, on our walks, invariably stopped and spoke to animals. I will not say that animals were always fond of him, because that is a privilege confined to saints, and heroes of romantic legends. But they generally responded to his advances. It used to amuse me to hear the way he used to talk to animals. He would stop to whistle to a caged bird: "You like your little prison, don't you, sweet?" he would say. Or he would apostrophise a cat, "Well, Ma'am, you must find it wearing to carry on your expeditions all night, and to live the life of a domestic saint all day?" I asked him once why he did not keep a dog, when he was so fond of animals. "Oh, I couldn't," he said; "it is so dreadful when dogs get old and ill, and when they die! It's sentiment, too; and I can't afford to multiply emotions--there are too many as it is! Besides, there is something rather terrible to me about the affection of a dog--it's so unreasonable a devotion, and I like more critical affections--I prefer to earn affection! I read somewhere the other day," he went on, "that it might easily be argued that the dog was a higher flight of nature even than man; that man has gone ahead in mind and inventiveness; but that the dog is on the whole the better Christian, because he does by instinct what man fails to do by intention--he is so sympathetic, so unresentful, so trustful! It is really amazing, if you come to think of it, the dog's power of attachment to another species. We must seem very mysterious to dogs, and yet they never question our right to use them as we will, while nothing shakes their love. And then there is something wonderful in the way in which the dog, however old he is, always wants to play. Most animals part with that after their first youth; but a dog plays, partly for the fun of it, and partly to make sure that you like his company and are happy. And yet it is a little undignified to care for people like that, you know!" "How ought one to care for people?" I said. "Ah, that's a large question," said Father Payne, "the duty of loving--it's a contradiction in terms! To love people seems the one thing in the world you cannot do because you ought to do it; and yet to love your neighbour as yourself can't _only_ mean to behave _as if_ you loved him. And then, what does caring about people mean? It seems impossible to say. It isn't that you want anything which they can give you--it isn't that they need anything you can give them; it isn't always even that you want to see them. There are people for whom I care who rather bore me; there are people who care for me who bore me to extinction; and again there are people whose company I like for whom I don't care. It isn't always by any means that I admire the people for whom I care. I see their faults, I don't want to resemble them. Then, too, there have been people for whom I have cared very much, and wanted to please, who have not cared in the least for me. Some of the best-loved people in the world seem to have had very little love to give away! I have a sort of feeling that the people who evoke most affection are the people who have something of the child always in them--something petulant, wilful, self-absorbed, claiming sympathy and attention. It is a certain innocence and freshness that we love, I think; the quality that seems to say, 'Oh, do make me happy'; and I think that caring for people generally means just that you would like to make them happy, or that they have it in their power to make you happy. I think it is a kind of conspiracy to be happy together, if possible. Probably the mistake we make is to think it is one definite thing, when a good many things go to make it up. I have been interested in a very large number of people--in fact, I am generally interested in people; but I haven't cared for all of them, while I have cared for a good many people in whom I have not been at all interested. But it is easier to say what the qualities are that repel affection, than what the qualities are which attract it. I don't think any faults prevent it, if people are sorry for their faults and are sorry to have hurt you. It seems to me impossible to care for spiteful people, or for the people who turn on you in a sudden anger, and don't want to be forgiven, but are glad to have made you fear them. I don't care for people who claim affection as a right, or who bargain for sacrifices. The bargaining element must be wholly absent from affection. The feeling 'it is your turn to be nice' is fatal to it. No, I think that it is a feeling that you can live at peace with the particular person that is the basis of friendship. The element of reproach must be wholly absent: I don't mean the element of criticism--that can be impersonal--but the feeling 'you ought not to behave like this to me.'" Father Payne relapsed into silence. "But," I said, "surely the people who make claims for affection are very often most beloved, even when they are unjust, inconsiderate, ill-tempered?" "By women," said Father Payne, "but not by men--and there's another difficulty. Men and women mean such utterly different things by affection, that they can't even discuss it together. Women will do anything for you, if you claim their help, and make it clear that you need them; they will love you if you do that. A man, on the other hand, will often do his very best to help you, if you appeal to him, but he won't care for you, as a rule, in consequence. Women like emotional surprises, men do not. A man wants to get done with excitement, and to enter on an easy partnership--women like the excitement more than the ease. And then it is all complicated by the admixture of the masculine and feminine temperaments. As a rule, however, women are interested in moody temperaments, and men are bored by them. Personally, my own pleasure in meeting a real friend, or in hearing from a friend, is the pleasure of feeling 'Yes, you are there, just the same,'--it's the tranquillity that one values. The possibility of finding a man angry or pettish is unpleasant to me. I feel 'so all this nonsense has to be cleared away again!' I don't want to be questioned and scrutinised, with a sense that I am on my trial. I don't mind an ironical letter, which shows that a friend is fully aware of my faults and foibles; but it's an end of all friendship with me if I feel a man is bent on improving me, especially if it is for his own convenience. I'm sure that the fault-finding element is fatal to affection. That may sound weak, but I can't be made to feel that I am responsible to other people. I don't recognise anyone's right to censure me. A man may criticise me if he likes, but he mustn't impose upon me the duty of living up to his ideal. I don't believe that even God does that!" "I don't understand," I said. "Well," said Father Payne, "I don't believe that God says, 'This is my law, and you must obey it because I choose," I believe He says, 'This is the law, for Me as well as for you, and you will not be happy till you obey it,'--Yes, I have got it, I believe--the essence of affection is _equality_. I don't mean that you may not recognise superiorities in your friend, and he in you; but they must not come into the question of affection. Love makes equal, and when there is a real sense of equality, love can begin." "But," I said, "the passion of lovers--isn't that all based on the worship of something infinitely superior to oneself?" "Yes," said Father Payne, "but that means a sight of something beyond--of the thing which we all love--beauty. I don't say that equality is the thing we love--it's only the condition of loving. The lover can't love, if he feels himself _really_ unworthy of love. He must believe that at worst he _can_ be loved, though he may be astonished at being loved; it is in love that it is possible to meet; it is love that brings beauty within your reach, or down, to your level. It is beauty that you love in your friend, not his right to improve you. He is what you want to be; and the comfort of being loved is the comfort of feeling that there is some touch of the same beauty in yourself. It is so easy to feel dreary, stupid, commonplace--and then someone appears, and you see in his glance and talk that there is, after all, some touch of the same thing in yourself which you love in him, some touch of the beauty which you love in God. But the glory of beauty is that it is concerned with being beautiful and becoming beautiful--not in mocking or despising or finding fault or improving. Love is the finding your friend beautiful in mind and heart, and the joy of being loved is the sense that you are beautiful to him--that you are equal in that! When you once know that, little quarrels and frictions do not matter--what _does_ matter is the recognising of some ugly thing which the man whom you thought was your friend really clings to and worships. Faults do not matter if only the friend is aware of them, and ashamed of them: it is the self-conscious fault, proud of its power to wound, and using affection as the channel along which the envenomed stream may flow, which destroys affection and trust." "Then it comes to this," I said, "that affection is a mutual recognition of beauty and a sense of equality?" "It _is_ that, more or less, I believe," said Father Payne. "I don't mean that friends need be aware of that--you need not philosophise about your friendships--but if you ask me, as an analyst, what it all consists in, I believe that those are the essential elements of it--and I believe that it holds good of the dog-and-man friendship as well!" XLVII OF RESPECT OF PERSONS Father Payne had been out to luncheon one day with some neighbours. He had groaned over the prospect the day before, and had complained that such goings-on unsettled him. "Well, Father," said Rose at dinner, "so you have got through your ordeal! Was it very bad?" "Bad!" said Father Payne, "why should it be bad? I'm crammed with impressions--I'm a perfect mine of them." "But you didn't like the prospect of going?" said Rose. "No," said Father Payne, "I shrank from the strain--you phlegmatic, aristocratic people,--men-of-the-world, blasés, highly-born and highly-placed,--have no conception of the strain these things are on a child of nature. You are used to such things, Rose, no doubt--you do not anticipate a luncheon-party with a mixture of curiosity and gloom. But it is good for me to go to such affairs--it is like a waterbreak in a stream--it aerates and agitates the mind. But _you_ don't realise the amount of observation I bring to bear on such an event--the strange house, the unfamiliar food, the new inscrutable people--everything has to be observed, dealt with, if possible accounted for, and if unaccountable, then inflexibly faced and recollected. A torrent of impressions has poured in upon me--to say nothing of the anxious consideration beforehand of topics of conversation, and modes of investigation! To stay in a new house crushes me with fatigue--and even a little party like this, which seems, I daresay, to some of you, a negligible, even a tedious thing, is to me rich in far-flung experience." "Mayn't we have the benefit of some of it?" said Rose. "Yes," said Father Payne, "you may--you must, indeed! I am grateful to you for introducing the subject--it is more graceful than if I had simply divested myself of my impressions unsolicited." "What was it all about?" said Rose. "Why," said Father Payne, "the answer to that is simple enough--it was to meet an American! I know that race! Who but an American would have heard of our little experiment here, and not only wanted to know--they all do that--but positively arranged to know? Yes, he was a hard-featured man--a man of wealth, I imagine--from some place, the grotesque and extravagant name of which I could not even accurately retain, in the State of Minnesota." "Did he want to try a similar experiment?" said Barthrop. "He did not," said Father Payne. "I gathered that he had no such intention--but he desired to investigate ours. He was full of compliments, of information, even of rhetoric. I have seldom heard a simple case stated more emphatically, or with such continuous emphasis. My mind simply reeled before it. He pursued me as a harpooner might pursue a whale. He had the whole thing out of me in no time. He interrogated me as a corkscrew interrogates a cork. That consumed the whole of luncheon. I made a poor show. My experiment, such as it is, stood none of the tests he applied to it. It appeared to be lacking in all earnestness and zeal. I was painfully conscious of my lack of earnestness. 'Well, sir,' he said at the conclusion of my examination-in-chief, 'I seem to detect that this business of yours is conducted mainly with a view to your own entertainment, and I admit that it causes me considerable disappointment.' The fact is, my boys," said Father Payne, surveying the table, "that we must be more conscious of higher aims here, and we must put them on a more commercial footing!" "But that was not all?" said Barthrop. "No, it was not all," said Father Payne; "and, to tell you the truth, I was more alarmed by than interested in the Minnesota merchant. I couldn't state my case--I failed in that--and I very much doubt if I could have convinced him that there was anything in it. Indeed, he said that my conceptions of culture were not as clear-cut as he had hoped." "He seems to have been fairly frank," said Rose. "He was frank, but not uncivil," said Father Payne. "He did not deride my absence of definiteness, he only deplored it. But I really got more out of the subsequent talk. We adjourned to a sort of portico, a pretty place looking on to a formal garden: it was really very charmingly done--a clever fake of an, old garden, but with nothing really beautiful about it. It looked as if no one had ever lived in it, though the illusion of age was skilfully contrived--old paving-stones, old bricks, old lead vases, but all looking as if they were shy, and had only been just introduced to each other. There was no harmony of use about it. But the talk--that was the amazing thing! Such pleasant intelligent people, nice smiling women, courteous grizzled men. By Jove, there wasn't a single writer or artist or musician that they didn't seem to know intimately! It was a literary party, I gathered: but even so there was a haze of politics and society about it--vistas of politicians and personages of every kind, all known intimately, all of them quoted, everything heard and whispered in the background of events--we had no foregrounds, I can tell you, nothing second-hand, no concealments or reticences. Everyone in the world worth knowing seemed to have confided their secrets to that group. It was a privilege, I can tell you! We simply swam in influences and authenticities. I seemed to be in the innermost shrine of the world's forces--where they get the steam up, you know!" "But who are these people, after all?" said Rose. "My dear Rose!" said Father Payne. "You mustn't destroy my illusions in that majestic manner! What would I not have given to be able to ask myself that question! To me they were simply the innermost circle, to whom the writers and artists of the day told their dreams, and from whom they sought encouragement and sympathy. That was enough for me. I stored my memory with anecdotes and noble names, like the man in _Pride and Prejudice_." "But what did it all come to?" said Rose. "Well," said Father Payne, "to tell you the truth, it didn't amount to very much! At the time I was dazzled and stupefied--but subsequent reflection has convinced me that the cooking was better than the food, so to speak." "You mean that it was mostly humbug?" said Rose. "Well, I wouldn't go quite as far as that," said Father Payne, "but it was not very nutritive--no, the nutriment was lacking! Come, I'll tell you frankly what I did think, as I came away. I thought these pretty people very adventurous, very quick, very friendly. But I don't truly think they were interested in the real thing at all--only interested in the words of the wise, and in the unconsidered trifles of the Major Prophets, so to speak. I didn't think it exactly pretentious--but they obviously only cared for people of established reputation. They didn't admire the ideas behind, only the reputations of the people who said the things. They had undoubtedly seen and heard the great people--I confess it amazed me to think how easily the men of mark can be exploited--but I did not discern that they cared about the things represented,--only about the representatives. The American was different. He, I think, cared about the ideas, though he cared about them in the wrong way. I mean that he claimed to find everything distinct, whereas the big things are naturally indistinct. They loom up in a shadowy way, and the American was examining them through field-glasses. But my other friends seemed to me to be only interested in the people who had the entrée, so to speak--the priests of the shrine. They had noticed everything that doesn't matter about the high and holy ones--how they looked, spoke, dressed, behaved. It was awfully clever, some of it; one of the women imitated Legard the essayist down to the ground--the way he pontificates, you know--but nothing else. They were simply interested in the great men, and not interested in what make the great men different from other people, but simply in their resemblance to other people. Even great people have to eat, you know! Legard himself eats, though it's a leisurely process; and this woman imitated the way he forked up a bit, held it till the bit dropped off, and put the empty fork into his mouth. It was excruciatingly funny--I'll admit that. But they missed the point, after all. They didn't care about Legard's books a bit--they cared much more about that funny cameo ring he wears on his tie!" "It all seems to me horribly vulgar," said Kaye. "No, it was no more vulgar than a dance of gnats," said Father Payne. "They were all alive, those people. They were just gnats, now I come to think of it! They had stung all the great men of the day--even drawn a little blood--and they were intoxicated by it. Mind, I don't say that it is worth doing, that kind of thing! But they were having their fun--and the only mistake they made was in thinking they cared about these people for the right reasons. No, the only really rueful part of the business was the revelation to me of what the great people can put up with, in the way of being fêted, and the extent to which they seem able to give themselves away to these pretty women. It must be enervating, I think, and even exhausting, to be so pawed and caressed; but it's natural enough, and if it amuses them, I'm not going to find fault. My only fear is that Legard and the rest think they are really _living_ with these people. They are not doing that; they are only being roped in for the fun of the performance. These charming ladies just ensnare the big people, make them chatter, and then get together, as they did to-day, and compare the locks of hair they have snipped from their Samsons. But it isn't a bit malicious--it's simply childish; and, by Jove, I enjoyed myself tremendously. Now, don't pull a long face, Kaye! Of course it was very cheap--and I don't say that anyone ought to enjoy that sort of thing enough to pursue it. But if it comes in my way, why, it is like a dish of sweetmeats! I don't approve of it, but it was like a story out of Boccaccio, full of life and zest, even though the pestilence was at work down in the city. We must not think ill of life too easily! I don't say that these people are living what is called the highest life. But, after all, I only saw them amusing themselves. There were some children about, nice children, sensibly dressed, well-behaved, full of go, and yet properly drilled. These women are good wives and good mothers; and I expect they have both spirit and tenderness, when either is wanted. I'm not going to bemoan their light-mindedness; at all events, I thought it was very pleasant, and they were very good to me. They saw I wasn't a first-hander or a thoroughbred, and they made it easy for me. No, it was a happy time for me--and, by George, how they fed us! I expect the women looked after all that. I daresay that, as far as economics go, it was all wrong, and that these people are only a sort of scum on the surface of society. But it is a pretty scum, shot with bright colours. Anyhow, it is no good beginning by trying to alter _them_! If you could alter everything else, they would fall into line, because they are good-humoured and sensible. And as long as people are kindly and full of life, I shall not complain; I would rather have that than a dreary high-mindedness." Father Payne rose. "Oh, do go on, Father!" said someone. "No, my boy," said Father Payne, "I'm boiling over with impressions--rooms, carpets, china, flowers, ladies' dresses! But that must all settle down a bit. In a few days I'll interrogate my memory, like Wordsworth, and see if there is anything of permanent worth there!" XLVIII OF AMBIGUITY Father Payne had been listening to some work of mine: and he said at the end, "That is graceful enough, and rather attractive--but it has a great fault: it is sometimes ambiguous. Several of your sentences can have more than one meaning. I remember once at Oxford," he said, smiling, "that Collins, one of our lecturers, had been going through a translation-paper with me, and had told me three quite distinct ways of rendering a sentence, each backed by a great scholar. I asked him, I remember, whether that meant that the original writer--it was Livy, I think--had been in any doubt as to what his words were meant to convey. He laughed, and said, 'No, I don't imagine that Livy intended to make his meaning obscure. I expect, if we took the passage to him with the three renderings, he would deride at least two of them, and possibly all three, and would point out that we simply did not know the usage of some word or phrase which would have been absolutely clear to a contemporary reader,' But Collins went on to say that there might also be a real ambiguity about the passage: and then he quoted the supposed remark of the bishop who declined to wear gaiters, and said, 'I shall wear no clothes to distinguish myself from my fellow-Christians.' This was printed in his biography, 'I shall wear no clothes, to distinguish myself from my fellow-Christians.' 'That sentence may be fairly called ambiguous,' Collins said, 'when its sense so much depends upon punctuation.' "Now," Father Payne went on, "you must remember, in writing, that you write for the eye, you don't write for the ear. A book isn't primarily meant to be read aloud: and you mustn't resort to tricks of emphasis, such as italics and so forth, which can only be rendered by voice-inflections. It is your first duty to be absolutely clear and limpid. You mustn't write long involved sentences which necessitate the mind holding in solution a lot of qualifying clauses. You must break up your sentences, and even repeat yourself rather than be confused. There is no beauty of style like perfect clearness, and in all writing mystification is a fault. You ought never to make your reader turn back to the page before to see what you are driving at." "But surely," I said, "there are great writers like Carlyle and George Meredith, for instance, who have been difficult to understand." "Yes," said Father Payne, "but that's a fault, though it may be a magnificent fault. It may mean such a pressure of ideas and images that the thing can hardly be written at length--and it may give you a sense of exuberant greatness. You may have to forgive a great writer his exuberance--you may even have to forgive him the trouble it costs to penetrate his exact thoughts, for the sake of steeping yourself in the rush and splendour of the style. But obscurity isn't a thing to aim at for anyone who is trying to write; it may be, in the case of a great writer, a sort of vociferousness which intoxicates you: and the man may convey a kind of inspiration by his very obscurities. But it must be an impulse which simply overpowers him--it mustn't be an effect deliberately planned. You may perhaps feel the bigness of the thought all the more in the presence of a writer who, for all his power, can't confine the stream, and comes down in a cataract of words. But if you begin trying for an effect, it is like splashing about in a pool to make people believe it is a rushing river. The movement mustn't be your own contortions, but the speed of the stream. If you want to see the bad side of obscurity, look at Browning. The idea is often a very simple one when you get at it; it's only obscure because it is conveyed by hints and jerks and nudges. In _Pickwick_, for instance, one does not read Jingle's remarks for the underlying thought--only for the pleasure of seeing how he leaps from stepping-stone to stepping-stone. You mustn't confuse the pleasure of unravelling thought with the pleasure of thought. If you can make yourself so attractive to your readers that they love your explosions and collisions, and say with a half-compassionate delight--'how characteristic--but it _is_ worth while unravelling!' you have achieved a certain success. But the chance is that future ages won't trouble you much. Disentangling obscurities isn't bad fun for contemporaries, who know by instinct the nuances of words; but it becomes simply a bore a century later, when people are not interested in old nuances, but simply want to know what you thought. Only scholars love obscurity--but then they are detectives, and not readers." "But isn't it possible to be too obvious?" I said--"to get a namby-pamby way of writing--what a reviewer calls painfully kind?" "Well, of course, the thought must be tough," said Father Payne, "but it's your duty to make a tough thought digestible, not to make an easy thought tough. No, my boy, you may depend upon it that, if you want people to attend to you, you must be intelligible. Don't, for God's sake, think that Carlyle or Meredith or Browning _meant_ to be unintelligible, or even thought they were being unintelligible. They were only thinking too concisely or too rapidly for the reader. But don't you try to produce that sort of illusion. Try to say things like Newman or Ruskin--big, beautiful, profound, delicate things, with an almost childlike naïveté. That is the most exquisite kind of charm, when you find that half-a-dozen of the simplest words in the language have expressed a thought which holds you spell-bound with its truth and loveliness. That is what lasts. People want to be fed, not to be drugged: That, I believe, is the real difference between romance and realism, and I am one of those who gratefully believe that romance has had its day. We want the romance that comes from realism, not the romance which comes by neglecting it. But that's another subject." XLIX OF BELIEF "I don't think there is a single word in the English language," said Father Payne, "which is responsible for such unhappiness as the word 'believe.' It is used with a dozen shades of intensity by people; and yet it is the one word which is always being used in theological argument, and which, like the ungodly, 'is a sword of thine.'" "I always mean the same thing by it, I believe!" I said. "Excuse me," said Father Payne, "but if you will take observations of your talk, you will find you do not. At any rate, _I_ do not, and I am more careful about the words I use than many people. If I have a heated argument with a man, and think he takes up a perverse or eccentric opinion, I am quite capable of saying of him, 'I believe he must be crazy.' Now such a sentence to a foreigner would carry the evidence of a deep and clear conviction; but, as I say it, it doesn't really express the faintest suspicion of my opponent's sanity--it means little more than that I don't agree with him; and yet when I say, 'If there is one thing that I do believe, it is in the actual existence of evil,' it means a slowly accumulated and almost unalterable opinion. In the Creed, one uses the word 'believe' as the nearest that conviction can come to knowledge, short of indisputable evidence; and some people go further still, and use it as if it meant an almost higher sort of knowledge. The real meaning is just what Tennyson said, "'Believing where we cannot prove,' where it signifies a conviction which we cannot actually test, but on which we are content to act." "But," I said, "if I say to a friend--'You are a real sceptic--you seem to me to believe nothing,' I mean to imply something almost cynical." "Yes," said Father Payne, "you mean that he has no enthusiasm or ideals, and holds nothing sacred, because those are just the convictions which cannot be proved." "Some people," I said, "seem to me simply to mean by the word 'believe' that they hold an opinion in such a way that they would be upset if it turned out to be untrue." "Yes," said Father Payne, "it is the intrusion of the nasty personal element which spoils the word. Belief ought to be a very impersonal thing. It ought simply to mean a convergence of your own experience on a certain result; but most people are quite as much annoyed at your disbelieving a thing which they _believe_, as at your disbelieving a thing which they _know_. You ought never to be annoyed at people not accepting your conclusions, and still less when your conclusion is partly intuition, and does not depend upon evidence. This is the sort of scale I have in my mind--'practically certain, probable, possible, unproved, unprovable.' Now, I am so far sceptical that, apart from practical certainties, which are just the convergence of all normal experience, the fact that any one person or any number of persons believed a thing would not affect my own faith in it, unless I felt sure that the people who believed it were fully as sceptical as and more clear-headed than myself, and had really gone into the evidence. But even so, as I said, the things most worth believing are the things that can't be proved by any evidence." "What sort of things do you mean?" I said. "Well, a thing like the existence of God," said Father Payne; "that at best is only a generalisation from an immense range of facts, and a special interpretation of them. But the amazing thing in the world is the vast number of people who are content to believe important things on hearsay, because, on the whole, they love or trust the people who teach them. The word 'believing,' when I use it, doesn't mean that a good man says it, and that I can't disprove it, but a sort of vital assent, so that I can act upon the belief almost as if I knew it. It means for me some sort of personal experience, I could not love or hate a man on hearsay, just because people whom I loved or trusted said that they either loved or hated him. I might be so far biassed that I should meet him expecting to find him either lovable or hateful, but I could not adopt a personal emotion on hearsay--that must be the result of a personal experience; and yet the adoption of a personal emotion on hearsay is just what most people seem to me to be able to do. I might believe that a man had done good or bad things on hearsay: but I could have no feeling about him unless I had seen him. I could not either love or hate a historical personage: the most I could do would be to like or dislike all stories told about him so much that I could wish to have met him or not to have met him." "Isn't it a question of imagination?" I said. "Yes," said Father Payne, "and most ordinary religious belief is simply an imaginative personification: but that is a childish affair, not a reasonable affair: and that is why most religious teachers praise what they call a childlike faith, but what is really a childish faith. I don't honestly think that our religious beliefs ought to be a dog-like kind of fidelity, unresentful, unquestioning, undignified confidence. The love of Bill Sikes' terrier for Bill Sikes doesn't make Bill Sikes an admirable or lovable man: it only proves his terrier a credulous terrier. The only reason why we admire such a faith is because it is pleasant and convenient to be blindly trusted, and to feel that we can behave as badly as we like without alienating that sort of trust. I have sometimes thought that the deepest anguish of God must lie in His being loved and trusted by people to whom He has been unable so far to show Himself a loving and careful Father. I don't believe God can wish us to love Him in an unreasonable way--I mean by simply overlooking the bad side of things. A man, let us say, with some hideous inherited disease or vice ought not to love God, unless he can be sure that God has not made him the helpless victim of disease or vice." "But may the victim not have a faith in God through and in spite of a disease or a vice?" I said. "Yes, if he really faces the fact of the evil," said Father Payne; "but he must not believe in a muddled sort of way, with a sort of abject timidity, that God may have brought about his weakness or his degradation. He ought to be quite clear that God wishes him to be free and happy and strong, and grieves, like Himself, over the miserable limitation. He must have no sort of doubt that God wishes him to be healthy or clean-minded. Then he can pray, he can strive for patience, he can fight his fault: he can't do it, if he really thinks that God allowed him to be born with this horror in his blood. If God could have avoided evil--I don't mean the sharp sorrows and trials which have a noble thing behind them, but the ailments of body or soul that simply debase and degrade--if He could have done without evil, but let it creep in, then it seems to me a hopeless business, trying to believe in God's power or His goodness. I believe in the reality of evil, and I believe too in God with all my heart and soul. But I stand with God against evil: I don't stand facing God, and not knowing on which side He is fighting. Everything may not be evil which I think evil: but there are some sorts of evil--cruelty, selfish lust, spite, hatred, which I believe that God detests as much as and far more than I detest them. That is what I mean by a belief, a conviction which I cannot prove, but on which I can and do act." "But am I justified in not sharing that belief?" I said. "Yes," said Father Payne; "if you, in the light of your experience, think otherwise, you need not believe it--you cannot believe it! But it is the only interpretation of the facts which sets me free to love God, which I do not only with heart and soul, but with mind and strength. If I could believe that God had ever tampered with what I feel to be evil, ever permitted it to exist, ever condoned it, I could fear Him--I should fear Him with a ghastly fear--but I could not believe in Him, or love Him as I do." L OF HONOUR "No, I couldn't do that," said Lestrange to Barthrop, in one of those unhappy little silences which so often seemed to lie in wait for Lestrange's most platitudinal utterances. "It wouldn't be consistent with a sense of honour." Father Payne gave a chuckle, and Lestrange looked pained, "Oughtn't one to have a code of honour?" he said. "Why, certainly!" said Father Payne, "but you mustn't impose your code on other people. You mustn't take for granted that your idea of honour means the same thing to everyone. Suppose you lost money at cards, and called it a debt of honour, and thought it dishonourable not to pay it; while at the same time you didn't think it dishonourable not to pay a poor tradesman whose goods you had ordered and consumed, am I bound to accept your code of honour?" "But there _is_ a difference there," said Rose, "because the man to whom you owe a gambling debt can't recover it by law, while a tradesman can. All that a debt of honour means is that you feel bound to pay it, though you are not legally compelled to do so." "Yes," said Father Payne, "that is so, in a sense, I admit. But still, one mustn't shelter oneself behind big words unless one is certain that they mean exactly the same to one's opponent. When I was at school there was a master who used to be fond, as he said, of putting the boys on their honour: but he never asked if we accepted the obligation. If I say, 'I give you my honour not to do a thing,' then I can be called dishonourable if I don't do it; but you can't put me on my honour unless I consent." "But surely honour means something quite definite?" said Lestrange. "Tell me what it is, then," said Father Payne. "Rose, you seem to have ideas on the subject. What do you mean by honour?" "Isn't it one of the ultimate things," said Rose, "which can't be defined, but which everyone recognises--like blue and green, let me say, or sweet and bitter?" "No," said Father Payne; "at least I don't think so. It seems to me rather an artificial thing, because it varies at different dates. It used, not so long ago, to be considered an affair of honour to fight a duel with a man if he threw a glass of wine in your face. And what do you make of the old proverb, 'All is fair in love and war'? That seems to mean that honour is not a universal obligation. Then there's the phrase, 'Honour among thieves,' which isn't a very exalted one; or the curious thing, schoolboy honour, which dictates that a boy may know that another boy is being disgracefully and cruelly bullied, and yet is prevented by his sense of honour from telling a master about it. I admit that honour is a fine idea; but it seems to me to cover a lot of things in human nature which are very bad indeed. It may mean only a sort of prudential arrangement which binds a set of people together for a bad purpose, because they do not choose to be interfered with, and yet call the thing honour for the sake of the associations." "Yes, I don't think it is necessarily a moral thing," said Rose, "but that doesn't seem to me to matter. It is simply an obligation, pledged or implied, that you will act in a certain way. It may conflict with a moral obligation, and then you have to decide which is the greater obligation." "Yes, that is perfectly true," said Father Payne, "and as long as you admit that honour isn't in itself bound to be a good thing, that is all I want. Lestrange seemed to use it as if you had only got to say that a motive was honourable, to have it recognised by everyone as right. Take the case of what are called 'national obligations.' A certain party in the State, having secured a majority of votes, enters into some arrangement--a treaty, let us say--without consulting the nation. Is that held to be for ever binding on a nation till it is formally repealed? Is it dishonourable for a citizen belonging, let us say, to the minority which is not represented by the particular Government which makes the treaty, to repudiate it?" "Yes, I think it may be fairly called dishonourable," said Rose; "there is an obligation on a citizen to back up his Government." "Then I should feel that honour is a very complicated thing," said Father Payne. "If a citizen thinks a treaty dishonourable, and if it is also dishonourable for him to repudiate it, it seems to me he is dishonourable whatever he does. He is obliged to consent for the sake of honour to a dishonourable thing being done. It seems to me perilously like a director of a firm having to condone fraudulent practices, because it is dishonourable to give his fellow-directors away. It is this conflict between individual honour and public honour which puzzles me, and which makes me feel that honour isn't a simple thing at all. A high conception of private honour seems to me a very fine thing indeed. I mean by it a profound hatred of anything false or cowardly or perfidious, and a loathing of anything insincere or treacherous. That sort of proud and stainless chivalry seems to me to be about the brightest thing we can discern, and the furthest beauty we can recognise. But honour seems also, according to you, to be a principle to which you can be committed by a majority of votes, whether you approve of it or not; and then it seems to me a merely detestable thing, if you can be bound by honour to acquiesce in something which you honestly believe to be base. It seems to me a case of what Tennyson describes: "'His honour rooted in dishonour stood, And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.'" "But surely social obligations must often conflict with private beliefs," said Rose. "A nation or a society has got to act collectively, and a minority must be over-ridden." "I quite agree," said Father Payne, "but why mix up honour with it at all? I don't object to a man who conscientiously dissents to some national move being told that he must lump it. But if he is called dishonourable for dissenting, then honour does not seem to me to be a real word at all, but only a term of abuse for a man who objects to some concerted plan. You can't make a dishonest thing honest because a majority choose to do it--at least I do not believe that morality is purely a matter of majorities, or that the dishonour of one century can become the honour of the next. I am inclined to believe just the opposite. I believe that the man who has so sensitive a conscience about what is honourable or not, that he is called a Quixotic fool by his contemporaries, is far more likely to be right than the coarser majority who only see that a certain course is expedient. I should believe that he saw some truth of morality clearly which the rougher sort of minds did not see. The saint--call him what you like--is only the man who stands higher up, and sees the sunrise before the people who stand lower down." "But everyone has a right to his own sense of honour," said Rose. "Certainly," said Father Payne, "but you must be certain that a man's sense of honour is lower than your own before you call him dishonourable for differing from you. If a man is less scrupulous than myself, I may think him dishonourable, if I also think that he knows better. But what I do not think that any of us has a right to do is to call a man dishonourable if he has more scruples than oneself. He may be over-scrupulous, but the chances are that any man who sacrifices his convenience to a scruple has a higher sense of honour than the man who throws over a scruple for the sake of his convenience. That is why I think honour is a dangerous word to play with, because it is so often used to frighten people who don't fall in with what is for the convenience of a gang." "But surely," said Rose, "morality is after all only a word for what society agrees to consider moral." "Yes, in a sense that is so," said Father Payne; "it is only a word to express a phenomenon. But I believe that morality is a real thing, for all that; and that our conceptions of it get clearer, as the world goes on. It is something outside of us--a law of nature if you like--which we are learning; not merely a thing which we invent for our convenience. But that is too big a business to go into now." LI OF WORK I cannot remember now what public man it was who had died of a breakdown from overwork, but I heard Father Payne say, after dinner, referring to the event, "I wish it to be clearly understood that I think a man who dies of deliberate or reckless overwork is a victim of self-indulgence. It is nothing more or less than giving way to a passion. I am as sure as I can be of anything," he went on, "that a thousand years hence that will be recognised by human beings, and that they will feel it to be as shameful for a man to die of spontaneous overwork as for him to die of drink or gluttony or any other vice. I don't of course mean," he added, "the cases of men who have had some definite and critical job to carry through, and have decided that the risk is worth running. A man has always the right to risk his life for a definite aim--but I mean the men--you can see it in biographies, and the worst of it is that they are often the biographies of clergymen--who, in spite of physical warnings, and entreaties from their friends, and definite statements by their doctors that they are shortening their lives by labour, still cannot stop, or, if they stop, begin again too soon. No man has any right to think his work so important as that--to take unimportant things too seriously is the worst sort of frivolity." "But isn't it the finer kind of people," said Kaye, "who make the mistake?" "Yes, of course," said Father Payne, "but so, too, if you look into it, you will too often find that it is the finer kinds of imaginative people who take to drink and drugs. I remember," he added, "once going to see a poor friend of mine in an asylum, and the old doctor at the head of it said, 'It isn't the stupid people who come here, Mr. Payne; it is the clever people!'" "But does not your principle about the right to risk one's life hold good here too?" said Barthrop. "No, I think not," said Father Payne. "A man may choose to try a dangerous thing, climb a mountain, explore a perilous country, go up in a balloon, where an element of risk is inseparable from the experiment; but ordinary work isn't risky in itself. Why," he added, "I was reading a book the other day, the life of Fitzherbert, you know, who was a man of prodigious laboriousness, who died early, worn out. He had an impossible standard of perfection. If he had to write an article, he read all the literature on the subject over and over; he wrote and re-wrote his stuff. There was a case quoted in the book, as if it were to Fitzherbert's credit, when he had to send in an article by a certain date--just a _Quarterly_ article. It had to go in on the Friday. He had finished it on the Monday before, when his mind misgave him. He destroyed the article, began again, sate up all Monday night and all Wednesday night, and wrote the whole thing afresh. He was laid up for a month after it. That is simply the act of an unbalanced mind." "I can't help feeling that there is something fine about it," said Vincent. "There is always something fine about unreasonable things," said Father Payne, "or in a man making a sacrifice for an idea. But there is an entire lack of proportion about this performance; and if Fitzherbert thought his work so valuable as that, then he ought to have reflected that he was simply limiting his future output by this reckless expenditure of force. But the whole case was a sad one--Fitzherbert worked in a ghastly way as a boy and as a young man. He had a very broad outlook, he was interested in everything; and when he was at Oxford, he told a friend that he was discovering a hundred subjects on which he hoped to have a say. Well, then, the middle part of his life was spent in preparing himself, under the same sort of pressure, to entitle himself to have his say: and then came his first bad break-down--and the end of his life, which was a wretched period, was spent in finding elaborate reasons why he should not commit himself to any opinion whatever. If he was asked his opinion, he always said he had not studied the subject adequately. That seems to me the life of a man suffering from a sort of nightmare. Things are not so deep as all that--at least, if no one is to give an opinion on any point until he has mastered the whole sum of human opinion on the point, then we shall never make any progress at all. I remember Fitzherbert's strong condemnation of Ruskin, for giving his opinion cursorily on all subjects of importance. Yet Ruskin did a greater work than Fitzherbert, because he at least made people think, while Fitzherbert only prevented them from daring to think. I don't mean that people ought to feel competent to express an opinion on everything--yet even that habit cures itself, because, if you do it, no one pays any attention. But if a man has gone into a subject with decent care, or if he has reflected upon problems of which the data are fairly well known, I think there is every reason why he should give an opinion. It is very easy to be too conscientious. There are plenty of fine hints of opinions in Fitzherbert's letters. You could make a very good book of _Pensées_ out of them--he had a clear, forcible, and original mind; but he did not dare to say what he thought; and you may remember that if he was ever sharply criticised, he felt it deeply, as a sort of imputation of dishonesty. A man must not go down before criticism like that." "But everyone must do their work in their own way?" said I. "Yes," said Father Payne, "but Fitzherbert ended by doing nothing--he only snubbed and silenced his own fine mind, by giving way to this unholy passion for examining things. No, I want you fellows to have common-sense about these matters. There is a great deal too much sanctity attached to print. The written word--there's a dark superstition about it! A man has as much right to write as he has to talk. He may say to the world, to his unseen and unknown friends in it, whatever he may say to his intimates. You should write just as you could talk to any gentleman, with the same courtesy and frankness. Of course you must run the risk of your book falling into the hands of ill-bred people--that can't be helped--and of course you must not pretend that your book is the result of deep and copious labour, if it is nothing of the kind. But heart-breaking toil is not the only qualification for speaking. There are plenty of complicated little topics--all the problems which arise from the combination of individuals into societies--which people ought to think about, and which are really everyone's concern. The interplay, I mean, of human relations--the moral, religious, social, intellectual ideas--which have all got to be co-ordinated. A man does not need immense knowledge for that; in fact if he studies the history of such things too deeply, he is often apt to forget that old interpreters of such things had not got all the present data. There is an immense future before writers who will interest people in and familiarise them with ideas. Some people get absorbed in life in the wrong way, just bent on acquisition and comfort--some people, again, live as if they were staying in somebody else's house--but what you want to induce men and women to do is to realise the sort of thing that life really is, and to attempt to put it in some kind of proportion. The mischief done by men like Fitzherbert, who was fond of snapping at people who produced ideas for inspection, is that ordinary people get to confuse wisdom with knowledge; and that won't do! And so the man who sets to work like Fitzherbert loses his alertness and his observation, with the result that instead of bringing a very fresh and incisive mind to bear on life, he loses his way in books, and falls a victim to the awful passion for feeling able to despise other people's opinions." "But isn't it possible," said Vincent, "for a man to get the best out of life for himself by a sort of passion for exact knowledge--like the man in the Grammarian's funeral, I mean?" "Personally," said Father Payne, "I always think that Browning did a lot of harm by that poem. He was glorifying a real vice, I think. If the Grammarian had said to himself, 'There is all this nasty work to be done by someone; I can do it, and I can save other people having to waste their time over it, by doing it once and for all,' it would have been different. But I think he was partly indulging a poor sort of vanity by just determining to know what no other man knew. The point of work is twofold. It is partly good for the worker, to tranquillise his life and to reduce it to a certain order and discipline; but you mustn't do it only for the sake of your own tranquillity, any more than the artist must work for the sake of luxuriating in his own emotions. You must have something to give away: you must have some idea of combination, of helping other people to find each other and to understand each other. It is vicious to isolate yourself for your own satisfaction. Fitzherbert and the Grammarian were really misers. They just accumulated, and enjoyed the pleasure of having their own minds clear. That doesn't seem to me in itself to be a fine thing at all. It is simply the oldest of temptations, 'Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.' That is the danger of the critical mind, that it says, 'I will know within myself what is good,' The only excuse for the critical mind is to help people not to be taken in by what is bad. It is better to be like Plato and Ruskin, to make mistakes, to have prejudices, to be unfair, even to be silly, because at least you encourage people to think that life is interesting--and that is about as much as any of us can do." LII OF COMPANIONSHIP "Isn't it rather odd," said someone to Father Payne after dinner, "that great men have as a rule rather preferred the company of their inferiors to the company of their equals?" "I don't know," said Father Payne; "I think it's rather natural! By Jove, I know that a very little of the society of a really superior person goes a very long way with me. No, I think it is what one would expect. When the great man is at work, he is on the strain and doing the lofty business for all he is worth; when he is at leisure, he doesn't want any more strain--he has done his full share." "But take the big groups," said someone, "like the Wordsworth set, or the pre-Raphaelite set--or take any of the great biographies--the big men of any time seem always to have been mutual friends and correspondents. You have letters to and from Ruskin from and to all the great men of his day." "Letters, yes!" said Father Payne; "of course the great men know each other, and respect each other; but they don't tend to coagulate. They relish an occasional meeting and an occasional letter, and they say how deeply they regret not seeing more of each other--but they tend to seek the repose of their own less exalted circle. The man who has fine ideas prefers his own disciples to the men who have got a different set of fine ideas. That is natural enough! You want to impart the ideas you believe in--you don't want to argue about them, or to have them knocked out of your hand. Depend upon it, the society of an intelligent person, who can understand you enough to stimulate you, and who is grateful for your talk, is much pleasanter, and indeed more fruitful, than the society of a man who is fully as intelligent as yourself, and thinks some of your conclusions to be rot!" "But doesn't all that encourage people to be prophets?" Vincent said. "One of the depressing things about great men is that they grow to consider themselves a sort of special providence--the originators of great ideas rather than the interpreters." "Yes," said Father Payne, "of course the little coteries and courts of great men are rather repulsive. But the best people don't do that. They live contentedly in a circle which combines with its admiration for the hero a comfortable feeling that, if other people knew what they know, they wouldn't feel genius to be quite so extraordinary as is commonly believed. And we must remember, too, that most great men seem greater afterwards than they did at the time. More of a treat and a privilege, I mean." "Do you think one ought to try to catch a sight of great men who are contemporaries?" said I. "Yes, a sight, I think," said Father Payne. "It's a pleasant thing to realise how your big man sits and looks and talks, what his house is like, and so forth. I have often rather regretted I haven't had the curiosity to get a sight of the giants. It helps you to understand them. I remember a pleasant old gentleman, Vinter by name, who lived in London. Vinter the novelist was his son. When young Vinter became famous for a bit, and people wanted to know him, old Vinter made a glorious rule. He told his son that he might invite any well-known person he liked to the house, to luncheon or dinner--but that unless he made a special exception in any one's favour, they were not to be invited again. There's a fine old Epicurean! He liked to realise what the bosses looked like, but he wasn't going to be bothered by having to talk respectfully to them time after time." "But that's rather tame," said Vincent. "The point surely would be to get to know a big man well." "Why, yes," said Father Payne, "but Vinter was a wise _old_ man; now I should say to any _young_ man who had a chance of really having a friendship with a great man, 'Of course, take it and thank your stars!' But I shouldn't advise any young man to make a collection of celebrities, or to go about hunting them. In fact I think for an original young man, it is apt to be rather dangerous to have a real friendship with a great man. There's a danger of being diverted from your own line, and of being drawn into imitative worship. A very moderate use of great men in person should suffice anyone. Your real friends ought to be people with whom you are entirely at ease, not people whom you reverence and defer to. It's better to learn to bark than to wag your tail. I don't think the big men themselves often begin by being disciples." "Then who _is_ worth seeing?" said Vincent. "There must be somebody!" "Why, to be frank," said Father Payne, "agreeable men like me, who haven't got too much authority, and are not surrounded by glory and worship! I'm interested in most things, and have learnt more or less how to talk--you look out for ingenious and kindly elderly men, who haven't been too successful, and haven't frozen into Tories, and yet have had some experience;--men of humour and liveliness, who have a rather more extended horizon than yourself, and who will listen to what you say instead of shutting you up, and saying 'Very likely' as Newman did--after which you were expected to go into a corner and think over your sins! Or clever, sympathetic, interesting women--not too young. Those are the people whom it is worth taking a little trouble to see." "But what about the young people!" said Vincent. "Oh, that will look after itself," said Father Payne. "There's no difficulty about that! You asked me whom it was worth while taking some trouble to see, and I prescribe a very occasional great man, and a good many well-bred, cultivated, experienced, civil men and women. It isn't very easy to find, that sort of society, for a young man; but it is worth trying for." "But do you mean that you should pursue good talk?" said Vincent. "A little, I think," said Father Payne; "there's a good deal of art in it--unconscious art in England, probably--but much of our life is spent in talking, and there's no reason why we shouldn't learn how to get the best and the most out of talk--how to start a subject, and when to drop it--how to say the sort of things which make other people want to join in, and so on. Of course you can't learn to talk unless you have a lot to say, but you can learn _how_ to do it, and better still how _not_ to do it. I used to feel in the old days, when I met a clever man--it was rare enough, alas!--how much more I could have got out of him if I had known how to do the trick. It's a great pleasure, good talk; and the fact that it is so tiring shows what a real pleasure it must be. But a man with whom you can only talk _hard_ isn't a companion--he's an adversary in a game. There have been times in my life when I have had a real tough talker staying here with me, when I have suffered from crushing intellectual fatigue, and felt inclined to say, like Elijah, 'Take away my life, for I am not better than my fathers.' That is the strange thing to me about most human beings--the extent to which they seem able to talk without being tired. I agree with Walter Scott, when he said, 'If the question was eternal company without the power of retiring within myself, or solitary confinement for life, I should say, "Turnkey, lock the cell!"' Companionship doesn't seem to me the normal thing. Solitude is the normal thing, with a few bits of talk thrown in, like meals, for refreshment. But you can't lay down rules for people about it. Some people are simply gregarious, and twitter together like starlings in a shrubbery: that isn't talk--it's only a series of signals and exclamations. The danger of solitude is that the machinery runs just as you wish it to run--and that wears it out." "But isn't your whole idea of talk rather strenuous--a little artificial?" said Vincent. "Not more so than fixed meals," said Father Payne, "or regular exercise. But, of course silent companionship is the greatest boon of all. I have a belief that even in silent companionship there is a real intermingling of vital and mental currents, and that one is much pervaded and affected by the people one lives with, even if one does not talk to them. The very sight of some people is as bad as an argument! The ideal thing, of course, is to have a few intimate friends and some comfortable acquaintances. But I am rather a fatalist about friendship, and I think that most of us get about as much as we deserve. Anyhow, it's all worth taking some trouble about; and most people make the mistake of not taking any trouble or putting themselves about; and that's not the way to behave!" LIII OF MONEY I suppose I had said something high-minded, showing a supposed contempt of money, for Father Payne looked at me in silence. "You mustn't say such things," said he, at last. "I'll tell you why! What you said was perfectly genuine, and I have no doubt you feel it--but, if I may say so, it's like talking about a place where you have never been, as if you had visited it, when you have only read about it in the guide-book. I don't mean that you wish to deceive for an instant--but you simply don't know! That's the tragic thing about money--that it is both so important and so unimportant. If you have enough money, you need never give it a thought; if you haven't, it's the devil! It's like health--no one who hasn't been on the wrong side of the dividing line knows what a horrible place the wrong side is. Those two things--I daresay there are others--poverty and ill-health--put a man on the rack. The healthy man, and the man with a sufficient income, are apt to think that the poor man and the ill man make a great fuss about very little. I don't know about ill-health, but by George, I know all about poverty--and I'll tell you once for all. For twenty years I was poor, and this is what that means. To be tied hand and foot to a piece of hideous drudgery--morning by morning, month by month, and with the consciousness too that, if health fails you, or if you lose your work, you will either starve or have to sponge on your friends--never to be able to do what you like or go where you like--to know that the world is full of beautiful places, delightful people, interesting ideas, books, talk, art, music--to sicken for all these things, and not even to have the time or energy to get hold of such scraps of them as can be found cheap in London--to feel time slipping away, and all your instincts for beautiful things unused and unsated--to live a solitary, grubby, nasty life--never able to entertain a friend, or to go a trip with a friend, or to do a kindness, or to help anyone generously--and yet to feel that with an income which many people would regard as ridiculously inadequate, you could do most of these things--the slavery, the bondage, the dreariness of it!" He broke off, much moved. "But," said I, "don't many quite poor people live happily and contentedly and kindly with minute incomes?" "Why, yes," said Father Payne, "of course they do!--and I'm willing enough to admit that I ought to have done better than I did. But then I had been brought up differently, and by the time I had done with Oxford, I had all the tastes and instincts of the well-to-do man. That was the mischief, that I had tasted freedom. Of course, if I had been cast in a stronger and nobler mould, it would have been different--but all my senses had been acutely developed, my faculties of interest and enjoyment and appreciation--not gross things, mind you, nor feelings that _ought_ to be starved, but just the wholesome delights of the well-educated man. I did not want to be extravagant, and I knew too that there were millions of people in the same case as myself. There was every reason why I should behave decently about it! If I had been really interested in my work, I could have done better--but I did not believe in the value of my work--I taught men, not to educate them, but that they might pass an examination and never look at the beastly stuff again. Whenever I reached the point at which I became interested, I had to hold my hand. And then, too, the work tired me without exercising my mind. There were the vacations, of course--but I couldn't afford to leave London--I simply lived in hell. I don't say that I didn't get some discipline out of it--and my escape gave me a stock of gratitude and delight that has been simply inexhaustible. The misery of it for me was that I had to live an unreal life. If I had been poor, and had had my leisure, and had worked at things I cared about, with a set, let us say, of young artists, all working too at things which they cared about, it would have been different--but I hadn't the energy left to make friends, or the time to find any congenial people. I can't describe what a nightmare it all was--so that when I hear you speaking as if money didn't really matter, I simply feel that you don't know what a tragedy it can be, or what your own income saves you from. You and I have the Epicurean temperament, my boy; it's no good pretending we haven't--things appeal to our mind and senses in a way they don't appeal to everyone. So I don't think that people ought to talk lightly about money, unless they have known poverty and _not_ suffered under it. I used to ask myself in those days if it was possible to suffer more, when every avenue reaching away out of my life to the things I loved and cared for seemed to be closed to me by an impassable barrier." "But one can practise oneself in doing without things?" I said. "With about as much success," said Father Payne, "as you can practise doing without food." "But isn't it partly that people are unduly reticent about money?" I said. "If people could only say frankly what they can and what they can't afford, it would simplify things very much." "I don't know," said Father Payne. "Money is one of those curious things--uninteresting if you have enough, tragic if you haven't. I don't think talking about money is vulgar--I think it is simply dull: to discuss poverty is like discussing a disease--to discuss wealth is like talking about food or wine. The poverty that simply humiliates and pinches can't be joked about--it's far too serious for that! Of course, there are men who don't really feel the call of life. Look at our friend Kaye! If Kaye had to live in London lodgings, he wouldn't mind a bit, if he could get to the Museum Reading-Room--he only wants books and his own work--he doesn't want company or music or art or talk or friends. He is wholly indifferent to nasty food or squalor. Poverty is not a real evil to him. If he had money he wouldn't know how to spend it. I read a book the other day about a priest who lived a very devoted life in the slums--he had two rooms in a clergy-house--and there was a chapter in praise of the way in which he endured his poverty. But it was all wrong! What that man really enjoyed was preaching and ceremonial and company--he had a real love of human beings. Well, that man's life was crammed with joy--he got exactly what he wanted all day long. It wasn't a self-sacrificing life--it would have been to you and me--but he no doubt woke day after day, with a prospect of having his whole time taken up with things he thoroughly enjoyed." "But what about the people," I said, "who really enjoy just the sense of power which money gives them, without using it--or the people whose only purpose in using it is the pleasure of being known to have it?" "Oh, of course, they are simply barbarians," said Father Payne, "and it doesn't do _them_ any harm to be poor. No, the tragedy lies in the case of a man with really expansive, generous, civilised instincts, to whom the world is full of wholesome and urgent delights, and whose life is simply starved out of him by poverty. I have a great mind to send you to London for a couple of months, to live on a pound a week, and see what you make of it." "I'll go if you wish it," I said. "It might bring things home to you," said Father Payne, smiling, "but again it probably would not, because it would only be a game--the real pinch would not come. Most people would rather enjoy migrating to hell from heaven for a month--it would just give them a sharper relish for heaven." "But do you really think your poverty hurt you?" I said. "I have no doubt it did," said Father Payne. "Of course I was rescued in time, before the bitterness really sank down into my soul. But I think it prevented my ever being more than a looker-on. I believe I could have done some work worth doing, if I could have tried a few experiments. I don't know! Perhaps I am ungrateful after all. My poverty certainly gave me a wish to help things along, and I doubt if I should have learnt that otherwise. And I think, too, it taught me not to waste compassion on the wrong things. The people to be pitied are simply the people whose minds and souls are pinched and starved--the over-sensitive, responsive people, who feel hunted and punished without knowing why. It's temperament always, and not circumstance, which is the happy or the unhappy thing. I felt, when you said what you did about poverty, that you neither knew how harmless it could be, or how infinitely noxious it might be. I don't take a high-minded view of money myself. I don't tell people to despise it. I always tell the fellows here to realise what they can endure and what they can't. The first requisite for a sensible man is to find work which he enjoys, and the next requisite is for him to earn as much as he really needs--that is to say without having to think daily and hourly about money. I don't over-estimate what money can do, but it is foolish to under-estimate what the want of it can do. I have seen more fine natures go to pieces under the stress of poverty than under any other stress that I know. Money is perfectly powerless as a shield against many troubles--and on the other hand it can save a man from innumerable little wretchednesses and horrors which destroy the beauty and dignity of life. I don't believe mechanically in humiliation and renunciation and ignominy and contempt, as purifying influences. It all depends upon whether they are gallantly and adventurously and humorously borne. They often make some people only sore and diffident, and I don't believe in learning to hate life. Not to learn your own limitations is childish: and one of the insolences which is most heavily punished is that of making a sacrifice without knowing if you can endure the consequences of it. The people who begin by despising money as vulgar are generally the people who end by making a mess which other people have to sweep up. So don't be either silly or prudent about money, my boy! Just realise that your first duty is not to be a burden on yourself or on other people. Find out your minimum, and secure it if you can; and then don't give the matter another thought. If it is any comfort to you, reflect that the best authors and artists have almost invariably been good men of business, and don't court squalor of any kind unless you really enjoy it." LIV OF PEACEABLENESS Father Payne, talking one evening, made a statement which involved an assumption that the world was progressing. Rose attacked him on this point. "Isn't that just one of the large generalisations," he said, "which you are always telling us to beware of?" "It isn't an assumption," said Father Payne, "but a conviction of mine, based upon a good deal of second-hand evidence. I don't think it can be doubted. I can't array all my reasons now, or we should sit here all night--but I will tell you one main reason, and that is the immensely increased peaceableness of the world. Fighting has gone out in schools, and none but decayed clubmen dare to deplore it: corporal punishment has diminished, and isn't needed, because children don't do savage things; bullying is extinct in decent schools; crimes of violence are much more rare; duelling is no longer a part of social life, except for an occasional farcical performance between literary men or politicians in France--I saw an account of one in the papers the other day. It was raining, and one of the combatants would not furl his umbrella: his seconds said that it made him a bigger target. "I may be shot," he said, "but that is no reason why I should get wet!" Then there is the mediaeval nonsense among students in Germany, where they fence like Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Generally speaking, however, the belief that a blow is an argument has gone out. Then war has become more rare, and is more reluctantly engaged in. I suppose that till the date of Waterloo there was hardly a year in history when some fighting was not going on. No, I think it is impossible not to believe that the impulse to kick and scratch and bite is really on the decline." "But need that be a proof of progress?" said Rose. "May it not only mean a decrease of personal courage, and a greater sensitiveness to pain?" "I think not," said Father Payne, "because when there _is_ fighting to be done, it is done just as courageously--indeed I think _more_ courageously than used to be the case. No, I think it is the training of an instinct--the instinct of self-restraint. I believe that people have more imagination and more sympathy than they used to have; there is more tolerance of adverse opinion, a greater sense of liberty in the air: opponents have more respect for each other, and do not attribute bad motives so easily. Why, consider how much milder even the newspapers are. If one reads old reviews, old books of political controversy, old pamphlets--how much more blackguarding and calling names one sees. Anonymous journalists, anonymous reviewers, are now the only people who keep up the tradition of public bad manners--all signed articles and criticisms are infinitely politer than they used to be." "But," persisted Rose, "isn't that simply a possible proof of the general declension of force?" "Certainly not," said Father Payne, "it only means more equilibrium. You must remember that equilibrium means a balance of forces, not a mere diminution of them. There is more force present in a banked-up reservoir than in a rushing stream. The rushing stream merely means a force making itself felt without a counterbalancing force--but that isn't nearly as strong as the pressure in a reservoir exerted by the water which is trying to get out, and the resistance of the dam which is trying to keep it in. You must not be taken in by apparent placidity: it often means two forces at work instead of one. Peace, as opposed to war, is a tremendous counterpoising of forces, and it simply means an organised resistance. In old days, there was no cohesion of the forces which desire peace, and violence was unresisted. There can be no doubt, I think, that in a civilised country there are many more forces at work than in a combative country. I do not suppose that we can either of us prove whether the forces at work in the world have increased or diminished. Let us grant that the amount is constant. If so, a great deal of the force that was combative has now been transformed to the force which resists combat. But I imagine that on the whole most people would grant that human energies have increased: if that is so, certainly the combative element has not increased in proportion, while the peaceful element has increased out of all proportion." "But," said Vincent, "you often talk in the most bellicose way, Father. You say that we ought all to be fighting on the side of good." "Yes," said Father Payne, "on the side of resistance to evil, I admit; but you can fight without banging and smashing things, as the dam fights the reservoir by silent cohesion. There is a temptation, from which some people suffer, to think that one can't be fighting for God at all, unless one is doing it furiously, and all the time, and successfully, and on a large and impressive scale. That is a fatal blunder. To hide your adversary's sword is often a very good way of fighting. To have an open tussle often makes the bystanders sympathise with the assailant. It is really a far more civilised thing, and often stands for a higher degree of force and honour, to be able to bear contradiction not ignobly. Direct conflict is a mistake, as a rule--blaming, fault-finding, censuring, snapping, punishing. The point is to put all your energy into your own life and work, and make it outweigh the energy of the combative critic. Do not fight by destroying faulty opinion, but by creating better opinion. You fight darkness by lighting a candle, not by waving a fan to clear it away. Look at one of the things we have been talking about--bullying in schools. That has not been conquered by expelling or whipping boys, or preaching about it--it has been abolished by kindlier and gentler family life, by humaner school-masters living with and among their boys, till the happiness of more peaceful relations all round has been instinctively perceived." "But isn't it right to show up mean and dishonest people, to turn the light of publicity upon cruel and detestable things?" said Vincent. "Exactly, my dear Vincent," said Father Payne; "but you can't turn the light of publicity on evil unless the light is there to turn. The reason why bullying continued was because people believed in it as inseparable from school life, and even, on the whole, bracing. What has got rid of it is a kinder and more tender spirit outside. I don't object to showing up bad things at all. By all means put them, if you can, in a clear light, and show their ugliness. Show your shame and disgust if you like, but do not condescend to personal abuse. That only weakens your case, because it merely proves that you have still some of the bully left in you. Be peaceable writers, my dear boys," said Father Payne, expanding in a large smile. "Don't squabble, don't try to scathe, don't be affronted! If your critic reveals a weak place in your work, admit it, and do better! I want to turn you out peace-makers, and that needs as much energy and restraint as any other sort of fighting. Don't make the fact that your opponent may be a cad into a personal grievance. Make your own idea clear, stick to it, repeat it, say it again in a more attractive way. Don't you see that not yielding to a bad impulse is fighting? The positive assertion of good, the shaping of beauty, the presentment of a fruitful thought in so desirable a light that other people go down with fresh courage into the dreariness and dullness of life, with all the delight of having a new way of behaving in their minds and hearts--that's how I want you to fight! It requires the toughest sort of courage, I can tell you. But instead of showing your spirit by returning a blow, show your spirit by propounding your idea in a finer shape. Don't be taken in by the silly and ugly old war-metaphors--the trumpet blown, the gathering of the hosts. That's simply a sensational waste of your time! Look out of your window, and then sit down to your work. That's the way to win, without noise or fuss." LV OF LIFE-FORCE I walked one afternoon with Father Payne just as winter turned to spring, in the pastures. There was a mound at the corner of one of his fields, on which grew a row of beech trees of which Father Payne was particularly fond. He pointed out to me to-day how the most southerly of the trees, exposed as it was to the full force of the wind, grew lower and sturdier than the rest, and how as the trees progressed towards the north, each one profiting more by the shelter of his comrades, they grew taller and more graceful. "I like the way that stout little fellow at the end grows," said Father Payne. "He doesn't know, I suppose, that he is protecting the rest, and giving them room to expand. But he holds on; and though he isn't so tall, he is bulkier and denser than his brethren. He knows that he has to bear the brunt of the wind, so he puts out no sail. He just devotes himself to standing four-square--he is not going to be bullied! He would like to be as smooth and as shapely as the rest, but he knows his own business, and he has adapted himself, like a sensible fellow, to his rough conditions." A little later Father Payne stopped to look at a great sow-thistle that was growing vigorously under a hedge-row. "Did you ever see such a bit of pure force?" said Father Payne. "I see a fierce conscious life in every inch of that plant. Look at the way he clips himself in, and strains to the earth: look at his great rays of leaves, thrust out so geometrically from the centre, with the sharp, horny, uncompromising thorns. And see how he flattens down his leaves over the surrounding grasses: they haven't a chance; he just squeezes them down and strangles them. There is no mild and delicate waving of fronds in the air. He means to sit down firmly on the top of his comrades. I don't think I ever saw anything with such a muscular pull on--you can't lift his leaves up; look, he resists with all his might! Just consider the immense force which he is using: he is not merely snuggling down: he is just hauling things about. You don't mean to tell me that this thistle isn't conscious! He knows he has enemies, but he is going to make the place his very own--and all that out of a drifting little arrow of down!" "Now that may not be a sympathetic or even Christian way of doing things," he went on presently, "but for all that, I do love to see the force of life, the intentness of living. I like our friend the beech a little better, because he is helping his friends, though he doesn't know it, and the thistle is only helping himself. But I am sure that it is the right way to go at it! We mustn't be always standing aside and making room: we mustn't obliterate ourselves. We have a right to our joy in life, and we mustn't be afraid of it. If we give away what we have got, it must cost us something--it must not be a mere relinquishing." "It is rather hard to combine the two principles," I said--"the living of life, I mean, and the giving away of life." "Well, I think that devotion is better than self-sacrifice," said Father Payne. "On the whole I mistrust weakness more than I mistrust strength. It's easy to dislike violence--but I rather worship vitality. I would almost rather see a man forcing his way through with some callousness, than backing out, smiling and apologising. You can convert strength, you can't do anything with weakness. Take the sort of work you fellows do. I always feel I can chasten and direct exuberance: what I can't do is to impart vigour. If a man says his essay is short because he can't think of anything to write, I feel inclined to say, 'Then for goodness' sake hold your tongue!' It's the people who can't hold their tongue, who go on roughly pointing things out, and commenting, and explaining, and thrusting themselves in front of the show, who do something. Of course force has to be kept in order, but there it is--it lives, it must have its say. What you have to learn is to insinuate yourself into life, like ivy, but without spoiling other people's pleasure. That's liberty! The old thistle has no respect for liberty, and that is why he is rooted up. But it's rather sad work doing it, because he does so very much want to be alive. But it isn't liberty simply to efface yourself, because you may interfere with other people. The thing is to fit in, without disorganising everything about you." He mused for a little in silence; then he said, "It's like almost everything else--it's a weighing of claims! I don't want you fellows to be either tyrannical or slavish. It's tyrannical to bully, it's slavish to defer. The thing is to have a firm opinion, not to be ashamed of it or afraid of it; to say it reasonably and gently, and to stick to it amiably. Good does not attack, though if it is attacked it can slay. Good fights evil, but it knows what it is fighting, while evil fights good and evil alike. I think that is true. I don't want you people to be controversial or quarrelsome in what you write, and to go in for picking holes in others' work. If you want to help a man to do better, criticise him privately--don't slap him in public, to show how hard you can lay on. Make your own points, explain if you like, but don't apologise. The great writers, mind you, are the people who can go on. It's volume rather than delicacy that matters in the end. It must flow like honey--good solid stuff--not drip like rain, out of mere weakness. But the thing is to flow, and largeness of production is better than little bits of overhandled work. Mind that, my boy! It's force that tells: and that's why I don't want you to be over-interested in your work. You must go on filling up with experience; but it doesn't matter where or how you get it, as long as it is eagerly done. Be on the side of life! _Amor fati_, that's the motto for a man--to love his destiny passionately, and all that is before him; not to droop, or sentimentalise, or submit, but to plunge on, like a 'sea-shouldering whale'! You remember old Kit Smart-- 'Strong against tide, the enormous whale Emerges as he goes.' "Mind you _emerge!_ Never heed the tide: there's plenty of room for it as well as for you!" LVI OF CONSCIENCE Lestrange was being genially bantered by Rose one day at dinner on what Rose called "problems of life and being," or "springs of action," or even "higher ground." Lestrange was oppressively earnest, but he was always good-natured. "Ultimately?" he had said, "why, ultimately, of course, you must obey your conscience." "No, no!" said Father Payne, "that won't do, Lestrange! Who are _you_, after all? I mean that the 'you' you speak of has something to say about it, to decide whether to disobey or to obey. And then, too, the same 'you' seems to have decided that conscience is to be obeyed. The thing that you describe as 'yourself' is much more ultimate than conscience, because if it is not convinced that conscience is to be obeyed, it will not obey. I mean that there is something which criticises even the conscience. It can't be reason, because your conscience over-rides your reason, and it can't be instinct, generally speaking, because conscience often over-rides instinct." "I am confused," said Lestrange. "I mean by conscience the thing which says 'You _ought!_' That is what seems to me to prove the existence of God, that there is a sense of a moral law which one does not invent, and which is sometimes very inconveniently aggressive." "Yes, that is all right," said Father Payne, "but how is it when there are two 'oughts,' as there often are? A man ought to work--and he ought not to overwork--something else has to be called in to decide where one 'ought' begins and the other ends. There is a perpetual balancing of moral claims. Your conscience tells you to do two things which are mutually exclusive--both are right in the abstract. What are you to do then?" "I suppose that reason comes in there," said Lestrange. "Then reason is the ultimate guide?" said Father Payne. "Oh, Father, you are darkening counsel," said Lestrange. "No, no," said Father Payne, "I am just trying to face facts." "Well, then," said Lestrange, "what is the ultimate thing?" "The ultimate thing," said Father Payne, "is of course the thing you call yourself--but the ultimate instinct is probably a sense of proportion--a sense of beauty, if you like!" "But how does that work out in practice?" said Vincent. "It seems to me to be a mere argument about names and titles. You are using conscience as the sense of right and wrong, and, as you say, they often seem to have conflicting claims. Lestrange used it in the further sense of the thing which ultimately decides your course. It is right to be philanthropic, it is right to be artistic--they may conflict; but something ultimately tells you what you _can_ do, which is really more important than what you _ought to_ do." "That is right," said Father Payne, "I think the test is simply this--that whenever you feel yourself paralysed, and your natural growth arrested by your obedience to any one claim--instinct, reason, conscience, whatever it is--the ultimate power cuts the knot, and tells you unfailingly where your real life lies. That is the real failure, when owing to some habit, some dread, some shrinking, you do not follow your real life. That, it seems to me, is where the old unflinching doctrines of sin and repentance have done harm. The old self-mortifying saints, who thought so badly of human nature, and who tore themselves to pieces, resisting wholesome impulses--celibate saints who ought to have been married, morbidly introspective saints who needed hard secular work, those were the people who did not dare to trust the sense of proportion, and were suspicious of the call of life. Look at St. Augustine in the wonderful passage about light, 'sliding by me in unnumbered guises'--he can only end by praying to be delivered from the temptation to enjoy the sight of dawn and sunset, as setting his affections too much upon the things of earth. I mistrust the fear of life--I mistrust all fear--at least I think it will take care of itself, and must not be cultivated. I think the call of God is the call of joy--and I believe that the superstitious dread of joy is one of the most potent agencies of the devil." "But there are many joys which one has to mistrust," said Lestrange; "mere sensual delights, for instance." "Yes," said Father Payne, "but most healthy and normal people, after a very little meddling with such delights, learn certainly enough that they only obscure the real, wholesome, temperate joys. You have to compromise wisely with your instincts, I think. You mustn't spend too much time in frontal attacks upon them. You have a quick temper, let us say. Well, it is better to lose it occasionally and apologise, than to hold your tongue about matters in which you are interested for fear of losing it. You are avaricious--well, hoard your money, and then yield on occasions to a generous impulse. That's a better way to defeat evil, than by dribbling money away in giving little presents which no one wants. I don't believe in petty warfare against faults. You know the proverb that if you knock too long at a closed door, the Devil opens it to you? Just give your sins a knock-down blow every now and then. I believe in the fire of life more than I believe in the cold water you use to quench it. Everything can be forgiven to passion; nothing can be forgiven to chilly calculation. The beautiful impulse is the thing that one must not disobey; and when I see people do big, wrong-headed, unguarded, unwise things, get into rows, sacrifice a reputation or a career without counting the cost, I am inclined to feel that they have probably done better for themselves than if they had been prudent and cautious. I don't say that they are always right, because people yield sometimes to a mere whim, and sometimes to a childishly overwhelming desire; but if there is a real touch of unselfishness about a sacrifice--that's the test, that some one else's joy should be involved--then I feel that it isn't my business to approve or disapprove. I feel in the presence of a force--an 'ought' as Lestrange says, which makes me shy of intervening. It's the wind of the Spirit--it blows where it will--and I know this, that I'm thankful beyond everything when I feel it in my own sails." "Tell me when you feel it next, Father," said Vincent. "I feel it now," said Father Payne, "now and here." And there was something in his face which made us disinclined to ask him any further questions. LVII OF RANK Someone had been telling a curious story about a contested peerage. It was a sensational affair, involving the alteration of registers, the burning down of a vestry, and the flight of a clergyman. "I like that story," said Father Payne, "and I like heraldry and rank and all that. It's decidedly picturesque. I enjoy the zigzagging of a title through generations. But the worst of it is that the most picturesque of all distinctions, like being the twentieth baron, let us say, in direct descent, is really of the nature of a stigma; a man whose twentieth ancestor was a baron has no excuse for not being a duke." "But what I don't like," said Rose, "is the awful sense of sanctity which some people have about it. I read a book the other day where the hero sacrificed everything in turn, a career, a fortune, an engagement to a charming girl, a reputation, and last of all an undoubted claim to an ancient barony. I don't remember exactly why he did all these things--it was noble, undoubtedly it was noble! But there was something which made me vaguely uncomfortable about the order in which he spun his various advantages." "It's only a sense of beauty slightly awry," said Father Payne; "names are curiously sacred things--they often seem to be part of the innermost essence of a man. I confess I would rather change most things than change my name. I would rather shave my head, for instance." "But my hero would have had to change his name if he had claimed the peerage," said Rose. "Yes, but you see the title was his _right_ name," said Father Payne; "he was only masquerading as a commoner, you must remember. Why I should value an ancient peerage is because I think it might improve my manners." "Impossible!" said Vincent. "Thank you," said Father Payne. "Yes, my manners are very good for a commoner--but I should like to be a little more in the grand style. I should like to be able to look long at a person, who said something of which I disapproved, and then change the subject. That would be fine! But I daren't do that now. Now I have to argue. Do you remember in _Daniel Deronda_, Grandcourt's habit of looking stonily at smiling persons. I have often envied that! Whereas my chief function in life is looking smilingly at stony persons, and that's very bourgeois." "We must show more animation," said Barthrop to his neighbour. "I mean it!" said Father Payne, "but come, I won't be personal! Seriously, you know, the one thing I have admired in the very few great people I have ever met is the absence of embarrassment. They don't need to explain who they are, they haven't got to preface their statements of opinion by fragments of autobiography, to show their right to speak. It is convenient to feel that if people don't know who you are, they will feel slightly foolish afterwards when they discover, like the man who shook hands warmly with Queen Victoria, and said, "I know the face quite well, but I can't put a name to it." It did not show any pride of birth in the Queen to be extremely amused by the incident. But even more than that I admire the case which people of that sort get by having had, from childhood onwards, to meet all sorts of persons, and to behave themselves, and to see that people do not feel shy or uncomfortable. I sometimes go about the village simply teeming with benevolence, and I pass some one, and can't think of anything to say. If I had the great manner, I should say, "Why, Tommy, is that you?" or some such human signal, which would not mean anything in particular, but would after all express exactly what is in my mind. But I can't just do that. I rack my brains for an _appropriate_ remark, because I am bourgeois, and have not the point of honour, as the French say. And by the time I have elaborated it, Tommy is gone, and Jack is passing, and I begin elaborating again; whereas I should simply add, if I were aristocratic, 'And that's you, Jack, isn't it?' That's the way to talk." We all laughed; and Barthrop said, "Well, I must say, Father, that I have often envied you your power of saying something to everyone." "I have spent more trouble on it than it is worth," said Father Payne; "and that's my point, that if I were only a great man, I should have learnt it all in childhood, and should not have to waste time over it at all. That's the best of rank; it's a device for saving trouble; it saves introduction and explanation and autobiography and elaborate civility, and makes people willing to be pleased by the smallest sign of affability. You may depend upon it that it was a very true instinct which made the Scotch minister pray that all might have honourable ancestors. It isn't a sacred thing, rank, and it isn't a magnificent thing--but it's a pleasant human sort of thing in the right hands. What is more, in these democratic days, it tends to make people of rank additionally anxious not to parade the fact--and I doubt if there is anything on the whole happier than having advantages which you don't want to parade--it gives a tranquil sort of contentment, and it removes all futile ambitions. To be, by descent, what a desperately industrious lawyer or a successful general feels himself amply rewarded for his toil by becoming, isn't nothing. I'm always rather suspicious of the people who try to pretend that it is nothing at all. The rank is but the guinea stamp, of course. But after all the stamp is what makes it a guinea instead of an unnegotiable disc of metal!" LVIII OF BIOGRAPHY Father Payne used often to say that he was more interested in biography than in any other form of art, and believed that there was a greater future before it than before any other sort of literature. "Just think," I remember his saying, "human portraiture--the most interesting thing in the world by far--what the novel tries to do and can't do!" "What exactly do you mean by 'can't do'?" I said. "Why, my boy," said Father Payne, "because we are all so horrified at the idea of telling the truth or looking the truth in the face. The novel accommodates human nature, patches it up, varnishes it, puts it in a good light: it may be artistic and romantic and poetical--but it hasn't got the beauty of truth. Life is much more interesting than any imaginative fricassee of it! These realistic fellows--they are moving towards biography, but they haven't got much beyond the backgrounds yet." "But why shouldn't it be done?" I said. "There's Boswell's Johnson--why does that stand almost alone?" "Why, think of all the difficulties, my boy," said Father Payne. "There's nothing like Boswell's Johnson, of course--but what a subject! There's nothing that so proves Boswells genius--we mustn't forget that--as the other wretched stuff written about Johnson. There's a passage in Boswell, when he didn't see Johnson for a long time, and stuck in a few stories collected from other friends. They are awfully flat and flabby--they have all been rolled about in some one's mind, till they are as smooth as pebbles--some bits of the crudest rudeness, not worked up to--some knock-down schoolboy retorts which most civilised men would have had the decency to repress--and then we get back to the real Boswell again, and how fresh and lively it is!" "But what are the difficulties you spoke of?" I said. "Why, in the first place," said Father Payne, "a biography ought to be written _during_ a man's life and not _after_ it--and very few people will take the trouble to write things down day after day about anyone else, as Boswell did. If it waits till after a man's death, a hush falls on the scene--everyone is pious and sentimental. Of course, Boswell's life is inartistic enough--it wanders along, here a letter, there a lot of criticism, here a talk, there a reminiscence. It isn't arranged--it has no scheme: but how full of _zest_ it is! And then you have to be pretty shameless in pursuing your hero, and elbowing other people away, and drawing him out; and you have to be prepared to be kicked and trampled upon, when the hero is cross: and then you have to be a considerable snob, and say what you really value and admire, however vulgar it is. And then you must expect to be called hard names when the book appears. I was reading a review the other day of what seemed to me to be a harmless biography enough--a little frank and enthusiastic affair, I gathered: and the reviewer wrote in the style of Pecksniff, caddish and priggish at the same time: he called the man to task for botanising on his friend's grave--that unfortunate verse of Wordsworth's, you know--and he left the impression that the writer had done something indelicate and impious, and all with a consciousness of how high-minded he himself was. "You ought to write a biography as though you were telling your tale in a friendly and gentle ear--you ought not to lose your sense of humour, or be afraid of showing your subject in a trivial or ridiculous light. Look at Boswell again--I don't suppose a more deadly case could be made out against any man, with perfect truth, than could be made out against Johnson. You could show him as brutal, rough, greedy, superstitious, prejudiced, unjust, and back it all up by indisputable evidence--but it's the balance, the net result, that matters! We have all of us faults; we know them, our friends know them--why the devil should not everyone know them? But then an interesting man dies, and everyone becomes loyal and sentimental. Not a word must be said which could pain or wound anyone. The friends and relations, it would seem, are not pained by the dead man's faults, they are only pained that other people should know them. The biography becomes a mixture of disinfectants and perfumes, as if it were all meant to hide some putrid thing. It's like what Jowett said about a testimonial, 'There's a strong smell here of something left out!' We have hardly ever had anything but romantic biographies hitherto, and they all smell of something left out. There's a tribe somewhere in Africa who will commit murder if anyone tries to sketch them. They think it brings bad luck to be sketched, a sort of 'overlooking' as they say. Well that seems to be the sort of superstition that many people have about biographies, as if the departed spirit would be vexed by anything which isn't a compliment. I suppose it is partly this--that many people are ill-bred, glum, and suspicious, and can't bear the idea of their faults being recorded. They hate all frankness: and so when anything frank gets written, they talk about violating sacred confidences, and about shameless exposures. It is really that we are all horribly uncivilised, and can't bear to give ourselves away, or to be given away. Of course we don't want biographies of merely selfish, stupid, brutal, ill-bred men--but everyone ought to be thankful when a life can be told frankly, and when there's enough that is good and beautiful to make it worth telling. "But, as I said, the thing can't be done, unless it is written to a great extent in a man's lifetime. Conversation is a very difficult thing to remember--it can't be remembered afterwards--it needs notes at the time: and few people's talk is worth recording; and even if it is, people are a little ashamed of doing it--there seems something treacherous about it: but it ought to be done, for all that! You don't want so very much of it--I don't suppose that Boswell has got down a millionth part of all Johnson said--you just want specimens--enough to give the feeling of it and the quality of it. One doesn't want immensely long biographies--just enough to make you feel that you have seen a man and sat with him and heard him talk--and the kind of way in which he dealt with things and people. I'll tell you a man who would have made a magnificent biography--Lord Melbourne. He had a great charm, and a certain whimsical and fantastic humour, which made him do funny little undignified things, like a child. But every single dictum of Melbourne's has got something original and graceful about it--always full of good sense, never pompous, always with a delicious lightness of touch. The only person who took the trouble to put down Melbourne's sayings, just as they came out, was Queen Victoria--but then she was in love with him without knowing it: and in the end he got stuck into the heaviest and most ponderous of biographies, and is lost to the world. Stale politics--there's nothing to beat them for dulness unutterable!" "But isn't it an almost impossible thing," I said, "to expect a man who is a first-rate writer, with ambitions in authorship, to devote himself to putting down things about some interesting person with the chance of their never being published? Very few people would have sufficient self-abnegation for that." "That's true enough," said Father Payne, "and of course it is a risk--a man must run the risk of sacrificing a good deal of his time and energy to recording unimportant details, perhaps quite uselessly, but with this possibility ahead of him, that he may produce an immortal book--and I grant you that the infernal vanity and self-glorification of authors is a real difficulty in the way." He was silent for a minute or two, and then he said: "Now, I'll tell you another difficulty, that at present people only want biographies of men of affairs, of big performers, men who have done things--I don't want that. I want biographies of people who wielded a charm of personality, even if they didn't _do_ things--people, I mean, who deserve to live and to be loved.--Those are the really puzzling figures a generation later, the men who lived in an atmosphere of admiring and delighted friendship, radiating a sort of enchanting influence, having the most extravagant things said and believed about them by their friends, and yet never doing anything in particular. People, I mean, like Arthur Hallam, whose letters and remains are fearfully pompous and tiresome--and who yet had _In Memoriam_ written about him, and who was described by Gladstone as the most perfect human being, physically, intellectually and morally, he had ever seen. Then there is Browning's Domett--the prototype of Waring--and Keats's friend James Rice, and Stevenson's friend Ferrier--that's a matchless little biographical fragment, Stevenson's letter about Ferrier--those are the sort of figures I mean, the men who charmed and delighted everyone, were brave and humorous, gave a pretty turn to everything they said--those are the roses by the wayside! They had ill-health some of them, they hadn't the requisite toughness for work, they even took to drink, or went to the bad. But they are the people of quality and tone, about whom one wants to know much more than about sun-burnt and positive Generals--the strong silent sort--or overworked politicians bent on conciliating the riff-raff. I don't want to know about men simply because they did honest work, and still less about men who never dared to say what they thought and felt. You can't make a striking picture out of a sense of responsibility! I'm not underrating good work--it's fine in every way, but it can't always be written about. There are exceptions, of course. Nelson and Wellington would have been splendid subjects, if anyone had really Boswellised them. But Nelson had a theatrical touch about him, and became almost too romantic a hero; while the Duke had a fund of admirable humour and almost grotesque directness of expression,--and he has never been half done justice to, though you can see from Lord Mahon's little book of _Table Talk_ and Benjamin Haydon's _Diary_, and the letters to Miss J., what a rich affair it all might have been, if only there had been a perfectly bold, candid, and truthful biographer." "But the charming people of whom you spoke," I said--"isn't the whole thing often too evanescent to be recorded?" "Not a bit of it!" said Father Payne, "and these are the people we want to hear about, because they represent the fine flower of civilisation. If a man has a delightful friend like that, always animated, fresh, humorous, petulant, original, he couldn't do better than observe him, keep scraps of his talk, record scenes where he took a leading part, get the impression down. It may come to nothing, of course, but it may also come to something worth more than a thousand twaddling novels. The immense _use_ of it--if one must think about the use--is that such a life might really show commonplace and ordinary people how to handle the simplest materials of life with zest and delicacy. Novels don't really do that--they only make people want to escape from middle-class conditions, what everyone is the better for seeing is not how life might conceivably be handled, but how it actually has been handled, freshly and distinctly, by someone in a commonplace milieu. Life isn't a bit romantic, but it is devilish interesting. It doesn't go as you want it to go. Sometimes it lags, sometimes it dances; and horrible things happen, often most unexpectedly. In the novel, everything has to be rounded off and led up to, and you never get a notion of the inconsequence of life. The interest of life is not what happens, but how it affects people, how they meet it, how they fly from it: the relief of a biography is that you haven't got to invent your setting and your character--all that is done for you: you have just got to select the characteristic things, and not to blur the things that you would have wished otherwise. For God's sake, let us get at the truth in books, and not use them as screens to keep the fire off, or as things to distract one from the depressing facts in one's bank-book. I welcome all this output of novels, because it at least shows that people are interested in life, and trying to shape it. But I don't want romance, and I don't want ugly and sensational realism either. That is only romance in another shape. I want real men and women--not from an autobiographical point of view, because that is generally romantic too--but from the point of view of the friends to whom they showed themselves frankly and naturally, and without that infernal reticence which is not either reverence or chivalry, but simply an inability to face the truth,--which is the direct influence of the spirit of evil. If one of my young men turns out a good biography of an interesting person, however ineffective he was, I shall not have lived in vain. For, mind this--very few people's performances are worth remembering, while very many people's personalities are." LIX OF EXCLUSIVENESS Rose told a story one night which amused Father Payne immensely. He had been up in town, and had sate next a Minister's wife, who had been very confidential. She had said to Rose that her husband had just been elected into a small dining-club well known in London, where the numbers were very limited, the society very choice, and where a single negative vote excluded a candidate. "I don't think," said the good lady, "that my husband has ever been so pleased at anything that has befallen him, not even when he was first given office--such a distinguished club--and so exclusive!" Father Payne laughed loud and shrill. "That's human nature at its nakedest!" he said. "It's like Miss Tox, in _Dombey and Son_, you know, who, when Dombey asked her if the school she recommended was select, said, 'It's exclusion itself!' What people love is the power of being able to _exclude_--not necessarily disagreeable people, or tiresome people, but simply people who would like to be inside-- "'Loving not, hating not, just choosing so.' "Those are the two great forces of society, you know--the exclusive force, and the inclusive force: the force that says, 'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers'; and the force which says, 'The more the merrier.' The exclusive force is represented by caste and class, by gentility and donnishness, by sectarianism and nationalism, and even by patriotism--and the inclusive force is represented by Walt Whitmanism and Christianity." "But what about St. Paul's words," said Lestrange, "'Honour all men: love the brotherhood'?" "That's an attempt to recognise both," said Father Payne, smiling. "Of course you can't love everyone equally--that's the error of democracy--democracy is really one of the exclusive forces, because it excludes the heroes--it is '_mundus contra Athanasium_,'--it is best illustrated by what the American democrat said to Charles Kingsley, 'My principle is "whenever you see a head above the crowd, hit it."' Democracy is, at its worst, the jealousy of the average man for the superior man." "But which is the best principle?" said Vincent. "Both are necessary," said Father Payne. "One must aim at inclusiveness, of course: and we must be quite certain that we exclude on the ground of qualities, and not on the ground of superficial differences. The best influences in the world arise not from individuals but from groups--and there is no sort of reason why groups should spoil their intensive qualities by trying to admit outsiders. The strength of a group lies in the fact that one gets the sense of fellowship and common purpose, of sympathy and encouragement. A man who has to fight a battle single-handed is always tempted to wonder whether, after all, it is worth all the trouble and misunderstanding. But, on the other hand, you are at liberty to mistrust the men who say that they don't want to know people. Do you remember how Charles Lamb once said, 'I do hate the Trotters!' 'But I thought you didn't know them?' said someone. 'That's just it,' said Charles Lamb, 'I never can hate anyone that I know!' The best bred man is the man who finds it easy to get on with everybody on equal terms: but it's part of the snobbishness of human nature that exclusiveness is rather admired than otherwise. There's a delightfully exclusive woman in one of Henry James' novels, who refuses to be introduced to a family. She entirely declines, and the man who is anxious to effect the introduction says, 'I can't think why you object to them.' 'They are hopelessly vulgar,' says the incisive lady, 'and in this short life, that is enough!' But St. Paul's remark is really very good, because it means 'Treat everyone with courtesy--but reserve your fine affections for the inner circle, whose worth you really know!'--it's a better theory than that of the man who said, 'It is enough for me to be with those whom I love!' That's rather inhuman." "Do you remember," said Barthrop, "the lines in Tennyson's Guinevere, which sum up the knightly attributes? "'High thought, and amiable words, And courtliness, and the desire of fame, And love of truth, and all that makes a man.'" "That's very interesting and curious!" said Father Payne. "Dear me, I had forgotten that--did Tennyson say that?--Come--let's have it again!" Barthrop repeated the lines again. "Now, that's the gentlemanly ideal of the sixties," said Father Payne, "and, good heavens, how offensive it sounds! The most curious part of it really is 'the desire of fame'--of course, a hundred years ago, no one made any secret of that! You remember Nelson's frank confession, made not once, but many times, that he pursued glory, 'Defeat--or Westminster Abbey'--didn't he say that?" "But surely people pursue fame as much as ever?" said Vincent. "I daresay," said Father Payne, "but it isn't now considered good taste to say so. You have got to pretend, at all events, that you wish to benefit humanity now-a-days. If a man had said to Ruskin or Carlyle, 'Why do you write all these books?' and they replied, 'It is because of my desire for fame,' it would have been thought vulgar. There's that odd story of Robert Browning, when he received an ovation at Oxford, and someone said to him, 'I suppose you don't care about all this,' he said, 'It is what I have waited for all my life!' I wonder if he _did_ say it! I think he must have done, because it is exactly the sort of thing that one is supposed not to say--and I confess I don't like it--it seems to me vain, and not proud, I don't mind a kind of pride--I think a man ought to know what he is worth: but I hate vanity. Perhaps that's only because I haven't been a success myself." "But mayn't you desire fame?" said Vincent. "It seems to me rather priggish to condemn it!" "Many fine things sound priggish when they are said," said Father Payne. "But, to be frank, I don't think that a man ought to desire fame. I think he may desire to do a thing well. I don't think he ought to desire to do it better than other people. It is the wanting to beat other people which is low. Why not wish them to do it well too?" "You mean that the difference between pride and vanity lies there?" said Barthrop. "Yes, I do," said Father Payne, "and it is a pity that pride is included in the deadly sins, because the word has changed its sense. Pride used to mean the contempt of others--that's a deadly sin, if you like. It used to mean a ghastly sort of self-satisfaction, arrived at by comparison of yourself with others. But now to be called a proud man is a real compliment. It means that a man can't condescend to anything mean or base. We ought all to be proud--not proud _of_ anything, because that is vulgar, but ashamed of doing anything which we know to be feeble or low. The Pharisee in the parable was vain, not proud, because he was comparing himself with other people. But it is all right to be grateful to God for having a sense of decency, just as you may be grateful for having a sense of beauty. The hatefulness of it comes in when you are secretly glad that other people love indecency and ugliness." "That is the exclusive feeling then?" said Barthrop. "Yes, the bad kind of exclusiveness," said Father Payne--"the kind of exclusiveness which ministers to self-satisfaction. And that is the fault of the group when it becomes a coterie. The coterie means a set of inferior people, bolstering up each other's vanity by mutual admiration. In a coterie you purchase praise for your own bad work, by pretending to admire the bad work of other people. But the real group is interested, not in each other's fame, but in the common work." "It seems to me confusing," said Vincent. "Not a bit of it," said Father Payne; "we have to consider our limitations: we are limited by time and space. You can't know everybody and love everybody and admire everybody--and you can't sacrifice the joy and happiness of real intimacy with a few for a diluted acquaintance with five hundred people. But you mustn't think that your own group is the only one--that is the bad exclusiveness--you ought to think that there are thousands of intimate groups all over the world, which you could love just as enthusiastically as you love your own, if you were inside them: and then, apart from your own group, you ought to be prepared to find reasonable and amiable and companionable people everywhere, and to be able to put yourself in line with them. Why, good heavens, there are millions of possible friends in the world! and one of my deepest and firmest hopes about the next world, so to speak, is that there will be some chance of communicating with them all at once, instead of shutting ourselves up in a frowsy room like this, smelling of meat and wine. I don't deny you are very good fellows, but if you think that you are the only fit and desirable company in the world for me or for each other, I tell you plainly that you are utterly mistaken. That's why I insist on your travelling about, to avoid our becoming a coterie." "Then it comes to this," said Vincent drily, "that you can't be inclusive, and that you ought not to be exclusive?" "Yes, that's exactly it!" said Father Payne. "You meant to shut me up with one of our patent Oxford epigrams, I know--and, of course, it is deuced smart! But put it the other way round, and it's all right. You can't help being exclusive, and you must try to be inclusive--that's the truth, with the Oxford tang taken out!" We laughed at this, and Vincent reddened. "Don't mind me, old man!" said Father Payne, "but try to make your epigrams genial instead of contemptuous--inclusive rather than exclusive. They are just as true, and the bitter flavour is only fit for the vitiated taste of Dons." And Father Payne stretched out a large hand down the table, and enclosed Vincent's in his own. "Yes, it was a nasty turn," said Vincent, smiling, "I see what you mean." "The world is a friendlier place than people know," said Father Payne. "We have inherited a suspicion of the unknown and the unfamiliar. Don't you remember how the ladies in _The Mill on the Floss_ mistrusted each other's recipes, and ate dry bread in other houses rather than touch jam or butter made on different methods. That is the old bad taint. But I think we are moving in the right direction. I fancy that the awakening may be very near, when we shall suddenly realise that we are all jolly good fellows, and wonder that we have been so blind." "A Roman Catholic friend of mine," said Rose--"he is a priest--told me that he attended a clerical dinner the other day. The health of the Pope was proposed, and they all got up and sang, 'For he's a jolly good fellow!'" There was a loud laugh at this. "I like that," said Father Payne, "I like their doing that! I expect that that is exactly what the Pope is! I should dearly love to have a good long quiet talk with him! I think I could let in a little light: and I should like to ask him if he enjoyed his fame, dear old boy: and whether he was interested in his work! 'Why, Mr. Payne, it's rather anxious work, you know, the care of all the churches'--I can hear him saying--'but I rub along, and the time passes quickly! though, to be sure, I'm not as young as I was once: and while I am on the subject, Mr. Payne, you look to me to be getting on in years yourself!' And then I should say 'Yes, your Holiness, I am a man that has seen trouble.' And he would say, 'I'm sorry to hear that! Tell me all about it!' That's how we should talk, like old friends, in a snug parlour in the Vatican, looking out on the gardens!" LX OF TAKING LIFE I was walking with Father Payne one hot summer day upon a field-path he was very fond of. There was a copse, through the middle of which the little river, the Fyllot, ran. It was the boundary of the Aveley estate, and it here joined another stream, the Rode, which came in from the south. The path went through the copse, dense with hazels, and there was always a musical sound of lapsing waters hidden in the wood. The birds sang shrill in the thicket, and Father Payne said, "This is the juncture of Pison and Hiddekel, you know, rivers of Paradise. Aveley is Havilah, where the gold is good, and where there is bdellium, if we only knew where to look for it. I fancy it is rich in bdellium. I came down here, I remember, the first day I took possession. It was wonderful, after being so long among the tents of Kedar, to plant my flag in Havilah; I made a vow that day--I don't know if I have kept it!" "What was that?" I said. "Only that I would not get too fond of it all," said Father Payne, smiling, "and that I would share it with other people. But I have got very fond of it, and I haven't shared it. Asking people to stay with you, that they may see what a nice place you have to live in, is hardly sharing it. It is rather the other way--the last refinement of possession, in fact!" "It's very odd," he went on, "that I should love this little bit of the world so much as I do. It's called mine--that's a curious idea. I have got very little power over it. I can't prevent the trees and flowers from growing here, or the birds from nesting here, if they have a mind to do so. I can only keep human beings out of it, more or less. And yet I love it with a sort of passion, so that I want other people to love it too. I should like to think that after I am gone, some one should come here and see how exquisitely beautiful it is, and wish to keep it and tend it. That's what lies behind the principle of inheritance; it isn't the money or the position only that we desire to hand on to our children--it's the love of the earth and all that grows out of it; and possession means the desire of keeping it unspoiled and beautiful, I could weep at the idea of this all being swept away, and a bdellium-mine being started here, with a factory-chimney and rows of little houses; and yet I suppose that if the population increased, and the land was all nationalised, a great deal of the beauty of England would go. I hope, however, that the sense of beauty might increase too--I don't think the country people here have much notion of beauty. They only like things to remain as they know them. It's a fearful luxury really for a man like myself to live in a land like this, so full of old woodland and pasture, which is only possible under rich proprietors. I'm an abuse, of course. I have got a much larger slice of my native soil than any one man ought to have; but I don't see the way out. The individual can't dispossess himself--it's the system which is wrong." He stopped in the middle of the copse, and said: "Did you ever see anything so perfectly lovely as this place? And yet it is all living in a state of war and anarchy. The trees and plants against each other, all fighting for a place in the sun. The rabbit against the grass, the bird against the worm, the cat against the bird. There's no peace here really--it's full of terrors! Only the stream is taking it easy. It hasn't to live by taking life, and the very sound of it is innocent." Presently he said: "This is all cut down every five years. It's all made into charcoal and bobbins. Then the flowers all come up in a rush; then the copse begins to grow again--I never can make up my mind which is most beautiful. I come and help the woodmen when they cut the copse. That's pleasant work, you know, cutting and binding. I sometimes wonder if the hazels hate being slashed about. I expect they do; but it can't hurt them much, for up they come again. It's the right way to live, of course, to begin again the minute you are cut down to the roots, to struggle out to the air and sun again, and to give thanks for life. Don't you feel yourself as if you were good for centuries of living?" "I'm not sure that I do," I said, "I don't feel as if I had quite got my hand in." "Yes, that's all right for you, old boy," said Father Payne. "You are learning to live, and you are living. But an old fellow like me, who has got in the way of it, and has found out at last how good it is to be alive, has to realise that he has only got a fag-end left. I don't at all want to die; I've got my hands as full as they can hold of pretty and delightful things; and I don't at all want to be cut down like the copse, and to have to build up my branches again. Yes," he added, pondering, "I used to think I should not live long, and I didn't much want to, I believe! But now--it's almost disgraceful to think how much I prize life, and how interesting I find it. Depend upon it, on we go! The only thing that is mysterious to me is why I love a place like this so much. I don't suppose it loves me. I suppose there isn't a beast or a bird, perhaps not a tree or a flower, in the place that won't be rather relieved when I go back home without having killed something. I expect, in fact, that I have left a track of death behind me in the grass--little beetles and things that weren't doing any harm, and that liked being alive. That's pretty beastly, you know, but how is one to help it? Then my affection for it is very futile. I can't establish a civilised system here; I can't prevent the creatures from eating each other, or the trees from crowding out the flowers. I can't eat or use the things myself, I can't take them away with me; I can only stand and yearn with cheap sentiment. "And yet," he said after a moment, "there's something here in this bit of copse that whispers to me beautiful secrets--the sunshine among the stems, the rustle of leaves, the wandering breeze, the scent and coolness of it all! It is crammed with beauty; it is all trying to live, and glad to live. You may say, of course, that you don't see all that in it, and it is I that am abnormal. But that doesn't explain it away. The fact that I feel it is a better proof that it is there than the fact that you don't feel it is a proof that it isn't there! The only thing about it that isn't beautiful to me is the fact that life can't live except by taking life--that there is no right to live; and that, I admit, is disconcerting. You may say to me, 'You old bully, crammed with the corpses of sheep and potatoes, which you haven't even had the honesty to kill for yourself, you dare to come here, and talk this stuff about the beauty of it all, and the joy of living. If all the bodies of the things you have consumed in your bloated life were piled together, it would make a thing as big as a whole row of ricks!' If you say that, I admit that you take the sentiment out of my sails!" "But I don't say it," said I: "Who dies if Father Payne live?" He laughed at this, and clapped me on the back. "You're in the same case as I, old man," he said, "only you haven't got such a pile of blood and bones to your credit! Here, we must stow this talk, or we shall become both humbugs and materialists. It's a puzzling business, talking! It leads you into some very ugly places!" LXI OF BOOKISHNESS I went in to see Father Payne one morning about some work. He was reading a book with knitted brows: he looked up, gave a nod, but no smile, pointed to a chair, and I sate down: a minute or two later he shut the book--a neat enough little volume--with a snap, and skimmed it deftly from where he sate, into his large waste-paper basket. This, by the way, was a curious little accomplishment of his,--throwing things with unerring aim. He could skim more cards across a room into a hat than anyone I have ever seen who was not a professed student of legerdemain. "What are you doing?" I said--"such a nice little book!" I rose and rescued the volume, which was a careful enough edition of some poems and scraps of poems, posthumously discovered, of a well-known poet. "Pray accept it with my kindest regards," said Father Payne. "No, I don't know that I _ought_ to give it you. It is the sort of book I object to." "Why?" I said, examining it--"it seems harmless enough." "It's the wrong sort of literature," said Father Payne. "There isn't time, or there ought not to be, to go fumbling about with these old scraps. They aren't good enough to publish--and what's more, if the man didn't publish them himself, you may be sure he had very good reasons for _not_ doing so. The only interest of them is that so good a poet could write such drivel, and that he knew it was drivel sufficiently well not to publish it. But the man who can edit it doesn't know that, and the critics who review it don't know it either--it was a respectful review that made me buy the rubbish--and as for the people who read it, God alone knows what they think of it. It's a case of "'Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes in holy dread.' "You have to shut your eyes pretty tight not to see what bosh it all is--it is all this infernal reverence paid by people, who have no independence of judgment, to great reputations. It reminds me of the barber who used to cut the Duke of Wellington's hair and nails, who made quite a lot of money by selling clippings to put in lockets!" "But isn't it worth while to see a great poet's inferior jottings, and to grasp how he worked?" said I. "No," said Father Payne;--"at least it would be worth while to see how he brought off his good strokes, but it isn't worth while seeing how he missed his stroke altogether. This deification business is all unwholesome. In art, in life, in religion, in literature, it's a mistake to worship the saints--you don't make them divine, you only confuse things, and bring down the divine to your own level. The truth--the truth--why can't people see how splendid it is, and that it is one's only chance of getting on! To shut your eyes to the possibility of the great man having a touch of the commonplace, a touch of the ass, even a touch of the knave in him, doesn't ennoble your conception of human nature. If you can only glorify humanity by telling lies about it, and by ruling out all the flaws in it, you end by being a sentimentalist. "See thou do it not ... worship God!" that's one of the finest things in the Bible. Of course it is magnificent to see a streak of the divine turning up again and again in human nature--but you have got to wash the dirt to find the diamond. Believe in the beauty behind and in and beyond us all--but don't worship the imperfect thing. This sort of book is like selling the dirt out of which the diamonds have been washed, and which would appear to have gained holiness by contact. I hate to see people stopping short on the symbol and the illustration, instead of passing on to the truth behind--it's idolatry. It's one degree better than worshipping nothing; but the danger of idolatry is that you are content to get no further: and that is what makes idolatry so ingenious a device of the devil, that it persuades people to stop still and not to get on." "But aren't you making too much out of it?" I said. "At the worst, this is a harmless literary blunder, a foolish bit of hero-worship?" "Yes," said Father Payne, "in a sense that is true, that these little literary hucksters and pedlars don't do any very great harm--I don't mean that they cause much mischief: but they are the symptom of a grave disease. It is this d----d _bookishness_ which is so unreal. I would like to say a word about it to you, if you have time, instead of doing our work to-day--for if you will allow me to say so, my boy, you have got a touch of it about you--only a touch--and I think if I can show you what I mean, you can throw it off--I have heard you say rather solemn things about books! But I want you to get through that. It reminds me of the talk of ritualists. I have a poor friend who is a very harmless sort of parson--but I have heard him talk of a bit of ceremonial with tears in his eyes. 'It was exquisite, exquisite,' he will say,--'the celebrant wore a cope--a bit, I believe of genuine pre-Reformation work--of course remounted--and the Gospeller and Epistoller had copes so perfectly copied that it would have been hard to say which was the real one. And then Father Wynne holds himself so nobly--such a mixture of humility and pride--a priest ought to exhibit both, I think, at that moment?--and his gestures are so inevitable--so inevitable--that's the only word: there's no sense of rehearsal about it: it is just the supreme act of worship expressing itself in utter abandonment'--He will go on like that for an hour if he can find a great enough goose to listen to him. Now, I don't mean to say that the man hasn't a sense of beauty--he has the real ritual instinct, a perfectly legitimate branch of art. But he doesn't know it's art--he thinks it is religion. He thinks that God is preoccupied with such things; 'a full choral High Mass, at nine o'clock, that's a thing to live and die for,' I have heard him say. Of course it's a sort of idealism, but you must know what you are about, and what you are idealising: and you mustn't think that your kind is better than any other kind of idealising." He made a pause, and then held out his hand for the book. "Now here is the same sort of intemperate rapture," he said. "Look at this introduction! 'It is his very self that his poems give, and the sharpest jealousy of his name and fame is enkindled by them. Not to find him there, his passion, endurance, faith, rapture, despair, is merely a confession of want in ourselves.' That's not sane, you know--it's the intoxication of the Corybant! It isn't the man himself we want to fix our eyes upon. He felt these things, no doubt: but we mustn't worship his raptures--we must worship what he worshipped. This sort of besotted agitation is little better than a dancing dervish. The poems are little sparks, struck out from a scrap of humanity by some prodigious and glorious force: but we must worship the force, not the spark: the spark is only an evidence, a system, a symbol if you like, of the force. And then see how utterly the man has lost all sense of proportion--he has spent hours and days in identifying with uncommon patience the exact date of these tepid scraps, and he says he is content to have laid a single stone in the "unamended, unabridged, authentic temple" of his idol's fame. That seems to me simply degrading: and then the portentous ass, whose review I read, says that if the editor had done nothing else, he is sure of an honoured place for ever in the hierarchy of impeccable critics! And what is all this jabber about--a few rhymes which a man made when he was feeling a little off colour, and which he did not think it worth while to publish! "You mustn't get into this kind of a mess, my boy. The artist mustn't indulge in emotion for the sake of the emotion. 'The weakness of life,' says this pompous ass, 'is that it deviates from art!' You might just as well say that the weakness of food was that it deviated from a well-cooked leg of mutton! Art is just an attempt to disentangle something, to get at one of the big constituents of life. It helps you to see clearly, not to confuse one thing with another, not to be vaguely impressed--the hideous danger of bookishness is that it is one of the blind alleys into which people get. These two fellows, the editor and his critic, have got stuck there: they can't see out: they think their little valley is the end of the world. I expect they are both of them very happy men, as happy as a man who goes to bed comfortably drunk. But, good God, the awakening!" Father Payne relapsed into a long silence, with knitted brows. I tried to start him afresh. "But you often tell us to be serious, to be deadly earnest, about our work?" I said. "Oh yes," said Father Payne, "that's another matter. We have to work hard, and put the best of ourselves into what we do. I don't want you to be an amiable dilettante. But I also want you to see past even the best art. You mustn't think that the stained-glass window is the body of heaven in its clearness. The sort of worshippers I object to are the men who shut themselves up in a church, and what with the colour and the music and the incense-smoke, think they are in heaven already. It's an intoxication, all that. I don't get you men to come here to make you drunk, but to get you to loathe drunkenness. God--that's the end of it all! God, who reveals Himself in beauty and kindness, and trustfulness, and charm and interest, and in a hundred pure and fine forces--yet each of them are but avenues which lead up to Him, the streets of the city, full of living water. But it is movement I am in search of--and I would rather be drowned in the depth of the sea than mislead anyone, or help him to sit still. I have made an awful row about it all," said Father Payne, relapsing into a milder mood--"But you will forgive me, I know. I can't bear to see these worthy men blocking the way with their unassailable, unabridged, authentic editions. They are like barbed-wire entanglements: and the worst of it is that, in spite of all their holy air of triumph, they enjoy few things more than tripping each other up! They condemn each other to eternal perdition for misplacing a date or misspelling a name. It's like getting into a bed of nettles to get in among these little hierophants. They remind me of the bishops at some ancient Church Council or other who tore the clothes off two right reverend consultants, and literally pulled them limb from limb in the name of Christ. That's the end of these holy raptures, my boy! They unchain the beast within." LXII OF CONSISTENCY There had been a little vague talk about politics, and someone had quoted a definition of a true Liberal as a man who, if he had only to press a button in a dark room to annihilate all cranks, faddists, political quacks, extremists, propagandists, and nostrum-mongers, would not dream of doing so, as a matter of conscience, on the ground that everyone has a right to hold his own beliefs and to persuade the world to accept them if he can. Father Payne laughed at this; but Rose, who had been nettled, I fancy, at a lack of deference for his political experience, his father being a Unionist M.P., said loudly, "Hear, hear! that's the only sort of Liberal whom I respect." A look of sudden anger passed over Father Payne's face--unmistakable and uncompromising wrath. "Come, Rose," he said, "this isn't a political meeting; and even if it were, why proclaim yourself as accepting a definition which is almost within the comprehension of a chimpanzee?" There was a faint laugh at this, but everyone had an uncomfortable sense of thunder in the air. Rose got rather white, and his nostrils expanded. "I'm sorry I put it in that way," he said rather frostily, "if you object. But I mean it, I think. I don't like diluted Liberalism." "Yes, but you beg the question by calling it diluted," said Father Payne. "If anyone had said that the only Tory he respected was a man who if he could press a button in a still darker room, and by doing so bring it to pass that all institutions on the face of the earth would remain immutably fixed for ever and ever, and would feel himself bound conscientiously to do it, you wouldn't accept that as a definition of Conservatism? These things are not hard and fast matters of principle--they are only tendencies. Toryism is an instinct to trust custom and authority, Liberalism is an instinct to welcome development and change. All that the definition of Liberalism which was quoted means is, that the Liberal has a deep respect for freedom of opinion; and all that my grotesque definition of Toryism means is that a Tory prefers to trust a fixed tradition. But, of course, both want a settled Government, and both have to recognise that the world and its conditions change. The Tory says, 'Look before you leap'; the Liberal says, 'Leap before you look.' But it is really all a matter of infinite gradations, and what differentiates people is merely their idea of the pace at which things can go and ought to go. Why should you say that you can only respect a man who wants to go at sixty miles an hour, any more than I should say I can only respect a man who wants to remain absolutely still?" Rose had by this time recovered his temper, and said, "It was rather crude, I admit. But what I meant was that if a man feels that all opinions are of equal value, he must give full weight to all opinions. The doctrinaire Liberal seems to me to be just as much inclined to tyrannise as the doctrinaire Tory, and to use his authority on the side of suppression when it is convenient to do so, and against all his own principles." "I don't think that is quite fair," said Father Payne. "You must have a working system; you can't try everyone's experiments. All that the Liberal says is, 'Persuade us if you can.' Pure Liberalism would be anarchy, just as pure Toryism would be tyranny. Both are intolerable. But just as the Liberal has to compromise and say, 'This may not be the ultimate theory of the Government, but meanwhile the world has to be governed,' so the Tory has to compromise, if a large majority of the people say, 'We will not be governed by a minority for their interest; we will be governed for our own.' The parliamentary vote is just a way of avoiding civil war; you can't always resort to force, so you resort to arbitration. But why the Liberal position is on the whole the stronger is because it says frankly, 'If you Tories can persuade the nation to ask you to govern it, we will obey you.' The weakness of the Tory position is that it has to make exactly the same concessions, while it claims to be inspired by a divine sort of knowledge as to what is just and right. I personally mistrust all intuitions which lead to tyranny. Of course, the weakness of the whole affair is that the man who believes in democracy has to assume that all have equal rights; that would be fair enough if all people were born equal in character and ability, and influence and wealth. But that isn't the case; and so the Liberal says, 'Democracy is a bad system perhaps, but it is the only system,' and it is fairer to maintain that everyone who gets into the world has as good a right as anyone else to be there, than it is to say, 'Some people have a right to manage the world and some have only a duty to obey.' Both represent a side of the truth, but neither represents the whole truth. At worst Liberalism is a combination of the weak against the strong, and Toryism a combination of the strong against the weak! I personally wish the weak to have a chance; but what we all really desire is to be governed by the wise and good, and my hope for the world is that the quality of it is improving. I want the weak to become sensible and self-restrained, and the strong to become unselfish and disinterested. It is generosity that I want to see increase--it is the finest of all qualities--the desire, I mean to serve others, to admire, to sympathise, to share, to rejoice, in other people's happiness. That would solve all our difficulties." "Yes, of course," said Rose. "But I would like to go back again, and say that what I was praising was consistency." "But there is no such thing," said Father Payne, "except in combination with entire irrationality. One can't say at any time of one's life, 'I know everything worth knowing. I am in a position to form a final judgment.' You can say, 'I will shut off all fresh light from my mind, and I will consider no further evidence,' but that isn't a thing to respect! I begin to suspect, Rose, that why you praised the uncompromising Liberal, as you call him, is because he is the only kind of opponent who isn't dangerous. A man who takes up such a position as I have described is practically insane. He has a fixed idea, which neither argument nor evidence can alter. The uncompromising man of fixed opinions, whatever those opinions may be, is almost the only man I do not respect, because he is really the only inconsistent person. He says, 'I have formed an opinion which is based on experience, and I shall not alter it.' That is tantamount to saying that you have done with experience; it is a claim to have attained infallibility through fallible faculties. Where is the dignity of that? It's just a deification of stupidity and stubbornness and insolence and complacency." "But you must take your stand on _some_ certainties," said Rose. "The fewer the better," said Father Payne. "One may learn to discriminate between things, and to observe differences; but that is very different from saying that you have got at the ultimate essence of any one thing. I am all for clearness--we ought not to confuse things with each other, or use the same names for different things; but I'm all against claiming absolute and impeccable knowledge. It may be a comfortable system for a man who doesn't want to be bothered; but he is only deferring the bother--he is like a man who stays in bed because he doesn't like dressing. But it isn't a solution to stay in bed--it is only suspending the solution. No, we mustn't have any regard for human consistency--it's a very paltry attribute; it's the opposite of anthropomorphism. That makes out God to be in the image of man, but consistency claims for man the privilege of God. And that isn't wholesome, you know, either for a man or his friends!" "I give up," said Rose: "can nothing be logical?" "Hardly anything," said Father Payne, "except logic itself. You have to coin logical ideas into counters to play with. No two things, for instance, can ever be absolutely equal, except imaginary equalities--and that's the mischief of logic applied to life, that it presumes an exact valuation of the ideas it works with, when no two people's valuations of the same idea are identical, and even one person's valuation varies from time to time; and logic breeds a phantom sort of consistency which only exists in the imagination. You know the story of how Smith and Jones were arguing, and Smith said, 'Brown will agree with me': 'Yes,' said Jones triumphantly, 'he will, but for my reasons!'" LXIII OF WRENS AND LILIES It was the first warm and sunny day, after a cold and cloudy spring: I took a long and leisurely walk with Father Payne down a valley among woods, of which Father Payne was very fond. "Almost precipitous for Northamptonshire, eh?" he used to say. I was very full of a book I had been reading, but I could not get him to talk. He made vague and foolish replies, and said several times, "I shall have to think that over, you know," which was, I well knew, a polite intimation that he was not in a mood for talk. But I persisted, and at last he said, "Hang it, you know, I'm not attending--I'm very sorry--it isn't your fault--but there's such a lot going on everywhere." He quoted a verse of _The Shropshire Lad_, of which he was very fond: "'Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more'"; adding, "That's the only instance I know of a subtraction sum made into perfect poetry--but it's the other way round, worse luck! "And _add_ to seventy springs a score, _That_ only leaves me forty more!" The birds were singing very sweetly in the copses as we passed--"That isn't art, I believe," said Father Payne. "It's only the reproductive instinct, I am told! I wish it took such an artistic form in my beloved brothers in the Lord! There," he added, stopping and speaking in a low tone; "don't move--there's a cock-wren singing his love-song--you can see his wings quivering." There followed a little tremolo, with four or five emphatic notes for a finish. "Now, if you listen, you'll hear the next wren answer him!" said Father Payne. In a moment the same little song came like an echo from a bush a few yards away. "The wren sings in stricter time than any bird but the cuckoo," said Father Payne--"four quavers to a bar. That's very important! Those two ridiculous creatures will go on doing that half the morning. They are so excited that they build sham nests, you know, about now--quite useless piles of twigs and moss, not intended for eggs, just to show what they can do. But that little song! It has all the passion of the old chivalry in it--it is only to say, 'My Dulcinea is prettier, sweeter, brighter-eyed than yours!' and the other says, 'You wait till I can get at you, and then we will see!' If they were two old knights, they would fight to the death over it, till the world had lost a brave man, and one of the Dulcineas was a hapless widow, and nothing proved. That's the sort of thing that men admire, full of fine sentiment. Why can't we leave each other alone? Why does loving one person make you want to fight another? Just look at that wren: he's as full of joy and pride as he can hold: look at the angle at which he holds his tail: he feels the lord of the world, sure enough!" We walked on, and I asked no more questions. "There's a bit of colour," said Father Payne, pointing to a bare wood, all carpeted with green blades. "That's pure emerald, like the seventh foundation of the city. Now, if I ask you, who are a bit of a poet, what those leaves are, what do you say? You say hyacinth or daffodil, or perhaps lily-of-the-valley. But what does the simple botanist--that's me--say? Garlic, my boy, and nothing else! and you had better not walk musing there, or you will come in smelling of spring onions, like a greengrocer's shop. So much for poetry! It's the loveliest green in creation, and it has a pretty flower too--but it's never once mentioned in English poetry, so far as I know. And yet Keats had the face to say that Beauty was Truth and Truth Beauty! That's the way we play the game." We rambled on, and passed a pleasant old stone-built cottage in the wood, with a tiny garden. "It's a curious thing," said Father Payne, "but in the spring I always want to live in all the houses I see. It's the nesting instinct, no doubt. I think I could be very happy here, for instance--much happier than in my absurd big house, with all you fellows about. Why did I ever start it? I ought to have had more sense. I want a cottage like this, and a little garden to work in, and a few books. I would live on bread and cold bacon and cheese and cabbages, with a hive of my own honey. I should get wise and silent, and not run on like this." A dog came out of the cottage garden, and followed us a little way. "Do we belong to your party, sir, or do you belong to ours?" said Father Payne. The dog put his head on one side, and wagged his tail. "It appears I have the pleasure of your acquaintance!" said Father Payne to him. "Very well, you can set us on our way if you like!" The dog gave a short shrill bark, and trotted along with us. When we got to the end of the lane, where it turned into the high road, Father Payne said to the dog, "Now, sir, I expect that's all the time you can spare this morning? You must go back and guard the house, and be a faithful dog. Duty first!" The dog looked mournfully at us, and wagged his tail, but did not attempt to come farther. He watched us for a little longer, but as we did not invite him to come on, he presently turned round and trotted off home. "Now, that's the sort of case where I feel sentimental," said Father Payne. "It's the sham sort of pathos. I hate to see anyone disappointed. A person offering flowers in the street for sale, and people not buying them--the men in London showing off little toys by the pavement, which nobody wants--I can't bear that. It makes me feel absurdly wretched to see anyone hoping to please, and not pleasing. And if the people who do it look old and frail and unhappy, I'm capable of buying the whole stock. The great uncomforted! It's silly, of course, and there is nothing in the world so silly as useless emotion! It is so easy to overflow with cheap benevolence, but the first step towards the joyful wisdom is to be afraid of the emotion that costs you nothing: but we won't be metaphysical to-day!" Presently Father Payne insisted on sitting down in a sheltered place. He flung his hat off, and sate there, looking round him with a smile, his arms clasped round his big knees. "Well," he said, "it's a jolly place, the old world, to be sure! Plenty of nasty and ugly things, I suppose, going on in corners; but if you look round, they are only a small percentage of the happy things. They don't force themselves upon the eye and ear, the beastly things: and it's a stupid and faithless mistake to fix the imagination and the reason too much upon them. We are all of us in a tight place occasionally, and we have to meet it as best we can. But I don't think we do it any better by anticipating it beforehand. What is more, no one can really help us or deliver us: we can be made a little more comfortable, and that's all, by what they call cooling drinks, and flowers in a vase by the bedside. And it's a bad thing to get the misery of the world in a vague way on our nerves. That's the useless emotion. We have got certain quite definite things to do for other people in our own circle, and we are bound to do them; we mustn't shirk them, and we mustn't shirk our own troubles, though the less we bother about them the better. I am not at all sure that the curse of the newspapers is not that they collect all the evils of the world into a hideous posy, and thrust it under our nose. They don't collect the fine, simple, wholesome things. Now you and I are better employed to-day in being agreeable to each other--at least you are being kind to me, even though I can't talk about that book--and in looking at the delightful things going on everywhere--just think of all the happiness in the world to-day, symbolised by that ridiculous wren!--we are better employed, I say, than if we were extending the commerce of England, or planning how to make war, or scolding people in sermons about their fatal indifference to the things that belong to their peace. Men and women must find and make their own peace, and we are doing both to-day. That awful vague sense of responsibility, that desire to interfere, that wish that everyone else should do uncomplaining what we think to be their duty--that's all my eye! It is the kindly, eager, wholesome life which affects the world, wherever it is lived: and that is the best which most of us can do. We can't be always fighting. Even the toughest old veteran soldier--how many hours of his life has he spent actually under fire? No, I'm not forgetting the workers either: but you need not tell me that they are all sick at heart because they are not dawdling in a country lane. It would bore them to death, and they can live a very happy life without it. That's the false pathos again--to think that everyone who can't do as _we_ like must be miserable. And anyhow, I have done my twenty-five years on the treadmill, and I am not going to pretend it was noble work, because it wasn't. It was useless and disgraceful drudgery, most of it!" "Ah," I said, "but that doesn't help me. You may have earned a holiday, but I have never done any real drudgery--I haven't earned anything." "Be content," said Father Payne; "take two changes of raiment! You have got your furrow to plough--all in good time! You are working hard now, and don't let me hear any stuff about being ashamed because you enjoy it! The reward of labour is life: to enjoy our work is the secret. If you could persuade people that the spring of life lies there, you would do more for the happiness of man than by attending fifty thousand committees. But I won't talk any more. I want to consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They don't do it every day!" LXIV OF POSE Someone said rashly, after dinner to-night, that the one detestable and unpardonable thing in a man was pose. A generalisation of this kind acted on Father Payne very often like a ferret on a rabbit. He had been mournfully abstracted during dinner, shaking his head slowly, and turning his eyes to heaven when he was asked leading questions. But now he said: "I don't think that is reasonable--you might as well say that you always disliked length in a book. A book has got to be some length--it is as short as it's long. Of course, the moment you begin to say, 'How long this book is!' you mean that it is too long, and excess is a fault. Do you remember the subject proposed in a school debating society, 'That too much athletics is worthy of our admiration'? Pose is like that--when you become conscious of pose it is generally disagreeable--that is, if it is meant to deceive: but it is often amusing too, like the pose of the unjust judge in the parable, who prefaces his remarks by saying, 'Though I fear not God, neither regard man.'" "Oh, but you know what I mean, Father," said the speaker, "the pose of knowing when you don't know, and being well-bred when you are snobbish, and being kind when you are mean, and so on." "I think you mean humbug rather than pose," said Father Payne; "but even so, I don't agree with you. I have a friend who would be intolerable, but for his pose of being agreeable. He isn't agreeable, and he doesn't feel agreeable; but he behaves as if he was, and it is the only thing that makes him bearable. What you really mean is the pose of superiority--the man whose motives are always just ahead of your own, and whose taste is always slightly finer, and who knows the world a little better. But there is a lot of pose that isn't that. What _is_ pose, after all? Can anyone define it?" "It's an artist's phrase, I think," said Barthrop; "it means a position in which you look your best." "Like the Archbishop who was always painted in a gibbous attitude--first quarter, you know--with his back turned to you, and his face just visible over his lawn sleeve," said Father Payne, "but that was in order to hide an excrescence on his left cheek. Do you remember what Lamb said of Barry Cornwall's wen on the nape of his neck? Some one said that Barry Cornwall was thinking of having it cut off. 'I hope he won't do that,' said Lamb, 'I rather like it--it's redundant, like his poetry!' I rather agree with Lamb. I like people to be a little redundant, and a harmless pose is pure redundancy: it only means that a man is up to some innocent game or other, some sort of mystification, and is enjoying himself. It's like a summer haze over the landscape. Now, there's another friend of mine who was once complimented on his 'uplifted' look. Whenever he thinks of it, and that's pretty often, he looks uplifted, like a bird drinking, with his eyes fixed on some far-off vision. I don't mind that! It's only a wish to look his best. It's partly a wish to give pleasure, you know. It's the same thing that makes people wear their hair long, or dress in a flamboyant way. I'll tell you a little story. You know Bertie Nash, the artist. I met him once in a Post Office, and he was buying a sheet of halfpenny stamps. I asked him if he was going to send out some circulars. He looked at me sadly, and said, 'No, I always use these--I can't use the penny stamps--such a crude red!' Now, he didn't do that to impress me: but it was a pose in a way, and he liked feeling so sensitive to colour." "But oughtn't one to avoid all that sort of nonsense?" said some one; "it's better surely to be just what you are." "Yes, but what _are_ you, after all?" said Father Payne; "your moods vary. It would be hopeless if everyone tried to keep themselves down to their worst level for the sake of sincerity. The point is that you ought to try to keep at your best level, even if you don't feel so. Hang it, good manners are a pose, if it comes to that. The essence of good manners is sometimes to conceal what you are feeling. Is it a pose to behave amiably when you are tired or cross?" "No, but that is in order not to make other people uncomfortable," said Vincent. "Well, it's very hard to draw the line," said Father Payne: "but what we really mean by pose is, I imagine, the attempt to appear to be something which you frankly are not--and that is where the word has changed its sense, Barthrop. An artist's pose is something characteristic, which makes a man look his best. What we generally mean by pose is the affecting a best which one never reaches. Come, tell a story, some one! That's the best way to get at a quality. Won't some one quote an illustration?" "What about my friend Pearce, the schoolmaster?" said Vincent. "He read a book about schoolmastering, and he said he didn't think much of it. He added that the author seemed only to be giving elegant reasons for doing things which the born schoolmaster did by instinct." "Well, that's not a bad criticism," said Father Payne; "but it was pose if he meant to convey that _he_ was a born schoolmaster. Is he one, by the way?" "No," said Vincent, "he is not: he is much ragged by the boys; but he comforts himself by thinking that all schoolmasters are ragged, but that he is rather more successful than most in dealing with it. He has a great deal of moral dignity, has Pearce! I don't know where he would be without it!" "Well, there's an instance," said Father Payne, "of a pose being of some use. I think a real genuine pose often makes a man do better work in the world than if he was drearily conscious of failure. It's a game, you know--a dramatic game: and I think it's a sign of vitality and interest to want to have a game. It's like the lawyer's clerk in _Our Mutual Friend_, when Mr. Boffin calls to keep an appointment, being the lawyer's only client; but the boy makes a show of looking it all up in a ledger, runs his finger down a list of imaginary consultants, and says to himself, 'Mr. Aggs, Mr. Baggs, Mr. Caggs, Mr. Daggs, Mr. Boffin--Yes, sir, that is right!' Now there's no harm in that sort of thing--it's only a bit of moral dignity, as Vincent says. It's no good acquiescing in being a humble average person--we must do better than that! Most people believe in themselves in spite of abundant evidence to the contrary--but it's better than disbelieving in yourself. That's abject, you know." "But if you accept the principle of pose," said Lestrange, "I don't see that you can find fault with any pose." "You might as well say," said Father Payne, "that if I accept the principle of drinking alcohol, it doesn't matter how much I drink! Almost all morality is relative--in fact, it is doubtful if it is ever absolute. The mischief of pose is not when it makes a man try to be or to appear at his best: but when a man lives a thoroughly unreal life, taking a high line in theory and never troubling about practice, then it's incredible to what lengths self-deception can go. Dr. Johnson said that he looked upon himself as a polite man! It is quite easy to get to believe yourself impeccable in certain points: and as one gets older, and less assailable, and less liable to be pulled up and told the hard truth, it is astonishing how serenely you can sail along. But that isn't pose exactly. It generally begins by a pose, and becomes simple imperviousness; and that is, after all, the danger of pose,--that it makes people blind to the truth about themselves." "I'm getting muddled," said Vincent. "It _is_ rather muddling," said Father Payne, "but, in a general way, the point is this. When pose is a deliberate attempt to deceive other people for your own credit, it is detestable. But when it is merely harmless drama, to add to the interest of life and to retain your own self-respect, it's an amiable foible, and need not be discouraged. The real question is whether it is assumed seriously, or whether it is all a sort of joke. We all like to play our little games, and I find it very easy to forgive a person who enjoys dressing up, so to speak, and making remarks in character. Come, I'll confess my sins in public. If I meet a stranger in the roads, I rather like to be thought a bluff and hearty English squire, striding about my broad acres. I prefer that to being thought a retired crammer, a dominie who keeps a school and calls it an academy, as Lord Auchinleck said of Johnson. But if I pretended in this house to be a kind of abbot, and glided about in a cassock with a gold cross round my neck, conferring a benediction on everyone, and then retired to my room to read a French novel and to drink whisky-and-soda, that would be a very unpleasant pose indeed!" We all implored Father Payne to adopt it, and he said he would give it his serious consideration. LXV OF REVENANTS I was sitting in the garden one evening in summer with Father Payne and Barthrop. Barthrop was going off next day to Oxford, and was trying to persuade Father Payne to come too. "No," he said, "I simply couldn't! Oxford is the city east of the sun and west of the moon--like as a dream when one awaketh! I don't hold with indulging fruitless sentiment, particularly about the past." "But isn't it rather a pity?" said Barthrop. "After all, most emotions are useless, if you come to that! Why should you cut yourself off from a place you are so fond of, and which is quite the most beautiful place in England too? Isn't it rather--well,--weak?" "Yes," said Father Payne, "it's weak, no doubt! That is to say, if I were differently made, more hard-hearted, more sure of myself, I should go, and I should enjoy myself, and moon about, and bore you to death with old stories about the chimes at midnight--everybody would be a dear old boy or a good old soul, and I should hand out tips, and get perfectly maudlin in the evenings over a glass of claret. That's the normal thing, no doubt--that's what a noble-minded man in a novel of Thackeray's would do!" "Well," said Barthrop, "you know best--but I expect that if you did take the plunge and go there, you would find yourself quite at ease." "I might," said Father Payne; "but then I also might not--and I prefer not to risk it. You see, it would be merely wallowing in sentiment--and I don't approve of sentiment. I want my emotions to live with, not to bathe in!" "But you don't mind going back to London," said Barthrop. "No," said Father Payne, "but that bucks me up. I was infernally unhappy in London, and it puts me in a thoroughly sensible and cheerful mood to go and look at the outside of my old lodgings, and the place where I used to teach, and to say to myself, 'Thank God, that's all over!' Then I go on my way rejoicing, and make no end of plans. But if I went to Oxford, I should just remember how happy and young I was; and I might even commit the folly of regretting the lapse of time, and of wishing I could have it back again. I don't think it is wholesome to do anything which makes one discontented, or anything which forces one to dwell on what one has lost. That doesn't matter. Nothing really is ever lost, and it only takes the starch out of one to think about it from that angle. I don't believe in the past. It seems unalterable, and I suppose in a sense it is so. But if you begin to dwell on unalterable things, you become a fatalist, and I'm always trying to get away from that. The point is that no one is unalterable, and, thank God, we are always altering. To potter about in the past is like grubbing in an ash-heap, and shedding tears over broken bits of china. The plate, or whatever it is, was pretty enough, and it had its place and its use; and when the stuff of which it is made is wanted again, it will be used again. It is simply fatuous to waste time over the broken pieces of old dreams and visions; and I mean to use my emotions and my imagination to see new dreams and finer visions. Perhaps the time will come when I can dream no more--the brain gets tired and languid, no doubt. But even then I shall try to be interested in what is going on." "I see your point," said Barthrop; "but, for the life of me, I can't see why the old place should not take its part in the new visions! When I go down to Oxford I don't regret it. I go gratefully and happily about, and I like to see the young men as jolly as I was, and as unaware what a good time they are having. An old pal of mine is a Don, and he puts me up in College, and it amuses me to go into Hall, and to see some of the young lions at close quarters. It's all pure and simple refreshment." "I've no doubt of it, old man," said Father Payne; "and it's an excellent thing for you to go, and to draw fresh life from the ancient earth, like Antaeus. But I'm not made that way. I'm not loyal--that is to say, I am not faithful to things simply because I once admired and loved them. If you are loyal in the right way, as you are, it's different. But these old attachments are a kind of idolatry to me--a false worship. I'm naturally full of unreasonable devotion to the old and beautiful things; but they get round my neck like a mill-stone, and it is all so much more weight that I have to carry. I sometimes go to see an old cousin of mine, a widow in the country, who lives entirely in the past, never allows anything to be changed in the house, never talks about anyone who isn't dead or ill. The woman's life is simply buried under old memories, mountains of old china, family plate, receipts for jam and marmalade--everything has got to be done as it was in the beginning. Now most of her friends think that very beautiful and tender, and talk of the old-world atmosphere of the place; but I think it simply a stuffy waste of time. I don't tell her so--God forbid! But I feel that she is lolling in an arbour by the roadside instead of getting on. It's innocent enough, but it does not seem to me beautiful." "But I still don't see why you give way to the feeling," said Barthrop. "I'm sure that if I felt as you do about Oxford, or any other place, you would tell me it was my duty to conquer it." "Very likely!" said Father Payne. "But doctors don't feel bound to take their own prescriptions! Everyone must decide for himself, and I know that I should fall under the luxurious enchantment. I should go into cheap raptures, I should talk about 'the tender grace of a day that is dead'--it's no use putting your head in a noose to see what being strangled feels like." "But do you apply that to everything," I said, "old friendships, old affections, old memories? They seem to me beautiful, and harmlessly beautiful." "Well, if you can use them up quite freshly, and make a poetical dish out of them, for present consumption, I don't mind," said Father Payne. "But that isn't my way--I'm not robust enough. It's all I can do to take things in as they come along. Of course an old memory sometimes goes through one like a sword, but I pull it out as quick as I can, and cast it away. I am not going to dance with Death if I can help it! I have got my job cut out for me, and I am not going to be hampered by old rubbish. Mind you, I don't say that it was rubbish at the time; but I have no use for anything that I can't use. Sentiment seems to me like letting valuable steam off. The people I have loved are all there still, whether they are dead or alive. They did a bit of the journey with me, and I enjoyed their company, and I shall enjoy it again, if it so comes about. But we have to live our life, and we can't keep more than a certain number of things in mind--that is an obvious limitation. Do you remember the old fairy story of the man who carried a magic goose, and everyone who touched it, or touched anyone who touched it, could not leave go, with the result that there was a long train of helpless people trotting about behind the man. I don't want to live like that, with a long train of old memories and traditions and friendships and furniture trailing helplessly behind me. My business is with my present circle, my present work, and I can't waste my strength in drawing about vehicles full of goods. If anyone wants me, here I am, and I will do my best to meet his wishes; but I am not going to be frightened by words like loyalty into pretending that I am going to stagger along carrying the whole of my past. No, my boy," said Father Payne, turning to Barthrop, "you go to Oxford, and enjoy yourself! But the old place is too tight about my heart for me to put my nose into it. I'm a free man, and I am not going to be in bondage to my old fancies. You may give my love to Corpus and to Wadham Garden--it's all dreadfully bewitching--but I'm not going to run the risk of falling in love with the phantom of the past--that's _La Belle Dame Sans Merci_ for me, and I'm riding on--I'm riding on. I won't have the hussy on my horse. "I set her on my pacing steed, And nothing else saw all day long, For sideways would she lean, and sing A faery's song. She found me roots of relish sweet, And honey wild and manna dew. And sure in language strange she said, 'I love thee true,'" He stopped a moment, as he often did when he made a quotation, overcome with feeling. Then he smiled, and added half to himself, "No; I should say, as Dr. Johnson said to the lady in Fleet Street; 'No, no; it won't do, my girl!'" LXVI OF DISCIPLINE "Well, anyhow," said Vincent at dinner, commenting on something that had been said, "you may not get anything else out of a disagreeable affair like that, but you get a sort of discipline." "Come, hold on," said Father Payne; "that won't do, you know! Discipline, in my belief, is in itself a bad thing, unless you not only get something out of it, but, what is more, know what you get out of it. You can't discipline anyone, unless he desires it! Discipline means the repressing of something--you must be quite sure that it is worth repressing." "What I mean," said Vincent, "is that it makes you tougher and harder." "Yes," said Father Payne, "but that is not a good thing in itself, unless there is something soft and weak in you. Discipline may easily knock the good things out of you. There's a general kind of belief that, because the world is a rough place, where you may get tumbles and shocks without any fault of your own, therefore it is as well to have something rough about you. I don't believe in that. The reason why a man gets roughly handled, in nine cases out of ten, is not because he is obnoxious or offensive, but because other people are harsh and indifferent. I want to apply discipline to the brutal, not to brutalise the sensitive. If discipline simply made people brave and patient, it would be different, but it often makes them callous and unpleasant." "But doesn't everyone want discipline of some kind?" said Vincent. "Of the right kind, yes," said Father Payne. "Some people want a good deal more than they get, and some a certain amount less than they get. It's a delicate business. It is not always fortifying. Take a simple case. A bold, brazen sort of boy who is untruthful may want a whipping; but a timid and imaginative boy who is untruthful doesn't necessarily want a whipping at all--it makes him more, and not less, timid. One of the most ridiculous and persistent blunders in human life is to believe that a certain penalty is divinely appointed for a certain offence. Our theory of punishment is all wrong; we inflict punishment, as a rule, not to improve an offender, but out of revenge, or because it gives us a comfortable sense of our own justice. And the whole difficulty of discipline is that it is apt to be applied in lumps, and distributed wholesale to people who don't all want the same amount. We haven't really got very far away from the Squeers theory of giving all the boys brimstone and treacle alike." "Yes, but in a school," said Vincent, "would not the boys themselves resent it, if they were punished differently for the same offence?" "That is to say," said Father Payne, "that you are to treat boys, whom you are supposed to be training, in accordance with their ideas of justice, and not in accordance with yours! Why should you confirm them in a wholly erroneous view of justice? Justice isn't a mathematical thing--or rather, it ought to be a mathematical thing, because you ought to take into account a lot of factors, which you simply omit from your calculation. I believe very little in punishment, to tell you the truth; it ought only to be inflicted after many warnings, when the offence is deliberately repeated. I don't believe that the sane and normal person is a habitual and deliberate offender. The kind of absence of self-restraint which makes people unable to resist temptation, in any form, is a disease, and ought to be segregated. I haven't the slightest doubt that we shall end by segregating or sterilising the person of criminal tendencies, which only means a total inability, in the presence of a temptation, to foresee consequences, and which gratifies a momentary desire." "But apart from definite moral disease," said Vincent, "isn't it a good thing to compel people, if possible, into a certain sort of habit? I am speaking of faults which are not criminal--things like unpunctuality, laziness, small excesses, mild untrustworthiness, and so forth." "Well, I don't personally believe in coercive discipline at all," said Father Payne. "I think it simply gets people out of shape. I believe in trying to give people a real motive for self-discipline: take unpunctuality, for instance. The only way to make an unpunctual person punctual is to convince him that it is rude and unjust to keep other people waiting. There is nothing sacred about punctuality in itself, unless some one else suffers by your being unpunctual. If it comes to that, isn't it quite as good a discipline for punctual people to learn to wait without impatience for the unpunctual? Supposing an unpunctual person were to say, 'I do it on principle, to teach precise people not to mind waiting,' where is the flaw in that? Take what you call laziness. Some people work better by fits and starts, some do better work by regularity. The point is to know how you work best. You must not make the convenience of average people into a moral law. The thing to aim at is that a man should not go on doing a thing which he honestly believes to be wrong and hurtful, out of a mere habit. Take the small excesses of which you speak--food, drink, sleep, tobacco. Some people want more of these things than others; you can't lay down exact laws. A man ought to find out precisely what suits him best; but I'm not prepared to say that regularity in these matters is absolutely good for everyone. The thing is not to be interfered with by your habits; and the end of all discipline is, I believe, efficiency, vitality, and freedom; but it is no good substituting one tyranny for another. I was reading the life of a man the other day who simply could not believe that anyone could think a thing wrong and yet do it. His biographer said, very shrewdly, that his sense of sin was as dead as his ear for music--that he did not possess even the common liberty of right and wrong. That's a bad case of atrophy! You must not, of course, be at the mercy of your moods, but you must not be at the mercy of your ethical habits either. Of the two, I am not sure that the habit isn't the most dangerous." "You seem to be holding a brief all round, Father," said Vincent. "No, I am not doing that," said Father Payne, "but my theory is this. You must know, first of all, what you are aiming at, and you must apply your discipline sensibly to that. There are certain things in us which we know to be sloppy--we lie in bed, we dawdle, we eat too much, we moon over our work. All that is obviously no good, and all sensible people try to pull themselves up. When you have found out what suits you, do it boldly; but the man who admires discipline for its own sake is a sort of hypochondriac--a medicine-drinker. I have a friend who says that if he stays in a house, and sees a bottle of medicine in a cupboard, he is always tempted to take a dose. 'Is it that you feel ill?' I once said to him. 'No,' he said; 'but I have an idea that it might do me good.' The disciplinarian is like that: he is always putting a little strain upon himself, cutting off this and that, trying new rules, heading himself off. He has an uneasy feeling that if he likes anything, it is a sort of sign that he should abstain from it: he mistrusts his impulses and instincts. He thinks he is getting to talk too much, and so he practises holding his tongue. The truth is that he is suspicious of life. He is like the schoolmaster who says, 'Go and see what Jack is doing, and tell him not to!' Of course I am taking an extreme case, but there is a tendency in that direction in many people. They think that strength means the power to resist, when it really means the power to flow. I do not think that people ought to be deferential to criticism, timid before rebuke, depressed by disapproval: and, on the whole, I believe that more harm is done by self-repression, obedience, meekness than by the opposite qualities. I want men to live their own lives fearlessly--not offensively, of course--with a due regard to other people's comfort, but without any regard to other people's conventions. I believe in trusting yourself, on the whole, and trusting the world. I do not think it is wholesome or brave to live under the shadow of other people's fears or other people's convictions. All the people, it seems to me, who have done anything for the world, have been the people who have gone their own way; and I think that self-discipline, or external discipline meekly accepted, ends in a flattening out of men's power and character. Of course you fellows here are learning to do a definite technical thing--but you will observe that all the discipline here is defensive, and not coercive. I don't want you to take any shape or mould: I want you just to learn to do things in your own way. I don't ever want you to interfere with each other's minds too much. I don't want to interfere with your minds myself, except in so far as to help you to get rid of sloppiness and prejudices. Here, I mustn't go on--it's becoming like a prospectus! but it comes to this, that I believe in the trained mind, and not in the moulded mind; and I think that the moment discipline ceases to train strength, and begins to mould weakness, it's a thoroughly bad thing. No one can be artificially protected from life without losing life--and life is what I am out for." LXVII OF INCREASE I did not hear the argument, but I heard Vincent say to Father Payne: "Of course I couldn't do that--it would have been so inconsistent." "Oh! consistency's a very cheap affair," said Father Payne; "it is mostly a blend of vanity and slow intelligence." "But one must stick to _something_," said Vincent. "There's nothing so tiresome as never knowing how a man is going to behave." "Of course," said Father Payne, "inconsistency isn't a virtue--it is generally the product of a quick and confused intelligence. But consistency ought not to be a principle of thought or action--you ought not to do or think a thing simply because you have thought it before--that is mere laziness! What one wants is a consistent sort of progress--you ought not to stay still." "But you must have principles," said Vincent. "Yes, but you must expect to change them," said Father Payne. "Principles are only deductions after all: and to remain consistent as a rule only means that you have ceased to do anything with your experience, or else it means that you have taken your principles second-hand. They ought to be living things, yielding fruits of increase. I don't mean that you should be at the mercy of a persuasive speaker, or of the last book you have read--but, on the other hand, to meet an interesting man or to read a suggestive book ought to modify your views a little. You ought to be elastic. The only thing that is never quite the same is opinion; and to be holding a ten years' old opinion simply means that you are stranded. There's nothing worse than to be high and dry." "But isn't it worse still," said Vincent, "to see so many sides to a question that you can't take a definite part?" "I don't feel sure," said Father Payne. "I know that the all-round sympathiser is generally found fault with in books; but it is an uncommon temperament, and means a great power of imagination. I am not sure that the faculty of taking a side is a very valuable one. People say that things get done that way; but a great many things get done wrong, and have to be undone. There is no blessing on the palpably one-sided people. Besides, there is a great movement in the world now towards approximation. Majorities don't want to bully minorities. Persecution has gone out. People are beginning to see that principles are few and interpretations many. I believe, as a matter of fact, that we ought always to be simplifying our principles, and getting them under a few big heads. Besides, you do not convert people by hammering away at principles. I always like the story of the Frenchman who said to his opponent, 'Come, let us go for a little walk, and see if we can disagree.'" "I don't exactly see what he meant," said Vincent. "Why, he meant," said Father Payne, "that if they could bring their minds together, they would find that there wasn't very much to quarrel about. But I don't believe in arguing. I don't think opinion changes in that way. I fancy it has tides of its own, and that ideas appear in numbers of minds all over the world, like flowers in spring. "But how is one ever to act at all," said Vincent, "if one is always to be feeling that a principle may turn out to be nonsense after all?" "Well, I think action is mainly a matter of instinct," said Father Payne. "But I don't really believe in taking too diffuse a view of things in general. Very few of us are strong enough and wise enough, let me say, to read the papers with any profit. The newspapers emphasize the disunion of the world, and I believe in its solidarity. Come, I'll tell you how I think people ought really to live, if you like. I think a man ought to live his own life, without attempting too much reference to what is going on in the world. I think it becomes pretty plain to most of us, by the time we reach years of discretion, what we can do and what we cannot. I don't mean that life ought to be lived in blank selfishness, without reference to anyone else. Most of us can't do that, anyhow--it requires extraordinary concentration of will. But I think that our lives ought to be intensive--that is to say, I don't think we ought to concern ourselves with getting rid of our deficiencies, so much as by concentrating and emphasizing our powers and faculties. We ought all of us to have a certain circle in mind--I believe very much in _circles_. We are very much limited, and our power of affecting people for good and evil is very small; our chance of helping is small. The moment we try to extend our circle very much, to widen our influence, we become like a juggler who keeps a dozen plates spinning all at once--it is mere legerdemain. But we most of us live really with about a score of people. We can't choose our circle altogether, and there are generally certain persons in it whom we should wish away. I think we ought to devote ourselves to our work, whatever it is, and outside of that to getting a real, intimate, and vital understanding with the people round us. That is a problem which is amply big enough for most of us. Then I think we ought to go seriously to work, not arguing or finding fault, not pushing or shoving people about, but just living on the finest lines we can. The only real chance of converting other people to our principles or own ideas, is to live in such a way that it is obvious that our ideas bring us real and vital happiness. You may depend upon it, that is the only way to live--the _positive_ way. We simply must not quarrel with our associates: we must be patient and sympathetic and imaginative." "But are there no exceptions?" said I. "I have heard you say that a man must be prepared to lose friends on occasions." "Yes," said Father Payne, "the circle shifts and changes a little, no doubt. I admit that it becomes clear occasionally that you cannot live with a particular person. But if you have alienated him or her by your censoriousness and your want of sympathy, you have to be ashamed of yourself. If it is the other way, and you are being tyrannised over, deflected, hindered, then it may be necessary to break away--though, mind you, I think it is finer still if you do not break away. But you must have your liberty, and I don't believe in sacrificing that, because then you live an unreal life--and, whatever happens, you must not do that." "But what is to be done when people are tied up by relationships, and can't get away?" said I. "Yes, there are such cases," said Father Payne; "I don't deny it. If there is really no escape possible, then you must tackle it, and make the finest thing you can out of the situation. Fulness of life, that is what we must aim at. Of course people are hemmed in in other ways too--by health, poverty, circumstances of various kinds. But, however small your saucepan is, it ought to be on the boil." "But can people _make_ themselves active and hopeful?" I said. "Isn't that just the most awful problem of all, the listlessness which falls on many of us, as the limitations draw round and the net encloses us?" "You must kick out for all you are worth," said Father Payne. "I fully admit the difficulty. But one of the best things in life is the fact that you can always do a little better than you expect. And then--you mustn't forget God." "But a conscious touch with God?" I said. "Isn't that a rare thing?" "It need not be," said Father Payne, very seriously. "If there is one thing which experience has taught me, it is this--that if you make a signal to God, it is answered. I don't say that troubles roll away, or that you are made instantly happy. But you will find that you can struggle on. People simply don't try that experiment. The reason why they do not is, I honestly believe, because of our services, where prayer is made so ceremoniously and elaborately that people get a false sense of dignity and reverence. It is a very natural instinct which made the disciples say, 'Teach us to pray,' and I do not think that ecclesiastical systems do teach people to pray--at least the examples they give are too intellectual, too much concerned with good taste. A prayer need not be a verbal thing--the best prayers are not. It is the mute glance of an eye, the holding out of a hand. And if you ask me what can make people different, I say it is not will, but prayer." LXVIII OF PRAYER I was walking about the garden on a wintry Sunday with Father Payne. He had a particular mood on Sundays, I used to think, which made itself subtly felt--a mood serious, restrained, and yet contented. I do not remember how the subject came up, but he said something about prayer, and I replied: "I wish you would tell me exactly what you feel about prayer, Father. I never quite understand. You always speak as if it played a great part in your life, and yet I never am sure what exactly it means to you." "You might as well say," he said, smiling, "that you never felt quite sure what breakfast meant to me." He stopped and looked at me for a moment. "Do we know what anything _means_? We know what prayer _is_, at any rate--one of the commonest and most natural of instincts. What is your difficulty?" "Oh, the usual one," I said, "that if the God to whom we pray is the Power which puts into our minds good desires, and knows not only what is passing in our thoughts, but the very direction which our thoughts are going to take--reads us, in fact, like a book, as they say--what, then, is the object or purpose of setting ourselves to pray to a Power that knows our precise range of thoughts, and can disentangle them all far better than we can ourselves?" "Why," said Father Payne, "that is pure fatalism. If you carry that on a little further it means all absence of effort. You might as well say, 'I will take no steps to provide myself with food--if God is All-Powerful, and sends me a good appetite, it is His business to satisfy it!" "Oh," I said, "I see that. But if I set about providing myself with breakfast, I know exactly what I want, and have a very fair chance of obtaining it. But the essence of prayer is that you must not expect to get your desires fulfilled." "I certainly do not pretend," said he, "that prayer is a mechanical method of getting things; it isn't a _substitute_ for effort and action. Nor do I think that God simply withholds things unless you ask for them, as a dog has to beg for a piece of biscuit. I don't look upon prayer as the mere formulating of a list of requests; and I dislike very much the way some good people have of getting a large number of men and women to pray for the same thing, as if you were canvassing for votes. And yet I believe that prayers have a way of being granted. Indeed, I think that both the strength and the danger of prayer lies in the fact that people do very much tend to get what they have set their hearts upon. A recurrent prayer for a definite thing is often a sign that a man is working hard to secure it. It is rather perilous to desire definite things too definitely, not because you are disappointed, but because you are often successful in attaining them." "Then that would be a reason for not praying," I said. Father Payne gave one of his little frowns, which I knew well. "I'm not arguing for the sake of arguing, Father," I said; "I really want to understand. It seems to me such a muddle." The little frown passed off in a smile. "Yes, it isn't a wholly rational thing," said Father Payne, "but it's a natural and instinctive thing. To forbid prayer seems to me like forbidding hope and love. Prayer seems to me just a mingling of hope and desire and love and confidence. It is more like talking over your plans and desires with God. It all depends upon whether you say, 'My will be done,' which is the wrong sort of prayer, or 'Thy will be done,' which is the right sort of prayer, and infinitely harder. I don't mind telling you this, that my prayers are an attempt to put myself in touch with the Spirit of God. I believe in God; I believe that He is trying very hard to bring men and women to live in a certain way--the right, joyful, beautiful way. He sees it clearly enough; but we are so tangled up with material things that we don't see it clearly--we don't see where our happiness lies; we mistake all kinds of things--pleasures, schemes, successes, comforts, desires--for happiness; and prayer seems to me like opening a sluice and letting a clear stream gush through. That's why I believe one must set oneself to it. The sluice is not always open--we are lazy, cowardly, timid; or again, we are confident, self-satisfied, proud of our own inventiveness and resourcefulness. I don't know what the will is or what its limitations are; but I believe it has a degree of liberty, and it can exercise that liberty in welcoming God. Of course, if we think of God as drearily moral, harsh, full of anger and disapproval, we are not likely to welcome Him; but if we feel Him full of eagerness and sympathy, of 'comfort, light, and fire of love,' as the old hymn says, then we desire His company. You have to prepare yourself for good company, you know. It is a bit of a strain; and I feel that the people who won't pray are like the lazy and sloppy people who won't put themselves out or forego their habits or take any trouble to receive a splendid guest. The difference is that the splendid guest is not to be got every day, while God is always glad of your company, I think." "Then with you prayer isn't a process of asking?" I said. "But isn't it a way of changing yourself by simply trying to get your ideals clear?" "No, no," said Father Payne; "it's just drawing water from a well when you are thirsty. Of course you must go to the well, and let down the bucket. It isn't a mere training of imagination; it is helping yourself to something actually there. The more you pray, the less you ask for definite things. You become ashamed to do that. Do you remember the story of Hans Andersen, when he went to see the King of Denmark? The King made a pause at one point and looked at Andersen, and Andersen said afterwards that the King had evidently expected him to ask for a pension. 'But I could not,' he said. 'I know I was a fool, but my heart would not let me.' One can trust God to know one's desires, and one's heart will not let one ask for them. It is His will that you want to know--your own will that you want to surrender. Strength, clearsightedness, simplicity--those are what flow from contact with God." "But what do you make," I said, "of contemplative Orders of monks and nuns, who say that they specialise in prayer, and give up their whole time and energy to it?" "Well," said Father Payne, "it's a harmless and beautiful life; but it seems to me like abandoning yourself to one kind of rapture. Prayer seems to me a part of life, not the whole of it. You have got to use the strength given you. It is given you to do business with. It seems to me as if a man argued that because eating gave him strength, it must be a good thing to eat; and that he would therefore eat all day long. It isn't the gaining of strength that is desirable, but the using of strength. You mustn't sponge upon God, so to speak. And I don't honestly believe in any life which takes you right away from life. Life is the duty of all of us; and prayer seems to me just one of the things that help one to live." "But intercession," I said, "is there nothing in the idea that you can pray for those who cannot or will not pray for themselves?" "I don't know," said Father Payne. "If you love people and wish them well, and hate the thought of the evils which befall the innocent, and the overflowings of ungodliness, you can't keep that out of your prayers, of course. But I doubt very much whether one can do things vicariously. It seems to land you in difficulties; if you say, for instance, 'I will inflict sufferings upon myself, that others may be spared suffering,' logically you might go on to say, 'I will enjoy myself that my enjoyment may help those who cannot enjoy.' One doesn't really know how much one's own experience does help other people. Living with others certainly does affect them, but I don't feel sure that isolating oneself from others does. I think, on the whole, that everyone must take his place in a circle. We are limited by time and space and matter, you know. You can know and love a dozen people; you can't know and love a hundred thousand to much purpose. I remember when I was a boy that there was a run on a Bank where we lived. Two of the partners went there, and did what they could. The third, a pious fellow, shut himself up in his bedroom and prayed. The Bank was saved, and he came down the next day and explained his absence by saying he had been giving them the most effectual help in his power. He thought, I believe, that he had saved the Bank; I don't think the other two men thought so, and I am inclined to side with them. Mind, I am not deriding the idea of a vocation for intercessory prayer. I don't know enough about the forces of the world to do that. It's a harmless life, a beautiful life, and a hard life too, and I won't say it is useless. But I am not convinced of its usefulness. It seems to me on a par with the artistic life, a devotion to a beautiful dream, I don't, on the whole, believe in art for art's sake, and I don't think I believe in prayer for prayer's sake. But I don't propound my ideas as final. I think it possible--I can't say more--that a life devoted to the absorption of beautiful impressions may affect the atmosphere of the world--we are bound up with each other behind the scenes in mysterious ways--and similarly I think that lives of contemplative prayer _may_ affect the world. I should not attempt to discourage anyone from such a vocation. But it can't be taken for granted, and I think that a man must show cause, apart from mere inclination, why he should not live the common life of the world, and mingle with his fellows." "Then prayer, you think," I said, "is to you just one of the natural processes of life?" "That's about it!" said Father Payne. "It seems to me as definite a way of getting strength and clearness of view and hope and goodness, as eating and sleeping are ways of getting strength of another kind. To neglect it is to run the risk of living a hurried, muddled, self-absorbed life. I can't explain it, any more than I can explain eating or breathing. It just seems to me a condition of fine life, which we can practise to our help and comfort, and neglect to our hurt. I don't think I can say more about it than that, my boy!" LXIX THE SHADOW One evening, when I was sitting with Barthrop in the smoking-room and the others had gone away, he said to me suddenly, "There's something I want to speak to you about: I have been worrying about it for some little time, and it's a bad thing to do that. I daresay it is all nonsense, but I am bothered about the Father. I don't think he is well, and I don't think he thinks he is well. He is much thinner, you know, and he isn't in good spirits. I don't mean that he isn't cheerful in a way, but it's an effort to him. Now, have you noticed anything?" I thought for a minute, and then I said, "No, I don't think I have! He's thinner, of course, but he joked to me about that--he said he had turned the corner, as people do, and he wasn't going to be a pursy old party when he got older. Now that you mention it, I think he has been rather silent and abstracted lately. But then he often is that, you know, when we are all together. And in his private talks with me--and I have had several lately--he has seemed to me more tender and affectionate than usual even; not so amusing, perhaps, not bubbling over with talk, and a little more serious. If I have thought anything at all, it simply is that he is getting older." "It may simply be that, of course," said Barthrop, looking relieved. "I suppose he is about fifty-eight or so? But I'll tell you something else. I went in to speak to him two or three days ago. Well you know how he always seems to be doing something? He is never unoccupied indoors, though he has certainly seen less of everyone's work of late--but that morning I found him sitting in his chair, looking out of the window, doing nothing at all; and I didn't like his look. How can I put it? He looked like a man who was going off on a long journey--and he was tired and worn-looking--I have never seen him looking _worn_ before--as if there was a strain of some kind. There were lines about his face I hadn't noticed before, and his eyes seemed larger and brighter. He said to me, half apologetically, 'Look here, this won't do! I'm getting lazy,' Then he went on, 'I was thinking, you know, about this place: it has been an experiment, and a good and happy experiment. But it hasn't founded itself, as I hoped,' I asked him what exactly he meant, and he laughed, and said: 'You know I don't believe in founding things! A place like this has got to grow up of itself, and have a life of its own. I don't think the place has got that. I put a seed or two into the ground, but I'm not sure that they have quickened to life.' Then he went on in a minute: 'You will know I don't say this conceitedly, but I think it has all depended too much on me, and I know I'm only a tiller of the ground. I don't believe I can give life to a society--I can keep it lively, but that's not the same thing. Something has come of my plan, to be sure, but it isn't going to spread like a tree--and I hoped it might! But it's no good being disappointed--that's childish--you can't do what you mean to do in this world, only what you are meant to do. I expect the weakness has been that I meddle too much--I don't leave things alone enough. I trust too much to myself, and not enough to God. It's been too much a case of "See me do it!"--as the children say.'" "What did you say?" I said. "Nothing at all," said Barthrop; "that's where I fail. I can't rise to an emergency. I murmured something about our all being very grateful to him--it was awfully flat! If I could but have told him how I cared for him, and how splendid he had always been! But those perfectly true, sincere, fine things are just what one can't say, unless one has it all written down on paper. I wish he would see a doctor, or go away for a bit; but I can't advise him to do that--he hates a fuss about anything, and most of all about health. He says you ought never to tell people how you are feeling, because they have to pretend to be interested!" I smiled at this, and said, "I don't think there really is much the matter! People can't be always at the top of their game, and he takes a lot out of himself, of course. He's always giving out!" "He is indeed," said Barthrop; "but I won't say more now. I feel better for having told you. Just you keep your eyes open--but, for Heaven's sake, don't watch him--you know how sharp he is." I went off a little depressed by the talk, because it seemed so impossible to connect anything but buoyant health with Father Payne. I did not see him at breakfast, but he came in to lunch; and I saw at once that there was something amiss with him. He ate little, and he looked tired. However, as I rose to go--we did not, as I have said, talk at lunch--he just beckoned to me, and pointed with his finger in the direction of his room. It was a well-known gesture if he wanted to speak to one. I went there, and stood before the fire surveying the room, which looked unwontedly tidy, the table being almost free from books and papers. But there lay a long folded folio sheet on the table, a legal document, and it gave me a chill to see the word _Will_ on the top of it. Father Payne came in a moment later with a smile. Then somehow divining, as he so often did, exactly what had happened, he said, as if answering an unspoken question, "Yes, that's my will! I have been, in fact, making it. It's a wholesome occupation for an elderly man. But I only wanted to know if you would come for a stroll? Yes? That's all right! You are sure I'm not interfering with any arrangement?" It was a late autumn day in November: the air was cold and damp, the roads wet, the hedges hung with moisture and the leaves were almost gone from the trees. "Most people don't like this sort of day," said Father Payne, as we went out of the gate; "but I like it even better than spring. Everything seems going contentedly to sleep, like a tired child. All the plants are withdrawing into themselves, into the inner life. They have had a pleasant time, waving their banners about--but they have no use for them any more. They are all going to be alone for a bit. Do you remember that epithet of Keats, about the 'cool-rooted' flowers? That's a bit of genius. That's what makes the difference between people, I think--whether they are cool-rooted or not." He walked more slowly than was his wont to-day, but he seemed in equable spirits, and made many exclamations of delight. He said suddenly, "Do you know one of the advantages of growing old? It is that if you have an unpleasant thing ahead of you, instead of shadowing the mind, as it does when you are young, it gives a sort of relish to the intervening time. I can even imagine a man in the condemned cell, till the end gets close, being able to look ahead to the day, when he wakes in the morning--the square meals, the pipe--I believe they allow them to smoke--the talk with the chaplain. It's always nice to feel it is your duty to talk about yourself, and to explain how it all came about, and why you couldn't do otherwise. Now I have got to go up to town on some tiresome business at the end of this week, and I'm going to enjoy the days in between." He stopped and spoke with all his accustomed good humour to half a dozen people whom we met. Then he said to me: "Do you know, my boy, I want to tell you that you have been one of my successes! I did not honestly think you would buckle to as you have done, and I don't think you are quite as sympathetic as I once feared!" He gave me a smile as he said it, and went on: "You know what I mean--I thought you would reflect people too much, and be too responsive to your companions. And you have been a great comfort to me, I don't deny it. But I thankfully discern a good hard stone in the middle of all the juiciness, with a tight little kernel inside it--I'll quote Keats again, and say 'a sweet-hearted kernel,' Mind, I don't say you will do great things. You are facile, and you see things very quickly and accurately, and you have a style. But I don't think you have got the tragic quality or the passionate gift. You are too placid and contented--but you spin along, and I think you see something of the reality of things. You will be led forth beside the waters of comfort--you will lack nothing--your cup will be full. But the great work is done by people with large empty cups that take some filling--the people who are given the plenteousness of tears to drink. It's a bitter draught--you won't have to drink it. But I think you are on right and happy lines, and you must be content with good work. Anyhow, you will always write like a gentleman, and that's a good deal to say." This pleased and touched me very deeply. I began to murmur something. "Oh no," said Father Payne, "you needn't! A boy at a prize-giving isn't required to enter into easy talk with the presiding buffer! I have just handed you your prize." He talked after this lightly of many small things--about Barthrop in particular, and asked me many questions about him. "I am afraid I haven't allowed him enough initiative," said Father Payne; "that's a bad habit of mine. But if he had really had it, we should have squabbled--he's not quite fiery enough, the beloved Barthrop! He's awfully judicious, but he must have a lead. He's a submissioner, I'm afraid, as a witty prelate once said! You know the two sides of the choir, _Decani_ and _Cantoris_ as they are called. _Decani_ always begin the psalms and say the versicles, _Cantoris_ always respond. People are always one or the other, and Barthrop is a born _Cantoris_." We did not go very far, and he soon proposed to return. But just as we were nearing home, he said, "I think the hardest thing in life to understand--the very hardest of all--is our pleasure in the sense of permanence! It's the supreme and constant illusion. I can't think where it comes from, or why it is there, or what it is supposed to do for us. Do you remember," he said with a smile, "how Shelley, the most hopelessly restless of mortals, whenever he settled anywhere, always wrote to his friends that he had established himself _for ever_? It's the instinct which is most contrary to reason. Everything contradicts it--we are not the same people for five minutes together, nothing that we see or hear or taste continues--and yet we feel eternally and immutably fixed; and instead of living each day as if it was our last--which is a thoroughly bad piece of advice--we live each day as if it was one of an endlessly revolving chain of days, and as if we were going to live to all eternity--as indeed I believe we are! Probably the reason for it is to give us a hint that we _are_ immortal, after all, though we are tempted to think that all things come to an end. It is strange to think that nothing on which our eyes rest at this moment is the same as it was when we started our walk--the very stones of the wall are altered. It ought to make us ashamed of pretending that we are anything but ourselves; and yet we do change a little, thank God, and for the better. I've a fancy--though I can't say more than that of that we aren't meant to _know_ anything: and I think that the times when we know, or think we know, are the times when we stand still. That seems hard!"--he broke off with an unusual emotion: but he was himself again in a moment, and said, "I don't know why--it's the weather, perhaps: but I feel inclined to do nothing but thank people all day, like the man in _Happy Thoughts_ you know, who came down late for breakfast and could say nothing but 'Thanks, thanks, awfully thanks--thanks (to the butler), thanks (to the hostess)--thanks, thanks!' but it means something--a real emotion, though grotesquely phrased!--I've enjoyed this bit of a walk, my boy!" LXX OF WEAKNESS This was, I think, the last talk I had with Father Payne before he left us, so suddenly and so quietly, for his last encounter. It was a calm and sunny day, though the air was cold and fresh. I finished some work I was doing, a little after noonday, and I walked down the garden. I was on the grass, and turning the corner of a tiny thicket of yews and hollies, where there was a secluded seat facing the south, I saw that Father Payne was sitting there in the sun alone. I came up to him, and was just about to speak, when I saw that his eyes were closed, though his lips were moving. He sat in an attitude of fatigue and lassitude, I thought, with one leg crossed over the other and his arm stretched out along the seat-back. I would have stolen away again unobserved, when he opened his eyes and saw me; he gave me one of his big smiles, and motioned to me to come and sit down beside him. I did so, and he put his arm through mine. I said something about disturbing him, and he said, "Not a bit of it--I shall be glad of your company, old boy." Presently he said, "Do you know what it is to feel _sad_? I suppose not. I don't mean troubled about anything in particular--there's nothing to be troubled about--but simply sad, in a causeless, listless way?" "Yes, I think so," I said. He smiled at that, and said, "Then you _don't_ know what I mean, old man! You would be quite sure, if you had ever felt it. I mean a sense of feebleness and wretchedness, as if there was much to be done, and no desire to do it--as if your life had been a long mistake from beginning to end. Of course it is quite morbid and unreal, I know that! It is a temptation of the devil, sure enough, and it is an uncommonly effective one. He gets inside the weakness of our mortal nature, and tells us that we have come down to the truth at last. It's all nonsense, of course, but it's infernally ingenious nonsense. He brings all the failures of the world before your mind and heart, the thought of all the people who have fallen by the roadside and can't get up, and, worse still, all the people who have lost hope and pride, and don't want to be different. He points out how brief our time is, and how little we know what lies beyond. He shows us how the strong and unscrupulous and cruel people succeed and have a good time, and how many well-meaning, sensitive, muddled people come to hopeless grief. Oh, he has a score of instances, a quiver full of poisonous shafts." He was silent for a minute, and then he said, "Old boy, we won't heed him, you and I. We'll say, 'Yes, my dear Apollyon, all that is undoubtedly true. You do a lot of mischief, but your time is short. You wound us and disable us--you can even kill us; but it's a poor policy at best. You defeat yourself, because we slip away and you can't follow us. And when we are refreshed and renewed, we will come back, and go on with the battle.' That's what well say, like old Sir Andrew Barton: "'I'll but lie down and bleed awhile, And then I'll rise and fight again.' You must never mind being defeated, old man. You must never say that your sins have done for you! I don't care what a man has done, I don't care how cruel, wicked, sensual, evil he has been, if in the bottom of his heart he can say, 'I belong to God, after all!' That's the last and worst assault of the devil, when he comes and whispers to you that you have cut yourself off from God. You can't do that, whatever you feel. I have been thinking to-day of all the mistakes I have made, how I have drifted along, how I have enjoyed myself, when I might have been helping other people; what a lazy, greedy, ugly business it has all been, how little I have ever _made_ myself do anything. But I don't care. I go straight to God and I say, 'Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son.' But I am His son, for all that, and I know it and He knows it; and Apollyon may straddle across the way as much as he likes, but he can't stop me. If he does stop me, he only sends me straight home." I saw the tears stand in Father Payne's eyes, and I said hurriedly and eagerly, "Why, Father, you have done so much, for me, for all of us, for everyone you have ever had to do with. Don't speak so; it isn't true, it hasn't been a failure. You are the only person I have met who has showed me what goodness really is." Father Payne pressed my arm, but he did not speak for a moment. "You are very good to me, old man," he said in a moment. "I was not trying to get a testimonial out of you, you know; and of course you can't judge how far I have fallen short of all I might have done. But your affection and your kindness are very precious to me. You give me a message from God! It matters little how near the truth you are or how far away. God doesn't think of that. He isn't a hard reckoner; He's only glad when we return to Him, and put down our tired head upon His shoulder for a little. But even so, that isn't the end. As soon as we are strong again, we must begin again. There's plenty left to do. The battle isn't over because you or I are tired. He is tired Himself, I dare say. But it all goes on, and there is victory ahead. Don't forget that, dear boy. It's no good being heart-broken or worn out. Rise and fight again as soon as you can. I'm quite ready--I haven't had enough. I have had an easy post, I don't deny that. I have suffered very little, as suffering goes; and I'm grateful for that; but we mustn't fall in love with rest. If we sleep, it is only that we may rise refreshed, and go off again singing. We mustn't be afraid of weakness and suffering, and we mustn't be afraid of joy and strength either. That's treachery, you know." Presently he said, "Now you must leave me here a little! You came in the nick of time, and you brought me a message. It always comes, if you ask for it! And I shall say a prayer for the Little Master himself, as Sintram called him, before I go. He has his points, you know. He is uncommonly shrewd and tenacious and brave. He's fighting for his life, and I pity him whenever he suspects--and it must be pretty often--that things are not going his way. I don't despair of the old fellow himself, if I may say so. I suspect him of a sense of humour. I can't help thinking he will capitulate and cut his losses some day, and then we shall get things right in a trice. He will be conquered, and perhaps convinced; but he won't be used vindictively, whatever happens. My knowledge of that, and of the fact that he has got defeat ahead of him, and knows it, is the best defence against him, even when it is his hour, and the power of darkness, as it has been to-day." I got up and left him; he smiled at me and waved his hand. LXXI THE BANK OF THE RIVER The week passed without anything further occurring to arouse our anxieties, and Father Payne went up to town on the Monday: he went off in apparently good spirits: but we got a wire in the course of the day to say that he was detained in town by business and would write. On the following morning, Barthrop came into my room in silence, shortly after breakfast, and handed me a letter without a word. It was very short: it ran as follows: "DEAR LEONARD,--_I want you to come up to town to-morrow to see me, and if Duncan cares to come, I shall be delighted to see him too, though I know he has an artistic objection to seeing people who are ill, and I understand that I am ill. I saw a doctor yesterday, and he advised me to see a specialist, who advised me to have an operation. It seems better to get it over at once; so I went without delay into a nursing home, where I feel like a child in the nursery again. I want to talk over matters, and it will be better to say nothing which will cause a fuss. So just run up to-morrow, there's a good man, and you can get back in the evening. Ever yours,_ "C.P." It happened that there were only two of us at Aveley at the time, Kaye, and a younger man, Raven, who had just joined. We determined to say nothing about it till the following morning: the day passed heavily enough. I found I could do nothing with the dread of what it might all mean overhanging me. I admired Barthrop's common-sense: he spent the day, he told me, in doing accounts--he acted as a sort of bursar--and he kept up a quiet conversation at dinner in which I confess I played a very poor part. Kaye never noticed anything, and had no curiosity, and Raven had no suspicion of anything unusual. I slept ill that night, and found myself in a very much depressed mood on the following morning. I realised at every moment how entirely everything at Aveley was centred upon Father Payne, and how he was both in the foreground as well as in the background of all that we did or thought. Our journey passed almost in silence, and we drove straight to the nursing home in Mayfair. We were admitted to a little waiting-room in a bright, fresh-looking house, and were presently greeted by a genial and motherly old lady, dressed in a sort of nursing uniform, who told us that Mr. Payne was expecting us. We asked anxiously how he was. "Oh, he is very cheerful," she said; "his nurse, Sister Jane, thinks he is the most amusing man she ever saw. You must not worry about him. The operation is to be on Friday--he seems very well and strong in himself, and we will soon have him all right again--you will see! He is just the sort of man to make a good recovery." Then she added, "Mr. Payne said he thought you would like to see the doctor, so he is going to look in here in half an hour from now--he will see Mr. Payne first, and then you can have a good talk to him. You are going back this afternoon, I think?" "That depends!" said Barthrop. "Oh, Mr. Payne is expecting you to go back, I know--we will just run up and see him now." We went up two flights of stairs: the matron knocked at a door in the passage, and we went in. Father Payne was sitting up in bed, in a sort of blue wrapper which gave him, I thought, a curiously monastic air--he was reading quietly. The room was large and airy, and looked out on the backs of tall houses: it was quiet enough: there was just a far-off murmur of the town in the air. He greeted us with much animation, and smiled at me. "It's good of you to come, I'm sure," he said, "with your feeling about ill people. I don't object to that," he added in the familiar manner. "I think it's a sign of health, you know!" We sat down beside him. "Now," said Father Payne, "don't let's have any grave looks or hushed voices--you remember what Baines told us, when he joined the Church of Rome, that when he got back after his reception, his friends all spoke to him as if he had had a serious illness. The matter is simple enough--and I'm going to speak plainly. I have got some internal mischief, something that obstructs the passages, and it has got to be removed. There's a risk, of course--they never can tell exactly what they will find, but they don't think it has gone too far to be remedied. I don't pretend to like it--in fact it's decidedly inconvenient. I like my own little plans as well as anyone! and this time I don't seem able to look ahead--there's a sort of wall ahead of me. I feel as if I had come, like the boy in the _Water Babies_, to the place which was called _Stop_!" He paused a moment and smiled on us, his big good-natured smile. "But if I put my head out of the other end of the tunnel, I shall go on as usual. If I _don't_, then I had better tell you what I have done. You know I have no near relations. The noble family of Payne is practically summed up in me. The Vicar's a sort of cousin, but a very diluted one. I have arranged by my will that if you two fellows think you can keep the place going on its present lines, you can have a try. But I don't think it will do, I think it will be artificial and possibly ridiculous. I don't think it has got life! And if you decide not to try, then it will all go to my old College, which is quite alive. I would rather they would not sell it--but bless me, what does it matter? It is a mistake to try and grip anything with a dead hand. But if I get through, and I believe I have a good chance of doing so, you must just keep things going till I get back--which won't be long. There's the case in a nutshell! You quite understand? I don't want you to do what you think I should wish, because I _don't_ wish. And now we won't say another word about it, unless there are any questions you would like to ask. By the way, I have arranged the programme for the day. The doctor is coming to see me presently, and while he is here you can have some lunch--they will see to that--and then you can have a talk to him, while I have my lunch--I can tell you they do feed me up here!--and then we will have a talk, and you can catch the 4.30. You know how I like planning out a day." "But we thought we would like to stay in town, and see it all through," said Barthrop. "We have brought up some things." "Stuff and nonsense!" said Father Payne in his old manner. "Back you go by the 4.30, things and all! I have got the best nurse in the world, Sister Jane. By George, it's a treat exploring that woman's mind. She's full of kindness and common sense and courage, without a grain of reason. There's nothing in the world that woman wouldn't do, and nothing she wouldn't believe--she's entirely mediaeval. Then I have some books: and I'm going to read and talk and play patience--I'm quite good at that already--and eat and drink and sleep. I'm not to be disturbed, I tell you! To-morrow is a complete holiday: and on Friday the great event comes off. I won't have any useless emotion, or any bedside thoughts!" He glanced at us smiling and said, "Oh, of course, my dear boys, I'm only joking. I know you would like to stay, and I would like to have you here well enough: but see here--if all goes well, what's the use of this drama?--people can't behave quite naturally, however much they would like to, and I don't want any melting looks: and if it goes the other way--well, I don't like good-byes. I agree with dear old Mrs. Barbauld: "'Say not Good-night, but in some brighter clime Bid me Good-morning.'" He was silent for a moment--and just at that moment the doctor arrived. We went off to lunch with the old matron, who talked cheerfully about things in general: and it was strange to feel that what was to us so deep a tragedy was to her just a familiar experience, a thing that happened day by day. Then the doctor came in, a tall, thin, pale, unembarrassed man, very frank and simple. "Yes," he said, "there's a risk--I don't deny that! One never knows exactly what the mischief is or how far it extends. I told Mr. Payne exactly what I thought. He is the sort of man to whom one can do that. But he is strong, he has lived a healthy life, he has a great vitality--everything is in his favour. How long has he seemed to be ill, by the way?" "Some three or four months, I think," said Barthrop. "But it is difficult when you see anyone every day to realise a change--and then he is always cheerful." "He is," said the doctor. "I never saw a better patient. He told me his symptoms like a doctor describing someone else's case, I never heard anything so impersonal! We managed to catch Dr. Angus--that's the specialist, you know, who will operate. Mr. Payne wasn't in the least flurried. He showed no sign of being surprised: we sent him in here at once, and he seems to have made friends with everyone. That's all to the good, of course. He's not a nervous subject. No," he added reflectively, "he has an excellent chance of recovery. But I should deceive you if I pretended there was no risk. There _is_ a risk, and we must hope for the best. By the way, gentlemen," he added, taking up his hat, "I hope you won't think of staying in town. Mr. Payne seems most anxious that you should go back, and I think his wish should be paramount. You can do nothing here, and I think your remaining would fret him. I won't attempt to dictate, but I feel that you would do well to go!" "Oh, yes, we will go," said Barthrop. "You will let us know how all goes?" "Of course!" said the doctor. "You shall hear at once!" We went back, and spent an hour with Father Payne. I shall never forget that hour: he talked on quietly, seeing that we were unable to do our part. He spoke about the men and their work, and gave pleasant, half-humorous summaries of their characters. He gave us some little reminiscences of his life in London; he talked about the villagers at Aveley, and the servants. I realised afterwards that he had spoken a few words about every single person in the circle, small or great. The time sped past, and presently they told us that our cab was at the door, "Now don't make me think you are going to miss the train, old boys!" said Father Payne, raising himself up to shake hands. "I have enjoyed the sight of you. Give them all my love: be good and wise! God bless you both!" He shook hands with Barthrop and with me, and I felt the soft touch of his firm hand, as I had done at our first meeting. Barthrop did not speak, and went hurriedly from the room, without looking round. I could not help it, but I bent down and kissed his hand. "Well, well!" he said indulgently, and gave me a most tender and beautiful look out of his big eyes, and then he mentioned to me to go. I went in silence. We felt, both of us, a premonition of the worst disaster. I knew in my heart that it was the end. It seemed to me characteristic of Father Payne to make his farewells simply, and without any dramatic emphasis. The way in which he had spoken of all his friends, in that last hour we spent with him, had been a series of adieux, and even as I recalled his words, they seemed to me to shape themselves into unspoken messages. His own calmness had been unmistakable, and was marvellous to me; but it was all the more impressive because he did not, as one has read in some of the well-known scenes recorded in history of the deaths of famous men, seem to be attempting to say anything memorable or magnanimous. "What can I say that will be worthy of myself?"--that question appears to me to be sometimes lurking in the minds of men who have played a great part in the world, and who are determined to play it to the end. It is, of course a noble sort of courage which enables a man, at the very threshold of death, to force himself to behave with dignity and grandeur: but it seemed to me now to be an even more supreme courage to be, as Father Payne was, simply himself. Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Thomas More, Charles II, Archbishop Laud all died with a real greatness of undismayed bravery, but with just a sense of enacting a part rehearsed. The death scene of Socrates, which is, I suppose, a romantically constructed tale, does indeed give a picture of perfect naturalness: and I thought that Father Payne's demeanour, like that of Socrates, showed clearly enough that the idea of death was not an overshadowing dread dispelled by an effort of the will, but that it was not present as a fear in his mind at all, and rather regarded with a reverent curiosity: and I was reminded of a saying of Father Payne's which I have elsewhere recorded, that the virtues to which we give our most unhesitating admiration are the instinctive virtues rather than the reasoned virtues. If Father Payne had appeared to be keeping a firm hold on himself, and to be obliging himself to speak things timely and fitting, I should have admired him deeply: but I admired him all the more because of his unaffected tranquillity and unuttered affection. He had just enveloped us in his own calmness, and gone straight forward. We made our journey almost in silence: Barthrop was too much moved to speak: and my own mind was dim with trouble, at all that we were to lose, and yet drawn away into an infinite loyalty and tenderness for one who had been more than a father to me. LXXII THE CROSSING The end is soon told. On the following day, we thought it best to tell our two companions and the Vicar what was happening, and we also told the old butler that Father Payne was ill. It was a day of infinite dreariness to me, with outbursts of sharp emotion at the sight of everything so closely connected with Father Payne, and with the thought that he would see them no more. I was sitting in my room on the Friday morning, after a sleepless night, when Barthrop came in and handed me a telegram from the doctor. "Mr. Payne never recovered consciousness, and died an hour after the operation. All details arranged. Please await letter." I raised my eyes to Barthrop's face, but saw that he could not speak. I could say nothing either: my mind and heart seemed to crumble suddenly into a hopeless despair. A letter reached us the same evening by train. It was to the effect that Father Payne had written down some exact directions the day before and given them to the matron. He did not wish, in case of his death, that anyone should see his body: he wished to be placed in the simplest of coffins, as soon as possible, and that the coffin should be sent down by train to Aveley, be taken from the station straight to the church, and if possible to be buried at once. But even so, that was only his wish, and he particularly desired to avoid alike all ceremony and inconvenience. But besides that there were two notes enclosed addressed in Father Payne's hand to Barthrop and myself, which ran as follows: "My dear Leonard,--_I thought it very good of you to come up to see me, and no less good of you to go away as I desired. It is possible, of course, that I may return to you, and all be as before. But to be frank, I do not think it will be so. Even if I survive, I shall, I think, be much weakened by this operation, and shall have the possibility of a recurrence of the disease hanging over me. Much as I love life, and the world where I have found it pleasant to live, I do not want to lead a broken sort of existence, with invalid precautions and limitations. I think that this would bring out all that is worst in me, and would lead to unhappiness both in myself and in all those about me. If it has to be so, I shall do my best, but I think it would be a discreditable performance. I do not, however, think that I shall have this trial laid upon me. I feel that I am summoned elsewhere, and I am glad to think that my passage will be a swift one. I am not afraid of what lies beyond, because I believe death to be simple and natural enough, and a perfectly definite thing. Of what lies beyond it, I can form no idea; all our theories are probably quite wide of the mark. But it will be the same for me as it has been for all others who have died, and as it will some day be for you; and when we know, we shall be surprised that we did not see what it would be. I confess that I love the things that I know, and dislike the unknown. The world is very dear and familiar, and it has been kind and beautiful to me, as well as full of interest. But I expect that things will be much simplified. And please bear this in mind, that such a scene which we went through yesterday is worse for those who stand by and can do nothing than for the man himself; and you will believe me when I say that I am neither afraid nor unhappy._ "_With regard to my wishes about the place being kept on, on its present lines, remember that it is only a wish, and not to be regarded as a binding obligation or undertaken against your judgment. I trust you fully in this, as I have always trusted you; and I will just thank you, once and for all, for all that you have done and been. I shall always think of you with deep gratitude and lasting affection. God bless you now and always. Your old friend,_ "CHARLES PAYNE." To me he had written: "My dear boy,--_Please read my letter to Barthrop, which is meant for you as well. I won't repeat myself--you know I dislike that. But I would like just to say that you have been more like a son to me than anyone I ever have known, and I thank God for bringing you into my life, and for all your kind and faithful affection. You must just go on as you have begun; and I can only say that if I still have any knowledge of what goes on in the world, my affection and interest will not fail; and if I have not, I shall believe that we shall still find each other again, and rejoice in mutual knowledge and confidence. You are very dear to me, and always will be._ "_Settle everything with Leonard. I know that you will be able to interpret my wishes as I should wish them to be interpreted. Your affectionate old friend,_ "C. PAYNE." The last act was simple enough. The preparations were soon made. The coffin arrived at midday, and was buried in the afternoon, between the church and the Hall. It was sad and beautiful to see the heartfelt grief of the villagers: and it was wonderful to me that at that moment I recovered a kind of serenity on the surface of the grief below, so that in the still afternoon as we walked away from the grave it seemed to me strange rather than sorrowful. With those last letters in mind, it seemed to me almost traitorous to mourn. He at least had his heart's desire, and I did not doubt that he was abundantly satisfied. LXXIII AFTER-THOUGHTS Barthrop and I decided that we could not hope to continue the scheme. We had neither the force nor the experience. The whole society was, we felt, just the expression of Father Payne's personality, and without it, it had neither stability nor significance. Barthrop and the Vicar were left money legacies: the servants all received little pensions: there was a sum for distribution in the village, and a fund endowed to meet certain practical needs of the place. We handed over the estate to Father Payne's old College, the furniture and pictures to go with the house, which was to be let, if possible, to a tenant who would be inclined to settle there and make it his home: the income of the estate was to provide travelling scholarships. All had been carefully thought out with much practical sense and insight. Our other two companions went away. Barthrop and I stayed on at the Hall together for some weeks to settle the final arrangements. We had some wonderfully touching letters from old pupils and friends of Father Payne's. One in particular, saying that the writer owed an infinite debt of gratitude to Father Payne, for having saved him from himself and given him a new life. We talked much of Father Payne in those days; and I went alone to all the places where I had walked with him, recalling more gratefully than sadly how he had looked and moved and talked and smiled. It came to the last night that we were to spend at the Hall together. Everything had been gone through and arranged, and we were glad, I think, to be departing. "I don't know what to say and think about it all," said Barthrop; "I feel at present quite lost and stranded, as if my motive for living were gone, and as if I could hardly take up my work again. I know it is wrong, and I am ashamed of it. Father Payne always said that we must not depend helplessly upon persons or institutions, but must find our own real life and live it--you remember?" "Yes," I said, "indeed I do remember! But I do not think he ever realised quite how strong he was, and how he affected those about him. He did not need us--I sometimes think he did not need anyone--and he credited everyone with living the same intent life that he lived. But I shall always be infinitely grateful to him for showing me just that--that one must live one's own life, through and in spite of everything grievous that happens. The temptation is to indulge grief, and to feel that collapse in such a case is a sign of loyalty. It isn't so--if one collapses, it only means that one has been living an artificial and parasitical life. Father Payne would have hated that--and I don't mean to do it. He has given me not only an example, but an inspiration--a real current of life has flowed into my life from his--or perhaps rather through his from some deeper origin." "That is so," said Barthrop, "that is perfectly true! and don't you remember too how he always said life must be a _real_ fight--a joining in the fight that was going forwards? It need not be wrangling or disputing, or finding fault with other people, or maintaining and confuting. He used to say that people fought in a hundred ways--with their humour, their companionableness, their kindness, their friendliness--it need not be violent, and indeed if it was violent, that was fighting on the wrong side--it had only to be calm and sincere and dutiful." "Did he say that?" I said. "Yes, I am sure he did--no one else could say it or think of it. Of course, we have to fight, but not by dealing injury and harm, but by seeking and following peace and goodwill. Well, we must try--and it may be that we shall find him again, though he is hidden for a little while with God." "Yes," said Barthrop, "we shall find him, or he will find us--it makes little difference: and he will always be the same, though I hope we may be different!" LXXIV DEPARTURE It was a soft and delicious spring morning when I left Aveley--and I have never had the heart to visit it again. I had had a sleepless night, with the thought of Father Payne continually in my mind. I saw him in a score of attitudes, as he loitered in the garden with that look of inexpressible and tender interest that he had for all that grew out of the earth--worshipping, I used to think, at the shrine of life--or as he sat rapt in thought in church, or as he strode beside me along the uplands, or as he came and went in a hurried abstraction, or as he argued and discussed, with his great animated smile and his quick little gestures. I felt how his personality had filled our lives to the brim, as a spring whose waters fail not. It was not that he was a perfect character, with a tranquil and effortless superiority, or with a high intellectual tenacity, or with an unruffled serenity. He was sensitive, impatient, fitful, prejudiced. He had little constructive capacity, no creative or dramatic power, no loftiness of tragic emotion. I knew all that; I did not regard him with a false or uncritical reverence. But he was vital, generous, rich in zest and joy, heroic, as no other man I had ever known. He had no petty ambition, no thirst for recognition, no acidity of judgment. He never sought to impress himself: but his was a large, affectionate, liberal nature, more responsive to life, more lavish of self, more disinterested than any human being that had crossed my path. He had never desired to make disciples--he was not self-confident or self-regarding enough for that. But he had continued to draw us all with him into a vortex of life, where the stream ran swiftly, and where it seemed disgraceful to be either listless or unconcerned. I blessed the kindly fate that had guided me to him, and had won for me his deep regard. I did not wish to copy or imitate him--he had infected me with a deep distrust for dependence--I only wished to live my own life in the same eager spirit. As he had said to me once, the motto for every man was to be _Amor Fati_--not a reluctant acquiescence, or a feeble optimism, or a gentle resignation, but a passion for one's own destiny, a deep desire to make the most and the best out of life, and a strong purpose to share one's best with all who were journeying at one's side. So the night passed, thick with recollections and regrets, deepening into a horror of loss and darkness, and then slowly brightening into the calm prelude of a day of farewell. The birds began to chirp and twitter in the ivy; the thrush uttered her long-drawn notes, sweetly repeated and sustained in the dusky bushes. That sound was much connected in my mind with Aveley. To be awakened thus in the summer dawn, to listen awhile to the delicious sound, to fall asleep again with the thought of the long pleasant day of work and friendship ahead of me, had been one of my greatest luxuries. I rose early, and made my last preparations, and then, having got a little time before the last meal I was to take with Barthrop, I went round about the garden with a desire to draw into my spirit for the last time the pure and happy atmosphere of the place. I saw the beds fringed with purple polyanthus, and the daffodils in the dewy grass. I gazed at the long lines of the low hills across the stream, with the woodland spaces all flushed with spring. I heard the cawing of the rooks in the soft air, and the bubbling song of the chaffinches filled the shrubberies. I knew the mood of old--the mood in which, after a holiday sojourn in some place which one has learned to love, a happy space of time stained by no base anxiety, shadowed by no calamity, the call to rejoin the routine of life makes itself heard half reluctantly, half ardently. The heart at such moments tries to be grateful without regret, and hopeful without indifference. The purpose to go, the desire to stay, wrestle together; and now at the end of the happiest and most fruitful period I had ever known or was ever, I thought, likely to know, I felt like Jacob wrestling with the angel till the breaking of the day, and crying out, half in weakness, half in strength, "I will not let thee go until thou bless me." It came, the sudden blessing which I desired. It fell like some full warm shower upon the thirsty earth. In that moment I had the blissful instinct which had before been but a reasoned conviction, that Father Payne was near me, with me, about me, enfolding me with a swift tenderness, and yet at the same time pointing me forward, bidding me clearly and almost, it seemed, petulantly, to disengage myself from all dependence upon himself or his example. He had other things to do, I felt with something like a smile, than to hover over me and haunt my path with tenderness. Such weakness of sentiment was worthy neither of himself nor of myself. I had all the world before me, and I was to take my part in it with spirit and even gaiety. To shrink into the shadow, to live in tearful retrospect--it was not to be thought of; and I had in that moment a glow of thankful energy which made light of grief and pain alike. I must take hold of life instantly and with both hands. I saw it in a sudden flash of light. I went to the churchyard, I stood for an instant beside the grave, now turfed over and planted with daffodils. I put aside from my heart, once and for all, the old wistful instinct which ties the living to the dead. The poor body that lay there, dust in dust, had no more to do with Father Payne than the stained candle-socket with the flame that had leapt away upon the air. That was a moment of true and certain joy; so that when I went back to the house and joined Barthrop, I felt no longer the uneasy quivering of the spirit which had long overmastered me. He too was calm and brave; we sat together for the last time, we talked with an unaffected cheerfulness of the future. He too, I saw, had experienced the same loosening of the spirit from its trivial bonds, dear and beautiful as they were, so long as one did not hug them close. "I never thought," he said to me at last, "to go light-heartedly away--and yet I can do even that! I have heard something, I can hardly say what, which tells me to go forward, not to hanker, not to look back--and which tells me best of all that it would be almost like treachery to wish the Father back again. It is better so! I say this," he went on, "not with resignation, not with a mild desire to make the best of a bad business, but with a serene certainty that it is not a bad business at all. I cannot tell where it is gone, the cloud that has oppressed me--but it is gone, and it will not come back." "Yes," I said, "I recognise that--I feel it too; our work here is done, and we have work waiting for us. We shall meet, we shall compare experiences, we shall love our fate. Life is to be a new quest, not an old worship. That is to be our loyalty to Father Payne, that we are to believe in life, and not only to believe in memory." It was soon over. Barthrop was to go later, and he came out to see me go. Just before I started, the old clock played its sweet tune; we stood in silence listening. "That is the best of omens," I said, "to depart with thanksgiving and the voice of melody." He smiled in my face, we clasped hands; I drove up the little road, while he stood at the door, smiling and waving his hand, till I turned into the main road, between the blossoming hedges, and saw Aveley no more. 
2680	----	MEDITATIONS By Marcus Aurelius CONTENTS NOTES INTRODUCTION FIRST BOOK SECOND BOOK THIRD BOOK FOURTH BOOK FIFTH BOOK SIXTH BOOK SEVENTH BOOK EIGHTH BOOK NINTH BOOK TENTH BOOK ELEVENTH BOOK TWELFTH BOOK APPENDIX GLOSSARY Original Transcriber's Notes: This text was scanned by J. Boulton using Textbridge OCR. The Greek portions of the text have been added by hand and they will require the standard "Symbol" font "symbol.ttf" to be installed in the system fonts folder. This is a standard Windows font, so should be present on most systems. To contact the scanner e-mail: magicjon@ic24.net INTRODUCTION This is the Plain Text version, see medma10h.txt or .zip for the HTML version with the various symbols mentioned above. INTRODUCTION MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS was born on April 26, A.D. 121. His real name was M. Annius Verus, and he was sprung of a noble family which claimed descent from Numa, second King of Rome. Thus the most religious of emperors came of the blood of the most pious of early kings. His father, Annius Verus, had held high office in Rome, and his grandfather, of the same name, had been thrice Consul. Both his parents died young, but Marcus held them in loving remembrance. On his father's death Marcus was adopted by his grandfather, the consular Annius Verus, and there was deep love between these two. On the very first page of his book Marcus gratefully declares how of his grandfather he had learned to be gentle and meek, and to refrain from all anger and passion. The Emperor Hadrian divined the fine character of the lad, whom he used to call not Verus but Verissimus, more Truthful than his own name. He advanced Marcus to equestrian rank when six years of age, and at the age of eight made him a member of the ancient Salian priesthood. The boy's aunt, Annia Galeria Faustina, was married to Antoninus Pius, afterwards emperor. Hence it came about that Antoninus, having no son, adopted Marcus, changing his name to that which he is known by, and betrothed him to his daughter Faustina. His education was conducted with all care. The ablest teachers were engaged for him, and he was trained in the strict doctrine of the Stoic philosophy, which was his great delight. He was taught to dress plainly and to live simply, to avoid all softness and luxury. His body was trained to hardihood by wrestling, hunting, and outdoor games; and though his constitution was weak, he showed great personal courage to encounter the fiercest boars. At the same time he was kept from the extravagancies of his day. The great excitement in Rome was the strife of the Factions, as they were called, in the circus. The racing drivers used to adopt one of four colours--red, blue, white, or green--and their partisans showed an eagerness in supporting them which nothing could surpass. Riot and corruption went in the train of the racing chariots; and from all these things Marcus held severely aloof. In 140 Marcus was raised to the consulship, and in 145 his betrothal was consummated by marriage. Two years later Faustina brought him a daughter; and soon after the tribunate and other imperial honours were conferred upon him. Antoninus Pius died in 161, and Marcus assumed the imperial state. He at once associated with himself L. Ceionius Commodus, whom Antoninus had adopted as a younger son at the same time with Marcus, giving him the name of Lucius Aurelius Verus. Henceforth the two are colleagues in the empire, the junior being trained as it were to succeed. No sooner was Marcus settled upon the throne than wars broke out on all sides. In the east, Vologeses III. of Parthia began a long-meditated revolt by destroying a whole Roman Legion and invading Syria (162). Verus was sent off in hot haste to quell this rising; and he fulfilled his trust by plunging into drunkenness and debauchery, while the war was left to his officers. Soon after Marcus had to face a more serious danger at home in the coalition of several powerful tribes on the northern frontier. Chief among those were the Marcomanni or Marchmen, the Quadi (mentioned in this book), the Sarmatians, the Catti, the Jazyges. In Rome itself there was pestilence and starvation, the one brought from the east by Verus's legions, the other caused by floods which had destroyed vast quantities of grain. After all had been done possible to allay famine and to supply pressing needs--Marcus being forced even to sell the imperial jewels to find money--both emperors set forth to a struggle which was to continue more or less during the rest of Marcus's reign. During these wars, in 169, Verus died. We have no means of following the campaigns in detail; but thus much is certain, that in the end the Romans succeeded in crushing the barbarian tribes, and effecting a settlement which made the empire more secure. Marcus was himself commander-in-chief, and victory was due no less to his own ability than to his wisdom in choice of lieutenants, shown conspicuously in the case of Pertinax. There were several important battles fought in these campaigns; and one of them has become celebrated for the legend of the Thundering Legion. In a battle against the Quadi in 174, the day seemed to be going in favour of the foe, when on a sudden arose a great storm of thunder and rain the lightning struck the barbarians with terror, and they turned to rout. In later days this storm was said to have been sent in answer to the prayers of a legion which contained many Christians, and the name Thundering Legion should be given to it on this account. The title of Thundering Legion is known at an earlier date, so this part of the story at least cannot be true; but the aid of the storm is acknowledged by one of the scenes carved on Antonine's Column at Rome, which commemorates these wars. The settlement made after these troubles might have been more satisfactory but for an unexpected rising in the east. Avidius Cassius, an able captain who had won renown in the Parthian wars, was at this time chief governor of the eastern provinces. By whatever means induced, he had conceived the project of proclaiming himself emperor as soon as Marcus, who was then in feeble health, should die; and a report having been conveyed to him that Marcus was dead, Cassius did as he had planned. Marcus, on hearing the news, immediately patched up a peace and returned home to meet this new peril. The emperors great grief was that he must needs engage in the horrors of civil strife. He praised the qualities of Cassius, and expressed a heartfelt wish that Cassius might not be driven to do himself a hurt before he should have the opportunity to grant a free pardon. But before he could come to the east news had come to Cassius that the emperor still lived; his followers fell away from him, and he was assassinated. Marcus now went to the east, and while there the murderers brought the head of Cassius to him; but the emperor indignantly refused their gift, nor would he admit the men to his presence. On this journey his wife, Faustina, died. At his return the emperor celebrated a triumph (176). Immediately afterwards he repaired to Germany, and took up once more the burden of war. His operations were followed by complete success; but the troubles of late years had been too much for his constitution, at no time robust, and on March 17, 180, he died in Pannonia. The good emperor was not spared domestic troubles. Faustina had borne him several children, of whom he was passionately fond. Their innocent faces may still be seen in many a sculpture gallery, recalling with odd effect the dreamy countenance of their father. But they died one by one, and when Marcus came to his own end only one of his sons still lived--the weak and worthless Commodus. On his father's death Commodus, who succeeded him, undid the work of many campaigns by a hasty and unwise peace; and his reign of twelve years proved him to be a ferocious and bloodthirsty tyrant. Scandal has made free with the name of Faustina herself, who is accused not only of unfaithfulness, but of intriguing with Cassius and egging him on to his fatal rebellion, it must be admitted that these charges rest on no sure evidence; and the emperor, at all events, loved her dearly, nor ever felt the slightest qualm of suspicion. As a soldier we have seen that Marcus was both capable and successful; as an administrator he was prudent and conscientious. Although steeped in the teachings of philosophy, he did not attempt to remodel the world on any preconceived plan. He trod the path beaten by his predecessors, seeking only to do his duty as well as he could, and to keep out corruption. He did some unwise things, it is true. To create a compeer in empire, as he did with Verus, was a dangerous innovation which could only succeed if one of the two effaced himself; and under Diocletian this very precedent caused the Roman Empire to split into halves. He erred in his civil administration by too much centralising. But the strong point of his reign was the administration of justice. Marcus sought by-laws to protect the weak, to make the lot of the slaves less hard, to stand in place of father to the fatherless. Charitable foundations were endowed for rearing and educating poor children. The provinces were protected against oppression, and public help was given to cities or districts which might be visited by calamity. The great blot on his name, and one hard indeed to explain, is his treatment of the Christians. In his reign Justin at Rome became a martyr to his faith, and Polycarp at Smyrna, and we know of many outbreaks of fanaticism in the provinces which caused the death of the faithful. It is no excuse to plead that he knew nothing about the atrocities done in his name: it was his duty to know, and if he did not he would have been the first to confess that he had failed in his duty. But from his own tone in speaking of the Christians it is clear he knew them only from calumny; and we hear of no measures taken even to secure that they should have a fair hearing. In this respect Trajan was better than he. To a thoughtful mind such a religion as that of Rome would give small satisfaction. Its legends were often childish or impossible; its teaching had little to do with morality. The Roman religion was in fact of the nature of a bargain: men paid certain sacrifices and rites, and the gods granted their favour, irrespective of right or wrong. In this case all devout souls were thrown back upon philosophy, as they had been, though to a less extent, in Greece. There were under the early empire two rival schools which practically divided the field between them, Stoicism and Epicureanism. The ideal set before each was nominally much the same. The Stoics aspired to the repression of all emotion, and the Epicureans to freedom from all disturbance; yet in the upshot the one has become a synonym of stubborn endurance, the other for unbridled licence. With Epicureanism we have nothing to do now; but it will be worth while to sketch the history and tenets of the Stoic sect. Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, was born in Cyprus at some date unknown, but his life may be said roughly to be between the years 350 and 250 B.C. Cyprus has been from time immemorial a meeting-place of the East and West, and although we cannot grant any importance to a possible strain of Phoenician blood in him (for the Phoenicians were no philosophers), yet it is quite likely that through Asia Minor he may have come in touch with the Far East. He studied under the cynic Crates, but he did not neglect other philosophical systems. After many years' study he opened his own school in a colonnade in Athens called the Painted Porch, or Stoa, which gave the Stoics their name. Next to Zeno, the School of the Porch owes most to Chrysippus (280--207 b.c.), who organised Stoicism into a system. Of him it was said, 'But for Chrysippus, there had been no Porch.' The Stoics regarded speculation as a means to an end and that end was, as Zeno put it, to live consistently omologonuenws zhn or as it was later explained, to live in conformity with nature. This conforming of the life to nature oralogoumenwz th fusei zhn. was the Stoic idea of Virtue. This dictum might easily be taken to mean that virtue consists in yielding to each natural impulse; but that was very far from the Stoic meaning. In order to live in accord with nature, it is necessary to know what nature is; and to this end a threefold division of philosophy is made--into Physics, dealing with the universe and its laws, the problems of divine government and teleology; Logic, which trains the mind to discern true from false; and Ethics, which applies the knowledge thus gained and tested to practical life. The Stoic system of physics was materialism with an infusion of pantheism. In contradiction to Plato's view that the Ideas, or Prototypes, of phenomena alone really exist, the Stoics held that material objects alone existed; but immanent in the material universe was a spiritual force which acted through them, manifesting itself under many forms, as fire, aether, spirit, soul, reason, the ruling principle. The universe, then, is God, of whom the popular gods are manifestations; while legends and myths are allegorical. The soul of man is thus an emanation from the godhead, into whom it will eventually be re-absorbed. The divine ruling principle makes all things work together for good, but for the good of the whole. The highest good of man is consciously to work with God for the common good, and this is the sense in which the Stoic tried to live in accord with nature. In the individual it is virtue alone which enables him to do this; as Providence rules the universe, so virtue in the soul must rule man. In Logic, the Stoic system is noteworthy for their theory as to the test of truth, the Criterion. They compared the new-born soul to a sheet of paper ready for writing. Upon this the senses write their impressions, fantasias and by experience of a number of these the soul unconsciously conceives general notions koinai eunoiai or anticipations. prolhyeis When the impression was such as to be irresistible it was called (katalnptikh fantasia) one that holds fast, or as they explained it, one proceeding from truth. Ideas and inferences artificially produced by deduction or the like were tested by this 'holding perception.' Of the Ethical application I have already spoken. The highest good was the virtuous life. Virtue alone is happiness, and vice is unhappiness. Carrying this theory to its extreme, the Stoic said that there could be no gradations between virtue and vice, though of course each has its special manifestations. Moreover, nothing is good but virtue, and nothing but vice is bad. Those outside things which are commonly called good or bad, such as health and sickness, wealth and poverty, pleasure and pain, are to him indifferent adiofora. All these things are merely the sphere in which virtue may act. The ideal Wise Man is sufficient unto himself in all things, autarkhs and knowing these truths, he will be happy even when stretched upon the rack. It is probable that no Stoic claimed for himself that he was this Wise Man, but that each strove after it as an ideal much as the Christian strives after a likeness to Christ. The exaggeration in this statement was, however, so obvious, that the later Stoics were driven to make a further subdivision of things indifferent into what is preferable (prohgmena) and what is undesirable. They also held that for him who had not attained to the perfect wisdom, certain actions were proper. (kaqhkonta) These were neither virtuous nor vicious, but, like the indifferent things, held a middle place. Two points in the Stoic system deserve special mention. One is a careful distinction between things which are in our power and things which are not. Desire and dislike, opinion and affection, are within the power of the will; whereas health, wealth, honour, and other such are generally not so. The Stoic was called upon to control his desires and affections, and to guide his opinion; to bring his whole being under the sway of the will or leading principle, just as the universe is guided and governed by divine Providence. This is a special application of the favourite Greek virtue of moderation, (swfrosuum) and has also its parallel in Christian ethics. The second point is a strong insistence on the unity of the universe, and on man's duty as part of a great whole. Public spirit was the most splendid political virtue of the ancient world, and it is here made cosmopolitan. It is again instructive to note that Christian sages insisted on the same thing. Christians are taught that they are members of a worldwide brotherhood, where is neither Greek nor Hebrew, bond nor free and that they live their lives as fellow-workers with God. Such is the system which underlies the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Some knowledge of it is necessary to the right understanding of the book, but for us the chief interest lies elsewhere. We do not come to Marcus Aurelius for a treatise on Stoicism. He is no head of a school to lay down a body of doctrine for students; he does not even contemplate that others should read what he writes. His philosophy is not an eager intellectual inquiry, but more what we should call religious feeling. The uncompromising stiffness of Zeno or Chrysippus is softened and transformed by passing through a nature reverent and tolerant, gentle and free from guile; the grim resignation which made life possible to the Stoic sage becomes in him almost a mood of aspiration. His book records the innermost thoughts of his heart, set down to ease it, with such moral maxims and reflections as may help him to bear the burden of duty and the countless annoyances of a busy life. It is instructive to compare the Meditations with another famous book, the Imitation of Christ. There is the same ideal of self-control in both. It should be a man's task, says the Imitation, 'to overcome himself, and every day to be stronger than himself.' 'In withstanding of the passions standeth very peace of heart.' 'Let us set the axe to the root, that we being purged of our passions may have a peaceable mind.' To this end there must be continual self-examination. 'If thou may not continually gather thyself together, namely sometimes do it, at least once a day, the morning or the evening. In the morning purpose, in the evening discuss the manner, what thou hast been this day, in word, work, and thought.' But while the Roman's temper is a modest self-reliance, the Christian aims at a more passive mood, humbleness and meekness, and reliance on the presence and personal friendship of God. The Roman scrutinises his faults with severity, but without the self-contempt which makes the Christian 'vile in his own sight.' The Christian, like the Roman, bids 'study to withdraw thine heart from the love of things visible'; but it is not the busy life of duty he has in mind so much as the contempt of all worldly things, and the 'cutting away of all lower delectations.' Both rate men's praise or blame at their real worthlessness; 'Let not thy peace,' says the Christian, 'be in the mouths of men.' But it is to God's censure the Christian appeals, the Roman to his own soul. The petty annoyances of injustice or unkindness are looked on by each with the same magnanimity. 'Why doth a little thing said or done against thee make thee sorry? It is no new thing; it is not the first, nor shall it be the last, if thou live long. At best suffer patiently, if thou canst not suffer joyously.' The Christian should sorrow more for other men's malice than for our own wrongs; but the Roman is inclined to wash his hands of the offender. 'Study to be patient in suffering and bearing other men's defaults and all manner infirmities,' says the Christian; but the Roman would never have thought to add, 'If all men were perfect, what had we then to suffer of other men for God?' The virtue of suffering in itself is an idea which does not meet us in the Meditations. Both alike realise that man is one of a great community. 'No man is sufficient to himself,' says the Christian; 'we must bear together, help together, comfort together.' But while he sees a chief importance in zeal, in exalted emotion that is, and avoidance of lukewarmness, the Roman thought mainly of the duty to be done as well as might be, and less of the feeling which should go with the doing of it. To the saint as to the emperor, the world is a poor thing at best. 'Verily it is a misery to live upon the earth,' says the Christian; few and evil are the days of man's life, which passeth away suddenly as a shadow. But there is one great difference between the two books we are considering. The Imitation is addressed to others, the Meditations by the writer to himself. We learn nothing from the Imitation of the author's own life, except in so far as he may be assumed to have practised his own preachings; the Meditations reflect mood by mood the mind of him who wrote them. In their intimacy and frankness lies their great charm. These notes are not sermons; they are not even confessions. There is always an air of self-consciousness in confessions; in such revelations there is always a danger of unctuousness or of vulgarity for the best of men. St. Augus-tine is not always clear of offence, and John Bunyan himself exaggerates venial peccadilloes into heinous sins. But Marcus Aurelius is neither vulgar nor unctuous; he extenuates nothing, but nothing sets down in malice. He never poses before an audience; he may not be profound, he is always sincere. And it is a lofty and serene soul which is here disclosed before us. Vulgar vices seem to have no temptation for him; this is not one tied and bound with chains which he strives to break. The faults he detects in himself are often such as most men would have no eyes to see. To serve the divine spirit which is implanted within him, a man must 'keep himself pure from all violent passion and evil affection, from all rashness and vanity, and from all manner of discontent, either in regard of the gods or men': or, as he says elsewhere, 'unspotted by pleasure, undaunted by pain.' Unwavering courtesy and consideration are his aims. 'Whatsoever any man either doth or saith, thou must be good;' 'doth any man offend? It is against himself that he doth offend: why should it trouble thee?' The offender needs pity, not wrath; those who must needs be corrected, should be treated with tact and gentleness; and one must be always ready to learn better. 'The best kind of revenge is, not to become like unto them.' There are so many hints of offence forgiven, that we may believe the notes followed sharp on the facts. Perhaps he has fallen short of his aim, and thus seeks to call his principles to mind, and to strengthen himself for the future. That these sayings are not mere talk is plain from the story of Avidius Cassius, who would have usurped his imperial throne. Thus the emperor faithfully carries out his own principle, that evil must be overcome with good. For each fault in others, Nature (says he) has given us a counteracting virtue; 'as, for example, against the unthankful, it hath given goodness and meekness, as an antidote.' One so gentle towards a foe was sure to be a good friend; and indeed his pages are full of generous gratitude to those who had served him. In his First Book he sets down to account all the debts due to his kinsfolk and teachers. To his grandfather he owed his own gentle spirit, to his father shamefastness and courage; he learnt of his mother to be religious and bountiful and single-minded. Rusticus did not work in vain, if he showed his pupil that his life needed amending. Apollonius taught him simplicity, reasonableness, gratitude, a love of true liberty. So the list runs on; every one he had dealings with seems to have given him something good, a sure proof of the goodness of his nature, which thought no evil. If his was that honest and true heart which is the Christian ideal, this is the more wonderful in that he lacked the faith which makes Christians strong. He could say, it is true, 'either there is a God, and then all is well; or if all things go by chance and fortune, yet mayest thou use thine own providence in those things that concern thee properly; and then art thou well.' Or again, 'We must needs grant that there is a nature that doth govern the universe.' But his own part in the scheme of things is so small, that he does not hope for any personal happiness beyond what a serene soul may win in this mortal life. 'O my soul, the time I trust will be, when thou shalt be good, simple, more open and visible, than that body by which it is enclosed;' but this is said of the calm contentment with human lot which he hopes to attain, not of a time when the trammels of the body shall be cast off. For the rest, the world and its fame and wealth, 'all is vanity.' The gods may perhaps have a particular care for him, but their especial care is for the universe at large: thus much should suffice. His gods are better than the Stoic gods, who sit aloof from all human things, untroubled and uncaring, but his personal hope is hardly stronger. On this point he says little, though there are many allusions to death as the natural end; doubtless he expected his soul one day to be absorbed into the universal soul, since nothing comes out of nothing, and nothing can be annihilated. His mood is one of strenuous weariness; he does his duty as a good soldier, waiting for the sound of the trumpet which shall sound the retreat; he has not that cheerful confidence which led Socrates through a life no less noble, to a death which was to bring him into the company of gods he had worshipped and men whom he had revered. But although Marcus Aurelius may have held intellectually that his soul was destined to be absorbed, and to lose consciousness of itself, there were times when he felt, as all who hold it must sometimes feel, how unsatisfying is such a creed. Then he gropes blindly after something less empty and vain. 'Thou hast taken ship,' he says, 'thou hast sailed, thou art come to land, go out, if to another life, there also shalt thou find gods, who are everywhere.' There is more in this than the assumption of a rival theory for argument's sake. If worldly things 'be but as a dream, the thought is not far off that there may be an awakening to what is real. When he speaks of death as a necessary change, and points out that nothing useful and profitable can be brought about without change, did he perhaps think of the change in a corn of wheat, which is not quickened except it die? Nature's marvellous power of recreating out of Corruption is surely not confined to bodily things. Many of his thoughts sound like far-off echoes of St. Paul; and it is strange indeed that this most Christian of emperors has nothing good to say of the Christians. To him they are only sectaries 'violently and passionately set upon opposition. Profound as philosophy these Meditations certainly are not; but Marcus Aurelius was too sincere not to see the essence of such things as came within his experience. Ancient religions were for the most part concerned with outward things. Do the necessary rites, and you propitiate the gods; and these rites were often trivial, sometimes violated right feeling or even morality. Even when the gods stood on the side of righteousness, they were concerned with the act more than with the intent. But Marcus Aurelius knows that what the heart is full of, the man will do. 'Such as thy thoughts and ordinary cogitations are,' he says, 'such will thy mind be in time.' And every page of the book shows us that he knew thought was sure to issue in act. He drills his soul, as it were, in right principles, that when the time comes, it may be guided by them. To wait until the emergency is to be too late. He sees also the true essence of happiness. 'If happiness did consist in pleasure, how came notorious robbers, impure abominable livers, parricides, and tyrants, in so large a measure to have their part of pleasures?' He who had all the world's pleasures at command can write thus 'A happy lot and portion is, good inclinations of the soul, good desires, good actions.' By the irony of fate this man, so gentle and good, so desirous of quiet joys and a mind free from care, was set at the head of the Roman Empire when great dangers threatened from east and west. For several years he himself commanded his armies in chief. In camp before the Quadi he dates the first book of his Meditations, and shows how he could retire within himself amid the coarse clangour of arms. The pomps and glories which he despised were all his; what to most men is an ambition or a dream, to him was a round of weary tasks which nothing but the stern sense of duty could carry him through. And he did his work well. His wars were slow and tedious, but successful. With a statesman's wisdom he foresaw the danger to Rome of the barbarian hordes from the north, and took measures to meet it. As it was, his settlement gave two centuries of respite to the Roman Empire; had he fulfilled the plan of pushing the imperial frontiers to the Elbe, which seems to have been in his mind, much more might have been accomplished. But death cut short his designs. Truly a rare opportunity was given to Marcus Aurelius of showing what the mind can do in despite of circumstances. Most peaceful of warriors, a magnificent monarch whose ideal was quiet happiness in home life, bent to obscurity yet born to greatness, the loving father of children who died young or turned out hateful, his life was one paradox. That nothing might lack, it was in camp before the face of the enemy that he passed away and went to his own place. Translations THE following is a list of the chief English translations of Marcus Aurelius: (1) By Meric Casaubon, 1634; (2) Jeremy Collier, 1701; (3) James Thomson, 1747; (4) R. Graves, 1792; (5) H. McCormac, 1844; (6) George Long, 1862; (7) G. H. Rendall, 1898; and (8) J. Jackson, 1906. Renan's "Marc-Aurèle"--in his "History of the Origins of Christianity," which appeared in 1882--is the most vital and original book to be had relating to the time of Marcus Aurelius. Pater's "Marius the Epicurean" forms another outside commentary, which is of service in the imaginative attempt to create again the period. MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS THE ROMAN EMPEROR HIS FIRST BOOK concerning HIMSELF: Wherein Antoninus recordeth, What and of whom, whether Parents, Friends, or Masters; by their good examples, or good advice and counsel, he had learned: Divided into Numbers or Sections. ANTONINUS Book vi. Num. xlviii. Whensoever thou wilt rejoice thyself, think and meditate upon those good parts and especial gifts, which thou hast observed in any of them that live with thee: as industry in one, in another modesty, in another bountifulness, in another some other thing. For nothing can so much rejoice thee, as the resemblances and parallels of several virtues, eminent in the dispositions of them that live with thee, especially when all at once, as it were, they represent themselves unto thee. See therefore, that thou have them always in a readiness. THE FIRST BOOK I. Of my grandfather Verus I have learned to be gentle and meek, and to refrain from all anger and passion. From the fame and memory of him that begot me I have learned both shamefastness and manlike behaviour. Of my mother I have learned to be religious, and bountiful; and to forbear, not only to do, but to intend any evil; to content myself with a spare diet, and to fly all such excess as is incidental to great wealth. Of my great-grandfather, both to frequent public schools and auditories, and to get me good and able teachers at home; and that I ought not to think much, if upon such occasions, I were at excessive charges. II. Of him that brought me up, not to be fondly addicted to either of the two great factions of the coursers in the circus, called Prasini, and Veneti: nor in the amphitheatre partially to favour any of the gladiators, or fencers, as either the Parmularii, or the Secutores. Moreover, to endure labour; nor to need many things; when I have anything to do, to do it myself rather than by others; not to meddle with many businesses; and not easily to admit of any slander. III. Of Diognetus, not to busy myself about vain things, and not easily to believe those things, which are commonly spoken, by such as take upon them to work wonders, and by sorcerers, or prestidigitators, and impostors; concerning the power of charms, and their driving out of demons, or evil spirits; and the like. Not to keep quails for the game; nor to be mad after such things. Not to be offended with other men's liberty of speech, and to apply myself unto philosophy. Him also I must thank, that ever I heard first Bacchius, then Tandasis and Marcianus, and that I did write dialogues in my youth; and that I took liking to the philosophers' little couch and skins, and such other things, which by the Grecian discipline are proper to those who profess philosophy. IV. To Rusticus I am beholding, that I first entered into the conceit that my life wanted some redress and cure. And then, that I did not fall into the ambition of ordinary sophists, either to write tracts concerning the common theorems, or to exhort men unto virtue and the study of philosophy by public orations; as also that I never by way of ostentation did affect to show myself an active able man, for any kind of bodily exercises. And that I gave over the study of rhetoric and poetry, and of elegant neat language. That I did not use to walk about the house in my long robe, nor to do any such things. Moreover I learned of him to write letters without any affectation, or curiosity; such as that was, which by him was written to my mother from Sinuessa: and to be easy and ready to be reconciled, and well pleased again with them that had offended me, as soon as any of them would be content to seek unto me again. To read with diligence; not to rest satisfied with a light and superficial knowledge, nor quickly to assent to things commonly spoken of: whom also I must thank that ever I lighted upon Epictetus his Hypomnemata, or moral commentaries and common-factions: which also he gave me of his own. V. From Apollonius, true liberty, and unvariable steadfastness, and not to regard anything at all, though never so little, but right and reason: and always, whether in the sharpest pains, or after the loss of a child, or in long diseases, to be still the same man; who also was a present and visible example unto me, that it was possible for the same man to be both vehement and remiss: a man not subject to be vexed, and offended with the incapacity of his scholars and auditors in his lectures and expositions; and a true pattern of a man who of all his good gifts and faculties, least esteemed in himself, that his excellent skill and ability to teach and persuade others the common theorems and maxims of the Stoic philosophy. Of him also I learned how to receive favours and kindnesses (as commonly they are accounted:) from friends, so that I might not become obnoxious unto them, for them, nor more yielding upon occasion, than in right I ought; and yet so that I should not pass them neither, as an unsensible and unthankful man. VI. Of Sextus, mildness and the pattern of a family governed with paternal affection; and a purpose to live according to nature: to be grave without affectation: to observe carefully the several dispositions of my friends, not to be offended with idiots, nor unseasonably to set upon those that are carried with the vulgar opinions, with the theorems, and tenets of philosophers: his conversation being an example how a man might accommodate himself to all men and companies; so that though his company were sweeter and more pleasing than any flatterer's cogging and fawning; yet was it at the same time most respected and reverenced: who also had a proper happiness and faculty, rationally and methodically to find out, and set in order all necessary determinations and instructions for a man's life. A man without ever the least appearance of anger, or any other passion; able at the same time most exactly to observe the Stoic Apathia, or unpassionateness, and yet to be most tender-hearted: ever of good credit; and yet almost without any noise, or rumour: very learned, and yet making little show. VII. From Alexander the Grammarian, to be un-reprovable myself, and not reproachfully to reprehend any man for a barbarism, or a solecism, or any false pronunciation, but dextrously by way of answer, or testimony, or confirmation of the same matter (taking no notice of the word) to utter it as it should have been spoken; or by some other such close and indirect admonition, handsomely and civilly to tell him of it. VIII. Of Fronto, to how much envy and fraud and hypocrisy the state of a tyrannous king is subject unto, and how they who are commonly called [Eupatridas Gk.], i.e. nobly born, are in some sort incapable, or void of natural affection. IX. Of Alexander the Platonic, not often nor without great necessity to say, or to write to any man in a letter, 'I am not at leisure'; nor in this manner still to put off those duties, which we owe to our friends and acquaintances (to every one in his kind) under pretence of urgent affairs. X. Of Catulus, not to contemn any friend's expostulation, though unjust, but to strive to reduce him to his former disposition: freely and heartily to speak well of all my masters upon any occasion, as it is reported of Domitius, and Athenodotus: and to love my children with true affection. XI. From my brother Severus, to be kind and loving to all them of my house and family; by whom also I came to the knowledge of Thrasea and Helvidius, and Cato, and Dio, and Brutus. He it was also that did put me in the first conceit and desire of an equal commonwealth, administered by justice and equality; and of a kingdom wherein should be regarded nothing more than the good and welfare of the subjects. Of him also, to observe a constant tenor, (not interrupted, with any other cares and distractions,) in the study and esteem of philosophy: to be bountiful and liberal in the largest measure; always to hope the best; and to be confident that my friends love me. In whom I moreover observed open dealing towards those whom he reproved at any time, and that his friends might without all doubt or much observation know what he would, or would not, so open and plain was he. XII. From Claudius Maximus, in all things to endeavour to have power of myself, and in nothing to be carried about; to be cheerful and courageous in all sudden chances and accidents, as in sicknesses: to love mildness, and moderation, and gravity: and to do my business, whatsoever it be, thoroughly, and without querulousness. Whatsoever he said, all men believed him that as he spake, so he thought, and whatsoever he did, that he did it with a good intent. His manner was, never to wonder at anything; never to be in haste, and yet never slow: nor to be perplexed, or dejected, or at any time unseemly, or excessively to laugh: nor to be angry, or suspicious, but ever ready to do good, and to forgive, and to speak truth; and all this, as one that seemed rather of himself to have been straight and right, than ever to have been rectified or redressed; neither was there any man that ever thought himself undervalued by him, or that could find in his heart, to think himself a better man than he. He would also be very pleasant and gracious. XIII. In my father, I observed his meekness; his constancy without wavering in those things, which after a due examination and deliberation, he had determined. How free from all vanity he carried himself in matter of honour and dignity, (as they are esteemed:) his laboriousness and assiduity, his readiness to hear any man, that had aught to say tending to any common good: how generally and impartially he would give every man his due; his skill and knowledge, when rigour or extremity, or when remissness or moderation was in season; how he did abstain from all unchaste love of youths; his moderate condescending to other men's occasions as an ordinary man, neither absolutely requiring of his friends, that they should wait upon him at his ordinary meals, nor that they should of necessity accompany him in his journeys; and that whensoever any business upon some necessary occasions was to be put off and omitted before it could be ended, he was ever found when he went about it again, the same man that he was before. His accurate examination of things in consultations, and patient hearing of others. He would not hastily give over the search of the matter, as one easy to be satisfied with sudden notions and apprehensions. His care to preserve his friends; how neither at any time he would carry himself towards them with disdainful neglect, and grow weary of them; nor yet at any time be madly fond of them. His contented mind in all things, his cheerful countenance, his care to foresee things afar off, and to take order for the least, without any noise or clamour. Moreover how all acclamations and flattery were repressed by him: how carefully he observed all things necessary to the government, and kept an account of the common expenses, and how patiently he did abide that he was reprehended by some for this his strict and rigid kind of dealing. How he was neither a superstitious worshipper of the gods, nor an ambitious pleaser of men, or studious of popular applause; but sober in all things, and everywhere observant of that which was fitting; no affecter of novelties: in those things which conduced to his ease and convenience, (plenty whereof his fortune did afford him,) without pride and bragging, yet with all freedom and liberty: so that as he did freely enjoy them without any anxiety or affectation when they were present; so when absent, he found no want of them. Moreover, that he was never commended by any man, as either a learned acute man, or an obsequious officious man, or a fine orator; but as a ripe mature man, a perfect sound man; one that could not endure to be flattered; able to govern both himself and others. Moreover, how much he did honour all true philosophers, without upbraiding those that were not so; his sociableness, his gracious and delightful conversation, but never unto satiety; his care of his body within bounds and measure, not as one that desired to live long, or over-studious of neatness, and elegancy; and yet not as one that did not regard it: so that through his own care and providence, he seldom needed any inward physic, or outward applications: but especially how ingeniously he would yield to any that had obtained any peculiar faculty, as either eloquence, or the knowledge of the laws, or of ancient customs, or the like; and how he concurred with them, in his best care and endeavour that every one of them might in his kind, for that wherein he excelled, be regarded and esteemed: and although he did all things carefully after the ancient customs of his forefathers, yet even of this was he not desirous that men should take notice, that he did imitate ancient customs. Again, how he was not easily moved and tossed up and down, but loved to be constant, both in the same places and businesses; and how after his great fits of headache he would return fresh and vigorous to his wonted affairs. Again, that secrets he neither had many, nor often, and such only as concerned public matters: his discretion and moderation, in exhibiting of the public sights and shows for the pleasure and pastime of the people: in public buildings. congiaries, and the like. In all these things, having a respect unto men only as men, and to the equity of the things themselves, and not unto the glory that might follow. Never wont to use the baths at unseasonable hours; no builder; never curious, or solicitous, either about his meat, or about the workmanship, or colour of his clothes, or about anything that belonged to external beauty. In all his conversation, far from all inhumanity, all boldness, and incivility, all greediness and impetuosity; never doing anything with such earnestness, and intention, that a man could say of him, that he did sweat about it: but contrariwise, all things distinctly, as at leisure; without trouble; orderly, soundly, and agreeably. A man might have applied that to him, which is recorded of Socrates, that he knew how to want, and to enjoy those things, in the want whereof, most men show themselves weak; and in the fruition, intemperate: but to hold out firm and constant, and to keep within the compass of true moderation and sobriety in either estate, is proper to a man, who hath a perfect and invincible soul; such as he showed himself in the sickness of Maximus. XIV. From the gods I received that I had good grandfathers, and parents, a good sister, good masters, good domestics, loving kinsmen, almost all that I have; and that I never through haste and rashness transgressed against any of them, notwithstanding that my disposition was such, as that such a thing (if occasion had been) might very well have been committed by me, but that It was the mercy of the gods, to prevent such a concurring of matters and occasions, as might make me to incur this blame. That I was not long brought up by the concubine of my father; that I preserved the flower of my youth. That I took not upon me to be a man before my time, but rather put it off longer than I needed. That I lived under the government of my lord and father, who would take away from me all pride and vainglory, and reduce me to that conceit and opinion that it was not impossible for a prince to live in the court without a troop of guards and followers, extraordinary apparel, such and such torches and statues, and other like particulars of state and magnificence; but that a man may reduce and contract himself almost to the state of a private man, and yet for all that not to become the more base and remiss in those public matters and affairs, wherein power and authority is requisite. That I have had such a brother, who by his own example might stir me up to think of myself; and by his respect and love, delight and please me. That I have got ingenuous children, and that they were not born distorted, nor with any other natural deformity. That I was no great proficient in the study of rhetoric and poetry, and of other faculties, which perchance I might have dwelt upon, if I had found myself to go on in them with success. That I did by times prefer those, by whom I was brought up, to such places and dignities, which they seemed unto me most to desire; and that I did not put them off with hope and expectation, that (since that they were yet but young) I would do the same hereafter. That I ever knew Apollonius and Rusticus, and Maximus. That I have had occasion often and effectually to consider and meditate with myself, concerning that life which is according to nature, what the nature and manner of it is: so that as for the gods and such suggestions, helps and inspirations, as might be expected from them, nothing did hinder, but that I might have begun long before to live according to nature; or that even now that I was not yet partaker and in present possession of that life, that I myself (in that I did not observe those inward motions, and suggestions, yea and almost plain and apparent instructions and admonitions of the gods,) was the only cause of it. That my body in such a life, hath been able to hold out so long. That I never had to do with Benedicta and Theodotus, yea and afterwards when I fell into some fits of love, I was soon cured. That having been often displeased with Rusticus, I never did him anything for which afterwards I had occasion to repent. That it being so that my mother was to die young, yet she lived with me all her latter years. That as often as I had a purpose to help and succour any that either were poor, or fallen into some present necessity, I never was answered by my officers that there was not ready money enough to do it; and that I myself never had occasion to require the like succour from any other. That I have such a wife, so obedient, so loving, so ingenuous. That I had choice of fit and able men, to whom I might commit the bringing up of my children. That by dreams I have received help, as for other things, so in particular, how I might stay my casting of blood, and cure my dizziness, as that also that happened to thee in Cajeta, as unto Chryses when he prayed by the seashore. And when I did first apply myself to philosophy, that I did not fall into the hands of some sophists, or spent my time either in reading the manifold volumes of ordinary philosophers, nor in practising myself in the solution of arguments and fallacies, nor dwelt upon the studies of the meteors, and other natural curiosities. All these things without the assistance of the gods, and fortune, could not have been. XV. In the country of the Quadi at Granua, these. Betimes in the morning say to thyself, This day I shalt have to do with an idle curious man, with an unthankful man, a railer, a crafty, false, or an envious man; an unsociable uncharitable man. All these ill qualities have happened unto them, through ignorance of that which is truly good and truly bad. But I that understand the nature of that which is good, that it only is to be desired, and of that which is bad, that it only is truly odious and shameful: who know moreover, that this transgressor, whosoever he be, is my kinsman, not by the same blood and seed, but by participation of the same reason, and of the same divine particle; How can I either be hurt by any of those, since it is not in their power to make me incur anything that is truly reproachful? or angry, and ill affected towards him, who by nature is so near unto me? for we are all born to be fellow-workers, as the feet, the hands, and the eyelids; as the rows of the upper and under teeth: for such therefore to be in opposition, is against nature; and what is it to chafe at, and to be averse from, but to be in opposition? XVI. Whatsoever I am, is either flesh, or life, or that which we commonly call the mistress and overruling part of man; reason. Away with thy books, suffer not thy mind any more to be distracted, and carried to and fro; for it will not be; but as even now ready to die, think little of thy flesh: blood, bones, and a skin; a pretty piece of knit and twisted work, consisting of nerves, veins and arteries; think no more of it, than so. And as for thy life, consider what it is; a wind; not one constant wind neither, but every moment of an hour let out, and sucked in again. The third, is thy ruling part; and here consider; Thou art an old man; suffer not that excellent part to be brought in subjection, and to become slavish: suffer it not to be drawn up and down with unreasonable and unsociable lusts and motions, as it were with wires and nerves; suffer it not any more, either to repine at anything now present, or to fear and fly anything to come, which the destiny hath appointed thee. XVII. Whatsoever proceeds from the gods immediately, that any man will grant totally depends from their divine providence. As for those things that are commonly said to happen by fortune, even those must be conceived to have dependence from nature, or from that first and general connection, and concatenation of all those things, which more apparently by the divine providence are administered and brought to pass. All things flow from thence: and whatsoever it is that is, is both necessary, and conducing to the whole (part of which thou art), and whatsoever it is that is requisite and necessary for the preservation of the general, must of necessity for every particular nature, be good and behoveful. And as for the whole, it is preserved, as by the perpetual mutation and conversion of the simple elements one into another, so also by the mutation, and alteration of things mixed and compounded. Let these things suffice thee; let them be always unto thee, as thy general rules and precepts. As for thy thirst after books, away with it with all speed, that thou die not murmuring and complaining, but truly meek and well satisfied, and from thy heart thankful unto the gods. THE SECOND BOOK I. Remember how long thou hast already put off these things, and how often a certain day and hour as it were, having been set unto thee by the gods, thou hast neglected it. It is high time for thee to understand the true nature both of the world, whereof thou art a part; and of that Lord and Governor of the world, from whom, as a channel from the spring, thou thyself didst flow: and that there is but a certain limit of time appointed unto thee, which if thou shalt not make use of to calm and allay the many distempers of thy soul, it will pass away and thou with it, and never after return. II. Let it be thy earnest and incessant care as a Roman and a man to perform whatsoever it is that thou art about, with true and unfeigned gravity, natural affection, freedom and justice: and as for all other cares, and imaginations, how thou mayest ease thy mind of them. Which thou shalt do; if thou shalt go about every action as thy last action, free from all vanity, all passionate and wilful aberration from reason, and from all hypocrisy, and self-love, and dislike of those things, which by the fates or appointment of God have happened unto thee. Thou seest that those things, which for a man to hold on in a prosperous course, and to live a divine life, are requisite and necessary, are not many, for the gods will require no more of any man, that shall but keep and observe these things. III. Do, soul, do; abuse and contemn thyself; yet a while and the time for thee to respect thyself, will be at an end. Every man's happiness depends from himself, but behold thy life is almost at an end, whiles affording thyself no respect, thou dost make thy happiness to consist in the souls, and conceits of other men. IV. Why should any of these things that happen externally, so much distract thee? Give thyself leisure to learn some good thing, and cease roving and wandering to and fro. Thou must also take heed of another kind of wandering, for they are idle in their actions, who toil and labour in this life, and have no certain scope to which to direct all their motions, and desires. V. For not observing the state of another man's soul, scarce was ever any man known to be unhappy. Tell whosoever they be that intend not, and guide not by reason and discretion the motions of their own souls, they must of necessity be unhappy. VI. These things thou must always have in mind: What is the nature of the universe, and what is mine--in particular: This unto that what relation it hath: what kind of part, of what kind of universe it is: And that there is nobody that can hinder thee, but that thou mayest always both do and speak those things which are agreeable to that nature, whereof thou art a part. VII. Theophrastus, where he compares sin with sin (as after a vulgar sense such things I grant may be compared:) says well and like a philosopher, that those sins are greater which are committed through lust, than those which are committed through anger. For he that is angry seems with a kind of grief and close contraction of himself, to turn away from reason; but he that sins through lust, being overcome by pleasure, doth in his very sin bewray a more impotent, and unmanlike disposition. Well then and like a philosopher doth he say, that he of the two is the more to be condemned, that sins with pleasure, than he that sins with grief. For indeed this latter may seem first to have been wronged, and so in some manner through grief thereof to have been forced to be angry, whereas he who through lust doth commit anything, did of himself merely resolve upon that action. VIII. Whatsoever thou dost affect, whatsoever thou dost project, so do, and so project all, as one who, for aught thou knowest, may at this very present depart out of this life. And as for death, if there be any gods, it is no grievous thing to leave the society of men. The gods will do thee no hurt, thou mayest be sure. But if it be so that there be no gods, or that they take no care of the world, why should I desire to live in a world void of gods, and of all divine providence? But gods there be certainly, and they take care for the world; and as for those things which be truly evil, as vice and wickedness, such things they have put in a man's own power, that he might avoid them if he would: and had there been anything besides that had been truly bad and evil, they would have had a care of that also, that a man might have avoided it. But why should that be thought to hurt and prejudice a man's life in this world, which cannot any ways make man himself the better, or the worse in his own person? Neither must we think that the nature of the universe did either through ignorance pass these things, or if not as ignorant of them, yet as unable either to prevent, or better to order and dispose them. It cannot be that she through want either of power or skill, should have committed such a thing, so as to suffer all things both good and bad, equally and promiscuously, to happen unto all both good and bad. As for life therefore, and death, honour and dishonour, labour and pleasure, riches and poverty, all these things happen unto men indeed, both good and bad, equally; but as things which of themselves are neither good nor bad; because of themselves, neither shameful nor praiseworthy. IX. Consider how quickly all things are dissolved and resolved: the bodies and substances themselves, into the matter and substance of the world: and their memories into the general age and time of the world. Consider the nature of all worldly sensible things; of those especially, which either ensnare by pleasure, or for their irksomeness are dreadful, or for their outward lustre and show are in great esteem and request, how vile and contemptible, how base and corruptible, how destitute of all true life and being they are. X. It is the part of a man endowed with a good understanding faculty, to consider what they themselves are in very deed, from whose bare conceits and voices, honour and credit do proceed: as also what it is to die, and how if a man shall consider this by itself alone, to die, and separate from it in his mind all those things which with it usually represent themselves unto us, he can conceive of it no otherwise, than as of a work of nature, and he that fears any work of nature, is a very child. Now death, it is not only a work of nature, but also conducing to nature. XI. Consider with thyself how man, and by what part of his, is joined unto God, and how that part of man is affected, when it is said to be diffused. There is nothing more wretched than that soul, which in a kind of circuit compasseth all things, searching (as he saith) even the very depths of the earth; and by all signs and conjectures prying into the very thoughts of other men's souls; and yet of this, is not sensible, that it is sufficient for a man to apply himself wholly, and to confine all his thoughts and cares to the tendance of that spirit which is within him, and truly and really to serve him. His service doth consist in this, that a man keep himself pure from all violent passion and evil affection, from all rashness and vanity, and from all manner of discontent, either in regard of the gods or men. For indeed whatsoever proceeds from the gods, deserves respect for their worth and excellency; and whatsoever proceeds from men, as they are our kinsmen, should by us be entertained, with love, always; sometimes, as proceeding from their ignorance, of that which is truly good and bad, (a blindness no less, than that by which we are not able to discern between white and black:) with a kind of pity and compassion also. XII. If thou shouldst live three thousand, or as many as ten thousands of years, yet remember this, that man can part with no life properly, save with that little part of life, which he now lives: and that which he lives, is no other, than that which at every instant he parts with. That then which is longest of duration, and that which is shortest, come both to one effect. For although in regard of that which is already past there may be some inequality, yet that time which is now present and in being, is equal unto all men. And that being it which we part with whensoever we die, it doth manifestly appear, that it can be but a moment of time, that we then part with. For as for that which is either past or to come, a man cannot be said properly to part with it. For how should a man part with that which he hath not? These two things therefore thou must remember. First, that all things in the world from all eternity, by a perpetual revolution of the same times and things ever continued and renewed, are of one kind and nature; so that whether for a hundred or two hundred years only, or for an infinite space of time, a man see those things which are still the same, it can be no matter of great moment. And secondly, that that life which any the longest liver, or the shortest liver parts with, is for length and duration the very same, for that only which is present, is that, which either of them can lose, as being that only which they have; for that which he hath not, no man can truly be said to lose. XIII. Remember that all is but opinion and conceit, for those things are plain and apparent, which were spoken unto Monimus the Cynic; and as plain and apparent is the use that may be made of those things, if that which is true and serious in them, be received as well as that which is sweet and pleasing. XIV. A man's soul doth wrong and disrespect itself first and especially, when as much as in itself lies it becomes an aposteme, and as it were an excrescency of the world, for to be grieved and displeased with anything that happens in the world, is direct apostacy from the nature of the universe; part of which, all particular natures of the world, are. Secondly, when she either is averse from any man, or led by contrary desires or affections, tending to his hurt and prejudice; such as are the souls of them that are angry. Thirdly, when she is overcome by any pleasure or pain. Fourthly, when she doth dissemble, and covertly and falsely either doth or saith anything. Fifthly, when she doth either affect or endeavour anything to no certain end, but rashly and without due ratiocination and consideration, how consequent or inconsequent it is to the common end. For even the least things ought not to be done, without relation unto the end; and the end of the reasonable creatures is, to follow and obey him, who is the reason as it were, and the law of this great city, and ancient commonwealth. XV. The time of a man's life is as a point; the substance of it ever flowing, the sense obscure; and the whole composition of the body tending to corruption. His soul is restless, fortune uncertain, and fame doubtful; to be brief, as a stream so are all things belonging to the body; as a dream, or as a smoke, so are all that belong unto the soul. Our life is a warfare, and a mere pilgrimage. Fame after life is no better than oblivion. What is it then that will adhere and follow? Only one thing, philosophy. And philosophy doth consist in this, for a man to preserve that spirit which is within him, from all manner of contumelies and injuries, and above all pains or pleasures; never to do anything either rashly, or feignedly, or hypocritically: wholly to depend from himself and his own proper actions: all things that happen unto him to embrace contentedly, as coming from Him from whom he himself also came; and above all things, with all meekness and a calm cheerfulness, to expect death, as being nothing else but the resolution of those elements, of which every creature is composed. And if the elements themselves suffer nothing by this their perpetual conversion of one into another, that dissolution, and alteration, which is so common unto all, why should it be feared by any? Is not this according to nature? But nothing that is according to nature can be evil, whilst I was at Carnuntzim. THE THIRD BOOK I. A man must not only consider how daily his life wasteth and decreaseth, but this also, that if he live long, he cannot be certain, whether his understanding shall continue so able and sufficient, for either discreet consideration, in matter of businesses; or for contemplation: it being the thing, whereon true knowledge of things both divine and human, doth depend. For if once he shall begin to dote, his respiration, nutrition, his imaginative, and appetitive, and other natural faculties, may still continue the same: he shall find no want of them. But how to make that right use of himself that he should, how to observe exactly in all things that which is right and just, how to redress and rectify all wrong, or sudden apprehensions and imaginations, and even of this particular, whether he should live any longer or no, to consider duly; for all such things, wherein the best strength and vigour of the mind is most requisite; his power and ability will be past and gone. Thou must hasten therefore; not only because thou art every day nearer unto death than other, but also because that intellective faculty in thee, whereby thou art enabled to know the true nature of things, and to order all thy actions by that knowledge, doth daily waste and decay: or, may fail thee before thou die. II. This also thou must observe, that whatsoever it is that naturally doth happen to things natural, hath somewhat in itself that is pleasing and delightful: as a great loaf when it is baked, some parts of it cleave as it were, and part asunder, and make the crust of it rugged and unequal, and yet those parts of it, though in some sort it be against the art and intention of baking itself, that they are thus cleft and parted, which should have been and were first made all even and uniform, they become it well nevertheless, and have a certain peculiar property, to stir the appetite. So figs are accounted fairest and ripest then, when they begin to shrink, and wither as it were. So ripe olives, when they are next to putrefaction, then are they in their proper beauty. The hanging down of grapes--the brow of a lion, the froth of a foaming wild boar, and many other like things, though by themselves considered, they are far from any beauty, yet because they happen naturally, they both are comely, and delightful; so that if a man shall with a profound mind and apprehension, consider all things in the world, even among all those things which are but mere accessories and natural appendices as it were, there will scarce appear anything unto him, wherein he will not find matter of pleasure and delight. So will he behold with as much pleasure the true rictus of wild beasts, as those which by skilful painters and other artificers are imitated. So will he be able to perceive the proper ripeness and beauty of old age, whether in man or woman: and whatsoever else it is that is beautiful and alluring in whatsoever is, with chaste and continent eyes he will soon find out and discern. Those and many other things will he discern, not credible unto every one, but unto them only who are truly and familiarly acquainted, both with nature itself, and all natural things. III. Hippocrates having cured many sicknesses, fell sick himself and died. The Chaldeans and Astrologians having foretold the deaths of divers, were afterwards themselves surprised by the fates. Alexander and Pompeius, and Caius Caesar, having destroyed so many towns, and cut off in the field so many thousands both of horse and foot, yet they themselves at last were fain to part with their own lives. Heraclitus having written so many natural tracts concerning the last and general conflagration of the world, died afterwards all filled with water within, and all bedaubed with dirt and dung without. Lice killed Democritus; and Socrates, another sort of vermin, wicked ungodly men. How then stands the case? Thou hast taken ship, thou hast sailed, thou art come to land, go out, if to another life, there also shalt thou find gods, who are everywhere. If all life and sense shall cease, then shalt thou cease also to be subject to either pains or pleasures; and to serve and tend this vile cottage; so much the viler, by how much that which ministers unto it doth excel; the one being a rational substance, and a spirit, the other nothing but earth and blood. IV. Spend not the remnant of thy days in thoughts and fancies concerning other men, when it is not in relation to some common good, when by it thou art hindered from some other better work. That is, spend not thy time in thinking, what such a man doth, and to what end: what he saith, and what he thinks, and what he is about, and such other things or curiosities, which make a man to rove and wander from the care and observation of that part of himself, which is rational, and overruling. See therefore in the whole series and connection of thy thoughts, that thou be careful to prevent whatsoever is idle and impertinent: but especially, whatsoever is curious and malicious: and thou must use thyself to think only of such things, of which if a man upon a sudden should ask thee, what it is that thou art now thinking, thou mayest answer This, and That, freely and boldly, that so by thy thoughts it may presently appear that in all thee is sincere, and peaceable; as becometh one that is made for society, and regards not pleasures, nor gives way to any voluptuous imaginations at all: free from all contentiousness, envy, and suspicion, and from whatsoever else thou wouldest blush to confess thy thoughts were set upon. He that is such, is he surely that doth not put off to lay hold on that which is best indeed, a very priest and minister of the gods, well acquainted and in good correspondence with him especially that is seated and placed within himself, as in a temple and sacrary: to whom also he keeps and preserves himself unspotted by pleasure, undaunted by pain; free from any manner of wrong, or contumely, by himself offered unto himself: not capable of any evil from others: a wrestler of the best sort, and for the highest prize, that he may not be cast down by any passion or affection of his own; deeply dyed and drenched in righteousness, embracing and accepting with his whole heart whatsoever either happeneth or is allotted unto him. One who not often, nor without some great necessity tending to some public good, mindeth what any other, either speaks, or doth, or purposeth: for those things only that are in his own power, or that are truly his own, are the objects of his employments, and his thoughts are ever taken up with those things, which of the whole universe are by the fates or Providence destinated and appropriated unto himself. Those things that are his own, and in his own power, he himself takes order, for that they be good: and as for those that happen unto him, he believes them to be so. For that lot and portion which is assigned to every one, as it is unavoidable and necessary, so is it always profitable. He remembers besides that whatsoever partakes of reason, is akin unto him, and that to care for all men generally, is agreeing to the nature of a man: but as for honour and praise, that they ought not generally to be admitted and accepted of from all, but from such only, who live according to nature. As for them that do not, what manner of men they be at home, or abroad; day or night, how conditioned themselves with what manner of conditions, or with men of what conditions they moil and pass away the time together, he knoweth, and remembers right well, he therefore regards not such praise and approbation, as proceeding from them, who cannot like and approve themselves. V. Do nothing against thy will, nor contrary to the community, nor without due examination, nor with reluctancy. Affect not to set out thy thoughts with curious neat language. Be neither a great talker, nor a great undertaker. Moreover, let thy God that is in thee to rule over thee, find by thee, that he hath to do with a man; an aged man; a sociable man; a Roman; a prince; one that hath ordered his life, as one that expecteth, as it were, nothing but the sound of the trumpet, sounding a retreat to depart out of this life with all expedition. One who for his word or actions neither needs an oath, nor any man to be a witness. VI. To be cheerful, and to stand in no need, either of other men's help or attendance, or of that rest and tranquillity, which thou must be beholding to others for. Rather like one that is straight of himself, or hath ever been straight, than one that hath been rectified. VII. If thou shalt find anything in this mortal life better than righteousness, than truth, temperance, fortitude, and in general better than a mind contented both with those things which according to right and reason she doth, and in those, which without her will and knowledge happen unto thee by the providence; if I say, thou canst find out anything better than this, apply thyself unto it with thy whole heart, and that which is best wheresoever thou dost find it, enjoy freely. But if nothing thou shalt find worthy to be preferred to that spirit which is within thee; if nothing better than to subject unto thee thine own lusts and desires, and not to give way to any fancies or imaginations before thou hast duly considered of them, nothing better than to withdraw thyself (to use Socrates his words) from all sensuality, and submit thyself unto the gods, and to have care of all men in general: if thou shalt find that all other things in comparison of this, are but vile, and of little moment; then give not way to any other thing, which being once though but affected and inclined unto, it will no more be in thy power without all distraction as thou oughtest to prefer and to pursue after that good, which is thine own and thy proper good. For it is not lawful, that anything that is of another and inferior kind and nature, be it what it will, as either popular applause, or honour, or riches, or pleasures; should be suffered to confront and contest as it were, with that which is rational, and operatively good. For all these things, if once though but for a while, they begin to please, they presently prevail, and pervert a man's mind, or turn a man from the right way. Do thou therefore I say absolutely and freely make choice of that which is best, and stick unto it. Now, that they say is best, which is most profitable. If they mean profitable to man as he is a rational man, stand thou to it, and maintain it; but if they mean profitable, as he is a creature, only reject it; and from this thy tenet and conclusion keep off carefully all plausible shows and colours of external appearance, that thou mayest be able to discern things rightly. VIII. Never esteem of anything as profitable, which shall ever constrain thee either to break thy faith, or to lose thy modesty; to hate any man, to suspect, to curse, to dissemble, to lust after anything, that requireth the secret of walls or veils. But he that preferreth before all things his rational part and spirit, and the sacred mysteries of virtue which issueth from it, he shall never lament and exclaim, never sigh; he shall never want either solitude or company: and which is chiefest of all, he shall live without either desire or fear. And as for life, whether for a long or short time he shall enjoy his soul thus compassed about with a body, he is altogether indifferent. For if even now he were to depart, he is as ready for it, as for any other action, which may be performed with modesty and decency. For all his life long, this is his only care, that his mind may always be occupied in such intentions and objects, as are proper to a rational sociable creature. IX. In the mind that is once truly disciplined and purged, thou canst not find anything, either foul or impure, or as it were festered: nothing that is either servile, or affected: no partial tie; no malicious averseness; nothing obnoxious; nothing concealed. The life of such an one, death can never surprise as imperfect; as of an actor, that should die before he had ended, or the play itself were at an end, a man might speak. X. Use thine opinative faculty with all honour and respect, for in her indeed is all: that thy opinion do not beget in thy understanding anything contrary to either nature, or the proper constitution of a rational creature. The end and object of a rational constitution is, to do nothing rashly, to be kindly affected towards men, and in all things willingly to submit unto the gods. Casting therefore all other things aside, keep thyself to these few, and remember withal that no man properly can be said to live more than that which is now present, which is but a moment of time. Whatsoever is besides either is already past, or uncertain. The time therefore that any man doth live, is but a little, and the place where he liveth, is but a very little corner of the earth, and the greatest fame that can remain of a man after his death, even that is but little, and that too, such as it is whilst it is, is by the succession of silly mortal men preserved, who likewise shall shortly die, and even whiles they live know not what in very deed they themselves are: and much less can know one, who long before is dead and gone. XI. To these ever-present helps and mementoes, let one more be added, ever to make a particular description and delineation as it were of every object that presents itself to thy mind, that thou mayest wholly and throughly contemplate it, in its own proper nature, bare and naked; wholly, and severally; divided into its several parts and quarters: and then by thyself in thy mind, to call both it, and those things of which it doth consist, and in which it shall be resolved, by their own proper true names, and appellations. For there is nothing so effectual to beget true magnanimity, as to be able truly and methodically to examine and consider all things that happen in this life, and so to penetrate into their natures, that at the same time, this also may concur in our apprehensions: what is the true use of it? and what is the true nature of this universe, to which it is useful? how much in regard of the universe may it be esteemed? how much in regard of man, a citizen of the supreme city, of which all other cities in the world are as it were but houses and families? XII. What is this, that now my fancy is set upon? of what things doth it consist? how long can it last? which of all the virtues is the proper virtue for this present use? as whether meekness, fortitude, truth, faith, sincerity, contentation, or any of the rest? Of everything therefore thou must use thyself to say, This immediately comes from God, this by that fatal connection, and concatenation of things, or (which almost comes to one) by some coincidental casualty. And as for this, it proceeds from my neighbour, my kinsman, my fellow: through his ignorance indeed, because he knows not what is truly natural unto him: but I know it, and therefore carry myself towards him according to the natural law of fellowship; that is kindly, and justly. As for those things that of themselves are altogether indifferent, as in my best judgment I conceive everything to deserve more or less, so I carry myself towards it. XIII. If thou shalt intend that which is present, following the rule of right and reason carefully, solidly, meekly, and shalt not intermix any other businesses, but shall study this only to preserve thy spirit unpolluted, and pure, and shall cleave unto him without either hope or fear of anything, in all things that thou shalt either do or speak, contenting thyself with heroical truth, thou shalt live happily; and from this, there is no man that can hinder thee. XIV. As physicians and chirurgeons have always their instruments ready at hand for all sudden cures; so have thou always thy dogmata in a readiness for the knowledge of things, both divine and human: and whatsoever thou dost, even in the smallest things that thou dost, thou must ever remember that mutual relation, and connection that is between these two things divine, and things human. For without relation unto God, thou shalt never speed in any worldly actions; nor on the other side in any divine, without some respect had to things human. XV. Be not deceived; for thou shalt never live to read thy moral commentaries, nor the acts of the famous Romans and Grecians; nor those excerpta from several books; all which thou hadst provided and laid up for thyself against thine old age. Hasten therefore to an end, and giving over all vain hopes, help thyself in time if thou carest for thyself, as thou oughtest to do. XVI. To steal, to sow, to buy, to be at rest, to see what is to be done (which is not seen by the eyes, but by another kind of sight:) what these words mean, and how many ways to be understood, they do not understand. The body, the soul, the understanding. As the senses naturally belong to the body, and the desires and affections to the soul, so do the dogmata to the understanding. XVII. To be capable of fancies and imaginations, is common to man and beast. To be violently drawn and moved by the lusts and desires of the soul, is proper to wild beasts and monsters, such as Phalaris and Nero were. To follow reason for ordinary duties and actions is common to them also, who believe not that there be any gods, and for their advantage would make no conscience to betray their own country; and who when once the doors be shut upon them, dare do anything. If therefore all things else be common to these likewise, it follows, that for a man to like and embrace all things that happen and are destinated unto him, and not to trouble and molest that spirit which is seated in the temple of his own breast, with a multitude of vain fancies and imaginations, but to keep him propitious and to obey him as a god, never either speaking anything contrary to truth, or doing anything contrary to justice, is the only true property of a good man. And such a one, though no man should believe that he liveth as he doth, either sincerely and conscionably, or cheerful and contentedly; yet is he neither with any man at all angry for it, nor diverted by it from the way that leadeth to the end of his life, through which a man must pass pure, ever ready to depart, and willing of himself without any compulsion to fit and accommodate himself to his proper lot and portion. THE FOURTH BOOK I. That inward mistress part of man if it be in its own true natural temper, is towards all worldly chances and events ever so disposed and affected, that it will easily turn and apply itself to that which may be, and is within its own power to compass, when that cannot be which at first it intended. For it never doth absolutely addict and apply itself to any one object, but whatsoever it is that it doth now intend and prosecute, it doth prosecute it with exception and reservation; so that whatsoever it is that falls out contrary to its first intentions, even that afterwards it makes its proper object. Even as the fire when it prevails upon those things that are in his way; by which things indeed a little fire would have been quenched, but a great fire doth soon turn to its own nature, and so consume whatsoever comes in his way: yea by those very things it is made greater and greater. II. Let nothing be done rashly, and at random, but all things according to the most exact and perfect rules of art. III. They seek for themselves private retiring places, as country villages, the sea-shore, mountains; yea thou thyself art wont to long much after such places. But all this thou must know proceeds from simplicity in the highest degree. At what time soever thou wilt, it is in thy power to retire into thyself, and to be at rest, and free from all businesses. A man cannot any whither retire better than to his own soul; he especially who is beforehand provided of such things within, which whensoever he doth withdraw himself to look in, may presently afford unto him perfect ease and tranquillity. By tranquillity I understand a decent orderly disposition and carriage, free from all confusion and tumultuousness. Afford then thyself this retiring continually, and thereby refresh and renew thyself. Let these precepts be brief and fundamental, which as soon as thou dost call them to mind, may suffice thee to purge thy soul throughly, and to send thee away well pleased with those things whatsoever they be, which now again after this short withdrawing of thy soul into herself thou dost return unto. For what is it that thou art offended at? Can it be at the wickedness of men, when thou dost call to mind this conclusion, that all reasonable creatures are made one for another? and that it is part of justice to bear with them? and that it is against their wills that they offend? and how many already, who once likewise prosecuted their enmities, suspected, hated, and fiercely contended, are now long ago stretched out, and reduced unto ashes? It is time for thee to make an end. As for those things which among the common chances of the world happen unto thee as thy particular lot and portion, canst thou be displeased with any of them, when thou dost call that our ordinary dilemma to mind, either a providence, or Democritus his atoms; and with it, whatsoever we brought to prove that the whole world is as it were one city? And as for thy body, what canst thou fear, if thou dost consider that thy mind and understanding, when once it hath recollected itself, and knows its own power, hath in this life and breath (whether it run smoothly and gently, or whether harshly and rudely), no interest at all, but is altogether indifferent: and whatsoever else thou hast heard and assented unto concerning either pain or pleasure? But the care of thine honour and reputation will perchance distract thee? How can that be, if thou dost look back, and consider both how quickly all things that are, are forgotten, and what an immense chaos of eternity was before, and will follow after all things: and the vanity of praise, and the inconstancy and variableness of human judgments and opinions, and the narrowness of the place, wherein it is limited and circumscribed? For the whole earth is but as one point; and of it, this inhabited part of it, is but a very little part; and of this part, how many in number, and what manner of men are they, that will commend thee? What remains then, but that thou often put in practice this kind of retiring of thyself, to this little part of thyself; and above all things, keep thyself from distraction, and intend not anything vehemently, but be free and consider all things, as a man whose proper object is Virtue, as a man whose true nature is to be kind and sociable, as a citizen, as a mortal creature. Among other things, which to consider, and look into thou must use to withdraw thyself, let those two be among the most obvious and at hand. One, that the things or objects themselves reach not unto the soul, but stand without still and quiet, and that it is from the opinion only which is within, that all the tumult and all the trouble doth proceed. The next, that all these things, which now thou seest, shall within a very little while be changed, and be no more: and ever call to mind, how many changes and alterations in the world thou thyself hast already been an eyewitness of in thy time. This world is mere change, and this life, opinion. IV. If to understand and to be reasonable be common unto all men, then is that reason, for which we are termed reasonable, common unto all. If reason is general, then is that reason also, which prescribeth what is to be done and what not, common unto all. If that, then law. If law, then are we fellow-citizens. If so, then are we partners in some one commonweal. If so, then the world is as it were a city. For which other commonweal is it, that all men can be said to be members of? From this common city it is, that understanding, reason, and law is derived unto us, for from whence else? For as that which in me is earthly I have from some common earth; and that which is moist from some other element is imparted; as my breath and life hath its proper fountain; and that likewise which is dry and fiery in me: (for there is nothing which doth not proceed from something; as also there is nothing that can be reduced unto mere nothing:) so also is there some common beginning from whence my understanding hath proceeded. V. As generation is, so also death, a secret of nature's wisdom: a mixture of elements, resolved into the same elements again, a thing surely which no man ought to be ashamed of: in a series of other fatal events and consequences, which a rational creature is subject unto, not improper or incongruous, nor contrary to the natural and proper constitution of man himself. VI. Such and such things, from such and such causes, must of necessity proceed. He that would not have such things to happen, is as he that would have the fig-tree grow without any sap or moisture. In sum, remember this, that within a very little while, both thou and he shall both be dead, and after a little while more, not so much as your names and memories shall be remaining. VII. Let opinion be taken away, and no man will think himself wronged. If no man shall think himself wronged, then is there no more any such thing as wrong. That which makes not man himself the worse, cannot make his life the worse, neither can it hurt him either inwardly or outwardly. It was expedient in nature that it should be so, and therefore necessary. VIII. Whatsoever doth happen in the world, doth happen justly, and so if thou dost well take heed, thou shalt find it. I say not only in right order by a series of inevitable consequences, but according to justice and as it were by way of equal distribution, according to the true worth of everything. Continue then to take notice of it, as thou hast begun, and whatsoever thou dost, do it not without this proviso, that it be a thing of that nature that a good man (as the word good is properly taken) may do it. This observe carefully in every action. IX. Conceit no such things, as he that wrongeth thee conceiveth, or would have thee to conceive, but look into the matter itself, and see what it is in very truth. X. These two rules, thou must have always in a readiness. First, do nothing at all, but what reason proceeding from that regal and supreme part, shall for the good and benefit of men, suggest unto thee. And secondly, if any man that is present shall be able to rectify thee or to turn thee from some erroneous persuasion, that thou be always ready to change thy mind, and this change to proceed, not from any respect of any pleasure or credit thereon depending, but always from some probable apparent ground of justice, or of some public good thereby to be furthered; or from some other such inducement. XI. Hast thou reason? I have. Why then makest thou not use of it? For if thy reason do her part, what more canst thou require? XII. As a part hitherto thou hast had a particular subsistence: and now shalt thou vanish away into the common substance of Him, who first begot thee, or rather thou shalt be resumed again into that original rational substance, out of which all others have issued, and are propagated. Many small pieces of frankincense are set upon the same altar, one drops first and is consumed, another after; and it comes all to one. XIII. Within ten days, if so happen, thou shalt be esteemed a god of them, who now if thou shalt return to the dogmata and to the honouring of reason, will esteem of thee no better than of a mere brute, and of an ape. XIV. Not as though thou hadst thousands of years to live. Death hangs over thee: whilst yet thou livest, whilst thou mayest, be good. XV. Now much time and leisure doth he gain, who is not curious to know what his neighbour hath said, or hath done, or hath attempted, but only what he doth himself, that it may be just and holy? or to express it in Agathos' words, Not to look about upon the evil conditions of others, but to run on straight in the line, without any loose and extravagant agitation. XVI. He who is greedy of credit and reputation after his death, doth not consider, that they themselves by whom he is remembered, shall soon after every one of them be dead; and they likewise that succeed those; until at last all memory, which hitherto by the succession of men admiring and soon after dying hath had its course, be quite extinct. But suppose that both they that shall remember thee, and thy memory with them should be immortal, what is that to thee? I will not say to thee after thou art dead; but even to thee living, what is thy praise? But only for a secret and politic consideration, which we call oikonomian or dispensation. For as for that, that it is the gift of nature, whatsoever is commended in thee, what might be objected from thence, let that now that we are upon another consideration be omitted as unseasonable. That which is fair and goodly, whatsoever it be, and in what respect soever it be, that it is fair and goodly, it is so of itself, and terminates in itself, not admitting praise as a part or member: that therefore which is praised, is not thereby made either better or worse. This I understand even of those things, that are commonly called fair and good, as those which are commended either for the matter itself, or for curious workmanship. As for that which is truly good, what can it stand in need of more than either justice or truth; or more than either kindness and modesty? Which of all those, either becomes good or fair, because commended; or dispraised suffers any damage? Doth the emerald become worse in itself, or more vile if it be not commended? Doth gold, or ivory, or purple? Is there anything that doth though never so common, as a knife, a flower, or a tree? XVII. If so be that the souls remain after death (say they that will not believe it); how is the air from all eternity able to contain them? How is the earth (say I) ever from that time able to Contain the bodies of them that are buried? For as here the change and resolution of dead bodies into another kind of subsistence (whatsoever it be;) makes place for other dead bodies: so the souls after death transferred into the air, after they have conversed there a while, are either by way of transmutation, or transfusion, or conflagration, received again into that original rational substance, from which all others do proceed: and so give way to those souls, who before coupled and associated unto bodies, now begin to subsist single. This, upon a supposition that the souls after death do for a while subsist single, may be answered. And here, (besides the number of bodies, so buried and contained by the earth), we may further consider the number of several beasts, eaten by us men, and by other creatures. For notwithstanding that such a multitude of them is daily consumed, and as it were buried in the bodies of the eaters, yet is the same place and body able to contain them, by reason of their conversion, partly into blood, partly into air and fire. What in these things is the speculation of truth? to divide things into that which is passive and material; and that which is active and formal. XVIII. Not to wander out of the way, but upon every motion and desire, to perform that which is just: and ever to be careful to attain to the true natural apprehension of every fancy, that presents itself. XIX. Whatsoever is expedient unto thee, O World, is expedient unto me; nothing can either be 'unseasonable unto me, or out of date, which unto thee is seasonable. Whatsoever thy seasons bear, shall ever by me be esteemed as happy fruit, and increase. O Nature! from thee are all things, in thee all things subsist, and to thee all tend. Could he say of Athens, Thou lovely city of Cecrops; and shalt not thou say of the world, Thou lovely city of God? XX. They will say commonly, Meddle not with many things, if thou wilt live cheerfully. Certainly there is nothing better, than for a man to confine himself to necessary actions; to such and so many only, as reason in a creature that knows itself born for society, will command and enjoin. This will not only procure that cheerfulness, which from the goodness, but that also, which from the paucity of actions doth usually proceed. For since it is so, that most of those things, which we either speak or do, are unnecessary; if a man shall cut them off, it must needs follow that he shall thereby gain much leisure, and save much trouble, and therefore at every action a man must privately by way of admonition suggest unto himself, What? may not this that now I go about, be of the number of unnecessary actions? Neither must he use himself to cut off actions only, but thoughts and imaginations also, that are unnecessary for so will unnecessary consequent actions the better be prevented and cut off. XXI. Try also how a good man's life; (of one, who is well pleased with those things whatsoever, which among the common changes and chances of this world fall to his own lot and share; and can live well contented and fully satisfied in the justice of his own proper present action, and in the goodness of his disposition for the future:) will agree with thee. Thou hast had experience of that other kind of life: make now trial of this also. Trouble not thyself any more henceforth, reduce thyself unto perfect simplicity. Doth any man offend? It is against himself that he doth offend: why should it trouble thee? Hath anything happened unto thee? It is well, whatsoever it be, it is that which of all the common chances of the world from the very beginning in the series of all other things that have, or shall happen, was destinated and appointed unto thee. To comprehend all in a few words, our life is short; we must endeavour to gain the present time with best discretion and justice. Use recreation with sobriety. XXII. Either this world is a kosmoz or comely piece, because all disposed and governed by certain order: or if it be a mixture, though confused, yet still it is a comely piece. For is it possible that in thee there should be any beauty at all, and that in the whole world there should be nothing but disorder and confusion? and all things in it too, by natural different properties one from another differenced and distinguished; and yet all through diffused, and by natural sympathy, one to another united, as they are? XXIII. A black or malign disposition, an effeminate disposition; an hard inexorable disposition, a wild inhuman disposition, a sheepish disposition, a childish disposition; a blockish, a false, a scurril, a fraudulent, a tyrannical: what then? If he be a stranger in the world, that knows not the things that are in it; why not be a stranger as well, that wonders at the things that are done in it? XXIV. He is a true fugitive, that flies from reason, by which men are sociable. He blind, who cannot see with the eyes of his understanding. He poor, that stands in need of another, and hath not in himself all things needful for this life. He an aposteme of the world, who by being discontented with those things that happen unto him in the world, doth as it were apostatise, and separate himself from common nature's rational administration. For the same nature it is that brings this unto thee, whatsoever it be, that first brought thee into the world. He raises sedition in the city, who by irrational actions withdraws his own soul from that one and common soul of all rational creatures. XXV. There is, who without so much as a coat; and there is, who without so much as a book, doth put philosophy in practice. I am half naked, neither have I bread to eat, and yet I depart not from reason, saith one. But I say; I want the food of good teaching, and instructions, and yet I depart not from reason. XXVI. What art and profession soever thou hast learned, endeavour to affect it, and comfort thyself in it; and pass the remainder of thy life as one who from his whole heart commits himself and whatsoever belongs unto him, unto the gods: and as for men, carry not thyself either tyrannically or servilely towards any. XXVII. Consider in my mind, for example's sake, the times of Vespasian: thou shalt see but the same things: some marrying, some bringing up children, some sick, some dying, some fighting, some feasting, some merchandising, some tilling, some flattering, some boasting, some suspecting, some undermining, some wishing to die, some fretting and murmuring at their present estate, some wooing, some hoarding, some seeking after magistracies, and some after kingdoms. And is not that their age quite over, and ended? Again, consider now the times of Trajan. There likewise thou seest the very self-same things, and that age also is now over and ended. In the like manner consider other periods, both of times and of whole nations, and see how many men, after they had with all their might and main intended and prosecuted some one worldly thing or other did soon after drop away, and were resolved into the elements. But especially thou must call to mind them, whom thou thyself in thy lifetime hast known much distracted about vain things, and in the meantime neglecting to do that, and closely and unseparably (as fully satisfied with it) to adhere unto it, which their own proper constitution did require. And here thou must remember, that thy carriage in every business must be according to the worth and due proportion of it, for so shalt thou not easily be tired out and vexed, if thou shalt not dwell upon small matters longer than is fitting. XXVIII. Those words which once were common and ordinary, are now become obscure and obsolete; and so the names of men once commonly known and famous, are now become in a manner obscure and obsolete names. Camillus, Cieso, Volesius, Leonnatus; not long after, Scipio, Cato, then Augustus, then Adrianus, then Antoninus Pius: all these in a short time will be out of date, and, as things of another world as it were, become fabulous. And this I say of them, who once shined as the wonders of their ages, for as for the rest, no sooner are they expired, than with them all their fame and memory. And what is it then that shall always be remembered? all is vanity. What is it that we must bestow our care and diligence upon? even upon this only: that our minds and wills be just; that our actions be charitable; that our speech be never deceitful, or that our understanding be not subject to error; that our inclination be always set to embrace whatsoever shall happen unto us, as necessary, as usual, as ordinary, as flowing from such a beginning, and such a fountain, from which both thou thyself and all things are. Willingly therefore, and wholly surrender up thyself unto that fatal concatenation, yielding up thyself unto the fates, to be disposed of at their pleasure. XXIX. Whatsoever is now present, and from day to day hath its existence; all objects of memories, and the minds and memories themselves, incessantly consider, all things that are, have their being by change and alteration. Use thyself therefore often to meditate upon this, that the nature of the universe delights in nothing more, than in altering those things that are, and in making others like unto them. So that we may say, that whatsoever is, is but as it were the seed of that which shall be. For if thou think that that only is seed, which either the earth or the womb receiveth, thou art very simple. XXX. Thou art now ready to die, and yet hast thou not attained to that perfect simplicity: thou art yet subject to many troubles and perturbations; not yet free from all fear and suspicion of external accidents; nor yet either so meekly disposed towards all men, as thou shouldest; or so affected as one, whose only study and only wisdom is, to be just in all his actions. XXXI. Behold and observe, what is the state of their rational part; and those that the world doth account wise, see what things they fly and are afraid of; and what things they hunt after. XXXII. In another man's mind and understanding thy evil Cannot subsist, nor in any proper temper or distemper of the natural constitution of thy body, which is but as it were the coat or cottage of thy soul. Wherein then, but in that part of thee, wherein the conceit, and apprehension of any misery can subsist? Let not that part therefore admit any such conceit, and then all is well. Though thy body which is so near it should either be cut or burnt, or suffer any corruption or putrefaction, yet let that part to which it belongs to judge of these, be still at rest; that is, let her judge this, that whatsoever it is, that equally may happen to a wicked man, and to a good man, is neither good nor evil. For that which happens equally to him that lives according to nature, and to him that doth not, is neither according to nature, nor against it; and by consequent, neither good nor bad. XXXIII. Ever consider and think upon the world as being but one living substance, and having but one soul, and how all things in the world, are terminated into one sensitive power; and are done by one general motion as it were, and deliberation of that one soul; and how all things that are, concur in the cause of one another's being, and by what manner of connection and concatenation all things happen. XXXIV. What art thou, that better and divine part excepted, but as Epictetus said well, a wretched soul, appointed to carry a carcass up and down? XXXV. To suffer change can be no hurt; as no benefit it is, by change to attain to being. The age and time of the world is as it were a flood and swift current, consisting of the things that are brought to pass in the world. For as soon as anything hath appeared, and is passed away, another succeeds, and that also will presently out of sight. XXXVI. Whatsoever doth happen in the world, is, in the course of nature, as usual and ordinary as a rose in the spring, and fruit in summer. Of the same nature is sickness and death; slander, and lying in wait, and whatsoever else ordinarily doth unto fools use to be occasion either of joy or sorrow. That, whatsoever it is, that comes after, doth always very naturally, and as it were familiarly, follow upon that which was before. For thou must consider the things of the world, not as a loose independent number, consisting merely of necessary events; but as a discreet connection of things orderly and harmoniously disposed. There is then to be seen in the things of the world, not a bare succession, but an admirable correspondence and affinity. XXXVII. Let that of Heraclitus never be out of thy mind, that the death of earth, is water, and the death of water, is air; and the death of air, is fire; and so on the contrary. Remember him also who was ignorant whither the way did lead, and how that reason being the thing by which all things in the world are administered, and which men are continually and most inwardly conversant with: yet is the thing, which ordinarily they are most in opposition with, and how those things which daily happen among them, cease not daily to be strange unto them, and that we should not either speak, or do anything as men in their sleep, by opinion and bare imagination: for then we think we speak and do, and that we must not be as children, who follow their father's example; for best reason alleging their bare successive tradition from our forefathers we have received it. XXXVIII. Even as if any of the gods should tell thee, Thou shalt certainly die to-morrow, or next day, thou wouldst not, except thou wert extremely base and pusillanimous, take it for a great benefit, rather to die the next day after, than to-morrow; (for alas, what is the difference!) so, for the same reason, think it no great matter to die rather many years after, than the very next day. XXXIX. Let it be thy perpetual meditation, how many physicians who once looked so grim, and so theatrically shrunk their brows upon their patients, are dead and gone themselves. How many astrologers, after that in great ostentation they had foretold the death of some others, how many philosophers after so many elaborate tracts and volumes concerning either mortality or immortality; how many brave captains and commanders, after the death and slaughter of so many; how many kings and tyrants, after they had with such horror and insolency abused their power upon men's lives, as though themselves had been immortal; how many, that I may so speak, whole cities both men and towns: Helice, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and others innumerable are dead and gone. Run them over also, whom thou thyself, one after another, hast known in thy time to drop away. Such and such a one took care of such and such a one's burial, and soon after was buried himself. So one, so another: and all things in a short time. For herein lieth all indeed, ever to look upon all worldly things, as things for their continuance, that are but for a day: and for their worth, most vile, and contemptible, as for example, What is man? That which but the other day when he was conceived was vile snivel; and within few days shall be either an embalmed carcass, or mere ashes. Thus must thou according to truth and nature, throughly consider how man's life is but for a very moment of time, and so depart meek and contented: even as if a ripe olive falling should praise the ground that bare her, and give thanks to the tree that begat her. XL. Thou must be like a promontory of the sea, against which though the waves beat continually, yet it both itself stands, and about it are those swelling waves stilled and quieted. XLI. Oh, wretched I, to whom this mischance is happened! nay, happy I, to whom this thing being happened, I can continue without grief; neither wounded by that which is present, nor in fear of that which is to come. For as for this, it might have happened unto any man, but any man having such a thing befallen him, could not have continued without grief. Why then should that rather be an unhappiness, than this a happiness? But however, canst thou, O man! term that unhappiness, which is no mischance to the nature of man I Canst thou think that a mischance to the nature of man, which is not contrary to the end and will of his nature? What then hast thou learned is the will of man's nature? Doth that then which hath happened unto thee, hinder thee from being just? or magnanimous? or temperate? or wise? or circumspect? or true? or modest? or free? or from anything else of all those things in the present enjoying and possession whereof the nature of man, (as then enjoying all that is proper unto her,) is fully satisfied? Now to conclude; upon all occasion of sorrow remember henceforth to make use of this dogma, that whatsoever it is that hath happened unto thee, is in very deed no such thing of itself, as a misfortune; but that to bear it generously, is certainly great happiness. XLII. It is but an ordinary coarse one, yet it is a good effectual remedy against the fear of death, for a man to consider in his mind the examples of such, who greedily and covetously (as it were) did for a long time enjoy their lives. What have they got more, than they whose deaths have been untimely? Are not they themselves dead at the last? as Cadiciant's, Fabius, Julianus Lepidus, or any other who in their lifetime having buried many, were at the last buried themselves. The whole space of any man's life, is but little; and as little as it is, with what troubles, with what manner of dispositions, and in the society of how wretched a body must it be passed! Let it be therefore unto thee altogether as a matter of indifferency. For if thou shalt look backward; behold, what an infinite chaos of time doth present itself unto thee; and as infinite a chaos, if thou shalt look forward. In that which is so infinite, what difference can there be between that which liveth but three days, and that which liveth three ages? XLIII. Let thy course ever be the most compendious way. The most compendious, is that which is according to nature: that is, in all both words and deeds, ever to follow that which is most sound and perfect. For such a resolution will free a man from all trouble, strife, dissembling, and ostentation. THE FIFTH BOOK I. In the morning when thou findest thyself unwilling to rise, consider with thyself presently, it is to go about a man's work that I am stirred up. Am I then yet unwilling to go about that, for which I myself was born and brought forth into this world? Or was I made for this, to lay me down, and make much of myself in a warm bed? 'O but this is pleasing.' And was it then for this that thou wert born, that thou mightest enjoy pleasure? Was it not in very truth for this, that thou mightest always be busy and in action? Seest thou not how all things in the world besides, how every tree md plant, how sparrows and ants, spiders and bees: how all in their kind are intent as it were orderly to perform whatsoever (towards the preservation of this orderly universe) naturally doth become and belong unto thin? And wilt not thou do that, which belongs unto a man to do? Wilt not thou run to do that, which thy nature doth require? 'But thou must have some rest.' Yes, thou must. Nature hath of that also, as well as of eating and drinking, allowed thee a certain stint. But thou guest beyond thy stint, and beyond that which would suffice, and in matter of action, there thou comest short of that which thou mayest. It must needs be therefore, that thou dost not love thyself, for if thou didst, thou wouldst also love thy nature, and that which thy nature doth propose unto herself as her end. Others, as many as take pleasure in their trade and profession, can even pine themselves at their works, and neglect their bodies and their food for it; and doest thou less honour thy nature, than an ordinary mechanic his trade; or a good dancer his art? than a covetous man his silver, and vainglorious man applause? These to whatsoever they take an affection, can be content to want their meat and sleep, to further that every one which he affects: and shall actions tending to the common good of human society, seem more vile unto thee, or worthy of less respect and intention? II. How easy a thing is it for a man to put off from him all turbulent adventitious imaginations, and presently to be in perfect rest and tranquillity! III. Think thyself fit and worthy to speak, or to do anything that is according to nature, and let not the reproach, or report of some that may ensue upon it, ever deter thee. If it be right and honest to be spoken or done, undervalue not thyself so much, as to be discouraged from it. As for them, they have their own rational over-ruling part, and their own proper inclination: which thou must not stand and look about to take notice of, but go on straight, whither both thine own particular, and the common nature do lead thee; and the way of both these, is but one. IV. I continue my course by actions according to nature, until I fall and cease, breathing out my last breath into that air, by which continually breathed in I did live; and falling upon that earth, out of whose gifts and fruits my father gathered his seed, my mother her blood, and my nurse her milk, out of which for so many years I have been provided, both of meat and drink. And lastly, which beareth me that tread upon it, and beareth with me that so many ways do abuse it, or so freely make use of it, so many ways to so many ends. V. No man can admire thee for thy sharp acute language, such is thy natural disability that way. Be it so: yet there be many other good things, for the want of which thou canst not plead the want or natural ability. Let them be seen in thee, which depend wholly from thee; sincerity, gravity, laboriousness, contempt of pleasures; be not querulous, be Content with little, be kind, be free; avoid all superfluity, all vain prattling; be magnanimous. Doest not thou perceive, how many things there be, which notwithstanding any pretence of natural indisposition and unfitness, thou mightest have performed and exhibited, and yet still thou doest voluntarily continue drooping downwards? Or wilt thou say that it is through defect of thy natural constitution, that thou art constrained to murmur, to be base and wretched to flatter; now to accuse, and now to please, and pacify thy body: to be vainglorious, to be so giddy-headed., and unsettled in thy thoughts? nay (witnesses be the Gods) of all these thou mightest have been rid long ago: only, this thou must have been contented with, to have borne the blame of one that is somewhat slow and dull, wherein thou must so exercise thyself, as one who neither doth much take to heart this his natural defect, nor yet pleaseth himself in it. VI. Such there be, who when they have done a good turn to any, are ready to set them on the score for it, and to require retaliation. Others there be, who though they stand not upon retaliation, to require any, yet they think with themselves nevertheless, that such a one is their debtor, and they know as their word is what they have done. Others again there be, who when they have done any such thing, do not so much as know what they have done; but are like unto the vine, which beareth her grapes, and when once she hath borne her own proper fruit, is contented and seeks for no further recompense. As a horse after a race, and a hunting dog when he hath hunted, and a bee when she hath made her honey, look not for applause and commendation; so neither doth that man that rightly doth understand his own nature when he hath done a good turn: but from one doth proceed to do another, even as the vine after she hath once borne fruit in her own proper season, is ready for another time. Thou therefore must be one of them, who what they do, barely do it without any further thought, and are in a manner insensible of what they do. 'Nay but,' will some reply perchance, 'this very thing a rational man is bound unto, to understand what it is, that he doeth.' For it is the property, say they, of one that is naturally sociable, to be sensible, that he doth operate sociably: nay, and to desire, that the party him self that is sociably dealt with, should be sensible of it too. I answer, That which thou sayest is true indeed, but the true meaning of that which is said, thou dost not understand. And therefore art thou one of those first, whom I mentioned. For they also are led by a probable appearance of reason. But if thou dost desire to understand truly what it is that is said, fear not that thou shalt therefore give over any sociable action. VII. The form of the Athenians' prayer did run thus: 'O rain, rain, good Jupiter, upon all the grounds and fields that belong to the Athenians.' Either we should not pray at all, or thus absolutely and freely; and not every one for himself in particular alone. VIII. As we say commonly, The physician hath prescribed unto this man, riding; unto another, cold baths; unto a third, to go barefoot: so it is alike to say, The nature of the universe hath prescribed unto this man sickness, or blindness, or some loss, or damage or some such thing. For as there, when we say of a physician, that he hath prescribed anything, our meaning is, that he hath appointed this for that, as subordinate and conducing to health: so here, whatsoever doth happen unto any, is ordained unto him as a thing subordinate unto the fates, and therefore do we say of such things, that they do happen, or fall together; as of square stones, when either in walls, or pyramids in a certain position they fit one another, and agree as it were in an harmony, the masons say, that they do (sumbainein) as if thou shouldest say, fall together: so that in the general, though the things be divers that make it, yet the consent or harmony itself is but one. And as the whole world is made up of all the particular bodies of the world, one perfect and complete body, of the same nature that particular bodies; so is the destiny of particular causes and events one general one, of the same nature that particular causes are. What I now say, even they that are mere idiots are not ignorant of: for they say commonly (touto eferen autw) that is, This his destiny hath brought upon him. This therefore is by the fates properly and particularly brought upon this, as that unto this in particular is by the physician prescribed. These therefore let us accept of in like manner, as we do those that are prescribed unto us our physicians. For them also in themselves shall We find to contain many harsh things, but we nevertheless, in hope of health, and recovery, accept of them. Let the fulfilling and accomplishment of those things which the common nature hath determined, be unto thee as thy health. Accept then, and be pleased with whatsoever doth happen, though otherwise harsh and un-pleasing, as tending to that end, to the health and welfare of the universe, and to Jove's happiness and prosperity. For this whatsoever it be, should not have been produced, had it not conduced to the good of the universe. For neither doth any ordinary particular nature bring anything to pass, that is not to whatsoever is within the sphere of its own proper administration and government agreeable and subordinate. For these two considerations then thou must be well pleased with anything that doth happen unto thee. First, because that for thee properly it was brought to pass, and unto thee it was prescribed; and that from the very beginning by the series and connection of the first causes, it hath ever had a reference unto thee. And secondly, because the good success and perfect welfare, and indeed the very continuance of Him, that is the Administrator of the whole, doth in a manner depend on it. For the whole (because whole, therefore entire and perfect) is maimed, and mutilated, if thou shalt cut off anything at all, whereby the coherence, and contiguity as of parts, so of causes, is maintained and preserved. Of which certain it is, that thou doest (as much as lieth in thee) cut off, and in some sort violently take somewhat away, as often as thou art displeased with anything that happeneth. IX. Be not discontented, be not disheartened, be not out of hope, if often it succeed not so well with thee punctually and precisely to do all things according to the right dogmata, but being once cast off, return unto them again: and as for those many and more frequent occurrences, either of worldly distractions, or human infirmities, which as a man thou canst not but in some measure be subject unto, be not thou discontented with them; but however, love and affect that only which thou dust return unto: a philosopher's life, and proper occupation after the most exact manner. And when thou dust return to thy philosophy, return not unto it as the manner of some is, after play and liberty as it were, to their schoolmasters and pedagogues; but as they that have sore eyes to their sponge and egg: or as another to his cataplasm; or as others to their fomentations: so shalt not thou make it a matter of ostentation at all to obey reason but of ease and comfort. And remember that philosophy requireth nothing of thee, but what thy nature requireth, and wouldest thou thyself desire anything that is not according to nature? for which of these sayest thou; that which is according to nature or against it, is of itself more kind and pleasing? Is it not for that respect especially, that pleasure itself is to so many men's hurt and overthrow, most prevalent, because esteemed commonly most kind, and natural? But consider well whether magnanimity rather, and true liberty, and true simplicity, and equanimity, and holiness; whether these be not most kind and natural? And prudency itself, what more kind and amiable than it, when thou shalt truly consider with thyself, what it is through all the proper objects of thy rational intellectual faculty currently to go on without any fall or stumble? As for the things of the world, their true nature is in a manner so involved with obscurity, that unto many philosophers, and those no mean ones, they seemed altogether incomprehensible, and the Stoics themselves, though they judge them not altogether incomprehensible, yet scarce and not without much difficulty, comprehensible, so that all assent of ours is fallible, for who is he that is infallible in his conclusions? From the nature of things, pass now unto their subjects and matter: how temporary, how vile are they I such as may be in the power and possession of some abominable loose liver, of some common strumpet, of some notorious oppressor and extortioner. Pass from thence to the dispositions of them that thou doest ordinarily converse with, how hardly do we bear, even with the most loving and amiable! that I may not say, how hard it is for us to bear even with our own selves, in such obscurity, and impurity of things: in such and so continual a flux both of the substances and time; both of the motions themselves, and things moved; what it is that we can fasten upon; either to honour, and respect especially; or seriously, and studiously to seek after; I cannot so much as conceive For indeed they are things contrary. X. Thou must comfort thyself in the expectation of thy natural dissolution, and in the meantime not grieve at the delay; but rest contented in those two things. First, that nothing shall happen unto thee, which is not according to the nature of the universe. Secondly, that it is in thy power, to do nothing against thine own proper God, and inward spirit. For it is not in any man's power to constrain thee to transgress against him. XI. What is the use that now at this present I make of my soul? Thus from time to time and upon all occasions thou must put this question to thyself; what is now that part of mine which they call the rational mistress part, employed about? Whose soul do I now properly possess? a child's? or a youth's? a woman's? or a tyrant's? some brute, or some wild beast's soul? XII. What those things are in themselves, which by the greatest part are esteemed good, thou mayest gather even from this. For if a man shall hear things mentioned as good, which are really good indeed, such as are prudence, temperance, justice, fortitude, after so much heard and conceived, he cannot endure to hear of any more, for the word good is properly spoken of them. But as for those which by the vulgar are esteemed good, if he shall hear them mentioned as good, he doth hearken for more. He is well contented to hear, that what is spoken by the comedian, is but familiarly and popularly spoken, so that even the vulgar apprehend the difference. For why is it else, that this offends not and needs not to be excused, when virtues are styled good: but that which is spoken in commendation of wealth, pleasure, or honour, we entertain it only as merrily and pleasantly spoken? Proceed therefore, and inquire further, whether it may not be that those things also which being mentioned upon the stage were merrily, and with great applause of the multitude, scoffed at with this jest, that they that possessed them had not in all the world of their own, (such was their affluence and plenty) so much as a place where to avoid their excrements. Whether, I say, those ought not also in very deed to be much respected, and esteemed of, as the only things that are truly good. XIII. All that I consist of, is either form or matter. No corruption can reduce either of these unto nothing: for neither did I of nothing become a subsistent creature. Every part of mine then will by mutation be disposed into a certain part of the whole world, and that in time into another part; and so in infinitum; by which kind of mutation, I also became what I am, and so did they that begot me, and they before them, and so upwards in infinitum. For so we may be allowed to speak, though the age and government of the world, be to some certain periods of time limited, and confined. XIV. Reason, and rational power, are faculties which content themselves with themselves, and their own proper operations. And as for their first inclination and motion, that they take from themselves. But their progress is right to the end and object, which is in their way, as it were, and lieth just before them: that is, which is feasible and possible, whether it be that which at the first they proposed to themselves, or no. For which reason also such actions are termed katorqwseiz to intimate the directness of the way, by which they are achieved. Nothing must be thought to belong to a man, which doth not belong unto him as he is a man. These, the event of purposes, are not things required in a man. The nature of man doth not profess any such things. The final ends and consummations of actions are nothing at all to a man's nature. The end therefore of a man, or the summum bonum whereby that end is fulfilled, cannot consist in the consummation of actions purposed and intended. Again, concerning these outward worldly things, were it so that any of them did properly belong unto man, then would it not belong unto man, to condemn them and to stand in opposition with them. Neither would he be praiseworthy that can live without them; or he good, (if these were good indeed) who of his own accord doth deprive himself of any of them. But we see contrariwise, that the more a man doth withdraw himself from these wherein external pomp and greatness doth consist, or any other like these; or the better he doth bear with the loss of these, the better he is accounted. XV. Such as thy thoughts and ordinary cogitations are, such will thy mind be in time. For the soul doth as it were receive its tincture from the fancies, and imaginations. Dye it therefore and thoroughly soak it with the assiduity of these cogitations. As for example. Wheresoever thou mayest live, there it is in thy power to live well and happy. But thou mayest live at the Court, there then also mayest thou live well and happy. Again, that which everything is made for, he is also made unto that, and cannot but naturally incline unto it. That which anything doth naturally incline unto, therein is his end. Wherein the end of everything doth consist, therein also doth his good and benefit consist. Society therefore is the proper good of a rational creature. For that we are made for society, it hath long since been demonstrated. Or can any man make any question of this, that whatsoever is naturally worse and inferior, is ordinarily subordinated to that which is better? and that those things that are best, are made one for another? And those things that have souls, are better than those that have none? and of those that have, those best that have rational souls? XVI. To desire things impossible is the part of a mad man. But it is a thing impossible, that wicked man should not commit some such things. Neither doth anything happen to any man, which in the ordinary course of nature as natural unto him doth not happen. Again, the same things happen unto others also. And truly, if either he that is ignorant that such a thing hath happened unto him, or he that is ambitious to be commended for his magnanimity, can be patient, and is not grieved: is it not a grievous thing, that either ignorance, or a vain desire to please and to be commended, should be more powerful and effectual than true prudence? As for the things themselves, they touch not the soul, neither can they have any access unto it: neither can they of themselves any ways either affect it, or move it. For she herself alone can affect and move herself, and according as the dogmata and opinions are, which she doth vouchsafe herself; so are those things which, as accessories, have any co-existence with her. XVII. After one consideration, man is nearest unto us; as we are bound to do them good, and to bear with them. But as he may oppose any of our true proper actions, so man is unto me but as a thing indifferent: even as the sun, or the wind, or some wild beast. By some of these it may be, that some operation or other of mine, may be hindered; however, of my mind and resolution itself, there can be no let or impediment, by reason of that ordinary constant both exception (or reservation wherewith it inclineth) and ready conversion of objects; from that which may not be, to that which may be, which in the prosecution of its inclinations, as occasion serves, it doth observe. For by these the mind doth turn and convert any impediment whatsoever, to be her aim and purpose. So that what before was the impediment, is now the principal object of her working; and that which before was in her way, is now her readiest way. XVIII. Honour that which is chiefest and most powerful in the world, and that is it, which makes use of all things, and governs all things. So also in thyself; honour that which is chiefest, and most powerful; and is of one kind and nature with that which we now spake of. For it is the very same, which being in thee, turneth all other things to its own use, and by whom also thy life is governed. XIX. That which doth not hurt the city itself; cannot hurt any citizen. This rule thou must remember to apply and make use of upon every conceit and apprehension of wrong. If the whole city be not hurt by this, neither am I certainly. And if the whole be not, why should I make it my private grievance? consider rather what it is wherein he is overseen that is thought to have done the wrong. Again, often meditate how swiftly all things that subsist, and all things that are done in the world, are carried away, and as it were conveyed out of sight: for both the substance themselves, we see as a flood, are in a continual flux; and all actions in a perpetual change; and the causes themselves, subject to a thousand alterations, neither is there anything almost, that may ever be said to be now settled and constant. Next unto this, and which follows upon it, consider both the infiniteness of the time already past, and the immense vastness of that which is to come, wherein all things are to be resolved and annihilated. Art not thou then a very fool, who for these things, art either puffed up with pride, or distracted with cares, or canst find in thy heart to make such moans as for a thing that would trouble thee for a very long time? Consider the whole universe whereof thou art but a very little part, and the whole age of the world together, whereof but a short and very momentary portion is allotted unto thee, and all the fates and destinies together, of which how much is it that comes to thy part and share! Again: another doth trespass against me. Let him look to that. He is master of his own disposition, and of his own operation. I for my part am in the meantime in possession of as much, as the common nature would have me to possess: and that which mine own nature would have me do, I do. XX. Let not that chief commanding part of thy soul be ever subject to any variation through any corporal either pain or pleasure, neither suffer it to be mixed with these, but let it both circumscribe itself, and confine those affections to their own proper parts and members. But if at any time they do reflect and rebound upon the mind and understanding (as in an united and compacted body it must needs;) then must thou not go about to resist sense and feeling, it being natural. However let not thy understanding to this natural sense and feeling, which whether unto our flesh pleasant or painful, is unto us nothing properly, add an opinion of either good or bad and all is well. XXI. To live with the Gods. He liveth with the Gods, who at all times affords unto them the spectacle of a soul, both contented and well pleased with whatsoever is afforded, or allotted unto her; and performing whatsoever is pleasing to that Spirit, whom (being part of himself) Jove hath appointed to every man as his overseer and governor. XXII. Be not angry neither with him whose breath, neither with him whose arm holes, are offensive. What can he do? such is his breath naturally, and such are his arm holes; and from such, such an effect, and such a smell must of necessity proceed. 'O, but the man (sayest thou) hath understanding in him, and might of himself know, that he by standing near, cannot choose but offend.' And thou also (God bless thee!) hast understanding. Let thy reasonable faculty, work upon his reasonable faculty; show him his fault, admonish him. If he hearken unto thee, thou hast cured him, and there will be no more occasion of anger. XXIII. 'Where there shall neither roarer be, nor harlot.' Why so? As thou dost purpose to live, when thou hast retired thyself to some such place, where neither roarer nor harlot is: so mayest thou here. And if they will not suffer thee, then mayest thou leave thy life rather than thy calling, but so as one that doth not think himself anyways wronged. Only as one would say, Here is a smoke; I will out of it. And what a great matter is this! Now till some such thing force me out, I will continue free; neither shall any man hinder me to do what I will, and my will shall ever be by the proper nature of a reasonable and sociable creature, regulated and directed. XXIV. That rational essence by which the universe is governed, is for community and society; and therefore hath it both made the things that are worse, for the best, and hath allied and knit together those which are best, as it were in an harmony. Seest thou not how it hath sub-ordinated, and co-ordinated? and how it hath distributed unto everything according to its worth? and those which have the pre-eminency and superiority above all, hath it united together, into a mutual consent and agreement. XXV. How hast thou carried thyself hitherto towards the Gods? towards thy parents? towards thy brethren? towards thy wife? towards thy children? towards thy masters? thy foster-fathers? thy friends? thy domestics? thy servants? Is it so with thee, that hitherto thou hast neither by word or deed wronged any of them? Remember withal through how many things thou hast already passed, and how many thou hast been able to endure; so that now the legend of thy life is full, and thy charge is accomplished. Again, how many truly good things have certainly by thee been discerned? how many pleasures, how many pains hast thou passed over with contempt? how many things eternally glorious hast thou despised? towards how many perverse unreasonable men hast thou carried thyself kindly, and discreetly? XXVI. Why should imprudent unlearned souls trouble that which is both learned, and prudent? And which is that that is so? she that understandeth the beginning and the end, and hath the true knowledge of that rational essence, that passeth through all things subsisting, and through all ages being ever the same, disposing and dispensing as it were this universe by certain periods of time. XXVII. Within a very little while, thou wilt be either ashes, or a sceletum; and a name perchance; and perchance, not so much as a name. And what is that but an empty sound, and a rebounding echo? Those things which in this life are dearest unto us, and of most account, they are in themselves but vain, putrid, contemptible. The most weighty and serious, if rightly esteemed, but as puppies, biting one another: or untoward children, now laughing and then crying. As for faith, and modesty, and justice, and truth, they long since, as one of the poets hath it, have abandoned this spacious earth, and retired themselves unto heaven. What is it then that doth keep thee here, if things sensible be so mutable and unsettled? and the senses so obscure, and so fallible? and our souls nothing but an exhalation of blood? and to be in credit among such, be but vanity? What is it that thou dost stay for? an extinction, or a translation; either of them with a propitious and contented mind. But still that time come, what will content thee? what else, but to worship and praise the Gods; and to do good unto men. To bear with them, and to forbear to do them any wrong. And for all external things belonging either to this thy wretched body, or life, to remember that they are neither thine, nor in thy power. XXVIII. Thou mayest always speed, if thou wilt but make choice of the right way; if in the course both of thine opinions and actions, thou wilt observe a true method. These two things be common to the souls, as of God, so of men, and of every reasonable creature, first that in their own proper work they cannot be hindered by anything: and secondly, that their happiness doth consist in a disposition to, and in the practice of righteousness; and that in these their desire is terminated. XXIX. If this neither be my wicked act, nor an act anyways depending from any wickedness of mine, and that by it the public is not hurt; what doth it concern me? And wherein can the public be hurt? For thou must not altogether be carried by conceit and common opinion: as for help thou must afford that unto them after thy best ability, and as occasion shall require, though they sustain damage, but in these middle or worldly things; but however do not thou conceive that they are truly hurt thereby: for that is not right. But as that old foster-father in the comedy, being now to take his leave doth with a great deal of ceremony, require his foster-child's rhombus, or rattle-top, remembering nevertheless that it is but a rhombus; so here also do thou likewise. For indeed what is all this pleading and public bawling for at the courts? O man, hast thou forgotten what those things are! yea but they are things that others much care for, and highly esteem of. Wilt thou therefore be a fool too? Once I was; let that suffice. XXX. Let death surprise rue when it will, and where it will, I may be a happy man, nevertheless. For he is a happy man, who in his lifetime dealeth unto himself a happy lot and portion. A happy lot and portion is, good inclinations of the soul, good desires, good actions. THE SIXTH BOOK I. The matter itself, of which the universe doth consist, is of itself very tractable and pliable. That rational essence that doth govern it, hath in itself no cause to do evil. It hath no evil in itself; neither can it do anything that is evil: neither can anything be hurt by it. And all things are done and determined according to its will and prescript. II. Be it all one unto thee, whether half frozen or well warm; whether only slumbering, or after a full sleep; whether discommended or commended thou do thy duty: or whether dying or doing somewhat else; for that also 'to die,' must among the rest be reckoned as one of the duties and actions of our lives. III. Look in, let not either the proper quality, or the true worth of anything pass thee, before thou hast fully apprehended it. IV. All substances come soon to their change, and either they shall be resolved by way of exhalation (if so be that all things shall be reunited into one substance), or as others maintain, they shall be scattered and dispersed. As for that Rational Essence by which all things are governed, as it best understandeth itself, both its own disposition, and what it doth, and what matter it hath to do with and accordingly doth all things; so we that do not, no wonder, if we wonder at many things, the reasons whereof we cannot comprehend. V. The best kind of revenge is, not to become like unto them. VI. Let this be thy only joy, and thy only comfort, from one sociable kind action without intermission to pass unto another, God being ever in thy mind. VII. The rational commanding part, as it alone can stir up and turn itself; so it maketh both itself to be, and everything that happeneth, to appear unto itself, as it will itself. VIII. According to the nature of the universe all things particular are determined, not according to any other nature, either about compassing and containing; or within, dispersed and contained; or without, depending. Either this universe is a mere confused mass, and an intricate context of things, which shall in time be scattered and dispersed again: or it is an union consisting of order, and administered by Providence. If the first, why should I desire to continue any longer in this fortuit confusion and commixtion? or why should I take care for anything else, but that as soon as may be I may be earth again? And why should I trouble myself any more whilst I seek to please the Gods? Whatsoever I do, dispersion is my end, and will come upon me whether I will or no. But if the latter be, then am not I religious in vain; then will I be quiet and patient, and put my trust in Him, who is the Governor of all. IX. Whensoever by some present hard occurrences thou art constrained to be in some sort troubled and vexed, return unto thyself as soon as may be, and be not out of tune longer than thou must needs. For so shalt thou be the better able to keep thy part another time, and to maintain the harmony, if thou dost use thyself to this continually; once out, presently to have recourse unto it, and to begin again. X. If it were that thou hadst at one time both a stepmother, and a natural mother living, thou wouldst honour and respect her also; nevertheless to thine own natural mother would thy refuge, and recourse be continually. So let the court and thy philosophy be unto thee. Have recourse unto it often, and comfort thyself in her, by whom it is that those other things are made tolerable unto thee, and thou also in those things not intolerable unto others. XI. How marvellous useful it is for a man to represent unto himself meats, and all such things that are for the mouth, under a right apprehension and imagination! as for example: This is the carcass of a fish; this of a bird; and this of a hog. And again more generally; This phalernum, this excellent highly commended wine, is but the bare juice of an ordinary grape. This purple robe, but sheep's hairs, dyed with the blood of a shellfish. So for coitus, it is but the attrition of an ordinary base entrail, and the excretion of a little vile snivel, with a certain kind of convulsion: according to Hippocrates his opinion. How excellent useful are these lively fancies and representations of things, thus penetrating and passing through the objects, to make their true nature known and apparent! This must thou use all thy life long, and upon all occasions: and then especially, when matters are apprehended as of great worth and respect, thy art and care must be to uncover them, and to behold their vileness, and to take away from them all those serious circumstances and expressions, under which they made so grave a show. For outward pomp and appearance is a great juggler; and then especially art thou most in danger to be beguiled by it, when (to a man's thinking) thou most seemest to be employed about matters of moment. XII. See what Crates pronounceth concerning Xenocrates himself. XIII. Those things which the common sort of people do admire, are most of them such things as are very general, and may be comprehended under things merely natural, or naturally affected and qualified: as stones, wood, figs, vines, olives. Those that be admired by them that are more moderate and restrained, are comprehended under things animated: as flocks and herds. Those that are yet more gentle and curious, their admiration is commonly confined to reasonable creatures only; not in general as they are reasonable, but as they are capable of art, or of some craft and subtile invention: or perchance barely to reasonable creatures; as they that delight in the possession of many slaves. But he that honours a reasonable soul in general, as it is reasonable and naturally sociable, doth little regard anything else: and above all things is careful to preserve his own, in the continual habit and exercise both of reason and sociableness: and thereby doth co-operate with him, of whose nature he doth also participate; God. XIV. Some things hasten to be, and others to be no more. And even whatsoever now is, some part thereof hath already perished. Perpetual fluxes and alterations renew the world, as the perpetual course of time doth make the age of the world (of itself infinite) to appear always fresh and new. In such a flux and course of all things, what of these things that hasten so fast away should any man regard, since among all there is not any that a man may fasten and fix upon? as if a man would settle his affection upon some ordinary sparrow living by him, who is no sooner seen, than out of sight. For we must not think otherwise of our lives, than as a mere exhalation of blood, or of an ordinary respiration of air. For what in our common apprehension is, to breathe in the air and to breathe it out again, which we do daily: so much is it and no more, at once to breathe out all thy respirative faculty into that common air from whence but lately (as being but from yesterday, and to-day), thou didst first breathe it in, and with it, life. XV. Not vegetative spiration, it is not surely (which plants have) that in this life should be so dear unto us; nor sensitive respiration, the proper life of beasts, both tame and wild; nor this our imaginative faculty; nor that we are subject to be led and carried up and down by the strength of our sensual appetites; or that we can gather, and live together; or that we can feed: for that in effect is no better, than that we can void the excrements of our food. What is it then that should be dear unto us? to hear a clattering noise? if not that, then neither to be applauded by the tongues of men. For the praises of many tongues, is in effect no better than the clattering of so many tongues. If then neither applause, what is there remaining that should be dear unto thee? This I think: that in all thy motions and actions thou be moved, and restrained according to thine own true natural constitution and Construction only. And to this even ordinary arts and professions do lead us. For it is that which every art doth aim at, that whatsoever it is, that is by art effected and prepared, may be fit for that work that it is prepared for. This is the end that he that dresseth the vine, and he that takes upon him either to tame colts, or to train up dogs, doth aim at. What else doth the education of children, and all learned professions tend unto? Certainly then it is that, which should be dear unto us also. If in this particular it go well with thee, care not for the obtaining of other things. But is it so, that thou canst not but respect other things also? Then canst not thou truly be free? then canst thou not have self-content: then wilt thou ever be subject to passions. For it is not possible, but that thou must be envious, and jealous, and suspicious of them whom thou knowest can bereave thee of such things; and again, a secret underminer of them, whom thou seest in present possession of that which is dear unto thee. To be short, he must of necessity be full of confusion within himself, and often accuse the Gods, whosoever stands in need of these things. But if thou shalt honour and respect thy mind only, that will make thee acceptable towards thyself, towards thy friends very tractable; and conformable and concordant with the Gods; that is, accepting with praises whatsoever they shall think good to appoint and allot unto thee. XVI. Under, above, and about, are the motions of the elements; but the motion of virtue, is none of those motions, but is somewhat more excellent and divine. Whose way (to speed and prosper in it) must be through a way, that is not easily comprehended. XVII. Who can choose but wonder at them? They will not speak well of them that are at the same time with them, and live with them; yet they themselves are very ambitious, that they that shall follow, whom they have never seen, nor shall ever see, should speak well of them. As if a man should grieve that he hath not been commended by them, that lived before him. XVIII. Do not ever conceive anything impossible to man, which by thee cannot, or not without much difficulty be effected; but whatsoever in general thou canst Conceive possible and proper unto any man, think that very possible unto thee also. XIX. Suppose that at the palestra somebody hath all to-torn thee with his nails, and hath broken thy head. Well, thou art wounded. Yet thou dost not exclaim; thou art not offended with him. Thou dost not suspect him for it afterwards, as one that watcheth to do thee a mischief. Yea even then, though thou dost thy best to save thyself from him, yet not from him as an enemy. It is not by way of any suspicious indignation, but by way of gentle and friendly declination. Keep the same mind and disposition in other parts of thy life also. For many things there be, which we must conceit and apprehend, as though we had had to do with an antagonist at the palestra. For as I said, it is very possible for us to avoid and decline, though we neither suspect, nor hate. XX. If anybody shall reprove me, and shall make it apparent unto me, that in any either opinion or action of mine I do err, I will most gladly retract. For it is the truth that I seek after, by which I am sure that never any man was hurt; and as sure, that he is hurt that continueth in any error, or ignorance whatsoever. XXI. I for my part will do what belongs unto me; as for other things, whether things unsensible or things irrational; or if rational, yet deceived and ignorant of the true way, they shall not trouble or distract me. For as for those creatures which are not endued with reason and all other things and-matters of the world whatsoever I freely, and generously, as one endued with reason, of things that have none, make use of them. And as for men, towards them as naturally partakers of the same reason, my care is to carry myself sociably. But whatsoever it is that thou art about, remember to call upon the Gods. And as for the time how long thou shalt live to do these things, let it be altogether indifferent unto thee, for even three such hours are sufficient. XXII. Alexander of Macedon, and he that dressed his mules, when once dead both came to one. For either they were both resumed into those original rational essences from whence all things in the world are propagated; or both after one fashion were scattered into atoms. XXIII Consider how many different things, whether they concern our bodies, or our souls, in a moment of time come to pass in every one of us, and so thou wilt not wonder if many more things or rather all things that are done, can at one time subsist, and coexist in that both one and general, which we call the world. XXIV. if any should put this question unto thee, how this word Antoninus is written, wouldst thou not presently fix thine intention upon it, and utter out in order every letter of it? And if any shall begin to gainsay thee, and quarrel with thee about it; wilt thou quarrel with him again, or rather go on meekly as thou hast begun, until thou hast numbered out every letter? Here then likewise remember, that every duty that belongs unto a man doth consist of some certain letters or numbers as it were, to which without any noise or tumult keeping thyself thou must orderly proceed to thy proposed end, forbearing to quarrel with him that would quarrel and fall out with thee. XXV. Is it not a cruel thing to forbid men to affect those things, which they conceive to agree best with their own natures, and to tend most to their own proper good and behoof? But thou after a sort deniest them this liberty, as often as thou art angry with them for their sins. For surely they are led unto those sins whatsoever they be, as to their proper good and commodity. But it is not so (thou wilt object perchance). Thou therefore teach them better, and make it appear unto them: but be not thou angry with them. XXVI. Death is a cessation from the impression of the senses, the tyranny of the passions, the errors of the mind, and the servitude of the body. XXVII. If in this kind of life thy body be able to hold out, it is a shame that thy soul should faint first, and give over, take heed, lest of a philosopher thou become a mere Caesar in time, and receive a new tincture from the court. For it may happen if thou dost not take heed. Keep thyself therefore, truly simple, good, sincere, grave, free from all ostentation, a lover of that which is just, religious, kind, tender-hearted, strong and vigorous to undergo anything that becomes thee. Endeavour to continue such, as philosophy (hadst thou wholly and constantly applied thyself unto it) would have made, and secured thee. Worship the Gods, procure the welfare of men, this life is short. Charitable actions, and a holy disposition, is the only fruit of this earthly life. XXVIII. Do all things as becometh the disciple of Antoninus Pius. Remember his resolute constancy in things that were done by him according to reason, his equability in all things, his sanctity; the cheerfulness of his countenance, his sweetness, and how free he was from all vainglory; how careful to come to the true and exact knowledge of matters in hand, and how he would by no means give over till he did fully, and plainly understand the whole state of the business; and how patiently, and without any contestation he would bear with them, that did unjustly condemn him: how he would never be over-hasty in anything, nor give ear to slanders and false accusations, but examine and observe with best diligence the several actions and dispositions of men. Again, how he was no backbiter, nor easily frightened, nor suspicious, and in his language free from all affectation and curiosity: and how easily he would content himself with few things, as lodging, bedding, clothing, and ordinary nourishment, and attendance. How able to endure labour, how patient; able through his spare diet to continue from morning to evening without any necessity of withdrawing before his accustomed hours to the necessities of nature: his uniformity and constancy in matter of friendship. How he would bear with them that with all boldness and liberty opposed his opinions; and even rejoice if any man could better advise him: and lastly, how religious he was without superstition. All these things of him remember, that whensoever thy last hour shall come upon thee, it may find thee, as it did him, ready for it in the possession of a good conscience. XXIX. Stir up thy mind, and recall thy wits again from thy natural dreams, and visions, and when thou art perfectly awoken, and canst perceive that they were but dreams that troubled thee, as one newly awakened out of another kind of sleep look upon these worldly things with the same mind as thou didst upon those, that thou sawest in thy sleep. XXX. I consist of body and soul. Unto my body all things are indifferent, for of itself it cannot affect one thing more than another with apprehension of any difference; as for my mind, all things which are not within the verge of her own operation, are indifferent unto her, and for her own operations, those altogether depend of her; neither does she busy herself about any, but those that are present; for as for future and past operations, those also are now at this present indifferent unto her. XXXI. As long as the foot doth that which belongeth unto it to do, and the hand that which belongs unto it, their labour, whatsoever it be, is not unnatural. So a man as long as he doth that which is proper unto a man, his labour cannot be against nature; and if it be not against nature, then neither is it hurtful unto him. But if it were so that happiness did consist in pleasure: how came notorious robbers, impure abominable livers, parricides, and tyrants, in so large a measure to have their part of pleasures? XXXII. Dost thou not see, how even those that profess mechanic arts, though in some respect they be no better than mere idiots, yet they stick close to the course of their trade, neither can they find in their heart to decline from it: and is it not a grievous thing that an architect, or a physician shall respect the course and mysteries of their profession, more than a man the proper course and condition of his own nature, reason, which is common to him and to the Gods? XXXIII. Asia, Europe; what are they, but as corners of the whole world; of which the whole sea, is but as one drop; and the great Mount Athos, but as a clod, as all present time is but as one point of eternity. All, petty things; all things that are soon altered, soon perished. And all things come from one beginning; either all severally and particularly deliberated and resolved upon, by the general ruler and governor of all; or all by necessary consequence. So that the dreadful hiatus of a gaping lion, and all poison, and all hurtful things, are but (as the thorn and the mire) the necessary consequences of goodly fair things. Think not of these therefore, as things contrary to those which thou dost much honour, and respect; but consider in thy mind the true fountain of all. XXXIV He that seeth the things that are now, hath Seen all that either was ever, or ever shall be, for all things are of one kind; and all like one unto another. Meditate often upon the connection of all things in the world; and upon the mutual relation that they have one unto another. For all things are after a sort folded and involved one within another, and by these means all agree well together. For one thing is consequent unto another, by local motion, by natural conspiration and agreement, and by substantial union, or, reduction of all substances into one. XXXV. Fit and accommodate thyself to that estate and to those occurrences, which by the destinies have been annexed unto thee; and love those men whom thy fate it is to live with; but love them truly. An instrument, a tool, an utensil, whatsoever it be, if it be fit for the purpose it was made for, it is as it should be though he perchance that made and fitted it, be out of sight and gone. But in things natural, that power which hath framed and fitted them, is and abideth within them still: for which reason she ought also the more to be respected, and we are the more obliged (if we may live and pass our time according to her purpose and intention) to think that all is well with us, and according to our own minds. After this manner also, and in this respect it is, that he that is all in all doth enjoy his happiness. XXXVI. What things soever are not within the proper power and jurisdiction of thine own will either to compass or avoid, if thou shalt propose unto thyself any of those things as either good, or evil; it must needs be that according as thou shalt either fall into that which thou dost think evil, or miss of that which thou dost think good, so wilt thou be ready both to complain of the Gods, and to hate those men, who either shall be so indeed, or shall by thee be suspected as the cause either of thy missing of the one, or falling into the other. And indeed we must needs commit many evils, if we incline to any of these things, more or less, with an opinion of any difference. But if we mind and fancy those things only, as good and bad, which wholly depend of our own wills, there is no more occasion why we should either murmur against the Gods, or be at enmity with any man. XXXVII. We all work to one effect, some willingly, and with a rational apprehension of what we do: others without any such knowledge. As I think Heraclitus in a place speaketh of them that sleep, that even they do work in their kind, and do confer to the general operations of the world. One man therefore doth co-operate after one sort, and another after another sort; but even he that doth murmur, and to his power doth resist and hinder; even he as much as any doth co-operate. For of such also did the world stand in need. Now do thou consider among which of these thou wilt rank thyself. For as for him who is the Administrator of all, he will make good use of thee whether thou wilt or no, and make thee (as a part and member of the whole) so to co-operate with him, that whatsoever thou doest, shall turn to the furtherance of his own counsels, and resolutions. But be not thou for shame such a part of the whole, as that vile and ridiculous verse (which Chrysippus in a place doth mention) is a part of the comedy. XXXVIII. Doth either the sun take upon him to do that which belongs to the rain? or his son Aesculapius that, which unto the earth doth properly belong? How is it with every one of the stars in particular? Though they all differ one from another, and have their several charges and functions by themselves, do they not all nevertheless concur and co-operate to one end? XXXIX. If so be that the Gods have deliberated in particular of those things that should happen unto me, I must stand to their deliberation, as discrete and wise. For that a God should be an imprudent God, is a thing hard even to conceive: and why should they resolve to do me hurt? for what profit either unto them or the universe (which they specially take care for) could arise from it? But if so be that they have not deliberated of me in particular, certainly they have of the whole in general, and those things which in consequence and coherence of this general deliberation happen unto me in particular, I am bound to embrace and accept of. But if so be that they have not deliberated at all (which indeed is very irreligious for any man to believe: for then let us neither sacrifice, nor pray, nor respect our oaths, neither let us any more use any of those things, which we persuaded of the presence and secret conversation of the Gods among us, daily use and practise:) but, I say, if so be that they have not indeed either in general, or particular deliberated of any of those things, that happen unto us in this world; yet God be thanked, that of those things that concern myself, it is lawful for me to deliberate myself, and all my deliberation is but concerning that which may be to me most profitable. Now that unto every one is most profitable, which is according to his own constitution and nature. And my nature is, to be rational in all my actions and as a good, and natural member of a city and commonwealth, towards my fellow members ever to be sociably and kindly disposed and affected. My city and country as I am Antoninus, is Rome; as a man, the whole world. Those things therefore that are expedient and profitable to those cities, are the only things that are good and expedient for me. XL. Whatsoever in any kind doth happen to any one, is expedient to the whole. And thus much to content us might suffice, that it is expedient for the whole in general. But yet this also shalt thou generally perceive, if thou dost diligently take heed, that whatsoever doth happen to any one man or men.... And now I am content that the word expedient, should more generally be understood of those things which we otherwise call middle things, or things indifferent; as health, wealth, and the like. XLI. As the ordinary shows of the theatre and of other such places, when thou art presented with them, affect thee; as the same things still seen, and in the same fashion, make the sight ingrateful and tedious; so must all the things that we see all our life long affect us. For all things, above and below, are still the same, and from the same causes. When then will there be an end? XLII. Let the several deaths of men of all sorts, and of all sorts of professions, and of all sort of nations, be a perpetual object of thy thoughts,... so that thou mayst even come down to Philistio, Phoebus, and Origanion. Pass now to other generations. Thither shall we after many changes, where so many brave orators are; where so many grave philosophers; Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Socrates. Where so many heroes of the old times; and then so many brave captains of the latter times; and so many kings. After all these, where Eudoxus, Hipparchus, Archimedes; where so many other sharp, generous, industrious, subtile, peremptory dispositions; and among others, even they, that have been the greatest scoffers and deriders of the frailty and brevity of this our human life; as Menippus, and others, as many as there have been such as he. Of all these consider, that they long since are all dead, and gone. And what do they suffer by it! Nay they that have not so much as a name remaining, what are they the worse for it? One thing there is, and that only, which is worth our while in this world, and ought by us much to be esteemed; and that is, according to truth and righteousness, meekly and lovingly to converse with false, and unrighteous men. XLIII. When thou wilt comfort and cheer thyself, call to mind the several gifts and virtues of them, whom thou dost daily converse with; as for example, the industry of the one; the modesty of another; the liberality of a third; of another some other thing. For nothing can so much rejoice thee, as the resemblances and parallels of several virtues, visible and eminent in the dispositions of those who live with thee; especially when, all at once, as near as may be, they represent themselves unto thee. And therefore thou must have them always in a readiness. XLIV. Dost thou grieve that thou dost weigh but so many pounds, and not three hundred rather? Just as much reason hast thou to grieve that thou must live but so many years, and not longer. For as for bulk and substance thou dost content thyself with that proportion of it that is allotted unto thee, so shouldst thou for time. XLV. Let us do our best endeavours to persuade them; but however, if reason and justice lead thee to it, do it, though they be never so much against it. But if any shall by force withstand thee, and hinder thee in it, convert thy virtuous inclination from one object unto another, from justice to contented equanimity, and cheerful patience: so that what in the one is thy hindrance, thou mayst make use of it for the exercise of another virtue: and remember that it was with due exception, and reservation, that thou didst at first incline and desire. For thou didst not set thy mind upon things impossible. Upon what then? that all thy desires might ever be moderated with this due kind of reservation. And this thou hast, and mayst always obtain, whether the thing desired be in thy power or no. And what do I care for more, if that for which I was born and brought forth into the world (to rule all my desires with reason and discretion) may be? XLVI. The ambitious supposeth another man's act, praise and applause, to be his own happiness; the voluptuous his own sense and feeling; but he that is wise, his own action. XLVII. It is in thy power absolutely to exclude all manner of conceit and opinion, as concerning this matter; and by the same means, to exclude all grief and sorrow from thy soul. For as for the things and objects themselves, they of themselves have no such power, whereby to beget and force upon us any opinion at all. XLVIII. Use thyself when any man speaks unto thee, so to hearken unto him, as that in the interim thou give not way to any other thoughts; that so thou mayst (as far as is possible) seem fixed and fastened to his very soul, whosoever he be that speaks unto thee. XLIX. That which is not good for the bee-hive, cannot be good for the bee. L. Will either passengers, or patients, find fault and complain, either the one if they be well carried, or the others if well cured? Do they take care for any more than this; the one, that their shipmaster may bring them safe to land, and the other, that their physician may effect their recovery? LI. How many of them who came into the world at the same time when I did, are already gone out of it? LII. To them that are sick of the jaundice, honey seems bitter; and to them that are bitten by a mad dog, the water terrible; and to children, a little ball seems a fine thing. And why then should I be angry? or do I think that error and false opinion is less powerful to make men transgress, than either choler, being immoderate and excessive, to cause the jaundice; or poison, to cause rage? LIII. No man can hinder thee to live as thy nature doth require. Nothing can happen unto thee, but what the common good of nature doth require. LIV. What manner of men they be whom they seek to please, and what to get, and by what actions: how soon time will cover and bury all things, and how many it hath already buried! THE SEVENTH BOOK I. What is wickedness? It is that which many time and often thou hast already seen and known in the world. And so oft as anything doth happen that might otherwise trouble thee, let this memento presently come to thy mind, that it is that which thou hast already often Seen and known. Generally, above and below, thou shalt find but the same things. The very same things whereof ancient stories, middle age stories, and fresh stories are full whereof towns are full, and houses full. There is nothing that is new. All things that are, are both usual and of little continuance. II. What fear is there that thy dogmata, or philosophical resolutions and conclusions, should become dead in thee, and lose their proper power and efficacy to make thee live happy, as long as those proper and correlative fancies, and representations of things on which they mutually depend (which continually to stir up and revive is in thy power,) are still kept fresh and alive? It is in my power concerning this thing that is happened, what soever it be, to conceit that which is right and true. If it be, why then am I troubled? Those things that are without my understanding, are nothing to it at all: and that is it only, which doth properly concern me. Be always in this mind, and thou wilt be right. III. That which most men would think themselves most happy for, and would prefer before all things, if the Gods would grant it unto them after their deaths, thou mayst whilst thou livest grant unto thyself; to live again. See the things of the world again, as thou hast already seen them. For what is it else to live again? Public shows and solemnities with much pomp and vanity, stage plays, flocks and herds; conflicts and contentions: a bone thrown to a company of hungry curs; a bait for greedy fishes; the painfulness, and continual burden-bearing of wretched ants, the running to and fro of terrified mice: little puppets drawn up and down with wires and nerves: these be the objects of the world among all these thou must stand steadfast, meekly affected, and free from all manner of indignation; with this right ratiocination and apprehension; that as the worth is of those things which a man doth affect, so is in very deed every man's worth more or less. IV. Word after word, every one by itself, must the things that are spoken be conceived and understood; and so the things that are done, purpose after purpose, every one by itself likewise. And as in matter of purposes and actions, we must presently see what is the proper use and relation of every one; so of words must we be as ready, to consider of every one what is the true meaning, and signification of it according to truth and nature, however it be taken in common use. V. Is my reason, and understanding sufficient for this, or no? If it be sufficient, without any private applause, or public ostentation as of an instrument, which by nature I am provided of, I will make use of it for the work in hand, as of an instrument, which by nature I am provided of. if it be not, and that otherwise it belong not unto me particularly as a private duty, I will either give it over, and leave it to some other that can better effect it: or I will endeavour it; but with the help of some other, who with the joint help of my reason, is able to bring somewhat to pass, that will now be seasonable and useful for the common good. For whatsoever I do either by myself, or with some other, the only thing that I must intend, is, that it be good and expedient for the public. For as for praise, consider how many who once were much commended, are now already quite forgotten, yea they that commended them, how even they themselves are long since dead and gone. Be not therefore ashamed, whensoever thou must use the help of others. For whatsoever it be that lieth upon thee to effect, thou must propose it unto thyself, as the scaling of walls is unto a soldier. And what if thou through either lameness or some other impediment art not able to reach unto the top of the battlements alone, which with the help of another thou mayst; wilt thou therefore give it over, or go about it with less courage and alacrity, because thou canst not effect it all alone? VI. Let not things future trouble thee. For if necessity so require that they come to pass, thou shalt (whensoever that is) be provided for them with the same reason, by which whatsoever is now present, is made both tolerable and acceptable unto thee. All things are linked and knitted together, and the knot is sacred, neither is there anything in the world, that is not kind and natural in regard of any other thing, or, that hath not some kind of reference and natural correspondence with whatsoever is in the world besides. For all things are ranked together, and by that decency of its due place and order that each particular doth observe, they all concur together to the making of one and the same ["Kosmos" ed] or world: as if you said, a comely piece, or an orderly composition. For all things throughout, there is but one and the same order; and through all things, one and the same God, the same substance and the same law. There is one common reason, and one common truth, that belongs unto all reasonable creatures, for neither is there save one perfection of all creatures that are of the same kind, and partakers of the same reason. VII. Whatsoever is material, doth soon vanish away into the common substance of the whole; and whatsoever is formal, or, whatsoever doth animate that which is material, is soon resumed into the common reason of the whole; and the fame and memory of anything, is soon swallowed up by the general age and duration of the whole. VIII. To a reasonable creature, the same action is both according to nature, and according to reason. IX. Straight of itself, not made straight. X. As several members in one body united, so are reasonable creatures in a body divided and dispersed, all made and prepared for one common operation. And this thou shalt apprehend the better, if thou shalt use thyself often to say to thyself, I am meloz, or a member of the mass and body of reasonable substances. But if thou shalt say I am meroz, or a part, thou dost not yet love men from thy heart. The joy that thou takest in the exercise of bounty, is not yet grounded upon a due ratiocination and right apprehension of the nature of things. Thou dost exercise it as yet upon this ground barely, as a thing convenient and fitting; not, as doing good to thyself, when thou dost good unto others. XI. Of things that are external, happen what will to that which can suffer by external accidents. Those things that suffer let them complain themselves, if they will; as for me, as long as I conceive no such thing, that that which is happened is evil, I have no hurt; and it is in my power not to conceive any such thing. XII. Whatsoever any man either doth or saith, thou must be good; not for any man's sake, but for thine own nature's sake; as if either gold, or the emerald, or purple, should ever be saying to themselves, Whatsoever any man either doth or saith, I must still be an emerald, and I must keep my colour. XIII. This may ever be my comfort and security: my understanding, that ruleth over all, will not of itself bring trouble and vexation upon itself. This I say; it will not put itself in any fear, it will not lead itself into any concupiscence. If it be in the power of any other to compel it to fear, or to grieve, it is free for him to use his power. But sure if itself do not of itself, through some false opinion or supposition incline itself to any such disposition; there is no fear. For as for the body, why should I make the grief of my body, to be the grief of my mind? If that itself can either fear or complain, let it. But as for the soul, which indeed, can only be truly sensible of either fear or grief; to which only it belongs according to its different imaginations and opinions, to admit of either of these, or of their contraries; thou mayst look to that thyself, that it suffer nothing. Induce her not to any such opinion or persuasion. The understanding is of itself sufficient unto itself, and needs not (if itself doth not bring itself to need) any other thing besides itself, and by consequent as it needs nothing, so neither can it be troubled or hindered by anything, if itself doth not trouble and hinder itself. XIV. What is rv&nfLovia, or happiness: but a7~o~ &d~wv, or, a good da~rnon, or spirit? What then dost thou do here, O opinion? By the Gods I adjure thee, that thou get thee gone, as thou earnest: for I need thee not. Thou earnest indeed unto me according to thy ancient wonted manner. It is that, that all men have ever been subject unto. That thou camest therefore I am not angry with thee, only begone, now that I have found thee what thou art. XV. Is any man so foolish as to fear change, to which all things that once were not owe their being? And what is it, that is more pleasing and more familiar to the nature of the universe? How couldst thou thyself use thy ordinary hot baths, should not the wood that heateth them first be changed? How couldst thou receive any nourishment from those things that thou hast eaten, if they should not be changed? Can anything else almost (that is useful and profitable) be brought to pass without change? How then dost not thou perceive, that for thee also, by death, to come to change, is a thing of the very same nature, and as necessary for the nature of the universe? XVI. Through the substance of the universe, as through a torrent pass all particular bodies, being all of the same nature, and all joint workers with the universe itself as in one of our bodies so many members among themselves. How many such as Chrysippus, how many such as Socrates, how many such as Epictetus, hath the age of the world long since swallowed up and devoured? Let this, be it either men or businesses, that thou hast occasion to think of, to the end that thy thoughts be not distracted and thy mind too earnestly set upon anything, upon every such occasion presently come to thy mind. Of all my thoughts and cares, one only thing shall be the object, that I myself do nothing which to the proper constitution of man, (either in regard of the thing itself, or in regard of the manner, or of the time of doing,) is contrary. The time when thou shalt have forgotten all things, is at hand. And that time also is at hand, when thou thyself shalt be forgotten by all. Whilst thou art, apply thyself to that especially which unto man as he is a mart, is most proper and agreeable, and that is, for a man even to love them that transgress against him. This shall be, if at the same time that any such thing doth happen, thou call to mind, that they are thy kinsmen; that it is through ignorance and against their wills that they sin; and that within a very short while after, both thou and he shall be no more. But above all things, that he hath not done thee any hurt; for that by him thy mind and understanding is not made worse or more vile than it was before. XVII. The nature of the universe, of the common substance of all things as it were of so much wax hath now perchance formed a horse; and then, destroying that figure, hath new tempered and fashioned the matter of it into the form and substance of a tree: then that again into the form and substance of a man: and then that again into some other. Now every one of these doth subsist but for a very little while. As for dissolution, if it be no grievous thing to the chest or trunk, to be joined together; why should it be more grievous to be put asunder? XVIII. An angry countenance is much against nature, and it is oftentimes the proper countenance of them that are at the point of death. But were it so, that all anger and passion were so thoroughly quenched in thee, that it were altogether impossible to kindle it any more, yet herein must not thou rest satisfied, but further endeavour by good consequence of true ratiocination, perfectly to conceive and understand, that all anger and passion is against reason. For if thou shalt not be sensible of thine innocence; if that also shall be gone from thee, the comfort of a good conscience, that thou doest all things according to reason: what shouldest thou live any longer for? All things that now thou seest, are but for a moment. That nature, by which all things in the world are administered, will soon bring change and alteration upon them, and then of their substances make other things like unto them: and then soon after others again of the matter and substance of these: that so by these means, the world may still appear fresh and new. XIX. Whensoever any man doth trespass against other, presently consider with thyself what it was that he did suppose to be good, what to be evil, when he did trespass. For this when thou knowest, thou wilt pity him thou wilt have no occasion either to wonder, or to be angry. For either thou thyself dust yet live in that error and ignorance, as that thou dust suppose either that very thing that he doth, or some other like worldly thing, to be good; and so thou art bound to pardon him if he have done that which thou in the like case wouldst have done thyself. Or if so be that thou dost not any more suppose the same things to be good or evil, that he doth; how canst thou but be gentle unto him that is in an error? XX. Fancy not to thyself things future, as though they were present but of those that are present, take some aside, that thou takest most benefit of, and consider of them particularly, how wonderfully thou wouldst want them, if they were not present. But take heed withal, lest that whilst thou dust settle thy contentment in things present, thou grow in time so to overprize them, as that the want of them (whensoever it shall so fall out) should be a trouble and a vexation unto thee. Wind up thyself into thyself. Such is the nature of thy reasonable commanding part, as that if it exercise justice, and have by that means tranquillity within itself, it doth rest fully satisfied with itself without any other thing. XXI. Wipe off all opinion stay the force and violence of unreasonable lusts and affections: circumscribe the present time examine whatsoever it be that is happened, either to thyself or to another: divide all present objects, either in that which is formal or material think of the last hour. That which thy neighbour hath committed, where the guilt of it lieth, there let it rest. Examine in order whatsoever is spoken. Let thy mind penetrate both into the effects, and into the causes. Rejoice thyself with true simplicity, and modesty; and that all middle things between virtue and vice are indifferent unto thee. Finally, love mankind; obey God. XXII. All things (saith he) are by certain order and appointment. And what if the elements only. It will suffice to remember, that all things in general are by certain order and appointment: or if it be but few. And as concerning death, that either dispersion, or the atoms, or annihilation, or extinction, or translation will ensue. And as concerning pain, that that which is intolerable is soon ended by death; and that which holds long must needs be tolerable; and that the mind in the meantime (which is all in all) may by way of interclusion, or interception, by stopping all manner of commerce and sympathy with the body, still retain its own tranquillity. Thy understanding is not made worse by it. As for those parts that suffer, let them, if they can, declare their grief themselves. As for praise and commendation, view their mind and understanding, what estate they are in; what kind of things they fly, and what things they seek after: and that as in the seaside, whatsoever was before to be seen, is by the continual succession of new heaps of sand cast up one upon another, soon hid and covered; so in this life, all former things by those which immediately succeed. XXIII. Out of Plato. 'He then whose mind is endowed with true magnanimity, who hath accustomed himself to the contemplation both of all times, and of all things in general; can this mortal life (thinkest thou) seem any great matter unto him? It is not possible, answered he. Then neither will such a one account death a grievous thing? By no means.' XXIV. Out of Antisthenes. 'It is a princely thing to do well, and to be ill-spoken of. It is a shameful thing that the face should be subject unto the mind, to be put into what shape it will, and to be dressed by it as it will; and that the mind should not bestow so much care upon herself, as to fashion herself, and to dress herself as best becometh her.' XXV. Out of several poets and comics. 'It will but little avail thee, to turn thine anger and indignation upon the things themselves that have fallen across unto thee. For as for them, they are not sensible of it, &c. Thou shalt but make thyself a laughing-stock; both unto the Gods and men, &c. Our life is reaped like a ripe ear of corn; one is yet standing and another is down, &c. But if so be that I and my children be neglected by the gods, there is some reason even for that, &c. As long as right and equity is of my side, &c. Not to lament with them, not to tremble, &c.' XXVI. Out of Plato. 'My answer, full of justice and equity, should be this: Thy speech is not right, O man! if thou supposest that he that is of any worth at all, should apprehend either life or death, as a matter of great hazard and danger; and should not make this rather his only care, to examine his own actions, whether just or unjust: whether actions of a good, or of a wicked man, &c. For thus in very truth stands the case, O ye men of Athens. What place or station soever a man either hath chosen to himself, judging it best for himself; or is by lawful authority put and settled in, therein do I think (all appearance of danger notwithstanding) that he should continue, as one who feareth neither death, nor anything else, so much as he feareth to commit anything that is vicious and shameful, &c. But, O noble sir, consider I pray, whether true generosity and true happiness, do not consist in somewhat else rather, than in the preservation either of our, or other men's lives. For it is not the part of a man that is a man indeed, to desire to live long or to make much of his life whilst he liveth: but rather (he that is such) will in these things wholly refer himself unto the Gods, and believing that which every woman can tell him, that no man can escape death; the only thing that he takes thought and care for is this, that what time he liveth, he may live as well and as virtuously as he can possibly, &c. To look about, and with the eyes to follow the course of the stars and planets as though thou wouldst run with them; and to mind perpetually the several changes of the elements one into another. For such fancies and imaginations, help much to purge away the dross and filth of this our earthly life,' &c. That also is a fine passage of Plato's, where he speaketh of worldly things in these words: 'Thou must also as from some higher place look down, as it were, upon the things of this world, as flocks, armies, husbandmen's labours, marriages, divorces, generations, deaths: the tumults of courts and places of judicatures; desert places; the several nations of barbarians, public festivals, mournings, fairs, markets.' How all things upon earth are pell-mell; and how miraculously things contrary one to another, concur to the beauty and perfection of this universe. XXVII. To look back upon things of former ages, as upon the manifold changes and conversions of several monarchies and commonwealths. We may also foresee things future, for they shall all be of the same kind; neither is it possible that they should leave the tune, or break the concert that is now begun, as it were, by these things that are now done and brought to pass in the world. It comes all to one therefore, whether a man be a spectator of the things of this life but forty years, or whether he see them ten thousand years together: for what shall he see more? 'And as for those parts that came from the earth, they shall return unto the earth again; and those that came from heaven, they also shall return unto those heavenly places.' Whether it be a mere dissolution and unbinding of the manifold intricacies and entanglements of the confused atoms; or some such dispersion of the simple and incorruptible elements... 'With meats and drinks and divers charms, they seek to divert the channel, that they might not die. Yet must we needs endure that blast of wind that cometh from above, though we toil and labour never so much.' XXVIII. He hath a stronger body, and is a better wrestler than I. What then? Is he more bountiful? is he more modest? Doth he bear all adverse chances with more equanimity: or with his neighbour's offences with more meekness and gentleness than I? XXIX. Where the matter may be effected agreeably to that reason, which both unto the Gods and men is common, there can be no just cause of grief or sorrow. For where the fruit and benefit of an action well begun and prosecuted according to the proper constitution of man may be reaped and obtained, or is sure and certain, it is against reason that any damage should there be suspected. In all places, and at all times, it is in thy power religiously to embrace whatsoever by God's appointment is happened unto thee, and justly to converse with those men, whom thou hast to do with, and accurately to examine every fancy that presents itself, that nothing may slip and steal in, before thou hast rightly apprehended the true nature of it. XXX. Look not about upon other men's minds and understandings; but look right on forwards whither nature, both that of the universe, in those things that happen unto thee; and thine in particular, in those things that are done by thee: doth lead, and direct thee. Now every one is bound to do that, which is consequent and agreeable to that end which by his true natural constitution he was ordained unto. As for all other things, they are ordained for the use of reasonable creatures: as in all things we see that that which is worse and inferior, is made for that which is better. Reasonable creatures, they are ordained one for another. That therefore which is chief in every man's constitution, is, that he intend the common good. The second is, that he yield not to any lusts and motions of the flesh. For it is the part and privilege of the reasonable and intellective faculty, that she can so bound herself, as that neither the sensitive, nor the appetitive faculties, may not anyways prevail upon her. For both these are brutish. And therefore over both she challengeth mastery, and cannot anyways endure, if in her right temper, to be subject unto either. And this indeed most justly. For by nature she was ordained to command all in the body. The third thing proper to man by his constitution, is, to avoid all rashness and precipitancy; and not to be subject to error. To these things then, let the mind apply herself and go straight on, without any distraction about other things, and she hath her end, and by consequent her happiness. XXXI. As one who had lived, and were now to die by right, whatsoever is yet remaining, bestow that wholly as a gracious overplus upon a virtuous life. Love and affect that only, whatsoever it be that happeneth, and is by the fates appointed unto thee. For what can be more reasonable? And as anything doth happen unto thee by way of cross, or calamity, call to mind presently and set before thine eyes, the examples of some other men, to whom the self-same thing did once happen likewise. Well, what did they? They grieved; they wondered; they complained. And where are they now? All dead and gone. Wilt thou also be like one of them? Or rather leaving to men of the world (whose life both in regard of themselves, and them that they converse with, is nothing but mere mutability; or men of as fickle minds, as fickle bodies; ever changing and soon changed themselves) let it be thine only care and study, how to make a right use of all such accidents. For there is good use to be made of them, and they will prove fit matter for thee to work upon, if it shall be both thy care and thy desire, that whatsoever thou doest, thou thyself mayst like and approve thyself for it. And both these, see, that thou remember well, according as the diversity of the matter of the action that thou art about shall require. Look within; within is the fountain of all good. Such a fountain, where springing waters can never fail, so thou dig still deeper and deeper. XXXII. Thou must use thyself also to keep thy body fixed and steady; free from all loose fluctuant either motion, or posture. And as upon thy face and looks, thy mind hath easily power over them to keep them to that which is grave and decent; so let it challenge the same power over the whole body also. But so observe all things in this kind, as that it be without any manner of affectation. XXXIII. The art of true living in this world is more like a wrestler's, than a dancer's practice. For in this they both agree, to teach a man whatsoever falls upon him, that he may be ready for it, and that nothing may cast him down. XXXIV. Thou must continually ponder and consider with thyself, what manner of men they be, and for their minds and understandings what is their present estate, whose good word and testimony thou dost desire. For then neither wilt thou see cause to complain of them that offend against their wills; or find any want of their applause, if once thou dost but penetrate into the true force and ground both of their opinions, and of their desires. 'No soul (saith he) is willingly bereft of the truth,' and by consequent, neither of justice, or temperance, or kindness, and mildness; nor of anything that is of the same kind. It is most needful that thou shouldst always remember this. For so shalt thou be far more gentle and moderate towards all men. XXXV. What pain soever thou art in, let this presently come to thy mind, that it is not a thing whereof thou needest to be ashamed, neither is it a thing whereby thy understanding, that hath the government of all, can be made worse. For neither in regard of the substance of it, nor in regard of the end of it (which is, to intend the common good) can it alter and corrupt it. This also of Epicurus mayst thou in most pains find some help of, that it is 'neither intolerable, nor eternal;' so thou keep thyself to the true bounds and limits of reason and give not way to opinion. This also thou must consider, that many things there be, which oftentimes unsensibly trouble and vex thee, as not armed against them with patience, because they go not ordinarily under the name of pains, which in very deed are of the same nature as pain; as to slumber unquietly, to suffer heat, to want appetite: when therefore any of these things make thee discontented, check thyself with these words: Now hath pain given thee the foil; thy courage hath failed thee. XXXVI. Take heed lest at any time thou stand so affected, though towards unnatural evil men, as ordinary men are commonly one towards another. XXXVII. How know we whether Socrates were so eminent indeed, and of so extraordinary a disposition? For that he died more gloriously, that he disputed with the Sophists more subtilty; that he watched in the frost more assiduously; that being commanded to fetch innocent Salaminius, he refused to do it more generously; all this will not serve. Nor that he walked in the streets, with much gravity and majesty, as was objected unto him by his adversaries: which nevertheless a man may well doubt of, whether it were so or no, or, which above all the rest, if so be that it were true, a man would well consider of, whether commendable, or dis-commendable. The thing therefore that we must inquire into, is this; what manner of soul Socrates had: whether his disposition was such; as that all that he stood upon, and sought after in this world, was barely this, that he might ever carry himself justly towards men, and holily towards the Gods. Neither vexing himself to no purpose at the wickedness of others, nor yet ever condescending to any man's evil fact, or evil intentions, through either fear, or engagement of friendship. Whether of those things that happened unto him by God's appointment, he neither did wonder at any when it did happen, or thought it intolerable in the trial of it. And lastly, whether he never did suffer his mind to sympathise with the senses, and affections of the body. For we must not think that Nature hath so mixed and tempered it with the body, as that she hath not power to circumscribe herself, and by herself to intend her own ends and occasions. XXXVIII. For it is a thing very possible, that a man should be a very divine man, and yet be altogether unknown. This thou must ever be mindful of, as of this also, that a man's true happiness doth consist in very few things. And that although thou dost despair, that thou shalt ever be a good either logician, or naturalist, yet thou art never the further off by it from being either liberal, or modest, or charitable, or obedient unto God. XXXIX. Free from all compulsion in all cheerfulness and alacrity thou mayst run out thy time, though men should exclaim against thee never so much, and the wild beasts should pull in sunder the poor members of thy pampered mass of flesh. For what in either of these or the like cases should hinder the mind to retain her own rest and tranquillity, consisting both in the right judgment of those things that happen unto her, and in the ready use of all present matters and occasions? So that her judgment may say, to that which is befallen her by way of cross: this thou art in very deed, and according to thy true nature: notwithstanding that in the judgment of opinion thou dust appear otherwise: and her discretion to the present object; thou art that, which I sought for. For whatsoever it be, that is now present, shall ever be embraced by me as a fit and seasonable object, both for my reasonable faculty, and for my sociable, or charitable inclination to work upon. And that which is principal in this matter, is that it may be referred either unto the praise of God, or to the good of men. For either unto God or man, whatsoever it is that doth happen in the world hath in the ordinary course of nature its proper reference; neither is there anything, that in regard of nature is either new, or reluctant and intractable, but all things both usual and easy. XL. Then hath a man attained to the estate of perfection in his life and conversation, when he so spends every day, as if it were his last day: never hot and vehement in his affections, nor yet so cold and stupid as one that had no sense; and free from all manner of dissimulation. XLI. Can the Gods, who are immortal, for the continuance of so many ages bear without indignation with such and so many sinners, as have ever been, yea not only so, but also take such care for them, that they want nothing; and dust thou so grievously take on, as one that could bear with them no longer; thou that art but for a moment of time? yea thou that art one of those sinners thyself? A very ridiculous thing it is, that any man should dispense with vice and wickedness in himself, which is in his power to restrain; and should go about to suppress it in others, which is altogether impossible. XLII. What object soever, our reasonable and sociable faculty doth meet with, that affords nothing either for the satisfaction of reason, or for the practice of charity, she worthily doth think unworthy of herself. XLIII. When thou hast done well, and another is benefited by thy action, must thou like a very fool look for a third thing besides, as that it may appear unto others also that thou hast done well, or that thou mayest in time, receive one good turn for another? No man useth to be weary of that which is beneficial unto him. But every action according to nature, is beneficial. Be not weary then of doing that which is beneficial unto thee, whilst it is so unto others. XLIV. The nature of the universe did once certainly before it was created, whatsoever it hath done since, deliberate and so resolve upon the creation of the world. Now since that time, whatsoever it is, that is and happens in the world, is either but a consequent of that one and first deliberation: or if so be that this ruling rational part of the world, takes any thought and care of things particular, they are surely his reasonable and principal creatures, that are the proper object of his particular care and providence. This often thought upon, will much conduce to thy tranquillity. THE EIGHTH BOOK I. This also, among other things, may serve to keep thee from vainglory; if thou shalt consider, that thou art now altogether incapable of the commendation of one, who all his life long, or from his youth at least, hath lived a philosopher's life. For both unto others, and to thyself especially, it is well known, that thou hast done many things contrary to that perfection of life. Thou hast therefore been confounded in thy course, and henceforth it will be hard for thee to recover the title and credit of a philosopher. And to it also is thy calling and profession repugnant. If therefore thou dost truly understand, what it is that is of moment indeed; as for thy fame and credit, take no thought or care for that: let it suffice thee if all the rest of thy life, be it more or less, thou shalt live as thy nature requireth, or according to the true and natural end of thy making. Take pains therefore to know what it is that thy nature requireth, and let nothing else distract thee. Thou hast already had sufficient experience, that of those many things that hitherto thou hast erred and wandered about, thou couldst not find happiness in any of them. Not in syllogisms, and logical subtilties, not in wealth, not in honour and reputation, not in pleasure. In none of all these. Wherein then is it to be found? In the practice of those things, which the nature of man, as he is a man, doth require. How then shall he do those things? if his dogmata, or moral tenets and opinions (from which all motions and actions do proceed), be right and true. Which be those dogmata? Those that concern that which is good or evil, as that there is nothing truly good and beneficial unto man, but that which makes him just, temperate, courageous, liberal; and that there is nothing truly evil and hurtful unto man, but that which causeth the contrary effects. II. Upon every action that thou art about, put this question to thyself; How will this when it is done agree with me? Shall I have no occasion to repent of it? Yet a very little while and I am dead and gone; and all things are at end. What then do I care for more than this, that my present action whatsoever it be, may be the proper action of one that is reasonable; whose end is, the common good; who in all things is ruled and governed by the same law of right and reason, by which God Himself is. III. Alexander, Caius, Pompeius; what are these to Diogenes, Heraclitus, and Socrates? These penetrated into the true nature of things; into all causes, and all subjects: and upon these did they exercise their power and authority. But as for those, as the extent of their error was, so far did their slavery extend. IV. What they have done, they will still do, although thou shouldst hang thyself. First; let it not trouble thee. For all things both good and evil: come to pass according to the nature and general condition of the universe, and within a very little while, all things will be at an end; no man will be remembered: as now of Africanus (for example) and Augustus it is already come to pass. Then secondly; fix thy mind upon the thing itself; look into it, and remembering thyself, that thou art bound nevertheless to be a good man, and what it is that thy nature requireth of thee as thou art a man, be not diverted from what thou art about, and speak that which seemeth unto thee most just: only speak it kindly, modestly, and without hypocrisy. V. That which the nature of the universe doth busy herself about, is; that which is here, to transfer it thither, to change it, and thence again to take it away, and to carry it to another place. So that thou needest not fear any new thing. For all things are usual and ordinary; and all things are disposed by equality. VI. Every particular nature hath content, when in its own proper course it speeds. A reasonable nature doth then speed, when first in matter of fancies and imaginations, it gives no consent to that which is either false uncertain. Secondly, when in all its motions and resolutions it takes its level at the common good only, and that it desireth nothing, and flieth from nothing, bet what is in its own power to compass or avoid. And lastly, when it willingly and gladly embraceth, whatsoever is dealt and appointed unto it by the common nature. For it is part of it; even as the nature of any one leaf, is part of the common nature of all plants and trees. But that the nature of a leaf, is part of a nature both unreasonable and unsensible, and which in its proper end may be hindered; or, which is servile and slavish: whereas the nature of man is part of a common nature which cannot be hindered, and which is both reasonable and just. From whence also it is, that accord ing to the worth of everything, she doth make such equal distribution of all things, as of duration, substance form, operation, and of events and accidents. But herein consider not whether thou shalt find this equality in everything absolutely and by itself; but whether in all the particulars of some one thing taken together, and compared with all the particulars of some other thing, and them together likewise. VII. Thou hast no time nor opportunity to read. What then? Hast thou not time and opportunity to exercise thyself, not to wrong thyself; to strive against all carnal pleasures and pains, and to aet the upper hand of them; to contemn honour and vainglory; and not only, not to be angry with them, whom towards thee thou doest find unsensible and unthankful; but also to have a care of them still, and of their welfare? VIII. Forbear henceforth to complain of the trouble of a courtly life, either in public before others, or in private by thyself. IX. Repentance is an inward and self-reprehension for the neglect or omission of somewhat that was profitable. Now whatsoever is good, is also profitable, and it is the part of an honest virtuous man to set by it, and to make reckoning of it accordingly. But never did any honest virtuous man repent of the neglect or omission of any carnal pleasure: no carnal pleasure then is either good or profitable. X. This, what is it in itself, and by itself, according to its proper constitution? What is the substance of it? What is the matter, or proper use? What is the form or efficient cause? What is it for in this world, and how long will it abide? Thus must thou examine all things, that present themselves unto thee. XI. When thou art hard to be stirred up and awaked out of thy sleep, admonish thyself and call to mind, that, to perform actions tending to the common good is that which thine own proper constitution, and that which the nature of man do require. But to sleep, is common to unreasonable creatures also. And what more proper and natural, yea what more kind and pleasing, than that which is according to nature? XII. As every fancy and imagination presents itself unto thee, consider (if it be possible) the true nature, and the proper qualities of it, and reason with thyself about it. XIII. At thy first encounter with any one, say presently to thyself: This man, what are his opinions concerning that which is good or evil? as concerning pain, pleasure, and the causes of both; concerning honour, and dishonour, concerning life and death? thus and thus. Now if it be no wonder that a man should have such and such opinions, how can it be a wonder that he should do such and such things? I will remember then, that he cannot but do as he doth, holding those opinions that he doth. Remember, that as it is a shame for any man to wonder that a fig tree should bear figs, so also to wonder that the world should bear anything, whatsoever it is which in the ordinary course of nature it may bear. To a physician also and to a pilot it is a shame either for the one to wonder, that such and such a one should have an ague; or for the other, that the winds should prove Contrary. XIV. Remember, that to change thy mind upon occasion, and to follow him that is able to rectify thee, is equally ingenuous, as to find out at the first, what is right and just, without help. For of thee nothing is required, ti, is beyond the extent of thine own deliberation and jun. merit, and of thine own understanding. XV. If it were thine act and in thine own power, wouldest thou do it? If it were not, whom dost tin accuse? the atoms, or the Gods? For to do either, the part of a mad man. Thou must therefore blame nobody, but if it be in thy power, redress what is amiss; if it be not, to what end is it to complain? For nothing should be done but to some certain end. XVI. Whatsoever dieth and falleth, however and wheresoever it die and fall, it cannot fall out of the world, here it have its abode and change, here also shall it have its dissolution into its proper elements. The same are the world's elements, and the elements of which thou dost consist. And they when they are changed, they murmur not; why shouldest thou? XVII. Whatsoever is, was made for something: as a horse, a vine. Why wonderest thou? The sun itself will say of itself, I was made for something; and so hath every god its proper function. What then were then made for? to disport and delight thyself? See how even common sense and reason cannot brook it. XVIII. Nature hath its end as well in the end and final consummation of anything that is, as in the begin-nine and continuation of it. XIX. As one that tosseth up a ball. And what is a ball the better, if the motion of it be upwards; or the worse if it be downwards; or if it chance to fall upon the ground? So for the bubble; if it continue, what it the better? and if it dissolve, what is it the worse And so is it of a candle too. And so must thou reason with thyself, both in matter of fame, and in matter of death. For as for the body itself, (the subject of death) wouldest thou know the vileness of it? Turn it about that thou mayest behold it the worst sides upwards as well, as in its more ordinary pleasant shape; how doth it look, when it is old and withered? when sick and pained? when in the act of lust, and fornication? And as for fame. This life is short. Both he that praiseth, and he that is praised; he that remembers, and he that is remembered, will soon be dust and ashes. Besides, it is but in one corner of this part of the world that thou art praised; and yet in this corner, thou hast not the joint praises of all men; no nor scarce of any one constantly. And yet the whole earth itself, what is it but as one point, in regard of the whole world? XX. That which must be the subject of thy consideration, is either the matter itself, or the dogma, or the operation, or the true sense and signification. XXI. Most justly have these things happened unto thee: why dost not thou amend? O but thou hadst rather become good to-morrow, than to be so to-day. XXII. Shall I do it? I will; so the end of my action be to do good unto men. Doth anything by way of cross or adversity happen unto me? I accept it, with reference unto the Gods, and their providence; the fountain of all things, from which whatsoever comes to pass, doth hang and depend. XXIII. By one action judge of the rest: this bathing which usually takes up so much of our time, what is it? Oil, sweat, filth; or the sordes of the body: an excrementitious viscosity, the excrements of oil and other ointments used about the body, and mixed with the sordes of the body: all base and loathsome. And such almost is every part of our life; and every worldly object. XXIV. Lucilla buried Verus; then was Lucilla herself buried by others. So Secunda Maximus, then Secunda herself. So Epitynchanus, Diotimus; then Epitynchanus himself. So Antoninus Pius, Faustina his wife; then Antoninus himself. This is the course of the world. First Celer, Adrianus; then Adrianus himself. And those austere ones; those that foretold other men's deaths; those that were so proud and stately, where are they now? Those austere ones I mean, such as were Charax, and Demetrius the Platonic, and Eudaemon, and others like unto those. They were all but for one day; all dead and gone long since. Some of them no sooner dead, than forgotten. Others soon turned into fables. Of others, even that which was fabulous, is now long since forgotten. This thereafter thou must remember, that whatsoever thou art compounded of, shall soon be dispersed, and that thy life and breath, or thy soul, shall either be no more or shall ranslated (sp.), and appointed to some certain place and station. XXV. The true joy of a man, is to do that which properly belongs unto a man. That which is most proper unto a man, is, first, to be kindly affected towards them that are of the same kind and nature as he is himself to contemn all sensual motions and appetites, to discern rightly all plausible fancies and imaginations, to contemplate the nature of the universe; both it, and things that are done in it. In which kind of contemplation three several relations are to be observed The first, to the apparent secondary cause. The Second to the first original cause, God, from whom originally proceeds whatsoever doth happen in the world. The third and last, to them that we live and converse with: what use may be made of it, to their use and benefit. XXVI. If pain be an evil, either it is in regard of the body; (and that cannot be, because the body of itself is altogether insensible:) or in regard of the soul But it is in the power of the soul, to preserve her own peace and tranquillity, and not to suppose that pain is evil. For all judgment and deliberation; all prosecution, or aversation is from within, whither the sense of evil (except it be let in by opinion) cannot penetrate. XXVII. Wipe off all idle fancies, and say unto thyself incessantly; Now if I will, it is in my power to keep out of this my soul all wickedness, all lust, and concupiscences, all trouble and confusion. But on the contrary to behold and consider all things according to their true nature, and to carry myself towards everything according to its true worth. Remember then this thy power that nature hath given thee. XXVIII. Whether thou speak in the Senate or whether thou speak to any particular, let thy speech In always grave and modest. But thou must not openly and vulgarly observe that sound and exact form of speaking, concerning that which is truly good and truly civil; the vanity of the world, and of worldly men: which otherwise truth and reason doth prescribe. XXIX. Augustus his court; his wife, his daughter, his nephews, his sons-in-law his sister, Agrippa, his kinsmen, his domestics, his friends; Areus, Maecenas, his slayers of beasts for sacrifice and divination: there thou hast the death of a whole court together. Proceed now on to the rest that have been since that of Augustus. Hath death dwelt with them otherwise, though so many and so stately whilst they lived, than it doth use to deal with any one particular man? Consider now the death of a whole kindred and family, as of that of the Pompeys, as that also that useth to be written upon some monuments, HE WAS THE LAST OF HIS OWN KINDRED. O what care did his predecessors take, that they might leave a successor, yet behold at last one or other must of necessity be THE LAST. Here again therefore consider the death of a whole kindred. XXX. Contract thy whole life to the measure and proportion of one single action. And if in every particular action thou dost perform what is fitting to the utmost of thy power, let it suffice thee. And who can hinder thee, but that thou mayest perform what is fitting? But there may be some outward let and impediment. Not any, that can hinder thee, but that whatsoever thou dost, thou may do it, justly, temperately, and with the praise of God. Yea, but there may be somewhat, whereby some operation or other of thine may be hindered. And then, with that very thing that doth hinder, thou mayest he well pleased, and so by this gentle and equanimious conversion of thy mind unto that which may be, instead of that which at first thou didst intend, in the room of that former action there succeedeth another, which agrees as well with this contraction of thy life, that we now speak of. XXXI. Receive temporal blessings without ostentation, when they are sent and thou shalt be able to part with them with all readiness and facility when they are taken from thee again. XXXII. If ever thou sawest either a hand, or a foot, or a head lying by itself, in some place or other, as cut off from the rest of the body, such must thou conceive him to make himself, as much as in him lieth, that either is offended with anything that is happened, (whatsoever it be) and as it were divides himself from it: or that commits anything against the natural law of mutual correspondence, and society among men: or, he that, commits any act of uncharitableness. Whosoever thou art, thou art such, thou art cast forth I know not whither out of the general unity, which is according to nature. Thou went born indeed a part, but now thou hast cut thyself off. However, herein is matter of joy and exultation, that thou mayst be united again. God hath not granted it unto any other part, that once separated and cut off, it might be reunited, and come together again. But, behold, that GOODNESS how great and immense it is! which hath so much esteemed MAN. As at first he was so made, that he needed not, except he would himself, have divided himself from the whole; so once divided and cut off, IT hath so provided and ordered it, that if he would himself, he might return, and grow together again, and be admitted into its former rank and place of a part, as he was before. XXXIII. As almost all her other faculties and properties the nature of the universe hath imparted unto every reasonable creature, so this in particular we have received from her, that as whatsoever doth oppose itself unto her, and doth withstand her in her purposes and intentions, she doth, though against its will and intention, bring it about to herself, to serve herself of it in the execution of her own destinated ends; and so by this though not intended co-operation of it with herself makes it part of herself whether it will or no. So may every reasonable creature, what crosses and impediments soever it meets with in the course of this mortal life, it may use them as fit and proper objects, to the furtherance of whatsoever it intended and absolutely proposed unto itself as its natural end and happiness. XXXIV. Let not the general representation unto thyself of the wretchedness of this our mortal life, trouble thee. Let not thy mind wander up and down, and heap together in her thoughts the many troubles and grievous calamities which thou art as subject unto as any other. But as everything in particular doth happen, put this question unto thyself, and say: What is it that in this present matter, seems unto thee so intolerable? For thou wilt be ashamed to confess it. Then upon this presently call to mind, that neither that which is future, nor that which is past can hurt thee; but that only which is present. (And that also is much lessened, if thou dost lightly circumscribe it:) and then check thy mind if for so little a while, (a mere instant), it cannot hold out with patience. XXXV. What? are either Panthea or Pergamus abiding to this day by their masters' tombs? or either Chabrias or Diotimus by that of Adrianus? O foolery! For what if they did, would their masters be sensible of It? or if sensible, would they be glad of it? or if glad, were these immortal? Was not it appointed unto them also (both men and women,) to become old in time, and then to die? And these once dead, what would become of these former? And when all is done, what is all this for, but for a mere bag of blood and corruption? XXXVI. If thou beest quick-sighted, be so in matter of judgment, and best discretion, saith he. XXXVII. In the whole constitution of man, I see not any virtue contrary to justice, whereby it may be resisted and opposed. But one whereby pleasure and voluptuousness may be resisted and opposed, I see: continence. XXXVIII. If thou canst but withdraw conceit and opinion concerning that which may seem hurtful and offensive, thou thyself art as safe, as safe may be. Thou thyself? and who is that? Thy reason. 'Yea, but I am not reason.' Well, be it so. However, let not thy reason or understanding admit of grief, and if there be anything in thee that is grieved, let that, (whatsoever it be,) conceive its own grief, if it can. XXXIX. That which is a hindrance of the senses, is an evil to the sensitive nature. That which is a hindrance of the appetitive and prosecutive faculty, is an evil to the sensitive nature. As of the sensitive, so of the vegetative constitution, whatsoever is a hindrance unto it, is also in that respect an evil unto the same. And so likewise, whatsoever is a hindrance unto the mind and understanding, must needs be the proper evil of the reasonable nature. Now apply all those things unto thyself. Do either pain or pleasure seize on thee? Let the senses look to that. Hast thou met with Some obstacle or other in thy purpose and intention? If thou didst propose without due reservation and exception now hath thy reasonable part received a blow indeed But if in general thou didst propose unto thyself what soever might be, thou art not thereby either hurt, nor properly hindered. For in those things that properly belong unto the mind, she cannot be hindered by any man. It is not fire, nor iron; nor the power of a tyrant nor the power of a slandering tongue; nor anything else that can penetrate into her. XL. If once round and solid, there is no fear that ever it will change. XLI. Why should I grieve myself; who never did willingly grieve any other! One thing rejoices one and another thing another. As for me, this is my joy, if my understanding be right and sound, as neither averse from any man, nor refusing any of those things which as a man I am subject unto; if I can look upon all things in the world meekly and kindly; accept all things and carry myself towards everything according to to true worth of the thing itself. XLII. This time that is now present, bestow thou upon thyself. They that rather hunt for fame after death, do not consider, that those men that shall be hereafter, will be even such, as these whom now they can so hardly bear with. And besides they also will be mortal men. But to consider the thing in itself, if so many with so many voices, shall make such and such a sound, or shall have such and such an opinion concerning thee, what is it to thee? XLIII. Take me and throw me where thou wilt: I am indifferent. For there also I shall have that spirit which is within me propitious; that is well pleased and fully contented both in that constant disposition, and with those particular actions, which to its own proper constitution are suitable and agreeable. XLIV. Is this then a thing of that worth, that for it my soul should suffer, and become worse than it was? as either basely dejected, or disordinately affected, or confounded within itself, or terrified? What can there be, that thou shouldest so much esteem? XLV. Nothing can happen unto thee, which is not incidental unto thee, as thou art a man. As nothing can happen either to an ox, a vine, or to a stone, which is not incidental unto them; unto every one in his own kind. If therefore nothing can happen unto anything, which is not both usual and natural; why art thou displeased? Sure the common nature of all would not bring anything upon any, that were intolerable. If therefore it be a thing external that causes thy grief, know, that it is not that properly that doth cause it, but thine own conceit and opinion concerning the thing: which thou mayest rid thyself of, when thou wilt. But if it be somewhat that is amiss in thine own disposition, that doth grieve thee, mayest thou not rectify thy moral tenets and opinions. But if it grieve thee, that thou doest not perform that which seemeth unto thee right and just, why doest not thou choose rather to perform it than to grieve? But somewhat that is stronger than thyself doth hinder thee. Let it not grieve thee then, if it be not thy fault that the thing is not performed. 'Yea but it is a thing of that nature, as that thy life is not worth the while, except it may be performed.' If it be so, upon condition that thou be kindly and lovingly disposed towards all men, thou mayest be gone. For even then, as much as at any time, art thou in a very good estate of performance, when thou doest die in charity with those, that are an obstacle unto thy performance. XLVI. Remember that thy mind is of that nature as that it becometh altogether unconquerable, when once recollected in herself, she seeks no other content than this, that she cannot be forced: yea though it so fall out, that it be even against reason itself, that it cloth bandy. How much less when by the help of reason she is able to judge of things with discretion? And therefore let thy chief fort and place of defence be, a mind free from passions. A stronger place, (whereunto to make his refuge, and so to become impregnable) and better fortified than this, hath no man. He that seeth not this is unlearned. He that seeth it, and betaketh not himself to this place of refuge, is unhappy. XLVII. Keep thyself to the first bare and naked apprehensions of things, as they present themselves unto thee, and add not unto them. It is reported unto thee, that such a one speaketh ill of thee. Well; that he speaketh ill of thee, so much is reported. But that thou art hurt thereby, is not reported: that is the addition of opinion, which thou must exclude. I see that my child is sick. That he is sick, I see, but that he is in danger of his life also, I see it not. Thus thou must use to keep thyself to the first motions and apprehensions of things, as they present themselves outwardly; and add not unto them from within thyself through mere conceit and opinion. Or rather add unto them: hut as one that understandeth the true nature of all things that happen in the world. XLVIII. Is the cucumber bitter? set it away. Brambles are in the way? avoid them. Let this suffice. Add not presently speaking unto thyself, What serve these things for in the world? For, this, one that is acquainted with the mysteries of nature, will laugh at thee for it; as a carpenter would or a shoemaker, if meeting in either of their shops with some shavings, or small remnants of their work, thou shouldest blame them for it. And yet those men, it is not for want of a place where to throw them that they keep them in their shops for a while: but the nature of the universe hath no such out-place; but herein doth consist the wonder of her art and skill, that she having once circumscribed herself within some certain bounds and limits, whatsoever is within her that seems either corrupted, or old, or unprofitable, she can change it into herself, and of these very things can make new things; so that she needeth not to seek elsewhere out of herself either for a new supply of matter and substance, or for a place where to throw out whatsoever is irrecoverably putrid and corrupt. Thus she, as for place, so for matter and art, is herself sufficient unto herself. XLIX. Not to be slack and negligent; or loose, and wanton in thy actions; nor contentious, and troublesome in thy conversation; nor to rove and wander in thy fancies and imaginations. Not basely to contract thy soul; nor boisterously to sally out with it, or furiously to launch out as it were, nor ever to want employment. L. 'They kill me, they cut my flesh; they persecute my person with curses.' What then? May not thy mind for all this continue pure, prudent, temperate, just? As a fountain of sweet and clear water, though she be cursed by some stander by, yet do her springs nevertheless still run as sweet and clear as before; yea though either dirt or dung be thrown in, yet is it no sooner thrown, than dispersed, and she cleared. She cannot be dyed or infected by it. What then must I do, that I may have within myself an overflowing fountain, and not a well? Beget thyself by continual pains and endeavours to true liberty with charity, and true simplicity and modesty. LI. He that knoweth not what the world is, knoweth not where he himself is. And he that knoweth not what the world was made for, cannot possibly know either what are the qualities, or what is the nature of the world. Now he that in either of these is to seek, for what he himself was made is ignorant also. What then dost thou think of that man, who proposeth unto himself, as a matter of great moment, the noise and applause of men, who both where they are, and what they are themselves, are altogether ignorant? Dost thou desire to be commended of that man, who thrice in one hour perchance, doth himself curse himself? Dost thou desire to please him, who pleaseth not himself? or dost thou think that he pleaseth himself, who doth use to repent himself almost of everything that he doth? LII. Not only now henceforth to have a common breath, or to hold correspondency of breath, with that air, that compasseth us about; but to have a common mind, or to hold correspondency of mind also with that rational substance, which compasseth all things. For, that also is of itself, and of its own nature (if a man can but draw it in as he should) everywhere diffused; and passeth through all things, no less than the air doth, if a man can but suck it in. LIII. Wickedness in general doth not hurt the world. Particular wickedness doth not hurt any other: only unto him it is hurtful, whosoever he be that offends, unto whom in great favour and mercy it is granted, that whensoever he himself shall but first desire it, he may be presently delivered of it. Unto my free-will my neighbour's free-will, whoever he be, (as his life, or his bode), is altogether indifferent. For though we are all made one for another, yet have our minds and understandings each of them their own proper and limited jurisdiction. For else another man's wickedness might be my evil which God would not have, that it might not be in another man's power to make me unhappy: which nothing now can do but mine own wickedness. LIV. The sun seemeth to be shed abroad. And indeed it is diffused but not effused. For that diffusion of it is a [-r~Jo-tc] or an extension. For therefore are the beams of it called [~i-~m'~] from the word [~KTEIVEO-Oa,,] to be stretched out and extended. Now what a sunbeam is, thou mayest know if thou observe the light of the sun, when through some narrow hole it pierceth into some room that is dark. For it is always in a direct line. And as by any solid body, that it meets with in the way that is not penetrable by air, it is divided and abrupted, and yet neither slides off, or falls down, but stayeth there nevertheless: such must the diffusion in the mind be; not an effusion, but an extension. What obstacles and impediments soever she meeteth within her way, she must not violently, and by way of an impetuous onset light upon them; neither must she fall down; but she must stand, and give light unto that which doth admit of it. For as for that which doth not, it is its own fault and loss, if it bereave itself of her light. LV. He that feareth death, either feareth that he shall have no sense at all, or that his senses will not be the same. Whereas, he should rather comfort himself, that either no sense at all, and so no sense of evil; or if any sense, then another life, and so no death properly. LVI. All men are made one for another: either then teach them better, or bear with them. LVII. The motion of the mind is not as the motion of a dart. For the mind when it is wary and cautelous, and by way of diligent circumspection turneth herself many ways, may then as well be said to go straight on to the object, as when it useth no such circumspection. LVIII. To pierce and penetrate into the estate of every one's understanding that thou hast to do with: as also to make the estate of thine own open, and penetrable to any other. THE NINTH BOOK I. He that is unjust, is also impious. For the nature of the universe, having made all reasonable creatures one for another, to the end that they should do one another good; more or less according to the several persons and occasions but in nowise hurt one another: it is manifest that he that doth transgress against this her will, is guilty of impiety towards the most ancient and venerable of all the deities. For the nature of the universe, is the nature the common parent of all, and therefore piously to be observed of all things that are, and that which now is, to whatsoever first was, and gave it its being, hath relation of blood and kindred. She is also called truth and is the first cause of all truths. He therefore that willingly and wittingly doth lie, is impious in that he doth receive, and so commit injustice: but he that against his will, in that he disagreeth from the nature of the universe, and in that striving with the nature of the world he doth in his particular, violate the general order of the world. For he doth no better than strive and war against it, who contrary to his own nature applieth himself to that which is contrary to truth. For nature had before furnished him with instincts and opportunities sufficient for the attainment of it; which he having hitherto neglected, is not now able to discern that which is false from that which is true. He also that pursues after pleasures, as that which is truly good and flies from pains, as that which is truly evil: is impious. For such a one must of necessity oftentimes accuse that common nature, as distributing many things both unto the evil, and unto the good, not according to the deserts of either: as unto the bad oftentimes pleasures, and the causes of pleasures; so unto the good, pains, and the occasions of pains. Again, he that feareth pains and crosses in this world, feareth some of those things which some time or other must needs happen in the world. And that we have already showed to be impious. And he that pursueth after pleasures, will not spare, to compass his desires, to do that which is unjust, and that is manifestly impious. Now those things which unto nature are equally indifferent (for she had not created both, both pain and pleasure, if both had not been unto her equally indifferent): they that will live according to nature, must in those things (as being of the same mind and disposition that she is) be as equally indifferent. Whosoever therefore in either matter of pleasure and pain; death and life; honour and dishonour, (which things nature in the administration of the world, indifferently doth make use of), is not as indifferent, it is apparent that he is impious. When I say that common nature doth indifferently make use of them, my meaning is, that they happen indifferently in the ordinary course of things, which by a necessary consequence, whether as principal or accessory, come to pass in the world, according to that first and ancient deliberation of Providence, by which she from some certain beginning, did resolve upon the creation of such a world, conceiving then in her womb as it were some certain rational generative seeds and faculties of things future, whether subjects, changes, successions; both such and such, and just so many. II. It were indeed more happy and comfortable, for a man to depart out of this world, having lived all his life long clear from all falsehood, dissimulation, voluptuousness, and pride. But if this cannot be, yet it is some comfort for a man joyfully to depart as weary, and out of love with those; rather than to desire to live, and to continue long in those wicked courses. Hath not yet experience taught thee to fly from the plague? For a far greater plague is the corruption of the mind, than any certain change and distemper of the common air can be. This is a plague of creatures, as they are living creatures; but that of men as they are men or reasonable. III. Thou must not in matter of death carry thyself scornfully, but as one that is well pleased with it, as being one of those things that nature hath appointed. For what thou dost conceive of these, of a boy to become a young man, to wax old, to grow, to ripen, to get teeth, or a beard, or grey hairs to beget, to bear, or to be delivered; or what other action soever it be, that is natural unto man according to the several seasons of his life; such a thing is it also to be dissolved. It is therefore the part of a wise man, in matter of death, not in any wise to carry himself either violently, or proudly but patiently to wait for it, as one of nature's operations: that with the same mind as now thou dost expect when that which yet is but an embryo in thy wife's belly shall come forth, thou mayst expect also when thy soul shall fall off from that outward coat or skin: wherein as a child in the belly it lieth involved and shut up. But thou desirest a more popular, and though not so direct and philosophical, yet a very powerful and penetrative recipe against the fear of death, nothing can make they more willing to part with thy life, than if thou shalt consider, both what the subjects themselves are that thou shalt part with, and what manner of disposition thou shalt no more have to do with. True it is, that, offended with them thou must not be by no means, but take care of them, and meekly bear with them However, this thou mayst remember, that whensoever it happens that thou depart, it shall not be from men that held the same opinions that thou dost. For that indeed, (if it were so) is the only thing that might make thee averse from death, and willing to continue here, if it were thy hap to live with men that had obtained the same belief that thou hast. But now, what a toil it is for thee to live with men of different opinions, thou seest: so that thou hast rather occasion to say, Hasten, I thee pray, O Death; lest I also in time forget myself. IV. He that sinneth, sinneth unto himself. He that is unjust, hurts himself, in that he makes himself worse than he was before. Not he only that committeth, but he also that omitteth something, is oftentimes unjust. V. If my present apprehension of the object be right, and my present action charitable, and this, towards whatsoever doth proceed from God, be my present disposition, to be well pleased with it, it sufficeth. VI. To wipe away fancy, to use deliberation, to quench concupiscence, to keep the mind free to herself. VII. Of all unreasonable creatures, there is but one unreasonable soul; and of all that are reasonable, but one reasonable soul, divided betwixt them all. As of all earthly things there is but one earth, and but one light that we see by; and but one air that we breathe in, as many as either breathe or see. Now whatsoever partakes of some common thing, naturally affects and inclines unto that whereof it is part, being of one kind and nature with it. Whatsoever is earthly, presseth downwards to the common earth. Whatsoever is liquid, would flow together. And whatsoever is airy, would be together likewise. So that without some obstacle, and some kind of violence, they cannot well be kept asunder. Whatsoever is fiery, doth not only by reason of the elementary fire tend upwards; but here also is so ready to join, and to burn together, that whatsoever doth want sufficient moisture to make resistance, is easily set on fire. Whatsoever therefore is partaker of that reasonable common nature, naturally doth as much and more long after his own kind. For by how much in its own nature it excels all other things, by so much more is it desirous to be joined and united unto that, which is of its own nature. As for unreasonable creatures then, they had not long been, but presently begun among them swarms, and flocks, and broods of young ones, and a kind of mutual love and affection. For though but unreasonable, yet a kind of soul these had, and therefore was that natural desire of union more strong and intense in them, as in creatures of a more excellent nature, than either in plants, or stones, or trees. But among reasonable creatures, begun commonwealths, friendships, families, public meetings, and even in their wars, conventions, and truces. Now among them that were yet of a more excellent nature, as the stars and planets, though by their nature far distant one from another, yet even among them began some mutual correspondency and unity. So proper is it to excellency in a high degree to affect unity, as that even in things so far distant, it could operate unto a mutual sympathy. But now behold, what is now come to pass. Those creatures that are reasonable, are now the only creatures that have forgotten their natural affection and inclination of one towards another. Among them alone of all other things that are of one kind, there is not to be found a general disposition to flow together. But though they fly from nature, yet are they stopt in their course, and apprehended. Do they what they can, nature doth prevail. And so shalt thou confess, if thou dost observe it. For sooner mayst thou find a thing earthly, where no earthly thing is, than find a man that naturally can live by himself alone. VIII. Man, God, the world, every one in their kind, bear some fruits. All things have their proper time to bear. Though by custom, the word itself is in a manner become proper unto the vine, and the like, yet is it so nevertheless, as we have said. As for reason, that beareth both common fruit for the use of others; and peculiar, which itself doth enjoy. Reason is of a diffusive nature, what itself is in itself, it begets in others, and so doth multiply. IX. Either teach them better if it be in thy power; or if it be not, remember that for this use, to bear with them patiently, was mildness and goodness granted unto thee. The Gods themselves are good unto such; yea and in some things, (as in matter of health, of wealth, of honour,) are content often to further their endeavours: so good and gracious are they. And mightest thou not be so too? or, tell me, what doth hinder thee? X. Labour not as one to whom it is appointed to be wretched, nor as one that either would be pitied, or admired; but let this be thine only care and desire; so always and in all things to prosecute or to forbear, as the law of charity, or mutual society doth require. XI. This day I did come out of all my trouble. Nay I have cast out all my trouble; it should rather be for that which troubled thee, whatsoever it was, was not without anywhere that thou shouldest come out of it, but within in thine own opinions, from whence it must be cast out, before thou canst truly and constantly be at ease. XII. All those things, for matter of experience are usual and ordinary; for their continuance but for a day; and for their matter, most base and filthy. As they were in the days of those whom we have buried, so are they now also, and no otherwise. XIII. The things themselves that affect us, they stand without doors, neither knowing anything themselves nor able to utter anything unto others concerning themselves. What then is it, that passeth verdict on them? The understanding. XIV. As virtue and wickedness consist not in passion, but in action; so neither doth the true good or evil of a reasonable charitable man consist in passion, but in operation and action. XV. To the stone that is cast up, when it comes down it is no hurt unto it; as neither benefit, when it doth ascend. XVI. Sift their minds and understandings, and behold what men they be, whom thou dost stand in fear of what they shall judge of thee, what they themselves judge of themselves. XVII. All things that are in the world, are always in the estate of alteration. Thou also art in a perpetual change, yea and under corruption too, in some part: and so is the whole world. XVIII. it is not thine, but another man's sin. Why should it trouble thee? Let him look to it, whose sin it is. XIX. Of an operation and of a purpose there is an ending, or of an action and of a purpose we say commonly, that it is at an end: from opinion also there is an absolute cessation, which is as it were the death of it. In all this there is no hurt. Apply this now to a man's age, as first, a child; then a youth, then a young man, then an old man; every change from one age to another is a kind of death And all this while here no matter of grief yet. Pass now unto that life first, that which thou livedst under thy grandfather, then under thy mother, then under thy father. And thus when through the whole course of thy life hitherto thou hast found and observed many alterations, many changes, many kinds of endings and cessations, put this question to thyself What matter of grief or sorrow dost thou find in any of these? Or what doest thou suffer through any of these? If in none of these, then neither in the ending and consummation of thy whole life, which is also but a cessation and change. XX. As occasion shall require, either to thine own understanding, or to that of the universe, or to his, whom thou hast now to do with, let thy refuge be with all speed. To thine own, that it resolve upon nothing against justice. To that of the universe, that thou mayest remember, part of whom thou art. Of his, that thou mayest consider whether in the estate of ignorance, or of knowledge. And then also must thou call to mind, that he is thy kinsman. XXI. As thou thyself, whoever thou art, were made for the perfection and consummation, being a member of it, of a common society; so must every action of thine tend to the perfection and consummation of a life that is truly sociable. What action soever of thine therefore that either immediately or afar off, hath not reference to the common good, that is an exorbitant and disorderly action; yea it is seditious; as one among the people who from such and such a consent and unity, should factiously divide and separate himself. XXII. Children's anger, mere babels; wretched souls bearing up dead bodies, that they may not have their fall so soon: even as it is in that common dirge song. XXIII. Go to the quality of the cause from which the effect doth proceed. Behold it by itself bare and naked, separated from all that is material. Then consider the utmost bounds of time that that cause, thus and thus qualified, can subsist and abide. XXIV. Infinite are the troubles and miseries, that thou hast already been put to, by reason of this only, because that for all happiness it did not suffice thee, or, that thou didst not account it sufficient happiness, that thy understanding did operate according to its natural constitution. XXV. When any shall either impeach thee with false accusations, or hatefully reproach thee, or shall use any such carriage towards thee, get thee presently to their minds and understandings, and look in them, and behold what manner of men they be. Thou shalt see, that there is no such occasion why it should trouble thee, what such as they are think of thee. Yet must thou love them still, for by nature they are thy friends. And the Gods themselves, in those things that they seek from them as matters of great moment, are well content, all manner of ways, as by dreams and oracles, to help them as well as others. XXVI. Up and down, from one age to another, go the ordinary things of the world; being still the same. And either of everything in particular before it come to pass, the mind of the universe doth consider with itself and deliberate: and if so, then submit for shame unto the determination of such an excellent understanding: or once for all it did resolve upon all things in general; and since that whatsoever happens, happens by a necessary consequence, and all things indivisibly in a manner and inseparably hold one of another. In sum, either there is a God, and then all is well; or if all things go by chance and fortune, yet mayest thou use thine own providence in those things that concern thee properly; and then art thou well. XXVII. Within a while the earth shall cover us all, and then she herself shall have her change. And then the course will be, from one period of eternity unto another, and so a perpetual eternity. Now can any man that shall consider with himself in his mind the several rollings or successions of so many changes and alterations, and the swiftness of all these rulings; can he otherwise but contemn in his heart and despise all worldly things? The cause of the universe is as it were a strong torrent, it carrieth all away. XXVIII. And these your professed politicians, the only true practical philosophers of the world, (as they think of themselves) so full of affected gravity, or such professed lovers of virtue and honesty, what wretches be they in very deed; how vile and contemptible in themselves? O man! what ado doest thou keep? Do what thy nature doth now require. Resolve upon it, if thou mayest: and take no thought, whether anybody shall know it or no. Yea, but sayest thou, I must not expect a Plato's commonwealth. If they profit though never so little, I must be content; and think much even of that little progress. Doth then any of them forsake their former false opinions that I should think they profit? For without a change of opinions, alas! what is all that ostentation, but mere wretchedness of slavish minds, that groan privately, and yet would make a show of obedience to reason, and truth? Go too now and tell me of Alexander and Philippus, and Demetrius Phalereus. Whether they understood what the common nature requireth, and could rule themselves or no, they know best themselves. But if they kept a life, and swaggered; I (God be thanked) am not bound to imitate them. The effect of true philosophy is, unaffected simplicity and modesty. Persuade me not to ostentation and vainglory. XXIX. From some high place as it were to look down, and to behold here flocks, and there sacrifices, without number; and all kind of navigation; some in a rough and stormy sea, and some in a calm: the general differences, or different estates of things, some, that are now first upon being; the several and mutual relations of those things that are together; and some other things that are at their last. Their lives also, who were long ago, and theirs who shall be hereafter, and the present estate and life of those many nations of barbarians that are now in the world, thou must likewise consider in thy mind. And how many there be, who never so much as heard of thy name, how many that will soon forget it; how many who but even now did commend thee, within a very little while perchance will speak ill of thee. So that neither fame, nor honour, nor anything else that this world doth afford, is worth the while. The sum then of all; whatsoever doth happen unto thee, whereof God is the cause, to accept it contentedly: whatsoever thou doest, whereof thou thyself art the cause, to do it justly: which will be, if both in thy resolution and in thy action thou have no further end, than to do good unto others, as being that, which by thy natural constitution, as a man, thou art bound unto. XXX. Many of those things that trouble and straiten thee, it is in thy power to cut off, as wholly depending from mere conceit and opinion; and then thou shalt have room enough. XXXI. To comprehend the whole world together in thy mind, and the whole course of this present age to represent it unto thyself, and to fix thy thoughts upon the sudden change of every particular object. How short the time is from the generation of anything, unto the dissolution of the same; but how immense and infinite both that which was before the generation, and that which after the generation of it shall be. All things that thou seest, will soon be perished, and they that see their corruptions, will soon vanish away themselves. He that dieth a hundred years old, and he that dieth young, shall come all to one. XXXII. What are their minds and understandings; and what the things that they apply themselves unto: what do they love, and what do they hate for? Fancy to thyself the estate of their souls openly to be seen. When they think they hurt them shrewdly, whom they speak ill of; and when they think they do them a very good turn, whom they commend and extol: O how full are they then of conceit, and opinion! XXXIII. Loss and corruption, is in very deed nothing else but change and alteration; and that is it, which the nature of the universe doth most delight in, by which, and according to which, whatsoever is done, is well done. For that was the estate of worldly things from the beginning, and so shall it ever be. Or wouldest thou rather say, that all things in the world have gone ill from the beginning for so many ages, and shall ever go ill? And then among so many deities, could no divine power be found all this while, that could rectify the things of the world? Or is the world, to incessant woes and miseries, for ever condemned? XXXIV. How base and putrid, every common matter is! Water, dust, and from the mixture of these bones, and all that loathsome stuff that our bodies do consist of: so subject to be infected, and corrupted. And again those other things that are so much prized and admired, as marble stones, what are they, but as it were the kernels of the earth? gold and silver, what are they, but as the more gross faeces of the earth? Thy most royal apparel, for matter, it is but as it were the hair of a silly sheep, and for colour, the very blood of a shell-fish; of this nature are all other things. Thy life itself, is some such thing too; a mere exhalation of blood: and it also, apt to be changed into some other common thing. XXXV. Will this querulousness, this murmuring, this complaining and dissembling never be at an end? What then is it, that troubleth thee? Doth any new thing happen unto thee? What doest thou so wonder at? At the cause, or the matter? Behold either by itself, is either of that weight and moment indeed? And besides these, there is not anything. But thy duty towards the Gods also, it is time thou shouldst acquit thyself of it with more goodness and simplicity. XXXVI. It is all one to see these things for a hundred of years together or but for three years. XXXVII. If he have sinned, his is the harm, not mine. But perchance he hath not. XXXVIII. Either all things by the providence of reason happen unto every particular, as a part of one general body; and then it is against reason that a part should complain of anything that happens for the good of the whole; or if, according to Epicurus, atoms be the cause of all things and that life be nothing else but an accidentary confusion of things, and death nothing else, but a mere dispersion and so of all other things: what doest thou trouble thyself for? XXXIX. Sayest thou unto that rational part, Thou art dead; corruption hath taken hold on thee? Doth it then also void excrements? Doth it like either oxen, or sheep, graze or feed; that it also should be mortal, as well as the body? XL. Either the Gods can do nothing for us at all, or they can still and allay all the distractions and distempers of thy mind. If they can do nothing, why doest thou pray? If they can, why wouldst not thou rather pray, that they will grant unto thee, that thou mayst neither fear, nor lust after any of those worldly things which cause these distractions and distempers of it? Why not rather, that thou mayst not at either their absence or presence, be grieved and discontented: than either that thou mayst obtain them, or that thou mayst avoid them? For certainly it must needs be, that if the Gods can help us in anything, they may in this kind also. But thou wilt say perchance, 'In those things the Gods have given me my liberty: and it is in mine own power to do what I will.' But if thou mayst use this liberty, rather to set thy mind at true liberty, than wilfully with baseness and servility of mind to affect those things, which either to compass or to avoid is not in thy power, wert not thou better? And as for the Gods, who hath told thee, that they may not help us up even in those things that they have put in our own power? whether it be so or no, thou shalt soon perceive, if thou wilt but try thyself and pray. One prayeth that he may compass his desire, to lie with such or such a one, pray thou that thou mayst not lust to lie with her. Another how he may be rid of such a one; pray thou that thou mayst so patiently bear with him, as that thou have no such need to be rid of him. Another, that he may not lose his child. Pray thou that thou mayst not fear to lose him. To this end and purpose, let all thy prayer be, and see what will be the event. XLI. 'In my sickness' (saith Epicurus of himself:) 'my discourses were not concerning the nature of my disease, neither was that, to them that came to visit me, the subject of my talk; but in the consideration and contemplation of that, which was of especial weight and moment, was all my time bestowed and spent, and among others in this very thing, how my mind, by a natural and unavoidable sympathy partaking in some sort with the present indisposition of my body, might nevertheless keep herself free from trouble, and in present possession of her own proper happiness. Neither did I leave the ordering of my body to the physicians altogether to do with me what they would, as though I expected any great matter from them, or as though I thought it a matter of such great consequence, by their means to recover my health: for my present estate, methought, liked me very well, and gave me good content.' Whether therefore in sickness (if thou chance to sicken) or in what other kind of extremity soever, endeavour thou also to be in thy mind so affected, as he doth report of himself: not to depart from thy philosophy for anything that can befall thee, nor to give ear to the discourses of silly people, and mere naturalists. XLII. It is common to all trades and professions to mind and intend that only, which now they are about, and the instrument whereby they work. XLIII. When at any time thou art offended with any one's impudency, put presently this question to thyself: 'What? Is it then possible, that there should not be any impudent men in the world! Certainly it is not possible.' Desire not then that which is impossible. For this one, (thou must think) whosoever he be, is one of those impudent ones, that the world cannot be without. So of the subtile and crafty, so of the perfidious, so of every one that offendeth, must thou ever be ready to reason with thyself. For whilst in general thou dost thus reason with thyself, that the kind of them must needs be in the world, thou wilt be the better able to use meekness towards every particular. This also thou shalt find of very good use, upon every such occasion, presently to consider with thyself, what proper virtue nature hath furnished man with, against such a vice, or to encounter with a disposition vicious in this kind. As for example, against the unthankful, it hath given goodness and meekness, as an antidote, and so against another vicious in another kind some other peculiar faculty. And generally, is it not in thy power to instruct him better, that is in an error? For whosoever sinneth, doth in that decline from his purposed end, and is certainly deceived, And again, what art thou the worse for his sin? For thou shalt not find that any one of these, against whom thou art incensed, hath in very deed done anything whereby thy mind (the only true subject of thy hurt and evil) can be made worse than it was. And what a matter of either grief or wonder is this, if he that is unlearned, do the deeds of one that is unlearned? Should not thou rather blame thyself, who, when upon very good grounds of reason, thou mightst have thought it very probable, that such a thing would by such a one be committed, didst not only not foresee it, but moreover dost wonder at it, that such a thing should be. But then especially, when thou dost find fault with either an unthankful, or a false man, must thou reflect upon thyself. For without all question, thou thyself art much in fault, if either of one that were of such a disposition, thou didst expect that he should be true unto thee: or when unto any thou didst a good turn, thou didst not there bound thy thoughts, as one that had obtained his end; nor didst not think that from the action itself thou hadst received a full reward of the good that thou hadst done. For what wouldst thou have more? Unto him that is a man, thou hast done a good turn: doth not that suffice thee? What thy nature required, that hast thou done. Must thou be rewarded for it? As if either the eye for that it seeth, or the feet that they go, should require satisfaction. For as these being by nature appointed for such an use, can challenge no more, than that they may work according to their natural constitution: so man being born to do good unto others whensoever he doth a real good unto any by helping them out of error; or though but in middle things, as in matter of wealth, life, preferment, and the like, doth help to further their desires he doth that for which he was made, and therefore can require no more. THE TENTH BOOK I. O my soul, the time I trust will be, when thou shalt be good, simple, single, more open and visible, than that body by which it is enclosed. Thou wilt one day be sensible of their happiness, whose end is love, and their affections dead to all worldly things. Thou shalt one day be full, and in want of no external thing: not seeking pleasure from anything, either living or insensible, that this world can afford; neither wanting time for the continuation of thy pleasure, nor place and opportunity, nor the favour either of the weather or of men. When thou shalt have content in thy present estate, and all things present shall add to thy content: when thou shalt persuade thyself, that thou hast all things; all for thy good, and all by the providence of the Gods: and of things future also shalt be as confident, that all will do well, as tending to the maintenance and preservation in some sort, of his perfect welfare and happiness, who is perfection of life, of goodness, and beauty; who begets all things, and containeth all things in himself, and in himself doth recollect all things from all places that are dissolved, that of them he may beget others again like unto them. Such one day shall be thy disposition, that thou shalt be able, both in regard of the Gods, and in regard of men, so to fit and order thy conversation, as neither to complain of them at any time, for anything that they do; nor to do anything thyself, for which thou mayest justly be condemned. II. As one who is altogether governed by nature, let it be thy care to observe what it is that thy nature in general doth require. That done, if thou find not that thy nature, as thou art a living sensible creature, will be the worse for it, thou mayest proceed. Next then thou must examine, what thy nature as thou art a living sensible creature, doth require. And that, whatsoever it be, thou mayest admit of and do it, if thy nature as thou art a reasonable living creature, will not be the worse for it. Now whatsoever is reasonable, is also sociable, Keep thyself to these rules, and trouble not thyself about idle things. III. Whatsoever doth happen unto thee, thou art naturally by thy natural constitution either able, or not able to bear. If thou beest able, be not offended, but bear it according to thy natural constitution, or as nature hath enabled thee. If thou beest not able, be not offended. For it will soon make an end of thee, and itself, (whatsoever it be) at the same time end with thee. But remember, that whatsoever by the strength of opinion, grounded upon a certain apprehension of both true profit and duty, thou canst conceive tolerable; that thou art able to bear that by thy natural constitution. IV. Him that offends, to teach with love and meek ness, and to show him his error. But if thou canst not, then to blame thyself; or rather not thyself neither, if thy will and endeavours have not been wanting. V. Whatsoever it be that happens unto thee, it is that which from all time was appointed unto thee. For by the same coherence of causes, by which thy substance from all eternity was appointed to be, was also whatsoever should happen unto it, destinated and appointed. VI. Either with Epicurus, we must fondly imagine the atoms to be the cause of all things, or we must needs grant a nature. Let this then be thy first ground, that thou art part of that universe, which is governed by nature. Then secondly, that to those parts that are of the same kind and nature as thou art, thou hast relation of kindred. For of these, if I shall always be mindful, first as I am a part, I shall never be displeased with anything, that falls to my particular share of the common chances of the world. For nothing that is behoveful unto the whole, can be truly hurtful to that which is part of it. For this being the common privilege of all natures, that they contain nothing in themselves that is hurtful unto them; it cannot be that the nature of the universe (whose privilege beyond other particular natures, is, that she cannot against her will by any higher external cause be constrained,) should beget anything and cherish it in her bosom that should tend to her own hurt and prejudice. As then I bear in mind that I am a part of such an universe, I shall not be displeased with anything that happens. And as I have relation of kindred to those parts that are of the same kind and nature that I am, so I shall be careful to do nothing that is prejudicial to the community, but in all my deliberations shall they that are of my kind ever be; and the common good, that, which all my intentions and resolutions shall drive unto, as that which is contrary unto it, I shall by all means endeavour to prevent and avoid. These things once so fixed and concluded, as thou wouldst think him a happy citizen, whose constant study and practice were for the good and benefit of his fellow citizens, and the carriage of the city such towards him, that he were well pleased with it; so must it needs be with thee, that thou shalt live a happy life. VII. All parts of the world, (all things I mean that are contained within the whole world), must of necessity at some time or other come to corruption. Alteration I should say, to speak truly and properly; but that I may be the better understood, I am content at this time to use that more common word. Now say I, if so be that this be both hurtful unto them, and yet unavoidable, would not, thinkest thou, the whole itself be in a sweet case, all the parts of it being subject to alteration, yea and by their making itself fitted for corruption, as consisting of things different and contrary? And did nature then either of herself thus project and purpose the affliction and misery of her parts, and therefore of purpose so made them, not only that haply they might, but of necessity that they should fall into evil; or did not she know what she did, when she made them? For either of these two to say, is equally absurd. But to let pass nature in general, and to reason of things particular according to their own particular natures; how absurd and ridiculous is it, first to say that all parts of the whole are, by their proper natural constitution, subject to alteration; and then when any such thing doth happen, as when one doth fall sick and dieth, to take on and wonder as though some strange thing had happened? Though this besides might move not so grievously to take on when any such thing doth happen, that whatsoever is dissolved, it is dissolved into those things, whereof it was compounded. For every dissolution is either a mere dispersion, of the elements into those elements again whereof everything did consist, or a change, of that which is more solid into earth; and of that which is pure and subtile or spiritual, into air. So that by this means nothing is lost, but all resumed again into those rational generative seeds of the universe; and this universe, either after a certain period of time to lie consumed by fire, or by continual changes to be renewed, and so for ever to endure. Now that solid and spiritual that we speak of, thou must not conceive it to be that very same, which at first was, when thou wert born. For alas! all this that now thou art in either kind, either for matter of substance, or of life, hath but two or three days ago partly from meats eaten, and partly from air breathed in, received all its influx, being the same then in no other respect, than a running river, maintained by the perpetual influx and new supply of waters, is the same. That therefore which thou hast since received, not that which came from thy mother, is that which comes to change and corruption. But suppose that that for the general substance, and more solid part of it, should still cleave unto thee never so close, yet what is that to the proper qualities and affections of it, by which persons are distinguished, which certainly are quite different? VIII. Now that thou hast taken these names upon thee of good, modest, true; of emfrwn, sumfrwn, uperfrwn; take heed lest at any times by doing anything that is contrary, thou be but improperly so called, and lose thy right to these appellations. Or if thou do, return unto them again with all possible speed. And remember, that the word emfrwn notes unto thee an intent and intelligent consideration of every object that presents itself unto thee, without distraction. And the word emfrwn a ready and contented acceptation of whatsoever by the appointment of the common nature, happens unto thee. And the word sumfrwn, a super-extension, or a transcendent, and outreaching disposition of thy mind, whereby it passeth by all bodily pains and pleasures, honour and credit, death and whatsoever is of the same nature, as matters of absolute indifferency, and in no wise to be stood upon by a wise man. These then if inviolably thou shalt observe, and shalt not be ambitious to be so called by others, both thou thyself shalt become a new man, and thou shalt begin a new life. For to continue such as hitherto thou hast been, to undergo those distractions and distempers as thou must needs for such a life as hitherto thou hast lived, is the part of one that is very foolish, and is overfond of his life. Whom a man might compare to one of those half-eaten wretches, matched in the amphitheatre with wild beasts; who as full as they are all the body over with wounds and blood, desire for a great favour, that they may be reserved till the next day, then also, and in the same estate to be exposed to the same nails and teeth as before. Away therefore, ship thyself; and from the troubles and distractions of thy former life convey thyself as it were unto these few names; and if thou canst abide in them, or be constant in the practice and possession of them, continue there as glad and joyful as one that were translated unto some such place of bliss and happiness as that which by Hesiod and Plato is called the Islands of the Blessed, by others called the Elysian Fields. And whensoever thou findest thyself; that thou art in danger of a relapse, and that thou art not able to master and overcome those difficulties and temptations that present themselves in thy present station: get thee into any private corner, where thou mayst be better able. Or if that will not serve forsake even thy life rather. But so that it be not in passion but in a plain voluntary modest way: this being the only commendable action of thy whole life that thus thou art departed, or this having been the main work and business of thy whole life, that thou mightest thus depart. Now for the better remembrance of those names that we have spoken of, thou shalt find it a very good help, to remember the Gods as often as may be: and that, the thing which they require at our hands of as many of us, as are by nature reasonable creation is not that with fair words, and outward show of piety and devotion we should flatter them, but that we should become like unto them: and that as all other natural creatures, the fig tree for example; the dog the bee: both do, all of them, and apply themselves unto that which by their natural constitution, is proper unto them; so man likewise should do that, which by his nature, as he is a man, belongs unto him. IX. Toys and fooleries at home, wars abroad: sometimes terror, sometimes torpor, or stupid sloth: this is thy daily slavery. By little and little, if thou doest not better look to it, those sacred dogmata will be blotted out of thy mind. How many things be there, which when as a mere naturalist, thou hast barely considered of according to their nature, thou doest let pass without any further use? Whereas thou shouldst in all things so join action and contemplation, that thou mightest both at the same time attend all present occasions, to perform everything duly and carefully and yet so intend the contemplative part too, that no part of that delight and pleasure, which the contemplative knowledge of everything according to its true nature doth of itself afford, might be lost. Or, that the true and contemnplative knowledge of everything according to its own nature, might of itself, (action being subject to many lets and impediments) afford unto thee sufficient pleasure and happiness. Not apparent indeed, but not concealed. And when shalt thou attain to the happiness of true simplicity, and unaffected gravity? When shalt thou rejoice in the certain knowledge of every particular object according to its true nature: as what the matter and substance of it is; what use it is for in the world: how long it can subsist: what things it doth consist of: who they be that are capable of it, and who they that can give it, and take it away? X. As the spider, when it hath caught the fly that it hunted after, is not little proud, nor meanly conceited of herself: as he likewise that hath caught an hare, or hath taken a fish with his net: as another for the taking of a boar, and another of a bear: so may they be proud, and applaud themselves for their valiant acts against the Sarmatai, or northern nations lately defeated. For these also, these famous soldiers and warlike men, if thou dost look into their minds and opinions, what do they for the most part but hunt after prey? XI. To find out, and set to thyself some certain way and method of contemplation, whereby thou mayest clearly discern and represent unto thyself, the mutual change of all things, the one into the other. Bear it in thy mind evermore, and see that thou be throughly well exercised in this particular. For there is not anything more effectual to beget true magnanimity. XII. He hath got loose from the bonds of his body, and perceiving that within a very little while he must of necessity bid the world farewell, and leave all these things behind him, he wholly applied himself, as to righteousness in all his actions, so to the common nature in all things that should happen unto him. And contenting himself with these two things, to do all things justly, and whatsoever God doth send to like well of it: what others shall either say or think of him, or shall do against him, he doth not so much as trouble his thoughts with it. To go on straight, whither right and reason directed him, and by so doing to follow God, was the only thing that he did mind, that, his only business and occupation. XIII. What use is there of suspicion at all? or, why should thoughts of mistrust, and suspicion concerning that which is future, trouble thy mind at all? What now is to be done, if thou mayest search and inquiry into that, what needs thou care for more? And if thou art well able to perceive it alone, let no man divert thee from it. But if alone thou doest not so well perceive it, suspend thine action, and take advice from the best. And if there be anything else that doth hinder thee, go on with prudence and discretion, according to the present occasion and opportunity, still proposing that unto thyself, which thou doest conceive most right and just. For to hit that aright, and to speed in the prosecution of it, must needs be happiness, since it is that only which we can truly and properly be said to miss of, or miscarry in. XIV. What is that that is slow, and yet quick? merry, and yet grave? He that in all things doth follow reason for his guide. XV. In the morning as soon as thou art awaked, when thy judgment, before either thy affections, or external objects have wrought upon it, is yet most free and impartial: put this question to thyself, whether if that which is right and just be done, the doing of it by thyself, or by others when thou art not able thyself; be a thing material or no. For sure it is not. And as for these that keep such a life, and stand so much upon the praises, or dispraises of other men, hast thou forgotten what manner of men they be? that such and such upon their beds, and such at their board: what their ordinary actions are: what they pursue after, and what they fly from: what thefts and rapines they commit, if not with their hands and feet, yet with that more precious part of theirs, their minds: which (would it but admit of them) might enjoy faith, modesty, truth, justice, a good spirit. XVI. Give what thou wilt, and take away what thou wilt, saith he that is well taught and truly modest, to Him that gives, and takes away. And it is not out of a stout and peremptory resolution, that he saith it, but in mere love, and humble submission. XVII. So live as indifferent to the world and all worldly objects, as one who liveth by himself alone upon some desert hill. For whether here, or there, if the whole world be but as one town, it matters not much for the place. Let them behold and see a man, that is a man indeed, living according to the true nature of man. If they cannot bear with me, let them kill me. For better were it to die, than so to live as they would have thee. XVIII. Make it not any longer a matter of dispute or discourse, what are the signs and proprieties of a good man, but really and actually to be such. XIX. Ever to represent unto thyself; and to set before thee, both the general age and time of the world, and the whole substance of it. And how all things particular in respect of these are for their substance, as one of the least seeds that is: and for their duration, as the turning of the pestle in the mortar once about. Then to fix thy mind upon every particular object of the world, and to conceive it, (as it is indeed,) as already being in the state of dissolution, and of change; tending to some kind of either putrefaction or dispersion; or whatsoever else it is, that is the death as it were of everything in his own kind. XX. Consider them through all actions and occupations, of their lives: as when they eat, and when they sleep: when they are in the act of necessary exoneration, and when in the act of lust. Again, when they either are in their greatest exultation; and in the middle of all their pomp and glory; or being angry and displeased, in great state and majesty, as from an higher place, they chide and rebuke. How base and slavish, but a little while ago, they were fain to be, that they might come to this; and within a very little while what will be their estate, when death hath once seized upon them. XXI. That is best for every one, that the common nature of all doth send unto every one, and then is it best, when she doth send it. XXII. The earth, saith the poet, doth often long after the rain. So is the glorious sky often as desirous to fall upon the earth, which argues a mutual kind of love between them. And so (say I) doth the world bear a certain affection of love to whatsoever shall come to pass With thine affections shall mine concur, O world. The same (and no other) shall the object of my longing be which is of thine. Now that the world doth love it is true indeed so is it as commonly said, and acknowledged ledged, when, according to the Greek phrase, imitated by the Latins, of things that used to be, we say commonly, that they love to be. XXIII. Either thou dost Continue in this kind of life and that is it, which so long thou hast been used unto and therefore tolerable: or thou doest retire, or leave the world, and that of thine own accord, and then thou hast thy mind: or thy life is cut off; and then mayst thou rejoice that thou hast ended thy charge. One of these must needs be. Be therefore of good comfort. XXIV Let it always appear and be manifest unto thee that solitariness, and desert places, by many philosophers so much esteemed of and affected, are of themselves but thus and thus; and that all things are them to them that live in towns, and converse with others as they are the same nature everywhere to be seen and observed: to them that have retired themselves to the top of mountains, and to desert havens, or what other desert and inhabited places soever. For anywhere it thou wilt mayest thou quickly find and apply that to thyself; which Plato saith of his philosopher, in a place: as private and retired, saith he, as if he were shut up and enclosed about in some shepherd's lodge, on the top of a hill. There by thyself to put these questions to thyself or to enter in these considerations: What is my chief and principal part, which hath power over the rest? What is now the present estate of it, as I use it; and what is it, that I employ it about? Is it now void of reason ir no? Is it free, and separated; or so affixed, so congealed and grown together as it were with the flesh, that it is swayed by the motions and inclinations of it? XXV. He that runs away from his master is a fugitive. But the law is every man's master. He therefore that forsakes the law, is a fugitive. So is he, whosoever he be, that is either sorry, angry, or afraid, or for anything that either hath been, is, or shall be by his appointment, who is the Lord and Governor of the universe. For he truly and properly is Nomoz, or the law, as the only nemwn (sp.), or distributor and dispenser of all things that happen unto any one in his lifetime--Whatsoever then is either sorry, angry, or afraid, is a fugitive. XXVI. From man is the seed, that once cast into the womb man hath no more to do with it. Another cause succeedeth, and undertakes the work, and in time brings a child (that wonderful effect from such a beginning!) to perfection. Again, man lets food down through his throat; and that once down, he hath no more to do with it. Another cause succeedeth and distributeth this food into the senses, and the affections: into life, and into strength; and doth with it those other many and marvellous things, that belong unto man. These things therefore that are so secretly and invisibly wrought and brought to pass, thou must use to behold and contemplate; and not the things themselves only, but the power also by which they are effected; that thou mayst behold it, though not with the eyes of the body, yet as plainly and visibly as thou canst see and discern the outward efficient cause of the depression and elevation of anything. XXVII. Ever to mind and consider with thyself; how all things that now are, have been heretofore much after the same sort, and after the same fashion that now they are: and so to think of those things which shall be hereafter also. Moreover, whole dramata, and uniform scenes, or scenes that comprehend the lives and actions of men of one calling and profession, as many as either in thine own experience thou hast known, or by reading of ancient histories; (as the whole court of Adrianus, the whole court of Antoninus Pius, the whole court of Philippus, that of Alexander, that of Croesus): to set them all before thine eyes. For thou shalt find that they are all but after one sort and fashion: only that the actors were others. XXVIII. As a pig that cries and flings when his throat is cut, fancy to thyself every one to be, that grieves for any worldly thing and takes on. Such a one is he also, who upon his bed alone, doth bewail the miseries of this our mortal life. And remember this, that Unto reasonable creatures only it is granted that they may willingly and freely submit unto Providence: but absolutely to submit, is a necessity imposed upon all creatures equally. XXIX. Whatsoever it is that thou goest about, consider of it by thyself, and ask thyself, What? because I shall do this no more when I am dead, should therefore death seem grievous unto me? XXX. When thou art offended with any man's transgression, presently reflect upon thyself; and consider what thou thyself art guilty of in the same kind. As that thou also perchance dost think it a happiness either to be rich, or to live in pleasure, or to be praised and commended, and so of the rest in particular. For this if thou shalt call to mind, thou shalt soon forget thine anger; especially when at the same time this also shall concur in thy thoughts, that he was constrained by his error and ignorance so to do: for how can he choose as long as he is of that opinion? Do thou therefore if thou canst, take away that from him, that forceth him to do as he doth. XXXI. When thou seest Satyro, think of Socraticus and Eutyches, or Hymen, and when Euphrates, think of Eutychio, and Sylvanus, when Alciphron, of Tropaeophorus, when Xenophon, of Crito, or Severus. And when thou doest look upon thyself, fancy unto thyself some one or other of the Caesars; and so for every one, some one or other that hath been for estate and profession answerable unto him. Then let this come to thy mind at the same time; and where now are they all? Nowhere or anywhere? For so shalt thou at all time be able to perceive how all worldly things are but as the smoke, that vanisheth away: or, indeed, mere nothing. Especially when thou shalt call to mind this also, that whatsoever is once changed, shall never be again as long as the world endureth. And thou then, how long shalt thou endure? And why doth it not suffice thee, if virtuously, and as becometh thee, thou mayest pass that portion of time, how little soever it be, that is allotted unto thee? XXXII. What a subject, and what a course of life is it, that thou doest so much desire to be rid of. For all these things, what are they, but fit objects for an understanding, that beholdeth everything according to its true nature, to exercise itself upon? Be patient, therefore, until that (as a strong stomach that turns all things into his own nature; and as a great fire that turneth in flame and light, whatsoever thou doest cast into it) thou have made these things also familiar, and as it were natural unto thee. XXXIII. Let it not be in any man's power, to say truly of thee, that thou art not truly simple, or sincere and open, or not good. Let him be deceived whosoever he be that shall have any such opinion of thee. For all this doth depend of thee. For who is it that should hinder thee from being either truly simple or good? Do thou only resolve rather not to live, than not to be such. For indeed neither doth it stand with reason that he should live that is not such. What then is it that may upon this present occasion according to best reason and discretion, either be said or done? For whatsoever it be, it is in thy power either to do it, or to say it, and therefore seek not any pretences, as though thou wert hindered. Thou wilt never cease groaning and complaining, until such time as that, what pleasure is unto the voluptuous, be unto thee, to do in everything that presents itself, whatsoever may be done conformably and agreeably to the proper constitution of man, or, to man as he is a man. For thou must account that pleasure, whatsoever it be, that thou mayest do according to thine own nature. And to do this, every place will fit thee. Unto the cylindrus, or roller, it is not granted to move everywhere according to its own proper motion, as neither unto the water, nor unto the fire, nor unto any other thing, that either is merely natural, or natural and sensitive; but not rational for many things there be that can hinder their operations. But of the mind and understanding this is the proper privilege, that according to its own nature, and as it will itself, it can pass through every obstacle that it finds, and keep straight on forwards. Setting therefore before thine eyes this happiness and felicity of thy mind, whereby it is able to pass through all things, and is capable of all motions, whether as the fire, upwards; or as the stone downwards, or as the cylindrus through that which is sloping: content thyself with it, and seek not after any other thing. For all other kind of hindrances that are not hindrances of thy mind either they are proper to the body, or merely proceed from the opinion, reason not making that resistance that it should, but basely, and cowardly suffering itself to be foiled; and of themselves can neither wound, nor do any hurt at all. Else must he of necessity, whosoever he be that meets with any of them, become worse than he was before. For so is it in all other subjects, that that is thought hurtful unto them, whereby they are made worse. But here contrariwise, man (if he make that good use of them that he should) is rather the better and the more praiseworthy for any of those kind of hindrances, than otherwise. But generally remember that nothing can hurt a natural citizen, that is not hurtful unto the city itself, nor anything hurt the city, that is not hurtful unto the law itself. But none of these casualties, or external hindrances, do hurt the law itself; or, are contrary to that course of justice and equity, by which public societies are maintained: neither therefore do they hurt either city or citizen. XXXIV. As he that is bitten by a mad dog, is afraid of everything almost that he seeth: so unto him, whom the dogmata have once bitten, or in whom true knowledge hath made an impression, everything almost that he sees or reads be it never so short or ordinary, doth afford a good memento; to put him out of all grief and fear, as that of the poet, 'The winds blow upon the trees, and their leaves fall upon the ground. Then do the trees begin to bud again, and by the spring-time they put forth new branches. So is the generation of men; some come into the world, and others go out of it.' Of these leaves then thy children are. And they also that applaud thee so gravely, or, that applaud thy speeches, with that their usual acclamation, axiopistwz, O wisely spoken I and speak well of thee, as on the other side, they that stick not to curse thee, they that privately and secretly dispraise and deride thee, they also are but leaves. And they also that shall follow, in whose memories the names of men famous after death, is preserved, they are but leaves neither. For even so is it of all these worldly things. Their spring comes, and they are put forth. Then blows the wind, and they go down. And then in lieu of them grow others out of the wood or common matter of all things, like unto them. But, to endure but for a while, is common unto all. Why then shouldest thou so earnestly either seek after these things, or fly from them, as though they should endure for ever? Yet a little while, and thine eyes will be closed up, and for him that carries thee to thy grave shall another mourn within a while after. XXXV. A good eye must be good to see whatsoever is to be seen, and not green things only. For that is proper to sore eyes. So must a good ear, and a good smell be ready for whatsoever is either to be heard, or smelt: and a good stomach as indifferent to all kinds of food, as a millstone is, to whatsoever she was made for to grind. As ready therefore must a sound understanding be for whatsoever shall happen. But he that saith, O that my children might live! and, O that all men might commend me for whatsoever I do! is an eye that seeks after green things; or as teeth, after that which is tender. XXXVI. There is not any man that is so happy in his death, but that some of those that are by him when he dies, will be ready to rejoice at his supposed calamity. Is it one that was virtuous and wise indeed? will there not some one or other be found, who thus will say to himself; 'Well now at last shall I be at rest from this pedagogue. He did not indeed otherwise trouble us much: but I know well enough that in his heart, he did much condemn us.' Thus will they speak of the virtuous. But as for us, alas I how many things be there, for which there be many that glad would be to be rid of us. This therefore if thou shalt think of whensoever thou diest, thou shalt die the more willingly, when thou shalt think with thyself; I am now to depart from that world, wherein those that have been my nearest friends and acquaintances, they whom I have so much suffered for, so often prayed for, and for whom I have taken such care, even they would have me die, hoping that after my death they shall live happier, than they did before. What then should any man desire to continue here any longer? Nevertheless, whensoever thou diest, thou must not be less kind and loving unto them for it; but as before, see them, continue to be their friend, to wish them well, and meekly, and gently to carry thyself towards them, but yet so that on the other side, it make thee not the more unwilling to die. But as it fareth with them that die an easy quick death, whose soul is soon separated from their bodies, so must thy separation from them be. To these had nature joined and annexed me: now she parts us; I am ready to depart, as from friends and kinsmen, but yet without either reluctancy or compulsion. For this also is according to Nature. XXXVII. Use thyself; as often, as thou seest any man do anything, presently (if it be possible) to say unto thyself, What is this man's end in this his action? But begin this course with thyself first of all, and diligently examine thyself concerning whatsoever thou doest. XXXVIII. Remember, that that which sets a man at work, and hath power over the affections to draw them either one way, or the other way, is not any external thing properly, but that which is hidden within every man's dogmata, and opinions: That, that is rhetoric; that is life; that (to speak true) is man himself. As for thy body, which as a vessel, or a case, compasseth thee about, and the many and curious instruments that it hath annexed unto it, let them not trouble thy thoughts. For of themselves they are but as a carpenter's axe, but that they are born with us, and naturally sticking unto us. But otherwise, without the inward cause that hath power to move them, and to restrain them, those parts are of themselves of no more use unto us, than the shuttle is of itself to the weaver, or the pen to the writer, or the whip to the coachman. THE ELEVENTH BOOK I. The natural properties, and privileges of a reasonable soul are: That she seeth herself; that she can order, and compose herself: that she makes herself as she will herself: that she reaps her own fruits whatsoever, whereas plants, trees, unreasonable creatures, what fruit soever (be it either fruit properly, or analogically only) they bear, they bear them unto others, and not to themselves. Again; whensoever, and wheresoever, sooner or later, her life doth end, she hath her own end nevertheless. For it is not with her, as with dancers and players, who if they be interrupted in any part of their action, the whole action must needs be imperfect: but she in what part of time or action soever she be surprised, can make that which she hath in her hand whatsoever it be, complete and full, so that she may depart with that comfort, 'I have lived; neither want I anything of that which properly did belong unto me.' Again, she compasseth the whole world, and penetrateth into the vanity, and mere outside (wanting substance and solidity) of it, and stretcheth herself unto the infiniteness of eternity; and the revolution or restoration of all things after a certain period of time, to the same state and place as before, she fetcheth about, and doth comprehend in herself; and considers withal, and sees clearly this, that neither they that shall follow us, shall see any new thing, that we have not seen, nor they that went before, anything more than we: but that he that is once come to forty (if he have any wit at all) can in a manner (for that they are all of one kind) see all things, both past and future. As proper is it, and natural to the soul of man to love her neighbour, to be true and modest; and to regard nothing so much as herself: which is also the property of the law: whereby by the way it appears, that sound reason and justice comes all to one, and therefore that justice is the chief thing, that reasonable creatures ought to propose unto themselves as their end. II. A pleasant song or dance; the Pancratiast's exercise, sports that thou art wont to be much taken with, thou shalt easily contemn; if the harmonious voice thou shalt divide into so many particular sounds whereof it doth consist, and of every one in particular shall ask thyself; whether this or that sound is it, that doth so conquer thee. For thou wilt be ashamed of it. And so for shame, if accordingly thou shalt consider it, every particular motion and posture by itself: and so for the wrestler's exercise too. Generally then, whatsoever it be, besides virtue, and those things that proceed from virtue that thou art subject to be much affected with, remember presently thus to divide it, and by this kind of division, in each particular to attain unto the contempt of the whole. This thou must transfer and apply to thy whole life also. III. That soul which is ever ready, even now presently (if need be) from the body, whether by way of extinction, or dispersion, or continuation in another place and estate to be separated, how blessed and happy is it! But this readiness of it, it must proceed, not from an obstinate and peremptory resolution of the mind, violently and passionately set upon Opposition, as Christians are wont; but from a peculiar judgment; with discretion and gravity, so that others may be persuaded also and drawn to the like example, but without any noise and passionate exclamations. IV. Have I done anything charitably? then am I benefited by it. See that this upon all occasions may present itself unto thy mind, and never cease to think of it. What is thy profession? to be good. And how should this be well brought to pass, but by certain theorems and doctrines; some Concerning the nature of the universe, and some Concerning the proper and particular constitution of man? V. Tragedies were at first brought in and instituted, to put men in mind of worldly chances and casualties: that these things in the ordinary course of nature did so happen: that men that were much pleased and delighted by such accidents upon this stage, would not by the same things in a greater stage be grieved and afflicted: for here you see what is the end of all such things; and that even they that cry out so mournfully to Cithaeron, must bear them for all their cries and exclamations, as well as others. And in very truth many good things are spoken by these poets; as that (for example) is an excellent passage: 'But if so be that I and my two children be neglected by the Gods, they have some reason even for that,' &c. And again, 'It will but little avail thee to storm and rage against the things themselves,' &c. Again, 'To reap one's life, as a ripe ear of corn;' and whatsoever else is to be found in them, that is of the same kind. After the tragedy, the ancient comedy was brought in, which had the liberty to inveigh against personal vices; being therefore through this her freedom and liberty of speech of very good use and effect, to restrain men from pride and arrogancy. To which end it was, that Diogenes took also the same liberty. After these, what were either the Middle, or New Comedy admitted for, but merely, (Or for the most part at least) for the delight and pleasure of curious and excellent imitation? 'It will steal away; look to it,' &c. Why, no man denies, but that these also have some good things whereof that may be one: but the whole drift and foundation of that kind of dramatical poetry, what is it else, but as we have said? VI. How clearly doth it appear unto thee, that no other course of thy life could fit a true philosopher's practice better, than this very course, that thou art now already in? VII. A branch cut off from the continuity of that which was next unto it, must needs be cut off from the whole tree: so a man that is divided from another man, is divided from the whole society. A branch is cut off by another, but he that hates and is averse, cuts himself off from his neighbour, and knows not that at the same time he divides himself from the whole body, or corporation. But herein is the gift and mercy of God, the Author of this society, in that, once cut off we may grow together and become part of the whole again. But if this happen often the misery is that the further a man is run in this division, the harder he is to be reunited and restored again: and however the branch which, once cut of afterwards was graffed in, gardeners can tell you is not like that which sprouted together at first, and still continued in the unity of the body. VIII. To grow together like fellow branches in matter of good correspondence and affection; but not in matter of opinions. They that shall oppose thee in thy right courses, as it is not in their power to divert thee from thy good action, so neither let it be to divert thee from thy good affection towards them. But be it thy care to keep thyself constant in both; both in a right judgment and action, and in true meekness towards them, that either shall do their endeavour to hinder thee, or at least will be displeased with thee for what thou hast done. For to fail in either (either in the one to give over for fear, or in the other to forsake thy natural affection towards him, who by nature is both thy friend and thy kinsman) is equally base, and much savouring of the disposition of a cowardly fugitive soldier. IX. It is not possible that any nature should be inferior unto art, since that all arts imitate nature. If this be so; that the most perfect and general nature of all natures should in her operation come short of the skill of arts, is most improbable. Now common is it to all arts, to make that which is worse for the better's sake. Much more then doth the common nature do the same. Hence is the first ground of justice. From justice all other virtues have their existence. For justice cannot be preserved, if either we settle our minds and affections upon worldly things; or be apt to be deceived, or rash, and inconstant. X. The things themselves (which either to get or to avoid thou art put to so much trouble) come not unto thee themselves; but thou in a manner goest unto them. Let then thine own judgment and opinion concerning those things be at rest; and as for the things themselves, they stand still and quiet, without any noise or stir at all; and so shall all pursuing and flying cease. XI. Then is the soul as Empedocles doth liken it, like unto a sphere or globe, when she is all of one form and figure: when she neither greedily stretcheth out herself unto anything, nor basely contracts herself, or lies flat and dejected; but shineth all with light, whereby she does see and behold the true nature, both that of the universe, and her own in particular. XII. Will any contemn me? let him look to that, upon what grounds he does it: my care shall be that I may never be found either doing or speaking anything that doth truly deserve contempt. Will any hate me? let him look to that. I for my part will be kind and loving unto all, and even unto him that hates me, whom-soever he be, will I be ready to show his error, not by way of exprobation or ostentation of my patience, but ingenuously and meekly: such as was that famous Phocion, if so be that he did not dissemble. For it is inwardly that these things must be: that the Gods who look inwardly, and not upon the outward appearance, may behold a man truly free from all indignation and grief. For what hurt can it be unto thee whatsoever any man else doth, as long as thou mayest do that which is proper and suitable to thine own nature? Wilt not thou (a man wholly appointed to be both what, and as the common good shall require) accept of that which is now seasonable to the nature of the universe? XIII. They contemn one another, and yet they seek to please one another: and whilest they seek to surpass one another in worldly pomp and greatness, they most debase and prostitute themselves in their better part one to another. XIV. How rotten and insincere is he, that saith, I am resolved to carry myself hereafter towards you with all ingenuity and simplicity. O man, what doest thou mean! what needs this profession of thine? the thing itself will show it. It ought to be written upon thy forehead. No sooner thy voice is heard, than thy countenance must be able to show what is in thy mind: even as he that is loved knows presently by the looks of his sweetheart what is in her mind. Such must he be for all the world, that is truly simple and good, as he whose arm-holes are offensive, that whosoever stands by, as soon as ever he comes near him, may as it were smell him whether he will or no. But the affectation of simplicity is nowise laudable. There is nothing more shameful than perfidious friendship. Above all things, that must be avoided. However true goodness, simplicity, and kindness cannot so be hidden, but that as we have already said in the very eyes and countenance they will show themselves. XV. To live happily is an inward power of the soul, when she is affected with indifferency, towards those things that are by their nature indifferent. To be thus affected she must consider all worldly objects both divided and whole: remembering withal that no object can of itself beget any opinion in us, neither can come to us, but stands without still and quiet; but that we ourselves beget, and as it were print in ourselves opinions concerning them. Now it is in our power, not to print them; and if they creep in and lurk in some corner, it is in our power to wipe them off. Remembering moreover, that this care and circumspection of thine, is to continue but for a while, and then thy life will be at an end. And what should hinder, but that thou mayest do well with all these things? For if they be according to nature, rejoice in them, and let them be pleasing and acceptable unto thee. But if they be against nature, seek thou that which is according to thine own nature, and whether it be for thy credit or no, use all possible speed for the attainment of it: for no man ought to be blamed, for seeking his own good and happiness. XVI. Of everything thou must consider from whence it came, of what things it doth consist, and into what it will be changed: what will be the nature of it, or what it will be like unto when it is changed; and that it can suffer no hurt by this change. And as for other men's either foolishness or wickedness, that it may not trouble and grieve thee; first generally thus; What reference have I unto these? and that we are all born for one another's good: then more particularly after another consideration; as a ram is first in a flock of sheep, and a bull in a herd of cattle, so am I born to rule over them. Begin yet higher, even from this: if atoms be not the beginning of all things, than which to believe nothing can be more absurd, then must we needs grant that there is a nature, that doth govern the universe. If such a nature, then are all worse things made for the better's sake; and all better for one another's sake. Secondly, what manner of men they be, at board, and upon their beds, and so forth. But above all things, how they are forced by their opinions that they hold, to do what they do; and even those things that they do, with what pride and self-conceit they do them. Thirdly, that if they do these things rightly, thou hast no reason to be grieved. But if not rightly, it must needs be that they do them against their wills, and through mere ignorance. For as, according to Plato's opinion, no soul doth willingly err, so by consequent neither doth it anything otherwise than it ought, but against her will. Therefore are they grieved, whensoever they hear themselves charged, either of injustice, or unconscionableness, or covetousness, or in general, of any injurious kind of dealing towards their neighbours. Fourthly, that thou thyself doest transgress in many things, and art even such another as they are. And though perchance thou doest forbear the very act of some sins, yet hast thou in thyself an habitual disposition to them, but that either through fear, or vainglory, or some such other ambitious foolish respect, thou art restrained. Fifthly, that whether they have sinned or no, thou doest not understand perfectly. For many things are done by way of discreet policy; and generally a man must know many things first, before he be able truly and judiciously to judge of another man's action. Sixthly, that whensoever thou doest take on grievously, or makest great woe, little doest thou remember then that a man's life is but for a moment of time, and that within a while we shall all be in our graves. Seventhly, that it is not the sins and transgressions themselves that trouble us properly; for they have their existence in their minds and understandings only, that commit them; but our own opinions concerning those sins. Remove then, and be content to part with that conceit of thine, that it is a grievous thing, and thou hast removed thine anger. But how should I remove it? How? reasoning with thyself that it is not shameful. For if that which is shameful, be not the only true evil that is, thou also wilt be driven whilest thou doest follow the common instinct of nature, to avoid that which is evil, to commit many unjust things, and to become a thief, and anything, that will make to the attainment of thy intended worldly ends. Eighthly, how many things may and do oftentimes follow upon such fits of anger and grief; far more grievous in themselves, than those very things which we are so grieved or angry for. Ninthly, that meekness is a thing unconquerable, if it be true and natural, and not affected or hypocritical. For how shall even the most fierce and malicious that thou shalt conceive, be able to hold on against thee, if thou shalt still continue meek and loving unto him; and that even at that time, when he is about to do thee wrong, thou shalt be well disposed, and in good temper, with all meekness to teach him, and to instruct him better? As for example; My son, we were not born for this, to hurt and annoy one another; it will be thy hurt not mine, my son: and so to show him forcibly and fully, that it is so in very deed: and that neither bees do it one to another, nor any other creatures that are naturally sociable. But this thou must do, not scoffingly, not by way of exprobation, but tenderly without any harshness of words. Neither must thou do it by way of exercise, or ostentation, that they that are by and hear thee, may admire thee: but so always that nobody be privy to it, but himself alone: yea, though there be more present at the same time. These nine particular heads, as so many gifts from the Muses, see that thou remember well: and begin one day, whilest thou art yet alive, to be a man indeed. But on the other side thou must take heed, as much to flatter them, as to be angry with them: for both are equally uncharitable, and equally hurtful. And in thy passions, take it presently to thy consideration, that to be angry is not the part of a man, but that to be meek and gentle, as it savours of more humanity, so of more manhood. That in this, there is strength and nerves, or vigour and fortitude: whereof anger and indignation is altogether void. For the nearer everything is unto unpassionateness, the nearer it is unto power. And as grief doth proceed from weakness, so doth anger. For both, both he that is angry and that grieveth, have received a wound, and cowardly have as it were yielded themselves unto their affections. If thou wilt have a tenth also, receive this tenth gift from Hercules the guide and leader of the Muses: that is a mad man's part, to look that there should be no wicked men in the world, because it is impossible. Now for a man to brook well enough, that there should be wicked men in the world, but not to endure that any should transgress against himself, is against all equity, and indeed tyrannical. XVII. Four several dispositions or inclinations there be of the mind and understanding, which to be aware of, thou must carefully observe: and whensoever thou doest discover them, thou must rectify them, saying to thyself concerning every one of them, This imagination is not necessary; this is uncharitable: this thou shalt speak as another man's slave, or instrument; than which nothing can be more senseless and absurd: for the fourth, thou shalt sharply check and upbraid thyself; for that thou doest suffer that more divine part in thee, to become subject and obnoxious to that more ignoble part of thy body, and the gross lusts and concupiscences thereof. XVIII. What portion soever, either of air or fire there be in thee, although by nature it tend upwards, submitting nevertheless to the ordinance of the universe, it abides here below in this mixed body. So whatsoever is in thee, either earthy, or humid, although by nature it tend downwards, yet is it against its nature both raised upwards, and standing, or consistent. So obedient are even the elements themselves to the universe, abiding patiently wheresoever (though against their nature) they are placed, until the sound as it were of their retreat, and separation. Is it not a grievous thing then, that thy reasonable part only should be disobedient, and should not endure to keep its place: yea though it be nothing enjoined that is contrary unto it, but that only which is according to its nature? For we cannot say of it when it is disobedient, as we say of the fire, or air, that it tends upwards towards its proper element, for then goes it the quite contrary way. For the motion of the mind to any injustice, or incontinency, or to sorrow, or to fear, is nothing else but a separation from nature. Also when the mind is grieved for anything that is happened by the divine providence, then doth it likewise forsake its own place. For it was ordained unto holiness and godliness, which specially consist in an humble submission to God and His providence in all things; as well as unto justice: these also being part of those duties, which as naturally sociable, we are bound unto; and without which we cannot happily converse one with another: yea and the very ground and fountain indeed of all just actions. XIX. He that hath not one and the self-same general end always as long as he liveth, cannot possibly be one and the self-same man always. But this will not suffice except thou add also what ought to be this general end. For as the general conceit and apprehension of all those things which upon no certain ground are by the greater part of men deemed good, cannot be uniform and agreeable, but that only which is limited and restrained by some certain proprieties and conditions, as of community: that nothing be conceived good, which is not commonly and publicly good: so must the end also that we propose unto ourselves, be common and sociable. For he that doth direct all his own private motions and purposes to that end, all his actions will be agreeable and uniform; and by that means will be still the same man. XX. Remember the fable of the country mouse and the city mouse, and the great fright and terror that this was put into. XXI. Socrates was wont to call the common conceits and opinions of men, the common bugbears of the world: the proper terror of silly children. XXII. The Lacedaemonians at their public spectacles were wont to appoint seats and forms for their strangers in the shadow, they themselves were content to sit anywhere. XXIII. What Socrates answered unto Perdiccas, why he did not come unto him, Lest of all deaths I should die the worst kind of death, said he: that is, not able to requite the good that hath been done unto me. XXIV. In the ancient mystical letters of the Ephesians, there was an item, that a man should always have in his mind some one or other of the ancient worthies. XXV. The Pythagoreans were wont betimes in the morning the first thing they did, to look up unto the heavens, to put themselves in mind of them who constantly and invariably did perform their task: as also to put themselves in mind of orderliness, or good order, and of purity, and of naked simplicity. For no star or planet hath any cover before it. XXVI. How Socrates looked, when he was fain to gird himself with a skin, Xanthippe his wife having taken away his clothes, and carried them abroad with her, and what he said to his fellows and friends, who were ashamed; and out of respect to him, did retire themselves when they saw him thus decked. XXVII. In matter of writing or reading thou must needs be taught before thou can do either: much more in matter of life. 'For thou art born a mere slave, to thy senses and brutish affections;' destitute without teaching of all true knowledge and sound reason. XXVIII. 'My heart smiled within me.' 'They will accuse even virtue herself; with heinous and opprobrious words.' XXIX. As they that long after figs in winter when they cannot be had; so are they that long after children, before they be granted them. XXX. 'As often as a father kisseth his child, he should say secretly with himself' (said Epictetus,) 'tomorrow perchance shall he die.' But these words be ominous. No words ominous (said he) that signify anything that is natural: in very truth and deed not more ominous than this, 'to cut down grapes when they are ripe.' Green grapes, ripe grapes, dried grapes, or raisins: so many changes and mutations of one thing, not into that which was not absolutely, but rather so many several changes and mutations, not into that which hath no being at all, but into that which is not yet in being. XXXI. 'Of the free will there is no thief or robber:' out of Epictetus; Whose is this also: that we should find a certain art and method of assenting; and that we should always observe with great care and heed the inclinations of our minds, that they may always be with their due restraint and reservation, always charitable, and according to the true worth of every present object. And as for earnest longing, that we should altogether avoid it: and to use averseness in those things only, that wholly depend of our own wills. It is not about ordinary petty matters, believe it, that all our strife and contention is, but whether, with the vulgar, we should be mad, or by the help of philosophy wise and sober, said he. XXXII. Socrates said, 'What will you have? the souls of reasonable, or unreasonable creatures? Of reasonable. But what? Of those whose reason is sound and perfect? or of those whose reason is vitiated and corrupted? Of those whose reason is sound and perfect. Why then labour ye not for such? Because we have them already. What then do ye so strive and contend between you?' THE TWELFTH BOOK I. Whatsoever thou doest hereafter aspire unto, thou mayest even now enjoy and possess, if thou doest not envy thyself thine own happiness. And that will be, if thou shalt forget all that is past, and for the future, refer thyself wholly to the Divine Providence, and shalt bend and apply all thy present thoughts and intentions to holiness and righteousness. To holiness, in accepting willingly whatsoever is sent by the Divine Providence, as being that which the nature of the universe hath appointed unto thee, which also hath appointed thee for that, whatsoever it be. To righteousness, in speaking the truth freely, and without ambiguity; and in doing all things justly and discreetly. Now in this good course, let not other men's either wickedness, or opinion, or voice hinder thee: no, nor the sense of this thy pampered mass of flesh: for let that which suffers, look to itself. If therefore whensoever the time of thy departing shall come, thou shalt readily leave all things, and shalt respect thy mind only, and that divine part of thine, and this shall be thine only fear, not that some time or other thou shalt cease to live, but thou shalt never begin to live according to nature: then shalt thou be a man indeed, worthy of that world, from which thou hadst thy beginning; then shalt thou cease to be a stranger in thy country, and to wonder at those things that happen daily, as things strange and unexpected, and anxiously to depend of divers things that are not in thy power. II. God beholds our minds and understandings, bare and naked from these material vessels, and outsides, and all earthly dross. For with His simple and pure understanding, He pierceth into our inmost and purest parts, which from His, as it were by a water pipe and channel, first flowed and issued. This if thou also shalt use to do, thou shalt rid thyself of that manifold luggage, wherewith thou art round about encumbered. For he that does regard neither his body, nor his clothing, nor his dwelling, nor any such external furniture, must needs gain unto himself great rest and ease. Three things there be in all, which thou doest consist of; thy body, thy life, and thy mind. Of these the two former, are so far forth thine, as that thou art bound to take care for them. But the third alone is that which is properly thine. If then thou shalt separate from thyself, that is from thy mind, whatsoever other men either do or say, or whatsoever thou thyself hast heretofore either done or said; and all troublesome thoughts concerning the future, and whatsoever, (as either belonging to thy body or life:) is without the jurisdiction of thine own will, and whatsoever in the ordinary course of human chances and accidents doth happen unto thee; so that thy mind (keeping herself loose and free from all outward coincidental entanglements; always in a readiness to depart:) shall live by herself, and to herself, doing that which is just, accepting whatsoever doth happen, and speaking the truth always; if, I say, thou shalt separate from thy mind, whatsoever by sympathy might adhere unto it, and all time both past and future, and shalt make thyself in all points and respects, like unto Empedocles his allegorical sphere, 'all round and circular,' &c., and shalt think of no longer life than that which is now present: then shalt thou be truly able to pass the remainder of thy days without troubles and distractions; nobly and generously disposed, and in good favour and correspondency, with that spirit which is within thee. III. I have often wondered how it should come to pass, that every man loving himself best, should more regard other men's opinions concerning himself than his own. For if any God or grave master standing by, should command any of us to think nothing by himself but what he should presently speak out; no man were able to endure it, though but for one day. Thus do we fear more what our neighbours will think of us, than what we ourselves. IV. how come it to pass that the Gods having ordered all other things so well and so lovingly, should be overseen in this one only thing, that whereas then hath been some very good men that have made many covenants as it were with God and by many holy actions and outward services contracted a kind of familiarity with Him; that these men when once they are dead, should never be restored to life, but be extinct for ever. But this thou mayest be sure of, that this (if it be so indeed) would never have been so ordered by the Gods, had it been fit otherwise. For certainly it was possible, had it been more just so and had it been according to nature, the nature of the universe would easily have borne it. But now because it is not so, (if so be that it be not so indeed) be therefore confident that it was not fit it should be so for thou seest thyself, that now seeking after this matter, how freely thou doest argue and contest with God. But were not the Gods both just and good in the highest degree, thou durst not thus reason with them. Now if just and good, it could not be that in the creation of the world, they should either unjustly or unreasonably oversee anything. V. Use thyself even unto those things that thou doest at first despair of. For the left hand we see, which for the most part lieth idle because not used; yet doth it hold the bridle with more strength than the right, because it hath been used unto it. VI. Let these be the objects of thy ordinary meditation: to consider, what manner of men both for soul and body we ought to be, whensoever death shall surprise us: the shortness of this our mortal life: the immense vastness of the time that hath been before, and will he after us: the frailty of every worldly material object: all these things to consider, and behold clearly in themselves, all disguisement of external outside being removed and taken away. Again, to consider the efficient causes of all things: the proper ends and references of all actions: what pain is in itself; what pleasure, what death: what fame or honour, how every man is the true and proper ground of his own rest and tranquillity, and that no man can truly be hindered by any other: that all is but conceit and opinion. As for the use of thy dogmata, thou must carry thyself in the practice of them, rather like unto a pancratiastes, or one that at the same time both fights and wrestles with hands and feet, than a gladiator. For this, if he lose his sword that he fights with, he is gone: whereas the other hath still his hand free, which he may easily turn and manage at his will. VII. All worldly things thou must behold and consider, dividing them into matter, form, and reference, or their proper end. VIII. How happy is man in this his power that hath been granted unto him: that he needs not do anything but what God shall approve, and that he may embrace contentedly, whatsoever God doth send unto him? IX. Whatsoever doth happen in the ordinary course and consequence of natural events, neither the Gods, (for it is not possible, that they either wittingly or unwittingly should do anything amiss) nor men, (for it is through ignorance, and therefore against their wills that they do anything amiss) must be accused. None then must be accused. X. How ridiculous and strange is he, that wonders at anything that happens in this life in the ordinary course of nature! XI. Either fate, (and that either an absolute necessity, and unavoidable decree; or a placable and flexible Providence) or all is a mere casual confusion, void of all order and government. If an absolute and unavoidable necessity, why doest thou resist? If a placable and exorable Providence, make thyself worthy of the divine help and assistance. If all be a mere confusion without any moderator, or governor, then hast thou reason to congratulate thyself; that in such a general flood of confusion thou thyself hast obtained a reasonable faculty, whereby thou mayest govern thine own life and actions. But if thou beest carried away with the flood, it must be thy body perchance, or thy life, or some other thing that belongs unto them that is carried away: thy mind and understanding cannot. Or should it be so, that the light of a candle indeed is still bright and lightsome until it be put out: and should truth, and righteousness, and temperance cease to shine in thee whilest thou thyself hast any being? XII. At the conceit and apprehension that such and such a one hath sinned, thus reason with thyself; What do I know whether this be a sin indeed, as it seems to be? But if it be, what do I know but that he himself hath already condemned himself for it? And that is all one as if a man should scratch and tear his own face, an object of compassion rather than of anger. Again, that he that would not have a vicious man to sin, is like unto him that would not have moisture in the fig, nor children to welp nor a horse to neigh, nor anything else that in the course of nature is necessary. For what shall he do that hath such an habit? If thou therefore beest powerful and eloquent, remedy it if thou canst. XIII. If it be not fitting, do it not. If it be not true, speak it not. Ever maintain thine own purpose and resolution free from all compulsion and necessity. XIV. Of everything that presents itself unto thee, to consider what the true nature of it is, and to unfold it, as it were, by dividing it into that which is formal: that which is material: the true use or end of it, and the just time that it is appointed to last. XV. It is high time for thee, to understand that there is somewhat in thee, better and more divine than either thy passions, or thy sensual appetites and affections. What is now the object of my mind, is it fear, or suspicion, or lust, or any such thing? To do nothing rashly without some certain end; let that be thy first care. The next, to have no other end than the common good. For, alas! yet a little while, and thou art no more: no more will any, either of those things that now thou seest, or of those men that now are living, be any more. For all things are by nature appointed soon to be changed, turned, and corrupted, that other things might succeed in their room. XVI. Remember that all is but opinion, and all opinion depends of the mind. Take thine opinion away, and then as a ship that hath stricken in within the arms and mouth of the harbour, a present calm; all things safe and steady: a bay, not capable of any storms and tempests: as the poet hath it. XVII. No operation whatsoever it he, ceasing for a while, can be truly said to suffer any evil, because it is at an end. Neither can he that is the author of that operation; for this very respect, because his operation is at an end, be said to suffer any evil. Likewise then, neither can the whole body of all our actions (which is our life) if in time it cease, be said to suffer any evil for this very reason, because it is at an end; nor he truly be said to have been ill affected, that did put a period to this series of actions. Now this time or certain period, depends of the determination of nature: sometimes of particular nature, as when a man dieth old; but of nature in general, however; the parts whereof thus changing one after another, the whole world still continues fresh and new. Now that is ever best and most seasonable, which is for the good of the whole. Thus it appears that death of itself can neither be hurtful to any in particular, because it is not a shameful thing (for neither is it a thing that depends of our own will, nor of itself contrary to the common good) and generally, as it is both expedient and seasonable to the whole, that in that respect it must needs be good. It is that also, which is brought unto us by the order and appointment of the Divine Providence; so that he whose will and mind in these things runs along with the Divine ordinance, and by this concurrence of his will and mind with the Divine Providence, is led and driven along, as it were by God Himself; may truly be termed and esteemed the *OEo~p7poc*, or divinely led and inspired. XVIII. These three things thou must have always in a readiness: first concerning thine own actions, whether thou doest nothing either idly, or otherwise, than justice and equity do require: and concerning those things that happen unto thee externally, that either they happen unto thee by chance, or by providence; of which two to accuse either, is equally against reason. Secondly, what like unto our bodies are whilest yet rude and imperfect, until they be animated: and from their animation, until their expiration: of what things they are compounded, and into what things they shall be dissolved. Thirdly, how vain all things will appear unto thee when, from on high as it were, looking down thou shalt contemplate all things upon earth, and the wonderful mutability, that they are subject unto: considering withal, the infinite both greatness and variety of things aerial and things celestial that are round about it. And that as often as thou shalt behold them, thou shalt still see the same: as the same things, so the same shortness of continuance of all those things. And, behold, these be the things that we are so proud and puffed up for. XIX. Cast away from thee opinion, and thou art safe. And what is it that hinders thee from casting of it away? When thou art grieved at anything, hast thou forgotten that all things happen according to the nature of the universe; and that him only it concerns, who is in fault; and moreover, that what is now done, is that which from ever hath been done in the world, and will ever be done, and is now done everywhere: how nearly all men are allied one to another by a kindred not of blood, nor of seed, but of the same mind. Thou hast also forgotten that every man's mind partakes of the Deity, and issueth from thence; and that no man can properly call anything his own, no not his son, nor his body, nor his life; for that they all proceed from that One who is the giver of all things: that all things are but opinion; that no man lives properly, but that very instant of time which is now present. And therefore that no man whensoever he dieth can properly be said to lose any more, than an instant of time. XX. Let thy thoughts ever run upon them, who once for some one thing or other, were moved with extraordinary indignation; who were once in the highest pitch of either honour, or calamity; or mutual hatred and enmity; or of any other fortune or condition whatsoever. Then consider what's now become of all those things. All is turned to smoke; all to ashes, and a mere fable; and perchance not so much as a fable. As also whatsoever is of this nature, as Fabius Catulinus in the field; Lucius Lupus, and Stertinius, at Baiae Tiberius at Caprem: and Velius Rufus, and all such examples of vehement prosecution in worldly matters; let these also run in thy mind at the same time; and how vile every object of such earnest and vehement prosecution is; and how much more agreeable to true philosophy it is, for a man to carry himself in every matter that offers itself; justly, and moderately, as one that followeth the Gods with all simplicity. For, for a man to be proud and high conceited, that he is not proud and high conceited, is of all kind of pride and presumption, the most intolerable. XXI. To them that ask thee, Where hast thou seen the Gods, or how knowest thou certainly that there be Gods, that thou art so devout in their worship? I answer first of all, that even to the very eye, they are in some manner visible and apparent. Secondly, neither have I ever seen mine own soul, and yet I respect and honour it. So then for the Gods, by the daily experience that I have of their power and providence towards myself and others, I know certainly that they are, and therefore worship them. XXII. Herein doth consist happiness of life, for a man to know thoroughly the true nature of everything; what is the matter, and what is the form of it: with all his heart and soul, ever to do that which is just, and to speak the truth. What then remaineth but to enjoy thy life in a course and coherence of good actions, one upon another immediately succeeding, and never interrupted, though for never so little a while? XXIII. There is but one light of the sun, though it be intercepted by walls and mountains, and other thousand objects. There is but one common substance of the whole world, though it be concluded and restrained into several different bodies, in number infinite. There is but one common soul, though divided into innumerable particular essences and natures. So is there but one common intellectual soul, though it seem to be divided. And as for all other parts of those generals which we have mentioned, as either sensitive souls or subjects, these of themselves (as naturally irrational) have no common mutual reference one unto another, though many of them contain a mind, or reasonable faculty in them, whereby they are ruled and governed. But of every reasonable mind, this the particular nature, that it hath reference to whatsoever is of her own kind, and desireth to be united: neither can this common affection, or mutual unity and correspondency, be here intercepted or divided, or confined to particulars as those other common things are. XXIV. What doest thou desire? To live long. What? To enjoy the operations of a sensitive soul; or of the appetitive faculty? or wouldst thou grow, and then decrease again? Wouldst thou long be able to talk, to think and reason with thyself? Which of all these seems unto thee a worthy object of thy desire? Now if of all these thou doest find that they be but little worth in themselves, proceed on unto the last, which is, in all things to follow God and reason. But for a man to grieve that by death he shall be deprived of any of these things, is both against God and reason. XXV. What a small portion of vast and infinite eternity it is, that is allowed unto every one of us, and how soon it vanisheth into the general age of the world: of the common substance, and of the common soul also what a small portion is allotted unto us: and in what a little clod of the whole earth (as it were) it is that thou doest crawl. After thou shalt rightly have considered these things with thyself; fancy not anything else in the world any more to be of any weight and moment but this, to do that only which thine own nature doth require; and to conform thyself to that which the common nature doth afford. XXVI. What is the present estate of my understanding? For herein lieth all indeed. As for all other things, they are without the compass of mine own will: and if without the compass of my will, then are they as dead things unto me, and as it were mere smoke. XXVII. To stir up a man to the contempt of death this among other things, is of good power and efficacy, that even they who esteemed pleasure to be happiness, and pain misery, did nevertheless many of them contemn death as much as any. And can death be terrible to him, to whom that only seems good, which in the ordinary course of nature is seasonable? to him, to whom, whether his actions be many or few, so they be all good, is all one; and who whether he behold the things of the world being always the same either for many years, or for few years only, is altogether indifferent? O man! as a citizen thou hast lived, and conversed in this great city the world. Whether just for so many years, or no, what is it unto thee? Thou hast lived (thou mayest be sure) as long as the laws and orders of the city required; which may be the common comfort of all. Why then should it be grievous unto thee, if (not a tyrant, nor an unjust judge, but) the same nature that brought thee in, doth now send thee out of the world? As if the praetor should fairly dismiss him from the stage, whom he had taken in to act a while. Oh, but the play is not yet at an end, there are but three acts yet acted of it? Thou hast well said: for in matter of life, three acts is the whole play. Now to set a certain time to every man's acting, belongs unto him only, who as first he was of thy composition, so is now the cause of thy dissolution. As for thyself; thou hast to do with neither. Go thy ways then well pleased and contented: for so is He that dismisseth thee. APPENDIX CORRESPONDENCE OF M. AURELIUS ANTONINUS AND M. CORNELIUS FRONTO' M. CORNELIUS FRONTO(1) was a Roman by descent, but of provincial birth, being native to Cirta, in Numidia. Thence he migrated to Rome in the reign of Hadrian, and became the most famous rhetorician of his day. As a pleader and orator he was counted by his contemporaries hardly inferior to Tully himself, and as a teacher his aid was sought for the noblest youths of Rome. To him was entrusted the education of M. Aurelius and of his colleague L. Verus in their boyhood; and he was rewarded for his efforts by a seat in the Senate and the consular rank (A.D. 143). By the exercise of his profession he became wealthy; and if he speaks of his means as not great,(2) he must be comparing his wealth with the grandees of Rome, not with the ordinary citizen. Before the present century nothing was known of the works of Fronto, except a grammatical treatise; but in 1815 Cardinal Mai published a number of letters and some short essays of Fronto, which he had discovered in a palimpsest at Milan. Other parts of the same MS. he found later in the Vatican, the whole being collected 1 References are made to the edition of Naber, Leipzig (Trübner), 1867. 2 Ad Verum imp. Aur. Caes., ii, 7. and edited in the year 1823. We now possess parts of his correspondence with Antoninus Pius, with M. Aurelius, with L. Verus, and with certain of his friends, and also several rhetorical and historical fragments. Though none of the more ambitious works of Fronto have survived, there are enough to give proof of his powers. Never was a great literary reputation less deserved. It would be hard to conceive of anything more vapid than the style and conception of these letters; clearly the man was a pedant without imagination or taste. Such indeed was the age he lived in, and it is no marvel that he was like to his age. But there must have been more in him than mere pedantry; there was indeed a heart in the man, which Marcus found, and he found also a tongue which could speak the truth. Fronto's letters are by no means free from exaggeration and laudation, but they do not show that loathsome flattery which filled the Roman court. He really admires what he praises, and his way of saying so is not unlike what often passes for criticism at the present day. He is not afraid to reprove what he thinks amiss; and the astonishment of Marcus at this will prove, if proof were needed, that he was not used to plain dealing. "How happy I am," he writes, "that my friend Marcus Cornelius, so distinguished as an orator and so noble as a man, thinks me worth praising and blaming."(1) In another place he deems himself blest because Pronto had taught him to speak the truth(2) although the context shows him to be speaking of expression, it is still a point in favour of Pronto. A sincere heart is better than literary taste; and if Fronto had not done his duty by the young prince, it is not easy to understand the friendship which remained between them up to the last. 1 Ad M. Caes iii. 17 2 Ad M. Caes iii. 12 An example of the frankness which was between them is given by a difference they had over the case of Herodes Atticus. Herodes was a Greek rhetorician who had a school at Rome, and Marcus Aurelius was among his pupils. Both Marcus and the Emperor Antoninus had a high opinion of Herodes; and all we know goes to prove he was a man of high character and princely generosity. When quite young he was made administrator of the free cities in Asia, nor is it surprising to find that he made bitter enemies there; indeed, a just ruler was sure to make enemies. The end of it was that an Athenian deputation, headed by the orators Theodotus and Demostratus, made serious accusations against his honour. There is no need to discuss the merits of the case here; suffice it to say, Herodes succeeded in defending himself to the satisfaction of the emperor. Pronto appears to have taken the delegates' part, and to have accepted a brief for the prosecution, urged to some extent by personal considerations; and in this cause Marcus Aurelius writes to Fronto as follows 'AURELIUS CAESAR to his friend FRONTO, greeting.(1) 'I know you have often told me you were anxious to find how you might best please me. Now is the time; now you can increase my love towards you, if it can be increased. A trial is at hand, in which people seem likely not only to hear your speech with pleasure, but to see your indignation with impatience. I see no one who dares give you a hint in the matter; for those who are less friendly, prefer to see you act with some inconsistency; and those who are more friendly, fear to seem too friendly to your opponent if they should dissuade you from your accusation; then again, in case you have prepared something neat for the occasion, they cannot endure to rob you of your harangue by silencing you. Therefore, whether you think me a rash counsellor, or a bold boy, or too kind to your opponent, not because I think it better, I will offer my counsel with some caution. But why have I said, offer my counsel? No, I demand it from you; I demand it boldly, and if I succeed, I promise to remain under your obligation. What? you will say if I am attackt, shall I not pay tit for tat? Ah, but you will get greater glory, if even when attackt you answer nothing. Indeed, if he begins it, answer as you will and you will have fair excuse; but I have demanded of him that he shall not begin, and I think I have succeeded. I love each of you according to your merits and I know that lie was educated in the house of P. Calvisius, my grandfather, and that I was educated by you; therefore I am full of anxiety that this most disagreeable business shall be managed as honourably as possible. I trust you may approve my advice, for my intention you will approve. At least I prefer to write unwisely rather than to be silent unkindly.' 1 Ad M. Caes ii., 2. Fronto replied, thanking the prince for his advice, and promising that he will confine himself to the facts of the case. But he points out that the charges brought against Herodes were such, that they can hardly be made agreeable; amongst them being spoliation, violence, and murder. However, he is willing even to let some of these drop if it be the prince's pleasure. To this Marcus returned the following answer:--(1) 'This one thing, my dearest Fronto, is enough to make me truly grateful to you, that so far from rejecting my counsel, you have even approved it. As to the question you raise in your kind letter, my opinion is this: all that concerns the case which you are supporting must be clearly brought forward; what concerns your own feelings, though you may have had just provocation, should be left unsaid.' The story does credit to both. Fronto shows no loss of temper at the interference, nor shrinks from stating his case with frankness; and Marcus, with forbearance remarkable in a prince, does not command that his friend be left unmolested, but merely stipulates for a fair trial on the merits of the case. Another example may be given from a letter of Fronto's (2) Here is something else quarrelsome and querulous. I have sometimes found fault with you in your absence somewhat seriously in the company of a few of my most intimate friends: at times, for example, when you mixt in society with a more solemn look than was fitting, or would read books in the theatre or in a banquet; nor did I absent myself from theatre or banquet when you did (3). Then I used to call you a hard man, no good company, even disagreeable, sometimes, when anger got the better of me. But did any one else in the same banquet speak against you, I could not endure to hear it with equanimity. Thus it was easier for me to say something to your disadvantage myself, than to hear others do it; just as I could more easily bear to chastise my daughter Gratia, than to see her chastised by another.' 1. Ad. M. Caes., iii. 5. 2. iv. 12. 3 The text is obscure The affection between them is clear from every page of the correspondence. A few instances are now given, which were written at different periods To MY MASTER.(1) 'This is how I have past the last few days. My sister was suddenly seized with an internal pain, so violent that I was horrified at her looks; my mother in her trepidation on that account accidentally bruised her side on a corner of the wall; she and we were greatly troubled about that blow. For myself; on going to rest I found a scorpion in my bed; but I did not lie down upon him, I killed him first. If you are getting on better, that is a consolation. My mother is easier now, thanks be to God. Good-bye, best and sweetest master. My lady sends you greeting.' (2)'What words can I find to fit my had luck, or how shall I upbraid as it deserves the hard constraint which is laid upon me? It ties me fast here, troubled my heart is, and beset by such anxiety; nor does it allow me to make haste to my Fronto, my life and delight, to be near him at such a moment of ill-health in particular, to hold his hands, to chafe gently that identical foot, so far as may be done without discomfort, to attend him in the bath, to support his steps with my arm.' (3)'This morning I did not write to you, because I heard you were better, and because I was myself engaged in other business, and I cannot ever endure to write anything to you unless with mind at ease and untroubled and free. So if we are all right, let me know: what I desire, you know, and how properly I desire it, I know. Farewell, my master, always in every chance first in my mind, as you deserve to be. My master, see I am not asleep, and I compel myself to sleep, that you may not be angry with me. You gather I am writing this late at night.' 1 Ad M. Caes., v. 8. 2 i. 2. 3 iii. 21. (1)'What spirit do you suppose is in me, when I remember how long it is since I have seen you, and why I have not seen you 1 and it may be I shall not see you for a few days yet, while you are strengthening yourself; as you must. So while you lie on the sick-bed, my spirit also will lie low anti, whenas,(2) by God's mercy you shall stand upright, my spirit too will stand firm, which is now burning with the strongest desire for you. Farewell, soul of your prince, your (3)O my dear Fronto, most distinguished Consul! I yield, you have conquered: all who have ever loved before, you have conquered out and out in love's contest. Receive the victor's wreath; and the herald shall proclaim your victory aloud before your own tribunal: "M. Cornelius Fronto, Consul, wins, and is crowned victor in the Open International Love-race."(4) But beaten though I may be, I shall neither slacken nor relax my own zeal. Well, you shall love me more than any man loves any other man; but I, who possess a faculty of loving less strong, shall love you more than any one else loves you; more indeed than you love yourself. Gratia and I will have to fight for it; I doubt I shall not get the better of her. For, as Plautus says, her love is like rain, whose big drops not only penetrate the dress, but drench to the very marrow.' Marcus Aurelius seems to have been about eighteen years of age when the correspondence begins, Fronto being some thirty years older.(5) The systematic education of the young prince seems to have been finisht, and Pronto now acts more as his adviser than his tutor. He recommends the prince to use simplicity in his public speeches, and to avoid affectation.(6) Marcus devotes his attention to the old authors who then had a great vogue at Rome: Ennius, Plautus, Nawius, and such orators as Cato and Gracchus.(7) Pronto urges on him the study of Cicero, whose letters, he says, are all worth reading. 1 Ad M. Caes., iii. 19. 2 The writer sometimes uses archaisms such as quom, which I render 'whenas'. 3 Ad M. Caes., ii. 2. 4 The writer parodies the proclamation at the Greek games; the words also are Greek. 5 From internal evidence: the letters are not arranged in order of time. See Naher's Prolegomena, p. xx. foil. 6 Ad M. Caes., iii. x. 7 Ad M. Caes ii. 10,; iii. 18,; ii. 4. When he wishes to compliment Marcus he declares one or other of his letters has the true Tullian ring. Marcus gives his nights to reading when he ought to be sleeping. He exercises himself in verse composition and on rhetorical themes. 'It is very nice of you,' he writes to Fronto,(1) 'to ask for my hexameters; I would have sent them at once if I had them by me. The fact is my secretary, Anicetus-you know who I mean-did not pack up any of my compositions for me to take away with me. He knows my weakness; he was afraid that if I got hold of them I might, as usual, make smoke of them. However, there was no fear for the hexameters. I must confess the truth to my master: I love them. I study at night, since the day is taken up with the theatre. I am weary of an evening, and sleepy in the daylight, and so I don't do much. Yet I have made extracts from sixty books, five volumes of them, in these latter days. But when you read remember that the "sixty" includes plays of Novius, and farces, and some little speeches of Scipio; don't be too much startled at the number. You remember your Polemon; but I pray you do not remember Horace, who has died with Pollio as far as I am concerned.(2) Farewell, my dearest and most affectionate friend, most distinguished consul and my beloved master, whom I have not seen these two years. Those who say two months, count the days. Shall I ever see you again?' Sometimes Fronto sends him a theme to work up, as thus: 'M. Lucilius tribune of the people violently throws into prison a free Roman citizen, against the opinion of his colleagues who demand his release. For this act he is branded by the censor. Analyse the case, and then take both sides in turn, attacking and defending.'(3) Or again: 'A Roman consul, doffing his state robe, dons the gauntlet and kills a lion amongst the young men at the Quinquatrus in full view of the people of Rome. Denunciation before the censors.'(4) The prince has a fair knowledge of Greek, and quotes from Homer, Plato, Euripides, but for some reason Fronto dissuaded him from this study.(5) His Meditations are written in Greek. He continued his literary studies throughout his life, and after he became emperor we still find him asking his adviser for copies of Cicero's Letters, by which he hopes to improve his vocabulary.(6) Pronto Helps him with a supply of similes, which, it seems, he did not think of readily. It is to be feared that the fount of Marcus's eloquence was pumped up by artificial means. 1 Ad M. Caes., ii. 10. 2 He implies, as in i. 6, that he has ceased to study Horace. 3 Pollio was a grammarian, who taught Marcus. 4 Ad M. Caes., v. 27,; V. 22. 5 Ep. Gracae, 6. 6 Ad Anton. Imp., II. 4. Some idea of his literary style may be gathered from the letter which follows:(1) 'I heard Polemo declaim the other day, to say something of things sublunary. If you ask what I thought of him, listen. He seems to me an industrious farmer, endowed with the greatest skill, who has cultivated a large estate for corn and vines only, and indeed with a rich return of fine crops. But yet in that land of his there is no Pompeian fig or Arician vegetable, no Tarentine rose, or pleasing coppice, or thick grove, or shady plane tree; all is for use rather than for pleasure, such as one ought rather to commend, but cares not to love. A pretty bold idea, is it not, and rash judgment, to pass censure on a man of such reputation? But whenas I remember that I am writing to you, I think I am less bold than you would have me. 'In that point I am wholly undecided. 'There's an unpremeditated hendecasyllable for you. So before I begin to poetize, i'll take an easy with you. Farewell, my heart's desire, your Verus's best beloved, most distinguisht consul, master most sweet. Farewell I ever pray, sweetest soul. What a letter do you think you have written me I could make bold to say, that never did she who bore me and nurst me, write anything SO delightful, so honey-sweet. And this does not come of your fine style and eloquence: otherwise not my mother only, but all who breathe.' 1 Ad M. Caes, ii. 5. To the pupil, never was anything on earth so fine as his master's eloquence; on this theme Marcus fairly bubbles over with enthusiasm. (1)'Well, if the ancient Greeks ever wrote anything like this, let those who know decide it: for me, if I dare say so, I never read any invective of Cato's so fine as your encomtum. O if my Lord(2) could be sufficiently praised, sufficiently praised he would have been undoubtedly by you! This kind of thing is not done nowadays.(3) It were easier to match Pheidias, easier to match Apelles, easier in a word to match Demosthenes himself, or Cato himself; than to match this finisht and perfect work. Never have I read anything more refined, anything more after the ancient type, anything more delicious, anything more Latin. O happy you, to be endowed with eloquence so great! O happy I, to be tinder the charge of such a master! O arguments,(4) O arrangement, O elegance, O wit, O beauty, O words, O brilliancy, O subtilty, O grace, O treatment, O everything! Mischief take me, if you ought not to have a rod put in your hand one day, a diadem on your brow, a tribunal raised for you; then the herald would summon us all-why do I say "us"? Would summnon all, those scholars and orators: one by one you would beckon them forward with your rod and admonish them. Hitherto I have had no fear of this admonition; many things help me to enter within your school. I write this in the utmost haste; for whenas I am sending you so kindly a letter from my Lord, what needs a longer letter of mine? Farewell then, glory of Roman eloquence, boast of your friends, magnifico, most delightful man, most distinguished consul, master most sweet. 'After this you will take care not to tell so many fibs of me, especially in the Senate. A monstrous fine speech this is! O if 1 could kiss your head at every heading of it! You have looked down on all with a vengeance. This oration once read, in vain shall we study, in vain shall we toil, in vain strain every nerve. Farewell always, most sweet master.' 1 Ad M. Caes., ii. 3. 2 The Emperor Antoninus Pius is spoken of as dominus vieus. 3 This sentence is written in Greek. 4 Several of these words are Greek, and the meaning is not quite clear. Sometimes Fronto descends from the heights of eloquence to offer practical advice; as when he suggests how Marcus should deal with his suite. It is more difficult, he admits, to keep courtiers in harmony than to tame lions with a lute; but if it is to be done, it must be by eradicating jealousy. 'Do not let your friends,' says Fronto,'(1) 'envy each other, or think that what you give to another is filched from them. Keep away envy from your suite, and you will find your friends kindly and harmonious.' Here and there we meet with allusions to his daily life, which we could wish to be more frequent. He goes to the theatre or the law-courts,(2) or takes part in court ceremony, but his heart is always with his books. The vintage season, with its religious rites, was always spent by Antoninus Pius in the country. The following letters give sonic notion of a day's occupation at that time:(3) 'MY DEAREST MASTER,--I am well. To-day I studied from the ninth hour of the night to the second hour of day, after taking food. I then put on my slippers, and from time second to the third hour had a most enjoyable walk up and down before my chamber. Then booted and cloaked-for so we were commanded to appear-I went to wait upon my lord the emperor. We went a-hunting, did doughty deeds, heard a rumour that boars had been caught, but there was nothing to see. However, we climbed a pretty steep hill, and in the afternoon returned home. I went straight to my books. Off with the boots, down with the cloak; I spent a couple of hours in bed. I read Cato's speech on the Property of Pulchra, and another in which he impeaches a tribune. Ho, ho! I hear you cry to your man, Off with you as fast as you can, and bring me these speeches from the library of Apollo. No use to send: I have those books with me too. You must get round the Tiberian librarian; you will have to spend something on the matter; and when I return to town, I shall expect to go shares with him. Well, after reading these speeches I wrote a wretched trifle, destined for drowning or burning. No, indeed my attempt at writing did not come off at all to-day; the composition of a hunter or a vintager, whose shouts are echoing through my chamber, hateful and wearisome as the law-courts. What have I said? Yes, it was rightly said, for my master is an orator. I think I have caught cold, whether from walking in slippers or from writing badly, I do not know. I am always annoyed with phlegm, but to-day I seem to snivel more than usual. Well, I will pour oil on my head and go off to sleep. I don't mean to put one drop in my lamp to-day, so weary am I from riding and sneezing. Farewell, dearest and most beloved master, whom I miss, I may say, more than Rome it~dL' 1 Ad M Caes., iv. 1. 2 ii. 14 3 iv. 5,6. 'MY BELOVED MASTER,-I am well. I slept a little more than usual for my slight cold, which seems to be well again. So I spent the time from the eleventh hour of the night to the third of the day partly in reading in Cato's Agriculture, partly in writing, not quite so badly as yesterday indeed. Then, after waiting upon my father, I soothed my throat with honey-water, ejecting it without swallowing: I might say gargle, but I won't, though I think the word is found in Novius and elsewhere. After attending to my throat I went to my father, and stood by his side as he sacrificed. Then to luncheon. What do you think I had to eat? A bit of bread so big, while I watched others gobbling boiled beans, onions, and fish full of roe. Then we set to work at gathering the grapes, with plenty of sweat and shouting, and, as the quotation runs, "A few high-hanging clusters did we leave survivors of the vintage." After the sixth hour we returned home. I did a little work, and poor work at that. Then I had a long gossip with my dear mother sitting on the bed. My conversation was: What do you think my friend Fronto is doing just now? She said: And what do you think of my friend Gratia?'(1) My turn now: And what of our little Gratia,(2) the sparrowkin? After this kind of talk, and an argument as to which of you loved the other most, the gong sounded, the signal that my father had gone to the bath. We supped, after ablutions in the oil-cellar-I mean we supped after ablutions, not after ablutions in the oil-cellar; and listened with enjoyment to the rustics gibing. After returning, before turning on my side to snore, I do my task and give an account of the day to my delightful master, whom if I could long for a little more, I should not mind growing a trifle thinner. Farewell, Fronto, wherever you are, honey-sweet, my darling, my delight. Why do I want you? I can love you while far away.' One anecdote puts Marcus before us in a new light:(3) 1 Fronto's wife. 2 Fronto's daughter 3 Ad M. Caes ii. 12. 'When my father returned home from the vineyards, I mounted my horse as usual, and rode on ahead some little way. Well, there on the road was a herd of sheep, standing all crowded together as though the place were a desert, with four dogs and two shepherds, but nothing else. Then one shepherd said to another shepherd, on seeing a number of horsemen: 'I say,' says he, 'look you at those horsemen; they do a deal of robbery.' When I heard this, I clap spurs to my horse, and ride straight for the sheep. In consternation the sheep scatter; hither and thither they are fleeting and bleating. A shepherd throws his fork, and the fork falls on the horseman who came next to me. We make our escape.' We like Marcus none the worse for this spice of mischief. Another letter(1) describes a visit to a country town, and shows the antiquarian spirit of the writer 'M. CAESAR to his MASTER M. FRONTO, greeting. 'After I entered the carriage, after I took leave of you, we made a journey comfortable enough, but we had a few drops of rain to wet us. But before coming to the country-house, we broke our journey at Anagnia, a mile or so from the highroad. Then we inspected that ancient town, a miniature it is, but has in it many antiquities, temples, and religious ceremonies quite out of the way. There is not a corner without its shrine, or fane, or temple; besides, many books written on linen, which belongs to things sacred. Then on the gate as we came out was written twice, as follows: "Priest don the fell."(2) I asked one of the inhabitants what that word was. He said it was the word in the Hernican dialect for the victim's skin, which the priest puts over his conical cap when he enters the city. I found out many other things which I desired to know, but the only thing I do not desire is that you should be absent from me; that is my chief anxiety. Now for yourself, when you left that place, did you go to Aurelia or to Campania? Be sure to write to me, and say whether you have opened the vintage, or carried a host of books to the country-house; this also, whether you miss me; I am foolish to ask it, whenas you tell it me of yourself. Now if you miss me and if you love me, send me your letters often, which is a comfort and consolation to me. Indeed I should prefer ten times to read your letters than all the vines of Gaurus or the Marsians; for these Signian vines have grapes too rank and fruit too sharp in the taste, but I prefer wine to must for drinking. Besides, those grapes are nicer to eat dried than fresh-ripe; I vow I would rather tread them under foot than put my teeth in them. But I pray they may be gracious and forgiving, and grant me free pardon for these jests of mine. Farewell, best friend, dearest, most learned, sweetest master. When you see the must ferment in the vat, remember that just so in my heart the longing for you is gushing and flowing and bubbling. Good-bye.' 1 Ad Verum. Imp ii. 1, s. fin. 2 Santentum Making all allowances for conventional exaggerations, it is clear from the correspondence that there was deep love between Marcus and his preceptor. The letters cover several years in succession, but soon after the birth of Marcus's daughter, Faustina, there is a large gap. It does not follow that the letters ceased entirely, because we know part of the collection is lost; but there was probably less intercourse between Marcus and Fronto after Marcus took to the study of philosophy under the guidance of Rusticus. When Marcus succeeded to the throne in 161, the letters begin again, with slightly increased formality on Fronto's part, and they go on for some four years, when Fronto, who has been continually complaining of ill-health, appears to have died. One letter of the later period gives some interesting particulars of the emperor's public life, which are worth quoting. Fronto speaks of Marcus's victories and eloquence in the usual strain of high praise, and then continues.(1) 'The army when you took it in hand was sunk in luxury and revelry, and corrupted with long inactivity. At Antiochia the soldiers had been Wont to applaud at the stage plays, knew more of the gardens at the nearest restaurant than of the battlefield. Horses were hairy from lack of grooming, horsemen smooth because their hairs had been pulled out by the roots(2) a rare thing it was to see a soldier with hair on arm or leg. Moreover, they were better drest than armed; so much so, that Laelianus Pontius, a strict man of the old discipline, broke the cuirasses of some of them with his finger-tips, and observed cushions on the horses' backs. At his direction the tufts were cut through, and out of the horsemen's saddles came what appeared to be feathers pluckt from geese. Few of the men could vault on horseback, the rest clambered up with difficulty by aid of heel and knee and leg not many could throw a lance hurtling, most did it without force or power, as though they were things of wool-dicing was common in the camp, sleep lasted all night, or if they kept watch it was over the winecup. By what regulations to restrain such soldiers as these, and to turn them to honesty and industry, did you not learn from Hannibal's sternness, the discipline of Africanus, the acts of Metellus recorded in history. 1 Ad Verum. imp., ii. I, s.fin. 2 A common mark of the effeminate at Rome. After the preceptorial letters cease the others are concerned with domestic events, health and sickness, visits or introductions, birth or death. Thus the empperor writes to his old friend, who had shown some diffidence in seeking an interview:(1) 'To MY MASTER. 'I have a serious grievance against you, my dear master, yet indeed my grief is more than my grievance, because after so long a time I neither embraced you nor spoke to you, though you visited the palace, and the moment after I had left the prince my brother. I reproached my brother severely for not recalling me; nor durst he deny the fault.' Fronto again writes on one occasion: 'I have seen your daughter. It was like seeing you and Faustina in infancy, so much that is charming her face has taken from each of yours.' Or again, at a later date:(2) I have seen your chicks, most delightful sight that ever I saw in my life, so like you that nothing is more like than the likeness.... By the mercy of Heaven they have a healthy colour and strong lungs. One held a piece of white bread, like a little prince, the other a common piece, like a true philosophers son.' 1 Ad Verum. Imp. Aur. Caes., i. 3. 2 Ad Ant. Imp i., 3. Marcus, we know, was devoted to his children. They were delicate in health, in spite of Fronto's assurance, and only one son survived the father. We find echoes of this affection now and again in the letters. 'We have summer heat here still,' writes Marcus, 'but since my little girls are pretty well, if I may say so, it is like the bracing climate of spring to us.'(1) When little Faustina came back from the valley of the shadow of death, her father at once writes to inform Fronto.(2) The sympathy he asks he also gives, and as old age brings more and more infirmity, Marcus becomes even more solicitous for his beloved teacher. The poor old man suffered a heavy blow in the death of his grandson, on which Marcus writes:(3) 'I have just heard of your misfortune. Feeling grieved as I do when one of your joints gives you pain, what do you think I feel, dear master, when you have pain of mind?' The old man's reply, in spite of a certain self-consciousness, is full of pathos. He recounts with pride the events of a long and upright life, in which he has wronged no man, and lived in harmony with his friends and family. His affectations fall away from him, as the cry of pain is forced from his heart:-- (4)'Many such sorrows has fortune visited me with all my life long. To pass by my other afflictions, I have lost five children under the most pitiful conditions possible: for the five I lost one by one when each was my only child, suffering these blows of bereavement in such a manner that each child was born to one already bereaved. Thus I ever lost my children without solace, and got them amidst fresh grief.....' The letter continues with reflections on the nature of death, 'more to be rejoiced at than bewailed, the younger one dies,' and an arraignment of Providence not without dignity, wrung from him as it were by this last culminating misfortune. It concludes with a summing-up of his life in protest against the blow which has fallen on his grey head. 1 Ad M. Caes., v. 19 2 iv. 11 3 De Nepote Amissa 4 De Nepote Amissa 2 'Through my long life I have committed nothing which might bring dishonour, or disgrace, or shame: no deed of avarice or treachery have I done in all my day's: nay, but much generosity, much kindness, much truth and faithfulness have I shown, often at the risk of my own life. I have lived in amity with my good brother, whom I rejoice to see in possession of the highest office by your father's goodness, and by your friendship at peace and perfect rest. The offices which I have myself obtained I never strove for by any underhand means. I have cultivated my mind rather than my body; the pursuit of learning I have preferred to increasing my wealth. I preferred to be poor rather than bound by any' man's obligation, even to want rather than to beg. I have never been extravagant in spending money, I have earned it sometimes because I must. I have scrupulously spoken the truth, and have been glad to hear it spoken to me. I have thought it better to be neglected than to fawn, to be dumb than to feign, to be seldom a friend than to be often a flatterer. 1 have sought little, deserved not little. So far as I could, I have assisted each according to my means. I have given help readily to the deserving, fearlessly to the undeserving. No one by proving to be ungrateful has made me more slow to bestow promptly all benefits I could give, nor have I ever been harsh to ingratitude. (A fragmentary passage follows, in which he appears to speak of his desire for a peaceful end, and the desolation of his house.) I have suffered long and painful sickness, my beloved Marcus. Then I was visited by pitiful misfortunes: my wife I have lost, my grandson I have lost in Germany:(1) woe is me! I have lost my Decimanus. If I were made of iron, at this tine I could write no more.' It is noteworthy that in his meditations Marcus Aurelius mentions Fronto only once.(2) All his literary studies, his oratory and criticism (such as it was) is forgotten; and, says he, 'Fronto taught me not to expect natural affection from the highly-born.' Fronto really said more than this: that 'affection' is not a Roman quality, nor has it a Latin name.(3) Roman or not Roman, Marcus found affection in Fronto; and if he outgrew his master's intellectual training, he never lost touch with the true heart of the man it is that which Fronto's name brings up to his remembrance, not dissertations on compound verbs or fatuous criticisms of style. 1 In the war against the Catti. 2 Book I., 8. 3 Ad Verum, ii. 7 NOTES THIS being neither a critical edition of the text nor an emended edition of Casaubon's translation, it has not been thought necessary to add full notes. Casaubon's own notes have been omitted, because for the most part they are discursive, and not necessary to an understanding of what is written. In those which here follow, certain emendations of his are mentioned, which he proposes in his notes, and follows in the translation. In addition, one or two corrections are made where he has mistaken the Greek, and the translation might be misleading. Those which do not come under these two heads will explain themselves. The text itself has been prepared by a comparison of the editions of 1634 and 1635. It should be borne in mind that Casaubon's is often rather a paraphrase than a close translation; and it did not seem worth while to notice every variation or amplification of the original. In the original editions all that Casauhon conceives as understood, but not expressed, is enclosed in square brackets. These brackets are here omitted, as they interfere with the comfort of the reader; and so have some of the alternative renderings suggested by the translator. In a few cases, Latin words in the text have been replaced by English. Numbers in brackets refer to the Teubner text of Stich, but the divisions of the text are left unaltered. For some of the references identified I am indebted to Mr. G. H. Rendall's Marcus Aurelius. BOOK II "Both to frequent" (4). Gr. to mh, C. conjectures to me. The text is probably right: "I did not frequent public lectures, and I was taught at home." VI Idiots.... philosophers (9). The reading is doubtful, but the meaning seems to be: "simple and unlearned men" XII "Claudius Maximus" (15). The reading of the Palatine MS. (now lost) was paraklhsiz Maximon, which C. supposes to conceal the letters kl as an abbreviation of Claudius. XIII "Patient hearing... He would not" (16). C. translates his conjectural reading epimonon ollan. on proapsth Stich suggests a reading with much the same sense: .....epimonon all antoi "Strict and rigid dealing" (16). C. translates tonvn (Pal. MS.) as though from tonoz, in the sense of "strain." "rigour." The reading of other MSS. tonvn is preferable. XIII "Congiaries" (13). dianomais, "doles." XIV "Cajeta" (17). The passage is certainly corrupt. C. spies a reference to Chryses praying by the sea-shore in the Illiad, and supposes M. Aurelius to have done the like. None of the emendations suggested is satisfactory. At § XV. Book II. is usually reckoned to begin. BOOK II III. "Do, soul" (6). If the received reading be right, it must be sarcastic; but there are several variants which show how unsatisfactory it is. C. translates "en gar o bioz ekasty so par eanty", which I do not understand. The sense required is: "Do not violence to thyself, for thou hast not long to use self-respect. Life is not (v. 1. so long for each, and this life for thee is all but done." X. "honour and credit do proceed" (12). The verb has dropt out of the text, but C. has supplied one of the required meaning. XI. "Consider," etc. (52). This verb is not in the Greek, which means: "(And reason also shows) how man, etc." BOOK IV XV. "Agathos" (18): This is probably not a proper name, but the text seems to be unsound. The meaning may be "the good man ought" XVI. oikonomian (16) is a "practical benefit," a secondary end. XXXIX. "For herein lieth all...." (~3). C. translates his conjecture olan for ola. BOOK V XIV. katorqwseiz (15): Acts of "rightness" or "straightness." XXIII. "Roarer" (28): Gr. "tragedian." Ed. 1 has whoremonger,' ed. 2 corrects to "harlot," but omits to alter' the word at its second occurrence. XXV. "Thou hast... them" (33): A quotation from Homer, Odyssey, iv. 690. XXVII. "One of the poets" (33): Hesiod, Op. et Dies, 197. XXIX and XXX. (36). The Greek appears to contain quotations from sources not known, and the translation is a paraphrase. (One or two alterations are here made on the authority of the second edition.) BOOK VI XIII. "Affected and qualified" (i4): exis, the power of cohesion shown in things inanimate; fusiz, power of growth seen in plants and the like. XVII. "Wonder at them" (18): i.e. mankind. XXXVII. "Chrysippus" (42): C. refers to a passage of Plutarch De Communibus Notitiis (c. xiv.), where Chrysippus is represented as saying that a coarse phrase may be vile in itself, yet have due place in a comedy as contributing to a certain effect. XL. "Man or men..." There is no hiatus in the Greek, which means: "Whatever (is beneficial) for a man is so for other men also." XLII. There is no hiatus in the Greek. BOOK VII IX. C. translates his conjecture mh for h. The Greek means "straight, or rectified," with a play on the literal and metaphorical meaning of ortoz. XIV. endaimonia. contains the word daimwn in composition. XXII. The text is corrupt, but the words "or if it be but few" should be "that is little enough." XXIII. "Plato": Republic, vi. p. 486 A. XXV. "It will," etc. Euripides, Belerophon, frag. 287 (Nauck). "Lives," etc. Euripides, Hypsipyle, frag. 757 (Nauck). "As long," etc. Aristophanes, Acharne, 66 i. "Plato" Apology, p. 28 B. "For thus" Apology, p. 28 F. XXVI. "But, O noble sir," etc. Plato, Gorgias, 512 D. XXVII. "And as for those parts," etc. A quotation from Euripides, Chryssipus, frag. 839 (Nauck). "With meats," etc. From Euripides, Supplices, 1110. XXXIII. "They both," i.e. life and wrestling. "Says he" (63): Plato, quoted by Epictetus, Arr. i. 28, 2 and 22. XXXVII. "How know we," etc. The Greek means: "how know we whether Telauges were not nobler in character than Sophocles?" The allusion is unknown. XXVII. "Frost" The word is written by Casaubon as a proper name, "Pagus.' "The hardihood of Socrates was famous"; see Plato, Siymposium, p. 220. BOOK X XXII. The Greek means, "paltry breath bearing up corpses, so that the tale of Dead Man's Land is clearer." XXII. "The poet" (21): Euripides, frag. 898 (Nauck); compare Aeschylus, Danaides, frag. 44. XXIV. "Plato" (23): Theaetetus, p. 174 D. XXXIV. "The poet" (34): Homer, Iliad, vi. 147. XXXIV. "Wood": A translation of ulh, "matter." XXXVIII. "Rhetoric" (38): Rather "the gift of speech"; or perhaps the "decree" of the reasoning faculty. BOOK XI V. "Cithaeron" (6): Oedipus utters this cry after discovering that he has fulfilled his awful doom, he was exposed on Cithaeron as an infant to die, and the cry implies that he wishes he had died there. Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus, 1391. V. "New Comedy...," etc. C. has here strayed from the Greek rather widely. Translate: "and understand to what end the New Comedy was adopted, which by small degrees degenerated into a mere show of skill in mimicry." C. writes Comedia Vetus, Media, Nova. XII. "Phocion" (13): When about to be put to death he charged his son to bear no malice against the Athenians. XXVIII. "My heart," etc. (31): From Homer, Odyssey ix. 413. "They will" From Hesiod, Opera et Dies, 184. "Epictetus" Arr. i. II, 37. XXX. "Cut down grapes" (35): Correct "ears of corn." "Epictetus"(36): Arr. 3, 22, 105. GLOSSARY This Glossary includes all proper names (excepting a few which are insignificant or unknown) and all obsolete or obscure words. ADRIANUS, or Hadrian (76-138 A. D.), 14th Roman Emperor. Agrippa, M. Vipsanius (63-12 B.C.), a distinguished soldier under Augustus. Alexander the Great, King of Macedonia, and Conqueror of the East, 356-323 B.C. Antisthenes of Athens, founder of the sect of Cynic philosophers, and an opponent of Plato, 5th century B.C Antoninus Pius, 15th Roman Emperor, 138-161 AD. one of the best princes that ever mounted a throne. Apathia: the Stoic ideal was calmness in all circumstance an insensibility to pain, and absence of all exaltation at, pleasure or good fortune. Apelles, a famous painter of antiquity. Apollonius of Alexandria, called Dyscolus, or the 'ill-tempered,' a great grammarian. Aposteme, tumour, excrescence. Archimedes of Syracuse 287-212 B.C., the most famous mathematician of antiquity. Athos, a mountain promontory at the N. of the Aegean Sea. Augustus, first Roman Emperor (ruled 31 B.C.-14 AD.). Avoid, void. BACCHIUS: there Were several persons of this name, and the one meant is perhaps the musician. Brutus (1) the liberator of the Roman people from their kings, and (2) the murderer of Caesar. Both names were household words. Caesar, Caius, Julius, the Dictator and Conqueror. Caieta, a town in Latium. Camillus, a famous dictator in the early days of the Roman Republic. Carnuntum, a town on the Danube in Upper Pannonia. Cato, called of Utica, a Stoic who died by his own hand after the battle of Thapsus, 46 B.C. His name was proverbial for virtue and courage. Cautelous, cautious. Cecrops, first legendary King of Athens. Charax, perhaps the priestly historian of that name, whose date is unknown, except that it must be later than Nero. Chirurgeon, surgeon. Chrysippus, 280-207 B.C., a Stoic philosopher, and the founder of Stoicism as a systematic philosophy. Circus, the Circus Maximus at Rome, where games were held. There were four companies who contracted to provide horses, drivers, etc. These were called Factiones, and each had its distinguishing colour: russata (red), albata (white), veneta (blue), prasina (green). There was high rivalry between them, and riots and bloodshed not infrequently. Cithaeron, a mountain range N. of Attica. Comedy, ancient; a term applied to the Attic comedy of Aristophanes and his time, which criticised persons and politics, like a modern comic journal, such as Punck. See New Comedy. Compendious, short. Conceit, opinion. Contentation, contentment. Crates, a Cynic philosopher of the 4th century B.C. Croesus, King of Lydia, proverbial for wealth; he reigned 560-546 B.C. Cynics, a school of philosophers, founded by Antisthenes. Their texts were a kind of caricature of Socraticism. Nothing was good but virtue, nothing bad but vice. The Cynics repudiated all civil and social claims, and attempted to return to what they called a state of nature. Many of them were very disgusting in their manners. DEMETRIUS of Phalerum, an Athenian orator, statesman, philosopher, and poet. Born 345 B.C. Democritus of Abdera (460-361 B.C.), celebrated as the 'laughing philosopher,' whose constant thought was 'What fools these mortals be.' He invented the Atomic Theory. Dio of Syracuse, a disciple of Plato, and afterwards tyrant of Syracuse. Murdered 353 B.C. Diogenes, the Cynic, born about 412 B.C., renowned for his rudeness and hardihood. Diognetus, a painter. Dispense with, put up with. Dogmata, pithy sayings, or philosophical rules of life. EMPEDOCLES of Agrigentum, fl. 5th century B.C., a philosopher, who first laid down that there were "four elements." He believed in the transmigration of souls, and the indestructibility of matter. Epictetus, a famous Stoic philosopher. He was of Phrygia, at first a slave, then freedman, lame, poor, and contented. The work called Encheiridion was compiled by a pupil from his discourses. Epicureans, a sect of philosophers founded by Epicurus, who "combined the physics of Democritus," i.e. the atomic theory, "with the ethics of Aristippus." They proposed to live for happiness, but the word did not bear that coarse and vulgar sense originally which it soon took. Epicurus of Samos, 342-270 B.C. Lived at Athens in his "gardens," an urbane and kindly, if somewhat useless, life. His character was simple and temperate, and had none of the vice or indulgence which was afterwards associated with the name of Epicurean. Eudoxus of Cnidus, a famous astronomer and physician of the 4th century B. C. FATAL, fated. Fortuit, chance (adj.). Fronto, M. Cornelius, a rhetorician and pleader, made consul in 143 A.D. A number of his letters to M, Aur. and others are extant. GRANUA, a tributary of the Danube. HELICE, ancient capital city of Achaia, swallowed up by an earthquake, 373 B.C. Helvidius Priscus, son-in-law of Thrasea Paetus, a noble man and a lover of liberty. He was banished by Nero, and put to death by Vespasian. Heraclitus of Ephesus, who lived in the 6th century B.C. He wrote on philosophy and natural science. Herculaneum, near Mount Vesuvius, buried by the eruption of 79 AD. Hercules, p. 167, should be Apollo. See Muses. Hiatus, gap. Hipparchus of Bithynia, an astronomer of the 2nd century B.C., "The true father of astronomy." Hippocrates of Cos, about 460-357 B.C. One of the most famous physicians of antiquity. IDIOT, means merely the non-proficient in anything, the "layman," he who was not technically trained in any art, craft, or calling. LEONNATUS, a distinguished general under Alexander the Great. Lucilla, daughter of M. Aurelius, and wife of Verus, whom she survived. MAECENAS, a trusted adviser of Augustus, and a munificent patron of wits and literary men. Maximus, Claudius, a Stoic philosopher. Menippus, a Cynic philosopher. Meteores, ta metewrologika, "high philosophy," used specially of astronomy and natural philosophy, which were bound up with other speculations. Middle Comedy, something midway between the Old and New Comedy. See Comedy, Ancient, and New Comedy. Middle things, Book 7, XXV. The Stoics divided all things into virtue, vice, and indifferent things; but as "indifferent" they regarded most of those things which the world regards as good or bad, such as wealth or poverty. Of these, some were "to be desired," some "to be rejected." Muses, the nine deities who presided over various kinds of poesy, music, etc. Their leader was Apollo, one of whose titles is Musegetes, the Leader of the Muses. NERVES, strings. New Comedy, the Attic Comedy of Menander and his school, which criticised not persons but manners, like a modern comic opera. See Comedy, Ancient. PALESTRA, wrestling school. Pancratiast, competitor in the pancratium, a combined contest which comprised boxing and wrestling. Parmularii, gladiators armed with a small round shield (parma). Pheidias, the most famous sculptor of antiquity. Philippus, founder of the Macedonian supremacy, and father of Alexander the Great. Phocion, an Athenian general and statesman, a noble and high-minded man, 4th century B.C. He was called by Demosthenes, "the pruner of my periods." He was put to death by the State in 317, on a false suspicion, and left a message for his son "to bear no grudge against the Athenians." Pine, torment. Plato of Athens, 429-347 B.C. He used the dialectic method invented by his master Socrates. He was, perhaps, as much poet as philosopher. He is generally identified with the Theory of Ideas, that things are what they are by participation with our eternal Idea. His "Commonwealth" was a kind of Utopia. Platonics, followers of Plato. Pompeii, near Mount Vesuvius, buried in the eruption of 79 A. D. Pompeius, C. Pompeius Magnus, a very successful general at the end of the Roman Republic (106-48 B.C.). Prestidigitator, juggler. Pythagoras of Samos, a philosopher, scientist, and moralist of the 6th century B.C. QUADI, a tribe of S. Germany. M. Aurelius carried on war against them, and part of this book was written in the field. RICTUS, gape, jaws. Rusticus, Q. Junius, or Stoic philosopher, twice made consul by M. Aurelius. SACRARY, shrine. Salaminius, Book 7, XXXVII. Leon of Sala-mis. Socrates was ordered by the Thirty Tyrants to fetch him before them, and Socrates, at his own peril, refused. Sarmatae, a tribe dwelling in Poland. Sceletum, skeleton. Sceptics, a school of philosophy founded by Pyrrho (4th contury B.C.). He advocated "suspension of judgment," and taught the relativity of knowledge and impossibility of proof. The school is not unlike the Agnostic school. Scipio, the name of two great soldiers, P. Corn. Scipio Africanus, conqueror of Hannibal, and P. Corn. Sc. Afr. Minor, who came into the family by adoption, who destroyed Carthage. Secutoriani (a word coined by C.), the Sececutores, light-armed gladiators, who were pitted against others with net and trident. Sextus of Chaeronea, a Stoic philosopher, nephew of Plutarch. Silly, simple, common. Sinuessa, a town in Latium. Socrates, an Athenian philosopher (469-399 B.C.), founder of the dialectic method. Put to death on a trumped-up charge by his countrymen. Stint, limit (without implying niggardliness). Stoics, a philosophic system founded by Zeno (4th century B.C.), and systematised by Chrysippus (3rd century B.C.). Their physical theory was a pantheistic materialism, their summum bonum "to live according to nature." Their wise man needs nothing, he is sufficient to himself; virtue is good, vice bad, external things indifferent. THEOPHRASTUS, a philosopher, pupil of Aristotle, and his successor as president of the Lyceum. He wrote a large number of works on philosophy and natural history. Died 287 B.C. Thrasea, P. Thrasea Pactus, a senator and Stoic philosopher, a noble and courageous man. He was condemned to death by Nero. Tiberius, 2nd Roman Emperor (14-31 AD.). He spent the latter part of his life at Capreae (Capri), off Naples, in luxury or debauchery, neglecting his imperial duties. To-torn, torn to pieces. Trajan, 13th Roman Emperor, 52-117 A.D. VERUS, Lucius Aurelius, colleague of M. Aurelius in the Empire. He married Lucilla, daughter of M. A., and died 169 A.D. Vespasian, 9th Roman Emperor XENOCRATES of Chalcedon, 396-314 B.C., a philosopher, and president of the Academy. 
43618	----	HUMAN LIFE BY S. S. KNIGHT [Illustration] NEW YORK R. F. FENNO & COMPANY 18 EAST 17TH STREET COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY S. S. KNIGHT CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE HABITAT OF MAN 9 II. THE LENGTH OF TIME DURING WHICH MAN HAS EXISTED 29 III. THE PHYSICAL LIMITATIONS OF EXISTENCE 56 IV. THE PURPOSE OF LIFE 76 V. KNOWLEDGE AND EDUCATION 99 VI. RELIGION AND ETHICS 120 VII. LOVE 156 VIII. PROBLEMS OF THE FUTURE 180 DEDICATION This volume is dedicated to my Mother and my Wife--the two women whose influence has most largely shaped my life, and whose companionship has afforded me so much happiness. It was written with the hope that it might be of value to my two children, and may they find as much happiness in life as has the author. HUMAN LIFE CHAPTER I THE HABITAT OF MAN In reviewing the facts concerning humanity, which are well authenticated at the present date, with the object of getting a composite view of the greatest of all "world riddles"--"Life"--possibly nothing tends so largely to expand our mental horizon as a study of the earth itself or man's place of abode. The ideas of the educated and cultured mind, at the beginning of the twentieth century, upon cosmogony, are necessarily of such a character that man's heretofore undisputed boast of being the objective and acme of creation or evolution is forced into that great mass of theories which science has proven to be absolutely untenable. Since the relative importance of the factors of heredity and adaptation has become known, the environment, or conditions surrounding man's existence in times past, is of exceptional importance, as, from an understanding of these prehistoric limitations, we are better able to judge what must have been the achievement of the individual and the race than we could be when in ignorance of these facts. The length of prehistoric time (so far as our earth is concerned) has been the subject of much intelligent labor and thought, as well as the occasion for much dissenting of opinion and more or less designed misstatement. Until very recently, it has been difficult to reconcile the theories, as promulgated by the authorities in the various departments of science; but, notwithstanding this, some light may be obtained by the summarization of the most plausible hypotheses now advocated. We cannot take the space to go into detail concerning these, but will merely touch upon the most salient points. The constancy of the supply of heat furnished by the sun and the division of the year into definite seasons was one of the first phenomena which attracted the attention of man at the dawn of history, and in the many accounts of the creation which we find in literature we see the feeble attempts of man to account for what he observed. Although the knowledge which we have at the present time is not complete enough to warrant any feeling of pride, yet we do know enough to say, with certainty, some things concerning the solar system. We know that our sun cannot forever radiate away its heat into space without sometime becoming as cold or colder than we are, unless the energy which it is losing in the form of heat be restored to it by some means not at this time known. Sir William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) has calculated that at the present rate of solar radiation, which amounts to about twenty-eight calories per minute, per square centimeter, at the distance of the mean radius of the earth's orbit, it would have taken somewhat more than fifteen million years for the heat generated by the contraction of the sun's mass from the orbit of the outer planet, Neptune, to its present size, to have been radiated away into space. This means that gravity, as a source of heat development, at the rate of solar radiation now known, would account for, perhaps, twenty million years' expenditure of energy in reducing the sun's diameter to but one-thirteen-thousandth part of what it once was. Not only does the nebular hypothesis fall short of accounting for the facts, as will subsequently be shown in this one particular of the length of time during which our solar system has existed, but it does not account for the variation in the obliquity of the poles of the planets, which are the attendants upon the sun; nor does gravitative attraction alone enable us to account for the tremendous velocities of some of the stars through space, such as Arcturus,--so that it may be safely assumed that we shall be forced to modify our ideas as to the value of the nebular hypothesis as a working basis, before we can harmonize our deductions from astronomical and geological grounds. Fortunately, the study of the spiral nebulæ has done much to elucidate our conceptions of the formation of the planetary systems, and from the discoveries made concerning these highly attenuated bodies of matter, a new hypothesis has been formed which will completely harmonize, perhaps, with these above stated facts, which could not be made to accord with the nebular theory as previously held. One source of the continued acquisition of energy by our sun, whose value is hard to estimate, is the shooting stars, or meteors, which constantly fall into it. Astronomical records show that, from the earth alone, no less than twenty million shooting stars are daily within the limits of vision, and inasmuch as the solar system is moving with a velocity of some twenty miles per second through space, it will be seen that the number of meteors which would come within the influence of the sun, being as it is about one and one-third million times the volume of the earth, would be practically infinite. What then must be said of the amount of energy acquired by the sun from these, although each meteor may have a mass of but a few grams, and perhaps may be only several hundred miles away from its successor? It is clearly demonstrated that, if no such additions of energy were received by our sun, in about ten million years its diameter would be reduced to one-half of what it is now, and its mass, where now it exists as a gas, would then become a solid, at least upon the surface, and the quantity of heat received by the earth would become so small that life here, as we know of it, would be an impossibility. But if it be granted that the sun annually gathers, by its gravitative attraction, a combined mass of matter equal to the one-hundredth part of our earth, at a distance away from its center equal to the main radius of the earth's orbit, the energy dissipated by its radiation of heat at its present rate would be accounted for, while the sensible heat of the sun would not diminish, and the supply would be kept up indefinitely. That such additions of mass are made, there can be no doubt, but as to their quantity, we cannot, with our present knowledge, even hazard a guess. In speaking of the solar heat and man's dependence upon it in a constant definite quantity, as one of the conditions of his existence, perhaps it will give us some just appreciation of his place in nature when we consider that the earth receives somewhat less than one two-billionth part of the heat radiated away by the sun, and while this expression makes the quantity which we receive seem rather small, it is, nevertheless, large enough annually to melt a layer of ice one hundred and seventy-five feet thick--all over the surface of the earth, and is a little more than one six-thousandth part of the quantity of heat which would be generated by the burning of a mass of coal as large as the sun. The researches of Halley and Adams have shown that from some cause, probably the result of gravity acting in conjunction with the varying eccentricity of the earth's orbit, the motion of the moon has been slightly accelerated as time went on, while the diurnal motion of the earth has been reduced by the action of the tides, and that the amount of this loss, in time, is equal to about one second in the length of our day, in 168,000 years. Now, this retardation in the earth's motion has not taken place at a uniform rate if caused by the reaction of the tides, as the nearer to the earth the moon was, the greater would be the tides, and, consequently, the greater would be the reaction; _i. e._, the retardation. But assuming that this retardation took place, on the whole, at twice the rate now prevailing, we would still have a period of six million years since the moon was thrown off by the earth, when our days were but three hours long. Turning from the theories of astronomy, which are obviously more or less inaccurate, owing to their very nature and the character and duration of the observations upon which they are based, we come to the nearer and more certain deductions of geology. Here we have the phenomena of denudation and deposition with which to deal, and inasmuch as these are measurable at many places, and under many conditions upon the earth to-day, it is safe to assume that computations made from these measurements cannot be far from the truth. We know that practically all of the great formations of the earth were depositions of material from water which contained them, and that, in many cases, heat caused these strata to be metamorphosed or crystallized ages after they were deposited, and that in this crystallization many of the fossils remaining imbedded in the deposited matter were destroyed. Concerning this deposition we know that it is going on to-day in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, where, in the deeper portions the Globigerina ooze is filling in these depressions with a deposit, resembling chalk, at the rate of perhaps an inch per century. We know that the Gulf of Mexico and several other ocean areas are being filled in with silt at the rate of as high as three inches per century. This silt is brought down in the tributary rivers and emptied into the gulfs. We also know that large areas in the Indian Ocean are being covered with coral and the débris from the coral reefs. We are absolutely certain that every geological period has had its characteristic fauna and flora, and that, in both the animal and vegetable kingdoms, some persistent types have connected it with both the past and the future, so that the fossils have become the "open sesame" to the geological records. We further know that the strata composing the earth's surface are subject to elevation and subsidence, such as is now going on in the delta of the Nile, on the coast of the Netherlands, and in many other places, and that such movement is a measurable quantity, given only the necessary time. The total thickness of known strata measures but about one-three hundred and twentieth part of the earth's diameter, or, in round numbers, twenty-five miles. Thirty thousand feet of this is quite readily identified as belonging to the old Archaic or Laurentian period, and constitutes the oldest stratified deposit known. Even in this, we find the remains of the Eozoon Canadense, which is now universally acknowledged to be the petrifaction of a foraminiferous living organism with a chambered shell. This means that, at this time, the earth's atmosphere must have been very similar to what it is at the present, and that the temperature of the sea was somewhere between the boiling and the freezing points of water. What time had elapsed since the earth was thrown off by the sun in an incandescent state can only be faintly imagined. At the rate of deposition given for the deepest of ocean deposits, this Archaic period would have taken perhaps thirty-six million years; but inasmuch as the water may have been far warmer then than now, and the rainfall more abundant, and the forces of denudation in all respects more active, this figure may be excessive. The next eighteen thousand feet of strata are easily identified as Lower Silurian, by the Diatoms which occur imbedded in them, and these formations include some of the largest deposits of limestone known. At our rate of calculation, this deposit would require no less than nine and one-half million years, and, in assuming this figure, no account is made of the intervals of time during which no deposit took place, although such periods of inactivity must necessarily have been. The Upper Silurian strata consists of twenty thousand feet, the fossils of which are the lower fishes, and for which we must assign a period of time equal to no less than twenty-five million years, inasmuch as these deposits are limestones and sandstones, or the remains of water-living animals and plants. Coming now to the Devonian and Carboniferous periods, the strata of the former, which is filled with fossils of the dipnoi, and the latter with those of the amphibia; we have deposits aggregating about forty thousand feet, and inasmuch as long intervals of time must have existed during the subsidence and elevation, and _vice versa_, of the land, while the process of coal-forming was going on, it is certain that our rate of deposition as heretofore used, is entirely too high. Dawson and Huxley have estimated, after most careful investigation, that the period of time consumed in laying down the coal measures, could not be less than six million years, and upon this basis it is safe to assume that between seventy-five and eighty million years were consumed in laying down the Devonian and Carboniferous deposits. This makes Paleozoic time occupy about one hundred and fifty million years, which is probably under- rather than over-estimated. The flora of the Carboniferous period was composed of tree ferns of the Sagillaria and Lepidodendron species which have since become extinct; but the Lingula, a shell in the Cambrian and Upper Silurian formations, and the Terbratula, another shell, is found in the Devonian rocks. Both of these are found living to-day, of the same identical genus and species. In the Silurian rocks, we find the remains of an air-breathing scorpion, very similar to that found to-day, which shows that the atmosphere at that remote period was practically the same as we have at the present time. In the Mesozoic time, we find deposits aggregating some fifteen thousand feet, and inasmuch as the Triassic sandstones were formations of slow deposition, our heretofore established rate will not answer the conditions. It has been estimated, after the most careful study of the Triassic and Jurassic measures, that probably no less than thirty million years were occupied by these periods, and that the chalk deposits of the Cretaceous must have taken at the present known rate, in like formations, somewhat over six million years of ceaseless activity. This gives to Mesozoic time a period of thirty-six million years, as a minimum, and, from what we know of the rate of biological evolution, this figure is conservative. The first period of the Mesozoic time was characterized by monotremes, the Jurassic by marsupials, and the latter by the first of man's direct progenitors, the placentals. The flora of this period consisted almost entirely of gymnosperms, or naked seed plants, and, as far as we know, at the close of this second great division of geological time, conditions on the earth were, in all respects, very much as they are to-day. Concerning the climatic conditions at the beginning of the Cenozoic time, we have every reason to believe that from the commencement of the Lower Silurian epoch, until then, there were no climatic zones upon the earth. Not only have coral formations been found in what are now Arctic waters, when we know that such reefs are formed only in waters where a moderately warm temperature is constantly maintained, but the cephalipods of the genus Ammonitoidea are found in what is now the Antarctic zone, and in the torrid. While, at the present time, we cannot see how the obliquity of the earth's poles to the plane of the ecliptic could have been changed after the earth began its career as an independent planet, yet the facts above stated show that the climatic zones must have been unknown during the Tertiary period. Our common cypress, which is now so plentiful in Florida and California, had very close relatives living as far north as Spitzbergen, as lately as Miocene time. Magnolias, which are now so abundant in all of the Gulf States, are plentifully found in the Miocene strata of Greenland. Returning to the length of the Tertiary period, it is well to note that, covering Wyoming and Nebraska, there was an immense lake, at least as large as Lake Superior is to-day, and into which several quite large rivers emptied, whose head waters were in the surrounding mountain ranges. This lake was at one time at least five thousand feet deep, and was completely filled up by the fine mud and silt, as the formation now shows, although at the known rate of filling in of smaller modern lakes, into which rivers, which originate in glaciers, empty, this would have taken the better part of fifty thousand years. This figure is particularly conservative, as during the Eocene period, there could have been neither glaciers nor melting snowfields to assist in the denudation at the head waters of the tributary rivers. During the Miocene period, many of the best geologists hold that America and Europe were connected, and there are certain similarities in their fauna and flora which make this very probable. Supposing that this depression which constitutes the bed of the North Atlantic Ocean, took place at the highest known rate of subsidence, as measured upon the coast of Sweden to-day, it is almost impossible to state the amount of time that necessarily elapsed from the beginning of the sinking of this strip until it finally went below the surface of the water. That such changes in level did take place in the Tertiary period, no one can doubt, as chalk deposits in England, which must have been laid down in the deep oceans, have now an elevation of thousands of feet. The Nummulite limestone of this same period is found in both the Alps and the Himalayas, at an elevation as great as ten thousand feet. The consideration of the fact that the greatest known rate of elevation or subsidence is, perhaps, scarcely more than two feet per century makes the figure of five hundred thousand years, as a minimum for Pliocene time, seem rather conservative. Toward the close of the Tertiary era the finishing touches were placed upon some of the greatest of the geological works. The folding of the strata, which had been going on for a long period in Eastern New York, was brought to an end by a violent rupture therein, and the out-rushing igneous rock, which was subsequently cooled rapidly by the floods of water flowing over it, gave us the beautiful palisades of the Hudson River. In the west, this folding resulted in the Rocky Mountains and the Coast Range, with their attendant high plateaux. In Europe, the Alps and the Pyrenees Mountains both belong to this period, while the grandest and highest of all mountain chains, the Himalayas, of Asia, were the culminating effect of the gigantic foldings of the earth's crust. The deposits of the Tertiary period will aggregate somewhat more than three thousand feet, and, inasmuch as this entire time was one of continued change in level, or the fluctuation between the subsidence of the earth's strata on the one hand and the elevation on the other (particularly in the Pliocene period), it is very hard to form any conjecture as to the actual amount of time required to do this work. Certainly, from what we know of the rate at which like phenomena are taking place at the present time in Northeastern North America, in Northwestern Europe, and Western Asia, the figure, as sometimes given, of ten million years seems very conservative. In the brief review which we have just given, of what can be conservatively considered the minimum limits of geological time, we have taken into account generally only periods of activity, and in but a few cases has any estimation been hazarded as to the proportion which this was of the whole time consumed in bringing about the changes which the fossils show so clearly to have taken place during the various epochs. But one thing should be kept clearly in mind, and that is, that no matter how long geological time may seem, it is but an infinitely small fraction of the period which must have elapsed since the world came into existence, as this globe had to cool down to below the boiling point of water before any geological records could be made. When thought of in this way, the Laurentian period becomes as but yesterday, and even man's dwelling place, which seems relatively so large, dwindles into nothingness, when compared with the vastness of the interstellar spaces or the size of the larger stars. Whoever conscientiously endeavors to form any idea of the teachings of astronomy and geology, must necessarily feel any prejudice which he had for man as the object and culmination of either the evolutionary or creative power, shrink at a tremendous rate, while over his mentality comes the sense of his diminutiveness, which awakens in him a brotherly feeling for even the primitive single-celled Laurentian Eozoon Canadensis, or the unnucleated monera of the present time. It must have been this same sense-perception in the Hindoos which made them worship and revere life wherever they found it, and which inspired them with so active a sympathy toward all living things. CHAPTER II THE LENGTH OF TIME DURING WHICH MAN HAS EXISTED In the preceding chapter, no mention has been made of the length of the Quaternary sub-division of Cenozoic time, and it will now be our aim to briefly review this period and then investigate the evidence which we have as to how much of this time man has been a portion of its fauna. With the opening of the Quaternary Period, we come to what is undoubtedly the most remarkable era in all geological time. From a climate which had been, heretofore, uniformly, warmly temperate, with but few exceptions, we come to a period known as the Glacial, in which, by a depression in the temperature, all vegetation and animals in high latitudes were killed; _viz._: in the central west--almost to the Ohio River; in Europe--to the northern part of Italy--while the addition of vast quantities of ice to the oceans, destroyed all life in them to about the latitude of the northern portion of the Gulf of Mexico. Nor was this period of cold confined to the northern hemisphere, as the southern part of South America and Africa show. Concerning the cause of the Glacial Period, but little is positively known. Of the theories which have been advanced, it seems very plausible that perhaps two more clearly account for the conditions which must have then existed, if we consider them together, than all the rest. The geological record teaches us that in the so-called Glacial Period, at least two distinct epochs of low temperature, and the consequential accumulation of ice, are to be definitely discerned. Still further back, we see evidence of glacial action in the Permian Strata, and possibly as far back as the Cambrian formations, although these eras of cold are not comparable with the period at the beginning of the Quaternary time. Croll, the Scottish physicist, first called attention to the fact that at certain regular intervals of time, the precession of the equinoxes, and the eccentricity of the earth's orbit, would so act in conjunction as to render favorable a great many conditions which would certainly all point toward a period of extreme cold. He calculated that the earth was traveling around the sun in an ellipse of maximum eccentricity, and that winter was occurring in the northern hemisphere when the earth was furthest from the sun, for the last time some quarter of a million years ago. About eighty thousand years after this date, the coincidence of the two phenomena reached a maximum effect, and about eighty thousand years later, climatic conditions were again about as we have them to-day. Upon this hypothesis, another period of extreme cold must have existed some one-half million years earlier, as calculations upon the same premises as were used in the last computation will show. It is likewise true that, according to this theory, there must have been at least one other such period further back in geological time, and it is now to be seen whether our records, as shown by the strata, establish these facts. Prior to the enunciation of this theory by Croll, the famous English geologist, Sir Charles Lyell, from measurements of the strata, had calculated that the last period of glaciation occurred about as Croll stated, and that a period of cold and ice far more intense and extensive occurred some four or five hundred thousand years earlier. Mr. Laing has shown that, in order to make such conditions as must have existed at this time, not only is a low temperature necessary, but a certain amount of land must have an elevation sufficient to give the required initial fall to the ice river, so that it may move over the obstacles in its way, and that the higher such elevations in the Arctic zones, and the greater the humidity of the air when it strikes such elevated polar plateaux, the more augmented will be the probability of glacial activity. The rapidity of the glacier's movement can have no bearing upon the duration of the glacial period, inasmuch as a certain length of time may have been required for the ice-cap to form and push forward to a certain place, and it may have remained there for an indeterminate period, governed only by the amount of snow deposited upon the original source, and the rapidity of melting at the moraine. In Eastern England, no less than four distinct boulder clays have been found separated by the débris deposited from the moraines of each ice sheet, and a few hundred miles away in France, the record is so certain that we know that the Arctic fauna and flora gave away twice for that of the warmer parts of the Temperate zones. We are certain that both that portion of Scandinavia and Canada, which were the centers of the great European and American ice-caps, had an elevation greatly in excess of what it is to-day, at the time of the glacial epoch. During the first glaciation, Eastern Canada, or that part south of Hudson's Bay, was certainly twenty-five hundred feet higher than it is now, and the area covered by ocean formations or marine beds to the southward, show that at the same time these sections were very much lower than they are at the present day. On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the elevation in Norway was at least a couple of thousand feet more than at present; while both England and Ireland have risen a considerable amount since this period. There are other ways by which we may form some estimate of the time which has elapsed since the melting away of the great glaciers, besides that given by Croll. From measurements taken on Table Rock, at Niagara Falls, which we know has receded in post-glacial times from Lewiston to the place which it occupies at present, we are certain that Lyell was not far wrong when he estimated this to have taken at least sixty thousand years. Shaler, on entirely different grounds,--mainly the redistribution of certain angiosperms--has arrived at figures in excess of these. Calculations made upon the canyons of the Columbia, San Joaquin, and Colorado Rivers, all show the estimations previously given to be conservative. Of course, the figures given will apply only to the time which has elapsed since the melting of the American ice-cap, as we have no means of knowing that the American and European glaciers acted at all in unison in their retreat to the northward. The manner in which we can get some idea of the length of time required to account for the enormous quantity of work done in the Champlain period, is by taking into account the deposits which lie in almost all of the great river valleys which were covered by the glaciers, or whose watersheds were made into lakes by the subsidence of the land to the north, and the rapid melting of that portion of the ice-cap which contained stones, dirt, and other material picked up in the travels of the glacier across the country. The Rhine, the Rhone, and the Danube in Europe, and the St. Lawrence, the Connecticut, and the Mississippi in America, all flow through valleys lined with cliffs of loess. These accumulations overlying the coarser sands and gravels, and conforming to the river valleys, have been measured in the case of the Rhine, and were found to be about eight hundred feet in depth. It is unreasonable to suppose that these deposits being, as they are, material thrown down out of the water after the rivers had lost their transporting power, could have accumulated at a greater rate than that now going on in the rivers, such as the Mississippi and the Nile, to-day, and if this was the case, these deposits must have taken no less than three hundred and twenty-five thousand years to form. Inasmuch as this work was all done during the Champlain period, this figure can be safely taken as the minimum for the measure of the duration of that time. Arriving now at the recent period of Quaternary time, we find in Europe evidences of a very short and less intense period of cold; in the remains of the reindeer and other Arctic animals in southern France. Associated with these, although of a later period, we find the bones of the cave bear, hyena, and lion, and in many of the localities intimately associated with these are the bones of man. In fact, since the first discovery of the paleolithic implements in the gravels of the Somme, there have been almost countless finds of human remains in England, France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, and Greece, in Europe; Algiers, Morocco, Egypt, and Natal, in Africa; in China, Japan, India, Syria, and Palestine, in Asia; in Brazil and Argentina in South America, and in no less than ten States of this country, associated with stone implements or paleoliths, and all of which, dating from the beginning of the Quaternary period, have established the certainty of human existence during the entire Quaternary era, beyond the possibility of doubt. The evidences of the existence of the human species during Tertiary time are many, and hardly a year goes by without adding another discovery of human remains in the deposits belonging to this period. To begin with, the existence of man so generally and widely distributed as we find him to be at the beginning of the Quaternary period, is almost _prima facie_ evidence of his occupation of the earth for some time previous. With the means of communication and the motives for it, such as they must have been at this remote period, we know that thousands of years would have been required to scatter any species all over the earth, as we have seen that man was from the locations of the remains found. Further than this, there are three well-authenticated cases where the bones of Tertiary animals have been found, upon which there were cuts made by edged tools, which could have been made only by human agency. Since these have been discovered, crude implements as well as human bones have been found in no less than a dozen places in both the Eastern and Western Hemispheres, which attest, beyond doubt, to man's having existed since the Middle Miocene or early Pliocene time. We not only have the opinions of such authorities as Rames, Hamy, Mortillet, Quatrefages, and Delauney, to accept in this matter, but the more recent thorough investigations of Laing and Haeckel. Turning now from geological evidence to that founded upon other observations, as to the length of time man has been an inhabitant of the earth, perhaps one of the most interesting discoveries was that of the Tumuli or mounds of shells of such animals as the oyster, cockle, limpet, etc., and, along with this, the bones of birds, wild animals, and fish, together with stone implements and rude pottery. These kitchen-middens were first discovered in Denmark, but they have since been found in many countries where savages have lived along the coast. In many of the Swiss lakes, such as Zurich and Neufchatel, there have been found piles driven into the ground, around which, in dredging, human bones, as well as stone implements, have been brought up, and which are now known to have been the dwelling-places and remains of prehistoric peoples, who located in this manner so as to protect themselves from prowling wild animals and from their savage neighbors. From the amount and character of these deposits, we are forced to assume that the habitations were used for a long period, and from geological computation of the time required to deposit the silt around these piles in the Swiss Lake-villages, and from the similarity of the remains in the Danish peat-mosses and the kitchen-middens no period could be assigned to their antiquity of less than seven thousand years. Our earliest record of historic man is found in the Valley of the Nile, where we can say with certainty that, over seven thousand years ago, there existed a high state of civilization under the old Egyptian Empire. Menes was the first recorded king who sat on the throne, and during the six dynasties of kings which composed this period, we see the rise to supremacy of Memphis, the building of the pyramids, the accumulation of a varied and extensive literature, and the perfection of the industrial and fine arts. In fact, so faithfully and indestructibly were the lines of human faces reproduced upon stone and other materials, that, at this day, we have no difficulty in identifying the different races of men from their resemblance at the present time. Menes, himself, carried to completion the great engineering feat of turning the course of the Nile so as to obtain a site for his capital, at Memphis. His successor was not only a patron but a practitioner of the art of medicine. From the monuments and papyri of the great tombs of Ghizeh and Sakkara, we have learned so much of the social and political life of Egypt at this period through the deciphering of the Rosetta stone by Champollion, that we may be said to have a very accurate knowledge of mankind, as his existence was conditioned in Egypt from four to five thousand years before the beginning of our present era. From Memphis, the seat of the government first shifts to Heracleopolis, and then to Thebes, and, during these changes, we see Egypt go back into the night of semi-barbarism (comparatively speaking), and after a long period of time to again develop a high state of civilization, under a new language and a new religion, in the eleventh dynasty. Egyptian influence extended from the equator on the south, to southern Syria on the north, and Isis and Osiris were the deities that commanded the veneration of the then civilized world. The kings of this dynasty built the famous labyrinth of Fayoum, where in the desert was formed a large artificial lake with tunnels and sluices so arranged that the annual inundations of the Nile were partially controlled by allowing the surplus water to fill this lake, and in the time of a drouth, letting it out to irrigate the valley as needed. Many temples, obelisks, and statues were erected, and the period was one of social and literary activity. About two thousand years before Christ, the seat of the government was transferred from Thebes to the Delta, and, shortly after this, the Hyksos dynasty began with a conquest by these invaders, who laid all Egypt under tribute. The conquerors adopted both the civilization and the religion of their subjects, and reigned over Egypt somewhat more than five hundred years. Their expulsion marks the beginning of the new empire, which extended the Egyptian influence from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean, and subjugated both Babylon and Nineveh. From this time on, we are on certain and firm historical grounds, and with the founding of the great library at Alexandria, by Ptolemy Philadelphus, Egypt received her last great literary impulse, and since the fourth century of this era the part which she has played in the struggle of humanity has been inconsiderable. From other data gathered by Horner, who sunk numerous shafts across the Nile Valley at Memphis, and who brought up copper knives and pottery from depths approximately of sixty feet, it has been calculated, from the rate of deposition in that valley to-day, that these remains are upward of twenty-five thousand years old. In other places, Paleoliths have been found that are undoubtedly very much older than the oldest temples and tombs. Furthermore, we know that in all the traditions of this country, the first inhabitants are represented as being autochthonous, which, if correct, must mean a very great state of antiquity, so far as man is concerned; if it be granted that this Egyptian civilization, which is known to have existed at Memphis, had to develop of its own accord in the Valley of the Nile, abundantly fertile though it always has been. In the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, we have further evidence of the existence of a high state of civilization, as taken from the cylinder of Sargon I, which reads, "Sharrukin the mighty king am I, who knew not his father, but whose mother was a royal princess, who, to conceal my birth, placed me in a basket of rushes closed with pitch, and cast me into the river, from which I was saved by Akki, the water-carrier, who brought me up as his own child." The date of this king is generally accepted as about four thousand years before Christ, and his exploits have been found pictured and described on the relics taken from Cyprus, Syria, and Babylonia. He did for Mesopotamia what Menes did for Egypt, and the prestige of his arms, and the renown of his civilization, spread over all Asia Minor. As a patron of literature, he founded some of the most famous libraries in Babylonia, and compiled a work of seventy-two volumes on Astronomy and Astrology, which was even translated into Greek. From recent researches, which have resulted in the finding of a great many clay tablets from the libraries of Mesopotamia, it seems certain that this Sargon I, upon his ascension to the throne, found the Accadian people (he was a Semite) already enjoying a high civilization, with sacred temples, a sacred and profane literature, and one who had a large and well-ordered knowledge of astronomy, as well as of agriculture and the industrial arts. From the archæological remains which have been discovered, and, in particular, the marble statue of a king by the name of David, which was recently found at Bisinya, and whose antiquity is probably greater than 4,500 B. C., it is entirely conservative to assume that Chaldean civilization was as old, if not older, than that of Egypt; while no figure can be set upon the length of time which was required in these fertile valleys for this state of affairs to develop from a condition of barbarism. In China, strangely enough, where the oldest historical records would be expected, we can find nothing to compare with the Egyptian papyri or the Chaldean clay-cylinders, and competent authorities are well agreed that there is great reason to suppose that much of the early civilization was brought from Accadia. In any case, at the dawn of history, we find China just as she is to-day:--an overpopulated, agricultural country, where blind imitation of predecessors ruled, and, consequently, progress, unless brought in by conquest, is extremely slow. If the empire was founded, as has been supposed, by an Accadian invasion or immigration, which must have occurred about 5,000 B. C., or at least before the time of Sargon I, then these wanderers drove out the aboriginal inhabitants, the Mioutse, who have been crowded at last into the mountains of the western provinces. Certain it is that no greater date can be assigned to the civilization of this country, at the beginning of its historical record, than about 2,750 B. C., which time is known in Chinese tradition as the "Age of the Five Rulers." Perhaps next in order of antiquity, comes the small country known as Elam, lying between the Tigris River and the Lagros Mountains, and extending to the south along the eastern shore of the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea. As in both Egypt and Chaldea, this country was brought into prominence by an aggressive and warlike king,--the famous Cyrus of history,--and, fortunately, his clay-cylinder; from one of the magnificent libraries of Susa, or Shushan; was recently found by Mr. Rassam, amid the débris composing the mound, which is now the only mark left to show where these great centers of population once were, in the fertile valleys and coast plains of this part of Asia; and this cylinder is now kept, with hundreds from like sources, in the British Museum at London. On this memorial cylinder, Cyrus gives his genealogy and an account of his exploits, and we find that he came from a line of kings, and held to the popular faith of his country, thanking and petitioning the whole Elamite Hierarchy of gods. Cyrus carried the Elamite arms into southern Syria and Palestine, and overthrew Mesopotamia about 2,300 B. C. It was the reaction from this conquest that caused some of the most gigantic struggles of antiquity. Of the Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon, no definite historical record can be found earlier than from fifteen hundred to two thousand years before Christ. The Hittite civilization and influence we find at their height at about the same time, but here we can get no inkling of a greater antiquity for man than that given in the Middle Egyptian Empire. In the cities of Troy and Mycenæ, we find civilization at its crest some five hundred years later, and it is not until we come to Arabia that we again find evidence of such high antiquity as we find in Chaldea and Egypt. The old kingdom of Saba was built upon the ruins of a still older, known as Ma'in, and the former was in its decline as an empire at the beginning of the eighth century, B. C. Now, contemporary history shows that this country has gone through all the transformations which Egypt and Chaldea had, and if this is also true of the Ma'in kingdom, then a date of great antiquity must be given to it. But these are not certainties, while in the cases of Chaldea and Egypt there can be no mistake. The Israelite civilization was at its height under David and Solomon, about contemporaneously with that of Troy and Mycenæ, and even the Hebrew tradition does not attempt to antedate the year 2,000 B. C., so that we can obtain no information from this source. Greece flourished but five hundred years before the present era, and even if we regard Homer as authentic, no more remote date can be given to their earliest civilization than that of the attack by the Hellenes upon Troy, which was about 1,000 B. C. In the Western Hemisphere archeologists are every year making valuable discoveries in Mexico and Peru which will probably give a remote date for the civilizations which flourished in these countries long before the conquests of the Spaniards. The great pyramids of the Sun and Moon on the Mexican plateau and the similarity of their design and orientation with the Egyptian all point to an interchange of ideas between the East and the West in prehistoric time. The geological table given at the close of this chapter may be of interest, as a careful consideration of it, and the foregoing facts, will show the real value of man in nature. That man is ascendent now, does not, in the light of experience, mean necessarily that he will by any means remain so. In the warm Champlain period, we know that brute mammals thrived and attained gigantic size, and, as Dana aptly remarks, "the great abundance of their remains and their conditions show that the climate and food were all that could have been desired." Yet the mastodon and the cave-bear have gone, together with countless other species which have become extinct, and, if science teaches anything at all, it tells us that nature delights in fostering one species at the expense of another. In the case of man, we most clearly see this. "For the historical succession of vertebrate fossils corresponds completely with the morphological scale which is revealed to us by comparative anatomy and ontology. After the Silurian fishes come the dipnoi of the Devonian period,--the Carboniferous amphibia, the Permian reptilia and the Mesozoic Mammals. Of these again, the lowest forms, the monotremes, appear first in the Triassic period; the marsupials in the Jurassic, and then the oldest placentals in the Cretaceous. Of the placentals, in turn, the first to appear in the oldest Tertiary period are the lowest primates, the prosimiæ, which are followed by the simiæ, in the Miocene. Of the carrhinæ, the cynopitheci precede the anthropomorpha; from one branch of the latter, during the Pliocene period, arises the apeman, without speech, and from him descends finally the speaking man. "Since the germ of the human embryo passes through the same chordula-stages as the germ of all other vertebrates; since it evolves, similarly, out of the two germinal layers of a gastrula, we infer by virtue of the biogenetic law, the early existence of corresponding ancestral forms. Most important of all is the fact that the human embryo, like that of all other animals, arises, originally, from a single cell, for this stem-cell--the impregnated egg cell--points, indubitably, to a corresponding unicellular ancestor, a primitive Laurentian protozoon." In the foregoing quotation, Haeckel clearly states what every geologist and embryologist plainly knows to be the truth, and in this case, as in all others, does it hold good: "Because truth is truth, to follow truth Were wisdom, in the scorn of consequence." For any human being, endowed with reason, to wilfully deceive himself could be nothing less than the height of folly. There is nothing more pitiful in all literature than Cicero, at the close of his "De Senectute," bowed down with years, and crushed with grief over the loss of his son and intimate friends, saying that if his belief in personal immortality be illogical and untrue, as he almost intimates that he thinks it more than likely to be, then he wishes to willingly delude himself for the satisfaction which he will get therefrom. How different from the man who, in his impeachment of Verres, or his defense of Archias, runs the chance of public disfavor,--always little less than death to the politician,--or even to that staunch patriot, who, with almost his last breath, defied the powerful Antony, although it cost him his life! How strange it is that Tully did not realize that allegiance to the truth, regardless of whether it be for or against us, carries with it, _per se_, the greatest of all virtues,--the virtue of sincerity. Polonius' death demonstrated the truth of his philosophy: "This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man." In considering this problem of the origin and destiny of man, which, axiomatically, includes ourselves, let us remember that it matters not what we may wish, for we have no choice in the matter,--the truth is inexorable, and, consequently, cannot be influenced. It is directly up to each human being to work out this problem for himself, and this can only be done by the fearless recognition of the truth, wherever found. It is in this spirit that the preceding and the succeeding chapters are written, and if they contain misstatements and errors, the author will not only most cheerfully acknowledge the same, when proven to him, but will accept the logical conclusions drawn therefrom, although they may completely revolutionize the philosophy of life as he now sees it, and is trying to live it. Geological Table, showing Approximate Minimum Duration in Time. Comparative Duration of Periods: Paleozoic, 12/16ths; Mesozoic, 3/16ths; Cenozoic, 1/16th. Geological Time, at least 200,000,000 years. Geological Epoch | Petrographic | Ascendant Form | Thickness Sub-Division | Formation | of Life | of of G. E. | | | Deposits | | | Paleozoic | | | | | | Laurentian | Archaic Igneous | Eozoon | | Rocks | Canadense | 30,000 ft. Cambrian or | | | L. Silurian | Potsdam Sandstone |} | | Magnesian Limestone |} Diatoms | 18,000 ft. | Trenton Limestone |} | | | | Upper Silurian| Niagara Limestone |} | | Medina Sandstone |} | | Saline Formations |} Lower Fishes | 22,000 ft. | Lower Helderberg |} | | Oriskany Sandstone |} | | | | Devonian | Corniferous or |} | | Upper Helderberg |} | | Limestone, |} Dipnoi | | Hamilton, |} | | Portage and Chemung|} | | Shales |} | | | | Carboniferous | Crinoidal Limestone |} | | Lower Coal Measures |} | | Mill Stone Grit |} Amphibia and | 42,000 ft. | Upper Coal Measures |} Sagillaria | | Permian Sandstone |} | | | | Mesozoic | | | | | | Triassic | Sandstones | Monotremes and | | | Gymnosperms | Jurassic | Wassatch Mountains | Marsupials | 15,000 ft. | | | Cretaceous | Sandstone and Chalk | Placentals | | | | Cenozoic | | | | | | Tertiary-- | | Lowest Primates | Eocene | | and Angiosperms| 3,000 ft. Miocene | | Simiæ | Pliocene | | Catarrhinæ | | | | Quaternary-- | | | Glacial | | | Champlain| | | Recent | | | CHAPTER III THE PHYSICAL LIMITATIONS OF EXISTENCE The tremendous strides made in the sciences of biology, histology, physiology, and psychology in the latter part of the last century, in connection with the development of the science of organic chemistry, have done much to unravel the life-mystery from a physical point of view. One by one the determining characteristics of the mentality of the _genus homo_ have dwindled down until to-day even reason in its broadest sense is granted by the most conservative to some of the vegetable forms of life, and any unbiased mind will have hard work to determine the difference between the so-called "Brownian" movement of particles of gamboge when macerated in a little water, or even of bits of camphor when dropped upon the surface of water, and the movements of the particles of a protoplasmic mass; although one is caused by temperature changes, and the other by chemism. The selectative growth of a vertex of a crystal in a saturated solution, and the claw of a crab, both of which have previously suffered the loss of their respective parts, are perhaps not so different as the words "organic" or "inorganic" would lead us to believe when applied as a classification to their principals. We know that in the life-process, as everywhere else, the law of substance and the law of the conservation of energy are held inviolate, and the theory which treats of life as a characteristic entity apart from the condition which makes it possible, is certainly false. The matter which composes the living body is chemically the same as that which we find everywhere. The fact that some living bodies have the power to form protoplasm out of its chemical elements or simple combinations of them, or only assimilate such protoplasm after it has been formed from inorganic matter, constitutes, in the broadest sense, the difference between the vegetable and the animal life, as we now know it. But, whether living or dead, the protoplasm has about the same composition, and, therefore, it must be that life _per se_ is in reality only the manifestation of a form of motion. Science, by deduction, teaches us to look upon the living body very much as a theoretically perfect motor-generator set, the line terminals of the dynamo being the feed wires of the motor. Such a machine, standing still, would be "dead" in all senses of the word, although, potentially, its integrity would be the same as when in operation. But, once put in motion, this machine would directly come up to speed, and maintain itself at its normal rate of rotation until something interfered with it, or set up resistance within its circuit. From this time on, its rate of rotation would diminish until it stopped. If its integrity were suddenly violated, this stop would come at once. Fifty years ago, heat, light, and electricity were all talked of, and believed to be forces whose existence was in no way dependent upon matter. Since the investigations of Thomson and Helmholtz, there is no unbiased scientist who can for a minute think that the manifestation of any of these could possibly exist without material of some sort, such as in a general way we call matter. Even chemism, the most obscure of all physical forces, we know to be very closely allied to gravitative attraction, and to be so powerful since it operates through such short distances. In fact, if we adopt the only known feasible hypothesis to account for the formation of matter, we must, in the end, admit that motion, and not matter, is the most potent of all the primal causes which we can imagine to-day. If we could eliminate motion entirely from the universe, we do not know of a single characteristic which would be left, by which we could identify existence as we know it, certainly not even matter itself. Every investigation or experiment which has been made in the domain of the natural sciences has only amassed additional evidence to the tremendous amount already gathered; all going certainly to prove that at least the former two of the old three universally accepted postulates were false, _viz._: the free moral agency of man, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of a personal God, or a power outside of and superior to nature. The latter will in no wise interest us, inasmuch as experience has taught us that, in general as well as in particular, the universe is governed by law; all honor to Humboldt and Descartes for so clearly demonstrating this. We are quite sure to-day that, roughly estimated, each pound of human flesh represents an amount of potential energy equal to about sixteen million foot-pounds, and that all of the life-processes are, in the last analysis, purely physical, and that they follow physical laws. Any exertion, either muscular or nervous, which we make, over and above that supplied by the energy in our assimilated food, will have to be taken from the stock as represented in the tissue,--consequently, continued work means hunger; if continued longer without food, it means exhaustion, and if continued longer without food and rest intervening, it means the deterioration of the tissues. The recent investigations of Matthews upon the manner of nerve action, and the fact that the same is due to substances known as reversible gelatines, as well as to the cause of the negative variation of nerves exposed to exciting stimuli, all show that these most complex of life's processes are as purely physical, in the largest sense, as the most simple ones. The artificial fertilization of sterile eggs by the use of dilute solutions, whose actions might almost be called catalytic, still further emphasizes the fact that life's processes, even in the embryo, are essentially physical. Take, for instance, the sterile egg of the sea-urchin; the two per cent. solution of potassium cyanide; the continued constant temperature for a definite time, and all of the other conditions which enter into the development of this crude protoplasmic mass, are all physical factors, regardless of the fact that the result is a living organism, where we would, according to our old ideas, certainly expect an undeveloped sterile egg, or a potentially dead body. As with this ovum, so with the vegetable protoplasmic mass in the germinal radical of a seed: if its development is once started, it must continue its natural course without interference, upon pain of speedy degeneration upon interruption, and, in this light, both the egg and the grain of seed are places where life can be started (or motion on a larger scale begun) rather than living things before their development began, or while they were lying in their dormant state. The death-knell to the theory of the personal immortality of the human soul, as ordinarily enunciated, was rung in 1875 by the German biologist, Hertzig, when he succeeded in bringing the living ovum into the presence of the ciliated sperm-cells under the microscope, while in the field of a lens of sufficient power to enable him to see clearly what took place. It is sufficient for our purpose to state that the minute the spermatozoon had pierced the cell wall of the egg-cell, the new individual of that species came into existence, and had, potentially, all of the life-possibilities, or was, in fact, as much alive as it would have been if this had happened under conditions which would have been favorable to its further development. The fact that the fertilized egg-cell immediately forms a mucous sheath the moment that its nucleus coalesces with that of the spermatozoon to prevent the further entrance of other spermatozoa, has done much to give rise and impetus to the theory that each cell has a soul, and that when these two nuclei completely fuse together, the resulting cytula, or fertilized ovum or stem-cell, has a soul peculiarly its own; which is made up in much the same way as two corresponding magnetic fields which are blended when two magnets are brought within the territory of each other's influence and unite to form a resultant field. That each of the sexual una-cells is distinguished by a form of sensation and motion of its own, and that this is true throughout the whole animal world, has given peculiar significance to these empirical facts of conception; as these will at once offer an explanation of the mysterious influence of heredity, such as was never possible heretofore. That each human individual has a beginning of existence with the coalescing of the nuclei of the parent cells, just as he has an end of existence with the violation of the integrity of his physical body, whether after the lapsing of one second or one century, must, to anyone who has observed biological phenomena like the above, be perfectly clear. With the recent development of the science of embryology, there is no longer any ground upon which man can lay claim, in the largest sense, to free moral agency. Conditioned as he is, even before birth, by the influence of heredity, which science has now localized to the inner nucleus of the cytula, not only are his natural tastes and temperament quite largely determined for him, but often, in at least as large a sense, his mental and physical possibilities. It was our genial Dr. Holmes, who, some years ago, said, "If you would make a man, you must begin at least four generations before he is born," and, as embryology has since proven, he spoke more truth than he thought. Any person possessing a normally trained observation cannot help but note in their aptitude, or in their manner of doing certain things, their debt to their ancestors. How seldom (we might say, never) do we find in our friends what we had pictured and hoped for, owing, perhaps more than anything else, to the baneful influence of heredity. Degenerate features, scrofula, epilepsy, melancholia, etc., are all practically in every case the gift of some progenitor. Tendencies to insanity and crime are clearly recognized to-day by the administrators of the law, in every civilized country, as possible a legacy as coin, real estate, or chattels were a few centuries ago. Whatever influence can be ascribed to heredity, as a positive limitation to human existence, we know absolutely that in a much larger sense is man a victim of his environment, particularly during the period of his childhood and adolescence. Professor Loeb has shown that at least as large proportion (possibly one-half) of the influence of heredity may be eliminated by the artificial fertilization of the ovum of many species, but embryology tells us that it is beyond the possibilities of science to ever render impotent the adaptive tendency of the individual. With human beings, the importance of environment is much greater under a high state of civilization than in the condition of savagery or barbarism, since the possibilities of achievement are infinitely greater in the individual well-educated than in a condition of illiteracy. What would the mathematical genius of Newton or Leibnitz accomplish in developing the calculus, had they been born among the Patagonians or the bushmen of Australia? Would Napoleon's military talent have availed him anything if he had been placed by birth among the cliff-dwellers of Arizona instead of the fomenting political corruption of overpopulated France? Even in a much more restricted sense, Austerlitz, Marengo, and Lodi could not have become noted as the stepping-stones toward his imperialism, had he not attended the military school at Brienne. In the discussion of this question, of the freedom of the will, or the free moral agency of man, it seems almost preposterous that educated people still cling to a theory so at variance with all known facts. That all men are created free and equal is not only relatively but absolutely untrue in the largest sense, but that they are all entitled to, and have equal possibilities, so far as is within their power, is not only the meaning which the writer of the "Declaration" intended to convey, but is what every fair-minded man must necessarily accord to all of his fellow-men, even regardless of sex. In Jefferson's time, the last clause could not have been inserted, but at the beginning of the twentieth century, at least in four of the States of this country, woman has been given her full property rights, and in one she has full and complete citizenship on an equal basis with man. It cannot be many years until culture and a sense of equity will have been so disseminated that, at least under democratic forms of government, woman will be given her full civil and political rights, and regarded, as she justly should be, as no longer a forced parasite of man, but as potentially his equal in every respect. While considering this matter, it is worthy of note that no less an authority than Havelock Ellis has conclusively shown that, not only in the moral world, where woman is and has been the acknowledged superior of man, is she at least his peer, but also in her intellectual power and physical development as concerns the evolution of the race when surrounded by equally advantageous conditions has she occupied the very van. The chivalrous and insane worship which man has bestowed upon her as an exchange for her condoning his moral crimes, has tended both to make him lax in his morality, by reason of her readily granted forgiveness, and to rob her of her rights as his equal, by keeping her in seclusion and incapacitated for self-support. Probably no one thing has worked more harm to the race as a whole than this, and it is perhaps the crowning glory of the age in which we are living that woman, in America, no longer has to accept the physical and moral derelict which the average man is when he comes to the age at which he has finished "sowing his wild oats," and wishes to settle down to a domestic existence, as a candidate for reform under the tutelage of a pure and virtuous woman; or by refusing his proffer of marriage, become the laughing-stock of not only her suitor, but of her own sex as well, under the name of "an old maid." As woman has become capable of self-support, man has lost his power over her, and his accountability for his actions has directly increased, just as woman has gone from under his power. That woman can have an honorable destiny to fulfill other than as a convenience or source of amusement for man is, at last, after countless ages of darkness, beginning to dawn upon the world of culture and intelligence. Perhaps the greatest of all human limitations arises from the fact that after the gratification of physical desire, of whatsoever kind, comes satiety. The food which, to the starving man, was priceless, and which afforded him keen delight as he ate it, but nauseates him when temporarily his appetite is satisfied and try, as hard as he may, he can contain no more. How many a man has failed to realize this, and, after a youth of penury has, by the closest application, obtained a competence, and by its use, a gratification of his desires, but without consideration kept up his earning power, and hoarded his wealth, only to find, to his sorrow, that it was impossible to furnish gratifications when he no longer had the shadow of a desire! No matter how much of a gormand a man is he can eat but a certain small quantity of food per day, the amount of which varies directly with the manual labor which he does, and, as a usual thing, the more he is able to purchase, the less likely he is to do that labor which alone will make his money of value to him from a gastronomic standpoint. Should his desire be to pale "the lilies of the field" with his raiment, he is still limited to a certain quantity and character of vesture, so that in comparison with "unreasoning" vegetable life, his pride will not be greatly gratified should he possess any sense of humor at all. If prestige and prowess resulting as the outcome of any physical endeavor be his ambition, he must realize that whatever pinnacle of popularity he may attain to, it will be only a few years until he must acknowledge a successful rival. In the constant mutation of all the conditions which surround human existence, we find another most potent limitation to life. How few of these vital conditions, from a physical standpoint, are under our control? And yet how important some of the even trivial ones really are? The extent to which we are dependent upon health, comeliness, wealth, location, the physical aspects in the lives of our friends, and all of those complex details which go to make up our routine of life, can hardly be over-estimated. Starting, as the individual does, with a complete lack of experience from which to judge, and without even the power to exercise his reason, as this develops within him after years of mistakes, until his fund of recollection of these errors constitutes a basis of experimental knowledge, he is at best upon most dangerous ground in early life. He is handicapped just in proportion as he has not some guardian who pilots him until he is able to judge for himself of the character of his actions. It is the most pathetic thought which the human mind is capable of comprehending, that nature cannot be imprecated, bribed, or frightened out of her relentless rule of exacting full and complete consequence of our every action. Ignorance is no plea for mercy before her court, and her penalties are exacted without either fear or favor. Nor is her tribunal cognizant of any plan of vicarious atonement, but in many cases partially are we visited with the penalties of our progenitors' disobedience to her immutable laws. In view of these truths, let us not falsely be inflated with pride, because of any ephemeral successes. Let us in the moments of aggrandizement remember Massillon, as he stood at the bier of "Le Grand Monarch," and when we consider the truth in his opening statement, in that magnificent funeral oration, "God only is Great," we must feel our sense of importance leave us. Whoever stood erect with egotism over the corpse of a friend, even though he be as mad as Lear, raving, "O that a horse, a dog, a rat hath life, and thou no breath!"? Our control over our physical condition is worthy of mention only on account of its paucity, and we can never appreciate our true position on earth, until at times we are filled with the sentiment, so well expressed by Bryant: "In sadness then I ponder, how quickly fleets the hour, Of human strength and action, man's courage and his power." It is not for us to be crushed with the appreciation of our real lack of importance, from a physical and moral viewpoint, but no scheme of life can be built upon a sure foundation without an understanding of what in the case of Schopenhauer, and some other brilliant intellects, formed the basis of their pessimistic philosophy. That we are not absolutely free, morally, to select our course, does not keep us from being relatively so, and, after all, the destiny of the individual is very largely within his power to shape. It is only through incessant and vigorous struggle that anything worth while is accomplished, and nature, in this and many other instances, is with us, since we become capacitated for greater endeavor through practice, and the habit, once formed, makes the effort for advancement become almost an instinct within us, so that our mental activity does not have to be continually consumed in holding our will to the course, but can be applied to fighting our way upward along it. Just as fresh recruits are unable to render the efficient service of veterans in actual warfare, so our capabilities, morally and intellectually, become augmented by constant practice. In the succeeding chapters, we shall attempt to show what is possible to be got from life by the use of all of the advantages which we have, and, in doing this, we shall elucidate a philosophy which is as consistent with the facts of life as known to us as we can make it. In the days of the decadence of the Roman Empire, when perhaps life was as uncertain as it ever was in the history of the world, the walls of the banquet halls of a certain clique were always adorned with skulls and other tokens of death, and according to all accounts, the mirth was more furious, and the licentiousness greater, as the guests were brought to realize the shortness of the time during which they had to live. We moderns may well get an idea from these feasts, in which the sentiment of Solomon, as voiced a thousand years earlier--than the instance cited, and under similar conditions, "let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die," is the dominating one, and, in considering the shortness of life, realize that every minute should be filled with effort, as time which is passed is gone forever. Even at the best, whatever we may elect to accomplish, should take all of our attention, and, although we may give it this, we will still be able to find moments in which we did not live up to our possibilities. CHAPTER IV THE PURPOSE OF LIFE In the preceding chapters, we have attempted to get a view of life from a purely physical standpoint, and to show in what ways our race is connected with the terrestrial past, and how much the individual is dependent upon physical conditions, beyond his control, which constitute both the background and the framework of his existence. But as great as are these limitations, they are still not so important as they at first sight would seem, since at least a portion of each person's environment is of his own choosing, and both his body and his mind are, to a greater or lesser degree, what he may elect to make them. Diligence and pertinacity have accomplished wonders along this line, and the poor struggling manual laborer very frequently turns out to be the great discoverer, not only in the province of geography, perhaps on the "Dark Continent," but along all the lines of truth. Nor is even age a bar to achievement, as our own bard tells us: "Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles Wrote his grand Oedipus, and Simonides Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers When each had numbered more than fourscore years; And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten, Had but begun his 'Characters of Men.' Chaucer at Woodstock, with his nightingales, At sixty, wrote the Canterbury Tales. Goethe, at Weimar, toiling to the last, Completed Faust, when eighty years were past." However, it is far more safe to assume that, whatever we have to do, should be started early in life, for, if we are to carve out our own destinies, we shall need all the time which we have at our disposal. While fully realizing the limiting conditions of heredity and environment, it is difficult to disprove the statement of Cassius, when he says: "Men, at some time, are masters of their fates; The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars But in ourselves; that we are underlings." Perhaps Bulwer-Lytton has, in other words, more forcibly expressed a similar idea when he says: "We are our own fates. Our own deeds Are our own doomsmen." Let us not shift the responsibility of our being other than we desire upon the shoulders of either our progenitors or circumstances, but, taking what is, as a fact, we should try to so regulate our conduct that what we wish may come to pass. It is not he who mourns the power which he has not--who becomes either the master of himself or of others, as the parable of the talents tells us, but it is he who, with a strong heart, dares and does, that achieves the great things on this earth. Perhaps as close an analogy as we can get to the real life-condition, is to represent the individual's power over himself and his destiny, by one line, and the power of heredity and forced environment by one of equal length; then his power of accomplishment will be the _vector sum_ of these two lines. The line representing the uncontrollable condition will necessarily be longer (as the influence is more powerful) in youth, while, during the life period, it gradually shortens up until it reaches its minimum at the physical and mental culmination of life, or when the individual is at his best, and lengthens again as old age comes on, and the physical and mental forces decline, and habit and environment become the prevailing factors. With our responsibility clearly before us, then, let us investigate what is worth having. At this particular time, when all of the Occidental world is hopelessly insane with its Machiavelian money greed, it would seem that one of Horace's sentiments, uttered satirically, had become the slogan of the battle: "Get place and wealth, if possible, with grace; If not, by any means, get wealth and place." Everything is thrown away by the average individual to-day, in his haste to satisfy his desire for inordinate wealth;--friendship, liberty, decency, humanity, honor, and even life itself, is hurled into the maw of this Mammon, which is not satisfied with such sacrifices, and gives only hard, cold gold as a return for the priceless jewels of the human soul, and even this usually at a time in life when the little value which the mental ever possessed has gone, since there are no longer desires to gratify by it, with the one exception of that calling constantly for more of the counters which have lost their purchasing power. Our forefathers thought of wealth as worth having only because with it came leisure, and with leisure came culture through application. Sir John Lubbock has well said, "If wealth is to be valued because it gives leisure, clearly it would be a mistake to sacrifice leisure in the struggle for wealth." Unfortunately, our country is going through that period which all other nations that have risen to "world power" have had to pass through, only, in our case, we have reached this period much earlier in point of time, owing to our vast natural resources, the activity of scientific research, and the multitude of inventions resulting therefrom within the last century. But, with the enormous increase in our national wealth, the legislative branch of our Government neglected to pass such restraining measures as would insure that no gigantic individual fortunes were amassed, or, in case that they were to have such wealth, bear its proportion of the tax; and, consequently, we are confronting a condition of both anarchy and socialism, inasmuch as, to-day, our law-making and higher judiciary branches of Government both have a decided leaning toward whatever is favorable to capital, as against the interests of the laboring people. Our lower judicial and executive officials, however, are in this country and in England, owing to rank partisan political influence, almost hopelessly under the domination of organized labor, whose leaders (necessarily demagogues) use all the means within their power to corrupt our system of jurisprudence to further their own ends. It remains to be seen whether our Government, owing to its democratic form, will be able to right these evils and withstand the stress and strain which such a changed social system must necessarily involve. Remembering our experience at the time of the Civil War, which was brought about by very similar causes, we have every reason to be hopeful of the outcome. Our vast alien population is the only factor which would be decidedly against us at a time such as this, since these foreigners have not had the privileges of citizenship where they were born, and into them has been instilled the blind hatred of all who possess wealth, owing to the monarchical feudal oppression of the poorer laboring classes, by the titled and plutocratic nobility of Europe. The most crying need of our time is a law equitable for poor and rich alike, and a judicial and executive system which will see that this law is enforced and its penalties are imposed impartially. Perhaps the worst feature about the possession of wealth, is that it tends to dwarf and belittle the finer sensibilities of man. Its acquisition becomes a passion of such violence that, in the majority of cases, its possessor no longer cares for anything but the few paltry pleasures which it will buy. And as few as these apparently are, they are even less upon closer examination, since only the counterfeits of anything of real moral value can be purchased for money. Purity, sincerity, culture, or love, owing to their nature, never could be bought for gold. Yet many an individual has acquired the opposite of the four "pearls of great price" just mentioned, by having too much money at his disposal; and most truly has it been said that "poverty is one of the greatest teachers of virtue." In fact, if it were not for the truth of our American aphorism, that "three generations cover the time it takes one of our wealthy families to go from shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves," our wealthy aristocracy would be much more profligate. There can be no heritage of equal value to children, so long as their poverty does not interfere with their fundamental education, comparable to their being born in straitened, rather than in opulent, circumstances. Consequently, we must accept the fact that beyond a small competence set aside against age, money has no value of moment, nor is it worthy of greater than a reasonable effort being spent to acquire it. In this age of bustle and hurry, the nervous system is operated at a very high tension, and as a result often refuses to do the work demanded of it. As a consequence, artificial stimulants are resorted to, with the most baneful effects upon our citizen body. Caffine, thermo-bromine, nicotine, narcine, alcohol, and, frequently, chloral, cocaine, morphine, and hyoscine, are used in some quantity, and often under several forms, for this purpose by over seventy-five per cent. of our population; and we have seen the statement that over ninety per cent. of the males, over the age of twenty-one, are addicted to some narcotic habit in this country. As a result of this, the vitality of the individual, suffering from these habits, is eventually lowered, owing to the effect which such stimulants have upon the involuntary muscular fibre; while the over-wrought nervous system, sooner or later, collapses, and we become, both mentally and physically, human wrecks. Particularly is the taking of the weaker stimulants, such as are more commonly used, harmful to children, inasmuch as, at this period of development, nature has about all that she can well care for, without interference from the outside, and abnormal activity of the imagination at this time is not to be desired; since, under these circumstances with the majority of human beings, the imaginative impulse runs more to sensual than to æsthetic things. The demands of our present civilization upon the individual, especially if he belongs to the coterie constituting the so-called social set, is so great for both time and effort, that the use of narcotic stimulants with this class is even greater than with the majority. Hence, it happens in America, where wealth is often acquired very quickly, that instead of bringing with it leisure, health, education, and refinement, as it should, we see very frequently the opposite result. On this account, in our country, we have no aristocracy, in any real sense of the word, and, in general we are forced to believe that real culture and refinement are becoming all the time more rare. The late Mark Twain has well illustrated this tendency in his trite character sketch, "The Man who Corrupted Hadleyburg." If our age tends toward degeneration ethically from this cause, it does so even more from a physiological point of view. It is becoming more imperative all the while that we ascertain, for certain, that those with whom we must enter upon intimate relationship, should be able to show a clean bill of health, not only in a strictly physical sense, but in a moral sense as well. To-day, luxury and vice in our centers of population are corrupting and ruining a far larger proportion of our young and middle-aged men than ever before. Since all branches of our Government are influenced by plutocratic power, we are at a loss immediately to rectify these evils by closing up the dens of vice, and raising the age of consent, to stem the tide of infamy. Any system of ethics is valuable as a guide for conduct just to that extent to which our interest is aroused. Inasmuch as with us all, self is always the paramount consideration, the safest and surest basis upon which we can build an ethical system is self-interest. Every human being of intelligence must sooner or later realize that he is on earth primarily by no choice of his own, and, since he is here, it is of the first importance to him that he should know, early in life, in just what way he will be able to secure the most out of his terrestrial existence. Now, as we take it, happiness, in its broadest and best sense, is alone the desideratum which is _per se_ worth the individual's effort, and, in the aggregate, is worth the pains, both as an end to be attained, and through the effects of the struggle of obtaining it upon others. By happiness, we mean that feeling of contentment and satisfaction which should, at all times, be with the conscientious and sincere being, whether he is expecting to live a few more decades, or if he has arrived at that inevitable hour which must sometime come to all. In other words, let his end come when it will, if he has happiness, in our sense, he feels and knows that he has had all that he could get out of life, and, if he had to live it over again, he would wish to operate upon only those principles which he had used to guide his existence. In this sense, then, should happiness be the purpose of life, we will now attempt to show what conditions must, of necessity, be fulfilled in order to attain it. Happiness, for the individual, is but slightly dependent upon circumstances outside of his control, and, in general, is the result of living up to the highest moral possibility, which means the development of self in the highest conception. Since any environment can be made to serve the purpose, we are always so conditioned that some degree of happiness may be ours. The presence of the objects of our affection, in the form of human beings, is perhaps an actual necessary detail of our environment, without which we cannot experience that feeling of satisfaction and contentment which we call "happiness." The matter of the greatest importance is so ordering your life that, in all your actions, you may be equitable in the most amplified sense of the word. This has, at all times, been understood by those teachers of humanity who have been reformers or saviors, from the priests of Osiris in Egypt and Zoroaster in Bactria, more than five thousand years ago, to Abbas Effendi in Palestine, within the last century. And, strange as it may seem, the world has advanced perhaps less in the understanding and practice of this, than in any of the truths of lesser importance. The exposition of the Decalogue of the Pentateuch is less refined and more constricted in meaning and application than the Negative Confession in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, or the Vedantic philosophy, as given in the older Hindoo writings, or in the more modern Upanishads. From this point of view, the ethics of the Zend or of the Chinese sages are infinitely beyond the best modern practice of a majority of the people in any part of the earth. But all conscientious and fearless thinkers, regardless of the date or locality in which they existed, have realized that in every sense the "Golden Rule" is the only safe guide for conduct, if contentment and real happiness were the end sought. And if we once get thoroughly fixed in the individual's mind that this is certain, and that, no matter what the intention, if our acts are not ordered in accordance with this fundamental principle of equity, we cannot be happy; we can rest assured that the individual would no sooner pursue a line of action which he absolutely knows will end in his own misery, than he would wilfully take a dose of poison. It is the putting of ethical matters upon a plain commonsense basis that will greatly assist, socially and morally, in revolutionizing the world. We have too long deformed and twisted facts to fit our fancies and prejudices, and we, as well as the rest of the human race, have paid "a pretty penny" for our delusion. The prevalence in all of the Western countries since Constantine raised Christianity to the prominence of a State religion, of a belief in a scheme of vicarious atonement, has worked inestimable harm to the human race. Certainly, in one particular, the doctrine taught by the gospel of Gautama Buddha is immeasurably further advanced ethically than that of his subsequent rival, Jesus of Nazareth, if we accept their gospels as correct reports of their teachings. Our blood, to-day, is tainted with venereal diseases, and our minds with a predisposition to infamy, because our ancestors were not taught, and did not know, that from the consequence of their actions, both physically and mentally, they could not escape. How many men would work day and night to accumulate wealth, at the expense of their fellows, through unfair advantage and unjust means, if they only knew that this could not, on account of immutable law, add one iota to their happiness after they had secured possession of their so much coveted gold? How many women, for the consideration of a home of leisure and luxury, would rush into a marriage "of convenience" with a man for whom they knew they had no semblance of an affection, if they felt, with certainty, that nature does not discriminate, even for a marriage license and a religious ceremony, between prostitution within the bonds of wedlock, and without, and that the horrors of remorse and disappointment are just as frightful in one case as in the other? How many young men would go out into the world with a Satanic sneer upon their faces, a cigarette between their lips, and a glass of champagne in their hands, to sow their wild oats under the tutelage of their older degenerate friends, if they fully realized that, in this one act, they were forever incapacitating themselves for the highest pleasure of life, and that no matter what their lives might be thereafter, that nature would ruthlessly hold them to the strictest accountability for their actions, and that ignorance would be no plea for mercy before her bar? This inexorable impartiality of nature is at once the saddest and the sublimest matter of contemplation, depending entirely upon whether we are considering the awful weight of her penalties or the magnificence of her rewards. The old axiom of prudery that "knowledge often comes hard," is, in the cold light of fact and reason, a most palpable absurdity. It is to-day, the man and woman who _knows_; not necessarily from his or her own experience, but from the authentic records of the results of the actions of others, whose motives of narration cannot be questioned, who are well-equipped to fight the battles of life, and get from terrestrial existence all the real pleasure which is to be obtained. It is from such simple yet grand souls that we have inspirations, and fortunate is that individual who can call himself a friend to a man or woman whose life has, from the earliest childhood, been so ordered that purity and sincerity have been kept inviolate, and all of the fundamental conditions of equity, as applicable to our fellow human beings, have been observed. A friendship with this character of human being is one of the few unalloyed pleasures of life, inasmuch as their company, when present, or their memory, when absent, is equally delightful. But to get the highest enjoyment from such a person, we must not only strive to reach his or her level, but, just in proportion as we do attain their moral altitude, we will have our capacity for enjoyment augmented. Perhaps in nothing more than in our moments of relaxation and amusement should we be careful that we make our actions accord with this law of equity. How many a careless thing we do without thinking what the result will be upon someone else! While the indulging in some amusements, such as a game of chance, for an insignificant stake, in order to maintain the interest, may be done with impunity by parties whose financial condition is such that the counters involved are of no moment to them, and the stability of their temperament is sedate enough so that the excitement of the game will not fascinate them with a snake's charm; yet are these particular participants sure that this is true of all of the company at such times? If not--and in no gathering of this kind can we be sure--there is a possibility of great harm being done. The same is also true of an occasional glass of stimulant, so much in vogue on all social occasions; of the occasional cigar or cigarette; of a little gossip or scandalous small-talk, which we all enjoy so much; and of a thousand and one other things which, in themselves, are almost positively not so harmful when properly conditioned, but which may, and frequently do, become the means of a fellow mortal's ruin. It is the lack of discerning and realizing our responsibility in these matters of conduct that causes almost all of the misery of the world. It is not, however, enough that we act equitably only toward our friends and strangers, but we must, within reasonable limits, follow the injunction which the Chinese philosopher has so well enunciated twenty-five hundred years ago: "Requite hatred with goodness." In this particular instance, Lao-Tse's philosophy is more sensible than Christ's, who commanded us to turn the other cheek. It is not the part of good judgment that we should throw ourselves open to the ravages of our enemies, but it is essential that we do not wilfully harm or wrong even the least of human beings. It has been the most unfortunate thing for the Occidental world that those in high authority in the Christian movement should have so belittled their physical self in comparison with their spiritual natures, that anything pertaining to the flesh was thought unclean and worthy of no consideration. Everything which tends toward real beauty and sincerity, and helps to make us learned, just, and charitable, must necessarily be worth striving for; and the possession of this should be counted above all other things. At the same time, we must appreciate the awfulness of our responsibility, and continually test our actions in the light of their equity toward others, if we would be following the safe line of conduct. On the other hand, we should not be blind to the evil in others, and we should be willing to go to any reasonable self-sacrifice to better terrestrial conditions. The philosophy, as enunciated in the foregoing, is not at all altruistic; it is, on the contrary, very selfish, and as such it has its chief value. If we teach our children that they must be good, not for the sake of doing the right thing, but for the purpose of increasing their happiness, it would seem but reasonable that such incentive in the latter case would be more potent than that given in the former one. Above all, the idea of vicarious atonement must be abhorred as a false conceit, and human beings should be taught that, in the moral as in the physical world, consequences are always absolutely true to their antecedents. As Orlando J. Smith so forcefully and tritely says, "Know that the consequences of your every act and thought are registered instantly in your character. This day, this hour, this moment, is your time of judgment. He who deceives, betrays, kills--he who entertains malice, treachery, or other vileness, secretly in his heart--takes the penalty instantly in the debasement of his character. And so, also, for every good thought or act, be it open or secret, he shall receive an instant reward in the improvement of his character. "Every night as you lie down to sleep, you are a little better or a little worse, a little richer or a little poorer, than you were in the morning. You have nothing that is substantial, nothing that is truly your own, but your character. You shall lose your money and your property; your home shall be your home no longer; the scenes which know you now shall know you no more; your flesh shall be food for worms; the earth upon which you tread shall be cinders and cosmic dust. Your character alone shall stay with you, surviving all wreckage, decay, and death; your character is you, it shall be you forever. Your character is the perfect register of your progress or of your degradation, of your victory or of your defeat; it shall be your glory or your shame, your blessing or your curse, your heaven or your hell." Truly has Plato said: "Character is man's destiny." "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." CHAPTER V KNOWLEDGE AND EDUCATION In entering upon the consideration of the part which knowledge plays in the making of human happiness, it seems impossible to secure a view of satisfactory breadth. What we, as children, knew as recently established facts was with our fathers, in many instances, entirely undreamed-of, so rapidly has the fund of knowledge grown within the last century. With us now, more than at any other time, is correctness of judgment advantageous, since, with increased learning, has come a fiercer competition in all the affairs of life, and more dependent than ever before is the individual now, upon his intelligence for his livelihood, as well as for his happiness. In this day, as never previously, are the words of Bacon true: "Crafty men contemn studies; simple men admire them, and wise men use them." At the present time, also, as at no time in the historic past, is experience gained at the hands of others or through them; so that the youth of to-day does not have to suffer the consequences of getting experience "first hand" on account of the lack of books, or of the prejudice or ignorance of his parents and teachers, as was so often the case in the not remote past. Furthermore, intelligent parents are taking their children into their confidence, and informing them upon all subjects with perfect freedom, since, inasmuch as knowledge must come to children at some time, it is vastly preferable that it should come through those who have the interest of the inexperienced at heart, so that the proper color and perspective may be given to each and every fact. It is almost an axiom of pedagogics to-day that "ignorance is the most potent cause of crime." With the unprecedented dissemination of knowledge which has taken place during the past few decades, there has necessarily been a proportionate advancement in the culture of the masses, and, with culture, comes refinement and conscience. The cheapness and attractiveness of current literature, before the decline in culture which engulfed this country with the rise of commercialism and imperialism, was a thing of which America had every reason to be proud; and while we are now in the trough of the wave of progress, and will continue to be until money and commercial influence lose their present prestige, yet it does not take an optimist to see that, sooner or later, and somewhere, humanity will take advantage of its hard-won victories of the past and commence again its march toward better conditions. Here, again, as with the individual, so with the entire race. As we outgrow the things of our childhood at the arrival of mature years, so has and will the human family as a whole. Who cannot remember the marvelous width and depth of the vistas of youth, as looked back at in the transmuting light of memory; and yet, when, after years of toil, we look at the same scenes again in reality, how disappointing and dwarfed they are! It is not the actual physical distance which has been altered, but we, ourselves. Our horizons have unconsciously widened every day; our standards of comparison have been insidiously raised. Just as an inch, when compared with a foot, seems relatively small, with a yard, smaller, and so on until we reach the "light year," the value of the fraction is reduced to almost an inappreciable sum; so, as we progress through life, the momentous events of our youth lose their importance, and we look at our past through the minifying glass of experience, until at last we can hardly believe that the person whose life we have been reviewing is, in reality, one with our present self. Furthermore, events seen at a distance assume their true proportions, and we are less influenced by passions and prejudices after the lapse of time; hence it is only in retrospection that we are able to secure a view of anything which we have experienced without distortion. All normal human beings are so constituted that their psychic activity runs through a long series of periods of evolution during each individual life. As Haeckel has shown, five of these, at least, can be clearly defined: 1st--The Infantile Stage--from birth to the beginning of self-consciousness. 2nd--The adolescent stage--from self-consciousness to puberty. 3rd--The idealistic stage--from puberty to the period of sexual intercourse. 4th--The mature stage--from the time of sexual intercourse to the beginning of degeneration with age. 5th--The senile stage--from the commencement of degeneration with age until death. The investigation of a human life, according to this outline, will prove, quite readily, the psychic possibilities of mundane existence. As is well known, the child enters life with its cerebellum almost devoid of functions. The vital processes are carried on through the cerebrum and the medulla oblongata, purely by virtue of the stamp of heredity, and it is only after some days that the outside stimuli, such as light, heat, pressure or contact, etc., of the most elementary and primitive sort, are responded to by the infant. Its life is a matter of little or no individual interest to it, and it is usually only after many months, and, in some cases, years, before the child has any conception of its own existence. Previous to the comprehension of its existence, the infant has to learn to see and judge something of the distance and size of objects by the use of its eyes, if not to invert the retina image. In a non-monistic sense, the child, during this period, has no soul, and its life or death is of absolutely no moment to it. In the second, or adolescent stage, the most important of the individual's concrete knowledge is obtained--that upon which the basis of judgment rests in after-years. The developing mentality seizes new facts with avidity, and the memory is more keen, potentially, at this stage than at any other. The value of correct associations at this era cannot be over-estimated, as ideas and habits formed in this period cling tenaciously to the individual. So deeply seated do they become that they form a part of what we call, in after-years, our instinct, and upon these memories and the foundation of habits we build our later intuition. Voltaire has somewhere remarked that "Mankind is led more by instinct than by reason," and his observation is a just one. The acquisition of concrete facts or knowledge, in a specialized form, takes place at a very much more rapid rate at this period than during any other one, and the child's mind is very plastic, and absorbs information greedily. Nature has so arranged it that at this time, when most is to be learned, learning comes more easily than before or afterwards. In the normal child, the sense of duty begins to make itself felt at this juncture, and while this may be entirely an objective idea, nevertheless, it clearly shows an appreciation of justice in a regard for the rights of others. Coupled with this, there is a satisfaction which comes both from a sense of our knowledge--little though it be--and the feeling that this is being used as a guide to our conduct; a sentiment which Bacon eloquently expresses in his aphorism: "No pleasure is comparable with the standing upon the vantage ground of Truth." With this realization, life for the first time becomes worth living, and our desire for more knowledge follows directly upon our appreciation of the power which truth gives over our destiny. The grasping and comprehension of this idea by the child is one of the greatest, if not the most important, points to be attained in any educational system. The absorption of abstract facts does not constitute, primarily, any part of an education, as Spencer has so clearly shown; but the implanting of the desire for truth, and the manner in which we should assimilate and use it, does attain the highest aim of any scheme of erudition. It is in this second stage of development that this must be done rudimentally; consequently, compulsory education must be carried at least through this period. At the beginning of the third subdivision in the life of the individual, we find a peculiar nervous tension, which is invariably an accompaniment of this stage of physical development. The imaginative faculties are enormously stimulated, and, unless directed into the right channels, are sure to work to the eternal harm of both male and female children. They should have been given a general knowledge of their physical peculiarities, previous to this time, by their parents, and should be allowed the companionship of playmates of the opposite sex so long as their characters are not objectionable. These close acquaintances between girls and boys should be fostered and allowed to become friendship, rather than be discouraged and ridiculed, by the parents and guardians, as is so often the case. The polarity of sex will assert itself at this early age, and the boys will strive to appear manly, strong and noble, while the girls, in a less positive sense, perhaps, but in an equally beneficial manner, will attempt to assume the womanly peculiarities of reserved kindliness and sympathy, which has made the female character so lovable and universally admired through all the ages. In this matter of the intersexual association of children, our public school system is usually in error, since, in most towns, the playgrounds of the boys and girls are separated by high fences, and communication is entirely cut off during play times. The association with a large number of individuals of the opposite sex gives the child a broader basis upon which to form a judgment concerning any one, and if taught at the same time to use his mind analytically, will mean a correspondingly high ideal of his own. The ideal of the child is but the selected striking characteristics of his own acquaintances, coalesced into an imaginative being. This ideal is high or low, just as he has been taught to reverence and worship beautiful or unlovely and vile things; but, all conditions being equal, there is no other time in life when the human mind will so readily respond to the pure and noble stimulation of æstheticism as against the baseness and depravity of unbridled sensuality. Much has been said concerning the difference in the systems of education and the class of facts to be presented to the male, as distinguished from the female, mind. There can be no doubt that the desired result of education in either case is broadly similar--the fitting of the individual for a useful and happy life. But it does not follow that, because in our present civilization, the woman is necessarily the guardian of the æsthetic, while the man is engrossed with the practical, that the same set of facts and power of investigation and reason are not just as good a preparation with which to meet the identical world-problems in the one life as in the other. Truth is the same to the boy as to the girl, and the material facts do not change whether faced by one sex or its opposite. Since in our industrial life, we have allowed woman to assume already no mean part, we have more than ever a valid reason for giving her the same course of training in general which we prescribe for her brother. Nor are we speaking of intellectual and moral education alone--but the physical as well--and this in its broadest sense. If we can but stamp indelibly upon the minds of our children that the natural consequences of their actions are the punishments, _per se_, which they must suffer in person, we have done about all possible toward making their pathways through the world lead at least through negative enjoyment, in place of absolute grief. There must be inculcated a frankness and sincerity into the processes of their mentality, before correct judgment can exist, and, without this, no scheme of education can fulfill its mission. This honesty of character or intro-active integrity is a hard matter to instill into the child, since our methods and actions are very rarely consistent, as Richter, Rousseau, Spencer, and others--in truth, all of our great educational thinkers--have so well realized. The indispensability of this candor and fervor is none the less appreciated, however, owing to the almost insurmountable difficulties attending its procuration. It is just in this connection that intimate friendships with members of both sexes so nicely supplement the work accomplished by parental association, since the restraint certain to come from the authority of the parent or guardian, is unknown as an influence between those equal in age and station in life. In the use of the beginning of sexual intercourse, as a line of demarcation between periods of human existence, it would seem that a most natural and rational selection were made. As a proof of this, it is but necessary to call to mind the large number of barbaric and semi-civilized peoples who observe some initiatory rites or mysteries connected with the arrival of the individual at puberty or nubility, which with them is, to all intents and purposes, the same as, if not absolutely identical with, the beginning of sexual indulgence. Under our civic law, it is at this time that, through marriage, the human being assumes his full responsibilities, and, by the beginning of an independent family relation, becomes an integral, co-ordinate member of the state. It is at this "stress and storm" period that the real work of life--the fruition of existence--takes place. Beginning with the intimate association with another human being, whose rights and privileges are so interwoven with our own that it is frequently a hard matter to respect them without becoming distant, tolerating the idiosyncrasies, and lauding the virtues, in such a way that the former are diminished, while the latter are increased; trying to anticipate the wants and wishes of the other so that they may be gratified--not for their own satisfaction, primarily, but for our own; seeing the pleasures of sensuality transmuted in the crucible of pain into the gold of a new existence; feeling the supplementary affection and interest, which, for the want of a better name, we call parental love, and, as the offspring grow older, the pride and elation which comes with their achievements; standing at last beside the grave, crushed with grief, raving like Macbeth in despair, or inspired with a transcendental insanity like Richter's--these all are the vicissitudes of mature human life, when at its best. But, great and varied as they are, we find them, in fact, very closely fused together; and like all life-processes, they take place at a comparatively slow rate, so that before we are aware, we have arrived at the beginning of senile degeneration. Prior to the ending of this fourth stage, the education of the individual has been finished, and it depends largely upon the previous mode of living, and the manner of thinking whether he may not remain at his best for a while, or must at once begin the descent, from which there is no return. Fortunate, indeed, is he whose "star remains long bright at the zenith." Considering now what constitutes an education and the best means of obtaining it, we can profitably review the principles involved. As Spencer has shown, intellectual, moral, and even physical development for the human being must proceed in one direction--call it what we will. There can be no question that the infant, as an individuality, is homogeneous in its ignorance and positive influence; that the first facts which dawn upon its germinating intelligence are concrete and empirical, and that all of its acts are simple, resulting from comparatively simple stimuli. Education, in its broadest sense, is the development, cultivation, and direction of all the natural powers of man, and its purpose should be to fit the individual for a useful and happy life. Education can come only through the acquisition of knowledge, but knowledge can be obtained in two ways. By knowledge, we mean assurance born of conviction, based upon sufficient evidence, that a mental conception corresponds with that which it represents. The primal way of gaining knowledge is by experience, and undoubtedly this is the most satisfactory and thorough in all cases, where the result of such experience is not of such a nature as to potentially lessen the possibilities of the individual for future usefulness and happiness. Where this would occur, or where, for any reason, such as lack of time or opportunity, it cannot be resorted to, the accurately recorded experience of others can be assimilated through the memory and reasoning faculties, and added to the store of knowledge for the mind's use. In using the second method of acquiring knowledge, we should not only exercise the utmost care in selecting authorities who have a reputation for keenness of perception and truthfulness of narration, but we should not accept their dictum for what seems to be to us contrary to our previous experience, and unsound to our reason and judgment. Unless we are able to follow with our reason their narration of the causes of events, it is of but little avail that we reach their conclusion. The adoption of the scientific as distinguished from the Aristotelian system of education by the leading teachers of all the Occidental countries within the last century, has been of enormous benefit to the human race. We know now that the first thing to be learned is to maintain the body in as nearly perfect physical condition as possible--since the mind, to a marked degree, reflects the pathological state of the flesh. Consequently, hygiene becomes the fundamental science in the education of the human being, and facts relating thereto should take precedence generally over all others in the priority of time in a youth's education. With the habit of health once established, the next matter is to see that those studies which will place the individual in possession of the greatest numbers of facts concerning his physical and mental environments, and which will give him the best training in observation and reasoning, are pursued. For this, natural science and its accompanying mathematics, are supreme, although enough manual training and domestic science should be included in the curriculum to insure an acquaintance with the matters of everyday life. Human physiology and anatomy, as well as the subject of parenthood, should also have a share of attention commensurate with their importance--and this has long been denied them. Elementary psychology must also have a place even in that course of education which should be made compulsory in every State. A knowledge of the elementary Latin and Greek is also to be desired in those countries whose vernaculars are largely made up from word-roots to be found in these dead languages. As a matter of amusement and erudition every individual should have some line of work other than that of his daily routine, upon which to devote his spare time, regardless of the educational advantages which he may have had before assuming his responsibilities in the world's work. This is equally true of woman. However, this should not be done with the intention of winning fame--although that is not impossible, since Newton developed his Calculus in his spare time after hours, while working as a clerk upon a very moderate salary--or attracting the attention of others, but as a means of self-development. Either some particular unsolved problem may be taken hold of, such as the sciences of chemistry, physics, or biology are so replete with, or the subject of literature and _belles lettres_ may be studied most entertainingly and profitably. This class of workers were very much more numerous formerly than at present, owing to the rise of commercialism recently over the whole world, and it is among these that labor for love, rather than for profit, that much of the real accomplishment occurs. From our standpoint, no plan of human existence can be complete, in the highest and best sense of the word, which does not include this phase of life, nor can any scheme of education be comprehensive which does not lead up to it. There is probably no natural law, the knowledge of which is of so much importance to the human race at large, as that commonly known as the law of compensation. How many of the thinking vulgar have for ages repeated the ancient adage: "You cannot have your pie and eat it." But it has remained for modern science to demonstrate how absolutely true this is, and Emerson only partly stated his case in one of his best essays: "Tit for tat; an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth; blood for blood; measure for measure, love for love. Give and it shall be given to you. Nothing venture, nothing have. Thou shalt be paid exactly for what thou hast done, no more, no less. Who doth not work, shall not eat. Harm watch, harm catch. Curses always recoil on the head of him who imprecates them. If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own. Bad council confounds the adviser. 'What will you have?' quoth God; 'pay for it and take it.'" It is one of the largest parts of any education, yea, it is the major, to know that you must pay for what you get in life whether you will or no, and that you are forced constantly to bargain and barter what you have for what you have not, and it is imperative that you see that you get something which you really want, and which will add to your happiness. And, in spite of yourself, you will get what you really want, for you can't help it; but for it you will have to pay out something, as you are doing all the time. Be sure to get something back of value, let your ideals be high, choose the thing which will give you the most happiness, but, remember, that you must pay its price. It is the sudden realization of the law of compensation, held possibly to an untenable extreme, that accounts for the recent rapid proselyting of the Christian Science cult. CHAPTER VI RELIGION AND ETHICS Those who have noticed little children playing contentedly in the early evening, when one of their number suggested the change of amusement to the game of bugoo-bear, could not have failed to see the almost immediate alteration in the infantile mind from the most happy placidity to the most tense apprehension. Although the lights still burned at their utmost brilliancy and the game was entered into with perfect good faith by the children, nevertheless it was a matter of but a short while until all were thoroughly scared and expected the bugoo-bear to appear in any dark or shadowed place. This phenomenon has always seemed to be a very close analogy to just what happens with grown persons who are working up a religious fervor. Just as the darker the room is, the more apprehensive the children become, so the deeper the ignorance of natural science is which engulfs the mature human individuals, directly in that proportion will be their capacity for religious fanaticism. The consciousness of man that he is dependent upon some supernatural being, has been and always will be the only basis upon which religious belief can be postulated. If we insert the idea of natural causes in place of the supernatural being in the foregoing sentence, then instead of a religious belief, we have the foundation for a system of ethics. The dissemination of scientific knowledge in the last century has done more to break down religious caste and hatred than all other influences combined previous to that time. The authority of age has been appreciably lessened, the significance of miracles as certain proofs of divinity on the part of religious teachers has changed, the reasonableness or expediency of any system of vicarious atonement as a means of attaining either spiritual or moral "grace," and the realization of humanity in general that the individual expiates his physical crimes by bodily suffering, and his moral sins by the tortures of a guilty conscience, are all verifications of what has occurred in the spiritual and moral world recently. The enormous strides made in proselyting by monism within the last few decades, speak volumes upon this topic. The statement has recently been made, as the result of an ecclesiastical census conducted by one of the largest Christian denominations, that less than twenty-five per cent. of our people in this country regularly attend church service. The demand of the age for demonstration does not well accord with the credulity insisted upon by the powerful religious organizations of to-day. Religious beliefs are of necessity mere matters of superstition, and are based very largely upon the tendency of the human mind to bow down before authority, particularly, if it is insolent, and the power of a falsehood to put on the appearance of a truth, if it can but gain sufficient repetition. "Credidi propter quod, locutus sum." The brazenness of this in much of the literature of religious revelation, particularly in the Hebrew, Christian, and Mohammedan collections, is most readily apparent to the most cursory critic. In fact, no strictly religious literature at the time of the supremacy of the belief is free from it. It is true of all religions that into the warp of superstition the woof of a code of ethics is interwoven. In the earlier stages of culture it has long been one of the accepted criteria of any faith whether its accompanying science of duty, as developed in it, was relatively good or bad. That there is a logical connection between these two elements no one can doubt, but this inter-relation is more frequently accidental than it is essential. Facts show that the instituters and early promulgators of all of the great religions of which we have knowledge, have seized with avidity upon any moral stipulations which were necessary for their locality or condition of life, and that if capital could be made out of these peculiar provincial circumstances, they were not slow in coining them to their advantage. An instance of this will be readily recognized in the inculcating within their tenets such doctrines as the existence of an omnipresent and omniscient deity, whose favor may be won by supplication, humility, or sacrifice, or that of a personal immortality for each individual in a pleasurable condition as one of the rewards for belief and an endless existence of pain for its lack. As the number of converts increased, there has, in almost every case, grown up a powerful and wealthy sacerdotal class having special privileges. This cult of priesthood is soon corrupted by idleness and luxury, and the great influence which is attached to it by virtue of its vocation, has sooner or later been largely exerted to keep its parishioners under its control by means of ignorance and superstition. No matter how pure and sincere may have been its founder, or how elevating or altruistic its doctrines might be, practically all religions have suffered from the infamy and gross selfishness of their priesthoods, who by their short-sighted policies of opposing all adjustment of its dogma to newly-discovered facts, or their advancement along with contemporary civilizations, have but precipitated their downfall. From one to another of the gods of heaven has the "sceptre of power and the purple of authority" passed with advancing ages, until it is no wonder that thinking people are asking, "Who will next occupy the old throne?" The earliest religion of which we have any knowledge was that prevailing in the Valley of the Nile over seven, and perhaps as long as ten, thousand years ago. The origin of these Egyptian Aborigines we do not know--some have supposed that they came from a mixture of conquering Lybians, with the early dwellers along the lower courses of the river. Time has effaced all record of any religious texts which they may have possessed, yet we can tell from the manner in which they buried their dead, when not dismembered, with their faces always to the south, and lying upon their left side, while the corpse was wrapped in the skins of gazelles or in grass mats--that their ideas of a future life were tolerably well-defined. The civilization of this people was modified by the arrival of the conquering immigrants who probably came from Asia, either by way of Arabia or across the Red Sea, and who, in turn, engrafted upon the religion of the conquered certain tenets of their own, and in this way formed a new system, the records of which we find in "The Book of the Dead," which is not only the oldest book extant, but also the most antiquated collection of sacred literature of which we have knowledge. Exploration in Egyptian burying-grounds plainly shows that between the time of the disposition of the dead, as first noted, and the date of the supremacy of the "Book of the Dead," that there existed civilizations in this valley who no longer buried their dead whole, with crude attempts at embalming with bitumen, but who burned their corpses more or less completely, and threw the remaining bones into a shallow pit. After this came a race who dismembered the bodies of their dead, burying the hands and feet in one place, while the trunk and the rest of the arms and legs were placed in a grave, separate again from the head. It is impossible, of course, to even guess at the length of time necessary to effect such changes in the customs of people, but we do know that at least seventy centuries ago the ritual contained in the "Book of the Dead" was generally accepted. And from this remote pre-dynastic time down to the seventh century after Christ, mummifying was, in some form or other, continually practiced in the Valley of the Nile. At the earliest time of which we have record, we find the Egyptians worshiping a number of autochthonic gods, of whom Osiris and his sister Isis were the chief. Their ideas of the deities were entirely anthropomorphic. Osiris having lived and suffered death and mutilation, and having been embalmed, was by his sisters, Isis and Nephthys, provided with a series of charms, by which he was protected from all evil and harm in the future life, and who had recited certain magical formulæ which had, in the world to come, given him everlasting life. It is certain that the practice of this belief changed in minor details many times as the semi-barbarous and sensual North Africans were subjected to the influence of their more highly moral and spiritual Asiatic conquerors. Their tombs changed from shallow pits to brick sepulchres, and these were in turn replaced, by those who could afford it, by pyramids--the most substantial form of human architecture left by historic races. As showing the height of the civilization reached by the ancient Egyptians, it is worthy of note that the great Pyramid of Cheops is not only the most gigantic tomb ever built, but that it was designed to serve also as an astronomical observatory, and that its Orientation for this purpose is very accurate, when we consider that the Egyptians had no transits or other instruments such as we have now. Consequently, in the location of this work, they were forced to either use the shadow or polar method, and the latter being the most accurate was, in fact, selected by them. Had they known anything of the refraction of light as it passes from space into our atmosphere, and been able to make the correction for horizontal parallax, their location would have been accurate. The purposes of their astronomical observations, as made from this pyramid, were astrological undoubtedly, as the completion of the tomb shut off the galleries which had been so carefully located. According to the "Book of the Dead," the human economy was composed of nine different integral parts, all of which, except the "ren" or name, are comprised broadly within our idea of _body_ and _soul_. The judgment of each individual took place after death, before the tribunal of Osiris, and in his Hall of Judgment. Here the soul, stripped of all chance of deceit or subterfuge, was forced to make, as his address to Osiris, the justly famous "Negative Confession," and the truth being apparent to Osiris and his forty-two associates, judgment was given impartially and upon an absolute basis of fact. The standard of ethics demanded of the individual can be realized from the fragments quoted from this address:--"In truth I have come to thee and I have brought right and truth to thee, and I have destroyed wickedness for thee. I have not brought forward my name for exaltation to honors. I have had no association with worthless men. I have not uttered evil words against any man. I have not stirred up strife. I have not judged hastily. I have not made haughty my voice, nor behaved with insolence. I have not ill-treated servants. I have not caused harm to be done to the servant by his master. I have not made to be the first consideration of each day that excessive labor should be performed for me. I have not oppressed the members of my family. I have not defrauded the oppressed one of his property. I have neither filched away land, nor have I encroached upon the fields of others. I have not diminished from the bushel, nor have I misread the pointer of the scales nor added to the weights. I have not carried away the milk from the mouths of children. I have caused no man to suffer hunger. I have made no one to weep. I have not acted deceitfully. I have not uttered falsehood. I have not wrought evil in the place of right and truth. I have not committed theft. I have not done violence to any man. I have done no murder. I have ordered no murder done for me. I have not caused pain. I have not done iniquity. I have not defiled the wife of any man. I have not committed fornication, nor have I lain with any man. I have not done evil to mankind. I have not committed any sin against purity. I am pure. I am pure. I am pure." Those who were condemned before this tribunal were instantly devoured by the "Eater of the Dead," while the good were admitted into the realm of Osiris to enjoy everlasting happiness and life. We turn now from the Valley of the Nile to that of the Tigris and Euphrates, lying about one thousand miles eastward. Here we find the home of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires, and interwoven with their religion we find many of the old myths which, in a corrupted form, occur in our own Bible. As the papyri of Egypt have been forced to give up their secrets, so have the clay cylinders of Mesopotamia. These, now lying in the British and Berlin Museums, tell in a purer and more primitive form than that found in the Old Testament, the story of the fall of man, and upon an old cylinder seal we have it illustrated, apple tree, woman, serpent, and all. The story of the deluge is also there taken from the library of Sardanapalus at Nineveh, just as it was written upon the cylinder more than two thousand years before Christ. All that is required to duplicate this deluge as far as the valley of Mesopotamia is concerned, is a tremendous downpour of water, coincident with a tornado blowing up the Persian Gulf, just as some thirty years ago, in the delta of the Ganges, nearly a quarter of a million persons perished during a like phenomenon in the Bay of Bengal. Here also we find the creation myth, and how after a terrible struggle with the engulfing waters, Marduk finally cut them in twain, and out of one-half made the roof of heaven, while out of the other half he made the earth. Then, too, out of mingled clay and celestial blood, he made the first two human beings, man and woman. The Babylonians and Assyrians believed in the immortality of the soul, dependent, of course, upon the mode in which it lived here. Thus, we find the fifth, sixth, and seventh commandments just as we have them in the Pentateuch, together with injunctions of humanity, charity, mercy, and love on the part of the follower of Babel. Speaking the truth and keeping one's word, as well as freedom from deceit, are also commanded, and infringements of these were regarded as sins punishable by human afflictions and ailments of all sorts, including death. Their idea of heaven was fairly well-developed, very greatly in excess of that of the Hebrews. Their heaven was a place of delight and ease, while Sheol was a place full of thirst and discomfort. It is also interesting to know that the Jews got their ideas of angels from the Babylonians, with whom, as far as we know, this idea was original, inasmuch as we find no mention of them in the Egyptian religious system. Considering now the civilization which existed in the valleys of Mesopotamia from five to six thousand years ago, the first thing which arrests our attention is their knowledge of astronomy. In place of the Egyptian pyramid, with its sides Oriented toward the cardinal points, we find the ziggurat pointing the angles instead. This one fact shows that Chaldea did not borrow from Egypt, but developed her science independently of her western neighbor. The planets were all known and named, eclipses were foretold with accuracy, and to Accadia we owe not only our observance of Sunday, but our angular duodecimal scale. What length of time must have been required to admit of such a highly-developed civilization as this, with such advanced religious and ethical ideas, is beyond the faintest conjecture. Far more remote than that time, however, were the first settlements on the alluvial plains by the rude aborigines of the highlands. On the plateau of Iran, in Central Asia, we find the location of the oldest known habitation of the Aryan race. Here, in the earliest twilight of our history, we find tribes of human beings who possessed well-developed religious and ethical ideas, and whose descendants, moving toward the southeast and into the valleys of the Himalayas, formulated the hymns which, when compiled, constitute the Vedas or the sacred literature of the Aryan Indians, while the portion who remained behind, became the progenitors of the Aryan Iranians whose religious lore we find in that wonderful collection known as the Avesta. In these two literatures, both of which are worthy of the deepest investigation and maturest deliberation, we have, so far as is known, the oldest idea of a non-anthropomorphic deity. His attributes with the Indian were so subdivided and abstracted as to allow this one god essence to almost fill a panthenon. Their worship took the form of adoration for the striking grandeurs of nature, each of whom they regarded as a separate personal consciousness possessed of superhuman powers. Their religion seems to the superficial investigator to be but an exceptionally pure form of pantheism, but this is not, in fact, the case, since philologists to-day recognize that the overwhelming spontaneous impulse which forces the barbaric human mentality to give utterance to its deepest emotions, is a certain index of a crude monotheistic conception. It is Brahma who is the universal self-existent soul, and who comprises, in his infinity, both the god and the adorer. Of course, as time went on, these ideas became more gross, until, with the introduction of caste, the ancient Vedic religion had lost much of its beauty and purity. The religious system had become both dogmatic and pretentious, and particularly insolent in its authority with the rise in power of the sacerdotal class, the Brahmans. While the Vedic religion is imbued with a spirit of strong belief in the efficacy of sacrifice and prayer, we find that this steadily increases in domination as we approach modern times. To all, except the Sudras or Serfs, a course of life conduct is prescribed consisting of four stages, _viz._: as a religious student, as a householder, as an anchorite, and last, as a religious mendicant. Corresponding to these, there were four sacred debts, _viz._: that due to the gods and paid by worship; that due to the ancient sages and discharged by Vedic study; that which he owes to his manes, and which he relieves himself of by the perpetuation of his name in a son; and last, that which he owes to mankind, and which demands his incessantly practicing kindness and hospitality. They believed in the immortality of the soul and through metempsychosis, in its reward or punishment, according to its existence here. In the sixth century before Christ, there lived in India a member of the Brahman class who was destined to more than restore Brahmanism to its pristine purity. Gautama Buddha was born as the son of a local ruler and his wife, whose conception was accomplished by her falling into a trance and dreaming that the future Buddha had become a superb white elephant, who, walking around her and striking her upon the right side with a lotus flower, entered her womb. Such is the Hindoo myth. This reformer altogether denied the existence of the soul, as an entity or substance possessing immortality in the individual sense, and he taught that the soul's future happiness in the abstract was entirely dependent upon its performance while here, as distinguished from any recollection or effect of its previous existences. He denied the authority of the Veda and the efficacy of prayer--in fact, his creed is best shown by a quotation from his gospel: "Rituals have no efficacy, prayers are but vain repetitions, and incantations have no saving power. But to abandon covetousness and lust, to become free from all evil passions, and to give up all hatred and ill-will; that is the right sacrifice and the true worship." This is the kernel of the pure Buddhistic belief, and this declaration at once reduces his system from a religious to a purely ethical one. Excepting the myth of his conception, his life was a perfectly natural one. Nothing could be more real than his discovery of sorrow and misery, and his inquiry after its cause; nothing can be more touching than his parting from his wife and son, whom he loved so much that he could not hazard the pleasure of a last farewell. And under the stress of this situation, we are particularly told that he was human enough to give way to tears. No ethics could be higher in the aggregate than his--not once, but time and again, does he speak thus: "Indulge in lust but little, and lust, like a child, will grow. Charity is rich in returns; charity is the greatest wealth, for though it scatters, it brings no repentance. Better than sovereignty over the earth, better than living in heaven, better than lordship over all the worlds, is the fruit of holiness. For seeking true religion, there is never a time that can be inopportune. The present reaps what the past has sown, and the future is the product of the present. Far better is it to revere the truth than try to appease the gods by the shedding of blood. What love can a man possess who believes that the destruction of life will atone for evil deeds? Can a new wrong expiate old wrongs? And can the slaughter of an innocent victim take away the sins of mankind? This is practicing religion by the neglect of moral conduct. The sensual man is the slave of his passions, and pleasure-seeking is degrading and vulgar. But to satisfy the necessities of life is not evil. To keep the body in good health is a duty, for otherwise we shall not be able to trim the lamp of wisdom, and keep our mind strong and clear. There is no savior in the world except in truth; there is no immortality except in truth. The truth is best as it is, have faith in the truth and live it. Not by birth does one become an outcast; not by birth does one become a Brahman; by deeds one becomes an outcast and by deeds one becomes a Brahman." What could more strongly emphasize the position of Buddha in regard to the infamy of the caste system, as it has been developed in India, than the parable of the low-caste girl at the well who had been asked by the disciple Ananda for a drink. This girl, seeing that he was a Brahman, or member of the highest caste, replied that she could not give him even a drink of water without contaminating his holiness. To this, Ananda promptly replied: "I ask not for caste, but for water." And when she came to Buddha with her heart full of gratitude and love for Ananda, he spoke to her in the following language: "Verily, there is great merit in the generosity of a king when he is kind to a slave, but there is greater merit in the slave when, ignoring the wrongs which he suffers, he cherishes kindness and good-will to all mankind. He will cease to hate his oppressors, and even when powerless to resist their usurpation will, with compassion, pity their arrogance and supercilious demeanor. Blessed are thou, Prakrita, for although you are of low caste, you will be a model for noblemen and noblewomen. You are of low caste, but Brahmans will learn a lesson from you. Swerve not from the path of justice and righteousness, and you will outshine the royal glory of queens." Very little wonder is it that, from North Hindustan, the doctrines of Buddha soon largely prevailed over Central, Southern, and Eastern Asia. Of the almost numberless sects into which Buddhism is divided, all go back for their inspiration to his teachings. In fact, he left little for his disciples to do in the matter of enunciating a pure and virtuous system of ethics, so thoroughly did he cover the ground himself. When we remember that Confucius was living in China at almost the identical time that Buddha was preaching in Hindustan, we cannot help but wonder at the strangeness of the occurrence--both enunciating a philosophy or system of ethics which was destined to affect the conduct of so large a portion of the human race. As we read Lao-Tse's injunction to "requite hatred with goodness," it seems that he must have drawn his inspiration from an Indian source. We return now to the location in Central Asia, and to the remote antiquity from which we digressed. At the same time the Indians in the southeast have been developing their religion, the Iranians have not remained quiescent. Their great sage, Zarathustra, or Zoroaster, had been teaching his dualism--in many respects the most subtle religious philosophy ever promulgated. From what little of the Zend lore that has escaped the ravages of time, we are able to-day to trace the outlines of a religion and philosophy based upon primal polarities. Ahura is to Zoroaster the great Life-Spirit-Lord, the Great Creator, the Great Wise One. His six characteristics are the fundamental laws of a righteous universe; simple, clear, and pure. Ahura creates the world during six periods: in the first, heaven; in the second, water; in the third, earth; in the fourth, plants; in the fifth, animals; and in the sixth, man. All of the human race is descended from a primitive pair. There is a deluge, and one man is selected to save and protect representatives of each species so that the earth may be repeopled with a better race. Zoroaster questions Ahura on the Mount of Holy Conversations, and receives from him answers. So far, the parallel between Zoroastrianism and Judaism is complete. The difference now appears, for the former held that the world was to last four periods--during the first two, Ahura has complete authority. Then comes Ahriman, the self-existent evil-principle, and their conflict fills the third period. The fourth period, which opens with the advent of Zoroaster, ends with the downfall of Ahriman, and the resurrection of the soul for a future life. It is entirely within the power of the individual as to whether he wishes to come under the power of the Good or Evil Spirit, and with whom he chooses to ally himself. But the struggle is incessant, and watchfulness must always be maintained. So much for the religion--now for the ethics. To the Zoroastrian, the natural and normal in life is not derided and scorned, nor is woman looked upon as "a necessary evil," as is the case in Buddhism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism. Here is a quotation from the Zend Avesta from the mouth of Ahura himself: "Verily, I say unto you, the man who has a wife is far above him who lives in continence; he who keeps a house is far above him who has none; he who has children is far above him who is childless; he who has riches is far above him who has none." If we can use the moral code of the only remaining Zoroastrians in the world to-day, the Parsees, as a criterion to judge by, we must acknowledge that no religion enjoys a purer and more perfect course of conduct. Dr. Haug tells us that the following are strictly denounced by its code: Murder, infanticide, poisoning, adultery on the part of men as well as of women, sorcery, sodomy, cheating in weight and measure, breach of promise, regardless of to whom made, deception of any kind, false covenants, slander and calumny, perjury, dishonest appropriation of wealth, taking bribes, keeping back the wages of laborers, misappropriation of religious property, removal of a boundary stone, turning people out of their property, maladministration and defrauding, apostasy, heresy, and rebellion. Besides these, there are a number of special precepts relating to the enforcement of sanitary regulations, kindness to animals, hospitality to strangers, respect to superiors, and help to the poor and needy. The following are especially condemned--abandoning the husband, not acknowledging the children on the part of the father, cruelty toward subjects on the part of a ruler, avarice, laziness, illiberality, egotism, and envy. Here we find a system of religion whose predominating symbolism was the worship of fire as the nearest human concept of Ahura, and well it might be, for those primitive people who had so sacredly to cherish it. In the Greek mythology, Prometheus was inconceivably tortured for filching from heaven the divine fire and carrying it to mortals. But according to the Zoroastrian philosophy, Ahura has placed all good within the reach of man, and it is for him to choose whether he will avail himself of this or become a slave of Ahriman. It seems strange that from Bactria, either from the old Mazdaism or through Zoroaster, the world should have conceived its only monotheistic conception reasonably free from anthropomorphism, and whose associated code of ethics was so reasonable, firm and pure. There is in Zoroastrianism no thought of dogmatic bigotry any more than there is in ancient Buddhism, and its philosophy of primitive polarity well corresponds with what modern science has taught us within the last five decades. Both of these systems are meditative rather than militant, and, consequently, have not exercised the influence over the destiny of the human race which Judaism has. In the consideration of the Jewish religion and its descendants, Christianity and Mohammedanism, we are face to face with the most warlike and combative monotheism which history has recorded. In the earlier form, and as in the Hebrew worship of to-day, Jehovah shares his authority with no one--in the Christian system, God and Christ are equally powerful, while with Islam it would seem that Mahomet had slightly the balance of power, notwithstanding the oft-repeated declaration that "there is no God but Allah." Here we have the idea of a chosen people of God carried to its logical conclusion; the jealousy of Jehovah being in no wise an efficient operative cause for the terrible butcheries of men, women, and children, such as we have described in the Old Testament, as having befallen the enemies of the Hebrews when they were victorious. This wild and fanatical worship of a suspicious and revengeful God, although it called for the waging of countless wars upon his supposed orders, and even for the immolation upon the sacrificial altar of one's own children; yet it did not promise, until the rise of the Pharisees into potent influence; the pleasure of a personal immortality for his followers, or the punishment by endless torture for his non-adherents. The effect of the selfish idea of God-ownership we see inherited by Christianity with the ancient heredity qualification changed to one of faith. There can be no question that the historical Christ was, perhaps, next to Buddha, the greatest religious reformer whom the world has known, if we accept as a criterion the number of individuals affected, and the nature of their work. As the enunciator of a system of ethics, it is impossible to see how the Jew could be regarded as the equal of the Indian; although no estimate of Christ can be consistently formed from the St. James version of the Bible, owing to the many and important interpolations of recent church enthusiasts. The plan of vicarious atonement is one of the most immoral doctrines of which the world has a record, and the contempt for woman which the Hebrew shows is not equalled by Buddha, although he, too, was filled with that eastern asceticism which looked with disdain upon intersexual affection. The narrowness and bigotry which can regard an omnipresent and omniscient deity as working for the benefit of but a few followers as against the great proportion of human beings who have passed through an earthly existence entirely in ignorance of Him, and who, on account of this, have to suffer eternal torture, has been responsible for no less than ten million murders in the name of Christ alone, to say nothing of the numberless victims of war and famine who have perished as a result of the insatiable thirst of Jehovah, Christ, and Mahomet for more influence in terrestrial affairs and an augmentation of adherents. The code of ethics prescribed by the Jewish régime was good--far in advance of that of the greater portion of their neighbors. But Egypt and Chaldea both played a very important part in this matter, as we must remember that Hebrew chronology only places the creation some four thousand years ago, and we now know that at least three and perhaps five thousand years previous to the possession of the Garden of Eden by Adam and Eve, the Valley of the Nile was teeming with a well-developed civilization. Christianity in the Egyptian City of the Greeks, through Philo, became deeply imbued with the spirit of Zoroaster, and the aid thus derived has been of incalculable value to it. The religion of Islam remains much as Mahomet left it, and it has been, and now is, well suited for much of the territory over which it has dominion. While its code of ethics is reasonably high, its conceptions are usually grossly sensual, and, unfortunately, since shortly after the death of its founder, the institution of the church and the political organization of the various countries where it prevails, have both been under the same head, and are both, consequently, full of corruption. Before taking up the possibility of a religious conception based upon the best knowledge we have, there is an interesting point to be considered. Between the two dates of 650 B. C., and 650 A. D., we have the work of Buddha, Confucius, Mencius, Christ, Philo, and Mahomet, as well as a score of lesser lights; in fact, all the great religious reformers who have been instrumental in shaping the beliefs of the majority of mankind since their time. And, stranger still, that since Mahomet, the world has seen no reformer who could wrest a following of any note from the established religions, although now, with modern facilities for publication, it would seem to be a much easier task than formerly. And so it would be, were it not for the dissemination of knowledge, and the influence of the scientific system which has come about during the last century, so that now there is not that fanaticism prevalent concerning religious matters which was so rife at almost all stages of the world's history until recently. More and more are people beginning to realize the truth which Pope so well expressed in his Alexandrine: "For modes of faith, let graceless zealots fight, His can't be wrong, whose life is in the right." About 1850 A. D., there began to be felt among scientific men a possibility that perhaps all of the natural phenomena of which we have knowledge are so inter-related that all of our observations are but different views of a few fundamental primary laws. These so-called laws or statements of facts in their natural order of sequence were always, and under all conditions, operative in natural affairs, had been quite thoroughly understood since Humboldt's time. But it remained for Herbert Spencer in England, and Ernest Haeckel in Germany, to correlate the vast quantity of facts gained from experiment and observation along the various lines of scientific research. Particularly has the latter been a most potent factor in formulating the new and necessarily predominating theology of the future--a system of belief which is in accordance with everything which the individual knows, and which is always ready to accept a new fact upon demonstration, although its reception may revolutionize even its fundamental concepts. This doctrine, which has been most aptly termed "monism," stands squarely upon its basis of "empirical investigation of facts, and the rational study of their efficient causes." In place of worshiping the trinities of the old superstitions, it holds for reverence the "good, the true, and the beautiful" wherever found, and in antithesis to the sacredness of Sabbath and the church, it holds that for the contemplation of the objects of its trinity, "all seasons to be summer and all climates June." While denying the existence of a God outside of Nature, the freedom of the human will and the possibility of an immortality for the individual human soul, as usually understood, it does insist upon the sequence of effect upon cause, and shows that here, in this earthly existence, we are forced to be virtuous if we would be happy, and that although we are not completely masters of our fates, yet it fundamentally lies with us, in the vast majority of cases, to so conduct our lives that either misery or happiness will result therefrom. Monistic ethics differ from those of any religious system, from the fact that the good of all is selected and digested into a code which looks toward the "greatest good to the greatest number." In doing this, individual effort is lauded and not proscribed, and altruism and egotism are developed with equal emphasis. The pleasures of this life are not forfeited to gain delectation in another, nor is the "illitative sense" considered a safe guide for conduct. Woman is not looked upon as fundamentally "unclean," nor is she denied any right or any privilege which man enjoys. The righteousness of intersexual love and association is maintained, when in operation within a proper constraint, and the family is not only the social and political unit, but the religious as well. Love is held to be more potent than hate, and justice more beneficial than charity. There is no such thing as either the forgiveness or remission of sins--the responsibility of our actions is ours, and ours alone, and can be assumed by no other. The result is the same whether our acts come through ignorance or intention--it is for the individual to know before doing. In the foregoing, a very brief outline of the progress which humanity has made in historic times in religion and ethics has been attempted, and, if an interest has been aroused in this subject, its purpose will have been fulfilled. No matter what creed we hold, we cannot afford to be bigoted, as simple investigation will show that in many ways we are but little in advance of our progenitors of seven thousand years ago. Only in the matter that we have a scientific basis to work upon, and a vast accumulation of observed facts, have we any reason for pride. And this has been gained, at almost all times, against every obstacle which the church, as established at the moment, could bring into potency. CHAPTER VII LOVE Without doubt, the greatest source of happiness, as known to human beings, is love. Scott voiced the sentiment of all rational and normal persons when he said: "Love rules the court, the camp, the grove, And men below and saints above, For love is Heaven, and Heaven is love." It is owing to the fact that we cannot enjoy anything to the fullest extent alone, since our nature is so constituted that we must have company in our pleasures, that friends are indispensable. Cicero realized this over two thousand years ago when he said that, "The fruit of talent, and worth, and every excellence, is gathered most fully when it is bestowed upon every one most nearly connected with us." Appreciating this, nature has given us the love and friendship of parents in our childhood; of the companions of our youth as we grow older; of our life-partner at a later period, and last, the love of our children and grandchildren, so that, by an interest in their lives, we may become ourselves rejuvenated. In this, as in everything else of a physical or mental character, we start at the bottom, and, by a crescendo movement, reach the acme of the condition which with age diminishes, but in this instance the quality does not deteriorate. Our likelihood of forming acquaintances and friends in later years is very much less than in youth, and, certainly, with our habits and idiosyncrasies established, as they are after middle age, the possibility of forming intimate friendships is very much decreased. In childhood and youth, we are more imaginative and less practical, and, consequently, our inclinations in the line of friendships will be more natural and less influenced by considerations alien to friendship itself. Nothing can be more true than the axiom of Cicero, "Friendship does not follow upon advantage, but advantage upon friendship." Clearly demonstrated as this is, but few people seem to realize it. For the fundamental truth at the bottom of this matter is, as he further states, "the basis of that steadfastness and constancy which we seek in friendship is sincerity. For nothing is enduring which is insincere." Of all virtues, sincerity is the greatest, yet, broadly speaking, how extremely rare! There is almost no trouble and pains which people will not take to make the world think that they are something other than they really are, when but a fraction of the cost might make them what they are trying to seem to be. The reciprocal relation of friendship demands sincerity, just in proportion as it becomes intimate, and this applies to all friendships, of whatsoever character. The love of children is perhaps the greatest of all affections in the aggregate, because experience has not taught them to doubt and impugn the motives of others, since everything to them is just what it superficially appears to be. Our most violent heartaches come through dissimulation toward others, and nothing tends to make so callous and blunt our finer sensibilities as this. But just in proportion as we are sincere, must we be careful as to who arouses an interest of more than passing moment within us, as after affection is once started and nurtured into luxuriance, it is not within our power to control it. While love, when reciprocated, can afford an ecstasy and happiness, otherwise unknown, it can, also, when not returned by the object of our affection, become the most potent cause of superlative pain and anguish. The expression of this truth by the greatest of all English poets, would, in itself, make his name forever immortal had he never written another line, and constitutes not only the soundest philosophy, but the most sublime of all sentiments evolved from the human mind: "Love is not love That alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. Oh no! It is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests, and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark Whose worth's unknown, altho' his height is taken. Love's not Time's fool; though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come. Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out e'en to the edge of doom." If all the race thoroughly understood the truth of these words, how much more happiness there would be in the world! It is our trifling with our affections, or the reckless manner in which we bestow them upon others, which causes us our deepest sorrows. In childhood, with ordinarily kind parents, we have such experiences as afford us pleasant memories throughout life, simply because we lived in accordance with nature's law, which she makes easy for us at this age to follow, when we have no experience or reason by which we may be guided; but as we grow older, we form those habits of dissimulation which lead us into all sorts of trouble; simply because we can do certain things without our friends and acquaintances becoming cognizant of our actions, we are foolish enough to think that no harm can be done. If we would use our intelligence at all, we would see at once, that while it may be possible to deceive others in the matter of our thoughts and actions, we cannot delude ourselves. We would also realize that our actions and our thoughts are efficient causes in the making of our own characters. We would further see that in order to get any real enjoyment out of a friendship, of even the most Platonic kind, we must be able to play our part sincerely; in other words, we must be all that we attempt to make our friends think we are. The old proverb which tells us that we should go courting in our old clothes, is true in the largest sense in which we can apply it. When we consider how much we are dependent upon our after-affections and their outcome for our happiness, we see that Coleridge resorted to no hyperbole when he wrote: "All thoughts, all passions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame, Are but the ministers of Love And feed his sacred flame." Nor did he overestimate the bearing which each and every act of our life has upon our ability to either love or to be loved, since it is only when we are capable of returning affection as pure and unsullied as is given us, that we achieve the acme of delight. It is on account of the necessity of the possession of these qualities which we have found to constitute the only possible basis for really lasting love, that we are so much interested in those of great affection. Emerson truly said that "all mankind loves a lover," and equally valid is his observation that "Love is not for levity, but for the total worth of man." It is the affection of any human being which constitutes his life and his friendships, both as living and when coming into his companionship, and when dead, as forming the memories upon which the imagination will fondly dwell, and that bring into his life whatever real satisfaction he may have. As a means of æsthetic development, nothing is of higher value than the affections, and, as a stimulant for action along this line, they are without an equal. We have only to remember the story of Damon and Pythias, to see that the ancients fully realized the power of affection; or to read what Plato puts into the mouth of Phoedrus, when he has him say, "Love will make men dare to die for their beloved, and women as well as men." What we have noted, heretofore, refers to all affections. Now we come to the culmination of all affairs of friendship,--that relationship which is known as marriage. Upon the immensity of the importance of this ceremony have almost all of the religious ideas of man been built, and in many cases, if not in all, to the utter profanation of the thing itself. In the old tribal civilization which prevailed, the idea of marriage was ill-defined, and it was only as the desire for the ownership of children grew that moral ideas in this relation became at all definite. The fact that men wished to leave to their children property and chattels, which they might not have the opportunity of disposing of satisfactorily before their death, brought about a desire for marriage upon the monogamous and monandrous basis; and the fact that man was the owner of the property, and that the wife, until recently, had no inherent right therein, made the matter of the ownership of the children of primal importance, so that the wishes of the father in regard to the inheritance might be fulfilled. It was on account of the supremacy of man in his own home that the family became the unit upon which the State is built, just as the male individual was the unit upon which the family was built, and citizenship was primarily evolved and applicable only to the male portion of the population, inasmuch as they were necessary to the State both as tax-payers and as warriors. This idea of the ownership of children enforced upon woman the moral code under which she lives in Occidental countries to-day; and, at the same time, and for the reasons above stated, kept man immune from it. The significance attached to the sexual desire in this relationship is and has been greatly overestimated, to the greatest disadvantage of mankind at large. The most distinguishing feature about connubial affection as compared with Platonic friendship, is that in matrimony there is the added unification of the parties thereto, owing to the community of interest between them. Their individualities are merged into one another; their development must be along similar or parallel lines. Richter has given us a good account of what a man should select in the character of his wife "to whom he may be able to give readings concerning the more essential principles of psychology and astronomy without her bringing up the subject of his stockings in the middle of his loftiest and fullest flights of enthusiasm; yet he will be well content should one possessed of moderate excellencies fall to his lot--one who shall be capable of accompanying him, side by side, in his flights so far as they extend--whose eyes and heart may be able to take in the blooming earth and the shining heavens, in great, grand masses at a time, and not in mere infinitesimal particles; one for whom this universe may be something higher than a nursery or ball-room, and one who, with feelings delicate and tender, both pious and wide, will be continually making her husband better and holier." Since the time of Jean Paul Richter, woman has been allowed educational advantages more nearly equal to those of her brothers than heretofore; and, as a consequence, in many instances and quite often, do we find the lady not only the better but the larger half of the home, intellectually. As Geoffrey Mortimer has well shown, love among cultured people is largely dependent upon the imagination. In savages and in the human race, primarily, when at this period of their existence, it took the form of hedonism, or even the more gross sex-worship, and it was not until mankind was removed far from the brute that his imagination developed, and his mind was capable of abstract thought, that his æsthetic nature began to develop. As his intellect became more profound, and his mental range wider, his power of abstract thinking was accordingly augmented, until to-day, with the average human being, love is only, in a restricted sense, dependent upon physical gratification. Herbert Spencer has given a very sure test of love, based upon its dependence upon the imaginative faculty. According to him, when we are absent from the one we love, the mental picture which we form of her, and the attributes which we at that time give her, are all found in her when in her actual presence. Then, we are really in love with the person whose faults we cannot see. The truth of the old adage, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder," still further shows the part which the imagination plays in love. There is no human being who has been so fortunate as to marry the first object upon which his affections settled, providing, of course, that his previous life has been spent so that he can enter into this relationship equitably, who did not find that if his love was reciprocated, life possessed a transcendent charm which words cannot express. Such an affection is necessarily based upon a most profound respect, and can only continue when this deferential regard exists. While feeling a security in its sense of ownership of the one loved, yet it asks and demands nothing, and can only bud, blossom, and ripen into its fullness in the atmosphere of kindness and absolute liberty. While sensual gratification, in the earlier stages, has been the means of nature in perpetuating the species, it is also the most powerful factor in the evolution of that community of interest which is the very soul of this attachment. The infinite number of little incidents which are never to be forgotten by any real lover, are all of a purely physical nature, but, in the aggregate, they form the nucleus of that "amazement of love and friendship and intimacy" which is like the melodious harmony of the sweetest sounds, which lead us into an ecstasy in every way supersensual. It is in the realization of such delight that Gay remarks, "Not to know love, is not to live." We can best understand the real potency of sensual gratification in love, if we consider that those moments which are the subject of our most pleasant memories, are not those in which our desires were gratified, but those in which we ourselves practiced the most ascetic self-denial. Well has Schlegel expressed this sentiment when he says, in his essay upon the Limits of the Beautiful:--"Those who yield their souls captive to the brief intoxication of (sensual) love, if no higher and holier feeling mingle with and consecrate their dreams of bliss, will shrink tremblingly from the pangs which attend their awakening." But nature has here so arranged her course, that after marriage, our children's, or, in their absence, our lovers' affairs, become a part and parcel of our lives, and thus, what began as selfish interest, from the pleasure which we obtain from the presence of our loved one, is transmuted into altruism of the highest type. To those who love, there is nothing of the spirit of boasting in the words of "Valentine," when he says: "She is mine own, And I as rich in having such a jewel As twenty seas, if all their sands were pearls, The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold"; but rather of a pious appreciation of the being who has brought him such great happiness. There is something unaccountable about this passion called love, and anyone who has experienced it does not wonder at the words of Madame de Stael, "Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notions of time, effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end." In speaking of the happiness which is to be attained by means of love, we should not fail to note the fact that in order to secure the most enjoyment from it, we must be able to satisfy the conditions for which such a close and reciprocal relationship calls. It is here that the philosophy of living, based upon self-interest, is by far the safest guide of conduct known, since once the fact that we must be able to give to the ones whom we love all that we ask of them is instilled in our minds, we will have a most powerful stimulant to virtuous living. And in this matter, there is no chance for misunderstanding. If we would get all the happiness out of love, we must go into it according to the old injunction given to clients who were both about to try their case before a court in equity: "You must enter with clean hands." It is strange, that even in the affairs of a Platonic friendship, a citizen of morally rotten Rome at the time of the decadence of the consulate, should realize that "Nothing is more amiable than virtue; nothing which more strongly allures us to love it," and yet, two thousand years later, so few people are practicing this truth, and many, who, in their ignorance, will utterly deny it. This has largely come about from the fact that, in times past, man has been able to mold the opinions of his sisters, and, consequently, virtue was not demanded from him. But if we will teach our children that it is essential to their happiness that they should be virtuous, so that they may enter into an _affair d'amour_ with equity, and obtain from it the happiness which it only can bring, we would sweep from their paths, with one stroke, the temptations of licentiousness which are to-day proving to be the ruin of the majority of the young men of this country. We should teach our boys that they must be able to give to their wives a mind and body as unpolluted by debauchery as they expect and insist upon receiving, and that unless they are able to do this, the pleasures of love, as it affects the marriage relationship, are forever beyond their power to experience. We should teach our girls that they should demand, from the man who asks for their hand, as clean and as spotless a past as they are able to give him, and that, unless they insist upon this, matrimony will not turn out to be the "grand, sweet song" which they have been told about, but will be more like an "armed truce." Connubial love is of such a nature that it will not find happiness in the contemplation of the possibility of a rival, and of all of the exacting passions with which humanity has to deal, undoubtedly this of love is the strongest. The old saying that "familiarity breeds contempt," is based upon this fact--that unless we are able to maintain, in the one we love, the esteem for us, which under a smaller knowledge of our individuality, we have excited, the sentiment of attraction soon turns to one of repulsion even more potent than its opposite, and even as great a source of misery as is the repulsion of hatred; not even being secondary when compared with jealousy, which "mocks the meat it feeds upon." What possibility of happiness is there in marriage where there is constantly running through the mind a comparison of the partner which you have, and a possibility of what you have given up? How much happiness is possible when you are always comparing yourself with some rival, and wondering what your lover sees in him which you do not possess? It is the strongest argument in favor of monogamy and monandry, that only under this condition can the marriage relationship be equitably fulfilled, even more potent than the necessity of parental guidance in directing the development of the growing mind. Man is, by nature, socially inclined, and it is only in the society of his fellow-men that he really matures intellectually and morally. Under the influence of love, in the most intimate association with a limited number of others, preferably of his own kin, who will reprove his faults gently and reasonably laud his courage and achievements--he finds the perfect element for inspiration and development. Holmes has expressed this sentiment beautifully in his lines: "Soft as the breath of a maiden's 'yes'; Not the light gossamer stirs with less; But never a cable holds so fast Through all the battles of wave and blast." The enthusiasm which comes from the struggle of maintaining a home for your loved ones, where privacy and comfort may be found; a retreat from the cares and trifling annoyances of the work-a-day world, makes the place of abode a shrine where all of our interests are centered. Most truly has Longfellow said: "Each man's chimney is his golden milestone; Is the central point from which he measures Every distance, through the gateways of the world around him." Without having experienced a real and genuine affection, no man can realize the highest possibility. Edwin Markham has most truly said that the love adventure is the episode of every human life, and, without it, no existence is complete. There is no other earthly possession with which it can be compared; consequently, we cannot be too careful in seeing that our lives conform to the necessary demands of the nature of this passion. The effect of love upon human ethics cannot be doubted. The finest faculty which we have is that by means of which we are able to judge right from wrong, and is what we call conscience. With this truth in mind, we have only to remember a portion of an incomplete sonnet of Shakespeare's, saying, "Conscience is born of love." In this observation, as in many of his others, the bard of Avon has reached the heart of the matter at once. Without love, we would have, and could have, no conscience, as we are only considerate of others when we have much at stake ourselves, and wish this consideration for reciprocal reasons. Had we no affection, we would have but little incentive to moral discrimination. In this sense, as well as for its happy memories, "It is better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all." In considering the advantages of real love, it is also important that the disadvantages of its counterfeits should be made clear. In the first place, many of the noted teachers during the last decade have called attention to the frightful reduction in our marriage and birth rates; and this, notwithstanding the fact that we feel that we are progressing upward in the scale of civilization. Now, while many of our political economists believe that the increased cost of living has been largely responsible for this, it seems that we should not, however, attach too great importance to the claim. There has been a growing of the moral sense among women of the Western nations, and particularly in America, during the last few years, which has tremendously influenced the foundations of our civilization. The Women's Christian Temperance movement, under the guiding hand of Miss Willard, not only advocated the prohibition of the sale of alcoholic stimulants, but also became a tremendous power in the social purity crusade, which began to sweep over this country some twenty-five years ago. The agitation, which resulted from this reform movement, developed facts which were previously unknown to the general public, and in every way caused people to begin to think about subjects which had previously never been brought to their attention in a specific way. When the statistics were published that, in this country of eighty million people, we were having one divorce for every twelve marriages, and that every year showed a decrease in the marriage and birth rate, thinking people of all classes began to seek to find the cause for such facts. It would seem that one of the primal causes for the decrease in the marriage rate is the ease with which vice has been allowed to become organized in this country into a regular system, which is conducted upon a basis of cold-blooded business calculation. The fact that we have between six hundred thousand and three-quarters of a million of prostitutes in America, and that this class of people is being recruited at the rate of over fifteen thousand per annum from foreign countries and about seventy-five thousand per annum from our own country, is certainly highly significant. Furthermore, the fact that probably three-quarters of the women in America who marry are forced to undergo major operations within the first five years of their married life, on account of the moral delinquency of their husbands, has certainly not given any impetus to marriage in our own country. We have also to remember that over one-third of all the blindness in this country is traceable to a like cause, and that this occurs in innocent children, who usually are less than a week old when their sight is lost, as the result of venereal infection. Furthermore, in many of the homes which we all have an opportunity to observe, there is not that happiness existing which would lead thinking people to rush ruthlessly into matrimony, and the necessity for making divorce easy and the marriage relationship hard to enter into was never as imperative as it is to-day. The majority of the children being born, and in whose hands the entire welfare of this state in the future will rest, are usually those of parents who are either unfitted or unable, physically, intellectually, and morally, to give them such character and education as will make them good citizens; in other words, vice and crime are breeding faster by far than moral restraint and virtue. Whenever we are able to have our young men understand that self-control on their part is a matter of first importance in the requirements of good citizenship, and a prime requisite if individual happiness is desired, then and only then will we begin to find marriage becoming more popular and divorce less to be desired by those who have entered into this relationship. CHAPTER VIII PROBLEMS OF THE FUTURE The close of the last century found humanity under a different aspect than ever before. Westward and ever westward had swept the course of empire until the early years of this decade found the Mongolian again demonstrating his superiority over the Slavonic people of Eastern Europe. For centuries the battles for individual freedom of body and mind had been fought in torture chambers, at heresy trials, at the stake of every auto-da-fé, as well as in the legislative halls of insular and continental Europe, and finally this struggle has culminated in the greatest, fiercest and most devastating war of modern times, which was America's tribute to the cause of democracy and freedom. The nations of Europe have looked with wonder upon the growth and sudden rise into importance of the American Confederacy of States, and crowned and titled tyrants, ruling by the "divine right," have long dreaded the absorption of American ideas by their subjects or American interference with the course of governmental procedure. With the advancement and dissemination of learning, democratic government has got to come, and woe to those who oppose it when the time is ripe. Poor, bleeding, ignorant Russia is at this minute in the throes of internecine strife, and no one realizes better than those of the autocracy who by their selfishness and sloth have brought upon themselves the engulfing tide of revolution, what was meant by the dissolute associates of the French Court directly before the horrors of the Commune when they used to say "After us the deluge." And little as they expected it, this deluge did not wait for them to leave, but in many instances helped to usher them from the field of human activity, upon the block, before the guillotine. It is not at this time even improbable that the great Siberian prisons may soon be filled with the bluest blood of royalty, and perhaps the Kara mines will yet be worked in by their owners, for the benefit of the revolutionists. But whether this comes to pass or not, we know that we have seen absolutism gradually give way to constitutional forms of government, and these in turn become metamorphosed into republics. And in these democracies we see a tendency to return to a centralized form of government, particularly when the chief executive is an individual whose judgment, although it is in error, has been actuated by motives which no one can impugn. What then is the meaning of this--is humanity traveling in cycles? Politically, we can answer emphatically, NO. The ease with which knowledge is communicated among people to-day and the unimpeachable integrity of the great middle classes are the surest guarantee that never will we return to the degrading darkness and servility of the past, while the trenchant manner in which our press uses the weapons of ridicule and cartoon insures for our posterity an even better and more active public conscience, which will demand duty performed commensurate with privileges granted. Municipalities and commonwealths may be full of political rottenness and corruption, senates may be filled by the paid agents of capital, representative halls may be packed by demagogues elected by the most radical element of organized labor, but regardless of temporary mistakes, just as long as we maintain an efficient public school system and make education compulsory and leave the press unshackled, we cannot under a democratic form of government, where tenure of office is for a short period only, ever permanently retrograde. Students of contemporaneous American history who have followed closely the exposure of municipal officials guilty of the worst forms of malfeasance, will probably be led to believe that we are going from bad to worse politically in our larger cities. Owing to the publicity, however, which such matters get, and the fact that our citizen body in the aggregate respect honesty and integrity, we have nothing to fear. The reform wave which oftentimes sweeps with violence over our cities, to be checked only when persons of much influence have their liberty jeopardized, will inevitably bring about an understanding on the part of the majority of the citizens that politics must not be corrupted by people who make a business of seducing the electorate of our cities. The commission form of government has already done much to lead the way to a better state of affairs, and even if it had not, it would be only a question of but a short time until publicity itself would bring about a better, purer, and more economic administration of government. As a nation, we are more seriously menaced by the accumulation of gigantic individual fortunes than from any other one and perhaps from all other sources combined, as in but very few cases does a competency mean the use of time for a leisure of culture and ennoblement, but rather for the development of selfishness, avarice, cruelty, and immorality. Christ certainly did not overrate the awful disadvantage of riches, particularly if considered in relation to the recent developments of our criminal trials in our great cities, when He said that "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven." Wealth in the hands of the young is the worst condition with which they can be surrounded--it almost forces them into the company of irresponsible and immoral persons who lead them into vice, thus sapping their vitality, as well as engrossing them in habits of infamy, which their weakened mentality can usually never shake off. The direst poverty, on the other hand, pinches and confines both the body and mind through lack of proper nutrition and time for rest and recreation, so that it is of double importance to the State to see that enormous private accumulations of wealth do not exist, and more especially that they cannot be inherited. A reasonable sum should be fixed upon by our lawmakers as the maximum amount which could be inherited by any one individual, and any part of an estate which was not legally disposed of under this act, by will or otherwise, should pass into the undisputed possession of the State and should be spent, not for the ordinary administration of the law, but for the building of schools, hospitals, parks, museums, and the purchase of public utilities, such as water, lighting, power and transportation companies. Should the means above suggested prove too slow in operation or inadequate to meet present emergencies, an income-tax might, for a decade or two, be a necessity--the returns from which should be expended as suggested above. Unless something of this character is done within the next century, it would seem that our country cannot continue to advance in civilization, although she might in political prestige and commercial importance, but would follow in the steps of so many other great states, and sooner or later arrive at a time where her present would be but a meagre shadow of her majestic past. If we would have the most that is to be got out of life, we should see to it that more time and attention is paid to the development of the æsthetic side of our natures. Our public buildings are to-day usually designed upon grand and majestic lines; some of our public parks are laid out with the idea of showing the beauty of simplicity and harmony; a few of our private mansions are architecturally works of art; we have in our large cities a few museums which are kept open a few hours to the public upon days when it has leisure, but, further than this, how little are we taught, or do we see, the beautiful aside from its arrangement in nature in the ordinary routine of life? With all but the wealthier class, the getting of a livelihood and the attention to other material things, consumes all the time and energy available under the present régime so that no leisure is left to cultivate an appreciation or desire for the beautiful. It is the amount of development of the æsthetic nature of the masses which is the surest and most certain index of any civilization. Schlegel has most justly observed that "when men are left to the sole guidance of artificial law, they become reduced to mere empty shadows and soulless forms; while the undivided sway of nature leaves them savage and loveless." It is therefore in this middle ground that we should provide stimuli for the growth of this cult of the beautiful, and to do this we must begin with the children. It should be the care of the state to see that our streets are kept clean, that grass plots and flower beds are harmoniously and tastily arranged at the intersection of the highways, wherever possible, and that all houses intended for tenement purposes be so built that plenty of light and air can be always available. Powerful and elevating music should be performed in public parks at frequent intervals, whenever the weather will permit of general gatherings in the open air. The best talent should be secured to address the people upon subjects of a general nature, such as topics of the day, political economy, popular science, etc. Our school rooms should not only be clean and well ventilated, but their walls should be hung with interesting and beautiful pictures, and our school libraries, as well as our public libraries, should be numerous, and filled with the best literature that money can buy. In our homes, we should see that every refining influence possible is thrown around the children, and, above all, they should be taught the beauty of self-sacrifice and heroism. Particularly should they be taught the value and beauty of affection, and they should be both told and shown that the pleasure derived therefrom, and its value to the human species, depends almost wholly upon the self-restraint and self-sacrifice which is exercised in connection with the intimate relations arising from it. Schlegel again speaks right to the point, "Every inordinate indulgence involves a corresponding amount of suffering.... Others, on the contrary, who devote themselves to glorious deeds and seek enjoyment only in the intervals of more serious exertion, will have their best reward in the pure, unchanging happiness purchased by such self-denial. Pleasure, indeed, has a higher zest when spontaneous and self-created; and it rises in value in proportion to its affinity with that perfection of beauty in which moral excellence is allied to external charms." Our attention as a nation to the acquisition of material wealth to the utter disregard of our æsthetic natures may very largely account for the fact that America has produced but few of those literary and artistic stars which are almost always coincident with commercial prosperity. We seem to have neither passed the Elizabethan nor the Victorian age in literature upon this side of the water--not because we have not produced talent along these lines, but because the quantity has been so small and seems to be growing less every year. Since the opening of the present century, there has practically been nothing produced which will demand recognition among literary and artistic people after our own generation. There seems to be only one other great problem before humanity to-day. Next to the distribution of wealth, it, however, is undoubtedly the most perplexing question with which every democratic country will sooner or later have to deal. In its two forms--as prostitution and the restriction of birth--it constitutes what for a better name is commonly called "the social evil." Under our civilization and in our system of social caste we have no class of serfs; but as low, if not lower, than these we have those women who sell their favors for money to anyone who will pay the price. Unfortunately, we have not yet reached the place where the majority of our male population decry moral looseness on the part of women with whom they are not connected by blood or matrimony; although this may or may not have been done for profit, as the case may be. It is still largely a matter as to how general the knowledge is, as to how great is the crime. Nevertheless, with those unfortunates whose character is generally known, our modern society has no place--they are outcasts in the true sense of the word. Worse than all, is the fact that society refuses to proscribe immorality of this nature in man as it does in woman--consequently, she alone before the world is made to suffer for what he is as much to blame for as she is, and very frequently more so. The incongruity of this, under a democratic form of government, is readily apparent to anyone and that such a condition of affairs may not exist permanently under our civilization cannot be doubted. It would therefore seem that either one of two things will have to come to pass in the future; either we shall have to regard our prostitutes as a class, as they were probably esteemed in ancient Greece, or we shall have to attach an equal calumny to man as we now attach to woman in these relations. In the first instance, we tacitly admit that the nature of man differs from that of woman, in that continence and monogamy are not fitted for him but are for her, which every fair-minded person knows to be a falsehood; or else in the other alternative we have the entire sentiment of this country upon this whole matter to make over and that against those who are in power. Mrs. Parsons, in her carefully prepared and comprehensive study, entitled "The Family," does not, it would seem, speak other than satirically when she proposes that the same license be allowed woman before she bears children as society now allows man. This would seem to be a step backward, inasmuch as there is to-day, with no small percentage of the people in this country, a decided stigma attached to promiscuity on the part of man, and this should be fostered and encouraged, at any expense. Her recommendation of early trial marriage also smacks of the satirical, while her propositions "to make the transmission of venereal diseases in marriage a penal offense, to render identical the age of consent with the legal age of marriage, and to abolish all laws requiring parental consent to marriage, to consider parental duties the same in the case of an illegitimate as in that of a legitimate child, and to abolish legal separation and divorce law provisions prohibiting the defendant to remarry," must appeal to all fair-minded persons as exactly what is needed. With sentiment once well started in this direction, we can hope that the next two or three decades will accomplish much--more particularly if we lose our money madness and return from "the flesh-pots" to things that are of real value. The happiness and virtue of our children will never be secure until society is founded upon a basis of real monogamy, and male as well as female continence before marriage, and the sooner this fact is admitted and enforced the better will it be for the human race. In this molding of sentiment, woman can be and is an important factor, and her position becomes the more commanding as she becomes more independent financially. If she demands purity on the part of her male friends--sooner or later it will be accorded to her--if she insists upon it in her lover, her Prince Charming will come forth with the quality. Concerning that part of this question which deals with the restriction of birth, it has always seemed that outside of voluntary childless marriages the importance of "race suicide" was over-estimated. Where there is no pathological reason why children should not be born, there can be no question but that voluntary childless marriage is what has been well termed "a progressive substitute for prostitution." But where not used to consummate this end, but to keep within the limits of the proper education and the bringing up of the progeny of a human pair, such practice as does not involve infanticide cannot be against the best interests of the race. Consequently, it would seem that, before marriage, young men and women should become acquainted with the fundamental phenomena of conception, with the purpose in view of regulating the number of children which they bring into the world to such a number as they can properly educate and equip for the struggle of existence. Such biological knowledge as is necessary to attain this should become the common property of humanity, and the state should not restrict the sale of such articles as would further this end. On the other hand, young men and women should be taught that it is their duty to have what children they can care for, and at such times and under such conditions during wedlock as will insure their descendants the best physical and mental equipment. Infanticide in any form and at any time, except when performed under the jurisdiction of a reputable physician, should be made a crime and proper punishment provided therefor. In this phase of the question, there is also a place for the fostering of proper sentiment. Parents should show their children that they constitute a very large proportion of their happiness, and that child-bearing, within the limits above set forth, is a privilege and not a burden. Under these conditions, voluntary childless marriage will become less frequent and the family will occupy the position of primary importance in the state to which it is entitled. It is impossible to estimate the far-reaching influence of the Woman's Rights movement. The agitation to-day extends completely around the world, and even such Oriental countries as Turkey, Japan, and China are being forced to realize that they have it to face in the near future. Politically, there can be no question but that the movement will tend more towards the purity of the administration of justice and the elimination of corruption in politics than any movement which has been started within the history of man; and, as examples of this, we have only to look for ample proof in countries where women have been given full rights of citizenship, such as New Zealand, and in Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, and Nevada States in this country. Socially, we have already noticed the effect which this movement will have as tending towards the purity of masculine morals. Economically, however, it presents a far different aspect, since every woman who enters commercial life, whether in the office or factory, diminishes the child-bearing population of the earth, and with the greater sense of justice and equity which comes from the higher education, the demands of woman will not only become more and more exacting, but she will be becoming constantly more potent in their enforcement. The economic phase of this problem is so great that it is impossible to state at this time what the outcome will be, but a still further tremendous decrease in the birth rate is absolutely sure to come about; and it would seem that possibly those evils which will, in the long run, be most largely rectified by this movement will be augmented in the immediate future, as a result of this agitation, until such a time as the majority of our citizens may be given such education as will enable them to reason more logically about the fundamental propositions of life. We have looked at a few of the phases of human existence; what shall be said of the value of life? Modern science has forever taken from us the comforting delusions of a personal Deity, an immortality for the soul in a personal sense, and the idea of our possessing a will, free to force our direction whithersoever we elect. It has left, in place of these, the idea of duty--individual and personal responsibility--which cannot be shirked. George Eliot, in the epilogue of Romola, preaches as strong a sermon as she ever could to Mr. Meyers, when she talked to him upon that now famous evening in May at Cambridge. Carlyle, no less than his countrywoman, realized, not only the importance of living up to individual responsibility, but also understood how hard it often was to know just what should be done. His rule, which is most worthy of emulation, was: "Do the nearest duty that lies to your hand, and already the next duty will have become plainer." In order that we may be the better prepared to fulfill our responsibilities, we should obtain all the knowledge possible, even although it may cause us lack of insight temporarily, and much mental agony. Faith is not comparable to knowledge, any more than wishing is equal to the obtaining of results. We should therefore be aggressive in the discharge of our duty--liberal and tolerant, pure and upright, loving and unselfish, virtuous and truly religious, so that it may be said of us, when we have finished, that the world is a little better, and life has been, for as many as possible, a little happier for our having lived. THE END THE ~"HOW DOES IT WORK"~ SERIES No. 1. =Electricity.= By THOMAS W. CORBIN. With many Illustrations. Price, 75 Cents, Cloth. Explains in simple language the working of Dynamos, Motors, Heating and Lighting Apparatus, Trainways, Railways, &c. "The information given is clear and easily understood, and many excellent halftones and line drawings are given. It is an A1 book for any boy or man with a leaning towards things electric."--_Publishers' Circular._ "The descriptions are given in very plain language and there are excellent illustrations." No. 2. =Model Making.= By CYRIL HALL. Cloth. With many Diagrams. Price, 75 Cents. Contains instructions for making a Steam Locomotive--Turbine--Steam Boat--Electric Engines--Motors--Yacht--Printing Press--Steam Crane--Telephone--Electric Bells--Telegraph, &c. No. 3. =Modern Engines.= By THOMAS W. CORBIN. With many illustrations. Price, Cloth, 75 Cents. Steam Engines, Gas Engines, Petrol Engines, Marine Engines, Steam Pumps, Steam Boilers, &c., &c. At all Booksellers or postpaid by R. F. Fenno & Company Transcriber's note Text in italics has been surrounded with _underscores_, underlined words with ~signs~, bold with =signs= and small capitals changed to all capitals. The first two columns of the Geological Table at the end of Chapter II have been combined to keep the width within limits. The following corrections were made, on page 91 "posession" changed to "possession" (after they had secured possession of their) 127 "formluæ" changed to "formulæ" (had recited certain magical formulæ which had) 175 ' changed to " (never to have loved at all.") 200 " added ("The information given is clear). Otherwise the original has been preserved, including archaic and unusual words, as well as unusual or inconsistent spelling and hyphenation. For instance: Phoedrus is usually spelled as Phædrus, this has not been changed. 
26861	----	[Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected, all other inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's spelling has been maintained. Some printed caracters could not be reproduce in this file and have been described [TN: description].] THE TEMPLE OF NATURE; OR, THE ORIGIN OF SOCIETY. T. Bensley, Printer, Bolt Court, Fleet Street, London. THE TEMPLE OF NATURE; OR, THE ORIGIN OF SOCIETY: A POEM, WITH PHILOSOPHICAL NOTES. BY ERASMUS DARWIN, M.D. F.R.S. AUTHOR OF THE BOTANIC GARDEN, OF ZOONOMIA, AND OF PHYTOLOGIA. Unde hominum pecudumque genus, vitæque volantum, Et quæ marmoreo fert monstra sub æquore pontus? Igneus est illis vigor, & cælestis origo. VIRG. Æn. VI. 728. LONDON: PRINTED FOR J. JOHNSON, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD, BY T. BENSLEY, BOLT COURT, FLEET STREET. 1803. PREFACE. The Poem, which is here offered to the Public, does not pretend to instruct by deep researches of reasoning; its aim is simply to amuse by bringing distinctly to the imagination the beautiful and sublime images of the operations of Nature in the order, as the Author believes, in which the progressive course of time presented them. The Deities of Egypt, and afterwards of Greece, and Rome, were derived from men famous in those early times, as in the ages of hunting, pasturage, and agriculture. The histories of some of their actions recorded in Scripture, or celebrated in the heathen mythology, are introduced, as the Author hopes, without impropriety into his account of those remote periods of human society. In the Eleusinian mysteries the philosophy of the works of Nature, with the origin and progress of society, are believed to have been taught by allegoric scenery explained by the Hierophant to the initiated, which gave rise to the machinery of the following Poem. PRIORY NEAR DERBY, Jan. 1, 1802. ORIGIN OF SOCIETY. CANTO I. PRODUCTION OF LIFE. CONTENTS. I. Subject proposed. Life, Love, and Sympathy 1. Four past Ages, a fifth beginning 9. Invocation to Love 15. II. Bowers of Eden, Adam and Eve 33. Temple of Nature 65. Time chained by Sculpture 75. Proteus bound by Menelaus 83. Bowers of Pleasure 89. School of Venus 97. Court of Pain 105. Den of Oblivion 113. Muse of Melancholy 121. Cave of Trophonius 125. Shrine of Nature 129. Eleusinian Mysteries 137. III. Morning 155. Procession of Virgins 159. Address to the Priestess 167. Descent of Orpheus into Hell 185. IV. Urania 205. GOD the First Cause 223. Life began beneath the Sea 233. Repulsion, Attraction, Contraction, Life 235. Spontaneous Production of Minute Animals 247. Irritation, Appetency 251. Life enlarges the Earth 265. Sensation, Volition, Association 269. Scene in the Microscope; Mucor, Monas, Vibrio, Vorticella, Proteus, Mite 281. V. Vegetables and Animals improve by Reproduction 295. Have all arisen from Microscopic Animalcules 303. Rocks of Shell and Coral 315. Islands and Continents raised by Earthquakes 321. Emigration of Animals from the Sea 327. Trapa 335. Tadpole, Musquito 343. Diodon, Lizard, Beaver, Lamprey, Remora, Whale 351. Venus rising from the Sea, emblem of Organic Nature 371. All animals are first Aquatic 385. Fetus in the Womb 389. Animals from the Mud of the Nile 401. The Hierophant and Muse 421-450. CANTO I. PRODUCTION OF LIFE. I. By firm immutable immortal laws Impress'd on Nature by the GREAT FIRST CAUSE, Say, MUSE! how rose from elemental strife Organic forms, and kindled into life; How Love and Sympathy with potent charm Warm the cold heart, the lifted hand disarm; Allure with pleasures, and alarm with pains, And bind Society in golden chains. Four past eventful Ages then recite, And give the fifth, new-born of Time, to light; 10 The silken tissue of their joys disclose, Swell with deep chords the murmur of their woes; Their laws, their labours, and their loves proclaim, And chant their virtues to the trump of Fame. IMMORTAL LOVE! who ere the morn of Time, On wings outstretch'd, o'er Chaos hung sublime; Warm'd into life the bursting egg of Night, And gave young Nature to admiring Light!-- YOU! whose wide arms, in soft embraces hurl'd Round the vast frame, connect the whirling world! 20 Whether immers'd in day, the Sun your throne, You gird the planets in your silver zone; Or warm, descending on ethereal wing, The Earth's cold bosom with the beams of spring; Press drop to drop, to atom atom bind, Link sex to sex, or rivet mind to mind; Attend my song!--With rosy lips rehearse, And with your polish'd arrows write my verse!-- So shall my lines soft-rolling eyes engage, And snow-white fingers turn the volant page; 30 The smiles of Beauty all my toils repay, And youths and virgins chant the living lay. II. WHERE EDEN'S sacred bowers triumphant sprung, By angels guarded, and by prophets sung, Wav'd o'er the east in purple pride unfurl'd, And rock'd the golden cradle of the World; Four sparkling currents lav'd with wandering tides Their velvet avenues, and flowery sides; On sun-bright lawns unclad the Graces stray'd, And guiltless Cupids haunted every glade; 40 Till the fair Bride, forbidden shades among, Heard unalarm'd the Tempter's serpent-tongue; Eyed the sweet fruit, the mandate disobey'd, And her fond Lord with sweeter smiles betray'd. Conscious awhile with throbbing heart he strove, Spread his wide arms, and barter'd life for love!-- Now rocks on rocks, in savage grandeur roll'd, Steep above steep, the blasted plains infold; The incumbent crags eternal tempest shrouds, And livid light'nings cleave the lambent clouds; 50 Round the firm base loud-howling whirlwinds blow, And sands in burning eddies dance below. [Footnote: _Cradle of the world_, l. 36. The nations, which possess Europe and a part of Asia and of Africa, appear to have descended from one family; and to have had their origin near the banks of the Mediterranean, as probably in Syria, the site of Paradise, according to the Mosaic history. This seems highly probable from the similarity of the structure of the languages of these nations, and from their early possession of similar religions, customs, and arts, as well as from the most ancient histories extant. The two former of these may be collected from Lord Monboddo's learned work on the Origin of Language, and from Mr. Bryant's curious account of Ancient Mythology. The use of iron tools, of the bow and arrow, of earthen vessels to boil water in, of wheels for carriages, and the arts of cultivating wheat, of coagulating milk for cheese, and of spinning vegetable fibres for clothing, have been known in all European countries, as long as their histories have existed; besides the similarity of the texture of their languages, and of many words in them; thus the word sack is said to mean a bag in all of them, as [Greek: sakkon] in Greek, saccus in Latin, sacco in Italian, sac in French, and sack in English and German. Other families of mankind, nevertheless, appear to have arisen in other parts of the habitable earth, as the language of the Chinese is said not to resemble those of this part of the world in any respect. And the inhabitants of the islands of the South-Sea had neither the use of iron tools nor of the bow, nor of wheels, nor of spinning, nor had learned to coagulate milk, or to boil water, though the domestication of fire seems to have been the first great discovery that distinguished mankind from the bestial inhabitants of the forest.] Hence ye profane!--the warring winds exclude Unhallow'd throngs, that press with footstep rude; But court the Muse's train with milder skies, And call with softer voice the good and wise. --Charm'd at her touch the opening wall divides, And rocks of crystal form the polish'd sides; Through the bright arch the Loves and Graces tread, Innocuous thunders murmuring o'er their head; 60 Pair after pair, and tittering, as they pass, View their fair features in the walls of glass; Leave with impatient step the circling bourn, And hear behind the closing rocks return. HERE, high in air, unconscious of the storm. Thy temple, NATURE, rears it's mystic form; From earth to heav'n, unwrought by mortal toil, Towers the vast fabric on the desert soil; O'er many a league the ponderous domes extend. And deep in earth the ribbed vaults descend; 70 A thousand jasper steps with circling sweep Lead the slow votary up the winding steep; Ten thousand piers, now join'd and now aloof, Bear on their branching arms the fretted roof. Unnumber'd ailes connect unnumber'd halls, And sacred symbols crowd the pictur'd walls; With pencil rude forgotten days design, And arts, or empires, live in every line. While chain'd reluctant on the marble ground, Indignant TIME reclines, by Sculpture bound; 80 And sternly bending o'er a scroll unroll'd, Inscribes the future with his style of gold. --So erst, when PROTEUS on the briny shore, New forms assum'd of eagle, pard, or boar; The wise ATRIDES bound in sea-weed thongs The changeful god amid his scaly throngs; Till in deep tones his opening lips at last Reluctant told the future and the past. [Footnote: _Pictur'd walls_, l. 76. The application of mankind, in the early ages of society, to the imitative arts of painting, carving, statuary, and the casting of figures in metals, seems to have preceded the discovery of letters; and to have been used as a written language to convey intelligence to their distant friends, or to transmit to posterity the history of themselves, or of their discoveries. Hence the origin of the hieroglyphic figures which crowded the walls of the temples of antiquity; many of which may be seen in the tablet of Isis in the works of Montfaucon; and some of them are still used in the sciences of chemistry and astronomy, as the characters for the metals and planets, and the figures of animals on the celestial globe.] [Footnote: _So erst, when Proteus_, l. 83. It seems probable that Proteus was the name of a hieroglyphic figure representing Time; whose form was perpetually changing, and who could discover the past events of the world, and predict the future. Herodotus does not doubt but that Proteus was an Egyptian king or deity; and Orpheus calls him the principle of all things, and the most ancient of the gods; and adds, that he keeps the keys of Nature, _Danet's Dict._, all which might well accord with a figure representing Time.] HERE o'er piazza'd courts, and long arcades, The bowers of PLEASURE root their waving shades; 90 Shed o'er the pansied moss a checker'd gloom, Bend with new fruits, with flow'rs successive bloom. Pleas'd, their light limbs on beds of roses press'd, In slight undress recumbent Beauties rest; On tiptoe steps surrounding Graces move, And gay Desires expand their wings above. HERE young DIONE arms her quiver'd Loves, Schools her bright Nymphs, and practises her doves; Calls round her laughing eyes in playful turns, The glance that lightens, and the smile that burns; 100 Her dimpling cheeks with transient blushes dies, Heaves her white bosom with seductive sighs; Or moulds with rosy lips the magic words, That bind the heart in adamantine cords. Behind in twilight gloom with scowling mien The demon PAIN, convokes his court unseen; Whips, fetters, flames, pourtray'd on sculptur'd stone, In dread festoons, adorn his ebon throne; Each side a cohort of diseases stands, And shudd'ring Fever leads the ghastly bands; 110 O'er all Despair expands his raven wings, And guilt-stain'd Conscience darts a thousand stings. Deep-whelm'd beneath, in vast sepulchral caves, OBLIVION dwells amid unlabell'd graves; The storied tomb, the laurell'd bust o'erturns, And shakes their ashes from the mould'ring urns.-- No vernal zephyr breathes, no sunbeams cheer, Nor song, nor simper, ever enters here; O'er the green floor, and round the dew-damp wall, The slimy snail, and bloated lizard crawl; 120 While on white heaps of intermingled bones The muse of MELANCHOLY sits and moans; Showers her cold tears o'er Beauty's early wreck, Spreads her pale arms, and bends her marble neck. So in rude rocks, beside the Ægean wave, TROPHONIUS scoop'd his sorrow-sacred cave; Unbarr'd to pilgrim feet the brazen door, And the sad sage returning smil'd no more. [Footnote: _Trophonius scoop'd_, l. 126. Plutarch mentions, that prophecies of evil events were uttered from the cave of Trophonius; but the allegorical story, that whoever entered this cavern were never again seen to smile, seems to have been designed to warn the contemplative from considering too much the dark side of nature. Thus an ancient poet is said to have written a poem on the miseries of the world, and to have thence become so unhappy as to destroy himself. When we reflect on the perpetual destruction of organic life, we should also recollect, that it is perpetually renewed in other forms by the same materials, and thus the sum total of the happiness of the world continues undiminished; and that a philosopher may thus smile again on turning his eyes from the coffins of nature to her cradles.] SHRIN'D in the midst majestic NATURE stands, Extends o'er earth and sea her hundred hands; 130 Tower upon tower her beamy forehead crests, And births unnumber'd milk her hundred breasts; Drawn round her brows a lucid veil depends, O'er her fine waist the purfled woof descends; Her stately limbs the gather'd folds surround, And spread their golden selvage on the ground. [Footnote: _Fam'd Eleusis stole_, l. 137. The Eleusinian mysteries were invented in Egypt, and afterwards transferred into Greece along with most of the other early arts and religions of Europe. They seem to have consisted of scenical representations of the philosophy and religion of those times, which had previously been painted in hieroglyphic figures to perpetuate them before the discovery of letters; and are well explained in Dr. Warburton's divine legation of Moses; who believes with great probability, that Virgil in the sixth book of the Æneid has described a part of these mysteries in his account of the Elysian fields. In the first part of this scenery was represented Death, and the destruction of all things; as mentioned in the note on the Portland Vase in the Botanic Garden. Next the marriage of Cupid and Psyche seems to have shown the reproduction of living nature; and afterwards the procession of torches, which is said to have constituted a part of the mysteries, probably signified the return of light, and the resuscitation of all things. Lastly, the histories of illustrious persons of the early ages seem to have been enacted; who were first represented by hieroglyphic figures, and afterwards became the gods and goddesses of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Might not such a dignified pantomime be contrived, even in this age, as might strike the spectators with awe, and at the same time explain many philosophical truths by adapted imagery, and thus both amuse and instruct?] From this first altar fam'd ELEUSIS stole Her secret symbols and her mystic scroll; With pious fraud in after ages rear'd Her gorgeous temple, and the gods rever'd. 140 --First in dim pomp before the astonish'd throng, Silence, and Night, and Chaos, stalk'd along; Dread scenes of Death, in nodding sables dress'd, Froze the broad eye, and thrill'd the unbreathing breast. Then the young Spring, with winged Zephyr, leads The queen of Beauty to the blossom'd meads; Charm'd in her train admiring Hymen moves, And tiptoe Graces hand in hand with Loves. Next, while on pausing step the masked mimes Enact the triumphs of forgotten times, 150 Conceal from vulgar throngs the mystic truth, Or charm with Wisdom's lore the initiate youth; Each shifting scene, some patriot hero trod, Some sainted beauty, or some saviour god. III. Now rose in purple pomp the breezy dawn, And crimson dew-drops trembled on the lawn; Blaz'd high in air the temple's golden vanes, And dancing shadows veer'd upon the plains.-- Long trains of virgins from the sacred grove, Pair after pair, in bright procession move, 160 With flower-fill'd baskets round the altar throng, Or swing their censers, as they wind along. The fair URANIA leads the blushing bands, Presents their offerings with unsullied hands; Pleas'd to their dazzled eyes in part unshrouds The goddess-form;--the rest is hid in clouds. "PRIESTESS OF NATURE! while with pious awe Thy votary bends, the mystic veil withdraw; Charm after charm, succession bright, display, And give the GODDESS to adoring day! 170 So kneeling realms shall own the Power divine, And heaven and earth pour incense on her shrine. "Oh grant the MUSE with pausing step to press Each sun-bright avenue, and green recess; Led by thy hand survey the trophied walls, The statued galleries, and the pictur'd halls; Scan the proud pyramid, and arch sublime, Earth-canker'd urn, medallion green with time, Stern busts of Gods, with helmed heroes mix'd, And Beauty's radiant forms, that smile betwixt. 180 [Footnote: _The statued galleries_, l. 176. The art of painting has appeared in the early state of all societies before the invention of the alphabet. Thus when the Spanish adventurers, under Cortez, invaded America, intelligence of their debarkation and movements was daily transmitted to Montezuma, by drawings, which corresponded with the Egyptian hieroglyphics. The antiquity of statuary appears from the Memnon and sphinxes of Egypt; that of casting figures in metals from the golden calf of Aaron; and that of carving in wood from the idols or household gods, which Rachel stole from her father Laban, and hid beneath her garments as she sat upon the straw. Gen. c. xxxi. v. 34.] "Waked by thy voice, transmuted by thy wand, Their lips shall open, and their arms expand; The love-lost lady, and the warrior slain, Leap from their tombs, and sigh or fight again. --So when ill-fated ORPHEUS tuned to woe His potent lyre, and sought the realms below; Charm'd into life unreal forms respir'd, And list'ning shades the dulcet notes admir'd.-- "LOVE led the Sage through Death's tremendous porch, Cheer'd with his smile, and lighted with his torch;-- 190 Hell's triple Dog his playful jaws expands, Fawns round the GOD, and licks his baby hands; In wondering groups the shadowy nations throng, And sigh or simper, as he steps along; Sad swains, and nymphs forlorn, on Lethe's brink, Hug their past sorrows, and refuse to drink; Night's dazzled Empress feels the golden flame Play round her breast, and melt her frozen frame; Charms with soft words, and sooths with amorous wiles, Her iron-hearted Lord,--and PLUTO smiles.-- 200 His trembling Bride the Bard triumphant led From the pale mansions of the astonish'd dead; Gave the fair phantom to admiring light,-- Ah, soon again to tread irremeable night!" [Footnote: _Love led the Sage_, l. 189. This description is taken from the figures on the Barbarini, or Portland Vase, where Eros, or Divine Love, with his torch precedes the manes through the gates of Death, and reverting his smiling countenance invites him into the Elysian fields.] [Footnote: _Fawns round the God_, l. 192. This idea is copied from a painting of the descent of Orpheus, by a celebrated Parisian artist.] IV. HER snow-white arm, indulgent to my song, Waves the fair Hierophant, and moves along.-- High plumes, that bending shade her amber hair, Nod, as she steps, their silver leaves in air; Bright chains of pearl, with golden buckles brac'd, Clasp her white neck, and zone her slender waist; 210 Thin folds of silk in soft meanders wind Down her fine form, and undulate behind; The purple border, on the pavement roll'd, Swells in the gale, and spreads its fringe of gold. "FIRST, if you can, celestial Guide! disclose From what fair fountain mortal life arose, Whence the fine nerve to move and feel assign'd, Contractile fibre, and ethereal mind: "How Love and Sympathy the bosom warm, Allure with pleasure, and with pain alarm, 220 With soft affections weave the social plan, And charm the listening Savage into Man." "GOD THE FIRST CAUSE!--in this terrene abode Young Nature lisps, she is the child of GOD. From embryon births her changeful forms improve, Grow, as they live, and strengthen as they move. [Footnote: _God the first cause_, l. 223. A Jove principium, musæ! Jovis omnia plena. VIRGIL. In him we live, and move, and have our being. ST. PAUL.] [Footnote: _Young Nature lisps_, l. 224. The perpetual production and increase of the strata of limestone from the shells of aquatic animals; and of all those incumbent on them from the recrements of vegetables and of terrestrial animals, are now well understood from our improved knowledge of geology; and show, that the solid parts of the globe are gradually enlarging, and consequently that it is young; as the fluid parts are not yet all converted into solid ones. Add to this, that some parts of the earth and its inhabitants appear younger than others; thus the greater height of the mountains of America seems to show that continent to be less ancient than Europe, Asia, and Africa; as their summits have been less washed away, and the wild animals of America, as the tigers and crocodiles, are said to be less perfect in respect to their size and strength; which would show them to be still in a state of infancy, or of progressive improvement. Lastly, the progress of mankind in arts and sciences, which continues slowly to extend, and to increase, seems to evince the youth of human society; whilst the unchanging state of the societies of some insects, as of the bee, wasp, and ant, which is usually ascribed to instinct, seems to evince the longer existence, and greater maturity of those societies. The juvenility of the earth shows, that it has had a beginning or birth, and is a strong natural argument evincing the existence of a cause of its production, that is of the Deity.] "Ere Time began, from flaming Chaos hurl'd Rose the bright spheres, which form the circling world; Earths from each sun with quick explosions burst, And second planets issued from the first. 230 Then, whilst the sea at their coeval birth, Surge over surge, involv'd the shoreless earth; Nurs'd by warm sun-beams in primeval caves Organic Life began beneath the waves. [Footnote: _Earths from each sun_, l. 229. See Botan. Garden, Vol. I. Cant. I. l. 107.] "First HEAT from chemic dissolution springs, And gives to matter its eccentric wings; With strong REPULSION parts the exploding mass, Melts into lymph, or kindles into gas. ATTRACTION next, as earth or air subsides, The ponderous atoms from the light divides, 240 Approaching parts with quick embrace combines, Swells into spheres, and lengthens into lines. Last, as fine goads the gluten-threads excite, Cords grapple cords, and webs with webs unite; And quick CONTRACTION with ethereal flame Lights into life the fibre-woven frame.-- Hence without parent by spontaneous birth Rise the first specks of animated earth; From Nature's womb the plant or insect swims, And buds or breathes, with microscopic limbs. 250 [Footnote: _First Heat from chemic_, l. 235. The matter of heat is an ethereal fluid, in which all things are immersed, and which constitutes the general power of repulsion; as appears in explosions which are produced by the sudden evolution of combined heat, and by the expansion of all bodies by the slower diffusion of it in its uncombined state. Without heat all the matter of the world would be condensed into a point by the power of attraction; and neither fluidity nor life could exist. There are also particular powers of repulsion, as those of magnetism and electricity, and of chemistry, such as oil and water; which last may be as numerous as the particular attractions which constitute chemical affinities; and may both of them exist as atmospheres round the individual particles of matter; see Botanic Garden, Vol. I. additional note VII. on elementary heat.] [Footnote: _Attraction next_, l. 239. The power of attraction may be divided into general attraction, which is called gravity; and into particular attraction, which is termed chemical affinity. As nothing can act where it does not exist, the power of gravity must be conceived as extending from the sun to the planets, occupying that immense space; and may therefore be considered as an ethereal fluid, though not cognizable by our senses like heat, light, and electricity. Particular attraction, or chemical affinity, must likewise occupy the spaces between the particles of matter which they cause to approach each other. The power of gravity may therefore be called the general attractive ether, and the matter of heat may be called the general repulsive ether; which constitute the two great agents in the changes of inanimate matter.] [Footnote: _And quick Contraction_, l. 245. The power of contraction, which exists in organized bodies, and distinguishes life from inanimation, appears to consist of an ethereal fluid which resides in the brain and nerves of living bodies, and is expended in the act of shortening their fibres. The attractive and repulsive ethers require only the vicinity of bodies for the exertion of their activity, but the contractive ether requires at first the contact of a goad or stimulus, which appears to draw it off from the contracting fibre, and to excite the sensorial power of irritation. These contractions of animal fibres are afterwards excited or repeated by the sensorial powers of sensation, volition, or association, as explained at large in Zoonomia, Vol. I. There seems nothing more wonderful in the ether of contraction producing the shortening of a fibre, than in the ether of attraction causing two bodies to approach each other. The former indeed seems in some measure to resemble the latter, as it probably occasions the minute particles of the fibre to approach into absolute or adhesive contact, by withdrawing from them their repulsive atmospheres; whereas the latter seems only to cause particles of matter to approach into what is popularly called contact, like the particles of fluids; but which are only in the vicinity of each other, and still retain their repulsive atmospheres, as may be seen in riding through shallow water by the number of minute globules of it thrown up by the horses feet, which roll far on its surface; and by the difficulty with which small globules of mercury poured on the surface of a quantity of it can be made to unite with it.] [Footnote: _Spontaneous birth_, l. 247. See additional Note, No. I.] "IN earth, sea, air, around, below, above, Life's subtle woof in Nature's loom is wove; Points glued to points a living line extends, Touch'd by some goad approach the bending ends; Rings join to rings, and irritated tubes Clasp with young lips the nutrient globes or cubes; And urged by appetencies new select, Imbibe, retain, digest, secrete, eject. In branching cones the living web expands, Lymphatic ducts, and convoluted glands; 260 Aortal tubes propel the nascent blood, And lengthening veins absorb the refluent flood; Leaves, lungs, and gills, the vital ether breathe On earth's green surface, or the waves beneath. So Life's first powers arrest the winds and floods, To bones convert them, or to shells, or woods; Stretch the vast beds of argil, lime, and sand, And from diminish'd oceans form the land! [Footnote: _In branching cones_, l. 259. The whole branch of an artery or vein may be considered as a cone, though each distinct division of it is a cylinder. It is probable that the amount of the areas of all the small branches from one trunk may equal that of the trunk, otherwise the velocity of the blood would be greater in some parts than in others, which probably only exists when a part is compressed or inflamed.] [Footnote: _Absorb the refluent flood_, l. 262. The force of the arterial impulse appears to cease, after having propelled the blood through the capillary vessels; whence the venous circulation is owing to the extremities of the veins absorbing the blood, as those of the lymphatics absorb the fluids. The great force of absorption is well elucidated by Dr. Hales's experiment on the rise of the sap-juice in a vine-stump; see Zoonomia, Vol. I. Sect. XXIII.] [Footnote: _And from diminish'd oceans_, l. 268. The increase of the solid parts of the globe by the recrements of organic bodies, as limestone rocks from shells and bones, and the beds of clay, marl, coals, from decomposed woods, is now well known to those who have attended to modern geology; and Dr. Halley, and others, have endeavoured to show, with great probability, that the ocean has decreased in quantity during the short time which human history has existed. Whence it appears, that the exertions of vegetable and animal life convert the fluid parts of the globe into solid ones; which is probably effected by combining the matter of heat with the other elements, instead of suffering it to remain simply diffused amongst them, which is a curious conjecture, and deserves further investigation.] "Next the long nerves unite their silver train, And young SENSATION permeates the brain; 270 Through each new sense the keen emotions dart, Flush the young cheek, and swell the throbbing heart. From pain and pleasure quick VOLITIONS rise, Lift the strong arm, or point the inquiring eyes; With Reason's light bewilder'd Man direct, And right and wrong with balance nice detect. Last in thick swarms ASSOCIATIONS spring, Thoughts join to thoughts, to motions motions cling; Whence in long trains of catenation flow Imagined joy, and voluntary woe. 280 [Footnote: _And young Sensation_, l. 270. Both sensation and volition consist in an affection of the central part of the sensorium, or of the whole of it; and hence cannot exist till the nerves are united in the brain. The motions of a limb of any animal cut from the body, are therefore owing to irritation, not to sensation or to volition. For the definitions of irritation, sensation, volition, and association, see additional Note II.] "So, view'd through crystal spheres in drops saline, Quick-shooting salts in chemic forms combine; Or Mucor-stems, a vegetative tribe, Spread their fine roots, the tremulous wave imbibe. Next to our wondering eyes the focus brings Self-moving lines, and animated rings; First Monas moves, an unconnected point, Plays round the drop without a limb or joint; Then Vibrio waves, with capillary eels, And Vorticella whirls her living wheels; 290 While insect Proteus sports with changeful form Through the bright tide, a globe, a cube, a worm. Last o'er the field the Mite enormous swims, Swells his red heart, and writhes his giant limbs. [Footnote: _Or Mucor-stems_, l. 283. Mucor or mould in its early state is properly a microscopic vegetable, and is spontaneously produced on the scum of all decomposing organic matter. The Monas is a moving speck, the Vibrio an undulating wire, the Proteus perpetually changes its shape, and the Vorticella has wheels about its mouth, with which it makes an eddy, and is supposed thus to draw into its throat invisible animalcules. These names are from Linneus and Muller; see Appendix to Additional Note I.] V. "ORGANIC LIFE beneath the shoreless waves Was born and nurs'd in Ocean's pearly caves; First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass, Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass; These, as successive generations bloom, New powers acquire, and larger limbs assume; 300 Whence countless groups of vegetation spring, And breathing realms of fin, and feet, and wing. [Footnote: _Beneath the shoreless waves_, l. 295. The earth was originally covered with water, as appears from some of its highest mountains, consisting of shells cemented together by a solution of part of them, as the limestone rocks of the Alps; Ferber's Travels. It must be therefore concluded, that animal life began beneath the sea. Nor is this unanalogous to what still occurs, as all quadrupeds and mankind in their embryon state are aquatic animals; and thus may be said to resemble gnats and frogs. The fetus in the uterus has an organ called the placenta, the fine extremities of the vessels of which permeate the arteries of the uterus, and the blood of the fetus becomes thus oxygenated from the passing stream of the maternal arterial blood; exactly as is done by the gills of fish from the stream of water, which they occasion to pass through them. But the chicken in the egg possesses a kind of aerial respiration, since the extremities of its placental vessels terminate on a membranous bag, which contains air, at the broad end of the egg; and in this the chick in the egg differs from the fetus in the womb, as there is in the egg no circulating maternal blood for the insertion of the extremities of its respiratory vessels, and in this also I suspect that the eggs of birds differ from the spawn of fish; which latter is immersed in water, and which has probably the extremities of its respiratory organ inserted into the soft membrane which covers it, and is in contact with the water.] [Footnote: _First forms minute_, l. 297. See Additional Note I. on Spontaneous Vitality.] "Thus the tall Oak, the giant of the wood, Which bears Britannia's thunders on the flood; The Whale, unmeasured monster of the main, The lordly Lion, monarch of the plain, The Eagle soaring in the realms of air, Whose eye undazzled drinks the solar glare, Imperious man, who rules the bestial crowd, Of language, reason, and reflection proud, 310 With brow erect who scorns this earthy sod, And styles himself the image of his God; Arose from rudiments of form and sense, An embryon point, or microscopic ens! "Now in vast shoals beneath the brineless tide, On earth's firm crust testaceous tribes reside; Age after age expands the peopled plain, The tenants perish, but their cells remain; Whence coral walls and sparry hills ascend From pole to pole, and round the line extend. 320 [Footnote: _An embryon point_, l. 314. The arguments showing that all vegetables and animals arose from such a small beginning, as a living point or living fibre, are detailed in Zoonomia, Sect. XXXIX. 4. 8. on Generation.] [Footnote: _Brineless tide_, l. 315. As the salt of the sea has been gradually accumulating, being washed down into it from the recrements of animal and vegetable bodies, the sea must originally have been as fresh as river water; and as it is not saturated with salt, must become annually saline. The sea-water about our island contains at this time from about one twenty-eighth to one thirtieth part of sea salt, and about one eightieth of magnesian salt; Brownrigg on Salt.] [Footnote: _Whence coral walls_, l. 319. An account of the structure of the earth is given in Botanic Garden, Vol. I. Additional Notes, XVI. XVIII. XIX. XX. XXIII. XXIV.] "Next when imprison'd fires in central caves Burst the firm earth, and drank the headlong waves; And, as new airs with dread explosion swell, Form'd lava-isles, and continents of shell; Pil'd rocks on rocks, on mountains mountains raised, And high in heaven the first volcanoes blazed; In countless swarms an insect-myriad moves From sea-fan gardens, and from coral groves; Leaves the cold caverns of the deep, and creeps On shelving shores, or climbs on rocky steeps. 330 As in dry air the sea-born stranger roves, Each muscle quickens, and each sense improves; Cold gills aquatic form respiring lungs, And sounds aerial flow from slimy tongues. [Footnote: _Drunk the headlong waves_, l. 322. See Additional Note III.] [Footnote: _An insect-myriad moves_, l. 327. After islands or continents were raised above the primeval ocean, great numbers of the most simple animals would attempt to seek food at the edges or shores of the new land, and might thence gradually become amphibious; as is now seen in the frog, who changes from an aquatic animal to an amphibious one; and in the gnat, which changes from a natant to a volant state. At the same time new microscopic animalcules would immediately commence wherever there was warmth and moisture, and some organic matter, that might induce putridity. Those situated on dry land, and immersed in dry air, may gradually acquire new powers to preserve their existence; and by innumerable successive reproductions for some thousands, or perhaps millions of ages, may at length have produced many of the vegetable and animal inhabitants which now people the earth. As innumerable shell-fish must have existed a long time beneath the ocean, before the calcareous mountains were produced and elevated; it is also probable, that many of the insect tribes, or less complicate animals, existed long before the quadrupeds or more complicate ones, which in some measure accords with the theory of Linneus in respect to the vegetable world; who thinks, that all the plants now extant arose from the conjunction and reproduction of about sixty different vegetables, from which he constitutes his natural orders. As the blood of animals in the air becomes more oxygenated in their lungs, than that of animals in water by their gills; it becomes of a more scarlet colour, and from its greater stimulus the sensorium seems to produce quicker motions and finer sensations; and as water is a much better vehicle for vibrations or sounds than air, the fish, even when dying in pain, are mute in the atmosphere, though it is probable that in the water they may utter sounds to be heard at a considerable distance. See on this subject, Botanic Garden, Vol. I. Canto IV. l. 176, Note.] "So Trapa rooted in pellucid tides, In countless threads her breathing leaves divides, Waves her bright tresses in the watery mass, And drinks with gelid gills the vital gas; Then broader leaves in shadowy files advance, Spread o'er the crystal flood their green expanse; 340 And, as in air the adherent dew exhales, Court the warm sun, and breathe ethereal gales. [Footnote: _So Trapa rooted_, l. 335. The lower leaves of this plant grow under water, and are divided into minute capillary ramifications; while the upper leaves are broad and round, and have air bladders in their footstalks to support them above the surface of the water. As the aerial leaves of vegetables do the office of lungs, by exposing a large surface of vessels with their contained fluids to the influence of the air; so these aquatic leaves answer a similar purpose like the gills of fish, and perhaps gain from water a similar material. As the material thus necessary to life seems to be more easily acquired from air than from water, the subaquatic leaves of this plant and of sisymbrium, oenanthe, ranunculus aquatilis, water crow-foot, and some others, are cut into fine divisions to increase the surface, whilst those above water are undivided; see Botanic Garden, Vol. II. Canto IV. l. 204. Note. Few of the water plants of this country are used for economical purposes, but the ranunculus fluviatilis may be worth cultivation; as on the borders of the river Avon, near Ringwood, the cottagers cut this plant every morning in boats, almost all the year round, to feed their cows, which appear in good condition, and give a due quantity of milk; see a paper from Dr. Pultney in the Transactions of the Linnean Society, Vol. V.] "So still the Tadpole cleaves the watery vale With balanc'd fins, and undulating tail; New lungs and limbs proclaim his second birth, Breathe the dry air, and bound upon the earth. So from deep lakes the dread Musquito springs, Drinks the soft breeze, and dries his tender wings, In twinkling squadrons cuts his airy way, Dips his red trunk in blood, and man his prey. 350 [Footnote: _So still the Tadpole_, l. 343. The transformation of the tadpole from an aquatic animal into an aerial one is abundantly curious, when first it is hatched from the spawn by the warmth of the season, it resembles a fish; it afterwards puts forth legs, and resembles a lizard; and finally losing its tail, and acquiring lungs instead of gills, becomes an aerial quadruped. The rana temporaria of Linneus lives in the water in spring, and on the land in summer, and catches flies. Of the rana paradoxa the larva or tadpole is as large as the frog, and dwells in Surinam, whence the mistake of Merian and of Seba, who call it a frog fish. The esculent frog is green, with three yellow lines from the mouth to the anus; the back transversely gibbous, the hinder feet palmated; its more frequent croaking in the evenings is said to foretell rain. Linnei Syst. Nat. Art. rana. Linneus asserts in his introduction to the class Amphibia, that frogs are so nearly allied to lizards, lizards to serpents, and serpents to fish, that the boundaries of these orders can scarcely be ascertained.] [Footnote: _The dread Musquito springs_, l. 347. See Additional Note IV.] "So still the Diodons, amphibious tribe, With two-fold lungs the sea or air imbibe; Allied to fish, the lizard cleaves the flood With one-cell'd heart, and dark frigescent blood; Half-reasoning Beavers long-unbreathing dart Through Erie's waves with perforated heart; With gills and lungs respiring Lampreys steer, Kiss the rude rocks, and suck till they adhere; The lazy Remora's inhaling lips, Hung on the keel, retard the struggling ships; 360 With gills pulmonic breathes the enormous Whale, And spouts aquatic columns to the gale; Sports on the shining wave at noontide hours, And shifting rainbows crest the rising showers. [Footnote: _So still the Diodon_, l. 351. See Additional Note V.] [Footnote: _At noontide hours_, l. 363. The rainbows in our latitude are only seen in the mornings or evenings, when the sun is not much more than forty-two degrees high. In the more northern latitudes, where the meridian sun is not more than forty-two degrees high, they are also visible at noon.] "So erst, ere rose the science to record In letter'd syllables the volant word; Whence chemic arts, disclosed in pictured lines, Liv'd to mankind by hieroglyphic signs; And clustering stars, pourtray'd on mimic spheres, Assumed the forms of lions, bulls, and bears; 370 --So erst, as Egypt's rude designs explain, Rose young DIONE from the shoreless main; Type of organic Nature! source of bliss! Emerging Beauty from the vast abyss! Sublime on Chaos borne, the Goddess stood, And smiled enchantment on the troubled flood; The warring elements to peace restored, And young Reflection wondered and adored." [Footnote: _As Egypt's rude design_, l. 371. See Additional Note VI.] [Footnote: _Rose young Dione_, l. 372. The hieroglyphic figure of Venus rising from the sea supported on a shell by two tritons, as well as that of Hercules armed with a club, appear to be remains of the most remote antiquity. As the former is devoid of grace, and of the pictorial art of design, as one half of the group exactly resembles the other; and as that of Hercules is armed with a club, which was the first weapon. The Venus seems to have represented the beauty of organic Nature rising from the sea, and afterwards became simply an emblem of ideal beauty; while the figure of Adonis was probably designed to represent the more abstracted idea of life or animation. Some of these hieroglyphic designs seem to evince the profound investigations in science of the Egyptian philosophers, and to have outlived all written language; and still constitute the symbols, by which painters and poets give form and animation to abstracted ideas, as to those of strength and beauty in the above instances.] Now paused the Nymph,--The Muse responsive cries, Sweet admiration sparkling in her eyes, 380 "Drawn by your pencil, by your hand unfurl'd, Bright shines the tablet of the dawning world; Amazed the Sea's prolific depths I view, And VENUS rising from the waves in YOU! "Still Nature's births enclosed in egg or seed From the tall forest to the lowly weed, Her beaux and beauties, butterflies and worms, Rise from aquatic to aerial forms. Thus in the womb the nascent infant laves Its natant form in the circumfluent waves; 390 With perforated heart unbreathing swims, Awakes and stretches all its recent limbs; With gills placental seeks the arterial flood, And drinks pure ether from its Mother's blood. Erewhile the landed Stranger bursts his way, From the warm wave emerging into day; Feels the chill blast, and piercing light, and tries His tender lungs, and rolls his dazzled eyes; Gives to the passing gale his curling hair, And steps a dry inhabitant of air. 400 [Footnote: _Awakes and stretches_, l. 392. During the first six months of gestation, the embryon probably sleeps, as it seems to have no use for voluntary power; it then seems to awake, and to stretch its limbs, and change its posture in some degree, which is termed quickening.] [Footnote: _With gills placental_, l. 393. The placenta adheres to any side of the uterus in natural gestation, or of any other cavity in extra-uterine gestation; the extremities of its arteries and veins probably permeate the arteries of the mother, and absorb from thence through their fine coats the oxygen of the mother's blood; hence when the placenta is withdrawn, the side of the uterus, where it adhered, bleeds; but not the extremities of its own vessels.] [Footnote: _His dazzled eyes_, l. 398. Though the membrana pupillaris described by modern anatomists guards the tender retina from too much light; the young infant nevertheless seems to feel the presence of it by its frequently moving its eyes, before it can distinguish common objects.] "Creative Nile, as taught in ancient song, So charm'd to life his animated throng; O'er his wide realms the slow-subsiding flood Left the rich treasures of organic mud; While with quick growth young Vegetation yields Her blushing orchards, and her waving fields; Pomona's hand replenish'd Plenty's horn, And Ceres laugh'd amid her seas of corn.-- Bird, beast, and reptile, spring from sudden birth, Raise their new forms, half-animal, half-earth; 410 The roaring lion shakes his tawny mane, His struggling limbs still rooted in the plain; With flapping wings assurgent eagles toil To rend their talons from the adhesive soil; The impatient serpent lifts his crested head, And drags his train unfinish'd from the bed.-- As Warmth and Moisture blend their magic spells, And brood with mingling wings the slimy dells; Contractile earths in sentient forms arrange, And Life triumphant stays their chemic change." 420 [Footnote: _As warmth and moisture_, l. 417. In eodem corpore sæpe Altera pars vivit; rudis est pars altera tellus. Quippe ubi temperiem sumpsêre humorque calorque, Concipiunt; & ab his oriuntur, cuncta duobus. OVID. MET. l. 1. 430. This story from Ovid of the production of animals from the mud of the Nile seems to be of Egyptian origin, and is probably a poetical account of the opinions of the magi or priests of that country; showing that the simplest animations were spontaneously produced like chemical combinations, but were distinguished from the latter by their perpetual improvement by the power of reproduction, first by solitary, and then by sexual generation; whereas the products of natural chemistry are only enlarged by accretion, or purified by filtration.] Then hand in hand along the waving glades The virgin Sisters pass beneath the shades; Ascend the winding steps with pausing march, And seek the Portico's susurrant arch; Whose sculptur'd architrave on columns borne Drinks the first blushes of the rising morn, Whose fretted roof an ample shield displays, And guards the Beauties from meridian rays. While on light step enamour'd Zephyr springs, And fans their glowing features with his wings, 430 Imbibes the fragrance of the vernal flowers, And speeds with kisses sweet the dancing Hours. Urania, leaning with unstudied grace, Rests her white elbow on a column's base; Awhile reflecting takes her silent stand, Her fair cheek press'd upon her lily hand; Then, as awaking from ideal trance, On the smooth floor her pausing steps advance, Waves high her arm, upturns her lucid eyes, Marks the wide scenes of ocean, earth, and skies; 440 And leads, meandering as it rolls along Through Nature's walks, the shining stream of Song. First her sweet voice in plaintive accents chains The Muse's ear with fascinating strains; Reverts awhile to elemental strife, The change of form, and brevity of life; Then tells how potent Love with torch sublime Relights the glimmering lamp, and conquers Time. --The polish'd walls reflect her rosy smiles, And sweet-ton'd echoes talk along the ailes. 450 END OF CANTO I. ORIGIN OF SOCIETY. CANTO II. REPRODUCTION OF LIFE. CONTENTS. I. Brevity of Life 1. Reproduction 13. Animals improve 31. Life and Death alternate 37. Adonis emblem of Mortal Life 45. II. Solitary reproduction 61. Buds, Bulbs, Polypus 65. Truffle; Buds of trees how generated 71. Volvox, Polypus, Tænia, Oysters, Corals, are without Sex 83. Storge goddess of Parental Love; First chain of Society 92. III. Female sex produced 103. Tulip bulbs, Aphis 125. Eve from Adam's rib 135. IV. Hereditary diseases 159. Grafted trees, bulbous roots degenerate 167. Gout, Mania, Scrofula, Consumption 177. Time and Nature 185. V. Urania and the Muse lament 205. Cupid and Psyche, the deities of sexual love 221. Speech of Hymen 239. Second chain of Society 250. Young Desire 251. Love and Beauty save the world 257. Vegetable sexes, Anthers and Stigmas salute 263. Vegetable sexual generation 271. Anthers of Vallisneria float to the Stigmas 279. Ant, Lampyris, Glow-Worm, Snail 287. Silk-Worm 293. VI. Demon of Jealousy 307. Cocks, Quails, Stags, Boars 313. Knights of Romance 327. Helen and Paris 333. Connubial love 341. Married Birds, nests of the Linnet and Nightingale 343. Lions, Tigers, Bulls, Horses 357. Triumphal car of Cupid 361. Fish, Birds, Insects 371. Vegetables 389. March of Hymen 411. His lamp 419. VII. Urania's advice to her Nymphs 425. Dines with the Muse on forbidden Fruit 435. Angels visit Abraham 447-458. CANTO II. REPRODUCTION OF LIFE. I. "How short the span of LIFE! some hours possess'd, Warm but to cool, and active but to rest!-- The age-worn fibres goaded to contract, By repetition palsied, cease to act; When Time's cold hands the languid senses seize, Chill the dull nerves, the lingering currents freeze; Organic matter, unreclaim'd by Life, Reverts to elements by chemic strife. Thus Heat evolv'd from some fermenting mass Expands the kindling atoms into gas; 10 Which sink ere long in cold concentric rings, Condensed, on Gravity's descending wings. [Footnote: _How short the span of Life_, l. 1. The thinking few in all ages have complained of the brevity of life, lamenting that mankind are not allowed time sufficient to cultivate science, or to improve their intellect. Hippocrates introduces his celebrated aphorisms with this idea; "Life is short, science long, opportunities of knowledge rare, experiments fallacious, and reasoning difficult."--A melancholy reflection to philosophers!] [Footnote: _The age-worn fibres_, l. 3. Why the same kinds of food, which enlarge and invigorate the body from infancy to the meridian of life, and then nourish it for some years unimpaired, should at length gradually cease to do so, and the debility of age and death supervene, would be liable to surprise us if we were not in the daily habit of observing it; and is a circumstance which has not yet been well understood. Before mankind introduced civil society, old age did not exist in the world, nor other lingering diseases; as all living creatures, as soon as they became too feeble to defend themselves, were slain and eaten by others, except the young broods, who were defended by their mother; and hence the animal world existed uniformly in its greatest strength and perfection; see Additional Note VII.] "But REPRODUCTION with ethereal fires New Life rekindles, ere the first expires; Calls up renascent Youth, ere tottering age Quits the dull scene, and gives him to the stage; Bids on his cheek the rose of beauty blow, And binds the wreaths of pleasure round his brow; With finer links the vital chain extends, And the long line of Being never ends. 20 [Footnote: _But Reproduction_, l. 13. See Additional Note VIII.] "Self-moving Engines by unbending springs May walk on earth, or flap their mimic wings; In tubes of glass mercurial columns rise, Or sink, obedient to the incumbent skies; Or, as they touch the figured scale, repeat The nice gradations of circumfluent heat. But REPRODUCTION, when the perfect Elf Forms from fine glands another like itself, Gives the true character of life and sense, And parts the organic from the chemic Ens.-- 30 Where milder skies protect the nascent brood, And earth's warm bosom yields salubrious food; Each new Descendant with superior powers Of sense and motion speeds the transient hours; Braves every season, tenants every clime, And Nature rises on the wings of Time. [Footnote: _Unbending springs_, l. 21. See Additional Note I. 4.] "As LIFE discordant elements arrests, Rejects the noxious, and the pure digests; Combines with Heat the fluctuating mass, And gives a while solidity to gas; 40 Organic forms with chemic changes strive, Live but to die, and die but to revive! Immortal matter braves the transient storm, Mounts from the wreck, unchanging but in form.-- [Footnote: _Combines with Heat_, l. 39. It was shown in note on line 248 of the first Canto, that much of the aerial and liquid parts of the terraqueous globe was converted by the powers of life into solid matter; and that this was effected by the combination of the fluid, heat, with other elementary bodies by the appetencies and propensities of the parts of living matter to unite with each other. But when these appetencies and propensities of the parts of organic matter to unite with each other cease, the chemical affinities of attraction and the aptitude to be attracted, and of repulsion and the aptitude to be repelled, succeed, and reduce much of the solid matters back to the condition of elements; which seems to be effected by the matter of heat being again set at liberty, which was combined with other matters by the powers of life; and thus by its diffusion the solid bodies return into liquid ones or into gasses, as occurs in the processes of fermentation, putrefaction, sublimation, and calcination. Whence solidity appears to be produced in consequence of the diminution of heat, as the condensation of steam into water, and the consolidation of water into ice, or by the combination of heat with bodies, as with the materials of gunpowder before its explosion.] [Footnote: _Immortal matter_, l. 43. The perpetual mutability of the forms of matter seems to have struck the philosophers of great antiquity; the system of transmigration taught by Pythagoras, in which the souls of men were supposed after death to animate the bodies of a variety of animals, appears to have arisen from this source. He had observed the perpetual changes of organic matter from one creature to another, and concluded, that the vivifying spirit must attend it.] "So, as the sages of the East record In sacred symbol, or unletter'd word; Emblem of Life, to change eternal doom'd, The beauteous form of fair ADONIS bloom'd.-- On Syrian hills the graceful Hunter slain Dyed with his gushing blood the shuddering plain; 50 And, slow-descending to the Elysian shade, A while with PROSERPINE reluctant stray'd; Soon from the yawning grave the bursting clay Restor'd the Beauty to delighted day; Array'd in youth's resuscitated charms, And young DIONE woo'd him to her arms.-- Pleased for a while the assurgent youth above Relights the golden lamp of life and love; Ah, soon again to leave the cheerful light, And sink alternate to the realms of night. 60 [Footnote: _Emblem of Life_, l. 47. The Egyptian figure of Venus rising from the sea seems to have represented the Beauty of organic Nature; which the philosophers of that country, the magi, appear to have discovered to have been elevated by earthquakes from the primeval ocean. But the hieroglyphic figure of Adonis seems to have signified the spirit of animation or life, which was perpetually wooed or courted by organic matter, and which perished and revived alternately. Afterwards the fable of Adonis seems to have given origin to the first religion promising a resurrection from the dead; whence his funeral and return to life were celebrated for many ages in Egypt and Syria, the ceremonies of which Ezekiel complains as idolatrous, accusing the women of Israel of lamenting over Thammus; which St. Cyril interprets to be Adonis, in his Commentaries on Isaiah; Danet's Diction.] II. "HENCE ere Vitality, as time revolves, Leaves the cold organ, and the mass dissolves; The Reproductions of the living Ens From sires to sons, unknown to sex, commence. New buds and bulbs the living fibre shoots On lengthening branches, and protruding roots; Or on the father's side from bursting glands The adhering young its nascent form expands; In branching lines the parent-trunk adorns, And parts ere long like plumage, hairs, or horns. 70 "So the lone Truffle, lodged beneath the earth, Shoots from paternal roots the tuberous birth; No stamen-males ascend, and breathe above, No seed-born offspring lives by female love. From each young tree, for future buds design'd Organic drops exsude beneath the rind; While these with appetencies nice invite, And those with apt propensities unite; New embryon fibrils round the trunk combine With quick embrace, and form the living line: 80 Whose plume and rootlet at their early birth Seek the dry air, or pierce the humid earth. [Footnote: _So the lone Truffle_, l. 71. Lycoperdon tuber. This plant never rises above the earth, is propagated without seed by its roots only, and seems to require no light. Perhaps many other fungi are generated without seed by their roots only, and without light, and approach on the last account to animal nature.] [Footnote: _While these with appetencies_, l. 77. See Additional Note VIII.] "So safe in waves prolific Volvox dwells, And five descendants crowd his lucid cells; So the male Polypus parental swims, And branching infants bristle all his limbs; So the lone Tænia, as he grows, prolongs His flatten'd form with young adherent throngs; Unknown to sex the pregnant oyster swells, And coral-insects build their radiate shells; 90 Parturient Sires caress their infant train, And heaven-born STORGE weaves the social chain; Successive births her tender cares combine, And soft affections live along the line. [Footnote: _Prolific Volvox_, l. 83. The volvox globator dwells in the lakes of Europe, is transparent, and bears within it children and grandchildren to the fifth generation; Syst. Nat.] [Footnote: _The male polypus_, l. 85. The Hydra viridis and fusca of Linneus dwell in our ditches and rivers under aquatic plants; these animals have been shown by ingenious observers to revive after having been dried, to be restored when mutilated, to be multiplied by dividing them, and propagated from portions of them, parts of different ones to unite, to be turned inside outwards and yet live, and to be propagated by seeds, to produce bulbs, and vegetate by branches. Syst. Nat.] [Footnote: _The lone Tænia_, l. 87. The tape-worm dwells in the intestines of animals, and grows old at one extremity, producing an infinite series of young ones at the other; the separate joints have been called Gourd-worms, each of which possesses a mouth of its own, and organs of digestion. Syst. Nat.] [Footnote: _The pregnant oyster_, l. 89. Ostrea edulis dwells in the European oceans, frequent at the tables of the luxurious, a living repast! New-born oysters swim swiftly by an undulating movement of fins thrust out a little way from their shells. Syst. Nat. But they do not afterwards change their place during their whole lives, and are capable of no other movement but that of opening the shell a little way: whence Professor Beckman observes, that their offspring is probably produced without maternal organs; and that those, who speak of male and female oysters, must be mistaken: Phil. Magaz. March 1800. It is also observed by H. I. le Beck, that on nice inspection of the Pearl oysters in the gulf of Manar, he could observe no distinction of sexes. Nicholson's Journal. April 1800.] [Footnote: _And coral insects_, l. 90. The coral habitation of the Madrepora of Linneus consists of one or more star-like cells; a congeries of which form rocks beneath the sea; the animal which constructs it is termed Medusa; and as it adheres to its calcareous cavity, and thence cannot travel to its neighbours, is probably without sex. I observed great masses of the limestone in Shropshire, which is brought to Newport, to consist of the cells of these animals.] [Footnote: _And heaven-born Storge_, l. 92. See Additional Note IX.] "On angel-wings the GODDESS FORM descends, Round her fond broods her silver arms she bends; White streams of milk her tumid bosom swell, And on her lips ambrosial kisses dwell. Light joys on twinkling feet before her dance With playful nod, and momentary glance; 100 Behind, attendant on the pansied plain, Young PSYCHE treads with CUPID in her train. III. "IN these lone births no tender mothers blend Their genial powers to nourish or defend; No nutrient streams from Beauty's orbs improve These orphan babes of solitary love; Birth after birth the line unchanging runs, And fathers live transmitted in their sons; Each passing year beholds the unvarying kinds, The same their manners, and the same their minds. 110 Till, as erelong successive buds decay, And insect-shoals successive pass away, Increasing wants the pregnant parents vex With the fond wish to form a softer sex; Whose milky rills with pure ambrosial food Might charm and cherish their expected brood. The potent wish in the productive hour Calls to its aid Imagination's power, O'er embryon throngs with mystic charm presides, And sex from sex the nascent world divides, 120 With soft affections warms the callow trains, And gives to laughing Love his nymphs and swains; Whose mingling virtues interweave at length The mother's beauty with the father's strength. [Footnote: _A softer sex_, l. 114. The first buds of trees raised from seed die annually, and are succeeded by new buds by solitary reproduction; which are larger or more perfect for several successive years, and then they produce sexual flowers, which are succeeded by seminal reproduction. The same occurs in bulbous rooted plants raised from seed; they die annually, and produce others rather more perfect than the parent for several years, and then produce sexual flowers. The Aphis is in a similar manner hatched from an egg in the vernal months, and produces a viviparous offspring without sexual intercourse for nine or ten successive generations; and then the progeny is both male and female, which cohabit, and from these new females are produced eggs, which endure the winter; the same process probably occurs in many other insects.] [Footnote: _Imagination's power_, l. 118. The manner in which the similarity of the progeny to the parent, and the sex of it, are produced by the power of imagination, is treated of in Zoonomia. Sect. 39. 6. 3. It is not to be understood, that the first living fibres, which are to form an animal, are produced by imagination, with any similarity of form to the future animal; but with appetencies or propensities, which shall produce by accretion of parts the similarity of form and feature, or of sex, corresponding with the imagination of the father.] [Footnote: _His nymphs and swains_, l. 122. The arguments which have been adduced to show, that mankind and quadrupeds were formerly in an hermaphrodite state, are first deduced from the present existence of breasts and nipples in all the males; which latter swell on titillation like those of the females, and which are said to contain a milky fluid at their birth; and it is affirmed, that some men have given milk to their children in desert countries, where the mother has perished; as the male pigeon is said to give a kind of milk from his stomach along with the regurgitated food, to the young doves, as mentioned in Additional Note IX. on Storge. Secondly, from the apparent progress of many animals to greater perfection, as in some insects, as the flies with two wings, termed Diptera; which have rudiments of two other wings, called halteres, or poisers; and in many flowers which have rudiments of new stamina, or filaments without anthers on them. See Botanic Garden, Vol. II. Curcuma, Note, and the Note on l. 204 of Canto I. of this work. It has been supposed by some, that mankind were formerly quadrupeds as well as hermaphrodites; and that some parts of the body are not yet so convenient to an erect attitude as to a horizontal one; as the fundus of the bladder in an erect posture is not exactly over the insertion of the urethra; whence it is seldom completely evacuated, and thus renders mankind more subject to the stone, than if he had preserved his horizontality: these philosophers, with Buffon and Helvetius, seem to imagine, that mankind arose from one family of monkeys on the banks of the Mediterranean; who accidentally had learned to use the adductor pollicis, or that strong muscle which constitutes the ball of the thumb, and draws the point of it to meet the points of the fingers; which common monkeys do not; and that this muscle gradually increased in size, strength, and activity, in successive generations; and by this improved use of the sense of touch, that monkeys acquired clear ideas, and gradually became men. Perhaps all the productions of nature are in their progress to greater perfection! an idea countenanced by modern discoveries and deductions concerning the progressive formation of the solid parts of the terraqueous globe, and consonant to the dignity of the Creator of all things.] "So tulip-bulbs emerging from the seed, Year after year unknown to sex proceed; Erewhile the stamens and the styles display Their petal-curtains, and adorn the day; The beaux and beauties in each blossom glow With wedded joy, or amatorial woe. 130 Unmarried Aphides prolific prove For nine successions uninform'd of love; New sexes next with softer passions spring, Breathe the fond vow, and woo with quivering wing. "So erst in Paradise creation's LORD, As the first leaves of holy writ record, From Adam's rib, who press'd the flowery grove, And dreamt delighted of untasted love, To cheer and charm his solitary mind, Form'd a new sex, the MOTHER OF MANKIND. 140 --Buoy'd on light step the Beauty seem'd to swim, And stretch'd alternate every pliant limb; Pleased on Euphrates' velvet margin stood, And view'd her playful image in the flood; Own'd the fine flame of love, as life began, And smiled enchantment on adoring Man. Down her white neck and o'er her bosom roll'd, Flow'd in sweet negligence her locks of gold; Round her fine form the dim transparence play'd, And show'd the beauties, that it seem'd to shade. 150 --Enamour'd ADAM gaz'd with fond surprise, And drank delicious passion from her eyes; Felt the new thrill of young Desire, and press'd The graceful Virgin to his glowing breast.-- The conscious Fair betrays her soft alarms, Sinks with warm blush into his closing arms, Yields to his fond caress with wanton play, And sweet, reluctant, amorous, delay. [Footnote: _The mother of mankind_, l. 140. See Additional Note X.] IV. "WHERE no new Sex with glands nutritious feeds, Nurs'd in her womb, the solitary breeds; 160 No Mother's care their early steps directs, Warms in her bosom, with her wings protects; The clime unkind, or noxious food instills To embryon nerves hereditary ills; The feeble births acquired diseases chase, Till Death extinguish the degenerate race. [Footnote: _Acquired diseases_, l. 165. See Additional Note XI.] "So grafted trees with shadowy summits rise, Spread their fair blossoms, and perfume the skies; Till canker taints the vegetable blood, Mines round the bark, and feeds upon the wood. 170 So, years successive, from perennial roots The wire or bulb with lessen'd vigour shoots; Till curled leaves, or barren flowers, betray A waning lineage, verging to decay; Or till, amended by connubial powers, Rise seedling progenies from sexual flowers. [Footnote: _So grafted trees_, l. 167. Mr. Knight first observed that those apple and pear trees, which had been propagated for above a century by ingraftment were now so unhealthy, as not to be worth cultivation. I have suspected the diseases of potatoes attended with the curled leaf, and of strawberry plants attended with barren flowers, to be owing to their having been too long raised from roots, or by solitary reproduction, and not from seeds, or sexual reproduction, and to have thence acquired those hereditary diseases.] "E'en where unmix'd the breed, in sexual tribes Parental taints the nascent babe imbibes; Eternal war the Gout and Mania wage With fierce uncheck'd hereditary rage; 180 Sad Beauty's form foul Scrofula surrounds With bones distorted, and putrescent wounds; And, fell Consumption! thy unerring dart Wets its broad wing in Youth's reluctant heart. [Footnote: _And, fell Consumption_, l. 183. ... Hæret lateri lethalis arundo. VIRGIL.] "With pausing step, at night's refulgent noon, Beneath the sparkling stars, and lucid moon, Plung'd in the shade of some religious tower, The slow bell counting the departed hour, O'er gaping tombs where shed umbrageous Yews On mouldering bones their cold unwholesome dews; 190 While low aerial voices whisper round, And moondrawn spectres dance upon the ground; Poetic MELANCHOLY loves to tread, And bend in silence o'er the countless Dead; Marks with loud sobs infantine Sorrows rave, And wring their pale hands o'er their Mother's grave; Hears on the new-turn'd sod with gestures wild The kneeling Beauty call her buried child; Upbraid with timorous accents Heaven's decrees, And with sad sighs augment the passing breeze. 200 'Stern Time,' She cries, 'receives from Nature's womb Her beauteous births, and bears them to the tomb; Calls all her sons from earth's remotest bourn, And from the closing portals none return!' V. URANIA paused,--upturn'd her streaming eyes, And her white bosom heaved with silent sighs; With her the MUSE laments the sum of things, And hides her sorrows with her meeting wings; Long o'er the wrecks of lovely Life they weep, Then pleased reflect, "to die is but to sleep;" 210 From Nature's coffins to her cradles turn, Smile with young joy, with new affection burn. And now the Muse, with mortal woes impress'd, Thus the fair Hierophant again address'd. --"Ah me! celestial Guide, thy words impart Ills undeserved, that rend the nascent heart! O, Goddess, say, if brighter scenes improve Air-breathing tribes, and births of sexual love?"-- The smiling Fair obeys the inquiring Muse, And in sweet tones her grateful task pursues. 220 "Now on broad pinions from the realms above Descending CUPID seeks the Cyprian grove; To his wide arms enamour'd PSYCHE springs, And clasps her lover with aurelian wings. A purple sash across HIS shoulder bends, And fringed with gold the quiver'd shafts suspends; The bending bow obeys the silken string, And, as he steps, the silver arrows ring. Thin folds of gauze with dim transparence flow O'er HER fair forehead, and her neck of snow; 230 The winding woof her graceful limbs surrounds, Swells in the breeze, and sweeps the velvet grounds; As hand in hand along the flowery meads His blushing bride the quiver'd hero leads; Charm'd round their heads pursuing Zephyrs throng, And scatter roses, as they move along; Bright beams of Spring in soft effusion play, And halcyon Hours invite them on their way. [Footnote: _Enamoured Psyché_, l. 223. A butterfly was the ancient emblem of the soul after death as rising from the tomb of its former state, and becoming a winged inhabitant of air from an insect creeping upon earth. At length the wings only were given to a beautiful nymph under the name of Psyche, which is the greek word for the soul, and also became afterwards to signify a butterfly probably from the popularity of this allegory. Many allegorical designs of Cupid or Love warming a butterfly or the Soul with his torch may be seen in Spence's Polymetis, and a beautiful one of their marriage in Bryant's Mythology; from which this description is in part taken.] "Delighted HYMEN hears their whisper'd vows, And binds his chaplets round their polish'd brows, 240 Guides to his altar, ties the flowery bands, And as they kneel, unites their willing hands. 'Behold, he cries, Earth! Ocean! Air above, 'And hail the DEITIES OF SEXUAL LOVE! 'All forms of Life shall this fond Pair delight, 'And sex to sex the willing world unite; 'Shed their sweet smiles in Earth's unsocial bowers, 'Fan with soft gales, and gild with brighter hours; 'Fill Pleasure's chalice unalloy'd with pain, 'And give SOCIETY his golden chain.' 250 "Now young DESIRES, on purple pinions borne, Mount the warm gales of Manhood's rising morn; With softer fires through virgin bosoms dart, Flush the pale cheek, and goad the tender heart. Ere the weak powers of transient Life decay, And Heaven's ethereal image melts away; LOVE with nice touch renews the organic frame, Forms a young Ens, another and the same; Gives from his rosy lips the vital breath, And parries with his hand the shafts of death; 260 While BEAUTY broods with angel wings unfurl'd O'er nascent life, and saves the sinking world. [Footnote: _While Beauty broods_, l. 261. Alma Venus! per te quoniam genus omne animantum Concipitur, visitque exortum lumina coeli. LUCRET.] "HENCE on green leaves the sexual Pleasures dwell, And Loves and Beauties crowd the blossom's bell; The wakeful Anther in his silken bed O'er the pleased Stigma bows his waxen head; With meeting lips and mingling smiles they sup Ambrosial dewdrops from the nectar'd cup; Or buoy'd in air the plumy Lover springs, And seeks his panting bride on Hymen-wings. 270 [Footnote: _From the nectar'd cup_, l. 268. The anthers and stigmas of flowers are probably nourished by the honey, which is secreted by the honey-gland called by Linneus the nectary; and possess greater sensibility or animation than other parts of the plant. The corol of the flower appears to be a respiratory organ belonging to these anthers and stigmas for the purpose of further oxygenating the vegetable blood for the production of the anther dust and of this honey, which is also exposed to the air in its receptacle or honey-cup; which, I suppose, to be necessary for its further oxygenation, as in many flowers so complicate an apparatus is formed for its protection from insects, as in aconitum, delphinium, larkspur, lonicera, woodbine; and because the corol and nectary fall along with the anthers and stigmas, when the pericarp is impregnated. Dr. B. S. Barton in the American Transactions has lately shown, that the honey collected from some plants is intoxicating and poisonous to men, as from rhododendron, azalea, and datura; and from some other plants that it is hurtful to the bees which collect it; and that from some flowers it is so injurious or disagreeable, that they do not collect it, as from the fritillaria or crown imperial of this country.] "The Stamen males, with appetencies just, Produce a formative prolific dust; With apt propensities, the Styles recluse Secrete a formative prolific juice; These in the pericarp erewhile arrive, Rush to each other, and embrace alive. --Form'd by new powers progressive parts succeed, Join in one whole, and swell into a seed. [Footnote: _With appetencies just_, l. 271. As in the productions by chemical affinity one set of particles must possess the power of attraction, and the other the aptitude to be attracted, as when iron approaches a magnet; so when animal particles unite, whether in digestion or reproduction, some of them must possess an appetite to unite, and others a propensity to be united. The former of these are secreted by the anthers from the vegetable blood, and the latter by the styles or pericarp; see the Additional Note VIII. on Reproduction.] "So in fond swarms the living Anthers shine Of bright Vallisner on the wavy Rhine; 280 Break from their stems, and on the liquid glass Surround the admiring stigmas as they pass; The love-sick Beauties lift their essenced brows, Sigh to the Cyprian queen their secret vows, Like watchful Hero feel their soft alarms, And clasp their floating lovers in their arms. [Footnote: _Of bright Vallisner_, l. 280. Vallisneria, of the class of dioecia. The flowers of the male plant are produced under water, and as soon as their farina or dust is mature, they detach themselves from the plant, rise to the surface and continue to flourish, and are wafted by the air or borne by the current to the female flowers. In this they resemble those tribes of insects, where the males at certain seasons acquire wings, but not the females, as ants, coccus, lampyris, phalæna, brumata, lichanella; Botanic Garden, Vol. II. Note on Vallisneria.] "Hence the male Ants their gauzy wings unfold, And young Lampyris waves his plumes of gold; The Glow-Worm sparkles with impassion'd light On each green bank, and charms the eye of night; 290 While new desires the painted Snail perplex, And twofold love unites the double sex. [Footnote: _And young Lampyris_, l. 288. The fire-fly is at some seasons so luminous, that M. Merian says, that by putting two of them under a glass, she was able to draw her figures of them by night. Whether the light of this and of other insects be caused by their amatorial passion, and thus assists them to find each other; or is caused by respiration, which is so analogous to combustion; or to a tendency to putridity, as in dead fish and rotten wood, is still to be investigated; see Botanic Garden, Vol. I. Additional Note IX.] "Hence, when the Morus in Italia's lands To spring's warm beam its timid leaf expands; The Silk-Worm broods in countless tribes above Crop the green treasure, uninform'd of love; Erewhile the changeful worm with circling head Weaves the nice curtains of his silken bed; Web within web involves his larva form, Alike secured from sunshine and from storm; 300 For twelve long days He dreams of blossom'd groves, Untasted honey, and ideal loves; Wakes from his trance, alarm'd with young Desire, Finds his new sex, and feels ecstatic fire; From flower to flower with honey'd lip he springs, And seeks his velvet loves on silver wings. [Footnote: _Untasted honey_, l. 302. The numerous moths and butterflies seem to pass from a reptile leaf-eating state, and to acquire wings to flit in air, with a proboscis to gain honey for their food along with their organs of reproduction, solely for the purpose of propagating their species by sexual intercourse, as they die when that is completed. By the use of their wings they have access to each other on different branches or on different vegetables, and by living upon honey probably acquire a higher degree of animation, and thus seem to resemble the anthers of flowers, which probably are supported by honey only, and thence acquire greater sensibility; see Note on Vallisneria, l. 280 of this Canto. A naturalist, who had studied this subject, thought it not impossible that the first insects were the anthers and stigmas of flowers, which had by some means loosened themselves from their parent plant, like the male flowers of vallisneria, and that other insects in process of time had been formed from these, some acquiring wings, others fins, and others claws, from their ceaseless efforts to procure food or to secure themselves from injury. He contends, that none of these changes are more incomprehensible than the transformation of caterpillars into butterflies; see Botanic Garden, Vol. I. Additional Note XXXIX.] VI. "The Demon, Jealousy, with Gorgon frown Blasts the sweet flowers of Pleasure not his own, Rolls his wild eyes, and through the shuddering grove Pursues the steps of unsuspecting Love; 310 Or drives o'er rattling plains his iron car, Flings his red torch, and lights the flames of war. Here Cocks heroic burn with rival rage, And Quails with Quails in doubtful fight engage; Of armed heels and bristling plumage proud, They sound the insulting clarion shrill and loud, With rustling pinions meet, and swelling chests, And seize with closing beaks their bleeding crests; Rise on quick wing above the struggling foe, And aim in air the death-devoting blow. 320 There the hoarse stag his croaking rival scorns, And butts and parries with his branching horns; Contending Boars with tusk enamell'd strike, And guard with shoulder-shield the blow oblique; While female bands attend in mute surprise, And view the victor with admiring eyes.-- [Footnote: _There the hoarse stag_, l. 321. A great want of one part of the animal world has consisted in the desire of the exclusive possession of the females; and these have acquired weapons to combat each other for this purpose, as the very thick shield-like horny skin on the shoulder of the boar is a defence only against animals of his own species, who strike obliquely upwards, nor are his tushes for other purposes, except to defend himself, as he is not naturally a carnivorous animal. So the horns of the stag are sharp to offend his adversary, but are branched for the purpose of parrying or receiving the thrusts of horns similar to his own, and have therefore been formed for the purpose of combating other stags for the exclusive possession of the females, who are observed, like the ladies in the times of chivalry, to attend the car of the victor. The birds, which do not carry food to their young, and do not therefore marry, are armed with spurs for the purpose of fighting for the exclusive possession of the females, as cocks and quails. It is certain that these weapons are not provided for their defence against other adversaries, because the females of these species are without this armour; Zoonomia, Sect. XXXIX. 4, 8.] "So Knight on Knight, recorded in romance, Urged the proud steed, and couch'd the extended lance; He, whose dread prowess with resistless force, O'erthrew the opposing warrior and his horse, 330 Bless'd, as the golden guerdon of his toils, Bow'd to the Beauty, and receiv'd her smiles. "So when fair HELEN with ill-fated charms, By PARIS wooed, provoked the world to arms, Left her vindictive Lord to sigh in vain For broken vows, lost love, and cold disdain; Fired at his wrongs, associate to destroy The realms unjust of proud adulterous Troy, Unnumber'd Heroes braved the dubious fight, And sunk lamented to the shades of night. 340 "Now vows connubial chain the plighted pair, And join paternal with maternal care; The married birds with nice selection cull Soft thistle-down, gray moss, and scattered wool, Line the secluded nest with feathery rings, Meet with fond bills, and woo with fluttering wings. Week after week, regardless of her food, The incumbent Linnet warms her future brood; Each spotted egg with ivory lips she turns, Day after day with fond expectance burns, 350 Hears the young prisoner chirping in his cell, And breaks in hemispheres the obdurate shell. Loud trills sweet Philomel his tender strain, Charms his fond bride, and wakes his infant train; Perch'd on the circling moss, the listening throng Wave their young wings, and whisper to the song. [Footnote: _The incumbent Linnet_, l. 348. The affection of the unexperienced and untaught bird to its egg, which induces it to sit days and weeks upon it to warm the enclosed embryon, is a matter of great difficulty to explain; See Additional Note IX. on Storge. Concerning the fabrication of their nests, see Zoonomia, Sect. XVI. 13. on instinct.] [Footnote: _Hears the young prisoner_, l. 351. The air-vessel at the broad end of an incubated egg gradually extends its edges along the sides of the shell, as the chick enlarges, but is at the same time applied closer to the internal surface of the shell; when the time of hatching approaches the chick is liable to break this air-bag with its beak, and thence begin to breathe and to chirp; at this time the edges of the enlarged air-bag extend so as to cover internally one hemisphere of the egg; and as one half of the external shell is thus moist, and the other half dry, as soon as the mother hearing the chick chirp, or the chick itself wanting respirable air, strikes the egg, about its equatorial line, it breaks into two hemispheres, and liberates the prisoner.] [Footnote: _And whisper to the song_, l. 356. A curious circumstance is mentioned by Kircherus de Musurgia, in his Chapter de Lusciniis. "That the young nightingales, that are hatched under other birds, never sing till they are instructed by the company of other nightingales." And Johnston affirms, that the nightingales that visit Scotland, have not the same harmony as those of Italy, (Pennant's Zoology, octavo, p. 255), which would lead us to suspect, that the singing of birds, like human music, is an artificial language rather than a natural expression of passion.] "The Lion-King forgets his savage pride, And courts with playful paws his tawny bride; The listening Tiger hears with kindling flame The love-lorn night-call of his brinded dame. 360 Despotic LOVE dissolves the bestial war, Bends their proud necks, and joins them to his car; Shakes o'er the obedient pairs his silken thong, And goads the humble, or restrains the strong.-- Slow roll the silver wheels,--in beauty's pride Celestial PSYCHE blushing by his side.-- The lordly Bull behind and warrior Horse With voice of thunder shake the echoing course, Chain'd to the car with herds domestic move, And swell the triumph of despotic LOVE. 370 "Pleased as they pass along the breezy shore In twinkling shoals the scaly realms adore, Move on quick fin with undulating train, Or lift their slimy foreheads from the main. High o'er their heads on pinions broad display'd The feather'd nations shed a floating shade; Pair after pair enamour'd shoot along, And trill in air the gay impassion'd song. With busy hum in playful swarms around Emerging insects leave the peopled ground, 380 Rise in dark clouds, and borne in airy rings Sport round the car, and wave their golden wings. Admiring Fawns pursue on dancing hoof, And bashful Dryads peep from shades aloof; Emerging Nereids rise from coral cells, Enamour'd Tritons sound their twisted shells; From sparkling founts enchanted Naiads move, And swell the triumph of despotic LOVE. [Footnote: _With undulating train_, l. 373. The side fins of fish seem to be chiefly used to poise them; as they turn upon their backs immediately when killed, the air-bladder assists them perhaps to rise or descend by its possessing the power to condense the air in it by muscular contraction; and it is possible, that at great depths in the ocean the air in this receptacle may by the great pressure of the incumbent water become condensed into so small a space, as to cease to be useful to the animal, which was possibly the cause of the death of Mr. Day in his diving ship. See note on Ulva, Botan. Gard. V. II. The progressive motion of fish beneath the water is produced principally by the undulation of their tails. One oblique plain of a part of the tail on the right side of the fish strikes the water at the same time that another oblique plain strikes it on the left side, hence in respect to moving to the right or left these percussions of the water counteract each other, but they coincide in respect to the progression of the fish; this power seems to be better applied to push forwards a body in water, than the oars of boats, as the particles of water recede from the stroke of the oar, whence the comparative power acquired is but as the difference of velocity between the striking oar and the receding water. So a ship moves swifter with an oblique wind, than with a wind of the same velocity exactly behind it; and the common windmill sail placed obliquely to the wind is more powerful than one which directly recedes from it. Might not some machinery resembling the tails of fish be placed behind a boat, so as to be moved with greater effect than common oars, by the force of wind or steam, or perhaps by hand?] [Footnote: _On pinions broad display'd_, l. 375. The progressive motion of birds in the air is principally performed by the movement of their wings, and not by that of their tails as in fish. The bird is supported in an element so much lighter than itself by the resistance of the air as it moves horizontally against the oblique plain made by its breast, expanded tail and wings, when they are at rest; the change of this obliquity also assists it to rise, and even directs its descent, though this is owing principally to its specific gravity, but it is in all situations kept upright or balanced by its wings. As the support of the bird in the air, as well as its progression, is performed by the motion of the wings; these require strong muscles as are seen on the breasts of partridges. Whence all attempts of men to fly by wings applied to the weak muscles of their arms have been ineffectual; but it is not certain whether light machinery so contrived as to be moved by their feet, might not enable them to fly a little way, though not so as to answer any useful purpose.] "Delighted Flora, gazing from afar, Greets with mute homage the triumphal car; 390 On silvery slippers steps with bosom bare, Bends her white knee, and bows her auburn hair; Calls to her purple heaths, and blushing bowers, Bursts her green gems, and opens all her flowers; O'er the bright Pair a shower of roses sheds, And crowns with wreathes of hyacinth their heads.-- --Slow roll the silver wheels with snowdrops deck'd, And primrose bands the cedar spokes connect; Round the fine pole the twisting woodbine clings, And knots of jasmine clasp the bending springs; 400 Bright daisy links the velvet harness chain, And rings of violets join each silken rein; Festoon'd behind, the snow-white lilies bend, And tulip-tassels on each side depend. --Slow rolls the car,--the enamour'd Flowers exhale Their treasured sweets, and whisper to the gale; Their ravelled buds, and wrinkled cups unfold, Nod their green stems, and wave their bells of gold; Breathe their soft sighs from each enchanted grove, And hail THE DEITIES OF SEXUAL LOVE. 410 "ONWARD with march sublime in saffron robe Young HYMEN steps, and traverses the globe; O'er burning sands, and snow-clad mountains, treads, Blue fields of air, and ocean's briny beds; Flings from his radiant torch celestial light O'er Day's wide concave, and illumes the Night. With dulcet eloquence his tuneful tongue Convokes and captivates the Fair and Young; His golden lamp with ray ethereal dyes The blushing cheek, and lights the laughing eyes; 420 With secret flames the virgin's bosom warms, And lights the impatient bridegroom to her arms; With lovely life all Nature's frame inspires, And, as they sink, rekindles all her fires." VII. Now paused the beauteous Teacher, and awhile Gazed on her train with sympathetic smile. 'Beware of Love! she cried, ye Nymphs, and hear 'His twanging bowstring with alarmed ear; 'Fly the first whisper of the distant dart, 'Or shield with adamant the fluttering heart; 430 'To secret shades, ye Virgin trains, retire, 'And in your bosoms guard the vestal fire.' --The obedient Beauties hear her words, advised, And bow with laugh repress'd, and smile chastised. [Footnote: _With laugh repress'd_, l. 434. The cause of the violent actions of laughter, and of the difficulty of restraining them, is a curious subject of inquiry. When pain afflicts us, which we cannot avoid, we learn to relieve it by great voluntary exertions, as in grinning, holding the breath, or screaming; now the pleasurable sensation, which excites laughter, arises for a time so high as to change its name, and become a painful one; and we excite the convulsive motions of the respiratory muscles to relieve this pain. We are however unwilling to lose the pleasure, and presently put a stop to this exertion; and immediately the pleasure recurs, and again as instantly rises into pain. Which is further explained in Zoonomia, Sect. 34. 1. 4. When this pleasurable sensation rises into a painful one, and the customs of society will not permit us to laugh aloud, some other violent voluntary exertion is used instead of it to alleviate the pain.] [Footnote: _With smile chastised_, l. 434. The origin of the smile has generally been ascribed to inexplicable instinct, but may be deduced from our early associations of actions and ideas. In the act of sucking, the lips of the infant are closed round the nipple of its mother, till it has filled its stomach, and the pleasure of digesting this grateful food succeeds; then the sphincter of the mouth, fatigued by the continued action of sucking, is relaxed; and the antagonist muscles of the face gently acting, produce the smile of pleasure, which is thus during our lives associated with gentle pleasure, which is further explained in Zoonomia, Sect. 16. 8. 4.] Now at her nod the Nymphs attendant bring Translucent water from the bubbling spring; In crystal cups the waves salubrious shine, Unstain'd untainted with immodest wine. Next, where emerging from its ancient roots Its widening boughs the Tree of Knowledge shoots; 440 Pluck'd with nice choice before the Muse they placed The now no longer interdicted taste. Awhile they sit, from higher cares released, And pleased partake the intellectual feast. Of good and ill they spoke, effect and cause, Celestial agencies, and Nature's laws. So when angelic Forms to Syria sent Sat in the cedar shade by ABRAHAM'S tent; A spacious bowl the admiring Patriarch fills With dulcet water from the scanty rills; 450 Sweet fruits and kernels gathers from his hoard, With milk and butter piles the plenteous board; While on the heated hearth his Consort bakes Fine flour well kneaded in unleaven'd cakes. The Guests ethereal quaff the lucid flood, Smile on their hosts, and taste terrestrial food; And while from seraph-lips sweet converse springs, Lave their fair feet, and close their silver wings. END OF CANTO II. ORIGIN OF SOCIETY. CANTO III. PROGRESS OF THE MIND. CONTENTS. I. Urania and the Muse converse 1. Progress of the Mind 42. II. The Four sensorial powers of Irritation, Sensation, Volition, and Association 55. Some finer senses given to Brutes 93. And Armour 108. Finer Organ of Touch given to Man 121. Whence clear ideas of Form 125. Vision is the Language of the Touch 131. Magic Lantern 139. Surprise, Novelty, Curiosity 145. Passions, Vices 149. Philanthropy 159. Shrine of Virtue 160. III. Ideal Beauty from the Female Bosom 163. Eros the God of Sentimental Love 177. Young Dione idolized by Eros 186. Third chain of Society 206. IV. Ideal Beauty from curved Lines 207. Taste for the Beautiful 222. Taste for the Sublime 223. For poetic Melancholy 231. For Tragedy 241. For artless Nature 247. The Genius of Taste 259. V. The Senses easily form and repeat ideas 269. Imitation from clear ideas 279. The Senses imitate each other 293. In dancing 295. In drawing naked Nymphs 299. In Architecture, as at St. Peter's at Rome 303. Mimickry 319. VI. Natural Language from imitation 335. Language of Quails, Cocks, Lions, Boxers 343. Pantomime Action 357. Verbal Language from Imitation and Association 363. Symbols of ideas 371. Gigantic form of Time 385. Wings of Hermes 391. VII. Recollection from clear ideas 395. Reason and Volition 401. Arts of the Wasp, Bee, Spider, Wren, Silk-Worm 411. Volition concerned about Means or Causes 435. Man distinguished by Language, by using Tools, labouring for Money, praying to the Deity 438. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil 445. VIII. Emotions from Imitation 461. The Seraph; Sympathy 467. Christian Morality the great bond of Society 483-496. CANTO III. PROGRESS OF THE MIND. I. Now rose, adorn'd with Beauty's brightest hues, The graceful HIEROPHANT, and winged MUSE; Onward they step around the stately piles, O'er porcelain floors, through laqueated ailes, Eye Nature's lofty and her lowly seats, Her gorgeous palaces, and green retreats, Pervade her labyrinths with unerring tread, And leave for future guests a guiding thread. First with fond gaze blue fields of air they sweep, Or pierce the briny chambers of the deep; 10 Earth's burning line, and icy poles explore, Her fertile surface, and her caves of ore; Or mark how Oxygen with Azote-Gas Plays round the globe in one aerial mass, Or fused with Hydrogen in ceaseless flow Forms the wide waves, which foam and roll below. [Footnote: _How Oxygen_, l. 13. The atmosphere which surrounds us, is composed of twenty-seven parts of oxygen gas and seventy-three of azote or nitrogen gas, which are simply diffused together, but which, when combined, become nitrous acid. Water consists of eighty-six parts oxygen, and fourteen parts of hydrogen or inflammable air, in a state of combination. It is also probable, that much oxygen enters the composition of glass; as those materials which promote vitrification, contain so much of it, as minium and manganese; and that glass is hence a solid acid in the temperature of our atmosphere, as water is a fluid one.] Next with illumined hands through prisms bright Pleased they untwist the sevenfold threads of light; Or, bent in pencils by the lens, convey To one bright point the silver hairs of Day. 20 Then mark how two electric streams conspire To form the resinous and vitreous fire; Beneath the waves the fierce Gymnotus arm, And give Torpedo his benumbing charm; Or, through Galvanic chain-work as they pass, Convert the kindling water into gas. [Footnote: _Two electric streams_, l. 21. It is the opinion of some philosophers, that the electric ether consists of two kinds of fluids diffused together or combined; which are commonly known by the terms of positive and negative electricity, but are by these electricians called vitreous and resinous electricity. The electric shocks given by the torpedo and by the gymnotus, are supposed to be similar to those of the Galvanic pile, as they are produced in water. Which water is decomposed by the Galvanic pile and converted into oxygen and hydrogen gas; see Additional Note XII. The magnetic ether may also be supposed to consist of two fluids, one of which attracts the needle, and the other repels it; and, perhaps, chemical affinities, and gravitation itself, may consist of two kinds of ether surrounding the particles of bodies, and may thence attract at one distance and repel at another; as appears when two insulated electrised balls are approached to each other, or when two small globules of mercury are pressed together.] How at the poles opposing Ethers dwell, Attract the quivering needle, or repel. How Gravitation by immortal laws Surrounding matter to a centre draws; 30 How Heat, pervading oceans, airs, and lands, With force uncheck'd the mighty mass expands; And last how born in elemental strife Beam'd the first spark, and lighten'd into Life. Now in sweet tones the inquiring Muse express'd Her ardent wish; and thus the Fair address'd. "Priestess of Nature! whose exploring sight Pierces the realms of Chaos and of Night; Of space unmeasured marks the first and last, Of endless time the present, future, past; 40 Immortal Guide! O, now with accents kind Give to my ear the progress of the Mind. How loves, and tastes, and sympathies commence From evanescent notices of sense? How from the yielding touch and rolling eyes The piles immense of human science rise?-- With mind gigantic steps the puny Elf, And weighs and measures all things but himself!" The indulgent Beauty hears the grateful Muse, Smiles on her pupil, and her task renews. 50 Attentive Nymphs in sparkling squadrons throng, And choral Virgins listen to the song; Pleased Fawns and Naiads crowd in silent rings, And hovering Cupids stretch their purple wings. II. "FIRST the new actions of the excited sense, Urged by appulses from without, commence; With these exertions pain or pleasure springs, And forms perceptions of external things. Thus, when illumined by the solar beams, Yon waving woods, green lawns, and sparkling streams, In one bright point by rays converging lie 61 Plann'd on the moving tablet of the eye; The mind obeys the silver goads of light, And IRRITATION moves the nerves of sight. [Footnote: _And Irritation moves_, l. 64. Irritation is an exertion or change of some extreme part of the sensorium residing in the muscles or organs of sense in consequence of the appulses of external bodies. The word perception includes both the action of the organ of sense in consequence of the impact of external objects and our attention to that action; that is, it expresses both the motion of the organ of sense, or idea, and the pain or pleasure that succeeds or accompanies it. Irritative ideas are those which are preceded by irritation, which is excited by objects external to the organs of sense: as the idea of that tree, which either I attend to, or which I shun in walking near it without attention. In the former case it is termed perception, in the latter it is termed simply an irritative idea.] "These acts repeated rise from joys or pains, And swell Imagination's flowing trains; So in dread dreams amid the silent night Grim spectre-forms the shuddering sense affright; Or Beauty's idol-image, as it moves, Charms the closed eye with graces, smiles, and loves; 70 Each passing form the pausing heart delights, And young SENSATION every nerve excites. [Footnote: _And young Sensation_, l. 72. Sensation is an exertion or change of the central parts of the sensorium or of the whole of it, _beginning_ at some of those extreme parts of it which reside in the muscles or organs of sense. Sensitive ideas are those which are preceded by the sensation of pleasure or pain, are termed Imagination, and constitute our dreams and reveries.] "Oft from sensation quick VOLITION springs, When pleasure thrills us, or when anguish stings; Hence Recollection calls with voice sublime Immersed ideas from the wrecks of Time, With potent charm in lucid trains displays Eventful stories of forgotten days. Hence Reason's efforts good with ill contrast, Compare the present, future, and the past; 80 Each passing moment, unobserved restrain The wild discordancies of Fancy's train; But leave uncheck'd the Night's ideal streams, Or, sacred Muses! your meridian dreams. [Footnote: _Quick Volition springs_, l. 73. Volition is an exertion or change of the central parts of the sensorium, or of the whole of it _terminating_ in some of those extreme parts of it which reside in the muscles and organs of sense. The vulgar use of the word _memory_ is too unlimited for our purpose: those ideas which we voluntarily recall are here termed ideas of _recollection_, as when we will to repeat the alphabet backwards. And those ideas which are suggested to us by preceding ideas are here termed ideas of _suggestion_, as whilst we repeat the alphabet in the usual order; when by habits previously acquired B is suggested by A, and C by B, without any effort of deliberation. Reasoning is that operation of the sensorium by which we excite two or many tribes of ideas, and then reexcite the ideas in which they differ or correspond. If we determine this difference, it is called judgment; if we in vain endeavour to determine it, it is called doubting. If we reexcite the ideas in which they differ, it is called distinguishing. If we reexcite those in which they correspond, it is called comparing.] [Footnote: _Each passing moment_, l. 81. During our waking hours, we perpetually compare the passing trains of our ideas with the known system of nature, and reject those which are incongruous with it; this is explained in Zoonomia, Sect. XVII. 3. 7. and is there termed Intuitive Analogy. When we sleep, the faculty of volition ceases to act, and in consequence the uncompared trains of ideas become incongruous and form the farrago of our dreams; in which we never experience any surprise, or sense of novelty.] "And last Suggestion's mystic power describes Ideal hosts arranged in trains or tribes. So when the Nymph with volant finger rings Her dulcet harp, and shakes the sounding strings; As with soft voice she trills the enamour'd song, Successive notes, unwill'd, the strain prolong; 90 The transient trains ASSOCIATION steers, And sweet vibrations charm the astonish'd ears. [Footnote: _Association steers_, l. 91. Association is an exertion or change of some extreme part of the sensorium residing in the muscles and organs of sense in consequence of some antecedent or attendant fibrous contractions. Associate ideas, therefore, are those which are preceded by other ideas or muscular motions, without the intervention of irritation, sensation, or volition between them; these are also termed ideas of suggestion.] "ON rapid feet o'er hills, and plains, and rocks, Speed the scared leveret and rapacious fox; On rapid pinions cleave the fields above The hawk descending, and escaping dove; With nicer nostril track the tainted ground The hungry vulture, and the prowling hound; Converge reflected light with nicer eye The midnight owl, and microscopic fly; 100 With finer ear pursue their nightly course The listening lion, and the alarmed horse. "The branching forehead with diverging horns Crests the bold bull, the jealous stag adorns; Fierce rival boars with side-long fury wield The pointed tusk, and guard with shoulder-shield; Bounds the dread tiger o'er the affrighted heath Arm'd with sharp talons, and resistless teeth; The pouncing eagle bears in clinched claws The struggling lamb, and rends with ivory jaws; 110 The tropic eel, electric in his ire, Alarms the waves with unextinguish'd fire; The fly of night illumes his airy way, And seeks with lucid lamp his sleeping prey; Fierce on his foe the poisoning serpent springs, And insect armies dart their venom'd stings. [Footnote: _The branching forehead_, l. 103. The peculiarities of the shapes of animals which distinguish them from each other, are enumerated in Zoonomia, Sect. XXXIX. 4. 8. on Generation, and are believed to have been gradually formed from similar living fibres, and are varied by reproduction. Many of these parts of animals are there shown to have arisen from their three great desires of lust, hunger, and security.] [Footnote: _The tropic eel_, l. 111. Gymnotus electricus.] [Footnote: _The fly of night_, l. 113. Lampyris noctiluca. Fire-fly.] "Proud Man alone in wailing weakness born, No horns protect him, and no plumes adorn; No finer powers of nostril, ear, or eye, Teach the young Reasoner to pursue or fly.-- 120 Nerved with fine touch above the bestial throngs, The hand, first gift of Heaven! to man belongs; Untipt with claws the circling fingers close, With rival points the bending thumbs oppose, Trace the nice lines of Form with sense refined, And clear ideas charm the thinking mind. Whence the fine organs of the touch impart Ideal figure, source of every art; Time, motion, number, sunshine or the storm, But mark varieties in Nature's _form_. 130 [Footnote: _The hand, first gift of Heaven_, l. 122. The human species in some of their sensations are much inferior to animals, yet the accuracy of the sense of touch, which they possess in so eminent a degree, gives them a great superiority of understanding; as is well observed by the ingenious Mr. Buffon. The extremities of other animals terminate in horns, and hoofs, and claws, very unfit for the sensation of touch; whilst the human hand is finely adapted to encompass its object with this organ of sense. Those animals who have clavicles or collar-bones, and thence use their forefeet like hands, as cats, squirrels, monkeys, are more ingenious than other quadrupeds, except the elephant, who has a fine sense at the extremity of his proboscis; and many insects from the possessing finer organs of touch have greater ingenuity, as spiders, bees, wasps.] [Footnote: _Trace the nice lines of form_, l. 125. When the idea of solidity is excited a part of the extensive organ of touch is compressed by some external body, and this part of the sensorium so compressed exactly resembles in figure the figure of the body that compressed it. Hence when we acquire the idea of solidity, we acquire at the same time the idea of figure; and this idea of figure, or motion of a part of the organ of touch, exactly resembles in its figure the figure of the body that occasions it; and thus exactly acquaints us with this property of the external world. Now, as the whole universe with all its parts possesses a certain form or figure, if any part of it moves, that form or figure of the whole is varied. Hence, as motion is no other than a perpetual variation of figure, our idea of motion is also a real resemblance of the motion that produced it. Hence arises the certainty of the mathematical sciences, as they explain these properties of bodies, which are exactly resembled by our ideas of them, whilst we are obliged to collect almost all our other knowledge from experiment; that is, by observing the effects exerted by one body upon another.] "Slow could the tangent organ wander o'er The rock-built mountain, and the winding shore; No apt ideas could the pigmy mite, Or embryon emmet to the touch excite; But as each mass the solar ray reflects, The eye's clear glass the transient beams collects; Bends to their focal point the rays that swerve, And paints the living image on the nerve. So in some village-barn, or festive hall The spheric lens illumes the whiten'd wall; 140 O'er the bright field successive figures fleet, And motley shadows dance along the sheet.-- Symbol of solid forms is colour'd light, And the mute language of the touch is sight. [Footnote: _The mute language of the touch_, l. 144. Our eyes observe a difference of colour, or of shade, in the prominences and depressions of objects, and that those shades uniformly vary when the sense of touch observes any variation. Hence when the retina becomes stimulated by colours or shades of light in a certain form, as in a circular spot, we know by experience that this is a sign that a tangible body is before us; and that its figure is resembled by the miniature figure of the part of the organ of vision that is thus stimulated. Here whilst the stimulated part of the retina resembles exactly the visible figure of the whole in miniature, the various kinds of stimuli from different colours mark the visible figures of the minuter parts; and by habit we instantly recall the tangible figures. So that though our visible ideas resemble in miniature the outline of the figure of coloured bodies, in other respects they serve only as a language, which by acquired associations introduce the tangible ideas of bodies. Hence it is, that this sense is so readily deceived by the art of the painter to our amusement and instruction. The reader will find much very curious knowledge on this subject in Bishop Berkeley's Essay on Vision, a work of great ingenuity.] "HENCE in Life's portico starts young Surprise With step retreating, and expanded eyes; The virgin, Novelty, whose radiant train Soars o'er the clouds, or sinks beneath the main, With sweetly-mutable seductive charms Thrills the young sense, the tender heart alarms. 150 Then Curiosity with tracing hands And meeting lips the lines of form demands, Buoy'd on light step, o'er ocean, earth, and sky, Rolls the bright mirror of her restless eye. While in wild groups tumultuous Passions stand, And Lust and Hunger head the Motley band; Then Love and Rage succeed, and Hope and Fear; And nameless Vices close the gloomy rear; Or young Philanthropy with voice divine Convokes the adoring Youth to Virtue's shrine; 160 Who with raised eye and pointing finger leads To truths celestial, and immortal deeds. [Footnote: _Starts young Surprise_, l. 145. Surprise is occasioned by the sudden interruption of the usual trains of our ideas by any violent stimulus from external objects, as from the unexpected discharge of a pistol, and hence does not exist in our dreams, because our external senses are closed or inirritable. The fetus in the womb must experience many sensations, as of resistance, figure, fluidity, warmth, motion, rest, exertion, taste; and must consequently possess trains both of waking and sleeping ideas. Surprise must therefore be strongly excited at its nativity, as those trains of ideas must instantly be dissevered by the sudden and violent sensations occasioned by the dry and cold atmosphere, the hardness of external bodies, light, sound, and odours; which are accompanied with pleasure or pain according to their quantity or intensity. As some of these sensations become familiar by repetition, other objects not previously attended to present themselves, and produce the idea of novelty, which is a less degree of surprise, and like that is not perceived in our dreams, though for another reason; because in sleep we possess no voluntary power to compare our trains of ideas with our previous knowledge of nature, and do not therefore perceive their difference by intuitive analogy from what usually occurs. As the novelty of our ideas is generally attended with pleasurable sensation, from this arises Curiosity, or a desire of examining a variety of objects, hoping to find novelty, and the pleasure consequent to this degree of surprise; see Additional Note VII. 3.] [Footnote: _And meeting lips_, l. 152. Young children put small bodies into their mouths, when they are satiated with food, as well as when they are hungry, not with design to taste them, but use their lips as an organ of touch to distinguish the shape of them. Puppies, whose toes are terminated with nails, and who do not much use their forefeet as hands, seem to have no other means of acquiring a knowledge of the forms of external bodies, and are therefore perpetually playing with things by taking them between their lips.] III. "As the pure language of the Sight commands The clear ideas furnish'd by the hands; Beauty's fine forms attract our wondering eyes, And soft alarms the pausing heart surprise. Warm from its cell the tender infant born Feels the cold chill of Life's aerial morn; Seeks with spread hands the bosoms velvet orbs, With closing lips the milky fount absorbs; 170 And, as compress'd the dulcet streams distil, Drinks warmth and fragrance from the living rill; Eyes with mute rapture every waving line, Prints with adoring kiss the Paphian shrine, And learns erelong, the perfect form confess'd, IDEAL BEAUTY from its Mother's breast. [Footnote: _Seeks with spread hands_, l. 169. These eight beautiful lines are copied from Mr. Bilsborrow's Address prefixed to Zoonomia, and are translated from that work; Sect. XVI. 6.] [Footnote: _Ideal Beauty_, l. 176. Sentimental Love, as distinguished from the animal passion of that name, with which it is frequently accompanied, consists in the desire or sensation of beholding, embracing, and saluting a beautiful object. The characteristic of beauty therefore is that it is the object of love; and though many other objects are in common language called beautiful, yet they are only called so metaphorically, and ought to be termed agreeable. A Grecian temple may give us the pleasurable idea of sublimity, a Gothic temple may give us the pleasurable idea of variety, and a modern house the pleasurable idea of utility; music and poetry may inspire our love by association of ideas; but none of these, except metaphorically, can be termed beautiful, as we have no wish to embrace or salute them. Our perception of beauty consists in our recognition by the sense of vision of those objects, first, which have before inspired our love by the pleasure, which they have afforded to many of our senses; as to our sense of warmth, of touch, of smell, of taste, hunger and thirst; and, secondly, which bear any analogy of form to such objects.] "Now on swift wheels descending like a star Alights young EROS from his radiant car; On angel-wings attendant Graces move, And hail the God of SENTIMENTAL LOVE. 180 Earth at his feet extends her flowery bed, And bends her silver blossoms round his head; Dark clouds dissolve, the warring winds subside. And smiling ocean calms his tossing tide, O'er the bright morn meridian lustres play, And Heaven salutes him with a flood of day. [Footnote: _Alights young Eros_, l. 178. There were two deities of Love belonging to the heathen mythology, the one said to be celestial, and the other terrestrial. Aristophanes says, "Sable-winged Night produced an egg, from which sprung up like a blossom Eros, the lovely, the desirable, with his glossy golden wings." See Botanic Garden, Canto I. l. 412. Note. The other deity of Love, Cupido, seems of much later date, as he is not mentioned in the works of Homer, where there were so many apt situations to have introduced him.] [Footnote: _Earth at his feet_, l. 181. Te, Dea, te fugiunt venti, te nubila coeli, Adventumque tuum; tibi suaves dædala tellus Submittit flores; tibi rident æquora ponti; Placatumque nitet diffuso lumine coelum. LUCRET.] "Warm as the sun-beam, pure as driven snows, The enamour'd GOD for young DIONE glows; Drops the still tear, with sweet attention sighs, And woos the Goddess with adoring eyes; 190 Marks her white neck beneath the gauze's fold, Her ivory shoulders, and her locks of gold; Drinks with mute ecstacy the transient glow, Which warms and tints her bosom's rising snow. With holy kisses wanders o'er her charms, And clasps the Beauty in Platonic arms; Or if the dewy hands of Sleep, unbid, O'er her blue eye-balls close the lovely lid, Watches each nascent smile, and fleeting grace, That plays in day-dreams o'er her blushing face; 200 Counts the fine mazes of the curls, that break Round her fair ear, and shade her damask cheek; Drinks the pure fragrance of her breath, and sips With tenderest touch the roses of her lips;-- O'er female hearts with chaste seduction reigns, And binds SOCIETY in silken chains. IV. "IF the wide eye the wavy lawns explores, The bending woodlands, or the winding shores, Hills, whose green sides with soft protuberance rise, Or the blue concave of the vaulted skies;-- 210 Or scans with nicer gaze the pearly swell Of spiral volutes round the twisted shell; Or undulating sweep, whose graceful turns Bound the smooth surface of Etrurian urns, When on fine forms the waving lines impress'd Give the nice curves, which swell the female breast; The countless joys the tender Mother pours Round the soft cradle of our infant hours, In lively trains of unextinct delight Rise in our bosoms _recognized by sight_; 220 Fond Fancy's eye recalls the form divine, And TASTE sits smiling upon Beauty's shrine. [Footnote: _The wavy lawns_, l. 207. When the babe, soon after it is born into this cold world, is applied to its mother's bosom; its sense of perceiving warmth is first agreeably affected; next its sense of smell is delighted with the odour of her milk; then its taste is gratified by the flavour of it; afterwards the appetites of hunger and of thirst afford pleasure by the possession of their objects, and by the subsequent digestion of the aliment; and lastly, the sense of touch is delighted by the softness and smoothness of the milky fountain, the source of such variety of happiness. All these various kinds of pleasure at length become associated with the form of the mother's breast; which the infant embraces with its hands, presses with its lips, and watches with its eyes; and thus acquires more accurate ideas of the form of its mother's bosom, than of the odour and flavour or warmth, which it perceives by its other senses. And hence at our maturer years, when any object of vision is presented to us, which by its waving or spiral lines bears any similitude to the form of the female bosom, whether it be found in a landscape with soft gradations of rising and descending surface, or in the forms of some antique vases, or in other works of the pencil or the chisel, we feel a general glow of delight, which seems to influence all our senses; and if the object be not too large, we experience an attraction to embrace it with our arms, and to salute it with our lips, as we did in our early infancy the bosom of our mother. And thus we find, according to the ingenious idea of Hogarth, that the waving lines of beauty were originally taken from the temple of Venus.] "Where Egypt's pyramids gigantic stand, And stretch their shadows o'er the shuddering sand; Or where high rocks o'er ocean's dashing floods Wave high in air their panoply of woods; Admiring TASTE delights to stray beneath With eye uplifted, and forgets to breathe; Or, as aloft his daring footsteps climb, Crests their high summits with his arm sublime. 230 [Footnote: _With his arm sublime_, l. 230. Objects of taste have been generally divided into the beautiful, the sublime, and the new; and lately to these have been added the picturesque. The beautiful so well explained in Hogarth's analysis of beauty, consists of curved lines and smooth surfaces, as expressed in the preceding note; any object larger than usual, as a very large temple or a very large mountain, gives us the idea of sublimity; with which is often confounded the terrific, and the melancholic: what is now termed picturesque includes objects, which are principally neither sublime nor beautiful, but which by their variety and intricacy joined with a due degree of regularity or uniformity convey to the mind an agreeable sentiment of novelty. Many other agreeable sentiments may be excited by visible objects, thus to the sublime and beautiful may be added the terrific, tragic, melancholic, artless, &c. while novelty superinduces a charm upon them all. See Additional Note XIII.] "Where mouldering columns mark the lingering wreck Of Thebes, Palmyra, Babylon, Balbec; The prostrate obelisk, or shatter'd dome, Uprooted pedestal, and yawning tomb, On loitering steps reflective TASTE surveys With folded arms and sympathetic gaze; Charm'd with poetic Melancholy treads O'er ruin'd towns and desolated meads; Or rides sublime on Time's expanded wings, And views the fate of ever-changing things. 240 [Footnote: _Poetic melancholy treads_, l. 237. The pleasure arising from the contemplation of the ruins of ancient grandeur or of ancient happiness, and here termed poetic melancholy, arises from a combination of the painful idea of sorrow with the pleasurable idea of the grandeur or happiness of past times; and becomes very interesting to us by fixing our attention more strongly on that grandeur and happiness, as the passion of Pity mentioned in the succeeding note is a combination of the painful idea of sorrow with the pleasurable one of beauty, or of virtue.] "When Beauty's streaming eyes her woes express, Or Virtue braves unmerited distress; Love sighs in sympathy, with pain combined, And new-born Pity charms the kindred mind; The enamour'd Sorrow every cheek bedews, And TASTE impassion'd woos the tragic Muse. [Footnote: _The tragic Muse_, l. 246. Why we are delighted with the scenical representations of Tragedy, which draw tears from our eyes, has been variously explained by different writers. The same distressful circumstance attending an ugly or wicked person affects us with grief or disgust; but when distress occurs to a beauteous or virtuous person, the pleasurable idea of beauty or of virtue becomes mixed with the painful one of sorrow and the passion of Pity is produced, which is a combination of love or esteem with sorrow; and becomes highly interesting to us by fixing our attention more intensely on the beauteous or virtuous person. Other distressful scenes have been supposed to give pleasure to the spectator from exciting a comparative idea of his own happiness, as when a shipwreck is viewed by a person safe on shore, as mentioned by Lucretius, L. 3. But these dreadful situations belong rather to the terrible, or the horrid, than to the tragic; and may be objects of curiosity from their novelty, but not of Taste, and must suggest much more pain than pleasure.] "The rush-thatch'd cottage on the purple moor, Where ruddy children frolic round the door, The moss-grown antlers of the aged oak, The shaggy locks that fringe the colt unbroke, 250 The bearded goat with nimble eyes, that glare Through the long tissue of his hoary hair;-- As with quick foot he climbs some ruin'd wall, And crops the ivy, which prevents its fall;-- With rural charms the tranquil mind delight, And form a picture to the admiring sight. While TASTE with pleasure bends his eye surprised In modern days at Nature unchastised. [Footnote: _Nature unchastised_, l. 258. In cities or their vicinity, and even in the cultivated parts of the country we rarely see undisguised nature; the fields are ploughed, the meadows mown, the shrubs planted in rows for hedges, the trees deprived of their lower branches, and the animals, as horses, dogs, and sheep, are mutilated in respect to their tails or ears; such is the useful or ill-employed activity of mankind! all which alterations add to the formality of the soil, plants, trees, or animals; whence when natural objects are occasionally presented to us, as an uncultivated forest and its wild inhabitants, we are not only amused with greater variety of form, but are at the same time enchanted by the charm of novelty, which is a less degree of Surprise, already spoken of in note on l. 145 of this Canto.] "The GENIUS-FORM, on silver slippers born, With fairer dew-drops gems the rising morn; 260 Sheds o'er meridian skies a softer light, And decks with brighter pearls the brow of night; With finer blush the vernal blossom glows, With sweeter breath enamour'd Zephyr blows, The limpid streams with gentler murmurs pass, And gayer colours tinge the watery glass, Charm'd round his steps along the enchanted groves Flit the fine forms of Beauties, Graces, Loves. V. "Alive, each moment of the transient hour, When Rest accumulates sensorial power, 270 The impatient Senses, goaded to contract, Forge new ideas, changing as they act; And, in long streams dissever'd, or concrete In countless tribes, the fleeting forms repeat. Which rise excited in Volition's trains, Or link the sparkling rings of Fancy's chains; Or, as they flow from each translucent source, Pursue Association's endless course. [Footnote: _When rest accumulates_, l. 270. The accumulation of the spirit of animation, when those parts of the system rest, which are usually in motion, produces a disagreeable sensation. Whence the pain of cold and of hunger, and the irksomeness of a continued attitude, and of an indolent life: and hence the propensity to action in those confined animals, which have been accustomed to activity, as is seen in the motions of a squirrel in a cage; which uses perpetual exertion to exhaust a part of its accumulated sensorial power. This is one source of our general propensity to action; another perhaps arises from our curiosity or expectation of novelty mentioned in the note on l. 145. of this canto. But the immediate cause of our propensity to imitation above that of other animals arises from the greater facility, with which by the sense of touch we acquire the ideas of the outlines of objects, and afterwards in consequence by the sense of sight; this seems to have been observed by Aristotle, who calls man, "the imitative animal;" see Zoonomia, Vol. I. Sect. XXII.] "Hence when the inquiring hands with contact fine Trace on hard forms the circumscribing line; 280 Which then the language of the rolling eyes From distant scenes of earth and heaven supplies; Those clear ideas of the touch and sight Rouse the quick sense to anguish or delight; Whence the fine power of IMITATION springs, And apes the outlines of external things; With ceaseless action to the world imparts All moral virtues, languages, and arts. First the charm'd Mind mechanic powers collects, Means for some end, and causes of effects; 290 Then learns from other Minds their joys and fears, Contagious smiles and sympathetic tears. [Footnote: _All moral virtues_, l. 288. See the sequel of this canto l. 453 on sympathy; and l. 331 on language; and the subsequent lines on the arts of painting and architecture.] "What one fine stimulated Sense discerns, Another Sense by IMITATION learns.-- So in the graceful dance the step sublime Learns from the ear the concordance of Time. So, when the pen of some young artist prints Recumbent Nymphs in TITIAN'S living tints; The glowing limb, fair cheek, and flowing hair, Respiring bosom, and seductive air, 300 He justly copies with enamour'd sigh From Beauty's image pictured on his eye. [Footnote: _Another sense_, l. 294. As the part of the organs of touch or of sight, which is stimulated into action by a tangible or visible object, must resemble in figure at least the figure of that object, as it thus constitutes an idea; it may be said to imitate the figure of that object; and thus imitation may be esteemed coeval with the existence both of man and other animals: but this would confound perception with imitation; which latter is better defined from the actions of one sense copying those of another.] "Thus when great ANGELO in wondering Rome Fix'd the vast pillars of Saint Peter's dome, Rear'd rocks on rocks sublime, and hung on high A new Pantheon in the affrighted sky. Each massy pier, now join'd and now aloof, The figured architraves, and vaulted roof, Ailes, whose broad curves gigantic ribs sustain, Where holy echoes chant the adoring strain; 310 The central altar, sacred to the Lord, Admired by Sages, and by Saints ador'd, Whose brazen canopy ascends sublime On spiral columns unafraid of Time, Were first by Fancy in ethereal dyes Plann'd on the rolling tablets of his eyes; And his true hand with imitation fine Traced from his Retina the grand design. [Footnote: _Thus when great Angelo_, l. 303. The origin of this propensity to imitation has not been deduced from any known principle; when any action presents itself to the view of a child, as of whetting a knife, or threading a needle; the parts of this action in respect of time, motion, figure, are imitated by parts of the retina of his eye; to perform this action therefore with his hands is easier to him than to invent any new action; because it consists in repeating with another set of fibres, viz. with the moving muscles, what he had just performed by some parts of the retina; just as in dancing we transfer the times of the motions from the actions of the auditory nerves to the muscles of the limbs. Imitation therefore consists of repetition, which is the easiest kind of animal action; as the ideas or motions become presently associated together; which adds to the facility of their production; as shown in Zoonomia, Vol. I. Sect. XXII. 2. It should be added, that as our ideas, when we perceive external objects, are believed to consist in the actions of the immediate organs of sense in consequence of the stimulus of those objects; so when we think of external objects, our ideas are believed to consist in the repetitions of the actions of the immediate organs of sense, excited by the other sensorial powers of volition, sensation, or association.] "The Muse of MIMICRY in every age With silent language charms the attentive stage; 320 The Monarch's stately step, and tragic pause, The Hero bleeding in his country's cause, O'er her fond child the dying Mother's tears, The Lover's ardor, and the Virgin's fears; The tittering Nymph, that tries her comic task, Bounds on the scene, and peeps behind her mask, The Punch and Harlequin, and graver throng, That shake the theatre with dance and song, With endless trains of Angers, Loves, and Mirths, Owe to the Muse of Mimicry their births. 330 [Footnote: _The Muse of Mimicry_, l. 319. Much of the pleasure received from the drawings of flowers finely finished, or of portraits, is derived from their imitation or resemblance of the objects or persons which they represent. The same occurs in the pleasure we receive from mimicry on the stage; we are surprised at the accuracy of its enacted resemblance. Some part of the pleasure received from architecture, as when we contemplate the internal structure of gothic temples, as of King's College chapel in Cambridge, or of Lincoln Cathedral, may arise also from their imitation or resemblance of those superb avenues of large trees, which were formerly appropriated to religious ceremonies.] "Hence to clear images of form belong The sculptor's statue, and the poet's song, The painter's landscape, and the builder's plan, And IMITATION marks the mind of Man. [Footnote: _Imitation marks_, l. 334. Many other curious instances of one part of the animal system imitating another part of it, as in some contagious diseases; and also of some animals imitating each other, are given in Zoonomia, Vol. I. Sect. XXII. 3. To which may be added, that this propensity to imitation not only appears in the actions of children, but in all the customs and fashions of the world; many thousands tread in the beaten paths of others, who precede or accompany them, for one who traverses regions of his own discovery.] VI. "WHEN strong desires or soft sensations move The astonish'd Intellect to rage or love; Associate tribes of fibrous motions rise, Flush the red cheek, or light the laughing eyes. Whence ever-active Imitation finds The ideal trains, that pass in kindred minds; 340 Her mimic arts associate thoughts excite And the first LANGUAGE enters at the sight. [Footnote: _And the first Language_, l. 342. There are two ways by which we become acquainted with the passions of others: first, by having observed the effects of them, as of fear or anger, on our own bodies, we know at sight when others are under the influence of these affections. So children long before they can speak, or understand the language of their parents, may be frightened by an angry countenance, or soothed by smiles and blandishments. Secondly, when we put ourselves into the attitude that any passion naturally occasions, we soon in some degree acquire that passion; hence when those that scold indulge themselves in loud oaths and violent actions of the arms, they increase their anger by the mode of expressing themselves; and, on the contrary, the counterfeited smile of pleasure in disagreeable company soon brings along with it a portion of the reality, as is well illustrated by Mr. Burke. (Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful.) These are natural signs by which we understand each other, and on this slender basis is built all human language. For without some natural signs no artificial ones could have been invented or understood, as is very ingeniously observed by Dr. Reid. (Inquiry into the Human Mind.)] "Thus jealous quails or village-cocks inspect Each other's necks with stiffen'd plumes erect; Smit with the wordless eloquence, they know The rival passion of the threatening foe. So when the famish'd wolves at midnight howl, Fell serpents hiss, or fierce hyenas growl; Indignant Lions rear their bristling mail, And lash their sides with undulating tail. 350 Or when the Savage-Man with clenched fist Parades, the scowling champion of the list; With brandish'd arms, and eyes that roll to know Where first to fix the meditated blow; Association's mystic power combines Internal passions with external signs. "From these dumb gestures first the exchange began Of viewless thought in bird, and beast, and man; And still the stage by mimic art displays Historic pantomime in modern days; 360 And hence the enthusiast orator affords Force to the feebler eloquence of words. "Thus the first LANGUAGE, when we frown'd or smiled, Rose from the cradle, Imitation's child; Next to each thought associate sound accords, And forms the dulcet symphony of words; The tongue, the lips articulate; the throat With soft vibration modulates the note; Love, pity, war, the shout, the song, the prayer Form quick concussions of elastic air. 370 "Hence the first accents bear in airy rings The vocal symbols of ideal things, Name each nice change appulsive powers supply To the quick sense of touch, or ear or eye. Or in fine traits abstracted forms suggest Of Beauty, Wisdom, Number, Motion, Rest; Or, as within reflex ideas move, Trace the light steps of Reason, Rage, or Love. The next new sounds adjunctive thoughts recite, As hard, odorous, tuneful, sweet, or white. 380 The next the fleeting images select Of action, suffering, causes and effect; Or mark existence, with the march sublime O'er earth and ocean of recording TIME. [Footnote: _Hence the first accents_, l. 371. Words were originally the signs or names of individual ideas; but in all known languages many of them by changing their terminations express more than one idea, as in the cases of nouns, and the moods and tenses of verbs. Thus a whip suggests a single idea of that instrument; but "to whip," suggests an idea of action, joined with that of the instrument, and is then called a verb; and "to be whipped," suggests an idea of being acted upon or suffering. Thus in most languages two ideas are suggested by one word by changing its termination; as amor, love; amare, to love; amari, to be loved. Nouns are the names of the ideas of things, first as they are received by the stimulus of objects, or as they are afterwards repeated; secondly, they are names of more abstracted ideas, which do not suggest at the same time the external objects, by which they were originally excited; or thirdly, of the operations of our minds, which are termed reflex ideas by metaphysical writers; or lastly, they are the names of our ideas of parts or properties of objects; and are termed by grammarians nouns adjective. Verbs are also in reality names of our ideas of things, or nouns, with the addition of another idea to them, as of acting or suffering; or of more than one other annexed idea, as of time, and also of existence. These with the numerous abbreviations, so well illustrated by Mr. Horne Tooke in his Diversions of Purley, make up the general theory of language, which consists of the symbols of ideas represented by vocal or written words; or by parts of those words, as their terminations; or by their disposition in respect to their order or succession; as further explained in Additional Note XIV.] "The GIANT FORM on Nature's centre stands, And waves in ether his unnumber'd hands; Whirls the bright planets in their silver spheres, And the vast sun round other systems steers; Till the last trump amid the thunder's roar Sound the dread Sentence "TIME SHALL BE NO MORE!" "Last steps Abbreviation, bold and strong, 391 And leads the volant trains of words along; With sweet loquacity to HERMES springs, And decks his forehead and his feet with wings. VII. "As the soft lips and pliant tongue are taught With other minds to interchange the thought; And sound, the symbol of the sense, explains In parted links the long ideal trains; From clear conceptions of external things The facile power of Recollection springs. 400 [Footnote: _In parted links_, l. 398. As our ideas consist of successive trains of the motions, or changes of figure, of the extremities of the nerves of one or more of our senses, as of the optic or auditory nerves; these successive trains of motion, or configuration, are in common life divided into many links, to each of which a word or name is given, and it is called an idea. This chain of ideas may be broken into more or fewer links, or divided in different parts of it, by the customs of different people. Whence the meanings of the words of one language cannot always be exactly expressed by those of another; and hence the acquirement of different languages in their infancy may affect the modes of thinking and reasoning of whole nations, or of different classes of society; as the words of them do not accurately suggest the same ideas, or parts of ideal trains; a circumstance which has not been sufficiently analysed.] "Whence REASON'S empire o'er the world presides, And man from brute, and man from man divides; Compares and measures by imagined lines Ellipses, circles, tangents, angles, sines; Repeats with nice libration, and decrees In what each differs, and in what agrees; With quick Volitions unfatigued selects Means for some end, and causes of effects; All human science worth the name imparts, And builds on Nature's base the works of Arts. 410 [Footnote: _Whence Reason's empire_, l. 401. The facility of the use of the voluntary power, which is owing to the possession of the clear ideas acquired by our superior sense of touch, and afterwards of vision, distinguishes man from brutes, and has given him the empire of the world, with the power of improving nature by the exertions of art. Reasoning is that operation of the sensorium by which we excite two or many tribes of ideas, and then reexcite the ideas in which they differ or correspond. If we determine this difference, it is called judgment; if we in vain endeavour to determine it, it is called doubting. If we reexcite the ideas in which they differ, it is called distinguishing. If we reexcite those in which they correspond, it is called comparing.] "The Wasp, fine architect, surrounds his domes With paper-foliage, and suspends his combs; Secured from frost the Bee industrious dwells, And fills for winter all her waxen cells; The cunning Spider with adhesive line Weaves his firm net immeasurably fine; The Wren, when embryon eggs her cares engross, Seeks the soft down, and lines the cradling moss; Conscious of change the Silkworm-Nymphs begin Attach'd to leaves their gluten-threads to spin; 420 Then round and round they weave with circling heads Sphere within Sphere, and form their silken beds. --Say, did these fine volitions first commence From clear ideas of the tangent sense; From sires to sons by imitation caught, Or in dumb language by tradition taught? Or did they rise in some primeval site Of larva-gnat, or microscopic mite; And with instructive foresight still await On each vicissitude of insect-state?-- 430 Wise to the present, nor to future blind, They link the reasoning reptile to mankind! --Stoop, selfish Pride! survey thy kindred forms, Thy brother Emmets, and thy sister Worms! [Footnote: _The Wasp, fine architect_, l. 411. Those animals which possess a better sense of touch are, in general, more ingenious than others. Those which have claviculæ, or collar-bones, and thence use the forefeet as hands, as the monkey, squirrel, rat, are more ingenious in seizing their prey or escaping from danger. And the ingenuity of the elephant appears to arise from the sense of touch at the extremity of his proboscis, which has a prominence on one side of its cavity like a thumb to close against the other side of it, by which I have seen him readily pick up a shilling which was thrown amongst the straw he stood upon. Hence the excellence of the sense of touch in many insects seems to have given them wonderful ingenuity so as to equal or even excel mankind in some of their arts and discoveries; many of which may have been acquired in situations previous to their present ones, as the great globe itself, and all that it inhabit, appear to be in a perpetual state of mutation and improvement; see Additional Note IX.] "Thy potent acts, VOLITION, still attend The means of pleasure to secure the end; To express his wishes and his wants design'd Language, the _means_, distinguishes Mankind; For _future_ works in Art's ingenious schools His hands unwearied form and finish tools; 440 He toils for money _future_ bliss to share, And shouts to Heaven his mercenary prayer. Sweet Hope delights him, frowning Fear alarms, And Vice and Virtue court him to their arms. [Footnote: _Thy potent acts, Volition_, l. 435. It was before observed, how much the superior accuracy of our sense of touch contributes to increase our knowledge; but it is the greater energy and activity of the power of volition, that marks mankind, and has given them the empire of the world. There is a criterion by which we may distinguish our voluntary acts or thoughts from those that are excited by our sensations: "The former are always employed about the means to acquire pleasurable objects, or to avoid painful ones; while the latter are employed about the possession of those that are already in our power." The ideas and actions of brutes, like those of children, are almost perpetually produced by their present pleasures or their present pains; and they seldom busy themselves about the _means_ of procuring future bliss, or of avoiding future misery. Whilst the acquiring of languages, the making of tools, and the labouring for money, which are all only the _means_ of procuring pleasure; and the praying to the Deity, as another means to procure happiness, are characteristic of human nature.] "Unenvied eminence, in Nature's plan Rise the reflective faculties of Man! Labour to Rest the thinking Few prefer! Know but to mourn! and reason but to err!-- In Eden's groves, the cradle of the world, Bloom'd a fair tree with mystic flowers unfurl'd; 450 On bending branches, as aloft it sprung, Forbid to taste, the fruit of KNOWLEDGE hung; Flow'd with sweet Innocence the tranquil hours, And Love and Beauty warm'd the blissful bowers. Till our deluded Parents pluck'd, erelong, The tempting fruit, and gather'd Right and Wrong; Whence Good and Evil, as in trains they pass, Reflection imaged on her polish'd glass; And Conscience felt, for blood by Hunger spilt, The pains of shame, of sympathy, and guilt! 460 [Footnote: _And gather'd Right and Wrong_, l. 456. Some philosophers have believed that the acquisition of knowledge diminishes the happiness of the possessor; an opinion which seems to have been inculcated by the history of our first parents, who are said to have become miserable from eating of the tree of knowledge. But as the foresight and the power of mankind are much increased by their voluntary exertions in the acquirement of knowledge, they may undoubtedly avoid many sources of evil, and procure many sources of good; and yet possess the pleasures of sense, or of imagination, as extensively as the brute or the savage.] VIII. "LAST, as observant Imitation stands, Turns her quick glance, and brandishes her hands, With mimic acts associate thoughts excites, And storms the soul with sorrows or delights; Life's shadowy scenes are brighten'd and refin'd, And soft emotions mark the feeling mind. [Footnote: _And soft emotions_, l. 466. From our aptitude to imitation arises what is generally understood by the word sympathy, so well explained by Dr. Smith of Glasgow. Thus the appearance of a cheerful countenance gives us pleasure, and of a melancholy one makes us sorrowful. Yawning, and sometimes vomiting, are thus propagated by sympathy; and some people of delicate fibres, at the presence of a spectacle of misery, have felt pain in the same parts of their bodies, that were diseased or mangled in the object they saw. The effect of this powerful agent in the moral world, is the foundation of all our intellectual sympathies with the pains and pleasures of others, and is in consequence the source of all our virtues. For in what consists our sympathy with the miseries or with the joys of our fellow creatures, but in an involuntary excitation of ideas in some measure similar or imitative of those which we believe to exist in the minds of the persons whom we commiserate or congratulate!] "The Seraph, SYMPATHY, from Heaven descends, And bright o'er earth his beamy forehead bends; On Man's cold heart celestial ardor flings, And showers affection from his sparkling wings; 470 Rolls o'er the world his mild benignant eye, Hears the lone murmur, drinks the whisper'd sigh; Lifts the closed latch of pale Misfortune's door, Opes the clench'd hand of Avarice to the poor, Unbars the prison, liberates the slave, Sheds his soft sorrows o'er the untimely grave, Points with uplifted hand to realms above, And charms the world with universal love. "O'er the thrill'd frame his words assuasive steal, And teach the selfish heart what others feel; 480 With sacred truth each erring thought control, Bind sex to sex, and mingle soul with soul; From heaven, He cried, descends the moral plan, And gives Society to savage man. "High on yon scroll, inscribed o'er Nature's shrine, Live in bright characters the words divine. "IN LIFE'S DISASTROUS SCENES TO OTHERS DO, WHAT YOU WOULD WISH BY OTHERS DONE TO YOU." --Winds! wide o'er earth the sacred law convey, Ye Nations, hear it! and ye Kings, obey! 490 [Footnote: _High on yon scroll_, l. 485. The famous sentence of Socrates "Know thyself," so celebrated by writers of antiquity, and said by them to have descended from Heaven, however wise it may be, seems to be rather of a selfish nature; and the author of it might have added "Know also other people." But the sacred maxims of the author of Christianity, "Do as you would be done by," and "Love your neighbour as yourself," include all our duties of benevolence and morality; and, if sincerely obeyed by all nations, would a thousandfold multiply the present happiness of mankind.] "Unbreathing wonder hush'd the adoring throng, Froze the broad eye, and chain'd the silent tongue; Mute was the wail of Want, and Misery's cry, And grateful Pity wiped her lucid eye; Peace with sweet voice the Seraph-form address'd, And Virtue clasp'd him to her throbbing breast." END OF CANTO III. ORIGIN OF SOCIETY. CANTO IV. OF GOOD AND EVIL. CONTENTS. I. Few affected by Sympathy 1. Cruelty of War 11. Of brute animals, Wolf, Eagle, Lamb, Dove, Owl, Nightingale 17. Of insects, Oestrus, Ichneumon, Libellula 29. Wars of Vegetables 41. Of fish, the Shark, Crocodile, Whale 55. The World a Slaughter-house 66. Pains from Defect and from Excess of Stimulus 71. Ebriety and Superstition 77. Mania 89. Association 93. Avarice, Imposture, Ambition, Envy, Jealousy 97. Floods, Volcanoes, Earthquakes, Famine 109. Pestilence 117. Pains from Sympathy 123. II. Good outbalances Evil 135. Life combines inanimate Matter, and produces happiness by Irritation 145. As in viewing a Landscape 159. In hearing Music 171. By Sensation or Fancy in Dreams 183. The Patriot and the Nun 197. Howard, Moira, Burdett 205. By Volition 223. Newton, Herschel 233. Archimedes, Savery 241. Isis, Arkwright 253. Letters and Printing 265. Freedom of the Press 273. By Association 291. Ideas of Contiguity, Resemblance, and of Cause and Effect 299. Antinous 319. Cecilia 329. III. Life soon ceases, Births and Deaths alternate 337. Acorns, Poppy-seeds, Aphises, Snails, Worms, Tadpoles, Herrings innumerable 347. So Mankind 369. All Nature teems with Life 375. Dead Organic Matter soon revives 383. Death is but a change of Form 393. Exclamation of St. Paul 403. Happiness of the World increases 405. The Phoenix 411. System of Pythagoras 417. Rocks and Mountains produced by Organic Life 429. Are Monuments of past Felicity 447. Munificence of the Deity 455. IV. Procession of Virgins 469. Hymn to Heaven 481. Of Chaos 489. Of Celestial Love 499. Offering of Urania 517-524. CANTO IV. OF GOOD AND EVIL. I. "HOW FEW," the MUSE in plaintive accents cries, And mingles with her words pathetic sighs.-- "How few, alas! in Nature's wide domains The sacred charm of SYMPATHY restrains! Uncheck'd desires from appetite commence, And pure reflection yields to selfish sense! --Blest is the Sage, who learn'd in Nature's laws With nice distinction marks effect and cause; Who views the insatiate Grave with eye sedate, Nor fears thy voice, inexorable Fate! 10 [Footnote: _Blest is the Sage_, l. 7. Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas; Quique metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum, Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari. VIRG. Georg. II. 490.] "WHEN War, the Demon, lifts his banner high, And loud artillery rends the affrighted sky; Swords clash with swords, on horses horses rush, Man tramples man, and nations nations crush; Death his vast sithe with sweep enormous wields, And shuddering Pity quits the sanguine fields. "The wolf, escorted by his milk-drawn dam, Unknown to mercy, tears the guiltless lamb; The towering eagle, darting from above, Unfeeling rends the inoffensive dove; 20 The lamb and dove on living nature feed, Crop the young herb, or crush the embryon seed. Nor spares the loud owl in her dusky flight, Smit with sweet notes, the minstrel of the night; Nor spares, enamour'd of his radiant form, The hungry nightingale the glowing worm; Who with bright lamp alarms the midnight hour, Climbs the green stem, and slays the sleeping flower. [Footnote: _The towering eagle_, l. 19. Torva leæna lupum sequitur, lupus ipse capellam, Florentem cytisum sequitur lasciva capella. VIRG.] "Fell Oestrus buries in her rapid course Her countless brood in stag, or bull, or horse; 30 Whose hungry larva eats its living way, Hatch'd by the warmth, and issues into day. The wing'd Ichneumon for her embryon young Gores with sharp horn the caterpillar throng. The cruel larva mines its silky course, And tears the vitals of its fostering nurse. While fierce Libellula with jaws of steel Ingulfs an insect-province at a meal; Contending bee-swarms rise on rustling wings, And slay their thousands with envenom'd stings. 40 [Footnote: _Fell Oestrus buries_, l. 29. The gadfly, bot-fly, or sheep-fly: the larva lives in the bodies of cattle throughout the whole winter; it is extracted from their backs by an African bird called Buphaga. Adhering to the anus it artfully introduces itself into the intestines of horses, and becomes so numerous in their stomachs, as sometimes to destroy them; it climbs into the nostrils of sheep and calves, and producing a nest of young in a transparent hydatide in the frontal sinus, occasions the vertigo or turn of those animals. In Lapland it so attacks the rein deer that the natives annually travel with the herds from the woods to the mountains. Lin. Syst. Nat.] [Footnote: _The wing'd Ichneumon_, l. 33. Linneus describes seventy-seven species of the ichneumon fly, some of which have a sting as long and some twice as long as their bodies. Many of them insert their eggs into various caterpillars, which when they are hatched seem for a time to prey on the reservoir of silk in the backs of those animals designed for their own use to spin a cord to support them, or a bag to contain them, while they change from their larva form to a butterfly; as I have seen in above fifty cabbage-caterpillars. The ichneumon larva then makes its way out of the caterpillar, and spins itself a small cocoon like a silk worm; these cocoons are about the size of a small pin's head, and I have seen about ten of them on each cabbage caterpillar, which soon dies after their exclusion. Other species of ichneumon insert their eggs into the aphis, and into the larva of the aphidivorous fly: others into the bedeguar of rose trees, and the gall-nuts of oaks; whence those excrescences seem to be produced, as well as the hydatides in the frontal sinus of sheep and calves by the stimulus of the larvæ deposited in them.] [Footnote: _While fierce Libellula_, l. 37. The Libellula or Dragon-fly is said to be a most voracious animal; Linneus says in their perfect state they are the hawks to naked winged flies; in their larva state they run beneath the water, and are the cruel crocodiles of aquatic insects. Syst. Nat.] [Footnote: _Contending bee-swarms_, l. 39. Stronger bee-swarms frequently attack weak hives, and in two or three days destroy them and carry away their honey; this I once prevented by removing the attacked hive after the first day's battle to a distinct part of the garden. See Phytologia, Sect. XIV. 3. 7.] "Yes! smiling Flora drives her armed car Through the thick ranks of vegetable war; Herb, shrub, and tree, with strong emotions rise For light and air, and battle in the skies; Whose roots diverging with opposing toil Contend below for moisture and for soil; Round the tall Elm the flattering Ivies bend, And strangle, as they clasp, their struggling friend; Envenom'd dews from Mancinella flow, And scald with caustic touch the tribes below; 50 Dense shadowy leaves on stems aspiring borne With blight and mildew thin the realms of corn; And insect hordes with restless tooth devour The unfolded bud, and pierce the ravell'd flower. "In ocean's pearly haunts, the waves beneath Sits the grim monarch of insatiate Death; The shark rapacious with descending blow Darts on the scaly brood, that swims below; The crawling crocodiles, beneath that move, Arrest with rising jaw the tribes above; 60 With monstrous gape sepulchral whales devour Shoals at a gulp, a million in an hour. --Air, earth, and ocean, to astonish'd day One scene of blood, one mighty tomb display! From Hunger's arm the shafts of Death are hurl'd, And one great Slaughter-house the warring world! [Footnote: _The shark rapacious_, l. 57. The shark has three rows of sharp teeth within each other, which he can bend downwards internally to admit larger prey, and raise to prevent its return; his snout hangs so far over his mouth, that he is necessitated to turn upon his back, when he takes fish that swim over him, and hence seems peculiarly formed to catch those that swim under him.] [Footnote: _The crawling crocodiles_, l. 59. As this animal lives chiefly at the bottom of the rivers, which he frequents, he has the power of opening the upper jaw as well as the under one, and thus with greater facility catches the fish or water-fowl which swim over him.] [Footnote: _One great slaughter-house_, l. 66. As vegetables are an inferior order of animals fixed to the soil; and as the locomotive animals prey upon them, or upon each other; the world may indeed be said to be one great slaughter-house. As the digested food of vegetables consists principally of sugar, and from this is produced again their mucilage, starch, and oil, and since animals are sustained by these vegetable productions, it would seem that the sugar-making process carried on in vegetable vessels was the great source of life to all organized beings. And that if our improved chemistry should ever discover the art of making sugar from fossile or aerial matter without the assistance of vegetation, food for animals would then become as plentiful as water, and they might live upon the earth without preying on each other, as thick as blades of grass, with no restraint to their numbers but the want of local room. It would seem that roots fixed in the earth and leaves innumerable waving in the air were necessary for the decomposition of water and air, and the conversion of them into saccharine matter, which would have been not only cumberous but totally incompatible with the locomotion of animal bodies. For how could a man or quadruped have carried on his head or back a forest of leaves, or have had long branching lacteal or absorbent vessels terminating in the earth? Animals therefore subsist on vegetables; that is they take the matter so prepared, and have organs to prepare it further for the purposes of higher animation and greater sensibility.] "THE brow of Man erect, with thought elate, Ducks to the mandate of resistless fate; Nor Love retains him, nor can Virtue save Her sages, saints, or heroes from the grave. 70 While cold and hunger by defect oppress, Repletion, heat, and labour by excess, The whip, the sting, the spur, the fiery brand, And, cursed Slavery! thy iron hand; And led by Luxury Disease's trains, Load human life with unextinguish'd pains. [Footnote: _While cold and hunger_, l. 71. Those parts of our system, which are in health excited into perpetual action, give us pain, when they are not excited into action: thus when the hands are for a time immersed in snow, an inaction of the cutaneous capillaries is induced, as is seen from the paleness of the skin, which is attended with the pain of coldness. So the pain of hunger is probably produced by the inaction of the muscular fibres of the stomach from the want of the stimulus of food. Thus those, who have used much voluntary exertion in their early years, and have continued to do so, till the decline of life commences, if they then lay aside their employment, whether that of a minister of state, a general of an army, or a merchant, or manufacturer; they cease to have their faculties excited into their usual activity, and become unhappy, I suppose from the too great accumulation of the sensorial power of volition; which wants the accustomed stimulus or motive to cause its expenditure.] "Here laughs Ebriety more fell than arms, And thins the nations with her fatal charms, With Gout, and Hydrops groaning in her train, And cold Debility, and grinning Pain, 80 With harlot's smiles deluded man salutes, Revenging all his cruelties to brutes! There the curst spells of Superstition blind, And fix her fetters on the tortured mind; She bids in dreams tormenting shapes appear, With shrieks that shock Imagination's ear, E'en o'er the grave a deeper shadow flings, And maddening Conscience darts a thousand stings. [Footnote: _Here laughs Ebriety_, l. 77. Sævior armis Luxuria incubuit, victumque ulciscitur orbem. HORAC.] [Footnote: _E'en o'er the grave_, l. 87. Many theatric preachers among the Methodists successfully inculcate the fear of death and of Hell, and live luxuriously on the folly of their hearers: those who suffer under this insanity, are generally most innocent and harmless people, who are then liable to accuse themselves of the greatest imaginary crimes; and have so much intellectual cowardice, that they dare not reason about those things, which they are directed by their priests to believe. Where this intellectual cowardice is great, the voice of reason is ineffectual; but that of ridicule may save many from these mad-making doctors, as the farces of Mr. Foot; though it is too weak to cure those who are already hallucinated.] "There writhing Mania sits on Reason's throne, Or Melancholy marks it for her own, 90 Sheds o'er the scene a voluntary gloom, Requests oblivion, and demands the tomb. And last Association's trains suggest Ideal ills, that harrow up the breast, Call for the dead from Time's o'erwhelming main, And bid departed Sorrow live again. [Footnote: _And last association_, l. 93. The miseries and the felicities of life may be divided into those which arise in consequence of irritation, sensation, volition, and association; and consist in the actions of the extremities of the nerves of sense, which constitute our ideas; if they are much more exerted than usual, or much less exerted than usual, they occasion pain; as when the finger is burnt in a candle; or when we go into a cold bath: while their natural degree of exertion produces the pleasure of life or existence. This pleasure is nevertheless increased, when the system is stimulated into rather stronger action than usual, as after a copious dinner, and at the beginning of intoxication; and diminished, when it is only excited into somewhat less activity than usual, which is termed ennui, or irksomeness of life.] [Footnote: _Ideal ills_, l. 94. The tooth-edge is an instance of bodily pain occasioned by association of ideas. Every one in his childhood has repeatedly bit a part of the glass or earthen vessel, in which his food has been given him, and has thence had a disagreeable sensation in his teeth, attended at the same time with a jarring sound: and ever after, when such a sound is accidentally produced, the disagreeable sensation of the teeth follows by association of ideas; this is further elucidated in Zoonomia, Vol. I. Sect. XVI. 10.] "Here ragged Avarice guards with bolted door His useless treasures from the starving poor; Loads the lorn hours with misery and care, And lives a beggar to enrich his heir. 100 Unthinking crowds thy forms, Imposture, gull, A Saint in sackcloth, or a Wolf in wool. While mad with foolish fame, or drunk with power, Ambition slays his thousands in an hour; Demoniac Envy scowls with haggard mien, And blights the bloom of other's joys, unseen; Or wrathful Jealousy invades the grove, And turns to night meridian beams of Love! [Footnote: _Enrich his heir_, l. 100. Cum furor haud dubius, cum sit manifesta phrenitis, Ut locuples moriaris, egenti vivere fato. JUVENAL.] [Footnote: _A Wolf in wool_, l. 102. A wolf in sheep's clothing.] "Here wide o'er earth impetuous waters sweep, And fields and forests rush into the deep; 110 Or dread Volcano with explosion dire Involves the mountains in a flood of fire; Or yawning Earth with closing jaws inhumes Unwarned nations, living in their tombs; Or Famine seizes with her tiger-paw, And swallows millions with unsated maw. "There livid Pestilence in league with Dearth Walks forth malignant o'er the shuddering earth, Her rapid shafts with airs volcanic wings, Or steeps in putrid vaults her venom'd stings. 120 Arrests the young in Beauty's vernal bloom, And bears the innocuous strangers to the tomb!-- [Footnote: _With airs volcanic_, l. 119. Those epidemic complaints, which are generally termed influenza, are believed to arise from vapours thrown out from earthquakes in such abundance as to affect large regions of the atmosphere, see Botanic Garden, V. I. Canto IV. l. 65. while the diseases properly termed contagious originate from the putrid effluvia of decomposing animal or vegetable matter.] "AND now, e'en I, whose verse reluctant sings The changeful state of sublunary things, Bend o'er Mortality with silent sighs, And wipe the secret tear-drops from my eyes, Hear through the night one universal groan, And mourn unseen for evils not my own, With restless limbs and throbbing heart complain, Stretch'd on the rack of sentimental pain! 130 --Ah where can Sympathy reflecting find One bright idea to console the mind? One ray of light in this terrene abode To prove to Man the Goodness of his GOD?" [Footnote: _Sentimental pain_, l. 130. Children should be taught in their early education to feel for all the remediable evils, which they observe in others; but they should at the same time be taught sufficient firmness of mind not intirely to destroy their own happiness by their sympathizing with too great sensibility with the numerous irremediable evils, which exist in the present system of the world: as by indulging that kind of melancholy they decrease the sum total of public happiness; which is so far rather reprehensible than commendable. See Plan for Female Education by Dr. Darwin, Johnson, London, Sect. XVII. This has been carried to great excess in the East by the disciples of Confucius; the Gentoos during a famine in India refused to eat the flesh of cows and of other animals to satisfy their hunger, and save themselves from death. And at other times they have been said to permit fleas and musquitoes to feed upon them from this erroneous sympathy.] II. "HEAR, O YE SONS OF TIME!" the Nymph replies, Quick indignation darting from her eyes; "When in soft tones the Muse lamenting sings, And weighs with tremulous hand the sum of things; She loads the scale in melancholy mood, Presents the evil, but forgets the good. 140 But if the beam some firmer hand suspends, And good and evil load the adverse ends; With strong libration, where the Good abides, Quick nods the beam, the ponderous gold subsides. "HEAR, O ye Sons of Time! the powers of Life Arrest the elements, and stay their strife; From wandering atoms, ethers, airs, and gas, By combination form the organic mass; And,--as they seize, digest, secrete,--dispense The bliss of Being to the vital Ens. 150 Hence in bright groups from IRRITATION rise Young Pleasure's trains, and roll their azure eyes. [Footnote: _From wandering atoms_, l. 147. Had those ancient philosophers, who contended that the world was formed from atoms, ascribed their combinations to certain immutable properties received from the hand of the Creator, such as general gravitation, chemical affinity, or animal appetency, instead of ascribing them to a blind chance; the doctrine of atoms, as constituting or composing the material world by the variety of their combinations, so far from leading the mind to atheism, would strengthen the demonstration of the existence of a Deity, as the first cause of all things; because the analogy resulting from our perpetual experience of cause and effect would have thus been exemplified through universal nature.] "With fond delight we feel the potent charm, When Zephyrs cool us, or when sun-beams warm; With fond delight inhale the fragrant flowers, Taste the sweet fruits, which bend the blushing bowers, Admire the music of the vernal grove, Or drink the raptures of delirious love. "So with long gaze admiring eyes behold The varied landscape all its lights unfold; 160 Huge rocks opposing o'er the stream project Their naked bosoms, and the beams reflect; Wave high in air their fringed crests of wood, And checker'd shadows dance upon the flood; Green sloping lawns construct the sidelong scene, And guide the sparkling rill that winds between; Conduct on murmuring wings the pausing gale, And rural echoes talk along the vale; Dim hills behind in pomp aerial rise, Lift their blue tops, and melt into the skies. 170 [Footnote: _The varied landscape_, l. 160. The pleasure, we feel on examining a fine landscape, is derived from various sources; as first the excitement of the retina of the eye into certain quantities of action; which when there is in the optic nerve any accumulation of sensorial power, is always agreeable. 2. When it is excited into such successive actions, as relieve each other; as when a limb has been long exerted in one direction, by stretching it in another; as described in Zoonomia, Sect. XL. 6. on ocular spectra. 3. And lastly by the associations of its parts with some agreeable sentiments or tastes, as of sublimity, beauty, utility, novelty; and the objects suggesting other sentiments, which have lately been termed picturesque as mentioned in the note to Canto III, l. 230 of this work. The two former of these sources of pleasure arise from irritation, the last from association.] "So when by HANDEL tuned to measured sounds The trumpet vibrates, or the drum rebounds; Alarm'd we listen with ecstatic wonder To mimic battles, or imagined thunder. When the soft lute in sweet impassion'd strains Of cruel nymphs or broken vows complains; As on the breeze the fine vibration floats, We drink delighted the melodious notes. But when young Beauty on the realms above Bends her bright eye, and trills the tones of love; 180 Seraphic sounds enchant this nether sphere; And listening angels lean from Heaven to hear. [Footnote: _We drink delighted_, l. 178. The pleasure we experience from music, is, like that from viewing a landscape, derived from various sources; as first from the excitement of the auditory nerve into certain quantities of action, when there exists any accumulation of sensorial power. 2. When the auditory nerve is exerted in such successive actions as relieve each other, like stretching or yawning, as described in Botanic Garden, Vol. II, Interlude the third, these successions of sound are termed melody, and their combinations harmony. 3. From the repetition of sounds at certain intervals of time; as we hear them with greater facility and accuracy, when we expect them; because they are then excited by volition, as well as by irritation, or at least the tympanum is then better adapted to assist their production; hence the two musical times or bars; and hence the rhimes in poetry give pleasure, as well as the measure of the verse: and lastly the pleasure we receive from music, arises from the associations of agreeable sentiments with certain proportions, or repetitions, or quantities, or times of sounds which have been previously acquired; as explained in Zoonomia Vol. I. Sect. XVI. 10. and Sect. XXII. 2.] "Next by SENSATION led, new joys commence From the fine movements of the excited sense; In swarms ideal urge their airy flight, Adorn the day-scenes, and illume the night. Her spells o'er all the hand of Fancy flings, Gives form and substance to unreal things; With fruits and foliage decks the barren waste, And brightens Life with sentiment and taste; 190 Pleased o'er the level and the rule presides, The painter's brush, the sculptor's chisel guides, With ray ethereal lights the poet's fire, Tunes the rude pipe, or strings the heroic lyre: Charm'd round the nymph on frolic footsteps move The angelic forms of Beauty, Grace, and Love. "So dreams the Patriot, who indignant draws The sword of vengeance in his Country's cause; Bright for his brows unfading honours bloom, Or kneeling Virgins weep around his tomb. 200 So holy transports in the cloister's shade Play round thy toilet, visionary maid! Charm'd o'er thy bed celestial voices sing, And Seraphs hover on enamour'd wing. "So HOWARD, MOIRA, BURDETT, sought the cells, Where want, or woe, or guilt in darkness dwells; With Pity's torch illumed the dread domains, Wiped the wet eye, and eased the galling chains; With Hope's bright blushes warm'd the midnight air, And drove from earth the Demon of Despair. 210 Erewhile emerging from the caves of night The Friends of Man ascended into light; With soft assuasive eloquence address'd The ear of Power to stay his stern behest; At Mercy's call to stretch his arm and save His tottering victims from the gaping grave. These with sweet smiles Imagination greets, For these she opens all her treasured sweets, Strews round their couch, by Pity's hand combined, Bright flowers of joy, the sunshine of the mind; 220 While Fame's loud trump with sounds applausive breathes And Virtue crowns them with immortal wreathes. "Thy acts, VOLITION, to the world impart The plans of Science with the works of art; Give to proud Reason her comparing power, Warm every clime, and brighten every hour. In Life's first cradle, ere the dawn began Of young Society to polish man; The staff that propp'd him, and the bow that arm'd, The boat that bore him, and the shed that warm'd, 230 Fire, raiment, food, the ploughshare, and the sword, Arose, VOLITION, at thy plastic word. "By thee instructed, NEWTON'S eye sublime Mark'd the bright periods of revolving time; Explored in Nature's scenes the effect and cause, And, charm'd, unravell'd all her latent laws. Delighted HERSCHEL with reflected light Pursues his radiant journey through the night; Detects new guards, that roll their orbs afar In lucid ringlets round the Georgian star. 240 "Inspired by thee, with scientific wand Pleased ARCHIMEDES mark'd the figured sand; Seized with mechanic grasp the approaching decks, And shook the assailants from the inverted wrecks. --Then cried the Sage, with grand effects elate, And proud to save the Syracusian state; While crowds exulting shout their noisy mirth, 'Give where to stand, and I will move the earth.' So SAVERY guided his explosive steam In iron cells to raise the balanced beam; 250 The Giant-form its ponderous mass uprears, Descending nods and seems to shake the spheres. [Footnote: _Mark'd the figur'd sand_, l. 242. The ancient orators seem to have spoken disrespectfully of the mechanic philosophers. Cicero mentioning Archimedes, calls him Homunculus e pulvere et radio, alluding to the custom of drawing problems on the sand with a staff.] [Footnote: _So Savery guided_, l. 249. Captain Savery first applied the pressure of the atmosphere to raise water in consequence of a vacuum previously produced by the condensation of steam, though the Marquis of Worcester had before proposed to use for this purpose the expansive power of steam; see Botanic Garden, Vol. I. Canto I. l. 253. Note.] "Led by VOLITION on the banks of Nile Where bloom'd the waving flax on Delta's isle, Pleased ISIS taught the fibrous stems to bind, And part with hammers from the adhesive rind; With locks of flax to deck the distaff-pole, And whirl with graceful bend the dancing spole. In level lines the length of woof to spread, And dart the shuttle through the parting thread. 260 So ARKWRIGHT taught from Cotton-pods to cull, And stretch in lines the vegetable wool; With teeth of steel its fibre-knots unfurl'd, And with the silver tissue clothed the world. [Footnote: _The waving flax_, l. 254. Flax is said to have been first discovered on the banks of the Nile, and Isis to have been the inventress of spinning and weaving.] [Footnote: _So Arkwright taught_, l. 261. See Botanic Garden, Vol. II. Canto II. l. 87, Note.] "Ages remote by thee, VOLITION, taught Chain'd down in characters the winged thought; With silent language mark'd the letter'd ground, And gave to sight the evanescent sound. Now, happier lot! enlighten'd realms possess The learned labours of the immortal Press; 270 Nursed on whose lap the births of science thrive, And rising Arts the wrecks of Time survive. [Footnote: _The immortal Press_, l. 270. The discovery of the art of printing has had so great influence on human affairs, that from thence may be dated a new æra in the history of mankind. As by the diffusion of general knowledge, both of the arts of taste and of useful sciences, the public mind has become improved to so great a degree, that though new impositions have been perpetually produced, the arts of detecting them have improved with greater rapidity. Hence since the introduction of printing, superstition has been much lessened by the reformation of religion; and necromancy, astrology, chiromancy, witchcraft, and vampyrism, have vanished from all classes of society; though some are still so weak in the present enlightened times as to believe in the prodigies of animal magnetism, and of metallic tractors; by this general diffusion of knowledge, if the liberty of the press be preserved, mankind will not be liable in this part of the world to sink into such abject slavery as exists at this day in China.] "Ye patriot heroes! in the glorious cause Of Justice, Mercy, Liberty, and Laws, Who call to Virtue's shrine the British youth, And shake the senate with the voice of Truth; Rouse the dull ear, the hoodwink'd eye unbind, And give to energy the public mind; While rival realms with blood unsated wage Wide-wasting war with fell demoniac rage; 280 In every clime while army army meets, And oceans groan beneath contending fleets; Oh save, oh save, in this eventful hour The tree of knowledge from the axe of power; With fostering peace the suffering nations bless, And guard the freedom of the immortal Press! So shall your deathless fame from age to age Survive recorded in the historic page; And future bards with voice inspired prolong Your sacred names immortalized in song. 290 "Thy power ASSOCIATION next affords Ideal trains annex'd to volant words, Conveys to listening ears the thought superb, And gives to Language her expressive verb; Which in one changeful sound suggests the fact At once to be, to suffer, or to act; And marks on rapid wing o'er every clime The viewless flight of evanescent Time. [Footnote: _Her expressive verb_, l. 294. The verb, or the word, has been so called from its being the most expressive term in all languages; as it suggests the ideas of existence, action or suffering, and of time; see the Note on Canto III. l. 371, of this work.] "Call'd by thy voice contiguous thoughts embrace In endless streams arranged by Time or Place; 300 The Muse historic hence in every age Gives to the world her _interesting_ page; While in bright landscape from her moving pen Rise the fine tints of manners and of men. [Footnote: _Call'd by thy voice_, l. 299. The numerous trains of associated ideas are divided by Mr. Hume into three classes, which he has termed contiguity, causation, and resemblance. Nor should we wonder to find them thus connected together, since it is the business of our lives to dispose them into these three classes; and we become valuable to ourselves and our friends as we succeed in it. Those who have combined an extensive class of ideas by the contiguity of time or place, are men learned in the history of mankind, and of the sciences they have cultivated. Those who have connected a great class of ideas of resemblances, possess the source of the ornaments of poetry and oratory, and of all rational analogy. While those who have connected great classes of ideas of causation, are furnished with the powers of producing effects. These are the men of active wisdom who lead armies to victory, and kingdoms to prosperity; or discover and improve the sciences which meliorate and adorn the condition of humanity.] "Call'd by thy voice Resemblance next describes Her sister-thoughts in lucid trains or tribes; Whence pleased Imagination oft combines By loose analogies her fair designs; Each winning grace of polish'd wit bestows To deck the Nymphs of Poetry and Prose. 310 [Footnote: _Polish'd wit bestows_, l. 309. Mr. Locke defines wit to consist of an assemblage of ideas, brought together with quickness and variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy. To which Mr. Addison adds, that these must occasion surprise as well as delight; Spectator, Vol. I. No. LXII. See Note on Canto III. l. 145. and Additional Note, VII. 3. Perhaps wit in the extended use of the word may mean to express all kinds of fine writing, as the word Taste is applied to all agreeable visible objects, and thus wit may mean descriptive sublimity, beauty, the pathetic, or ridiculous, but when used in the confined sense, as by Mr. Locke and Mr. Addison as above, it may probably be better defined a combination of ideas with agreeable novelty, as this may be effected by opposition as well as by resemblance.] "Last, at thy potent nod, Effect and Cause Walk hand in hand accordant to thy laws; Rise at Volition's call, in groups combined, Amuse, delight, instruct, and serve Mankind; Bid raised in air the ponderous structure stand, Or pour obedient rivers through the land; With cars unnumber'd crowd the living streets, Or people oceans with triumphant fleets. "Thy magic touch imagined forms supplies From colour'd light, the language of the eyes; 320 On Memory's page departed hours inscribes, Sweet scenes of youth, and Pleasure's vanish'd tribes. By thee ANTINOUS leads the dance sublime On wavy step, and moves in measured time; Charm'd round the Youth successive Graces throng, And Ease conducts him, as he moves along; Unbreathing crowds the floating form admire, And Vestal bosoms feel forbidden fire. "When rapp'd CECILIA breathes her matin vow, And lifts to Heaven her fair adoring brow; 330 From her sweet lips, and rising bosom part Impassion'd notes, that thrill the melting heart; Tuned by thy hand the dulcet harp she rings, And sounds responsive echo from the strings; Bright scenes of bliss in trains suggested move, And charm the world with melody and love. III. "SOON the fair forms with vital being bless'd, Time's feeble children, lose the boon possess'd; The goaded fibre ceases to obey, And sense deserts the uncontractile clay; 340 While births unnumber'd, ere the parents die, The hourly waste of lovely life supply; And thus, alternating with death, fulfil The silent mandates of the Almighty Will; Whose hand unseen the works of nature dooms By laws unknown--WHO GIVES, AND WHO RESUMES. [Footnote: _The goaded fibre_, l. 339. Old age consists in the inaptitude to motion from the inirritability of the system, and the consequent want of fibrous contraction; see Additional Note VII.] "Each pregnant Oak ten thousand acorns forms Profusely scatter'd by autumnal storms; Ten thousand seeds each pregnant poppy sheds Profusely scatter'd from its waving heads; 350 The countless Aphides, prolific tribe, With greedy trunks the honey'd sap imbibe; Swarm on each leaf with eggs or embryons big, And pendent nations tenant every twig. Amorous with double sex, the snail and worm, Scoop'd in the soil, their cradling caverns form; Heap their white eggs, secure from frost and floods, And crowd their nurseries with uncounted broods. Ere yet with wavy tail the tadpole swims, Breathes with new lungs, or tries his nascent limbs; 360 Her countless shoals the amphibious frog forsakes, And living islands float upon the lakes. The migrant herring steers her myriad bands From seas of ice to visit warmer strands; Unfathom'd depths and climes unknown explores, And covers with her spawn unmeasured shores. --All these, increasing by successive birth, Would each o'erpeople ocean, air, and earth. [Footnote: _Ten thousand seeds_, l. 349. The fertility of plants in respect to seeds is often remarkable; from one root in one summer the seeds of zea, maize, amount to 2000; of inula, elecampane, to 3000; of helianthus, sunflower, to 4000; of papaver, poppy, 32000; of nicotiana, tobacco, to 40320; to this must be added the perennial roots, and the buds. Buds, which are so many herbs, in one tree, the trunk of which does not exceed a span in thickness, frequently amount to 10000; Lin. Phil. Bot. p. 86.] [Footnote: _The countless Aphides_, l. 351. The aphises, pucerons, or vine-fretters, are hatched from an egg in the early spring, and are all called females, as they produce a living offspring about once in a fortnight to the ninth generation, which are also all of them females; then males are also produced, and by their intercourse the females become oviparous, and deposite their eggs on the branches, or in the bark to be hatched in the ensuing spring. This double mode of reproduction, so exactly resembling the buds and seeds of trees, accounts for the wonderful increase of this insect, which, according to Dr. Richardson, consists of ten generations, and of fifty at an average in each generation; so that the sum of fifty multiplied by fifty, and that product again multiplied by fifty nine times, would give the product of one egg only in countless millions; to which must be added the innumerable eggs laid by the tenth generation for the renovation of their progeny in the ensuing spring.] [Footnote: _The honey'd sap_, l. 352. The aphis punctures with its fine proboscis the sap-vessels of vegetables without any visible wound, and thus drinks the sap-juice, or vegetable chyle, as it ascends. Hence on the twigs of trees they stand with their heads downwards, as I have observed, to acquire this ascending sap-juice with greater facility. The honey-dew on the upper surface of leaves is evacuated by these insects, as they hang on the underside of the leaves above; when they take too much of this saccharine juice during the vernal or midsummer sap-flow of most vegetables; the black powder on leaves is also their excrement at other times. The vegetable world seems to have escaped total destruction from this insect by the number of flies, which in their larva state prey upon them; and by the ichneumon fly, which deposits its eggs in them. Some vegetables put forth stiff bristles with points round their young shoots, as the moss-rose, apparently to prevent the depredation of these insects, so injurious to them by robbing them of their chyle or nourishment.] [Footnote: _The tadpole swims_, l. 359. The progress of a tadpole from a fish to a quadruped by his gradually putting forth his limbs, and at length leaving the water, and breathing the dry air, is a subject of great curiosity, as it resembles so much the incipient state of all other quadrupeds, and men, who are aquatic animals in the uterus, and become aerial ones at their birth.] "So human progenies, if unrestrain'd, By climate friended, and by food sustain'd, 370 O'er seas and soils, prolific hordes! would spread Erelong, and deluge their terraqueous bed; But war, and pestilence, disease, and dearth, Sweep the superfluous myriads from the earth. Thus while new forms reviving tribes acquire Each passing moment, as the old expire; Like insects swarming in the noontide bower, Rise into being, and exist an hour; The births and deaths contend with equal strife, And every pore of Nature teems with Life; 380 Which buds or breathes from Indus to the Poles, And Earth's vast surface kindles, as it rolls! [Footnote: _Which buds or breathes_, l. 381. Organic bodies, besides the carbon, hydrogen, azote, and the oxygen and heat, which are combined with them, require to be also immersed in loose heat and loose oxygen to preserve their mutable existence; and hence life only exists on or near the surface of the earth; see Botan. Garden, Vol. I. Canto IV. l. 419. L'organisation, le sentiment, le movement spontané, la vie, n'existent qu'à la surface de la terre, et dans les lieux exposés à la lumière. Traité de Chimie par M. Lavoisier, Tom. I. p. 202.] "HENCE when a Monarch or a mushroom dies, Awhile extinct the organic matter lies; But, as a few short hours or years revolve, Alchemic powers the changing mass dissolve; Born to new life unnumber'd insects pant, New buds surround the microscopic plant; Whose embryon senses, and unwearied frames, Feel finer goads, and blush with purer flames; 390 Renascent joys from irritation spring, Stretch the long root, or wave the aurelian wing. [Footnote: _Born to new life_, l. 387. From the innumerable births of the larger insects, and the spontaneous productions of the microscopic ones, every part of organic matter from the recrements of dead vegetable or animal bodies, on or near the surface of the earth, becomes again presently reanimated; which by increasing the number and quantity of living organizations, though many of them exist but for a short time, adds to the sum total of terrestrial happiness.] "When thus a squadron or an army yields, And festering carnage loads the waves or fields; When few from famines or from plagues survive, Or earthquakes swallow half a realm alive;-- While Nature sinks in Time's destructive storms, The wrecks of Death are but a change of forms; Emerging matter from the grave returns, Feels new desires, with new sensations burns; 400 With youth's first bloom a finer sense acquires, And Loves and Pleasures fan the rising fires.-- Thus sainted PAUL, 'O Death!' exulting cries, 'Where is thy sting? O Grave! thy victories?' [Footnote: _Thus sainted Paul_, l. 403. The doctrine of St. Paul teaches the resurrection of the body in an incorruptible and glorified state, with consciousness of its previous existence; he therefore justly exults over the sting of death, and the victory of the grave.] "Immortal Happiness from realms deceased Wakes, as from sleep, unlessen'd or increased; Calls to the wise in accents loud and clear, Sooths with sweet tones the sympathetic ear; Informs and fires the revivescent clay, And lights the dawn of Life's returning day. 410 [Footnote: _And lights the dawn_, l. 410. The sum total of the happiness of organized nature is probably increased rather than diminished, when one large old animal dies, and is converted into many thousand young ones; which are produced or supported with their numerous progeny by the same organic matter. Linneus asserts, that three of the flies, called musca vomitoria, will consume the body of a dead horse, as soon as a lion can; Syst. Nat.] "So when Arabia's Bird, by age oppress'd, Consumes delighted on his spicy nest; A filial Phoenix from his ashes springs, Crown'd with a star, on renovated wings; Ascends exulting from his funeral flame, And soars and shines, another and the same. [Footnote: _So when Arabia's bird_, l. 411. The story of the Phoenix rising from its own ashes with a star upon its head seems to have been an hieroglyphic emblem of the destruction and resuscitation of all things; see Botan. Garden, Vol. I. Canto IV. l. 389.] "So erst the Sage with scientific truth In Grecian temples taught the attentive youth; With ceaseless change how restless atoms pass From life to life, a transmigrating mass; 420 How the same organs, which to day compose The poisonous henbane, or the fragrant rose, May with to morrow's sun new forms compile, Frown in the Hero, in the Beauty smile. Whence drew the enlighten'd Sage the moral plan, That man should ever be the friend of man; Should eye with tenderness all living forms, His brother-emmets, and his sister-worms. [Footnote: _So erst the Sage_, l. 417. It is probable, that the perpetual transmigration of matter from one body to another, of all vegetables and animals, during their lives, as well as after their deaths, was observed by Pythagoras; which he afterwards applied to the soul, or spirit of animation, and taught, that it passed from one animal to another as a punishment for evil deeds, though without consciousness of its previous existence; and from this doctrine he inculcated a system of morality and benevolence, as all creatures thus became related to each other.] "HEAR, O ye Sons of Time! your final doom, And read the characters, that mark your tomb: 430 The marble mountain, and the sparry steep, Were built by myriad nations of the deep,-- Age after age, who form'd their spiral shells, Their sea-fan gardens and their coral cells; Till central fires with unextinguished sway Raised the primeval islands into day;-- The sand-fill'd strata stretch'd from pole to pole; Unmeasured beds of clay, and marl, and coal, Black ore of manganese, the zinky stone, And dusky steel on his magnetic throne, 440 In deep morass, or eminence superb, Rose from the wrecks of animal or herb; These from their elements by Life combined, Form'd by digestion, and in glands refined, Gave by their just excitement of the sense The Bliss of Being to the vital Ens. [Footnote: _The marble mountain_, l. 431. From the increased knowledge in Geology during the present century, owing to the greater attention of philosophers to the situations of the different materials, which compose the strata of the earth, as well as to their chemical properties, it seems clearly to appear, that the nucleus of the globe beneath the ocean consisted of granite; and that on this the great beds of limestone were formed from the shells of marine animals during the innumerable primeval ages of the world; and that whatever strata lie on these beds of limestone, or on the granite, where the limestone does not cover it, were formed after the elevation of islands and continents above the surface of the sea by the recrements of vegetables and of terrestrial animals; see on this subject Botanic Garden, Vol. I. Additional Note XXIV.] "Thus the tall mountains, that emboss the lands, Huge isles of rock, and continents of sands, Whose dim extent eludes the inquiring sight, ARE MIGHTY MONUMENTS OF PAST DELIGHT; 450 Shout round the globe, how Reproduction strives With vanquish'd Death,--and Happiness survives; How Life increasing peoples every clime, And young renascent Nature conquers Time; --And high in golden characters record The immense munificence of NATURE'S LORD!-- [Footnote: _Are mighty monuments_, l. 450. The reader is referred to a few pages on this subject in Phytologia, Sect. XIX. 7. 1, where the felicity of organic life is considered more at large; but it is probable that the most certain way to estimate the happiness and misery of organic beings; as it depends on the actions of the organs of sense, which constitute ideas; or of the muscular fibres which perform locomotion; would be to consider those actions, as they are produced or excited by the four sensorial powers of irritation, sensation, volition, and association. A small volume on this subject by some ingenious writer, might not only amuse, as an object of curiosity; but by showing the world the immediate sources of their pains and pleasures might teach the means to avoid the one, and to procure the other, and thus contribute both ways to increase the sum total of organic happiness.] [Footnote: _How Life increasing_, l. 453. Not only the vast calcareous provinces, which form so great a part of the terraqueous globe, and also whatever rests upon them, as clay, marl, sand, and coal, were formed from the fluid elements of heat, oxygen, azote, and hydrogen along with carbon, phosphorus, and perhaps a few other substances, which the science of chemistry has not yet decomposed; and gave the pleasure of life to the animals and vegetables, which formed them; and thus constitute monuments of the past happiness of those organized beings. But as those remains of former life are not again totally decomposed, or converted into their original elements, they supply more copious food to the succession of new animal or vegetable beings on their surface; which consists of materials convertible into nutriment with less labour or activity of the digestive powers; and hence the quantity or number of organized bodies, and their improvement in size, as well as their happiness, has been continually increasing, along with the solid parts of the globe; and will probably continue to increase, till the whole terraqueous sphere, and all that inhabit it shall dissolve by a general conflagration, and be again reduced to their elements. Thus all the suns, and the planets, which circle round them, may again sink into one central chaos; and may again by explosions produce a new world; which in process of time may resemble the present one, and at length again undergo the same catastrophe! these great events may be the result of the immutable laws impressed on matter by the Great Cause of Causes, Parent of Parents, Ens Entium!] "He gives and guides the sun's attractive force, And steers the planets in their silver course; With heat and light revives the golden day, And breathes his spirit on organic clay; 460 With hand unseen directs the general cause By firm immutable immortal laws." Charm'd with her words the Muse astonish'd stands, The Nymphs enraptured clasp their velvet hands; Applausive thunder from the fane recoils, And holy echoes peal along the ailes; O'er NATURE'S shrine celestial lustres glow, And lambent glories circle round her brow. IV. Now sinks the golden sun,--the vesper song Demands the tribute of URANIA'S tongue; 470 Onward she steps, her fair associates calls From leaf-wove avenues, and vaulted halls. Fair virgin trains in bright procession move, Trail their long robes, and whiten all the grove; Pair after pair to Nature's temple sweep, Thread the broad arch, ascend the winding steep; Through brazen gates along susurrant ailes Stream round their GODDESS the successive files; Curve above curve to golden seats retire, And star with beauty the refulgent quire. 480 AND first to HEAVEN the consecrated throng With chant alternate pour the adoring song, Swell the full hymn, now high, and now profound, With sweet responsive symphony of sound. Seen through their wiry harps, below, above, Nods the fair brow, the twinkling fingers move; Soft-warbling flutes the ruby lip commands, And cymbals ring with high uplifted hands. TO CHAOS next the notes melodious pass, How suns exploded from the kindling mass, 490 Waved o'er the vast inane their tresses bright, And charm'd young Nature's opening eyes with light. Next from each sun how spheres reluctant burst, And second planets issued from the first. And then to EARTH descends the moral strain, How isles, emerging from the shoreless main, With sparkling streams and fruitful groves began, And form'd a Paradise for mortal man. [Footnote: _To Chaos next_, l. 489. Namque canebat uti magnum per inane coacta Semina terrarumque, animæque, marisque fuissent; Et liquidi simul ignis; ut his exordia primis Omnia, et ipse tener mundi concreverit orbis. VIRG. EC. VI. l. 31.] Sublimer notes record CELESTIAL LOVE, And high rewards in brighter climes above; 500 How Virtue's beams with mental charm engage Youth's raptured eye, and warm the frost of age, Gild with soft lustre Death's tremendous gloom, And light the dreary chambers of the tomb. How fell Remorse shall strike with venom'd dart, Though mail'd in adamant, the guilty heart; Fierce furies drag to pains and realms unknown The blood-stain'd tyrant from his tottering throne. By hands unseen are struck aerial wires, And Angel-tongues are heard amid the quires; 510 From aile to aile the trembling concord floats, And the wide roof returns the mingled notes, Through each fine nerve the keen vibrations dart, Pierce the charm'd ear, and thrill the echoing heart.-- MUTE the sweet voice, and still the quivering strings, Now Silence hovers on unmoving wings.-- --Slow to the altar fair URANIA bends Her graceful march, the sacred steps ascends, High in the midst with blazing censer stands, And scatters incense with illumined hands: 520 Thrice to the GODDESS bows with solemn pause, With trembling awe the mystic veil withdraws, And, meekly kneeling on the gorgeous shrine, Lifts her ecstatic eyes to TRUTH DIVINE! 524 END OF CANTO IV. CONTENTS OF THE NOTES. CANTO I. Line. 36 Origin of European Nations. 76 Early use of Painting and Hieroglyphics. 83 Proteus represents Time. 126 Cave of Trophonius. 137 Eleusinian Mysteries. 176 Antiquity of Statuary, casting Figures, and Carving. 224 Infancy of the present World. 235 Of Heat. 239 Of Attraction. 245 Of Contraction. 259 Arteries not conical. 262 Venous Absorption. 268 Decrease of the Ocean. 270 Sensation and Volition. 283 Mucor, Vibrio. 295 Animals are first aquatic. 315 Sea, originally was not Salt. 327 Animals from the Sea. 335 Aquatic Plants. 343 Frogs. 363 Rainbow in Northern Latitudes. 372 Venus rising from the Sea. 392 The Fetus in the Womb. 417 Animals from the Mud of the Nile. CANTO II. 1 Shortness of Life. 3 Old Age surprising. 39 Organic and chemical Properties. 43 Immortality of Matter. 47 Adonis emblem of Life. 71 The Truffle, Lycoperdon. 83 Volvox. 85 Polypus. 87 Tænia. 89 Oysters. 90 Coral-Insect. 114 Female Sex produced. 118 Power of Imagination. 122 Mankind were formerly Hermaphrodites and Quadrupeds. 167 Hereditary Diseases of Vegetables. 223 Psyche and Cupid. 268 Some Honey poisonous. 271 Appetency and Propensity. 280 Vallisneria. 288 Lampyris. 302 Insects from Anthers and Stigmas. 321 Horns of Stags, and Tusks of Boars, Spurs of Cocks. 351 Chick in the Egg. 356 Songs of Birds. 373 How Fish swim. 375 How Birds fly. 434 Of Smiles, and of Laughter. CANTO III. 13 Oxygen, and Hydrogen, and Azote. 21 Two electric Ethers. 64 Irritation. 72 Sensation. 73 Volition, Memory. 81 Intuitive Analogy. 91 Association. 103 Armour of Brutes. 122 Of the Human Hand. 125 Perception of Figure. 144 Sight the Language of the Touch. 145 Surprise, Novelty, Curiosity. 152 The Lips an Organ of Touch. 176 Ideal Beauty. 178 Two Deities of Love. 207 Idea of Beauty from the Female Bosom. 230 Taste for Sublimity. 237 Poetic Melancholy. 246 Taste for Tragedy. 258 Taste for uncultivated Nature. 270 Accumulation of sensorial Power. 294 Imitation described. 303 Imitation of one Sense by another. 319 Mimickry or Resemblance. 334 The Parts of the System imitate each other. 342 External Signs of Passions. 371 Theory of Language. 398 Ideas so called are parts of a train of Actions. 401 Of Reason. 411 Reasoning of Insects. 435 Volition distinguishes Mankind. 456 If Knowledge produces Happiness. 466 Sympathy the source of Virtue. 485 Maxim of Socrates. CANTO IV. 29 Oestrus or Gadfly. 33 Ichneumon fly. 37 Libellula. 39 Bees. 57 Shark. 59 Crocodile 66 Animals prey on Vegetables. 71 Defect of Stimulus. 87 Theatric Preachers. 93 Pleasure of Life, Ennui. 94 Of Tooth-edge. 119 Epidemic Complaints. 130 Compassion may be too great. 147 Doctrine of Atoms. 160 Pleasure of viewing a Landscape. 178 Pleasure from Music. 242 Ancient Orators spoke disrespectfully of the mechanic Philosophers. 270 Influence of Printing. 299 Associated ideas of three Classes. 309 Wit defined. 349 Surprising number of Seeds. 351 Of the Aphis, its Numbers. 352 Aphis drinks the Sap-juice. 359 The Mutation of the Tadpole. 387 Animation near the Surface of the Earth. 387 All dead animal and vegetable Bodies become animated. 403 Doctrine of St. Paul. 411 Happiness increased. 417 Doctrine of Pythagoras. 431 Geology. 450 Method of investigation of Organic happiness. 453 Organic Life increases. ADDITIONAL NOTES. ADDITIONAL NOTES. SPONTANEOUS VITALITY OF MICROSCOPIC ANIMALS. Hence without parent by spontaneous birth Rise the first specks of animated earth. CANTO I. l. 227. _Prejudices against this doctrine._ I. From the misconception of the ignorant or superstitious, it has been thought somewhat profane to speak in favour of spontaneous vital production, as if it contradicted holy writ; which says, that God created animals and vegetables. They do not recollect that God created all things which exist, and that these have been from the beginning in a perpetual state of improvement; which appears from the globe itself, as well as from the animals and vegetables, which possess it. And lastly, that there is more dignity in our idea of the supreme author of all things, when we conceive him to be the cause of causes, than the cause simply of the events, which we see; if there can be any difference in infinity of power! Another prejudice which has prevailed against the spontaneous production of vitality, seems to have arisen from the misrepresentation of this doctrine, as if the larger animals had been thus produced; as Ovid supposes after the deluge of Deucalion, that lions were seen rising out of the mud of the Nile, and struggling to disentangle their hinder parts. It was not considered, that animals and vegetables have been perpetually improving by reproduction; and that spontaneous vitality was only to be looked for in the simplest organic beings, as in the smallest microscopic animalcules; which perpetually, perhaps hourly, enlarge themselves by reproduction, like the roots of tulips from seed, or the buds of seedling trees, which die annually, leaving others by solitary reproduction rather more perfect than themselves for many successive years, till at length they acquire sexual organs or flowers. A third prejudice against the existence of spontaneous vital productions has been the supposed want of analogy; this has also arisen from the expectation, that the larger or more complicated animals should be thus produced; which have acquired their present perfection by successive generations during an uncounted series of ages. Add to this, that the want of analogy opposes the credibility of all new discoveries, as of the magnetic needle, and coated electric jar, and Galvanic pile; which should therefore certainly be well weighed and nicely investigated before distinct credence is given them; but then the want of analogy must at length yield to repeated ocular demonstration. _Preliminary observations._ II. Concerning the spontaneous production of the smallest microscopic animals it should be first observed, that the power of reproduction distinguishes organic being, whether vegetable or animal, from inanimate nature. The circulation of fluids in vessels may exist in hydraulic machines, but the power of reproduction belongs alone to life. This reproduction of plants and of animals is of two kinds, which may be termed solitary and sexual. The former of these, as in the reproduction of the buds of trees, and of the bulbs of tulips, and of the polypus, and aphis, appears to be the first or most simple mode of generation, as many of these organic beings afterwards acquire sexual organs, as the flowers of seedling trees, and of seedling tulips, and the autumnal progeny of the aphis. See Phytologia. Secondly, it should be observed, that by reproduction organic beings are gradually enlarged and improved; which may perhaps more rapidly and uniformly occur in the simplest modes of animated being; but occasionally also in the more complicated and perfect kinds. Thus the buds of a seedling tree, or the bulbs of seedling tulips, become larger and stronger in the second year than the first, and thus improve till they acquire flowers or sexes; and the aphis, I believe, increases in bulk to the eighth or ninth generation, and then produces a sexual progeny. Hence the existence of spontaneous vitality is only to be expected to be found in the simplest modes of animation, as the complex ones have been formed by many successive reproductions. _Experimental facts._ III. By the experiments of Buffon, Reaumur, Ellis, Ingenhouz, and others, microscopic animals are produced in three or four days, according to the warmth of the season, in the infusions of all vegetable or animal matter. One or more of these gentlemen put some boiling veal broth into a phial previously heated in the fire, and sealing it up hermetically or with melted wax, observed it to be replete with animalcules in three or four days. These microscopic animals are believed to possess a power of generating others like themselves by solitary reproduction without sex; and these gradually enlarging and improving for innumerable successive generations. Mr. Ellis in Phil. Transact. V. LIX. gives drawings of six kinds of animalcula infusoria, which increase by dividing across the middle into two distinct animals. Thus in paste composed of flour and water, which has been suffered to become acescent, the animalcules called eels, vibrio anguillula, are seen in great abundance; their motions are rapid and strong; they are viviparous, and produce at intervals a numerous progeny: animals similar to these are also found in vinegar; Naturalist's Miscellany by Shaw and Nodder, Vol. II. These eels were probably at first as minute as other microscopic animalcules; but by frequent, perhaps hourly reproduction, have gradually become the large animals above described, possessing wonderful strength and activity. To suppose the eggs of the former microscopic animals to float in the atmosphere, and pass through the sealed glass phial, is so contrary to apparent nature, as to be totally incredible! and as the latter are viviparous, it is equally absurd to suppose, that their parents float universally in the atmosphere to lay their young in paste or vinegar! Not only microscopic animals appear to be produced by a spontaneous vital process, and then quickly improve by solitary generation like the buds of trees, or like the polypus and aphis, but there is one vegetable body, which appears to be produced by a spontaneous vital process, and is believed to be propagated and enlarged in so short a time by solitary generation as to become visible to the naked eye; I mean the green matter first attended to by Dr. Priestley, and called by him conferva fontinalis. The proofs, that this material is a vegetable, are from its giving up so much oxygen, when exposed to the sunshine, as it grows in water, and from its green colour. Dr. Ingenhouz asserts, that by filling a bottle with well-water, and inverting it immediately into a basin of well-water, this green vegetable is formed in great quantity; and he believes, that the water itself, or some substance contained in the water, is converted into this kind of vegetation, which then quickly propagates itself. M. Girtanner asserts, that this green vegetable matter is not produced by water and heat alone, but requires the sun's light for this purpose, as he observed by many experiments, and thinks it arises from decomposing water deprived of a part of its oxygen, and laughs at Dr. Priestley for believing that the seeds of this conferva, and the parents of microscopic animals, exist universally in the atmosphere, and penetrate the sides of glass jars; Philos. Magazine for May 1800. Besides this green vegetable matter of Dr. Priestley, there is another vegetable, the minute beginnings of the growth of which Mr. Ellis observed by his microscope near the surface of all putrefying vegetable or animal matter, which is the mucor or mouldiness; the vegetation of which was amazingly quick so as to be almost seen, and soon became so large as to be visible to the naked eye. It is difficult to conceive how the seeds of this mucor can float so universally in the atmosphere as to fix itself on all putrid matter in all places. _Theory of Spontaneous Vitality._ IV. In animal nutrition the organic matter of the bodies of dead animals, or vegetables, is taken into the stomach, and there suffers decompositions and new combinations by a chemical process. Some parts of it are however absorbed by the lacteals as fast as they are produced by this process of digestion; in which circumstance this process differs from common chemical operations. In vegetable nutrition the organic matter of dead animals, or vegetables, undergoes chemical decompositions and new combinations on or beneath the surface of the earth; and parts of it, as they are produced, are perpetually absorbed by the roots of the plants in contact with it; in which this also differs from common chemical processes. Hence the particles which are produced from dead organic matter by chemical decompositions or new consequent combinations, are found proper for the purposes of the nutrition of living vegetable and animal bodies, whether these decompositions and new combinations are performed in the stomach or beneath the soil. For the purposes of nutrition these digested or decomposed recrements of dead animal or vegetable matter are absorbed by the lacteals of the stomachs of animals or of the roots of vegetables, and carried into the circulation of their blood, and these compose new organic parts to replace others which are destroyed, or to increase the growth of the plant or animal. It is probable, that as in inanimate or chemical combinations, one of the composing materials must possess a power of attraction, and the other an aptitude to be attracted; so in organic or animated compositions there must be particles with appetencies to unite, and other particles with propensities to be united with them. Thus in the generation of the buds of trees, it is probable that two kinds of vegetable matter, as they are separated from the solid system, and float in the circulation, become arrested by two kinds of vegetable glands, and are then deposed beneath the cuticle of the tree, and there join together forming a new vegetable, the caudex of which extends from the plumula at the summit to the radicles beneath the soil, and constitutes a single fibre of the bark. These particles appear to be of two kinds; one of them possessing an appetency to unite with the other, and the latter a propensity to be united with the former; and they are probably separated from the vegetable blood by two kinds of glands, one representing those of the anthers, and the others those of the stigmas, in the sexual organs of vegetables; which is spoken of at large in Phytologia, Sect. VII. and in Zoonomia, Vol. I. Sect. XXXIX. 8. of the third edition, in octavo; where it is likewise shown, that none of these parts which are deposited beneath the cuticle of the tree, is in itself a complete vegetable embryon, but that they form one by their reciprocal conjunction. So in the sexual reproduction of animals, certain parts separated from the living organs, and floating in the blood, are arrested by the sexual glands of the female, and others by those of the male. Of these none are complete embryon animals, but form an embryon by their reciprocal conjunction. There hence appears to be an analogy between generation and nutrition, as one is the production of new organization, and the other the restoration of that which previously existed; and which may therefore be supposed to require materials somewhat similar. Now the food taken up by animal lacteals is previously prepared by the chemical process of digestion in the stomach; but that which is taken up by vegetable lacteals, is prepared by chemical dissolution of organic matter beneath the surface of the earth. Thus the particles, which form generated animal embryons, are prepared from dead organic matter by the chemico-animal processes of sanguification and of secretion; while those which form spontaneous microscopic animals or microscopic vegetables are prepared by chemical dissolutions and new combinations of organic matter in watery fluids with sufficient warmth. It may be here added, that the production and properties of some kinds of inanimate matter, are almost as difficult to comprehend as those of the simplest degrees of animation. Thus the elastic gum, or caoutchouc, and some fossile bitumens, when drawn out to a great length, contract themselves by their elasticity, like an animal fibre by stimulus. The laws of action of these, and all other elastic bodies, are not yet understood; as the laws of the attraction of cohesion, to produce these effects, must be very different from those of general attraction, since the farther the particles of elastic bodies are drawn from each other till they separate, the stronger they seem to attract; and the nearer they are pressed together, the more they seem to repel; as in bending a spring, or in extending a piece of elastic gum; which is the reverse to what occurs in the attractions of disunited bodies; and much wants further investigation. So the spontaneous production of alcohol or of vinegar, by the vinous and acetous fermentations, as well as the production of a mucus by putrefaction which will contract when extended, seems almost as difficult to understand as the spontaneous production of a fibre from decomposing animal or vegetable substances, which will contract when stimulated, and thus constitutes the primordium of life. Some of the microscopic animals are said to remain dead for many days or weeks, when the fluid in which they existed is dried up, and quickly to recover life and motion by the fresh addition of water and warmth. Thus the chaos redivivum of Linnæus dwells in vinegar and in bookbinders paste: it revives by water after having been dried for years, and is both oviparous and viviparous; Syst. Nat. Thus the vorticella or wheel animal, which is found in rain water that has stood some days in leaden gutters, or in hollows of lead on the tops of houses, or in the slime or sediment left by such water, though it discovers no sign of life except when in the water, yet it is capable of continuing alive for many months though kept in a dry state. In this state it is of a globulous shape, exceeds not the bigness of a grain of sand, and no signs of life appear; but being put into water, in the space of half an hour a languid motion begins, the globule turns itself about, lengthens itself by slow degrees, assumes the form of a lively maggot, and most commonly in a few minutes afterwards puts out its wheels, swimming vigorously through the water as if in search of food; or else, fixing itself by the tail, works the wheels in such a manner as to bring its food to its mouth; English Encyclopedia, Art. Animalcule. Thus some shell-snails in the cabinets of the curious have been kept in a dry state for ten years or longer, and have revived on being moistened with warmish water; Philos. Transact. So eggs and seeds after many months torpor, are revived by warmth and moisture; hence it may be concluded, that even the organic particles of dead animals may, when exposed to a due degree of warmth and moisture, regain some degree of vitality, since this is done by more complicate animal organs in the instances above mentioned. The hydra of Linnæus, which dwells in the rivers of Europe under aquatic plants, has been observed by the curious of the present time, to revive after it has been dried, to be restored after being mutilated, to multiply by being divided, to be propagated from small portions, to live after being inverted; all which would be best explained by the doctrine of spontaneous reproduction from organic particles not yet completely decomposed. To this should be added, that these microscopic animals are found in all solutions of vegetable or animal matter in water; as black pepper steeped in water, hay suffered to become putrid in water, and the water of dunghills, afford animalcules in astonishing numbers. See Mr. Ellis's curious account of Animalcules produced from an infusion of Potatoes and Hempseed; Philos. Transact. Vol. LIX. from all which it would appear, that organic particles of dead vegetables and animals during their usual chemical changes into putridity or acidity, do not lose all their organization or vitality, but retain so much of it as to unite with the parts of living animals in the process of nutrition, or unite and produce new complicate animals by secretion as in generation, or produce very simple microscopic animals or microscopic vegetables, by their new combinations in warmth and moisture. And finally, that these microscopic organic bodies are multiplied and enlarged by solitary reproduction without sexual intercourse till they acquire greater perfection or new properties. Lewenhoek observed in rain-water which had stood a few days, the smallest scarcely visible microscopic animalcules, and in a few more days he observed others eight times as large; English Encyclop. Art. Animalcule. _Conclusion._ There is therefore no absurdity in believing that the most simple animals and vegetables may be produced by the congress of the parts of decomposing organic matter, without what can properly be termed generation, as the genus did not previously exist; which accounts for the endless varieties, as well as for the immense numbers of microscopic animals. The green vegetable matter of Dr. Priestley, which is universally produced in stagnant water, and the mucor, or mouldiness, which is seen on the surface of all putrid vegetable and animal matter, have probably no parents, but a spontaneous origin from the congress of the decomposing organic particles, and afterwards propagate themselves. Some other fungi, as those growing in close wine-vaults, or others which arise from decaying trees, or rotten timber, may perhaps be owing to a similar spontaneous production, and not previously exist as perfect organic beings in the juices of the wood, as some have supposed. In the same manner it would seem, that the common esculent mushroom is produced from horse dung at any time and in any place, as is the common practice of many gardeners; Kennedy on Gardening. _Appendix._ The knowledge of microscopic animals is still in its infancy: those already known are arranged by Mr. Muller into the following classes; but it is probable, that many more classes, as well as innumerable individuals, may be discovered by improvements of the microscope, as Mr. Herschell has discovered so many thousand stars, which were before invisible, by improvements of the telescope. Mr. Muller's classes consist of I. _Such as have no External Organs._ 1. Monas: Punctiformis. A mere point. 2. Proteus: Mutabilis. Mutable. 3. Volvox: Sphæricum. Spherical. 4. Enchelis: Cylindracea. Cylindrical. 5. Vibrio: Elongatum. Long. *Membranaceous. 6. Cyclidium: Ovale. Oval. 7. Paramecium: Oblongum. Oblong. 8. Kolpoda: Sinuatum. Sinuous. 9. Gonium: Angulatum. With angles. 10. Bursaria. Hollow like a purse. II. _Those that have External Organs._ *Naked, or not enclosed in a shell. 1. Cercaria: Caudatum. With a tail. 2. Trichoda: Crinitum. Hairy. 3. Kerona: Corniculatum. With horns. 4. Himantopus: Cirratum. Cirrated. 5. Leucophra: Ciliatum undique. Every part ciliated. 6. Vorticella: Ciliatum apice. The apex ciliated. *Covered with a shell. 7. Brachionus: Ciliatum apice. The apex ciliated. 1. These animalcules are discovered in two or three days in all decompositions of organic matter, whether vegetable or animal, in moderate degrees of warmth with sufficient moisture. 2. They appear to enlarge in a few days, and some to change their form; which are probably converted from more simple into more complicate animalcules by repeated reproductions. See Note VIII. 3. In their early state they seem to multiply by viviparous solitary reproduction, either by external division, as the smaller ones, or by an internal progeny, as the eels in paste or vinegar; and lastly, in their more mature state, the larger ones are said to appear to have sexual connexion. Engl. Encyclop. 4. Those animalcules discovered in pustules of the itch, in the feces of dysenteric patients, and in semine masculino, I suppose to be produced by the stagnation and incipient decomposition of those materials in their receptacles, and not to exist in the living blood or recent secretions; as none, I believe, have been discovered in blood when first drawn from the arm, or in fluids newly secreted from the glands, which have not previously stagnated in their reservoirs. 5. They are observed to move in all directions with ease and rapidity, and to avoid obstacles, and not to interfere with each other in their motions. When the water is in part evaporated, they are seen to flock towards the remaining part, and show great agitation. They sustain a great degree of cold, as some insects, and perish in much the same degree of heat as destroys insects; all which evince that they are living animals. And it is probable, that other or similar animalcules may be produced in the air, or near the surface of the earth, but it is not so easy to view them as in water; which as it is transparent, the creatures produced in it can easily be observed by applying a drop to a microscope. I hope that microscopic researches may again excite the attention of philosophers, as unforeseen advantages may probably be derived from them, like the discovery of a new world. ADDITIONAL NOTES. II. THE FACULTIES OF THE SENSORIUM. Next the long nerves unite their silver train, And young Sensation permeates the brain. CANT. I. l. 250. I. The fibres, which constitute the muscles and organs of sense, possess a power of contraction. The circumstances attending the exertion of this power of contraction constitute the laws of animal motion, as the circumstances attending the exertion of the power of attraction constitute the laws of motion of inanimate matter. II. The spirit of animation is the immediate cause of the contraction of animal fibres, it resides in the brain and nerves, and is liable to general or partial diminution or accumulation. III. The stimulus of bodies external to the moving organ is the remote cause of the original contractions of animal fibres. IV. A certain quantity of stimulus produces irritation, which is an exertion of the spirit of animation exciting the fibres into contraction. V. A certain quantity of contraction of animal fibres, if it be perceived at all, produces pleasure; a greater or less quantity of contraction, if it be perceived at all, produces pain; these constitute sensation. VI. A certain quantity of sensation produces desire or aversion; these constitute volition. VII. All animal motions which have occurred at the same time, or in immediate succession, become so connected, that when one of them is reproduced, the other has a tendency to accompany or succeed it. When fibrous contractions succeed or accompany other fibrous contractions, the connexion is termed association; when fibrous contractions succeed sensorial motions, the connexion is termed causation; when fibrous and sensorial motions reciprocally introduce each other, it is termed catenation of animal motions. VIII. These four faculties of the sensorium during their inactive state are termed irritability, sensibility, voluntarily, and associability; in their active state they are termed as above irritation, sensation, volition, association. Irritation is an exertion or change of some extreme part of the sensorium residing in the muscles or organs of sense, in consequence of the appulses of external bodies. Sensation is an exertion or change of the central parts of the sensorium, or of the whole of it, beginning at some of those extreme parts of it, which reside in the muscles or organs of sense. Volition is an exertion or change of the central parts of the sensorium, or of the whole of it, terminating in some of those extreme parts of it, which reside in the muscles or organs of sense. Association is an exertion or change of some extreme part of the sensorium residing in the muscles or organs of sense, in consequence of some antecedent or attendant fibrous contractions; see Zoonomia, Vol. I. The word sensorium is used to express not only the medullary part of the brain, spinal marrow, nerves, organs of sense and muscles, but also at the same time that living principle, or spirit of animation, which resides throughout the body, without being cognizable to our senses except by its effects. ADDITIONAL NOTES. III. Next when imprison'd fires in central caves Burst the firm earth, and drank the headlong waves. CANTO I. l. 302. The great and repeated explosions of volcanoes are shown by Mr. Mitchell in the Philosoph. Transact. to arise from their communication with the sea, or with rivers, or inundations; and that after a chink or crack is made, the water rushing into an immense burning cavern, and falling on boiling lava, is instantly expanded into steam, and produces irresistible explosions. As the first volcanic fires had no previous vent, and were probably more central, and larger in quantity, before they burst the crust of the earth then intire, and as the sea covered the whole, it must rapidly sink down into every opening chink; whence these primeval earthquakes were of much greater extent, and of much greater force, than those which occur in the present era. It should be added, that there may be other elastic vapours produced by great heat from whatever will evaporate, as mercury, and even diamonds; which may be more elastic, and consequently exert greater force than the steam of water even though heated red hot. Which may thence exert a sufficient power to raise islands and continents, and even to throw the moon from the earth. If the moon be supposed to have been thus thrown out of the great cavity which now contains the South Sea, the immense quantity of water flowing in from the primeval ocean, which then covered the earth, would much contribute to leave the continents and islands, which might be raised at the same time above the surface of the water. In later days there are accounts of large stones falling from the sky, which may have been thus thrown by explosion from some distant earthquake, without sufficient force to cause them to circulate round the earth, and thus produce numerous small moons or satellites. Mr. Mitchell observes, that the agitations of the earth from the great earthquake at Lisbon were felt in this country about the same time after the shock, as sound would have taken in passing from Lisbon hither; and thence ascribes these agitations to the vibrations of the solid earth, and not to subterraneous caverns of communication; Philos. Transact. But from the existence of warm springs at Bath and Buxton, there must certainly be unceasing subterraneous fires at some great depth beneath those parts of this island; see on this subject Botanic Garden, Vol. II. Canto IV. l. 79, note. For an account of the noxious vapours emitted from volcanoes, see Botanic Garden, Vol. II. Cant. IV. l. 328, note. For the milder effects of central fires, see Botanic Garden, Vol. I. Cant. I. l. 139, and Additional Note VI. ADDITIONAL NOTES. IV. So from deep lakes the dread musquito springs, Drinks the soft breeze, and dries his tender wings. CANTO I. l. 327. The gnat, or musquito, culex pipiens. The larva of this insect lives chiefly in water, and the pupa moves with great agility. It is fished for by ducks; and, when it becomes a fly, is the food of the young of partridges, quails, sparrows, swallows, and other small birds. The females wound us, and leave a red point; and in India their bite is more venomous. The male has its antennæ and feelers feathered, and seldom bites or sucks blood; Lin. Syst. Nat. It may be driven away by smoke, especially by that from inula helenium, elecampane; and by that of cannabis, hemp. Kalm. It is said that a light in a chamber will prevent their attack on sleeping persons. The gnats of this country are produced in greater numbers in some years than others, and are then seen in swarms for many evenings near the lakes or rivers whence they arise; and, I suppose, emigrate to upland situations, where fewer of them are produced. About thirty years ago such a swarm was observed by Mr. Whitehurst for a day or two about the lofty tower of Derby church, as to give a suspicion of the fabric being on fire. Many other kinds of flies have their origin in the water, as perhaps the whole class of neuroptera. Thus the libellula, dragon fly: the larva of which hurries amid the water, and is the cruel crocodile of aquatic insects. After they become flies, they prey principally on the class of insects termed lepidoptera, and diptera of Linneus. The ephemera is another of this order, which rises from the lakes in such quantities in some countries, that the rustics have carried cart-loads of them to manure their corn lands; the larva swims in the water: in its fly-state the pleasures of life are of short duration, as its marriage, production of its progeny, and funeral, are often celebrated in one day. The phryganea is another fly of this order; the larva lies concealed under the water in moveable cylindrical tubes of their own making. In the fly-state they institute evening dances in the air in swarms, and are fished for by the swallows. Many other flies, who do not leave their eggs in water, contrive to lay them in moist places, as the oestros bovis; the larvæ of which exist in the bodies of cattle, where they are nourished during the winter, and are occasionally extracted by a bird of the crow-kind called buphaga. These larvæ are also found in the stomachs of horses, whom they sometimes destroy; another species of them adhere to the anus of horses, and creep into the lowest bowel, and are called botts; and another species enters the frontal sinus of sheep, occasioning a vertigo called the turn. The musca pendula lives in stagnant water; the larva is suspended by a thread-form respiratory tube; of the musca chamæleon, the larva lives in fountains, and the fly occasionally walks upon the water. The musca vomitoria is produced in carcases; three of these flies consume the dead body of a horse as soon as a lion. Lin. Syst. Nat. ADDITIONAL NOTE. V. AMPHIBIOUS ANIMALS. So still the Diodons, amphibious tribe, With twofold lungs the sea and air imbibe. CANT. I. l. 331. D. D. Garden dissected the amphibious creature called diodon by Linneus, and was amazed to find that it possessed both external gills and internal lungs, which he described and prepared and sent to Linneus; who thence put this animal into the order nantes of his class amphibia. He adds also, in his account of polymorpha before the class amphibia, that some of this class breathe by lungs only, and others by both lungs and gills. Some amphibious quadrupeds, as the beaver, water rat, and otter, are said to have the foramen ovale of the heart open, which communicates from one cavity of it to the other; and that, during their continuance under water, the blood can thus for a time circulate without passing through the lungs; but as it cannot by these means acquire oxygen either from the air or water, these creatures find it frequently necessary to rise to the surface to respire. As this foramen ovale is always open in the foetus of quadrupeds, till after its birth that it begins to respire, it has been proposed by some to keep young puppies three or four times a day for a minute or two under warm water to prevent this communication from one cavity of the heart to the other from growing up; whence it has been thought such dogs might become amphibious. It is also believed that this circumstance has existed in some divers for pearl; whose children are said to have been thus kept under water in their early infancy to enable them afterwards to succeed in their employment. But the most frequent distinction of the amphibious animals, that live much in the water, is, that their heart consists but of one cell; and as they are pale creatures with but little blood, and that colder and darker coloured, as frogs and lizards, they require less oxygen than the warmer animals with a greater quantity and more scarlet blood; and thence, though they have only lungs, they can stay long under water without great inconvenience; but are all of them, like frogs, and crocodiles, and whales, necessitated frequently to rise above the surface for air. In this circumstance of their possessing a one-celled heart, and colder and darker blood, they approach to the state of fish; which thus appear not to acquire so much oxygen by their gills from the water as terrestrial animals do by their lungs from the atmosphere; whence it may be concluded that the gills of fish do not decompose the water which passes through them, and which contains so much more oxygen than the air, but that they only procure a small quantity of oxygen from the air which is diffused in the water; which also is further confirmed by an experiment with the air-pump, as fish soon die when put in a glass of water into the exhausted receiver, which they would not do if their gills had power to decompose the water and obtain the oxygen from it. The lamprey, petromyzon, is put by Linneus amongst the nantes, which are defined to possess both gills and lungs. It has seven spiracula, or breathing holes, on each side of the neck, and by its more perfect lungs approaches to the serpent kind; Syst. Nat. The means by which it adheres to stones, even in rapid streams, is probably owing to a partial vacuum made by its respiring organs like sucking, and may be compared to the ingenious method by which boys are seen to lift large stones in the street, by applying to them a piece of strong moist leather with a string through the centre of it; which, when it is forcibly drawn upwards, produces a partial vacuum under it, and thus the stone is supported by the pressure of the atmosphere. The leech, hirudo, and the remora, echeneis, adhere strongly to objects probably by a similar method. I once saw ten or twelve leeches adhere to each foot of an old horse a little above his hoofs, who was grazing in a morass, and which did not lose their hold when he moved about. The bare-legged travellers in Ceylon are said to be much infested by leeches; and the sea-leech, hirudo muricata, is said to adhere to fish, and the remora is said to adhere to ships in such numbers as to retard their progress. The respiratory organ of the whale, I suppose, is pulmonary in part, as he is obliged to come frequently to the surface, whence he can be pursued after he is struck with the harpoon; and may nevertheless be in part like the gills of other fish, as he seems to draw in water when he is below the surface, and emits it again when he rises above it. ADDITIONAL NOTE. VI. HIEROGLYPHIC CHARACTERS. So erst as Egypt's rude designs explain. CANTO I. l. 351. The outlines of animal bodies, which gave names to the constellations, as well as the characters used in chemistry for the metals, and in astronomy for the planets, were originally hieroglyphic figures, used by the magi of Egypt before the invention of letters, to record their discoveries in those sciences. Other hieroglyphic figures seem to have been designed to perpetuate the events of history, the discoveries in other arts, and the opinions of those ancient philosophers on other subjects. Thus their figures of Venus for beauty, Minerva for wisdom, Mars and Bellona for war, Hercules for strength, and many others, became afterwards the deities of Greece and Rome; and together with the figures of Time, Death, and Fame, constitute the language of the painters to this day. From the similarity of the characters which designate the metals in chemistry, and the planets in astronomy, it may be concluded that these parts of science were then believed to be connected; whence astrology seems to have been a very early superstition. These, so far, constitute an universal visible language in those sciences. So the glory, or halo, round the head is a part of the universal language of the eye, designating a holy person; wings on the shoulders denote a good angel; and a tail and hoof denote the figure of an evil demon; to which may be added the cap of liberty and the tiara of popedom. It is to be wished that many other universal characters could be introduced into practice, which might either constitute a more comprehensive language for painters, or for other arts; as those of ciphers and signs have done for arithmetic and algebra, and crotchets for music, and the alphabets for articulate sounds; so a zigzag line made on white paper by a black-lead pencil, which communicates with the surface of the mercury in the barometer, as the paper itself is made constantly to move laterally by a clock, and daily to descend through the space necessary, has ingeniously produced a most accurate visible account of the rise and fall of the mercury in the barometer every hour in the year. Mr. Grey's Memoria Technica was designed as an artificial language to remember numbers, as of the eras, or dates of history. This was done by substituting one consonant and one vowel for each figure of the ten cyphers used in arithmetic, and by composing words of these letters; which words Mr. Grey makes into hexameter verses, and produces an audible jargon, which is to be committed to memory, and occasionally analysed into numbers when required. An ingenious French botanist, Monsieur Bergeret, has proposed to apply this idea of Mr. Grey to a botanical nomenclature, by making the name of each plant to consist of letters, which, when analysed, were to signify the number of the class, order, genus, and species, with a description also of some particular part of the plant, which was designed to be both an audible and visible language. Bishop Wilkins in his elaborate "Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language," has endeavoured to produce, with the greatest simplicity, and accuracy, and conciseness, an universal language both to be written and spoken, for the purpose of the communication of all our ideas with greater exactness and less labour than is done in common languages, as they are now spoken and written. But we have to lament that the progress of general science is yet too limited both for his purpose, and for that even of a nomenclature for botany; and that the science of grammar, and even the number and manner of the pronunciation of the letters of the alphabet, are not yet determined with such accuracy as would be necessary to constitute Bishop Wilkins's grand design of an universal language, which might facilitate the acquirement of knowledge, and thus add to the power and happiness of mankind. ADDITIONAL NOTE. VII. OLD AGE AND DEATH. The age-worn fibres goaded to contract By repetition palsied, cease to act. CANTO II. l. 4 I. _Effects of Age._ The immediate cause of the infirmities of age, or of the progress of life to death, has not yet been well ascertained. The answer to the question, why animals become feeble and diseased after a time, though nourished with the same food which increased their growth from infancy, and afterwards supported them for many years in unimpaired health and strength, must be sought for from the laws of animal excitability, which, though at first increased, is afterwards diminished by frequent repetitions of its adapted stimulus, and at length ceases to obey it. 1. There are four kinds of stimulus which induce the fibres to contract, which constitute the muscles or the organs of sense; as, first, The application of external bodies, which excites into action the sensorial power of irritation; 2dly, Pleasure and pain, which excite into action the sensorial power of sensation; 3dly, Desire and aversion, which excite into action the power of volition; and lastly, The fibrous contractions, which precede association, which is another sensorial power; see Zoonomia, Vol. I. Sect. II. 13. Many of the motions of the organic system, which are necessary to life, are excited by more than one of these stimuli at the same time, and some of them occasionally by them all. Thus respiration is generally caused by the stimulus of blood in the lungs, or by the sensation of the want of oxygen; but is also occasionally voluntary. The actions of the heart also, though generally owing to the stimulus of the blood, are also inflamed by the association of its motions with those of the stomach, whence sometimes arises an inequality of the pulse, and with other parts of the system, as with the capillaries, whence heat of the skin in fevers with a feeble pulse, see Zoonomia. They are also occasionally influenced by sensation, as is seen in the paleness occasioned by fear, or the blush of shame and anger; and lastly the motions of the heart are sometimes assisted by volition; thus in those who are much weakened by fevers, the pulse is liable to stop during their sleep, and to induce great distress; which is owing at that time to the total suspension of voluntary power; the same occurs during sleep in some asthmatic patients. 2. The debility of approaching age appears to be induced by the inactivity of many parts of the system, or their disobedience to their usual kinds and quantities of stimulus: thus the pallid appearance of the skin of old age is owing to the inactivity of the heart, which ceases to obey the irritation caused by the stimulus of the blood, or its association with other moving organs with its former energy; whence the capillary arteries are not sufficiently distended in their diastole, and consequently contract by their elasticity, so as to close the canal, and their sides gradually coalesce. Of these, those which are most distant from the heart, and of the smallest diameters, will soonest close, and become impervious; hence the hard pulse of aged patients is occasioned by the coalescence of the sides of the vasa vasorum, or capillary arteries of the coats of the other arteries. The veins of elderly people become turgid or distended with blood, and stand prominent on the skin; for as these do not possess the elasticity of the arteries, they become distended with accumulation of blood; when the heart by its lessened excitability does not contract sufficiently forcibly, or frequently, to receive, as fast as usual, the returning blood; and their apparent prominence on the skin is occasioned by the deficient secretion of fat or mucus in the cellular membrane; and also to the contraction and coalescence and consequent less bulk of many capillary arteries. 3. Not only the muscular fibres lose their degree of excitability from age, as in the above examples; and as may be observed in the tremulous hands and feeble step of elderly persons; but the organs of sense become less excitable by the stimulus of external objects; whence the sight and hearing become defective; the stimulus of the sensorial power of sensation also less affects the aged, who grieve less for the loss of friends or for other disappointments; it should nevertheless be observed, that when the sensorial power of irritation is much exhausted, or its production much diminished; the sensorial power of sensation appears for a time to be increased; as in intoxication there exists a kind of delirium and quick flow of ideas, and yet the person becomes so weak as to totter as he walks; but this delirium is owing to the defect of voluntary power to correct the streams of ideas by intuitive analogy, as in dreams: see Zoonomia: and thus also those who are enfeebled by habits of much vinous potation, or even by age alone, are liable to weep at shaking hands with a friend, whom they have not lately seen; which is owing to defect of voluntary power to correct their trains of ideas caused by sensation, and not to the increased quantity of sensation, as I formerly supposed. The same want of voluntary power to keep the trains of sensitive ideas consistent, and to compare them by intuitive analogy with the order of nature, is the occasion of the starting at the clapping to of a door, or the fall of a key, which occasions violent surprise with fear and sometimes convulsions, in very feeble hysterical patients, and is not owing I believe (as I formerly supposed) to increased sensation; as they are less sensible to small stimuli than when in health. Old people are less able also to perform the voluntary exertions of exercise or of reasoning, and lastly the association of their ideas becomes more imperfect, as they are forgetful of the names of persons and places; the associations of which are less permanent, than those of the other words of a language, which are more frequently repeated. 4. This disobedience of the fibres of age to their usual stimuli, has generally been ascribed to repetition or habit, as those who live near a large clock, or a mill, or a waterfall, soon cease to attend to the perpetual noise of it in the day, and sleep dining the night undisturbed. Thus all medicines, if repeated too frequently, gradually lose their effect; as wine and opium cease to intoxicate: some disagreeable tastes as tobacco, by frequent repetition cease to be disagreeable; grief and pain gradually diminish and at length cease altogether; and hence life itself becomes tolerable. This diminished power of contraction of the fibres of the muscles or organs of sense, which constitutes permanent debility or old age, may arise from a deficient secretion of sensorial power in the brain, as well as from the disobedience of the muscles and organs of sense to their usual stimuli; but this less production of sensorial power must depend on the inactivity of the glands, which compose the brain, and are believed to separate it perpetually from the blood; and is thence owing to a similar cause with the inaction of the fibres of the other parts of the system. It is finally easy to understand how the fibres may cease to act by the usual quantity of stimulus after having been previously exposed to a greater quantity of stimulus, or to one too long continued; because the expenditure of sensorial power has then been greater than its production; but it is not easy to explain why the repetition of fibrous contractions, which during the meridian of life did not expend the sensorial power faster than it was produced; or only in such a degree as was daily restored by rest and sleep, should at length in the advance of life expend too much of it; or otherwise, that less of it should be produced in the brain; or reside in the nerves; lastly that the fibres should become less excitable by the usual quantity of it. 5. But these facts would seem to show, that all parts of the system are not changed as we advance in life, as some have supposed; as in that case it might have preserved for ever its excitability; and it might then perhaps have been easier for nature to have continued her animals and vegetables for ever in their mature state, than perpetually by a complicate apparatus to have produced new ones, and suffer the old ones to perish; for a further account of stimulus and the consequent animal exertion, see Zoonomia, Vol. I. Sect. 12. II. _Means of preventing old age._ The means of preventing the approach of age must therefore consist in preventing the inexcitability of the fibres, or the diminution of the production of sensorial power. 1. As animal motion cannot be performed without the fluid matter of heat, in which all things are immersed, and without a sufficient quantity of moisture to prevent rigidity: nothing seems so well adapted to both these purposes as the use of the warm bath; and especially in those, who become thin or emaciated with age, and who have a hard and dry skin, with hardness of the coat of the arteries; which feels under the finger like a cord; the patient should sit in warm water for half an hour every day, or alternate days, or twice a week; the heat should be about ninety-eight degrees on Fahrenheit's scale, or of such a warmth, as may be most agreeable to his sensation; but on leaving the bath he should always be kept so cool, whether he goes into bed, or continues up, as not sensibly to perspire. There is a popular prejudice, that the warm bath relaxes people, and that the cold bath braces them; which are mechanical terms belonging to drums and fiddle-strings, but not applicable except metaphorically to animal bodies, and then commonly mean weakness and strength: during the continuance in the bath the patient does not lose weight, unless he goes in after a full meal, but generally weighs heavier as the absorption is greater than the perspiration; but if he suffers himself to sweat on his leaving the bath, he will undoubtedly be weakened by the increased action of the system, and its exhaustion: the same occurs to those who are heated by exercise, or by wine, or spice, but not during their continuance in the warm bath: whence we may conclude, that the warm bath is the most harmless of all those stimuli, which are greater than our natural habits have accustomed us to; and that it particularly counteracts the approach of old age in emaciated people with dry skins. It may be here observed in favour of bathing, that some fish are believed to continue to a great age, and continually to enlarge in size, as they advance in life; and that long after their state of puberty. I have seen perch full of spawn, which were less than two inches long; and it is known, that they will grow to six or eight times that size; it is said, that the whales, which have been caught of late years, are much less in size than those, which were caught, when first the whale-fishery was established; as the large ones, which were supposed to have been some hundred years old, are believed to be already destroyed. All cold-blooded amphibious animals more slowly waste their sensorial power; as they are accustomed to less stimulus from their respiring less oxygen; and their movements in water are slower than those of aerial animals from the greater resistance of the element. There besides seems to be no obstacle to the growth of aquatic animals; as by means of the air-bladder, they can make their specific gravity the same as that of the water in which they swim. And the moisture of the element seems well adapted to counteract the rigidity of their fibres; and as their exertions in locomotion, and the pressure of some parts on others, are so much less than in the bodies of land animals. 2. But as all excessive stimuli exhaust the sensorial power, and render the system less excitable for a time till the quantity of sensorial power is restored by sleep, or by the diminution or absence of stimulus; which is seen by the weakness of inebriates for a day at least after intoxication. And as the frequent repetition of this great and unnatural stimulus of fermented liquors produces a permanent debility, or disobedience of the system to the usual and natural kinds and quantities of stimulus, as occurs in those who have long been addicted to the ingurgitation of fermented liquors. And as, secondly, the too great deficiency of the quantity of natural stimuli, as of food, and warmth, or of fresh air, produces also diseases; as is often seen in the children of the poor in large towns, who become scrofulous from want of due nourishment, and from cold, damp, unairy lodgings. The great and principal means to prevent the approach of old age and death, must consist in the due management of the quantity of every kind of stimulus, but particularly of that from objects external to the moving organ; which may excite into action too great or too small a quantity of the sensorial power of irritation, which principally actuates the vital organs. Whence the use of much wine, or opium, or spice, or of much salt, by their unnatural stimulus induces consequent debility, and shortens life, on the one hand, by the exhaustion of sensorial power; so on the other hand, the want of heat, food, and fresh air, induces debility from defect of stimulus, and a consequent accumulation of sensorial power, and a general debility of the system. Whence arise the pains of cold and hunger, and those which are called nervous; and which are the cause of hysteric, epileptic, and perhaps of asthmatic paroxysms, and of the cold fits of fever. 3. Though all excesses of increase and decrease of stimulus should be avoided, yet a certain variation of stimulus seems to prolong the excitability of the system; as during any diminution of the usual quantity of stimulus, an accumulation of sensorial power is produced; and in consequence the excitability, which was lessened by the action of habitual stimulus, becomes restored. Thus those, who are uniformly habituated to much artificial heat, as in warm parlours in the winter months, lose their irritability in some degree, and become feeble like hot-house plants; but by frequently going for a time into the cold air, the sensorial power of irritability is accumulated and they become stronger. Whence it may be deduced, that the variations of the cold and heat of this climate contribute to strengthen its inhabitants, who are more active and vigorous, and live longer, than those of either much warmer or much colder latitudes. This accumulation of sensorial power from diminution of stimulus any one may observe, who in severe weather may sit by the fire-side till he is chill and uneasy with the sensation of cold; but if he walks into the frosty air for a few minutes, an accumulation of sensorial power is produced by diminution of the stimulus of heat, and on his returning into the room where he was chill before, his whole skin will now glow with warmth. Hence it may be concluded, that the variations of the quantity of stimuli within certain limits contribute to our health; and that those houses which are kept too uniformly warm, are less wholesome than where the inhabitants are occasionally exposed to cold air in passing from one room to another. Nevertheless to those weak habits with pale skins and large pupils of the eyes, whose degree of irritability is less than health requires, as in scrofulous, hysterical, and some consumptive constitutions, a climate warmer than our own may be of service, as a greater stimulus of heat may be wanted to excite their less irritability. And also a more uniform quantity of heat may be serviceable to consumptive patients than is met with in this country, as the lungs cannot be clothed like the external skin, and are therefore subject to greater extremes of heat and cold in passing in winter from a warm room into the frosty air. 4. It should nevertheless be observed, that there is one kind of stimulus, which though it be employed in quantity beyond its usual state, seems to increase the production of sensorial power beyond the expenditure of it (unless its excess is great indeed) and thence to give permanent strength and energy to the system; I mean that of volition. This appears not only from the temporary strength of angry or insane people, but because insanity even cures some diseases of debility, as I have seen in dropsy, and in some fevers; but it is also observable, that many who have exerted much voluntary effort during their whole lives, have continued active to great age. This however may be conceived to arise from these great exertions being performed principally by the organs of sense, that is by exciting and comparing ideas; as in those who have invented sciences, or have governed nations, and which did not therefore exhaust the sensorial power of those organs which are necessary to life, but perhaps rather prevented them from being sooner impaired, their sensorial power not having been so frequently exhausted by great activity, for very violent exercise of the body, long continued, forwards old age; as is seen in post-horses that are cruelly treated, and in many of the poor, who with difficulty support their families by incessant labour. III. _Theory of the Approach of Age._ The critical reader is perhaps by this time become so far interested in this subject as to excuse a more prolix elucidation of it. In early life the repetition of animal actions occasions them to be performed with greater facility, whether those repetitions are produced by volition, sensation, or irritation; because they soon become associated together, if as much sensorial power is produced between every reiteration of action, as is expended by it. But if a stimulus be repeated at uniform intervals of time, the action, whether of our muscles or organs of sense, is performed with still greater facility and energy; because the sensorial power of association mentioned above, is combined with the sensorial power of irritation, and forms part of the diurnal chain of animal motions; that is, in common language, the acquired habit assists the power of the stimulus; see Zoonomia, Vol. I. Sect. XXII. 2. and Sect. XII. 3. 3. On this circumstance depends the easy motions of the fingers in performing music, and of the feet and arms in dancing and fencing, and of the hands in the use of tools in mechanic arts, as well as all the vital motions which animate and nourish organic bodies. On the contrary, many animal motions by perpetual repetition are performed with less energy; as those who live near a waterfall, or a smith's forge, after a time, cease to hear them. And in those infectious diseases which are attended with fever, as the small-pox and measles, violent motions of the system are excited, which at length cease, and cannot again be produced by application of the same stimulating material; as when those are inoculated for the small-pox, who have before undergone that malady. Hence the repetition, which occasions animal actions for a time to be performed with greater energy, occasions them at length to become feeble, or to cease entirely. To explain this difficult problem we must more minutely consider the catenations of animal motions, as described in Zoonomia, Vol. I. Sect. XVII. The vital motions, as suppose of the heart and arterial system, commence from the irritation occasioned by the stimulus of the blood, and then have this irritation assisted by the power of association; at the same time an agreeable sensation is produced by the due actions of the fibres, as in the secretions of the glands, which constitutes the pleasure of existence; this agreeable sensation is intermixed between every link of this diurnal chain of actions, and contributes to produce it by what is termed animal causation. But there is also a degree of the power of volition excited in consequence of this vital pleasure, which is also intermixed between the links of the chain of fibrous actions; and thus also contributes to its uniform easy and perpetual production. The effects of surprise and novelty must now be considered by the patient reader, as they affect the catenations of action; and, I hope, the curiosity of the subject will excuse the prolixity of this account of it. When any violent stimulus breaks the passing current or catenation of our ideas, surprise is produced, which is accompanied with pain or pleasure, and consequent volition to examine the object of it, as explained in Zoonomia, Vol. I. Sect. XVIII. 17, and which never affects us in sleep. In our waking hours whenever an idea of imagination occurs, which is incongruous to our former experience, we feel another kind of surprise, and instantly dissever the train of imagination by the power of volition, and compare the incongruous idea with our previous knowledge of nature, and reject it by an act of reasoning, of which we are unconscious, termed in Zoonomia, "Intuitive Analogy," Vol. I Sect. XVII. 7. The novelty of any idea may be considered as affecting us with another kind of surprise, or incongruity, as it differs from the usual train of our ideas, and forms a new link in this perpetual chain; which, as it thus differs from the ordinary course of nature, we instantly examine by the voluntary efforts of intuitive analogy; or by reasoning, which we attend to; and compare it with the usual appearances of nature. These ideas which affect us with surprise, or incongruity, or novelty, are attended with painful or pleasurable sensation; which we mentioned before as intermixing with all catenations of animal actions, and contributing to strengthen their perpetual and energetic production; and also exciting in some degree the power of volition, which also intermixes with the links of the chain of animal actions, and contributes to produce it. Now by frequent repetition the surprise, incongruity, or novelty ceases; and, in consequence, the pleasure or pain which accompanied it, and also the degree of volition which was excited by that sensation of pain or pleasure; and thus the sensorial power of sensation and of volition are subducted from the catenation of vital actions, and they are in consequence produced much weaker, and at length cease entirely. Whence we learn why contagious matters induce their effects on the circulation but once; and why, in process of time, the vital movements are performed with less energy, and at length cease; whence the debilities of age, and consequent death. ADDITIONAL NOTES. VIII. REPRODUCTION. But Reproduction with ethereal fires New life rekindles, ere the first expires. CANTO II. l. 13. I. The reproduction or generation of living organized bodies, is the great criterion or characteristic which distinguishes animation from mechanism. Fluids may circulate in hydraulic machines, or simply move in them, as mercury in the barometer or thermometer, but the power of producing an embryon which shall gradually acquire similitude to its parent, distinguishes artificial from natural organization. The reproduction of plants and animals appears to be of two kinds, solitary and sexual; the former occurs in the formation of the buds of trees, and the bulbs of tulips; which for several successions generate other buds, and other bulbs, nearly similar to the parent, but constantly approaching to greater perfection, so as finally to produce sexual organs, or flowers, and consequent seeds. The same occurs in some inferior kinds of animals; as the aphises in the spring and summer are viviparous for eight or nine generations, which successively produce living descendants without sexual intercourse, and are themselves, I suppose, without sex; at length in the autumn they propagate males and females, which copulate and lay eggs, which lie dormant during the winter, and are hatched by the vernal sun; while the truffle, and perhaps mushrooms amongst vegetables, and the polypus and tænia amongst insects, perpetually propagate themselves by solitary reproduction, and have not yet acquired male and female organs. Philosophers have thought these viviparous aphides, and the tænia, and volvox, to be females; and have supposed them to have been impregnated long before their nativity within each other; so the tænia and volvox still continue to produce their offspring without sexual intercourse. One extremity of the tænia, is said by Linneus to grow old, whilst at the other end new ones are generated proceeding to infinity like the roots of grass. The volvox globator is transparent, and carries within itself children and grandchildren to the fifth generation like the aphides; so that the tænia produces children and grandchildren longitudinally in a chain-like series, and the volvox propagates an offspring included within itself to the fifth generation; Syst. Nat. Many microscopic animals, and some larger ones, as the hydra or polypus, are propagated by splitting or dividing; and some still larger animals, as oysters, and perhaps eels, have not yet acquired sexual organs, but produce a paternal progeny, which requires no mother to supply it with a nidus, or with nutriment and oxygenation; and, therefore, very accurately resemble the production of the buds of trees, and the wires of some herbaceous plants, as of knot-grass and of strawberries, and the bulbs of other plants, as of onions and potatoes; which is further treated of in Phytologia, Sect. VII. The manner in which I suspect the solitary reproduction of the buds of trees to be effected, may also be applied to the solitary generation of the insects mentioned above, and probably of many others, perhaps of all the microscopic ones. It should be previously observed, that many insects are hermaphrodite, possessing both male and female organs of reproduction, as shell-snails and dew-worms; but that these are seen reciprocally to copulate with each other, and are believed not to be able to impregnate themselves; which belongs, therefore, to sexual generation, and not to the solitary reproduction of which I am now speaking. As in the chemical production of any new combination of matter, two kinds of particles appear to be necessary; one of which must possess the power of attraction, and the other the aptitude to be attracted, as a magnet and a piece of iron; so in vegetable or animal combinations, whether for the purpose of nutrition or for reproduction, there must exist also two kinds of organic matter; one possessing the appetency to unite, and the other the propensity to be united; (see Zoonomia, octavo edition, Sect. XXXIX. 8.) Hence in the generation of the buds of trees, there are probably two kinds of glands, which acquire from the vegetable blood, and deposite beneath the cuticle of the tree two kinds of formative organic matter, which unite and form parts of the new vegetable embryon; which again uniting with other such organizations form the caudex, or the plumula, or the radicle, of a new vegetable bud. A similar mode of reproduction by the secretion of two kinds of organic particles from the blood, and by depositing them either internally as in the vernal and summer aphis or volvox, or externally as in the polypus and tænia, probably obtains in those animals; which are thence propagated by the father only, not requiring a cradle, or nutriment, or oxygenation from a mother; and that the five generations, said to be seen in the transparent volvox globator within each other, are perhaps the successive progeny to be delivered at different periods of time from the father, and erroneously supposed to be mothers impregnated before their nativity. II. Sexual as well as solitary reproduction appears to be effected by two kinds of glands; one of which collects or secretes from the blood formative organic particles with appetencies to unite, and the other formative organic particles with propensities to be united. These probably undergo some change by a kind of digestion in their respective glands; but could not otherwise unite previously in the mass of blood from its perpetual motion. The first mode of sexual reproduction seems to have been by the formation of males into hermaphrodites; that is, when the numerous formative glands, which existed in the caudex of the bud of a tree, or on the surface of a polypus, became so united as to form but two glands; which might then be called male and female organs. But they still collect and secrete their adapted particles from the same mass of blood as in snails and dew-worms, but do not seem to be so placed as to produce an embryon by the mixture of their secreted fluids, but to require the mutual assistance of two hermaphrodites for that purpose. From this view-of the subject, it would appear that vegetables and animals were at first propagated by solitary generation, and afterwards by hermaphrodite sexual generation; because most vegetables possess at this day both male and female organs in the same flower, which Linneus has thence well called hermaphrodite flowers; and that this hermaphrodite mode of reproduction still exists in many insects, as in snails and worms; and, finally, because all the male quadrupeds, as well as men, possess at this day some remains of the female apparatus, as the breasts with nipples, which still at their nativity are said to be replete with a kind of milk, and the nipples swell on titillation. Afterwards the sexes seem to have been formed in vegetables as in flowers, in addition to the power of solitary reproduction by buds. So in animals the aphis is propagated both by solitary reproduction as in spring, or by sexual generation as in autumn; then the vegetable sexes began to exist in separate plants, as in the classes monoecia and dioecia, or both of them in the same plant also, as in the class polygamia; but the larger and more perfect animals are now propagated by sexual reproduction only, which seems to have been the chef-d'oeuvre, or capital work of nature; as appears by the wonderful transformations of leaf-eating caterpillars into honey-eating moths and butterflies, apparently for the sole purpose of the formation of sexual organs, as in the silk-worm, which takes no food after its transformation, but propagates its species and dies. III. _Recapitulation._ The microscopic productions of spontaneous vitality, and the next most inferior kinds of vegetables and animals, propagate by solitary generation only; as the buds and bulbs raised immediately from seeds, the lycoperdon tuber, with probably many other fungi, and the polypus, volvox, and tænia. Those of the next order propagate both by solitary and sexual reproduction, as those buds and bulbs which produce flowers as well as other buds or bulbs; and the aphis, and probably many other insects. Whence it appears, that many of those vegetables and animals, which are produced by solitary generation, gradually become more perfect, and at length produce a sexual progeny. A third order of organic nature consists of hermaphrodite vegetables and animals, as in those flowers which have anthers and stigmas in the same corol; and in many insects, as leeches, snails, and worms; and perhaps all those reptiles which have no bones, according to the observation of M. Poupart, who thinks, that the number of hermaphrodite animals exceeds that of those which are divided into sexes; Mém. de l'Acad. des Sciences. These hermaphrodite insects I suspect _to_ be incapable of impregnating themselves for reasons mentioned in Zoonomia, Sect. XXXIX. 6. 2. And, lastly, the most perfect orders of animals are propagated by sexual intercourse only; which, however, does not extend to vegetables, as all those raised from seed produce some generations of buds or bulbs, previous to their producing flowers, as occurs not only in trees, but also in the annual plants. Thus three or four joints of wheat grow upon each other, before that which produces a flower; which joints are all separate plants growing over each other, like the buds of trees, previous to the uppermost; though this happens in a few months in annual plants, which requires as many years in the successive buds of trees; as is further explained in Phytologia, Sect. IX. 3. 1. IV. _Conclusion._ Where climate is favourable, and salubrious food plentiful, there is reason to believe, that the races of animals perpetually improve by reproduction. The smallest microscopic animals become larger ones in a short time, probably by successive reproductions, as is so distinctly seen in the buds of seedling apple-trees, and in the bulbs of tulips raised from seed; both which die annually, and leave behind them one or many, which are more perfect than themselves, till they produce a sexual progeny, or flowers. To which may be added, the rapid improvement of our domesticated dogs, horses, rabbits, pigeons, which improve in size, or in swiftness, or in the sagacity of the sense of smell, or in colour, or other properties, by sexual reproduction. The great Linneus having perceived the changes produced in the vegetable world by sexual reproduction, has supposed that not more than about sixty plants were at first created, and that all the others have been formed by their solitary or sexual reproductions; and adds, Suadent hæc Creatoris leges a simplicibus ad composita; Gen. Plant. preface to the natural orders, and Amenit. Acad. VI. 279. This mode of reasoning may be extended to the most simple productions of spontaneous vitality. There is one curious circumstance of animal life analogous in some degree to this wonderful power of reproduction; which is seen in the propagation of some contagious diseases. Thus one grain of variolous matter, inserted by inoculation, shall in about seven days stimulate the system into unnatural action; which in about seven days more produces ten thousand times the quantity of a similar material thrown out on the skin in pustules! The mystery of reproduction, which alone distinguishes organic life from mechanic or chemic action, is yet wrapt in darkness. During the decomposition of organic bodies, where there exists a due degree of warmth with moisture, new microscopic animals of the most minute kind are produced; and these possess the wonderful power of reproduction, or of producing animals similar to themselves in their general structure, but with frequent additional improvements; which the preceding parent might in some measure have acquired by his habits of life or accidental situation. But it may appear too bold in the present state of our knowledge on this subject, to suppose that all vegetables and animals now existing were originally derived from the smallest microscopic ones, formed by spontaneous vitality? and that they have by innumerable reproductions, during innumerable centuries of time, gradually acquired the size, strength, and excellence of form and faculties, which they now possess? and that such amazing powers were originally impressed on matter and spirit by the great Parent of Parents! Cause of Causes! Ens Entium! ADDITIONAL NOTES. IX. STORGE. And Heaven-born STORGE weaves the social chain. CANTO II. l. 92. The Greek word Storge is used for the affection of parents to children; which was also visibly represented by the Stork or Pelican feeding her young with blood taken from her own wounded bosom. A number of Pelicans form a semicircle in shallow parts of the sea near the coast, standing on their long legs; and thus including a shoal of small fish, they gradually approach the shore; and seizing the fish as they advance, receive them into a pouch under their throats; and bringing them to land regurgitate them for the use of their young, or for their future support. Adanson, Voyage to Senegal. In this country the parent Pigeons both male and female swallow the grain or other seeds, which they collect for their young, and bring it up mixed with a kind of milk from their stomachs, with their bills inserted into the mouths of the young doves. J. Hunter's works. The affection of the parent to the young in experienced mothers may be in part owing to their having been relieved by them from the burden of their milk; but it is difficult to understand, how this affection commences in those mothers of the bestial world, who have not experienced this relief from the sucking of their offspring; and still more so to understand how female birds were at first induced to incubate their eggs for many weeks; and lastly how caterpillars, as of the silk-worm, are induced to cover themselves with a well-woven house of silk before their transformation. These as well as many other animal facts, which are difficult to account for, have been referred to an inexplicable instinct; which is supposed to preclude any further investigation: but as animals seem to have undergone great changes, as well as the inanimate parts of the earth, and are probably still in a state of gradual improvement; it is not unreasonable to conclude, that some of these actions both of large animals and of insects, may have been acquired in a state preceding their present one; and have been derived from the parents to their offspring by imitation, or other kind of tradition; thus the eggs of the crocodile are at this day hatched by the warmth of the sun in Egypt; and the eggs of innumerable insects, and the spawn of fish, and of frogs, in this climate are hatched by the vernal warmth: this might be the case of birds in warm climates, in their early state of existence; and experience might have taught them to incubate their eggs, as they became more perfect animals, or removed themselves into colder climates: thus the ostrich is said to sit upon its eggs only in the night in warm situations, and both day and night in colder ones. This love of the mother in quadrupeds to the offspring, whom she licks and cleans, is so allied to the pleasure of the taste or palate, that nature seems to have had a great escape in the parent quadruped not devouring her offspring. Bitches, and cats, and sows, eat the placenta; and if a dead offspring occurs, I am told, that also is sometimes eaten, and yet the living offspring is spared; and by that nice distinction the progenies of those animals are saved from destruction! "Certior factus sum a viro rebus antiquissimis docto, quod legitur in Berosi operibus homines ante diluvium mulierum puerperarum placentam edidisse, quasi cibum delicatum in epulis luxuriosis; et quod hoc nefandissimo crimine movebatur Deus diluvio submergere terrarum incolas." ANON. It may be finally concluded, that this affection from the parent to the progeny existed before animals were divided into sexes, and produced the beginning of sympathetic society, the source of which may perhaps be thus well accounted for; whenever the glandular system is stimulated into greater natural action within certain limits, an addition of pleasure is produced along with the increased secretion; this pleasure arising from the activity of the system is supposed to constitute the happiness of existence, in contradistinction to the ennui or tædium vitæ; as shown in Zoonomia, Sect. XXXIII. 1. Hence the secretion of nutritious juices occasioned by the stimulus of an embryon or egg in the womb gives pleasure to the parent for a length of time; whence by association a similar pleasure may be occasioned to the parent by seeing and touching the egg or fetus after its birth; and in lactescent animals an additional pleasure is produced by the new secretion of milk, as well as by its emission into the sucking lips of the infant. This appears to be one of the great secrets of Nature, one of those fine, almost invisible cords, which have bound one animal to another. The females of lactiferous animals have thus a passion or inlet of pleasure in their systems more than the males, from their power of giving suck to their offspring; the want of the object of this passion, either owing to the death of the progeny, or to the unnatural fashion of their situation in life, not only deprives them of this innocent and virtuous source of pleasure; but has occasioned diseases, which have been fatal to many of them. ADDITIONAL NOTES. X. EVE FROM ADAM'S RIB. Form'd a new sex, the mother of mankind. CANTO II. l. 140. The mosaic history of Paradise and of Adam and Eve has been thought by some to be a sacred allegory, designed to teach obedience to divine commands, and to account for the origin of evil, like Jotham's fable of the trees; Judges ix. 8. or Nathan's fable of the poor man and his lamb; 2 Sam. xii. 1. or like the parables in the New Testament; as otherwise knowledge could not be said to grow upon one tree, and life upon another, or a serpent to converse; and lastly that this account originated with the magi or philosophers of Egypt, with whom Moses was educated, and that this part of the history, where Eve is said to have been made from a rib of Adam might have been an hieroglyphic design of the Egyptian philosophers, showing their opinion that Mankind was originally of both sexes united, and was afterwards divided into males and females: an opinion in later times held by Plato, and I believe by Aristotle, and which must have arisen from profound inquiries into the original state of animal existence. ADDITIONAL NOTES. XI. HEREDITARY DISEASES. The feeble births acquired diseases chase, Till Death extinguish the degenerate race. CANTO II. l. 165. As all the families both of plants and animals appear in a state of perpetual improvement or degeneracy, it becomes a subject of importance to detect the causes of these mutations. The insects, which are not propagated by sexual intercourse, are so few or so small, that no observations have been made on their diseases; but hereditary diseases are believed more to affect the offspring of solitary than of sexual generation in respect to vegetables; as those fruit trees, which have for more than a century been propagated only by ingrafting, and not from seeds, have been observed by Mr. Knight to be at this time so liable to canker, as not to be worth cultivation. From the same cause I suspect the degeneracy of some potatoes and of some strawberries to have arisen; where the curled leaf has appeared in the former, and barren flowers in the latter. This may arise from the progeny by solitary reproduction so much more exactly resembling the parent, as is well seen in grafted trees compared with seedling ones; the fruit of the former always resembling that of the parent tree, but not so of the latter. The grafted scion also accords with the branch of the tree from whence it was taken, in the time of its bearing fruit; for if a scion be taken from a bearing branch of a pear or apple tree, I believe, it will produce fruit even the next year, or that succeeding; that is, in the same time that it would have produced fruit, if it had continued growing on the parent tree; but if the parent pear or apple tree has been cut down or headed, and scions are then, taken from the young shoots of the stem, and ingrafted; I believe those grafted trees will continue to grow for ten or twelve years, before they bear fruit, almost as long as seedling trees, that is they will require as much time, as those new shoots from the lopped trunk would require, before they produce fruit. It should thence be inquired, when grafted fruit trees are purchased, whether the scions were taken from bearing branches, or from the young shoots of a lopped trunk; as the latter, I believe, are generally sold, as they appear stronger plants. This greater similitude of the progeny to the parent in solitary reproduction must certainly make them more liable to hereditary diseases, if such have been acquired by the parent from unfriendly climate or bad nourishment, or accidental injury. In respect to the sexual progeny of vegetables it has long been thought, that a change of seed or of situation is in process of time necessary to prevent their degeneracy; but it is now believed, that it is only changing for seed of a superior quality, that will better the product. At the same time it may be probably useful occasionally to intermix seeds from different situations together; as the anther-dust is liable to pass from one plant to another in its vicinity; and by these means the new seeds or plants may be amended, like the marriages of animals into different families. As the sexual progeny of vegetables are thus less liable to hereditary diseases than the solitary progenies; so it is reasonable to conclude, that the sexual progenies of animals may be less liable to hereditary diseases, if the marriages are into different families, than if into the same family; this has long been supposed to be true, by those who breed animals for sale; since if the male and female be of different temperaments, as these are extremes of the animal system, they may counteract each other; and certainly where both parents are of families, which are afflicted with the same hereditary disease, it is more likely to descend to their posterity. The hereditary diseases of this country have many of them been the consequence of drinking much fermented or spirituous liquor; as the gout always, most kinds of dropsy, and, I believe, epilepsy, and insanity. But another material, which is liable to produce diseases in its immoderate use, I believe to be common salt; the sea-scurvy is evidently caused by it in long voyages; and I suspect the scrofula, and consumption, to arise in the young progeny from the debility of the lymphatic and venous absorption produced in the parent by this innutritious fossile stimulus. The petechiæ and vibices in the sea-scurvy and occasional hæmorrhages evince the defect of venous absorption; the occasional hæmoptoe at the commencement of pulmonary consumption, seems also to arise from defect of venous absorption; and the scrofula, which arises from the inactivity of the lymphatic absorbent system, frequently exists along with pulmonary as well as with mesenteric consumption. A tendency to these diseases is certainly hereditary, though perhaps not the diseases themselves; thus a less quantity of ale, cyder, wine, or spirit, will induce the gout and dropsy in those constitutions, whose parents have been intemperate in the use of those liquors; as I have more than once had occasion to observe. Finally the art to improve the sexual progeny of either vegetables or animals must consist in choosing the most perfect of both sexes, that is the most beautiful in respect to the body, and the most ingenious in respect to the mind; but where one sex is given, whether male or female, to improve a progeny from that person may consist in choosing a partner of a contrary temperament. As many families become gradually extinct by hereditary diseases, as by scrofula, consumption, epilepsy, mania, it is often hazardous to marry an heiress, as she is not unfrequently the last of a diseased family. ADDITIONAL NOTES. XII. CHEMICAL THEORY OF ELECTRICITY AND MAGNETISM. Then mark how two electric streams conspire To form the resinous and vitreous fire. CANTO III. l. 21. I. _Of Attraction and Repulsion._ The motions, which accomplish the combinations and decompositions of bodies, depend on the peculiar attractions and repulsions of the particles of those bodies, or of the sides and angles of them; while the motions of the sun and planets, of the air and ocean, and of all bodies approaching to a general centre or retreating from it, depend on the general attraction or repulsion of those masses of matter. The peculiar attractions above mentioned are termed chemical affinities, and the general attraction is termed gravitation; but the peculiar repulsions of the particles of bodies, or the general repulsion of the masses of matter, have obtained no specific names, nor have been sufficiently considered; though they appear to be as powerful agents as the attractions. The motions of ethereal fluids, as of magnetism and electricity, are yet imperfectly understood, and seem to depend both on chemical affinity, and on gravitation; and also on the peculiar repulsions of the particles of bodies, and on the general repulsion of the masses of matter. In what manner attraction and repulsion are produced has not yet been attempted to be explained by modern philosophers; but as nothing can act, where it does not exist, all distant attraction of the particles of bodies, as well as general gravitation, must be ascribed to some still finer ethereal fluid; which fills up all space between the suns and their planets, as well as the interstices of coherent matter. Repulsion in the same manner must consist of some finer ethereal fluid; which at first projected the planets from the sun, and I suppose prevents their return to it; and which occasionally volatilizes or decomposes solid bodies into fluid or aerial ones, and perhaps into ethereal ones. May not the ethereal matter which constitutes repulsion, be the same as the matter of heat in its diffused state; which in its quiescent state is combined with various bodies, as appears from many chemical explosions, in which so much heat is set at liberty? The ethereal matter, which constitutes attraction, we are less acquainted with; but it may also exist combined with bodies, as well as in its diffused state; since the specific gravities of some metallic mixtures are said not to accord with what ought to result from the combination of their specific gravities, which existed before their mixture; but their absolute gravities have not been attended to sufficiently; as these have always been supposed to depend on their quantity of matter, and situation in respect to the centre of the earth. The ethereal fluids, which constitute peculiar repulsions and attractions, appear to gravitate round the particles of bodies mixed together; as those, which constitute the general repulsion or attraction, appear to gravitate round the greater masses of matter mixed together; but that which constitutes attraction seems to exist in a denser state next to the particles or masses of matter; and that which constitutes repulsion to exist more powerfully in a sphere further from them; whence many bodies attract at one distance, and repel at another. This may be observed by approaching to each other two electric atmospheres round insulated cork-balls; or by pressing globules of mercury, which roll on the surface, till they unite with it; or by pressing the drops of water,' which stand on a cabbage leaf, till they unite with it, and hence light is reflected from the surface of a mirror without touching it. Thus the peculiar attractions and repulsions of the particles of bodies, and the general ones of the masses of matter, perpetually oppose and counteract each other; whence if the power of attraction should cease to act, all matter would be dissipated by the power of repulsion into boundless space; and if heat, or the power of repulsion, should cease to act, the whole world would become one solid mass, condensed into a point. II. _Preliminary Propositions._ The following propositions concerning Electricity and Galvanism will either be proved by direct experiments, or will be rendered probable by their tending to explain or connect the variety of electric facts, to which they will be applied. 1. There are two kinds of electric ether, which exist either separately or in combination. That which is accumulated on the surface of smooth glass, when it is rubbed with a cushion, is here termed vitreous ether; and that which is accumulated on the surface of resin or sealing-wax, when it is rubbed with a cushion, is here termed resinous ether; and a combination of them, as in their usual state, may be termed neutral electric ethers. 2. Atmospheres of vitreous or of resinous or of neutral electricity surround all separate bodies, are attracted by them, and permeate those, which are called conductors, as metallic and aqueous and carbonic ones; but will not permeate those, which are termed nonconductors, as air, glass, silk, resin, sulphur. 3. The particles of vitreous electric ether strongly repel each other as they surround other bodies; but strongly attract the particles of resinous electric ether: in similar manner the particles of the resinous ether powerfully repel each other, and as powerfully attract those of the vitreous ether. Hence in their separate state they appear to occupy much greater space, as they, gravitate round insulated bodies, and are then only cognizable by our senses or experiments. They rush violently together through conducting substances, and then probably possess much less space in this their combined state. They thus resemble oxygen gas and nitrous gas; which rush violently together when in contact; and occupy less space when united, than either of them possessed separately before their union. When the two electric ethers thus unite, a chemical explosion occurs, like an ignited train of gunpowder; as they give out light and heat; and rend or fuse the bodies they occupy; which cannot be accounted for on the mechanical theory of Dr. Franklin. 4. Glass holds within it in combination much resinous electric ether, which constitutes a part of it, and which more forcibly attracts vitreous electric ether from surrounding bodies, which stands on it mixed with a less proportion of resinous ether like an atmosphere, but cannot unite with the resinous ether, which is combined with the glass; and resin, on the contrary, holds within it in combination much vitreous electric ether, which constitutes a part of it, and which more forcibly attracts resinous electric ether from surrounding bodies, which stands on it mixed with a less proportion of vitreous ether like an atmosphere, but cannot unite with the vitreous ether, which is combined with the resin. As in the production of vitrification, those materials are necessary which contain much oxygen, as minium, and manganese; there is probably much oxygen combined with glass, which may thence be esteemed a solid acid, as water may be esteemed a fluid one. It is hence not improbable, that one kind of electric ether may also be combined with it, as it seems to affect the oxygen of water in the Galvanic experiments. The combination of the other kind of electric ether with wax or sulphur, is countenanced from those bodies, when heated or melted, being said to part with much electricity as they cool, and as it appears to affect the hydrogen in the decomposition of water by Galvanism. 5. Hence the nonconductors of electricity are of two kinds; such as are combined with vitreous ether, as resin, and sulphur; and such as are combined with resinous ether, as glass, air, silk. But both these kinds of nonconductors are impervious to either of the electric ethers; as those ethers being already combined with other bodies will not unite with each other, or be removed from their situations by each other. Whereas the perfect conducting bodies, as metals, water, charcoal, though surrounded with electric atmospheres, as they have neither of the electric ethers combined with them, suffer them to permeate and pass through them, whether separately or in their neutral state of reciprocal combination. But it is probable, that imperfect conductors may possess more or less of either the vitreous or resinous ether combined with them, since their natural atmospheres are dissimilar as mentioned below; and that this makes them more or less imperfect conductors. 6. Those bodies which are perfect conductors, have probably neutral electric atmospheres gravitating round them consisting of an equal or saturated mixture of the two electric ethers, whereas the atmospheres round the nonconducting bodies probably consist of an unequal mixture of the electric ethers, as more of the vitreous one round glass, and more of the resinous one round resin; and, it is probable, that these mixed atmospheres, which surround imperfect conducting bodies, consist also of different proportions of the vitreous and resinous ethers, according to their being more or less perfect conductors. These minute degrees of the difference of these electric atmospheres are evinced by Mr. Bennet's Doubler of Electricity, as shown in his work, and are termed by him Adhesive Electric Atmospheres, to distinguish them from those accumulated by art; thus the natural adhesive electricity of silver is more of the vitreous kind compared with that of zinc, which consists of a greater proportion of the resinous; that is, in his language, silver is positive and zinc negative. This experiment I have successfully repeated with Mr. Bennet's Doubler along with Mr. Swanwick. 7. Great accumulation or condensation of the separate electric ethers attract each other so strongly, that they will break a passage through nonconducting bodies, as through a plate of glass, or of air, and will rend bodies which are less perfect conductors, and give out light and heat like the explosion of a train of gunpowder; whence, when a strong electric shock is passed through a quire of paper, a bur, or elevation of the sheets, is seen on both sides of it occasioned by the explosion. Whence trees and stone walls are burst by lightning, and wires are fused, and inflammable bodies burnt, by the heat given out along with the flash of light, which cannot be explained by the mechanic theory. 8. When artificial or natural accumulations of these separate ethers are very minute in quantity or intensity, they pass slowly and with difficulty from one body to another, and require the best conductors for this purpose; whence many of the phenomena of the torpedo or gymnotus, and of Galvanism. Thus after having discharged a coated jar, if the communicating wire has been quickly withdrawn, a second small shock may be taken after the principal discharge, and this repeatedly two or three times. Hence the charge of the Galvanic pile being very minute in quantity or intensity, will not readily pass through the dry cuticle of the hands, though it so easily passes through animal flesh or nerves, as this combination of charcoal with water seems to constitute the most perfect conductor yet known. 9. As light is reflected from the surface of a mirror before it actually touches it, and as drops of water are repelled from cabbage leaves without touching them, and as oil lies on water without touching it, and also as a fine needle may be made to lie on water without touching it, as shown by Mr. Melville in the Literary Essays of Edinburgh; there is reason to believe, that the vitreous and resinous electric ethers are repelled by, or will not pass through, the surfaces of glass or resin, to which they are applied. But though neither of these electric ethers passes through the surfaces of glass or resin, yet their attractive or repulsive powers pass through them: as the attractive or repulsive power of the magnet to iron passes through the atmosphere, and all other bodies which exist between them. So an insulated cork-ball, when electrised either with vitreous or resinous ether, repels another insulated cork-ball electrised with the same kind of ether, through half an inch of common air, though these electric atmospheres do not unite. Whence it may be concluded, that the general attractive and repulsive ethers accompany the electric ethers as well as they accompany all other bodies; and that the electric ethers do not themselves attract or repel through glass or resin, as they cannot pass through them, but strongly attract each other when they come into contact, rush together, and produce an explosion of the sudden liberation of heat and light. III. _Effect of Metallic Points._ 1. When a pointed wire is presented by a person standing on the ground to an insulated conductor, on which either vitreous or resinous electricity is accumulated, the accumulated electricity will pass off at a much greater distance than if a metallic knob be fixed on the wire and presented in its stead. 2. The same occurs if the metallic point be fixed on the electrised conductor, and the finger of a person standing on the ground be presented to it, the accumulated electricity will pass off at a much greater distance, and indeed will soon discharge itself by communicating the accumulated electricity to the atmosphere. 3. If a metallic point be fixed on the prime conductor, and the flame of a candle be presented to it, on electrising the conductor either with vitreous or resinous ether, the flame of the candle is blown from the point, which must be owing to the electric fluid in its passage from the point carrying along with it a stream of atmospheric air. The manner in which the accumulated electricity so readily passes off by a metallic point may be thus understood; when a metallic point stands erect from an electrised metallic plane, the accumulated electricity which exists on the extremity of the point, is attracted less than that on the other parts of the electrised surface. For the particle of electric matter immediately over the point is attracted by that point only, whereas the particles of electric matter over every other part of the electrised plane, is not only attracted by the parts of the plane immediately under them, but also laterally by the circumjacent parts of it; whence the accumulated electric fluid is pushed off at this point by that over the other parts being more strongly attracted to the plane. Thus if a light insulated horizontal fly be constructed of wire with points fixed as tangents to the circle, it will revolve the way contrary to the direction of the points as long as it continues to be electrised. For the same reason as when a circle of cork, with a point of the cork standing from it like a tangent, is smeared with oil, and thrown upon a lake, it will continue to revolve backwards in respect to the direction of the point till all the oil is dispersed upon the lake, as first observed by Dr. Franklin; for the oil being attracted to all the other parts of the cork-circle more than towards the pointed tangent, that part over the point is pushed off and diffuses itself on the water, over which it passes without touching, and consequently without friction; and thus the cork revolves in the contrary direction. As the flame of a candle is blown from a point fixed on an electrised conductor, whether vitreous or resinous electricity is accumulated on it, it shows that in both cases electricity passes from the point, which is a forcible argument against the mechanical theory of positive and negative electricity; because then the flame should be blown towards the point in one case, and from it in the other. So the electric fly, as it turns horizontally, recedes from the direction of the points of the tangents, whether it be electrised with vitreous or resinous electricity; whereas if it was supposed to receive electricity, when electrised by resin, and to part with it when electrised by glass, it ought to revolve different ways; which also forcibly opposes the theory of positive and negative electricity. As an electrised point with either kind of electricity causes a stream of air to pass from it in the direction of the point, it seems to affect the air much in the same manner as the fluid matter of heat affects it; that is, it will not readily pass through it, but will adhere to the particles of air, and is thus carried away with them. From this it will also appear, that points do not attract electricity, properly speaking, but suffer it to depart from them; as it is there less attracted to the body which it surrounds, than by any other part of the surface. And as a point presented to an electrised conductor facilitates the discharge of it, and blows the flame of a candle towards the conductor, whether vitreous or resinous electricity be accumulated upon it; it follows, that in both cases some electric matter passes from the point to the conductor, and that hence there are two electric ethers; and that they combine or explode when they meet together, and give out light and heat, and occupy less space in this their combined state, like the union of nitrous gas with oxygen gas. IV. _Accumulation of Electric Ethers by Contact._ The electric ethers may be separately accumulated by contact of conductors with nonconductors, by vicinity of the two ethers, by heat, and by decomposition. Glass is believed to consist in part of consolidated resinous ether, and thence to attract an electric atmosphere round it, which consists of a greater proportion of vitreous ether compared to the quantity of the resinous, as mentioned in Proposition No. 4. This atmosphere may stand off a line from the surface of the glass, though its attractive or repulsive power may extend to a much greater distance; and a more equally mixed electric atmosphere may stand off about the same distance from the surface of a cushion. Now when a cushion is forcibly pressed upon the surface of a glass cylinder or plane, the atmosphere of the cushion is forced within that of the glass, and consequently the vitreous part of it is brought within the sphere of the attraction of the resinous ether combined with the glass, and therefore becomes attracted by it in addition to the vitreous part of the spontaneous atmosphere of the glass; and the resinous part of the atmosphere of the cushion is at the same time repelled by its vicinity to the combined resinous ether of the glass. From both which circumstances a vitreous ether alone surrounds the part of the glass on which the cushion is forcibly pressed; which does not, nevertheless, resemble an electrised coated jar; as this accumulation of vitreous ether on one side of the glass is not so violently condensed, or so forcibly attracted to the glass by the loose resinous ether on the other side of it, as occurs in the charged coated jar. Hence as weak differences of the kinds or quantities of electricity do not very rapidly change place, if the cushion be suddenly withdrawn, with or without friction, I suppose an accumulation of vitreous electric ether will be left on the surface of the glass, which will diffuse itself on an insulated conductor by the assistance of points, or will gradually be dissipated in the air, probably like odours by the repulsion of its own particles, or may be conducted away by the surrounding air as it is repelled from it, or by the moisture or other impurities of the atmosphere. And hence I do not suppose the friction of the glass-globe to be necessary, except for the purpose of more easily removing the parts of the surface from the pressure of the cushion to the points of the prime conductor, and to bring them more easily into reciprocal contact. When sealing wax or sulphur is rubbed by a cushion, exactly the same circumstance occurs, but with the different ethers; as the resinous ether of the spontaneous atmosphere of the cushion, when it is pressed within the spontaneous atmosphere of the sealing wax, is attracted by the solid vitreous ether, which is combined with it; and at the same time the vitreous ether of the cushion is repelled by it; and hence an atmosphere of resinous ether alone exists between the sealing wax and the cushion thus pressed together. It is nevertheless possible, that friction on both sealing wax and glass may add some facility to the accumulations of their opposite ethers by the warmth which it occasions. As most electric machines succeed best after being warmed, I think even in dry frosty seasons. Though when a cushion is applied to a smooth surfaced glass, so as to intermix their electric atmospheres, the vitreous ether of the cushion is attracted by the resinous ether combined with the glass; but does not intermix with it, but only adheres to it: and as the glass turns round, the vitreous electric atmosphere stands on the solid resinous electric ether combined with the glass; and is taken away by the metallic points of the prime conductor. Yet if the surface of the glass be roughened by scratching it with a diamond or with hard sand, a new event occurs; which is, that the vitreous ether attracted from the cushion by the resinous ether combined with the glass becomes adhesive to it; and stands upon the roughened glass, and will not quit the glass to go to the prime conductor; whence the surface of the glass having a vitreous electric atmosphere united, as it were, to its inequalities, becomes similar to resin; and will now attract resinous electric ether, like a stick of sealing wax, without combining with it. Whence this curious and otherwise unintelligible phenomenon, that smooth surfaced glass will give vitreous electric ether to an insulated conductor, and glass with a roughened surface will give resinous ether to it. V. _Accumulation of electric ethers by vicinity._ Though the contact of a cushion on the whirling glass is the easiest method yet in use for the accumulation of the vitreous electric ether on an insulated conductor; yet there are other methods of effecting this, as by the vicinity of the two electric ethers with a nonconductor between them. Thus I believe a great quantity of both vitreous and resinous electric ether may be accumulated in the following manner. Let a glass jar be coated within in the usual manner; but let it have a loose external coating, which can easily be withdrawn by an insulating handle. Then charge the jar, as highly as it may be, by throwing into it vitreous electric ether; and in this state hermetically seal it, if practicable, otherwise close it with a glass stopple and wax. When the external coating is drawn off by an insulating handle, having previously had a communication with the earth, it will possess an accumulation of resinous electric ether; and then touching it with your finger, a spark will be seen, and there will cease to be any accumulated ether. Thus by alternately replacing this loose coating, and withdrawing it from the sealed charged jar, by means of an insulating handle; and by applying it to one insulated conductor, when it is in the vicinity of the jar; and to another insulated conductor, when it is withdrawn; vitreous electric ether may be accumulated on one of them, and resinous on the other; and thus I suspect an immense quantity of both ethers may be produced without friction or much labour, if a large electric battery was so contrived; and that it might be applied to many mechanical purposes, where other explosions are now used, as in the place of steam engines, or to rend rocks, or timber, or destroy invading armies! The principle of this mode of accumulating the two electric ethers in some measure resembles that of Volta's Electrophorus and Bennet's Doubler. VI. _Accumulation of electric ethers by heat and by decomposition._ When glass or amber is heated by the fire in a dry season, I suspect that it becomes in some degree electric; as either of the electric ethers which is combined with them may have its combination with those materials loosened by the application of heat; and that on this account they may more forcibly attract the opposite one from the air in their vicinity. It has long been known, that a siliceous stone called the tourmalin, when its surfaces are polished, if it be laid down before the fire, will become electrified with vitreous, or what is called positive electricity on its upper surface; and resinous, or what is called negative electricity on its under surface; which I suppose lay in contact with somewhat which supported it near the fire. In this experiment I suppose the tourmalin to be naturally combined with resinous electric ether like glass; which on one side next towards the fire by the increase of its attractive power, owing to the heat having loosened its combination with the earth of the stone, more strongly attracts vitreous electric ether from the atmosphere; which now stands on its surface: and then as the lower surface of the stone lies in contact with the hearth, the less quantity of vitreous ether is there repelled by the greater quantity of it on the upper surface; while the resinous ether is attracted by it: and the stone is thus charged like a coated jar with vitreous electric ether condensed on one side of it, and resinous on the other. So cats, as they lie by the fire in a frosty day, become so electric as frequently to give a perceptible spark to one's finger from their ears without friction. A fourth method of separating the two ethers would seem to be by the decomposition of metallic bodies, as in the experiment with Volta's Galvanic pile; which is said by Mr. Davy to act so much more powerfully, when an acid is added to the water used in the experiment; as will be spoken of below. From experiments made by M. Saussure on the electricity of evaporated water from hot metallic vessels, and from those of china and glass, he found when the vessel was calcined or made rusty by the evaporating water, that the electricity of it was positive (or vitreous), and that from china or glass was negative (or resinous), Encyclop. Britan. Art. Elect. No. 206, which seems also to show, that vitreous electric ether was given out or produced by the corrosion of metals, and resinous ether from the evaporation of water. VII. _The spark from the conductor, and of electric light._ When either the vitreous or resinous electric ether is accumulated on an insulated conductor, and an uninsulated conductor, as the finger of an attendant, is applied nearly in contact with it, what happens? The attractive and repulsive powers of the accumulated electric ether pass through the nonconducting plate of air, and if it be of the vitreous kind, it attracts the resinous electric ether of the finger towards it, and repels the vitreous electric ether of the finger from it. Hence there exists for an instant a charged plate of air between the finger and the prime conductor, with an accumulation of vitreous ether on one side of it, and of resinous ether on the other side of it; and lastly these two kinds of electric ethers suddenly unite by their powerful attraction of each other, explode, and give out heat and light, and rupture the plate of nonconducting air, which separated them. The rupture or disjunction of the plate of air is known by the sound of the spark, as of thunder; which shows that a vacuum of air was previously produced by the explosion of the electric fluids, and a vibration of the air in consequence of the sudden joining again of the sides of the vacuum. The light which attends electric sparks and shocks, is not accounted for by the Theory of Dr. Franklin. I suspect that it is owing to the combination of the two electric ethers, from which as from all chemical explosions both light and heat are set at liberty, and because a smell is said to be perceptible from electric sparks, and even a taste which must be deduced from new combinations, or decompositions, as in other explosions: add to this that the same thing occurs, when electric shocks are passed through eggs in the dark, or through water, a luminous line is seen like the explosion of a train of gunpowder; lastly, whether light is really produced in the passage of the Galvanic electricity through the eyes, or that the sensation alone of light is perceived by its stimulating the optic nerve, has not yet been investigated; but I suspect the former, as it emits light from its explosion even in passing through eggs and through water, as mentioned above. VIII. _The shock from the coated jar, and of electric condensation._ 1. When a glass jar is coated on both sides, and either vitreous or resinous electricity is thrown upon the coating on one side, and there is a communication to the earth from the other side, the same thing happens as in the plate of air between the finger and prime conductor above described; that is, the accumulated electricity, if it be of the vitreous kind, on one coating of the glass jar will attract the resinous part of the electricity, which surrounds or penetrates the coating on the other side of the jar, and also repel the vitreous part of it; but this occurs on a much more extensive surface than in the instance of the plate of air between the finger and prime conductor. The difference between electric sparks and shocks consists in this circumstance, that in the former the insulating medium, whether of air, or of thin glass, is ruptured in one part, and thus a communication is made between the vitreous and resinous ethers, and they unite immediately, like globules of quicksilver, when pressed forcibly together: but in the electric shock a communication is made by some conducting body applied to the other extremities of the vitreous, and of the resinous atmospheres, through which they pass and unite, whether both sides of the coated jar are insulated, or only one side of it. And in this line, as they reciprocally meet, they appear to explode and give out light and heat, and a new combination of the two ethers is produced, as a residuum after the explosion, which probably occupies much less space than either the vitreous or resinous ethers did separately before. At the same time there may be another unrestrainable ethereal fluid yet unobserved, given out from this explosion, which rends oak trees, bursts stone-walls, lights inflammable substances, and fuses metals, or dissipates them in a calciform smoak, along with which great light and much heat are emitted, or these effects are produced by the heat and light only thus set at liberty by their synchronous and sudden evolution. 2. The curious circumstance of electric condensation appears from the violence of the shock of the coated jar compared with the strongest spark from an insulated conductor, though the latter possesses a much greater surface; when vitreous electric ether is thrown on one side of a coated jar, it attracts the resinous electric ether of the other side of the coated jar; and the same occurs, when resinous ether is thrown on one side of it, it attracts the vitreous ether of the other side of it, and thus the vitreous electric ether on one side of the jar, and the resinous ether on the other side of it become condensed, that is accumulated in less space, by their reciprocal attraction of each other. This condensation of the two electric ethers owing to their reciprocal attraction appears from another curious event, that the thinner the glass jar is, the stronger will the charge be on the same quantity of surface, as then the two ethers approaching nearer without their intermixing attract each other stronger, and consequently condense each other more. And when the glass jar is very thin the reciprocal attractive powers of the vitreous and resinous ether attract each other so violently as at length to pass through the glass by rupturing it, in the same manner as a less forcible attraction of them ruptures and passes through the plate of air in the production of sparks from the prime conductor. As these two ethers on each side of a charged coated jar so powerfully attract each other, when a communication is made between them by some conducting substance as in the common mode of discharging an electrised coated jar, they reciprocally pass to each other for the purpose of combining, as some chemical fluids are known to do; as when nitrous gas and oxygen gas are mixed together; whence as these fluids pass both ways to intermix with each other, and then explode; a bur appears on each side of a quire of paper well pressed together, when a strong electric shock is passed through it; which is occasioned by their explosion, like a train of gunpowder, and consequent emission of some other ethereal fluid, either those of heat and light or of some new one not yet observed. Whence it becomes difficult to explain, according to the theory of Dr. Franklin, which way the electric fluid passed; and which side of the coated jar contained positive and which the negative charge according to that doctrine. But the theory of the ingenious Dr. Franklin failed also in explaining other phenomena of the coated jar; since if the positive electricity accumulated on one side of the jar repelled the electricity from the coating on the other side of it, so as to produce an electric vacuum; why should it be so eager, when a communication is made by some conducting body, to run into that vacuum by its attraction or gravitation, which has been made by its repulsion; as thus it seems to be violently attracted by the vacuum, from which it had previously repelled a fluid similar to itself, which is not easily to be comprehended. 3. There is another mode by which either vitreous or resinous electric ether is capable of condensation; which consists in contracting the volume, so as to diminish the surface of the electrised body; as was ingeniously shown by Dr. Franklin's experiment of electrising a silver tankard with a length of chain rolled up within it; and then drawing up the chain by a silk string, which weakened the electric attraction of the tankard; which was strengthened again by returning the chain into it; thus the condensation of an electrised cloud is believed to condense the electric ether, which it contains, and thus to occasion the lightning passing from one cloud to another, or from a cloud into the earth. This experiment of the chain and tankard is said to succeed as well with what is termed negative electricity in the theory of Dr. Franklin, as with what is termed positive electricity; but in that theory the negative electricity means a less quantity or total deprivation or vacuity of that fluid; now to condense negative electricity by lowering the suspended chain into the tankard ought to make it less negative; whereas in this experiment I am told it becomes more so, as appears by its stronger repulsion of cork balls suspended on silk strings, and previously electrised by rubbed sealing wax: and if the negative electricity be believed to be a perfect vacuum of it, the condensation of a vacuum of electricity is totally incomprehensible; and this experiment alone seems to demonstrate the existence of two electric ethers. IX. _Of Galvanic Electricity._ 1. The conductors of electricity, as well as the nonconductors of it, have probably a portion of the vitreous and resinous ethers combined with them, and have also another portion of these ethers diffused round them, which forms their natural or spontaneous adhesive atmospheres; and which exists in different proportions round them correspondent in quantity to those which are combined with them, but opposite in kind. These adhesive spontaneous atmospheres of electricity are shown to consist of different proportions or quantities of the electric ethers by Mr. Bennet's Doubler of Electricity, as mentioned in his work called New Experiments on Electricity, sold by Johnson. In this work, p. 91, the blade of a steel knife was evidently, in his language, positive, compared to a soft iron wire which was comparatively negative; so the adhesive electricity of gold, silver, copper, brass, bismuth, mercury, and various kinds of wood and stone, were what he terms positive or vitreous; and that of tin and zinc, what he terms negative or resinous. Where these spontaneous atmospheres of diffused electricity surrounding two conducting bodies, as two pieces of silver, are perfectly similar, they probably do not intermix when brought into the vicinity of each other; but if these spontaneous atmospheres of diffused electricity are different in respect to the proportion of the two ethers, or perhaps in respect to their quantity, in however small degree either of these circumstances exists, they may be made to unite but with some difficulty; as the two metallic plates, suppose one of silver, and another of zinc, which they surround, must be brought into absolute or adhesive contact; or otherwise these atmospheres may be forced together so as to be much flattened, and compress each other where they meet, like small globules of quicksilver when pressed together, but without uniting. This curious phenomenon may be seen in more dense electric atmospheres accumulated by art, as in the following experiment ascribed to Mr. Canton. Lay a wooden skewer the size of a goose-quill across a dry wine-glass, and another across another wine-glass; let the ends of them touch each other, as they lie in a horizontal line; call them X and Y; approach a rubbed glass-tube near the external end of the skewer X, but not so as to touch it; then separate the two skewers by removing the wine-glasses further from each other; and lastly, withdraw the rubbed glass-tube, and the skewer X will now be found to possess resinous electricity, which has been generally called negative or minus electricity; and the skewer Y will be found to possess vitreous, or what is generally termed positive or plus electricity. The same phenomenon will occur if rubbed sealing wax be applied near to, but not in contact with, the skewer X, as the skewer X will then be left with an atmosphere of vitreous ether, and the skewer Y with one of resinous ether. These experiments also evince the existence of two electric fluids, as they cannot be understood from an idea of one being a greater or less quantity of the same material; as a vacuum of electric ether, brought near to one end of the skewer, cannot be conceived so to attract the ether as to produce a vacuum at the other end. In this experiment the electric atmospheres, which are nearly of similar kinds, do not seem to touch, as there may remain a thin plate of air between them, in the same manner as small globules of mercury may be pressed together so as to compress each other, long before they intermix; or as plates of lead or brass require strongly to be pressed together before they acquire the attraction of cohesion; that is, before they come into real contact. 2. It is probable, that all bodies are more or less perfect conductors, as they have less or more of either of the electric ethers combined with them; as mentioned in Preliminary Proposition, No. VI. as they may then less resist the passage of either of the ethers through them. Whence some conducting bodies admit the junction of these spontaneous electric atmospheres, in which the proportions or quantities of the two ethers are not very different, with greater facility than others. Thus in the common experiments, where the vitreous or resinous ether is accumulated by art, metallic bodies have been esteemed the best conductors, and next to these water, and all other moist bodies; but it was lately discovered, that dry charcoal, recently burnt, was a more perfect conductor than metals; and it appears from the experiments discovered by Galvani, which have thence the name of Galvanism, that animal flesh, and particularly perhaps the nerves of animals, both which are composed of much carbon and water, are the most perfect conductors yet discovered; that is, that they give the least resistance to the junction of the spontaneous electric atmospheres, which exist round metallic bodies, and which differ very little in respect to the proportions of their vitreous and resinous ingredients. Thus also, though where the accumulated electricities are dense, as in charging a coated glass-jar, the glass, which intervenes, may be of considerable thickness, and may still become charged by the stronger attraction of the secondary electric ethers; but where the spontaneous adhesive electric atmospheres are employed to charge plates of air, as in the Galvanic pile, or probably to charge thin animal membranes or cuticles, as perhaps in the shock given by the torpedo or gymnotus, it seems necessary that the intervening nonconducting plate must be extremely thin, that it may become charged by the weaker attraction of these small quantities or difference of the spontaneous electric atmospheres; and in this circumstance only, I suppose, the shocks from the Galvanic pile, and from the torpedo and gymnotus, differ from those of the coated jar. 3. When atmospheres of electricity, which do not differ much in the quantity or proportion of their vitreous and resinous ethers, approach each other, they are not easily or rapidly united; but the predominant vitreous or resinous ether of one of them repels the similar ether of the opposed atmosphere, and attracts the contrary kind of ether. The slowness or difficulty with, which atmospheres, which differ but little in kind or in density, unite with each other, appears not only from the experiment of Mr. Canton above related, but also from the repeated smaller shocks, which may be taken from a charged coated jar after the first or principal discharge, if the conducting medium has not been quickly removed, as is also mentioned above. Hence those atmospheres of either kind of electric matter, which differ but very little from each other in kind or quantity, require the most perfect conductors to cause them to unite. Thus it appears by Mr. Bennet's doubler, as mentioned in the Preliminary Proposition, No. VI. that the natural adhesive atmosphere round silver contains more vitreous electricity than that naturally round zinc; but when thin plates of these metals, each about an ounce in weight, are laid on each other, or moderately pressed together, their atmospheres do not unite. For metallic plates, which when laid on each other, do not adhere, cannot be said to be in real contact, of which their not adhering is a proof; and in consequence a thin plate of air, or of their own repulsive ethers exists between them. Hence when two plates of zinc and silver are thus brought in to the vicinity of each other, the plate of air between them, as they are not in adhesive contact, becomes like a charged coated jar; and if these two metallic plates are touched by your dry hands, they do not unite their electricities, as the dry cuticle is not a sufficiently good conductor; but if one of the metals be put above, and another under the tongue, the saliva and moist mucous membrane, muscular fibres, and nerves, supply so good a conductor, that this very minute electric shock is produced, and a kind of pungent taste is perceived. When a plate or pencil of silver is put between the upper lip and the gum, and a plate or pencil of zinc under the tongue, a sensation of light is perceived in the eyes, as often as the exterior extremities of these metals are brought into contact; which is owing in like manner to the discharge of a very minute electric shock, which would not have been produced but by the intervention of such good conductors as moist membranes, muscular fibres, and nerves. In this situation, a sensation of light is produced in the eyes; which seems to show, that these ethers pass through nerves more easily, than through muscular flesh simply; since the passage of them through the retina of the eyes from the upper gum to the parts beneath the tongue is a more distant one, than would otherwise appear necessary. It is not so easy to give the sensation of light in the eyes by passing a small shock of artificially accumulated electricity through, the eyes (though this may, I believe, be done) because this artificial accumulated electricity, as it passes with greater velocity than the spontaneous accumulations of it, will readily permeate the muscles or other moist parts of animal bodies; whereas the spontaneous accumulations of electricity seem to require the best of all conductors, as animal nerves, to facilitate their passage. 4. In the Galvanic pile of Volta this electric shock becomes so much increased, as to pass by less perfect conductors, and to give shocks to the arms of the conducting person, if the cuticle of his hands be moistened, and even to show sparks like the coated jar; which appears to be effected in this manner. When a plate of silver is laid horizontally on a plate of zinc, the plate of air between them becomes charged like a coated jar; as the silver, naturally possessing more vitreous electric ether, repels the vitreous ether, which the zinc possesses in less quantity, and attracts the resinous ether of the zinc. Whence the inferior surface of the plate of zinc abounds now with vitreous ether, and its upper surface with resinous ether. Beneath this pair of plates lay a cloth moistened with water, or with some better conductor, as salt and water, or a slight acid mixed with water, or volatile alcali of ammoniac mixed with water, and this vitreous electric ether on the lower surface of the zinc plate will be given to the second silver plate which lies beneath it; and thus this second silver plate will possess not only its own natural vitreous atmosphere, which was denser or in greater quantity than that of the zinc plate next beneath it, but now acquires an addition of vitreous ether from the zinc plate above it, conducted to it through the moist cloth. This then will repel more vitreous ether from the second zinc plate into the third silver one; and so on till the plates of air between the zincs and silvers are all charged, and each stronger and stronger, as they descend in the pile. If the reader still prefers the Franklinian theory of positive and negative electricity, he will please to put the word positive for vitreous, and negative for resinous, and he will find the theory of the Galvanic pile equally thus accounted for. 5. When a Galvanic pile is thus placed, and a communication between the two ends of it is made by wires, so that the electric shocks pass through water, the water becomes decomposed in some measure, and oxygen is liberated from it at the point of one wire, and hydrogen at the point of the other; and this though a syphon of water be interposed between them. This curious circumstance seems to evince the existence of two electric ethers, which enter the water at different ends of the syphon, and have chemical affinities to the component parts of it; the resinous ether sets at liberty the hydrogen at one end, and the vitreous ether the oxygen at the other end of the conducting medium. Hence it must appear, that the longer the Galvanic pile, or the greater the number of the alternate pieces of silver and zinc that it consists of, the stronger will be the Galvanic shock; but there is another circumstance, difficult to explain, which is the perpetual decomposition of water by the Galvanic pile; when water is made the conducting medium between the two extremities of the pile. As no conductors of electricity are absolutely perfect, there must be produced a certain accumulation of vitreous ether on one side of each charged plate of the Galvanic pile, and of resinous ether on the other side of it, before the discharge takes place, even though the conducting medium be in apparent contact. When the discharge does take place, the whole of the accumulated electricity explodes and vanishes; and then an instant of time is required for the silver and zinc again to attract from the air, or other bodies in their vicinity, their spontaneous natural atmospheres, and then another discharge ensues; and so repeatedly and perpetually till the surface of one of the metallic plates becomes so much oxydated or calcined, that it ceases to act. Hence a perpetual motion may be said to be produced, with an incessant decomposition of water into the two gasses of oxygen and hydrogen; which must probably be constantly proceeding on all moist Surfaces, where a chain of electric conductors exists, surrounded with different proportions of the two electric ethers. Whence the ceaseless liberation of oxygen from the water has oxydated or calcined the ores of metals near the surface of the earth, as of manganese, of zinc into lapis calaminaris, of iron into various ochres, and other calciform ores. From this source also the corrosion of some metals may be traced, when they are immersed in water in the vicinity of each other, as when the copper sheathing of ships was held on by iron nails. And hence another great operation of nature is probably produced, I mean the restoration of oxygen to the atmosphere from the surface of the earth in dewy mornings, as well as from the perspiration of vegetable leaves; which atmospheric oxygen is hourly destructible by the respiration of animals and plants, by combustion, and by other oxydations. 6. The combination of the electric ethers with metallic bodies, before mentioned appears from the Galvanic pile; since, according to the experiments of Mr. Davy, when an acid is mixed with the water placed between the alternate pairs of silver and zinc plates, a much greater electric shock is produced by the same pile; and an anonymous writer in the Phil. Magaz. No. 36, for May 1801, asserts, that when the intervening cloths or papers are moistened with pure alcali, as a solution of pure ammonia, the effect is greater than by any other material. It must here be observed, that both the acid and the alcaline solution, or common salt and water, and even water alone, in these experiments much erodes the plates of zinc, and somewhat tarnishes those of silver. Whence it would appear, that as by the repeated explosions of the two electric ethers in the conducting water, both oxygen and hydrogen are liberated; the oxygen erodes the zinc plates, and thus increases the Galvanic shock by liberating their combined electric ethers: and that this erosion is much increased by a mixture either of acid or of volatile alcali with the water. Further experiments are wanting on this subject to show whether metallic bodies emit either or both of the electric ethers at the time of their solution or erosion in acids or in alcalies. X. _Of the two Magnetic Ethers._ 1. Magnetism coincides with electricity in so many important points, that the existence of two magnetic ethers, as well as of two electric ones, becomes highly probable. We shall suppose, that in a common bar of iron or steel the two magnetic ethers exist intermixed or in their neutral state; which for the greater ease of speaking of them may be called arctic ether and antarctic ether; and in this state like the two electric fluids they are not cognizable by our senses of experiments. When these two magnetic ethers are separated from each other, and the arctic ether is accumulated on one end of an iron or steel bar, which is then called the north pole of the magnet, and the antarctic ether is accumulated on the other end of the bar, and is then termed the south pole of the magnet; they become capable of attracting other pieces of iron or steel, and are thus cognizable by experiments. It seems probable, that it is not the magnetic ether itself which attracts or repels particles of iron, but that an attractive and repulsive ether attends the magnetic ethers, as was shown to attend the electric ones in No. II. 9. of this Note; because magnetism does not pass through other bodies, as it does not escape from magnetised steel when in contact with other bodies; just as the electric fluids do not pass through glass, but the attractive and repellent ethers, which attend both the magnetic and electric ethers, pass through all bodies. 2. The prominent articles of analogical coincidence between magnetism and electricity are first, that when one end of an iron bar possesses an accumulation of arctic magnetic ether, or northern polarity; the other end possesses an accumulation of antarctic magnetic ether, or southern polarity; in the same manner as when vitreous electric ether is accumulated on one side of a coated glass jar, resinous electric ether becomes accumulated on the other side of it; as the vitreous and resinous ethers strongly attract each other, and strongly repel the ethers of the same denomination, but are prevented from intermixing by the glass plane between them; so the arctic and antarctic ethers attract each other, and repel those of similar denomination, but are prevented from intermixing by the iron or steel being a bad conductor of them; they will, nevertheless, sooner combine, when the bar is of soft iron, than when it is of hardened steel; and then they slowly combine without explosion, that is, without emitting heat and light like the electric ethers, and therefore resemble a mixture of oxygen and pure ammonia; which unite silently producing a neutral fluid without emitting any other fluids previously combined with them. Secondly, If the north pole of a magnetic bar be approached near to the eye of a sewing needle, the arctic ether of the magnet attracts the antarctic ether, which resides in the needle towards the eye of it, and repels the arctic ether, which resides in the needle towards the point, precisely in the same manner as occurs in presenting an electrised, glass tube, or a rubbed stick of sealing wax to one extremity of two skewers insulated horizontally on wine-glasses in the experiment ascribed to Mr. Canton, and described in No. IX. 1, of this Additional Note, and also so exactly resembles the method of producing a separation and consequent accumulation of the two electric ethers by pressing a cushion on glass or on sealing wax, described in No. 4 of this Note, that their analogy is evidently apparent. Thirdly, When much accumulated electricity is approached to one end of a long glass tube by a charged prime conductor, there will exist many divisions of the vitreous and resinous electricity alternately; as the vitreous ether attracts the resinous ether from a certain distance on the surface of the glass tube, and repels the vitreous ether; but, as this surface is a bad conductor, these reciprocal attractions and repulsions do not extend very far along it, but cease and recur in various parts of it. Exactly similar to this, when a magnetic bar is approximated to the end of a common bar of iron or steel, as described in Mr. Cavallo's valuable Treatise on Magnetism; the arctic ether of the north pole of the magnetic bar attracts the antarctic ether of the bar of common iron towards the end in contact, and repels the arctic ether; but, as iron and steel are as bad conductors of magnetism, as glass is of electricity, this accumulation of arctic ether extends but a little way, and then there exists an accumulation of antarctic ether; and thus reciprocally in three or four divisions of the bar, which now becomes magnetised, as the glass tube became electrised. Another striking feature, which shows the sisterhood of electricity and magnetism, consists in the origin of both of them from the earth, or common mass of matter. The eduction of electricity from the earth is shown by an insulated cushion soon ceasing to supply either the vitreous or resinous ether to the whirling globe of glass or of sulphur; the eduction of magnetism from the earth appears from the following experiment: if a bar of iron be set upright on the earth in this part of the world, it becomes in a short time magnetical; the lower end possessing northern polarity, or arctic ether, and the higher end in consequence possessing southern polarity or antarctic ether; which may be well explained, if we suppose with Mr. Cavallo, that the earth itself is one great magnet, with its southern polarity or antarctic ether at the northern end of its axis; and, in consequence, that it attracts the arctic ether of the iron bar into that end of it which touches the earth, and repels the antarctic ether of the iron bar to the other end of it, exactly the same as when the southern pole of an artificial magnet is brought into contact with one end of a sewing needle. 3. The magnetic and electric ethers agree in the characters above mentioned, and perhaps in many others, but differ in the following ones. The electric ethers pass readily through metallic, aqueous, and carbonic bodies, but do not permeate vitreous or resinous ones; though on the surfaces of these they are capable of adhering, and of being accumulated by the approach or contact of other bodies; while the magnetic ethers will not permeate any bodies, and are capable of being accumulated only on iron and steel by the approach or contact of natural or artificial magnets, or of the earth; at the same time the attractive and repulsive powers both of the magnetic and electric ethers will act through all bodies, like those of gravitation and heat. Secondly, The two electric ethers rush into combination, when they can approach each other, after having been separated and condensed, and produce a violent explosion emitting the heat and light, which were previously combined with them; whereas the two magnetic ethers slowly combine, after having been separated and accumulated on the opposite ends of a soft iron bar, and without emitting heat and light produce a neutral mixture, which, like the electric combination, ceases to be cognizable by our senses or experiments. Thirdly, The wonderful property of the magnetic ethers, when separately accumulated on the ends of a needle, endeavouring to approach the two opposite poles of the earth; nothing similar to which has been observed in the electric ethers. From these strict analogies between electricity and magnetism, we may conclude that the latter consists of two ethers as well as the former; and that they both, when separated by art or nature, combine by chemical affinity when they approach, the one exploding, and then consisting of a residuum after having emitted heat and light; and the other producing simply a neutralised fluid by their union. XI. _Conclusion._ 1. When two fluids are diffused together without undergoing any change of their chemical properties, they are said simply to be mixed, and not combined; as milk and water when poured together, or as oxygen and azote in the common atmosphere. So when salt or sugar is diffused in water, it is termed solution, and not combination; as no change of their chemical properties succeeds. But when an acid is mixed with a pure alcali a combination is produced, and the mixture is said to become neutral, as it does not possess the chemical properties which either of the two ingredients possessed in their separate state, and is therefore similar to neither of them. But when a carbonated alcali, as mild salt of tartar, is mixed with a mineral acid, they presently combine as above, but now the carbonic acid flies forcibly away in the form of gas; this, therefore, may be termed a kind of explosion, but cannot properly be so called, as the ethereal fluids of heat and light are not principally emitted, but an aerial one or gas; which may probably acquire a small quantity of heat from the combining matters. But when strong acid of nitre is poured upon charcoal in fine powder, or upon oil of cloves, a violent explosion ensues, and the ethereal matters of heat and light are emitted in great abundance, and are dissipated; while in the former instance the oxygen of the nitrous acid unites with the carbone forming carbonic acid gas, and the azote escapes in its gaseous form; which may be termed a residuum after the explosion, and may be confined in a proper apparatus, which the heat and light cannot; for the former, if its production be great and sudden, bursts the vessels, or otherwise it passes slowly through them; and the latter passes through transparent bodies, and combines with opake ones. But where ethers only are concerned in an explosion, as the two electric ones, which are previously difficult to confine in vessels; the repulsive ethers of heat and light are given out; and what remains is a combination of the two electric ethers; which in this state are attracted by all bodies, and form atmospheres round them. These combined electric atmospheres must possess less heat and light after their explosion; which they seem afterwards to acquire at the time they are again separated from each other, probably from the combined heat and combined light of the cushion and glass, or of the cushion and resin; by the contact of which they are separated; and not from the diffused heat of them; but no experiments have yet been made to ascertain this fact, this combination of the vitreous and resinous ethers may be esteemed the residuum after their explosion. 2. Hence the essence of explosion consists in two bodies, which are previously united with heat and light, so strongly attracting each other, as to set at liberty those two repulsive ethers; but it happens, that these explosive materials cannot generally be brought into each other's vicinity in a state of sufficient density; unless they are also previously combined with some other material beside the light and heat above spoken of: as in the nitrous acid, the oxygen is previously combined with azote; and is thus in a condensed state, before it is brought into the contact or vicinity of the carbone; there are however bodies which will slowly explode; or give out heat and light, without being previously combined with other bodies; as phosphorus in the common atmosphere, some dead fish in a certain degree of putridity, and some living insects probably by their respiration in transparent lungs, which is a kind of combustion. But the two electric ethers are condensed by being brought into vicinity with each other with a nonconductor between them; and thus explode, violently as soon as they communicate, either by rupturing the interposed nonconductor, or by a metallic communication. This curious method of a previous condensation of the two exploding matters, without either of them being combined with any other material except with the ethers of heat and light, distinguishes, this ethereal explosion from that of most other bodies; and seems to have been the cause, which prevented the ingenious Dr. Franklin, and others since his time, from ascribing the powerful effects of the electric battery, and of lightning in bursting trees, inflaming combustible materials, and fusing metals, to chemical explosion; which it resembles in every other circumstance, but in the manner of the previous condensation of the materials, so as violently to attract each other, and suddenly set at liberty the heat and light, with which one or both of them were combined. 3. This combination of vitreous and resinous electric ethers is again destroyed or weakened by the attractions of other bodies; as they separate intirely, or exist in different proportions, forming atmospheres round conducting and nonconducting bodies; and in this they resemble other combinations of matters; as oxygen and azote, when united in the production of nitrous acid, are again separated by carbone; which attracts the oxygen more powerfully, than that attracts the azote, with which it is combined. This mode of again separating the combined electric ethers by pressing them, as they surround bodies in different proportions, into each other's atmospheres, as by the glass and cushion, has not been observed respecting the decomposition of other bodies; when their minute particles are brought so near together as to decompose each other; which has thence probably contributed to prevent this decomposition of the two combined electric ethers from being ascribed to chemical laws; but, as far as we know, the attractive and repulsive atmospheres round the minute particles of bodies in chemical operations may act in a similar manner; as the attractive and repulsive atmospheres, which accompany the electric ethers surrounding the larger masses of matter, and that hence both the electric and the chemical explosions are subject to the same laws, and also the decomposition again of those particles, which were combined in the act of explosion. 4. It is probable that this theory of electric and magnetic attractions and repulsions, which so visibly exist in atmospheres round larger masses of matter, may be applied to explain the invisible attractions and repulsions of the minute particles of bodies in chemical combinations and decompositions, and also to give a clear idea of the attractions of the great masses of matter, which form the gravitations of the universe. We are so accustomed to see bodies attract each other, when they are in absolute contact, as dew drops or particles of quicksilver forming themselves into spheres, as water rising in capillary tubes, the solution of salts and sugar in water, and the cohesion with which all hard bodies are held together, that we are not surprised at the attractions of bodies in contact with each other, but ascribe them to a law affecting all matter. In similar manner when two bodies in apparent contact repel each other, as oil thrown on water; or when heat converts ice into water and water into steam; or when one hard body in motion pushes another hard body out of its place; we feel no surprise, as these events so perpetually occur to us, but ascribe them as well as the attractions of bodies in contact with each other, to a general law of nature. But when distant bodies appear to attract or repel each other, as we believe that nothing can act where it does not exist, we are struck with astonishment; which is owing to our not seeing the intermediate ethers, the existence of which is ascertained by the electric and magnetic facts above related. From the facts and observations above mentioned electricity and magnetism consist each of them of two ethers, as the vitreous and resinous electric ethers, and the arctic and antarctic magnetic ethers. But as neither of the electric ethers will pass through glass or resin; and as neither of the magnetic ethers will pass through any bodies except iron; and yet the attractive and repulsive powers accompanying all these ethers permeate bodies of all kinds; it follows, that ethers more subtile than either the electric or magnetic ones attend those ethers forming atmospheres round them; as those electric and magnetic ethers themselves form atmospheres round other bodies. This secondary atmosphere of the electric one appears to consist of two ethers, like the electric one which it surrounds: but these ethers are probably more subtile as they permeate all bodies; and when they unite by the reciprocal approach of the bodies, which they surround, they do not appear to emit heat and light, as the primary electric atmospheres do; and therefore they are simpler fluids, as they are not previously combined with heat and light. The secondary magnetic atmospheres are also probably more subtile or simple than the primary ones. Hence we may suppose, that not only all the larger insulated masses of matter, but all the minute particles also, which constitute those masses, are surrounded by two ethereal fluids; which like the electric and magnetic ones attract each other forcibly, and as forcibly repel those of the same denomination; and at the same time strongly adhere to the bodies, which they surround. Secondly that these ethers are of the finer kind, like those secondary ones, which surround the primary electric and magnetic ethers; and that therefore they do not explode giving out heat and light when they unite, but simply combine, and become neutral; and lastly, that they surround different bodies in different proportions, as the vitreous and resinous electric ethers were shown to surround silver and zinc and many other metals in different proportions in No. IX. of this note. 5. For the greater ease of conversing on this subject, we shall call these two ethers, with which all bodies are surrounded, the masculine and the feminine ethers; and suppose them to possess the properties above mentioned. We should here however previously observe, that in chemical processes it is necessary, that the bodies, which are to combine or unite with each other, should be in a fluid state, and the particles in contact with each other; thus when salt is dissolving in water, the particles of salt unite with those of the water, which touch them; these particles of water become saturated, and thence attract some of the saline particles with less force; which are therefore attracted from them by those behind; and the first particles of water are again saturated from the solid salt; or in some similar processes the saturated combinations may subside or evaporate, as in the union of the two electric ethers, or in the explosion of gunpowder, and thus those in their vicinity may approach each other. This necessity of a liquid form for the purpose of combination appears in the lighting of gunpowder, as well as in all other combustion, the spark of fire applied dissolves the sulphur, and liquifies the combined heat; and by these means a fluidity succeeds, and the consequent attractions and repulsions, which form the explosion. The whole mixed mass of matter, of which the earth is composed, we suppose to be surrounded and penetrated by the two ethers, but with a greater proportion of the masculine ether than of the feminine. When a stone is elevated above the surface of the earth, we suppose it also to be surrounded with an atmosphere of the two ethers, but with a greater proportion of the feminine than of the masculine, and that these ethers adhere strongly by cohesion both to the earth and to the stone elevated above it. Now the greater quantity of the masculine ether of the earth becomes in contact with the greater quantity of the feminine ether of the stone above it; which it powerfully attracts, and at the same time repels the less quantity of the masculine ether of the stone. The reciprocal attractions of these two fluids, if not restrained by counter attractions, bring them together as in chemical combination, and thus they bring together the solid bodies, which they reciprocally adhere to; if they be not immovable; which solid bodies, when brought into contact, cohere by their own reciprocal attractions, and hence the mysterious affair of distant attraction or gravitation becomes intelligible, and consonant to the chemical combinations of fluids. To further elucidate these various attractions, if the patient reader be not already tired, he will please to attend to the following experiment: let a bit of sponge suspended on a silk line be moistened with a solution of pure alcali, and another similar piece of sponge be moistened with a weak acid, and suspended near the former; electrize one of them with vitreous ether, and the other with resinous ether; as they hang with a thin plate of glass between them: now as these two electric ethers appear to attract each other without intermixing; as neither of them can pass through glass; they must be themselves surrounded with secondary ethers, which pass through the glass, and attract each other, as they become in contact; as these secondary ethers adhere to the primary vitreous and resinous ethers, these primary ones are drawn by them into each other's vicinity by the attraction of cohesion, and become condensed on each side of the glass plane; and then when the glass plane is withdrawn, the two electric ethers being now in contact rush violently together, and draw along with them the pieces of moistened sponge, to which they adhere; and finally the acid and alcaline liquids being now brought into contact combine by their chemical affinity. The repulsions of distant bodies are also explicable by this idea of their being surrounded with two ethers, which we have termed masculine and feminine for the ease of conversing about them; and have compared them to vitreous and resinous electricity, and to arctic and antarctic magnetism. As when two particles of matter, or two larger masses of it, are surrounded both with their masculine ethers, these ethers repel each other or refuse to intermix; and in consequence the bodies to which they adhere, recede from each other; as two cork-balls suspended near each other, and electrised both with vitreous or both with resinous ether, repel each other; or as the extremities of two needles magnetised both with arctic, or both with antarctic ether, repel each other; or as oil and water surrounded both with their masculine, or both with their feminine ethers, repel each other without touching; so light is believed to be reflected from a mirror without touching its surface, and to be bent towards the edge of a knife, or refracted by its approach from a rarer medium into a denser one, by the repulsive ether of the mirror, and the attractive ones of the knife-edge, and of the denser medium. Thus a polished tea-cup slips on the polished saucer probably without their actual contact with each other, till a few drops of water are interposed between them by capillary attraction, and prevent its sliding by their tenacity. And so, lastly, one hard body in motion pushes another hard body out of its place by their repulsive ethers without being in contact; as appears from their not adhering to each other, which all bodies in real contact are believed to do. Whence also may be inferred the reason why bodies have been supposed to repel at one distance and attract at another, because they attract when their particles are in contact with each other, and either attract or repel when at a distance by the intervention of their attractive or repulsive ethers. Thus have I endeavoured to take one step further back into the mystery of the gravitation and repulsion of bodies, which appeared to be distant from each other, as of the sun and planets, as I before endeavoured to take one step further back into the mysteries of generation in my account of the production of the buds of vegetables in Phytologia. With what success these have been attended I now leave to the judgment of philosophical readers, from which I can make no appeal. ADDITIONAL NOTES. XIII. ANALYSIS OF TASTE. Fond Fancy's eye recalls the form divine, And Taste sits smiling upon Beauty's shrine. CANTO III. l. 221. The word Taste in its extensive application may express the pleasures received by any of our senses, when excited into action by the stimulus of external objects; as when odours stimulate the nostrils, or flavours the palate; or when smoothness, or softness, are perceived by the touch, or warmth by its adapted organ of sense. The word Taste is also used to signify the pleasurable trains of ideas suggested by language, as in the compositions of poetry and oratory. But the pleasures, consequent to the exertions of our sense of vision only, are designed here to be treated of, with occasional references to those of the ear, when they elucidate each other. When any of our organs of sense are excited into their due quantity of action, a pleasurable sensation succeeds, as shown in Zoonomia, Vol. I. Sect. IV. These are simply the pleasures attending perception, and not those which are termed the pleasures of Taste; which consist of additional pleasures arising from the peculiar forms or colours of objects, or of their peculiar combinations or successions, or from other agreeable trains of ideas previously associated with them. There are four sources of pleasure attendant on the excitation of the nerves of vision by light and colours, besides that simply of perception above mentioned; the first is derived from a degree of novelty of the forms, colours, numbers, combinations, or successions, and visible objects. The second is derived from a degree of repetition of their forms, colours, numbers, combinations, or successions. Where these two circumstances exist united in certain quantities, and compose the principal part of a landscape, it is termed picturesque by modern writers. The third source of pleasure from the perception of the visible world may be termed the melody of colours, which will be shown to coincide with melody of sounds: this circumstance may also accompany the picturesque, and will add to the pleasure it affords. The fourth source of pleasure from the perception of visible objects is derived from the previous association of other pleasurable trains of ideas with certain forms, colours, combinations, or successions of them. Whence the beautiful, sublime, romantic, melancholic, and other emotions, which have not acquired names to express them. We may add, that all these four sources of pleasure from perceptions are equally applicable to those of sounds as of sights. I. _Novelty or infrequency of visible objects._ The first circumstance, which suggests an additional pleasure in the contemplation of visible objects, besides that of simple perception, arises from their novelty or infrequency; that is from the unusual combinations or successions of their forms or colours. From this source is derived the perpetual cheerfulness of youth, and the want of it is liable to add a gloom to the countenance of age. It is this which produces variety in landscape compared with the common course of nature, an intricacy which incites investigation, and a curiosity which leads to explore the works of nature. Those who travel into foreign regions instigated by curiosity, or who examine and unfold the intricacies of sciences at home, are led by novelty; which not only supplies ornament to beauty or to grandeur, but adds agreeable surprise to the point of the epigram, and to the double meaning of the pun, and is courted alike by poets and philosophers. It should be here premised, that the word Novelty, as used in these pages, admits of degrees or quantities, some objects, or the ideas excited by them, possessing more or less novelty, as they are more or less unusual. Which the reader will please to attend to, as we have used the word Infrequency of objects, or of the ideas excited by them, to express the degrees or quantities of their novelty. The source, from which is derived the pleasure of novelty, is a metaphysical inquiry of great curiosity, and will on that account excuse my here introducing it. In our waking hours whenever an idea occurs, which is incongruous to our former experience, we instantly dissever the train of imagination by the power of volition; and compare the incongruous idea with our previous knowledge of nature, and reject it. This operation of the mind has not yet acquired a specific name, though it is exerted every minute of our waking hours, unless it may be termed INTUITIVE ANALOGY. It is an act of reasoning of which we are unconscious except by its effects in preserving the congruity of our ideas; Zoonomia, Vol. I. Sect. XVII. 5. 7. In our sleep as the power of volition is suspended, and consequently that of reason, when any incongruous ideas occur in the trains of imagination, which compose our dreams; we cannot compare them with our previous knowledge of nature and reject them; whence arises the perpetual inconsistency of our sleeping trains of ideas; and whence in our dreams we never feel the sentiment of novelty; however different the ideas, which present themselves, may be from the usual course of nature. But in our waking hours, whenever any object occurs which does not accord with the usual course of nature, we immediately and unconsciously exert our voluntary power, and examine it by intuitive analogy, comparing it with our previous knowledge of nature. This exertion of our volition excites many other ideas, and is attended with pleasurable sensation; which constitutes the sentiment of novelty. But when the object of novelty stimulates us so forcibly as suddenly to disunite our passing trains of ideas, as if a pistol be unexpectedly discharged, the emotion of surprise is experienced; which by exciting violent irritation and violent sensation, employs for a time the whole sensorial energy, and thus dissevers the passing trains of ideas; before the power of volition has time to compare them with the usual phenomena of nature; but as the painful emotion of fear is then generally added to that of surprise, as every one experiences, who hears a noise in the dark, which he cannot immediately account for; this great degree of novelty, when it produces much surprise, generally ceases to be pleasurable, and does not then belong to objects of taste. In its less degree surprise is generally agreeable, as it simply expresses the sentiment occasioned by the novelty of our ideas; as in common language we say, we are agreeably surprised at the unexpected meeting with a friend, which not only expresses the sentiment of novelty, but also the pleasure from other agreeable ideas associated with the object of it. It must appear from hence, that different persons must be affected more or less agreeably by different degrees or quantities of novelty in the objects of taste; according to their previous knowledge of nature, or their previous habits or opportunities of attending to the fine arts. Thus before its nativity the fetus experiences the perceptions of heat and cold, of hardness and softness, of motion and rest, with those perhaps of hunger and repletion, sleeping and waking, pain and pleasure; and perhaps some other perceptions, which may at this early time of its existence have occasioned perpetual trains of ideas. On its arrival into the world the perceptions of light and sound must by their novelty at first dissever its usual trains of ideas and occasion great surprise; which after a few repetitions will cease to be disagreeable, and only excite the emotion from novelty, which has not acquired a separate name, but is in reality a less degree of surprise; and by further experience the sentiment of novelty, or any degree of surprise, will cease to be excited by the sounds or sights, which at first excited perhaps a painful quantity of surprise. It should here be observed, that as the pleasure of novelty is produced by the exertion of our voluntary power in comparing uncommon objects with those which are more usually exhibited; this sentiment of novelty is less perceived by those who do not readily use the faculty of volition, or who have little previous knowledge of nature, as by very ignorant or very stupid people, or by brute animals; and that therefore to be affected with this circumstance of the objects of Taste requires some previous knowledge of-such kinds of objects, and some degree of mental exertion. Hence when a greater variety of objects than usual is presented to the eye, or when some intricacy of forms, colours, or reciprocal locality more than usual accompanies them, it is termed novelty if it only excites the exertion of intuitive comparison with the usual order of nature, and affects us with pleasurable sensation; but is termed surprise, if it suddenly dissevers our accustomed habits of motion, and is then more generally attended with disagreeable sensation. To this circumstance attending objects of taste is to be referred what is termed wild and irregular in landscapes, in contradistinction to the repetition of parts or uniformity spoken of below. We may add, that novelty of notes and tones in music, or of their combinations or successions, are equally agreeable to the ear, as the novelty of forms and colours, and of their combinations or successions are to the eye; but that the greater quantity or degree of novelty, the sentiment of which is generally termed Surprise, is more frequently excited by unusual or unexpected sounds; which are liable to alarm us with fear, as well as surprise us with novelty. II. _Repetition of visible objects._ The repeated excitement of the same or similar ideas with certain intervals of time, or distances of space between them, is attended with agreeable sensations, besides that simply of perception; and, though it appears to be diametrically opposite to the pleasure arising from the novelty of objects above treated of, enters into the compositions of all the agreeable arts. The pleasure arising from the repetition of similar ideas with certain intervals of time or distances of space between them is a subject of great metaphysical curiosity, as well as the source of the pleasure derived from novelty, which will I hope excuse its introduction in this place. The repetitions of motions may be at first produced either by volition, or by sensation, or by irritation, but they soon become easier to perform than any other kinds of action, because they soon become associated together; and thus their frequency of repetition, if as much sensorial power be produced during every reiteration, as is expended, adds to the facility of their production. If a stimulus be repeated at uniform intervals of time, the action, whether of our muscles or organs of sense, is produced with still greater facility or energy; because the sensorial power of association, mentioned above, is combined with the sensorial power of irritation; that is in common language, the acquired habit assists the power of the stimulus. This not only obtains in the annual, lunar, and diurnal catenations of animal motions, as explained in Zoonomia, Sect. XXXVI. which are thus performed with great facility and energy; but in every less circle of actions or ideas, as in the burden of a song, or the reiterations of a dance. To the facility and distinctness, with which we hear sounds at repeated intervals, we owe the pleasure, which we receive from musical time, and from poetic time, as described in Botanic Garden, V. II. Interlude III. And to this the pleasure we receive from the rhimes and alliterations of modern versification; the source of which without this key would be difficult to discover. There is no variety of notes referable to the gamut in the beating of a drum, yet if it be performed in musical time, it is agreeable to our ears; and therefore this pleasurable sensation must be owing to the repetition of the divisions of the sounds at certain intervals of time, or musical bars. Whether these times or bars are distinguished by a pause, or by an emphasis, or accent, certain it is, that this distinction is perpetually repeated; otherwise the ear could not determine instantly, whether the successions of sound were in common or in triple time. But besides these little circles of musical time, there are the greater returning periods, and the still more distinct choruses; which, like the rhimes at the end of verses, owe their beauty to repetition; that is, to the facility and distinctness with which we perceive sounds, which we expect to perceive or have perceived before; or in the language of this work, to the greater ease and energy with which our organ is excited by the combined sensorial powers of association and irritation, than by the latter singly. This kind of pleasure arising from repetition, that is from the facility and distinctness with which we perceive and understand repeated sensations, enters into all the agreeable arts; and when it is carried to excess is termed formality. The art of dancing like that of music depends for a great part of the pleasure, it affords, on repetition; architecture, especially the Grecian, consists of one part being a repetition of another, and hence the beauty of the pyramidal outline in landscape-painting; where one side of the picture may be said in some measure to balance the other. So universally does repetition contribute to our pleasure in the fine arts, that beauty itself has been defined by some writers to consist in a due combination of uniformity and variety: Zoonomia, Vol. I. Sect. XXII. 2. 1. Where these repetitions of form, and reiterations of colour, are produced in a picture or a natural landscape, in an agreeable quantity, it is termed simplicity, or unity of character; where the repetition principally is seen in the disposition or locality of the divisions, it is called symmetry, proportion, or grouping the separate parts; where this repetition is most conspicuous in the forms of visible objects, it is called regularity or uniformity; and where it affects the colouring principally, the artists call it breadth of colour. There is nevertheless, an excess of the repetition of the same or similar ideas, which ceases to please, and must therefore be excluded from compositions of Taste in painted landscapes, or in ornamented gardens; which is then called formality, monotony, or insipidity. Why the excitation of ideas should give additional pleasure by the facility and distinctness of their production for a certain time, and then cease to give additional pleasure; and gradually to give less pleasure than that, which attends simple exertion of them; is another curious metaphysical problem, and deserves investigation. In our waking hours a perpetual voluntary exertion, of which we are unconscious, attends all our new trains of ideas, whether those of imagination or of perception; which by comparing them with our former experience preserves the consistency of the former, by rejecting such as are incongruous; and adds to the credibility of the latter, by their analogy to objects of our previous knowledge: and this exertion is attended with pleasurable sensation. After very frequent repetition these trains of ideas do not excite the exertion of this intuitive analogy, and in consequence are not attended with additional pleasure to that simply of perception; and by continued repetition they at length lose even the pleasure simply of perception, and thence finally cease to be excited; whence one cause of the torpor of old age, and of death, as spoken of in Additional Note, No. VII. 3. of this work. When there exists in any landscape a certain number and diversity of forms and colours, or of their combinations or successions, so as to produce a degree of novelty; and that with a certain repetition, or arrangement of parts, so as to render them gradually comprehensible or easily compared with the usual course of nature; if this agreeable combination of visible objects be on a moderate scale, in respect to magnitude, and form the principal part of the landscape, it is termed PICTURESQUE by modern artists; and when such a combination of forms and colours contains many easy flowing curves and smooth surfaces, the delightful sentiment of BEAUTY becomes added to the pleasure of the Picturesque. If the above agreeable combination of novelty and repetition exists on a larger scale with more projecting rocks, and deeper dells, and perhaps with a somewhat greater proportion of novelty than repetition, the landscape assumes the name of ROMANTIC; and if some of these forms or combinations are much above the usual magnitude of similar objects, the more interesting sentiment of SUBLIMITY becomes mixed with the pleasure of the romantic. III. _Melody of Colours._ A third source of pleasure arising from the inspection of visible objects, besides that of simple perception, arises from what may be termed melody of colours, as certain colours are more agreeable, when they succeed each other; or when they are disposed in each other's vicinity, so as successively to affect the organ of vision. In a paper on the colours seen in the eye after looking for some time on luminous objects, published by Dr. Darwin of Shrewsbury in the Philos. Trans. Vol. 76, it is evidently shown, that we see certain colours not only with greater ease and distinctness, but with relief and pleasure, after having for some time inspected other certain colours; as green after red, or red after green; orange after blue, or blue after orange; yellow after violet, or violet after yellow; this, he shows, arises from the ocular spectrum of the colour last viewed coinciding with the irritation of the colour now under contemplation. Thus if you make a dot with ink in the centre of a circle of red silk the size of a letter-wafer, and place it on a sheet of white paper, and look on it for a minute without moving your eyes; and then gently turn them on the white paper in its vicinity, or gently close them, and hold one hand an inch or two before them, to prevent too much light from passing through the eyelids, a circular spot of pale green will be seen on the white paper, or in the closed eye; which is called the ocular spectrum of the red silk, and is formed as Dr. Darwin shows by the pandiculation or stretching of the fine fibrils, which constitute the extremities of the optic nerve, in a direction contrary to that, in which they have been excited by previously looking at a luminous object, till they become fatigued; like the yawning or stretching of the larger muscles after acting long in one direction. If at this time the eye, fatigued by looking long at the centre of the red silk, be turned on paper previously coloured with pale green; the circular spot or ocular spectrum will appear of a much darker green; as now the irritation from the pale green paper coincides with the pale green spectrum remaining in the eye, and thus excites those fibres of the retina into stronger action; on this account some colours are seen more distinctly, and consequently more agreeably after others; or when placed in the vicinity of others; thus if orange-coloured letters are painted on a blue ground, they may be read at as great distance as black on white, perhaps at a greater. The colours, which are thus more distinct when seen in succession are called opposite colours by Sir Isaac Newton in his optics, Book I. Part 2, and may be easily discovered by any one, by the method above described; that is by laying a coloured circle of paper or silk on a sheet of white paper, and inspecting it some time with steady eyes, and then either gently closing them, or removing them on another part of the white paper, and the ocular spectrum or opposite colour becomes visible in the eye. Sir Isaac Newton has observed, that the breadths of the seven primary colours in the sun's image refracted by a prism, are proportioned to the seven musical notes of the gamut; or to the intervals of the eight sounds contained in an octave. From this curious coincidence, it has been proposed to produce a luminous music, consisting of successions or combinations of colours, analogous to a tune in respect to the proportions above mentioned. This might be performed by a strong light, made by means of Mr. Argand's lamps, passing through coloured glasses, and falling on a defined part of the wall, with moveable blinds before them, which might communicate with the keys of a harpsichord, and thus produce at the same time visible and audible music in unison with each other. Now as the pleasure we receive from the sensation of melodious notes, independent of musical time, and of the previous associations of agreeable ideas with them, must arise from our hearing some proportions of sounds after others more easily, distinctly, or agreeably; and as there is a coincidence between the proportions of the primary colours, and the primary sounds, if they may be so called; the same laws must probably govern the sensations of both. In this circumstance therefore consists the sisterhood of Music and Painting; and hence they claim a right to borrow metaphors from each other: musicians to speak of the brilliancy of sounds, and the light and shade of a concerto; and painters of the harmony of colours, and the tone of a picture. This source of pleasure received from the melodious succession of colours or of sounds must not be confounded with the pleasure received from the repetition of them explained above, though the repetition, or division of musical notes into bars, so as to produce common or triple time, contributes much to the pleasure of music; but in viewing a fixed landscape nothing like musical time exists; and the pleasure received therefore from certain successions of colours must depend only on the more easy or distinct action of the retina in perceiving some colours after others, or in their vicinity, like the facility or even pleasure with which we act with contrary muscles in yawning or stretching after having been fatigued with a long previous exertion in the contrary direction. Hence where colours are required to be distinct, those which are opposite to each other, should be brought into succession or vicinity; as red and green, orange and blue, yellow and violet; but where colours are required to intermix imperceptibly, or slide into each other, these should not be chosen; as they might by contrast appear too glaring or tawdry. These gradations and contrasts of colours have been practically employed both by the painters of landscape, and by the planters of ornamental gardens; though the theory of this part of the pleasure derived from visible objects was not explained before the publication of the paper on ocular spectra above mentioned; which is reprinted at the end of the first part of Zoonomia, and has thrown great light on the actions of the nerves of sense in consequence of the stimulus of external bodies. IV. _Association of agreeable sentiments with visible objects._ Besides the pleasure experienced simply by the perception of visible objects, it has been already shown, that there is an additional pleasure arising from the inspection of those, which possess novelty, or some degree of it; a second additional pleasure from those, which possess in some degree a repetition of their parts; and a third from those, which possess a succession of particular colours, which either contrast or slide into each other, and which we have termed melody of colours. We now step forward to the fourth source of the pleasures arising from the contemplation of visible objects besides that simply of perception, which consists in our previous association of some agreeable sentiment with certain forms or combinations of them. These four kinds of pleasure singly or in combination constitute what is generally understood by the word Taste in respect to the visible world; and by parity of reasoning it is probable, that the pleasurable ideas received by the other senses, or which are associated with language, may be traced to similar sources. It has been shown by Bishop Berkeley in his ingenious essay on vision, that the eye only acquaints us with the perception of light and colours; and that our idea of the solidity of the bodies, which reflect them, is learnt by the organ of touch: he therefore calls our vision the language of touch, observing that certain gradations of the shades of colour, by our previous experience of having examined similar bodies by our hands or lips, suggest our ideas of solidity, and of the forms of solid bodies; as when we view a tree, it would otherwise appear to us a flat green surface, but by association of ideas we know it to be a cylindrical stem with round branches. This association of the ideas acquired by the sense of touch with those of vision, we do not allude to in the following observations, but to the agreeable trains or tribes of ideas and sentiments connected with certain kinds of visible objects. V. _Sentiment of Beauty._ Of these catenations of sentiments with visible objects, the first is the sentiment of Beauty or Loveliness; which is suggested by easy-flowing curvatures of surface, with smoothness; as is so well illustrated in Mr. Burke's Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful, and in Mr. Hogarth's analysis of Beauty; a new edition of which is much wanted separate from his other works. The sentiment of Beauty appears to be attached from our cradles to the easy curvatures of lines, and smooth surfaces of visible objects, and to have been derived from the form of the female bosom; as spoken of in Zoonomia, Vol. I. Section XVI. on Instinct. Sentimental love, as distinguished from the animal passion of that name, with which it is frequently accompanied, consists in the desire or sensation of beholding, embracing, and saluting, a beautiful object. The characteristic of beauty therefore is that it is the object of love; and though many other objects are in common language called beautiful, yet they are only called so metaphorically, and ought to be termed agreeable. A Grecian temple may give us the pleasurable idea of sublimity; a Gothic temple may give us the pleasurable idea of variety; and a modern house the pleasurable idea of utility; music and poetry may inspire our love by association of ideas; but none of these, except metaphorically, can be termed beautiful; as we have no wish to embrace or salute them. Our perception of beauty consists in our recognition by the sense of vision of those objects, first which have before inspired our love by the pleasure, which they have afforded to many of our senses: as to our sense of warmth, of touch, of smell, of taste, hunger and thirst; and secondly, which bear any analogy of form to such objects. When the babe, soon after it is born into this cold world, is applied to its mother's bosom, its sense of perceiving warmth is first agreeably affected; next its sense of smell is delighted with the odour of her milk; then its taste is gratified by the flavour of it, afterwards the appetites of hunger and of thirst afford pleasure by the possession of their objects, and by the subsequent digestion of the aliment; and lastly, the sense of touch is delighted by the softness and smoothness of the milky fountain, the source of such variety of happiness. ADDITIONAL NOTES. XIV. THE THEORY AND STRUCTURE OF LANGUAGE Next to each thought associate sound accords, And forms the dulcet symphony of words. CANTO III. l. 365. Ideas consist of synchronous motions or configurations of the extremities of the organs of sense; these when repeated by sensation, volition, or association, are either simple or complex, as they were first excited by irritation; or have afterwards some parts abstracted from them, or some parts added to them. Language consists of words, which are the names or symbols of ideas. Words are therefore properly all of them nouns or names of things. Little had been done in the investigation of the theory of language from the time of Aristotle to the present æra, till Mr. Horne Tooke, the ingenious and learned author of the Diversions of Purley, explained those undeclined words of all languages, which had puzzled the grammarians, and evinced from their etymology, that they were abbreviations of other modes of expression. Mr. Tooke observes, that the first aim of language was to communicate our thoughts, and the second to do it with dispatch; and hence he divides words into those, which were necessary to express our thoughts, and those which are abbreviations of the former; which he ingeniously styles the wings of Hermes. For the greater dispatch of conversation many words suggest more than one idea; I shall therefore arrange them according to the number and kinds of ideas, which they suggest; and am induced to do this, as a new distribution of the objects of any science may advance the knowledge of it by developing another analogy of its constituent parts. And in thus endeavouring to analyze the theory of language I mean to speak primarily of the English, and occasionally to add what may occur concerning the structure of the Greek and Latin. I. _Conjunctions and Prepositions._ The first class of words consists of those, which suggest but one idea, and suffer no change of termination; which have been termed by grammarians CONJUNCTIONS and PREPOSITIONS; the former of which connect sentences, and the latter words. Both which have been ingeniously explained by Mr. Horne Tooke from their etymology to be abbreviations of other modes of expression. 1. Thus the conjunction _if_ and _an_, are shown by Mr. Tooke to be derived from the imperative mood of the verbs to give and to grant; but both of these conjunctions by long use appear to have become the name of a more abstracted idea, than the words give or grant suggest, as they do not now express any ideas of person, or of number, or of time; all which are generally attendant upon the meaning of a verb; and perhaps all the words of this class are the names of ideas much abstracted, which has caused the difficulty of explaining them. 2. The number of Prepositions is very great in the English language, as they are used before the cases of nouns, and the infinitive mood of verbs, instead of the numerous changes of termination of the nouns and verbs of the Greek and Latin; which gives greater simplicity to our language, and greater facility of acquiring it. The prepositions, as well as the preceding conjunctions, have been well explained by Mr. Horne Tooke; who has developed the etymology of many of them. As the greatest number of the ideas, we receive from external objects, are complex ones, the names of these constitute a great part of language, as the proper names of persons and places; which are complex terms. Now as these complex terms do not always exactly suggest the quantity of combined ideas we mean to express, some of the prepositions are prefixed to them to add or to deduct something, or to limit their general meaning; as a house with a party wall, or a house without a roof. These words are also derived by Mr. Tooke, as abbreviations of the imperative moods of verbs; but which appear now to suggest ideas further abstracted than those generally suggested by verbs, and are all of them properly nouns, or names of ideas. II. _Nouns Substantive._ The second class of words consists of those, which in their simplest state suggest but one idea, as the word man; but which by two changes of termination in our language suggest one secondary idea of number, as the word men; or another secondary idea of the genitive case, as man's mind, or the mind of man. These words by other changes of termination in the Greek and Latin languages suggest many other secondary ideas, as of gender, as well as of number, and of all the other cases described in their grammars; which in English are expressed by prepositions. This class of words includes the NOUNS SUBSTANTIVE, or names of things, of common grammars, and may be conveniently divided into three kinds. 1. Those which suggest the ideas of things believed to possess hardness and figure, as a house or a horse. 2. Those which suggest the ideas of things, which are not supposed to possess hardness and figure, except metaphorically, as virtue, wisdom; which have therefore been termed abstracted ideas. 3. Those which have been called by metaphysical writers reflex ideas, and mean those of the operations of the mind, as sensation, volition, association. Another convenient division of these nouns substantive or names of things may be first into general terms, or the names of classes of ideas, as man, quadruped, bird, fish, animal. 2. Into the names of complex ideas, as this house, that dog. 3. Into the names of simple ideas, as whiteness, sweetness. A third convenient division of the names of things may be into the names of intire things, whether of real or imaginary being; these are the nouns substantive of grammars. 2. Into the names of the qualities or properties of the former; these are the nouns adjective of grammars. 3. The names of more abstracted ideas as the conjunctions and prepositions of grammarians. These nouns substantive, or names of intire things, suggest but one idea in their simplest form, as in the nominative case singular of grammars. As the word a stag is the name of a single complex idea; but the word stags by a change of termination adds to this a secondary idea of number; and the word stag's, with a comma before the final s, suggests, in English, another secondary idea of something appertaining to the stag, as a stag's horn; which is, however, in our language, as frequently expressed by the preposition _of_, as the horn of a stag. In the Greek and Latin languages an idea of gender is joined with the names of intire things, as well as of number; but in the English language the nouns, which express inanimate objects, have no genders except metaphorically; and even the sexes of many animals have names so totally different from each other, that they rather give an idea of the individual creature than of the sex, as bull and cow, horse and mare, boar and sow, dog and bitch. This constitutes another circumstance, which renders our language more simple, and more easy to acquire; and at the same time contributes to the poetic excellence of it; as by adding a masculine or feminine pronoun, as he, or she, other nouns substantive are so readily personified. In the Latin language there are five cases besides the nominative, or original word, and in the Greek four. Whence the original noun substantive by change of its termination suggests a secondary idea either corresponding with the genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, or ablative cases, besides the secondary ideas of number and gender above mentioned. The ideas suggested by these changes of termination, which are termed cases, are explained in the grammars of these languages, and are expressed in ours by prepositions, which are called the signs of those cases. Thus the word Domini, of the Lord, suggests beside the primary idea a secondary one of something appertaining to it, as templum domini, the temple of the Lord, or the Lord's temple; which in English is either effected by an addition of the letter s, with a comma before it, or by the preposition _of_. This genitive case is said to be expressed in the Hebrew language simply by the locality of the words in succession to each other; which must so far add to the conciseness of that language. Thus the word Domino, in the dative case, to the Lord, suggests besides the primary idea a secondary one of something being added to the primary one; which is effected in English by the preposition _to_. The accusative case, or Dominum, besides the primary idea implies something having acted upon the object of that primary idea; as felis edit murem, the cat eats the mouse. This is thus effected in the Greek and Latin by a change of termination of the noun acted upon, but is managed in a more concise way in our language by its situation in the sentence, as it follows the verb. Thus if the mouse in the above sentence was placed before the verb, and the cat after it, in English the sense would be inverted, but not so in Latin; this necessity of generally placing the accusative case after the verb is inconvenient in poetry; though it adds to the conciseness and simplicity of our language, as it saves the intervention of a preposition, or of a change of termination. The vocative case of the Latin language, or Domine, besides the primary idea suggests a secondary one of appeal, or address; which in our language is either marked by its situation in the sentence, or by the preposition O preceding it. Whence this interjection O conveys the idea of appeal joined to the subsequent noun, and is therefore properly another noun, or name of an idea, preceding the principal one like other prepositions. The ablative case in the Latin language, as Domino, suggests a secondary idea of something being deducted from or by the primary one. Which is perhaps more distinctly expressed by one of those prepositions in our language; which, as it suggests somewhat concerning the adjoined noun, is properly another noun, or name of an idea, preceding the principal one. When to these variations of the termination of nouns in the singular number are added those equally numerous of the plural, and the great variety of these terminations correspondent to the three genders, it is evident that the prepositions of our own and other modern languages instead of the changes of termination add to the simplicity of these languages, and to the facility of acquiring them. Hence in the Latin language, besides the original or primary idea suggested by each noun substantive, or name of an entire thing, there attends an additional idea of number, another of gender, and another suggested by each change of termination, which constitutes the cases; so that in this language four ideas are suggested at the same time by one word; as the primary idea, its gender, number, and case; the latter of which has also four or five varieties. These nouns therefore may properly be termed the abbreviation of sentences; as the conjunctions and prepositions are termed by Mr. Tooke the abbreviation of words; and if the latter are called the wings affixed to the feet of Hermes, the former may be called the wings affixed to his cap. III. _Adjectives, Articles, Participles, Adverbs._ 1. The third class of words consists of those, which in their simplest form suggest two ideas; one of them is an abstracted idea of the quality of an object, but not of the object itself; and the other is an abstracted idea of its appertaining to some other noun called a substantive, or a name of an entire thing. These words are termed ADJECTIVES, are undeclined in our language in respect to cases, number, or gender; but by three changes of termination they suggest the secondary ideas of greater, greatest, and of less; as the word sweet changes into sweeter, sweetest, and sweetish; which may be termed three degrees of comparison besides the positive meaning of the word; which terminations of _er_ and _est_ are seldom added to words of more than two syllables; as those degrees are then most frequently denoted by the prepositions more and most. Adjectives seem originally to have been derived from nouns substantive, of which they express a quality, as a musky rose, a beautiful lady, a stormy day. Some of them are formed from the correspondent substantive by adding the syllable _ly_, or _like_, as a lovely child, a warlike countenance; and in our language it is frequently only necessary to put a hyphen between two nouns substantive for the purpose of converting the former one into an adjective, as an eagle-eye, a Mayday. And many of our adjectives are substantives unchanged, and only known by their situation in a sentence, as a German, or a German gentleman. Adjectives therefore are names of qualities, or parts of things; as substantives are the names of entire things. In the Latin and Greek languages these adjectives possess a great variety of terminations; which suggest occasionally the ideas of number, gender, and the various cases, agreeing in all these with the substantive, to which they belong; besides the two original or primary ideas of quality, and of their appertaining to some other word, which must be adjoined to make them sense. Insomuch that some of these adjectives, when declined through all their cases, and genders, and numbers, in their positive, comparative, and superlative degrees, enumerate fifty or sixty terminations. All which to one, who wishes to learn these languages, are so many new words, and add much to the difficulty of acquiring them. Though the English adjectives are undeclined, having neither case, gender, nor number; and with this simplicity of form possess a degree of comparison by the additional termination of ish, more than the generality of Latin or Greek adjectives, yet are they less adapted to poetic measure, as they must accompany their corresponding substantives; from which they are perpetually separated in Greek and Latin poetry. 2. There is a second kind of adjectives, which abound in our language, and in the Greek, but not in the Latin, which are called ARTICLES by the writers of grammar, as the letter _a_, and the word _the_. These, like the adjectives above described, suggest two primary ideas, and suffer no change of termination in our language, and therefore suggest no secondary ideas. Mr. Locke observes, that languages consist principally of general terms; as it would have been impossible to give a name to every individual object, so as to communicate an idea of it to others; it would be like reciting the name of every individual soldier of an army, instead of using the general term, army. Now the use of the article _a_, and _the_ in English, and _o_ in Greek, converts general terms into particular ones; this idea of particularity as a quality, or property of a noun, is one of the primary ideas suggested by these articles; and the other is, that of its appertaining to some particular noun substantive, without which it is not intelligible. In both these respects these articles correspond with adjectives; to which may be added, that our article _a_ may be expressed by the adjective one or any; and that the Greek article _o_ is declined like other adjectives. The perpetual use of the article, besides its converting general terms into particular ones, contributes much to the force and beauty of our language from another circumstance, that abstracted ideas become so readily personified simply by the omission of it; which perhaps renders the English language better adapted to poetry than any other ancient or modern: the following prosopopoeia from Shakspeare is thus beautiful. She let Concealment like a worm i' th' bud Feed on her damask cheek. And the following line, translated from Juvenal by Dr. Johnson, is much superior to the original, owing to the easy personification of Worth and Poverty, and to the consequent conciseness of it. Difficile emergunt, quorum virtutibus obstat Res angusta domi. Slow rises Worth by Poverty depress'd. 3. A third class of adjectives includes what are termed PARTICIPLES, which are allied to the infinitive moods of verbs, and are formed in our language by the addition only of the syllable _ing_ or _ed_; and are of two kinds, active and passive, as loving, loved, from the verb to love. The verbs suggest an idea of the noun, or thing spoken of; and also of its manner of existence, whether at rest, in action, or in being acted upon; as I lie still, or I whip, or I am whipped; and, lastly, another idea of the time of resting, acting, or suffering; but these adjectives called participles, suggest only two primary ideas, one of the noun, or thing spoken of, and another of the mode of existence, but not a third idea of time; and in this respect participles differ from the verbs, from which they originate, or which originated from them, except in their infinitive moods. Nor do they resemble adjectives only in their suggesting but two primary ideas; but in the Latin and Greek languages they are declined through all the cases, genders, and numbers, like other adjectives; and change their terminations in the degrees of comparison. In our language the participle passive, joined to the verb _to be_, for the purpose of adding to it the idea of time, forms the whole of the passive voice; and is frequently used in a similar manner in the Latin language, as I am loved is expressed either by amor, or amatus sum. The construction of the whole passive voice from the verb _to be_ and the participles passive of other verbs, contributes much to the simplicity of our language, and the ease of acquiring it; but renders it less concise than perhaps it might have been by some simple variations of termination, as in the active voice of it. 4. A fourth kind of adjective is called by the grammarians an ADVERB; which has generally been formed from the first kind of adjectives, as these were frequently formed from correspondent substantives; or it has been formed from the third kind of adjectives, called participles; and this is effected in both cases by the addition, of the syllable _ly_, as wisely, charmingly. This kind of adjective suggests two primary ideas, like the adjectives, and participles, from which they are derived; but differ from them in this curious circumstance, that the other adjectives relate to substantives, and are declined like them in the Latin and Greek languages, as a lovely boy, a warlike countenance; but these relate to verbs, and are therefore undeclined, as to act boldly, to suffer patiently. IV. _Verbs._ The fourth class of words consists of those which are termed VERBS, and which in their simplest state suggest three ideas; first an idea of the noun, or name of the thing spoken of, as a whip. 2. An idea of its mode of existence, whether at rest, or in action, or in being acted upon. 3. An idea of the time of its existence. Thus "the beadle whipped the beggar," in prolix language might be expressed, the beadle with a whip struck in time past the beggar. Which three ideas are suggested by the one word whipped. Verbs are therefore nouns, or names of intire ideas, with the additional ideas of their mode of existence and of time; but the participles suggest only the noun, and the mode of existence, without any idea of time; as whipping, or whipped. The infinitive moods of verbs correspond in their signification with the participles; as they also suggest only the noun, or name of the thing spoken of, and an idea of its mode of existence, excluding the idea of time; which is expressed by all the other moods and tenses; whence it appears, that the infinitive mood, as well as the participle, is not truly a part of the verb; but as the participle resembles the adjective in its construction; so the infinitive mood may be said to resemble the substantive, and it is often used as a nominative case to another verb. Thus in the words "a charming lady with a smiling countenance," the participle acts as an adjective; and in the words "to talk well commands attention," the infinitive mood acts as the nominative case of a noun substantive; and their respective significations are also very similar, as whipping, or to whip, mean the existence of a person acting with a whip. In the Latin language the verb in its simplest form, except the infinitive mood, and the participle, both which we mean to exclude from complete verbs, suggests four primary ideas, as amo, suggests the pronoun I, the noun love, its existence in its active state, and the present time; which verbs in the Greek and Latin undergo an uncounted variation of termination, suggesting so many different ideas in addition to the four primary ones. We do not mean to assert, that all verbs are literally derived from nouns in any language; because all languages have in process of time undergone such great variation; many nouns having become obsolete or have perished, and new verbs have been imported from foreign languages, or transplanted from ancient ones; but that this has originally been the construction of all verbs, as well as those to whip and to love above mentioned, and innumerable others. Thus there may appear some difficulty in analyzing from what noun substantive were formed the verbs to stand or to lie; because we have not properly the name of the abstract ideas from which these verbs arose, except we use the same word for the participle and the noun substantive, as standing, lying. But the verbs, to sit, and to walk, are less difficult to trace to their origin; as we have names for the nouns substantive, a seat, and a walk. But there is another verb of great consequence in all languages, which would appear, in its simplest form in our language to suggest but two primary ideas, as the verb _to be_, but that it suggests three primary ideas like other verbs maybe understood, if we use the synonymous term to exist instead of to be. Thus "I exist" suggests first the abstract idea of existence, not including the mode of existence, whether at rest, or in action, or in suffering; secondly it adds to that abstracted idea of existence its real state, or actual resting, acting, or suffering, existence; and thirdly the idea of the present time: thus the infinitive mood _to be_, and the participle, _being_, suggest both the abstract idea of existence, and the actual state of it, but not the time. The verb _to be_ is also used irregularly to designate the parts of time and actual existence; and is then applied to either the active or passive participles of other verbs, and called an auxiliary verb; while the mode of existence, whether at rest, or in action, or being acted upon, is expressed by the participle, as "I am loving" is nearly the same as "I love," amo; and "I am loved," amatus sum, is nearly the same as amor. This mode of application of the verb _to be_ is used in French as well as in English, and in the passive voice of the Latin, and perhaps in many other languages; and is by its perpetual use in conversation rendered irregular in them all, as I am, thou art, he is, would not seem to belong to the infinitive mood _to be_, any more than sum, fui, sunt, fuerunt, appear to belong to esse. The verb _to have_ affords another instance of irregular application; the word means in its regular sense to possess, and then suggests three ideas like the above verb of existence: first the abstracted idea of the thing spoken of, or possession; secondly, the actual existence of possession, and lastly the time, as I have or possess. This verb _to have_ like the verb _to be_ is also used irregularly to denote parts of past time, and is then joined to the passive participles alone, as I have eaten; or it is accompanied with the passive participle of the verb _to be_, and then with the active participle of another verb, as I have been eating. There is another word _will_ used in the same irregular manner to denote the parts of future time, which is derived from the verb _to will_; which in its regular use signifies to exert our volition. There are other words used to express other circumstances attending upon verbs, as may, can, shall, all which are probably the remains of verbs otherwise obsolete. Lastly, when we recollect, that in the moods and tenses of verbs one word expresses never less than three ideas in our language, and many more in the Greek and Latin; as besides those three primary ideas the idea of person, and of number, are always expressed in the indicative mood, and other ideas suggested in the other moods, we cannot but admire what excellent abbreviations of language are thus achieved; and when we observe the wonderful intricacy and multiplicity of sounds in those languages, especially in the Greek verbs, which change both the beginning and ending of the original word through three voices, and three numbers, with uncounted variations of dialect; we cannot but admire the simplicity of modern languages compared to these ancient ones; and must finally perceive, that all language consists simply of nouns, or names of ideas, disposed in succession or in combination, all of which are expressed by separate words, or by various terminations of the same word. _Conclusion._ The theory of the progressive production of language in the early times of society, and its gradual improvements in the more civilized ones, may be readily induced from the preceding pages. In the commencement of Society the names of the ideas of entire things, which, it was necessary most frequently to communicate, would first be invented, as the names of individual persons, or places, fire, water, this berry, that root; as it was necessary perpetually to announce, whether one or many of such external things existed, it was soon found more convenient to add this idea of number by a change of termination of the word, than by the addition of another word. As many of these nouns soon became general terms, as bird, beast, fish, animal; it was next convenient to distinguish them when used for an individual, from the same word used as a general term; whence the two articles _a_ and _the_, in our language, derive their origin. Next to these names of the ideas of entire things, the words most perpetually wanted in conversation would probably consist of the names of the ideas of the parts or properties of things; which might be derived from the names of some things, and applied to others which in these respects resembled them; these are termed adjectives, as rosy cheek, manly voice, beastly action; and seem at first to have been formed simply by a change of termination of their correspondent substantives. The comparative degrees of greater and less were found so frequently necessary to be suggested, that a change of termination even in our language for this purpose was produced; and is as frequently used as an additional word, as wiser or more wise. The expression of general similitude, as well as partial similitude, becomes so frequently used in conversation, that another kind of adjective, called an adverb, was expressed by a change of termination, or addition of the syllable ly or like; and as adjectives of the former kind are applied to substantives, and express a partial similitude, these are applied to verbs and express a general similitude, as to act heroically, to speak boldly, to think freely. The perpetual chain of causes and effects, which constitute the motions, or changing configurations, of the universe, are so conveniently divided into active and passive, for expressing the exertions or purposes of common life, that it became particularly convenient in all languages to substitute changes of termination, instead of additional nouns, to express, whether the thing spoken of was in a state of acting or of being acted upon. This change of termination betokening action or suffering constitutes the participle, as loving, loved; which, as it expresses a property of bodies, is classed amongst adjectives in the preceding pages. Besides the perpetual allusions to the active or passive state of things, the comparative times of these motions, or changes, were also perpetually required to be expressed; it was therefore found convenient in all languages to suggest them by changes of terminations in preference to doing it by additional nouns. At the same time the actual or real existence of the thing spoken of was perpetually required, as well as the times of their existence, and the active or passive state of that existence. And as no conversation could be carried on without unceasingly alluding to these circumstances, they became in all languages suggested by changes of termination; which are termed moods and tenses in grammars, and convert the participle above mentioned into a verb; as that participle had originally been formed by adding a termination to a noun, as chaining, and chained, from chain. The great variety of changes of termination in all languages consists therefore of abbreviations used instead of additional words; and adds much to the conciseness of language, and the quickness with which we are enabled to communicate our ideas; and may be said to add unnumbered wings to every limb of the God of Eloquence. ADDITIONAL NOTES. XV. ANALYSIS OF ARTICULATE SOUNDS. The tongue, the lips articulate; the throat With soft vibration modulates the note. CANTO III. l. 367. Having explained in the preceding account of the theory of language that it consists solely of nouns, or the names of ideas, disposed in succession or combination; I shall now attempt to investigate the number of the articulate sounds, which constitute those names of ideas by their successions and combinations; and to show by what parts of the organs of speech they are modulated and articulated; whence may be deduced the precise number of letters or symbols necessary to suggest those sounds, and form an alphabet, which may spell with accuracy the words of all languages. I. _Imperfections of the present Alphabet._ It is much to be lamented, that the alphabet, which has produced and preserved almost all the improvements in other arts and sciences, should have itself received no improvement in modern times; which have added so much elucidation to almost every branch of knowledge, that can meliorate the condition of humanity. Thus in our present alphabets many letters are redundant, others are wanted; some simple articulate sounds have two letters to suggest them; and in other instances two articulate sounds are suggested by one letter. Some of these imperfections in the alphabet of our own language shall be enumerated. X. Thus the letter x is compounded of ks, or of gz, as in the words excellent, example: eksellent, egzample. C. is sometimes k, at other times s, as in the word access. G. is a single letter in go; and suggests the letters d and the French J in pigeon. Qu is kw, as quality is kwality. NG in the words long and in king is a simple sound like the French n, and wants a new character. SH is a simple sound, and wants a new character. TH is either sibilant as in thigh; or semivocal as in thee; both of which are simple sounds, and want two new characters. J French exists in our words confu_si_on, and conclusion, judge, pigeon, and wants a character. J consonant, in our language, expresses the letters d, and the French j conjoined, as in John, Djon. CH is either k as in Arch-angel, or is used for a sound compounded of Tsh, as in Children, Tshildren. GL is dl, as Glove is pronounced by polite people dlove. CL is tl, as Cloe is pronounced by polite speakers Tloe. The spelling of our language in respect to the pronunciation is also wonderfully defective, though perhaps less so than that of the French; as the words slaughter and laughter are pronounced totally different, though spelt alike. The word sough, now pronounced suff, was formerly called sow; whence the iron fused and received into a sough acquired the name of sowmetal; and that received into less soughs from the former one obtained the name of pigs of iron or of lead; from the pun on the word sough, into sow and pigs. Our word jealousies contains all the vowels, though three of them only were necessary; nevertheless in the two words abstemiously and facetiously the vowels exist all of them in their usual order, and are pronounced in their most usual manner. Some of the vowels of our language are diphthongs, and consist of two vocal sounds, or vowels, pronounced in quick succession; these diphthongs are discovered by prolonging the sound, and observing, if the ending of it be different from the beginning; thus the vowel i in in our language, as in the word high, if drawn put ends in the sound of the letter e as used in English; which is expressed by the letter i in most other languages: and the sound of this vowel i begins with ah, and consists therefore of ah and ee. Whilst the diphthong on in our language, as in the word how, begins with ah also and ends in oo, and the vowel u of our language, as in the word use, is likewise a diphthong; which begins with e and ends with oo, as eoo. The French u is also a diphthong compounded of a and oo, as aoo. And many other defects and redundancies in our alphabet will be seen by perusing the subsequent structure of a more perfect one. II. _Production of Sounds._ By our organ of hearing we perceive the vibrations of the air; which vibrations are performed in more or in less time, which constitutes high or low notes in respect to the gammut; but the tone depends on the kind of instrument which produces them. In speaking of articulate sounds they may be conveniently divided first into clear continued sounds, expressed by the letters called vowels; secondly, Into hissing sounds, expressed by the letters called sibilants; thirdly, Into semivocal sounds, which consist of a mixture of the two former; and, lastly, Into interrupted sounds, represented by the letters properly termed consonants. The clear continued sounds are produced by the streams of air passing from the lungs in respiration through the larynx; which is furnished with many small muscles, which by their action give a proper tension to the extremity of this tube; and the sounds, I suppose, are produced by the opening and closing of its aperture; something like the trumpet stop of an organ, as may be observed by blowing through the wind-pipe of a dead goose. These sounds would all be nearly similar except in their being an octave or two higher or lower; but they are modulated again, or acquire various tones, in their passage through the mouth; which thus converts them into eight vowels, as will be explained below. The hissing sounds are produced by air forcibly pushed through certain passages of the mouth without being previously rendered sonorous by the larynx; and obtain their sibilancy from their slower vibrations, occasioned by the mucous membrane, which lines those apertures or passages, being less tense than that of the larynx. I suppose the stream of air is in both cases frequently interrupted by the closing of the sides or mouth of the passages or aperture; but that this is performed much slower in the production of sibilant sounds, than in the production of clear ones. The semivocal sounds are produced by the stream of air having received quick vibrations, or clear sound, in passing through the larynx, or in the cavity of the mouth; but apart of it, as the outsides of this sonorous current of air, afterwards receives slower vibrations, or hissing sound, from some other passages of the lips or mouth, through which it then flows. Lastly the stops, or consonants, impede the current of air, whether sonorous or sibilant, for a perceptible time; and probably produce some change of tone in the act of opening and closing their apertures. There are other clear sounds besides those formed by the larynx; some of them are formed in the mouth, as may be heard previous to the enunciation of the letters b, and d, and ga; or during the pronunciation of the semivocal letters, v. z. j. and others in sounding the liquid letters r and l; these sounds we shall term orisonance. The other clear sounds are formed in the nostrils, as in pronouncing the liquid letters m, n, and ng, these we shall term narisonance. Thus the clear sounds, except those above mentioned, are formed in the larynx along with the musical height or lowness of note; but receive afterward a variation of tone from the various passages of the mouth: add to these that as the sibilant sounds consist of vibrations slower than those formed by the larynx, so a whistling through the lips consists of vibrations quicker than those formed by the larynx. As all sound consists in the vibrations of the air, it may not be disagreeable to the reader to attend to the immediate causes of those vibrations. When any sudden impulse is given to an elastic fluid like the air, it acquires a progressive motion of the whole, and a condensation of the constituent particles, which first receive the impulse; on this account the currents of the atmosphere in stormy seasons are never regular, but blow and cease to blow by intervals; as a part of the moving stream is condensed by the projectile force; and the succeeding part, being consequently rarefied, requires some time to recover its density, and to follow the former part: this elasticity of the air is likewise the cause of innumerable eddies in it; which are much more frequent than in streams of water; as when it is impelled against any oblique plane, it results with its elastic force added to its progressive one. Hence when a vacuum is formed in the atmosphere, the sides of the cavity forcibly rush together both by the general pressure of the superincumbent air, and by the expansion of the elastic particles of it; and thus produce a vibration of the atmosphere to a considerable distance: this occurs, whether this vacuity of air be occasioned by the discharge of cannon, in which the air is displaced by the sudden evolution of heat, which as suddenly vanishes; or whether the vacuity be left by a vibrating string, as it returns from each side of the arc, in which it vibrates; or whether it be left under the lid of the valve in the trumpet stop of an organ, or of a child's play trumpet, which continues perpetually to open and close, when air is blown through it; which is caused by the elasticity of the currents, as it occasions the pausing gusts of wind mentioned above. Hence when a quick current of air is suddenly broken by any intervening body, a vacuum is produced by the momentum of the proceeding current, between it and the intervening body; as beneath the valve of the trumpet-stop above mentioned; and a vibration is in consequence produced; which with the great facility, which elastic fluids possess of forming eddies, may explain the production of sounds by blowing through a fissure upon a sharp edge in a common organ-pipe or child's whistle; which has always appeared difficult to resolve; for the less vibration an organ-pipe itself possesses, the more agreeable, I am informed, is the tone; as the tone is produced by the vibration of the air in the organ pipe, and not by that of the sides of it; though the latter, when it exists, may alter the tone though, not the note, like the belly of a harpsichord, or violin. When a stream of air is blown on the edge of the aperture of an organ-pipe about two thirds of it are believed to pass on the outside of this edge, and one third to pass on the inside of it; but this current of air on the inside forms an eddy, whether the bottom of the pipe be closed or not; which eddy returns upwards, and strikes by quick intervals against the original stream of air, as it falls on the edge of the aperture, and forces outwards this current of air with quick repetitions, so as to make more than two thirds of it, and less than two thirds alternately pass on the outside; whence a part of this stream of air, on each side of the edge of the aperture is perpetually stopped by that edge; and thus a vacuum and vibration in consequence, are reciprocally produced on each side of the edge of the aperture. The quickness or slowness of these vibrations constitute the higher and lower notes of music, but they all of them are propagated to distant places in the same time; as the low notes of a distant ring of bells are heard in equal times with the higher ones: hence in speaking at a distance from the auditors, the clear sounds produced in the larynx by the quick vibrations of its aperture, which form the vowels; the tremulous sounds of the L. R. M. N. NG. which are owing to vibrations of certain apertures of the mouth and nose, and are so slow, that the intervals between them are perceived; the sibilant sounds, which I suppose are occasioned by the air not rushing into a complete vacuum, whence the vibrations produced are defective in velocity; and lastly the very high notes made by the quickest vibrations of the lips in whistling; are all heard in due succession without confusion; as the progressive motions of all sounds I believe travel with equal velocity, notwithstanding the greater or less quickness of their vibrations. III. STRUCTURE OF THE ALPHABET. _Mute and antesonant Consonants, and nasal Liquids._ P. If the lips be pressed close together and some air be condensed in the mouth behind them, on opening the lips the mute consonant P begins a syllable; if the lips be closed suddenly during the passage of a current of air through them, the air becomes condensed in the mouth behind them, and the mute consonant P terminates a syllable. B. If in the above situation of the lips a sound is previously produced in the mouth, which may be termed orisonance, the semisonant consonant B is produced, which like the letter P above described may begin or terminate a syllable. M. In the above situation of the lips, if a sound is produced through the nostrils, which sound is termed narisonance, the nasal letter M is formed; the sound of which may be lengthened in pronunciation like those of the vowels. T. If the point of the tongue be applied to the forepart of the palate, at the roots of the upper teeth, and some air condensed in the mouth behind, on withdrawing the tongue downwards the mute consonant T is formed; which may begin or terminate a syllable. D. If the tongue be placed as above described, and a sound be previously produced in the mouth, the semisonant consonant D is formed, which may begin or terminate a syllable. N. If in the above situation of the tongue and palate a sound be produced through the nostrils, the nasal letter N is formed, the sound of which may be elongated like those of the vowels. K. If the point of the tongue be retracted, and applied to the middle part of the palate; and some air condensed in the mouth behind; on withdrawing the tongue downwards the mute consonant K is produced, which may begin or terminate a syllable. Ga. If in the above situation of the tongue and palate a sound be previously produced in the mouth behind, the semisonant consonant G is formed, as pronounced in the word go, and may begin or terminate a syllable. NG. If in the above situation of the tongue and palate a sound be produced through the nostrils; the nasal letter ng is produced, as in king and throng; which is the french n, the sound of which may be elongated like a vowel; and should have an appropriated character, as thus _v_. Three of these letters, P, T, K, are stops to the stream of vocal air, and are called mutes by grammarians; three, B, D, Ga, are preceded by a little orisonance; and three, M, N, NG, possess continued narisonance, and have been called liquids by grammarians. _Sibilants and Sonisibilants._ W. Of the Germans; if the lips be appressed together, as informing the letter P; and air from the mouth be forced between them; the W sibilant is produced, as pronounced by the Germans, and by some of the inferiour people of London, and ought to have an appropriated character as thus M.[TN: Upside down W.] W. If in the above situation of the lips a sound be produced in the mouth, as in the letter B, and the sonorous air be forced between them; the sonisibilant letter W is produced; which is the common W of our language. F. If the lower lip be appressed to the edges of the upper teeth, and air from the mouth be forced between them, the sibilant letter F is formed. V. If in the above situation of the lip and teeth a sound be produced in the mouth, and the sonorous air be forced between them, the sonisibilant letter V is formed. Th. Sibilant. If the point of the tongue be placed between the teeth, and air from the mouth be forced between them, the Th sibilant is produced, as in thigh, and should have a proper character, as [TN: Looks like the Greek 'phi']. Th. Sonisibilant. If in the above situation of the tongue and teeth a sound be produced in the mouth, and the sonorous air be forced between them, the sonisibilant Th is formed, as in Thee; and should have an appropriated character as [TN: Looks like the Greek 'theta']. S. If the point of the tongue be appressed to the forepart of the palate, as in forming the letter T, and air from the mouth be forced between them, the sibilant letter S is produced. Z. If in the above situation of the tongue and palate a sound be produced in the mouth, as in the letter D, and the sonorous air be forced between them, the sonisibilant letter Z is formed. SH. If the point of the tongue be retracted and applied to the middle part of the palate, as in forming the letter K, and air from the mouth be forced between them, the letter Sh is produced, which is a simple sound and ought to have a single character, thus [TN: Looks like the Greek 'lambda']. J. French. If in the above situation of the tongue and palate a sound be produced in the mouth, as in the letter Ga; and the sonorous air be forced between them; the J consonant of the French is formed; which is a sonisibilant letter, as in the word conclusion, confusion, pigeon; it should be called Je, and should have a different character from the vowel i, with which it has an analogy, as thus _V_. H. If the back part of the tongue be appressed to the pendulous curtain of the palate and uvula; and air from behind be forced between them; the sibilant letter H is produced. Ch Spanish. If in the above situation of the tongue and palate a sound be produced behind; and the sonorous air be forced between them; the Ch Spanish is formed; which is a sonisibilant letter, the same as the Ch Scotch in the words Bu_ch_anan and lo_ch_: it is also perhaps the Welsh guttural expressed by their double L as in Lloyd, Lluellen; it is a simple sound, and ought to have a single character as [TN: Looks like an H on its side]. The sibilant and sonisibilant letters may be elongated in pronunciation like the vowels; the sibilancy is probably occasioned by the vibrations of the air being slower than those of the lowest musical notes. I have preferred the word sonisibilants to the word semivocal sibilants; as the sounds of these sonisibilants are formed in different apertures of the mouth, and not in the larynx like the vowels. _Orisonant Liquids._ R. If the point of the tongue be appressed to the forepart of the palate, as in forming the letters T, D, N, S, Z, and air be pushed between them so as to produce continued sound, the letter R is formed. L. If the retracted tongue be appressed to the middle of the palate, as in forming the letters K, Ga, NG, Sh, J French, and air be pushed over its edges so as to produce continued sound, the letter L is formed. The nasal letters m, n, and ng, are clear tremulous sounds like R and L, and have all of them been called liquids by grammarians. Besides the R and L, above described, there is another orisonant sound produced by the lips in whistling; which is not used in this country as a part of language, and has therefore obtained no character, but is analogous to the R and L; it is also possible, that another orisonant letter may be formed by the back part of the tongue and back part of the palate, as in pronouncing H and Ch, which may perhaps be the Welch Ll in Lloyd, Lluellin. _Four pairs of Vowels._ A pronounced like au, as in the word call. If the aperture, made by approximating the back part of the tongue to the uvula and pendulous curtain of the palate, as in forming the sibilant letter H, and the sonisibilant letter Ch Spanish, be enlarged just so much as to prevent sibilancy; and a continued sound produced by the larynx be modulated in passing through it; the letter A is formed, as in ball, wall, which is sounded like aw in the word awkward; and is the most usual sound of the letter A in foreign languages; and to distinguish it from the succeeding A might be called A micron; as the aperture of the fauces, where it is produced, is less than in the next A. A pronounced like ah, as in the word hazard. If the aperture of the fauces above described, between the back part of the tongue and the back part of the palate, be enlarged as much as convenient, and a continued sound, produced in the larynx, be modulated in passing through it; the letter A is formed, as in animal, army, and ought to have an appropriated character in our language, as thus [TN: Looks like an A on its head]. As this letter A is formed by a larger aperture than the former one, it may be called A mega. A pronounced as in the words cake, ale. If the retracted tongue by approximation to the middle part of the palate, as in forming the letters R, Ga, NG, Sh, J French, L, leaves an aperture just so large as to prevent sibilancy, and sonorous air from the larynx be modulated in passing through it; the letter A is produced, as pronounced in the words whale, sale, and ought to have an appropriated character in our language, as thus [TN: Looks like a handwritten 9]; this is expressed by the letter E in some modern languages, and might be termed E micron; as it is formed by a less aperture of the mouth than the succeeding E. E pronounced like the vowel a, when short, as in the words emblem, dwelling. If the aperture above described between the retracted tongue and the middle of the palate be enlarged as much as convenient, and sonorous air from the larynx be modulated in passing through it, the letter E is formed, as in the words egg, herring; and as it is pronounced in most foreign languages, and might be called E mega to distinguish it from the preceding E. I pronounced like e in keel. If the point of the tongue by approximation to the forepart of the palate, as in forming the letters T, D, N, S, Z, R, leaves an aperture just so large as to prevent sibilancy, and sonorous air from the larynx be modulated in passing through it; the vowel I is produced, which is in our language generally represented by e when long, as in the word keel; and by i when, short, as in the word it, which is the sound of this letter in most foreign languages; and may be called E micron to distinguish it from the succeeding E or Y. Y, when it begins a word, as in youth. If the aperture above described between the point of the tongue, and the forepart of the palate be enlarged as much as convenient, and sonorous air from the larynx be modulated in passing through it, the letter Y is formed; which, when it begins a word, has been called Y consonant by some, and by others has been thought only a quick pronunciation of our e, or the i of foreign languages; as in the word year, yellow; and may be termed E mega, as it is formed by a larger aperture than the preceding e or i. O pronounced like oo, as in the word fool. If the lips by approximation to each other, as in forming the letters P, B, M, W sibilant, W sonisibilant, leave an aperture just so wide as to prevent sibilancy; and sonorous air from the larynx be modulated in passing through it; the letter O is formed, as in the words cool, school, and ought to have an appropriated character as thus [TN: Looks like the infinity symbol], and may be termed o micron to distinguish it from the succeeding o. O pronounced as in the word cold. If the aperture above described between the approximated lips be enlarged as much as convenient; and sonorous air from the larynx be modulated in passing through it, the letter o is formed, as in sole, coal, which may be termed o mega, as it is formed in a larger aperture than the preceding one. _Conclusion._ The alphabet appears from this analysis of it to consist of thirty-one letters, which spell all European languages. Three mute consonants, P, T, K. Three antesonant consonants, B, D, Ga. Three narisonant liquids, M, N, NG. Six sibilants, W German, F, Th, S, Sh, H. Six sonisibilants, W, V, Th, Z, J French, Ch Spanish. Two orisonant liquids, R, L. Eight vowels, Aw, ah, a, e, i, y, oo, o. To these thirty-one characters might perhaps be added one for the Welsh L, and another for whistling with the lips; and it is possible, that some savage nations, whose languages are said to abound with gutturals, may pronounce a mute consonant, as well as an antesonant one, and perhaps another narisonant letter, by appressing the back part of the tongue to the back part of the palate, as in pronouncing the H, and Ch Spanish. The philosophical reader will perceive that these thirty-one sounds might be expressed by fewer characters referring to the manner of their production. As suppose one character was to express the antesonance of B, D, Ga; another the orisonance of R, L; another the sibilance of W, S, Sh, H; another the sonisibilance of W, Z, J French, Ch Spanish; another to express the more open vowels; another the less open vowels; for which the word micron is here used, and for which the word mega is here used. Then the following characters only might be necessary to express them all; P alone, or with antesonance B; with narisonance M; with sibilance W German; with sonisibilance W; with vocality, termed micron OO; with vocality, termed mega O. T alone, or with the above characters added to it, would in the same manner suggest D, N, S, Z, EE, Y, and R with a mark for orisonance. K alone, or with the additional characters, would suggest Ga, NG, Sh, J French, A, E, and L, with a mark for orisonance. F alone, or with a mark for sonisibilance, V. Th alone, or with a mark for sonisibilance, Th. H alone, or with a mark for sonisibilance, Ch Spanish, and with a mark for less open vocality, aw, with another for more open vocality ah. Whence it appears that six single characters, for the letters P, T, K, F, Th, H, with seven additional marks joined to them for antesonance, narisonance, orisonance, sibilance, sonisibilance, less open vocality, and more open vocality; being in all but thirteen characters, may spell all the European languages. I have found more difficulty in analyzing the vowels than the other letters; as the apertures, through which they are modulated, do not close; and it was therefore less easy to ascertain exactly, in what part of the mouth they were modulated; but recollecting that those parts of the mouth must be more ready to use for the purpose of forming the vowels, which were in the habit of being exerted in forming the other letters; I rolled up some tin foil into cylinders about the size of my finger; and speaking the vowels separately through them, found by the impressions made on them, in what part of the mouth each of the vowels was formed with somewhat greater accuracy, but not so as perfectly to satisfy myself. The parts of the mouth appeared to me to be those in which the letters P, I, K, and H, are produced; as those, where the letters F and Th are formed, do not suit the production of mute or antesonant consonants; as the interstices of the teeth would occasion some sibilance; and these apertures are not adapted to the formation of vowels on the same account. The two first vowels aw and ah being modulated in the back part of the mouth, it is necessary to open wide the lips and other passages of the mouth in pronouncing them; that those passages may not again alter their tone; and that more so in pronouncing ah, than aw; as the aperture of the fauces is opened wider, where it is formed, and from the greater or less size of these apertures used in forming the vowels by different persons, the tone of all of them may be somewhat altered as spoken by different orators. I have treated with greater confidence on the formation of articulate sounds, as I many years ago gave considerable attention to this subject for the purpose of improving shorthand; at that time I contrived a wooden mouth with lips of soft leather, and with a valve over the back part of it for nostrils, both which could be quickly opened or closed by the pressure of the fingers, the vocality was given by a silk ribbon about an inch long and a quarter of an inch wide stretched between two bits of smooth wood a little hollowed; so that when a gentle current of air from bellows was blown on the edge of the ribbon, it gave an agreeable tone, as it vibrated between the wooden sides, much like a human voice. This head pronounced the p, b, m, and the vowel a, with so great nicety as to deceive all who heard it unseen, when it pronounced the words mama, papa, map, and pam; and had a most plaintive tone, when the lips were gradually closed. My other occupations prevented me from proceeding in the further construction of this machine; which might have required but thirteen movements, as shown in the above analysis, unless some variety of musical note was to be added to the vocality produced in the larynx; all of which movements might communicate with the keys of a harpsichord or forte piano, and perform the song as well as the accompaniment; or which if built in a gigantic form, might speak so loud as to command an army or instruct a crowd. I conclude this with an agreeable hope, that now war is ceased, the active and ingenious of all nations will attend again to those sciences, which better the condition of human nature; and that the alphabet will undergo a perfect reformation, which may indeed make it more difficult to trace the etymologies of words, but will much facilitate the acquisition of modern languages; which as science improves and becomes more generally diffused, will gradually become more distinct and accurate than the ancient ones; as metaphors will cease to be necessary in conversation, and only be used as the ornaments of poetry. THE END. CONTENTS OF THE ADDITIONAL NOTES. NOTE I. SPONTANEOUS VITALITY OF MICROSCOPIC ANIMALS. I. Spontaneous vital production not contrary to scripture; to be looked for only in the simplest organic beings; supposed want of analogy no argument against it, as this equally applies to all new discoveries. II. The power of reproduction distinguishes organic beings; which are gradually enlarged and improved by it. III. Microscopic animals produced from all vegetable and animal infusions; generate others like themselves by solitary reproduction; not produced from eggs; conferva fontinalis; mucor. IV. Theory of spontaneous vitality. Animal nutrition; vegetable; some organic particles have appetencies to unite, others propensities to be united; buds of trees; sexual reproduction: analogy between generation and nutrition; laws of elasticity not understood; dead animalcules recover life by heat and moisture; chaos redivivum; vorticella; shell-snails; eggs and seeds: hydra. Classes of microscopic animals; general remarks. NOTE II. FACULTIES OF THE SENSORIUM. Fibres possess a power of contraction; spirit of animation immediate cause of their contracting; stimulus of external bodies the remote cause; stimulus produces irritation; due contraction occasions pleasure; too much, or too little, pain; sensation produces desire or aversion, which constitute volition: associated motions; irritation; sensation; volition; association; sensorium. NOTE III. VOLCANOES. Their explosions occasioned by water falling on boiling lava; primeval earthquakes of great extent; more elastic vapours might raise islands and continents, or even throw the moon from the earth; stones falling from the sky; earthquake at, Lisbon; subterraneous fires under this island. NOTE IV. MUSQUITO. The larva lives chiefly in water; it may be driven away by smoke; gnats; libelulla; æstros bovis; bolts: musca chamæleon; vomitoria. NOTE V. AMPHIBIOUS ANIMALS. Diodon has both lungs and gills; some amphibious quadrupeds have the foramen ovale open; perhaps it may be kept open in dogs by frequent immersion so as to render them amphibious; pearl divers; distinctions of amphibious animals; lamprey, leech; remora; whale. NOTE VI. HIEROGLYPHIC CHARACTERS. Used by the magi of Egypt to record discoveries in science, and historical events; astrology an early superstition; universal characters desirable; Grey's Memoria Technica; Bergeret's Botanical Nomenclature; Bishop Wilkins's Real Character and Philosophical Language. NOTE VII. OLD AGE AND DEATH. I. Immediate cause of the infirmities of age not yet well ascertained; must be sought in the laws of animal excitability; debility induced by inactivity of many parts of the system; organs of sense become less excitable; this ascribed to habit; may arise from deficient secretion of sensorial power; all parts of the system not changed as we advance in life. II. Means of preventing old age; warm bath; fishes; cold-blooded amphibious animals; fermented liquors injurious; also want of heat, food, and fresh air; variation of stimuli; volition; activity. III. Theory of the approach of age; surprise: novelty; why contagious diseases affect a person but once; debility; death. NOTE VIII. REPRODUCTION. I. Distinguishes animation from mechanism; solitary and sexual; buds and bulbs; aphises; tenia; volvox; polypus; oyster; eel; hermaphrodites. II. Sexual. III. Inferior vegetables and animals propagate by solitary generation only; next order by both; superior by sexual generation alone. IV. Animals are improved by reproduction; contagious diseases; reproduction a mystery. NOTE IX. STORGE. Pelicans; pigeons; instincts of animals acquired by a previous state, and transmitted by tradition; parental love originates from pleasure. NOTE X. EVE FROM ADAM'S RIB. Mosaic history of Paradise supposed by some to be an allegory; Egyptian philosophers, and others, supposed mankind to have been originally of both sexes united. NOTE XI. HEREDITARY DISEASES. Most affect the offspring of solitary reproduction: grafted trees, strawberries, potatoes; changing seed; intermarriages; hereditary diseases owing to indulgence in fermented liquors; immoderate use of common salt; improvement of progeny; hazardous to marry an heiress. NOTE XII. CHEMICAL THEORY OF ELECTRICITY AND MAGNETISM. I. Attraction and repulsion. II. Two kinds of electric ether; atmospheres of electricity surround all separate bodies; atmospheres of similar kinds repel, of different kinds attract each other strongly; explode on uniting; nonconductors; imperfect conductors; perfect conductors; torpedo, gymnotus, galvanism. III. Effect of metallic points. IV. Accumulation of electric ethers by contact. V. By vicinity; Volta's electrophorus and Rennet's doubler. VI. By heat and by decomposition; the tourmalin; cats; galvanic pile; evaporation of water. VII. The spark from the conductor; electric light; not accounted for by Franklin's theory. VIII. Shock from a coated jar; perhaps an unrestrainable ethereal fluid yet unobserved; electric condensation. IX. Galvanic electricity. X. Two magnetic ethers; analogy between magnetism and electricity; differences between them. XI. Conclusion. NOTE XIII. ANALYSIS OF TASTE. Taste may signify the pleasures received by any of the senses, but not those which simply attend perception; four sources of pleasure in vision. I. Novelty or infrequency of visible objects; surprise. II. Repetition; beating of a drum; dancing; architecture; landscapes; picturesque; beautiful; romantic; sublime. III. Melody of colours. IV. Association of agreeable sentiments with visible objects; vision the language of touch; sentiment of beauty. NOTE XIV. THEORY AND STRUCTURE OF LANGUAGE. Ideas; words the names or symbols of ideas. I. Conjunctions and prepositions; abbreviations of other words. II. Nouns substantive. III. Adjectives, articles; participles, adverbs. IV. Verbs; progressive production of language. NOTE XV. ANALYSIS OF ARTICULATE SOUNDS. I. Imperfections of the present alphabet; of our orthography. II. Production of sounds. III. Structure of the alphabet; mute and antesonant consonants, and nasal liquids; sibilants and sonisibilants; orisonant liquids; four pairs of vowels; alphabet consists of thirty-one letters; speaking figure. ERRATUM. Additional Notes, p. 43, l. 3, for Canto II, l. 129, read Canto II, l. 165. T. Bensley, Printer, Bolt Court; Fleet Street, London. 
60999	----	THE SEEDER By MAX WILLIAMS Being just plain Pop was not enough--he was bucking for All-Fatherhood. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] It took me less than three thousand years to catch up with Pop; which, all things considered, was pretty good going. I came out of overdrive at 018970 hours in orbit around an ugly-looking A3-type planet, and there was his ship below me. I slammed my cruiser down right alongside--hard enough to pulverize a couple of feet of basalt and make Pop and his ship bounce a little. He'd put me to quite a bit of trouble and I was annoyed. Pop got to his feet and stood there looking kind of sheepish as I climbed out of the cruiser. The old fool had his helmet off and was breathing in the foul atmosphere as if it were health gas. His gills had begun to turn a little blue from the methane and CO2. He was a character all right. His name wasn't really Pop, of course. I guess the nickname had been tacked on because he was such an eccentric, old codger, and because he looked like a couple of billion years old. Actually, of course, he wasn't nearly that old. "Welcome aboard planet," he said. "I kind of figured you'd be along sooner or later. Or someone like you." "Well, I'm here," I said. He looked harmless, but I kept a 201R projector on him just in case. Pop had given Security Division a lot of trouble, and I had strict orders. I crawled over to his ship and slid inside. The cabin looked neat enough, but the old fool had so much junk crammed into the ship you could hardly turn around. I found what I was looking for toward the bow--row after row of cylindrical canisters. I broke one open and the bio-detector on my back began to stutter like crazy. I dropped it and sprayed them all until they glowed dull green. By then the contents were cooked. * * * * * Pop was still standing in the same place when I crawled out, looking as casual as you please. He only had a few eyes on me. Most of them he had turned toward the planet's oversize satellite and a raw, angry-looking sea that was breaking a few ship's-lengths away. "How'd you catch up with me?" he asked. "Space warp. You left a trail a child could follow." I moved around his ship and found the reason he was looking so innocent. He'd already set up one of his canisters and the seal was about to break. I sprayed it. So much for several billion one-celled forms of life bottled under pressure. "All right," I said. "That's the last of them. Let's get going." "Okay," said Pop. "Never argue with Security Division. Still, you've got to admit I gave you a good run for your money. And I seeded quite a mess of planets." I shouldn't have done it, but I was angry. I snapped a claw across his nerve center before he could draw it back into his shell. It must have hurt plenty, because ten or twelve of his eyes began to water. "Seeded, hell!" I said. "You touched down on exactly 9080 planets, and I sterilized every one of them after you left. That's what took me so long." He seemed to shrink a little inside, and for the first time I realized just how old the nut really was. "All that time," he said. "All that effort wasted. Damn. Double damn." "You should have figured that in the first place," I said. "Central Maxim 0438 clearly states that no life is to be introduced into the outer galaxies. And don't ask me why. I'm no biologist. I just follow orders." "Listen," said Pop. "_Please_ listen. Back at Central Galaxy they think we--our race--is pretty much immortal. But they don't _know_. They don't know for sure if _any_ life will be left in our galaxy after two or three hundred wars like the last one and--" "Hold it," I said. "You're wasting your time. I'm not a philosopher and you know it." "That's right," said Pop. "And you're not a biologist, either. You told me." He waved a claw in gesture of resignation number seven. "Well, maybe you're right. Maybe I have been an old fool. Let's go home. No use hanging around an ugly planet like this one." He made gesture of contempt number fifteen. Well, I thought, that's a relief. Maybe the old geezer wasn't as crazy as I'd figured. Maybe he just needed some sense slapped into him. At any rate, he didn't make any trouble when I disintegrated his ship--the old crate wasn't spaceworthy to begin with--and he climbed into my cruiser meek as could be. * * * * * I put the drive in low and pulled out of the system. The next planet--Pop had landed on the third--was going through G14 disintegration into asteroids, but I eased through without any trouble and began to pick up speed. Just then Pop swung around in his seat and made good-luck gesture eight and long-life gesture twelve toward the planet we'd left. I stared at him. "I don't get it," I said. "Just a while ago you agreed that was an ugly hunk of rock. You even made contempt gesture fifteen--you spat on it." "That's right," said Pop. "I did, didn't I? Right into a pool of brackish water." Then he began to chuckle. He kept on chuckling for five years, until I got annoyed and slapped his nerve center again. Aside from that, the return voyage was uneventful. 
26163	----	CREATIVE EVOLUTION BY HENRI BERGSON MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE PROFESSOR AT THE COLLEGE DE FRANCE AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION BY ARTHUR MITCHELL, PH.D. NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1911 COPYRIGHT, 1911, by HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY CAMELOT PRESS, 18-20 OAK STREET, NEW YORK TRANSLATOR'S NOTE In the writing of this English translation of Professor Bergson's most important work, I was helped by the friendly interest of Professor William James, to whom I owe the illumination of much that was dark to me as well as the happy rendering of certain words and phrases for which an English equivalent was difficult to find. His sympathetic appreciation of Professor Bergson's thought is well known, and he has expressed his admiration for it in one of the chapters of _A Pluralistic Universe_. It was his intention, had he lived to see the completion of this translation, himself to introduce it to English readers in a prefatory note. I wish to thank my friend, Dr. George Clarke Cox, for many valuable suggestions. I have endeavored to follow the text as closely as possible, and at the same time to preserve the living union of diction and thought. Professor Bergson has himself carefully revised the whole work. We both of us wish to acknowledge the great assistance of Miss Millicent Murby. She has kindly studied the translation phrase by phrase, weighing each word, and her revision has resulted in many improvements. But above all we must express our acknowledgment to Mr. H. Wildon Carr, the Honorary Secretary of the Aristotelian Society of London, and the writer of several studies of "Evolution Creatrice."[1] We asked him to be kind enough to revise the proofs of our work. He has done much more than revise them: they have come from his hands with his personal mark in many places. We cannot express all that the present work owes to him. ARTHUR MITCHELL HARVARD UNIVERSITY CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION ix CHAPTER I THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE--MECHANISM AND TELEOLOGY Of duration in general--Unorganized bodies and abstract time--Organized bodies and real duration--Individuality and the process of growing old 1 Of transformism and the different ways of interpreting it--Radical mechanism and real duration: the relation of biology to physics and chemistry--Radical finalism and real duration: the relation of biology to philosophy 23 The quest of a criterion--Examination of the various theories with regard to a particular example--Darwin and insensible variation--De Vries and sudden variation--Eimer and orthogenesis--Neo-Lamarckism and the hereditability of acquired characters 59 Result of the inquiry--The _vital impetus_ 87 CHAPTER II THE DIVERGENT DIRECTIONS OF THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE--TORPOR, INTELLIGENCE, INSTINCT General idea of the evolutionary process--Growth--Divergent and complementary tendencies--The meaning of progress and of adaptation 98 The relation of the animal to the plant--General tendency of animal life--The development of animal life 105 The main directions of the evolution of life: torpor, intelligence, instinct 135 The nature of the intellect 151 The nature of instinct 165 Life and consciousness--The apparent place of man in nature 176 CHAPTER III ON THE MEANING OF LIFE--THE ORDER OF NATURE AND THE FORM OF INTELLIGENCE Relation of the problem of life to the problem of knowledge--The method of philosophy--Apparent vicious circle of the method proposed--Real vicious circle of the opposite method 186 Simultaneous genesis of matter and intelligence--Geometry inherent in matter--Geometrical tendency of the intellect--Geometry and deduction--Geometry and induction--Physical laws 199 Sketch of a theory of knowledge based on the analysis of the idea of Disorder--Two opposed forms of order: the problem of _genera_ and the problem of _laws_--The idea of "disorder" an oscillation of the intellect between the two kinds of order 220 Creation and evolution--Ideal genesis of matter--The origin and function of life--The essential and the accidental in the vital process and in the evolutionary movement--Mankind--The life of the body and the life of the spirit 236 CHAPTER IV THE CINEMATOGRAPHICAL MECHANISM OF THOUGHT AND THE MECHANISTIC ILLUSION--A GLANCE AT THE HISTORY OF SYSTEMS--REAL BECOMING AND FALSE EVOLUTIONISM Sketch of a criticism of philosophical systems, based on the analysis of the idea of Immutability and of the idea of "Nothing"--Relation of metaphysical problems to the idea of "Nothing"--Real meaning of this idea 272 Form and Becoming 298 The philosophy of Forms and its conception of Becoming--Plato and Aristotle--The natural trend of the intellect 304 Becoming in modern science: two views of Time 329 The metaphysical interpretation of modern science: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz 345 The Criticism of Kant 356 The evolutionism of Spencer 363 INDEX 371 INTRODUCTION The history of the evolution of life, incomplete as it yet is, already reveals to us how the intellect has been formed, by an uninterrupted progress, along a line which ascends through the vertebrate series up to man. It shows us in the faculty of understanding an appendage of the faculty of acting, a more and more precise, more and more complex and supple adaptation of the consciousness of living beings to the conditions of existence that are made for them. Hence should result this consequence that our intellect, in the narrow sense of the word, is intended to secure the perfect fitting of our body to its environment, to represent the relations of external things among themselves--in short, to think matter. Such will indeed be one of the conclusions of the present essay. We shall see that the human intellect feels at home among inanimate objects, more especially among solids, where our action finds its fulcrum and our industry its tools; that our concepts have been formed on the model of solids; that our logic is, pre-eminently, the logic of solids; that, consequently, our intellect triumphs in geometry, wherein is revealed the kinship of logical thought with unorganized matter, and where the intellect has only to follow its natural movement, after the lightest possible contact with experience, in order to go from discovery to discovery, sure that experience is following behind it and will justify it invariably. But from this it must also follow that our thought, in its purely logical form, is incapable of presenting the true nature of life, the full meaning of the evolutionary movement. Created by life, in definite circumstances, to act on definite things, how can it embrace life, of which it is only an emanation or an aspect? Deposited by the evolutionary movement in the course of its way, how can it be applied to the evolutionary movement itself? As well contend that the part is equal to the whole, that the effect can reabsorb its cause, or that the pebble left on the beach displays the form of the wave that brought it there. In fact, we do indeed feel that not one of the categories of our thought--unity, multiplicity, mechanical causality, intelligent finality, etc.--applies exactly to the things of life: who can say where individuality begins and ends, whether the living being is one or many, whether it is the cells which associate themselves into the organism or the organism which dissociates itself into cells? In vain we force the living into this or that one of our molds. All the molds crack. They are too narrow, above all too rigid, for what we try to put into them. Our reasoning, so sure of itself among things inert, feels ill at ease on this new ground. It would be difficult to cite a biological discovery due to pure reasoning. And most often, when experience has finally shown us how life goes to work to obtain a certain result, we find its way of working is just that of which we should never have thought. Yet evolutionist philosophy does not hesitate to extend to the things of life the same methods of explanation which have succeeded in the case of unorganized matter. It begins by showing us in the intellect a local effect of evolution, a flame, perhaps accidental, which lights up the coming and going of living beings in the narrow passage open to their action; and lo! forgetting what it has just told us, it makes of this lantern glimmering in a tunnel a Sun which can illuminate the world. Boldly it proceeds, with the powers of conceptual thought alone, to the ideal reconstruction of all things, even of life. True, it hurtles in its course against such formidable difficulties, it sees its logic end in such strange contradictions, that it very speedily renounces its first ambition. "It is no longer reality itself," it says, "that it will reconstruct, but only an imitation of the real, or rather a symbolical image; the essence of things escapes us, and will escape us always; we move among relations; the absolute is not in our province; we are brought to a stand before the Unknowable."--But for the human intellect, after too much pride, this is really an excess of humility. If the intellectual form of the living being has been gradually modeled on the reciprocal actions and reactions of certain bodies and their material environment, how should it not reveal to us something of the very essence of which these bodies are made? Action cannot move in the unreal. A mind born to speculate or to dream, I admit, might remain outside reality, might deform or transform the real, perhaps even create it--as we create the figures of men and animals that our imagination cuts out of the passing cloud. But an intellect bent upon the act to be performed and the reaction to follow, feeling its object so as to get its mobile impression at every instant, is an intellect that touches something of the absolute. Would the idea ever have occurred to us to doubt this absolute value of our knowledge if philosophy had not shown us what contradictions our speculation meets, what dead-locks it ends in? But these difficulties and contradictions all arise from trying to apply the usual forms of our thought to objects with which our industry has nothing to do, and for which, therefore, our molds are not made. Intellectual knowledge, in so far as it relates to a certain aspect of inert matter, ought, on the contrary, to give us a faithful imprint of it, having been stereotyped on this particular object. It becomes relative only if it claims, such as it is, to present to us life--that is to say, the maker of the stereotype-plate. * * * * * Must we then give up fathoming the depths of life? Must we keep to that mechanistic idea of it which the understanding will always give us--an idea necessarily artificial and symbolical, since it makes the total activity of life shrink to the form of a certain human activity which is only a partial and local manifestation of life, a result or by-product of the vital process? We should have to do so, indeed, if life had employed all the psychical potentialities it possesses in producing pure understandings--that is to say, in making geometricians. But the line of evolution that ends in man is not the only one. On other paths, divergent from it, other forms of consciousness have been developed, which have not been able to free themselves from external constraints or to regain control over themselves, as the human intellect has done, but which, none the less, also express something that is immanent and essential in the evolutionary movement. Suppose these other forms of consciousness brought together and amalgamated with intellect: would not the result be a consciousness as wide as life? And such a consciousness, turning around suddenly against the push of life which it feels behind, would have a vision of life complete--would it not?--even though the vision were fleeting. It will be said that, even so, we do not transcend our intellect, for it is still with our intellect, and through our intellect, that we see the other forms of consciousness. And this would be right if we were pure intellects, if there did not remain, around our conceptual and logical thought, a vague nebulosity, made of the very substance out of which has been formed the luminous nucleus that we call the intellect. Therein reside certain powers that are complementary to the understanding, powers of which we have only an indistinct feeling when we remain shut up in ourselves, but which will become clear and distinct when they perceive themselves at work, so to speak, in the evolution of nature. They will thus learn what sort of effort they must make to be intensified and expanded in the very direction of life. * * * * * This amounts to saying that _theory of knowledge_ and _theory of life_ seem to us inseparable. A theory of life that is not accompanied by a criticism of knowledge is obliged to accept, as they stand, the concepts which the understanding puts at its disposal: it can but enclose the facts, willing or not, in pre-existing frames which it regards as ultimate. It thus obtains a symbolism which is convenient, perhaps even necessary to positive science, but not a direct vision of its object. On the other hand, a theory of knowledge which does not replace the intellect in the general evolution of life will teach us neither how the frames of knowledge have been constructed nor how we can enlarge or go beyond them. It is necessary that these two inquiries, theory of knowledge and theory of life, should join each other, and, by a circular process, push each other on unceasingly. Together, they may solve by a method more sure, brought nearer to experience, the great problems that philosophy poses. For, if they should succeed in their common enterprise, they would show us the formation of the intellect, and thereby the genesis of that matter of which our intellect traces the general configuration. They would dig to the very root of nature and of mind. They would substitute for the false evolutionism of Spencer--which consists in cutting up present reality, already evolved, into little bits no less evolved, and then recomposing it with these fragments, thus positing in advance everything that is to be explained--a true evolutionism, in which reality would be followed in its generation and its growth. But a philosophy of this kind will not be made in a day. Unlike the philosophical systems properly so called, each of which was the individual work of a man of genius and sprang up as a whole, to be taken or left, it will only be built up by the collective and progressive effort of many thinkers, of many observers also, completing, correcting and improving one another. So the present essay does not aim at resolving at once the greatest problems. It simply desires to define the method and to permit a glimpse, on some essential points, of the possibility of its application. Its plan is traced by the subject itself. In the first chapter, we try on the evolutionary progress the two ready-made garments that our understanding puts at our disposal, mechanism and finality;[2] we show that they do not fit, neither the one nor the other, but that one of them might be recut and resewn, and in this new form fit less badly than the other. In order to transcend the point of view of the understanding, we try, in our second chapter, to reconstruct the main lines of evolution along which life has traveled by the side of that which has led to the human intellect. The intellect is thus brought back to its generating cause, which we then have to grasp in itself and follow in its movement. It is an effort of this kind that we attempt--incompletely indeed--in our third chapter. A fourth and last part is meant to show how our understanding itself, by submitting to a certain discipline, might prepare a philosophy which transcends it. For that, a glance over the history of systems became necessary, together with an analysis of the two great illusions to which, as soon as it speculates on reality in general, the human understanding is exposed. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: _Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society_, vols. ix. and x., and _Hibbert Journal_ for July, 1910.] [Footnote 2: The idea of regarding life as transcending teleology as well as mechanism is far from being a new idea. Notably in three articles by Ch. Dunan on "Le problème de la vie" (_Revue philosophique_, 1892) it is profoundly treated. In the development of this idea, we agree with Ch. Dunan on more than one point. But the views we are presenting on this matter, as on the questions attaching to it, are those that we expressed long ago in our _Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience_ (Paris, 1889). One of the principal objects of that essay was, in fact, to show that the psychical life is neither unity nor multiplicity, that it transcends both the _mechanical_ and the _intellectual_, mechanism and finalism having meaning only where there is "distinct multiplicity," "spatiality," and consequently assemblage of pre-existing parts: "real duration" signifies both undivided continuity and creation. In the present work we apply these same ideas to life in general, regarded, moreover, itself from the psychological point of view.] CHAPTER I THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE--MECHANISM AND TELEOLOGY The existence of which we are most assured and which we know best is unquestionably our own, for of every other object we have notions which may be considered external and superficial, whereas, of ourselves, our perception is internal and profound. What, then, do we find? In this privileged case, what is the precise meaning of the word "exist"? Let us recall here briefly the conclusions of an earlier work. I find, first of all, that I pass from state to state. I am warm or cold, I am merry or sad, I work or I do nothing, I look at what is around me or I think of something else. Sensations, feelings, volitions, ideas--such are the changes into which my existence is divided and which color it in turns. I change, then, without ceasing. But this is not saying enough. Change is far more radical than we are at first inclined to suppose. For I speak of each of my states as if it formed a block and were a separate whole. I say indeed that I change, but the change seems to me to reside in the passage from one state to the next: of each state, taken separately, I am apt to think that it remains the same during all the time that it prevails. Nevertheless, a slight effort of attention would reveal to me that there is no feeling, no idea, no volition which is not undergoing change every moment: if a mental state ceased to vary, its duration would cease to flow. Let us take the most stable of internal states, the visual perception of a motionless external object. The object may remain the same, I may look at it from the same side, at the same angle, in the same light; nevertheless the vision I now have of it differs from that which I have just had, even if only because the one is an instant older than the other. My memory is there, which conveys something of the past into the present. My mental state, as it advances on the road of time, is continually swelling with the duration which it accumulates: it goes on increasing--rolling upon itself, as a snowball on the snow. Still more is this the case with states more deeply internal, such as sensations, feelings, desires, etc., which do not correspond, like a simple visual perception, to an unvarying external object. But it is expedient to disregard this uninterrupted change, and to notice it only when it becomes sufficient to impress a new attitude on the body, a new direction on the attention. Then, and then only, we find that our state has changed. The truth is that we change without ceasing, and that the state itself is nothing but change. This amounts to saying that there is no essential difference between passing from one state to another and persisting in the same state. If the state which "remains the same" is more varied than we think, on the other hand the passing from one state to another resembles, more than we imagine, a single state being prolonged; the transition is continuous. But, just because we close our eyes to the unceasing variation of every psychical state, we are obliged, when the change has become so considerable as to force itself on our attention, to speak as if a new state were placed alongside the previous one. Of this new state we assume that it remains unvarying in its turn, and so on endlessly. The apparent discontinuity of the psychical life is then due to our attention being fixed on it by a series of separate acts: actually there is only a gentle slope; but in following the broken line of our acts of attention, we think we perceive separate steps. True, our psychic life is full of the unforeseen. A thousand incidents arise, which seem to be cut off from those which precede them, and to be disconnected from those which follow. Discontinuous though they appear, however, in point of fact they stand out against the continuity of a background on which they are designed, and to which indeed they owe the intervals that separate them; they are the beats of the drum which break forth here and there in the symphony. Our attention fixes on them because they interest it more, but each of them is borne by the fluid mass of our whole psychical existence. Each is only the best illuminated point of a moving zone which comprises all that we feel or think or will--all, in short, that we are at any given moment. It is this entire zone which in reality makes up our state. Now, states thus defined cannot be regarded as distinct elements. They continue each other in an endless flow. But, as our attention has distinguished and separated them artificially, it is obliged next to reunite them by an artificial bond. It imagines, therefore, a formless _ego_, indifferent and unchangeable, on which it threads the psychic states which it has set up as independent entities. Instead of a flux of fleeting shades merging into each other, it perceives distinct and, so to speak, _solid_ colors, set side by side like the beads of a necklace; it must perforce then suppose a thread, also itself solid, to hold the beads together. But if this colorless substratum is perpetually colored by that which covers it, it is for us, in its indeterminateness, as if it did not exist, since we only perceive what is colored, or, in other words, psychic states. As a matter of fact, this substratum has no reality; it is merely a symbol intended to recall unceasingly to our consciousness the artificial character of the process by which the attention places clean-cut states side by side, where actually there is a continuity which unfolds. If our existence were composed of separate states with an impassive ego to unite them, for us there would be no duration. For an ego which does not change does not _endure_, and a psychic state which remains the same so long as it is not replaced by the following state does not _endure_ either. Vain, therefore, is the attempt to range such states beside each other on the ego supposed to sustain them: never can these solids strung upon a solid make up that duration which flows. What we actually obtain in this way is an artificial imitation of the internal life, a static equivalent which will lend itself better to the requirements of logic and language, just because we have eliminated from it the element of real time. But, as regards the psychical life unfolding beneath the symbols which conceal it, we readily perceive that time is just the stuff it is made of. There is, moreover, no stuff more resistant nor more substantial. For our duration is not merely one instant replacing another; if it were, there would never be anything but the present--no prolonging of the past into the actual, no evolution, no concrete duration. Duration is the continuous progress of the past which gnaws into the future and which swells as it advances. And as the past grows without ceasing, so also there is no limit to its preservation. Memory, as we have tried to prove,[3] is not a faculty of putting away recollections in a drawer, or of inscribing them in a register. There is no register, no drawer; there is not even, properly speaking, a faculty, for a faculty works intermittently, when it will or when it can, whilst the piling up of the past upon the past goes on without relaxation. In reality, the past is preserved by itself, automatically. In its entirety, probably, it follows us at every instant; all that we have felt, thought and willed from our earliest infancy is there, leaning over the present which is about to join it, pressing against the portals of consciousness that would fain leave it outside. The cerebral mechanism is arranged just so as to drive back into the unconscious almost the whole of this past, and to admit beyond the threshold only that which can cast light on the present situation or further the action now being prepared--in short, only that which can give _useful_ work. At the most, a few superfluous recollections may succeed in smuggling themselves through the half-open door. These memories, messengers from the unconscious, remind us of what we are dragging behind us unawares. But, even though we may have no distinct idea of it, we feel vaguely that our past remains present to us. What are we, in fact, what is our _character_, if not the condensation of the history that we have lived from our birth--nay, even before our birth, since we bring with us prenatal dispositions? Doubtless we think with only a small part of our past, but it is with our entire past, including the original bent of our soul, that we desire, will and act. Our past, then, as a whole, is made manifest to us in its impulse; it is felt in the form of tendency, although a small part of it only is known in the form of idea. From this survival of the past it follows that consciousness cannot go through the same state twice. The circumstances may still be the same, but they will act no longer on the same person, since they find him at a new moment of his history. Our personality, which is being built up each instant with its accumulated experience, changes without ceasing. By changing, it prevents any state, although superficially identical with another, from ever repeating it in its very depth. That is why our duration is irreversible. We could not live over again a single moment, for we should have to begin by effacing the memory of all that had followed. Even could we erase this memory from our intellect, we could not from our will. Thus our personality shoots, grows and ripens without ceasing. Each of its moments is something new added to what was before. We may go further: it is not only something new, but something unforeseeable. Doubtless, my present state is explained by what was in me and by what was acting on me a moment ago. In analyzing it I should find no other elements. But even a superhuman intelligence would not have been able to foresee the simple indivisible form which gives to these purely abstract elements their concrete organization. For to foresee consists of projecting into the future what has been perceived in the past, or of imagining for a later time a new grouping, in a new order, of elements already perceived. But that which has never been perceived, and which is at the same time simple, is necessarily unforeseeable. Now such is the case with each of our states, regarded as a moment in a history that is gradually unfolding: it is simple, and it cannot have been already perceived, since it concentrates in its indivisibility all that has been perceived and what the present is adding to it besides. It is an original moment of a no less original history. The finished portrait is explained by the features of the model, by the nature of the artist, by the colors spread out on the palette; but, even with the knowledge of what explains it, no one, not even the artist, could have foreseen exactly what the portrait would be, for to predict it would have been to produce it before it was produced--an absurd hypothesis which is its own refutation. Even so with regard to the moments of our life, of which we are the artisans. Each of them is a kind of creation. And just as the talent of the painter is formed or deformed--in any case, is modified--under the very influence of the works he produces, so each of our states, at the moment of its issue, modifies our personality, being indeed the new form that we are just assuming. It is then right to say that what we do depends on what we are; but it is necessary to add also that we are, to a certain extent, what we do, and that we are creating ourselves continually. This creation of self by self is the more complete, the more one reasons on what one does. For reason does not proceed in such matters as in geometry, where impersonal premisses are given once for all, and an impersonal conclusion must perforce be drawn. Here, on the contrary, the same reasons may dictate to different persons, or to the same person at different moments, acts profoundly different, although equally reasonable. The truth is that they are not quite the same reasons, since they are not those of the same person, nor of the same moment. That is why we cannot deal with them in the abstract, from outside, as in geometry, nor solve for another the problems by which he is faced in life. Each must solve them from within, on his own account. But we need not go more deeply into this. We are seeking only the precise meaning that our consciousness gives to this word "exist," and we find that, for a conscious being, to exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly. Should the same be said of existence in general? * * * * * A material object, of whatever kind, presents opposite characters to those which we have just been describing. Either it remains as it is, or else, if it changes under the influence of an external force, our idea of this change is that of a displacement of parts which themselves do not change. If these parts took to changing, we should split them up in their turn. We should thus descend to the molecules of which the fragments are made, to the atoms that make up the molecules, to the corpuscles that generate the atoms, to the "imponderable" within which the corpuscle is perhaps a mere vortex. In short, we should push the division or analysis as far as necessary. But we should stop only before the unchangeable. Now, we say that a composite object changes by the displacement of its parts. But when a part has left its position, there is nothing to prevent its return to it. A group of elements which has gone through a state can therefore always find its way back to that state, if not by itself, at least by means of an external cause able to restore everything to its place. This amounts to saying that any state of the group may be repeated as often as desired, and consequently that the group does not grow old. It has no history. Thus nothing is created therein, neither form nor matter. What the group will be is already present in what it is, provided "what it is" includes all the points of the universe with which it is related. A superhuman intellect could calculate, for any moment of time, the position of any point of the system in space. And as there is nothing more in the form of the whole than the arrangement of its parts, the future forms of the system are theoretically visible in its present configuration. All our belief in objects, all our operations on the systems that science isolates, rest in fact on the idea that time does not bite into them. We have touched on this question in an earlier work, and shall return to it in the course of the present study. For the moment, we will confine ourselves to pointing out that the abstract time _t_ attributed by science to a material object or to an isolated system consists only in a certain number of simultaneities or more generally of correspondences, and that this number remains the same, whatever be the nature of the intervals between the correspondences. With these intervals we are never concerned when dealing with inert matter; or, if they are considered, it is in order to count therein fresh correspondences, between which again we shall not care what happens. Common sense, which is occupied with detached objects, and also science, which considers isolated systems, are concerned only with the ends of the intervals and not with the intervals themselves. Therefore the flow of time might assume an infinite rapidity, the entire past, present, and future of material objects or of isolated systems might be spread out all at once in space, without there being anything to change either in the formulae of the scientist or even in the language of common sense. The number _t_ would always stand for the same thing; it would still count the same number of correspondences between the states of the objects or systems and the points of the line, ready drawn, which would be then the "course of time." Yet succession is an undeniable fact, even in the material world. Though our reasoning on isolated systems may imply that their history, past, present, and future, might be instantaneously unfurled like a fan, this history, in point of fact, unfolds itself gradually, as if it occupied a duration like our own. If I want to mix a glass of sugar and water, I must, willy nilly, wait until the sugar melts. This little fact is big with meaning. For here the time I have to wait is not that mathematical time which would apply equally well to the entire history of the material world, even if that history were spread out instantaneously in space. It coincides with my impatience, that is to say, with a certain portion of my own duration, which I cannot protract or contract as I like. It is no longer something _thought_, it is something _lived_. It is no longer a relation, it is an absolute. What else can this mean than that the glass of water, the sugar, and the process of the sugar's melting in the water are abstractions, and that the Whole within which they have been cut out by my senses and understanding progresses, it may be in the manner of a consciousness? Certainly, the operation by which science isolates and closes a system is not altogether artificial. If it had no objective foundation, we could not explain why it is clearly indicated in some cases and impossible in others. We shall see that matter has a tendency to constitute _isolable_ systems, that can be treated geometrically. In fact, we shall define matter by just this tendency. But it is only a tendency. Matter does not go to the end, and the isolation is never complete. If science does go to the end and isolate completely, it is for convenience of study; it is understood that the so-called isolated system remains subject to certain external influences. Science merely leaves these alone, either because it finds them slight enough to be negligible, or because it intends to take them into account later on. It is none the less true that these influences are so many threads which bind up the system to another more extensive, and to this a third which includes both, and so on to the system most objectively isolated and most independent of all, the solar system complete. But, even here, the isolation is not absolute. Our sun radiates heat and light beyond the farthest planet. And, on the other hand, it moves in a certain fixed direction, drawing with it the planets and their satellites. The thread attaching it to the rest of the universe is doubtless very tenuous. Nevertheless it is along this thread that is transmitted down to the smallest particle of the world in which we live the duration immanent to the whole of the universe. The universe _endures_. The more we study the nature of time, the more we shall comprehend that duration means invention, the creation of forms, the continual elaboration of the absolutely new. The systems marked off by science _endure_ only because they are bound up inseparably with the rest of the universe. It is true that in the universe itself two opposite movements are to be distinguished, as we shall see later on, "descent" and "ascent." The first only unwinds a roll ready prepared. In principle, it might be accomplished almost instantaneously, like releasing a spring. But the ascending movement, which corresponds to an inner work of ripening or creating, _endures_ essentially, and imposes its rhythm on the first, which is inseparable from it. There is no reason, therefore, why a duration, and so a form of existence like our own, should not be attributed to the systems that science isolates, provided such systems are reintegrated into the Whole. But they must be so reintegrated. The same is even more obviously true of the objects cut out by our perception. The distinct outlines which we see in an object, and which give it its individuality, are only the design of a certain kind of _influence_ that we might exert on a certain point of space: it is the plan of our eventual actions that is sent back to our eyes, as though by a mirror, when we see the surfaces and edges of things. Suppress this action, and with it consequently those main directions which by perception are traced out for it in the entanglement of the real, and the individuality of the body is reabsorbed in the universal interaction which, without doubt, is reality itself. Now, we have considered material objects generally. Are there not some objects privileged? The bodies we perceive are, so to speak, cut out of the stuff of nature by our _perception_, and the scissors follow, in some way, the marking of lines along which _action_ might be taken. But the body which is to perform this action, the body which marks out upon matter the design of its eventual actions even before they are actual, the body that has only to point its sensory organs on the flow of the real in order to make that flow crystallize into definite forms and thus to create all the other bodies--in short, the _living_ body--is this a body as others are? Doubtless it, also, consists in a portion of extension bound up with the rest of extension, an intimate part of the Whole, subject to the same physical and chemical laws that govern any and every portion of matter. But, while the subdivision of matter into separate bodies is relative to our perception, while the building up of closed-off systems of material points is relative to our science, the living body has been separated and closed off by nature herself. It is composed of unlike parts that complete each other. It performs diverse functions that involve each other. It is an _individual_, and of no other object, not even of the crystal, can this be said, for a crystal has neither difference of parts nor diversity of functions. No doubt, it is hard to decide, even in the organized world, what is individual and what is not. The difficulty is great, even in the animal kingdom; with plants it is almost insurmountable. This difficulty is, moreover, due to profound causes, on which we shall dwell later. We shall see that individuality admits of any number of degrees, and that it is not fully realized anywhere, even in man. But that is no reason for thinking it is not a characteristic property of life. The biologist who proceeds as a geometrician is too ready to take advantage here of our inability to give a precise and general definition of individuality. A perfect definition applies only to a _completed_ reality; now, vital properties are never entirely realized, though always on the way to become so; they are not so much _states_ as _tendencies_. And a tendency achieves all that it aims at only if it is not thwarted by another tendency. How, then, could this occur in the domain of life, where, as we shall show, the interaction of antagonistic tendencies is always implied? In particular, it may be said of individuality that, while the tendency to individuate is everywhere present in the organized world, it is everywhere opposed by the tendency towards reproduction. For the individuality to be perfect, it would be necessary that no detached part of the organism could live separately. But then reproduction would be impossible. For what is reproduction, but the building up of a new organism with a detached fragment of the old? Individuality therefore harbors its enemy at home. Its very need of perpetuating itself in time condemns it never to be complete in space. The biologist must take due account of both tendencies in every instance, and it is therefore useless to ask him for a definition of individuality that shall fit all cases and work automatically. But too often one reasons about the things of life in the same way as about the conditions of crude matter. Nowhere is the confusion so evident as in discussions about individuality. We are shown the stumps of a Lumbriculus, each regenerating its head and living thence-forward as an independent individual; a hydra whose pieces become so many fresh hydras; a sea-urchin's egg whose fragments develop complete embryos: where then, we are asked, was the individuality of the egg, the hydra, the worm?--But, because there are several individuals now, it does not follow that there was not a single individual just before. No doubt, when I have seen several drawers fall from a chest, I have no longer the right to say that the article was all of one piece. But the fact is that there can be nothing more in the present of the chest of drawers than there was in its past, and if it is made up of several different pieces now, it was so from the date of its manufacture. Generally speaking, unorganized bodies, which are what we have need of in order that we may act, and on which we have modelled our fashion of thinking, are regulated by this simple law: _the present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause_. But suppose that the distinctive feature of the organized body is that it grows and changes without ceasing, as indeed the most superficial observation testifies, there would be nothing astonishing in the fact that it was _one_ in the first instance, and afterwards _many_. The reproduction of unicellular organisms consists in just this--the living being divides into two halves, of which each is a complete individual. True, in the more complex animals, nature localizes in the almost independent sexual cells the power of producing the whole anew. But something of this power may remain diffused in the rest of the organism, as the facts of regeneration prove, and it is conceivable that in certain privileged cases the faculty may persist integrally in a latent condition and manifest itself on the first opportunity. In truth, that I may have the right to speak of individuality, it is not necessary that the organism should be without the power to divide into fragments that are able to live. It is sufficient that it should have presented a certain systematization of parts before the division, and that the same systematization tend to be reproduced in each separate portion afterwards. Now, that is precisely what we observe in the organic world. We may conclude, then, that individuality is never perfect, and that it is often difficult, sometimes impossible, to tell what is an individual, and what is not, but that life nevertheless manifests a search for individuality, as if it strove to constitute systems naturally isolated, naturally closed. * * * * * By this is a living being distinguished from all that our perception or our science isolates or closes artificially. It would therefore be wrong to compare it to an _object_. Should we wish to find a term of comparison in the inorganic world, it is not to a determinate material object, but much rather to the totality of the material universe that we ought to compare the living organism. It is true that the comparison would not be worth much, for a living being is observable, whilst the whole of the universe is constructed or reconstructed by thought. But at least our attention would thus have been called to the essential character of organization. Like the universe as a whole, like each conscious being taken separately, the organism which lives is a thing that _endures_. Its past, in its entirety, is prolonged into its present, and abides there, actual and acting. How otherwise could we understand that it passes through distinct and well-marked phases, that it changes its age--in short, that it has a history? If I consider my body in particular, I find that, like my consciousness, it matures little by little from infancy to old age; like myself, it grows old. Indeed, maturity and old age are, properly speaking, attributes only of my body; it is only metaphorically that I apply the same names to the corresponding changes of my conscious self. Now, if I pass from the top to the bottom of the scale of living beings, from one of the most to one of the least differentiated, from the multicellular organism of man to the unicellular organism of the Infusorian, I find, even in this simple cell, the same process of growing old. The Infusorian is exhausted at the end of a certain number of divisions, and though it may be possible, by modifying the environment, to put off the moment when a rejuvenation by conjugation becomes necessary, this cannot be indefinitely postponed.[4] It is true that between these two extreme cases, in which the organism is completely individualized, there might be found a multitude of others in which the individuality is less well marked, and in which, although there is doubtless an ageing somewhere, one cannot say exactly what it is that grows old. Once more, there is no universal biological law which applies precisely and automatically to every living thing. There are only _directions_ in which life throws out species in general. Each particular species, in the very act by which it is constituted, affirms its independence, follows its caprice, deviates more or less from the straight line, sometimes even remounts the slope and seems to turn its back on its original direction. It is easy enough to argue that a tree never grows old, since the tips of its branches are always equally young, always equally capable of engendering new trees by budding. But in such an organism--which is, after all, a society rather than an individual--_something_ ages, if only the leaves and the interior of the trunk. And each cell, considered separately, evolves in a specific way. _Wherever anything lives, there is, open somewhere, a register in which time is being inscribed._ This, it will be said, is only a metaphor.--It is of the very essence of mechanism, in fact, to consider as metaphorical every expression which attributes to time an effective action and a reality of its own. In vain does immediate experience show us that the very basis of our conscious existence is memory, that is to say, the prolongation of the past into the present, or, in a word, _duration_, acting and irreversible. In vain does reason prove to us that the more we get away from the objects cut out and the systems isolated by common sense and by science and the deeper we dig beneath them, the more we have to do with a reality which changes as a whole in its inmost states, as if an accumulative memory of the past made it impossible to go back again. The mechanistic instinct of the mind is stronger than reason, stronger than immediate experience. The metaphysician that we each carry unconsciously within us, and the presence of which is explained, as we shall see later on, by the very place that man occupies amongst the living beings, has its fixed requirements, its ready-made explanations, its irreducible propositions: all unite in denying concrete duration. Change _must_ be reducible to an arrangement or rearrangement of parts; the irreversibility of time _must_ be an appearance relative to our ignorance; the impossibility of turning back _must_ be only the inability of man to put things in place again. So growing old can be nothing more than the gradual gain or loss of certain substances, perhaps both together. Time is assumed to have just as much reality for a living being as for an hour-glass, in which the top part empties while the lower fills, and all goes where it was before when you turn the glass upside down. True, biologists are not agreed on what is gained and what is lost between the day of birth and the day of death. There are those who hold to the continual growth in the volume of protoplasm from the birth of the cell right on to its death.[5] More probable and more profound is the theory according to which the diminution bears on the quantity of nutritive substance contained in that "inner environment" in which the organism is being renewed, and the increase on the quantity of unexcreted residual substances which, accumulating in the body, finally "crust it over."[6] Must we however--with an eminent bacteriologist--declare any explanation of growing old insufficient that does not take account of phagocytosis?[7] We do not feel qualified to settle the question. But the fact that the two theories agree in affirming the constant accumulation or loss of a certain kind of matter, even though they have little in common as to what is gained and lost, shows pretty well that the frame of the explanation has been furnished _a priori_. We shall see this more and more as we proceed with our study: it is not easy, in thinking of time, to escape the image of the hour-glass. The cause of growing old must lie deeper. We hold that there is unbroken continuity between the evolution of the embryo and that of the complete organism. The impetus which causes a living being to grow larger, to develop and to age, is the same that has caused it to pass through the phases of the embryonic life. The development of the embryo is a perpetual change of form. Any one who attempts to note all its successive aspects becomes lost in an infinity, as is inevitable in dealing with a continuum. Life does but prolong this prenatal evolution. The proof of this is that it is often impossible for us to say whether we are dealing with an organism growing old or with an embryo continuing to evolve; such is the case, for example, with the larvae of insects and crustacea. On the other hand, in an organism such as our own, crises like puberty or the menopause, in which the individual is completely transformed, are quite comparable to changes in the course of larval or embryonic life--yet they are part and parcel of the process of our ageing. Although they occur at a definite age and within a time that may be quite short, no one would maintain that they appear then _ex abrupto_, from without, simply because a certain age is reached, just as a legal right is granted to us on our one-and-twentieth birthday. It is evident that a change like that of puberty is in course of preparation at every instant from birth, and even before birth, and that the ageing up to that crisis consists, in part at least, of this gradual preparation. In short, what is properly vital in growing old is the insensible, infinitely graduated, continuance of the change of form. Now, this change is undoubtedly accompanied by phenomena of organic destruction: to these, and to these alone, will a mechanistic explanation of ageing be confined. It will note the facts of sclerosis, the gradual accumulation of residual substances, the growing hypertrophy of the protoplasm of the cell. But under these visible effects an inner cause lies hidden. The evolution of the living being, like that of the embryo, implies a continual recording of duration, a persistence of the past in the present, and so an appearance, at least, of organic memory. The present state of an unorganized body depends exclusively on what happened at the previous instant; and likewise the position of the material points of a system defined and isolated by science is determined by the position of these same points at the moment immediately before. In other words, the laws that govern unorganized matter are expressible, in principle, by differential equations in which time (in the sense in which the mathematician takes this word) would play the rôle of independent variable. Is it so with the laws of life? Does the state of a living body find its complete explanation in the state immediately before? Yes, if it is agreed _a priori_ to liken the living body to other bodies, and to identify it, for the sake of the argument, with the artificial systems on which the chemist, physicist, and astronomer operate. But in astronomy, physics, and chemistry the proposition has a perfectly definite meaning: it signifies that certain aspects of the present, important for science, are calculable as functions of the immediate past. Nothing of the sort in the domain of life. Here calculation touches, at most, certain phenomena of organic _destruction_. Organic _creation_, on the contrary, the evolutionary phenomena which properly constitute life, we cannot in any way subject to a mathematical treatment. It will be said that this impotence is due only to our ignorance. But it may equally well express the fact that the present moment of a living body does not find its explanation in the moment immediately before, that _all_ the past of the organism must be added to that moment, its heredity--in fact, the whole of a very long history. In the second of these two hypotheses, not in the first, is really expressed the present state of the biological sciences, as well as their direction. As for the idea that the living body might be treated by some superhuman calculator in the same mathematical way as our solar system, this has gradually arisen from a metaphysic which has taken a more precise form since the physical discoveries of Galileo, but which, as we shall show, was always the natural metaphysic of the human mind. Its apparent clearness, our impatient desire to find it true, the enthusiasm with which so many excellent minds accept it without proof--all the seductions, in short, that it exercises on our thought, should put us on our guard against it. The attraction it has for us proves well enough that it gives satisfaction to an innate inclination. But, as will be seen further on, the intellectual tendencies innate to-day, which life must have created in the course of its evolution, are not at all meant to supply us with an explanation of life: they have something else to do. Any attempt to distinguish between an artificial and a natural system, between the dead and the living, runs counter to this tendency at once. Thus it happens that we find it equally difficult to imagine that the organized has duration and that the unorganized has not. When we say that the state of an artificial system depends exclusively on its state at the moment before, does it not seem as if we were bringing time in, as if the system had something to do with real duration? And, on the other hand, though the whole of the past goes into the making of the living being's present moment, does not organic memory press it into the moment immediately before the present, so that the moment immediately before becomes the sole cause of the present one?--To speak thus is to ignore the cardinal difference between _concrete_ time, along which a real system develops, and that _abstract_ time which enters into our speculations on artificial systems. What does it mean, to say that the state of an artificial system depends on what it was at the moment immediately before? There is no instant immediately before another instant; there could not be, any more than there could be one mathematical point touching another. The instant "immediately before" is, in reality, that which is connected with the present instant by the interval _dt_. All that you mean to say, therefore, is that the present state of the system is defined by equations into which differential coefficients enter, such as _ds_|_dt_, _dv_|_dt_, that is to say, at bottom, _present_ velocities and _present_ accelerations. You are therefore really speaking only of the present--a present, it is true, considered along with its _tendency_. The systems science works with are, in fact, in an instantaneous present that is always being renewed; such systems are never in that real, concrete duration in which the past remains bound up with the present. When the mathematician calculates the future state of a system at the end of a time _t_, there is nothing to prevent him from supposing that the universe vanishes from this moment till that, and suddenly reappears. It is the _t_-th moment only that counts--and that will be a mere instant. What will flow on in the interval--that is to say, real time--does not count, and cannot enter into the calculation. If the mathematician says that he puts himself inside this interval, he means that he is placing himself at a certain point, at a particular moment, therefore at the extremity again of a certain time _t'_; with the interval up to _T'_ he is not concerned. If he divides the interval into infinitely small parts by considering the differential _dt_, he thereby expresses merely the fact that he will consider accelerations and velocities--that is to say, numbers which denote tendencies and enable him to calculate the state of the system at a given moment. But he is always speaking of a given moment--a static moment, that is--and not of flowing time. In short, _the world the mathematician deals with is a world that dies and is reborn at every instant--the world which Descartes was thinking of when he spoke of continued creation_. But, in time thus conceived, how could evolution, which is the very essence of life, ever take place? Evolution implies a real persistence of the past in the present, a duration which is, as it were, a hyphen, a connecting link. In other words, to know a living being or _natural system_ is to get at the very interval of duration, while the knowledge of an _artificial_ or _mathematical system_ applies only to the extremity. Continuity of change, preservation of the past in the present, real duration--the living being seems, then, to share these attributes with consciousness. Can we go further and say that life, like conscious activity, is invention, is unceasing creation? * * * * * It does not enter into our plan to set down here the proofs of transformism. We wish only to explain in a word or two why we shall accept it, in the present work, as a sufficiently exact and precise expression of the facts actually known. The idea of transformism is already in germ in the natural classification of organized beings. The naturalist, in fact, brings together the organisms that are like each other, then divides the group into sub-groups within which the likeness is still greater, and so on: all through the operation, the characters of the group appear as general themes on which each of the sub-groups performs its particular variation. Now, such is just the relation we find, in the animal and in the vegetable world between the generator and the generated: on the canvas which the ancestor passes on, and which his descendants possess in common, each puts his own original embroidery. True, the differences between the descendant and the ancestor are slight, and it may be asked whether the same living matter presents enough plasticity to take in turn such different forms as those of a fish, a reptile and a bird. But, to this question, observation gives a peremptory answer. It shows that up to a certain period in its development the embryo of the bird is hardly distinguishable from that of the reptile, and that the individual develops, throughout the embryonic life in general, a series of transformations comparable to those through which, according to the theory of evolution, one species passes into another. A single cell, the result of the combination of two cells, male and female, accomplishes this work by dividing. Every day, before our eyes, the highest forms of life are springing from a very elementary form. Experience, then, shows that the most complex has been able to issue from the most simple by way of evolution. Now, has it arisen so, as a matter of fact? Paleontology, in spite of the insufficiency of its evidence, invites us to believe it has; for, where it makes out the order of succession of species with any precision, this order is just what considerations drawn from embryogeny and comparative anatomy would lead any one to suppose, and each new paleontological discovery brings transformism a new confirmation. Thus, the proof drawn from mere observation is ever being strengthened, while, on the other hand, experiment is removing the objections one by one. The recent experiments of H. de Vries, for instance, by showing that important variations can be produced suddenly and transmitted regularly, have overthrown some of the greatest difficulties raised by the theory. They have enabled us greatly to shorten the time biological evolution seems to demand. They also render us less exacting toward paleontology. So that, all things considered, the transformist hypothesis looks more and more like a close approximation to the truth. It is not rigorously demonstrable; but, failing the certainty of theoretical or experimental demonstration, there is a probability which is continually growing, due to evidence which, while coming short of direct proof, seems to point persistently in its direction: such is the kind of probability that the theory of transformism offers. Let us admit, however, that transformism may be wrong. Let us suppose that species are proved, by inference or by experiment, to have arisen by a discontinuous process, of which to-day we have no idea. Would the doctrine be affected in so far as it has a special interest or importance for us? Classification would probably remain, in its broad lines. The actual data of embryology would also remain. The correspondence between comparative embryogeny and comparative anatomy would remain too. Therefore biology could and would continue to establish between living forms the same relations and the same kinship as transformism supposes to-day. It would be, it is true, an _ideal_ kinship, and no longer a _material_ affiliation. But, as the actual data of paleontology would also remain, we should still have to admit that it is successively, not simultaneously, that the forms between which we find an ideal kinship have appeared. Now, the evolutionist theory, so far as it has any importance for philosophy, requires no more. It consists above all in establishing relations of ideal kinship, and in maintaining that wherever there is this relation of, so to speak, _logical_ affiliation between forms, there is also a relation of _chronological_ succession between the species in which these forms are materialized. Both arguments would hold in any case. And hence, an evolution _somewhere_ would still have to be supposed, whether in a creative Thought in which the ideas of the different species are generated by each other exactly as transformism holds that species themselves are generated on the earth; or in a plan of vital organization immanent in nature, which gradually works itself out, in which the relations of logical and chronological affiliation between pure forms are just those which transformism presents as relations of real affiliation between living individuals; or, finally, in some unknown cause of life, which develops its effects _as if_ they generated one another. Evolution would then simply have been _transposed_, made to pass from the visible to the invisible. Almost all that transformism tells us to-day would be preserved, open to interpretation in another way. Will it not, therefore, be better to stick to the letter of transformism as almost all scientists profess it? Apart from the question to what extent the theory of evolution describes the facts and to what extent it symbolizes them, there is nothing in it that is irreconcilable with the doctrines it has claimed to replace, even with that of special creations, to which it is usually opposed. For this reason we think the language of transformism forces itself now upon all philosophy, as the dogmatic affirmation of transformism forces itself upon science. But then, we must no longer speak of _life in general_ as an abstraction, or as a mere heading under which all living beings are inscribed. At a certain moment, in certain points of space, a visible current has taken rise; this current of life, traversing the bodies it has organized one after another, passing from generation to generation, has become divided amongst species and distributed amongst individuals without losing anything of its force, rather intensifying in proportion to its advance. It is well known that, on the theory of the "continuity of the germ-plasm," maintained by Weismann, the sexual elements of the generating organism pass on their properties directly to the sexual elements of the organism engendered. In this extreme form, the theory has seemed debatable, for it is only in exceptional cases that there are any signs of sexual glands at the time of segmentation of the fertilized egg. But, though the cells that engender the sexual elements do not generally appear at the beginning of the embryonic life, it is none the less true that they are always formed out of those tissues of the embryo which have not undergone any particular functional differentiation, and whose cells are made of unmodified protoplasm.[8] In other words, the genetic power of the fertilized ovum weakens, the more it is spread over the growing mass of the tissues of the embryo; but, while it is being thus diluted, it is concentrating anew something of itself on a certain special point, to wit, the cells, from which the ova or spermatozoa will develop. It might therefore be said that, though the germ-plasm is not continuous, there is at least continuity of genetic energy, this energy being expended only at certain instants, for just enough time to give the requisite impulsion to the embryonic life, and being recouped as soon as possible in new sexual elements, in which, again, it bides its time. Regarded from this point of view, _life is like a current passing from germ to germ through the medium of a developed organism_. It is as if the organism itself were only an excrescence, a bud caused to sprout by the former germ endeavoring to continue itself in a new germ. The essential thing is the _continuous progress_ indefinitely pursued, an invisible progress, on which each visible organism rides during the short interval of time given it to live. Now, the more we fix our attention on this continuity of life, the more we see that organic evolution resembles the evolution of a consciousness, in which the past presses against the present and causes the upspringing of a new form of consciousness, incommensurable with its antecedents. That the appearance of a vegetable or animal species is due to specific causes, nobody will gainsay. But this can only mean that if, after the fact, we could know these causes in detail, we could explain by them the form that has been produced; foreseeing the form is out of the question.[9] It may perhaps be said that the form could be foreseen if we could know, in all their details, the conditions under which it will be produced. But these conditions are built up into it and are part and parcel of its being; they are peculiar to that phase of its history in which life finds itself at the moment of producing the form: how could we know beforehand a situation that is unique of its kind, that has never yet occurred and will never occur again? Of the future, only that is foreseen which is like the past or can be made up again with elements like those of the past. Such is the case with astronomical, physical and chemical facts, with all facts which form part of a system in which elements supposed to be unchanging are merely put together, in which the only changes are changes of position, in which there is no theoretical absurdity in imagining that things are restored to their place; in which, consequently, the same total phenomenon, or at least the same elementary phenomena, can be repeated. But an original situation, which imparts something of its own originality to its elements, that is to say, to the partial views that are taken of it, how can such a situation be pictured as given before it is actually produced?[10] All that can be said is that, once produced, it will be explained by the elements that analysis will then carve out of it. Now, what is true of the production of a new species is also true of the production of a new individual, and, more generally, of any moment of any living form. For, though the variation must reach a certain importance and a certain generality in order to give rise to a new species, it is being produced every moment, continuously and insensibly, in every living being. And it is evident that even the sudden "mutations" which we now hear of are possible only if a process of incubation, or rather of maturing, is going on throughout a series of generations that do not seem to change. In this sense it might be said of life, as of consciousness, that at every moment it is creating something.[11] But against this idea of the absolute originality and unforeseeability of forms our whole intellect rises in revolt. The essential function of our intellect, as the evolution of life has fashioned it, is to be a light for our conduct, to make ready for our action on things, to foresee, for a given situation, the events, favorable or unfavorable, which may follow thereupon. Intellect therefore instinctively selects in a given situation whatever is like something already known; it seeks this out, in order that it may apply its principle that "like produces like." In just this does the prevision of the future by common sense consist. Science carries this faculty to the highest possible degree of exactitude and precision, but does not alter its essential character. Like ordinary knowledge, in dealing with things science is concerned only with the aspect of _repetition_. Though the whole be original, science will always manage to analyze it into elements or aspects which are approximately a reproduction of the past. Science can work only on what is supposed to repeat itself--that is to say, on what is withdrawn, by hypothesis, from the action of real time. Anything that is irreducible and irreversible in the successive moments of a history eludes science. To get a notion of this irreducibility and irreversibility, we must break with scientific habits which are adapted to the fundamental requirements of thought, we must do violence to the mind, go counter to the natural bent of the intellect. But that is just the function of philosophy. In vain, therefore, does life evolve before our eyes as a continuous creation of unforeseeable form: the idea always persists that form, unforeseeability and continuity are mere appearance--the outward reflection of our own ignorance. What is presented to the senses as a continuous history would break up, we are told, into a series of successive states. "What gives you the impression of an original state resolves, upon analysis, into elementary facts, each of which is the repetition of a fact already known. What you call an unforeseeable form is only a new arrangement of old elements. The elementary causes, which in their totality have determined this arrangement, are themselves old causes repeated in a new order. Knowledge of the elements and of the elementary causes would have made it possible to foretell the living form which is their sum and their resultant. When we have resolved the biological aspect of phenomena into physico-chemical factors, we will leap, if necessary, over physics and chemistry themselves; we will go from masses to molecules, from molecules to atoms, from atoms to corpuscles: we must indeed at last come to something that can be treated as a kind of solar system, astronomically. If you deny it, you oppose the very principle of scientific mechanism, and you arbitrarily affirm that living matter is not made of the same elements as other matter."--We reply that we do not question the fundamental identity of inert matter and organized matter. The only question is whether the natural systems which we call living beings must be assimilated to the artificial systems that science cuts out within inert matter, or whether they must not rather be compared to that natural system which is the whole of the universe. That life is a kind of mechanism I cordially agree. But is it the mechanism of parts artificially isolated within the whole of the universe, or is it the mechanism of the real whole? The real whole might well be, we conceive, an indivisible continuity. The systems we cut out within it would, properly speaking, not then be _parts_ at all; they would be _partial views_ of the whole. And, with these partial views put end to end, you will not make even a beginning of the reconstruction of the whole, any more than, by multiplying photographs of an object in a thousand different aspects, you will reproduce the object itself. So of life and of the physico-chemical phenomena to which you endeavor to reduce it. Analysis will undoubtedly resolve the process of organic creation into an ever-growing number of physico-chemical phenomena, and chemists and physicists will have to do, of course, with nothing but these. But it does not follow that chemistry and physics will ever give us the key to life. A very small element of a curve is very near being a straight line. And the smaller it is, the nearer. In the limit, it may be termed a part of the curve or a part of the straight line, as you please, for in each of its points a curve coincides with its tangent. So likewise "vitality" is tangent, at any and every point, to physical and chemical forces; but such points are, as a fact, only views taken by a mind which imagines stops at various moments of the movement that generates the curve. In reality, life is no more made of physico-chemical elements than a curve is composed of straight lines. In a general way, the most radical progress a science can achieve is the working of the completed results into a new scheme of the whole, by relation to which they become instantaneous and motionless views taken at intervals along the continuity of a movement. Such, for example, is the relation of modern to ancient geometry. The latter, purely static, worked with figures drawn once for all; the former studies the varying of a function--that is, the continuous movement by which the figure is described. No doubt, for greater strictness, all considerations of motion may be eliminated from mathematical processes; but the introduction of motion into the genesis of figures is nevertheless the origin of modern mathematics. We believe that if biology could ever get as close to its object as mathematics does to its own, it would become, to the physics and chemistry of organized bodies, what the mathematics of the moderns has proved to be in relation to ancient geometry. The wholly superficial displacements of masses and molecules studied in physics and chemistry would become, by relation to that inner vital movement (which is transformation and not translation) what the position of a moving object is to the movement of that object in space. And, so far as we can see, the procedure by which we should then pass from the definition of a certain vital action to the system of physico-chemical facts which it implies would be like passing from the function to its derivative, from the equation of the curve (_i.e._ the law of the continuous movement by which the curve is generated) to the equation of the tangent giving its instantaneous direction. Such a science would be a _mechanics of transformation_, of which our _mechanics of translation_ would become a particular case, a simplification, a projection on the plane of pure quantity. And just as an infinity of functions have the same differential, these functions differing from each other by a constant, so perhaps the integration of the physico-chemical elements of properly vital action might determine that action only in part--a part would be left to indetermination. But such an integration can be no more than dreamed of; we do not pretend that the dream will ever be realized. We are only trying, by carrying a certain comparison as far as possible, to show up to what point our theory goes along with pure mechanism, and where they part company. Imitation of the living by the unorganized may, however, go a good way. Not only does chemistry make organic syntheses, but we have succeeded in reproducing artificially the external appearance of certain facts of organization, such as indirect cell-division and protoplasmic circulation. It is well known that the protoplasm of the cell effects various movements within its envelope; on the other hand, indirect cell-division is the outcome of very complex operations, some involving the nucleus and others the cytoplasm. These latter commence by the doubling of the centrosome, a small spherical body alongside the nucleus. The two centrosomes thus obtained draw apart, attract the broken and doubled ends of the filament of which the original nucleus mainly consisted, and join them to form two fresh nuclei about which the two new cells are constructed which will succeed the first. Now, in their broad lines and in their external appearance, some at least of these operations have been successfully imitated. If some sugar or table salt is pulverized and some very old oil is added, and a drop of the mixture is observed under the microscope, a froth of alveolar structure is seen whose configuration is like that of protoplasm, according to certain theories, and in which movements take place which are decidedly like those of protoplasmic circulation.[12] If, in a froth of the same kind, the air is extracted from an alveolus, a cone of attraction is seen to form, like those about the centrosomes which result in the division of the nucleus.[13] Even the external motions of a unicellular organism--of an amoeba, at any rate--are sometimes explained mechanically. The displacements of an amoeba in a drop of water would be comparable to the motion to and fro of a grain of dust in a draughty room. Its mass is all the time absorbing certain soluble matters contained in the surrounding water, and giving back to it certain others; these continual exchanges, like those between two vessels separated by a porous partition, would create an everchanging vortex around the little organism. As for the temporary prolongations or pseudopodia which the amoeba seems to make, they would be not so much given out by it as attracted from it by a kind of inhalation or suction of the surrounding medium.[14] In the same way we may perhaps come to explain the more complex movements which the Infusorian makes with its vibratory cilia, which, moreover, are probably only fixed pseudopodia. But scientists are far from agreed on the value of explanations and schemas of this sort. Chemists have pointed out that even in the organic--not to go so far as the organized--science has reconstructed hitherto nothing but waste products of vital activity; the peculiarly active plastic substances obstinately defy synthesis. One of the most notable naturalists of our time has insisted on the opposition of two orders of phenomena observed in living tissues, _anagenesis_ and _katagenesis_. The rôle of the anagenetic energies is to raise the inferior energies to their own level by assimilating inorganic substances. They _construct_ the tissues. On the other hand, the actual functioning of life (excepting, of course, assimilation, growth, and reproduction) is of the katagenetic order, exhibiting the fall, not the rise, of energy. It is only with these facts of katagenetic order that physico-chemistry deals--that is, in short, with the dead and not with the living.[15] The other kind of facts certainly seem to defy physico-chemical analysis, even if they are not anagenetic in the proper sense of the word. As for the artificial imitation of the outward appearance of protoplasm, should a real theoretic importance be attached to this when the question of the physical framework of protoplasm is not yet settled? We are still further from compounding protoplasm chemically. Finally, a physico-chemical explanation of the motions of the amoeba, and _a fortiori_ of the behavior of the Infusoria, seems impossible to many of those who have closely observed these rudimentary organisms. Even in these humblest manifestations of life they discover traces of an effective psychological activity.[16] But instructive above all is the fact that the tendency to explain everything by physics and chemistry is discouraged rather than strengthened by deep study of histological phenomena. Such is the conclusion of the truly admirable book which the histologist E.B. Wilson has devoted to the development of the cell: "The study of the cell has, on the whole, seemed to widen rather than to narrow the enormous gap that separates even the lowest forms of life from the inorganic world.[17]" To sum up, those who are concerned only with the functional activity of the living being are inclined to believe that physics and chemistry will give us the key to biological processes.[18] They have chiefly to do, as a fact, with phenomena that are _repeated_ continually in the living being, as in a chemical retort. This explains, in some measure, the mechanistic tendencies of physiology. On the contrary, those whose attention is concentrated on the minute structure of living tissues, on their genesis and evolution, histologists and embryogenists on the one hand, naturalists on the other, are interested in the retort itself, not merely in its contents. They find that this retort creates its own form through a _unique_ series of acts that really constitute a _history_. Thus, histologists, embryogenists, and naturalists believe far less readily than physiologists in the physico-chemical character of vital actions. The fact is, neither one nor the other of these two theories, neither that which affirms nor that which denies the possibility of chemically producing an elementary organism, can claim the authority of experiment. They are both unverifiable, the former because science has not yet advanced a step toward the chemical synthesis of a living substance, the second because there is no conceivable way of proving experimentally the impossibility of a fact. But we have set forth the theoretical reasons which prevent us from likening the living being, a system closed off by nature, to the systems which our science isolates. These reasons have less force, we acknowledge, in the case of a rudimentary organism like the amoeba, which hardly evolves at all. But they acquire more when we consider a complex organism which goes through a regular cycle of transformations. The more duration marks the living being with its imprint, the more obviously the organism differs from a mere mechanism, over which duration glides without penetrating. And the demonstration has most force when it applies to the evolution of life as a whole, from its humblest origins to its highest forms, inasmuch as this evolution constitutes, through the unity and continuity of the animated matter which supports it, a single indivisible history. Thus viewed, the evolutionist hypothesis does not seem so closely akin to the mechanistic conception of life as it is generally supposed to be. Of this mechanistic conception we do not claim, of course, to furnish a mathematical and final refutation. But the refutation which we draw from the consideration of real time, and which is, in our opinion, the only refutation possible, becomes the more rigorous and cogent the more frankly the evolutionist hypothesis is assumed. We must dwell a good deal more on this point. But let us first show more clearly the notion of life to which we are leading up. The mechanistic explanations, we said, hold good for the systems that our thought artificially detaches from the whole. But of the whole itself and of the systems which, within this whole, seem to take after it, we cannot admit _a priori_ that they are mechanically explicable, for then time would be useless, and even unreal. The essence of mechanical explanation, in fact, is to regard the future and the past as calculable functions of the present, and thus to claim that _all is given_. On this hypothesis, past, present and future would be open at a glance to a superhuman intellect capable of making the calculation. Indeed, the scientists who have believed in the universality and perfect objectivity of mechanical explanations have, consciously or unconsciously, acted on a hypothesis of this kind. Laplace formulated it with the greatest precision: "An intellect which at a given instant knew all the forces with which nature is animated, and the respective situations of the beings that compose nature--supposing the said intellect were vast enough to subject these data to analysis--would embrace in the same formula the motions of the greatest bodies in the universe and those of the slightest atom: nothing would be uncertain for it, and the future, like the past, would be present to its eyes."[19] And Du Bois-Reymond: "We can imagine the knowledge of nature arrived at a point where the universal process of the world might be represented by a single mathematical formula, by one immense system of simultaneous differential equations, from which could be deduced, for each moment, the position, direction, and velocity of every atom of the world."[20] Huxley has expressed the same idea in a more concrete form: "If the fundamental proposition of evolution is true, that the entire world, living and not living, is the result of the mutual interaction, according to definite laws, of the forces possessed by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed, it is no less certain that the existing world lay, potentially, in the cosmic vapor, and that a sufficient intellect could, from a knowledge of the properties of the molecules of that vapor, have predicted, say the state of the Fauna of Great Britain in 1869, with as much certainty as one can say what will happen to the vapor of the breath in a cold winter's day." In such a doctrine, time is still spoken of: one pronounces the word, but one does not think of the thing. For time is here deprived of efficacy, and if it _does_ nothing, it _is_ nothing. Radical mechanism implies a metaphysic in which the totality of the real is postulated complete in eternity, and in which the apparent duration of things expresses merely the infirmity of a mind that cannot know everything at once. But duration is something very different from this for our consciousness, that is to say, for that which is most indisputable in our experience. We perceive duration as a stream against which we cannot go. It is the foundation of our being, and, as we feel, the very substance of the world in which we live. It is of no use to hold up before our eyes the dazzling prospect of a universal mathematic; we cannot sacrifice experience to the requirements of a system. That is why we reject radical mechanism. * * * * * But radical finalism is quite as unacceptable, and for the same reason. The doctrine of teleology, in its extreme form, as we find it in Leibniz for example, implies that things and beings merely realize a programme previously arranged. But if there is nothing unforeseen, no invention or creation in the universe, time is useless again. As in the mechanistic hypothesis, here again it is supposed that _all is given_. Finalism thus understood is only inverted mechanism. It springs from the same postulate, with this sole difference, that in the movement of our finite intellects along successive things, whose successiveness is reduced to a mere appearance, it holds in front of us the light with which it claims to guide us, instead of putting it behind. It substitutes the attraction of the future for the impulsion of the past. But succession remains none the less a mere appearance, as indeed does movement itself. In the doctrine of Leibniz, time is reduced to a confused perception, relative to the human standpoint, a perception which would vanish, like a rising mist, for a mind seated at the centre of things. Yet finalism is not, like mechanism, a doctrine with fixed rigid outlines. It admits of as many inflections as we like. The mechanistic philosophy is to be taken or left: it must be left if the least grain of dust, by straying from the path foreseen by mechanics, should show the slightest trace of spontaneity. The doctrine of final causes, on the contrary, will never be definitively refuted. If one form of it be put aside, it will take another. Its principle, which is essentially psychological, is very flexible. It is so extensible, and thereby so comprehensive, that one accepts something of it as soon as one rejects pure mechanism. The theory we shall put forward in this book will therefore necessarily partake of finalism to a certain extent. For that reason it is important to intimate exactly what we are going to take of it, and what we mean to leave. Let us say at once that to thin out the Leibnizian finalism by breaking it into an infinite number of pieces seems to us a step in the wrong direction. This is, however, the tendency of the doctrine of finality. It fully realizes that if the universe as a whole is the carrying out of a plan, this cannot be demonstrated empirically, and that even of the organized world alone it is hardly easier to prove all harmonious: facts would equally well testify to the contrary. Nature sets living beings at discord with one another. She everywhere presents disorder alongside of order, retrogression alongside of progress. But, though finality cannot be affirmed either of the whole of matter or of the whole of life, might it not yet be true, says the finalist, of each organism taken separately? Is there not a wonderful division of labor, a marvellous solidarity among the parts of an organism, perfect order in infinite complexity? Does not each living being thus realize a plan immanent in its substance?--This theory consists, at bottom, in breaking up the original notion of finality into bits. It does not accept, indeed it ridicules, the idea of an _external_ finality, according to which living beings are ordered with regard to each other: to suppose the grass made for the cow, the lamb for the wolf--that is all acknowledged to be absurd. But there is, we are told, an _internal_ finality: each being is made for itself, all its parts conspire for the greatest good of the whole and are intelligently organized in view of that end. Such is the notion of finality which has long been classic. Finalism has shrunk to the point of never embracing more than one living being at a time. By making itself smaller, it probably thought it would offer less surface for blows. The truth is, it lay open to them a great deal more. Radical as our own theory may appear, finality is external or it is nothing at all. Consider the most complex and the most harmonious organism. All the elements, we are told, conspire for the greatest good of the whole. Very well, but let us not forget that each of these elements may itself be an organism in certain cases, and that in subordinating the existence of this small organism to the life of the great one we accept the principle of an _external_ finality. The idea of a finality that is _always_ internal is therefore a self-destructive notion. An organism is composed of tissues, each of which lives for itself. The cells of which the tissues are made have also a certain independence. Strictly speaking, if the subordination of all the elements of the individual to the individual itself were complete, we might contend that they are not organisms, reserve the name organism for the individual, and recognize only internal finality. But every one knows that these elements may possess a true autonomy. To say nothing of phagocytes, which push independence to the point of attacking the organism that nourishes them, or of germinal cells, which have their own life alongside the somatic cells--the facts of regeneration are enough: here an element or a group of elements suddenly reveals that, however limited its normal space and function, it can transcend them occasionally; it may even, in certain cases, be regarded as the equivalent of the whole. There lies the stumbling-block of the vitalistic theories. We shall not reproach them, as is ordinarily done, with replying to the question by the question itself: the "vital principle" may indeed not explain much, but it is at least a sort of label affixed to our ignorance, so as to remind us of this occasionally,[21] while mechanism invites us to ignore that ignorance. But the position of vitalism is rendered very difficult by the fact that, in nature, there is neither purely internal finality nor absolutely distinct individuality. The organized elements composing the individual have themselves a certain individuality, and each will claim its vital principle if the individual pretends to have its own. But, on the other hand, the individual itself is not sufficiently independent, not sufficiently cut off from other things, for us to allow it a "vital principle" of its own. An organism such as a higher vertebrate is the most individuated of all organisms; yet, if we take into account that it is only the development of an ovum forming part of the body of its mother and of a spermatozoon belonging to the body of its father, that the egg (_i.e._ the ovum fertilized) is a connecting link between the two progenitors since it is common to their two substances, we shall realize that every individual organism, even that of a man, is merely a bud that has sprouted on the combined body of both its parents. Where, then, does the vital principle of the individual begin or end? Gradually we shall be carried further and further back, up to the individual's remotest ancestors: we shall find him solidary with each of them, solidary with that little mass of protoplasmic jelly which is probably at the root of the genealogical tree of life. Being, to a certain extent, one with this primitive ancestor, he is also solidary with all that descends from the ancestor in divergent directions. In this sense each individual may be said to remain united with the totality of living beings by invisible bonds. So it is of no use to try to restrict finality to the individuality of the living being. If there is finality in the world of life, it includes the whole of life in a single indivisible embrace. This life common to all the living undoubtedly presents many gaps and incoherences, and again it is not so mathematically _one_ that it cannot allow each being to become individualized to a certain degree. But it forms a single whole, none the less; and we have to choose between the out-and-out negation of finality and the hypothesis which co-ordinates not only the parts of an organism with the organism itself, but also each living being with the collective whole of all others. Finality will not go down any easier for being taken as a powder. Either the hypothesis of a finality immanent in life should be rejected as a whole, or it must undergo a treatment very different from pulverization. * * * * * The error of radical finalism, as also that of radical mechanism, is to extend too far the application of certain concepts that are natural to our intellect. Originally, we think only in order to act. Our intellect has been cast in the mold of action. Speculation is a luxury, while action is a necessity. Now, in order to act, we begin by proposing an end; we make a plan, then we go on to the detail of the mechanism which will bring it to pass. This latter operation is possible only if we know what we can reckon on. We must therefore have managed to extract resemblances from nature, which enable us to anticipate the future. Thus we must, consciously or unconsciously, have made use of the law of causality. Moreover, the more sharply the idea of efficient causality is defined in our mind, the more it takes the form of a _mechanical_ causality. And this scheme, in its turn, is the more mathematical according as it expresses a more rigorous necessity. That is why we have only to follow the bent of our mind to become mathematicians. But, on the other hand, this natural mathematics is only the rigid unconscious skeleton beneath our conscious supple habit of linking the same causes to the same effects; and the usual object of this habit is to guide actions inspired by intentions, or, what comes to the same, to direct movements combined with a view to reproducing a pattern. We are born artisans as we are born geometricians, and indeed we are geometricians only because we are artisans. Thus the human intellect, inasmuch as it is fashioned for the needs of human action, is an intellect which proceeds at the same time by intention and by calculation, by adapting means to ends and by thinking out mechanisms of more and more geometrical form. Whether nature be conceived as an immense machine regulated by mathematical laws, or as the realization of a plan, these two ways of regarding it are only the consummation of two tendencies of mind which are complementary to each other, and which have their origin in the same vital necessities. For that reason, radical finalism is very near radical mechanism on many points. Both doctrines are reluctant to see in the course of things generally, or even simply in the development of life, an unforeseeable creation of form. In considering reality, mechanism regards only the aspect of similarity or repetition. It is therefore dominated by this law, that in nature there is only _like_ reproducing _like_. The more the geometry in mechanism is emphasized, the less can mechanism admit that anything is ever created, even pure form. In so far as we are geometricians, then, we reject the unforeseeable. We might accept it, assuredly, in so far as we are artists, for art lives on creation and implies a latent belief in the spontaneity of nature. But disinterested art is a luxury, like pure speculation. Long before being artists, we are artisans; and all fabrication, however rudimentary, lives on likeness and repetition, like the natural geometry which serves as its fulcrum. Fabrication works on models which it sets out to reproduce; and even when it invents, it proceeds, or imagines itself to proceed, by a new arrangement of elements already known. Its principle is that "we must have like to produce like." In short, the strict application of the principle of finality, like that of the principle of mechanical causality, leads to the conclusion that "all is given." Both principles say the same thing in their respective languages, because they respond to the same need. That is why again they agree in doing away with time. Real duration is that duration which gnaws on things, and leaves on them the mark of its tooth. If everything is in time, everything changes inwardly, and the same concrete reality never recurs. Repetition is therefore possible only in the abstract: what is repeated is some aspect that our senses, and especially our intellect, have singled out from reality, just because our action, upon which all the effort of our intellect is directed, can move only among repetitions. Thus, concentrated on that which repeats, solely preoccupied in welding the same to the same, intellect turns away from the vision of time. It dislikes what is fluid, and solidifies everything it touches. We do not _think_ real time. But we _live_ it, because life transcends intellect. The feeling we have of our evolution and of the evolution of all things in pure duration is there, forming around the intellectual concept properly so-called an indistinct fringe that fades off into darkness. Mechanism and finalism agree in taking account only of the bright nucleus shining in the centre. They forget that this nucleus has been formed out of the rest by condensation, and that the whole must be used, the fluid as well as and more than the condensed, in order to grasp the inner movement of life. Indeed, if the fringe exists, however delicate and indistinct, it should have more importance for philosophy than the bright nucleus it surrounds. For it is its presence that enables us to affirm that the nucleus is a nucleus, that pure intellect is a contraction, by condensation, of a more extensive power. And, just because this vague intuition is of no help in directing our action on things, which action takes place exclusively on the surface of reality, we may presume that it is to be exercised not merely on the surface, but below. As soon as we go out of the encasings in which radical mechanism and radical finalism confine our thought, reality appears as a ceaseless upspringing of something new, which has no sooner arisen to make the present than it has already fallen back into the past; at this exact moment it falls under the glance of the intellect, whose eyes are ever turned to the rear. This is already the case with our inner life. For each of our acts we shall easily find antecedents of which it may in some sort be said to be the mechanical resultant. And it may equally well be said that each action is the realization of an intention. In this sense mechanism is everywhere, and finality everywhere, in the evolution of our conduct. But if our action be one that involves the whole of our person and is truly ours, it could not have been foreseen, even though its antecedents explain it when once it has been accomplished. And though it be the realizing of an intention, it differs, as a present and _new_ reality, from the intention, which can never aim at anything but recommencing or rearranging the past. Mechanism and finalism are therefore, here, only external views of our conduct. They extract its intellectuality. But our conduct slips between them and extends much further. Once again, this does not mean that free action is capricious, unreasonable action. To behave according to caprice is to oscillate mechanically between two or more ready-made alternatives and at length to settle on one of them; it is no real maturing of an internal state, no real evolution; it is merely--however paradoxical the assertion may seem--bending the will to imitate the mechanism of the intellect. A conduct that is truly our own, on the contrary, is that of a will which does not try to counterfeit intellect, and which, remaining itself--that is to say, evolving--ripens gradually into acts which the intellect will be able to resolve indefinitely into intelligible elements without ever reaching its goal. The free act is incommensurable with the idea, and its "rationality" must be defined by this very incommensurability, which admits the discovery of as much intelligibility within it as we will. Such is the character of our own evolution; and such also, without doubt, that of the evolution of life. Our reason, incorrigibly presumptuous, imagines itself possessed, by right of birth or by right of conquest, innate or acquired, of all the essential elements of the knowledge of truth. Even where it confesses that it does not know the object presented to it, it believes that its ignorance consists only in not knowing which one of its time-honored categories suits the new object. In what drawer, ready to open, shall we put it? In what garment, already cut out, shall we clothe it? Is it this, or that, or the other thing? And "this," and "that," and "the other thing" are always something already conceived, already known. The idea that for a new object we might have to create a new concept, perhaps a new method of thinking, is deeply repugnant to us. The history of philosophy is there, however, and shows us the eternal conflict of systems, the impossibility of satisfactorily getting the real into the ready-made garments of our ready-made concepts, the necessity of making to measure. But, rather than go to this extremity, our reason prefers to announce once for all, with a proud modesty, that it has to do only with the relative, and that the absolute is not in its province. This preliminary declaration enables it to apply its habitual method of thought without any scruple, and thus, under pretense that it does not touch the absolute, to make absolute judgments upon everything. Plato was the first to set up the theory that to know the real consists in finding its Idea, that is to say, in forcing it into a pre-existing frame already at our disposal--as if we implicitly possessed universal knowledge. But this belief is natural to the human intellect, always engaged as it is in determining under what former heading it shall catalogue any new object; and it may be said that, in a certain sense, we are all born Platonists. Nowhere is the inadequacy of this method so obvious as in theories of life. If, in evolving in the direction of the vertebrates in general, of man and intellect in particular, life has had to abandon by the way many elements incompatible with this particular mode of organization and consign them, as we shall show, to other lines of development, it is the totality of these elements that we must find again and rejoin to the intellect proper, in order to grasp the true nature of vital activity. And we shall probably be aided in this by the fringe of vague intuition that surrounds our distinct--that is, intellectual--representation. For what can this useless fringe be, if not that part of the evolving principle which has not shrunk to the peculiar form of our organization, but has settled around it unasked for, unwanted? It is there, accordingly, that we must look for hints to expand the intellectual form of our thought; from there shall we derive the impetus necessary to lift us above ourselves. To form an idea of the whole of life cannot consist in combining simple ideas that have been left behind in us by life itself in the course of its evolution. How could the part be equivalent to the whole, the content to the container, a by-product of the vital operation to the operation itself? Such, however, is our illusion when we define the evolution of life as a "passage from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous," or by any other concept obtained by putting fragments of intellect side by side. We place ourselves in one of the points where evolution comes to a head--the principal one, no doubt, but not the only one; and there we do not even take all we find, for of the intellect we keep only one or two of the concepts by which it expresses itself; and it is this part of a part that we declare representative of the whole, of something indeed which goes beyond the concrete whole, I mean of the evolution movement of which this "whole" is only the present stage! The truth is, that to represent this the entire intellect would not be too much--nay, it would not be enough. It would be necessary to add to it what we find in every other terminal point of evolution. And these diverse and divergent elements must be considered as so many extracts which are, or at least which were, in their humblest form, mutually complementary. Only then might we have an inkling of the real nature of the evolution movement; and even then we should fail to grasp it completely, for we should still be dealing only with the evolved, which is a result, and not with evolution itself, which is the act by which the result is obtained. Such is the philosophy of life to which we are leading up. It claims to transcend both mechanism and finalism; but, as we announced at the beginning, it is nearer the second doctrine than the first. It will not be amiss to dwell on this point, and show more precisely how far this philosophy of life resembles finalism and wherein it is different. Like radical finalism, although in a vaguer form, our philosophy represents the organized world as a harmonious whole. But this harmony is far from being as perfect as it has been claimed to be. It admits of much discord, because each species, each individual even, retains only a certain impetus from the universal vital impulsion and tends to use this energy in its own interest. In this consists _adaptation_. The species and the individual thus think only of themselves--whence arises a possible conflict with other forms of life. Harmony, therefore, does not exist in fact; it exists rather in principle; I mean that the original impetus is a _common_ impetus, and the higher we ascend the stream of life the more do diverse tendencies appear complementary to each other. Thus the wind at a street-corner divides into diverging currents which are all one and the same gust. Harmony, or rather "complementarity," is revealed only in the mass, in tendencies rather than in states. Especially (and this is the point on which finalism has been most seriously mistaken) harmony is rather behind us than before. It is due to an identity of impulsion and not to a common aspiration. It would be futile to try to assign to life an end, in the human sense of the word. To speak of an end is to think of a pre-existing model which has only to be realized. It is to suppose, therefore, that all is given, and that the future can be read in the present. It is to believe that life, in its movement and in its entirety, goes to work like our intellect, which is only a motionless and fragmentary view of life, and which naturally takes its stand outside of time. Life, on the contrary, progresses and _endures_ in time. Of course, when once the road has been traveled, we can glance over it, mark its direction, note this in psychological terms and speak as if there had been pursuit of an end. Thus shall we speak ourselves. But, of the road which was going to be traveled, the human mind could have nothing to say, for the road has been created _pari passu_ with the act of traveling over it, being nothing but the direction of this act itself. At every instant, then, evolution must admit of a psychological interpretation which is, from our point of view, the best interpretation; but this explanation has neither value nor even significance except retrospectively. Never could the finalistic interpretation, such as we shall propose it, be taken for an anticipation of the future. It is a particular mode of viewing the past in the light of the present. In short, the classic conception of finality postulates at once too much and too little: it is both too wide and too narrow. In explaining life by intellect, it limits too much the meaning of life: intellect, such at least as we find it in ourselves, has been fashioned by evolution during the course of progress; it is cut out of something larger, or, rather, it is only the projection, necessarily on a plane, of a reality that possesses both relief and depth. It is this more comprehensive reality that true finalism ought to reconstruct, or, rather, if possible, embrace in one view. But, on the other hand, just because it goes beyond intellect--the faculty of connecting the same with the same, of perceiving and also of producing repetitions--this reality is undoubtedly creative, _i.e._ productive of effects in which it expands and transcends its own being. These effects were therefore not given in it in advance, and so it could not take them for ends, although, when once produced, they admit of a rational interpretation, like that of the manufactured article that has reproduced a model. In short, the theory of final causes does not go far enough when it confines itself to ascribing some intelligence to nature, and it goes too far when it supposes a pre-existence of the future in the present in the form of idea. And the second theory, which sins by excess, is the outcome of the first, which sins by defect. In place of intellect proper must be substituted the more comprehensive reality of which intellect is only the contraction. The future then appears as expanding the present: it was not, therefore, contained in the present in the form of a represented end. And yet, once realized, it will explain the present as much as the present explains it, and even more; it must be viewed as an end as much as, and more than, a result. Our intellect has a right to consider the future abstractly from its habitual point of view, being itself an abstract view of the cause of its own being. It is true that the cause may then seem beyond our grasp. Already the finalist theory of life eludes all precise verification. What if we go beyond it in one of its directions? Here, in fact, after a necessary digression, we are back at the question which we regard as essential: can the insufficiency of mechanism be proved by facts? We said that if this demonstration is possible, it is on condition of frankly accepting the evolutionist hypothesis. We must now show that if mechanism is insufficient to account for evolution, the way of proving this insufficiency is not to stop at the classic conception of finality, still less to contract or attenuate it, but, on the contrary, to go further. Let us indicate at once the principle of our demonstration. We said of life that, from its origin, it is the continuation of one and the same impetus, divided into divergent lines of evolution. Something has grown, something has developed by a series of additions which have been so many creations. This very development has brought about a dissociation of tendencies which were unable to grow beyond a certain point without becoming mutually incompatible. Strictly speaking, there is nothing to prevent our imagining that the evolution of life might have taken place in one single individual by means of a series of transformations spread over thousands of ages. Or, instead of a single individual, any number might be supposed, succeeding each other in a unilinear series. In both cases evolution would have had, so to speak, one dimension only. But evolution has actually taken place through millions of individuals, on divergent lines, each ending at a crossing from which new paths radiate, and so on indefinitely. If our hypothesis is justified, if the essential causes working along these diverse roads are of psychological nature, they must keep something in common in spite of the divergence of their effects, as school-fellows long separated keep the same memories of boyhood. Roads may fork or by-ways be opened along which dissociated elements may evolve in an independent manner, but nevertheless it is in virtue of the primitive impetus of the whole that the movement of the parts continues. Something of the whole, therefore, must abide in the parts; and this common element will be evident to us in some way, perhaps by the presence of identical organs in very different organisms. Suppose, for an instant, that the mechanistic explanation is the true one: evolution must then have occurred through a series of accidents added to one another, each new accident being preserved by selection if it is advantageous to that sum of former advantageous accidents which the present form of the living being represents. What likelihood is there that, by two entirely different series of accidents being added together, two entirely different evolutions will arrive at similar results? The more two lines of evolution diverge, the less probability is there that accidental outer influences or accidental inner variations bring about the construction of the same apparatus upon them, especially if there was no trace of this apparatus at the moment of divergence. But such similarity of the two products would be natural, on the contrary, on a hypothesis like ours: even in the latest channel there would be something of the impulsion received at the source. _Pure mechanism, then, would be refutable, and finality, in the special sense in which we understand it, would be demonstrable in a certain aspect, if it could be proved that life may manufacture the like apparatus, by unlike means, on divergent lines of evolution; and the strength of the proof would be proportional both to the divergency between the lines of evolution thus chosen and to the complexity of the similar structures found in them._ It will be said that resemblance of structure is due to sameness of the general conditions in which life has evolved, and that these permanent outer conditions may have imposed the same direction on the forces constructing this or that apparatus, in spite of the diversity of transient outer influences and accidental inner changes. We are not, of course, blind to the rôle which the concept of _adaptation_ plays in the science of to-day. Biologists certainly do not all make the same use of it. Some think the outer conditions capable of causing change in organisms in a _direct_ manner, in a definite direction, through physico-chemical alterations induced by them in the living substance; such is the hypothesis of Eimer, for example. Others, more faithful to the spirit of Darwinism, believe the influence of conditions works _indirectly_ only, through favoring, in the struggle for life, those representatives of a species which the chance of birth has best adapted to the environment. In other words, some attribute a _positive_ influence to outer conditions, and say that they actually _give rise to_ variations, while the others say these conditions have only a _negative_ influence and merely _eliminate_ variations. But, in both cases, the outer conditions are supposed to bring about a precise adjustment of the organism to its circumstances. Both parties, then, will attempt to explain mechanically, by adaptation to similar conditions, the similarities of structure which we think are the strongest argument against mechanism. So we must at once indicate in a general way, before passing to the detail, why explanations from "adaptation" seem to us insufficient. Let us first remark that, of the two hypotheses just described, the latter is the only one which is not equivocal. The Darwinian idea of adaptation by automatic elimination of the unadapted is a simple and clear idea. But, just because it attributes to the outer cause which controls evolution a merely negative influence, it has great difficulty in accounting for the progressive and, so to say, rectilinear development of complex apparatus such as we are about to examine. How much greater will this difficulty be in the case of the similar structure of two extremely complex organs on two entirely different lines of evolution! An accidental variation, however minute, implies the working of a great number of small physical and chemical causes. An accumulation of accidental variations, such as would be necessary to produce a complex structure, requires therefore the concurrence of an almost infinite number of infinitesimal causes. Why should these causes, entirely accidental, recur the same, and in the same order, at different points of space and time? No one will hold that this is the case, and the Darwinian himself will probably merely maintain that identical effects may arise from different causes, that more than one road leads to the same spot. But let us not be fooled by a metaphor. The place reached does not give the form of the road that leads there; while an organic structure is just the accumulation of those small differences which evolution has had to go through in order to achieve it. The struggle for life and natural selection can be of no use to us in solving this part of the problem, for we are not concerned here with what has perished, we have to do only with what has survived. Now, we see that identical structures have been formed on independent lines of evolution by a gradual accumulation of effects. How can accidental causes, occurring in an accidental order, be supposed to have repeatedly come to the same result, the causes being infinitely numerous and the effect infinitely complicated? The principle of mechanism is that "the same causes produce the same effects." This principle, of course, does not always imply that the same effects must have the same causes; but it does involve this consequence in the particular case in which the causes remain visible in the effect that they produce and are indeed its constitutive elements. That two walkers starting from different points and wandering at random should finally meet, is no great wonder. But that, throughout their walk, they should describe two identical curves exactly superposable on each other, is altogether unlikely. The improbability will be the greater, the more complicated the routes; and it will become impossibility, if the zigzags are infinitely complicated. Now, what is this complexity of zigzags as compared with that of an organ in which thousands of different cells, each being itself a kind of organism, are arranged in a definite order? Let us turn, then, to the other hypothesis, and see how it would solve the problem. Adaptation, it says, is not merely elimination of the unadapted; it is due to the positive influence of outer conditions that have molded the organism on their own form. This time, similarity of effects will be explained by similarity of cause. We shall remain, apparently, in pure mechanism. But if we look closely, we shall see that the explanation is merely verbal, that we are again the dupes of words, and that the trick of the solution consists in taking the term "adaptation" in two entirely different senses at the same time. If I pour into the same glass, by turns, water and wine, the two liquids will take the same form, and the sameness in form will be due to the sameness in adaptation of content to container. Adaptation, here, really means mechanical adjustment. The reason is that the form to which the matter has adapted itself was there, ready-made, and has forced its own shape on the matter. But, in the adaptation of an organism to the circumstances it has to live in, where is the pre-existing form awaiting its matter? The circumstances are not a mold into which life is inserted and whose form life adopts: this is indeed to be fooled by a metaphor. There is no form yet, and the life must create a form for itself, suited to the circumstances which are made for it. It will have to make the best of these circumstances, neutralize their inconveniences and utilize their advantages--in short, respond to outer actions by building up a machine which has no resemblance to them. Such adapting is not _repeating_, but _replying_,--an entirely different thing. If there is still adaptation, it will be in the sense in which one may say of the solution of a problem of geometry, for example, that it is adapted to the conditions. I grant indeed that adaptation so understood explains why different evolutionary processes result in similar forms: the same problem, of course, calls for the same solution. But it is necessary then to introduce, as for the solution of a problem of geometry, an intelligent activity, or at least a cause which behaves in the same way. This is to bring in finality again, and a finality this time more than ever charged with anthropomorphic elements. In a word, if the adaptation is passive, if it is mere repetition in the relief of what the conditions give in the mold, it will build up nothing that one tries to make it build; and if it is active, capable of responding by a calculated solution to the problem which is set out in the conditions, that is going further than we do--too far, indeed, in our opinion--in the direction we indicated in the beginning. But the truth is that there is a surreptitious passing from one of these two meanings to the other, a flight for refuge to the first whenever one is about to be caught _in flagrante delicto_ of finalism by employing the second. It is really the second which serves the usual practice of science, but it is the first that generally provides its philosophy. In any _particular_ case one talks as if the process of adaptation were an effort of the organism to build up a machine capable of turning external circumstances to the best possible account: then one speaks of adaptation _in general_ as if it were the very impress of circumstances, passively received by an indifferent matter. But let us come to the examples. It would be interesting first to institute here a general comparison between plants and animals. One cannot fail to be struck with the parallel progress which has been accomplished, on both sides, in the direction of sexuality. Not only is fecundation itself the same in higher plants and in animals, since it consists, in both, in the union of two nuclei that differ in their properties and structure before their union and immediately after become equivalent to each other; but the preparation of sexual elements goes on in both under like conditions: it consists essentially in the reduction of the number of chromosomes and the rejection of a certain quantity of chromatic substance.[22] Yet vegetables and animals have evolved on independent lines, favored by unlike circumstances, opposed by unlike obstacles. Here are two great series which have gone on diverging. On either line, thousands and thousands of causes have combined to determine the morphological and functional evolution. Yet these infinitely complicated causes have been consummated, in each series, in the same effect. And this effect, could hardly be called a phenomenon of "adaptation": where is the adaptation, where is the pressure of external circumstances? There is no striking utility in sexual generation; it has been interpreted in the most diverse ways; and some very acute enquirers even regard the sexuality of the plant, at least, as a luxury which nature might have dispensed with.[23] But we do not wish to dwell on facts so disputed. The ambiguity of the term "adaptation," and the necessity of transcending both the point of view of mechanical causality and that of anthropomorphic finality, will stand out more clearly with simpler examples. At all times the doctrine of finality has laid much stress on the marvellous structure of the sense-organs, in order to liken the work of nature to that of an intelligent workman. Now, since these organs are found, in a rudimentary state, in the lower animals, and since nature offers us many intermediaries between the pigment-spot of the simplest organisms and the infinitely complex eye of the vertebrates, it may just as well be alleged that the result has been brought about by natural selection perfecting the organ automatically. In short, if there is a case in which it seems justifiable to invoke adaptation, it is this particular one. For there may be discussion about the function and meaning of such a thing as sexual generation, in so far as it is related to the conditions in which it occurs; but the relation of the eye to light is obvious, and when we call this relation an adaptation, we must know what we mean. If, then, we can show, in this privileged case, the insufficiency of the principles invoked on both sides, our demonstration will at once have reached a high degree of generality. Let us consider the example on which the advocates of finality have always insisted: the structure of such an organ as the human eye. They have had no difficulty in showing that in this extremely complicated apparatus all the elements are marvelously co-ordinated. In order that vision shall operate, says the author of a well-known book on _Final Causes_, "the sclerotic membrane must become transparent in one point of its surface, so as to enable luminous rays to pierce it;... the cornea must correspond exactly with the opening of the socket;... behind this transparent opening there must be refracting media;... there must be a retina[24] at the extremity of the dark chamber;... perpendicular to the retina there must be an innumerable quantity of transparent cones permitting only the light directed in the line of their axes to reach the nervous membrane,"[25] etc. etc. In reply, the advocate of final causes has been invited to assume the evolutionist hypothesis. Everything is marvelous, indeed, if one consider an eye like ours, in which thousands of elements are coördinated in a single function. But take the function at its origin, in the Infusorian, where it is reduced to the mere impressionability (almost purely chemical) of a pigment-spot to light: this function, possibly only an accidental fact in the beginning, may have brought about a slight complication of the organ, which again induced an improvement of the function. It may have done this either directly, through some unknown mechanism, or indirectly, merely through the effect of the advantages it brought to the living being and the hold it thus offered to natural selection. Thus the progressive formation of an eye as well contrived as ours would be explained by an almost infinite number of actions and reactions between the function and the organ, without the intervention of other than mechanical causes. The question is hard to decide, indeed, when put directly between the function and the organ, as is done in the doctrine of finality, as also mechanism itself does. For organ and function are terms of different nature, and each conditions the other so closely that it is impossible to say _a priori_ whether in expressing their relation we should begin with the first, as does mechanism, or with the second, as finalism requires. But the discussion would take an entirely different turn, we think, if we began by comparing together two terms of the same nature, an organ with an organ, instead of an organ with its function. In this case, it would be possible to proceed little by little to a solution more and more plausible, and there would be the more chance of a successful issue the more resolutely we assumed the evolutionist hypothesis. Let us place side by side the eye of a vertebrate and that of a mollusc such as the common Pecten. We find the same essential parts in each, composed of analogous elements. The eye of the Pecten presents a retina, a cornea, a lens of cellular structure like our own. There is even that peculiar inversion of retinal elements which is not met with, in general, in the retina of the invertebrates. Now, the origin of molluscs may be a debated question, but, whatever opinion we hold, all are agreed that molluscs and vertebrates separated from their common parent-stem long before the appearance of an eye so complex as that of the Pecten. Whence, then, the structural analogy? Let us question on this point the two opposed systems of evolutionist explanation in turn--the hypothesis of purely accidental variations, and that of a variation directed in a definite way under the influence of external conditions. The first, as is well known, is presented to-day in two quite different forms. Darwin spoke of very slight variations being accumulated by natural selection. He was not ignorant of the facts of sudden variation; but he thought these "sports," as he called them, were only monstrosities incapable of perpetuating themselves; and he accounted for the genesis of species by an accumulation of _insensible_ variations.[26] Such is still the opinion of many naturalists. It is tending, however, to give way to the opposite idea that a new species comes into being all at once by the simultaneous appearance of several new characters, all somewhat different from the previous ones. This latter hypothesis, already proposed by various authors, notably by Bateson in a remarkable book,[27] has become deeply significant and acquired great force since the striking experiments of Hugo de Vries. This botanist, working on the _OEnothera Lamarckiana_, obtained at the end of a few generations a certain number of new species. The theory he deduces from his experiments is of the highest interest. Species pass through alternate periods of stability and transformation. When the period of "mutability" occurs, unexpected forms spring forth in a great number of different directions.[28]--We will not attempt to take sides between this hypothesis and that of insensible variations. Indeed, perhaps both are partly true. We wish merely to point out that if the variations invoked are accidental, they do not, whether small or great, account for a similarity of structure such as we have cited. Let us assume, to begin with, the Darwinian theory of insensible variations, and suppose the occurrence of small differences due to chance, and continually accumulating. It must not be forgotten that all the parts of an organism are necessarily coördinated. Whether the function be the effect of the organ or its cause, it matters little; one point is certain--the organ will be of no use and will not give selection a hold unless it functions. However the minute structure of the retina may develop, and however complicated it may become, such progress, instead of favoring vision, will probably hinder it if the visual centres do not develop at the same time, as well as several parts of the visual organ itself. If the variations are accidental, how can they ever agree to arise in every part of the organ at the same time, in such way that the organ will continue to perform its function? Darwin quite understood this; it is one of the reasons why he regarded variation as insensible.[29] For a difference which arises accidentally at one point of the visual apparatus, if it be very slight, will not hinder the functioning of the organ; and hence this first accidental variation can, in a sense, _wait for_ complementary variations to accumulate and raise vision to a higher degree of perfection. Granted; but while the insensible variation does not hinder the functioning of the eye, neither does it help it, so long as the variations that are complementary do not occur. How, in that case, can the variation be retained by natural selection? Unwittingly one will reason as if the slight variation were a toothing stone set up by the organism and reserved for a later construction. This hypothesis, so little conformable to the Darwinian principle, is difficult enough to avoid even in the case of an organ which has been developed along one single main line of evolution, _e.g._ the vertebrate eye. But it is absolutely forced upon us when we observe the likeness of structure of the vertebrate eye and that of the molluscs. How could the same small variations, incalculable in number, have ever occurred in the same order on two independent lines of evolution, if they were purely accidental? And how could they have been preserved by selection and accumulated in both cases, the same in the same order, when each of them, taken separately, was of no use? Let us turn, then, to the hypothesis of sudden variations, and see whether it will solve the problem. It certainly lessens the difficulty on one point, but it makes it much worse on another. If the eye of the mollusc and that of the vertebrate have both been raised to their present form by a relatively small number of sudden leaps, I have less difficulty in understanding the resemblance of the two organs than if this resemblance were due to an incalculable number of infinitesimal resemblances acquired successively: in both cases it is chance that operates, but in the second case chance is not required to work the miracle it would have to perform in the first. Not only is the number of resemblances to be added somewhat reduced, but I can also understand better how each could be preserved and added to the others; for the elementary variation is now considerable enough to be an advantage to the living being, and so to lend itself to the play of selection. But here there arises another problem, no less formidable, viz., how do all the parts of the visual apparatus, suddenly changed, remain so well coördinated that the eye continues to exercise its function? For the change of one part alone will make vision impossible, unless this change is absolutely infinitesimal. The parts must then all change at once, each consulting the others. I agree that a great number of uncoördinated variations may indeed have arisen in less fortunate individuals, that natural selection may have eliminated these, and that only the combination fit to endure, capable of preserving and improving vision, has survived. Still, this combination had to be produced. And, supposing chance to have granted this favor once, can we admit that it repeats the self-same favor in the course of the history of a species, so as to give rise, every time, all at once, to new complications marvelously regulated with reference to each other, and so related to former complications as to go further on in the same direction? How, especially, can we suppose that by a series of mere "accidents" these sudden variations occur, the same, in the same order,--involving in each case a perfect harmony of elements more and more numerous and complex--along two independent lines of evolution? The law of correlation will be invoked, of course; Darwin himself appealed to it.[30] It will be alleged that a change is not localized in a single point of the organism, but has its necessary recoil on other points. The examples cited by Darwin remain classic: white cats with blue eyes are generally deaf; hairless dogs have imperfect dentition, etc.--Granted; but let us not play now on the word "correlation." A collective whole of _solidary_ changes is one thing, a system of _complementary_ changes--changes so coördinated as to keep up and even improve the functioning of an organ under more complicated conditions--is another. That an anomaly of the pilous system should be accompanied by an anomaly of dentition is quite conceivable without our having to call for a special principle of explanation; for hair and teeth are similar formations,[31] and the same chemical change of the germ that hinders the formation of hair would probably obstruct that of teeth: it may be for the same sort of reason that white cats with blue eyes are deaf. In these different examples the "correlative" changes are only _solidary_ changes (not to mention the fact that they are really _lesions_, namely, diminutions or suppressions, and not additions, which makes a great difference). But when we speak of "correlative" changes occurring suddenly in the different parts of the eye, we use the word in an entirely new sense: this time there is a whole set of changes not only simultaneous, not only bound together by community of origin, but so coördinated that the organ keeps on performing the same simple function, and even performs it better. That a change in the germ, which influences the formation of the retina, may affect at the same time also the formation of the cornea, the iris, the lens, the visual centres, etc., I admit, if necessary, although they are formations that differ much more from one another in their original nature than do probably hair and teeth. But that all these simultaneous changes should occur in such a way as to improve or even merely maintain vision, this is what, in the hypothesis of sudden variation, I cannot admit, unless a mysterious principle is to come in, whose duty it is to watch over the interest of the function. But this would be to give up the idea of "accidental" variation. In reality, these two senses of the word "correlation" are often interchanged in the mind of the biologist, just like the two senses of the word "adaptation." And the confusion is almost legitimate in botany, that science in which the theory of the formation of species by sudden variation rests on the firmest experimental basis. In vegetables, function is far less narrowly bound to form than in animals. Even profound morphological differences, such as a change in the form of leaves, have no appreciable influence on the exercise of function, and so do not require a whole system of complementary changes for the plant to remain fit to survive. But it is not so in the animal, especially in the case of an organ like the eye, a very complex structure and very delicate function. Here it is impossible to identify changes that are simply solidary with changes which are also complementary. The two senses of the word "correlation" must be carefully distinguished; it would be a downright paralogism to adopt one of them in the premisses of the reasoning, and the other in the conclusion. And this is just what is done when the principle of correlation is invoked in explanations of _detail_ in order to account for complementary variations, and then correlation _in general_ is spoken of as if it were any group of variations provoked by any variation of the germ. Thus, the notion of correlation is first used in current science as it might be used by an advocate of finality; it is understood that this is only a convenient way of expressing oneself, that one will correct it and fall back on pure mechanism when explaining the nature of the principles and turning from science to philosophy. And one does then come back to pure mechanism, but only by giving a new meaning to the word "correlation"--a meaning which would now make correlation inapplicable to the detail it is called upon to explain. To sum up, if the accidental variations that bring about evolution are insensible variations, some good genius must be appealed to--the genius of the future species--in order to preserve and accumulate these variations, for selection will not look after this. If, on the other hand, the accidental variations are sudden, then, for the previous function to go on or for a new function to take its place, all the changes that have happened together must be complementary. So we have to fall back on the good genius again, this time to obtain the _convergence_ of _simultaneous_ changes, as before to be assured of the _continuity of direction_ of _successive_ variations. But in neither case can parallel development of the same complex structures on independent lines of evolution be due to a mere accumulation of accidental variations. So we come to the second of the two great hypotheses we have to examine. Suppose the variations are due, not to accidental and inner causes, but to the direct influence of outer circumstances. Let us see what line we should have to take, on this hypothesis, to account for the resemblance of eye-structure in two series that are independent of each other from the phylogenetic point of view. Though molluscs and vertebrates have evolved separately, both have remained exposed to the influence of light. And light is a physical cause bringing forth certain definite effects. Acting in a continuous way, it has been able to produce a continuous variation in a constant direction. Of course it is unlikely that the eye of the vertebrate and that of the mollusc have been built up by a series of variations due to simple chance. Admitting even that light enters into the case as an instrument of selection, in order to allow only useful variations to persist, there is no possibility that the play of chance, even thus supervised from without, should bring about in both cases the same juxtaposition of elements coördinated in the same way. But it would be different supposing that light acted directly on the organized matter so as to change its structure and somehow adapt this structure to its own form. The resemblance of the two effects would then be explained by the identity of the cause. The more and more complex eye would be something like the deeper and deeper imprint of light on a matter which, being organized, possesses a special aptitude for receiving it. But can an organic structure be likened to an imprint? We have already called attention to the ambiguity of the term "adaptation." The gradual complication of a form which is being better and better adapted to the mold of outward circumstances is one thing, the increasingly complex structure of an instrument which derives more and more advantage from these circumstances is another. In the former case, the matter merely receives an imprint; in the second, it reacts positively, it solves a problem. Obviously it is this second sense of the word "adapt" that is used when one says that the eye has become better and better adapted to the influence of light. But one passes more or less unconsciously from this sense to the other, and a purely mechanistic biology will strive to make the _passive_ adaptation of an inert matter, which submits to the influence of its environment, mean the same as the _active_ adaptation of an organism which derives from this influence an advantage it can appropriate. It must be owned, indeed, that Nature herself appears to invite our mind to confuse these two kinds of adaptation, for she usually begins by a passive adaptation where, later on, she will build up a mechanism for active response. Thus, in the case before us, it is unquestionable that the first rudiment of the eye is found in the pigment-spot of the lower organisms; this spot may indeed have been produced physically, by the mere action of light, and there are a great number of intermediaries between the simple spot of pigment and a complicated eye like that of the vertebrates.--But, from the fact that we pass from one thing to another by degrees, it does not follow that the two things are of the same nature. From the fact that an orator falls in, at first, with the passions of his audience in order to make himself master of them, it will not be concluded that to _follow_ is the same as to _lead_. Now, living matter seems to have no other means of turning circumstances to good account than by adapting itself to them passively at the outset. Where it has to direct a movement, it begins by adopting it. Life proceeds by insinuation. The intermediate degrees between a pigment-spot and an eye are nothing to the point: however numerous the degrees, there will still be the same interval between the pigment-spot and the eye as between a photograph and a photographic apparatus. Certainly the photograph has been gradually turned into a photographic apparatus; but could light alone, a physical force, ever have provoked this change, and converted an impression left by it into a machine capable of using it? It may be claimed that considerations of utility are out of place here; that the eye is not made to see, but that we see because we have eyes; that the organ is what it is, and "utility" is a word by which we designate the functional effects of the structure. But when I say that the eye "makes use of" light, I do not merely mean that the eye is capable of seeing; I allude to the very precise relations that exist between this organ and the apparatus of locomotion. The retina of vertebrates is prolonged in an optic nerve, which, again, is continued by cerebral centres connected with motor mechanisms. Our eye makes use of light in that it enables us to utilize, by movements of reaction, the objects that we see to be advantageous, and to avoid those which we see to be injurious. Now, of course, as light may have produced a pigment-spot by physical means, so it can physically determine the movements of certain organisms; ciliated Infusoria, for instance, react to light. But no one would hold that the influence of light has physically caused the formation of a nervous system, of a muscular system, of an osseous system, all things which are continuous with the apparatus of vision in vertebrate animals. The truth is, when one speaks of the gradual formation of the eye, and, still more, when one takes into account all that is inseparably connected with it, one brings in something entirely different from the direct action of light. One implicitly attributes to organized matter a certain capacity _sui generis_, the mysterious power of building up very complicated machines to utilize the simple excitation that it undergoes. But this is just what is claimed to be unnecessary. Physics and chemistry are said to give us the key to everything. Eimer's great work is instructive in this respect. It is well known what persevering effort this biologist has devoted to demonstrating that transformation is brought about by the influence of the external on the internal, continuously exerted in the same direction, and not, as Darwin held, by accidental variations. His theory rests on observations of the highest interest, of which the starting-point was the study of the course followed by the color variation of the skin in certain lizards. Before this, the already old experiments of Dorfmeister had shown that the same chrysalis, according as it was submitted to cold or heat, gave rise to very different butterflies, which had long been regarded as independent species, _Vanessa levana_ and _Vanessa prorsa_: an intermediate temperature produces an intermediate form. We might class with these facts the important transformations observed in a little crustacean, _Artemia salina_, when the salt of the water it lives in is increased or diminished.[32] In these various experiments the external agent seems to act as a cause of transformation. But what does the word "cause" mean here? Without undertaking an exhaustive analysis of the idea of causality, we will merely remark that three very different meanings of this term are commonly confused. A cause may act by _impelling_, _releasing_, or _unwinding_. The billiard-ball, that strikes another, determines its movement by _impelling_. The spark that explodes the powder acts by _releasing_. The gradual relaxing of the spring, that makes the phonograph turn, _unwinds_ the melody inscribed on the cylinder: if the melody which is played be the effect, and the relaxing of the spring the cause, we must say that the cause acts by _unwinding_. What distinguishes these three cases from each other is the greater or less solidarity between the cause and the effect. In the first, the quantity and quality of the effect vary with the quantity and quality of the cause. In the second, neither quality nor quantity of the effect varies with quality and quantity of the cause: the effect is invariable. In the third, the quantity of the effect depends on the quantity of the cause, but the cause does not influence the quality of the effect: the longer the cylinder turns by the action of the spring, the more of the melody I shall hear, but the nature of the melody, or of the part heard, does not depend on the action of the spring. Only in the first case, really, does cause _explain_ effect; in the others the effect is more or less given in advance, and the antecedent invoked is--in different degrees, of course--its occasion rather than its cause. Now, in saying that the saltness of the water is the cause of the transformations of Artemia, or that the degree of temperature determines the color and marks of the wings which a certain chrysalis will assume on becoming a butterfly, is the word "cause" used in the first sense? Obviously not: causality has here an intermediary sense between those of unwinding and releasing. Such, indeed, seems to be Eimer's own meaning when he speaks of the "kaleidoscopic" character of the variation,[33] or when he says that the variation of organized matter works in a definite way, just as inorganic matter crystallizes in definite directions.[34] And it may be granted, perhaps, that the process is a merely physical and chemical one in the case of the color-changes of the skin. But if this sort of explanation is extended to the case of the gradual formation of the eye of the vertebrate, for instance, it must be supposed that the physico-chemistry of living bodies is such that the influence of light has caused the organism to construct a progressive series of visual apparatus, all extremely complex, yet all capable of seeing, and of seeing better and better.[35] What more could the most confirmed finalist say, in order to mark out so exceptional a physico-chemistry? And will not the position of a mechanistic philosophy become still more difficult, when it is pointed out to it that the egg of a mollusc cannot have the same chemical composition as that of a vertebrate, that the organic substance which evolved toward the first of these two forms could not have been chemically identical with that of the substance which went in the other direction, and that, nevertheless, under the influence of light, the same organ has been constructed in the one case as in the other? The more we reflect upon it, the more we shall see that this production of the same effect by two different accumulations of an enormous number of small causes is contrary to the principles of mechanistic philosophy. We have concentrated the full force of our discussion upon an example drawn from phylogenesis. But ontogenesis would have furnished us with facts no less cogent. Every moment, right before our eyes, nature arrives at identical results, in sometimes neighboring species, by entirely different embryogenic processes. Observations of "heteroblastia" have multiplied in late years,[36] and it has been necessary to reject the almost classical theory of the specificity of embryonic gills. Still keeping to our comparison between the eye of vertebrates and that of molluscs, we may point out that the retina of the vertebrate is produced by an expansion in the rudimentary brain of the young embryo. It is a regular nervous centre which has moved toward the periphery. In the mollusc, on the contrary, the retina is derived from the ectoderm directly, and not indirectly by means of the embryonic encephalon. Quite different, therefore, are the evolutionary processes which lead, in man and in the Pecten, to the development of a like retina. But, without going so far as to compare two organisms so distant from each other, we might reach the same conclusion simply by looking at certain very curious facts of regeneration in one and the same organism. If the crystalline lens of a Triton be removed, it is regenerated by the iris.[37] Now, the original lens was built out of the ectoderm, while the iris is of mesodermic origin. What is more, in the _Salamandra maculata_, if the lens be removed and the iris left, the regeneration of the lens takes place at the upper part of the iris; but if this upper part of the iris itself be taken away, the regeneration takes place in the inner or retinal layer of the remaining region.[38] Thus, parts differently situated, differently constituted, meant normally for different functions, are capable of performing the same duties and even of manufacturing, when necessary, the same pieces of the machine. Here we have, indeed, the same effect obtained by different combinations of causes. Whether we will or no, we must appeal to some inner directing principle in order to account for this convergence of effects. Such convergence does not appear possible in the Darwinian, and especially the neo-Darwinian, theory of insensible accidental variations, nor in the hypothesis of sudden accidental variations, nor even in the theory that assigns definite directions to the evolution of the various organs by a kind of mechanical composition of the external with the internal forces. So we come to the only one of the present forms of evolution which remains for us to mention, viz., neo-Lamarckism. * * * * * It is well known that Lamarck attributed to the living being the power of varying by use or disuse of its organs, and also of passing on the variation so acquired to its descendants. A certain number of biologists hold a doctrine of this kind to-day. The variation that results in a new species is not, they believe, merely an accidental variation inherent in the germ itself, nor is it governed by a determinism _sui generis_ which develops definite characters in a definite direction, apart from every consideration of utility. It springs from the very effort of the living being to adapt itself to the circumstances of its existence. The effort may indeed be only the mechanical exercise of certain organs, mechanically elicited by the pressure of external circumstances. But it may also imply consciousness and will, and it is in this sense that it appears to be understood by one of the most eminent representatives of the doctrine, the American naturalist Cope.[39] Neo-Lamarckism is therefore, of all the later forms of evolutionism, the only one capable of admitting an internal and psychological principle of development, although it is not bound to do so. And it is also the only evolutionism that seems to us to account for the building up of identical complex organs on independent lines of development. For it is quite conceivable that the same effort to turn the same circumstances to good account might have the same result, especially if the problem put by the circumstances is such as to admit of only one solution. But the question remains, whether the term "effort" must not then be taken in a deeper sense, a sense even more psychological than any neo-Lamarckian supposes. For a mere variation of size is one thing, and a change of form is another. That an organ can be strengthened and grow by exercise, nobody will deny. But it is a long way from that to the progressive development of an eye like that of the molluscs and of the vertebrates. If this development be ascribed to the influence of light, long continued but passively received, we fall back on the theory we have just criticized. If, on the other hand, an internal activity is appealed to, then it must be something quite different from what we usually call an effort, for never has an effort been known to produce the slightest complication of an organ, and yet an enormous number of complications, all admirably coördinated, have been necessary to pass from the pigment-spot of the Infusorian to the eye of the vertebrate. But, even if we accept this notion of the evolutionary process in the case of animals, how can we apply it to plants? Here, variations of form do not seem to imply, nor always to lead to, functional changes; and even if the cause of the variation is of a psychological nature, we can hardly call it an effort, unless we give a very unusual extension to the meaning of the word. The truth is, it is necessary to dig beneath the effort itself and look for a deeper cause. This is especially necessary, we believe, if we wish to get at a cause of regular hereditary variations. We are not going to enter here into the controversies over the transmissibility of acquired characters; still less do we wish to take too definite a side on this question, which is not within our province. But we cannot remain completely indifferent to it. Nowhere is it clearer that philosophers can not to-day content themselves with vague generalities, but must follow the scientists in experimental detail and discuss the results with them. If Spencer had begun by putting to himself the question of the hereditability of acquired characters, his evolutionism would no doubt have taken an altogether different form. If (as seems probable to us) a habit contracted by the individual were transmitted to its descendants only in very exceptional cases, all the Spencerian psychology would need remaking, and a large part of Spencer's philosophy would fall to pieces. Let us say, then, how the problem seems to us to present itself, and in what direction an attempt might be made to solve it. After having been affirmed as a dogma, the transmissibility of acquired characters has been no less dogmatically denied, for reasons drawn _a priori_ from the supposed nature of germinal cells. It is well known how Weismann was led, by his hypothesis of the continuity of the germ-plasm, to regard the germinal cells--ova and spermatozoa--as almost independent of the somatic cells. Starting from this, it has been claimed, and is still claimed by many, that the hereditary transmission of an acquired character is inconceivable. But if, perchance, experiment should show that acquired characters are transmissible, it would prove thereby that the germ-plasm is not so independent of the somatic envelope as has been contended, and the transmissibility of acquired characters would become _ipso facto_ conceivable; which amounts to saying that conceivability and inconceivability have nothing to do with the case, and that experience alone must settle the matter. But it is just here that the difficulty begins. The acquired characters we are speaking of are generally habits or the effects of habit, and at the root of most habits there is a natural disposition. So that one can always ask whether it is really the habit acquired by the soma of the individual that is transmitted, or whether it is not rather a natural aptitude, which existed prior to the habit. This aptitude would have remained inherent in the germ-plasm which the individual bears within him, as it was in the individual himself and consequently in the germ whence he sprang. Thus, for instance, there is no proof that the mole has become blind because it has formed the habit of living underground; it is perhaps because its eyes were becoming atrophied that it condemned itself to a life underground.[40] If this is the case, the tendency to lose the power of vision has been transmitted from germ to germ without anything being acquired or lost by the soma of the mole itself. From the fact that the son of a fencing-master has become a good fencer much more quickly than his father, we cannot infer that the habit of the parent has been transmitted to the child; for certain natural dispositions in course of growth may have passed from the plasma engendering the father to the plasma engendering the son, may have grown on the way by the effect of the primitive impetus, and thus assured to the son a greater suppleness than the father had, without troubling, so to speak, about what the father did. So of many examples drawn from the progressive domestication of animals: it is hard to say whether it is the acquired habit that is transmitted or only a certain natural tendency--that, indeed, which has caused such and such a particular species or certain of its representatives to be specially chosen for domestication. The truth is, when every doubtful case, every fact open to more than one interpretation, has been eliminated, there remains hardly a single unquestionable example of acquired and transmitted peculiarities, beyond the famous experiments of Brown-Séquard, repeated and confirmed by other physiologists.[41] By cutting the spinal cord or the sciatic nerve of guinea-pigs, Brown-Séquard brought about an epileptic state which was transmitted to the descendants. Lesions of the same sciatic nerve, of the restiform body, etc., provoked various troubles in the guinea-pig which its progeny inherited sometimes in a quite different form: exophthalmia, loss of toes, etc. But it is not demonstrated that in these different cases of hereditary transmission there had been a real influence of the soma of the animal on its germ-plasm. Weismann at once objected that the operations of Brown-Séquard might have introduced certain special microbes into the body of the guinea-pig, which had found their means of nutrition in the nervous tissues and transmitted the malady by penetrating into the sexual elements.[42] This objection has been answered by Brown-Séquard himself;[43] but a more plausible one might be raised. Some experiments of Voisin and Peron have shown that fits of epilepsy are followed by the elimination of a toxic body which, when injected into animals,[44] is capable of producing convulsive symptoms. Perhaps the trophic disorders following the nerve lesions made by Brown-Séquard correspond to the formation of precisely this convulsion-causing poison. If so, the toxin passed from the guinea-pig to its spermatozoon or ovum, and caused in the development of the embryo a general disturbance, which, however, had no visible effects except at one point or another of the organism when developed. In that case, what occurred would have been somewhat the same as in the experiments of Charrin, Delamare, and Moussu, where guinea-pigs in gestation, whose liver or kidney was injured, transmitted the lesion to their progeny, simply because the injury to the mother's organ had given rise to specific "cytotoxins" which acted on the corresponding organ of the foetus.[45] It is true that, in these experiments, as in a former observation of the same physiologists,[46] it was the already formed foetus that was influenced by the toxins. But other researches of Charrin have resulted in showing that the same effect may be produced, by an analogous process, on the spermatozoa and the ova.[47] To conclude, then: the inheritance of an acquired peculiarity in the experiments of Brown-Séquard can be explained by the effect of a toxin on the germ. The lesion, however well localized it seems, is transmitted by the same process as, for instance, the taint of alcoholism. But may it not be the same in the case of every acquired peculiarity that has become hereditary? There is, indeed, one point on which both those who affirm and those who deny the transmissibility of acquired characters are agreed, namely, that certain influences, such as that of alcohol, can affect at the same time both the living being and the germ-plasm it contains. In such case, there is inheritance of a defect, and the result is _as if_ the soma of the parent had acted on the germ-plasm, although in reality soma and plasma have simply both suffered the action of the same cause. Now, suppose that the soma can influence the germ-plasm, as those believe who hold that acquired characters are transmissible. Is not the most natural hypothesis to suppose that things happen in this second case as in the first, and that the direct effect of the influence of the soma is a _general_ alteration of the germ-plasm? If this is the case, it is by exception, and in some sort by accident, that the modification of the descendant is the same as that of the parent. It is like the hereditability of the alcoholic taint: it passes from father to children, but it may take a different form in each child, and in none of them be like what it was in the father. Let the letter C represent the change in the plasm, C being either positive or negative, that is to say, showing either the gain or loss of certain substances. The effect will not be an exact reproduction of the cause, nor will the change in the germ-plasm, provoked by a certain modification of a certain part of the soma, determine a similar modification of the corresponding part of the new organism in process of formation, unless all the other nascent parts of this organism enjoy a kind of immunity as regards C: the same part will then undergo alteration in the new organism, because it happens that the development of this part is alone subject to the new influence. And, even then, the part might be altered in an entirely different way from that in which the corresponding part was altered in the generating organism. We should propose, then, to introduce a distinction between the hereditability of _deviation_ and that of _character_. An individual which acquires a new character thereby _deviates_ from the form it previously had, which form the germs, or oftener the half-germs, it contains would have reproduced in their development. If this modification does not involve the production of substances capable of changing the germ-plasm, or does not so affect nutrition as to deprive the germ-plasm of certain of its elements, it will have no effect on the offspring of the individual. This is probably the case as a rule. If, on the contrary, it has some effect, this is likely to be due to a chemical change which it has induced in the germ-plasm. This chemical change might, by exception, bring about the original modification again in the organism which the germ is about to develop, but there are as many and more chances that it will do something else. In this latter case, the generated organism will perhaps deviate from the normal type _as much as_ the generating organism, but it will do so _differently_. It will have inherited deviation and not character. In general, therefore, the habits formed by an individual have probably no echo in its offspring; and when they have, the modification in the descendants may have no visible likeness to the original one. Such, at least, is the hypothesis which seems to us most likely. In any case, in default of proof to the contrary, and so long as the decisive experiments called for by an eminent biologist[48] have not been made, we must keep to the actual results of observation. Now, even if we take the most favorable view of the theory of the transmissibility of acquired characters, and assume that the ostensible acquired character is not, in most cases, the more or less tardy development of an innate character, facts show us that hereditary transmission is the exception and not the rule. How, then, shall we expect it to develop an organ such as the eye? When we think of the enormous number of variations, all in the same direction, that we must suppose to be accumulated before the passage from the pigment-spot of the Infusorian to the eye of the mollusc and of the vertebrate is possible, we do not see how heredity, as we observe it, could ever have determined this piling-up of differences, even supposing that individual efforts could have produced each of them singly. That is to say that neo-Lamarckism is no more able than any other form of evolutionism to solve the problem. * * * * * In thus submitting the various present forms of evolutionism to a common test, in showing that they all strike against the same insurmountable difficulty, we have in no wise the intention of rejecting them altogether. On the contrary, each of them, being supported by a considerable number of facts, must be true in its way. Each of them must correspond to a certain aspect of the process of evolution. Perhaps even it is necessary that a theory should restrict itself exclusively to a particular point of view, in order to remain scientific, _i.e._ to give a precise direction to researches into detail. But the reality of which each of these theories takes a partial view must transcend them all. And this reality is the special object of philosophy, which is not constrained to scientific precision because it contemplates no practical application. Let us therefore indicate in a word or two the positive contribution that each of the three present forms of evolutionism seems to us to make toward the solution of the problem, what each of them leaves out, and on what point this threefold effort should, in our opinion, converge in order to obtain a more comprehensive, although thereby of necessity a less definite, idea of the evolutionary process. The neo-Darwinians are probably right, we believe, when they teach that the essential causes of variation are the differences inherent in the germ borne by the individual, and not the experiences or behavior of the individual in the course of his career. Where we fail to follow these biologists, is in regarding the differences inherent in the germ as purely accidental and individual. We cannot help believing that these differences are the development of an impulsion which passes from germ to germ across the individuals, that they are therefore not pure accidents, and that they might well appear at the same time, in the same form, in all the representatives of the same species, or at least in a certain number of them. Already, in fact, the theory of _mutations_ is modifying Darwinism profoundly on this point. It asserts that at a given moment, after a long period, the entire species is beset with a tendency to change. The _tendency to change_, therefore, is not accidental. True, the change itself would be accidental, since the mutation works, according to De Vries, in different directions in the different representatives of the species. But, first we must see if the theory is confirmed by many other vegetable species (De Vries has verified it only by the _OEnothera Lamarckiana_),[49] and then there is the possibility, as we shall explain further on, that the part played by chance is much greater in the variation of plants than in that of animals, because, in the vegetable world, function does not depend so strictly on form. Be that as it may, the neo-Darwinians are inclined to admit that the periods of mutation are determinate. The direction of the mutation may therefore be so as well, at least in animals, and to the extent we shall have to indicate. We thus arrive at a hypothesis like Eimer's, according to which the variations of different characters continue from generation to generation in definite directions. This hypothesis seems plausible to us, within the limits in which Eimer himself retains it. Of course, the evolution of the organic world cannot be predetermined as a whole. We claim, on the contrary, that the spontaneity of life is manifested by a continual creation of new forms succeeding others. But this indetermination cannot be complete; it must leave a certain part to determination. An organ like the eye, for example, must have been formed by just a continual changing in a definite direction. Indeed, we do not see how otherwise to explain the likeness of structure of the eye in species that have not the same history. Where we differ from Eimer is in his claim that combinations of physical and chemical causes are enough to secure the result. We have tried to prove, on the contrary, by the example of the eye, that if there is "orthogenesis" here, a psychological cause intervenes. Certain neo-Lamarckians do indeed resort to a cause of a psychological nature. There, to our thinking, is one of the most solid positions of neo-Lamarckism. But if this cause is nothing but the conscious effort of the individual, it cannot operate in more than a restricted number of cases--at most in the animal world, and not at all in the vegetable kingdom. Even in animals, it will act only on points which are under the direct or indirect control of the will. And even where it does act, it is not clear how it could compass a change so profound as an increase of complexity: at most this would be conceivable if the acquired characters were regularly transmitted so as to be added together; but this transmission seems to be the exception rather than the rule. A hereditary change in a definite direction, which continues to accumulate and add to itself so as to build up a more and more complex machine, must certainly be related to some sort of effort, but to an effort of far greater depth than the individual effort, far more independent of circumstances, an effort common to most representatives of the same species, inherent in the germs they bear rather than in their substance alone, an effort thereby assured of being passed on to their descendants. * * * * * So we come back, by a somewhat roundabout way, to the idea we started from, that of an _original impetus_ of life, passing from one generation of germs to the following generation of germs through the developed organisms which bridge the interval between the generations. This impetus, sustained right along the lines of evolution among which it gets divided, is the fundamental cause of variations, at least of those that are regularly passed on, that accumulate and create new species. In general, when species have begun to diverge from a common stock, they accentuate their divergence as they progress in their evolution. Yet, in certain definite points, they may evolve identically; in fact, they must do so if the hypothesis of a common impetus be accepted. This is just what we shall have to show now in a more precise way, by the same example we have chosen, the formation of the eye in molluscs and vertebrates. The idea of an "original impetus," moreover, will thus be made clearer. Two points are equally striking in an organ like the eye: the complexity of its structure and the simplicity of its function. The eye is composed of distinct parts, such as the sclerotic, the cornea, the retina, the crystalline lens, etc. In each of these parts the detail is infinite. The retina alone comprises three layers of nervous elements--multipolar cells, bipolar cells, visual cells--each of which has its individuality and is undoubtedly a very complicated organism: so complicated, indeed, is the retinal membrane in its intimate structure, that no simple description can give an adequate idea of it. The mechanism of the eye is, in short, composed of an infinity of mechanisms, all of extreme complexity. Yet vision is one simple fact. As soon as the eye opens, the visual act is effected. Just because the act is simple, the slightest negligence on the part of nature in the building of the infinitely complex machine would have made vision impossible. This contrast between the complexity of the organ and the unity of the function is what gives us pause. A mechanistic theory is one which means to show us the gradual building-up of the machine under the influence of external circumstances intervening either directly by action on the tissues or indirectly by the selection of better-adapted ones. But, whatever form this theory may take, supposing it avails at all to explain the detail of the parts, it throws no light on their correlation. Then comes the doctrine of finality, which says that the parts have been brought together on a preconceived plan with a view to a certain end. In this it likens the labor of nature to that of the workman, who also proceeds by the assemblage of parts with a view to the realization of an idea or the imitation of a model. Mechanism, here, reproaches finalism with its anthropomorphic character, and rightly. But it fails to see that itself proceeds according to this method--somewhat mutilated! True, it has got rid of the end pursued or the ideal model. But it also holds that nature has worked like a human being by bringing parts together, while a mere glance at the development of an embryo shows that life goes to work in a very different way. _Life does not proceed by the association and addition of elements, but by dissociation and division._ We must get beyond both points of view, both mechanism and finalism being, at bottom, only standpoints to which the human mind has been led by considering the work of man. But in what direction can we go beyond them? We have said that in analyzing the structure of an organ, we can go on decomposing for ever, although the function of the whole is a simple thing. This contrast between the infinite complexity of the organ and the extreme simplicity of the function is what should open our eyes. In general, when the same object appears in one aspect and in another as infinitely complex, the two aspects have by no means the same importance, or rather the same degree of reality. In such cases, the simplicity belongs to the object itself, and the infinite complexity to the views we take in turning around it, to the symbols by which our senses or intellect represent it to us, or, more generally, to elements _of a different order_, with which we try to imitate it artificially, but with which it remains incommensurable, being of a different nature. An artist of genius has painted a figure on his canvas. We can imitate his picture with many-colored squares of mosaic. And we shall reproduce the curves and shades of the model so much the better as our squares are smaller, more numerous and more varied in tone. But an infinity of elements infinitely small, presenting an infinity of shades, would be necessary to obtain the exact equivalent of the figure that the artist has conceived as a simple thing, which he has wished to transport as a whole to the canvas, and which is the more complete the more it strikes us as the projection of an indivisible intuition. Now, suppose our eyes so made that they cannot help seeing in the work of the master a mosaic effect. Or suppose our intellect so made that it cannot explain the appearance of the figure on the canvas except as a work of mosaic. We should then be able to speak simply of a collection of little squares, and we should be under the mechanistic hypothesis. We might add that, beside the materiality of the collection, there must be a plan on which the artist worked; and then we should be expressing ourselves as finalists. But in neither case should we have got at the real process, for there are no squares brought together. It is the picture, _i.e._ the simple act, projected on the canvas, which, by the mere fact of entering into our perception, is _de_composed before our eyes into thousands and thousands of little squares which present, as _re_composed, a wonderful arrangement. So the eye, with its marvelous complexity of structure, may be only the simple act of vision, divided _for us_ into a mosaic of cells, whose order seems marvelous to us because we have conceived the whole as an assemblage. If I raise my hand from A to B, this movement appears to me under two aspects at once. Felt from within, it is a simple, indivisible act. Perceived from without, it is the course of a certain curve, AB. In this curve I can distinguish as many positions as I please, and the line itself might be defined as a certain mutual coördination of these positions. But the positions, infinite in number, and the order in which they are connected, have sprung automatically from the indivisible act by which my hand has gone from A to B. Mechanism, here, would consist in seeing only the positions. Finalism would take their order into account. But both mechanism and finalism would leave on one side the movement, which is reality itself. In one sense, the movement is _more_ than the positions and than their order; for it is sufficient to make it in its indivisible simplicity to secure that the infinity of the successive positions as also their order be given at once--with something else which is neither order nor position but which is essential, the mobility. But, in another sense, the movement is _less_ than the series of positions and their connecting order; for, to arrange points in a certain order, it is necessary first to conceive the order and then to realize it with points, there must be the work of assemblage and there must be intelligence, whereas the simple movement of the hand contains nothing of either. It is not intelligent, in the human sense of the word, and it is not an assemblage, for it is not made up of elements. Just so with the relation of the eye to vision. There is in vision _more_ than the component cells of the eye and their mutual coördination: in this sense, neither mechanism nor finalism go far enough. But, in another sense, mechanism and finalism both go too far, for they attribute to Nature the most formidable of the labors of Hercules in holding that she has exalted to the simple act of vision an infinity of infinitely complex elements, whereas Nature has had no more trouble in making an eye than I have in lifting my hand. Nature's simple act has divided itself automatically into an infinity of elements which are then found to be coördinated to one idea, just as the movement of my hand has dropped an infinity of points which are then found to satisfy one equation. We find it very hard to see things in that light, because we cannot help conceiving organization as manufacturing. But it is one thing to manufacture, and quite another to organize. Manufacturing is peculiar to man. It consists in assembling parts of matter which we have cut out in such manner that we can fit them together and obtain from them a common action. The parts are arranged, so to speak, around the action as an ideal centre. To manufacture, therefore, is to work from the periphery to the centre, or, as the philosophers say, from the many to the one. Organization, on the contrary, works from the centre to the periphery. It begins in a point that is almost a mathematical point, and spreads around this point by concentric waves which go on enlarging. The work of manufacturing is the more effective, the greater the quantity of matter dealt with. It proceeds by concentration and compression. The organizing act, on the contrary, has something explosive about it: it needs at the beginning the smallest possible place, a minimum of matter, as if the organizing forces only entered space reluctantly. The spermatozoon, which sets in motion the evolutionary process of the embryonic life, is one of the smallest cells of the organism; and it is only a small part of the spermatozoon which really takes part in the operation. But these are only superficial differences. Digging beneath them, we think, a deeper difference would be found. A manufactured thing delineates exactly the form of the work of manufacturing it. I mean that the manufacturer finds in his product exactly what he has put into it. If he is going to make a machine, he cuts out its pieces one by one and then puts them together: the machine, when made, will show both the pieces and their assemblage. The whole of the result represents the whole of the work; and to each part of the work corresponds a part of the result. Now I recognize that positive science can and should proceed as if organization was like making a machine. Only so will it have any hold on organized bodies. For its object is not to show us the essence of things, but to furnish us with the best means of acting on them. Physics and chemistry are well advanced sciences, and living matter lends itself to our action only so far as we can treat it by the processes of our physics and chemistry. Organization can therefore only be studied scientifically if the organized body has first been likened to a machine. The cells will be the pieces of the machine, the organism their assemblage, and the elementary labors which have organized the parts will be regarded as the real elements of the labor which has organized the whole. This is the standpoint of science. Quite different, in our opinion, is that of philosophy. For us, the whole of an organized machine may, strictly speaking, represent the whole of the organizing work (this is, however, only approximately true), yet the parts of the machine do not correspond to parts of the work, because _the materiality of this machine does not represent a sum of means employed, but a sum of obstacles avoided_: it is a negation rather than a positive reality. So, as we have shown in a former study, vision is a power which should attain _by right_ an infinity of things inaccessible to our eyes. But such a vision would not be continued into action; it might suit a phantom, but not a living being. The vision of a living being is an _effective_ vision, limited to objects on which the being can act: it is a vision that is _canalized_, and the visual apparatus simply symbolizes the work of canalizing. Therefore the creation of the visual apparatus is no more explained by the assembling of its anatomic elements than the digging of a canal could be explained by the heaping up of the earth which might have formed its banks. A mechanistic theory would maintain that the earth had been brought cart-load by cart-load; finalism would add that it had not been dumped down at random, that the carters had followed a plan. But both theories would be mistaken, for the canal has been made in another way. With greater precision, we may compare the process by which nature constructs an eye to the simple act by which we raise the hand. But we supposed at first that the hand met with no resistance. Let us now imagine that, instead of moving in air, the hand has to pass through iron filings which are compressed and offer resistance to it in proportion as it goes forward. At a certain moment the hand will have exhausted its effort, and, at this very moment, the filings will be massed and coördinated in a certain definite form, to wit, that of the hand that is stopped and of a part of the arm. Now, suppose that the hand and arm are invisible. Lookers-on will seek the reason of the arrangement in the filings themselves and in forces within the mass. Some will account for the position of each filing by the action exerted upon it by the neighboring filings: these are the mechanists. Others will prefer to think that a plan of the whole has presided over the detail of these elementary actions: they are the finalists. But the truth is that there has been merely one indivisible act, that of the hand passing through the filings: the inexhaustible detail of the movement of the grains, as well as the order of their final arrangement, expresses negatively, in a way, this undivided movement, being the unitary form of a resistance, and not a synthesis of positive elementary actions. For this reason, if the arrangement of the grains is termed an "effect" and the movement of the hand a "cause," it may indeed be said that the whole of the effect is explained by the whole of the cause, but to parts of the cause parts of the effect will in no wise correspond. In other words, neither mechanism nor finalism will here be in place, and we must resort to an explanation of a different kind. Now, in the hypothesis we propose, the relation of vision to the visual apparatus would be very nearly that of the hand to the iron filings that follow, canalize and limit its motion. The greater the effort of the hand, the farther it will go into the filings. But at whatever point it stops, instantaneously and automatically the filings coördinate and find their equilibrium. So with vision and its organ. According as the undivided act constituting vision advances more or less, the materiality of the organ is made of a more or less considerable number of mutually coördinated elements, but the order is necessarily complete and perfect. It could not be partial, because, once again, the real process which gives rise to it has no parts. That is what neither mechanism nor finalism takes into account, and it is what we also fail to consider when we wonder at the marvelous structure of an instrument such as the eye. At the bottom of our wondering is always this idea, that it would have been possible for _a part only_ of this coördination to have been realized, that the complete realization is a kind of special favor. This favor the finalists consider as dispensed to them all at once, by the final cause; the mechanists claim to obtain it little by little, by the effect of natural selection; but both see something positive in this coördination, and consequently something fractionable in its cause,--something which admits of every possible degree of achievement. In reality, the cause, though more or less intense, cannot produce its effect except in one piece, and completely finished. According as it goes further and further in the direction of vision, it gives the simple pigmentary masses of a lower organism, or the rudimentary eye of a Serpula, or the slightly differentiated eye of the Alciope, or the marvelously perfected eye of the bird; but all these organs, unequal as is their complexity, necessarily present an equal coördination. For this reason, no matter how distant two animal species may be from each other, if the progress toward vision has gone equally far in both, there is the same visual organ in each case, for the form of the organ only expresses the degree in which the exercise of the function has been obtained. But, in speaking of a progress toward vision, are we not coming back to the old notion of finality? It would be so, undoubtedly, if this progress required the conscious or unconscious idea of an end to be attained. But it is really effected in virtue of the original impetus of life; it is implied in this movement itself, and that is just why it is found in independent lines of evolution. If now we are asked why and how it is implied therein, we reply that life is, more than anything else, a tendency to act on inert matter. The direction of this action is not predetermined; hence the unforeseeable variety of forms which life, in evolving, sows along its path. But this action always presents, to some extent, the character of contingency; it implies at least a rudiment of choice. Now a choice involves the anticipatory idea of several possible actions. Possibilities of action must therefore be marked out for the living being before the action itself. Visual perception is nothing else:[50] the visible outlines of bodies are the design of our eventual action on them. Vision will be found, therefore, in different degrees in the most diverse animals, and it will appear in the same complexity of structure wherever it has reached the same degree of intensity. We have dwelt on these resemblances of structure in general, and on the example of the eye in particular, because we had to define our attitude toward mechanism on the one hand and finalism on the other. It remains for us to describe it more precisely in itself. This we shall now do by showing the divergent results of evolution not as presenting analogies, but as themselves mutually complementary. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 3: _Matière et mémoire_, Paris, 1896, chaps. ii. and iii.] [Footnote 4: Calkins, _Studies on the Life History of Protozoa (Archiv f. Entwicklungsmechanik_, vol. xv., 1903, pp. 139-186).] [Footnote 5: Sedgwick Minot, _On Certain Phenomena of Growing Old_ (_Proc. Amer. Assoc. for the Advancement of Science_, 39th Meeting, Salem, 1891, pp. 271-288).] [Footnote 6: Le Dantec, _L'Individualité et l'erreur individualiste_, Paris, 1905, pp. 84 ff.] [Footnote 7: Metchnikoff, _La Dégénérescence sénile_ (_Année biologique_, iii., 1897, pp. 249 ff.). Cf. by the same author, _La Nature humaine_, Paris, 1903, pp. 312 ff.] [Footnote 8: Roule, _L'Embryologie générale_, Paris, 1893, p. 319.] [Footnote 9: The irreversibility of the series of living beings has been well set forth by Baldwin (_Development and Evolution_, New York, 1902; in particular p. 327).] [Footnote 10: We have dwelt on this point and tried to make it clear in the _Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience_, pp. 140-151.] [Footnote 11: In his fine work on _Genius in Art_ (_Le Génie dans l'art_), M. Séailles develops this twofold thesis, that art is a continuation of nature and that life is creation. We should willingly accept the second formula; but by creation must we understand, as the author does, a _synthesis_ of elements? Where the elements pre-exist, the synthesis that will be made is virtually given, being only one of the possible arrangements. This arrangement a superhuman intellect could have perceived in advance among all the possible ones that surround it. We hold, on the contrary, that in the domain of life the elements have no real and separate existence. They are manifold mental views of an indivisible process. And for that reason there is radical contingency in progress, incommensurability between what goes before and what follows--in short, duration.] [Footnote 12: Bütschli, _Untersuchungen über mikroskopische Schäume und das Protoplasma_, Leipzig, 1892, First Part.] [Footnote 13: Rhumbler, _Versuch einer mechanischen Erklärung der indirekten Zell-und Kernteilung_ (_Roux's Archiv_, 1896).] [Footnote 14: Berthold, _Studien über Protoplasmamechanik_, Leipzig, 1886, p. 102. Cf. the explanation proposed by Le Dantec, _Théorie nouvelle de la vie_, Paris, 1896, p. 60.] [Footnote 15: Cope, _The Primary Factors of Organic Evolution_, Chicago, 1896, pp. 475-484.] [Footnote 16: Maupas, "Etude des infusoires ciliés" (_Arch. de zoologie expérimentale_, 1883, pp. 47, 491, 518, 549, in particular). P. Vignon, _Recherches de cytologie générale sur les épithéliums_, Paris, 1902, p. 655. A profound study of the motions of the Infusoria and a very penetrating criticism of the idea of tropism have been made recently by Jennings (_Contributions to the Study of the Behavior of Lower Organisms_, Washington, 1904). The "type of behavior" of these lower organisms, as Jennings defines it (pp. 237-252), is unquestionably of the psychological order.] [Footnote 17: E.B. Wilson, _The Cell in Development and Inheritance_, New York, 1897, p. 330.] [Footnote 18: Dastre, _La Vie et la mort_, p. 43.] [Footnote 19: Laplace, _Introduction à la théorie analytique des probabilités_ (_OEuvres complètes_, vol. vii., Paris, 1886, p. vi.).] [Footnote 20: Du Bois-Reymond, _�ber die Grenzen des Naturerkennens_, Leipzig, 1892.] [Footnote 21: There are really two lines to follow in contemporary neo-vitalism: on the one hand, the assertion that pure mechanism is insufficient, which assumes great authority when made by such scientists as Driesch or Reinke, for example; and, on the other hand, the hypotheses which this vitalism superposes on mechanism (the "entelechies" of Driesch, and the "dominants" of Reinke, etc.). Of these two parts, the former is perhaps the more interesting. See the admirable studies of Driesch--_Die Lokalisation morphogenetischer Vorgänge_, Leipzig, 1899; _Die organischen Regulationen_, Leipzig, 1901; _Naturbegriffe und Natururteile_, Leipzig, 1904; _Der Vitalismus als Geschichte und als Lehre_, Leipzig, 1905; and of Reinke--_Die Welt als Tat_, Berlin, 1899; _Einleitung in die theoretische Biologie_, Berlin, 1901; _Philosophie der Botanik_, Leipzig, 1905.] [Footnote 22: P. Guérin, _Les Connaissances actuelles sur la fécondation chez les phanérogames_, Paris, 1904, pp. 144-148. Cf. Delage, _L'Hérédité_, 2nd edition, 1903, pp. 140 ff.] [Footnote 23: Möbius, _Beiträge zur Lehre von der Fortpflanzung der Gewächse_, Jena, 1897, pp. 203-206 in particular. Cf. Hartog, "Sur les phénomènes de reproduction" (_Année biologique_, 1895, pp. 707-709).] [Footnote 24: Paul Janet, _Les Causes finales_, Paris, 1876, p. 83.] [Footnote 25: _Ibid._ p. 80.] [Footnote 26: Darwin, _Origin of Species_, chap. ii.] [Footnote 27: Bateson, _Materials for the Study of Variation_, London, 1894, especially pp. 567 ff. Cf. Scott, "Variations and Mutations" (_American Journal of Science_, Nov. 1894).] [Footnote 28: De Vries, _Die Mutationstheorie_, Leipzig, 1901-1903. Cf., by the same author, _Species and Varieties_, Chicago, 1905.] [Footnote 29: Darwin, _Origin of Species_, chap. vi.] [Footnote 30: Darwin, _Origin of Species_, chap. i.] [Footnote 31: On this homology of hair and teeth, see Brandt, "�ber ... eine mutmassliche Homologie der Haare und Zahne" (_Biol. Centralblatt_, vol. xviii., 1898, especially pp. 262 ff.).] [Footnote 32: It seems, from later observations, that the transformation of Artemia is a more complex phenomenon than was first supposed. See on this subject Samter and Heymons, "Die Variation bei Artemia Salina" (_Anhang zu den Abhandlungen der k. preussischen Akad. der Wissenschaften_, 1902).] [Footnote 33: Eimer, _Orthogenesis der Schmetterlinge_, Leipzig, 1897, p. 24. Cf. _Die Entstehung der Arten_, p. 53.] [Footnote 34: Eimer, _Die Entstehung der Arten_, Jena, 1888, p. 25.] [Footnote 35: _Ibid._ pp. 165 ff.] [Footnote 36: Salensky, "Heteroblastie" (_Proc. of the Fourth International Congress of Zoology_, London, 1899, pp. 111-118). Salensky has coined this word to designate the cases in which organs that are equivalent, but of different embryological origin, are formed at the same points in animals related to each other.] [Footnote 37: Wolff, "Die Regeneration der Urodelenlinse" (_Arch. f. Entwicklungsmechanik_, i., 1895, pp. 380 ff.).] [Footnote 38: Fischel, "�ber die Regeneration der Linse" (_Anat. Anzeiger_, xiv., 1898, pp. 373-380).] [Footnote 39: Cope, _The Origin of the Fittest_, 1887; _The Primary Factors of Organic Evolution_, 1896.] [Footnote 40: Cuénot, "La Nouvelle Théorie transformiste" (_Revue générale des sciences_, 1894). Cf. Morgan, _Evolution and Adaptation_, London, 1903, p. 357.] [Footnote 41: Brown-Séquard, "Nouvelles recherches sur l'épilepsie due à certaines lésions de la moelle épiniéere et des nerfs rachidiens" (_Arch. de physiologie_, vol. ii., 1866, pp. 211, 422, and 497).] [Footnote 42: Weismann, _Aufsätze über Vererbung_, Jena, 1892, pp. 376-378, and also _Vorträge über Descendenztheorie_, Jena, 1902, vol. ii., p. 76.] [Footnote 43: Brown-Séquard, "Hérédité d'une affection due à une cause accidentelle" (_Arch. de physiologie_, 1892, pp. 686 ff.).] [Footnote 44: Voisin and Peron, "Recherches sur la toxicité urinaire chez les épileptiques" (_Arch. de neurologie_, vol. xxiv., 1892, and xxv., 1893. Cf. the work of Voisin, _L'�pilepsie_, Paris, 1897, pp. 125-133).] [Footnote 45: Charrin, Delamare and Moussu, "Transmission expérimentale aux descendants de lésions développées chez les ascendants" (_C.R. de l'Acad. des sciences_, vol. cxxxv., 1902, p. 191). Cf. Morgan, _Evolution and Adaptation_, p. 257, and Delage, _L'Hérédité_, 2nd edition, p. 388.] [Footnote 46: Charrin and Delamare, "Hérédité cellulaire" (_C.R. de l'Acad. des sciences_, vol. cxxxiii., 1901, pp. 69-71).] [Footnote 47: Charrin, "L'Hérédité pathologique" (_Revue générale des sciences_, 15 janvier 1896).] [Footnote 48: Giard, _Controverses transformistes_, Paris, 1904, p. 147.] [Footnote 49: Some analogous facts, however, have been noted, all in the vegetable world. See Blaringhem, "La Notion d'espèce et la théorie de la mutation" (_Année psychologique_, vol. xii., 1906, pp. 95 ff.), and De Vries, _Species and Varieties_, p. 655.] [Footnote 50: See, on this subject, _Matière et mémoire_, chap. i.] CHAPTER II THE DIVERGENT DIRECTIONS OF THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE. TORPOR, INTELLIGENCE, INSTINCT The evolution movement would be a simple one, and we should soon have been able to determine its direction, if life had described a single course, like that of a solid ball shot from a cannon. But it proceeds rather like a shell, which suddenly bursts into fragments, which fragments, being themselves shells, burst in their turn into fragments destined to burst again, and so on for a time incommensurably long. We perceive only what is nearest to us, namely, the scattered movements of the pulverized explosions. From them we have to go back, stage by stage, to the original movement. When a shell bursts, the particular way it breaks is explained both by the explosive force of the powder it contains and by the resistance of the metal. So of the way life breaks into individuals and species. It depends, we think, on two series of causes: the resistance life meets from inert matter, and the explosive force--due to an unstable balance of tendencies--which life bears within itself. The resistance of inert matter was the obstacle that had first to be overcome. Life seems to have succeeded in this by dint of humility, by making itself very small and very insinuating, bending to physical and chemical forces, consenting even to go a part of the way with them, like the switch that adopts for a while the direction of the rail it is endeavoring to leave. Of phenomena in the simplest forms of life, it is hard to say whether they are still physical and chemical or whether they are already vital. Life had to enter thus into the habits of inert matter, in order to draw it little by little, magnetized, as it were, to another track. The animate forms that first appeared were therefore of extreme simplicity. They were probably tiny masses of scarcely differentiated protoplasm, outwardly resembling the amoeba observable to-day, but possessed of the tremendous internal push that was to raise them even to the highest forms of life. That in virtue of this push the first organisms sought to grow as much as possible, seems likely. But organized matter has a limit of expansion that is very quickly reached; beyond a certain point it divides instead of growing. Ages of effort and prodigies of subtlety were probably necessary for life to get past this new obstacle. It succeeded in inducing an increasing number of elements, ready to divide, to remain united. By the division of labor it knotted between them an indissoluble bond. The complex and quasi-discontinuous organism is thus made to function as would a continuous living mass which had simply grown bigger. But the real and profound causes of division were those which life bore within its bosom. For life is tendency, and the essence of a tendency is to develop in the form of a sheaf, creating, by its very growth, divergent directions among which its impetus is divided. This we observe in ourselves, in the evolution of that special tendency which we call our character. Each of us, glancing back over his history, will find that his child-personality, though indivisible, united in itself divers persons, which could remain blended just because they were in their nascent state: this indecision, so charged with promise, is one of the greatest charms of childhood. But these interwoven personalities become incompatible in course of growth, and, as each of us can live but one life, a choice must perforce be made. We choose in reality without ceasing; without ceasing, also, we abandon many things. The route we pursue in time is strewn with the remains of all that we began to be, of all that we might have become. But nature, which has at command an incalculable number of lives, is in no wise bound to make such sacrifices. She preserves the different tendencies that have bifurcated with their growth. She creates with them diverging series of species that will evolve separately. These series may, moreover, be of unequal importance. The author who begins a novel puts into his hero many things which he is obliged to discard as he goes on. Perhaps he will take them up later in other books, and make new characters with them, who will seem like extracts from, or rather like complements of, the first; but they will almost always appear somewhat poor and limited in comparison with the original character. So with regard to the evolution of life. The bifurcations on the way have been numerous, but there have been many blind alleys beside the two or three highways; and of these highways themselves, only one, that which leads through the vertebrates up to man, has been wide enough to allow free passage to the full breath of life. We get this impression when we compare the societies of bees and ants, for instance, with human societies. The former are admirably ordered and united, but stereotyped; the latter are open to every sort of progress, but divided, and incessantly at strife with themselves. The ideal would be a society always in progress and always in equilibrium, but this ideal is perhaps unrealizable: the two characteristics that would fain complete each other, which do complete each other in their embryonic state, can no longer abide together when they grow stronger. If one could speak, otherwise than metaphorically, of an impulse toward social life, it might be said that the brunt of the impulse was borne along the line of evolution ending at man, and that the rest of it was collected on the road leading to the hymenoptera: the societies of ants and bees would thus present the aspect complementary to ours. But this would be only a manner of expression. There has been no particular impulse towards social life; there is simply the general movement of life, which on divergent lines is creating forms ever new. If societies should appear on two of these lines, they ought to show divergence of paths at the same time as community of impetus. They will thus develop two classes of characteristics which we shall find vaguely complementary of each other. So our study of the evolution movement will have to unravel a certain number of divergent directions, and to appreciate the importance of what has happened along each of them--in a word, to determine the nature of the dissociated tendencies and estimate their relative proportion. Combining these tendencies, then, we shall get an approximation, or rather an imitation, of the indivisible motor principle whence their impetus proceeds. Evolution will thus prove to be something entirely different from a series of adaptations to circumstances, as mechanism claims; entirely different also from the realization of a plan of the whole, as maintained by the doctrine of finality. * * * * * That adaptation to environment is the necessary condition of evolution we do not question for a moment. It is quite evident that a species would disappear, should it fail to bend to the conditions of existence which are imposed on it. But it is one thing to recognize that outer circumstances are forces evolution must reckon with, another to claim that they are the directing causes of evolution. This latter theory is that of mechanism. It excludes absolutely the hypothesis of an original impetus, I mean an internal push that has carried life, by more and more complex forms, to higher and higher destinies. Yet this impetus is evident, and a mere glance at fossil species shows us that life need not have evolved at all, or might have evolved only in very restricted limits, if it had chosen the alternative, much more convenient to itself, of becoming anchylosed in its primitive forms. Certain Foraminifera have not varied since the Silurian epoch. Unmoved witnesses of the innumerable revolutions that have upheaved our planet, the Lingulae are to-day what they were at the remotest times of the paleozoic era. The truth is that adaptation explains the sinuosities of the movement of evolution, but not its general directions, still less the movement itself.[51] The road that leads to the town is obliged to follow the ups and downs of the hills; it _adapts itself_ to the accidents of the ground; but the accidents of the ground are not the cause of the road, nor have they given it its direction. At every moment they furnish it with what is indispensable, namely, the soil on which it lies; but if we consider the whole of the road, instead of each of its parts, the accidents of the ground appear only as impediments or causes of delay, for the road aims simply at the town and would fain be a straight line. Just so as regards the evolution of life and the circumstances through which it passes--with this difference, that evolution does not mark out a solitary route, that it takes directions without aiming at ends, and that it remains inventive even in its adaptations. But, if the evolution of life is something other than a series of adaptations to accidental circumstances, so also it is not the realization of a plan. A plan is given in advance. It is represented, or at least representable, before its realization. The complete execution of it may be put off to a distant future, or even indefinitely; but the idea is none the less formulable at the present time, in terms actually given. If, on the contrary, evolution is a creation unceasingly renewed, it creates, as it goes on, not only the forms of life, but the ideas that will enable the intellect to understand it, the terms which will serve to express it. That is to say that its future overflows its present, and can not be sketched out therein in an idea. There is the first error of finalism. It involves another, yet more serious. If life realizes a plan, it ought to manifest a greater harmony the further it advances, just as the house shows better and better the idea of the architect as stone is set upon stone. If, on the contrary, the unity of life is to be found solely in the impetus that pushes it along the road of time, the harmony is not in front, but behind. The unity is derived from a _vis a tergo_: it is given at the start as an impulsion, not placed at the end as an attraction. In communicating itself, the impetus splits up more and more. Life, in proportion to its progress, is scattered in manifestations which undoubtedly owe to their common origin the fact that they are complementary to each other in certain aspects, but which are none the less mutually incompatible and antagonistic. So the discord between species will go on increasing. Indeed, we have as yet only indicated the essential cause of it. We have supposed, for the sake of simplicity, that each species received the impulsion in order to pass it on to others, and that, in every direction in which life evolves, the propagation is in a straight line. But, as a matter of fact, there are species which are arrested; there are some that retrogress. Evolution is not only a movement forward; in many cases we observe a marking-time, and still more often a deviation or turning back. It must be so, as we shall show further on, and the same causes that divide the evolution movement often cause life to be diverted from itself, hypnotized by the form it has just brought forth. Thence results an increasing disorder. No doubt there is progress, if progress mean a continual advance in the general direction determined by a first impulsion; but this progress is accomplished only on the two or three great lines of evolution on which forms ever more and more complex, ever more and more high, appear; between these lines run a crowd of minor paths in which, on the contrary, deviations, arrests, and set-backs, are multiplied. The philosopher, who begins by laying down as a principle that each detail is connected with some general plan of the whole, goes from one disappointment to another as soon as he comes to examine the facts; and, as he had put everything in the same rank, he finds that, as the result of not allowing for accident, he must regard everything as accidental. For accident, then, an allowance must first be made, and a very liberal allowance. We must recognize that all is not coherent in nature. By so doing, we shall be led to ascertain the centres around which the incoherence crystallizes. This crystallization itself will clarify the rest; the main directions will appear, in which life is moving whilst developing the original impulse. True, we shall not witness the detailed accomplishment of a plan. Nature is more and better than a plan in course of realization. A plan is a term assigned to a labor: it closes the future whose form it indicates. Before the evolution of life, on the contrary, the portals of the future remain wide open. It is a creation that goes on for ever in virtue of an initial movement. This movement constitutes the unity of the organized world--a prolific unity, of an infinite richness, superior to any that the intellect could dream of, for the intellect is only one of its aspects or products. But it is easier to define the method than to apply it. The complete interpretation of the evolution movement in the past, as we conceive it, would be possible only if the history of the development of the organized world were entirely known. Such is far from being the case. The genealogies proposed for the different species are generally questionable. They vary with their authors, with the theoretic views inspiring them, and raise discussions to which the present state of science does not admit of a final settlement. But a comparison of the different solutions shows that the controversy bears less on the main lines of the movement than on matters of detail; and so, by following the main lines as closely as possible, we shall be sure of not going astray. Moreover, they alone are important to us; for we do not aim, like the naturalist, at finding the order of succession of different species, but only at defining the principal directions of their evolution. And not all of these directions have the same interest for us: what concerns us particularly is the path that leads to man. We shall therefore not lose sight of the fact, in following one direction and another, that our main business is to determine the relation of man to the animal kingdom, and the place of the animal kingdom itself in the organized world as a whole. * * * * * To begin with the second point, let us say that no definite characteristic distinguishes the plant from the animal. Attempts to define the two kingdoms strictly have always come to naught. There is not a single property of vegetable life that is not found, in some degree, in certain animals; not a single characteristic feature of the animal that has not been seen in certain species or at certain moments in the vegetable world. Naturally, therefore, biologists enamored of clean-cut concepts have regarded the distinction between the two kingdoms as artificial. They would be right, if definition in this case must be made, as in the mathematical and physical sciences, according to certain statical attributes which belong to the object defined and are not found in any other. Very different, in our opinion, is the kind of definition which befits the sciences of life. There is no manifestation of life which does not contain, in a rudimentary state--either latent or potential,--the essential characters of most other manifestations. The difference is in the proportions. But this very difference of proportion will suffice to define the group, if we can establish that it is not accidental, and that the group as it evolves, tends more and more to emphasize these particular characters. In a word, _the group must not be defined by the possession of certain characters, but by its tendency to emphasize them_. From this point of view, taking tendencies rather than states into account, we find that vegetables and animals may be precisely defined and distinguished, and that they correspond to two divergent developments of life. This divergence is shown, first, in the method of alimentation. We know that the vegetable derives directly from the air and water and soil the elements necessary to maintain life, especially carbon and nitrogen, which it takes in mineral form. The animal, on the contrary, cannot assimilate these elements unless they have already been fixed for it in organic substances by plants, or by animals which directly or indirectly owe them to plants; so that ultimately the vegetable nourishes the animal. True, this law allows of many exceptions among vegetables. We do not hesitate to class amongst vegetables the Drosera, the Dionaea, the Pinguicula, which are insectivorous plants. On the other hand, the fungi, which occupy so considerable a place in the vegetable world, feed like animals: whether they are ferments, saprophytes or parasites, it is to already formed organic substances that they owe their nourishment. It is therefore impossible to draw from this difference any _static_ definition such as would automatically settle in any particular case the question whether we are dealing with a plant or an animal. But the difference may provide the beginning of a _dynamic_ definition of the two kingdoms, in that it marks the two divergent directions in which vegetables and animals have taken their course. It is a remarkable fact that the fungi, which nature has spread all over the earth in such extraordinary profusion, have not been able to evolve. Organically they do not rise above tissues which, in the higher vegetables, are formed in the embryonic sac of the ovary, and precede the germinative development of the new individual.[52] They might be called the abortive children of the vegetable world. Their different species are like so many blind alleys, as if, by renouncing the mode of alimentation customary amongst vegetables, they had been brought to a standstill on the highway of vegetable evolution. As to the Drosera, the Dionaea, and insectivorous plants in general, they are fed by their roots, like other plants; they too fix, by their green parts, the carbon of the carbonic acid in the atmosphere. Their faculty of capturing, absorbing and digesting insects must have arisen late, in quite exceptional cases where the soil was too poor to furnish sufficient nourishment. In a general way, then, if we attach less importance to the presence of special characters than to their tendency to develop, and if we regard as essential that tendency along which evolution has been able to continue indefinitely, we may say that vegetables are distinguished from animals by their power of creating organic matter out of mineral elements which they draw directly from the air and earth and water. But now we come to another difference, deeper than this, though not unconnected with it. The animal, being unable to fix directly the carbon and nitrogen which are everywhere to be found, has to seek for its nourishment vegetables which have already fixed these elements, or animals which have taken them from the vegetable kingdom. So the animal must be able to move. From the amoeba, which thrusts out its pseudopodia at random to seize the organic matter scattered in a drop of water, up to the higher animals which have sense-organs with which to recognize their prey, locomotor organs to go and seize it, and a nervous system to coördinate their movements with their sensations, animal life is characterized, in its general direction, by mobility in space. In its most rudimentary form, the animal is a tiny mass of protoplasm enveloped at most in a thin albuminous pellicle which allows full freedom for change of shape and movement. The vegetable cell, on the contrary, is surrounded by a membrane of cellulose, which condemns it to immobility. And, from the bottom to the top of the vegetable kingdom, there are the same habits growing more and more sedentary, the plant having no need to move, and finding around it, in the air and water and soil in which it is placed, the mineral elements it can appropriate directly. It is true that phenomena of movement are seen in plants. Darwin has written a well-known work on the movements of climbing plants. He studied also the contrivances of certain insectivorous plants, such as the Drosera and the Dionaea, to seize their prey. The leaf-movements of the acacia, the sensitive plant, etc., are well known. Moreover, the circulation of the vegetable protoplasm within its sheath bears witness to its relationship to the protoplasm of animals, whilst in a large number of animal species (generally parasites) phenomena of fixation, analogous to those of vegetables, can be observed.[53] Here, again, it would be a mistake to claim that fixity and mobility are the two characters which enable us to decide, by simple inspection alone, whether we have before us a plant or an animal. But fixity, in the animal, generally seems like a torpor into which the species has fallen, a refusal to evolve further in a certain direction; it is closely akin to parasitism and is accompanied by features that recall those of vegetable life. On the other hand, the movements of vegetables have neither the frequency nor the variety of those of animals. Generally, they involve only part of the organism and scarcely ever extend to the whole. In the exceptional cases in which a vague spontaneity appears in vegetables, it is as if we beheld the accidental awakening of an activity normally asleep. In short, although both mobility and fixity exist in the vegetable as in the animal world, the balance is clearly in favor of fixity in the one case and of mobility in the other. These two opposite tendencies are so plainly directive of the two evolutions that the two kingdoms might almost be defined by them. But fixity and mobility, again, are only superficial signs of tendencies that are still deeper. Between mobility and consciousness there is an obvious relationship. No doubt, the consciousness of the higher organisms seems bound up with certain cerebral arrangements. The more the nervous system develops, the more numerous and more precise become the movements among which it can choose; the clearer, also, is the consciousness that accompanies them. But neither this mobility nor this choice nor consequently this consciousness involves as a necessary condition the presence of a nervous system; the latter has only canalized in definite directions, and brought up to a higher degree of intensity, a rudimentary and vague activity, diffused throughout the mass of the organized substance. The lower we descend in the animal series, the more the nervous centres are simplified, and the more, too, they separate from each other, till finally the nervous elements disappear, merged in the mass of a less differentiated organism. But it is the same with all the other apparatus, with all the other anatomical elements; and it would be as absurd to refuse consciousness to an animal because it has no brain as to declare it incapable of nourishing itself because it has no stomach. The truth is that the nervous system arises, like the other systems, from a division of labor. It does not create the function, it only brings it to a higher degree of intensity and precision by giving it the double form of reflex and voluntary activity. To accomplish a true reflex movement, a whole mechanism is necessary, set up in the spinal cord or the medulla. To choose voluntarily between several definite courses of action, cerebral centres are necessary, that is, crossways from which paths start, leading to motor mechanisms of diverse form but equal precision. But where nervous elements are not yet canalized, still less concentrated into a system, there is something from which, by a kind of splitting, both the reflex and the voluntary will arise, something which has neither the mechanical precision of the former nor the intelligent hesitations of the latter, but which, partaking of both it may be infinitesimally, is a reaction simply undecided, and therefore vaguely conscious. This amounts to saying that the humblest organism is conscious in proportion to its power to move _freely_. Is consciousness here, in relation to movement, the effect or the cause? In one sense it is the cause, since it has to direct locomotion. But in another sense it is the effect; for it is the motor activity that maintains it, and, once this activity disappears, consciousness dies away or rather falls asleep. In crustaceans such as the rhizocephala, which must formerly have shown a more differentiated structure, fixity and parasitism accompany the degeneration and almost complete disappearance of the nervous system. Since, in such a case, the progress of organization must have localized all the conscious activity in nervous centres, we may conjecture that consciousness is even weaker in animals of this kind than in organisms much less differentiated, which have never had nervous centres but have remained mobile. How then could the plant, which is fixed in the earth and finds its food on the spot, have developed in the direction of conscious activity? The membrane of cellulose, in which the protoplasm wraps itself up, not only prevents the simplest vegetable organism from moving, but screens it also, in some measure, from those outer stimuli which act on the sensibility of the animal as irritants and prevent it from going to sleep.[54] The plant is therefore unconscious. Here again, however, we must beware of radical distinctions. "Unconscious" and "conscious" are not two labels which can be mechanically fastened, the one on every vegetable cell, the other on all animals. While consciousness sleeps in the animal which has degenerated into a motionless parasite, it probably awakens in the vegetable that has regained liberty of movement, and awakens in just the degree to which the vegetable has reconquered this liberty. Nevertheless, consciousness and unconsciousness mark the directions in which the two kingdoms have developed, in this sense, that to find the best specimens of consciousness in the animal we must _ascend_ to the highest representatives of the series, whereas, to find probable cases of vegetable consciousness, we must _descend_ as low as possible in the scale of plants--down to the zoospores of the algae, for instance, and, more generally, to those unicellular organisms which may be said to hesitate between the vegetable form and animality. From this standpoint, and in this measure, we should define the animal by sensibility and awakened consciousness, the vegetable by consciousness asleep and by insensibility. To sum up, the vegetable manufactures organic substances directly with mineral substances; as a rule, this aptitude enables it to dispense with movement and so with feeling. Animals, which are obliged to go in search of their food, have evolved in the direction of locomotor activity, and consequently of a consciousness more and more distinct, more and more ample. * * * * * Now, it seems to us most probable that the animal cell and the vegetable cell are derived from a common stock, and that the first living organisms oscillated between the vegetable and animal form, participating in both at once. Indeed, we have just seen that the characteristic tendencies of the evolution of the two kingdoms, although divergent, coexist even now, both in the plant and in the animal. The proportion alone differs. Ordinarily, one of the two tendencies covers or crushes down the other, but in exceptional circumstances the suppressed one starts up and regains the place it had lost. The mobility and consciousness of the vegetable cell are not so sound asleep that they cannot rouse themselves when circumstances permit or demand it; and, on the other hand, the evolution of the animal kingdom has always been retarded, or stopped, or dragged back, by the tendency it has kept toward the vegetative life. However full, however overflowing the activity of an animal species may appear, torpor and unconsciousness are always lying in wait for it. It keeps up its rôle only by effort, at the price of fatigue. Along the route on which the animal has evolved, there have been numberless shortcomings and cases of decay, generally associated with parasitic habits; they are so many shuntings on to the vegetative life. Thus, everything bears out the belief that vegetable and animal are descended from a common ancestor which united the tendencies of both in a rudimentary state. But the two tendencies mutually implied in this rudimentary form became dissociated as they grew. Hence the world of plants with its fixity and insensibility, hence the animals with their mobility and consciousness. There is no need, in order to explain this dividing into two, to bring in any mysterious force. It is enough to point out that the living being leans naturally toward what is most convenient to it, and that vegetables and animals have chosen two different kinds of convenience in the way of procuring the carbon and nitrogen they need. Vegetables continually and mechanically draw these elements from an environment that continually provides it. Animals, by action that is discontinuous, concentrated in certain moments, and conscious, go to find these bodies in organisms that have already fixed them. They are two different ways of being industrious, or perhaps we may prefer to say, of being idle. For this very reason we doubt whether nervous elements, however rudimentary, will ever be found in the plant. What corresponds in it to the directing will of the animal is, we believe, the direction in which it bends the energy of the solar radiation when it uses it to break the connection of the carbon with the oxygen in carbonic acid. What corresponds in it to the sensibility of the animal is the impressionability, quite of its kind, of its chlorophyl light. Now, a nervous system being pre-eminently a mechanism which serves as intermediary between sensations and volitions, the true "nervous system" of the plant seems to be the mechanism or rather chemicism _sui generis_ which serves as intermediary between the impressionability of its chlorophyl to light and the producing of starch: which amounts to saying that the plant can have no nervous elements, and that _the same impetus that has led the animal to give itself nerves and nerve centres must have ended, in the plant, in the chlorophyllian function_.[55] * * * * * This first glance over the organized world will enable us to ascertain more precisely what unites the two kingdoms, and also what separates them. Suppose, as we suggested in the preceding chapter, that at the root of life there is an effort to engraft on to the necessity of physical forces the largest possible amount of _indetermination_. This effort cannot result in the creation of energy, or, if it does, the quantity created does not belong to the order of magnitude apprehended by our senses and instruments of measurement, our experience and science. All that the effort can do, then, is to make the best of a pre-existing energy which it finds at its disposal. Now, it finds only one way of succeeding in this, namely, to secure such an accumulation of potential energy from matter, that it can get, at any moment, the amount of work it needs for its action, simply by pulling a trigger. The effort itself possesses only that power of releasing. But the work of releasing, although always the same and always smaller than any given quantity, will be the more effective the heavier the weight it makes fall and the greater the height--or, in other words, the greater the sum of potential energy accumulated and disposable. As a matter of fact, the principal source of energy usable on the surface of our planet is the sun. So the problem was this: to obtain from the sun that it should partially and provisionally suspend, here and there, on the surface of the earth, its continual outpour of usable energy, and store a certain quantity of it, in the form of unused energy, in appropriate reservoirs, whence it could be drawn at the desired moment, at the desired spot, in the desired direction. The substances forming the food of animals are just such reservoirs. Made of very complex molecules holding a considerable amount of chemical energy in the potential state, they are like explosives which only need a spark to set free the energy stored within them. Now, it is probable that life tended at the beginning to compass at one and the same time both the manufacture of the explosive and the explosion by which it is utilized. In this case, the same organism that had directly stored the energy of the solar radiation would have expended it in free movements in space. And for that reason we must presume that the first living beings sought on the one hand to accumulate, without ceasing, energy borrowed from the sun, and on the other hand to expend it, in a discontinuous and explosive way, in movements of locomotion. Even to-day, perhaps, a chlorophyl-bearing Infusorian such as the Euglena may symbolize this primordial tendency of life, though in a mean form, incapable of evolving. Is the divergent development of the two kingdoms related to what one may call the oblivion of each kingdom as regards one of the two halves of the programme? Or rather, which is more likely, was the very nature of the matter, that life found confronting it on our planet, opposed to the possibility of the two tendencies evolving very far together in the same organism? What is certain is that the vegetable has trended principally in the first direction and the animal in the second. But if, from the very first, in making the explosive, nature had for object the explosion, then it is the evolution of the animal, rather than that of the vegetable, that indicates, on the whole, the fundamental direction of life. The "harmony" of the two kingdoms, the complementary characters they display, might then be due to the fact that they develop two tendencies which at first were fused in one. The more the single original tendency grows, the harder it finds it to keep united in the same living being those two elements which in the rudimentary state implied each other. Hence a parting in two, hence two divergent evolutions; hence also two series of characters opposed in certain points, complementary in others, but, whether opposed or complementary, always preserving an appearance of kinship. While the animal evolved, not without accidents along the way, toward a freer and freer expenditure of discontinuous energy, the plant perfected rather its system of accumulation without moving. We shall not dwell on this second point. Suffice it to say that the plant must have been greatly benefited, in its turn, by a new division, analogous to that between plants and animals. While the primitive vegetable cell had to fix by itself both its carbon and its nitrogen, it became able almost to give up the second of these two functions as soon as microscopic vegetables came forward which leaned in this direction exclusively, and even specialized diversely in this still complicated business. The microbes that fix the nitrogen of the air and those which convert the ammoniacal compounds into nitrous ones, and these again into nitrates, have, by the same splitting up of a tendency primitively one, rendered to the whole vegetable world the same kind of service as the vegetables in general have rendered to animals. If a special kingdom were to be made for these microscopic vegetables, it might be said that in the microbes of the soil, the vegetables and the animals, we have before us the _analysis_, carried out by the matter that life found at its disposal on our planet, of all that life contained, at the outset, in a state of reciprocal implication. Is this, properly speaking, a "division of labor"? These words do not give the exact idea of evolution, such as we conceive it. Wherever there is division of labor, there is _association_ and also _convergence_ of effort. Now, the evolution we are speaking of is never achieved by means of association, but by _dissociation_; it never tends toward convergence, but toward _divergence_ of efforts. The harmony between terms that are mutually complementary in certain points is not, in our opinion, produced, in course of progress, by a reciprocal adaptation; on the contrary, it is complete only at the start. It arises from an original identity, from the fact that the evolutionary process, splaying out like a sheaf, sunders, in proportion to their simultaneous growth, terms which at first completed each other so well that they coalesced. Now, the elements into which a tendency splits up are far from possessing the same importance, or, above all, the same power to evolve. We have just distinguished three different kingdoms, if one may so express it, in the organized world. While the first comprises only microorganisms which have remained in the rudimentary state, animals and vegetables have taken their flight toward very lofty fortunes. Such, indeed, is generally the case when a tendency divides. Among the divergent developments to which it gives rise, some go on indefinitely, others come more or less quickly to the end of their tether. These latter do not issue directly from the primitive tendency, but from one of the elements into which it has divided; they are residual developments made and left behind on the way by some truly elementary tendency which continues to evolve. Now, these truly elementary tendencies, we think, bear a mark by which they may be recognized. This mark is like a trace, still visible in each, of what was in the original tendency of which they represent the elementary directions. The elements of a tendency are not like objects set beside each other in space and mutually exclusive, but rather like psychic states, each of which, although it be itself to begin with, yet partakes of others, and so virtually includes in itself the whole personality to which it belongs. There is no real manifestation of life, we said, that does not show us, in a rudimentary or latent state, the characters of other manifestations. Conversely, when we meet, on one line of evolution, a recollection, so to speak, of what is developed along other lines, we must conclude that we have before us dissociated elements of one and the same original tendency. In this sense, vegetables and animals represent the two great divergent developments of life. Though the plant is distinguished from the animal by fixity and insensibility, movement and consciousness sleep in it as recollections which may waken. But, beside these normally sleeping recollections, there are others awake and active, just those, namely, whose activity does not obstruct the development of the elementary tendency itself. We may then formulate this law: _When a tendency splits up in the course of its development, each of the special tendencies which thus arise tries to preserve and develop everything in the primitive tendency that is not incompatible with the work for which it is specialized._ This explains precisely the fact we dwelt on in the preceding chapter, viz., the formation of identical complex mechanisms on independent lines of evolution. Certain deep-seated analogies between the animal and the vegetable have probably no other cause: sexual generation is perhaps only a luxury for the plant, but to the animal it was a necessity, and the plant must have been driven to it by the same impetus which impelled the animal thereto, a primitive, original impetus, anterior to the separation of the two kingdoms. The same may be said of the tendency of the vegetable towards a growing complexity. This tendency is essential to the animal kingdom, ever tormented by the need of more and more extended and effective action. But the vegetable, condemned to fixity and insensibility, exhibits the same tendency only because it received at the outset the same impulsion. Recent experiments show that it varies at random when the period of "mutation" arrives; whereas the animal must have evolved, we believe, in much more definite directions. But we will not dwell further on this original doubling of the modes of life. Let us come to the evolution of animals, in which we are more particularly interested. What constitutes animality, we said, is the faculty of utilizing a releasing mechanism for the conversion of as much stored-up potential energy as possible into "explosive" actions. In the beginning the explosion is haphazard, and does not choose its direction. Thus the amoeba thrusts out its pseudopodic prolongations in all directions at once. But, as we rise in the animal scale, the form of the body itself is observed to indicate a certain number of very definite directions along which the energy travels. These directions are marked by so many chains of nervous elements. Now, the nervous element has gradually emerged from the barely differentiated mass of organized tissue. It may, therefore, be surmised that in the nervous element, as soon as it appears, and also in its appendages, the faculty of suddenly freeing the gradually stored-up energy is concentrated. No doubt, every living cell expends energy without ceasing, in order to maintain its equilibrium. The vegetable cell, torpid from the start, is entirely absorbed in this work of maintenance alone, as if it took for end what must at first have been only a means. But, in the animal, all points to action, that is, to the utilization of energy for movements from place to place. True, every animal cell expends a good deal--often the whole--of the energy at its disposal in keeping itself alive; but the organism as a whole tries to attract as much energy as possible to those points where the locomotive movements are effected. So that where a nervous system exists, with its complementary sense-organs and motor apparatus, everything should happen as if the rest of the body had, as its essential function, to prepare for these and pass on to them, at the moment required, that force which they are to liberate by a sort of explosion. The part played by food amongst the higher animals is, indeed, extremely complex. In the first place it serves to repair tissues, then it provides the animal with the heat necessary to render it as independent as possible of changes in external temperature. Thus it preserves, supports, and maintains the organism in which the nervous system is set and on which the nervous elements have to live. But these nervous elements would have no reason for existence if the organism did not pass to them, and especially to the muscles they control, a certain energy to expend; and it may even be conjectured that there, in the main, is the essential and ultimate destination of food. This does not mean that the greater part of the food is used in this work. A state may have to make enormous expenditure to secure the return of taxes, and the sum which it will have to dispose of, after deducting the cost of collection, will perhaps be very small: that sum is, none the less, the reason for the tax and for all that has been spent to obtain its return. So it is with the energy which the animal demands of its food. Many facts seem to indicate that the nervous and muscular elements stand in this relation towards the rest of the organism. Glance first at the distribution of alimentary substances among the different elements of the living body. These substances fall into two classes, one the quaternary or albuminoid, the other the ternary, including the carbohydrates and the fats. The albuminoids are properly plastic, destined to repair the tissues--although, owing to the carbon they contain, they are capable of providing energy on occasion. But the function of supplying energy has devolved more particularly on the second class of substances: these, being deposited in the cell rather than forming part of its substance, convey to it, in the form of chemical potential, an expansive energy that may be directly converted into either movement or heat. In short, the chief function of the albuminoids is to repair the machine, while the function of the other class of substances is to supply power. It is natural that the albuminoids should have no specially allotted destination, since every part of the machine has to be maintained. But not so with the other substances. The carbohydrates are distributed very unequally, and this inequality of distribution seems to us in the highest degree instructive. Conveyed by the arterial blood in the form of glucose, these substances are deposited, in the form of glycogen, in the different cells forming the tissues. We know that one of the principal functions of the liver is to maintain at a constant level the quantity of glucose held by the blood, by means of the reserves of glycogen secreted by the hepatic cells. Now, in this circulation of glucose and accumulation of glycogen, it is easy to see that the effect is as if the whole effort of the organism were directed towards providing with potential energy the elements of both the muscular and the nervous tissues. The organism proceeds differently in the two cases, but it arrives at the same result. In the first case, it provides the muscle-cell with a large reserve deposited in advance: the quantity of glycogen contained in the muscles is, indeed, enormous in comparison with what is found in the other tissues. In the nervous tissue, on the contrary, the reserve is small (the nervous elements, whose function is merely to liberate the potential energy stored in the muscle, never have to furnish much work at one time); but the remarkable thing is that this reserve is restored by the blood at the very moment that it is expended, so that the nerve is instantly recharged with potential energy. Muscular tissue and nervous tissue are, therefore, both privileged, the one in that it is stocked with a large reserve of energy, the other in that it is always served at the instant it is in need and to the exact extent of its requirements. More particularly, it is from the sensori-motor system that the call for glycogen, the potential energy, comes, as if the rest of the organism were simply there in order to transmit force to the nervous system and to the muscles which the nerves control. True, when we think of the part played by the nervous system (even the sensori-motor system) as regulator of the organic life, it may well be asked whether, in this exchange of good offices between it and the rest of the body, the nervous system is indeed a master that the body serves. But we shall already incline to this hypothesis when we consider, even in the static state only, the distribution of potential energy among the tissues; and we shall be entirely convinced of it when we reflect upon the conditions in which the energy is expended and restored. For suppose the sensori-motor system is a system like the others, of the same rank as the others. Borne by the whole of the organism, it will wait until an excess of chemical potential is supplied to it before it performs any work. In other words, it is the production of glycogen which will regulate the consumption by the nerves and muscles. On the contrary, if the sensori-motor system is the actual master, the duration and extent of its action will be independent, to a certain extent at least, of the reserve of glycogen that it holds, and even of that contained in the whole of the organism. It will perform work, and the other tissues will have to arrange as they can to supply it with potential energy. Now, this is precisely what does take place, as is shown in particular by the experiments of Morat and Dufourt.[56] While the glycogenic function of the liver depends on the action of the excitory nerves which control it, the action of these nerves is subordinated to the action of those which stimulate the locomotor muscles--in this sense, that the muscles begin by expending without calculation, thus consuming glycogen, impoverishing the blood of its glucose, and finally causing the liver, which has had to pour into the impoverished blood some of its reserve of glycogen, to manufacture a fresh supply. From the sensori-motor system, then, everything starts; on that system everything converges; and we may say, without metaphor, that the rest of the organism is at its service. Consider again what happens in a prolonged fast. It is a remarkable fact that in animals that have died of hunger the brain is found to be almost unimpaired, while the other organs have lost more or less of their weight and their cells have undergone profound changes.[57] It seems as though the rest of the body had sustained the nervous system to the last extremity, treating itself simply as the means of which the nervous system is the end. To sum up: if we agree, in short, to understand by "the sensori-motor system" the cerebro-spinal nervous system together with the sensorial apparatus in which it is prolonged and the locomotor muscles it controls, we may say that a higher organism is essentially a sensori-motor system installed on systems of digestion, respiration, circulation, secretion, etc., whose function it is to repair, cleanse and protect it, to create an unvarying internal environment for it, and above all to pass it potential energy to convert into locomotive movement.[58] It is true that the more the nervous function is perfected, the more must the functions required to maintain it develop, and the more exacting, consequently, they become for themselves. As the nervous activity has emerged from the protoplasmic mass in which it was almost drowned, it has had to summon around itself activities of all kinds for its support. These could only be developed on other activities, which again implied others, and so on indefinitely. Thus it is that the complexity of functioning of the higher organisms goes on to infinity. The study of one of these organisms therefore takes us round in a circle, as if everything was a means to everything else. But the circle has a centre, none the less, and that is the system of nervous elements stretching between the sensory organs and the motor apparatus. We will not dwell here on a point we have treated at length in a former work. Let us merely recall that the progress of the nervous system has been effected both in the direction of a more precise adaptation of movements and in that of a greater latitude left to the living being to choose between them. These two tendencies may appear antagonistic, and indeed they are so; but a nervous chain, even in its most rudimentary form, successfully reconciles them. On the one hand, it marks a well-defined track between one point of the periphery and another, the one sensory, the other motor. It has therefore canalized an activity which was originally diffused in the protoplasmic mass. But, on the other hand, the elements that compose it are probably discontinuous; at any rate, even supposing they anastomose, they exhibit a _functional_ discontinuity, for each of them ends in a kind of cross-road where probably the nervous current may choose its course. From the humblest Monera to the best endowed insects, and up to the most intelligent vertebrates, the progress realized has been above all a progress of the nervous system, coupled at every stage with all the new constructions and complications of mechanism that this progress required. As we foreshadowed in the beginning of this work, the rôle of life is to insert some _indetermination_ into matter. Indeterminate, _i.e._ unforeseeable, are the forms it creates in the course of its evolution. More and more indeterminate also, more and more free, is the activity to which these forms serve as the vehicle. A nervous system, with neurones placed end to end in such wise that, at the extremity of each, manifold ways open in which manifold questions present themselves, is a veritable _reservoir of indetermination_. That the main energy of the vital impulse has been spent in creating apparatus of this kind is, we believe, what a glance over the organized world as a whole easily shows. But concerning the vital impulse itself a few explanations are necessary. * * * * * It must not be forgotten that the force which is evolving throughout the organized world is a limited force, which is always seeking to transcend itself and always remains inadequate to the work it would fain produce. The errors and puerilities of radical finalism are due to the misapprehension of this point. It has represented the whole of the living world as a construction, and a construction analogous to a human work. All the pieces have been arranged with a view to the best possible functioning of the machine. Each species has its reason for existence, its part to play, its allotted place; and all join together, as it were, in a musical concert, wherein the seeming discords are really meant to bring out a fundamental harmony. In short, all goes on in nature as in the works of human genius, where, though the result may be trifling, there is at least perfect adequacy between the object made and the work of making it. Nothing of the kind in the evolution of life. There, the disproportion is striking between the work and the result. From the bottom to the top of the organized world we do indeed find one great effort; but most often this effort turns short, sometimes paralyzed by contrary forces, sometimes diverted from what it should do by what it does, absorbed by the form it is engaged in taking, hypnotized by it as by a mirror. Even in its most perfect works, though it seems to have triumphed over external resistances and also over its own, it is at the mercy of the materiality which it has had to assume. It is what each of us may experience in himself. Our freedom, in the very movements by which it is affirmed, creates the growing habits that will stifle it if it fails to renew itself by a constant effort: it is dogged by automatism. The most living thought becomes frigid in the formula that expresses it. The word turns against the idea. The letter kills the spirit. And our most ardent enthusiasm, as soon as it is externalized into action, is so naturally congealed into the cold calculation of interest or vanity, the one takes so easily the shape of the other, that we might confuse them together, doubt our own sincerity, deny goodness and love, if we did not know that the dead retain for a time the features of the living. The profound cause of this discordance lies in an irremediable difference of rhythm. Life in general is mobility itself; particular manifestations of life accept this mobility reluctantly, and constantly lag behind. It is always going ahead; they want to mark time. Evolution in general would fain go on in a straight line; each special evolution is a kind of circle. Like eddies of dust raised by the wind as it passes, the living turn upon themselves, borne up by the great blast of life. They are therefore relatively stable, and counterfeit immobility so well that we treat each of them as a _thing_ rather than as a _progress_, forgetting that the very permanence of their form is only the outline of a movement. At times, however, in a fleeting vision, the invisible breath that bears them is materialized before our eyes. We have this sudden illumination before certain forms of maternal love, so striking, and in most animals so touching, observable even in the solicitude of the plant for its seed. This love, in which some have seen the great mystery of life, may possibly deliver us life's secret. It shows us each generation leaning over the generation that shall follow. It allows us a glimpse of the fact that the living being is above all a thoroughfare, and that the essence of life is in the movement by which life is transmitted. This contrast between life in general, and the forms in which it is manifested, has everywhere the same character. It might be said that life tends toward the utmost possible action, but that each species prefers to contribute the slightest possible effort. Regarded in what constitutes its true essence, namely, as a transition from species to species, life is a continually growing action. But each of the species, through which life passes, aims only at its own convenience. It goes for that which demands the least labor. Absorbed in the form it is about to take, it falls into a partial sleep, in which it ignores almost all the rest of life; it fashions itself so as to take the greatest possible advantage of its immediate environment with the least possible trouble. Accordingly, the act by which life goes forward to the creation of a new form, and the act by which this form is shaped, are two different and often antagonistic movements. The first is continuous with the second, but cannot continue in it without being drawn aside from its direction, as would happen to a man leaping, if, in order to clear the obstacle, he had to turn his eyes from it and look at himself all the while. Living forms are, by their very definition, forms that are able to live. In whatever way the adaptation of the organism to its circumstances is explained, it has necessarily been sufficient, since the species has subsisted. In this sense, each of the successive species that paleontology and zoology describes was a _success_ carried off by life. But we get a very different impression when we refer each species to the movement that has left it behind on its way, instead of to the conditions into which it has been set. Often this movement has turned aside; very often, too, it has stopped short; what was to have been a thoroughfare has become a terminus. From this new point of view, failure seems the rule, success exceptional and always imperfect. We shall see that, of the four main directions along which animal life bent its course, two have led to blind alleys, and, in the other two, the effort has generally been out of proportion to the result. Documents are lacking to reconstruct this history in detail, but we can make out its main lines. We have already said that animals and vegetables must have separated soon from their common stock, the vegetable falling asleep in immobility, the animal, on the contrary, becoming more and more awake and marching on to the conquest of a nervous system. Probably the effort of the animal kingdom resulted in creating organisms still very simple, but endowed with a certain freedom of action, and, above all, with a shape so undecided that it could lend itself to any future determination. These animals may have resembled some of our worms, but with this difference, however, that the worms living to-day, to which they could be compared, are but the empty and fixed examples of infinitely plastic forms, pregnant with an unlimited future, the common stock of the echinoderms, molluscs, arthropods, and vertebrates. One danger lay in wait for them, one obstacle which might have stopped the soaring course of animal life. There is one peculiarity with which we cannot help being struck when glancing over the fauna of primitive times, namely, the imprisonment of the animal in a more or less solid sheath, which must have obstructed and often even paralyzed its movements. The molluscs of that time had a shell more universally than those of to-day. The arthropods in general were provided with a carapace; most of them were crustaceans. The more ancient fishes had a bony sheath of extreme hardness.[59] The explanation of this general fact should be sought, we believe, in a tendency of soft organisms to defend themselves against one another by making themselves, as far as possible, undevourable. Each species, in the act by which it comes into being, trends towards that which is most expedient. Just as among primitive organisms there were some that turned towards animal life by refusing to manufacture organic out of inorganic material and taking organic substances ready made from organisms that had turned toward the vegetative life, so, among the animal species themselves, many contrived to live at the expense of other animals. For an organism that is animal, that is to say mobile, can avail itself of its mobility to go in search of defenseless animals, and feed on them quite as well as on vegetables. So, the more species became mobile, the more they became voracious and dangerous to one another. Hence a sudden arrest of the entire animal world in its progress towards higher and higher mobility; for the hard and calcareous skin of the echinoderm, the shell of the mollusc, the carapace of the crustacean and the ganoid breast-plate of the ancient fishes probably all originated in a common effort of the animal species to protect themselves against hostile species. But this breast-plate, behind which the animal took shelter, constrained it in its movements and sometimes fixed it in one place. If the vegetable renounced consciousness in wrapping itself in a cellulose membrane, the animal that shut itself up in a citadel or in armor condemned itself to a partial slumber. In this torpor the echinoderms and even the molluscs live to-day. Probably arthropods and vertebrates were threatened with it too. They escaped, however, and to this fortunate circumstance is due the expansion of the highest forms of life. In two directions, in fact, we see the impulse of life to movement getting the upper hand again. The fishes exchanged their ganoid breast-plate for scales. Long before that, the insects had appeared, also disencumbered of the breast-plate that had protected their ancestors. Both supplemented the insufficiency of their protective covering by an agility that enabled them to escape their enemies, and also to assume the offensive, to choose the place and the moment of encounter. We see a progress of the same kind in the evolution of human armaments. The first impulse is to seek shelter; the second, which is the better, is to become as supple as possible for flight and above all for attack--attack being the most effective means of defense. So the heavy hoplite was supplanted by the legionary; the knight, clad in armor, had to give place to the light free-moving infantryman; and in a general way, in the evolution of life, just as in the evolution of human societies and of individual destinies, the greatest successes have been for those who have accepted the heaviest risks. Evidently, then, it was to the animal's interest to make itself more mobile. As we said when speaking of adaptation in general, any transformation of a species can be explained by its own particular interest. This will give the immediate cause of the variation, but often only the most superficial cause. The profound cause is the impulse which thrust life into the world, which made it divide into vegetables and animals, which shunted the animal on to suppleness of form, and which, at a certain moment, in the animal kingdom threatened with torpor, secured that, on some points at least, it should rouse itself up and move forward. On the two paths along which the vertebrates and arthropods have separately evolved, development (apart from retrogressions connected with parasitism or any other cause) has consisted above all in the progress of the sensori-motor nervous system. Mobility and suppleness were sought for, and also--through many experimental attempts, and not without a tendency to excess of substance and brute force at the start--variety of movements. But this quest itself took place in divergent directions. A glance at the nervous system of the arthropods and that of the vertebrates shows us the difference. In the arthropods, the body is formed of a series more or less long of rings set together; motor activity is thus distributed amongst a varying--sometimes a considerable--number of appendages, each of which has its special function. In the vertebrates, activity is concentrated in two pairs of members only, and these organs perform functions which depend much less strictly on their form.[60] The independence becomes complete in man, whose hand is capable of any kind of work. That, at least, is what we see. But behind what is seen there is what may be surmised--two powers, immanent in life and originally intermingled, which were bound to part company in course of growth. To define these powers, we must consider, in the evolution both of the arthropods and the vertebrates, the species which mark the culminating point of each. How is this point to be determined? Here again, to aim at geometrical precision will lead us astray. There is no single simple sign by which we can recognize that one species is more advanced than another on the same line of evolution. There are manifold characters, that must be compared and weighed in each particular case, in order to ascertain to what extent they are essential or accidental and how far they must be taken into account. It is unquestionable, for example, that _success_ is the most general criterion of superiority, the two terms being, up to a certain point, synonymous. By success must be understood, so far as the living being is concerned, an aptitude to develop in the most diverse environments, through the greatest possible variety of obstacles, so as to cover the widest possible extent of ground. A species which claims the entire earth for its domain is truly a dominating and consequently superior species. Such is the human species, which represents the culminating point of the evolution of the vertebrates. But such also are, in the series of the articulate, the insects and in particular certain hymenoptera. It has been said of the ants that, as man is lord of the soil, they are lords of the sub-soil. On the other hand, a group of species that has appeared late may be a group of degenerates; but, for that, some special cause of retrogression must have intervened. By right, this group should be superior to the group from which it is derived, since it would correspond to a more advanced stage of evolution. Now man is probably the latest comer of the vertebrates;[61] and in the insect series no species is later than the hymenoptera, unless it be the lepidoptera, which are probably degenerates, living parasitically on flowering plants. So, by different ways, we are led to the same conclusion. The evolution of the arthropods reaches its culminating point in the insect, and in particular in the hymenoptera, as that of the vertebrates in man. Now, since instinct is nowhere so developed as in the insect world, and in no group of insects so marvelously as in the hymenoptera, it may be said that the whole evolution of the animal kingdom, apart from retrogressions towards vegetative life, has taken place on two divergent paths, one of which led to instinct and the other to intelligence. Vegetative torpor, instinct, and intelligence--these, then, are the elements that coincided in the vital impulsion common to plants and animals, and which, in the course of a development in which they were made manifest in the most unforeseen forms, have been dissociated by the very fact of their growth. _The cardinal error which, from Aristotle onwards, has vitiated most of the philosophies of nature, is to see in vegetative, instinctive and rational life, three successive degrees of the development of one and the same tendency, whereas they are three divergent directions of an activity that has split up as it grew._ The difference between them is not a difference of intensity, nor, more generally, of degree, but of kind. * * * * * It is important to investigate this point. We have seen in the case of vegetable and animal life how they are at once mutually complementary and mutually antagonistic. Now we must show that intelligence and instinct also are opposite and complementary. But let us first explain why we are generally led to regard them as activities of which one is superior to the other and based upon it, whereas in reality they are not things of the same order: they have not succeeded one another, nor can we assign to them different grades. It is because intelligence and instinct, having originally been interpenetrating, retain something of their common origin. Neither is ever found in a pure state. We said that in the plant the consciousness and mobility of the animal, which lie dormant, can be awakened; and that the animal lives under the constant menace of being drawn aside to the vegetative life. The two tendencies--that of the plant and that of the animal--were so thoroughly interpenetrating, to begin with, that there has never been a complete severance between them: they haunt each other continually; everywhere we find them mingled; it is the proportion that differs. So with intelligence and instinct. There is no intelligence in which some traces of instinct are not to be discovered, more especially no instinct that is not surrounded with a fringe of intelligence. It is this fringe of intelligence that has been the cause of so many misunderstandings. From the fact that instinct is always more or less intelligent, it has been concluded that instinct and intelligence are things of the same kind, that there is only a difference of complexity or perfection between them, and, above all, that one of the two is expressible in terms of the other. In reality, they accompany each other only because they are complementary, and they are complementary only because they are different, what is instinctive in instinct being opposite to what is intelligent in intelligence. We are bound to dwell on this point. It is one of the utmost importance. Let us say at the outset that the distinctions we are going to make will be too sharply drawn, just because we wish to define in instinct what is instinctive, and in intelligence what is intelligent, whereas all concrete instinct is mingled with intelligence, as all real intelligence is penetrated by instinct. Moreover, neither intelligence nor instinct lends itself to rigid definition: they are tendencies, and not things. Also, it must not be forgotten that in the present chapter we are considering intelligence and instinct as going out of life which deposits them along its course. Now the life manifested by an organism is, in our view, a certain effort to obtain certain things from the material world. No wonder, therefore, if it is the diversity of this effort that strikes us in instinct and intelligence, and if we see in these two modes of psychical activity, above all else, two different methods of action on inert matter. This rather narrow view of them has the advantage of giving us an objective means of distinguishing them. In return, however, it gives us, of intelligence in general and of instinct in general, only the mean position above and below which both constantly oscillate. For that reason the reader must expect to see in what follows only a diagrammatic drawing, in which the respective outlines of intelligence and instinct are sharper than they should be, and in which the shading-off which comes from the indecision of each and from their reciprocal encroachment on one another is neglected. In a matter so obscure, we cannot strive too hard for clearness. It will always be easy afterwards to soften the outlines and to correct what is too geometrical in the drawing--in short, to replace the rigidity of a diagram by the suppleness of life. * * * * * To what date is it agreed to ascribe the appearance of man on the earth? To the period when the first weapons, the first tools, were made. The memorable quarrel over the discovery of Boucher de Perthes in the quarry of Moulin-Quignon is not forgotten. The question was whether real hatchets had been found or merely bits of flint accidentally broken. But that, supposing they were hatchets, we were indeed in the presence of intelligence, and more particularly of _human_ intelligence, no one doubted for an instant. Now let us open a collection of anecdotes on the intelligence of animals: we shall see that besides many acts explicable by imitation or by the automatic association of images, there are some that we do not hesitate to call intelligent: foremost among them are those that bear witness to some idea of manufacture, whether the animal life succeeds in fashioning a crude instrument or uses for its profit an object made by man. The animals that rank immediately after man in the matter of intelligence, the apes and elephants, are those that can use an artificial instrument occasionally. Below, but not very far from them, come those that _recognize_ a constructed object: for example, the fox, which knows quite well that a trap is a trap. No doubt, there is intelligence wherever there is inference; but inference, which consists in an inflection of past experience in the direction of present experience, is already a beginning of invention. Invention becomes complete when it is materialized in a manufactured instrument. Towards that achievement the intelligence of animals tends as towards an ideal. And though, ordinarily, it does not yet succeed in fashioning artificial objects and in making use of them, it is preparing for this by the very variations which it performs on the instincts furnished by nature. As regards human intelligence, it has not been sufficiently noted that mechanical invention has been from the first its essential feature, that even to-day our social life gravitates around the manufacture and use of artificial instruments, that the inventions which strew the road of progress have also traced its direction. This we hardly realize, because it takes us longer to change ourselves than to change our tools. Our individual and even social habits survive a good while the circumstances for which they were made, so that the ultimate effects of an invention are not observed until its novelty is already out of sight. A century has elapsed since the invention of the steam-engine, and we are only just beginning to feel the depths of the shock it gave us. But the revolution it has effected in industry has nevertheless upset human relations altogether. New ideas are arising, new feelings are on the way to flower. In thousands of years, when, seen from the distance, only the broad lines of the present age will still be visible, our wars and our revolutions will count for little, even supposing they are remembered at all; but the steam-engine, and the procession of inventions of every kind that accompanied it, will perhaps be spoken of as we speak of the bronze or of the chipped stone of prehistoric times: it will serve to define an age.[62] If we could rid ourselves of all pride, if, to define our species, we kept strictly to what the historic and the prehistoric periods show us to be the constant characteristic of man and of intelligence, we should say not _Homo sapiens_, but _Homo faber_. In short, _intelligence, considered in what seems to be its original feature, is the faculty of manufacturing artificial objects, especially tools to make tools, and of indefinitely varying the manufacture_. Now, does an unintelligent animal also possess tools or machines? Yes, certainly, but here the instrument forms a part of the body that uses it; and, corresponding to this instrument, there is an _instinct_ that knows how to use it. True, it cannot be maintained that _all_ instincts consist in a natural ability to use an inborn mechanism. Such a definition would not apply to the instincts which Romanes called "secondary"; and more than one "primary" instinct would not come under it. But this definition, like that which we have provisionally given of intelligence, determines at least the ideal limit toward which the very numerous forms of instinct are traveling. Indeed, it has often been pointed out that most instincts are only the continuance, or rather the consummation, of the work of organization itself. Where does the activity of instinct begin? and where does that of nature end? We cannot tell. In the metamorphoses of the larva into the nymph and into the perfect insect, metamorphoses that often require appropriate action and a kind of initiative on the part of the larva, there is no sharp line of demarcation between the instinct of the animal and the organizing work of living matter. We may say, as we will, either that instinct organizes the instruments it is about to use, or that the process of organization is continued in the instinct that has to use the organ. The most marvelous instincts of the insect do nothing but develop its special structure into movements: indeed, where social life divides the labor among different individuals, and thus allots them different instincts, a corresponding difference of structure is observed: the polymorphism of ants, bees, wasps and certain pseudoneuroptera is well known. Thus, if we consider only those typical cases in which the complete triumph of intelligence and of instinct is seen, we find this essential difference between them: _instinct perfected is a faculty of using and even of constructing organized instruments; intelligence perfected is the faculty of making and using unorganized instruments_. The advantages and drawbacks of these two modes of activity are obvious. Instinct finds the appropriate instrument at hand: this instrument, which makes and repairs itself, which presents, like all the works of nature, an infinite complexity of detail combined with a marvelous simplicity of function, does at once, when required, what it is called upon to do, without difficulty and with a perfection that is often wonderful. In return, it retains an almost invariable structure, since a modification of it involves a modification of the species. Instinct is therefore necessarily specialized, being nothing but the utilization of a specific instrument for a specific object. The instrument constructed intelligently, on the contrary, is an imperfect instrument. It costs an effort. It is generally troublesome to handle. But, as it is made of unorganized matter, it can take any form whatsoever, serve any purpose, free the living being from every new difficulty that arises and bestow on it an unlimited number of powers. Whilst it is inferior to the natural instrument for the satisfaction of immediate wants, its advantage over it is the greater, the less urgent the need. Above all, it reacts on the nature of the being that constructs it; for in calling on him to exercise a new function, it confers on him, so to speak, a richer organization, being an artificial organ by which the natural organism is extended. For every need that it satisfies, it creates a new need; and so, instead of closing, like instinct, the round of action within which the animal tends to move automatically, it lays open to activity an unlimited field into which it is driven further and further, and made more and more free. But this advantage of intelligence over instinct only appears at a late stage, when intelligence, having raised construction to a higher degree, proceeds to construct constructive machinery. At the outset, the advantages and drawbacks of the artificial instrument and of the natural instrument balance so well that it is hard to foretell which of the two will secure to the living being the greater empire over nature. We may surmise that they began by being implied in each other, that the original psychical activity included both at once, and that, if we went far enough back into the past, we should find instincts more nearly approaching intelligence than those of our insects, intelligence nearer to instinct than that of our vertebrates, intelligence and instinct being, in this elementary condition, prisoners of a matter which they are not yet able to control. If the force immanent in life were an unlimited force, it might perhaps have developed instinct and intelligence together, and to any extent, in the same organisms. But everything seems to indicate that this force is limited, and that it soon exhausts itself in its very manifestation. It is hard for it to go far in several directions at once: it must choose. Now, it has the choice between two modes of acting on the material world: it can either effect this action _directly_ by creating an _organized_ instrument to work with; or else it can effect it _indirectly_ through an organism which, instead of possessing the required instrument naturally, will itself construct it by fashioning inorganic matter. Hence intelligence and instinct, which diverge more and more as they develop, but which never entirely separate from each other. On the one hand, the most perfect instinct of the insect is accompanied by gleams of intelligence, if only in the choice of place, time and materials of construction: the bees, for example, when by exception they build in the open air, invent new and really intelligent arrangements to adapt themselves to such new conditions.[63] But, on the other hand, intelligence has even more need of instinct than instinct has of intelligence; for the power to give shape to crude matter involves already a superior degree of organization, a degree to which the animal could not have risen, save on the wings of instinct. So, while nature has frankly evolved in the direction of instinct in the arthropods, we observe in almost all the vertebrates the striving after rather than the expansion of intelligence. It is instinct still which forms the basis of their psychical activity; but intelligence is there, and would fain supersede it. Intelligence does not yet succeed in inventing instruments; but at least it tries to, by performing as many variations as possible on the instinct which it would like to dispense with. It gains complete self-possession only in man, and this triumph is attested by the very insufficiency of the natural means at man's disposal for defense against his enemies, against cold and hunger. This insufficiency, when we strive to fathom its significance, acquires the value of a prehistoric document; it is the final leave-taking between intelligence and instinct. But it is no less true that nature must have hesitated between two modes of psychical activity--one assured of immediate success, but limited in its effects; the other hazardous, but whose conquests, if it should reach independence, might be extended indefinitely. Here again, then, the greatest success was achieved on the side of the greatest risk. _Instinct and intelligence therefore represent two divergent solutions, equally fitting, of one and the same problem._ There ensue, it is true, profound differences of internal structure between instinct and intelligence. We shall dwell only on those that concern our present study. Let us say, then, that instinct and intelligence imply two radically different kinds of knowledge. But some explanations are first of all necessary on the subject of consciousness in general. It has been asked how far instinct is conscious. Our reply is that there are a vast number of differences and degrees, that instinct is more or less conscious in certain cases, unconscious in others. The plant, as we shall see, has instincts; it is not likely that these are accompanied by feeling. Even in the animal there is hardly any complex instinct that is not unconscious in some part at least of its exercise. But here we must point out a difference, not often noticed, between two kinds of unconsciousness, viz., that in which consciousness is _absent_, and that in which consciousness is _nullified_. Both are equal to zero, but in one case the zero expresses the fact that there is nothing, in the other that we have two equal quantities of opposite sign which compensate and neutralize each other. The unconsciousness of a falling stone is of the former kind: the stone has no feeling of its fall. Is it the same with the unconsciousness of instinct, in the extreme cases in which instinct is unconscious? When we mechanically perform an habitual action, when the somnambulist automatically acts his dream, unconsciousness may be absolute; but this is merely due to the fact that the representation of the act is held in check by the performance of the act itself, which resembles the idea so perfectly, and fits it so exactly, that consciousness is unable to find room between them. _Representation is stopped up by action._ The proof of this is, that if the accomplishment of the act is arrested or thwarted by an obstacle, consciousness may reappear. It was there, but neutralized by the action which fulfilled and thereby filled the representation. The obstacle creates nothing positive; it simply makes a void, removes a stopper. This inadequacy of act to representation is precisely what we here call consciousness. If we examine this point more closely, we shall find that consciousness is the light that plays around the zone of possible actions or potential activity which surrounds the action really performed by the living being. It signifies hesitation or choice. Where many equally possible actions are indicated without there being any real action (as in a deliberation that has not come to an end), consciousness is intense. Where the action performed is the only action possible (as in activity of the somnambulistic or more generally automatic kind), consciousness is reduced to nothing. Representation and knowledge exist none the less in the case if we find a whole series of systematized movements the last of which is already pre-figured in the first, and if, besides, consciousness can flash out of them at the shock of an obstacle. From this point of view, _the consciousness of a living being may be defined as an arithmetical difference between potential and real activity_. _It measures the interval between representation and action._ It may be inferred from this that intelligence is likely to point towards consciousness, and instinct towards unconsciousness. For, where the implement to be used is organized by nature, the material furnished by nature, and the result to be obtained willed by nature, there is little left to choice; the consciousness inherent in the representation is therefore counterbalanced, whenever it tends to disengage itself, by the performance of the act, identical with the representation, which forms its counterweight. Where consciousness appears, it does not so much light up the instinct itself as the thwartings to which instinct is subject; it is the _deficit_ of instinct, the distance, between the act and the idea, that becomes consciousness so that consciousness, here, is only an accident. Essentially, consciousness only emphasizes the starting-point of instinct, the point at which the whole series of automatic movements is released. Deficit, on the contrary, is the normal state of intelligence. Laboring under difficulties is its very essence. Its original function being to construct unorganized instruments, it must, in spite of numberless difficulties, choose for this work the place and the time, the form and the matter. And it can never satisfy itself entirely, because every new satisfaction creates new needs. In short, while instinct and intelligence both involve knowledge, this knowledge is rather _acted_ and unconscious in the case of instinct, _thought_ and conscious in the case of intelligence. But it is a difference rather of degree than of kind. So long as consciousness is all we are concerned with, we close our eyes to what is, from the psychological point of view, the cardinal difference between instinct and intelligence. In order to get at this essential difference we must, without stopping at the more or less brilliant light which illumines these two modes of internal activity, go straight to the two _objects_, profoundly different from each other, upon which instinct and intelligence are directed. When the horse-fly lays its eggs on the legs or shoulders of the horse, it acts as if it knew that its larva has to develop in the horse's stomach and that the horse, in licking itself, will convey the larva into its digestive tract. When a paralyzing wasp stings its victim on just those points where the nervous centres lie, so as to render it motionless without killing it, it acts like a learned entomologist and a skilful surgeon rolled into one. But what shall we say of the little beetle, the Sitaris, whose story is so often quoted? This insect lays its eggs at the entrance of the underground passages dug by a kind of bee, the Anthophora. Its larva, after long waiting, springs upon the male Anthophora as it goes out of the passage, clings to it, and remains attached until the "nuptial flight," when it seizes the opportunity to pass from the male to the female, and quietly waits until it lays its eggs. It then leaps on the egg, which serves as a support for it in the honey, devours the egg in a few days, and, resting on the shell, undergoes its first metamorphosis. Organized now to float on the honey, it consumes this provision of nourishment, and becomes a nymph, then a perfect insect. Everything happens _as if_ the larva of the Sitaris, from the moment it was hatched, knew that the male Anthophora would first emerge from the passage; that the nuptial flight would give it the means of conveying itself to the female, who would take it to a store of honey sufficient to feed it after its transformation; that, until this transformation, it could gradually eat the egg of the Anthophora, in such a way that it could at the same time feed itself, maintain itself at the surface of the honey, and also suppress the rival that otherwise would have come out of the egg. And equally all this happens _as if_ the Sitaris itself knew that its larva would know all these things. The knowledge, if knowledge there be, is only implicit. It is reflected outwardly in exact movements instead of being reflected inwardly in consciousness. It is none the less true that the behavior of the insect involves, or rather evolves, the idea of definite things existing or being produced in definite points of space and time, which the insect knows without having learned them. Now, if we look at intelligence from the same point of view, we find that it also knows certain things without having learned them. But the knowledge in the two cases is of a very different order. We must be careful here not to revive again the old philosophical dispute on the subject of innate ideas. So we will confine ourselves to the point on which every one is agreed, to wit, that the young child understands immediately things that the animal will never understand, and that in this sense intelligence, like instinct, is an inherited function, therefore an innate one. But this innate intelligence, although it is a faculty of knowing, knows no object in particular. When the new-born babe seeks for the first time its mother's breast, so showing that it has knowledge (unconscious, no doubt) of a thing it has never seen, we say, just because the innate knowledge is in this case of a definite object, that it belongs to _instinct_ and not to _intelligence_. Intelligence does not then imply the innate knowledge of any object. And yet, if intelligence knows nothing by nature, it has nothing innate. What, then, if it be ignorant of all things, can it know? Besides _things_, there are _relations_. The new-born child, so far as intelligent, knows neither definite objects nor a definite property of any object; but when, a little later on, he will hear an epithet being applied to a substantive, he will immediately understand what it means. The relation of attribute to subject is therefore seized by him naturally, and the same might be said of the general relation expressed by the verb, a relation so immediately conceived by the mind that language can leave it to be understood, as is instanced in rudimentary languages which have no verb. Intelligence, therefore, naturally makes use of relations of like with like, of content to container, of cause to effect, etc., which are implied in every phrase in which there is a subject, an attribute and a verb, expressed or understood. May one say that it has _innate_ knowledge of each of these relations in particular? It is for logicians to discover whether they are so many irreducible relations, or whether they can be resolved into relations still more general. But, in whatever way we make the analysis of thought, we always end with one or several general categories, of which the mind possesses innate knowledge since it makes a natural use of them. Let us say, therefore, that _whatever, in instinct and intelligence, is innate knowledge, bears in the first case on_ things _and in the second on_ relations. Philosophers distinguish between the matter of our knowledge and its form. The matter is what is given by the perceptive faculties taken in the elementary state. The form is the totality of the relations set up between these materials in order to constitute a systematic knowledge. Can the form, without matter, be an object of knowledge? Yes, without doubt, provided that this knowledge is not like a thing we possess so much as like a habit we have contracted,--a direction rather than a state: it is, if we will, a certain natural bent of attention. The schoolboy, who knows that the master is going to dictate a fraction to him, draws a line before he knows what numerator and what denominator are to come; he therefore has present to his mind the general relation between the two terms although he does not know either of them; he knows the form without the matter. So is it, prior to experience, with the categories into which our experience comes to be inserted. Let us adopt then words sanctioned by usage, and give the distinction between intelligence and instinct this more precise formula: _Intelligence, in so far as it is innate, is the knowledge of a_ form; _instinct implies the knowledge of a_ matter. From this second point of view, which is that of knowledge instead of action, the force immanent in life in general appears to us again as a limited principle, in which originally two different and even divergent modes of knowing coexisted and intermingled. The first gets at definite objects immediately, in their materiality itself. It says, "This is what is." The second gets at no object in particular; it is only a natural power of relating an object to an object, or a part to a part, or an aspect to an aspect--in short, of drawing conclusions when in possession of the premisses, of proceeding from what has been learnt to what is still unknown. It does not say, "This _is_;" it says only that "_if_ the conditions are such, such will be the conditioned." In short, the first kind of knowledge, the instinctive, would be formulated in what philosophers call _categorical_ propositions, while the second kind, the intellectual, would always be expressed _hypothetically_. Of these two faculties, the former seems, at first, much preferable to the other. And it would be so, in truth, if it extended to an endless number of objects. But, in fact, it applies only to one special object, and indeed only to a restricted part of that object. Of this, at least, its knowledge is intimate and full; not explicit, but implied in the accomplished action. The intellectual faculty, on the contrary, possesses naturally only an external and empty knowledge; but it has thereby the advantage of supplying a frame in which an infinity of objects may find room in turn. It is as if the force evolving in living forms, being a limited force, had had to choose between two kinds of limitation in the field of natural or innate knowledge, one applying to the _extension_ of knowledge, the other to its _intension_. In the first case, the knowledge may be packed and full, but it will then be confined to one specific object; in the second, it is no longer limited by its object, but that is because it contains nothing, being only a form without matter. The two tendencies, at first implied in each other, had to separate in order to grow. They both went to seek their fortune in the world, and turned out to be instinct and intelligence. Such, then, are the two divergent modes of knowledge by which intelligence and instinct must be defined, from the standpoint of knowledge rather than that of action. But knowledge and action are here only two aspects of one and the same faculty. It is easy to see, indeed, that the second definition is only a new form of the first. If instinct is, above all, the faculty of using an organized natural instrument, it must involve innate knowledge (potential or unconscious, it is true), both of this instrument and of the object to which it is applied. Instinct is therefore innate knowledge of a _thing_. But intelligence is the faculty of constructing unorganized--that is to say artificial--instruments. If, on its account, nature gives up endowing the living being with the instruments that may serve him, it is in order that the living being may be able to vary his construction according to circumstances. The essential function of intelligence is therefore to see the way out of a difficulty in any circumstances whatever, to find what is most suitable, what answers best the question asked. Hence it bears essentially on the relations between a given situation and the means of utilizing it. What is innate in intellect, therefore, is the tendency to establish relations, and this tendency implies the natural knowledge of certain very general relations, a kind of stuff that the activity of each particular intellect will cut up into more special relations. Where activity is directed toward manufacture, therefore, knowledge necessarily bears on relations. But this entirely _formal_ knowledge of intelligence has an immense advantage over the _material_ knowledge of instinct. A form, just because it is empty, may be filled at will with any number of things in turn, even with those that are of no use. So that a formal knowledge is not limited to what is practically useful, although it is in view of practical utility that it has made its appearance in the world. An intelligent being bears within himself the means to transcend his own nature. He transcends himself, however, less than he wishes, less also than he imagines himself to do. The purely formal character of intelligence deprives it of the ballast necessary to enable it to settle itself on the objects that are of the most powerful interest to speculation. Instinct, on the contrary, has the desired materiality, but it is incapable of going so far in quest of its object; it does not speculate. Here we reach the point that most concerns our present inquiry. The difference that we shall now proceed to denote between instinct and intelligence is what the whole of this analysis was meant to bring out. We formulate it thus: _There are things that intelligence alone is able to seek, but which, by itself, it will never find. These things instinct alone could find; but it will never seek them._ It is necessary here to consider some preliminary details that concern the mechanism of intelligence. We have said that the function of intelligence is to establish relations. Let us determine more precisely the nature of these relations. On this point we are bound to be either vague or arbitrary so long as we see in the intellect a faculty intended for pure speculation. We are then reduced to taking the general frames of the understanding for something absolute, irreducible and inexplicable. The understanding must have fallen from heaven with its form, as each of us is born with his face. This form may be defined, of course, but that is all; there is no asking why it is what it is rather than anything else. Thus, it will be said that the function of the intellect is essentially unification, that the common object of all its operations is to introduce a certain unity into the diversity of phenomena, and so forth. But, in the first place, "unification" is a vague term, less clear than "relation" or even "thought," and says nothing more. And, moreover, it might be asked if the function of intelligence is not to divide even more than to unite. Finally, if the intellect proceeds as it does because it wishes to unite, and if it seeks unification simply because it has need of unifying, the whole of our knowledge becomes relative to certain requirements of the mind that probably might have been entirely different from what they are: for an intellect differently shaped, knowledge would have been different. Intellect being no longer dependent on anything, everything becomes dependent on it; and so, having placed the understanding too high, we end by putting too low the knowledge it gives us. Knowledge becomes relative, as soon as the intellect is made a kind of absolute.--We regard the human intellect, on the contrary, as relative to the needs of action. Postulate action, and the very form of the intellect can be deduced from it. This form is therefore neither irreducible nor inexplicable. And, precisely because it is not independent, knowledge cannot be said to depend on it: knowledge ceases to be a product of the intellect and becomes, in a certain sense, part and parcel of reality. Philosophers will reply that action takes place in an _ordered_ world, that this order is itself thought, and that we beg the question when we explain the intellect by action, which presupposes it. They would be right if our point of view in the present chapter was to be our final one. We should then be dupes of an illusion like that of Spencer, who believed that the intellect is sufficiently explained as the impression left on us by the general characters of matter: as if the order inherent in matter were not intelligence itself! But we reserve for the next chapter the question up to what point and with what method philosophy can attempt a real genesis of the intellect at the same time as of matter. For the moment, the problem that engages our attention is of a psychological order. We are asking what is the portion of the material world to which our intellect is specially adapted. To reply to this question, there is no need to choose a system of philosophy: it is enough to take up the point of view of common sense. Let us start, then, from action, and lay down that the intellect aims, first of all, at constructing. This fabrication is exercised exclusively on inert matter, in this sense, that even if it makes use of organized material, it treats it as inert, without troubling about the life which animated it. And of inert matter itself, fabrication deals only with the solid; the rest escapes by its very fluidity. If, therefore, the tendency of the intellect is to fabricate, we may expect to find that whatever is fluid in the real will escape it in part, and whatever is life in the living will escape it altogether. _Our intelligence, as it leaves the hands of nature, has for its chief object the unorganized solid._ When we pass in review the intellectual functions, we see that the intellect is never quite at its ease, never entirely at home, except when it is working upon inert matter, more particularly upon solids. What is the most general property of the material world? It is extended: it presents to us objects external to other objects, and, in these objects, parts external to parts. No doubt, it is useful to us, in view of our ulterior manipulation, to regard each object as divisible into parts arbitrarily cut up, each part being again divisible as we like, and so on _ad infinitum_. But it is above all necessary, for our present manipulation, to regard the real object in hand, or the real elements into which we have resolved it, as _provisionally final_, and to treat them as so many _units_. To this possibility of decomposing matter as much as we please, and in any way we please, we allude when we speak of the _continuity_ of material extension; but this continuity, as we see it, is nothing else but our ability, an ability that matter allows to us to choose the mode of discontinuity we shall find in it. It is always, in fact, the mode of discontinuity once chosen that appears to us as the actually real one and that which fixes our attention, just because it rules our action. Thus discontinuity is thought for itself; it is thinkable in itself; we form an idea of it by a positive act of our mind; while the intellectual representation of continuity is negative, being, at bottom, only the refusal of our mind, before any actually given system of decomposition, to regard it as the only possible one. _Of the discontinuous alone does the intellect form a clear idea._ On the other hand, the objects we act on are certainly mobile objects, but the important thing for us to know is _whither_ the mobile object is going and _where_ it is at any moment of its passage. In other words, our interest is directed, before all, to its actual or future positions, and not to the _progress_ by which it passes from one position to another, progress which is the movement itself. In our actions, which are systematized movements, what we fix our mind on is the end or meaning of the movement, its design as a whole--in a word, the immobile plan of its execution. That which really moves in action interests us only so far as the whole can be advanced, retarded, or stopped by any incident that may happen on the way. From mobility itself our intellect turns aside, because it has nothing to gain in dealing with it. If the intellect were meant for pure theorizing, it would take its place within movement, for movement is reality itself, and immobility is always only apparent or relative. But the intellect is meant for something altogether different. Unless it does violence to itself, it takes the opposite course; it always starts from immobility, as if this were the ultimate reality: when it tries to form an idea of movement, it does so by constructing movement out of immobilities put together. This operation, whose illegitimacy and danger in the field of speculation we shall show later on (it leads to dead-locks, and creates artificially insoluble philosophical problems), is easily justified when we refer it to its proper goal. Intelligence, in its natural state, aims at a practically useful end. When it substitutes for movement immobilities put together, it does not pretend to reconstitute the movement such as it actually is; it merely replaces it with a practical equivalent. It is the philosophers who are mistaken when they import into the domain of speculation a method of thinking which is made for action. But of this more anon. Suffice it now to say that to the stable and unchangeable our intellect is attached by virtue of its natural disposition. _Of immobility alone does the intellect form a clear idea._ Now, fabricating consists in carving out the form of an object in matter. What is the most important is the form to be obtained. As to the matter, we choose that which is most convenient; but, in order to choose it, that is to say, in order to go and seek it among many others, we must have tried, in imagination at least, to endow every kind of matter with the form of the object conceived. In other words, an intelligence which aims at fabricating is an intelligence which never stops at the actual form of things nor regards it as final, but, on the contrary, looks upon all matter as if it were carvable at will. Plato compares the good dialectician to the skilful cook who carves the animal without breaking its bones, by following the articulations marked out by nature.[64] An intelligence which always proceeded thus would really be an intelligence turned toward speculation. But action, and in particular fabrication, requires the opposite mental tendency: it makes us consider every actual form of things, even the form of natural things, as artificial and provisional; it makes our thought efface from the object perceived, even though organized and living, the lines that outwardly mark its inward structure; in short, it makes us regard its matter as indifferent to its form. The whole of matter is made to appear to our thought as an immense piece of cloth in which we can cut out what we will and sew it together again as we please. Let us note, in passing, that it is this power that we affirm when we say that there is a _space_, that is to say, a homogeneous and empty medium, infinite and infinitely divisible, lending itself indifferently to any mode of decomposition whatsoever. A medium of this kind is never perceived; it is only conceived. What is perceived is extension colored, resistant, divided according to the lines which mark out the boundaries of real bodies or of their real elements. But when we think of our power over this matter, that is to say, of our faculty of decomposing and recomposing it as we please, we project the whole of these possible decompositions and recompositions behind real extension in the form of a homogeneous space, empty and indifferent, which is supposed to underlie it. This space is therefore, pre-eminently, the plan of our possible action on things, although, indeed, things have a natural tendency, as we shall explain further on, to enter into a frame of this kind. It is a view taken by mind. The animal has probably no idea of it, even when, like us, it perceives extended things. It is an idea that symbolizes the tendency of the human intellect to fabrication. But this point must not detain us now. Suffice it to say that _the intellect is characterized by the unlimited power of decomposing according to any law and of recomposing into any system_. We have now enumerated a few of the essential features of human intelligence. But we have hitherto considered the individual in isolation, without taking account of social life. In reality, man is a being who lives in society. If it be true that the human intellect aims at fabrication, we must add that, for that as well as for other purposes, it is associated with other intellects. Now, it is difficult to imagine a society whose members do not communicate by signs. Insect societies probably have a language, and this language must be adapted, like that of man, to the necessities of life in common. By language community of action is made possible. But the requirements of joint action are not at all the same in a colony of ants and in a human society. In insect societies there is generally polymorphism, the subdivision of labor is natural, and each individual is riveted by its structure to the function it performs. In any case, these societies are based on instinct, and consequently on certain actions or fabrications that are more or less dependent on the form of the organs. So if the ants, for instance, have a language, the signs which compose it must be very limited in number, and each of them, once the species is formed, must remain invariably attached to a certain object or a certain operation: the sign is adherent to the thing signified. In human society, on the contrary, fabrication and action are of variable form, and, moreover, each individual must learn his part, because he is not preordained to it by his structure. So a language is required which makes it possible to be always passing from what is known to what is yet to be known. There must be a language whose signs--which cannot be infinite in number--are extensible to an infinity of things. This tendency of the sign to transfer itself from one object to another is characteristic of human language. It is observable in the little child as soon as he begins to speak. Immediately and naturally he extends the meaning of the words he learns, availing himself of the most accidental connection or the most distant analogy to detach and transfer elsewhere the sign that had been associated in his hearing with a particular object. "Anything can designate anything;" such is the latent principle of infantine language. This tendency has been wrongly confused with the faculty of generalizing. The animals themselves generalize; and, moreover, a sign--even an instinctive sign--always to some degree represents a genus. But what characterizes the signs of human language is not so much their generality as their mobility. _The instinctive sign is_ adherent, _the intelligent sign is_ mobile. Now, this mobility of words, that makes them able to pass from one thing to another, has enabled them to be extended from things to ideas. Certainly, language would not have given the faculty of reflecting to an intelligence entirely externalized and incapable of turning homeward. An intelligence which reflects is one that originally had a surplus of energy to spend, over and above practically useful efforts. It is a consciousness that has virtually reconquered itself. But still the virtual has to become actual. Without language, intelligence would probably have remained riveted to the material objects which it was interested in considering. It would have lived in a state of somnambulism, outside itself, hypnotized on its own work. Language has greatly contributed to its liberation. The word, made to pass from one thing to another, is, in fact, by nature transferable and free. It can therefore be extended, not only from one perceived thing to another, but even from a perceived thing to a recollection of that thing, from the precise recollection to a more fleeting image, and finally from an image fleeting, though still pictured, to the picturing of the act by which the image is pictured, that is to say, to the idea. Thus is revealed to the intelligence, hitherto always turned outwards, a whole internal world--the spectacle of its own workings. It required only this opportunity, at length offered by language. It profits by the fact that the word is an external thing, which the intelligence can catch hold of and cling to, and at the same time an immaterial thing, by means of which the intelligence can penetrate even to the inwardness of its own work. Its first business was indeed to make instruments, but this fabrication is possible only by the employment of certain means which are not cut to the exact measure of their object, but go beyond it and thus allow intelligence a supplementary--that is to say disinterested work. From the moment that the intellect, reflecting upon its own doings, perceives itself as a creator of ideas, as a faculty of representation in general, there is no object of which it may not wish to have the idea, even though that object be without direct relation to practical action. That is why we said there are things that intellect alone can seek. Intellect alone, indeed, troubles itself about theory; and its theory would fain embrace everything--not only inanimate matter, over which it has a natural hold, but even life and thought. By what means, what instruments, in short by what method it will approach these problems, we can easily guess. Originally, it was fashioned to the form of matter. Language itself, which has enabled it to extend its field of operations, is made to designate things, and nought but things: it is only because the word is mobile, because it flies from one thing to another, that the intellect was sure to take it, sooner or later, on the wing, while it was not settled on anything, and apply it to an object which is not a thing and which, concealed till then, awaited the coming of the word to pass from darkness to light. But the word, by covering up this object, again converts it into a thing. So intelligence, even when it no longer operates upon its own object, follows habits it has contracted in that operation: it applies forms that are indeed those of unorganized matter. It is made for this kind of work. With this kind of work alone is it fully satisfied. And that is what intelligence expresses by saying that thus only it arrives at _distinctness_ and _clearness_. It must, therefore, in order to think itself clearly and distinctly, perceive itself under the form of discontinuity. Concepts, in fact, are outside each other, like objects in space; and they have the same stability as such objects, on which they have been modeled. Taken together, they constitute an "intelligible world," that resembles the world of solids in its essential characters, but whose elements are lighter, more diaphanous, easier for the intellect to deal with than the image of concrete things: they are not, indeed, the perception itself of things, but the representation of the act by which the intellect is fixed on them. They are, therefore, not images, but symbols. Our logic is the complete set of rules that must be followed in using symbols. As these symbols are derived from the consideration of solids, as the rules for combining these symbols hardly do more than express the most general relations among solids, our logic triumphs in that science which takes the solidity of bodies for its object, that is, in geometry. Logic and geometry engender each other, as we shall see a little further on. It is from the extension of a certain natural geometry, suggested by the most general and immediately perceived properties of solids, that natural logic has arisen; then from this natural logic, in its turn, has sprung scientific geometry, which extends further and further the knowledge of the external properties of solids.[65] Geometry and logic are strictly applicable to matter; in it they are at home, and in it they can proceed quite alone. But, outside this domain, pure reasoning needs to be supervised by common sense, which is an altogether different thing. Thus, all the elementary forces of the intellect tend to transform matter into an instrument of action, that is, in the etymological sense of the word, into an _organ_. Life, not content with producing organisms, would fain give them as an appendage inorganic matter itself, converted into an immense organ by the industry of the living being. Such is the initial task it assigns to intelligence. That is why the intellect always behaves as if it were fascinated by the contemplation of inert matter. It is life looking outward, putting itself outside itself, adopting the ways of unorganized nature in principle, in order to direct them in fact. Hence its bewilderment when it turns to the living and is confronted with organization. It does what it can, it resolves the organized into the unorganized, for it cannot, without reversing its natural direction and twisting about on itself, think true continuity, real mobility, reciprocal penetration--in a word, that creative evolution which is life. Consider continuity. The aspect of life that is accessible to our intellect--as indeed to our senses, of which our intellect is the extension--is that which offers a hold to our action. Now, to modify an object, we have to perceive it as divisible and discontinuous. From the point of view of positive science, an incomparable progress was realized when the organized tissues were resolved into cells. The study of the cell, in its turn, has shown it to be an organism whose complexity seems to grow, the more thoroughly it is examined. The more science advances, the more it sees the number grow of heterogeneous elements which are placed together, outside each other, to make up a living being. Does science thus get any nearer to life? Does it not, on the contrary, find that what is really life in the living seems to recede with every step by which it pushes further the detail of the parts combined? There is indeed already among scientists a tendency to regard the substance of the organism as continuous, and the cell as an artificial entity.[66] But, supposing this view were finally to prevail, it could only lead, on deeper study, to some other mode of analyzing of the living being, and so to a new discontinuity--although less removed, perhaps, from the real continuity of life. The truth is that this continuity cannot be thought by the intellect while it follows its natural movement. It implies at once the multiplicity of elements and the interpenetration of all by all, two conditions that can hardly be reconciled in the field in which our industry, and consequently our intellect, is engaged. Just as we separate in space, we fix in time. The intellect is not made to think _evolution_, in the proper sense of the word--that is to say, the continuity of a change that is pure mobility. We shall not dwell here on this point, which we propose to study in a special chapter. Suffice it to say that the intellect represents _becoming_ as a series of _states_, each of which is homogeneous with itself and consequently does not change. Is our attention called to the internal change of one of these states? At once we decompose it into another series of states which, reunited, will be supposed to make up this internal modification. Each of these new states must be invariable, or else their internal change, if we are forced to notice it, must be resolved again into a fresh series of invariable states, and so on to infinity. Here again, thinking consists in reconstituting, and, naturally, it is with _given_ elements, and consequently with _stable_ elements, that we reconstitute. So that, though we may do our best to imitate the mobility of becoming by an addition that is ever going on, becoming itself slips through our fingers just when we think we are holding it tight. Precisely because it is always trying to reconstitute, and to reconstitute with what is given, the intellect lets what is _new_ in each moment of a history escape. It does not admit the unforeseeable. It rejects all creation. That definite antecedents bring forth a definite consequent, calculable as a function of them, is what satisfies our intellect. That a definite end calls forth definite means to attain it, is what we also understand. In both cases we have to do with the known which is combined with the known, in short, with the old which is repeated. Our intellect is there at its ease; and, whatever be the object, it will abstract, separate, eliminate, so as to substitute for the object itself, if necessary, an approximate equivalent in which things will happen in this way. But that each instant is a fresh endowment, that the new is ever upspringing, that the form just come into existence (although, _when once produced_, it may be regarded as an effect determined by its causes) could never have been foreseen--because the causes here, unique in their kind, are part of the effect, have come into existence with it, and are determined by it as much as they determine it--all this we can feel within ourselves and also divine, by sympathy, outside ourselves, but we cannot think it, in the strict sense of the word, nor express it in terms of pure understanding. No wonder at that: we must remember what our intellect is meant for. The causality it seeks and finds everywhere expresses the very mechanism of our industry, in which we go on recomposing the same whole with the same parts, repeating the same movements to obtain the same result. The finality it understands best is the finality of our industry, in which we work on a model given in advance, that is to say, old or composed of elements already known. As to invention properly so called, which is, however, the point of departure of industry itself, our intellect does not succeed in grasping it in its _upspringing_, that is to say, in its indivisibility, nor in its _fervor_, that is to say, in its creativeness. Explaining it always consists in resolving it, it the unforeseeable and new, into elements old or known, arranged in a different order. The intellect can no more admit complete novelty than real becoming; that is to say, here again it lets an essential aspect of life escape, as if it were not intended to think such an object. All our analyses bring us to this conclusion. But it is hardly necessary to go into such long details concerning the mechanism of intellectual working; it is enough to consider the results. We see that the intellect, so skilful in dealing with the inert, is awkward the moment it touches the living. Whether it wants to treat the life of the body or the life of the mind, it proceeds with the rigor, the stiffness and the brutality of an instrument not designed for such use. The history of hygiene or of pedagogy teaches us much in this matter. When we think of the cardinal, urgent and constant need we have to preserve our bodies and to raise our souls, of the special facilities given to each of us, in this field, to experiment continually on ourselves and on others, of the palpable injury by which the wrongness of a medical or pedagogical practise is both made manifest and punished at once, we are amazed at the stupidity and especially at the persistence of errors. We may easily find their origin in the natural obstinacy with which we treat the living like the lifeless and think all reality, however fluid, under the form of the sharply defined solid. We are at ease only in the discontinuous, in the immobile, in the dead. _The intellect is characterized by a natural inability to comprehend life._ * * * * * Instinct, on the contrary, is molded on the very form of life. While intelligence treats everything mechanically, instinct proceeds, so to speak, organically. If the consciousness that slumbers in it should awake, if it were wound up into knowledge instead of being wound off into action, if we could ask and it could reply, it would give up to us the most intimate secrets of life. For it only carries out further the work by which life organizes matter--so that we cannot say, as has often been shown, where organization ends and where instinct begins. When the little chick is breaking its shell with a peck of its beak, it is acting by instinct, and yet it does but carry on the movement which has borne it through embryonic life. Inversely, in the course of embryonic life itself (especially when the embryo lives freely in the form of a larva), many of the acts accomplished must be referred to instinct. The most essential of the primary instincts are really, therefore, vital processes. The potential consciousness that accompanies them is generally actualized only at the outset of the act, and leaves the rest of the process to go on by itself. It would only have to expand more widely, and then dive into its own depth completely, to be one with the generative force of life. When we see in a living body thousands of cells working together to a common end, dividing the task between them, living each for itself at the same time as for the others, preserving itself, feeding itself, reproducing itself, responding to the menace of danger by appropriate defensive reactions, how can we help thinking of so many instincts? And yet these are the natural functions of the cell, the constitutive elements of its vitality. On the other hand, when we see the bees of a hive forming a system so strictly organized that no individual can live apart from the others beyond a certain time, even though furnished with food and shelter, how can we help recognizing that the hive is really, and not metaphorically, a single organism, of which each bee is a cell united to the others by invisible bonds? The instinct that animates the bee is indistinguishable, then, from the force that animates the cell, or is only a prolongation of that force. In extreme cases like this, instinct coincides with the work of organization. Of course there are degrees of perfection in the same instinct. Between the humble-bee, and the honey-bee, for instance, the distance is great; and we pass from one to the other through a great number of intermediaries, which correspond to so many complications of the social life. But the same diversity is found in the functioning of histological elements belonging to different tissues more or less akin. In both cases there are manifold variations on one and the same theme. The constancy of the theme is manifest, however, and the variations only fit it to the diversity of the circumstances. Now, in both cases, in the instinct of the animal and in the vital properties of the cell, the same knowledge and the same ignorance are shown. All goes on as if the cell knew, of the other cells, what concerns itself; as if the animal knew, of the other animals, what it can utilize--all else remaining in shade. It seems as if life, as soon as it has become bound up in a species, is cut off from the rest of its own work, save at one or two points that are of vital concern to the species just arisen. Is it not plain that life goes to work here exactly like consciousness, exactly like memory? We trail behind us, unawares, the whole of our past; but our memory pours into the present only the odd recollection or two that in some way complete our present situation. Thus the instinctive knowledge which one species possesses of another on a certain particular point has its root in the very unity of life, which is, to use the expression of an ancient philosopher, a "whole sympathetic to itself." It is impossible to consider some of the special instincts of the animal and of the plant, evidently arisen in extraordinary circumstances, without relating them to those recollections, seemingly forgotten, which spring up suddenly under the pressure of an urgent need. No doubt many secondary instincts, and also many varieties of primary instinct, admit of a scientific explanation. Yet it is doubtful whether science, with its present methods of explanation, will ever succeed in analyzing instinct completely. The reason is that instinct and intelligence are two divergent developments of one and the same principle, which in the one case remains within itself, in the other steps out of itself and becomes absorbed in the utilization of inert matter. This gradual divergence testifies to a radical incompatibility, and points to the fact that it is impossible for intelligence to reabsorb instinct. That which is instinctive in instinct cannot be expressed in terms of intelligence, nor, consequently, can it be analyzed. A man born blind, who had lived among others born blind, could not be made to believe in the possibility of perceiving a distant object without first perceiving all the objects in between. Yet vision performs this miracle. In a certain sense the blind man is right, since vision, having its origin in the stimulation of the retina, by the vibrations of the light, is nothing else, in fact, but a retinal touch. Such is indeed the _scientific_ explanation, for the function of science is just to express all perceptions in terms of touch. But we have shown elsewhere that the philosophical explanation of perception (if it may still be called an explanation) must be of another kind.[67] Now instinct also is a knowledge at a distance. It has the same relation to intelligence that vision has to touch. Science cannot do otherwise than express it in terms of intelligence; but in so doing it constructs an imitation of instinct rather than penetrates within it. Any one can convince himself of this by studying the ingenious theories of evolutionist biology. They may be reduced to two types, which are often intermingled. One type, following the principles of neo-Darwinism, regards instinct as a sum of accidental differences preserved by selection: such and such a useful behavior, naturally adopted by the individual in virtue of an accidental predisposition of the germ, has been transmitted from germ to germ, waiting for chance to add fresh improvements to it by the same method. The other type regards instinct as lapsed intelligence: the action, found useful by the species or by certain of its representatives, is supposed to have engendered a habit, which, by hereditary transmission, has become an instinct. Of these two types of theory, the first has the advantage of being able to bring in hereditary transmission without raising grave objection; for the accidental modification which it places at the origin of the instinct is not supposed to have been acquired by the individual, but to have been inherent in the germ. But, on the other hand, it is absolutely incapable of explaining instincts as sagacious as those of most insects. These instincts surely could not have attained, all at once, their present degree of complexity; they have probably evolved; but, in a hypothesis like that of the neo-Darwinians, the evolution of instinct could have come to pass only by the progressive addition of new pieces which, in some way, by happy accidents, came to fit into the old. Now it is evident that, in most cases, instinct could not have perfected itself by simple accretion: each new piece really requires, if all is not to be spoiled, a complete recasting of the whole. How could mere chance work a recasting of the kind? I agree that an accidental modification of the germ may be passed on hereditarily, and may somehow wait for fresh accidental modifications to come and complicate it. I agree also that natural selection may eliminate all those of the more complicated forms of instinct that are not fit to survive. Still, in order that the life of the instinct may evolve, complications fit to survive have to be produced. Now they will be produced only if, in certain cases, the addition of a new element brings about the correlative change of all the old elements. No one will maintain that chance could perform such a miracle: in one form or another we shall appeal to intelligence. We shall suppose that it is by an effort, more or less conscious, that the living being develops a higher instinct. But then we shall have to admit that an acquired habit can become hereditary, and that it does so regularly enough to ensure an evolution. The thing is doubtful, to put it mildly. Even if we could refer the instincts of animals to habits intelligently acquired and hereditarily transmitted, it is not clear how this sort of explanation could be extended to the vegetable world, where effort is never intelligent, even supposing it is sometimes conscious. And yet, when we see with what sureness and precision climbing plants use their tendrils, what marvelously combined manoeuvres the orchids perform to procure their fertilization by means of insects,[68] how can we help thinking that these are so many instincts? This is not saying that the theory of the neo-Darwinians must be altogether rejected, any more than that of the neo-Lamarckians. The first are probably right in holding that evolution takes place from germ to germ rather than from individual to individual; the second are right in saying that at the origin of instinct there is an effort (although it is something quite different, we believe, from an _intelligent_ effort). But the former are probably wrong when they make the evolution of instinct an _accidental_ evolution, and the latter when they regard the effort from which instinct proceeds as an _individual_ effort. The effort by which a species modifies its instinct, and modifies itself as well, must be a much deeper thing, dependent solely neither on circumstances nor on individuals. It is not purely accidental, although accident has a large place in it; and it does not depend solely on the initiative of individuals, although individuals collaborate in it. Compare the different forms of the same instinct in different species of hymenoptera. The impression derived is not always that of an increasing complexity made of elements that have been added together one after the other. Nor does it suggest the idea of steps up a ladder. Rather do we think, in many cases at least, of the circumference of a circle, from different points of which these different varieties have started, all facing the same centre, all making an effort in that direction, but each approaching it only to the extent of its means, and to the extent also to which this central point has been illumined for it. In other words, instinct is everywhere complete, but it is more or less simplified, and, above all, simplified _differently_. On the other hand, in cases where we do get the impression of an ascending scale, as if one and the same instinct had gone on complicating itself more and more in one direction and along a straight line, the species which are thus arranged by their instincts into a linear series are by no means always akin. Thus, the comparative study, in recent years, of the social instinct in the different apidae proves that the instinct of the meliponines is intermediary in complexity between the still rudimentary tendency of the humble bees and the consummate science of the true bees; yet there can be no kinship between the bees and the meliponines.[69] Most likely, the degree of complexity of these different societies has nothing to do with any greater or smaller number of added elements. We seem rather to be before a _musical theme_, which had first been transposed, the theme as a whole, into a certain number of tones and on which, still the whole theme, different variations had been played, some very simple, others very skilful. As to the original theme, it is everywhere and nowhere. It is in vain that we try to express it in terms of any idea: it must have been, originally, _felt_ rather than _thought_. We get the same impression before the paralyzing instinct of certain wasps. We know that the different species of hymenoptera that have this paralyzing instinct lay their eggs in spiders, beetles or caterpillars, which, having first been subjected by the wasp to a skilful surgical operation, will go on living motionless a certain number of days, and thus provide the larvae with fresh meat. In the sting which they give to the nerve-centres of their victim, in order to destroy its power of moving without killing it, these different species of hymenoptera take into account, so to speak, the different species of prey they respectively attack. The Scolia, which attacks a larva of the rose-beetle, stings it in one point only, but in this point the motor ganglia are concentrated, and those ganglia alone: the stinging of other ganglia might cause death and putrefaction, which it must avoid.[70] The yellow-winged Sphex, which has chosen the cricket for its victim, knows that the cricket has three nerve-centres which serve its three pairs of legs--or at least it acts as if it knew this. It stings the insect first under the neck, then behind the prothorax, and then where the thorax joins the abdomen.[71] The Ammophila Hirsuta gives nine successive strokes of its sting upon nine nerve-centres of its caterpillar, and then seizes the head and squeezes it in its mandibles, enough to cause paralysis without death.[72] The general theme is "the necessity of paralyzing without killing"; the variations are subordinated to the structure of the victim on which they are played. No doubt the operation is not always perfect. It has recently been shown that the Ammophila sometimes kills the caterpillar instead of paralyzing it, that sometimes also it paralyzes it incompletely.[73] But, because instinct is, like intelligence, fallible, because it also shows individual deviations, it does not at all follow that the instinct of the Ammophila has been acquired, as has been claimed, by tentative intelligent experiments. Even supposing that the Ammophila has come in course of time to recognize, one after another, by tentative experiment, the points of its victim which must be stung to render it motionless, and also the special treatment that must be inflicted on the head to bring about paralysis without death, how can we imagine that elements so special of a knowledge so precise have been regularly transmitted, one by one, by heredity? If, in all our present experience, there were a single indisputable example of a transmission of this kind, the inheritance of acquired characters would be questioned by no one. As a matter of fact, the hereditary transmission of a contracted habit is effected in an irregular and far from precise manner, supposing it is ever really effected at all. But the whole difficulty comes from our desire to express the knowledge of the hymenoptera in terms of intelligence. It is this that compels us to compare the Ammophila with the entomologist, who knows the caterpillar as he knows everything else--from the outside, and without having on his part a special or vital interest. The Ammophila, we imagine, must learn, one by one, like the entomologist, the positions of the nerve-centres of the caterpillar--must acquire at least the practical knowledge of these positions by trying the effects of its sting. But there is no need for such a view if we suppose a _sympathy_ (in the etymological sense of the word) between the Ammophila and its victim, which teaches it from within, so to say, concerning the vulnerability of the caterpillar. This feeling of vulnerability might owe nothing to outward perception, but result from the mere presence together of the Ammophila and the caterpillar, considered no longer as two organisms, but as two activities. It would express, in a concrete form, the _relation_ of the one to the other. Certainly, a scientific theory cannot appeal to considerations of this kind. It must not put action before organization, sympathy before perception and knowledge. But, once more, either philosophy has nothing to see here, or its rôle begins where that of science ends. Whether it makes instinct a "compound reflex," or a habit formed intelligently that has become automatism, or a sum of small accidental advantages accumulated and fixed by selection, in every case science claims to resolve instinct completely either into _intelligent_ actions, or into mechanisms built up piece by piece like those combined by our _intelligence_. I agree indeed that science is here within its function. It gives us, in default of a real analysis of the object, a translation of this object in terms of intelligence. But is it not plain that science itself invites philosophy to consider things in another way? If our biology was still that of Aristotle, if it regarded the series of living beings as unilinear, if it showed us the whole of life evolving towards intelligence and passing, to that end, through sensibility and instinct, we should be right, we, the intelligent beings, in turning back towards the earlier and consequently inferior manifestations of life and in claiming to fit them, without deforming them, into the molds of our understanding. But one of the clearest results of biology has been to show that evolution has taken place along divergent lines. It is at the extremity of two of these lines--the two principal--that we find intelligence and instinct in forms almost pure. Why, then, should instinct be resolvable into intelligent elements? Why, even, into terms entirely intelligible? Is it not obvious that to think here of the intelligent, or of the absolutely intelligible, is to go back to the Aristotelian theory of nature? No doubt it is better to go back to that than to stop short before instinct as before an unfathomable mystery. But, though instinct is not within the domain of intelligence, it is not situated beyond the limits of mind. In the phenomena of feeling, in unreflecting sympathy and antipathy, we experience in ourselves--though under a much vaguer form, and one too much penetrated with intelligence--something of what must happen in the consciousness of an insect acting by instinct. Evolution does but sunder, in order to develop them to the end, elements which, at their origin, interpenetrated each other. More precisely, intelligence is, before anything else, the faculty of relating one point of space to another, one material object to another; it applies to all things, but remains outside them; and of a deep cause it perceives only the effects spread out side by side. Whatever be the force that is at work in the genesis of the nervous system of the caterpillar, to our eyes and our intelligence it is only a juxtaposition of nerves and nervous centres. It is true that we thus get the whole outer effect of it. The Ammophila, no doubt, discerns but a very little of that force, just what concerns itself; but at least it discerns it from within, quite otherwise than by a process of knowledge--by an intuition (_lived_ rather than _represented_), which is probably like what we call divining sympathy. A very significant fact is the swing to and fro of scientific theories of instinct, from regarding it as intelligent to regarding it as simply intelligible, or, shall I say, between likening it to an intelligence "lapsed" and reducing it to a pure mechanism.[74] Each of these systems of explanation triumphs in its criticism of the other, the first when it shows us that instinct cannot be a mere reflex, the other when it declares that instinct is something different from intelligence, even fallen into unconsciousness. What can this mean but that they are two symbolisms, equally acceptable in certain respects, and, in other respects, equally inadequate to their object? The concrete explanation, no longer scientific, but metaphysical, must be sought along quite another path, not in the direction of intelligence, but in that of "sympathy." * * * * * Instinct is sympathy. If this sympathy could extend its object and also reflect upon itself, it would give us the key to vital operations--just as intelligence, developed and disciplined, guides us into matter. For--we cannot too often repeat it--intelligence and instinct are turned in opposite directions, the former towards inert matter, the latter towards life. Intelligence, by means of science, which is its work, will deliver up to us more and more completely the secret of physical operations; of life it brings us, and moreover only claims to bring us, a translation in terms of inertia. It goes all round life, taking from outside the greatest possible number of views of it, drawing it into itself instead of entering into it. But it is to the very inwardness of life that _intuition_ leads us--by intuition I mean instinct that has become disinterested, self-conscious, capable of reflecting upon its object and of enlarging it indefinitely. That an effort of this kind is not impossible, is proved by the existence in man of an aesthetic faculty along with normal perception. Our eye perceives the features of the living being, merely as assembled, not as mutually organized. The intention of life, the simple movement that runs through the lines, that binds them together and gives them significance, escapes it. This intention is just what the artist tries to regain, in placing himself back within the object by a kind of sympathy, in breaking down, by an effort of intuition, the barrier that space puts up between him and his model. It is true that this aesthetic intuition, like external perception, only attains the individual. But we can conceive an inquiry turned in the same direction as art, which would take life _in general_ for its object, just as physical science, in following to the end the direction pointed out by external perception, prolongs the individual facts into general laws. No doubt this philosophy will never obtain a knowledge of its object comparable to that which science has of its own. Intelligence remains the luminous nucleus around which instinct, even enlarged and purified into intuition, forms only a vague nebulosity. But, in default of knowledge properly so called, reserved to pure intelligence, intuition may enable us to grasp what it is that intelligence fails to give us, and indicate the means of supplementing it. On the one hand, it will utilize the mechanism of intelligence itself to show how intellectual molds cease to be strictly applicable; and on the other hand, by its own work, it will suggest to us the vague feeling, if nothing more, of what must take the place of intellectual molds. Thus, intuition may bring the intellect to recognize that life does not quite go into the category of the many nor yet into that of the one; that neither mechanical causality nor finality can give a sufficient interpretation of the vital process. Then, by the sympathetic communication which it establishes between us and the rest of the living, by the expansion of our consciousness which it brings about, it introduces us into life's own domain, which is reciprocal interpenetration, endlessly continued creation. But, though it thereby transcends intelligence, it is from intelligence that has come the push that has made it rise to the point it has reached. Without intelligence, it would have remained in the form of instinct, riveted to the special object of its practical interest, and turned outward by it into movements of locomotion. How theory of knowledge must take account of these two faculties, intellect and intuition, and how also, for want of establishing a sufficiently clear distinction between them, it becomes involved in inextricable difficulties, creating phantoms of ideas to which there cling phantoms of problems, we shall endeavor to show a little further on. We shall see that the problem of knowledge, from this point of view, is one with the metaphysical problem, and that both one and the other depend upon experience. On the one hand, indeed, if intelligence is charged with matter and instinct with life, we must squeeze them both in order to get the double essence from them; metaphysics is therefore dependent upon theory of knowledge. But, on the other hand, if consciousness has thus split up into intuition and intelligence, it is because of the need it had to apply itself to matter at the same time as it had to follow the stream of life. The double form of consciousness is then due to the double form of the real, and theory of knowledge must be dependent upon metaphysics. In fact, each of these two lines of thought leads to the other; they form a circle, and there can be no other centre to the circle but the empirical study of evolution. It is only in seeing consciousness run through matter, lose itself there and find itself there again, divide and reconstitute itself, that we shall form an idea of the mutual opposition of the two terms, as also, perhaps, of their common origin. But, on the other hand, by dwelling on this opposition of the two elements and on this identity of origin, perhaps we shall bring out more clearly the meaning of evolution itself. Such will be the aim of our next chapter. But the facts that we have just noticed must have already suggested to us the idea that life is connected either with consciousness or with something that resembles it. Throughout the whole extent of the animal kingdom, we have said, consciousness seems proportionate to the living being's power of choice. It lights up the zone of potentialities that surrounds the act. It fills the interval between what is done and what might be done. Looked at from without, we may regard it as a simple aid to action, a light that action kindles, a momentary spark flying up from the friction of real action against possible actions. But we must also point out that things would go on in just the same way if consciousness, instead of being the effect, were the cause. We might suppose that consciousness, even in the most rudimentary animal, covers by right an enormous field, but is compressed in fact in a kind of vise: each advance of the nervous centres, by giving the organism a choice between a larger number of actions, calls forth the potentialities that are capable of surrounding the real, thus opening the vise wider and allowing consciousness to pass more freely. In this second hypothesis, as in the first, consciousness is still the instrument of action; but it is even more true to say that action is the instrument of consciousness; for the complicating of action with action, and the opposing of action to action, are for the imprisoned consciousness the only possible means to set itself free. How, then, shall we choose between the two hypotheses? If the first is true, consciousness must express exactly, at each instant, the state of the brain; there is strict parallelism (so far as intelligible) between the psychical and the cerebral state. On the second hypothesis, on the contrary, there is indeed solidarity and interdependence between the brain and consciousness, but not parallelism: the more complicated the brain becomes, thus giving the organism greater choice of possible actions, the more does consciousness outrun its physical concomitant. Thus, the recollection of the same spectacle probably modifies in the same way a dog's brain and a man's brain, if the perception has been the same; yet the recollection must be very different in the man's consciousness from what it is in the dog's. In the dog, the recollection remains the captive of perception; it is brought back to consciousness only when an analogous perception recalls it by reproducing the same spectacle, and then it is manifested by the recognition, _acted_ rather than _thought_, of the present perception much more than by an actual reappearance of the recollection itself. Man, on the contrary, is capable of calling up the recollection at will, at any moment, independently of the present perception. He is not limited to _playing_ his past life again; he _represents_ and _dreams_ it. The local modification of the brain to which the recollection is attached being the same in each case, the psychological difference between the two recollections cannot have its ground in a particular difference of detail between the two cerebral mechanisms, but in the difference between the two brains taken each as a whole. The more complex of the two, in putting a greater number of mechanisms in opposition to one another, has enabled consciousness to disengage itself from the restraint of one and all and to reach independence. That things do happen in this way, that the second of the two hypotheses is that which must be chosen, is what we have tried to prove, in a former work, by the study of facts that best bring into relief the relation of the conscious state to the cerebral state, the facts of normal and pathological recognition, in particular the forms of aphasia.[75] But it could have been proved by pure reasoning, before even it was evidenced by facts. We have shown on what self-contradictory postulate, on what confusion of two mutually incompatible symbolisms, the hypothesis of equivalence between the cerebral state and the psychic state rests.[76] The evolution of life, looked at from this point, receives a clearer meaning, although it cannot be subsumed under any actual _idea_. It is as if a broad current of consciousness had penetrated matter, loaded, as all consciousness is, with an enormous multiplicity of interwoven potentialities. It has carried matter along to organization, but its movement has been at once infinitely retarded and infinitely divided. On the one hand, indeed, consciousness has had to fall asleep, like the chrysalis in the envelope in which it is preparing for itself wings; and, on the other hand, the manifold tendencies it contained have been distributed among divergent series of organisms which, moreover, express these tendencies outwardly in movements rather than internally in representations. In the course of this evolution, while some beings have fallen more and more asleep, others have more and more completely awakened, and the torpor of some has served the activity of others. But the waking could be effected in two different ways. Life, that is to say consciousness launched into matter, fixed its attention either on its own movement or on the matter it was passing through; and it has thus been turned either in the direction of intuition or in that of intellect. Intuition, at first sight, seems far preferable to intellect, since in it life and consciousness remain within themselves. But a glance at the evolution of living beings shows us that intuition could not go very far. On the side of intuition, consciousness found itself so restricted by its envelope that intuition had to shrink into instinct, that is, to embrace only the very small portion of life that interested it; and this it embraces only in the dark, touching it while hardly seeing it. On this side, the horizon was soon shut out. On the contrary, consciousness, in shaping itself into intelligence, that is to say in concentrating itself at first on matter, seems to externalize itself in relation to itself; but, just because it adapts itself thereby to objects from without, it succeeds in moving among them and in evading the barriers they oppose to it, thus opening to itself an unlimited field. Once freed, moreover, it can turn inwards on itself, and awaken the potentialities of intuition which still slumber within it. From this point of view, not only does consciousness appear as the motive principle of evolution, but also, among conscious beings themselves, man comes to occupy a privileged place. Between him and the animals the difference is no longer one of degree, but of kind. We shall show how this conclusion is arrived at in our next chapter. Let us now show how the preceding analyses suggest it. A noteworthy fact is the extraordinary disproportion between the consequences of an invention and the invention itself. We have said that intelligence is modeled on matter and that it aims in the first place at fabrication. But does it fabricate in order to fabricate or does it not pursue involuntarily, and even unconsciously, something entirely different? Fabricating consists in shaping matter, in making it supple and in bending it, in converting it into an instrument in order to become master of it. It is this _mastery_ that profits humanity, much more even than the material result of the invention itself. Though we derive an immediate advantage from the thing made, as an intelligent animal might do, and though this advantage be all the inventor sought, it is a slight matter compared with the new ideas and new feelings that the invention may give rise to in every direction, as if the essential part of the effect were to raise us above ourselves and enlarge our horizon. Between the effect and the cause the disproportion is so great that it is difficult to regard the cause as _producer_ of its effect. It releases it, whilst settling, indeed, its direction. Everything happens as though the grip of intelligence on matter were, in its main intention, to _let something pass_ that matter is holding back. The same impression arises when we compare the brain of man with that of the animals. The difference at first appears to be only a difference of size and complexity. But, judging by function, there must be something else besides. In the animal, the motor mechanisms that the brain succeeds in setting up, or, in other words, the habits contracted voluntarily, have no other object nor effect than the accomplishment of the movements marked out in these habits, stored in these mechanisms. But, in man, the motor habit may have a second result, out of proportion to the first: it can hold other motor habits in check, and thereby, in overcoming automatism, set consciousness free. We know what vast regions in the human brain language occupies. The cerebral mechanisms that correspond to the words have this in particular, that they can be made to grapple with other mechanisms, those, for instance, that correspond to the things themselves, or even be made to grapple with one another. Meanwhile consciousness, which would have been dragged down and drowned in the accomplishment of the act, is restored and set free.[77] The difference must therefore be more radical than a superficial examination would lead us to suppose. It is the difference between a mechanism which engages the attention and a mechanism from which it can be diverted. The primitive steam-engine, as Newcomen conceived it, required the presence of a person exclusively employed to turn on and off the taps, either to let the steam into the cylinder or to throw the cold spray into it in order to condense the steam. It is said that a boy employed on this work, and very tired of having to do it, got the idea of tying the handles of the taps, with cords, to the beam of the engine. Then the machine opened and closed the taps itself; it worked all alone. Now, if an observer had compared the structure of this second machine with that of the first without taking into account the two boys left to watch over them, he would have found only a slight difference of complexity. That is, indeed, all we can perceive when we look only at the machines. But if we cast a glance at the two boys, we shall see that whilst one is wholly taken up by the watching, the other is free to go and play as he chooses, and that, from this point of view, the difference between the two machines is radical, the first holding the attention captive, the second setting it at liberty. A difference of the same kind, we think, would be found between the brain of an animal and the human brain. If, now, we should wish to express this in terms of finality, we should have to say that consciousness, after having been obliged, in order to set itself free, to divide organization into two complementary parts, vegetables on one hand and animals on the other, has sought an issue in the double direction of instinct and of intelligence. It has not found it with instinct, and it has not obtained it on the side of intelligence except by a sudden leap from the animal to man. So that, in the last analysis, man might be considered the reason for the existence of the entire organization of life on our planet. But this would be only a manner of speaking. There is, in reality, only a current of existence and the opposing current; thence proceeds the whole evolution of life. We must now grasp more closely the opposition of these two currents. Perhaps we shall thus discover for them a common source. By this we shall also, no doubt, penetrate the most obscure regions of metaphysics. However, as the two directions we have to follow are clearly marked, in intelligence on the one hand, in instinct and intuition on the other, we are not afraid of straying. A survey of the evolution of life suggests to us a certain conception of knowledge, and also a certain metaphysics, which imply each other. Once made clear, this metaphysics and this critique may throw some light, in their turn, on evolution as a whole. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 51: This view of adaptation has been noted by M.F. Marin in a remarkable article on the origin of species, "L'Origine des espèces" (_Revue scientifique_, Nov. 1901, p. 580).] [Footnote 52: De Saporta and Marion, _L'�volution des cryptogames_, 1881, p. 37.] [Footnote 53: On fixation and parasitism in general, see the work of Houssay, _La Forme et la vie_, Paris, 1900, pp. 721-807.] [Footnote 54: Cope, _op. cit._ p. 76.] [Footnote 55: Just as the plant, in certain cases, recovers the faculty of moving actively which slumbers in it, so the animal, in exceptional circumstances, can replace itself in the conditions of the vegetative life and develop in itself an equivalent of the chlorophyllian function. It appears, indeed, from recent experiments of Maria von Linden, that the chrysalides and the caterpillars of certain lepidoptera, under the influence of light, fix the carbon of the carbonic acid contained in the atmosphere (M. von Linden, "L'Assimilation de l'acide carbonique par les chrysalides de Lépidoptères," _C.R. de la Soc. de biologie_, 1905, pp. 692 ff.).] [Footnote 56: _Archives de physiologie_, 1892.] [Footnote 57: De Manacéine, "Quelques observations expérimentales sur l'influence de l'insomnie absolue" (_Arch. ital. de biologie_, t. xxi., 1894, pp. 322 ff.). Recently, analogous observations have been made on a man who died of inanition after a fast of thirty-five days. See, on this subject, in the _Année biologique_ of 1898, p. 338, the résumé of an article (in Russian) by Tarakevitch and Stchasny.] [Footnote 58: Cuvier said: "The nervous system is, at bottom, the whole animal; the other systems are there only to serve it." ("Sur un nouveau rapprochement à établir entre les classes qui composent le regne animal," _Arch. du Muséum d'histoire naturelle_, Paris, 1812, pp. 73-84.) Of course, it would be necessary to apply a great many restrictions to this formula--for example, to allow for the cases of degradation and retrogression in which the nervous system passes into the background. And, moreover, with the nervous system must be included the sensorial apparatus on the one hand and the motor on the other, between which it acts as intermediary. Cf. Foster, art. "Physiology," in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, Edinburgh, 1885, p. 17.] [Footnote 59: See, on these different points, the work of Gaudry, _Essai de paléontologie philosophique_, Paris, 1896, pp. 14-16 and 78-79.] [Footnote 60: See, on this subject, Shaler, _The Individual_, New York, 1900, pp. 118-125.] [Footnote 61: This point is disputed by M. René Quinton, who regards the carnivorous and ruminant mammals, as well as certain birds, as subsequent to man (R. Quinton, _L'Eau de mer milieu organique_, Paris, 1904, p. 435). We may say here that our general conclusions, although very different from M. Quinton's, are not irreconcilable with them; for if evolution has really been such as we represent it, the vertebrates must have made an effort to maintain themselves in the most favorable conditions of activity--the very conditions, indeed, which life had chosen in the beginning.] [Footnote 62: M. Paul Lacombe has laid great stress on the important influence that great inventions have exercised on the evolution of humanity (P. Lacombe, _De l'histoire considérée comme science_, Paris, 1894. See, in particular, pp. 168-247).] [Footnote 63: Bouvier, "La Nidification des abeilles à l'air libre" (_C.R. de l'Ac. des sciences_, 7 mai 1906).] [Footnote 64: Plato, _Phaedrus_, 265 E.] [Footnote 65: We shall return to these points in the next chapter.] [Footnote 66: We shall return to this point in chapter iii., p. 259.] [Footnote 67: _Matière et mémoire_, chap. i.] [Footnote 68: See the two works of Darwin, _Climbing Plants_ and _The Fertilization of Orchids by Insects_.] [Footnote 69: Buttel-Reepen, "Die phylogenetische Entstehung des Bienenstaates" (_Biol. Centralblatt_, xxiii. 1903), p. 108 in particular.] [Footnote 70: Fabre, _Souvenirs entomologiques_, 3^e série, Paris, 1890, pp. 1-69.] [Footnote 71: Fabre, _Souvenirs entomologiques_, 1^{re} série, Paris, 3^e édition, Paris, 1894, pp. 93 ff.] [Footnote 72: Fabre, _Nouveaux souvenirs entomologiques_, Paris, 1882, pp. 14 ff.] [Footnote 73: Peckham, _Wasps, Solitary and Social_, Westminster, 1905, pp. 28 ff.] [Footnote 74: See, in particular, among recent works, Bethe, "Dürfen wir den Ameisen und Bienen psychische Qualitäten zuschreiben?" (_Arch. f. d. ges. Physiologie_, 1898), and Forel, "Un Aperçu de psychologie comparée" (_Année psychologique_, 1895).] [Footnote 75: _Matière et mémoire_, chaps. ii. and iii.] [Footnote 76: "Le Paralogisme psycho-physiologique" (_Revue de métaphysique_, Nov. 1904).] [Footnote 77: A geologist whom we have already had occasion to cite, N.S. Shaler, well says that "when we come to man, it seems as if we find the ancient subjection of mind to body abolished, and the intellectual parts develop with an extraordinary rapidity, the structure of the body remaining identical in essentials" (Shaler, _The Interpretation of Nature_, Boston, 1899, p. 187).] CHAPTER III ON THE MEANING OF LIFE--THE ORDER OF NATURE AND THE FORM OF INTELLIGENCE In the course of our first chapter we traced a line of demarcation between the inorganic and the organized, but we pointed out that the division of unorganized matter into separate bodies is relative to our senses and to our intellect, and that matter, looked at as an undivided whole, must be a flux rather than a thing. In this we were preparing the way for a reconciliation between the inert and the living. On the other side, we have shown in our second chapter that the same opposition is found again between instinct and intelligence, the one turned to certain determinations of life, the other molded on the configuration of matter. But instinct and intelligence, we have also said, stand out from the same background, which, for want of a better name, we may call consciousness in general, and which must be coextensive with universal life. In this way, we have disclosed the possibility of showing the genesis of intelligence in setting out from general consciousness, which embraces it. We are now, then, to attempt a genesis of intellect at the same time as a genesis of material bodies--two enterprises that are evidently correlative, if it be true that the main lines of our intellect mark out the general form of our action on matter, and that the detail of matter is ruled by the requirements of our action. Intellectuality and materiality have been constituted, in detail, by reciprocal adaptation. Both are derived from a wider and higher form of existence. It is there that we must replace them, in order to see them issue forth. Such an attempt may appear, at first, more daring than the boldest speculations of metaphysicians. It claims to go further than psychology, further than cosmology, further than traditional metaphysics; for psychology, cosmology and metaphysics take intelligence, in all that is essential to it, as given, instead of, as we now propose, engendering it in its form and in its matter. The enterprise is in reality much more modest, as we are going to show. But let us first say how it differs from others. To begin with psychology, we are not to believe that it _engenders_ intelligence when it follows the progressive development of it through the animal series. Comparative psychology teaches us that the more an animal is intelligent, the more it tends to reflect on the actions by which it makes use of things, and thus to approximate to man. But its actions have already by themselves adopted the principal lines of human action; they have made out the same general directions in the material world as we have; they depend upon the same objects bound together by the same relations; so that animal intelligence, although it does not form concepts properly so called, already moves in a conceptual atmosphere. Absorbed at every instant by the actions it performs and the attitudes it must adopt, drawn outward by them and so externalized in relation to itself, it no doubt plays rather than thinks its ideas; this play none the less already corresponds, in the main, to the general plan of human intelligence.[78] To explain the intelligence of man by that of the animal consists then simply in following the development of an embryo of humanity into complete humanity. We show how a certain direction has been followed further and further by beings more and more intelligent. But the moment we admit the direction, intelligence is given. In a cosmogony like that of Spencer, intelligence is taken for granted, as matter also at the same time. We are shown matter obeying laws, objects connected with objects and facts with facts by constant relations, consciousness receiving the imprint of these relations and laws, and thus adopting the general configuration of nature and shaping itself into intellect. But how can we fail to see that intelligence is supposed when we admit objects and facts? _A priori_ and apart from any hypothesis on the nature of the matter, it is evident that the materiality of a body does not stop at the point at which we touch it: a body is present wherever its influence is felt; its attractive force, to speak only of that, is exerted on the sun, on the planets, perhaps on the entire universe. The more physics advances, the more it effaces the individuality of bodies and even of the particles into which the scientific imagination began by decomposing them: bodies and corpuscles tend to dissolve into a universal interaction. Our perceptions give us the plan of our eventual action on things much more than that of things themselves. The outlines we find in objects simply mark what we can attain and modify in them. The lines we see traced through matter are just the paths on which we are called to move. Outlines and paths have declared themselves in the measure and proportion that consciousness has prepared for action on unorganized matter--that is to say, in the measure and proportion that intelligence has been formed. It is doubtful whether animals built on a different plan--a mollusc or an insect, for instance--cut matter up along the same articulations. It is not indeed necessary that they should separate it into bodies at all. In order to follow the indications of instinct, there is no need to perceive _objects_, it is enough to distinguish _properties_. Intelligence, on the contrary, even in its humblest form, already aims at getting matter to act on matter. If on one side matter lends itself to a division into active and passive bodies, or more simply into coexistent and distinct fragments, it is from this side that intelligence will regard it; and the more it busies itself with dividing, the more it will spread out in space, in the form of extension adjoining extension, a matter that undoubtedly itself has a tendency to spatiality, but whose parts are yet in a state of reciprocal implication and interpenetration. Thus the same movement by which the mind is brought to form itself into intellect, that is to say, into distinct concepts, brings matter to break itself up into objects excluding one another. _The more consciousness is intellectualized, the more is matter spatialized._ So that the evolutionist philosophy, when it imagines in space a matter cut up on the very lines that our action will follow, has given itself in advance, ready made, the intelligence of which it claims to show the genesis. Metaphysics applies itself to a work of the same kind, though subtler and more self-conscious, when it deduces _a priori_ the categories of thought. It compresses intellect, reduces it to its quintessence, holds it tight in a principle so simple that it can be thought empty: from this principle we then draw out what we have virtually put into it. In this way we may no doubt show the coherence of intelligence, define intellect, give its formula, but we do not trace its genesis. An enterprise like that of Fichte, although more philosophical than that of Spencer, in that it pays more respect to the true order of things, hardly leads us any further. Fichte takes thought in a concentrated state, and expands it into reality; Spencer starts from external reality, and condenses it into intellect. But, in the one case as in the other, the intellect must be taken at the beginning as given--either condensed or expanded, grasped in itself by a direct vision or perceived by reflection in nature, as in a mirror. The agreement of most philosophers on this point comes from the fact that they are at one in affirming the unity of nature, and in representing this unity under an abstract and geometrical form. Between the organized and the unorganized they do not see and they will not see the cleft. Some start from the inorganic, and, by compounding it with itself, claim to form the living; others place life first, and proceed towards matter by a skilfully managed _decrescendo_; but, for both, there are only differences of _degree_ in nature--degrees of complexity in the first hypothesis, of intensity in the second. Once this principle is admitted, intelligence becomes as vast as reality; for it is unquestionable that whatever is geometrical in things is entirely accessible to human intelligence, and if the continuity between geometry and the rest is perfect, all the rest must indeed be equally intelligible, equally intelligent. Such is the postulate of most systems. Any one can easily be convinced of this by comparing doctrines that seem to have no common point, no common measure, those of Fichte and Spencer for instance, two names that we happen to have just brought together. At the root of these speculations, then, there are the two convictions correlative and complementary, that nature is one and that the function of intellect is to embrace it in its entirety. The faculty of knowing being supposed coextensive with the whole of experience, there can no longer be any question of engendering it. It is already given, and we merely have to use it, as we use our sight to take in the horizon. It is true that opinions differ as to the value of the result. For some, it is reality itself that the intellect embraces; for others, it is only a phantom. But, phantom or reality, what intelligence grasps is thought to be all that can be attained. Hence the exaggerated confidence of philosophy in the powers of the individual mind. Whether it is dogmatic or critical, whether it admits the relativity of our knowledge or claims to be established within the absolute, a philosophy is generally the work of a philosopher, a single and unitary vision of the whole. It is to be taken or left. More modest, and also alone capable of being completed and perfected, is the philosophy we advocate. Human intelligence, as we represent it, is not at all what Plato taught in the allegory of the cave. Its function is not to look at passing shadows nor yet to turn itself round and contemplate the glaring sun. It has something else to do. Harnessed, like yoked oxen, to a heavy task, we feel the play of our muscles and joints, the weight of the plow and the resistance of the soil. To act and to know that we are acting, to come into touch with reality and even to live it, but only in the measure in which it concerns the work that is being accomplished and the furrow that is being plowed, such is the function of human intelligence. Yet a beneficent fluid bathes us, whence we draw the very force to labor and to live. From this ocean of life, in which we are immersed, we are continually drawing something, and we feel that our being, or at least the intellect that guides it, has been formed therein by a kind of local concentration. Philosophy can only be an effort to dissolve again into the Whole. Intelligence, reabsorbed into its principle, may thus live back again its own genesis. But the enterprise cannot be achieved in one stroke; it is necessarily collective and progressive. It consists in an interchange of impressions which, correcting and adding to each other, will end by expanding the humanity in us and making us even transcend it. But this method has against it the most inveterate habits of the mind. It at once suggests the idea of a vicious circle. In vain, we shall be told, you claim to go beyond intelligence: how can you do that except by intelligence? All that is clear in your consciousness is intelligence. You are inside your own thought; you cannot get out of it. Say, if you like, that the intellect is capable of progress, that it will see more and more clearly into a greater and greater number of things; but do not speak of engendering it, for it is with your intellect itself that you would have to do the work. The objection presents itself naturally to the mind. But the same reasoning would prove also the impossibility of acquiring any new habit. It is of the essence of reasoning to shut us up in the circle of the given. But action breaks the circle. If we had never seen a man swim, we might say that swimming is an impossible thing, inasmuch as, to learn to swim, we must begin by holding ourselves up in the water and, consequently, already know how to swim. Reasoning, in fact, always nails us down to the solid ground. But if, quite simply, I throw myself into the water without fear, I may keep myself up well enough at first by merely struggling, and gradually adapt myself to the new environment: I shall thus have learnt to swim. So, in theory, there is a kind of absurdity in trying to know otherwise than by intelligence; but if the risk be frankly accepted, action will perhaps cut the knot that reasoning has tied and will not unloose. Besides, the risk will appear to grow less, the more our point of view is adopted. We have shown that intellect has detached itself from a vastly wider reality, but that there has never been a clean cut between the two; all around conceptual thought there remains an indistinct fringe which recalls its origin. And further we compared the intellect to a solid nucleus formed by means of condensation. This nucleus does not differ radically from the fluid surrounding it. It can only be reabsorbed in it because it is made of the same substance. He who throws himself into the water, having known only the resistance of the solid earth, will immediately be drowned if he does not struggle against the fluidity of the new environment: he must perforce still cling to that solidity, so to speak, which even water presents. Only on this condition can he get used to the fluid's fluidity. So of our thought, when it has decided to make the leap. But leap it must, that is, leave its own environment. Reason, reasoning on its powers, will never succeed in extending them, though the extension would not appear at all unreasonable once it were accomplished. Thousands and thousands of variations on the theme of walking will never yield a rule for swimming: come, enter the water, and when you know how to swim, you will understand how the mechanism of swimming is connected with that of walking. Swimming is an extension of walking, but walking would never have pushed you on to swimming. So you may speculate as intelligently as you will on the mechanism of intelligence; you will never, by this method, succeed in going beyond it. You may get something more complex, but not something higher nor even something different. You must take things by storm: you must thrust intelligence outside itself by an act of will. So the vicious circle is only apparent. It is, on the contrary, real, we think, in every other method of philosophy. This we must try to show in a few words, if only to prove that philosophy cannot and must not accept the relation established by pure intellectualism between the theory of knowledge and the theory of the known, between metaphysics and science. * * * * * At first sight, it may seem prudent to leave the consideration of facts to positive science, to let physics and chemistry busy themselves with matter, the biological and psychological sciences with life. The task of the philosopher is then clearly defined. He takes facts and laws from the scientists' hand; and whether he tries to go beyond them in order to reach their deeper causes, or whether he thinks it impossible to go further and even proves it by the analysis of scientific knowledge, in both cases he has for the facts and relations, handed over by science, the sort of respect that is due to a final verdict. To this knowledge he adds a critique of the faculty of knowing, and also, if he thinks proper, a metaphysic; but the _matter_ of knowledge he regards as the affair of science and not of philosophy. But how does he fail to see that the real result of this so-called division of labor is to mix up everything and confuse everything? The metaphysic or the critique that the philosopher has reserved for himself he has to receive, ready-made, from positive science, it being already contained in the descriptions and analyses, the whole care of which he left to the scientists. For not having wished to intervene, at the beginning, in questions of fact, he finds himself reduced, in questions of principle, to formulating purely and simply in more precise terms the unconscious and consequently inconsistent metaphysic and critique which the very attitude of science to reality marks out. Let us not be deceived by an apparent analogy between natural things and human things. Here we are not in the judiciary domain, where the description of fact and the judgment on the fact are two distinct things, distinct for the very simple reason that above the fact, and independent of it, there is a law promulgated by a legislator. Here the laws are internal to the facts and relative to the lines that have been followed in cutting the real into distinct facts. We cannot describe the outward appearance of the object without prejudging its inner nature and its organization. Form is no longer entirely isolable from matter, and he who has begun by reserving to philosophy questions of principle, and who has thereby tried to put philosophy above the sciences, as a "court of cassation" is above the courts of assizes and of appeal, will gradually come to make no more of philosophy than a registration court, charged at most with wording more precisely the sentences that are brought to it, pronounced and irrevocable. Positive science is, in fact, a work of pure intellect. Now, whether our conception of the intellect be accepted or rejected, there is one point on which everybody will agree with us, and that is that the intellect is at home in the presence of unorganized matter. This matter it makes use of more and more by mechanical inventions, and mechanical inventions become the easier to it the more it thinks matter as mechanism. The intellect bears within itself, in the form of natural logic, a latent geometrism that is set free in the measure and proportion that the intellect penetrates into the inner nature of inert matter. Intelligence is in tune with this matter, and that is why the physics and metaphysics of inert matter are so near each other. Now, when the intellect undertakes the study of life, it necessarily treats the living like the inert, applying the same forms to this new object, carrying over into this new field the same habits that have succeeded so well in the old; and it is right to do so, for only on such terms does the living offer to our action the same hold as inert matter. But the truth we thus arrive at becomes altogether relative to our faculty of action. It is no more than a _symbolic_ verity. It cannot have the same value as the physical verity, being only an extension of physics to an object which we are _a priori_ agreed to look at only in its external aspect. The duty of philosophy should be to intervene here actively, to examine the living without any reservation as to practical utility, by freeing itself from forms and habits that are strictly intellectual. Its own special object is to speculate, that is to say, to see; its attitude toward the living should not be that of science, which aims only at action, and which, being able to act only by means of inert matter, presents to itself the rest of reality in this single respect. What must the result be, if it leave biological and psychological facts to positive science alone, as it has left, and rightly left, physical facts? It will accept _a priori_ a mechanistic conception of all nature, a conception unreflected and even unconscious, the outcome of the material need. It will _a priori_ accept the doctrine of the simple unity of knowledge and of the abstract unity of nature. The moment it does so, its fate is sealed. The philosopher has no longer any choice save between a metaphysical dogmatism and a metaphysical skepticism, both of which rest, at bottom, on the same postulate, and neither of which adds anything to positive science. He may hypostasize the unity of nature, or, what comes to the same thing, the unity of science, in a being who is nothing since he does nothing, an ineffectual God who simply sums up in himself all the given; or in an eternal Matter from whose womb have been poured out the properties of things and the laws of nature; or, again, in a pure Form which endeavors to seize an unseizable multiplicity, and which is, as we will, the form of nature or the form of thought. All these philosophies tell us, in their different languages, that science is right to treat the living as the inert, and that there is no difference of value, no distinction to be made between the results which intellect arrives at in applying its categories, whether it rests on inert matter or attacks life. In many cases, however, we feel the frame cracking. But as we did not begin by distinguishing between the inert and the living, the one adapted in advance to the frame in which we insert it, the other incapable of being held in the frame otherwise than by a convention which eliminates from it all that is essential, we find ourselves, in the end, reduced to regarding everything the frame contains with equal suspicion. To a metaphysical dogmatism, which has erected into an absolute the factitious unity of science, there succeeds a skepticism or a relativism that universalizes and extends to all the results of science the artificial character of some among them. So philosophy swings to and fro between the doctrine that regards absolute reality as unknowable and that which, in the idea it gives us of this reality, says nothing more than science has said. For having wished to prevent all conflict between science and philosophy, we have sacrificed philosophy without any appreciable gain to science. And for having tried to avoid the seeming vicious circle which consists in using the intellect to transcend the intellect, we find ourselves turning in a real circle, that which consists in laboriously rediscovering by metaphysics a unity that we began by positing _a priori_, a unity that we admitted blindly and unconsciously by the very act of abandoning the whole of experience to science and the whole of reality to the pure understanding. Let us begin, on the contrary, by tracing a line of demarcation between the inert and the living. We shall find that the inert enters naturally into the frames of the intellect, but that the living is adapted to these frames only artificially, so that we must adopt a special attitude towards it and examine it with other eyes than those of positive science. Philosophy, then, invades the domain of experience. She busies herself with many things which hitherto have not concerned her. Science, theory of knowledge, and metaphysics find themselves on the same ground. At first there may be a certain confusion. All three may think they have lost something. But all three will profit from the meeting. Positive science, indeed, may pride itself on the uniform value attributed to its affirmations in the whole field of experience. But, if they are all placed on the same footing, they are all tainted with the same relativity. It is not so, if we begin by making the distinction which, in our view, is forced upon us. The understanding is at home in the domain of unorganized matter. On this matter human action is naturally exercised; and action, as we said above, cannot be set in motion in the unreal. Thus, of physics--so long as we are considering only its general form and not the particular cutting out of matter in which it is manifested--we may say that it touches the absolute. On the contrary, it is by accident--chance or convention, as you please--that science obtains a hold on the living analogous to the hold it has on matter. Here the use of conceptual frames is no longer natural. I do not wish to say that it is not legitimate, in the scientific meaning of the term. If science is to extend our action on things, and if we can act only with inert matter for instrument, science can and must continue to treat the living as it has treated the inert. But, in doing so, it must be understood that the further it penetrates the depths of _life_, the more symbolic, the more relative to the contingencies of action, the knowledge it supplies to us becomes. On this new ground philosophy ought then to follow science, in order to superpose on scientific truth a knowledge of another kind, which may be called metaphysical. Thus combined, all our knowledge, both scientific and metaphysical, is heightened. In the absolute we live and move and have our being. The knowledge we possess of it is incomplete, no doubt, but not external or relative. It is reality itself, in the profoundest meaning of the word, that we reach by the combined and progressive development of science and of philosophy. Thus, in renouncing the factitious unity which the understanding imposes on nature from outside, we shall perhaps find its true, inward and living unity. For the effort we make to transcend the pure understanding introduces us into that more vast something out of which our understanding is cut, and from which it has detached itself. And, as matter is determined by intelligence, as there is between them an evident agreement, we cannot make the genesis of the one without making the genesis of the other. An identical process must have cut out matter and the intellect, at the same time, from a stuff that contained both. Into this reality we shall get back more and more completely, in proportion as we compel ourselves to transcend pure intelligence. * * * * * Let us then concentrate attention on that which we have that is at the same time the most removed from externality and the least penetrated with intellectuality. Let us seek, in the depths of our experience, the point where we feel ourselves most intimately within our own life. It is into pure duration that we then plunge back, a duration in which the past, always moving on, is swelling unceasingly with a present that is absolutely new. But, at the same time, we feel the spring of our will strained to its utmost limit. We must, by a strong recoil of our personality on itself, gather up our past which is slipping away, in order to thrust it, compact and undivided, into a present which it will create by entering. Rare indeed are the moments when we are self-possessed to this extent: it is then that our actions are truly free. And even at these moments we do not completely possess ourselves. Our feeling of duration, I should say the actual coinciding of ourself with itself, admits of degrees. But the more the feeling is deep and the coincidence complete, the more the life in which it replaces us absorbs intellectuality by transcending it. For the natural function of the intellect is to bind like to like, and it is only facts that can be repeated that are entirely adaptable to intellectual conceptions. Now, our intellect does undoubtedly grasp the real moments of real duration after they are past; we do so by reconstituting the new state of consciousness out of a series of views taken of it from the outside, each of which resembles as much as possible something already known; in this sense we may say that the state of consciousness contains intellectuality implicitly. Yet the state of consciousness overflows the intellect; it is indeed incommensurable with the intellect, being itself indivisible and new. Now let us relax the strain, let us interrupt the effort to crowd as much as possible of the past into the present. If the relaxation were complete, there would no longer be either memory or will--which amounts to saying that, in fact, we never do fall into this absolute passivity, any more than we can make ourselves absolutely free. But, in the limit, we get a glimpse of an existence made of a present which recommences unceasingly--devoid of real duration, nothing but the instantaneous which dies and is born again endlessly. Is the existence of matter of this nature? Not altogether, for analysis resolves it into elementary vibrations, the shortest of which are of very slight duration, almost vanishing, but not nothing. It may be presumed, nevertheless, that physical existence inclines in this second direction, as psychical existence in the first. Behind "spirituality" on the one hand, and "materiality" with intellectuality on the other, there are then two processes opposite in their direction, and we pass from the first to the second by way of inversion, or perhaps even by simple interruption, if it is true that inversion and interruption are two terms which in this case must be held to be synonymous, as we shall show at more length later on. This presumption is confirmed when we consider things from the point of view of extension, and no longer from that of duration alone. The more we succeed in making ourselves conscious of our progress in pure duration, the more we feel the different parts of our being enter into each other, and our whole personality concentrate itself in a point, or rather a sharp edge, pressed against the future and cutting into it unceasingly. It is in this that life and action are free. But suppose we let ourselves go and, instead of acting, dream. At once the self is scattered; our past, which till then was gathered together into the indivisible impulsion it communicated to us, is broken up into a thousand recollections made external to one another. They give up interpenetrating in the degree that they become fixed. Our personality thus descends in the direction of space. It coasts around it continually in sensation. We will not dwell here on a point we have studied elsewhere. Let us merely recall that extension admits of degrees, that all sensation is extensive in a certain measure, and that the idea of unextended sensations, artificially localized in space, is a mere view of the mind, suggested by an unconscious metaphysic much more than by psychological observation. No doubt we make only the first steps in the direction of the extended, even when we let ourselves go as much as we can. But suppose for a moment that matter consists in this very movement pushed further, and that physics is simply psychics inverted. We shall now understand why the mind feels at its ease, moves about naturally in space, when matter suggests the more distinct idea of it. This space it already possessed as an implicit idea in its own eventual _detension_, that is to say, of its own possible _extension_. The mind finds space in things, but could have got it without them if it had had imagination strong enough to push the inversion of its own natural movement to the end. On the other hand, we are able to explain how matter accentuates still more its materiality, when viewed by the mind. Matter, at first, aided mind to run down its own incline; it gave the impulsion. But, the impulsion once received, mind continues its course. The idea that it forms of _pure_ space is only the _schema_ of the limit at which this movement would end. Once in possession of the form of space, mind uses it like a net with meshes that can be made and unmade at will, which, thrown over matter, divides it as the needs of our action demand. Thus, the space of our geometry and the spatiality of things are mutually engendered by the reciprocal action and reaction of two terms which are essentially the same, but which move each in the direction inverse of the other. Neither is space so foreign to our nature as we imagine, nor is matter as completely extended in space as our senses and intellect represent it. We have treated of the first point elsewhere. As to the second, we will limit ourselves to pointing out that perfect spatiality would consist in a perfect externality of parts in their relation to one another, that is to say, in a complete reciprocal independence. Now, there is no material point that does not act on every other material point. When we observe that a thing really is there where it _acts_, we shall be led to say (as Faraday[79] was) that all the atoms interpenetrate and that each of them fills the world. On such a hypothesis, the atom or, more generally, the material point, becomes simply a view of the mind, a view which we come to take when we continue far enough the work (wholly relative to our faculty of acting) by which we subdivide matter into bodies. Yet it is undeniable that matter lends itself to this subdivision, and that, in supposing it breakable into parts external to one another, we are constructing a science sufficiently representative of the real. It is undeniable that if there be no entirely isolated system, yet science finds means of cutting up the universe into systems relatively independent of each other, and commits no appreciable error in doing so. What else can this mean but that matter _extends_ itself in space without being absolutely _extended_ therein, and that in regarding matter as decomposable into isolated systems, in attributing to it quite distinct elements which change in relation to each other without changing in themselves (which are "displaced," shall we say, without being "altered"), in short, in conferring on matter the properties of pure space, we are transporting ourselves to the terminal point of the movement of which matter simply indicates the direction? What the _Transcendental Aesthetic_ of Kant appears to have established once for all is that extension is not a material attribute of the same kind as others. We cannot reason indefinitely on the notions of heat, color, or weight: in order to know the modalities of weight or of heat, we must have recourse to experience. Not so of the notion of space. Supposing even that it is given empirically by sight and touch (and Kant has not questioned the fact) there is this about it that is remarkable that our mind, speculating on it with its own powers alone, cuts out in it, _a priori_, figures whose properties we determine _a priori_: experience, with which we have not kept in touch, yet follows us through the infinite complications of our reasonings and invariably justifies them. That is the fact. Kant has set it in clear light. But the explanation of the fact, we believe, must be sought in a different direction to that which Kant followed. Intelligence, as Kant represents it to us, is bathed in an atmosphere of spatiality to which it is as inseparably united as the living body to the air it breathes. Our perceptions reach us only after having passed through this atmosphere. They have been impregnated in advance by our geometry, so that our faculty of thinking only finds again in matter the mathematical properties which our faculty of perceiving has already deposed there. We are assured, therefore, of seeing matter yield itself with docility to our reasonings; but this matter, in all that it has that is intelligible, is our own work; of the reality "in itself" we know nothing and never shall know anything, since we only get its refraction through the forms of our faculty of perceiving. So that if we claim to affirm something of it, at once there rises the contrary affirmation, equally demonstrable, equally plausible. The ideality of space is proved directly by the analysis of knowledge indirectly by the antinomies to which the opposite theory leads. Such is the governing idea of the Kantian criticism. It has inspired Kant with a peremptory refutation of "empiricist" theories of knowledge. It is, in our opinion, definitive in what it denies. But, in what it affirms, does it give us the solution of the problem? With Kant, space is given as a ready-made form of our perceptive faculty--a veritable _deus ex machina_, of which we see neither how it arises, nor why it is what it is rather than anything else. "Things-in-themselves" are also given, of which he claims that we can know nothing: by what right, then, can he affirm their existence, even as "problematic"? If the unknowable reality projects into our perceptive faculty a "sensuous manifold" capable of fitting into it exactly, is it not, by that very fact, in part known? And when we examine this exact fitting, shall we not be led, in one point at least, to suppose a pre-established harmony between things and our mind--an idle hypothesis, which Kant was right in wishing to avoid? At bottom, it is for not having distinguished degrees in spatiality that he has had to take space ready-made as given--whence the question how the "sensuous manifold" is adapted to it. It is for the same reason that he has supposed matter wholly developed into parts absolutely external to one another;--whence antinomies, of which we may plainly see that the thesis and antithesis suppose the perfect coincidence of matter with geometrical space, but which vanish the moment we cease to extend to matter what is true only of pure space. Whence, finally, the conclusion that there are three alternatives, and three only, among which to choose a theory of knowledge: either the mind is determined by things, or things are determined by the mind, or between mind and things we must suppose a mysterious agreement. But the truth is that there is a fourth, which does not seem to have occurred to Kant--in the first place because he did not think that the mind overflowed the intellect, and in the second place (and this is at bottom the same thing) because he did not attribute to duration an absolute existence, having put time, _a priori_, on the same plane as space. This alternative consists, first of all, in regarding the intellect as a special function of the mind, essentially turned toward inert matter; then in saying that neither does matter determine the form of the intellect, nor does the intellect impose its form on matter, nor have matter and intellect been regulated in regard to one another by we know not what pre-established harmony, but that intellect and matter have progressively adapted themselves one to the other in order to attain at last a common form. _This adaptation has, moreover, been brought about quite naturally, because it is the same inversion of the same movement which creates at once the intellectuality of mind and the materiality of things._ From this point of view the knowledge of matter that our perception on one hand and science on the other give to us appears, no doubt, as approximative, but not as relative. Our perception, whose rôle it is to hold up a light to our actions, works a dividing up of matter that is always too sharply defined, always subordinated to practical needs, consequently always requiring revision. Our science, which aspires to the mathematical form, over-accentuates the spatiality of matter; its formulae are, in general, too precise, and ever need remaking. For a scientific theory to be final, the mind would have to embrace the totality of things in block and place each thing in its exact relation to every other thing; but in reality we are obliged to consider problems one by one, in terms which are, for that very reason, provisional, so that the solution of each problem will have to be corrected indefinitely by the solution that will be given to the problems that will follow: thus, science as a whole is relative to the particular order in which the problems happen to have been put. It is in this meaning, and to this degree, that science must be regarded as conventional. But it is a conventionality of fact so to speak, and not of right. In principle, positive science bears on reality itself, provided it does not overstep the limits of its own domain, which is inert matter. Scientific knowledge, thus regarded, rises to a higher plane. In return, the theory of knowledge becomes an infinitely difficult enterprise, and which passes the powers of the intellect alone. It is not enough to determine, by careful analysis, the categories of thought; we must engender them. As regards space, we must, by an effort of mind _sui generis_, follow the progression or rather the regression of the extra-spatial degrading itself into spatiality. When we make ourselves self-conscious in the highest possible degree and then let ourselves fall back little by little, we get the feeling of extension: we have an extension of the self into recollections that are fixed and external to one another, in place of the tension it possessed as an indivisible active will. But this is only a beginning. Our consciousness, sketching the movement, shows us its direction and reveals to us the possibility of continuing it to the end; but consciousness itself does not go so far. Now, on the other hand, if we consider matter, which seems to us at first coincident with space, we find that the more our attention is fixed on it, the more the parts which we said were laid side by side enter into each other, each of them undergoing the action of the whole, which is consequently somehow present in it. Thus, although matter stretches itself out in the direction of space, it does not completely attain it; whence we may conclude that it only carries very much further the movement that consciousness is able to sketch within us in its nascent state. We hold, therefore, the two ends of the chain, though we do not succeed in seizing the intermediate links. Will they always escape us? We must remember that philosophy, as we define it, has not yet become completely conscious of itself. Physics understands its rôle when it pushes matter in the direction of spatiality; but has metaphysics understood its rôle when it has simply trodden in the steps of physics, in the chimerical hope of going further in the same direction? Should not its own task be, on the contrary, to remount the incline that physics descends, to bring back matter to its origins, and to build up progressively a cosmology which would be, so to speak, a reversed psychology? All that which seems _positive_ to the physicist and to the geometrician would become, from this new point of view, an interruption or inversion of the true positivity, which would have to be defined in psychological terms. * * * * * When we consider the admirable order of mathematics, the perfect agreement of the objects it deals with, the immanent logic in numbers and figures, our certainty of always getting the same conclusion, however diverse and complex our reasonings on the same subject, we hesitate to see in properties apparently so positive a system of negations, the absence rather than the presence of a true reality. But we must not forget that our intellect, which finds this order and wonders at it, is directed in the same line of movement that leads to the materiality and spatiality of its object. The more complexity the intellect puts into its object by analyzing it, the more complex is the order it finds there. And this order and this complexity necessarily appear to the intellect as a positive reality, since reality and intellectuality are turned in the same direction. When a poet reads me his verses, I can interest myself enough in him to enter into his thought, put myself into his feelings, live over again the simple state he has broken into phrases and words. I sympathize then with his inspiration, I follow it with a continuous movement which is, like the inspiration itself, an undivided act. Now, I need only relax my attention, let go the tension that there is in me, for the sounds, hitherto swallowed up in the sense, to appear to me distinctly, one by one, in their materiality. For this I have not to do anything; it is enough to withdraw something. In proportion as I let myself go, the successive sounds will become the more individualized; as the phrases were broken into words, so the words will scan in syllables which I shall perceive one after another. Let me go farther still in the direction of dream: the letters themselves will become loose and will be seen to dance along, hand in hand, on some fantastic sheet of paper. I shall then admire the precision of the interweavings, the marvelous order of the procession, the exact insertion of the letters into the syllables, of the syllables into the words and of the words into the sentences. The farther I pursue this quite negative direction of relaxation, the more extension and complexity I shall create; and the more the complexity in its turn increases, the more admirable will seem to be the order which continues to reign, undisturbed, among the elements. Yet this complexity and extension represent nothing positive; they express a deficiency of will. And, on the other hand, the order must grow with the complexity, since it is only an aspect of it. The more we perceive, symbolically, parts in an indivisible whole, the more the number of the relations that the parts have between themselves necessarily increases, since the same undividedness of the real whole continues to hover over the growing multiplicity of the symbolic elements into which the scattering of the attention has decomposed it. A comparison of this kind will enable us to understand, in some measure, how the same suppression of positive reality, the same inversion of a certain original movement, can create at once extension in space and the admirable order which mathematics finds there. There is, of course, this difference between the two cases, that words and letters have been invented by a positive effort of humanity, while space arises automatically, as the remainder of a subtraction arises once the two numbers are posited.[80] But, in the one case as in the other, the infinite complexity of the parts and their perfect coördination among themselves are created at one and the same time by an inversion which is, at bottom, an interruption, that is to say, a diminution of positive reality. * * * * * All the operations of our intellect tend to geometry, as to the goal where they find their perfect fulfilment. But, as geometry is necessarily prior to them (since these operations have not as their end to construct space and cannot do otherwise than take it as given) it is evident that it is a latent geometry, immanent in our idea of space, which is the main spring of our intellect and the cause of its working. We shall be convinced of this if we consider the two essential functions of intellect, the faculty of deduction and that of induction. Let us begin with deduction. The same movement by which I trace a figure in space engenders its properties: they are visible and tangible in the movement itself; I feel, I see in space the relation of the definition to its consequences, of the premisses to the conclusion. All the other concepts of which experience suggests the idea to me are only in part constructible _a priori_; the definition of them is therefore imperfect, and the deductions into which these concepts enter, however closely the conclusion is linked to the premisses, participate in this imperfection. But when I trace roughly in the sand the base of a triangle, as I begin to form the two angles at the base, I know positively, and understand absolutely, that if these two angles are equal the sides will be equal also, the figure being then able to be turned over on itself without there being any change whatever. I know it before I have learnt geometry. Thus, prior to the science of geometry, there is a natural geometry whose clearness and evidence surpass the clearness and evidence of other deductions. Now, these other deductions bear on qualities, and not on magnitudes purely. They are, then, likely to have been formed on the model of the first, and to borrow their force from the fact that, behind quality, we see magnitude vaguely showing through. We may notice, as a fact, that questions of situation and of magnitude are the first that present themselves to our activity, those which intelligence externalized in action resolves even before reflective intelligence has appeared. The savage understands better than the civilized man how to judge distances, to determine a direction, to retrace by memory the often complicated plan of the road he has traveled, and so to return in a straight line to his starting-point.[81] If the animal does not deduce explicitly, if he does not form explicit concepts, neither does he form the idea of a homogeneous space. You cannot present this space to yourself without introducing, in the same act, a virtual geometry which will, of itself, degrade itself into logic. All the repugnance that philosophers manifest towards this manner of regarding things comes from this, that the logical work of the intellect represents to their eyes a positive spiritual effort. But, if we understand by spirituality a progress to ever new creations, to conclusions incommensurable with the premisses and indeterminable by relation to them, we must say of an idea that moves among relations of necessary determination, through premisses which contain their conclusion in advance, that it follows the inverse direction, that of materiality. What appears, from the point of view of the intellect, as an effort, is in itself a letting go. And while, from the point of view of the intellect, there is a _petitio principii_ in making geometry arise automatically from space, and logic from geometry--on the contrary, if space is the ultimate goal of the mind's movement of _detension_, space cannot be given without positing also logic and geometry, which are along the course of the movement of which pure spatial intuition is the goal. It has not been enough noticed how feeble is the reach of deduction in the psychological and moral sciences. From a proposition verified by facts, verifiable consequences can here be drawn only up to a certain point, only in a certain measure. Very soon appeal has to be made to common sense, that is to say, to the continuous experience of the real, in order to inflect the consequences deduced and bend them along the sinuosities of life. Deduction succeeds in things moral only metaphorically, so to speak, and just in the measure in which the moral is transposable into the physical, I should say translatable into spatial symbols. The metaphor never goes very far, any more than a curve can long be confused with its tangent. Must we not be struck by this feebleness of deduction as something very strange and even paradoxical? Here is a pure operation of the mind, accomplished solely by the power of the mind. It seems that, if anywhere it should feel at home and evolve at ease, it would be among the things of the mind, in the domain of the mind. Not at all; it is there that it is immediately at the end of its tether. On the contrary, in geometry, in astronomy, in physics, where we have to do with things external to us, deduction is all-powerful! Observation and experience are undoubtedly necessary in these sciences to arrive at the principle, that is, to discover the aspect under which things must be regarded; but, strictly speaking, we might, by good luck, have hit upon it at once; and, as soon as we possess this principle, we may draw from it, at any length, consequences which experience will always verify. Must we not conclude, therefore, that deduction is an operation governed by the properties of matter, molded on the mobile articulations of matter, implicitly given, in fact, with the space that underlies matter? As long as it turns upon space or spatialized time, it has only to let itself go. It is _duration_ that puts spokes in its wheels. * * * * * Deduction, then, does not work unless there be spatial intuition behind it. But we may say the same of induction. It is not necessary indeed to think geometrically, nor even to think at all, in order to expect from the same conditions a repetition of the same fact. The consciousness of the animal already does this work, and indeed, independently of all consciousness, the living body itself is so constructed that it can extract from the successive situations in which it finds itself the similarities which interest it, and so respond to the stimuli by appropriate reactions. But it is a far cry from a mechanical expectation and reaction of the body, to induction properly so called, which is an intellectual operation. Induction rests on the belief that there are causes and effects, and that the same effects follow the same causes. Now, if we examine this double belief, this is what we find. It implies, in the first place, that reality is decomposable into groups, which can be practically regarded as isolated and independent. If I boil water in a kettle on a stove, the operation and the objects that support it are, in reality, bound up with a multitude of other objects and a multitude of other operations; in the end, I should find that our entire solar system is concerned in what is being done at this particular point of space. But, in a certain measure, and for the special end I am pursuing, I may admit that things happen as if the group _water-kettle-stove_ were an independent microcosm. That is my first affirmation. Now, when I say that this microcosm will always behave in the same way, that the heat will necessarily, at the end of a certain time, cause the boiling of the water, I admit that it is sufficient that a certain number of elements of the system be given in order that the system should be complete; it completes itself automatically, I am not free to complete it in thought as I please. The stove, the kettle and the water being given, with a certain interval of duration, it seems to me that the boiling, which experience showed me yesterday to be the only thing wanting to complete the system, will complete it to-morrow, no matter when to-morrow may be. What is there at the base of this belief? Notice that the belief is more or less assured, according as the case may be, but that it is forced upon the mind as an absolute necessity when the microcosm considered contains only magnitudes. If two numbers be given, I am not free to choose their difference. If two sides of a triangle and the contained angle are given, the third side arises of itself and the triangle completes itself automatically. I can, it matters not where and it matters not when, trace the same two sides containing the same angle: it is evident that the new triangles so formed can be superposed on the first, and that consequently the same third side will come to complete the system. Now, if my certitude is perfect in the case in which I reason on pure space determinations, must I not suppose that, in the other cases, the certitude is greater the nearer it approaches this extreme case? Indeed, may it not be the limiting case which is seen through all the others and which colors them, accordingly as they are more or less transparent, with a more or less pronounced tinge of geometrical necessity?[82] In fact, when I say that the water on the fire will boil to-day as it did yesterday, and that this is an absolute necessity, I feel vaguely that my imagination is placing the stove of yesterday on that of to-day, kettle on kettle, water on water, duration on duration, and it seems then that the rest must coincide also, for the same reason that, when two triangles are superposed and two of their sides coincide, their third sides coincide also. But my imagination acts thus only because it shuts its eyes to two essential points. For the system of to-day actually to be superimposed on that of yesterday, the latter must have waited for the former, time must have halted, and everything become simultaneous: that happens in geometry, but in geometry alone. Induction therefore implies first that, in the world of the physicist as in that of the geometrician, time does not count. But it implies also that qualities can be superposed on each other like magnitudes. If, in imagination, I place the stove and fire of to-day on that of yesterday, I find indeed that the form has remained the same; it suffices, for that, that the surfaces and edges coincide; but what is the coincidence of two qualities, and how can they be superposed one on another in order to ensure that they are identical? Yet I extend to the second order of reality all that applies to the first. The physicist legitimates this operation later on by reducing, as far as possible, differences of quality to differences of magnitude; but, prior to all science, I incline to liken qualities to quantities, as if I perceived behind the qualities, as through a transparency, a geometrical mechanism.[83] The more complete this transparency, the more it seems to me that in the same conditions there must be a repetition of the same fact. Our inductions are certain, to our eyes, in the exact degree in which we make the qualitative differences melt into the homogeneity of the space which subtends them, so that geometry is the ideal limit of our inductions as well as of our deductions. The movement at the end of which is spatiality lays down along its course the faculty of induction as well as that of deduction, in fact, intellectuality entire. * * * * * It creates them in the mind. But it creates also, in things, the "order" which our induction, aided by deduction, finds there. This order, on which our action leans and in which our intellect recognizes itself, seems to us marvelous. Not only do the same general causes always produce the same general effects, but beneath the visible causes and effects our science discovers an infinity of infinitesimal changes which work more and more exactly into one another, the further we push the analysis: so much so that, at the end of this analysis, matter becomes, it seems to us, geometry itself. Certainly, the intellect is right in admiring here the growing order in the growing complexity; both the one and the other must have a positive reality for it, since it looks upon itself as positive. But things change their aspect when we consider the whole of reality as an undivided advance forward to successive creations. It seems to us, then, that the complexity of the material elements and the mathematical order that binds them together must arise automatically when within the whole a partial interruption or inversion is produced. Moreover, as the intellect itself is cut out of mind by a process of the same kind, it is attuned to this order and complexity, and admires them because it recognizes itself in them. But what is admirable _in itself_, what really deserves to provoke wonder, is the ever-renewed creation which reality, whole and undivided, accomplishes in advancing; for no complication of the mathematical order with itself, however elaborate we may suppose it, can introduce an atom of novelty into the world, whereas this power of creation once given (and it exists, for we are conscious of it in ourselves, at least when we act freely) has only to be diverted from itself to relax its tension, only to relax its tension to extend, only to extend for the mathematical order of the elements so distinguished and the inflexible determinism connecting them to manifest the interruption of the creative act: in fact, inflexible determinism and mathematical order are one with this very interruption. It is this merely negative tendency that the particular laws of the physical world express. None of them, taken separately, has objective reality; each is the work of an investigator who has regarded things from a certain bias, isolated certain variables, applied certain conventional units of measurement. And yet there is an order approximately mathematical immanent in matter, an objective order, which our science approaches in proportion to its progress. For if matter is a relaxation of the inextensive into the extensive and, thereby, of liberty into necessity, it does not indeed wholly coincide with pure homogeneous space, yet is constituted by the movement which leads to space, and is therefore on the way to geometry. It is true that laws of mathematical form will never apply to it completely. For that, it would have to be pure space and step out of duration. We cannot insist too strongly that there is something artificial in the mathematical form of a physical law, and consequently in our scientific knowledge of things.[84] Our standards of measurement are conventional, and, so to say, foreign to the intentions of nature: can we suppose that nature has related all the modalities of heat to the expansion of the same mass of mercury, or to the change of pressure of the same mass of air kept at a constant volume? But we may go further. In a general way, _measuring_ is a wholly human operation, which implies that we really or ideally superpose two objects one on another a certain number of times. Nature did not dream of this superposition. It does not measure, nor does it count. Yet physics counts, measures, relates "quantitative" variations to one another to obtain laws, and it succeeds. Its success would be inexplicable, if the movement which constitutes materiality were not the same movement which, prolonged by us to its end, that is to say, to homogeneous space, results in making us count, measure, follow in their respective variations terms that are functions one of another. To effect this prolongation of the movement, our intellect has only to let itself go, for it runs naturally to space and mathematics, intellectuality and materiality being of the same nature and having been produced in the same way. If the mathematical order were a positive thing, if there were, immanent in matter, laws comparable to those of our codes, the success of our science would have in it something of the miraculous. What chances should we have indeed of finding the standard of nature and of isolating exactly, in order to determine their reciprocal relations, the very variables which nature has chosen? But the success of a science of mathematical form would be no less incomprehensible, if matter did not already possess everything necessary to adapt itself to our formulae. One hypothesis only, therefore, remains plausible, namely, that the mathematical order is nothing positive, that it is the form toward which a certain _interruption_ tends of itself, and that materiality consists precisely in an interruption of this kind. We shall understand then why our science is contingent, relative to the variables it has chosen, relative to the order in which it has successively put the problems, and why nevertheless it succeeds. It might have been, as a whole, altogether different, and yet have succeeded. This is so, just because there is no definite system of mathematical laws, at the base of nature, and because mathematics in general represents simply the side to which matter inclines. Put one of those little cork dolls with leaden feet in any posture, lay it on its back, turn it up on its head, throw it into the air: it will always stand itself up again, automatically. So likewise with matter: we can take it by any end and handle it in any way, it will always fall back into some one of our mathematical formulae, because it is weighted with geometry. * * * * * But the philosopher will perhaps refuse to found a theory of knowledge on such considerations. They will be repugnant to him, because the mathematical order, being order, will appear to him to contain something positive. It is in vain that we assert that this order produces itself automatically by the interruption of the inverse order, that it is this very interruption. The idea persists, none the less, that _there might be no order at all_, and that the mathematical order of things, being a conquest over disorder, possesses a positive reality. In examining this point, we shall see what a prominent part the idea of _disorder_ plays in problems relative to the theory of knowledge. It does not appear explicitly, and that is why it escapes our attention. It is, however, with the criticism of this idea that a theory of knowledge ought to begin, for if the great problem is to know why and how reality submits itself to an order, it is because the absence of every kind of order appears possible or conceivable. It is this absence of order that realists and idealists alike believe they are thinking of--the realist when he speaks of the regularity that "objective" laws actually impose on a virtual disorder of nature, the idealist when he supposes a "sensuous manifold" which is coördinated (and consequently itself without order) under the organizing influence of our understanding. The idea of disorder, in the sense of _absence of order_, is then what must be analyzed first. Philosophy borrows it from daily life. And it is unquestionable that, when ordinarily we speak of disorder, we are thinking of something. But of what? It will be seen in the next chapter how hard it is to determine the content of a negative idea, and what illusions one is liable to, what hopeless difficulties philosophy falls into, for not having undertaken this task. Difficulties and illusions are generally due to this, that we accept as final a manner of expression essentially provisional. They are due to our bringing into the domain of speculation a procedure made for practice. If I choose a volume in my library at random, I may put it back on the shelf after glancing at it and say, "This is not verse." Is this what I have really seen in turning over the leaves of the book? Obviously not. I have not seen, I never shall see, an absence of verse. I have seen prose. But as it is poetry I want, I express what I find as a function of what I am looking for, and instead of saying, "This is prose," I say, "This is not verse." In the same way, if the fancy takes me to read prose, and I happen on a volume of verse, I shall say, "This is not prose," thus expressing the data of my perception, which shows me verse, in the language of my expectation and attention, which are fixed on the idea of prose and will hear of nothing else. Now, if Mons. Jourdain heard me, he would infer, no doubt, from my two exclamations that prose and poetry are two forms of language reserved for books, and that these learned forms have come and overlaid a language which was neither prose nor verse. Speaking of this thing which is neither verse nor prose, he would suppose, moreover, that he was thinking of it: it would be only a pseudo-idea, however. Let us go further still: the pseudo-idea would create a pseudo-problem, if M. Jourdain were to ask his professor of philosophy how the prose form and the poetry form have been superadded to that which possessed neither the one nor the other, and if he wished the professor to construct a theory of the imposition of these two forms upon this formless matter. His question would be absurd, and the absurdity would lie in this, that he was hypostasizing as the substratum of prose and poetry the simultaneous negation of both, forgetting that the negation of the one consists in the affirmation of the other. Now, suppose that there are two species of order, and that these two orders are two contraries within one and the same genus. Suppose also that the idea of disorder arises in our mind whenever, seeking one of the two kinds of order, we find the other. The idea of disorder would then have a clear meaning in the current practice of life: it would objectify, for the convenience of language, the disappointment of a mind that finds before it an order different from what it wants, an order with which it is not concerned at the moment, and which, in this sense, does not exist for it. But the idea would not admit a theoretical use. So if we claim, notwithstanding, to introduce it into philosophy, we shall inevitably lose sight of its true meaning. It denotes the absence of a certain order, but _to the profit of another_ (with which we are not concerned); only, as it applies to each of the two in turn, and as it even goes and comes continually between the two, we take it on the way, or rather on the wing, like a shuttlecock between two battledores, and treat it as if it represented, not the absence of the one or other order as the case may be, but the absence of both together--a thing that is neither perceived nor conceived, a simple verbal entity. So there arises the problem how order is imposed on disorder, form on matter. In analyzing the idea of disorder thus subtilized, we shall see that it represents nothing at all, and at the same time the problems that have been raised around it will vanish. It is true that we must begin by distinguishing, and even by opposing one to the other, two kinds of order which we generally confuse. As this confusion has created the principal difficulties of the problem of knowledge, it will not be useless to dwell once more on the marks by which the two orders are distinguished. In a general way, reality is _ordered_ exactly to the degree in which it satisfies our thought. Order is therefore a certain agreement between subject and object. It is the mind finding itself again in things. But the mind, we said, can go in two opposite ways. Sometimes it follows its natural direction: there is then progress in the form of tension, continuous creation, free activity. Sometimes it inverts it, and this inversion, pushed to the end, leads to extension, to the necessary reciprocal determination of elements externalized each by relation to the others, in short, to geometrical mechanism. Now, whether experience seems to us to adopt the first direction or whether it is drawn in the direction of the second, in both cases we say there is order, for in the two processes the mind finds itself again. The confusion between them is therefore natural. To escape it, different names would have to be given to the two kinds of order, and that is not easy, because of the variety and variability of the forms they take. The order of the second kind may be defined as geometry, which is its extreme limit; more generally, it is that kind of order that is concerned whenever a relation of necessary determination is found between causes and effects. It evokes ideas of inertia, of passivity, of automatism. As to the first kind of order, it oscillates no doubt around finality; and yet we cannot define it as finality, for it is sometimes above, sometimes below. In its highest forms, it is more than finality, for of a free action or a work of art we may say that they show a perfect order, and yet they can only be expressed in terms of ideas approximately, and after the event. Life in its entirety, regarded as a creative evolution, is something analogous; it transcends finality, if we understand by finality the realization of an idea conceived or conceivable in advance. The category of finality is therefore too narrow for life in its entirety. It is, on the other hand, often too wide for a particular manifestation of life taken separately. Be that as it may, it is with the _vital_ that we have here to do, and the whole present study strives to prove that the vital is in the direction of the voluntary. We may say then that this first kind of order is that of the _vital_ or of the _willed_, in opposition to the second, which is that of the _inert_ and the _automatic_. Common sense instinctively distinguishes between the two kinds of order, at least in the extreme cases; instinctively, also, it brings them together. We say of astronomical phenomena that they manifest an admirable order, meaning by this that they can be foreseen mathematically. And we find an order no less admirable in a symphony of Beethoven, which is genius, originality, and therefore unforeseeability itself. But it is exceptional for order of the first kind to take so distinct a form. Ordinarily, it presents features that we have every interest in confusing with those of the opposite order. It is quite certain, for instance, that if we could view the evolution of life in its entirety, the spontaneity of its movement and the unforeseeability of its procedures would thrust themselves on our attention. But what we meet in our daily experience is a certain determinate living being, certain special manifestations of life, which repeat, _almost_, forms and facts already known; indeed, the similarity of structure that we find everywhere between what generates and what is generated--a similarity that enables us to include any number of living individuals in the same group--is to our eyes the very type of the _generic_: the inorganic genera seem to us to take living genera as models. Thus the vital order, such as it is offered to us piecemeal in experience, presents the same character and performs the same function as the physical order: both cause experience to _repeat itself_, both enable our mind to _generalize_. In reality, this character has entirely different origins in the two cases, and even opposite meanings. In the second case, the type of this character, its ideal limit, as also its foundation, is the geometrical necessity in virtue of which the same components give the same resultant. In the first case, this character involves, on the contrary, the intervention of something which manages to obtain the same total effect although the infinitely complex elementary causes may be quite different. We insisted on this last point in our first chapter, when we showed how identical structures are to be met with on independent lines of evolution. But, without looking so far, we may presume that the reproduction only of the type of the ancestor by his descendants is an entirely different thing from the repetition of the same composition of forces which yields an identical resultant. When we think of the infinity of infinitesimal elements and of infinitesimal causes that concur in the genesis of a living being, when we reflect that the absence or the deviation of one of them would spoil everything, the first impulse of the mind is to consider this army of little workers as watched over by a skilled foreman, the "vital principle," which is ever repairing faults, correcting effects of neglect or absentmindedness, putting things back in place: this is how we try to express the difference between the physical and the vital order, the former making the same combination of causes give the same combined effect, the latter securing the constancy of the effect even when there is some wavering in the causes. But that is only a comparison; on reflection, we find that there can be no foreman, for the very simple reason that there are no workers. The causes and elements that physico-chemical analysis discovers are real causes and elements, no doubt, as far as the facts of organic destruction are concerned; they are then limited in number. But vital phenomena, properly so called, or facts of organic creation open up to us, when we analyze them, the perspective of an analysis passing away to infinity: whence it may be inferred that the manifold causes and elements are here only views of the mind, attempting an ever closer and closer imitation of the operation of nature, while the operation imitated is an indivisible act. The likeness between individuals of the same species has thus an entirely different meaning, an entirely different origin, to that of the likeness between complex effects obtained by the same composition of the same causes. But in the one case as in the other, there is _likeness_, and consequently possible generalization. And as that is all that interests us in practice, since our daily life is and must be an expectation of the same things and the same situations, it is natural that this common character, essential from the point of view of our action, should bring the two orders together, in spite of a merely internal diversity between them which interests speculation only. Hence the idea of a _general order of nature_, everywhere the same, hovering over life and over matter alike. Hence our habit of designating by the same word and representing in the same way the existence of _laws_ in the domain of inert matter and that of _genera_ in the domain of life. Now, it will be found that this confusion is the origin of most of the difficulties raised by the problem of knowledge, among the ancients as well as among the moderns. The generality of laws and that of genera having been designated by the same word and subsumed under the same idea, the geometrical order and the vital order are accordingly confused together. According to the point of view, the generality of laws is explained by that of genera, or that of genera by that of laws. The first view is characteristic of ancient thought; the second belongs to modern philosophy. But in both ancient and modern philosophy the idea of "generality" is an equivocal idea, uniting in its denotation and in its connotation incompatible objects and elements. In both there are grouped under the same concept two kinds of order which are alike only in the facility they give to our action on things. We bring together the two terms in virtue of a quite external likeness, which justifies no doubt their designation by the same word for practice, but which does not authorize us at all, in the speculative domain, to confuse them in the same definition. The ancients, indeed, did not ask why nature submits to laws, but why it is ordered according to genera. The idea of genus corresponds more especially to an objective reality in the domain of life, where it expresses an unquestionable fact, heredity. Indeed, there can only be genera where there are individual objects; now, while the organized being is cut out from the general mass of matter by his very organization, that is to say naturally, it is our perception which cuts inert matter into distinct bodies. It is guided in this by the interests of action, by the nascent reactions that our body indicates--that is, as we have shown elsewhere,[85] by the potential genera that are trying to gain existence. In this, then, genera and individuals determine one another by a semi-artificial operation entirely relative to our future action on things. Nevertheless the ancients did not hesitate to put all genera in the same rank, to attribute the same absolute existence to all of them. Reality thus being a system of genera, it is to the generality of the genera (that is, in effect, to the generality expressive of the vital order) that the generality of laws itself had to be brought. It is interesting, in this respect, to compare the Aristotelian theory of the fall of bodies with the explanation furnished by Galileo. Aristotle is concerned solely with the concepts "high" and "low," "own proper place" as distinguished from "place occupied," "natural movement" and "forced movement;"[86] the physical law in virtue of which the stone falls expresses for him that the stone regains the "natural place" of all stones, to wit, the earth. The stone, in his view, is not quite stone so long as it is not in its normal place; in falling back into this place it aims at completing itself, like a living being that grows, thus realizing fully the essence of the genus stone.[87] If this conception of the physical law were exact, the law would no longer be a mere relation established by the mind; the subdivision of matter into bodies would no longer be relative to our faculty of perceiving; all bodies would have the same individuality as living bodies, and the laws of the physical universe would express relations of real kinship between real genera. We know what kind of physics grew out of this, and how, for having believed in a science unique and final, embracing the totality of the real and at one with the absolute, the ancients were confined, in fact, to a more or less clumsy interpretation of the physical in terms of the vital. But there is the same confusion in the moderns, with this difference, however, that the relation between the two terms is inverted: laws are no longer reduced to genera, but genera to laws; and science, still supposed to be uniquely one, becomes altogether relative, instead of being, as the ancients wished, altogether at one with the absolute. A noteworthy fact is the eclipse of the problem of genera in modern philosophy. Our theory of knowledge turns almost entirely on the question of laws: genera are left to make shift with laws as best they can. The reason is, that modern philosophy has its point of departure in the great astronomical and physical discoveries of modern times. The laws of Kepler and of Galileo have remained for it the ideal and unique type of all knowledge. Now, a law is a relation between things or between facts. More precisely, a law of mathematical form expresses the fact that a certain magnitude is a function of one or several other variables appropriately chosen. Now, the choice of the variable magnitudes, the distribution of nature into objects and into facts, has already something of the contingent and the conventional. But, admitting that the choice is hinted at, if not prescribed, by experience, the law remains none the less a relation, and a relation is essentially a comparison; it has objective reality only for an intelligence that represents to itself several terms at the same time. This intelligence may be neither mine nor yours: a science which bears on laws may therefore be an objective science, which experience contains in advance and which we simply make it disgorge; but it is none the less true that a comparison of some kind must be effected here, impersonally if not by any one in particular, and that an experience made of laws, that is, of terms _related_ to other terms, is an experience made of comparisons, which, before we receive it, has already had to pass through an atmosphere of intellectuality. The idea of a science and of an experience entirely relative to the human understanding was therefore implicitly contained in the conception of a science one and integral, composed of laws: Kant only brought it to light. But this conception is the result of an arbitrary confusion between the generality of laws and that of genera. Though an intelligence be necessary to condition terms by relation to each other, we may conceive that in certain cases the terms themselves may exist independently. And if, beside relations of term to term, experience also presents to us independent terms, the living genera being something quite different from systems of laws, one half, at least, of our knowledge bears on the "thing-in-itself," the very reality. This knowledge may be very difficult, just because it no longer builds up its own object and is obliged, on the contrary, to submit to it; but, however little it cuts into its object, it is into the absolute itself that it bites. We may go further: the other half of knowledge is no longer so radically, so definitely relative as certain philosophers say, if we can establish that it bears on a reality of inverse order, a reality which we always express in mathematical laws, that is to say in relations that imply comparisons, but which lends itself to this work only because it is weighted with spatiality and consequently with geometry. Be that as it may, it is the confusion of two kinds of order that lies behind the relativism of the moderns, as it lay behind the dogmatism of the ancients. We have said enough to mark the origin of this confusion. It is due to the fact that the "vital" order, which is essentially creation, is manifested to us less in its essence than in some of its accidents, those which _imitate_ the physical and geometrical order; like it, they present to us repetitions that make generalization possible, and in that we have all that interests us. There is no doubt that life as a whole is an evolution, that is, an unceasing transformation. But life can progress only by means of the living, which are its depositaries. Innumerable living beings, almost alike, have to repeat each other in space and in time for the novelty they are working out to grow and mature. It is like a book that advances towards a new edition by going through thousands of reprints with thousands of copies. There is, however, this difference between the two cases, that the successive impressions are identical, as well as the simultaneous copies of the same impression, whereas representatives of one and the same species are never entirely the same, either in different points of space or at different moments of time. Heredity does not only transmit characters; it transmits also the impetus in virtue of which the characters are modified, and this impetus is vitality itself. That is why we say that the repetition which serves as the base of our generalizations is essential in the physical order, accidental in the vital order. The physical order is "automatic;" the vital order is, I will not say voluntary, but analogous to the order "willed." Now, as soon as we have clearly distinguished between the order that is "willed" and the order that is "automatic," the ambiguity that underlies the idea of _disorder_ is dissipated, and, with it, one of the principal difficulties of the problem of knowledge. The main problem of the theory of knowledge is to know how science is possible, that is to say, in effect, why there is order and not disorder in things. That order exists is a _fact_. But, on the other hand, disorder, _which appears to us to be less than order_, is, it seems, of _right_. The existence of order is then a mystery to be cleared up, at any rate a problem to be solved. More simply, when we undertake to found order, we regard it as contingent, if not in things, at least as viewed by the mind: of a thing that we do not judge to be contingent we do not require an explanation. If order did not appear to us as a conquest over something, or as an addition to something (which something is thought to be the "absence of order"), ancient realism would not have spoken of a "matter" to which the Idea superadded itself, nor would modern idealism have supposed a "sensuous manifold" that the understanding organizes into nature. Now, it is unquestionable that all order is contingent, and conceived as such. But contingent in relation to what? The reply, to our thinking, is not doubtful. An order is contingent, and seems so, in relation to the inverse order, as verse is contingent in relation to prose and prose in relation to verse. But, just as all speech which is not prose is verse and necessarily conceived as verse, just as all speech which is not verse is prose and necessarily conceived as prose, so any state of things that is not one of the two orders is the other and is necessarily conceived as the other. But it may happen that we do not realize what we are actually thinking of, and perceive the idea really present to our mind only through a mist of affective states. Any one can be convinced of this by considering the use we make of the idea of disorder in daily life. When I enter a room and pronounce it to be "in disorder," what do I mean? The position of each object is explained by the automatic movements of the person who has slept in the room, or by the efficient causes, whatever they may be, that have caused each article of furniture, clothing, etc., to be where it is: the order, in the second sense of the word, is perfect. But it is order of the first kind that I am expecting, the order that a methodical person consciously puts into his life, the willed order and not the automatic: so I call the absence of this order "disorder." At bottom, all there is that is real, perceived and even conceived, in this absence of one of the two kinds of order, is the presence of the other. But the second is indifferent to me, _I am interested only in the first_, and I express the presence of the second as a function of the first, instead of expressing it, so to speak, as a function of itself, by saying it is _disorder_. Inversely, when we affirm that we are imagining a chaos, that is to say a state of things in which the physical world no longer obeys laws, what are we thinking of? We imagine facts that appear and disappear _capriciously_. First we think of the physical universe as we know it, with effects and causes well proportioned to each other; then, by a series of arbitrary decrees, we augment, diminish, suppress, so as to obtain what we call disorder. In reality we have substituted _will_ for the mechanism of nature; we have replaced the "automatic order" by a multitude of elementary wills, just to the extent that we imagine the apparition or vanishing of phenomena. No doubt, for all these little wills to constitute a "willed order," they must have accepted the direction of a higher will. But, on looking closely at them, we see that that is just what they do: our own will is there, which objectifies itself in each of these capricious wills in turn, and takes good care not to connect the same with the same, nor to permit the effect to be proportional to the cause--in fact makes one simple intention hover over the whole of the elementary volitions. Thus, here again, the absence of one of the two orders consists in the presence of the other. In analyzing the idea of chance, which is closely akin to the idea of disorder, we find the same elements. When the wholly mechanical play of the causes which stop the wheel on a number makes me win, and consequently acts like a good genius, careful of my interests, or when the wholly mechanical force of the wind tears a tile off the roof and throws it on to my head, that is to say acts like a bad genius, conspiring against my person: in both cases I find a mechanism where I should have looked for, where, indeed, it seems as if I ought to have found, an intention. That is what I express in speaking of _chance_. And of an anarchical world, in which phenomena succeed each other capriciously, I should say again that it is a realm of chance, meaning that I find before me wills, or rather _decrees_, when what I am expecting is mechanism. Thus is explained the singular vacillation of the mind when it tries to define chance. Neither efficient cause nor final cause can furnish the definition sought. The mind swings to and fro, unable to rest, between the idea of an absence of final cause and that of an absence of efficient cause, each of these definitions sending it back to the other. The problem remains insoluble, in fact, so long as the idea of chance is regarded as a pure idea, without mixture of feeling. But, in reality, chance merely objectifies the state of mind of one who, expecting one of the two kinds of order, finds himself confronted with the other. Chance and disorder are therefore necessarily conceived as relative. So if we wish to represent them to ourselves as absolute, we perceive that we are going to and fro like a shuttle between the two kinds of order, passing into the one just at the moment at which we might catch ourself in the other, and that the supposed absence of all order is really the presence of both, with, besides, the swaying of a mind that cannot rest finally in either. Neither in things nor in our idea of things can there be any question of presenting this disorder as the substratum of order, since it implies the two kinds of order and is made of their combination. But our intelligence is not stopped by this. By a simple _sic jubeo_ it posits a disorder which is an "absence of order." In so doing it thinks a word or a set of words, nothing more. If it seeks to attach an idea to the word, it finds that disorder may indeed be the negation of order, but that this negation is then the implicit affirmation of the presence of the opposite order, which we shut our eyes to because it does not interest us, or which we evade by denying the second order in its turn--that is, at bottom, by re-establishing the first. How can we speak, then, of an incoherent diversity which an understanding organizes? It is no use for us to say that no one supposes this incoherence to be realized or realizable: when we speak of it, we believe we are thinking of it; now, in analyzing the idea actually present, we find, as we said before, only the disappointment of the mind confronted with an order that does not interest it, or a swaying of the mind between two kinds of order, or, finally, the idea pure and simple of the empty word that we have created by joining a negative prefix to a word which itself signifies something. But it is this analysis that we neglect to make. We omit it, precisely because it does not occur to us to distinguish two kinds of order that are irreducible to one another. We said, indeed, that all order necessarily appears as contingent. If there are two kinds of order, this contingency of order is explained: one of the forms is contingent in relation to the other. Where I find the geometrical order, the vital was possible; where the order is vital, it might have been geometrical. But suppose that the order is everywhere of the same kind, and simply admits of degrees which go from the geometrical to the vital: if a determinate order still appears to me to be contingent, and can no longer be so by relation to an order of another kind, I shall necessarily believe that the order is contingent by relation to an _absence of itself_, that is to say by relation to a state of things "in which there is no order at all." And this state of things I shall believe that I am thinking of, because it is implied, it seems, in the very contingency of order, which is an unquestionable fact. I shall therefore place at the summit of the hierarchy the vital order; then, as a diminution or lower complication of it, the geometrical order; and finally, at the bottom of all, an absence of order, incoherence itself, on which order is superposed. This is why incoherence has the effect on me of a word behind which there must be something real, if not in things, at least in thought. But if I observe that the state of things implied by the contingency of a determinate order is simply the presence of the contrary order, and if by this very fact I posit two kinds of order, each the inverse of the other, I perceive that no intermediate degrees can be imagined between the two orders, and that there is no going down from the two orders to the "incoherent." Either the incoherent is only a word, devoid of meaning, or, if I give it a meaning, it is on condition of putting incoherence midway between the two orders, and not below both of them. There is not first the incoherent, then the geometrical, then the vital; there is only the geometrical and the vital, and then, by a swaying of the mind between them, the idea of the incoherent. To speak of an uncoördinated diversity to which order is superadded is therefore to commit a veritable _petitio principii_; for in imagining the uncoördinated we really posit an order, or rather two. * * * * * This long analysis was necessary to show how the real can pass from tension to extension and from freedom to mechanical necessity by way of inversion. It was not enough to prove that this relation between the two terms is suggested to us, at once, by consciousness and by sensible experience. It was necessary to prove that the geometrical order has no need of explanation, being purely and simply the suppression of the inverse order. And, for that, it was indispensable to prove that suppression is always a substitution and is even necessarily conceived as such: it is the requirements of practical life alone that suggest to us here a way of speaking that deceives us both as to what happens in things and as to what is present to our thought. We must now examine more closely the inversion whose consequences we have just described. What, then, is the principle that has only to let go its tension--may we say to _detend_--in order to _extend_, the interruption of the cause here being equivalent to a reversal of the effect? For want of a better word we have called it consciousness. But we do not mean the narrowed consciousness that functions in each of us. Our own consciousness is the consciousness of a certain living being, placed in a certain point of space; and though it does indeed move in the same direction as its principle, it is continually drawn the opposite way, obliged, though it goes forward, to look behind. This retrospective vision is, as we have shown, the natural function of the intellect, and consequently of distinct consciousness. In order that our consciousness shall coincide with something of its principle, it must detach itself from the _already-made_ and attach itself to the _being-made_. It needs that, turning back on itself and twisting on itself, the faculty of _seeing_ should be made to be one with the act of _willing_--a painful effort which we can make suddenly, doing violence to our nature, but cannot sustain more than a few moments. In free action, when we contract our whole being in order to thrust it forward, we have the more or less clear consciousness of motives and of impelling forces, and even, at rare moments, of the becoming by which they are organized into an act: but the pure willing, the current that runs through this matter, communicating life to it, is a thing which we hardly feel, which at most we brush lightly as it passes. Let us try, however, to instal ourselves within it, if only for a moment; even then it is an individual and fragmentary will that we grasp. To get to the principle of all life, as also of all materiality, we must go further still. Is it impossible? No, by no means; the history of philosophy is there to bear witness. There is no durable system that is not, at least in some of its parts, vivified by intuition. Dialectic is necessary to put intuition to the proof, necessary also in order that intuition should break itself up into concepts and so be propagated to other men; but all it does, often enough, is to develop the result of that intuition which transcends it. The truth is, the two procedures are of opposite direction: the same effort, by which ideas are connected with ideas, causes the intuition which the ideas were storing up to vanish. The philosopher is obliged to abandon intuition, once he has received from it the impetus, and to rely on himself to carry on the movement by pushing the concepts one after another. But he soon feels he has lost foothold; he must come into touch with intuition again; he must undo most of what he has done. In short, dialectic is what ensures the agreement of our thought with itself. But by dialectic--which is only a relaxation of intuition--many different agreements are possible, while there is only one truth. Intuition, if it could be prolonged beyond a few instants, would not only make the philosopher agree with his own thought, but also all philosophers with each other. Such as it is, fugitive and incomplete, it is, in each system, what is worth more than the system and survives it. The object of philosophy would be reached if this intuition could be sustained, generalized and, above all, assured of external points of reference in order not to go astray. To that end a continual coming and going is necessary between nature and mind. When we put back our being into our will, and our will itself into the impulsion it prolongs, we understand, we feel, that reality is a perpetual growth, a creation pursued without end. Our will already performs this miracle. Every human work in which there is invention, every voluntary act in which there is freedom, every movement of an organism that manifests spontaneity, brings something new into the world. True, these are only creations of form. How could they be anything else? We are not the vital current itself; we are this current already loaded with matter, that is, with congealed parts of its own substance which it carries along its course. In the composition of a work of genius, as in a simple free decision, we do, indeed, stretch the spring of our activity to the utmost and thus create what no mere assemblage of materials could have given (what assemblage of curves already known can ever be equivalent to the pencil-stroke of a great artist?) but there are, none the less, elements here that pre-exist and survive their organization. But if a simple arrest of the action that generates form could constitute matter (are not the original lines drawn by the artist themselves already the fixation and, as it were, congealment of a movement?), a creation of matter would be neither incomprehensible nor inadmissible. For we seize from within, we live at every instant, a creation of form, and it is just in those cases in which the form is pure, and in which the creative current is momentarily interrupted, that there is a creation of matter. Consider the letters of the alphabet that enter into the composition of everything that has ever been written: we do not conceive that new letters spring up and come to join themselves to the others in order to make a new poem. But that the poet creates the poem and that human thought is thereby made richer, we understand very well: this creation is a simple act of the mind, and action has only to make a pause, instead of continuing into a new creation, in order that, of itself, it may break up into words which dissociate themselves into letters which are added to all the letters there are already in the world. Thus, that the number of atoms composing the material universe at a given moment should increase runs counter to our habits of mind, contradicts the whole of our experience; but that a reality of quite another order, which contrasts with the atom as the thought of the poet with the letters of the alphabet, should increase by sudden additions, is not inadmissible; and the reverse of each addition might indeed be a world, which we then represent to ourselves, symbolically, as an assemblage of atoms. The mystery that spreads over the existence of the universe comes in great part from this, that we want the genesis of it to have been accomplished at one stroke or the whole of matter to be eternal. Whether we speak of creation or posit an uncreated matter, it is the totality of the universe that we are considering at once. At the root of this habit of mind lies the prejudice which we will analyze in our next chapter, the idea, common to materialists and to their opponents, that there is no really acting duration, and that the absolute--matter or mind--can have no place in concrete time, in the time which we feel to be the very stuff of our life. From which it follows that everything is given once for all, and that it is necessary to posit from all eternity either material multiplicity itself, or the act creating this multiplicity, given in block in the divine essence. Once this prejudice is eradicated, the idea of creation becomes more clear, for it is merged in that of growth. But it is no longer then of the universe in its totality that we must speak. Why should we speak of it? The universe is an assemblage of solar systems which we have every reason to believe analogous to our own. No doubt they are not absolutely independent of one another. Our sun radiates heat and light beyond the farthest planet, and, on the other hand, our entire solar system is moving in a definite direction as if it were drawn. There is, then, a bond between the worlds. But this bond may be regarded as infinitely loose in comparison with the mutual dependence which unites the parts of the same world among themselves; so that it is not artificially, for reasons of mere convenience, that we isolate our solar system: nature itself invites us to isolate it. As living beings, we depend on the planet on which we are, and on the sun that provides for it, but on nothing else. As thinking beings, we may apply the laws of our physics to our own world, and extend them to each of the worlds taken separately; but nothing tells us that they apply to the entire universe, nor even that such an affirmation has any meaning; for the universe is not made, but is being made continually. It is growing, perhaps indefinitely, by the addition of new worlds. Let us extend, then, to the whole of our solar system the two most general laws of our science, the principle of conservation of energy and that of its degradation--limiting them, however, to this relatively closed system and to other systems relatively closed. Let us see what will follow. We must remark, first of all, that these two principles have not the same metaphysical scope. The first is a quantitative law, and consequently relative, in part, to our methods of measurement. It says that, in a system presumed to be closed, the total energy, that is to say the sum of its kinetic and potential energy, remains constant. Now, if there were only kinetic energy in the world, or even if there were, besides kinetic energy, only one single kind of potential energy, but no more, the artifice of measurement would not make the law artificial. The law of the conservation of energy would express indeed that _something_ is preserved in constant quantity. But there are, in fact, energies of various kinds,[88] and the measurement of each of them has evidently been so chosen as to justify the principle of conservation of energy. Convention, therefore, plays a large part in this principle, although there is undoubtedly, between the variations of the different energies composing one and the same system, a mutual dependence which is just what has made the extension of the principle possible by measurements suitably chosen. If, therefore, the philosopher applies this principle to the solar system complete, he must at least soften its outlines. The law of the conservation of energy cannot here express the objective permanence of a certain quantity of a certain thing, but rather the necessity for every change that is brought about to be counterbalanced in some way by a change in an opposite direction. That is to say, even if it governs the whole of our solar system, the law of the conservation of energy is concerned with the relationship of a fragment of this world to another fragment rather than with the nature of the whole. It is otherwise with the second principle of thermodynamics. The law of the degradation of energy does not bear essentially on magnitudes. No doubt the first idea of it arose, in the thought of Carnot, out of certain quantitative considerations on the yield of thermic machines. Unquestionably, too, the terms in which Clausius generalized it were mathematical, and a calculable magnitude, "entropy," was, in fact, the final conception to which he was led. Such precision is necessary for practical applications. But the law might have been vaguely conceived, and, if absolutely necessary, it might have been roughly formulated, even though no one had ever thought of measuring the different energies of the physical world, even though the concept of energy had not been created. Essentially, it expresses the fact that all physical changes have a tendency to be degraded into heat, and that heat tends to be distributed among bodies in a uniform manner. In this less precise form, it becomes independent of any convention; it is the most metaphysical of the laws of physics since it points out without interposed symbols, without artificial devices of measurements, the direction in which the world is going. It tells us that changes that are visible and heterogeneous will be more and more diluted into changes that are invisible and homogeneous, and that the instability to which we owe the richness and variety of the changes taking place in our solar system will gradually give way to the relative stability of elementary vibrations continually and perpetually repeated. Just so with a man who keeps up his strength as he grows old, but spends it less and less in actions, and comes, in the end, to employ it entirely in making his lungs breathe and his heart beat. From this point of view, a world like our solar system is seen to be ever exhausting something of the mutability it contains. In the beginning, it had the maximum of possible utilization of energy: this mutability has gone on diminishing unceasingly. Whence does it come? We might at first suppose that it has come from some other point of space, but the difficulty is only set back, and for this external source of mutability the same question springs up. True, it might be added that the number of worlds capable of passing mutability to each other is unlimited, that the sum of mutability contained in the universe is infinite, that there is therefore no ground on which to seek its origin or to foresee its end. A hypothesis of this kind is as irrefutable as it is indemonstrable; but to speak of an infinite universe is to admit a perfect coincidence of matter with abstract space, and consequently an absolute externality of all the parts of matter in relation to one another. We have seen above what we must think of this theory, and how difficult it is to reconcile with the idea of a reciprocal influence of all the parts of matter on one another, an influence to which indeed it itself makes appeal. Again it might be supposed that the general instability has arisen from a general state of stability; that the period in which we now are, and in which the utilizable energy is diminishing, has been preceded by a period in which the mutability was increasing, and that the alternations of increase and diminution succeed each other for ever. This hypothesis is theoretically conceivable, as has been demonstrated quite recently; but, according to the calculations of Boltzmann, the mathematical improbability of it passes all imagination and practically amounts to absolute impossibility.[89] In reality, the problem remains insoluble as long as we keep on the ground of physics, for the physicist is obliged to attach energy to extended particles, and, even if he regards the particles only as reservoirs of energy, he remains in space: he would belie his rôle if he sought the origin of these energies in an extra-spatial process. It is there, however, in our opinion, that it must be sought. Is it extension in general that we are considering _in abstracto_? _Extension_, we said, appears only as a _tension_ which is interrupted. Or, are we considering the concrete reality that fills this extension? The order which reigns there, and which is manifested by the laws of nature, is an order which must be born of itself when the inverse order is suppressed; a detension of the will would produce precisely this suppression. Lastly, we find that the direction, which this reality takes, suggests to us the idea of a thing _unmaking itself_; such, no doubt, is one of the essential characters of materiality. What conclusion are we to draw from all this, if not that the process by which this thing _makes itself_ is directed in a contrary way to that of physical processes, and that it is therefore, by its very definition, immaterial? The vision we have of the material world is that of a weight which falls: no image drawn from matter, properly so called, will ever give us the idea of the weight rising. But this conclusion will come home to us with still greater force if we press nearer to the concrete reality, and if we consider, no longer only matter in general, but, within this matter, living bodies. All our analyses show us, in life, an effort to remount the incline that matter descends. In that, they reveal to us the possibility, the necessity even of a process the inverse of materiality, creative of matter by its interruption alone. The life that evolves on the surface of our planet is indeed attached to matter. If it were pure consciousness, _a fortiori_ if it were supra-consciousness, it would be pure creative activity. In fact, it is riveted to an organism that subjects it to the general laws of inert matter. But everything happens as if it were doing its utmost to set itself free from these laws. It has not the power to reverse the direction of physical changes, such as the principle of Carnot determines it. It does, however, behave absolutely as a force would behave which, left to itself, would work in the inverse direction. Incapable of _stopping_ the course of material changes downwards, it succeeds in _retarding_ it. The evolution of life really continues, as we have shown, an initial impulsion: this impulsion, which has determined the development of the chlorophyllian function in the plant and of the sensori-motor system in the animal, brings life to more and more efficient acts by the fabrication and use of more and more powerful explosives. Now, what do these explosives represent if not a storing-up of the solar energy, the degradation of which energy is thus provisionally suspended on some of the points where it was being poured forth? The usable energy which the explosive conceals will be expended, of course, at the moment of the explosion; but it would have been expended sooner if an organism had not happened to be there to arrest its dissipation, in order to retain it and save it up. As we see it to-day, at the point to which it was brought by a scission of the mutually complementary tendencies which it contained within itself, life is entirely dependent on the chlorophyllian function of the plant. This means that, looked at in its initial impulsion, before any scission, life was a tendency to accumulate in a reservoir, as do especially the green parts of vegetables, with a view to an instantaneous effective discharge, like that which an animal brings about, something that would have otherwise flowed away. It is like an effort to raise the weight which falls. True, it succeeds only in retarding the fall. But at least it can give us an idea of what the raising of the weight was.[90] Let us imagine a vessel full of steam at a high pressure, and here and there in its sides a crack through which the steam is escaping in a jet. The steam thrown into the air is nearly all condensed into little drops which fall back, and this condensation and this fall represent simply the loss of something, an interruption, a deficit. But a small part of the jet of steam subsists, uncondensed, for some seconds; it is making an effort to raise the drops which are falling; it succeeds at most in retarding their fall. So, from an immense reservoir of life, jets must be gushing out unceasingly, of which each, falling back, is a world. The evolution of living species within this world represents what subsists of the primitive direction of the original jet, and of an impulsion which continues itself in a direction the inverse of materiality. But let us not carry too far this comparison. It gives us but a feeble and even deceptive image of reality, for the crack, the jet of steam, the forming of the drops, are determined necessarily, whereas the creation of a world is a free act, and the life within the material world participates in this liberty. Let us think rather of an action like that of raising the arm; then let us suppose that the arm, left to itself, falls back, and yet that there subsists in it, striving to raise it up again, something of the will that animates it. In this image of a _creative action which unmakes itself_ we have already a more exact representation of matter. In vital activity we see, then, that which subsists of the direct movement in the inverted movement, _a reality which is making itself in a reality which is unmaking itself_. Everything is obscure in the idea of creation if we think of _things_ which are created and a _thing_ which creates, as we habitually do, as the understanding cannot help doing. We shall show the origin of this illusion in our next chapter. It is natural to our intellect, whose function is essentially practical, made to present to us things and states rather than changes and acts. But things and states are only views, taken by our mind, of becoming. There are no things, there are only actions. More particularly, if I consider the world in which we live, I find that the automatic and strictly determined evolution of this well-knit whole is action which is unmaking itself, and that the unforeseen forms which life cuts out in it, forms capable of being themselves prolonged into unforeseen movements, represent the action that is making itself. Now, I have every reason to believe that the other worlds are analogous to ours, that things happen there in the same way. And I know they were not all constructed at the same time, since observation shows me, even to-day, nebulae in course of concentration. Now, if the same kind of action is going on everywhere, whether it is that which is unmaking itself or whether it is that which is striving to remake itself, I simply express this probable similitude when I speak of a centre from which worlds shoot out like rockets in a fireworks display--provided, however, that I do not present this centre as a _thing_, but as a continuity of shooting out. God thus defined, has nothing of the already made; He is unceasing life, action, freedom. Creation, so conceived, is not a mystery; we experience it in ourselves when we act freely. That new things can join things already existing is absurd, no doubt, since the _thing_ results from a solidification performed by our understanding, and there are never any things other than those that the understanding has thus constituted. To speak of things creating themselves would therefore amount to saying that the understanding presents to itself more than it presents to itself--a self-contradictory affirmation, an empty and vain idea. But that action increases as it goes on, that it creates in the measure of its advance, is what each of us finds when he watches himself act. Things are constituted by the instantaneous cut which the understanding practices, at a given moment, on a flux of this kind, and what is mysterious when we compare the cuts together becomes clear when we relate them to the flux. Indeed, the modalities of creative action, in so far as it is still going on in the organization of living forms, are much simplified when they are taken in this way. Before the complexity of an organism and the practically infinite multitude of interwoven analyses and syntheses it presupposes, our understanding recoils disconcerted. That the simple play of physical and chemical forces, left to themselves, should have worked this marvel, we find hard to believe. And if it is a profound science which is at work, how are we to understand the influence exercised on this matter without form by this form without matter? But the difficulty arises from this, that we represent statically ready-made material particles juxtaposed to one another, and, also statically, an external cause which plasters upon them a skilfully contrived organization. In reality, life is a movement, materiality is the inverse movement, and each of these two movements is simple, the matter which forms a world being an undivided flux, and undivided also the life that runs through it, cutting out in it living beings all along its track. Of these two currents the second runs counter to the first, but the first obtains, all the same, something from the second. There results between them a _modus vivendi_, which is organization. This organization takes, for our senses and for our intellect, the form of parts entirely external to other parts in space and in time. Not only do we shut our eyes to the unity of the impulse which, passing through generations, links individuals with individuals, species with species, and makes of the whole series of the living one single immense wave flowing over matter, but each individual itself seems to us as an aggregate, aggregate of molecules and aggregate of facts. The reason of this lies in the structure of our intellect, which is formed to act on matter from without, and which succeeds by making, in the flux of the real, instantaneous cuts, each of which becomes, in its fixity, endlessly decomposable. Perceiving, in an organism, only parts external to parts, the understanding has the choice between two systems of explanation only: either to regard the infinitely complex (and thereby infinitely well-contrived) organization as a fortuitous concatenation of atoms, or to relate it to the incomprehensible influence of an external force that has grouped its elements together. But this complexity is the work of the understanding; this incomprehensibility is also its work. Let us try to see, no longer with the eyes of the intellect alone, which grasps only the already made and which looks from the outside, but with the spirit, I mean with that faculty of seeing which is immanent in the faculty of acting and which springs up, somehow, by the twisting of the will on itself, when action is turned into knowledge, like heat, so to say, into light. To movement, then, everything will be restored, and into movement everything will be resolved. Where the understanding, working on the image supposed to be fixed of the progressing action, shows us parts infinitely manifold and an order infinitely well contrived, we catch a glimpse of a simple process, an action which is making itself across an action of the same kind which is unmaking itself, like the fiery path torn by the last rocket of a fireworks display through the black cinders of the spent rockets that are falling dead. * * * * * From this point of view, the general considerations we have presented concerning the evolution of life will be cleared up and completed. We will distinguish more sharply what is accidental from what is essential in this evolution. The impetus of life, of which we are speaking, consists in a need of creation. It cannot create absolutely, because it is confronted with matter, that is to say with the movement that is the inverse of its own. But it seizes upon this matter, which is necessity itself, and strives to introduce into it the largest possible amount of indetermination and liberty. How does it go to work? An animal high in the scale may be represented in a general way, we said, as a sensori-motor nervous system imposed on digestive, respiratory, circulatory systems, etc. The function of these latter is to cleanse, repair and protect the nervous system, to make it as independent as possible of external circumstances, but, above all, to furnish it with energy to be expended in movements. The increasing complexity of the organism is therefore due theoretically (in spite of innumerable exceptions due to accidents of evolution) to the necessity of complexity in the nervous system. No doubt, each complication of any part of the organism involves many others in addition, because this part itself must live, and every change in one point of the body reverberates, as it were, throughout. The complication may therefore go on to infinity in all directions; but it is the complication of the nervous system which conditions the others in right, if not always in fact. Now, in what does the progress of the nervous system itself consist? In a simultaneous development of automatic activity and of voluntary activity, the first furnishing the second with an appropriate instrument. Thus, in an organism such as ours, a considerable number of motor mechanisms are set up in the medulla and in the spinal cord, awaiting only a signal to release the corresponding act: the will is employed, in some cases, in setting up the mechanism itself, and in the others in choosing the mechanisms to be released, the manner of combining them and the moment of releasing them. The will of an animal is the more effective and the more intense, the greater the number of the mechanisms it can choose from, the more complicated the switchboard on which all the motor paths cross, or, in other words, the more developed its brain. Thus, the progress of the nervous system assures to the act increasing precision, increasing variety, increasing efficiency and independence. The organism behaves more and more like a machine for action, which reconstructs itself entirely for every new act, as if it were made of india-rubber and could, at any moment, change the shape of all its parts. But, prior to the nervous system, prior even to the organism properly so called, already in the undifferentiated mass of the amoeba, this essential property of animal life is found. The amoeba deforms itself in varying directions; its entire mass does what the differentiation of parts will localize in a sensori-motor system in the developed animal. Doing it only in a rudimentary manner, it is dispensed from the complexity of the higher organisms; there is no need here of the auxiliary elements that pass on to motor elements the energy to expend; the animal moves as a whole, and, as a whole also, procures energy by means of the organic substances it assimilates. Thus, whether low or high in the animal scale, we always find that animal life consists (1) in procuring a provision of energy; (2) in expending it, by means of a matter as supple as possible, in directions variable and unforeseen. Now, whence comes the energy? From the ingested food, for food is a kind of explosive, which needs only the spark to discharge the energy it stores. Who has made this explosive? The food may be the flesh of an animal nourished on animals and so on; but, in the end it is to the vegetable we always come back. Vegetables alone gather in the solar energy, and the animals do but borrow it from them, either directly or by some passing it on to others. How then has the plant stored up this energy? Chiefly by the chlorophyllian function, a chemicism _sui generis_ of which we do not possess the key, and which is probably unlike that of our laboratories. The process consists in using solar energy to fix the carbon of carbonic acid, and thereby to store this energy as we should store that of a water-carrier by employing him to fill an elevated reservoir: the water, once brought up, can set in motion a mill or a turbine, as we will and when we will. Each atom of carbon fixed represents something like the elevation of the weight of water, or like the stretching of an elastic thread uniting the carbon to the oxygen in the carbonic acid. The elastic is relaxed, the weight falls back again, in short the energy held in reserve is restored, when, by a simple release, the carbon is permitted to rejoin its oxygen. So that all life, animal and vegetable, seems in its essence like an effort to accumulate energy and then to let it flow into flexible channels, changeable in shape, at the end of which it will accomplish infinitely varied kinds of work. That is what the _vital impetus_, passing through matter, would fain do all at once. It would succeed, no doubt, if its power were unlimited, or if some reinforcement could come to it from without. But the impetus is finite, and it has been given once for all. It cannot overcome all obstacles. The movement it starts is sometimes turned aside, sometimes divided, always opposed; and the evolution of the organized world is the unrolling of this conflict. The first great scission that had to be effected was that of the two kingdoms, vegetable and animal, which thus happen to be mutually complementary, without, however, any agreement having been made between them. It is not for the animal that the plant accumulates energy, it is for its own consumption; but its expenditure on itself is less discontinuous, and less concentrated, and therefore less efficacious, than was required by the initial impetus of life, essentially directed toward free actions: the same organism could not with equal force sustain the two functions at once, of gradual storage and sudden use. Of themselves, therefore, and without any external intervention, simply by the effect of the duality of the tendency involved in the original impetus and of the resistance opposed by matter to this impetus, the organisms leaned some in the first direction, others in the second. To this scission there succeeded many others. Hence the diverging lines of evolution, at least what is essential in them. But we must take into account retrogressions, arrests, accidents of every kind. And we must remember, above all, that each species behaves as if the general movement of life stopped at it instead of passing through it. It thinks only of itself, it lives only for itself. Hence the numberless struggles that we behold in nature. Hence a discord, striking and terrible, but for which the original principle of life must not be held responsible. The part played by contingency in evolution is therefore great. Contingent, generally, are the forms adopted, or rather invented. Contingent, relative to the obstacles encountered in a given place and at a given moment, is the dissociation of the primordial tendency into such and such complementary tendencies which create divergent lines of evolution. Contingent the arrests and set-backs; contingent, in large measure, the adaptations. Two things only are necessary: (1) a gradual accumulation of energy; (2) an elastic canalization of this energy in variable and indeterminable directions, at the end of which are free acts. This twofold result has been obtained in a particular way on our planet. But it might have been obtained by entirely different means. It was not necessary that life should fix its choice mainly upon the carbon of carbonic acid. What was essential for it was to store solar energy; but, instead of asking the sun to separate, for instance, atoms of oxygen and carbon, it might (theoretically at least, and, apart from practical difficulties possibly insurmountable) have put forth other chemical elements, which would then have had to be associated or dissociated by entirely different physical means. And if the element characteristic of the substances that supply energy to the organism had been other than carbon, the element characteristic of the plastic substances would probably have been other than nitrogen, and the chemistry of living bodies would then have been radically different from what it is. The result would have been living forms without any analogy to those we know, whose anatomy would have been different, whose physiology also would have been different. Alone, the sensori-motor function would have been preserved, if not in its mechanism, at least in its effects. It is therefore probable that life goes on in other planets, in other solar systems also, under forms of which we have no idea, in physical conditions to which it seems to us, from the point of view of our physiology, to be absolutely opposed. If its essential aim is to catch up usable energy in order to expend it in explosive actions, it probably chooses, in each solar system and on each planet, as it does on the earth, the fittest means to get this result in the circumstances with which it is confronted. That is at least what reasoning by analogy leads to, and we use analogy the wrong way when we declare life to be impossible wherever the circumstances with which it is confronted are other than those on the earth. The truth is that life is possible wherever energy descends the incline indicated by Carnot's law and where a cause of inverse direction can retard the descent--that is to say, probably, in all the worlds suspended from all the stars. We go further: it is not even necessary that life should be concentrated and determined in organisms properly so called, that is, in definite bodies presenting to the flow of energy ready-made though elastic canals. It can be conceived (although it can hardly be imagined) that energy might be saved up, and then expended on varying lines running across a matter not yet solidified. Every essential of life would still be there, since there would still be slow accumulation of energy and sudden release. There would hardly be more difference between this vitality, vague and formless, and the definite vitality we know, than there is, in our psychical life, between the state of dream and the state of waking. Such may have been the condition of life in our nebula before the condensation of matter was complete, if it be true that life springs forward at the very moment when, as the effect of an inverse movement, the nebular matter appears. It is therefore conceivable that life might have assumed a totally different outward appearance and designed forms very different from those we know. With another chemical substratum, in other physical conditions, the impulsion would have remained the same, but it would have split up very differently in course of progress; and the whole would have traveled another road--whether shorter or longer who can tell? In any case, in the entire series of living beings no term would have been what it now is. Now, was it necessary that there should be a series, or terms? Why should not the unique impetus have been impressed on a unique body, which might have gone on evolving? This question arises, no doubt, from the comparison of life to an impetus. And it must be compared to an impetus, because no image borrowed from the physical world can give more nearly the idea of it. But it is only an image. In reality, life is of the psychological order, and it is of the essence of the psychical to enfold a confused plurality of interpenetrating terms. In space, and in space only, is distinct multiplicity possible: a point is absolutely external to another point. But pure and empty unity, also, is met with only in space; it is that of a mathematical point. Abstract unity and abstract multiplicity are determinations of space or categories of the understanding, whichever we will, spatiality and intellectuality being molded on each other. But what is of psychical nature cannot entirely correspond with space, nor enter perfectly into the categories of the understanding. Is my own person, at a given moment, one or manifold? If I declare it one, inner voices arise and protest--those of the sensations, feelings, ideas, among which my individuality is distributed. But, if I make it distinctly manifold, my consciousness rebels quite as strongly; it affirms that my sensations, my feelings, my thoughts are abstractions which I effect on myself, and that each of my states implies all the others. I am then (we must adopt the language of the understanding, since only the understanding has a language) a unity that is multiple and a multiplicity that is one;[91] but unity and multiplicity are only views of my personality taken by an understanding that directs its categories at me; I enter neither into one nor into the other nor into both at once, although both, united, may give a fair imitation of the mutual interpenetration and continuity that I find at the base of my own self. Such is my inner life, and such also is life in general. While, in its contact with matter, life is comparable to an impulsion or an impetus, regarded in itself it is an immensity of potentiality, a mutual encroachment of thousands and thousands of tendencies which nevertheless are "thousands and thousands" only when once regarded as outside of each other, that is, when spatialized. Contact with matter is what determines this dissociation. Matter divides actually what was but potentially manifold; and, in this sense, individuation is in part the work of matter, in part the result of life's own inclination. Thus, a poetic sentiment, which bursts into distinct verses, lines and words, may be said to have already contained this multiplicity of individuated elements, and yet, in fact, it is the materiality of language that creates it. But through the words, lines and verses runs the simple inspiration which is the whole poem. So, among the dissociated individuals, one life goes on moving: everywhere the tendency to individualize is opposed and at the same time completed by an antagonistic and complementary tendency to associate, as if the manifold unity of life, drawn in the direction of multiplicity, made so much the more effort to withdraw itself on to itself. A part is no sooner detached than it tends to reunite itself, if not to all the rest, at least to what is nearest to it. Hence, throughout the whole realm of life, a balancing between individuation and association. Individuals join together into a society; but the society, as soon as formed, tends to melt the associated individuals into a new organism, so as to become itself an individual, able in its turn to be part and parcel of a new association. At the lowest degree of the scale of organisms we already find veritable associations, microbial colonies, and in these associations, according to a recent work, a tendency to individuate by the constitution of a nucleus.[92] The same tendency is met with again at a higher stage, in the protophytes, which, once having quitted the parent cell by way of division, remain united to each other by the gelatinous substance that surrounds them--also in those protozoa which begin by mingling their pseudopodia and end by welding themselves together. The "colonial" theory of the genesis of higher organisms is well known. The protozoa, consisting of one single cell, are supposed to have formed, by assemblage, aggregates which, relating themselves together in their turn, have given rise to aggregates of aggregates; so organisms more and more complicated, and also more and more differentiated, are born of the association of organisms barely differentiated and elementary.[93] In this extreme form, the theory is open to grave objections: more and more the idea seems to be gaining ground, that polyzoism is an exceptional and abnormal fact.[94] But it is none the less true that things happen _as if_ every higher organism was born of an association of cells that have subdivided the work between them. Very probably it is not the cells that have made the individual by means of association; it is rather the individual that has made the cells by means of dissociation.[95] But this itself reveals to us, in the genesis of the individual, a haunting of the social form, as if the individual could develop only on the condition that its substance should be split up into elements having themselves an appearance of individuality and united among themselves by an appearance of sociality. There are numerous cases in which nature seems to hesitate between the two forms, and to ask herself if she shall make a society or an individual. The slightest push is enough, then, to make the balance weigh on one side or the other. If we take an infusorian sufficiently large, such as the Stentor, and cut it into two halves each containing a part of the nucleus, each of the two halves will generate an independent Stentor; but if we divide it incompletely, so that a protoplasmic communication is left between the two halves, we shall see them execute, each from its side, corresponding movements: so that in this case it is enough that a thread should be maintained or cut in order that life should affect the social or the individual form. Thus, in rudimentary organisms consisting of a single cell, we already find that the apparent individuality of the whole is the composition of an _undefined_ number of potential individualities potentially associated. But, from top to bottom of the series of living beings, the same law is manifested. And it is this that we express when we say that unity and multiplicity are categories of inert matter, that the vital impetus is neither pure unity nor pure multiplicity, and that if the matter to which it communicates itself compels it to choose one of the two, its choice will never be definitive: it will leap from one to the other indefinitely. The evolution of life in the double direction of individuality and association has therefore nothing accidental about it: it is due to the very nature of life. Essential also is the progress to reflexion. If our analysis is correct, it is consciousness, or rather supra-consciousness, that is at the origin of life. Consciousness, or supra-consciousness, is the name for the rocket whose extinguished fragments fall back as matter; consciousness, again, is the name for that which subsists of the rocket itself, passing through the fragments and lighting them up into organisms. But this consciousness, which is a _need of creation_, is made manifest to itself only where creation is possible. It lies dormant when life is condemned to automatism; it wakens as soon as the possibility of a choice is restored. That is why, in organisms unprovided with a nervous system, it varies according to the power of locomotion and of deformation of which the organism disposes. And in animals with a nervous system, it is proportional to the complexity of the switchboard on which the paths called sensory and the paths called motor intersect--that is, of the brain. How must this solidarity between the organism and consciousness be understood? We will not dwell here on a point that we have dealt with in former works. Let us merely recall that a theory such as that according to which consciousness is attached to certain neurons, and is thrown off from their work like a phosphorescence, may be accepted by the scientist for the detail of analysis; it is a convenient mode of expression. But it is nothing else. In reality, a living being is a centre of action. It represents a certain sum of contingency entering into the world, that is to say, a certain quantity of possible action--a quantity variable with individuals and especially with species. The nervous system of an animal marks out the flexible lines on which its action will run (although the potential energy is accumulated in the muscles rather than in the nervous system itself); its nervous centres indicate, by their development and their configuration, the more or less extended choice it will have among more or less numerous and complicated actions. Now, since the awakening of consciousness in a living creature is the more complete, the greater the latitude of choice allowed to it and the larger the amount of action bestowed upon it, it is clear that the development of consciousness will appear to be dependent on that of the nervous centres. On the other hand, every state of consciousness being, in one aspect of it, a question put to the motor activity and even the beginning of a reply, there is no psychical event that does not imply the entry into play of the cortical mechanisms. Everything seems, therefore, to happen _as if_ consciousness sprang from the brain, and _as if_ the detail of conscious activity were modeled on that of the cerebral activity. In reality, consciousness does not spring from the brain; but brain and consciousness correspond because equally they measure, the one by the complexity of its structure and the other by the intensity of its awareness, the quantity of _choice_ that the living being has at its disposal. It is precisely because a cerebral state expresses simply what there is of nascent action in the corresponding psychical state, that the psychical state tells us more than the cerebral state. The consciousness of a living being, as we have tried to prove elsewhere, is inseparable from its brain in the sense in which a sharp knife is inseparable from its edge: the brain is the sharp edge by which consciousness cuts into the compact tissue of events, but the brain is no more coextensive with consciousness than the edge is with the knife. Thus, from the fact that two brains, like that of the ape and that of the man, are very much alike, we cannot conclude that the corresponding consciousnesses are comparable or commensurable. But the two brains may perhaps be less alike than we suppose. How can we help being struck by the fact that, while man is capable of learning any sort of exercise, of constructing any sort of object, in short of acquiring any kind of motor habit whatsoever, the faculty of combining new movements is strictly limited in the best-endowed animal, even in the ape? The cerebral characteristic of man is there. The human brain is made, like every brain, to set up motor mechanisms and to enable us to choose among them, at any instant, the one we shall put in motion by the pull of a trigger. But it differs from other brains in this, that the number of mechanisms it can set up, and consequently the choice that it gives as to which among them shall be released, is unlimited. Now, from the limited to the unlimited there is all the distance between the closed and the open. It is not a difference of degree, but of kind. Radical therefore, also, is the difference between animal consciousness, even the most intelligent, and human consciousness. For consciousness corresponds exactly to the living being's power of choice; it is coextensive with the fringe of possible action that surrounds the real action: consciousness is synonymous with invention and with freedom. Now, in the animal, invention is never anything but a variation on the theme of routine. Shut up in the habits of the species, it succeeds, no doubt, in enlarging them by its individual initiative; but it escapes automatism only for an instant, for just the time to create a new automatism. The gates of its prison close as soon as they are opened; by pulling at its chain it succeeds only in stretching it. With man, consciousness breaks the chain. In man, and in man alone, it sets itself free. The whole history of life until man has been that of the effort of consciousness to raise matter, and of the more or less complete overwhelming of consciousness by the matter which has fallen back on it. The enterprise was paradoxical, if, indeed, we may speak here otherwise than by metaphor of enterprise and of effort. It was to create with matter, which is necessity itself, an instrument of freedom, to make a machine which should triumph over mechanism, and to use the determinism of nature to pass through the meshes of the net which this very determinism had spread. But, everywhere except in man, consciousness has let itself be caught in the net whose meshes it tried to pass through: it has remained the captive of the mechanisms it has set up. Automatism, which it tries to draw in the direction of freedom, winds about it and drags it down. It has not the power to escape, because the energy it has provided for acts is almost all employed in maintaining the infinitely subtle and essentially unstable equilibrium into which it has brought matter. But man not only maintains his machine, he succeeds in using it as he pleases. Doubtless he owes this to the superiority of his brain, which enables him to build an unlimited number of motor mechanisms, to oppose new habits to the old ones unceasingly, and, by dividing automatism against itself, to rule it. He owes it to his language, which furnishes consciousness with an immaterial body in which to incarnate itself and thus exempts it from dwelling exclusively on material bodies, whose flux would soon drag it along and finally swallow it up. He owes it to social life, which stores and preserves efforts as language stores thought, fixes thereby a mean level to which individuals must raise themselves at the outset, and by this initial stimulation prevents the average man from slumbering and drives the superior man to mount still higher. But our brain, our society, and our language are only the external and various signs of one and the same internal superiority. They tell, each after its manner, the unique, exceptional success which life has won at a given moment of its evolution. They express the difference of kind, and not only of degree, which separates man from the rest of the animal world. They let us guess that, while at the end of the vast spring-board from which life has taken its leap, all the others have stepped down, finding the cord stretched too high, man alone has cleared the obstacle. It is in this quite special sense that man is the "term" and the "end" of evolution. Life, we have said, transcends finality as it transcends the other categories. It is essentially a current sent through matter, drawing from it what it can. There has not, therefore, properly speaking, been any project or plan. On the other hand, it is abundantly evident that the rest of nature is not for the sake of man: we struggle like the other species, we have struggled against other species. Moreover, if the evolution of life had encountered other accidents in its course, if, thereby, the current of life had been otherwise divided, we should have been, physically and morally, far different from what we are. For these various reasons it would be wrong to regard humanity, such as we have it before our eyes, as pre-figured in the evolutionary movement. It cannot even be said to be the outcome of the whole of evolution, for evolution has been accomplished on several divergent lines, and while the human species is at the end of one of them, other lines have been followed with other species at their end. It is in a quite different sense that we hold humanity to be the ground of evolution. From our point of view, life appears in its entirety as an immense wave which, starting from a centre, spreads outwards, and which on almost the whole of its circumference is stopped and converted into oscillation: at one single point the obstacle has been forced, the impulsion has passed freely. It is this freedom that the human form registers. Everywhere but in man, consciousness has had to come to a stand; in man alone it has kept on its way. Man, then, continues the vital movement indefinitely, although he does not draw along with him all that life carries in itself. On other lines of evolution there have traveled other tendencies which life implied, and of which, since everything interpenetrates, man has, doubtless, kept something, but of which he has kept only very little. _It is as if a vague and formless being, whom we may call, as we will_, man _or_ superman, _had sought to realize himself, and had succeeded only by abandoning a part of himself on the way_. The losses are represented by the rest of the animal world, and even by the vegetable world, at least in what these have that is positive and above the accidents of evolution. From this point of view, the discordances of which nature offers us the spectacle are singularly weakened. The organized world as a whole becomes as the soil on which was to grow either man himself or a being who morally must resemble him. The animals, however distant they may be from our species, however hostile to it, have none the less been useful traveling companions, on whom consciousness has unloaded whatever encumbrances it was dragging along, and who have enabled it to rise, in man, to heights from which it sees an unlimited horizon open again before it. It is true that it has not only abandoned cumbersome baggage on the way; it has also had to give up valuable goods. Consciousness, in man, is pre-eminently intellect. It might have been, it ought, so it seems, to have been also intuition. Intuition and intellect represent two opposite directions of the work of consciousness: intuition goes in the very direction of life, intellect goes in the inverse direction, and thus finds itself naturally in accordance with the movement of matter. A complete and perfect humanity would be that in which these two forms of conscious activity should attain their full development. And, between this humanity and ours, we may conceive any number of possible stages, corresponding to all the degrees imaginable of intelligence and of intuition. In this lies the part of contingency in the mental structure of our species. A different evolution might have led to a humanity either more intellectual still or more intuitive. In the humanity of which we are a part, intuition is, in fact, almost completely sacrificed to intellect. It seems that to conquer matter, and to reconquer its own self, consciousness has had to exhaust the best part of its power. This conquest, in the particular conditions in which it has been accomplished, has required that consciousness should adapt itself to the habits of matter and concentrate all its attention on them, in fact determine itself more especially as intellect. Intuition is there, however, but vague and above all discontinuous. It is a lamp almost extinguished, which only glimmers now and then, for a few moments at most. But it glimmers wherever a vital interest is at stake. On our personality, on our liberty, on the place we occupy in the whole of nature, on our origin and perhaps also on our destiny, it throws a light feeble and vacillating, but which none the less pierces the darkness of the night in which the intellect leaves us. These fleeting intuitions, which light up their object only at distant intervals, philosophy ought to seize, first to sustain them, then to expand them and so unite them together. The more it advances in this work, the more will it perceive that intuition is mind itself, and, in a certain sense, life itself: the intellect has been cut out of it by a process resembling that which has generated matter. Thus is revealed the unity of the spiritual life. We recognize it only when we place ourselves in intuition in order to go from intuition to the intellect, for from the intellect we shall never pass to intuition. Philosophy introduces us thus into the spiritual life. And it shows us at the same time the relation of the life of the spirit to that of the body. The great error of the doctrines on the spirit has been the idea that by isolating the spiritual life from all the rest, by suspending it in space as high as possible above the earth, they were placing it beyond attack, as if they were not thereby simply exposing it to be taken as an effect of mirage! Certainly they are right to listen to conscience when conscience affirms human freedom; but the intellect is there, which says that the cause determines its effect, that like conditions like, that all is repeated and that all is given. They are right to believe in the absolute reality of the person and in his independence toward matter; but science is there, which shows the interdependence of conscious life and cerebral activity. They are right to attribute to man a privileged place in nature, to hold that the distance is infinite between the animal and man; but the history of life is there, which makes us witness the genesis of species by gradual transformation, and seems thus to reintegrate man in animality. When a strong instinct assures the probability of personal survival, they are right not to close their ears to its voice; but if there exist "souls" capable of an independent life, whence do they come? When, how and why do they enter into this body which we see arise, quite naturally, from a mixed cell derived from the bodies of its two parents? All these questions will remain unanswered, a philosophy of intuition will be a negation of science, will be sooner or later swept away by science, if it does not resolve to see the life of the body just where it really is, on the road that leads to the life of the spirit. But it will then no longer have to do with definite living beings. Life as a whole, from the initial impulsion that thrust it into the world, will appear as a wave which rises, and which is opposed by the descending movement of matter. On the greater part of its surface, at different heights, the current is converted by matter into a vortex. At one point alone it passes freely, dragging with it the obstacle which will weigh on its progress but will not stop it. At this point is humanity; it is our privileged situation. On the other hand, this rising wave is consciousness, and, like all consciousness, it includes potentialities without number which interpenetrate and to which consequently neither the category of unity nor that of multiplicity is appropriate, made as they both are for inert matter. The matter that it bears along with it, and in the interstices of which it inserts itself, alone can divide it into distinct individualities. On flows the current, running through human generations, subdividing itself into individuals. This subdivision was vaguely indicated in it, but could not have been made clear without matter. Thus souls are continually being created, which, nevertheless, in a certain sense pre-existed. They are nothing else than the little rills into which the great river of life divides itself, flowing through the body of humanity. The movement of the stream is distinct from the river bed, although it must adopt its winding course. Consciousness is distinct from the organism it animates, although it must undergo its vicissitudes. As the possible actions which a state of consciousness indicates are at every instant beginning to be carried out in the nervous centres, the brain underlines at every instant the motor indications of the state of consciousness; but the interdependency of consciousness and brain is limited to this; the destiny of consciousness is not bound up on that account with the destiny of cerebral matter. Finally, consciousness is essentially free; it is freedom itself; but it cannot pass through matter without settling on it, without adapting itself to it: this adaptation is what we call intellectuality; and the intellect, turning itself back toward active, that is to say free, consciousness, naturally makes it enter into the conceptual forms into which it is accustomed to see matter fit. It will therefore always perceive freedom in the form of necessity; it will always neglect the part of novelty or of creation inherent in the free act; it will always substitute for action itself an imitation artificial, approximative, obtained by compounding the old with the old and the same with the same. Thus, to the eyes of a philosophy that attempts to reabsorb intellect in intuition, many difficulties vanish or become light. But such a doctrine does not only facilitate speculation; it gives us also more power to act and to live. For, with it, we feel ourselves no longer isolated in humanity, humanity no longer seems isolated in the nature that it dominates. As the smallest grain of dust is bound up with our entire solar system, drawn along with it in that undivided movement of descent which is materiality itself, so all organized beings, from the humblest to the highest, from the first origins of life to the time in which we are, and in all places as in all times, do but evidence a single impulsion, the inverse of the movement of matter, and in itself indivisible. All the living hold together, and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity, in space and in time, is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an overwhelming charge able to beat down every resistance and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 78: We have developed this point in _Matière et mémoire_, chaps. ii. and iii., notably pp. 78-80 and 169-186.] [Footnote 79: Faraday, _A Speculation concerning Electric Conduction_ (_Philosophical Magazine_, 3d. series, vol. xxiv.).] [Footnote 80: Our comparison does no more than develop the content of the term [Greek: logos], as Plotinus understands it. For while the [Greek: logos] of this philosopher is a generating and informing power, an aspect or a fragment of the [Greek: psychê], on the other hand Plotinus sometimes speaks of it as of a _discourse_. More generally, the relation that we establish in the present chapter between "extension" and "detension" resembles in some aspects that which Plotinus supposes (some developments of which must have inspired M. Ravaisson) when he makes extension not indeed an inversion of original Being, but an enfeeblement of its essence, one of the last stages of the procession, (see in particular, _Enn._ IV. iii. 9-11, and III. vi. 17-18). Yet ancient philosophy did not see what consequences would result from this for mathematics, for Plotinus, like Plato, erected mathematical essences into absolute realities. Above all, it suffered itself to be deceived by the purely superficial analogy of duration with extension. It treated the one as it treated the other, regarding change as a degradation of immutability, the sensible as a fall from the intelligible. Whence, as we shall show in the next chapter, a philosophy which fails to recognize the real function and scope of the intellect.] [Footnote 81: Bastian, _The Brain as an Organ of the Mind_, pp. 214-16.] [Footnote 82: We have dwelt on this point in a former work. See the _Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience_, Paris, 1889, pp. 155-160.] [Footnote 83: _Op. cit._ chaps. i. and ii. _passim_.] [Footnote 84: Cf. especially the profound studies of M. Ed. Le Roy in the _Revue de métaph. et de morale_.] [Footnote 85: _Matière et mémoire_, chapters iii. and iv.] [Footnote 86: See in particular, _Phys._, iv. 215 a 2; v. 230 b 12; viii. 255 a 2; and _De Caelo_, iv. 1-5; ii. 296 b 27; iv. 308 a 34.] [Footnote 87: _De Caelo_, iv. 310 a 34 [Greek: to d' eis ton autou topon pherethai hekaoton to eis to autou eidos esti pheresthai].] [Footnote 88: On these differences of quality see the work of Duhem, _L'�volution de la mécanique_, Paris, 1905, pp. 197 ff.] [Footnote 89: Boltzmann, _Vorlesungen über Gastheorie_, Leipzig, 1898, pp. 253 ff.] [Footnote 90: In a book rich in facts and in ideas (_La Dissolution opposée a l'évolution_, Paris, 1899), M. André Lalande shows us everything going towards death, in spite of the momentary resistance which organisms seem to oppose.--But, even from the side of unorganized matter, have we the right to extend to the entire universe considerations drawn from the present state of our solar system? Beside the worlds which are dying, there are without doubt worlds that are being born. On the other hand, in the organized world, the death of individuals does not seem at all like a diminution of "life in general," or like a necessity which life submits to reluctantly. As has been more than once remarked, life has never made an effort to prolong indefinitely the existence of the individual, although on so many other points it has made so many successful efforts. Everything is _as if_ this death had been willed, or at least accepted, for the greater progress of life in general.] [Footnote 91: We have dwelt on this point in an article entitled "Introduction à la métaphysique" (_Revue de métaphysique et de morale_, January, 1903, pp. 1-25).] [Footnote 92: Cf. a paper written (in Russian) by Serkovski, and reviewed in the _Année biologique_, 1898, p. 317.] [Footnote 93: Ed. Perrier, _Les Colonies animales_, Paris, 1897 (2nd edition).] [Footnote 94: Delage, _L'Hérédité_, 2nd edition, Paris, 1903, p. 97. Cf. by the same author, "La Conception polyzoïque des êtres" (_Revue scientifique_, 1896, pp. 641-653).] [Footnote 95: This is the theory maintained by Kunstler, Delage, Sedgwick, Labbé, etc. Its development, with bibliographical references, will be found in the work of Busquet, _Les êtres vivants_, Paris, 1899.] CHAPTER IV THE CINEMATOGRAPHICAL MECHANISM OF THOUGHT AND THE MECHANISTIC ILLUSION--A GLANCE AT THE HISTORY OF SYSTEMS[96]--REAL BECOMING AND FALSE EVOLUTIONISM. It remains for us to examine in themselves two theoretical illusions which we have frequently met with before, but whose consequences rather than principle have hitherto concerned us. Such is the object of the present chapter. It will afford us the opportunity of removing certain objections, of clearing up certain misunderstandings, and, above all, of defining more precisely, by contrasting it with others, a philosophy which sees in duration the very stuff of reality. Matter or mind, reality has appeared to us as a perpetual becoming. It makes itself or it unmakes itself, but it is never something made. Such is the intuition that we have of mind when we draw aside the veil which is interposed between our consciousness and ourselves. This, also, is what our intellect and senses themselves would show us of matter, if they could obtain a direct and disinterested idea of it. But, preoccupied before everything with the necessities of action, the intellect, like the senses, is limited to taking, at intervals, views that are instantaneous and by that very fact immobile of the becoming of matter. Consciousness, being in its turn formed on the intellect, sees clearly of the inner life what is already made, and only feels confusedly the making. Thus, we pluck out of duration those moments that interest us, and that we have gathered along its course. These alone we retain. And we are right in so doing, while action only is in question. But when, in _speculating_ on the _nature_ of the real, we go on regarding it as our practical interest requires us to regard it, we become unable to perceive the true evolution, the radical becoming. Of becoming we perceive only states, of duration only instants, and even when we speak of duration and of becoming, it is of another thing that we are thinking. Such is the most striking of the two illusions we wish to examine. It consists in supposing that we can think the unstable by means of the stable, the moving by means of the immobile. The other illusion is near akin to the first. It has the same origin, being also due to the fact that we import into speculation a procedure made for practice. All action aims at getting something that we feel the want of, or at creating something that does not yet exist. In this very special sense, it fills a void, and goes from the empty to the full, from an absence to a presence, from the unreal to the real. Now the unreality which is here in question is purely relative to the direction in which our attention is engaged, for we are immersed in realities and cannot pass out of them; only, if the present reality is not the one we are seeking, we speak of the _absence_ of this sought-for reality wherever we find the _presence_ of another. We thus express what we have as a function of what we want. This is quite legitimate in the sphere of action. But, whether we will or no, we keep to this way of speaking, and also of thinking, when we speculate on the nature of things independently of the interest they have for us. Thus arises the second of the two illusions. We propose to examine this first. It is due, like the other, to the static habits that our intellect contracts when it prepares our action on things. Just as we pass through the immobile to go to the moving, so we make use of the void in order to think the full. We have met with this illusion already in dealing with the fundamental problem of knowledge. The question, we then said, is to know why there is order, and not disorder, in things. But the question has meaning only if we suppose that disorder, understood as an absence of order, is possible, or imaginable, or conceivable. Now, it is only order that is real; but, as order can take two forms, and as the presence of the one may be said to consist in the absence of the other, we speak of disorder whenever we have before us that one of the two orders for which we are not looking. The idea of disorder is then entirely practical. It corresponds to the disappointment of a certain expectation, and it does not denote the absence of all order, but only the presence of that order which does not offer us actual interest. So that whenever we try to deny order completely, absolutely, we find that we are leaping from one kind of order to the other indefinitely, and that the supposed suppression of the one and the other implies the presence of the two. Indeed, if we go on, and persist in shutting our eyes to this movement of the mind and all it involves, we are no longer dealing with an idea; all that is left of disorder is a word. Thus the problem of knowledge is complicated, and possibly made insoluble, by the idea that order fills a void and that its actual presence is superposed on its virtual absence. We go from absence to presence, from the void to the full, in virtue of the fundamental illusion of our understanding. That is the error of which we noticed one consequence in our last chapter. As we then anticipated, we must come to close quarters with this error, and finally grapple with it. We must face it in itself, in the radically false conception which it implies of negation, of the void and of the nought.[97] Philosophers have paid little attention to the idea of the nought. And yet it is often the hidden spring, the invisible mover of philosophical thinking. From the first awakening of reflection, it is this that pushes to the fore, right under the eyes of consciousness, the torturing problems, the questions that we cannot gaze at without feeling giddy and bewildered. I have no sooner commenced to philosophize than I ask myself why I exist; and when I take account of the intimate connection in which I stand to the rest of the universe, the difficulty is only pushed back, for I want to know why the universe exists; and if I refer the universe to a Principle immanent or transcendent that supports it or creates it, my thought rests on this principle only a few moments, for the same problem recurs, this time in its full breadth and generality: Whence comes it, and how can it be understood, that anything exists? Even here, in the present work, when matter has been defined as a kind of descent, this descent as the interruption of a rise, this rise itself as a growth, when finally a Principle of creation has been put at the base of things, the same question springs up: How--why does this principle exist rather than nothing? Now, if I push these questions aside and go straight to what hides behind them, this is what I find:--Existence appears to me like a conquest over nought. I say to myself that there might be, that indeed there ought to be, nothing, and I then wonder that there is something. Or I represent all reality extended on nothing as on a carpet: at first was nothing, and being has come by superaddition to it. Or, yet again, if something has always existed, nothing must always have served as its substratum or receptacle, and is therefore eternally prior. A glass may have always been full, but the liquid it contains nevertheless fills a void. In the same way, being may have always been there, but the nought which is filled, and, as it were, stopped up by it, pre-exists for it none the less, if not in fact at least in right. In short, I cannot get rid of the idea that the full is an embroidery on the canvas of the void, that being is superimposed on nothing, and that in the idea of "nothing" there is _less_ than in that of "something." Hence all the mystery. It is necessary that this mystery should be cleared up. It is more especially necessary, if we put duration and free choice at the base of things. For the disdain of metaphysics for all reality that endures comes precisely from this, that it reaches being only by passing through "not-being," and that an existence which endures seems to it not strong enough to conquer non-existence and itself posit itself. It is for this reason especially that it is inclined to endow true being with a _logical_, and not a psychological nor a physical existence. For the nature of a purely logical existence is such that it seems to be self-sufficient and to posit itself by the effect alone of the force immanent in truth. If I ask myself why bodies or minds exist rather than nothing, I find no answer; but that a logical principle, such as A=A, should have the power of creating itself, triumphing over the nought throughout eternity, seems to me natural. A circle drawn with chalk on a blackboard is a thing which needs explanation: this entirely physical existence has not by itself wherewith to vanquish non-existence. But the "logical essence" of the circle, that is to say, the possibility of drawing it according to a certain law--in short, its definition--is a thing which appears to me eternal: it has neither place nor date; for nowhere, at no moment, has the drawing of a circle begun to be possible. Suppose, then, that the principle on which all things rest, and which all things manifest possesses an existence of the same nature as that of the definition of the circle, or as that of the axiom A=A: the mystery of existence vanishes, for the being that is at the base of everything posits itself then in eternity, as logic itself does. True, it will cost us rather a heavy sacrifice: if the principle of all things exists after the manner of a logical axiom or of a mathematical definition, the things themselves must go forth from this principle like the applications of an axiom or the consequences of a definition, and there will no longer be place, either in the things nor in their principle, for efficient causality understood in the sense of a free choice. Such are precisely the conclusions of a doctrine like that of Spinoza, or even that of Leibniz, and such indeed has been their genesis. Now, if we could prove that the idea of the nought, in the sense in which we take it when we oppose it to that of existence, is a pseudo-idea, the problems that are raised around it would become pseudo-problems. The hypothesis of an absolute that acts freely, that in an eminent sense endures, would no longer raise up intellectual prejudices. The road would be cleared for a philosophy more nearly approaching intuition, and which would no longer ask the same sacrifices of common sense. Let us then see what we are thinking about when we speak of "Nothing." To represent "Nothing," we must either imagine it or conceive it. Let us examine what this image or this idea may be. First, the image. I am going to close my eyes, stop my ears, extinguish one by one the sensations that come to me from the outer world. Now it is done; all my perceptions vanish, the material universe sinks into silence and the night.--I subsist, however, and cannot help myself subsisting. I am still there, with the organic sensations which come to me from the surface and from the interior of my body, with the recollections which my past perceptions have left behind them--nay, with the impression, most positive and full, of the void I have just made about me. How can I suppress all this? How eliminate myself? I can even, it may be, blot out and forget my recollections up to my immediate past; but at least I keep the consciousness of my present reduced to its extremest poverty, that is to say, of the actual state of my body. I will try, however, to do away even with this consciousness itself. I will reduce more and more the sensations my body sends in to me: now they are almost gone; now they are gone, they have disappeared in the night where all things else have already died away. But no! At the very instant that my consciousness is extinguished, another consciousness lights up--or rather, it was already alight: it had arisen the instant before, in order to witness the extinction of the first; for the first could disappear only for another and in the presence of another. I see myself annihilated only if I have already resuscitated myself by an act which is positive, however involuntary and unconscious. So, do what I will, I am always perceiving something, either from without or from within. When I no longer know anything of external objects, it is because I have taken refuge in the consciousness that I have of myself. If I abolish this inner self, its very abolition becomes an object for an imaginary self which now perceives as an external object the self that is dying away. Be it external or internal, some object there always is that my imagination is representing. My imagination, it is true, can go from one to the other, I can by turns imagine a nought of external perception or a nought of internal perception, but not both at once, for the absence of one consists, at bottom, in the exclusive presence of the other. But, from the fact that two relative noughts are imaginable in turn, we wrongly conclude that they are imaginable together: a conclusion the absurdity of which must be obvious, for we cannot imagine a nought without perceiving, at least confusedly, that we are imagining it, consequently that we are acting, that we are thinking, and therefore that something still subsists. The image, then, properly so called, of a suppression of everything is never formed by thought. The effort by which we strive to create this image simply ends in making us swing to and fro between the vision of an outer and that of an inner reality. In this coming and going of our mind between the without and the within, there is a point, at equal distance from both, in which it seems to us that we no longer perceive the one, and that we do not yet perceive the other: it is there that the image of "Nothing" is formed. In reality, we then perceive both, having reached the point where the two terms come together, and the image of Nothing, so defined, is an image full of things, an image that includes at once that of the subject and that of the object and, besides, a perpetual leaping from one to the other and the refusal ever to come to rest finally on either. Evidently this is not the nothing that we can oppose to being, and put before or beneath being, for it already includes existence in general. But we shall be told that, if the representation of Nothing, visible or latent, enters into the reasonings of philosophers, it is not as an image, but as an idea. It may be agreed that we do not imagine the annihilation of everything, but it will be claimed that we can conceive it. We conceive a polygon with a thousand sides, said Descartes, although we do not see it in imagination: it is enough that we can clearly represent the possibility of constructing it. So with the idea of the annihilation of everything. Nothing simpler, it will be said, than the procedure by which we construct the idea of it. There is, in fact, not a single object of our experience that we cannot suppose annihilated. Extend this annihilation of a first object to a second, then to a third, and so on as long as you please: the nought is the limit toward which the operation tends. And the nought so defined is the annihilation of everything. That is the theory. We need only consider it in this form to see the absurdity it involves. An idea constructed by the mind is an idea only if its pieces are capable of coexisting; it is reduced to a mere word if the elements that we bring together to compose it are driven away as fast as we assemble them. When I have defined the circle, I easily represent a black or a white circle, a circle in cardboard, iron, or brass, a transparent or an opaque circle--but not a square circle, because the law of the generation of the circle excludes the possibility of defining this figure with straight lines. So my mind can represent any existing thing whatever as annihilated;--but if the annihilation of anything by the mind is an operation whose mechanism implies that it works on a part of the whole, and not on the whole itself, then the extension of such an operation to the totality of things becomes self-contradictory and absurd, and the idea of an annihilation of everything presents the same character as that of a square circle: it is not an idea, it is only a word. So let us examine more closely the mechanism of the operation. In fact, the object suppressed is either external or internal: it is a thing or it is a state of consciousness. Let us consider the first case. I annihilate in thought an external object: in the place where it was, there is no longer anything.--No longer anything of that object, of course, but another object has taken its place: there is no absolute void in nature. But admit that an absolute void is possible: it is not of that void that I am thinking when I say that the object, once annihilated, leaves its place unoccupied; for by the hypothesis it is a _place_, that is a void limited by precise outlines, or, in other words, a kind of _thing_. The void of which I speak, therefore, is, at bottom, only the absence of some definite object, which was here at first, is now elsewhere and, in so far as it is no longer in its former place, leaves behind it, so to speak, the void of itself. A being unendowed with memory or prevision would not use the words "void" or "nought;" he would express only what is and what is perceived; now, what is, and what is perceived, is the _presence_ of one thing or of another, never the _absence_ of anything. There is absence only for a being capable of remembering and expecting. He remembered an object, and perhaps expected to encounter it again; he finds another, and he expresses the disappointment of his expectation (an expectation sprung from recollection) by saying that he no longer finds anything, that he encounters "nothing." Even if he did not expect to encounter the object, it is a possible expectation of it, it is still the falsification of his eventual expectation that he expresses by saying that the object is no longer where it was. What he perceives in reality, what he will succeed in effectively thinking of, is the presence of the old object in a new place or that of a new object in the old place; the rest, all that is expressed negatively by such words as "nought" or the "void," is not so much thought as feeling, or, to speak more exactly, it is the tinge that feeling gives to thought. The idea of annihilation or of partial nothingness is therefore formed here in the course of the substitution of one thing for another, whenever this substitution is thought by a mind that would prefer to keep the old thing in the place of the new, or at least conceives this preference as possible. The idea implies on the subjective side a preference, on the objective side a substitution, and is nothing else but a combination of, or rather an interference between, this feeling of preference and this idea of substitution. Such is the mechanism of the operation by which our mind annihilates an object and succeeds in representing in the external world a partial nought. Let us now see how it represents it within itself. We find in ourselves phenomena that are produced, and not phenomena that are not produced. I experience a sensation or an emotion, I conceive an idea, I form a resolution: my consciousness perceives these facts, which are so many _presences_, and there is no moment in which facts of this kind are not present to me. I can, no doubt, interrupt by thought the course of my inner life; I may suppose that I sleep without dreaming or that I have ceased to exist; but at the very instant when I make this supposition, I conceive myself, I imagine myself watching over my slumber or surviving my annihilation, and I give up perceiving myself from within only by taking refuge in the perception of myself from without. That is to say that here again the full always succeeds the full, and that an intelligence that was only intelligence, that had neither regret nor desire, whose movement was governed by the movement of its object, could not even conceive an absence or a void. The conception of a void arises here when consciousness, lagging behind itself, remains attached to the recollection of an old state when another state is already present. It is only a comparison between what is and what could or ought to be, between the full and the full. In a word, whether it be a void of matter or a void of consciousness, _the representation of the void is always a representation which is full and which resolves itself on analysis into two positive elements: the idea, distinct or confused, of a substitution, and the feeling, experienced or imagined, of a desire or a regret_. It follows from this double analysis that the idea of the absolute nought, in the sense of the annihilation of everything, is a self-destructive idea, a pseudo-idea, a mere word. If suppressing a thing consists in replacing it by another, if thinking the absence of one thing is only possible by the more or less explicit representation of the presence of some other thing, if, in short, annihilation signifies before anything else substitution, the idea of an "annihilation of everything" is as absurd as that of a square circle. The absurdity is not obvious, because there exists no particular object that cannot be supposed annihilated; then, from the fact that there is nothing to prevent each thing in turn being suppressed in thought, we conclude that it is possible to suppose them suppressed altogether. We do not see that suppressing each thing in turn consists precisely in replacing it in proportion and degree by another, and therefore that the suppression of absolutely everything implies a downright contradiction in terms, since the operation consists in destroying the very condition that makes the operation possible. But the illusion is tenacious. Though suppressing one thing consists _in fact_ in substituting another for it, we do not conclude, we are unwilling to conclude, that the annihilation of a thing _in thought_ implies the substitution in thought of a new thing for the old. We agree that a thing is always replaced by another thing, and even that our mind cannot think the disappearance of an object, external or internal, without thinking--under an indeterminate and confused form, it is true--that another object is substituted for it. But we add that the representation of a disappearance is that of a phenomenon that is produced in space or at least in time, that consequently it still implies the calling up of an image, and that it is precisely here that we have to free ourselves from the imagination in order to appeal to the pure understanding. "Let us therefore no longer speak," it will be said, "of disappearance or annihilation; these are physical operations. Let us no longer represent the object A as annihilated or absent. Let us say simply that we think it "non-existent." To annihilate it is to act on it in time and perhaps also in space; it is to accept, consequently, the condition of spatial and temporal existence, to accept the universal connection that binds an object to all others, and prevents it from disappearing without being at the same time replaced. But we can free ourselves from these conditions; all that is necessary is that by an effort of abstraction we should call up the idea of the object A by itself, that we should agree first to consider it as existing, and then, by a stroke of the intellectual pen, blot out the clause. The object will then be, by our decree, non-existent." Very well, let us strike out the clause. We must not suppose that our pen-stroke is self-sufficient--that it can be isolated from the rest of things. We shall see that it carries with it, whether we will or no, all that we tried to abstract from. Let us compare together the two ideas--the object A supposed to exist, and the same object supposed "non-existent." The idea of the object A, supposed existent, is the representation pure and simple of the object A, for we cannot represent an object without attributing to it, by the very fact of representing it, a certain reality. Between thinking an object and thinking it existent, there is absolutely no difference. Kant has put this point in clear light in his criticism of the ontological argument. Then, what is it to think the object A non-existent? To represent it non-existent cannot consist in withdrawing from the idea of the object A the idea of the attribute "existence," since, I repeat, the representation of the existence of the object is inseparable from the representation of the object, and indeed is one with it. To represent the object A non-existent can only consist, therefore, in _adding_ something to the idea of this object: we add to it, in fact, the idea of an _exclusion_ of this particular object by actual reality in general. To think the object A as non-existent is first to think the object and consequently to think it existent; it is then to think that another reality, with which it is incompatible, supplants it. Only, it is useless to represent this latter reality explicitly; we are not concerned with what it is; it is enough for us to know that it drives out the object A, which alone is of interest to us. That is why we think of the expulsion rather than of the cause which expels. But this cause is none the less present to the mind; it is there in the implicit state, that which expels being inseparable from the expulsion as the hand which drives the pen is inseparable from the pen-stroke. The act by which we declare an object unreal therefore posits the existence of the real in general. In other words, to represent an object as unreal cannot consist in depriving it of every kind of existence, since the representation of an object is necessarily that of the object existing. Such an act consists simply in declaring that the existence attached by our mind to the object, and inseparable from its representation, is an existence wholly ideal--that of a mere _possible_. But the "ideality" of an object, and the "simple possibility" of an object, have meaning only in relation to a reality that drives into the region of the ideal, or of the merely possible, the object which is incompatible with it. Suppose the stronger and more substantial existence annihilated: it is the attenuated and weaker existence of the merely possible that becomes the reality itself, and you will no longer be representing the object, then, as non-existent. In other words, and however strange our assertion may seem, _there is_ more, _and not_ less, _in the idea of an object conceived as "not existing" than in the idea of this same object conceived as "existing"; for the idea of the object "not existing" is necessarily the idea of the object "existing" with, in addition, the representation of an exclusion of this object by the actual reality taken in block_. But it will be claimed that our idea of the non-existent is not yet sufficiently cut loose from every imaginative element, that it is not negative enough. "No matter," we shall be told, "though the unreality of a thing consist in its exclusion by other things; we want to know nothing about that. Are we not free to direct our attention where we please and how we please? Well then, after having called up the idea of an object, and thereby, if you will have it so, supposed it existent, we shall merely couple to our affirmation a 'not,' and that will be enough to make us think it non-existent. This is an operation entirely intellectual, independent of what happens outside the mind. So let us think of anything or let us think of the totality of things, and then write in the margin of our thought the 'not,' which prescribes the rejection of what it contains: we annihilate everything mentally by the mere fact of decreeing its annihilation."--Here we have it! The very root of all the difficulties and errors with which we are confronted is to be found in the power ascribed here to negation. We represent negation as exactly symmetrical with affirmation. We imagine that negation, like affirmation, is self-sufficient. So that negation, like affirmation, would have the power of creating ideas, with this sole difference that they would be negative ideas. By affirming one thing, and then another, and so on _ad infinitum_, I form the idea of "All;" so, by denying one thing and then other things, finally by denying All, I arrive at the idea of Nothing.--But it is just this assimilation which is arbitrary. We fail to see that while affirmation is a complete act of the mind, which can succeed in building up an idea, negation is but the half of an intellectual act, of which the other half is understood, or rather put off to an indefinite future. We fail to see that while affirmation is a purely intellectual act, there enters into negation an element which is not intellectual, and that it is precisely to the intrusion of this foreign element that negation owes its specific character. To begin with the second point, let us note that to deny always consists in setting aside a possible affirmation.[98] Negation is only an attitude taken by the mind toward an eventual affirmation. When I say, "This table is black," I am speaking of the table; I have seen it black, and my judgment expresses what I have seen. But if I say, "This table is not white," I surely do not express something I have perceived, for I have seen black, and not an absence of white. It is therefore, at bottom, not on the table itself that I bring this judgment to bear, but rather on the judgment that would declare the table white. I judge a judgment and not the table. The proposition, "This table is not white," implies that you might believe it white, that you did believe it such, or that I was going to believe it such. I warn you or myself that this judgment is to be replaced by another (which, it is true, I leave undetermined). Thus, while affirmation bears directly on the thing, negation aims at the thing only indirectly, through an interposed affirmation. An affirmative proposition expresses a judgment on an object; a negative proposition expresses a judgment on a judgment. _Negation, therefore, differs from affirmation properly so called in that it is an affirmation of the second degree: it affirms something of an affirmation which itself affirms something of an object._ But it follows at once from this that negation is not the work of pure mind, I should say of a mind placed before objects and concerned with them alone. When we deny, we give a lesson to others, or it may be to ourselves. We take to task an interlocutor, real or possible, whom we find mistaken and whom we put on his guard. He was affirming something: we tell him he ought to affirm something else (though without specifying the affirmation which must be substituted). There is no longer then, simply, a person and an object; there is, in face of the object, a person speaking to a person, opposing him and aiding him at the same time; there is a beginning of society. Negation aims at some one, and not only, like a purely intellectual operation, at some thing. It is of a pedagogical and social nature. It sets straight or rather warns, the person warned and set straight being possibly, by a kind of doubling, the very person that speaks. So much for the second point; now for the first. We said that negation is but the half of an intellectual act, of which the other half is left indeterminate. If I pronounce the negative proposition, "This table is not white," I mean that you ought to substitute for your judgment, "The table is white," another judgment. I give you an admonition, and the admonition refers to the necessity of a substitution. As to what you ought to substitute for your affirmation, I tell you nothing, it is true. This may be because I do not know the color of the table; but it is also, it is indeed even more, because the white color is that alone that interests us for the moment, so that I only need to tell you that some other color will have to be substituted for white, without having to say which. A negative judgment is therefore really one which indicates a need of substituting for an affirmative judgment another affirmative judgment, the nature of which, however, is not specified, sometimes because it is not known, more often because it fails to offer any actual interest, the attention bearing only on the substance of the first. Thus, whenever I add a "not" to an affirmation, whenever I deny, I perform two very definite acts: (1) I interest myself in what one of my fellow-men affirms, or in what he was going to say, or in what might have been said by another _Me_, whom I anticipate; (2) I announce that some other affirmation, whose content I do not specify, will have to be substituted for the one I find before me. Now, in neither of these two acts is there anything but affirmation. The _sui generis_ character of negation is due to superimposing the first of these acts upon the second. It is in vain, then, that we attribute to negation the power of creating ideas _sui generis_, symmetrical with those that affirmation creates, and directed in a contrary sense. No idea will come forth from negation, for it has no other content than that of the affirmative judgment which it judges. To be more precise, let us consider an existential, instead of an attributive, judgment. If I say, "The object A does not exist," I mean by that, first, that we might believe that the object A exists: how, indeed, can we think of the object A without thinking it existing, and, once again, what difference can there be between the idea of the object A existing and the idea pure and simple of the object A? Therefore, merely by saying "The object A," I attribute to it some kind of existence, though it be that of a mere _possible_, that is to say, of a pure idea. And consequently, in the judgment "The object A is not," there is at first an affirmation such as "The object A has been," or "The object A will be," or, more generally, "The object A exists at least as a mere _possible_." Now, when I add the two words "is not," I can only mean that if we go further, if we erect the possible object into a real object, we shall be mistaken, and that the possible of which I am speaking is excluded from the actual reality as incompatible with it. Judgments that posit the non-existence of a thing are therefore judgments that formulate a contrast between the possible and the actual (that is, between two kinds of _existence_, one thought and the other found), where a person, real or imaginary, wrongly believes that a certain possible is realized. Instead of this possible, there is a reality that differs from it and rejects it: the negative judgment expresses this contrast, but it expresses the contrast in an intentionally incomplete form, because it is addressed to a person who is supposed to be interested exclusively in the possible that is indicated, and is not concerned to know by what kind of reality the possible is replaced. The expression of the substitution is therefore bound to be cut short. Instead of affirming that a second term is substituted for the first, the attention which was originally directed to the first term will be kept fixed upon it, and upon it alone. And, without going beyond the first, we shall implicitly affirm that a second term replaces it in saying that the first "is not." We shall thus judge a judgment instead of judging a thing. We shall warn others or warn ourselves of a possible error instead of supplying positive information. Suppress every intention of this kind, give knowledge back its exclusively scientific or philosophical character, suppose in other words that reality comes itself to inscribe itself on a mind that cares only for things and is not interested in persons: we shall affirm that such or such a thing is, we shall never affirm that a thing is not. How comes it, then, that affirmation and negation are so persistently put on the same level and endowed with an equal objectivity? How comes it that we have so much difficulty in recognizing that negation is subjective, artificially cut short, relative to the human mind and still more to the social life? The reason is, no doubt, that _both_ negation and affirmation are expressed in propositions, and that _any_ proposition, being formed of _words_, which symbolize _concepts_, is something relative to social life and to the human intellect. Whether I say "The ground is damp" or "The ground is not damp," in both cases the terms "ground" and "damp" are concepts more or less artificially created by the mind of man--extracted, by his free initiative, from the continuity of experience. In both cases the concepts are represented by the same conventional words. In both cases we can say indeed that the proposition aims at a social and pedagogical end, since the first would propagate a truth as the second would prevent an error. From this point of view, which is that of formal logic, to affirm and to deny are indeed two mutually symmetrical acts, of which the first establishes a relation of agreement and the second a relation of disagreement between a subject and an attribute. But how do we fail to see that the symmetry is altogether external and the likeness superficial? Suppose language fallen into disuse, society dissolved, every intellectual initiative, every faculty of self-reflection and of self-judgment atrophied in man: the dampness of the ground will subsist none the less, capable of inscribing itself automatically in sensation and of sending a vague idea to the deadened intellect. The intellect will still affirm, in implicit terms. And consequently, neither distinct concepts, nor words, nor the desire of spreading the truth, nor that of bettering oneself, are of the very essence of the affirmation. But this passive intelligence, mechanically keeping step with experience, neither anticipating nor following the course of the real, would have no wish to deny. It could not receive an imprint of negation; for, once again, that which exists may come to be recorded, but the non-existence of the non-existing cannot. For such an intellect to reach the point of denying, it must awake from its torpor, formulate the disappointment of a real or possible expectation, correct an actual or possible error--in short, propose to teach others or to teach itself. It is rather difficult to perceive this in the example we have chosen, but the example is indeed the more instructive and the argument the more cogent on that account. If dampness is able automatically to come and record itself, it is the same, it will be said, with non-dampness; for the dry as well as the damp can give impressions to sense, which will transmit them, as more or less distinct ideas, to the intelligence. In this sense the negation of dampness is as objective a thing, as purely intellectual, as remote from every pedagogical intention, as affirmation.--But let us look at it more closely: we shall see that the negative proposition, "The ground is not damp," and the affirmative proposition, "The ground is dry," have entirely different contents. The second implies that we know the dry, that we have experienced the specific sensations, tactile or visual for example, that are at the base of this idea. The first requires nothing of the sort; it could equally well have been formulated by an intelligent fish, who had never perceived anything but the wet. It would be necessary, it is true, that this fish should have risen to the distinction between the real and the possible, and that he should care to anticipate the error of his fellow-fishes, who doubtless consider as alone possible the condition of wetness in which they actually live. Keep strictly to the terms of the proposition, "The ground is not damp," and you will find that it means two things: (1) that one might believe that the ground is damp, (2) that the dampness is replaced in fact by a certain quality _x_. This quality is left indeterminate, either because we have no positive knowledge of it, or because it has no actual interest for the person to whom the negation is addressed. To deny, therefore, always consists in presenting in an abridged form a system of two affirmations: the one determinate, which applies to a certain _possible_; the other indeterminate, referring to the unknown or indifferent reality that supplants this possibility. The second affirmation is virtually contained in the judgment we apply to the first, a judgment which is negation itself. And what gives negation its subjective character is precisely this, that in the discovery of a replacement it takes account only of the replaced, and is not concerned with what replaces. The replaced exists only as a conception of the mind. It is necessary, in order to continue to see it, and consequently in order to speak of it, to turn our back on the reality, which flows from the past to the present, advancing from behind. It is this that we do when we deny. We discover the change, or more generally the substitution, as a traveller would see the course of his carriage if he looked out behind, and only knew at each moment the point at which he had ceased to be; he could never determine his actual position except by relation to that which he had just quitted, instead of grasping it in itself. To sum up, for a mind which should follow purely and simply the thread of experience, there would be no void, no nought, even relative or partial, no possible negation. Such a mind would see facts succeed facts, states succeed states, things succeed things. What it would note at each moment would be things existing, states appearing, events happening. It would live in the actual, and, if it were capable of judging, it would never affirm anything except the existence of the present. Endow this mind with memory, and especially with the desire to dwell on the past; give it the faculty of dissociating and of distinguishing: it will no longer only note the present state of the passing reality; it will represent the passing as a change, and therefore as a contrast between what has been and what is. And as there is no essential difference between a past that we remember and a past that we imagine, it will quickly rise to the idea of the "possible" in general. It will thus be shunted on to the siding of negation. And especially it will be at the point of representing a disappearance. But it will not yet have reached it. To represent that a thing has disappeared, it is not enough to perceive a contrast between the past and the present; it is necessary besides to turn our back on the present, to dwell on the past, and to think the contrast of the past with the present in terms of the past only, without letting the present appear in it. The idea of annihilation is therefore not a pure idea; it implies that we regret the past or that we conceive it as regrettable, that we have some reason to linger over it. The idea arises when the phenomenon of substitution is cut in two by a mind which considers only the first half, because that alone interests it. Suppress all interest, all feeling, and there is nothing left but the reality that flows, together with the knowledge ever renewed that it impresses on us of its present state. From annihilation to negation, which is a more general operation, there is now only a step. All that is necessary is to represent the contrast of what is, not only with what has been, but also with all that might have been. And we must express this contrast as a function of what might have been, and not of what is; we must affirm the existence of the actual while looking only at the possible. The formula we thus obtain no longer expresses merely a disappointment of the individual; it is made to correct or guard against an error, which is rather supposed to be the error of another. In this sense, negation has a pedagogical and social character. Now, once negation is formulated, it presents an aspect symmetrical with that of affirmation; if affirmation affirms an objective reality, it seems that negation must affirm a non-reality equally objective, and, so to say, equally real. In which we are both right and wrong: wrong, because negation cannot be objectified, in so far as it is negative; right, however, in that the negation of a thing implies the latent affirmation of its replacement by something else, which we systematically leave on one side. But the negative form of negation benefits by the affirmation at the bottom of it. Bestriding the positive solid reality to which it is attached, this phantom objectifies itself. Thus is formed the idea of the void or of a partial nought, a thing being supposed to be replaced, not by another thing, but by a void which it leaves, that is, by the negation of itself. Now, as this operation works on anything whatever, we suppose it performed on each thing in turn, and finally on all things in block. We thus obtain the idea of absolute Nothing. If now we analyze this idea of Nothing, we find that it is, at bottom, the idea of Everything, together with a movement of the mind that keeps jumping from one thing to another, refuses to stand still, and concentrates all its attention on this refusal by never determining its actual position except by relation to that which it has just left. It is therefore an idea eminently comprehensive and full, as full and comprehensive as the idea of _All_, to which it is very closely akin. How then can the idea of Nought be opposed to that of All? Is it not plain that this is to oppose the full to the full, and that the question, "Why does something exist?" is consequently without meaning, a pseudo-problem raised about a pseudo-idea? Yet we must say once more why this phantom of a problem haunts the mind with such obstinacy. In vain do we show that in the idea of an "annihilation of the real" there is only the image of all realities expelling one another endlessly, in a circle; in vain do we add that the idea of non-existence is only that of the expulsion of an imponderable existence, or a "merely possible" existence, by a more substantial existence which would then be the true reality; in vain do we find in the _sui generis_ form of negation an element which is not intellectual--negation being the judgment of a judgment, an admonition given to some one else or to oneself, so that it is absurd to attribute to negation the power of creating ideas of a new kind, viz. ideas without content;--in spite of all, the conviction persists that before things, or at least under things, there is "Nothing." If we seek the reason of this fact, we shall find it precisely in the feeling, in the social and, so to speak, practical element, that gives its specific form to negation. The greatest philosophic difficulties arise, as we have said, from the fact that the forms of human action venture outside of their proper sphere. We are made in order to act as much as, and more than, in order to think--or rather, when we follow the bent of our nature, it is in order to act that we think. It is therefore no wonder that the habits of action give their tone to those of thought, and that our mind always perceives things in the same order in which we are accustomed to picture them when we propose to act on them. Now, it is unquestionable, as we remarked above, that every human action has its starting-point in a dissatisfaction, and thereby in a feeling of absence. We should not act if we did not set before ourselves an end, and we seek a thing only because we feel the lack of it. Our action proceeds thus from "nothing" to "something," and its very essence is to embroider "something" on the canvas of "nothing." The truth is that the "nothing" concerned here is the absence not so much of a thing as of a utility. If I bring a visitor into a room that I have not yet furnished, I say to him that "there is nothing in it." Yet I know the room is full of air; but, as we do not sit on air, the room truly contains nothing that at this moment, for the visitor and for myself, counts for anything. In a general way, human work consists in creating utility; and, as long as the work is not done, there is "nothing"--nothing that we want. Our life is thus spent in filling voids, which our intellect conceives under the influence, by no means intellectual, of desire and of regret, under the pressure of vital necessities; and if we mean by void an absence of utility and not of things, we may say, in this quite relative sense, that we are constantly going from the void to the full: such is the direction which our action takes. Our speculation cannot help doing the same; and, naturally, it passes from the relative sense to the absolute sense, since it is exercised on things themselves and not on the utility they have for us. Thus is implanted in us the idea that reality fills a void, and that Nothing, conceived as an absence of everything, pre-exists before all things in right, if not in fact. It is this illusion that we have tried to remove by showing that the idea of Nothing, if we try to see in it that of an annihilation of all things, is self-destructive and reduced to a mere word; and that if, on the contrary, it is truly an idea, then we find in it as much matter as in the idea of All. * * * * * This long analysis has been necessary to show that _a self-sufficient reality is not necessarily a reality foreign to duration_. If we pass (consciously or unconsciously) through the idea of the nought in order to reach that of being, the being to which we come is a logical or mathematical essence, therefore non-temporal. And, consequently, a static conception of the real is forced on us: everything appears given once for all, in eternity. But we must accustom ourselves to think being directly, without making a detour, without first appealing to the phantom of the nought which interposes itself between it and us. We must strive to see in order to see, and no longer to see in order to act. Then the Absolute is revealed very near us and, in a certain measure, in us. It is of psychological and not of mathematical nor logical essence. It lives with us. Like us, but in certain aspects infinitely more concentrated and more gathered up in itself, it _endures_. But do we ever think true duration? Here again a direct taking possession is necessary. It is no use trying to approach duration: we must install ourselves within it straight away. This is what the intellect generally refuses to do, accustomed as it is to think the moving by means of the unmovable. The function of the intellect is to preside over actions. Now, in action, it is the result that interests us; the means matter little provided the end is attained. Thence it comes that we are altogether bent on the end to be realized, generally trusting ourselves to it in order that the idea may become an act; and thence it comes also that only the goal where our activity will rest is pictured explicitly to our mind: the movements constituting the action itself either elude our consciousness or reach it only confusedly. Let us consider a very simple act, like that of lifting the arm. Where should we be if we had to imagine beforehand all the elementary contractions and tensions this act involves, or even to perceive them, one by one, as they are accomplished? But the mind is carried immediately to the end, that is to say, to the schematic and simplified vision of the act supposed accomplished. Then, if no antagonistic idea neutralizes the effect of the first idea, the appropriate movements come of themselves to fill out the plan, drawn in some way by the void of its gaps. The intellect, then, only represents to the activity ends to attain, that is to say, points of rest. And, from one end attained to another end attained, from one rest to another rest, our activity is carried by a series of leaps, during which our consciousness is turned away as much as possible from the movement going on, to regard only the anticipated image of the movement accomplished. Now, in order that it may represent as unmovable the result of the act which is being accomplished, the intellect must perceive, as also unmovable, the surroundings in which this result is being framed. Our activity is fitted into the material world. If matter appeared to us as a perpetual flowing, we should assign no termination to any of our actions. We should feel each of them dissolve as fast as it was accomplished, and we should not anticipate an ever-fleeting future. In order that our activity may leap from an _act_ to an _act_, it is necessary that matter should pass from a _state_ to a _state_, for it is only into a state of the material world that action can fit a result, so as to be accomplished. But is it thus that matter presents itself? _A priori_ we may presume that our perception manages to apprehend matter with this bias. Sensory organs and motor organs are in fact coördinated with each other. Now, the first symbolize our faculty of perceiving, as the second our faculty of acting. The organism thus evidences, in a visible and tangible form, the perfect accord of perception and action. So if our activity always aims at a _result_ into which it is momentarily fitted, our perception must retain of the material world, at every moment, only a _state_ in which it is provisionally placed. This is the most natural hypothesis. And it is easy to see that experience confirms it. From our first glance at the world, before we even make our _bodies_ in it, we distinguish _qualities_. Color succeeds to color, sound to sound, resistance to resistance, etc. Each of these qualities, taken separately, is a state that seems to persist as such, immovable until another replaces it. Yet each of these qualities resolves itself, on analysis, into an enormous number of elementary movements. Whether we see in it vibrations or whether we represent it in any other way, one fact is certain, it is that every quality is change. In vain, moreover, shall we seek beneath the change the thing which changes: it is always provisionally, and in order to satisfy our imagination, that we attach the movement to a mobile. The mobile flies for ever before the pursuit of science, which is concerned with mobility alone. In the smallest discernible fraction of a second, in the almost instantaneous perception of a sensible quality, there may be trillions of oscillations which repeat themselves. The permanence of a sensible quality consists in this repetition of movements, as the persistence of life consists in a series of palpitations. The primal function of perception is precisely to grasp a series of elementary changes under the form of a quality or of a simple state, by a work of condensation. The greater the power of acting bestowed upon an animal species, the more numerous, probably, are the elementary changes that its faculty of perceiving concentrates into one of its instants. And the progress must be continuous, in nature, from the beings that vibrate almost in unison with the oscillations of the ether, up to those that embrace trillions of these oscillations in the shortest of their simple perceptions. The first feel hardly anything but movements; the others perceive quality. The first are almost caught up in the running-gear of things; the others react, and the tension of their faculty of acting is probably proportional to the concentration of their faculty of perceiving. The progress goes on even in humanity itself. A man is so much the more a "man of action" as he can embrace in a glance a greater number of events: he who perceives successive events one by one will allow himself to be led by them; he who grasps them as a whole will dominate them. In short, the qualities of matter are so many stable views that we take of its instability. Now, in the continuity of sensible qualities we mark off the boundaries of bodies. Each of these bodies really changes at every moment. In the first place, it resolves itself into a group of qualities, and every quality, as we said, consists of a succession of elementary movements. But, even if we regard the quality as a stable state, the body is still unstable in that it changes qualities without ceasing. The body pre-eminently--that which we are most justified in isolating within the continuity of matter, because it constitutes a relatively closed system--is the living body; it is, moreover, for it that we cut out the others within the whole. Now, life is an evolution. We concentrate a period of this evolution in a stable view which we call a form, and, when the change has become considerable enough to overcome the fortunate inertia of our perception, we say that the body has changed its form. But in reality the body is changing form at every moment; or rather, there is no form, since form is immobile and the reality is movement. What is real is the continual _change of_ form: _form is only a snapshot view of a transition_. Therefore, here again, our perception manages to solidify into discontinuous images the fluid continuity of the real. When the successive images do not differ from each other too much, we consider them all as the waxing and waning of a single _mean_ image, or as the deformation of this image in different directions. And to this mean we really allude when we speak of the _essence_ of a thing, or of the thing itself. Finally things, once constituted, show on the surface, by their changes of situation, the profound changes that are being accomplished within the Whole. We say then that they _act_ on one another. This action appears to us, no doubt, in the form of movement. But from the mobility of the movement we turn away as much as we can; what interests us is, as we said above, the unmovable plan of the movement rather than the movement itself. Is it a simple movement? We ask ourselves _where_ it is going. It is by its direction, that is to say, by the position of its provisional end, that we represent it at every moment. Is it a complex movement? We would know above all _what_ is going on, _what_ the movement is doing--in other words, the _result_ obtained or the presiding _intention_. Examine closely what is in your mind when you speak of an action in course of accomplishment. The idea of change is there, I am willing to grant, but it is hidden in the penumbra. In the full light is the motionless plan of the act supposed accomplished. It is by this, and by this only, that the complex act is distinguished and defined. We should be very much embarrassed if we had to imagine the movements inherent in the actions of eating, drinking, fighting, etc. It is enough for us to know, in a general and indefinite way, that all these acts are movements. Once that side of the matter has been settled, we simply seek to represent the _general plan_ of each of these complex movements, that is to say the _motionless design_ that underlies them. Here again knowledge bears on a state rather than on a change. It is therefore the same with this third case as with the others. Whether the movement be qualitative or evolutionary or extensive, the mind manages to take stable views of the instability. And thence the mind derives, as we have just shown, three kinds of representations: (1) qualities, (2) forms of essences, (3) acts. To these three ways of seeing correspond three categories of words: _adjectives_, _substantives_, and _verbs_, which are the primordial elements of language. Adjectives and substantives therefore symbolize _states_. But the verb itself, if we keep to the clear part of the idea it calls up, hardly expresses anything else. * * * * * Now, if we try to characterize more precisely our natural attitude towards Becoming, this is what we find. Becoming is infinitely varied. That which goes from yellow to green is not like that which goes from green to blue: they are different _qualitative_ movements. That which goes from flower to fruit is not like that which goes from larva to nymph and from nymph to perfect insect: they are different _evolutionary_ movements. The action of eating or of drinking is not like the action of fighting: they are different _extensive_ movements. And these three kinds of movement themselves--qualitative, evolutionary, extensive--differ profoundly. The trick of our perception, like that of our intelligence, like that of our language, consists in extracting from these profoundly different becomings the single representation of becoming _in general_, undefined becoming, a mere abstraction which by itself says nothing and of which, indeed, it is very rarely that we think. To this idea, always the same, and always obscure or unconscious, we then join, in each particular case, one or several clear images that represent _states_ and which serve to distinguish all becomings from each other. It is this composition of a specified and definite state with change general and undefined that we substitute for the specific change. An infinite multiplicity of becomings variously colored, so to speak, passes before our eyes: we manage so that we see only differences of color, that is to say, differences of state, beneath which there is supposed to flow, hidden from our view, a becoming always and everywhere the same, invariably colorless. Suppose we wish to portray on a screen a living picture, such as the marching past of a regiment. There is one way in which it might first occur to us to do it. That would be to cut out jointed figures representing the soldiers, to give to each of them the movement of marching, a movement varying from individual to individual although common to the human species, and to throw the whole on the screen. We should need to spend on this little game an enormous amount of work, and even then we should obtain but a very poor result: how could it, at its best, reproduce the suppleness and variety of life? Now, there is another way of proceeding, more easy and at the same time more effective. It is to take a series of snapshots of the passing regiment and to throw these instantaneous views on the screen, so that they replace each other very rapidly. This is what the cinematograph does. With photographs, each of which represents the regiment in a fixed attitude, it reconstitutes the mobility of the regiment marching. It is true that if we had to do with photographs alone, however much we might look at them, we should never see them animated: with immobility set beside immobility, even endlessly, we could never make movement. In order that the pictures may be animated, there must be movement somewhere. The movement does indeed exist here; it is in the apparatus. It is because the film of the cinematograph unrolls, bringing in turn the different photographs of the scene to continue each other, that each actor of the scene recovers his mobility; he strings all his successive attitudes on the invisible movement of the film. The process then consists in extracting from all the movements peculiar to all the figures an impersonal movement abstract and simple, _movement in general_, so to speak: we put this into the apparatus, and we reconstitute the individuality of each particular movement by combining this nameless movement with the personal attitudes. Such is the contrivance of the cinematograph. And such is also that of our knowledge. Instead of attaching ourselves to the inner becoming of things, we place ourselves outside them in order to recompose their becoming artificially. We take snapshots, as it were, of the passing reality, and, as these are characteristic of the reality, we have only to string them on a becoming, abstract, uniform and invisible, situated at the back of the apparatus of knowledge, in order to imitate what there is that is characteristic in this becoming itself. Perception, intellection, language so proceed in general. Whether we would think becoming, or express it, or even perceive it, we hardly do anything else than set going a kind of cinematograph inside us. We may therefore sum up what we have been saying in the conclusion that the _mechanism of our ordinary knowledge is of a cinematographical kind_. Of the altogether practical character of this operation there is no possible doubt. Each of our acts aims at a certain insertion of our will into the reality. There is, between our body and other bodies, an arrangement like that of the pieces of glass that compose a kaleidoscopic picture. Our activity goes from an arrangement to a rearrangement, each time no doubt giving the kaleidoscope a new shake, but not interesting itself in the shake, and seeing only the new picture. Our knowledge of the operation of nature must be exactly symmetrical, therefore, with the interest we take in our own operation. In this sense we may say, if we are not abusing this kind of illustration, that _the cinematographical character of our knowledge of things is due to the kaleidoscopic character of our adaptation to them_. The cinematographical method is therefore the only practical method, since it consists in making the general character of knowledge form itself on that of action, while expecting that the detail of each act should depend in its turn on that of knowledge. In order that action may always be enlightened, intelligence must always be present in it; but intelligence, in order thus to accompany the progress of activity and ensure its direction, must begin by adopting its rhythm. Action is discontinuous, like every pulsation of life; discontinuous, therefore, is knowledge. The mechanism of the faculty of knowing has been constructed on this plan. Essentially practical, can it be of use, such as it is, for speculation? Let us try with it to follow reality in its windings, and see what will happen. I take of the continuity of a particular becoming a series of views, which I connect together by "becoming in general." But of course I cannot stop there. What is not determinable is not representable: of "becoming in general" I have only a verbal knowledge. As the letter _x_ designates a certain unknown quantity, whatever it may be, so my "becoming in general," always the same, symbolizes here a certain transition of which I have taken some snapshots; of the transition itself it teaches me nothing. Let me then concentrate myself wholly on the transition, and, between any two snapshots, endeavor to realize what is going on. As I apply the same method, I obtain the same result; a third view merely slips in between the two others. I may begin again as often as I will, I may set views alongside of views for ever, I shall obtain nothing else. The application of the cinematographical method therefore leads to a perpetual recommencement, during which the mind, never able to satisfy itself and never finding where to rest, persuades itself, no doubt, that it imitates by its instability the very movement of the real. But though, by straining itself to the point of giddiness, it may end by giving itself the illusion of mobility, its operation has not advanced it a step, since it remains as far as ever from its goal. In order to advance with the moving reality, you must replace yourself within it. Install yourself within change, and you will grasp at once both change itself and the successive states in which _it might_ at any instant be immobilized. But with these successive states, perceived from without as real and no longer as potential immobilities, you will never reconstitute movement. Call them _qualities_, _forms_, _positions_, or _intentions_, as the case may be, multiply the number of them as you will, let the interval between two consecutive states be infinitely small: before the intervening movement you will always experience the disappointment of the child who tries by clapping his hands together to crush the smoke. The movement slips through the interval, because every attempt to reconstitute change out of states implies the absurd proposition, that movement is made of immobilities. Philosophy perceived this as soon as it opened its eyes. The arguments of Zeno of Elea, although formulated with a very different intention, have no other meaning. Take the flying arrow. At every moment, says Zeno, it is motionless, for it cannot have time to move, that is, to occupy at least two successive positions, unless at least two moments are allowed it. At a given moment, therefore, it is at rest at a given point. Motionless in each point of its course, it is motionless during all the time that it is moving. Yes, if we suppose that the arrow can ever _be_ in a point of its course. Yes again, if the arrow, which is moving, ever coincides with a position, which is motionless. But the arrow never _is_ in any point of its course. The most we can say is that it might be there, in this sense, that it passes there and might stop there. It is true that if it did stop there, it would be at rest there, and at this point it is no longer movement that we should have to do with. The truth is that if the arrow leaves the point A to fall down at the point B, its movement AB is as simple, as indecomposable, in so far as it is movement, as the tension of the bow that shoots it. As the shrapnel, bursting before it falls to the ground, covers the explosive zone with an indivisible danger, so the arrow which goes from A to B displays with a single stroke, although over a certain extent of duration, its indivisible mobility. Suppose an elastic stretched from A to B, could you divide its extension? The course of the arrow is this very extension; it is equally simple and equally undivided. It is a single and unique bound. You fix a point C in the interval passed, and say that at a certain moment the arrow was in C. If it had been there, it would have been stopped there, and you would no longer have had a flight from A to B, but _two_ flights, one from A to C and the other from C to B, with an interval of rest. A single movement is entirely, by the hypothesis, a movement between two stops; if there are intermediate stops, it is no longer a single movement. At bottom, the illusion arises from this, that the movement, _once effected_, has laid along its course a motionless trajectory on which we can count as many immobilities as we will. From this we conclude that the movement, _whilst being effected_, lays at each instant beneath it a position with which it coincides. We do not see that the trajectory is created in one stroke, although a certain time is required for it; and that though we can divide at will the trajectory once created, we cannot divide its creation, which is an act in progress and not a thing. To suppose that the moving body _is_ at a point of its course is to cut the course in two by a snip of the scissors at this point, and to substitute two trajectories for the single trajectory which we were first considering. It is to distinguish two successive acts where, by the hypothesis, there is only one. In short, it is to attribute to the course itself of the arrow everything that can be said of the interval that the arrow has traversed, that is to say, to admit _a priori_ the absurdity that movement coincides with immobility. We shall not dwell here on the three other arguments of Zeno. We have examined them elsewhere. It is enough to point out that they all consist in applying the movement to the line traversed, and supposing that what is true of the line is true of the movement. The line, for example, may be divided into as many parts as we wish, of any length that we wish, and it is always the same line. From this we conclude that we have the right to suppose the movement articulated as we wish, and that it is always the same movement. We thus obtain a series of absurdities that all express the same fundamental absurdity. But the possibility of applying the movement _to_ the line traversed exists only for an observer who keeping outside the movement and seeing at every instant the possibility of a stop, tries to reconstruct the real movement with these possible immobilities. The absurdity vanishes as soon as we adopt by thought the continuity of the real movement, a continuity of which every one of us is conscious whenever he lifts an arm or advances a step. We feel then indeed that the line passed over between two stops is described with a single indivisible stroke, and that we seek in vain to practice on the movement, which traces the line, divisions corresponding, each to each, with the divisions arbitrarily chosen of the line once it has been traced. The line traversed by the moving body lends itself to any kind of division, because it has no internal organization. But all movement is articulated inwardly. It is either an indivisible bound (which may occupy, nevertheless, a very long duration) or a series of indivisible bounds. Take the articulations of this movement into account, or give up speculating on its nature. When Achilles pursues the tortoise, each of his steps must be treated as indivisible, and so must each step of the tortoise. After a certain number of steps, Achilles will have overtaken the tortoise. There is nothing more simple. If you insist on dividing the two motions further, distinguish both on the one side and on the other, in the course of Achilles and in that of the tortoise, the _sub-multiples_ of the steps of each of them; but respect the natural articulations of the two courses. As long as you respect them, no difficulty will arise, because you will follow the indications of experience. But Zeno's device is to reconstruct the movement of Achilles according to a law arbitrarily chosen. Achilles with a first step is supposed to arrive at the point where the tortoise was, with a second step at the point which it has moved to while he was making the first, and so on. In this case, Achilles would always have a new step to take. But obviously, to overtake the tortoise, he goes about it in quite another way. The movement considered by Zeno would only be the equivalent of the movement of Achilles if we could treat the movement as we treat the interval passed through, decomposable and recomposable at will. Once you subscribe to this first absurdity, all the others follow.[99] Nothing would be easier, now, than to extend Zeno's argument to qualitative becoming and to evolutionary becoming. We should find the same contradictions in these. That the child can become a youth, ripen to maturity and decline to old age, we understand when we consider that vital evolution is here the reality itself. Infancy, adolescence, maturity, old age, are mere views of the mind, _possible stops_ imagined by us, from without, along the continuity of a progress. On the contrary, let childhood, adolescence, maturity and old age be given as integral parts of the evolution, they become _real stops_, and we can no longer conceive how evolution is possible, for rests placed beside rests will never be equivalent to a movement. How, with what is made, can we reconstitute what is being made? How, for instance, from childhood once posited as a _thing_, shall we pass to adolescence, when, by the hypothesis, childhood only is given? If we look at it closely, we shall see that our habitual manner of speaking, which is fashioned after our habitual manner of thinking, leads us to actual logical dead-locks--dead-locks to which we allow ourselves to be led without anxiety, because we feel confusedly that we can always get out of them if we like: all that we have to do, in fact, is to give up the cinematographical habits of our intellect. When we say "The child becomes a man," let us take care not to fathom too deeply the literal meaning of the expression, or we shall find that, when we posit the subject "child," the attribute "man" does not yet apply to it, and that, when we express the attribute "man," it applies no more to the subject "child." The reality, which is the _transition_ from childhood to manhood, has slipped between our fingers. We have only the imaginary stops "child" and "man," and we are very near to saying that one of these stops _is_ the other, just as the arrow of Zeno _is_, according to that philosopher, at all the points of the course. The truth is that if language here were molded on reality, we should not say "The child becomes the man," but "There is becoming from the child to the man." In the first proposition, "becomes" is a verb of indeterminate meaning, intended to mask the absurdity into which we fall when we attribute the state "man" to the subject "child." It behaves in much the same way as the movement, always the same, of the cinematographical film, a movement hidden in the apparatus and whose function it is to superpose the successive pictures on one another in order to imitate the movement of the real object. In the second proposition, "becoming" is a subject. It comes to the front. It is the reality itself; childhood and manhood are then only possible stops, mere views of the mind; we now have to do with the objective movement itself, and no longer with its cinematographical imitation. But the first manner of expression is alone conformable to our habits of language. We must, in order to adopt the second, escape from the cinematographical mechanism of thought. We must make complete abstraction of this mechanism, if we wish to get rid at one stroke of the theoretical absurdities that the question of movement raises. All is obscure, all is contradictory when we try, with states, to build up a transition. The obscurity is cleared up, the contradiction vanishes, as soon as we place ourselves along the transition, in order to distinguish states in it by making cross cuts therein in thought. The reason is that there is _more_ in the transition than the series of states, that is to say, the possible cuts--_more_ in the movement than the series of positions, that is to say, the possible stops. Only, the first way of looking at things is conformable to the processes of the human mind; the second requires, on the contrary, that we reverse the bent of our intellectual habits. No wonder, then, if philosophy at first recoiled before such an effort. The Greeks trusted to nature, trusted the natural propensity of the mind, trusted language above all, in so far as it naturally externalizes thought. Rather than lay blame on the attitude of thought and language toward the course of things, they preferred to pronounce the course of things itself to be wrong. Such, indeed, was the sentence passed by the philosophers of the Eleatic school. And they passed it without any reservation whatever. As becoming shocks the habits of thought and fits ill into the molds of language, they declared it unreal. In spatial movement and in change in general they saw only pure illusion. This conclusion could be softened down without changing the premisses, by saying that the reality changes, but that it _ought not_ to change. Experience confronts us with becoming: that is _sensible_ reality. But the _intelligible_ reality, that which _ought_ to be, is more real still, and that reality does not change. Beneath the qualitative becoming, beneath the evolutionary becoming, beneath the extensive becoming, the mind must seek that which defies change, the definable quality, the form or essence, the end. Such was the fundamental principle of the philosophy which developed throughout the classic age, the philosophy of Forms, or, to use a term more akin to the Greek, the philosophy of Ideas. The word [Greek: eidos], which we translate here by "Idea," has, in fact, this threefold meaning. It denotes (1) the quality, (2) the form or essence, (3) the end or _design_ (in the sense of _intention_) of the act being performed, that is to say, at bottom, the _design_ (in the sense of _drawing_) of the act supposed accomplished. _These three aspects are those of the adjective, substantive and verb, and correspond to the three essential categories of language._ After the explanations we have given above, we might, and perhaps we ought to, translate [Greek: eidos] by "view" or rather by "moment." For [Greek: eidos] is the stable view taken of the instability of things: the _quality_, which is a moment of becoming; the _form_, which is a moment of evolution; the _essence_, which is the mean form above and below which the other forms are arranged as alterations of the mean; finally, the intention or _mental design_ which presides over the action being accomplished, and which is nothing else, we said, than the _material design_, traced out and contemplated beforehand, of the action accomplished. To reduce things to Ideas is therefore to resolve becoming into its principal moments, each of these being, moreover, by the hypothesis, screened from the laws of time and, as it were, plucked out of eternity. That is to say that we end in the philosophy of Ideas when we apply the cinematographical mechanism of the intellect to the analysis of the real. But, when we put immutable Ideas at the base of the moving reality, a whole physics, a whole cosmology, a whole theology follows necessarily. We must insist on the point. Not that we mean to summarize in a few pages a philosophy so complex and so comprehensive as that of the Greeks. But, since we have described the cinematographical mechanism of the intellect, it is important that we should show to what idea of reality the play of this mechanism leads. It is the very idea, we believe, that we find in the ancient philosophy. The main lines of the doctrine that was developed from Plato to Plotinus, passing through Aristotle (and even, in a certain measure, through the Stoics), have nothing accidental, nothing contingent, nothing that must be regarded as a philosopher's fancy. They indicate the vision that a systematic intellect obtains of the universal becoming when regarding it by means of snapshots, taken at intervals, of its flowing. So that, even to-day, we shall philosophize in the manner of the Greeks, we shall rediscover, without needing to know them, such and such of their general conclusions, in the exact proportion that we trust in the cinematographical instinct of our thought. * * * * * We said there is _more_ in a movement than in the successive positions attributed to the moving object, _more_ in a becoming than in the forms passed through in turn, _more_ in the evolution of form than the forms assumed one after another. Philosophy can therefore derive terms of the second kind from those of the first, but not the first from the second: from the first terms speculation must take its start. But the intellect reverses the order of the two groups; and, on this point, ancient philosophy proceeds as the intellect does. It installs itself in the immutable, it posits only Ideas. Yet becoming exists: it is a fact. How, then, having posited immutability alone, shall we make change come forth from it? Not by the addition of anything, for, by the hypothesis, there exists nothing positive outside Ideas. It must therefore be by a diminution. So at the base of ancient philosophy lies necessarily this postulate: that there is more in the motionless than in the moving, and that we pass from immutability to becoming by way of diminution or attenuation. It is therefore something negative, or zero at most, that must be added to Ideas to obtain change. In that consists the Platonic "non-being," the Aristotelian "matter"--a metaphysical zero which, joined to the Idea, like the arithmetical zero to unity, multiplies it in space and time. By it the motionless and simple Idea is refracted into a movement spread out indefinitely. In right, there ought to be nothing but immutable Ideas, immutably fitted to each other. In fact, matter comes to add to them its void, and thereby lets loose the universal becoming. It is an elusive nothing, that creeps between the Ideas and creates endless agitation, eternal disquiet, like a suspicion insinuated between two loving hearts. Degrade the immutable Ideas: you obtain, by that alone, the perpetual flux of things. The Ideas or Forms are the whole of intelligible reality, that is to say, of truth, in that they represent, all together, the theoretical equilibrium of Being. As to sensible reality, it is a perpetual oscillation from one side to the other of this point of equilibrium. Hence, throughout the whole philosophy of Ideas there is a certain conception of duration, as also of the relation of time to eternity. He who installs himself in becoming sees in duration the very life of things, the fundamental reality. The Forms, which the mind isolates and stores up in concepts, are then only snapshots of the changing reality. They are moments gathered along the course of time; and, just because we have cut the thread that binds them to time, they no longer endure. They tend to withdraw into their own definition, that is to say, into the artificial reconstruction and symbolical expression which is their intellectual equivalent. They enter into eternity, if you will; but what is eternal in them is just what is unreal. On the contrary, if we treat becoming by the cinematographical method, the Forms are no longer snapshots taken of the change, they are its constitutive elements, they represent all that is positive in Becoming. Eternity no longer hovers over time, as an abstraction; it underlies time, as a reality. Such is exactly, on this point, the attitude of the philosophy of Forms or Ideas. It establishes between eternity and time the same relation as between a piece of gold and the small change--change so small that payment goes on for ever without the debt being paid off. The debt could be paid at once with the piece of gold. It is this that Plato expresses in his magnificent language when he says that God, unable to make the world eternal, gave it Time, "a moving image of eternity."[100] Hence also arises a certain conception of extension, which is at the base of the philosophy of Ideas, although it has not been so explicitly brought out. Let us imagine a mind placed alongside becoming, and adopting its movement. Each successive state, each quality, each form, in short, will be seen by it as a mere cut made by thought in the universal becoming. It will be found that form is essentially extended, inseparable as it is from the extensity of the becoming which has materialized it in the course of its flow. Every form thus occupies space, as it occupies time. But the philosophy of Ideas follows the inverse direction. It starts from the Form; it sees in the Form the very essence of reality. It does not take Form as a snapshot of becoming; it posits Forms in the eternal; of this motionless eternity, then, duration and becoming are supposed to be only the degradation. Form thus posited, independent of time, is then no longer what is found in a perception; it is a _concept_. And, as a reality of the conceptual order occupies no more of extension than it does of duration, the Forms must be stationed outside space as well as above time. Space and time have therefore necessarily, in ancient philosophy, the same origin and the same value. The same diminution of being is expressed both by extension in space and detention in time. Both of these are but the distance between what is and what ought to be. From the standpoint of ancient philosophy, space and time can be nothing but the field that an incomplete reality, or rather a reality that has gone astray from itself, needs in order to run in quest of itself. Only it must be admitted that the field is created as the hunting progresses, and that the hunting in some way deposits the field beneath it. Move an imaginary pendulum, a mere mathematical point, from its position of equilibrium: a perpetual oscillation is started, along which points are placed next to points, and moments succeed moments. The space and time which thus arise have no more "positivity" than the movement itself. They represent the remoteness of the position artificially given to the pendulum from its normal position, _what it lacks_ in order to regain its natural stability. Bring it back to its normal position: space, time and motion shrink to a mathematical point. Just so, human reasonings are drawn out into an endless chain, but are at once swallowed up in the truth seized by intuition, for their extension in space and time is only the distance, so to speak, between thought and truth.[101] So of extension and duration in relation to pure Forms or Ideas. The sensible forms are before us, ever about to recover their ideality, ever prevented by the matter they bear in them, that is to say, by their inner void, by the interval between what they are and what they ought to be. They are for ever on the point of recovering themselves, for ever occupied in losing themselves. An inflexible law condemns them, like the rock of Sisyphus, to fall back when they are almost touching the summit, and this law, which has projected them into space and time, is nothing other than the very constancy of their original insufficiency. The alternations of generation and decay, the evolutions ever beginning over and over again, the infinite repetition of the cycles of celestial spheres--this all represents merely a certain fundamental deficit, in which materiality consists. Fill up this deficit: at once you suppress space and time, that is to say, the endlessly renewed oscillations around a stable equilibrium always aimed at, never reached. Things re-enter into each other. What was extended in space is contracted into pure Form. And past, present, and future shrink into a single moment, which is eternity. This amounts to saying that physics is but logic spoiled. In this proposition the whole philosophy of Ideas is summarized. And in it also is the hidden principle of the philosophy that is innate in our understanding. If immutability is more than becoming, form is more than change, and it is by a veritable fall that the logical system of Ideas, rationally subordinated and coördinated among themselves, is scattered into a physical series of objects and events accidentally placed one after another. The generative idea of a poem is developed in thousands of imaginations which are materialized in phrases that spread themselves out in words. And the more we descend from the motionless idea, wound on itself, to the words that unwind it, the more room is left for contingency and choice. Other metaphors, expressed by other words, might have arisen; an image is called up by an image, a word by a word. All these words run now one after another, seeking in vain, by themselves, to give back the simplicity of the generative idea. Our ear only hears the words: it therefore perceives only accidents. But our mind, by successive bounds, leaps from the words to the images, from the images to the original idea, and so gets back, from the perception of words--accidents called up by accidents--to the conception of the Idea that posits its own being. So the philosopher proceeds, confronted with the universe. Experience makes to pass before his eyes phenomena which run, they also, one behind another in an accidental order determined by circumstances of time and place. This physical order--a degeneration of the logical order--is nothing else but the fall of the logical into space and time. But the philosopher, ascending again from the percept to the concept, sees condensed into the logical all the positive reality that the physical possesses. His intellect, doing away with the materiality that lessens being, grasps being itself in the immutable system of Ideas. Thus Science is obtained, which appears to us, complete and ready-made, as soon as we put back our intellect into its true place, correcting the deviation that separated it from the intelligible. Science is not, then, a human construction. It is prior to our intellect, independent of it, veritably the generator of Things. And indeed, if we hold the Forms to be simply snapshots taken by the mind of the continuity of becoming, they must be relative to the mind that thinks them, they can have no independent existence. At most we might say that each of these Ideas is an _ideal_. But it is in the opposite hypothesis that we are placing ourselves. Ideas must then exist by themselves. Ancient philosophy could not escape this conclusion. Plato formulated it, and in vain did Aristotle strive to avoid it. Since movement arises from the degradation of the immutable, there could be no movement, consequently no sensible world, if there were not, somewhere, immutability realized. So, having begun by refusing to Ideas an independent existence, and finding himself nevertheless unable to deprive them of it, Aristotle pressed them into each other, rolled them up into a ball, and set above the physical world a Form that was thus found to be the Form of Forms, the Idea of Ideas, or, to use his own words, the Thought of Thought. Such is the God of Aristotle--necessarily immutable and apart from what is happening in the world, since he is only the synthesis of all concepts in a single concept. It is true that no one of the manifold concepts could exist apart, such as it is in the divine unity: in vain should we look for the ideas of Plato within the God of Aristotle. But if only we imagine the God of Aristotle in a sort of refraction of himself, or simply inclining toward the world, at once the Platonic Ideas are seen to pour themselves out of him, as if they were involved in the unity of his essence: so rays stream out from the sun, which nevertheless did not contain them. It is probably this _possibility of an outpouring_ of Platonic Ideas from the Aristotelian God that is meant, in the philosophy of Aristotle, by the active intellect, the [Greek: nous] that has been called [Greek: poiêtikos]--that is, by what is essential and yet unconscious in human intelligence. The [Greek: nous poiêtikos] is Science entire, posited all at once, which the conscious, discursive intellect is condemned to reconstruct with difficulty, bit by bit. There is then within us, or rather behind us, a possible vision of God, as the Alexandrians said, a vision always virtual, never actually realized by the conscious intellect. In this intuition we should see God expand in Ideas. This it is that "does everything,"[102] playing in relation to the discursive intellect, which moves in time, the same rôle as the motionless Mover himself plays in relation to the movement of the heavens and the course of things. There is, then, immanent in the philosophy of Ideas, a particular conception of causality, which it is important to bring into full light, because it is that which each of us will reach when, in order to ascend to the origin of things, he follows to the end the natural movement of the intellect. True, the ancient philosophers never formulated it explicitly. They confined themselves to drawing the consequences of it, and, in general, they have marked but points of view of it rather than presented it itself. Sometimes, indeed, they speak of an _attraction_, sometimes of an _impulsion_ exercised by the prime mover on the whole of the world. Both views are found in Aristotle, who shows us in the movement of the universe an aspiration of things toward the divine perfection, and consequently an ascent toward God, while he describes it elsewhere as the effect of a contact of God with the first sphere and as descending, consequently, from God to things. The Alexandrians, we think, do no more than follow this double indication when they speak of _procession_ and _conversion_. Everything is derived from the first principle, and everything aspires to return to it. But these two conceptions of the divine causality can only be identified together if we bring them, both the one and the other, back to a third, which we hold to be fundamental, and which alone will enable us to understand, not only why, in what sense, things move in space and time, but also why there is space and time, why there is movement, why there are things. This conception, which more and more shows through the reasonings of the Greek philosophers as we go from Plato to Plotinus, we may formulate thus: _The affirmation of a reality implies the simultaneous affirmation of all the degrees of reality intermediate between it and nothing._ The principle is evident in the case of number: we cannot affirm the number 10 without thereby affirming the existence of the numbers 9, 8, 7, ..., etc.--in short, of the whole interval between 10 and zero. But here our mind passes naturally from the sphere of quantity to that of quality. It seems to us that, a certain perfection being given, the whole continuity of degradations is given also between this perfection, on the one hand, and the nought, on the other hand, that we think we conceive. Let us then posit the God of Aristotle, thought of thought--that is, thought _making a circle_, transforming itself from subject to object and from object to subject by an instantaneous, or rather an eternal, circular process: as, on the other hand, the nought appears to posit itself, and as, the two extremities being given, the interval between them is equally given, it follows that all the descending degrees of being, from the divine perfection down to the "absolute nothing," are realized automatically, so to speak, when we have posited God. Let us then run through this interval from top to bottom. First of all, the slightest diminution of the first principle will be enough to precipitate Being into space and time; but duration and extension, which represent this first diminution, will be as near as possible to the divine inextension and eternity. We must therefore picture to ourselves this first degradation of the divine principle as a sphere turning on itself, imitating, by the perpetuity of its circular movement, the eternity of the circle of the divine thought; creating, moreover, its own place, and thereby place in general,[103] since it includes without being included and moves without stirring from the spot; creating also its own duration, and thereby duration in general, since its movement is the measure of all motion.[104] Then, by degrees, we shall see the perfection decrease, more and more, down to our sublunary world, in which the cycle of birth, growth and decay imitates and mars the original circle for the last time. So understood, the causal relation between God and the world is seen as an attraction when regarded from below, as an impulsion or a contact when regarded from above, since the first heaven, with its circular movement, is an imitation of God and all imitation is the reception of a form. Therefore, we perceive God as efficient cause or as final cause, according to the point of view. And yet neither of these two relations is the ultimate causal relation. The true relation is that which is found between the two members of an equation, when the first member is a single term and the second a sum of an endless number of terms. It is, we may say, the relation of the gold-piece to the small change, if we suppose the change to offer itself automatically as soon as the gold piece is presented. Only thus can we understand why Aristotle has demonstrated the necessity of a first motionless mover, not by founding it on the assertion that the movement of things must have had a beginning, but, on the contrary, by affirming that this movement could not have begun and can never come to an end. If movement exists, or, in other words, if the small change is being counted, the gold piece is to be found somewhere. And if the counting goes on for ever, having never begun, the single term that is eminently equivalent to it must be eternal. A perpetuity of mobility is possible only if it is backed by an eternity of immutability, which it unwinds in a chain without beginning or end. Such is the last word of the Greek philosophy. We have not attempted to reconstruct it _a priori_. It has manifold origins. It is connected by many invisible threads to the soul of ancient Greece. Vain, therefore, the effort to deduce it from a simple principle.[105] But if everything that has come from poetry, religion, social life and a still rudimentary physics and biology be removed from it, if we take away all the light material that may have been used in the construction of the stately building, a solid framework remains, and this framework marks out the main lines of a metaphysic which is, we believe, the natural metaphysic of the human intellect. We come to a philosophy of this kind, indeed, whenever we follow to the end, the cinematographical tendency of perception and thought. Our perception and thought begin by substituting for the continuity of evolutionary change a series of unchangeable forms which are turn by turn, "caught on the wing," like the rings at a merry-go-round, which the children unhook with their little stick as they are passing. Now, how can the forms be passing, and on what "stick" are they strung? As the stable forms have been obtained by extracting from change everything that is definite, there is nothing left, to characterize the instability on which the forms are laid, but a negative attribute, which must be indetermination itself. Such is the first proceeding of our thought: it dissociates each change into two elements--the one stable, definable for each particular case, to wit, the Form; the other indefinable and always the same, Change in general. And such, also, is the essential operation of language. Forms are all that it is capable of expressing. It is reduced to taking as understood or is limited to _suggesting_ a mobility which, just because it is always unexpressed, is thought to remain in all cases the same.--Then comes in a philosophy that holds the dissociation thus effected by thought and language to be legitimate. What can it do, except objectify the distinction with more force, push it to its extreme consequences, reduce it into a system? It will therefore construct the real, on the one hand, with definite Forms or immutable elements, and, on the other, with a principle of mobility which, being the negation of the form, will, by the hypothesis, escape all definition and be the purely indeterminate. The more it directs its attention to the forms delineated by thought and expressed by language, the more it will see them rise above the sensible and become subtilized into pure concepts, capable of entering one within the other, and even of being at last massed together into a single concept, the synthesis of all reality, the achievement of all perfection. The more, on the contrary, it descends toward the invisible source of the universal mobility, the more it will feel this mobility sink beneath it and at the same time become void, vanish into what it will call the "non-being." Finally, it will have on the one hand the system of ideas, logically coördinated together or concentrated into one only, on the other a quasi-nought, the Platonic "non-being" or the Aristotelian "matter."--But, having cut your cloth, you must sew it. With supra-sensible Ideas and an infra-sensible non-being, you now have to reconstruct the sensible world. You can do so only if you postulate a kind of metaphysical necessity in virtue of which the confronting of this All with this Zero _is equivalent_ to the affirmation of all the degrees of reality that measure the interval between them--just as an undivided number, when regarded as a difference between itself and zero, is revealed as a certain sum of units, and with its own affirmation affirms all the lower numbers. That is the natural postulate. It is that also that we perceive as the base of the Greek philosophy. In order then to explain the specific characters of each of these degrees of intermediate reality, nothing more is necessary than to measure the distance that separates it from the integral reality. Each lower degree consists in a diminution of the higher, and the _sensible_ newness that we perceive in it is resolved, from the point of view of the _intelligible_, into a new quantity of negation which is superadded to it. The smallest possible quantity of negation, that which is found already in the highest forms of sensible reality, and consequently _a fortiori_ in the lower forms, is that which is expressed by the most general attributes of sensible reality, extension and duration. By increasing degradations we will obtain attributes more and more special. Here the philosopher's fancy will have free scope, for it is by an arbitrary decree, or at least a debatable one, that a particular aspect of the sensible world will be equated with a particular diminution of being. We shall not necessarily end, as Aristotle did, in a world consisting of concentric spheres turning on themselves. But we shall be led to an analogous cosmology--I mean, to a construction whose pieces, though all different, will have none the less the same relations between them. And this cosmology will be ruled by the same principle. The physical will be defined by the logical. Beneath the changing phenomena will appear to us, by transparence, a closed system of concepts subordinated to and coördinated with each other. Science, understood as the system of concepts, will be more real than the sensible reality. It will be prior to human knowledge, which is only able to spell it letter by letter; prior also to things, which awkwardly try to imitate it. It would only have to be diverted an instant from itself in order to step out of its eternity and thereby coincide with all this knowledge and all these things. Its immutability is therefore, indeed, the cause of the universal becoming. Such was the point of view of ancient philosophy in regard to change and duration. That modern philosophy has repeatedly, but especially in its beginnings, had the wish to depart from it, seems to us unquestionable. But an irresistible attraction brings the intellect back to its natural movement, and the metaphysic of the moderns to the general conclusions of the Greek metaphysic. We must try to make this point clear, in order to show by what invisible threads our mechanistic philosophy remains bound to the ancient philosophy of Ideas, and how also it responds to the requirements, above all practical, of our understanding. * * * * * Modern, like ancient, science proceeds according to the cinematographical method. It cannot do otherwise; all science is subject to this law. For it is of the essence of science to handle _signs_, which it substitutes for the objects themselves. These signs undoubtedly differ from those of language by their greater precision and their higher efficacy; they are none the less tied down to the general condition of the sign, which is to denote a fixed aspect of the reality under an arrested form. In order to think movement, a constantly renewed effort of the mind is necessary. Signs are made to dispense us with this effort by substituting, for the moving continuity of things, an artificial reconstruction which is its equivalent in practice and has the advantage of being easily handled. But let us leave aside the means and consider only the end. What is the essential object of science? It is to enlarge our influence over things. Science may be speculative in its form, disinterested in its immediate ends; in other words we may give it as long a credit as it wants. But, however long the day of reckoning may be put off, some time or other the payment must be made. It is always then, in short, practical utility that science has in view. Even when it launches into theory, it is bound to adapt its behavior to the general form of practice. However high it may rise, it must be ready to fall back into the field of action, and at once to get on its feet. This would not be possible for it, if its rhythm differed absolutely from that of action itself. Now action, we have said, proceeds by leaps. To act is to re-adapt oneself. To know, that is to say, to foresee in order to act, is then to go from situation to situation, from arrangement to rearrangement. Science may consider rearrangements that come closer and closer to each other; it may thus increase the number of moments that it isolates, but it always isolates moments. As to what happens in the interval between the moments, science is no more concerned with that than are our common intelligence, our senses and our language: it does not bear on the interval, but only on the extremities. So the cinematographical method forces itself upon our science, as it did already on that of the ancients. Wherein, then, is the difference between the two sciences? We indicated it when we said that the ancients reduced the physical order to the vital order, that is to say, laws to genera, while the moderns try to resolve genera into laws. But we have to look at it in another aspect, which, moreover, is only a transposition, of the first. Wherein consists the difference of attitude of the two sciences toward change? We may formulate it by saying that _ancient science thinks it knows its object sufficiently when it has noted of it some privileged moments, whereas modern science considers the object at any moment whatever_. The forms or ideas of Plato or of Aristotle correspond to privileged or salient moments in the history of things--those, in general, that have been fixed by language. They are supposed, like the childhood or the old age of a living being, to characterize a period of which they express the quintessence, all the rest of this period being filled by the passage, of no interest in itself, from one form to another form. Take, for instance, a falling body. It was thought that we got near enough to the fact when we characterized it as a whole: it was a movement _downward_; it was the tendency toward a _centre_; it was the _natural_ movement of a body which, separated from the earth to which it belonged, was now going to find its place again. They noted, then, the final term or culminating point ([Greek: telos, akmê]) and set it up as the essential moment: this moment, that language has retained in order to express the whole of the fact, sufficed also for science to characterize it. In the physics of Aristotle, it is by the concepts "high" and "low," spontaneous displacement and forced displacement, own place and strange place, that the movement of a body shot into space or falling freely is defined. But Galileo thought there was no essential moment, no privileged instant. To study the falling body is to consider it at it matters not what moment in its course. The true science of gravity is that which will determine, for any moment of time whatever, the position of the body in space. For this, indeed, signs far more precise than those of language are required. We may say, then, that our physics differs from that of the ancients chiefly in the indefinite breaking up of time. For the ancients, time comprises as many undivided periods as our natural perception and our language cut out in it successive facts, each presenting a kind of individuality. For that reason, each of these facts admits, in their view, of only a _total_ definition or description. If, in describing it, we are led to distinguish phases in it, we have several facts instead of a single one, several undivided periods instead of a single period; but time is always supposed to be divided into determinate periods, and the mode of division to be forced on the mind by apparent crises of the real, comparable to that of puberty, by the apparent release of a new form.--For a Kepler or a Galileo, on the contrary, time is not divided objectively in one way or another by the matter that fills it. It has no natural articulations. We can, we ought to, divide it as we please. All moments count. None of them has the right to set itself up as a moment that represents or dominates the others. And, consequently, we know a change only when we are able to determine what it is about at any one of its moments. The difference is profound. In fact, in a certain aspect it is radical. But, from the point of view from which we are regarding it, it is a difference of degree rather than of kind. The human mind has passed from the first kind of knowledge to the second through gradual perfecting, simply by seeking a higher precision. There is the same relation between these two sciences as between the noting of the phases of a movement by the eye and the much more complete recording of these phases by instantaneous photography. It is the same cinematographical mechanism in both cases, but it reaches a precision in the second that it cannot have in the first. Of the gallop of a horse our eye perceives chiefly a characteristic, essential or rather schematic attitude, a form that appears to radiate over a whole period and so fill up a time of gallop. It is this attitude that sculpture has fixed on the frieze of the Parthenon. But instantaneous photography isolates any moment; it puts them all in the same rank, and thus the gallop of a horse spreads out for it into as many successive attitudes as it wishes, instead of massing itself into a single attitude, which is supposed to flash out in a privileged moment and to illuminate a whole period. From this original difference flow all the others. A science that considers, one after the other, undivided periods of duration, sees nothing but phases succeeding phases, forms replacing forms; it is content with a _qualitative_ description of objects, which it likens to organized beings. But when we seek to know what happens within one of these periods, at any moment of time, we are aiming at something entirely different. The changes which are produced from one moment to another are no longer, by the hypothesis, changes of quality; they are _quantitative_ variations, it may be of the phenomenon itself, it may be of its elementary parts. We were right then to say that modern science is distinguishable from the ancient in that it applies to magnitudes and proposes first and foremost to measure them. The ancients did indeed try experiments, and on the other hand Kepler tried no experiment, in the proper sense of the word, in order to discover a law which is the very type of scientific knowledge as we understand it. What distinguishes modern science is not that it is experimental, but that it experiments and, more generally, works only with a view to measure. For that reason it is right, again, to say that ancient science applied to _concepts_, while modern science seeks _laws_--constant relations between variable magnitudes. The concept of circularity was sufficient to Aristotle to define the movement of the heavenly bodies. But, even with the more accurate concept of elliptical form, Kepler did not think he had accounted for the movement of planets. He had to get a law, that is to say, a constant relation between the quantitative variations of two or several elements of the planetary movement. Yet these are only consequences--differences that follow from the fundamental difference. It did happen to the ancients accidentally to experiment with a view to measuring, as also to discover a law expressing a constant relation between magnitudes. The principle of Archimedes is a true experimental law. It takes into account three variable magnitudes: the volume of a body, the density of the liquid in which the body is immersed, the vertical pressure that is being exerted. And it states indeed that one of these three terms is a function of the other two. The essential, original difference must therefore be sought elsewhere. It is the same that we noticed first. The science of the ancients is static. Either it considers in block the change that it studies, or, if it divides the change into periods, it makes of each of these periods a block in its turn: which amounts to saying that it takes no account of time. But modern science has been built up around the discoveries of Galileo and of Kepler, which immediately furnished it with a model. Now, what do the laws of Kepler say? They lay down a relation between the areas described by the heliocentric radius-vector of a planet and the _time_ employed in describing them, a relation between the longer axis of the orbit and the _time_ taken up by the course. And what was the principle discovered by Galileo? A law which connected the space traversed by a falling body with the _time_ occupied by the fall. Furthermore, in what did the first of the great transformations of geometry in modern times consist, if not in introducing--in a veiled form, it is true--time and movement even in the consideration of figures? For the ancients, geometry was a purely static science. Figures were given to it at once, completely finished, like the Platonic Ideas. But the essence of the Cartesian geometry (although Descartes did not give it this form) was to regard every plane curve as described by the movement of a point on a movable straight line which is displaced, parallel to itself, along the axis of the abscissae--the displacement of the movable straight line being supposed to be uniform and the abscissa thus becoming representative of the time. The curve is then defined if we can state the relation connecting the space traversed on the movable straight line to the time employed in traversing it, that is, if we are able to indicate the position of the movable point, on the straight line which it traverses, at any moment whatever of its course. This relation is just what we call the equation of the curve. To substitute an equation for a figure consists, therefore, in seeing the actual position of the moving points in the tracing of the curve at any moment whatever, instead of regarding this tracing all at once, gathered up in the unique moment when the curve has reached its finished state. Such, then, was the directing idea of the reform by which both the science of nature and mathematics, which serves as its instrument, were renewed. Modern science is the daughter of astronomy; it has come down from heaven to earth along the inclined plane of Galileo, for it is through Galileo that Newton and his successors are connected with Kepler. Now, how did the astronomical problem present itself to Kepler? The question was, knowing the respective positions of the planets at a given moment, how to calculate their positions at any other moment. So the same question presented itself, henceforth, for every material system. Each material point became a rudimentary planet, and the main question, the ideal problem whose solution would yield the key to all the others was, the positions of these elements at a particular moment being given, how to determine their relative positions at any moment. No doubt the problem cannot be put in these precise terms except in very simple cases, for a schematized reality; for we never know the respective positions of the real elements of matter, supposing there are real elements; and, even if we knew them at a given moment, the calculation of their positions at another moment would generally require a mathematical effort surpassing human powers. But it is enough for us to know that these elements might be known, that their present positions might be noted, and that a superhuman intellect might, by submitting these data to mathematical operations, determine the positions of the elements at any other moment of time. This conviction is at the bottom of the questions we put to ourselves on the subject of nature, and of the methods we employ to solve them. That is why every law in static form seems to us as a provisional instalment or as a particular view of a dynamic law which alone would give us whole and definitive knowledge. Let us conclude, then, that our science is not only distinguished from ancient science in this, that it seeks laws, nor even in this, that its laws set forth relations between magnitudes: we must add that the magnitude to which we wish to be able to relate all others is time, and that _modern science must be defined pre-eminently by its aspiration to take time as an independent variable_. But with what time has it to do? We have said before, and we cannot repeat too often, that the science of matter proceeds like ordinary knowledge. It perfects this knowledge, increases its precision and its scope, but it works in the same direction and puts the same mechanism into play. If, therefore, ordinary knowledge, by reason of the cinematographical mechanism to which it is subjected, forbears to follow becoming in so far as becoming is moving, the science of matter renounces it equally. No doubt, it distinguishes as great a number of moments as we wish in the interval of time it considers. However small the intervals may be at which it stops, it authorizes us to divide them again if necessary. In contrast with ancient science, which stopped at certain so-called essential moments, it is occupied indifferently with any moment whatever. But it always considers moments, always virtual stopping-places, always, in short, immobilities. Which amounts to saying that real time, regarded as a flux, or, in other words, as the very mobility of being, escapes the hold of scientific knowledge. We have already tried to establish this point in a former work. We alluded to it again in the first chapter of this book. But it is necessary to revert to it once more, in order to clear up misunderstandings. When positive science speaks of time, what it refers to is the movement of a certain mobile T on its trajectory. This movement has been chosen by it as representative of time, and it is, by definition, uniform. Let us call T_{1}, T_{2}, T_{3}, ... etc., points which divide the trajectory of the mobile into equal parts from its origin T_0. We shall say that 1, 2, 3, ... units of time have flowed past, when the mobile is at the points T_{1}, T_{2}, T_{3}, ... of the line it traverses. Accordingly, to consider the state of the universe at the end of a certain time _t_, is to examine where it will be when T is at the point T_t of its course. But of the _flux_ itself of time, still less of its effect on consciousness, there is here no question; for there enter into the calculation only the points T_{1}, T_{2}, T_{3}, ... taken on the flux, never the flux itself. We may narrow the time considered as much as we will, that is, break up at will the interval between two consecutive divisions T_{n} and T_{n-|-1}; but it is always with points, and with points only, that we are dealing. What we retain of the movement of the mobile T are positions taken on its trajectory. What we retain of all the other points of the universe are their positions on their respective trajectories. To each _virtual stop_ of the moving body T at the points of division T_{1}, T_{2}, T_{3}, ... we make correspond a _virtual stop_ of all the other mobiles at the points where they are passing. And when we say that a movement or any other change has occupied a time _t_, we mean by it that we have noted a number _t_ of correspondences of this kind. We have therefore counted simultaneities; we have not concerned ourselves with the flux that goes from one to another. The proof of this is that I can, at discretion, vary the rapidity of the flux of the universe in regard to a consciousness that is independent of it and that would perceive the variation by the quite qualitative _feeling_ that it would have of it: whatever the variation had been, since the movement of T would participate in this variation, I should have nothing to change in my equations nor in the numbers that figure in them. Let us go further. Suppose that the rapidity of the flux becomes infinite. Imagine, as we said in the first pages of this book, that the trajectory of the mobile T is given at once, and that the whole history, past, present and future, of the material universe is spread out instantaneously in space. The same mathematical correspondences will subsist between the moments of the history of the world unfolded like a fan, so to speak, and the divisions T_{1}, T_{2}, T_{3}, ... of the line which will be called, by definition, "the course of time." In the eyes of science nothing will have changed. But if, time thus spreading itself out in space and succession becoming juxtaposition, science has nothing to change in what it tells us, we must conclude that, in what it tells us, it takes account neither of _succession_ in what of it is specific nor of _time_ in what there is in it that is fluent. It has no sign to express what strikes our consciousness in succession and duration. It no more applies to becoming, so far as that is moving, than the bridges thrown here and there across the stream follow the water that flows under their arches. Yet succession exists; I am conscious of it; it is a fact. When a physical process is going on before my eyes, my perception and my inclination have nothing to do with accelerating or retarding it. What is important to the physicist is the _number_ of units of duration the process fills; he does not concern himself about the units themselves and that is why the successive states of the world might be spread out all at once in space without his having to change anything in his science or to cease talking about time. But for us, conscious beings, it is the units that matter, for we do not count extremities of intervals, we feel and live the intervals themselves. Now, we are conscious of these intervals as of _definite_ intervals. Let me come back again to the sugar in my glass of water:[106] why must I wait for it to melt? While the duration of the phenomenon is _relative_ for the physicist, since it is reduced to a certain number of units of time and the units themselves are indifferent, this duration is an _absolute_ for my consciousness, for it coincides with a certain degree of impatience which is rigorously determined. Whence comes this determination? What is it that obliges me to wait, and to wait for a certain length of psychical duration which is forced upon me, over which I have no power? If succession, in so far as distinct from mere juxtaposition, has no real efficacy, if time is not a kind of force, why does the universe unfold its successive states with a velocity which, in regard to my consciousness, is a veritable absolute? Why with this particular velocity rather than any other? Why not with an infinite velocity? Why, in other words, is not everything given at once, as on the film of the cinematograph? The more I consider this point, the more it seems to me that, if the future is bound to _succeed_ the present instead of being given alongside of it, it is because the future is not altogether determined at the present moment, and that if the time taken up by this succession is something other than a number, if it has for the consciousness that is installed in it absolute value and reality, it is because there is unceasingly being created in it, not indeed in any such artificially isolated system as a glass of sugared water, but in the concrete whole of which every such system forms part, something unforeseeable and new. This duration may not be the fact of matter itself, but that of the life which reascends the course of matter; the two movements are none the less mutually dependent upon each other. _The duration of the universe must therefore be one with the latitude of creation which can find place in it._ When a child plays at reconstructing a picture by putting together the separate pieces in a puzzle game, the more he practices, the more and more quickly he succeeds. The reconstruction was, moreover, instantaneous, the child found it ready-made, when he opened the box on leaving the shop. The operation, therefore, does not require a definite time, and indeed, theoretically, it does not require any time. That is because the result is given. It is because the picture is already created, and because to obtain it requires only a work of recomposing and rearranging--a work that can be supposed going faster and faster, and even infinitely fast, up to the point of being instantaneous. But, to the artist who creates a picture by drawing it from the depths of his soul, time is no longer an accessory; it is not an interval that may be lengthened or shortened without the content being altered. The duration of his work is part and parcel of his work. To contract or to dilate it would be to modify both the psychical evolution that fills it and the invention which is its goal. The time taken up by the invention, is one with the invention itself. It is the progress of a thought which is changing in the degree and measure that it is taking form. It is a vital process, something like the ripening of an idea. The painter is before his canvas, the colors are on the palette, the model is sitting--all this we see, and also we know the painter's style: do we foresee what will appear on the canvas? We possess the elements of the problem; we know in an abstract way, how it will be solved, for the portrait will surely resemble the model and will surely resemble also the artist; but the concrete solution brings with it that unforeseeable nothing which is everything in a work of art. And it is this nothing that takes time. Nought as matter, it creates itself as form. The sprouting and flowering of this form are stretched out on an unshrinkable duration, which is one with their essence. So of the works of nature. Their novelty arises from an internal impetus which is progress or succession, which confers on succession a peculiar virtue or which owes to succession the whole of its virtue--which, at any rate, makes succession, or _continuity of interpenetration_ in time, irreducible to a mere instantaneous juxtaposition in space. This is why the idea of reading in a present state of the material universe the future of living forms, and of unfolding now their history yet to come, involves a veritable absurdity. But this absurdity is difficult to bring out, because our memory is accustomed to place alongside of each other, in an ideal space, the terms it perceives in turn, because it always represents _past_ succession in the form of juxtaposition. It is able to do so, indeed, just because the past belongs to that which is already invented, to the dead, and no longer to creation and to life. Then, as the succession to come will end by being a succession past, we persuade ourselves that the duration to come admits of the same treatment as past duration, that it is, even now, unrollable, that the future is there, rolled up, already painted on the canvas. An illusion, no doubt, but an illusion that is natural, ineradicable, and that will last as long as the human mind! _Time is invention or it is nothing at all._ But of time-invention physics can take no account, restricted as it is to the cinematographical method. It is limited to counting simultaneities between the events that make up this time and the positions of the mobile T on its trajectory. It detaches these events from the whole, which at every moment puts on a new form and which communicates to them something of its novelty. It considers them in the abstract, such as they would be outside of the living whole, that is to say, in a time unrolled in space. It retains only the events or systems of events that can be thus isolated without being made to undergo too profound a deformation, because only these lend themselves to the application of its method. Our physics dates from the day when it was known how to isolate such systems. To sum up, _while modern physics is distinguished from ancient physics by the fact that it considers any moment of time whatever, it rests altogether on a substitution of time-length for time-invention_. It seems then that, parallel to this physics, a second kind of knowledge ought to have grown up, which could have retained what physics allowed to escape. On the flux itself of duration science neither would nor could lay hold, bound as it was to the cinematographical method. This second kind of knowledge would have set the cinematographical method aside. It would have called upon the mind to renounce its most cherished habits. It is within becoming that it would have transported us by an effort of sympathy. We should no longer be asking where a moving body will be, what shape a system will take, through what state a change will pass at a given moment: the moments of time, which are only arrests of our attention, would no longer exist; it is the flow of time, it is the very flux of the real that we should be trying to follow. The first kind of knowledge has the advantage of enabling us to foresee the future and of making us in some measure masters of events; in return, it retains of the moving reality only eventual immobilities, that is to say, views taken of it by our mind. It symbolizes the real and transposes it into the human rather than expresses it. The other knowledge, if it is possible, is practically useless, it will not extend our empire over nature, it will even go against certain natural aspirations of the intellect; but, if it succeeds, it is reality itself that it will hold in a firm and final embrace. Not only may we thus complete the intellect and its knowledge of matter by accustoming it to install itself within the moving, but by developing also another faculty, complementary to the intellect, we may open a perspective on the other half of the real. For, as soon as we are confronted with true duration, we see that it means creation, and that if that which is being unmade endures, it can only be because it is inseparably bound to what is making itself. Thus will appear the necessity of a continual growth of the universe, I should say of a _life_ of the real. And thus will be seen in a new light the life which we find on the surface of our planet, a life directed the same way as that of the universe, and inverse of materiality. To intellect, in short, there will be added intuition. The more we reflect on it, the more we shall find that this conception of metaphysics is that which modern science suggests. For the ancients, indeed, time is theoretically negligible, because the duration of a thing only manifests the degradation of its essence: it is with this motionless essence that science has to deal. Change being only the effort of a form toward its own realization, the realization is all that it concerns us to know. No doubt the realization is never complete: it is this that ancient philosophy expresses by saying that we do not perceive form without matter. But if we consider the changing object at a certain essential moment, at its apogee, we may say that there it just touches its intelligible form. This intelligible form, this ideal and, so to speak, limiting form, our science seizes upon. And possessing in this the gold-piece, it holds eminently the small money which we call becoming or change. This change is less than being. The knowledge that would take it for object, supposing such knowledge were possible, would be less than science. But, for a science that places all the moments of time in the same rank, that admits no essential moment, no culminating point, no apogee, change is no longer a diminution of essence, duration is not a dilution of eternity. The flux of time is the reality itself, and the things which we study are the things which flow. It is true that of this flowing reality we are limited to taking instantaneous views. But, just because of this, scientific knowledge must appeal to another knowledge to complete it. While the ancient conception of scientific knowledge ended in making time a degradation, and change the diminution of a form given from all eternity--on the contrary, by following the new conception to the end, we should come to see in time a progressive growth of the absolute, and in the evolution of things a continual invention of forms ever new. It is true that it would be to break with the metaphysics of the ancients. They saw only one way of knowing definitely. Their science consisted in a scattered and fragmentary metaphysics, their metaphysics in a concentrated and systematic science. Their science and metaphysics were, at most, two species of one and the same genus. In our hypothesis, on the contrary, science and metaphysics are two opposed although complementary ways of knowing, the first retaining only moments, that is to say, that which does not endure, the second bearing on duration itself. Now, it was natural to hesitate between so novel a conception of metaphysics and the traditional conception. The temptation must have been strong to repeat with the new science what had been tried on the old, to suppose our scientific knowledge of nature completed at once, to unify it entirely, and to give to this unification, as the Greeks had already done, the name of metaphysics. So, beside the new way that philosophy might have prepared, the old remained open, that indeed which physics trod. And, as physics retained of time only what could as well be spread out all at once in space, the metaphysics that chose the same direction had necessarily to proceed as if time created and annihilated nothing, as if duration had no efficacy. Bound, like the physics of the moderns and the metaphysics of the ancients, to the cinematographical method, it ended with the conclusion, implicitly admitted at the start and immanent in the method itself: _All is given._ That metaphysics hesitated at first between the two paths seems to us unquestionable. The indecision is visible in Cartesianism. On the one hand, Descartes affirms universal mechanism: from this point of view movement would be relative,[107] and, as time has just as much reality as movement, it would follow that past, present and future are given from all eternity. But, on the other hand (and that is why the philosopher has not gone to these extreme consequences), Descartes believes in the free will of man. He superposes on the determinism of physical phenomena the indeterminism of human actions, and, consequently, on time-length a time in which there is invention, creation, true succession. This duration he supports on a God who is unceasingly renewing the creative act, and who, being thus tangent to time and becoming, sustains them, communicates to them necessarily something of his absolute reality. When he places himself at this second point of view, Descartes speaks of movement, even spatial, as of an absolute.[108] He therefore entered both roads one after the other, having resolved to follow neither of them to the end. The first would have led him to the denial of free will in man and of real will in God. It was the suppression of all efficient duration, the likening of the universe to a thing given, which a superhuman intelligence would embrace at once in a moment or in eternity. In following the second, on the contrary, he would have been led to all the consequences which the intuition of true duration implies. Creation would have appeared not simply as _continued_, but also as _continuous_. The universe, regarded as a whole, would really evolve. The future would no longer be determinable by the present; at most we might say that, once realized, it can be found again in its antecedents, as the sounds of a new language can be expressed with the letters of an old alphabet if we agree to enlarge the value of the letters and to attribute to them, retro-actively, sounds which no combination of the old sounds could have produced beforehand. Finally, the mechanistic explanation might have remained universal in this, that it can indeed be extended to as many systems as we choose to cut out in the continuity of the universe; but mechanism would then have become a _method_ rather than a _doctrine_. It would have expressed the fact that science must proceed after the cinematographical manner, that the function of science is to scan the rhythm of the flow of things and not to fit itself into that flow.--Such were the two opposite conceptions of metaphysics which were offered to philosophy. It chose the first. The reason of this choice is undoubtedly the mind's tendency to follow the cinematographical method, a method so natural to our intellect, and so well adjusted also to the requirements of our science, that we must feel doubly sure of its speculative impotence to renounce it in metaphysics. But ancient philosophy also influenced the choice. Artists for ever admirable, the Greeks created a type of supra-sensible truth, as of sensible beauty, whose attraction is hard to resist. As soon as we incline to make metaphysics a systematization of science, we glide in the direction of Plato and of Aristotle. And, once in the zone of attraction in which the Greek philosophers moved, we are drawn along in their orbit. Such was the case with Leibniz, as also with Spinoza. We are not blind to the treasures of originality their doctrines contain. Spinoza and Leibniz have poured into them the whole content of their souls, rich with the inventions of their genius and the acquisitions of modern thought. And there are in each of them, especially in Spinoza, flashes of intuition that break through the system. But if we leave out of the two doctrines what breathes life into them, if we retain the skeleton only, we have before us the very picture of Platonism and Aristotelianism seen through Cartesian mechanism. They present to us a systematization of the new physics, constructed on the model of the ancient metaphysics. What, indeed, could the unification of physics be? The inspiring idea of that science was to isolate, within the universe, systems of material points such that, the position of each of these points being known at a given moment, we could then calculate it for any moment whatever. As, moreover, the systems thus defined were the only ones on which the new science had hold, and as it could not be known beforehand whether a system satisfied or did not satisfy the desired condition, it was useful to proceed always and everywhere _as if_ the condition was realized. There was in this a methodological rule, a very natural rule--so natural, indeed, that it was not even necessary to formulate it. For simple common sense tells us that when we are possessed of an effective instrument of research, and are ignorant of the limits of its applicability, we should act as if its applicability were unlimited; there will always be time to abate it. But the temptation must have been great for the philosopher to hypostatize this hope, or rather this impetus, of the new science, and to convert a general rule of method into a fundamental law of things. So he transported himself at once to the limit; he supposed physics to have become complete and to embrace the whole of the sensible world. The universe became a system of points, the position of which was rigorously determined at each instant by relation to the preceding instant and theoretically calculable for any moment whatever. The result, in short, was universal mechanism. But it was not enough to formulate this mechanism; what was required was to found it, to give the reason for it and prove its necessity. And the essential affirmation of mechanism being that of a reciprocal mathematical dependence of all the points of the universe, as also of all the moments of the universe, the reason of mechanism had to be discovered in the unity of a principle into which could be contracted all that is juxtaposed in space and successive in time. Hence, the whole of the real was supposed to be given at once. The reciprocal determination of the juxtaposed appearances in space was explained by the indivisibility of true being, and the inflexible determinism of successive phenomena in time simply expressed that the whole of being is given in the eternal. The new philosophy was going, then, to be a recommencement, or rather a transposition, of the old. The ancient philosophy had taken each of the _concepts_ into which a becoming is concentrated or which mark its apogee: it supposed them all known, and gathered them up into a single concept, form of forms, idea of ideas, like the God of Aristotle. The new philosophy was going to take each of the _laws_ which condition a becoming in relation to others and which are as the permanent substratum of phenomena: it would suppose them all known, and would gather them up into a unity which also would express them eminently, but which, like the God of Aristotle and for the same reasons, must remain immutably shut up in itself. True, this return to the ancient philosophy was not without great difficulties. When a Plato, an Aristotle, or a Plotinus melt all the concepts of their science into a single one, in so doing they embrace the whole of the real, for concepts are supposed to represent the things themselves, and to possess at least as much positive content. But a law, in general, expresses only a relation, and physical laws in particular express only _quantitative_ relations between concrete things. So that if a modern philosopher works with the laws of the new science as the Greek philosopher did with the concepts of the ancient science, if he makes all the conclusions of a physics supposed omniscient converge on a single point, he neglects what is concrete in the phenomena--the qualities perceived, the perceptions themselves. His synthesis comprises, it seems, only a fraction of reality. In fact, the first result of the new science was to cut the real into two halves, quantity and quality, the former being credited to the account of _bodies_ and the latter to the account of _souls_. The ancients had raised no such barriers either between quality and quantity or between soul and body. For them, the mathematical concepts were concepts like the others, related to the others and fitting quite naturally into the hierarchy of the Ideas. Neither was the body then defined by geometrical extension, nor the soul by consciousness. If the [Greek: psychê] of Aristotle, the entelechy of a living body, is less spiritual than our "soul," it is because his [Greek: oôma], already impregnated with the Idea, is less corporeal than our "body." The scission was not yet irremediable between the two terms. It has become so, and thence a metaphysic that aims at an abstract unity must resign itself either to comprehend in its synthesis only one half of the real, or to take advantage of the absolute heterogeneity of the two halves in order to consider one as a translation of the other. Different phrases will express different things if they belong to the same language, that is to say, if there is a certain relationship of sound between them. But if they belong to two different languages, they might, just because of their radical diversity of sound, express the same thing. So of quality and quantity, of soul and body. It is for having cut all connection between the two terms that philosophers have been led to establish between them a rigorous parallelism, of which the ancients had not dreamed, to regard them as translations and not as inversions of each other; in short, to posit a fundamental identity as a substratum to their duality. The synthesis to which they rose thus became capable of embracing everything. A divine mechanism made the phenomena of thought to correspond to those of extension, each to each, qualities to quantities, souls to bodies. It is this parallelism that we find both in Leibniz and in Spinoza--in different forms, it is true, because of the unequal importance which they attach to extension. With Spinoza, the two terms Thought and Extension are placed, in principle at least, in the same rank. They are, therefore, two translations of one and the same original, or, as Spinoza says, two attributes of one and the same substance, which we must call God. And these two translations, as also an infinity of others into languages which we know not, are called up and even forced into existence by the original, just as the essence of the circle is translated automatically, so to speak, both by a figure and by an equation. For Leibniz, on the contrary, extension is indeed still a translation, but it is thought that is the original, and thought might dispense with translation, the translation being made only for us. In positing God, we necessarily posit also all the possible views of God, that is to say, the monads. But we can always imagine that a view has been taken from a point of view, and it is natural for an imperfect mind like ours to class views, qualitatively different, according to the order and position of points of view, qualitatively identical, from which the views might have been taken. In reality the points of view do not exist, for there are only views, each given in an indivisible block and representing in its own way the whole of reality, which is God. But we need to express the plurality of the views, that are _unlike_ each other, by the multiplicity of the points of view that are _exterior_ to each other; and we also need to symbolize the more or less close relationship between the views by the relative situation of the points of view to one another, their nearness or their distance, that is to say, by a magnitude. That is what Leibniz means when he says that space is the order of coexistents, that the perception of extension is a confused perception (that is to say, a perception relative to an imperfect mind), and that nothing exists but monads, expressing thereby that the real Whole has no parts, but is repeated to infinity, each time integrally (though diversely) within itself, and that all these repetitions are complementary to each other. In just the same way, the visible relief of an object is equivalent to the whole set of stereoscopic views taken of it from all points, so that, instead of seeing in the relief a juxtaposition of solid parts, we might quite as well look upon it as made of the _reciprocal complementarity_ of these whole views, each given in block, each indivisible, each different from all the others and yet representative of the same thing. The Whole, that is to say, God, is this very relief for Leibniz, and the monads are these complementary plane views; for that reason he defines God as "the substance that has no point of view," or, again, as "the universal harmony," that is to say, the reciprocal complementarity of monads. In short, Leibniz differs from Spinoza in this, that he looks upon the universal mechanism as an aspect which reality takes for us, whereas, Spinoza makes of it an aspect which reality takes for itself. It is true that, after having concentrated in God the whole of the real, it became difficult for them to pass from God to things, from eternity to time. The difficulty was even much greater for these philosophers than an Aristotle or a Plotinus. The God of Aristotle, indeed, had been obtained by the compression and reciprocal compenetration of the Ideas that represent, in their finished state or in their culminating point, the changing things of the world. He was, therefore, transcendent to the world, and the duration of things was juxtaposed to His eternity, of which it was only a weakening. But in the principle to which we are led by the consideration of universal mechanism, and which must serve as its substratum, it is not concepts or _things_, but laws or _relations_ that are condensed. Now, a relation does not exist separately. A law connects changing terms and is immanent in what it governs. The principle in which all these relations are ultimately summed up, and which is the basis of the unity of nature, cannot, therefore, be transcendent to sensible reality; it is immanent in it, and we must suppose that it is at once both in and out of time, gathered up in the unity of its substance and yet condemned to wind it off in an endless chain. Rather than formulate so appalling a contradiction, the philosophers were necessarily led to sacrifice the weaker of the two terms, and to regard the temporal aspect of things as a mere illusion. Leibniz says so in explicit terms, for he makes of time, as of space, a confused perception. While the multiplicity of his monads expresses only the diversity of views taken of the whole, the history of an isolated monad seems to be hardly anything else than the manifold views that it can take of its own substance: so that time would consist in all the points of view that each monad can assume towards itself, as space consists in all the points of view that all monads can assume towards God. But the thought of Spinoza is much less clear, and this philosopher seems to have sought to establish, between eternity and that which has duration, the same difference as Aristotle made between essence and accidents: a most difficult undertaking, for the [Greek: ylê] of Aristotle was no longer there to measure the distance and explain the passage from the essential to the accidental, Descartes having eliminated it for ever. However that may be, the deeper we go into the Spinozistic conception of the "inadequate," as related to the "adequate," the more we feel ourselves moving in the direction of Aristotelianism--just as the Leibnizian monads, in proportion as they mark themselves out the more clearly, tend to approximate to the Intelligibles of Plotinus.[109] The natural trend of these two philosophies brings them back to the conclusions of the ancient philosophy. To sum up, the resemblances of this new metaphysic to that of the ancients arise from the fact that both suppose ready-made--the former above the sensible, the latter within the sensible--a science one and complete, with which any reality that the sensible may contain is believed to coincide. _For both, reality as well as truth are integrally given in eternity._ Both are opposed to the idea of a reality that creates itself gradually, that is, at bottom, to an absolute duration. * * * * * Now, it might easily be shown that the conclusions of this metaphysic, springing from science, have rebounded upon science itself, as it were, by ricochet. They penetrate the whole of our so-called empiricism. Physics and chemistry study only inert matter; biology, when it treats the living being physically and chemically, considers only the inert side of the living: hence the mechanistic explanations, in spite of their development, include only a small part of the real. To suppose _a priori_ that the whole of the real is resolvable into elements of this kind, or at least that mechanism can give a complete translation of what happens in the world, is to pronounce for a certain metaphysic--the very metaphysic of which Spinoza and Leibniz have laid down the principles and drawn the consequences. Certainly, the psycho-physiologist who affirms the exact equivalence of the cerebral and the psychical state, who imagines the possibility, for some superhuman intellect, of reading in the brain what is going on in consciousness, believes himself very far from the metaphysicians of the seventeenth century, and very near to experience. Yet experience pure and simple tells us nothing of the kind. It shows us the interdependence of the mental and the physical, the necessity of a certain cerebral substratum for the psychical state--nothing more. From the fact that two things are mutually dependent, it does not follow that they are equivalent. Because a certain screw is necessary to a certain machine, because the machine works when the screw is there and stops when the screw is taken away, we do not say that the screw is the equivalent of the machine. For correspondence to be equivalence, it would be necessary that to any part of the machine a definite part of the screw should correspond--as in a literal translation in which each chapter renders a chapter, each sentence a sentence, each word a word. Now, the relation of the brain to consciousness seems to be entirely different. Not only does the hypothesis of an equivalence between the psychical state and the cerebral state imply a downright absurdity, as we have tried to prove in a former essay,[110] but the facts, examined without prejudice, certainly seem to indicate that the relation of the psychical to the physical is just that of the machine to the screw. To speak of an equivalence between the two is simply to curtail, and make almost unintelligible, the Spinozistic or Leibnizian metaphysic. It is to accept this philosophy, such as it is, on the side of Extension, but to mutilate it on the side of Thought. With Spinoza, with Leibniz, we suppose the unifying synthesis of the phenomena of matter achieved, and everything in matter explained mechanically. But, for the conscious facts, we no longer push the synthesis to the end. We stop half-way. We suppose consciousness to be coextensive with a certain part of nature and not with all of it. We are thus led, sometimes to an "epiphenomenalism" that associates consciousness with certain particular vibrations and puts it here and there in the world in a sporadic state, and sometimes to a "monism" that scatters consciousness into as many tiny grains as there are atoms; but, in either case, it is to an incomplete Spinozism or to an incomplete Leibnizianism that we come back. Between this conception of nature and Cartesianism we find, moreover, intermediate historical stages. The medical philosophers of the eighteenth century, with their cramped Cartesianism, have had a great part in the genesis of the "epiphenomenalism" and "monism" of the present day. * * * * * These doctrines are thus found to fall short of the Kantian criticism. Certainly, the philosophy of Kant is also imbued with the belief in a science single and complete, embracing the whole of the real. Indeed, looked at from one aspect, it is only a continuation of the metaphysics of the moderns and a transposition of the ancient metaphysics. Spinoza and Leibniz had, following Aristotle, hypostatized in God the unity of knowledge. The Kantian criticism, on one side at least, consists in asking whether the whole of this hypothesis is necessary to modern science as it was to ancient science, or if part of the hypothesis is not sufficient. For the ancients, science applied to _concepts_, that is to say, to kinds of _things_. In compressing all concepts into one, they therefore necessarily arrived at a _being_, which we may call Thought, but which was rather thought-object than thought-subject. When Aristotle defined God the [Greek: noêseôs noêsis], it is probably on [Greek: noêseôs], and not on [Greek: noêsis] that he put the emphasis. God was the synthesis of all concepts, the idea of ideas. But modern science turns on laws, that is, on relations. Now, a relation is a bond established by a mind between two or more terms. A relation is nothing outside of the intellect that relates. The universe, therefore, can only be a system of laws if phenomena have passed beforehand through the filter of an intellect. Of course, this intellect might be that of a being infinitely superior to man, who would found the materiality of things at the same time that he bound them together: such was the hypothesis of Leibniz and of Spinoza. But it is not necessary to go so far, and, for the effect we have here to obtain, the human intellect is enough: such is precisely the Kantian solution. Between the dogmatism of a Spinoza or a Leibniz and the criticism of Kant there is just the same distance as between "it may be maintained that--" and "it suffices that--." Kant stops this dogmatism on the incline that was making it slip too far toward the Greek metaphysics; he reduces to the strict minimum the hypothesis which is necessary in order to suppose the physics of Galileo indefinitely extensible. True, when he speaks of the human intellect, he means neither yours nor mine: the unity of nature comes indeed from the human understanding that unifies, but the unifying function that operates here is impersonal. It imparts itself to our individual consciousnesses, but it transcends them. It is much less than a substantial God; it is, however, a little more than the isolated work of a man or even than the collective work of humanity. It does not exactly lie within man; rather, man lies within it, as in an atmosphere of intellectuality which his consciousness breathes. It is, if we will, a _formal_ God, something that in Kant is not yet divine, but which tends to become so. It became so, indeed, with Fichte. With Kant, however, its principal rôle was to give to the whole of our science a relative and _human_ character, although of a humanity already somewhat deified. From this point of view, the criticism of Kant consisted chiefly in limiting the dogmatism of his predecessors, accepting their conception of science and reducing to a minimum the metaphysic it implied. But it is otherwise with the Kantian distinction between the matter of knowledge and its form. By regarding intelligence as pre-eminently a faculty of establishing relations, Kant attributed an extra-intellectual origin to the terms between which the relations are established. He affirmed, against his immediate predecessors, that knowledge is not entirely resolvable into terms of intelligence. He brought back into philosophy--while modifying it and carrying it on to another plane--that essential element of the philosophy of Descartes which had been abandoned by the Cartesians. Thereby he prepared the way for a new philosophy, which might have established itself in the extra-intellectual matter of knowledge by a higher effort of intuition. Coinciding with this matter, adopting the same rhythm and the same movement, might not consciousness, by two efforts of opposite direction, raising itself and lowering itself by turns, become able to grasp from within, and no longer perceive only from without, the two forms of reality, body and mind? Would not this twofold effort make us, as far as that is possible, re-live the absolute? Moreover, as, in the course of this operation, we should see intellect spring up of itself, cut itself out in the whole of mind, intellectual knowledge would then appear as it is, limited, but not relative. Such was the direction that Kantianism might have pointed out to a revivified Cartesianism. But in this direction Kant himself did not go. He _would_ not, because, while assigning to knowledge an extra-intellectual matter, he believed this matter to be either coextensive with intellect or less extensive than intellect. Therefore he could not dream of cutting out intellect in it, nor, consequently, of tracing the genesis of the understanding and its categories. The molds of the understanding and the understanding itself had to be accepted as they are, already made. Between the matter presented to our intellect and this intellect itself there was no relationship. The agreement between the two was due to the fact that intellect imposed its form on matter. So that not only was it necessary to posit the intellectual form of knowledge as a kind of absolute and give up the quest of its genesis, but the very matter of this knowledge seemed too ground down by the intellect for us to be able to hope to get it back in its original purity. It was not the "thing-in-itself," it was only the refraction of it through our atmosphere. If now we inquire why Kant did not believe that the matter of our knowledge extends beyond its form, this is what we find. The criticism of our knowledge of nature that was instituted by Kant consisted in ascertaining what our mind must be and what Nature must be _if_ the claims of our science are justified; but of these claims themselves Kant has not made the criticism. I mean that he took for granted the idea of a science that is one, capable of binding with the same force all the parts of what is given, and of coördinating them into a system presenting on all sides an equal solidity. He did not consider, in his _Critique of Pure Reason_, that science became less and less objective, more and more symbolical, to the extent that it went from the physical to the vital, from the vital to the psychical. Experience does not move, to his view, in two different and perhaps opposite ways, the one conformable to the direction of the intellect, the other contrary to it. There is, for him, only _one_ experience, and the intellect covers its whole ground. This is what Kant expresses by saying that all our intuitions are sensuous, or, in other words, infra-intellectual. And this would have to be admitted, indeed, if our science presented in all its parts an equal objectivity. But suppose, on the contrary, that science is less and less objective, more and more symbolical, as it goes from the physical to the psychical, passing through the vital: then, as it is indeed necessary to perceive a thing somehow in order to symbolize it, there would be an intuition of the psychical, and more generally of the vital, which the intellect would transpose and translate, no doubt, but which would none the less transcend the intellect. There would be, in other words, a supra-intellectual intuition. If this intuition exist, a taking possession of the spirit by itself is possible, and no longer only a knowledge that is external and phenomenal. What is more, if we have an intuition of this kind (I mean an ultra-intellectual intuition) then sensuous intuition is likely to be in continuity with it through certain intermediaries, as the infra-red is continuous with the ultra-violet. Sensuous intuition itself, therefore, is promoted. It will no longer attain only the phantom of an unattainable thing-in-itself. It is (provided we bring to it certain indispensable corrections) into the absolute itself that it will introduce us. So long as it was regarded as the only material of our science, it reflected back on all science something of the relativity which strikes a scientific knowledge of spirit; and thus the perception of bodies, which is the beginning of the science of bodies, seemed itself to be relative. Relative, therefore, seemed to be sensuous intuition. But this is not the case if distinctions are made between the different sciences, and if the scientific knowledge of the spiritual (and also, consequently, of the vital) be regarded as the more or less artificial extension of a certain manner of knowing which, applied to bodies, is not at all symbolical. Let us go further: if there are thus two intuitions of different order (the second being obtained by a reversal of the direction of the first), and if it is toward the second that the intellect naturally inclines, there is no essential difference between the intellect and this intuition itself. The barriers between the matter of sensible knowledge and its form are lowered, as also between the "pure forms" of sensibility and the categories of the understanding. The matter and form of intellectual knowledge (restricted to its own object) are seen to be engendering each other by a reciprocal adaptation, intellect modeling itself on corporeity, and corporeity on intellect. But this duality of intuition Kant neither would nor could admit. It would have been necessary, in order to admit it, to regard duration as the very stuff of reality, and consequently to distinguish between the substantial duration of things and time spread out in space. It would have been necessary to regard space itself, and the geometry which is immanent in space, as an ideal limit in the direction of which material things develop, but which they do not actually attain. Nothing could be more contrary to the letter, and perhaps also to the spirit, of the _Critique of Pure Reason_. No doubt, knowledge is presented to us in it as an ever-open roll, experience as a push of facts that is for ever going on. But, according to Kant, these facts are spread out on one plane as fast as they arise; they are external to each other and external to the mind. Of a knowledge from within, that could grasp them in their springing forth instead of taking them already sprung, that would dig beneath space and spatialized time, there is never any question. Yet it is indeed beneath this plane that our consciousness places us; there flows true duration. In this respect, also, Kant is very near his predecessors. Between the non-temporal, and the time that is spread out in distinct moments, he admits no mean. And as there is indeed no intuition that carries us into the non-temporal, all intuition is thus found to be sensuous, by definition. But between physical existence, which is spread out in space, and non-temporal existence, which can only be a conceptual and logical existence like that of which metaphysical dogmatism speaks, is there not room for consciousness and for life? There is, unquestionably. We perceive it when we place ourselves in duration in order to go from that duration to moments, instead of starting from moments in order to bind them again and to construct duration. Yet it was to a non-temporal intuition that the immediate successors of Kant turned, in order to escape from the Kantian relativism. Certainly, the ideas of becoming, of progress, of evolution, seem to occupy a large place in their philosophy. But does duration really play a part in it? Real duration is that in which each form flows out of previous forms, while adding to them something new, and is explained by them as much as it explains them; but to deduce this form directly from one complete Being which it is supposed to manifest, is to return to Spinozism. It is, like Leibniz and Spinoza, to deny to duration all efficient action. The post-Kantian philosophy, severe as it may have been on the mechanistic theories, accepts from mechanism the idea of a science that is one and the same for all kinds of reality. And it is nearer to mechanism than it imagines; for though, in the consideration of matter, of life and of thought, it replaces the successive degrees of complexity, that mechanism supposed by degrees of the realization of an Idea or by degrees of the objectification of a Will, it still speaks of degrees, and these degrees are those of a scale which Being traverses in a single direction. In short, it makes out the same articulations in nature that mechanism does. Of mechanism it retains the whole design; it merely gives it a different coloring. But it is the design itself, or at least one half of the design, that needs to be re-made. If we are to do that, we must give up the method of _construction_, which was that of Kant's successors. We must appeal to experience--an experience purified, or, in other words, released, where necessary, from the molds that our intellect has formed in the degree and proportion of the progress of our action on things. An experience of this kind is not a non-temporal experience. It only seeks, beyond the spatialized time in which we believe we see continual rearrangements between the parts, that concrete duration in which a radical recasting of the whole is always going on. It follows the real in all its sinuosities. It does not lead us, like the method of construction, to higher and higher generalities--piled-up stories of a magnificent building. But then it leaves no play between the explanations it suggests and the objects it has to explain. It is the detail of the real, and no longer only the whole in a lump, that it claims to illumine. * * * * * That the thought of the nineteenth century called for a philosophy of this kind, rescued from the arbitrary, capable of coming down to the detail of particular facts, is unquestionable. Unquestionably, also, it felt that this philosophy ought to establish itself in what we call concrete duration. The advent of the moral sciences, the progress of psychology, the growing importance of embryology among the biological sciences--all this was bound to suggest the idea of a reality which _endures_ inwardly, which is duration itself. So, when a philosopher arose who announced a doctrine of evolution, in which the progress of matter toward perceptibility would be traced together with the advance of the mind toward rationality, in which the complication of correspondences between the external and the internal would be followed step by step, in which change would become the very substance of things--to him all eyes were turned. The powerful attraction that Spencerian evolutionism has exercised on contemporary thought is due to that very cause. However far Spencer may seem to be from Kant, however ignorant, indeed, he may have been of Kantianism, he felt, nevertheless, at his first contact with the biological sciences, the direction in which philosophy could continue to advance without laying itself open to the Kantian criticism. But he had no sooner started to follow the path than he turned off short. He had promised to retrace a genesis, and, lo! he was doing something entirely different. His doctrine bore indeed the name of evolutionism; it claimed to remount and redescend the course of the universal becoming; but, in fact, it dealt neither with becoming nor with evolution. We need not enter here into a profound examination of this philosophy. Let us say merely that _the usual device of the Spencerian method consists in reconstructing evolution with fragments of the evolved_. If I paste a picture on a card and then cut up the card into bits, I can reproduce the picture by rightly grouping again the small pieces. And a child who working thus with the pieces of a puzzle-picture, and putting together unformed fragments of the picture finally obtains a pretty colored design, no doubt imagines that he has _produced_ design and color. Yet the act of drawing and painting has nothing to do with that of putting together the fragments of a picture already drawn and already painted. So, by combining together the most simple results of evolution, you may imitate well or ill the most complex effects; but of neither the simple nor the complex will you have retraced the genesis, and the addition of evolved to evolved will bear no resemblance whatever to the movement of evolution. Such, however, is Spencer's illusion. He takes reality in its present form; he breaks it to pieces, he scatters it in fragments which he throws to the winds; then he "integrates" these fragments and "dissipates their movement." Having _imitated_ the Whole by a work of mosaic, he imagines he has retraced the design of it, and made the genesis. Is it matter that is in question? The diffused elements which he integrates into visible and tangible bodies have all the air of being the very particles of the simple bodies, which he first supposes disseminated throughout space. They are, at any rate, "material points," and consequently unvarying points, veritable little solids: as if solidity, being what is nearest and handiest to us, could be found at the very origin of materiality! The more physics progresses, the more it shows the impossibility of representing the properties of ether or of electricity--the probable base of all bodies--on the model of the properties of the matter which we perceive. But philosophy goes back further even than the ether, a mere schematic figure of the relations between phenomena apprehended by our senses. It knows indeed that what is visible and tangible in things represents our possible action on them. It is not by dividing the evolved that we shall reach the principle of that which evolves. It is not by recomposing the evolved with itself that we shall reproduce the evolution of which it is the term. Is it the question of mind? By compounding the reflex with the reflex, Spencer thinks he generates instinct and rational volition one after the other. He fails to see that the specialized reflex, being a terminal point of evolution just as much as perfect will, cannot be supposed at the start. That the first of the two terms should have reached its final form before the other is probable enough; but both the one and the other are _deposits_ of the evolution movement, and the evolution movement itself can no more be expressed as a function solely of the first than solely of the second. We must begin by mixing the reflex and the voluntary. We must then go in quest of the fluid reality which has been precipitated in this twofold form, and which probably shares in both without being either. At the lowest degree of the animal scale, in living beings that are but an undifferentiated protoplasmic mass, the reaction to stimulus does not yet call into play one definite mechanism, as in the reflex; it has not yet choice among several definite mechanisms, as in the voluntary act; it is, then, neither voluntary nor reflex, though it heralds both. We experience in ourselves something of this true original activity when we perform semi-voluntary and semi-automatic movements to escape a pressing danger. And yet this is but a very imperfect imitation of the primitive character, for we are concerned here with a mixture of two activities already formed, already localized in a brain and in a spinal cord, whereas the original activity was a simple thing, which became diversified through the very construction of mechanisms like those of the spinal cord and brain. But to all this Spencer shuts his eyes, because it is of the essence of his method to recompose the consolidated with the consolidated, instead of going back to the gradual process of consolidation, which is evolution itself. Is it, finally, the question of the correspondence between mind and matter? Spencer is right in defining the intellect by this correspondence. He is right in regarding it as the end of an evolution. But when he comes to retrace this evolution, again he integrates the evolved with the evolved--failing to see that he is thus taking useless trouble, and that in positing the slightest fragment of the actually evolved he posits the whole--so that it is vain for him, then, to pretend to make the genesis of it. For, according to him, the phenomena that succeed each other in nature project into the human mind images which represent them. To the relations between phenomena, therefore, correspond symmetrically relations between the ideas. And the most general laws of nature, in which the relations between phenomena are condensed, are thus found to have engendered the directing principles of thought, into which the relations between ideas have been integrated. Nature, therefore, is reflected in mind. The intimate structure of our thought corresponds, piece by piece, to the very skeleton of things--I admit it willingly; but, in order that the human mind may be able to represent relations between phenomena, there must first be phenomena, that is to say, distinct facts, cut out in the continuity of becoming. And once we posit this particular mode of cutting up such as we perceive it to-day, we posit also the intellect such as it is to-day, for it is by relation to it, and to it alone, that reality is cut up in this manner. Is it probable that mammals and insects notice the same aspects of nature, trace in it the same divisions, articulate the whole in the same way? And yet the insect, so far as intelligent, has already something of our intellect. Each being cuts up the material world according to the lines that its action must follow: it is these lines of _possible action_ that, by intercrossing, mark out the net of experience of which each mesh is a fact. No doubt, a town is composed exclusively of houses, and the streets of the town are only the intervals between the houses: so, we may say that nature contains only facts, and that, the facts once posited, the relations are simply the lines running between the facts. But, in a town, it is the gradual portioning of the ground into lots that has determined at once the place of the houses, their general shape, and the direction of the streets: to this portioning we must go back if we wish to understand the particular mode of subdivision that causes each house to be where it is, each street to run as it does. Now, the cardinal error of Spencer is to take experience already allotted as given, whereas the true problem is to know how the allotment was worked. I agree that the laws of thought are only the integration of relations between facts. But, when I posit the facts with the shape they have for me to-day, I suppose my faculties of perception and intellection such as they are in me to-day; for it is they that portion the real into lots, they that cut the facts out in the whole of reality. Therefore, instead of saying that the relations between facts have generated the laws of thought, I can as well claim that it is the form of thought that has determined the shape of the facts perceived, and consequently their relations among themselves: the two ways of expressing oneself are equivalent; they say at bottom the same thing. With the second, it is true, we give up speaking of evolution. But, with the first, we only speak of it, we do not think of it any the more. For a true evolutionism would propose to discover by what _modus vivendi_, gradually obtained, the intellect has adopted its plan of structure, and matter its mode of subdivision. This structure and this subdivision work into each other; they are mutually complementary; they must have progressed one with the other. And, whether we posit the present structure of mind or the present subdivision of matter, in either case we remain in the evolved: we are told nothing of what evolves, nothing of evolution. And yet it is this evolution that we must discover. Already, in the field of physics itself, the scientists who are pushing the study of their science furthest incline to believe that we cannot reason about the parts as we reason about the whole; that the same principles are not applicable to the origin and to the end of a progress; that neither creation nor annihilation, for instance, is inadmissible when we are concerned with the constituent corpuscles of the atom. Thereby they tend to place themselves in the concrete duration, in which alone there is true generation and not only a composition of parts. It is true that the creation and annihilation of which they speak concern the movement or the energy, and not the imponderable medium through which the energy and the movement are supposed to circulate. But what can remain of matter when you take away everything that determines it, that is to say, just energy and movement themselves? The philosopher must go further than the scientist. Making a clean sweep of everything that is only an imaginative symbol, he will see the material world melt back into a simple flux, a continuity of flowing, a becoming. And he will thus be prepared to discover real duration there where it is still more useful to find it, in the realm of life and of consciousness. For, so far as inert matter is concerned, we may neglect the flowing without committing a serious error: matter, we have said, is weighted with geometry; and matter, the reality which _descends_, endures only by its connection with that which _ascends_. But life and consciousness are this very ascension. When once we have grasped them in their essence by adopting their movement, we understand how the rest of reality is derived from them. Evolution appears and, within this evolution, the progressive determination of materiality and intellectuality by the gradual consolidation of the one and of the other. But, then, it is within the evolutionary movement that we place ourselves, in order to follow it to its present results, instead of recomposing these results artificially with fragments of themselves. Such seems to us to be the true function of philosophy. So understood, philosophy is not only the turning of the mind homeward, the coincidence of human consciousness with the living principle whence it emanates, a contact with the creative effort: it is the study of becoming in general, it is true evolutionism and consequently the true continuation of science--provided that we understand by this word a set of truths either experienced or demonstrated, and not a certain new scholasticism that has grown up during the latter half of the nineteenth century around the physics of Galileo, as the old scholasticism grew up around Aristotle. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 96: The part of this chapter which treats of the history of systems, particularly of the Greek philosophy, is only the very succinct résumé of views that we developed at length, from 1900 to 1904, in our lectures at the Collège de France, especially in a course on the _History of the Idea of Time_ (1902-1903). We then compared the mechanism of conceptual thought to that of the cinematograph. We believe the comparison will be useful here.] [Footnote 97: The analysis of the idea of the nought which we give here (pp. 275-298) has appeared before in the _Revue philosophique_ (November 1906).] [Footnote 98: Kant, _Critique of Pure Reason_, 2nd edition, p. 737: "From the point of view of our knowledge in general ... the peculiar function of negative propositions is simply to prevent error." Cf. Sigwart, _Logik_, 2nd edition, vol. i. pp. 150 ff.] [Footnote 99: That is, we do not consider the sophism of Zeno refuted by the fact that the geometrical progression _a_(1 + 1/_n_ + 1/_n_2 + 1/_n_3 +,... etc.)--in which _a_ designates the initial distance between Achilles and the tortoise, and _n_ the relation of their respective velocities--has a finite sum if _n_ is greater than 1. On this point we may refer to the arguments of F. Evellin, which we regard as conclusive (see Evellin, _Infini et quantité_, Paris, 1880, pp. 63-97; cf. _Revue philosophique_, vol. xi., 1881, pp. 564-568). The truth is that mathematics, as we have tried to show in a former work, deals and can deal only with lengths. It has therefore had to seek devices, first, to transfer to the movement, which is not a length, the divisibility of the line passed over, and then to reconcile with experience the idea (contrary to experience and full of absurdities) of a movement that is a length, that is, of a movement _placed upon_ its trajectory and arbitrarily decomposable like it.] [Footnote 100: Plato, _Timaeus_, 37 D.] [Footnote 101: We have tried to bring out what is true and what is false in this idea, so far as spatiality is concerned (see Chapter III.). It seems to us radically false as regards _duration_.] [Footnote 102: Aristotle, _De anima_, 430 a 14 [Greek: kai hestin ho men toioutos nous tô pynta ginesthai, ho de tô panta poiein, ôs hexis tis, oion to phôs. tropon gar tina ka to phôs poiei ta dynamei onta chrômata energeia chrômata].] [Footnote 103: _De caelo_, ii. 287 a 12 [Greek: tês eschatês periphoras oute kenon estin exôthen oute topos.] _Phys._ iv. 212 a 34 [Greek: to de pan esti men hôs kinêsetai hesti d' hôs ou. hôs men gar holon, hama ton topon hou metaballei. kyklô de kinêsetai, tôn moriôn gar outos ho topos].] [Footnote 104: _De caelo_, i. 279 a 12 [Greek: oude chronos hestin hexô tou ouranou]. _Phys._ viii. 251 b 27 [Greek: ho chronos pathos ti kinêseôs].] [Footnote 105: Especially have we left almost entirely on one side those admirable but somewhat fugitive intuitions that Plotinus was later to seize, to study and to fix.] [Footnote 106: See page 10.] [Footnote 107: Descartes, _Principes_, ii. § 29.] [Footnote 108: Descartes, _Principes_, ii. §§ 36 ff.] [Footnote 109: In a course of lectures on Plotinus, given at the Collège de France in 1897-1898, we tried to bring out these resemblances. They are numerous and impressive. The analogy is continued even in the formulae employed on each side.] [Footnote 110: "Le Paralogisme psycho-physiologique" (_Revue de métaphysique et de morale_, Nov. 1904, pp. 895-908). Cf. _Matière et mémoire_, Paris, 1896, chap. i.] INDEX (Compiled by the Translator) Abolition of everything a self-contradiction, 280, 283, 296, 298 idea of, 279, 282, 283, 295, 296. _See_ Nought Absence of order, 231, 234, 274. _See_ Disorder Absolute and freedom, 277 reality, 99, 228-9, 269, 358, 361 reality of the person, 269 time and the, 239, 240, 298, 340, 344 Absoluteness of duration, 206 of understanding, xi, 47, 152, 190, 197, 199 Abstract becoming, 304-7 multiplicity, 257-9 time, 9, 17, 20-2, 37, 39, 46, 51, 163, 318-9, 336, 352-3 Accident and essence in Aristotle's philosophy, 353 in evolution, 86-7, 104, 114-5, 127, 169, 170, 252, 254-5, 266, 267, 326-7 Accidental variations, 55, 63, 68, 69, 74, 85-6, 168 Accumulation of energy, function of vegetable organisms, 253, 255 Achilles and tortoise, in Zeno, 311, 312-3 Acquired characters, inheritance of, 76-9, 83-4, 87, 169, 170, 173, 231 Act, consciousness as inadequacy of, to representation, 144 form (or essence), quality, three classes of representation, 302-3 Action, creativeness of free, 192, 247 and concepts, 160, 297 and consciousness, xiii, 5, 143-4, 145, 179-80, 207, 262 discontinuity of, 154, 307 freedom of, in animals, 130 as function of nervous system, 262-3 indivisibility of, 94, 95, 308-9 and inert matter, 96, 136, 141-2, 156, 187, 198, 226, 366 instinct and, 136, 141 instrument of, consciousness, 180 instrument of, life, 162 instrument of matter, 161, 198-9 as instrument of consciousness, 180 and intellect. _See_ Intellect and action intensity of consciousness varies with ratio of possible, to real, 145 meaning of, 301-3 moves from want to fulness, 297, 298 organism a machine for, 252, 254, 300 and perception, 5, 11, 12, 93, 188, 189, 206, 227-30, 300, 307, 368 possible, 12, 13, 96, 144, 145, 146-7, 159, 165, 179-81, 188, 264 and science, 93, 195-6, 198-9, 329-30 and space, 203 sphere of the intellect, 155 tension in a free, 200, 207, 238, 240, 301-2 Activity, dissatisfaction the starting-point of, 297 of instinct, continuous with vital process, 139, 140 life as, 128-9, 247 mutually inverse factors in vital, 248 and nervous system, 110, 130, 132-3, 134-5, 180, 252, 261-3 organism as, 174 potential. _See_ Action, possible tension of free, 200, 202, 207-8, 223-4, 237, 239, 300-1 and torpor in evolution, 109, 111, 113, 114, 119-20, 129-30, 135-6, 181, 292 vital, has evolved divergently, 134 _See_ Divergent lines of evolution Adaptation, 50-1, 55, 57-8, 59, 70, 101, 129, 133, 192, 255, 270, 305-6 and causation, 102 mutual, between materiality and intellectuality, 187, 206-7 and progress, 101-2 Adequate and inadequate in Spinoza, 353 Adjectives, substantives and verbs, 303-4, 315 Aesthetics and philosophy, 177 Affection, Role of, in the idea of chance, 234 in the idea of nought, 281-3, 289, 293, 295, 296 in negation, 286-7 Affirmation and negation, 285-6, 293 Age and individuality, 15-6 Albuminoid substances, 121-2 Alciope, 96 Alexandrian philosophy, 322, 323 Algae in illustration of probable consciousness in vegetable forms, 112 Alimentation, 113-4, 117, 247 Allegory of the Cave, 191 Alternations of increase and decrease of mutability of the universe, 245-6 Alveolar froth, 33-4 Ambiguity of the idea of "generality" in philosophy, 230-1, 320-1 of primitive organisms, 99, 112, 113, 129-30 Ammophila hirsuta, paralyzing instinct in, 173 Amoeba, in illustration of imitation of the living by the unorganized, 33-6 in illustration of the ambiguity of primitive organisms, 99 in illustration of the mobility characteristic of animals, 108 in illustration of the "explosive" expenditure of energy characteristic of animals, 120, 253 Anagenesis, 34 Anarchy, idea of, 233, 234. _See_ Disorder Anatomy, comparative, and transformism, 25 Ancient philosophy, Achilles and tortoise, 311-2 Alexandrian philosophy, 322-3 Allegory of the Cave, 191 Anima (De), 322 _note_ Apogee of sensible object, 344, 345, 349 Archimedes, 343-4 Aristotle, 135, 174-5, 227-8, 314, 316, 321, 323, 324, 328-33, 347, 349, 353, 356, 370 Arrow of Zeno, 308-13 ascent toward God, in Aristotle, 323 Astronomy, ancient and modern, 334-6 attraction and impulsion in, 323-4 becoming in, 313-4, 317 bow and indivisibility of motion, 308-9 Caelo (De), of Aristotle, 322 _note_, 324 _note_ and Cartesian geometry, 334-5 causality in, 323, 325-6 change in, 313-4, 317, 328-9, 342-3 cinematographical nature of, 315 circularity of God's thought, 323-4 concentric spheres, 328 concepts, 326-7, 356 "conversion" and "procession" in, 323 degradation of ideas into sensible flux, 317-8, 321, 323-4, 327, 328, 343-5, 352-3 degrees of reality, 323-4, 327 diminution, derivation of becoming by. _See_ Degradation of Ideas, etc. duration, 317-9 _note_, 323-4, 327-9 Eleatic philosophy, 308, 314 Enneads of Plotinus, 210 _note_ essence and accident, 354 essence or form, 314-5 eternal, 317-8, 324-6 Eternity, 317-8, 320, 324, 328-9 extension, 210 _note_, 318, 324, 327 form or idea, 314-20, 322, 327, 329-31, 352 geometry, Cartesian, and ancient philosophy, 334 God of Aristotle, 196-7, 322-4, 349, 352, 356 [Greek: hylê], 353 Idea, 314-22, 352-3 and indivisibility of motion, 307-8, 311 intelligible reality in, 326 intelligibles of Plotinus, 353 [Greek: logos], of Plotinus, 210 _note_ matter in Aristotle's philosophy, 316, 327 and modern astronomy, 333-4, 335 and modern geometry, 333-4 and modern philosophy, 226-7, 228-9, 232, 281-2, 344-5, 346, 349-51, 364, 369 and modern science, 329-30, 336, 342-3, 344-5, 357 motion in, 307-8, 312-3 necessity in, 327 [Greek: noêseôs noêsis], 356 non-being, 316, 327 [Greek: nous poiêtikos], 322 oscillation about being, sensible reality as, 317-8 Physics of Aristotle, 227-8 _note_, 324 _note_, 330-1 Plato, 48, 156, 191, 210 _note_, 316-8, 321-4, 327, 330, 348, 349 Plotinus, 210, 316, 323, 326 _note_, 349, 352-4 procession in Alexandrian philosophy, 323 [Greek: psychê], 210 _note_, 350 realism in, 232 refraction of idea through matter or non-being, 317 sectioning of becoming, 318-9 sensible reality, 314, 316-8, 321, 327-9, 352-3 [Greek: sôma], 350 space and time, 317-9, 320 Timaeus, 318 _note_ time in ancient and in modern science, 330-1, 336-7, 341-4 time and space, 317-9, 320 vision of God in Alexandrian philosophy, 322 Zeno, 308, 313 Ancient science and modern, 329-31, 336-7, 342-5, 357 Anima (De), of Aristotle, 322 _note_ Animal kingdom, 12, 105-6, 119-21, 126, 129, 131-2, 134-6, 137-8, 139, 179, 184-5 Animals, 105-47, 167, 170, 181, 183, 187, 212, 214, 246, 252, 253, 254, 262-5, 267, 271, 293, 301 deduction in, 212 induction in, 214 and man, 139-43, 183, 187, 188, 212, 263, 264, 267 and man in respect to brain, 183, 184-5, 263-5 and man in respect to consciousness, 139-43, 180, 183, 187, 188, 192, 212, 263-8 and man in respect to instruments of action, 139-43, 150-1 and man in respect to intelligence, 137-8, 187, 188, 191-2, 212 and plants, 105-39, 124-6, 143, 145, 146-7, 168-70, 181-2, 253, 254, 293 and plants in respect to activity of consciousness, 109, 111, 113, 119-21, 128-9, 132, 134-6, 142-3, 144, 181-2, 293 and plants in respect to function, 117-8, 121-2, 127 and plants in respect to instinct, 167, 170 and plants in respect to mobility, 109, 110, 113, 129-30, 132-3, 135, 181 and plants in respect to nature of consciousness, 134-5 Antagonistic currents of the vital impetus, 129, 135-6, 181, 184, 250, 258-9 Anthophora, 146-7 Antinomies of Kant, 204, 205 Antipathy. _See_ Sympathy, Feeling, Divination Antithesis and thesis, 205 Ants, 101, 134, 140, 157 Ape's brain and consciousness contrasted with man's, 263 Aphasia, 181 Apidae, social instinct in the, 171 Apogee of instinct in the hymenoptera and of intelligence in man, 174-5 _See_ Evolutionary superiority Apogee of sensible object, in philosophy of Ideas, 343-4, 349 Approximateness of the knowledge of matter, 206-7 Approximation, in matter, to the mathematical order, 218. _See_ Order Archimedes, 333-4 Aristotle. _See_ Ancient Philosophy, Aristotle Arrow, Flying, of Zeno, 308-9, 310, 312-3 Art, 6-7, 29 _note_, 45, 89, 177 Artemia Salina, transformations of, 72, 73 Arthropods in evolution, 130-5, 142 Articulate species, 133 Articulations of matter relative to action, 156, 367 of motion, 310-1 of real time, 332-3 Artificial, how far scientific knowledge is, 197, 218-9 instruments, 138, 139, 140-1 Artist, in illustration of the creativeness of duration, 340-1 Ascending cosmic movement, 11, 208, 275, 369 Ascent toward God, in Aristotle, 323 Association of organisms, 260. _See_ Individuation universal oscillation between association and individuation, 259, 260. _See_ Societies Astronomy and deduction, 213 and the inert order, 224 modern, in reference to ancient science, 334-6 Atmosphere of spatiality bathing intelligence, 204 Atom, 240, 254, 255 as an intellectual view of matter, 203, 250 and interpenetration, 207 Attack and defence in evolution, 131-2 Attention, 2, 148-9, 154, 184, 209 discontinuity of, 2 in man and in lower animals, 184. _See_ Tension and instinct, Tension as inverted extension, Tension of personality, Sympathetic appreciation, etc., Relaxation and intellect Attraction and impulsion in Greek philosophy, 323, 324 Attribute and subject, 148 Automatic activity, 145 as instrument of voluntary, 252 order, 224, 231-4. _See_ Negative movement, etc., Geometrical order Automatism, 127, 143-4, 174, 223-4, 261, 264 Background of instinct and intelligence, consciousness as, 186 Backward-looking attitude of the intellect, 47, 48, 237 Baldwin, J.M., 27 _note_ Ballast of intelligence, 152, 230, 239, 369-70 Bastian, 212 _note_ Bateson, 63 Becoming, 164, 236, 248-9, 273, 299-304, 307-8, 313-4, 316, 337-8, 342-3, 345, 363 in ancient philosophy, 313-4, 317 in Descartes's philosophy, 346 in Eleatic philosophy, 313-4, 315 in general, or abstract becoming, 304, 306-7 instantaneous and static views of, 272, 304-5 states of, falsely so called, 164, 247-8, 273, 298-301, 307-8 in the successors of Kant, 363. _See_ Change, New, Duration, Time, Views of reality Bees, 101, 140, 142, 146, 166, 172 Beethoven, 224 Berthold, 34 _note_ Bethe, 176 _note_ Bifurcations of tendency, 54. _See_ Divergent lines of evolution Biology, 12, 25, 26, 31-2, 43, 168-9, 174-5, 194-6 evolutionist, 168-9 and philosophy, 43, 194-6 and physico-chemistry, 26 Blaringhem, 85 Bodies, 156, 188, 189, 300-1, 360. _See_ Inert matter as a relaxation of the unextended into the extended defined as bundles of qualities, 349 Bois-Reymond (Du), 38 Boltzmann, 245 Bombines, social instincts in, 171 Bouvier, 142 _note_ Bow, strain of, illustrating indivisibility of motion, 308-10 Brain and consciousness, 5, 109, 110, 179-80, 183-4, 212 _note_, 252, 261-4, 270, 354, 356, 366. _See_ Nervous System in man and lower animals, 183, 184, 263-5 Brandt, 66 _note_ Breast-Plate, in reference to animal mobility, 130, 131. _See_ Carapace, Cellulose envelope Brown-Séquard, 80-2 Bulb, medullary, in the development of the nervous system, 110, 252 Busquet, 259 _note_ Bütschli, 33 _note_ Buttel-Reepen, 171 _note_ Butterflies, in illustration of variation from evolutionary type, 72 Caelo (De), of Aristotle, 322 _note_, 324 _note_ Calcareous sheath, in reference to animal mobility, 130-1 Calkins, 16 _note_ Canal, in illustration of the relation of function and structure, 93 Canalization, in illustration of the function of animal organisms, 93, 95, 110, 126, 256, 270 Canvas, embroidering "something" on the, of "nothing," 297 Caprice, an attribute not of freedom but of mechanism, 47 Carapace, in reference to animal mobility, 130-1 Carbohydrates, in reference to the function of the animal organism, 121-2 Carbon, in reference to the function of organisms, 107, 113, 114, 117, 254, 255 Carbonic acid, in reference to the function of organisms, 254, 255 Carnot, 243, 246, 256 Cartesian geometry, compared with ancient, 334 Cartesianism, 345, 356, 358 Cartesians, 358. _See_ Spinoza, Leibniz Carving, the, of matter by intellect, 155 Categorical propositions, characteristic of instinctive knowledge, 149-50 Categories, conceptual, x, xiii, 48, 147, 148-9, 165, 189-90, 195-7, 207, 220-1, 257-60, 265, 358, 361. _See_ Concept deduction of, and genesis of the intellect, 196, 207, 359. _See_ Genesis of matter and of the intellect innate, 147, 148-9 misfit for the vital, x, xiii, 48, 165, 195-9, 220-1, 257-9 in reference to the adaptation to each other of the matter and form of knowledge, 361 Cats, in illustration of the law of correlation, 67 Causal relation in Aristotle, 325 between consciousness and movement, 111 in Greek philosophy, 324-5 Causality, mechanical, a category which does not apply to life, x, xiv, 177 in the philosophy of Ideas, 323-6 Causation and adaptation, 101, 102 final, involves mechanical, 44 Cause and effect as mathematical functions of each other, 20, 21 efficient, 238, 277, 323 efficient, in Aristotle's philosophy, 324 efficient, in Leibniz's philosophy, 353 final, 40, 44, 238 final, in Aristotle's philosophy, 324 by impulsion, release and unwinding, 73 mechanical, as containing effect, 14, 233, 269 in the vital order, 95, 164 Cave, Plato's allegory of the, 191 Cell, 16, 24, 33, 162, 166, 167, 260, 269 as artificial construct, 162 in the "colonial theory," 260 division, 16, 24, 33 instinct in the, 166, 167 in relation to the soul, 269 Cellulose envelope in reference to vegetable immobility and torpor, 108, 111, 130 Cerebral activity and consciousness, 5, 109-10, 180-1, 183-4, 212 _note_, 252, 253, 261, 264, 268, 270, 350, 351, 354, 355, 366 mechanism, 5, 252, 253, 262, 264, 366 Cerebro-spinal system, 124. _See_ Nervous system Certainty of induction, 215, 216 Chance analogous to disorder, 233, 234. _See_ Affection in evolution, 86-7, 104, 114-5, 126, 169-70, 171, 252, 254, 255, 266, 267, 326-7. _See_ Indetermination Change, 1, 7-8, 18, 85-6, 248, 275, 294, 300-304, 308, 313-4, 317, 326, 328-9, 343-4, 344-5 in ancient philosophy, 313-4, 316-7, 325-6, 327-9, 343, 345 in Eleatic philosophy, 314 known only from within, 307-8 Chaos, 232. _See_ Disorder Character, moral, 5, 99-100 Charrin, 81 _note_ Chemistry, 27, 34-6, 55, 72, 74, 98, 194, 226, 256, 260 Child, intelligence in, 147-8 adolescence of, in illustration of evolutionary becoming, 311-3 Chipped stone, in paleontology, 139 Chlorophyllian function, 107-9, 114, 117, 246, 253 Choice, 110, 125, 143-5, 179, 180, 252, 260-4, 276, 366 and consciousness, 110, 179, 260-4 Chrysalis, 114 _note_ Cinematograph, 306-7, 339-40 Cinematographical character of ancient philosophy, 315-6 of intellectual knowledge, 306, 307, 312-8, 323-4, 331-3, 346 of language, 306-7, 312-5 of modern science, 329-31, 336-7, 341-3, 345, 346, 347 Circle of the given, broken by action, 192, 247 logical and physical, 277 vicious, in intellectualist philosophy, 193, 197, 320 vicious, in the intuitional method is only apparent, 192, 193 Circularity of God's thought in Aristotle's philosophy, 324 of each special evolution, 128 Circulation, protoplasmic, imitated, 32-3 in plants and animals, 108 Circumstances in the determination of evolution, 101-2, 128-9, 133, 138, 142, 150-1, 167, 168, 170-1, 193, 194, 252, 256 in relation to special instincts, 138, 168, 193 Classes of words corresponding to the three kinds of representation, 303-4 Clausius, 243 Clearness characteristic of intellect, 160 Cleft between the organized and the unorganized, 190, 196-9 Climbing plants, instincts of, 170 _note_ Coincidence of matter with space as in Kant, 206, 207, 244 of mind with intellect as in Kant, 48, 206 of qualities, 216 of seeing and willing, 237 of self with self, definition of the feeling of duration, 199-200 Coleopter, instinct in, 146 Colonial theory, 259, 260 Colonies, microbial, 259 Color variation in lizards, 72, 74 Coming and going of the mind between the without and the within gives rise to the idea of "Nothing," 279 between nature and mind, the true method of philosophy, 239 Common-sense, 29, 153, 161, 213, 224, 277 defined as continuous experience of the real, 213 Comparison of ancient philosophy with modern, 226, 228-9, 232, 328-9, 345-6, 349-51, 353-4, 356 Compenetration, 352-3. _See_ Interpenetration Complementarity of forms evolved, xii, xiii, 51, 101, 103, 113, 116-7, 135, 136, 254, 255 of instinct and intelligence, 146, 173. _See_ Opposition of Instinct and Intelligence of intuition and intellect, 343, 345 in the powers of life, 49, 96-7, 140-3, 177, 178-9, 183-5, 239, 246, 254, 343 of science and metaphysics, 344 Complexity of the order of mathematics, 208-10, 217, 251 Compound reflex, instinct as a, 174 Concentration, intellect as, 191, 301 of personality, 198-9, 201 Concentric spheres in Aristotle's philosophy, 328 Concept accessory to action, ix analogy of, with the solid body, ix in animals, 187 externality of, 160, 168, 175-8, 199-200, 251, 306, 311, 314 fringed about with intuition, 46 and image distinguished, 160, 279 impotent to grasp life, ix-xiii, 49 intellect the concept-making faculty, vi, 49 misfit for the vital, 48 representation of the act by which the intellect is fixed on things, 161 synthesis of, in ancient philosophy, 325-6, 356. _See_ Categories, Externality, Frames, Image, Space, Symbol Conditions, external, in evolution, 128-9, 133, 138, 141-2, 150-1, 166-7, 168, 170, 193, 194, 251, 256, 257 external, in determination of special instinct, 141-2, 150-1, 167, 168, 171 Conduct, mechanism and finality in the evolution of, 47. _See_ Freedom, Determination, Indetermination Confused plurality of life, 257 Conjugation of Infusoria, 16 Consciousness and action, ix, 5, 144, 145, 179-80, 207, 260-1 consciousness as appendage to action, ix consciousness as arithmetical difference between possible and real activity, 145 consciousness as auxiliary to action, 179-80 consciousness as inadequacy of act to representation, 144 consciousness as instrument of action, 180 consciousness as interval between possible and real action, 145, 179 consciousness as light from zone of possible actions surrounding the real act, 179 consciousness and locomotion, 262 consciousness plugged up by action, 144, 145. _See_ Torpor, Sleep consciousness as sketch of action, 207 intensity of, varies with ratio of possible to real action, 145 Consciousness in animals, as distinguished from the consciousness of plants, 130, 135-6, 143 as distinguished from the consciousness of man, 139-43, 180, 183, 184, 187, 188, 212, 263-9. _See_ Torpor, Sleep characteristic of animals, torpor of plants, 109, 111, 113, 120, 128-9, 135-6, 181, 182, 292 as background of instinct and intelligence, 186 and brain, 180, 262, 263, 269, 270, 354 and choice, 110, 144-5, 179, 262-4 coextensive with universal life, 186, 270 and creation, consciousness as demand for creation, 261 current of, penetrating matter, 181, 270 as deficiency of instinct, 145 in dog and man, 180 double form of, 179 function of, 207 as hesitation or choice, 143, 144 imprisonment of, 180, 183-4, 264 as invention and freedom, 264, 270 in man as distinguished from, in lower forms of life, 180, 263, 264, 267, 268 and matter, 179, 181-2 as motive principle of evolution, 181-2 nullified, as distinguished from the absence of consciousness, 143 and the organism, 270 in plants, 131, 135-6, 143 as world principle, 237, 261 Conservation of energy, 243, 244 Construction, 139-42, 150-1, 156, 157-8, 180, 182. _See_ Manufacture, Solid the characteristic work of intellect, 163-4 as the method of Kant's successors, 364-5 Contingency, 96, 255, 268. _See_ Accident, Chance the, of order, 231, 235 Continuation of vital process in instinct, 138, 139, 166, 167, 246. _See_ Variations, Vital process Continuity, 1, 26, 29-30, 37, 138-40, 154, 162-4, 258, 302, 306-7, 311-2, 321, 325-6, 329-30, 347 of becoming, 306-7, 312 of change, 325-6 of evolution, 18, 19 of extension, 154 of germinative plasma, 26, 37 of instinct with vital process, 139, 140, 166-7, 246 of life, 1-11, 29, 163-4, 258 of living substance, 162 of psychic life, 1, 30 of the real, 302, 329-30 of sensible intuition with ultra-intellectual, 361 of sensible universe, 346 Conventionality of science, 207 "Conversion" and "procession" in Alexandrian philosophy, 323 Cook, Plato's comparison of the, and the dialectician, 156 Cope, 35 _note_, 77, 111 Correlation, law of, 66, 67 Correspondence between mind and matter in Spencer, 368. _See_ Simultaneity Cortical mechanism, 252, 253, 262. _See_ Cerebral mechanism Cosmogony and genesis of matter, 188. _See_ Genesis of matter and of intellect, Spencer Cosmology the, that follows from the philosophy of Ideas, 315, 328 as reversed psychology, 208 Counterweight representation as, to action, 145 Counting simultaneities, the measurement of time is, 338, 341-2 Creation, xi, 7, 11, 12, 22, 29, 30, 45, 93, 100, 101, 103, 105, 108, 114, 128-31, 161, 163-4, 178, 200, 217, 218, 223, 226, 230, 237-40, 261, 270, 275, 339-40 in Descartes's philosophy, 345 of intellect, 248-9 of matter, 237, 239, 247-8, 249. _See_ Materiality the inversion of spirituality of present by past, 5, 20-3, 27, 167, 199-202 the vital order as, 230 Creative evolution, 7, 15, 21, 27, 29, 36, 37, 65, 100, 104-5, 161, 163, 223-4, 230-1, 237, 264, 269 Creativeness of free action, 192, 243 of invention, 250 Creeping plants in illustration of vegetable mobility, 108 Cricket victim of paralyzing instinct of sphex, 172 Criterion, quest of a, 53 _ff._ of evolutionary rank, 133, 265 Criticism, Kantian, 205, 287 _note_, 356, 360-2 of knowledge, 194-5 Cross-cuts through becoming by intellect, 314. _See_ Views of reality through matter by perception, 206 Cross-roads of vital tendency, 51, 52, 54, 110, 126 Crustacea, 19, 111, 129-30 Crystal illustrating (by contrast) individuation, 12 Cuénot, 79 _note_ Culminating points of evolutionary progress, 50, 133-5. _See_ Evolutionary superiority Current, 26, 27, 51, 185, 236, 237, 250, 266, 269 Currents, antagonistic, 250 of existence, 185 of life penetrating matter, 26, 27, 266, 270 vital, 26, 27, 51, 237, 266, 270 of will penetrating matter, 237 Curves, as symbol of life, 32, 90, 213 Cuts through becoming by the intellect, 313-4. _See_ Views of reality, Snapshots in illustration, etc. through matter by perception, 206 Cuvier, 125 _note_ Dantec (Le), 18 _note_, 34 _note_ Darwin, 62-5, 66, 72, 108, 170 _note_ Darwinism, 56, 85, 86 Dastre, 36 _note_ Dead, the, is the object of intellect, 165 Dead-locks in speculation, 155, 312 Death, 246 _note_, 271 Declivity descended by matter, 208, 246, 256, 339-40. _See_ Descending movement Decomposing and recomposing powers characteristic of intellect, 157, 251 Deduction, analogy between, related to moral sphere and tangent to curve, 213 and astronomy, 213 duration refractory to, 213 geometry the ideal limit of, 213-26, 361 in animals, 212 inverse to positive spiritual effort, 212 nature of, 211 physics and, 213 weakness of, in psychology and moral science, 213 Defence and attack in evolution, 132 Deficiency of will the negative condition of mathematical order and complexity, 209 Definition in the realm of life, 13, 105, 106 Degenerates, 133-5 _Dégénérescence sénile (La)_, by Metchnikoff, 18 _note_ Degradation of energy, 241, 242, 246 of the extra-spatial into the spatial, 207 of the ideas into the sensible flux in ancient philosophy, 317-9, 324-5, 327-9, 331, 343, 345, 352-3 Degrees of being in the successors of Kant, 362-3 Degrees of reality in Greek philosophy, 324, 327 Delage, 59 _note_, 81 _note_, 260 _note_ Delamare, 81 _note_ Deliberation, 144 De Manacéine, 124 _note_ Deposit, instinct and intelligence as deposits, emanations, issues, or aspects of life, x, xii, xiii, 49, 103, 105, 136, 365 De Saporta, 107 _note_ Descartes, 280, 334, 345, 346, 353, 358 becoming, 345-6 creation, 346 determinism, 345 duration, 346 freedom, 345, 346 geometry, 334 God, 346 image and idea or concept, 281 indeterminism, 345 mechanism, 345, 346 motion, 346 vacillation between abstract time and real duration, 345 Descending movement of existence, 11, 202, 203, 208, 271, 275, 369 Design, motionless, of action the object of intellect, 154-5, 299, 301-2, 303 Detention in the dream state, 202 of intuition in intellect, 238 Determination, 76-7, 129-30, 223, 246 Determinism, 217, 264, 345, 348. _See_ Inert matter, Geometry in Descartes, 345 Development, 133, 134-5, 141. _See_ Order, Progress, Evolution, Superiority Deviation from type, 82-4 Dialect and intuition in philosophy, 238 Dichotomy of the real in modern philosophy, 350 Differentiation of parts in an organism, 253, 260 Dilemma of any systematic metaphysics, 195, 197, 230 Diminution, derivation of becoming from being by, in ancient philosophy, 316, 317, 322, 323-4, 327-8, 343-5, 352 geometrical order as, or lower complication of the vital order, 236 Dionaea illustrating certain animal characteristics in plants, 107, 108, 109 Discontinuity of action, 154, 306-7 of attention, 2 of extension relative to action, 154, 163 of knowledge, 306 of living substance, 163 a positive idea, 154 Discontinuous the object of intellect, 154 Discord in nature, 127, 128, 254-5, 267 Disorder, 40, 104, 222-3, 225-6, 232-5, 274. _See_ Expectation, Order, mathematical, Orders of reality, two Disproportion between an invention and its consequences, 182 Dissociation as a cosmic principle opposed to association, 260 of tendencies, 54, 89, 135, 254, 255, 257, 258. _See_ Divergent lines of evolution Distance, extension as the, between what is and what ought to be, 318-9, 327-8, 331 Distinct multiplicity in the dream state, 201, 210 of the inert, 257 Distinctness characteristic of the intellect, 160, 237, 251 characteristic of perception, 227, 251 as spatiality, 203, 207-8, 244, 250 Divergent lines of evolution, xii, 54, 55, 87, 97-101, 103-4, 106, 107, 109, 112, 113, 116, 119, 130, 132, 134-5, 142, 149, 150, 168, 173, 181, 254, 255, 266, 267. _See_ Dissociation of tendencies, Complementarity, etc., Schisms in the primitive impulsion of life Diversity, sensible, 205, 220-1, 231, 235, 236 Divination, instinct as, 176. _See_ Sympathy, etc. Divisibility of extension, 154, 162 Division as function of intellect, 152, 154, 162-3, 189 of labor, 99, 110, 118, 157, 166, 260 of labor in cells, 166 Dog and man, consciousness in, 180 Dogmatism of the ancient epistemology contrasted with the relativism of the modern, 230 of Leibniz and Spinoza, 356-7 skepticism, and relativism, 196-7, 230 Dogs and the law of correlation, 66 Domestication of animals and heredity, 80 Dominants of Reinke, 42 _note_ Dorfmeister, 72 Dream, 144, 180-1, 202, 209, 256. _See_ Interpenetration, Relaxation, Detention, Recollection as relaxation, 202 Driesch, 42 _note_ Drosera, 107, 108, 109 Dufourt, 124 _note_ Duhem, 242 _note_ Dunan, Ch., xv _note_ Duration, xiv _note_, 2, 4-6, 8-11, 15, 17, 21, 22, 37, 39, 46, 51, 199, 201, 206, 213, 216, 240, 272, 273, 276, 298-9, 308-9, 317-8, 319 _note_, 324, 328, 332, 339, 342, 343, 345, 354, 361, 363-4 absoluteness of, 206 and deduction, 213 in Descartes's philosophy, 346 gnawing of, 4, 8, 46 indivisibility of, 6, 308-9 and induction, 216 and the inert, 343-4 in the philosophy of the Ideas, 316-7, 319 _note_, 324, 327, 328-9 rhythm of, 11, 128, 346. _See_ Creation, Evolution, Invention, Time, Unforeseeableness, Uniqueness Echinoderms in reference to animal mobility, 130, 131 Efficient cause in conception of chance, 234 Spinoza and, 269 Effort in evolution, 170 [Greek: Eidos], 314-5 Eimer, 55, 72, 73, 86 Elaborateness of the mathematical order, 208-10, 217, 251 Eleatic philosophy, 308, 314-5 Emanation, logical thought an, issue, aspect or deposit of life, ix, xii, xiii, 49 Embroidering "something" on the canvas of "nothing," 297 Embroidery by descendants on the canvas handed down by ancestors, 23 Embryo, 18, 19, 26, 27, 75, 81, 89, 101, 166 Embryogeny, comparative, and transformism, 25 Embryonic life, 27, 166 Empirical study of evolution the centre of the theory of knowledge and of the theory of life, 178 theories of knowledge, 205 Empty, thinking the full by means of the empty, 273-4 End in Eleatic philosophy, 314-5 of science is practical utility, 329 Energy, 115-7, 120-3, 242, 243, 245, 246, 252-5, 256, 257, 262 conservation of, 242 degradation of, 242, 243, 246 solar, stored by plants, released by animals, 245, 254 Enneadae of Plotinus, 210 _note_ Entelechy of Driesch, 42 _note_ Entropy, 243 Environment in evolution, 129, 133, 138, 140, 142, 150, 167, 168, 170, 192, 193, 252, 256, 257 and special instincts, 138, 168, 192, 193 Epiphenomenalism, 262 Essence and accidents in Aristotle's philosophy, 353 or form in Eleatic philosophy, 314-5 the meaning of, 302-3 Essences (or forms), qualities and acts, the three kinds of representation, 303-4 Eternity, 39, 298, 314, 317, 320, 324, 328, 346, 352, 354 in the philosophy of Ideas, 316-7, 319, 324, 328 in Spinoza's philosophy, 353 Euglena, 116 Evellin, 311 _note_ Eventual actions, 11, 96. _See_ Possible activity Evolution, ix-xv, 18, 20, 22, 24, 25, 26-7, 37, 46-55, 63, 68, 79 _note_, 84-8, 97-105, 107, 113, 116, 126, 127, 129-30, 131-2, 133, 134, 136, 138-40, 141-2, 143, 161, 166, 167, 168-72, 173, 174, 175, 179, 181, 182, 185, 186, 190, 193, 198-9, 207-8, 224, 231, 242 _note_, 246, 248, 249, 251, 252, 254, 264-6, 268, 273, 302, 311, 345, 359, 360, 366 accident in, 104, 169, 170, 173, 174, 251, 252 animal, a progress toward mobility, 131 antagonistic tendencies in, 103, 113, 185 automatic and determinate, is action being undone, 248 blind alleys of, 129 circularity of each special, 128 complementarity of the divergent lines of, 97-102, 103, 116 conceptually inexpressible, 49, 50, 52, 53, 127, 181, 273 continuity of, 18, 19, 26, 37, 46, 273, 302, 312, 345 creative, 7, 15, 21, 27, 30, 36, 37, 65, 100, 105, 161, 162, 163, 223, 230, 238, 264, 269 culminating points of, 50, 133, 174, 185, 265, 266, 268 development by, 133, 134, 141-2 divergent lines of, xii, 53, 54, 87, 97-101, 103-4, 107, 173-4, 246 and duration, 20, 22, 37, 45-6 empirical study of, the centre of the theory of knowledge and of life, 178 and environment, 101-3, 129, 133, 138, 142, 150, 167, 168, 169, 192, 193, 251, 256, 257 of instinct, 170, 171, 174-5. _See_ Divergent lines, etc., Culminating points, etc., Evolution and environment of intellect, x-xii, 153, 186, 189-90, 193, 198-9, 207-8, 359, 360. _See_ Divergent lines, etc., Culminating points, etc., Genesis of matter and of intellect as invention, 344 of man, 264, 266, 268. _See_ Culminating points, etc. motive principle of, is consciousness, 181 of species product of the vital impetus opposed by matter, 247-8, 254 and transformism, 24 unforeseeable, 47, 48, 53, 86, 224 variation in, 23-4, 55, 63, 68, 72 _note_, 85, 131, 137-8, 167, 169, 171, 264 Evolutionary, qualitative, and extensive motion 302-3, 311, 312 superiority, 133-5, 174-5. _See_ Success, Criterion of evolutionary rank, Culminating points, etc. Evolutionism, x-xii, xiv, 77, 84, 364 Exhaustion of the mutability of the universe, 337-8 Existence, logical, as contrasted with psychical and physical, 276, 362 of matter tends toward instantaneity, 201 of self means change, 1 _ff._ superaddition of, upon nothingness, 276 Expectation, 214-6, 221, 222, 226, 233, 235, 274, 281, 292 in conception of disorder, 221, 222, 226, 233, 234, 235, 274 in conception of void or naught, 282, 292 Experience, 138, 147, 177, 197, 204, 229, 321, 354, 359, 363, 368 Explosion, illustrating cause by release, 73 Explosive character of animal energy, 116, 119, 120, 246 of organization, 92 Explosives, manufacture of, by plants and use by animals, 246, 254 Extension, 149, 154, 161, 202, 203, 207, 211, 223, 236, 245, 318-20, 324, 327, 351, 352 continuity of, 154 discontinuity of, relative to action, 154, 162 as the distance between what is and what ought to be, 318 divisibility of, 154, 162 the most general property of matter, 154, 250, 251 the inverse movement to tension, 245 of knowledge, 150 in Leibniz's philosophy, 351, 352 of matter in space, 204, 211 in the philosophy of Ideas, 318-9, 323-4, 327 and relaxation, 202, 207, 209, 211, 212, 218, 223, 245 in Spinoza's philosophy, 350 in the Transcendental Aesthetic, 203 unity of, 158-9 as weakening of the essence of being, in Plotinus, 210 _note_ Extensive, evolutionary and qualitative motion, 302-3, 311, 312 External conditions in evolution, 128, 133, 137, 141-2, 150-1, 167, 168, 170, 192, 193, 252, 256, 257 finality, 41 Externality of concepts, 160, 168, 174, 177, 199, 251, 305, 311-4 the most general property of matter, 154, 250, 251 Externalized action in distinction from internalized, 147, 165. _See_ Somnambulism, etc., Automatic activity, etc. Eye of mollusc and vertebrate compared, 60, 75, 77, 84, 86, 87-8 Fabre, 172 _note_ Fabrication. _See_ Construction Fallacies, two fundamental, 272, 273 Fallacy of thinking being by not-being, 276, 277, 284, 297-8 of thinking the full by the empty, 273-5 of thinking motion by the motionless, 272, 273, 297-8, 307-8, 309-14 Fallibility of instinct, 172-3 Falling back of matter upon consciousness, 264 bodies, comparison of Aristotle and Galileo, 228, 331-2, 334 weight, figure of material world, 245, 246 Familiar, the, is the object of intellect, 163, 164, 199, 270 Faraday, 203 Fasting, in reference to primacy of nervous system over the other physiological systems, 124 Fauna, menace of torpor in primitive, 130 Feeling in the conception of chance, 207 and instinct, 143, 174-5 Fencing-master, illustrating hereditary transmission, 79 Ferments, certain characteristics of, 106 Fertilization of orchids by insects, by Darwin, 170 _note_ Fichte's conception of the intellect, 189-90, 357 Filings, iron, in illustration of the relation of structure to function, 94, 95 Film, cinematographic, figure of abstract motion, 304-6 Final cause, 40, 45, 234, 325 conception of, involves conception of mechanical cause, 44 God as, in Aristotle, 322-3 Finalism, 39-53, 58, 74, 88-97, 101-5, 126-8 Finality, 41, 164, 177-8, 185, 223, 224, 266 external and internal, 41 misfit for the vital, 177, 223-4, 225, 266 and the unforeseeableness of life, 164, 185 Fischel, 75 _note_ Fish in illustration of animal tendency to mobility, 130, 131 Fixation of nutritive elements, 107-9, 113, 117, 246, 247, 253 Fixity, 108-13, 118, 119, 130, 155. _See_ Torpor apparent or relative, 155 cellulose envelope and the, of plants, 108, 111, 130 of extension, 155 of plants, 108-13, 118, 119, 130-1 of torpid animals, 130 Flint hatchets and human intelligence, 137 Fluidity of life, 153, 165, 193 of matter as a whole, 186, 369 Flux of material bodies, 265 of reality, 250, 251, 337, 342, 344 Flying arrow of Zeno, 308, 309, 310 Focalization of personality, 201 Food, 106-9, 113-4, 117, 120, 121, 246, 247, 254 Foraminifera, failure of certain, to evolve, 197 Force, 126-7, 141, 149, 150, 175, 246, 254, 339 life a, inverse to matter, 246 limitedness of vital force, 126, 127, 141, 149, 162 time as, 339-40 Forel, 176 _note_ Foreseeing, 8, 28, 29, 30, 37, 45, 47, 96. _See_ Unforeseeableness Form, xi, 51, 101, 104, 113, 116-8, 129, 135-6, 148-53, 155, 156, 160, 164, 195-7, 222, 237, 250, 255, 302, 303, 314, 317, 318, 322, 341, 357, 359, 361, 362 complementarity of forms evolved, xi, 51, 101, 104, 113, 116-8, 135-6, 255 expansion of the forms of consciousness, xii, xiii (or essences), qualities and acts the three kinds of representation, 302-3 God as pure form in Aristotle, 196, 322 or idea in ancient philosophy, 317, 318, 330 of intelligence, xiv, 48, 147, 148, 165, 190, 195, 196, 198, 207, 219, 257-9, 266, 358-9, 361. _See_ Concept and matter in creation, 239, 250 and matter in knowledge, 195, 361 a snapshot view of transition, 302 Formal knowledge, 152 logic, 292 Forms of sensibility, 361 Fossil species, 102 Foster, 125 _note_ Fox in illustration of animal intelligence, 138 Frames of the understanding, 46-7, 48, 150-2, 173, 177, 197-9, 219-20, 223-4, 258, 270, 313, 358, 364 fit the inert, 197, 218 inadequate to reality entire, 364 misfit for the vital, x, xiii, xiv, 46, 48, 173, 177, 197-9, 223, 258, 313 product of life, 358 transform freedom into necessity, 270 utility of, lies in their unlimited application, 149-50, 152 Freedom, 11, 48, 126, 130, 163, 164, 200, 202, 207, 208, 217, 223, 231, 237, 239, 247, 249, 264-6, 269, 270, 277, 300, 339-41, 345, 346 the absolute as freely acting, 277 affirmed by conscience, 269 animal characteristic rather than vegetable, 129-30 caprice attribute not of, but of mechanism, 47 coextensiveness of consciousness with, 111, 112, 202, 264, 270 of creation and life, 247, 254, 255 creativeness of, 223, 239, 248 in Descartes's philosophy, 345, 346 as efficient causality, 277 inversion of necessity, 236 and liberation of consciousness, 265, 266. _See_ Imprisonment of consciousness and novelty, 12, 163, 164, 200, 218, 231, 239, 249, 270, 339-42 order in, 223 property of every organism, 129-31 relaxation of, into necessity, 217 tendency of, to self-negation in habit, 127 tension of, 200, 201, 202, 207, 223, 237, 301 transformed by the understanding into necessity, 270 _See_ Spontaneity Fringe of intelligence around instinct, 136 of intuition around intellect, xii, xiii, 46 of possible action around real action, 179, 272 Froth, alveolar, in imitation of organic phenomena, 33-4 Full, fallacy of thinking the, by the empty, 273-6 Function, ix, 3, 5, 44, 46, 47, 88-90, 94, 95, 106-10, 113, 114, 117, 120, 121, 127, 132, 140, 141, 145, 152, 153, 157, 161, 163, 164, 168, 173-5, 186-92, 199, 206, 207, 233, 237, 246, 251, 254-6, 262, 263, 270, 273, 298, 306, 346, 358, 369 accumulation of energy the function of vegetable organisms, 254, 255 action the, of intellect, ix, 12, 44, 47, 93, 161, 162, 186-8, 206, 251, 273, 305 action the, of nervous system, 262, 263 alimentation, 106, 107, 120, 121, 246, 254 of animals is canalization of energy, 93, 110, 126, 255, 256 carbon and the, of organisms, 107, 113, 114, 117, 254, 255 chlorophyllian, 107-9, 114, 117, 246, 254 concept-making the, of intellect, x, 49 of consciousness: sketching movements, 207 construction the, of intellect, 108 illumination of action, of perception, 5, 206, 307-8 of intelligence: action, ix, 12, 44, 46, 93, 160, 162, 186-8, 206, 251, 273, 307-8 of intelligence: concept-making, x, 50 of intelligence: construction, 160, 163, 181-2 of intelligence: division, 154, 155, 162, 189 of intelligence: illumination of action by perception, 5, 206, 301 of intelligence: repetition, 164, 199, 214-6 of intelligence: retrospection, 47, 237 of intelligence: connecting same with same, 199, 233, 270 of intelligence: scanning the rhythm of the universe, 346 of intelligence: tactualizing all perception, 168 of intelligence: unification, 152, 154, 357 of the nervous system: action, 262, 263 and organ, 88-90, 94, 95, 132-3, 140, 141, 158. _See_ Function and structure and organ in arthropods, vertebrates and man, 132-3 of the organism, 94, 106-10, 112, 114, 117, 120, 126, 173-5, 246, 253-6 of the organism, alimentation, 106, 107, 120, 121, 246, 254 of the organism, animal: canalization of energy, 93, 110, 126, 255, 256 of the organism, carbon in, 107, 113, 114, 117, 254, 255 of the organism, chlorophyllian function, 107-9, 114, 117, 246, 247, 254 of the organism, primary functions of life: storage and expenditure of energy, 254-6 of the organism, vegetable: accumulation of energy, 254, 255 of philosophy: adoption of the evolutionary movement of life and consciousness, 370 of science, 168, 346 sketching movements the, of consciousness, 207 and structure, 55, 62, 66, 69, 74, 75, 76, 86, 88-91, 93, 94, 96, 118, 132, 140, 141, 158, 162, 250, 252, 256 tactualizing all perception the, of science, 168 of vegetable organism: accumulation of energy, 254, 255 Functions of life, the two: storage and expenditure of energy, 254-6 Galileo, homogeneity of time in, 332 his influence on metaphysics, 20, 228 his influence on modern science, 334, 335 extension of Galileo's physics, 357, 370 his theory of the fall of bodies compared with Aristotle's, 228, 331, 332, 334 Ganoid breast-plate of ancient fishes, in reference to animal mobility, 130, 131 Gaudry, 130 _note_ Genera, relation of, to individuals, 226 relation of, to laws, 225, 226, 330 potential, 226-7 and signs, 158 Generality, ambiguity of the idea of, in philosophy, 229-31, 236 Generalization dependent on repetition, 230, 231 distinguished from transference of sign, 158 in the vital and mathematical orders, 224, 225, 230 Generic, type of the: similarity of structure between generating and generated, 223, 224 Genesis, xiii, xiv, 153, 186-199, 207, 359, 360 of intellect, xiii, xiv, 153, 186, 187, 190, 193, 194, 196-7, 207, 264, 360 of knowledge, 191 of matter, xiii, xiv, 153, 186, 188, 190, 193, 199, 207, 360 Genius and the willed order, 223, 237 Genus. _See_ Genera Geometrical, the, is the object of the intellect, 190 Geometrical order as a diminution or lower complication of the vital, 223, 225, 236, 330. _See_ Genera, Relation of, to laws mutual contingency of, and vital order, 235 _See_ Mathematical order space, relation of, to the spatiality of things, 203 Geometrism, the latent, of intellect, 194, 211-3 Geometry, fitness of, to matter, 10 goal of intellectual operations, 211, 213, 218 ideal limit of induction and deduction, 214-8, 361. _See_ Space, Descending movement of existence modern, compared with ancient, 36, 161, 333-4 natural, 194, 211-2 perception impregnated with, 205, 230 reasoning in, contrasted with reasoning concerning life, 7, 8 scientific, 161, 211 Germ, accidental predisposition of, in Neo-Darwinism, 168, 169, 170 Germ-plasm, continuity of, 27, 37, 78-83 Giard, 84 Glucose in organic function, 122, 123 Glycogen in organic function, 122-4 God, as activity, 249 of Aristotle, 196, 322, 325, 349, 353, 356-7 ascent toward, in Aristotle's philosophy, 322-3 circularity of God's thought, in Aristotle's philosophy, 324, 325 in Descartes's philosophy, 346, 347 as efficient cause in Aristotle's philosophy, 324 as hypostasis of the unity of nature, 196, 322, 357 in Leibniz's philosophy, 352, 353, 356-7 as eternal matter, 196-7 as pure form, 196-7, 322 in Spinoza's philosophy, 351, 357 Greek philosophy. _See_ Ancient philosophy Green parts of plants, 107-9, 114, 117, 246, 247, 254 Growing old, 15 Growth, creation is, 240-1, 275 and novelty, 231 of the powers of life, 132, 134-5 reality is, 237 of the universe, 343, 345 Guérin, P., 59 _note_ Guinea-pig, in illustration of hereditary transmission, 80, 81 Habit and consciousness annulled, 143 form of knowledge a habit or bent of attention, 148 and heredity, 78, 93, 169, 170, 173. _See_ Acquired characters, inheritance of instinct as an intelligent, 173-4 and invention in animals, 264 and invention in man, 265 tendency of freedom to self-negation in, 127-8 Harmony between instinct and life, and between intelligence and the inert, 187, 194-5, 198 of the organic world is complementarity due to a common original impulse 50, 51, 103, 116, 118 pre-established, 205, 206 in radical finalism, 127-8. _See_ Discord Hartog, 60 _note_ Hatchets, ancient flint, and human intellect, 137 Heliocentric radius-vector in Kepler's laws, 333-4 Hereditary transmission, 76-83, 87, 168-9, 170, 173, 225-6, 230 domestication of animals and, 80-1 habit and, 79, 83, 169, 170, 173 Hesitation or choice, consciousness as, 143, 144 Heteroblastia and identical structures on divergent lines of evolution, 75 Heymons, 72 _note_ History as creative evolution, 6, 15, 21, 26, 29, 36, 37, 65-6, 103-4, 105, 163, 264, 269 of philosophy, 238 Hive as an organism, 166 _Homo faber_, designation of human species, 139 Homogeneity of space, 156, 212 the sphere of intellect, 163 of time in Galileo, 332 Horse-fly illustrating the object of instinct, 146 Houssay, 109 _note_ Human and animal attention, 184 and animal brain, 184, 263-5 and animal consciousness, 139-43, 180, 183, 184, 187, 188, 191, 212, 263-8 and animal instruments of action, 139-43, 150 and animal intelligence, 138, 187, 188, 191, 192, 212 and animal invention, relation of, to habit, 264, 265 intellect and language, 157-8 intellect and manufacture, 137, 138 Humanity in evolution, 134, 137-9, 142, 147, 158, 181, 184, 185, 264-71. _See_ Culminating points, etc. goal of evolution, 266, 267 Huxley, 38 Hydra and individuality, 13 [Greek: Hylê] of Aristotle, 353 Hymenoptera, the culmination of arthropod and instinctive evolution, 134, 173-4 as entomologists, 146, 172-3 organization and instinct in, 140 paralyzing instinct of, 146, 172, 173-4 social instincts of, 101, 171 Hypostasis of the unity of nature, God as, 196-7, 322, 356 Hypothetical propositions characteristic of intellectual knowledge, 149-50 Idea or form in ancient philosophy, 49, 314, 316-7, 318, 329-30 in ancient philosophy, [Greek: eidos], 314-5 in ancient philosophy, Platonic, 48 and image in Descartes, 280 Idealism, 232 Idealists and realists alike assume the possibility of an absence of order, 220, 232 Identical structures in divergent lines of evolution, 55, 60-1, 62, 69, 74-7, 86, 119 Illumination of action the function of perception, 5, 206, 307 Image and idea in Descartes, 280 distinguished from concept, 160-1, 280 Imitation of being in Greek philosophy, 324, 327 of instinct by science, 168-9, 173-4 of life in intellectual representation, 4, 33, 88-9, 101, 176, 208, 209, 213, 226, 259, 341, 365 of life by the unorganized, 33, 35, 36 of motion by intelligence, 305, 307-8, 312, 313, 329. _See_ Imitation of the real, etc. of the physical order by the vital, 230 of the real by intelligence, 258, 270, 307 Immobility of extension, 155 and plants, 108-13, 118, 119, 130 of primitive and torpid animals, 130-1 relative and apparent; mobility real, 155 Impatience, duration as, 10, 339-40 Impelling cause, 73 Impetus, vital, divergence of, 26-7, 51-5, 97-105, 110, 118-9, 126-7, 131, 134-6, 257, 258, 266, 270 vital, limitedness of, 126, 141, 148-9, 254 vital, loaded with matter, 239 vital, as necessity for creation, 252, 261 vital, transmission of, through organisms, 25, 27, 79, 85, 87, 88, 230, 231, 250, 251 vital, _See_ Impulse of life Implement, the animal, is natural: the human, artificial, 139-43 artificial, 137-40, 150-1 constructing, function of intelligence, 159, 182-3 life known to intelligence only as, 162 matter known to intelligence only as, 161, 198 natural, 141, 145, 150 organized, 141, 145, 150 unorganized, 137-9, 141, 150-1 Implicit knowledge, 148 Impotence of intellect and perception to grasp life, 176-8 Imprisonment of consciousness, 180-3, 264-6 Impulse of life, divergence of, 26, 27, 51-5, 97-105, 110, 118-9, 126-7, 131, 134-6, 257, 258, 266, 270 limitedness of, 126, 141, 148-9, 254 loaded with matter, 239 tendency to mobility, 131, 132 as necessity for creation, 252, 261 negates itself, 247, 248 prolonged in evolution, 246 prolonged in our will, 239 transmitted through generations of organisms, 25, 26, 79, 85, 87, 230, 231 unity of, 202, 250, 270 Impulsion and attraction in Greek philosophy, 323-4 release and unwinding, the three kinds of cause, 73 given to mind by matter, 202 Inadequacy of act to representation, consciousness as, 143 Inadequate and adequate in Spinoza, 353 Inanition, illustrating primacy of nervous system, 124 _note_ Incoherence, 236. _See_ Absence of order, Chance, Chaos in nature, 104 Incommensurability of free act with conceptual idea, 47, 201 of instinct and intelligence, 167-8, 175 Incompatibility of developed tendencies, 104, 168 Independent variable, time as, 20, 335-6 Indetermination, 86, 114, 126, 252, 253, 326. _See_ Accident in evolution Indeterminism in Descartes, 345 Individual, viewed by intelligence as aggregate of molecules and of facts, 250-1 and division of labor, 140 in evolutionist biology, 169, 171, 246 _note_ and genus, 226-9 mind in philosophy, 191 aesthetic intuition only attains the, 177 and society, 260, 265 transmits the vital impetus, 250, 259, 270 Individuality never absolute, x, 12, 13, 16, 19, 42, 260 and age, 15-23, 27, 43 corporeal, physics tends to deny, 188, 189, 208. _See_ Interpenetration, Obliteration of outlines, Solidarity of the parts of matter and generality, 226-8 the many and the one in the idea of, x, 258 as plan of possible influence, 11 Individuation never absolute, x, 12-16, 43, 260 as a cosmic principle in contrast with association, 259-60 property of life, 12-5 partly the work of matter, 257-8, 259, 270 Indivisibility of action, 94, 95 of duration, 6, 308 of invention, 164 of life, 225, 270-1. _See_ Unity of life of motion, 307-11 Induction in animals, 214 certainty of, approached as factors approach pure magnitudes, 222, 223 and duration, 216 and expectation, 214-6 geometry the ideal limit of, 214-8, 361. _See_ Space, Geometry, Reasoning, "Descending" movement of matter, etc. and magnitude, 215, 216 repetition the characteristic function of intellect, 164, 199, 205-16 and space, 216. _See_ Space as the ideal limit, Systems, etc. Industry, ix, 161, 162, 164 Inert matter and action, 96, 136, 141, 155, 187, 198, 225, 367 in Aristotle, 316, 327, 353 bodies, 7, 8, 12, 14, 20, 21, 156, 159, 174, 186, 188, 189, 204, 213, 215, 228, 240, 241, 298, 300, 341, 342, 346-8, 360 Creation of. _See_ Inert matter the inversion of life flux of, 186, 265, 273, 369 and form, 148, 149, 157, 239, 250 genesis of, 188 homogeneity of, 156 imitation of living matter by, 33, 35, 36 imitation of physical order by vital, 230 instantaneity of, 10, 201 and intellect, ix, 31, 141, 159-62, 164, 165, 167-8, 175, 179, 181, 186, 187, 195, 196, 197, 198, 205-12, 216-9, 224, 264, 270, 319, 369 the inversion or interruption of life, 93, 94, 98, 99, 128-9, 153, 177, 186, 189, 190, 196, 197, 201, 203, 208, 216-9, 231, 235, 236, 239, 240, 245-50, 252, 254, 256, 258, 259, 261, 264, 267, 272, 276, 319, 339-40, 343. _See_ Inert matter, order inherent in knowledge of, approximate but not relative, 206 the metaphysics and the physics of, 195-6 as necessity, 252, 264 the order inherent in, 40, 103, 153, 201, 207-12, 216, 226-7, 230-6, 245, 251, 263, 274, 319-20. _See_ Inert matter, inversion of life penetration of, by life, 25, 26, 51, 179, 181, 237, 239, 266, 270, 271 and perception, 12, 206, 226 and the psychical, 201, 202, 205, 269, 270, 350, 367 solidarity of the parts of, 188, 202, 207, 241, 257-9, 270, 271, 352 and space, 10, 153, 189, 204-11, 214, 244, 250, 251, 257 in Spencer's philosophy, 365 Inertia, 176, 224 Infant, intelligence in, 147, 148 Inference a beginning of invention, 138 Inferiority in evolutionary rank, 174-5 Influence, possible, 11, 189 Infusoria, conjugation of, 15 development of the eye from its stage in, 60-1, 72, 78, 84 and individuation, 260 and mechanical explanations, 34, 35 vegetable function in, 116 Inheritance of acquired characters. _See_ Hereditary transmission Innate knowledge, 146-7, 150-1 Innateness of the categories, 148, 149-50 Inorganic matter. _See_ Inert matter Insectivorous plants, 107-9 Insects, 19, 101, 107, 126, 131, 134, 135, 140-1, 146, 147, 157, 166, 169, 171-5, 188 apogee of instinct in hymenoptera, 134, 173-4 consciousness and instinct, 145, 167, 173 continuity of instinct with organization, 139, 145 fallibility of instinct in, 172-3 instinct in general in, 169, 173-4 language of ants, 157-8 object of instinct in, 146 paralyzing instinct in, 146, 171, 172-3 social instinct in, 101, 157-8, 171 special instincts as variations on a theme, 167. _See_ Arthropods in evolution Insensible variation, 63, 66 Inspiration of a poem an undivided intuitive act, contrasted with its intellectual imitation in words, 209, 210, 258. _See_ Sympathy Instantaneity of the intellectual view, 31, 70, 84, 89, 199, 201-2, 207, 226, 249, 258, 273, 300-6, 311, 314, 331-3, 342, 351, 352 Instinct and action on inert matter, 136, 141 in animals as distinguished from plants, 170 in cells, 166 and consciousness, 143-5, 166, 167, 173, 174, 175, 186 culmination of, in evolution, 133, 174-5. _See_ Arthropods in evolution, Evolutionary superiority fallibility of, 173-4 in insects in general, 169, 173-4 and intelligence, xii, 51, 100, 103, 113, 116-8, 132-7, 141-3, 145, 150, 152, 159, 168-70, 173-9, 184-5, 186, 197-8, 238, 246, 254, 255, 259, 267, 268, 343, 345, 366 and intuition, 177, 178-9, 181 object of, 146-52, 165, 168, 172-9, 186, 189, 195, 234, 254 and organization, 23-4, 138-40, 145, 166-8, 171-2, 173, 176, 193, 194, 264 paralyzing, in certain hymenoptera, 146, 171, 172-3 in plants, 170, 171 social, of insects, 101, 157-8, 171 Instinctive knowledge, 148, 167, 168, 173-4 learning, 193 metaphysics, 192, 269, 270, 277 Instrument, action as, of consciousness, 180 animal, is natural; human artificial, 139-43 automatic activity as instrument of voluntary, 252 consciousness as, of action, 180 intelligence: the function of intelligence is to construct instruments, 159, 192-3 intelligence transforms life into an, 162 intelligence transforms matter into an, 161, 198 intelligence: the instruments of intelligence are artificial, ix, 137-9, 140-1, 150-1 natural or organized instruments of instinct, 140-1, 145, 150 Intellect and action, ix, 11, 29, 44-8, 93, 136, 142, 152-7, 162, 179, 186, 187, 192, 195, 197-8, 219, 220, 226-9, 251, 270, 273, 297-9, 301, 302, 306, 329, 346-7 in animals, 187 Fichte's conception of the, 189, 190, 357 function of the, 5, 11, 12, 44-50, 92, 93, 126, 137-45, 149-60, 162-4, 168, 174, 176, 181, 187-99, 204-8, 214-9, 229, 233, 237, 241, 242, 246, 247, 251, 270, 290, 298, 299, 328, 336, 337, 341, 342, 347, 348, 356, 357 genesis of the, xi-xv, 49, 103, 104-5, 126-7, 152, 153, 186, 187, 189, 193, 194, 195, 198, 207, 247-9, 358, 359, 366 as inversion of intuition, 7, 8, 11, 12, 46, 49, 51, 86, 88-91, 93, 94, 103-4, 113, 116-8, 129, 132, 133, 135, 136, 139-43, 145, 157, 161, 168-80, 181, 183, 184, 185, 190-204, 207-12, 216-8, 221, 223, 225-6, 230-3, 235, 236, 238, 245-52, 254-9, 264, 267-71, 276, 277, 313, 330, 339, 342-5, 361, 369 and language, 4, 148, 158-60, 258, 265, 292, 303, 304, 312, 313, 326 and matter, ix-xv, 10, 11, 48-9, 92, 135, 136, 141, 142, 152-4, 155, 160, 161, 165, 168, 175, 179, 181, 182, 186-7, 190, 193, 194, 195, 198, 199, 201-4, 205-10, 213, 215, 218-20, 224, 225-30, 240-2, 245, 246, 248-52, 254, 256-9, 264, 270, 271, 272, 273, 275, 297-8, 306, 319, 321, 329, 340, 341-3, 347-9, 355, 358-61, 368, 369 mechanism of the, ix-xv, 4, 30, 32, 47-9, 70, 84-5, 88-9, 101, 137-8, 150-5, 156-7, 160, 161, 164, 165, 167, 168, 173, 174, 176, 177, 186, 187, 190-3, 194-218, 223-40, 244, 246-7, 249-51, 254, 255, 257, 258, 266, 270, 273, 276-7, 292, 300-21, 325, 329, 330, 332, 337, 338, 339, 341-8, 351, 358-9, 361-2, 363-4, 365, 367 object of the, ix-xv, 7, 8, 10, 17, 20, 21, 30, 31, 34, 35, 37, 46-9, 52, 71, 74, 84, 87-92, 93, 95, 102, 103, 139, 140, 149, 152-66, 168, 173, 175-9, 180, 181, 186, 190, 193-211, 213, 216-20, 223, 224, 226, 228-30, 233, 237, 238, 240, 245, 249-51, 254, 255, 257-9, 261, 264, 265, 270, 271, 273, 274, 298-314, 318-22, 326, 328, 329, 332-8, 342, 344-9, 351, 352-7, 359-61, 363, 365, 369-70 and perception, 4-5, 11, 12, 93-4, 161-2, 168, 176-7, 188, 189, 205, 207, 226-7, 228-9, 230, 238, 249-51, 273, 299-300, 301, 306, 359-60 and rhythm, 299, 300-1, 306-7, 329, 337, 346-7 and science, 8-12, 31, 92-3, 152, 153, 157-8, 159, 160-1, 162-3, 168, 173-6, 187, 193-8, 202, 204, 207-9, 214-6, 217, 225-6, 228-9, 241, 251, 270, 273, 297-8, 306, 321, 322, 329, 333-5, 345, 346-8, 354, 356, 357, 359-60, 362-3, 369-70 and space, 10-11, 154, 156-7, 160-3, 174-5, 176-7, 189, 202-4, 207-12, 215, 218, 222-3, 244, 245, 250, 251, 257-8, 361-2 and time, 4, 8-9, 17, 18, 20-2, 36, 39, 45-6, 47, 51, 163, 300, 301, 331-2, 335-7, 341 possibility of transcending the, xii, xiii, 48, 152, 177-8, 193-4, 198-200, 205-6, 207-8, 266, 360-1. _See_ Philosophy, Intelligence Intellectualism, hesitation of Descartes between, and intuitionism, 345 Intelligence and action, 137-41, 150, 154-5, 161, 162-3, 181, 189, 198, 306 animal, 138, 187, 188, 212 categories of, x, 48, 195-6 of the child, 147-8 and consciousness, 187 culmination of, 130, 139-40, 174-5. _See_ Superiority genesis of, 136, 177-8, 366 and the individual, 251 and instinct, 109, 135, 136, 141, 142, 168-70, 173-7, 179, 186, 197, 209, 238, 259, 267 in Kant's philosophy, 357-8 and laws, 229-30 limitations of, 152 and matter, 152, 159-60, 161-2, 175, 179, 181, 186, 189, 194-8, 230, 237, 250, 369, 370 mechanism of, 152, 153, 164, 165 and motion, 153, 159-60, 274, 303-7, 312, 313, 329 object of, 145-56, 161, 162, 175, 179, 250 practical nature of, ix-xv, 137-9, 141, 150-1, 247-8, 305, 306, 328-9 and reality, ix-xv, 161-2, 177, 237, 251, 258, 269, 271, 307 and science, 175, 176, 193, 194-5 and signs, 157, 158, 159, 160 and space, 205 _See_ Intellect, Understanding, Reason Intelligent, the, contrasted with the merely intelligible, 175 Intelligible reality in ancient philosophy, 316-7 world, 160-1 Intelligibles of Plotinus, 353 Intension of knowledge, 149-50 Intensity of consciousness varies with ratio of possible to real action, 144-5 Intention as contrasted with mechanism, 233. _See_ Automatic order, Willed order of life the object of instinct, 176, 233 Interaction, universal, 188-9 Interest as cause of variation, 131 in representation of "nought," 296, 297. _See_ Affection, rôle of, etc. Internal finality, 41 Internality of instinct, 168, 174-5, 176-7 of subject in object the condition of knowledge of reality, 307, 317, 358-9 Interpenetration, 161, 162, 174-5, 177, 184 _note_, 188, 189, 201-3, 207-8, 257, 258, 270, 319-20, 341, 352 Interruption, materiality an, of positivity, 219, 246, 247-8, 319-20. _See_ Inverse relation, etc. Interval of time, 8-9, 22, 23 between what is done and what might be done covered by consciousness, 179 Intuition, continuity between sensible and ultra-intellectual, 360-1 dialectic and, in philosophy, 238. _See_ Intellect as inversion of intuition fringe of, around the nucleus of intellect, xiii, 12, 46, 49, 193 and instinct, 176-9, 182 and intellect in theoretical knowledge, 176-9, 270-1 Intuitional cosmology as reversed psychology, 207-8 metaphysics contrasted with intellectual or systematic, 191-2, 268-70, 277-8 method of philosophy, apparent vicious circle of, 191-4, 195-8 Intuitionism in Spinoza, 347-8 and intellectualism in Descartes, 345-6 Invention, consciousness as, and freedom, 264, 270-1 creativeness of, 164, 237, 340, 341 disproportion between, and its consequences, 181, 182-3 duration as, 10-1 evolution as, 102-3, 255, 344-5 fervor of, 164 indivisibility of, 164 inference a beginning of, 138 mechanical, 142-3, 194-5 of steam engine as epoch-marking, 138-9 time as, 341 unforeseeableness of, 164 upspringing of, 164 _See_ New Inverse relation of the physical and psychical, 126-7, 143-4, 145, 173-4, 177-8, 201, 202, 206-7, 208, 210-1, 212, 217, 218, 222, 223, 236, 240, 245, 246, 247-8, 249, 256, 257, 261, 264, 265, 270, 319-20 Irreversibility of duration. _See_ Repetition Isolated systems of matter, 204, 213, 215, 241, 242, 341, 342, 346, 347-8. _See_ Bodies Janet, Paul, 60-1 _note_ Jennings, 35 _note_ Jourdain and the two kinds of order, 221 Juxtaposition, 207-8, 338, 339, 341. Cf. Succession Kaleidoscopic variation, 74 Kant, antinomies of, 204-5, 206 becoming in Kant's successors, 362 coincidence of matter with space in Kant's philosophy, 206, 207-8, 244 construction the method of Kant's successors, 364-5 his criticism of pure reason, 205, 287 _note_, 356-62, 364 degrees of being in Kant's successors, 362-3 duration in Kant's successors, 362-3 intelligence in Kant's philosophy, 230, 357 ontological argument in Kant's philosophy, 285 space and time in Kant's philosophy, 204-6 and Spencer, 364 _See_ Mind and matter, Sensuous manifold, Thing-in-itself Kantianism, 358, 364 Katagenesis, 34 Kepler, 228-9, 332-5 Knowledge and action, 150, 193-4, 196, 197, 206-7, 208, 218 criticism of, 193-4 discontinuity of, 306 extension of, 149 form of, 148, 194-5, 358-362 formal, 152 genesis of, 190 innate or natural, 146-50 instinct in, 143, 144, 166-9, 173, 177, 192-3, 198, 268 intellect in, ix-xv, 48, 149, 162-4, 177, 179, 193-4, 196-9, 206-7, 208, 218, 237, 238, 251, 270, 305, 306, 312, 313, 315, 317, 325, 331-2, 342, 343, 347-8, 359-60, 361 intension of, 149-50 of reality viewed as the internality of subject in object, 307, 317, 358-9 intuition and intellect in theoretical knowledge, 174-7, 179, 238, 270, 342-4 matter of, 194-5, 357-8, 359-62 of matter, xi, 48, 206-7, 360-1 object of, ix-xv, 1, 48, 147, 148, 159-60, 163, 164, 197-9, 270, 342, 359-60 fundamental problem of, 273-5 as relative to certain requirements of the mind, 152, 190-1, 230 scientific, 193-4, 196-8, 206, 207, 218 theory of, xiii, 177, 179, 197, 204-5, 207-8, 229, 231 unconscious, 142-6, 146, 150, 165, 166 alleged unknowableness of the thing-in-itself, 205, 206 Kunstler, 260 _note_ Labbé 260 _note_ Labor, division of, 99, 110, 118, 140, 157, 166, 260 Lalande, André, 246 _note_ Lamarck, 75-6 Lamarckism, 75-6, 77, 84-87 Language, 4, 147, 157-60, 258, 265, 293, 302-3, 305, 312-4, 320 La Place, 38 Lapsed intelligence, instinct as, 169, 175 Larvae, 19, 140, 145-66, 172-3 Latent geometrism of intellect, 194, 211-2 Law of correlation, 66, 67 and genera, 226-9, 330 heliocentric radius-vector in Kepler's laws, 334 imprint of relations and laws upon consciousness in Spencer's philosophy, 188 and intuitional philosophy, 176-7 physical, contrasted with the laws of our codes, 218-9 physical, expression of the negative movement, 218 physical, mathematical form of, 218, 219, 229-30, 241 relation as, 228, 229-30 Learning, instinctive, 192, 193 Le Dantec, 18 _note_ Leibniz, cause in, 277 dogmatism of, 356, 357 extension in, 351, 352 God in, 351, 352, 356 mechanism in, 348, 351, 355, 356 his philosophy a systematization of physics, 347 space in, 351-2 teleology in, 39, 40 time in, 352, 362 Lepidoptera, 114 _note_, 134 Le Roy, Ed., 218 _note_ Liberation of consciousness, 183-4, 265, 266 Liberty. _See_ Freedom Life as activity, 128-9, 246 cause in the realm of, 94, 164 complementarity of the powers of, ix-xv, 25-6, 27, 51-5, 97-105, 110, 113, 116-9, 126-7, 131-6, 140-3, 176, 177, 183, 184, 246, 254-7, 266, 270, 343, 344-5 consciousness coextensive with, 186, 257, 270, 362-3 mutual contingency of the orders of life and matter, 235 continuity of, 1-11, 29, 30, 162, 163, 258 as creation, 57-8, 161-2, 223, 230, 246, 247-8, 252, 254, 255 symbolized by a curve, 31, 89, 90 embryonic, 166 and finality, 44, 89, 164, 185, 222-3 fluidity of, 153, 165, 191-2, 193 as free, 129-30 function of, 93-4, 106-10, 113, 114, 117, 120, 121, 126-7, 173-5, 246, 254-6 harmony of the realm of, 50, 51, 103, 116, 117-8, 127 imitation of the inert by, 230 imitation of, by the inert, 33-6 impulse of, prolonged in our will, 239 and individuation, 12-4, 26, 27, 79-80, 85, 87, 88, 127-8, 149, 195-6, 230, 231, 250, 259, 261, 269, 300-1, 302-3. _See_ Individuality indivisibility of, 225-6, 270 and instinct. 136-40, 145, 165-8, 170, 172, 173, 175-9, 186, 192-7, 233, 264, 366 and intellect, ix-xv, 13, 32-5, 44-9, 89, 101, 102-3, 104-5, 127, 136, 152, 160-5, 168, 173-4, 176-9, 181, 191-201, 206, 207, 213, 220, 222-3, 224, 225-6, 257-61, 266, 270, 300-1, 342, 355, 359-61, 365, 366 and interpenetration, 271 as inversion of the inert, 6-7, 8, 176, 177, 186, 190, 191, 196, 197, 201, 202, 207, 208-9, 210-1, 212, 216, 217, 218, 222-3, 225-6, 232, 235, 236, 238, 239, 245-50, 264, 329-31 a limited force, 126, 127, 141, 148, 149, 254 and memory, 167 penetrating matter, 26, 27, 52, 179, 181, 182, 237, 239, 266, 269-70 as tendency to mobility, 128, 131, 132 and physics and chemistry, 31, 33, 35, 36, 225-6 in other planets, 256 as potentiality, 258 repetition in, and in the inert, 224, 225, 230, 231 sinuousness of, 71, 98, 99, 102, 112, 113, 116, 129-30, 212 social, 138, 140, 157-8, 265 in other solar systems, 256 and evolution of species, 247-8, 254, 269 theory of, and theory of knowledge, xii, 177, 179, 197 unforeseeableness of, 6, 8-9, 20, 26-7, 28, 29, 37, 45-6, 47, 48, 52, 86, 96, 163, 164, 184, 223-4, 249, 339, 341 unity of, 250, 268, 270 as a wave flowing over matter, 251, 266 _See_ Impulse of, Organic substance, Organism, Organization, Vital impetus, Vital order, Vital principle, Vitalism, Willed order Limitations of instinct and of intelligence, 152 Limitedness of the scope of Galileo's physics, 357, 370 of the vital impetus, 126, 127, 141, 148, 149, 255 Linden, Maria von, 114 _note_ Lingulae illustrating failure to evolve, 102 Lizards, color variation in, 72, 74 Locomotion and consciousness, 108, 111, 115, 261. _See_ Mobility, Movement Logic and action, ix, 44, 46, 162, 179 formal, 292 genesis of, x-xi, xiii-xiv, 49, 103, 104-5, 136, 191-2, 193, 301, 359, 366 and geometry, ix, 161, 176, 212 impotent to grasp life, x, 13, 32, 35, 36, 46-9, 89, 101, 152, 162-5, 194-201, 205, 206, 213, 219, 220, 222, 223, 225-6, 256-61, 266, 270, 313, 355, 360-1, 365 natural, 161, 194-5 of number, 208 and physics, 319-20, 321 and time, 4, 277 _See_ Intellect, Intelligence, Understanding, Order, mathematical Logical existence contrasted with psychical and physical, 277, 298, 328, 361-2 categories, x, 48, 195, 196 and physical contrasted, 276-7 _Logik_, by Sigwart, 287 _note_ [Greek: logos], in Plotinus, 210 _note_ Looking backward, the attitude of intellect, 46, 237 Lumbriculus, 13 Machinery and intelligence, 141 Machines, natural and artificial, 139. _See_ Implement, Instrument organisms, for action, 252, 254, 300-1 Magnitude, certainty of induction approached as factors approach pure magnitudes, 215-16 and modern science, 333, 335 Man in evolution, attention, 184 brain, 183, 184, 263-5 consciousness, 139-43, 180, 181, 183, 185, 187, 188, 191-2, 212, 262-8 goal, 134, 174-5, 185, 266, 267, 269, 270 habit and invention, 265 intelligence, 133, 137-9, 143, 146, 174, 175, 187, 188, 212, 266, 267 language, 158 Manacéine (de), 124 _note_ Manufacture, the aim of intellect, 137, 138, 145, 152-4, 159-65, 181, 191, 192, 199, 251, 298 and organization, 92, 93, 126-7, 139-43, 150 and repetition, 44, 45, 155-8 _See_ Construction, Solid, Utility Many and one, categories inapplicable to life, x, 162-3, 177-8, 257, 261, 268 in the idea of individuality, 258 _See_ Multiplicity Martin, J., 102 _note_ Marion, 107 _note_ Material knowledge, 152 Materialists, 240 Materiality the inversion of spirituality, 212 Mathematical order. _See_ Inert matter, Order Matter. _See_ Inert matter Maturation as creative evolution, 47-8, 230 Maupas, 35 _note_ Measurement a human convention, 218, 242 of real time an illusion, 336-40 Mechanical account of action after the fact, 47 cause, x, 34, 35, 40, 44, 177, 234, 235 procedure of intellect, 165 invention, 138, 140, 194-5 necessity, 47, 215, 216, 218, 236, 252, 265, 270, 327 Mechanics of transformation, 32 Mechanism, cerebral, 252, 253, 262, 263, 265, 366. _See_ Cerebral activity and consciousness of the eye, 88 instinct as, 176-7 of intellect. _See_ Intellect, mechanism of and intention, 233. _See_ Automatic order, Willed order life more than, x, xiv _note_, 78-9 Mechanistic philosophy, xii, xiv, 17, 29, 30, 37, 74, 88-96, 101, 102, 194-5, 218, 223, 264, 345, 346, 347, 348, 351, 355, 356, 362 Medical philosophers of the eighteenth century, 356 science, 165 Medullary bulb in the development of the nervous system, 252 and consciousness, 110 Memory, 5, 17, 20, 21, 167, 168, 180, 181, 201 Menopause in illustration of crisis of evolution, 19 Mental life, unity of, 268 Metamorphoses of larvae, 139-40, 146-7, 166 Metaphysics and duration, 276 and epistemology, 177, 179, 185, 197, 208-9 Galileo's influence on, 20, 238 instinctive, 191-2, 269, 270, 277-8 and intellect, 189-90 and matter, 194 natural, 21, 325 and science, 176-7, 194-5, 198, 208-9, 344, 354, 369-70 systematic, 191, 192, 194, 195-6, 238, 269, 270, 347 Metchnikoff, 18 _note_ Method of philosophy, 191-2 Microbes, illustrating divergence of tendency, 117 Microbial colonies, 259 Mind, individual, in philosophy, 191 and intellect, 48-9, 205-6 knowledge as relative to certain requirements of the mind, 152, 190-1, 230 and matter, 188-9, 201, 202, 203, 205-6, 264, 269, 270, 350, 365-9 _See_ Psychic, Psycho-physiological parallelism, Psychology and Philosophy, [Greek: psychê] Minot, Sedgwick, 17 _note_ Mobility, tendency toward, characterizes animals, 109, 110, 113, 129-32, 135, 180 and consciousness, 108, 111, 115-6, 261 and intellect, 154-5, 161-2, 163, 300, 326, 327, 337 of intelligent signs, 158, 159 life as tendency toward, 127-8, 131, 132 in plants, 112, 135 _See_ Motion Möbius, 60 _note_ Model necessary to the constructive work of intellect, 164, 166-7 Modern astronomy compared with ancient science, 334, 335 geometry compared with ancient science, 31, 161, 334 idealism, 231 philosophy compared with ancient, 225-9, 231, 327-8, 344, 345, 349-51, 354, 356-7 philosophy: parallelism of body and mind in, 180, 350, 355, 356 science: cinematographical character of, 329, 330, 336, 341, 342, 346-7 science compared with ancient, 329-36, 342-5, 356-7 science, Galileo's influence on, 334, 335 science, Kepler's influence on, 334 science, magnitudes the object of, 333, 335 science, time an independent variable in, 20, 335 Molecules, 251 Molluscs, illustrating animal tendency to mobility, 129-31 perception in, 189 vision in, 60, 75, 77, 83, 86, 87 Monads of Leibniz, 351-4 Monera, 126 Monism, 355 Moral sciences, weakness of deduction in, 212 Morat, 123 _note_ Morgan, L., 79 _note_, 80 Motion, abstract, 304 articulations of, 310-1 an animal characteristic, 252 and the cinematograph, 304-5 continuity of, 310 in Descartes, 346-7 evolutionary, extensive and qualitative, 302, 303, 311, 312 in general (_i.e._ abstract), 304-5 indivisibility of, 306-7, 311, 336-7, 338 and instinct, 139-40, 331-2 and intellect, 71, 155, 156, 159-60, 273, 274, 298, 317-8, 321, 329, 331-2, 338, 344-5 organization of, 310-1 track laid by motion along its course, 308-11, 337, 338 _See_ Mobility, Movement Motive principle of evolution: consciousness, 181-2 Motor mechanisms, cerebral, 252, 253, 263, 265 Moulin-Quignon, quarry of, 137 Moussu, 81 Movement and animal life, 108, 131, 132 ascending, 12, 101, 103, 104, 185, 208-9, 210-1, 369-70. _See_ Vital impetus consciousness and, 111, 118, 144-5, 207-8 descending, 11-2, 202-4, 207-10, 212, 246, 252, 256, 270, 276, 339, 361, 369-70 goal of, the object of the intellect, 155, 299-300, 302, 303 intellect unable to grasp, 313 mutual inversion of cosmic movements, 126-7, 143, 144, 173-4, 176, 177, 209-10, 212, 217, 218, 222-3, 236, 245-51, 261, 264, 265, 272, 342-3 life as, 166, 176-7 and the nervous system, 110, 132, 134, 180, 262-3 of plants, 109, 135-6 _See_ Mobility, Motion, Locomotion, Current, Tendency, Impetus, Impulse, Impulsion Movements, antagonistic cosmic, 128-9, 135, 181, 185, 250, 259. _See_ Movement, Mutual inversion of cosmic Multiplicity, abstract, 257, 259 distinct, 202, 209-10, 257. _See_ Interpenetration does not apply to life, x, 162, 177, 257, 261, 270 Mutability, exhaustion of, of the universe, 244, 245 Mutations, sudden, 28, 62-3, 64-8 theory of, 85-6 Natural geometry, 195-6, 211-2 instrument, 141, 144-5, 150-1 or innate knowledge, 147, 150-1 logic, 161, 194-5 metaphysic, 21, 325-6 selection, 54, 56-7, 59-60, 61-5, 68, 95, 169-70 Nature, Aristotelian theory of, 135, 174 discord in, 127-8, 255, 267 facts and relations in, 368 incoherence in, 104 as inert matter, 161-2, 218, 219, 228-9, 239, 245, 264, 280-1, 303, 356, 359-60, 367 as life, 100, 138, 139-40, 141-2, 143, 144-5, 150, 154, 155-6, 227, 241, 260, 269, 270, 301-2 order of, 225-6 as ordered diversity, 231, 233 unity of, 105, 190, 191, 195, 196-9, 322, 352-7, 358 Nebula, cosmic, 249, 257 Necessity for creation, vital impetus as, 252, 261 and death of individuals, 246 _note_ and freedom, 218, 236, 270 in Greek philosophy, 326-7 in induction, 215, 216 and matter, 252, 264 Negation, 275, 285-97. _See_ Nought Negative cause of mathematical order, 217. _See_ Inverse relation, etc. cosmic principle, 126-7, 143, 144, 173-4, 176-7, 209, 212, 218, 223-4, 236, 245-51, 261, 264-5, 272, 243. _See_ Inert matter, Opposition of the two ultimate cosmic movements, etc. Neo-Darwinism, 55, 56, 85, 86, 169-70 Neo-Lamarckism, 42 _note_ Nervous system a centre of action, 109, 130-1, 132, 134-5, 180, 253, 261-3 of the plant, 114 primacy of, 120-1, 126-7, 252 Neurone and indetermination, 126 New, freedom and the, 11-2, 164, 165, 199-200, 218, 230, 239, 249, 270, 339-42 Newcomen, 184 Newton, 335 Nitrogen and the function of organisms, 108, 113-4, 117, 255 [Greek: noêseôs noêsis] of Aristotle, 356 Non-existence. _See_ Nought Nothing. _See_ Nought Nought, conception of the, 273-80, 281-3, 289-90, 292-8, 316-7, 327. _See_ Negation, Pseudo-ideas, etc. [Greek: nous poiêtikos] of Aristotle, 322 Novelty. _See_ new. Nucleus intelligence as the luminous, enveloped by instinct, 166-7 in microbial colonies, 259 intelligence as the solid, bathed by a mist of instinct, 193, 194 of Stentor, 260 Number illustrating degrees of reality, 324-5, 327 logic of, 208 Nuptial flight, 146 Nutritive elements, fixation of, 107-9, 114, 117, 246, 247, 254 Nymph (Zool.), 139, 146 Object of this book, ix-xv of instinct, 146-52, 163, 175-9 of intellect, 146-52, 161-5, 175, 179, 190-1, 199-200, 237, 250, 252, 270, 273, 298-304, 307-8, 311-2, 354, 359 internality of subject in, the condition of knowledge of reality, 307-8, 317-8, 359 of knowledge, 147, 148-9, 159-60 idea of, contrasted with that of universal interaction, 11, 188-9, 207-8 of philosophy as contrasted with object of science, 195-6, 220-1, 225-6, 227, 239, 251, 270, 273, 297-9, 305-6, 347 of science, 329, 332-3, 335-6 Obliteration of outlines in the real, 11, 188, 189, 207-8 Oenothera Lamarckiana, 63, 85-6 Old, growing. _See_ Age the, is the object of the intellect, 163, 164, 199, 270 One and many in the idea of individuality, x, 258. _See_ Unity Ontological argument in Kant, 284 Opposition of the two ultimate cosmic movements, 128-9, 175-6, 179, 186, 201, 203, 238, 248, 254, 259, 261, 267. _See_ Inverse relation of the physical and psychical Orchids, instincts of, 170 Order and action, 226-7 complementarity of the two orders, 145-6, 173-4, 221-2. _See_ Order, Mutual inversion of the two orders mutual contingency of the two orders, 231, 235 and disorder, 40, 103-4, 220-2, 225-6, 231-6, 274 mutual inversion of the two orders, 186, 201, 202, 206-9, 211, 212, 216-8, 219-21, 222-3, 225-6, 230, 232, 235, 236, 238, 240, 245-8, 256, 257, 258, 264, 270, 274, 313, 330 mathematical, 153, 209-11, 217-9, 223-6, 230-3, 236, 245, 251, 270, 330-1 of nature, 225-6, 231, 233 as satisfaction, 222, 223, 274 vital, 94-5, 164, 222-7, 230, 235, 236, 237, 330-1 willed, 224, 239 Organ and function, 88-91, 93-4, 95, 132, 140, 141, 157, 161-2 Organic destruction and physico-chemistry, 226 substance, 131, 140, 141-2, 149, 162-3, 195-6, 240 _note_, 255, 267 world, cleft between, and the inorganic, 190, 191, 196, 197-8 world, harmony of, 50-1, 103, 104, 116, 118, 126-7 world, instinct the procedure of, 165 Organism and action, 123-4, 125, 174, 253, 254, 300-1 ambiguity of primitive, 99, 112, 113, 116, 129, 130 association of organisms, 260 change and the, 301, 302-3 complementarity of intelligence and instinct in the, 141-2, 150, 181, 184, 185 complexity of the, 162, 250, 252, 253, 260 consciousness and the, 111, 145, 179, 180, 262, 270 contingency of the actual chemical nature of the, 255, 257 differentiation of parts in, 252, 260. _See_ Organism, complexity of extension of, by artificial instruments, 141, 161 freedom the property of every, 130, 131 function of, 26, 27, 79, 80, 85, 87, 88, 93-4, 106-110, 113, 114, 117, 120, 121, 126-7, 128, 136, 173-5, 230, 231, 246, 247, 250, 251, 254, 255, 256, 258, 270 function and structure, 55, 61, 62, 69, 74, 75, 76-7, 86, 88-91, 93-4, 95, 96-7, 118-9, 132, 139, 140, 157-8, 161-3, 250, 252, 256 generality typified by similarity among organisms, 223, 224, 228-9, 230 hive as, 166 and individuation, x, 12, 13, 15, 23, 26-7, 42, 149, 195-6, 225-6, 228-9, 259, 260, 261, 270 mutual interpenetration of organisms, 177-8 mechanism of the, 31, 92-3, 94 philosophy and the, 195-6 unity of the, 176-8 Organization of action, 142, 145, 147-8, 150, 181, 184, 185 of duration, 5-6, 15, 25, 26 explosive character of, 92 and instinct, 24, 138-46, 150, 165-7, 171-2, 173, 176, 192-3, 194, 264 and intellect, 161-2 and manufacture, 92, 93, 94-5, 96, 126-8 is the _modus vivendi_ between the antagonistic cosmic currents, 181, 250, 254 of motion, 310 and perception, 226-7 Originality of the willed order, 224 Orthogenesis, 69, 86-7 Oscillation between association and individuation, 259, 261. _See_ Societies of ether, 301-2 of instinct and intelligence about a mean position, 136 of pendulum, illustrating space and time in ancient philosophy, 318-9, 320 between representation of inner and outer reality, 279-80 of sensible reality in ancient philosophy about being, 316-8 Outlines of perception the plan of action, 5, 11, 12, 93, 188, 189, 204-5, 206-7, 226-7, 228-9, 230, 250, 299-300, 306 Oxygen, 114, 254, 255 Paleontology, 24-5, 129, 139 Paleozoic era, 102 Parallelism, psycho-physiological, 180, 350, 351, 355, 356 Paralyzing instinct in hymenoptera, 139-40, 146, 172, 174-5 Parasites, 106, 108, 109, 111-13, 134-5 Parasitism, 132 Passivity, 222-4 Past, subsistence of, in present, 4, 20-3, 26-7, 108, 199-202 Peckham, 173-4 _note_ Pecten, illustrating identical structures in divergent lines of evolution, 62, 63, 75 Pedagogical and social nature of negation, 287-97 Pedagogy and the function of the intellect, 165 Penetration, reciprocal, 161-2. _See_ Interpenetration Perception and action, 4-5, 11, 12, 93, 188, 189, 206, 226-7, 228-9, 300-1, 306-7 and becoming, 176-7, 303-6 cinematographical character of, 206-7, 249, 251, 331-2 distinctness of, 226-7, 250 and geometry, 205, 230 in molluscs, 188 and organization, 226-7 prolonged in intellect, 161-2, 273 reaction in, 264 and recollection, 180, 181 refracts reality, 204, 238, 359-60 rhythm of, 299-300, 301 and science, 168 Permanence an illusion, 299-301 Peron, 80 Perrier, Ed., 260 _note_ Personality, absolute reality of, 269 concentration of, 201, 202 and matter, 269, 270 the object of intuition, 268 tension of, 199, 200, 201 Perthes, Boucher de, 137 Phaedrus, 156 _note_ Phagocytes and external finality, 42 Phagocytosis and growing old, 18 Phantom ideas and problems, 177, 277, 283, 296 Philosophical explanation contrasted with scientific explanation, 168 Philosophy and art, 176-7 and biology, 43-4, 194-6 and experience, 197-8 function of 29-30, 84-5, 93-4, 168, 173-4, 194-7, 198, 268, 269, 369-70 history of, 238 incompletely conscious of itself, 207-8, 209 individual mind in, 191 and intellect, ix-xv intellect and intuition in, 238 of intuition, 176-7, 191-4, 196, 197, 277 method of, 191-2, 194, 195, 239 object of, 239 and the organism, 195-6 and physics, 194, 208 and psychology, 194, 196 and science, 175, 196-7, 208, 345, 370 _See_ Ancient philosophy, Cosmology, Finalism, Mechanistic philosophy, Metaphysics, Modern philosophy, Post-Kantian philosophy Phonograph illustrating "unwinding" cause, 73 Phosphorescence, consciousness compared to, 262 Photograph, illustrating the nature of the intellectual view of reality, 31, 304-5 Photography, instantaneous, illustrating the mechanism of the intellect, 331-2, 333 Physical existence, as contrasted with logical, 276, 297-8, 328, 361 laws, their precise form artificial, 218, 219, 229, 240-1 laws and the negative cosmic movement, 218 operations the object of intelligence, 175, 250 order, imitation of, by the vital, 230 science, 176-7 Physicochemistry and organic destruction, 226 and biology, 25-6, 29-30, 34, 35, 36, 55, 57, 98, 194 Physics, ancient, "logic spoiled," 320, 321-2 of ancient philosophy, 315, 320, 321-2, 355 of Aristotle, 228 _note_, 324 _note_, 331, 332 and deduction, 213 of Galileo, 357, 369-70 and individuality of bodies, 188, 208 as inverted psychics, 202 and logic, 319-20, 321 and metaphysics, 194, 208 and mutability, 245 success of, 218, 219 Pigment-spot and adaptation, 60, 61, 71-3, 76-7 and heredity, 83, 84 Pinguicula, certain animal characteristics of, 107 Plan, motionless, of action the object of intellect, 155, 298-9, 301-2, 303 Planets, life in other, 256 Plants and animals in evolution, 105-39, 142-3, 144, 145-6, 147, 168, 169-70, 181, 182, 183-4, 185, 254, 267 complementarity of, to animals, 183-4, 185, 267 consciousness of, 109, 111, 113, 120, 128-35, 142-3, 144, 181, 182, 292. _See_ Torpor, Sleep function of, 107-9, 113, 114, 117, 246, 247, 254, 256 function and structure in, 67, 77-8, 79 individuation in, 12 instinct in, 170, 171 and mobility, 108, 109, 111-13, 118-9, 129, 130, 135-6 parallelism of evolution with animals, 59-60, 106-8, 116 supporters of all life, 271 variation of, 85, 86 Plasma, continuity of germinative, 25-6, 42, 78-83 Plastic substances, 255 Plato, 49, 156, 191, 210 _note_, 316, 318, 319, 320, 321, 327, 330, 347, 349 Platonic ideas, 49, 315-6, 321, 322, 327, 330, 352 Plotinus, 210 _note_, 314-5, 323, 324 _note_, 349, 352, 353 Plurality, confused, of life, 257. _See_ Interpenetration Poem, sounds of, distinct to perception; the sense indivisible to intuition, 209 illustrating creation of matter, 240, 319-20 [Greek: poiêtikos, nous], of Aristotle, 322 Polymorphism of ants, bees, and wasps, 140 of insect societies, 157 Polyzoism, 260 Positive reality, 208, 212. _See_ Reality Positivity, materiality an inversion or interruption of, 219, 246, 247-8, 319-20 Possible activity as a factor in consciousness, 11, 12, 96, 144, 145, 146-7, 158-9, 165, 179, 180, 181, 189, 264, 368 existence, 290, 295 Post-Kantian philosophy, 362, 363 Potential activity. _See_ Possible activity genera, 226 knowledge, 142-7, 150, 166 Potentiality, life as an immense, 258, 270 zone of, surrounding acts, 179, 180, 181, 264. _See_ Possible activity Powers of life, complementarity of, xii, xiii, 26, 27, 51-5, 97-105, 110, 113, 116-8, 119, 126-7, 131-6, 140-3, 176, 177, 183, 184, 246, 254, 255, 257, 266, 270, 343, 345 Practical nature of perception and its prolongation in intellect and science, 137-41, 150, 193-4, 196, 197, 206, 207-8, 218, 247-8, 273, 281, 305, 306-7, 328, 329 Preëstablished harmony, 205-6, 207 Present, creation of, by past, 5, 20-3, 26-7, 167, 199-202 Prevision. _See_ Foreseeing Primacy of nervous system, 120-6, 252 Primary instinct, 138-9, 168 Primitive organisms, ambiguous forms of, 99, 112, 113, 116, 129, 130 "Procession" in Alexandrian philosophy, 323 Progress, adaptation and, 101 ff. evolutionary, 50, 133, 134, 138, 141-2, 173-4, 175, 185, 264-5, 266 Prose and verse, illustrating the two kinds of orders, 221, 232 Protophytes, colonizing of, 259 Protoplasm, circulation of, 32-3, 108 and senescence, 18, 19 imitation of, 32-3, 35 primitive, and the nervous system, 124, 126-7 of primitive organisms, 99, 108, 109 and the vital principle, 42-3 Protozoa, association of, 259-61 ageing of, 16 of ambiguous form, 112 and individuation, 14, 259-61 mechanical explanation of movements of, 33 and nervous system, 126 reproduction of, 14 Pseudo-ideas and problems, 177, 277, 283, 296 Pseudoneuroptera, division of labor among, 140 [Greek: pschnê] of Aristotle, 350 of Plotinus, 210 _note_ Psychic activity, twofold nature of, 136, 140-1, 142-3 life, continuity of, 1-11, 29-30 Psychical existence contrasted with logical, 276, 297-8, 327-8, 361 nature of life, 257 Psychics inverted physics, 201, 202. _See_ Inverse relation of the physical and psychical Psychology and deduction, 212-3 and the genesis of intellect, 187, 194, 195-6, 197 intuitional cosmology as reversed, 208-9 Psycho-physiological parallelism, 180, 350, 351, 355, 356 Puberty, illustrating crises in evolution, 19, 320-1 Qualitative, evolutionary and extensive becoming, 313 motion, 302-3, 304, 311 Qualities, acts, forms, the classes of representation, 303, 314 bodies as bundles of, 300-1 coincidence of, 309 and movements, 299-300 and natural geometry, 211 superimposition of, in induction, 216 Quality is change, 299-300 in Eleatic philosophy, 314-5 and quantity in ancient philosophy, 323-4 and quantity in modern philosophy, 350 and rhythm, 300-2 Quaternary substances, 121 Quinton, René, 134 _note_ Radius-vector, Heliocentric, in Kepler's laws, 334 Rank, evolutionary, 50, 133-5, 173-4, 265 Reaction, rôle of, in perception, 226-7 Ready-made categories, x, xiv, 48, 237, 250, 251, 273, 311, 321, 329, 354, 359 Real activity as distinguished from possible, 145 common-sense is continuous experience of the, 213 continuity of the, 302, 329 dichotomy of the, in modern philosophy, 349 imitation of the, by intelligence, 90, 204, 258, 270, 307, 355 obliteration of outlines in the, 11-2, 188, 189, 207-8 representation of the, by science, 203-4 Realism, ancient, 231-2 Realists and idealists alike assume possibility of absence of order, 220, 231-2 Reality, absolute, 198, 228-9, 230, 269, 359-60, 361 as action, 47, 191-2, 194-5, 249 degrees of, 323, 327 in dogmatic metaphysics, 196 double form of, 179-80, 216, 230-1, 236 as duration, 11-2, 217, 272 as flux, 165, 250, 251, 294, 337, 338, 342 and the frames of the intellect, 363-4, 365. _See_ Frames of the understanding as freedom, 247 of genera in ancient philosophy, 226-7 is growth, 239 imitation of, by the intellect, 89-90, 365 and the intellect, 52, 89-90, 153, 191, 192, 314-5, 355-6 intelligible, in ancient philosophy, 317 knowledge of, 307-8, 317, 358-9 and mechanism, 351, 354-5 as movement, 90, 155, 301-2, 312 and not-being, 276, 280, 285 of the person, 269 refraction of, through the forms of perception, 204, 238, 359-60 and science, 194, 196, 198, 199, 203-4, 206-8, 354, 357 sensible, in ancient philosophy, 314, 317, 321, 327, 328, 352 symbol of, xi, 30-1, 71, 88-9, 93-4, 195-6, 197, 209, 240, 342, 360-1, 369 undefinable conceptually, 13, 49 unknowable in Kant, 205 unknowable in Spencer, xi views of, 30-1, 71, 84, 88, 199, 201, 206-7, 225-6, 249, 258, 273, 300-7, 311, 314, 331-2, 342, 351, 352 Reason and life, 7, 8, 48, 161 cannot transcend itself, 193-4 Reasoning and acting, 192-3 and experience, 203-4 and matter, 204-5, 208-9 on matter and life, 7, 8 Recollection, dependence of, on special circumstances, 167, 180 in the dream, 202, 207-8 and perception, 180, 181 Recommencing, continual, of the present in the state of relaxation, 201 Recomposing, decomposing and, the characteristic powers of intellect, 157, 251 Record, false comparison of memory with, 5 Reflection, 158-9 Reflex activity, 110 compound, 173-4, 175-6 Refraction of the idea through matter or non-being, 316-7 of reality through forms of perception, 204, 238, 359-60 Regeneration and individuality, 13, 14 Register of time, 16, 20, 37 Reinke, 42 _note_ Relation, imprint of relations and laws upon consciousness, 188 as law, 229, 230-1 and thing, 147-52, 156-7, 160, 161, 187, 202, 352, 357 Relativism, epistemological, 196, 197, 230 Relativity of immobility, 155 of the intellect, xi, 48-9, 152, 153, 187, 195-6, 197-8, 199, 219, 273, 306-7, 360-1 of knowledge, 152, 191, 230 of perception, 226-7, 228, 300-1 Relaxation in the dream state, 201, 209-10 and extension, 201, 207-8, 209, 210, 212, 218, 223, 245 and intellect, 200, 207-8, 209, 212, 218 logic a, of virtual geometry, 212 matter a, of unextended into extended, 218 memory vanishes in complete, 200 necessity as, of freedom, 218 present continually recommences in the state of relaxation, 200 will vanishes in complete, 200, 207-8 _See_ Tension Releasing cause, 73, 74, 115, 118-9, 120 Repetition and generalization, 230-1, 232 and fabrication, 44-5, 46, 155-8 and intellect, 156-7, 199, 214-6 of states, 5-6, 7-8, 28-9, 30, 36, 45-6, 47 in the vital and in the mathematical order, 225, 226, 230, 231 Representation and action, 143-4, 145, 180 classes of: qualities, forms, acts, 302-3, 314 and consciousness, 143-4 of motion, 159-60, 303-4, 305, 306-7, 308, 313, 315, 344-5 of the Nought, 273-80, 281-4, 289-317, 327 Represented or internalized action distinguished from externalized action, 144-7, 158-9, 165 Reproduction and individuation, 13, 14 Resemblance. _See_ Similarity Reservoir, organism a, of energy, 115, 116, 125-6, 245, 246, 254 Rest and motion in Zeno, 308-12 Retrogression in evolution, 133, 134 Retrospection the function of intellect, 47-8, 237 Reversed psychology: intuitional cosmology, 208 Rhizocephala and animal mobility, 111 Rhumbler, 34 _note_ Rhythm of duration, 11-2, 127-8, 300-1, 345-7 intelligence adopts the, of action, 305-6 of perception, 299-300, 301 and quality, 301 scanning the, of the universe the function of science, 346-7 of science must coincide with that of action, 320 of the universe untranslatable into scientific formulae, 337 Rings of arthropods, 132-3 Ripening, creative evolution as, 47-8, 340-1 Romanes, 139 Roule, 27 _note_ Roy (Le), Ed., 218 _note_ _Salamandra maculata_, vision in, 75 Salensky, 75 _note_ Same, function of intellect connecting same with same, 199-200, 233, 270 Samter and Heymons, 72 _note_ Saporta (De), 112 _note_ Savage's sense of distance and direction, 212 Skepticism or dogmatism the dilemma of any systematic metaphysics, 195-6, 197, 230-1 Schisms in the primitive impulsion of life, 254-5, 257. _See_ Divergent lines of evolution Scholasticism, 370 Science and action, 93, 195, 198, 328-9 ancient, and modern, 329-37, 342-5, 357 astronomy, ancient and modern, 334-5, 336 cartesian geometry and ancient geometry, 333-4 cinematographical character of modern, 329, 330, 336-7, 340-1, 342, 345-8 conventionality of a certain aspect of, 206-7 and deduction, 212-3 and discontinuity, 161-2 function of, 92, 167-8, 173-4, 176-7, 193-4, 195-6, 198-9, 328-9, 346-7 Galileo's influence on modern, 333-4, 335 and instinct, 169, 170, 173-4, 175, 193-5 and intelligence, 176, 177, 193-6 Kepler's influence on modern, 334 and matter, 194-5, 206-7, 208 modern. _See_ Modern science object of, 195-6, 220, 221, 251, 270-1, 273, 296-8, 306-7, 328-9, 332-3, 335-6, 347-8 and perception, 168 and philosophy, 175-6, 196-7, 208-9, 344, 370 physical. _See_ Physics and reality. _See_ Reality and science and time, 8-13, 20, 335-8 unity of, 195-6, 197, 228-9, 230, 321-2, 323, 344-5, 347-8, 349, 354, 355-6, 359-60, 362-3 Scientific concepts, 338-40 explanation and philosophical explanation, 168 formulae, 337 geometry, 161, 211 knowledge, 193-4, 196-7, 198, 199, 207, 208, 218 Sclerosis and ageing, 19 Scolia, paralyzing instinct in, 172 Scope of action indefinitely extended by intelligent instruments, 141 of Galileo's physics, 357, 370 Scott, 63 _note_ Sea-urchin and individuality, 13 Séailles, 29 _note_ Secondary instincts, 139, 168 Sectioning of becoming in the philosophy of ideas, 317-8 of matter by perception, 206-7, 249, 251 Sedgwick, 260 _note_ Seeing and willing, coincidence of, in intuition, 237 Selection, natural, 54, 56-7, 59-60, 61-2, 63, 64, 68, 95-6, 169, 170 Self, coincidence of, with, 199 existence of, means change, 1 ff. knowledge of, 1 ff. Senescence, 15-23, 26-7, 42-3 Sensation and space, 202 Sense-perception. _See_ Perception Sensible flux, 316-7, 318, 321, 322, 327, 343, 345 intuition and ultra-intellectual, 360-1 object, apogee of, 342-3, 344-5, 349 reality, 314, 317, 319, 327, 328, 352 Sensibility, forms of, 361 Sensitive plant, in illustration of mobility in plants, 109 Sensori-motor system. _See_ Nervous system Sensuous manifold, 205, 221, 232, 235, 236 Sentiment, poetic, in illustration of individuation, 258, 259 Serkovski, 259 _note_ Serpula, in illustration of identical evolution in divergent lines, 96 Sexual cells, 14, 26, 27, 79-81 Sexuality parallel in plants and animals, 58-60, 119-21 Shaler, N.S., 133 _note_, 184 _note_ Sheath, calcareous, in illustration of animal tendency to mobility, 130-1 Signs, function of, 158, 159, 160 the instrument of science, 329-30 Sigwart, 287 _note_ Silurian epoch, failure of certain species to evolve since, 102 Similarity among individuals of same species the type of generality, 224-6, 228-9, 230-1 and mechanical causality, 44, 45 Simultaneity, to measure time is merely to count simultaneities, 9, 336, 337, 341 Sinuousness of evolution, 71, 98, 102, 212-3 Sitaris, unconscious knowledge of, 146, 147 Situation and magnitude, problems of, 211 Sketching movements, function of consciousness, 207-8 Sleep, 129-31, 135, 181 Snapshot, in illustration of intellectual representation of motion, 305, 306, 313, 315, 344 _See_ View of reality, Cinematographical character, etc. form defined as a, of transition, 301-2, 317, 318, 321-2, 345 Social instinct, 101, 140, 158, 171-2 life, 138, 140, 158, 265 and pedagogical character of negation, 287-97 Societies, 101, 131-2, 158, 171-2, 259 Society and the individual, 260, 265 Solar energy stored by plants, released by animals, 246, 254 systems, 241-4, 246 _note_, 256, 270 systems, life in other, 256 Solid, concepts analogous to solids, ix intellect as a solid nucleus, 193, 194 the material of construction and the object of the intellect, 153, 154, 161, 162, 251 Solidarity between brain and consciousness, 180, 262 of the parts of matter, 203, 207-8, 241, 271 Solidification operated by the understanding, 249 [Greek: sôma] in Aristotle, 350 Somnambulism and consciousness, 144, 145, 159 Soul and body, 350 and cell, 269 creation of, 270 Space and action, 203 in ancient philosophy, 318, 319 and concepts, 160-1, 163, 174-5, 176-7, 188-9, 257-9 geometrical, 203 homogeneity of, 156, 212 and induction, 216 in Kant's philosophy, 205, 206, 207, 244 in Leibniz's philosophy, 351 and matter, 189, 202-13, 244, 257, 264, 361-2, 368 and time in Kant's philosophy, 205-6 unity and multiplicity determinations of, 357-9 _See_ Extension Spatiality atmosphere of, bathing intelligence, 205 degradation of the extra-spatial, 207 and distinctness, 203, 207, 244, 250, 257-9 and geometrical space, 203, 211, 213, 218 and mathematical order, 208, 209 Special instincts and environment, 138, 168, 192-3, 194 and recollections, 167, 168, 180 as variations on a theme, 167, 172, 264 Species, articulate, 133 evolution of, 247, 255, 269 and external finality, 128-9, 130-1, 132, 266 fossil, 102 human, as goal of evolution, 266, 267 human, styled _homo faber_, 139 and instinct, 140, 167, 170-2, 264 and life, 167 similarity within, 223-6, 228-9, 230-1 Speculation, dead-locks in, xii, 155, 156, 312, 313-4 object of philosophy, 44, 152, 196, 198, 220, 225-6, 227, 251, 270-1, 273, 297-8, 306-7, 317, 347-8 Spencer, Herbert, xi, xiv, 78-9, 153, 188, 189, 190, 364, 365 Spencer's evolutionism, correspondence between mind and matter in, 368 cosmogony in, 188 imprint of relations and laws upon consciousness in, 188 matter in, 365, 367 mind in, 365, 367 Spheres, concentric, in Aristotle's philosophy, 328 Sphex, paralyzing instinct in, 172-5 Spiders and paralyzing hymenoptera, 172 Spinal cord, 110 Spinoza, the adequate and the inadequate, 353 cause, 277 dogmatism, 356, 357 eternity, 353 extension, 350 God, 351, 357 intuitionism, 347 mechanism, 348, 352, 355, 356 time, 362 Spirit, 251, 269, 270 Spirituality and materiality, 128-9, 201-3, 316-7, 208-9, 210-1, 212-3, 217, 218, 219, 222-3, 237, 238, 245, 247-8, 249, 251, 254, 256, 257, 259, 261, 267, 270-1, 272, 276, 343 Spontaneity of life, 86, 237. _See_ Freedom and mechanism, 40 in vegetables, 109 and the willed order, 224 Sport (biol.), 63 Starch, in the function of vegetable kingdom, 114 States of becoming, 1, 13, 163, 247-8, 299, 300, 307 Static character of the intellect, 155-6, 163, 274, 298 views of becoming, 273 Stehasny, 124 _note_ Steam-engine and bronze, parallel as epoch-marking, 138-9 Stentor and individuality, 260 Stoics, 316 Storing of solar energy by plants, 246, 253-6 Strain of bow and indivisibility of motion, 308 Stream, duration as a, 39, 338 Structure and function. _See_ Function and structure identical, in divergent lines of evolution, 55, 60, 61-2, 63, 69, 73-4, 75, 76-7, 83, 86, 87, 118-9 Subject and attribute, 147-8 Substance, albuminoid, 120-1 continuity of living, 162 organic, 121, 131, 140, 142, 149, 162-3, 195-7 _note_, 255, 267 in Spinoza's philosophy, 350 ternary substances, 121 Substantives, adjectives, verbs, correspond to the three classes of representation, 302-4 Substitution essential to representation of the Nought, 281, 283-4, 289-90, 291, 294, 296 Success of physics, 218, 219-20 and superiority, 133, 264-5 Succession in time, 10, 339, 340, 341, 345. Cf. Juxtaposition Successors of Kant, 363, 364 Sudden mutations, 28, 62-3, 64-5, 68-9 Sun, 115, 241, 323 Superaddition of existence upon nothingness, 276 of order upon disorder, 236, 275 Superimposition. _See_ Measurement of qualities, in induction, 216 Superiority, evolutionary, 133-5, 173, 174-5 Superman, 267 Supraconsciousness, 261 Survival of the fit, 169. _See_ Natural selection Swim, learning to, as instinctive learning, 193, 194 Symbol, the concept is a, 161, 209, 341-2 of reality, xi, 30-1, 71, 88-9, 93, 195-6, 210, 240, 342, 360-1, 369-70 Symbolic knowledge of life, 199, 342, 360 Symbolism, 176, 180, 360 Sympathetic or intuitive knowledge, 209, 210, 342 Sympathy, instinct is, 164, 168, 172-8, 342-3. _See_ Divination, Feeling, Inspiration Systematic metaphysics, dilemma of, 195, 196, 230-1 contrasted with intuitional, 191-2, 193-4, 238, 269, 270, 277, 346-8 postulate of, 190, 195 Systematization of physics, Liebniz's philosophy, 347 Systems, isolated, 9-13, 203, 214, 215, 241, 242, 342, 347-9 Tangent and curve, analogy with deduction and the moral sphere, 214 analogy with physico-chemistry and life, 31 Tarakevitch, 124 _note_ Teleology. _See_ Finalism Tendency, antagonistic tendencies of life, 13, 98, 103, 113, 135, 150 antagonistic tendencies in development of nervous system, 124-5 complementary tendencies of life, 51, 103, 135, 150, 168, 246 to dissociation, 260 divergent tendencies of life, 54, 89, 99, 101, 107-8, 109-10, 112, 116-8, 134, 135, 150, 181, 246, 254-8 to individuation, 13 life a tendency to act on inert matter, 96 toward mobility in animals, 109, 110, 113, 127-8, 129-33, 135, 181, 182 the past exists in present tendency, 5 to reproduce, 13 of species to change, 85-86 mathematical symbols of tendencies, 22, 23 toward systems, in matter, 10 transmission of, 80-1 a vital property is a, 13 Tension and extension, 236, 245 and freedom, 200-2, 207-8, 223, 237, 239, 300-2 matter the inversion of vital, 239 of personality, 199-200, 201, 207-8, 237, 239, 300 Ternary substances, 121 Theology consequent upon philosophy of ideas, 316 Theoretic fallacies, 263, 264 knowledge and instinct, 177, 268 knowledge and intellect, 155, 177, 179, 238, 270, 342, 343 Theorizing not the original function of the intellect, 154-5 Theory of knowledge, xiii, 178, 180, 184-5, 197, 204, 207-8, 209, 228-9, 231 of life, xiii, 178, 180, 197 Thermodynamics, 241-2. _See_ Conservation of energy, Degradation of energy Thesis and antithesis, 205 Thing as distinguished from motion, 187, 202, 247-8, 249, 299-300 as distinguished from relation, 147, 148, 150, 152, 158-9, 159-60, 161, 187, 202, 352, 356-7 and mind, 206 as solidification operated by understanding, 249 Thing-in-itself, 205, 206, 230-1, 312 Timaeus, 318 _note_ Time and the absolute, 240, 241, 297-8, 339, 343-4 abstract, 21, 22, 37, 39 articulations of real, 331-3 as force, 16, 45-6, 47, 51, 103, 339 homogeneous, 17, 18, 163-4, 331-3 as independent variable, 20, 335-7 interval of, 9, 22, 23 as invention, 341-2 in Leibniz's philosophy, 351, 352, 362 and logic, 4, 277 and simultaneity, 9, 336, 337, 341 in modern science 321-37, 341-5 and space in Kant, 205 and space in ancient philosophy, 318, 319. _See_ Duration Tools and intellect, 137-41, 150-1. _See_ Implement Torpor, in evolution, 109, 111, 113, 114 _note_, 120, 128-35, 181, 292 Tortoise, Achilles and the, in Zeno, 311 Touch, science expresses all perception as touch, 168 is to vision as intelligence to instinct, 169 Track laid by motion along its course, 309-12, 337 Transcendental Aesthetic, 203 Transformation, 32, 72, 73, 131, 231, 263 Transformism, 23-5 Transition, form a snapshot view of, 301-2, 316-7, 318, 321, 344-5 Transmissibility of acquired characters, 75-84, 87, 168, 169, 172-3, 225-6, 230-1 Transmission of the vital impetus, 26, 27, 79, 85, 87, 88, 93-4, 110, 126-7, 128, 230, 231, 246, 255, 256, 257, 259, 270 Trigger-action of motor mechanisms, 272 Triton, Regeneration in, 75 Tropism and psychical activity, 35 _note_ Truth seized in intuition, 318-20 Unconscious effort, 170 instinct, 142-3, 144, 145-6, 147, 166 knowledge, 145-8, 150-1 Unconsciousness, two kinds of, 144 Undefinable, reality, 13, 48 Understanding, absoluteness of, 153-4, 190-1, 197-8, 199, 200 and action, ix, xi, 179 genesis of the, ix-xv, 49, 189, 207-8, 257-9, 359, 361-2 and geometry, ix, xii and innateness of categories, 147, 148-9 and intuition, 46-7 and life, ix-xv, 13, 32-3, 46-50, 88-9, 101, 147-8, 149, 152, 162-5, 173-4, 176-7, 178, 195-201, 213, 220, 222-3, 224, 226, 257-9, 261, 266, 270, 271, 313, 361-2, 365 and inert matter, 166, 168, 179, 194-5, 198, 205-6, 207, 219, 355 and the ready-made, xiii, 48, 237, 250, 251, 273, 311, 321, 328-9, 354, 358 and the solid, ix unlimited scope of the, 149, 150, 152 _See_ Intellect, Intelligence, Concept, Categories, Frames of the understanding, Logic Undone, automatic and determinate evolution is action being, 249 Unfolding cause, 73, 74 Unforeseeableness of action, 47 of duration, 6, 164, 340-2 of evolution, 47, 48, 52, 86, 224 of invention, 164 of life, 164, 184 and the willed order, 224, 342-3 _See_ Foreseeing Unification as the function of the intellect, 152, 154, 357-8 Uniqueness of phases of duration, 164 Unity of extension, 154 of knowledge, 195-6 of life, 106-7, 250, 268, 271 of mental life, 268 and multiplicity as determinations of space, 351-3 of nature, 104-5, 189-90, 191, 195-6, 197, 199, 322, 352, 356-8 of the organism, 176-7 of science, 195-6, 197, 228-9, 230, 321, 322, 344-5, 347, 359-60, 362-3 Universal interaction, 188, 189 life, consciousness coextensive with, 186, 257, 270 Universe, continuity of, 346 Descartes's, 346 physical, and the idea of disorder, 233, 275 duration of, 10, 11, 241 evolution of, 241, 246 _note_ growth of, 342-3, 344 movement of, in Aristotle, 323 mutability of, 244, 245 as organism, 31, 241 as realization of plan, 40 rhythm of, 337, 339, 346-7 states of, considered by science, 336, 337 as unification of physics, 348-9, 357 Unknowable, the, of evolutionism, xi the, in Kant, 204, 205, 206 Unmaking, the nature of the process of materiality, 245, 248, 249, 251, 272, 342-3 Unorganized bodies, 7-8, 14, 20, 21, 186. _See_ inert matter instruments, 137-9, 140-1, 150-1 matter, cleft between, and the organized, 190, 191, 196, 197-9 matter, imitation of the organized by, 33-4, 35, 36 matter and science, 194-6 matter. _See_ inert matter Unwinding cause, 73 of immutability in Greek philosophy, 325, 352 Upspringing of invention, 164 Utility, 4-5, 150, 152, 154-5, 158-9, 160, 168, 187, 195-6, 247-8, 297-8, 328-9, 330 _Vanessa levana_ and _Vanessa prorsa_, transformation of, 72 Variable, time as an independent, 20, 336 Variation, accidental, 55, 63-4, 68, 85, 168-9 of color, in lizards, 72, 74 by deviation, 82-3, 84 of evolutionary type, 23-4, 72 _note_, 131-2, 137-8, 167, 169, 171-2, 264 insensible, 63, 68 interest as cause of, 131-2 in plants, 85-86 Vegetable kingdom. _See_ Plants Verb, relation expressed by, 148 Verbs, substantives and adjectives, 303 Verse and prose, in illustration of the two kinds of order, 221, 232 Vertebrate, ix, 126, 130, 131-4, 141 Vibrations, matter analyzed into elementary, 201 Vicious circle, apparent, of intuitionism, 192-4, 196-7 of intellectualism, 194, 197, 318-9, 320 View, intellectual, of becoming, 4, 90-1, 273, 298-9, 304, 305, 310, 326-7 intellectual, of matter, 203, 240, 250, 254, 255 of reality, 206 Vignon, P., 35 _note_ Virtual actions, 12. _See_ Possible action geometry, 212 Vise, consciousness compressed in a, 179 Vision of God, in Alexandrian philosophy, 322 in molluscs. See Eye of molluscs, etc. in _Salamandra maculata_, 75 Vital activity, 134-6, 139, 140, 166-9, 246, 247-8 current, 26, 27, 53-5, 80, 85, 87, 88, 96-105, 118-9, 120, 230-1, 232, 239, 257, 266, 270 impetus, 50-1, 53-5, 85, 87, 88, 98-105, 118-9, 126-7, 128, 131-2, 141-2, 148-9, 150, 218, 230-1, 232, 247-8, 250, 252, 254-5, 261 order, cause in, 34, 35, 94-5, 164 order, finality and, 223-5, 226 order, generalization in the, and in the mathematical order contrasted, 225, 226, 230-1 order, and the geometrical order, 222-3, 225, 226, 230, 231, 235, 236, 330-1 order, imitation of physical order by vital, 230 principle, 42, 43, 225, 226 order, repetition in the vital and the mathematical orders contrasted, 225, 226, 230, 231 process, 166-7 Vitalism, 42, 43 Void, representation of, 273, 274, 275, 277-8, 281, 283-4, 289-90, 291, 292, 294, 296, 298 Voisin, 80 Volition and cerebral mechanism, 253-4 Voluntary activity, 110, 252 Vries (de), 24, 63 _note_, 85 Wasps, instinct in, 140, 172 Weapons and intellect, 137 Weismann, 26, 78, 80-1 Will and caprice, 47 and cerebral mechanism, 252 current of, penetrating matter, 237 insertion of, into reality, 305-6, 307 and relaxation, 201, 207-8 and mechanism in disorder, 233 tension of, 199, 201, 207-8 Willed order, mutual contingency of willed order and mathematical order, 231-3 unforeseeability in the, 224, 342-3 Willing, coincidence of seeing and, in intuition, 237 Wilson, E.B., 36 Wolff, 75 _note_ Words and states, 4, 302-3 three classes of, corresponding to three classes of representation, 302-3, 313-4 World, intelligible, 162-3 principle: conciousness, 237, 261 Worms, in illustration of ambiguity of primitive organisms, 130 Yellow-winged sphex, paralyzing instinct in, 172 Zeno on motion, 308-13 Zone of potentialities surrounding acts, 179-80, 181, 264 Zoology, 128-9 Zoospores of algae, in illustration of mobility in plants, 112 
21668	----	[Note: I have made the following spelling changes: Prologue: "methed" to "method"; Chapter 2: "renders imposssible" to "renders impossible"; "which man possessses" to "which man possesses"; "absolute unqestionable" to "absolute unquestionable"; "loathesomeness" to "loathsomeness"; Chapter 3: "alllowed to distort" to "allowed to distort"; Chapter 4: "itelf in its precise" to "itself in its precise"; Chapter 5: "do very considerably" to "do vary considerably"; Chapter 6: "oversoul" to "over-soul"; "its own permonition" to "its own premonition"; "arbitrement" to "arbitrament"; "subtratum" to "substratum"; "gooodeness" to "goodness"; Chapter 7: "flicherings" to "filcherings"; "Perapity" to "Peripety"; Chapter 8: "penerated" to "penetrated"; Chapter 9: "the anthropomorphic expresssion" to "the anthropomorphic expression"; "convuluted" to "convoluted"; Chapter 10: "a vast hierachy" to "a vast hierarchy"; Chapter 11: "to be too anthromorphic" to "to be too anthropomorphic"; "strictly strictly speaking" to "strictly speaking"; Chapter 13: "working in isolaton" to "working in isolation"; "If to this the astronomer answer" to "If to this the astronomer answers"; "difficult to decribe" to "difficult to describe"; "the asethetic sense" to "the aesthetic sense"; "no attentuation" to "no attenuation"; "the Complex Vision represents" to "the complex vision represents"; Conclusion: "is eternaly divided" to "is eternally divided"; "rest of the imortals" to "rest of the immortals"; "elimination of the objectice mystery" to "elimination of the objective mystery". The word "over-soul" is mostly spelled with a hyphen, so I added a hyphen to all instances of this word. The word "outflowing" is mostly spelled without a hyphen, so I deleted the hyphens from all instances of this word. All other spelling remains the same.] THE COMPLEX VISION BY JOHN COWPER POWYS NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1920 DEDICATED TO LITTLETON ALFRED PROLOGUE What I am anxious to attempt in this anticipatory summary of the contents of this book is a simple estimate of its final conclusions, in such a form as shall eliminate all technical terms and reduce the matter to a plain statement, intelligible as far as such a thing can be made intelligible, to the apprehension of such persons as have not had the luck, or the ill-luck, of a plunge into the ocean of metaphysic. A large portion of the book deals with what might be called our _instrument of research_; in other words, with the problem of what particular powers of insight the human mind must use, if its vision of reality is to be of any deeper or more permanent value than the "passing on the wing," so to speak, of individual fancies and speculations. This instrument of research I find to be the use, by the human person, of all the various energies of personality concentrated into one point; and the resultant spectacle of things or reality of things, which this concentrated vision makes clear, I call the original revelation of the complex vision of man. Having analyzed in the earlier portions of the book the peculiar nature of our organ of research and the peculiar difficulties-- amounting to a very elaborate work of art--which have to be overcome before this _concentration_ takes place, I proceed in the later portions of the book to make as clear as I can what kind of reality it is that we actually do succeed in grasping, when this concentrating process has been achieved. I indicate incidentally that this desirable concentration of the energies of personality is so difficult a thing that we are compelled to resort to our memory of what we experienced in rare and fortunate moments in order to establish its results. I suggest that it is not to our average moments of insight that we have to appeal, but to our exceptional moments of insight; since it is only at rare moments in our lives that we are able to enter into what I call the _eternal vision_. To what, then, does this conclusion amount, and what is this resultant reality, in as far as we are able to gather it up and articulate its nature from the vague records of our memory? I have endeavoured to show that it amounts to the following series of results. What we are, in the first place, assured of is the existence within our own individual body of a real actual living thing composed of a mysterious substance wherein what we call mind and what we call matter are fused and intermingled. This is our real and self-conscious soul, the thing in us which says, "I am I," of which the physical body is only one expression, and of which all the bodily senses are only one gateway of receptivity. The soul within us becomes aware of its own body simultaneously with its becoming aware of all the other bodies which fill the visible universe. It is then by an act of faith or imagination that the soul within us takes for granted and assumes that there must be a soul resembling our own soul within each one of those alien bodies, of which, simultaneously with its own, it becomes aware. And since the living basis of our personality is this real soul within us, it follows that all those energies of personality, whose concentration is the supreme work of art, are the energies of this real soul. If, therefore, we assume that all the diverse physical bodies which fill the universe possess, each of them, an inner soul resembling our own soul, we are led to the conclusion that just as our own soul half-creates and half-discovers the general spectacle of things which it names "the universe," so all the alien souls in the world half-create and half-discover what they feel as _their_ universe. If our revelation stopped at this point we should have to admit that there was not one universe, but as many universes are there are living souls. It is at this point, however, that we become aware that all these souls are able, in some degree or other, to enter into communication. They are able to do this both by the bodily sounds and signs which constitute language and by certain immaterial vibrations which seem to make no use of the body at all. In this communication between different souls, as far as humanity is concerned, a very curious experience has to be recorded. When two human beings dispute together upon any important problem of life, there is always an implicit appeal made by both of them to an invisible arbiter, or invisible standard of arbitration, in the heart of which both seem aware that the reality, upon which their opinions differ, is to be found in its eternal truth. What then is this invisible standard of arbitration? Whatever it is, we are compelled to assume that it satisfies and transcends the deepest and furthest reach of personal vision in all the souls that approach it. And what is the deepest and furthest reach of our individual soul? This seems to be a projection upon the material plane of the very stuff and substance of the soul's inmost nature. This very "stuff" of the soul, this outflowing of the substance of the soul, I name "emotion"; and I find it to consist of two eternally conflicting elements; what I call the element of "love," and what I call the element of "malice." This emotion of love, which is the furthest reach of the soul, I find to be differentiated when it comes into contact with the material universe into three ultimate ways of taking life; namely, the way which we name the pursuit of beauty, the way which we name the pursuit of goodness, and the way which we name the pursuit of truth. But these three ways of taking life find always their unity and identity in that emotion of love which is the psychic substance of them all. The invisible standard of arbitration, then, to which an appeal is always made, consciously or unconsciously, when two human beings dispute upon the mystery of life, is a standard of arbitration which concerns the real nature of love, and the real nature of what we call "the good" and "the true" and "the beautiful." And since we have found in personality the one thing in existence of which we are absolutely assured, because we are aware of it, _on the inside_, so to speak, in the depths of our own souls, it becomes necessary that in place of thinking of this invisible standard as any spiritual or chemical "law" in any stream of "life-force" we should think of it as being as personal as we ourselves are personal. For since what we call the universe has been already described as something which is half-created and half-discovered by the vision of some one soul in it or of all the souls in it, it is clear that we have no longer any right to think of these ultimate ideas as "suspended" in the universe, or as general "laws" of the universe. They are suspended in the individual soul, which half-creates and half-discovers the universe according to their influence. Personality is the only permanent thing in life; and if truth, beauty, goodness, and love, are to have permanence they must depend for their permanence not upon some imaginary law in a universe half-created by personality but upon the indestructible nature of personality itself. The human soul is aware of an invisible standard of beauty. To this invisible standard it is compelled to make an unconscious appeal in all matters of argument and discussion. This standard must therefore be rooted in a personal super-human vision and we are driven to the conclusion that some being or beings exist, superior to man, and yet in communication with man. And since what we see around us is a world of many human and sub-human personalities, it is, by analogy, a more natural supposition to suppose that these supernatural beings are many than that they are one. What the human soul, therefore, together with all other souls, attains in its concentrated moments is "an eternal vision" wherein what is mortal in us merges itself in what is immortal. But if what we call the universe is a thing made up of all the various universes of all the various souls in space and time, we are forbidden to find in this visible material universe, whose "reality" does not become "really real" until it has received the "hall-mark," so to speak, of the eternal vision, any sort of medium or link which makes it possible for these various souls to communicate with one another. This material universe, thus produced by the concentrated visions of all the souls entering into the eternal vision, is made up of all the physical bodies of all such souls, linked together by the medium of universal ether. But although the bodies which thus occupy different points of space are linked together by the universal ether, we are not permitted to find in this elemental ether, the medium which links the innumerable souls together. And we are not permitted this because in our original assumption such souls are themselves the half-creators, as well as the half-discoverers, of that universe whose empty spaces are thus filled. The material ether which links all bodies together cannot, since it is a portion of such an universe, be itself the medium from the midst of which these souls create that universe. But if, following our method of regarding every material substance in the world as the body of some sort of soul, we regard this universal ether as itself the body of an universal or elemental soul, then we are justified in finding in this elemental omnipresent soul diffused through space, the very medium we need; out of the midst of which all the souls which exist project their various universes. We are thus faced by a universe which is the half-creation and half-discovery of all living souls, a universe the truth and beauty of which depend upon the eternal vision, a universe whose material substance is entirely composed of the actual physical bodies of those very souls whose vision half-creates and half-discovers it. We thus reach our conclusion that there is nothing in the world except personality. The material universe is entirely made up of personal bodies united by the personal body of the elemental ether. What we name the universe, therefore, is an enormous group of bodies joined together by the body of the ether; such bodies being the physical expression of a corresponding group of innumerable souls joined together by the soul of the ether. In the portions of this book which deal with the creative energy of the soul I have constantly used the expression "objective mystery"; but in my concluding chapter I have rejected and eliminated this word as a mere step or stage in human thought which does not correspond to any final reality. When I use the term "objective mystery" I am referring to the original movement of the individual mind when it first stretches out to what is outside itself. What is outside itself consists in reality of nothing but an unfathomable group of bodies and souls joined together by the body and soul of the ether which fills space. But since, in its first stretching out towards these things, all it is aware of is the presence of a plastic something which lends itself, under the universal curve of space, to the moulding and shaping and colouring of its creative vision, it is natural enough to look about for a name by which we can indicate this original "clay" or "matter" or "world-stuff" out of which the individual soul creates its vision of an universe. And the name "objective mystery" is the name by which, in the bulk of this book, I have indicated this mysterious world-stuff, by which the soul finds itself surrounded, both in regard to the matter of its own body and in regard to the still more alien matter of which all other bodies are composed. But when by the use of the term objective mystery I have indicated that general and universal something, not itself, by which the soul is confronted, that something which, like a white screen, or a thick mass of darkness, waits the moving lamp of the soul to give it light and colour, it becomes clear that the name itself does not cover any actual reality other than the actual reality of all the bodies in the world joined together by the universal ether. Is the term "objective mystery," therefore, no more than the name given to that first solid mass of external impression which the insight of the soul subsequently reduces to the shapes, colours, scents, sounds, and all the more subtle intimations springing from the innumerable bodies and souls which fill universal space? No. It is not quite this. It is a little deeper than this. It is, in fact, the mind's recognition that _behind_ this first solid mass of external impression which the soul's own creative activity creates into its "universe" there must exist "something," some real substance, or matter, or world-stuff, in contact with which the soul half-creates and half-discovers the universe which it makes its own. When, however, the soul has arrived at the knowledge that its own physical body is the outward expression of its inner self, and when by an act of faith or imagination it has extended this knowledge to every other bodily form in its universe, it ceases to be necessary to use the term "objective mystery"; since that something which the soul felt conscious of as existing behind the original solid mass of impressions is now known by the soul to be nothing else than an incredible number of living personalities, each with its own body. And just as I make use in this book of the term "objective mystery," and then discard it in my final conclusion, so I make an emphatic and elaborate use of the term "creative" and then discard it, or considerably modify it, in my final conclusion. My sequence of thought, in this matter of the soul's "creative" power, may thus be indicated. In the process of preparing the ground for those rare moments of illumination wherein we attain the eternal vision the soul is occupied, and the person attempting to think is occupied, with what I call "the difficult work of art" of concentrating its various energies and fusing them into one balanced point of rhythmic harmony. This effort of contemplative tension is a "creative effort" similar to that which all artists are compelled to make. In addition to this aspect of what I call "creation," there also remains the fact that the individual soul modifies and changes that first half-real something which I name the objective mystery, until it becomes all the colours, shapes, sounds and so forth, produced by the impression upon the soul of all the other personalities brought into contract with it by the omnipresent personality of the universal ether. The words "creation" and "creative" axe thus made descriptive in this book of the simple and undeniable fact that everything which the mind touches is modified and changed by the mind; and that ultimately the universe which any mind beholds is an universe half-created by the mood of the mind which beholds it. And since the mood of any mind which contemplates the universe is dependent upon the relative "overcoming" in that particular soul of the emotion of malice by love, or of the emotion of love by malice, it becomes true to say that any universe which comes into existence is necessarily "created" by the original struggle, in the depths of some soul or other, of the conflicting emotions of love and malice. And since the ideal of the emotion of love is life, and the ideal of the emotion of hate is death, it becomes true to say that the emotion of love is identical with the creative energy in all souls, while the emotion of malice is identical with the force which resists creation in all souls. Why then do I drop completely, or at least considerably modify, this stress upon the soul's "creative" power in my final chapter? I am led to do so by the fact that such creative power in the soul is, after all, only a preparation for the eternal vision. Creative energy implies effort, tension, revolution, agitation, and the pain of birth. All these things have to do with preparing the ground for the eternal vision, and with the final gesture of the soul, by which it enters into that ultimate rhythm. But once having entered into that vision-- and in these things time is nothing--the rhythm which results is a rhythm upon which the soul rests, even as music rests upon music, or life rests upon life. And the eternal vision, thus momentarily attained, and hereafter gathered together from the deep cisterns of memory, liberates us, when we are under its influence, from that contemplative or creative tension whereby we reached it. It is then that the stoical pride of the soul, in the strength of which it has endured so much, undergoes the process of an immense relaxation and relief. An indescribable humility floods our being; and the mood with which we contemplate the spectacle of life and death ceases to be an individual mood and becomes an universal mood. The isolation, which was a necessary element in our advance to this point, melts away when we have reached it. It is not that we lose our personality, it is that we merge ourselves by the outflowing of love, in all the personalities to which the procession of time gives birth. And the way we arrive at this identification of ourselves with all souls, living or dead or unborn, is by our love for that ideal symbolized in the figure of Christ in whom this identification has already been achieved. This, and nothing less than this, is the eternal vision. For the only "god" among all the arbiters of our destiny, with whom we are concerned, is Christ. To enter into his secret is to enter into their secret. To be aware of him is to be aware of everything in the world, mortality and immortality, the transitory and the eternal. Life then, as I have struggled to interpret it in this book, seems to present itself as an unfathomable universe entirely made up of personalities. What we call inanimate substances are all of them the bodies, or portions of the bodies, of living personalities. The immense gulf, popularly made between the animate and the inanimate, thus turns out to be an unfounded illusion; and the whole universe reveals itself as an unfathomable series, or congeries, of living personalities, united by the presence of the omnipresent ether which fills universal space. It is of little moment, the particular steps or stages of thought, by which one mind, among so many, arrives at this final conclusion. Other minds, following other tracks across the desert, might easily reach it. The important thing to note is that, once reached, such a conclusion seems to demand from us a very definite attitude toward life. For if life, if the universe, is entirely made up of personality, then our instinctive or acquired attitude toward personality becomes the path by which we approach truth. To persons who have not been plunged, luckily or unluckily, in the troublesome sea of metaphysical phrases, the portions of this book which will be most tiresome are the portions which deal with those "half-realities" or logical abstractions of the human reason, when such reason "works" in isolation from the other attributes of the soul. Such reason, working in isolation, inevitably produces certain views of life; and these views of life, although unreal when compared with the reality produced by the full play of all our energies, cannot be completely disregarded if our research is to cover the whole field of humanity's reactions. Since there is always an irresistible return to these metaphysical views of life directly the soul loses the rhythm of its total being, it seems as if it were unwise to advance upon our road until we have discounted such views and placed them in their true perspective, as unreal but inevitable abstractions. The particular views of life which this recurrent movement of the logical reason results in, are, first, the reduction of everything to an infinite stream of pure thought, outside both time and space, unconscious of itself as in any way personal; and, in the second place, the reduction of everything to one universal self-conscious spirit, in whose absolute and infinite being independent of space and time all separate existences lose themselves and are found to be illusions. What I try to make clear in the metaphysical portion of this book is that these two views of life, while always liable to return upon us with every renewed movement of the isolated reason, are in truth unreal projections of man's imperious mind. When we subject them to an analysis based upon our complete organ of research they show themselves to be nothing but tyrannous phantoms, abstracted from the genuine reality of the soul as it exists _within_ space and time. What I seek to show throughout this book is that the world resolves itself into an immeasurable number of personalities held together by the personality of the universal ether and by the unity of one space and one time. Even of space and time themselves, since the only thing that really "fills them," so to speak, to the brim, is the universal ether, it might be said that they are the expression of this universal ether in its relation to all the objects which it contains. Thus the conclusion to which I am driven is that the dome of space, out of which the sun shines by day and the stars by night, contains no vast gulfs of absolute nothingness into which the soul that hates life may flee away and be at rest. At the same time the soul that hates life need not despair. The chances, as we come to estimate them, for and against the soul's survival after death, seem so curiously even, that it may easily happen that the extreme longing of the soul for annihilation may prove in such a balancing of forces the final deciding stroke. And quite apart from death, I have tried to show in this book, how in the mere fact of the unfathomable depths into which all physical bodies as well as all immaterial souls recede there is an infinite opportunity for any soul to find a way of escape from life, either by sinking into the depths of its own physical being, or by sinking into the depths of its own spiritual substance. The main purpose of the book reveals, however, the only escape from all the pain and misery of life which is worthy of the soul of man. And this is not so much an escape from life as a transfiguring of the nature of life by means of a newly born attitude toward it. This attitude toward life, of which I have tried to catch at least the general outlines, is the attitude which the soul struggles to maintain by gathering together all its diffused memories of those rare moments when it entered into the eternal vision. And I have indicated as clearly as I could how it comes about that in the sphere of practical life the only natural and consistent realization of this attitude would be the carrying into actual effect of what I call "the idea of communism." This "idea of communism," in which the human implications of the eternal vision become realized, is simply the conception of a system of human society founded upon the creative instinct, instead of upon the possessive instinct in humanity. I endeavour to make clear that such a reorganization of society, upon such a basis does not imply any radical change in human nature. It only implies a liberation of a force that already exists, of the force in the human soul that is centrifugal, or outflowing, as opposed to the force that is centripetal, or indrawing. Such a force has always been active in the lives of individuals. It only remains to liberate that force until it reaches the general consciousness of the race, to make such a reconstruction of human society not only ideal, but actual and effective. CONTENTS Chapter I. The Complex Vision 1 Chapter II. The Aspects of the Complex Vision 20 Chapter III. The Soul's Apex-Thought 56 Chapter IV. The Revelation of the Complex Vision 71 Chapter V. The Ultimate Duality 100 Chapter VI. The Ultimate Ideas 120 Chapter VII. The Nature of Art 160 Chapter VIII. The Nature of Love 194 Chapter IX. The Nature of the Gods 214 Chapter X. The Figure of Christ 225 Chapter XI. The Illusion of Dead Matter 248 Chapter XII. Pain and Pleasure 270 Chapter XIII. The Reality of the Soul in Relation to Modern Thought 293 Chapter XIV. The Idea of Communism 323 Conclusion 339 PREFACE The speculative system which I have entitled "The Philosophy of the Complex Vision" is an attempt to bring into prominence, in the sphere of definite and articulate thought, those scattered and chaotic intimations which hitherto have found expression rather in Art than in Philosophy. It has come to be fatally clear to me that between the great metaphysical systems of rationalized purpose and the actual shocks, experiences, superstitions, illusions, disillusions, reactions, hope and despairs, of ordinary men and women there is a great gulf fixed. It has become clear to me that the real poignant personal drama in all our lives, together with those vague "marginal" feelings which overshadow all of us with a sense of something half-revealed and half withheld, has hardly any point of contact with these formidable edifices of pure logic. On the other hand the tentative, hesitating, ambiguous hypotheses of Physical Science, transforming themselves afresh with every new discovery, seem, when the portentous mystery of Life's real secret confronts us, to be equally remote and elusive. When in such a dilemma one turns to the vitalistic and pragmatic speculations of a Bergson or a William James there is an almost more hopeless revulsion. For in these pseudo-scientific, pseudo-psychological methods of thought something most profoundly human seems to us to be completely neglected. I refer to the high and passionate imperatives of the heroic, desperate, treasonable heart of man. What we have come to demand is some intelligible system of _imaginative reason_ which shall answer the exigencies not only of our more normal moods but of those moods into which we are thrown by the pressure upon us--apparently from outside the mechanical sequence of cause and effect--of certain mysterious Powers in the background of our experience, such as hitherto have only found symbolic and representative expression in the ritual of Art and Religion. What we have come to demand is some flexible, malleable, rhythmic system which shall give an imaginative and yet a rational form to the sum total of those manifold and intricate impressions which make up the life of a real person upon a real earth. What we have come to demand is that the centre of gravity in our interpretation of life should be restored to its natural point of vantage, namely, to the actual living consciousness of an actual living human being. And it is precisely these demands that the philosophy of the complex vision attempts to satisfy. It seeks to satisfy them by using as its organ of research the balanced "ensemble" of man's whole nature. It seeks to satisfy them by using as its "material" the whole variegated and contradictory mass of feelings and reactions to feelings, which the natural human being with his superstitions, his sympathies, his antipathies, his loves and his hates, his surmises, his irrational intuitions, his hopes and fears, is of necessity bound to experience as he moves through the world. It seeks, in fact, to envisage from within and without the confused hurly-burly of life's drama; and to give to this contradictory and complicated spectacle the aesthetic rationality or imaginative inevitableness of a rhythmic work of art. In this attempt the philosophy of the complex vision is bound to recognize, and include in its _rational form_, much that remains mysterious, arbitrary, indetermined, organic, obstinately illogical. For the illogical is not necessarily the unintelligible, so long as the reason which we use is that same imaginative and clairvoyant reason, which, in its higher measure, sustains the vision of the poets and the artists. By the use of this fuller, richer, more living, more concrete instrument of research, the conclusions we arrive at will have in them more of the magic of Nature, and will be closer to the actual palpable organic mystery of Life, than either the abstract conclusions of metaphysic or the cautious, impersonal hypotheses of experimental physical science. CHAPTER I. THE COMPLEX VISION A philosophy is known by its genuine starting-point. This is also its final conclusion, often very cunningly concealed. Such a conclusion may be presented to us as the logical result of a long train of reasoning, when really it was there all the while as one single vivid revelation of the complex vision. Like travellers who have already found, by happy accident, the city of their desire, many crafty thinkers hasten hurriedly back to the particular point from which they intend to be regarded as having started; nor in making this secret journey are they forgetful to erase their footsteps from the sand, so that when they publicly set forth it shall appear to those who follow them that they are guided not by previous knowledge of the way but by the inevitable necessity of pure reason. I also, like the rest, must begin with what will turn out to be the end; but unlike many I shall openly indicate this fact and not attempt to conceal it. My starting-point is nothing less than what I call the original revelation of man's complex vision; and I regard this original revelation as something which is arrived at by the use of a certain synthetic activity of all the attributes of this vision. And this synthetic activity of the complex vision I call its apex-thought. This revelation is of a peculiar nature, which must be grasped, at least in its general outlines, before we can advance a step further upon that journey which is also a return. It might be maintained that before attempting to philosophize upon life, the question should be asked . . . "why philosophize at all?" And again . . . "what are the motive-forces which drive us into this process which we call philosophizing?" To philosophize is to articulate and express our personal reaction to the mystery which we call life, both with regard to the nature of that mystery and with regard to its meaning and purpose. My answer to the question "Why do we philosophize?" is as follows. We philosophize for the same reason that we move and speak and laugh and eat and love. In other words, we philosophize because man is a philosophical animal. We breathe because we cannot help breathing and we philosophize because we cannot help philosophizing. We may be as sceptical as we please. Our very scepticism is the confession of an implicit philosophy. To suppress the activity of philosophizing is as impossible as to suppress the activity of breathing. Assuming then that we _have_ to philosophize, the question naturally arises . . . _how_ have we to philosophize if our philosophy is to be an adequate expression of our complete reaction to life? By the phrase "man's complex vision" I am trying to indicate the elaborate and intricate character of the organ of research which we have to use. All subsequent discoveries are rendered misleading if the total activity, at least in its general movement, of our instrument of research is not brought into focus. This instrument of research which I have named "man's complex vision" implies his possession, at the moment when he begins to philosophize, of certain basic attributes or energies. The advance from infancy to maturity naturally means, when the difference between person and person is considered an unequal and diverse development of these basic energies. Nor even when the person is full grown will it be found that these energies exist in him in the same proportion as they exist in other persons. But if they existed in every person in precisely equal proportions we should not all, even then, have the same philosophy. We should not have this, because though the basic activities were there in equal proportion, each living concrete person whose activities these were would necessarily colour the resultant vision with the stain or dye of his original difference from all the rest. For no two living entities in this extraordinary world are exactly the same. What is left for us, then, it might be asked, but to "whisper our conclusions" and accept the fact that all "philosophies" must be different, as they are all the projection of different personalities? Nothing, as far as pure logic is concerned, is left for us but this. Yet it remains as an essential aspect of the process of philosophizing that we should endeavour to bring over to our vision as many other visions as we can succeed in influencing. For since we have the power of communicating our thought to one another and since it is of the very nature of the complex vision to be exquisitely sensitive to influences from outside, it is a matter of primordial necessity to us all that we should exercise this will to influence and this will to be influenced. And just as in the case of persons sympathetic to ourselves the activity of philosophizing is attended by the emotion of love and the instinct of creation, so in the case of persons antagonistic to ourselves the activity of philosophizing is attended by the emotion of hate and the instinct of destruction. For philosophy being the final articulation of a personal reaction to life, is penetrated through and through with the basic energies of life. On the one hand there is a "Come unto me, all ye . . ." and on the other there is a "Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!" Just because the process of philosophizing is necessarily personal, it is evident that the primordial aspect of it which implies "the will to influence" must tally with some equally primordial reciprocity, implying "the will to be influenced." That it does so tally with this is proved by the existence of language. This medium of expression between living things does not seem to be confined to the human race. Some reciprocal harmony of energy, corresponding to our complex vision, seems to have created many mysterious modes of communication by which myriads of sub-human beings, and probably also myriads of super-human beings, act and react on one another. But the existence of language, though it excludes the possibility of absolute difference, does not, except by an act of faith, necessitate that any sensation we name by the same name is really identical with the sensation which another person feels. And this difficulty is much further complicated by the fact that words themselves tend in the process to harden and petrify, and in their hardening to form, as it were, solid blocks of accretion which resist and materially distort the subtle and evasive play of the human psychology behind them. So that not only are we aware that the word which we use does not necessarily represent to another what it represents to ourself, but we are also aware that it does not, except in a hard and inflexible manner, represent what we ourselves feel. Words tend all too quickly to become symbolic; and it is often the chief importance of what we call "genius" that it takes these inflexible symbols into its hands and breaks them up into pieces and dips them in the wavering waters of experience and sensation. Every philosopher should be at pains to avoid as far as possible the use of technical terms, whether ancient or modern, and should endeavour to evade and slip behind these terms. He should endeavour to indicate his vision of the world by means of words which have acquired no thick accretion of traditional crust but are fresh and supple and organic. He should use such words, in fact, as might be said to have the flexibility of life, and like living plants to possess leaves and sap. He should avoid as far as he can such metaphors and images as already carry with them the accumulated associations of traditional usage, and he should select his expressions so that they shall give the reader the definite impact and vivid shock of thoughts that leap up from immediate contact with sensation, like fish from the surface of a river. Just because words, in their passage from generation to generation, tend to become so hard and opaque, it is advisable for any one attempting to philosophize to use indirect as well as direct means of expressing his thoughts. The object of philosophizing being to "carry over" into another person's consciousness one's personal reaction to things, it may well happen that a hint, a gesture, a signal, a sign, made indirectly and rather by the grouping of words and the tone of words than by their formal content, will reach the desired result more effectually than any direct argument. It must be admitted, however, that this purely subjective view of philosophy, with its implied demand for a precise subjective colouring of the words, leaves some part of our philosophical motive-force unsatisfied and troubled by an obscure distress. No two minds can interchange ideas without some kind of appeal, often so faint and unconscious as to be quite unrecognized, to an invisible audience of hidden attendants upon the argument, who are tacitly assumed in some mysterious way to be the arbiters. These invisible companions seem to gather to themselves, as we are vaguely aware of them, the attributes of a company of overshadowing listeners. They present themselves to the half-conscious background of our mind as some pre-existent vision of "truth" towards which my subjective vision is one contribution and my interlocutor's subjective vision another contribution. This vague consciousness which we both have, as we exchange our ideas, of some comprehensive vision of pre-existent reality, to which we are both appealing, does not destroy my passionate conviction that I am "nearer the truth" than my friend; nor does it destroy my latent feeling that in my friend's vision there is "something of the truth" which I am unable to grasp. I think the more constantly we encounter other minds in these philosophical disputes the more does there grow and take shape in our own mind the idea of some mysterious and invisible watchers whose purer vision, exquisitely harmonious and clairvoyant, remains a sort of test both of our own and of others' subjectivity; becomes, in fact, an objective standard or measure or pattern of those ideas which we discover within us all, and name truth, beauty, nobility. This objective standard of the things which are most important and precious to us, this ideal pattern of all human values, attests and manifests its existence by the primordial necessity of the interchange of thoughts among us. I call this pattern or standard of ideas "the vision of the immortal companions." By the term "the immortal companions" I do not mean to indicate any "immanent" power or transcendental "over-soul." Nor do I mean to indicate that they are created by our desire that they should exist. Although I call them "companions" I wish to suggest that they exist quite independently of man and are not the origin of these ideas in man's soul but only the model, the pattern, the supreme realization of these ideas. It is, however, to these tacit listeners, whose vision of the world is there in the background as the arbiter of our subjective encounters, that in our immense loneliness we find ourselves constantly turning. All our philosophy, all our struggle with life, falls into two aspects as we grow more and more aware of what we are doing. The whole strange drama takes the form, as we feel our way, of a creation which at present is non-existent and of a realization of something which at present is hidden. Thus philosophy, as I have said, is at once a setting-forth and a return; a setting-forth to something that has never been reached, because to reach it we have to create it, and a return to something that has been with us from the beginning and is the very form and shape and image of the thing which we have set forth to create. These hidden listeners, these tacit arbiters, these assumed and implied witnesses of our life, give value to every attempt we make at arriving at some unity amid our differences; and their vision seems, as the eternal duality presses upon us, to be at once the thing from which we start and the thing towards which, moulding the future as we go, we find ourselves moving. In the unfathomable depths of the past we are aware of a form, a shape, a principle, a premonition; and into the unfathomable depths of the future we project the fulfilled reality of this. We are as gods creating something out of nothing. But when we have created it . . . behold! it was there from the beginning; and the nothing out of which we have created it has receded into a second future from which it mocks and menaces us again. The full significance of this ultimate duality would be rendered abortive if the future were determined in any more definite way than by the premonition, the hope, the dream, the passion, the prophecy, the vision, of those invisible companions whose existence is implied whenever two separate souls communicate their thoughts to one another. It is by our will that the future is created; but around the will hover intermittently many unfathomable motives. And the pre-existent motive, which finally gives the shape to the future, holds the future already in its hand. And this surviving motive, ultimately selected by our will, is of necessity purged and tested by a continual comparison with that form, that idea, that dream, that vision, which is implied from the beginning and which I name "the vision of the invisible companions." The philosophical enquiry upon which we are engaged finds its starting point, then, in nothing less than that revelation of the complex vision which is also the goal of its journey. The complex vision, in the rhythmic play of its united attributes, makes use of a synthetic power which I call its apex-thought. The supreme activity of this apex-thought is centred about those primordial ideas of truth, beauty and nobility which are the very stuff and texture of its being. In the ecstasy of its creative and receptive "rapport" with these it becomes aware of the presence of certain immortal companions whose vision is at once the objective standard of such ideas and the premonition of their fuller realization. In thus attempting to articulate and clarify the main outlines of our starting point, a curious situation emerges. The actual _spectacle_, or mass of impressions to be dealt with, presents itself, we are forced to suppose, as more or less identical, in its general appearance, in every human consciousness. And this "general situation" is strange enough. We find ourselves, motionless or moving, surrounded by earth and air and space. Impressions flow past us and flow through us. We ourselves seem at the same time able to move from point to point in this apparently real universe and able to remain, as invisible observers, outside all the phenomena of time and space. As the ultimate invisible spectator of the whole panorama, or, in the logical phrase, as the "a priori unity of apperception" our consciousness cannot be visualized in any concrete image. But as the empirical personal self, able to move about within the circle of the objective universe, the soul is able to visualize itself pictorially and imaginatively, although not rationally or logically. These two revelations of the situation are simultaneously disclosed; and although the first-named of them--the "a priori unity of apperception"--might seem to claim, on the strength of this "a priori" a precedence over the second, it has no real right to make such a claim. The truth of the situation is indeed the reverse of this; and upon this truth, more than upon anything else, our whole method of enquiry depends. For the fact that we are unable to think of our integral personal self _as actually_ being this "a priori" consciousness, and are not only able but are bound to think of our integral personal self as _actually being_ this individual "soul" within time and space, we are driven to the conclusion that this "a priori" observer outside time and space is nothing more than an inevitable trick or law or aspect or play of our isolated logical reason. Our logical reason is itself only one attribute of our real concrete self, the self which exists within time and space; and therefore we reach the conclusion that this "a priori unity," which seems outside time and space, is nothing but a necessary inevitable abstraction from the concrete reality of our personal self which is within time and space. There is no need to be startled at the apparent paradox of this, as though the lesser were including the larger or the part the whole, because when space and time are eliminated there can be no longer any large or small or whole or part. All are equal there because all are equally nothing there. This "a priori" unity of consciousness, outside time and space, is only real in so far as it represents the inevitable manner in which reason has to work when it works in isolation, and therefore compared with the reality of the personal self, within time and space, it is unreal. And it is obvious that an unreal thing cannot be larger than a real thing; nor can an unreal thing be a whole of which a real thing is a part. The method therefore of philosophic enquiry, which I name "the philosophy of the complex vision," depends upon the realization of the difference between what is only the inevitable play of reason, working in isolation, and what is the inevitable play of all the attributes of the human soul when they are held together by the synthetic activity of what I name the "apex-thought." But this logical revelation of the "a priori" unity of consciousness outside of time and space is not the only result of the isolated play of some particular attribute of personality. Just as the isolated play of reason evokes this result, so the isolated play of self-consciousness evokes yet another result, which we have to recognize as intervening between this ultimate logical unity and the real personal self. The abstraction evoked by the isolated play of self-consciousness is obviously nearer reality and less of an abstraction than the merely logical one above-named, because self-consciousness has more of the personal self in it than reason or logic can have. But though nearer reality and less of an abstraction than the other, this revelation of the inevitable play of self-consciousness, working by itself, is also unreal in relation to the revelation of the concrete personal individual soul. This revelation of self-consciousness, working in isolation, has as its result the conception of one universal "I am I" or cosmic self, which is nothing more or less than the whole universe, contemplating itself as its own object. To this conception are we driven, when in isolation from the soul's other attributes our self-consciousness gives itself up to its own activity. The "I am I" which we then seek to articulate is an "I am I" reached by the negation or suppression of that primordial act of faith which is the work of the imagination. This act of faith, thus negated and suppressed in order that this unreal cosmic self may embrace the universe, is the act of faith by which we become aware of the existence of innumerable other "selves," besides our own self, filling the vast spaces of nature. The difference between the sensation we have of our own body and the sensation we have of the rest of the universe ceases to exist when self-consciousness thus expands; and the conceptions we arrive at can only be described as the idea that the whole universe with all the bodies which it contains--including our own body--is nothing but one vast manifestation of one vast mind which is our own "I am I." It must not be supposed that this abstraction evoked by the solitary activity of self-consciousness is any more a "whole," of which the real self is a "part," than the logical "a priori unity" is a whole, of which the real self is a part. Both are abstractions. Both are unreal. Both are shadowy projections from the true reality, which is the personal self existing side by side with "the immortal companions." Nor must it be supposed that these primordial aspects of life are of equal importance and that we have an equal right to make of any one of them the starting point of our enquiry. The starting point of our enquiry, and the end of our enquiry also, can be nothing else than the innumerable company of individual "souls," mortal and immortal, confronting the mystery of the universe. The philosophy of the complex vision is not a mechanical philosophy; it is a creative philosophy. And as such it includes in it from the beginning a certain element of faith and a certain element which I can only describe as "the impossible." It may seem ridiculous to some minds that the conception of the "impossible" should be introduced into any philosophy at the very start. The complex vision is, however, essentially creative. The creation of something really new in the world is regarded by pure reason as impossible. Therefore the element of "the impossible" must exist in this philosophy from the very start. The act of faith must also exist in it; for the imagination is one of the primary aspects of the complex vision and the act of faith is one of the basic activities of the imagination. The complex vision does not regard history as a progressive predetermined process. It regards history as the projection, by advance and retreat, of the creative and resistant power of individual souls. That the "invisible companions" should be in eternal contact with every living "soul" is a rational impossibility; and yet this impossibility is what the complex vision, using the faith of its creative imagination, reveals as the truth. The imagination working in isolation is able, like reason and self-consciousness, to fall into curious distortions and aberrations. One has only to survey the field of dogmatic religion to see how curiously astray it may be led. It is only by holding fast to the high rare moments when the apex-thought attains its consummation that we are able to keep such isolated acts of faith in their place and prevent the element of the "impossible" becoming the element of the absurd. The philosophy of the complex vision, though far more sympathetic to much that is called "materialism" than to much that is called "idealism," certainly cannot itself be regarded as materialistic. And it cannot be so regarded because its central assumption and implication is the concrete basis of personality which we call the "soul." And the "soul," when we think of it as something real, must inevitably be associated with what might be called "the vanishing point of sensation." In other words the soul must be thought of as having some kind of "matter" or "energy" or "form" as its ultimate life, and yet as having no kind of "matter" or "energy" or "form." The soul must be regarded as "something" which is living and real and concrete, and which has a definite existence in time and space, and which is subject to annihilation; but the stuff out of which the soul is made is not capable of analysis, and can only be accepted by such an act of faith as that which believes in "the impossible." The fact that the philosophy of the complex vision assumes as its only axiom the concrete reality of the "soul" within us which is so difficult to touch or handle or describe and yet which we feel to be so much more real than our physical body, justifies us in making an experiment which to many minds will seem uncalled for and ridiculous. I mean the experiment of trying to visualize, by an arbitrary exercise of fancy, the sort of form or shape which this formless and shapeless thing may be imagined as possessing. Metaphysical discussion tends so quickly to become thin and abstract and unreal; words themselves tend so quickly to become "dead wood" rather than living branches and leaves; that it seems advisable, from the point of view of getting nearer reality, to make use sometimes of a pictorial image, even though such an image be crudely and clumsily drawn. Pictorial images are always treacherous and dangerous; but, as I have hinted, it is sometimes necessary, considering the intricate and delicately balanced character of man's complex vision, to make a guarded and cautious use of them, so as to arrive at truth "sideways," so to speak, and indirectly. One of the curious psychological facts, in connection with the various ways in which various minds function, is the fact that when in these days we seek to visualize, in some pictorial manner, our ultimate view of life, the images which are called up are geometrical or chemical rather than anthropomorphic. It is probable that even the most rational and logical among us as soon as he begins to philosophize at all is compelled by the necessity of things to form in the mind some vague pictorial representation answering to his conception of the universe. The real inherent nature of such a philosophy would be probably understood and appreciated far better, both by the philosopher himself and by his friends, if this vague pictorial projection could be actually represented, in words or in a picture. Most minds see the universe of their mental conception as something quite different from the actual stellar universe upon which we all gaze. Even the most purely rational minds who find the universe in "pure thought" are driven against their rational will to visualize this "pure thought" and to give it body and form and shape and movement. These hidden and subconscious representations, in terms of sensible imagery, of the conclusions of philosophic thought, are themselves of profound philosophical interest. We cannot afford to neglect them. They are at least proof of the inalienable part played, in the functioning of our complex vision, by _sensation_ as an organ of research. But they have a further interest. They are an illuminating revelation of the inherent character and personal bias of the individual soul who is philosophizing. I suppose to a great many minds what we call "the universe" presents itself as a colossal circle, without any circumference, filled with an innumerable number of material objects floating in some thin attenuated ether. I suppose the centre of this circle with no circumference is generally assumed to be the "self" or "soul" of the person projecting this particular image. Doubtless, in some cases, it is assumed to be such a person's physical body as it feels itself conscious of sensation and is aware of space and time. As I myself use the expression "complex vision" I suppose I call up in the minds of my various readers an extraordinary variety of pictorial images. Without laying any undue stress upon this pictorial tendency, I should like to indicate the kind of projected image which I myself am conscious of, when I use the expression, "the complex vision." I seem to visualize this thing as a wavering, moving mass of flames, taking the shape of what might be called a "horizontal pyramid," the apex of which, where the flames are fused and lost in one another, is continually cleaving the darkness like the point of a fiery arrow, while the base of it remains continually invisible by reason of some magical power which confuses the senses whenever they seek to touch or to hold it. Sometimes I seem to see this "base" or "spear handle" or "arrow shaft," of my moving horizontal pyramid, as a kind of deeper darkness; sometimes as a vibration of air; sometimes as a cloud of impenetrable smoke. I am always conscious of the curious fact that, while I can most vividly see the apex-point of the thing, and while I know that this moving pyramid of fire has a base, there is for ever some drastic natural law or magical power at work that obscures my vision whenever I turn my eyes to the place where I know it exists. I have not mentioned this particular pictorial image with any wish to lay undue stress upon it. In all rarified and subtle experiments of thought pictorial images are quite as likely to hinder us in our groping towards reality as they are to help us. If my image of a moving, horizontal pyramid with an apex-point of many names fused into one and a base of impenetrable invisibility seems to any reader of this passage a ridiculous and arbitrary fancy I would merely ask such an one to let it go, and to consider my description of the complex vision quite independently of it. Sometimes to myself it appears ridiculous; and I only, as we put it, "throw it out" in order that, if it has the least illuminative value, such a value should not be quite lost. Any reader who regards my particular picture as absurd is perfectly at liberty to form his own pictorial image of what I am endeavouring to make clear. He may, if he pleases, visualize "the soul" as a sort of darkened planet from which the attributes of the complex vision radiate to the right or to the left, as the thing moves through immensity. All I ask is that these attributes should be thought of as converging to a point and as finding their "base" in some thing which is felt to exist but cannot be described. Probably to a thorough-going empiricist, and certainly to a thorough-going materialist, it will appear quite unnecessary to translate the obvious spectacle of the world, with oneself as a physical body in the centre of it, into mental symbols and pictorial representations of the above character. Of such an one I would only ask, in what sort of manner he visualizes, when he thinks of it at all, the "soul" which he feels conscious of in his own body; and in the second place how he visualizes the connection between the will, the instinct, the reason and so forth, which animate his body and endow it with living purpose? It will be found much easier for critics to reject the particular image which has commended itself to me as suggestive of the mystery with which we have to deal, than for them to drive out and expel from their own thought the insidious human tendency towards pictorial representation. I would commend to any sardonic psychologist whose "malice" leads him to derive pleasure from the little weaknesses of philosophers, to turn his attention to the ideal systems of supposedly "pure thought." He will find infinite satisfaction for his spleen in the crafty manner in which "impure" thought--that is to say thought by means of pictorial images--passes itself off as "pure" and conceals its lapses. Truth, as the complex vision clearly enough reveals to us, refuses to be dealt with by "pure" thought. To deal with truth one has to use "impure" thought, in other words thought that is dyed in the grain by taste, instinct, intuition, imagination. And every philosopher who attempts to round off his system by pure reason alone, and who refuses to recognize that the only adequate organ of research is the complex vision, is a philosopher who sooner or later will be caught red-handed in the unphilosophic act of covering his tracks. No philosopher is on safe ground, no philosopher can offer us a massive organic concrete representation of reality who is shy of all pictorial images. They are dangerous and treacherous things; but it is better to be led astray by them than to avoid them altogether. The mythological symbolism of antique thought was full of this pictorial tendency and even now the shrewdest of modern thinkers are compelled to use images drawn from antique mythology. Poetic thought may go astray. But it can never negate itself into quite the thin simulacrum of reality into which pure reason divorced from poetic imagery is capable of fading. After all, the most obstinate and irreducible of all pictorial representations is the obvious one of the material universe with our physical body as the centre of it. But even this is not complete. In fact it is extremely far from complete, directly we think closely about it. For not only does such a picture omit the real centre, that indescribable "something" we call the "soul," it also loses itself in unthinkable darkness when it considers any one of its own unfathomable horizons. It cannot be regarded as a very adequate picture when both the centre of it and the circumference of it baffle thought. The materialist or "objectivist" may be satisfied with such a result, but it is a result which does not answer the question of philosophy, but rather denies that any answer is possible. But though this obvious objective spectacle of the universe, with our bodily self as a part of it, cannot satisfy the demands of the complex vision, it is at least certain that no philosophy which does not include this and accept this and continually return to this, can satisfy these demands. The complex vision requires the reality of this objective spectacle but it also requires recognition of certain basic assumptions, implicit in this spectacle, which the materialist refuses to consider. And the most comprehensive of these assumptions is nothing less than the complex vision itself, with that "something," which is the soul, as its inscrutable base. Thus I am permitted to retain, in spite of its arbitrary fantasy, my pictorial image of a pyramidal arrow of fire, moving from darkness to darkness. My picture were false to my conception if it did not depict the whole pyramid, with the soul itself as its base, moving, in its complete totality, from mystery to mystery. It may move upwards, downwards, or, as I myself seem to see it, horizontally. But as long as it keeps its apex-point directed to the mystery in front of it, it matters little how we conceive of it as moving. That it should _move_, in some way or another, is the gist of my demand upon it; for, if it does not move, nothing moves; and life itself is swallowed up in nothingness. This swallowing up of life in nothingness, this obliteration of life by nothingness is what the emotion of malice ultimately desires. The eternal conflict between love and malice is the eternal contest between life and death. And this contest is what the complex vision reveals, as it moves from darkness to darkness. CHAPTER II. THE ASPECTS OF THE COMPLEX VISION The aspects of the complex vision may be separated from one another according to many systems of classifications. As long as, in the brief summary which follows, I include the more obvious and more important of these aspects, I shall be doing all that the philosophy of the complex vision demands. The reader is quite at liberty to make a different classification from mine, if mine appears unconvincing to him. The general trend of my argument will not be in any serious way affected, as long as he admits that I have followed the tradition of ordinary human language, in the classification which I have preferred. It seems to me, then, that the aspects of the complex vision are eleven in number; and that they may be summarized as consisting of reason, self-consciousness, will, the aesthetic sense, or "taste," imagination, memory, conscience, sensation, instinct, intuition and emotion. These eleven aspects or attributes are not to be regarded as absolutely separate "functions," but rather as relatively separate "energies" of the one concrete soul-monad. The complex vision is the vision of an irreducible living entity which pours itself as a whole into every one of its various energizings. And though it pours itself as a whole into each one of these, and though each one of these contains the latent potentiality of all the rest, the nature of the complex vision is such that it necessarily takes colour and form from the particular aspect or attribute through which at the moment it is especially energizing. It is precisely here that the danger of "disproportion" was found. For the complex vision with the whole weight of all its aspects behind it receives the colour and the form of only one of them. We can see the result of this from the tenacity--implying the presence of emotion and will--with which some philosopher of pure reason passionately and imaginatively defends his logical conclusion. But we are ourselves proof of it in every moment of our lives. Confronted with some definite external situation, of a happy or unhappy character, we fling ourselves upon this new intrusion with the momentum of our whole being; and it becomes largely a matter of accident whether our reaction of the moment is coloured by reason or by will or by imagination or by taste. Immersed in the tide of experience, receiving shock after shock from alien and hostile forces, we struggle with the weight of our whole soul against each particular obstacle, not stopping to regulate the complicated machinery of our vision but just seizing upon the thing, or trying to avoid it, with whatever energy serves our purpose best at the moment. This is especially true of small and occasional pleasures or small and occasional annoyances. A supreme pleasure or a supreme pain forces us to gather our complex vision together, forces us to make use of its apex-thought, so that we can embrace the ecstasy or fling ourselves upon the misery with a co-ordinated power. It is the little casual annoyances and reliefs of our normal days which are so hard to deal with in the spirit of philosophic art, because these little pleasures and pains while making a superficial appeal to the reason or the emotion or the will or the conscience, are not drastic or formidable enough to drive us into any concentration of the apex-thought which shall harmonize our confused energies. The fatal ease with which the whole complex vision gets itself coloured by and obsessed by one of its own attributes may be proved by the history of philosophy itself. Individual philosophers have, over and over again, plunged with furious tenacity into the mystery of life with a complex vision distorted, deformed and over-balanced. I seem to see the complex vision of such thinkers taking some grotesque shape whereby the apex-point of effective thought is blunted and broken. The loss and misery, or the yet more ignoble comfort, of such suppressions of the apex-thought, is however a personal matter. Those "invisible companions," or immortal children of the universe, who are implicitly present as the background of all human discussion, grow constantly more definite and articulate the apprehension of the general human mind by reason of these personal aberrations. It is perhaps rather to the great artists of our race than to any philosopher at all that these invisible ones reveal themselves, but in their gradual disclosure to the consciousness of the human race, they are certainly assisted by the most insane and unbalanced plunges into mystery, of this and the other abnormal individual. The paradox may indeed be hazarded that the madder and more abnormal are the individual's attempts to dig himself into the very nerves and fibres of reality, the clearer and more definite as far as consciousness of the race is concerned, does the revelation of these invisible ones grow. The abnormal individual whose complex vision is distorted almost out of human recognition by the predominance of some one attribute, is yet, in his madness and morbidity, a wonderful engine of research for the clairvoyance of humanity. The vision of the immortals, as a background to all further discussion, is rendered richer and more rhythmical every day, or rather the hidden rhythm of their being is revealed more clearly every day, by the eccentricities and maladies, nay! by the insanities and desperations, of individual victims of life. Thus it comes about that, while the supreme artists, whose approximation, to the vision of the invisible ones is closest, remain our unique masters, the lower crowd of moderately sane and moderately well-balanced persons are of less value to humanity than those abnormal and wayward ones whose psychic distortions are the world's perverted instruments of research. A philosopher of this unbalanced kind is indeed a sort of living sacrifice or victim of self-vivisection, out of whose demonic discoveries--bizarre and fantastic though they may seem to the lower sanity of the mob--the true rhythmic vision of the immortals is made clearer and more articulate. The kind of balance or sanity which such average persons, as are commonly called "men of the world," possess is in reality further removed from true vision than all the madness of these debauches of specialized research. For the consummation of the complex vision is a meeting place of desperate and violent extremes; extremes, not watered down nor modified nor even "reconciled," certainly not cancelled by one another, but held forcibly and deliberately together by an arbitrary act of the apex-thought of the human soul. As I glance at these basic activities of the complex vision one by one, I would beg the reader to sink as far as he can into the recesses of his own identity; so that he may discover whether what he finds there agrees in substance--call it by what name he pleases and explain it how he pleases--with each particular energy I name, as I indicate such energies in my own way. Consider the attitude of self-consciousness. That man is self-conscious is a basic and perhaps a tragic fact that surely requires no proof. The power of thinking "I am I" is an ultimate endowment of personality, outside of which, except by an act of primordial faith, we cannot pass. The phenomenon of human growth from infancy to maturity proves that it is possible for this self-consciousness--this power of saying "I am I"--to become clearer and more articulate from day to day. It seems as impossible to fix upon a definite moment in a child's life where we can draw a line and say "_there_ he was unconscious of himself and _here_ he is conscious of himself" as it is impossible to observe as an actual visible movement the child's growth in stature. Between consciousness and self-consciousness the dividing line seems to be as difficult to define as it is difficult to define the line between sub-consciousness and consciousness. My existence as a self-conscious entity capable of thinking "I am I" is the basic assumption of all thought. And though it is possible for my thought to turn round upon itself and deny my own existence, such thought in the process of such a denial cuts the very ground away which is the leaping point of any further advance. Philosophy by such drastic scepticism is reduced to complete silence. You cannot build up anything except illusion from a basis that is itself illusion. If I were not self-conscious there would be no centre or substratum or coherence or unity in any thought I had. If I were not self-conscious I should be unable to think. Consider, then, the attribute of reason. That we possess reason is also a fact that carries with it its own evidence. It is reason which at this very moment--reason of some sort, at any rate--I am bound to use, in estimating the important place or the unimportant place which reason itself should occupy. You cannot derogate from the value of reason without using reason. You cannot put reason into an inferior category, when compared with will or instinct or emotion, without using reason itself to prove such an inferiority. We may come to the conclusion that the universe is rather irrational than rational. We may come to the conclusion that the secret of life transcends and over-brims all rationality. But this very conclusion as to the irrational nature of the mystery with which reason is attempting to deal is itself a conclusion of the reason. There is only one power which is able to put reason aside in its search for truth and that power is reason. Consider, then, the attribute of will. That we possess a definite and distinct energy whose activity may be contrasted with the rest and may be legitimately named "the will" is certainly less self-evident than either of the two preceding propositions but is none the less implied in both of them. For in the act of articulating to ourself the definite thought "I am I" we are using our will. The motive-force may be anything. We may for instance will an answer to the implied question "_what_ am I," and our self-consciousness may return the answer "I am I," leaving it to the reason to deal with this answer as best it can. The motive may be anything or nothing. Both consciousness and will are independent of motive. For in all these primordial energizings of the complex vision everything that happens, happens simultaneously. With the consciousness "I am I" there comes simultaneously into existence the consciousness of an external universe which is, at one and the same time, included in the circle of the "I am I" and outside the circle. That is to say when we think the thought "I am I," we feel ourselves to be the whole universe thinking "I am I," and yet by a primordial contradiction, we feel ourselves to be an "I am I" opposed to the universe and contrasted with the universe. But all this happens simultaneously; and the consciousness that we are ourselves implies, at one and the same time, the consciousness that we _are_ the universe and the consciousness that we are _inside_ the universe. And precisely as the fact of self-consciousness implies the primordial duality and contradiction of being at once the whole universe and something inside the universe, so the original fact of our thinking at all, implies the activity of the will. We think because we are "thinking animals" and we will because we are "willing animals." The presence of what we call motive is something that comes and goes intermittently and which may or may not be present from the first awakening of consciousness. We _may_ think "I am I" at the very dawn of consciousness under the pressure of a vague motive of clearing up a confused situation. We _may_ use our reason at the very dawn of consciousness under the pressure of a vague motive of alleviating the distress of disorder with the comfort of order. But, on the other hand, self-consciousness may play its part, reason may play its part and the will may play its part in the complete absence of any definite motive. There is such a thing--and this is the point I am anxious to make--as _motiveless_ will. Certain thinkers have sought to eliminate the will altogether by substituting for it the direct impact or pressure of some motive or motive-force. But if the will can be proved to be a primordial energy of the complex vision and if the conception of a motiveless exertion of the will is a legitimate conception, then, although we must admit the intermittent appearance and disappearance of all manner of motives, we have no right to substitute motive for will. If we do make such a substitution, all we really achieve is simply a change of _name_; and our new motive is the old will "writ small." Motives undoubtedly may come and go from the beginning of consciousness and the beginning of will. They may flutter like butterflies round both the consciousness and the will. For instance it is clear that I am not _always_ articulating to myself the notable or troublesome thought "I am I." I may be sometimes so lost and absorbed in sensation that I quite forget this interesting fact. But it may easily happen at such times that I definitely experience the _sensation of choice_; of choice between an intensification of self-consciousness and a continued blind enjoyment of this external preoccupation. And it is from this _sensation of choice_ that we gather weight for our contention that the will is a basic attribute of the human soul. It is certainly true that we are often able to detach ourselves from ourselves and to watch the struggle going on between two opposite motive-forces, quite unaware, it might seem, and almost indifferent, as to how the contest will end. But this struggle between opposite motives does not obliterate our sensation of choice. It sometimes intensifies it to an extreme point of quite painful suspension. The opposite motives may be engaged in a struggle. But the field of the struggle is what we call the will. And it may even sometimes happen that the will intervenes between a weaker and stronger motive and, out of arbitrary pride and the pleasure of exertion for the sake of exertion, throws its weight on the weaker side. It is a well-known psychological fact that the complex vision can energize, with vigorous spontaneity, through the will alone, just as it can energize through sensation alone. The will can, so to speak, stretch its muscles and gather itself together for attack or defence at a moment when there is no particular necessity for its use. Some degree of self-consciousness is bound to accompany this "motiveless stretching" of the will, for the simple reason that it is not "will in the abstract" which makes such a movement but the totality of the complex vision, though in this case all other attributes of the complex vision, including self-consciousness and reason, are held in subordination to the will. Man is a philosophical animal; and he philosophizes as inevitably as he breathes. He is also an animal possessed of will; and he uses his will as inevitably as, in the process of breathing, he uses his lungs or his throat. Around him, from the beginning, all manner of motives may flutter like birds on the wing. They may be completely different motives in the case of different personalities. But in all personalities there is consciousness, to grasp these motives; and in all personalities there is will, to accept or to reject these motives. The question of the freedom of the will is a question which necessarily enters into our discussion. The will feels itself--or rather consciousness feels the will to be--at once free and limited. The soul does not feel it is free to do anything it pleases. That at least is certain. For without some limitation, without something resistant to exert itself upon, the will could not be known. An absolutely free will is unthinkable. The very nature of the will implies a struggle with some sort of resistance. The will is, therefore, by the terms of its original definition and by the original feeling which the soul experiences in regard to it, limited in its freedom. The problem resolves itself, therefore, if once we grant the existence of the will, into the question of how much freedom the will has or how far it is limited. Is it, for instance, when we know all the conditions of its activity, entirely limited? Is the freedom of the will an illusion? It is just at this point that the logical reason makes a savage attempt to dominate the situation. The logical reason arrives step by step at the inevitable conclusion that the will has no freedom at all but is absolutely limited. On the other hand emotion, instinct, imagination, intuition, and conscience, all assume that the limitation of the will is not absolute but that within certain boundaries, which themselves are by no means fixed or permanent, the will is free. Consciousness itself must be added to this list. For whatever arguments may be used in the realm of thought, when the moment of choice arrives in the realm of action, we are always conscious of the will as free. If the reason is justified in regarding the freedom of the will as an illusion, we are justified in denying the existence of the will altogether. For a will with only an illusion of freedom is not a will at all. In that ease it were better to eliminate the will and regard the soul as a thing which acts and reacts under the stimuli of motives like a helpless automaton endowed with consciousness. But the wiser course is to experiment with the will and let it prove its freedom to the sceptical reason by helping that same reason to retire into its proper place and associate itself with the apex-thought of the complex vision. Leaving the will then, as a thing limited and yet free, let us pass to a consideration of what I call "taste." This is the aesthetic sense, an original activity of the human soul, associated with that universal tendency in life and nature which we name the beautiful. I use the word "taste" at this moment in preference to "aesthetic sense," because I feel that this particular original activity of the complex vision has a wider field than is commonly supposed. I regard it, in fact, as including much more than the mere sense of beauty. I regard it as a direct organ of research, comparable to instinct or intuition, but covering a different ground. I regard it as a mysterious clairvoyance of the soul, capable of discriminating between certain everlasting opposites, which together make up an eternal duality in the very depths of existence. These opposites imply larger and more complicated issues than are implied in the words beautiful and ugly. The real and the unreal, the interesting and the uninteresting, the significant and the insignificant, the suggestive and the meaningless, the arresting and the commonplace, the exciting and the dull, the organic and the affected, the dramatic and the undramatic, are only some of the differences implied. The fact that art is constantly using what we call the ugly as well as what we call the commonplace, and turning both these into new forms of beauty, is a fact that considerably complicates the situation. And what art, the culminating creative energy of the aesthetic sense, can do, the aesthetic sense itself can do with its critical and receptive power. So that in the aesthetic sense, or in what I call "taste," we have an energy which is at once receptive and creative; at once capable of responding to this eternal duality, and of creating new forms of beauty and interest _out of_ the ugly and uninteresting. A new name is really required for this thing. A name is required for it that conveys a more creative implication than the word "taste," a word which has an irresponsible, arbitrary, and even flippant sound, and a more passionate, religious, and ecstatic implication than the word "aesthetic," a word which suggests something calculated, cold, learned, and a little tame. I use the word "taste" at this particular moment because this word implies a certain challenge to both reason and conscience, and some such challenge it is necessary to insist upon, if this particular energy of the soul is to defend its basic integrity. This ultimate attribute of personality, then, which I call "taste" reveals to us an aspect of the system of things quite different from those revealed by the other activities of the human soul. This aspect of the universe, or this "open secret" of the universe, loses itself, as all the others do in unfathomable abysses. It descends to the very roots of life. It springs from the original reservoirs of life. It has depths which no mental logic can sound; and it has horizons in the presence of which the mind stops baffled. When we use the term "the beautiful" to indicate the nature of what it reveals, we are easily misled; because in current superficial speech--and unless the word is used by a great artist--the term "beautiful" has a narrow and limited meaning. Dropping the term "taste" then, as having served its purpose, and reverting to the more academic phrase "aesthetic sense" we must note that the unfathomable duality revealed by this aesthetic sense covers, as I have hinted, much more ground than is covered by the narrow terms "beauty" and "ugliness." It must be understood, moreover, that what is revealed by the aesthetic sense is a struggle, a conflict, a war, a contradiction, going on in the heart of things. The aesthetic sense does not only reveal loveliness and distinction; it also reveals the grotesque, the bizarre, the outrageous, the indecent and the diabolic. If we prefer to use the term "beauty" in a sense so comprehensive and vast as to include _both sides_ of this eternal duality, then we shall be driven to regard as "beautiful" the entire panorama of life, with its ghastly contrasts, with its appalling evil, with its bitter pain, and with its intolerable dreariness. The "beautiful" will then become nothing less than the whole dramatic vortex regarded from the aesthetic point of view. Life with all its contradictions, considered as an aesthetic spectacle, will become "beautiful" to us. This is undoubtedly one form which the aesthetic sense assumes; the form of justifying existence, in all its horror and loathsomeness as well as in all its magical attraction. Another form the aesthetic sense may assume is the form of "taking sides" in this eternal struggle; of using its inspiration to destroy, or to make us forget, the brutality of things, by concentrating our attention upon what in the narrow sense we call the beautiful or the distinguished or the lovely. But there is yet a third form the aesthetic sense may assume. Not only can it visualize the whole chaotic struggle between beauty and hideousness as itself a beautiful drama; not only can it so concentrate upon beauty that we forget the hideousness; it is also able to see the world as a humorous spectacle. When the aesthetic sense regards the whole universe as "beautiful" it must necessarily regard the whole universe as tragic; for the pain and dreariness and devilishness in the universe is so unspeakable that any "beauty" which includes such things must be a tragic beauty. Not to recognize this and to attempt to "accept" the universe as something which is not tragic, is to outrage and insult the aesthetic sense. But we may regard the universe as tragic without regarding it as "beautiful" and yet remain under the power of the aesthetic energy. For there exists a primordial aspect of the aesthetic vision which is not concerned with the beautiful at all, or only with the beautiful in so wide a latitude as to transcend all ordinary usage, and this is our sense of humour. The universe as the human soul perceives it, is horribly and most tragically humorous. Man is the laughing animal; and the "perilous stuff" which tickles his aesthetic sense with a revelation of outrageous comedy has its roots in the profoundest abyss. This humorous aspect of the system of things is just as primordial and intrinsic as what we call the "beautiful." The human soul is able to pour the whole stream of its complex vision through this fantastic casement. It knows how to respond to the "diablerie" of the abysses with a reciprocal gesture. It is able to answer irony with irony; and to the appalling grotesqueness and indecency of the universe it has the power of retorting with an equally shameless leer. But this sardonic aspect of human humour, though tallying truly enough with one eternal facet of the universe, does not exhaust the humorous potentiality of the aesthetic sense. There is a "good" irony as well as a "wicked" irony. Humour can be found in alliance with the emotion of love as well as with the emotion of hate. Humour can be kind as well as cruel; and there is no doubt that the aesthetic spectacle of the world is as profoundly humorous in a quite normal sense as it is beautiful or noble or horrible. Turning now to that primeval attribute of the complex vision which we call emotion, we certainly enter the presence of something whose existence cannot be denied or explained away. Directly we grow conscious of ourselves, directly we use reason or instinct or the aesthetic sense, we are aware of an emotional reaction. This emotional reaction may be resolved into a basic duality, the activity of love and the activity of the opposite of love. I say "the opposite of love" deliberately; because I am anxious to indicate, in regard to emotion, how difficult it is to find adequate words to cover the actual field of what we feel. I should like to write even the word "love" with some such mark of hesitation. For, just because of the appalling importance of this ultimate duality, it is essential to be on our guard against the use of words which convey a narrow, crude, rough-and-ready, and superficial meaning. By the emotion of "love" I do not mean the amorous phenomenon which we call "being in love." Nor do I mean the calmer emotion which we call "affection." The passion of friendship, when friendship really becomes a passion, is nearer my meaning than any of these. And yet the emotion of love, conceived as one side of this eternal duality, is much more than the "passion of friendship"; because it is an emotion that can be felt in the presence of things and ideas as well as persons. Perhaps the emotion of love as symbolized in the figure of Christ, combined with the aesthetic and intellectual passion inherited from the Greek philosophers, comes nearest to what I have in mind; though even this, without some tangible and concrete embodiment, tends to escape us and evade analysis. And if it is hard to define this "love" which is the protagonist, so to speak, in the world's emotional drama, it is still harder to define its opposite, its antagonist. I could name this by the name of "hate," the ordinary antithesis of love, but if I did so it would have to be with a very wide connotation. The true opposite to the sort of "love" I have in my mind is not so much "hate" as a kind of dull and insensitive hostility, a kind of brutal malignity and callous aversion. Perhaps what we are looking for as the true opposite of love may be best defined as malice. Malice seems to convey a more impersonal depth and a wider reach of activity than the word hate and has also a clearer suggestion of deliberate insensitiveness about it. The most concentrated and energetic opposite of love is not either hate or malice. It is _cruelty_; which is a thing that seems to draw its evil inspiration from the profoundest depths of conscious existence. But cruelty must necessarily have for its "object" something living and sentient. A spiritual feeling, a work of art, an idea, a principle, a landscape, a theory, an inanimate group of things, could not be contemplated with an emotion of cruelty, though it could certainly be contemplated with an emotion of malice. There is often, if not always, a strange admixture of sensuality in cruelty. Cruelty, profoundly evil as it is, has a living intensity which makes it less dull, less thick, less deliberately insensitive, less coldly hostile, than the pure emotion of malice, and therefore less adapted than malice to be regarded as the true opposite of love. But the best indication of the distinction I want to make will be found in the contrast between the conceptions of creation and destruction. The dull, thick, insensitive callousness which we are conscious of in the opposite of love is an indication that while love is essentially creative the opposite of love is essentially _that which resists creation_. The opposite of love is not destructive in the sense of being an active destructive force. Such an active destructive force must necessarily, by reason of the passionate energy in it, be a perversion of creative power, not the opposite of creative power. Creative power, even in its unperverted activity, must always be capable of destroying. It must be capable of destroying what is in the way of further creation. Thus the true opposite of creation is not destruction, but the inert, heavy, thick, callous, brutal, insensitive "obscurantism" or "material opacity" which resists the pressure of the creative spirit. By this analysis of the ultimate duality of emotion we are put in possession of a basic aspect of the complex vision, which must largely shape and determine its total activity. The soul within us, that mysterious "something" which is the living and concrete "person" whose vision the complex vision is, is a thing subject at the start to this unfathomable duality, the emotion of love and the emotion of malice. The emotion of love is the life-begetting, life-conceiving force, the creator of beauty, the discoverer of truth, and the reconciler of eternal contradictions. The emotion of malice, with its frozen sneer of sardonic denial, raises its "infernal fist" against the centrifugal outflowing of the emotion of love. It is impossible to conceive of self-consciousness without love and hatred; or, as I prefer to say, without love and malice. Self-consciousness implies from the start what we call the universe; and the universe cannot appear upon the scene without exciting in us the emotion of love and hate. Every man born into the world loves and hates directly he is conscious of the world. This is the ultimate duality. Attraction and repulsion is the material formula for this contradiction. If everything in the world were illusion except one Universal Being, such a being must necessarily be thought of as experiencing the emotion of self-love and of self-hatred. A condition of absolute indifference is unthinkable. Such indifference could not last a moment without becoming either that faint hatred, which we call "boredom," or that faint love, which we call "interest." The contemplation of the universe with no emotional reaction of any kind is an inconceivable thing. An infant at its mother's breast displays love and malice. At one and the same moment it satisfies its thirst and beats upon the breast that feeds it. The primordial process of philosophizing and the primal will to philosophize are both of them penetrated through and through, with this ultimate duality of love and malice. Love and malice in alternate impulse are found latent and potent in every philosophic effort. Behind every philosophy, if we have the love or the malice to seek for it, may be found the love or malice, or both of them, side by side, of the individual philosopher. That pure and unemotional desire for truth for its own sake which is the privilege of physical science cannot retain its simplicity when confronted with the deeper problems of philosophy. It cannot do so because the complex vision with which we philosophize contains emotion as one of its basic attributes. To consider next, the attribute of imagination. Imagination seems, when we analyse it, to resolve itself into the half-creative, half-interpretative act by which the complex personality seizes upon, plunges into, and moulds to its purpose, that deeper unity in any group of things which gives such a group its larger and more penetrating significance. Imagination differs from intuition in the fact that by its creative and interpretative power it dominates, possesses and moulds the material it works upon. Intuition is entirely receptive and it receives the illumination offered to it at one single indrawing, at one breath. Imagination may be regarded as a male attribute; intuition as a feminine one; although in a thousand individual cases the situation is actually reversed. To realize the primary importance of imagination one has only to visualize reason, will, taste, sensation, and so forth, energizing in its absence. One becomes aware at once that such a limited activity does not cover the field of man's complex vision. Something--a power that creates, interprets, illumines, gathers up into large and flowing outlines--is absent from such an experience. Consider, in the next place, that primordial attribute of the complex vision which we commonly name conscience. We are not concerned here with the world-old discussion as to the "origin" of conscience. Conscience, from the point of view we are now considering, is just as fundamental and axiomatic as will, or intuition, or sensation. The philosophy of the complex vision retains, with regard to what is called "evolution," a completely suspended judgment. The process of historic evolution may or may not have resulted in the particular differentiation of species which we now behold. What we are now assuming is that, in whatever way the differentiation of actual living organisms has come about, every particular living organism, including the planetary and stellar bodies, must possess in some degree or other the organ of apprehension which we call the complex vision. Our assumption, in fact, is that every living thing has personality; that personality implies the existence of a definite soul-monad; that where such a soul-monad exists there is a complex vision; and finally that, where there is a complex vision, there must be, in some rudimentary or embryotic state, the eleven attributes of such a vision, including the attribute which the human race has come to call "conscience" and which is, in reality, "the power of response" to the vision which we have named "immortal." When evolutionists retort to us that what we call personality is only a late and accidental phenomenon in the long process of evolution, our answer is that when they seek, according to such an assumption, to visualize the universe as it was _before personality appeared_, they really, only in a surreptitious and illegitimate manner, project their own conscious personality into "the vast backward and abysm of time," to be the invisible witness of this pre-personal universe. Thus when evolutionists assure us that there was once a period in the history of the stellar system when nothing existed but masses of gaseous nebulae, our reply is that they have forgotten that invisible and shadowy projection of their own personality which is the pre-supposed watcher or witness of this "nothing-but-nebulae" state of things. The doctrine or hypothesis of evolution does not in any degree explain the mystery of the universe. All it does is to offer us an hypothetical picture--true or false--of the manner in which the changes of organic and inorganic life succeeded one another in their historic creation. Evolutionists have to make their start somewhere, just as "personalists" have; and it is much more difficult for them to show how masses of utterly unconscious "nebulae" evoked the mystery of personality than it is for us to show how the primordial existence of personality demands at the very start some sort of material or bodily expression, whether of a nebular or of any other kind. Evolutionists, forgetting the presence of that invisible "watcher" of their evolutionary process which they have themselves projected into the remote planetary past, assume as their axiomatic "data" that soulless unconscious chemical elements possess "within them" the miraculous power of producing living personalities. All one has to do is to pile up thousands upon thousands of years in which the miracle takes place. But the philosophy of the complex vision would indicate that no amount of piling up of centuries upon centuries could possibly produce out of "unconscious matter" the perilous and curious "stuff" which we call "consciousness of life." And we would further reply to the evolutionists that their initial assumption as to the objective existence, suspended in a vacuum, of masses of material chemistry is an assumption which has been abstracted and isolated from the total volume of those sense-impressions, which are the only actual reality we know, and which are the impressions made, in human experience, upon some living personality. This criticism of the evolutionists' inevitable attack upon us enters naturally at this point; because, while the average mind is willing enough to grant some sort of vague omnipresent "will to evolve" to the primordial "nebula" and even prepared to allow it such obscure consciousness as is implied in the phrase "life-force" or "élan vital," it is startled and shocked to a supreme degree when we assert that such "nebula," if it existed, was the outward body or form of a living "soul-monad" possessed, even as human beings are, of every attribute of the complex vision. The average mind, in its vague and careless mood, is ready to accept our contention that some sort of will or reason or consciousness existed at the beginning of things. It is only when such a mind comes to realize that what we are predicating is actual personality, with all the implications of that, that it cries out in protest. The average mind can swallow our contention that reason and will existed from the beginning because the average mind has been penetrated for centuries by vague traditions of an "over-soul" or an universal "reason" or "will." It is only when in our analysis of the attributes of personality we come bolt up against the especially anthropomorphic attribute of "conscience" that it staggers and gasps. For the original "stellar gas" to be vaguely animated by some obscure "élan vital" seemed natural enough; but for it to be the "body" of some definite living soul seems almost humorous; and for such a living soul to possess the attribute of "conscience," or the power of response to the vision of immortals, seems not only humorous but positively absurd. The philosophy of the complex vision, however, in its analysis of the eternal elements of personality is not in the least afraid of reaching conclusions which appear "absurd" to the average intelligence. The philosophy of the complex vision accepts the element of the "absurd" or of the "outrageous" or of the "fantastic" in its primordial assumptions; for according to its contention this element of the "apparently impossible" is an essential ingredient in the whole system of things. Life, according to this philosophy, is only one aspect of personality. Another aspect of personality is the apparently miraculous creation of "something" out of "nothing"; for the unfathomable creative power of personality extends beyond and below all the organic phenomena which we group vaguely together under the name of "life." Thus when in our analysis of the attributes of the complex vision we are confronted by the evolutionary question as to how such a thing, as the thing we call "conscience," got itself lodged in the little cells of the human cranium, our answer is that the question stated in this manner does not touch the essential problem at all. The essential problem from the point of view of the philosophy of the complex vision is not how "conscience," or why other attribute of the soul, got itself lodged in the human skull, or expressed, shall we say, through the human skull, but how it is that the whole stream of sense-impressions, of which the hardness and thickness of the human skull is only one impression among many, and the original "star-dust" or "star-nebulae" only another impression among many, ever got itself unified and synthesized into the form of "impression" at all. In other words the problem is not how the attributes of the soul arose from the chemistry of the brain and the nerves; but how the brain and the nerves together with the whole stream of material phenomena from the star-dust upwards, ever got themselves unified and focussed into any sort of intelligibility or system. The average human mind which feels a shock of distrust and suspicion directly we suggest that the thing we name "conscience," defined as the power of response to the ideal vision, is an inalienable aspect of what we call "the soul" wherever the soul exists, feels no sort of shock or surprise when we appeal to its own "conscience," or when it appeals to the "conscience" of its child or its dog or even of its cat, or when it displays anger with its trees or its flowers for their apparent wilfulness and errancy. Kant found in the moral sense of humanity his door of escape from the fatal relativity of pure reason with its confounding antinomies. Huxley found in the moral sense of humanity a mysterious, unrelated phenomenon that refused to fall into line with the rest of the evolutionary-stream. But when, in one hold act of faith or of imagination, we project the content of our own individual soul into the circle of every other possible "soul," including the "souls" of such phenomenal vortices of matter as those from which historic evolution takes its start, this impossible gulf or "lacuna" dividing the human scene from all previous "scenes" is immediately bridged; and the whole stream of material sense-impression flows forward, in parallel and consonant congruity, with the underlying creative energy of all the complex visions of which it is the expression. Therefore, there is no need for us, in our consideration of the basic attribute of the soul which we call conscience, to tease ourselves with the fabulous image of some prehistoric "cave-man" supposedly devoid of such a sense. To do this is to employ a trick of the isolated reason quite alien from our real human imagination. Our own personality is so constructed that it is impossible for us to realize with any sort of intelligent sympathy what the feelings of this conscience-less cave-man would be. To contemplate his existence at all we have to resort to pure rationalistic speculation. We have to leave our actual human experience completely behind. But the philosophy of the complex vision is an attempt to interpret the mystery of the universe in terms of nothing else than actual human experience. So we are not only permitted but compelled to put out of court this conscience-less cave-man of pure speculation. It is true that we encounter certain eccentric human beings who deny that they possess this "moral sense"; but one has only to observe them for a little while under the pressure of actual life to find out how they deceive themselves. Experience certainly indicates that every human being, however normal and "good," has somewhere in him a touch of insanity and a vein of anti-social aberration. But no human being, however abnormal or however "criminal," is born into the world without this invisible monitor we call "conscience." The curious pathological experience which might be called "conscience-killing" is certainly not uncommon. But it is an experiment that has never been more than approximately successful. In precisely the same way we might practise "reason-killing" or "intuition-killing" or "taste-killing." One may set out to hunt and try to kill any basic attribute of our complex vision; but the proof of the truth of our whole argument lies in the fact that these murderous campaigns are never completely successful. The "murdered" attribute refuses to remain quiet in its grave. It stretches out an arm from beneath the earth. It shakes the dust off and comes to life again. When we leave the question as to the existence of conscience, and enquire what the precise and particular "command" of conscience may be in any individual case, we approach the edge of an altogether different problem. The particular message or command of conscience is bound to differ in a thousand ways in the cases of different personalities. Only in its ultimate essence it cannot differ. Because, in its ultimate essence, the conscience of every individual is confronted by that eternal duality of love and malice which is the universal contradiction at the basis of every living soul. But short of this there is room for an infinite variety of "categorical imperatives." The conscience of one personality is able to accept as its "good" the very same thing that another personality is compelled to regard as its "evil." Indeed it is conceivable that a moment might arise in the history of the race when one single solitary individual called that thing "good" or that thing "evil" which all the rest of the world regarded in the opposite sense. Not only so; but it might even happen that the genius and persuasiveness of such a person might change into its direct opposite the moral valuation of the whole of humanity. In many quite ordinary cases there may arise a clash between the conventional morality of the community and the verdict of an individual conscience. In such cases it would be towards what the community termed "immoral" that the conscience of the individual would point, and from the thing that the community termed "moral" that it would turn instinctively away. A conscience of this kind would suffer the pain of remorse when in its weakness it let itself be swayed by the "community-morality" and it would experience the pleasure of relief when in absolute loneliness it defied the verdict of society. Let us consider now an attribute of man's complex vision which must instantaneously be accepted as basic and fundamental by every living person. I refer to what we call "sensation." The impressions of the outward senses may be criticized. They may be corrected, modified, reduced to order, and supplemented by other considerations. Conclusions based upon them may be questioned. But whatever be done with them, or made by them, they must always remain an integral and inveterate aspect of man's personality. The sensations of pain and pleasure--who can deny the primordial and inescapable character of these? Not that the pursuit of pleasure or the avoidance of pain can be the unbroken motive-force even of the most hedonistic among us. Our complex vision frequently flings us passionately upon pain. We often embrace pain in an ecstasy of welcome. Nor is this fierce embracing of pain "motivated" by a deliberate desire to get pleasure out of pain. It seems in some strange way due to an attraction towards pain for its own sake-- towards pain, as though pain were really beautiful and desirable in itself. One element in all this is undoubtedly due to the desire of the will to assert its freedom and the integrity of its being; in other words to the desire of the will towards the irrational, the capricious, the destructive, the chaotic. It has been only the least imaginative of philosophers who have taken for granted that man invariably desires his own welfare. Man does not even invariably desire his own pleasure. He desires the reactive vibration of power; and very often this "power" is the power to rush blindly upon destruction. But, whether dominant or not as a motive affecting the will, it remains that our experience of pleasure and pain is a basic experience of the complex vision. And this experience of sensation is not only a passive experience. The attribute of sensation has its active, its energetic, its creative side. No one who has suffered extreme pain or enjoyed exquisite and thrilling pleasures, can deny the curious fact that these things take to themselves a kind of independent life within us and become something very like "entities" or living separate objects. This phenomenon is due to the fact that our whole personality incarnates itself in the pain or in the pleasure of the moment. Such pain, such pleasure, is the quintessential attenuated "matter" with which our soul clothes itself. At such moments we _are_ the pain; we _are_ the pleasure. Our human identity seems merged, lost, annihilated. Our soul seems no longer _our_ soul. It becomes the soul of the overpowering sensation. We ourselves at such moments become fiery molecules of pain, burning atoms of pleasure. Just as the logical reason can abstract itself from the other primal energies and perform strange and fantastic tricks, so the activity of sensation can so absorb, obsess and overpower the whole personality that the rhythm of existence is entirely broken. Pain at the point of ecstasy, pleasure at the point of ecstasy, are both of them destructive of those rare moments when our complex vision resolves itself into music. Such music is indeed itself a kind of ecstasy; but it is an ecstasy intellectualized and consciously creative. Pain is present there and pleasure is present there; but they are there only as orchestral notes in a larger unity that has absorbed them and transmuted them. When a work of art by reason of its sensational appeal reduces us to an ecstasy of pleasure or pain it renders impossible that supreme act of the complex vision by means of which the immortal calm of the ideal vision descends upon the unfathomable universe. Sensation carried to its extreme limit becomes impersonal; for in its unconscious mechanism personality is devoured. But it does not become impersonal in that magical liberating sense in which the impersonal is an escape, bringing with it a feeling of large, cool, quiet, and unruffled space. It becomes impersonal in a thick, gross, opaque, mechanical manner. There is brutality and outrage; there is bestiality and obscenity about both pain and pleasure when in their voracious maw they devour the magic of the unfathomable world. Thus it may be noted that most great and heroic souls hold their supreme pain at a distance from them, with a proud gesture of contempt, and go down at the last with their complex vision unruffled and unimpaired. There is indeed a still deeper "final moment" than this; but it is so rare as to be out of the reach of average humanity. I refer to an attitude like that of Jesus upon the cross; in whose mood towards his own suffering there was no element of "pride of will" but only an immense pity for the terrible sensitiveness of all life, and a supreme heightening of the emotion of love towards all life. It will be noted that in my analysis of "sensation" I have said nothing of what are usually called "the five senses." These senses are obviously the material "feelers" or the gates of material sentiency by which the soul's attribute of sensation feeds itself from the objective world; but they are so penetrated and percolated, through and through, by the other basic activities of the soul, that it is extremely difficult to disentangle from our impressions of sight, of sound, of touch, of taste, and of smell, those interwoven threads of reason, imagination and so forth which so profoundly modify and transmute, even in the art of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling, the various manifestations of "the objective mystery" which we apprehend in our sensuous grasp. By emphasizing the feelings of pleasure and pain as the primary characteristics of the attribute of sensation we are indicating the fact that every sensation we experience carries with it in some perceptible degree or other, the feeling of "well-being" or the feeling of distress. We now come to consider that dim, obscure, but nevertheless powerful energy, which the universal tradition of language dignifies by the name of "instinct." This "instinct" is the portion of the activity of the soul which works more blindly and less consciously than any other. The French philosopher Bergson isolates and emphasizes this subterranean activity until it seems to him to hold in its grasp a deeper secret of life than any other energy which man possesses To secure for instinct this primary place in the panorama of life it is necessary to eliminate from the situation that silent witness which we call "the mind" or self-consciousness; that witness which from its invisible watch-tower looks forth upon the whole spectacle. It is necessary to take for granted the long historic stream of evolutionary development. It is necessary to regard this development in its organic totality as the sole reality with which we have to deal. The invisible mental witness being eliminated, it becomes necessary, if instinct is to be thus made supreme, to regard the appearance of the soul as a mere stage in an evolutionary process, the driving-force of which is the power of instinct itself. Planets and plants, men and animals, are seen in this way to be all dominated by instinct; and instinct is found to be so much the most important element in evolution, that upon it, rather than upon anything else, the whole future of the universe may be said to depend. Having made this initial plunge into shameless objectivity, having put completely out of court the invisible witness of it all, we find ourselves reduced to regarding this "blind" instinct as the galvanic battery which moves the world. Thus isolated from the other powers of the soul, this mysterious energy, this subterranean driving-force, has to bear the whole weight of everything that happens in space and time. A strange sort of "blindness" must its blindness be, when its devices can supply the place of the most passionate intellectual struggles of the mind! If it is blind, it gropes its way, in its blindness, through the uttermost gulfs of space and into the nethermost abysses of life. If it is dumb, its silence is the irresistible silence of Fate, the silence of the eternal "Mothers." But the "instinct" which is one of the basic attributes of the complex vision is not quite such an awe-inspiring thing as this. To raise it into such a position as this there has to be a vigorous suppression, as I have hinted, of many other attributes of the soul. Instinct may be defined as the pressure of obscure creative desire, drawn from the inscrutable recesses of the soul, malleable up to a certain point by reason and will, but beyond that point remaining unconscious, irrational, incalculable, elusive. That it plays an enormous part in the process of life cannot be denied; but the part it plays is not so isolated from consciousness as sometimes has been imagined. There is in truth a strange reciprocity between instinct and self-consciousness, according to which they both play into each other's hands. This is above all true of great artists' work, which in a superficial sense might be called unconscious, but which in a deeper sense is profoundly conscious. It seems as though, in great works of art, a certain superficial reasoning is sacrificed to instinct, but in that very sacrifice a deeper level of reason is reached between which and instinct there is no longer anything but complete understanding. To intellectualize instinct is one of the profoundest secrets of the art of life; and it is only when instinct is thus intellectualized, or brought into focus with the other aspects of the soul, that it is able to play its proper rhythmic part in the musical synthesis of the complex vision. But although we cannot allow to instinct the all-absorbing part in the world-play which Bergson claims for it, it remains that we have to regard it as one of the most mysterious and incalculable of the energies of the soul. It is instinct which brings all living entities into relation with something sub-conscious in their own nature. Under the pressure of instinct man recognizes the animal in himself, the plant in himself, and even a strange affinity with the inorganic and the inanimate. It is instinct in us which attracts us so strangely to the earth under our feet. It is instinct which attracts certain individual souls to certain particular natural elements, such as air, fire, sand, mould, rain, wind, water, and the like; a kind of remote atavistic reciprocity in us stretching out towards that particular element. It is by means of instinct that we are able to sink into that mysterious sub-conscious world which underlies the conscious levels of every soul-monad. Under the groping and fumbling guidance of this strange power we seem to come into touch with the profoundest reservoirs of our personal identity. Considering what fantastic and cruel tricks the lonely thinking power, the abstract reason, has been allowed to play us it is no wonder that this French philosopher has been tempted to turn away from reason and find in instinct the ultimate solution. Instinct, as we give ourselves up to it, seems to carry us into the very nerves and tissues and veins and pulses of life. Its verdicts seem to reach us with an absolute and unquestionable authority. They seem to bear upon them an "imprimatur" more powerful than any moral sanction. Potent and terrible, direct and final, instinct seems to rise up out of the depths and break every law. It leaps forth from our inmost being like a second self more powerful than we are. It invades religion. It incarnates itself in lust. It obsesses taste. It masquerades as intuition. It triumphs over reason. With an irrationality, that seems at the same time terrible and beautiful, instinct moves straight to its goal. It follows its purpose with demonic tenacity, heedless of logic, contemptuous of consequences. It cares nothing for contradictions. It forces contradictions to lose themselves in one another according to some secret law of its own, unknown to the law of reason. Such, then, is instinct, the sub-conscious fatality of Nature so difficult to control; whose unrestrained activity is capable of completely destroying the rhythm of the complex vision. Nothing but the power of the apex-thought of man's whole concentrated being is able to dominate this thing. It may be detected lurking in the droop of the Sphinx's eyelids and in the cruel smile upon her mouth. But the answer given to the challenge of this subterranean force is not, after all, any logical judgment of the pure reason. It is the answer of the vision of the artist, holding its treacherous material under his creative hand. Let us turn now to the attribute of "intuition." Intuition is a thing more clearly definable and more easily analysed than almost any other of the aspects of the soul. Intuition is the feminine counterpart of imagination; and, as compared with instinct, it is a power which acts in clearly denned, isolated, intermittent movements, each one of which has a definite beginning and a definite end. As compared with imagination, intuition is passive and receptive; as compared with instinct it does not fumble and grope forward, steadily and tenaciously, among the roots of things; but it suspends itself, mirror-like, upon the surface of the unfathomable waters, and suspended there reflects in swift sudden glimpses the mysterious movements of the great deep. In this process of reflecting, or apprehending in sudden, intermittent glimpses, the mysterious depths of the life of the soul, intuition is less affected by the reason or by the will than any other aspect of the complex vision. Instinct, in secret sub-conscious alliance with the will, is a permanent automatic energy, working in the hidden darkness of the roots of things like an ever-flowing subterranean stream. The revelations of intuition, on the other hand, are not flowing and constant, but separate, isolated, distinct and detached. In the subject-matter of their revelations, too, intuition and instinct are very different. If the recesses of the soul be compared to a fortified castle, instinct is the active messenger of the place, continually issuing forth on secret errands concerning the real nature of which he is himself often quite ignorant. Intuition, on the contrary, is the little postern gate at the back of the building, set open at rare moments to the wide fields and magical forests which extend to the far-off horizon. Instinct is always found in close contact with sensation, groping its ways through the midst of the mass of material impressions, acting and reacting as it fumbles among such impressions. Intuition seems to deal directly and absolutely with a clear and definite landscape behind the superficial landscape, with a truth behind truth, with a reality within reality. To take an instance from common experience: a stranger, an unknown person, enters our circle. Instinct, working automatically and sensationally, may attract us powerfully towards such a person, with a steady, irresistible attraction. Intuition, on the contrary, uttering its revelation abruptly and with, so to speak, one sudden mysterious cry, may warn us of some dangerous quicksand or perilous jungle in such a stranger's nature of which instinct was totally ignorant because the thing was what might be called a "spiritual quality" lying deeper than those sensational or magnetic levels through which instinct feels its way. The instinct of animals or birds for instance warns them very quickly with regard to the presence of some natural enemy whose approach they apprehend through some mysterious sense-impression beyond the analysis of human reason. But when their enemy is the mental intention of a human being they are only too easily tricked. To take quite a different instance. It may easily happen that while conscience has habitually driven us to a certain course of action against which instinct has never revolted because of its preoccupation with the senses, some sudden flash of intuition reaching us from the hidden substratum of our being changes our whole perspective and gives to conscience itself a completely opposite bias. What these intermittent revelations of intuition certainly do achieve is the preservation in the soul's memory of the clear and deep and free and unfathomable margins of the ultimate mystery, those wavering sea-edges and twilight-shores of our being, which the austere categories of rational logic tend to shut out as if by impenetrable walls. It remains to consider the attribute of memory. Memory is the name which we give to that intrinsic susceptibility, implying an intrinsic permanence or endurance in the material which displays susceptibility, such as makes it possible for what the soul feels or what the soul creates to write down its own record, so that it can be read at will, or if not "at will," at least can be read, if the proper stimulus or shock be applied. Memory is not the cause of the soul's concrete identity. The soul's concrete identity is the cause or natural ground of memory. Memory is the "passive-active" power by means of which the concrete identity of the soul grows richer, fuller, more articulate, more complex and more subtle. In looking back over these eleven attributes of the "soul-monad," what we have to remark is, that two of the number differ radically in their nature from the rest. The attribute of emotion differs from the rest in the sense that it is the living substantial unity or ultimate synthesis in which they all move. It is indeed more than this. For it is the actual "stuff" or "material" out of which they are all, so to speak, "made" or upon which they all, so to speak, inscribe their diverse creations. The permanent "surface," or identical susceptibility, of this ebbing and flowing stream of emotion is memory; but the emotion itself, divided into the positive and negative "pole," as we say of love and malice, is an actual projection upon the objective universe of the intrinsic "stuff" or psycho-material "substance" of which the substratum of the soul is actually composed. The other aspects of the soul are, so to speak, the various "tongues" of diversely coloured flame with which the soul pierces the "objective mystery"; but the substance of all these flames is one and the same. It is the soul itself, projected upon the plane of material impression; and thus projected, becoming the conflicting duality to which I give the name of "emotion." The attribute of "will," also, differs radically from the rest; in the sense that "will" is the power which the soul possesses of encouraging or suppressing, re-vivifying or letting fade, all the other attributes of the soul, including that attribute which is the substance and synthesis of them all and which I name "emotion." In regard to "emotion" the will can do three separate things. It can encourage the emotion of love and suppress that of malice. It can encourage the emotion of malice and suppress that of love. And finally it can use its energy in the effort, an effort which can never be totally successful, to suppress all emotion, of any kind at all. Man's complex vision then consists, in simple terms, of self-consciousness, reason, taste, imagination, conscience, instinct, sensation, intuition, will, memory, and emotion. These various activities, differentiated clearly enough in their separate energizing, must never be regarded as absolutely separate "faculties," but rather as relatively separated "aspects." Behind all of them and under all of them is the complex vision itself, felt by all of us in rare moments in its creative totality, but constantly being distorted and obscured as one or other of its primal energies invades the appropriate territory of some other. The complex vision must not be regarded as the mere sum or accumulated agglomeration of all these. It is much more than this. It is more than a mere formal focussing of its own attributes. It is more than a mere logical unity suspended in a vacuum. The complex vision is the vision of a living self, of an organic personality, of an actual soul-monad. It may be the vision of a man. It may be the vision of a plant or a planet or a god. It may be the vision of entities undreamed of and of existences inconceivable. It may be the vision, for example, of some strange "soul of space" or "soul of the ether" whose consciousness is extended throughout the visible universe and even throughout the "etherial medium" which binds all souls together. But whether the vision of a plant, a man, or a god, the complex vision seems to bring with it its own immediate revelation that where there is any form of "matter," however attenuated, such "matter" is the outward expression of some inward living soul whose energies have some mysterious correspondence to the eleven aspects of the soul of man. CHAPTER III. THE SOUL'S APEX-THOUGHT It now becomes necessary to discuss the connection between what I have named the soul's "apex-thought" and certain permanent aspects of life with which this "apex-thought" has to deal. The "apex-thought" is the name I give to that synthetic and concentrating effort of the soul by means of which the various energies of the complex vision are brought into focus and fused with one another. In accordance with my favourite metaphorical image, the "apex-thought" is the extreme point of the arrow-head of the soul; the point with which it pierces its ways into eternity. It is necessary that I should indicate the connection between the activity of this apex-point of the complex vision and the various perplexing human problems round which our controversies smoulder and burn. It is advisable that I should indicate the connection between the activity of this "apex-thought" and that thing which the world has agreed to call Religion. It is advisable that I should indicate the relation of the "apex-thought" to those recurrent moods of profound human scepticism wherein we deny the attainability of any "truth" at all. It is advisable that I should indicate the relation of the apex-thought to any possible "new organ of vision" with which some unforeseen experiment of the soul may suddenly endow us. And it is above all advisable that I should show the relation between this focussed synthesis of the soul's complexity and the actual physical body whose material senses are part of this complexity. The whole problem of the art of life may be said to lie in the question of co-ordination. The actual process of coordination is the supreme and eternal difficulty. Only at rare moments do we individually approximate to its achievement. Only once or twice, it may be, in a whole life-time, do we actually achieve it. But it is by the power and insight of such fortunate moments that we attain whatever measure of permanent illumination adds dignity and courage to our days. We live by the memory of such moments. We live by the hope of their return. In the meanwhile our luck or our ill luck, as living human beings, depends on no outward events or circumstances but on our success in the conscious effort of approximation to what, when it does arrive, seems to take the grace and ease and inevitable beauty of a free gift of the gods. This fortunate rhythm of the primordial energies of the complex vision may be felt and realized without being expressed in words. The curse of what we call "cleverness" is that it hastens to find facile and fluent expression for what cannot be easily and fluently expressed. Education is too frequently a mere affair of words, a superficial encouragement of superficial expression. It is for this reason that many totally uneducated persons achieve, unknown to all except their most intimate friends, a far closer approach to this difficult co-ordination than others who are not only well-educated but are regarded by the world as famous leaders of modern thought. It will be remarked that in my list of the primordial energies of the complex vision I do not mention religion. This is not because I do not recognize the passionate and formidable role played by religion in the history of the human race, nor because I regard the "religious instinct" as a thing outgrown and done with. I have not included it because I cannot regard it as a distinct and separate attribute, in the sense in which reason, conscience, intuition and so forth, are distinct and separate attributes, of the complex vision. I regard it as a name given in common usage to certain premature and disproportioned efforts at co-ordination among these attributes, and I am well content to apply the word "religion" to that sacred ecstasy, at once passionate and calm, at once personal and impersonal, which suffuses our being with an unutterable happiness when the energies of the complex vision are brought into focus. I regard the word religion as a word that has drawn and attracted to itself, in its descent down the stream of time, so rich and so intricate a cargo of human feelings that it has come to mean too many things to be any longer of specific value in a philosophical analysis. Any sort of reaction against the primeval fear with which man contemplates the unknown, is religion. The passionate craving of human beings for a love which changes not nor passes away, is religion. The desperate longing to find an idea, a principle, a truth, a "cause," for the sake of which we can sacrifice our personal pleasure and our personal selfishness, is religion. The craving for some unity, some synthesis, some universal meaning in the system of things, is religion. The desire for an "over-life" or an "over-world," in which the distress, disorder, misunderstandings and cruelties of our present existence are redeemed, is religion. The desire to find something real and eternal behind the transient flow of appearance, is religion. The desire to force upon others by violence, by trickery, by fire, by sword, by persecution, by magic, by persuasion, by eloquence, by martyrdom, an idea which is more important to us than life itself, is religion. It will be seen from this brief survey of the immense field which the word "religion" has come to cover, that I am justified in regarding it rather as a name given to the emotional thrill and ecstatic abandonment which accompanies any sort of co-ordination of the attributes of the complex vision, proportioned or disproportioned, than as a distinct and separate attribute in itself. Only when the co-ordination of our human activities rises to the height of a supreme music, can we regard "religion" as the most beautiful and most important of all human experiences. And at the moment when it takes this form it resolves itself into nothing more than an unutterable feeling of ecstasy produced by the sense that we are in harmony with the rest of the universe. Religion, as I am compelled to think of it, resolves itself into that reaction of unspeakable happiness produced in us, when by any kind of synthetic movement, however crude, we are either saved from unreality or reconciled to reality. Religion is, in fact, the name we give to the ecstasy in the heart of the complex vision, when, in any sort of coordination between our contradictory energies, we at once escape from ourselves and realize ourselves. We are forbidden to speak of the "religious sense" or the "religious instinct" because, truly interpreted, religion is not a single activity among other activities, but the emotional reaction upon our whole nature when that nature is functioning in its creative fulness. Religion must therefore be regarded as the culminating ecstasy of the art of life, or as a premature snatching at such an ecstasy while the art of life is still discordant and inchoate. In the first instance it is the supreme reward of the creative act. In the second instance it is a tragic temptation to rest by the way in a unity which is an illusive unity and in a heaven from which "the sun of the morning" is excluded. It thus comes about that what we call religion is frequently a hindrance to the rhythm of the apex-thought. It may be a sentimental consolation. It may be an excuse for cruelty and obscurantism. There is always a danger when it is thus prematurely manifested, that it should darken, distort, deprave and obstruct the movement of creation. At this point, an objection arises to our whole method of research which it is necessary to meet at once. This objection, a peculiarly modern one, is based upon the theory, handed about in modern literature as a kind of diploma of cleverness and repeated superficially by many who are not really sceptical at all, that it is impossible in this world to arrive, under any circumstances, at any kind of truth. Persons who repeat this sceptical dogma are simply refusing to acknowledge the evidence of their own experience. However rare our high rhythmic moments may be, some sort of approximation to them, quite sufficient to destroy the validity of this absolute scepticism, must, if a person honestly confesses the truth, and does not dissimulate out of intellectual pride, have entered into the experience of every human being. Let us, however, consider the kind of dogmatic language which these sceptics use. They speak of "life" as a thing which so perpetually changes, expands, diminishes, undulates, advances, recedes, evolves, revolves, explodes, precipitates, lightens, darkens, thins, thickens, hardens, softens, over-brims, concentrates, grows shallow, grows deep, that it were ridiculous even to attempt to create an equilibrium, or rhythmic "parting-of-the-ways," out of such evasive and treacherous material. My answer to this sceptical protest is a simple one. It is an appeal to human experience. I maintain that this modern tendency to talk dogmatically and vaguely about "the evasive fluidity of life" is nothing more than a crafty pathological retreat from the formidable challenge of life. It is indeed a kind of mental drug or spiritual opiate by the use of which many unheroic souls hide themselves from the sardonic stare of the eternal Sphinx. It is a weakness comparable to the weakness of many premature religious syntheses; and it has the same soothing and disintegrating effect upon the creative energy of the mind. What, as a matter of fact, hurts us all, much more than any tendency of life to be over-fluid and over-evasive, is the atrocious tendency of life to be inflexible, rigorous, implacable, harshly immobile. This vague dogmatic sentiment about "the fluidity of life," is one of the instinctive ways by which we try to pretend that our prison-walls are not walls at all, but only friendly and flowing vapour. None of the great works of art and poetry, the austere beauty of which reflects the real nature of the universe, could continue to exercise their magical power upon us, could continue to sustain us and comfort us, if those tragic ultimate realities were not ultimate realities. The sublime ritual of art, which at its noblest has the character of religion, could not exist for a moment in a world as softly fluctuating and as dimly wavering as this modern scepticism would make it. Life is at once more beautiful and far more tragic. Though surrounded by mystery the grand outlines of the world remain austerely and sternly the same. The sun rises and sets. The moon draws the tides. Man goes forth to his work and his labour until the evening. Man is born; man loves and hates; man dies. And over him the same unfathomable spaces yawn. And under him the same unfathomable spaces yawn. Time, with its seasons, passes him in unalterable procession. From birth to death his soul wrestles with the universe; and the drama of which he is the protagonist lifts the sublime monotony of its scenery from the zenith to the nadir. Let any man ask himself what it is that hurts him most in life and yet seems most real to him. He will be compelled to answer . . . "the atrocious regularity of things and their obscene necessity." The very persons who talk so glibly about the "fluidity" and "evasiveness" of life are persons in whose own flesh the wedge-like granite of fate has lodged itself with crushing finality. Life has indeed been too rigid and too stark for them; and in place of seizing it in an embrace as formidable as its own, they go aside muttering, "life is evasive; life is fluid; life brims over." This sceptical dogma of "evasiveness" is generally found in alliance with some vague modern "religion" whose chief object is to strip the world of the dignity of its real tragedy and endow it with the indignity of some pretended assurance. This is the role of that superficial optimism so inherently repugnant to the aesthetic sense. Such apologists for a shallow and ignoble idealism are in the habit of declaring that "the tendency of modern thought" is to render "materialism" unthinkable; but when these people speak of materialism they are thinking of the austere limits of that vast objective spectacle into which we are all born. This spectacle is indeed mysterious. It is indeed staggering and awful. But it is irrevocably _there_. And no vague talk about the "evasiveness" and "over-brimmingness" of life can alter one jot or tittle of its eternal outlines. From the sublime terror of this extraordinary drama such persons are anxious to escape, because the iron of it has entered into their souls. They do not see that the only "escape" offered by the reality of things is a change of attitude towards this spectacle, not an assertion that the form of this spectacle is unfixed and wavering. No psychological or mathematical speculation has the power to alter the essential outlines of this spectacle. If such speculations could alter it, then the aesthetic sense of humanity would be driven to transform itself; and a new aesthetic sense, adapted to this new "evasiveness of life," would have to take its place. Attempts are indeed being made at this very hour to "start fresh" with a new aesthetic sense and only the winnowing process of time and the pressure of personal experience can refute such attempts. Meanwhile all we can do is to note the rejection of such attempts by the verdict of the complex vision; a rejection which indicates that if such attempts are to be successful they must imply the substitution of a new complex vision for the one which humanity has used since the beginning. In other words they must imply a radical change in the basic attributes of human nature. Humanity, to justify them, must become some sort of super-humanity; and a new world inhabited by a new race must take the place of the world we know. Such an attempt to substitute a new humanity for the old is already conscious of itself in those curious experiments of psychical research which are based upon the hypothesis that some completely new organs of sense are on the point of being discovered. Philosophers who believe in the inherent unchangeableness of our present instrument of research--the complex vision as it now exists--can only look on at these experiments with an attitude of critical detachment; and wait until time and experience have justified or refuted them. Philosophers who believe in the unchangeableness of the complex vision are bound to recognize that the human will, which is a basic attribute of this vision, must in any case play a considerable part in the creation of the future. But from their point of view the will is, after all, only one of these basic attributes. There is also the aesthetic sense. And the aesthetic sense is totally averse to this new kind of humanity and this new kind of world. The eternal vision of those invisible "sons of the universe," the proof of whose existence is a deduction from the encounters of all actual souls with one another, would seem to be entirely irreconcilable with any new complex vision whose nature had been completely changed. The visible spectacle of the world with its implied "eternal arbiters" would be transmuted and transfigured by such an upheaval. For as long as the human will, as we know it now, remains in association with the aesthetic sense as we know it now, the creation of the future--however yielding and indetermined-- must depend upon the form, the shape, the principle, the prophecy, the premonition, existing from the beginning in the nature of things. And it is precisely this shape, this form, this principle, this hope, this dream, this essential motive of those sons of the universe whose existence is implied "when two and three are gathered together," which would be destroyed and annihilated, if the complex vision were transformed into something else and a new world took the place of the old. It is the existence of these real "immortals" confronting this real universe which makes possible the feeling we have that in spite of all our differences, some accumulated stream of beauty, truth and goodness, does actually carry the past forward into the future, does actually create the future according to a premonition and a hope which have been there from the beginning. This is the supreme act of faith of the complex vision. This is the supreme act of faith which saves us at once from our subjective isolation and from the will towards the acceptance of a premature "religion." This is what saves us from any psychological or mathematical or logical speculation, which would contradict this hope or destroy the reality of the universe from which this hope emerges. When we come to a general consideration of the various attributes of the complex vision we are struck at once by the appalling power they each have, when not held in check, of cancelling one another's contribution. It is for this reason that my newly-coined word was unavoidable if we are to emphasize the synthetic energy of the complex vision when it exercises its control over these diverse attributes and resists their constant tendency to cancel one another. It was precisely to emphasize this synthetic energy of the soul that I have made use of the arbitrary expression "apex-thought." For if we think of these various attributes as shooting forth like flames from the arrowhead of the individual soul, we must think of this coordinating energy as the power which continually draws these flames together when they deviate from their focussed intensity, and continually restores, from its inharmonious dispersion, the concentration of their arrows' point. If we are permitted to use this image of a horizontal pyramid of flames it will be seen how important a part is played by this apex-thought in concentrating the energies of the complex vision so that it can "drive" or "burn" or "pierce" its way into the surrounding mystery. For this image of an arrow-head of focussed flame which is in constant danger of being dispersed as the flames recede from one another and are blown backwards is only a symbolic way of indicating how difficult it is to pierce with our complicated instrument of research the vast mystery which surrounds us. All this is mere pictorial metaphor; but in visualizing the human soul as a moving arrow-head, composed of flickering flames that only now and then combine into a sharp point, while at other times the wind drives them apart and bends them back, I am suggesting that the ultimate reality of things is a state of confused movement continually becoming a state of concentrated movement. I am suggesting that the secrets of life only yield themselves up to a movement of desperation. I am suggesting that the spirit of creation is also the spirit of destruction, and that the real object of the energy of creation is to pierce with its burning light the darkness of the objective mystery. As proof of the necessity of keeping this apex-thought in constant poise, let me reiterate one or two of the philosophical disasters which result from a cessation of its rhythmic function. When the reason, for instance, usurps the whole field and acts in isolation from the imagination and the intuition, it tends to persuade us to deny the very existence of that deepest and most vivid reality of all, the handle of our spear-head, the base of our pyramid, the mysterious entity within us, which we have come, following the traditions of the centuries, to name the "soul." And not only does the soul disappear when the reason thus isolates itself, but another primary revelation of the complex vision, I mean that half-created, half-discovered object of the senses popularly called "matter," disappears with it. Man's self-consciousness is thus left suspended "in vacuo" with no concrete reality within it and no concrete reality outside it; and "thought-in-the-abstract" becomes the only truth. But not only can reason thus set itself up in isolated usurpation against such other activities as imagination, intuition, will or taste; it can also divide itself against itself and emerge in completely contradictory functions. In the form of mathematical logic, for instance, it can dispose most drastically of that living organic world which in the form of experimental science it assumes to be the only truth. Again it may happen that reason will arbitrarily ally itself with one or the other of the other attributes and on the strength of such an alliance seek to obliterate all the rest. Thus while it is impossible to avoid the admission that of all these basic attributes reason is the most important, because without it all the rest would be inarticulate and dumb, it remains true that to hold reason in balanced relation to all the rest and to hold its own contradictory tendencies in balanced relation to one another is an undertaking of such extraordinary difficulty that if it were not for the complex vision's possession of that co-ordinating power which I have named its apex-thought, one might well pardon the mood of those persons who use reason to drug reason and who steer their boat into some unruffled backwater of dogma or mysticism. The necessity of such an infinitely delicate poise or balance or rhythm in these high matters, the necessity of keeping all these conflicting attributes at this exquisite point of suspense between abysses of contradiction, is a necessity which compels us to recognize that philosophy is nothing more or less than the supreme art, and the most difficult of all arts. Certainly, it seems as though thought has to become in a profound sense rhythmical, has to take to itself the nature of music, before it can become the truth. For the truth does not seem to be a mere picture of the system of things, reflected in the mirror of the mind. The truth seems to be the very system of things itself, become conscious and volitional, changing, growing, living, destroying, creating. Thus it comes about that the thought which plunges into the universe must of necessity, even in that very act, remould and re-fashion the universe. Thus Nature perpetually recreates herself by the passion of her children and is forever re-born as the child of her own offspring. But if the supreme difficulty of the art of life lies in the maintenance of this rhythm between these primary attributes, it must never be forgotten that these "attributes" are, after all, only _aspects_ of the soul. The soul _is_ each of them, not _in_ each of them. They are not "faculties" through which the soul acts. They are never absolutely distinct from one another. There is something of each of them in every one of them, and every attempt which they make to establish themselves in an independent existence is only an attempt of the soul itself to live a perverted and a discordant, instead of a natural and a harmonious life. The rarity and difficulty of that high art which brings all these orchestral players into harmony is sufficient cause to account for the scarcity of genuine philosophical thought in this confused world. The human soul, looking desperately round for some calm yet passionate light to save its hours from ruinous waste, turns away in bitter disillusion from the thin dust and the swollen vapour that are offered it. Out of the logical laboratories of the abstract reason this thin dust is offered; and out of the ideal factories of the wish for superficial comfort this iridescent vapour is poured forth. That burning secret of life, that lovely and terrible reality for which the soul pines is not to be found in any mere outward fact or in any mere subjective intuition. Such a fact may crumble to pieces and give place to another. Such an intuition may melt into air under the shock of experience. The craving of the soul is not satisfied by the discovery that "matter" resolves itself into "energy," nor is the misery of the heart assuaged by the theory that time is an attribute of fourth-dimensional space. The lamentable beating of blood-stained hands upon the ultimate walls does not cease when we learn that two straight lines can or cannot meet in infinity; nor does the knowledge that history is an "ideal evolution" heal the aching of the world-sorrow. Could we know for certain that the dead were raised up, even that knowledge would not reduce to silence the bitter cry of the outraged generations. So poisonous and so deep is the pain of life that no kind of knowledge, not even the knowledge that annihilation must at last, sooner or later, end it all, can really heal it. But truth is not knowledge. Truth is not the recognition of an external fact. Truth is a creative gesture. It is a ritual, a rhythmic poise, a balance deliberately sustained between eternal contradictions. It is the magical touch which reduces to harmony the quivering vibrations of many opposites. It is the dramatic movement of a supreme actor at the climax of an unfathomable drama. It is music resting upon itself; music so exquisite as to seem like silence, music so passionate as to have become calm. The apex-thought of that pyramid of conflicting flames which we call the complex vision holds itself together at one concentrated point. And this point is the arrow point of our human soul; that soul which is shot across immensity in the eternal war between life and the opposite of life. Although for the purpose of emphasizing and elucidating the essential nature of this apex-thought it has been found advisable to use such metaphorical and pictorial images as the one just indicated, it must be remembered that what we are actually and in direct experience confronted with is the mystery of a real human personality inhabiting a real human body. This real personal soul inhabiting a real objective body and surrounded on all sides by a real unfathomable universe, is the original revelation of the complex vision from which there is no escape except by death. The philosophy of the complex vision finds its starting point in an acceptance of this situation which is nothing more than an acceptance of the complex vision's own harmonious activity. An acceptance of the reality of the human body is an essential part of this harmonious activity because among the aspects of the complex vision are to be found certain attributes, such as sensation, instinct and imagination, which would be negated and rendered abortive if the human body were an illusion. If the "starting point" of our philosophy demands recognition of the reality of the body, the "ideal" of our philosophy must have a place for the body also. Flesh and blood must therefore play their part in the resultant harmony at which we are all the while aiming; and no contempt for the body, no hatred of the body, no refusal to recognize the supreme beauty and sacredness of the body, can be allowed to distort or pervert our vision. The activity of the apex-thought, though we have a right to use any metaphorical image we please about it in order to elucidate its nature, must always be considered as using the bodily senses in its resultant rhythm. It must always be considered as using that portion of the objective universe which we name the body as an inevitable "note" in its musical flight from darkness to darkness. It must always be conceived as following the attraction of an eternal vision, in which "the idea of the body" is an imperishable element. This "eternal vision," which it is the rhythmic motive of the apex-thought to seek, carries with it the witness and "imprimatur" of the gods; and although no man has ever "beheld" the gods, and although the gods by reason of their omnipresent activity, cannot be thought of as being "incarnated," yet since they are living souls, even as we are, and since every living soul has, as the substratum of its identity, what might be called a "spiritual body," there is nothing in the revelation made to us through the activity of our complex vision to forbid our free and even fanciful speculation as to its use, by the very highest of superhuman personalities, even, let us say, by the Christ himself, of this mysterious energy of the soul which I have named the "apex-thought." CHAPTER IV. THE REVELATION OF THE COMPLEX VISION Using then, as our instrument of research, that totality of attributes by which the soul in its rare moments of rhythmic consummation visualizes the world, the question arises--what, in plain untechnical terms, is the revelation made to us by this complex medium? Here, as before, I am anxious, before I venture upon such a hazardous undertaking as an answer to this question, to indicate clearly that what I am attempting to state is a revelation which is common to the experience of all souls, wherever such a thing as the soul exists. The question as to whether or not such an universal revelation is an illusion does not concern us. To call any universal experience "an illusion" is no more and no less illuminating than to call it "an ultimate truth." It is the only reality we are at present in possession of; and we must accept it, or remain in complete scepticism; which is only another name for complete chaos. The first important discovery which the complex vision makes is the fact that the revelation, thus half-offered to it and half-created by it, is presented simultaneously in all its various aspects. It does not appear to us bit by bit or in succession but "en masse" and in its complete "ensemble." It is of course unavoidable that its aspects should be enumerated one by one and that in such an enumeration one aspect should be placed first and another last. Nevertheless, this "first" and "last" must not be regarded as of any reasonable importance; but as nothing more than an accident of arbitrary choice. All the aspects of this original revelation are linked together. All are dependent upon one another. Among them there is no "first" and "last." All are equally real. All are equally necessary. All are equally inescapable. The activity of the complex vision, then, makes us aware that we have within us an integral irreducible self, the living personal substratum of our self-consciousness, the "I" of our primordial "I am I." This living personal self is the background of our complex vision. It is the personal "visionary" whose vision we are using. I say we have "within us" such a self. This "within us" is one of the inescapable original revelations. For though our consciousness will be found in its full circle to invade obscure shores and wavering margins, there must always be a return, however far it may wander, to this definite "something" within us which utters the happy or unhappy "I am I." It is precisely here, in regard to the nature of this "I am I," that it is essential to let the totality of our complex vision speak, and not one or other of its attributes. Nowhere has the fantastic and desolating power of pure abstract reason left to itself done more to distort the general situation than in this matter. It has distorted it in two opposing ways. It has distorted it metaphysically by completely eliminating this revelation of a personal self, "within us," and it has distorted it scientifically by reducing this personal self to an automatic mechanical phenomenon produced by the action and interaction of unconscious chemical "forces." To the logic of metaphysical reason there is no concrete living self which can say "I am I" from that definite point in space and time which we indicate by the use of the phrase "within us." According to such logic our "I am I" becomes "an infinity of consciousness" with no local habitation. It becomes a consciousness which includes both the "within" and the "without," a consciousness in which our actual personal self is nothing but an illusory phenomenon, a consciousness which is outside both time and space, a consciousness whose centre is everywhere and its circumference nowhere, a consciousness which is pure disembodied "thought," thought without any "thinker," thought contemplating itself as thought, thought in an absolutely empty void. When to this ultimate "unity of apperception," suspended in a vacuum, consciousness of self is added; when this "consciousness-in-the-abstract" is regarded as an universal self-consciousness, the resultant "I am I" of such an omnipresent being becomes an infinite "I am I" which is nothing less than the unfathomable universe conscious of itself in its totality. Whether consciousness of self be added to this "consciousness-in-the-abstract" or not, it is hard to see how out of this unruffled ocean of identity the actual multifarious world which we feel around us, this world of plants and planets and birds and fishes and mortal men and immortal gods, ever succeeded in getting itself produced at all. The vague metaphysical phrases about the One issuing forth into the Many, in order to make Itself more completely Itself than it was before, seem to us, when under the influence of our complex vision, no other than the meaningless playing with cosmic tennis balls of some insane universal Juggler. The second way in which reason, left to itself, has distorted what the complex vision reveals to us about the "I am I," is the scientific or evolutionary way. According to this view which assumes that the objective process of evolution is our only knowable reality, the individual personal "I am I" finds itself resolved into a fatal automatic phenomenon of cause and effect; a phenomenon which has as its "cause" nothing, but the prehistoric chemical movements of "matter" or "energy." The personal self thus considered becomes a momentary vortex in a perpetually changing stream of "states of consciousness" or "ripples of sensation" to each of which vast anterior tides of atavistic forces have contributed their mechanical quota. The chemical fatality of our nerve-tissues, the psychological fatality of our motive-impulses, leave no space, when they have all been summed up, for any free arbitrary action of an independent self. And so, just as according to the metaphysical view, the soul disappears in a blur of ideal fatality, according to the scientific view the soul disappears in a nexus of mechanical determinism. As against both these errors, to the complex vision this "soul" within us appears to be something altogether different from the physical body. The experience we have of it, the feeling we have of it, is that it is a definite "something" dwelling "within" the physical body. This revelation with regard to it is as unmistakable as it is difficult to analyze. That it is here, within us, we feel and know; but as soon as we attempt to subject it to any exact scrutiny it seems to melt away under our hands. The situation is indeed a kind of philosophical tragic-comedy; and is only too indicative of the baffling whimsicality of the whole system of things. Contradiction and paradox at the very basis of life mock our attempt to utter one intelligible word about the thing which is the most real of all things to us. We are vividly aware of this mysterious personality within us, "the guest and companion of the body," but directly we attempt to lay hold upon the actual substance of it it seems to vanish into thin air. But at least our complex vision, which is _its_ complex vision, reveals to us the fact of its existence; and with its existence once acknowledged, however impossible analysis of it may be, we are able to give a plain and unequivocal denial to all the impersonal conclusions reached by metaphysic and science. This categorical pronouncement of the complex vision with regard to the "I am I," namely that it is the voice of a living concrete soul within us, is supported historically by an immense weight of human tradition. Belief in the reality of the soul is older and more tenacious than any other human doctrine which our race has ever held. The use of the term "soul" is no more than a bare recognition that behind the consciousness which says "I am I" there is a living entity whose consciousness this is. With this bare recognition the revelation of the complex vision abruptly stops. It stops with that peculiar and disconcerting suddenness with which it seems to be its nature to stop, whenever it reaches the limit of its scope in any direction. It stops here, with regard to the soul, just as it stops when confronted with the conception of limitlessness, both with regard to space and with regard to time. But the soul at least is ours; a fact that cannot be explained away. And although we have no right to go a step beyond the bare recognition of its existence and although all words regarding it are misleading if used in any other than a symbolic sense, we must remember that since the complex vision is conscious of itself as a unity, whatever this "something" may be which is the centre and core of our living personality, it must at least be a definite irreducible "monad," "something" that cannot be resolved into anything else, or accounted for by anything else, or explained in terms of anything else, or "caused" by anything else; "something" that may, perhaps, at last be annihilated; but that while it lives must remain the vividest reality we know. Insanity and disease may obstruct and cloud the soul. Outward circumstances may drive the soul back upon itself. But while it lives it lives in its totality and when it perishes, if it be its destiny to perish, it perishes in its totality. While the soul lives we may sink into it and have no fear; and yet all the while we have no right to say anything about it except that it exists. Truly it is a tragic commentary upon the drama that we call our life, that we should find our ultimate "rest" and "peace" in so bare, so stark, so austere, so irrational a revelation as this! But surrounded as we are by the menace of eternal nothingness it is at least something to have at the background of our life a living power of this kind, a power which can endure unafraid the very breaking point of disaster, a power which can contemplate the possibility of annihilation itself with equanimity and unperturbed calm. It will be noted that I have been compelled to use once and again the term "eternal nothingness." This is indeed an inevitable aspect of what the soul visualizes as possible. For since the soul is the creator and discoverer of all life, when once the soul has ceased to exist, non-existence takes the place of existence, and nothingness takes the place of life. Speculatively we have the right, although the complex vision is silent on that tremendous question, to dally with the idea of the survival of the soul after the death of the body. But this must for ever be an open question, not to be answered either negatively or affirmatively, not to be answered by the intelligence of any living man. All we can say is that it seems as if the death of the body destroyed the complex vision; and if the complex vision is destroyed it seems as though non-existence were bound to take the place of existence, and as though nothingness were bound to take the place of everything. The oriental conception of "Nirvana" is no more than a soothing opiate administered to a soul that has grown weary of its complex vision and weary of its irreducible personality. To imagine oneself freed from the burden of personal consciousness, and yet in some mysterious way conscious of being freed from consciousness, is a delicious and delicate dream of life-exhausted souls. As a speculation it has a curious attraction; as a reality it has nothing that is intelligible. But though the tragedy of life to all sensitive spirits is outrageous and obscene, at least we may say that the worst conceivable possibility is not likely to occur. The worst conceivable possibility would be to be doomed to an immortal personal life without losing the restrictions and limitations of our present personal life. If the soul survives the body it must do so on the strength of its possession of some transforming energy which shall enable it to supply the place in its organic being which is at present occupied by the attribute of sensation. It is quite obvious that if the life of the soul depends upon the active functioning of all its attributes; and if one of its attributes, namely sensation, is entirely dependent for its active functioning upon the life of the body; the life of the soul itself must also depend upon the life of the body, unless, as I have hinted, it can transmute its attribute of sensation into some other attribute suitable to some unknown plane of spiritual existence. There are indeed certain ecstatic moments when the soul feels as if such a power of liberation from the bodily senses were actually within its grasp; but it will inevitably be found, when the great rhythmic concentration of the apex-thought is brought to bear upon such a feeling as this, that it either melts completely away, or is relegated to unimportance and insignificance. Such a feeling, ecstatic and intense though it may have been, has been nothing more than a disproportioned activity of the attribute of intuition; intuition misled in favour of the immortality of the soul, even as the pure reason is often misled in the direction of the denial of the soul's existence. The revelation of the complex vision has no word to say, on either side, with regard to whether the soul does or does not survive the death of the body; but it has a very distinct word to say as to the importance of this whole question; and what it says in regard to this is--that it is not important at all! The revelation of the complex vision implies clearly enough that what man were wise to "assume"--leaving always the ultimate question as an open question--is that the individual soul and the individual body perish together. This assumption is in direct harmony with what we actually _see_; even though it is in frequent collision with what we sometimes _feel_. But the essence of the matter is to be found in this, that our assumption as to the soul's perishing, when the body perishes, is an assumption, untrue though it may turn out to be, which the soul itself, when under the power of its apex-thought, is compelled to make. And it is compelled to make this assumption by reason of the inherent nature of love. For it is of the nature of love when confronted by two alternatives one of which lays the stress upon personal advantage and the other _upon love itself_ apart from any personal advantage, whether one's own or another's, to choose, as the assumption upon which it shall live, the latter of these two alternatives. For it is the nature of love to seek love and nothing else than love. And as long as the assumption which the soul makes is the assumption that it survives the death of the body, that emotion of love which is the soul's creative essence is debarred from the full and complete integrity of its desire. For the desire of love is not for immortality but for the eternal; and the eternal is not something that depends upon the survival of any individual soul, whether our own or another's. The eternal is something which can be realized in one single moment; something which completely destroys in us any desire for survival after death; something which reconciles us to existence _considered in the light of love alone_; something that does not assume anything at all about the universe, except that love exists. Thus we return to that assumption about the soul, which it is better--leaving the open question still an open question--for the mind to accept as its working assumption; namely that the soul uses the body in its own ends, is conscious of its existence through the senses of the body, lives _in_ the body, and perishes when the body perishes. Nor is it only the emotion of love which rejects the dogma of the immortality of the soul. Were the soul proved beyond all possibility of doubt to be immortal, there would at once fall upon us a despair more appalling than any which we have known. For just as the idea of the eternal satisfies the very depths of our soul with an infinite peace, so the idea of immortality troubles the very depths of our soul with an infinite doubt. Something unutterable in our aesthetic sense demands that life should be surrounded by death and ended by death. Thus and not otherwise should we ourselves have created the world at the beginning. Thus and not otherwise by the rhythmic play of the complex vision, do we create the world. But meanwhile, whatever happens, as long as we live we possess the reality of the soul. This is, and always has been, the rallying-ground of heroic and sensitive personalities, struggling with the demons of circumstance and chance. This is that unconquerable "mind-within-themselves" into which the great Stoics of Antiquity withdrew at their will, and were "happy," beyond the reach of hope and fear. This is the citadel from the security of which all the martyrs for human liberty have mocked their tormentors. This is the fortress from which the supreme artists of the world have looked forth and moulded the outrage of life's dilemma into monumental forms of imaginative beauty. This is the sanctuary from which all human personalities, however weak and helpless, have been permitted to endure the cruelty and pitilessness of fate. After all, it does not so greatly matter that we are unable to do more than know that this thing, this indescribable "something," really exists. Perhaps it is because its existence is more real than anything else that we are unable to define it. Perhaps we can only define those attributes which are the outward aspects of our real being. Perhaps it is simply because the soul is nothing less than our very self, that our analytical power stops, helpless, in its presence. _We_ are what it is; and for this very cause it perpetually evades and escapes us. The reality of the soul, therefore, is the first revelation of the complex vision. The second revelation is the objective reality of the outward visible universe. Left to itself, in its isolated activity, our logical reason is capable of throwing doubt upon this revelation also. For it is logically certain that what we are actually conscious of is no more than a unified stream of various mental impressions, reaching us through our senses, and never interrupted except in moments of unconscious sleep. It is therefore quite easy for the logical reason, functioning in its isolation from the other attributes, to maintain that this stream of mental impressions _is all that there is_, and that we have no right to call the universe real and objective, except in the ambiguous sense of a sort of permanent illusion. But as soon as the complex vision, in its totality, contemplates the situation, the thing takes on a very different aspect. The pure reason may be as sceptical as it pleases about the static solidity of what is popularly called "matter." It may use the term energy, or movement, or ether, or force, or electricity, or any other name to describe that _permanent sensation of outward reality_ which our complex vision reveals. But one thing it has no right to do. It has no right to utter the word "illusion" with regard to this objective universe. The apparent solidity of matter may be rationally resolved into energy or movement, just as the apparent objectivity of matter may be rationally resolved into a stream of mental impression. But the complex vision still persists in asserting that this _permanent sensation of outward reality_, which, except in dreamless sleep, is never normally interrupted, represents and bears witness to the real existence, outside ourselves, of "something" which corresponds to such a sensation. It is just at this point that the soul--helped by instinct, imagination, and intuition--makes its great inevitable plunge into the act of primordial faith. This act of primordial faith is the active belief of the soul not only in an objective universe outside itself, but also in the objective existence of other individual souls. Without this primordial act of faith the individual soul can never escape from itself. For the pure reason not only reduces the whole universe to an idea in the mind; but it also reduces all _other_ minds to ideas in _our_ mind. In other words the logical reason imprisons us fatally and hopelessly in a sort of cosmic nut-shell of our own mentality. And there would, actually, be no escape from this appalling imprisonment, according to which the individual soul becomes a solitary circle, the centre and circumference of all possible existence, if it were not that the soul possesses other organs of research, in addition to reason and self-consciousness. Directly we temper reason with these other activities the whole situation has a different look. It is a thing of small consequence what word we use to describe that external cause of the flowing stream of mental impressions. The important point is that we are compelled to assume, as representing a real outward fact, this permanent sense of objectivity from which there is no escape. And as the existence of the objective universe is established by a primordial act of faith, so it is also established that these alien bodily personalities, whose outward appearance stands and falls with the objective universe, possess "souls," or what we have come to name "complex visions," comparable with our own. And this is the case not only with regard to other human beings, but with regard to all living entities whether human or non-human. As to how the "souls" of plants, birds, and animals, or of planets or stars, differ in their nature from human souls we can only vaguely conjecture. But to refuse some degree of consciousness, some measure of the complex vision, to any living thing, is to be false to that primordial act of faith into which the original revelation of the complex vision compels us to plunge. The inevitableness of this act of faith may be perhaps more vividly realized when we remember that it includes in its revelation the objective reality of our own physical body. Our evidence for the real outward existence of our own body is no surer and no more secure than our evidence for the outward existence of other "bodies." They stand or fall together. If the universe is an illusion then our own physical body is an illusion also. And precisely as the "stuff" out of which the universe is made may be named "energy" or "ether" or "force" or "electricity," rather than "matter," so also the "stuff" out of which the body is made may be named by any scientific term we please. The term used is of no importance as long as the thing represented by it is accepted as a permanent reality. We are now able to advance a step further in regard to the revelation of the complex vision. Granting, as we are compelled to grant, that the other "souls" in the universe possess, each of them, its own "vision" of this same universe; and assuming that each "vision" is so coloured by the individuality of the "visionary" as to be, in a measure, different from all the rest, it becomes obvious that in a very important sense there is not only one universe, but many universes. These many universes, however, are "caused," or evoked, or created, or discovered, by the encounter of various individual souls with that one "objective mystery" which confronts them all. What a naive confession it is of the limitation of the human mind that we should be driven, after all our struggles to articulate the secret of life, to accept, as our final estimate of such a secret just the mysterious "something" which is the substratum of our own soul, confronted by that other mysterious "something" which is the substratum of all possible universes! With the complex vision's revelation that the objective universe really exists comes the parallel revelation that time and space really exist. Here, for the third time, are we faced with critical protests from the isolated activity of the logical reason. Metaphysic reduces both time and space to categories of the mind. Mathematical speculation hints at the existence of some mysterious fourth-dimensional space. Bergsonian dialectic regards ordinary "spatial" time as an inferior category; and finds the real movement of life in a species of time called "duration," which can only be detected by the interior feeling of intuition. But while we listen with interest to all these curious speculations, the fact remains that for the general vision of the combined energies of the soul the world in which we find ourselves is a world entirely dependent upon what must be recognized as a _permanent sensation_ of "ordinary" space and "ordinary" time. And as we have shown in the case of the objective existence of what we call Nature, when any mental impression reaches the level of becoming a _permanent sensation_ of all living souls it ceases to be possible to speak of it as an illusion. It is well that we should become clearly conscious of this "reality-destroying" tendency of the logical reason, so that whenever it obsesses us we can undermine its limited vision by an appeal to the complex vision. Shrewdly must we be on our guard against this double-edged trick of logic, which on the one hand seeks to destroy the basis of its own activity, by disintegrating the unity of the soul, and on the other hand seeks to destroy the material of its own activity by disintegrating the unity of the "objective mystery." The original revelation of the complex vision not only puts us on our guard against this disintegrating tendency of the pure reason, but it also explains the motive-force behind this tendency. This motive-force is the emotion of malice, which naturally and inevitably seeks to hand us over to the menace of nothingness; in the first place of nothingness "within" us, and in the second place of nothingness "without" us. That the logic of the pure reason quickly becomes the slave of the emotion of malice may be proved by both introspection and observation. For we note, both in ourselves and others, a peculiar glow of malicious satisfaction when such logic strikes its deadliest blows at what it would persuade us to regard as the illusion of life. Life, just because its deepest secret is not law, determined by fate, but personality struggling against fate, is always found to display a certain irrationality. And the complex vision becomes false to itself as soon as it loses touch with this world-deep irrationality. We have now therefore reached the conception of reality as consisting of the individual soul confronted by the objective mystery. That this objective mystery would be _practically_ the same as _nothing_, if there were no soul to apprehend it, must be admitted. But it would not be _really_ the same as _nothing_; since as soon as any kind of soul reappeared upon the scene the inevitable material of the objective mystery would at once re-appear with it. The existence of the objective mystery as a permanent possibility of material for universe-building is a fact which surrounds every individual soul with a margin of unfathomable depth. At its great illuminated moments the complex vision reduces the limitlessness of space to a realizable sensation of liberty, and the "flowingness" of time to an eternal now; but even at these moments it is conscious of an unfathomable background, one aspect of which is the immensity of space and the other the flowingness of time. The revelation of the complex vision which I have thus attempted to indicate will be found identical with the natural conclusions of man in all the ages of his history. The primeval savage, the ancient Greek, the mediaeval saint, the eighteenth century philosopher, the modern psychologist, are all brought together here and are all compelled to confess the same situation. That we are now living personalities, possessed of soul and body, and surrounded by an unfathomable universe, is a revelation about which all ages and all generations agree, whenever the complex vision is allowed its orchestral harmony. The primeval savage looking up at the sky above him might regard the sun and moon as living gods exercising their influence upon a fixed unmoving earth. In this view of the sun and the moon and the stars such a savage was perfectly within his right, because always along with it even to the most anthropomorphic, there came the vague sense of unfathomableness. The natural Necessity of the ancient Greeks, the trinitarian God of the mediaeval school-man, the great First Cause of the eighteenth-century deist, the primordial Life-Force of the modern man of science, are all on common ground here in regard to the unfathomableness of the ultimate mystery. But the revelation of the complex vision saves us from the logical boredom of the word "infinite." The idea of the infinite is merely a tedious mathematical formula, marking the psychological point where the mind finds its stopping-place. All that the complex vision can say about "infinite space" is that it is a real experience, and that we can neither imagine space with an end nor without an end. The "Infinite" is the name which logic gives to this psychological phenomenon. The fact that the mind stops abruptly and breaks into irreconcilable contradictions when it is confronted with unfathomable space is simply a proof that space without an end is as unimaginable as space with an end. It is no proof that space is merely a subjective category of the human mind. One, thing, however, it is a proof of. It is a proof that the universe can never be satisfactorily explained on any materialistic hypothesis. The fact that we all of us, at every hour of our common day, are surrounded by this unthinkable thing, space without end, is an eternal reminder that the forms, shapes and events of habitual occurrence, which we are inclined to take so easily for granted, are part of a staggering and inscrutable enigma. The reality of this thing, actually there, above our heads and under our feet, lodges itself, like an ice cold wedge of annihilating scepticism, right in the heart of any facile explanation. We cannot interpret the world in terms of what we call "matter" when what we call "matter" has these unthinkable horizons. We may take into our hands a pebble or a shell or a grain of sand; and we may feel as though the universe were within our grasp. But when we remember that this little piece of the earth is part of a continuous unity which recedes in every direction, world without end, we are driven to admit that the universe is so little within our grasp that we have to regard it as something which breaks and baffles the mind as soon as the mind tries to take hold of it at all. The reason does not advance one inch in explaining the universe when it utters the word "evolution" and it does not advance one thousandth part of an inch--indeed it gives up the task altogether-- when it informs us that infinite space is a category of the human mind. We must regard it, then, as part of the original revelation of the complex vision, that we are separate personal souls surrounded by an unfathomable mystery whose margins recede into unthinkable remoteness. The ancient dilemma of the One and the Many obtrudes itself at this point; and we are compelled to ask how the plurality of these separate souls can be reconciled with the unity of which they form a part. That they cannot be regarded as absolutely separate is clear from the fact that they can communicate with one another, not only in human language but in a thousand more direct ways. But granting this communication between them, does the mere existence of myriads of independent personalities, living side by side in a world common to all, justify us in speaking of the original system of things as being pluralistic rather than monistic? Human language, at any rate, founded on the fact that these separate souls can communicate with one another, seems very reluctant to use any but monistic terms. We say "the system of things," not "the systems of things." And yet it is only by an act of faith that human language makes the grand assumption that the complex vision of all these myriad entities tells the same story. We say "the universe"; yet may it not be that there are as many "universes" as there are conscious personalities in this unfathomable world? If there were no closer unity between the separate souls which fill the universe than the fact that they are able, after one primordial act of faith, to communicate with one another, these monistic assumptions of language might perhaps be disregarded and we might have a right to reject such expressions as "system of things" and "cosmos" and "universe" and "nature." But it still remains that they are connected, in space and in time, by the medium, whatever it may be, which fills the gulfs between the planets and the stars. As long as these separate souls are invariably associated as they are, with physical bodies, and as long as these physical bodies are composed of the same mysterious force which we may call earth, fire, water, air, ether, electricity, energy, vibration, or any other technical or popular name, so long will it be legitimate to use these monistic expressions with which human language is, so to speak, so deeply stained. As a matter of fact we are not left with only this limited measure of unity. There are also certain psychological experiences--experiences which I believe I have a right to regard as universal--which bring these separate souls into much closer connection. Such experiences can be, and have been, ridiculously exaggerated. But the undeniable fact that they exist is sufficient to prove that in spite of the pluralistic appearance of things, there is still enough unity available to prevent the Many from completely devouring the One. The experiences to which I am referring are experiences which the complex vision owes to the intuition. And though this experience has been made unfair use of, by both mystics and metaphysicians, it cannot be calmly disregarded. The intuition, which is, as I have already pointed out, the feminine counterpart to the imagination, is found, with regard to this particular problem, uttering so frequent and impressive an oracle that to neglect its voice, would be to nullify and negate the whole activity of the intuition and deny it its place among the ultimate energies of vision. There is always more difficulty in putting into words a revelation which the complex vision owes to intuition than in regard to any other of its attributes. Reason in his matter, and sensation and imagination also, have an unfair advantage when it comes to _words_. For human language is compelled to draw its images from sensation and its logic from reason. But intuition--the peculiarly feminine attribute of the soul--finds itself dealing with what is barely intelligible and with what is profoundly irrational. Thus it naturally experiences a profound difficulty in getting itself expressed in words at all. And, incidentally, we cannot avoid asking ourselves the curious question whether it may not be that language, which is so dependent upon the peculiarly masculine attributes of reason and sensation, has not become an inadequate medium for the expression of what might be called the feminine vision of the world? May we not indeed go so far as to hazard the suggestion that when this fact, of the masculine domination of language, has been adequately recognized, there will emerge upon the earth women-philosophers and women-artists who will throw completely new light upon many problems? The difficulty which women experience in getting expressed in definite terms, whether in philosophy or art, the co-ordinated rhythm of _their_ complex vision, may it not be largely due to the fact that the attribute of intuition which is their most vital organ of research has remained so inarticulate? And may not the present wave of psychological "mysticism," which just now is so prominent a psychic phenomenon, be due to the vague and, in many cases, the clumsy attempt, which women are now making to get their intuitive contribution into line with the complex vision of the rest? When the universe is referred to as "Nature," may it not be that it is this very element, this strange wisdom of the abysmal "Mothers," which humanity thinks of as struggling to utter its unutterable secret? How, then, for the sake of its contribution to the ultimate rhythm, does the complex vision articulate this mysterious oracle from the feminine principle in life, as it brokenly and intermittently lifts up its voice? One aspect of this oracle's voice is precisely what we are concerned with now. I mean the problem of the relation of the One to the Many. The merely logical conception of unity is misleading because the wavering mass of impression which makes up our life has a margin which recedes on every side into unfathomableness. This conception has two aspects. In the first place it implies _continuity_, by which I mean that everything in the world is in touch with everything else. In the second place it implies _totality_, by which I mean that everything in the world can be considered as one rounded-off and complete "whole." According to this second aspect of the case, we think of the world as an integral One surrounded by nothingness, in the same way that the individual soul is surrounded by the universe. The revelation of the complex vision finds the second of these two aspects entirely misleading. It accepts the conception of _continuity_, and rejects the conception of _totality_. It rejects the conception of "totality," because "totality," in this cosmic sense, is a thing of which it has no experience; and the revelation of the complex vision is entirely based on experience. The margins of the world, receding without limit in every direction, prevent us from ever arriving at the conception of "totality." What right have we to regard the universe as a totality, when all we are conscious of is a mass of wavering impression continued unfathomable in every direction? In only one sense, therefore, have we a right to speak of the unity of the system of things; and that is in the sense of continuity. Since this mass of impression, which we name the universe, is on all sides lost in a margin of unfathomableness, it is, after all, only a limited portion of it which comes into the scope of our consciousness. It is one of the curious exaggerations of our logical reason that we should be tempted to "round off" this mystery. The combined voices of imagination and intuition protest against such an enclosed circle. The same revelation of the complex vision which gives objective reality to what is outside our individual soul insists that this objective reality extends beyond the limited circle of our consciousness. The device by which the logical reason "rounds off" the conception of _continuity_ by the conception of _totality_ is the device of the mathematical formula of "infinity." The imaginative movement by which the complex vision of the soul plunges into the abysses of stellar space, seeking to fathom, at least in a mental act, immensity beyond immensity, and gulf beyond gulf, is a definite human experience. It is the actual experience of the soul itself, dropping its plummet into immensity, and finding immensity unfathomable. But as soon as the logical reason dominates the situation, in place of this palpable plunge into a real concrete experience, with its accompanying sensation of appalling wonder and terrible freedom, we are offered nothing but a thin, dry, barren mathematical formula called "infinity," the mere mention of which freezes the imagination at its source. What, in fact, the complex vision reveals to us is that all these arid formulae, such as infinity, the Absolute Being, and the Universal Cause, are conceptions projected into the real and palpable bosom of unfathomable life by the very enemy and antagonist of life, the aboriginal emotion of inert malice. This is why so often in the history of the human race the conception of "God" has been the worst enemy of the soul. The conception of "God" by its alliance with the depressing mathematical formula of "infinity" has indeed done more than any other human perversion to obliterate the beauty and truth of the emotional feeling which we name "religion." The revelation of the complex vision makes it clear to us that the idea of "God," in alliance with the idea of "Infinity," is a projection, into religious experience, of the emotion of inert malice. As soon as the palpable unfathomableness of space is reduced to the barren notion of a mathematical "infinity" all the free and terrible beauty of life is lost. We have pressed our hands against our prison-gates and found them composed of a material more rigid than adamant, the material of "thought-in-the-abstract." Now although our chief difficulty in regard to this insistent problem of the One and the Many has been got rid of by eliminating from the notion of the One all idea of totality, it is still true that something in us remains unsatisfied while our individual soul is thought of as absolutely isolated from all other souls. It is here, as I have already said, that the peculiarly feminine attribute of intuition comes to our rescue. The fact that we can communicate together by human and sub-human language, does not, though it implies a basic similarity in our complex vision, really satisfy us. A strange unhappiness, a vague misery, a burden of unutterable nostalgia, troubles the loneliness of our soul. And yet it is not, this vague longing, a mere desire to break the isolating circle of the "I am I" and to invade, and mingle with, other personalities. It is something deeper than this, it is a desire to break the isolation of all personalities, and to enter, in company with all, some larger, fuller, freer level of life, where what we call "the limits of personality" are surpassed and transcended. This underlying misery of the soul is, in fact, a constant recognition that by the isolated loneliness of our deepest self we are keeping at a distance something--some unutterable flow of happiness--which would destroy for us all fears and all weariness, and would end for ever the obscene and sickening burden of the commonplace. It is precisely at this point that the intuition comes to the rescue; supplying our complex vision with that peculiar "note," or "strain of music," without which the orchestral harmony must remain incomplete. In seeking to recall those great moments when the "apex-thought" of the complex vision revealed to us the secret of things, we find ourselves remembering how, when in the presence of some supreme work of art, or of some action of heroic sacrifice, or of some magical effect of nature, or of some heart-breaking gesture of tragic emotion in some simple character, we have suddenly been transported out of the closed circle of our personal life into something that was at once personal and impersonal. At such a moment it seems as if we literally "died" to ourself, and became something "other" than ourself; and yet at the same time "found" ourself, as we had never "found" ourself before. What the complex vision seems to reveal to us about this great human experience is that it is an initiation into an "eternal vision," into a "vision of the immortals," into a mood, a temper, a "music of the spheres," wherein the creative mystery of the emotion of love finds its consummation. The peculiar opportunity of an experience of this kind, its temporal "occasion," shall we say, seems to be more often supplied by the intuition, than by any other attribute of the complex vision. Intuition having this power, it is not surprising that many souls should misuse and abuse this great gift. The temptation to allow the intuition to absorb the whole field of consciousness is to certain natures almost irresistible. And yet, when intuition is divorced from the other aspects of the rhythm of life, its tendency towards what might be called "the passion of identity" very easily lapses into a sort of spiritual sensuality, destructive to the creative freedom of the soul. Woe to the artist who falls into the quagmire of unbalanced intuition! It is as if he were drugged with a spiritual lust. To escape from self-loathing, to escape from the odious monotony and the indecent realism of life--what a relief! How desirable to be confronted no longer by that impassable gulf between one's own soul and all other living souls! How desirable to cross the abyss which separates the "something" which is the substance of our being from the "something" which is the substance of the "objective mystery"! And yet, according to the revelation of the complex vision, this "spiritual ecstasy" is a perversion of the true art of life. The true art of life finds in "the vision of the immortals," and in "the vision of the immortals" alone, its real escape from evil. This "passion of identity," offered us by the vice, by the madness of intuition, is not in harmony with the great moments of the soul. Its "identity" is but a gross, mystical, clotted "identity"; and its "heaven" is not the "heaven" of the Christ. If the "ecstasy of identity," as the unbalanced attribute of intuition forces it upon us, were in very truth the purpose of life, how grotesque a thing life would be! It would then be the purpose of life to create personality, only in order to drown it in the impersonal. In other words it would be the purpose of life to create the "higher" in order that it should lose itself in the lower. At its very best this "ecstasy of identity" is the expression of what might be called the "lyrical" element in things. But the secret of life is not lyrical, as many of the prophets have supposed, but dramatic, as all the great artists have shown. For the essence of life is contradiction. And contradiction demands a "for" and an "against," a protagonist and an antagonist. What the revelation of the complex vision discloses is the inherent duality of all things. Pleasure and pain, night and day, man and woman, good and evil, summer and winter, life and death, personality and fate, love and malice, the soul and the objective mystery, these are the threads out of which the texture of existence is woven; and there is no escape from these, except in that eternal "_nothingness_" which itself is the "contradiction" or "opposite" of that "_all_," which it reduces to chaos and annihilation. Thus runs the revelation of the complex vision. This integral soul of ours, made of a stuff which for ever defies analysis; this objective mystery, made of a stuff which for ever defies analysis; these two things perpetually confront one another in a struggle that only annihilation can end. The vision of the eternal implies the passing of the transitory. For what cannot cease from being beautiful has no real beauty; and what cannot cease from being true has no real truth. The art of life according to the revelation of the complex vision, consists in giving to the transitory the form of the eternal. It is the art of creating a rhythm, a music, a harmony, so passionate and yet so calm, that the mere fact of having once or twice attained it is sufficient "to redeem all sorrows." The assumption that death ends it all, is an assumption which the very nature of love calls upon us to make; for, if we did not make it make it, something different from love would be the object and purpose of our life. But the revelation of the complex vision, in our supreme moments, discloses to us that love itself is the only justification for life; and therefore, by making the assumption that the soul perishes, we put once and for all out of our thought that formidable revival of love, the idea of personal immortality. For the idea of personal immortality, like the idea of an Absolute God, is a projection of the aboriginal "inert" malice. It must be remembered that the revelation of the complex vision, by laying stress upon the creative energy of the soul in its grappling with the objective mystery, implies an element of _indeterminism_, or free choice, in regard to the ultimate nature of the world. Man, in a very profound sense, perpetually creates the world according to his will and desire. Nor can he ever know at what point, in the struggle between personality and destiny, the latter is bound to win. Such a point may _seem_ to be reached; until some astounding "act of faith" on the part of the soul flings that "point" into a yet further remoteness. And this creative power in the soul of man may apply in ways which at present our own race has hardly dared to contemplate. It may apply, for instance, to the idea of personal immortality. Personal immortality may be a thing which the soul, by a concentrated act of creative will, can secure for itself, or can reject for itself. It may be, if we take the whole conscious and subconscious purpose of a man's life, a _matter of choice_. But when a man makes a choice of such a kind, when a man concentrates his energy upon surviving the death of his body, he is deliberately selecting a "lower" purpose for his life in place of a "higher." In other words, instead of concentrating his will upon the evocation of the emotion of love, he is concentrating his will upon self-realization or self-continuance. What he is really doing is even worse than this. For since what we call "emotion" is an actual projection into the matrix of the objective mystery, of the very substance and stuff of the soul, when the will thus concentrates upon personal immortality, it takes the very substance of the soul and perverts it to the satisfaction of inert malice. In other words it actually transforms the stuff of the soul from its positive to its negative chemistry, and produces a relative victory of malice over love. The soul's desires for personal immortality is one of the aspects of the soul's "possessive" instinct. The soul desires to "possess" itself--itself as it exactly is, itself in its precise and complete "status quo"--without interruption for ever. But love has a very different desire from this. Love is not concerned with time at all-- for time has a "future"; and any contemplation of a "future" implies the activity of something in the soul which is different from love, implies something which is concerned with outward events and occurrences and chances. But love is not concerned with outward events, whether past or future. Love desires eternity and eternity alone. Or rather it does not "desire" eternity. It _is_ eternity. It is an eternal Now, in which what _will_ happen and what _has_ happened are irrelevant and unimportant. All this offers us an intelligible explanation of a very bewildering phenomenon in human life. I mean the instinctive disgust experienced by the aesthetic sense when men, who otherwise seem gentle and good, display an undue and unmeasured agitation about the fate of their souls. Love never so much as even considers the question of the fate of the soul. Love finds, in the mere act of loving, a happiness so profound that all such problems seem tiresome and insignificant. The purpose of life is to attain the rhythmic ecstasy of all love's intrinsic potentialities. This desire for personal immortality is not one of love's intrinsic potentialities. When a human soul has lost by death the one person it has loved, the strength of its love is measured by the greater or less emphasis it places upon the problem of the lost one's "survival." The disgust which the aesthetic sense experiences when it encounters a certain sort of mystical and psychic agitation over the question as to whether the lost one "lives still somewhere" is a disgust based upon our instinctive knowledge that this particular kind of inquiry would never occur to a supreme and self-forgetful love. For this enquiry, this agitation, this dabbling in "psychic evidences," is a projection of the baser nature of the soul; is, in fact, a projection of the "possessive instinct," which is only another name for the original inert malice. In the "ave atque vale" of the Roman poet, there is much more of the absolute quality of great love than in all these psychic dabblings. For in the austere reserve of that passionate cry there is the ultimate acceptance, by Love itself, of the tragedy of having lived and loved at all. There is an acceptance of that aspect of the "vision of the immortals" which implies that the possessive instinct has no part or lot in the eternal. The inhuman cruelties which have been practised by otherwise "good" men under the motive of "saving" other people's souls, and the inhuman cruelties which have been practised by otherwise "good" men under the motive of saving their own souls, have, each of them, the same evil origin. Love sweeps aside, in one great wave of its own nature, all these doubts and ambiguities. It lifts the object of its love into its own eternity; and in its own eternity the ultimate tragedy of personal separation is but one chord of its unbroken rhythm. The tragedy of personal separation is not a thing which love realizes for the first time when it loses the object of its love. It is a thing which is of the very nature of the eternity in which love habitually dwells. For the eternity in which love habitually dwells is its vision of the tragedy of all life. This, then, is the original revelation of the complex vision. The soul is confronted by an ultimate duality which extends through the whole mass of its impressions. And because this duality extends through every aspect of the soul's universe and can be changed and transformed by the soul's will, it is inevitable that what the world has hitherto named "philosophy" and has regarded as the effort of "getting hold" of a reality which exists already, should be named by the complex vision the "art of life" and should be regarded as the effort of reducing to harmony the unruly impulses and energies which perpetually transform and change the world. CHAPTER V. THE ULTIMATE DUALITY What we are really, all of us, in search of, whether we know it or not, is some concrete and definite symbol of life and the "object" of life which shall gather up into one living image all the broken, thwarted, devious, and discordant impressions which make up our experience. What we crave is something that shall, in some permanent form and yet in a form that can grow and enrich itself, represent and embody the whole circle of the joy and pain of existence. What we crave is something into which we can throw our personal joys and sorrows, our individual sensations and ideas, and know of a certainty that thrown into that reservoir, they will blend with all the joys and sorrows of all the dead and all the living. Such a symbol in order to give us what we need must represent the ultimate reach of insight to which humanity has attained. It must be something that, once having come into existence, remains independent of our momentary subjective fancies and our passing moods. It must be something of clearer outlines and more definite lineaments than those vague indistinct ecstasies, half-physiological and half-psychic, which the isolated intuition brings us. Such a symbol must represent the concentrated struggle of the human soul with the bitterness of fate and the cruelty of fate, its long struggle with the deadly malice in itself and the deadly malice in nature. There is only one symbol which serves this purpose; a symbol which has already by the slow process of anonymous creation and discovery established itself in the world. I mean the symbol of the figure of Christ. This symbol would not have sufficed to satisfy the craving of which I speak if it were only a "discovery" of humanity. The "God-man" may be "discovered" in nature; but the "Man-god" must be "created" by man. We find ourselves approaching this symbol from many points of view, but the point of view which especially concerns us is to note how it covers the whole field of human experience. In this symbol the ultimate duality receives its "eternal form" and becomes an everlasting standard or pattern of what is most natural and most rhythmic. As I advance in my analysis of the relation of the ultimate duality to this symbolic figure of Christ, it becomes necessary to review once more, in clear and concise order, the various stages of thought by means of which I prove the necessity of some sort of universal symbol, and the necessity of moulding this symbol to fit the drama of One ultimate duality. A summary of the stages of thought through which we have already passed will thus be inevitable; but it will be a summary of the situation from the view-point of a different angle. Philosophy then is an attempt to articulate more vividly the nature of reality than such "reality" can get itself articulated in the confused pell-mell of ordinary experience. The unfortunate thing is that in this process of articulating reality philosophy tends to create an artificial world of its own, which in the end gets so far away from reality that its conclusions when they are confronted with the pell-mell of ordinary experience appear remote, strange, fantastic, arbitrary, and even laughable. This philosophical tendency to create an artificial world which when confronted with the real world appears strange and remote is due to the fact that philosophers, instead of using as their instrument of research the entire complex vision, use first one and then another of its isolated attributes. But there must come moments when, in the analysis of so intricate and elaborate a thing as "reality" by means of so intricate and elaborate an instrument, as the complex vision, the most genuine and the least artificial of philosophies must appear to be following a devious and serpentine path. These moments of difficulty and obscurity are not, however--as long as such a philosophy attaches itself closely to "reality" and flows round "reality" like a tide flowing round submerged rocks or liquid metal flowing round the cavities of a mould--a sign that philosophy has deserted reality, but only a sign that the curves and contours and jagged edges of reality are so intricate and involved that only a very fluid element can follow their complicated shape. But these moments of difficulty and obscurity, these vague and impalpable links in the chain, are only to be found in the _process_ by which we arrive at our conclusion. When our conclusion has been once reached it becomes suddenly manifest to us that it has been there, with us, all the while, implicit in our whole argument, the secret and hidden cause why the argument took the form it did rather than any other. The test of any philosophy is not that it should appeal immediately and directly to what is called "common-sense," for common-sense is no better than a crude and premature synthesis of superficial experiences; a synthesis from which the supreme and culminating experiences of a person's life have been excluded. For in our supreme and culminating experiences there is always an element of what might be called the "impossible" or of what must be recognized as a matter of faith or imagination. It is therefore quite to be expected that the conclusions of a philosophy like the philosophy of the complex vision, which derives its authority from the exceptional and supreme experiences of all souls, should strike us in our moments of "practical common-sense" as foolish, impossible, ridiculous and even insane. All desperate and formidable efforts towards creation have struck and will strike the mood of "practical common-sense" as ridiculous and insane. This is true of every creative idea that has ever emanated from the soul of man. For the mood of "practical common-sense" is a projection of the baser instinct of self-preservation and is penetrated through and through with that power of inert malice which itself might be called the instinct of self-preservation of the enemy of life. "Practical common-sense" is the name we give to that superficial synthesis of our baser self-preservative instincts, which, when it is reinforced and inspired by "the will of malice" out of the evil depths of the soul, is the most deadly of all antagonists of new life. We need suffer, therefore, no surprise or pain if we find the conclusions of the philosophy of the complex vision ridiculous and "impossible" to our mood of practical common-sense. If on the contrary they did not seem insane and foolish to such a mood we might well be profoundly suspicious of them. For although there are very few certainties in this world, one thing at least is certain, namely that for any truth or reality to satisfy the creative spirit in us it must present itself as something dangerous, destructive, ridiculous and insane to that instinct in us which resists creation. But although "the appeal to common-sense" is no test of the truth of a philosophy, since common-sense is precisely the thing in us which has a malicious hostility to the creative spirit, yet no philosophy can afford to disregard an appeal to actual experience as long as actual experience includes the rare moments of our life as well as all the rest. Here is indeed a true and authentic test of philosophic validity. If we take our philosophical conclusions, so to speak, in our hands, and plunge with them into the very depths of actual experience, do they grow more organic, more palpable and more firm, or do they melt away into the flowing waters? Who is not able to recall the distress of bitter disillusionment which has followed the collapse of some plausible system of "sweet reasonableness" under the granite-like impact of a rock of reality which has knocked the bottom out of it and left it a derelict upon the waves? This collapse of an ordered and reasonable system under the impact of some atrocious projection of "crass casuality" is a proof that if a philosophy has not got in it some "iron" of its own, if it has not got in it something formidable and unfathomable, something that can destroy as well as create, it is not of much avail against the winds and storms of destiny. For a philosophy to be a true representation of reality, for it to be that reality itself, become conscious and articulate, it is necessary that it should prove most vivid and actual at those supreme moments when the soul of man is driven to the ultimate wall and is at the breaking-point. The truth of a philosophy is not to be tested by what we feel about it in moods of practical common-sense; for in these moods we have, for some superficial reason, suppressed more than half of the attributes of our soul. The truth of a philosophy can only be tested in those moments when the soul, driven to the wall, gathers itself together for one supreme effort. But there is, even in less stark and drastic hours, an available test of a sound and organic philosophy which must not be forgotten. I refer to its capacity for being vividly and emphatically summed up and embodied in some concrete image or symbol. If a philosophy is so rationalistic that it refuses to lend itself to a definite and concrete expression we are justified in being more than suspicious of it. And we are suspicious of it not because its lack of simplicity makes it intricate and elaborate, for "reality" is intricate and elaborate; but because its inability to find expression for its intricacy in any concrete symbol is a proof that it is too simple. For the remote conclusions of a purely logical and rationalistic philosophy are made to appear much less simple than they really are by reason of their use of remote technical terms. What the soul demands from philosophy is not simplicity but complexity, for the soul itself is the most complex thing we know. The thin, rigid, artificial outlines of purely rationalistic systems can never be expressed in ritual or symbol or drama, not because they are too intricate, but because they are not intricate enough. A genuine symbol, or ritualistic image, is a concrete living organic thing carrying all manner of magical and subtle associations. It is an expression of reality which comes much nearer to reality than any rationalistic system can possibly do. A genuine symbolic or ritualistic image is a concrete expression of the complexity of life. It has the creative and destructive power of life. It has the formidable mysteriousness of life, and with all this it has the clear-cut directness of life's terrible and exquisite tangibility. When suddenly confronted, then, in the mid-stream of life, by the necessity of expressing the starting-point, which is also the conclusion, of the philosophy of the complex vision, what synthetic image or symbol or ritualistic word are we to use in order to sum up its concrete reality? The revelation of life, offered to us by the complex vision, is, as we have seen, no very simple or logical affair. We axe left with the spectacle of innumerable "souls," human, sub-human and super-human, held together by some indefinable "medium" which enables them to communicate with one another. Each one of these "souls" at once creates and discovers its own individual "universe" and then by an act of faith assumes that the various "universes" created and discovered by all other souls are identical with its own. That they _are_ identical with its own the soul is led to assume with more and more certainty in proportion as its communion with other souls grows more and more involved. This identity between the various "universes" of alien souls is rendered more secure and more objective by the fact that time and space are found to be essential peculiarities of all of them alike. For since time and space are found to enter into the original character of all these "universes," it becomes a natural and legitimate conclusion that all these "universes" are in reality the same "universe." We are left, then, with the spectacle of innumerable souls confronting a "universe" which in their interaction with one another they have half-created and half-discovered. There is no escape from the implication of this phrase "half-discovered." The creative activity of the complex vision perpetually modifies, clarifies and moulds the mystery which surrounds it; but that there is an objective mystery surrounding it, of which time and space are permanent aspects, cannot be denied. The pure reason's peculiar power of thinking time and space away, or of lodging itself outside of time and space, is an abstraction which leads us out of the sphere of reality; because, in its resultant conception, it omits the activity of the other attributes of the complex vision. The complex vision reveals to us, therefore, three aspects of objective mystery. It reveals to us in the first place the presence of an objective "something" outside the soul, which the soul by its various energies moulds and clarifies and shapes. This is that "something" which the soul at one and the same moment "half-discovers" and "half-creates." It reveals to us, in the second place, the presence of an indefinable objective "something" which is the medium that makes possible the communion of one soul with another and with "the invisible companions." This is the medium which holds all these separate personalities together while each of them half-creates and half-discovers his own "universe." In the third place it reveals to us the presence, in each individual soul, of a sort of "substratum of the soul" or something beyond analysis which is the "vanishing point of sensation" and the vortex-point or fusion-point where the movement which we call "matter" loses itself in the movement which we call "mind." In all these three aspects of objective mystery, revealed to us by the united activities of the complex vision, we are compelled, as has been shown, to use the vague and obscure word "something." We are compelled to apply this unilluminating and tantalizing word to all these three aspects of "objective mystery," because no other word really covers the complex vision's actual experience. The soul recognizes that there is "something" outside itself which is the "clay" upon which its energy works in creating its "universe," but it cannot know anything about this "something" except that it is "there"; because, directly the soul discovers it, it inevitably moulds it and recreates it. There is not one minutest division of time between this "discovery" and this "creation"; so all that one can say is that the resultant objective "universe" is half-created and half-discovered; and that whatever this mysterious "something" may be, apart from the complex vision, it at any rate has the peculiarity of being forced to submit to the complex vision's creative energy. But not only are we compelled to apply the provoking and unilluminating word "something" to each of these three aspects of objective mystery which the complex vision reveals; we are also compelled to assume that each one of these is dominated by time and space. This implication of "time and space" is necessitated in a different way in each of these three aspects of what was formerly called "matter." In the first aspect of the thing we have time and space as essential characteristics of all the various "universes," reduced by an act of faith to one "universe," of the souls which fill the world. In the second aspect of it we have time and space as essential characteristics of that indefinable "medium" which holds all these souls together, and which by holding them together makes it easier to regard their separate "universes" as "one universe," since they find their ground or base in one universal "medium." In the third aspect of it we have time and space as essential characteristics of that "substratum of the soul" which is the vanishing-point of sensation and the fusion-point of "mind" and "matter." We are thus inevitably led to a further conclusion; namely, that all these three aspects of objective reality, since they are all dominated by time and space, are all dominated by the _same_ "time" and the same "space." And since it is unthinkable that three coexistent forms of objective reality should be all dominated by the same time and space and remain absolutely distinct from one another, it becomes evident that these three forms of objective mystery, these three indefinable "somethings," are not separate from one another but are in continual contact with one another. Thus the fact that all these three aspects of objective reality are under the domination of the same time and space is a further confirmation of the truth which we have already assumed by an act of faith, namely that all the various "universes," half-discovered and half-created by all the souls in the world, are in reality "one universe." The real active and objective existence of this "one universe" is made still more sure and is removed still further from all possibility of "illusion," by the fact that we are forced to regard it as being not only "our" universe but the universe also of those "invisible companions" whose vision half-creates it and half-discovers it, even as our own vision does. It is true that to certain types of mind, for whom the definite recognition of mystery is repugnant, it must seem absurd and ridiculous to be driven to the acknowledgment of a thing's existence, while at the same time we have to confess complete inability to predicate anything at all about the thing except that it exists. It must seem to such minds still more absurd and ridiculous that we should be driven to recognize no less than three aspects of this mysterious "something." But since they are included in the same time and space, and since, consequently, they are intimately connected with one another, it becomes inevitable that we should take the yet further step and regard them as three separate aspects of one and the same mystery. Thus we are once more confronted with the inescapable trinitarian nature of the system of things; and just as we have three ultimate aspects of reality in the monistic truth of "the one time and space," in the pluralistic truth of the innumerable company of living souls and the dualistic truth of the contradictory nature of all existence; so we have three further ultimate aspects of reality, in the incomprehensible "something" which holds all souls together; in the incomprehensible "something" out of which all souls create the universe; and in the incomprehensible "something" which forms the substratum both of the souls of the invisible "companions of men" and of the soul of every individual thing. The supreme unity, therefore, in this complicated world, thus revealed to us by the activity of the complex vision is the unity of time and space. This unity is eternally reborn and eternally re-discovered every time any living personality contemplates the system of things. And since "the sons of the universe" must be regarded as continually contemplating the system of things, struggling with it, moulding it, and changing it, according to their pre-existent ideal, we are compelled to assume that time and space are eternal aspects of reality and that their eternal necessity gives the system of things its supreme unity. No isolated speculation of the logical reason, functioning apart from the other attributes of the complex vision, can undermine this supreme unity of time and space. The "a priori unity of apperception" is an unreality compared with this reality. The all-embracing cosmic "monad," contemplating itself as its eternal object, is an unreality compared with this reality. We are left with a pluralistic world of individual souls, finding their pattern and their ideal in the vision of the "immortal gods" and perpetually rediscovering and recreating together "a universe" which like themselves is dominated by time and space and which like themselves is for ever divided against itself in an eternal and unfathomable duality. The ultimate truth of the system of things according to the revelation of the complex vision is thus found to consist in the mystery of personality confronting "something" which _seems_ impersonal. Over both these things, over the personal soul and over the primordial "clay" or "energy" or "movement" or "matter" out of which the personal soul creates its "universe," time and space are dominant. But since we can predicate nothing of this original "plasticity" except that it is "plastic" and that time and space rule over it, it is in a strict sense illegitimate to say that this primordial "clay" or "world stuff" is in itself divided into a duality. We know nothing, and can never know anything about it, beyond the bare fact of its existence. Its duality comes from the duality in us. It is we who create the contradiction upon which its life depends. It is from the unfathomable duality in the soul of the "companions of men" that the universe is brought forth. The ultimate duality which perpetually creates the world is the ultimate duality in all living souls and in the souls of "the sons of the universe." But although it is we ourselves who in the primal act of envisaging the world endow it with this duality, it would be an untrue statement to say that this duality in the material universe is an "illusion." It is no more an illusion than the objective material world itself is an illusion. Both are created by the inter-action between the mystery of personality and the mystery of what seems the impersonal. Thus it remains perfectly true that what we sometimes call "brute matter" possesses an element of malignant inertness and malicious resistance to the power of creation. This malice of the impersonal, this malignant inertness of "matter," is an ultimate fact; and is not less a fact because it depends upon the existence of the same malice and the same inert resistance in our own souls. Nor are we able to escape from the conclusion that this malignant element in the indefinable "world-stuff" exists independently of any human soul. It must be thought of as dependent upon the same duality in the souls of "the sons of the universe" as that which exists in the souls of men. For although the primordial ideas of truth and nobility and beauty, brought together by the emotion of love, are realized in the "gods" with an incredible and immortal intensity, yet the souls of the "gods" could not be souls at all if they were not subject to the same duality as that which struggles within ourselves. It follows from this that we are forced to recognize the presence of a potentiality of evil or malice in the souls of "the sons of the universe." But although we cannot escape from the conclusion that evil or malice exists in the souls of the immortals as in all human souls, yet in their souls this evil or malice must be regarded as perpetually overcome by the energy of the power of love. This overcoming of malice by the power of love, or of evil by "good," in the souls of "the sons of the universe," must not be regarded as a thing once for all accomplished, but as a thing eternally re-attained as the result of an unceasing struggle, a struggle so desperate, so passionate and so unfathomable, that it surpasses all effort of the mind to realize or comprehend it. It must not, moreover, be forgotten that what the complex vision reveals about this eternal struggle between love and malice in the souls of "the sons of the universe" and in the souls of all living things, is not that love and malice are vague independent elemental "forces" which obsess or possess or function _through_ the soul which is their arena, but rather that they themselves _are_ the very stuff and texture and essence of the individual soul itself. Their duality is unfathomable because the soul is unfathomable. The struggle between them is unfathomable because the struggle between them is nothing less than the intrinsic nature of the soul. The soul is unthinkable without this unfathomable struggle in its inherent being between love and malice or between life and what resists life. We are therefore justified in saying that "the universe" is created by the perpetual struggle between love and malice or between life and what resists life. But when we say this we must remember that this is only true because "the universe" is half-discovered and half-created by the souls of "the sons of the universe" and by the souls of all living things which fill the universe. This unfathomable duality which perpetually re-creates Nature, does not exist in Nature apart from living things, although it does exist in nature apart from any individual living thing. All those aspects of the objective universe which we usually call "inanimate," such as earth, water, air, fire, ether, electricity, energy, movement, matter and the like, including the stellar and planetary bodies and the chemical medium, whatever it may be, which unites them, must be regarded as sharing, in some inscrutable way, in this unfathomable struggle. We are unable to escape from this conception of them, as thus sharing in this struggle, because they are themselves the creation and discovery of the complex vision of the soul; and the soul is, as we have seen, dependent for its every existence upon this struggle. In the same way, all those other aspects of the universe which are "animate" but sub-human, such as grass, moss, lichen, plants, sea-weed, trees, fish, birds, animals and the like, must be regarded as sharing in a still more intimate sense in this unfathomable struggle. This conception has a double element of truth. For not only do these things depend for their form and shape and reality upon the complex vision of the soul which contemplates them; but they are themselves, since they are things endowed with life, possessed of some measure or degree of the complex vision. And if the souls of men and the Souls of the "sons of the universe" are inextricably made up of the very stuff of this unfathomable struggle, between life and what resists life, we cannot escape from the conclusion that the souls of plants and birds and animals and all other living things are inextricably made up of the stuff of the same unfathomable struggle. For where there is life there must be a soul possessed of life. Life, apart from some soul possessed with life, is an abstraction of the logical reason and a phantom of no more genuine reality than the "a priori unity of apperception" or "the universal self-conscious monad." What we call reality, or the truth of the system of things, is nothing less than an innumerable company of personalities confronting an objective mystery; and while we are driven to regard the "inanimate," such as earth and air and water and fire, as the bodily expressions of certain living souls, so are we much more forcibly driven to regard the "animate," wherever it is found, as implying the existence of some measure of personality and some degree of consciousness. Life, apart from a soul possessing life, is not life at all. It is an abstraction of the logical reason which we cannot appropriate to our instinct or imagination. A vague phrase, like the phrase "life-force," conveys to us whose medium of research is the complex vision, simply no intelligible meaning at all. It is on a par with the "over-soul"; and, to the philosophy of the complex vision, both the "life-force" and the "over-soul" are vague, materialistic, metaphorical expressions which do not attain to the dignity of a legitimate symbolic image. They do not attain to this, because a legitimate symbolic image must appeal to the imagination and the aesthetic sense by the possession of something concrete and intelligible. Any individual personal soul is concrete and intelligible. The personal souls of "the sons of the universe" are concrete and intelligible. But the "over-soul" and the "life-force" are neither concrete nor intelligible and therefore cannot be regarded as legitimate symbols. One of the most important aspects of the method of philosophical enquiry which the philosophy of the complex vision adopts is this use of legitimate symbolic images in place of illegitimate metaphorical images. This use of concrete, tangible, intelligible images is a thing which has to pay its price. And the price which it has to pay is the price of appearing childish, absurd and ridiculous to the type of mind which advocates the exclusive use of the logical reason as the sole instrument of philosophical research. This price of appearing naive, childish and ridiculous has to be paid shamelessly and in full. The type of mind which exacts this price, which demands in fact that the concrete intelligible symbols of the philosophy of the complex vision should be regarded as childish and ridiculous, is precisely the type of mind for whom "truth" is a smoothly evolutionary affair, an affair of steady "progress," and for whom, therefore, the mere fact of an idea being "a modern idea" implies that it is "true" and the mere fact of an idea being a classical idea or a mediaeval idea implies that it is crude and inadequate if not completely "false." To the philosophy of the complex vision "truth" does not present itself as an affair of smooth and steady historical evolution but as something quite different from this--as a work of art, in fact, dependent upon the struggle of the individual soul with itself, and upon the struggle of "the souls of the sons of the universe" with themselves. And although the struggle of the souls of "the sons of the universe" towards a fuller clarifying of the mystery of life must be regarded as having its concrete tangible history in time and space, yet this history is not at all synonymous with what is usually called "progress." An individual human soul, the apex-thought of whose complex vision has attained an extraordinary and unusual rhythm, must be regarded as having approached nearer to the vision of "the sons of the universe" although such an one may have lived in the days of the patriarchs or in the Greek days or in the days of mediaevalism or of the renaissance, than any modern rationalistic thinker who is obsessed by "the latest tendencies of modern thought." The souls of "the immortals" must certainly be regarded as developing and changing and as constantly advancing towards the realization of their hope and premonition. But this "advance" is also, as we have seen, in the profoundest sense a "return," because it is a movement towards an idea which already is implicit and latent. And in the presence of this "advance," which is also a "return," all historic ages of individual human souls are equal and co-existent. All real symbols are "true," wherever and whenever they are invoked, because all real symbols are the expression of that rare unity of the complex vision which is man's deepest approximation to the mystery of life. The symbol of the cross, for instance, has far more truth in it than any vague metaphorical expression such as the "over-soul." The symbolic ritual of the Mass, for instance, has far more truth in it than any metaphorical expression such as the "life-force." And although both the Cross and the Mass are inadequate and imperfect symbols with regard to the vision of "the sons of the universe," because they are associated with the idea of an historic incarnation, yet in comparison with any modern rationalistic or chemical metaphor they are supremely true. The philosophy of the complex vision, just because it is the philosophy of personality, must inevitably use images which appear to the rationalistic mind as naive and childish and ridiculous. But the philosophy of the complex vision prefers to express itself in terms which are concrete, tangible and intelligible, rather than in terms which are no more than vague projections of phantom logic abstracted from the concrete activity of real personality. In completing this general picture of the starting point of the philosophy of the complex vision there is one further implication which ought to be brought fully into the light. I refer to a doctrine which certain ancient and mediaeval thinkers adopted, and which must always be constantly re-appearing in human thought because it is an inevitable projection of the human conscience when the human conscience functions in isolation and in disregard of the other attributes. I mean the doctrine of the essentially evil, character of that phenomenon which was formerly called "matter" but which I prefer to call the objective mystery. According to this doctrine--which might be called the eternal heresy of puritanism--this objective mystery, this world-stuff, this eternal "energy" or "movement," this "flesh and blood" through which the soul expresses itself and of which the physical body is made, is "evil"; and the opposite of this, that is to say "mind" or "thought" or "consciousness" or "spirit" is alone "good." According to this doctrine the world is a struggle between "the spirit" which is entirely good and "the flesh" which is entirely evil. To the philosophy of the complex vision this doctrine appears false and misleading. It detects in this doctrine, as I have hinted, an attempt of the conscience to arrogate to itself the whole field of experience and to negate all the other attributes, especially emotion and the aesthetic sense. Such a doctrine negates the whole activity of the complex vision because it assumes the independent existence of "flesh and blood" as opposed to "mind." But "flesh and blood" is a thing which has no existence apart from "mind," because it is a thing "half-created" as well as "half-discovered" by "mind." It negates the aesthetic sense because the aesthetic sense requires the existence of "the body" or of "flesh and blood" or of what we call "matter," and cannot exert its activity without the reality of this thing. It negates emotion, because the emotion of love demands, for its full satisfaction, nothing less than "the eternal idea of flesh and blood." And since love demands the "eternal idea of flesh and blood," "flesh and blood" cannot be "evil." This doctrine of the evil nature of "matter" is obviously a perversion of what the complex vision reveals to us about the eternal duality. According to this doctrine, which I call the puritan heresy, the duality resolves itself into a struggle between the spirit and the flesh. But according to the revelation of the complex vision the true duality is quite different from this. In the true duality there is an evil aspect of "matter" and also an evil aspect of "mind." In the true duality "spirit" is by no means necessarily good. For since the true duality lies in the depths of the soul itself, what we call "spirit" must very often be evil. According to the revelation of the complex vision, evil or malice is a positive force, of malignant inertness, resisting the power of creation or of love. It is, as we have seen, the primordial or chaotic weight which opposes itself to life. But "flesh and blood" or any other definite form of "matter" has already in large measure submitted to the energy of creation and is therefore both "good" and "evil." That original shapeless "clay" or "objective mystery" out of which the complex vision creates the universe certainly cannot be regarded as "evil," for we can never know anything at all about it except that it exists and that it lends itself to the creative energy of the complex vision. And in so far as it lends itself to the creative energy of the complex vision it certainly cannot be regarded as entirely evil, but must obviously be both good and evil; even as the complex vision itself, being the vision of the soul, is both good and evil. According to the philosophy of the complex vision then, what we call "mind" is both good and evil and what we call "matter" being intimately dependent upon "mind" is both good and evil. We are forced, therefore, to recognize the existence of both spiritual "evil" and spiritual "good" in the unfathomable depths of the soul. But just because personality is itself a relative triumph of good over evil it is possible to conceive of the existence of a personality in whom evil is perpetually overcome by good, while it is impossible to conceive of a personality in whom good is _perpetually_ overcome by evil. In other words, all personalities are relatively good; and some personalities namely those of "the immortals" are, as far as we are concerned, absolutely good. All personalities including even the personalities of "the immortals" have evil in them, but no personality can be the embodiment of evil, in the sense in which "the sons of the universe" are the embodiment of good. I thus reach the conclusion of this complicated summary of the nature of the ultimate duality and the necessity of finding a clear and definite symbol for it. CHAPTER VI. THE ULTIMATE IDEAS It now becomes necessary to consider in greater detail those primary human conceptions of truth, beauty, and goodness, which I have already referred to as the soul's "ultimate ideas." Let no one think that any magical waving of the wand of modern psychology can explain away these universal human experience. They may be named by different appellations; but considering the enormous weight of historical tradition behind these names it would seem absurd and pedantic to attempt to re-baptize them at this late hour. Human nature, in its essentials, has undergone no material change since we have any record of it; and to use any other word than "beauty" for what we mean by beauty, or than "goodness" for what we mean by goodness, would seem a mere superstition of originality. The interpretation offered, in what follows, of the existence of these experiences is sufficiently startling to require no assistance from novelty of phrasing to give it interest and poignancy. That our souls are actually able to touch, in the darkness which surrounds us, the souls of super-human beings, and that the vision of such super-human beings is the "eternal vision" wherein the mystery of love is consummated, is a doctrine of such staggering implications that it seems wise, in making our way towards it, to use the simplest human words and to avoid any "stylistic" shocks. It seems advisable also to advance with scrupulous leisureliness in this formidable matter and at certain intervals to turn round as it were, and survey the path by which we have come. The existence of super-human beings, immeasurably superior to man, is in itself a harmless and natural speculation. It is only when it presents itself as a necessary link in philosophical discussion that it appears startling. And the mere fact that it does appear startling when introduced into philosophy shows how, lamentably philosophy has got itself imprisoned in dull, mechanical, mathematical formulae; in formulae so arid and so divorced from life, that the conception of personality, applied to man or to the gods, seems to us as exciting as an incredible fairy story when brought into relation with them. As the souls of men, then, each with its own complex vision, move side by side along the way, or across one another's path, they are driven by the necessity of things to exchange impressions with regard to the nature of life. In their communications with one another they become aware of the presence, at the back of their consciousness, of an invisible standard of truth, of beauty, of goodness. It is from this standard of beauty and truth and goodness, from this dream, this vision, this hope, that all these souls seem to themselves to draw their motive of movement. But though they seem to themselves to be "moving" into an indetermined future still to be created by their wills, they also seem to themselves to be "returning" towards the discovery of that invisible standard of beauty, truth and goodness, which has as their motive-impulse been with them from the beginning. This implicit standard, this invisible pattern and test and arbitrament of all philosophizing, is what I call "the vision of the immortals." Some minds, both philosophical and religious, seem driven to think of this invisible pattern, this standard of truth and beauty, as the _parent_ of the universe rather than as its offspring. I cannot bring myself to take this view because of the fact that the ultimate revelation of the world as presented, to man's complex vision is essential and unfathomably _dualistic_. A "parent" of the universe can only be thought of as a stopping-place of all thought. He can only be _imagined_--for strictly speaking he cannot be thought of at all--as some unutterable mystery out of which the universe originally sprang. From this unutterable mystery, to which we have no right to attribute either a monistic or a pluralistic character, we may, I suppose, imagine to emerge a perpetual torrent of duality. Towards this unutterable mystery, about which even to say "it is" seems to be saying too much, it is impossible for the complex vision to have any attitude at all. It can neither love it nor hate it. It can neither reject it nor accept it. It can neither worship it nor revolt against it. It is only _imaginable_ in the illegitimate sense of metaphor and analogy. It is simply the stopping-place of the complex vision; that stopping-place beyond which anything is possible and nothing is thinkable. This thing, which is at once everything and nothing, this thing which is _no thing_ but only the unutterable limit where all things pass beyond thought, cannot be accepted by the complex vision as the parent of the universe. The universe has therefore no parent, no origin, no cause, no creator. Eternally it re-creates itself and eternally it divides itself into that ultimate duality which makes creation possible. That monistic tendency of human thought, which is itself a necessary projection of the monistic reality of the individual soul, cannot, except by an arbitrary act of faith, resolve this ultimate duality into unity. Such a primordial "act of faith" it can and must make with regard to the objective reality of other souls. But such an "act of faith" is not demanded with regard to the unutterable mystery behind the universe. We have not, strictly speaking, even the right to use the expression "an unutterable mystery." All we have a right to do is just to titter the final judgment--"beyond this limit neither thought nor imagination can pass." What the complex vision definitely denies to us, therefore, is the right to regard this thing, which is _no_ thing, with any emotion at all. The expression "unutterable mystery" is a misleading one because it appears to justify the emotions of awe and reverence. We have no right to regard this thin simulacrum, this mathematical formula, this stopping-place of thought, with any feelings of awe or reverence. We have not even a right to regard it with humorous contempt; for, being nothing at all, it is beneath contempt. Humanity has a right to indulge in that peculiar emotional attitude which is called "worship" towards either side of the ultimate duality. It has a right to worship, if it pleases--though to do so several attitudes of the complex vision must be outraged and suppressed--the resistant power of malice. It has even a right to worship the universe, that turbulent arena of these primal antagonists. What it has no right to worship is the "unutterable mystery" _behind the universe_; for the simple reason that the universe is unfathomable. Human thought has its stopping-place. The universe is unfathomable. Human thought has a definite limit. The universe has no limit. The universe is "unutterably mysterious"; and so also is the human soul; but as far as the soul's complex vision is concerned there can be no reality "behind the appearances of things" except the reality of the soul itself. Thus there is no "parent" of man and of the universe. But "the immortal companions" of men are implied from man's most intimate experiences of life. For if there were no invisible watchers, no arbiters, no standards, no tests, no patterns, no ideals; our complex vision, in regard to certain basic attributes, would be refuted and negated. Every soul which exists must be thought of as possessing the attribute of "emotion" with its duality of love and malice, the attribute of "taste" with its duality of beauty and hideousness, of conscience with its duality of good and evil, and the attribute of "reason" with its duality of the true and the false. Every one of these basic attributes would be reduced to a suicidal confusion of absolute sceptical subjectivity if it could not have faith in some objective reality to which it can appeal. Such an appeal, to such an objective reality, it does, as a matter of fact, continually make, whether it makes it consciously or sub-consciously. And just as the soul's basic attributes of emotion, taste, conscience, and reason indicate an implicit faith in the objective reality of the ideas of beauty and nobility and truth; so the soul's basic attribute of self-consciousness indicates an implicit demand that the objective reality of these ideas should be united and embodied in actual living and self-conscious "souls" external to other "souls." The most dangerous mistake we can make, and the most deadly in its implications, is to reduce these "companions of men" to a monistic unity and to make this unity what the metaphysicians call "absolute" in its embodiment of these ultimate ideas. In comparison with the fitful and moody subjectivity of our individual conceptions of these ideas the vision of the immortals may be thought of as embodying them absolutely. But in itself it certainly does not embody them absolutely; otherwise the whole movement of life would end. It is unthinkable that it should ever embody them absolutely. For it is in the inherent nature of such a vision that it should be growing, living, inexhaustible. The most withering and deadly of all conceivable dogmas is the dogma that there is such a thing as absolute truth, absolute beauty, absolute good and absolute love. The attraction of such a dogma for the mind of man is undoubtedly due to the spirit of evil or of malice. For nothing offers a more frozen resistance to the creative power than such a faith. Compared with our human visions of these ideas the vision of these "companions of men" must be thought of as relatively complete. And complete it is, with regard to its general synthesis and orientation. But it is not really complete; and can never be so. For when we consider the nature of love alone, it becomes ridiculous to speak of an absolute or complete love. If the love of these "companions of men" became at any moment incapable of a deeper and wider manifestation, at that very moment the whole stream of life would cease, the malice of the adversary would prevail, and nothingness would swallow up the universe. It is because we are compelled to regard the complex vision, including all its basic attributes, as the vision of a personal soul, that it is a false and misleading conception to view these "companions of men" as a mere ideal. An ideal is nothing if not expressed in personality. Subjectively every ideal is the ideal of "some one," an ideal of a conscious, personal, and living entity. Objectively every ideal must be embodied in "some one": and must be a standard, a measure, a rhythm, of various energies synthesized in a living soul. This is really the crux of the whole matter. Vaguely and obscurely do we all feel the pressure of these deep and secret impulses. Profoundly do we feel that these mysterious "ideas," which give life its dramatic intensity, are part of the depths of our own soul and part of the depths of the souls of the immortals. And yet though they are so essentially part of us and part of the universe, they remain vague, obscure, contradictory, confused, inchoate; only gradually assuming coherent substance and form as the "rapport" between man and his invisible companions grows clearer and clearer. We are confronted at this point by one of the most difficult of all dilemmas. If by reason of the fact that we are driven to regard personality as the most real thing in the universe we are compelled toward the act of faith which recognizes one side of the eternal duality of things as embodied in actual living souls, how is it that we are not equally compelled to a similar act of faith in relation to the other side of this duality? In simpler words, how is it that while we are compelled to an act of faith with regard to the existence of powers which embody the spirit of love, we are not compelled to an act of faith with regard to the existence of powers which embody the spirit of malice? How is it that while we have a right to regard the ideas of truth, beauty, goodness as objectively embodied in living personalities we have no right to regard the ideas of falseness, hideousness, evil and malice, as objectively embodied in living personalities? To answer this question it is necessary to define more clearly the essential duality which we discover as the secret of the universe. One side of this duality is the creative power of life, the other side is the resistant power which repels life. The emotion of love is the motive-force of the power of creation, a force which we have to recognize as containing in itself the power of destruction; for destruction is necessary to creation and is inspired by the creative energy. The other side of the eternal duality is not a destructive force, but a resistant force. That is why it is necessary to define the opposite of love, not as hate--but as malice, which is a resistant thing. Thus it becomes clear why it is that we are not driven by the necessity of the situation to any act of faith with regard to the existence of living souls which embody evil and malice. We are not compelled towards this act of faith because the nature of the "other side" of the eternal duality is such that it cannot be embodied, in any complete or objective way, in a living personality. It can and it does appear in every personality that has ever existed. We are compelled to assume that it exists, though in a state of suppression, even in the souls of the immortals. If it did not exist, in some form or other, in the souls of the immortals, the ideas of truth, beauty, and goodness would be absolute in them, and the life of the universe would cease. For the nature of this eternal duality is such that the life of the universe depends upon this unending struggle between what creates and what resists creation. The power that creates must be regarded as embodied in personality, for creation always implies personality. But the power that resists creation--though present in every living soul--cannot be embodied in personality because personality is the highest expression of creation. Every soul born into life must possess the attributes of taste, reason, conscience and emotion. And each of these attributes implies this fundamental duality; being resolvable into a choice between hideousness, falsehood, evil, malice, and the opposites of these. But the soul itself, being a living and personal thing, can never, however deeply it plunges into evil, become the embodiment of evil, because by the mere fact of existing at all it has already defeated evil. Any individual soul may give itself up to malice rather than to love, and may do its utmost to resist the creative power of love. But one thing it cannot do. It cannot become the embodiment of evil, because, by merely being alive, it is the eternal defiance of evil. Personality is the secret of the universe. The universe exists by reason of a struggle between what creates and what resists creation. Therefore personality exists by reason of a struggle between what creates and what resists creation. And the existence of personality, however desperate the struggle within itself may be, is a proof that the power of life is stronger than the power which resists life. But we have to consider another and yet deeper dilemma. Since the existence of the universe depends upon the continuance of this unfathomable struggle and since the absolute victory of life over death, of love over malice, of truth over falsehood, of beauty over hideousness and of nobility over ignobility, would mean that the universe would end, are we therefore forced to the conclusion that evil is necessary to the fuller manifestation of good? Undoubtedly we _are_ forced to this conclusion. Not one of these primordial ideas, which find their synthesis in "the invisible companions of men," can be conceived without its opposite. And it is in the process of their unending struggle that the fuller realization of all of them is attained. And this struggle must inevitably assume a double character. It must assume the character of a struggle within the individual soul and of a struggle of the individual soul with other souls and with the universe. Such a struggle must be thought of as continually maintained in the soul of the "invisible companions of men" and maintained there with a depth of dramatic intensity at which we can only guess. Only less false and dangerous than the dogma that the absolute victory of good over evil has already been achieved, is the dogma that these two eternal antagonists are in reality one and the same thing. They are only one and the same thing in the sense that neither is thinkable without the other; and in the sense that they create the universe by their conflict. It is important in a matter as crucial as this matter, concerning "the invisible companions of men," not to advance a step beyond our starting-point till we have apprehended it from several different aspects and have gone over our ground again and again--even as builders of a bridge might test the solidity of their fabric stone by stone and arch by arch. By that "conscience in reason" which never allows us pleasantly to deceive ourselves, we are bound to touch, as it were with our very hands, every piece of stone work and every patch of cement which holds this desperate bridge together over the dark waters. We have not, then, a right to say that every energy of the complex vision depends for its functioning upon the existence of these invisible companions. We have not a right to say--"if there were no such beings these energies could not function; but they do function; therefore there are such beings." What we have a right to say is simply this, that it is an actual experience that when two or more personalities come together and seek to express their various subjective impressions of these ultimate ideas there is always a tacit reference to some objective standard. This objective standard cannot be thought of apart from personalities capable of embodying it. For these ultimate ideas are only real and living when embodied in personality. Apart from personality we are unable to grasp them; although we must recognize that the universe itself is composed of the very stuff of their contention. We have in the first place, then, completely eliminated from our discussion that "inscrutable mystery" behind the universe. In every direction we find the universe unfathomable; and though our power of thought stops abruptly at a certain limit, we have no reason to think that the universe stops there; and we have every reason to think that it continues--together with the unfathomable element in our souls--into impenetrably receding depths. The universe, as we apprehend it, presents itself as a congeries of living souls united by some indefinable medium. These living souls are each possessed of that multiform activity which I have named the complex vision. Among the basic energies of this vision are some which in their functioning imply the pre-existence of certain primordial ideas. These ideas are at once the eternally receding horizon and the eternally receding starting-point--the unfathomable past and the unfathomable future--of this procession of souls. The crux of the whole situation is found in the evasive and tantalizing problem of the real nature of these primordial ideas. Can "truth," can "beauty," can "goodness" be conceived of as existing in the universe apart from any individual soul? They are clearly not completely exhausted or totally revealed by the vision of any individual human soul or of any number of human souls. The sense which we all have when we attempt to exchange our individual feelings with regard to these things is that we are appealing to some invisible standard or pattern which already exists and of which we each apprehend a particular facet or aspect. All human intercourse depends upon this implicit assumption; of which language is the outward proof. The existence of language goes a long way in itself to destroy that isolation of individual souls which in its extreme form would mean the impossibility of any objective truth or beauty or nobility. Language itself is founded upon that original act of faith by which we assume the independent existence of other souls. And the same act of faith which assumes the existence of other souls assumes also that the vision of other souls does not essentially differ from our own vision. Once having got as far as this, the further fact that these other visions do vary considerably, though not essentially, differ from our own leads us by an inevitable, if not a logical, step to the assumption that all our different visions are the imperfect renderings of one vision, wherein the ideas of truth, beauty and nobility exist in a harmonious synthesis. There is no reason why we should think of this objective synthesis of truth, beauty, and goodness as absolute or perfect. Indeed there is every reason why we should think of it as imperfect and relative. But it is imperfect and relative only in its relation to its own dream, its own hope, its own prophecy, its own premonition, its own struggle towards a richer and fuller manifestation. In its relation to our broken, baffled, and subjective visions it is already so complete as to be relatively absolute. To this objective ideal of our aesthetic and emotional values, I have given the name "the vision of the immortals" because we are unable to disassociate it from personality; and because, while the generations of man pass away, this vision does not pass away. Have I, in giving to this natural human ideal, such a formidable name--a name with so many bold and startling implications--been merely tempted into an alluring metaphorical image, or have I been driven to make use of this expression by reason of the intrinsic nature of life itself? I think that the latter of these two alternatives is the true one. The "logic" by which this conclusion is reached differs from the "logic" of the abstract reason in the sense of being the organic, dynamic, and creative "logic" of the complex vision itself, using the very apex-thought of its pyramidal activity in apprehending a mystery which is at once the secret of its own being and the secret of the unfathomable universe into the depths of which it forces its way. The expression, then, "the vision of the immortals" is not a mere pictorial image but is the definite articulation of a profound reality from which there is no escape if certain attributes of the human soul are to be trusted at all. We cannot get rid of this dilemma, one of those dilemmas which offer alternative possibilities so appallingly opposite, that the choice between them seems like a choice between two eternities. Is the vision of these immortals, the existence of which as a standard of all philosophical discussion seems to be implied by the very nature of man's soul, to be regarded or not to be regarded as the vision of real and living personalities? In other words, to put the case once more in its rigid outlines, is that objective vision of truth, beauty, and goodness of which our individual subjective visions are only imperfect representations, the real vision of actual living "gods" or only the projection, upon the evasive medium which holds all human souls together, of such beauty and such truth and such goodness as these souls find that they possess in common? This is the crux of the whole human comedy. This is the throw of the dice between a world without hope and a world with hope. Philosophers are capable of treating this subject with quiet intellectual curiosity; but all living men and women--philosophers included--come, at moments, to a pitiless and adamantine "impasse" where the eternal "two ways" branch off in unfathomable perspective. In our normal and superficial moods we are able to find a plausible excuse for our struggles with ourselves, in a simple acceptance of the ultimate duality. It is enough for us, in these moods, that we have on the one hand a consciousness of "love" and on the other a consciousness of "malice." It is enough for us, in these moods, that we have on the one hand a consciousness of truth and beauty and nobility; and on the other a consciousness of unreality, of hideousness, and of evil. But there come other, deeper, more desperate moods, when, out of intolerable and unspeakable loneliness our soul sinking back into its own depths refuses to be satisfied with a mere recognition of this ultimate duality. At these moments the soul seems to rend and tear at the very roots of this duality. It takes these ideas of beauty and truth and goodness and subjects them to a savage and merciless analysis. It takes the emotion of love and the emotion of malice and tries to force its way behind them. It turns upon itself, in its insane trouble, and seeks to get itself out of its own way and to efface itself, so that "something" beyond itself may flow into its place. At these moments the soul's complex vision is roused to a supreme pitch of rhythmic energy. The apex-thought of its focussed attributes gathers itself together to pierce the mystery. Like a strain of indescribable music the apex-thought rests upon itself and brings each element of its being into harmony with every other. This ultimate harmony of the complex vision may be compared to a music which is so intense that it becomes silence. And in this "silence," wherein the apex-thought becomes at once a creator and a discoverer, the pain and distress of the struggle seems suddenly to disappear and an indescribable happiness flows in upon the soul. At this moment when this consummation is reached the soul's complex vision becomes aware that the ideas of beauty, truth and goodness are not mental abstractions or material qualities or evolutionary by-products, but are the very purpose and meaning of life. It becomes aware that the emotion of love is not a mental abstraction or a psychological accident or a biological necessity but the secret of the whole struggle and the explanation of the whole drama. It becomes aware that this truth, this beauty, this nobility find their unity and harmony in nothing less than in the emotion of love. It becomes aware that these three primordial "ideas" are only varying facets and aspects of one unfathomable secret which is the activity of love. It becomes aware that this activity of love is the creative principle of life itself; that it alone is life, and the force which resists it is the enemy of life. Such, then, is the ultimate reality grasped in its main outlines by the rhythmic energy of the soul's apex-thought when, in its desperate and savage struggle with itself, the complex vision reaches its consummation. And this reality, thus created and thus discovered by the apex-thought of the complex vision, demands and requires that very revelation, towards which we have been moving by so long a road. It requires the revelation, namely, that the emotion of love of which we are conscious in the depths of our being, as an emotion flowing through us and obsessing us, should be conceived of as existing in a far greater completeness in these silent "watchers" and "companions" whom we name "the immortal gods." It requires, therefore, that these immortal ones should be regarded as conscious and living "souls"; for the ultimate reach of the complex vision implies the idea of personality and cannot interpret life except in terms of personality. As I said above, there come moments in all our lives, when, rending and tearing at the very roots of our own existence, we seek to extricate ourselves from ourselves and to get ourselves out of the way of ourselves, as if we were seeking to make room for some deeper personality within us which is ourself and yet not ourself. This is that impersonal element which the aesthetic sense demands in all supreme works of art so that the soul may find at once its realization of itself and its liberation from itself. The "watchers" and "companions" of men must therefore be immortal and living "souls" existing side by side with our human "souls" and side by side with all other "souls," super-human or sub-human, which the universal medium of the world holds together. In arriving at this conclusion which seems to me to be the consummation vouched for and attested by the rhythmic energy of the complex vision, I have refused to allow any particular attribute of this vision, such as the will or the intuition or the conscience, to claim for its isolated discoveries any universal assent. The soul's emotion of love passionately craves for the real existence of these "invisible companions." The soul's emotion of malice displays an abysmal resistance to such a reality. This is naturally a fact that we cannot afford to disregard. But in our final decision in so high and difficult a matter nothing can be allowed to claim an universal assent except the rhythmic activity of the soul's apex-thought in its supreme moments. At this point in our argument it is advisable to glance backward over the way we have come; because the reality of this "eternal vision" depends, more than has as yet been understood, upon our whole attitude to the mystery of personality, and to the place of personality, as the secret of the world. The feeling which we have about the emotion of love, as if it were a thing pouring through us from some unfathomable depth, does not imply that "the invisible companions" are themselves that depth. The "invisible companions" are not in any sense connected with the conception of an "over-soul." That "depth," from which the power of creative love pours forth, is not the "depth" of any "over-soul" but is the depth of our own unfathomable nature. The introduction of "something behind the universe," the introduction of some "parent" or "first cause" of the universe, from which we have to suppose this secret of love as emerging, is as unnecessary as it is unbeautiful. It does nothing but fling the mystery one step further back without in the least elucidating it; and in thus throwing it back it thins it out and cheapens it. There is nothing which appeals to the aesthetic sense about this hypothesis of an "over-soul" from whose universal being the ideas of beauty and truth and goodness may be supposed to proceed. It is a clumsy and crude speculation, easy to be grasped by the superficial mind, and with an air of profundity which is entirely deceptive. So far from being a spiritual conception, this conception of an over-soul, existing just behind the material universe and pouring forth indiscriminately its "truth," "beauty," "nobility" and "love," is an entirely materialistic one. It is a clumsy and crude metaphor or analogy drawn from the objective world and projected into that region of sheer unfathomableness which lies beyond human thought. When the conception of the over-soul is submitted to analysis it is found to consist of nothing else than vague images drawn from material sensation. We think of the world for instance as a vast porous sponge continually penetrated by a flood of water or air or vapour drawn from some hidden cistern or reservoir or cosmic lake. The modern theological expression "immanent" has done harm in this direction. There is nothing profound about this conception of "immanence." It is an entirely materialistic conception drawn from sense analogy. The same criticism applies to much of the vague speculation which is usually called "mysticism." Mysticism is not a spiritual attitude. It is often no more than the expression of thwarted sex-desire directed towards the universe instead of towards the person who has repulsed it. The basic motive of mysticism, although in the highest cases it springs from intuition, is very often only an extension into the unknown of physiological misery or of physiological well-being. The word "spiritual" retains, by some instinctive wisdom in human language, a far nobler significance than the word "mystical." It is, so to speak, a purer word, and has succeeded, in its progress down the ages, in keeping itself more clear of physiological associations than any other human word except the word "soul." It must, however, be recognized, when we submit the two words to analysis, that the word "spirit" is less free from metaphorical materialism than the word "soul." The word "spirit" is a metaphorical word derived from the material phenomenon of breath. For the purest and least tangible of all natural phenomena, except perhaps "ether" or electricity, is obviously nothing less than the wind. "The wind bloweth where it listeth," and this elementary "freedom of the wind," combined with our natural association of "breath" and "breathing" with all organic life, accounts for the traditional nobility of the word spirit. "Spirit" and "life" have become almost interchangeable terms. The modern expression "the life-force" is only a metaphorical confusion of the idea conveyed by the word "spirit" or "breath" with the idea conveyed by the word "consciousness" when abstracted from any particular conscious soul. The use of the term "spirit" as applied to what metaphysical idealists name "the absolute" is the supreme example of this metaphorical confusion. According to this use of the term "spirit" we have an arbitrary association of the ultimate fact of self-consciousness--a fact drawn from the necessity of thought--with that attenuated and etherial materialism implied in the words "breath" or "breathing" and in the elemental "freedom of the wind." The word "spiritual" is a purer and nobler word than the word "mystical" for the same reason that the word "soul" is a purer and nobler word than the word "spirit." The historic fact must, however, be recognized that in the evolution of human thought and in the evolution of philosophical systems the word "spirit" has in large measure usurped the position that ought to belong to the word "soul" as the highest and purest expression of what is most essential and important in life. The history of this usurpation is itself a curious psychological document. But I cannot help feeling that the moment has arrived for reinstating the word "soul" in its rightful place and altering this false valuation. The word "soul" is the name given by the common consent of language to that original "monad" or concrete unity or living "self" which exists, according to universal experience, "within" the physical body and is the indescribable "substratum" of self-consciousness and the unutterable "something" which gives a real concrete permanence to what we call "personality." Here also we are confronted by the metaphorical danger, which is a danger springing from the necessity of thought itself; the necessity under which thought labours of being compelled to use sense-impressions if it is to function at all. But though thought cannot exist as thought without the use of sense-impressions it can at least concentrate its attention upon this primal necessity and be aware of it and cautious of it and hypercritical in its use. It can do more than this. It can throw back, so to speak, the whole weight of the mystery and drive it so rigorously to the ultimate wall, that the materialistic and metaphorical element is reduced to a mere gap or space or lacuna in the mind that only a material element can fill and yet that we cannot imagine being filled by any material element which we are able to define. This is precisely what we have to do with regard to that "vanishing-point of sensation" which is the substratum of the soul. The situation resolves itself into this. The highest, deepest, most precious thing we know or can imagine is _personality_. Personality is and must be our ultimate synthesis, our final ideal, and the origin of all our ideals. Nothing can be conceived more true, more real, more spiritual than personality. All conceptions, qualities, principles, forces, elements, thoughts, ideas, are things which we abstract from personality, and project into the space which surrounds us, as if they could be independent of the personal unity from which they have been taken. We are compelled by the inevitable necessity of thought itself, which cannot escape from the world of sense-impressions, to think of personality as possessing for its "substratum" "something" which gives it concrete reality. This "something" which is utterly indefinable, is the last gesture, so to speak, made by the sense-world before it vanishes away. This "something" which is the substratum of the soul and the thing which gives unity and concreteness to the soul is the thinnest and remotest attenuation of the world of sense-impression. It is far thinner and more remote than the sense-element in our conception of spirit. Why, it may be asked, can we not get rid of this "something" which fills that gap or lacuna in the identity of the soul which can only be thought of in material terms? We cannot get rid of it because directly we attempt to do so we are left with that vague idealistic abstraction upon our hands which we call "thought-in-the-abstract"--or "pure thought" or "pure self-consciousness." But it may be asked--"Why cannot the physical body serve this necessary purpose of giving personality a local and concrete identity?" First--and this is the psychological reason--it cannot do so because our feeling of the soul as "something within" our physical body is an ultimate fact of experience which would then remain as an experience denied and contradicted. Secondly--and this is the metaphysical reason--it cannot do so because our physical body is itself only a part of that objective universe of sense-impressions which the soul is conscious of as essentially distinct from its own inmost identity. Metaphysical idealism seems to hold that the ultimate monad of self-consciousness is not this personal micro-cosmic monad which I am conscious of as the empirical self or "soul" but an impersonal macrocosmic monad or "unity of apperception" which underlies the whole field of impressions and is unable, by reason of its inherent nature, to contemplate itself as an "object" at all. What the complex vision seems to me to disclose, is a revelation which includes at one and the same moment "the universal monad" and the "personal monad"; but it indicates clearly enough that the former is an abstraction from the latter. My thought can certainly think of the whole universe, including time and space, as one enormous mass of impressions or ideals presenting itself inside the circle of my mind. Of this mass of impressions, including time and space, my thought, thus abstracted from my personal soul, becomes the circumference. Outside my thought there is nothing at all. Inside my thought there is all that is. The metaphysical reason insists that this all-comprehensive thought or all-embracing consciousness cannot contemplate itself as an object but is compelled to remain an universal subject whose object can only be the mass of impressions which it contains. If it is possible to speak of this "a priori" background of all possible perception as a "monad" at all, it is a monad which certainly lacks the essential power of the individual monad which we know as our real self, for this latter can and does contemplate itself as an object. But as I have hinted before, the complex vision's attribute of self-consciousness projects a second abstraction, which takes its place between this ultimate monad which is pure "subject" and our real personal self which is so much more than subject and object together. This second abstraction, "thrown off" by our pure self-consciousness just as the first one is "thrown off" by our pure reason, becomes therefore an intervening monad which exists midway between the monad which is pure "subject"--if that can be called a monad at all--and the actual individual soul which is the living reality of both these thought-projections. The whole question resolves itself into a critical statement of the peculiar play of thought when thought is considered in its own inherent nature apart from concrete objects of thought. This original play of thought, apart from what it may think, can result in nothing better than isolated abstractions; because thought, apart from concrete objects of thought, is itself nothing more than one attribute of the complex vision, groping about in a vacuum and finding nothing. We are, however, bound by the "conscience of reason," and by what might be called reason's sense of honour to articulate as clearly as we can all these movements of pure thought working in the void; but we certainly are forbidden by the original revelation of the complex vision to accept them as the starting point of our philosophical enquiry. And we cannot accept them as a starting point, because the complex vision includes much more than self-consciousness and reason. It includes indeed so much more than these, that these, when indulging in their isolated conjuring-tricks, seem like irrelevant and tiresome clowns who insist upon interrupting with their fantastic pedantry the great tragic-comedy wherein the soul of man wrestles with its fate. As I have already indicated, it is necessary in dealing with a matter as dramatic and fatal as this whole question of ultimate reality, to risk the annoyance of repetition. It is important to go over our tracks again so that no crevice should be left in this perilous bridge hung across the gulf. Reason, then, working in isolation, provides us with the recognition of an ultimate universal "subject" or, in metaphysical language, with an "a priori unity of apperception." Simultaneously with this recognition, self-consciousness, also working in isolation, provides us with the recognition of an universal self-conscious "monad" or "cosmic self" which is not only able but is compelled to think of itself as its own object. Both these recognitions imply a consciousness which is outside time and space; but while the first, the outer edge of thought, can only be regarded as "pure subject," the second can be regarded as nothing else than the whole universe contemplating itself as its own object. In the third place the complex vision, working with all its attributes together, provides us with the recognition of a personal or empirical self which is the real "I am I" of our integral soul. This personal self, or actual living soul, must be thought of as possessing some "substratum" or "vanishing point of sensation" as the implication of its permanence and continuous identity. This "vanishing point of sensation," or in other words this attenuated form of "matter" or "energy" or "movement," must not be allowed to disappear from our conception of the soul. If it _were_ allowed to disappear, one of the basic attributes of the soul's complex vision, namely its attribute of sensation, would be negated and suppressed. Directly we regarded the "I am I" within us as independent of such a "vanishing point of sensation" and as being entirely free from any, even from the most attenuated form, of what is usually called "matter," then, at that very moment, the complex vision's revelation would be falsified. Then, at that very moment, the integrity of the soul would dissolve away, and we should be reduced to a stream of sensations with nothing to give them coherence and unity, or to that figment of abstract self-consciousness, "thought-in-itself," apart from both the thing "thinking" and the thing "thought." The soul, therefore, must be conceived if we are to be true to the original revelation of the complex vision, as having an indefinable "something" as its substratum or implication of identity. And this something, although impossible to be analysed, must be regarded as existing within that mysterious medium which is the uniting force of the universe. The soul must, in fact, be thought of as possessing some sort of "spiritual body" which is the centre of its complex vision and which, therefore, expresses itself in reason, self-consciousness, will, sensation, instinct, intuition, memory, emotion, conscience, taste, and imagination. All this must necessarily imply that the soul is within, and not outside, time and space. It must further imply that although the physical body, which the soul uses at its will, is only one portion of the objective universe which confronts it, this physical body is more immediately connected with the soul's complex vision and more directly under the influence of it than any other portion of the external universe. The question then arises, can it be said that this "vanishing point of sensation," this "substratum" composed of "something" which we are only able to define as the limit where the ultimate attenuation of what we call "matter" or "energy" passes into unfathomableness, this centre of the soul, this "spiritual body," this invisible "pyramid base" of the complex vision, is also, just as the physical body is, a definite portion of that objective universe which we apprehend through our senses? The physical body is entirely and in all its aspects a portion of this objective universe. Is the substratum of the soul a portion of it also? I think the answer to this question is that it _is_ and also _is not_ a portion of this universe. This "spiritual body," this "vanishing point of sensation," which is the principle of permanence and continuity and identity in the soul, is obviously the very centre and core of reality. Being this, it must necessarily be a portion of that objective world whose reality, after the reality of the soul itself, is the most vivid reality which we know. The complex vision demands and exacts the reality of the objective world. The whole drama of its life depends upon this. Without this the complex vision would not exist. And just as the complex vision could not exist without the reality of the objective world, so the objective world could not exist without the reality of the complex vision. These two depend upon one another and perpetually recreate one another. Any metaphysical system which denies the existence of the objective world, or uses the expression "illusion" with regard to it, is a system based, not upon the complex vision in its entirety, but upon some isolated attribute of it. The "substratum" of the soul, then, must be a portion of the objective world so as to give validity, so to speak, and assurance that this objective world with its mysterious medium crowded with living bodies and inanimate objects is not a mere illusion. But the "substratum" of the soul must be something else in addition to this. Being the essential meeting-point between what we call thought on the one hand, and what we call "matter" or "energy" on the other, the "substratum" of the soul must be a point of perpetual movement where the life of thought passes into the life of sensation. The "substratum" of the soul must be regarded as the ultimate attenuation of "matter" on the one hand, and on the other as perpetually passing into "mind." For since it is the centre-point of life it must be composed of a stuff woven, so to speak, out all the threads of life. That is to say it must be the very centre and vortex of all the contradictions in the universe. Since the "substratum" or "spiritual body" of the soul is the most real thing in the universe it must, in its own nature, partake of every kind of reality which exists in the universe. It must therefore be, quite definitely, a portion of the objective world existing within time and space. But it must also be the ultimate unity of "the life of thought." And since, as we have seen, it is within the power of reason and self-consciousness to isolate themselves from the other attributes of the soul and to project themselves outside of space and time, it must be the perpetual fatality of the "substratum" of the soul to recall these wanderers back to the true reality of things, which does not lie outside of space and time but within space and time, and which must justify time and space as something very different from illusion. But because, within time and space, the universe is unfathomable, and because, also within time and space, personality is unfathomable, the "substratum" of the soul, which is the point where the known and the unknown meet, must be unfathomable also, and hence must sink away beyond the limit of our thought and beyond the limit of our sensation. Since it does this, since it sinks away beyond the limit of our thought, it must be regarded as "something" whose reality is partly known and partly unknown. Thus it is true to say that the "substratum" of the soul _is_ and _is not_ a portion of the objective universe. The substratum of the soul is, in fact, the essential and ultimate reality, where all that we know loses itself in all that we do not know. Because we are compelled to admit that only one aspect of the "substratum" of the soul is a portion of the objective universe as we know it, this does not justify us in asserting that the "substratum" of the soul is at once within space and time and outside of space and time. Nothing is outside of space and time. This conception of "outside" is, as we have seen, an abstraction evoked by the isolated activity of the logical reason. The fact that only one aspect of the "substratum" of the soul--and even that one with the barest limit of definition--can be regarded as a portion of the objective universe does not give the soul any advantage over the universe. For the universe, like the soul, has also its unfathomable depths. That indefinable medium, for instance, which we are compelled to think of as making it possible that various souls should touch one another and communicate with one another, is in precisely the same position as regards any ultimate analysis as is the soul itself. It also sinks away into unfathomableness. It also becomes a portion of that part of reality which we do _not_ know. At this point in our enquiry it is not difficult to imagine some materialistic objector asking the question how we can conceive such a vaguely denned entity as the soul possessing such very definite attributes as those which make up the complex vision. Is it not, such an one might ask, a fantastic and ridiculous assumption to endow so obscure a thing as this "soul" with such very definite powers as reason, instinct, will, intuition, imagination, and the rest? Surely, such an one might protest, it is in the physical body that these find their unity? Surely, if we must have a meeting-place where thought and the objects of thought lose themselves in one another, such a meeting-place can be nothing else than the cells of the brain? The answer to this objection seems to me quite a final one. The physical body cannot supply us with the true meeting-place between "the life of thought" and "the life of sensation" because the physical body does not _in itself_ sink away into unfathomablenesss as does the substratum of the soul. The physical body can only be regarded as unfathomable when definitely included in the whole physical universe. But the substratum of the soul is doubly unfathomable. It is unfathomable as being the quintessence or vanishing-point of "matter" or "energy," and it is unfathomable as being the quintessence of that personal self which confronts not only the objective universe but the physical body also as part of that universe. It is undoubtedly true that this real self which is the centre of its own universe is bound to contemplate itself as occupying a definite point in space and time. This is one of its eternal contradictions; that it should be at the same time the creator of its universe and an unfathomable portion of the very universe it creates. The answer which the philosophy of the complex vision makes to the materialistic questioner who points to the "little cells of the brain" may be briefly be put thus. The soul functions through the physical body and through the cells of the brain. The soul is so closely and so intimately associated with the physical body that it is more than possible that the death of the physical body implies the annihilation of the soul. But when it comes to the question as to where we are to look for the essential self in us which is able to say "I am I" it is found to be much more fantastic and ridiculous to look for it in the "little cells of the brain" than in some obscure "something," or "vanishing point of sensation," where mind and matter are fused together. That this "something" which is able to say "I am I" should possess instinct, reason, will, intuition, conscience and the rest, may be hard to imagine. But that the "little cells of the brain" should possess these is not only hard to imagine--it is unimaginable. The mysterious relation which exists between our soul and our body lends itself to endless speculation; and much of this speculation tends to become far more fantastic and ridiculous than any analysis of the attributes of the soul. Experiment and experience alone can teach us how far the body is actually malleable by the soul and amenable to the soul's purpose. The arbitrary symbol which I have made use of to indicate the nature of the soul's essential reality, the image of a pyramidal wedge of flames, is certainly felt to be but a thin and rigid fancy when we consider how in the actual play of life the soul expresses itself through the body. As I have already indicated, the original revelation of the complex vision accepts without scruple the whole spectacle of natural life. The philosophy of the complex vision insists that no rationalistic necessity of pure logic gives it the right to reject this natural objective spectacle. The philosophy of the complex vision insists that this obvious, solid, external, so-called "materialistic" spectacle of common life, be accepted, included and continually returned to. It insists that the word "illusion" be no more used about this spectacle. It insists that this vast unfathomable universe of time and space be recognized as an ultimate reality, and that all these projected images of the pure reason, all these circles, cubes, squares and straight lines, all these "unities of apperception," universal "monads" and the like, be recognized as by-products of the abstracting energy of human logic and as entirely without reality when compared with this objective spectacle. My own symbolic or pictorial image of the activity of the complex vision, this pyramidal wedge or arrow-head of concentrated and focussed flames, must be recognized as no more adequate or satisfactory than any of these. The complex vision, with its rhythmic apex-thought, is not really a "pyramid" or a "wedge of flame" any more than it is a circle or a cube or a square or an "a priori synthetic unity of apperception" or "an universal self-conscious monad." It is the vision of a living personality, surrounded by an unfathomable universe. To keep our thoughts firmly and harmoniously fixed on the real objective spectacle of life and on the real subjective "soul," or personality, contemplating this spectacle, it is advisable to revert to the magical and mysterious associations called up by the classical word _Nature_. The mere utterance of the word "Nature" serves to bring us back to the things which are essential and organic, and to put into their proper place of comparative unreality all these "unities" and circles, all these pyramids and "monads." When we think of the astounding beauty and intricacy of the actual human body; when we think of the astounding beauty and intricacy of the actual living soul which animates this body, and when we think of the magical universe which surrounds them both, we are compelled to recognize that in the last resort Nature herself is the great mystery. The word "Nature" conveys a more living and less metaphysical connotation than the word "universe," and may be regarded as implying more of that in-determined future of all living souls, which is still in the process of creation. The "universe" is a static conception. Nature is a dynamic conception. When we speak of Nature we think of the whole struggle towards a fuller life of all the living entities which the indefinable medium of the universe contains. Nature from this point of view becomes the whole unfathomable spectacle, seen as something living and growing and changing. The "invisible companions" of men who supply the pattern and standard of all human ideas, become in this way the immortal children of Nature. The creative energy of the complex vision is itself an integral portion of the creative energy of Nature; for "Nature" is no more than the beautiful and classical word which recalls us to the objective spectacle which is the ultimate revelation of the complex vision. Nature is the supreme artist; but the apex-point of her artistry is nothing less than the apex-point of the artistry of the immortal gods. The artistry of the human soul, when its rhythm is most harmonious and complete, implies the magical artistry of Nature, for "Nature" is nothing more than the whole objective spectacle finding its myriad creative centres of new life in all living souls. The value of the word Nature, the value of the conception of Nature, is that it reminds us that, held together by the indefinable medium which fills the universe, there are innumerable entities both subhuman and super-human, all of whom, in their various degrees, possess living souls. Nature's supreme art is nothing more than the natural impulses of all these, as they are thus held together, and to "return to Nature" is nothing more than to return to the objective spectacle of real life, and to the objective ideal of real life as it is embodied in "the invisible companions." These "invisible companions" just because they are the most "natural" of all living personalities, are the supreme manifestation of the secret of Nature. It is because the objective spectacle of life, the spectacle which includes the stars, the planets, plants, trees, grass, moss, lichen, earth, birds, fish, animals, is a spectacle continually shifting and changing under the pressure of innumerable conscious and sub-conscious souls, that we find ourselves turning to these invisible companions whose supreme "naturalness" is the test and pattern of all Nature. And it is because our physical bodies in their magical mysteriousness are so much more real than any rationalistic symbols, such as circles, cubes, squares, wedges, pyramids, and the like, that when we seek to visualize the actual appearance of these "invisible companions," it seems much more appropriate to image their souls as clothed, like the souls of plants, trees, grass, planets, animals and men, in some tangibleness of physical form, than in nothing but the insubstantial stuff of air or wind or vapour, or "spirit." But since all that we call "Nature" continually changes, passes away in dissolution and is reborn again in other forms; and since no physical body is exempted from death, it is apparent that if the "immortals" possessed physical bodies such as our own, they also would be subject to this law along with the rest of the universe. But the generations of mankind come and go and the "invisible companions" of men remain; therefore the "invisible companions" cannot be supposed, except pictorially and in a symbolic sense, to be subject to the laws which govern our mortal bodies. It is this freedom from the laws which govern the physical body and from all the intimate and intricate relations which exist between our human soul and our human body, which makes it possible for these companions of men to remain in perpetual contact with every living soul born into the world. The difficulty we experience in realizing the nearness to our individual souls of these invisible companions, is due to a false and exaggerated emphasis laid upon the material spectacle of nature. This spectacle of the objective universe is undoubtedly one of the ultimate realities revealed to us by the complex vision; but it is only one of these ultimate realities. The complex vision is itself another one of these; and the real existence of the soul is implied in the activity of the complex vision. The reality of the external universe, the reality of Nature, is so closely associated with the activity of the soul that it is impossible to think of the one apart from the other. The soul's attribute of sensation is alone responsible for the greater portion of this objective spectacle; for apprehended through any other senses than the ones we possess the whole universe would be transformed. It is only when the soul's essential part in the creation of Nature is fully realized that we see how false and exaggerated an emphasis we are placing upon this "externality" when we permit it to hinder our recognition of the nearness of the immortal gods. The laws which govern the physical body and "the thousand ills that flesh is heir to" obstruct, confuse, conceal, and distort the soul and hold the gods at a distance. But although the brain and the senses may be tortured, atrophied, perverted; and although the soul may be driven back into its unfathomable depths and held there as if in prison; and although madness intervene between the soul's vision and the world, and sleep may fling it into oblivion, and death may destroy it utterly; tortured or perverted or atrophied or semi-conscious or unconscious, while the soul _lives_, the "invisible companions of men" remain nearer to it than any outward accident, chance, circumstance, fatality or destiny, and are still the arbiters of its hope. Retracing once more our steps over this perilous bridge of ultimate thought, we may thus indicate the situation. Our starting-point cannot be the "a priori synthetic unity of apperception," because this is an abstraction of the pure reason, and if accepted as a real fact would contradict and negate all the other attributes of the soul. Our starting-point cannot be the universal "monad" of self-consciousness, because this is an abstraction of the "I am I" and if accepted as a real fact would negate and suppress every attribute of the soul except the attributes of self-consciousness and emotion. Our starting-point cannot be the objective world, considered in its evolutionary externality, because this external world depends for its very existence upon the attributes of the soul, especially upon the attribute of sensation. Our starting-point can therefore be nothing less than the complex vision, which on the one hand implies the reality of the soul and on the other the reality of the external world, and which itself is the vision of a real concrete personality. The individual is thus disclosed as something more than the universal, the microcosm as something more than the macrocosm, and any living personality as something more than any conceivable absolute being. By an original act of faith, towards which we are helped by the soul's attribute of imagination, we are compelled to conceive of every other soul in the world as being the centre of a universe more or less identical in character with the universe of which our own soul is the centre. These separate universes we have to conceive as being subjective impressions of the same objective reality, the beauty, truth, and goodness of which are guaranteed for us by those "invisible companions of men" in whose eternal vision they find their synthesis. The tragedy of our life consists in the fact that it is only in rare exalted moments, when the rhythmic harmony of the complex vision is most intense and yet most calm, that the individual soul feels the presence of those supreme companions whose real and personal existence I have attempted to indicate. These ideal and yet most real companions of humanity make their presence felt by the soul in just the same immediate, direct and equivocal way in which we feel the influence of a friend or lover whose spirit, in his bodily absence, is concentrated upon our spirit, even as ours is upon his. To the larger vision of these "invisible companions" we find ourselves consciously and sub-consciously turning whenever the burden of our flesh oppresses us more than we can bear. We are compelled to turn to them by reason of the profound instinct in us which recognizes that our ideas of truth, of beauty, and goodness are not mere subjective fancies but are actual objective realities. These ideas do not spring from these "companions" or find their origin and cause in them, any more than they spring from some imaginary "parent" of the universe and find their origin and cause in something "behind life." They do not "spring" from anything at all; but are the very stuff and texture of our own unfathomable souls, just as they are the very stuff and texture of the unfathomable souls of the immortal gods. What we are conscious of, when our complex vision gathers itself together, is the fact that the inevitable element of subjectivity in our individual feeling about these things is transcended and supplemented by an invisible pattern or standard or ideal in which these things are reconciled and fused together at a higher pitch of harmony than we individually, or even in contact with one another, are capable of attaining. The vision of these "invisible companions"--absolute enough in relation to our own tragic relativity--is itself relative to its own hope, its own dream, its own prophecy, its own premonition. The real evolution of the world, the real movement of life, takes therefore a double form. It takes the form of an individual _return_ to the fulness of ideas which have always been implicit and latent in our individual souls. And it takes the form of a co-operative _advance_ towards the fulness of ideas which are foreshadowed and prophesied in the vision of these immortals' companions. Thus for us, as well as for them, the eternal movement is at once an advance and a return. Thus for us, as well as for them, the eternal inspiration is at once a hope and a reminiscence. It will be seen from what I have said that this philosophy of the complex vision finds a place for all the nobler and more desperate struggles of the human race towards a solution of the mystery of life. It accepts fully the fact that the human reason playing isolated games with itself, is driven by its own nature to reduce "all objects of all thought" to the circle of one "synthetic unity" which is the implied "a priori" background of all actual vision. It accepts fully the fact that human self-consciousness, playing isolated games with itself, is driven by the necessity of its own nature to reduce all separate "selves" to one all embracing "world self" which is the universe conscious of itself as the universe. It accepts fully the fact that we have to regard the apparent objectivity of the external universe, with its historic process, as an essential and unalterable aspect of reality, so grounded in truth that to call it an "illusion" is a misuse of language. But although it accepts both the extreme "materialistic" view and the extreme "idealistic" view as inevitable revelations of reality, it does not regard either of them as the true starting-point of enquiry, because it regards both these extremes as the result of the isolated play of one or the other of the complex vision's attributes. The philosophy of the complex vision refuses to accept as its starting-point any "synthetic unity" other than the synthetic unity of personality; because any other than this it is compelled to regard as abstracted from this by the isolated play of some particular attribute of the mind. The philosophy of the complex vision refuses to accept as its starting-point any attenuated materialistic hypothesis, such as may be indicated by the arbitrary words "life" or "movement" or "ether" or "force" or "energy" or "atoms" or "molecules" or "electrons" or "vortices" or "evolutionary progress," because it recognizes that all these hypothetical origins of life are only projected and abstracted aspects of the central reality of life, which is, and always must be, personality. But what is the relation of the philosophy of the complex vision to that modern tendency of thought which calls itself "pragmatism" and which also finds in personality its starting-point and centre? The philosophy of the complex vision seems to detect in the pragmatic attitude something which is profoundly unpleasing to its taste. Its own view of the art of life is that it is before everything else a matter of rhythm and harmony and it cannot help discerning in "pragmatism" something piece-meal, pell-mell and "hand-to-mouth." It seems conscious of a certain outrage to its aesthetic sense in the method and the attitude of this philosophy. The pragmatic attitude, though it would be unfair to call it superficial, does not appeal to the philosophy of the complex vision as being one of the supreme, desperate struggles of the human race to overcome the resistance of the Sphinx. The philosophy of the complex vision implies the difficult attainment of an elaborate harmony. It regards "philosophy" as the most difficult of all "works of art." What it seems to be suspicious of in pragmatism is a tendency to seek mediocrity rather than beauty, and a certain humorous opportunism rather than the quiet of an eternal vision. It seems to look in vain in "Pragmatism" for that element of the _impossible_, for that strain of Quixotic faith, in which no high work of art is found to be lacking. It seems unable to discover in the pragmatic attitude that "note of tragedy" which the fatality of human life demands. It certainly shares with the pragmatic philosophy a tendency to lay more stress upon the freedom of the will than is usual among philosophies. But the "will" of the complex vision moves in closer association with the aesthetic sense than does the "will" of pragmatism. It is perhaps as a matter of "taste" that pragmatism proves most unsatisfactory to it. It seems to be conscious of something in pragmatism, which, though itself perhaps not precisely "commercial," seems curiously well adapted to a commercial age. It is aware, in fine, that certain high and passionate intimations are roused to unmitigated hostility by the whole pragmatic attitude. And it refuses to outrage these intimations for the sake of any psychological contentment. In regard to the particular kind of "truth" championed by pragmatists, the "truth" namely which gives one on the whole the greatest amount of practical efficiency, the philosophy of the complex vision remains unconvinced. The pragmatic philosophy judges the value of any "truth" by its effective application to ordinary moments. The philosophy of the complex vision judges the value of any "truth" by its relation to that rare and difficult harmony which can be obtained only in extraordinary moments. To the pragmatic philosopher a shrewd, efficient and healthy-minded person, with a good "working" religion, would seem the lucky one, while to the philosophy of the complex vision some desperate, unhappy suicidal wastrel, who by the grace of the immortals was allowed some high unutterable moment, might approach much more closely to the vision of those "sons of the universe" who are the pattern of us all. This comparison of the method we are endeavouring to follow with the method of "pragmatism" helps to throw a clear light upon what the complex vision reveals about these "ultimate ideas" in the flow of an indiscriminate mass of mental impression. To the passing fashion of modern thought there is something stiff, scholastic, archaic, rigid, and even Byzantine, about the words "truth," "beauty," "goodness," thus pedestalled side by side. But just as with the old-fashioned word "matter" and the old-fashioned word "soul," we must not be misled by a mere "superstition of novelty" in these things. Modern psychology has not been able, and never can be able, to escape from the universal human experiences which these old-fashioned words cover; and as long as the experiences are recognized as real, it surely does not make much difference what _names_ we give to them. It seems, indeed, in a point so human and dramatic as this, far better to use words that have already acquired a clear traditional and natural connotation than to invent new words according to one's own arbitrary fancy. It would not be difficult to invent such words. In place of "truth" one could say "the objective reality of things" rhythmically apprehended by the complex vision. Instead of "beauty" one could say "the world seen under the light of a peculiar creative power in the soul which reveals a secret aspect of things otherwise concealed from us." Instead of "goodness" one could say "the power of the conscious and living _will_, when directed towards love." And in place of "love" itself one could say "the projection of the essence of the soul upon the objective plane; when such an essence is directed towards life." But it would be futile to continue this "fancy-work," of definition by an individual temperament. The general traditional meaning of these words is clear and unmistakable; though there may be infinite minute shades of difference between one person's interpretation of such a meaning and another's. What it all really amounts to is this. No philosophic or scientific interpretation of life, which does not include the verdict of life's own most concentrated moments, can possibly be adequate. Human nature can perfectly well philosophize about its normal stream of impressions in "cold blood," so to speak, and according to a method that discounts all emotional vision. But the resultant conclusions of such philosophizing, with their easy-going assumption that what we call "beauty" and "goodness" have no connection with what we call "truth," are conclusions so unsatisfying to more than half of our being that they carry their refutation on the face of them. To be an "interpretation of life" a philosophical theory cannot afford to disregard the whole turbulent desperate dramatic content of emotional experience. It cannot disregard the fact, for instance, that certain moments of our lives bring to us certain reconciliations and revelations that change the whole perspective of our days. To "interpret life" from the material offered by the uninspired unconcentrated unrhythmical "average" moods of the soul is like trying to interpret the play of "Hamlet" from a version out of which every one of Hamlet's own speeches have been carefully removed. Or, to take a different metaphor, such pseudo-psychological philosophy is like an attempt to analyse the nature of fire by a summary of the various sorts of fuel which have been flung into the flame. The act of faith by which these ultimate ideas are reduced to the vision of living personalities is a legitimate matter for critical scepticism. But that there are such ultimate ideas and that life cannot be interpreted without considering them is not a matter for any sort of scepticism. It is a basic assumption, without which there could be no adequate philosophy at all. It is the only intelligible assumption which covers the undeniable human experience which gathers itself together in these traditional words. CHAPTER VII. THE NATURE OF ART The only adequate clue to the historic mystery of that thing which the human race has come to call "beauty," and that other thing--the re-creation of this through individual human minds--which we have come to call "art"--is found, if the complex vision is to be trusted at all, in the contact of the emotion of love with the "objective mystery," and its consequent dispersion, as the other aspects of the soul are brought to bear upon it, into the three primordial ideas of goodness, beauty, and truth. The reason why this one particular aspect of the soul which we call emotion is found to be the synthesis of what is discovered by all the other aspects of the soul functioning together is that the nature of emotion differs radically from reason, conscience, will, imagination, taste, and the rest, in that it is not only a clarifying, directing and discriminating activity but is also--as none of these others are--an actual mood, or temper, or state of the soul, possessing certain definite vibrations of energy and a certain sort of psychic fluidity or outflowing which seems perpetually to spring up from an unfathomable depth. This synthetic role played by emotion in unifying the other activities of the complex vision and preparing the psychic material for the final activity of the apex-thought may perhaps be understood better if we think of emotion as being an actual outflowing of the soul itself, springing up from unfathomable depths. Thinking of it in this way we may conceive the actual size or volume of the "soul monad" to be increased by this centrifugal expansion. By such an increase of the soul's volume we do not mean an actual increase; because the depths of all souls are equally unfathomable when their recession inwards is considered. By such an increase we refer to the forth-flowing of the soul as it manifests itself through the physical body. Thus our theory brings us back, as all theories must if they are consonant with experience, to the traditional language of the human race. For in ordinary language there is nothing strange about the expression "a great soul." Such an expression simply refers to the volume of the soul's outflowing through the body. And this outflowing is the fulness, more or less, of the soul's well-spring of emotion. A "great soul" is thus a soul whereof the outflowing emotion--on both sides of its inherent duality--is larger in volume as it manifests itself through the body than in normal cases; and a "small soul" is a soul whose volume of outflowing emotion is less than in normal cases. It must be remembered, however, when we speak of the outflowing emotion of the soul that we do not mean that there _pours through_ the soul from some exterior source a stream of emotion distinct from the integral being of the soul itself. What we mean is that the soul itself finds itself divided against itself in an eternal contradiction which may be compared to the positive and negative pole of electricity. This outflowing of emotion is not, therefore, the outflowing of something which emerges from the soul but is the outflowing, or the expansion and dilation through the body, or the soul itself. What we are now indicating, as to the less or greater degree of volume in the soul's manifestation through the body, is borne witness to in the curious fact that the bodies of persons under strong emotion--whether it be the emotion of love or the emotion of malice--do actually seem to dilate in bulk and stature. All that we have been saying has a clear bearing upon the problem of the relation between the emotional aspect of the soul and the other aspects. The emotion of the soul is the outflowing of the soul itself, on one side or other of its inherent duality; while the other aspects of the soul--such as will, taste, imagination, reason, and so forth--are the directing, selecting, clarifying, interpreting activities of the soul as it flings itself upon the objective mystery. Thus, while it is by means of that activity of the soul which we call conscience that we distinguish between good and evil; and by means of that activity called the aesthetic sense that we distinguish between beauty and hideousness; and by means of that activity called reason that we distinguish between reality and unreality; it is all the while from its own emotional outflowing that the soul directed and guided by these critical energies, creates the universe which becomes its own, and then discovers that the universe which it has created is also the universe of the immortals. It is because this emotional duality of love and malice is the inherent "psychic stuff" of all living souls whether mortal or immortal that the soul of man comes at last to comprehend that those primordial ideas of goodness, beauty and truth, out of which the universe is half-created and half-discovered, draw, so to speak the sanction of their objective reality from the eternal vision of the immortals. The distinction we have thus insisted upon between the nature of emotion and the nature of the other aspects of the soul makes it now clear how it is that we are compelled to regard these three primordial ideas of beauty, truth and goodness as finding their unity and their original identity in the emotion of love. It has been necessary to consider these ultimate movements of the soul in order that we may be in a position to understand the general nature of this mysterious thing we call "art," and be able to track its river-bed, so to speak, up to the original source. From a consideration of the fact that the outflowing of the soul takes the form of emotion, and that this emotion is at perpetual war within itself and is for ever contradicting itself, we arrive at our first axiomatic principle with regard to art, namely that art is, and must always be, penetrated through and through by the spirit of contradiction. Whatever else art may become, then, one thing we can predicate for certain with regard to it, namely that it springs from an eternal conflict between two irreconcilable opposites. We are, further than this, able to define the nature of these opposites as the everlasting conflict between creation and what resists creation, or between love and malice. It is just here, in regard to the character of these opposites, that the philosophy of the complex vision differs from the Bergsonian philosophy of the "élan vital." According to Bergson's monistic system the only genuine reality is the flux of spirit The spirit of some primordial self-expansion projects what we call "matter" as its secondary manifestation and then is condemned to an unending and exhausting struggle with what it has projected. Spirit, therefore, is pure energy and movement and matter is pure heaviness and resistance. Out of the necessity of this conflict emerge all those rigid logical concepts and mathematical formulae, of which space and time, in the ordinary sense of those words, are the ultimate generalization. Our criticism of this theory is that both these things--this "spirit" and this spirit-evoked "matter"--are themselves meaningless concepts, concepts which, in spite of Bergson's contempt for ordinary metaphysic, are in reality entirely metaphysical, being in fact, like the old-fashioned entities whose place they occupy, nothing but empty bodiless generalizations abstracted from the concrete living reality of the soul. But quite apart from our criticism of the Bergsonian "spirit" and "matter" on the ground of their being unreal conceptions illegitimately abstracted from real personality we are compelled to note a second vivid difference between our point of view and his in regard to this matter of opposites and their contradiction. Bergson's monism, as we have seen, resolves itself into a duality which may be defined as conscious activity confronted by unconscious inertness. Our duality, on the contrary, which has behind it, not monism, but pluralism, may be denned as conscious creation, or conscious love, confronted by conscious resistance to creation, or conscious inert malice. Thus while Bergson finds his ultimate axiomatic "data" in philosophical abstractions, we find our ultimate axiomatic "data" in the realities of human experiences. Bergson seeks to interpret human life in terms of the universe. We seek to interpret the universe in terms of human life. And we contend that we are justified in doing this since what we call "the universe," as soon as it is submitted to analysis, turns out to be nothing but an act of faith according to which an immense plurality of separate personal universes find a single universe of inspiration and hope in the vision of the immortal gods. The ultimate duality revealed by the complex vision is a duality on both sides of which we have unfathomable abysses of consciousness. On the one side this consciousness is eternally creative. On the other side this consciousness is eternally malicious, in its deliberate inert resistance to creation. It is natural enough, therefore, that while Bergson's "creative evolution" resolves itself into a series of forward-movements which are as easy and organic as the growth of leaves on a tree, our advance toward the real future which is also a return to the ideal past, resolves itself in a series of supremely difficult rhythms, wherein eternally conscious "good" overcomes eternally conscious "evil." Our philosophy, therefore, may, in the strictest sense, be called a "human" philosophy in contra-distinction to a "cosmic" philosophy; or, if you please, it may be called a "dramatic" philosophy in contra-distinction to a "lyric" philosophy. From all this it will be clearly seen that it would be impossible for us to hypostasize a super-moral or sub-moral universe in complete disregard of the primordial conscience of the human soul. It will be equally clearly seen that it would be impossible for us to project a theoretical universe made up of "cosmic streams of tendency," whether "spiritual" or "material," in complete disregard of the soul's primordial aesthetic sense. The logical scrupulosity and rationalistic passion which drive a cosmic philosopher forward, in his attempt to construct a universe in disregard of the human conscience and the human aesthetic sense, are themselves evidence that while he has suppressed in himself the first two of the three primordial ideas of which we speak, he has become an all-or-nothing slave of the last of these three ideas--namely, the idea of truth. He has sacrificed his conscience and his taste to this isolated and abstracted "truth," the quest of pure reason alone, and, as a result of this fanaticism, the real "true truth," that is to say the complete rhythmic vision of the totality of man's nature, has been suppressed and destroyed. It must be fully admitted at this point that the fanaticism of the so-called "pure saint" and the so-called "pure artist" who suppress, the one for the sake of "goodness" and the other for the sake of "beauty," the third great primordial idea which we have called "truth," is a fanaticism just as one sided and just as destructive of the complete harmonious vision as those other kinds. That this is the case can easily be proved by recalling how thin, how strained, how morbid, how ungracious, how inhuman, those so-called "saints" and "artists" become, when, in their neglect of reason and truth, they persist in following their capricious, subjective, fantastic, individual dreams, out of all concrete relation to the actual world we live in. We arrive, therefore, at a point from which we are able to detect the true inner spirit of the nature of art; and what we discover may thus be stated. Art is the expression, through the medium of an individual temperament, of a beauty which is one of the primordial aspects of this pluralistic world. The eternal duality of things implies that this beauty is always manifested as something in perpetual conflict with its opposite, namely with that antagonistic aspect of the universe which we name the hideous or the ugly. This duality exists as the eternal condition of each one of the three primordial ideas out of which the universe is evoked. Each of these three ideas is only known to us as the result of a relative victory over its opposite. Beauty is known to us as a relative victory over hideousness. Goodness is known to us as a relative victory over evil. Truth is known to us as a relative victory over the false and the unreal. The fact that each of these ideas can only be known in a condition of conflict with its opposite and in a condition of relative victory over its opposite is due to the fact that all three of them are in their own nature only clarifying, selecting, and value-giving activities; whereas the actual material upon which they have to work, as well as the energy from which they derive their motive-power, is nothing else but that mysterious outflowing of the soul itself which we call emotion. For since emotion is eternally divided against itself into love and malice, the three primordial ideas which deal this emotion are also eternally divided against themselves, into beauty and hideousness, into goodness and evil, into reality and unreality. And since the very existence of emotion depends upon the struggle between love and malice, in the same way the very existence of our aesthetic sense depends upon the struggle between beauty and hideousness; and the very existence of reason depends upon the struggle between reality and unreality. The only love we can possibly have to deal with is a love which is for ever overcoming malice. The only beauty we can possibly have to deal with is a beauty which is for ever overcoming hideousness. And the same assertion must be made both with regard to goodness and with regard to truth. If any one of them absolutely overcame the other, so as completely to destroy it, the ebb and flow of life would at that moment cease. A world where all minds could apprehend all truth without any illusion or admixture of unreality, would not be a world at all, as we know the world. It would be the colourless dream of an immobile plurality of absolutes. As far as we are concerned it would be synonymous with death. Thus the ultimate nature of the world is found to be unfathomably dualistic. A sharp dividing line of irreconcilable duality intersects every living soul; and the secret of life turns out to be the relatively victorious struggle of personality with the thing that in itself resists its fuller life. This verdict of the complex vision is in unison with the natural feeling of ordinary humanity and it is also in unison with the supreme illuminated moments when we seem to apprehend the vision of the gods. When once we have apprehended the inherent nature of beauty, we are in a position to understand what the spirit of art must be, whose business it is to re-create this beauty in terms of personality. The idea of beauty itself is profoundly personal even before art touches it, since it is one of the three primordial ideas with which every conscious soul sets forth. But it is not only personal. It is also objective and impersonal. For it is not only the reaction of a particular soul to its own universe; it is also felt, in the rare moments when the apex-thought of the complex vision is creating its world rhythm, to be nothing less than the vision of the immortals. Art, therefore, which is the representation in terms of some particular personal temperament, of that sense of beauty which is the inheritance of all souls born into the world, must be profoundly penetrated by the victorious struggle of the emotion of love with the emotion of malice. For although the human sense of the beauty of the world, which may be called the objective sense of the beauty of the world, since the vision of the immortals lies behind it, is the thing which art expresses, it must be remembered that this sense is not an actual substance or concrete entity, but is only a principle of selection or a process of mental reaction, in regard to life. The thing which may be called an actual substance is that outflowing of the soul itself in centrifugal waves of positive and negative vibration which we have chosen to name by the name "emotion." This may indeed be called an actual concrete extension of the psychic-stuff of the substantial soul. None of the three primordial ideas resemble it in this. They are all attitudes of the soul; not conscious enlargements or lessenings of the very stuff; of the soul. The idea of beauty is a particular reaction to the universe. The idea of truth is a particular reaction to the universe. The idea of goodness is a particular act of the will with regard to our relation to the universe. But the emotion of love, in its struggle with the emotion of malice, is much more than this. It is the actual outflowing of the soul itself; and it offers, as such, the very stuff and material out of which truth and beauty and goodness are distinguished and discerned. Some clear hints and intimations as to the nature of art may be arrived at from these considerations. We at any rate reach a general criterion, applicable to all instances, as to the presence or absence in any particular case of the authentic and objective "note" of true art. This "note" is the presence in a work of art of the decisive relative victory of love over malice. When, on the contrary, in any work of art, the original struggle of love with malice issues in a relative overcoming of love by malice, then such a work of art belongs, ipso facto, to an inferior order of excellence. This criterion is one of easy intuitive application, although any exact analysis of it, in a particular case, may be difficult and obscure. Roughly and generally expressed it amounts to this. In the great works of art of the world, wherein the subjective vision of the artist expresses itself in mysterious reciprocity with the objective vision of the immortals, there is always found a certain large "humanity." This humanity, wherein an infinite pity never for a moment degenerates into weak sentiment, reduces the co-existence of cruelty and malice to the lowest possible minimum, consonant with the ebb and flow of life. Some residuum of such malice and cruelty there must be, even in the supremest work of art, else the eternal contradictions upon which life depends would be destroyed. But the emotion of love, in such works, will always be found to have its fingers, as it were, firmly upon the throat of its antagonist, so that the resultant rhythm shall be felt to be the ultimate rhythm of life itself, wherein the eternal struggle of love with malice issues in the relative overcoming of the latter by the former. It would be invidious perhaps to name, in this place, any particular works of art in which the predominant element is malice rather than love. But such works of art exist in considerable number, and the lacerated and distorted beauty of them remains as a perpetual witness to what they have missed. In speaking of these inferior works of art the aesthetic psychologist must be on his guard against the confusion of such moods as the creative instinct of destruction or the creative instinct of simple sensuality with the inert malice we are considering. The instinct of destruction is essentially connected with the instinct of creation and indeed must be regarded as an indirect expression of that instinct; for, as one can clearly understand, almost every creative undertaking implies some kind of destructive or at least some kind of suppressive or renunciant act which renders such an undertaking possible. In the same way it is not difficult to see that the simple impulse of natural sensuality, or direct animal lust, is profoundly connected with the creative instinct, and is indeed the expression of the creative instinct on the plane of purely material energy. But it must be understood, however, that neither the will to destruction nor the will to sensuality are by any means always as innocent as the forms of them I have indicated above. It often happens indeed that this destructive instinct is profoundly penetrated by malice and derives the thrill of its activity from malice; and this may easily be observed in certain famous but not supreme works of art. It must also be understood that the impulse to sensuality or lust is not always the direct simple animal instinct to which I have referred. What has come to be called "Sadism" is an instance of this aberration of an innocent impulse. The instinct of "sadism," or the deriving of voluptuous pleasure from sensual cruelty, has its origin in the legitimate association of the impulse to destroy with the impulse to create, as these things are inseparably linked together in the normal "possession" of a woman by a man. In such "possession" the active masculine principle has to exercise a certain minimum of destruction with a view to a certain maximum of creation; and the normal resistance of the female is the mental corollary of this. The normal resistance of the artist's medium to the activity of his energy is a sort of aesthetic parallel to this situation; and it is easy to see how, in the creation of a work of art, this aesthetic overcoming of resistance may get itself mentally associated with the parallel sensation experienced on the sensual plane. The point we have to make is this: that while in normal cases the impulse to sensuality is perfectly direct, innocent, animal, and earth-born; in other cases it becomes vitiated by the presence in it of a larger amount of destructive energy than can be accounted for by the original necessity. Thus in a great many quite famous works of art there will be found an element of sadism. But it will always remain that in the supreme works of art this sadistic element has been overcome and transformed by the pressure upon it of the emotion of love. There exists, however, other instances, when the work of art in question is obviously inferior, in which we are confronted by something much more evil than the mere presence of the sadistic impulse. What I refer to is a very subtle and complicated mood wherein the simple sadistic impulse to derive sensual pleasure from the contemplation of cruelty has been seized upon and taken possession of by the emotion of malice. The complicated mood resulting from this association of sadistic cruelty with inert malice is perhaps the most powerful engine of evil that exists in the world; although a pure unmitigated condition of unsensualized, unimpassioned, motiveless malice is, in its inmost self, more essentially and profoundly evil. For while the energy of sadism renders the actual destructive power of malice much more formidable, we must remember that what really constitutes the essence of evil is never the energy of destruction but always the malicious inertness of resistance to creation. We have thus arrived at some measure of insight as to the nature of art and we find that whatever else it may be it must be penetrated through and through by the overcoming of malice by love. It must, in other words, have the actual outflowing of the soul as the instrument of its expression and as the psycho-material medium with which it inscribes its vision upon the objective mystery that confronts it. We have at least arrived at this point in our search for a definite criterion: that when in any work of art a vein of excessive cruelty or, worse still, a vein of sneering and vindictive malice, dominates the emotional atmosphere, such a work of art, however admirable it may be in other respects, falls below the level of the most excellent. The relation between the idea of beauty as expressed by the aesthetic sense and those other ideas, namely of truth and goodness, which complete the circle of human vision, is a relation which may be suggested thus. Since all three of these primordial ideas are unified by the emotion of love it is clear that the emotion of love is the element in which each of them severally moves. And since it is impossible that love should be antagonistic to itself we must conclude that the love which is the element or substratum of beauty is the same love that is the element or substratum of goodness and truth. And since all these three elements are in reality one element, which is indeed nothing less than the dominant outflowing of the soul itself, it follows that those portions of the soul's outflowing which have been directed by reason and by conscience, which we call the idea of truth and the idea of goodness, must have an ultimate identity with that portion of the soul's outflowing which has been directed by the aesthetic sense and which we call the idea of beauty. This identity between truth and goodness on the one hand and beauty on the other cannot be regarded as an absolute identity. The idea of truth continues to represent one facet of the universe, the idea of goodness another, and the idea of beauty another or a third. What we mean by the use of the term "identity" is simply this: that the universe revealed by each one of these three ideas is the same universe as is revealed by the others, and the emotional out-flowing of the individual soul, which reveals each of these separate facets or aspects of the universe, is the same in each of the three ideas which govern its direction. It is, however, only at their supreme point, when they are fused together by the apex-thought of the complex vision, that the activity of these separate ideas is found to be in complete harmony. Short of this extreme limit they tend to deviate from each other and to utter contradictory oracles. We may therefore lay it down as an unalterable law of their activity that when any one of these ideas contradicts another it does so because of a weakness and imperfection in its own intensity or in the intensity of the idea it contradicts. Thus if an idea of goodness is found irreconcilable with an idea of beauty, something is wrong with one or the other of these ideas, or perhaps with both of them. And we are not only able to say that something is wrong with such ideas when they contradict one another, we are able to predicate with certainty as to what precisely is wrong. For the "something wrong" which leads to this contradiction, the "something wrong" which stands in the way of the rhythmic activity of the soul's apex-thought, will invariably be found to be a weakening of the outflowing of the emotion of love in one or other or perhaps all three of the implicated ideas. For the outflowing of the soul's emotion is not only the life of the root of this "tree of knowledge"; it is also the life of the sap of the uttermost branches; it is the force that makes the fragrance of each topmost leaf mingle with that of all the rest, in that unified breath of the whole tree which loses itself in the air. Thus we arrive at our final conclusion as to the nature of art. And when we apply our criterion to any of the supreme works of art of the world we find it does not fail us. The figure of Christ, for instance, remains the supreme incarnation of the idea of goodness in the world; and few will deny that the figure of Christ represents not only the idea of goodness but the ideas of truth and beauty also. If one contemplates many another famous "good man" of history, such as easily may be called to mind, one is at once conscious that the "goodness" of these admirable persons is a thing not altogether pleasing to the aesthetic taste, and a thing which in some curious way seems to obscure our vision of the real truth of life. A great work of art, such as Leonardo's "Virgin of the Rocks," or Dostoievsky's "Idiot," is intuitively recognized as being not only entirely satisfying to the aesthetic sense but also entirely satisfying to our craving for truth and our longing for the inmost secret of goodness. Every great work of art is the concentrated essence of a man's ultimate reaction to the universe. It has an undertone of immense tragedy; but in the depths of this tragedy there is no despair, because an infinite pity accompanies the infinite sorrow, and in such pity love finds itself stronger than fate. No work of art, however appealing or magical, can carry the full weight of what it means to be an inheritor of human tradition, of what it means to be a living soul, until it has arrived at that rhythm of the apex-thought which is a fusion of what we call the "good" with what we call the "beautiful" and the "true." It is only when our notion of what _is_ good and what is true falls short of the austere demands of the aesthetic sense that a certain uneasiness and suspicion enters into a discussion of this kind. And such an uneasiness is justified by reason of the fact that the popular notion both of goodness and truth does so often fall lamentably short of such demands. The moral conscience of average humanity is a thing of such dull sensibility, of such narrow and limited vision, that it is inevitable that its "goodness" should clash with so exacting a censor as the aesthetic sense. The rational conscience of average humanity is a thing of such dense and rigid and unimaginative vision that it is inevitable that its "truth" should clash with the secrets revealed by the aesthetic sense. The cause, why the aesthetic sense seems to come on the scene with an apparatus of valuation so much more advanced and refined than that possessed by the conscience or by the reason, is that both conscience and reason are continually being applied to action, to conduct, to the manipulation of practical affairs, and are bound in this commerce with superficial circumstance to grow a little blunt and gross and to lose something of their fine edge. Conscience and reason, in the hurly-burly and pell-mell of life, are driven to compromise, to half-measures, to the second-best. Conscience is compelled to be satisfied with something less than its own rigid demands. Reason is compelled to accept something less than its own rigid demands. Both of these things tend to become, under the pressure of the play of circumstance, pragmatical, time-serving, and opportunist. But the aesthetic sense, although in itself it has always room for infinite growth, is in its inherent nature unable to compromise; unable to bend this way and that; unable to dally with half-measures. Any action, in a world of this kind, necessarily implies compromise; and since goodness is so largely a matter of action, goodness is necessarily penetrated by a spirit of compromise. Indeed it may be said that a certain measure of common-sense is of the very essence of goodness. But what has common-sense to do with art? Common-sense has never been able, and never will be able, to understand even the rudiments of art. For art is the half-discovery of something that must always seem an impossibility to common-sense; and it is the half-creation of something that must always render common-sense irrelevant and unimportant. Truth, again, in a world of so infinite a complication, must frequently have to remain an open question, a suspended judgment, an antinomy of opposites. The agnostic attitude--as, for instance, in the matter of the immortality of the soul--may in certain cases come to be the ultimate gesture of what we call the truth. But with the aesthetic sense there can never be any suspension of judgment, never any open question, never any antinomy of opposites, never the least shadow of the pragmatic, or "working" test. It is therefore natural enough that when persons possessed of any degree of cultivated taste hear other persons speak of "goodness" or "truth" they grow distrustful and suspicious, they feel uneasy and very much on guard. For they know well that the conscience of the ordinary person is but a blunt and clumsy instrument, quite as likely to distort and pervert the essential spirit of "goodness" as to reveal it, and they know well that the "truth" of the ordinary person's reason is a sorry compound of logical rigidity and practical opportunism; with but small space left in it for the vision of imagination. It is because of their primary importance in the sphere of practical action that the conscience and the reason have been developed out of all proportion to the aesthetic sense. And it is because the deplorable environment of our present commercial system has emphasized action and conduct, out of all proportion to contemplation and insight, that it is so difficult to restore the balance. The tyranny of machinery has done untold evil in increasing this lack of proportion; because machinery, by placing an unmalleable and inflexible material--a material that refuses to be humanized--between man's fingers and the actual element he works in, has interrupted that instinctive aesthetic movement of the human hands, which, even in the midst of the most utter clumsiness and grossness, can never fail to introduce some touch of beauty into what it creates. We have thus arrived at a definite point of view from which we are able to observe the actual play of man's aesthetic sense as, in its mysterious fusion with the energy of reason and conscience, it interprets the pervading beauty of the system of things, according to the temperament of the individual. It remains to note how in the supreme works of art this human temperamental vision is caught up and transcended in the high objectivity of a greater and more universal vision; a vision which is still personal, because everything true and beautiful in the universe is personal, but which, by the rhythm of the apex-thought, has attained a sort of impersonal personality or, in other words, has been brought into harmony with the vision of the immortals. The material upon which the artist works is that original "objective mystery," confronting every individual soul, out of which every individual soul creates its universe. The medium by means of which the artist works is that outflowing of the very substance of the soul itself which we name by the name of emotion. This actual passing of the substantial substance of the soul into whatever form or shape of objective mystery the soul's vision has half-discovered and half-created is the true secret of what happens both in the case of the original creation of the artist and in case of the reciprocal re-creation of the person enjoying the work of art. For Benedetto Croce, the Italian philosopher, is surely right when he asserts that no one can enter into the true spirit of a work of art without exercising upon it something of the same creative impulse as that by the power of which it originally came into existence. In the contemplation of a statue or a picture or a piece of bric-a-brac, in the enjoyment of a poem or an exquisite passage of prose, just as much as in the hearing of music, the soul of the recipient is projected beyond its normal limitation in the same way as the soul of the creator was projected beyond its normal limitation. The soul which thus gives itself up to Beauty is actually extended in a living ecstasy of vibration until it flows into, and through, and around, the thing it loves. But even this is an inadequate expression of what happens; for this outflowing of the soul is the very force and energy which actually is engaged in re-creating this thing out of what at present I confine myself to calling the "objective mystery." The emotion of the soul plays therefore a double part. It half-discovers and half-creates the pervading beauty of things; and it also loses itself in receptive ecstasy, in embracing what it has half-created and half-found. We have now reached a point from which we are able to advance yet another step. Since what we call beauty is the evocation of these two confronted existences, the existing thing which we call the soul and the existing thing which we call the objective mystery, it follows that there resides, as a potentiality, in the nature of the objective mystery, the capacity for being converted into Beauty at the touch of the soul. There is thus a three-fold complication of reality in this thing we call the beauty of the universe. There is the individual, human, subjective reality of it, dependent upon the temperament of the observer. There is the universal potential reality of it, existing in the objective mystery. And finally there is the ideal reality of it, objective and absolute as far as we are concerned, in the vision that I have called "the vision of the immortals." If it be asked why, in all these ultimate problems, it is necessary to introduce the vision of the immortals, my answer is that the highest human experience demands and requires it. At those rare moments when the "apex-thought" reaches its rhythmic consummation the soul is conscious that its subjective vision of Truth and Beauty merges itself and loses itself in an objective vision which carries the "imprimatur" of eternity. This is a definite universal experience which few introspective minds will dare to deny. But since, as we have already proved, the ultimate reality of things is personality, or, to be more exact, is personality, confronting the objective mystery, it is clear that if the subjective vision of the soul is to correspond with an objective reality outside the soul, that objective reality outside the soul must itself be the vision of personality. It may be asked, at this point, why it is that the potentiality or the capacity for being turned into beauty at the touch of the soul, which resides in the objective mystery is not enough to explain this recognition by the soul of an eternal objective validity in its ultimate ideas. It is not enough to explain it, because this potentiality remains entirely unrecognized until it is touched by personality, and it is therefore quite as much a potentiality of inferior beauty, inadequate truth, and second-rate goodness, as it is a potentiality of the rarest of these things. The objective mystery by itself cannot explain the soul's experience of an eternal validity in its deepest ideas because the objective mystery in its role of pure potentiality is capable of being moulded into the form of _any_ ideas, whether deep or shallow. Thus our proof of the real existence of "the vision of the immortals" depends upon two facts. It depends upon the fact that the soul experiences an intuitive assurance of objective reality in its ideas. And it depends upon the fact that there is no other reality in the world, with any definite form or outline, except the reality of personality. For an idea to be eternal, therefore, it must be the idea of a personality, or of many personalities, which themselves are eternal; and since we have no evidence that the human soul is eternal and does not perish with the body we are compelled to assume that somewhere in the universe there must exist beings whose personality is able to resist death and whose vision is an immortal vision. It might be objected at this point, by such as follow the philosophy of Epicurus, that, even though such beings exist, we have no right to assume that they have any regard for us. My answer to this is that in such moments as I have attempted to describe, when the rhythmic activity of the soul is at its highest, we become directly and intuitively conscious of an immense unutterable harmony pervading all forms of life, whether mortal or immortal; a harmony which could not be felt if there were not some mysterious link binding all living souls together. We become aware at such moments that not only are all living souls thus bound together but that all are bound together by the fact that the ideal vision of them all is one and the same. This is not only my answer to such as maintain that though there may be Beings in the system of things superior to man, such Beings have no necessary connection with man; it is also my answer to the question as to how, considering the capricious subjectivity of our human vision, we can be assured that the ideal vision of the immortals does not vary in the same way among themselves. We are assured against both these possibilities; against the possibility of the immortals being indifferent to humanity, and against the possibility of the immortals being divided among themselves, by the fact that, according to the very basic revelation of the complex vision, wherever there is a living soul, that living soul is dependent for its continued existence upon the overcoming of malice by love. This duality is so much the essence of what we call personality that we cannot conceive of personality without it. If, therefore, the immortals are possessed of personality they must be subject to this duality; and the fact that they are subject to it puts them necessarily in at least a potential "rapport" with all other living souls, since the essence of every living soul is to be found in the same unfathomable struggle. But granting that there _are_ superior Beings, worthy to be called Gods, who in their essential nature resemble humanity, how can we be assured that there is any contact between them and humanity? We are assured of this in the intuitive revelation of a most definite human experience, an experience which few philosophers have been sceptical enough to deny, although their explanations of it may have been different from mine. William James, for instance, whose psychological investigations into the phenomena of religious feeling are so thorough and original, describes the sense we have of the presence of these unseen Powers in a very interesting and curious way. He points out that the feeling we experience at such moments is that there exists below the level of our ordinary consciousness a deep and limitless reservoir or cistern containing "more" of the same stream of spiritual emotion which we are conscious of as being our very inmost self or soul of our soul. On the waves of this subconscious ocean of deeper life we are, so to speak, able to "ride"; if once, in a sudden revolution of absolute humility, we can give ourselves up to it. It is needless to indicate how the Ideas of Plato, the "sub specie aeternitatis" of Spinoza, the "Liberation" from "the Will" of Schopenhauer, the "Beatific Vision" of the Catholic saints are all analogues and parallels, expressed under different symbols, of the same universal feeling. The difference between these philosophic statements of the situation and mine, is that, whereas these are content, with the doubtful exception of Plato, to eliminate from this subconscious "more" of what is "best" in our own soul, every trace and element of personality, I am unable to escape from the conviction that compared with personality no power in the universe, whether it be called "Idea" or "Substance" or a "Will to annihilate Will" or "Life Force" or "Stream of consciousness" or any other name, is worthy to be regarded as the cause and origin of that intimation of "something more" by which our soul comes into contact with the secret of the system of things. To assume that the vision of unutterable truth which is reached in the supreme works of art is anything less than the vision of super-human Personality is to assume that something other than Peripety is the secret of life. And how can man, who feels so profoundly conscious that his own personal "I am I" is the inmost essence of his being, when it comes to the question of the cause of his sensation of "riding on the waves" of this something "more," be content to find the cause in mere abstractions from personality, such as "streams of consciousness" or "life-force" or "Absolute Substance"? What we _know for certain_, in this strange imbroglio, is that what we call Beauty is a complex of two mysteries, the mystery of our own "I am I" and the mystery of the "objective something" which this "I am I" confronts. And if, as is the case, our most intense and passionate experience, when the rhythm of our nature is at the fullest, is the intuition of some world-deep authority or sanction giving an eternal validity to our ideas, this authority or sanction cannot be interpreted in mere metaphors or similes abstracted from personality, or in any material substance without a mind, or in any "stream of thought" without a thinker: but can only be interpreted in terms of what alone we have an inside consciousness of, namely in terms of personality itself. To some temperaments it might seem as though this reduction of the immense unfathomable universe to a congeries of living souls were a strangling limitation. There are certain human temperaments, and my own is one of them, whose aesthetic sense demands the existence of vast interminable spaces of air, of water, of earth, of fire, or even of blank emptiness. To such a temperament it might seem as though to be jostled throughout eternity by other living souls were to be shut up in an unescapable prison. And when to this unending population of fellow-denizens of space we add this doctrine that our deepest ideas of Beauty remain subjective and ephemeral until they have received the "imprimatur" of some mysterious superhuman Being or Beings, such rebellious temperaments as I am speaking of might conceivably cry aloud for the Psalmist's "wings of a dove." But the aspect of things which I have just suggested is after all only a superficial aspect of the situation. Those hollow spaces of unplumbed darkness, those gulfs filled with primordial nothingness, those caverns of midnight where the hoary chemistry of matter swirls and ferments in eternal formlessness; these indeed _are_ taken away from us. But as I have indicated again and again, no movement of human logic, no energy of human reason, can destroy the unfathomableness of Nature. The immense spectacle of the material universe, with its perpetually receding background of objective mystery, is a thing that cannot be destroyed. Those among us who reluct at every human explanation of this panorama of shadows, are only too easily able to "flee away and be at rest" in the bottomless gulf they crave. The fact that man's apex-thought reveals the presence of an unending procession of living souls, each of whose creative energy moulds this mystery to its own vision, does not remove the unfathomableness of the world-stuff whereof they mould it. As we have already seen, this aboriginal world-stuff, so impenetrable to all analysis, assumes as far as we are concerned a three-fold form. It assumes the form of the material element in that fusion of matter and consciousness which makes up the substance of the soul. It assumes the form of the universal medium which binds all souls together. And it assumes the form of the objective mystery which confronts the vision of all souls. Over these three forms of the "world-stuff" hangs irrevocably the great "world-curve" or "world-circle" of omnipresent Space, which gives the final and ultimate unity to all possible universes. The temperamental revolt, however, which I am endeavouring to describe, against our doctrine of personality, does not stop with a demand for de-humanized air and space. It has a passionate "penchant" for the projection of such vague imaginative images as "spirit" and "life." Forgetful that no man has ever seen or touched this "spirit," apart from a personal soul, or this "life," apart from some living thing, the temperament I am thinking of loves to make imaginative excursions into what it supposes to be vast receding abysses of pure "spirit" and of impersonal inhuman "life." It gains thus a sense of liberation from the boundaries of its own personality and a sense of liberation from the boundaries of all personality. The doctrine, therefore, that the visible universe is a mysterious complex of many concentrated mortal visions, stamped, so to speak, with the "imprimatur" of an ideal immortal vision, is a doctrine that seems to impede and oppose such a temperament in this abysmal plunge into the ocean of existence. But my answer to the protest of this temperament--and it is an answer that has a certain measure of authority, since this temperament is no other than my own--is that this feeling of "imprisonment" is due to a superficial understanding of the doctrine against which it protests. It is superficial because it does not recognize that around, above, beneath, within, every form of personality that the "curve of space" covers, there is present the aboriginal "world-stuff," unfathomable and inexplicable, out of which all souls draw the material element of their being, in which all souls come into contact with one another, and from which all souls half-create and half-discover their personal universe. It was necessary to introduce this question of temperamental reaction just here, because in any conclusion as to the nature of Beauty it is above all things important to give complete satisfaction to every great recurrent exigency of human desire. And this desire for liberation from the bonds of personality is one of the profoundest instincts of personality. We have now arrived at a point of vantage from which it is possible to survey the outlines of our final problem; the problem, namely as to what it really is which renders one object in nature more beautiful than another object, and one work of art more beautiful than another work of art. We know that in the intuitive judgment which affixes these relative valuations there must be the three elements of mortal subjective vision, of immortal objective vision, and of the original "world-stuff" out of which all visions are made. But upon what criteria, by what rules and standards, do we become aware that one tree is more beautiful than another tree, one landscape than another landscape, one poem or person or picture than another of the same kind? The question has already been lifted out of the sphere of pure subjective taste by what has been said with regard to the eternal Ideal vision. But are there any permanent laws of Beauty by which we may analyse the verdict of this objective vision? Or are we made aware of it, in each individual case, by a pure intuitive apprehension? I think there _are_ such laws. But I think the "science," so to say, of the aesthetic judgment remains at present in so rudimentary a stage that we are not in a position to do more than indicate their general outline. The following principles seem, as far as I am able to lay hold upon this evasive problem, of more comprehensive application than any others. A thing to be beautiful must form an organic totality, even though in some other sense it is only a portion of a larger totality. It must carry with it the impression, illusive or otherwise, that it is the outward form or shape of a living personal soul. It must satisfy, at least by symbolic association, the physical desires of the body. It must obey certain hidden laws of rhythm, proportion, balance, and harmony, both with regard to colour and form, and with regard to magical suggestiveness. It must answer, in some degree, the craving of the human mind for some symbolic expression of the fatality of human experience. It must have a double effect upon us. It must arouse the excitement of a passion of attention, and it must quiet us with a sense of eternal rest. It must thrill us with a happiness which goes beyond the pleasure of a passing physical sensation. It must convey the impression of something unique and yet representative; and it must carry the mind through and beyond itself, to the very brink and margin of the ultimate objective mystery. It must suggest inevitableness, spontaneity, a certain monumental ease, and a general feeling of expansion and liberation. It must, if it belong to nature, convey that magical and world-deep sadness which springs from an inarticulate appeal; or, if it belong to art, that wistful loneliness which springs from the creation of immortality by the hands of mortality. The above principles are not offered as in any way exhaustive. They are outlined as a temporary starting point and suggestion for the more penetrating analysis which the future will surely provide. And I have temporally excluded from them, as can be seen, all references to those auxiliary elements drawn from reason and conscience which, according to the philosophy of the complex vision, must be included in the body of art, if art is to be the final expression of human experience. But after gathering together all we have accumulated among these various paths leading to the edge of the mystery of art, what we are compelled to recognize, when we confront the palpable thing itself, is that, in each unique embodiment of it, it arrests and entrances us, as with a sudden transformation of our entire universe. Out of the abysses of personality--human or super-human--every new original work of art draws us, by an irresistible magnetism, into itself, until we are compelled to become _what it is_, until we are actually transformed into its inmost identity. What hitherto has seemed to us mere refuse and litter and dreariness and debris--all the shards and ashes and flints and excrement of the margins of our universe--take upon themselves, as they are thus caught up and transfigured, a new and ineffable meaning. The terrible, the ghastly, the atrocious, the abominable, the apparently meaningless and dead, suddenly gather themselves together and take on strange and monumental significance. What has hitherto seemed to us floating jetsom and blind wreckage, what has hitherto seemed to us mere brutal lumps of primeval clay tossed to and fro by the giant hands of chaos, what has hitherto seemed to us slabs of inhuman chemistry, suddenly assumes under the pressure of this great power out of the abyss a strange and lovely and terrible expressiveness. Deep calls to Deep; and the mysterious oceans of Personality move and stir in a terrific reciprocity. The unfathomable gulfs of the eternal duality within us are roused to undreamed-of response in answer to this abysmal stirring of the powers that create the world. What is good in us is enlarged and heightened; what is evil in us is enlarged and deepened; while, under the increasing pressure of this new wave of the perilous stuff "of emotion," slowly, little by little, as we give ourselves up to the ecstasy of contemplation, the intensified "good" overcomes the intensified "evil." It is then that what has begun in agitation and disturbance sinks by degrees into an infinite peace; as, without any apparent change or confusion, the waves roll in, one after another, upon our human shore, and we are lifted up and carried out on that vast tide into the great spaces, beneath the morning and the evening, where the eternal vision awaits us with its undescribable calm. Let art be as bizarre, as weird, as strange, as rare, as fantastic, as you please, if it be true art it must spring from the aboriginal duality in the human soul and thus must remain indestructibly personal. But since the two elements of personality wrestle together in every artist's soul, the more personal a work of art becomes the more comprehensive is its impersonality. For art, by means of the personal and the particular, attains the impersonal and the universal. By means of sinking down into the transitory and the ephemeral, by means of moulding chance and accident to its will, it is enabled to touch the eternal and the eternally fatal. From agitation to peace; from sound to silence; from creation to contemplation; from birth and death to that which is immortal; from movement to that which is at rest--such is the wayfaring of this primordial power. It is from the vantage-ground of this perception that we are able to discern how the mysterious beauty revealed in apparently "inhuman" arrangements of line and colour and light and shade is really a thing springing from the depths of some personal and individual vision. The controversy as to the superior claims of an art that is just "art," with an appeal entirely limited to texture and colour and line and pure sound, and an art that is imagistic, symbolic, representative, religious, philosophical, or prophetic, is rendered irrelevant and meaningless when we perceive that all art, whether it be a thing of pure line and colour or a thing of passionate human content, must inevitably spring from the depths of some particular personal vision and must inevitably attain, by stressing this personal element to the limit, that universal impersonality which is implied in the fact that every living soul is composed of the same elements. It may require no little subtlety of vision to detect in the pure beauty of line, colour, and texture that compose, say, some lovely piece of bric-a-brac, the hidden presence of that primordial duality out of which all forms of beauty emerge, but the metaphysical significance latent in the phrase "the sense of difficulty overcome" points us towards just this very interpretation. The circumstantial and the sexual "motifs" in art, so appealing to the mob, may or may not play an aesthetic part in the resultant rhythm. If they do, they do so because such "interest" and such "eroticism" were an integral portion of the original vision that gave unity to the work in question. If they do not, but are merely dragged in by the un-aesthetic observer, it is easy enough for the genuine virtuoso to disregard such temptation and to put "story," "message," "sentiment," and "sex-appeal" rigidly aside, as he seeks to respond to the primordial vision of an "unstoried" non-sexual beauty springing from those deeper levels of the soul where "story," "sentiment," and sex have no longer any place. More dangerous, however, to art, than any popular craving for "human interest" or for the comfort of amorous voluptuousness, is the unpardonable stupidity of puritanical censorship. Such censorship, in its crass impertinence, assumes that its miserable and hypocritical negations represent that deep, fierce, terrible "imperative" uttered by the soul's primordial conscience. They represent nothing of the sort. The drastic revelations of "conscience" are, as I have pointed out again and again, fused and blended in their supreme moments with the equally drastic revelations of reason and the aesthetic sense. They are inevitably blended with these, because, as we have proved, they are all three nothing less than divergent aspects of the one irresistible projection of the soul itself which I have named "creative love." Thus it comes about that in the great, terrible moments of tragic art there may be an apparent catastrophic despair, which in our normal moods seems hopeless, final, absolute. It is only when the complex rhythm of the apex-thought is brought to bear upon these _moments of midnight_ that a strange and unutterable healing emerges from them, a shy, half-hinted whisper or something deeper than hope, a magical effluence, a "still, small voice" from beneath the disastrous eclipse, which not only "purges our passions by pity and terror" but evokes an assured horizon, beyond truth, beyond beauty, beyond goodness, where the mystery of love, in its withdrawn and secret essence, transforms all things into its own likeness. The nature of art is thus found to be intimately associated with the universal essence of every personal life. Art is not, therefore, a thing for the "coteries" and the "cliques"; nor is it a thing for the exclusive leisure of any privileged class. It is a thing springing from the eternal "stuff of the soul," of every conceivable soul, whether human, sub-human, or super-human. Art is nearer than "philosophy" or "morality" to the creative energy; because, while it is impossible to think of art as "philosophy" or "morality," it is inevitable that we should think of both of these as being themselves forms and manifestations of art. All that the will does, in gathering together its impressions of life and its reactions to life, must, even in regard to the most vague, shadowy, faint and obscure filcherings of contemplation, be regarded as a kind of intimate "work of art," with the soul as the "artist" and the flow of life as the artist's material. Every personal soul, however "inartistic," is an artist in this sense; and every personal life thus considered is an effective or ineffective "work of art." The primal importance of what in the narrow and restricted sense we have come to call "art" can only be fully realized when we think of such "art" as concentrating upon a definite material medium the creative energy which is for ever changing the world in the process of changing our attitude to the world. The deadly enemy of art--the power that has succeeded, in these commercial days, in reducing art to a pastime for the leisured and wealthy--is the original inert malice of the abyss. This inert malice assumes, directly it comes in contact with practical affairs, the form of the possessive instinct. And the attitude towards art of the "collector" or the leisured "epicurean," for whom it is merely a pleasant sensation among other sensations, is an attitude which undermines the basis of its life. The very essence of art is that it should be a thing common to all, within the reach of all, expressive of the inherent and universal nature of all. And that this is the nature of art is proved by the fact that art is the personal expression of the personal centrifugal tendency in all living souls; an expression which, when it goes far enough, becomes _impersonal_, because, by expressing what is common to all, it reaches the point where the particular becomes the universal. It thus becomes manifest that the true nature of art will only be incidentally and occasionally manifested, and manifested among us with great difficulty and against obstinate resistance, until the hour comes when, to an extent as yet hardly imaginable, the centripetal tendency of the possessive instinct in the race shall have relinquished something of its malicious resistance to the out-flowing force which I have named "love." And this yielding of the centripetal power to that which we call centrifugal can only take place in a condition of human society where the idea of communism has been accepted as the ideal and, in some effective measure, realized in fact. For every work of art which exists is the rhythmic articulation, in terms of any medium, of some personal vision of life. And the more entirely "original" such a vision is, the more closely--such is the ultimate _paradox_ of things--will it be found to approximate to a re-creation, in this particular medium, of that "eternal vision" wherein all souls have their share. CHAPTER VIII. THE NATURE OF LOVE The secret of the universe, as by slow degrees it reveals itself to us, turns out to be personality. When we consider, further, the form under which personality realizes, itself, we find it to consist in the struggle of personality to grapple with the objective mystery. When, in a still further movement of analysis, we examine the nature of this struggle between the soul and the mystery which surrounds the soul, we find it complicated by the fact that the soul's encounter with this mystery reveals the existence, in the depths of the soul itself, of two conflicting emotions, the emotion of love and the emotion of malice. The word "love" has been used so indiscriminately in its surprising history that it becomes necessary to elucidate a little the particular meaning I give to it in connection with this ultimate duality. A strange and grotesque commentary upon human life, these various contradictory feelings that have covered their "multitude of sins" under this historic name! The lust of the satyr, the affectionate glow of the domestic habitué, the rare exalted passion of the lover, the cold, clear attraction of the intellectual platonist, the will to possession of the sex-maniac, the will to voluptuous cruelty of the sex-pervert, the maternal instinct, the race-instinct, the instinct towards fetish-worship, the instinct towards art, towards nature, towards the ultimate mystery--all these things have been called "love" that we should follow them and pursue them; all these things have been called "love" that we should avoid them and fly from them. The emotion of love in which we seem to detect the ultimate creative force is not precisely any of these things. Of all normal human emotions it comes nearest to passionate sympathy. But it is much more than this. The emotion of love is not a simple nor an easily defined thing. How should it be that, when it is one aspect of the outpouring of the very stuff of the soul itself? How should it be that when it is the projection, into the heart of the objective mystery, of the soul's manifold and complicated essence? The best definition of love is that it is the creative apprehension of life, or of the objective mystery, under the form of an eternal vision. At first sight this definition might seem but a cold and intellectual account of love; an account that has omitted all feeling, all passion, all ecstasy. But when we remember that what we call "the eternal vision" is nothing less than the answer of love to love, nothing less than the reciprocal rhythm of all souls, in so far as they have overcome malice, with one another and with the mystery which surrounds them, it will be seen that the thing is something in which what we call "intellect" and what we call "feeling" are both transcended. Love, in this sense, is an ecstasy; but it is an ecstasy from which all troubling, agitating, individual exactions have been obliterated. It is an ecstasy completely purged of the possessive instinct. It is an ecstasy that brings to us a feeling of indescribable peace and calm. It is an ecstasy in which our personal self, in the fullest realization of its inmost identity, loses itself, even at the moment of such realization, in something which cannot be put into words. At one moment our human soul finds itself harassed by a thousand vexations, outraged by a thousand miseries. Physical pain torments it, spiritual pain torments it; and a great darkness of thick, heavy, poisonous obscurity wraps it round like a grave-cloth. Then, in a sudden movement of the will, the soul cries aloud upon love; and in one swift turn of the ultimate wheel, the whole situation is transformed. The physical pain seems to have no longer any hold upon the soul. The mental misery and trouble falls away from it like an unstrapped load. And a deep, cool, tide--calm and still and full of infinite murmurs--rolls up around it, and pours through it, and brings it healing and peace. The emotion of love in which personality, and therefore in which the universe, finds the secret of its life, has not the remotest connection with sex. Sexual passion has its place in the world'; but it is only when sexual passion merges itself in the sort of love we are now considering that it becomes an instrument of real clairvoyance. There is a savage instinct of cruel and searching illumination in sexual passion, but such an instinct is directed towards death rather than towards life, because it is dominated, through all its masks and disguises, by the passion of possession. Like the passion of hate, to which it is so closely allied, sexual passion has a kind of furious intensity which is able to reveal many deep levels of human obliquity. But one thing it cannot reveal, because of the strain of malice it carries with it, and that is the spring of genuine love. "Like unto like" is the key to the situation; and the deeper the clairvoyance of malice digs into the subterranean poison of life, the more poison it finds. For in finding poison it creates poison, and in finding malice it doubles malice. The great works of art are not motivated by the clairvoyance of malice; they are motivated by the clairvoyance of love. It is only in the inferior levels of art that malice is the dominant note; and even there it is only effective because, mixed with it, there is an element of destructive hatred springing from some perversion of the sexual instinct. Whatever difficulty we may experience in finding words wherewith to define this emotion of love, there is not one of us, however sceptical and malign, who does not recognize it when it appears in the flesh. Malice displays its recognition of it by a passion of furious hatred; but even this hatred cannot last for ever, because in every personality that exists there must be a hidden love which answers to the appeal of love. The feeling which love has, at its supreme moments, is the feeling of "unity in difference" with all forms of life. Love may concentrate itself with a special concentration upon one person or upon more than one; but what it does when it so concentrates itself is not to make an alliance of "attack and defence" with the person it loves, but to flow outwards, through them and beyond them, until it includes every living thing. Let it not, however, be for a moment supposed that the emotion of love resembles that vague "emotion of humanity" which is able to satisfy itself in its own remote sensationalism without any contact with the baffling and difficult mystery of real flesh and blood. The emotion of love holds firmly and tightly to the pieces and fragments of humanity which destiny has thrown in its way. It does not ask that these should be different from what they are, except in so far as love inevitably makes them different. It accepts them as its "universe," even as it accepts, without ascetic dismay, the weakness of the particular "form of humanity" in which it finds _itself_ "incarnated." By gradual degrees it subdues these weaknesses of the flesh, whether in its own "form" or in the "form" of others; but it is quite contrary to the emotion of love to react against such weaknesses of the flesh with austere or cruel contempt. It is humorously indulgent to them in the form of its own individual "incarnation" and it is tenderly indulgent to them in the form of the "incarnation" of other souls. The emotion of love does not shrink back into itself because in the confused pell-mell of human life the alien souls which destiny has chosen for its companions do not satisfy, in this detail or the other detail, the desire of its heart. The emotion of love is always centrifugal, always outflowing. It concentrates itself upon this person or the other person, as the unaccountable attractions of likeness and difference dictate or as destiny dictates; but the deepest loyalty of love is always directed to the eternal vision; for in the eternal vision it not only becomes one with all living souls but it also becomes one--though this is a high and difficult mystery--with all the dead that have ever loved and with all the unborn that will ever love. For the apprehension of the eternal vision is at once the supreme creation and the supreme discovery of the soul of man; and not of the soul of man alone, but of all souls, whether of beasts or plants or demi-gods or gods, who fill the unfathomable circle of space. The secret of this kind of love, when it comes to the matter of human relationships, may perhaps best be expressed in those words of William Blake which imply the difficulty which love finds in overcoming the murderous exactions of the possessive instinct and the cruel clairvoyance of malice. "And throughout all eternity, I forgive you: you forgive me: As our dear Redeemer said--This is the wine: this is the bread." This "forgiveness" of love does not imply that love, as the old saying runs, is "blind." Love sees deeper than malice; for malice can only recognize its own likeness in everything it approaches. It must be remembered too that this process of laying bare the faults of others is not a pure process of discovery. Like all other forms of apprehension it is also a reproduction of itself. The situation, in fact, is never a static one. These "faults" which malice, in its reproductive "discoveries" lays bare, are not fixed, immobile, dead. They are organic and psychic conditions of a living soul. They are themselves in a perpetual state of change, of growth, of increase, of withering, of fading. They are affected at every moment by the will and by the emotion of the subject of them. They project themselves; they withdraw themselves. They dilate; they diminish. Thus it happens that at the very touch of this "discovering," the malice which is thus "discovered" dilates with immediate reciprocity to meet its "discoverer"; and this can occur--such is the curious telepathic vibration between living things--without any articulate act of consciousness. The art of psychological investigation is therefore a very dangerous organ of research in the hands of the malicious; for it goes like a reproductive scavenger through the field of human consciousness increasing the evil which it is its purpose to collect. The apostolic definition of "charity" as the thing which "thinketh no evil" is hereby completely justified; and the profound Goethean maxim, that the way to enlarge the capacities of human beings is to "assume" that such capacities are larger than they really are, is justified also. Malice naturally assumes that the "faults" of people are "static," immobile, and unchanging. It assumes this even in the very act of increasing these faults. For the I static and unchanging is precisely what malice desires and seeks to find; for death is its ideal; and, short of pure nothingness, death is the most static thing we know. Love is not blind or fooled or deluded when it waives aside the faults of a person and plunges into the unknown depths of such a person's soul. It is not blind, when, in the energy of the creative vision, such faults subside and fall away and cease to exist. It is completely justified in its declaration that what it sees and feels in such a person is a hidden reservoir of unsatisfied good. It does see this; it does feel this; because there arises, in answer to its approach, an upward-flowing wave of its own likeness; because in such a person's inmost soul love, after all, remains the creative impulse which is the life of that soul and the very substance of that soul's personality. The struggle between the emotion of love and the emotion of malice goes on perpetually, in the depths of life, below a thousand shifting masks and disguises. What we call the "universe" is nothing but a congeries of innumerable "souls," manifested in innumerable "bodies," each one confronted by the objective mystery, each one surrounded by an indescribable ethereal "medium." What we call the emotion of love is the outflowing of any one of these souls towards the body and soul of any other, or again, in a still wider sense, towards all bodies and souls covered by the unfathomable circle of space. I will give a concrete example of what I mean. Suppose a man to be seated in the yard of a house with a few patches of grass in front of him and the trunk of a solitary tree. The slanting sunshine, we will suppose, throws the shadows of the leaves of the tree and the shadows of the grass-blades upon a forlorn piece of trodden earth-mould or dusty sand which lies at his feet. Something about the light movement of these shadows and their delicate play upon the ground thrills him with a sudden thrill; and he finds he "loves" this barren piece of earth, these grass-blades, and this tree. He does not only love their outward shape and colour. He loves the "soul" behind them, the "soul" that makes them what they are. He loves the "soul" of the grass, the "soul" of the tree, and that dim, mysterious, far-off "soul" of the planet, of whose "body" this barren patch of earth is a living portion. What does this "love" of his actually imply? It implies an outflowing of the very stuff and substance of his own towards the thing he loves. It implies, by a mysterious vibration of reciprocity, an indescribable response to his love from the "soul" of the tree, the plant, and the earth. Let an animal enter upon the scene, or a bird, or a windblown butterfly, or a flickering flight of midges or gnats, their small bodies illumined by the sun. These new comers he also loves; and is obscurely conscious that between their "souls" and his own there vibrates a strange reciprocity. Let a human being enter, familiar or unfamiliar, and if his will be set upon "love," the same phenomenon will repeat itself, only with a more conscious interchange. But what of "malice" all this time? Well! It is not difficult to indicate what "malice" will seek to do. Malice will seek to find its account in some physical or mental annoyance produced in us by each of these living things. This annoyance, this jerk or jolt to our physical or mental well-being, will be what to ourselves we name the "fault" of the offending object. The shadows will tease us by their incessant movement. The tree will vex us by the swaying of its branches. The grass will present itself to us as an untidy intruder. The barren patch of earth will fill us with a profound depression owing to its desolate lack of life and beauty. The dog will worry us by its fuss, its solicitation, its desire to be petted. The gnats or midges will stir in us an indignant hostility; since their tribe have been known to poison the blood of man. The human invader, above all; how loud and unpleasing his voice is! The eternal malice in the depths of our soul pounces upon this tendency of grass to be "a common weed," of gnats to bite, of dogs to bark, of shadows to flicker, of a man to have an evil temper, of a woman to have an atrocious shrewishness, or an appalling sluttishness; and out of these annoyances or "faults" it feeds its desire; it satisfies its necrophilistic lust; and it rouses in the grass, in the earth, in the tree, in the dog, in the human intruder, strange and mysterious vibrations of response which add to the general poison of the world. But the example I have selected of the activity of emotion may be carried further than this. All these individual "souls" of human, animal, vegetable, planetary embodiment, are confronted by the same objective mystery and surrounded by the same ethereal "medium." By projecting a vision poisoned by malice into the matrix of the objective mystery, the resultant "universe" becomes itself a poisoned thing, a thing penetrated by the spirit of evil. It is because the universe is always penetrated by the malice of the various visions whose "universe" it is, that we suffer so cruelly from its ironic "diablerie." A universe entirely composed of the bodies and souls of beings whose primordial emotion is so largely made up of malice is naturally a malicious universe. The age-old tradition of the witchery and devilry of malignant Nature is a proof as to how deep this impression of the system of things has sunk. Certain great masters of fiction draw the "motive" of their art from this unhappy truth. And just as the universe is penetrated through and through by the malice of those whose universe it is, so we may suppose that the ethereal "medium" which surrounds all souls, before they have visioned their various "universes" and found them to be one, is a thing which also may be affected by malice. It is an open question and one which, in the words of Sir Thomas Browne, "admits a wide solution," whether or not this ethereal "medium," which in a sense is of one stuff both with the objective mystery and with the substratum of the soul, is itself the "elemental body," as it were, of a living ubiquitous soul. If this should be the case--and it is no fantastic hypothesis--we are then provided with an explanation of the curious malignant impishness of those so-called "elementals" who tease, with their enigmatic oracles, the minds of unwise dabblers in "psychic manifestations." But what we are concerned with noting now is that just as the primordial malice of all the souls it contains continually poisons the universe, so the primordial love of all the souls it contains continually redeems and transforms the universe. In other words it is no exaggeration to say that the unfathomable universe is continually undergoing the same ebb and flow between love and malice, as are the souls and bodies of all the living things whereof it is composed. And what precisely is the attitude of love towards the physical body? Does it despise the physical body? Does its activity imply an ascetic or a puritanical attitude towards the body and the appetites of the body? The truth is quite the contrary of this. What the revelation of the complex vision indicates is that this loathing of the body, this revulsion against the body, this craving to escape from the body, is a mood which springs up out of the eternal malice. It is from the emotion of love in its attitude to the body that we arrive at the idea of the sacredness of the body and at the idea of what might be called "the eternal reality of the body." This idea of the eternal reality of the body springs directly from those ideas of truth, beauty and goodness which are pre-existent in the universe and therefore springs directly from that emotion of love which is the synthesis of these. The forms and shapes of stars and plants and rivers and hills are all realized and consummated in the form and shape of the human body. The magic of the elements, the mystery of earth and air and water and fire, are incarnated in this miracle of flesh and blood. In the countenance of a human child, in the countenance of a man or a woman, the whole unfathomable drama of life is expressed. The most evil of the children of men, asleep or dead, has in his face something more tragic and more beautiful than all the waters and all the land. Not to "love" flesh and blood, not to will the eternal existence of flesh and blood, is not to know "love" at all. To loathe flesh and blood, to will the annihilation of flesh and blood, is to be a victim of that original "motiveless malignity" which opposes itself to the creative force. This insistence upon "the eternal idea of the body" does not necessarily limit "the idea of the body" to the idea of the human body; but practically it does so. And it practically does so because the human body evidently incarnates the beauty and the nobility of all other forms and shapes and appearances which make up our existing universe. There may be other and different bodies in the unfathomable spaces of the world; but for those among us who are content to deal with the actual experiences which we have, the human body, summing up the magical qualities of all other terrestrial forms and shapes, must, as far as we are concerned, remain our permanent standard of truth and beauty. The substitution in art, in philosophy, and in religion, of other symbols, for this natural and eternal symbol of the human body is always a sign of a weakening of the creative impulse. It is a sign of a relative disintegration of the power of "love" and a relative concentration of the power of "malice." Thus when, by an abuse of the metaphysical reason, "thought-in-the-abstract" assumes the rights of a personality the principle of love is outraged, because the eternal idea of the body is denied. And when, by an abuse of the psychological reason, the other activities of the soul are so stressed and emphasized that the attribute of sensation is forgotten, the principle of love is outraged, because the eternal idea of the body is denied. The principle of love, by the necessity of its own nature, demands that the physiological aspect of reality should retain its validity. When, therefore, we come to consider the relation of this "eternal idea of the body" to those invisible "sons of the universe" whose power of love is inconceivably greater than our own, we are compelled, by the necessity of the complex vision, to encounter one of those ultimate dilemmas from which there appears to be no escape. The dilemma to which we are thus led may be defined in the following manner. Because the secret of the universe and the ultimate harmony between the pre-existent ideas by which all souls must live can be nothing less than what, in this rarified and heightened sense, we have named "love" and because the objective pattern and standard of this love is the creative energy of those personal souls we have named "the sons of the universe," therefore "the sons of the universe" must be regarded as directing their desire and their will towards what satisfies the inherent nature of such love. And because the inherent nature of such love demands nothing less than the eternalizing of the idea of flesh and blood, therefore the "sons of the universe" must be regarded as directing their desire and their will towards the eternalizing of the idea of flesh and blood. And just as the will and desire of these "invisible companions of men" must be regarded as directed towards the eternalizing of this idea whose magical "stuff of dreams" is one of the objects of their love, so the will and desire of all living souls must be directed towards the eternalizing of this same reality. And because the love of all living souls remains restless and unsatisfied when directed to any object except the "eternal vision" and because when directed to the "eternal vision" such love loses the misery of its craving and becomes satisfied, therefore the "eternal vision" must be regarded as the only object which can ultimately and really satisfy the eternal restlessness of the love of all living souls. But the inherent nature of love demands, as we have seen, the permanent reality of the physiological aspect of the universe. That is to say, the inherent desire of the love of all living souls is directed towards the eternalizing of the idea of flesh and blood. From this it follows that since the "eternal vision" satisfies the desire of love "the eternal vision" must include within it the eternal idea of the body. Both "the sons of the universe," therefore, and all other living souls are compelled, in so far as they give themselves up to the creative energy, to direct their will towards the eternalization of this idea. But is there not an inevitable frustration and negation of this desire and this will? Are not both the "companions of men" and men themselves denied by the very nature of things the realization of this idea? Is not the love of man for "the sons of the universe" frustrated in its desire in so far as "the sons of the universe" cannot be embodied in flesh and blood? And is not the love of "the sons of the universe" for man frustrated in its desire in so far as the physical form of each individual soul is destroyed by death? It seems to me that this dilemma cannot be avoided. Love insists on the eternity of the idea of the body. Therefore every soul who loves "the sons of the universe" desires their incarnation. But if "the sons of the universe" could appear in flesh and blood for the satisfaction of any one of their lovers, all other souls in the wide world would lose them as their invisible companions. But although this dilemma cannot in its literal outlines be avoided, it seems that the same inherent nature of love which leads to this dilemma leads also to the vanishing point or gap or lacuna in thought where the solution, although never actually realized, may conceivably exist. What love desires is the eternalizing of the idea of flesh and blood. It desires this because the idea of flesh and blood is a necessary aspect of the fulness and completeness of personality. But though the idea of flesh and blood is a necessary aspect of personality, every actual incarnation of personality leaves us aware that the particular soul we love has something more of beauty and nobility than is expressed. This "something more" is not a mere hypothetical quality but is an actual and real quality which we must assume to exist in the very stuff and texture of the soul. It exists, therefore, in that "vanishing-point of sensation," as I called it, which we have to think of, although we cannot define it, as constituting the soul's essential self. Those pre-existed ideas which find their synthesis in the emotion of love are undoubtedly part of the unfathomable universe. But they are this only because they are interwoven with the unfathomable soul which exists in each of us. The "something," therefore, which is the substratum of the soul and its centre of identity is a thing woven out of the very stuff of these ideas. This is the "vanishing point of sensation" to which I have referred, the point namely where what we call "mind" blends indissolubly with what we call "matter." The emotion of love which desires the eternalization of the idea of flesh and blood would be on the way to satisfaction, even if it never altogether reached it, if it were able to feel that this beauty and nobility and reality which exist in this "vanishing point of sensation" which is the very self of the soul were actually the living essence of flesh and blood, were, in fact, a real "spiritual body," of which the material body was the visible expression. It is the inherent nature of love itself, with its craving for reality, which leads us to the verge of this conception; and although this conception can never, as we have seen, become more than a "vanishing-point of sensation" we have at least the satisfaction of knowing that if we were able to define the thing more clearly it would cease at once to be the object of love; because it would cease to be that mysterious fusion of "mind" and "matter" which it is the nature of love to crave. Without the necessity then that these immortal ones whom I call the "sons of the universe" should satisfy the love of human souls by any physical incarnation, they may be considered as leading such love upon the true way by simply being what they are; that is by being living souls. For, as living souls, they also must possess as the centre of their being, a "spiritual body," or fusion-point of "mind" and "matter," which is the inner reality of flesh and blood. This "spiritual body" of "the gods" or the "sons of the universe" must necessarily be more noble and more beautiful than any visible embodiment of them could possibly be; though human imagination and human art have a profound right to attempt to visualize such an impossible embodiment; and the purest and most natural form of "religion" would be the form which struggled most successfully to appropriate such a visualization. And just as the human soul can satisfy something, though not all, of its desire for the eternalizing of flesh and blood in the "spiritual bodies" of these "invisible companions," so the gods can themselves satisfy something, though not all, of their love for the individual soul in the reality of the soul's "spiritual body." All this may carry to certain minds an ambiguous and even distasteful association; but I think it will only do so to such minds as are reluctant to analyse, to the furthest limit, their own capacity for the kind of "love" I have attempted to describe; and possibly also such minds as are debarred, by some sub-conscious element of "malice" in them, from even desiring to develop such a capacity. The ambiguity and unsatisfactory vagueness in what I have been attempting to indicate may perhaps be in a measure dissipated by a direct appeal to concrete experience. When one analyses this emotion of love in relation to any actual human object I think it becomes clear that in our attitude to the physical body of the person we love there is a profound element of pity. The sexual emotion may destroy this pity; and any emotion which is sensual as well as sexual may not only destroy it but turn it into a very different kind of pity; into the "pity," namely, of a torturer for his victim. But I feel I am not wrong in my analysis of the kind of "love" I have in my mind, when I say that the element of pity enters profoundly into our attitude towards the body of the person we love. It enters into it for this reason; namely because the physical body of the person we love does so inadequately and so imperfectedly express the beauty of such a person's soul. "Love is not love" when the blemishes and defects and maladies of the physical form of the person loved interfere with our love and cause it to diminish. And such blemishes and defects and maladies _would_ interfere with love if love were not in its essence profoundly penetrated by pity. It may be asked--"how can love, which is naturally associated with beauty and nobility, endure for a moment in the presence of such lamentable hideousness and repulsiveness and offensiveness, as exists in some degree in the physiological aspects of us all?" It is able to endure because in the presence of this what it desires is, as I have said, not so much the actual physical body of the object of its love as the "eternal idea" of such a body. When the individual soul allows itself to demand with too desperate a craving the actual incarnation of these "sons of the universe" it is in reality false to its desire for the "eternal idea of the body," because no actual incarnation of these immortal ones could realize in any complete sense this "eternal idea." In the same way when we feel the emotion of love towards any human soul, our attitude towards the physical form of such a soul must of necessity be profoundly penetrated by pity and by a tender and humorous recognition that such a physical form only expresses a very limited portion of the unfathomable soul which we love. If, with a desperate craving to contradict the essential nature of love, we insist upon regarding the physical body as the complete expression of the soul, we fall into the same fatal weakness as that into which those fall who demand a physical incarnation of the "companions of men," and along with such as these we are false to love's true craving for the "eternal idea of flesh and blood." In other words, this craving of love for "the eternal idea of the body" does not imply that we are false to love when we are unable to change our natural repugnance in the presence of the repulsive and the offensive into attraction to these things. Love certainly does not mean a morbid attraction to what is unattractive. The sexual emotion, the emotion which we call "being in love," does sometimes include this morbidity, just because, by reason of its physiological origin, it tends to remain the slave of the physiological. But although love does not imply a morbid attraction to the repulsive and the offensive, and although the presence of the repulsive and offensive in connection with those we love is a proof to us that "the eternal idea of the body," is not realized in the actual body, it is clear that "love is not love" when it allows itself to be diminished or destroyed by the presence of these things. What love really demands, both with regard to the universe and with regard to any individual soul in the universe, is not so much the retention of the physiological aspect of these things, _as we know them now_, but of the physiological aspect of them implied in such a phrase as "the eternal idea of matter" or "the eternal idea of flesh and blood." It may be put still more simply by saying that what love demands is the existence of something in what we call "matter" or the "body" which guarantees the eternal reality of these aspects of life. It does not demand that we should love the repulsive, the offensive, the false, or the evil, because these exist in the bodies and the souls of those we love. Everything in the universe partakes of the eternal duality. The hideous, the false and the evil are not confined to what we call "mind" but exist in what we call "matter" also. Consequently love, when in its craving for complete reality it demands "the eternal idea of the body" does not demand that this eternal idea should be realized in any actual body. When a demand of this kind is made, it is not made by love but by the sexual instinct, and it is invariably doomed to a ghastly disillusion. For it is just this very craving, namely that in some actual human body "the eternal idea of the body" should be realized, that the sweet and terrible madness of sexual love continually implies. But real love, the love which is the supreme synthesis of those ideas which represent the creative power in the ultimate duality, can never be disillusioned. And it cannot be disillusioned because it is able to see, beneath the chaotic litter and unessential debris of "matter," the eternal idea of "matter" and because it is able to see, under the lamentable repulsiveness and offensiveness of so much actual flesh and blood, "the eternal idea of flesh and blood." Love's attitude toward this element of litter and chaos in the universe is sometimes an attitude of humorous toleration and sometimes an attitude of destructive fire. Love's attitude towards the repulsive and the offensive in human souls and bodies is sometimes an attitude of humorous toleration and sometimes an attitude of destructive fire. But along with this passion of destruction, which is so essential a part of the passion of creation, and along with this humorous indulgence, there necessarily mingles, where human beings are concerned, an element of profound pity. The best concrete example of the mood I am trying to indicate is the emotion which any one would naturally feel in the presence of some torturer or tyrant whom he had slain, or even whom he had surprised asleep. For the prerogative of both sleep and death is that they obliterate the repulsive elements of flesh and blood and set free its eternal idea. And this is true of death even after the ghastly process of chemical dissolution has actually begun. A loathing of matter as matter, a hatred and contempt for the body as the body, is therefore a manifestation not of love but of the opposite of love. Such a loathing of the physiological is a sign of a weakening of the creative energy. It is also a sign of the stiffening of the resistant "malice," or "motiveless malignity," which opposes creation. What the energy of love directs its desire and its will towards, is first the "eternal idea of the soul," the idea of the rhythmic harmony of "mind" and "matter" fused and lost in one another, and then "the eternal idea of the body," the idea of the rhythmic projection of this invisible harmony upon the visible fabric of the world. Thus we arrive at the only definition of the nature of love which is satisfactory to the deepest moments of feeling experienced by the human soul. In such moments the soul gathers itself together on the verge and brink of the unknown. Something beyond the power of our will takes possession then of all that we are. In our momentary and transitory movement of the complex vision we are permitted to pass across the ultimate threshold. We enter then that mysterious rhythm which I have called "The Eternal Vision"; and in place of our desire for personal immortality, in place of our desire for the possession of any person or thing, in place of our contemplation of "forces" and "energies" and "evolution" or "dissolution," in place of our struggle for "existence" or for "power," we become suddenly aware that in the outflowing and reciprocal inter-action of the emotion of love there is something that reduces all these to insignificance, something that out of the very depths of the poisonous misery of the world and the irony of the world and the madness of the world utters its defiant Rabelaisian signal, "Bon espoir y gist au fond." CHAPTER IX. THE NATURE OF THE GODS We must now return to our original definition of the true philosophical instrument of research in order to see if we can secure from it a clearer notion as to the nature of the Gods. Such an instrument is, as we have seen, the apex-thought of the complex vision using all its attributes in rhythmic unison. For the complex vision using all its attributes in unison is only another name for the soul using the body and using something more than the body. If the soul could use no attributes except those given to it by the body, it might, or it might not, arrive at the idea of the "sons of the universe." It certainly could not enter into any relation with such immortal beings. But since it has arrived at such a conception "it is impossible for it ever to fall entirely away from what it has reached." For the same unfathomable duality which gave birth to the sons of the universe has given birth to men; and between these two, between the ideal figures who cannot perish and the generations of souls who for ever appear and for ever pass away there is an eternal understanding. And the understanding between these two depends upon the fact that they are both children of the same unfathomable duality. But this duality which is the cause why the universe is the universe and not something other than the universe, must remain as great a mystery to the souls of the "companions of men" as it is to all the souls in the world who recognize them as their ideal. We cannot escape the impression that this complex vision of ours, which is our instrument of research and which leaves us in the presence of an unfathomable duality, finds a parallel in the complex vision of the sons of the universe which is their instrument of research and which leaves them also in the presence of an unfathomable duality. We cannot escape from the impression that to these children of the eternal duality the mystery of this duality is as dark as it is to ourselves. They find themselves struggling to overcome malice with love, even as we find ourselves struggling to overcome malice with love. They find themselves driven to creation and destruction. The complex vision, which is their instrument of research, is baffled in the same way as the complex vision which is our instrument of research. If, therefore, in our desperate struggle with the unfathomable nature of this duality, we demand why it is that the gods have failed, in spite of their love, to give us any clue to some ultimate reconciliation, the answer must be that such an ultimate reconciliation is as much beyond the reach of their vision as it is beyond the reach of ours. The attainment of such a reconciliation would seem to mean the absolute end of life as we know it and of creation as we know it. Such a reconciliation would seem to mean nothing less than the swallowing up of the universe in unthinkable nothingness. The truth is that in this ultimate revelation of the complex vision we are confronted with an inevitable triad, or trinity, of primordial aspects. We are compelled to think of a plurality of living souls of which our own is one; of certain ideal companions of all souls whose vision gives to our vision its objective value; and of an external universe which is the creation of this vision. What the complex vision indicates, therefore, is a system of things which has a monistic aspect, for there is only one space and only one succession of time; a pluralistic aspect, for the system of things gives birth continually to innumerable individual souls; and a dualistic aspect, for the universe itself is created by the struggle between love and malice. What the complex vision does not indicate is any ultimate principle which reduces this complex system of things to the unbroken mass of one integral unity. The nearest approach to such an unbroken, integral unity is to be found in that indefinable "medium" which makes it possible for the innumerable souls which compose the universe to communicate with one another and with their invisible pre-existent companions. It is only the existence of this indefinable medium which makes it possible for us to speak of a universe at all. For this medium is the objective ground, or basis, so to say, from the midst of which each individual vision creates its own universe, always appealing as it does so to that objective standard or pattern of truth offered by the vision of man's invisible companions. What we roughly and loosely call "the universe" or "nature" is therefore an accumulated projection or creation of all the souls which exist, held together by this pervading medium which enables them to communicate with one another. In this eternal process of creating the universe by their united visions, all these souls must inevitably appeal, consciously or unconsciously, to the vision of their pre-existent companions. The best justification which can be offered for the expression _sons_ of the universe as applied to these invisible companions is to be found in the inevitable anthropomorphism of all human thought. The breaking point, so to speak, of man's vision, that ecstasy of comprehension which I call his apex-thought, is the moment which makes him aware of these companions' existence. And, at this ecstatic moment, all individual souls find their personality deepened to such a point that they feel themselves possessed of the very secret of the ultimate duality, feel themselves to be, in fact, unfathomable personifications of that duality. And their intimation or vision with regard to the gods presents itself to them at that moment as the very nature and true being of the gods. Yet it must be remembered that this intimation is a thing which we reach only by pain and exquisite effort; is a thing, in fact, which is the culminating point of an elaborate and difficult "work of art" requiring a rhythm and a harmony in our nature attained by no easy road. Since, therefore, the reality of these invisible companions though implied in all our intercourse with one another, is only visualized as actual and authentic when our subjective vision is at its highest point, and since when our subjective vision is at its highest point it conveys the sensation, rightly or wrongly, that what we call our "universe" is _their_ universe also, it is not without justification that we use the anthropomorphic expression "the sons of the universe" to describe these invisible companions. This expression, the sons of the universe, this idea of an objective standard of all ideas, is something that we attain with difficulty and not something that we just pick up as we go along. The "objective," in this sense, is the supreme attainment of the "subjective." And although when we have found these companions they become real and actual, we must not forget that, in the long process of escaping from the subjectivity of ourselves into the objectivity of their existence, it was our own subjective vision with the rhythmic ecstasy of its apex-thought which led us to the brink of this discovery. Thus the expression "the sons of the universe" finds its justification. For they are the objective discovery, as well as the objective implication, of all our human and subjective visions. We and they together create the universe and together become the "children" of the world we create. And although the universe when thus created remains the creation of man, assisted by the gods, it now presents itself to us, in its acquired and attained objectivity, as a pre-existent thing which is rather our parent than our creation. This objective reality of it, with the inevitable implication that it existed before we came on the scene at all, and will exist after we have disappeared from the scene, is a truth towards which our subjective vision has led us, but which, when once we reach it, seems to become independent of our subjective vision. Here again, therefore, in connection with the universe as in connection with the gods, the creation of our subjectivity is found to be something independent of our subjectivity and something that, all the while, has been implicit in the energy of our subjective vision. And precisely as the subjective vision of man creates the companions of men and then discovers them to be an objective reality, so the subjective vision of man creates the universe and then discovers the universe to be an objective reality. And in both cases this discovering finds its justification in a recognition that the idea of this resultant objectivity was implicit in the subjective energy from the beginning. But the universe once created or discovered, is found to be the eternal manifestation of that ultimate duality which is the essence of our own souls and of the souls of the immortals. In no other way can we think of the objectivity of the universe; for in no other way can we think of ourselves. And because it is the evocation of that ultimate duality which is the very stuff and texture of our creative vision, the universe becomes naturally the parent of man's invisible companions as it becomes the parent of man himself. And thus are we justified in speaking of these mysterious ones as the "sons of the universe." It is out of pain and grief that we arrive at the conception of the nature of the gods. "Those who have not eaten their bread with tears, they know them not, the Heavenly Powers!" Pain and sorrow, both physical and mental, seem to soften the porous shell, so to speak, of the human intelligence, seem to throw back certain shutter-like shards or scales with which it protects its malignant ignorance. It is when our loneliness becomes intolerable, it is when the poisonous teeth of the eternal malice in Nature have us by the throat, it is when our malice rises up, in the miserable torture of hatred, to answer the malice of the system of things, that, out of the depths, we cry to the darkness which surrounds us for some voice or some signal that shall give us an intimation of help. Merely to know that our wretched pain is known to some one besides ourselves is an incredible relief. Merely to know that some sort of superhuman being, even without special preoccupation with human fate, can turn an amused or an indulgent clairvoyance towards our wretchedness, can "note" it with dispassionate sympathy, as we note the hurts of animals or plants, is a sort of consolation. It is a relief to know that what we feel when we are hurt to the breaking-point is not absolutely wasted and lost in the void, but is stored up in an immortal memory along with many other pains of the same kind. That cry, "Only He do know what I do suffer" of the Wessex peasant is a cry natural to the whole human race. It is not that we ask to be confronted and healed by our immortal friend. We ask merely that our sorrows should not be altogether drowned in the abyss as though they had never been. There is a certain outrage about this annihilation of the very memory of pain against which humanity protests. But it is necessary at this point to beware of the old pathetic fallacy of human thought, the fallacy of assuming that to be true, which we desire to be true. What our complex vision reveals as to the nature of the gods does not satisfy in any obvious or facile manner this bitter need of humanity. If it did so satisfy it, then for some profound and mysterious reason man's own aesthetic sense would revolt against it, would indignantly reject it, as too smooth an answer to life's mystery. For man's aesthetic sense seems in some strange way to be in league with a certain inveterate tragedy in things, which no facile optimism can ever cajole or melt. That the gods are aware of our existence can hardly be doubted. That they feel pity for us, in this or that significant hour, can easily be imagined. That the evil in us draws towards us what is evil in them seems likewise a not unnatural possibility. That the love in us draws towards us the love in them is a thing in complete accordance with our own relation to forms of life lower than ourselves. That even at certain moments the gods may, by a kind of celestial vampirizing, use the bodily senses of men to "fill out," as it were, what is lacking in their own materiality, is a conceivable speculation. But it is not in any definite relation between the individual soul of man and the individual soul of any one of the immortals that our hope lies. If this were all that we could look for, our condition would be as miserable as the condition of those unhappy ones who seek intermittent and fantastic relief in attempted intercourse with the psychic and the occult. Our hope lies in that immemorial and traditional human gesture which has, in the unique figure of Christ, gathered up and focussed, as it were, all the vague and floating intimations of super-human sympathy, all the shadowy rumours and intimations of super-human help, which move to and fro in the background of our apprehension. The figure of Christ has thus become something more than a mere name arbitrarily given by us to some nameless god. The figure of Christ has become a symbol, an intermediary, a kind of cosmic high-priest, standing between all that is mortal and all that is immortal in the world, and by means of the love and pity that is in him partaking of the nature of every living thing. When, therefore, out of the bitterness of our fate we cry aloud upon the Unknown, the answer to our cry comes from the heart of Christ. In other words it comes from the epitome and personification of all the love in the universe. For to the figure of Christ has been brought, down the long ages of the world, all the baffled, thwarted, broken, unsatisfied love in every soul that has ever lived. It is in the heart of Christ that all the nameless sorrows and miseries, of the innumerable lives that Nature gives birth to, are stored up and remembered. Not one single pang, felt by plant or animal or bird or fish or man or planet, but is embalmed for ever in that mysterious store-house of the universal pity. Thus, if there were no other superhuman Beings in the world and if apart from the creative energy of all souls Christ would never have existed, as it is now He _does_ exist because He _has_ been created by the creative power of all souls. But while in one sense the figure of Christ is the supreme work of art of the world, the culminating achievement of the anonymous creative energy of all souls, the turning of the transitory into the eternal, of the mortal into the immortal, of the human into the divine; in another sense the figure of Christ is a real and living personality, the one personality among the gods, whose nature we may indeed assume that we understand and know. How should we not understand it, when it has been in so large a measure created by our sorrow and our desire? But the fact that the anonymous striving of humanity with the objective mystery has in a sense created the figure of Christ does not reduce the figure of Christ to a mere Ideal. As we have seen with regard to the primordial ideas of truth, beauty, and goodness, nothing can be an Ideal which has not already, in the eternal system of things, existed as a reality. What we call the pursuit of truth, or the creation of truth, what we call the pursuit of beauty or the creation of beauty, is always a _return_ to something which has been latent in the eternal nature of the system of things. In other words, in all creation there is a rediscovery, just as in all discovery there is creation. The figure of Christ, therefore, the everlasting intermediary between mortality and immortality, has been at once created and discovered by humanity. When any living soul approaches the figure of Christ, or cries aloud upon Christ out of the depths of its misery, it cries aloud upon all the love that has ever existed in the world. It enters at such a moment into definite communion with all the suffering of all the dead and with all the suffering of all the unborn. For in the heart of Christ all the dead are gathered up into immortality, and all their pain remembered. In the heart of Christ all the unborn live already, in their pain and in their joy; for such pain and such joy are latent in the ultimate duality of love and malice, and in the heart of Christ this ultimate duality struggles with such terrible concentration that all the antagonisms which the procession of time evokes, all the "moments" of this abysmal drama, in the past, in the present, in the future, are summed up and comprehended in what that heart feels. The ancient human doctrine of "vicarious suffering," the doctrine that upon the person of Christ all the sins and sorrows of the world are laid, is not a mere logical conclusion of a certain set of theological axioms; but is a real and true secret of life, discovered by our most intimate experience. The profoundest of all the oracles, uttered out of the depths, is that saying of Jesus about the "losing" of life to "save" it. This "losing of life" for Christ's sake is that ultimate act of the will by which the lusts of the flesh, the pride of life, the possessive instinct, the hatred of the body, the malice which resists creation, the power of pride, are all renounced, in order that the soul may enter into that supreme vision of Christ, wherein by a mysterious movement of sympathy, all the struggles of all living things are comprehended and shared. Thus it is true to say that the object of life for all living souls is the eternal vision. Towards the attainment of the eternal vision the love in all living souls perpetually struggles; and against the attainment of the eternal vision the malice in all living souls perpetually struggles. We arrive, therefore, at the only adequate conception of the nature of the gods which the complex vision permits us. The nature of the gods, or of the immortals, or, as I have preferred to call them, the sons of the universe, is a nature which corresponds to our nature, even as our nature corresponds to the nature of animals or of plants. The ultimate duality is embodied in the nature of the gods more richly, more beautifully, more terribly, in a more dramatic and articulate concentration, than it is embodied in our nature. Between us and the gods there must be a reciprocal vibration, as there is a reciprocal vibration between us and plants and beasts and oceans and hills. The precise nature of such reciprocity may well be left a matter for vague and unphilosophical speculation; because the important aspect of it, in regard to the mystery of life and the object of life, is not the method or manner of its functioning but the issue and the result of its functioning. And this issue and result of the reciprocity between mortal and immortal, between man and his invisible companions, is the eternal vision which they both share, the vision in which love attains its object. And the eternal vision, which was, and is, and is to come, is the vision in which Christ, the Intermediary between the transitory and the permanent, contemplates the spectacle of the unfathomable world; and is able to endure that spectacle, by reason of the creative power of love. CHAPTER X. THE FIGURE OF CHRIST In considering the figure of that great Intermediary between mortality and immortality whom we have come to name Christ, the question arises, in view of the historic existence of other world-saviours, such as the Indian Buddha, whether it would not be better to invent, out of our arbitrary fancy, some completely new symbol for the eternal vision which should be entirely free from those merely geographical associations which have limited the acceptance of this Figure to so much less than one-half of the inhabitants of our planet. The question arises--can there be invented any concrete, tangible symbol which shall appeal to every attribute of the complex vision and be an accumulated image of that side of the unfathomable duality from which we draw our ideas of truth, beauty, and goodness? For the complex vision itself I have projected my own arbitrary image of an arrow-head of many concentrated flames; but when we approach a matter as important as the choice of a symbolic image for the expression of the ultimate synthesis of the good as contrasted with the evil something very different from a mere subjective fancy is required. If it were possible for me, the present writer, to give myself up so completely to the creative spirit as to become suddenly inspired with the true idea of such a symbolic image, even then my image would remain detached, remote and individualistic. If it were possible for me to gather up, as it were, and to bring into focus all the symbolic images used by all the supreme prophets and artists and poets of the world, my synthetic symbol, including all these different symbols, would still remain remote and distant from the feelings and experiences of the mass of humanity. But the ideas of truth, beauty, goodness, together with that emotion of love which is their synthesis, are not confined to the great artists and prophets of the world. They are felt and experienced by the common mass of humanity. They have indeed an even wider scope than this, since they exist in the depths of the souls of the sons of the universe, and in the depths of that unfathomable universe whose objective reality depends upon their energy. They have the widest scope which it is possible for the complex vision to grasp. Wherever time and space are, they are; and, as we have seen, time and space make up the ultimate unity within whose limits the drama of life proceeds. Although the universe depends for its objective reality upon the vision of the immortals and incidentally upon all the visions of all the souls born into the world, it is not true to say that either the vision of the immortals or the visions of all souls, or even both of these together, exhaust the possibilities of the universe and sound the depths of its unfathomableness. The complex vision of man stops at a certain point; but the unfathomable nature of the universe goes on beyond that point. The complex vision, of the immortals stops at a definite point; but the unfathomable nature of the universe goes on beyond that point. If it be asked, "how can it be said that an universe, which depends for its objective reality upon the complex vision, goes on beyond the point where the complex vision stops?" I would answer that the complex vision does not only create reality; it discovers reality. There is always the primordial objective mystery outside the complex vision; that objective mystery, or world-stuff, or world-clay, out of which, in its process of half-creation and half-discovery, the complex vision evokes the universe. And although apart from the activity of the complex vision this primordial world-clay or objective mystery is almost nothing because it is only of its bare existence that we are aware, yet it is not altogether nothing, because it is, in a sense, the origin of everything we discover. When, therefore, we speak of the unfathomable as receding into depths beyond the point where the vision of man stops and beyond the point where the vision of the immortals stops, we do not contradict the statement that the vision of man and the vision of the immortals create the universe. They create the universe in so far as they discover the universe; but the universe must be thought of as always capable of being further discovered and further created. Perhaps the most adequate way of putting the situation would be to image the objective mystery as a kind of colourless screen across which a coloured picture is slowly moved. This coloured picture is the universe as we know it. Without the white screen as a background there could be no picture. All the colours of the picture are latent and potential in the whiteness of the screen; but they require the focussed lime-light of the magic-lantern to call them forth. The lantern from which the light comes, half-creates, so to speak, and half-discovers the resultant colours. When we say, therefore, that the universe, although created by the complex vision, recedes into unfathomable depths beyond the reach of the complex vision, what we mean is that the boundary line between the moving colour-picture, which is the universe, and the original whiteness of the screen across which the picture is moved, which is the objective mystery, is capable of endless recession. The blank whiteness of the part of the screen over which the picture has not yet moved is capable of revealing every kind of colour as soon as the focussed lime-light of the complex vision reaches it. The colours are in the whiteness of the screen as well as in the lime-light which is thrown upon the screen; but neither the lantern which throws the light nor the screen upon which the light is thrown, can, in isolation from one another, produce colour. The universe, therefore, is half-created and half-discovered by the complex vision; and it may be said to go on beyond the point where the complex vision stops, although strictly speaking what goes on beyond the stopping place of the complex vision is not the universe as we know it but a potential universe as we may come to know it; a universe, in fact, which is at present held in suspense in the unfathomable depths of the objective mystery. This potential universe, this universe which will come into existence as soon as the complex vision discovers it and creates it, this universe across which gathers already the moving shadow of the complex vision, is not a new universe but only an extension into a further depth of the objective mystery, of the universe which we already know. We are not justified in saying of this objective mystery or of this white screen across which the colours will presently flow, that it is outside time and space. We are not justified in saying anything at all about it, except that it exists and that it lends itself to the advance of the complex vision. If in place of a white screen we could figure to ourselves this objective mystery as a mass of impenetrable darkness, we should thus be able to envisage the complex vision as I have tried to envisage it, namely as a moving arrow-head of focussed flames with the point of it, or what I have named the apex-thought of it, illuminating that mass of darkness with all the colours of life. But, as I have said, none of these subjective images can serve as the sort of symbol we are in search of, because by reason of their being arbitrary and individualistic they lack the organic and magical associations which cling round such symbols as have become objective and historical. We can content ourselves with such fanciful symbols as white screens and arrow-heads and pyramids of fire in regard to the organ of our research and the original protoplasmic stuff out of which this organ of research creates the world; but when it comes to the purpose of life and the meaning of life, when it comes to that unfathomable duality which is the essence of life, we require for our symbol something that has already gathered about it the whole desperate stream of life's tears and blood and dreams and ecstasies and memories and hopes. We can find no symbol for the adversary of life, no symbol for the malignant obscurantism and the sneering malice that resist creation. To endow this thing which is in the way, this unfathomable depth of spiritual evil, with the vivid and imaginative life of a symbolic image would be to change its inherent nature. No adequate symbol can be found for evil, any more than a complete embodiment can be found for evil. Directly evil becomes personal it ceases to be evil, because personality is the supreme achievement of life. And directly evil is expressed in a living, objective, historic, mythological image it ceases to be evil, because such an image instantaneously gathers to itself some potency of creative energy. Evil is a positive thing, a spiritual thing, an eternal thing; but it is positive only in its opposition to creation, in its corruption of the soul, and in its subtle undermining of the divine moments of the soul by the power of eternal dreariness and disillusion. What we need above everything is a symbolic image which shall represent the creative energy of life, the creative power of love, and those eternal ideas of truth and beauty and nobility which seem in some mysterious way derogated from, rendered less formidable and unfathomable, by being named "the good." The desire for a symbol of this kind, which shall gather together all the tribes and nations of men and all conflicting ideals of humanity, is a desire so deep and universal as to be perhaps the supreme desire of the human race. No symbol arbitrarily invented by any one man, even though he were the greatest genius that ever lived, could supply this want or satisfy this desire. And it could not do so because it would lack the organic weathering and bleaching, so to speak, of the long panorama of time. An individual genius might hit upon a better symbolic image, an image more comprehensive, more inclusive, more appealing to the entire nature of the complex vision; but without having been subjected to the sun and rain of actual human experience, without having endured the passion of the passing of the generations, such an image would remain, for all its appropriateness, remote, intellectual and barren of magical suggestiveness. I do not mean to indicate that there is necessarily any determined or fatalistic process of natural selection in these things by which one symbol rather than another gathers about it the hopes and fears of the generations. Chance no doubt plays a strange part in all this. But the concrete necessities of living human souls play a greater part than chance; and without believing in any steady evolutionary process or even in any law of natural selection among the evocations of human desire, it must still remain that the symbol which survives will be the symbol adapted to the deepest instincts of complicated souls and at the same time palpable and tangible to the touch of the crudest and most simple. It cannot be denied that there are serious difficulties in the way of the acceptance of any historic symbol, the anonymous evocation of the generations of men. Just because it has a definite place in history such a symbol will necessarily have gathered to itself much that is false and much that is accidental and unessential. It will have entered into bitter controversies. It will have been hardened and narrowed by the ferocious logic of rationalistic definition. It will have been made the rallying cry of savage intolerances and the mask for strange perversions. Evil will naturally have attached itself to it and malice will have left its sinister stain upon it. Because chance and accident and even evil have had much to do with its survival, it may easily happen that some primary attribute of the complex vision, such for instance as the aesthetic sense with its innate awareness of the humorous and the grotesque, will have been forgotten altogether in the stuff out of which it is made. Considering such things, considering above all this final fact that it may not satisfy every attribute of the complex vision, and may even completely suppress and negate some essential attribute, it remains still a perilous question whether it were not, after all, better to invent a new symbol that shall be deliberately adapted to the entire complex vision, than to accept an already existing symbol, which in the shocks and jolts and casualties, of history has been narrowed, limited and stiffened by the malice of attack and defence. This narrowing and hardening process by which such a symbol, the anonymous creation of humanity under the shocks of circumstance, becomes limited and inadequate, is a process frequently assisted by those premature and violent syntheses of the ultimate contradiction which we name dogmatic religions. To make such a symbol once more fluid and flexible, to restore it to its place in the organic life of the soul, it is necessary to extricate it from the clutch of any dogmatic religion. I do not say that it is necessary to extricate it from religion, or even from every aspect of dogma; for it is of the very essence of such symbol to be a stimulus to the religious ecstasy and there are many dogmas which are full of imaginative poetry. But it is necessary to extricate it from dogmatic religion because dogmatic religion may be defined as a premature metaphysical synthesis, masquerading beneath a system of imaginative ritual. The truth of religion is in its ritual and the truth of dogma is in its poetry. Where a dogmatic religion becomes dangerous to any human symbol is when it tries to rationalize it and interpret it according to a premature metaphysical synthesis. In so far as it remains purely symbolic and does not attempt to rationalize its symbolism, a dogmatic religion must always contain within the circle of its creed many profound and illuminating secrets. The false and ephemeral portion of a dogmatic religion is its metaphysical aspect, because the whole science of metaphysics is an ambiguity from the start, since it is a projection of one isolated attribute of the complex vision. What the apex-thought of the complex vision does is to undermine metaphysic; not by the use of metaphysic but by the use of the rhythmic totality of all the attributes of the soul. The philosophy of the complex vision has its metaphysical, as it has its psychological and its physiological aspect, but its real starting point must transcend all these, because it must emanate from personality. And personality is something super-metaphysical; as it is something super-psychological, and super-physiological. The creed of a dogmatic religion is not to be condemned because it calls upon us to believe the impossible. Some sort of belief in the impossible, some primordial act of faith is an essential part of the process of life and, without it, life could not continue. It is where dogmatic religion attempts to justify its belief in the impossible by the use of metaphysical reason that we must regard it as an enemy of the truth of its own symbolism. The supreme example of the evil and dangerous influence of metaphysic upon religion is to be found in connection with that inscrutable nothingness behind the universe, and also behind the objective mystery out of which the soul creates the universe. I refer to that ambiguous and unbeautiful phantom, which has acquired for itself the name of "the absolute," or the parent or first cause of life. That the conception of "the sons of the universe," to which certain basic facts and experiences in regard to the intercourse between living human souls has led humanity, is not a metaphysical conception, is proved by the fact that it is a conception of a reality existing inside and not outside the ultimate unity of time and space. Any pure metaphysical conception must, as we have seen, remain outside the categories of time and space, and remaining there bear perpetual witness to its essential unreality. The sons of the universe are living personal souls; and being this, they must be, as all personalities are, super-metaphysical, super-psychological, and super-physiological. The perilous choice between the invention of an arbitrary symbol which shall represent in its full complexity this idea of the sons of the universe, and the acceptance of a symbol already supplied by that chaotic mixture of accident and human purpose which we call history is a choice upon which more than we can imagine or surmise may ultimately depend. It is necessary in all matters of this kind, wherein the rhythmic totality of the complex vision is involved, to remain rigorous in our suppression of any particular usurpation of the whole field by any isolated attribute of the soul. It is a most evil usurpation, for instance, an usurpation of which the sinister history of dogmatic religion is full, when the conscience is allowed to introduce the conception of a "duty," of an "ought," of a "categorical" imperative, into such a choice as this. There is no ought in philosophy. There is no ought in faith. And there can be, in no possible way, any ought of the usurping conscience, in regard to this choice of an appropriate symbol which shall represent a thing so entirely beyond the conception of any single attribute, as this eternal protagonist of the ultimate struggle. The risk of choosing for our symbol a mere arbitrary invention is that it should remain thin and cold and unappealing. The risk of choosing for our symbol a form, a figure, a gesture, a name, offered us by history, is that it should carry with it too many of the false accretions of accident, chance, the passions of controversy and the hypocrisies of malice. But after all the anonymous creative spirit of the generations is so full of the wisdom of the earth and so involved with the rhythmic inspiration of innumerable souls, that it would seem better to risk the presence of certain sinister accretions, than to risk the loss of so much magical suggestiveness. If we do select for our symbol such a form, such a shape, such a gesture and such a name, as history may offer, we shall at any rate be always free to keep it fluid and malleable and organic. We shall be free to plunge it, so to speak, again and again into the living reality which it has been selected to represent. We shall be free to extricate it completely from all its accretions of chance and circumstance and material events. We shall be free to extricate it from all premature metaphysical syntheses. We shall be free to draw it from the clutches of dogmatic religion. We shall be free to make it, as all such symbols should be made, poetical and mythological and, in the aesthetic sense, shamelessly anthropomorphic. Above all we shall be completely free, since it represents for us those sons of the universe who are the embodiment of the creative energy, to associate it with every aspect of the life of the soul. We shall be free to associate it with those aspects of the soul which in the process of its slow invention by the generations have, it may be, been disassociated from it and separated from it. We shall be free to use it as a symbol for the fuller, complete life of the future, and for every kind of revolt, into which the spirit of creation may drive us, against the evil obscurantism and malicious inertness which resist the power of love. The conclusion to which we are thus led, the choice which we are thus compelled to make, is one that has been anticipated from the beginning. No other name except the name of Christ, no other figure except the figure of Christ, can possibly serve, if we are to make any use of history at all, as our symbol for the sons of the universe. The choice of Christ as our symbol for these invisible companions does not imply that we are forced to accept in their entirety the scriptural accounts of the life of Jesus, or even that we are forced to assume that the historic Jesus ever lived at all. The desire which the soul experiences for the incarnation of Christ does not prove that Christ has already been incarnated, or ever will be incarnated. And it does not prove this because, in the greater, nobler, and more spiritual moods of the soul, there is no need for the incarnation of Christ. In these rare and indescribable moments, when the past and future seem annihilated and we experience the sensation of eternity, Christ is felt to be so close to us that no material incarnation could make him any closer. The association of Christ with the figure of Jesus is a sublime accident which has had more influence upon the human soul than any other historic event; and it must be confessed that the idea of Christ has been profoundly affected by this association. It has been so deepened and enlarged and clarified by it that the substitution of the religion of Jesus for the religion of Christ has been an almost entirely fortunate event, since it has furnished the soul with a criterion of the true nature of love which otherwise it might never have gained. Jesus undoubtedly came so much nearer than any other to the understanding of the nature of love, and consequently of the nature of "the immortals," that the idea of the incarnation--that beautiful concession to the weakness of the flesh--emanated with an almost inevitable naturalness from their association. Jesus himself felt in his own soul the presence of the invisible companions; although he was led, by reason of his peculiar religious bent, and by reason of the influences that surrounded him, to speak of these companions as a "heavenly father." But the words of Jesus which carry with them the very magic of truth are not the words in which he speaks of his "father," but the words in which he speaks of himself as if he were the very incarnation of Love itself. There is no doubt that the sons of the universe found in Jesus a soul so uniquely harmonious with their own that there existed between them a sympathy and an understanding without parallel in the history of humanity. It is this sympathy which is the origin of those unequalled words used by the son of Mary in which he speaks as if he were himself in very truth an incarnation of the vision of the immortals. The whole situation is one which need have little mystery for those who understand the nature of love. In moment after moment of supreme ecstasy Jesus felt himself so given up to the will of the invisible companions that this own identity became lost. In speaking for himself he spoke for them; in suffering for himself he suffered for them, and in the great hours of his tragic wayfaring he felt himself so close to them that, by reason of his love, he knew himself able to speak of the secret of life even as the immortals themselves would speak. We are permitted indeed in reading the divine narrative to distinguish between two moods in the soul of Jesus. In one of these moods he refers to his "father" as if his father were distinct and separate from him and even very distant. In the other mood he speaks as if he himself were in very truth a god; and were able, without any appeal to any other authority, to heal the wounds of the world and to reveal to mankind the infinite pity of the love which is beyond analysis. It is towards the words and gestures of the son of Mary, when he spoke of himself rather than of his "father" that we are inevitably drawn, in our search for an adequate symbol for the eternal vision. It is when he speaks with authority as if he himself were an immortal god, as if he himself were one of the invisible companions, that his words and gestures carry the very breath and fragrance of truth. As the drama of his life unfolds itself before us we seem to grow more and more aware of these two aspects of his soul. It was his reason, brooding upon the traditions of his race, that led him into that confusion of the invisible witnesses with the jealous tribal God of his father David. It was the rhythmic harmony of his soul, rising up out of the depths of his struggle with himself, that led him, in his passionate submission to the will of his invisible friends, to feel as if he were identical with those friends, as if he were himself the "son of man" and the incarnation of man's supreme hope. It is the emphasis laid by Jesus upon his identity with his "father" which has produced the tragic results we know. For although this was the personal conception of the noblest of all human souls, it remains a proof of how much even the soul of Jesus was limited and restricted by the malicious power which opposes itself to love. The living companions of men are as we have seen a necessary answer to the craving of the complex vision for some objective standard of beauty and reality, which shall give these things an eternal unity and purpose. Such a vision is an answer to our desire that the spirit of creative love, which is one side of the unfathomable duality, should be embodied in personality. And we have a right to use the name of Christ in this sense; and to associate it with all that immortal anonymous company, so beautiful, so pitiful, so terrible, which the name of "_the gods_" has, in its turbulent and dramatic history, gathered about itself. The idea of Christ is older than the life of Jesus; nor does the life of Jesus, as it has come down to us in ecclesiastical tradition, exhaust or fulfil all the potentialities latent in the idea of Christ. What the complex vision seems to demand is that the invisible companions of men should be regarded as immortal gods. If, therefore, we throw all hesitancy and scruple aside and risk the application of the name of Christ to this vision of the sons of the universe, then we shall be compelled to regard Christ as an immortal God. The fact that there must be some objective standard which shall satisfy all the passionate demands of the complex vision is the path by which we reach this conception of Christ. But once having reached him he ceases to be a mere conception of the intellect, and becomes an objective reality which we can touch and appeal to with our emotion, our imagination, and our aesthetic sense. But although Christ as our symbolic image of the invisible companions, must be assumed to be the objective standard of all our ideas of truth, it is obvious that we cannot escape from subjectivity in our individual interpretation of his deeper and truer vision. Thus there are two parallel streams of growth and change. There is growth and change in the soul of Christ as he continually approximates nearer and nearer to his eternally receding ideal. And there is growth and change in the accumulated harmony of our individual ideas about his ideal, as each human soul and each generation of human souls restates this ideal in terms of its own limited vision. Each new restatement of this accumulated interpretation of the ideal of the son of man brings necessarily with it an innate conviction of its truth because it finds an immediate response in every individual soul in so far as such individual souls are able to overcome their intrinsic evil or malice. What Jesus did for the universe was to recognize in it the peculiar nature of that love which is its essential life. He would have done yet more for it had he been able to disassociate his vision from the conception of an imaginary father of the universe and from his traditional interest in the tribal god of his ancestors. But Jesus remains the one human soul who has revealed to us in his own subjective vision the essential secret of the vision of the immortals. And that he has done so is proved by the fact that all his words and actions have come to be inextricably associated with the Christ-idea. In this way Jesus remains the profoundest of all human philosophers and the subtlest of all human psychologists; and although we have the right to disassociate the Christ-idea from the sublime illusion of Jesus which led him to confuse the invisible companions of humanity with the tribal God of the Hebrews, we are compelled to recognize that Jesus has done so much for humanity by the depth of his psychological insight that we do not experience any shock when in the ritual of the Church the name of the son of David becomes identical with the name of Christ. The essential thing to establish is that there are greater depths in the Christ-idea than even Jesus was able to fathom; and that compared with the soul of Jesus or with the soul of any other man or god or spiritual entity, the figure of Christ has come now at last to be for humanity the only god we need; for he is the only god whose love for all living things is beyond question and dispute, and whose existence is assumed and implied when any soul in the universe loves any other soul. It is necessary then to do two things. To accept without reserve the vision which Jesus had as to the secret of love; because to nothing less than this does the love which we possess in our own souls respond. And in the second place to be merciless and drastic, even at the risk of pain to the weakness of our human flesh, in separating the personality of Christ, the immortal god, from the historic figure of the traditional Jesus. By doing these two things, and by this alone, we establish what the complex vision desires, upon a firm ground. For we retain what the vision of Jesus has revealed to us as to the inherent nature of the invisible companions and we are saved from all controversy as to the historic reality of the life of Jesus. It does not matter to us whether Jesus "really lived"; or whether, like other great figures, his personality has been created by the anonymous instinct of humanity. What matters to us is that humanity itself, using the vision of Jesus as its organ of research or as the focus point of its own passionate clairvoyance has in some way or another recognized that the secret of the universe is to be found in the unfathomable duality of love and malice. From this point, now it has been once reached, the intrinsic nature of all human souls makes sure that humanity cannot go back. And it is because, either by his own sublime insight or by the accident and chance of history, the figure of Jesus has become associated with the reality of the immortal gods that we are justified in using for our symbol of these sons of the universe no other name than the name of Christ. We shall, however, be doing wrong to our conception of Christ, if, while recognizing that the kind of love, of which Jesus revealed the secret, is the essence of Christ's soul, we refuse to find in him also many aspects and attributes of life which occupy but little place or no place at all in the traditional figure of Jesus. All that is most beautiful and profound, all that is most magical and subtle, in the gods of the ancient world, must be recognized as existent in the soul of Christ who is our true "Son of the Morning." The earth-magic of the ancient gods must be in him; and the Titanic spirit which revolted against such gods must be in him also. The mystery of the elements must be interwoven with the very stuff of his being and the unfathomable depths of Nature must be a path for his feet. In him all mythologies and all religions must meet and be transcended. He is Prometheus and Dionysus. He is Osiris and Balder. He is the great god Pan. "All that we have been, all that we are, and all that we hope to be, is centred in him alone." His spirit is the creative spirit which moves for ever upon the face of the waters. In him all living souls find the object of their love. Against him the unfathomable power of evil struggles with eternal demonic malice. In his own soul it struggles against him; and in the universe which confronts him it struggles against him. His inmost being is made up of the duality of this struggle even as is the inmost being of all that exists. If it were not for the presence of evil in him his passion of love would be as nothing. For without evil there can be no good, and without malice there cannot be love. His soul and our human souls remain the ultimate reality. These alone are concrete, definite, actual and personal. All except these is ambiguous, half-real and unstable as water. These and the universe which they create are the true truth; and compared with these every other "truth" is dubious, shadowy and unsubstantial. These are the true truth, because these are personal; and we know nothing in life, and can know nothing, with the interior completeness with which we know personality. And the essence of that interior knowledge with which we know personality is our recognition of the unfathomable duality within ourselves. We cannot imagine the good in us as existing without the evil in us; and we cannot imagine the evil in us as existing without the good in us. And this ultimate essence of reality must apply to the soul of Christ. And this duality has no reconciliation except the reconciliation that it is a duality in ourselves and a duality in him. For both the good and the evil in us recede into unfathomable depths. So that the ultimate reality of the universe is to be found in the two eternal emotions which perpetually contradict and oppose one another; of which the only unity and reconciliation is to be found in the fact that they both belong to every separate soul; and are the motive power which brings the universe into existence; and in bringing the universe into existence find themselves under the domination of time and space. Every individual soul in the world is composed of two unfathomable abysses. From the limitless depths of each of these emanates an emotion which is able to obsess and preoccupy the whole field of consciousness. Every individual soul has depths, therefore, which descend into unfathomable recesses; and we are forced into the conclusion that the unfathomable recesses in the soul of Christ are subject to the same eternal duality as the souls of men. Every movement of thought implies an evocation of the opposing passion of these two emotions. For no movement of thought can take place without the activity of the complex vision; and since one of the basic attributes of the complex vision is divided into these two primary emotions, we are compelled to conclude that it is impossible to think any thought at all without some evocation of the emotion of love and some evocation of the emotion of malice. The emotion of love is the power that brings together and synthesizes those eternal ideas of truth and beauty and nobility which find their objective standard in the soul of Christ. The emotion of malice is the power that brings together and synthesizes and harmonizes those eternal ideas of unreality and hideousness and evil with which the love of Christ struggles desperately in the unfathomable depths of his soul. It matters to us little or nothing that we have no name to give to any among the gods except to this god; for in this god, in this companion of men, in this immortal helper, the complex vision of man finds all it needs, the embodiment of Love itself. We arrive, therefore, at the very symbol we desire, at the symbol which in tangible and creative power satisfies the needs of the soul. We owe this symbol to nothing less than the free gift of the gods themselves; and to the anonymous strivings of the generations. And once having reached this symbol, this name of Christ, the same phenomenon occurs as occurs in the establishment of the real existence of the external universe. _That_, like this, was at first only a daring hypothesis, only a supreme act of faith, reached by the subjective effort of the innumerable individual souls. But once having been reached, it became, as this has become, a definite objective fact, whose reality turns out to have been implicit from the beginning. Thus the name, the word, which we arrive at as the only possible symbol of our hope is found to be, as soon as we reach it, no longer merely a symbol but the outward sign of an invisible and eternal truth. And thus although it remains that we are forced to recognize that the world is full of gods and that the Person we name Christ is only one of an innumerable company of invisible companions to whom in our loneliness we have a right to turn, yet just because the vision of humanity has found in Christ a completer, subtler, more beautiful, more revolutionary figure upon which to fix its hope than it has found in Buddha or Confucius or Mahomet, or any other name, the figure of Christ has become the supreme and solitary embodiment of the Ideal to which we look, and about this figure has come to gather itself and focus itself all the hopeless longing with which the soul of man turns to the souls of the immortals. These divine people of the abyss, these sons of the universe, are for us henceforth and must be now for us for ever summed up and embodied in this one figure, the only one among them all whose nature and being has been drawn so near to us that we can appropriate it to ourselves. It remains that the unity of time and space contains an immeasurable company of immortals; but of these immortals only one has been articulated and outlined, and so to speak "touched with the hand," by the troubled passion of humanity. Henceforth, therefore, while the necessity of the complex vision compels us to think of the invisible company of the sons of the universe as a vast hierarchy of supernatural beings, the necessity of the complex vision compels us also to recognize, that of this company, only one--only one until the end of time--can be the true symbol of what our heart desires. It is better to think of the evocation of this figure as due to the pity of the gods themselves and to the anonymous craving of humanity than to think of him as dependent upon the historic evidence as to the personality of Jesus. The soul requires something more certain than historic evidence upon which to base its faith. It requires something closer and more certain even than the divine "logoi" attributed to the historic Jesus. It requires a living and a personal soul for ever present to the depths of its own nature. It requires a living and a personal soul for ever ready to answer the cry of its love. The misery and unhappiness, the restlessness and pain of all our human "loves," is due to the fact that the only eternal response to Love as it beats its hands against the barriers set up against it, is the embodiment of Love itself as we feel it present with us in the figure of Christ. The love which draws two human souls together can only become eternal and indestructible when it passes beyond the love of the two for one another into the love of both of them for the Lover who is immortal. This merging of the love of human lovers into the love of the immortal Lover does not imply the lessening or diminishing of the love which draws them together. The nature of this love cries out against their separation, cries out that they two shall become one. And yet if they actually and in very truth became one, that unity in difference which is the very essence of love would be destroyed. But though they know this well enough there still remains the desperate craving of the two that they should become one; and this is of the very nature of love itself. Thus it may be seen that the only path by which human lovers can be satisfied is by merging their love for one another into their love for Christ. In this way, in a sense profounder than mortal flesh can know, they actually do become one. They become so completely one that no power on earth or above the earth can ever separate them. For they are bound together by no mortal link but by the eternal love of a soul beyond the reach of death. Thus when one of them comes to die the love which was of the essence of that soul lives on in the soul of Christ; and when both of them are dead it can never be as though their love had not been, for in the eternal memory of Christ their love lives on, increasing the love of Christ for others like themselves and continually drawing the transitory and the mortal nearer to the eternal and the immortal. It therefore becomes evident why it is that the vision of the invisible companions which remains our standard of reality and of beauty is not broken up into innumerable subjective visions but is fixed and permanent and sure. All the unfathomable souls of the world, and all souls are unfathomable whether they are the souls of plants or animals or planets or gods or men, are found, the closer they approach one another, to be in possession of the same vision. For this immortal vision, in which what we name beauty, and what we name "reality," finds its synthesis, is found to be nothing less than the secret love. And while the great company of the immortal companions are only known to us by the figure of one among them, namely by the figure of Christ, this figure alone is sufficient to contain all that we require of life; for being the embodiment of love this figure is the embodiment of life, of which love is the creator and the sustainer. Thus what the apex-thought of man's complex vision reveals is not only the existence of the gods but the fact that the vision of the gods is not broken up and divided but is one and the same; and is yet for ever growing and deepening. And the only measure of the vision of the gods which we possess is the figure of Christ; for it has come about by reason of the anonymous instinct of humanity, by reason of the compassion of the immortals, and by reason of the divine insight of Jesus, that the figure of Christ contains within it every one of those primordial ideas from which and towards which, in a perpetual advance which is also a perpetual return, the souls of all living things are for ever journeying. Whether the souls of men and of beasts, of plants and of planetary spheres survive in any form after they are dead we know not and can never know. But this at least the revelation of the complex vision makes clear, that the secret of the whole process is to be found in the mystery of love; and to the mystery of love we can, at the worst, constantly appeal; for the mystery of love has been at last embodied for us in a living figure over whom Death has no control. CHAPTER XI. THE ILLUSION OF DEAD MATTER The philosophy of the complex vision is based, as I have shown, upon nothing less than the whole personality of man become conscious of itself in the totality of its rhythmic functioning. This personality, although capable of being analysed in its constituent elements, is an integral and unfathomable reality. And just because it is such a reality it descends and expands on every side into immeasurable depths and immeasurable horizons. We know nothing as intimately and vividly as we know personality and every knowledge that we have is either a spiritual or a material abstraction from this supreme knowledge. This knowledge of personality which is our ultimate truth, implies a belief in the integral and real existence of what we call the soul. And because personality implies the soul and because we have no ultimate conception of any other reality in the world except the reality of personality, therefore we are compelled to assume that every separate external object in Nature is possessed of a soul. The peculiar psychological melancholy which sometimes seizes us in the presence of inanimate natural objects, such as earth and water and sand and dust and rain and vapour, objects whose existence may superficially appear to be entirely chemical or material, is accounted for by the fact that the soul in us is baffled and discouraged and repulsed by these things because by reason of their superficial appearance they convey the impression of complete soullessness. In the presence of plants and animals and all animate things we are also vaguely conscious of a strange psychological melancholy. But this latter melancholy is of a less poignant character than the former because what we seem superficially conscious of is not "soullessness" but a psychic life which is alien from our life, and therefore baffling and obscure. In both of these cases, however, as soon as we are bold enough to apply the conclusions we have arrived at from the analysis of the knowledge which is most vivid and real to us, namely, the knowledge of our own soul, this peculiar psychological melancholy is driven away. It is a melancholy which descends upon us when in any disintegrated moment the creative energy in us, the energy of love in us, is overcome by the evil and inertness of the aboriginal malice. Under the influence of this inert malice, which takes advantage of some lapse or ebb of the creative energy in us, the rhythmic activity of our complex vision breaks down; and we visualize the world through the attributes of reason and sensation alone. And the world, visualized through reason and sensation alone, becomes a world of uniform, and homogeneous monotony, made up either of one all-embracing material substance, or of one all-embracing spiritual substance. In either case that living plurality of real separate "souls" which correspond to our own soul vanishes away, and a dreary and devastating oneness, whether spiritual or chemical, fills the whole field. The world which is the emanation of this atrophied and distorted vision is a world of crushing dreariness; but it is an unreal world because the only vivid and unfathomable reality we know is the reality of innumerable souls. The curious thing about this world of superficial chemical or spiritual uniformity is that it seems the same _identical_ world in the case of all separate souls whose complex vision is thus distorted by the prevalence of that which opposes itself to creation and by the consequent ebb and weakening of the energy of love. It is impossible to be assured that this is the case; but all evidence of language points towards such an _identity of desolation_ between the innumerable separate "universes" of the souls which fill the world, when such souls visualize existence through reason and sensation alone. This also is a portion of the same "illusion of impersonality" into which the inert malice of the ultimate "resistance" betrays us with demonic cunning. What man is there among us who does not recall some moment of visionary disintegration, when, in the presence of both these mysteries, an unspeakable depression of this kind has overtaken him? He has stood, perhaps, on some wet autumn evening, watching the soulless reflection of a dead moon in a pond of dead water; while above him the motionless distorted trunk of some goblinish tree mocks him with its desolate remoteness from his own life. At that moment, with his abortive and atrophied complex vision, all he sees is the eternal soullessness and deadness of matter; dead moonlight, dead water, dead mud and slime and refuse, dead mist and vapour, dead earth-mould and dead leaves. And while the desolate chemistry of nothingness grips him with its dead fingers and he turns hopelessly to the silent tree-trunk at his side, that also repels him with the chill breath of psychic remoteness; and it seems to him that that also is strange and impersonal and unconscious; that that also is only a blind pre-determined portion of some huge planetary life-process that has no place for a living soul, but only a place for automatic impersonal chemistry. Brooding in this way, with the eternal malice of the system of things conquering the creative impulse in the depths of his soul, he becomes obsessed with the idea that not only these isolated portions of Nature, but the whole of Nature, is thus alien and remote and thus given up to a desolate and soulless uniformity. Unutterable loneliness takes possession of him and he feels himself to be an exile in a dark and hostile assemblage of elemental forces. If at such a moment by means of some passionate invocation of the immortal gods, or by means of some desperate sinking into his own soul and gathering together of the creative energy in him, he is able to resist this desolation, how strange and sudden a shifting of mood occurs! He then, by a bold movement of imagination, restores the balance of his complex vision; and in a moment the spectacle is transfigured. The apparently dead pond takes to itself the lineaments of some indescribable living soul, of which that particular portion of elemental being is the outward expression. The apparently dead moonlight becomes the magical influence of some mysterious "lunar soul" of which the earth's silent companions is the external form. The apparently dead mud of the pond's edge becomes a living portion of that earth-body which is the visible manifestation of the soul of the earth. The motionless tree-trunk at his side seems no longer the desolate embodiment of some vague "psychic life" utterly alien from his own life but reveals to him the immediate magical presence of a real soul there, whose personality, though not conscious in the precise manner in which he is conscious, has yet its own measure of complex vision and is mutely struggling with the cruel inertness and resistance which blocks the path of the energy of life. When once, by the bold synthesis of reason and sensation with those other attributes of the complex vision which we name instinct, imagination, intuition, and the like, the soul itself comes to be regarded as the substratum of personal existence, that desolating separation between humanity and Nature ceases to baffle us. As long as the substratum of personal life is regarded as the physical body there must always be this desolating difference and this remoteness. For in such a case the stress is inevitably laid upon the physiological and biological difference between the body of a man and the body of the earth or the moon or the sun or any plant or animal. But as soon as the substratum of personal life is regarded not as the body but as the sour it ceases to be necessary to lay so merciless a stress upon the difference between man's elaborate physiological constitution and the simpler chemical constitution of organic or inorganic objects. If the complex vision is the vision of the soul, if the soul uses its bodily sensation as only one among its other instruments of contact with life, then it is obvious that between the soul of a man and the soul of a planet or a plant there need be no such appalling and desolating gulf as that which fills us with such profound melancholy when we refuse to let the complex vision have its complete rhythmic play and insist on sacrificing the revelations made by instinct and intuition to the falsifying conclusions of reason and sensation, energizing in arbitrary solitude. The "mort-main" or "dead-hand" of that aboriginal malice which resists life is directly responsible for this illusion of "unconscious matter" through the midst of which we grope like outlawed exiles. Reason and the bodily senses, conspiring together, are perpetually tempting us to believe in the reality of this desolate phantom-world of blind material elements; but the unreality of this corpse-life becomes evident directly we consider the revelation of the complex vision. For the complex vision reveals to us that what we call "the universe" is a thing which is for ever coming newly and freshly into life, for ever being re-born and re-constituted by the interplay between the individual soul and the "objective mystery." Of the objective mystery itself, apart from the individual soul, we are able to say nothing. But since the "universe" is the discovery and creation of the individual soul, there must be as many different "universes" as there are living souls. Our belief in "one universe," whose characteristics are relatively identical in the case of all the souls which contemplate it, is a belief which in part results from an original act of faith and in part results from an implicit appeal to those "invisible companions" whose concentrated will towards "reality" and "beauty" and "nobility" offers us our only objective standard of these ideas. From the ground, therefore, of this trinity of incomprehensible substances, namely the substance which is the substratum of the individual soul, the substance which is "the objective mystery" out of which the individual soul creates its universe, and the substance which is the "medium" or "link" which enables these individual souls to communicate with one another, emerge the only realities which we can know. And since this trinity of incomprehensible substances, thus divided one from another, must be thought of as dominated by the same unity of time and space, it is inconceivable that they should be anything else than three aspects of one and the same incomprehensible substance. From this it follows that from the ground of one incomprehensible substance which in its first aspect is the substratum of the soul, in its second aspect is the objective mystery confronting the soul, in its third aspect is the medium which holds all souls together, there must be evoked all the reality which we can conceive. And this reality must, from the conclusions we have already reached, take two forms. It must take the form of a plurality of subjective "universes" answering to the plurality of living souls. And it must take the form of one objective "universe," answering to the objective standard of truth, beauty, and nobility, together with the opposites of these, which is implied in the tacit appeal of all individual souls to their "invisible companions." In this double reality; the reality of one objective universe identical in its appearance to all souls but dependent for its identity upon an implicit reference to the "invisible companions," and the reality of as many subjective universes as there are living souls; in this double reality there is obviously no place at all for that phantom-world of unconscious "matter," which in the form of soulless elements, or soulless organic automata, fills the human mind with such devastating melancholy. The dead pond with its dead moonlight, with its dead mud and its dead snow, is therefore no better than a ghastly illusion when considered in isolation from the soul or the souls which look forth from it. To the soul of which those elements are the "body" neither mud nor water nor rain nor earth-mould can appear desolate or dead. To the soul which contemplates these things there can be no other way of regarding them, as long as the rhythm of its vision is unimpeded, than as the outward manifestation of a personal life, or of many personal lives, similar in creative energy to its own. Between the soul, or the souls, of the elements of the earth, and the soul of the human spectator there must be, if our conclusions are to be held good at all, a natural and profound reciprocity. The apparent "deadness," the apparent automatism of "matter," which projects itself between these two and resists with corpse-like opacity their reciprocal understanding, must be one of the ghastly illusions with which the sinister side of the eternal duality undermines the magic of life. But although in its objective isolation, as an absolute entity, this "material deadness" of earth and water and rain and snow and of all disintegrated organic chemistry must be regarded as an "illusion," it would be a falsifying of the reality of things to deny that it is an "illusion" to which the visions of all souls are miserably subject. They are for ever subject to it because it is precisely this "illusion" which the unfathomable power hostile to life for ever evokes. Nor must we for a moment suppose that this material objectivity, this pond, these leaves, this mud, this snow, are altogether unreal. Their reality is demanded by the complex vision and to deny their reality would be the gesture of madness. They are only unreal, they are only an "illusion," when they are considered as existing independently of the "souls" of which they are the "body." As the expression and manifestation of such "souls" they are entirely real. They are indeed, in this sense, as real as our own human body. The human soul, when it suffers from that malignant power which has its positive and external existence in the soul itself, feels itself to be absolutely alone in the midst of a dark chaotic welter of monstrous elemental forces. In a mood of this kind the thought of the huge volumes of soulless water which we call "oceans" and "seas" crushes us with a devastating melancholy. The thought of the interminable deserts of "dead" sand and the vast polar ice fields and the monstrous excrescences that we call "mountains" have the same effect. But the supreme example of the kind of material ghastliness which I am trying to indicate, is, as may easily be surmised, nothing less than the appalling thought of the unfathomable spatial gulfs through which our whole stellar system moves. Here also, in this supreme insistence of objective "deadness," the situation is relieved when we realize that this unthinkable space is nothing more than the material expression of that indefinable "medium" which holds all souls together. Moreover we must remember that these stellar gulfs cannot be thought of except as the habitation of innumerable living souls, each one of which is using this very "space" as the ground of its creation of the many-coloured impassioned "universe" which is its own dwelling. In all these instances of "objective deadness," whether great or small, we must not forget that the thing which desolates us and fills us with so intolerable a nostalgia is a thing only half real, a thing whose full reality depends upon the soul which contemplates it and upon the soul's implicit assumption that its truth is the truth of those "invisible companions" who supply us with our perpetually renewed and reconstituted standard of what is "good" and what is "evil." There is an abominably vivid example of the kind of melancholy I have in my mind, which, although obviously less common to normal human experience than the forms of it I have so far attempted to suggest, is as a rule even more crushing in its cruelty. I refer to the sight of a dead human body; and in a less degree to the sight of a dead animal or a dead plant. A human corpse laid out in its coffin, or nailed down in its coffin, how exactly does the particular attitude towards life, which for convenience sake I name the philosophy of the complex vision, find itself regarding _that_? Such a body, deserted by its living soul, is obviously no longer the immediate and integral expression of a personal life. Is it therefore no more than a shred or shard or husk or remnant of inconceivably soulless matter? The gods forbid! Certainly and most assuredly it is more than that. An isolated heterogeneous mass of dead chemistry is a monstrous illusion which only exists for us when the weakness of our creative energy and the power of the original malice in the soul destroys our vision. This dead body lying in its wooden coffin is certainly possessed of no more life than the inanimate boards of the coffin in which it lies. But the inanimate boards of the coffin, together with the inanimate furniture of the house or room that contains it, and the bricks and stones and mortar of such a house, are themselves nothing less than inevitable portions of the vast earth-body of our planetary globe. And this planetary globe, this earth upon which we live, cannot under any conceivable kind of reasoning to which imagination has contributed its share, be regarded as a dead or a soulless thing. In its isolated integrity, as a separate integral personality, the soul has deserted the body and left it "dead." But it is only "dead" when considered in isolation from the surrounding chemistry of planetary life. And to consider it in this way is to consider it falsely. For from the moment it ceases to be the expression of the life of an individual human soul, it becomes the expression-- through every single phase of its chemical dissolution--of the life of the planet. In so far as the human soul, which has deserted it, is concerned it is assuredly no better than a dead husk; but in so far as the soul of the planet is concerned it is an essential portion of that planet's living body and in this sense is not dead at all. Its chemical elements, as they resolve themselves slowly back into their planetary accomplices, are part and parcel of that general "body of the earth" which is in a state of constant movement, and which has the "soul of the earth" as its animating principle of personality. And just as the human corpse, when the soul has deserted it, becomes a portion of those chemical elements which are the body of the planet's "personal soul," so do the dead bodies of animals and plants and trees become portions of the same terrestrial bodies. Thus strictly speaking there is no single moment when any material form or body can be called "dead." Instantaneously with the departure of its own individual soul it is at once "possessed" by the soul of that planetary globe from whose chemistry it drew its elemental life and from whose chemistry, although the form of it has changed, it still draws its life. For it is no fantastic speculation to affirm that every living thing whether human or otherwise plays, while it lives, a triple part upon the world stage. It is in the first place the vehicle of the individual soul. It is in the second place the medium of the "spiritual vampirizing" of the invisible planetary spirits. And it is in the third place a living portion of that organic elemental chemistry which is the body of the terrestrial soul. Thus it becomes manifest that that "illusion of dead matter" which fills the human soul with so profound a melancholy is no more than an everlasting trick of the malice of the abyss. And the despair which sometimes results from it is a despair which issues from no "dead matter" but from the terrible living depths of the soul itself. It is from a consideration of the especial kind of melancholy evoked in us by the illusion of "objective deadness" that we are enabled to analyse those peculiar imaginative feelings which sometime or another affect us all. I refer to the extraordinary tenacity with which we cling to our bodily form, however grotesque it may be, and the difficulty we experience in disassociating our living soul from its particular envelope or habitation; and the tendency which we have, in spite of this, to imagine ourselves transferred to an alien body. For the soul in us has the power of "thinking itself" into any other body it may please to select. And there is no reason why we should be alarmed at such an imaginative power; or even associate its fantastic realization with any terror of madness. The invisible entity within us which says "I am I" can easily be conceived as suddenly awakening out of sleep and discovering, to its astonishment, that its visible body has suffered a bewildering transformation. Such a transformation can be conceived as almost unlimited in its humorous and disconcerting possibilities. But no such transformation of the external envelope of the soul, whether into the form of an animal or a plant or a god, need be conceived of as necessarily driving us into insanity. The "I am I" would remain the same in regard to its imagination, instinct, intuition, emotion, self-consciousness and the rest. It would be only "changed" in regard to sensation, which is a thing immediately dependent upon the particular and special senses of the human body. This is a truth to the reality of which the wandering fancies of every human child bear ample witness; not to speak of the dreams of those childlike tribes of the race, who in our progressive insolence we are pleased to name "uncivilized." The deeper we dig into the tissue of convoluted impressions that make up our universe the more vividly do we become aware that our only redemption from sheer insanity lies in "knowing ourselves"; in other words, in keeping a drastic and desperate hold upon what, in the midst of ambiguity and treachery, we are definitely assured of. And the only thing we are definitely assured of, the only thing which we really know "on the inner side," and with the kind of knowledge which is unassailable, is the reality of our soul. We know this with a vividness completely different from the vividness of any other knowledge because this is not what we feel or see or imagine or think but what we _are_. And all feeling, all seeing, all imagining and all thinking are only attributes of this mysterious "something" which is our integral self. To the superficial judgment there is always something weird and arbitrary about this belief in our own soul. And this apparent weirdness arises from the fact that our superficial judgments are the work of reason and sensation arrogating to themselves the whole field of consciousness. But directly we bring to bear upon this mass of impressions which is our "universe" the full rhythmic play of our complete identity this weirdness and arbitrariness disappear and we realize that we _are_, not this thought or this sensation or even this stream of thoughts and sensations, but the definite living "monad" which gives these things their only link of continuity and permanence. And it is better to accept experience, even though it refuses to resolve itself into any rational unity, rather than to leave experience in the distance and permit our reason to evolve its desired unity out of its own rules and limitations. We must readily admit that to take all the attributes of personality and to make them adhere in the mysterious substratum of the soul rather than in the little cells of the brain, seems to the superficial judgment a weird and arbitrary act. But the more closely we think of what we are doing when we make this assumption the more inevitable does such an assumption appear. We are driven by the necessity of the case to find some "point," or at least some "gap" in thought and the system of things, where mind and matter meet and are fused with one another. Absolute consciousness does not help us to explain the facts of experience; because "facing" absolute consciousness, directly it isolates itself, we are compelled to recognize the presence of "something else," which is the material or object of which absolute consciousness is conscious. And what we do when we assume the little cells of the physical brain to be the point in space or "the gap in thought" where mind and matter meet and become one is simply to place these two worlds in close juxtaposition and then assert that they are one. But this placing them side by side and asserting that they are one does not make them one. They are just as far apart as ever. The cells of the brain remain material and the phenomenon of consciousness remains immaterial and they are still as remote from one another and as "unfused" as if consciousness were outside of time and space altogether. It is only when we come to regard the "fusion-point" of these two things as being itself a living and personal thing; it is only when we come to regard the substratum of the soul as a mysterious "something" which is, at one and the same time, both what we call "mind" and what we call "matter," that the difficulty I have described disappears. For in this case we are dealing with something which, unlike the little cells of the brain, is totally invisible and totally beyond all scientific analysis; and yet with something which, because it is affected by bodily sensations and because it is under the sway of time and space, cannot be regarded as utterly outside the realm of material substance. We are in fact, in this case, dealing with something which we feel to be the integral and ultimate reality of ourselves, as we certainly do not feel the little cells of the brain to be; and we are dealing with something that is no mere stream of impressions, but is the concrete permanent reality which gives to all impressions, whether material or immaterial, their unity and coherence. When once we are put into possession of this, when once we come to recognize our invisible soul as the reality which is our true self, it is found to be no longer ridiculous and arbitrary to endow this soul with all those various attributes, which, after all, are only various aspects of that unique personality which is the personality of the soul. To say "the soul has imagination," or "the soul has instinct," or "the soul has an aesthetic sense," has only a ridiculous sound when under the pressure of the abysmal malice which opposes itself to life we fall into the habits of permitting those usurping accomplices, pure reason and pure sensation, to destroy the rhythmic harmony of the complex vision. When once we are in full possession of our own soul it is no mere fanciful speculation but an inevitable act of faith which compels us to envisage the universe as a thing crowded with invisible souls, who in some degree or other resemble our own. If this is "anthropomorphism," though strictly speaking it ought to be called "pan-psychism," then it is impossible for us to be too anthropomorphic. For in this way we are doing the only philosophical thing we have a right to do--namely, interpreting the less known in the terms of the more known. When we seek to interpret the soul, which we vividly know, in terms of chemical or spiritual abstractions of which we have no direct knowledge but which are merely rationalized symbols, we are proceeding in an illegitimate and unphilosophical manner to interpret the more known in terms of the less known, which is in the true sense ridiculous. The only escape from that profound melancholy so easily engulfed in sheer insanity, which is the result of submission to "the illusion of dead matter," lies in this tenacious hold upon the concrete identity of the soul. So closely are we linked, by reason of the chemistry of our mortal body, to every material-element; that it is only too easy for us to merge our personal life by a perverted use of the imagination in that phantom-world of supposedly "dead matter" which is the illusive projection of the abysmal malice. Thus just as the soul is driven by extreme physical pain to relinquish its identity and to become "an incarnate sensation," so the soul is driven by the power of malice to relinquish its centrifugal force and to become the very mud and slime and excremental debris which it has endowed with an illusive soullessness. The clue to the secret pathology of these moods, to whose brink reason and sensation have led us and into whose abyss perverted imagination has plunged us, is therefore to be found in the unfathomable duality of good and evil. If it seems to the kind of mind that demands "rational unity" at all costs, even at the cost of truth to experience, that this duality cannot be left unreconciled, the answer which the philosophy of the complex vision must make, is that any reconciliation of such a sort, any reduction to monistic unity of the eternal adversaries out of whose struggle life itself springs, would bring life itself back to nothingness. The argument that because, in the eternal process of destruction and creation, life or love or what we call "the good" depends for its activity upon death or malice or what we call "evil," these opposites are one and the same, is shown to be utterly false when one thinks of the analogy of the struggle between the sexes. Because the activity of the male depends upon the existence of the female, that is no reason for concluding that the male and the female are one and the same thing. Because "good" becomes more "good" out of its conflict with "evil," that does not mean that "good" is responsible for the existence of "evil"; any more than because "evil" becomes more "evil" out of its conflict with "good" does it mean that "evil" is responsible for the existence of "good." Neither is responsible for the existence of the other. They are both positive and real and they are both eternal. They are both unfathomable elements in every personal individual soul, whether of man or plant or animal or god or demi-god that has ever existed or will ever come to exist. The prevalent idea that because good "in the long run" and over vast spaces of time shows itself to be a little--just a little--more powerful than evil, evil must be regarded as only a form of good or a necessary negation of good is a fallacy derived from the illusion that life is the creation of a "parent" of the universe whose nature is absolutely "good." Such a fallacy takes for granted that somewhere and somehow "Good" will finally triumph over "evil." The revelation of the complex vision destroys this fallacy. Such a complete triumph of "good" over "evil" would mean the end of everything that exists because everything that exists depends upon this abysmal struggle. But for personalities who are able to recognize that the mere fact of their being alive is already a considerable victory of "good" over "evil," there is nothing overwhelming in the thought that "good" can never completely overcome "evil." It is enough that life has given them life; and that in the perpetually renewed struggle between love and malice they find at the rare moments when love overcomes malice a flood of happiness which, brings with it "the sensation of eternity." For such souls eternity is here and now; and no anticipated absolute triumph of the "good" in the world over the "evil" can compare for a moment with the indescribable happiness which this "sensation of eternity" brings. It is this happiness, evoked by the rhythmic play of the soul's apex-thought in its supreme hours, which alone, even in memory, can destroy "the illusion of dead matter." The psychological situation brought about by the fact that this illusion is a perpetually recurrent one and a thing that is always liable to return whenever reason and sensation are driven to isolate themselves is a situation a good deal more complicated than I have so far indicated. It is complicated by the fact that although in certain moods the contemplation of "the illusion of dead matter" produces profound melancholy, in other moods it produces a kind of demonic joy. It seems as though the melancholy mood, which carried to an extreme limit borders on absolute despair, comes about when the creative energy in our soul, although under the momentary dominance of what resists creation, is still, so to speak, the master of our will. Under such circumstances the will, still resolutely turned towards life, is confronted by what appears to be the very embodiment of death. Under these conditions the will is baffled, perplexed, defeated and outraged. It beats in vain against the "inert mass" which malice has projected; and feels itself powerless to overcome it. It then turns furiously round upon the very substratum of the soul and rends and tears at that, in a mad effort to reach the secret of a phantom-world which seems to hold no secret. If some sort of relief does not come, such relief for instance as physical sleep, the inert misery of the submission of the will, following upon such a desperate struggle, may easily drift into a deadly apathy, may easily approach the borders of insanity. But there is another condition under which the soul may confront "the illusion of dead matter." This condition comes about when the will, instead of being turned towards creation, is definitely turned towards the opposite of creation. It is impossible for the will to remain in this condition for more than a limited time. Some outward or inward shock, some drastic swing of the psychic pendulum, must sooner or later restore the balance and bring the will back to that wavering and indecisive state--poised like the point of a compass between the two extremes--which seems to be its normal attitude. Any human will unchangeably directed towards "the good" would be the will of a soul that in its inherent depths were already "absolutely good"; and this, as we have seen, is an impossible phenomenon. The utmost reach of "wickedness" that any soul, whether it be the soul of a man or of a god, can attain to, is a recurrent concentration of the will upon evil and a recurrent overcoming, for relatively increasing spaces of time, of the power of love. This incomplete and constantly interrupted concentration upon evil is the nearest approach to "the worship of Satan" which any will is able to reach. The exquisite pleasure, therefore, culminating in a kind of insane ecstasy, which the soul can enjoy when, in the passion of its evil will, it leaps to welcome "the illusion of dead matter," is a pleasure that in the nature of things cannot last. And the condition of inert malignant apathy which follows such an "ecstasy of evil" is perhaps the nearest approach to a consciousness of "eternal death" which the soul can know. And it is in this malignant apathy, rather than in the demonic exultation of the mood that preceded it, that the extreme opposite of love finds its culmination. For in its hour of demonic exultation, when the will to evil buries itself with insane joy in "the illusion of dead matter," it is drawing savagely upon the energy of life. It corrupts such energy as it draws upon it and distorts it from its natural functions; but the energy itself, although "possessed" by the abysmal malice, is living and intense; and therefore cannot be regarded as so entirely the opposite of love as that inert condition of malignant lifelessness which inevitably succeeds it. The demonic ecstasy, full of invincible magnetism, which looks forth from the countenance of a soul obsessed with, evil, has much more in common with the magnetic exultation of a soul possessed with love than has that ghastly inertness, with its insane malignant attraction to death. For out of the countenance of this latter looks forth everything that is hostile to life; and its expression has in it the obscene cunning, mixed with frozen despair, of a corpse which has become utterly dehumanized. It is frequently a matter of surprise to minds whose view of what is "good" has excluded the concept of energy that persons obviously under the obsession of "evil" are able to display such immense reserves of inexhaustible power. But this surprise disappears when it is realized that such "worshippers of Satan" are drawing upon the creative energy and corrupting it, in the process of drawing upon it, by the malignant power which resists creation. The "illusion of dead matter" conceived as we have conceived it, as a thing made up of unconscious chemical elements, is after all only one aspect of the phantom-world of illusive soullessness which the abysmal malice delights to project. It is only to particular sensitive natures that this peculiar "despair of the inanimate" takes the form of mud or sand or refuse or water or dead planetary bodies or empty space. To other natures it may take the form of those innumerable off-shoots of economic necessity, which are not themselves necessary either to human life or human welfare but which are the arbitrary creations of economic avarice divorced from necessity and indulged in out of an inert hatred of what is beautiful and real. Any labour, whether mental or physical, which directly satisfies the economic needs of humanity carries with it the unfathomable thrill of creative happiness. But when we come to consider those innumerable forms of financial and commercial enterprise which in no way satisfy human needs but exist only for the sake of exploitation we find ourselves confronted by a weight of unreal soulless hideousness which by reason of the fact that it is deliberately protected by organized society is a more devastating example of "the thing which is in the way" than any amount of mud and litter and refuse and excremental debris. For this unproductive commercialism, this "unreal reality" projected by the malignant power which resists creation, is not only an obscene outrage to the aesthetic sense; it is actually an assassination of life. When, therefore, a philosopher who uses the complex vision of the soul as his organ of research is asked the question, "where are we to look for the type of human being most entirely evil?" the answer which he is compelled to give is not a little surprising to many minds. For there are many minds whose physiological timidity corrupts their judgment, and who lack the clairvoyance to unmask with infallible certainty that look of sneering apathy which is the pure expression of malice. And to such minds some wretched devil of a criminal, driven to crime by an insane perversion of the creative instinct--for creation and destruction are not the true opposites-- might easily seem the ultimate embodiment of evil. Whereas the particular type of human being from whom the philosopher of the complex vision would draw his standard of evil would be a type very different from any perverted type even from those whose mania might take the form of erotic cruelty. It would be a type whose recurrent "evil" would take the form of a sneering and malignant inertness, the form of a cold and sarcastic disparagement of all intense feeling. It would be a type entirely obsessed by "the illusion of dead matter"; not so much the "illusion of dead matter" where Nature is concerned, but where the economic struggle has resulted in some unnecessary and purely commercial activity, altogether divorced from the basic necessities of human life. A person of this type would, in his evil moods, be more completely dominated by a malignant resistance to every movement of the creative spirit than any other type, unless it were perhaps one whom the heavy brutality of "officialdom" had blunted into inhuman callousness. Compared with persons such as these, by whom no actual positive "wickedness" may have ever been perpetrated, the confessed criminal or the acknowledged pervert remains far less committed to the depths of evil. For in persons who have habitually lent themselves to "the illusion of dead matter," whether in regard to Nature or in regard to commercial or financial exploitation, there occurs a kind of "death-in-life" which gives the sneering malignity of the abyss its supreme opportunity, whereas in the souls of those who have committed "crimes," or have been guilty of passionate cruelty, there may easily remain a vivid and sensitive response to some form of reality or beauty, or self-annihilating love. For "the illusion of dead matter" is the most formidable expression of evil which we know; and it can only be destroyed by the magic of that creative spirit whose true "opposite" is not hatred or cruelty or violence or destruction, but the motiveless power of a deadly obscurantism. CHAPTER XII. PAIN AND PLEASURE Since neither pleasure nor pain can be experienced without consciousness; and since consciousness finds its substratum not in the body but in the soul; we are driven to the conclusion that what we call the capacity of the body for pleasure and pain is really the capacity of the soul for pleasure and pain. But the capacity of the soul for pleasure and pain is not confined to its functioning through the body. Sensation, that is to say, the use of the bodily senses, gives the soul one particular form of pain and one particular form of pleasure; but that the soul possesses other forms of pleasure and pain independently of the body is proved by the psychological fact that intense bodily pain is sometimes accompanied by intense spiritual pleasure and intense bodily pleasure is sometimes accompanied by intense spiritual pain. What is called "the pursuit of pleasure," that rationalistic abstraction from our real psychological experience, that abstraction which has been made the basis of the false philosophy called "hedonism," cannot stand for a moment against the revelation of the complex vision. Under certain rare and morbid conditions, when reason and sensation, in their conspiracy of assassination, have usurped for a while the whole field of consciousness, such a "pursuit of pleasure" may become a dominant motive. But even under these conditions there often comes a shifting of the stage according to which the pleasure-seeker, sick to death of pleasure, deliberately "pursues" pain. If it be said that this change is no real change because what is then pursued is the pleasure of "contrast" or even "the pleasure of pain," the retort to such reasoning can only be that in this case the whole hedonistic theory has been given up; for what is really then "pursued" is neither pleasure nor pain but the sensation of novelty or the sensation of new experience. Pleasure and pain are emotionalized sensations accompanying various physical and mental states. The psychological truth about their "pursuit" is simply that we "pursue" certain objects or conditions because of their immediate attractiveness or "attractive terribleness," and that the accompanying pleasure becomes first a kind of orchestral background to our pursuit; and then, later, becomes, by the action of the law of association, part and parcel of the thing's attractiveness or "attractive terribleness." Thus what really occurs is precisely opposite to the hedonist's contention. For the thing "pursued" swallows up and appropriates to itself the pleasure and pain of the pursuit; and, by the law of association, becomes more vividly, even than at the start the motive force which lures us. The most ghastly, the most obscene, the most intolerable thing in the world is when the pain of pure sensation, the pain of the body, is accentuated to such a pitch of atrocious suffering that the other attributes of the soul are annihilated; and the humanity of the person thus suffering is temporarily destroyed; so that what "lives" at such a moment is not a person at all but an incarnate pain. That this ultimate ghastliness, this dehumanization by pain, can only occur where the aboriginal malice of the soul has previously weakened the soul's independent life, is proved by the fact that the most atrocious tortures have been successfully endured, even unto the point of death, by such as have been martyrs for an idea. And the reason of this endurance, the reason why, in the case of such martyrizing, the victim has been able to resist dehumanization is found in the fact that the soul's creative energy or the power of love has been so great that it has been able to assert its independence of bodily torment, even to the last moment of human identity. Since pain and pleasure, although so often the direct evocation of the soul's attribute of bodily sensation, are always composed of the primordial "stuff" of emotion; and since emotion is a projection of the soul independently of the body, it is natural that the soul should, in the reverse manner, colour its emotion with the memory of sensation. Thus it follows that although it is possible for the soul, when its emotional feeling is outraged or excited, to experience pain or pleasure apart from sensation, there is usually present in such an emotional pain or pleasure a residual element of sensation; for the soul is not a thing which simply "possesses" certain functions; but a thing which is present in some degree or other in all its various aspects of energy. What we call "memory" is nothing more than the plastic consciousness of personal identity and continuity. And when once the pain or pleasure of a bodily sensation has been lodged in the soul, that pain or pleasure becomes an integral portion of the soul's life, to be worked upon and appropriated for good or evil by the soul's intrinsic duality. Thus although the creative energy in the soul, emerging from fathomless abysses, can enable the soul to endure until death the most infernal torments, the fact remains that since the attribute of sensation, which depends entirely upon the existence of the bodily senses, is one of the soul's basic attributes and has its ground in the very substratum of the soul, the sensations of pain and pleasure whether coloured by emotion and imagination or left "pure" in the clear element of consciousness, are sensations from which the soul cannot escape. From this we are forced to conclude that to affirm that the soul can remain wholly untouched and unaffected by bodily pain or pleasure is ridiculous. Bodily pain and pleasure are the soul's pain and pleasure; because the attribute of sensation, through which the bodily senses feed the soul, is not the body's attribute of sensation but the soul's attribute of sensation. To say, therefore, that the soul can "conquer" the body or be "indifferent" to the body is as ridiculous as to say that the body can "conquer" the soul or be "indifferent" to the soul. The fact that the attribute of sensation is a basic attribute of the soul and that the attribute of sensation is dependent upon the bodily senses must inevitably imply that the pressure or impact of the bodily senses descend to the profoundest depths of the soul. The thing that "conquers" pain in the invincible martyr is love, or "the energy of creation," in the soul. The abysmal struggle is not between the soul and the body or between the flesh and the spirit, but between the power of life and love, in the body and the soul together, and the power of death or malice, in the body and the soul together. What we are compelled to assume with regard to those "sons of the universe," whose existence affords a basis for the objectivity of the "ultimate ideas," is that, with them, what I have called "the eternal idea of the body" takes the place in their complex vision of our actual physical body. Their complex vision must be regarded, if our philosophy is to remain boldly and shamelessly anthropomorphic, as possessing, even as our own, the basic attribute of sensation. But since their essential invisibility, and consequent upon this their ubiquity under the dominant categories of time and place, precludes any possibility of their incarnation, we are compelled to postulate that their complex vision's attribute of sensation, in the absence of any bodily senses, finds its contact with "the objective mystery" and with the objective "universe" in some definite and permanent "intermediary" which serves in their case the same primal necessity as is served in our case by the human body. If no such "intermediary" existed for them, we should be compelled to relinquish the idea that they possessed a complex vision at all, for not only the attribute of sensation, but the attribute of emotion also, demands for its activity something that shall represent the human body and occupy in their objective "universe" the place occupied by our physical bodies in our "universe." As we have already shown, this primary demand for the "eternalizing of flesh and blood" is a demand which springs from the profoundest depths of the soul, for it is a demand which springs from the creative energy itself, the eternal protagonist in the world-drama. We must conclude, therefore, that although these super-human children of Nature cannot in the ordinary sense incarnate themselves in flesh and blood they can and do appropriate to themselves out of the surrounding body of the ether, and out of the body of any other living thing they approach, a certain attenuated essence of flesh and blood which, though invisible to us, supplies with them the place of our human body. This, therefore, is the "intermediary" which, in the "invisible companions" of our planetary struggle, occupies the place which is occupied by the physical element in our human life. And this is evoked by nothing less than that "eternal idea of the body," or "that eternal idea of flesh and blood," which the creative energy of love demands. A very curious and interesting possibility follows from this assumption; namely, that by a process which might be called a process of "spiritual vampirizing" the same creative passion which demands satisfaction in the eternalizing of "the idea of the body" actually suffers, by means of its vivid sympathy with living bodies, the very pains and pleasures through which these bodies pass. The possibility that "the invisible companions," or in more traditional language that the "immortal gods," should be driven by the passion of their creative love, to suffer vicarious pain and pleasure through the living bodies of all organic existences, is a possibility that derives a certain support from two considerations, both of which are drawn directly from human experiences. It is certainly a matter of common human experience to be conscious, for good and for evil, of a kind of obsession of one's body by some sort of spiritual power. We may regard these moments of obsession, with their consequent exhilaration or profound gloom, as due purely to the activity of our own soul; and doubtless very often this is the explanation of them. But it is conceivable also that such obsessions are actually due to the presence near us and around us of the "high immortal ones." That when we experience this "spiritual vampirizing" of our mortal bodies by immortal companions, such an obsession is not necessarily "for good," is a thing inevitably implied in our primary conception of personality. For although a purely demonic personality is an impossibility, owing to the fact that personality is, in itself, an achieved triumph over evil, it must still remain true that the eternal duality of creation and "what resists creation" must find an arena in the soul of an "immortal" even as it finds an arena in the soul of a "mortal." Therefore we are driven to regard it as no fantastic speculation but as only too reasonable a possibility, that when a physical depression takes possession of us it is due to this "spiritual vampirizing," in an evil sense, by the power of some immortal whose "malice" at that particular moment has overcome "love." But just as the power of physical pain may be dominated and overcome by the energy of love arising from the depths of our own soul, so this vampirizing by the malice of an "invisible companion," may be dominated and overcome by the energy of love from the depths of our own soul. It may indeed be regarded as certain that it is when the malice in our own soul is in the ascendant, rather than the love, that we fall victims to this kind of obsession. For evil eternally attracts evil; and it is no wild nor erratic fancy to maintain that the malice in the human soul naturally draws to itself by an inevitable and tragic reciprocity the malice in the souls of the "immortal companions." The second consideration derived from human experience which supports this view of the vicarious pain and pleasure experienced by the gods through the bodies of all organic entities is the psychological fact of our own attitude towards plants and animals. Any sensitive person among us will not hesitate to admit that in watching animals suffer, he has suffered _with_ such animals; or again, that in watching a branch torn from its trunk, leaving an open wound out of which the sap oozes, he has suffered _with_ the suffering of the tree. And just as the phenomenon of bodily obsession by some immortal god may be either "for good" or "for evil" as our own soul dictates, so the sympathy which we feel for plants and animals may be either "for good" or "for evil." And this also applies to the relation between these bodiless "immortals" and the bodies of all organic planetary life. According to the revelation of the complex vision, with its emphasis upon the ultimate duality as the supreme secret of life, both pain and pleasure are instruments, in the hands of love, for rousing the soul out of that sleep of death or semi-death which is the abysmal enemy. The philosophies which oppose pain to pleasure, and insist upon the "good" of pain and the "evil" of pleasure, are no less misleading than the philosophies which oppose flesh to spirit, or matter to mind, calling the one "good" and the other "evil." Such philosophies have permitted that basic attribute of the complex vision which we call conscience to usurp the place occupied, in the total rhythm, by imagination; with the result of a complete falsifying of the essential values. In a question of such deadly import as this, we have, more than ever, to make our appeal to those rare moments of illumination which we have attained when the rhythmic intensity of the arrow-point of thought was most concentrated and piercing. And the testimony of these moments is given with no uncertain sound. In the great hours of our life, and I think all human experiences justify this statement, both pain and pleasure are transcended and flung into a subordinate and irrelevant place. Something which it is very difficult to describe, a kind of emotion which resembles happiness, flows through us; so that pain and pleasure seem to come and go almost unremarked, like dark and light shadows flung upon some tremendous water-fall. What we are compelled to recognize, therefore, is that pain and pleasure are both instruments of the creative power of life. They only become evil or are used for purposes of evil, when, by reason of some fatal weakening in the other attributes of the soul, the purely sensational element in them dominates the emotional and they become something most horribly like living entities--entities with bodies composed of the vibrations of torment and souls composed of the substance of torment--and succeed in annihilating the very features of humanity. Pain and pleasure are not identical with the unfathomable duality which descends into the abyss; for pain and pleasure are definitely and quite unmistakenly fathomable; though, as the gods know well, few enough of the sons of mortals reach the limit of them. They are fathomable; for carried to a certain pitch of intensity they end in ecstasy or they end in death. They are fathomable; for even in the souls of "the immortals" they are only instruments of life warring against death. They are fathomable; because they have one identical root; and this root is the ecstasy of the rhythm of the complex vision which transcends and surpasses them both. The hideous symbol of "hell" is the creation of the false philosophy which makes the eternal duality resolve itself into flesh and spirit or into soul and body. The power of love renders this symbol meaningless and abortive; for personality is the supreme victory of life over what resists life; and consequently where personality exists "hell" cannot exist; for personality is the scope and boundary of all we know. The symbol of "Satan" also is rendered meaningless by the philosophy of the complex vision; unless such a symbol is used to express those appalling moments when the evil in the soul attracts to itself and associates with itself the evil in the soul of some immortal god. But just as no mortal can be more evil than good, so also no immortal can be more evil than good, that is to say intrinsically and over a vast space of time. Momentarily and for a limited space of time it is obvious that the human soul can be more evil than good; and by a reasonable analogy it is only too probable that the same thing applies to the invisible sons of the universe. But the philosophy of the complex vision has no place for devils or demons in its world; for the simple reason that at the very moment any soul did become intrinsically and unchangeably evil, at that same moment it would vanish into nothingness, since existence is the product of the struggle between good and evil. If any soul, whether mortal or immortal, became entirely and absolutely good, it would instantaneously vanish into nothingness. For the life of no kind of living soul is thinkable or conceivable apart from the unfathomable duality. The false philosophy which finds its ideal in an imaginary "parent" of the universe whose goodness is absolute is a philosophy conceived under the furtive influence of the power of evil. For the essence of the power of evil is opposition to the movement of life; and no false ideal has ever done so much injury to the free expansion of life as has been done by this conception of a "parent" of the universe who is a spirit of "absolute goodness." It is entirely in accordance with the unfathomable cunning of the power of malice that the supreme historic obstacle to the power of love in the human soul should be this conception of a "parent" of the universe, possessed of absolute goodness. In the deepest and most subtle way does this conception oppose itself to the creative energy of love. The creative energy of love demands an indetermined and malleable future. It demands an enemy with which to struggle. It demands the freedom of the individual will. Directly that ancient and treacherous phantom, the "inscrutable mystery" _behind_ the "universe," is allowed to become an object of thought; directly this mystery is allowed to take the shape of a "parent of things" who is to be regarded as "absolutely good," then, at that very moment, the eternal duality ceases to be "eternal" and ceases to be a "duality." Good and evil become the manifestations of the same inscrutable power. Love and malice become interchangeable names of little meaning. Satan becomes as significant a figure as Christ. All distinctions are then blurred and blotted out. The aesthetic sense is made of no account; or becomes a matter of accidental fancy. Imagination is left with nothing to work upon. The rhythm of the complex vision is broken to pieces. All is permitted. Nothing is forbidden. The universe is reduced to an indiscriminate and formless mass of excremental substance. Indiscriminately we have to swallow the "universe" or indiscriminately we have to let the "universe" alone. There is no longer a protagonist in the great drama, for there is no longer an antagonist. Indeed there is no longer any drama. Tragedy is at an end; and Comedy is at an end. All is equal. Nothing matters. Everything is at once good and evil, beautiful and hideous, true and false. Or rather nothing is beautiful, nothing is true. The "parent of the universe" has satisfied his absolute "goodness" by swallowing up the universe; and there is nothing left for the miserable company of mortal souls to do but to bow their resigned heads and cry "Om! Om!" out of the belly of that unutterable "universal," which by becoming "everything" has become nothing. This conception of a universal being of "absolute goodness" looms like a colossal corpse in front of all living movement. If instead of "absolute goodness" we say "absolute love," the falseness and deadliness of this conception appears even more unmistakable. For love is the prerogative of personality alone. Apart from personality we cannot conceive of love. And we cannot conceive of personality without the struggle between love and malice. "Absolute love" is a contradiction in terms; for it is the nature of love to be perpetually overcoming malignant opposition; and, in this overcoming, to be perpetually approximating to a far-off ideal which can never be completely reached. Devils and demons, or elemental entities of unredeemed evil, are unreal enough; and in their unreality dangerous enough to the creative spirit; but far more unreal and far more dangerous than any devil, is this conception of an absolute being whose "goodness" is of so spurious a nature that it obliterates all distinction. This conception of "a parent of the universe" who is responsible for the "eternal duality," but in whom the "eternal duality" is reconciled, blots out all hope for mortal or immortal souls. Between the soul of a man and the soul of an immortal god, as for instance between the soul of a man and the soul of Christ, there may be passionate and enduring love. But between the soul of a man, in whom love is desperately struggling with malice, and this monstrous being in whom love and malice have arrived at some unthinkable reconciliation, there can be no love. There can be nothing but indignant unbelief alternating with profound aversion. Towards any being in whose nature love has been reconciled to malice, the true to the false, the beautiful to the hideous, the good to the evil, there can be no alternative to unbelief, except unmitigated hostility. It is especially in connection with the atrocious cruelty of physical pain that our conscience and our tastes--unless perverted by some premature metaphysical synthesis or by some morbid religious emotion--reluct at the conception of a "parent" of the universe. Personal love, since it is continually being roused to activity by pain and is continually being expressed through pain and in spite of pain, has come to find in pain, perhaps even more than in pleasure, its natural accomplice. Through the radiant well-being which results from pleasure, love pours forth its influence with a sun-like sweetness and profusion. But from the profound depths of pain, love rises like silence out of a deep sea; and no path of moonlight upon any ocean reaches so far an horizon. And it is because of this intimate association of love with pain that it is found to be impossible to love any living being who has not experienced pain. Pain can be entirely sensational; and in this case it needs a very passion of love to prevent it becoming obscene and humiliating. But it also can be entirely emotional; in which case it results directly from the struggle of malice with love. When pain is a matter of sensation or of sensationalized emotion, it depends for its existence upon the body. But when pain is entirely emotional it is independent of the body and is a condition of the soul. As a condition of the soul pain is inevitably associated with the struggle between love and malice. For in proportion as love overcomes malice, pain ceases, and in proportion as malice overcomes love, pain ceases. A human being entirely free from emotional pain is a human being in whom love has for the moment completely triumphed; or a human being in whom malice has for the moment completely triumphed. There is an exultation of love which fills the soul with irresistible magnetic power, so that it can redeem the universe. There is also an exultation of malice which fills the soul with irresistible magnetic power, so that it can corrupt the universe. In both these extreme cases--and they are cases of no unfrequent occurrence in all deep souls--emotional pain ceases to exist. Emotional pain is the normal condition of the human soul; because the normal condition of the human soul is a wavering and uncertain struggle between love and malice; but although love may overcome malice, or malice may overcome love, with relative completeness, they neither of them can overcome the other with absolute completeness. There must always remain in the depths of the soul a living potentiality; which is the love or the malice which has been for the moment relatively overcome by its opposite. And just as pain can be both emotional and sensational so pleasure can be both emotional and sensational. Pleasure, like pain, can be a thing of bodily sensation alone; in which case it tends to become a thing of degrading and humiliating reality. A human entity entirely obsessed by physical pleasure is a revolting and obscene spectacle. Even with animals it is only when their sensation of pleasure is in some degree emotionalized that we can endure to contemplate it with sympathy. The soul of an animal is capable of being "de-animalized" in just as horrible a way by a pure sensation as the soul of a man is capable of being "de-humanized" by a pure sensation. The sexual sensation of pleasure carried to the extreme limit "de-animalizes" animals as it "de-humanizes" human beings; because it drowns the consciousness of personality. There is an ecstasy when personality loses itself and finds itself again in a deeper personality. There is also an ecstasy where personality loses itself in pure sensation. In the region of sexual sensation, just as in the region of sexual emotion, it is love alone which is able to hold fast to personality in the midst of ecstasy; or which is able to merge personality in a deeper personality. It is because of love's intimate association with pain that we are unable, except under the morbid pressure of some metaphysical or religious illusion, to regard the imaginary "parent of the universe" with anything but hostility. Both pain and pleasure are associated with the unfathomable duality. And although the unfathomable duality descends into abysses beyond the reach of both of these, yet we cannot conceive of either of them existing apart from this struggle. But there can be no duality, as there can be no struggle, in the soul of a being in whom love has absolutely overcome malice. Therefore in such a soul there can be no pain. And for a soul incapable of feeling pain we can feel no love. It is of course obvious that this whole problem is an imaginary one. We are not really confronted with the alternative of loving or hating the unruffled soul of this absolute one. And we are not confronted with this problem for the simple reason that such a soul does not exist. And it does not exist because every soul, together with the "universe" created by every soul, depends for its existence upon this ultimate struggle. It is from a consideration of the nature of pain and pleasure that we attain the clue to the ultimate duality. Pain and pleasure are conditions of the soul; conditions which have a definite and quite fathomable limit. Malice and love are conditions of the soul; conditions which have no definite limit, but which descend into unfathomable depths. Extremity of malice sinks down to an abyss where pain and pleasure are lost and merged in one another. Extremity of love sinks down to an abyss where pain and pleasure are lost and merged in one another. But just as, apart from the individual soul which is their possessor, pain and pleasure have no existence at all; so, apart from the individual soul which is the arena of their struggle, malice and love have no existence at all. Because we speak of pain and pleasure as if they were "things in themselves" and of malice and love as if they were "things in themselves" this can never mean more than that they are eternal conditions of the soul which is their habitation. Apart from a personal soul, "love" has no meaning and cannot be said to exist. Apart from a personal soul, "life" has no meaning and cannot be said to exist. There is no such thing as the "love-force" or the "life-force," any more than there is such a thing as the "malice-force" or the "death-force," apart from some personal soul. The "life-force" is a condition of the soul which carried to an extreme limit results in ecstasy. The "death-force" is a condition of the soul which carried to an extreme limit results in ecstasy. Beyond these two ecstasies there is nothing but total annihilation; which would simply mean that the soul had become absolutely "good" or absolutely "evil." What we call the "death-force" in the soul does not imply real death, until it has reached a limit beyond ecstasy. It implies a malignant resistance to life which may be carried to a point of indescribable exultation. As I have already hinted there is a profound association between the duality of love and malice and the duality of pain and pleasure. But it would be false to our deepest experience to say that love implies pleasure and that malice implies pain. As a matter of fact, they both imply a thrilling and ecstatic pleasure, in proportion as the equilibrium between them, the balance of the wavering struggle between them, is interrupted by the relative victory of either the one or the other. The relative victory of malice or of the "death-force" over love or over the "life-force" is attended by exquisite and poignant pleasure, a pleasure which culminates in unutterable ecstasy. The shallow ethical thinkers who regard "evil" as a negation are obviously thinkers whose consciousness has never penetrated into the depths of their own souls. Pain and pleasure for such thinkers must be entirely sensationalized. They cannot have experienced, to any profound depth, the kind of pain and pleasure which are purely emotional. The condition of the soul which gives itself up to the "death-force" or to the malignant power which resists creation may be sometimes a condition of thrilling and exultant pleasure. As we have already indicated, the normal condition of the soul, wavering and hesitating between good and evil, is liable to be changed into a profound melancholy, when it is confronted by the "illusion of dead matter." But, as we have also discovered, if, in the soul thus contemplating the "illusion of dead matter," evil is more potent than good, there may be a thrilling and exquisite pleasure. The "death-force" in our own soul leaps in exultation to welcome the "death illusion" in material objects. Upon this illusion, which it has itself projected, it rejoices to feed. There is a "sweet pain" in the melancholy it thus evokes; a "sweet pain" that is more delicate than any pleasure; and it is a mistake to assume that even the insanity which this aberration may result in is necessarily an insanity of distress. It may be an insanity of ecstasy. All this is profoundly associated with the aesthetic sense; and we may note that the diabolical exultation with which many great artists and writers fling themselves upon the obscene, the atrocious, the cruel and the abominable, and derive exquisite pleasure from representing these things is not an example of the love in them overcoming the malice but an example of the "death-force" in them leaping to respond to the death-force in the universe. It is just here that we touch one of the profoundest secrets of the aesthetic sense. I refer to that condition of the soul when the creative energy which is life and love, suffers an insidious corruption by the power which resists creation and which is malice and death. This psychological secret, although assuming an aesthetic form, is closely associated with the sexual instinct. The sexual instinct, which is primarily creative, may easily, by the insidious corruption of the power which resists creation, become a vampirizing force of destruction. It may indeed become something worse than destruction. It may become an abysmal and unutterable "death-in-life." That voluptuous "pleasure in cruelty" which is an intrinsic element of the sexual instinct may attach itself to "the pleasure in death" which is the intrinsic emotion of the aboriginal inert malice; or rather the "pleasure in death" of the adversary of creation may insidiously associate itself with the "pleasure in cruelty" of the sexual instinct and make of "this energy of cruelty" a new and terrible emotion which is at once cruel and inert. All this were mere fantastic speculation if it lacked touch with direct experience. But direct experience, if we have any psycho-clairvoyance at all, bears unmistakable witness to what I have been saying. If one glances at the expression in the countenance of any human soul who is deriving pleasure from the spectacle of suffering and who, under the pressure of this queer fusion of the aesthetic sense with the abysmal malice, is engaged in vampirizing the victim of such suffering one will observe a very curious and very illuminating series of revelations. One will observe, for instance, the presence of demonic energy and of magnetic dominance in such a countenance; but parallel with this and simultaneously with this, one will observe an expression of unutterable sadness, a sadness which is inert and death-like, a sadness which has the soulless rigidity and the frozen immobility of a corpse. We are thus justified, by an impression of direct experience, in our contention that the peculiar pleasure which many artists derive from the contemplation of suffering and from the contemplation of what is atrocious, obscene, monstrous and revolting, is the result of a corruption of both the sexual instinct and the aesthetic sense by the abysmal malice. For the pleasure which such souls derive from the contemplation of suffering is identical with the pleasure they derive from contemplating the "illusion of dead matter." Philosophers who give themselves up to the profoundest pessimism do not do so, as a rule, under the influence of love. The only exceptions to this are rare cases when preoccupation with suffering does not spring from a furtive enjoyment of the spectacle of suffering but from an incurable pity for the victims of suffering. Such exceptions are far more rare than is usually supposed, because the self-preservative hypocrisy of most pessimists enables them to conceal their voluptuousness under the mask of pity. Nor must we hide from ourselves the fact that even pity, which in its pure form is the very incarnation of love, has a perverted form in which it lends itself to every kind of subterranean cruelty. Our psychological insight does not amount to very much if it does not recognize that there is a form of pity which enhances the pleasure of cruelty. There may indeed be discovered, when we dig deep enough into the abysses of the soul, an aspect of pity which thrills us with a most delicate sensation of tenderness and yet which remains an aspect of pity by no means incompatible with the fact that we continue the process of causing pain to the object of such tenderness. Of all human emotions the emotion of pity is capable of the most divergent subtleties. The only kind of pity which is entirely free from the ambiguous element of "pleasure in cruelty" is the pity which is only another name for love, when love is confronted by suffering. There is such a thing as a suppressed envy of "the pleasure of cruelty" manifested in the form of moral indignation against the perpetrator of such cruelty. Such moral indignation, with its secret impulse of suppressed unconscious jealousy, is a very frequent phenomenon when any sexual element enters into the cruelty in question. But the psychologist who has learnt his art from the profoundest of all psychologists--I mean the Christ of the gospels--is not deceived by this moral gesture. He is able to detect the infinite yearning of the satyr under the righteous fury of the moral avenger. And he has an infallible test at hand by which to ascertain whether the emotion he feels is pure or impure pity; whether in other words it is merely a process of delicate vampirizing, or whether it is the creative sympathy of love. And the test which he has at his disposal is nothing less than his attitude towards the perpetrator of the particular cruelty under discussion. If his attitude is one of implacable revenge he may be sure that his pity is something else than the emotion of love. If his attitude is one which implies pity not only for the victim but also for the victim's torturer--who without question has more need for pity--then he may be sure that his attitude is an attitude of genuine love. The mood of implacable revenge need not necessarily imply a suppressed jealousy or envy; but it certainly implies the presence of an element which has its origin in the sinister side of the great duality. The pleasure which certain minds derive from a contemplation of the "deadness of matter" is closely associated with the voluptuousness of cruelty drawn from the recesses of the sexual instinct. Such cruelty finds one of its most insidious incentives in the phenomenon of humiliation; and when the philosopher contemplates the "deadness of matter" with exquisite satisfaction, the pleasure which he experiences, or the "sweet pain" which he experiences, is very closely connected with the cruel idea of humiliating the pride of the human soul. The duality of pleasure and pain helps us to understand the nature of the duality of good and evil, for it helps us to realize that good and evil are not separate independent existences; but are--like pleasure and pain--emotional conditions of the soul. Thus when we say that the ultimate duality of good and evil, or of creation and what resists creation, is the thing upon which the whole universe depends, we must not for a moment be supposed to mean that the ultimate reality of the universe consists of two opposed "forces" who, like blind chemical energies, struggle with one another in unconscious darkness. The ultimate reality of the universe is personality, or rather, let us say, is the existence of an innumerable company of personal souls, visible and invisible, each of whom half-creates and half-discovers his own universe; each of whom finds, sooner or later, in the objective validity of the "eternal ideas," a universe which is common to them all. The unfathomable duality upon which this objective world, common to them all, depends for its existence is a duality which exists in every separate soul. Without such a duality it is impossible to conceive any soul existing. And directly such a duality were resolved into unity such a soul would cease to exist. But because, without the presence of evil, good would cease to exist, we have no right to say that evil is an aspect of good. We have no right to say this because, if good is dependent for its existence upon evil, it is equally true that evil is dependent for its existence upon good. The whole question of ultimate issues is a purely speculative one and one that does not touch the real situation. The real situation, the real fact of our personal experience--which is the only experience worth anything--lies undoubtedly in this impression of unfathomable duality. It cannot be regarded as a reconciliation between love and malice merely to recognize that love and malice are not independent "forces," such as can be compared to chemical "forces," but are states of the soul. It is true that they both exist within the soul, just as the soul exists within time and space; but since the soul is unfathomable these two conditions of the soul are also unfathomable. The struggle upon which the universe depends is a struggle which goes on within the circle of personality; but since personality is unthinkable without this struggle, it may truly be said that the existence of personality "depends" upon the existence of this struggle. When we speak of pain and pleasure as if they were independent entities we are forgetting that it is merely as "states of the soul" that pain and pleasure exist. When we speak of love and malice as independent entities we are forgetting that it is merely as "states of the soul" that love and malice exist. Love and malice, the life-force and the death-force, these are merely abstractions when separated from the soul which is their arena. It is certainly not in harmony with the revelation of the complex vision to seek to imagine some vague "beginning of things"; when some inscrutable chemical or spiritual "energy," called "life," rushed into objective existence and proceeded to create living personalities through which it might be able to function. The revelation of the complex vision is a revelation of a world made up of unfathomable personalities. Of this world, of these unfathomable personalities, we are unable to postulate any "beginning." They have always existed. They seem likely to remain always in existence. Our knowledge stops at that point; because our knowledge is the knowledge of personality. The revelation of the complex vision is constantly warning us against any tendency to evade the whole question of the original mystery by the use of meaningless abstractions. The word "energy" is such an abstraction. So also is the word "movement." So also are those logical formulae of the pure reason, such as the "a priori unity of apperception" and the "absolute spirit." Apart from personality, apart from the complex vision of the individual soul, there is no such thing as "energy" or "movement" or "transcendental unity" or "absolute spirit." In the same way we are compelled to recognize that apart from personality the unfathomable duality has no meaning. But in so far as it represents the eternal struggle between life and death which goes on all the while in every living soul, the unfathomable duality is the permanent condition of our deepest knowledge. It is just here that the mystery of pain and pleasure helps us to understand the mystery of love and malice, the same insensitiveness in certain souls that prevents their feeling any vivid pain or any vivid pleasure, also prevents their feeling any intense malice. But this insensitiveness which prevents their feeling any intense malice is, more than anything else, the especial evocation of the power of malice. For intensity, even in malice, is a proof that malice has been appropriating to its use the energy of life. The real opposite of intense love is not intense malice but inert malice. For malignant inertness is the true adversary of creation. From this it necessarily follows that the soul which is insensitive to pain and pleasure and to malice and love is a soul in whom the profound opposite of love has already won a relative victory. It is certainly possible, as we have seen, for the victory of malice over love to be accompanied by thrilling pleasure; but, when this happens malice has lost something of its "inertness" by drawing to itself and corrupting for its own use the dynamic energy of love. When malice displays itself in an intense and vivid activity of destruction it is less "evil" and less purely "malignant" than when it remains insensitive and inert. For this reason it is undeniably true that an insensitive person, although he may cause much less positive pain than a passionately cruel person, is in reality a more complete incarnation of the power of "evil" than the latter; for the latter, in the very violence of his passion, has appropriated to himself something of the creative energy. It is true that in appropriating this he has corrupted it, and it is true that by the use of it he can cause far more immediate pain; but it remains that in himself he is less purely "evil" than the person whose chief characteristic is a malignant insensitiveness. CHAPTER XIII. THE REALITY OF THE SOUL IN RELATION TO MODERN THOUGHT It ought not to be forgotten, as at least an important historical fact, in regard to what we have asserted as the revelation of the complex vision concerning the reality of the soul, that the two most influential modern philosophers deny this reality altogether. I refer to Bergson and William James. In the systems of thought of both these writers there is no place left for that concrete, real, actual "monad," with its semi-mental, semi-material substratum of unknown hyper-physical, hyper-psychic substance, which is what we mean, in philosophical as well as in popular language when we talk of the "soul." According to the revelation of man's complex vision this hyper-physical, hyper-psychic "something," which is the concrete centre of will and consciousness and energy, is also the invisible core or base of what we term personality, and, without its real existence, personality can have no permanence. Without the assumption of its real existence personality cannot hold its own or remain integral and identical in the midst of the process of life. This then being the nature and character of the soul, what weight is there in the arguments used against the soul's concrete existence by such thinkers as James and Bergson? The position of the American philosopher in regard to this matter seems less plausible and less consistent than that of his French master. James is prepared to give his adherence to a belief in a soul of the earth and in planetary souls and stellar souls. He quotes with approval on this point the writings of Gustav Theodor Fechner, the Leipzig chemist. He is also prepared to find a place in his pluralistic world for at least one quite personal and quite finite god. If he is not merely exercising his philosophical fancy in all this, but is actually prepared to assume the real concrete existence of an earth-soul and of planetary souls and of at least one beneficent and quite personal god, why should he find himself unable to accept the same sort of real concrete soul in living human beings? Why should he find himself compelled to say--"the notion of the substantial soul, so freely used by common men and the more popular philosophers has fallen upon evil days and has no prestige in the eyes of critical thinkers . . . like the word 'cause' the word 'soul' is but a theoretic stop-gap . . . it marks a place and claims it for a future explanation to occupy . . . let us leave out the soul, then, and confront the original dilemma"? This scepticism of the pragmatic philosophy in regard to the "substantial soul" is surely an unpardonable inconsistency. For in all other problems the fact of an idea being "freely used by common men" is, according to pragmatic principles, an enormous piece of evidence in its favour. The further fact that all the great "a priori" metaphysical systems have been driven by their pure logic to discredit the "substantiality" of the soul, just as they have been driven to discredit the personality of God, ought, one would think, where "radical empiricism" is concerned, to be a still stronger piece of evidence on the soul's side. James has told us that he has found it necessary to throw away "pure reason" and to assume an inherent "irrationality" in the system of things. Why then, when it comes to this particular axiom of irrational common-sense, does he balk and sheer off? One cannot resist the temptation of thinking that just here the great Pragmatist has been led astray by that very philosophical pride he condemns in the metaphysicians. One cannot help suspecting that it is nothing less than the fact of the soul's appeal to ordinary common-sense that has prejudiced this philosopher of common-sense so profoundly against it. What James does not seem to see is that his pseudo-scientific reduction of the integral soul-monad into a wavering and fitful series of compounded vortex-consciousness is really a falling back from the empirical data of human reality into the thin abstracted air of conceptual truth. The concrete substantial soul, just because it is the permanent basis of personality and the only basis of personality which common sense can apprehend, is precisely one of those obstinate original particular "data" of consciousness which it is the proud role of conceptual and intellectual logic to explain away, and to explain away in favour of attenuated rationalistic theories which are themselves "abstracted" or, shall we say, pruned and shaved off from the very thing they are supposed to explain. All these "flowing streams," and "pulses of consciousness" and multiple "compoundings of consciousness" and overlappings of sub-consciousness are in reality, for all their pseudo-scientific air, nothing more or less than the old-fashioned metaphysical conceptions, such as "being" and "becoming," under a new name. Nor is the new "irrational reason" by which the pragmatist arrives at these plausible theories really in the least different from the imaginative personal vision which, as James himself clearly shows, was at the back of all that old-fashioned dialectic. The human mind has not changed its inherent texture; nor can it change it. We may talk of substituting intuition for reason. But the "new intuition," with its arrogant claims of getting upon the "inner side" of reality, is after all only "the old reason" functioning with a franker admission of its reliance upon that immediate personal vision and with less regard for the logical rules. It is not, in fact, because of any rule of "logical identity with itself" that the human mind clings so tenaciously to the notion of an integral soul-monad. It is because of its own inmost consciousness that such a monad, that such a substantial integral soul, is in the deepest sense its very self, and a denial of it a denial of its very self. The attitude of Bergson in this matter is much more consistent than that of James. Bergson is frankly and confessedly not a pluralist at all, but a spiritual monist. As a spiritual monist he is compelled to regard what we call "matter," including in this term the mechanical or chemical resistance of body and brain, as something which is produced or evolved or "thrown off" by spirit and as something which, when once it has been evolved, spirit has to penetrate, permeate, and render porous and submissive. The complexity of Bergson's speculations with regard to memory and the "élan vital," with regard above all to the "true time," has done much to distract popular attention away from his real attitude towards the soul. But Bergson's attitude towards the existence of a substantial soul-monad is consistently and inevitably hostile. It could not be anything else as long as the original personal "fling" into life which gives each one of us his peculiar angle of vision remained with him a question of one unified _spirit_--"a continuum of eternal shooting-forth"--which functioned through the brain and through all personal life and perpetually created a new unforeseen universe. In the flux of this one universal "spirit," whereof "duration," in the mysterious Bergsonian sense, is the functional activity, there can obviously be no place for an actual substantial soul. "The consciousness we have of our own self in its continual flux introduces us to the interior of a reality on the model of which we must represent other realities. All reality, therefore, is a tendency, if we agree to mean by tendency an incipient change in any direction." And when we enquire as to the nature of this "continual flux" of which the positive and integral thing we have come to call the soul is but a ripple, or swirling whirlpool of centripetal ripples, the answer which Bergson gives is definite enough. "We approach a duration which _strains_, contracts, and intensifies itself more and more; at the limit would be eternity. No longer conceptual eternity, which is an eternity of death, but an eternity of life. A living, and therefore still moving eternity in which our own particular duration would be included, as the vibrations are in light; an eternity which would be the concentration of all duration, as materiality is its dispersion. Between these two extreme limits intuition moves, and this movement is the very essence of metaphysics." Thus according to Bergson the essential secret of life is to be found in some peculiar movement of what he calls spirit; a movement which takes place in some unutterable medium, or upon some indescribable plane, the name of which is "pure time" or "duration." And listening to all this we cannot resist a sigh of dismay. For here, in these vague de-humanized terms--"tendency," "flux," "eternity," "vibration," "duration," "dispersion"--we are once more, only with a different set of concepts, following the old metaphysical method, that very method which Bergson himself sets out to confine to its inferior place. "Tendency" or "flux" or "duration" is just as much a metaphysical concept as "being" or "not being" or "becoming." The only way in which we can really escape from the rigid conceptualism of rational logic is to accept the judgment of the totality of man's nature. And the judgment of the totality of man's nature points unmistakably to the existence of a real substantial soul. Such a soul is the indispensable implication of personality. And the most interior and intimate knowledge that we are in possession of, or shall ever be in possession of, is the knowledge of personality. Bergson is perfectly right when he asserts that "the consciousness which we have of our own self" introduces us "to the interior of a reality, on the model of which we must represent other realities." But Bergson is surely departing both from the normal facts of ordinary introspection and from the exceptional facts of abnormal illumination when he appends to the words "the consciousness which we have of our own self" the further words in its continual "flux." For in our normal moods of human introspection, as well as in our abnormal moods of superhuman illumination, what we are conscious of most of all is a sense of integral continuity in the midst of change, and of identical permanence in the midst of ebb and flow. The flux of things does most assuredly rush swiftly by us; and we, in our inmost selves, are conscious of life's incessant flow. But how could we be conscious of any of this turbulent movement across the prow of our voyaging ship, if the ship itself--the substantial base of our living consciousness--were not an organized and integral reality, of psycho-chemical material, able to exert will and to make use of memory and reason in its difficult struggle with the waves and winds? The revelation of man's complex vision with regard to the personality of the soul is a thing of far-reaching issues and implications. One of these implications is that while we have the right to the term "the eternal flux" in regard to the changing waves of sensations and ideas that pass across the horizon of the soul's vision we have no right to think of this "eternal flux" as anything else than the pressure upon us of the universe of our own vision and the pressure upon us of the universe of other visions, as they seem, for this or that passing moment, to be different from our own. The kind of world to which we are thus committed is a world crowded with living personalities. Each of these personalities brings with it its own separate universe. But the fact that all these separate universes find their ideal synthesis or teleological orientation in "the vision of the immortals," justifies us in assuming that in a certain eternal sense all these apparently conflicting universes are in reality one. This unity of ideas, with its predominant aesthetic idea--the idea of beauty--and its predominant emotional idea--the idea of love--helps us towards a synthesis which is after all only a dynamic one, a thing of movement, growth and creation. Such a teleological unity, forever advancing to a consummation never entirely to be attained, demands however some sort of static "milieu" as well as some sort of static "material" in the midst of which and out of which it moulds its premeditated future. It is precisely this static "milieu" or "medium," and this static "material" or formless "objective mystery," which Bergson's philosophy, of the _"élan vital" of pure spirit_, spreading out into a totally indetermined future, denies and eliminates. In order to justify this double elimination--the elimination of an universal "medium" and the elimination of a formless "thing-in-itself"--Bergson is compelled to reduce _space_ to a quite secondary and merely logical conception and to substitute for our ordinary stream of time, measurable in terms of space, an altogether new conception of time, measurable in terms of feeling. When however we come to analyse this new Bergsonian time, or as he prefers to call it "intuitively-felt duration," we cannot avoid observing that it is merely a new "mysterious something" introduced into the midst of the system of things, in order to enable us to escape from those older traditional "mysterious somethings" which we have to recognize as the "immediate data" of human consciousness. It might be argued that Bergson's monistic "spirit," functioning in a mysterious indefinable "time," demands neither more nor less of an irrational act of faith than our mysterious psycho-material "soul" surrounded by a mysterious hyper-chemical "medium" and creating its future out of an inexplicable "objective mystery." Where however the philosophy of the complex vision has the advantage over the philosophy of the "élan vital" is in the fact that even on Bergson's own admission what the human consciousness most intensely _knows_ is not "pure spirit," whether shaped like a fan or shaped like a sheaf, but simply its own integral identity. And this integral identity of consciousness can only be visualized or felt in the mind itself under the form of a living concrete monad. It will be seen, however, when it comes to a "showing up" of what might be called the "trump cards" of axiomatic mystery, that the complex vision has in reality fewer of these ultimate irrational "data" than has the philosophy of the élan vital. Space itself, whether we regard it as objective or subjective, is certainly not an irrational axiom but an entirely rational and indeed an entirely inevitable assumption. And what the complex vision reveals is that the trinity of "mysterious somethings" with which we are compelled to start our enquiry, namely the "something" which is the substratum of the soul, the "something" which is the "medium" binding all souls together, and the "something" which is the "objective mystery" out of which all souls create their universe, is, in fact, a genuine trinity in the pure theological sense; in other words is a real "three-in-one." And it is a "three-in-one" not only because it is unthinkable that three "incomprehensible substances" should exist in touch with one another without being in organic relation, but also because all three of them are dominated, in so far as we can say anything about them at all, by the same universal space. It is true that the unappropriated mass of "objective mystery" upon which no shadow of the creative energy of any soul has yet been thrown must be considered as utterly "formless and void" and thus in a sense beyond space and time, yet since immediately we try to _imagine_ or _visualize_ this mystery, as well as just logically "consider" it, we are compelled to extend over it our conception of time and space, it is in a practical sense, although not in a logical sense, under the real dominion of these. When therefore the philosophy of the complex vision places its trump-cards of axiomatic mystery over against the similar cards of the philosophy of the "élan vital" it will be found that in actual number Bergson has one more "card" than we have. For Bergson has not only his "pure spirit" and his "intuitively-felt time," but has also--for he cannot really escape from that by just asserting that his "spirit" produces it--the opposing obstinate principle of "matter" or "solid bodies" or "mechanical brains" upon which his pure spirit has to work. It is indeed out of its difficulties with "matter," that is to say with bodies and brains, that Bergson's "spirit" is forced to forego its natural element of "intuitive duration" and project itself into the rigid rationalistic conceptualism of ordinary science and metaphysic. The point of our argument in this place is that since the whole purpose of philosophy is articulation or clarification and since in this process of clarification the fewer "axiomatic incomprehensibles" we start with the better; it is decidedly to the advantage of any philosophy that it should require at the start nothing more than the mystery of the individual soul confronting the mystery of the world around it. And it is to the disadvantage of Bergson's philosophy that it should require at the start, in addition to "pure spirit" with its assumption of memory and will, and "pure matter" with its assumption of ordinary space and ordinary time, a still further axiomatic trump-card, in the theory of intuitive "durational" time, in which the real process of the life-flow transcends all reason and logic. Putting aside however the cosmological aspect of our controversy with the "radical empirical" school of thought, we still have left unconsidered our most serious divergence from their position. This consists in the fact that both Bergson and James have entirely omitted from their original instrument of research that inalienable aspect of the human soul which we call the aesthetic sense. With only a few exceptions--notably that of Spinoza--all the great European philosophers from Plato to Nietzsche have begun their philosophizing from a starting-point which implied, as an essential part of their "organum" of enquiry, the possession by the human soul of some sort of aesthetic vision. To these thinkers, whether rationalistic or mystic, no interpretation of the world seemed possible that did not start with the aesthetic sense, both as an instrument of research and as a test of what research discovered. The complete absence of any discussion of the aesthetic sense in Bergson and James is probably an historic confession of the tyranny of commercialism and physical science over the present generation. It may also be a spiritual reflection, in the sphere of philosophy, of the rise to political and social power of that bourgeois class which, of all classes, is the least interested in aesthetic speculation. The philosophy of the complex vision may have to wait for its hour of influence until the proletariat comes into its own. And it does indeed seem as if between the triumph of the proletariat and the triumph of the aesthetic sense there were an intimate association. It is precisely because these two philosophers have so completely neglected the aesthetic sense that their speculations seem to have so little hold upon the imagination. When once it is allowed that the true instrument of research into the secret of the universe is the rhythmic activity of man's complete nature, and not merely the activity of his reason or the activity of his intuition working in isolation, it then becomes obvious that the universal revelations of the aesthetic sense, if they can be genuinely disentangled from mere subjective caprices, are an essential part of what we have to work with if we are to approach the truth. The philosophy of the complex vision bases its entire system upon its faith in the validity of these revelations; and, as we have already shown, it secures an objective weight and force for this ideal vision by its faith in certain unseen companions of humanity, whom it claims the right to name "the immortals." This is really the place where we part company with Bergson and James. We agree with the former in his distrust of the old metaphysic. We agree with the latter in many of his pluralistic speculations. But we feel that any philosophy which refuses to take account, at the very beginning, of those regions of human consciousness which are summed up by the words "beauty" and "art," is a philosophy that in undertaking to explain life has begun by eliminating from life one of its most characteristic products. In Bergson's interpretation of life the stress is laid upon "spirit" and "intuition." In James' interpretation of life the stress is laid upon those practical changes in the world and in human nature which any new idea must produce if it is to prove itself true. In the view of life we are now trying to make clear, philosophy is so closely dependent upon the activity of the aesthetic sense that it might itself be called an art, the most difficult and the most comprehensive of all the arts, the art of retaining the rhythmic balance of all man's contradictory energies. What this rhythmic balance of man's concentrated energies seems to make clear is the primary importance of the process of discrimination and valuation. From the profoundest depths of the soul rises the consciousness of the power of choice; and this power of choice to which we give, by common consent, the name of "will," finds itself confronted at the start by the eternal duality of the impulse to create and the impulse to resist creation. The impulse to create we find, by experience, to be identical with the emotion of love. And the impulse to resist creation we find, by experience, to be identical with the emotion of malice. But experience carries us further than this. The impulse to create, or the emotion of love, is found, as soon as it begins a function, to be itself a living synthesis of three primordial reactions to life, which, in philosophic language, we name "ideas." These three primordial ideas may be summed up as follows: The idea of beauty, which is the revelation of the aesthetic sense. The idea of goodness or nobility, which is the revelation of conscience. The idea of truth, or the mind's apprehension of reality, which is the revelation of reason, intuition, instinct, and imagination, functioning in sympathic harmony. Now it is true that by laying so much stress upon the "élan vital" or flowing tide of creative energy, Bergson has indicated his acceptance of one side of the ultimate duality. But for Bergson this creative impulse is not confronted by evil or by malice as its opposite, but simply by the natural inertness of mechanical "matter." And once having assumed his "continuum" of pure spirit, he deals no further with the problem of good and evil or with the problem of the aesthetic sense. From our point of view he is axiomatically unable to deal with these problems for the simple reason that his élan vital or flux of pure spirit, being itself a mere metaphysical abstraction from living personality, can never, however hard you squeeze it, produce either the human conscience or the human aesthetic sense. These things can only be produced from the concrete activity of a real living individual soul. In the same way it is true that William James, by his emphasis upon conduct and action and practical efficiency as the tests of truth, is bound to lay enormous stress at the very start upon the ethical problem. What a person believes about the universe becomes itself an ethical problem by the introduction on the one hand of the efficiency of the will to believe and on the other of the assumption that a person "ought" to believe that which it is "useful" to him to believe, as long as it does not conflict with other desirable truths. But this ethical element in the pragmatic doctrine, though it is so dominant as almost to reduce philosophy itself to a sub-division of ethics, is not, when one examines it, at all the same thing as what the philosophy of the complex vision means by the revelation of conscience. Ethics with William James swallows up philosophy and in swallowing up philosophy the nature of Ethics is changed and becomes something different from the clear unqualified mandate of the human conscience. With the philosophy of the complex vision the revelations of conscience are intimately associated with the revelations of the aesthetic sense; and these again, in the rhythmic totality of man's nature, with the revelations of emotion, instinct, intuition, imagination. Thus when it comes to conduct and the question of choice the kind of "imperative" issued by conscience has been already profoundly changed. It is still the mandate of conscience. But it is the mandate of a conscience whose search-light has been taken possession of by the aesthetic sense and has been fed by imagination, instinct and intuition. It must be understood when we speak of these various "aspects" or "attributes" of the human soul we do not imply that they exist as separable faculties independently of the unity of the soul which possesses them. The soul is an integral and indivisible monad and throws its whole strength along each of these lines of contact with the world. As will, the soul flings itself upon the world in the form of choice between opposite valuations. As conscience, it flings itself upon the world in the form of motive force of opposite valuations. As the aesthetic sense, it flings itself upon the world in the form of yet another motive-force of opposite valuations. As imagination, it half-creates and half-discovers the atmospheric climate, so to speak, of this valuation. As intuition, it feels itself to be in possession of a super-terrestrial, super-human authority which gives objective definiteness and security to this valuation. As instinct, it feels its way by an innate clairvoyance into the organic or biological vibrations of this valuation. Thus we return to the point from which we started, namely that the whole problem of philosophy is the problem of valuation. And this is the same thing as saying that philosophy, considered in its essential nature, is nothing less than art--the art of flinging itself upon the world with all the potentialities of the soul functioning in rhythmic harmony. When Bergson talks of the "élan vital" and suggests that the acts of choice of the human personality are made as naturally and inevitably, under the pressure of the "shooting out" of the spirit, as leaves grow upon the tree, he is falling into the old traditional blunder of all pantheistic and monistic thinkers, the blunder namely of attributing to a universal "God" or "life-force" or "stream of tendency" the actual personal achievements of individual souls. Bergson's "apologia" for free-will is therefore rendered ineffective by reason of the fact that it does not really leave the individual free. The only "free" thing is the aboriginal "spirit," pouring forth in its "durational" stream, and moulding bodies and brains as it goes along. The philosophy of the complex vision does not believe in "spirit" or "life-force" or "durational streams of tendency." Starting with personality it is not incumbent upon it to show how personality has been evolved. It is no more incumbent upon it to show how personality has been evolved than it is incumbent upon pantheistic idealism to show how God or how the Absolute has been evolved. Personality with its implication of separate concrete psycho-material soul-monads is indeed our Absolute or at any rate is as much of an Absolute as we can ever get while we continue to recognize the independent existence of one universal space, of one universal ethereal medium, and of on universal objective mystery. Perhaps the correct metaphysical statement of our philosophic position would be that our Absolute is a duality from the very start--a duality made up on one side of innumerable soul-monads and on the other side of an incomprehensible formless mass of plastic material, itself subdivided into the two aspects of a medium binding the soul-monads together, and an objective mystery into which they pierce their way. When the evolutionists tell us that personality is a thing of late appearance in the system of things and a thing of which we are able to note the historic or prehistoric development, out of the "lower" forms of life, our answer is that we have no right to assume that the life of the earth and of the other planetary and stellar bodies is a "lower" form of life. If to this the astronomer answer that he is able to carry the history of evolution further back than any planet or star, as far back as a vast floating mass of homogeneous fiery vapour, even then we should still maintain that this original nebular mass of fire was the material "body" of an integral soul-monad; and that in surrounding immensities of space there were other similar masses of nebular fire--possibly innumerable others--who in their turn were the bodily manifestations of integral soul-monads. When evolutionists argue that personality is a late and accidental appearance on the world scene, they are only thinking of human personalities; and our contention is that while man has a right to interpret the universe in terms of his soul, he has no right to interpret the universe in terms of his body; and that it is therefore quite possible to maintain that the "body" of the earth has been from the beginning animated by a soul-monad whose life can in no sense be called "lower" than the life of the soul-monad which at present animates the human body. And in support of our contention just here we are able to quote not only the authority of Fechner but the authority of Professor James himself approving of Fechner. What the philosophy of the complex vision really does is to take life just as it is--the ordinary multifarious spectacle presented to our senses and interpreted by our imagination--and regard this, and nothing more recondite than this, as the ultimate Absolute, or as near an Absolute as we are ever likely to get. From our point of view it seems quite uncalled for to summon up vague and remote entities, like streams of consciousness and shootings forth of spirit, in order to interpret this immediate spectacle. Such streams of consciousness and shootings forth of spirit seem to us just as much abstractions and just as much conceptual substitutions for reality as do the old-fashioned metaphysical entities of "being" and "becoming." No one has ever _seen_ a life-stream or a life-force. No one has ever _seen_ a compounded congeries of conscious states. But every one of us has seen a living human soul looking out of a living human body; and most of us have seen a living soul looking out of the mysterious countenance of earth, water, air and fire. The philosophy of the soul-monad has at any rate this advantage over every other: namely, that it definitely represents human experience and can always be verified by human experience. Any human being can try the experiment of sinking into the depths of his own identity. Let the reader of this passage try such an experiment here and now; and let him, in the light of what he finds, decide this question. Does he find himself flowing mysteriously forth, along some indescribable "durational" stream, and, as he flows, feeling himself to be that stream? Or does he feel himself to be a definite concrete actual "I am I," "the guest and companion of his body" and, as far as the mortal weakness of flesh allows, the motive-principle of that body? If the philosophy of the complex vision is able to make an appeal of this kind with a certain degree of assurance as to the answer, it is able to make a yet more convincing appeal, when--the soul's existence once admitted--it becomes a question as to that soul's inherent quality. No human being, unless in the grasp of some megalomania of virtue, can deny the existence, in the depths of his nature, of a struggle between the emotion of love and the emotion of malice. Out of this ultimate duality under the pressure of the forms and shapes of life and the reaction against these of the imagination and the aesthetic sense, spring into existence those primordial ideas of truth and beauty and goodness which, are the very stuff and texture of our fate. But these ideas, primordial though they are, are so confused and distorted by their contact with circumstances and accident, that it may well be that no clear image of them is found in the recesses of the soul when the soul turns its glance inward. No soul, however, can turn its glance inward without recognizing in its deepest being this ultimate struggle between love and malice. How then can any philosophy be regarded as a transcript and reflection of reality when at the very start it refuses to take cognizance of this fact? If the only knowledge, which is in any sense certain, is our knowledge of ourselves, and if our knowledge of ourselves implies our knowledge of a definite "soul-monad" for ever divided against itself in this abysmal struggle, how then may a philosophy be regarded as covering the facts of experience, when in place of this personal contradiction it predicates, as its explanation of the system of things, some remote, thin, abstract tendency, such as the "shooting forth of spirit" or the compounding of states of consciousness? The whole matter may be thus summed up. The modern tendencies of thought which we have been considering, get rid of the old metaphysical notion of the logical Absolute only to substitute vague psychological "states of consciousness" in its place. But what philosophy requires if the facts of introspective experience are to be trusted is neither an Absolute in whose identity all difference is lost nor a stream of "states of consciousness" which is suspended, as it were, in a vacuum. What philosophy requires is the recognition of real actual persons whose original revelation of the secret of life implies that abysmal duality of good and evil beyond the margin of which no living soul has ever passed. Whether or not this concrete "monad" or living substratum of personality survives the death of the body is quite a different question; is in fact a question to which the philosophy of the complex vision can make no definite response. In this matter all we can say is that those supreme moments of rhythmic ecstasy, whose musical equilibrium I have indicated in the expression "apex-thought," establish for us a conclusive certainty as to the eternal continuance, beyond the scope of all deaths, of that indestructible aspect of personality we have come to name the struggle between love and malice. With the conclusive consciousness of this there necessarily arises a certain attitude of mind which is singularly difficult to describe but which I can hint at in the following manner. In the very act of recognition, in the act by which we apprehend the secret of the universe to consist in this abysmal struggle of the emotion of love with the emotion of malice, there is an implication of a complete acceptance of whatever the emotion of love or the principle of love is found to demand, as the terms of its relative victory over its antagonist. Whether this demand of love, or to put it more exactly this demand of "all souls" in whom love is dominant, actually issues in a personal survival after death we are not permitted to feel with any certainty. But what we feel with certainty, when the apex-thought of the complex vision reaches its consummation, is that we find our full personal self-realization and happiness in a complete acceptance of whatever the demand of love may be. And this is the case because the ultimate happiness and fulfilment of personality does not depend upon what may have happened to personality in the past or upon what may happen to personality in the future but solely and exclusively upon what personality demands here and now in the apprehension of the unassailable moment. This suspension of judgment therefore in regard to the question of the immortality of the soul is a suspension of judgment implicit in the very nature of love itself. For if there were anything in the world nearer the secret of the world than is this duality of love and malice, then that alien thing, however we thought of it, would be the true object of the soul's desire and the victory of love over malice would fall into the second place. If instead of the soul's desire being simply the victory of love over malice it were, so to speak, the "material fruit" of such a victory-- namely, the survival of personality after death--then, in place of the struggle between love and malice, we should be compelled to regard _personality in itself_, apart from the nature of that personality, as the secret of the universe. But as we have repeatedly shown, it is impossible to think of any living personality apart from this abysmal dualism, the ebb and flow of which, with the relative victory of love over malice, is our ultimate definition of what living personality _is_. The emotion of love abstracted from personality is not the secret of the universe, because personality in its concrete living activity is the secret of the universe. It is this very abstraction of love, isolated from any person who loves, and projected as an abstract into the void, that has done so much to undermine religious thought, just as that other absolute of "pure being" has done so much to undermine philosophic thought. Love and malice are unthinkable apart from personality; but personality divorced from the struggle between love and malice is something worse than unthinkable. It is something most tragically thinkable. It is in fact the plain reality of death. A dead body is a body in which the struggle between love and malice has completely ceased. A dead planet would be a planet in which the struggle between love and malice had ceased. We cannot speak of a "dead soul" because the soul is, according to our original definition, the very fusion-point and vortex-point where not only consciousness and energy meet but where love and malice meet and wage their eternal struggle. Strictly speaking it is not true to say that the ultimate secret of the universe is the emotion of love. The emotion of love, just because it is an _emotion_, is the emotion of a personality. It is personality, not the emotion of love, which is the secret of the universe, which is, in fact, the very universe itself. But it is personality considered in its true concrete life, not as a mere abstraction devoid of all characteristics, which is this basic thing. And personality thus considered is, as we have seen, a living battleground of two ultimate emotions. The complete triumph of love over malice would mean the extinction of personality and following from this the extinction of the universe. Thus what the soul's desire really amounts to, in those rhythmic moments when its diverse aspects are reduced to harmonious energy, is not the complete victory of love over malice but only a relative victory. What it really desires is that malice should still exist, but that it should exist in subordination to love. The ideal of the soul therefore in its creative moments is _the process of the overcoming of malice_, not the completion of this process. In order to be perpetually overcome by love, malice must remain existent, must remain "still there." If it ceased to be there, there would be nothing left for love to overcome; and the ebb and flow of the universe, its eternal contradictions, would be at an end. The soul's desire, according to this view, is not a life after death where malice, shall we say, is completely overcome and "good" completely triumphant. The soul's desire is that malice, or evil, should continue to exist; but should continue to exist under the triumphant hand of love. The desire of the soul, in such ultimate moments, has nothing to do with the survival of the soul after death. It has to do with an acceptance of the demand of love. And what love demands is not that malice should disappear; but that it should for ever exist, in order that love should for ever be overcoming it. And the ecstasy of this process, of this "overcoming," is a thing of single moments, moments which, as they pass, not only reduce both past and future to an eternal "now" but annihilate everything else but this eternal "now." This annihilation of the past does not mean the extinction of memory or the extinction of hope. It only means that the profoundest of our memories are "brought over" as it were from the past into the present. It only means that a formless horizon of immense hope, indefinite and vague, hovers above the present, to give it spaciousness and freedom. The revelation of the complex vision does not therefore answer the question of the immortality of the soul. What it does is to indicate the degree of importance of any answer to this question. And this degree of importance is much smaller than in our less harmonious moments we are inclined to suppose. At certain complacent moments the soul finds itself praying for some final assurance of personal survival. At certain other moments the soul is tempted to pray for complete annihilation. But at the moments when it is most entirely itself it neither prays for annihilation nor for immortality. It does not pray for itself at all. It prays that the will of the gods may be done. It prays that the power of love in every soul in the universe may hold the power of malice in subjection. The soul therefore, revealed as a real substantial living thing by the complex vision, is not revealed as a thing necessarily exempt from death, but as a thing whose deepest activity renders it free from the fear of death. In considering the nature of the contrast between the philosophy of the complex vision and the most dominant philosophic tendencies of the present time it is important to make clear what our attitude is towards that hypothetical assumption usually known as the Theory of Evolution. If what is called Evolution means simply _change_, then we have not the least objection to the word. The universe obviously changes. It is undergoing a perpetual series of violent and revolutionary changes. But it does not necessarily improve or progress. On the contrary during enormous periods of time it deteriorates. Both progress and deterioration are of course purely human valuations. But according to our valuation of good and evil it may be said that during those epochs when the malicious, the predatory, the centripetal tendency in life predominates over the creative and centrifugal tendency, there is deterioration and degeneracy; and during the epochs when the latter overcomes the former there is growth and improvement. It is quite obvious that from our point of view, there is no such thing as inanimate chemical substance, no such isolated evolutionary _phases_ of "matter," such as the movements from "solids" to "liquids," from "liquids" to "gases," from "gases" to "ether," from "ether" to "electro-magnetism." All these apparent changes must be regarded as nothing less than the living organic changes taking place in the living bodies of actual personal souls. According to our view the real and important variations in the multiform spectacle of the universe are the variations brought about by the perpetual struggle between life and death, in other words between the personal energy of creation and the personal resistance of malice. For us the universe of bodies and souls is perpetually re-creating itself by the mysterious process of birth, perpetually destroying itself by the mysterious process of death. It is this eternal struggle between the impulse to create new life and the impulse to resist the creation of life, and to destroy or to petrify life, which actually causes all movement in things and all change; movement sometimes forward and sometimes backward as the great pendulum and rhythm of existence swings one way or the other. And even this generalization does not really cover what we regard as the facts of the case, because this backward or forward movement, though capable of being weighed and estimated "en masse" in the erratic and violent changes of history, is in reality a thing of particular and individual instances, a thing that ultimately affects nothing but individuals and personalities, in as much as it is the weighing and balancing of a struggle which takes place nowhere else except in the arena of concrete separate and personal souls. What is usually called Evolution then, and what may just as reasonably be called Deterioration, is as far as we are concerned just a matter of perpetual movement and change. The living personalities that fill the circle of space are perpetually reproducing themselves in a series of organic births, and perpetually passing away in the process of death. We have also to remember that every living organism whether such an organism resemble that of a planet or a human being, is itself the dwelling-place of innumerable other living organisms dependent on it and drawing their life from it, precisely as their parent organism depends on, and draws its life from, the omnipresent universal ether. What the philosophy of the complex vision denies and refutes is the modern tendency to escape from the real mystery of existence by the use of such vague hypothetical metaphors, all of them really profoundly anthropomorphic, such as "life-force" or "hyper-space" or "magnetic energy" or "streams of sub-consciousness." The philosophy of the complex vision drives these pseudo-philosophers to the wall and compels them to confess that ultimately all they are aware of is the inner personal activity of their own individual souls; compels them to confess that when it comes to the final analysis their "life-force" and "pure thought" and "hyper-space" and "radio-magnetic activity" are all nothing but one-sided hypothetical abstractions taken from the concrete movements of concrete individual bodies and souls which by an inevitable act of the imagination we assume to reproduce in their interior reactions what we ourselves experience in ours. To introduce such a conception as that of those mysterious super human beings, whom I have named "the gods," into a serious philosophic system, may well appear to many modern scientific minds the very height of absurdity. But the whole method of the philosophy of the complex vision is based upon direct human experience; and from my point of view the obscure and problematic existence of some such beings has behind it the whole formidable weight of universal human feeling-- a weight which is not made less valid by the arrogant use of mere phrases of rationalistic contempt such as that which is implied in the word "superstition." From our point of view a philosophy which does not include and subsume and embody that universal human experience covered by the term "superstition" is a philosophy that has eliminated from its consideration one great slice of actual living fact. And it is in this aspect of the problem more than in any other that the philosophy of the complex vision represents a return to certain revelations of human truth--call them mythological if you please--which modern philosophy seems to have deliberately suppressed. In the final result it may well be that we have to choose, as our clue to the mystery of life, either "mathematica" or "mythology." The philosophy of the complex vision is compelled by the very nature of its organ of research to choose, in this dilemma, the latter rather than the former. And the universe which it thus dares to predicate is at least a universe that lends itself, as so many "scientific" universes do not, to that synthetic activity of the _imaginative reason_ which in the long run alone satisfies the soul. And such a universe satisfies the soul, as these others cannot, because it reflects, in its objective spectacle of things, the profoundest interior consciousness of the actual living self which the soul in its deepest moments of introspection is able to grasp. Modern science, under the rhetorical spell of this talismanic word "evolution," seems to imply that it can explain the multiform shapes and appearances of organic life by deducing them, in all their vivid heterogeneity, from some hypothetical monistic substance which it boldly endows with the mysterious energy called the "life-force" and which it then permits to project out of itself, by some sort of automatic volition, the whole long historic procession of living organisms. This purely imaginative assumption gives it, in the popular mind, a sort of vague right to make the astounding claim that it has "explained" the origin of things. Little further arrogance is needed to give it, in the popular mind, the still more astounding right to claim that it has indicated not only the nature of the "beginning" of things but the nature of their "end" also; this "end" being nothing less than some purely hypothetical "equilibrium" when the movement of "advance," coming full circle, rounds itself off into the movement of "reversion." The philosophy of the complex vision makes no claim to deal either with the beginning of things or with the end of things. It recognizes that "beginnings" and "ends" are not things with which we can intelligibly deal; are, on the contrary, things which are completely unthinkable. What we actually see, feel, divine, imagine, love, hate, detest, desire, dream, create and destroy--these living, dying, struggling, relaxing, advancing and retreating things--this space, this ether, these stars and suns, these animals, fishes, birds, plants, this earth and moon, these men and these trees and flowers, these high and unchanging eternal ideas of the beautiful and the good, these transitory perishing mortal lives and these dimly discerned immortal figures that we name "gods," all these, as far as we are concerned, have for ever existed, all these, as far as we are concerned, must for ever exist. In the immense procession of deaths and births, it is indeed certain that the soul and body of the Earth have given birth to all the souls and bodies which struggle for existence upon her living flesh and draw so much of their love and their malice from the unfathomable depths of her spirit. But when once we accept as our basic axiom that where the "soul-monad" exists, whether such a "monad" be human, sub-human, or super-human, it exists in actual concrete organic personal integrity, we are saved from the necessity of explaining how, and by what particular series of births and deaths and change and variation, the living spectacle of things, as we visualize it today, has "evolved" or has "deteriorated" out of the remote past. It is in fact by their constant preoccupation with the immediate and material causes of such organic changes, that men of science have been distracted from the real mystery. This real mystery does not limit itself to the comparatively unimportant "How," but is constantly calling upon us to deal with the terrible and essential questions, the two grim interrogations of the old Sphinx, the "_What_" and the "_Wherefore_." It is by its power to deal with these more essential riddles that any philosophy must be weighed and judged; and it is just because what we name Science stops helplessly at this unimportant "How," that it can never be said to have answered Life's uttermost challenge. Materialistic and Evolutionary Hypotheses must always, however far they may go in reducing so-called "matter" to so-called "spirit," remain outside the real problem. No attenuation of "matter" into movement or energy or magnetic radio-activity can reach the impregnable citadel of life. For the citadel of life is to be found in nothing less than the complex of personality--whether such personality be that of a planet or a plant or an animal or a man or a god--must always be recognized as inherent in an actual living soul-monad, divided against itself in the everlasting duality. Although the most formidable support to our theory of an "eternal vision," wherein all the living entities that fill space under the vibration of an unspeakable cosmic rhythm and brought into focus by one supreme act of contemplative "love," is drawn from the rare creative moments of what I have called the "apex-thought," it still remains that for the normal man in his most normal hours the purely scientific view is completely unsatisfying. I do not mean that it is unsatisfying because, with its mechanical determinism, it does not satisfy his desires. I mean that it does not satisfy his imagination, his instinct, his intuition, his emotion, his aesthetic sense; and in being unable to satisfy these, it proves itself, "ipso-facto," false and equivocal. It is equally true that, except for certain rare and privileged natures, the orthodox systems of religion are equally unsatisfying. What is required is some philosophic system which is bold enough to include the element of so-called "superstition" and at the same time contradicts neither reason nor the aesthetic sense. Such a system, we contend, is supplied by the philosophy of the complex vision; a philosophy which, while remaining frankly anthropomorphic and mythological, does not, in any narrow or impudent or complacent manner, slur over the bitter ironies of this cruel world, or love the clear outlines of all drastic issues in a vague, unintelligible, unaesthetic idealism. What our philosophy insists upon is that the modern tendency to reduce everything to some single monistic "substance," which, by the blind process of "evolution," becomes all this passionate drama that we see, is a tendency utterly false and misleading. For us the universe is a much larger, freer, stranger, deeper, more complicated affair than that. For us the universe contains possibilities of real ghastly, incredible _evil_, descending into spiritual depths, before which the normal mind may well shudder and turn dismayed away. For us the universe contains possibilities of divine, magical, miraculous _good_, ascending into spiritual heights and associating itself with immortal super-human beings, before which the mind of the merely logical intelligence may well pause, baffled, puzzled, and obscurely indignant. The "fulcrum" upon which the whole issue depends, the "pivot" upon which it turns, is the existence of actual living souls filling the immense spaces of nature. If there is no "soul" in any living thing, then our whole system crumbles to pieces. If there are living "souls" in every living thing, then the universe, as revealed by the complex vision, is more real than the universe as revealed by the chief exponents of modern thought. CHAPTER XIV. THE IDEA OF COMMUNISM The philosophy of the complex vision inevitably issues, when it is applied to political and economic conditions, in the idea of communism. The idea of communism is inherent in it from the beginning; and in communism, and in communism alone, does it find its objective and external expression. The philosophy of the complex vision reveals, as we have seen, a certain kind of ultimate duality as the secret of life. This ultimate duality remains eternally unreconciled; for it is a duality within the circle of every personal soul; and the fact that every personal soul is surrounded by an incomprehensible substance under the dominion of time and space, does not reconcile these eternal antagonists; because these eternal antagonists are for ever unfathomable, even as the personal soul, of which they are the conflicting conditions, is itself for ever unfathomable. It is therefore a perpetual witness to the truth that the idea of communism is the inevitable expression of the complex vision that this idea should, more than other idea in the world, divide the souls of men into opposite camps. If the idea of communism were not the inevitable expression of the philosophy of the complex vision as applied to human life it would be an idea with regard to which all human souls would hold infinitely various opinions. But this is not the case. In regard to the idea of communism we do not find this infinite variety of opinion. We find, on the contrary, a definite and irreconcilable duality of thought. Human souls are divided on this matter not, as they are on other matters, into a motley variety of convictions but into two opposite and irreconcilable convictions, unfathomably hostile to one another. There is no other question, no other issue, about which the souls of men are divided so clearly and definitely into two opposite camps. The question of the existence of a "parent of the universe" does not divide them so clearly; because it always remains possible for any unbeliever in a spiritual unity of this absolute kind to use the term "parent," if he pleases, for that incomprehensible "substance" under the dominion of space and time which takes the triple form of the "substance" out of which the substratum of the soul is made, the "substance" out of which the "objective mystery" is made, and the substance out of which is made the surrounding "medium" which holds all personal souls together. The question of the mortality or the immortality of the soul does not divide them so clearly; because such a question is entirely insoluble; and a vivid consciousness of its insolubility accompanies all argument. The question of race does not divide them so clearly; because both with regard to race and with regard to class the division is very largely a superficial thing, dependent upon public opinion and upon group-consciousness and leaving many individuals on each side entirely unaffected. The question of sex does not divide them so clearly; because there are always innumerable examples of noble and ignoble treachery to the sex-instinct; not to speak of a certain intellectual neutrality which refuses to be biased. The idea of communism is on the contrary so profoundly associated with the original revelation of the complex vision that it must be regarded as the inevitable expression of all the attributes of this vision when such attributes are reduced to a rhythmic harmony. That this is no speculative hypothesis but a real fact of experience can be proved by any sincere act of personal introspection. The philosophy of the complex vision is based upon those rare and supreme moments when the soul's "apex-thought" quivers like an arrow in the very heart of the surrounding darkness. By any honest act of introspection we can recall to memory the world-deep revelations which are thus obtained. And among these revelations the one most vivid and irrefutable, as far as human association is concerned, is the revelation of the idea of communism. So vivid and so dominant is this idea, that it may be said that no motive which drives or obsesses the will in the sphere of external relations can approach or rival it in importance. And that this is so can be proved by the fact that the opposite of this idea, namely the idea of private property, is found when we analyse the content of our profoundest instincts to be in perpetual conflict with the idea of communism. And the inevitableness of the world-deep struggle between these two ideas is proved by the fact that in no other way, as soon as the objective world is introduced at all, can we conceive of love and malice as expressing themselves. Love must naturally express itself in the desire to "have all things in common"; and malice must naturally express itself in the desire to have as little as possible in common and as much as possible for ourselves alone. The "possessive instinct," although it may often be found accompanying like an evil shadow some of the purest movements of love, must be recognized as eternally arising out of the depths of the power opposed to love. If we have any psychological clairvoyance we can disentangle this base element from some of the most passionate forms of the sexual instinct and from some of the most passionate forms of the maternal instinct. It is undeniable that the possessive instinct does accompany both these emotions and we are compelled to recognize that, whenever or wherever it appears, it is the expression of the direct opposite of love. So inevitably does the complex vision manifest itself in the idea of communism that it would be legitimate to say that the main object of human life as we know it at present is the realization of the ideas of truth and beauty and nobility in a world-wide communistic state. As far as the human soul in our present knowledge of it is concerned there is no other synthesis possible except this synthesis. And there is no other synthesis possible except this, because this and this alone realizes the ideal which the abysmal power of love implies. And the power of love implies this ideal because the power of love is the only unity which fuses together the ideas of reality and beauty and nobility; and because it is impossible to conceive the power of love as embodying itself in these ideas except in a world-wide communistic state. We are able to prove that this is no speculative hypothesis but a fact based upon experience, by a consideration of the opposite ideal. For evil, as we have hinted in many places, _has_ its ideal. The ideal of evil, or of what I call "malice," is the annihilation of the will to creation. This ideal of malice is in fact an obstinate and continuous resistance to the power of creation; a resistance carried so far as to reduce everything that exists to eternal non-existence. The profoundest experience of the human soul is to be found in the unfathomable struggle that goes on in the depths between "the ideal of evil" which is universal death and "the ideal of love" which is universal life. Reason and sensation are used in turn by this abysmal malice of the soul, to establish and make objective "the idea of nothingness." Thus reason, driven on by the power of malice, derives exquisite satisfaction from the theory of the automatism of the will. The theory of the automatism of the will, the theory that the will is only an illusive name for a pre-determined congeries of irresistible motives, is a theory that lends itself to the ideal of universal death. It is a theory that diminishes, and reduces to a minimum, the identity of the personal soul. And therefore it is a theory which the isolated reason, divorced from imagination and instinct, fastens upon and exults in. The isolated reason, in league with pure sensation and divorced from instinct, becomes very quickly a slave of the abysmal power of malice; and the pleasure which it derives from the contemplation of a mechanical universe predestined and pre-determined, a universe out of which the personal soul has been completely expurgated, is a pleasure derived directly from the power of malice, exulting in the idea of eternal death. Philosophers are very crafty in these things; and it is necessary to discriminate between that genuine passion for reality which derived from the power of love and that exultant pleasure in a "frightful" reality which is derived from intellectual sadism and from the unfathomable malice of the soul. Between a philosophic pessimism which springs from a genuine passion for reality and from a pure "pity" for tortured sentient things, and a philosophic pessimism which springs from a cruel pleasure in atrocious situations and an ambiguous "pity" for tortured sentient things there is an eternity of difference. It needs however something almost like a clairvoyance to recognize this difference; and such a clairvoyance can only be obtained when, as in the case of Christ, the soul becomes aware of its own unfathomable possibilities of good and evil. A careful and implacable analysis of the two camps of opinion into which the idea of communism divides the world reveals to us the fact that the philosophical advocates of private property draw a certain malignant pleasure from insisting that the possessive instinct is the strongest instinct in humanity. This is tantamount to saying that the power of malice is the strongest instinct in humanity; whereas, if the power of malice had not already been relatively overcome by the power of love there would be no "humanity" at all. But the philosophical advocates of private property do not confine themselves to this malign insistence upon the basic greediness of human nature. They are in the habit of twisting their arguments completely around and speaking of the "rights" of property and of the "wholesome" value of the "natural instinct" to possess property. This "natural instinct to possess property" becomes, when they so defend it, something which we assume to be "good" and "noble," and not something which we are compelled to recognize as "evil" and "base." It is necessary to keep these two arguments quite separate in our minds and not to allow the philosophical advocates of private property to confuse them. If the assumption is that the instinct to possess property is a "good" instinct, an instinct springing from the power of love in the human soul, then what we have to do is to subject this "good instinct" to an inflexible analysis; under the process of which such "goodness" will be found to transform itself into the extreme opposite of goodness. If the assumption is that the instinct to possess property is an evil instinct, but an instinct which is the strongest of all human instincts and therefore one which it is insane to attempt to resist, then what we have to do is to prove that the instinct or the emotion of love is stronger than the instinct or the emotion of malice and so essential to the life of the soul that if it had not already relatively overcome the emotion of malice, the personal soul would never have become what it has become; in fact would never have existed at all, since its mere existence depends upon the relative victory of love over malice. In dealing with the former of these two arguments, namely that the instinct to possess property is a "good" instinct, it is advisable to search for some test of "goodness" which shall carry a stronger conviction to the mind of such biassed philosophers than any appeal to the conscience or even to the aesthetic sense. The conscience and the aesthetic sense speak with uncompromising finality upon this subject and condemn the possessive instinct or the instinct to possess property with an unwavering voice. As eternal aspects of the complex vision, both conscience and the aesthetic sense, when their power is exercised in harmony with all the other aspects of the soul, indicate with an oracular clearness that the possessive instinct is not good but evil. The person obsessed by the idea of "nobility" and the person obsessed by the idea of "beauty" are both of them found to be extraordinarily suspicious of the possessive instinct and fiercely anxious to destroy its power. But the test more likely to appeal to the type of philosopher whose business it is to defend the institution of private property is the simple test of reality. Reality or "truth," much more than nobility or beauty, is the idea in the soul which is outraged by the illusion of the value of private property. For the illusion of the value of private property is like the "illusion of dead matter." It is a half-truth projected by the power of malice. The inherent unreality of the illusion of the value of private property can be proved by the simplest examination of the facts. The illusion draws its strength from a false appeal to the genuine and basic necessities of the human mind and the human body. These necessities demand adequate food, adequate clothing, adequate shelter and adequate leisure. They also demand freedom, beauty, happiness, a considerable degree of solitude, and final relief from the intolerable fear of poverty. But the economic and intellectual resources of the human race are perfectly capable of providing all these things for all human beings within the limits of a communistic society. These things and the legitimate demand for these things must not be confused with the illusion of the value of private property. Nor must the illusion of the value of private property be permitted to fortify its insecure position by a false appeal to these real values. The astounding achievements of modern science have brought to light two things. They have brought to light the fact that no human or social unit short of the international unit of the whole race can adequately deal with the resources of the planet. And they have brought to light the fact that this inevitable internationalizing of economic production must be accompanied by a co-operative internationalizing of economic distribution, if murderous chaotic conflict is to be avoided. The real values of sufficient food, clothing, shelter, leisure, and solitude can be secured for every human being inhabiting this planet, under _a far from perfect_ organization of world-production and world-distribution. The astounding achievements of modern science have made this possible. It only requires a reasonable and not by any means an ideal co-operation to make it actual. The achievements of modern science, especially in the sphere of industrial machinery, have made it possible for every human being to have sufficient food, clothing, shelter, leisure and solitude. Man, in this sense, has already conquered Nature; and has secured for his progeny however indefinitely increased, and for the frail and incompetent ones of his race, however indefinitely increased, a more than sufficient supply of these primal necessities. The extraordinary power of international co-operation has been recently displayed during the years of the war in the production of engines of destruction. Far less cooperation applied to the problems of production could secure for an indefinitely multiplied population, including all derelicts and all incompetents, such primal necessities of life as normal persons demand. The resources of this planet, as long as scientific distribution follows close upon scientific production, are sufficient to maintain in food, in shelter, in clothing, in leisure, in reasonable comfort, any human progeny. What then is the principal cause why, as things are now, such lamentable poverty and such huge fear of lamentable poverty dominate the human situation? The cause is not far to seek. It lies in the very root and ground of our existing commercial and industrial system. It lies in the fact that economic production by reason of the illusive value of private enterprise, is directed not towards the satisfaction of such universal and primary necessities as food, shelter, clothing, leisure and reasonable comfort, but towards the creation of unnecessary luxury and artificial frippery, towards the piling up, by means of advertisement, monopoly, exploitation and every kind of chicanery of unproductive accumulation of private property. Our present commercial and industrial system is based upon what is called "free competition." In other words it is based upon the right of private individuals to make use of the resources of nature and the energy of labour to produce unnecessary wealth, wealth which does little or nothing to increase the food, shelter, clothing, leisure and comfort of the masses of mankind, wealth which is artificially maintained by artificial values and by the fantastic process of advertisement. In order to make clear and irrefutable the statement that the illusive value of private property is, like "the illusion of dead matter," a thing conceived, projected and maintained by the aboriginal power of evil, it is necessary to prove two things. It is necessary to prove in the first place that the idea of private property is neither beautiful nor noble nor real. And it is necessary to prove in the second place that the defence of the idea of private property arouses the most evil and most malignant passions which it is possible for the human soul to feel. That private property is neither beautiful nor noble can be deduced from the fact that in proportion as human souls become attuned to finer, more distinguished, and more intellectual levels they become more and more indifferent to the "sensation of ownership." That private property is an unreal thing can be deduced from the fact that no human being can actually "possess," in a definite, positive, and exhaustive manner, more than he can eat or drink or wear or otherwise personally enjoy. His "sensation of ownership," over lands, houses, gardens, pictures, statues, books, animals and human beings, is really and actually restricted to the immediate and direct enjoyment which he is able in person to derive from such things. Beyond this immediate and personal enjoyment the extension of his "sensation of ownership" can do no more than increase his general sense of conventional power and importance. His real "possession" of his land is actually restricted to his capacity for appreciating its beauty. His real "possession" of his books is actually restricted to his personal capacity for entering into the living secrets of these things. Without such capacity, though he may call himself the "possessor" or "owner," he is really no better than an official "care-taker," whose province it is to preserve certain objects for other people to enjoy, or, shall we say, for the permanent prevention of any people ever enjoying them. And just as the "sensation of ownership" or "the idea of private property" is unreal and illusive with regard to land, houses, pictures, books, and the like so it is unreal and illusive with regard to human beings. No one, however maliciously he may hug to himself his possessive instinct, can ever actually and truly "possess" another living person. One's wife, one's paramour, one's child, one's slave, are only apparently and by a conventional illusion of language one's real and actual "possession." That this is the case can be proved by the fact that any of these "human possessions" has only to commit suicide, to escape for ever from such bondage. The illusion of private property derives its vigour and its obstinate vividness from two things; from the apparent increase of power and importance which accompanies it, and from its association with that necessary minimum of food, shelter, clothing, leisure, comfort, freedom, solitude, and happiness, which is certainly real, essential and indispensable. The universal wisdom of the ages bears witness to the fact that a "moderate poverty" or a "moderate competence" is the ideal outward state for a man to find himself in. And this "moderate enjoyment" of food, shelter, clothing, comfort, leisure and emotional happiness, is a thing which, in a scientifically organized communistic society, would be within the reach of even the least efficient. The gloomy and melancholy argument brought forward by the enemies of "communism" that under such a condition "the incentive of private initiative would disappear" and that no other motive could take its place, is an argument based upon the assumption that human nature derives more inspiration from the idea of dishonourable greed than it derives from the idea of honourable and useful labour; which is an assumption so wholly opposed to true psychology that it has only to be nakedly stated to be seen in its complete absurdity. What the psychologist, interested in this abysmal struggle between the idea of communism and the idea of private property, has to note is the nature and character of the particular individual who brings forward this argument of the "incentive of greed" or the "initiative" produced by greed. Such an individual will never be found to be a great man of science, or a great artist or scholar or craftsman, or a first-rate engineer, or a highly trained artisan or farmer or builder. The individual bringing forward this argument of the "initiative of greed" will invariably be found to be a member of what might be called the "parasitic class." He will either be an intellectually second-rate minister or politician or lawyer or professor, or he will be a commercial and financial "middleman," whose activities are entirely absorbed in the art of exploitation and who has never experienced the sensation of creative work. If he does not himself belong to the unproductive and parasitic class it will be easy to detect in him the unmistakable presence of the emotion of malice. Nowhere is the emotion of malice more entirely in harmony with itself than when it is engaged in attributing base and sordid motives to the energy of human nature. This monstrous doctrine that human beings _require_ "the incentive of greed" and that without that incentive or "initiative" no one would engage in any kind of creative work, is a doctrine springing directly from the aboriginal malice of the soul; and a doctrine which is refuted every day by every honest, healthy and honourable man and woman. But all these are, after all, only negative proofs of the inevitable rise, out of the very necessity of love's nature, of the idea of communism. Of all mortal instincts, the possessive instinct is the most insidious and most evil. Love is for ever being perverted and polluted by this thing, and turned from its true essence into something other than itself. This is equally true of love whether such love is directed towards persons or towards ideas or things. The possessive instinct springing directly from the aboriginal malice is perpetually deceiving itself. Apparently and superficially what it aims at is the eternally "static." In other words what it aims at is the retention in everlasting immobility of the person or the idea or the thing into which it has dug its claws. Thus the maternal instinct, in its evil mood, aims at petrifying and rendering immobile that helpless youthfulness in its offspring which the possessive passion finds so provocative and exciting. Thus the lover in his evil mood, desires that the object of his love should remain in everlasting immobility, an odalisque of eternal reciprocity. That this evil desire takes the form of a longing that the object of his love should eternally escape and eternally be recaptured makes no difference in the basic feeling. Thus the collector of "works of art"--a being divided from the real lover of art by an impassable gulf--derives no pleasure from the beauty of anything until it has become _his_, until he has hidden it away from all the rest of the world. Thus the lover of "nature," in his evil mood, derives no pleasure from the fitful magic of grass and bowers and trees, until he feels happy in the mad illusion that the very body of the earth, even to the centre of the planet, where these things grow, is his "private" property and is something fixed, permanent, static, unchanging. But all this desire for the eternally "static" is superficial and self-deceiving. Analysed down to its very depth, what this evil possessive instinct desires is what all malice desires, namely the annihilation of life. Pretending to itself that it desires to hug to itself, in eternal immobility, the thing it loves, what in its secret essence it really desires is that thing's absolute annihilation. It wants to hug that thing so tightly to itself that the independence of the thing completely vanishes. It wants to destroy all separation between itself and the thing, and all liberty and freedom for the thing. It wants "to eat the thing up" and draw the thing into its own being. Its evil desire can never find complete satisfaction until it has "killed the thing it loves" and buried it within its own identity. It is this evil possessive element in sexual love, whether of a man for a woman or a woman for a man, which is the real evil in the sexual passion. It is this possessive instinct in maternal love which is the evil element in the love of a mother for a child. Both these evil emotions tend to make war upon life. The mother, in her secret sub-conscious passion, desires to draw back her infant into her womb, and restore it to its pre-natal physiological unity with herself. The lover in his secret evil sub-consciousness, desires to draw his beloved into ever-increasing unity with himself, until the separation between them is at an end and her identity is lost in his identity. The final issue, therefore, of this evil instinct of possession, this evil instinct of private property, can never be anything else than death. Death is what the ultimate emotion of malice desires; and death is an actual result of the instinct of possession carried to an extreme limit. The static immobility and complete "unchangeableness" which the possessive instinct pretends to itself is all it desires is really therefore nothing but a mask for its desire to destroy. The possessive instinct is, in its profoundest abyss, an amorist of death. What it secretly loves is the dead; for the dead alone can never defraud it of its satisfaction. Wherever love exercises its creative energy the possessive instinct relaxes its hold. Love expands and diffuses itself. Love projects itself and merges itself The creative impulse is always centrifugal. The indrawing movement, the centripetal movement, is a sign of the presence of that inert malice which would reduce all life to nothingness. The creative energy of love issues inevitably in the idea of communism. The idea of communism implies the complete abolition of private property; because private property, whether it be property in persons or in things, is essentially evil, is indeed the natural expression of the primordial inert malice, in its hostility to life. Under any realization, in actual existence, of the idea of communism the creative energy finds itself free to expand and dilate. All that heavy clogging burden of "the personally possessed" being shaken off, the natural fresh shoots of living beauty rise to the surface like the new green growths of spring when the winter's rubble has been washed away by the rain. The accursed system of private property, rooted in the abysmal malice of the human heart, lies like a dead weight upon every creative impulse. Everything is weighed and judged, everything is valued and measured, in relation to this. Modern Law is the system of restriction by which we protect private property. Modern religion is the system of compensation by which we soften the difference between inequalities in private property. Modern politics is the system of compromise by which public opinion registers its devotion to private property. Modern morality is the system of artificial inhibitions by which the human conscience is perverted into regarding private property as the supreme good. Modern science is the system by which private property is increased and the uses of it made more complicated. Modern "truth" is the system of traditional opinion by which the illusion of private property is established as "responsible" thinking, and "serious" thinking, and "ethical" thinking. Modern art is the system by which what is most gross and vulgar in the popular taste is pandered to in the interests of private property. The creative energy in modern life is therefore restricted and opposed at almost every point by the evil instinct to possess. Of every new idea the question is asked, "does it conflict with private property?" Of every new aesthetic judgment the question is asked, "does it conflict with private property?" Of every new moral valuation the question is asked, "does it conflict with private property?" And the instinct which puts these questions to every new movement of the creative energy is the instinct of inert malice. The object of life can be regarded as nothing less than the realization of the vision of the Immortals; and it is only under a communistic state that the vision of the Immortals can be realized; because only in such a state is that petrified illusion of inert malice which we name "private property" thoroughly got rid of and destroyed. CONCLUSION No attempted articulation of the mystery, life, can be worthy of being named a "philosophy" unless it has a definite bearing upon what, in the midst of that confused "manifold" through which we move, we call the problem of conduct. The mass of complicated impression, which from our first dawn of consciousness presses upon us, falls into two main divisions--the portion of it which comes under the power of our will and the portion of it which is supplied by destiny or circumstance, and over which our will is impotent. Superficially speaking what we call conduct only applies to action; but in a deeper sense it applies to that whole division of our sensations, emotions, ideas, and energies, whether it take the form of action or not, which comes in any measure under the power of the will. Such acts of the mind therefore, as are purely intellectual or emotional--as for instance what we call "acts of faith"--are as much to be considered forms of conduct as those outer visible material gestures which manifest themselves in action. This is no fantastic or extravagant fancy. It is the old classical and catholic doctrine, to which not only such thinkers as Plato and Spinoza have affixed their seal, but which is at the root of the deepest instincts of Buddhists, Christians, Epicureans, Stoics, and the mystics of all ages. It may be summed up by the statement that life is an art towards which the will must be directed; and that the larger portion of life manifests itself in interior contemplation and only the smaller part of it in overt action. In both these spheres, in the sphere of contemplation as much as in the sphere of action, there exists that "given element" of destiny or circumstance, in the presence of which the will is powerless. But in regard to this given element it must be remembered that no individual soul can ever, to the end of time, be absolutely certain that in any particular case, whether his own or another's, he has finally arrived at this irreducible fatality. The extraordinary phenomenon of what religious people call "conversion," a phenomenon which implies a change of heart so unexpected and startling as to seem miraculous, is a proof of how unwise it is to be in any particular case rigidly dogmatic as to where the sunken rock of destiny really begins. So many appearances have taken the shape of this finality, so many mirages of "false fate" have paralysed our will, that it is wisest to believe to the very end of our days that our attitude to destiny can change and modify destiny. Assuming then that the articulation of the mystery of life which has been outlined in this book, under the name of "the philosophy of the complex vision," must remain the barest of intellectual hypotheses until it has manifested itself in "conduct"; and assuming further that this "conduct" includes the whole of that portion of life, whether contemplative or active, which can be reduced to a fine art by the effort of the will; the question emerges--what kind of effort must the will make, both interiorally and exteriorally, if it desire to respond, by a rhythmic reciprocity, to the vision which the intellect has accepted? It must be remembered that the vision upon which this philosophy depends and from which it derives its primordial assumptions is not the normal vision of the human soul. The philosophy of the complex vision rejects the normal vision of the human soul on behalf of the abnormal vision of the human soul. Its point of view, in this matter, is that the human soul only arrives at the secret of the universe in those exalted, heightened, exceptional and rare moments, when all the multiform activities of the soul's life achieve a musical consummation. Its point of view is that since philosophy, at its deepest and highest, necessarily becomes art; and since art is a rare and difficult thing requiring infinite adjustments and reconciliations; what philosophy has really to use, in formulating any sort of adequate system, is the memory of such rare moments after they have passed away. The point of view from which we have made all our basic assumptions is the point of view that the secret of the universe is only revealed to man in rare moments of ecstasy; and that what man's reason has to do is to gather together in memory the broken and scattered fragments of these moments and out of this residuum build up and round off, as best it may, some coherent interpretation of life. From all this it follows that the first rhythmic reply of the human will to the vision to serve is a passionate act of what might be called "contemplative tension," in the direction of the reviving of such memories, and in the direction of preparing the ground for the return of another "moment of vision" similar in nature to those that have gone before. The secret of this act of inward contemplative tension we have already analysed. We have found it to consist in a "complex" of all the primordial energies of the soul, focussed and concentrated into what we have compared to a pyramidal apex-point by the power of a certain synthetic movement of the soul itself which we have named the apex-thought. The reply of the will, therefore, to the vision it desires to serve consists of a gathering together of all the energies of the soul into a rhythmic harmony. It may well be that this premeditated and deliberately constructed harmony will have to wait for many days and years without experiencing the magic touch of the soul's apex-thought. For though we may passionately desire the touch of this--aye, and pray for it with a most desperate prayer!--it is of the very nature of this mysterious thing to require for the moment of its activity something else than the contemplative tension which has prepared the ground for its appearance. For this synthetic apex-thought, which is the soul's highest power, is only in a very limited sense within the power of the will. The whole matter is obscure and perhaps inexplicable; but it seems as if a place were required here for some philosophic equivalent of that free gift of the Gods which, in theological language, goes by the name of "grace." Long and long may the soul wait--with the hardly won rhythm of its multiform "complex" poised in vibrant expectation--before the moment arrives in which the apex-thought can strike its note of ecstasy. In the time and place of such a moment, in the accumulation of conditions which render such a moment eternal, chance and circumstance may play a prominent part. There is, however, an inveterate instinct in humanity--not perhaps to be altogether disregarded--according to the voice of which this unaccountable element of chance and circumstance, or, shall we say, of destiny, is itself the result of the interposed influence of the invisible companions. But whether this be so or not, the fact remains that some alien element of indeterminable chance or circumstance or destiny does frequently enter into that accumulation of obscure conditions which seem to be necessary before the magic of the apex-thought is roused. This preparing of the ground, this deliberate concentration of the soul's energies, is the first movement of the will in answer to the attraction of the eternal vision discerned so far only as a remote ideal. The second movement of the will has been already implied in the first, and is only a lifting into clear consciousness of what led the soul to make its initial effort. I speak of the part played by the will in the abysmal struggle between love and malice. This struggle was really implicit, in the beginning, in the effort the will made to focus the multiform energies of the complex vision. But directly some measure of insight into the secret of life has followed upon this effort, or directly, if the soul's good fortune has been exceptional, its great illuminative moment has been reached, the will finds itself irresistibly plunged into this struggle, finds itself inevitably ranged, on one side or the other, of the ultimate duality. That the first effort of the will was largely what might be called an intellectual one, though its purpose was to make use of all the soul's attributes together, is proved by the fact that it is possible for human souls to be possessed of formidable insight into the secret of life and yet to use that insight for evil rather than for good. But the second movement of the will, of which I am now speaking, reveals without a shadow of ambiguity on which side of the eternal contest the personality in question has resolved to throw its weight. If, in this second movement, the will answers, with a reciprocal gathering of itself together, the now far clearer attraction of the vision attained by its original effort, it will be found to range itself on the side of love against the power of malice. If, on the contrary, having made use of its original vision to understand the secret of this struggle, it allies itself with the power of malice against love, it will be found to produce the spectacle of a soul of illuminated intellectual insight deliberately concentrated on evil rather than good. But once irrevocably committed to the power of that creative energy which we call love, the will, though it may have innumerable lapses and moments of troubled darkness, never ceases from its abysmal struggle. For this is the conclusion of the whole matter. When we speak of the eternal duality as consisting in a struggle between love and malice, what we really mean is that the human soul, concentrated into the magnet-point of a passionately conscious will, is found varying and quivering between the pole of love and the pole of malice. The whole drama is contained within the circle of personality; and it would be of a similar nature if the personality in question were confronted by no other thing in the universe except the objective mystery. I mean that the soul would be committed to a struggle between its creative energy and its inert malice even if there were no other living persons in the world towards whom this love and this malice could be directed. I have compared the substance of the soul to an arrowhead of concentrated flames, the shaft of which is wrapped in impenetrable darkness while the point of it pierces the objective mystery. From within the impenetrable darkness of this invisible arrow-shaft the very substance of the soul is projected; and in its projection it assumes the form of these flames; and the name I have given to this mysterious outpouring of the soul is _emotion_, whereof the opposing poles of contending force are respectively love and malice. The psycho-material substance of the invisible soul-monad is itself divided into this eternally alternating duality, of which the projected "flames," or manifested "energies" are the constant expression. Each of these energies has as its concrete "material," so to speak, the one projected substance of the soul; and is thus composed of the very stuff of emotion. The eternal duality of this emotion takes various forms in these various manifestations of its one substance. Thus the energy or flame of the aesthetic sense resolves itself into the opposed vibrations of the beautiful and the hideous. Thus the energy, or flame, of the pure reason resolves itself into the opposed vibrations of the true and the false. Thus the energy, or flame, of conscience resolves itself into the opposed vibrations of the good and the evil. Although the remaining energies of the soul, beyond those I have just named--such as instinct, intuition, imagination, and the like-- are less definitely divided up among those three "primordial ideas" which we discern as "truth," "beauty," and "goodness," they are subject, nevertheless, since their substance is the stuff of emotion, to the same duality of love and malice. It is not difficult to see how this duality turns upon itself in human instinct, in human imagination, and in human intuition for the creative impulse in all these energies finds itself opposed by the impulse to resist creation. It is when the will is in question that we are compelled to notice a difference. For the will, although itself a primal energy or projection of the soul, is in its inherent nature set apart from the other activities of the soul. The will is that particular aspect of the soul-monad by means of which it consciously intensifies or relaxes the outward pressure of emotion. From the point of view of the complex vision, the will, although easily differentiated from both consciousness and emotion, cannot be imagined as existing apart from these. Every living organism possesses consciousness in some degree, emotion in some degree, and will in some degree; and the part played by the will in the complicated "nexus" of the soul's life may be compared to that of a mechanical spring in some kind of a machine. In this case, however, the spring of the machine is fed by the oil of consciousness and releases its force upon the cogs and wheels of contradictory emotion. No theory of psychology which attempts to eliminate the will by the substitution of pure "motive" playing upon pure "action" is acceptable to us. And such an elimination is unacceptable, because, in the ultimate insight of the complex vision turned round upon itself, the soul is aware of a definite recognizable phenomenon which although present to consciousness is different from consciousness, and although intensifying and lessoning emotion is different from emotion. In regard to this "problem of conduct," which I refuse to interpret as anything short of the whole art of life, contemplative as well as active, the will, being, so to say, the main-spring of the soul, naturally plays the most important part. The prominence given, in moral tradition, to the struggle of the will with sexual desire is one of the melancholy evidences as to how seldom the complex vision of the soul has been allowed full play. What is called "asceticism" or "puritanism" is the result of an over-balanced concentration of the will upon the phenomena of sensation alone. Whereas in the rhythmic balance of the soul's complete faculties, what the ideal vision calls upon the will to do, is not to concentrate upon repressing sensation but to concentrate upon repressing malice and intensifying love. Sensation is only, after all, one of the energies, or projected flames, of the soul, in its reaction to the objective mystery. But emotion is, as we have seen, the very soul itself, poured forth in its profoundest essence, and eternally divided against itself in the ultimate duality. Emotion is the psychic element which is the real substratum of sensation, just as it is the real substratum of reason and taste. So that when the will concentrates itself, as it has so often done and so often been commended for doing, upon sensation alone, it is neglecting and betraying its main function, which is the repressing of malice and the liberation of love. The deliberate repression of sensation does, it is true, sometimes destroy our response to sensation; but it more often intensifies the soul's sensational life. It is only when the will is concentrated upon the intensifying of love and the suppression of malice that sensation falls into its right place in the resultant rhythm. There is then no question of either suppressing it or of indulging it. It comes and goes as naturally, as easily, as inevitably, as the rain or the snow. When the will is concentrated upon the suppression of malice and the intensifying of love all those cults of sensation which we call vice naturally relinquish their hold upon us. The fact that women so rarely indulge in the worst excesses of these cults is due to the fact that in their closeness to nature they follow more easily the rhythmic flow of life and are less easily tempted to isolate and detach from the rest any particular feeling. But women pay the penalty for this advantage when it comes to the question of the illuminative moments of the apex-thought. For in these high, rare and abnormal moments, the ordinary ebb and flow of life is interrupted; and something emerges which resembles the final effluence of a work of art that has touched eternity. The rhythmic movement of the apex-thought, when under such exceptional conditions it evokes this effluence, rises for a moment out of the flux of nature and gathers itself into a monumental vision, calm and quiet and immortal. It is more difficult for women to attain this vision than for men; because, while under normal conditions the play of their energies is better balanced and more harmonious than man's, it is harder for them to detach themselves from the ebb and flow of nature's chemistry, harder for them to attain the personal isolation which lends itself to the supreme creative act. But while such exceptional moments seem to come more frequently to men than to women, and while a greater number of the supreme artists and prophets of the world are of the male sex, it cannot be denied that the average woman, in every generation, leads a more human and a more dignified life than the average man. And she does this because the special labours which occupy her, such as the matter of food, of cleanliness, of the making and mending of clothes, of the care of children and animals and flowers, of the handling of animate and inanimate things with a view to the increase of life and beauty upon the earth, are labours which have gathered about them, during their long descent of the centuries, a certain symbolic and poetic distinction which nothing but immemorial association with mankind's primal necessities is able to give. The same dignity of immemorial association hangs, it is true, about such masculine labours as are connected with the tilling of the earth and the sailing of the sea. Certain ancient and eternally necessary handicrafts, such as cannot be superseded by machinery, take their place with these. But since man's particular power of separating himself from Nature and dominating Nature by means of logical reason, physical science and mechanical devices, puts him in the position of continuity breaking up those usages of the ages upon which the ritualistic element in life depends, he has come, by inevitable evolution, to be much more the child of the new and the arbitrary than woman is; and in his divorce from immemorial necessity has lost much of that symbolic distinction which the life of woman retains. It may thus be said that while the determining will in the soul of the average woman ought to be directed towards that exceptional creative energy which lifts the soul out of the flux of Nature and gives it a glimpse of the vision of the immortals, the determining will in the soul of the average man ought to be directed towards the heightening of his ordinary consciousness so as to bring this up to the level of the flux of nature and to penetrate it with the memory of the creative moments which he has had. In both cases the material with which the will has to work is the emotions of love and of malice; but in the case of man this malice tends to destroy the poetry of common life, while in the case of woman it tends to obstruct and embarrass her soul when the magic of the apex-thought stirs within her and an opportunity arises for that creative act which puts the complex vision in touch with the vision of the Gods. The philosophy of the complex vision does not discover in its examination of the psycho-material organism of the soul any differentiated "faculties" which can be paralleled by the differentiated "members" of the human body. The organic unity of the soul is retained, in undissipated concentration, throughout whatever movement or action or stress of energy it is led to make. The totality of the soul becomes will, or the totality of the soul becomes reason, or the totality of the soul becomes intuition, in the same way as a falling body of water, or the projected stream of a fountain _becomes_ whatever dominant colour of sky or air or atmosphere penetrates it and transforms it. What we have called emotion, made up of the duality of love and malice, is something much more integral than this. For the totality of the soul, which _becomes_ reason, consciousness, intuition, conscience, and the like, is always composed of the very stuff and matter of emotion. When we say "the totality of the soul becomes imagination or intuition" it is the same thing as though we said "the emotion of the soul becomes imagination or intuition." Emotion is our name, in fact, for the psycho-material "stuff" out of which the organic substratum of the soul is made. And since this "stuff" is eternally divided against itself into a positive and a negative "pole" we are compelled to assert that our ultimate analysis of the system of things is dualistic, in spite of the fact that the whole drama takes place under the one comprehensive unity of space. When we say that the totality of the soul becomes will, reason, imagination, conscience, intuition and so forth, we do not mean that by becoming any one of these single things it is prevented from becoming others. We are confronted here by a phenomenon of organic life which, however inexplicable, is of frequent occurrence in human experience. The ecclesiastical dogma of the Trinity is no fantastic invention of this or the other theologian. It is an inevitable definition of a certain body of human experience to which it affords a plausible explanation. What the philosophy of the complex vision attempts to do is to analyse into its component parts that confused mass of contradictory impressions to which the soul awakens as soon as it becomes conscious of itself at all. The older philosophers begin their adventurous journey by the discovery and proclamation of some particular clue, or catchword, or general principle, out of the rational necessity of whose content they seek to evoke that living and breathing universe which impinges upon us all. Modern philosophy tends to reject these Absolute "clues," these simplifying "secrets" of the system of things; but in rejecting these it either substitutes its own hypothetical generalizations, such as "spirit," "life-force," or "cosmic energy," or it contents itself with noting, as William James does, the more objective grouping of states of consciousness, as they weave their pattern on the face of the swirling waters, without regard to any "substantial soul" whose background of organic life gives these "states" their concrete unity. The philosophy of the complex vision differs from the older philosophies in that it frankly and confessedly starts with that general situation which is also its goal. Its movement is therefore a perpetual setting-forth and a perpetual return; a setting forth towards a newly created vision of the world, and a return to that ideal of such a vision which has been implicit from the beginning. And this general situation from which it starts and to which it returns is nothing less than the huge spectacle of the visible universe confronting the individual soul and implying the kindred existence of innumerable other souls. The fact that what the complex vision reveals is the primary importance of personality does not detract in the least degree from the unfathomable mysteriousness of the objective universe And it does not detract from this because the unfathomableness of the universe is not a rational deduction drawn from the logical idea of what an objective universe would be like if it existed, but is a direct human experience verified at every movement of the soul. The universe revealed to us by the complex vision is a universe compounded of the concentrated visions of all the souls that compose it, a universe which in its eternal beauty and hideousness has received the "imprimatur of the immortal Gods." The fact that such a universe is in part a creation of the mind, and in part a discovery made by the mind when it flings itself upon the unknown, does not lessen or diminish the strangeness or unfathomableness of life. The fact that the ultimate reality of such a universe is to be found in the psycho-material substratum--where mind and matter become one--of the individual soul, does not lessen or diminish the magical beauty or cruel terribleness of life. What we name by the name of "matter" is not less a permanent human experience, because apart from the creative energy of some personal soul we are not able to conceive of its existence. The philosophy of the complex vision reduces everything that exists to an eternal action and re-action between the individual soul and the objective mystery. This action and reaction is itself reproduced in the eternal duality, or ebb and flow, which constitutes the living soul itself. And because the psycho-material substance of the soul must be considered as identical, on its psychic side, with the "spiritual substance" of the universe "medium" through which all souls come into contact with one another, and identical on its material side with the objective mystery which is expressed in all bodies, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the individual personality is surrounded by an elemental and universal "something" similar to itself, dominated as itself is dominated by the omnipresent circle of Space. This universal "something" must be regarded, in spite of its double nature, as one and the same, since it is dominated by one and the same space. The fact that the material aspect of this psycho-material element is constantly plastic to the creative energy of the soul does not reduce it to the level of an "illusion." The mind recreates everything it touches; but the mind cannot work in a vacuum. There must be something for the mind to "touch." What the soul touches, therefore, as soon as it becomes conscious of itself is, in the first place, the "material element" of its own inmost nature; in the second place the "material element" which makes it possible for all bodies to come in contact with one another; and in the third place the "material element" which is the original potentiality of all universes and which has been named "the objective mystery." To call this universal material element, thus manifested in a three-fold form, an illusion of the human mind is to destroy the integrity of language. Nothing can justly be called an illusion which is a permanent and universal human experience. The name we select for this experience is of no importance. We can name it _matter_, or we can name it _energy_, or _movement_, or _force_. The experience remains the same, by whatever name we indicate it to one another. The philosophy of the complex vision opposes itself to all materialistic systems by its recognition of personality as the ultimate basis of life; and it opposes itself to all idealistic systems by its recognition of an irreducible "material element" which is the object of all thought but which is also, in the substratum of the soul-monad, fused and blended with thought itself. We now arrive at the conclusion of our philosophical journey; and we find it to be the identical point or situation from which we originally started. Once and for all we are compelled to ask ourselves the question, whether since personality is the ultimate secret of life and since all individual personalities, whether human, sub-human, or super-human, are confronted by one "material element" dominated by one universal material space, it is not probable that this "material element" should itself be, as it were, the "outward body" of one "elemental soul"? Such an elemental soul would have no connexion with the "Absolute Being" of the great metaphysical systems. For in those systems the Absolute Being is essentially impersonal, and can in no sense be regarded as having anything corresponding to a body. But this hypothetical soul of the ethereal element would be just as definitely expressed in a bodily form as are the personalities of men, beasts, plants and stars. It is impossible to avoid, now we are at the end of our philosophic journey, one swift glance backward over the travelled road; and it is impossible to avoid asking ourselves the question whether this universal material element which confronts every individual soul and surrounds every individual body may not itself be the body of an universal living personality? Is such a question, so presented to us for the last time, as we look back over our long journey, a kind of faint and despairing gesture made by the phantom of "the idea of God," or is it the obscure stirring of such an idea, from beneath the weight of all our argument, as it refuses to remain buried? It seems to me much more than this. The complex vision seems to indicate in this matter that we have a right to make the hypothetical outlines of this thing as clear and emphatic as we can; as clear and emphatic, and also, by a rigid method of limitation, as little overstressed and as little overpowering as we can. The question that presses upon us, therefore, as we glance backward over our travelled road, is whether or not, by the logic of our doctrine of personality, we are bound to predicate some sort of "elemental soul" as the indwelling personal monad belonging to the universal material element even as any other soul belongs to its body. Does it not, we might ask, seem unthinkable that any portion of this universal element should remain suspended in a vacuum without the indwelling presence of a definite personality of which it is the expression? Are we not led to the conclusion that the whole mass and volume of this material element, namely the material element in every living soul, the material element which binds all bodies together, and the material element which composes the objective mystery, must make up in its total weight and pressure the _body_, so to speak, of some sort of universal elemental soul? And because no personality, whether universal or individual, can be regarded as absolute, since perpetual creation is the essence of life, must it not follow that this elemental personality must itself eternally confront and be confronted by an unfathomable depth of objective mystery which it perpetually invades with its creative energy but which it can never exhaust, or touch the limit of? The body of this being would be in fact its own "objective mystery," while our "objective mystery" would be recognized as disappearing in the same reality. Does this hypothesis reduce the tragedy of life to a negligible quantity, or afford a basis upon which any easy optimism could be reared? It does not appear so. Wherever personality existed, there the ultimate duality would inevitably reign. And just as with "the invisible companions" what is evil and malicious in us attracts towards us what is evil and malicious in them so with the elemental personality, whatever were evil and malicious in us would attract towards us whatever were evil and malicious in it. The elemental personality would not necessarily be better, or nobler, or wiser than we are. There would be no particular reason why we should worship it, or give it praise. For if it really existed it could no more help being what it is than we can help being what we are, or the immortal gods can help being what they are. That such an elemental personality would have to be regarded as a kind of demi-god can hardly be denied; but there would be no reason for asserting that our highest moments of inspiration were due to its love for us. As with the rest of the "immortals" it would be sometimes possessed by love and sometimes possessed by malice, and we should have not the least authority for saying that our supreme moments of insight were due to its inspiration. Sometimes they would be so. On the other hand sometimes our most baffled, clouded, inert, moribund, and wretched moments would be due to its influence. Such an elemental personality would have no advantage over any other personality, except in the fact of being elemental; and this would give it no absolute advantage, since its universality would be eternally challenged by the unfathomable element in its own being. The "body" of such an elemental personality would have to be regarded as the actual objective mystery which confronts both men and gods. It would have to be regarded as possessing a complex vision even as every other personality possesses it; and its soul-monad would have to be as concrete, actual, and real, as every other soul monad. An ethereal Being of this kind, whose body were composed of the whole mass of the material element which binds all bodies together, would have no closer connexion with the soul of man than any other invisible companion. The soul of man could be drawn to it in love or could be repelled from it by malice, just as it can be drawn to any other living thing or repelled by any other living thing. That the human race should have sometimes made the attempt to associate such an universal personality with the ideal figure of Christ is natural enough. But such an association wins no sanction or authority from the revelation of the complex vision. In one sense the figure of Christ, as the life of Jesus reveals it, is a pure symbol. In another sense, as we become aware of his love in the depths of our own soul, he is the most real and actual of all living beings. But neither as a symbol of the immortal vision, nor as himself an immortal God, have we any right to regard Christ as identical with this elemental personality. Christ is far more important to us and precious to us than such a being could possibly be. And just as this hypothetical personality, whose body is the material element which binds all bodies together, must not be confused with the figure of Christ, so also it is not to be confused with either of those primordial projections of pure reason, working in isolation, which we have noted as the "synthetic unity of apperception" and the "universal self," The elemental personality, if it existed, would be something quite different from the universal self of the logical reason. For the universal self of the logical reason includes and transcends all the other selves, whereas the elemental personality which has the whole weight of the world's material element as its body could not transcend, or in any way "subsume" the least of individual things except in so far as the material element which is its body would surround all living things and bring them into contact with one another. The elemental personality could in no sense be called an over-soul, because, so far from being an universal self made up of particular individual selves, it would be a completely detached soul, only related to other souls in the sense that all other souls come into contact with one another through the medium of its spiritual substance. According to the revelation of the complex vision the question of the existence or non-existence of an elemental soul of this kind has no relation to the problem of human conduct. For the material element in the individual soul is fused in individual consciousness; and therefore the spiritual medium which surrounds the individual soul cannot impinge upon or penetrate the soul which it surrounds. And this conclusion is borne witness to in all manner of common human experience. For although we all feel dimly aware of vast gulfs of spiritual evil and vast gulfs of spiritual beauty in the world about us, this knowledge only becomes definite and concrete when we think of such gifts as being entirely made up of personal moods, the moods of mortal men, of immortal gods, and the moods, it may be, of this elemental personality. But the problem of conduct is not the problem of getting into harmony with any particular individual soul. It is the problem of getting into harmony with the creative vision in our own soul, which when attained turns out to be identical with the creative vision of every other soul in the universe. The conception of the elemental personality does not depend, as does the existence of the immortals, upon our consciousness of something objective and eternal in our primordial ideas. It depends upon our suspicion that no extended mass of what we call matter, however attenuated and ethereal, can exist suspended in soulless space. Some attenuated form of matter our universe demands, as the universal medium by means of which all separate bodies come into touch with each other; but it is hard to imagine an universal medium hung, as it were, in an enormous vacuum. Such a medium would seem to demand, as a reason for its existence, some living centre of energy such as that which a personal soul can alone supply. It is in this way we arrive at the hypothetical conception of the elemental soul. And our hypothesis is borne out by one very curious human experience. I mean the experience which certain natures have of a demonic or magnetic force in life which can be drawn upon either for good or for evil, and which seems in some strange sense to be diffused round us in the universal air. Goethe frequently refers to this demonic element; and others, besides Goethe, have had experience of it. If our hypothetical, elemental personality is to be regarded as a sort of demi-god, lower than the immortals and perhaps lower than man, we may associate it with those vague intimations of a sub-human life around us which seems in some weird sense distinct from the life of any particular thing we know. The elemental personality, in this case, would be the cause of those various "psychic manifestations" which have sometimes been fantastically accounted for as the work of so-called "elementals." But the supreme moments of human consciousness, when the apex-thought of the complex vision is shooting its arrows of flame into the darkness, are but slightly concerned with the demonic sub-human life of hypothetical elemental personalities. They are concerned with the large, deep, magical spectacle of the great cosmic drama as it unrolls itself in infinite perspective. They are concerned with the unfathomable struggle, more terrible, more beautiful, more real, than anything else in life, between the resistant power of malice and the creative power of love. Nor do they see, these moments, the end of this long drama. The soul creates and is baffled in its creations. The soul loves and is baffled in its loving. Good and evil grow strangely mingled as they wrestle in the bottomless abyss. And ever, above us and beneath us, the same immense space spreads out its encircling arms. And ever, out of the invisible, the beckoning of immortal beauty leads us forward. Pain turns into pleasure; and pleasure turns into pain. Misery, deep as the world, troubles the roots of our being. Happiness, deep as the world, floods us with a flood like the waves of the ocean. All our philosophy is like the holding up of a little candle against a great wind. Soon, soon the candle is blown out: and the immense Perhaps rolls its waters above our heads. The aboriginal malice against which the Gods struggle is never overcome. But who can resist asking the question--supposing that drama once ended, that eternal duality once reconciled, would annihilation be the last word or would something else, something undreamed of, something unguessed at, something "impossible," irrational, contrary to every philosophy that has ever sprung from the human brain, take the place of what we call life and substitute some new organ of research for the vision which we have called complex? Who can say? The world is still young and the immortal Gods are still young; and our business at present is with life rather than beyond-life. Confused and difficult are the ways of our mortality; and after much philosophizing we seem to be only more conscious than ever that the secret of the world is in something else than wisdom. The secret of the world is not in something that one can hold in one's hand, or about which one can say "Lo, here!" or "Lo, there!" The secret of the world is in the whole spectacle of the world, seen under the emotion of one single moment. But the memory of such a moment may be diffused over all the chances and accidents of our life and may be restored to us in a thousand faint and shadowy intimations. It may be restored to us in broken glimpses, in little stirrings and ripples on the face of the water, in rumours and whispers among the margin-reeds, in sighings of the wind across the sea-bank. It may be restored to us in sudden flickerings of unearthly light thrown upon common and familiar things. It may be restored to us when the shadow of death falls upon the path we have to follow. It may be restored to us when the common ritual and the ordinary usages of life gather to themselves a sudden dignity from the presence of great joy or of tragic grief. For the stream of life flows deeper than any among us realize or know; deeper, and with more tragic import; deeper, and with more secret hope. We are all born, even the most lucky among us, under a disastrous eclipse. We all contain something of that perilous ingredient which belongs to the unplumbed depths. Deep calls unto deep within us; and in the circle of our mortal personality an immortal drama unrolls itself. Waves of unredeemed chaos roll upward from the abysses of our souls, and like a brackish tide contend with the water-springs of life. Over the landscape of our vision lies a shadow, a rarely lifted shadow, the shadow of our own malice. But the human race has not been destined to carry on the unending struggle alone. Its subjective human vision has touched in the darkness a subjective super-human vision; and the symbol of the encounter of these two is the lonely figure of Christ. Looking backward, as we thus reach our conclusion, we see how such a conclusion was implicit all the while in the first movement with which we started. For since the truth we seek is not a thing we just put out our hand and take, but is a mood, an attitude, a gesture of our whole being, it follows that whenever, and by whatever means, we reach it, this "truth" will always be the same, and will not be affected, when once it is reached, by the slowness or the speed of the method with which we approach it. Nor will it be changed or transformed by the vision that finally grasps it as it would necessarily be if it were an objective fact which we could each of us take into our hands. Such an objective fact or series of facts would, of necessity, "look differently" to every individual vision that seized upon it. But by making our truth, down to the very depths, a gesture, an attitude, a mood, we have already anticipated and discounted that fatal relativity which inserts itself like a wedge of distorting vapour, between any objective fact and any subjective mind. "Truth" cannot get blurred and distorted by the subjective mind when truth is regarded as that subjective mind's own creation. According to the conclusion we have reached, every subjective mind in the universe, when it is rhythmically energizing, attains the same truth. For when subjectivity is carried to the furthest possible limit of rhythm and harmony, it transforms itself, of necessity, into objectivity. The subjective vision of all mortal minds, thus rendered objective by the intensity of the creative energy, is nothing less than the eternal vision. For as soon as the rhythmic harmony of the creative act has thus projected such a truth, such a truth receives the "imprimatur of the Gods" and turns out to be the truth which was implicit in us from the beginning. Thus, the reality which we apprehend is found to be identical with the pursuit of the ideal which we seek; for what we name beauty and truth and goodness are of the essence of the mystery of life, and it is of _their_ essence that they should ever advance and grow. The eternal vision includes in its own inmost rhythm the idea and spectacle of inexhaustible growth; for, although it beholds all things "under the form of eternity," its own nature is the nature of a creative gesture, of a supreme "work of art," whereby it approximates to the ideal even in the midst of the real. The "form of eternity" under which it visualizes the world is not a dead or static eternity but an eternity of living growth. The peace and quiet which it attains is not the peace and quiet of the equilibrium which means "nothingness" but the peace and quiet of the equilibrium which means the rhythmic movement of life. The truth which it creates is a truth which lends itself to infinite development upon lines already laid down from the beginning. The beauty which it creates is a beauty which lends itself to infinite development upon lines laid down from the beginning. And this truth, this beauty, this goodness, are all of them nothing less than the projection of the soul itself--of all the souls which constitute the system of things--in the mysterious outflowing of the ultimate duality. And when we make use of the expression "from the beginning" we are using a mere metaphorical sign-post. There is no beginning of the system of things and there is no end. "From the beginning" means nothing except "from eternity"; and in the immortal figure of Christ the beginning and the end are one. In my analysis of the ultimate duality which is the secret of the soul I have said little about sex. The modern tendency is to over-emphasize the importance of this thing and to seek its influence in regions it can never enter. Many attributes of the soul are sexless; and since only one attribute of the soul, namely sensation, is entirely devoted to the body and unable to function except through the body, it is ridiculous and unphilosophical to make sex the profoundest aspect of truth which we know. The tendency to lay stress upon sex, at the expense of all sexless aspects of the soul, is a tendency which springs directly from the inert malice of the abyss What the instinct of sex secretly desires is that the very fountains of life should be invaded by sex and penetrated by sex. But the fountains of life can never be invaded by sex; because the fountains of life sink into that eternal vision which transcends all sex and reduces sex to its proper place as one single element in the rhythm of the universe. It is only by associating itself with love and malice--it is only by getting itself transformed into love and malice that the sexual instinct is able to lift itself up, or to sink itself down, into the subtler levels of the soul's vision. The secret of life lies far deeper than the obvious bodily phenomena of sex. The fountains from which life springs _may flow through that channel_ but they flow from a depth far below these physical or magnetic agitations. And it is only the abysmal cunning of the inert malice, which opposes itself to creation that tempts philosophers and artists to lay such a disproportionate stress upon this thing. The great artists are always known by their power to transcend sex and to reduce sex to its relative insignificance. In the greatest of all sculpture, in the greatest of all music, in the greatest of all poetry, the difference between the sexes disappears. The inert malice delights to emphasize this thing, because its normal functioning implies the most desperate exertion of the possessive instinct known to humanity. The sexual instinct unless transfigured by love, tends towards death; because the sexual instinct desires to petrify into everlasting immobility what the creative instinct would change and transform. What the sexual instinct secretly desires is the eternal death of the object of its passion. It would strike its victim if it could into everlasting immobility so that it could satiate its lust of possession upon it without limit and without end. Any object of sexual desire, untransformed by love, is, for the purposes of such desire, already turned into a living corpse. But although, according to the method we have been following, the difference between men and women is but of small account in the real life of the soul, it remains that humanity has absurdly and outrageously neglected the especial vision of the woman, as, in her bodily senses and her magnetic instincts, she differs from man we may well hope that with the economic independence of women, which is so great and desirable a revolution in our age, individual women of genius will arise, able to present, in philosophy and art, the peculiar and especial reaction to the universe which women possess as women we may well desire such a consummation in view of the fact that all except the very greatest of men have permitted their vision of the world to be perverted and distorted by their sex-instinct. Could women of genius arise in sufficient numbers to counteract this tendency, such sex-obsessed masculine artists would be shamed into recognizing the narrowness of their perverted outlook. As it is, what normal women of talent do is simply to copy and imitate, in a diluted form, the sex-distortions of man's narrower vision. Sex-obsessed male artists have seduced the natural intelligence of the most talented women to their own narrow and limited view of life. But it still remains that what the true artists of the world for ever seek--whether they be male or female--is not the partial and distorted vision of man as _a man_, or of woman _as a woman_, but the rhythmic and harmonious vision of, the human soul as it allies itself with the vision of the immortals. Women in private life, and in private conversation, disentangle themselves from the prejudices of men, but, as soon as they touch philosophy and art, they tend to deny their natural instincts and imitate the sex-obsessed instincts of man. But this tendency is already beginning to collapse under the freer atmosphere of economic independence; and in the future we may expect such a fierce conflict between the sex-vision of woman and the sex-vision of man, that the human soul will revolt against both such partialities and seek the "ampler ether and diviner air" of a vision that has altogether transcended the difference of sex. As we look back over the travelled road of our attempt to articulate the ultimate secret, there arises one last stupendous question, not to meet which would be to shirk the heaviest weight of the problem. We have reached the conclusion that the secret of Nature is to be found in personality. We have reached the further conclusion that personality demands, for the integrity of its inmost self, an actual "soul-monad." We are faced with a "universe," then, made up entirely of living souls, manifested in so-called animate, or so-called inanimate bodies. Everything that our individual mind apprehends is therefore the body of a soul, or a portion of the body of a soul, or the presence of a soul that needs no incarnation. The soul itself is composed of a mysterious substance wherein what we call mind and what we call matter are fused and merged. What I have named throughout this book by the name of the _objective mystery_ is therefore, when we come to realize the uttermost implications of our method, nothing more than the appearance of all the bodies of all the souls in the world _before_ the creative act of our own particular soul has visualized such a spectacle. We can never see the objective mystery as _it is_, because directly we have seen it, that is to say, the appearance of all the adjacent bodies of all the souls within our reach, it ceases to be the objective mystery and becomes the universe we know. The objective mystery is therefore no real thing at all, but only the potentiality of all real things, before the "real thing" which is our individual soul comes upon the scene to create the universe. It is only the potentiality of the "universe" which we have thus named, only the idea of the general spectacle of such an universe, _before_ any universe has actually appeared. And since the final conclusion of our attempt at articulation should rigorously eliminate from our picture everything that is relatively unreal, in favour of what is relatively real, it becomes necessary, now at the end, to eliminate from our vision of reality any substantial basis for this, "potentiality of all universes," and to see how our actual universe appears when this thing has been withdrawn as nothing but an unreal thing. The substantial basis for what we actually see becomes therefore no mere potential universe, or objective mystery, but something much more definite than either of these. The spectacle of Nature, as we behold it, becomes nothing else than the spectacle of all the living bodies that compose the universe, each one of them with its corresponding invisible soul-monad. The movement of thought to which I have throughout this book given the name of "the struggle with the objective mystery" remains the same. In these cases, _names_ are of small account. But since it is a movement of thought which itself culminates in the elimination of the "objective mystery," it becomes necessary to "think through" the stage of thought which this term covered, and articulate the actual cause of this movement of the mind. The cause of the spectacle of the universe, as it presents itself to us in its manifold variety, is the presence of innumerable visible bodies which are themselves the manifestation of innumerable invisible souls. Everything that we see and touch and taste and smell and hear is a portion of some material body, which is the expression of some spiritual soul. The universe is an immense congeries of bodies, moved and sustained by an immense congeries of souls. But it remains that these souls, inhabiting these bodies, are linked together by some mysterious medium which makes it possible for them to communicate with one another. What is this mysterious medium? What we have already indicated, here and there in this book, leads us at this point to our natural conclusion. Such a medium may well be nothing less than that elemental soul, with the universal ether as its bodily expression, the existence of which we have already suggested as a more than probable hypothesis. If the omnipresent body of this elemental soul is the material atmosphere or medium which unites all material bodies, surely we are justified in assuming that the invisible primordial medium which binds all souls together, which hypothetically binds them together even _before_ they have, by the interaction of their different visions, created the universe, is this universal "soul of the elements." Only a spiritual substance is able to unite spiritual substances. And only a material substance is able to unite material substances. Thus we are justified in assuming that while the medium which unites all bodies is the universal body of the elemental soul, the medium which unites all souls is the omnipresent soul-monad of this elemental being. It must however be remembered that this uniting does not imply any sort of spiritual _including_ or subsuming of the souls thus united. They communicate with one another by means of this medium; but the integrity of the medium which unites them does not impinge at any point upon their integrity. Thus, at the end of our journey, we are able, by this final process of drastic elimination, to reduce the world in which we live to a congeries of living souls. Some of these souls possess what we name animate bodies, others possess what we name inanimate bodies. For us, these words, animate and inanimate, convey but slight difference in meaning. Between a stone, which is part of the body of the earth, and a leaf which is part of the body of a plant, and a lock of hair which is part of the body of a man, there may be certain unimportant chemical differences, justifying us in using the terms animate and inanimate. But the essential fact remains that all we see and taste and touch and smell and hear, all, in fact, that makes up the objective universe which surrounds us, is a portion of some sort of living body, corresponding to some sort of living soul. Our individual soul-monad, then, able to communicate with other soul-monads, whether mortal or immortal, through the medium of omnipresent soul-monads of the universal ether finds itself dominated, as all the rest are dominated, by one inescapable circle of unfathomable space. Under the curve of this space we all of us live, and under the curve of this space those that are mortal among us, die. When we die, if it be our destiny not to survive death, our souls vanish into nothingness; and our bodies become a portion of the body of the earth. But if we have entered into the eternal vision we have lost all fear of death; for we have come to see that the thing which is most precious to us, the fact that love remains undying in the heart of the universe, does not vanish with our vanishing. Once having attained, by means of the creative vision of humanity and by means of the grace of the immortals, even a faint glimpse into this mystery, we are no longer inclined to lay the credit of our philosophizing upon the creative spirit in our individual soul. The apex-thought of the complex vision has given us our illuminated moments. But the eternal vision to which those moments led us has filled us with an immense humility. And in the last resort, when we turn round upon the amazing spectacle of life it is of the free gift of the gods, or of the magical love hidden in the mystery of nature, that we are led to think, rather than of any creative activity in ourselves. The word "creative" like the word "objective mystery," has served our purpose well in the preceding pages. But now, as we seek to simplify our conclusion to the uttermost, it becomes necessary to reject much of the manifold connotation which hangs about this word; although in this case also, the stage of thought which it covers is a real movement of the mind. But the creative activity in the apex-thought of our complex vision is, after all, only a means, a method, a gesture which puts us into possession of the eternal vision. When once the eternal vision has been ours, the memory of it does not associate itself with any energy of our own. The memory of these eternal moments associates itself with a mood in which the creative energy rests upon its own equipoise, upon its own rhythm; a mood in which the spectacle of the universe, the magic of Nature, the love in all living souls, the contact of mortality with immortality, become things which blend themselves together; a mood in which what is most self-assertive in our personality seems to lose itself in what is least self-assertive, and yet in thus losing itself is not rendered utterly void. For all action, even the ultimate act of faith, must issue in contemplation; and this is the law of life, that what we contemplate, _that_ we become. He who contemplates malice becomes malicious. He who contemplates hideousness becomes hideous. He who contemplates unreality becomes unreal. If the universe is nothing but a congeries of souls and bodies, united by the soul and the body which fill universal space, then it follows that "the art of philosophy" consists in the attempt to attain the sort of "contemplation" which can by the power of its love enter into the joy and the suffering of all these living things. Thus in reaching a conclusion which tallies with our rarest moments of super-normal insight we discover that we have reached a conclusion which tallies with our moments of profoundest self-abasement. In these recurrent moods of humiliation it seems ridiculous to speak of the creative or the destructive energy of the mind. What presents itself to us in such moods is a world of forms and shapes that we can neither modify nor obliterate. All we can do is to reflect their impact upon us and to note the pleasure of it or the pain. But when even in the depths of our weakness we come to recognize that these forms and shapes are, all of them, the bodily expressions of souls resembling our own, the nostalgia of the great darkness is perceptibly lifted and a strange hope is born, full of a significance which cannot be put into words. The world-stuff, or the objective mystery, out of which the eternal vision has been created is now seen to be the very flesh and blood of a vast company of living organisms; and it has become impossible to contemplate anything in the world without the emotion of malice or the emotion of love. If ever the universe, as we know it now, is dissolved into nothingness, such an end of things will be brought about either by the complete victory of malice or by the complete victory of love. THE END 
45122	----	images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals. * * * * * [Illustration: coverpage] THOUGHTS ON LIFE AND RELIGION THOUGHTS ON LIFE AND RELIGION An Aftermath from the Writings of THE RIGHT HONOURABLE PROFESSOR MAX MÜLLER BY HIS WIFE THIRD IMPRESSION London ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD. 1907 Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty PREFACE This book has been prepared in accordance with a wish expressed by many known and unknown admirers of my husband's writings, who desire to possess in a portable form the passages that have specially appealed to them in his different works, and in the _Life and Letters_. I have taken this opportunity of adding extracts from private letters, and from the writings he left unfinished, which would not otherwise have become known to any but his own family or a few intimate friends. Those who have read the _Life and Letters_, do not need to be told that Max Müller lived from his earliest years in the firm conviction that all is wisely ordered in this life, and 'all for our real good, though we do not always see it, and though we cannot venture to fathom the wisdom guiding our steps through life.' To others his unswerving trust and faith as shown in these extracts may be a revelation, for he seldom talked on such subjects. This trust and faith gave him strength through the bitter struggles of his early life, taught him resignation during the years when the dearest wish of his heart seemed unattainable, supported him later when those he tenderly loved were snatched from him by death, and upheld him in his last long and depressing illness. My earnest desire is that this little book may prove a help and comfort to many exposed to like trials, and strengthen those whose path now stretches before them as a sunny avenue, to meet the sorrows that almost surely await them as life advances. GEORGINA MAX MÜLLER. _June 11, 1905_. CONTENTS PAGE The Art of Life, 1 The Beautiful, 4 The Bible, 6 Children, 12 Christ, the Logos, 13 Christianity, 21 Death, 34 The Deity, 44 The Divine, 57 Doubts, 60 Evolution of Religion, 66 Faith, 70 The Fatherhood of God, 73 Future Life, 74 The Infinite, 87 Knowledge, 96 Language, 99 Life, 103 Love, 121 Mankind, 129 Mind or Thought, 132 Miracles, 135 Music, 138 Nature, 139 Obscurity, 142 Old Age, 143 Religion and Religions, 145 Revelation, 184 The Rig-Veda, 189 Science, 190 The Self, 192 Sorrow and Suffering, 198 The Soul, 208 Theosophy, 215 Truth, 217 The Will of God, 222 Wonder, 226 Words, 228 Work, 230 The World, 233 THE ART OF LIFE To learn to understand one another is the great art of life, and to 'agree to differ' is the best lesson of the comparative science of religion. _Silesian Horseherd._ There is a higher kind of music which we all have to learn, if our life is to be harmonious, beautiful, and useful. There are certain intervals between the young and the old which must be there, which are meant to be there, without which life would be monotonous; but out of these intervals and varieties the true art of life knows how to build up perfect harmonies.... Even great sorrow may be a blessing, by drawing some of our affections away from this life to a better life ... of which, it is true, we know nothing, but from which, when we see the wisdom and love that underlie this life, we may hope everything. We are meant to hope and to trust, and that is often much harder than to see and to know.... The greatest of all arts is the art of life, and the best of all music the harmony of spirits. There are many little rules to be learnt for giving harmony and melody to our life, but the thorough bass must be--love. _Life._ One thing is necessary above all things in order to live peaceably with people, that is, in Latin, _Humanitas_, German, _Menschlichkeit_. It is difficult to describe, but it is to claim as little as possible from others, neither an obliging temper nor gratitude, and yet to do all one can to please others, yet without expecting them always to find it out. As men are made up of contradictions they are the more grateful and friendly the less they see that we expect gratitude and friendliness. Even the least cultivated people have their good points, and it is not only far better but far more interesting if one takes trouble to find out the best side and motives of people, rather than the worst and most selfish.... Life is an art, and more difficult than Sanscrit or anything else. _Life._ We become chiefly what we are more through others than through ourselves, and happy is the man whose path in life leads him only by good men and brings him together with good men. How often we forget in judging others the influences under which they have grown up. How can one expect a child to be truthful when he sees how servants, yes often parents, practise deceit. How many children hear from those to whom they look up, expressions, principles, and prudent rules of life, which consciously or unconsciously exercise an influence on the young life of the child. Yet with how little of loving introspection we pass our judgments. _MS._ If you want to be at peace with yourself, do not mind being at war with the world. _MS._ THE BEAUTIFUL Is the Beautiful without us, or is it not rather within us? What we call sweet and bitter is our own sweetness, our own bitterness, for nothing can be sweet or bitter without us. Is it not the same with the Beautiful? The world is like a rich mine, full of precious ore, but each man has to assay the ore for himself, before he knows what is gold and what is not. What, then, is the touchstone by which we assay the Beautiful? We have a touchstone for discovering the good. Whatever is unselfish is good. But--though nothing can be beautiful, except what is in some sense or other good, not everything that is good is also beautiful. What, then, is that something which, added to the good, makes it beautiful? It is a great mystery. It is so to us as it was to Plato. We must have gazed on the Beautiful in the dreams of childhood, or, it may be, in a former life, and now we look for it everywhere, but we can never find it,--never at least in all its brightness and fulness again, never as we remember it once as the vision of a half-forgotten dream. Nor do we all remember the same ideal--some poor creatures remember none at all.... The ideal, therefore, of what is beautiful is within us, that is all we know; how it came there we shall never know. It is certainly not of this life, else we could define it; but it underlies this life, else we could not feel it. Sometimes it meets us like a smile of Nature, sometimes like a glance of God; and if anything proves that there is a great past, and a great future, a Beyond, a higher world, a hidden life, it is our faith in the Beautiful. _Chips._ THE BIBLE The fault is ours, not theirs, if we wilfully misinterpret the language of ancient prophets, if we persist in understanding their words in their outward and material aspect only, and forget that before language had sanctioned a distinction between the concrete and the abstract, between the purely spiritual as opposed to the coarsely material, the intention of the speakers comprehended both the concrete and the abstract, both the material and the spiritual, in a manner which has become quite strange to us, though it lives on in the language of every true poet. _Science of Religion._ Canonical books give the reflected image only of the real doctrines of the founder of a new religion; an image always blurred and distorted by the medium through which it had to pass. _Science of Religion._ The Old Testament stands on a higher ethical stage than other sacred books,--it certainly does not lose by a comparison with them. I always said so, but people would not believe it. Still, anything to show the truly historical and human character of the Old Testament would be extremely useful in any sense, and would in nowise injure the high character which it possesses. _Life._ If we have once learnt to be charitable and reasonable in the interpretation of the sacred books of other religions, we shall more easily learn to be charitable and reasonable in the interpretation of our own. We shall no longer try to force a literal sense on words which, if interpreted literally, must lose their true and original purport; we shall no longer interpret the Law and the Prophets as if they had been written in the English of our own century, but read them in a truly historical spirit, prepared for many difficulties, undiscouraged by many contradictions, which, so far from disproving the authenticity, become to the historian of ancient language and ancient thought the strongest confirmatory evidence of the age, the genuineness, and the real truth of ancient sacred books. Let us but treat our own sacred books with neither more nor less mercy than the sacred books of any other nations, and they will soon regain that position and influence which they once possessed, but which the artificial and unhistorical theories of the last three centuries have wellnigh destroyed. _Science of Religion._ By the students of the science of religion the Old Testament can only be looked upon as a strictly historical book by the side of other historical books. It can claim no privilege before the tribunal of history, nay, to claim such a privilege would be to really deprive it of the high position which it justly holds among the most valuable monuments of the distant past. But the authorship of the single books which form the Old Testament, and more particularly the dates at which they were reduced to writing, form the subject of keen controversy, not among critics hostile to religion, but among theologians who treat these questions in the most independent, but at the same time the most candid and judicial, spirit. By this treatment many difficulties, which in former times disturbed the minds of thoughtful theologians, have been removed, and the Old Testament has resumed its rightful place among the most valuable monuments of antiquity.... But this was possible on one condition only, namely, that the Old Testament should be treated simply as an historical book, willing to submit to all the tests of historical criticism to which other historical books have submitted. _Gifford Lectures, II._ What the student of the history of the continuous growth of religion looks for in vain in the books of the Old Testament, are the successive stages in the development of religious concepts. He does not know which books he may consider as more ancient or more modern than other books. He asks in vain how much of the religious ideas reflected in certain of these books may be due to ancient tradition, how much to the mind of the latest writer. In Exodus iii. God is revealed to Moses, not only as the supreme, but as the only God. But we are now told by competent scholars that Exodus could not have been written down till probably a thousand years after Moses. How then can we rely on it as an accurate picture of the thoughts of Moses and his contemporaries? It has been said with great truth that 'it is almost impossible to believe that a people who had been emancipated from superstition at the time of the Exodus, and who had been all along taught to conceive God as the one universal Spirit, existing only in truth and righteousness, should be found at the time of Josiah, nearly nine hundred years later, steeped in every superstition.' Still, if the writings of the Old Testament[1] were contemporaneous with the events they relate, this retrogressive movement would have to be admitted. Most of these difficulties are removed, or considerably lessened, if we accept the results of modern Hebrew scholarship, and remember that though the Old Testament may contain very ancient traditions, they probably were not reduced to writing till the middle of the fifth century B.C., and may have been modified by and mixed up with ideas belonging to the time of Ezra. _Gifford Lectures, II._ [Footnote 1: The reader is reminded that these lectures were published in 1891, before English theologians had reached any generally received results in the study of the dates of the various parts of the Old Testament. It would be more correct now to substitute 'the Pentateuch' in the above sentence for the 'Old Testament.' For a statement of the modern views of the several periods to which the different books may be assigned, see Canon Driver's _Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament_.] May we, or may we not, interpret, as students of language, and particularly as students of Oriental languages, the language of the Old Testament as a primitive and as an Oriental language? May we, or may we not, as true believers, see through the veil which human language always throws over the most sacred mysteries of the soul, and instead of dragging the sublimity of Abraham's trial and Abraham's faith down to the level of a merely preternatural event, recognise in it the real trial of a human soul, the real faith of the friend of God, a faith without stormwinds, without earthquakes and fires, a faith in the still small voice of God? _MS._ Is it really necessary to say again and again what the Buddhists have said so often and well, that the act of creation is perfectly inconceivable to any human understanding, and that, if we speak of it at all, we can only do so anthropomorphically or mythologically? _MS._ CHILDREN All seems so bright and perfect, and quite a new life seems to open before me, in that beloved little child. She helps me to look forward to such a far distance, and opens quite a new view of one's own purpose and duties on earth. It is something new to live for, to train a human soul entrusted to us, and to fit her for her true home beyond this life. _Life._ I doubt whether it is possible to take too high a view of life where the education of children is concerned. It is the one great work entrusted to us, it forms the true religion of life. Nothing is small or unimportant in forming the next generation, which is to carry on the work where we have to leave it unfinished. No single soul can be spared--every one is important, every one may be the cause of infinite good, or of infinite mischief, for ever hereafter. _MS._ CHRIST, THE LOGOS An explanation of _Logos_ in Greek philosophy is much simpler than is commonly supposed. It is only needful not to forget that for the Greeks thought and word were inseparable, and that the same term, namely _Logos_, expressed both, though they distinguished the inner from the outer _Logos_. It is one of the most remarkable aberrations of the human mind to imagine that there could be a word without thought, or a thought without word. The two are inseparable; one cannot exist or be even conceived without the other. _Silesian Horseherd._ In nearly all religions God remains far from man. I say in nearly all religions: for in Brahmanism the unity, not the union, of the human soul with Brahma is recognised as the highest aim. This unity with Deity, together with phenomenal difference, Jesus expressed in part through the _Logos_, in part through the Son. There is nothing so closely allied as thought and word, Father and Son. They can be distinguished but never separated, for they exist only through each other. In this matter the Greek philosophers considered all creation as the thought or the word of God, and the thought 'man' became naturally the highest _Logos_, realised in millions of men, and raised to the highest perfection in Jesus. As the thought exists only through the word, and the word only through the thought, so also the Father exists only through the Son, and the Son through the Father, and in this sense Jesus feels and declares himself the Son of God, and all men who believe in Him His brethren. This revelation or inspiration came to mankind through Jesus. No one knew the Father except the Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, and those to whom the Son willeth to reveal Him. This is the Christian Revelation in the true sense of the word. _Silesian Horseherd._ Small as may be the emphasis that we now lay on the _Logos_ doctrine, in that period (_i.e._ of the Fourth Gospel) it was the centre, the vital germ, of the whole Christian teaching. If we read any of the writings of Athanasius, or of any of the older church fathers, we shall be surprised to see how all of them begin with the word (_Logos_) as a fixed point of departure, and then proceed to prove that the Word is the Son of God, and finally that the Son of God is Jesus of Nazareth. Religion and philosophy are here closely related. _Silesian Horseherd._ What is true Christianity if it be not the belief in the true sonship of man, as the Greek philosophers had rightly surmised, but had never seen realised on earth? Here is the point where the two great intellectual currents of the Aryan and Semitic worlds flow together, in that the long-expected Messiah of the Jews was recognised as the _Logos_, the true Son of God, and that He opened or revealed to every man the possibility to become what he had always been, but had never before apprehended, the highest thought, the Word, the Logos, the Son of God. _Silesian Horseherd._ Eternal life consists in knowing that men have their Father and their true being in the only true God, and that as sons of this same Father, they are of like nature with God and Christ. _Silesian Horseherd._ Why should the belief in the Son give everlasting life? Because Jesus has through His own sonship in God declared to us ours also. This knowledge gives us eternal life through the conviction that we too have something divine and eternal within us, namely, the word of God, the Son whom He hath sent. Jesus Himself, however, is the only begotten Son, the light of the world. He first fulfilled and illumined the divine idea which lies darkly in all men, and made it possible for all men to become actually what they have always been potentially--sons of God. _Silesian Horseherd._ We make the fullest allowance for those who, from reverence for God and for Christ, and from the purest motives, protest against claiming for man the full brotherhood of Christ. But when they say that the difference between Christ and mankind is one of kind, and not of degree, they know not what they do, they nullify the whole of Christ's teaching, and they deny the Incarnation which they pretend to teach. _Gifford Lectures, IV._ The Ammergau play must be very powerful. And I feel sure just now nothing is more wanted than to be powerfully impressed with the truly human character of Christ; it has almost vanished under the extravagant phraseology of hymns and creeds, and yet how much greater is the simple story of His unselfish life than all the superlatives of later Theology. If one knows what it is to lose a human soul whom one has loved--how one forgets all that was human, and only clings to what was eternal in it, one can understand the feelings of Christ's friends and disciples when they saw Him crucified and sacrificed, the innocent for those whom He wished to guide and save. _MS._ Jesus destroyed the barrier between man and God, the veil that hid the Holiest was withdrawn. Man was taught to see what the prophets had seen dimly, that he was near to God, that God was near to every one of us, that the old Jewish view of a distant Jehovah had arisen from an excess of reverence, had filled the heart of man with fear, but not with love. Jesus did not teach a new doctrine, but He removed an old error, and that error, that slavish fear of God, once removed, the human heart would recover the old trust in God--man would return like a lost son to his lost father, he would feel that if he was anything, he could only be what his God had made him, and wished him to be. And if a name was wanted for that intimate relation between God and man, what better name was there than Father and Son? _MS._ Those who deprived Jesus of His real humanity in order to exalt Him above all humanity were really undoing His work. Christ came to teach us, not what He was, but what we are. He had seen that man, unless he learnt himself to be the child of God, was lost. All his aspirations were vain unless they all sprang from one deep aspiration, love of God. And how can we love what is totally different from ourselves? If there is in us a likeness, however small, of God, then we can love our God, feel ourselves drawn towards Him, have our true being in Him. That is the essence of Christianity, that is what distinguishes the Christian from all other religions. And yet that very kernel and seed of Christianity is constantly disregarded, is even looked upon with distrust. Was not Christ, who died for us, more than we ourselves? it is said. Or again, Are we to make ourselves gods? Christ never says that He is different from ourselves; He never taught as a God might teach. His constant teaching is, that we are His brethren, and that we ought to follow His example, to become like Him, because we were meant to be like Him. In that He has come near to God, as near as a son can be to His father; He is what He was meant to be. We are not, and hence the deep difference between Him and us. _MS._ Then it is said, Is not Christ God? Yes, He is, but in His own sense, not in the Jewish nor in the Greek sense, nor in the sense which so many Christians attach to that article of their faith. Christ's teaching is that we are of God, that there is in us something divine, that we are nothing if we are not that. He also teaches that through our own fault we are now widely separated from God, as a son may be entirely separated and alienated from his father. But God is a perfect and loving Father--He knows that we can be weak, and yet be good, and when His lost sons return to Him He receives them and forgives them as only a father can forgive. Let us bestow all praise and glory on Christ as the best son of God. Let us feel how unworthy we are to be called His brothers, and the children of God, but let us not lose Christ, and lose our Father whom He came to show us, by exalting Jesus beyond the place which He claimed Himself. Christ never calls Himself the Father, He speaks of His Father with love, but always with humility and reverence. All attempts to find in human language a better expression than that of son have failed. Theologians and philosophers have tried in vain to define more accurately the relation of Christ to the Father, of man to God. They have called Christ another person of the Godhead. Is that better than Christ's own simple human language, I go to my Father? _MS._ Christ has been made so unreal to us, He has been spoken of in such unmeasured terms that it is very difficult to gain Him back, such as He was, without a fear of showing less reverence and love of Him than others. And yet, unreal expressions are always false expressions--nothing is so bad as if we do not fully mean what we say. Of course we know Christ through His friends only, they tell us what He told them--they represent Him as He appeared to them. What fallible judges they often were they do not disguise, and that, no doubt, raises the value of their testimony, but we can only see Him as they saw Him; the fact remains we know very little of Him. Still, enough remains to show that Christ was full of love, that He loved not only His friends, but His enemies. Christ's whole life seems to have been one of love, not of coldness. He perceived our common brotherhood, and what it was based on, our common Father beyond this world, in heaven, as He said. _MS._ CHRISTIANITY Christianity is Christianity by this one fundamental truth, that as God is the father of man, so truly, and not poetically, or metaphorically only, man is the son of God, participating in God's very essence and nature, though separated from God by self and sin. This oneness of nature between the Divine and the human does not lower the concept of God by bringing it nearer to the level of humanity; on the contrary, it raises the old concept of man and brings it nearer to its true ideal. The true relation between God and man had been dimly foreseen by many prophets and poets, but Christ was the first to proclaim that relation in clear and simple language. He called Himself the Son of God, and He was the firstborn son of God in the fullest sense of that word. But He never made Himself equal with the Father in whom He lived and moved and had His being. He was man in the new and true sense of the word, and in the new and true sense of the word He was God. To my mind man is nothing if He does not participate in the Divine. _Chips._ True Christianity lives, not in our belief, but in our love, in our love of God, and in our love of man founded on our love of God. _Chips._ True Christianity, I mean the religion of Christ, seems to me to become more and more exalted the more we know and the more we appreciate the treasures of truth hidden in the despised religions of the world. But no one can honestly arrive at that conviction unless he uses honestly the same measure for all religions. _Science of Religion._ The position which Christianity from the very beginning took up with regard to Judaism served as the first lesson in comparative theology, and directed the attention even of the unlearned to a comparison of two religions, differing in their conception of the Deity, in their estimate of humanity, in their motives of morality, and in their hope of immortality, yet sharing so much in common that there are but few of the psalms and prayers in the Old Testament in which a Christian cannot heartily join even now, and but few rules of morality which he ought not even now to obey. _Science of Religion._ It was exactly because the doctrine of Christ, more than that of the founders of any other religion, offered in the beginning an expression of the highest truths in which Jewish carpenters, Roman publicans, and Greek philosophers could join without dishonesty, that it has conquered the best part of the world. It was because attempts were made from very early times to narrow and stiffen the outward expression of our faith, to put narrow dogma in the place of trust and love, that the Christian Church often lost those who might have been its best defenders, and that the religion of Christ has almost ceased to be what, before all things, it was meant to be, a religion of world-wide love and charity. _Hibbert Lectures._ The founder of Christianity insisted again and again on the fact that He came to fulfil, and not to destroy; and we know how impossible it would be to understand the true position of Christianity in the history of the world, the true purport of the 'fullness of time,' unless we always remember that its founder was born and lived and died an Israelite. Many of the parables and sayings of the New Testament have now been traced back, not only to the Old Testament, but to the Talmud also; and we know how difficult it was at first for any but a Jew to understand the true meaning of the new Christian doctrine. _Gifford Lectures, I._ There is no religion in the whole world which in simplicity, in purity of purpose, in charity, and true humanity, comes near to that religion which Christ taught to His disciples. And yet that very religion, we are told, is being attacked on all sides. The principal reason for this omnipresent unbelief is, I believe, the neglect of our foundations, the disregard of our own bookless religion, the almost disdain of Natural Religion. Even bishops will curl their lips when you speak to them of that natural and universal _religion_ which existed before the advent of our historical religions, nay, without which all historical religions would have been as impossible as poetry is without language. Natural religion may exist and does exist without revealed religion--revealed religion without natural religion is an utter impossibility. _Gifford Lectures, I._ There can be no doubt that free inquiry has swept away, and will sweep away, many things which have been highly valued, nay, which were considered essential by many honest and pious minds. And yet who will say that true Christianity, Christianity which is known by its fruits, is less vigorous now than it has ever been before? There have been discussions in the Christian Church from the time of the Apostles to our own times. We have passed through them ourselves, we are passing through them now. _Gifford Lectures, II._ When we think of the exalted character of Christ's teaching, may we not ask ourselves once more, What would He have said if He had seen the fabulous stories of His birth and childhood, or if He had thought that His Divine character would ever be made to depend on the historical truth of the _Evangelia Infantiae_? _Gifford Lectures, II._ Much of the mere outworks of Christianity cannot hold the ground on which they have been planted, they have to be given up by force at last, when they ought to have been given up long before; and when given up at last, they often tear away with them part of the strength of that faith of which they had previously been not only the buttress outside, but a part of the living framework. _Gifford Lectures, III._ What we call Christianity embraces several fundamental doctrines, but the most important of them all is the recognition of the Divine in man, or, as we call it, the belief in the Divinity of the Son. The belief in God, let us say in God the Father, or the Creator and Ruler of the world, had been elaborated by the Jews, and most of the civilised and uncivilised nations of the world had arrived at it. But when the Founder of Christianity called God His Father, and not only His Father, but the Father of all mankind, He did no longer speak the language of either Jews or Greeks. To the Jews, to claim Divine sonship for man would have been blasphemy. To the Greeks, Divine sonship would have meant no more than a miraculous, a mythological event. Christ spoke a new language, a language liable, no doubt, to be misunderstood, as all language is; but a language which to those who understood it has imparted a new glory to the face of the whole world. It is well known how this event, the discovery of the Divine in man, which involves a complete change in the spiritual condition of mankind, and marks the great turning-point in the history of the world, has been surrounded by a legendary halo, has been obscured, has been changed into mere mythology, so that its real meaning has often been quite forgotten, and has to be discovered again by honest and fearless seeking. Christ had to speak the language of His time, but He gave a new meaning to it, and yet that language has often retained its old discarded meaning in the minds of His earliest, nay sometimes of His latest disciples also. The Divine sonship of which He speaks was not blasphemy as the Jews thought, nor mythology as so many of His own followers imagined, and still imagine. Father and Son, divine and human, were like the old bottles that could hardly hold the new wine; and yet how often have the old broken bottles been preferred to the new wine that was to give new life to the world. _Gifford Lectures, III._ If we have learnt to look upon Christianity, not as something unreal and unhistorical, but as an integral part of history, of the historical growth of the human race, we can see how all the searchings after the Divine or Infinite in man were fulfilled in the simple utterances of Christ. His preaching, we are told, brought life and immortality to light. Life, the life of the soul, and immortality, the immortality of the soul, were there and had always been there. But they were brought to light, man was made fully conscious of them, man remembered his royal birth, when the word had been spoken by Christ. _Gifford Lectures, III._ We must never forget that it was not the principal object of Christ's teaching to make others believe that He only was divine, immortal, or the son of God. He wished them to believe this for _their own_ sake, for _their own_ regeneration. 'As many as received Him to them gave He power to become the sons of God.' It might be thought, at first, that this recognition of a Divine element in man must necessarily lower the conception of the Divine. And so it does in one sense. It brings God nearer to us, it bridges over the abyss by which the Divine and the human were completely separated in the Jewish, and likewise in many of the pagan religions. It rends the veil of the temple. This lowering, therefore, is no real lowering of the Divine. It is an expanding of the concept of the Divine, and at the same time a raising of the concept of humanity, or rather a restoration of what is called human to its true character,--a regeneration, or a second birth, as it is called by Christ Himself. 'Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.' _Gifford Lectures, III._ There is a constant action and reaction in the growth of religious ideas, and the first action by which the Divine was separated from and placed almost beyond the reach of the human mind, was followed by a reaction which tried to reunite the two. This process, though visible in many religions, was most pronounced in Judaism in its transition to Christianity. Nowhere had the invisible God been further removed from the visible world than in the ancient Jewish religion, and nowhere have the two been so closely drawn together again and made one as by that fundamental doctrine of Christianity, the Divine sonship of man. _Gifford Lectures, IV._ Christ spoke to men, women, and children, not to theologians, and the classification of His sayings should be made, not according to theological technicalities, but according to what makes our own heart beat. _Life._ The yearning for union or unity with God, which we see as the highest goal in other religions, finds its fullest recognition in Christianity, if but properly understood, that is, if but treated historically, and it is inseparable from our belief in man's full brotherhood with Christ. However imperfect the forms may be in which that human yearning for God has found expression in different religions, it has always been the deepest spring of all religions, and the highest summit reached by Natural Religion. The different bridges that have been thrown across the gulf that seems to separate earth from heaven and man from God, may be more or less crude and faulty, yet we may trust that many a faithful soul has been carried across by them to a better home. It is quite true that to speak of a bridge between man and God, even if that bridge is called the Self, is but a metaphor. But how can we speak of these things except in metaphors? To return to God is a metaphor, to stand before the throne of God is a metaphor, to be in Paradise with Christ is a metaphor. _Gifford Lectures, IV._ The Christian religion should challenge rather than deprecate comparison. If we find certain doctrines which we thought the exclusive property of Christianity in other religions also, does Christianity lose thereby, or is the truth of these doctrines impaired by being recognised by other teachers also? _Gifford Lectures, IV._ Love--superseding faith--seems to be the keynote of all Christianity. But the world is still far from true Christianity, and whoever is honest towards himself knows how far away he himself is from the ideal he wishes to reach. One can hardly imagine what this world would be if we were really what we profess to be, followers of Christ. The first thing we have to learn is that we are not what we profess to be. When we have learnt that, we shall at all events be more forbearing, forgiving, and loving towards others. We shall believe in them, give them credit for good intentions, with which, I hope, not hell, but heaven, is paved. _Life._ Our religion is certainly better and purer than others, but in the essential points all religions have something in common. They all start with the belief that there is something beyond, and they are all attempts to reach out to it. _Life._ How little was taught by Christ, and yet that is enough, and every addition is of evil. Love God, love men--that is the whole law and the prophets--not the Creeds and the Catechism and the Articles and the endless theological discussions. We want no more, and those who try to fulfil that simple law, know best how difficult it is, and how our whole life and our whole power are hardly sufficient to fulfil that short law. _MS._ Christ's teaching is plainly that as He is the Son of God so we are His brothers. His conception of man is a new one, and as that is new, so must His conception of God be new. He lifts up humanity, and brings deity near to humanity, and He expresses their inseparable nature and their separate existences by the best simile which the world supplies, that of Father and Son. He claims no more for Himself than He claims for us. His only excellence is that which is due to Himself--His having been the first to find the Father, and become again His Son, and His having remained in life and death more one with the Father than any one of those who professed to believe in Him, and to follow His example. _MS._ If Jesus was not God, was He, they ask, a mere man? A _mere_ man? Is there anything among the works of God, anything next to God, more wonderful, more awful, more holy than man? Much rather should we ask, Was then Jesus a mere God? Look at the miserable conceptions which man made to himself as long as he spoke of gods beside God? It could not be otherwise. God is one, and he who admits other gods beside or without Him degrades, nay, denies and destroys the One God. _A_ God is less than man. True Christianity does not degrade the Godhead, it exalts manhood, by bringing it back near to God, as near as it is possible for the human thought to approach the ineffable and inconceivable Majesty of the true God. _MS._ If I ventured to speak of God's purpose at all, I should say, that it is not God's purpose to win only the spiritually gifted, the humble, the tender hearted, the souls that are discontented with their own shortcomings, the souls that find happiness in self-sacrifice--those are His already--but to win the intellectually gifted, the wise, the cultivated, the clever, or better still, to win them both. It would be an evil day for Christianity if it could no longer win the intellectually gifted, the wise, the cultivated, the clever, and it seems to me the duty of all who really believe in Christ to show that Christianity, if truly understood, can win the highest as well as the humblest intellects. _Gifford Lectures, III._ DEATH Trust in God! What He does is well done. What we are, we are through Him; what we suffer, we suffer through His will. We cannot conceive His wisdom, we cannot fathom His love; but we can trust with a trust stronger than all other trusts that He will not forsake us, when we cling to Him, and call on Him, as His Son Jesus Christ has taught us to call on Him, 'Our Father.' Though this earthly form of ours must perish, all that was good, and pure, and unselfish in us will live. Death has no power over what is of God within us. Death changes and purifies and perfects us, Death brings us nearer to God, where we shall meet again those that are God's, and love them with that godly love which can never perish. _Life._ Would that loving Father begin such a work in us as is now going on, and then destroy it, leave it unfinished? No, what is will be; what really is in us will always be; we shall be because we are. Many things which are now will change, but what we really are we shall always be; and if love forms really part of our very life, that love, changed it may be, purified, sanctified, will be with us, and remain with us through that greatest change which we call death. The pangs of death will be the same for all that, just as the pangs of childbirth seem ordained by God in order to moderate the exceeding joy that a child is born into the world. And as the pain is forgotten when the child is born, so it will be after death--the joy will be commensurate to the sorrow. The sorrow is but the effort necessary to raise ourselves to that new and higher state of being, and without that supreme effort or agony, the new life that waits for us is beyond our horizon, beyond our conception. It is childish to try to anticipate, we cannot know anything about it; we are meant to be ignorant; even the _Divina Commedia_ of a great poet and thinker is but child's play, and nothing else.... No illusions, no anticipations; only that certainty, that quiet rest in God, that submissive expectation of the soul, which knows that all is good, all comes from God, all tends to God. _MS._ As one gets older death seems hardly to make so wide a gap--a few years more or less, that is all--meantime we know in whose hands we all are, that life is very beautiful, but death has its beauty too. _Life._ We accustom ourselves so easily to life as a second nature, and in spite of the graves around us, death remains something unnatural, hard and terrifying. That should not be. An early death is terrifying, but as we grow older our thoughts should accustom themselves to passing away at the end of a long life's journey. All is so beautiful, so good, so wisely ordered, that even death can be nothing hard, nothing disturbing; it all belongs to a great plan, which we do not understand, but of which we know that it is wiser than all wisdom, better than all good, that it cannot be otherwise, cannot be better. In faith we can live and we can die--can even see those go before us who came before us, and whom we must follow. All is not according to our will, to our wisdom, but according to a heavenly will, and those who have once found each other through God's hand will, clinging to His hand, find each other again. _Life._ If we are called away sooner or later we ought to part cheerfully, knowing that this earth could give no more than has been ours, and looking forward to our new home, as to a more perfect state where all that was good and true and unselfish in us will live and expand, and all that was bad and mean will be purified and cast off. So let us work here as long as it is day, but without fearing the night that will lead us to a new and brighter dawn of life. _MS._ Annihilation ... is a word without any conceivable meaning. We are--that is enough. What we are does not depend on us; what we shall be neither. We may conceive the idea of change in form, but not of cessation or destruction of substance. People mean frequently by annihilation the loss of conscious personality, as distinct from material annihilation. What I feel about it is shortly this. If there is anything real and substantial in our conscious personality, then whatever there is real and substantial cannot cease to exist. If on the contrary we mean by conscious personality something that is the result of accidental circumstances, then, no doubt, we must face the idea of such a personality ceasing to be what it now is. I believe, however, that the true source and essence of our personality lies in what is the most real of all real things, and in so far as it is true, it cannot be destroyed. There is a distinction between conscious personality and personal consciousness. A child has personal consciousness, a man who is this or that, a Napoleon, a Talleyrand, has conscious personality. Much of that conscious personality is merely temporary, and passes away, but the personal consciousness remains. _Life._ One look up to heaven, and all this dust of the highroad of life vanishes. Yes! one look up to heaven and that dark shadow of death vanishes. We have made the darkness of that shadow ourselves, and our thoughts about death are very ungodly. God has willed it so; there is to be a change, and a change of such magnitude that even if angels were to come down and tell us all about it, we could not understand it, as little as the new-born child would understand what human language could tell about the present life. Think what the birth of a child, of a human soul, is; and when you have felt the utter impossibility of fathoming that mystery, then turn your thoughts upon death, and see in it a new birth equally unfathomable, but only the continuation of that joyful mystery which we call a birth. It is all God's work, and where is there a flaw in that wonder of all wonders, God's ever-working work? If people talk of the miseries of life, are they not all man's work? _Life._ Great happiness makes one feel so often that it cannot last, and that we will have some day to give up all to which one's heart clings so. A few years sooner or later, but the time will come, and come quicker than one expects. Therefore I believe it is right to accustom oneself to the thought that we can none of us escape death, and that all our happiness here is only lent us. But at the same time we can thankfully enjoy all that God gives us, ... and there is still so much left us, so much to be happy and thankful for, and yet here too the thought always rushes across one's brightest hours: it cannot last, it is only for a few years and then it must be given up. Let us work as long as it is day, let us try to do our duty, and be very thankful for God's blessings which have been showered upon us so richly--but let us learn also always to look beyond, and learn to be ready to give up everything,--and yet say, Thy Will be done. _MS._ It is the most painful work I know looking through the papers and other things belonging to one who is no more with us. How different everything looks to what it did before. There is one beautiful feature about death, it carries off all the small faults of the soul we loved, it makes us see the true littleness of little things, it takes away all the shadows, and only leaves the light. That is how it ought to be; and if in judging of a person we could only bring ourselves to think how we should judge of them if we saw them on the bed of death, how different life would be! We always judge in self-defence, and that makes our judgments so harsh. When they are gone how readily we forget and forgive everything, how truly we love all that was lovable in them, how we blame ourselves for our own littleness in minding this and that, and not simply and truly loving all that was good and bright and noble. How different life might be if we could all bring ourselves to be what we really are, good and loving, and could blow away the dust that somehow or other will fall on all of us. It is never too late to begin again. _Life._ The death of those we love is the last lesson we receive in life--the rest we must learn for ourselves. To me, the older I grow, and the nearer I feel that to me the end must be, the more perfect and beautiful all seems to be; one feels surrounded and supported everywhere by power, wisdom, and love, content to trust and wait, incapable of murmuring, very helpless, very weak, yet strong in that very helplessness, because it teaches us to trust in something not ourselves. Yet parting with those we love is hard--only I fear there is nothing else that would have kept our eyes open to what is beyond this life. _MS._ It is strange how little we all think of death as the condition of all the happiness we enjoy now. If we could but learn to value each hour of life, to enjoy it fully, to use it fully, never to spoil a minute by selfishness, then death would never come too soon; it is the wasted hours which are like death in life, and which make life really so short. It is not too late to learn to try to be more humble, more forbearing, more courteous, or, what is at the root of all, more loving. _Life._ The great world for which we live seems to me as good as the little world in which we live, and I have never known why faith should fail, when everything, even pain and sorrow, is so wonderfully good and beautiful. All that we say to console ourselves on the death of those we loved, and who loved us, is hollow and false; the only true thing is rest and silence. We cannot understand, and therefore we must and can trust. There can be no mistake, no gap, in the world-poem to which we belong; and I believe that those stars which without their own contrivance have met, will meet again. How, where, when? God knows this, and that is enough. _MS._ God has taught us that death is not so terrible as it appears to most men--it is but a separation for a few short days, and then, too, eternity awaits us. _Life._ We live here in a narrow dwelling-house, which presses us in on all sides, and yet we fancy it is the whole universe. But when the door opens and a loved one passes out, never to return, we too step to the door and look out into the distance, and realise then how small and empty the dwelling is, and how a larger, more beautiful world waits for us without. How it is in that larger world, who can say? but if we were so happy in the narrow dwelling, how far more happy shall we be out there! Be not afraid. See how beautifully all is ordered; look up to the widespread firmament, and think how small it is in comparison with God's almighty power. He who regulates the courses of the stars will regulate the fate of the souls of men, and those souls who have once met, shall they not meet again like the stars? _MS._ Those who are absent are often nearer to us than those who are present. _MS._ We reckon too little with death, and then when it comes it overwhelms us. We know all the time that our friends must go, and that we must go, but we shut our eyes, and enjoy their love and friendship as if life could never end. We should say good-bye to each other every evening--perhaps the last good-bye would find us then less unprepared. _MS._ There is something so natural in death. We come and we go, there is no break. _Life._ What is more natural in life than death? and having lived this long life, so full of light, having been led so kindly by a Fatherly hand through all storms and struggles, why should I be afraid when I have to make the last step? _Life._ THE DEITY We clearly see that the possibility of intercourse between man and God, and a revelation of God to man, depends chiefly or exclusively on the conception which man has previously formed of God and man. In all theological researches we must carefully bear in mind that the idea of God is _our_ idea, which we have formed in part through tradition, and in part by our own thinking. God is and remains _our_ God. We can have a knowledge of Him only through our inner consciousness, not through our senses. _Silesian Horseherd._ Our duties toward God and man, our love for God and for man, are as nothing without the firm foundation which is formed only by our faith in God, as the Thinker and Ruler of the world, the Father of the Son, who was revealed through Him as the Father of all sons, of all men. _Silesian Horseherd._ Though Christianity has given us a purer and truer idea of the Godhead, of the majesty of His power and the holiness of His will, there remains with many of us the conception of a merely objective Deity. God is still with many of us in the clouds, so far removed from the earth and so high above anything human, that in trying to realise fully the meaning of Christ's teaching we often shrink from approaching too near to the blinding effulgence of Jehovah. The idea that we should stand to Him in the relation of children to their father seems to some people almost irreverent, and the thought that God is near us everywhere, the belief that we are also His offspring, nay, that there has never been an absolute barrier between divinity and humanity, has often been branded as Pantheism. Yet Christianity would not be Christianity without this so-called Pantheism, and it is only some lingering belief in something like a Jove-like Deus Optimus Maximus that keeps the eyes of our mind fixed with awe on the God of Nature without, rather than on the much more awful God of the soul within. _Chips._ The idea of God is the result of an unbroken historical evolution, call it a development, an unveiling, or a purification, but not of a sudden revelation.... What right have we to find fault with the manner in which the Divine revealed itself, first to the eyes, and then to the mind, of man? Is the revelation in nature really so contemptible a thing that we can afford to despise it, or at the utmost treat it as good enough for the heathen world? Our eyes must have grown very dim, our mind very dull, if we can no longer perceive how the heavens declare the glory of God. _Gifford Lectures, II._ A belief in one Supreme God, even if at first it was only a henotheistic, and not yet a monotheistic belief, took possession of the leading spirits of the Jewish race at a very early time. All tradition assigns that belief in One God, the Most High, to Abraham. Abraham, though he did not deny the existence of the gods worshipped by the neighbouring tribes, yet looked upon them as different from, and as decidedly inferior to, his own God. His monotheism was, no doubt, narrow. His God was the friend of Abraham, as Abraham was the friend of God. Yet the concept of God formed by Abraham was a concept that could and did grow. Neither Moses, nor the Prophets, nor Christ Himself, nor even Mohammed, had to introduce a new God. Their God was always called the God of Abraham, even when freed from all that was local and narrow in the faith of that patriarch. _Gifford Lectures, II._ To some any attempt to trace back the name and concept of Jehovah to the same hidden sources from which other nations derived their first intimation of deity may seem almost sacrilegious. They forget the difference between the human concept of the Deity and the Deity itself, which is beyond the reach of all human concepts. But the historian reads deeper lessons in the growth of these human concepts, as they spring up everywhere in the minds of men who have been seekers after truth--seeking the Lord if haply they might feel after Him and find Him--and when he can show the slow but healthy growth of the noblest and sublimest thoughts out of small and apparently insignificant beginnings, he rejoices as the labourer rejoices over his golden harvest; nay, he often wonders what is more truly wonderful, the butterfly that soars up to heaven on its silvery wings, or the grub that hides within its mean chrysalis such marvellous possibilities. _Gifford Lectures, II._ The concept of God arises out of necessity in the human mind, and is not, as many theologians will have it, the result of one special disclosure, granted to Jews and Christians only. It seems to me impossible to resist this conviction, where a comparative study of the great religions of the world shows us that the highest attributes which we claim for the Deity are likewise ascribed to it by the Sacred Books of other religions. _Gifford Lectures, II._ We can now repeat the words which have been settled for us centuries ago, and which we have learnt by heart in our childhood--I believe in God the Father, Maker of heaven and earth--with the conviction that they express, not only the faith of the apostles, or of oecumenical councils, but that they contain the Confession of Faith of the whole world, expressed in different ways, conveyed in thousands of languages, but always embodying the same fundamental truth. I call it fundamental, because it is founded, in the very nature of our mind, our reason, and our language, on a simple and ineradicable conviction that where there are acts there must be agents, and in the end one Prime Agent, whom man may know, not indeed in His own inscrutable essence, yet in His acts, as revealed in Nature. _Gifford Lectures, II._ The historical proof of the existence of God, which is supplied to us by the history of the religions of the world, has never been refuted, and cannot be refuted. It forms the foundation of all the other proofs, call them cosmological, ontological, or teleological, or rather it absorbs them all, and makes them superfluous. There are those who declare that they require no proof at all for the existence of a Supreme Being, or if they did, they would find it in revelation, and nowhere else. Suppose they wanted no proof themselves, would they really not care at all to know how the human race, and how they themselves, came in possession of what, I suppose, they value as their most precious inheritance? An appeal to revelation is of no avail in deciding questions of this kind, unless it is first explained what is really meant by revelation. The history of religions teaches us that the same appeal to a special revelation is made, not only by Christianity, but by the defenders of Brâhmanism, Zoroastrianism, and Mohammedanism, and where is the tribunal to adjudicate on the conflicting appeals of these and other claimants? The followers of every one of these religions declare their belief in the revealed character of their own religion, never in that of any other religion. There is, no doubt, a revelation to which we may appeal in the court of our own conscience, but before the court of universal appeal we require different proofs for the faith that is in us. _Gifford Lectures, III._ Given man, such as he is, and given the world, such as it is, a belief in divine beings, and, at last, in one Divine Being, is not only a universal, but an inevitable fact.... If from the standpoint of human reason no flaw can be pointed out in the intellectual process which led to the admission of something within, behind, or beyond nature, call it the Infinite or any other name you like, it follows that the history of that process is really, at the same time, the best proof of the legitimacy and truth of the conclusions to which it has led. _Gifford Lectures, III._ There is no predicate in human language worthy of God, all we can say of Him is what the Upanishads said of Him, No, No! What does that mean? It meant that if God is called all-powerful, we have to say No, because whatever we comprehend by powerful is nothing compared with the power of God. If God is called all-wise, we have again to say No, because what we call wisdom cannot approach the wisdom of God. If God is called holy, again we have to say No, for what can our conception of holiness be compared with the holiness of God? This is what the thinkers of the Upanishads meant when they said that all we can say of God is No, No. _Gifford Lectures, III._ If people would only define what they mean by knowing, they would shrink from the very idea that God can ever be known by us in the same sense in which everything else is known, or that with regard to Him we could ever be anything but Agnostics. All human knowledge begins with the senses, and goes on from sensations to percepts, from percepts to concepts and names. And yet the same people who insist that they know God, will declare in the same breath that no one can see God and live. Let us only define the meaning of knowing, and keep the different senses in which this word has been used carefully apart, and I doubt whether any one would venture to say that, in the true sense of the word, he is not an Agnostic as regards the true nature of God. This silence before a nameless Being does not exclude a true belief in God, nor devotion, nor love of a Being beyond our senses, beyond our understanding, beyond our reason, and therefore beyond all names. _Gifford Lectures, III._ Every one of the names given to this infinite Being by finite beings marks a stage in the evolution of religious truth. If once we try to understand these names, we shall find that they were all well meant, that, for the time being, they were probably the only possible names. The Historical School does not look upon all the names given to divine powers as simply true or simply false. We look upon all of them as well meant and true for the time being, as steps on the ladder on which the angels of God ascend and descend. There was no harm in the ancient people, when they were thirsting for rain, invoking the sky, and saying, 'O, dear sky, send us rain!' And when after a time they used more and more general words, when they addressed the powers (of nature) as bright, or rich, or mighty, all these were meant for something else, for something they were seeking for, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him. This is St. Paul's view of the growth of religion. _Gifford Lectures, III._ When God has once been conceived without 'any manner of similitude,' He may be meditated on, revered, and adored, but that fervent passion of the human breast, that love with all our heart, and all our soul, and all our might, seems to become hushed before that solemn presence. We may love our father and mother with all our heart, we may cling to our children with all our soul, we may be devoted to wife, or husband, or friend with all our might, but to throw all these feelings in their concentrated force and truth on the Deity has been given to very few on earth. _Gifford Lectures, III._ If the history of religion has taught us anything, it has taught us to distinguish between the names and the thing named. The names may change, and become more and more perfect, and our concepts of the Deity may become more perfect also, but the Deity itself is not affected by our names. However much the names may differ and change, there remains, as the last result of the study of religion, the everlasting conviction that behind all the names there is something named, that there is an agent behind all acts, that there is an Infinite behind the finite, that there is a God in Nature. That God is the abiding goal of many names, all well meant and well aimed, and yet all far, far away from the goal which no man can see and--live. All names that human language has invented may be imperfect. But the name 'I am that I am' will remain for those who think Semitic thought, while to those who speak Aryan languages it will be difficult to invent a better name than the Vedanta Sa_k_-_k_id-ânanda, He who is, who knows, who is blessed. _Gifford Lectures, III._ However much we may cease to speak the language of the faith of our childhood, the faith in a superintending and ever-present Providence grows only stronger the more we see of life, the more we know of ourselves. When that Bass-note is right, we may indulge in many variations, we shall never go entirely wrong. _MS._ We do not see the hand that takes our dear ones from us, but we know whose hand it is, whose will it is. We have no name for Him, we do not know Him, but we know that whatever name we give, He will understand it. That is the foundation of all religion. Let us give the best name we can find in us, let us know that even that must be a very imperfect name, but let us trust that if we only believe in that name, if we use it, not because it is the fashion, but because we can find no better name, He will understand and forgive. Every name is true if we are true, every name is false if we are false. If we are true our religion is true, if we are false our religion is false. An honest fetish worshipper even is better than a scoffing Pope. _MS._ In the ordinary sense of knowledge we cannot have any knowledge of God; our very idea of God implies that He is beyond our powers of perception and understanding. Then what can we do? Shut our eyes and be silent? That will not satisfy creatures such as we are. We must speak, but all our words apply to things perceptible or intelligible. The old Buddhists used to say, The only thing we can say of God is No, No! He is not this, He is not that. Whatever we can see or understand, He is not that. But again I say that kind of self-denial will not satisfy such creatures as we are. What can we do? We can only give the best we have. Now the best we have or know on earth is Love, therefore we say God is Love or loving. Love is entire self-surrender, we can go no further in our conception of what is best. And yet how poor a name it is in comparison of what we want to name. Our idea of love includes, as you say, humility, a looking up and worshipping. Can we say that of God's love? Depend upon it, the best we say is but poor endeavour,--it is well we should know it,--and yet, if it is the best we have and can give, we need not be ashamed. _Life._ And now that generations after generations have passed away, with their languages--adoring and worshipping the Name of God--preaching and dying in the Name of God--thinking and meditating on the Name of God--there the old word stands still, breathing to us the pure air of the dawn of humanity, carrying with it all the thoughts and sighs, the doubts and tears, of our bygone brethren, and still rising up to heaven with the same sound from the basilicas of Rome and the temples of Benares, as if embracing by its simple spell millions and millions of hearts in their longing desire to give utterance to the unutterable, to express the inexpressible. _Life._ THE DIVINE It was, after all, the Jew who, in the great history of the world, was destined to solve the riddle of the Divine in man. It was the soil of Jewish thought that in the end gave birth to the true conception of the relation between the Divine in nature and the Divine in man. _Gifford Lectures, III._ When the Divine in the outward world has once been fully recognised, there can be nothing more or less divine, nothing more or less miraculous, either in nature or in history. Those who assign a divine and miraculous character to certain consecrated events only in the history of the world, are in great danger of desecrating thereby the whole drama of history, and of making it, not only profane, but godless. It is easy to call this a pantheistic view of the world. It is pantheistic, in the best sense of the word, so much so that any other view would soon become atheistic. Even the Greeks suspected the omnipresence of the Divine, when, as early as the time of Thales, they declared that _all_ is full of the gods. The choice here lies really between Pantheism and Atheism. If anything, the greatest or the smallest, can ever happen without the will of God, then God is no longer God. To distinguish between a direct and indirect influence of the Divine, to admit a general and a special providence, is like a relapse into polytheism, a belief in one and many gods. _Gifford Lectures, III._ Human nature is divine nature modified. It can be nothing else. Christ, in shaking off all that is not divine in man,--let us call it by one general name, all that is selfish,--resumed His own divinity. _MS._ God comes to us in the likeness of man--there is no other likeness for God. And that likeness is not forbidden, Christ has taught us to see and love God in man. We cannot go further. If we attempt to conceive anything more than human, our mind breaks down. But we can conceive and perceive the Divine in man, and most in those who are risen from the earth. While we live our love is human, and mixed with earthly things. We love and do not love--we even hate, or imagine we do. But we do not really hate any man, we only hate something that surrounds and hides man. What is behind, the true nature of man, we always love. Death purifies man, it takes away the earthly crust, and we can love those who are dead far better than those who are still living: that is the truth. We do not deceive ourselves, we do not use vain words. Love is really purer, stronger, and more unselfish when it embraces those who are risen. That is why the Apostles loved Christ so much better when He was no longer with them. While He lived, Peter could deny Him--when He had returned to the Father, Peter was willing to die for Him. All that is so true, only one must have gone through it, felt it oneself, in order to understand it. If one knows the love one feels for the blessed, one wants no temporary resurrection to account for the rekindled love of the Apostles. They believed that Christ had truly risen, that death had no power over Him, that He was with the Father. Was not that more, far more, than a return to this fleeting life for a few hours, or days, or weeks, or than an ascent through the clouds to the blue sky? Ah! how the great truths have been exchanged for small fancies, the _mira_ for the _miracula_. _MS._ DOUBTS There is certainly no happier life than a life of simple faith; of literal acceptance, of rosy dreams. We must all grant that, if it were possible, nothing would be more perfect. I gladly acknowledge that some of the happiest, and also some of the best men and women I have known, were those who would have shrunk with horror from questioning a single letter of the Bible, or doubting that a serpent actually spoke to Eve, and an ass to Balaam. But can we prevent the light of the sun and the noises of the street from waking the happy child from his heavenly dreams? Nay, is it not our duty to wake the child, when the time has come that he must be up and doing, and take his share in the toils of the day? And is it not well for those who for the first time open their eyes and look around, that they should see by their side some who have woke before them, who understand their inquiring looks, and can answer their timid questions and tell them in the simple-hearted language of the old poet: 'There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds.' _Gifford Lectures, III._ There is an atheism which is unto death, there is another atheism which is the life-blood of all true faith. It is the power of giving up what, in our best, our most honest, moments, we know to be no longer true; it is the readiness to replace the less perfect, however dear, however sacred it may have been to us, by the more perfect, however much it may be detested, as yet, by the world. It is the true self-surrender, the true self-sacrifice, the truest trust in truth, the truest faith. Without that atheism religion would long ago have become a petrified hypocrisy; without that atheism no new religion, no reform, no reformation, no resuscitation would ever have been possible; without that atheism no new life is possible for any one of us. _Hibbert Lectures._ How many men in all countries and all ages have been called atheists, not because they denied that there existed anything beyond the visible and the finite, or because they declared that the world, such as it was, could be explained without a cause, without a purpose, without a God, but often because they differed only from the traditional conception of the Deity prevalent at the time, and were yearning after a higher conception of God than what they had learnt in their childhood. _Hibbert Lectures._ There are moments in our life when those who seek most earnestly after God think they are forsaken of God; when they hardly venture to ask themselves, Do I then believe in God, or do I not? Let them not despair, and let us not judge harshly of them; their despair may be better than many creeds.... Honest doubt is the deepest spring of honest faith; only he who has lost can find. _Hibbert Lectures._ If we have once claimed the freedom of the spirit which St. Paul claimed: to prove all things and hold fast that which is good: we cannot turn back, we cannot say that no one shall prove our own religion, no one shall prove other religions and compare them with our own. We have to choose once for all between freedom and slavery of judgment, and though I do not wish to argue with those who prefer slavery, yet one may remind them that even they, in deliberately choosing slavery, follow their own private judgment quite as much as others do in choosing freedom. _Gifford Lectures, III._ Our own self-interest surely would seem to suggest as severe a trial of our own religion as of other religions, nay, even a more severe trial. Our religion has sometimes been compared to a good ship that is to carry us through the waves and tempests of this life to a safe haven. Would it not be wise, therefore, to have it tested, and submitted to the severest trials, before we entrust ourselves and those dear to us to such a vessel. And remember, all men, except those who take part in the foundation of a new religion, or have been converted from an old to a new faith, have to accept their religious belief on trust, long before they are able to judge for themselves. And while in all other matters an independent judgment in riper years is encouraged, every kind of influence is used to discourage a free examination of religious dogmas, once engrafted on our intellect in its tenderest stage. We condemn an examination of our own religion, even though it arises from an honest desire to see with our own eyes the truth which we mean to hold fast; and yet we do not hesitate to send missionaries into all the world, asking the faithful to re-examine their own time-honoured religions. We attack their most sacred convictions, we wound their tenderest feelings, we undermine the belief in which they have been brought up, and we break up the peace and happiness of their homes. Yet if some learned Jew, or subtle Brahman, or outspoken Zulu asks us to re-examine the date and authorship of the Old or New Testament, or challenges us to produce the evidence on which we also are quite ready to accept certain miracles, we are offended, forgetting that with regard to these questions we can claim no privilege, no immunity. _Gifford Lectures, III._ If we can respect a childlike and even a childish faith, we ought likewise to learn to respect even a philosophical atheism which often contains the hidden seeds of the best and truest faith. We ought never to call a man an atheist, and say that he does not believe in God, till we know what kind of God it is he has been brought up to believe in, and what kind of God it is that he rejects, it may be, from the best and highest motives. We ought never to forget that Socrates was called an atheist, that the early Christians were all called atheists, that some of the best and greatest men this world has ever known have been branded by that name. _Gifford Lectures, III._ I have heard and read the worst that can be said against our religion--I mean the true original teaching of Christ--and I feel that I am ready in mind, if not in body, to lay down my life for the truth of His teaching. All our difficulties arise from the doctrines of men, not from His doctrine. There is no outward evidence of the truth of His doctrine, but the Spirit of God that is within us testifieth to its truth. If it does not, we are not yet disciples of Christ, but we may be hereafter. _Life._ Be certain of this, that to repress a doubt is to repress the spirit of truth; a doubt well spoken out is generally a doubt solved. But all this requires great seriousness of mind--it must assume an importance greater than anything else in life, and then we can fight our way through it. God is with us in our struggles. _Life._ EVOLUTION OF RELIGION Evolution is really the same as history, if we take it in its objective sense. Subjectively, history meant originally inquiry, or a desire to know; it then came to mean knowledge, obtained by inquiry, and lastly, in a purely objective sense, the objects of such knowledge. _Gifford Lectures, I._ We may discover in all the errors of mythology, and in what we call the false or pagan religions of this world, a progress towards truth, a yearning after something more than finite, a growing recognition of the Infinite, throwing off some of its veils before our eyes, and from century to century revealing itself to us more and more in its own purity and holiness. And thus the two concepts, that of evolution and that of revelation, which seem at first so different, become one in the end. If there is a purpose running through the ages, if nature is not blind, if there are agents, recognised at last as the agents of one Will, behind the whole phenomenal world, then the evolution of man's belief in that Supreme Will is itself the truest revelation of that Supreme Will, and must remain the adamantine foundation on which all religion rests, whether we call it natural or supernatural. _Gifford Lectures, II._ The same changes in the idea of God, which we see in the different books of the Bible, take place in the different chapters of our own life. The child cannot but represent God to himself as a venerable man, walking about, warning and reproving the creatures He has made. The child has no higher conception as yet which it could apply to God; if it heard of a higher one it could not grasp it. But as the child grows and gathers in higher conceptions, the lower must give way to the higher. As long as the evidence of the senses is the only evidence which a child knows, he demands a visible God. When he learns that the human senses are different modes of apprehension, that according to their very nature they can never apprehend except what is limited, then the mind involuntarily surrenders the visible God, it believes in God as a Spirit. And so the growth of each man, and the growth of the whole human race, goes on, and will go on; and I cannot see how, if the world goes on as it has hitherto, it can be otherwise but that much of the language of the New Testament also will have to be surrendered. Changes have lately taken place with the word _person_. Many things which were formerly comprehended under personality have been discovered to be mere accessories, and above the more material conception of personality, of individuality, or of the I, a higher one is rising, that of the _Self_. The I, the personality, is made up of many things which are purely temporal--which are dear to us on earth, but which will pass away, while the Self will abide for ever. Need we wonder, therefore, that just those who wish to transfer only their highest to the Godhead begin to shrink from speaking of a personal God? or insist on defining the word 'personal' so that it should exclude all that is incompatible with a perfect, unlimited, unchanging Being? What led to such expressions as 'God is Love' but a feeling of reverence, which shrank from speaking of God as loving as we love? This process will go on as long as the thoughts and words of mankind grow and change. Let us learn only from the Bible that those who spoke of God as walking about in Paradise spoke as children, did the best they could, gave all they had, and who shall say that their two mites were in the sight of God less precious than all our creeds and philosophies? They too will change, they too will be looked upon by future generations as the language of children. But He to whom our thoughts and prayers are addressed will interpret all languages and dialects. Before Him the wisdom of the man will not sound much wiser than the trustful ignorance of the child. _MS._ FAITH Next to our faith in God there is nothing so essential to the healthy growth of our whole being as an unshaken faith in man. _Chips._ Let us trust in Him to whom alone we owe all our blessings. If we do not forsake Him, He will never forsake us--we cannot fathom His love, but we can trust. _MS._ Separation loses its bitterness when we have faith in each other and in God. Faith in each other keeps us close together in life, and faith in God keeps us together in eternity. _MS._ Those who remember the happiness of the simple faith of their childhood may well ask why it should ever be disturbed. Knowing the blessedness of that faith we naturally abstain from everything that might disturb it prematurely in the minds of those who are entrusted to us. But, as the child, whether he likes it or not, grows to be a man, so the faith of a child grows into the faith of a man. It is not our doing, it is the work of Him who made us what we are. As all our other ideas grow and change, so does our idea of God. I know there are men and women who, when they perceive the first warnings of that inward growth, become frightened and suppress it with all their might. They shut their eyes and ears to all new light from within and from without. They wish to remain as happy as children, and many of them succeed in remaining as good as children. Who would blame them or disturb them? But those who trust in God and God's work within them, must go forth to the battle. With them it would be cowardice and faithlessness to shrink from the trial. They are not certain that they were meant to be here simply to enjoy the happiness of a childlike faith. They feel they have a talent committed to them which must not be wrapped up in a napkin. But the battle is hard, and all the harder because, while they know they are obeying the voice of truth, which is the voice of God, many of those whom they love look upon them as disobeying the voice of God, as disturbers of the peace, as giving offence to those little ones. _MS._ There is a difference between the childlike faith of a man (all real faith must be childlike) and the childlike faith of a child. The one is Paradise not yet lost, the other Paradise lost but regained. The one is right for the child, the other is right for the man. It is the will of God that it should be so--but it is also the will of God that we should all bear with each other, and join, each in his own voice, in the great hymn of praise. _MS._ Faith is that organ of knowledge by which we apprehend the Infinite, namely, whatever transcends the ken of our senses and the grasp of our reason. The Infinite is hidden from the senses, it is denied by Reason, but it is perceived by Faith; and it is perceived, if once perceived, as underlying both the experience of the senses and the combinations of reason. _Science of Language._ THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD Wherever our Father leads us there is our Fatherland. _Life._ Man must discover that God is his father before he can become a son of God. To know is here to be, to be to know. No mere miracle will make man the son of God. That sonship can be gained through knowledge only, 'through man knowing God, or rather being known of God,' and till it is so gained it does not exist, even though it be a fact. If we apply this to the words in which Christ speaks of Himself as the Son of God, we shall see that to Him it is no miracle, it is no mystery, it is no question of supernatural contrivance; it is simply clear knowledge, and it was this self-knowledge which made Christ what He was, it was this which constituted His true, His eternal divinity. _Gifford Lectures, III._ FUTURE LIFE One wonders indeed how kindred souls become separated, and one feels startled and repelled at the thought that, such as they were on earth, they can never meet again. And yet there is continuity in the world, there is no flaw, no break anywhere, and what has been will surely be again, though how it will be we cannot know, and if only we trust in the Wisdom that pervades and overshadows the whole Universe, we need not know. _Auld Lang Syne._ Even if we resign ourselves to the thought that the likenesses and likelihoods which we project upon the unseen and unknown, nay, that the hope of our meeting again as we once met on earth, need not be fulfilled exactly as we shape them to ourselves, where is the argument to make us believe that the real fulfilment can be less perfect than what even a weak human heart devises and desires? This trust that whatever is will be best, is what is meant by faith, true, because inevitable, faith. We see traces of it in many places and many religions, but I doubt whether anywhere that faith is more simply and more powerfully expressed than in the Old and New Testaments: 'For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside Thee, what He hath prepared for him that waiteth for Him' (Isaiah lxiv. 4). 'As it is written, Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him' (1 Cor. ii. 9). _Hibbert Lectures._ The highest which man can comprehend is man. One step only he may go beyond, and say that what is beyond may be different, but it cannot be less perfect than the present; the future cannot be worse than the past.... That much-decried philosophy of evolution, if it teaches us anything, teaches us a firm belief in a better future, and in a higher perfection which man is destined to reach. _Hibbert Lectures._ In our longings for the departed we often think of them as young or old, we think of them as man or woman, as father or mother, as husband or wife. Even nationality and language are supposed to remain after death, and we often hear expressions, 'Oh! if the souls are without all this, without age, and sex, and national character, without even their native language, what will they be to us?' The answer is, They will really be the same to us they were in this life. Unless we can bring ourselves to believe that a soul has a beginning, and that our soul sprang into being at the time of our birth, the soul within us must have existed before. But however convinced we may be of the soul's eternal existence, we shall always remain ignorant as to how it existed. And yet we do not murmur or complain. Our soul on awakening here is not quite a stranger to itself, and the souls who, as our parents, our wives, and husbands, our children, and our friends, have greeted us at first as strangers in this life, have become to us as if we had known them for ever, and as if we could never lose them again. If it were to be so again in the next life, if there also we should meet at first as strangers till drawn together by the same mysterious love that has drawn us together here, why should we murmur or complain? Thousands of years ago we read of a husband telling his wife, 'Verily a wife is not dear that you may love the wife, but that you may love the soul, therefore a wife is dear.' What does that mean? It means that true love consists not in loving what is perishable, but in discovering and loving what is eternal in man or woman. In Sanscrit that eternal part is called by many names, but the best seems that used in this passage, Atma. We translate it by Soul, but it is even higher and purer than Soul, it is best translated by the word _Self_. That which constitutes the true Self, the looker-on, the witness within us, that which is everywhere in the body and yet nowhere to be touched, that which cannot die or expire, because it never breathed, that is the Infinite in man which philosophers have been groping for, though 'he is not far from every one of us.' It is the Divine or God-like in man. _Gifford Lectures, III._ The southern Aryans were absorbed in the struggles of thought: their past is the problem of creation, their future the problem of existence, and the present, which ought to be the solution of both, seems never to have attracted their attention, or called forth their energies. There never was a nation believing so firmly in another world, and so little concerned about this. Their condition on earth was to them a problem; their real and eternal life a simple fact. Though this is true chiefly before they were brought in contact with foreign conquerors, traces of this character are still visible in the Hindus as described by the companions of Alexander, nay, even in the Hindus of the present day. The only sphere in which the Indian mind finds itself at liberty to act, to create, and to worship is the sphere of religion and philosophy, and nowhere have religious and metaphysical ideas struck root so deeply in the mind of a nation as in India. History supplies no second instance where the inward life of the soul has so completely absorbed all the other faculties of a people. _India._ Our happiness here is but a foretaste of our blessed life hereafter. We must never forget that. We shall be called away, but we shall meet again. _Life._ We must have patience--and we all cling to life as long as there are those who love us here. Those who love us there are always ours. Nothing is lost in the world. How it will be, we know not, but if we have recognised the working of a divine wisdom and love here on earth, we can take comfort, and wait patiently for that which is to come. _Life._ Truly those who die young are blest. And shall we find them again such as they left us? Why not? It is really here on earth that those whom we love change, it is here that they die every day.... Where are all those bright joyous faces which we look at when we open our photograph books from year to year? On earth they are lost, but are they not treasured up for another life, where we shall be not only what we are from day to day, never the same to-morrow as we were yesterday, but where we are at once all that we can be--where memory is not different from perception, nor our wills different from our acts? We shall soon know--till then surely we have a right to be what we are, and to cling to our human hopes. The more human they are, the nearer the truth they are likely to be. _Life._ I believe in all our hopes we cannot be human enough. Let us be what we are--men, feel as men, sorrow as men, hope as men. It is true our hopes are human, but what are the doubts and difficulties? Are they not human too? Shall we meet again as we left? Why not? We do not know _how_ it will be so, but who has a right to say it _cannot_ be so? Let us imagine and hope for the best that, as men, we can conceive, and then rest convinced that it will be a thousand times better. _Life._ The inward voice never suggested or allowed me the slightest doubt or misgiving about the reality of a future life. If there is continuity in the world everywhere, why should there be a wrench and annihilation only with us? It will be as it has been--that is the lesson we learn from nature--_how_ it will be we are not meant to know. There is an old Greek saying to the effect, to try to know what the gods did not tell us is not piety. If God wished us to know what is to be, He would tell us. Darwin has shown us that there is continuity from beginning to end. _Life._ I believe in the continuity of Self. If there were an annihilation or complete change of our individual self-consciousness, we might become somebody else, but we should not be ourselves. Personally, I have no doubt of the persistence of the individual after death, as we call it. I cannot imagine the very crown and flower of creation being destroyed by its author. I do not say it is impossible, it is not for us to say either yes or no; we have simply to trust, but that trust or faith is implanted in us, and is strengthened by everything around us. _Life._ Do we really lose those who are called before us? I feel that they are even nearer to us than when they were with us in life. We must take a larger view. Our life does not end here, if only we can see that our horizon here is but like a curtain that separates us from what is beyond. Those who go before us are beyond our horizon at present, but we have no right to suppose that they have completely vanished. We cannot see them, that is all. And even that, we know, can last for a short time only. We have lived and done our work in life, before we knew those we loved, and we may have to live the same number of years separated from them. But nothing can be lost: it depends on ourselves to keep those we loved always near to our thoughts, even though our eyes look in vain for them. The world is larger than this little earth, our thoughts go further than this short life, and if we can but find our home in this larger world, we shall find that this larger home is full of those whom we loved, and who loved us. There is no _chance_ in life; a few years more, a few years less, will seem as nothing to us hereafter. _Life._ I fully take in the real death (of my child), I know I shall follow and die the same real death, and through that same real death I trust the spirit of Christ will be my guide and helper, and bring me to a better life, and unite me again with those whom I have loved, and whom I love still, and those who have loved me and love me still. God is no giver of imperfect gifts, and He has given me life, but life on earth is imperfect. He has given me love, but love on earth is imperfect. I believe, I must believe in perfection, and therefore I believe in a life perfected and in a love perfected. 'Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders--Gott helfe mich Amen.' _MS._ It seems hard, it seems so unintelligible, so far above us, that we should know nothing at all of what is to come--that we should be so completely separated for a time from those whom we love. Whence all these limits? whence all those desires in us that cannot be fulfilled? The limits teach us one lesson, that we are in the Hands of a Higher Power. Wonderful as our body and our senses are, they are a prison and chains, and they could not be meant for anything else. _MS._ Of what is to come, what is in store for us, we know nothing; and the more we know that, the greater and stronger our faith. It must be right, it cannot be wrong. Why was the past often so beautiful? Because all tends to beauty, to perfection, and the highest point of perfection is love. We are far from that here, yet all the miseries of this life, or many at least, would vanish before love. Life seems most unnatural in what we call the most highly civilised countries--the struggle of life is fiercest there. Rest and love seem impossible, and yet that is what we are yearning for, and it may be granted us hereafter. _MS._ How is it that we know so little of life after death? that we can hardly imagine anything without feeling that it is all human poetry? We are to believe the best, but nothing definite, nothing that can be described. It is the same with God, we are to believe the best we can believe, and yet all is earthly, human, weak. We are in a dark prison here; let us believe that outside it there is no darkness, but light--but what light, who knows? _MS._ Wait, wait, do not ask. Children ask every year what the Christ Child will bring them, but they are not told, they wait in the dark room. Every year they expect something quite new, but it is always the same old Christmas-tree, with its lights and flowers, and all the rest. And why should it be so different when the door opens, and we step out of this dark life into the bright room? Why should all be different? We have stepped into this dark room here on earth, and how often did we think it was very bright and very warm. We shall step into another room, and it will be brighter, warmer, more pure, more perfect. _MS._ What is past, present, future? Is it not all one? only the past and the future somewhere where at present we cannot be. Wait a little time, and the eternal will take the place of the present,--and we shall have the past again,--for the past is not lost. Nothing is lost--but this waiting is sometimes very hard, and this longing very hard. Friends go on all sides, it seems a different world, yet there is work to do, and there is much left to love. _MS._ If immortality is meant for no more than a continuance of existence, if by a belief in immortality on the part of the Jews is meant no more than that the Jews did not believe in the annihilation of the soul at the time of death, we may confidently assert that, to the bulk of the Jewish nation, this very idea of annihilation was as yet unfamiliar. The fact is that the idea of absolute annihilation and nothingness is hardly ever found except among people whose mind has received some amount of philosophical education, certainly more than what the Jews possessed in early times. The Jews did not believe in the utter destruction of the soul, but, on the other hand, their idea of life after death was hardly that of life at all. It was existence without life. Death was considered by them, as by the Greeks, as the greatest of misfortunes. To rejoice in death is a purely Christian, not a Jewish, idea. Though the Jews believed that the souls continued to exist in Sheol, they did not believe that the wicked would there be punished and the good rewarded. All rewards and punishments for virtue or vice were confined to this world, and a long life was regarded as a sure proof of the favour of Jehovah. It was the Jewish conception of God, as infinitely removed from this world, that made a belief in true immortality almost impossible for them, and excluded all hope for a nearer approach to God, or for any share in that true immortality which belonged to Him and to Him alone. _Gifford Lectures, III._ Our angels live in heaven, not on earth. We only recognise the angelic in man, even in those we love the most, when we can no longer see them. They are then nearer us than ever, we love them more than ever. Happy are those who have such angels in heaven, who draw our hearts away from earth and fill them with longing for our true home. They lighten the burden of life, they give a quiet, gentle tone to the joys of life, and they teach us to love those who are left to us on earth, it may be but for a few days or years, with a love which we never knew before, a love which bears all things, believes all things, and gladly pardons all things. _MS._ Life Eternal. Why do we so seldom face the great problem? With me the chief reason was the conviction that we can _know_ nothing--that we must wait and trust--do our work for the day which is--and believe that nothing can happen to us unless God wills it. Know, where knowledge is possible; believe, trust where faith only is possible. _MS._ I know we shall meet again, for God does not destroy what He has made, nor do souls meet by accident. This life is full of riddles, but divine riddles have a divine solution. _Life._ THE INFINITE Though we cannot know things finite, as they are in themselves, we know at all events that they are. And this applies to our perception of the Infinite also. We do not know through our senses what it is, but we know through our very senses that it is. We feel the pressure of the Infinite in the Finite, and unless we had that feeling, we should have no true and safe foundation for whatever we may afterwards believe of the Infinite. Some critics have urged that what I call the Infinite ... is the Indefinite only. Of course it is.... We can know the Infinite as the Indefinite only, or as the partially defined. We try to define it, and to know it more and more, but we never finish it. The whole history of religion represents the continuous progress of the human definition of the Infinite, but however far that definition may advance, it will never exhaust the Infinite. Could we define it all, it would cease to be the Infinite, it would cease to be the Unknown, it would cease to be the Inconceivable or the Divine. _Chips._ What we feel through the pressure on all our senses is the pressure of the Infinite. Our senses, if I may say so, feel nothing but the Infinite, and out of that plenitude they apprehend the Finite. To apprehend the Finite is the same as to define the Infinite. _Chips._ We accept the primitive savage with nothing but his five senses. These five senses supply him with a knowledge of finite things; the problem is how such a being ever comes to think or speak of anything not finite, but infinite. It is his senses which give him the first impression of infinite things, and force him to the admission of the infinite. Everything of which his senses cannot perceive a limit is to a primitive savage, or to any man in an early stage of intellectual activity, unlimited or infinite. Man sees to a certain point, and there his eyesight breaks down. But exactly where his eyesight breaks down, there presses upon him, whether he likes it or not, the perception of the unlimited or infinite. It may be said this is not perception in the ordinary sense of the word. No more it is, but still less is it mere reasoning. In perceiving the infinite, we neither count, nor measure, nor compare, nor name. We know not what it is, but we know that it is, and we know it because we actually feel it and are brought in contact with it. If it seems too bold to say that man actually sees the invisible, let us say that he suffers from the invisible, and this invisible is only a special name for the infinite. The infinite, therefore, instead of being merely a late abstraction, is really implied in the earliest manifestations of our sensuous knowledge. It was true from the very first, but it was not yet defined or named. If the infinite had not from the very first been present in our sensuous perceptions, such a word as infinite would be a sound and nothing else. With every finite perception there is a concomitant perception or a concomitant sentiment or presentiment of the infinite; from the very first act of touch, or hearing, or sight, we are brought in contact, not only with the visible, but also at the same time with an invisible universe. We have in this that without which no religion would have been possible, we have in that perception of the infinite the root of the whole historical development of religion. _Hibbert Lectures._ No thought, no name is ever entirely lost. When we here in this ancient Abbey,[2] which was built on the ruins of a still more ancient Roman temple, seek for a name for the invisible, the infinite that surrounds us on every side, the unknown, the true Self of the world, and the true Self of ourselves--we too, feeling once more like children kneeling in a small dark room, can hardly find a better name than 'Our Father, which art in Heaven.' _Hibbert Lectures._ [Footnote 2: Westminster.] The idea of the infinite, which is at the root of all religious thought, is not simply evolved by reason out of nothing, but supplied to us, in its original form, by our senses. Beyond, behind, beneath, and within the finite, the infinite is always present to our senses. It presses upon us, it grows upon us from every side. What we call finite in space and time, in form and word, is nothing but a veil or a net which we ourselves have thrown over the infinite. The finite by itself, without the infinite, is simply inconceivable; as inconceivable as the infinite without the finite. As reason deals with the finite materials supplied to us by our senses, faith, or whatever else we like to call it, deals with the infinite that underlies the finite. What we call sense, reason, and faith are three functions of one and the same perceptive self; but without sense both reason and faith are impossible, at least to human beings like ourselves. _Hibbert Lectures._ The ancestors of our race did not only believe in divine powers more or less manifest to their senses, in rivers and mountains, in the sky and the sun, in the thunder and rain, but their senses likewise suggested to them two of the most essential elements of all religion: the concept of the infinite, and the concept of law and order, as revealed before them, the one in the golden sea behind the dawn, the other in the daily path of the sun.... These two concepts, which sooner or later must be taken in and minded by every human being, were at first no more than an impulse, but their impulsive force would not rest till it had beaten into the minds of the fathers of our race the deep and indelible impression that 'all is right,' and filled them with a hope, and more than a hope, that 'all will be right.' _Hibbert Lectures._ The real religious instinct or impulse is the perception of the infinite. _Hibbert Lectures._ All objects which we perceive and afterwards conceive and name must be circumscribed, must have been separated from their surroundings, must be measurable, and can thus only become perceivable and knowable and namable.... They are therefore finite in their very nature.... If finiteness is a necessary characteristic of our ordinary knowledge, it requires but little reflection to perceive that limitation or finiteness, in whatever sense we use it, always implies a something beyond. We are told that our mind is so constituted, whether it is our fault or not, that we cannot conceive an absolute limit. Beyond every limit we must always take it for granted that there is something else. But what is the reason of this? The reason why we cannot conceive an absolute limit is because we never perceive an absolute limit; or in other words, because in perceiving the finite we always perceive the infinite also.... There is no limit which has not two sides, the one turned towards us, the other turned towards what is beyond; and it is that Beyond which from the earliest days has formed the only real foundation of all that we call transcendental in our perceptual, as well as in our conceptual, Knowledge. _Gifford Lectures, I._ The infinite was not discovered behind the veil of nature only, though its manifestation in physical phenomena was no doubt the most primitive and the most fertile source of mythological and religious ideas. There were two more manifestations of the infinite and the unknown, which must not be neglected, if we wish to gain a complete insight into the theogonic process through which the human mind had to pass from its earliest days. The infinite disclosed itself not only in nature but likewise in man, looked upon as an object, and lastly in man looked upon as a subject. Man looked upon as an object, as a living thing, was felt to be more than a mere part of nature. There was something in man, whether it was called breath or spirit or soul or mind, which was perceived and yet not perceived, which was behind the veil of the body, and from a very early time was believed to remain free from decay, even when illness and death had destroyed the body in which it seemed to dwell. There was nothing to force even the simplest peasant to believe that because he saw his father dead, and his body decaying, therefore what was known as the man himself, call it his soul or his mind or his person, had vanished altogether out of existence. A philosopher may arrive at such an idea, but a man of ordinary understanding, though terrified by the aspect of death, would rather be inclined to believe that what he had known and loved and called his father or mother must be somewhere, though no longer in the body.... It is perhaps too much to say that such a belief was universal; but it certainly was and is still very widely spread. In fact it constitutes a very large portion of religion and religious worship. _Gifford Lectures, I._ Nature, Man, and Self are the three great manifestations in which the infinite in some shape or other has been perceived, and every one of these perceptions has in its historical development contributed to what may be called religion. _Gifford Lectures, I._ Like all other experiences, our religious experience begins with the senses. Though the senses seem to deliver to us finite experiences only, many, if not all, of them can be shown to involve something beyond the Known, something unknown, something which I claim the liberty to call infinite. In this way the human mind was led to the recognition of undefined, infinite agents or agencies beyond, behind, and within our finite experience. The feelings of fear, awe, reverence, and love excited by the manifestations of some of these agents or powers began to react on the human mind, and thus produced what we call Natural Religion in its lowest and simplest form--fear, awe, reverence, and love of the gods. _Gifford Lectures, I._ The perception of the Infinite can be shown by historical evidence to be the one element shared in common by all religions. Only we must not forget that, like every other concept, that of the Infinite also had to pass through many phases in its historical evolution, beginning with the simple negation of what is finite, and the assertion of an invisible Beyond, and leading up to a perceptive belief in that most real Infinite in which we live and move and have our being. _Gifford Lectures, IV._ KNOWLEDGE The lesson that there are limits to our knowledge is an old lesson, but it has to be taught again and again. It was taught by Buddha, it was taught by Socrates, and it was taught for the last time in the most powerful manner by Kant. Philosophy has been called the knowledge of our knowledge; it might be called more truly the knowledge of our ignorance, or, to adopt the more moderate language of Kant, the knowledge of the limits of our knowledge. _Last Essays._ Metaphysical truth is wider than physical truth, and the new discoveries of physical observers, if they are to be more than merely contingent truths, must find their appointed place and natural refuge within the immovable limits traced by the metaphysician.... It is only after having mastered the principles of metaphysics that the student of nature can begin his work in the right spirit, knowing the horizon of human knowledge, and guided by principles as unchangeable as the pole star. _Last Essays._ There is no subject in the whole realm of human knowledge that cannot be rendered clear and intelligible, if we ourselves have perfectly mastered it. _Chips._ The bridge of thoughts and sighs that spans the whole history of the Aryan world has its first arch in the _Veda_, its last in Kant's _Critique of Pure Reason_. In the _Veda_ we watch the first unfolding of the human mind as we can watch it nowhere else. Life seems simple, natural, childlike.... What is beneath, and above, and beyond this life is dimly perceived, and expressed in a thousand words and ways, all mere stammerings, all aiming to express what cannot be expressed, yet all full of a belief in the real presence of the Divine in Nature, of the Infinite in the Finite.... While in the _Veda_ we may study the childhood, we may study in Kant's _Critique_ the perfect manhood of the Aryan mind. It has passed through many phases, and every one of them ... has left its mark. It is no longer dogmatical, no longer sceptical, least of all is it positive.... It stands before us conscious of its weakness and its strength, modest yet brave. It knows what the old idols of its childhood and youth were made of. It does not break them, it only tries to understand them, but it places above them the Ideals of Reason--no longer tangible--not even within the reach of the understanding--but real--bright and heavenly stars to guide us even in the darkest night. _Last Essays._ All knowledge, in order to be knowledge, must pass through two gates, and two gates only: the gate of the senses and the gate of reason. Religious knowledge also, whether true or false, must have passed through these two gates. At these two gates, therefore, we take our stand. Whatever claims to have entered in by any other gate, whether that gate is called primeval revelation or religious instinct, must be rejected as contraband of thought; and whatever claims to have entered by the gate of reason, without having first passed through the gate of the senses, must equally be rejected, as without sufficient warrant, or ordered at least to go back to the first gate, in order to produce there its full credentials. _Hibbert Lectures._ LANGUAGE The history of language opens a vista which makes one feel almost giddy if one tries to see the end of it, but the measuring-rod of the chronologist seems to me entirely out of place. Those who have eyes to see will see the immeasurable distance between the first historical appearance of language and the real beginnings of human speech: those who cannot see will oscillate between the wildly large figures of the Buddhists, or the wildly small figures of the Rabbis, but they will never lay hold of what by its very nature is indefinite. _Life._ By no effort of the understanding, by no stretch of imagination, can I explain to myself how language could have grown out of anything which animals possess, even if we granted them millions of years for that purpose. If anything has a right to the name of specific difference, it is language, as we find it in man, and in man only. Even if we removed the name of specific difference from our philosophic dictionaries, I should still hold that nothing deserves the name of man except what is able to speak. _Science of Thought._ Every language has to be learnt, but who made the language that was to be learnt? It matters little whether we call language an instinct, a gift, a talent, a faculty, or the _proprium_ of man; certain it is that neither language, nor the power of language, nor the conditions under which alone language can exist, are to be discovered anywhere in the whole animal kingdom, except in man. _Science of Thought._ It was Christianity which first broke down the barrier between Jew and Gentile, between Greek and Barbarian, between the white and the black. _Humanity_ is a word which you look for in vain in Plato and Aristotle; the idea of mankind as one family, as the children of one God, is an idea of Christian growth; and the science of mankind, and of the languages of mankind, is a science which, without Christianity, would never have sprung into life. When people had been taught to look upon all men as brethren, then, and then only, did the variety of human speech present itself as a problem that called for a solution in the eyes of thoughtful observers; and from an historical point of view it is not too much to say that the first day of Pentecost marks the real beginning of the science of language. _Science of Language._ And now, if we gaze from our native shores over the vast ocean of human speech, with its waves rolling on from continent to continent, rising under the fresh breezes of the morning of history, and slowly heaving in our own more sultry atmosphere, with sails gliding over its surface, and many an oar ploughing through its surf, and the flags of all nations waving joyously together, with its rocks and wrecks, its storms and battles, yet reflecting serenely all that is beneath and above and around it; if we gaze and hearken to the strange sounds rushing past our ears in unbroken strains, it seems no longer a wild tumult, but we feel as if placed within some ancient cathedral, listening to a chorus of innumerable voices: and the more intensely we listen, the more all discords melt away into higher harmonies, till at last we hear but one majestic trichord, or a mighty unison, as at the end of a sacred symphony. Such visions will float through the study of the grammarian, and in the midst of toilsome researches his heart will suddenly beat, as he feels the conviction growing upon him that men are brethren in the simplest sense of the word--the children of the same father--whatever their country, their language, and their faith. _Turanian Languages._ LIFE All really great and honest men may be said to live three lives: there is one life which is seen and accepted by the world at large, a man's outward life; there is a second life which is seen by a man's most intimate friends, his household life; and there is a third life, seen only by the man himself, and by Him who searcheth the heart, which may be called the inner or heavenly--a life led in communion with God, a life of aspiration rather than of fulfilment. _Chips._ Where Plato could only see imperfections, the failures of the founders of human speech, we see, as everywhere else in human life, a natural progress from the imperfect towards the perfect, unceasing attempts at realising the ideal, and the frequent triumphs of the human mind over the inevitable difficulties of this earthly condition--difficulties not of man's own making, but, as I firmly believe, prepared for him, and not without a purpose, as toils and tasks, by a higher Power, and by the highest wisdom. _Chips._ Our life is not completely in our hands--we must submit to many things which we may smile at in our inmost heart, but which nevertheless are essential, not only to our happiness, but to our fulfilling the duties which we are called to fulfil. We ought to look upon the circumstances in which we are born and brought up as ordained by a Higher Power, and we must learn to walk the path which is pointed out to us! _Life._ It is difficult to be always true to ourselves, to be always what we wish to be, what we feel we ought to be. As long as we feel that, as long as we do not surrender the ideal of our life, all is right. Our aspirations represent the true nature of our soul much more than our everyday life. I feel as much as you, how far I have been left behind in the race which I meant to run, but I honestly try to rouse myself, and to live up to what I feel I ought to be. Let us keep up our constant fight against all that is small and common and selfish, let us never lose our faith in the ideal life, in what we ought to be, and in what with constant prayer to God we shall be, and let us never forget how unworthy we are of all the blessings God has showered down upon us. _Life._ I feel quite thankful for any little misfortune; it is like paying something of the large debt of happiness we owe, though it is but a very trifling interest, and the capital we must owe for ever. _MS._ I thought a long time about my happiness, and my unworthiness, and God's unbounded mercy. And then I heard the words within me: 'Be not afraid.' Yes, there must be no fear. Where there is fear there is no perfect love. Our happiness here is but a foretaste of our blessed life hereafter. We must never forget that. We shall be called away, but we shall meet again. _MS._ I begin to be quite thankful for my disappointment--we all want winding up, and nothing does it so well as a great disappointment, if we only see clearly Who sent it and then forget everything else. _MS._ One sometimes forgets that all this is only the preparation for what is to come hereafter. Yet we should never forget this, otherwise this life loses its true meaning and purpose. If we only know what we live for here, we can easily find out what is worth having in this life, and what is not; we can easily go on without many things which others, whose eyes are fixed on this world only, consider essential to their happiness. _MS._ The spirit of love, and the spirit of truth, are the two life-springs of our whole being--or, what is the same, of our whole religion. If we lose that bond, which holds us and binds us to a higher world, our life becomes purposeless, joyless; if it holds us and supports, life becomes perfect, all little cares vanish, and we feel we are working out a great purpose as well as we can, a purpose not our own, not selfish, not self-seeking, but, in the truest sense of the word, God-serving and God-seeking.... Gentleness is a kind of mixture of love and truthfulness, and it should be the highest object of our life to attain more and more to that true gentleness which throws such a charm over all our life. There is a gentleness of voice, of look, of movement, of speech, all of which are but the expressions of true gentleness of heart. _MS._ It is impossible to take too high a view of life; the very highest we take is still too low. One feels that more and more as our life draws to its close, and many things that seemed important once are seen to be of no consequence, while only a few things remain which will tell for ever. _MS._ I don't believe in what is called worldly wisdom. I do not think the world was made for it--with real faith in a higher life I believe one can pass through this life without let or hindrance. What I dread are compromises. There are false notes in them always, and a false note goes on for ever. _MS._ How thankful we ought to be every minute of our existence to Him who gives us all richly to enjoy. How little one has deserved this happy life, much less than many poor sufferers to whom life is a burden and a hard and bitter trial. But then, how much greater the claims on us; how much more sacred the duty never to trifle, never to waste time and power, never to compromise, but to live in all things, small and great, to the praise and glory of God, to have God always present with us, and to be ready to follow His voice, and His voice only. Has our prosperity taught us to meet adversity when it comes? I often tremble, but then I commit all to God, and I say, 'Have mercy upon me, miserable sinner.' _Life._ There is something very awful in this life, and it is not right to try to forget it. It is well to be reminded by the trials of others of what may befall us, and what is kept from us only by the love of our Father in heaven, not by any merit of our own. _MS._ How different life is to what one thought it when young, how all around us falls together, till we ourselves fall together. How meaningless and vain everything seems on earth, and how closely the reality of the life beyond approaches us. Many days were beautiful here, but the greater the happiness the more bitter the thought that it all passes away, that nothing remains of earthly happiness, but a grateful heart and faith in God who knows best what is best for us. _MS._ Oh! if we could even in this life forget all that is unessential, all that makes it so hard for us to recognise true greatness and goodness in the character of those with whom this life brings us in contact for a little while! How much we lose by making little things so important, and how rarely do we think highly enough of what is essential and lasting! _MS._ You must accustom yourself more and more to the thought that here is not our abiding city, that all that we call ours here is only lent, not given us, and that if the sorrow for those we have lost remains the same, we must yet acknowledge with gratitude to God the great blessing of having enjoyed so many years with those whom He gave us, as parents, or children, or friends. One forgets so easily the happy years one has had with those who were the nearest to us. Even these years of happiness, however short they may have been, were only given us, we had not deserved them. I know well there is no comfort for this pain of parting: the wound always remains, but one learns to bear the pain, and learns to thank God for what He gave, for the beautiful memories of the past, and the yet more beautiful hope for the future. If a man has lent us anything for several years, and at last takes it back, he expects gratitude, not anger; and if God has more patience with our weakness than men have, yet murmurs and complaints for the life which He measured out for us as is best for us, are not what He expected from us. A spirit of resignation to God's will is our only comfort, the only relief under the trials God lays upon us, and with such a spirit the heaviest as well as the lightest trials of life are not only bearable, but useful, and gratitude to God and joy in life and death remain untroubled. _Life._ By a grave one learns what life really is--that it is not here but elsewhere--that this is the exile and there is our home. As we grow older the train of life goes faster and faster, those with whom we travelled together step out from station to station, and our own station too will soon be reached. _MS._ It seems to me so ungrateful to allow one moment to pass that is not full of joy and happiness, and devotion to Him who gives us all this richly to enjoy. The clouds will come, they must come, but they ought never to be of our own making. _Life._ The shadows fall thicker and thicker, but even in the shade it is well, often better than in full sunshine. And when the evening comes, one is tired and ready to sleep! And so all is ordered for us, if we only accommodate ourselves to it quietly. _Life._ As long as God wills it we must learn to bear this life, but when He calls us we willingly close our eyes, for we know it is better for us there than here. When so many whom we loved are gone before us, we follow gladly; and the older we become here, the more one feels that death is a relief. And yet we can thankfully enjoy what is still left us on earth, even if our hearts no longer cling to it as formerly. _Life._ Our life here is not our own work, and we know that it is best for us all just as it is. We ought to bear it, and we must bear it; and the more patiently, yes, the more joyfully, we accommodate ourselves to it, the better for us. We must take life as it is, as the way appointed for us, and that must lead to a certain goal. Some go sooner, some later, but we all go the same way, and all find the same place of rest. Impatience, gloom, murmurs and tears do not help us, do not alter anything, and make the road longer, not shorter. Quiet, resignation, thankfulness and faith help us forwards, and alone make it possible to perform the duties which we all, each in his own sphere, have to fulfil.... The darker the night, the clearer the stars in heaven. _Life._ How different life might be, if in our daily intercourse and conversation we thought of our friends as lying before us on the last bed of flowers--how differently we should then judge, and how differently we should act. All that is of the earth is then forgotten, all the little failings inherent in human nature vanish from our minds, and we only see what was good, unselfish, and loving in that soul, and we think with regret of how much more we might have done to requite that love. It is curious how forgetful we are of death, how little we think that we are dying daily, and that what we call life is really death, and death the beginning of a higher life. Such a thought should not make our life less bright, but rather more--it should make us feel how unimportant many things are which we consider all-important: how much we could bear which we think unbearable, if only we thought that to-morrow we ourselves or our friends may be taken away, at least for a time. You should think of death, should feel that what you call your own is only lent to you, and that all that remains as a real comfort is the good work done in this short journey, the true unselfish love shown to those whom God has given us, has placed near to us, not without a high purpose. _Life._ What a marvel life seems to be the older we grow! So far from becoming more intelligible, it becomes a greater wonder every day. One stands amazed, and everything seems so small--the little one can do so very small. One ought not to brood too much, when there is no chance of light, and yet how natural it is that one should brood over life and death, rather than on the little things of life. _Life._ If we only hold fast the belief that nothing happens but by the will of God, we learn to be still and can bear everything. The older one grows, the more one feels sure that life here is but a long imprisonment, and one longs for freedom and higher efforts.... How small and insignificant is all in this life when we raise our eyes above. Gazing up to the Lord of the Universe, all strife is made easy. We speak different tongues when we think of the Highest, but we all mean the same thing. _MS._ It is sad to think of all that was and is no more, and yet there is something much more real in memory than one used to think. All is there but what our weak human senses require, and nothing is lost, nothing can be lost except what we know would vanish one day, but what was the husk only, not the kernel. I have learnt to live with those who went before us, and they seem more entirely our own than when they were with us in the body. And as long as we have duties to fulfil, so long as there are others who lean on us and want us, life can be lived a few years longer, it can only be a few years. _MS._ Life is earnest! is a very old lesson, and we are never too old to learn it. 'Life is an art' is Goethe's doctrine, and there is some truth in it also, as long as art does not imply artful or artificial. Huxley used to say the highest end of life is action, not knowledge. There I quite differ. First knowledge, then action, and what a lottery action is! The best intentions often fail, and what is done to-day is undone to-morrow. However, we must toil on and do what every day brings us, and do it as well as we can, and better, if possible, than anybody else. _Life._ What can we call ours if God did not vouchsafe it to us from day to day? Yet it is so difficult to give oneself up entirely to Him, to trust everything to His Love and Wisdom. I thought I could say, 'Thy Will be done,' but I found I could not: my own will struggled against His Will. I prayed as we ought not to pray, and yet He heard me. It is so difficult not to grow very fond of this life and all its happiness, but the more we love it, the more we suffer, for we know we must lose it and it must all pass away. _MS._ Our idea of life grows larger, and birth and death seem like morning and evening. One feels that as it has been so it will be again, and all one can do is to try to make the best of every day, as it comes and goes. _Life._ The things that annoy us in life are after all very trifling things, if we always bear in mind for what purpose we are here. And even in the heavier trials, one knows, or one should know, that all is sent by a higher power, and in the end must be for our best interests. It is true we cannot understand it, but we can understand that God rules in the world in the smallest and in the largest events, and he who keeps that ever in mind has the peace of God, and enjoys his life as long as it lasts. _Life._ Life may grow more strange and awful every day, but the more strange and awful it grows, the more it reveals to us its truest meaning and reality, and the deepest depth of its divinity. 'And God saw everything that He had made, and behold it was very good.' _Life._ Enjoy the precious years God has added to your life, with constant gratitude, with quiet and purity of soul, looking more to the heavenly than to the earthly: that gives true joyfulness of soul, if we _every moment_ recollect what is eternal, and never quite lose ourselves in the small, or even the large cares of life. _Life._ If we live on this earth only, if our thoughts are hemmed in by the narrow horizon of this life, then we lose indeed those whom death takes from us. But it is death itself which teaches us that there is a Beyond, we are lifted up and see a new world, far beyond what we had seen before. In that wide world we lead a new and larger life, a life which includes those we no longer see on earth, but whom we cannot surrender. The old Indian philosophers say that no one can find the truth whose heart is attached to his wife and children. No doubt perfect freedom from all affections would make life and death very easy. But may not the very love which we feel for those who belong to us, even when they are taken from us, bring light to our eyes, and make us see the truth that, by that very love, we belong to another world, and that from that world, however little we can here know about it, love will not be excluded. We believe what we desire--true--but why do we desire? Let us be ourselves, let us be what we are meant to be on earth, and trust to Him who made us what we are. _MS._ Yes, every day adds a new thin layer of new thoughts, and these layers form the texture of our character. The materials come floating towards us, but the way in which they settle down depends much on the ebb and flow within us. We can do much to keep off foreign elements, and to attach and retain those which serve best in building up a strong rock. But from time to time a great sorrow breaks through all the strata of our soul--all is upheaved, shattered, distorted. In nature all that is grand dates from such convulsions--why should we wish for a new smooth surface, or let our sorrows be covered by the flat sediment of everyday life? _MS._ If we feel that this life can only be a link in a chain without beginning and without end, in a circle which has its beginning and its end everywhere and nowhere, we learn to bear it, and to enjoy it too, in a new sense. What we achieve here assumes a new meaning--it will not altogether perish, whether for good or for evil. What is done in time is done for ever--what is done by one affects us all. Thus our love too is not lost--what is loved in time is loved for ever. The form changes, but that which changes, which undergoes change, remains itself unchanged. We seem to love the fleeting forms of life, and yet how can we truly love what is so faithless? No, we truly love what is, and was, and will be, hidden under the fleeting forms of life, but in itself more than those fleeting forms however fair. We love the fair appearance too, how could it be otherwise? but we should love it only as belonging to what we love--not as being what we love. So it is, or rather so it ought to be. Yet while we are what we are, we love the flower, not the sightless grain of seed, and when that flower fades and passes away, we mourn for it, and our only comfort is that we too fade and pass away. Then we follow there, wherever they go. Some flowers fade sooner, some later, but none is quite forgotten. _MS._ It would be difficult to say at what moment in our young lives real responsibility begins. The law fixes a time, our own heart cannot do that. Yet in spite of this unknown quantity at the beginning, we begin afterwards to reckon with ourselves. Why should we protest against a similar unknown quantity before the beginning of our life on earth? Wherever and whenever it was, we feel that we have made ourselves what we are; is not that a useful article of faith? Does it not help us to decide on undoing what we have done wrong and in doing all the good we can, even if it does not bear fruit, within or without, in this life? A break of consciousness does not seem incompatible with a sense of responsibility, if we know by reasoning, though not by recollection, that what we see done in ourselves must have been done by ourselves. And even if we waive the question of responsibility for the first two or three years of our life on earth, surely we existed during those years though we do not recollect it,--then why not before our life on earth? _MS._ We must learn to live two lives--this short life here on earth with its joys and sorrows, and that true life beyond, of which this is only a fragment or an interruption. When we enter into that true life, we shall find what we cannot find here, we shall find what we have lost here. If only so many things did not seem so irregular, so unnatural. The death of young children before their parents. We love them better because we know we can lose them--that is true--but yet it is a hard lesson to learn. _MS._ One month will go after another, till at last this journey is over, and we look back on it grateful for the many pleasures it has given us, grateful for the company of so many kind friends whom we met, grateful also for the struggles which we had to go through and which will appear so small, and so little worth our tears and anguish, when all is over and the last station and resting-place reached in safety. _MS._ LOVE I cannot help thinking that the souls towards whom we feel drawn in this life are the very souls whom we knew and loved in a former life, and that the souls who repel us here, we do not know why, are the souls that earned our disapproval, the souls from whom we kept aloof, in a former life. But let us remember that if our love is the love of what is merely phenomenal, the love of the body, the kindness of the heart, the vigour and wisdom of the intellect, our love is the love of changing and perishable things.... But if our love, under all its earthly aspects, was the love of the true soul, of what is immortal and divine in every man and woman, that love cannot die, but will find once more what seems beautiful, true, and lovable in worlds to come, as in worlds that have passed.... What we truly love in everything is the eternal _âtman_, the immortal self, and as we should add, the immortal God, for the immortal self and the immortal God must be one. _Last Essays._ We must not forget that if earthly love has in the vulgar mind been often degraded into mere animal passion, it still remains in its purest sense the highest mystery of our existence, the most perfect blessing and delight on earth, and at the same time the truest pledge of our more than human nature. To be able to feel the same unselfish devotion to the Deity which the human heart is capable of, if filled with love for another human soul, is something that may well be called the best religion. _Gifford Lectures, IV._ What the present generation ought to learn, the young as well as the old, is spirit and perseverance to discover the beautiful, pleasure and joy in making it known, and resigning ourselves with grateful hearts to its enjoyment; in a word--love, in the old, true, eternal meaning of the word. Only sweep away the dust of self-conceit, the cobwebs of selfishness, the mud of envy, and the old type of humanity will soon reappear, as it was when it could still 'embrace millions.' The love of mankind, the true fountain of all humanity, is still there; it can never be quite choked up. He who can descend into this fountain of youth, who can again recover himself, who can again be that which he was by nature, loves the beautiful wherever he finds it; he understands enjoyment and enthusiasm, in the few quiet hours which he can win for himself in the noisy, deafening hurry of the times in which we live. _Chips._ Would not the carrying out of one single commandment of Christ, 'Love one another,' change the whole aspect of the world, and sweep away prisons and workhouses, and envying and strife, and all the strongholds of the devil? Two thousand years have nearly passed, and people have not yet understood that one single command of Christ, 'Love one another'! We are as perfect heathens in that one respect as it is possible to be. No, this world might be heaven on earth, if we would but carry out God's work and God's commandments, and so it will be hereafter. _Life._ If we do a thing because we think it is our duty, we generally fail; that is the old law which makes slaves of us. The real spring of our life, and of our work in life, must be love--true, deep love--not love of this or that person, or for this or that reason, but deep human love, devotion of soul to soul, love of God realised where alone it can be, in love of those whom He loves. Everything else is weak, passes away; that love alone supports us, makes life tolerable, binds the present together with the past and future, and is, we may trust, imperishable. _Life._ Love which seems so unselfish may become very selfish if we are not on our guard. Do not shut your eyes to what is dark in others, but do not dwell on it except so far as it helps to bring out more strongly what is bright in them, lovely, and unselfish. The true happiness of true love is self-forgetfulness and trust. _Life._ There is nothing in life like a mother's love, though children often do not find it out till it is too late. If you want to be really happy in life, love your mother with all your heart; it is a blessing to feel that you belong to her, and that through her you are connected by an unbroken chain with the highest source of our being. _MS._ Is there such a thing as a Lost Love? I do not believe it. Nothing that is true and great is ever lost on earth, though its fulfilment may be deferred beyond this short life.... Love is eternal, and all the more so if it does not meet with its fulfilment on earth. If once we know that our lives are in the hands of God, and that nothing can happen to us without His Will, we are thankful for the trials which He sends us. Is there any one who loves us more than God? any one who knows better what is for our real good than God? This little artificial and complicated society of ours may sometimes seem to be outside His control, but if we think so it is our own fault, and we have to suffer for it. We blame our friends, we mistrust ourselves, and all this because our wild hearts will not be quiet in that narrow cage in which they must be kept to prevent mischief. _Life._ Does love pass away (with death)? I cannot believe it. God made us as we are, many instead of one. Christ died for all of us individually, and such as we are--beings incomplete in themselves, and perfect only through love to God on one side, and through love to man on the other. We want both kinds of love for our very existence, and therefore in a higher and better existence too the love of kindred souls may well exist together with our love of God. We need not love those we love best on earth less in heaven, though we may love all better than we do on earth. After all, love seems only the taking away those unnatural barriers which divide us from our fellow creatures--it is only the restoration of that union which binds us altogether in God, and which has broken on earth we know not how. In Christ alone that union was preserved, for He loved us _all_ with a love warmer than the love of a husband for his wife, or a mother for her child. He gave His life for us, and if we ask ourselves there is hardly a husband or a mother who would really suffer death for his wife or her child. Thus we see that even what seems to us the most perfect love is very far as yet from the perfection of love which drives out the whole self and all that is selfish, and we must try to love more, not to love less, and trust that what is imperfect here is not meant to be destroyed, but to be made perfect hereafter. With God nothing is imperfect; without Him everything is imperfect. We must live and love in God, and then we need not fear: though our life seem chequered and fleeting, we know that there is a home for us in God, and rest for all our troubles in Christ. _Life._ Let us hold together while life lasts. Hand in hand we may achieve more than each alone by himself. We are much less afraid when we are two together. The chief condition of all spiritual friendship is perfect frankness. There is no better proof of true friendship than sincere reproof, where such reproof is necessary. We are occupied in one great work, and in this consciousness all that is small must necessarily disappear. _Life._ Why do we love so deeply? Is not that also God's will? And if so, why should that love ever cease? What should we be without it? I cannot believe that we are to surrender that love, that we are to lose those who were given us to love. Love may be purified, may become more and more unselfish, may be very different from what it was on earth, but sympathy, suffering together and rejoicing together, lies very deep at the root of all being--were it ever to cease, our very being might cease too. We cannot help loving, loving more and more, better and better. Thus life becomes brighter and brighter again, and we feel that we have not lost those who are taken from us for a little while. We love them all the more, all the better. _MS._ How selfish we are even in our love. Here we live for a short season, and we know we must part sooner or later. We wish to go first, and to leave those whom we love behind us, and we sorrow because they went first and left us behind. As soon as one looks beyond this life, it seems so short, yet there was a time when it seemed endless. _MS._ The past is ours, and there we have all who loved us, and whom we love as much as ever, ay, more than ever. _MS._ MANKIND The earth was unintelligible to the ancients because looked upon as a solitary being, without a peer in the whole universe; but it assumed a new and true significance as soon as it rose before the eyes of man as one of many planets, all governed by the same laws, and all revolving around the same centre. It is the same with the human soul, and its nature stands before our mind in quite a different light since man has been taught to know and feel himself as a member of a great family--as one of the myriads of wandering stars all governed by the same laws, and all revolving around the same centre, and all deriving their light from the same source. 'Universal History' has laid open new avenues of thought, and it has enriched our language with a word which never passed the lips of Socrates, or Plato, or Aristotle--_Mankind_. Where the Greek saw barbarians, we see brethren; where the Greek saw nations, we see mankind, toiling and suffering, separated by oceans, divided by language, and severed by national enmity,--yet evermore tending, under a divine control, towards the fulfilment of that inscrutable purpose for which the world was created, and man placed in it, bearing the image of God. History therefore, with its dusty and mouldering pages, is to us as sacred a volume as the book of nature. In both we read, or we try to read, the reflex of the laws and thoughts of a Divine Wisdom. We believe that there is nothing irrational in either history or nature, and that the human mind is called upon to read and to revere in both the manifestations of a Divine Power. _Chips._ There are two antagonistic schools--the one believing in a descending, the other in an ascending development of the human race; the one asserting that the history of the human mind begins of necessity with a state of purity and simplicity which gradually gives way to corruption, perversity, and savagery; the other maintaining that the first human beings could not have been more than one step above the animals, and that their whole history is one of progress towards higher perfection. With regard to the beginnings of religion, the one school holds to a primitive suspicion of something that is beyond--call it supernatural, transcendental, infinite, or divine. It considers a silent walking across this bridge of life, with eyes fixed on high, as a more perfect realisation of primitive religion than singing of Vedic hymns, offering of Jewish sacrifices, or the most elaborate creeds and articles. The other begins with the purely animal and passive nature of man, and tries to show how the repeated impressions of the world in which he lived, drove him to fetichism and totemism, whatever these words may mean, to ancestor worship, to a worship of nature, of trees and serpents, of mountains and rivers, of clouds and meteors, of sun and moon and stars, and the vault of heaven, and at last to a belief in One who dwells in heaven above. _Chips._ MIND OR THOUGHT Wherever we can see clearly, we see that what we call mind and thought consist in this, that man has the power not only to receive presentations like an animal, but to discover something general in them. This element he can eliminate and fix by vocal signs; and he can further classify single presentations under the same general concepts, and mark them by the same vocal signs. _Silesian Horseherd._ Language and thought go hand in hand; where there is as yet no word, there is not yet an idea. The thinking capacity of the mind has its source in language, lives in language, and develops continually in language. _Silesian Horseherd._ All our thoughts, even the apparently most abstract, have their natural beginnings in what passes daily before our senses. _Nihil in fide nisi quod ante fuerit in sensu._ Man may for a time be unheedful of these voices of nature; but they come again and again, day after day, night after night, till at last they are heeded. And if once heeded, those voices disclose their purport more and more clearly, and what seemed at first a mere sunrise becomes in the end a visible revelation of the infinite, while the setting of the sun is transfigured into the first vision of immortality. _Hibbert Lectures._ As the evolution of nature can be studied with any hope of success in those products only which nature has left us, the evolution of mind also can be effectually studied in those products only which mind itself has left us. These mental products in their earliest form are always embodied in language, and it is in language, therefore, that we must study the problem of the origin, and of the successive stages in the growth of mind. _Science of Thought._ If language and reason are identical, or two names, or two aspects only of the same thing, and if we cannot doubt that language had an historical beginning, and represents the work of man carried on through many thousands of years, we cannot avoid the conclusion that before those thousands of years there was a time when the first stone of the great temple of language was laid, and before that time man was without language, and therefore without reason. _Science of Thought._ MIRACLES If once the human mind has arrived at the conviction that _everything_ must be accounted for, or, as it is sometimes expressed, that there is uniformity, that there is care and order in everything, and that an unbroken chain of cause and effect holds the whole universe together, then the idea of the miraculous arises, and we, weak human creatures, call what is not intelligible to us, what is not in accordance with law, what seems to break through the chain of cause and effect, a miracle. Every miracle, therefore, is of our own making, and of our own unmaking. _Gifford Lectures, III._ It is due to the psychological necessities of human nature, under the inspiring influence of religious enthusiasm, that so many of the true signs and wonders performed by the founders of religion have so often been exaggerated, and, in spite of the strongest protests of these founders themselves, degraded into mere jugglery. It is true that all this does not form an essential element of religion, as we now understand religion. Miracles are no longer used as arguments in support of the truth of religious doctrines. Miracles have often been called helps to faith, but they have so often proved stumbling-blocks to faith, and no one in our days would venture to say that the truth as taught by any religion must stand or fall by certain prodigious events which may or may not have happened, which may or may not have been rightly apprehended by the followers of Buddha, Christ, or Mohammed. _Gifford Lectures, II._ Our Lord's ascension will have to be understood as a sublime idea, materialised in the language of children. Is not a real fact that happened, in a world in which nothing can happen against the will of God, better than any miracle? Why should we try to know more than we can know, if only we firmly believe that Christ's immortal spirit ascended to the Father? That alone is true immortality, divine immortality; not the resuscitation of the frail mortal body, but the immortality of the immortal divine soul. It was this rising of the Spirit, and not of the body, without which, as St. Paul said, our faith would be vain. It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing. _Gifford Lectures, III._ It will be to many of the honest disciples of Christ a real day of Damascus, when the very name of miracle shall be struck out of the dictionary of Christian theology. The facts remain exactly as they are, but the Spirit of truth will give them a higher meaning. What is wanted for this is not less, but more, faith, for it requires more faith to believe in Christ without, than with, the help of miracles. Nothing has produced so much distress of mind, so much intellectual dishonesty, so much scepticism, so much unbelief, as the miraculous element forced into Christianity from the earliest days. Nothing has so much impeded missionary work as the attempt to persuade people first not to believe in their own miracles, and then to make a belief in other miracles a condition of their becoming Christians. It is easy to say 'You are not a Christian if you do not believe in Christian miracles.' I hope the time will come when we shall be told, 'You are not a Christian if you cannot believe in Christ without the help of miracles.' _Gifford Lectures, III._ MUSIC Music is the language of the soul, but it defies interpretation. It means something, but that something belongs not to this world of sense and logic, but to another world, quite real, though beyond all definition.... Is there not in Music, and in Music alone of all the arts, something that is not entirely of this earth?... Whence comes melody? Surely not from anything that we hear with our outward ears and are able to imitate, to improve, or to sublimise.... Here if anywhere we see the golden stairs on which angels descend from heaven and whisper sweet sounds into the ears of those who have ears to hear. Words cannot be so inspired, for words, we know, are of the earth, earthy. Melodies are not of the earth, and it is truly said, 'Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.' _Auld Lang Syne._ NATURE There is nothing so beautiful as being alone with nature; one sees how God's will is fulfilled in each bud and leaf that blooms and withers, and one learns to recognise how deeply rooted in one is this thirst for nature. In living with men one is only too easily torn from this real home; then one's own plans and wishes and fears spring up; then we fancy we can perfect something for ourselves alone, and think that every thing must serve for our own ends and enjoyments, until the influence of nature in life, or the hand of God, arouses us, and warns us that we live and flourish not for enjoyment, nor for undisturbed quiet, but to bear fruit in another life. _Life._ When one stands amid the grandeur of nature, with one's own little murmurings and sufferings, and looks deep into this dumb soul, much becomes clear to one, and one is astounded at the false ideas one has formed of this life. It is but a short journey, and on a journey one can do without many things which generally seem necessary to us. Yes, we can do without even what is dearest to our hearts, in this world, if we know that, after the journey we shall have to endure, we shall find again those who have arrived at the goal quicker and more easily than we have done. Now if life were looked upon as a journey for refreshment or amusement, which it ought not to be, we might feel sad if we have to make our way alone; but if we treat it as a serious business-journey, then we know we have hard and unpleasant work before us, and enjoy all the more the beautiful resting-places which God's love has provided for each of us in life. _Life._ In the early days of the world, the world was too full of wonders to require any other miracles. The whole world was a miracle and a revelation, there was no need for any special disclosure. At that time the heavens, the waters, the sun and moon, the stars of heaven, the showers and dew, the winds of God, fire and heat, winter and summer, ice and snow, nights and days, lightnings and clouds, the earth, the mountains and hills, the green things upon the earth, the wells, and seas and floods--all blessed the Lord, praised Him and magnified Him for ever. Can we imagine a more powerful revelation? Is it for us to say that for the children of men to join in praising and magnifying Him who revealed Himself in His own way in all the magnificence, the wisdom and order of nature, is mere paganism, polytheism, pantheism, and abominable idolatry? I have heard many blasphemies, I have heard none greater than this. _Gifford Lectures, II._ OBSCURITY There may be much depth of wisdom in all that darkness and vagueness, but I cannot help thinking that there is nothing that cannot be made clear, and bright, and simple, and that obscurity arises in all cases from slovenly thinking and lazy writing. _MS._ OLD AGE Sharing the happiness of other people, entering into their feelings, living life over once more with them and in them, that is all that remains to old people. I suppose it was meant to be so, the principal object of life being the overcoming of self, in every sense of the word. _Life._ This is a lesson one has to learn as one grows older, to learn to be alone, and yet to feel one in spirit with all whom one loves, whether present or absent. _MS._ You cannot escape from old age, whether it comes slowly or suddenly, but it comes unawares, and you suddenly feel that you cannot walk or jump as you used to do, and even the muscles of the mind don't hold out as they used. Well, so it was meant to be, and it will be pleasant to begin again with new muscles, and to take up new work. After seeing a good deal of life, I still think the greatest satisfaction is work: I do not mean drudgery, but one's own findings out. _Life._ As one is getting old, and looks forward with fear rather than with hope to what is still in store for us, one learns to appreciate more and more the never-failing pleasure of recalling all the bright and happy days that are gone. Gone they are, but they are not lost. Ever present to our calling and recalling, they assume at last a vividness, such as they hardly had when present, and when we poor souls were trembling for every day and hour and minute that was going and ever going, and would not and could not abide. _Life._ RELIGION AND RELIGIONS God is not far from each one of those who seek God, if haply they may feel after Him. Let theologians pile up volume upon volume of what they call theology, religion is a very simple matter, and that which is so simple and yet so all-important to us, the living kernel of religion, can be found, I believe, in almost every creed, however much the husk may vary. And think what that means! It means that above and beneath and behind all religions there is one eternal, one universal religion, a religion to which every man belongs, or may belong. _Last Essays._ True religion, that is practical, active, living religion, has little or nothing to do with logical or metaphysical quibbles. Practical religion is life, is a new life, a life in the sight of God, and it springs from what may truly be called a new birth. _Last Essays._ Our senses can never perceive a real boundary, be it on the largest or the smallest scale: they present to us everywhere the infinite as their background, and everything that has to do with religion has sprung out of this infinite background as its ultimate and deepest foundation. _Silesian Horseherd._ I cannot bring myself to take much interest in all the controversies that are going on (1865) in the Church of England.... No doubt the points at issue are great, and appeal to our hearts and minds, but the spirit in which they are treated seems to me so very small. How few men on either side give you the impression that they write face to face with God, and not face to face with men and the small powers that be. Surely this was not so in the early centuries, nor again at the time of the Reformation? _Life._ We live in two worlds; behind the seen is the unseen, around the finite the infinite, above the comprehensible the incomprehensible. There have been men who have lived in this world only, who seem never to have felt the real presence of the unseen: and yet they achieved some greatness as rulers of men, as poets, artists, philosophers, and discoverers. But the greatest among the great have done their greatest works in moments of self-forgetful ecstasy, in union and communion with a higher world: and when it was done, such was their silent rapture that they started back, and could not believe it was their own, their very own, and they ascribed the glory of it to God, by whatever name they called Him in their various utterances. And while the greatest among the great thus confessed that they were not of this world only, and that their best work was but in part their own, those whom we reverence as the founders of religions, and who were at once philosophers, poets, and rulers of men, called nothing their own, but professed to teach only either what their fathers had taught them, or what a far-off voice had whispered in their ear.... The ancient religions were not founded like temples or palaces, they sprang up like sacred groves from the soil of humanity, quickened by the rays of celestial light. In India, Greece, Italy, and Germany, not even the names of the earliest prophets are preserved. And, if in other countries the forms and features of the authors of their religious faith and worship are still dimly visible amidst the clouds of legend and poetry, all of them, Moses as well as Zoroaster, Confucius, Buddha and Mohammed, seem to proclaim with one voice that their faith was no new faith, but the faith of their fathers, that their wisdom was not their own wisdom, but, like every good and perfect gift, given them from above. What should we learn from these prophets who from distant countries and bygone ages all bear the same witness to the same truth? We should learn that though religions may be founded and fashioned into strange shapes by the hand of man, religion is one and eternal. From the first dawn that ever brightened a human hearth or warmed a human heart, one generation has told another that there is a world beyond the dawn; and the keynotes of all religion--the feeling of the infinite, the bowing down before the incomprehensible, the yearning after the unseen--having once been set to vibrate, have never been altogether drowned in the strange and wild music of religious sects and sciences. The greatest prophets of the world have been those who at sundry times and in divers manners have proclaimed again and again in the simplest words the simple creed of the fathers, faith in the unseen, reverence for the incomprehensible, awe of the infinite, or, simpler still, love of God, and oneness with the All-Father. _Life._ I have endeavoured to make clear two things, which constitute the foundation of all religion; first, that the world is rational, that it is the result of thought, and that in this sense only is it the creation of a being which possesses reason, or is reason itself (the _Logos_); and secondly, that mind or thought cannot be the outcome of matter, but on the contrary is the _prius_ of all things. _Silesian Horseherd._ Religion is not philosophy; but there never has been a religion, and there never can be, which is not based on philosophy, and does not presuppose the philosophical notions of the people. The highest aim towards which all philosophy strives, is and will always remain the idea of God, and it was this idea which Christianity grasped in the Platonic sense, and presented to us most clearly in its highest form, in the Fourth Gospel. _Silesian Horseherd._ There has been no entirely new religion since the beginning of the world. The elements and roots of religion were there, as far back as we can trace the history of man; and the history of religion shows us throughout a succession of new combinations of the same radical elements. An intuition of God, a sense of human weakness and dependence, a belief in a Divine government of the world, a distinction between good and evil, and a hope of a better life, these are some of the radical elements of all religions. Though sometimes hidden, they rise again and again to the surface. Though frequently distorted, they tend again and again to their perfect form. Unless they had formed part of the original dowry of the human soul, religion would have remained an impossibility, and the tongues of angels would have been to human ears but as sounding brass, or as tinkling cymbals. _Chips._ In lecturing on the origin and growth of religion, my chief object has been to show that a belief in God, in the immortality of the soul, and in a future retribution, can be gained, and not only can be, but has been gained, by the right exercise of human reason alone, without the assistance of what has been called a special revelation. In doing this, I thought I was simply following in the footsteps of the greatest theologians of our time, and that I was serving the cause of true religion by showing, by ample historical evidence, gathered from the Sacred Books of the East, how, what St. Paul, what the Fathers of the Church, what mediæval theologians, and what some of the most learned of modern divines had asserted again and again, was most strikingly confirmed by the records of all non-Christian religions which have lately become accessible to us. I could not have believed it possible that, in undertaking this work, I should have exposed myself to attacks from theologians who profess and call themselves Christians, and who yet maintain that worst of all heresies, that during all the centuries that have elapsed and in all the countries of the world, God has left Himself without a witness, and has revealed Himself to one race only, the Jews of Palestine. _Gifford Lectures, III._ If there is one thing which a comparative study of religions places in the clearest light, it is the inevitable decay to which every religion is exposed. It may seem almost like a truism that no religion can continue to be what it was during the lifetime of its founders and its first apostles. Yet it is but seldom borne in mind that without constant reformation, _i.e._ without a constant return to its fountain head, every religion--even the most perfect, on account of its very perfection, more even than others--suffers from its contact with the world, as the purest air suffers from the mere fact of being breathed. _Chips._ To each individual his own religion, if he really believes in it, is something quite inseparable from himself, something unique, that cannot be compared to anything else, or replaced by anything else. Our own religion is, in that respect, something like our own language. In its form it may be like other languages; in its essence, and in its relation to ourselves, it stands alone and admits of no peer or rival. _Chips._ Three of the results to which, I believe, a comparative study of religion is sure to lead, I may here state:-- 1. We shall learn that religions, in their most ancient form, or in the minds of their authors, are generally free from many of the blemishes that attach to them in later times. 2. We shall learn that there is hardly one religion which does not contain some truth, some important truth; truth sufficient to enable those who seek the Lord, and feel after Him, to find Him in their hour of need. 3. We shall learn to appreciate better than ever what we have in our own religion. No one who has not examined patiently and honestly the other religions of the world can know what Christianity really is, or can join with such truth and sincerity in the words of St. Paul, 'I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ.' _Chips._ Many are the advantages to be derived from a careful study of other religions, but the greatest of all is that it teaches us to appreciate more truly what we possess in our own. Let us see what other nations have had and still have in the place of religion, let us examine the prayers, the worship, the theology even, of the most highly civilised races, and we shall then understand more thoroughly what blessings are vouchsafed to us in being allowed to breathe from the first breath of life the pure air of a land of Christian light and knowledge. We are too apt to take the greatest blessings as matters of course, and even religion forms no exception. We have done so little to gain our religion, we have suffered so little in the cause of truth, that however highly we prize our own Christianity, we never prize it highly enough until we have compared it with the religions of the rest of the world. _Chips._ The spirit of truth is the life-spring of all religion, and where it exists it must manifest itself, it must plead, it must persuade, it must convince and convert. _Chips._ As there is a faculty of speech, independent of all the historical forms of language, there is a faculty of faith in man, independent of all historical religions. If we say it is religion which distinguishes man from the animal, we do not mean the Christian and Jewish religion: we do not mean any special religion: but we mean a mental faculty or disposition, which, independent of, nay in spite of, sense and reason, enables man to apprehend the Infinite under different names, and under varying disguises. Without that faculty, no religion, not even the lowest worship of idols and fetishes, would be possible; and if we will but listen attentively, we can hear in all religions a groaning of the spirit, a struggle to conceive the inconceivable, to utter the unutterable, a longing after the Infinite, a love of God. _Science of Religion._ Like an old precious metal, the ancient religion, after the dust of ages has been removed, will come out in all its purity and brightness: and the image which it discloses will be the image of the Father, the Father of all the nations upon earth; and the superscription, where we can read it again, will be, not in Judæa only, but in the languages of all the races of the world, the Word of God, revealed where alone it can be revealed--revealed in the heart of man. _Science of Religion._ If we granted that all religions, except Christianity and Mosaism, derived their origin from those faculties of the mind only which, according to Paley, are sufficient by themselves for calling into life the fundamental tenets of natural religion, the classification of Christianity and Judaism on one side as _revealed_, and of the other religions as _natural_, would still be defective, for the simple reason that no religion, though founded on revelation, can ever be entirely separated from natural religion. The tenets of natural religion, though they never constituted by themselves a real historical religion, supply the only ground on which even revealed religions can stand, the only soil where they can strike root, and from which they can receive nourishment and life. _Science of Religion._ The intention of religion, wherever we meet it, is always holy. However imperfect, however childish a religion may be, it always places the human soul in the presence of God: and however imperfect and however childish the conception of God may be, it always represents the highest ideal of perfection which the human soul, for the time being, can reach and grasp. Religion therefore places the human soul in the presence of its highest ideal, it lifts it above the level of ordinary goodness, and produces at last a yearning after a higher and better life--a life in the light of God. _Science of Religion._ I suppose that most of us, sooner or later in life, have felt how the whole world--this wicked world, as we call it--is changed as if by magic, if once we can make up our mind to give men credit for good motives, never to be suspicious, never to think evil, never to think ourselves better than our neighbours. Trust a man to be true and good, and, even if he is not, your trust will tend to make him true and good. It is the same with the religions of the world. Let us but once make up our minds to look in them for what is true and good, and we shall hardly know our old religions again. There is no religion--or, if there is, I do not know it--which does not say, 'Do good, avoid evil.' There is none which does not contain what Rabbi Hillel called the quintessence of all religions, the simple warning, 'Be good, my boy.' 'Be good, my boy,' may seem a very short catechism, but let us add to it, 'Be good, my boy, for God's sake,' and we have in it very nearly the whole of the Law and the Prophets. _Science of Religion._ In order to choose between different gods, and different forms of faith, a man must possess the faculty of choosing the instruments of testing truth and untruth, whether revealed or not; he must know that certain fundamental tenets cannot be absent in any true religion, and that there are doctrines against which his rational or moral conscience revolts as incompatible with truth. In short, there must be the foundation of religion, there must be the solid rock, before it is possible to erect an altar, a temple, or a church: and if we call that foundation natural religion, it is clear that no revealed religion can be thought of which does not rest more or less firmly on natural religion. _Science of Religion._ Universal primeval revelation is only another name for natural religion, and it rests on no authority but the speculations of philosophers. The same class of philosophers, considering that language was too wonderful an achievement for the human mind, insisted on the necessity of admitting a universal primeval language, revealed directly by God to men, or rather to mute beings: while the more thoughtful and more reverent of the Fathers of the Church, and among the founders of modern philosophy also, pointed out that it was more consonant with the general working of an all-wise and all-powerful Creator that He should have endowed human nature with the essential conditions of speech, instead of presenting mute beings with grammars and dictionaries ready-made. The same applies to religion. A universal primeval religion revealed direct by God to man, or rather to a crowd of atheists, may, to our human wisdom, seem the best solution of all difficulties; but a higher wisdom speaks to us out of the realities of history, and teaches us, if we will but learn, that 'we have all to seek the Lord, if haply we may feel after Him, and find Him, though He is not far from every one of us.' _Science of Religion._ The study of the ancient religions of mankind, I feel convinced, if carried on in a bold, but scholarlike, careful, and reverent spirit, will remove many doubts and difficulties which are due entirely to the narrowness of our religious horizon; it will enlarge our sympathies, it will raise our thoughts above the small controversies of the day, and at no distant future evoke in the very heart of Christianity a fresh spirit and a new life. _Science of Religion._ No judge, if he had before him the worst of criminals, would treat him as most historians and theologians have treated the religions of the world. Every act in the lives of their founders which shows that they were but men, is eagerly seized and judged without mercy; every doctrine that is not carefully guarded is interpreted in the worst sense that it will bear; every act of worship that differs from our own way of serving God is held up to ridicule and contempt. And this is not done by accident but with a purpose, nay, with something of that artificial sense of duty which stimulates the counsel for the defence to see nothing but an angel in his own client, and anything but an angel in the plaintiff on the other side. The result has been--as it could not be otherwise--a complete miscarriage of justice, an utter misapprehension of the real character and purpose of the ancient religions of mankind; and, as a necessary consequence, a failure in discovering the peculiar features which really distinguish Christianity from all the religions of the world, and secure to its founder His own peculiar place in the history of the world, far away from Zoroaster and Buddha, from Moses and Mohammed, from Confucius and Laotse. By unduly deprecating all other religions we have placed our own in a position which its founder never intended for it; we have torn it away from the sacred context of the history of the world; we have ignored, or wilfully narrowed, the sundry times and divers manners in which, in times past, God spake unto the fathers by the prophets; and instead of recognising Christianity as coming in the fulness of time, and as the fulfilment of the hopes and desires of the whole world, we have brought ourselves to look upon its advent as the only broken link in that unbroken chain which is rightly called the Divine government of the world. Nay, worse than this, there are people who, from mere ignorance of the ancient religions of mankind, have adopted a doctrine more unchristian than any that could be found in the pages of the religious books of antiquity, _i.e._ that all the nations of the earth, before the rise of Christianity, were mere outcasts, forsaken and forgotten of their Father in heaven, without a knowledge of God, without a hope of heaven. If a comparative study of the religions of the world produced but this one result, that it drove this godless heresy out of every Christian heart, and made us see again in the whole history of the world the eternal wisdom and love of God towards all His creatures, it would have done a good work. _Science of Religion._ Do you still wonder at polytheism or at mythology? Why, they are inevitable. They are, if you like, a _parler enfantin_ of religion. But the world has its childhood, and when it was a child, it spoke as a child, it understood as a child, it thought as a child, and in that it spoke as a child its language was true. The fault rests with us, if we insist on taking the language of children for the language of men, if we attempt to translate literally ancient into modern language, Oriental into Occidental speech, poetry into prose. _Science of Religion._ Religion is inevitable if only we are left in possession of our senses, such as we really find them, not such as they have been defined for us. We claim no special faculty, no special revelation. The only faculty we claim is perception, the only revelation we claim is history, or, as it is now called, historical evolution. But let it not be supposed that we find the idea of the Infinite ready made in the human mind from the very beginning of our history. All we maintain is that the germ or the possibility, the Not-yet of that idea, lies hidden in the earliest sensuous perceptions, and that as reason is evolved from what is finite, so faith is evolved from what from the very beginning is infinite in the perceptions of our senses. _Hibbert Lectures._ Each religion has its own peculiar growth, but the seed from which they spring is everywhere the same. That seed is the perception of the infinite, from which no one can escape who does not wilfully shut his eyes. From the first flutter of human consciousness, that perception underlies all the other perceptions of our senses, all our imaginings, all our concepts, and every argument of our reason. It may be buried for a time beneath the fragments of our finite knowledge, but it is always there, and, if we dig deep enough, we shall always find that buried seed, supplying the living sap to the fibres and feeders of all true faith. _Hibbert Lectures._ Instead of approaching the religions of the world with the preconceived idea that they are either corruptions of the Jewish religion, or descended, in common with the Jewish religion, from some perfect primeval revelation, the students of the science of religion have seen that it is their duty first to collect all the evidence of the early history of religious thought that is still accessible in the sacred books of the world, or in the mythology, customs, or even in the languages of various races. Afterwards they have undertaken a genealogical classification of all the materials that have hitherto been collected, and they have then only approached the question of the origin of religion in a new spirit, by trying to find out how the roots of the various religions, the radical concepts which form their foundation, and before all, the concept of the infinite, could have been developed, taking for granted nothing but sensuous perception on one side, and the world by which we are surrounded on the other. _Hibbert Lectures._ A distinction has been made for us between religion and philosophy, and, so far as form and object are concerned, I do not deny that such a distinction may be useful. But when we look to the subjects with which religion is concerned, they are, and always have been, the very subjects on which philosophy has dwelt, nay, from which philosophy has sprung. If religion depends for its very life on the sentiment or the perception of the infinite within the finite and beyond the finite, who is to determine the legitimacy of that sentiment, or of that perception, if not the philosopher? Who is to determine the powers which man possesses for apprehending the finite by his senses, for working up his single, and therefore finite, impressions into concepts by his reason, if not the philosopher? And who, if not the philosopher, is to find out whether man can claim the right of asserting the existence of the infinite, in spite of the constant opposition of sense and reason, taking these words in their usual meaning? We should damnify religion if we separated it from philosophy: we should ruin philosophy if we divorced it from religion. _Hibbert Lectures._ Who, if he is honest towards himself, could say that the religion of his manhood was the same as that of his childhood, or the religion of his old age the same as the religion of his manhood? It is easy to deceive ourselves, and to say that the most perfect faith is a childlike faith. Nothing can be truer, and the older we grow the more we learn to understand the wisdom of a childlike faith. But before we can learn that, we have first to learn another lesson, namely, to put away childish things. There is the same glow about the setting sun as there is about the rising sun; but there lies between the two a whole world, a journey through the whole sky, and over the whole earth. _Hibbert Lectures._ I hope the time will come when the subterranean area of human religion will be rendered more and more accessible, ... and that the Science of Religion, which at present is but a desire and a seed, will in time become a fulfilment, a plenteous harvest. When that time of harvest has come, when the deepest foundations of all the religions of the world have been laid free and restored, who knows but that those very foundations may serve once more, like the catacombs, or like the crypts beneath our old cathedrals, as a place of refuge for those who, to whatever creed they may belong, long for something better, purer, older, and truer than what they can find in the statutable sacrifices, services, and sermons of the days in which their lot on earth has been cast; some who have learnt to put away childish things, call them genealogies, legends, miracles, or oracles, but who cannot part with the childlike faith of their heart. Each believer may bring down with him into that quiet crypt what he values most, his own pearl of great price--the Hindu, his innate disbelief in this world, his unhesitating belief in another world; the Buddhist, his perception of an eternal law, his submission to it, his gentleness, his pity; the Mohammedan, if nothing else, his sobriety; the Jew, his clinging through good and evil days to the one God, who loveth righteousness and whose name is 'I am'; the Christian, that which is better than all, if those who doubt it would only try it--our love of God, call Him what you like, the infinite, the invisible, the immortal, the father, the highest Self, above all, and through all, and in all, manifested in our love of man, our love of the living, our love of the dead, our living and undying love. _Hibbert Lectures._ If we see the same doctrines, sometimes uttered even in the very same words, by the Apostles, and by what people call the false prophets, of the heathen world, we need not grudge them these precious pearls. When two religions say the same thing, it is not always the same thing; but even if it is, should we not rather rejoice and try with all our might to add to what may be called the heavenly dowry of the human race, the common stock of truth which, as we are told, is not far from every one of us, if only we feel after it and find it? _Gifford Lectures, I._ Religion, when looked upon not as supernatural, but as thoroughly natural to man, has assumed a new meaning and a higher dignity when studied as an integral part of that historical evolution which has made man what he is, and what from the very first he was meant to be. Is it no comfort to know that at no time and in no part of the world, has God left Himself without witness, that the hand of God was nowhere beyond the reach of the outstretched hands of babes and sucklings; nay, that it was from those rude utterances out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, that is, of savages and barbarians, that has been perfected in time the true praise of God? To have looked for growth and evolution in history as well as in nature is no blame, and has proved no loss to the present or to the last century; and if the veil has as yet been but little withdrawn from the Holy of Holies, those who come after us will have learnt at least this one lesson, that this lifting of the veil which was supposed to be the privilege of priests, is no longer considered as a sacrilege, if attempted by any honest seekers after truth. _Gifford Lectures, I._ Religion consists in the perception of the infinite under such manifestations as are able to influence the moral character of man. _Gifford Lectures, I._ No opinion is true simply because it has been held either by the greatest intellects or by the largest number of human beings at different periods in the history of the world. No one can spend years in the study of the religions of the world, beginning with the lowest and ending with the highest forms, no one can watch the sincerity of religious endeavour, the warmth of religious feeling, the nobleness of religious conduct, among races whom we are inclined to call pagan or savage, without learning at all events a lesson of humility. Anybody, be he Jew, Christian, Mohammedan, or Brahman, if he has a spark of modesty left, must feel that it would be nothing short of a miracle that his own religion alone should be perfect throughout, while that of every other believer should be false or wrong from beginning to end. _Gifford Lectures, I._ The more we study the history of the religions of the world, the clearer it becomes that there is really no religion which could be called an individual religion, in the sense of a religion created, as it were _de novo_, or rather _ab ovo_, by one single person. This may seem strange, and yet it is really most natural. Religion, like language, is everywhere an historical growth, and to invent a completely new religion would be as hopeless a task as to invent a completely new language. Nor do the founders of the great historical religions of the world ever claim this exclusive authorship. On the contrary, most of them disclaim in the strongest terms the idea that they have come either to destroy, or to build a completely new temple. _Gifford Lectures, I._ The whole world in its wonderful history has passed through the struggle for life, the struggle for eternal life; and every one of us, in his own not less wonderful history, has had to pass through the same wonderful struggle: for, without it, no religion, whatever its sacred books may be, will find in any human heart that soil in which alone it can strike root and on which alone it can grow and bear fruit. We must all have our own bookless religion, if the sacred books, whatever they may be, are to find a safe and solid foundation within ourselves. No temple can stand without that foundation, and it is because that foundation is so often neglected that the walls of the temple become unsafe and threaten to fall. _Gifford Lectures, I._ The heart and mind and soul of man are the same under every sky, in all the varying circumstances of human life; and it would be awful to believe that _any_ human beings should have been deprived of that light 'which lighteth _every_ man that cometh into the world.' It is that light which lighteth every man, and which has lighted all the religions of the world, call them bookless or literate, human or divine, natural or supernatural, which alone can dispel the darkness of doubt and fear that has come over the world. What our age wants more than anything else is _Natural Religion_. Whatever meaning different theologians may attach to _Supernatural Religion_, history teaches us that nothing is so natural as the supernatural. But the supernatural must always be _superimposed_ on the natural. Supernatural religion without natural religion is a house built on sand, and when, as in our days, the rain of doubt descends, and the floods of criticism come, and the winds of unbelief and despair blow and beat upon that house, that house will fall because it was not founded on the rock of bookless religion, of natural religion, of eternal religion. _Gifford Lectures, I._ Every religion, being the property of the young and the old, the wise and the foolish, must always be a kind of compromise, and, while protesting against real corruptions and degradations, we must learn to bear with those whose language differs from our own, and trust that in spite of the tares which have sprung up during the night, some grains of wheat will ripen towards the harvest in every honest heart. _Gifford Lectures, II._ In all the fundamentals of religion we are neither better nor worse than our neighbours, neither more wise nor more unwise than all the members of that great family who have been taught to know themselves as children of one and the same Father in Heaven. _Gifford Lectures, II._ What can a study of Natural Religion teach us? Why, it teaches us that religion is natural, is real, is inevitable, is universal. Is that nothing? Is it nothing to know that there is a solid rock on which all religion, call it natural or supernatural, is founded? Is it nothing to learn from the annals of history that God has not left Himself without witness in that He did good, and gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts, and the hearts of the whole human race, with food and gladness? _Gifford Lectures, II._ While on the one side a study of Natural Religion teaches us that much of what we are inclined to class as natural, to accept as a matter of course, is in reality full of meaning, is full of God, is in fact truly miraculous, it also opens our eyes to another fact, namely, that many things which we are inclined to class as supernatural, are in reality perfectly natural, perfectly intelligible, nay inevitable, in the growth of every religion. _Gifford Lectures, II._ The real coincidences between all the religions of the world teach us that all religions spring from the same soil--the human heart; that they all look to the same ideals, and that they are all surrounded by the same dangers and difficulties. Much that is represented to us as supernatural in the annals of the ancient religions of the world becomes perfectly natural from this point of view. _Gifford Lectures, II._ To those who see no difficulties in their own religion, the study of other religions will create no new difficulties. It will only help them to appreciate more fully what they already possess. For with all that I have said in order to show that other religions also contain all that is necessary for salvation, it would be simply dishonest on my part were I to hide my conviction that the religion taught by Christ, free as yet from all ecclesiastical fences and entrenchments, is the best, the purest, the truest religion the world has ever seen. _Gifford Lectures, II._ To expect that religion could ever be placed again beyond the reach of scientific treatment or honest criticism, shows an utter misapprehension of the signs of the times, and would, after all, be no more than to set up private judgment against private judgment. If the inalienable rights of private judgment, that is, of honesty and truth, were more generally recognised, the character of religious controversy would at once be changed. It is restriction that provokes resentment, and thus embitters all discussions on religious subjects. _Gifford Lectures, III._ So far from being dishonest, the distinction between a higher and a lower form of religion is in truth the only honest recognition of the realities of life. If to a philosophic mind religion is a spiritual love of God, and the joy of his full consciousness of the spirit of God within him, what meaning can such words convey to the millions of human beings who nevertheless want a religion, a positive, authoritative, or revealed religion, to teach them that there is a God, and that His commands must be obeyed without questioning? _Gifford Lectures, III._ People ask what can be gained by a comprehensive study of religions, by showing that, as yet, no race has been discovered without some word for what is not visible, not finite, not human, for something superhuman and divine. Some theologians go even so far as to resent the discovery of the universality of such a belief. They are anxious to prove that human reason alone could never have arrived at a conception of God. They would much rather believe that God has left Himself without witness than that a belief in something higher than the Finite could spring up in the human heart from gratitude to Him who gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness. _Gifford Lectures, III._ Physical religion, beginning in a belief in agents behind the great phenomena of nature, reached its highest point when it had led the human mind to a belief in one Supreme Agent or God, whatever his name might be. It was supposed that this God could be implored by prayers and pleased by sacrifices. He was called the father of gods and men. Yet even in his highest conception, he was no more than what Cardinal Newman defined God to be. 'I mean by the Supreme Being,' he wrote, 'one who is simply self-dependent, and the only being who is such. I mean that he created all things out of nothing, and could destroy them as easily as he made them, and that, in consequence, he is separated from them by an abyss, and incommunicable in all his attributes.' This abyss separating God from man remains at the end of Physical Religion. It constitutes its inherent weakness. But this very weakness becomes in time a source of strength, for from it sprang a yearning for better things. Even the God of the Jews, in His unapproachable majesty, though He might be revered and loved by man during His life on earth, could receive, as it were, a temporary allegiance only, for 'the dead cannot praise God, neither any that go down into darkness!' God was immortal, a man was mortal; and Physical Religion could not throw a bridge over the abyss that separated the two. Real religion, however, requires more than a belief in God, it requires a belief in man also, and an intimate relation between God and man, at all events in a life to come. There is in man an irrepressible desire for continued existence. It shows itself in life in what we may call self-defence. It shows itself at the end of life and at the approach of death, in the hope of immortality. _Gifford Lectures, III._ So long as we look on the history of the human race as something that might or might not have been, we cannot wonder that the student of religion should prefer to form his opinions of the nature of religion and the laws of its growth from the masterpiece of Thomas Aquinas, the _Summa Sacræ Theologiæ_, rather than from the _Sacred Books of the East_. But when we have learnt to recognise in history the realisation of a rational purpose, when we have learnt to look upon it as in the truest sense of the word a Divine Drama, the plot revealed in it ought to assume in the eyes of a philosopher also, a meaning and a value far beyond the speculations of even the most enlightened and logical theologians. _Gifford Lectures, IV._ The question is whether there is, or whether there is not, hidden in every one of the sacred books, something that could lift up the human heart from this earth to a higher world, something that could make man feel the omnipresence of a higher Power, something that could make him shrink from evil and incline to good, something to sustain him in the short journey through life, with its bright moments of happiness, and its long hours of terrible distress. _Preface, Sacred Books of the East._ It has been truly said, and most emphatically, by Dr. Newman, that neither a belief in God by itself, nor a belief in the soul by itself, would constitute religion, and that real religion is founded on a true perception of the relation of the soul to God, and of God to the soul. _Gifford Lectures, IV._ It may be truly said that the founders of the religions of the world have all been bridge-builders. As soon as the existence of a Beyond, of a Heaven above the earth, of Powers above us and beneath us, had been recognised, a great gulf seemed to be fixed between what was called by various names, the earthly and the heavenly, the material and the spiritual, the phenomenal and nomenal, or best of all, the visible and invisible world, and it was the chief object of religion to unite these two worlds again, whether by the arches of hope and fear, or by the iron chains of logical syllogisms. _Gifford Lectures, IV._ Religion, in order to be _real_ religion, a man's own religion, must be searched for, must be discovered, must be conquered. If it is simply inherited, or accepted as a matter of course, it often happens that in later years it falls away, and has either to be reconquered, or to be replaced by another religion. _Autobiography._ Religion is growth, never finished. From the lowest to the highest stages it is growth, not willed only, nor given only, but both. The lowest stages may seem very imperfect to us, but they are all the more important. Language and mythology show us the old path on which man travelled from Nature to God. _MS._ There is no lesson which at the present time seems more important than to learn that in every religion there are precious grains; that we must draw in every religion a broad distinction between what is essential and what is not, between the eternal and the temporary, between the divine and the human, and that though the non-essential may fill many volumes, the essential can often be comprehended in a few words, but words on which 'hang all the law and the prophets.' _Preface, Sacred Books of the East._ Religions were meant to be many, like languages. To us, one language for the whole human race would seem to be far better; but it was not to be. Each language was to be a school for each race, a talent committed to each nation. And so it is with religion. There is truth in all of them, the whole truth in none. Let each one cherish his own, purify his own, and throw away what is dead and decaying. But to give up one's religion is like giving up one's life. Even the lowest savage must keep his own old faith in God, when he becomes converted to Christianity, or he will have lost the living and life-giving root of his faith. If people would only learn to look for what is good in all religions, how far more beautiful the world would appear in their eyes. They dig hard enough to get the ore from out a mine, they sift it, smelt it, purify it, and then keep the small pieces of gold they have got with all this trouble, forgetting the _scoriae_ and all the refuse. That is what we must do as students of religion; but we do the very contrary--we hug the _scoriae_ and shut our eyes to the glittering rays of gold. Jews and Christians are worse in that respect than all other people. It may be because their religions are freer from human impurities than all other religions. But why should that make them blind to what is really good in other religions, why should it blind them so much that they look upon other religions as the work of the Devil? The power of evil has had its work in all religions, our own not excepted--but the power of goodness prevails everywhere. Till we know that, life and history seem intolerable. It would not put an end to missionary labour, it would only make it more a labour of love, less painful to those whom we wish to win, not away from their God, but back to their God, Him whom they ignorantly worship, and whom we should declare unto them, according to our own light, such as it is, less dark than theirs on many points, but yet dark, as those know best who, like St. Paul, have striven hardest to look through the glass of our own weak human mind. _MS._ If people would only learn to see that there is really a religion beyond all religions, that each man must have his own religion which he has conquered for himself, and that we must learn to tolerate religion wherever we find it! Christianity would be a perfect religion, if it did not go beyond the simple words of Christ, and if, even in these words, we made full allowance for the time and place and circumstances in which they were spoken--that is, if we simply followed Christ where He wishes us to follow Him. We have gone far beyond those times and circumstances in many things, but in what is most essential we are still far behind the teaching of Christ. How many call themselves Christians who have no idea how difficult it is to be a Christian, a follower of Christ! It is easy enough to repeat creeds, and to work ourselves into a frame of mind when miracles seem most easy. _MS._ It was the duty of the Apostles and of the early Christians in general to stand forth in the name of the only true God, and to prove to the world that their God had nothing in common with the idols worshipped at Athens and Ephesus. It was the duty of the early converts to forswear all allegiance to their former deities, and if they could not at once bring themselves to believe that the gods whom they had worshipped had no existence at all, they were naturally led on to ascribe to them a kind of demoniacal nature, and to curse them as the offspring of that new principle of Evil with which they had become acquainted in the doctrines of the early Church.... Through the whole of St. Augustine's works, and through all the works of earlier Christian divines, there runs the same spirit of hostility blinding them to all that may be good, and true, and sacred, and magnifying all that is bad, false, and corrupt, in the ancient religions of mankind. Only the Apostles and their immediate disciples venture to speak in a different and, no doubt, in a more truly Christian spirit of the old forms of worships.... What can be more convincing, more powerful, than the language of St. Paul at Athens? _Science of Language._ Those who believe that there is a God, and that He created heaven and earth, and that He ruleth the world by His unceasing providence, cannot believe that millions of human beings, all created like ourselves in the image of God, were, in their time of ignorance, so utterly abandoned that their whole religion was falsehood, their whole worship a farce, their whole life a mockery. An honest and independent study of the religions of the world will teach us that it was not so, ... that there is no religion which does not contain some grains of truth. Nay, it will teach us more; it will teach us to see in the history of the ancient religions, more clearly than anywhere else, the _Divine education of the human race_. _Science of Religion._ The Divine, if it is to reveal itself at all to us, will best reveal itself in our own human form. However far the human may be from the Divine, nothing on earth is nearer to God than man, nothing on earth more godlike than man. And as man grows from childhood to old age, the idea of the Divine must grow with us from the cradle to the grave, from grace to grace. A religion which is not able thus to grow and live with us as we grow and live, is dead already. Definite and unvarying uniformity, so far from being a sign of honesty and life, is always a sign of dishonesty and death. Every religion, if it is to be a bond between the wise and the foolish, the old and the young, must be pliant, must be high and deep and broad; bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things. The more it is so, the greater its vitality, the greater the strength and warmth of its embrace. _Hibbert Lectures._ REVELATION True inspiration is, and always has been, the spirit of truth within, and this is but another name for the spirit of God. It is truth that makes inspiration, not inspiration that makes truth. Whoever knows what truth is knows also what inspiration is: not only _theopneustos_, blown into the soul by God, but the very voice of God, the real presence of God, the only presence in which we, as human beings, can ever perceive Him. _Autobiography._ There is nothing in the idea of revelation that excludes progress, for whatever definition of revelation we may adopt, it always represents a communication between the Divine on one side and the Human on the other. Let us grant that the Divine element in revelation, that is, whatever of truth there is in revelation, is immutable, yet the human element, the recipient, must always be liable to the accidents and infirmities of human nature. That human element can never be eliminated in any religion.... To ignore that human element in all religions is like ignoring the eye as the recipient and determinant of the colours of light. We know more of the sun than our forefathers, though the same sun shone on them that shines on us; and if astronomy has benefited by its telescopes, ... theology also ought not to despise whatever can strengthen the far-sightedness of human reason in its endeavour to gain a truer and purer idea of the Divine. A veil will always remain. But as in every other pursuit, so in religion also, we want less and less of darkness, more and more of light; we want, call it life, or growth, or development, or progress; we do not want mere rest, mere stagnation, mere death. _Gifford Lectures, I._ It was the sense of an overpowering truth which led to the admission of a revelation. But while in the beginning truth made revelation, it soon came to pass that revelation was supposed to make truth. When we see this happening in every part of the world, when we can watch the psychological progress which leads in the most natural way to a belief in supernatural inspiration, it will hardly be said that an historical study of religion may be useful to the antiquarian, but cannot help us to solve the burning questions of the day. _Gifford Lectures, I._ I believe in one revelation only--the revelation within us, which is much better than any revelations which come from without. Why should we look for God and listen for His voice outside us only, and not within us? Where is the temple of God, or the true kingdom of God? _Life._ There are Christian mystics who would not place internal revelation, or the voice of God within the heart, so far below external revelation. To those who know the presence of God within the heart, this revelation is far more real than any other can be. They hold with St. Paul that man is in the full sense of the word the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth within him, nay, they go even further, and both as Christians and as mystics they cling to the belief that all men are one in the Father and the Son, as the Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father. There is no conflict in their minds between Christian doctrine and mystic doctrine. They are one and the same in character, the one imparted through Christ on earth, the other imparted through the indwelling spirit of God, which again is Christ, as born within us. The Gospel of St. John is full of passages to which the Christian mystic clings, and by which he justifies his belief in the indwelling spirit of God, or, as he also calls it, the birth of Christ in the human soul. _Gifford Lectures, II._ I cannot connect any meaning with a primeval revelation, or with an original knowledge of God. A knowledge of God is surely at all times impossible; man can only trust, he cannot know. He can feel the Infinite, and the Divine, he can never class it or subdue it by knowledge. The question seems to me, how our unconscious relation to God, which must be there and can never be destroyed, becomes gradually more and more conscious; and that is what one can best learn to understand in the history of the various religions of the world--so many voyages of discovery, each full of sufferings and heroic feats, all looking towards the same Pole, each to be judged by itself, none, I believe, to be condemned altogether. _MS._ To assume that every word, every letter, every parable, every figure was whispered to the authors of the Gospels, is certainly an absurdity, and rests only on human ... authority. But the true revelation, the real truth, as it was already anticipated by the Greek philosophers, slowly accepted by Jews, like Philo and the contemporaries of Jesus, taught by men like Clement and Origen in the ancient Greek Church, and, in fine, realised in the life of Jesus, and sealed by His death, is no absurdity: it is for every thinking Christian the eternal life, or the Kingdom of God on earth, which Jesus wished to establish, and in part did establish. To become a citizen of this Kingdom is the highest that man can attain, but it is not attained merely through baptism and confirmation; it must be gained in earnest spiritual conflict. _Silesian Horseherd._ THE RIG-VEDA The _Veda_ alone of all works I know treats of a genesis of God-consciousness, compared to which the Theogony of Hesiod is like a worn-out creature. We see it grow slowly and gradually with all its contradictions, its sudden terrors, its amazements, and its triumphs. As God reveals His Being in nature in her order, her indestructibility, in the eternal victory of light over darkness, of spring over winter, in the eternally returning course of the sun and the stars, so man has gradually spelt out of nature the Being of God, and after trying a thousand names for God in vain, we find Him in the _Veda_ already saying: 'They call him Indra, Mitra, Varuna; then they call him the Heavenly, the bird with beautiful wings; that which is One they call in various ways.'... The belief in Immortality is only the other side, as it were, of the God-consciousness, and both are originally natural to the Aryan race. _Life._ SCIENCE Every true Science is like a hardy Alpine guide that leads us on from the narrow, though it may be the more peaceful and charming, valleys of our preconceived opinions, to higher points, apparently less attractive, nay often disappointing for a time, till, after hours of patient and silent climbing, we look round and see a new world around us. _Chips._ A new horizon has opened, our eyes see far and wide, and as the world beneath us grows wider and larger, our own hearts seem to grow wider and larger, and we learn to embrace the far and distant, and all that before seemed strange and indifferent, with a warmer recognition and a deeper human sympathy; we form wider concepts, we perceive higher truths. _Chips._ What is natural is divine; what is supernatural is human. _Gifford Lectures, I._ Man is the measurer of all things; and what is Science but the reflection of the outer world on the mirror of the mind, growing more perfect, more orderly, more definite, more great, with every generation? To attempt to study nature without studying man is as impossible as to study light without studying the eye. I have no misgivings, therefore, that the lines on which this College (Mason Science College) is founded will ever become so narrow as to exclude the science of man, and the science of that which makes man, the science of language, and, what is really the same, the science of thought. And where can we study the science of thought, that most wonderful instance of development, except in the languages and literatures of the past? How are we to do justice to our ancestors except by letting them plead their own case in their own language? Literary culture can far better dispense with physical science than physical science with literary culture, though nothing is more satisfactory than a perfect combination of the two. _Life._ THE SELF As behind the various gods of nature, one supreme deity was at last discovered in India, the Brahmans imagined that they perceived behind the different manifestations of feeling, thought, and will also, a supreme power which they called Atma, or Self, and of which the intellectual powers or faculties were but the outward manifestations. This led to a philosophy which took the place of religion, and recognised in the self the only true being, the unborn and therefore immortal element in man. A step further led to the recognition of the original identity of the subjective Self in man, and the objective Self in nature, and thus, from an Indian point of view, to a solution of all the riddles of the world. The first commandment of all philosophy, 'Know thyself,' became in the philosophy of the Upanishads, 'Know thyself as the Self,' or, if we translate it into religious language, 'Know that we live and move and have our being in God.' _Gifford Lectures, I._ The death of a child is as if the flash of the Divine eye had turned quickly away from the mirror of this world, before the human consciousness woke up and thought it recognised itself in the mirror, often only to perceive for a moment, just as it closes its eyes for the last time, that that which it took for itself was the shadow or reflection of its eternal self. _Life._ A man need not go into a cave because he has found his true Self; he may live and act like everybody else; he is 'living but free.' All remains just the same, except the sense of unchangeable, imperishable self which lifts him above the phenomenal self. He knows he is wearing clothes, that is all. If a man does not see it, if some of his clothes stick to him like his very skin, if he fears he might lose his identity by not being a male instead of a female, by not being English instead of German, by not being a child instead of a man, he must wait and work on. Good works lead to quietness of mind, and quietness of mind to true self-knowledge. Is it so very little to be only Self, to be the subject that can resist, i.e. perceive the whole universe, and turn it into his object? Can we wish for more than what we are, lookers-on--resisting what tries to crush us, call it force, or evil, or anything else? _Life._ The impression made on me by the look of a child who is not yet conscious of himself and of the world round him is that of still undisturbed godliness. Only when self-consciousness wakes little by little, through pleasure or pain, when the spirit accustoms itself to its bodily covering, when man begins to say _I_ and the world to call things _his_, then the full separation of the human self from the Divine begins, and it is only after long struggles that the light of _true_ self-consciousness sooner or later breaks through the clouds of earthly semblances, and makes us again like the little children 'of whom is the Kingdom of Heaven.' In God we live and move and have our being, that is the sum of all human wisdom, and he who does not find it here, will find it in another life. All else that we learn on earth, be it the history of nature or of mankind, is for this end alone, to show us everywhere the presence of a Divine providence, and to lead us through the knowledge of the history of the human spirit to the knowledge of ourselves, and through the knowledge of the laws of nature to the understanding of that human nature to which we are subjected in life. _Life._ To my mind the birth of a child is not a breach of the law of continuity, but on that very ground I must admit the previous existence of the Self that is here born as a child, and which brings with it into this new order of things simply its Self-consciousness, and even that not developed but undeveloped potentia, in a sleep. When afterwards a child awakes to self-consciousness, that is really its remembrance of its former existence. The Self which it becomes conscious of, remember, is in its essence not of this world only, but of a former as well as of a future world. This constitutes in fact the only distinct remembrance in every human being of a former life. There are besides indistinct remembrances of his former existence, viz. the many dispositions which every thinking man finds in himself, and which are not simply the result of the impressions of this world on a so-called _tabula rasa_. Unless we begin life as _tabula rasa_ we begin it as _tabula preparata_, as _leukomata_, and whatever colour or disposition, or talent, or temperament, whatever there is inexplicable in each individual, that he will perceive, or possibly remember, as the result of the continuity between his present and former life. _MS._ What, then, is that which we call Death? Separation of the Self from a living body. If so, does the body die because the Self leaves it, or does the Self leave the body because it dies? What has life to do with the Self? Has the Self which for a time dwells in a living body anything to do with what we call the life of that body? Does the Self take possession of a body because it lives, or does the body live because the Self has taken possession of it? The difficulty arises from our vague conception of _life_. Life is only a mode of existence. Existence is possible without what we call life, not life without existence. To live means to be able to absorb, but who or what is able? The Self exists, it is sentient, capable of perception by becoming embodied. It is perceptive because sentient, it is conceptive because perceptive. The difficulty lies in the embodiment. It is there where all philosophy becomes ridiculous. _MS._ Knowledge belongs to the Self alone, call it what we will. The nerve fibres might vibrate as often as they pleased, millions and millions of times in a second; they could never produce the sensation of red if there were no Self as the receiver and illuminator, the translator of these vibrations of ether; this Self that alone receives, alone illumines, alone knows, and of which we can say nothing more than that it exists, that it perceives, and as the Indian philosophers add, that it is blessed, _i.e._ that it is complete in itself, serene, and eternal. _Silesian Horseherd._ Nothing eternal can have a beginning, and there can be no immortal life after death, unless our true immortal life has been realised here on earth. Hindu philosophers called those who had realised their true, immortal, eternal, or divine Self 'free while living.' _MS._ SORROW AND SUFFERING How mysterious all this suffering is, particularly when it produces such prostration that it must lose all that elevating power which one knows suffering does exercise in many cases. It seems sometimes as if a large debt of suffering had to be paid off, and that some are chosen to pay a large, very large sum, so that others may go free. We have our own burden to bear, but it is a burden that seems to make other things easy to bear--it strengthens even when it seems to crush. But how could one bear that complete prostration of all powers which must make death seem so much preferable to life. And yet life goes on, and people care about a hundred little things, and break their hearts if they do not get them. _MS._ Such trials as you have had to pass through are not sent without a purpose, and if you say that they have changed your views of life, such a change in a character like yours can only be a change in advance, a firmer faith in those truths which have been revealed to the dim sight of human nature, a stronger will to resist all falsehood and tampering with the truth, and a deeper conviction that we owe our life to Him who has given it, and that we must fight His battle when He calls us to do it. _MS._ God knows that we want rain and storm as much as sunshine, and He sends us both as seems best to His love and wisdom. When all breaks down He lifts us up. But when we feel quite crushed and forsaken and alone, we then feel the real presence of our truest Friend, who, whether by joys or sorrows, is always calling us to Him, and leading us to that true Home where we shall find Him, and in Him all we loved, with Him all we believed, and through Him all we hoped for and aspired to on earth. Our broken hearts are the truest earnest of everlasting life. _Life._ We must submit, but we must feel it a great blessing to be able to submit, to be able to trust that infinite Love which embraces us on all sides, which speaks to us through every flower and every worm, which always shows us beauty and perfection, which never mars, never destroys, never wastes, never deceives, never mocks. _MS._ There is but one help and one comfort in these trials, that is, to know by whom they are sent. If one knows that nothing can happen to us without Him, one does not feel quite helpless, even under the greatest terrors of this life. _MS._ How little one thinks that many trials and afflictions may come upon us any day. One lives as if life were to last for ever, and as if we should never part with those who are most dear to us. Life would be intolerable were it otherwise, but how little one is prepared for what life really is. _MS._ Why is there so much suffering in this world? I cannot think it improves us much, and yet it must have its purpose. All these are questions far too high for us--we are like children, and more than children, when we come to think of them. All we know is that where we catch a glimpse of God's handiwork, either in the natural or moral world, it is so wonderfully perfect, so beyond all our measures, that we feel safe as in a good ship, however rough the sea may be. Whatever we may believe, or hope, or wish for, will be far exceeded by that Higher Will and Wisdom which supports all, even us little souls. _MS._ The sorrows of life are inevitable, but they are hard to bear, for all that. They would be harder still if we did not see their purpose of reminding us that our true life is not here, but that we are here on a voyage that may be calm or stormy, and which is to teach us what all sailors have to learn, courage, perseverance, kindness, and in the end complete trust in a Higher Power. _MS._ Sorrow is necessary and good for men; one learns to understand that each joy must be indemnified by suffering, that each new tie which knits our hearts to this life must be loosed again, and the tighter and the closer it was knit, the keener the pain of loosening it. Should we then attach our hearts to nothing, and pass quietly and unsympathetically through this world, as if we had nothing to do with it? We neither could nor ought to act so. Nature itself knits the first tie between parents and children, and new ties through our whole life. We are not here for reward, for the enjoyment of undisturbed peace or from mere accident, but for trial, for improvement, perhaps for punishment; for the only union which can secure the happiness of men, the union between our Self and God's Self, is broken, or at least obscured, by our birth, and the highest object of our life is to find this bond again, to remain ever conscious of it and hold fast to it in life and in death. This rediscovery of the eternal union between God and man constitutes true religion among all people. _Life._ Every one carries a grave of lost hope in his soul, but he covers it over with cold marble, or with green boughs. On sad days one likes to go alone to this God's acre of the soul, and weep there, but only in order to return full of comfort and hope to those who are left to us. _Life._ The sorrows of life, like all other things, pass away, and the larger the number who await us beyond, the easier the parting from those we leave behind. _Life._ Grief is a sweet remembrance of happiness that was. _MS._ There is the old riddle always before me, why was ... taken from me? Human understanding has no answer for it, and yet I feel as certain as I can feel of anything that as it is, it is good, it is best, better than anything I can wish for. One feels one's own ignorance why what seems so right and natural should not be, and yet one knows it could not be. One hides one's head in the arms of a Higher Power, a Friend, a Father, and more than a Father. Wait, and you will know. Work, and you will be able to bear it. _MS._ People think that grief is pain, but it is not so: Grief, the absorption in the quiet recollection of what was, but is no longer, is a pleasure, a consolation, a blessing. _MS._ Those who would comfort us by bidding us forget our grief, and join their happy gatherings, do not know what comfort is. Hearts which have suffered have a right to what the world may call grief and sorrow, but what is really a quiet communion with those whom we love, and whom we can find no longer among the laughter of the happy. _MS._ What can we pray for? Not for special gifts, but only for God's mercy. We do not know what is good for us, and for others. What would become of the world if all our prayers were granted? And yet it is good to pray--that is, to live in all our joys and sorrows with God, that unknown God whom we cannot reason with, but whom we can love and trust. Human misery, outward and inward, is certainly a great problem, and yet one knows from one's own life how just the heaviest burdens have been blessings. The soul must be furrowed if it is to bear fruit. _MS._ What is the tenure of all our happiness? Are we not altogether at the mercy of God? Would it not be fearful to live for one day unless we knew, and saw, and felt His Presence and Wisdom and Love encompassing us on all sides? If we once feel that, then even death, even the death of those we love best and who love us best, loses much of its terror: it is part and parcel of one great system of which we see but a small portion here, and which without death, without that bridge of which we see here but the first arch, would seem to be a mere mockery. That is why I said to you it is well that human art cannot prolong our life for ever, and in that sentiment I should think we both agree. I have felt much for you, more than I cared to say. We are trained differently, but we are all trained for some good purpose, and the suffering which you have undergone is to me like deep ploughing, the promise of a rich harvest. _Life._ There is a large and secret brotherhood in this world, the members of which easily recognise each other, without any visible outward sign. It is the band of mourners. The members of this brotherhood need not necessarily wear mourning; they can even rejoice with the joyful, and they seldom sigh or weep when others see them. But they recognise and understand each other, without uttering a word, like tired wanderers who, climbing a steep mountain, overtake other tired wanderers, and pause, and then silently go on again, knowing that they all hope to see the same glorious sunset high up above. Their countenances reflect a soft moonlight; when they speak, one thinks of the whispering of the leaves of a beech forest after a warm spring shower, and as the rays of the sun light up the drops of dew with a thousand colours, and drink them up from the green grass, a heavenly light seems to shine through the tears of the mourners, to lighten them, and lovingly kiss them away. Almost every one, sooner or later, enters this brotherhood, and those who enter it early may be considered fortunate, for they learn, before it is too late, that _all_ which man calls his own is only lent him for a short time, and the ivy of their affections does not cling so deeply and so strongly to the old walls of earthly happiness. _Life._ We cannot know, we cannot name the Divine, nor can we understand its ways as manifested in nature and human life. We ask why there should be suffering and sin, we cannot answer the question. All we can say is, it is willed to be so. Some help our human understanding may find, however, by simply imagining what would have been our life if the power of evil had not been given us. It seems to me that in that case we, human beings as we are, should never have had a conception of what is meant by good: we should have been like the birds in the air, happier, it may be, but better, no. Or if suffering had always been reserved for the bad, we should all have become the most cunning angels. Often when I am met by a difficulty which seems insoluble, I try that experiment, and say, Let us see what would happen if it were otherwise. Still, I confess there is some suffering on earth which goes beyond all understanding, which even the truest Christian love and charity seems unable to remove or mitigate. It can teach us one thing only, that we are blind, and that in the darkness of the night we lose our faith in a Dawn which will drive away darkness, fear, and despair. Much, no doubt, could be done even by what is now called Communism, but what in earlier days was called Christianity. And then one wonders whether the world can ever again become truly Christian. I dare not call myself a Christian. I have hardly met the men in all my life who deserved that name. Again, I say, let us do our best, knowing all the time that our best is a mere nothing. _Life._ THE SOUL The name of the immortal element (in man) was not given to man as a gratuitous gift. It had to be gained, like the name of God, in the sweat of his face. Before man could say that he believed his soul to be immortal, he had to discover that there was a soul in man. It required as great an effort to form such a word as _anima_, breath, and to make it signify the infinite in man, as to form such a word as _diva_, bright, and to make it signify the infinite in nature. _Gifford Lectures, III._ To us the two words 'body and soul' are so familiar that it seems almost childish to ask how man came at first to speak of body and soul. But what did he mean by soul? What do we ourselves mean by soul? Think of the many meanings contained in our word soul. Our soul may mean the living soul; it may mean the sentient soul; it may mean the seat of the passions, whether good or bad; it may mean the organ of thought; and lastly, the immortal element in man. The question we have to ask is not how man arrived at a name for soul, but how he came for the first time to speak of something different from the body. _Gifford Lectures, III._ The discovery of the soul, the first attempts at naming the soul, started everywhere from the simplest observations of material facts. The lesson cannot be inculcated too often that the whole wealth of our most abstract and spiritual words comes from a small number of material or concrete terms. _Gifford Lectures, III._ We see that the way which led to the discovery of a soul was pointed out to man as clearly as was the way which led him to the discovery of the gods. It was chiefly the breath, which almost visibly left the body at the time of death, that suggested the name of breath, and afterwards the thought of something breathing, living, perceiving, willing, remembering, and thinking within us. The name came first, the name of the material breath. By dropping what seemed material even in this airy breath, there remained the first vague and airy concept of what we call soul. _Gifford Lectures, III._ The worship of the spirits of the departed which, under various forms, was so widely spread over the ancient world, could not but accustom the human mind to the idea that there was something in man which deserved such worship. The souls of the departed were lifted higher and higher, till at last they reached the highest stage which existed in the human mind, namely, that of divine beings, in the ancient sense of that word. _Gifford Lectures, III._ The problem of uniting the invisible and visible worlds presented itself under three principal aspects. The first was the problem of creation, or how the invisible Primal Cause could ever come in contact with visible matter and impart to it form and meaning. The second problem was the relation between God and the individual soul. The third problem was the return of the soul from the visible to the invisible world, from the prison of its mortal body to the freedom of a heavenly paradise. The individual soul as dwelling in a material body forms part of the created world, and the question of the return of the soul to God is therefore closely connected with that of its creation by, or its emanation from, God. _Gifford Lectures, IV._ When the original oneness of earth and heaven, of the human and the divine natures, has once been discovered, the question of the return of the soul to God assumes a new character. It is no longer a question of an ascension to heaven, an approach to the throne of God, an ecstatic vision of God, and a life in a heavenly Paradise. The vision of God is rather the knowledge of the divine element in the soul, and of the consubstantiality of the divine and human natures. Immortality has no longer to be asserted, because there can be no death for what is divine, and therefore immortal, in man. There is life eternal and peace eternal for all who feel the divine Spirit as dwelling within them, and have thus become the children of God. _Gifford Lectures, IV._ No doubt the soul must find it difficult in childhood to accustom itself to the human body, and it takes many years before it is quite at home. Then for a time all goes well, and the soul hardly knows it is hidden in a strange garment till the body begins to be weakly, and can no longer do all the soul wishes, and presses it everywhere, so that the soul appears to lose all outward freedom and movement. Then one can well understand that we long to be gone, and death is a true deliverance. God always knows best when the right time comes. _Life._ Let us remember that we do not know what the soul was before this life--nay, even what it was during the first years of our childhood. Yet we believe on very fair evidence that what we call our soul existed from the moment of our birth. What ground have we, then, to doubt that it was even before that moment? To ascribe to the soul a beginning on our birthday would be the same as to claim for it an end on the day of our death, for whatever has a beginning has an end. If then, in the absence of any other means of knowledge, we may take refuge in analogy, might we not say that it will be with the soul hereafter as it has been here, and that the soul after its earthly setting will rise again, much as it rose here? This is not a syllogism, it is analogy, and in a cosmos like ours analogy has a right to claim some weight, in the absence of any proof to the contrary. _Last Essays._ There is a question which has probably been asked by every human heart--Granting that the soul cannot, without self-contradiction, be mortal, will that soul be itself, know itself, and will it know others whom it has known before? For the next life, it is said, would not be worth living if the soul did not recollect itself, recognise not only itself, but those whom it has known and loved on earth. Here analogy alone can supply some kind of answer: 'It will be hereafter as it has been' is not, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, an argument that can be treated with contempt. Our soul here may be said to have risen without any recollection of itself and of the circumstances of its former existence. But it has within it the consciousness of its eternity, and the conception of a beginning is as impossible for it as that of an end, and if souls were to meet again hereafter as they met in this life, as they loved in this life, without knowing that they had met and loved before, would the next life be so very different from what this life has been here on earth--would it be so utterly intolerable and really not worth living? _Last Essays._ When the soul has once reached that union with God, nay, when it lives in the constant presence of God, evil becomes almost impossible. We know that most of the evil deeds to which human nature is prone are possible in the dark only. Before the eyes of another human being, more particularly of a beloved being, they become at once impossible. How much more in the real presence of a real and really beloved God, as felt by the true mystic, not merely as a phrase, but as a fact? As long as there is no veil between him and God, evil thoughts, evil words, and evil deeds are simply impossible to one who feels the actual presence of God. Nor is he troubled any longer by questions, such as how the world was created, how evil came into the world. He is satisfied with the Divine Love that embraces his soul; he has all that he can desire, his whole life is hid through Christ in God, death is swallowed up in victory, the mortal has become immortal, neither death nor life, nor things present, nor things to come, is able to separate his soul from the love of God. _Gifford Lectures, IV._ THEOSOPHY This venerable name (Theosophy), so well known among early Christian thinkers, as expressing the highest conception of God within the reach of the human mind, has of late been so greatly misappropriated that it is high time to restore it to its proper function. It should be known once for all that one may call oneself a theosophist without ... believing in any occult sciences and black art. _Gifford Lectures, IV._ There is nothing esoteric in Buddhism. Buddhism is the very opposite of esoteric--it is a religion for the people at large, for the poor, the suffering, the ill-treated. Buddha protests against the very idea of keeping anything secret. There was much more of that esoteric teaching in Brâhmanism. There was the system of caste, which deprived the Sûdras, at least, of many religious privileges. But I do say that even in Brâhmanism there is _no such thing as an esoteric interpretation of the Sâstras._ The Sâstras have but one meaning, and all who had been properly prepared by education had access to them. There are some artificial poems, which are so written as to admit of two interpretations. They are very wonderful, but they have nothing to do with philosophical doctrines. Again, there are erotic poems in Sanscrit which are explained as celebrating the love and union between the soul and God. But all this is perfectly well known, there is no mystery in it. _Life._ TRUTH What is wanted is the power of sifting evidence, and a simple love of truth. Whatever value we may attach to our own most cherished convictions, there is something more cherished than all of them, and that is a perfect trust in truth, if once we have seen it. _Last Essays._ True reverence does not consist in declaring a subject, because it is dear to us, to be unfit for free, and honest inquiry; far from it! True reverence is shown in treating every subject, however sacred, however dear to us, with perfect confidence, without fear and without favour; with tenderness and love, by all means, but, before all, with unflinching and uncompromising loyalty to truth. _Science of Religion._ Do we lose anything if we find that what we hold to be the most valuable truth is shared in and supported by millions of human beings? Ancient philosophers were most anxious to support their own belief in God by the unanimous testimony of mankind. They made the greatest efforts to prove that there was no race so degraded and barbarous as to be without a belief in something divine. Some modern theologians seem to grudge to all religions but their own the credit of having a pure and true, nay any concept of God at all, quite forgetful of the fact that a truth does not cease to be a truth because it is accepted universally. I know no heresy more dangerous to true religion than this denial that a true concept of God is within the reach of every human being, is, in fact, the common inheritance of mankind, however fearfully it may have been misused and profaned by Christian and un-Christian nations. _Gifford Lectures, II._ If Comparative Theology has taught us anything, it has taught us that there is a common fund of truth in all religions, derived from a revelation that was neither confined to one nation, nor miraculous in the usual sense of that word, and that even minute coincidences between the doctrines, nay, between the external accessories of various religions, need not be accounted for at once by disguised borrowings, but can be explained by other and more natural causes. _Gifford Lectures, II._ Can there be anything higher and better than truth? Is any kind of religion possible without an unquestioning trust in truth? No one knows what it is to believe who has not learnt to believe in truth, for the sake of truth, and for the sake of truth only. _Gifford Lectures, III._ It may be quite right to guard against dangers, whether real or imaginary, so long as it is possible. But when it is no longer possible, the right thing is to face an enemy bravely. Very often the enemy will turn out a friend in disguise. We cannot be far wrong, if we are only quite honest, but if we are once not quite honest over a few things, we shall soon become dishonest over many things. In teaching on religion, even on Natural religion, we must look neither right nor left, but look all facts straight in the face, to see whether they are facts or not, and, if they are facts, to find out what they mean. _Gifford Lectures, III._ Some people say that they can derive no help, no comfort, from what they call spiritual _only_. Spiritual _only_--think what that _only_ would mean, if it could have any meaning at all. We might as well say of light that it is light only, and that what we want is the shadow which we can grasp. So long as we know the shadow only, and not the light that throws it, the shadow only is real, and not the light. But when we have once turned our head and seen the light, the light only is real and substantial, and not the shadow. _Gifford Lectures, III._ We find in the Upanishads, what has occupied the thoughts of man at all times, what occupies them now and will occupy them for ever--a search after truth, a desire to discover the Eternal that underlies the Ephemeral, a longing to find in the human heart the assurance of a future life, and an attempt to reunite the bond which once held the human and the divine together, the true atonement between God and man. _Gifford Lectures, III._ We have toiled for many years and been troubled with many questionings, but what is the end of it all? We must learn to become simple again like little children. That is all we have a right to be: for this life was meant to be the childhood of our souls, and the more we try to be what we were meant to be, the better for us. Let us use the powers of our minds with the greatest freedom and love of truth, but let us never forget that we are, as Newton said, like children playing on the seashore, while the great ocean of truth lies undiscovered before us. _Life._ Nothing I like better than when I meet a man who differs from me; he always gives me something, and for that I am grateful. Nor am I at all so hopeless as many people, who imagine that two people who differ can never arrive at a mutual understanding.... Why do people differ, considering that they all begin with the same love of truth, and are all influenced by the same environment? Well, they often differ because one is ignorant of facts which the other knows and has specially studied.... But in most cases people differ because they use their words loosely, and because they mix up different subjects instead of treating them one by one. _Life._ THE WILL OF GOD Through my whole life I have learnt this one lesson, that nothing can happen to us, unless it be the will of God. There can be no disappointment in life, if we but learn to submit our will to the will of God. Let us wait for a little while, and to those whose eyes are turned to God and eternity the longest life is but a little while,--let us wait then in faith, hope, and charity: these three abide, but the greatest of these is charity. _Life._ Whatever happens to us is always the best for us, even if we do not at once understand and perceive it. _MS._ Surely everything is ordered, and ordered for our true interests. It would be fearful to think that anything, however small in appearance, could happen to us without the will of God. If you admit the idea of chance or unmeaning events anywhere, the whole organisation of our life in God is broken to pieces. We are we don't know where, unless we rest in God and give Him praise for all things. We must trust in Him whether he sends us joy or sorrow. If he sends us joy let us be careful. Happiness is often sent to try us, and is by no means a proof of our having deserved it. Nor is sorrow always a sign of God's displeasure, but frequently, nay always, of His love and compassion. We must each interpret our life as best we can, but we must be sure that its deepest purpose is to bring us back to God through Christ. Death is a condition of our life on earth, it brings the creature back to its Creator. The creature groans at the sight of death, but God will not forsake us at the last, He who has never forsaken us from the first breath of our life on earth. If it is His will we may live to serve Him here on earth for many happy years to come. If He takes either of us away, His name be praised. We live in the shadow of death, but that shadow should not darken the brightness of our life. It is the shadow of the hand of our God and Father, and the earnest of a higher, brighter life hereafter. Our Father in heaven loves us more than any husband can love his wife, or any mother her child. His hand can never hurt us, so let us hope and trust always. _Life._ Our lives are in the hands of a Father, who knows what is best for all of us. Death is painful to the creature, but in God there is no death, no dying; dying belongs to life, and is only a passage to a more perfect world into which we all go when God calls us. When one's happiness is perfect, then the thought of death often frightens one, but even that is conquered by the feeling and the faith that all is best as it is, and that God loves us more than even a father and mother can love us. It is a beautiful world in which we live, but it is only beautiful and only really our home when we feel the nearness of God at each moment and lean on Him and trust in His love.... When the hour of parting comes, we know that love never dies, and that God who bound us closely together in this life will bring us together where there is no more parting. _MS._ Our meeting here on earth with those we loved was not our doing. We did not select our father and mother, and sisters and brothers. We did not even explore the whole world to discover our friends. They too were more or less given us, the choice was given us, and the sphere of choice was determined and limited. Hence we seem to have a right to say that they were meant for us, and we for them, and unless we believe in accident, who is there by whose will alone they could have been meant for us? Hence, if they were meant for us once by a Divine, not by our own will, that will can never change, and we have a right to hope and even to believe that _what has been will be_, and that we shall again meet and love those whom we met and loved here. This is faith, and this is comfort, but it is greater faith, and greater comfort still, if we close our eyes in the firm conviction that whatever will be, will be best for us. _MS._ WONDER There are few sensations more pleasant than that of wondering. We have all experienced it in childhood, in youth, in manhood, and we may hope that even in our old age this affection of the mind will not entirely pass away. If we analyse this feeling of wonder carefully, we shall find that it consists of two elements. What we mean by wondering is not only that we are startled or stunned--that I should call the merely passive element of wonder. When we say 'I wonder' we confess that we are taken aback, but there is a secret satisfaction mixed up with our feeling of surprise, a kind of hope, nay, almost of certainty, that sooner or later the wonder will cease, that our senses or our mind will recover, will grapple with these novel expressions or experiences, grasp them, it may be, know them, and finally triumph over them. In fact we wonder at the riddles of nature, whether animate or inanimate, with a firm conviction that there is a solution to them all, even though we ourselves may not be able to find it. Wonder, no doubt, arises from ignorance, but from a peculiar kind of ignorance, from what might be called a fertile ignorance; an ignorance which, if we look back at the history of most of our sciences, will be found to have been the mother of all human knowledge. _Chips._ WORDS What people call 'mere words' are in truth the monuments of the fiercest intellectual battles; triumphant arches of the grandest victories won by the intellect of man. When man had formed names for body and soul, for father and mother, and not till then, did the first art of human history begin. Not till there were names for right and wrong, for God and man, could there be anything worthy of the name of human society. Every new word was a discovery, and these early discoveries, if but properly understood, are more important to us than the greatest conquests of the kings of Egypt and Babylon. Not one of our greatest explorers has unearthed more splendid palaces, than the etymologist. Every word is the palace of a human thought, and in scientific etymology we possess the charm with which to call these ancient thoughts back to life. _Chips._ Cannot a concept exist without a word? Certainly not, though in order to meet every possible objection we may say that no concept can exist without a sign, whether it be a word or anything else. And if it is asked whether the concept exists first, and the sign comes afterwards, I should say no: the two are simultaneous, but in strict logic, the sign, being the condition of a concept, may really be said to come first. After a time, words may be dropt, and it is then, when we try to remember the old word that gave birth to our concept, that we are led to imagine that concepts came first, and words afterwards. I know how difficult it is to see this clearly. We are so accustomed to think without words, that we can hardly realise the fact that originally no conceptual thought was possible without these or other signs. _Gifford Lectures, I._ WORK If you have found a work to which you are ready to sacrifice the whole of your life, and if you have faith in yourselves, others will have faith in you, and, sooner or later, a work that must be done will be done. _Gifford Lectures, II._ What flimsy things the so-called pleasures of life are--how little in them that lasts. To delight in doing one's work is life--that is what helps us on, though the road is sometimes very stiff and tiring--uphill rather it would seem than downhill, and yet downhill it is. _MS._ A distaste for work is only another name for a distaste for duty, a disregard for those commandments which hold society together, a disregard of the commandments of God. No doubt there is that reward in work that after a time it ceases to be distasteful, and like many a bitter medicine becomes liked, but that reward is vouchsafed to honest work only. _MS._ Work is the best healer of sorrow. In grief or disappointment try hard work; it will not fail you. _Autobiography._ No sensible man ought to care about posthumous praise, or posthumous blame. Enough for the day is the evil thereof. Our contemporaries are our right judges, our peers have to give their votes in the great academies and learned societies, and if they on the whole are not dissatisfied with the little we have done, often under far greater difficulties than the world was aware of, why should we care for the distant future? _Autobiography._ Put your whole heart, or your whole love into your work. Half-hearted work is really worse than no work. _Last Essays._ Much of the best work in the world is done by those whose names remain unknown, who work because life's greatest bliss is work, and who require no reward beyond the consciousness that they have enlarged the knowledge of mankind and contributed their share to the final triumph of honesty and truth. _Chips._ True immortality (of fame) is the immortality of the work done by man, which nothing can make undone, which lives, works on, grows on for ever. It is good to _ourselves_ to remember and honour the names of our ancestors and benefactors, but to them, depend upon it, the highest reward was not the hope of fame, but their faith in themselves, their faith in their work, their faith that nothing really good can ever perish, and that Right and Reason must in the end prevail. _Chips._ It is given to few scholars only to be allowed to devote the whole of their time and labour to the one subject in which they feel the deepest interest. We have all to fight the battle of life before we can hope to secure a quiet cell in which to work in the cause of learning and truth. _Chips._ What author has ever said the last word he wanted to say, and who has not had to close his eyes before he could write _Finis_ to his work? _Autobiography._ THE WORLD There is no other Christian explanation of the world than that God thought and uttered it, and that man follows in life and thought the thoughts of God. We must not forget that all our knowledge and hold of the world are again nothing but thoughts, which we transform under the law of causality into objective realities. It was this unswerving dependence on God in thought and life that made Jesus what He was, and what we should be if we only tried, viz. children of God. _Silesian Horseherd._ I cannot help seeing order, law, reason or Logos in the world, and I cannot account for it by merely _ex post_ events, call them what you like--survival of the fittest, natural selection, or anything else. _Last Essays._ Think only what it was to believe in an order of the world, though it be no more at first than a belief that the sun will never overstep his bounds. It was all the difference between a chaos and a cosmos, between the blind play of chance and an intelligible and therefore an intelligent providence. How many souls, even now when everything else has failed them, when they have parted with the most cherished convictions of their childhood, when their faith in man has been poisoned, and when the apparent triumph of all that is selfish, ignoble, and hideous has made them throw up the cause of truth, of righteousness, and innocence as no longer worth fighting for, at least in this world; how many, I say, have found their last peace and comfort in the contemplation of the order of the world, whether manifested in the unvarying movement of the stars, or revealed in the unvarying number of the petals and stamens and pistils of the smallest forget-me-not. How many have felt that to belong to this cosmos, to this beautiful order of nature, is something at least to rest on, something to trust, something to believe, when everything else has failed. To us, this perception of law and order in the world may seem very little, but to the ancient dwellers on earth, who had little else to support them, it was everything because, if once perceived, if once understood, it could never be taken from them. _Hibbert Lectures._ We must learn to see a meaning in everything. No doubt we cannot always see cause and effect, and it is well we cannot. It is quite true that we do not always get our deserts. And yet we must believe that we do--only if we knew it, the whole fabric of the world would be destroyed, there would be neither virtue nor vice in the whole world, nothing but calculation. We should avoid the rails laid down by the world because we should know that the engine would be sure to come and mangle us. In this way the world holds together, and it could not in any other way. _Life._ There is to me a beauty and mystery and sanctity about flowers, and when I see them come and go, no one knows whence and whither, I ask what more miracles do we want,--what better, more beautiful, more orderly world could we wish to belong to than that by which we are surrounded and supported on all sides? Where is there a flaw or a fault? Then why should we fear unless the flaws are within us, and we will not see the blessing and the rest which we might enjoy if we only trusted to the Author of all that beauty, order, and wisdom about us. It is a perfect sin not to be happy in this world, and how much of the misery which there is, is the work of men, or could be removed by men, if they would but work together for each others' good. _Life._ Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty at the Edinburgh University Press. * * * * * Transcriber's note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed. Page 81: "There no _chance_ in life ..." The transcriber has inserted "is". 
39928	----	MAN'S PLACE IN THE UNIVERSE MAN'S PLACE IN THE UNIVERSE A Study of the Results of Scientific Research in Relation to the Unity or Plurality of Worlds BY ALFRED R. WALLACE LL.D., D.C.L., F.R.S., ETC. 'O, glittering host! O, golden line! I would I had an angel's ken, Your deepest secrets to divine, And read your mysteries to men.' _THIRD EDITION_ LONDON CHAPMAN AND HALL LIMITED 1904 'I said unto my inmost heart, Shall I don corslet, helm, and shield, And shall I with a Giant strive, And charge a Dragon on the field?' J.H. DELL. PREFACE This work has been written in consequence of the great interest excited by my article, under the same title, which appeared simultaneously in _The Fortnightly Review_ and the _New York Independent_. Two friends who read the manuscript were of opinion that a volume, in which the evidence could be given much more fully, would be desirable, and the result of the publication of the article confirmed their view. I was led to a study of the subject when writing four new chapters on Astronomy for a new edition of _The Wonderful Century_. I then found that almost all writers on general astronomy, from Sir John Herschel to Professor Simon Newcomb and Sir Norman Lockyer, stated, as an indisputable fact, that our sun is situated _in_ the plane of the great ring of the Milky Way, and also very nearly in the centre of that ring. The most recent researches also showed that there was little or no proof of there being any stars or nebulæ very far beyond the Milky Way, which thus seemed to be the limit, in that direction, of the stellar universe. Turning to the earth and the other planets of the Solar System, I found that the most recent researches led to the conclusion that no other planet was likely to be the seat of organic life, unless perhaps of a very low type. For many years I had paid special attention to the problem of the measurement of geological time, and also that of the mild climates and generally uniform conditions that had prevailed throughout all geological epochs; and on considering the number of concurrent causes and the delicate balance of conditions required to maintain such uniformity, I became still more convinced that the evidence was exceedingly strong against the probability or possibility of any other planet being inhabited. Having long been acquainted with most of the works dealing with the question of the supposed _Plurality of Worlds_, I was quite aware of the very superficial treatment the subject had received, even in the hands of the most able writers, and this made me the more willing to set forth the whole of the available evidence--astronomical, physical, and biological--in such a way as to show both what was proved and what suggested by it. The present work is the result, and I venture to think that those who will read it carefully will admit that it is a book that was worth writing. It is founded almost entirely on the marvellous body of facts and conclusions of the New Astronomy together with those reached by modern physicists, chemists, and biologists. Its novelty consists in combining the various results of these different branches of science into a connected whole, so as to show their bearing upon a single problem--a problem which is of very great interest to ourselves. This problem is, whether or no the logical inferences to be drawn from the various results of modern science lend support to the view that our earth is the only inhabited planet, not only in the Solar System but in the whole stellar universe. Of course it is a point as to which absolute demonstration, one way or the other, is impossible. But in the absence of any direct proofs, it is clearly rational to inquire into probabilities; and these probabilities must be determined not by our prepossessions for any particular view, but by an absolutely impartial and unprejudiced examination of the tendency of the evidence. As the book is written for the general, educated body of readers, many of whom may not be acquainted with any aspect of the subject or with the wonderful advance of recent knowledge in that department often termed the New Astronomy, a popular account has been given of all those branches of it which bear upon the special subject here discussed. This part of the work occupies the first six chapters. Those who are fairly acquainted with modern astronomical literature, as given in popular works, may begin at my seventh chapter, which marks the commencement of the considerable body of evidence and of argument I have been able to adduce. To those of my readers who may have been influenced by any of the adverse criticisms on my views as set forth in the article already referred to, I must again urge, that throughout the whole of this work, neither the facts nor the more obvious conclusions from the facts are given on my own authority, but always on that of the best astronomers, mathematicians, and other men of science to whose works I have had access, and whose names, with exact references, I generally give. What I claim to have done is, to have brought together the various facts and phenomena _they_ have accumulated; to have set forth the hypotheses by which _they_ account for them, or the results to which the evidence clearly points; to have judged between conflicting opinions and theories; and lastly, to have combined the results of the various widely-separated departments of science, and to have shown how they bear upon the great problem which I have here endeavoured, in some slight degree, to elucidate. As such a large body of facts and arguments from distinct sciences have been here brought together, I have given a rather full summary of the whole argument, and have stated my final conclusions in six short sentences. I then briefly discuss the two aspects of the whole problem--those from the materialistic and from the spiritualistic points of view; and I conclude with a few general observations on the almost unthinkable problems raised by ideas of Infinity--problems which some of my critics thought I had attempted in some degree to deal with, but which, I here point out, are altogether above and beyond the questions I have discussed, and equally above and beyond the highest powers of the human intellect. BROADSTONE, DORSET, _September_ 1903. 'The wilder'd mind is tost and lost, O sea, in thy eternal tide; The reeling brain essays in vain, O stars, to grasp the vastness wide! The terrible tremendous scheme That glimmers in each glancing light, O night, O stars, too rudely jars The finite with the infinite!' J.H. DELL. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. EARLY IDEAS, 1 II. MODERN IDEAS, 7 III. THE NEW ASTRONOMY, 24 IV. THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE STARS, 47 V. DISTANCES OF STARS: THE SUN'S MOTION, 73 VI. UNITY AND EVOLUTION OF THE STAR-SYSTEM, 99 VII. ARE THE STARS INFINITE? 135 VIII. OUR RELATION TO THE MILKY WAY, 156 IX. THE UNIFORMITY OF MATTER AND ITS LAWS, 183 X. THE ESSENTIAL CHARACTERS OF ORGANISMS, 191 XI. PHYSICAL CONDITIONS ESSENTIAL FOR LIFE, 206 XII. THE EARTH IN RELATION TO LIFE, 218 XIII. THE ATMOSPHERE IN RELATION TO LIFE, 243 XIV. THE OTHER PLANETS ARE NOT HABITABLE, 262 XV. THE STARS: HAVE THEY PLANETS? ARE THEY USEFUL TO US? 282 XVI. STABILITY OF THE STAR-SYSTEM: IMPORTANCE OF CENTRAL POSITION: SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION, 295 INDEX, 326 _EIGHT DIAGRAMS IN THE TEXT AND TWO STAR CHARTS AT END._ 'Who is man, and what his place? Anxious asks the heart, perplext In this recklessness of space, Worlds with worlds thus intermixt: What has he, this atom creature, In the infinitude of Nature?' F.T. PALGRAVE. MAN'S PLACE IN THE UNIVERSE CHAPTER I EARLY IDEAS AS TO THE UNIVERSE AND ITS RELATION TO MAN When men attained to sufficient intelligence for speculations as to their own nature and that of the earth on which they lived, they must have been profoundly impressed by the nightly pageant of the starry heavens. The intense sparkling brilliancy of Sirius and Vega, the more massive and steady luminosity of Jupiter and Venus, the strange grouping of the brighter stars into constellations to which fantastic names indicating their resemblance to various animals or terrestrial objects seemed appropriate and were soon generally adopted, together with the apparently innumerable stars of less and less brilliancy scattered broadcast over the sky, many only being visible on the clearest nights and to the acutest vision, constituted altogether a scene of marvellous and impressive splendour of which it must have seemed almost impossible to attain any real knowledge, but which afforded an endless field for the imagination of the observer. The relation of the stars to the sun and moon in their respective motions was one of the earliest problems for the astronomer, and it was only solved by careful and continuous observation, which showed that the invisibility of the former during the day was wholly due to the blaze of light, and this is said to have been proved at an early period by the observed fact that from the bottom of very deep wells stars can be seen while the sun is shining. During total eclipses of the sun also the brighter stars become visible, and, taken in connection with the fixity of position of the pole-star, and the course of those circumpolar stars which never set in the latitudes of Greece, Egypt, and Chaldea, it soon became possible to frame a simple hypothesis which supposed the earth to be suspended in space, while at an unknown distance from it a crystal sphere revolved upon an axis indicated by the pole-star, and carried with it the whole host of heavenly bodies. This was the theory of Anaximander (540 B.C.), and it served as the starting-point for the more complex theory which continued to be held in various forms and with endless modifications down to the end of the sixteenth century. It is believed that the early Greeks obtained some knowledge of astronomy from the Chaldeans, who appear to have been the first systematic observers of the heavenly bodies by means of instruments, and who are said to have discovered the cycle of eighteen years and ten days after which the sun and moon return to the same relative positions as seen from the earth. The Egyptians perhaps derived their knowledge from the same source, but there is no proof that they were great observers, and the accurate orientation, proportions, and angles of the Great Pyramid and its inner passages may perhaps indicate a Chaldean architect. The very obvious dependence of the whole life of the earth upon the sun, as a giver of heat and light, sufficiently explains the origin of the belief that the latter was a mere appanage of the former; and as the moon also illuminates the night, while the stars as a whole also give a very perceptible amount of light, especially in the dry climate and clear atmosphere of the East, and when compared with the pitchy darkness of cloudy nights when the moon is below the horizon, it seemed clear that the whole of these grand luminaries--sun, moon, stars, and planets--were but parts of the terrestrial system, and existed solely for the benefit of its inhabitants. Empedocles (444 B.C.) is said to have been the first who separated the planets from the fixed stars, by observing their very peculiar motions, while Pythagoras and his followers determined correctly the order of their succession from Mercury to Saturn. No attempt was made to explain these motions till a century later, when Eudoxus of Cnidos, a contemporary of Plato and of Aristotle, resided for some time in Egypt, where he became a skilful astronomer. He was the first who systematically worked out and explained the various motions of the heavenly bodies on the theory of circular and uniform motion round the earth as a centre, by means of a series of concentric spheres, each revolving at a different rate and on a different axis, but so united that all shared in the motion round the polar axis. The moon, for example, was supposed to be carried by three spheres, the first revolved parallel to the equator and accounted for the diurnal motion--the rising and setting--of the moon; another moved parallel to the ecliptic and explained the monthly changes of the moon; while the third revolved at the same rate but more obliquely, and explained the inclination of the moon's orbit to that of the earth. In the same way each of the five planets had four spheres, two moving like the first two of the moon, another one also moving in the ecliptic was required to explain the retrograde motion of the planets, while a fourth oblique to the ecliptic was needed to explain the diverging motions due to the different obliquity of the orbit of each planet to that of the earth. This was the celebrated Ptolemaic system in the simplest form needed to account for the more obvious motions of the heavenly bodies. But in the course of ages the Greek and Arabian astronomical observers discovered small divergences due to the various degrees of excentricity of the orbits of the moon and planets and their consequent varying rates of motion; and to explain these other spheres were added, together with smaller circles sometimes revolving excentrically, so that at length about sixty of these spheres, epicycles and excentrics were required to account for the various motions observed with the rude instruments, and the rates of motion determined by the very imperfect time-measurers of those early ages. And although a few great philosophers had at different times rejected this cumbrous system and had endeavoured to promulgate more correct ideas, their views had no influence on public opinion even among astronomers and mathematicians, and the Ptolemaic system held full sway down to the time of Copernicus, and was not finally given up till Kepler's _Laws_ and Galileo's _Dialogues_ compelled the adoption of simpler and more intelligible theories. We are now so accustomed to look upon the main facts of astronomy as mere elementary knowledge that it is difficult for us to picture to ourselves the state of almost complete ignorance which prevailed even among the most civilised nations throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages. The rotundity of the earth was held by a few at a very early period, and was fairly well established in later classical times. The rough determination of the size of our globe followed soon after; and when instrumental observations became more perfect, the distance and size of the moon were measured with sufficient accuracy to show that it was very much smaller than the earth. But this was the farthest limit of the determination of astronomical sizes and distances before the discovery of the telescope. Of the sun's real distance and size nothing was known except that it was much farther from us and much larger than the moon; but even in the century before the commencement of the Christian era Posidonius determined the circumference of the earth to be 240,000 stadia, equal to about 28,600 miles, a wonderfully close approximation considering the very imperfect data at his command. He is also said to have calculated the sun's distance, making it only one-third less than the true amount, but this must have been a chance coincidence, since he had no means of measuring angles more accurately than to one degree, whereas in the determination of the sun's distance instruments are required which measure to a second of arc. Before the discovery of the telescope the sizes of the planets were quite unknown, while the most that could be ascertained about the stars was, that they were at a very great distance from us. This being the extent of the knowledge of the ancients as to the actual dimensions and constitution of the visible universe, of which, be it remembered, the earth was held to be the centre, we cannot be surprised at the almost universal belief that this universe existed solely for the earth and its inhabitants. In classical times it was held to be at once the dwelling-place of the gods and their gift to man, while in Christian ages this belief was but slightly, if at all, changed; and in both it would have been considered impious to maintain that the planets and stars did not exist for the service and delight of mankind alone but in all probability had their own inhabitants, who might in some cases be even superior in intellect to man himself. But apparently, during the whole period of which we are now treating, no one was so daring as even to suggest that there were other worlds with other inhabitants, and it was no doubt because of the idea that we occupied _the_ world, the very centre of the whole surrounding universe which existed solely for us, that the discoveries of Copernicus, Tycho Brahé, Kepler, and Galileo excited so much antagonism and were held to be impious and altogether incredible. They seemed to upset the whole accepted order of nature, and to degrade man by removing his dwelling-place, the earth, from the commanding central position it had always before occupied. CHAPTER II MODERN IDEAS AS TO MAN'S RELATION TO THE UNIVERSE The beliefs as to the subordinate position held by sun, moon, and stars in relation to the earth, which were almost universal down to the time of Copernicus, began to give way when the discoveries of Kepler and the revelations of the telescope demonstrated that our earth was not specially distinguished from the other planets by any superiority of size or position. The idea at once arose that the other planets might be inhabited; and when the rapidly increasing power of the telescope, and of astronomical instruments generally, revealed the wonders of the solar system and the ever-increasing numbers of the fixed stars, the belief in other inhabited worlds became as general as the opposite belief had been in all preceding ages, and it is still held in modified forms to the present day. But it may be truly said that the later like the earlier belief is founded more upon religious ideas than upon a scientific and careful examination of the whole of the facts both astronomical, physical, and biological, and we must agree with the late Dr. Whewell, that the belief that other planets are inhabited has been generally entertained, not in consequence of physical reasons but in spite of them. And he adds:--'It was held that Venus, or that Saturn was inhabited, not because anyone could devise, with any degree of probability, any organised structure which would be suitable to animal existence on the surfaces of those planets; but because it was conceived that the greatness or goodness of the Creator, or His wisdom, or some other of His attributes, would be manifestly imperfect, if these planets were not tenanted by living creatures.' Those persons who have only heard that many eminent astronomers down to our own day have upheld the belief in a 'Plurality of Worlds' will naturally suppose that there must be some very cogent arguments in its favour, and that it must be supported by a considerable body of more or less conclusive facts. They will therefore probably be surprised to hear that any direct evidence which may be held to support the view is almost wholly wanting, and that the greater part of the arguments are weak and flimsy in the extreme. Of late years, it is true, some few writers have ventured to point out how many difficulties there are in the way of accepting the belief, but even these have never examined the question from the various points of view which are essential to a proper consideration of it; while, so far as it is still upheld, it is thought sufficient to show, that in the case of some of the planets, there seem to be such conditions as to render life possible. In the millions of planetary systems supposed to exist it is held to be incredible that there are not great numbers as well fitted to be inhabited by animals of all grades, including some as high as man or even higher, and that we must, therefore, believe that they are so inhabited. As in the present work I propose to show, that the probabilities and the weight of direct evidence tend to an exactly opposite conclusion, it will be well to pass briefly in review the various writers on the subject, and to give some indication of the arguments they have used and the facts they have set forth. For the earlier upholders of the theory I am indebted to Dr. Whewell, who, in his _Dialogue on the Plurality of Worlds_--a Supplement to his well-known volume on the subject--refers to all writers of importance known to him. The earliest are the great astronomers Kepler and Huygens, and the learned Bishop Wilkins, who all believed that the moon was or might probably be inhabited; and of these Whewell considers Wilkins to have been by far the most thoughtful and earnest in supporting his views. Then we have Sir Isaac Newton himself who, at considerable length, argued that the sun was probably inhabited. But the first regular work devoted to the subject appears to have been written by M. Fontenelle, Secretary to the Academy of Sciences in Paris, who in 1686 published his _Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds_. The book consisted of five chapters, the first explaining the Copernican Theory; the second maintaining that the moon is a habitable world; the third gives particulars as to the moon, and argues that the other planets are also inhabited; the fourth gives details as to the worlds of the five planets; while the fifth declares that the fixed stars are suns, and that each illuminates a world. This work was so well written, and the subject proved so attractive, that it was translated into all the chief European languages, while the astronomer Lalande edited one of the French editions. Three English translations were published, and one of these went through six editions down to the year 1737. The influence of this work was very great and no doubt led to that general acceptance of the theory by such men as Sir William Herschel, Sir John Herschel, Dr. Chalmers, Dr. Dick, Dr. Isaac Taylor, and M. Arago, although it was wholly founded on pure speculation, and there was nothing that could be called evidence on one side or the other. This was the state of public opinion when an anonymous work appeared (in 1853) under the somewhat misleading title of _The Plurality of Worlds: An Essay_. This was written, as already stated, by Dr. Whewell, who, for the first time, ventured to doubt the generally accepted theory, and showed that all the evidence at our command led to the conclusion that some of the planets were _certainly_ not habitable, that others were _probably_ not so, while in none was there that close correspondence with terrestrial conditions which seemed essential for their habitability by the higher animals or by man. The book was ably written and showed considerable knowledge of the science of the time, but it was very diffuse, and the larger part of it was devoted to showing that his views were not in any way opposed to religion. One of his best arguments was founded on the proposition that '_the Earth's Orbit is the Temperate Zone of the Solar System_,' that there only is it possible to have those moderate variations of heat and cold, dryness and moisture, which are suitable for animal life. He suggested that the outer planets of the system consisted mainly of water, gases, and vapour, as indicated by their low specific gravity, and were therefore quite unsuitable for terrestrial life; while those near the sun were equally unsuited, because, owing to the great amount of solar heat, water could not exist on their surfaces. He devotes a great deal of space to the evidence that there is no animal life on the moon, and taking this as proved, he uses it as a counter argument against the other side. They always urge that, the earth being inhabited, we must suppose the other planets to be so too; to which he replies:--We know that the moon is not inhabited though it has all the advantage of proximity to the sun that the earth has; why then should not other planets be equally uninhabited? He then comes to Mars and admits that this planet is very like the earth so far as we can judge, and that it may therefore be inhabited, or as the author expresses it, 'may have been judged worthy of inhabitants by its Maker.' But he urges the small size of Mars, its coldness owing to distance from the sun, and that the annual melting of its polar ice-caps will keep it cold all through the summer. If there are animals they are probably of a low type like the saurians and iguanodons of our seas during the Wealden epoch; but, he argues, as even on our earth the long process of preparation for man was carried on for countless millions of years, we need not discuss whether there are intelligent beings on Mars till we have some better evidence that there are any living creatures at all. Several of the early chapters are devoted to an attempt to minimise the difficulties of those religious persons who feel oppressed by the immensity and complexity of the material universe as revealed by modern astronomy; and by the almost infinite insignificance of man and his dwelling-place, the earth, in comparison with it, an insignificance vastly increased if not only the planets of the solar system, but also those which circle around the myriads of suns, are also theatres of life. And these persons are further disquieted because the very same facts are used by sceptics of various kinds in their attacks upon Christianity. Such writers point out the irrationality and absurdity of supposing that the Creator of all this unimaginable vastness of suns and systems, filling for all we know endless space, should take any _special_ interest in so mean and pitiful a creature as man, the imperfectly developed inhabitant of one of the smaller worlds attached to a second or third-rate sun, a being whose whole history is one of war and bloodshed, of tyranny, torture, and death; whose awful record is pictured by himself in such books as Josephus' _History of the Jews_, the _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, and even more forcibly summarised in that terrible picture of human fiendishness and misery, _The Martyrdom of Man_; while their character is indicated by one of the kindest and simplest of their poets in the restrained but expressive lines:-- 'Man's inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn.' It is for such a being as this, they say, that God should have specially revealed His will some thousands of years ago, and finding that His commands were not obeyed, His will not fulfilled, yet ordained for their benefit the necessarily unique sacrifice of His Son, in order to save a small portion of these 'miserable sinners' from the natural and well-deserved consequence of their stupendous follies, their unimaginable crimes? Such a belief they maintain is too absurd, too incredible, to be held by any rational being, and it becomes even less credible and less rational if we maintain that there are countless other inhabited worlds. It is very difficult for the religious man to make any adequate reply to such an attack as this, and as a result many have felt their position to be untenable and have accordingly lost all faith in the special dogmas of orthodox Christianity. They feel themselves really to be between the horns of a dilemma. If there are myriads of other worlds, it seems incredible that they should each be the object of a special revelation and a special sacrifice. If, on the other hand, we are the only intelligent beings that exist in the material universe, and are really the highest creative product of a Being of infinite wisdom and power, they cannot but wonder at the vast apparent disproportion between the Creator and the created, and are sometimes driven to Atheism from the hopelessness of comprehending so mean and petty a result as the sole outcome of infinite power. Whewell tells us that the great preacher, Dr. Chalmers, in his Astronomical Discourses, attempted a reply to these difficulties, but, in his opinion, not a very successful one; and a large part of his own work is devoted to the same purpose. His main point seems to be that we know too little of the universe to arrive at any definite conclusions on the question at issue, and that any ideas that we may have as to the purposes of the Creator in forming the vast system we see around us are almost sure to be erroneous. We must therefore be content to remain ignorant, and must rest satisfied in the belief that the Creator had a purpose although we are not yet permitted to know what it was. And to those who urge that in other worlds there may be other laws of nature which may render them quite as habitable by intelligent beings as our world is for us, he replies, that if we are to suppose new laws of nature in order to render each planet habitable, there is an end of all rational inquiry on the subject, and we may maintain and believe that animals may live on the moon without air or water, and on the sun exposed to heat which vaporises earths and metals. His concluding argument, and perhaps one of his strongest, is that founded upon the dignity of man, as conferring a pre-eminence upon the planet which has produced him. 'If,' he says, 'man be not merely capable of Virtue and Duty, of universal Love and Self-Devotion, but be also immortal; if his being be of infinite duration, his soul created never to die; then, indeed, we may well say that one soul outweighs the whole unintelligent creation.' And then, addressing the religious world, he urges that, if, as they believe, God _has_ redeemed man by the sacrifice of His Son, and _has_ given to him a revelation of His will, then indeed no other conception is possible than that he is the sole and highest product of the universe. 'The elevation of millions of intellectual, moral, religious, spiritual creatures, to a destiny so prepared, consummated, and developed, is no unworthy occupation of all the capacities of space, time, and matter.' Then with a chapter on 'The Unity of the World,' and one on 'The Future,' neither of which contains anything which adds to the force of his argument, the book ends. The publication of this able if rather vague and diffuse work, contesting popular opinions, was followed by a burst of indignant criticism on the part of a man of considerable eminence in some branches of physics--Sir David Brewster, but who was very inferior, both in general knowledge of science and in literary skill, to the writer whose views he opposed. The purport of the book in which he set forth his objections is indicated by its title--_More Worlds than One, the Creed of the Philosopher and the Hope of the Christian_. Though written with much force and conviction it appeals mainly to religious prejudices, and assumes throughout that every planet and star is a special creation, and that the peculiarities of each were designed for some special purpose. 'If,' he says, 'the moon had been destined to be merely a lamp to our earth, there was no occasion to variegate its surface with lofty mountains and extinct volcanoes, and cover it with large patches of matter that reflect different quantities of light and give its surface the appearance of continents and seas. It would have been a better lamp had it been a smooth piece of lime or of chalk.' It is, therefore, he thinks, prepared for inhabitants; and then he argues that all the other satellites are also inhabited. Again he says that 'when it was found that Venus was about the same size as the Earth, with mountains and valleys, days and nights, and years analogous to our own, the _absurdity_ of believing that she had no inhabitants, when no other rational purpose could be assigned for her creation, became an argument of a certain amount that she was, like the Earth, the seat of animal and vegetable life.' Then, when it was found that Jupiter was so gigantic 'as to require four moons to give him light, the argument from analogy that _he_ was inhabited became stronger also, because it extended to _two_ planets.' And thus each successive planet having certain points of analogy with the others becomes an additional argument; so that when we take account of all the planets, with atmosphere, and clouds, and arctic snows, and trade-winds, the argument from analogy becomes, he urges, very powerful;--'and the absurdity of the opposite opinion, that planets should have moons and no inhabitants, atmospheres with no creatures to breathe in them, and currents of air without life to be fanned, became a formidable argument which few minds, if any, could resist.' The work is full of such weak and fallacious rhetoric and even, if possible, still weaker. Thus after describing double stars, he adds--'But no person can believe that two suns could be placed in the heavens for no other purpose than to revolve round their common centre of gravity'; and he concludes his chapter on the stars thus:--'Wherever there is matter there must be Life; Life Physical to enjoy its beauties--Life Moral to worship its Maker, and Life Intellectual to proclaim His wisdom and His power.' And again--'A house without tenants, a city without citizens, presents to our minds the same idea as a planet without life, and a universe without inhabitants. Why the house was built, why the city was founded, why the planet was made, and why the universe was created, it would be difficult even to conjecture.' Arguments of this kind, which in almost every case beg the question at issue, are repeated _ad nauseam_. But he also appeals to the Old Testament to support his views, by quoting the fine passage in the Psalms--'When I consider Thy heavens the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained; what is man that Thou art mindful of him?' on which he remarks--'We cannot doubt that inspiration revealed to him [David] the magnitude, the distances, and the final cause, of the glorious spheres which fixed his admiration.' And after quoting various other passages from the prophets, all as he thinks supporting the same view, he sets forth the extraordinary idea as a confirmatory argument, that the planets or some of them are to be the future abode of man. For, he says--'Man in his future state of existence is to consist, as at present, of a spiritual nature residing in a corporeal frame. He must live, therefore, upon a material planet, subject to all the laws of matter.' And he concludes thus:--'If there is not room, then, on our globe for the millions of millions of beings who have lived and died on its surface, we can scarcely doubt that their future abode must be on some of the primary or secondary planets of the solar system, whose inhabitants have ceased to exist, or upon planets which have long been in a state of preparation, as our earth was, for the advent of intellectual life.' It is pleasant to turn from such weak and trivial arguments to the only other modern works which deal at some length with this subject, the late Richard A. Proctor's _Other Worlds than Ours_, and a volume published five years later under the title--_Our Place Among Infinities_. Written as these were by one of the most accomplished astronomers of his day, remarkable alike for the acuteness of his reasoning and the clearness of his style, we are always interested and instructed even when we cannot agree with his conclusions. In the first work mentioned above, he assumes, like Sir David Brewster, the antecedent probability that the planets are inhabited and on much the same theological grounds. So strongly does he feel this that he continually speaks as if the planets _must_ be inhabited unless we can show very good reason that they _cannot_ be so, thus throwing the burden of proving a negative on his opponents, while he does not attempt to prove his positive contention that they are inhabited, except by purely hypothetical considerations as to the Creator's purpose in bringing them into existence. But starting from this point he endeavours to show how Whewell's various difficulties may be overcome, and here he always appeals to astronomical or physical facts, and reasons well upon them. But he is quite honest; and, coming to the conclusion that Jupiter and Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, cannot be habitable, he adduces the evidence and plainly states the result. But then he thinks that the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn _may_ be habitable, and if they may be, then he concludes that they _must_. One great oversight in his whole argument is, that he is satisfied with showing the possibility that life may exist now, but never deals with the question of whether life could have been developed from its earliest rudiments up to the production of the higher vertebrates and man; and this, as I shall show later, is the _crux_ of the whole problem. With regard to the other planets, after a careful examination of all that is known about them, he arrives at the conclusion that if Mercury is protected by a cloud-laden atmosphere of a peculiar kind it may possibly, but not probably, support high forms of animal life. But in the case of Venus and Mars he finds so much resemblance to and so many analogies with our earth, that he concludes that they almost certainly are so. In the case of the fixed stars, now that we know by spectroscopic observations that they are true suns, many of which closely resemble our sun and give out light and heat as he does, Mr. Proctor argues, that 'The vast supplies of heat thus emitted by the stars not only suggest the conclusion that there must be worlds around these orbs for which these heat-supplies are intended, but point to the existence of the various forms of force into which heat may be transmuted. We know that the sun's heat poured upon our earth is stored up in vegetable and animal forms of life; is present in all the phenomena of nature--in winds and clouds and rain, in thunder and lightning, storm and hail; and that even the works of man are performed by virtue of the solar heat-supplies. Thus the fact that the stars send forth heat to the worlds which circle around them suggests at once the thought that on those worlds there must exist animal and vegetable forms of life.' We may note that in the first part of this passage the presence of worlds or planets is 'suggested,' while later on 'the worlds which circle round them' is spoken of as if it were a proved fact from which the presence of vegetable and animal life may be inferred. A suggestion depending on a preceding suggestion is not a very firm basis for so vast and wide-reaching a conclusion. In the second work referred to above there is one chapter entitled, 'A New Theory of Life in other Worlds,' where the author gives his more matured views of the question, which are briefly stated in the preface as being 'that the weight of evidence favours my theory of the (relative) paucity of worlds.' His views are largely founded on the theory of probabilities, of which subject he had made a special study. Taking first our earth, he shows that the period during which life has existed upon it is very small in comparison with that during which it must have been slowly forming and cooling, and its atmosphere condensing so as to form land and water on its surface. And if we consider the time the earth has been occupied by man, that is a very minute part, perhaps not the thousandth part, of the period during which it has existed as a planet. It follows that even if we consider only those planets whose physical condition seems to us to be such as to be able to sustain life, the chances are perhaps hundreds to one against their being at that particular stage when life has begun to be developed, or if it has begun has reached as high a development as on our earth. With regard to the stars, the argument is still stronger, because the epochs required for their formation are altogether unknown, while as to the conditions required for the formation of planetary systems around them we are totally ignorant. To this I would add that we are equally ignorant as to the probability or even possibility of many of these suns producing planets which, by their position, size, atmosphere, or other physical conditions can possibly become life-producing worlds. And, as we shall see later, this point has been overlooked by all writers, including Mr. Proctor himself. His conclusion is, then, that although the worlds which possess life at all approaching that of our earth may be relatively few in number, yet considering the universe as practically infinite in extent, they may be really very numerous. It has been necessary to give this sketch of the views of those who have written specially on the question of the Plurality of Worlds, because the works referred to have been very widely read and have influenced educated opinion throughout the world. Moreover, Mr. Proctor, in his last work on the subject, speaks of the theory as being 'identified with modern astronomy'; and in fact popular works still discuss it. But all these follow the same general line of argument as those already referred to, and the curious thing is that while overlooking many of the most essential conditions they often introduce others which are by no means essential--as, for instance, that the atmosphere must have the same proportion of oxygen as our own. They seem to think that if any of our quadrupeds or birds taken to another planet could not live there, no animals of equally high organisation could inhabit it; entirely overlooking the very obvious fact that, supposing, as is almost certain, that oxygen is necessary for life, then, whatever proportion of oxygen within certain limits was present, the forms of life that arose would necessarily be organised in adaptation to that proportion, which might be considerably less or greater than on the earth. The present volume will show how extremely inadequate has been the treatment of this question, which involves a variety of important considerations hitherto altogether overlooked. These are extremely numerous and very varied in their character, and the fact that they all point to one conclusion--a conclusion which so far as I am aware no previous writer has reached--renders it at least worthy of the careful consideration of all unbiassed thinkers. The whole subject is one as to which no direct evidence is obtainable, but I venture to think that the convergence of so many probabilities and indications towards a single definite theory, intimately connected with the nature and destiny of man himself, raises this theory to a very much higher level of probability than the vague possibilities and theological suggestions which are the utmost that have been adduced by previous writers. In order to make every step of my argument clearly intelligible to all educated readers, it will be necessary to refer continually to the marvellous extension of our knowledge of the universe obtained during the last half-century, and constituting what is termed the New Astronomy. The next chapter will therefore be devoted to a popular exposition of the new methods of research, so that the results reached, which will have to be referred to in succeeding chapters, may be not only accepted, but clearly understood. CHAPTER III THE NEW ASTRONOMY During the latter half of the nineteenth century discoveries were made which extended the powers of astronomical research into entirely new and unexpected regions, comparable to those which were opened up by the discovery of the telescope more than two centuries before. The older astronomy for more than two thousand years was purely mechanical and mathematical, being limited to observation and measurement of the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies, and the attempts to deduce, from these apparent motions, their real motions, and thus determine the actual structure of the solar system. This was first done when Kepler established his three celebrated laws: and later, when Newton showed that these laws were necessary consequences of the one law of gravitation, and when succeeding observers and mathematicians proved that each fresh irregularity in the motions of the planets was explicable by a more thorough and minute application of the same laws, this branch of astronomy reached its highest point of efficiency and left very little more to be desired. Then, as the telescope became successively improved, the centre of interest was shifted to the surfaces of the planets and their satellites, which were watched and scrutinised with the greatest assiduity in order if possible to attain some amount of knowledge of their physical constitution and past history. A similar minute scrutiny was given to the stars and nebulæ, their distribution and grouping, and the whole heavens were mapped out, and elaborate catalogues constructed by enthusiastic astronomers in every part of the world. Others devoted themselves to the immensely difficult problem of determining the distances of the stars, and by the middle of the century a few such distances had been satisfactorily measured. Thus, up to the middle of the nineteenth century it appeared likely that the future of astronomy would rest almost entirely on the improvement of the telescope, and of the various instruments of measurement by means of which more accurate determinations of distances might be obtained. Indeed, the author of the Positive Philosophy, Auguste Comte, felt so sure of this that he deprecated all further attention to the stars as pure waste of time that could never lead to any useful or interesting result. In his _Philosophical Treatise on Popular Astronomy_ published in 1844, he wrote very strongly on this point. He there tells us that, as the stars are only accessible to us by sight they must always remain very imperfectly known. We can know little more than their mere existence. Even as regards so simple a phenomenon as their temperature this must always be inappreciable to a purely visual examination. Our knowledge of the stars is for the most part purely negative, that is, we can determine only that they do _not_ belong to our system. Outside that system there exists, in astronomy, only obscurity and confusion, for want of indispensable facts; and he concludes thus:--'It is, then, in vain that for half a century it has been endeavoured to distinguish two astronomies, the one solar the other sidereal. In the eyes of those for whom science consists of real laws and not of incoherent facts, the second exists only in name, and the first alone constitutes a true astronomy; and I am not afraid to assert that it will always be so.' And he adds that--'all efforts directed to this subject for half a century have only produced an accumulation of incoherent empirical facts which can only interest an irrational curiosity.' Seldom has a confident assertion of finality in science received so crushing a reply as was given to the above statements of Comte by the discovery in 1860 (only three years after his death) of the method of spectrum-analysis which, in its application to the stars, has revolutionised astronomy, and has enabled us to obtain that very kind of knowledge which he declared must be for ever beyond our reach. Through it we have acquired accurate information as to the physics and chemistry of the stars and nebulæ, so that we now know really more of the nature, constitution, and temperature of the enormously distant suns which we distinguish by the general term stars, than we do of most of the planets of our own system. It has also enabled us to ascertain the existence of numerous invisible stars, and to determine their orbits, their rate of motion, and even, approximately, their mass. The despised stellar astronomy of the early part of the century has now taken rank as the most profoundly interesting department of that grand science, and the branch which offers the greatest promise of future discoveries. As the results obtained by means of this powerful instrument will often be referred to, a short account of its nature and of the principles on which it depends must here be given. The solar spectrum is the band of coloured light seen in the rainbow and, partially, in the dew-drop, but more completely when a ray of sunlight passes through a prism--a piece of glass having a triangular section. The result is, that instead of a spot of white light we have a narrow band of brilliant colours which succeed each other in regular order, from violet at one end through blue, green, and yellow to red at the other. We thus see that light is not a simple and uniform radiation from the sun, but is made up of a large number of separate rays, each of which produces in our eyes the sensation of a distinct colour. Light is now explained as being due to vibrations of ether, that mysterious substance which not only permeates all matter, but which fills space at least as far as the remotest of the visible stars and nebulæ. The exceedingly minute waves or vibrations of the ether produce all the phenomena of heat, light, and colour, as well as those chemical actions to which photography owes its wonderful powers. By ingenious experiments the size and rate of vibration of these waves have been measured, and it is found that they vary considerably, those forming the red light, which is least refracted, having a wave-length of about 1/326000 of an inch, while the violet rays at the other end of the spectrum are only about half that length or 1/630000 of an inch. The rate at which the vibrations succeed each other is from 302 millions of millions per second for the extreme red rays, to 737 millions of millions for those at the violet end of the spectrum. These figures are given to show the wonderful minuteness and rapidity of these heat and light waves on which the whole life of the world, and all our knowledge of other worlds and other suns, directly depends. But the mere colours of the spectrum are not the most important part of it. Very early in the nineteenth century a close examination showed that it was everywhere crossed by black lines of various thicknesses, sometimes single, sometimes grouped together. Many observers studied them and made accurate drawings or maps showing their positions and thicknesses, and by combining several prisms, so that the beam of sunlight had to pass through them successively, a spectrum could be produced several feet long, and more than 3000 of these dark lines were counted in it. But what they were and how they were caused remained a mystery, till, in the year 1860, the German physicist Kirchhoff discovered the secret and gave to chemists and astronomers a new and quite unexpected engine of research. It had already been observed that the chemical elements and various compounds, when heated to incandescence, produced spectra consisting of coloured lines or bands which were constant for each element, so that the elements could at once be recognised by their characteristic spectra; and it had also been noticed that some of these bands, especially the yellow band produced by sodium, corresponded in position with certain black lines in the solar spectrum. Kirchhoff's discovery consisted in showing that, when the light from an incandescent body passes through the same substance in a state of vapour or gas, so much of the light is absorbed that the coloured lines or bands become black. The mystery of more than half a century was thus solved; and the thousands of black lines in the solar spectrum were shown to be caused by the light from the incandescent matter of the sun's surface passing through the heated gases or vapours immediately above it, and thereby having the bright coloured lines of their spectra changed, by absorption, to comparative blackness. Chemists and physicists immediately set to work examining the spectra of the elements, fixing the position of the several coloured lines or bands by accurate measurement, and comparing them with the dark lines of the solar spectrum. The results were in the highest degree satisfactory. In a large proportion of the elements the coloured bands corresponded exactly with a group of dark lines in the spectrum of the sun, in which, therefore, the same terrestrial elements were proved to exist. Among the elements first detected in this manner were hydrogen, sodium, iron, copper, magnesium, zinc, calcium, and many others. Nearly forty of the elements have now been found in the sun, and it seems highly probable that all our elements really exist there, but as some are very rare and are present in very minute quantities they cannot be detected. Some of the dark lines in the sun were found not to correspond to any known element, and as this was thought to indicate an element peculiar to the sun it was named Helium; but quite recently it has been discovered in a rare mineral. Many of the elements are represented by a great number of lines, others by very few. Thus iron has more than 2000, while lead and potassium have only one each. The value of the spectroscope both to the chemist in discovering new elements and to the astronomer in determining the constitution of the heavenly bodies, is so great, that it became of the highest importance to have the position of all the dark lines in the solar spectrum, as well as the bright lines of all the elements, determined with extreme accuracy, so as to be able to make exact comparisons between different spectra. At first this was done by means of very large-scale drawings showing the exact position of every dark or bright line. But this was found to be both inconvenient and not sufficiently exact; and it was therefore agreed to adopt the natural scale of the wave-lengths of the different parts of the spectrum, which by means of what are termed diffraction-gratings can now be measured with great accuracy. Diffraction-gratings are formed of a polished surface of hard metal ruled with excessively fine lines, sometimes as many as 20,000 to an inch. When sunlight falls upon one of these gratings it is reflected, and by interference of the rays from the spaces between the fine grooves, it is spread out into a beautiful and well-defined spectrum, which, when the lines are very close, is several yards in length. In these diffraction spectra many dark lines are seen which can be shown in no other way, and they also give a spectrum which is far more uniform than that produced by glass prisms in which minute differences in the composition of the glass cause some rays to be refracted more and others less than the normal amount. The spectra produced by diffraction-gratings are double; that is, they are spread out on both sides of the central line of the ray which remains white, and the several coloured or dark lines are so clearly defined that they can be thrown on a screen at a considerable distance, giving a great length to the spectrum. The data for obtaining the wave-lengths are the distance apart of the lines, the distance of the screen, and the distance apart of the first pair of dark lines on each side of the central bright line. All these can be measured with extreme accuracy by means of telescopes with micrometers and other contrivances, and the result is an accuracy of determination of wave-lengths which can probably not be equalled in any other kind of measurement. As the wave-lengths are so excessively minute, it has been found convenient to fix upon a still smaller unit of measurement, and as the millimetre is the smallest unit of the metric system, the ten-millionth of a millimetre (technically termed 'tenth meter') is the unit adopted for the measurement of wave-lengths, which is equal to about the 250 millionth of an inch. Thus the wave-lengths of the red and blue lines characteristic of hydrogen are 6563.07 and 4861.51 respectively. This excessively minute scale of wave-lengths, once determined by the most refined measurement, is of very great importance. Having the wave-lengths of any two lines of a spectrum so determined, the space between them can be laid down on a diagram of any length, and all the lines that occur in any other spectrum between these two lines can be marked in their exact relative positions. Now, as the visible spectrum consists of about 300,000 rays of light, each of different wave-lengths and therefore of different refrangibilities, if it is laid down on such a scale as to be of a length of 3000 inches (250 feet), each wave-length will be 1/100 of an inch long, a space easily visible by the naked eye. The possession of an instrument of such wonderful delicacy, and with powers which enable it to penetrate into the inner constitution of the remotest orbs of space, rendered it possible, within the next quarter of a century, to establish what is practically a new science--Astrophysics--often popularly termed the New Astronomy. A brief outline of the main achievements of this science must now be given. The first great discovery made by Spectrum analysis, after the interpretation of the sun's spectrum had been obtained, was, the real nature of the fixed stars. It is true they had long been held by astronomers to be suns, but this was only an opinion of the accuracy of which it did not seem possible to obtain any proof. The opinion was founded on two facts--their enormous distance from us, so great that the whole diameter of the earth's orbit did not lead to any apparent change of their relative positions, and their intense brilliancy which at such distances could only be due to an actual size and splendour comparable with our sun. The spectroscope at once proved the correctness of this opinion. As one after another was examined, they were found to exhibit spectra of the same general type as that of the sun--a band of colours crossed by dark lines. The very first stars examined by Sir William Huggins showed the existence of nine or ten of our elements. Very soon all the chief stars of the heavens were spectroscopically examined, and it was found that they could be classed in three or four groups. The first and largest group contains more than half the visible stars, and a still larger proportion of the most brilliant, such as Sirius, Vega, Regulus, and Alpha Crucis in the Southern Hemisphere. They are characterised by a white or bluish light, rich in the ultra-violet rays, and their spectra are distinguished by the breadth and intensity of the four dark bands due to the absorption of hydrogen, while the various black lines which indicate metallic vapours are comparatively few, though hundreds of them can be discovered by careful examination. The next group, to which Capella and Arcturus belong, is also very numerous, and forms the solar type of stars. Their light is of a yellowish colour, and their spectra are crossed throughout by innumerable fine dark lines more or less closely corresponding with those in the solar spectrum. The third group consists of red and variable stars, which are characterised by fluted spectra. Such spectra show like a range of Doric columns seen in perspective, the red side being that most illuminated. The last group, consisting of few and comparatively small stars, has also fluted spectra, but the light appears to come from the opposite direction. These groups were established by Father Secchi, the Roman astronomer, in 1867, and have been adopted with some modifications by Vogel of the Astrophysical Observatory at Potsdam. The exact interpretation of these different spectra is somewhat uncertain, but there can be little doubt that they coincide primarily with differences of temperature and with corresponding differences in the composition and extent of the absorptive atmospheres. Stars with fluted spectra indicate the presence of vapours of the metalloids or of compound substances, while the reversed flutings indicate the presence of carbon. These conclusions have been reached by careful laboratory experiments which are now carried on at the same time as the spectral examination of the stars and other heavenly bodies, so that each peculiarity of their spectra, however puzzling and apparently unmeaning, has been usually explained, by being shown to indicate certain conditions of chemical constitution or of temperature. But whatever difficulty there may be in explaining details, there remains no doubt whatever of the fundamental fact that all the stars are true suns, differing no doubt in size, and their stage of development as indicated by the colour or intensity of their light or heat, but all alike possessing a photosphere or light-emitting surface, and absorptive atmospheres of various qualities and density. Innumerable other details, such as the often contrasted colours of double stars, the occasional variability of their spectra, their relations to the nebulæ, the various stages of their development and other problems of equal interest, have occupied the continued attention of astronomers, spectroscopists, and chemists; but further reference to these difficult questions would be out of place here. The present sketch of the nature of spectrum-analysis applied to the stars is for the purpose of making its principle and method of observation intelligible to every educated reader, and to illustrate the marvellous precision and accuracy of the results attained by it. So confident are astronomers of this accuracy that nothing less than _perfect correspondence_ of the various bright lines in the spectrum of an element in the laboratory with the dark lines in the spectrum of the sun or of a star is required before the presence of that element is accepted as proved. As Miss Clerke tersely puts it--'Spectroscopic coincidences admit of no compromise. Either they are absolute or they are worthless.' MEASUREMENT OF MOTION IN THE LINE OF SIGHT We must now describe another and quite distinct application of the spectroscope, which is even more marvellous than that already described. It is the method of measuring the rate of motion of any of the visible heavenly bodies in a direction either directly towards us, or directly away from us, technically described as 'radial motion,' or by the expression--'in the line of sight.' And the extraordinary thing is that this power of measurement is altogether independent of distance, so that the rate of motion in miles per second of the remotest of the fixed stars, if sufficiently bright to show a distinct spectrum, can be measured with as much certainty and accuracy as in the case of a much nearer star or a planet. In order to understand how this is possible we have again to refer to the wave-theory of light; and the analogy of other wave-motions will enable us better to grasp the principle on which these calculations depend. If on a nearly calm day we count the waves that pass each minute by an anchored steamboat, and then travel in the direction the waves come from, we shall find that a larger number pass us in the same time. Again, if we are standing near a railway, and an engine comes towards us whistling, we shall notice that it changes its tone as it passes us; and as it recedes the sound will be in a lower key, although the engine may be at exactly the same distance from us as when it was approaching. Yet the sound does not change to the ear of the engine driver, the cause of the change being that the sound-waves reach us in quicker succession as the source of the waves is approaching us than when it is retreating from us. Now, just as the pitch of a note depends upon the rapidity with which the successive air-vibrations reach our ear, so does the colour of a particular part of the spectrum depend upon the rapidity with which the ethereal waves which produce colour reach our eyes; and as this rapidity is greater when the source of the light is approaching than when it is receding from us, a slight shifting of the position of the coloured bands, and therefore of the dark lines, will occur, as compared with their position in the spectrum of the sun or of any stationary source of light, if there is any motion sufficient in amount to produce a perceptible shift. That such a change of colour would occur was pointed out by Professor Doppler of Prague in 1842, and it is hence usually spoken of as the 'Doppler principle'; but as the changes of colour were so minute as to be impossible of measurement it was not at that time of any practical importance in astronomy. But when the dark lines in the spectrum were carefully mapped, and their positions determined with minute accuracy, it was seen that a means of measuring the changes produced by motion in the line of sight existed, since the position of any of the dark or coloured lines in the spectra of the heavenly bodies could be compared with those of the corresponding lines produced artificially in the laboratory. This was first done in 1868 by Sir William Huggins, who, by the use of a very powerful spectroscope constructed for the purpose, found that such a change did occur in the case of many stars, and that their rate of motion towards us or away from us--the radial motion--could be calculated. As the actual distance of some of these stars had been measured, and their change of position annually (their proper motion) determined, the additional factor of the amount of motion in the direction of our line of sight completed the data required to fix their true line of motion among the other stars. The accuracy of this method under favourable conditions and with the best instruments is very great, as has been proved by those cases in which we have independent means of calculating the real motion. The motion of Venus towards or away from us can be calculated with great accuracy for any period, being a resultant of the combined motions of the planet and of our earth in their respective orbits. The radial motions of Venus were determined at the Lick Observatory in August and September 1890, by spectroscopic observations, and also by calculation, to be as follows:-- By Observation. By Calculation. Aug. 16th. 7.3 miles per second. 8.1 miles per second. " 22nd. 8.9 " " " 8.2 " " " " 30th. 7.3 " " " 8.3 " " " Sep. 3rd. 8.3 " " " 8.3 " " " " 4th. 8.2 " " " 8.3 " " " showing that the maximum error was only one mile per second, while the mean error was about a quarter of a mile. In the case of the stars the accuracy of the method has been tested by observations of the same star at times when the earth's motion in its orbit is towards or away from the star, whose apparent radial velocity is, therefore, increased or diminished by a known amount. Observations of this kind were made by Dr. Vogel, Director of the Astrophysical Observatory at Potsdam, showing, in the case of three stars, of which ten observations were taken, a mean error of about two miles per second; but as the stellar motions are more rapid than those of the planets, the proportionate error is no greater than in the example given above. The great importance of this mode of determining the real motion of the stars is, that it gives us a knowledge of the scale on which such motions are progressing; and when in the course of time we discover whether any of their paths are rectilinear or curved, we shall be in a position to learn something of the nature of the changes that are going on and of the laws on which they depend. INVISIBLE STARS AND IMPERCEPTIBLE MOTIONS But there is another result of this power of determining radial motion which is even more unexpected and marvellous, and which has extended our knowledge of the stars in quite a new direction. By its means it is possible to determine the existence of invisible stars and to measure the rate of otherwise imperceptible motions; that is of stars which are invisible in the most powerful modern telescopes, and whose motions have such a limited range that no telescope can detect them. Double or binary stars forming systems which revolve around their common centre of gravity were discovered by Sir William Herschel, and very great numbers are known; but in most cases their periods of revolution are long, the shortest being about twelve years, while many extend to several hundred years. These are, of course, all visible binaries, but many are now known of which one star only is visible while the other is either non-luminous or is so close to its companion that they appear as a single star in the most powerful telescopes. Many of the variable stars belong to the former class, a good example of which is Algol in the constellation Perseus, which changes from the second to the fourth magnitude in about four and a half hours, and in about four and a half hours more regains its brilliancy till its next period of obscuration which occurs regularly every two days and twenty-one hours. The name Algol is from the Arabic _Al Ghoul_, the familiar 'ghoul' of the Arabian Nights, so named--'The Demon'--from its strange and weird behaviour. It had long been conjectured that this obscuration was due to a dark companion which partially eclipsed the bright star at every revolution, showing that the plane of the orbit of the pair was almost exactly directed towards us. The application of the spectroscope made this conjecture a certainty. At an equal time before and after the obscuration, motion in the line of sight was shown, towards and away from us, at a rate of twenty-six miles per second. From these scanty data and the laws of gravitation which fix the period of revolution of planets at various distances from their centres of revolution, Professor Pickering of the Harvard Observatory was able to arrive at the following figures as highly probable, and they may be considered to be certainly not far from the truth. Diameter of Algol, 1,061,000 miles. Diameter of dark companion, 830,000 " Distance between their centres, 3,230,000 " Orbital speed of Algol, 26.3 miles per sec. Orbital speed of companion, 55.4 " " " Mass of Algol, 4/9 mass of our Sun. Mass of companion, 2/9 " " " When it is considered that these figures relate to a pair of stars only one of which has ever been seen, that the orbital motion even of the visible star cannot be detected in the most powerful telescopes, when, further, we take into account the enormous distance of these objects from us, the great results of spectroscopic observation will be better appreciated. But besides the marvel of such a discovery by such simple means, the facts discovered are themselves in the highest degree marvellous. All that we had known of the stars through telescopic observation indicated that they were at very great distances from each other however thickly they may appear scattered over the sky. This is the case even with close telescopic double stars, owing to their enormous remoteness from us. It is now estimated that even stars of the first magnitude are, on a general average, about eighty millions of millions of miles distant; while the closest double stars that can be distinctly separated by large telescopes are about half a second apart. These, if at the above distance, will be about 1500 millions of miles from each other. But in the case of Algol and its companion, we have two bodies both larger than our sun, yet with a distance of only 2-1/4 millions of miles between their surfaces, a distance not much exceeding their combined diameters. We should not have anticipated that such huge bodies could revolve so closely to each other, and as we now know that the neighbourhood of our sun--and probably of all suns--is full of meteoric and cometic matter, it would seem probable that in the case of two suns so near together the quantity of such matter would be very great, and would lead probably by continued collisions to increase of their bulk, and perhaps to their final coalescence into a single giant orb. It is said that a Persian astronomer in the tenth century calls Algol a red star, while it is now white or somewhat yellowish. This would imply an increase of temperature caused by collisions or friction, and increasing proximity of the pair of stars. A considerable number of double stars with dark companions have been discovered by means of the spectroscope, although their motion is not directly in the line of sight, and therefore there is no obscuration. In order to discover such pairs the spectra of large numbers of stars are taken on photographic plates every night and for considerable periods--for a year or for several years. These plates are then carefully examined with a high magnifying power to discover any periodical displacement of the lines, and it is astonishing in how large a number of cases this has been found to exist and the period of revolution of the pair determined. But besides discovering double stars of which one is dark and one bright, many pairs of bright stars have been discovered by the same means. The method in this case is rather different. Each component star, being luminous, will give a separate spectrum, and the best spectroscopes are so powerful that they will separate these spectra when the stars are at their maximum distance although no telescope in existence, or ever likely to be made, can separate the component stars. The separation of the spectra is usually shown by the most prominent lines becoming double and then after a time single, indicating that the plane of revolution is more or less obliquely towards us, so that the two stars if visible would appear to open out and then get nearer together every revolution. Then, as each star alternately approaches and recedes from us the radial velocity of each can be determined, and this gives the relative mass. In this way not only doubles, but triple and multiple systems, have been discovered. The stars proved to be double by these two methods are so numerous that it has been estimated by one of the best observers that about one star in every thirteen shows inequality in its radial motion and is therefore really a double star. THE NEBULÆ One other great result of spectrum-analysis, and in some respects perhaps the greatest, is its demonstration of the fact that true nebulæ exist, and that they are not all star-clusters so remote as to be irresolvable, as was once supposed. They are shown to have gaseous spectra, or sometimes gaseous and stellar spectra combined, and this, in connection with the fact that nebulæ are frequently aggregated around nebulous stars or groups of stars, renders it certain that the nebulæ are in no way separated in space from the stars, but that they constitute essential parts of one vast stellar universe. There is, indeed, good reason to believe that they are really the material out of which stars are made, and that in their forms, aggregations, and condensations, we can trace the very process of evolution of stars and suns. PHOTOGRAPHIC ASTRONOMY But there is yet another powerful engine of research which the new astronomy possesses, and which, either alone or in combination with the spectroscope, had produced and will yet produce in the future an amount of knowledge of the stellar universe which could never be attained by any other means. It has already been stated how the discovery of new variable and binary stars has been rendered possible by the preservation of the photographic plates on which the spectra are self-recorded, night after night, with every line, whether dark or coloured, in true position, so as to bear magnification, and, by comparison with others of the series, enabling the most minute changes to be detected and their amount accurately measured. Without the preservation of such comparable records, which is in no other way possible, by far the larger portion of spectroscopic discoveries could never have been made. But there are two other uses of photography of quite a different nature which are equally and perhaps in their final outcome may be far more important. The first is, that by the use of the photographic plate the exact positions of scores, hundreds, or even thousands of stars can be self-mapped simultaneously with extreme accuracy, while any number of copies can be made of these star-maps. This entirely obviates the necessity for the old method of fixing the position of each star by repeated measurement by means of very elaborate instruments, and their registration in laborious and expensive catalogues. So important is this now seen to be, that specially constructed cameras are made for stellar photography, and by means of the best kinds of equatorial mounting are made to revolve slowly so that the image of each star remains stationary upon the plate for several hours. Arrangements have been now made among all the chief observatories of the world to carry out a photographic survey of the heavens with identical instruments, so as to produce maps of the whole star-system on the same scale. These will serve as fixed data for future astronomers, who will thus be able to determine the movements of stars of all magnitudes with a certainty and accuracy hitherto unattainable. The other important use of photography depends upon the fact that with a longer exposure within certain limits we increase the light-collecting power. It will surprise many persons to learn that an ordinary good portrait-camera with a lens three or four inches in diameter, if properly mounted so that an exposure of several hours can be made, will show stars so minute that they are invisible even in the great Lick telescope. In this way the camera will often reveal double-stars or small groups which can be made visible in no other way. Such photographs of the stars are now constantly reproduced in works on Astronomy and in popular magazine articles, and although some of them are very striking, many persons are disappointed with them, and cannot understand their great value, because each star is represented by a white circle often of considerable size and with a somewhat undefined outline, not by a minute point of light as stars appear in a good telescope. But the essential matter in all such photographs is not so much the smallness, as the roundness, of the star-images, as this proves the extreme precision with which the image of every star has been kept by the clockwork motion of the instrument on the same point of the plate during the whole exposure. For example, in the fine photograph of the Great Nebula in Andromeda, taken 29th December 1888, by Dr. Isaac Roberts, with an exposure of four hours, there are probably over a thousand stars large and small to be seen, every one represented by an almost exactly circular white dot of a size dependent on the magnitude of the star. These round dots can be bisected by the cross hairs of a micrometer with very great accuracy, and thus the distance between the centres of any of the pairs, as well as the direction of the line joining their centres, can be determined as accurately as if each was represented by a point only. But as a minute white speck would be almost invisible on the maps, and would convey no information as to the approximate magnitude of the star, mistakes would be much more easily made, and it would probably be found necessary to surround each star with a circle to indicate its magnitude, and to enable it to be easily seen. It is probable, therefore, that the supposed defect is really an important advantage. The above-mentioned photograph is beautifully reproduced in Proctor's _Old and New Astronomy_, published after his greatly lamented death. But besides the amount of altogether new knowledge obtained by the methods of research here briefly explained, a great deal of light has been thrown on the distribution of the stars as a whole, and hence on the nature and extent of the stellar universe, by a careful study of the materials obtained by the old methods, and by the application of the doctrine of probabilities to the observed facts. In this way alone some very striking results have been reached, and these have been supported and strengthened by the newer methods, and also by the use of new instruments in the measurement of stellar distances. Some of these results bear so closely and directly upon the special subject of the present volume, that our next chapter must be devoted to a consideration of them. CHAPTER IV THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE STARS If we look at the heavens on a clear, moonless night in winter, and from a position embracing the entire horizon, the scene is an inexpressibly grand one. The intense sparkling brilliancy of Sirius, Capella, Vega, and other stars of the first magnitude; their striking arrangement in constellations or groups, of which Orion, the Great Bear, Cassiopeiæ, and the Pleiades, are familiar examples; and the filling up between these by less and less brilliant points down to the limit of vision, so as to cover the whole sky with a scintillating tracery of minute points of light, convey together an idea of such confused scattering and such enormous numbers, that it seems impossible to count them or to reduce them to systematic order. Yet this was done for all except the faintest stars by Hipparchus, 134 B.C., who catalogued and fixed the positions of more than 1000 stars, and this is about the number, down to the fifth magnitude, visible in the latitude of Greece. A recent enumeration of all the stars visible to the naked eye, under the most favourable conditions and by the best eyesight, has been made by the American astronomer, Pickering. His numbers are--for the Northern Hemisphere 2509, and for the Southern Hemisphere 2824, thus showing a somewhat greater richness in the southern celestial hemisphere. But as this difference is due entirely to a preponderance of stars between magnitudes 5-1/2 and 6, that is, just on the limits of vision, while those down to magnitude 5-1/2 are more numerous by 85 in the Northern Hemisphere, Professor Newcomb is of opinion that there is no real superiority of numbers of visible stars in one hemisphere over the other. Again, the total number of the visible stars by the above enumeration is 5333. But this includes stars down to 6.2 magnitude, while it is generally considered that magnitude 6 marks the limit of visibility. On a re-examination of all the materials, the Italian astronomer Schiaparelli concludes that the total number of stars down to the sixth magnitude is 4303; and they seem to be about equally divided between the northern and southern skies. THE MILKY WAY But besides the stars themselves, a most conspicuous object both in the northern and southern hemisphere is that wonderful irregular belt of faintly diffused light termed the Milky Way or Galaxy. This forms a magnificent arch across the sky, best seen in the autumn months in our latitude. This arch, while following the general course of a great circle round the heavens, is extremely irregular in detail, sometimes being single, sometimes double, sending off occasional branches or offshoots, and also containing in its very midst dark rifts, spots, or patches, where the black background of almost starless sky can be seen through it. When examined through an opera-glass or small telescope quantities of stars are seen on the luminous background, and with every increase in the size and power of the telescope more and more stars become visible, till with the largest and best modern instruments the whole of the Galaxy seems densely packed with them, though still full of irregularities, wavy streams of stars, and dark rifts and patches, but always showing a faint nebulous background as if there remained other myriads of stars which a still higher optical power would reveal. The relations of this great belt of telescopic stars to the rest of the star-system have long interested astronomers, and many have attempted its solution. By a system of gauging, that is counting all the stars that passed over the field of his telescope in a certain time, Sir William Herschel was the first who made a systematic effort to determine the shape of the stellar universe. From the fact that the number of stars increased rapidly as the Milky Way was approached from whatever direction, while in the Galaxy itself the numbers visible were at once more than doubled, he formed the idea that the shape of the entire system must be that of a highly compressed very broad mass or ring rather less dense towards the centre where our sun was situated. Roughly speaking, the form was likened to a flat disc or grindstone, but of irregular thickness, and split in two on one side where it appears to be double. The immense quantity of the stars which formed it was supposed to be due to the fact that we looked at it edgewise through an immense depth of stars; while at right angles to its direction when looking towards what is termed the pole of the Galaxy, and also in a less degree when looking obliquely, we see out into space through a much thinner stratum of stars, which thus seem on the average to be very much farther apart. But, in the latter part of his life, Sir William Herschel realised that this was not the true explanation of the features presented by the Galaxy. The brilliant spots and patches in it, the dark rifts and openings, the narrow streams of light often bounded by equally narrow streams or rifts of darkness, render it quite impossible to conceive that this complex luminous ring has the form of a compressed disc extending in the direction in which we see it to a distance many times greater than its thickness. In one very luminous cluster Herschel thought that his telescope had penetrated to regions twenty times as far off as the more brilliant stars forming the nearer portions of the same object. Now, in the case of the Magellanic clouds, which are two roundish nebular patches of large size some distance from the Milky Way in the Southern Hemisphere and looking like detached portions of it, Sir John Herschel himself has shown that any such interpretation of its form is impossible; because it requires us to suppose that in both these cases we see, not rounded masses of a roughly globular shape, but immensely long cones or cylinders, placed in such a direction that we see only the ends of them. He remarks that one such object so situated would be an extraordinary coincidence, but that there should be two or many such is altogether out of the question. But in the Milky Way there are hundreds or even thousands of such spots or masses of exceptional brilliancy or exceptional darkness; and, if the form of the Galaxy is that of a disc many times broader than thick, and which we see edgewise, then every one of these patches and clusters, and all the narrow winding streams of bright light or intense blackness, must be really excessively long cylinders, or tunnels, or deep curving laminæ, or narrow fissures. And every one of these, which are to be found in every part of this vast circle of luminosity, must be so arranged as to be exactly turned towards our sun. The weight of this argument, which has been most forcibly and clearly set forth by the late Mr. R.A. Proctor, in his very instructive volume _Our Place among Infinities_, is now generally admitted by astronomers, and the natural conclusion is that the form of the Milky Way is that of a vast irregular ring, of which the section at any part is, roughly speaking, circular; while the many narrow rifts or lanes or openings where we seem to be able to see completely through it to the darkness of outer space beyond, render it probable that in those directions its thickness is less instead of greater than its apparent width, that is, that we see the broader side rather than the narrow edge of it. Before entering on the consideration of the relations which the bulk of the stars we see scattered over the entire vault of heaven bear to this great belt of telescopic stars, it will be advisable to give a somewhat full description of the Galaxy itself, both because it is not often delineated on star-maps with sufficient accuracy, or so as to show its wonderful intricacies of structure, and also because it constitutes the fundamental phenomenon upon which the argument set forth in this volume primarily rests. For this purpose I shall use the description of it given by Sir John Herschel in his _Outlines of Astronomy_, both because he, of all the astronomers of the last century, had studied it most thoroughly, in the northern and in the southern hemispheres, by eye-observation and with the aid of telescopes of great power and admirable quality; and also because, amid the throng of modern works and the exciting novelties of the last thirty years, his instructive volume is, comparatively speaking, very little known. This precise and careful description will also be of service to any of my readers who may wish to form a closer personal acquaintance with this magnificent and intensely interesting object, by examining its peculiarities of form and beauties of structure either with the naked eye, or with the aid of a good opera-glass, or with a small telescope of good defining power. A DESCRIPTION OF THE MILKY WAY Sir John Herschel's description is as follows:--'The course of the Milky Way as traced through the heavens by the unaided eye, neglecting occasional deviations and following the line of its greatest brightness as well as its varying breadth and intensity will permit, conforms, as nearly as the indefiniteness of its boundary will allow it to be fixed, to that of a great circle inclined at an angle of about 63° to the equinoctial, and cutting that circle in Right Ascension 6h. 47m. and 18h. 47m., so that its northern and southern poles respectively are situated in Right Ascension 12h. 47m., North Polar Distance 63°, and R.A. 0h. 47m., NPD. 117°. Throughout the region where it is so remarkably subdivided, this great circle holds an intermediate situation between the two great streams; with a nearer approximation however to the brighter and continuous stream than to the fainter and interrupted one. If we trace its course in order of right ascension, we find it traversing the constellation Cassiopeiæ, its brightest part passing about two degrees to the north of the star Delta of that constellation. Passing thence between Gamma and Epsilon Cassiopeiæ, it sends off a branch to the south-preceding side, towards Alpha Persei, very conspicuous as far as that star, prolonged faintly towards Eta of the same constellation, and possibly traceable towards the Hyades and Pleiades as remote outliers. The main stream, however (which is here very faint), passes on through Auriga, over the three remarkable stars, Epsilon, Zeta, Eta, of that constellation called the Hædi, preceding Capella, between the feet of Gemini and the horns of the Bull (where it intersects the ecliptic nearly in the Solstitial Colure) and thence over the club of Orion to the neck of Monoceros, intersecting the equinoctial in R.A. 6h. 54m. Up to this point, from the offset in Perseus, its light is feeble and indefinite, but thenceforward it receives a gradual accession of brightness, and where it passes through the shoulder of Monoceros and over the head of Canis Major it presents a broad, moderately bright, very uniform, and to the naked eye, starless stream up to the point where it enters the prow of the ship Argo, nearly on the southern tropic. Here it again subdivides (about the star _m_ Puppis), sending off a narrow and winding branch on the preceding side as far as Gamma Argûs, where it terminates abruptly. The main stream pursues its southward course to the 123rd parallel of NPD., where it diffuses itself broadly and again subdivides, opening out into a wide fan-like expanse, nearly 20° in breadth, formed of interlacing branches, which all terminate abruptly, in a line drawn nearly through Lambda and Gamma Argûs. 'At this place the continuity of the Milky Way is interrupted by a wide gap, and where it recommences on the opposite side it is by a somewhat similar fan-shaped assemblage of branches which converge upon the bright star Eta Argûs. Thence it crosses the hind feet of the Centaur, forming a curious and sharply-defined semicircular concavity of small radius, and enters the Cross by a very bright neck or isthmus of not more than three or four degrees in breadth, being the narrowest portion of the Milky Way. After this it immediately expands into a broad and bright mass, enclosing the stars Alpha and Beta Crucis and Beta Centauri, and extending almost up to Alpha of the latter constellation. In the midst of this bright mass, surrounded by it on all sides, and occupying about half its breadth, occurs a singular dark pear-shaped vacancy, so conspicuous and remarkable as to attract the notice of the most superficial gazer and to have acquired among the early southern navigators the uncouth but expressive appellation of the _coal-sack_. In this vacancy, which is about 8° in length and 5° broad, only one very small star visible to the naked eye occurs, though it is far from devoid of telescopic stars, so that its striking blackness is simply due to the effect of contrast with the brilliant ground with which it is on all sides surrounded. This is the place of nearest approach of the Milky Way to the South Pole. Throughout all this region its brightness is very striking, and when compared with that of its more northern course already traced, conveys strongly the impression of greater proximity, and would almost lead to a belief that our situation as spectators is separated on all sides by a considerable interval from the dense body of stars composing the Galaxy, which in this view of the subject would come to be considered as a flat ring or some other re-entering form of immense and irregular breadth and thickness, within which we are excentrically situated, nearer to the southern than to the northern part of its circuit. 'At Alpha Centauri the Milky Way again subdivides, sending off a great branch of nearly half its breadth, but which thins off rapidly, at an angle of about 20° with its general direction to Eta and _d_ Lupi, beyond which it loses itself in a narrow and faint streamlet. The main stream passes on increasing in breadth to Gamma Normæ, where it makes an abrupt elbow and again subdivides into one principal and continuous stream of very irregular breadth and brightness, and a complicated system of interlaced streaks and masses, which covers the tail of Scorpio, and terminates in a vast and faint effusion over the whole extensive region occupied by the preceding leg of Ophiuchus, extending northward to the parallel of 103° NPD., beyond which it cannot be traced; a wide interval of 14°, free from all appearance of nebulous light, separating it from the great branch on the north side of the equinoctial of which it is usually represented as a continuation. 'Returning to the point of separation of this great branch from the main stream, let us now pursue the course of the latter. Making an abrupt bend to the following side, it passes over the stars Iota Aræ, Theta and Iota Scorpii, and Gamma Tubi to Gamma Sagittarii, where it suddenly collects into a vivid oval mass about 6° in length and 4° in breadth, so excessively rich in stars that a very moderate calculation makes their number exceed 100,000. Northward of this mass, this stream crosses the ecliptic in longitude about 276°, and proceeding along the bow of Sagittarius into Antinous has its course rippled by three deep concavities, separated from each other by remarkable protuberances, of which the larger and brighter forms the most conspicuous patch in the southern portion of the Milky Way visible in our latitudes. 'Crossing the equinoctial at the 19th hour of R.A., it next runs in an irregular, patchy, and winding stream through Aquila, Sagitta, and Vulpecula up to Cygnus; at Epsilon of which constellation its continuity is interrupted, and a very confused and irregular region commences, marked by a broad dark vacuity, not unlike the southern "coal-sack," occupying the space between Epsilon, Alpha, and Gamma Cygni, which serves as a kind of centre for the divergence of three great streams; one, which we have already traced; a second, the continuation of the first (across the interval) from Alpha northward, between Lacerta and the head of Cepheus to the point in Cassiopeiæ whence we set out, and a third branching off from Gamma Cygni, very vivid and conspicuous, running off in a southern direction through Beta Cygni, and _s_ Aquilæ almost to the equinoctial, where it loses itself in a region thinly sprinkled with stars, where in some maps the modern constellation Taurus Poniatowski is placed. This is the branch which, if continued across the equinoctial, might be supposed to unite with the great southern effusion in Ophiuchus already noticed. A considerable offset, or protuberant appendage, is also thrown off by the northern stream from the head of Cepheus directly towards the pole, occupying the greater part of the quartile formed by Alpha, Beta, Iota, and Delta of that constellation.' To complete this careful, detailed description of the Milky Way, it will be well to add a few passages from the same work as to its telescopic appearance and structure. 'When examined with powerful telescopes, the constitution of this wonderful zone is found to be no less various than its aspect to the naked eye is irregular. In some regions the stars of which it is composed are scattered with remarkable uniformity over immense tracts, while in others the irregularity of their distribution is quite as striking, exhibiting a rapid succession of closely clustering rich patches separated by comparatively poor intervals, and indeed in some instances by spaces absolutely dark _and completely void of any star_, even of the smallest telescopic magnitude. In some places not more than 40 or 50 stars on an average occur in a gauge-field of 15', while in others a similar average gives a result of 400 or 500. Nor is less variety observable in the character of its different regions in respect of the magnitudes of the stars they exhibit, and the proportional numbers of the larger and smaller magnitudes associated together, than in respect of their aggregate numbers. In some, for instance, extremely minute stars occur in numbers so moderate as to lead us irresistibly to the conclusion that in these regions we see _fairly through_ the starry stratum, since it is impossible otherwise that the numbers of the smaller magnitudes should not go on continually increasing ad infinitum. In such cases, moreover, the ground of the heavens is for the most part perfectly dark, which again would not be the case if innumerable multitudes of stars, too minute to be individually discernible, existed beyond. In other regions we are presented with the phænomenon of an almost uniform degree of brightness of the individual stars, accompanied with a very even distribution of them over the ground of the heavens, both the larger and smaller magnitudes being strikingly deficient. In such cases it is equally impossible not to perceive that we are looking _through_ a sheet of stars nearly of a size, and of no great thickness compared with the distance which separates them from us. Were it otherwise we should be driven to suppose the more distant stars uniformly the larger, so as to compensate by their greater intrinsic brightness for their greater distance, a supposition contrary to all probability.... 'Throughout by far the larger portion of the extent of the Milky Way in both hemispheres, the general blackness of the ground of the heavens on which its stars are projected, and the absence of that innumerable multitude and excessive crowding of the smallest visible magnitudes, and of glare produced by the aggregate light of multitudes too small to affect the eye singly, must, we think, be considered unequivocal indications that its dimensions in _directions where these conditions obtain_ are not only not infinite, but that the space-penetrating power of our telescopes suffices fairly to pierce through and beyond it.' In the above-quoted passage the italics are those of Sir John Herschel himself, and we see that he drew the very same conclusions from the facts he describes, and for much the same reasons, as Mr. Proctor has drawn from the observations of Sir William Herschel; and, as we shall see, the best astronomers to-day have arrived at a similar result, from the additional facts at their disposal, and in some cases from fresh lines of argument. THE STARS IN RELATION TO THE MILKY WAY Sir John Herschel was so impressed with the form, structure, and immensity of the Galactic Circle, as he sometimes terms it, that he says (in a footnote p. 575, 10th ed.), 'This circle is to sidereal what the invariable ecliptic is to planetary astronomy--a plane of ultimate reference, the ground-plane of the sidereal system.' We have now to consider what are the relations of the whole body of the stars to this Galactic Circle--this plane of ultimate reference for the whole stellar universe. If we look at the heavens on a starry night, the whole vault appears to be thickly strewn with stars of various degrees of brightness, so that we could hardly say that any extensive region--the north, east, south, or west, or the portion vertically above us--is very conspicuously deficient or superior in numbers. In every part there are to be found a fair proportion of stars of the first two or three magnitudes, while where these may seem deficient a crowd of smaller stars takes their place. But an accurate survey of the visible stars shows that there is a large amount of irregularity in their distribution, and that all magnitudes are really more numerous in or near the Milky Way, than at a distance from it, though not in so large a degree as to be very conspicuous to the naked eye. The area of the whole of the Milky Way cannot be estimated at more than one-seventh of the whole sphere, while some astronomers reckon it at only one-tenth. If stars of any particular size were uniformly distributed, at most one-seventh of the whole number should be found within its limits. But Mr. Gore finds that of 32 stars brighter than the second magnitude 12 lie upon the Milky Way, or considerably more than twice as many as there should be if they were uniformly distributed. And in the case of the 99 stars which are brighter than the third magnitude 33 lie upon the Milky Way, or one-third instead of one-seventh. Mr. Gore also counted all the stars in Heis's Atlas which lie upon the Milky Way, and finds there are 1186 out of a total of 5356, a proportion of between a fourth and a fifth instead of a seventh. The late Mr. Proctor in 1871 laid down on a chart two feet diameter all the stars down to magnitude 9-1/2 given in Agrelander's forty large charts of the stars visible in the northern hemisphere. They were 324,198 in number, and they distinctly showed by their greater density not only the whole course of the Milky Way but also its more luminous portions and many of the curious dark rifts and vacuities, which latter are almost wholly avoided by these stars. Later on Professor Seeliger of Munich made an investigation of the relation of more than 135,000 stars down to the ninth magnitude to the Milky Way, by dividing the whole of the heavens into nine regions, one and nine being circles of 20° wide (equal to 40° diameter) at the two poles of the Galaxy; the middle region, five, is a zone 20° wide including the Milky Way itself, and the other six intermediate zones are each 20° wide. The following table shows the results as given by Professor Newcomb, who has made some alterations in the last column of 'Density of Stars' in order to correct differences in the estimate of magnitudes by the different authorities. Regions. Area in Degree. Number of Stars. Density. I. 1,398.7 4,277 2.78 II. 3,146.9 10,185 3.03 III. 5,126.6 19,488 3.54 IV. 4,589.8 24,492 5.32 V. 4,519.5 33,267 8.17 VI. 3,971.5 23,580 6.07 VII. 2,954.4 11,790 3.71 VIII. 1,796.6 6,375 3.21 IX. 468.2 1,644 3.14 _N.B._--The inequality of the N. and S. areas is because the enumeration of the stars only went as far as 24° S. Decl., and therefore included only a part of Regions VII., VIII., and IX. [Illustration: DIAGRAM OF STAR-DENSITY From Herschel's Gauges (as given by Professor Newcomb, p. 251).] Upon this table of densities Professor Newcomb remarks as follows:--'The star-density in the several regions increases continuously from each pole (regions I. and IX.) to the Galaxy itself (region V.). IF THE LATTER WERE A SIMPLE RING OF STARS SURROUNDING A SPHERICAL SYSTEM OF STARS, THE STAR-DENSITY WOULD BE ABOUT THE SAME IN REGIONS I., II., and III., and also in VII., VIII., and IX., but would suddenly increase in IV. and VI. as the boundary of the ring was approached. Instead of such being the case, the numbers 2.78, 3.03, and 3.54 in the north, and 3.14, 3.21, and 3.71 in the south, show a progressive increase from the galactic pole to the Galaxy itself. The conclusion to be drawn is a fundamental one. The universe, or at least the denser portion of it, is really flattened between the galactic poles, as supposed by Herschel and Struve.' But looking at the series of figures in the table, and again as quoted by Professor Newcomb, they seem to me to show in some measure what he says they do not show. I therefore drew out the above diagram from the figures in the table, and it certainly shows that the density in regions I., II., and III., and in regions VII., VIII., and IX., may be said to be 'about the same,' that is, they increase very slowly, and that they _do_ 'suddenly increase' in IV. and VI. as the boundary of the Galaxy is approached. This may be explained either by a flattening towards the poles of the Galaxy, or by the thinning out of stars in that direction. In order to show the enormous difference of star-density in the Galaxy and at the galactic poles, Professor Newcomb gives the following table of the Herschelian gauges, on which he only remarks that they show an enormously increased density in the galactic region due to the Herschels having counted so many more stars there than any other observers. +-----------+----+----+----+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+ |Region, .| I. | II.|III.| IV.| V. | VI. | VII.|VIII.| IX. | | | | | | | | | | | | |Density, .|107 |154 |281 |560 |2,019| 672 | 261 | 154 | 111 | +-----------+----+----+----+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+ [Illustration: DIAGRAM OF STAR-DENSITY From a table in _The Stars_ (p. 249).] But an important characteristic of these figures is, that the Herschels alone surveyed the whole of the heavens from the north to the south pole, that they did this with instruments of the same size and quality, and that from almost life-long experience in this particular work they were unrivalled in their power of counting rapidly and accurately the stars that passed over each field of view of their telescopes. Their results, therefore, must be held to have a comparative value far above those of any other observer or combination of observers. I have therefore thought it advisable to draw a diagram from their figures, and it will be seen how strikingly it agrees with the former diagram in the very slow increase of star-richness in the first three regions north and south, the sudden increase in regions IV. and VI. as we approach the Galaxy, while the only marked difference is in the enormously greater richness of the Galaxy itself, which is an undoubtedly real phenomenon, and is brought out here by the unrivalled observing power of the two greatest astronomers in this special department that have ever lived. We shall find later on that Professor Newcomb himself, as the result of a quite different inquiry arrives at a result in accordance with these diagrams which will then be again referred to. As this is a very interesting subject, it will be well to give another diagram from two tables of star-density in Sir John Herschel's volume already quoted. The tables are as follows:-- Zones of Galactic Average number of Star North Polar Distance. per Field of 15'. 0° to 15° 4.32 15° to 30° 5.42 30° to 45° 8.21 45° to 60° 13.61 60° to 75° 24.09 75° to 90° 53.43 Zones of Galactic Average number of Stars South Polar Distance. per Field of 15'. 0° to 15° 6.05 15° to 30° 6.62 30° to 45° 9.08 45° to 60° 13.49 60° to 75° 26.29 75° to 90° 59.06 In these tables the Milky Way itself is taken as occupying two zones of 15° each, instead of one of 20° as in Professor Newcomb's tables, so that the excess in the number of stars over the other zones is not so large. They show also a slight preponderance in all the zones of the southern hemisphere, but this is not great, and may probably be due to the clearer atmosphere of the Cape of Good Hope as compared with that of England. [Illustration: DIAGRAM OF STAR-DENSITY. From Table in Sir J. Herschel's _Outlines of Astronomy_ (10th ed., pp. 577-578).] It need only be noted here that this diagram shows the same general features as those already given, of a continuous increase of star-density from the poles of the Galaxy, but more rapidly as the Galaxy itself is more nearly approached. This fact must, therefore, be accepted as indisputable. CLUSTERS AND NEBULÆ IN RELATION TO THE GALAXY An important factor in the structure of the heavens is afforded by the distribution of the two classes of objects known as clusters and nebulæ. Although we can form an almost continuous series from double stars which revolve round their common centre of gravity, through triple and quadruple stars, to groups and aggregations of indefinite extent--of which the Pleiades form a good example, since the six stars visible to the naked eye are increased to hundreds by high telescopic powers, while photographs with three hours' exposure show more than 2000 stars--yet none of these correspond to the large class known as clusters, whether globular or irregular, which are very numerous, about 600 having been recorded by Sir John Herschel more than fifty years ago. Many of these are among the most beautiful and striking objects in the heavens even with a very small telescope or good opera-glass. Such is the luminous spot called Praesepe, or the Beehive in the constellation Cancer, and another in the sword handle of Perseus. In the southern hemisphere there is a hazy star of about the fourth magnitude, Omega Centauri, which with a good telescope is seen to be really a magnificent cluster nearly two-thirds the diameter of the moon, and described by Sir John Herschel as very gradually increasing in brightness to the centre, and composed of innumerable stars of the thirteenth and fifteenth magnitudes, forming the richest and largest object of the kind in the heavens. He describes it as having rings like lace-work formed of the larger stars. By actual count, on a good photograph, there are more than 6000 stars, while other observers consider that there are at least 10,000. In the northern hemisphere one of the finest is that in the constellation Hercules, known as 13 Messier. It is just visible to the naked eye or with an opera glass as a hazy star of the sixth magnitude, but a good telescope shows it to be a globular cluster, and the great Lick telescope resolves even the densest central portion into distinct stars, of which Sir John Herschel considered there were many thousands. These two fine clusters are figured in many of the modern popular works on astronomy, and they afford an excellent idea of these beautiful and remarkable objects, which, when more thoroughly studied, will probably aid in elucidating some of the obscure problems connected with the constitution and development of the stellar universe. But for the purpose of the present work the most interesting fact connected with star-clusters is their remarkable distribution in the heavens. Their special abundance in and near the Milky Way had often been noted, but the full importance of the fact could not be appreciated till Mr. Proctor and, later, Mr. Sidney Waters marked down, on maps of the two hemispheres, all the star-clusters and nebulæ in the best catalogues. The result is most interesting. The clusters are seen to be thickly strewn over the entire course of the Milky Way, and along its margins, while in every other part of the heavens they are thinly scattered at very distant intervals, with the one exception of the Magellanic clouds of the southern hemisphere where they are again densely grouped; and if anything were needed to prove the physical connection of these clusters with the Galaxy it would be their occurrence in these extensive nebulous patches which seem like outlying portions of the Milky Way itself. With these two exceptions probably not one-twentieth part of the whole number of star-clusters are found in any part of the heavens remote from the Milky Way. Nebulæ were for a long time confounded with star-clusters, because it was thought that with sufficient telescopic power they could all be resolvable into stars as in the case of the Milky Way itself. But when the spectroscope showed that many of the nebulæ consisted wholly or mainly of glowing gases, while neither the highest powers of the best telescopes nor the still greater powers of the photographic plate gave any indications of resolvability, although a few stars were often found to be, as it were, entangled in them, and evidently forming part of them, it was seen that they constituted a distinct stellar phenomenon, a view which was enforced and rendered certain by their quite unique mode of distribution. A few of the larger and irregular type, as in the case of the grand Orion nebula visible to the naked eye, the great spiral nebula in Andromeda, and the wonderful Keyhole nebula round Eta Argûs, are situated in or near the Milky Way; but with these and a few other exceptions the overwhelming majority of the smaller irresolvable nebulæ appear to avoid it, there being a space almost wholly free from nebulæ along its borders, both in the northern and southern hemispheres; while the great majority are spread over the sky, far away from it in the southern hemisphere, and in the north clustering in a very marked degree around the galactic pole. The distribution of nebulæ is thus seen to be the exact opposite to that of the star-clusters, while both are so distinctly related to the position of the Milky Way--the ground-plane of the sidereal system, as Sir John Herschel termed it--that we are compelled to include them all as connected portions of one grand and, to some extent, symmetrical universe, whose remarkable and opposite mode of distribution over the heavens may probably afford a clue to the mode of development of that universe and to the changes that are even now taking place within it. The maps referred to above are of such great importance, and are so essential to a clear comprehension of the nature and constitution of the vast sidereal system which surrounds us, that I have, with the permission of the Royal Astronomical Society, reproduced them here. (See end of volume.) A careful examination of them will give a clearer idea of the very remarkable facts of distribution of star-clusters and nebulæ than can be afforded by any amount of description or of numerical statements. The forms of many of the nebulæ are very curious. Some are quite irregular, as the Orion nebula, the Keyhole nebula in the southern hemisphere, and many others. Some show a decidedly spiral form, as those in Andromeda and Canes Venatici; others again are annular or ring-shaped, as those in Lyra and Cygnus, while a considerable number are termed planetary nebulæ, from their exhibiting a faint circular disc like that of a planet. Many have stars or groups of stars evidently forming parts of them, and this is especially the case with those of the largest size. But all these are comparatively few in number and more or less exceptional in type, the great majority being minute cloudy specks only visible with good telescopes, and so faint as to leave much doubt as to their exact shape and nature. Sir John Herschel catalogued 5000 in 1864, and more than 8000 were discovered up to 1890; while the application of the camera has so increased the numbers that it is thought there may really be many hundreds of thousands of them. The spectroscope shows the larger irregular nebulæ to be gaseous, as are the annular and planetary nebulæ as well as many very brilliant white stars; and all these objects are most frequent in or near the Milky Way. Their spectra show a green line not produced by any terrestrial element. With the great Lick telescope several of the planetary nebulæ have been found to be irregular and sometimes to be formed of compressed or looped rings and other curious forms. Many of the smaller nebulæ are double or triple, but whether they really form revolving systems is not yet known. The great mass of the small nebulæ that occupy large tracts of the heavens remote from the Galaxy are often termed irresolvable nebulæ, because the highest powers of the largest telescopes show no indication of their being star-clusters, while they are too faint to give any definite indications of structure in the spectroscope. But many of them resemble comets in their forms, and it is thought not impossible that they may be not very dissimilar in constitution. * * * * * We have now passed in review the main features presented to us in the heavens outside the solar system, so far as regards the numbers and distribution of the lucid stars (those visible to the naked eye) as well as those brought to view by the telescope; the form and chief characteristics of the Milky Way or Galaxy; and lastly, the numbers and distribution of those interesting objects--star-clusters and nebulæ in their special relations to the Milky Way. This examination has brought clearly before us the unity of the whole visible universe; that everything we can see, or obtain any knowledge of, with all the resources of modern gigantic telescopes, of the photographic plate, and of the even more marvellous spectroscope, forms parts of one vast system which may be shortly and appropriately termed the Stellar universe. In our next chapter we shall carry the investigation a step further, by sketching in outline what is known of the motions and distances of the stars, and thus obtain some important information bearing upon our special subject of inquiry. CHAPTER V DISTANCE OF THE STARS--THE SUN'S MOTION THROUGH SPACE In early ages, before any approximate idea was reached of the great distances of the stars from us, the simple conception of a crystal sphere to which these luminous points were attached and carried round every day on an axis near which our pole-star is situated, satisfied the demands for an explanation of the phenomena. But when Copernicus set forth the true arrangement of the heavenly bodies, earth and planets alike revolving round the sun at distances of many millions of miles, and when this scheme was enforced by the laws of Kepler and the telescopic discoveries of Galileo, a difficulty arose which astronomers were unable satisfactorily to overcome. If, said they, the earth revolves round the sun at a distance which cannot be less (according to Kepler's measurement of the distance of Mars at opposition) than 13-1/2 millions of miles, then how is it that the nearer stars are not seen to shift their apparent places when viewed from opposite sides of this enormous orbit? Copernicus, and after him Kepler and Galileo, stoutly maintained that it was because the stars were at such an enormous distance from us that the earth's orbit was a mere point in comparison. But this seemed wholly incredible, even to the great observer Tycho Brahé, and hence the Copernican theory was not so generally accepted as it otherwise would have been. Galileo always declared that the measurement would some day be made, and he even suggested the method of effecting it which is now found to be the most trustworthy. But the sun's distance had to be first measured with greater accuracy, and that was only done in the latter part of the eighteenth century by means of transits of Venus; and by later observations with more perfect instruments it is now pretty well fixed at about 92,780,000 miles, the limits of error being such that 92-3/4 millions may perhaps be quite as accurate. With such an enormous base-line as twice this distance, which is available by making observations at intervals of about six months when the earth is at opposite points in its orbit, it seemed certain that some parallax or displacement of the nearer stars could be found, and many astronomers with the best instruments devoted themselves to the work. But the difficulties were enormous, and very few really satisfactory results were obtained till the latter half of the nineteenth century. About forty stars have now been measured with tolerable certainty, though of course with a considerable margin of possible or probable error; and about thirty more, which are found to have a parallax of one-tenth of a second or less, must be considered to leave a very large margin of uncertainty. The two nearest fixed stars are Alpha Centauri and 61 Cygni. The former is one of the brightest stars in the southern hemisphere, and is about 275,000 times as far from us as the sun. The light from this star will take 4-1/4 years to reach us, and this 'light-journey,' as it is termed, is generally used by astronomers as an easily remembered mode of recording the distances of the fixed stars, the distance in miles--in this case about 25 millions of millions--being very cumbrous. The other star, 61 Cygni, is only of about the fifth magnitude, yet it is the second nearest to us, with a light-journey of about 7-1/4 years. If we had no other determinations of distance than these two, the facts would be of the highest importance. They teach us, first, that magnitude or brightness of a star is no proof of nearness to us, a fact of which there is much other evidence; and in the second place, they furnish us with a probable minimum distance of independent suns from one another, which, in proportion to their sizes, some being known to be many times larger than our sun, is not more than we might expect. This remoteness may be partly due to those which were once nearer together having coalesced under the influence of gravitation. As this measurement of the distance of the nearer stars should be clearly understood by every one who wishes to obtain some real comprehension of the scale of this vast universe of which we form a part, the method now adopted and found to be most effectual will be briefly explained. Everyone who is acquainted with the rudiments of trigonometry or mensuration, knows that an inaccessible distance can be accurately determined if we can measure a base-line from both ends of which the inaccessible object can be seen, and if we have a good instrument with which to measure angles. The accuracy will mainly depend upon our base-line being not excessively short in comparison with the distance to be measured. If it is as much as half or even a quarter as long the measurement may be as accurate as if directly performed over the ground, but if it is only one-hundredth or one-thousandth part as long, a very small error either in the length of the base or in the amount of the angles will produce a large error in the result. In measuring the distance of the moon, the earth's diameter, or a considerable portion of it, has served as a base-line. Either two observers at great distances from each other, or the same observer after an interval of nine or ten hours, may examine the moon from positions six or seven thousand miles apart, and by accurate measurements of its angular distance from a star, or by the time of its passage over the meridian of the place as observed with a transit instrument, the angular displacement can be found and the distance determined with very great accuracy, although that distance is more than thirty times the length of the base. The distance of the planet Mars when nearest to us has been found in the same way. His distance from us even when at his nearest point during the most favourable oppositions is about 36 million miles, or more than four thousand times the earth's diameter, so that it requires the most delicate observations many times repeated and with the finest instruments to obtain a tolerably approximate result. When this is done, by Kepler's law of the fixed proportion between the distances of planets from the sun and their times of revolution, the proportionate distance of all the other planets and that of the sun can be ascertained. This method, however, is not sufficiently accurate to satisfy astronomers, because upon the sun's distance that of every other member of the solar system depends. Fortunately there are two other methods by which this important measurement has been made with much greater approach to certainty and precision. [Illustration: Diagram illustrating the transit of Venus.] The first of these methods is by means of the rare occasions when the planet Venus passes across the sun's disc as seen from the earth. When this takes place, observations of the transit, as it is termed, are made at remote parts of the earth, the distance between which places can of course easily be calculated from their latitudes and longitudes. The diagram here given illustrates the simplest mode of determining the sun's distance by this observation, and the following description from Proctor's _Old and New Astronomy_ is so clear that I copy it verbally:--'V represents Venus passing between the Earth E and the Sun S; and we see how an observer at E will see Venus as at v', while an observer at E' will see her as at v. The measurement of the distance v v', as compared with the diameter of the sun's disc, determines the angle v V v' or E V E'; whence the distance E V can be calculated from the known length of the base-line E E'. For instance, it is known (from the known proportions of the Solar System as determined from the times of revolution by Kepler's third law) that E V bears to V v the proportion 28 to 72, or 7 to 18; whence E E' bears to v v' the same proportion. Suppose, now, that the distance between the two stations is known to be 7000 miles, so that v v' is 18,000 miles; and that v v' is found by accurate measurement to be 1/48 part of the sun's diameter. Then the sun's diameter, as determined by this observation, is 48 times 18,000 miles, or 864,000 miles; whence from his known apparent size, which is that of a globe 107-1/3 times farther away from us than its own diameter, his distance is found to be 92,736,000 miles.' Of course, there being two observers, the proportion of the distance v v' to the diameter of the sun's disc cannot be measured directly, but each of them can measure the apparent angular distance of the planet from the sun's upper and lower margins as it passes across the disc, and thus the angular distance between the two lines of transit can be obtained. The distance v v' can also be found by accurately noting the times of the upper and lower passage of Venus, which, as the line of transit is considerably shorter in one than the other, gives by the known properties of the circle the exact proportion of the distance between them to the sun's diameter; and as this is found to be the most accurate method, it is the one generally adopted. For this purpose the stations of the observers are so chosen that the length of the two chords, v and v', may have a considerable difference, thus rendering the measurement more easy. The other method of determining the sun's distance is by the direct measurement of the velocity of light. This was first done by the French physicist, Fizeau, in 1849, by the use of rapidly revolving mirrors, as described in most works on physics. This method has now been brought to such a decree of perfection that the sun's distance so determined is considered to be equally trustworthy with that derived from the transits of Venus. The reason that the determination of the velocity of light leads to a determination of the sun's distance is, because the time taken by light to pass from the sun to the earth is independently known to be 8 min. 13-1/3 sec. This was discovered so long ago as 1675 by means of the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites. These satellites revolve round the planet in from 1-3/4 to 16 days, and, owing to their moving very nearly in the plane of the ecliptic and the shadow of Jupiter being so large, the three which are nearest to the planet are eclipsed at every revolution. This rapid revolution of the satellites and frequency of the eclipses enabled their periods of recurrence to be determined with extreme accuracy, especially after many years of careful observation. It was then found that when Jupiter was at its farthest distance from the earth the eclipses of the satellites took place a little more than eight minutes later than the time calculated from the mean period of revolution, and when the planet was nearest to us the eclipses occurred the same amount earlier. And when further observation showed that there was no difference between calculation and observation when the planet was at its mean distance from us, and that the error arose and increased exactly in proportion to our varying distance from it, then it became clear that the only cause adequate to produce such an effect was, that light had not an infinite velocity but travelled at a certain fixed rate. This however, though a highly probable explanation, was not absolutely proved till nearly two centuries later, by means of two very difficult measurements--that of the actual distance of the sun from the earth, and that of the actual speed of light in miles per second; the latter corresponding almost exactly with the speed deduced from the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites and the sun's distance as measured by the transits of Venus. [Illustration: (A) and the last 2 lines of the next paragraph should be replaced with: one-tenth of an inch long, and from a point (A) 5-3/4 inches from it (accurately 5.72957795 inches) we draw straight lines to B and C. Then the angle at A is one degree.)] But this problem of measuring the sun's distance, and through it the dimensions of the orbits of all the planets of our system, sinks into insignificance when compared with the enormous difficulties in the way of the determination of the distance of the stars. As a great many people, perhaps the majority of the readers of any popular scientific book, have little knowledge of mathematics and cannot realise what an angle of a minute or a second really means, a little explanation and illustration of these terms will not be out of place. An angle of one degree (1°) is the 360th part of a circle (viewed from its centre), the 90th part of a right angle, the 60th part of either of the angles of an equilateral triangle. To see exactly how much is an angle of one degree we draw a short line (B C) one-tenth of an inch long, and from a point we draw straight lines to B and C. Then the angle at A is one degree. Now, in all astronomical work, one degree is considered to be quite a large angle. Even before the invention of the telescope the old observers fixed the position of the stars and planets to half or a quarter of a degree, while Mr. Proctor thinks that Tycho Brahé's positions of the stars and planets were correct to about one or two minutes of arc. But a minute of arc is obtained by dividing the line B C into sixty equal parts and seeing the distance between two of these with the naked eye from the point A. But as very long-sighted people can see very minute objects at 10 or 12 inches distance, we may double the distance A B, and then making the line B C one three-hundredth part of an inch long, we shall have the angle of one minute which Tycho Brahé was perhaps able to measure. How very large an amount a minute is to the modern astronomer is, however, well shown by the fact that the maximum difference between the calculated and observed positions of Uranus, which led Adams and Leverrier to search for and discover Neptune, was only 1-1/2 minutes, a space so small as to be almost invisible to the average eye, so that if there had been two planets, one in the calculated, the other in the observed place, they would have appeared as one to unassisted vision. In order now to realise what one second of arc really means, let us look at the circle here shown, which is as nearly as possible one-tenth of an inch in diameter--(one-O-tenth of an inch). If we remove this circle to a distance of 28 feet 8 inches it will subtend an angle of one minute, and we shall have to place it at a distance of nearly 1730 feet--almost one-third of a mile--to reduce the angle to one second. But the very nearest to us of the fixed stars, Alpha Centauri, has a parallax of only three-fourths of a second; that is, the distance of the earth from the sun--about 92-3/4 millions of miles--would appear no wider, seen from the nearest star, than does three-fourths of the above small circle at one-third of a mile distance. To see this circle at all at that distance would require a very good telescope with a power of at least 100, while to see any small part of it and to measure the proportion of that part to the whole would need very brilliant illumination and a large and powerful astronomical telescope. WHAT IS A MILLION? But when we have to deal with millions, and even with hundreds and thousands of millions, there is another difficulty--that few people can form any clear conception of what a million is. It has been suggested that in every large school the walls of one room or hall should be devoted to showing a million at one view. For this purpose it would be necessary to have a hundred large sheets of paper each about 4 feet 6 inches square, ruled in quarter inch squares. In each alternate square a round black wafer or circle should be placed a little over-lapping the square, thus leaving an equal amount of white space between the black spots. At each tenth spot a double width should be left so as to separate each hundred spots (10 × 10). Each sheet would then hold ten thousand spots, which would all be distinctly visible from the middle of a room 20 feet wide, each horizontal or vertical row containing a thousand. One hundred such sheets would contain a million spots, and they would occupy a space 450 feet long in one row, or 90 feet long in five rows, so that they would entirely cover the walls of a room, about 30 feet square and 25 feet high, from floor to ceiling, allowing space for doors but not for windows, the hall or gallery being lighted from above. Such a hall would be in the highest degree educational in a country where millions are spoken of so glibly and wasted so recklessly; while no one can really appreciate modern science, dealing as it does with the unimaginably great and little, unless he is enabled to realise by actual vision, and summing up, what a vast number is comprised in _one_ of those millions, which, in modern astronomy and physics, he has to deal with not singly only, but by hundreds and thousands or even by millions. In every considerable town, at all events, a hall or gallery should have a _million_ thus shown upon its walls. It would in no way interfere with the walls being covered when required with maps, or ornamental hangings, or pictures; but when these were removed, the visible and countable million would remain as a permanent lesson to all visitors; and I believe that it would have widespread beneficial effects in almost every department of human thought and action. On a small scale any one can do this for himself by getting a hundred sheets of engineer's paper ruled in small squares, and making the spots very small; and even this would be impressive, but not so much so as on the larger scale. In order to enable every reader of this volume at once to form some conception of the number of units in a million, I have made an estimate of the number of _letters_ contained in it, and I find them to amount to about 420,000--considerably less than half a million. Try and realise, when reading it, that if every letter were a pound sterling, we waste as many pounds as there are letters in _two_ such volumes whenever we build a battleship. Having thus obtained some real conception of the immensity of a million, we can better realise what it must be to have every one of the dots above described, or every one of the letters in two such volumes as this lengthened out so as to be each a mile long, and even then we should have reached little more than a hundredth part of the distance from our earth to the sun. When, by careful consideration of these figures, we have even partially realised this enormous distance, we may take the next step, which is, to compare this distance with that of the nearest fixed star. We have seen that the parallax of that star is three-fourths of a second, an amount which implies that the star is 271,400 times as far from us as our sun is. If after _seeing_ what a million is, and knowing that the sun is 92-3/4 times this distance from us in miles--a distance which itself is almost inconceivable to us--we find that we have to multiply this almost inconceivable distance 271,400 times--more than a quarter of a million times--to reach the _nearest_ of the fixed stars, we shall begin to realise, however imperfectly, how vast is the system of suns around us, and on what a scale of immensity the material universe, which we see so gloriously displayed in the starry heavens and the mysterious galaxy, is constructed. This somewhat lengthy preliminary discussion is thought necessary in order that my readers may form some idea of the enormous difficulty of obtaining any measurement whatever of such distances. I now propose to point out what the special difficulties are, and how they have been overcome; and thus I hope to be able to satisfy them that the figures astronomers give us of the distances of the stars are in no way mere guesses or probabilities, but are real measurements which, within certain not very wide limits of error, may be trusted as giving us correct ideas of the magnitude of the visible universe. MEASUREMENT OF STELLAR DISTANCES The fundamental difficulty of this measurement is, of course, that the distances are so vast that the longest available base-line, the diameter of the earth's orbit, only subtends an angle of little more than a second from the nearest star, while for all the rest it is less than one second and often only a small fraction of it. But this difficulty, great as it is, is rendered far greater by the fact that there is no fixed point in the heavens from which to measure, since many of the stars are known to be in motion, and all are believed to be so in varying degrees, while the sun itself is now known to be moving among the stars at a rate which is not yet accurately determined, but in a direction which is fairly well known. As the various motions of the earth while passing round the sun, though extremely complex, are very accurately known, it was first attempted to determine the changed position of stars by observations, many times repeated at six months' intervals, of the moment of their passage over the meridian and their distance from the zenith; and then by allowing for all the known motions of the earth, such as precession of the equinoxes and nutation of the earth's axis, as well as for refraction and for the aberration of light, to determine what residual effect was due to the difference of position from which the star was viewed; and a result was thus obtained in several cases, though almost always a larger one than has been found by later observations and by better methods. These earlier observations, however perfect the instruments and however skilful the observer, are liable to errors which it seems impossible to avoid. The instruments themselves are subject in all their parts to expansion and contraction by changes of temperature; and when these changes are sudden, one part of the instrument may be affected more than another, and this will often lead to minute errors which may seriously affect the amount to be measured when that is so small. Another source of error is due to atmospheric refraction, which is subject to changes both from hour to hour and at different seasons. But perhaps most important of all are minute changes in level of the foundations of the instruments even when they are carried down to solid rock. Both changes of temperature and changes of moisture of the soil produce minute alterations of level; while earth-tremors and slow movements of elevation or depression are now known to be very frequent. Owing to all these causes, actual measurements of differences of position at different times of the year, amounting to small fractions of a second, are found to be too uncertain for the determination of such minute angles with the required accuracy. But there is another method which avoids almost all these sources of error, and this is now generally preferred and adopted for these measurements. It is, that of measuring the distance between two stars situated apparently very near each other, one of which has large proper motion, while the other has none which is measurable. The proper motions of the stars was first suspected by Halley in 1717, from finding that several stars, whose places had been given by Hipparchus, 130 B.C., were not in the positions where they now ought to be; and other observations by the old astronomers, especially those of occultations of stars by the moon, led to the same result. Since the time of Halley very accurate observations of the stars have been made, and in many cases it is found that they move perceptibly from year to year, while others move so slowly that it is only after forty or fifty years that the motion can be detected. The greatest proper motions yet determined amount to between 7" and 8" in a year, while other stars require twenty, or even fifty or a hundred years to show an equal amount of displacement. At first it was thought that the brightest stars would have the largest proper motion, because it was supposed they were nearest to us, but it was soon found that many small and quite inconspicuous stars moved as rapidly as the most brilliant, while in many very bright stars no proper motion at all can be detected. That which moves most rapidly is a small star of less than the sixth magnitude. It is a matter of common observation that the motion of things at a distance cannot be perceived so well as when near, even though the speed may be the same. If a man is seen on the top of a hill several miles off, we have to observe him closely for some time before we can be sure whether he is walking or standing still. But objects so enormously distant as we now know that the stars are, may be moving at the rate of many miles in a second and yet require years of observation to detect any movement at all. The proper motions of nearly a hundred stars have now been ascertained to be more than one second of arc annually, while a large number have less than this, and the majority have no perceptible motion, presumably due to their enormous distance from us. It is therefore not difficult in most cases to find one or two motionless stars sufficiently close to a star having a large proper motion (anything more than one-tenth of a second is so called) to serve as fixed points of measurement. All that is then required is, to measure with extreme accuracy the angular distance of the moving from the fixed stars at intervals of six months. The measurements can be made, however, on every fine night, each one being compared with one at nearly an interval of six months from it. In this way a hundred or more measurements of the same star may be made in a year, and the mean of the whole, allowance being made for proper motion in the interval, will give a much more accurate result than any single measurement. This kind of measurement can be made with extreme accuracy when the two stars can be seen together in the field of the telescope; either by the use of a micrometer, or by means of an instrument called a heliometer, now often constructed for the purpose. This is an astronomical telescope of rather large size, the object glass of which is cut in two straight across the centre, and the two halves made to slide upon each other by means of an exceedingly fine and accurate screw-motion, so adjusted and tested as to measure the angular distance of two objects with extreme accuracy. This is done by the number of turns of the screw required to bring the two stars into contact with each other, the image of each one being formed by one of the halves of the object glass. But the greatest advantage of this method of determining parallax is, as Sir John Herschell points out, that it gets rid of all the sources of error which render the older methods so uncertain and inaccurate. No corrections are required for precession, nutation, or aberration, since these affect both stars alike, as is the case also with refraction; while alterations of level of the instrument have no prejudicial effect, since the measures of angular distance taken by this method are quite independent of such movements. A test of the accuracy of the determination of parallax by this instrument is the very close agreement of different observers, and also their agreement with the new and perhaps even superior method by photography. This method was first adopted by Professor Pritchard of the Oxford Observatory, with a fine reflector of thirteen inches aperture. Its great advantage is, that all the small stars in the vicinity of the star whose parallax is sought are shown in their exact positions upon the plate, and the distances of all of them from it can be very accurately measured, and by comparing plates taken at six months' intervals, each of these stars gives a determination of parallax, so that the mean of the whole will lead to a very accurate result. Should, however, the result from any one of these stars differ considerably from that derived from the rest, it will be due in all probability to that star having a proper motion of its own, and it may therefore be rejected. To illustrate the amount of labour bestowed by astronomers on this difficult problem, it may be mentioned that for the photographic measurement of the star 61 Cygni, 330 separate plates were taken in 1886-7, and on these 30,000 measurements of distances of the pairs of star-images were made. The result agreed closely with the best previous determination by Sir Robert Ball, using the micrometer, and the method was at once admitted by astronomers as being of the greatest value. Although, as a rule, stars having large proper motions are found to be comparatively near us, there is no regular proportion between these quantities, indicating that the rapidity of the motion of the stars varies greatly. Among fifty stars whose distances have been fairly well determined, the rate of actual motion varies from one or two up to more than a hundred miles per second. Among six stars with less than a tenth of a second of annual proper motion there is one with a parallax of nearly half a second, and another of one-ninth of a second, so that they are nearer to us than many stars which move several seconds a year. This may be due to actual slowness of motion, but is almost certainly caused in part by their motion being either towards us or away from us, and therefore only measurable by the spectroscope; and this had not been done when the lists of parallaxes and proper motions from which these facts are taken were published. It is evident that the actual direction and rate of motion of a star cannot be known till this radial movement, as it is termed--that is, towards or away from us--has been measured; but as this element always tends to increase the visually observed rate of motion, we cannot, through its absence, exaggerate the actual motions of the stars. THE SUN'S MOVEMENT THROUGH SPACE But there is yet another important factor which affects the apparent motions of all the stars--the movement of our sun, which, being a star itself, has a proper motion of its own. This motion was suspected and sought for by Sir William Herschel a century ago, and he actually determined the direction of its motion towards a point in the constellation Hercules, not very far removed from that fixed upon as the average of the best observations since made. The method of determining this motion is very simple, but at the same time very difficult. When we are travelling in a railway carriage near objects pass rapidly out of sight behind us, while those farther from us remain longer in view, and very distant objects appear almost stationary for a considerable time. For the same reason, if our sun is moving in any direction through space, the nearer stars will appear to travel in an opposite direction to our movement, while the more distant will remain quite stationary. This movement of the nearest stars is detected by an examination and comparison of their proper motions, by which it is found that in one part of the heavens there is a preponderance of the proper motions in one direction and a deficiency in the opposite direction, while in the directions at right angles to these the proper motions are not on the average greater in one direction than in the opposite. But the proper motions of the stars being themselves so minute, and also so irregular, it is only by a most elaborate mathematical investigation of the motions of hundreds or even of thousands of stars, that the direction of the solar motion can be determined. Till quite recently astronomers were agreed that the motion was towards a point in Hercules near the outstretched arm in the figure of that constellation. But the latest inquiries into this problem, involving the comparison of the motions of several thousand stars in all parts of the heavens, have led to the conclusion that the most probable direction of the 'solar apex' (as the point towards which the sun is moving is termed), is in the adjacent constellation Lyra, and not far from the brilliant star Vega. This is the position which Professor Newcomb of Washington thinks most probable, though there is still room for further investigation. To determine the rate of the motion is very much more difficult than to fix its direction, because the distances of so few stars have been determined, and very few indeed of these lie in the directions best adapted to give accurate results. The best measurements down to 1890 led to a motion of about 15 miles a second. But more recently the American astronomer, Campbell, has determined by the spectroscope the motion in the line of sight of a considerable number of stars towards and away from the solar apex, and by comparing the average of these motions, he derives a motion for the sun of about 12-1/2 miles a second, and this is probably as near as we can yet reach towards the true amount. SOME NUMERICAL RESULTS OF THE ABOVE MEASUREMENTS The measurements of distances and proper motions of a considerable number of the stars, of the motion of our sun in space (its proper motion), together with accurate determinations of the comparative brilliancy of the brightest stars as compared with our sun and with each other, have led to some very remarkable numerical results which serve as indications of the scale of magnitude of the stellar universe. The parallaxes of about fifty stars have now been repeatedly measured with such consistent results that Professor Newcomb considers them to be fairly trustworthy, and these vary from one-hundredth to three-quarters of a second. Three more, all stars of the first magnitude--Rigel, Canopus, and Alpha Cygni--have no measurable parallax, notwithstanding the long-continued efforts of many astronomers, affording a striking example of the fact that brilliancy alone is no test of proximity. Six more stars have a parallax of only one-fiftieth of a second, and five of these are either of the first or second magnitudes. Of these nine stars having very small parallax or none, six are situated in or near to the Milky Way, another indication of exceeding remoteness, which is further shown by the fact that they all have a very small proper motion or none at all. These facts support the conclusion, which had been already reached by astronomers from a careful study of the distribution of the stars, that the larger portion of the stars of all magnitudes scattered throughout the Milky Way or along its borders really belong to the same great system, and may be said to form a part of it. This is a conclusion of extreme importance because it teaches us that the grandest of the suns, such as Rigel and Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion, Antares in the Scorpion, Deneb in the Swan (Alpha Cygni), and Canopus (Alpha Argus), are in all probability as far removed from us as are the innumerable minute stars which give the nebulous or milky appearance to the Galaxy. It is well to consider for a moment what these facts mean. Professor S. Newcomb, one of the highest authorities on these problems, tells us that the long series of measurements to discover the parallax of Canopus, the brightest star in the southern hemisphere, would have shown a parallax of one-hundredth of a second, had such existed. Yet the results always seemed to converge to a mean of 0".000! Suppose, then, we assume the parallax of this star to be somewhat less than the hundredth of a second--let us say 1/125 of a second. At the distance this gives, light would take almost exactly 400 years to reach us, so that if we suppose this very brilliant star to be situated a little on this side of the Galaxy, we must give to that great luminous circle of stars a distance of about 500 light years. We shall now perceive the advantage of being able to realise what a million really is. A person who had once seen a wall-space more than 100 feet long and 20 feet high completely covered with quarter-inch spots a quarter of an inch apart; and then tried to imagine every spot to be a mile long and to be placed end to end in one row, would form a very different conception of a million miles than those who almost daily _read_ of millions, but are quite unable to visualise even one of them. Having really seen one million, we can partially realise the velocity of light, which travels over this million miles in a little less than 5-1/2 seconds; and yet light takes more than 4-1/3 years at this inconceivable speed to come to us from the very _nearest_ of the stars. To realise this still more impressively, let us take the _distance_ of this nearest star, which is 26 _millions_ of _millions_ of miles. Let us look in imagination at this large and lofty hall covered from floor to ceiling with quarter-inch spots--only _one_ million. Let all these be imagined as miles. Then repeat this number of miles in a straight line, one after the other, as many times as there are spots in this hall; and even then you have reached only one twenty-sixth part of the distance to the nearest fixed star! This _million_ times a _million_ miles has to be repeated twenty-six times to reach the _nearest_ fixed star; and it seems probable that this gives us a good indication of the distance from each other of at least all the stars down to the sixth magnitude, perhaps even of a large number of the telescopic stars. But as we have found that the bright stars of the Milky Way must be at least one hundred times farther from us than these nearest stars, we have found what may be termed a minimum distance for that vast star-ring. It may be immensely farther, but it is hardly possible that it should be anything less. THE PROBABLE SIZE OF THE STARS Having thus obtained an inferior limit for the distance of several stars of the first magnitude, and their actual brilliancy or light-emission as compared with our sun having been carefully measured, we have afforded us some indication of size though perhaps an uncertain one. By these means it has been found that Rigel gives out about ten thousand times as much light as our sun, so that if its surface is of the same brightness, it must be a hundred times the diameter of the sun. But as it is one of the white or Sirian type of stars it is probably very much more luminous, but even if it were twenty times brighter it would still have to be twenty-two and a half times the diameter of the sun; and as the stars of this type are probably wholly gaseous and much less dense than our sun, this enormous size may not be far from the truth. It is believed that the Sirian stars generally have a greater surface brilliancy than our sun. Beta Aurigæ, a star of the second magnitude but of the Sirian type, is one of the double stars whose distance has been measured, and this has enabled Mr. Gore to find the mass of the binary system to be five times that of the sun, and their light one hundred and seventeen times greater. Even if the density is much less than the sun's, the intrinsic brilliancy of the surface will be considerably greater. Another double star, Gamma Leonis, has been found to be three hundred times more brilliant than the sun if of the same density, but it would require to be seven times rarer than air to have the extent of surface needed to give the same amount of light if its surface emitted no more light than our sun from equal areas. It is clear, therefore, that many of the stars are much larger than our sun as well as more luminous; but there are also large numbers of small stars whose large proper motions, as well as the actual measurement of some, prove them to be comparatively near to us which yet are only about one-fiftieth part as bright as the sun. These must, therefore, be either comparatively small, or if large must be but slightly luminous. In the case of some double stars it has been proved that the latter is the case; but it seems probable that others are very much smaller than the average. Up to the present time no means of determining the size of a star by actual measurement has been discovered, since their distances are so enormous that the most powerful telescopes show only a point of light. But now that we have really measured the distance of a good many stars we are able to determine an upper limit for their actual dimensions. As the nearest fixed star, Alpha Centauri, has a parallax of 0".75, this means that if this star has a diameter as great as our distance from the sun (which is not much more than a hundred times the sun's diameter) it would be seen to have a distinct disc about as large as that of Jupiter's first satellite. If it were even one-tenth of the size supposed it would probably be seen as a disc in our best modern telescopes. The late Mr. Ranyard remarks that if the Nebular Hypothesis is true, and our sun once extended as far as the orbit of Neptune, then, among the millions of visible suns there ought to be some now to be found in every stage of development. But any sun having a diameter at all approaching this size, and situated as far off as a hundred times the distance of Alpha Centauri, would be seen by the Lick telescope to have a disc half a second in diameter. Hence the fact that there are no stars with visible discs proves that there are no suns of the required size, and adds another argument, though not perhaps a strong one, against the acceptance of the Nebular Hypothesis. CHAPTER VI THE UNITY AND EVOLUTION OF THE STAR SYSTEM The very condensed sketch now given of such of the discoveries of recent Astronomy as relate to the subject we are discussing will, it is hoped, give some idea both of the work already done and of the number of interesting problems yet remaining to be solved. The most eminent astronomers in every part of the world look forward to the solution of these problems not, perhaps, as of any great value in themselves, but as steps towards a more complete knowledge of our universe as a whole. Their aim is to do for the star-system what Darwin did for the organic world, to discover the processes of change that are at work in the heavens, and to learn how the mysterious nebulæ, the various types of stars, and the clusters and systems of stars are related to each other. As Darwin solved the problem of the origin of organic species from other species, and thus enabled us to understand how the whole of the existing forms of life have been developed out of pre-existing forms, so astronomers hope to be able to solve the problem of the evolution of suns from some earlier stellar types, so as to be able, ultimately, to form some intelligible conception of how the whole stellar universe has come to be what it is. Volumes have already been written on this subject, and many ingenious suggestions and hypotheses have been advanced. But the difficulties are very great; the facts to be co-ordinated are excessively numerous, and they are necessarily only a fragment of an unknown whole. Yet certain definite conclusions have been reached; and the agreement of many independent observers and thinkers on the fundamental principles of stellar evolution seems to assure us that we are progressing, if slowly yet with some established basis of truth, towards the solution of this, the most stupendous scientific problem with which the human intellect has ever attempted to grapple. THE UNITY OF THE STELLAR UNIVERSE During the latter half of the nineteenth century the opinion of astronomers has been tending more and more to the conception that the whole of the visible universe of stars and nebulæ constitutes one complete and closely-related system; and during the last thirty years especially the vast body of facts accumulated by stellar research has so firmly established this view that it is now hardly questioned by any competent authority. The idea that the nebulæ were far more remote from us than the stars long held sway, even after it had been given up by its chief supporter. When Sir William Herschel, by means of his then unapproached telescopic power, resolved the Milky Way more or less completely into stars, and showed that numerous objects which had been classed as nebulæ were really clusters of stars, it was natural to suppose that those which still retained their cloudy appearance under the highest telescopic powers were also clusters or systems of stars, which only needed still higher powers to show their true nature. This idea was supported by the fact that several nebulæ were found to be more or less ring-shaped, thus corresponding on a smaller scale to the form of the Milky Way; so that when Herschel discovered thousands of telescopic nebulæ, he was accustomed to speak of them as so many distinct universes scattered through the immeasurable depths of space. Now, although any real conception of the immensity of the one stellar universe, of which the Milky Way with its associated stars is the fundamental feature, is, as I have shown, almost unattainable, the idea of an unlimited number of other universes, almost infinitely remote from our own and yet distinctly visible in the heavens, so seized upon the imagination that it became almost a commonplace of popular astronomy and was not easily given up even by astronomers themselves. And this was in a large part due to the fact that Sir William Herschel's voluminous writings, being almost all in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, were very little read, and that he only indicated his change of view by a few brief sentences which might easily be overlooked. The late Mr. Proctor appears to have been the first astronomer to make a thorough study of the whole of Herschel's papers, and he tells us that he read them all over five times before he was able thoroughly to grasp the writer's views at different periods. But the first person to point out the real teaching of the facts as to the distribution of the nebulæ was not an astronomer, but our greatest philosophical student of science in general, Herbert Spencer. In a remarkable essay on 'The Nebular Hypothesis' in the _Westminster Review_ of July, 1858, he maintained that the nebulæ really formed a part of our own Galaxy and of our own stellar universe. A single passage from his paper will indicate his line of argument, which, it may be added, had already been partially set forth by Sir John Herschel in his _Outlines of Astronomy_. 'If there were but one nebula, it would be a curious coincidence were this one nebula so placed in the distant regions of space as to agree in direction with a starless spot in our own sidereal system. If there were but two nebulæ, and both were so placed, the coincidence would be excessively strange. What, then, shall we say on finding that there are thousands of nebulæ so placed? Shall we believe that in thousands of cases these far-removed galaxies happen to agree in their visible positions with the thin places in our own galaxy? Such a belief is impossible.' He then applies the same argument to the distribution of the nebulæ as a whole:--'In that zone of celestial space where stars are excessively abundant, nebulæ are rare, while in the two opposite celestial spaces that are farthest removed from this zone, nebulæ are abundant. Scarcely any nebulæ lie near the galactic circle (or plane of the Milky Way); and the great mass of them lie round the galactic poles. Can this also be mere coincidence?' And he concludes, from the whole mass of the evidence, that 'the proofs of a physical connection become overwhelming.' Nothing could be more clear or more forcible; but Spencer not being an astronomer, and writing in a comparatively little read periodical, the astronomical world hardly noticed him; and it was from ten to fifteen years later, when Mr. R.A. Proctor, by his laborious charts and his various papers read before the Royal and Royal Astronomical Societies from 1869 to 1875, compelled the attention of the scientific world, and thus did more perhaps than any other man to establish firmly the grand and far-reaching principle of the essential unity of the stellar universe, which is now accepted by almost every astronomical writer of eminence in the civilised world. THE EVOLUTION OF THE STELLAR UNIVERSE Amid the enormous mass of observations and of suggestive speculation upon this great and most interesting problem, it is difficult to select what is most important and most trustworthy. But the attempt must be made, because, unless my readers have some knowledge of the most important facts bearing upon it (besides those already set forth), and also learn something of the difficulties that meet the inquirer into causes at every step of his way, and of the various ideas and suggestions which have been put forth to account for the facts and to overcome the difficulties, they will not be in a position to estimate, however imperfectly, the grandeur, the marvel, and the mystery of the vast and highly complex universe in which we live and of which we are an important, perhaps the most important, if not the only permanent outcome. THE SUN A TYPICAL STAR It being now a recognised fact that the stars are suns, some knowledge of our own sun is an essential preliminary to an inquiry into their nature, and into the probable changes they have undergone. The fact that the sun's density is only one-fourth that of the earth, or less than one and a half times that of water, demonstrates that it cannot be solid, since the force of gravity at its surface being twenty-six and a half times that at the earth's surface, the materials of a solid globe would be so compressed that the resulting density would be at least twenty times greater instead of four times less than that of the earth. All the evidence goes to show that the body of the sun is really gaseous, but so compressed by its gravitative force as to behave more like a liquid. A few figures as to the vast dimensions of the sun and the amount of light and heat emitted by it will enable us better to understand the phenomena it presents, and the interpretation of those phenomena. Proctor estimated that each square inch of the sun's surface emitted as much light as twenty-five electric arcs; and Professor Langley has shown by experiment that the sun is 5300 times brighter, and eighty-seven times hotter than the white-hot metal in a Bessemer converter. The actual amount of solar heat received by the earth is sufficient, if wholly utilised, to keep a three-horse-power engine continually at work on every square yard of the surface of our globe. The size of the sun is such, that if the earth were at its centre, not only would there be ample space for the moon's orbit, but sufficient for another satellite 190,000 miles beyond the moon, all revolving inside the sun. The mass of matter in the sun is 745 times greater than that of all the planets combined; hence the powerful gravitative force by which they are retained in their distant orbits. What we see as the sun's surface is the photosphere or outer layer of gaseous or partially liquid matter kept at a definite level by the power of gravitation. The photosphere has a granular texture implying some diversity of surface or of luminosity; although the even contour of the sun's margin shows that these irregularities are not on a very large scale. This surface is apparently rent asunder by what are termed sun-spots, which were long supposed to be cavities, showing a dark interior; but are now thought to be due to downpours of cooled materials driven out from the sun, and forming the prominences seen during solar eclipses. They appear to be black, but around their margin is a shaded border or penumbra formed of elongated shining patches crossing and over-lapping, something like heaps of straw. Sometimes brilliant portions overhang the dark spots, and often completely bridge them over; and similar patches, called faculæ, accompany spots, and in some cases almost surround them. Sun-spots are sometimes numerous on the sun's disc, sometimes very few, and they are of such enormous size that when present they can easily be seen with the naked eye, protected by a piece of smoked glass; or, better still, with an ordinary opera-glass similarly protected. They are found to increase in number for several years, and then to decrease; the maxima recurring after an average period of eleven years, but with no exactness, since the interval between two maxima or minima is sometimes only nine and sometimes as much as thirteen years; while the minima do not occur midway between two maxima, but much nearer to the succeeding than to the preceding one. What is more interesting is, that variations in terrestrial magnetism follow them with great accuracy; while violent commotions in the sun, indicated by the sudden appearance of faculæ, sun-spots, or prominences on the sun's limb, are always accompanied by magnetic disturbances on the earth. WHAT SURROUNDS THE SUN It has been well said that what we commonly term the sun is really the bright spherical nucleus of a nebulous body. This nucleus consists of matter in the gaseous state, but so compressed as to resemble a liquid or even a viscous fluid. About forty of the elements have been detected in the sun by means of the dark lines in its spectrum, but it is almost certain that all the elements, in some form or other, exist there. This semi-liquid glowing surface is termed the photosphere, since from it are given out the light and heat which reach our earth. Immediately above this luminous surface is what is termed the 'reversing layer' or absorbing layer, consisting of dense metallic vapours only a few hundred miles thick, and, though glowing, somewhat cooler than the surface of the photosphere. Its spectrum, taken, at the moment when the sun is totally darkened, through a slit which is directed tangentially to the sun's limb, shows a mass of bright lines corresponding in a large degree to the dark lines in the ordinary solar spectrum. It is thus shown to be a vaporous stratum which absorbs the special rays emitted by each element and forming its characteristic coloured lines, changing them into black lines. But as coloured lines are not found in this layer corresponding to all the black lines in the solar spectrum, it is now held that special absorption must also occur in the chromosphere and perhaps in the corona itself. Sir Norman Lockyer, in his volume on _Inorganic Evolution_, even goes so far as to say, that the true 'reversing layer' of the sun--that which by its absorption produced the dark lines in the solar spectrum--is now shown to be _not_ the chromosphere itself but a layer above it, of lower temperature. Above the reversing layer comes the chromosphere, a vast mass of rosy or scarlet emanations surrounding the sun to a depth of about 4000 miles. When seen during eclipses it shows a serrated waving outline, but subject to great changes of form, producing the prominences already mentioned. These are of two kinds: the 'quiescent,' which are something like clouds of enormous extent, and which keep their forms for a considerable time; and the 'eruptive,' which shoot out in towering tree-like flames or geyser-like eruptions, and while doing so have been proved to reach velocities of over 300 miles a second, and subside again with almost equal rapidity. The chromosphere and its quiescent prominences appear to be truly gaseous, consisting of hydrogen, helium, and coronium, while the eruptive prominences always show the presence of metallic vapours, especially of calcium. Prominences increase in size and number in close accordance with the increase of sun-spots. Beyond the red chromosphere and prominences is the marvellous white glory of the corona, which extends to an enormous distance round the sun. Like the prominences of the chromosphere, it is subject to periodical changes in form and size, corresponding to the sun-spot period, but in inverse order, a minimum of sun-spots going with a maximum extension of the corona. At the total eclipse of July 1878, when the sun's surface was almost wholly clear, a pair of enormous equatorial streamers stretched east and west of the sun to a distance of ten millions of miles, and less extensions of the corona occurred at the poles. At the eclipses of 1882 and 1883, on the other hand, when sun-spots were at a maximum, the corona was regularly stellate with no great extensions, but of high brilliancy. This correspondence has been noted at every eclipse, and there is therefore an undoubted connection between the two phenomena. The light of the corona is believed to be derived from three sources--from incandescent solid or liquid particles thrown out from the sun, from sunlight reflected from these particles, and from gaseous emissions. Its spectrum possesses a green ray, which is peculiar to it, and is supposed to indicate a gas named 'coronium'; in other respects the spectrum is more like that of reflected sunlight. The enormous extensions of the corona into great angular streamers seem to indicate electrical repulsive forces analogous to those which produce the tails of comets. Connected with the sun's corona is that strange phenomenon, the zodiacal light. This is a delicate nebulosity, which is often seen after sunset in spring and before sunrise in autumn, tapering upwards from the sun's direction along the plane of the ecliptic. Under very favourable conditions it has been traced in the eastern sky in spring to 180° from the sun's position, indicating that it extends beyond the earth's orbit. Long-continued observations from the summit of the Pic du Midi show that this is really the case, and that it lies almost exactly in the plane of the sun's equator. It is therefore held to be produced by the minute particles thrown off the sun, through those coronal wings and streamers which are visible only during solar eclipses. The careful study of the solar phenomena has very clearly established the fact that none of the sun's envelopes, from the reversing layer to the corona itself, is in any sense an atmosphere. The combination of enormous gravitative force with an amount of heat which turns all the elements into the liquid or gaseous state, leads to consequences which it is difficult for us to follow or comprehend. There is evidently constant internal movement or circulation in the interior of the sun, resulting in the faculæ, the sun-spots, the intensely luminous photosphere, and the chromosphere with its vast flaming coruscations and eruptive protuberances. But it seems impossible that this incessant and violent movement can be kept up without some great and periodical or continuous inrush of fresh materials to renew the heat, keep up the internal circulation, and supply the waste. Perhaps the movement of the sun through space may bring him into contact with sufficiently large masses of matter to continually excite that internal movement without which the exterior surface would rapidly become cool and all planetary life cease. The various solar envelopes are the result of this internal agitation, uprushes, and explosions, while the vast white corona is probably of little more density than comets' tails, probably even of less density, since comets not unfrequently rush through its midst without suffering any loss of velocity. The fact that none of the solar envelopes are visible to us until the light of the photosphere is completely shut off, and that they all vanish the very instant the first gleam of direct sunlight reaches us, is another proof of their extreme tenuity, as is also the sharply defined edge of the sun's disc. The envelopes therefore consist partly of liquid or vaporous matter, in a very finely divided state, driven off by explosions or by electrical forces, and this matter, rapidly cooling, becomes solidified into minutest particles, or even physical molecules. Much of this matter continually falls back on the sun's surface, but a certain quantity of the very finest dust is continually driven away by electrical repulsion, so as to form the corona and the zodiacal light. The vast coronal streamers and the still more extensive ring of the zodiacal light are therefore in all probability due to the same causes, and have a similar physical constitution with the tails of comets. As the whole of our sunlight must pass through both the reversing layer and the red chromosphere, its colour must be somewhat modified by them. Hence it is believed that, if they were absent, not only would the light and heat of the sun be considerably greater, but its colour would be a purer white, tending towards bluish rather than towards the yellowish tinge it actually possesses. THE NEBULAR AND METEORITIC HYPOTHESES As the constitution of the sun, and its agency in producing magnetism and electricity in the matter and orbs around it, afford us our best guide to the constitution of the stars and nebulæ, and to their possible action on each other, and even upon our earth, so the mode of evolution of the sun and solar system, from some pre-existing condition, is likely to help us towards gaining some knowledge of the constitution of the stellar universe and the processes of change going on there. At the very commencement of the nineteenth century the great mathematician Laplace published his Nebular Theory of the Origin of the Solar System; and although he put it forth merely as a suggestion, and did not support it with any numerical or physical data, or by any mathematical processes, his great reputation, and its apparent probability and simplicity, caused it to be almost universally accepted, and to be extended so as to apply to the evolution of the stellar universe. This theory, very briefly stated, is, that the whole of the matter of the solar system once formed a globular or spheroidal mass of intensely heated gases, extending beyond the orbit of the outermost planet, and having a slow motion of revolution about an axis. As it cooled and contracted, its rate of revolution increased, and this became so great that at successive epochs it threw off rings, which, owing to slight irregularities, broke up, and, gravitating together, formed the planets. The contraction continuing, the sun, as we now see it, was the result. For about half a century this nebular hypothesis was generally accepted, but during the last thirty years so many objections and difficulties have been suggested, that it has been felt impossible to retain it even as a working hypothesis. At the same time another hypothesis has been put forth which seems more in accordance with the facts of nature as we find them in our own solar system, and which is not open to any of the objections against the nebular theory, even if it introduces a few new ones. A fundamental objection to Laplace's theory is, that in a gas of such extreme tenuity as the solar nebula must have been, even when it extended only to Saturn or Uranus, it could not possibly have had any cohesion, and therefore could not have given off whole rings at distant intervals, but only small fragments continuously as condensation went on, and these, rapidly cooling, would form solid particles, a kind of meteoric dust, which might aggregate into numerous small planets, or might persist for indefinite periods, like the rings of Saturn or the great ring of the Asteroids. Another equally vital objection is, that, as the nebula when extending beyond the orbit of Neptune could have had a mean density of only about the two-hundred millionth of our air at sea level, it must have been many hundred times less dense than this at and near its outer surface, and would there be exposed to the cold of stellar space--a cold that would solidify hydrogen. It is thus evident that the gases of all the metallic and other solid elements could not possibly exist as such, but would rapidly, perhaps almost instantaneously, become first liquid and then solid, forming meteoric dust even before contraction had gone far enough to produce such increased rotation as would throw off any portion of the gaseous matter. Here we have the foundations of the meteoritic hypothesis which is now steadily making its way. It is supported by the fact that we everywhere find proofs of such solid matter in the planetary spaces around us. It falls continually upon the earth. It can be collected on the Arctic and Alpine snows. It occurs everywhere in the deepest abysses of the ocean where there are not sufficient organic deposits to mask it. It constitutes, as has now been demonstrated, the rings of Saturn. Thousands of vast rings of solid particles circulate around the sun, and when our earth crosses any of these rings, and their particles enter our atmosphere with planetary velocity, the friction ignites them and we see falling stars. Comets' tails, the sun's corona, and the zodiacal light are three strange phenomena, which, though wholly insoluble on any theory of gaseous formation, receive their intelligible explanation by means of excessively minute solid particles--microscopic cosmic dust--driven outward by the tremendous electrical repulsions that emanate from the sun. Having these and other proofs that solid matter, ranging in size, perhaps, from the majestic orbs of Jupiter and Saturn down to the inconceivably minute particles driven millions of miles into space to form a comet's tail, does actually exist everywhere around us, and by collisions between the particles or with planetary atmospheres can produce heat and light and gaseous emanations, we find a basis of fact and observation for the meteoritic hypothesis which Laplace's nebular, and essentially gaseous, theory does not possess. During the latter half of the nineteenth century several writers suggested this idea of the possible formation of the Solar System, but so far as I am aware, the late R.A. Proctor was the first to discuss it in any detail, and to show that it explained many of the peculiarities in the size and arrangement of the planets and their satellites which the nebular hypothesis did not explain. This he does at some length in the chapter on meteors and comets in his _Other Worlds than Ours_, published in 1870. He assumed, instead of the fire-mist of Laplace, that the space now occupied by the solar system, and for an unknown distance around it, was occupied by vast quantities of solid particles of all the kinds of matter which we now find in the earth, sun, and stars. This matter was dispersed somewhat irregularly, as we see that all the matter of the universe is now distributed; and he further assumed that it was all in motion, as we now know that all the stars and other cosmical masses are, and must be, in motion towards or around some centre. Under these conditions, wherever the matter was most aggregated, there would be a centre of attraction through gravitation, which would necessarily lead to further aggregation, and the continual impacts of such aggregating matter would produce heat. In course of time, if the supply of cosmic matter was ample (as the result shows that it must have been, whatever theory we adopt), our sun, thus formed, would approximate to its present mass and acquire sufficient heat by collision and gravitation to convert its whole body into the liquid or gaseous condition. While this was going on, subordinate centres of aggregation might form, which would capture a certain proportion of the matter flowing in under the attraction of the central mass, while, owing to the nearly uniform direction and velocity with which the whole system was revolving, each subordinate centre would revolve around the central mass, in somewhat different planes, but all in the same direction. Mr. Proctor shows the probability that the largest outside aggregation would be at a great distance from the central mass, and this having once been formed, any centres farther away from the sun would be both smaller and very remote, while those inside the first would, as a rule, become smaller as they were nearer the centre. The heated condition of the earth's interior would thus be due, not to the primitive heat of matter in a gaseous state out of which it was formed--a condition physically impossible--but would be acquired in the process of aggregation by the collisions of meteoric masses falling on it, and by its own gravitative force producing continuous condensation and heat. On this view Jupiter would probably be formed first, and after him at very great distances, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune; while the inner aggregations would be smaller, as the much greater attractive power of the sun would give them comparatively little opportunity of capturing the meteoric matter that was continuously flowing towards him. THE METEORITIC NATURE OF THE NEBULÆ Having thus reached the conclusion that wherever apparently nebulous matter exists within the limits of the solar system it is not gaseous but consists of solid particles, or, if heated gases are associated with the solid matter they can be accounted for by the heat due to collisions either with other solid particles or with accumulations of gases at a low temperature, as when meteorites enter our atmosphere, it was an easy step to consider whether the cosmic nebulæ and stars may not have had a similar origin. From this point of view the nebulæ are supposed to be vast aggregations of meteorites or cosmic dust, or of the more persistent gases, revolving with circular or spiral motions, or in irregular streams, and so sparsely scattered that the separate particles of dust may be miles--perhaps hundreds of miles--apart; yet even those nebulæ, only visible by the telescope, may contain as much matter as the whole solar system. From this simple origin, by steps which can be observed in the skies, almost all the forms of suns and systems can be traced by means of the known laws of motion, of heat-production, and of chemical action. The chief English advocate of this view at the present time is Sir Norman Lockyer, who, in numerous papers, and in his works on _The Meteoritic Hypothesis_ and _Inorganic Evolution_, has developed it in detail, as the result of many years' continuous research, aided by the contributory work of continental and American astronomers. These views are gradually spreading among astronomers and mathematicians, as will be seen by the very brief outline which will now be given of the explanations they afford of the main groups of phenomena presented by the stellar universe. DR. ROBERTS ON SPIRAL NEBULÆ Dr. Isaac Roberts, who possesses one of the finest telescopes constructed for photographing stars and nebulæ, has given his views on stellar evolution, in _Knowledge_ of February 1897, illustrated by four beautiful photographs of spiral nebulæ. These curious forms were at first thought to be rare, but are now found to be really very numerous when details are brought out by the camera. Many of the very large and apparently quite irregular nebulæ, like the Magellanic Clouds, are found to have faint indications of spiral structure. As more than ten thousand nebulæ are now known, and new ones are continually being discovered, it will be a long time before these can all be carefully studied and photographed, but present indications seem to show that a considerable proportion of them will exhibit spiral forms. Dr. Roberts tells us that all the spiral nebulæ he has photographed are characterised by having a nucleus surrounded by dense nebulosity, most of them being also studded with stars. These stars are always arranged more or less symmetrically, following the curves of the spiral, while outside the visible nebula are other stars arranged in curves strongly suggesting a former greater extension of the nebulous matter. This is so marked a feature that it at once leads to a possible explanation of the numerous slightly curved lines of stars found in every part of the heavens, as being the result of their origin from spiral nebulæ whose material substance has been absorbed by them. Dr. Roberts proposes several problems in relation to these bodies: Of what materials are spiral nebulæ composed? Whence comes the vortical motion which has produced their forms? The material he finds in those faint clouds of nebulous matter, often of vast extent, that exist in many parts of the sky, and these are so numerous that Sir William Herschel alone recorded the positions of fifty-two such regions, many of which have been confirmed by recent photographs. Dr. Roberts considers these to be either gaseous or with discrete solid particles intermixed. He also enumerates smaller nebulous masses undergoing condensation and segregation into more regular forms; spiral nebulæ in various stages of condensation and of aggregation; elliptic nebulæ; and globular nebulæ. In the last three classes there is clear evidence, on every photograph that has been taken, that condensation into stars or star like forms is now going on. He adopts Sir Norman Lockyer's view that collisions of meteorites within each swarm or cloud would produce luminous nebulosity; so also would collisions between separate swarms of meteorites produce the conditions required to account for the vortical motions and the peculiar distribution of the nebulosity in the spiral nebulæ. Almost any collision between unequal masses of diffused matter would, in the absence of any massive central body round which they would be forced to revolve, lead to spiral motions. It is to be noted that, although the stars formed in the spiral convolutions of the nebulæ follow those curves, and retain them after the nebulous matter has been all absorbed by them, yet, whenever such a nebula is seen by us edgewise, the convolutions with their enclosed stars will appear as straight lines; and thus not only numbers of star groups arranged in curves, but also those which form almost perfect straight lines, may possibly be traced back to an origin from spiral nebulæ. Motion being a necessary result of gravitation, we know that every star, planet, comet, or nebula must be in motion through space, and these motions--except in systems physically connected or which have had a common origin--are, apparently, in all directions. How these motions originated and are now regulated we do not know; but there they are, and they furnish the motive power of the collisions, which, when affecting large bodies or masses of diffused matter, lead to the formation of the various kinds of permanent stars; while when smaller masses of matter are concerned those temporary stars are formed which have interested astronomers in all ages. It must be noted that although the motions of the single stars appear to be in straight lines, yet the spaces through which they have been observed to move are so small that they may really be moving in curved orbits around some central body, or the centre of gravity of some aggregation of stars bright and dark, which may itself be comparatively at rest. There may be thousands of such centres around us, and this may sufficiently explain the apparent motions of stars in all directions. A SUGGESTION AS TO THE FORMATION OF SPIRAL NEBULÆ In a remarkable paper in the Astrophysical Journal (July 1901), Mr. T.C. Chamberlin suggests an origin for the spiral nebulæ, as well as of swarms of meteorites and comets, which seems likely to be a true, although perhaps not the only one. There is a well-known principle which shows that when two bodies in space, of stellar size, pass within a certain distance of each other, the smaller one will be liable to be torn into fragments by the differential attraction of the larger and denser body. This was originally proved in the case of gaseous and liquid bodies, and the distance within which the smaller one will be disrupted (termed the Roche limit) is calculated on the supposition that the disrupted body is a liquid mass. Mr. Chamberlin shows, however, that a solid body will also be disrupted at a lesser distance dependent on its size and cohesive strength; but, as the size of the two bodies increases, the distance at which disruption will occur increases also, till with very large bodies, such as suns, it becomes almost as large as in the case of liquids or gases. The disruption occurs from the well-known law of differential gravitation on the two sides of a body leading to tidal deformation in a liquid, and to unequal strain in a solid. When the changes of gravitative force take place slowly, and are also small in amount, the tides in liquids or strains in solids are very small, as in the case of our earth when acted on by the sun and moon, the result is a small tide in the ocean and atmosphere, and no doubt also in the molten interior, to which the comparatively thin crust may partially adjust itself. But if we suppose two dark or luminous suns whose proper motions are in such a direction as to bring them near each other, then, as they approach, each will be deflected towards the other, and will pass round their common centre of gravity with immense velocity, perhaps hundreds of miles in a second. At a considerable distance they will begin to produce tidal elongation towards and away from each other, but when the disruptive limit is nearly reached, the gravitative forces will be increasing so rapidly that even a liquid mass could not adjust its shape with sufficient quickness and the tremendous internal strains would produce the effects of an explosion, tearing the whole mass (of the smaller of the two) into fragments and dust. But it is also shown that, during the entire process, the two elongated portions of the originally spherical mass would be so acted upon by gravity as to produce increasing rotation, which as the crisis approached would extend the elongation, and aid in the explosive result. This rapid rotation of the elongated mass would, when the disruption occurred, necessarily give to the fragments a whirling or spiral motion, and thus initiate a spiral nebula of a size and character dependent on the size and constitution of the two masses, and on the amount of the explosive forces set up by their approach. There is one very suggestive phenomenon which seems to prove that this _is_ one of the modes of formation of spiral nebulæ. When the explosive disruption occurs the two protuberances or elongations of the body will fly apart, and having also a rapid rotatory movement, the resulting spiral will necessarily be a double one. Now, it is the fact that almost all the well-developed spiral nebulæ have two such arms opposite to each other, as beautifully shown in M. 100 Comæ, M. 51 Canum, and others photographed by Dr. I. Roberts. It does not seem likely that any other origin of these nebulæ should give rise to a double rather than to a single spiral. THE EVOLUTION OF DOUBLE STARS The advance in knowledge of double and multiple stars has been wonderfully rapid, numerous observers having devoted themselves to this special branch. Many thousands were discovered during the first half of the nineteenth century, and as telescopic power increased new ones continued to flow in by hundreds and thousands, and there has been recently published by the Yerkes Observatory a catalogue of 1290 such stars, discovered between 1871 and 1899 by one observer, Mr. S.W. Burnham. All these have been found by the use of the telescope, but during the last quarter of a century the spectroscope has opened up a new world of double stars of enormous extent and the highest interest. The telescopic binaries which have been observed for a sufficient time to determine their orbits, range from periods of about eleven years as a minimum up to hundreds and even more than a thousand years. But the spectroscope reveals the fact that the many thousands of telescopic binaries form only a very small part of the binary systems in existence. The overwhelming importance of this discovery is, that it carries the times of revolution from the minimum of the telescopic doubles downward in unbroken series through periods of a few years, to those reckoned by months, by days, and even by hours. And with this reduction of period there necessarily follows a corresponding reduction of distance, so that sometimes the two stars must be in contact, and thus the actual birth or origin of a double star has been observed to occur, even though not actually seen. This mode of origin was indeed anticipated by Dr. Lee of Chicago in 1892, and it has been confirmed by observation in the short space of ten years. In a remarkable communication to _Nature_ (September 12th, 1901) Mr. Alexander W. Roberts of Lovedale, South Africa, gives some of the main results of this branch of inquiry. Of course all the variable stars are to be found among the spectroscopic binaries. They consist of that portion of the class in which the plane of the orbit is directed towards us, so that during their revolution one of the pair either wholly or partially eclipses the other. In some of these cases there are irregularities, such as double maxima and minima of unequal lengths, which may be due to triple systems or to other causes not yet explained, but as they all have short periods and always appear as one star in the most powerful telescopes, they form a special division of the spectroscopic binary systems. There are known at present twenty-two variables of the Algol type, that is, stars having each a dark companion very close to it which obscures it either wholly or partially during every revolution. In these cases the density of the systems can be approximately determined, and they are found to be, on the average, only one-fifth that of water, or one-eighth that of our sun. But as many of them are as large as our sun, or even considerably larger, it is evident that they must be wholly gaseous, and, even if very hot, of a less complex constitution than our luminary. Mr. A.W. Roberts tells us that five out of these twenty-two variables revolve _in absolute contact_ forming systems of the shape of a dumb-bell. The periods vary from twelve days to less than nine hours; and, starting from these, we now have a continuous series of lengthening periods up to the twin stars of Castor which require more than a thousand years to complete their revolution. During his observations of the above five stars, Mr. Roberts states that one, X Carinæ, was found to have parted company, so that instead of being actually united to its companion the two are now at a distance apart equal to one-tenth of their diameters, and he may thus be said to have been almost a witness of the birth of a stellar system. A year later we find the record (in _Knowledge_, October 1902) of Professor Campbell's researches at the Lick Observatory. He states that, out of 350 stars observed spectroscopically, one in eight is a spectroscopic binary; and so impressed is he with their abundance that, as accuracy of measurement increases, he believes that _the star that is not a spectroscopic binary will prove to be the rare exception_! Professor G. Darwin had already shown that the 'dumb-bell' was a figure of equilibrium in a rotating mass of fluid; and we now find proofs that such figures exist, and that they form the starting-point for the enormous and ever-increasing quantities of spectroscopic binary star-systems that are now known. The origin of these binary stars is also of especial interest as giving support to Professor Darwin's well-known explanation of the origin of the moon by disruption from the earth, owing to the very rapid rotation of the parent planet. It now appears that suns often subdivide in the same manner, but, owing perhaps to their intensely heated gaseous state they seem usually to form nearly equal globes. The evolution of this special form of star-system is therefore now an observed fact; though it by no means follows that all double stars have had the same mode of origin. CLUSTERS OF STARS AND VARIABLES The clusters of stars, which are tolerably abundant in the heavens and offer so many strange and beautiful forms to the telescopist, are yet among the most puzzling phenomena the philosophic astronomer has to deal with. Many of these clusters which are not very crowded and of irregular forms, strongly suggest an origin from the equally irregular and fantastic forms of nebulæ by a process of aggregation like that which Dr. Roberts describes as developing within the spiral nebulæ. But the dense globular clusters which form such beautiful telescopic objects, and in some of which more than six thousand stars have been counted besides considerable numbers so crowded in the centre as to be uncountable, are more difficult to explain. One of the problems suggested by these clusters is as to their stability. Professor Simon Newcomb remarks on this point as follows: 'Where thousands of stars are condensed into a space so small, what prevents them from all falling together into one confused mass? Are they really doing so, and will they ultimately form a single body? These are questions which can be satisfactorily answered only by centuries of observation; they must therefore be left to the astronomers of the future.' There are, however, some remarkable features in these clusters which afford possible indications of their origin and essential constitution. When closely examined most of them are seen to be less regular than they at first appear. Vacant spaces can be noted in them; even rifts of definite forms. In some there is a radiated structure; in others there are curved appendages; while some have fainter centres. These features are so exactly like what are found, in a more pronounced form, in the larger nebulæ, that we can hardly help thinking that in these clusters we have the result of the condensation of very large nebulæ, which have first aggregated towards numerous centres, while these agglomerations have been slowly drawn towards the common centre of gravity of the whole mass. It is suggestive of this origin that while the smaller telescopic nebulæ are far removed from the Milky Way, the larger ones are most abundant near its borders; while the star-clusters are excessively abundant on and near the Milky Way, but very scarce elsewhere, except in or near vast nebulæ like the Magellanic Clouds. We thus see that the two phenomena may be complementary to each other, the condensation of nebulæ having gone on most rapidly where material was most abundant, resulting in numerous star-clusters where there are now few nebulæ. There is one striking feature of the globular clusters which calls for notice; the presence in some of them of enormous quantities of variable stars, while in others few or none can be found. The Harvard Observatory has for several years devoted much time to this class of observations, and the results are given in Professor Newcomb's recent volume on 'The Stars.' It appears that twenty-three clusters have been observed spectroscopically, the number of stars examined in each cluster varying from 145 up to 3000, the total number of stars thus minutely tested being 19,050. Out of this total number 509 were found to be variable; but the curious fact is, the extreme divergence in the proportion of variables to the whole number examined in the several clusters. In two clusters, though 1279 stars were examined, not a single variable was found. In three others the proportion was from one in 1050 to one in 500. Five more ranged up to one in 100, and the remainder showed from that proportion up to one in seven, 900 stars being examined in the last mentioned cluster of which 132 were variable! When we consider that variable stars form only a portion, and necessarily a very small proportion, of binary systems of stars, it follows that in all the clusters which show a large proportion of variables, a very much larger proportion--in some cases perhaps all, must be double or multiple stars revolving round each other. With this remarkable evidence, in addition to that adduced for the prevalence of double stars and variables among the stars in general, we can understand Professor Newcomb adding his testimony to that of Professor Campbell already quoted, that 'it is probable that among the stars in general, single stars are the exception rather than the rule. If such be the case, the rule should hold yet more strongly among the stars of a condensed cluster.' THE EVOLUTION OF THE STARS So long as astronomers were limited to the use of the telescope only, or even the still greater powers of the photographic plate, nothing could be learnt of the actual constitution of the stars or of the process of their evolution. Their apparent magnitudes, their movements, and even the distances of a few could be determined; while the diversity of their colours offered the only clue (a very imperfect one) even to their temperature. But the discovery of spectrum analysis has furnished the means of obtaining some definite knowledge of the physics and chemistry of the stars, and has thus established a new branch ofscience--Astrophysics--which has already attained large proportions, and which furnishes the materials for a periodical and some important volumes. This branch of the subject is very complex, and as it is not directly connected with our present inquiry, it is only referred to again in order to introduce such of its results as bear upon the question of the classification and evolution of the stars. By a long series of laboratory experiments it has been shown that numerous changes occur in the spectra of the elements when subjected to different temperatures, ranging upwards to the highest attainable by means of a battery producing an electric spark several feet long. These changes are not in the relative position of the bands or dark lines, but in their number, breadth, and intensity. Other changes are due to the density of the medium in which the elements are heated, and to their chemical condition as to purity; and from these various modifications and their comparison with the solar spectrum and those of its appendages, it has become possible to determine, from the spectrum of a star, not only its temperature as compared with that of the electric spark and of the sun, but also its place in a developmental series. The first general result obtained by this research is, that the bluish white or pure white stars, having a spectrum extending far towards the violet end, and which exhibits the coloured bands of gases only, usually hydrogen and helium, are the hottest. Next come those with a shorter spectrum not extending so far towards the violet end, and whose light is therefore more yellow in tint. To this group our sun belongs; and they are all characterised like it by dark lines due to absorption, and by the presence of metals, especially iron, in a gaseous state. The third group have the shortest spectra and are of a red colour, while their spectra contain lines denoting the presence of carbon. These three groups are often spoken of as 'gaseous stars,' 'metallic stars,' and 'carbon stars.' Other astronomers call the first group 'Sirian stars,' because Sirius, though not the hottest, is a characteristic type; the second being termed 'solar stars'; others again speak of them as stars of Class I., Class II., etc., according to the system of classification they have adopted. It was soon perceived, however, that neither the colour nor the temperature of stars gave much information as to their nature and state of development, because, unless we supposed the stars to begin their lives already intensely hot (and all the evidence is against this), there must be a period during which heat increases, then one of maximum heat, followed by one of cooling and final loss of light altogether. The meteoritic theory of the origin of all luminous bodies in the heavens, now very widely adopted, has been used, as we have seen, to explain the development of stars from nebulæ, and its chief exponent in this country, Sir Norman Lockyer, has propounded a complete scheme of stellar evolution and decay which may be here briefly outlined: Beginning with nebulæ, we pass on to stars having banded or fluted spectra, indicating comparatively low temperatures and showing bands or lines of iron, manganese, calcium, and other metals. They are more or less red in colour, Antares in the Scorpion being one of the most brilliant red stars known. These stars are supposed to be in the process of aggregation, to be continually increasing in size and heat, and thus to be subject to great disturbances. Alpha Cygni has a similar spectrum but with more hydrogen, and is much hotter. The increase of heat goes on through Rigel and Beta Crucis, in which we find mainly hydrogen, helium, oxygen, nitrogen, and also carbon, but only faint traces of metals. Reaching the hottest of all--Epsilon Orionis and two stars in Argo--hydrogen is predominant, with traces of a few metals and carbon. The cooling series is indicated by thicker lines of hydrogen and thinner lines of the metallic elements, through Sirius, to Arcturus and our sun, thence to 19 Piscium, which shows chiefly flutings of carbon, with a few faint metallic lines. The process of further cooling brings us to the dark stars. We have here a complete scheme of evolution, carrying us from those ill-defined but enormously diffused masses of gas and cosmic dust we know as nebulæ, through planetary nebulæ, nebulous stars, variable and double-stars, to red and white stars and on to those exhibiting the most intense blue-white lustre. We must remember, however, that the most brilliant of these stars, showing a gaseous spectrum and forming the culminating point of the ascending series, are not necessarily hotter than, or even so hot as, some of those far down on the descending scale; since it is one of the apparent paradoxes of physics that a body may become hotter during the very process of contraction through loss of heat. The reason is that by cooling it contracts and thus becomes denser, that a portion of its mass falls towards its centre, and in doing so produces an amount of heat which, though absolutely less than the heat lost in cooling, will under certain conditions cause the reduced surface to become hotter. The essential point is, that the body in question must be wholly gaseous, allowing of free circulation from surface to centre. The law, as given by Professor S. Newcomb, is as follows:-- '_When a spherical mass of incandescent gas contracts through the loss of its heat by radiation into space, its temperature continually becomes higher as long as the gaseous condition is retained._' To put it in another way: if the compression was caused by external force and no heat was lost, the globe would get hotter by a calculable amount for each unit of contraction. But the heat lost in causing a similar amount of contraction is so little more than the increase of heat produced by contraction, that the slightly diminished total heat in a smaller bulk causes the temperature of the mass to increase. But if, as there is reason to believe, the various types of stars differ also in chemical constitution, some consisting mainly of the more permanent gases, while in others the various metallic and non-metallic elements are present in very different proportions, there should really be a classification by constitution as well as by temperature, and the course of evolution of the differently constituted groups may be to some extent dissimilar. With this limitation the process of evolution and decay of sun through a cycle of increasing and decreasing temperature, as suggested by Sir Norman Lockyer, is clear and suggestive. During the ascending series the star is growing both in mass and heat, by the continual accretion of meteoritic matter either drawn to it by gravitation or falling towards it through the proper motions of independent masses. This goes on till all the matter for some distance around the star has been utilised, and a maximum of size, heat, and brilliancy attained. Then the loss of heat by radiation is no longer compensated by the influx of fresh matter, and a slow contraction occurs accompanied by a slightly increased temperature. But owing to the more stable conditions continuous envelopes of metals in the gaseous state are formed, which check the loss of heat and reduce the brilliancy of colour; whence it follows that bodies like our sun may be really hotter than the most brilliant white stars, though not giving out quite so much heat. The loss of heat is therefore reduced; and this may serve to account for the undoubted fact that during the enormous epochs of geological time there has been very little diminution in the amount of heat we have received from the sun. On the general question of the meteoritic hypothesis one of our first mathematicians, Professor George Darwin, has thus expressed his views: 'The conception of the growth of the planetary bodies by the aggregation of meteorites is a good one, and perhaps seems more probable than the hypothesis that the whole solar system was gaseous.' I may add, that one of the chief objections made to it, that meteorites are too complex to be supposed to be the primitive matter out of which suns and worlds have been made, does not seem to me valid. The primitive matter, whatever it was, may have been used up again and again, and if collisions of large solid globes ever occur--and it is assumed by most astronomers that they must sometimes occur--then meteoric particles of all sizes would be produced which might exhibit any complexity of mineral constitution. The material universe has probably been in existence long enough for all the primitive elements to have been again and again combined into the minerals found upon the earth and many others. It cannot be too often repeated that no explanation--no theory--can ever take us to the beginning of things, but only one or two steps at a time into the dim past, which may enable us to comprehend, however imperfectly, the processes by which the world, or the universe, as it is, has been developed out of some earlier and simpler condition. CHAPTER VII ARE THE STARS INFINITE IN NUMBER? Most of the critics of my first short discussion of this subject laid great stress upon the impossibility of proving that the universe, a part of which we see, is not infinite; and a well-known astronomer declared that unless it can be demonstrated that our universe is finite the entire argument founded upon our position within it fall to the ground. I had laid myself open to this objection by rather incautiously admitting that if the preponderance of evidence pointed in this direction any inquiry as to our place in the universe would be useless, because as regards infinity there can be no difference of position. But this statement is by no means exact, and even in an infinite universe of matter containing an infinite number of stars, such as those we see, there might well be such infinite diversities of distribution and arrangement as would give to certain positions all the advantages which I submit we actually possess. Supposing, for example, that beyond the vast ring of the Milky Way the stars rapidly decrease in number in all directions for a distance of a hundred or a thousand times the diameter of that ring, and that then for an equal distance they slowly increase again and become aggregated into systems or universes totally distinct from ours in form and structure, and so remote that they can influence us in no way whatever. Then, I maintain, our position within our own stellar universe might have exactly the same importance, and be equally suggestive, as if ours were the only material universe in existence--as if the apparent diminution in the number of stars (which is an observed fact) indicated a continuous diminution, leading at some unknown distance to entire absence of luminous--that is, of active, energy-emitting aggregations of matter.[1] As to whether there are such other material universes or not I offer no opinion, and have no belief one way or the other. I consider all speculations as to what may or may not exist in infinite space to be utterly valueless. I have limited my inquiries strictly to the evidence accumulated by modern astronomers, and to direct inferences and logical deductions from that evidence. Yet, to my great surprise, my chief critic declares that 'Dr. Wallace's underlying error is, indeed, that he has reasoned from the area which we can embrace with our limited perceptions to the infinite beyond our mental or intellectual grasp.' I have distinctly _not_ done this, but many astronomers have done so. The late Richard Proctor not only continually discussed the question of infinite matter as well as infinite space, but also argued, from the supposed attributes of the Deity, for the necessity of holding this material universe to be infinite, and the last chapter of his _Other Worlds than Ours_ is mainly devoted to such speculations. In a later work, _Our Place among Infinities_, he says that 'the teachings of science bring us into the presence of the unquestionable infinities of time and of space, and the presumable infinities of matter and of operation--hence therefore into the presence of infinity of energy. But science teaches us nothing about these infinities as such. They remain none the less inconceivable, however clearly we may be taught to recognise their reality.' All this is very reasonable, and the last sentence is particularly important. Nevertheless, many writers allow their reasonings from facts to be influenced by these ideas of infinity. In Proctor's posthumous work, _Old and New Astronomy_, the late Mr. Ranyard, who edited it, writes: 'If we reject as abhorrent to our minds the supposition that the universe is not infinite, we are thrown back on one of two alternatives--either the ether which transmits the light of the stars to us is not perfectly elastic, or a large proportion of the light of the stars is obliterated by dark bodies.' Here we have a well-informed astronomer allowing his abhorrence of the idea of a finite universe to affect his reasoning on the actual phenomena we can observe--doing in fact exactly what my critic erroneously accuses me of doing. But setting aside all ideas and prepossessions of the kind here indicated, let us see what are the actual facts revealed by the best instruments of modern astronomy, and what are the natural and logical inferences from those facts. ARE THE STARS INFINITE IN NUMBER? The views of those astronomers who have paid attention to this subject are, on the whole, in favour of the view that the stellar universe is limited in extent and the stars therefore limited in number. A few quotations will best exhibit their opinions on this question, with some of the facts and observations on which they are founded. Miss A.M. Clerke, in her admirable volume, _The System of the Stars_, says: 'The sidereal world presents us, to all appearance, with a finite system.... The probability amounts almost to certainty that star-strewn space is of measurable dimensions. For from innumerable stars a limitless sum-total of radiations should be derived, by which darkness would be banished from our skies; and the "intense inane," glowing with the mingled beams of suns individually indistinguishable, would bewilder our feeble senses with its monotonous splendour.... Unless, that is to say, light suffer some degree of enfeeblement in space.... But there is not a particle of evidence that any such toll is exacted; contrary indications are strong; and the assertion that its payment is inevitable depends upon analogies which may be wholly visionary. We are then, for the present, entitled to disregard the problematical effect of a more than dubious cause.' Professor Simon Newcomb, one of the first of American mathematicians and astronomers, arrives at a similar conclusion in his most recent volume, _The Stars_ (1902). He says, in his conclusions at the end of the work: 'That collection of stars which we call the universe is limited in extent. The smallest stars that we see with the most powerful telescopes are not, for the most part, more distant than those a grade brighter, but are mostly stars of less luminosity situate in the same regions' (p. 319). And on page 229 of the same work he gives reasons for this conclusion, as follows: 'There is a law of optics which throws some light on the question. Suppose the stars to be scattered through infinite space so that every great portion of space is, in the general average, equally rich in stars. Then at some great distance we describe a sphere having its centre in our sun. Outside this sphere describe another one of a greater radius, and beyond this other spheres at equal distances apart indefinitely. Thus we shall have an endless succession of spherical shells, each of the same thickness. The volume of each of these shells will be nearly proportional to the squares of the diameters of the spheres which bound it. Hence each of the regions will contain a number of stars increasing as the square of the radius of the region. Since the amount of light we receive from each star is as the inverse square of its distance, it follows that the sum total of the light received from each of these spherical shells will be equal. Thus as we add sphere after sphere we add equal amounts of light without limit. The result would be that if the system of stars extended out indefinitely the whole heavens would be filled with a blaze of light as bright as the sun.' But the whole light given us by the stars is variously estimated at from one-fortieth to one-twentieth or, as an extreme limit, to one-tenth of moonlight, while the sun gives as much light as 300,000 full moons, so that starlight is only equivalent at a fair estimate to the six-millionth part of sunlight. Keeping this in mind, the possible causes of the extinction of almost the whole of the light of the stars (if they are infinite in number and distributed, on the average, as thickly beyond the Milky Way as they are up to its outer boundary) are absurdly inadequate. These causes are (1) the loss of light in passing through the ether, and (2) the stoppage of light by dark stars or diffused meteoritic dust. As to the first, it is generally admitted that there is not a particle of evidence of its existence. There is, however, some distinct evidence that, if it exists, it is so very small in amount that it would not produce a perceptible effect for any distances less remote than hundreds or perhaps thousands of times as far as the farthest limits of the Milky Way are from us. This is indicated by the fact that the brightest stars are _not_ always, or even generally, the nearest to us, as is shown both by their small proper motions and the absence of measurable parallax. Mr. Gore states that out of twenty-five stars, with proper motions of more than two seconds annually, only two are above the third magnitude. Many first magnitude stars, including Canopus, the second brightest star in the heavens, are so remote that no parallax can be found, notwithstanding repeated efforts. They must therefore be much farther off than many small and telescopic stars, and perhaps as far as the Milky Way, in which so many brilliant stars are found; whereas if any considerable amount of light were lost in passing that distance we should find but few stars of the first two or three magnitudes that were very remote from us. Of the twenty-three stars of the first magnitude, only ten have been found to have parallaxes of more than one-twentieth of a second, while five range from that small amount down to one or two hundredths of a second, and there are two with no ascertainable parallax. Again, there are 309 stars brighter than magnitude 3.5, yet only thirty-one of these have proper motions of more than 100" a century, and of these only eighteen have parallaxes of more than one-twentieth of a second. These figures are from tables given in Professor Newcomb's book, and they have very great significance, since they indicate that the brightest stars are _not_ the nearest to us. More than this, they show that out of the seventy-two stars whose distance has been measured with some approach to certainty, only twenty-three (having a parallax of more than one-fiftieth of a second) are of greater magnitudes than 3.5, while no less than forty-nine are smaller stars down to the eighth or ninth magnitude, and these are on the average much nearer to us than the brighter stars! Taking the whole of the stars whose parallaxes are given by Professor Newcomb, we find that the average parallax of the thirty-one bright stars (from 3.5 magnitude up to Sirius) is 0.11 seconds; while that of the forty-one stars below 3.5 magnitude down to about 9.5, is 0.21 seconds, showing that they are, on the average, only half as far from us as the brighter stars. The same conclusion was reached by Mr. Thomas Lewis of the Greenwich Observatory in 1895, namely, that the stars from 2.70 magnitude down to about 8.40 magnitude have, on the average, double the parallaxes of the brighter stars. This very curious and unexpected fact, however it may be accounted for, is directly opposed to the idea of there being any loss of light by the more distant as compared with the nearer stars; for if there should be such a loss it would render the above phenomenon still more difficult of explanation, because it would tend to exaggerate it. The bright stars being on the whole farther away from us than the less bright down to the eighth and ninth magnitudes, it follows, if there is any loss of light, that the bright stars are really brighter than they appear to us, because, owing to their enormous distance some of their light has been lost before it reached us. Of course it may be said that this does not _demonstrate_ that no light is lost in passing through space; but, on the other hand, it is exactly the opposite of what we should expect if the more distant stars were perceptibly dimmed by this cause, and it may be considered to prove that if there is any loss it is exceedingly small, and will not affect the question of the limits of our stellar system, which is all that we are dealing with. This remarkable fact of the enormous remoteness of the majority of the brighter stars is equally effective as an argument against the loss of light by dark stars or cosmic dust, because, if the light is not appreciably diminished for stars which have less than the fiftieth of a second of parallax, it cannot greatly interfere with our estimates of the limits of our universe. Both Mr. E.W. Maunder of the Greenwich Observatory and Professor W.W. Turner of Oxford lay great stress on these dark bodies, and the former quotes Sir Robert Ball as saying, 'the dark stars are incomparably more numerous than those that we can see ... and to attempt to number the stars of our universe by those whose transitory brightness we can perceive would be like estimating the number of horseshoes in England by those which are red-hot.' But the proportion of dark stars (or nebulæ) to bright ones cannot be determined _a priori_, since it must depend upon the causes that heat the stars, and how frequently those causes come into action as compared with the life of a bright star. We do know, both from the stability of the light of the stars during the historic period and much more precisely by the enormous epochs during which our sun has supported life upon this earth--yet which must have been 'incomparably' less than its whole existence as a light-giver--that the life of most stars must be counted by hundreds or perhaps by thousands of millions of years. But we have no knowledge whatever of the rate at which true stars are born. The so-called 'new stars' which occasionally appear evidently belong to a different category. They blaze out suddenly and almost as suddenly fade away into obscurity or total invisibility. But the true stars probably go through their stages of origin, growth, maturity, and decay, with extreme slowness, so that it is not as yet possible for us to determine by observation when they are born or when they die. In this respect they correspond to species in the organic world. They would probably first be known to us as stars or minute nebulæ: at the extreme limit of telescopic vision or of photographic sensitiveness, and the growth of their luminosity might be so gradual as to require hundreds, perhaps thousands of years to be distinctly recognisable. Hence the argument derived from the fact that we have never witnessed the birth of a true permanent star, and that, therefore, such occurrences are very rare, is valueless. New stars may arise every year or every day without our recognising them; and if this is the case, the reservoir of dark bodies, whether in the form of large masses or of clouds of cosmic dust, so far from being incomparably greater than the whole of the visible stars and nebulæ, may quite possibly be only equal to it, or at most a few times greater; and in that case, considering the enormous distances that separate the stars (or star-systems) from each other, they would have no appreciable effect in shutting out from our view any considerable proportion of the luminous bodies constituting our stellar universe. It follows, that Professor Newcomb's argument as to the very small total light given by the stars has not been even weakened by any of the facts or arguments adduced against it. Mr. W.H.S. Monck, in a letter to _Knowledge_ (May 1903), puts the case very strongly so as to support my view. He says:--'The highest estimate that I have seen of the total light of the full moon is 1/300000 of that of the sun. Suppose that the dark bodies were a hundred and fifty thousand times as numerous as the bright ones. Then the whole sky ought to be as bright as the illuminated portion of the moon. Every one knows that this is not so. But it is said that the stars, though infinite, may only extend to infinity in particular directions, _e.g._ in that of the Galaxy. Be it so. Where, in the very brightest portion of the Galaxy, will we find a part equal in angular magnitude to the moon which affords us the same quantity of light? In the very brightest spot, the light probably does not amount to one hundredth part that of the full moon.' It follows that, even if dark stars were fifteen million times as numerous as the bright ones, Professor Newcomb's argument would still apply against an infinite universe of stars of the same average density as the portion we see. TELESCOPIC EVIDENCE AS TO THE LIMITS OF THE STAR SYSTEM Throughout the earlier portion of the nineteenth century every increase of power and of light-giving qualities of telescopes added so greatly to the number of the stars which became visible, that it was generally assumed that this increase would go on indefinitely, and that the stars were really infinite in number and could not be exhausted. But of late years it has been found that the increase in the number of stars visible in the larger telescopes was not so great as might be expected, while in many parts of the heavens a longer exposure of the photographic plate adds comparatively little to the number of stars obtained by a shorter exposure with the same instrument. Mr. J.E. Gore's testimony on this point is very clear. He says:--'Those who do not give the subject sufficient consideration, seem to think that the number of the stars is practically infinite, or at least, that the number is so great that it cannot be estimated. But this idea is totally incorrect, and due to complete ignorance of telescopic revelations. It is certainly true that, to a certain extent, the larger the telescope used in the examination of the heavens, the more the number of the stars seems to increase; but we now know that there is a limit to this increase of telescopic vision. And the evidence clearly shows that we are rapidly approaching this limit. Although the number of stars visible in the Pleiades rapidly increases at first with increase in the size of the telescope used, and although photography has still further increased the number of stars in this remarkable cluster, it has recently been found that an increased length of exposure--beyond three hours--adds very few stars to the number visible on the photograph taken at the Paris Observatory in 1885, on which over two thousand stars can be counted. Even with this great number on so small an area of the heavens, comparatively large vacant places are visible between the stars, and a glance at the original photograph is sufficient to show that there would be ample room for many times the number actually visible. I find that if the whole heavens were as rich in stars as the Pleiades, there would be only thirty-three millions in both hemispheres.' Again, referring to the fact that Celoria, with a telescope showing stars down to the eleventh magnitude, could see almost exactly the same number of stars near the north pole of the Galaxy as Sir William Herschel found with his much larger and more powerful telescope, he remarks: 'Their absence, therefore, seems certain proof that very faint stars do _not_ exist in that direction, and that here, at least, the sidereal universe is limited in extent.' Sir John Herschel notes the same phenomena, stating that even in the Milky Way there are found 'spaces absolutely dark _and completely void of any star_, even of the smallest telescopic magnitude'; while in other parts 'extremely minute stars, though never altogether wanting, occur in numbers so moderate as to lead us irresistibly to the conclusion that in these regions we see _fairly through_ the starry stratum, since it is impossible otherwise (supposing their light not intercepted) that the numbers of the smaller magnitudes should not go on continually increasing ad infinitum. In such cases, moreover, the ground of the heavens, as seen between the stars, is for the most part perfectly dark, which again would not be the case if innumerable multitudes of stars, too minute to be individually discernible, existed beyond.' And again he sums up as follows:--'Throughout by far the larger portion of the extent of the Milky Way in both hemispheres, the general blackness of the ground of the heavens on which its stars are projected, and the absence of that innumerable multitude and excessive crowding of the smallest visible magnitudes, and of glare produced by the aggregate light of multitudes too small to affect the eye singly, which the contrary supposition would appear to necessitate, must, we think, be considered unequivocal indications that its dimensions _in directions where these conditions obtain_, are not only not infinite, but that the space-penetrating power of our telescopes suffices fairly to pierce through and beyond it.'[2] This expression of opinion by the astronomer who, probably beyond any now living, was the most competent authority on this question, to which he devoted a long life of observation and study extending over the whole heavens, cannot be lightly set aside by the opinions or conjectures of those who seem to assume that we must believe in an infinity of stars if the contrary cannot be absolutely proved. But as not a particle of evidence can be adduced to prove infinity, and as all the facts and indications point, as here shown, in a directly opposite direction, we must, if we are to trust to evidence at all in this matter, arrive at the conclusion that the universe of stars is limited in extent. Dr. Isaac Roberts gives similar evidence as regards the use of photographic plates. He writes:--'Eleven years ago photographs of the Great Nebula in _Andromeda_ were taken with the 20-inch reflector, and exposures of the plates during intervals up to four hours; and upon some of them were depicted stars to the faintness of 17th to 18th magnitude, and nebulosity to an equal degree of faintness. The films of the plates obtainable in those days were less sensitive than those which have been available during the past five years, and during this period photographs of the nebula with exposures up to four hours have been taken with the 20-inch reflector. No extensions of the nebulosity, however, nor increase in the number of the stars can be seen on the later rapid plates than were depicted upon the earlier slower ones, though the star-images and the nebulosity have greater density on the later plates.' Exactly similar facts are recorded in the cases of the Great Nebula in _Orion_, and the group of the Pleiades. In the case of the Milky Way in _Cygnus_ photographs have been taken with the same instrument, but with exposures varying from one hour to two hours and a half, but no fainter stars could be found on one than on the other; and this fact has been confirmed by similar photographs of other areas in the sky. THE LAW OF DIMINISHING NUMBERS OF STARS We will now consider another kind of evidence equally weighty with the two already adduced. This is what may be termed the law of diminishing numbers beyond a certain magnitude, as observed by larger and larger telescopes. For some years past star-magnitudes have been determined very accurately by means of careful photometric comparisons. Down to the sixth magnitude stars are visible to the naked eye, and are hence termed lucid stars. All fainter stars are telescopic, and continuing the magnitudes in a series in which the difference in luminosity between each successive magnitude is equal, the seventeenth magnitude is reached and indicates the range of visibility in the largest telescopes now in existence. By the scale now used a star of any magnitude gives nearly two and a half times as much light as one of the next lower magnitude, and for accurate comparison the apparent brightness of each star is given to the tenth of a magnitude which can easily be observed. Of course, owing to differences in the colour of stars, these determinations cannot be made with perfect accuracy, but no important error is due to this cause. According to this scale a sixth magnitude star gives about one-hundredth part of the light of an average first magnitude star. Sirius is so exceptionally bright that it gives nine times as much light as a standard or average first magnitude star. Now it is found that from the first to the sixth magnitude the stars increase in number at the rate of about three and a half times those of the preceding magnitudes. The total number of stars down to the sixth magnitude is given by Professor Newcomb as 7647. For higher magnitudes the numbers are so great that precision and uniformity are more difficult of attainment; yet there is a wonderful continuance of the same law of increase down to the tenth magnitude, which is estimated to include 2,311,000 stars, thus conforming very nearly with the ratio of 3.5 as determined by the lucid stars. But when we pass beyond the tenth magnitude to those vast numbers of faint stars only to be seen in the best or the largest telescopes, there appears to be a sudden change in the ratio of increased numbers per magnitude. The numbers of these stars are so great that it is impossible to count the whole as with the higher magnitude stars, but numerous counts have been made by many astronomers in small measured areas in different parts of the heavens, so that a fair average has been obtained, and it is possible to make a near approximation to the total number visible down to the seventeenth magnitude. The estimate of these by astronomers who have made a special study of this subject is, that the total number of visible stars does not exceed one hundred millions.[3] But if we take the number of stars down to the ninth magnitude, which are known with considerable accuracy, and find the numbers in each succeeding magnitude down to the seventeenth, according to the same ratio of increase which has been found to correspond very nearly in the case of the higher magnitudes, Mr. J.E. Gore finds that the total number should be about 1400 millions. Of course neither of these estimates makes any pretence to exact accuracy, but they are founded on all the facts at present available, and are generally accepted by astronomers as being the nearest approach that can be made to the true numbers. The discrepancy is, however, so enormous that probably no careful observer of the heavens with very large telescopes doubts that there is a very real and very rapid diminution in the numbers of the fainter as compared with the brighter stars. There is, however, yet one more indication of the decreasing numbers of the faint telescopic stars, which is almost conclusive on this question, and, so far as I am aware, has not yet been used in this relation. I will therefore briefly state it. THE LIGHT RATIO AS INDICATING THE NUMBER OF FAINT STARS Professor Newcomb points out a remarkable result depending on the fact that, while the average light of successively lower magnitudes diminishes in a ratio of 2.5, their numbers increase at nearly a ratio of 3.5. From this it follows that, so long as this law of increase continues, the total of starlight goes on increasing by about forty per cent. for each successive magnitude, and he gives the following table to illustrate it:-- Mag. 1 Total Light = 1 " 2 " = 1.4 " 3 " = 2.0 " 4 " = 2.8 " 5 " = 4.0 " 6 " = 5.7 " 7 " = 8.0 " 8 " = 11.3 " 9 " = 16.0 " 10 " = 22.6 -------- Total light to Mag. 10 = 74.8 -------- Thus the total amount of the light given by all stars down to the tenth magnitude is seventy-four times as great as that from the few first magnitude stars. We also see that the light given by the stars of any magnitude is twice as much as that of the stars two magnitudes higher in the scale, so that we can easily calculate what additional light we ought to receive from each additional magnitude if they continue to increase in numbers below the tenth as they do above that magnitude. Now it has been calculated as the result of careful observations, that the total light given by stars down to nine and a half magnitude is one-eightieth of full moonlight, though some make it much more. But if we continue the table of light-ratios from this low starting-point down to magnitude seventeen and a half, we shall find, if the numbers of the stars go on increasing at the same rate as before, that the light of all combined should be at least seven times as great as moonlight; whereas the photometric measurements make it actually about one-twentieth. And as the calculation from light-ratios only includes stars just visible in the largest telescopes, and does not include all those proved to exist by photography, we have in this case a demonstration that the numbers of the stars below the tenth and down to the seventeenth magnitude diminish rapidly. We must remember that the minuter telescopic stars preponderate enormously in and near the Milky Way. At a distance from it they diminish rapidly, till near its poles they are almost entirely absent. This is shown by the fact (already referred to at p. 146) that Professor Celoria of Milan, with a telescope of less than three inches aperture, counted almost as many stars in that region as did Herschel with his eighteen-inch reflector. But if the stellar universe extends without limit we can hardly suppose it to do so in one plane only; hence the absence of the minuter stars and of diffused milky light over the larger part of the heavens is now held to prove that the myriads of very minute stars in the Milky Way really belong to it, and not to the depths of space far beyond. It seems to me that here we have a fairly direct proof that the stars of our universe are really limited in number. There are thus four distinct lines of argument all pointing with more or less force to the conclusion that the stellar universe we see around us, so far from being infinite, is strictly limited in extent and of a definite form and constitution. They may be briefly summarised as follows:-- (1) Professor Newcomb shows that, if the stars were infinite in number, and if those we see were approximately a fair sample of the whole, and further, if there were not sufficient dark bodies to shut out almost the whole of their light, then we should receive from them an amount of light theoretically greater than that of sunlight. I have shown, at some length, that neither of these causes of loss of light will account for the enormous disproportion between the theoretical and the actual light received from the stars; and therefore Professor Newcomb's argument must be held to be a valid one against the infinite extent of our universe. Of course, this does not imply that there may not be any number of other universes in space, but as we know absolutely nothing of them--even whether they are material or non-material--all speculation as to their existence is worse than useless. (2) The next argument depends on the fact that all over the heavens, even in the Milky Way itself, there are areas of considerable extent, besides rifts, lanes, and circular patches, where stars are either quite absent or very faint and few in number. In many of these areas the largest telescopes show no more stars than those of moderate size, while the few stars seen are projected on an intensely dark background. Sir William Herschel, Humboldt, Sir John Herschel, R.A. Proctor, and many living astronomers hold that, in these dark areas, rifts, and patches, we see completely through our stellar universe into the starless depths of space beyond. (3) Then we have the remarkable fact that the steady increase in the number of stars, down to the ninth or tenth magnitudes, following one constant ratio either gradually or suddenly changes, so that the total number from the tenth down to the seventeenth magnitudes is only about one-tenth of what it would have been had the same ratio of increase continued. The conclusion to be drawn from this fact clearly is, that these faint stars are becoming more and more thinly scattered in space, while the dark background on which they are usually seen shows that, except in the region of the Milky Way, there are _not_ multitudes of still smaller invisible stars beyond them. (4) The last indication of a limited stellar universe--the estimate of numbers by the light-ratio of each successive magnitude--powerfully supports the three preceding arguments. The four distinct classes of evidence now adduced must be held to constitute, as nearly as the circumstances permit, a satisfactory proof that the stellar universe, of which our solar system forms a part, has definite limits; and that a full knowledge of its form, structure, and extent, is not beyond the possibility of attainment by the astronomers of the future. FOOTNOTES: [1] In a letter to _Knowledge_, June 1903, Mr. W.H.T. Monck puts the same point in a mathematical form. [2] _Outlines of Astronomy_, pp. 578-9. In the passages quoted the italics are Sor John Herschel's. [3] Mr. J.E. Gore in _Concise Knowledge Astronomy_, pp. 541-2. CHAPTER VIII OUR RELATION TO THE MILKY WAY We now approach what may be termed the very heart of the subject of our inquiry, the determination of how we are actually situated within this vast but finite universe, and how that position is likely to affect our globe as being the theatre of the development of life up to its highest forms. We begin with our relation to the Milky Way (which we have fully described in our fourth chapter), because it is by far the most important feature in the whole heavens. Sir John Herschel termed it 'the ground-plane of the sidereal system'; and the more it is studied the more we become convinced that the whole of the stellar universe--stars, clusters of stars, and nebulæ--are in some way connected with it, and are probably dependent on it or controlled by it. Not only does it contain a greater number of stars of the higher magnitudes than any other part of the heavens of equal extent, but it also comprises a great preponderance of star-clusters, and a great extent of diffused nebulous matter, besides the innumerable myriads of minute stars which produce its characteristic cloud-like appearance. It is also the region of those strange outbursts forming new stars; while gaseous stars of enormous bulk--some probably a thousand or even ten thousand times that of our sun, and of intense heat and brilliancy--are more abundant there than in any other part of the heavens. It is now almost certain that these enormous stars and the myriads of minute stars just visible with the largest telescopes, are actually intermingled, and together constitute its essential features; in which case the fainter stars are really small and cannot be far apart, forming, as it were, the first aggregations of the nebulous substratum, and perhaps supplying the fuel which keeps up the intense brilliancy of the giant suns. If this is so, then the Galaxy must be the theatre of operation of vast forces, and of continuous combinations of matter, which escape our notice owing to its enormous distance from us. Among its millions of minute telescopic stars, hundreds or thousands may appear or disappear yearly without being perceived by us, till the photographic charts are completed and can be minutely scrutinised at short intervals. As undoubted changes have occurred in many of the larger nebulæ during the last fifty years, we may anticipate that analogous changes will soon be noted in the stars and the nebulous masses of the Milky Way. Dr. Isaac Roberts has even observed changes in nebulæ after such a short interval as eight years. THE MILKY WAY A GREAT CIRCLE Notwithstanding all its irregularities, its divisions, and its diverging branches, astronomers are generally agreed that the Milky Way forms a great circle in the heavens. Sir John Herschel, whose knowledge of it was unrivalled, stated that its course 'conforms, as nearly as the indefiniteness of its boundary will allow it to be fixed, to that of a great circle'; and he gives the Right Ascension and Declination of the points where it crosses the equinoctial, in figures which define those points as being exactly opposite each other. He also defines its northern and southern poles by other figures, so as to show that they are the poles of a great circle. And after referring to Struve's view that it was _not_ a great circle, he says, 'I retain my own opinion.' Professor Newcomb says that its position 'is nearly always near a great circle of the sphere'; and again he says: 'that we are in the galactic plane itself seems to be shown in two ways: (1) the equality in the counts of stars on the two sides of this plane all the way to its poles; and (2) the fact that the central line of the Galaxy is a great circle, which it would not be if we viewed it from one side of its central plane' (_The Stars_, p. 317). Miss Clerke, in her _History of Astronomy_, speaks of 'our situation _in_ the galactic plane' as one of the undisputed facts of astronomy; while Sir Norman Lockyer, in a lecture delivered in 1899, said, 'the middle line of the Milky Way is really not distinguishable from a great circle,' and again in the same lecture--'but the recent work, chiefly of Gould in Argentina, has shown that it practically is a great circle.'[4] About this fact, then, there can be no dispute. A great circle is a circle dividing the celestial sphere into two equal portions, as seen from the earth, and therefore the plane of this circle must pass through the earth. Of course the whole thing is on such a vast scale, the Milky Way varying from ten to thirty degrees wide, that the plane of its circular course cannot be determined with minute accuracy. But this is of little importance. When carefully laid down on a chart, as in that of Mr. Sidney Waters (see end of volume), we can see that its central line does follow a very even circular course, conforming 'as nearly as may be' to a great circle. We are therefore certainly well within the space that would be enclosed if its northern and southern margins were connected together across the vast intervening abyss, and in all probability not far from the central plane of that enclosed space. THE FORM OF THE MILKY WAY AND OUR POSITION ON ITS PLANE Although the Galaxy forms a great circle in the heavens from our point of view, it by no means follows that it is circular in plan. Being unequal in width and irregular in outline, it might be elliptic or even angular in shape without being at all obviously so to us. If we were standing in an open plain or field two or three miles in diameter, and bounded in every direction by woods of very irregular height and density and great diversity of tint, we should find it difficult to judge of the shape of the field, which might be either a true circle, an oval, a hexagon, or quite irregular in outline, without our being able to detect the exact shape unless some parts were very much nearer to us than others. Again, just as the woods bounding the field might be either a narrow belt of nearly uniform width, or might in some places be only a few yards wide and in others stretch out for miles, so there have been many opinions as to the width of the Milky Way in the direction of its plane, that is, in the direction in which we look towards it. Lately, however, as the result of long-continued observation and study, astronomers are fairly well agreed as to its general form and extent, as will be seen by the following statements of fact and reasoning. Miss Clerke, after giving the various views of many astronomers--and as the historian of modern astronomy her opinion has much weight--considers that the most probable view of it is, that it is really very much what it seems to us--an immense ring with streaming appendages extending from the main body in all directions, producing the very complex effect we see. The belief seems to be now spreading that the whole universe of stars is spherical or spheroidal, the Milky Way being its equator, and therefore in all probability circular or nearly so in plan; and it is also held that it must be rotating--perhaps very slowly--as nothing else can be supposed to have led to the formation of such a vast ring, or can preserve it when formed. Professor Newcomb considers, from the numbers of the stars in all directions towards the Milky Way being approximately equal, that there cannot be much difference in our distance from it in various directions. It would follow that its plan is approximately circular or broadly elliptic. The existence of ring-nebulæ may be held to render such a form probable. Sir Norman Lockyer gives facts which tend in the same direction. In an article in _Nature_ of November 8th, 1900, he says: 'We find that the gaseous stars are not only confined to the Milky Way, but they are the most remote in every direction, in every galactic longitude; all of them have the smallest proper motion.' And again, referring to the hottest stars being equally remote on all sides of us, he says: 'It is because we are in the centre, because the solar system is in the centre, that the observed effect arises.' He also considers that the ring-nebula in Lyra nearly represents the form of our whole system; and he adds: 'We practically know that in our system the centre is the region of least disturbance, and therefore cooler conditions.' These various facts and conclusions of some of the most eminent astronomers all point to one definite inference, that our position, or that of the solar system, is not very far from the centre of the vast ring of stars constituting the Milky Way, while the same facts imply a nearly circular form to this ring. Here, more than as regards our position in the plane of the Galaxy, there is no possibility of precise determination; but it is quite certain that if we were situated very far away from the centre, say, for instance, one-fourth of its diameter from one side of it and three-fourths from the other, the appearances would not be what they are, and we should easily detect the excentricity of our position. Even if we were one-third the diameter from one side and two-thirds from the other, it will, I think, be admitted that this also would have been ascertained by the various methods of research now available. We must, therefore, be somewhere between the actual centre and a circle whose radius is one-third of the distance to the Milky Way. But if we are about midway between these two positions, we shall only be one-sixth of the radius or one-twelfth of the diameter of the Milky Way from its exact centre; and if we form part of a cluster or group of stars slowly revolving around that centre, we should probably obtain all the advantages, if any, that may arise from a nearly central position in the entire star-system. This question of our situation within the great circle of the Milky Way is of considerable importance from the point of view I am here suggesting, so that every fact bearing upon it should be noted; and there is one which has not, I think, been given the full weight due to it. It is generally admitted that the greater brilliancy of some parts of the Milky Way is no indication of nearness, because surfaces possess equal brilliancy from whatever distance they are seen. Thus each planet has its special brilliancy or reflective power, technically termed its 'albedo,' and this remains the same at all distances if the other conditions are similar. But notwithstanding this well-known fact, Sir John Herschel's remark that the greater brightness of the southern Milky Way 'conveys strongly the impression of greater proximity,' and therefore, that we are excentrically placed in its plane, has been adopted by many writers as if it were the statement of a fact, or at least a clearly expressed opinion, instead of being a mere 'impression,' and really a misleading one. I therefore wish to adduce a phenomenon which has a real bearing on the question. It is evident that, if the Milky Way were actually of uniform width throughout, then differences of apparent width would indicate differences of distance. In the parts nearer to us it would appear wider, where more remote, narrower; but in these opposite directions there would not necessarily be any differences in brightness. We should, however, expect that in the parts nearer to us the lucid stars, as well as those within any definite limits of magnitude, would be either more numerous or more wide apart on the average. No such difference as this, however, has been recorded; but there _is_ a peculiar correspondence in the opposite portions of the Galaxy which is very suggestive. In the beautiful charts of the Nebulæ and Star Clusters by the late Mr. Sidney Waters, published by the Royal Astronomical Society and here reproduced by their permission (see end of volume), the Milky Way is delineated in its whole extent with great detail and from the best authorities. These charts show us that, in both hemispheres, it reaches its maximum extension on the right and left margins of the charts, where it is almost equal in extent; while in the centre of each chart, that is at its nearest points to the north and south poles respectively, it is at its narrowest portion; and, although this part in the southern hemisphere is brightest and most strongly defined, yet the actual extent, including the fainter portions, is, again, not very unequal in the opposite segments. Here we have a remarkable and significant symmetry in the proportions of the Milky Way, which, taken in connection with the nearly symmetrical scattering of the stars in all parts of the vast ring, is strongly suggestive of a nearly circular form and of our nearly central position within its plane. There is one other feature in this delineation of the Milky Way which is worthy of notice. It has been the universal practice to speak of it as being double through a considerable portion of its extent, and all the usual star-maps show the division greatly exaggerated, especially in the northern hemisphere; and this division was considered so important as to lead to the cloven-disc theory of its form, or that it consisted of two separate irregular rings, the nearer one partly hiding the more distant; while various spiral combinations were held by others to be the best way of explaining its complex appearance. But this newer map, reduced from a large one by Lord Rosse's astronomer, Dr. Boeddicker, who devoted five years to its delineation, shows us that there is no actual division in any portion of it in the northern hemisphere, but that everywhere, throughout its whole width, it consists of numerous intermingled streams and branches, varying greatly in luminosity, and with many faint or barely distinguishable extensions along its margins, yet forming one unmistakable nebulous belt; and the same general character applies to it in the southern hemisphere as delineated by Dr. Gould. Another feature, which is well shown to the eye by these more accurate maps, is the regular curvature of the central line of the Milky Way. We can judge of this almost sufficiently by the eye; but if, with a pair of compasses, we find the proper radius and centre of curvature, we shall see that the true circular curve is always in the very centre of the nebulous mass, and the same radius applied in the same manner to the opposite hemisphere gives a similar result. It will be noted that as the Milky Way is obliquely situated on these charts, the centre of the curve will be about in R.A. 0h. 40m. in the map of the southern hemisphere, and in R.A. 12h. 40m. in that of the northern hemisphere; while the radius of curvature will be about the length of the chord of eight hours of R.A. as measured on the margin of the maps. This great regularity of curve of the central line of the Galaxy strongly suggests rotation as the only means by which it could have originated and be maintained. THE SOLAR CLUSTER Astronomers are now generally agreed that there is a cluster of stars of which our sun forms a part, though its exact dimensions, form, and limits are still under discussion. Sir William Herschel long ago arrived at the conclusion that the Milky Way 'consists of stars very differently scattered from those immediately around us.' Dr. Gould believed that there were about five hundred bright stars much nearer to us than the Milky Way, which he termed the solar cluster. And Miss Clerke observes that the actual existence of such a cluster is indicated by the fact that 'an enumeration of the stars in photometric order discloses a systematic excess of stars brighter than the 4th magnitude, making it certain that there is an actual condensation in the neighbourhood of the sun--that the average allowance of cubical space per star is smaller within a sphere enclosing him with a radius, say, of 140 light-years, than further away.'[5] But the most interesting inquiry into this subject is that by Professor Kapteyn of Gröningen, one of the most painstaking students of the distribution of the stars. He founds his conclusions mainly on the proper motions of the stars, this being the best general indication of distance in the absence of actual determination of parallax. He made use of the proper motions and the spectra of more than two thousand stars, and he finds that a considerable body of stars having large proper motions, and also presenting the solar type of spectra, surround our sun in all directions, and show no increased density, as the more distant stars do, towards the Milky Way. He finds also that towards the centre of this cluster stars are far closer together than near its outer limits (he says there are ninety-eight times as many), that it is roughly spherical in shape, and that the maximum compression is, as nearly as can be ascertained, at the centre of the circle of the Milky Way, while the sun is at some distance away from this central point.[6] It is a very suggestive fact that most of the stars belonging to this cluster have spectra of the solar type, which indicates that they are of the same general chemical constitution as our sun, and are also at about the same stage of evolution; and this may well have arisen from their origin in a great nebulous mass situated at or near the centre of the galactic plane, and probably revolving round their common centre of gravity. As Kapteyn's result was based on materials which were not so full or reliable as those now available, Professor S. Newcomb has examined the question himself, using two recent lists of stars, one limited to those having proper motions of 10" a century, of which there are 295, and the other of nearly 1500 stars with 'appreciable proper motions.' They are situated in two zones, each about 5° in breadth and cutting across the Milky Way in different parts of its course. They afford, therefore, a good test of the distribution of these nearer stars with regard to the Galaxy. The result is, that on the average these stars are not more numerous in or near the Milky Way than elsewhere; and Professor Newcomb expresses himself on this point as follows:--'The conclusion is interesting and important. If we should blot out from the sky all the stars having no proper motion large enough to be detected, we should find remaining stars of all magnitudes; but they would be scattered almost uniformly over the sky, and show little or no tendency to crowd towards the Galaxy, unless, perhaps, in the region near 19h. of Right Ascension.'[7] A little consideration will show that, as the stars of all magnitudes which are, on the average, nearest to us are spread over the sky in 'all directions' and 'almost uniformly,' this necessarily implies that they form a cluster or group, and that our sun is somewhere not very far from the centre of this group. Again, Professor Newcomb refers to 'the remarkable equality in the number of stars in opposite directions from us. We do not detect any marked difference between the numbers lying round the opposite poles of the Galaxy, nor, so far as known, between the star-density in different regions at equal distances from the Milky Way' (_The Stars_, p. 315). And again he refers to the same question at p. 317, where he says: 'So far as we can judge from the enumeration of the stars in all directions, and from the aspect of the Milky Way, our system is near the centre of the stellar universe.' It will, I think, now be clear to my readers that the four main astronomical propositions stated in my article which appeared in the New York _Independent_ and in the _Fortnightly Review_, and which were either denied or declared to be unproved by my astronomical critics, have been shown to be supported by so many converging lines of evidence, that it is no longer possible to deny that they are, at least provisionally, fairly well established. These facts are, (1) that the stellar universe is not of infinite extent; (2) that our sun is situated in the central plane of the Milky Way; (3) that it is also situated near to the centre of that plane; (4) that we are surrounded by a group or cluster of stars of unknown extent, which occupy a place not far removed from the centre of the galactic plane, and therefore, near to the centre of our universe of stars. Not only are these four propositions each supported by converging lines of evidence, including some which I believe have not before been adduced in their support, but a number of astronomers, admittedly of the first rank, have arrived at the same conclusions as to the bearing of the evidence, and have expressed their convictions in the clearest manner, as quoted by me. It is _their_ conclusions which I appeal to and adopt; yet my two chief astronomical critics positively deny that there is any valid evidence of the finiteness of the stellar universe, which one of them terms 'a myth,' and he even accuses _me_ of having started it. Both of them, however, agree in stating very strongly one objection to my main thesis--that our central position (not necessarily at the precise centre) in the stellar universe has a meaning and a purpose, in connection with the development of life and of man upon this earth, and, _so far as we know_, here only. With this one objection, the only one that in my opinion has the slightest weight, I will now proceed to deal. THE SUN'S MOTION THROUGH SPACE The two astronomers who did me the honour to criticise my original article laid the greatest stress on the fact, that even if I had proved that the sun now occupied a nearly central position in the great star-system, it was really of no importance whatever, because, at the rate the sun was travelling, 'five million years ago we were deep in the actual stream of the Milky Way; five million years hence we shall have completely crossed the gulf which it encircles, and again be a member of one of its constituent groups, but on the opposite side. And ten million years are regarded by geologists and biologists as but a trifle on account to meet their demands upon the bank of Time.' Thus speaks one of my critics. The other is equally crushing. He says:--'If there is a centre to the visible universe, and if we occupy it to-day, we certainly did not do so yesterday, and shall not do so to-morrow. The Solar System is known to be moving among the stars with a velocity which would carry us to Sirius within 100,000 years, if we happened to be travelling in his direction, as we are not. In the 50 or 100 million years during which, according to geologists, this earth has been a habitable globe, we must have passed by thousands of stars on the right hand and on the left.... In his eagerness to limit the universe in space, Dr. Wallace has surely forgotten that it is equally important, for his purpose, to limit it in time; but incomparably more difficult in the face of ascertained facts.... Indeed, so far from our having tranquilly enjoyed a central position in unbroken continuity for scores or perhaps hundreds of millions of years, we should in that time have traversed the universe from boundary to boundary.'[8] Now the average reader of these two criticisms, taking account of the high official position of both writers, would accept their statements of the case as being demonstrated facts, requiring no qualification whatever, and would conclude that my whole argument had been thereby rendered worthless, and all that I founded upon it a fantastic dream. But if, on the other hand, I can show that their stated facts as to the sun's motion are by no means demonstrated, because founded upon assumptions which may be quite erroneous; and further, that if the facts should turn out to be substantially correct, they have both omitted to state well-known and admitted qualifications which render the conclusions they derive from the facts very doubtful, then the average reader will learn the valuable lesson that official advocacy, whether in medicine, law, or science is never to be accepted till the other side of the case has been heard. Let us see, therefore, what the facts really are. Professor Simon Newcomb calculates that, if there are one hundred million stars in the stellar universe each five times the mass of our sun, and spread over a space which light would require thirty thousand years to cross, then any mass traversing such a system with a velocity of more than twenty-five miles a second, would fly off into infinite space never to return. Now as there are many stars which have, apparently, very much more than this velocity, it would follow that the visible universe is unstable. It also implies that these great velocities were not acquired in the system itself, but that the bodies which possess them must have entered it from without, thus requiring other universes as the feeders of our universe. For the accuracy of the above statement the authority of Professor Newcomb is an ample guarantee; but there may be modifications required in the data on which it is founded, and these may greatly alter the result. If I do not mistake, the estimate of a hundred million stars is founded on actual counts or estimates of stars of successive magnitudes in different parts of the heavens, and it does not include either those of the denser star clusters nor the countless millions just beyond the reach of telescopes in the Milky Way. Neither does it make allowance for the dark stars supposed by some astronomers to be many times more numerous than the bright ones, nor for the vast number of the nebulæ, great and small, in calculating the total mass of the stellar system.[9] In his latest work Professor Newcomb says, 'The total number of stars is to be counted by hundreds of millions'; and hence the controlling power of the system on bodies within it will be many times greater than that given above, and might even be ample to retain within its bounds such a rapidly moving star as Arcturus, which is believed to be travelling at the rate of more than three hundred miles a second. But there is another very important limitation to the conclusions to be drawn from Professor Newcomb's calculation. It assumes the stars to be nearly uniformly distributed through the whole of the space to which the system extends. But the facts are very different. The existence of clusters, some of which comprise many thousands of stars, is one example of irregularity of distribution, and any one of these larger clusters would probably be able to change the course of even the swiftest stars passing near it. The larger nebulæ might have the same effect, since the late Mr. Ranyard, taking all his data so as to produce a minimum result, calculated the probable mass of the Orion nebula to be four and a half million times that of the sun, and there may be many other nebulæ equally large. But far more important is the fact of the vast ring of the Milky Way, which is now universally held by astronomers to be, not only apparently but really, more densely crowded with stars and also with vast masses of nebulous matter than any other part of the heavens, so that it may possibly comprise within itself a very large proportion of the whole of the matter of the visible universe. This is rendered more probable by the fact that the great majority of star-clusters lie along its course, most of the huge gaseous stars belong to it, while the occurrence there only of 'new stars' is evidence of a superabundance of matter in various forms leading to frequent heat-producing collisions, just as the frequent occurrence of meteoric showers on our earth is evidence of the superabundance of meteoric matter in the solar system. It is recognised by mathematicians that within any great system of bodies subject to the law of gravitation there can be no such thing as motion of any of them in a straight line; neither can any amount of motion arise within such a system through the action of gravitation alone capable of carrying any of its masses out of the system. The ultimate tendency must be towards concentration rather than towards dispersal. It seems, therefore, only reasonable to consider whatever motions and whatever velocities we find among the stars, as having been produced by the gravitative power of the larger aggregations, modified perhaps by electrical repulsive forces, by collisions, and by the results of those collisions; and we may look to the changes now visibly going on in some of the nebulæ and clusters as indications of the forces that have probably brought about the actual condition of the whole stellar universe. If we examine the beautiful photographs of nebulæ by Dr. Roberts and other observers, we find that they are of many forms. Some are extremely irregular and almost like patches of cirrus clouds, but a large number are either distinctly spiral in form, or show indications of becoming spiral, and this has been found to be the case even with some of the large irregular nebula. Then again we have numerous ring-formed nebulæ, usually with a star involved in dense nebulosity in the centre, separated by a dark space of various widths from the outer ring. All these kinds of nebulæ have stars involved in them, and apparently forming part of their structure, while others which do not differ in appearance from ordinary stars are believed by Dr. Roberts to lie between us and the nebula. In the case of many of the spiral nebulæ, stars are often strung along the coils of the spiral, while other curved lines of stars are seen just outside the nebula, so that it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that both are really connected with it, the outer lines of stars indicating a former greater extension of the nebula whose material has been used up in the growth of these stars. Some of these spiral nebulæ show beautifully regular convolutions, and these usually have a large central star like mass, as in M. 100 Comæ and I. 84 Comæ, in Vol. II. Pl. 14 of Dr. Roberts's photographs. The straight white streaks across the nebula of the Pleiades and some others are believed by Dr. Roberts to be indications of spiral nebulæ seen edgewise. In other cases, clusters of stars are more or less nebulous, and the arrangement of the stars seems to indicate their development from a spiral nebula. It is to be noted that many of the objects classed as planetary nebulæ by Sir John Herschel are shown by the best photographs to be really of the ring-type, though often with a very narrow division between the ring and the central mass. This form may therefore be of frequent occurrence. But if this annular form with some kind of central nucleus, often very large, is produced under certain conditions by the action of the ordinary laws of motion upon more or less extensive masses of discrete matter, why may not the same laws acting upon similar matter once dispersed over the whole extent of the existing stellar universe, or even beyond what are now its farthest limits, have led to the aggregation of the vast annular formation of the Milky Way, with all the subordinate centres of concentration or dispersal to be found within or around it? And if this is a reasonable conception, may we not hope that by a concentration of attention upon a few of the best marked and most favourably situated annular and spiral systems, sufficient knowledge of their internal motions may be obtained which may serve as a guide to the kind of motion we may expect to find in the great galactic ring and its subordinate stars? We may then perhaps discover which now seem so erratic, are really all parts of a series of orbital movements limited and controlled by the forces of the great system to which they belong, so that, if not mathematically stable, they may yet be sufficiently so to endure for some thousand millions of years. It is a suggestive fact that the calculated position of the 'solar apex'--the point towards which our sun appears to move--is now found to be much more nearly in the plane of the Milky Way than the position first assigned to it, and Professor Newcomb adopts, as most likely to be accurate, a point near the bright star Vega in the constellation Lyra. Other calculators have placed it still farther east, while Rancken and Otto Stumpe assign it a position actually in the Milky Way; and Mr. G.C. Bompas concludes that the sun's plane of motion nearly coincides with that of the Galaxy. M. Rancken found that 106 stars near the Milky Way showed, in their very small proper motions, a drift along it in a direction from Cassiopeiæ towards Orion, and this, it is supposed, may be partly due to our sun's motion in an opposite direction. In many other parts of the heavens there are groups of stars which have almost identical proper motions--a phenomenon which the late R.A. Proctor termed 'star-drift'; and he especially pointed out that five of the stars of the Great Bear were all drifting in the same direction; and although this has been denied by later writers, Professor Newcomb, in his recent book on _The Stars_, declares that Proctor was right, and explains that the error of his critics was due to not making allowance for the divergence of the circles of right ascension. The Pleiades are another group, the stars of which drift in the same direction, and it is a most suggestive fact that photographs now show this cluster to be embedded in a vast nebula, which, therefore, has also a proper motion; but some of the smaller stars do not partake of it. Three stars in Cassiopeiæ also move together, and no doubt many other similarly connected groups remain to be discovered. These facts have a very important bearing on the question of the motion of our sun in space. For this motion has been determined by comparing the motions of large numbers of stars which are assumed to be wholly independent of each other, and to move, as it were, at random. Miss A.M. Clerke, in her _System of the Stars_, puts this point very clearly, as follows: 'For the assumption that the absolute movements of the stars have no preference for one direction over another, forms the basis of all investigations hitherto conducted into the translatory advance of the solar system. The little fabric of laboriously acquired knowledge regarding it at once crumbles if that basis has to be removed. In all investigations of the sun's movement, the movements of the stars have been regarded as casual irregularities; should they prove to be in any visible degree systematic, the mode of treatment adopted (and there is no other at present open to us) becomes invalid, and its results null and void. The point is then of singular interest, and the evidence bearing upon it deserves our utmost attention.' Mr. W.H.S. Monck, a well-known astronomer, takes the same view. He says: 'The proof of this motion rests on the assumption that if we take a sufficient number of stars, their real motions in all directions will be equal, and that therefore the apparent preponderances which we observe in particular directions result from the real motion of the sun. But there is no impossibility in a systematic motion of the majority of the stars used in these researches which might reconcile the observed facts with a motionless sun. And, in the second place, if the sun is not in the exact centre of gravity of the universe, we might expect him to be moving in an orbit around this centre of gravity, and our observations on his actual motion are not sufficiently numerous or accurate to enable us to affirm that he is moving in a right line rather than such an orbit.' Now this 'systematic motion,' which would render all calculations as to the sun's motion inaccurate or even altogether worthless, is by many astronomers held to be an observed reality. The star-drift, first pointed out by Proctor, has been shown to exist in many other groups of stars, while the curious arrangements of stars all over the heavens in straight lines, or regular curves, or spirals, strongly suggests a wide extension of the same kind of relation. But even more extensive systematic movements have been observed or suggested by astronomers. Sir D. Gill, by an extensive research, believes that he has found indications of a rotation of the brighter fixed stars as a whole in regard to the fainter fixed stars as a whole. Mr. Maxwell Hall has also found indications of a movement of a large group of stars, including our sun, around a common centre, situated in a direction towards Epsilon Andromedæ, and at a distance of about 490 years of light-travel. These last two motions are not yet established; but they seem to prove two important facts--(_a_) that eminent astronomers believe that _some_ systematic motions must exist among the stars, or they would not devote so much labour to the search for them; and (_b_) that extensive systematic motions of some kind do exist, or even these results would not have been obtained. Mr. W.W. Campbell, of the Lick Observatory, thus remarks on the uncertainty of determinations of the sun's motions: 'The motion of the solar system is a purely relative quantity. It refers to specified groups of stars. The results for various groups may differ widely, and all be correct. It would be easy to select a group of stars with reference to which the solar motion would be reversed 180° from the values assigned above' (_Astrophysical Journal_, vol. xiii. p. 87. 1901). It must be remembered that, within a uniform cluster of stars, each moving round the common centre of gravity of the whole cluster, Kepler's laws do not prevail, the law being that the angular velocities are all identical, so that the more distant stars move faster than those nearer the centre, subject to modifications, however, due to the varying density of the cluster. But if the cluster is nearly globular, there must be stars moving round the centre in every plane, and this would lead to apparent motions in many directions as viewed by us, although those which were moving in the same plane as ourselves would, when compared with remote stars outside the cluster, appear to be all moving in the same direction and at the same rate, forming, in fact, one of those drifting systems of stars already referred to. Again, if in the process of formation of our cluster, smaller aggregations already having a rotatory motion were drawn into it, this might lead to their revolving in an opposite direction to those which were formed from the original nebula, thus increasing the diversities of apparent motion. The evidence now briefly set forth fully justifies, I submit, the remarks as to the statements of my astronomical critics at the beginning of this section. They have both given the accepted views as to direction and rate of movement of our sun without any qualification whatever, as if they were astronomical facts of the same certainty and the same degree of accuracy as the sun's distance from the earth; and they will assuredly have been so understood by the great body of non-mathematical readers. It appears, however, if the authorities I have quoted are right, that the whole calculation rests upon certain assumptions, which are certainly to some extent, and may be to a very large extent, erroneous. This is my reply to one part of their criticism. In the next place, they both assert, or imply, not only that the sun's motion is now in a straight line, but that it has been in a straight line from some enormously remote period when it first entered the stellar system on one side, and will so continue to move till it reaches the utmost bounds of that system on the other side. And this is stated by them both, not as a possibility, but as a certainty. They use such terms as 'must' and 'will be,' leaving no room for any doubt whatever. But such a result implies the abrogation of the law of gravitation, since under its action motion in a straight line in the midst of thousands or millions of suns of various sizes is an absolute impossibility; while it also implies that the sun must have been started on its course from some other system outside the Milky Way, with such a precise determination of direction as not to collide with, or even make a near approach to, any one of the suns or clusters of suns, or vast nebulous masses, during its passage through the very midst of the stellar universe. This is my reply to the main point of their criticism, and I think I am justified in saying that nothing in my whole article is so demonstrably baseless as the statements I have now examined. * * * * * Considering then the whole bearing of the evidence, I refuse to accept the unsupported dicta of those who would have us believe that our admitted position not far from the centre of the stellar universe is a mere temporary coincidence of no significance whatever; or that our sun and hosts of other similar orbs near to us have come together by an accident, and are being dispersed into surrounding space, never to meet again. Until this is proved by indisputable evidence, it seems to me far more probable that we are moving in an orbit of some kind around the centre of gravity of a vast cluster, as determined by the investigations of Kapteyn, Newcomb, and other astronomers; and, consequently, that the nearly central position we now occupy may be a permanent one. For even if our sun's orbit should have a diameter a thousand times that of Neptune, it would be but a small fraction of the diameter of the Milky Way; while so vast is the scale of our universe, that it might be even a hundred thousand times as great and still leave us deeply immersed in the solar cluster, and very much nearer to the dense central portion than to its more diffused outer regions. Here the subject may be left for the present. After having studied the evidence afforded by the essential conditions of life-development on the earth, and the numerous indications that these conditions do not exist on any of the other planets of the solar system, it may be again touched upon in a general review of the conclusions arrived at. FOOTNOTES: [4] _Nature_, October 26, 1899. [5] _The System of the Stars_, p. 385. [6] This account of Professor Kapteyn's research is taken from an article by Miss A.M. Clerke in _Knowledge_, April 1893. [7] _The Stars_, p. 256. The region here referred to is that where the Milky Way has its greatest width (though nearly as wide in the part exactly opposite), and where it may perhaps extend somewhat in our direction. Miss A.M. Clerke informs me that in April 1901 Kapteyn withdrew the conclusions arrived at in 1893, as being founded on illegitimate reasoning as to the relation of parallaxes to proper motions. But as this relation is still accepted, under certain limitations, by Professor Newcomb and other astronomers, who have arrived independently at very similar results, it seems not improbable that, after all, Professor Kapteyn's conclusions may not require very much modification. Professor Newcomb also tells us (_The Stars_, p. 214, footnote) that he has seen the latest of Professor Kapteyn's papers, down to 1901; but he does not therefore express any doubt as to his own conclusions as here referred to. [8] See _Knowledge_ and _The Fortnightly Review_ of April 1903. [9] Sir R. Ball in an article in _Good Words_ (April 1903) says that luminosity is an exceptional phenomenon in nature, and that luminous stars are but the glow-worms and fire-flies of the universe, as compared with the myriads of other animals. CHAPTER IX THE UNIFORMITY OF MATTER AND ITS LAWS THROUGHOUT THE STELLAR UNIVERSE I have shown in the second chapter of this work that none of the previous writers on the question of the habitability of the other planets have really dealt with the subject in any adequate manner, since not only do they appear to be quite unaware of the delicate balance of conditions which alone renders organic life possible on any planet, but they have altogether omitted any reference to the fact that not only must the conditions be such as to render life possible _now_, but these conditions must have persisted during the long geological epochs needed for the slow development of life from its most rudimentary forms. It will therefore be necessary to enter into some details both as to the physical and chemical essentials for a continuous development of organic life, and also into the combination of mechanical and physical conditions which are required on any planet to render such life possible. THE UNIFORMITY OF MATTER One of the most important and far-reaching of the discoveries due to the spectroscope is that of the wonderful identity of the elements and material compounds in earth and sun, stars and nebulæ, and also of the identity of the physical and chemical laws that determine the states and forms assumed by matter. More than half the total number of the known elements have been already detected in the sun, including all those which compose the bulk of the earth's solid material, with the one exception of oxygen. This is a very large proportion when we consider the very peculiar conditions which enable us to detect them. For we can only recognise an element in the sun when it exists at its surface in an incandescent state, and also above its surface in the form of a somewhat cooler gas. Many of the elements may rarely or never be brought to the surface of so vast a body, or if they do sometimes appear there, it may not be in sufficient quantity or in sufficient purity to produce any bands in the spectroscope, while the cooler gas or vapour may either not be present, or be so dispersed as not to produce sufficient absorption to render its spectral lines visible. Again, it is believed that many elements are dissociated by the intense heat of the sun, and may not be recognisable by us, or they may only exist at its surface in a compound form unknown on the earth; and in some such way those lines of the solar spectrum which remain still unrecognised may have been produced. One of these unknown lines was that of Helium, a gas found soon afterwards in the rare mineral 'Cleveite,' and since detected frequently in many stars. Some of the stars have spectra very closely resembling that of the sun. The dark lines are almost as numerous, and most of them correspond accurately with solar lines, so that we cannot doubt their having almost exactly the same chemical constitution, and being also in the same condition as regards heat and stage of development. Other stars, as we have already stated, exhibit mainly lines of hydrogen, sometimes combined with fine metallic lines. Of the spectra of the nebulæ comparatively little is known, but many are decidedly gaseous, while others show a continuous spectrum indicating a more complex constitution. But we also obtain considerable knowledge of the matter of non-terrestrial bodies by the analysis of the numerous meteorites which fall upon the earth. Most of these belong to some of the many meteoric streams which circulate round the sun, and which may be supposed to give us samples of planetary matter. But as it is now believed that many of them are produced by the debris of comets, and the orbits of some of these indicate that they have come from stellar space and have been drawn into our system by the attractive power of the larger planets, it is almost certain that the meteoric stones not infrequently bring us matter from the remoter regions of space, and probably afford us samples of the solid constituents of nebula; or the cooler stars. It is, therefore, a most suggestive fact that none of these meteorites have been found to contain a single non-terrestrial element, although no less than twenty-four elements have been found in them, and it will be of interest to give the list of these, as follows:--_Oxygen_, Hydrogen, _Chlorine_, _Sulphur_, _Phosphorus_, Carbon, Silicon, Iron, Nickel, Cobalt, Magnesium, Chromium, Manganese, Copper, Tin, _Antimony_, Aluminium, Calcium, Potassium, Sodium, _Lithium_, Titanium, _Arsenic_, and Vanadium. Seven of the above, printed in italics, have not yet been found in the sun, such as Oxygen, Chlorine, Sulphur, and Phosphorus, which form the constituents of many widespread minerals, and they supply important gaps in the series of solar and stellar elements. It may be noted that although meteorites have supplied no new elements, they have furnished examples of some new combinations of these elements forming minerals distinct from any found in our rocks. The fact of the occurrence in meteorites not only of minerals which are peculiar to them or are found on the earth, but also of structures resembling our breccias, veins, and even slicken-side surfaces, has been held to be opposed to the meteoritic theory of the origin of suns and planets, because meteorites seem to be thus proved to be the fragments of suns or worlds, not their primary constituents. But these cases are exceptional, and Mr. Sorby, who made a special study of meteorites, concluded that their materials have usually been in a state of fusion or even of vapour, as they now exist in the sun, and that they became condensed into minute globular particles, which afterwards collected into larger masses, and may have been broken up by mutual impact, and again and again become aggregated together--thus presenting features which are completely in accordance with the meteoritic theory. But, quite recently, Mr. T.C. Chamberlin has applied the theory of tidal distortion to showing how solid bodies in space, without ever coming into actual contact, must sometimes be torn apart or disrupted into numerous fragments by passing near to each other. Especially when a small body passes near a much larger one, there is a certain distance of approach (termed the Roche limit) when the increasing differential force of gravity will be sufficient to tear asunder the smaller body and cause the fragments either to circulate around it or to be dispersed in space.[10] In this way, therefore, those larger meteorites which exhibit planetary structure may have been produced. Of course they would rarely have been true planets attached to a sun, but more frequently some of the smaller dark suns, which may possess many of the physical characteristics of planets, and of which there may be myriads in the stellar spaces. On the whole, then, we have positive knowledge of the existence, in the sun, stars, and planetary and stellar spaces, of such a large proportion of the elements of our globe, and so few indications of any not forming part of it, that we are justified in the statement, that the whole stellar universe is, broadly speaking, constructed of the same series of elementary substances as those we can study upon our earth, and of which the whole realm of nature, animal, vegetable, and mineral, is composed. The evidence of this identity of substance is really far more complete than we could expect, considering the very limited means of inquiry that we possess; and we shall, therefore, not be justified in assuming that any important difference exists. When we pass from the elements of matter to the laws which govern it, we also find the clearest proofs of identity. That the fundamental law of gravitation extends to the whole physical universe is rendered almost certain by the fact that double stars move round their common centre of gravity in elliptical orbits which correspond well with both observation and calculation. That the laws of light are the same both here and in inter-planetary space is indicated by the fact that the actual measurement of the velocity of light on the earth's surface gives a result so completely identical with that prevailing to the limits of the solar system, that the measurement of the sun's distance, by means of the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites combined with the measured velocity of light, agrees almost exactly with that obtained by means of the transits of Venus, or through our nearest approach to the planets Mars or Eros. Again, the more recondite laws of light are found to be identical in sun and stars with those observed within the narrow bounds of laboratory experiments. The minute change of position of spectral lines caused by the source of light moving towards or away from us enables us to determine this kind of motion in the most distant stars, in the planets, or in the moon, and these results can be tested by the motion of the earth either in its orbit or in its rotation; and these latter tests agree with the theoretical determination of what must occur, dependent on the wave-lengths of the different dark lines of the solar spectrum determined by measurements in the laboratory. In like manner, minute changes in the widening or narrowing of spectral lines, their splitting up, their increase or decrease in number, and their arrangement so as to form flutings, can all be interpreted by experiments in the laboratory, showing that such phenomena are due to alterations of temperature, of pressure, or of the magnetic field, thus proving that the very same physical and chemical laws act in the same way here and in the remotest depths of space. These various discoveries give us the certain conviction that the whole material universe is essentially one, both as regards the action of physical and chemical laws, and also in its mechanical relations of form and structure. It consists throughout of the very same elements with which we are so familiar on our earth; the same ether whose vibrations bring us light and heat, electricity and magnetism, and a whole host of other mysterious and as yet imperfectly known forces; gravitation acts throughout its vast extent; and in whatever direction and by whatever means we obtain a knowledge of the stellar universe, we find the same mechanical, physical, and chemical laws prevailing as upon our earth, so that we have in some cases been actually enabled to reproduce in our laboratories phenomena with which we had first become acquainted in the sun or among the stars. We may therefore feel it to be an almost certain conclusion that--the elements being the same, the laws which act upon, and combine, and modify those elements being the same--organised living beings wherever they may exist in this universe must be, fundamentally, and in essential nature, the same also. The outward forms of life, if they exist elsewhere, may vary almost infinitely, as they do vary on the earth; but, throughout all this variety of form--from fungus or moss to rose-bush, palm or oak; from mollusc, worm, or butterfly to humming-bird, elephant, or man--the biologist recognises a fundamental unity of substance and of structure, dependent on the absolute requirements of the growing, moving, developing, living organism, built up of the same elements, combined in the same proportions, and subject to the same laws. We do not say that organic life _could_ not exist under altogether diverse conditions from those which we know or can conceive, conditions which may prevail in other universes constructed quite differently from ours, where other substances replace the matter and ether of our universe, and where other laws prevail. But, _within_ the universe we know, there is not the slightest reason to suppose organic life to be possible, except under the same general conditions and laws which prevail here. We will, therefore, now proceed to describe, very generally, what are the conditions essential to the existence and the continuous development of vegetable and animal life. FOOTNOTE: [10] _The Astrophysical Journal_, vol. xiv., July 1901, p. 17. CHAPTER X THE ESSENTIAL CHARACTERS OF THE LIVING ORGANISM Before trying to comprehend the physical conditions on any planet which are essential for the development and maintenance of a varied and complex system of organic life comparable to that of our earth, we must obtain some knowledge of what life is, and of the fundamental nature and properties of the living organism. Physiologists and philosophers have made many attempts to define 'life,' but in most cases in aiming at absolute generality they have been vague and uninstructive. Thus De Blainville defined it as 'The twofold internal movement of composition and decomposition, at once general and continuous'; while Herbert Spencer's latest definition was 'Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations.' But neither of these is sufficiently precise, explanatory, or distinctive, and they might almost be applied to the changes occurring in a sun or planet, or to the elevation and gradual formation of a continent. One of the oldest definitions, that of Aristotle, seems to come nearer the mark: 'Life is the assemblage of the operations of nutrition, growth, and destruction.' But these definitions of 'life' are unsatisfactory, because they apply to an abstract idea rather than to the actual living organism. The marvel and mystery of life, as we know it, resides in the body which manifests it, and this living body the definitions ignore. The essential points in the living body, as seen in its higher developments, are, first, that it consists throughout of highly complex but very unstable forms of matter, every particle of which is in a continual state of growth or decay; that it absorbs or appropriates dead matter from without; takes this matter into the interior of its body; acts upon it mechanically and chemically, rejecting what is useless or hurtful; and so transforming the remainder as to renew every atom of its own structure internal and external, at the same time throwing off, particle by particle, all the worn-out or dead portions of its own substance. Secondly, in order to be able to do all this, its whole body is permeated throughout by branching vessels or porous tissues, by which liquids and gases can reach every part and carry on the various processes of nutrition and excretion above referred to. As Professor Burdon Sanderson well puts it: 'The most distinctive peculiarity of living matter as compared with non-living is, that it is ever changing while ever the same.' And these changes are the more remarkable because they are accompanied, and even produced, by a very large amount of mechanical work--in animals by means of their normal activities in search of food, in assimilating that food, in continually renewing and building up their whole organism, and in many other ways; in plants by building up their structure, which often involves raising tons of material high into the air, as in forest trees. As a recent writer puts it: 'The most prominent, and perhaps the most fundamental, phenomenon of life is what may be described as the _Energy Traffic_ or the function of _trading in energy_. The chief physical function of living matter seems to consist in absorbing energy, storing it in a higher potential state, and afterwards partially expending it in the kinetic or active form.'[11] Thirdly--and perhaps most marvellous of all--all living organisms have the power of reproduction or increase, in the lowest forms by a process of self-division or 'fission,' as it is termed, in the higher by means of reproductive cells, which, though in their earliest stage quite indistinguishable physically or chemically in very different species, yet possess the mysterious power of developing a perfect organism, identical with its parents in all its parts, shapes, and organs, and so wonderfully resembling them, that the minutest distinctive details of size, form, and colour, in hair or feathers, in teeth or claws, in scales, spines, or crests, are reproduced with very close accuracy, though often involving metamorphic changes during growth of so strange a nature that, if they were not familiar to us but were narrated as occurring only in some distant and almost inaccessible region, would be treated as travellers' tales, incredible and impossible as those of Sindbad the Sailor. In order that the substance of living bodies should be able to undergo these constant changes while preserving the same form and structure in minute details--that they should be, as it were, in a constant state of flux while remaining sensibly unchanged, it is necessary that the molecules of which they are built up should be so combined as to be easily separated and as easily united--be, as it is termed, _labile_ or flowing; and this is brought about by their chemical composition, which, while consisting of few elements, is yet highly complex in structure, a large number of chemical atoms being combined in an endless variety of ways. The physical basis of life, as Huxley termed it, is protoplasm, a substance which consists essentially of only four common elements, the three gases, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen, with the non-metallic solid, carbon; hence all the special products of plants and animals are termed carbon-compounds, and their study constitutes one of the most extensive and intricate branches of modern chemistry. Their complexity is indicated by the fact that the molecule of sugar contains 45, and that of stearine no less than 173, constituent atoms. The chemical compounds of carbon are far more numerous than those of all the other chemical elements combined; and it is this wonderful variety and the complexity of its possible combinations which explain the fact, that all the various animal tissues--skin, horn, hair, nails, teeth, muscle, nerve, etc., consist of the same four elements (with occasionally minute quantities of sulphur, phosphorus, lime, or silica, in some of them), as proved by the marvellous fact that these tissues are all produced as well by the grass-eating sheep or ox as by the fish or flesh-eating seal or tiger. And the marvel is still further increased when we consider that the innumerable diverse substances produced by plants and animals are all formed out of the same three or four elements. Such are the endless variety of organic acids, from prussic acid to those of the various fruits; the many kinds of sugars, gums, and starches; the number of different kinds of oil, wax, etc.; the variety of essential oils which are mostly forms of turpentines, with such substances as camphor, resins, caoutchouc, and gutta-percha; and the extensive series of vegetable alkaloids, such as nicotine from tobacco, morphine from opium, strychnine, curarine, and other poisons; quinine, belladonna, and similar medicinal alkaloids; together with the essential principles of our refreshing drinks, tea, coffee, and cocoa, and others too numerous to be named here--all alike consisting solely of the four common elements from which almost our whole organism is built up. If this were not indisputably proved, it would scarcely be credited. Professor F.J. Allen considers that the most important element in protoplasm, and that which confers upon it its most essential properties in the living organism--its extreme mobility and transposibility--is nitrogen. This element, though inert in itself, readily enters into compounds when energy is supplied to it, the most striking illustration of which is the formation of ammonia, a compound of nitrogen and hydrogen, produced by electric discharges through the atmosphere. Ammonia, and certain oxides of nitrogen produced in the atmosphere in the same way, are the chief sources of the nitrogen assimilated by plants, and through them by animals; for although plants are continually in contact with the free nitrogen of the atmosphere, they are unable to absorb it. By their leaves they absorb oxygen and carbon-dioxide to build up their woody tissues, while by their roots they absorb water in which ammonia and oxides of nitrogen are dissolved, and from these they produce the protoplasm which builds up the whole substance of the animal world. The energy required to produce these nitrogen-compounds is given up by them when undergoing further changes, and thus the production of ammonia by electricity in the atmosphere, and its being carried by rain into the soil, constitute the first steps in that long series of operations which culminates in the production of the higher forms of life. But the remarkable transformations and combinations continually going on in every living body, which are, in fact, the essential conditions of its life, are themselves dependent on certain physical conditions which must be always present. Professor Allen remarks: 'The sensitiveness of nitrogen, its proneness to change its state of combination and energy, appear to depend on certain conditions of temperature, pressure, etc., which exist at the surface of this earth. Most vital phenomena occur between the temperature of freezing water and 104° F. If the general temperature of the earth's surface rose or fell 72° F. (a small amount relatively), the whole course of life would be changed, even perchance to extinction.' Another important, and even more essential fact, in connection with life, is the existence in the atmosphere of a small but nearly constant proportion of carbonic acid gas, this being the source from which the whole of the carbon in the vegetable and animal kingdoms is primarily derived. The leaves of plants absorb carbonic acid gas from the atmosphere, and the peculiar substance, chlorophyll, from which they derive their green colour, has the power, under the influence of sunlight, to decompose it, using the carbon to build up its own structure and giving out the oxygen. In the laboratory the carbon can only be separated from the oxygen by the application of heat, under which certain metals burn by combining with the oxygen, thus setting free the carbon. Chlorophyll has a highly complex chemical structure very imperfectly known, but it is said to be only produced when there is iron in the soil. The leaves of plants, so often looked upon as mere ornamental appendages, are among the most marvellous structures in living organisms, since in decomposing carbonic acid at ordinary temperatures they do what no other agency in nature can perform. In doing this they utilise a special group of ether-waves which alone appear to have this power. The complexity of the processes going on in leaves is well indicated in the following quotation:-- 'We have seen how green leaves are supplied with gases, water, and dissolved salts, and how they can trap special ether-waves. The active energy of these waves is used to transmute the simple inorganic compounds into complex organic ones, which in the process of respiration are reduced to simpler substances again, and the potential energy transformed into kinetic. These metabolic changes take place in living cells full of intense activities. Currents course through the protoplasm and cell-sap in every direction, and between the cells which are also united by strands of protoplasm. The gases used and given off in respiration and assimilation are floated in and out, and each protoplasm particle burned or unburned is the centre of an area of disturbance. Pure protoplasm is influenced equally by all rays: that associated with chlorophyll is affected by certain red and violet rays in particular. These, especially the red ones, bring about the dissociation of the elements of the carbonic acid, the assimilation of the carbon, and the excretion of the oxygen.'[12] It is this vigorous life-activity ever at work in the leaves, the roots, and the sap-cells, that builds up the plant, in all its wondrous beauty of bud and foliage, flower and fruit; and at the same time produces, either as useful or waste-products, all that wealth of odours and flavours, of colours and textures, of fibres and varied woods, of roots and tubers, of gums and oils and resins innumerable, that, taken altogether, render the world of vegetable life perhaps more varied, more beautiful, more enjoyable, more indispensable to our higher nature than even that of animals. But there is really no comparison between them. We _could_ have plants without animals; we could _not_ have animals without plants. And all this marvel and mystery of vegetable life, a mystery which we rarely ponder over because its effects are so familiar, is usually held to be sufficiently explained by the statement that it is all due to the special properties of protoplasm. Well might Huxley say, that protoplasm is not only a substance but a structure or mechanism, a mechanism kept at work by solar heat and light, and capable of producing a thousand times more varied and marvellous results than all the human mechanism ever invented. But besides absorbing carbonic acid from the atmosphere, separating and utilising the carbon and giving out the oxygen, plants as well as animals continually absorb oxygen from the atmosphere, and this is so universally the case that oxygen is said to be the food of protoplasm, without which it cannot continue to live; and it is the peculiar but quite invisible structure of the protoplasm which enables it to do this, and also in plants to absorb an enormous amount of water as well. But although protoplasm is so complex chemically as to defy exact analysis, being an elaborate structure of atoms built up into a molecule in which each atom must occupy its true place (like every carved stone in a Gothic cathedral), yet it is, as it were, only the starting-point or material out of which the infinitely varied structures of living bodies are formed. The extreme mobility and changeability of the structure of these molecules enables the protoplasm to be continually modified both in constitution and form, and, by the substitution or addition of other elements, to serve special purposes. Thus when sulphur in small quantities is absorbed and built into the molecular structure, proteids are formed. These are most abundant in animal structures, and give the nourishing properties to meat, cheese, eggs, and other animal foods; but they are also found in the vegetable kingdom, especially in nuts and seeds such as grain, peas, etc. These are generally known as nitrogenous foods, and are very nutritious, but not so easily digestible as meat. Proteids exist in very varied forms and often contain phosphorus as well as sulphur, but their main characteristic is the large proportion of nitrogen they contain, while many other animal and vegetable products, as most roots, tubers, and grains, and even fats and oils, are mainly composed of starch and sugar. In its chemical and physiological aspects protein is thus described by Professor W.D. Haliburton:--'Proteids are produced only in the living laboratory of animals and plants; proteid matter is the all-important material present in protoplasm. This molecule is the most complex that is known; it always contains five and often six or even seven elements. The task of thoroughly understanding its composition is necessarily vast, and advance slow. But, little by little, the puzzle is being solved, and this final conquest of organic chemistry, when it does arrive, will furnish physiologists with new light on many of the dark places of physiological science.'[13] What makes protoplasm and its modifications still more marvellous is the power it possesses of absorbing and moulding a number of other elements in various parts of living organisms for special uses. Such are silica in the stems of the grass family, lime and magnesia in the bones of animals, iron in blood, and many others. Besides the four elements constituting protoplasm, most animals and plants contain also in some parts of their structure sulphur, phosphorus, chlorine, silicon, sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, and iron; while, less frequently, fluorine, iodine, bromine, lithium, copper, manganese, and aluminium are also found in special organs or structures; and the molecules of all these are carried by the protoplasmic fluids to the places where they are required and built into the living structure, with the same precision and for similar ends as brick and stone, iron, slate, wood, and glass are each utilised in their proper places in any large building.[14] The organism, however, is not built, but grows. Every organ, every fibre, cell, or tissue is formed from diverse materials, which are first decomposed into their elementary molecules, transformed by the protoplasm or by special solvents formed from it, carried to the places where they are needed by the vital fluids, and there built up atom by atom or molecule by molecule into the special structures of which they are to form a part. But even this marvel of growth and repair of every individual organism is far surpassed by the greater marvel of reproduction. Every living thing of the higher orders arises from a single microscopic cell, when fertilised, as it is termed, by the absorption of another microscopic cell derived from a different individual. These cells are often, even under the highest powers of the microscope, hardly distinguishable from other cells which occur in all animals and plants and of which their structure is built up; yet these special cells begin to grow in a totally different manner, and instead of forming one particular part of the organism, develop inevitably into a complete living thing with all the organs, powers, and peculiarities of its parents, so as to be recognisably of the same species. If the simple growth of the fully formed organism is a mystery, what of this growth of thousands of complex organisms each with all its special peculiarities, yet all arising from minute germs or cells the diverse natures of which are wholly indistinguishable by the highest powers of the microscope? This, too, is said to be the work of protoplasm under the influence of heat and moisture, and modern physiologists hope some day to learn 'how it is done.' It may be well here to give the views of a modern writer on this point. Referring to a difficulty which had been stated by Clerk-Maxwell twenty-five years ago, that there was not room in the reproductive cell for the millions of molecules needed to serve as the units of growth for all the different structures in the body of the higher animals, Professor M'Kendrick says:--'But to-day, it is reasonable from existing data to suppose that the germinal vesicle might contain a million of millions of organic molecules. Complex arrangements of these molecules suited for the development of all the parts of a highly complicated organism, might satisfy all the demands of the theory of heredity. Doubtless the germ was a material system through and through. The conception of the physicist was, that molecules were in various states of movement; and the thinkers were striving toward a kinetic theory of molecules and of atoms of solid matter, which might be as fruitful as the kinetic theory of gases. There were motions atomic and molecular. It was conceivable that the peculiarities of vital action might be determined by the kind of motion that took place in the molecules of what we call living matter. It might be different in kind from some of the motions dealt with by physicists. Life is continually being created from non-living material--such, at least, is the existing view of growth by the assimilation of food. The creation of living matter out of non-living may be the transmission to the dead matter of molecular motions which are _sui generis_ in form.' This is the modern physiological view of 'how it may be done,' and it seems hardly more intelligible than the very old theory of the origin of stone axes, given by Adrianus Tollius in 1649, and quoted by Mr. E.B. Tylor, who says:--'He gives drawings of some ordinary stone axes and hammers and tells how naturalists say that they are generated in the sky by a fulgureous exhalation conglobed in a cloud by the circumfixed humour, and are, as it were, baked hard by intense heat, and the weapon becomes pointed by the damp mixed with it flying from the dry part, and leaving the other end denser, but the exhalations press it so hard that it breaks through the cloud and makes thunder and lightning. But--he says--if this is really the way in which they are generated, it is odd they are not round, and that they have holes through them. It is hardly to be believed, he thinks.'[15] And so, when the physiologists, determined to avoid the assumption of anything beyond matter and motion in the germ, impute the whole development and growth of the elephant or of man from minute cells internally alike, by means of 'kinds of motion' and the 'transmission of motions which are _sui generis_ in form,' many of us will be inclined to say with the old author--'It is hardly to be believed, I think.' This brief statement of the conclusions arrived at by chemists and physiologists as to the composition and structure of organised living things has been thought advisable, because the non-scientific reader has often no conception of the incomparable marvel and mystery of the life-processes he has always seen going on, silently and almost unnoticed, in the world around him. And this is still more the case now that two-thirds of our population are crowded into cities where, removed from all the occupations, the charms, and the interests of country life, they are driven to seek occupation and excitement in the theatre, the music-hall, or the tavern. How little do these know what they lose by being thus shut out from all quiet intercourse with nature; its soothing sights and sounds; its exquisite beauties of form and colour; its endless mysteries of birth, and life, and death. Most people give scientific men credit for much greater knowledge than they possess in these matters; and many educated readers will, I feel sure, be surprised to find that even such apparently simple phenomena as the rise of the sap in trees are not yet completely explained. As to the deeper problems of life, and growth, and reproduction, though our physiologists have learned an infinite amount of curious or instructive facts, they can give us no intelligible explanation of them. The endless complexities and confusing amount of detail in all treatises on the physiology of animals and plants are such, that the average reader is overwhelmed with the mass of knowledge presented to him, and concludes that after such elaborate researches everything must be known, and that the almost universal protests against the need of any causes but the mechanical, physical, and chemical laws and forces are well founded. I have, therefore, thought it advisable to present a kind of bird's-eye view of the subject, and to show, in the words of the greatest living authorities on these matters, both how complex are the phenomena and how far our teachers are from being able to give us any adequate explanation of them. I venture to hope that the very brief sketch of the subject I have been able to give will enable my readers to form some faint general conception of the infinite complexity of life and the various problems connected with it; and that they will thus be the better enabled to appreciate the extreme delicacy of those adjustments, those forces, and those complex conditions of the environment, that alone render life, and above all the grand age-long panorama of the development of life, in any way possible. It is to these conditions, as they prevail in the world around us, that we will now direct our attention. FOOTNOTES: [11] Professor F.J. Allen: _What is Life?_ [12] Art. 'Vegetable Physiology' in _Chambers's Encyclopædia_. [13] Address to the British Association, 1902, Section Physiology. [14] This enumeration of the elements that enter into the structure of plants and animals is taken from Professor F.J. Allen's paper already referred to. [15] _Early History of Mankind_, 2nd ed. p. 227. CHAPTER XI THE PHYSICAL CONDITIONS ESSENTIAL FOR ORGANIC LIFE The physical conditions on the surface of our earth which appear to be necessary for the development and maintenance of living organisms may be dealt with under the following headings:-- 1. Regularity of heat-supply, resulting in a limited range of temperature. 2. A sufficient amount of solar light and heat. 3. Water in great abundance, and universally distributed. 4. An atmosphere of sufficient density, and consisting of the gases which are essential for vegetable and animal life. These are Oxygen, Carbonic-acid gas, Aqueous vapour, Nitrogen, and Ammonia. These must all be present in suitable proportions. 5. Alternations of day and night. SMALL RANGE OF TEMPERATURE REQUIRED FOR GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT Vital phenomena for the most part occur between the temperatures of freezing water and 104° Fahr., and this is supposed to be due mainly to the properties of nitrogen and its compounds, which between these temperatures only can maintain those peculiarities which are essential to life--extreme sensitiveness and lability; facility of change as regards chemical combination and energy; and other properties which alone render nutrition, growth, and continual repair possible. A very small increase or decrease of temperature beyond these limits, if continued for any considerable time, would certainly destroy most existing forms of life, and would not improbably render any further development of life impossible except in some of its lowest forms. As one example of the direct effects of increased temperature, we may adduce the coagulation of albumen. This substance is one of the proteids, and plays an important part in the vital phenomena of both plants and animals, and its fluidity and power of easy combination and change of form are lost by any degree of coagulation which takes place at about 160° Fahr. The extreme importance to all the higher organisms of a moderate temperature is strikingly shown by the complex and successful arrangements for maintaining a uniform degree of heat in the interior of the body. The normal blood-heat in a man is 98° Fahr., and this is constantly maintained within one or two degrees though the external temperature may be more than fifty degrees below the freezing-point. High temperatures upon the earth's surface do not range so far from the mean as do the low. In the greater part of the tropics the air-temperature seldom reaches 96° Fahr., though in arid districts and deserts, which occur chiefly along the margins of the northern and southern tropics, it not unfrequently surpasses 110° Fahr., and even occasionally rises to 115° or 120° in Australia and Central India. Yet with suitable food and moderate care the blood-temperature of a healthy man would not rise or fall more than one or at most two degrees. The great importance of this uniformity of temperature in all the vital organs is distinctly shown by the fact that when, during fevers, the temperature of the patient rises six degrees above the normal amount, his condition is critical, while an increase of seven or eight degrees is an almost certain indication of a fatal result. Even in the vegetable kingdom seeds will not germinate under a temperature of four or five degrees above the freezing-point. Now this extreme sensibility to variations of internal temperature is quite intelligible when we consider the complexity and instability of protoplasm, and of all the proteids in the living organism, and how important it is that the processes of nutrition and growth, involving constant motion of fluids and incessant molecular decompositions and recombinations, should be effected with the greatest regularity. And though a few of the higher animals, including man, are so perfectly organised that they can adapt or protect themselves so as to be able to live under very extreme conditions as regards temperature, yet this is not the case with the great majority, or with the lower types, as evidenced by the almost complete absence of reptiles from the arctic regions. It must also be remembered that extreme cold and extreme heat are nowhere perpetual. There is always some diversity of seasons, and there is no land animal which passes its whole life where the temperature never rises above the freezing point. THE NECESSITY OF SOLAR LIGHT Whether the higher animals and man could have been developed upon the earth without solar light, even if all the other essential conditions were present, is doubtful. That, however, is not the point I am at present considering, but one that is much more fundamental. Without plant life land animals at all events could never have come into existence, because they have not the power of making protoplasm out of inorganic matter. The plant alone can take the carbon out of the small proportion of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, and with it, and the other necessary elements, as already described, build up those wonderful carbon compounds which are the very foundation of animal life. But it does this solely by the agency of solar light, and even uses a special portion of that light. Not only, therefore, is a sun needed to give light and heat, but it is quite possible that _any_ sun would not answer the purpose. A sun is required whose light possesses those special rays which are effective for this operation, and as we know that the stars differ greatly in their spectra, and therefore in the nature of their light, all might not be able to effect this great transformation, which is one of the very first steps in rendering animal life possible on our earth, and therefore probably on all earths. WATER A FIRST ESSENTIAL OF ORGANIC LIFE It is hardly necessary to point out the absolute necessity of water, since it actually constitutes a very large proportion of the material of every living organism, and about three-fourths of our own bodies. Water, therefore, must be present everywhere, in one form or another, on any globe where life is possible. Neither animal nor plant can exist without it. It must also be present in such quantity and so distributed as to be constantly available on every part of a globe where life is to be maintained; and it is equally necessary that it should have persisted in equal profusion throughout those enormous geological epochs during which life has been developing. We shall see later on how very special are the conditions that have secured this continuous distribution of water on our earth, and we shall also learn that this large amount of water, its wide distribution, and its arrangement with regard to the land-surface, is an essential factor in producing that limited range of temperature which, as we have seen, is a primary condition for the development and maintenance of life. THE ATMOSPHERE MUST BE OF SUFFICIENT DENSITY AND COMPOSED OF SUITABLE GASES The atmosphere of any planet on which life can be developed must have several qualities which are unconnected with each other, and the coincidence of which may be a rare phenomenon in the universe. The first of these is a sufficient density, which is required for two purposes--as a storer of heat, and in order to supply the oxygen, carbonic acid, and aqueous vapour in sufficient quantities for the requirements of vegetable and animal life. As a reservoir of heat and a regulator of temperature, a rather dense atmosphere is a first necessity, in co-operation with the large quantity and wide distribution of water referred to in the last section. The very different character of our south-west from our north-east winds is a good illustration of its power of distributing heat and moisture. This it does owing to the peculiar property it possesses of allowing the sun's rays to pass freely through it to the earth which it warms, but acting like a blanket in preventing the rapid escape of the non-luminous heat so produced. But the heat stored up during the day is given out at night, and thus secures a uniformity of temperature which would not otherwise exist. This effect is strikingly seen at high altitudes, where the temperature becomes lower and lower, till at a not very great elevation, even in the tropics, snow lies on the ground all the year round. This is almost wholly due to the rarity of the air, which, on that account, has not so much capacity for heat. It also allows the heat it acquires to radiate more freely than denser air, so that the nights are much colder. At about 18,000 feet high our atmosphere is exactly half its density at the sea-level. This is considerably higher than the usual snow-line, even under the equator, whence it follows that if our atmosphere was only half its present density it would render the earth unsuitable for the higher forms of animal life. It is not easy to say exactly what would be the result as regards climate; but it seems likely that, except perhaps in limited areas in the tropics, where conditions were very favourable, the whole land-surface would become buried in snow and ice. This appears inevitable, because evaporation from the oceans by direct sun-heat would be more rapid than now; but as the vapour rose in the rare atmosphere it would rapidly become frozen, and snow would fall almost perpetually, although it might not lie permanently on the ground in the equatorial lowlands. It appears certain, therefore, that with half our present bulk of atmosphere life would be hardly possible on the earth on account of lowered temperature alone. And as there would certainly be an added difficulty in the needful supply of oxygen to animals and carbonic acid to plants, it seems highly probable that a reduction of density of even one-fourth might be sufficient to render a large portion of the globe a snow and ice-clad waste, and the remainder liable to such extremes of climate that only low forms of life could have arisen and been permanently maintained. THE GASES OF THE ATMOSPHERE Coming now to consider the constituent gases of the atmosphere, there is reason to believe that they form a mixture as nicely balanced in regard to animal and vegetable life as are the density and the temperature. At a first view of the subject we might conclude that oxygen is the one great essential for animal life, and that all else is of little importance. But further consideration shows us that nitrogen, although merely a diluent of the oxygen as regards the respiration of animals, is of the first importance to plants, which obtain it from the ammonia formed in the atmosphere and carried down into the soil by the rain. Although there is only one part of ammonia to a million of air, yet upon this minute proportion the very existence of the animal world depends, because neither animals nor plants can assimilate the free nitrogen of the air into their tissues. Another fundamentally important gas in the atmosphere is carbonic acid, which forms about four parts in ten thousand parts of air, and, as already stated, is the source from which plants build up the great bulk of their tissues, as well as those protoplasms and proteids so absolutely necessary as food for animals. An important fact to notice here is, that carbonic acid, so essential to plants, and to animals through plants, is yet a poison to animals. When present in much more than the normal quantity, as it often is in cities and in badly ventilated buildings, it becomes highly prejudicial to health; but this is believed to be partly due to the various corporeal emanations and other impurities associated with it. Pure carbonic acid gas to the amount of even one per cent. in otherwise pure air can, it is said, be breathed for a time without bad effects, but anything more than this proportion will soon produce suffocation. It is probable, therefore, that a very much smaller proportion than one per cent., if constantly present, would be dangerous to life; though no doubt, if this had always been the proportion, life might have been developed in adaptation to it. Considering, however, that this poisonous gas is largely given out by the higher animals as a product of respiration, it would evidently be dangerous to the permanence of life if the quantity forming a constant constituent of the atmosphere were much greater than it is. AQUEOUS VAPOUR IN THE ATMOSPHERE This water-gas, although it occurs in the atmosphere in largely varying quantities, is yet, in two distinct ways, essential to organic life. It prevents the too rapid loss of moisture from the leaves of plants when exposed to the sun, and it is also absorbed by the upper surface of the leaf and by the young shoots, which thus obtain both water and minute quantities of ammonia when the supply by the roots is insufficient. But it is of even more vital importance in supplying the hydrogen which, when united with the nitrogen of the atmosphere by electrical discharges, produces the ammonia, which is the main source of all the proteids of the plant, which proteids are the very foundation of animal life. From this brief statement of the purposes served by the various gases forming our atmosphere, we see that they are to some extent antagonistic, and that any considerable increase of one or the other would lead to results that might be injurious either directly or in their ultimate results. And as the elements which constitute the bulk of all living matter possess properties which render them alone suitable for the purpose, we may conclude that the proportions in which they exist in our atmosphere cannot be very widely departed from wherever organic forms are developed. THE ALTERNATION OF DAY AND NIGHT Although it is difficult to decide positively whether alternations of light and darkness at short intervals are absolutely essential for the development of the various higher forms of life, or whether a world in which light was constant might do as well, yet on the whole it seems probable that day and night are really important factors. All nature is full of rhythmic movements of infinitely varied kinds, degrees, and durations. All the motions and functions of living things are periodic; growth and repair, assimilation and waste, go on alternately. All our organs are subject to fatigue and require rest. All kinds of stimulus must be of short duration or injurious results follow. Hence the advantage of darkness, when the stimuli of light and heat are partially removed, and we welcome 'tired nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep'--giving rest to all the senses and faculties of body and mind, and endowing us with renewed vigour for another period of activity and enjoyment of life. Plants as well as animals are invigorated by this nightly repose; and all alike benefit by these longer periods of greater and less amounts of work caused by summer and winter, dry and wet seasons. It is a suggestive fact, that where the influence of heat and light is greatest--within the tropics--the days and nights are of equal length, giving equal periods of activity and rest. But in cold and Arctic regions where, during the short summer, light is nearly perpetual, and all the functions of life, in vegetation especially, go on with extreme rapidity, this is followed by the long rest of winter, with its short days and greatly lengthened periods of darkness. Of course, all this is rather suggestion than proof. It is possible that in a world of perpetual day or in one of perpetual night, life _might_ have been developed. But on the other hand, considering the great variety of physical conditions which are seen to be necessary for the development and preservation of life in its endless varieties, any prejudicial influences, however slight, might turn the scale, and prevent that harmonious and continuous evolution which we know _must_ have occurred. So far I have only considered the question of day and night as regards the presence or absence of light. But it is probably far more important in its heat aspect; and here its period becomes of great, perhaps vital, importance. With its present duration of twelve hours day and twelve night on the average, there is not time, even between the tropics, for the earth to become so excessively heated as to be inimical to life; while a considerable portion of the heat, stored up in the soil, the water, and the atmosphere, is given out at night, and thus prevents a too sudden and injurious contrast of heat and cold. If the day and night were each very much longer--say 50 or 100 hours--it is quite certain that, during a day of that duration, the heat would become so great as to be inimical, perhaps prohibitive, to most forms of life; while the absence of all sun-heat for an equally long period would result in a temperature far below the freezing point of water. It is doubtful whether any high forms of animal life could have arisen under such great and continual contrasts of temperature. We will now proceed to point out the special features which, in our earth, have combined to bring about and to maintain the various and complex conditions we have seen to be essential for life as it exists around us. CHAPTER XII THE EARTH IN ITS RELATION TO THE DEVELOPMENT AND MAINTENANCE OF LIFE The first circumstance to be considered in relation to the habitability of a planet is its distance from the sun. We know that the heating power of the sun upon our earth is ample for the development of life in an almost infinite variety of forms; and we have a large amount of evidence to show that, were it not for the equalising power of air and water, distributed as they are with us, the heat received from the sun would be sometimes too great and sometimes too little. In some parts of Africa, Australia, and India, the sandy soil becomes so hot that an egg can be cooked by placing it just below the surface. On the other hand, at an elevation of about 12,000 feet in lat. 40° it freezes every night, and throughout the day in all places sheltered from the sun. Now, both these temperatures are adverse to life, and if either of them persisted over a considerable portion of the earth, the development of life would have been impossible. But the heat derived from the sun is inversely as the square of the distance, so that at half the distance we should have four times as much heat, and at twice the distance only one-fourth of the heat. Even at two-thirds of the distance we should receive more than twice as much heat; and, considering the facts as to the extreme sensitiveness of protoplasm and the coagulation of albumen, it seems certain that we are situated in what has been termed the temperate zone of the solar system, and that we could not be removed far from our present position without endangering a considerable portion of the life now existing upon the earth, and in all probability rendering the actual development of life, through all its phases and gradations, impossible. THE OBLIQUITY OF THE ECLIPTIC The effect of the obliquity of the earth's equator to its path round the sun, upon which depend our varying seasons and the inequality of day and night throughout all the temperate zones, is very generally known. But it is not usually considered that this obliquity is of any great importance as regards the suitability of the earth for the development and maintenance of life; and it seems to have been passed over as an accident hardly worth notice, because almost any other obliquity or none at all would have been equally advantageous. But if we consider what the direction of the earth's axis might possibly have been, we shall find that it is really a matter of great importance from our present point of view. Let us suppose, first, that the earth's axis was, like that of Uranus, almost exactly in the plane of its orbit or directed towards the sun. There can be little doubt that such a position would have rendered our world unfitted for the development of life. For the result would be the most tremendous contrasts of the seasons; at mid-winter, on one half the globe, arctic night and more than arctic cold would prevail; while on the other half there would be a midsummer of continuous day with a vertical sun and such an amount of heat as nowhere exists with us. At the two equinoxes the whole globe would enjoy equal day and night, all our present tropics and part of the sub-tropical zone having the sun at noon so near to the zenith as to have the essential of a tropical climate. But the change to about a month of constant sunshine or a month of continuous night would be so rapid, that it seems almost impossible that either vegetable or animal life would ever have developed under such terrible conditions. The other extreme direction of the earth's axis, exactly at right angles to the plane of the orbit, would be much more favourable, but would still have its disadvantages. The whole surface from equator to poles would enjoy equal day and night, and every part would receive the same amount of sun-heat all the year round, so that there would be no change of seasons; but the heat received would vary with the latitude. In our latitude the sun's altitude at noon all the year would be less than 40°, the same as now occurs at the equinoxes, and we might therefore have a perpetual spring as regards temperature. But the constancy of the heat in the equatorial and tropical regions and of cold towards the poles would lead to a more constant and more rapid circulation of air, and we should probably experience such continuous north-westerly winds as to render our climate always cold and probably very damp. Near the poles the sun would always be on, or close to, the horizon, and would give so little heat that the sea might be perpetually frozen and the land deeply snow-buried; and these conditions would probably extend into the temperate zone, and possibly so far south as to render life impossible in our latitudes, since whatever results arose would be due to permanent causes, and we know how powerful are snow and ice to extend their sway over adjacent areas if not counteracted by summer heat or warm moist winds. On the whole, therefore, it seems probable that this position of the earth's axis would result in a much smaller portion of its surface being capable of supporting a luxuriant and varied vegetable and animal life than is now the case; while the extreme uniformity of conditions everywhere present might be so antagonistic to the great law of rhythm that seems to pervade the universe, and be in other ways so unfavourable, that life-development would probably have taken quite a different course from that which it has taken. It appears almost certain, therefore, that some intermediate position of the axis would be the most favourable; and that which actually exists seems to combine the advantage of change of seasons with good climatical conditions over the largest possible area. We know that during the greater part of the epoch of life-development this area was much greater than at present, since a luxuriant vegetation of deciduous and evergreen trees and shrubs extended up to and within the Arctic Circle, leading to the formation of coal-beds both in palæozoic and tertiary times; the extremely favourable conditions for organic life which then prevailed over so large a portion of the globe's surface, and which persisted down to a comparatively recent epoch, lead to the conclusion that no more favourable degree of obliquity was possible than that which we actually possess. A short account of the evidence on this interesting subject will now be given. PERSISTENCE OF MILD CLIMATES THROUGH GEOLOGIC TIME The whole of the geological evidence goes to show that in remote ages the climate of the earth was generally more uniform, though perhaps not warmer, than it is now, and this can be best explained by a slightly different distribution of sea and land, which allowed the warm waters of the tropical oceans to penetrate into various parts of the continents (which were then more broken up than they are now), and also to extend more freely into the Arctic regions. So soon as we go back into the tertiary period, we find indications of a warmer climate in the north temperate zone; and when we reach the middle of that period, we find abundant indications, both in plant and animal remains, of mild climates near to the Arctic Circle, or actually within it. On the west coast of Greenland, in 70° N. lat., there are found abundance of fossil plants very beautifully preserved, among which are many different species of oaks, beeches, poplars, plane-trees, vines, walnuts, plums, chestnuts, sequoias, and numerous shrubs--137 species in all, indicating a vegetation such as now grows in the north temperate parts of America and Eastern Asia. And even further north, in Spitzbergen, in N. lat. 78° and 79°, a somewhat similar flora is found, not quite so varied, but with oaks, poplars, birches, planes, limes, hazels, pines, and many aquatic plants such as may now be found in West Norway and in Alaska, nearly twenty degrees further south. Still more remote, in the Cretaceous period, fossil plants have been found in Greenland, consisting of ferns, cycads, conifers, and such trees and shrubs as poplars, sassafras, andromedas, magnolias, myrtles, and many others, similar in character and often identical in species with fossils of the same period found in Central Europe and the United States, indicating a widespread uniformity of climate, such as would be brought about by the great ocean-currents carrying the warm waters of the tropics into the Arctic seas. Still further back, in the Jurassic period, we have proofs of a mild climate in East Siberia and at Andö in Norway just within the Arctic Circle, in numerous plant remains, and also remains of great reptiles allied to those found in the same strata in all parts of the world. Similar phenomena occur in the still earlier Triassic period; but we will pass on to the much more remote Carboniferous period, during which most of the great coal-beds of the world were formed from a luxuriant vegetation, consisting mostly of ferns, giant horse-tails, and primitive conifers. The luxuriance of these plants, which are often found beautifully preserved and in immense quantities, is supposed to indicate an atmosphere in which carbonic acid gas was much more abundant than now; and this is rendered probable by the small number and low type of terrestrial animals, consisting of a few insects and amphibia. But the interesting point is, that true coal-beds, with similar fossils to those of our own coal-measures, are found at Spitzbergen and at Bear Island in East Siberia, both far within the Arctic Circle, again indicating a great uniformity of climate, and probably a denser and more vapour-laden atmosphere, which would act as a blanket over the earth and preserve the heat brought to the Arctic seas by the ocean currents from the warmer regions. The still earlier Silurian rocks are also found abundantly in the Arctic regions, but their fossils are entirely of marine animals. Yet they show the same phenomena as regards climate, since the corals and cephalopodous mollusca found in the Arctic beds closely resemble those of all other parts of the earth.[16] Many other facts indicate that throughout the enormous periods required for the development of the varied forms of life upon the earth, the great phenomena of nature were but little different from those that prevail in our own times. The slow and gentle processes by which the various vegetable and animal remains were preserved are shown by the perfect state in which many of the fossils exist. Often trunks of trees, cycads, and tree-ferns are found standing erect, with their roots still imbedded in the soil they grew in. Large leaves of poplars, maples, oaks, and other trees are often preserved in as perfect a state as if gathered by a botanist and dried between paper for his herbarium, and the same is especially the case with the beautiful ferns of the Permian and Carboniferous periods. Throughout these and most other formations well-preserved ripple-marks are found in the solidified mud or sand of old seashores, differing in no respect from similar marks to be found on almost every coast to-day. Equally interesting are the marks of rain-drops preserved in the rocks of almost all ages. Sir Charles Lyell has given illustrations of recent impressions of rain-drops on the extensive mud-flats of Nova Scotia, and also an illustration of rain-drops on a slab of shale from the carboniferous formation of the same country; and the two are as much alike as the prints of two different showers a few days apart. The general size and form of the drops are almost identical, and imply a great similarity in the general atmospheric conditions. We must not forget that this presence of rain throughout geological time implies, as we have seen in our last chapter, a constant and universal distribution of atmospheric dust. The two chief sources of this dust--the total quantity of which in the atmosphere must be enormous--are volcanoes and deserts, and we are therefore sure that these two great natural phenomena have always been present. Of volcanoes we have ample independent evidence in the presence of lavas and volcanic ashes, as well as actual stumps or cores of old volcanoes, through all geological formations; and we can have little doubt that deserts also were present, though perhaps not always so extensive as they are now. It is a very suggestive fact that these two phenomena, usually held to be blots on the fair face of nature, and even to be opposed to belief in a beneficent Creator, should now be proved to be really essential to the earth's habitability. Notwithstanding this prevalence of warm and uniform conditions, there is also evidence of considerable changes of climate; and at two periods--in the Eocene and in the remote Permian--there are even indications of ice-action, so that some geologists believe that there were then actual glacial epochs. But it seems more probable that they imply only local glaciation, owing to there having been high land and other suitable conditions for the production of glaciers in certain areas. The whole bearing of the geological evidence indicates the wonderful continuity of conditions favourable for life, and for the most part of climatal conditions more favourable than those now prevailing, since a larger extent of land towards the North Pole was available for an abundant vegetation, and in all probability for an equally abundant animal life. We know, too, that there was never any total break in life-development; no epoch of such lowering or raising of temperature as to destroy all life; no such general subsidence as to submerge the whole land-surface. Although the geological record is in parts very imperfect, yet it is, on the whole, wonderfully complete; and it presents to our view a continuous progress, from simple to complex, from lower to higher. Type after type becomes highly specialised in adaptation to local or climatal conditions, and then dies out, giving room for some other type to arise and be specialised in harmony with the changed conditions. The general character of the inorganic change appears to have been from more insular to more continental conditions, accompanied by a change from more uniform to less uniform climates, from an almost sub-tropical warmth and moisture, extending up to the Arctic Circle, to that diversity of tropical, temperate, and cold areas, capable of supporting the greatest possible variety in the forms of life, and which seems especially adapted to stimulate mankind to civilisation and social development by means of the necessary struggle against, and utilisation of, the various forces of nature. WATER, ITS AMOUNT AND DISTRIBUTION ON THE EARTH Although it is generally known that the oceans occupy more than two-thirds of the whole surface of the globe, the enormous bulk of the water in proportion to the land that rises above its surface is hardly ever appreciated. But as this is a matter of the greatest importance, both as regards the geological history of the globe and the special subject we are here discussing, it will be necessary to enter into some details in regard to it. According to the best recent estimates, the land area of the globe is 0.28 of the whole surface, and the water area 0.72. But the mean height of the land above the sea-level is found to be 2250 feet, while the mean depth of the seas and oceans is 13,860 feet; so that though the water area is two and a half times that of the land, the mean depth of the water is more than six times the mean height of the land. This is, of course, due to the fact that lowlands occupy most of the land-area, the plateaus and high mountains a comparatively small portion of it; while, though the greatest depths of the oceans about equal the greatest heights of the mountains, yet over enormous areas the oceans are deep enough to submerge all the mountains of Europe and temperate North America, except the extreme summits of one or two of them. Hence it follows that the bulk of the oceans, even omitting all the shallow seas, is more than thirteen times that of the land above sea-level; and if all the land-surface and ocean-floors were reduced to one level, that is, if the solid mass of the globe were a true oblate spheroid, the whole would be covered with water about two miles deep. The diagram here given will render this more intelligible and will serve to illustrate what follows. [Illustration: _Diagram of proportionate mean height of Land and depth of Oceans_. _Land_ _Area. .28 of area of Globe._ _Ocean_ _Area .72 of area of Globe._] In this diagram the lengths of the sections representing land and ocean are proportionate to their areas, while the thickness of each is proportionate to their mean height and mean depth respectively. Hence the two sections are in correct proportion to their cubic contents. A mere inspection of this diagram is sufficient to disprove the old idea, still held by a few geologists and by many biologists, that oceans and continents have repeatedly changed places during geological times, or that the great oceans have again and again been bridged over to facilitate the distribution of beetles or birds, reptiles or mammals. We must remember that although the diagram shows the continents and oceans as a whole, yet it also shows, with quite sufficient accuracy, the proportions of each of the great continents to the oceans which are adjacent to them. It must also be borne in mind that there can be no elevation on a large scale without a corresponding subsidence elsewhere; because if there were not a vast unsupported hollow would be left beneath the rising land or in some part adjacent to it. Now, looking at the diagram and at a chart or globe, try to imagine the ocean-bottom rising gradually, to form a continent joining Africa with South America or with Australia (both of which are demanded by many biologists): it is clear that, while such an elevation was going on, either some continental land or some other part of the ocean-bed must sink to a corresponding amount. We shall then see, that if such changes of elevation on a continental scale have taken place again and again at different periods, it would have been almost impossible, on every occasion, to avoid a whole continent being submerged (or even all the continents) in order to equalise subsidence with elevation while new continents were being raised up from the abyssal depths of the ocean. We conclude, therefore, that with the exception of a comparatively narrow belt around the continents, which may be roughly indicated by the thousand fathom line of soundings, the great ocean depths are permanent features of the earth's surface. It is this stability of the general distribution of land and water that has secured the continuity of life upon the earth. Had the great oceanic basins, on the other hand, been unstable, changing places with the land at various periods of geological time, they would, almost certainly, again and again have swallowed up the land in their vast abysses, and have thus destroyed all the organic life of the world. There are many confirmatory proofs of this view (which is now widely accepted by geologists and physicists), and a few of them may be briefly stated. 1. None of the continents present us with marine deposits of any one geological age and occupying a large part of the surface of each, as must have been the case had they ever been sunk deep beneath the ocean and again elevated; neither do any of them contain extensive formations corresponding to the deep oceanic clays and oozes, which again they must have done had they been at any time raised up from the ocean depths. 2. All the continents present an almost complete and continuous series of rocks of _all_ geological ages, and in each of the great geological periods there are found fresh water and estuarine deposits, and even old land-surfaces, demonstrating continuity of continental or insular conditions. 3. All the great oceans possess, scattered over them, a few or many islands termed 'oceanic,' and characterised by a volcanic or coralline structure, with no ancient stratified rocks in anyone of them; and in none of these is there found a single indigenous land mammal or amphibian. It is incredible that, if these oceans had ever contained extensive continents, and if these oceanic islands are--as even now they are often alleged to be--parts of these now submerged continents, not one fragment of any of the old stratified rocks, which characterise all existing continents, should remain to show their origin. In the Atlantic we find the Azores, Madeira, and St. Helena; in the Indian Ocean, Mauritius, Bourbon, and Kerguelen Island; in the Pacific, the Fiji, Samoan, Society, Sandwich, and Galapagos Islands, all without exception telling us the same tale, that they have been built up from the ocean depths by submarine volcanoes and coralline growths, but have never formed part of continental areas. 4. The contours of the floors of all the great oceans, now fairly well known through the soundings of exploring vessels and for submarine telegraph lines, also give confirmatory evidence that they have never been continental land. For if any part of them were a sunken continent, that part must have retained some impress of its origin. Some of the numerous mountain ranges which characterise _every_ continent would have remained. We should find slopes of from 20° to 50° not uncommon, while valleys bordered by rocky precipices, as in Lake Lucerne and a hundred others, or isolated rock-walled mountains like Roraima, or ranges of precipices as in the Ghâts of India or the Fiords of Norway, would frequently be met with. But not a single feature of this kind has ever been found in the ocean abysses. Instead of these we have vast plains, which, if the water were removed, would appear almost exactly level, with no abrupt slopes anywhere. When we consider that deposits from the land never reach these remote ocean depths, and that there is no wave-action below a few hundred feet, these continental features once submerged would be indestructible; and their total absence is, therefore, itself a demonstration that none of the great oceans are on the sites of submerged continents. HOW OCEAN DEPTHS WERE PRODUCED It is a very difficult problem to determine how the vast basins which are filled by the great oceans, especially that of the Pacific, were first produced. When the earth's surface was still in a molten state, it would necessarily take the form of a true oblate spheroid, with a compression at the poles due to its speed of rotation, which is supposed to have been very great. The crust formed by the gradual cooling of such a globe would be of the same general form, and, being thin, would easily be fractured or bent so as to accommodate itself to any unequal stresses from the interior. As the crust thickened and the whole mass slowly cooled and contracted, fissures and crumpling would occur, the former serving as outlets for volcanic activities whose results are found throughout all geological ages; the latter producing mountain chains in which the rocks are almost always curved, folded, or even thrust over each other, indicating the mighty forces due to the adjustments of a solid crust upon a shrinking fluid or semi-fluid interior. But during this whole process there seem to be no forces at work that could lead to the production of such a feature as the Pacific, a vast depression covering nearly one-third of the whole surface of the globe. The Atlantic Ocean, being smaller and nearly opposite to the Pacific, but approximately of equal depth, may be looked upon as a complementary phenomenon which will be probably explained as a result of the same causes as the vaster cavity. So far as I am aware, there is only one suggested cause of the formation of these great oceans that seems adequate; and as that cause is to some extent supported by quite independent astronomical evidence, and also directly bears upon the main subject of the present volume, it must be briefly considered. A few years ago, Professor George Darwin, of Cambridge, arrived at a certain conclusion as to the origin of the moon, which is now comparatively well known by Sir Robert Ball's popular account of it in his small volume, _Time and Tide_. Briefly stated, it is as follows. The tides produce friction on the earth and very slowly increase the length of our day, and also cause the moon to recede further from us. The day is lengthened only by a small fraction of a second in a thousand years, and the moon is receding at an equally imperceptible rate. But as these forces are constant, and have always acted on the earth and moon, as we go back and back into the almost infinite past we come to a time when the rotation of the earth was so rapid that gravity at the equator could hardly retain its outer portion, which was spread out so that the form of the whole mass was something like a cheese with rounded edges. And about the same epoch the distance of the moon is found to have been so small that it was actually touching the earth. All this is the result of mathematical calculation from the known laws of gravitation and tidal effects; and as it is difficult to see how so large a body as the moon could have originated in any other way, it is supposed that at a still earlier period the moon and earth were one, and that the moon separated from the parent mass owing to centrifugal force generated by the earth's rapid rotation. Whether the earth was liquid or solid at this epoch, and exactly how the separation occurred, is not explained either by Professor Darwin or Sir Robert Ball; but it is a very suggestive fact that, quite recently, it has been shown, by means of the spectroscope, that double stars of short period _do_ originate in this way from a single star, as already described in our sixth chapter; but in these cases it seems probable that the parent star is in a gaseous state. These investigations of Professor G. Darwin have been made use of by the Rev. Osmond Fisher (in his very interesting and important work, _Physics of the Earth's Crust_) to account for the basins of the great oceans, the Pacific being the chasm left when the larger portion of the mass of the moon parted from the earth. Adopting, as I do, the theory of the origin of the earth by meteoric accretion of solid matter, we must consider our planet as having been produced from one of those vast rings of meteorites which in great numbers still circulate round the sun, but which at the much earlier period now contemplated were both more numerous and much more extensive. Owing to irregularities of distribution in such a ring and through disturbance by other bodies, aggregations of various size would inevitably occur, and the largest of these would in time draw in to itself all the rest, and thus form a planet. During the early stages of this process the particles would be so small and would come together so gradually, that little heat would be produced, and there would result merely a loose aggregation of cold matter. But as the process went on and the mass of the incipient planet became considerable--perhaps half that of the earth--the rest of the ring would fall in with greater and greater velocity; and this, added to the gravitative compression of the growing mass might, when nearly its present size, have produced sufficient heat to liquefy the outer layers, while the central portion remained solid and to some extent incoherent, with probably large quantities of heavy gases in the interstices. When the amount of the meteoric accretions became so reduced as to be insufficient to keep up the heat to the melting-point, a crust would form, and might have reached about half or three-fourths of its present thickness when the moon became separated. Let us now try to picture to ourselves what happened. We should have a globe somewhat larger than our earth is now, both because it then contained the material of the moon and also because it was hotter, revolving so rapidly as to be very greatly flattened at the poles; while the equatorial belt bulged out enormously, and would probably have separated in the form of a ring with a very slight increase of the time of rotation, which is supposed to have been about four hours. This globe would have a comparatively thin crust, beneath which there was molten rock to an unknown depth, perhaps a few hundreds, perhaps more than a thousand miles. At this time the attraction of the sun acting on the molten interior produced tides in it, causing the thin crust to rise and fall every two hours, but to so small an extent--only about a foot or so--as not necessarily to fracture it; but it is calculated that this slight rhythmic undulation coincided with the normal period of undulation due to such a large mass of heavy liquid, and so tended to increase the instability due to rapid rotation. The bulk of the moon is about one-fiftieth part that of the earth, and an easy calculation shows us that, taking the area of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans combined as about two-thirds that of the globe, it would require a thickness (or depth) of about forty miles to furnish the material for the moon. We must, of course, assume that there were some inequalities in the thickness of the crust and in its comparative rigidity, so that when the critical moment came and the earth could no longer retain its equatorial protuberance against the centrifugal force due to rotation combined with the tidal undulations caused by the sun, instead of a continuous ring slowly detaching itself, the crust gave way in two or more great masses where it was weakest, and as the tidal wave passed under it and a quantity of the liquid substratum rose with it, the whole would break up and collect into a sub-globular mass a short distance from the earth, and continue revolving with it for some time at about the same rate as the surface had rotated. But as tidal action is always equal on opposite sides of a globe, there would be a similar disruption there, forming, it may be supposed, the Atlantic basin, which, as may be seen on a small globe, is almost exactly opposite a part of the Central Pacific. So soon as these two great masses had separated from the earth, the latter would gradually settle down into a state of equilibrium, and the molten matter of the interior, which would now fill the great oceanic basins up to a level of a few mile below the general surface would soon cool enough to form a thin crust. The larger portion of the nascent moon would gradually attract to itself the one or more smaller portions and form our satellite; and from that time tidal friction by both moon and sun would begin to operate and would gradually lengthen our day and, more rapidly, our month in the way explained in Sir Robert Ball's volume. A very interesting point may now be referred to, because it seems confirmatory of this origin of the great ocean basins. In Mr. Osmond Fisher's work it is explained how the variations in the force of gravity, at numerous points all over the world, have been determined by observations with the pendulum, and also how these variations afford a measure of the thickness of the solid crust, which is of less specific gravity than the molten interior on which it rests. By this means a very interesting result was obtained. The observations on numerous oceanic islands proved that the sub-oceanic crust was considerably more dense than the crust under the continents, but also thinner, the result being to bring the average mass of the sub-oceanic crust and oceans to an equality with that of the continental crust, and this causes the whirling earth to be in a state of balance, or equilibrium. Now, both the thinness and the increased density of the crust seem to be well explained by this theory of the origin of the oceanic basins. The new crust would necessarily for a long time be thinner than the older portion, because formed so much later, but it would very soon become cool enough to allow the aqueous vapour of the atmosphere and that given off through fissures from the molten interior to collect in the ocean basins, which would thenceforth be cooled more rapidly and kept at a uniform temperature and also under a uniform pressure, and these conditions would lead to the steady and continuous increase of thickness, with a greater compactness of structure than in the continental areas. It is no doubt to this uniformity of conditions, with a lowering of the bottom temperature throughout the greater part of geological time, till it has become only a few degrees above the freezing-point, that we owe the remarkable persistence of the vast and deep ocean basins on which, as we have seen, the continuity of life on the earth has largely depended. There is one other fact which lends some support to this theory of the origin of the ocean basins--their almost complete symmetry with regard to the equator. Both the Atlantic and Pacific basins extend to an equal distance north and south of the equator, an equality which could hardly have been produced by any cause not directly connected with the earth's rotation. The polar seas which are coterminous with the two great oceans are very much shallower, and cannot, therefore, be considered as forming part of the true oceanic basins. WATER AS AN EQUALISER OF TEMPERATURE The importance of water in regulating the temperature of the earth is so great that, even if we had enough water on the land for all the wants of plants and animals, but had no great oceans, it is almost certain that the earth could not have produced and sustained the various forms of life which it now possesses. The effect of the oceans is twofold. Owing to the great specific heat of water, that is, its property of absorbing heat slowly but to a large amount, and giving it out with equal slowness, the surface-waters of the oceans and seas are heated by the sun so that by the evening of a bright day they have become quite warm to a depth of several feet. But air has much less specific heat than water, a pound of water in cooling one degree being capable of warming four pounds of air one degree; but as air is 770 times as light as water, it follows that the heat from one cubic foot of water will warm more than 3000 cubic feet of air as much as it cools itself. Hence the enormous surface of the seas and oceans, the larger part of which is within the tropics, warms the whole of the lower and denser portions of the air, especially during the night, and this warmth is carried to all parts of the earth by the winds, and thus ameliorates the climate. Another quite distinct effect is due to the great ocean currents, like the Gulf Stream and the Japan Current, which carry the warm water of the tropics to temperate and arctic regions, and thus render many countries habitable which would otherwise suffer the rigour of an almost arctic winter. These currents are, however, directly due to the winds, and properly belong to the section on the atmosphere. The other equalising action, due primarily to the great area of the seas and oceans, is a result of the vast evaporating surface from which the land derives almost all its water in the form of rain and rivers; and it is quite evident that if there were not sufficient water-surface to produce an ample supply of vapour for this purpose, arid districts would occupy more and more of the earth's surface. How much water-surface is necessary for life we do not know; but if the proportions of water and land-surfaces were reversed, it seems probable that the larger proportion of the earth might be uninhabitable. The vapour thus produced has also a very great effect in equalising temperature; but this also is a point which will come better under our next chapter on the atmosphere. * * * * * There are, however, some matters connected with the water-supply of the earth, and its relation to the development of life, that call for a few remarks here. What has determined the total quantity of water on the earth or on other planets does not appear to be known; but presumably it would depend, partially or wholly, on the mass of the planet being sufficient to enable it to retain by its gravitative force the oxygen and hydrogen of which water is composed. As the two gases are so easily combined to form water, but can only be separated under special conditions, its quantity would be dependent on the supply of hydrogen, which is but rarely found on the earth in a free state. The important fact, however, is, that we do possess so great a quantity of water, that if the whole surface of the globe was as regularly contoured as are the continents, and merely wrinkled with mountain chains, then the existing water would cover the whole globe nearly two miles deep, leaving only the tops of high mountains above its surface as rows of small islands, with a few larger islands formed by what are now the high plateaus of Tibet and the Southern Andes. Now there seems no reason why this distribution of the water should not have occurred--in fact it seems probable that it would have occurred, had it not been for the fortunate coincidence of the formation of enormously deep ocean basins. So far as I am aware, no sufficient explanation of the formation of these basins has been given but that of Mr. Osmond Fisher, as here described, and that depends upon three unique circumstances: (1) the formation of a satellite at a very late period of the planet's development when there was already a rather thick crust; (2) the satellite being far larger in proportion to its primary than any other in the solar system; and (3) its having been produced by fission from its primary on account of extremely rapid rotation, combined with solar tides in its molten interior, and a rate of oscillation of that molten interior coinciding with the tidal period.[17] Whether this very remarkable theory of the origin of our moon is the true one, and if so, whether the explanation it seems to afford of the great oceanic basins is correct, I am not mathematician enough to judge. The tidal theory of the origin of the moon, as worked out mathematically by Professor G.H. Darwin, has been supported by Sir Robert Ball and accepted by many other astronomers; while the researches of the Rev. Osmond Fisher into the _Physics of the Earth's Crust_, together with his mathematical abilities and his practical work as a geologist, entitle his opinion on the question of the mode of origin of the ocean basins to the highest respect. And, as we have seen, the existence of these vast and deep ocean basins, produced by the agency of a series of events so remarkable as to be quite unique in the solar system, played an important part in rendering the earth fit for the development of the higher forms of animal life, while without them it seems not improbable that the conditions would have been such as to render any varied forms of terrestrial life hardly possible. FOOTNOTES: [16] For a fuller account of this Arctic fauna and flora see the works of Sir C. Lyell, Sir A. Geikie, and other geologists. A full summary of it is also given in the author's _Island Life_. [17] Professor G.H. Darwin states that it is nearly certain that no other satellite nor any of the planets originated in the same way as the moon. CHAPTER XIII THE EARTH IN RELATION TO LIFE: ATMOSPHERIC CONDITIONS We have seen in our tenth chapter that the physical basis of life--protoplasm--consists of the four elements, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and carbon, and that both plants and animals depend largely upon the free oxygen in the air to carry on their vital processes; while the carbonic acid and ammonia in the atmosphere seem to be absolutely essential to plants. Whether life could have arisen and have been highly developed with an atmosphere composed of different elements from ours it is, of course, impossible to say; but there are certain physical conditions which seem absolutely essential whatever may be the elements which compose it. The first of these essentials is an atmosphere which shall be of such density at the surface of the planet, and of so great a bulk, as to be not too rare to fulfil its various functions at all altitudes where there is a considerable area of land. What determines the total quantity of gaseous matter on the surface of a planet will be, mainly, its mass, together with the average temperature of its surface. The molecules of gases are in a state of rapid motion in all directions, and the lighter gases have the most rapid motions. The average speed of the motion of the molecules has been roughly determined under varying conditions of pressure and temperature, and also the probable maximum and minimum rates, and from these data, and certain known facts as to planetary atmospheres, Mr. G. Johnstone Stoney, F.R.S., has calculated what gases will escape from the atmospheres of the earth and the other planets. He finds that all the gases which are constituents of air have such comparatively low molecular rates of motion that the force of gravity at the upper limits of the earth's atmosphere is amply sufficient to retain them; hence the stability in its composition. But there are two other gases, hydrogen and helium, which are both known to enter the atmosphere, but never accumulate so as to form any measurable portion of it, and these are found to have sufficient molecular motion to escape from it. With regard to hydrogen, if the earth were much larger and more massive than it is, so as to retain the hydrogen, disastrous consequences might ensue, because, whenever a sufficient quantity of this gas accumulated, it would form an explosive mixture with the oxygen of the atmosphere, and a flash of lightning or even the smallest flame would lead to explosions so violent and destructive as perhaps to render such a planet unsuited for the development of life. We appear, therefore, to be just at the major limit of mass to secure habitability, except in such planets as may have no continuous supply of free hydrogen. * * * * * Perhaps the most important mechanical functions of the atmosphere dependent on its density are: (1) the production of winds, which in many ways bring about an equalisation of temperature, and which also produce surface-currents on the ocean; and (2) the distribution of moisture over the earth by means of clouds which also have other important functions. Winds depend primarily on the local distribution of heat in the air, especially on the great amount of heat constantly present in the equatorial zone, due to the sun being always nearly vertical at noon, and to its being similarly vertical at each tropic once a year, with a longer day, leading to even higher temperatures than at the equator, and producing also that continuous belt of arid lands or deserts which almost encircle the globe in the region of the tropics. Heated air being lighter, the colder air from the temperate zones continually flows towards it, lifting it up and causing it to flow over, as it were, to the north and south. But as the inflow comes from an area of less rapid to one of more rapid rotation, the course of the air is diverted, and produces the north-east and south-east trades; while the overflow from the equator going to an area of less rapid rotation, turns westward and produces the south-west winds so prevalent over the north Atlantic and the north temperate zone generally, and the north-west in the southern hemisphere. It is outside the zone of the equable trade-winds, and in a region a few degrees on each side of the tropics, that destructive hurricanes and typhoons prevail. These are really enormous whirlwinds due to the intensely heated atmosphere over the arid regions already mentioned, causing an inrush of cool air from various directions, thus setting up a rotatory motion which increases in rapidity till equilibrium is restored. The hurricanes of the West Indies and Mauritius, and the typhoons of the Eastern seas, are thus caused. Some of these storms are so violent that no human structures can resist them, while the largest and most vigorous trees are torn to pieces or overturned by them. But if our atmosphere were much denser than it is, its increased weight would give it still greater destructive force; and if to this were added a somewhat greater amount of sun-heat--which might be due either to our greater proximity to the sun or to the sun's greater size or greater heat-intensity, these tempests might be so increased in frequency and violence as to render considerable portions of the earth uninhabitable. The constant and equable trade-winds have a very important function in initiating those far-reaching ocean-currents which are of the greatest importance in equalising temperature. The well known Gulf Stream is to us the most important of these currents, because it plays the chief part in giving us the mild climate we enjoy in common with the whole of Western Europe, a mildness which is felt to a considerable distance within the Arctic Circle; and, in conjunction with the Japan current, which does the same for the whole of the temperate regions of the North Pacific, renders a large portion of the globe better adapted for life than it would be without these beneficial influences. These equalising currents, however, are almost entirely due to the form and position of the continents, and especially to the fact that they are so situated as to leave vast expanses of ocean along the equatorial zone, and extending north and south to the arctic and antarctic regions. If with the same amount of land the continents had been so grouped as to occupy a considerable portion of the equatorial oceans--such as would have been the case had Africa been turned so as to join South America, and Asia been brought to the south-east so as to take the place of part of the equatorial Pacific, then the great ocean-currents could have been but feeble or have hardly existed. Without these currents much of the north and south temperate lands would have been buried in ice, while the largest portion of the continents would have been so intensely heated as perhaps to be unsuited for the development of the higher forms of animal life, since we have shown (in chapters X. and XI.) how delicate is the balance and how narrow the limits of temperature which are required. There seems to be no reason whatever why some such distribution of the sea and land should not have existed, had it not been for the admittedly exceptional conditions which led to the production of our satellite, thus necessarily forming vast chasms along the region of the equator where centrifugal force as well as the internal solar tides were most powerful, and where the thin crust was thus compelled to give way. And as the highest authorities declare that there are no indications of such an origin of satellites in the case of any other planet, the whole series of conditions favourable to life on the earth become all the more remarkable. CLOUDS, THEIR IMPORTANCE AND THEIR CAUSES Few persons have any adequate conception of the real nature of clouds and of the important part they take in rendering our world a habitable and an enjoyable one. On the average, the rainfall over the oceans is much less than over the land, the whole region of the trade-winds having usually a cloudless sky and very little rain; but in the intervening belt of calms, near to the equator, a cloudy sky and heavy rains are frequent. This arises from the fact that the warm, moist air over the ocean is raised upwards, by the cold and heavy air from north and south, into a cooler region where it cannot hold so much aqueous vapour, which is there condensed and falls as rain. Generally, wherever the winds blow over extensive areas of water on to the land, especially if there are mountains or elevated plateaus which cause the moisture-laden air to rise to heights where the temperature is lower, clouds are formed and more or less rain falls. But if the land is of an arid nature and much heated by the sun, the air becomes capable of holding still more aqueous vapour, and even dense rain-clouds disperse without producing any rainfall. From these simple causes, with the large area of sea as compared with the land upon our earth, by far the larger portion of the surface is well supplied with rain, which, falling most abundantly in the elevated and therefore cooler regions, percolates the soil, and gives rise to those innumerable springs and rivulets which moisten and beautify the earth, and which, uniting together, form streams and rivers, which return to the seas and oceans whence they were originally derived. CLOUDS AND RAIN DEPEND UPON ATMOSPHERIC DUST The beautiful system of aqueous circulation by means of the atmosphere as sketched above was long thought to explain the whole process, and to require no further elucidation; but about a quarter of a century back a curious experiment was made which indicated that there was another factor in the process which had been entirely overlooked. If a small jet of steam is sent into two large glass receivers, one filled with ordinary air, the other with air which has been filtered by passing through a thick layer of cotton wool so as to keep back all particles of solid matter, the first vessel will be instantly filled with condensed cloudy-looking vapour, while in the other vessel the air and vapour will remain perfectly transparent and invisible. Another experiment was then made to imitate more nearly what occurs in nature. The two vessels were prepared as before, but a small quantity of water was placed in each vessel and allowed to evaporate till the air was nearly saturated with vapour, which remained invisible in both. Both vessels were then slightly cooled, when instantly a dense cloud was formed in that filled with unfiltered air, while the other remained quite clear. These experiments proved that the mere cooling of air below the dew point will not cause the aqueous vapour in it to condense into drops so as to form mist, fog, or cloud, unless small particles of solid or liquid matter are present to act as nuclei upon which condensation begins. The density of a cloud will therefore depend not only on the quantity of vapour in the air, but on the presence of an abundance of minute dust-particles on which condensation can begin. That such dust exists everywhere in the air, even up to great heights, is not a supposition but a proved fact. By exposing glass plates covered with glycerine in different places and at different altitudes the number of these particles in each cubic foot of air has been determined; and it is found that not only are they present everywhere at low levels, but that there are a considerable number even at the tops of the highest mountains. These solid particles also act in another way. By radiation in the higher atmosphere they become very cold, and thus condense the vapour by contact, just as the points of grass-blades condense it to form dew. When steam is escaping from an engine we see a mass of dense white vapour, a miniature cloud; and if we are near it in cold, damp weather, we feel little drops of rain produced from it. But on a fine, warm day it rises quickly and soon melts away, and entirely disappears. Exactly the same thing happens on a larger scale in nature. In fine weather we may have abundant clouds continually passing high overhead, but they never produce rain, because as the minute globules of water slowly fall towards the earth, the warm dry air again turns them into invisible vapour. Again, in fine weather, we often see a small cloud on a mountain top which remains there a considerable time, even though a brisk wind is blowing. The mountain top is colder than the surrounding air, and the invisible vapour becomes condensed into cloud by passing over it, but the moment these cloud particles are carried past the summit into the warmer and drier air they are again evaporated and disappear. On Table Mountain, near Cape Town, this phenomenon occurs on a large scale, and is termed the table-cloth, the mass of white fleecy cloud seeming to hang over the flat mountain top to some distance down where it remains for several months, while all around there is bright sunshine. Another phenomenon that indicates the universal presence of dust to enormous heights in the atmosphere is the blue colour of the sky. This is caused by the presence of such excessively minute particles of dust through an enormous thickness of the higher atmosphere--probably up to a height of twenty or thirty miles, or more--that they reflect only the light of short wave-length from the blue end of the spectrum. This also has been proved by experiment. If a glass cylinder, several feet long, is filled with pure air from which all solid particles have been removed by filtering and passing over red-hot platinum wires, and a ray of electric light is passed through it, the interior, when viewed laterally, appears quite dark, the light passing through in a straight line and not illuminating the air. But if a little more air is passed through the filter so rapidly as to allow only the minutest particles of dust to enter with it, the vessel becomes gradually filled with a blue haze, which gradually deepens into a beautiful blue, comparable with that of the sky. If now some of the unfiltered air is admitted, the blue fades away into the ordinary tint of daylight. Since it has been known that liquid oxygen is blue, many people have concluded that this explains the blue colour of the sky. But it has really nothing to do with the point at issue. The blue of the liquid oxygen becomes so excessively faint in the gas, further attenuated as it is by the colourless nitrogen, that it would have no perceptible colour in the whole thickness of our atmosphere. Again, if it had a perceptible blue tint we could not see it against the blackness of space behind it; but white objects seen through it, such as the moon and clouds, should all appear blue, which they do not do. The blue we see is from the whole sky, and is therefore reflected light; and as pure air is quite transparent, there must be solid or liquid particles so minute as to reflect blue light only. In the lower atmosphere the rain-producing particles are larger, and reflect all the rays, thus diluting the blue colour near the horizon, and, by refraction and reflection combined, producing the various beautiful hues of sunrise and sunset. This production of exquisite colours by the dust in the atmosphere, though adding greatly to the enjoyment of life, cannot be considered essential to it; but there is another circumstance connected with atmospheric dust which, though little appreciated, might have effects which can hardly be calculated. If there were no dust in the atmosphere, the sky would appear black even at noon, except in the actual direction of the sun; and the stars would be visible in the day as well as at night. This would follow because air does not reflect light, and is not visible. We should therefore receive no light from the sky itself as we do now, and the north side of every hill, house, and other solid objects, would be totally dark, unless there were any surfaces in that direction to reflect the light. The surface of the ground at a little distance would be in sunshine, and this would be the only source of light wherever direct sunlight was cut off. To get a good amount of pleasant light in houses it would be necessary to have them built on nearly level ground, or on ground rising to the north, and with walls of glass all round and down to the floor line, to receive as much as possible of the reflected light from the ground. What effect this kind of light would have on vegetation it is difficult to say, but trees and shrubs would probably grow laterally towards the south, east, and west, so as to get as much direct sunshine as possible. A more important result would be that, as sunshine would be perpetual during the day, so much evaporation would take place that the soil would become arid and almost bare in places that are now covered with vegetation, and plants like the cactuses of Arizona and the euphorbias of South Africa would occupy a large portion of the surface. Returning now from this collateral subject of light and colour to the more important aspect of the question--the absence of cloud and rain--we have to consider what would happen, and in what way the enormous quantity of water which would be evaporated under continual sunshine would be returned to the earth. The first and most obvious means would be by abnormally abundant dews, which would be deposited almost every night on every form of leafy vegetation. Not only would all grass and herbage, but all the outer leaves of shrubs and trees, condense so much moisture as to take the place of rain so far as the needs of such vegetation were concerned. But without arrangements for irrigation cultivation would be almost impossible, because the bare soil would become intensely heated during the day, and would retain so much of its heat through the night so as to prevent any dew forming upon it. Some more effective mode, therefore, of returning the aqueous vapour of the atmosphere to the earth and ocean, would be required, and this, I believe, would be done by means of hills and mountains of sufficient height to become decidedly colder than the lowlands. The air from over the oceans would be constantly loaded with moisture, and whenever the winds blew on to the land the air would be carried up the slopes of the hills into the colder regions, and there be rapidly condensed upon the vegetation, and also on the bare earth and rocks of northern slopes, and wherever they cooled sufficiently during the afternoon or night to be below the temperature of the air. The quantity of vapour thus condensed would reduce the atmospheric pressure, which would lead to an inrush of air from below, bringing with it more vapour, and this might give rise to perpetual torrents, especially on northern and eastern slopes. But as the evaporation would be much greater than at the present time, owing to perpetual sunshine, so the water returned to the earth would be greater, and as it would not be so uniformly distributed over the land as it is now, the result would perhaps be that extensive mountain sides would become devastated by violent torrents, rendering permanent vegetation almost impossible; while other and more extensive areas, in the absence of rain, would become arid wastes that would support only the few peculiar types of vegetation that are characteristic of such regions. Whether such conditions as here supposed would prevent the development of the higher forms of life it is impossible to say, but it is certain that they would be very unfavourable, and might have much more disastrous consequences than any we have here suggested. We can hardly suppose that, with winds and rock-formations at all like what they are now, any world could be wholly free from atmospheric dust. If, however, the atmosphere itself were much less dense than it is, say one-half, which might very easily have been the case, then the winds would have less carrying power, and at the elevations at which clouds are usually formed there would not be enough dust-particles to assist in their formation. Hence fogs close to the earth's surface would largely take the place of clouds floating far above it, and these would certainly be less favourable to human life and to that of many of the higher animals than existing conditions. The world-wide distribution of atmospheric dust is a remarkable phenomenon. As the blue colour of the sky is universal, the whole of the higher atmosphere must be pervaded by myriads of ultra-microscopical particles, which, by reflecting the blue rays only, give us not only the azure vault of heaven, but in combination with the coarser dust of lower altitudes, diffused daylight, the grand forms and motions of the fleecy clouds, and the 'gentle rain from heaven' to refresh the parched earth and make it beautiful with foliage and flowers. Over every part of the vast Pacific Ocean, whose islands must produce a minimum of dust, the sky is always blue, and its thousand isles do not suffer for want of rain. Over the great forest-plain of the Amazon valley, where the production of dust must be very small, there is yet abundance of rain-clouds and of rain. This is due primarily to the two great natural sources of dust--the active volcanoes, together with the deserts and more arid regions of the world; and, in the second place, to the density and wonderful mobility of the atmosphere, which not only carries the finest dust-particles to an enormous height, but distributes them through its whole extent with such wonderful uniformity. Every dust-particle is of course much heavier than air, and in a comparatively short time, if the atmosphere were still, would fall to the ground. Tyndall found that the air of a cellar under the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street, which had not been opened for several months, was so pure that the path of a beam of electric light sent through it was quite invisible. But careful experiments show that not only is the air in continual motion, but the motion is excessively irregular, being hardly ever quite horizontal, but upwards and downwards and in every intermediate direction, as well as in countless whirls and eddies; and this complexity of motion must extend to a vast height, probably to fifty miles or more, in order to provide a sufficient thickness of those minutest particles which produce the blue of the sky. All this complexity of motion is due to the action of the sun in heating the surface of the earth, and the extreme irregularity of that surface both as regards contour and its capacity for heat-absorption. In one area we have sand or rock or bare clay, which, when exposed to bright sunshine, become scorching hot; in another area we have dense vegetation, which, owing to evaporation caused by the sunshine, remains comparatively cool, and also the still cooler surfaces of rivers and Alpine lakes. But if the air were much less dense than it is, these movements would be less energetic, while all the dust that was raised to any considerable height would, by its own weight, fall back again to the earth much more rapidly than it does now. There would thus be much less dust permanently in the atmosphere, and this would inevitably lead to diminished rainfall and, partially, to the other injurious effects already described. ATMOSPHERIC ELECTRICITY We have already seen that vegetable organisms obtain the chief part of the nitrogen in their tissues from ammonia produced in the atmosphere and carried into the earth by rain. This substance can only be thus produced by the agency of electrical discharges, or lightning, which cause the combination of the hydrogen in the aqueous vapour with the free nitrogen of the air. But clouds are important agents in the accumulation of electricity in sufficient amount to produce the violent discharges we know as lightning, and it is doubtful whether without them there would be any discharges through the atmosphere capable of decomposing the aqueous vapour in it. Not only are clouds beneficial in the production of rain, and also in moderating the intensity of continuous sun-heat, but they are also requisite for the formation of chemical compounds in vegetables which are of the highest importance to the whole animal kingdom. So far as we know, animal life could not exist on the earth's surface without this source of nitrogen, and therefore without clouds and lightning; and these, we have just seen, depend primarily on a due proportion of dust in the atmosphere. But this due proportion of dust is mainly supplied by volcanoes and deserts, and its distribution and constant presence in the air depends upon the density of the atmosphere. This again depends on two other factors: the force of gravity due to the mass of the planet, and the absolute quantity of the free gases constituting the atmosphere. We thus find that the vast, invisible ocean of air in which we live, and which is so important to us that deprivation of it for a few minutes is destructive of life, produces also many other beneficial effects of which we usually take little account, except at times when storm or tempest, or excessive heat or cold, remind us how delicate is the balance of conditions on which our comfort, and even our lives, depend. But the sketch I have here attempted to give of its varied functions shows us that it is really a most complex structure, a wonderful piece of machinery, as it were, which in its various component gases, its actions and reactions upon the water and the land, its production of electrical discharges, and its furnishing the elements from which the whole fabric of organic life is composed and perpetually renewed, may be truly considered to be the very source and foundation of life itself. This is seen, not only in the fact of our absolute dependence upon it every minute of our lives, but in the terrible effects produced by even a slight degree of impurity in this vital element. Yet it is among those nations that claim to be the most civilised, those that profess to be guided by a knowledge of the laws of nature, those that most glory in the advance of science, that we find the greatest apathy, the greatest recklessness, in continually rendering impure this all-important necessary of life, to such a degree that the health of the larger portion of their populations is injured and their vitality lowered, by conditions which compel them to breathe more or less foul and impure air for the greater part of their lives. The huge and ever-increasing cities, the vast manufacturing towns belching forth smoke and poisonous gases, with the crowded dwellings, where millions are forced to live under the most terrible insanitary conditions, are the witnesses to this criminal apathy, this incredible recklessness and inhumanity. For the last fifty years and more the inevitable results of such conditions have been fully known; yet to this day nothing of importance _has_ been done, nothing is being done. In this beautiful land there is ample space and a superabundance of pure air for every individual. Yet our wealthy and our learned classes, our rulers and law-makers, our religious teachers and our men of science, all alike devote their lives and energies to anything or everything but this. Yet _this_ is the one great and primary essential of a people's health and well-being, to which _everything_ should, for the time, be subordinate. Till this is done, and done thoroughly and completely, our civilisation is naught, our science is naught, our religion is naught, and our politics are less than naught--are utterly despicable; are below contempt. It has been the consideration of our wonderful atmosphere in its various relations to human life, and to all life, which has compelled me to this cry for the children and for outraged humanity. Will no body of humane men and women band themselves together, and take no rest till this crying evil is abolished, and with it nine-tenths of all the other evils that now afflict us? Let _everything_ give way to this. As in a war of conquest or aggression nothing is allowed to stand in the way of victory, and all private rights are subordinated to the alleged public weal, so, in this war against filth, disease, and misery let nothing stand in the way--neither private interests nor vested rights--and we shall certainly conquer. This is the gospel that should be preached, in season and out of season, till the nation listens and is convinced. Let this be our claim: Pure air and pure water for every inhabitant of the British Isles. Vote for no one who says 'It can't be done.' Vote only for those who declare 'It shall be done.' It may take five or ten or twenty years, but all petty ameliorations, all piecemeal reforms, must wait till this fundamental reform is effected. Then, when we have enabled our people to breathe pure air, and drink pure water, and live upon simple food, and work and play and rest under healthy conditions, they will be in a position to decide (for the first time) what other reforms are really needed. Remember! We claim to be a people of high civilisation, of advanced science, of great humanity, of enormous wealth! For very shame do not let us say 'We _cannot_ arrange matters so that our people may all breathe unpolluted, unpoisoned air!' CHAPTER XIV THE EARTH IS THE ONLY HABITABLE PLANET IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM Having shown in the last three chapters how numerous and how complex are the conditions which alone render life possible on our earth, how nicely balanced are opposing forces, and how curious and delicate are the means by which the essential combinations of the elements are brought about, it will be a comparatively easy task to show how totally unfitted are all the other planets either to develop or to preserve the higher forms of life, and, in most cases, any forms above the lowest and most rudimentary. In order to make this clear we will take the most important of the conditions in order, and see how the various planets fulfil them. MASS OF A PLANET AND ITS ATMOSPHERE The height and density of the atmosphere of a planet is important as regards life in several ways. On its density depends its power of carrying moisture; of holding a sufficient supply of dust-particles for the formation of clouds; of carrying ultra-microscopic particles to such a height and in such quantity as to diffuse the light of the sun by reflection from the whole sky; of raising waves in the ocean and thus aerating its waters, and of producing the ocean currents which so greatly equalise temperature. Now this density depends on two factors: the mass of the planet and the quantity of the atmospheric gases. But there is good reason to think that the latter depends directly upon the former, because it is only when a certain mass is attained that any of the lighter permanent gases can be held on the surface of a planet. Thus, according to Dr. G. Johnstone Stoney, who has specially studied this subject, the moon cannot retain even such a heavy gas as carbonic acid, or the still heavier carbon disulphide; while no particle of oxygen, nitrogen, or water-vapour can possibly remain on it, owing to the fact of its mass being only about one-eightieth that of the earth. It is believed that there are considerable quantities of gases in the stellar spaces, and probably also within the solar system, but perhaps in the liquid or solid form. In that state they might be attracted by any small mass such as the moon, but the heat of its surface when exposed to the solar rays would quickly restore them to the gaseous condition, when they would at once escape. It is only when a planet attains a mass at least a quarter that of the earth that it is capable of retaining water-vapour, one of the most essential of the gases; but with so small a mass as this, its whole atmosphere would probably be so limited in amount and so rare at the planet's surface that it would be quite unable to fulfil the various purposes for which an atmosphere is required in order to support life. For their adequate fulfilment the mass of a planet cannot be much less than that of the earth. Here we come to one of those nice adjustments of which so many have been already pointed out. Dr. Johnstone Stoney arrives at the conclusion that hydrogen escapes from the earth. It is continually produced in small quantities by submarine volcanoes, by fissures in volcanic regions, from decaying vegetation, and from some other sources; yet, though sometimes found in minute quantities, it forms no regular constituent of our atmosphere.[18] The quantity of hydrogen combined with oxygen to form the mass of water in our vast and deep oceans is enormous. Yet if it had been only one-tenth more than it actually is, the present land-surface would have been almost all submerged. How the adjustments occurred so that there was exactly enough hydrogen to fill the vast ocean basins with water to such a depth as to leave enough land-surface for the ample development of vegetable and animal life, and yet not so much as to be injurious to climate, it is difficult to imagine. Yet the adjustment stares us in the face. First, we have a satellite unique in size as compared with its primary, and apparently in lateness of origin; then we have a mode of origin for that satellite said to be certainly unique in the solar system; as a consequence of this origin, it is believed, we have enormously deep ocean basins symmetrically placed with regard to the equator--an arrangement which is very important for ocean circulation; then we must have had the right quantity of hydrogen, obtained in some unknown way, which formed water enough to fill these chasms, so as to leave an ample area of dry land, but which one-tenth more water would have ingulfed; and, lastly, we have oxygen enough left to form an atmosphere of sufficient density for all the requirements of life. It could not be that the surplus hydrogen escaped when the water had been produced, because it escapes very slowly, and it combines so easily with free oxygen by means of even a spark, as to make it certain that _all_ the available hydrogen was used up in the oceanic waters, and that the supply from the earth's interior has been since comparatively small in amount. There is yet one more adjustment to be noticed. All the facts now referred to show that the earth's mass is sufficient to bring about the conditions favourable for life. But if our globe had been a little larger, and proportionately denser, in all probability no life would have been possible. Between a planet of 8000 and one of 9500 miles diameter is not a large difference, when compared with the enormous range of size of the other planets. Yet this slight increase in diameter would give two-thirds increase in bulk, and, with a corresponding increase of density due to the greater gravitative force, the mass would be about double what it is. But with double the mass the quantity of gases of all sorts attracted and retained by gravity would probably have been double; and in that case there would have been double the quantity of water produced, as no hydrogen could then escape. But the _surface_ of the globe would only be one half greater than at present, in which case the water would have sufficed to cover the whole surface several miles deep. HABITABILITY OF OTHER PLANETS When we look to the other planets of our system we see everywhere illustrations of the relation of size and mass to habitability. The smaller planets, Mercury and Mars, have not sufficient mass to retain water-vapour, and, without it, they cannot be habitable. All the larger planets can have very little solid matter, as indicated by their very low density notwithstanding their enormous mass. There is, therefore, very good reason for the belief that the adaptability of a planet for a full development of life is _primarily_ dependent, within very narrow limits, on its size and, more directly, on its mass. But if the earth owes its specially constituted atmosphere and its nicely adjusted quantity of water to such general causes as here indicated, and the same causes apply to the other planets of the solar system, then the only planet on which life can be possible is Venus. As, however, it may be urged that exceptional causes may have given other planets an equal advantage in the matter of air and water, we will briefly consider some of the other conditions which we have found to be essential in the case of the earth, but which it is almost impossible to conceive as existing, to the required extent, on any of the other planets of the solar system. A SMALL AND DEFINITE RANGE OF TEMPERATURE We have already seen within what narrow limits the temperature on a planet's surface must be maintained in order to develop and support life. We have also seen how numerous and how delicate are the conditions, such as density of atmosphere, extent and permanence of oceans, and distribution of sea and land, which are requisite, even with us, in order to render possible the continuous preservation of a sufficiently uniform temperature. Slight alterations one way or another might render the earth almost uninhabitable, through its being liable to alternations of too great heat or excessive cold. How then can we suppose that any other of the planets, which have either very much more or very much less sun-heat than we receive, could, by any possible modification of conditions, be rendered capable of producing and supporting a full and varied life-development? Mars receives less than half the amount of sun-heat per unit of surface that we do. And as it is almost certain that it contains no water (its polar snows being caused by carbonic acid or some other heavy gas) it follows that, although it may produce vegetable life of some low kinds, it must be quite unsuited for that of the higher animals. Its small size and mass, the latter only one-ninth that of the earth, may probably allow it to possess a very rare atmosphere of oxygen and nitrogen, if those gases exist there, and this lack of density would render it unable to retain during the night the very moderate amount of heat it might absorb during the day. This conclusion is supported by its low reflecting power, showing that it has hardly any clouds in its scanty atmosphere. During the greater part of the twenty-four hours, therefore, its surface-temperature would probably be much below the freezing point of water; and this, taken in conjunction with the total absence of aqueous vapour or liquid water, would add still further to its unsuitability for animal life. In Venus the conditions are equally adverse in the other direction. It receives from the sun almost double the amount of heat that we receive, and this alone would render necessary some extraordinary combination of modifying agencies in order to reduce and render uniform the excessively high temperature. But it is now known that Venus has one peculiarity which is in itself almost prohibitive of animal life, and probably of even the lowest forms of vegetable life. This peculiarity is, that through tidal action caused by the sun, its day has been made to coincide with its year, or, more properly, that it rotates on its axis in the same time that it revolves round the sun. Hence it always presents the same face to the sun; and while one half has a perpetual day, the other half has perpetual night, with perpetual twilight through refraction in a narrow belt adjoining the illuminated half. But the side that never receives the direct rays of the sun must be intensely cold, approximating, in the central portions, to the zero of temperature, while the half exposed to perpetual sunshine of double intensity to ours must almost certainly rise to a temperature far too great for the existence of protoplasm, and probably, therefore, of any form of animal life. Venus appears to have a dense atmosphere, and its brilliancy suggests that we see the upper surface of a cloud-canopy, and this would no doubt greatly reduce the excessive solar heat. Its mass, being a little more than three-fourths that of the earth, would enable it to retain the same gases as we possess. But under the extraordinary conditions that prevail on the surface of this planet, it is hardly possible that the temperature of the illuminated side can be preserved in a sufficient state of uniformity for the development of life in any of its higher forms. Mercury possesses the same peculiarity of keeping one face always towards the sun, and as it is so much smaller and so much nearer the sun its contrasts of heat and cold must be still more excessive, and we need hardly discuss the possibility of this planet being habitable. Its mass being only one-thirtieth that of the earth, water-vapour will certainly escape from it, and, most probably, nitrogen and oxygen also, so that it can possess very little atmosphere; and this is indicated by its low reflecting power, no less than 83 per cent. of the sun's light being absorbed, and only 17 per cent. reflected, whereas clouds reflect 72 per cent. This planet is therefore intensely heated on one side and frozen on the other; it has no water and hardly any atmosphere, and is therefore, from every point of view, totally unfitted for supporting living organisms. Even if it is supposed that, in the case of Venus, its perpetual cloud-canopy may keep down the surface temperature within the limits necessary for animal life, the extraordinary turmoil in its atmosphere caused by the excessively contrasted temperatures of its dark and light hemispheres must be extremely inimical to life, if not absolutely prohibitive of it. For on the greater part of the hemisphere that never receives a ray of light or heat from the sun all the water and aqueous vapour must be turned into ice or snow, and it seems almost impossible that the air itself can escape congelation. It could only do so by a very rapid circulation of the whole atmosphere, and this would certainly be produced by the enormous and permanent difference of temperature between the two hemispheres. Indications of refraction by a dense atmosphere are visible during the planet's transit over the sun's disc, and also when it is in conjunction with the sun, and the refraction is so great that Venus is believed to have an atmosphere much higher than ours. But during the rapid circulation of such an atmosphere, heated on one half the planet and cooled on the other, most of the aqueous vapour must be taken out of it on the dark side as fast as it is produced on the heated side, though sufficient may remain to produce a canopy of very lofty clouds analogous to our cirri. The occasional visibility of the dark side of Venus may be caused by an electrical glow due to the friction of the perpetually overflowing and inflowing atmosphere, this being increased by reflection from a vast surface of perpetual snow. If we consider all the exceptional features of this planet, it appears certain that the conditions as regards climate cannot now be such as to maintain a temperature within the narrow limits essential for life, while there is little probability that at any earlier period it can have possessed and maintained the necessary stability during the long epochs which are requisite for its development. Before considering the condition of the larger planets, it will be well to refer to an argument which has been supposed to minimise the difficulties already stated as to those planets which approach nearest to the earth in size and distance from the sun. THE ARGUMENT FROM EXTREME CONDITIONS ON THE EARTH In reply to the evidence showing how nice are the adaptations required for life-development, it is often objected that life does _now_ exist under very extreme conditions--under tropic heat and arctic snows; in the burnt-up desert as well as in the moist tropical forest; in the air as well as in the water; on lofty mountains as well as on the level lowlands. This is no doubt true, but it does not prove that life could have been developed in a world where any of these extremes of climate characterised the whole surface. The deserts are inhabited because there are oases where water is attainable, as well as in the surrounding fertile areas. The arctic regions are inhabited because there is a summer, and during that summer there is vegetation. If the surface of the ground were always frozen, there would be no vegetation and no animal life. The late Mr. R.A. Proctor put this argument of the diversity of conditions under which life actually does exist on the earth as well probably as it can be put. He says: 'When we consider the various conditions under which life is found to prevail, that no difference of climatic relations, or of elevation, of land, or of air, or of water, of soil in land, of freshness or saltness in water, of density in air, appears (so far as our researches have extended) to render life impossible, we are compelled to infer that the power of supporting life is a quality which has an exceedingly wide range in nature.' This is true, but with certain reservations. The only species of animal which does really exist under the most varied conditions of climate is man, and he does so because his intellect renders him to some extent the ruler of nature. None of the lower animals have such a wide range, and the diversity of conditions is not really so great as it appears to be. The strict limits are nowhere permanently overpassed, and there is always the change from winter to summer, and the possibility of migration to less inhospitable areas. THE GREAT PLANETS ALL UNINHABITABLE Having already shown that the condition of Mars, both as regards water, atmosphere, and temperature, is quite unfitted to maintain life, a view in which both general principles and telescopic examination perfectly agree, we may pass on to the outer planets, which, however, have long been given up as adapted for life even by the most ardent advocates for 'life in other worlds.' Their remoteness from the sun--even Jupiter being five times as far as the earth, and therefore receiving only one twenty-fifth of the light and heat that we receive per unit of surface--renders it almost impossible, even if other conditions were favourable, that they should possess surface-temperatures adequate to the necessities of organic life. But their very low densities, combined with very large size, renders it certain that they none of them have a solidified surface, or even the elements from which such a surface could be formed. It is supposed that Jupiter and Saturn, as well as Uranus and Neptune, retain a considerable amount of internal heat, but certainly not sufficient to keep the metallic and other elements of which the sun and earth consist in a state of vapour, for if so they would be planetary stars and would shine by their own light. And if any considerable portion of their bulk consisted of these elements, whether in a solid or a liquid state, their densities would necessarily be much greater than that of the earth instead of very much less--Jupiter is under one-fourth the density of the earth, Saturn under an eighth, while Uranus and Neptune are of intermediate densities, though much less in bulk even than Saturn. It thus appears that the solar system consists of two groups of planets which differ widely from each other. The outer group of four very large planets are almost wholly gaseous, and probably consist of the permanent gases--those which can only be liquefied or solidified at a very low temperature. In no other way can their small density combined with enormous bulk be accounted for. The inner group also of four planets are totally unlike the preceding. They are all of small size, the earth being the largest. They are all of a density roughly proportionate to their bulk. The earth is both the largest and the densest of the group; not only is it situated at that distance from the sun which, through solar heat alone, allows water to remain in the liquid state over almost the whole of its surface, but it possesses numerous characteristics which secure a very equable temperature, and which have secured to it very nearly the same temperature during those enormous geological periods in which terrestrial life has existed. We have already shown that no other planet possesses these characteristics now, and it is almost equally certain that they never have possessed them in the past, and never will possess them in the future. A LAST ARGUMENT FOR HABITABILITY OF THE PLANETS Although it has been admitted by the late Mr. Proctor and some other astronomers that most of the planets are not _now_ habitable, yet, it is often urged, they may have been so in the past or may become so in the future. Some are now too hot, others are now too cold; some have now no water, others have too much; but all go through their appointed series of stages, and during some of these stages life may be or may have been possible. This argument, although vague, will appeal to some readers, and it may, therefore, be necessary to reply to it. This is the more necessary as it is still made use of by astronomers. In a criticism of my article in _The Fortnightly Review_, M. Camille Flammarion, of the Paris Observatory, dramatically remarks: 'Yes, life is universal, and eternal, for time is one of its factors. Yesterday the moon, to-day the earth, to-morrow Jupiter. In space there are both cradles and tombs.'[19] It is thus suggested that the moon was once inhabited and that Jupiter will be inhabited in some remote future; but no attempt is made to deal with the essential physical conditions of these very diverse objects, rendering them not only _now_, but always, unfitted to develop and to maintain terrestrial or aerial life. This vague supposition--it can hardly be termed an argument--as regards past or future adaptability for life, of all the planets and some of the satellites in the solar system, is, however, rendered invalid by an equally general objection to which its upholders appear never to have given a moment's consideration; and as it is an objection which still further enforces the view as to the unique position of the earth in the solar system, it will be well to submit it to the judgment of our readers. LIMITATION OF THE SUN'S HEAT It is well known that there is, and has been for nearly half a century, a profound difference of opinion between geologists and physicists as to the actual or possible duration in years of life upon the earth. The geologists, being greatly impressed with the vast results produced by the slow processes of the wearing away of the rocks and the deposit of the material in seas or lakes, to be again upheaved to form dry land, and to be again carved out by rain and wind, by heat and cold, by snow and ice, into hills and valleys and grand mountain ranges; and further, by the fact that the highest mountains in every part of the globe very often exhibit on their loftiest summits stratified rocks which contain marine organisms, and were therefore originally laid down beneath the sea; and, yet again, by the fact that the loftiest mountains are often the most recent, and that these grand features of the earth's surface are but the latest examples of the action of forces that have been at work throughout all geological time--studying all their lives the detailed evidences of all these changes, have come to the conclusion that they imply enormous periods only to be measured by scores or hundreds of millions of years. And the collateral study of fossil remains in the long series of rock-formations enforces this view. In the whole epoch of human history, and far back into prehistoric times during which man existed on the earth, although several animals have become extinct, yet there is no proof that any new one has been developed. But this human era, so far as yet known, going back certainly to the glacial epoch and almost certainly to pre-glacial times, cannot be estimated at less than a million, some think even several million years; and as there have certainly been some considerable alterations of level, excavation of valleys, deposits of great beds of gravel, and other superficial changes during this period, some kind of a scale of measurement of geological time has been obtained, by comparison with the very minute changes that have occurred during the historical period. This scale is admittedly a very imperfect one, but it is better than none at all; and it is by comparing these small changes with the far greater ones which have occurred during every successive step backward in geological history that these estimates of geological time have been arrived at. They are also supported by the palæontologists, to whom the vast panorama of successive forms of life is an ever-present reality. Directly they pass into the latest stage of the Tertiary period--the Pliocene of Sir Charles Lyell--all over the world new forms of life appear which are evidently the forerunners of many of our still existing species; and as they go a little further back, into the Miocene, there are indications of a warmer climate in Europe, and large numbers of mammals resembling those which now inhabit the tropics, but of quite distinct species and often of distinct genera and families. And here, though we have only reached to about the middle of the Tertiary period, the changes in the forms of life, in the climate, and in the land-surfaces are so great when compared with the very minute changes during the human epoch, as to require us to multiply the time elapsed many times over. Yet the whole of the Tertiary period, during which _all_ the great groups of the higher animals were developed from a comparatively few generalised ancestral forms, is yet the shortest by far of the three great geological periods--the Mesozoic or Secondary, having been much longer, with still vaster changes both in the earth's crust and in the forms of life; while the Palæozoic or Primary, which carries us back to the earliest forms of life as represented by fossilised remains, is always estimated by geologists to be at least as long as the other two combined, and probably very much longer. From these various considerations most geologists who have made any estimates of geological time from the period of the earliest fossiliferous rocks, have arrived at the conclusion that about 200 millions of years are required. But from the variety of the forms of life at this early period it is concluded that a very much greater duration is needed for the whole epoch of life. Speaking of the varied marine fauna of the Cambrian period, the late Professor Ramsay says:--'In this earliest known varied life we find no evidence of its having lived near the beginning of the zoological series. In a broad sense, compared with what must have gone before, both biologically and physically, all the phenomena connected with this old period seem, to my mind, to be of quite a recent description; and the climates of seas and lands were of the very same kind as those the world enjoys at the present day.' And Professor Huxley held very similar views when he declared: 'If the very small differences which are observable between the crocodiles of the older Secondary formations and those of the present day furnish any sort of an approximation towards an estimate of the average rate of change among reptiles, it is almost appalling to reflect how far back in Palæozoic times we must go before we can hope to arrive at that common stock from which the crocodiles, lizards, _Ornithoscelida_, and _Plesiosauria_, which had attained so great a development in the Triassic epoch, must have been derived.' Now, in opposition to these demands of the geologists, in which they are almost unanimous, the most celebrated physicists, after full consideration of all possible sources of the heat of the sun, and knowing the rate at which it is now expending heat, declare, with complete conviction, that our sun cannot have existed as a heat-giving body for so long a period, and they would therefore reduce the time during which life can possibly have existed on the earth to about one-fourth of that demanded by geologists. In one of his latest articles, Lord Kelvin says:--'Now we have irrefragable dynamics proving that the whole life of our sun as a luminary is a very moderate number of million years, probably less than 50 million, possibly between 50 and 100' (_Phil. Mag._, vol. ii., Sixth Ser., p. 175, Aug. 1901). In my _Island Life_ (chap. X.) I have myself given reasons for thinking that both the stratigraphical and biological changes may have gone on more quickly than has been supposed, and that geological time (meaning thereby the time during which the development of life upon the earth has been going on) may be reduced so as possibly to be brought within the maximum period allowed by physicists; but there will certainly be no time to spare, and any planets dependent on our sun whose period of habitability is either past or to come, cannot possibly have, or have had, sufficient time for the necessarily slow evolution of the higher life-forms. Again, all physicists hold that the sun is now cooling, and that its future life will be much less than its past. In a lecture at the Royal Institution (published in _Nature Series_, in 1889), Lord Kelvin says:--'It would, I think, be exceedingly rash to assume as probable anything more than twenty million years of the sun's light in the past history of the earth, or to reckon more than five or six million years of sunlight for time to come.' These extracts serve to show that, unless either geologists or physicists are very far from any approach to accuracy in their estimates of past or future age of the sun, there is very great difficulty in bringing them into harmony or in accounting for the actual facts of the geological history of the earth and of the whole course of life-development upon it. We are, therefore, again brought to the conclusion that there has been, and is, no time to spare; that the _whole_ of the available past life-period of the sun has been utilised for life-development on the earth, and that the future will be not much more than may be needed for the completion of the grand drama of human history, and the development of the full possibilities of the mental and moral nature of man. We have here, then, a very powerful argument, from a different point of view than any previously considered, for the conclusion that man's place in the solar system is altogether unique, and that no other planet either has developed or can develop such a full and complete life-series as that which the earth has actually developed. Even if the conditions had been more favourable than they are seen to be on other planets, Mercury, Venus, and Mars could not possibly have preserved equability of conditions long enough for life-development, since for unknown ages they must have been passing slowly towards their present wholly _unsuitable_ conditions; while Jupiter and the planets beyond him, whose epoch of life-development is supposed to be in the remote future when they shall have slowly cooled down to habitability, will then be still more faintly illuminated and scantily warmed by a rapidly cooling sun, and may thus become, at the best, globes of solid ice. This is the teaching of science--of the best science of the twentieth century. Yet we find even astronomers who, more than any other exponents of science, should give heed to the teachings of the sister sciences to which they owe so much, indulging in such rhapsodies as the following:--'In our solar system, this little earth has not obtained any special privileges from Nature, and it is strange to wish to confine life within the circle of terrestrial chemistry.' And again: 'Infinity encompasses us on all sides, life asserts itself, universal and eternal, our existence is but a fleeting moment, the vibration of an atom in a ray of the sun, and our planet is but an island floating in the celestial archipelago, to which no thought will ever place any bounds.'[20] In place of such 'wild and whirling words,' I have endeavoured to state the sober conclusions of the best workers and thinkers as to the nature and origin of the world in which we live, and of the universe which on all sides surrounds us. I leave it to my readers to decide which is the more trustworthy guide. FOOTNOTES: [18] _Transactions of Royal Dublin Society_, vol. vi. (ser. ii.), part xiii. 'Of Atmospheres upon Planets and Satellites.' By G. Johnstone Stoney, F.R.S., etc. etc. [19] _Knowledge_, June 1903. [20] M. Camille Flammarion, in _Knowledge_, June 1903. CHAPTER XV THE STARS--HAVE THEY PLANETARY SYSTEMS? ARE THEY BENEFICIAL TO US? Most of the writers on the Plurality of Worlds, from Fontenelle to Proctor, taking into consideration the enormous number of the stars and their apparent uselessness to our world, have assumed that many of them _must_ have systems of planets circling round them, and that some of these planets, at all events, _must_ possess inhabitants, some, perhaps, lower, but others no doubt higher than ourselves. One of our well-known modern astronomers, writing only ten years ago, adopts the same view. He says: 'The suns which we call stars were clearly not created for our benefit. They are of very little practical use to the earth's inhabitants. They give us very little light; an additional small satellite--one considerably smaller than the moon--would have been much more useful in this respect than the millions of stars revealed by the telescope. They must therefore have been formed for some other purpose.... We may therefore conclude, with a high degree of probability, that the stars--at least those with spectra of the solar type--form centres of planetary systems somewhat similar to our own.'[21] The author then discusses the conditions necessary for life analogous to that of our earth, as regards temperature, rotation, mass, atmosphere, water, etc., and he is the only writer I have met with who has considered these conditions; but he touches on them very briefly, and he arrives at the conclusion that, in the case of the stars of solar type, it is probable that _one_ planet, situated at a proper distance, would be fitted to support life. He estimates roughly that there are about ten million stars of this type, that is, closely resembling our sun, and that if only one in ten of these has a planet at the proper distance and properly constituted in other respects, there will be one million worlds fitted for the support of animal life. He therefore concludes that there are probably many stars having life-bearing planets revolving round them. There are, however, many considerations not taken account of by this writer which tend to reduce very considerably the above estimate. It is now known that immense numbers of the stars of smaller magnitudes are nearer to us than are the majority of the stars of the first and second magnitudes, so that it is probable that these, as well as a considerable proportion of the very faint telescopic stars, are really of small dimensions. We have evidence that many of the brightest stars are much larger than our sun, but there are probably ten times as many that are much smaller. We have seen that the whole of the past light and heat-giving duration of our sun has, according to the best authorities, been only just sufficient for the development of life upon the earth. But the duration of a sun's heat-giving power will depend mainly upon its mass, together with its constituent elements. Suns which are much smaller than ours are, therefore, from that cause alone, unsuited to give adequate light and heat for a sufficient time, and with sufficient uniformity, for life-development on planets, even if they possess any at the right distance, and with the extensive series of nicely adjusted conditions which I have shown to be necessary. Again, we must, probably, rule out as unfitted for life-development the whole region of the Milky Way, on account of the excessive forces there in action, as shown by the immense size of many of the stars, their enormous heat-giving power, the crowding of stars and nebulous matter, the great number of star-clusters, and, especially, because it is the region of 'new stars,' which imply collisions of masses of matter sufficiently large to become visible from the immense distance we are from them, but yet excessively small as compared with suns the duration of whose light is to be measured by millions of years. Hence the Milky Way is the theatre of extreme activity and motion; it is comparatively crowded with matter undergoing continual change, and is therefore not sufficiently stable for long periods to be at all likely to possess habitable worlds. We must, therefore, limit our possible planetary systems suitable for life-development, to stars situated inside the circle of the Milky Way and far removed from it--that is, to those composing the solar cluster. These have been variously estimated to consist of a few hundred or many thousand stars--at all events to a very small number as compared with the 'hundreds of millions' in the whole stellar universe. But even here we find that only a portion are probably suitable. Professor Newcomb arrives at the conclusion--as have some other astronomers--that the stars in general have a much smaller mass in proportion to the light they give than our sun has; and, after an elaborate discussion, he finally concludes that the brighter stars are, on the average, much less dense than our sun. In all probability, therefore, they cannot give light and heat for so long a period, and as this period in the case of our sun has only been just sufficient, the number of suns of the solar type and of a sufficient mass may be very limited. Yet further, even among stars having a similar physical constitution to our sun and of an equal or greater mass, only a portion of their period of luminosity would be suitable for the support of planetary life. While they are in process of formation by accretions of solid or gaseous masses, they would be subject to such fluctuations of temperature, and to such catastrophic outbursts when any larger mass than usual was drawn towards them, that the whole of this period--perhaps by far the longest portion of their existence--must be left out of the account of planet-producing suns. Yet all these are to us stars of various degrees of brilliancy. It is almost certain that it is only when the growth of a sun is nearly completed, and its heat has attained a maximum, that the epoch of life-development is likely to begin upon any planets it may possess at the most suitable distance, and upon which all the requisite conditions should be present. It may be said that there are great numbers of stars beyond our solar cluster and yet within the circle of the Milky Way, as well as others towards the poles of the Milky Way, which I have not here referred to. But of these regions very little is known, because it is impossible to tell whether stars in these directions are situated in the outer portion of the solar cluster or in the regions beyond it. Some astronomers appear to think that these regions may be nearly empty of stars, and I have endeavoured to represent what seems to be the general view on this very difficult subject in the two diagrams of the stellar universe at pp. 300, 301. The regions beyond our cluster and above or below the plane of the Milky Way are those where the small irresolvable nebulæ abound, and these may indicate that sun-formation is not yet active in those regions. The two charts of Nebulæ and Clusters at the end of the volume illustrate, and perhaps tend to support this view. DOUBLE AND MULTIPLE STAR SYSTEMS We have already seen, in our sixth chapter, how rapid and extraordinary has been the discovery of what are termed spectroscopic binaries--pairs of stars so close together as to appear like a single star in the most powerful telescopes. The systematic search for such stars has only been carried on for a few years, yet so many have been already found, and their numbers are increasing so rapidly, as to quite startle astronomers. One of the chief workers in this field, Professor Campbell of the Lick Observatory, has stated his opinion that, as accuracy of measurement increases, these discoveries will go on till--'the star that is not a spectroscopic binary will prove to be the rare exception,'--and other astronomers of eminence have expressed similar views. But these close revolving star-systems are generally admitted to be out of the category of life-producing suns. The tidal disturbances mutually produced must be enormous, and this must be inimical to the development of planets, unless they were very close to each sun, and thus in the most unfavourable position for life. We thus see that the result of the most recent researches among the stars is entirely opposed to the old idea that the countless myriads of stars _all_ had planets circulating round them, and that the ultimate purpose of their existence was, that they should be supporters of life, as our sun is the supporter of life upon the earth. So far is this from being the case, that vast numbers of stars have to be put aside as wholly unfitted for such a purpose; and when by successive eliminations of this nature we have reduced the numbers which may possibly be available to a few millions, or even to a few thousands, there comes the last startling discovery, that the entire host of stars is found to contain binary systems in such rapidly increasing numbers, as to lead some of the very first astronomers of the day to the conclusion that single stars may someday be found to be the rare exception! But this tremendous generalisation would, at one stroke, sweep away a large proportion of the stars which other successive disqualifications had spared, and thus leave our sun, which is certainly single, and perhaps two or three companion orbs, alone among the starry host as possible supporters of life on some one of the planets which circulate around them. But we do not really _know_ that any such suns exist. If they exist we do not _know_ that they possess planets. If any do possess planets these may not be at the proper distance, or be of the proper mass, to render life possible. If these primary conditions should be fulfilled, and if there should possibly be not only one or two, but a dozen or more that so far fulfil the first few conditions which are essential, what probability is there that all the other conditions, all the other nice adaptations, all the delicate balance of opposing forces that we have found to prevail upon the earth, and whose combination here is due to exceptional conditions which exist in the case of no other known planet--should _all_ be again combined in some of the possible planets of these possibly existing suns? I submit that the probability is _now_ all the other way. So long as we could assume that all the stars might be, in all essentials, like our sun, it seemed almost ludicrous to suppose that our sun alone should be in a position to support life. But when we find that enormous classes like the gaseous stars of small density, the solar stars while increasing in size and temperature, the stars which are much smaller than our sun, the nebulous stars, probably all the stars of the Milky Way, and lastly that enormous class of spectroscopic doubles--veritable Aaron's rods which threaten to swallow up all the rest--that all these are for various reasons unlikely to have attendant planets adapted to develop life, then the probabilities seem to be enormously against there being any considerable number of suns possessing attendant habitable earths. Just as the habitability of all the planets and larger satellites, once assumed as so extremely probable as to amount almost to a certainty, is now generally given up, so that in speculating on life in stellar systems Mr. Gore assumes that only _one_ planet to each sun can be habitable; in like manner it may, and I believe will, turn out, that of all the myriad stars, the more we learn about them, the smaller and smaller will become the scanty residue which, with any probability, we can suppose to illuminate and vivify habitable earths. And when with this scanty probability we combine the still scantier probability that any such planet will possess simultaneously, and for a sufficiently long period, _all_ the highly complex and delicately balanced conditions known to be essential for a full life-development, the conception that on this earth alone has such development been completed will not seem so wildly improbable a conjecture as it has hitherto been held to be. ARE THE STARS BENEFICIAL TO US? When I suggested in my first publication on this subject that some emanations from the stars _might_ be beneficial or injurious, and that a central position _might_ be essential in order to render these emanations equable, one of my astronomical critics laughed the idea to scorn, and declared that 'we might wander into outer space without losing anything more serious than we lose when the night is cloudy and we cannot see the stars.'[22] How my critic knows that this is so he does not tell us. He states it positively, with no qualification, as if it were an established fact. It may be as well to inquire, therefore, if there is any evidence bearing upon the point at issue. Astronomers are so fully occupied with the vast number and variety of the phenomena presented by the stellar universe and the various difficult problems arising therefrom, that many lesser but still interesting inquiries have necessarily received little attention. Such a minor problem is the determination of how much heat or other active radiation we receive from the stars; yet a few observations have been made with results that are of considerable interest. In the years 1900 and 1901 Mr. E.F. Nichols of the Yerkes Observatory made a series of experiments with a radiometer of special construction, to determine the heat emitted by certain stars. The result arrived at was, that Vega gave about 1/200000000 of the heat of a candle at one metre distance, and Arcturus about 2.2 times as much. In 1895 and 1896 Mr. G.M. Minchin made a series of experiments on the _Electrical Measurement of Starlight_, by means of a photo-electric cell of peculiar construction which is sensitive to the whole of the rays in the spectrum, and also to some of the ultra-red and ultra-violet rays. Combined with this was a very delicate electrometer. The telescope employed to concentrate the light was a reflector of two feet aperture. Mr. Minchin was assisted in the experiments by the late Professor G.F. Fitzgerald, F.R.S., of Trinity College, Dublin, which may be considered guarantee of the accuracy of the observations. The following are the chief results obtained:-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------+-------------+-----------+----------- | Deflection | Light | Source of Light. | in | in | E. M. F. | Millimetres | Candles. | Volts. ---------------------------------+-------------+-----------+----------- 1896 Candle at 10 feet distance | 18.70 | | Betelgeuse (0.9 mag.) | 12.80 | 0.685 | 0.026 Aldebaran (1.1 mag.) | 5.21 | 0.279 | 0.012 Procyon (0.5 mag) | 4.89 | 0.261 | 0.011 Alpha Cygni (1.3 mag.) | 4.90 | 0.262 | 0.011 Polaris (2.1 mag.) | 3.10 | 0.166 | 0.007 ---------------------------------+-------------+-----------+----------- 1 volt. | 432.00 | | | | | 1895 Arcturus (0.3 mag.) | 8.2 | 1.01 | 0.019 Vega (0.1 mag) | 11.5 | 1.42 | 0.026 Candle at 10 feet | 8.1 | | ---------------------------------+-------------+-----------+----------- N.B.--The standard candle shone directly on the cell, whereas the star's light was concentrated by a 2-foot mirror. The sensitive surface on which the light of the stars was concentrated was 1/20 inch in diameter. We must therefore diminish the amount of candle light in this table in the proportion of the square of the diameter of the mirror (in 1/20 of an inch) to one, equal to 1/230400. If we make the necessary reduction in the case of Vega, and also equalise the distance at which the candle was placed, we find the following result:-- Observer. Star. Candle power at 10 ft. Minchin. Vega 1/162250 Nichols. " 1/22000000 This enormous difference in the result is no doubt largely due to the fact that Mr. Nichols's apparatus measured heat alone, whereas Mr. Minchin's cell measured almost all the rays. And this is further shown by the fact that, whereas Mr. Nichols found Arcturus a red star, hotter than Vega a white one, Mr. Minchin, measuring also the light-giving and some of the chemical rays, found Vega considerably more energetic than Arcturus. These comparisons also suggest that other modes of measurement might give yet higher results, but it will no doubt be urged that such minute effects must necessarily be quite inoperative upon the organic world. There are, however, some considerations which tend the other way. Mr. Minchin remarks on the unexpected fact that Betelgeuse produces more than double the electrical energy of Procyon, a much brighter star. This indicates that many of the stars of smaller visual magnitudes may give out a large amount of energy, and it is this energy, which we now know can take many strange and varied forms, that would be likely to influence organic life. And as to the quantity being too minute to have any effect, we know that the excessively minute amount of light from the very smallest telescopic stars produces such chemical changes on a photographic plate as to form distinct images, with comparatively small lenses or reflectors and with an exposure of two or three hours. And if it were not that the diffused light of the surrounding sky also acts upon the plate and blurs the faint images, much smaller stars could be photographed. We know that not all the rays, but a portion only, are capable of producing these effects; we know also that there are many kinds of radiation from the stars, and probably some yet undiscovered comparable with the X rays and other new forms of radiation. We must also remember the endless variety and the extreme instability of the protoplasmic products in the living organism, many of which are perhaps as sensitive to special rays as is the photographic plate. And we are not here limited to action for a few minutes or a few hours, but throughout the whole night and day, and continued whenever the sky is clear for months or years. Thus the cumulative effect of these very weak radiations may become important. It is probable that their action would be most influential on plants, and here we find all the conditions requisite for its accumulation and utilisation in the large amount of leaf-surface exposed to it. A large tree must present some hundreds of superficial feet of receptive surface, while even shrubs and herbs often have a leaf-area of greater superficial extent than the object-glasses of our largest telescopes. Some of the highly complex chemical processes that go on in plants may be helped by these radiations, and their action would be increased by the fact that, coming from every direction over the whole surface of the heavens, the rays from the stars would be able to reach and act upon every leaf of the densest masses of foliage. The large amount of growth that takes place at night may be in part due to this agency. Of course all this is highly speculative; but I submit, in view of the fact that the light of the very faintest stars _does_ produce distinct chemical changes, that even the very minute heat-effects are measureable, as well as the electro-motive forces caused by them; and further, that when we consider the millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of stars, all acting simultaneously on any organism which may be sensitive to them, the supposition that they do produce some effect, and possibly a very important effect, is not one to be summarily rejected as altogether absurd and not worth inquiring into. It is not, however, these possible direct actions of the stars upon living organisms to which I attach much weight as regards our central position in the stellar universe. Further consideration of the subject has convinced me that the fundamental importance of that position is a physical one, as has already been suggested by Sir Norman Lockyer and some other astronomers. Briefly, the central position appears to be the only one where suns can be sufficiently stable and long-lived to be capable of maintaining the long process of life-development in any of the planets they may possess. This point will be further developed in the next (and concluding) chapter. FOOTNOTES: [21] _The Worlds of Space_, by J.E. Gore, chapter iii. [22] _The Fortnightly Review_, April 1903, p. 60. CHAPTER XVI STABILITY OF THE STAR-SYSTEM: IMPORTANCE OF OUR CENTRAL POSITION: SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION One of the greatest difficulties with regard to the vast system of stars around us is the question of its permanence and stability, if not absolutely and indefinitely, yet for periods sufficiently long to allow for the many millions of years that have certainly been required for our terrestrial life-development. This period, in the case of the earth, as I have sufficiently shown, has been characterised throughout by extreme uniformity, while a continuance of that uniformity for a few millions of years in the future is almost equally certain. But our mathematical astronomers can find no indications of such stability of the stellar universe as a whole, if subject to the law of gravitation alone. In reply to some questions on this point, my friend Professor George Darwin writes as follows:--'A symmetrical annular system of bodies might revolve in a circle with or without a central body. Such a system would be unstable. If the bodies are of unequal masses and not symmetrically disposed, the break-up of the system would probably be more rapid than in the ideal case of symmetry.' This would imply that the great annular system of the Milky Way is unstable. But if so, its existence at all is a greater mystery than ever. Although in detail its structure is very irregular, as a whole it is wonderfully symmetrical; and it seems quite impossible that its generally circular ring-like form can be the result of the chance aggregation of matter from any pre-existing different form. Star-clusters are equally unstable, or, rather, nothing is known or can be predicated about their stability or instability, according to Professors Newcomb and Darwin. Mr. E.T. Whittaker (Secretary to the Royal Astronomical Society), to whom Professor G. Darwin sent my questions, writes:--'I doubt whether the principal phenomena of the stellar universe are consequences of the law of gravitation at all. I have been working myself at spiral nebulæ, and have got a first approximation to an explanation--but it is electro-dynamical and not gravitational. In fact, it may be questioned whether, for bodies of such tremendous extent as the Milky Way or nebulæ, the effect which we call gravitation is given by Newton's law; just as the ordinary formulæ of electrostatic attraction break down when we consider charges moving with very great velocities.' Accepting these statements and opinions of two mathematicians who have given special attention to similar problems, we need not limit ourselves to the laws of gravitation as having determined the present form of the stellar universe; and this is the more important because we may thus escape from a conclusion which many astronomers seem to think inevitable, viz. that the observed proper motions of the stars cannot be explained by the gravitative forces of the system itself. In chapter VIII. of this work I have quoted Professor Newcomb's calculation as to the effect of gravitation in a universe of 100 million stars, each five times the mass of our sun, and spread over a sphere which it would take light 30,000 years to cross; then, a body falling from its outer limits to the centre could at the utmost acquire a velocity of twenty-five miles a second; and therefore, any body in any part of such a universe having a greater velocity would pass away into infinite space. Now, as several stars have, it is believed, much more than this velocity, it follows not only that they will inevitably escape from our universe, but that they do not belong to it, as their great velocity must have been acquired elsewhere. This seems to have been the idea of the astronomer who stated that, even at the very moderate speed of our sun, we should in five million years be deep in the actual stream of the Milky Way. To this I have already sufficiently replied; but I now wish to bring before my readers an excellent illustration of the importance of the late Professor Huxley's remark, that the results you got out of the 'mathematical mill' depend entirely on what you put into it. In the _Philosophical Magazine_ (January 1902) is a remarkable article by Lord Kelvin, in which he discusses the very same problem as that which Professor Newcomb had discussed at a much earlier date, but, starting from different assumptions, equally based on ascertained facts and probabilities deduced from them, brings out a very different result. Lord Kelvin postulates a sphere of such a radius that a star at its confines would have a parallax of one-thousandth part of a second (0".001), equivalent to 3215 light-years. Uniformly distributed through this sphere there is matter equal in mass to 1000 million suns like ours. If this matter becomes subject to gravitation, it all begins to move at first with almost infinite slowness, especially near its centre; but nevertheless, in twenty-five million years many of these suns would have acquired velocities of from twelve to twenty miles a second, while some would have less and some probably more than seventy miles a second. Now such velocities as these agree generally with the measured velocities of the stars, hence Lord Kelvin thinks there may be as much matter as 1000 million suns within the above-named distance. He then states that if we suppose there to be 10,000 million suns within the same sphere, velocities would be produced very much greater than the known star-velocities; hence it is probable that there is very much less matter than 10,000 million times the sun's mass. He also states that if the matter were not uniformly distributed within the sphere, then, whatever was the irregularity, the acquired motions would be greater; again indicating that the 1000 million suns would be ample to produce the observed effects of stellar motion. He then calculates the average distance apart of each of the 1000 million stars, which he finds to be about 300 millions of millions of miles. Now the nearest star to our sun is about twenty-six million million of miles distant, and, as the evidence shows, is situated in the denser part of the solar cluster. This gives ample allowance for the comparative emptiness of the space between our cluster and the Milky Way, as well as of the whole region towards the poles of the Milky Way (as shown by the diagrams in chapter IV.), while the comparative density of extensive portions of the Galaxy itself may serve to make up the average. Now, previous writers have come to a different conclusion from the same general line of argument, because they have started with different assumptions. Professor Newcomb, whose statement made some years back is usually followed, assumed 100 million stars each five times as large as our sun, equal to 500 million suns in all, and he distributed them equally throughout a sphere 30,000 light-years in diameter. Thus he has half the amount of matter assumed by Lord Kelvin, but nearly five times the extent, the result being that gravity could only produce a maximum speed of twenty-five miles a second; whereas on Lord Kelvin's assumption a maximum speed of seventy miles a second would be produced, or even more. By this latter calculation we find no insuperable difficulty in the speed of any of the stars being beyond the power of gravitation to produce, because the rates here given are the direct results of gravitation acting on bodies almost uniformly distributed through space. Irregular distribution, such as we see everywhere in the universe, might lead to both greater and less velocities; and if we further take account of collisions and near approaches of large masses resulting in explosive disruptions, we might have almost any amount of motion as the result, but as this motion would be produced by gravitation within the system, it could equally well be controlled by gravitation. [Illustration: DIAGRAM OF STELLAR UNIVERSE (Plan). 1. Central part of Solar Cluster. 2. Sun's Orbit (Black spot). 3. Outer limit of Solar Cluster. 4. Milky Way.] In order that my readers may better understand the calculations of Lord Kelvin, and also the general conclusions of astronomers as to the form and dimensions of the stellar universe, I have drawn two diagrams, one showing a plan on the central plane of the Milky Way, the other a section through its poles. Both are on the same scale, and they show the total diameter across the Milky Way as being 3600 light-years, or about half that postulated by Lord Kelvin for his hypothetical universe. I do this because the dimensions given by him are those which are sufficient to lead to motions near the centre such as the stars now possess in a minimum period of twenty-five million years after the initial arrangement he supposes, at which later epoch which we are now supposed to have reached, the whole system would of course be greatly reduced in extent by aggregations towards and near the centre. These dimensions also seem to accord sufficiently with the actual distances of stars as yet measured. The smallest parallax which has been determined with any certainty, according to Professor Newcomb's list, is that of Gamma Cassiopeiæ, which is one-hundredth of a second (0".01), while Lord Kelvin gives none smaller than 0".02, and these will all be included within the solar cluster as I have shown it. [Illustration: DIAGRAM OF STELLAR UNIVERSE (Section). Section through Poles of Milky Way.] It must be clearly understood that these two illustrations are merely diagrams to show the main features of the stellar universe according to the best information available, with the proportionate dimensions of these features, so far as the facts of the distribution of the stars and the views of those astronomers who have paid most attention to the subject can be harmonised. Of course it is not suggested that the whole arrangement is so regular as here shown, but an attempt has been made by means of the dotted shading to represent the comparative densities of the different portions of space around us, and a few remarks on this point may be needed. The solar cluster is shown very dense at the central portion, occupying one-tenth of its diameter, and it is near the outside of this dense centre that our sun is supposed to be situated. Beyond this there seems to be almost a vacuity, beyond which again is the outer portion of the cluster consisting of comparatively thinly scattered stars, thus forming a kind of ring-cluster, resembling in shape the beautiful ring-nebula in Lyra, as has been suggested by several astronomers. There is some direct evidence for this ring-form. Professor Newcomb in his recent book on _The Stars_ gives a list of all stars of which the parallax is fairly well known. These are sixty-nine in number; and on arranging them in the order of the amount of their parallax, I find that no less than thirty-five of them have parallaxes between 0".1 and 0".4 of a second, thus showing that they constitute part of the dense central mass; while three others, from 0".4 to 0".75, indicate those which are our closest companions at the present time, but still at an enormous distance. Those which have parallaxes of less than the tenth and down to one-hundredth of a second are only thirty-one in all; but as they are spread over a sphere ten times the diameter, and therefore a thousand times the cubic content of the sphere containing those above one-tenth of a second, they ought to be immensely more numerous even if very much more thinly scattered. The interesting point, however, is, that till we get down to a parallax of 0".06, there are only three stars as yet measured, whereas those between 0".02 and 0".06, an equal range of parallax, are twenty-six in number, and as these are scattered in all directions they indicate an almost vacant space followed by a moderately dense outer ring. In the enormous space between our cluster and the Milky Way, and also above and below its plane to the poles of the Galaxy, stars appear to be very thinly scattered, perhaps more densely in the plane of the Milky Way than above and below it where the irresolvable nebulæ are so numerous; and there may not improbably be an almost vacant space beyond our cluster for a considerable distance, as has been supposed, but this cannot be known till some means are discovered of measuring parallaxes of from one-hundredth to one five-hundredth of a second. These diagrams also serve to indicate another point of considerable importance to the view here advocated. By placing the solar system towards the outer margin of the dense central portion of the solar cluster (which may very possibly include a large proportion of dark stars and thus be much more dense towards the centre than it appears to us), it may very well be supposed to revolve, with the other stars composing it, around the centre of gravity of the cluster, as the force of gravity towards that centre might be perhaps twenty or a hundred times greater than towards the very much less dense and more remote outer portions of the cluster. The sun, as indicated on the diagrams, is about thirty light-years from that centre, corresponding to a parallax of a little more than one-tenth of a second, and an actual distance of 190 millions of millions of miles, equal to about 70,000 times the distance of the sun from Neptune. Yet we see that this position is so little removed from the exact centre of the whole stellar universe, that if any beneficial influences are due to that central position in regard to the Galaxy, it will receive them perhaps to as full an extent as if situated at the actual centre. But if it is situated as here shown, there is no further difficulty as to its proper motion carrying it from one side to the other of the Milky Way in less time than has been required for the development of life upon the earth. And if the solar cluster is really sub-globular, and sufficiently condensed to serve as a centre of gravity for the whole of the stars of the cluster to revolve around, all the component stars which are not situated in the plane of its equator (and that of the Milky Way) must revolve obliquely at various angles up to an angle of 90°. These numerous diverging motions, together with the motions of the nearer stars outside the cluster, some of which may revolve round other centres of gravity made up largely of dark bodies, would perhaps sufficiently account for the apparent random motions of so many of the stars. UNIFORM HEAT-SUPPLY DUE TO CENTRAL POSITION We now come to a point of the greatest interest as regards the problem we are investigating. We have seen how great is the difference in the estimates of geologists and those of physicists as to the time that has elapsed during the whole development of life. But the position we have now found for the sun, in the outer portion of the central star-cluster, may afford a clue to this problem. What we require is, some mode of keeping up the sun's heat during the enormous geological periods in which we have evidence of a wonderful uniformity in the earth's temperature, and therefore in the sun's heat-emission. The great central ring-cluster with its condensed central mass, which presumably has been forming for a much longer period than our sun has been giving heat to the earth, must during all this time have been exerting a powerful attraction on the diffused matter in the spaces around it, now apparently almost void as compared with what they may have been. Some scanty remnants of that matter we see in the numerous meteoric swarms which have been drawn into our system. A position towards the outside of this central aggregation of suns would evidently be very favourable for the growth by accretion of any considerable mass. The enormous distance apart of the outer components (the outer ring) of the cluster would allow a large amount of the inflowing meteoritic matter to escape them, and the larger suns situated near the surface of the inner dense cluster would draw to themselves the greater part of this matter.[23] The various planets of our system were no doubt built up from a portion of the matter that flowed in near the plane of the ecliptic, but much of that which came from all other directions would be drawn towards the sun itself or to its neighbouring suns. Some of this would fall directly into it; other masses coming from different directions and colliding with each other would have their motion checked, and thus again fall into the sun; and so long as the matter falling in were not in too large masses, the slow additions to the sun's bulk and increase of its heat would be sufficiently gradual to be in no way prejudicial to a planet at the earth's distance. The main point I wish to suggest here is, that by far the greater portion of the matter of the whole stellar universe has, either through gravitation or in combination with electrical forces, as suggested by Mr. Whittaker, become drawn together into the vast ring-formed system of the Milky Way, which is, presumably, slowly revolving, and has thus been checked in its original inflow toward the centre of mass of the stellar universe. It has also probably drawn towards itself the adjacent portions of the scattered material in the spaces around it in all directions. Had the vast mass of matter postulated by Lord Kelvin acquired no motion of revolution, but have fallen continuously towards the centre of mass, the motions developed when the more distant bodies approached that centre would have been extremely rapid; while, as they must have fallen in from every direction, they would have become more and more densely aggregated, and collisions of the most catastrophic nature would frequently have occurred, and this would have rendered the central portion of the universe the _least_ stable and the _least_ fitted to develop life. But, under the conditions that actually prevail, the very reverse is the case. The quantity of matter remaining between our cluster and the Milky Way being comparatively small, the aggregation into suns has gone on more regularly and more slowly. The motions acquired by our sun and its neighbours have been rendered moderate by two causes: (1) their nearness to the centre of the very slowly aggregating cluster where the motion due to gravitation is least in amount; and (2) the slight differential attraction away from the centre by the Milky Way on the side nearest to us. Again, this protective action of the Milky Way has been repeated, on a smaller scale, by the formation of the outer ring of the solar cluster, which has thus preserved the inner central cluster itself from a too abundant direct inflow of large masses of matter. But although the matter composing the outer portion of the original universe has been to a large extent aggregated into the vast system of the Milky Way, it seems probable, perhaps even certain, that some portion would escape its attractive forces and would pass through its numerous open spaces--indicated by the dark rifts, channels, and patches, as already described--and thus flow on unchecked towards the centre of mass of the whole system. The quantity of matter thus reaching the central cluster from the enormously remote spaces beyond the Milky Way might be very small in comparison with what was retained to build up that wonderful star-system; but it might yet be so large in total amount as to play an important part in the formation of the central group of suns. It would probably flow inwards almost continuously, and when it ultimately reached the solar cluster, it would have attained a very high velocity. If, therefore, it were widely diffused, and consisted of masses of small or moderate size as compared with planets or stars, it would furnish the energy requisite for bringing these slowly aggregating stars to the required intensity of heat for forming luminous suns. Here, then, I think, we have found an adequate explanation of the very long-continued light and heat-emitting capacity of our sun, and probably of many others in about the same position in the solar cluster. These would at first gradually aggregate into considerable masses from the slowly moving diffused matter of the central portions of the original universe; but at a later period they would be reinforced by a constant and steady inrush of matter from its very outer regions, and therefore possessing such high velocities as to materially aid in producing and maintaining the requisite temperature of a sun such as ours, during the long periods demanded for continuous life-development. The enormous extension and mass of the original universe of diffused matter (as postulated by Lord Kelvin) is thus seen to be of the greatest importance as regards this ultimate product of evolution, because, without it, the comparatively slow-moving and cool central regions might not have been able to produce and maintain the requisite energy in the form of heat; while the aggregation of by far the larger portion of its matter in the great revolving ring of the galaxy was equally important, in order to prevent the too great and too rapid inflow of matter to these favoured regions. It appears, then, that if we admit as probable some such process of development as I have here indicated, we can dimly see the bearing of all the great features of the stellar universe upon the successful development of life. These are, its vast dimensions; the form it has acquired in the mighty ring of the Milky Way; and our position near to, but not exactly in, its centre. We know that the star-system _has_ acquired these forms, presumably from some simple and more diffused condition. We know that we _are_ situated near the centre of this vast system. We know that our sun _has_ emitted light and heat, almost uniformly, for periods incompatible with rapid aggregation and the equally rapid cooling which physicists consider inevitable. I have here suggested a mode of development which would lead to a very slow but continuous growth of the more central suns; to an excessively long period of nearly stationary heat-giving power; and lastly, an equally long period of very gradual cooling--a period the commencement of which our sun may have just entered upon. Descending now to terrestrial physics, I have shown that, owing to the highly complex nature of the adjustments required to render a world habitable and to retain its habitability during the æons of time requisite for life-development, it is in the highest degree improbable that the required conditions and adaptations should have occurred in any other planets of any other suns, which _might_ occupy an equally favourable position with our own, and which were of the requisite size and heat-giving power. Lastly, I submit that the whole of the evidence I have here brought together leads to the conclusion that our earth is almost certainly the only inhabited planet in our solar system; and, further, that there is no inconceivability--no improbability even--in the conception that, in order to produce a world that should be precisely adapted in every detail for the orderly development of organic life culminating in man, such a vast and complex universe as that which we know exists around us, may have been absolutely required. SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT As the last ten chapters of this volume embody a connected argument leading to the conclusion above stated, it may be useful to my readers to summarise rather fully the successive steps of this argument, the facts on which it rests, and the various subsidiary conclusions arrived at. (1) One of the most important results of modern astronomy is to have established the unity of the vast stellar universe which we see around us. This rests upon a great mass of observations, which demonstrate the wonderful complexity in detail of the arrangement and distribution of stars and nebulæ, combined with a no less remarkable general symmetry, indicating throughout a single inter-dependent system, not a number of totally distinct systems so far apart as to have no physical relations with each other, as was once supposed. (2) This view is supported by numerous converging lines of evidence, all tending to show that the stars are not infinite in number, as was once generally believed, and which view is even now advocated by some astronomers. The very remarkable calculations of Lord Kelvin, referred to in the early part of this chapter, give a further support to this view, since they show that if the stars extended much beyond those we see or can obtain direct knowledge of, and with no very great change in their average distance apart, then the force of gravitation towards the centre would have produced on the average more rapid motions than the stars generally possess. (3) An overwhelming consensus of opinion among the best astronomers establishes the fact of our nearly central position in the stellar universe. They all agree that the Milky Way is nearly circular in form. They all agree that our sun is situated almost exactly in its medial plane. They all agree that our sun, although not situated at the exact centre of the galactic circle, is yet not very far from it, because there are no unmistakable signs of our being nearer to it at any one point and farther away from the opposite point. Thus the nearly central position of our sun in the great star-system is almost universally admitted. On the question of the solar-cluster there is more difference of opinion; though here, again, all are agreed that there is such a cluster. Its size, form, density, and exact position are somewhat uncertain, but I have, as far as possible, been guided by the best available evidence. If we adopt Lord Kelvin's general idea of the gradual condensation of an enormous diffused mass of matter towards its common centre of gravity, that centre would be approximately the centre of this cluster. Also, as gravitational force at and near this centre would be comparatively small, the motions produced there would be slow, and collisions, being due only to differential motions, when they did occur would be very gentle. We might therefore expect many dark aggregations of matter here, which may explain why we do not find any special crowding of visible stars in the direction of this centre; while, as no star has a sensible disc, the dark stars if at great distances would hardly ever be seen to occult the bright ones. Thus, it seems to me, the controlling force may be explained which has retained our sun in approximately the same orbit around the centre of gravity of this central cluster during the whole period of its existence as a sun and our existence as a planet; and has thus saved us from the possibility--perhaps even the certainty--of disastrous collisions or disruptive approaches to which suns, in or near the Milky Way, and to a less extent elsewhere, are or have been exposed. It seems quite probable that in that region of more rapid and less controlled motions and more crowded masses of matter, no star can remain in a nearly stable condition as regards temperature for sufficiently long periods to allow of a complete system of life-development on any planet it may possess. (4) The various proofs are next stated that assure us of the almost complete uniformity of matter, and of material physical and chemical laws, throughout our universe. This I believe no one seriously disputes; and it is a point of the greatest importance when we come to consider the conditions required for the development and maintenance of life, since it assures us that very similar, if not identical, conditions must prevail wherever organic life is or can be developed. (5) This leads us on to the consideration of the essential characteristics of the living organism, consisting as it does of some of the most abundant and most widely distributed of these material elements, and being always subject to the general laws of matter. The best authorities in physiology are quoted, as to the extreme complexity of the chemical compounds which constitute the physical basis for the manifestation of life; as to their great instability; their wonderful mobility combined with permanence of form and structure; and the altogether marvellous powers they possess of bringing about unique chemical transformations and of building up the most complicated structures from simple elements. I have endeavoured to put the broad phenomena of vegetable and animal life in a way that will enable my readers to form some faint conception of the intricacy, the delicacy, and the mystery of the myriad living forms they see everywhere around them. Such a conception will enable them to realise how supremely grand is organic life, and to appreciate better, perhaps, the absolute necessity for the numerous, complex and delicate adaptations of inorganic nature, without which it is impossible for life either to exist now, or to have been developed during the immeasurable past. (6) The general conditions which are absolutely essential for life thus manifested on our planet are then discussed, such as, solar light and heat; water universally distributed on the planet's surface and in the atmosphere; an atmosphere of sufficient density, and composed of the several gases from which alone protoplasm can be formed; some alternations of light and darkness, and a few others. (7) Having treated these conditions broadly, and explained why they are important and even indispensable for life, we next proceed to show how they are fulfilled upon the earth, and how numerous, how complex, and often how exact are the adjustments needed to bring them about, and maintain them almost unchanged throughout the vast æons of time occupied in the development of life. Two chapters are devoted to this subject; and it is believed that they contain facts that will be new to many of my readers. The combinations of causes which lead to this result are so varied, and in several cases dependent on such exceptional peculiarities of physical constitution, that it seems in the highest degree improbable that they can _all_ be found again combined either in the solar system or even in the stellar universe. It will be well here just to enumerate these conditions, which are all essential within more or less narrow limits:-- Distance of planet from the sun. Mass of planet. Obliquity of its ecliptic. Amount of water as compared with land. Surface distribution of land and water. Permanence of this distribution, dependent probably on the unique origin of our moon. An atmosphere of sufficient density, and of suitable component gases. An adequate amount of dust in the atmosphere. Atmospheric electricity. Many of these act and react on each other, and lead to results of great complexity. (8) Passing on to other planets of the solar system, it is shown that none of them combine all the complex conditions which are found to work harmoniously together on the earth; while in most cases there is some one defect which alone removes them from the category of possible life-producing and life-supporting planets. Among these are the small size and mass of Mars, being such that it cannot retain aqueous vapour; and the fact that Venus rotates on its axis in the same time as it takes to revolve round the sun. Neither of these facts was known when Proctor wrote upon the question of the habitability of the planets. All the other planets are now given up--and were given up by Proctor himself--as possible life-bearers in their present stage; but he and others have held that, if not suitable now, some of them may have been the scene of life-development in the past, while others will be so in the future. In order to show the futility of this supposition, the problem of the duration of the sun as a stable heat-giver is discussed; and it is shown that it is only by reducing the periods claimed by geologists and biologists for life-development upon the earth, and by extending the time allowed by physicists to its utmost limits, that the two claims can be harmonised. It follows that the whole period of the sun's duration as a light and heat-giver has been required for the development of life upon the earth; and that it is only upon planets whose phases of development synchronise with that of the earth that the evolution of life is possible. For those whose material evolution has gone on quicker or slower, there has not been, or will not be, time enough for the development of life. (9) The problem of the stars as possibly having life-supporting planets is next dealt with, and reasons are given why in only a minute portion of the whole is this possible. Even in that minute portion, reduced probably to a few of the component suns of the solar-cluster, a large proportion seems likely to be ruled out by being close binary systems, and another large portion by being in process of aggregation. In those remaining, whether they may be reckoned by tens or by hundreds we cannot say, the chances against the same complex combination of conditions as those which we find on the earth occurring on any planet of any other sun are enormously great. (10) I then refer, briefly, to some recent measurements of star-radiation, and suggest that they may thus possibly have important effects on the development of vegetable and animal life; and, finally, I discuss the problem of the stability of the stellar universe and the special advantage we derive from our central position, suggested by some of the latest researches of our great mathematician and physicist--Lord Kelvin. CONCLUSIONS Having thus brought together the whole of the available evidence bearing upon the questions treated in this volume, I claim that certain definite conclusions have been reached and proved, and that certain other conclusions have enormous probabilities in their favour. The conclusions reached by modern astronomers are: (1) That the stellar universe forms one connected whole; and, though of enormous extent, is yet finite, and its extent determinable. (2) That the solar system is situated in the plane of the Milky Way, and not far removed from the centre of that plane. The earth is therefore nearly in the centre of the stellar universe. (3) That this universe consists throughout of the same kinds of matter, and is subjected to the same physical and chemical laws. The conclusions which I claim to have shown to have enormous probabilities in their favour are-- (4) That no other planet in the solar system than our earth is inhabited or habitable. (5) That the probabilities are almost as great against any other sun possessing inhabited planets. (6) That the nearly central position of our sun is probably a permanent one, and has been specially favourable, perhaps absolutely essential, to life-development on the earth. * * * * * These latter conclusions depend upon the combination of a large number of special conditions, each of which must be in definite relation to many of the others, and must all have persisted simultaneously during enormous periods of time. The weight to be given to this kind of reasoning depends upon a full and fair consideration of the _whole_ evidence as I have endeavoured to present it in the last seven chapters of this book. To this evidence I appeal. * * * * * This completes my work as a connected argument, founded wholly on the facts and principles accumulated by modern science; and it leads, if my facts are substantially correct and my reasoning sound, to one great and definite conclusion--that man, the culmination of conscious organic life, has been developed here only in the whole vast material universe we see around us. I claim that this is the logical outcome of the evidence, if we consider and weigh this evidence without any prepossessions whatever. I maintain that it is a question as to which we have no right to form _a priori_ opinions not founded upon evidence. And evidence opposed to this conclusion, or even as to its improbability, we have absolutely none whatever. But, if we admit the conclusion, nothing that need alarm either the scientific or the religious mind necessarily follows, because it can be explained or accounted for in either of two distinct ways. One considerable body, including probably the majority of men of science, will admit that the evidence does apparently lead to this conclusion, but will explain it as due to a fortunate coincidence. There might have been a hundred or a thousand life-bearing planets, had the course of evolution of the universe been a little different, or there might have been none at all. They would probably add, that, as life and man _have_ been produced, that shows that their production was possible; and therefore, if not now then at some other time, if not here then in some other planet of some other sun, we should be sure to have come into existence; or if not precisely the same as we are, then something a little better or a little worse. The other body, and probably much the largest, would be represented by those who, holding that mind is essentially superior to matter and distinct from it, cannot believe that life, consciousness, mind, are products of matter. They hold that the marvellous complexity of forces which appear to control matter, if not actually to constitute it, are and must be mind-products; and when they see life and mind apparently rising out of matter and giving to its myriad forms an added complexity and unfathomable mystery, they see in this development an additional proof of the supremacy of mind. Such persons would be inclined to the belief of the great eighteenth century scholar, Dr. Bentley, that the soul of one virtuous man is of greater worth and excellency than the sun and all his planets and all the stars in the heavens; and when they are shown that there are strong reasons for thinking that man _is_ the unique and supreme product of this vast universe, they will see no difficulty in going a little further, and believing that the universe was actually brought into existence for this very purpose. With infinite space around us and infinite time before and behind us, there is no incongruity in this conception. A universe as large as ours for the purpose of bringing into existence many myriads of living, intellectual, moral, and spiritual beings, with unlimited possibilities of life and happiness, is surely not _more_ out of proportion than is the complex machinery, the life-long labour, the ingenuity and invention which we have bestowed upon the production of the humble, the trivial, _pin_. Neither is the apparent waste of energy so great in such a universe, comparatively, as the millions of acorns, produced during its life by an oak, every one of which might grow to be a tree, but of which only _one_ does actually, after several hundred years, produce the _one_ tree which is to replace the parent. And if it is said that the acorns are food for bird and beast, yet the spores of ferns and the seeds of orchids are not so, and countless millions of these go to waste for every one which reproduces the parent form. And all through the animal world, especially among the lower types, the same thing is seen. For the great majority of these entities _we_ can see no use whatever, either of the enormous variety of the species, or the vast hordes of individuals. Of beetles alone there are at least a hundred thousand distinct species now living, while in some parts of sub-arctic America mosquitoes are sometimes so excessively abundant that they obscure the sun. And when we think of the myriads that have existed through the vast ages of geological time, the mind reels under the immensity of, to us, apparently useless life. All nature tells us the same strange, mysterious story, of the exuberance of life, of endless variety, of unimaginable quantity. All this life upon our earth has led up to and culminated in that of man. It has been, I believe, a common and not unpopular idea that during the whole process of the rise and growth and extinction of past forms, the earth has been preparing for the ultimate--Man. Much of the wealth and luxuriance of living things, the infinite variety of form and structure, the exquisite grace and beauty in bird and insect, in foliage and flower, may have been mere by-products of the grand mechanism we call nature--the one and only method of developing humanity. And is it not in perfect harmony with this grandeur of design (if it be design), this vastness of scale, this marvellous process of development through all the ages, that the material universe needed to produce this cradle of organic life, and of a being destined to a higher and a permanent existence, should be on a corresponding scale of vastness, of complexity, of beauty? Even if there were no such evidence as I have here adduced for the unique position and the exceptional characteristics which distinguish the earth, the old idea that all the planets were inhabited, and that all the stars existed for the sake of other planets, which planets existed to develop life, would, in the light of our present knowledge, seem utterly improbable and incredible. It would introduce monotony into a universe whose grand character and teaching is endless diversity. It would imply that to produce the living soul in the marvellous and glorious body of man--man with his faculties, his aspirations, his powers for good and evil--that this was an easy matter which could be brought about anywhere, in any world. It would imply that man is an animal and nothing more, is of no importance in the universe, needed no great preparations for his advent, only, perhaps, a second-rate demon, and a third or fourth-rate earth. Looking at the long and slow and complex growth of nature that preceded his appearance, the immensity of the stellar universe with its thousand million suns, and the vast æons of time during which it has been developing--all these seem only the appropriate and harmonious surroundings, the necessary supply of material, the sufficiently spacious workshop for the production of that planet which was to produce first, the organic world, and then, Man. In one of his finest passages our great world-poet gives us _his_ conception of the grandeur of human nature--'What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving, how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god!' And for the development of such a being what is a universe such as ours? However vast it may seem to our faculties, it is as a mere nothing in the ocean of the infinite. In infinite space there may be infinite universes, but I hardly think they would be all universes of matter. That would indeed be a low conception of infinite power! Here, on earth, we see millions of distinct species of animals, millions of different species of plants, and each and every species consisting often of many millions of individuals, no two individuals exactly alike; and when we turn to the heavens, no two planets, no two satellites alike; and outside our system we see the same law prevailing--no two stars, no two clusters, no two nebulæ alike. Why then should there be other universes of the _same_ matter and subject to the _same_ laws--as is implied by the conception that the stars are infinite in number, and extend through infinite space? Of course there may be, and probably are, other universes, perhaps of other kinds of matter and subject to other laws, perhaps more like our conceptions of the ether, perhaps wholly non-material, and what we can only conceive of as spiritual. But, unless these universes, even though each of them were a million times vaster than our stellar universe, were also infinite in number, they could not fill infinite space, which would extend on all sides beyond them, so that even a million million such universes would shrink to imperceptibility when compared with the vast beyond! Of infinity in any of its aspects we can really know nothing, but that it exists and is inconceivable. It is a thought that oppresses and overwhelms. Yet many speak of it glibly as if they _knew_ what it contains, and even use that assumed knowledge as an argument against views that are unacceptable to themselves. To me its existence is absolute but unthinkable--that way madness lies. 'O night! O stars, too rudely jars The finite with the infinite!' I will conclude with one of the finest passages relating to the infinite that I am acquainted with, from the pen of the late R.A. Proctor: 'Inconceivable, doubtless, are these infinities of time and space, of matter, of motion, and of life. Inconceivable that the whole universe can be for all time the scene of the operation of infinite power, omnipresent, all-knowing. Utterly incomprehensible how Infinite Purpose can be associated with endless material evolution. But it is no new thought, no modern discovery, that we are thus utterly powerless to conceive or comprehend the idea of an Infinite Being, Almighty, All-knowing, Omnipresent, and Eternal, of whose inscrutable purpose the material universe is the unexplained manifestation. Science is in presence of the old, old mystery; the old, old questions are asked of her--"Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know?" And science answers these questions as they were answered of old--"As touching the Almighty we cannot find Him out."' * * * * * The following beautiful lines--among the latest products of Tennyson's genius--so completely harmonise with the subject-matter of the present volume, that no apology is needed for quoting them here:-- (_The Question_) Will my tiny spark of being Wholly vanish in your deeps and heights? Must my day be dark by reason, O ye Heavens, of your boundless nights, Rush of Suns and roll of systems, And your fiery clash of meteorites? (_The Answer_) 'Spirit, nearing yon dark portal At the limit of thy human state, Fear not thou the hidden purpose Of that Power which alone is great, Nor the myriad world, His shadow, Nor the silent Opener of the Gate.' FOOTNOTE: [23] Since writing this chapter I have seen a paper by Luigi d'Auria dealing mathematically with 'Stellar Motion, etc.,' and am pleased to see that, from quite different considerations, he has found it necessary to place the solar system at a distance from the centre not very much more remote than the position I have given it. He says: 'We have good reasons to suppose that the solar system is rather near the centre of the Milky Way, and as this centre would, according to our hypothesis, coincide with the centre of the Universe, the distance of 159 light years assumed is not too great, nor can it be very much smaller.'--_Journal of the Franklin Institute_, March 1903. INDEX Adrianus Tollius on stone axes, 203. Air criminally poisoned by us, 260. Albedo explained, 162. Algol and its companion, 39; change of colour of, 41. Allen, Prof. F.J., on living matter, 193; on importance of nitrogen, 195; on physical conditions essential for life, 196. Alpha Centauri, nearest star, 74. Ammonia, importance of, to life, 195. Anaximander's cosmic theory, 2. Angles of a minute and second, 80. Arcturus, rapid motion of, 172. Argument of book, summary of, 310. Astronomers, the first, 2. Astronomy, the new, 24. Astrophysics, a new science, 32. Atmosphere, qualities requisite for life, 210; requisite composition of, 212; aqueous vapour in, 214; and life, 243; effects of density of, 245; a complex structure, 259; its vital importance to us, 260. Ball, Sir R., on dark stars, 143; _Time and Tide_, 233. Barnham, S.W., on double stars, 123. Blue of sky due to dust, 251. Boeddicker's map of Milky Way, 164. Brewster, Sir D., against Whewell, 15. Campbell, Prof., on spectroscopic binaries, 125; on uncertainty of sun's motions, 179; on number of binary systems, 286. Carbon compounds, vast numbers of, 194. Carbonic acid gas essential for life, 196. Central position of sun, importance of, 305. Chaldeans the first astronomers, 2. Chalmers Dr., on plurality of worlds, 13. Chamberlin, T.C., origin of nebulæ, 120; on stellar disruption, 186. Chromosphere, the sun's, 107. Clerke, Miss A.M., on limits of star system, 138; on Milky Way, 158, 160; on solar cluster, 165; on uncertainty of the sun's motion, 177. Climate, persistence of mild, 222. Clouds, importance of, to life, 248. Clusters in relation to Galaxy, 67. Comte, on impossibility of real knowledge of the stars, 25. Conclusions of the book, 317; bearing of, on science and on religion, 319. Corona of sun, 108. Criticisms of article in _Fortnightly Review_, 168, 180. Darwin, Prof. G., on meteoritic hypothesis, 133; on origin of moon, 233; on instability of annular systems, 295. Day and night, uses of, 215. Diagrams of star-distribution, 62, 66. Diffraction-gratings, 30. Disruption of stellar bodies, 187. Doppler principle, the, 37. Double stars, evolution of, 123; not fitted for life, 286. Dust, importance of, 249. Dust-free air, results of, 254. Earth, first measured, 5; in relation to life, 218; the only habitable planet, 262; cannot retain hydrogen, 264; supposed extreme conditions of, 271. Earth's mass, how related to life, 265. Ecliptic, obliquity of, in relation to life, 219. Electricity, effects of atmospheric, 257; atmospheric, how caused, 258. Elements, change in spectra of, 129; in the sun, 184; in meteorites, 185; in organic structures, 201. Empedocles an early astronomer, 3. Eudoxus on motions of planets, 3. Evolution of the stars, 128. Explanations of life-processes, 202. Faculæ of sun, 105. Fisher, Rev. O., on oceanic basins, 234; on thin sub-oceanic crust, 237. Fizeau measures speed of light, 79. Flammarion, C., on universality of life, 274, 281. Fontenelle on plurality of worlds, 9. Galileo on star measurement, 74. Geological climates, 222. Geologists on duration of sun's heat, 275. Germinal vesicle, M'Kendrick on, 202. Gill, Sir D., on systematic star-motions, 178. Globular clusters, stability of, 126; and variables, 127. Gore, Mr. J.E., on stars in Galaxy, 60; on mass of binary stars, 97; on remoteness of bright stars, 140; on limits of star system, 145; on limited number of stars, 151; on life on planets of other suns, 282, 289. Gould on solar cluster, 165. Gould's map of Milky Way, 164. Gravitation, motions produced by, on Lord Kelvin's hypothesis, 298. Haliburton, Professor W.D., on proteids, 200. Heat and cold on earth's surface, 207. Heat-supply, our long-continued, accounted for, 305. Herschel, Sir J., on Milky Way, 50; on limits of the star-system, 147. Heliometer, description of, 89. Huggins, Sir W., on spectra of stars, 32; measures radial motion, 37. Huxley, Prof., on protoplasm, 198; on duration of life, 278. Hydrogen, why not in atmosphere, 240; escapes from earth, 264. Infinity, unknowable, 323; Proctor on, 324. Jupiter's satellites show speed of light, 79. Kapteyn on solar cluster, 166. Kelvin, Lord, on the sun's age, 279; on a suggested primitive form of star-system, 298. Kirchhoff, discovers spectrum-analysis, 28. Laws of matter uniform throughout universe, 187. Leaves, importance of, 197. Lee, Dr., on origin of double stars, 123. Lewis, on remote bright stars, 141. Life, unity of organic, 189; definitions of, 191; conditions essential for, 206; water essential for, 210; atmosphere for, 210; dependent on temperature, 218; now improbable in stars, 288; conditions essential for, summarised, 314. Life-processes, explanations of, 202. Light, velocity of measured, 79; necessity of solar, 209; from sky due to dust, 252. Light-journey explained, 75. Light-ratio shows stars to be limited, 152. Living bodies, essential points in, 192. Lockyer, Sir. N., on inorganic evolution, 117; on evolution of stars, 130; on Milky Way, 159; on position of solar system, 161. Luigi d'Auria on stellar motion, 306. M'Kendrick, Prof., on germinal vesicle, 202. Magnetism and sun-spots, 106. Man, Shakespeare on, 322. Mars, has no water, 266; excessive temperatures on, 267. Matter of universe uniform, 183. Maunder on dark stars, 143. Maxwell Hall, Mr., on star-motions, 178. Measurement of star-distances, 85; difficulty of, 86. Mercury not habitable, 266. Meteorites, elements in, 185; not primitive bodies, 186. Meteoritic hypothesis, 113; Proctor on, 114; explains nebulæ, 116; Dr. Roberts on, 119. Milky Way, the, 48; form of, 51, 159; description of, 52; telescopic view of, 57; stars in relation to, 59; Mr. Gore on, 60; density of stars in, 61; clusters and nebulæ in relation to, 67; probable distance of, 96; forms a great circle, 157, 162; Prof. Newcomb on, 158; probably no life in, 284; diagrams of, 300; revolution of, important to us, 307. Million, how to appreciate a, 82. Minchin, G.M., on radiation from stars, 290. Monck, Mr. W.H.S., on non-infinity of stars, 144; on uncertainty of sun's motion, 177. Moon, why no atmosphere, 263. Moon's supposed origin, 233. Motion, in line of sight, 35. Motions, imperceptible, 39. Nebulæ, with gaseous spectra, 43; in relation to Galaxy, 66; distribution of, 69; many forms of, 70; gaseous, 71; meteoritic theory of, 116; planetary and annular, 175; Dr. Roberts on spiral, 117, 174; Chamberlin on origin of, 120. Nebular hypothesis, 98, 111; objection to, 112. Newcomb, Prof. S., on star distribution, 61; on parallax of stars, 94; on stability of star clusters, 126; on scarcity of single stars, 128; on limits of star system, 138; on Milky Way, 158, 160; on solar cluster, 167; on star velocities, 171; on average small mass of stars, 285; on star-motions, 297. Newton, Sir Isaac, on sun's habitability, 9. Nichols, E.F., on heat of stars, 290. Nitrogen, its importance to life, 195. Non-habitability of great planets, 272. Ocean and land, diagram of, 228. ---- basins, permanence of, 229. ---- ---- symmetry of, 238. ---- depths, how produced, 232. Oceans, effect of, on temperature, 239; curious relations of, 264. Organic products, diversity of, 195. Photographic astronomy, 43; measures of star-distances, 89. Photosphere, the, 105. Physicists on sun's duration, 278. Pickering's measurements of Algol, 40. Planets, supposed habitability of, 266, 269; the great, uninhabitable, 272; internal heat of great, 273; a last argument for habitability of, 274; have probably no life, 315. Planets' motions first explained, 3; mass and atmosphere, 262. Pleiades, number of stars in, 67; a drifting cluster, 177. Plurality of worlds, early writers on, 9; Proctor on, 18. Posidonius measures the earth, 5. Pritchard's photographic measures of star-distance, 89. Proctor, R.A., on other worlds, 18; on form of Galaxy, 51; on Herschel's views, 101; on stellar universe, 103; on meteoritic theory, 114; on infinities, 136; on star-drift, 176; on life under varied conditions, 271; on infinity, 324. Proctor's _Old and New Astronomy_, 46; chart of stars, 60. Prominences of sun, 107. Proteids, formation of, 199; Prof. Haliburton on, 200. Protoplasm, complexity of, 194; a mechanism, 198; sensibility of, to heat, 208. Ptolemaic system of the heavens, 4. Radial motion, 35. Radiation from stars, 290. Rain in the Carboniferous age, 225; dependent on dust, 249. Ramsay, Prof., on geological climates, 278. Ranyard, on star-discs, 98; on infinite universe, 137; on mass of Orion nebula, 173. Religious bearing of my conclusions, 319. Reproduction, marvel of, 201. Reversing layer of sun, 107. Roberts, A.W., on birth of double stars, 123. ---- Dr. I., on limits of star-system, 148; on spiral nebulæ, 117; on meteoritic theory, 119; photographs of nebulæ, 45, 174. Roche limit explained, 120, 187. Sanderson, Prof. Burdon, on living matter, 192. Scientific and agnostic opinion on my conclusions, 318. Secchi's classification of stars, 33. Single stars perhaps rare, 128. Solar apex, position of, 176. Solar cluster, the, 165; diagram showing, 300; evidence for, 302; importance to us, 306-7, 312. Solar system, position of, 304. Sorby on constitution of meteorites, 186. Spectra, varieties of, 34; of elements, changes in, 129. Spectroscopic binaries, abundance of, 125; great numbers of, 286. Spectrum analysis, discovery of, 26. Spencer, H., on status of nebulæ, 102. Spiral nebulæ, origin of, 120. Stars, proved to be suns, 32; invisible, 39; classification of, 33; spectroscopic double, 42; distribution of the, 47; number of visible, 48; description of Milky Way, 52; in relation to Milky Way, 59; distances of, 74; measurement of distance of, 85; mass of binary, 97; evolution of double, 122; spectroscopic double, 123; clusters of, 125; evolution of the, 128; classification of, 130; the hottest, 131; when cooling give more heat, 132; cycle of evolution and decay, 133; supposed infinite number of, 135; not infinite, 138; law of diminishing numbers of, 149; systematic motions of, 178; in relation to life, 282, 287; possible use of their emanations, 289. Star-clusters and variables, 127. Star-density, diagram of, 66. Star-drift, Proctor on, 176. Starlight, electrical measure of, 290; possible uses of, 292. Star-motions, Prof. Newcomb on, 297. Star-system, limited, 145; stability of, 295; supposed primitive form of, 297. Stellar motion, Luigi d'Auria on, 306. ---- universe, shape of, 49; unity of, 100; evolution of, 103; diagrams of, 300. Stoney, Dr., on atmospheres and gravity, 263. Sun, a typical star, 104; brightness of, 104; heat of, 104; surface of, 105; surroundings of, 106-110; corona of, 108; colour of, 111; elements in, 184. Sun's distance, measure of, 76. ---- heat, supposed limits of, 275. ---- life, all required to develop earth-life, 280. ---- motion through space, 91, 169. ---- ---- uncertain, 177. Sun-spots, nature of, 105. Symmetry of oceans, cause of, 238. Temperature, essential for life, 206; equalised by water, 239; as regards life on planets, 267. Tennyson on man and the universe, 325. Uniformity of matter, 183. Unity of stellar universe, 100. Universe of stars, how its form has affected our sun and earth, 308. Universe not disproportionate if man is its sole product, 320. VENUS, radial motions of, 38; diagram of transit of, 77; life barely possible on, 266; adverse climatic conditions of, 268. WATER, an essential for life, 210; its amount and distribution, 227; an equaliser of temperature, 239. Wave-lengths, how measured, 31. Whewell, on plurality of worlds, 8, 15; on man as the highest product of the universe, 14. Whittaker, Mr. E.T., on gravitative and electro-dynamical forces, 296. Winds, importance of, to life, 246. ZODIACAL light, 109. Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty, at the Edinburgh University Press [Illustration: THE NEBULÆ AND CLUSTERS OF THE NORTHERN HEAVENS. Drawn upon an equal surface projection from Dr. DREYER'S catalogue of 1888 The Milky Way from a Dr. BOEDDICKER'S Drawing by SIDNEY WATERS] [Illustration: THE NEBULÆ AND CLUSTERS OF THE SOUTHERN HEAVENS. Drawn upon an equal surface projection from Dr. DREYER'S catalogue of 1888 The Milky Way from URANOMETRIA ARGENTINA by SIDNEY WATERS] _WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR._ TRAVELS ON THE AMAZON AND RIO-NEGRO. PALM-TREES OF THE AMAZON, AND THEIR USES (_out of print_). THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO. NATURAL SELECTION AND TROPICAL NATURE. THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS. _2 vols._ ISLAND LIFE, OR INSULAR FAUNAS AND FLORAS. DARWINISM. AUSTRALASIA. _2 vols._ BAD TIMES--CAUSES OF DEPRESSION OF TRADE (_out of print_). LAND NATIONALISATION, ITS NECESSITY AND ITS AIMS. VACCINATION A DELUSION. MIRACLES AND MODERN SPIRITUALISM. THE WONDERFUL CENTURY (_New and Illustrated Edition_). THE WONDERFUL CENTURY READER. STUDIES SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL. * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Obvious punctuation and spelling errors repaired. Inconsistent hyphenation has been repaired. The oe and ae ligatures in the text has been left as it appears in the original book. Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal signs=. In ambiguous cases, the text has been left as it appears in the original book. In particular, many mismatched quotation marks have not been changed. The remaining corrections made: Page v, "Fort-nightly" changed to "Fortnightly". Page 106, "terrestial" changed to "terrestrial". 
53261	----	in an extended version, also linking to free sources for education worldwide ... MOOC's, educational materials,...) Images generously made available by the Internet Achive. WE MODERNS: ENIGMAS AND GUESSES By EDWIN MUIR Edited with Introduction by H. L. Mencken NEW YORK ALFRED. A. KNOPF MCMXX CONTENTS INTRODUCTION I. THE OLD AGE, II. ORIGINAL SIN, III. WHAT IS MODERN? IV. ART AND LITERATURE, V. CREATIVE LOVE, VI. THE TRAGIC VIEW. INTRODUCTION That a young Scotsman, reacting from the vast emotional assault of the late ferocious war, should have withdrawn himself into an ivory tower in Glasgow town, and there sat himself down in heroic calm to wrestle with the vexatious and no doubt intrinsically insoluble problems of being and becoming--this was surely nothing to cause, whispers among connoisseurs of philosophical passion, for that grim, persistent, cold-blooded concern with the fundamental mysteries of the world has been the habit of the Scots ever since they emerged from massacre and blue paint. From blue paint, indeed, the transition was almost instantaneous to blue souls, and the conscience of Britain, such as it is, has dwelt north of the Cheviot Hills ever since. Find a Scot, and you are at once beset by a metaphysician, or, at all events, by a theologian. But for a young man of those damp, desolate parts, throwing himself into the racial trance, to emerge with a set of ideas reaching back, through Nietzsche and even worse heretics, to the spacious, innocent, somewhat gaudy days of the Greek illumination--for such a fellow, so bred and circumscribed, to come out of his tower with a concept of life as a grand and glittering adventure, a tremendous spectacle, an overpowering ecstasy, almost an orgy--such a phenomenon was, and is, quite sufficient to lift the judicious eyebrow. Yet here is this Mr. Edwin Muir of Caledonia bearing just that outlandish contraband, offering just that strange flouting of all things traditionally Scotch. What he preaches in the ensuing aphorisms is the emancipation of the modern spirit from its rotting heritage of ingenuous fears and exploded certainties. What he denounces most bitterly is the abandonment of a world that is beautifully surprising and charming to the rule of sordid, timid and unimaginative men--the regimentation of ideas in a system that is half a denial of the obvious and half a conglomeration of outworn metaphors, all taken too literally. And what he pleads for most eloquently, with his cold, reserved northern eloquence, is the whole-hearted acceptance of "life as a sacrament,... life as joy triumphing over fate,... life made innocent,... life washed free from how much filth of remorse, guilt, contempt, 'sin'."... It goes without saying that the red hand of Nietzsche is in all this. The Naumburg Antichrist, damned for five years running by the indignation of all right-thinking men, has made steady and enormous progress under cover. There has never been a time, indeed, when his notions enjoyed a wider dispersion or were poll-parrotted unwittingly by greater numbers of the righteous. Excessive draughts of the democratic cure-all, swallowed label, cork, testimonials and all, have brought Christendom to bed with _Katzenjammer--_and there stands the seductive antidote in its leering blue bottles. Where would philosophical opponents of Bolshevism be without Nietzsche? Who would devise arguments for them, eloquence for them, phrases for them? On all sides one hears echoes of him--often transformed from his harsh bass to a piping falsetto, but nevertheless recognizable enough. Any port in a storm! If God is asleep, then turn to the Devil! The show offers the best laughing that heathen have enjoyed, perhaps, since the Hundred Years' War. And there is an extra snicker in the fact that Scotland, once again, seems to resume the old trade of intellectual smuggling. If one Scot is to the front with so forthright a piece as "We Moderns," then surely there must be a thousand other Scots hard at it in a _pianissimo_ manner. Thus, I suppose, the crime of Carlyle is repeated on a wholesale scale, and once again the poor Sassenach is inoculated with pathogenic Prussian organisms. On this side of the ocean the business is less efficiently organized; we have no race of illicit metaphysicians on our border. But the goods come in all the same. I have heard more prattling of stale Nietzscheism of late, from men bearing the flag in one hand and the cross in the other, than I ever heard in the old days from parlour anarchists and unfrocked priests. Nietzsche, belatedly discovered by a world beset by terrors too great for it and mysteries too profound, becomes almost respectable, nay, almost Episcopalian! What ails it, at bottom, is the delusion that all the mysteries, given doctors enough, theories enough, pills enough, may be solved--that it is all a matter of finding a panacea, unearthing a prophet, passing a bill. If it turns to Nietzsche, however gingerly and suspiciously, it will turn only to fresh disappointment and dismay, for Nietzsche is no quack with another sure cure, but simply an iconoclast who shows that all the sure cures of the past and present have failed, and _must_ fail--and particularly the sure cure of the mob, the scheme of determining the diagnosis by taking a vote, the notion that the medicine which most pleases the grossest palates is the medicine to get the patient upon his legs. Nietzsche is no reformer; he is an assassin of reformers; if he preaches anything at all, it is that reform is useless, illusory--above all, unnecessary. The patient is really not dying at all. Let him get up and dance! Let him pick up his bed and employ it upon the skulls of his physicians! Life is not a disease to be treated with boluses and philtres, not an affliction to be shirked and sentimentalized, but an adventure to be savoured and enjoyed--life, here and now, is the highest imaginable experience. What the world needs is not a cure for it, but room for it, freedom for it, innocent zest for it. So accepted and regarded, half of its terrors vanish at once, and even its unescapable catastrophes take on a certain high stateliness, a fine æsthetic dignity. This is the tragic view that Mr. Muir cries up--life as joy triumphing over fate. "For the character of tragedy is not negative and condemnatory, but deeply affirmative and joyous." The ideal man is not the time-serving slave of Christendom, in endless terror of God, forever flattering and bribing God, but the Nietzschean _Ja-sager,_ the yes-sayer, facing destiny courageously and a bit proudly, living to the full the life that lies within his grasp in the present, accepting its terms as he finds them, undaunted by the impenetrable shadows that loom ahead. What Mr. Muir, following Nietzsche, is most dissatisfied with in the modern spirt is its intolerable legalism--its fatuous frenzy to work everything out to nine places of constabulary decimals, to establish windy theories and principles, to break the soul of man to a rule. In part, of course, that effort is of respectable enough origin. It springs from intelligent self-assertion, healthy curiosity, the sense of competence; it is a by-product of the unexampled conquests of nature that have gone on in the modern age. But in other parts it is no more than a by-product of the democratic spirit, the rise of the inferior, the emancipation of the essentially in competent. Science is no longer self-sufficient, isolated from moral ideas, an end in itself; it tends to become a mere agent of mob tyranny; it takes on gratuitous and incomprehensible duties and responsibilities; like the theology that it has supplanted, it has friendlier and friendlier dealings with the secular arm. And art, too, begins to be poisoned by this moral obsession of the awakened proletariat. It ceases to be an expression of well-being, of healthy functioning, of unpolluted joy in life, and becomes a thing of obscure and snuffling purposes, a servant of some low enterprise of the cocksure. The mob is surely no scientist and no artist; it is, in fact, eternally the anti-scientist, the anti-artist; science and art offer it unscalable heights and are hence its enemies. But in a world dominated by mob yearnings and mob passions, even science and art must take on some colour from below. The enemies, if they cannot be met and overthrown on a fair field, can at least be degraded. And when the mob degrades, it always degrades to moral tunes. Morality is its one avenue to superiority--false but none the less soothing. It can always be good. It can always dignify its stupidity, its sordidness and its cowardice with terms borrowed from ethical revelation. The good man is a numskull, but nevertheless he is good. Mr. Muir has at the modern spirit on many other counts, but nearly all of them may be converted with more or less plausibility into an objection to its ethical obsession, its idiotic craze to legislate and admonish. When he says, for example, that realism in the novel and the drama is hollow, he leaves his case but half stated; there is undoubtedly a void where imagination, feeling and a true sense of the tragic ought to be, but it is filled with the common garbage of mob thinking, to wit, with the common garbage of moral purpose. All of the chief realists, from Zola to Barbusse, are pre-eminently moralists disguised as scientists; what one derives from them, reading them sympathetically, is not illumination but merely indignation. They are always violently against something--and that something is usually the fact that the world is not as secure and placid a place as a Methodist Sunday-school. Their affectation of moral agnosticism need deceive no one. They are secretly appalled (and delighted) by their own "scientific" pornographies, just as their brethren of the vice crusades are appalled and delighted. Realism, of course, can never be absolute. It must always stress something and leave out something. What it commonly stresses is the colossal failure of society to fit into an orderly scheme of causes and effects, virtues and rewards, crimes and punishments. What it leaves out is the glow of romance that hangs about that failure--the poignant drama of blind chance, the fascination of the unknowable. The realists are bad artists because they are anæsthetic to beauty. And a good many scientists are bad scientists for precisely the same reason. In their hands the gorgeous struggle of man against the mysteries and foul ambuscades of nature is converted into a banal cause before a police court, with the complainant put on the stand to prove that his own hands are clean. One cannot read some of the modern medical literature, particularly on the side of public hygiene, without giving one's sympathy to the tubercle bacilli and the spirochætæ. Science of that sort ceases to be a fit concern for men of dignity, superior men, gentlemen; it becomes a concern for evangelists, uplifters, bounders. Its aim is no longer to penetrate the impenetrable, to push forward the bounds of human knowledge, to overreach the sinister trickeries of God; its aim is simply to lengthen the lives of human ciphers and to reinforce their delusion that they confer a favour upon the universe by living at all. Worse, it converts the salvation of such vacuums into a moral obligation, and sets up the absurd doctrine that human progress is furthered by diminishing the death-rate in the Balkans, by rescuing Georgia crackers from the hookworm and by reducing the whole American people, the civilized minority with the barbarian mass, to a race of teetotalling ascetics, full of pious indignations and Freudian suppressions. The western world reeks with this new sentimentality. It came on in Europe with the fall of feudalism and the rise of the lower orders. Even war, the last surviving enterprise of natural man, has been transformed from a healthy play of innocent instincts into a combat of moral ideas, nine-tenths of them obviously unsound. It no longer offers a career to a Gustavus Adolphus, a Prince Eugene or a Napoleon I. It loses even the spirit of gallant adventure that dignified the theological balderdash of the Crusades--in which, as every one knows, the balderdash was quickly absorbed altogether by the adventure. It becomes the business of specialists in moral indignation. The modern general must not only know the elements of military science; he must also show some of the gifts of a chautauqua orator, including particularly the gift of right-thinking; it would do him more harm to speak of his opponent with professional politeness, as one lawyer might speak of another, than it would do him to lose an important battle. Worse, war gets out of the hands of soldiers altogether. It becomes an undertaking of boob-bumpers, spy-hunters, emotion-pumpers, propaganda-mongers--all sorts of disgusting cads. Its great prizes tend to go, not to the men fighting in the field, but to the man manufacturing shells, alarms, and moral indignation. At the time of the last great series of wars it was said that every musketeer of France carried a marshal's baton in his haversack. The haversack of the musketeer now contains only official literature, informing him of the causes of the war as most lately determined, the names of its appointed moral heroes, and the penalties for discussing its aims, for swapping tobacco with the boys on the other side, and for inviting a pretty peasant-girl into his shell-hole. The baton is being fought for by a press-agent, a labour leader and a Y.M.C.A. secretary. It is against such degradations that Mr. Muir raises his voice, and in particular against such degradations in the field of the fine arts. The superficial, I daresay, will mistake him (once they get over the sheer immorality of his relation to Nietzsche) as simply one more pleader for _l'art pour l'art--_one more prophet of a superior and disembodied æstheticism. Well, turn to his singularly acute and accurate estimate of Walter Pater: there is the answer to that error. He has, in fact, no leanings whatsoever in any such direction. The thing he argues for, despite all his fury against the debasement of art to mob uses, is not an art that shall be transcendental, but an art that shall relate itself to life primarily and unashamedly, an art that shall accept and celebrate life. He preaches, of course, out of season. There has never been a time in the history of the world when the natural delight of man in himself was held in greater suspicion. Christianity, after two thousand years, seems triumphant at last. From the ashes of its barbaric theology there arises the phoenix of its maudlin sentimentality; the worship of inferiority becomes its dominating cult. In all directions that worship goes on. It gives a new colour to politics, and not only to politics, but also to the sciences and the arts. Perhaps we are at the mere beginning of the process. The doctrine that all men are equal in the sight of God is now defended and propagated by machine guns; it becomes a felony to deny it; one is already taxed in America to make good the lofty aspirations of Poles, Jugo-Slavs and Armenians. In England there are signs of a further step. An Ehrlich or a Koch, miraculously at work there, might be jailed for slitting the throat of a white rat: all the lower animals, too, it appears, are God's creatures. So viewed, a guinea-pig becomes the peer of a Beethoven, as a farm-hand is already the peer of a Bach. It is too late to turn back; let us hope that the logic of it is quickly worked out to its unescapable conclusion. Once the _pediculus vestimenti_ and the streptococcus are protected, there will be a chance again, it may be, for the law of natural selection to achieve its benign purgation. Meanwhile, Mr. Muir cannot expect his ideas to get much attention. A gaudy parade is passing and the populace is busy cheering. Nevertheless, they were ideas worth playing with, and they are now worth printing and pondering. It seems to me that, in more than one way, they help to illuminate the central æsthetic question--the problem as to the nature and function of artistic representation. They start from Nietzschean beginnings, but they get further than Nietzsche ever got. His whole æsthetic was hampered by the backwardness of psychology in his time. He made many a brilliant guess, but more than once he was hauled up rather sharply by his ignorance of the machinery of thought. Mr. Muir not only has Nietzsche behind him; he also has Freud, as he shows, for example, in §145. Beyond him there is still a lot of room. He will not stop the parade--but he will help the next man. * * * * * Edwin Muir was born in the Orkney Islands in 1887. His father was a small crofter there. When he was fourteen years old the family moved to Glasgow. Within four years his father, his mother and two older brothers died, and he was forced to fend for himself. He became a clerk in a Glasgow office and remained there until very recently, when he moved to London. Like all other young men with the itch to write, he tried poetry before prose, and his first verses were printed in _The New Age._ But his discovery of Nietzsche, at the age of twenty-two, exerted such a powerful influence upon him that he soon turned to prose, and five or six years later his first philosophical speculations were printed, again in _The New Age._ They attracted attention and were republished in book-form, in 1918, as "We Moderns." At the last minute the author succumbed to modesty and put the _nom de plume_ of Edward Moore upon his book. But now, in this American edition (for which he has made certain revisions), he returns to his own name. H. L. MENCKEN. I THE OLD AGE 1 _The Advanced_ Among the advanced one observes a strange contradiction: the existence in one and the same person of confidence and enthusiasm about certain aspects of life along with diffidence and pessimism about life itself. The advanced have made up their minds about all the problems of existence but not about the problem of existence. In dealing with these problems they find their greatest happiness; they are there sure-footed, convinced and convincing. But brought face to face with that other problem, how helpless, vacillating and spiritless are they! What! are propaganda, reform, and even revolution, perchance, with many of them simply their escape from their problem? 2 _The Intellectual Coquettes_ An intellectual coquetry is one of the worst vices of this age. From what does it arise? From fear of a decision? Or from love of freedom? It cannot be from the latter, for to abstain from a choice is not freedom but irresponsibility. To be free, is, on the contrary, itself a choice, a decision involving, in its acceptance, responsibility. And it is responsibility that the intellectual coquettes fear: rather than admit that one burden they will bear all the others of scepticism, pessimism and impotence. To accept a new gospel, to live it out in all its ramifications, is too troublesome, too dangerous. The average man in them pleads, "Be prudent! Where may not this resolution lead you? Through what perils? Into what hells?" And so they remain in their prison house of doubt, neither Pagans nor Christians, neither Theists nor Atheists, ignorant of the fact that they are slaves and that a decision would set them free. But in the end the soul has its revenge, for their coquetry destroys not only the power but the will to choose. To flirt with dangerous ideas in a graceful manner: that becomes their destiny. For the intellectual coquette, like other coquettes, dislikes above everything passion--passion with its seriousness, sincerity and--demand for a decision. 3 _Modern Realism_ How crude and shallow is the whole theory of modern realism: a theory of art by the average man for the average man! It makes art intelligible by simplifying or popularizing it; in short, as Nietzsche would say, by vulgarizing it. The average man perceives, for instance, that there is in great drama an element of representation. Come, he says, let us make the representation as "thorough" as possible! Let every detail of the original be reproduced! Let us have life as it is lived! And when he has accomplished this, when representation has become reproduction, he is very well pleased and thinks how far he has advanced beyond the poor Greeks. But it is hardly so! For the Greeks did not aim at the reproduction but at the interpretation of life, for which they would accept no symbol less noble than those _ideal_ figures which move in the world of classical tragedy. To the Greeks, indeed, the world of art was precisely this world: not a paltry, sober and conscientious dexterity in the "catching" of the aspects of existence (nothing so easy!), but a symbolizing of the deepest questions and enigmas of life--a thing infinitely more noble, profound and subtle than realistic art. The Greeks would have demanded of realism, Why do you exist? What noble end is served by the reproduction of ordinary existence? Are you not simply superfluous--and vilely smelling at that? And realism could have given no reply, for the truth is that realism _is_ superfluous. It is without a _raison d'être._ The average man, however, takes a second glance at classical tragedy and reaches a second discovery. There is something enigmatical, he finds, behind the Greek clearness of representation, something unexplained; in short, a problem. This problem, however, is not sufficiently clear. Let us state our problems clearly, he cries! Let us have problems which can be recognized at a glance by every one! Let us write a play about "the marriage question," or bad-housing, or the Labour Party! But, again, the theory of the Greeks, at least before Euripides, was altogether different. The "problem" in their tragedies was precisely not a problem which could be stated in a syllogism or solved in a treatise: it was the eternal problem, and it was not stated to be "solved." Thus the Moderns, in their attempt to simplify art, to understand it or misunderstand it--what does it matter which word is used?--have succeeded in destroying it. The realistic and the "problem" drama alike are for the inartistic. The first is drama without a _raison d'être,_ the second is a _raison d'être_ without drama. 4 _The Modern Tragic_ In realistic novels and dramas a new type of the tragic has been evolved. It may be called tragedy without a meaning. In classical and Shakespearean tragedy, the inevitable calamities incident to human existence were given significance and nobility by the poets. That interpretive power of drama was, indeed, the essential thing to the great artists, to whom representation was only a means. But the realists with their shallow rationalizing of art have changed all that. They have cut out the essential part of drama so as to make the other part more "complete": in short, their tragedy is now simply "tragedy" in the newspaper sense. And it is obvious that this kind of "art" is much easier to produce than tragedy in the grand style: one has not even to read a meaning into it. This absence of meaning, however, is itself, in the long run, made to appear the last word of an unfathomably ironical wisdom. And in this light, how much modern wisdom is understood! The superficiality which can see only the surface here parades as the profundity which has dived into every abyss and found it empty. No! it is not tragedy but the modern tragedian who is without a _raison d'être!_ 5 _Realism as a Symptom of Poverty_ In an age in which the power of creation is weak, men will choose the easiest forms: those in which sustained elevation is not demanded and creation itself is eked out in various ways. The world of our day has therefore as its characteristic production the realistic novel, which in form is more loose, in content and execution more unequal, and in imaginative power less rich and inventive than poetic drama, or _any_ of the higher forms of literature. If we deduct from the modern "literary artist," the diarist, the sociologist, the reporter, and the collector of documents, there is not much left. For creation there is very little room in his works; perhaps it is as well! 6 _Compliments and Art_ The convention of gallantry observed by the sexes is the foundation of all refined understanding between them. For in the mutual game of compliment it is the spiritual attitude and not the spoken word that matters. There is truth in this attitude, however unreal the words may seem: a thousand times more truth than in the modern egalitarian, go-as-you-please camaraderie of the sexes. Here there is truth neither in the spirit nor in the letter. To be candid, about this new convention there is something faintly fatuous: the people who act thus are not subtle! Yet they are hardly to be blamed; it is the age that is at fault. There is no time for reflection upon men, women and manners, and consequently no refinement of understanding, no form in the true sense. We work so hard and have so little leisure that when we meet we are tired and wish to "stretch our legs," as Nietzsche said. It is far from our thoughts that a convention between men and women might be _necessary_; we are not disposed to inquire why this convention arose; it presents itself to us as something naively false; and we have time only to be unconventional. The ceremonious in manners arose from the recognition that between the sexes there must be distance--respect as well as intimacy--understanding. The old gallantry enabled men and women to be intimate and distant at the same time: it was the perfection of the art of manners. Indeed, we can hardly have sufficient respect for this triumphant circumvention of a natural difficulty, whereby it was made a source of actual pleasure. But now distance and understanding have alike disappeared. The moderns, so obtuse have they become, see here no difficulty at all, consequently no need for manners: brotherhood--comradeship--laziness has superseded that. Nothing is any longer _understood;_ but a convention means essentially that something is understood. Indeed, it is already a gaucherie to explain the meaning of a good convention. But what can one do? Against obtuseness the only weapon is obtuseness. In literature this decline into bad taste and denseness is most clearly to be seen. So incapable have readers become, so resourceless writers, that whatever is said now must be said right out; sex must be called sex; and no one has sufficient subtlety to suggest or to follow a suggestion. Hence, Realism. An artist has to write exactly what he means: the word must be word and nothing more. But this is to misunderstand art. For the words of the true artist undergo a transubstantiation and become flesh and blood, even spirit. His words are deeds--to say nothing of what he writes _between_ his lines! Realism in art and "comradeship" between the sexes are two misunderstandings, or, rather, two aspects of a misunderstanding. And that misunderstanding is perhaps attributable to a lack of leisure? And that to modern hurry? And that to the industrial system? 7 _A Modern Problem_ It has been observed again and again that as societies--forms of production, of government, and so on--become more complex, the mastery of the individual over his destiny grows weaker. In other words, the more man subjugates "nature," the more of a slave he becomes. The industrial system, for instance, which is the greatest modern example of man's subjugation of nature, is at the same time the greatest modern example of man's enslavement. What are we to think, then? Is the problem a moral one, and shall we say that a conquest of nature which is not preceded by a conquest of human nature is bound to be bad? In a society which has not surpassed the phase of slavery does every addition to man's power over nature simply intensify the slavery? Or is the problem intellectual? And when the intellect concentrates upon one branch of knowledge to the neglect of the other, is the outcome bound to be the enslavement of the others? For instance the nineteenth century devoted far more of its brains to industry than to politics--its politics, indeed, was merely the reflection of its industry--with the result that industry has now enslaved us all. Yes, it has enslaved us all--not merely the wage-earners, not merely the salariat! In the old days the workman, indeed, was a slave, but now the employer is a slave as well. In this age, therefore, in which man appears as the helpless appendage of a machine too mighty for him, it is natural that theories of Determinism should flourish. It is natural, also, that the will should become weak and discouraged, and, consequently, that the power of creation should languish. And so the world of art has withered and turned barren. The artist needs above all things a sense of power; it is out of the abundance of this sense that he creates. But confronted with modern society, that vast machine, and surrounded by its hopeless mechanics and slaves, he feels the sense dying within him; nor does the evil cease there, for along with the sense of power, power itself dies. Well, does not the moral become clearer and clearer? If art and literature are to flourish again, artists, writers, nay, the whole community must regain the sense of power. Therefore, economic emancipation first! 8 _Leisure and Good Things_ The very greatest danger confronts a people who renounce leisure: that people will become shallow--just consider England! For of all things noble it is hard to see the immediate utility: patience and reverence are needed before one can see in them a meaning at all. Art, literature and philosophy are not obvious goods: at the first glance they appear even repellent: alas, then, for them in an age of first glances! In such an age, it is true, they will not altogether disappear. Something worse will happen. They will be degraded, made obvious, misunderstood; in one word, popularized--the fate of our time. Society should be organized so as to give to its members the maximum of leisure; thus would the dissemination of art and philosophy be made at least possible. But society should at the same time provide for a privileged class of artists and philosophers, with _absolute_ leisure, who would work only when the inner compulsion made them. The second condition is at least as important as the first. 9 _Wanted: A History of Hurry_ Is there a critic who wishes to be at once edifying and entertaining? Let him write a history of hurry in its relation to literature and art. Has literature decayed as hurry has intensified? Have standards of balance, repose and leisured grace gradually shrunk since, say, the Industrial Revolution? Has the curtailment of the realm of literature, its reduction from the Romantic school to the Victorian circle and from that to the Decadent clique, been due to the everstrengthening encroachment of hurry? And has hurry now become finally triumphant so that our critics and even our artists and savants are nothing more than journalists? For certainly they seem to be so. These are questions to be investigated by our historian. 10 _The Sex Novel_ How did the vogue of the sex novel arise? Perhaps from the great attention which was in the last century given to the sciences of biology and physiology; and perhaps, more especially from the popularization of these sciences. Love was, under the spell of science, translated by the novelists into sex. Not the psychology, but the physiology of love was found interesting: with the result that for the production of a modern novel one qualification alone is now necessary: a "knowledge of the simple facts of physiology," as the primer-writers say. Well, what is the remedy for this? Not a denial of physiology: those who have learned it cannot now erase it from their memory and become voluntarily ignorant. No; let, rather, the opposite course be taken! Let us popularize psychology as well! 11 _These Advanced People_ A. Free Love is all right in theory, but all wrong in practice. B. On the contrary! I think it is all right in practice, but all wrong in theory. 12 _Sex in Literature_ In English literature, until very modern times, sex was treated only within the limits of a very well-understood convention. From this convention the physiological was strictly excluded. Yet, of our classical writers, even in the most artificial periods, it cannot be said that they did not understand sex. No matter how "unreal" they might be in writing about Love, the physiological contingencies of Love were unmistakably implied in their works, but only, it is true, implied. The moderns, however, saw in this treatment of Love nothing but a convention, a "lie"; and they became impatient of the artificiality, as if art could be anything but artificial! To what was the change of attitude due? Not to a failure in the artistic convention: that was perfectly sound. No, it was the reader who had failed: a generation of readers had arisen who had not learnt the art of reading, who did not understand reading as a cultured amateur of the eighteenth century, for instance, understood it. Literature was to this reader a document, not an art. He had no eye for what is written between the lines--for symbolism, idealization, "literature." And it was to satisfy him that the realistic school arose: it arose, indeed, out of himself. In the realist the modern reader has become writer: the man who could not learn the art of reading has here essayed the more difficult art of writing--documentary art! 13 _History of a Realist_ Who will write a series of biographies of modern writers, illustrating this thesis: that they are nothing more than modern readers wielding a hasty pen? Such a set of memoirs would almost compensate us for having read the works of these writers. How interesting, for instance, it would be to know how many years--surely it would be years?--they spent in trying to understand literature before they dedicated themselves to its service. How interesting, again, to discover how many hours each day X, the celebrated novelist, devotes to contemplation, how many to writing for the newspapers, and how many to his present masterpiece. What! one hour's thought has actually preceded five hours' dictation! This revelation is, after all, not so startling. On second thought, these memoirs seem superfluous; we can read everything we wish to know of the moderns in their works. Yet, for our better amusement, will not some one write his one and only novel, giving the true history of the novelist? A novel against novels! But for that we need a second Cervantes, yet how unlike the first! For on this occasion it is not Don Quixote that must be satirized, but Sancho Panza. 14 _Novelists by Habit_ All of us who read are novelists more or less nowadays: that is to say, we collect "impressions," "analyse" ourselves, make a pother about sex, and think that people, once they are divorced, live happily ever after. The habit of reading novels has turned us into this! When one of us becomes articulate, however--in the form of a novel--he only makes explicit his kinship with the rest; he proclaims to all the world that he is a mediocrity. 15 _The Only Course_ All the figures in this novel are paltry; we despise them, and, if we were in danger of meeting them in real life, would take steps to avoid them; yet such is the author's adroitness that we are led on helplessly through the narrative, through unspeakable sordidness of circumstance and soul, hating ourselves and him, and feeling nothing better than slaves. To rouse our anxiety lest Herbert lose five pounds, or Mabel find it impossible to get a new dress, this is art, this is modern art! But to feel _anxiety_ about such things is ignoble; and to live in a sordid atmosphere, even if it be of a book, is the part of a slave. And yet we cannot but admire. For in this novel what subtlety in the treatment there must be overlying the fundamental vulgarity of the theme! How is Art, which should make Man free, here transformed into a potent means for enslaving him! It is impossible to yield oneself to the sway of a modern realist without a loss in one's self-respect. To what is due this conspicuous absence of nobility in modern writers? But is the question, indeed, worth the asking? For to the artist and to him who would retain freedom of soul, there is only one course with the paltry in literature--to avoid it. 16 _The Average Man_ It is surely one of G. K. Chesterton's paradoxes that he praises the average man. For he is not himself an average man, but a man of genius; he does not write of the average man, but of grotesques; he is not read by the average man, but by intellectuals and the nonconformist middle-class. The true prophets of the average man are the popular realistic novelists. For they write of him and for him--yes, even when they write "for themselves," when they are "serious artists." Who, then, but them should extol him? It is their _métier_. 17 _The "New" Writers_ The fault of the most modern writers--and especially of the novelists--is not that they are too modern, but that they are too traditional. It is true, they are not traditional in the historical manner of G. K. Chesterton, who wishes to destroy one tradition--the modern tradition--in order to get back to another--the mediæval. To Mr. Chesterton tradition is a matter of selection; the dead tradition seems to him nobler than the living; and, deliberately, therefore, he would return to it. The new writers, however, follow a tradition also, though a much narrower one; they, too, believe in the past, but only, alas, in the immediate past; they are slaves to the generation which preceded theirs. In short, that which is disgusting in them is their inability to rise high enough to _see_ their little decade or two, and to challenge it, if they cannot from the standpoint of a nobler future, then, at least, from that of the noblest past. But how weak must a generation be which is not strong enough to challenge and supersede Arnold Bennett, for instance. 18 _The Modern Reader_ What is it that the modern reader demands from those who write for him? To be challenged, and again to be challenged, and evermore to be challenged--but on no account to be asked to accept a challenge, on no account to be expected to take sides! A seat at the tournament is all that he asks, where he may watch the most sincere and intrepid spirits of his time waging their desperate battle and spilling their life blood upon the sand. How he loves them when, with high gesture, they fling down their gauntlets and utter their blasphemies! His heart then exults within him; but, why? Simply because he is a connoisseur; simply because he _collects_ gauntlets! 19 _The Public_ Of the modern writers who are in earnest, Mr. Chesterton has had the most ironical fate: he has been read by the people who will never agree with him. To the average man for whom he writes he is an intellectual made doubly inaccessible by his orthodoxy and his paradoxy. It is the advanced, his _bête noire,_ who read him, admire him, and--disagree with him. 20 _Reader and Writer_ The modern reader loves to be challenged. The modern writer, if he is in earnest, however, is bound to challenge him. This is his greatest burden; that he _must_ fall a victim of the advanced idlers. But one day he thinks he see a way of escape. He has noticed that the reader desires not only to be challenged, but to be able to understand the challenge at a glance. And here he sees his advantage. I shall write, he says, to himself, in a manner beautiful, exact, and yet not easily understood; so I shall throw off the intellectual coquettes and secure my audience of artists, for my style is beautiful; an audience of critics, for my style is exact; an audience of patient, resolute, conscientious intellects, for my style is difficult. This, perhaps, was the conscious practice of Nietzsche. But he did not foresee that, for the benefit of the intellectual coquettes, who must have hold of new thoughts by one end or another, a host of popularizers would be born; he did not reckon with the Nietzscheans! 21 _Popularity_ How amazingly popular he is. Even the man in the street reads him. Yes; but it is because he has first read the man in the street. 22 _Middle Age's Betrayals_ It is not easy to tell by a glance what is the character of a young man; his soul has not yet etched itself clearly enough upon his body. But one may read a middle-aged man's soul with perfect ease; and not only his soul but his history. For when a man has passed five-and-forty, he looks--not what he is, perhaps--but certainly what he has been. If he has been invariably respectable, he is now the very picture of respectability. If he has been a man about town or a secret toper, the fact is blazoned so clearly on his face that even a child can read it. If he has studied, his very walk, to use a phrase of Nietzsche's, is learned. As for the poet, we know how terribly poetical he looks in middle age--poor devil! Well, to every one of you, I say, Beware! 23 _The Novelists and the Artist_ Is it the modern novelists who are to be blamed for the degraded image of the artist which lives in the minds of the cultured populace? Turgenieff in "On the Eve," and Henry James in "Roderick Hudson" display the artist simply as a picturesque waster, an oh so charming, impulsive, childlike, naïve waster. But, in doing so, they surely confused the artist with the man of artistic temperament. Of the artistic temperament, however, the great artists had very often little or nothing--far less, certainly, than either Shubin or Roderick. The great examples of last century, the Goethes, Ibsens, and Nietzsches, knew that there were qualities more essential to them than temperament; discipline, for instance, perseverance, truth to themselves, self-control. How is it possible, indeed, without these virtues--virtues of the most difficult and heroic kind--for the artist to bring his gifts to maturity, to become great? His discipline to beauty must be as severe as the discipline of the saint to holiness. And, then, how has his sensuousness been misconstrued and vulgarized; and treated precisely, indeed, as if it were the licentiousness of a present-day Tom Jones! That artists can be thought about in such a way proves only one thing, namely, in what poor esteem they are now held. We need a new ideal of the artist; or, failing that, an old one, that of Plato, perhaps, or of Leonardo, or of Nietzsche. 24 _Decadence and Health_ It is in the decadent periods that the most triumphantly healthy men--one or two--appear. The corrupt Italy of the Renaissance gave birth to Leonardo; the Europe of Gautier, Baudelaire and Wilde produced Nietzsche. In decadent eras both disease and health become more self-conscious; they are cultivated, enhanced and refined. It has been said that the best way to remain healthy is not to think of health. But lack of self-consciousness speaks here. Perhaps the Middle Ages were as diseased as our own--only they did not know it! Is decadence nothing more than the symptom of a self-conscious age? And is "objectivity" the antidote? Well, we might believe this if we could renounce our faith that mankind will yet become healthy--if we could become optimists in the present-day sense! 25 _Art in Modern Society_ An object of beauty has in modern surroundings a dangerous seduction which it did not possess in less hideous eras. In this is there to be found a contributory explanation of Decadence--the decadent being one who feels the power of beauty intensely, and the repulsion from his environment as intensely, and who plunges into the enjoyment of beauty madly, with abandonment? In a society, however, which was not hideous as ours is, and in which beauty was distributed widely over all the aspects and forms of existence, the intoxication of beauty would not be felt with the same terrible intensity; a beautiful object would be enjoyed simply as one among many lovely things. In short, it would be enjoyed in the manner of health, not in that of sickness. It is the _contrast_ that is dangerous; the aridity of modern life arouses a terrible thirst, which is suddenly presented with the spectacle of a beauty unaccountable and awful; and this produces a dislocation and convulsion of the very soul. So that the present-day artist, if he would retain his health--if he would remain an artist--must curb his very love of the beautiful, and treat beauty, when he meets it, as he always does, in the gutter, a little cynically. Otherwise he will lose his wits, and Art will become his Circe. Therefore, mockery and hard laughter--alas, that it _must_ be so! 26 _Art in Industry_ In those wildernesses of dirt, ugliness and obscenity, our industrial towns, there are usually art galleries, where the daintiest and most beautiful things, the flowers of Greek statuary, for instance, bloom among the grime like a band of gods imprisoned in a slum. The spectacle of art in such surroundings sometimes strikes us as being at once ludicrous and pathetic, like something delicate and lovely sprawling in the gutter, or an angel with a dirty face. 27 _Conventions_ The revolt against conventions in art, thought, life and manners may be due to at least more than one cause. It is usually ascribed to "vitality" which "breaks through" forms, because it desires to be "free." But common sense tells us that more than two or three of our friends abjure convention for an altogether different reason--to be candid, on account of a _lack_ of vitality resulting in laziness and the inability to endure restraint of any kind. And, for the others, we shall judge their "vitality" to be justified when they build new conventions worthy of observance, instead of running their heads finally into illimitable space. Or does their strength not go just so far? There is something suspicious about this vitality which cannot create: it resembles impotence so much! Heaven preserve the moderns from their "vitality"! 28 _"Vitality"_ When moderns talk of the "vitality" of their most lauded writer, what they mean is finally the size of his muscles, physical energy, or, at the most, strong emotions; not vigour of mind. Well, let us on no account make the opposite mistake and revile the large muscle and energetic feelings: they are admirable things. Let us point out, however, that vitality of emotion undisciplined by vitality of thought leads nowhere, is often disruptive and cannot build. But to build is our highest duty and our peculiar form of freedom--we who have realized that there is no freedom without power. As for the old freedom--it is only the slaves who are not already tired of it. 29 _Decadence_ The decisive thing, determining whether an artist shall be major or minor, is very often not artistic at all, but moral. Yes, though it shock our modern ears, let this be proclaimed! The more "temperament" an artist has, the more character he requires to govern it, to make it fruitful for him, if he would not have it get beyond control, and wreck both him and itself. And, consequently, the great artists show, as a rule, less "temperament" than the minor; they appear more self-contained and less "artistic." Indeed, they smile with the hint of irony at the merely "artistic." It is, perhaps, when the traditions of artistic morality and discipline have broken down, when the "temperament" has, therefore, become unfettered and lawless, that decadence in art is born. The sincerity of the artist, his chief virtue, is gone--the sincerity which commands him to create only under the pressure of an artistic necessity, which tells him, in other words, to produce nothing which is not genuine. Without sincerity, severity and patience, nothing great in art can be created. And it is precisely in these virtues that the decadent is lacking. A love of beauty is his only credential as an artist, but, undisciplined, it degenerates very soon into a love of mere effect. An effect of beauty at all costs, whether it be the true beauty or not! That becomes his object. Without a root in any soil, he aspires to the condition of the water lily, and, in due time, becomes a full-blown æsthete. Is it because he is incapable of becoming anything else? Has he in despair grown "artistic" simply because he is not an artist? Is Decadence the most subtle disguise of impotence? And are decadents those who, if they had submitted to an artistic discipline of sincerity, would never have written at all? Of some of them this is true, but of others it is not; and in that lies the tragedy of Decadence. Wilde himself was, perhaps, a decadent by misadventure; for on occasion he could rise above decadence into sincerity. "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" proves that. He was the victim of a bad æsthetic morality, to which, it is true, he had a predisposition. And if this is true of him, it is true, also, of his followers. A baleful artistic ethic still rules, demoralizing the young artist at the moment when he should be disciplining himself; and turning, perhaps, some one with the potentiality of greatness into a minor artist. By neglecting the harder virtues, the decadents have made minor art inevitable and great art almost impossible. The old tradition of artistic discipline must be regained, then, or a new and even more severe tradition inaugurated. A text-book of morality for artists is now overdue. When it has been written, and the new discipline has been hailed and submitted to by the artists, who can say if greatness may not again be possible? 30 _Decadence Again_ How is the dissolution of the tradition of artistic discipline to be explained? To what cause is it to be traced? Perhaps to the more general dissolution of tradition which has taken place in modern times. When theological dogmas and moral values are thrown into the melting-pot, and the discipline of centuries is dissolved into anarchy, it is natural that artistic traditions should perish along with them. Decadence follows free-thought: it appears at the time when the old values lie deliquescent and the new values have not yet risen, the dry land has not yet appeared. But this does not happen always: the old traditions of morality, theology, politics and industry are overthrown, the beginnings of a new tradition appear tentatively, everything fixed has vanished, the wildest hopes and the most chilling despair are the common possession of one and the same generation--but, throughout, the artistic tradition is held securely and confidently, it remains the one thing fixed in a world of dissolution. Then an art arises greater even than that of the eras of tradition. The pathos of the dying and the inexpressible hope of the newly born find expression side by side; all chains are broken, and the world appears suddenly to be immeasurable. Is this what happened at the Renaissance? 31 _Wilde_ The refined degeneracy of Oscar Wilde might be explained on the assumption that he was at once over--and under--civilized: he had acquired all the exquisite and superfluous without the necessary virtues. These "exquisite" virtues are unfortunately dangerous to all but those who have become masters of the essential ones; they are qualities of the body more than of the mind; they are developments and embellishments of the shell of man. In acquiring them, Wilde ministered to his body merely, and, as a consequence, it became more and more powerful and subtle--far more powerful and subtle than his mind. Eventually this body--senses, passions and appetite--actually became the intellectual principle in him, of which his mind was merely a drugged and stupefied slave! 32 _Wilde and the Sensualists_ The so-called Paganism of our time, the movement towards sensualism of the followers of Wilde, is not an attempt, however absurd, to supersede Christianity; nor is it even in essence anti-Christian. At the most it is a reaction--not a step beyond current religion into a new world of the spirit, but a changing from one foot to the other, a reliance on the senses for a little, so that the over-laboured soul may rest. And there is still much of Christianity in this modern Paganism. Its devotees are too deeply corrupted to be capable either of pure sensuousness or of pure spirituality. They speak of Christ like voluptuaries, and of Eros like penitents. But it is impossible now to become a Pagan: one must remember Ibsen's Julian and take warning. Two thousand years of "bad conscience," of Christian self-probing, with its deepening of the soul, cannot be disavowed, forgotten, unlived. For Paganism a simpler spirit, mind and sensuousness are required than we can reproduce. We cannot feel, we cannot think, above all, we cannot feel without thinking of our feelings, as the Pagans did. Our modern desire to take out our soul and look at it separates us from the naïve classic sensuousness. What, then, does modern sensualism mean? What satisfaction does it bring to those, by no means few in number, its "followers"? A respite, an escapade, a holiday from Christianity, from the inevitable. For Christianity is assumed by them to be the inevitable, and it fills them with the loathing which is evoked by the enforced contemplation of things tyrannical and permanent. To escape from it they plunge madly into sensuality as into a sea of redemption. But the disgust which drives them there will eventually drive them forth again--into asceticism and the denial of the senses. Christianity will then appear stronger than ever, having been purged of its "uncleanness." Yes, the sensualists of our time are the best unconscious friends of Christianity, its "saviours," who have taken its sins upon their shoulders. There still remain the few who do not assume Christianity to be inevitable, who desire, no matter how hopeless the fight may seem, to surmount it, and who see that men have played too long the game of reaction. "To cure the senses by the soul and the soul by the senses" seems to them a creed for invalids. And, therefore, that against which, above all, they guard, is a mere relapse into sensualism. Not by fleeing from Christianity do they hope to reach their goal; but by understanding it, perhaps by "seeing through" it, certainly by benefiting in so far as they can by it, and, finally, emancipating themselves from it. They know that the soil no longer exists out of which grew the flower of Paganism, and that they must pass through Christianity if they would reach a new sensuality and a new spirituality. But their motto is, Spirituality first, and, after that, only as much sensuality as our spirituality can govern! They hold that as men become more spiritual they may safely become more sensual; but that, to the man without spirit, sensuality and asceticism are alike an indulgence and a curse. That the spirit should rule--such is their desire; but it must rule as a constitutional governor, not as an arbitrary tyrant. For the senses, too, as Heine said, have their rights. 33 _Arnold Going Down the Hill_ One section of the realist school--that represented by Bennett and John Galsworthy--may be described as a reaction from asceticism. Men had become tired of experiencing Life only in its selected and costly "sensations," and sought an escape from "sensations," sought the ordinary. But another section of the school--George Moore, for example--was merely a bad translation of æstheticism. Equally tired of the exquisite, already having sampled all that luxury in "sensation" could provide, the artists now sought _new "sensations"_--and nothing else--in the squalid. It was the _rôle_ of the æsthetes to go downhill gracefully, but when they turned realists they ceased even to do that. They went downhill _sans_ art. Yet, in doing so, did they not rob æstheticism of its seductiveness? And should we not, therefore, feel grateful to them? Alas, no; for to the taste of this age, grace and art have little fascination: it is the heavy, unlovely and sordid that seduces. To disfigure æstheticism was to popularize it. And now the very man in the street is--artistically speaking--corrupted: a calamity second in importance only to the corruption of the artists and thinkers. 34 _Pater and the Æsthetes_ How much of Walter Pater's exclusiveness and reclusiveness was a revulsion from the ugliness of his time--an ugliness which he was not strong enough to contemplate, far less to fight--it is hard to say. Perhaps his phase of the Decadence may be defined as largely a reaction against industrialism, just as that of Wilde may be defined as largely a reaction against Christianity: but, in the former case as in the latter, that against which the reaction was made was assumed to be permanent. Indeed, by escaping from industrialism instead of fighting it, Pater and his followers made its persistence only a little more secure. It is true, there are excuses enough to palliate their weakness: the delicateness of their own nerves and senses, making them peculiarly liable to suffering, the ugliness and apparent invulnerability of industrialism, the beauty and repose of the world of art wherein they might take refuge and be happy. Art as forgetfulness, art as Lethe, the seduction of that cry was strong! But to yield to it was none the less unforgivable: it was an act traitorous not only to society but to art itself. For what was the confession underlying it? That the society of today and of tomorrow is, and _must be,_ barren; that no great art can hereafter be produced; that there is nothing left but to enjoy what has been accomplished! Against that presumption, not the Philistines but the great artists will cry as the last word of Nihilism. Pater's creed marks, therefore, a degradation of the conception of art. Art as something exclusive, fragile and a little odd, the occupation of a few æsthetic eccentrics--this is the most pitiable caricature! To make themselves understood by one another, this little clique invented a jargon of their own; in this jargon Pater's books are written, and not only his, but those of his followers to this day. It is a style lacking, above all, in good taste; it very easily drops into absurdity; indeed, it is always on the verge of absurdity. It has no masculinity, no hardness; and it is meant to be read by people a little insincerely "æsthetic," who are conscious that they are open to ridicule, and who are accordingly indulgent to the ridiculous; the Fabians of art. To admire Pater's style, it is necessary first to put oneself into the proper attitude. 35 _Creator and Æsthete_ The true creators and the mere æsthetes agree in this, that they are not realists. Neither of them copies existence in its external details: wherein do they differ? In that the creators write of certain realities behind life, and the æsthetes--of the words standing for these realities. 36 _Hypocrisy of Words_ The æsthetes, and Pater and Wilde in particular, made a cult of the use of decorative words. They demanded, not that a word should be _true,_ nor even that it should be true and pretty at the same time, but simply that it should be pretty. It cannot be denied that writers here and there before them had been guilty of using a fine word where a common one was most honest; but this had been generally regarded as a forgiveable, "artistic" weakness. Wilde and his followers, however, chose "exquisite" words systematically, in conformity to an artistic dogma, and held that literature consisted in doing nothing else. And that was dangerous; for truth was thereby banished from the realm of diction and a hypocrisy of words arose. In short, language no longer grasped at realities, and literature ceased to express any thing at all, except a writer's taste in words. 37 _The Average Man_ In this welter of dissolving values, the intellectuals of our time find themselves struggling, and liable at any moment to be engulfed. A few of them, however, have snatched at something which, in the prevailing deliquescence, appears to be solid--the average man. Encamped upon him, they have won back sanity and happiness. But their act is nevertheless simply a reaction; here the real problem has not yet been faced! What is it that makes the average man more sane and happy than the modern man? The possession of dogmas, says G. K. Chesterton; let us therefore have dogmas! But, alas, for them he goes back and not forward. And not only back, but back to the very dogmas against which modern thought, and Decadence with it, are a reaction, nay, the _inevitable_ reaction. What! has Mr. Chesterton, then, postponed the solution of the problem? And on the heels of his remedy does there tread the old disease over again? Perhaps it is so. The acceptance of the old dogmas will be followed by a new reaction from them, a new disintegration of values therefore, and a new Decadence. The hands of the clock can be put back, it is true; but they will eventually reach the time when the hour shall strike _again_ for the solution of the modern problem. And that is the criticism which modern men must pass upon Mr. Chesterton; that he interposed in the course of their malady to bring relief with a remedy which was not a remedy. The modern problem should have been worked out to a new solution, to its own solution. Instead of going back to the old dogmas, we should have strained on towards the new. And if, in this generation, the new dogmas are still out of sight, if we have meantime to live our lives without peace or stability, does it matter so very much? To do so is, perhaps, our allotted task. And as sacrifices to the future we justify our very fruitlessness, our very modernity! II ORIGINAL SIN 38 _Original Sin_ Original Sin and the Future are essentially irreconcilable conceptions. The believer in the future looks upon humanity as plastic: the good and the bad in man are not fixed quantities, always, in every age, past and future, to be found in the same proportions: an "elevation of the type man" is, therefore, possible. But the believer in Original Sin regards mankind as that in which--the less said about the good, the better--there is, at any rate, a fixed substratum of the bad. And _that_ can never be lessened, never weakened, never conquered. Therefore, man has to fight constantly to escape the menace of an ever-present defeat. A battle in which victory is impossible; a contest in which man has to climb continually in order not to fall lower; existence as the tread mill: that is what is meant by Original Sin. And as such it is the great enemy of the Future, the believers in which hold that there is not this metaphysical drag. But it is more. At all things aspiring it sets the tongue in the cheek, gladly provides a caricature for them, and becomes their Sancho Panza. To the great man it says, through the mouths of its chosen apostles, the average men, "What matter how high you climb! This load which you carry even as we will bring you back to us at last. And the higher you climb the greater will be your fall. Humanity cannot rise above its own level." And therefore, humility, equality, radicalism, comradeship in sin--the ideas of Christianity! 39 _Again_ Distrust of the future springs from the same root as distrust of great men. It derives from the belief in the average man, which derives from the belief in Original Sin. The egalitarian sentiment strives always to become unconditional. It claims not only that all men are equal, but that the men who live now are no more than the equals of those who lived one, or five, thousand years ago, and no less than the equals of those who will live in another one, or five, thousand years. And it desires that this should be so: its jealousy embraces not only the living, but the dead and the unborn. 40 _Again_ Society is a conspiracy, said Emerson, against the great man. And to blast him utterly in the centre of his being, it invented Original Sin. Is Original Sin, then, a theological dogma or a political device? 41 _Equality_ Is equality, in truth, a generous dogma? Does it express, as every one assumes, the solidarity of men in their higher attributes? It is time to question this, and to ask if inequality be not the more noble and generous belief. For, surely, it is in their nobler qualities that men are most unequal. It was not in his genius that Shakespeare was only the equal, for instance, of his commentators; it was in the groundwork of his nature, in those feelings and desires without which he would not have been a man at all, in the things which made him human, but which did not make him Shakespeare: in a word, in that which is for us of no significance. Equality in the common part of man's nature, equality in sin, equality before God--it is the same thing--that is the only equality which can be admitted. And if its admission is insisted upon by apologists for Christianity, that is because to the common part of man's nature they give so much importance, because they are believers in Original Sin. In their equality there is accordingly more malice than generosity. The belief that no one is other than themselves, the will that no one shall be other than themselves--there is nothing generous in that belief and that will. For man, according to them, is guilty from the womb. And what, then, is equality but the infinitely consoling consciousness of tainted creatures that every one on this earth is tainted? The believer in Original Sin will, of course, deny this, and say that in his philosophy men are equals also in their higher _rôle_ as "sons of God." But is this so? Is salvation, like sin, common to all men? Is it not, on the contrary, something _conferred_ as the reward of a belief and a choice--a belief and a choice which an Atheist, for instance, simply cannot embrace? So that here, touching the highest part of men, their soul, there is introduced, by Christianity itself, a distinction, an inequality--the distinction, the inequality between the "saved" and the "lost." Men are equal inasmuch as they are all damned, but they are not equal inasmuch as they are not all redeemed. Gazing at man, however, no longer through the eyes of the serpent, shall we not be bound to find, if we look _high_ enough, distinction, superiority, inferiority, valuation? The dogma of equality is itself a device to evade valuation. For valuation is difficult, and demands generosity for its exercise. To recognize that one is greater than you, and cheerfully to acknowledge it; to see that another is less than you, and to treat the inferiority as a trifling thing, that is difficult, that requires generosity. But one who believes in inequality will always be looking for greatness in others; his eye, habituated to the contemplation of lofty things, will become subtle in the detection of concealed nobility; while to the ignoble he will give only a glance--and is it not good, where one may not help, to pass on the other side? The egalitarians will cry that it is ungenerous to believe that some men are vile; but it is a strange generosity which would persuade us with them that all men are vile. Let us be frank. To those who believe in the future, inequality is a holy thing; their pledge that greatness shall not disappear from the earth; the rainbow assuring them that Man shall not go down beneath the vast tide of mankind. All great men are to them at once forerunners and sacrifices; the imperfect forms which the Future has shattered in trying to incarnate itself; the sublime ruins of _future_ greatness. 42 _If Men Were Equal_ If men had been equal at the beginning, they would never have risen above the savage. For in absolute equality even the concept of greatness could not have come into being. Inequality is the source of all advancement. 43 _The Fall of Man_ In very early times men must have had a deep sense of the tragicality of existence: life was then so full of pain; death, as a rule, so sudden and unforeseen, and the world generally so beset with terrors. The few who were fortunate enough to escape violent death had yet to toil incessantly to retain a footing on this unkind star. Life would, accordingly, appear to them in the most sombre tones and colours. And it was to explain this human misfortune, and not sin at all, that the whole fable of Adam and Eve and the Fall was invented. The doctrine of Original Sin was simply an interpretation which was afterwards read into the story, an interpretation, perhaps, as arbitrary as the orthodox interpretation of the Song of Songs. How would the fable arise? Well, a primitive poet one day in a fit of melancholy made the whole thing up. Out of his misery his desires created for him an imaginary state, its opposite, the Garden of Eden. But this state being created, the problem arose, How did Man fall from it? And the Tree was brought in. But to the naïve, untheological poet, this tree had nothing to do with metaphysics or with sin, the child of metaphysics. It was simply a magical tree, and if Man ate of the fruit of it, something terrible would happen to him. The Fall of Man was a _mystery_ to the poet, which he did not rationalize or theologize. Well, Man succumbed to curiosity, and pain and misfortune befell the human race. But we must not assume in the modern manner that with the eating of the fruit early man associated any idea of guilt. Rather the contrary; he regarded the act simply as unfortunate, just as at the present day we regard as unfortunate the foolish princess in some fairy tale. So the Fall was not to him a crime, branding all mankind with a metaphysical stigma. That conception came much later, when the conscience had become deeper, more subtle and more neurotic; when individualism had been introduced into morality. And at that time, too, the ideal of the Redeemer became vitiated. Early man, if he did envisage a Redeemer, envisaged him as one who would set him back in the Garden of Eden again, in the literal, terrestrial Garden of Eden, be it understood: theology had not yet been etherealized. And this Redeemer would redeem _all_ men: the distinction of the individual came afterwards. It was not until later, too, that this ideal was "interpreted," and, as a concession to the conscience, salvation was made a conditional thing: the reward of those who were successful in a competition in credulity, in which the first prize went to the most simple, most stupid. The "guilt" now implicated in the Fall was not purged away from all men by the Redeemer, but only from such as would "accept" it. And, lastly, with the passing of Jesus, the redemption was still further de-actualized. It was found that acceptance of the Redeemer did _not_ reinstate Man in an earthly Garden: paradise was, therefore, drawn on the invisible wires of theology into the inaccessible heavens. Salvation lay at the other side of the grave, and there it was safe from assault. Nevertheless, what our primitive poet meant by the Fall and the Redemption was probably something entirely different. The Fall to him was the fall into misfortune, not into sin: the Redemption to him was the redemption from misfortune, not from sin. And his Redeemer would be, therefore--whom? Perhaps it is impossible for us to imagine the nature of such a being. This is not an interpretation, but an attempted explanation of the story of the Fall. 44 _Interpretations_ How inexhaustible is myth! In the story of the Fall is a meaning for every age and every creed. The interpretation called Original Sin is only one of a thousand, and not the greatest of them. Let us dip our bucket into the well. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil--that was the tree of morality! And morality was then the original sin? And through _it_ Man lost his innocence? The antithesis of morality and innocence is as old as the world. And if we are to capture innocence again, if the world is to become æsthetically acceptable to us, we must dispense more and more with morality and limit its domain. This, one desperate glance into the depths of the myth tells us. Instinct is upheld in it against isolated reason and exterior law. Detached, "abstract" Reason brought sin into the world, but Instinct, which is fundamentally Love, Creation, Will to Power, is forever innocent, beyond good and evil. It was when Reason, no longer the sagacity of Instinct, no longer the eyes of Love, became its opponent and oppressor, that morality arose and Man fell. Or to take another guess, granted we read Original Sin in the Fall, must we not read there, also, the way to get rid of it? If by Original Sin Man fell, then by renouncing it let him arise again. But how renounce it? What! Cannot Man renounce a metaphor? Yet how powerful is metaphor! Man is ruled by metaphor. The gods were nothing but that, some sublime, some terrible, some lovely, all metaphors, Jehovah, Moloch, Apollo, Eros. Life is now stained through and through with metaphor. And there are further transfigurations still possible! Yet we would not destroy the beauty already starring Life's skies, the lovely hues lent by Aphrodite, and Artemis, and Dionysos, or the sublime colours of Jehovah and Thor. But the heavy disfiguring blot tarnishing all, Love, Innocence, Ecstasy, Wrath, that we would rather altogether extirpate and annul. Original Sin we would cut off as a disfigurement and disease of Life. Or, again, may not the myth be an attempt to glorify Man and to clothe him with a sad splendour. And not Original Sin, but Original Innocence is the true reading of the fable? Its _raison d'être_ is the Garden of Eden, not the Fall? To glorify Humanity at its source it set there a Superman. The fall from innocence--that was the fall from the Superman into Man. And how, then, is Man to be redeemed? By the return of the Superman! Let that be our reading of the myth! 45 _The Use of Myth_ In the early world myth was used to dignify Man by idealizing his origin. Henceforward it must be used to dignify him by idealizing his goal. _That_ is the task of the poets and artists. 46 _Before the Fall_ Innocence is the morality of the instincts. Original Sin--that was war upon the instincts, morality become abstract, separate, self-centred, accusing and tyrannical. This self-consciousness of morality, this disruption in the nature of Man, was the Fall. 47 _Beyond Original Sin_ How far is Man still from his goal? How sexual, foul in word and thought, naively hedonistic! How little of spirit is in him! How clumsily his mind struggles in the darkness! How far he is still from his goal!--This is a cry which the believer in Original Sin cannot understand, because he accepts all this imperfection as inevitable, as the baleful heritage of Man, from which he cannot escape. The feeling of pure joy in life, the feeling that Life is a sacrament--that also is forever denied to the believer in Original Sin. For Life is not a sacrament to him, but a sin of which joy itself is only an aggravation. 48 _The Eternal Bluestocking_ The bluestocking is as old as mankind. Her original was Eve, the first dabbler in moral philosophy. 49 _The Sin of Intellectualism_ The first sin, the original sin was that of the intellectuals. The knowledge of Good and Evil was not an instantaneous "illumination"; it was the result of long experiment and analysis: the apple took perhaps hundreds of years to eat! Before that, in the happy day of innocence, Good and Evil were not, for instinct and morality were one and not twain. As time passed, however, the physically lazy, who had been from the beginning, became weaker and wiser. Enforced contemplation, the contemplation of those who were not strong enough to hunt or to labour, made them more subtle than their simple brethren; they formed themselves into a priesthood, and created a theology. In these priests instinct was not strong: they were invalids with powerful reason. But they had the lust for power; they wished to conquer by means of their reason; therefore, they said to themselves, belittle instinct, tyrannize over instinct, discover an absolute "good" and an absolute "evil," become moral. Morality, which had in the days of innocence been unconscious, the harmony of the instincts, was now given a separate existence. The cry was morality against the instincts. Thus triumphed the priests, the intellectuals, by means of their reason. Original Sin was their sin--the result of the analysis by which they had separated morality and the instincts. If we are to speak of Original Sin at all, let it be in this manner. 50 _Once More_ The belief in Original Sin--that was itself Man's original sin. 51 _Apropos Gautier_ He had just read "Mlle. de Maupin," "What seduction there is still for Man in the senses!" he exclaimed. "How much more of an animal than a spirit he must be to be charmed and enslaved by this book!" Yet, what ground had he to conclude that because the sensual intoxicates Man, therefore Man is more sensual than spiritual? For we are most fatally attracted by what is most alien to us. 52 _Psychology of the Humble_ There is something very naïve in those who speak of humility as a certain good and of pride as a proven evil. In the first place these are not opposites at all; there are a hundred kinds of both, and humility is sometimes simply a refined form of pride. Humility may be prudence, or good taste, or timidity, or a concealment, or a sermon, or a snub. How much of it, for instance, is simple prudence? Is not this, indeed, its chief _utility,_ that it saves men from the dangers which accompany pride? On the day on which some one discovered that "Pride goeth before a fall," humility became no mean virtue. For if one become the servant and proclaim himself the least of all, how can he still fall? Yet if he does it is a fall into greater humility, and his virtue only shows the brighter. This is the sagacity of the humble, that they turn even ignominy to their glorification. Humility is most commonly used with a different meaning, however. There are people who wish to be anonymous and uniform, and people who desire to be personal and distinct. Or, more exactly, it is their instincts that seek these ends. The first are humble in the fundamental sense that they are instinctively so; the latter are proud in the same sense. Humility, then, is the desire to be as others are and to escape notice; and this desire can only be realized in conformity. It is true, people become conceited after a while about their very conformity, and would be wounded in their vanity if they failed to comply with fashion; but vanity and humility are not incompatible. Pride, however, is something much more subtle. The naïve, unconditional contemners of pride, who plead with men to cast it out, have certainly no idea what would happen if they were obeyed. For pride is the condition of all fruitful action. This thought must be consciously or subconsciously present in the doer, What I do is of value! I am capable of doing a thing which is worth doing! The Christian, it is true, still acts, though he is convinced that all action is sinful and of little worth. But it is only his mind that is convinced: his instincts are by no means persuaded of the truth of this! For though in the conscious there may be self-doubt, in the unconscious there _must_ be pride, or actions would not be performed at all. Moreover, in all those qualities which are personal and not common--in personality--pride is an essential ingredient. The pronoun "I" is itself an affirmation of pride. The feeling, This is myself, this quality is _my_ quality, by possessing it I am different from you, these things constitute _my_ personality and _are_ me: what a naïve assumption of the valuableness of these qualities do we have there, how much pride is there in that unconscious confession! And without this instinctive pride, these qualities, personality could never have been possible. In the heart of all distinct, valuable and heroic things, pride lies coiled. Yes, even in the heart of humility, of the most refined, spiritual humility. For such humility is _not_ a conformity; it separates and individualizes its possessor as effectually as pride could; it takes its own path and not that of the crowd; and so its source must be in an inward sense of worth, of independence: it is a form of pride. But pride is so closely woven into life that to wound it is to wound life; to abolish it, if that were possible, would be to abolish life. Well do its subtler defamers know that! And when they shoot their arrows at pride, it is Life they hope to hit. 53 _Les Humbles_ Humility is the chief virtue, said a humble man. Then are you the vainest man, said his friend, for you are renowned for your humility. Good taste demands from writers who praise humility a little aggressiveness and dogmatism, lest they be taken for humble, and, therefore, proud. On the other hand, if humility is the chief virtue, it is immoral not to practise it. And, therefore, one should praise humility, and practise it? Or praise it and not practise it? Or not praise it and practise it? There is contradiction in every course. That is the worst of believing in paradoxical virtues! 54 _Against the Ostentatiously Humble_ He who is truly humble conceals even his humility. 55 _The Pessimists_ In pessimistic valuations of Life, the alternative contemplated is generally not between Life and Death, but between different types of Life. The real goal of Schopenhauerism is not the extinction of life, for death is a perfectly normal aspect of existence, and Life would not be denied even if death became universal. In order to deny Life and to triumph over it, the pessimist must continue at least to exist, in a sort of death in life: he must be dead, but he must also know it. That is the goal of Schopenhauerism; perhaps not so difficult, perhaps frequently attained! "They have not enough life even to die," said Nietzsche. 56 _Sickness and Health_ Some men have such unconquerable faith in Life that they defy their very maladies, creating out of them forms of ecstasy: that is their way of triumphing over them. Perhaps some poetry, certainly not a little religion has sprung from this. In religions defaming the senses and enjoining asceticism, or, in other words, a lowering of vitality, the chronic sufferers _affirm_ Life in their own way; for sickness _is_ their life: their praise of sickness is their praise of Life. And if they sometimes morbidly invite death, that is because death is nothing but another form of experience, of Life. To the sick, if they are to retain self-respect and pride, these doctrines are perhaps the best possible; it is only to the healthy that they are noxious. For the healthy who are converted by them, become sick through them, yet not so sick as to find comfort in them. The aspiration after an ascetic life contends in these men with their old health, their desire to live fully, and causes untold perplexities and conflicts; leaving them at last with nothing but a despairing desire for release. Thus, a religion of consolation becomes for the strong a Will to Death--the very opposite of that which it was to those who created it. 57 _The Pride of the Sterile_ Ecclesiastical, ceremonious humility is the pride of those who cannot create or initiate, either because they are sterile, or because the obstacles in their way are too great. Their pride is centred, not on what they can do, but on what they can endure. The anchorite goes into the wilderness, perhaps rather to get his background than to escape attention, and there imposes upon himself the most difficult and loathsome tasks, enduring not only outward penances, fasting and goading of the flesh, but such inward convulsions, portents and horrors, as the soul of man has by no other means experienced. Here, in endurance, is his power, and here, therefore, is his pride: the poor Atlas, who does not remove, but supports mountains, and these of his own making! Men who have the power to create but are at the same time extremely timid belong to this class. Rather than venture outside themselves they will do violence to their own nature. The forces which in creation would have been liberated are pent within them and cause untold restlessness, uneasiness and pain. Religions which stigmatize "self-expression," separating the individual into an "outward" and an "inward" and raising a barrier between the two, encourage the growth of this type of man. These religions themselves have their roots in a timidity, a fear of pain. For self-expression is by no means painless; it is, on the contrary, a great cause of suffering. Essentially its outcome is strife, the clash of egos: Tragedy is the great recognition in Art of this truth. Christianity saw the suffering which conflict brought with it, said it was altogether evil, and sought to abolish it. But a law of Life cannot be abolished: strife, driven from the world of outward event, retreated into the very core of man, and there became baleful, indeed, disintegrating, and subversive. The early Christians did not see that men would suffer more from that inward psychic conflict than from the other. It was the Greeks who elevated conflict to an honourable position in their outward actions; with them, as Nietzsche said, there was no distinction between the "outward" and "inward"; they lived completely and died once. But the Christians, to use the words of St. Paul, "died daily." How true was that of those proudly humble anchorites! What a light it throws upon their sternly endured convulsions of the soul! In the end, Death itself came no doubt to many of them as a relief from this terribly protracted "dying." Perhaps one thing, however, made their lives bearable and even enjoyable--the power of the soul to plumb its own sufferings and capacity for endurance. Psychology arose first among the ecclesiastically humble men. Well, let us count up our gains and losses. Spiritual humility, wherever it has spread, has certainly weakened the expression of Life: for it has weakened man by introducing within him a disrupting conflict. But it has also made Life subtler and deeper; it has enlarged the inward world of man, even if it has straitened the world outside. So that when we return--as we must--to the Pagan ideal of "expression," our works shall be richer than those of the Pagans, for man has now _more_ to express. 58 _When Pride is Necessary_ Perhaps in all great undertakings into which uncertainty enters pride is necessary. In the Elizabethan age, our most productive and adventurous age, pride was at its zenith. Was that pride the necessary condition of that productiveness? Would the poets, the thinkers and the discoverers have attempted what they did attempt, had they been humble men? What is needed is more enquiry: a new psychology, and, above all, a new history of pride. 59 _Humility and the Artists_ There is one man, at any rate, who has always owed more to pride than to humility--the artist. Whether it be in himself, where it is almost the condition of productiveness, or in others, where it is the cause of all actions and movements æsthetically agreeable, Pride is his great benefactor. All artists are proud, but not all have the good conscience of their pride. In their thoughts they permit themselves to be persuaded too much by the theologians; they have not enough "free spirit" to say, "Pride is my atmosphere, in which I create. I do not choose to refuse my atmosphere." But if pride were banished even from the remainder of Life, how poor would the artists be left! For every gesture that is beautiful, all free, spirited, swift movement and all noble repose have in them pride. Humility uglifies, except, indeed, the humility which is a form of pride; that has a sublimity of its own. Even the Christian Church--the Church of the humble--had to make its ceremonies magnificent to make itself æsthetically presentable; without its magnificence it would have been an impossible institution. Humility, to be supportable, must have in it an admixture of pride. That gives it _standing._ It was His subtle pride that communicated to the humility of Jesus its gracious "charm." Poetic tragedy and pride are profoundly associated. No event is tragic which has not arisen out of pride, and has not been borne proudly: the Greeks knew that. But, as well, is not pride at times laughable and absurd? Well, what does that prove, except that comedy as well as tragedy has been occasioned by it? Humility is not even laughable! 60 _Love and Pride_ Pride is so indissolubly bound up with everything great--Joy, Beauty, Courage, Creation--that surely it must have had some celestial origin. Who created it? Was it Love, who wished to shape a weapon for itself, the better to fashion things? Pride has so much to do with creation that sometimes it imagines it is a creator. But that it is not. Only Love can create. Pride was fashioned out of a rib taken from the side of Love. 61 _Pride and the Fall_ It was not humility that was the parent of the fable of the Fall. Or is it humility to boast of one's high ancestry, and if the ancestry does not exist, to invent it? The naïve poet who created that old allegory did not foresee the number of interpretations which would be read into it. He did not foresee that it would be used to humiliate Man instead of to exalt him; he did not at all foresee Original Sin. As less than justice, then, has been meted to him, let us now accord him more than justice. Let us say that he was a divine philosopher who perceived that in unconditional morality lay the grand misfortune of mankind. Man is innocent; thus, he said, it is an absolute ethic that defiles him--the knowledge of Good and Evil. Sweep that away, and he is innocent and back in the Garden of Eden again. Let us say this of the first poet, for certainly he did not mean it! Perhaps he knew nothing at all about morality! All that he wished for was to provide a dignified family tree for his generation. 62 _The Good Conscience_ What a revolution for mankind it would be to get back "the good conscience"? Life made innocent, washed free from how much filth of remorse, guilt, contempt, "sin"--that vision arouses a longing more intense than that of the religious for any heaven. And it seems at least equally possible of realization! Bad conscience arises when religion and the instincts are in opposition; the more comprehensive and deep this conflict, the more guilty the conscience. But there have been religions not antagonistic to the instincts, which, instead of condemning them, have thought so well of them as to become their rule, their discipline. The religion of the Greeks was an example of this; and in Greece, accordingly, there was no "bad conscience" in our sense. Well, how is it possible, if it _is_ possible, to regain "the good conscience"? Not by any miracle! Not by an instantaneous "change of heart," for even the heart changes slowly. But suppose that a new instinctive religion and morality were to be set up, and painfully complied with, until they became a second nature as ours have become, should we not then gradually lose our bad conscience, born as it is out of the antagonism between instinct and morality? Nay, if we were to persevere still further until instinct and religion and morality became intermingled and indistinguishable, might we not enter the Garden of Eden again, might not innocence itself become ours? But to attain that end, an unremitting discipline, extending over hundreds of years, might be necessary; and who, in the absence of gods, is to impose that discipline? 63 _The Other Side_ The life-defaming creeds are not to be condemned unconditionally: even they are not evil. "Guilt," asceticism, contempt for the world--these are the physiologically bad things which have sharpened, deepened and made subtle the soul of man. The Greeks were simple compared with modern man; a thousand times more healthy, it is true--perhaps because they were incapable of contracting our maladies. Well, let us judge Christianity, which in Europe was mainly responsible for this deepening of Man, by an artistic criterion: let us judge it by the effects it achieved, not by what it said. 64 _Effects of Christianity_ If there are gods who take an interest in Man, and experiment upon him, what better means could they have devised for getting out of him certain "effects," not Christian at all, than Christianity? Far more significant for mankind than the virtues of Christianity, are its contradictions, excesses and "states of mind." The "way of life," Christian morality, is of little account compared with the permanent physiological and psychological transformations effected upon Man by the discipline of centuries of religion. Not that Man has been forced into the mould of Christian morality, but that in the process he has undergone the most unique convulsions, adaptations and permutations, that an entire new world of conflict, pain, fear, horror, exaltation, faith and scepticism has been born within him, that Life, driven within itself, has deepened, enriched and invested him--_that_ is from the standpoint of human culture the most important thing, beside which what is usually understood by the Christianizing of Europe is relatively insignificant. Not Christian morality, but the effects of Christian morality it is that now concern us. And these effects are not themselves Christian; rather the contrary. Christianity has made Man more complex, contradictory, sceptical, tragic and sublime; it has given him more capacity for good and for evil, and has added to these two qualities subtlety and spirituality. III WHAT IS MODERN? 65 _Whither?_ The fever of modern thought which burns in our veins, and from which we refuse to escape by reactionary backdoors--Christianity and the like--is not without its distinction: it is an "honourable sickness," to use the phrase of Nietzsche. I speak of those who sincerely strive to seek an issue from this fever; to pass through it into a new health. Of the others to whom fever is the condition of existence, who make a profession of their maladies, the valetudinarians of the spirit, the dabblers in quack soul-remedies for their own sake, it is impossible to speak without disdain. Our duty is to exterminate them, by ridicule or any other means found effectual. But we are ourselves already too grievously harassed; we are caught in the whirlwind of modern thought, which contains as much dust as wind. We see outside our field of conflict a region of Christian calm, but never, never, never can we return there, for our instincts as well as our intellect are averse to it. The problem must have a different solution. And what, indeed, is the problem? To some of us it is still that of emancipation--that which confronted Goethe, Ibsen, Nietzsche, and the other great spirits of last century. It is an error to think that these men have yet been refuted or even understood; they have simply been buried beneath the corpses of later writers. And it is the worst intellectual weakness, and, therefore, crime, of our age that ideas are no longer disproved, but simply superseded by newer ideas. The latest is the true, and Time refutes everything! That is our modern superstition. We have still, then, to go back--or, rather, forward--to Goethe, Ibsen and Nietzsche. Our problem is still that of clearing a domain of freedom around us, of enlarging our field of choice, and so making destiny itself more spacious; and, then, having delivered ourselves from prejudice and superstition--and how many other things!--of setting an aim before us for the unflinching pursuit of which we make ourselves responsible. Greater freedom, and therefore greater responsibility, above all greater aims, an enlargement of life, not a whittling of it down to Christian standards--that is our problem still! 66 _The "Restoration" of Christianity_ Will Christianity ever be established again? It is doubtful. At the most, it may be "restored"--in the manner of the architectural "restorations," against which Ruskin declaimed. The difficulty of re-establishing it must needs be greater than that of establishing it. For it has now been battered by science (people no longer believe in miracles) and by history (people have read what the Church has done--or has not done). Christianity has become a Church, and the Church, an object of criticism. As the body which housed the spirit of Christianity, men have studied it with secular eyes, and have found little to reverence, much to censure; and in the disrepute into which the body has fallen, the spirit, also, has shared. And now the atmosphere cannot be created in which Christianity may grow young again and recapture its faith. The necessary credulity, or, at any rate, the proper kind of credulity, is no longer ours. For Christianity grew, like the mushrooms, _in the night._ Had there been newspapers in Judea, there had been no Christianity. And this age of ours, in which the clank of the printing press drowns all other sounds, is fatal to any noble mystery, to any noble birth or rebirth. _That_ night, at all events, we can never pass through again, and, therefore, Christianity will probably never renew itself. 67 _A Drug for Diseased Souls_ The utmost that can be expected is a "restoration," and in that direction we have gone already a long way. For Christianity is not now, as it was at the beginning, a spring of inspiration, a thing spiritual, spontaneous, Dionysian. It is mainly a remedy, or, more often, a drug for diseased souls; and, therefore, to be husbanded strictly by the modern medicine men, to be dispensed carefully, and, yes, to be advertised as well! Its birth was out of an exuberance of spiritual life; its "restoration" will be out of a hopeless debility and fatigue. And, therefore---- 68 _The Dogmatists_ All religions may be regarded from two sides; from that of their creators, and from that of their followers. Among the creators are to be numbered not only the founders of religion, but the saints, the inspired prophets and every one who has in some degree the genius for religion. They are not distinguished by much reverence for dogma, but by the "religious feeling"; and when this emotion carries them away in its flood they often treat dogma in a way to make the orthodox gape with horror. But, in truth, they do not themselves take much account of dogma; every dogma is a crutch, and they do not feel the need of one. But the people who are not sustained by this inward spring of emotion, who can never know what religion really is, these need a crutch; it is for them that dogma was designed. And, of course, the real religious men see their advantage also in the adherence of the dogmatists, the many; for the more widely a religion is spread, the more secure it becomes, and the greater chance it has of enduring. Dogma, then, is religion for the irreligious. To the saint religion is a thing inward and creative; to the dogmatist it is a thing outward, accomplished and fixed, to which he may cling. The former is the missionary of religion, the latter, its conserver. The one is religious because he has religion, the other, because he needs it. 69 _The Religious Impulse_ The time comes in the history of a faith when the "religious feeling" dies, and nothing is left but dogma. The dogmatists then become the missionaries of religion. The fount is dried up; there is no longer an inward force seeking for expression; there is only the fear of the dogmatist lest his staff, his guide, his horizon should be taken from him. Religion is then supported most frenziedly by the irreligious; weakness then speaks with a more poignant eloquence than strength itself. And that is what is happening with Christianity. Its "religious feeling" is dead: there has been no great religious figure in Europe in our time. And the Church is now being defended on grounds neither religious nor theological, but secular and even utilitarian. The real religious impulse is now to be found in the movement outside, and, _therefore,_ against Christianity. But, alas, as Nietzsche feared, there may not after all be "sufficient religion in the world to destroy religion." 70 _The Decay of Prophecy_ The past should be studied only in order to divine the future. The new soothsayers should seek for omens, not, as their ancient brethren did, in the stars and the entrails of animals, but in the book of history, past and becoming. "The new soothsayers," for soothsaying has not died; it has become popular--and degenerate. Every one may now foretell the future, but no one may believe what is foretold. And that is because the soothsayers do not themselves believe their auguries; when they happen to speak the truth, no one is more surprised than they. But in the antique world the augurs had, at any rate, responsibility; to foretell the future was not to them an amusement but a vocation. To what is due the decay of the art of soothsaying? Partly, no doubt, to the dissemination of popular knowledge, by which people have become less credulous; partly to the "scientific temper" of those who, had they lived in the old world, would have been the soothsayers; partly to other causes known to every one. But, allowing for these, may there not be _something_ due to the fact that people are no longer interested, as they used to be, in the future? They know the past, ah, perhaps too well: they have looked into it so long that at length they feel that the future holds nothing which it has not held, that Fate has now no fresh metamorphosis or apotheosis, and that Time must henceforth be content to plagiarize itself. And so the future has lost the seduction which it once held for the noblest spirits. It is true, men still amuse themselves by guessing which of Time's well-thumbed and greasy cards will turn up at the next deal, or by playing at patience with the immemorial possibilities. But that is not soothsaying, nor is it even playing with the future: it is playing with the past. And the great modern discovery is not the discovery of the future, but the discovery of the past. And as with soothsaying, so with prophecy. If we could but look for a moment into the soul of an old prophet and see his deepest thoughts and visions, what a conception of the future would be ours! But that is impossible. We cannot now understand the faith of the men who, unmoved, prophesied the advent of supernatural beings, the Christ or another; to whom the future was a new world more strange than America was to Columbus. That attitude of mind has been killed; and now comes one who says the belief in the future is a weakness. Would he, perchance, have said that to John the Baptist, the great modern of his time? Had he lived in that pre-Christian world, would he have believed in the God in whom he now believes? The orthodox Christian here finds himself in a laughable dilemma. Admitting nothing wonderful in the future, he is yet constrained to believe in a past wonderful beyond the dreams of poets or of madmen--a past in which supernatural beings, miracles and portents were almost the rule. And so the future is to him not even so wonderful as the past. It is an expurgated edition of the past--an edition with the incidents and marvels left out, a novel without a hero or a plot. So, for good or for evil, we no longer believe in the future as we did: it is steadily becoming less marvellous, and, therefore, less seductive for us. But, without the bait of the strange and the new to lure it on, must not humanity halt on its way? _Can_ man act at all without believing in the future in some fashion? Must not things be _foreseen_ before they can be accomplished? Is not soothsaying implicit in every deliberate act? Are not all sincere ideals involuntary auguries? Is it not the future rather than the prophecy which "comes true"? Did not the old prophecies "come true" _because_ they were prophesied? Did not Christ arise _because_ He was foretold? And are not the believers in the future, then, the creators of the future, and the true priests of progress? When we can envisage a future noble enough, it will not then be weakness to believe in it. 71 _The Great Immoralists_ The morality of Nietzsche is more strict and exacting than that of Christianity. When the Christians argue against it, therefore, they are arguing in favour of a morality more comfortable, pleasing and indulgent to the natural man; consequently, even on religious grounds, of a morality more immoral. What! is Nietzsche, then, the great moralist, and are the Christians the great immoralists? This notion may appear to us absurd, or merely ingenious, but will it appear so to future generations? Will timidity, conformity, mediocrity, judicious blindness, unwillingness to offend, be synonymous, to them also, with morality? Or will they look back upon Christianity as a creed too indulgent and not noble enough? As a sort of Epicureanism, for instance? 72 _The First and the Last_ We all know what the weak have suffered from the strong; but who shall compute what the strong have suffered from the weak? "The last shall be first"; but when they become first they become also the worst tyrants--impalpable, anonymous and petty. 73 _Humility in Pride_ The pride of some gifted men is not pride in their person, but in something within them, of which they regard themselves the guardians and servants. If there is dignity in their demeanour it is a reflected, impersonal dignity. Just so a peasant might feel ennobled who guarded a king in danger and exile. 74 _The Modern Devil_ The devil is not wicked but corrupt, in modern phraseology, decadent. The qualities of the mediæval devil, rage, cruelty, hatred, pride, avarice, are in their measure necessary to Life, necessary to virtue itself. But corruption is wholly bad; it contaminates even those who fight it. Hell relaxes: Mr. Shaw's conception is profoundly true. But if the devil is corruption, cannot the devil be abolished? It is true, Man cannot extirpate cruelty, hatred and pride without destroying Life; but Life is made more powerful by the destruction of the corrupt. God created Man; but it was Man that created the devil. 75 _Master and Servant_ To summon out of the void a task, and then incontinently to make of himself its slave: that is the happiness of many a man. A great means of happiness! 76 _Criterions_ It is not expedient to choose on _every_ occasion the higher rather than the lower, for one may not be able to endure too much living on the heights. If will and capacity were always equal! Then, it is true, there would not be any difficulty; but Life is Life, after all--that is, our will _is_ greater than our capacity. On the other hand, it is not well to develop equally all our faculties--the formula of the Humanist--for among them there is a hierarchy, and some are more worthy of development than others. What course is left? To act always in the interest of what is highest in us, and when we partake of a lower pleasure to regard it as a form of sleep, of necessary forgetting? For even the mind must slumber occasionally if it is to remain healthy. 77 _Intellectual Prudence_ Among athletes there is a thing known as over-training: if it is persisted in it wrecks the body. A similar phenomenon is to be found among thinkers: thought too severe and protracted may ruin the mind. Was this the explanation of Nietzsche's downfall? Certainly, his intellectual health was that of the athlete who remains vigorous by virtue of a never-sleeping discipline, who maintains his balance by a continuous effort. This is perhaps the highest, the most exquisite form of health, but it is at the same time the most dangerous--a little more, a little less, and the engine of thought is destroyed. It is important that the thinker should discover exactly how far he may discipline himself, and how far permit indulgence. What in the ordinary man--conscious of no _secondary raison d'être_--is performed without fuss by the instincts, must by him be _thought out_--a task of great peril. 78 _A Dilemma_ To be a man is easy: to be a purpose is more difficult; but, on the whole--easy. In the first instance, one has but to exist; in the second, to act. But to unite man and purpose in the same person--to be a type--is both difficult and precarious. For that a balance is imperative: "being" and "doing" must be prevented from injuring each other: action must become rhythm, and rest, a form of energy. To be in doing, to do in being--that is the task of the future man. The danger of our being mere man is that mankind may remain forever stationary, without a goal. The danger of our being mere purpose is that our humanity may altogether drop out and nothing but the purpose be left. And would not that defeat the purpose? 79 _Dangers of Genius_ Why is it that so many men of genius have been destroyed by falling into chasms of desire which are safely trodden by common men? Is it because there is within the exceptional man greater compass, and, therefore, greater danger? The genius has left the animal further behind than the ordinary man; indeed, in the genius of the nobler sort there is an almost passionate avoidance and disavowal of the animal. In this disavowal lie at once his safety and his danger: by means of it he climbs to perilous heights, and is also secure upon them. But let him abrogate even once this denial of kinship, and he is in the utmost danger. He now finds himself stationed on the edge of a precipice up to which he seems to have climbed in a dream, a dreadful dizziness assails him, along with a mad desire to fling himself into the depths. It was perhaps a leap of this kind that Marlowe made, and Shelley. Meantime, the ordinary man lives in safety at the foot of the precipice: he is never so far above the animal as to be injured by a fall into animalism. Only to the noble does spiritual _danger_ come. 80 _A Strange Failure_ He failed; for the task was too _small_ for him--a common tale among men of genius. You have been unsuccessful in trivial things? There is always a remedy left: to essay the great. How often has Man become impotent simply because there was no task heroic enough to demand greatness of him! 81 _Dangers of the Spiritual_ If you are _swept off your feet_ by a strongly sensuous book, it is probably a sign that you have become too highly spiritualized. For a sensualist would simply have enjoyed it, while feeling, perhaps, a little bored and dissatisfied. It was only a religious anchorite who could have lost his _soul_ to Anatole France's Thaïs. For the salvation of Man it is more than ever imperative that a reconciliation should be effected between the spirit and the senses. Until it is, the highest men--the most spiritual--will be in the very greatest peril, and will almost inevitably be wrecked or frustrated. It is for the good of the _soul_ that this reconciliation must now be sought. 82 _Again_ From the diabolization of the senses innumerable evils have flowed; physical and mental disease, disgust with the world, cruelty towards everything natural. But, worst of all, it has made sensuality a greater _danger_ than it was ever before. In the anchorite, seeking to live entirely in the spirit, and ignoring or chastising the body, sensuality was driven into the very soul, and there was magnified a hundredfold. To the thinker avoiding the senses as much as possible--for he had been taught to distrust them--sensuality, in the moments when he was brought face to face with it, had acquired a unique seductiveness, and had become a problem and a danger. If he yielded, it was perilous in a degree unknown to the average sensual man; if he resisted, a good half of his spiritual energy was wasted in keeping the senses at bay. In either case, the thinker suffered. So that now it is the spirit that has become the champion of the senses, but for the good of the spirit. 83 _God and Animal_ Until the marriage of the soul and the senses has been accomplished, Man cannot manifest himself in any _new_ type. What has been the history of humanity during the last two thousand years? The history of humanity, that is, as distinct from the history of communities? A record of antithetic tyrannies, the spiritual alternating with the sensual; an uncertain tussle between God and animal, now one uppermost, now the other; not a tragedy--for in Tragedy there is significance--but a gloomy farce. And this farce must continue so long as the spirit contems sense as evil in itself--for neither of them can be abolished! Whether we like it or not, the senses, so long as they are oppressed and defamed, will continue to break out in terrible insurrections of sensuality and excess, until, tired and satiated, they return again under the tyranny of the spirit--at the appointed time, however, to revolt once more. From this double _cul de sac_ Man can be freed only by a reconciliation between the two. When this happens, however, it will be the beginning of a higher era in the history of humanity; Man will then become spiritual in a new sense. Spirit will then affirm Life, instead of, as now, slandering it; existence will become joyful and tragic; for to live in accordance with Life itself--voluntarily to approve struggle, suffering and change--is the most difficult and heroic of lives. The softening of the rigour of existence, its reduction and weakening by asceticism, humility, "sin," is the _easier_ path; _narrow_ is the way that leads to Nihilism! The error of Heine was that he prophesied a _happier_ future from the reconciliation of the body and the soul: his belief in the efficacy of happiness was excessive. But this reconciliation is, nevertheless, of importance for _nothing else_ than its _spiritual_ significance: by means of it Man is freed from his labyrinth, and can at last _move forward_--he becomes more tragic. 84 _Ultimate Pessimism_ To the most modern man must have come at some time the thought, What if this thing spirit be _essentially_ the enemy of the senses? What if, like the vampire, it _can_ live only by drinking blood? What if the conflict between spirit and "life" is and must forever be an implacable and destructive one? He is then for a moment a Christian, but with an added bitterness which few Christians have known. For if his thought be true, then the weakening and final nullification of Life must be our object. To prove that the spirit and the senses are not eternally irreconcilable enemies is still a task. Those who believe they are, do so as an act of faith: their opponents are in the same case. We should never cease to read spirit into Life-affirming things, such as pride, heroism and love, and to magnify and exalt these aspects of the spirit. 85 _Leisure and Productiveness_ Granted that the society which produces the highest goods in the greatest profusion is the best--let us not argue from this that society should be organized with the direct aim of producing goods. For what if goods be to society what happiness is said to be to men--things to be attained only by striving for something else? In all good things--whether it be in art, literature or philosophy--there is much of the free, the perverse, the unique, the incalculable. In short, good things can only be produced by great men--and these are exceptions. The best we can do, then, is to inaugurate a society in which great men will find it possible to live, will be even encouraged to live. Can a society in which rights are affixed to functions serve for that? A function, in practice, in a democratic state--that will mean something which can be seen to be useful for today, but not for tomorrow, far less for any distant future. The more subtle, spiritual, posthumous the activity of a man the less it will be seen to be a function. Art and philosophy arise when leisure and not work is the ruling convention. It is true that artists and philosophers work, and at a higher tension than other men; but it is in leisure that they must _conceive_ their works: what obvious function do they then fulfil? Even the most harassed of geniuses, even Burns would never have become immortal had he not had the leisure to ponder, dream and love. Idleness is as necessary for the production of a work of art as labour. And with some men perhaps whole years of idleness are needed. Artists must always be privileged creatures. It is privileges, and not rights, that they want. 86 _What is Freedom?_ The athlete, by the disciplining of his body, creates for himself a new world of actions; he can now do things which before were prohibited to him; in consequence, he has enlarged the sphere of his freedom. The thinker and the artist by discipline of a different kind are rewarded in the same way. They are now more free, because they have now more capacity. There are people, however, who think one can be free whether one has the capacity for freedom or not--a characteristically modern fallacy. But a man the muscles of whose body and mind are weak cannot do _anything;_ how can he be free? The concept of Freedom cannot be separated from that of Power. 87 _Freedom, in the Dance_ Even the most unbridled dance is a form of constraint. The completest freedom of movement is the reward of the severest discipline. 88 _A Moral for Moderns_ A spring gushed forth here on the airy height; but the soil was not hard enough to retain it; and the water sapped away among the soft moss. One day a man came and laid down a hard channel for the spring. Imprisoned on both sides, it now imperiously sought an outlet and--a miracle!--leapt glittering into the sunshine. The history of Freedom. 89 _The Renaissance: A Thesis_ How unsatisfactory are those explanations of the Renaissance which give as its cause the breaking up of the restrictive intellectual canons of the Middle Ages--as if a mere negation could explain such a unique creative era! What has here to be discovered is how freedom and the _capacity_ for freedom should have appeared at the same moment. Perhaps the Middle Ages have now been sufficiently reviled by the admirers of the Renaissance; perhaps that event owed more than we are willing to acknowledge to the centuries of mediæval repression and discipline. During these centuries the human spirit had been confined in the granite channel cut for it by mediæval Christianity, a channel of which even the mouth was stopped. In the fifteenth century the stream swept away every obstacle and leapt forth, a brilliant cascade, scattering almost pagan warmth and light. The fall of Constantinople and the other circumstances usually given as the explanation of this outburst were only its occasion; the cause lay much deeper, in the long storing up, conserving and strengthening of human powers. The freedom of which the Renaissance was an expression was more, then, than the simple removal of restriction. It was a freedom not political or moral, but vital; a positive enhancement if the natural power of man, who could now do things which hitherto he could not do--an event in the history, not merely of society, but of Man. Accordingly, the "freedom of the individual," so dear to some moderns, does not teach us much here. It was not because freedom was given to them that men now created: the freedom was claimed because they now possessed more power, could do more, and had, therefore, the _right_ to a larger sphere of freedom. The more naturally free--that is, individually powerful--a people become, the more they will demand and obtain of "individual freedom"; but it is perhaps inexpedient to offer to a people individually weak any more freedom than they can use. They are still at the disciplinary stage; they are preparing for their renaissance; and to the student of human culture the periods of preparation, of unproductiveness, are more worthy of consideration than the productive periods. For in the future we must prepare for our eras of fruition, and not leave them, as in the past, to pure chance. At the Renaissance, however, it was not even individual freedom in the modern democratic sense that was claimed and allowed; it was at the most the freedom of certain individuals, the naturally free, the powerful. Not until a later time was this claim to be universalized by the unconditional theorists, the generalizers _sans_ distinction, the egalitarians. The French Revolution was the Renaissance rationalized and popularized. 90 _The Unproductive Periods_ Without the Middle Ages the Renaissance would have been impossible; the one, therefore, was as necessary as the other; and our reprobation of the former for its comparative sterility is entirely without justification. If we happen to be living in an unproductive age, it is our misfortune, then; but we are not entitled, in contemplating this age, to the luxury of condemnation, reproof or scorn. What we _may_ demand of any period now is that it should be a period either of preparation or of fruition. So the present era _is,_ after all, deserving of condemnation, but only because it is not an era of preparation--not for any other reason. 91 _Duties of the Unproductive_ The history of culture is the history of long ages of unproductiveness broken by short eras of production; but unproductiveness is the rule. The men born in barren periods have not, then, the right to bewail their lot: _we_ have not that right. But what is of the first importance, for the sake of culture, is to find out what are the duties proper to men in a sterile age. Certainly their duty it is not to produce whether they are productive or not; that can only result in abortions and painful caricatures: does not contemporary literature demonstrate it? The work that is born out of the poverty of the artist is, as Nietzsche pointed out, decadent work, and debases the spectator, lowers his vitality. What, then, are the tasks of a writer in an unproductive age? To live sparely and conserve strength? To make discipline more rigid? To preserve and fortify the tradition of culture? To render more accessible the sources from which creative literature draws its life, so that the _next_ generation may be better placed? To observe vigilantly the signs of today--and not only of today? It may be so; but, also, when necessary, to throw these prudent and preservative tasks to the winds and spend his last ounce of strength in battling with the demons who make a productive era forever impossible. Yes, this last duty is for us today--the most important. And, we may depend, it is the creators--those who produce what they should not--who will fight most bitterly on the opposite side. 92 _"Emancipation"_ The rallying cry of the great writers of the last century was "emancipation." Goethe, Heine and Ibsen alike professed as their task the emancipation of man; Nietzsche, their successor, elevated the freed man, the Superman, into an ideal, in the pursuit of which it was necessary meantime that men should discipline themselves. The later moderns, our own contemporaries, have belittled this freedom, seeing in it nothing but a negation, the freedom _from_ some one thing or another. But Ibsen and Heine, these men of true genius, who believed most sincerely that they were "brave soldiers in the war of the liberation of humanity" did not perhaps waste their powers in battling for a thing so trivial! It is barely possible that they meant by emancipation something much more profound; something spiritual and positive; indeed, nothing less than an enhancement of the powers of man! Certainly both poets looked forward to new "developments" of man: Heine with his "happier and more perfect generations, begot in free and voluntary embraces, blossoming forth in a religion of joy"; Ibsen with his perplexed figures painfully "working their way out to Freedom." It was the task of us in this generation, who should have been the heirs of this tradition, but are not, to supply the commentary to this noble vision, to carry forward this religion of hope further and further. But the _cult_ of modernity has itself prevented this; the latest theory has always seized us and exacted our belief for its hour; the present has invariably triumphed; and we have discarded the great work of last century before we have understood it. Heine has been seized mainly by the decadents; his healthy and noble sensuousness, his desire to restore the harmony between the senses and the soul, _as a means_ towards the emancipation of man, and as nothing else, has been perverted by them into worship of the senses for their own sake--a thing which to Heine would have seemed despicable. Ibsen has fallen among the realists and propagandists; all the spiritual value of his work has for this age been lost--and what a loss!--his battle to deliver man from his weakness and inward slavery has been reduced --it is no exaggeration--to a battle to deliver the women of the middle classes from their husbands. The old story of emanation has been again repeated, with the distinction that here there is no trace left of the original source except negative ones! Well, we have to turn back again, our task, second to none in grandeur, before which we may well feel abashed, is still the same as that of Goethe, Ibsen and Nietzsche, the task of emancipation. To restore dignity to literature, indeed, it would be necessary to create such a task if it did not already exist. 93 _Genealogy of the Moderns_ This is what has happened. The conventional moderns of our time are the descendants _not_ of Heine and Ibsen, but of the race against which the poets fought. They live unthinkingly in the present, just as their spiritual ancestors lived unthinkingly in the past. But slavery to the past has long ago fallen into the second place among dangers to humanity: it is slavery to the present that is now by far the greatest peril. Not because they broke the tyranny of the past, but because they had an ideal in the future are the great fighters of last century significant. To think of them as iconoclasts is to mistake for their aim the form of their activity: the past lay between them and their object: on that account alone did they destroy it. But the great obstacle now is the domination of the present; and were the demi-gods of last century alive today, they would be fighting precisely against _you,_ my dear moderns, who live so complacently in your provincial present, making of it almost a cult. To be a modern in the true sense, however, is to be a fore-runner; there is in this age, an age of preparation, no other test of the modern. To believe that there are still potentialities in man; to have faith that the "elevation of the type Man" is possible, yes, that the time is ripe to prepare for it; and to write and live in and by that thought: this is to be modern. 94 _Domination of the Present_ To be modern in the accepted, intellectually fashionable sense: what is that? To propagate always the newest theory, whatever it be; to be the least possible distance behind the times, behind the latest second of the times, whether they be good or bad; and, of course, to assume one is "in the circle" and to adopt the tone of the circle: in short, to make ideas a matter of fashion, to choose views as a well-to-do woman chooses dresses--to be intellectually without foundation, principles or taste. How did this convention arise? Perhaps out of lack of leisure: superficiality is bound to engulf a generation who abandon leisure. But to be enslaved to the present in this way is the most _dangerous_ form of superficiality: it is to be ignorant of the very thing that makes Man significant, and with idiotic cheerfulness and unconcern to render his existence meaningless and trivial. In two ways' can Man become sublime; by regarding himself as the heir of a great tradition: by making of himself a fore-runner. Both ways are open to the true modern, and both must be followed by him. For the past and the future are greater than the present: the sense of continuity is necessary for human dignity. The men of this age, however, are isolated--to use an electrical metaphor--from the current of Humanity: they have become almost entirely individuals, temporal units, "men"; what has been the outcome? Inevitably the loss of the concept Man, for Man is a concept which can be understood only through the contemplation on a grand scale of the history of mankind. Man ceases to be dramatic when there are no longer spectators for the drama of Humanity. The present generation have, therefore, no sentiment of the human sublime; they see that part of the grand tragedy which happens to pass before them, but without caring about what went before or what will come after, without a clue, however poor, to the mystery of existence. They know men only, the men of their time. They are provincial--that is, lacking the sentiment of Man. How much decadence may not be traced to this! In Art, the conventions of Realism and of Æstheticism have arisen. The first is just the portrayal of present-day men _as_ present-day men; nothing more, therefore, than "contemporary art"; an appendage of the present, a triviality. The second has as its creed enjoyment of the moment; and if it contemplates the past at all, it is with the eyes of the voluptuous antiquary--but a collector is not an heir. Art has in our time, both in theory and in practice, become deliberately more fleeting. In morality, there is Humanitarianism, or, in other words, the conviction that the suffering of today is the most important thing, coupled with the belief that there is nothing at present existing which can justify and redeem this suffering: therefore, unconditional pity, alleviation, "the greatest happiness of the greatest number." Modern pessimism, which springs from the same source, is the obverse of this belief. It, also, regards only the present, and says, perhaps with truth, that _it,_ at any rate, is not noble enough to deserve and demand the suffering necessary for its existence--consequently, _all life_ is an error! All these theories, however, are breaks with the spiritual tradition of emancipation; they are founded on the magnification of the temporary--of that which only in a present continually carried forward seems to be important. This judgment of Life with the eyes of the present, this narrowest and most false of interpretations: how has it confused and finally stultified the finest talents of our time! The modern man is joyless; his joylessness has arisen out of his modernity; and now to find forgetfulness of it he plunges more madly than before--into modernity! For his own sake, as much as for that of Humanity, it is our duty to free him from his wheel. One can live with dignity only if one have a sense of the tragedy of Man. It is the first task of the true modern to destroy the domination of the present. 95 _Encyclopædists_ Strange that the great dramatic poets of modern times have had a weakness for turning their tragedies into encyclopædias! Consider "Faust" and "Brand," for instance. Is it that the sentiment of the eternal was already beginning to weaken in Goethe and Ibsen? Were they overburdened by their own age? Their world was too much with them; and so they did not reach the highest peaks of tragedy: they were not universal. 96 _What is Modern_ It is time we erected a standard whereby to test what is modern. To be an adherent of all the latest movements--that is at most to be anarchistic, eclectic, inconsistent--call it what you will. Futurism, Realism, Feminism, Traditionalism may be all of them opposed or irrelevant to modernity. It is not sufficient that movements should be new--if they are ever new; the question is, To what end are they? If they are movements in the direction of emancipation, "the elevation of the type Man," then they are modern; if they are not, then they are movements to be opposed or ignored by moderns. If modernism be a vital thing it must needs have roots in the past and be an essential expression of humanity, to be traced, therefore, in the history of humanity: in short, it can only be a tradition. The true modern is a continuator of tradition as much as the Christian or the conservative: the tine fight between progress and stagnation is always a fight between antagonistic _traditions._ To battle against tradition _as such_ is, therefore, not the task of the modern; but rather to enter the conflict--an eternal one--for his tradition against its opposite: Nietzsche found for this antithesis the symbolism of Dionysus and Apollo. Does such a tradition of modernity exist? Is there a "modern spirit" not dependent upon time and place, and in all ages modern? If there is--and there is--the possession of it in some measure will alone entitle us to the name of moderns, give us dignity and make the history of Man once more dramatic and tragical. It is a pity that some historian has not yet traced, in its expression in events, the history of this conflict--a task requiring the deepest subtlety and insight. Meantime, for this tradition may be claimed with confidence such events as Greek Tragedy, most of the Renaissance, and the emancipators of last century. These are triumphant expressions of "the modern spirit," but that spirit is chiefly to be recognized as a principle not always triumphant or easy of perception, constantly struggling, assuming many disguises and tirelessly creative. It is not, indeed, only a tradition of persons, of dogmas, or of sentiments: it is a principle of Life itself. This conception, it is true, is grand, and even terrifying--a disadvantage in this age. But is there any other which grants modernity more than the status of an accident of time and fashion? 97 _How We Shall Be Known_ In an age it is not always what is most characteristic that survives: posterity will probably know us not by our true qualities, but by the exceptions to them. The present-day writers in English who will endure after their age has passed are probably Joseph Conrad, W. H. Hudson, and Hillaire Belloc for a few of his essays and lyrics--none of them representative, none of them modern. They might have been born in any era: they are in the oldest tradition. The most striking characteristic of our time, however, is its lack of a tradition. The sentiment of transiency is our most deeply rooted sentiment: it is the very spirit of the age. But by its essential nature it cannot hope to endure, to be known by future generations; for we shall not produce immortal works until we become interested in some idea long enough to be inspired by it, and to write monumentally and surely of it. We hold our ideas by the day; but for a masterpiece to be born, an idea must have taken root and defied time. Permanence of form, moreover, would seriously embarrass a modern writer, who wishes to change with the hour, and does not want his crotchets of yesterday to live to be refutations of his fads of today. Thus we are too fleeting to make even our transitoriness eternal. The very sentiment of immortality has perished amongst us, and we actually prefer that our work should die--witness the Futurists! The most self-conscious heirs of modernity, these propounded the theory that _it is better_ that works of art should not endure: well, in that case, their own creations have been true works of art! Nevertheless, all they did in this theory was to erect into a system the shallowness, provinciality and frivolousness of the present--and thereby to proclaim themselves the enemies of the future. IV ART AND LITERATURE 98 _Psychology of Style_ There are writers with a style--it may be either good or bad--and writers with no style at all, who just write badly. What quality or combination of qualities is it which makes a writer a stylist? Style probably arises out of a duality; the association in a writer of the scribe and the spectator. The first having set down his thought, the second goes aside, contemplates it, as things should be contemplated, _from a distance,_ and and asks, "How does this strike me? How does it look, sound, move?" And he suggests here a toning down of colour, there an acceleration of speed, somewhere else, it may be, an added lucidity, for clearness is an æsthetic as well as an intellectual virtue. The writer without style, however, just writes on without second thought; the spectator is altogether lacking in him; he cannot contemplate his work from a distance, nor, indeed, at all. This explains the unconsciousness and innocence in bad writing--not in bad style, which is neither unconscious nor innocent! The stylist, on the other hand, is always the actor to his own spectator; he must get his effect; even Truth he uses as a means to his effect. If a truth is too repulsive, he throws this or that cloak over it; if it is uninteresting, he envelops it in mysticism (mysticism is simply an artist's trick); in a word, he æstheticizes, that is, falsifies everything, to please the second person in his duality, the spectator. Even if he gets his effects by moderation of statements, he is to be distrusted, for it is the moderation and not Truth that is aimed at. And, then, his temptation to employ metaphors, to work up an interesting madness, to rhapsodize--these most potent means to great effects, these falsifications! Well, are we to assent, then, to the old philosophic prejudice against style and refuse to believe any philosopher who does not write badly? 99 _Modern Writing_ The greatest fault of modern style is that it is a smirking style. It fawns upon the reader, it insinuates, it has the manner of an amiable dog. If it does something smart, it stops immediately, wags its tail, and waits confidently for your approval. You will guess now why those little regiments of dots are scattered so liberally over the pages of the best-known English novelist. It is H.G. Wells's style wagging its tail. 100 _The Precise_ There have been writers--there _are_ writers--whose only title to fame is an interesting defect. They are unable to write soundly, and this inability, being abnormal, is more interesting than sound writing, which is only normal. For to limp or to hop on one leg is never pedestrian--what do I say?--is _not even_ pedestrian. 101 _Paradox_ What is paradox? The "bull" raised to a form of literary art? 102 _The Platitude_ There should be no platitudes in the works of a sincere author. A platitude is an idea not understood by its writer--in one word, a shibboleth. 103 _Praise?_ It is usual to extol the industry of those realists who put _everything_ into their books, but they should rather be censured for their want of taste. The truth is that they lack the selective faculty--lack, that is, art. Afraid to omit anything from their reproductions of existence--lest they omit what is most significant--they include _all_: the easiest course. The easiest course, that is--for the writers. 104 _Hostility of Thinkers_ When a thinker has a world of thought of his own, he generally becomes cold towards other thinkers, and to none more than to him whose star is nearest his own. It is necessary, therefore, that he should read, above all, the philosopher whose thought most closely resembles his, for to him he is most likely to be unjust. We are the most hostile to those who say what we say, but say it in a way we do not like. 105 _The Twice Subtle_ The thinker who has been twice subtle arrives at simplicity. And in doing so he has, at the same time, discovered a new truth. But this other thinker has possessed simplicity from the beginning. Has he also possessed this truth? At any rate, he does not know it. 106 _Mastery of One's Thoughts_ One should know how to keep one's thoughts at a distance. The French can do this, and, therefore, write at once wittily and profoundly of serious things. But the Germans live, perhaps, too near their thoughts, and are possessed by them: hence, their obscurity and heaviness. Wit--lightness of hand--shows that one is master of one's thought, and is not mastered by it. Nevertheless, the thoughts of the Germans may be the mightier. In this matter the complete thinker should be able to become French or German as occasion demands. 107 _Psychologists_ The keenest psychologists are those who are burdened with no social mission and get along with a minimum of theory. Joseph Conrad, for instance, is infinitely more subtle in his analysis of the human mind and heart than is H. G. Wells or John Galsworthy. He has the happy unconcern and detachment of a connoisseur in humanity, of one who experiences the same fine interest in an unusual human situation as the dilettante finds in some recondite trifle. Henry James carried this attitude to a high degree of refinement. He walked among men and women as a botanist might walk among a collection of "specimens," dismissing the ordinary with the assured glance of an expert, and lingering only before the distinctive and the significant. Should we who nurse a mission deplore the spirit in which these disinterested observers enter into their task? By no means. But for them, certain domains of human nature would never have been discovered, and we should have been correspondingly the losers. For we revolutionists must know the human kind before we can alter them. The non-missionary is as necessary as the missionary, and to none more than to the missionary. 108 _Realism_ Novels which take for their subject-matter mere ordinary, pedestrian existence--and of this kind are three-fourths of present-day novels -are invariably dull in one of two ways. In the first instance, they are written by pettifogging talents to whom only the ordinary is of interest, by people, that is to say, who are incapable of writing a book that is not dull. In the other, they are written by men generally of considerable, sometimes of brilliant, ability, who, misled by a theory, concern themselves laboriously with a domain of life which they dislike and which even bores them. But if the writer is bored, how much more so must be the reader! In short, the realist theory produces bad books because it forces the writer to select subjects the only emotion towards which it is possible to feel is boredom. And great art may arise out of hate, grief, even despair, but never out of boredom. 109 _Fate and Mr. Wells_ Fate has dealt ironically with H. G. Wells. It has turned his volumes of fiction into prophecies, and his volumes of prophecies into fiction. 110 Mr. G. K. Chesterton A man's philosophy may be uninteresting, although he writes about it in an interesting manner. Just as the many write dully about interesting things, so a few write interestingly about dull things. And Mr. Chesterton is one of these. Equality is a dull creed, Christianity is a dry bone, tradition is wisdom for ants and the Chinese. But Mr. Chesterton is a very interesting man. How is it possible for an interesting man to have an uninteresting philosophy? Is this simply the last paradox of a master of paradox? Mr. Chesterton's most charming quality is a capacity for being surprised. He writes paradoxically, because to him everything is a paradox--the most simple thing, the most uninteresting thing. And that is his weakness, as well as his strength. He has found the common things so wonderful that he has not searched for the uncommon things. The average man is to him such a miracle, that he will not admit the genius is a far greater miracle. The theories he finds established, Christianity, equality, democracy, traditionalism, interest him so much that he has not gone beyond them to inquire into other theories perhaps more interesting. And this, because he lacks intellectual curiosity, along with that which frequently accompanies it, subtlety of mind. For the intellectually curious man is precisely the man who is _not_ interested in things, or, at any rate, is interested in them only for a little, and then passes on or burrows deeper to find something further. One dogma after another he studies and deserts, this faith--- less searcher, this philanderer, this philosopher; and that which leads him on is the hope that at last he will find something to interest him for an eternity. Perhaps it is this dissatisfaction of the mind which has always driven men to seek knowledge; perhaps, if all mankind had been like Mr. Chesterton, we should not have had even Christianity, equality, democracy and the other theories which he holds and adorns. For Mr. Chesterton's impressions are all first impressions. Like his own deity, he sees everything for the first time always. And he lacks, therefore, the power, called vision, of seeing _into_ things: the outside of things is already sufficiently interesting to him. He possesses imagination, however, and kindly and grotesque fancies which he hangs on the ear of the most common clodhopper of a reality. In fantasy he reaches greatness. But his philosophy is not interesting. It is himself that is interesting. 111 _Nietzsche_ Nietzsche loved Man, but not men: in that love were comprehended his nobility and his cruelty. He demanded that men should become Man before they asked to be loved. 112 _Strindberg_ This writer, despite his genius, earnestness and courage, arouses in us a feeling of profound disappointment. Nor is the cause very far to seek. For along with earnestness and courage in a writer we instinctively look for nobility and joy: if the latter qualities are absent we feel that the _raison d'être_ of the former is gone, and that earnestness and courage divorced from nobility and joy are aimless, wasted, almost inconceivable. And in Strindberg they are so divorced. A disappointed courage; an ignoble earnestness! These are his pre-eminent qualities. And with them he essayed tragedy--the form of art in which nobility and joy are most required! As a consequence, the problems which he treats are not only treated inadequately; the inadequacy, when we stop to reflect upon it, absolutely amazes us. His crises are simply rows. His women, when they are angry, are intellectual fishwives; and--more disgusting still--so are his men. All his characters, indeed, intellectual and talented as they are, move on an amazingly low spiritual plane. The worst in their nature comes to light at the touch of tragedy, and an air of sordidness surrounds all. Posterity will not tolerate this "low" tragedy, this tragedy without a _raison d'être,_ this drama of the dregs. 113 _Dostoieffsky_ Dostoieffsky depicted the subconscious as conscious; that was how he achieved his complex and great effects. For the subconscious is the sphere of all that is most primeval, mysterious and sublime in man; the very bed out of which springs the flower of tragedy. But did Dostoieffsky do well to lay bare that world previously so reverently hidden, and to bring the reader behind the scenes of tragedy? The artist will deny it--the artist who always demands as an ingredient in his highest effects mystery. For how can mystery be retained when the very realm of mystery, the subconscious, is surveyed and mapped? In Dostoieffsky's imperishable works the spirit of full tragedy is perhaps never evoked. What he provides in them, however, is such a criticism of tragedy as is nowhere else to be found. His genius was for criticism; the artist in him created these great figures in order that afterwards the psychologist might dissect them. And so well are they dissected, even down to the subconsciousness, that, to use a phrase of the critics, we know them better than the people we meet. Well, that is precisely what we object to--as lovers of art! 114 _Again_ Not only is Dostoieffsky himself a great psychologist; all his chief characters are great psychologists as well. Raskolnikoff, for instance, Porphyrius Petrovitch, Svidragaïloff, Prince Muishkin, walk through his pages as highly self-conscious figures, and as people who have one and all looked deeply into the shadowy world of human motives, and have generalized. The crises in Dostoieffsky's books are, therefore, of a peculiarly complex kind. It is not only the human passions and desires that meet one another in a conflict more or less spontaneous; the whole wealth of psychological observation and generalization of the conflicting character is thrown into their armoury, and with that, too, they do battle. The resulting effect is more large, rich and subtle than anything else in modern fiction, but also, if the truth must be told, more impure, in the artistic sense, more sophisticated. Sometimes, so inextricably are passion and "psychology" mingled, that the crises are more like the duels of psychologists than the conflicts of human souls. In the end, one turns with relief to the pure tragedy of the classical writers, the tragedy which is not brought about by people who act like amateur psychologists. 115 _Tolerance of Artists_ No matter what their conscious theories may be, all artists are unconsciously aristocratic, and even intolerant in their attitude to other men. They are more blind than most people to the _raison d'être_ of the politician, the business man and the philosopher--these unaccountable beings who will not acknowledge the primacy of Creation and Beauty. But at last they magnanimously conclude that these exist to form their audience, _not_ the subject-matter of their art--that is the modern fallacy! 116 _Climate_ There are natures exquisitely sensitive to their human environment. This man depresses them, they feel the vitality ebbing out of them in his presence; that other brings exhilaration, at the touch of his mind their powers increase and become creative. It is a question of atmosphere. The first has a wintry, grey soul; the latter carries a sun--_their_ sun--in his bosom. And these artists require sunlight and soft air, before the flowers and fruit can hang from their boughs. Every artist of this type should go to Italy or France and live there; or, failing that, create for himself an Italy or France of friends. Others require the tempest with its lowering skies. But that is easier to seek; they can generally find it within themselves. 117 _Sensibility_ It may be wisdom for the man of action to smother his griefs, and follow resolutely his course. But with the artist it is different. He should not close his heart against sorrow, for sorrow is of use to him; his task is to transfigure it; thus he makes himself richer. Every conquest of suffering which is attained by isolating the pang makes the artist poorer; the part of him so isolated dies: he loses bit by bit his sensitiveness, and how much does his sensitiveness mean to him! The artist is more defenceless than other men, and he must be so. For his sensitiveness should be such that the faintest rose-leaf of emotion or thought cannot touch his heart without evoking in him infinite delight or pain; and, at the same time, he should be able to respond to the great tempests and terrible moods of life. Great strength, great love, great productiveness, these are required if he is to endure his sensitiveness; alas, for him, if he have them not! Then he must suffer and suffer, until he has cut off one by one the sources of his suffering, until he has mutilated and lamed what is most godlike in him, and has made himself ordinary at last--or a Schopenhauerian. 118 _The Artist's Enemy_ I waited once beside a lake, created surely to mirror Innocence, so pure it was. The passage of a butterfly over it or the breath of a rose-leaf's fall was enough to stir its surface, infinitely delicate and sensitive. Yet tempests did not affright it, for it laughed and danced beneath the whip of the fiercest storm. And it could bury, as in a bottomless tomb, the stones thrown at it by the most spiteful hands; to these, indeed, it responded with a Puck-like radiating smile that spread until it broke in soft laughter upon its marge. So strong and delicate it lay, and yet, it seemed, so defenceless. Yet what could harm it? Storm, shower, sunshine, and darkness alike but ministered to it, and even the missiles of its enemies were lost in its boundless security. It seemed invulnerable. I returned years later, and looked once, looked and fled. For the lake had grown old, blind and torpid, so that even the light lay dead in it. Then I noticed that on every side, almost invisible, there were innumerable black streams oozing--infection! The tragedy of the artist. 119 _Uniformity_ In the mien of children there is sometimes to be noted a natural nobility and pride; they walk with the unconscious grace of conquerors. But this grace and freedom soon disappear, and when the child has become man there is nothing left of them: his bearing is as undistinguished as his neighbour's. Nowhere, now, is nobility of presence and movement to be found, except among children, the chieftains of half-barbarous peoples, and some animals. The farther man departs from the animal the less dignified he becomes, and the more his appearance conforms to a common level: indeed, civilization seems, on one side, to be a labourious attempt to arrive at the undistinguished and indistinguishable. Is Man, then, the mediocre animal par excellence? Only, perhaps, under an egalitarian régime. Wherever a hierarchy exists in Europe there is more of nobility of demeanour than elsewhere. Equality and humility are the great fosterers of the mediocre: and not only, alas! of the mediocre in demeanour. Who can tell how many proud, graceful and gallant thoughts and emotions have been killed by shame--the shame which the egalitarians and the humble have heaped upon them? And how much Art, therefore, has lost? Certainly, in the minds of children there are many brave, generous and noble thoughts which are never permitted to come to maturity. Ye must become as little children----. 120 _Immortality of the Artist_ An artist one day forgot Death, so entirely had he become Life's, rapt in a world of living contemplation; and, established there, he created a form. That hour was immortal, and, therefore, the form was immortal. This is the "timelessness" of true art-work; they are fashioned "in eternity," as Blake said, and so speak to the eternal in Man. 121 _The Descent of the Artist_ At the beginning of his journey he climbed daringly, leaping from rock to rock, exuberant, tireless, until he reached what he thought was his highest peak. Then began his descent, and, lo, immediately great weariness fell upon him. A friend of his wondered, Is he going downhill because he is tired? Or is he tired because he is going downhill? 122 _Apropos the Cynic_ He wrote with an assumption of extreme heartlessness, and the public said, "How tender his heart must be when he hides it under _such_ a disguise!" But what he was hiding all the time was his lack of heart. 123 _Artist and Philosopher_ In all ages the philosophers have _pardoned_ the artists their lack of depth, on account of their divine love of the beautiful. In our time, however, this only reason for pardoning them has disappeared, and they are now entirely deserving of condemnation. For the realists abjure equally thought--interpretation, and beauty--selection. To be an eye, with a fountain pen attached to it; that is their aim, successfully attained, alas! A single eye and not a single thought: the definition of the realist. 124 _An Evil_ Art is at the present day far too easy for comprehension, far too obvious. Our immediate task should be to make it _difficult,_ and the concern of a dedicated few. Thus only shall we win back reverence for it. When it is reverenced, however, it will then be time to extend its sway; but not until then. Art must be approached with reverence, or not at all. A democratic familiarity with it--such as exists among the middle classes, _not_ among the working classes, in whom reverence is not yet dead--is an abomination. 125 _Modern Art Themes_ How sordid are the themes which modern art has chosen for itself! The loss of money or of position, poverty, social entanglements--the little accidents which a thinker laughs at! Are modern artists as bourgeois as this? A coterie of shop-keepers? Tragic art has no concern with the accidental: that is the sphere of comedy. Tragedy should move inevitably once it has begun to revolve; it is beyond fashion, universal, essential; Fate, not Circumstance, is its theme. The presence of the accidental in a tragedy is sufficient to condemn it. For it is the inevitable, the "Fate" in Tragedy, that makes of it a heroic and _joyful_ thing. It cannot be improvised like Comedy. It demands in its creator a sense of the eternal, just as Comedy, on the other hand, demands an exquisite appreciation of temporal fashion. Tragedy is the greater art; Comedy, perhaps, the more difficult. Our modern tragedies, however, are mainly about accidents, and very mean accidents; they are improvised misfortunes and their effect is depressing. 126 _The Illusionists_ How shallow are most artists! How childish! How subject to illusion! This novelist at the end of his novels leaves his characters in a Utopia, from which all sorrow and trial have been banished, a condition absolutely unreal, contemptible and absurd. And all his readers admire without thinking, and call the author profound! He is not profound, but shallow and commonplace. Except for his gift of mimicry, which he calls Art, he is just an average man. And, moreover, he is tired: the "happy ending" is his exhaustion speaking through his art, his will to stagnation and surrender. Works of art should only end tragically, or enigmatically, as in "A Doll's House," or at the gateway of a new ideal, as in "An Enemy of the People." 127 _Majorities and Art_ When it is said that in modern society poetic tragedy is out of season and cannot _succeed,_ an assumption is made which on literary grounds can never be admitted. It is that majorities count in literature as in politics; that "Brand" was a failure and "A Doll's House" a success. But from another point of view, "Brand" was the success, "A Doll's House" the failure. And the whole "problem" drama a failure with it, and all the realistic schools, as well--a failure! This is _certainly_ how the future historian of literature will regard it. Our era with its depressing "masterpieces" will be called the barren era, because the grand _exception,_ great art, has not bloomed in it, because even our critics have judged contemporary art by a criterion of success instead of the eternal spiritual criterion: their championship of "problem" art proves it! In the meantime, then, realism is considered "the thing," and people speak pityingly of poetic tragedy. Only those forms of art which can "survive" in the struggle for existence are counted good--so deeply, so unwisely have we drunk at the Darwinian spring! 128 _The Decay of Man_ The aim of Art was once to enrich existence by the creation of gods and demi-gods; it is now to duplicate existence by the portrayal of men. Art has become imitation, Realism has triumphed. And how much has materialism had to do with this! In an age lacking a vivid ideal of Man, men become interesting. The eyes of the artist, no longer having an ideal to feed upon, are turned towards the actual, and imitation succeeds creation. Every one busies himself in the study of men, and Art becomes half a science, the artists actually collecting their data, as if they were professors of psychology! Theories glorifying men are born, and the cult of the average man arises, which is nothing but the exaltation of men at the expense of Man. In due time all ideals perish, only an inspiration towards averageness remains, and equality is everywhere enthroned. Art has no longer a heaven to fly to, there to create loftier heavens. In despair, she descends to earth and the ordinary, and for her salvation _must_ find the ordinary interesting, must _make_ the ordinary interesting. Realism arises when ideals of Man decay: it is the egalitarianism of Art. 129 _A New Valuation_ But why do ideals of Man decay--why _did_ the ideal of Man decay? Because there were no longer examples to inspire the artists in the creation of their grand, superhuman figures. Suspicion, envy, equality--call it what you will--had become strong: the great man could no longer fight it and remain great. By the radicals the genius was regarded as an insult to the remainder of mankind. And how ordinary he was, this genius, compared with the grand figures of the time of the Renaissance; that time when men were weighed and valued, when elevation and inequality were acknowledged and acted upon, and Man became greater in stature, with Art his Will to Greatness! Well, we must weigh men again; we must deny equality; we must affirm aristocracy--in everything but commerce and production, where democracy is really a return to the aristocratic tradition. And, you artists, you must turn from men to Man, from Realism to Myth. And if you can find in your age no example to inspire you to the creation of a great ideal of Man, then become your own examples! Man must be born again, if you would enter into your heaven. 130 _The Man and the Hour_ A. Let people say about aristocracy what they will, it remains true that Man generally is equal to the event. Events are the true stepping-stones on which Man rises to higher things. B. Ah! you are not speaking of Man, but of men, of the many. The great man, however, does not require an event to call his greatness forth. He is his own event--and also that of others! 131 _The Lover to the Artists_ Love idealizes the object. If you would create an ideal Art, must you not, then, learn to love? And that you are Realists--does it not prove that you have not Love? 132 _Origin of the Tragic_ Here is yet another guess at the origin of the tragic: A man is told of some calamity, altogether unexpected, the engulfing of a vessel by the sea, an avalanche which wipes out a town, or a fire in which a family of little ones perish, leaving the father and mother unharmed and disconsolate; and at once the very grandest feelings awaken within him, he finds himself enlarged spiritually, and life itself is enriched for him--the people in the vessel and in the town, the children and the parents of the children, are raised to a little more than human elevation by the favouritism of calamity. Next day he hears that the news was false, and immediately, along with the feeling of relief, he experiences an unmistakable disappointment and loss; for all those grand emotions and the contemplation of life in that greater aspect are snatched from him! Perhaps in primitive times, when the means of disseminating news were more untrustworthy than they are today, disappointments of this kind would occur very often; and one day some rude poet, having noted the elevation which calamity brings, would in luxurious imagination _invent_ a calamity, in order to experience _at will_ this enlargement of the soul. But a tale of calamity, being invented, would inevitably please the poet's hearers, both for the feelings it aroused and the grand image of Man it represented. So much for the origin and persistence--not the meaning--of the tragic. 133 _Tragedy and Comedy_ Tragedy is the aristocratic form of art. In it the stature of Man is made larger. The great tragic figures are superhuman, unapproachable: we do not sorrow with them, but for them, with an impersonal pity and admiration. And that is because Man, and not men, is represented by them: idealization and myth are, therefore, proper to their delineation. But Comedy is democratic. Its subject is men, the human-all-too-human, the unrepresentative: it belittles men in a jolly egalitarianism. This static fraternity, this acceptance of men as they are, is resented by the aristocratic natures, who would make Man nobler; but to the average men it is flattering, for it proclaims that the great are absurd even as they, it unites men in a brotherhood of absurdity. Thus, all comedy is an involuntary satire, all tragedy an involuntary idealization of men. Tragedy is the supreme affirmation of Life, for it affirms Life even in its most painful aspects, struggle, suffering, death; so that we say, "Yes, this, too, is beautiful!" _That_ was the _raison d'être_ of classical tragedy--and not Nihilism! Well, in which of these forms, Tragedy or Comedy, may our hopes and visions of the Future best be expressed? Surely in that which idealizes Man and says Yea to suffering, Tragedy, the dynamic form of Art. 134 _Super-Art_ In the works of some artists everything is on a slightly superhuman scale. The figures they create fill us with astonishment; we cannot understand how such unparalleled creatures came into being. When we contemplate them, in the works of Michelangelo or of Nietzsche, there arise unvoluntarily in our souls sublime dreams of what Man may yet attain. Our thoughts travel into the immeasurable, the undiscovered, and the future becomes almost an intoxication to us. In Nietzsche, especially, this attempt to make Art perform the impossible--this _successful_ attempt to make Art perform the impossible--is to be noted in every book, almost in every word. For he strains language to the utmost it can endure; his words seem to be striving to escape from the bonds of language, seeking to transcend language. "It is my ambition," he says in "The Twilight of the Idols," "to say in ten sentences what every one else says in a whole book--what every one else does _not_ say in a whole book." In the same way, when in his first book he wrote about Tragedy, he raised it to an elevation greater than it had ever known before, except, perhaps, in the works of Æschylus; when, in his essay upon "Schopenhauer as Educator," he adumbrated his conception of the philosopher, philosophy seemed to become a task for the understandings of gods; and when, having criticized the prevailing morality, he set up another, it seemed to his generation an impossible code for human beings, a code cruel, over-noble. Finally, when he wrote of Man, it was to create the Superman. He touched nothing which he did not ennoble. And, consequently, in Art his chosen form was Myth; he held it beneath the nobility of great art to create anything less than demi-gods; religion and art were in him a unity. In super-art, in these works of Leonardo and Michelangelo, of Æschylus and Nietzsche, Man is incited again and again to surpass himself, to become more than "human." 135 _Love Poetry_ Love poetry, so long as it glorifies Love, is supremely worthy of our reverence. Everything that idealizes and transfigures Love, making it more desirable and full even of transcendental meaning, is of unquestionable advantage to mankind; on the other hand, a crudely physiological statement, even though this may be _formally_ true, serves neither Love nor Life. It is assuredly not the function of art to treat Love in this way. On the contrary, amatory poetry by its idealization allures to Love; this is true even of such of it as is tragic: we are prepared by it to experience gladly even the suffering of Love. The only poetry that is noxious is that which bewails the "vanity" of Love, and that in which a deliberate sterility is adumbrated. These are decadent. 136 _Literature and Literature_ Literature that is judged by literary standards merely is not of the highest rank. For the greatest works are themselves the standards by which literature is judged. How, then, are they to be valued? By a standard outside of literature, by their consonance with that which is the _raison d'être_ of literature? In them a far greater problem than any literary problem faces us, the problem, Why does literature exist? What is the meaning of literature? Through whole generations men forget this problem, and literature becomes to them a specialized form of activity to be pursued for its own sake, a part of Man's soul, thrown off and become static and separate, with a sterile life of its own. The more shallow theory and practice of literature then come into being; Realism and Art for Art's sake flourish. But the eternal question always returns again, Why does literature exist? What is its meaning? And, then, the possibility of another blossoming of literature is not far away. 137 _The Old Poet_ An old poet who had lived in the good days when poets were _makers_--of moralities and gods, among other things--lately re-visited the earth, and after a study of the very excellent exercises in literature to be found in our libraries, delivered himself thus:-- "How has our power decayed! Into litterateurs have we declined who were creators. Perish all literature that is only literature! Poets live to create gods; to glorify gods should all their arts of adornment and idealization be used. But I see here adornment without the object worthy of adornment; beautification for the sake of beautification; Art for Art's sake. These artists are only half artists. They have surely made Art into a game." The critics did not understand him, and, _therefore,_ disagreed. The artists thought he was mad, besides knowing nothing of æsthetics. The moral fanatics acclaimed him vociferously, mistaking him for a popular preacher. Only a philosophico-artistic dilettante listened attentively, and said, a little patronizingly, "He is wrong, but he is more right than wrong." 138 _The Old Gods_ Perhaps there is too much made of anthropomorphism. Man's first gods were not "human" gods; they were stars, animals, plants and the like. It was not until he became an artist that he made gods after his own form: anthropomorphism is just an artistic convention! For gods are in their _content_ superhuman. There has never been a man like Jehovah or Zeus or Odin. The essential thing in them is that they embody an ideal, a fiction, adumbrating something _more_ than Man. Religion is poetry in the grand style, and, as poetry, must have its conventions. 139 _The Old Poets_ In primitive times the poet was far more both of an inventor and a liar than he is at present. For many centuries the lies of the poets have been innocent lies, a convention merely, and to be recognized as such before "æsthetic" enjoyment can begin. But the lies the old poets told were believed literally--as they were meant to be! Yes, the poet at the beginning was just a liar, a great liar. How else, if he had not deceived Man, could he have peopled the heavens with Man's deities? And as the father of whole families of gods, he has done more to decide the fate of Humanity than all the philosophers, heroes and martyrs. These are only his servants, who explain war or die for his fictions. And not merely error, as Nietzsche held, but lying has from the earliest times been the most potent factor of progress. But not all lying; only the lies told out of great love have been creative and life-giving. Art, imagination, prophecy, hallucination, ecstasy, vision--all these were united in the first poets, the true creators. 140 _The Creator Redivivus_ The only modern who has dared to be a poet through and through, that is, a liar in the noble and tragic sense, is the author of the Superman. In Nietzsche, again, after centuries of divine toying, the poet has appeared in his great _rôle_ of a creator of gods, a figure beside whom the "poet" seems like nothing more than the page boy of the Muse. 141 _Literature as Praise_ A. Would you erase from the book of literature all that is not idealization and myth, you neo-moderns? Would you deprive us of all the charming, serious, whimsical, and divinely frivolous works which are human-all-too-human? B. If we could--a thousand times no! We would only destroy what defames Life. All that praises Life, all that enchants to Life, we would cherish as things holy. Idealization, it is true, is the highest form of praise, because it arises out of Love; but there are other forms. Modern Realism, however, is a calumny against Life. _Écrasez l'infâme!_ 142 _The Poet Speaks_ How unhappy must all those poor mortals be who are not poets! They feel and cannot express. They are dumb when their soul would utter its divinest thoughts. Cloddish and fragmentary, they are scarcely human, these poor mortals! For one must be a poet to be altogether human. Yes! in the ideal society of the future every one will be a poet, even the average man! 143 _Myth_ The worst evil of our time is this, that there is nothing greater than the current average existence to which man can look; Religion has dried up, Art has decayed from an idealization of life into a reflection of it. In short, Art has become a passive thing, where once it was the "great stimulus to Life." The idealization and enchantment which the moderns have so carefully eliminated from it was precisely its _raison d'être._ And modern Art, which sets out to copy life, has forgotten Art altogether, its origin, its meaning and its end. Against this aimless Realism, we must oppose idealization, and especially that which is its highest expression, Myth. And let no one say that it is impossible at this stage in Man's history to resuscitate Myth. The past has certainly lost its mystery for us, and it was in the past, at the source of Humanity, that the old poets set their sublime fictions. But the future is still ours, and there, at Man's goal, our myths must be planted. And thither, indeed, has set the great literature of the last hundred years. Faust, Mephistopheles, Brand, Peer Gynt, Zarathustra--there were no greater figures in the literature of the last century--were all myths, and all forecasts of the future. The soil out of which literature grows, then, has not yet been exhausted! If we but break away from Realism, if we make Art symbolic, if we bring about a marriage between Art and Religion, Art will rise again. That this is possible, we who have faith in the Future _must_ believe. V CREATIVE LOVE 144 _Creative Love_ To us who nourish hopes for the future of Man, the important distinction to be drawn in Love is not that between the sacred and the profane. We ask, rather, Is our Love creative or barren? That Love should bring happiness, or union, or fulfilment, seems to us not such a very great matter! The will to create something, out of oneself, not oneself, whether it be in bodies, or in Art or Philosophy--that is the thing for ever worthy of our reverence. There is another Love; that whose end is enjoyment. It is the enemy of creative Love. It is the Love which, in various forms, is known as Liberalism, or Humanitarianism, or the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Sympathy is its central dogma; and it is never tired of exalting itself at the expense of the other Love, which it calls cruel, senseless and unholy. But the same blasphemy is here repeated that Socrates once was guilty of and afterwards so divinely atoned. For it is not creative Love, but sympathetic Love, that is unholy. This would spare the beloved the pangs of love, even if, in doing so, it had to sacrifice the fruits of love. It springs from disbelief in existence. Life is suffering, it cries, suffering must be alleviated, and, therefore, Life must be abated, weakened and lamed! And this love is barren. But creative Love does not bring enjoyment, but rapture and pain. It is the will to suffer gladly; it finds relief from the pains of existence, not in alleviation, but in creation. This Love is, indeed, a Siren--we would not mitigate the awfulness of that symbol--luring Man to peril, perhaps to shipwreck. Yet, by the holiest law of his being, he listens, he follows. And, if his ears have been sealed by reason he _unseals_ them again, he listens with his very soul, yielding to that which is for him certainly danger, perhaps Death, knowing that, even in Death, he will be affirming Life in the highest. This Love, the earnest of future greatness, this terrible, unconditional and innocent thing, we _cannot but_ reverence. 145 _Where Man is Innocent_ There is one region in Man where innocence and a good conscience still reign--in the unconscious. Love and the joy in Love are of the unconscious. The rapture which Love brings is neither, as Schopenhauer said, merely a device to ensure the propagation of mankind, nor the race rejoicing in and through the individual to its own perpetuation; but the joy of unconscious Man, still innocent as before the Fall, with a good conscience enjoying the anticipatory rapture of new life. The instincts believe in Life entirely without questioning; doubt and guilt are simply not present in their world: it is reflection that makes sinners of us all. The thoughts that come to us in the season of Love--we do not need to search in metaphysical heavens for their source. They arise from the very well spring, the very central ego of Man, out of the unconscious, the innocent, the real. Poetry, in that which is incomprehensible and mystical in it, arises from this also. So there is hope still for Man, all ye who believe not in primal depravity! The real man is _even now_ innocent: Original Sin is only mind deep, conscience deep. The instincts still behave as if Life-defaming doctrines _were not_: they have not yet begun to mourn at the Spring and exult at the Autumn. And in the ecstasies of creative Love, whether it be of persons or of things, they continue to celebrate, without misgiving, their jubilee. 146 _A Criterion_ To find out whether a thing is decadent or no, let us henceforth put this question, Does it spring from creative Love? Is the Will to suffering incarnate in it, or the will to alleviate suffering? How much must by this standard be condemned! Humanitarianism and its child, Reform, or the desire to alleviate others' pain; Æstheticism and its step-brother, Realism, or the wish to alleviate one's own: these spring from the same source--a dearth of Love. For creative Love would enjoin, not sympathy with suffering, but the will to transcend suffering; not reform, whose aim is happiness, but revolution, whose aim is growth; not Art for Art's sake, an escape from Life into a stationary æsthetic world, but the creation, out of Life, of ever new Art; not Realism or the need to find men interesting; but idealization, or the desire to _make_ men interesting. John Galsworthy and Oscar Wilde alike are decadent for this reason, that they lack Love. The real difference between them is that the one is a Collectivist, and sympathizes with the people, and the other is an Individualist, and sympathizes with himself. But both degrade Love to the level of Hedonism; both rebel against the cruelty of Love, desiring a Love which will not hurt, and, therefore, _must_ be barren. But wherever peoples, faiths or arts decay, the decay of Love--this strong, energetic Love--has come first. The current frivolousness about intellectual matters, the philandering of the literary coquettes, springs simply from a lack of Love. For the great problems demand passion for their comprehension, and our intellectuals dislike passion. In politics and in religion it is the same: creative Love has everywhere disappeared to be replaced by barren Sympathy. But is it possible by preaching to increase Love? Can it be willed into power? Well, praise may call it forth. 147 _Love at the Renaissance_ How may a great creative age like the Renaissance be interpreted on the hypothesis of Love? Shall it yet be found that the mainspring of the Renaissance was a newly discovered love of Life and, therefore, of Man? In the Middle Ages that part of Life, then called God, had become isolated and abstract, and was worshipped to the detriment of all other Life; while Man was neglected where he was not belittled. Thus, a strong current of Man's love was diverted away from Man altogether, and the earth became dark and sterile. How was the earth to recapture its love again, and drink back into itself its rapture and creativeness? By a marriage in which God and the Universe were made one flesh; by the incorporation of God into Life, and, therefore, into Man. Hence arose the Pantheism of the Renaissance. To love Life with a good conscience, to love Life unconditionally, it was necessary to call Life God. Out of this Love sprang not only the art but the science of the Renaissance. For Man once more became interested in himself, and, from himself, in Life; ultimately discoveries were made and more than one New World was brought to light. Perhaps it is the defect of all theistic, objective theologies that they become, sooner or later, barren. Only by being translated into the subjective do they regain their creative power: Pantheism is the remedy for Theism. Yet to Theism we owe this, that it lent intensity and elevation to Love. The Love of the Pantheists of the Renaissance was not ordinary human Love; it united in a unique emotion the love that had formerly been given to Man along with that which had formerly been given to God. It loved Man as God should be loved--a dangerous thing. But out of this love of God in Man it created, nevertheless, something great, somewhat less than the one, somewhat more than the other--the demi-god. The Renaissance was the age of the demi-gods. 148 _Sympathy_ Sympathy is Love bereft of his bow and arrows--but still blind. 149 A Self-Evident Proposition This is certain, that God is Love. How, else, could He have created the Universe? 150 _"God is Love"_ When Jesus said, "God is Love," He denned a religion of Becoming. Was it not necessarily so? For Love is not something which may _choose_ to create; it _must_ create, it is fundamentally the will and the power to create. And Eternal Love, or God, is, therefore, eternal creation, eternal change, eternal Becoming. Consequently, there is no ultimate goal, no Perfection, except that which is realized at every moment in the self-expression of Love. A vision? A nightmare? Well, it depends whether one is in favour of Life, or of Death; whether one lives, or is lived. And, therefore, whether religion is subjective, or objective? Whether God is within us, or outside us? For so long as God is within us, we must create. That should be our Becoming! 151 _Love and Mr. Galsworthy_ The art of Mr. Galsworthy is such an ambiguous thing--half impersonal portrayal, half personal plea, the _Art pour l'Art_ of a social reformer--and the subjects he chooses are so controversial--the abuses of society--that it is hard to place him as an artist. When "The Dark Flower" appeared, however, we thought we had him. Here was a great subject to his hand, an artist's question at last, Love. Alas! even in writing about it, he could not altogether exclude the reformer. Well, that itself, perhaps, told us something! However that may be, we do get here Mr. Galsworthy's conception of Love. It is an inadequate conception, a realist's conception: Love, with the meaning left out. The ardours, the longing, the disappointment and anguish--all the _symptoms_--of Love are given; but not a hint that Love has any significance beyond the emotions it brings: that which redeems Love, creation, is ignored altogether! Mr. Galsworthy has seen that Love is cruel, but he has not seen beyond the cruelty: it is the ultimate thing to him. Well, that is perhaps the most that could be expected of a humanitarian trying to comprehend Love! In this book are all the symptoms of Humanitarianism--pity for every one, reform of institutions, suffering always considered the sufficient reason for abolishing or palliating things: a creed thrice inadequate, thrice shallow, thrice blind. Love would find relief from suffering in creation. But one feels that Mr. Galsworthy would abolish Life if he could. Humanitarianism unconsciously seeks the annihilation of Life, for in Life suffering is integral. 152 _Mr. Thomas Hardy_ In Mr. Hardy's conception of Love, unlike Mr. Galsworthy's, the contingency of creation is never absent; but to him creation is not a justification of the pangs of Love. It is an intensification of them; it is Love's last and worst indignity. But even when Love does not bestow this ultimate insult of creation, it cannot resist the satisfaction of torturing its victims; it is wanton and irrelevant in its distribution of pain. Mr. Hardy's books are filled with the torments of Love. Was it not fitting that he should aim his main indictment of Life against it, seeing that it is the trick whereby the blunder of Life is perpetuated? And so Mr. Hardy is certainly a decadent; but he is a great decadent--one of those who by the power of their denial of Life seem to make Life more profound and tragic, and inspire the healthy artists to an even greater love and reverence for it. He is great, however, not by his theories, but by his art. The contrast between the sordidness of his thought and the splendidness of his art fills us sometimes with amazement. He sets out in his books to prove that Life is a mean blunder; and, in spite of himself, the tragedy of this blunder becomes in his hands splendid and impressive, so that Life is enriched even while it is defamed. Art, which is _necessarily_ idealization and glorification, triumphs in him over even his most deeply founded conscious ideas. In all his greater books, it refutes his pessimism and turns his curses into involuntary blessings. So divine is Art! 153 _Mr. George Moore_ In writing about Love, Mr. Moore falls into the same realistic error as Mr. Galsworthy: he writes about its manifestations without knowledge of that which gives them meaning and connection. Love to him is just certain sensations--and not only Love, but everything else. Art is a sensation; religion, a sensation; the soul, a sensation. Take out of his books sensation, and there will be little of account left. He knows the religious feeling, but not religion: he always confounds spirituality with refined sensualism. So he knows the sensation of Love, but not Love. But Mr. Moore is learned in the senses: he knows them in everything but their purity. Yes, even sensuality is in his books corrupted. How true this is we realize when in "Evelyn Innes" he compares one of his characters to a faun. We are almost distressed at this, for we feel that the word is not only coarsened, but used with a wrong meaning altogether: we feel that Mr. Moore is incapable of understanding what a faun is! These sophisticated, scented and somewhat damaged voluptuaries of his, in whose conversation there is always an atmosphere of expensive feminine lingerie, and who "know" women so intimately; how perverted must be the taste which can compare them with the hardy, nimble, unconscious creatures of ancient Greece! But Mr. Moore is much nearer in temper to Oscar Wilde than to the realists. He is an æsthete essentially, and a realist only in the second place, and only because he is an æsthete. The province of selected exquisite beauty had been exhausted by Wilde and his school; so Mr. Moore turned to the squalid, the commonplace and the diseased in Life, there to find his "æsthetic emotion." This explains the curious effect at once of colour and of drabness in his books. He is a perverted Wilde; doubly a decadent. 154 _Mr. Bernard Shaw_ Both the strength and the weakness of Mr. Shaw spring from a defect--his lack of Love. Freedom from illusion is his strength. He possesses common sense minus common sentiment; that, and probably nothing more; and that gives to his thought an appearance of subtlety, though it is not really subtle. Thus, his common sense tells him that Love is essentially creation. He sees through the illusions which Love spins round its purpose, because he does not see these illusions at all. Love, indeed, is known to him in all but its illusions; but who knows Love that knows not Love's illusions? Still, it is to his honour that he has conceived Love as creation. His weakness consists in that his attitude to Love is purely intellectual. He lacks Love more than any other man of his time. In grappling with the great problems of existence, it is not Love but the very absence of Love that has been his most useful weapon; and so he has seen much, but grasped nothing, created nothing. And because he has never loved, he can never be called an artist. For how can one who has not loved idealize? And how can one who has not idealized be an artist? In Mr. Shaw, Nature has gone out of her way to create the very antithesis of the artist. What Nietzsche said about Socrates is true of Mr. Shaw even in a higher degree; that his reason is stronger than his instincts, and has usurped the place of his instincts. Without Love, he yet affirms creation. What can be his reason for doing so? Why should he wish Life to persist if he does not love Life? Is it in order that people might still converse wittily, and the epigram might not die? Or so that exceptional men might experience forever the joy of intellectual conflict, the satisfaction found in the ruthless exposure of fallacy and weakness, and the proud feeling of mental power? We know that Mr. Shaw regards the brain as an end--the purpose of Life being to perfect a finer and finer brain--and we know, too, that to Mr. Shaw the highest joy the brain can experience is not that of knowing, but of fighting. Knowledge to him is a weapon with which to wage war. Does he desire Life to continue so that controversy might continue? Well, let us look, then, for some other reason for his praise of Love. He himself lacks Love:--Can it be that he praises it for the same reason for which the Christian praises what he is not but would fain be? And his love of Love is then something pathetic, founded on "unselfishness"? And himself, a Romantic? 155 _Mr. H. G. Wells_ How much has Mr. Wells's scientific training had to do with his conception of Love? As a student of biology, it was natural he should see Love as sex. In all his theories, indeed, there is more of the scientist than of the artist. Scientific certainly, is his simple acceptance of sex as a fact, and his unhesitating association of it with generation, and of both with Love. The innocence of the scientist and not of the artist is his, an innocence Darwinian, not Goethean. And so, although his purpose is fine--to restore in his books an innocent conception of sexual Love--in doing so, his biology always runs away with his art. For he would render sex significant by reading it into all creation, as the meaning of creation; thus making the instrument more than the agent, the very meaning of the agent! But this robs both creation and sex of their significance. The way to restore an innocent conception of sexual Love is by reading creation into it, by seeing it as part of the universal Becoming, by carrying it away on the great purifying stream of Becoming. In spite of his genius, and still more of his cleverness, Mr. Wells here began at the wrong end. But it is doubtful whether any one in this generation has sufficient artistic power and elevation to express in art this conception of Love. Within the limits of Realism, especially of "physiological Realism," it certainly cannot be expressed. Nothing less than the symbolic may serve for it. 156 _The Idealism of Love_ The writer who discovered that love idealizes the object might have pushed his discovery a little further; for it is no less true that love idealizes the subject. None knows better than the poets how to take advantage of this self-idealization: one has only to read their love poems to find out how much more is said about the poet's beautiful feelings than about the object which presumably evoked them. Heine, particularly, was a shameless offender in this way. A woman was to him simply an excuse for seeing himself in imagination in a romantic attitude. But even with the others who appear less obtrusive and more disinterested the implication is the same. How elevated and even divine we must be, they seem to say, when we can feel in this manner; and how happy, when we are privileged to love an object of such loveliness! Yes! love has such power that it idealizes everything--even the subject! 157 _Love and Becoming_ The great Heraclitus propounded the doctrine of Becoming. Everything changes, is built up and dissolved; "stability" is only a little sluggishness in the flux of things. Zeus, the great child, the divine artist, constructs and destroys at his pleasure and for his amusement: all the worlds are his playthings. This conception of the Universe is innocent and beautiful, an artist's conception; but it is at the same time terrifying. And that because all meaning is left out of it; for all things without meaning, no matter how beautiful they may be, are in the end terrifying. Nietzsche, the modern counterpart of Heraclitus, re-affirmed this doctrine; but he coupled with it the idea of creative Love: that is his chief distinction. Certainly, those who do not comprehend Nietzsche's Love do not comprehend Nietzsche. It is the key to his religion of Becoming. Becoming without Love is meaningless; Love without Becoming is meaningless. But, united, each gives its meaning to the other, each redeems the other. But have things a meaning in themselves? Is it not Man that forever interprets and interprets? Very well. But is not a thing incomplete without its interpretation? Is not its interpretation a part of it? 158 _Static Values_ Stagnant waters become noisome after a while. And stagnant values? Certainly within these eternal pools not a few repulsive things have been born: in Perfection, Sin; in Justice, Guilt. It was when human judgments were apotheosized and became Eternal Justice that guilt was insinuated into the core of Life. A falsehood, a presumption! What man found necessary at one moment in his history for his preservation, that, forsooth, was a law governing the spheres, the everlasting edict of God Himself. And when Life did not operate in conformity with this law, it was Life that must needs be guilty--a very ingenious method of world-vilification! It was human vanity that created the eternal verities. And how much have we suffered from them! For the deification of Things meant the diabolization of Man, nay, of Life itself. The metaphysician who created Heaven created Hell at the self-same moment; but, ever since, it has been Hell that has given birth to the metaphysicians. Being _condemns_ Becoming, and pollutes all Life with sin. So in the pools of Being we can no longer cleanse ourselves, and our preference for a doctrine of Becoming may be at bottom a hygienic preference. 159 _The God of Becoming_ Love is the God of Becoming. All the other gods are static gods, changeless for yesterday, today and tomorrow. But Love belongs altogether to the future. It is the deity of those who would create a future. 160 _Utopias_ It is sympathy that has built the Utopias. On every one of them is written, "Conflict and suffering are bad." Utopia is nothing but a place where men are happy, like how many heavens, an ideal of exhaustion. The thing that is omitted from it is always Love, for Love would shatter all Utopias and leave them behind. In Nowhere Man no longer creates, but enjoys. But creation and pain go hand in hand; for what is creation? The dissolution of the outworn, the birth of the new; a continuous fury in which the throes of death and of life are mingled. And Love calls Man to that fate. What we need is an ideal of energy. But that must needs be an ideal of Man, not of Society; for Man is the dynamic, Society the static. Utopia is a goal, but the Superman is a goal beyond a goal; for, once attained, he is naught but the arrow to shoot into _his_ future. To attain the Superman is to surpass the Superman. Only ideals of this kind are unassailable by Love. 161 _"Primacy of Things"_ If we aim at a state of society in which static values, as far as we can know them, are conformed with, we aim at a state in which the creative impulse will not only be needless, but harmful. For does not belief in absolute values necessarily imply belief in a Utopia? And therefore in something antagonistic to Love? The metaphor of static Perfection, lovely as it is, has perhaps ruled us too long, and it is time we superseded it by another. Or is it still, as it has always been, a crime to substitute one metaphor for another? Even if it is Love that drives us on? Progress conceived as a discovery of the unknown instead of as a pursuit of Perfection--might not that take us a long way? Did Nietzsche, perhaps, create his Superman, and give him his hardness and lightness for no other purpose than to carry out that task? Perfection is something that we have yet to discover! In this conception of progress all Utopias are transcended, all goals renounced, yet a set of values, a morality, is retained. The morality might be judged by the criterion, Does it aid us in our quest? A future of discovery, of creation and change, not of enjoyment: what a task for energetic Love does that open out! The Superman is a goal, but what is the Superman's goal? The Superman is something that must be surpassed! 162 _Perfection_ When men write largely of Perfection, as if it were a concept every one could understand, we are entitled to ask what exactly they mean. Do they mean a sort of synthesis or hotchpotch of the virtues in which they believe? Does X believe in a Christian and Y in a Nietzschean perfection? As a rule, conceptions of Perfection are offshoots of the morality prevalent at any given time. And, for action, people's conception of Perfection is much more important than Perfection itself. Therefore, let us ceaselessly repeat, Perfection is something still to be discovered! As for the current conception, is conflict an ingredient in it, or rest? Is it an ideal of Life, or a thing impossible, self-contradictory, static, an eternal stick with which to chastise existence? The first question to be asked. 163 _Goals_ When people speak of the unthinkableness of eternal Becoming which has no goal in Being, what they express is their longing for rest. It is unendurable, they feel, that Life, creation, change, should travel on their way forever: at the very thought their minds become tired, and Being is conjured up. Hitherto, our goals have not been resting stages, but eternal termini. But a true goal should not be a cul-de-sac, but the peak from which to descry our next goal. And so on eternally? Well, why not? Finality was born when the mind became weary at the thought of eternal ascent and found refuge in that of eternal rest. We have not fully learned yet how to live: struggle is still with us an argument against Life. What we need is perhaps a few re-incarnations! When we have learned to live, however, we shall welcome struggle as a necessary part of Life, and Becoming will be as desirable to us as Being now. And not till then shall we be _fit_ for immortality. 164 _Love and Sympathy_ Love and Hatred are not the true opposites, but Love and Sympathy. Love is creation, that is to say, strife: a battle between the inanimate not yet dead, and the living still unborn. And it is also, therefore, the hatred of the one for the other. True, this hatred may not be of individuals but of things; but does that make it any more harmless? It is naïve democratic prejudice to think that hatred of things is less _wicked_ than hatred of individuals; the very opposite is the case! The former is a thousand times more dangerous and destructive than the latter, which, indeed, is little more than an idiosyncrasy. Hatred is contained in and is an aspect of Love; it is Love seen as destruction. Well, only Love has a right to Hatred, for only Love can create. Sympathy, however, would maintain in existence what should be dead, and would bid what should be living remain forever unborn. For in death and in birth alike there is pain. Sympathy--that is, Sympathy with the _necessary_ suffering of existence--is a far greater danger than Hatred. 165 _The Humanitarians_ Hatred only to things, not to men; Love only to men, not to things: the formula of the half-and-half. 166 Love and the Virtues Love is the mother of all the harder virtues, and that because she requires them. For how without them could she suffer to create, and endure the pain of Becoming? Everything dynamic must become virtuous. The soft, hedonistic, and degenerate in morality, however, arise from Sympathy. Sympathy needs the comfortable virtues; it seeks the static, for movement is pain, and pain, of the devil--if Sympathy will admit a devil! Its virtues are all in bad training. 167 _The Other Side_ He ceaselessly groaned that he was weary of life and wished to be rid of it; but all the time it was life that wished to be rid of him. 168 _Love and Danger_ The fear that danger might perish--the immortal fear of Nietzsche--need cause us no anxiety, could we but believe that creative Love will continue to exist. For Love is the great source of danger, and of the heroic in action and thought. If military wars were to disappear from the earth, danger need not be diminished; it might become emancipated and voluntary: it might be raised from a common necessity to an individual task. Perhaps in the distant future nations will become more pacific, men more war-like; peace will be maintained among nations _in order_ that individuals may have a free arena in which to carry on their great contests--"without powder," as Nietzsche said. The battles, born of Love, of the Brands and Zarathustras, not those of the Napoleons: that is what creative Love would envisage! But this prophecy has not sufficient foundation as yet, alas, to be called even a conjecture! 169 _Fellowship and Love_ Fellowship is of two kinds: that which is inspired by Sympathy, and that which is an expression of Love. Men unite for the mere satisfaction which union brings, or for that which is found in the struggle for more remote things--an aspiration or a vision. This latter thing, impractical and paradoxical, which lends Man what nobility he has--it was Love that gave it to him. Fellowship is the sublime attempt to complete the figure of Man. My friend is he who possesses the qualities which I lack and most need: in that sense, he creates me. Fellowship should enrich _all_ who partake of it, make their highest qualities productive, and throw bridges over the chasms of their defects. But the association of men for mere enjoyment is not worthy the name of Friendship. Sympathy is its parent. 170 _The Paradox_ It is possible to live nobly without Happiness, but not without Love. Love, however, confers the highest happiness. Is it because Love is indifferent to Happiness that Happiness flutters around it, and caresses it with its wings? 171 _Moral Indignation_ We should altogether eschew moral censoriousness in our contemplation of Life, for it is merely destructive. To destroy that which we cannot re-create in a better form is a crime. Only Love should condemn, for only Love can create. To bring the good into existence, or prepare the way of those who can create the good--that should be our only form of condemnation. In what consists the passion of the moral fanatic? In respect for the law, that it should not be violated. So he would extirpate whatever does not conform, even though thus he should destroy all life, and have no power to create it anew. No wonder he is gloomy: the vulture is not a bird of cheerful mien. 172 _Morality and Love_ Into what a dilemma falls the poor lover of life who goes to make the choice of morality! He sees that both great types of morality, the humanitarian and the military, the Hedonistic and the Spartan, lead in the end to Nihilism, the one by liquefying, the other by hardening. The former becomes too sensitive to endure Life; the latter, too insensible to feel it. Yet they were to serve Life; but they soon forgot the purpose for which they were formed; they exalted themselves as something higher than Life; they become "absolute," and a stumbling-block to existence. And this was because they were not founded in the beginning upon the very principle of Life, which is Love, but upon accidentals. The conflict between Morality and Love has accordingly been a conflict between the forces of Death and of Life: for "works" without Love are dead. Morality should be but the discipline which Love imposes upon itself in order to create. It should crown all the virtues which oppose a gallant and affirmative countenance to suffering and change, such as heroism, fortitude, joy, temperance. This morality is the antithesis of the humanitarian morality sprung from Sympathy. 173 _Paradise Regained_ If Life is but an expression of creative Love, then a morality founded upon Love must be the only true morality. And, moreover, in it ethics and the instincts are reconciled; innocence is grasped. 174 _Love and Knowledge_ If in all Life there is change, creation, Becoming, and if in our lives we know these things only in the interpretation of them which we call Love, must not Love be a necessary part of our knowledge of Life? Observation, investigation and the weighing of results may tell us much _about_ Life, and show it to us in many aspects, but it does not give us immediate knowledge. Is it possible to know Life? If Life be the expression of Love----! Upon that "if" depends everything. For if it is justified, then we have within us the clue to the riddle of existence. Perhaps here we discern the faint struggling for birth of that undiscovered faculty of the mind of which men speak. The comprehension of Life through Love! The profoundest of intuitions? The maddest of dreams? 175 _Proverb and Commentary_ Love is blind, but it is with excess of light. 176 _Bad Thoughts_ She was as perfect as a drop of dew or a beam of light; a pure thought of God, delicate, spontaneous and finished. There was nothing misshapen in body or soul; Love did well to create such a being. But the others, the crooked, blind and defiled! Are these the bad thoughts of God? From whence do they come? Whither do they go? Conceived in darkness, born for destruction? 177 _Love and Sympathy_ We must not think of Love as a mere concept. For it is something more real than Life itself: the very Life of Life, the very soul of Becoming. It is a force both spiritual and physical, but transcending the distinction of spiritual and physical. We must not conceive Love as a thing akin to Sympathy. It is not humanitarian or even human; it is a force as unsullied by humanity as the mountain winds or the tides of the ocean. Nevertheless, it is within Man, just as it is within the stars and seas; a great creative, destructive, transforming and purifying force; beyond Good and Evil as the dew and the lightning are. This is the power that is known by Man in his moments of love. He is then free to create and enjoy, as if he were re-born, with a will new, joyful and innocent. But seldom does he attain this knowledge: his moments of exultation are brief. Yet Love has not on that account lost any of its potence. Man may decay and become corrupt; but Love remains unalterable, forever pure, incapable of corruption. 178 _Multum in Parvo_ You are but a drop in the ocean of Life. True: but it is in the ocean _of Life!_ 179 _Love and the Senses_ When one loves, the distinction between soul and body is passed. In Love alone is the dream of Goethe, Heine, and the moderns realized: here the reconciliation of the spirit and the senses is celebrated in perfect innocence. For Love irradiates and makes fragrant the body in which it dwells, and raises it aloft to sit by its brother the soul. 180 _Love and Innocence_ Life takes us back to its bosom when we love. The heavens, the earth and the race of men no longer appear things external and hostile, against which we must arm ourselves. We return from exile in personality; our thought sweeps to the farthest horizons, and plunges into the deepest gulfs of existence, at home in all places. The "external" is no longer external: we contemplate it from the inside, we gaze through its eyes. For the very principle of Life, of which all living things are the expression, has been apprehended by us. Our personality has been emancipated. This feeling of universal comprehension is called Innocence. 181 _Love and the Fall_ Has the fable of the Fall still another interpretation for us? Was the Fall of Man the fall from Love? When the feeling of universal comprehension was lost, personality in the individualistic sense arose. And Sin was the child of this Individualism. To the first man bereft of Love, the earth assumed a terrible mien; nature glared at him with a million baleful eyes: he became an outcast in his home. No longer knowing the earth or other men, he experienced terror, hatred and despair. To protect himself against existence, he created Love's substitute, morality. And with morality arose sin, and perished innocence. 182 _Love and its Object_ Nietzsche's psychology was wrong when he spoke of Love as a narrowly egoistic thing isolating two people and making them indifferent to every one else. There is too much of the philosopher and too little of the psychologist in this observation. For mankind cannot be loved, Life cannot be loved, until One has been loved. Only lovers can generate such wealth of life that it overflows, enriching their friends, their enemies, all the world. To love one is to love all. 183 _Freedom in Love_ In true love there is a feeling of entire freedom. Is it because the lovers have by a divine chance found their true path, have become a pulse in the very heart of Life? If Love is the principle of Life, then in Love alone is perfect freedom. Ethics and instinct become one. This is the road that leads beyond good and evil: Man must learn to love. 184 _Love and the Sensualists_ On those who affirm Life as innocent and holy, there is an obligation laid. Their lives must be innocent: Life must be to them a sustained act of worship. How many of them have been lacking just here! Heine failed, in spite of his real nobility. Goethe, however, attained unity and sincerity; and Nietzsche was a figure of beautiful integrity and innocence. They were neither of them mere "writers." Nor must we be: there is upon us the compulsion to prove that a life of innocence is possible. And as a first step, we must separate ourselves from those who, before they have sought innocence, praise the senses. For they confuse and defile everything. 185 _Free Will_ Only those who have knowledge of Becoming can know what the freedom of the will is. Freedom--that is to will Becoming with all its suffering, voluntarily to go on the way which Fate and the highest Life direct us. Slavery--that is to deny Becoming, to cling to the static, and to be dragged along the stream of change. To be dragged, not to remain stationary; for men by taking thought cannot gain immunity from change. Their will and their desires avail them nothing. For the stream of Becoming is unchangeable in its power. It is Man that changes. When he affirms Becoming, he is enlarged; when he denies it, he is straitened. 186 _Tragedy, Life and Love_ In the highest Life two qualities are always to be found together, exuberance and suffering. Life is founded on this paradox, which is fundamental; for in the emotion of Love we are most conscious of it. Love is the most joyful and most suffering thing: its plenitude of joy is so great that it can endure gladly the worst griefs. And tragedy is the truest expression in art of Life and of Love; for its characteristic, too, is a Joy triumphing over Fate. VI THE TRAGIC VIEW 187 _Life as Expression_ Schopenhauer interpreted life as the expression of a Will to Live. Nietzsche showed with profound truth that beneath this will there was something more fundamental, the Will to Power. Have we here got to the foundation, or shall we find that underlying the Will to Power there is something more fundamental still? _Why_ do all living things strive for power? Is it, indeed, power that they desire in their striving, power for the sake of power? That which everything by a law of its being searches for is _expression:_ the Will to Power is merely an outcome of that search. For seeing that the sun of created Life is split up into individuals, related and yet diverse, the expression of one unit is bound to collide with that of another, and the outcome is a conflict. Life, therefore, is essentially something that injures itself, and injures itself the more the more powerful it is; in a word, Life is essentially tragic. Most people, however, live in illusion, knowing nothing of this. The philosophers, and, before them, the priests, were those who perceived that Life was of this nature; but, alas, from the truth they drew the immediate and not the more profound conclusion. They sought, unconscious Hedonists, a palliative for Life, and contemned expression, which they saw was the cause of suffering. These were the creators of that morality which has prevailed to our own day; a morality antagonistic to Life, anti-tragic, negative. All the systems which have been created in this way are colossal panaceas and remedies: they are not fundamental. There were others, however, who saw as the priests did that Life was tragic, but who at the same time affirmed it. These were the tragic poets. They were more deeply versed in Life than the priests: tragic art is more profound than morality. For morality is based on the belief that man desires above everything else Happiness. But Tragedy has perceived that this is not so. Man will express himself, it proclaims, whatever the outcome, whether it be joy or suffering. Since then morality has sunk deep into Life, and there is now almost a second instinct in man striving against expression. Consequently there are many existences passed without expression; sometimes even in a resolute struggle against it, as in the case of innumerable religious men and ascetics. To some men it seems that their spirit has been lying frozen and dead within them, until one day an influence touches them, and they feel an imperious desire to express themselves, to create. This influence is nothing else than Love, which is the desire for expression itself. When its rule is recognized and obeyed Life reaches its highest degree of joy and of pain, and becomes creative. This is the state which is glorified by the tragic poets. To those who affirm, it is the highest condition of Life. 188 _"Self-Expression"_ Self-expression is something infinitely more subtle than the moderns conceive. This man studied to express himself: he investigated his ego, and thereby cut himself off from Life more completely than any anchorite, for the anchorite had at least heaven in addition to himself. This neo-anchorite, however, turned his eyes deliberately inward and strove to find expression for what he discovered there, but for nothing more. Thus he became his own prison. Eventually he turned out an æsthete. This other man found that his thoughts and desires flew away from him as irrevocably as a flock of wild birds and became lost or strangers. He seemed constrained to express everything _not_ himself, everything foreign, remote and as exalted; but in the end he discovered that it was himself he had expressed. "Thy true being," said Nietzsche, "lies not deeply hidden in thee, but an infinite height above thee, or at least above that which thou dost commonly take to be thyself." 189 _Life as a Value_ Those who say that the belief in Life as a value is not a belief which will arouse the heroic passions and make men die for it, use a form of reasoning, at any rate, which is erroneous. They first confuse the ideal of more complete existence with the more complete existence of an individual, and then demonstrate that this individual will not lay down his life for the sake of _his_ more complete existence! But Life as an ideal is just as impersonal as any other ideal, whether it be Justice or Perfection or Renunciation. True, it has not yet become static, but on that account its attraction is only the stronger; it arouses our very love. And men will die for what they love: they will die for Life. 190 _Hebbel's Theory of Tragedy_ Hebbel's theory of Tragedy is noble and profound. Not in the misdirection of wills does he find the source of the tragic, but in the core of the will itself, in the inexorable expression and collision of wills. This conception raises Tragedy from a mere consequence and punishment of sin to an expression of Life itself, to the most profound and essential expression of Life. And this is just and worthy of Tragedy. For the character of Tragedy is not negative and condemnatory, but deeply affirmative and joyous. How shallow then must be the theories which would deny Tragedy to the good, to those whose wills are highly directed! Tragedy is not a punishment. The more noble man becomes the more tragic he will also become. 191 _Tragic Philosophy_ The belief, against which Nietzsche declaimed, that Reason brings Happiness has become to the modern man second nature, so that now the notions of Reason and Happiness are indissolubly connected in his mind. Any argument for a tragic view of Life must therefore appear, first of all, unreasonable; for Happiness as an end is the only reason that will be acknowledged. It remains for us to show that Happiness is itself unreasonable, an impossibility, a chimera. There is no Happiness as an end. Reason does not bring Happiness, nor does virtue, nor does asceticism, nor does comfort. Happiness is an accident. And not even a modern can make accidents happen! To this modern world, with its belief in Happiness, Nietzsche was bound to appear unreasonable, for he brought with him not only a tragic conception of Life, but a tragic philosophy. A tragic philosophy--the marriage of Knowledge and Tragedy: nothing could have seemed more irrational to modern Europe than that! 192 _Tragedy and Arguments_ Those who desire to restore a tragic conception of Life should not use these arguments: that Happiness is a condition which, if it were possible of realization, would become intolerable, producing its opposite, unhappiness; or that only when the individual renounces Happiness does Happiness become his. These are the statements of a Hedonism once removed. The argument for the tragic view should be founded on considerations altogether irrelevant to Happiness. It should not care enough about Happiness even to disdain it. 193 _Morality and Happiness_ Philosophers have from the beginning acknowledged that Happiness is not won by seeking for it, but by striving for other things. This, however, has not prevented them from proclaiming Happiness as the goal of Man and as the deliberate object of ethics. Contradiction upon contradiction! If the individual cannot by taking thought capture Happiness, is it conceivable that a community can, or the human race, in toto? To throw a net round this mirage compounded of desire and fancy--surely Reason was itself the most unreasonable thing to attempt that. And, after all, does Man desire Happiness? Tragedy denies it. 194 _End or Effect_ One may possess all the virtues save Love, and remain unhappy. Love, however, brings Happiness with it as the sun brings light. Is Happiness, then, the end of morality? Or an effect of Love? 195 _Superiority_ In order to despise enjoyment, one need only be supremely happy or supremely wretched. 196 _Beauty and Tragedy_ In every beautiful face there is nobility, strength and a touch of sadness--the seal of tragedy is upon it. To make Life beautiful, then, would be to make it tragic? Nay, rather let us say that to make Life tragic is to make it beautiful. Supreme beauty is but the expression in which are comprised in a miracle of unity the sorrow and the joy of Tragedy. For in the most radiant manifestation of Beauty there is a brooding solemnity; in the most sorrowful there is triumph. 197 _Experimenting in Life_ The aim of the æsthetes was without enduring Tragedy to enjoy Beauty. To that end they devised their creed of experimentation in Life: they wished to know all the joys of the soul and of the senses without inconvenience to themselves. Perceiving that Love and Beauty bring suffering in their train, they decided to _take the initiative_ against them, in other words, to "experience" them. All they experienced, however, was--their experiences. That, indeed, was all they desired: their "experimenting in Life" was escaping from Life. Without the courage to accept Life with the Dionysians or to renounce it with the ascetics, they hit upon the plan of stealing a march upon it. Well, it was certainly not upon Life that they stole a march! 198 _Christian and Dionysian_ The Christian and the Dionysian are both of them step-children and solutions of Pessimism. A gloomy and realistic view of the world was necessary before either of them could be born. In Christianity Pessimism was translated into symbols. "Original Sin" and "transgression against God"--these were the theological counterparts of the pessimist's "suffering," "the tyranny of the Will." How did Christianity find relief from this fundamental pessimism? By a pathetic illusion in which mankind were transformed into erring children, who, however, were forgiven by an indulgent Father. Here suffering was still an argument against Life, and a palliative was sought and found. The Dionysian, however, affirmed Life in the very tragicality of its aspect, and, by so doing, achieved a victory over it. In short, to the Dionysian Life is a tragedy; to the Christian it is a pathetic tale with a happy ending. 199 _History of the Dionysian_ In the beginning he possessed innocence: the world appeared to him as beautiful, Man as good, and the future as immeasurable. The great illusion of Rousseau was his--a "natural man" himself, believing in the "natural man," a romanticist, a credulous, not too sincere, "beautiful" soul--a youth with the qualities of youth. But a day came when unwillingly and painfully his soul forced his eyes open and compelled them to look, and he saw without illusion; the cruelty beneath smiling Appearance, the red claw, and conscienceless, inappeasable appetite. Looking at Man he found him a powerless little creature, condemned to a few years in this world, cut off by Death, and even during his life circumscribed by invincible limitation. Nevertheless, this man disdained to hide his head in the sands of illusion; and immediately he became altogether more worthy of respect, more real, almost sublime. A noble resignation to Life now characterized him; the classical writers, especially the Greeks with their naturalistic pessimism, seemed to him the highest thing; and he accepted the theory of Original Sin. All honour to him when he reached, after a painful journey, this spare but real conclusion! All honour to this pessimist who would not deceive himself! One day, however, the thought came to him, "Even if pain and necessity be the truths of Life! There is something within me which can turn these, also, to account! I can transfigure them. Pain, Struggle, Change--these will no longer enslave me; for these shall be my slaves!" At that moment he became a Dionysian: he had turned the corner of pessimism, and had gained freedom. Original Sin was no longer true for him; for a new truth had dawned in whose light the old was quenched. From an illusive freedom in the beginning, through bondage to necessity, to a new freedom--the history of the Dionysian. The pessimist is more profound than the "natural man," but the Dionysian is the most profound of all. He burrows deeper than pessimism itself; he grows, the most happy of men, out of the very soil of pessimism. 200 _Tragic Affirmation_ To feel happy at this moment--is not that to approve of your whole life, of its suffering, conflict, ennui and scepticism no less than its victories and festivals? This moment is what it is by virtue of these experiences; justify it and you justify them. The physical agony which left its mark upon you; the anguish of bereavement and of disillusionment; the cynicism with which you consoled yourself; the years when you lived altogether bereft of hope; your most profound and most petty thoughts and actions; your meanest, bitterest and noblest experiences: all these are unconsciously affirmed in your affirmation of this moment. Let them be affirmed consciously! Or is your soul afraid to go as far as your will? Looking back now with new eyes over your life, you find that precisely what you cannot do is to repent--least of all of your sins and griefs! For to repent is to will Life to be other than Life, and essentially not to affirm. He who contemplates his life thus, perhaps understands for the first time what is the meaning of Tragedy. 201 _Mastery and Tragedy_ The desire of Man to subjugate Nature and Fate and obtain mastery over his resources--perhaps it is as well that this is meantime unattainable! For Man's spirit is not yet noble enough for him to use his power aright: he would use it, if he could grasp it now, as a means to Happiness! Our first duty is to fight the idea of Happiness, to make Man tragic. Once Man wills Tragedy, however, the more mastery he acquires the better. 202 _The Hidden Faculty_ When we speak hopefully of the discovery of still undiscovered faculties in Man, to what do we look forward? In plain terms, how do we expect this faculty to be of use to us? In bringing about Happiness? It is almost a tragedy--it is a tragedy without the nobility--that in our time the most beautiful, heroic and powerful things have to bow their heads and become slaves to this weak and pathetic tyrant, Happiness. Should we then oppose the addition of one more divine power to the imprisoned? Well, a hope consoles us. For the discovery of a new faculty in Man will not make him more happy, but simply more powerful; his self-expression in action will be the more complete; the essential conflict of Life will be magnified; Life will become more tragic. So think well, you votaries of Happiness, before you bring to life another power of the tragic creature, Man. Far better for your ends if you could but succeed in killing some of those he already possesses. But have you not sometimes tried to do that? 203 _The Other Side_ And yet Man cannot create without Happiness. The soul that lives in shadow becomes unhealthy and sterile: sunshine is after all the great health-bringing and fructifying thing. Happiness does make a man nobler; more ready to generosity and heroism; more careless of enjoyment. Happiness! But what is Happiness? The Happiness that is essential to the best life is a state of the soul: this is doubtless that which Goethe and Heine praised. But the other, the Happiness of the utilitarian, is an effect of calculated action, the reward of a sort of ethical thrift. The first, however, is independent of calculation, and even a little scornful of it; for in its confidence and plenitude it dares to put out on the gloomiest seas. It is not unrelated to Love, this effect of an affirmative attitude to Life. When people praise Happiness, how one desires to believe it is this that they praise. 204 _The Two Species_ The few have a conception of Life different from that of the many. To the latter still pertain such notions as "do as you would be done by," and so forth. They understand a morality but not the end of morality. The few, however, who understand both the morality and the reason for it, who have a conception of Life more difficult and unyielding, seem to the many cold and a little inhuman. The lives of the latter, on the other hand, appear to the few as a naively happy, narrow and absurd form of existence. 205 _Nietzsche_ What was Nietzsche, that subtlest of modern riddles? First, a great tragic poet: it was by a divine accident that he was at the same time a profound thinker and the deepest psychologist. But his tragic affirmative was the core of his work, of which thought and analysis were but outgrowths. Without it, his subtlety might have made him another Pascal. The Will to Power, which makes suffering integral in Life; the Order of Rank whereby the bulk of mankind are doomed to slavery; the Superman himself, that most sublime child of Tragedy; and the last affirmation, the Eternal Recurrence: these are the conceptions of a tragic poet. It is, indeed, by virtue of his tragic view of Life that Nietzsche is for us a force of such value. For only by means of it could modern existence, sunk in scepticism, pessimism and the greatest happiness of the greatest number, be re-created. For the last two centuries Europe has been under the domination of the concept of Happiness as progress. Altruism, the ideology of the greatest happiness of the greatest number, altruism as a means of universalizing Happiness, was preached in the eighteenth century; until after a while it was seen by such clear-sighted observers as Voltaire that men did not obey this imperative of altruism; therefore they were condemned: the moral indignation of the eighteenth century, the century of censoriousness par excellence, was the result. First, an impossible morality was demanded, and for the attainment of an unattainable ideal; then Man was condemned because he failed to comply with it, because he was Man. Thus in the end the ideal of the greatest happiness worked out in pessimism: Life became hideous and, worst of all, immoral, to the utilitarian, when it was seen that altruism and happiness are alike impossible. Schopenhauer is here the heir of Voltaire: the moral condemnation of the one has become in the other a condemnation of Life itself, more profound, more poetical, more logical. Altruism has in Schopenhauer deepened into Pity; for Pity is altruism bereft of the illusion of Happiness. How was Man to avoid now the almost inevitable bourne of Nihilism? By renouncing altogether Happiness as a value; by restoring a conception of Life in which Happiness was neither a positive nor a negative standard, but something irrelevant, an accident: in short, by setting up a tragic conception of Life. This was the task of Nietzsche: in how far he succeeded how can we yet say? 206 _Again_ Nietzsche loved not goodness but greatness: the True, the _Great_ and the Beautiful. Was not this the necessary corollary of his æsthetic evaluation of Life? 207 _Sacrifices_ "The first of the first fruits of thy land thou shalt bring into the house of the Lord thy God." Thus spoke the oldest reverence. We should not scoff at this feeling but rather try to understand it; for it is only too rare in our time. What was its meaning to the rulers of Israel? Gratitude, a beautiful, affirmative thing. To enrich Life with our highest gifts, which we freely offer in thanksgiving for what Life has given us,--that should be our form of sacrifice. And we should perform it gladly, with festive, overflowing heart, not with sullen and conscientious face, as if Life were a usurer. 208 _Our Poverty_ The spiritual poverty of modern life is appalling; and all the more because men are unconscious of it. Prayer was in former times the channel whereby a profound current of spiritual life flowed into the lives of men and enriched them. This source of wealth has now almost ceased, and Man has become less spiritual, more impoverished. We must seek a new form of prayer. Better not live at all than live without reverence and gratitude! Let our sacramental attitude to Life be our form of prayer. Let us no longer desire to live when that has perished. 209 _Finis_ "To abjure half measures and to live resolutely in the Whole, the Full, the Beautiful."--GOETHE. "To try to see in all things necessity as beauty."--NIETZSCHE. THE END 
55317	----	THE MEDITATIONS OF THE EMPEROR MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS A NEW RENDERING BASED ON THE FOULIS TRANSLATION OF 1742 BY GEORGE W. CHRYSTAL WARNER EXHIBITIONER OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD EDINBURGH OTTO SCHULZE & COMPANY 20 SOUTH FREDERIC STREET LONDON: S. C. BROWN & COMPANY 47 GREAT RUSSELL STREET, W.C. 1902 MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS BOOK I. 1. I learned from my grandfather, Verus, to use good manners, and to put restraint on anger. 2. In the famous memory of my father I had a pattern of modesty and manliness. 3. Of my mother I learned to be pious and generous; to keep myself not only from evil deeds, but even from evil thoughts; and to live with a simplicity which is far from customary among the rich. 4. I owe it to my great-grandfather that I did not attend public lectures and discussions, but had good and able teachers at home; and I owe him also the knowledge that for things of this nature a man should count no expense too great. 5. My tutor taught me not to favour either green or blue at the chariot races, nor, in the contests of gladiators, to be a supporter either of light or heavy armed. He taught me also to endure labour; not to need many things; to serve myself without troubling others; not to intermeddle in the affairs of others, and not easily to listen to slanders against them. 6. Of Diognetus I had the lesson not to busy myself about vain things; not to credit the great professions of such as pretend to work wonders, or of sorcerers about their charms, and their expelling of Demons and the like; not to keep quails (for fighting or divination), nor to run after such things; to suffer freedom of speech in others, and to apply myself heartily to philosophy. Him also I must thank for my hearing first Bacchius, then Tandasis and Marcianus; that I wrote dialogues in my youth, and took a liking to the philosopher's pallet and skins, and to the other things which, by the Grecian discipline, belong to that profession. 7. To Rusticus I owe my first apprehensions that my nature needed reform and cure; and that I did not fall into the ambition of the common Sophists, either by composing speculative writings or by declaiming harangues of exhortation in public; further, that I never strove to be admired by ostentation of great patience in an ascetic life, or by display of activity and application; that I gave over the study of rhetoric, poetry, and the graces of language; and that I did not pace my house in my senatorial robes, or practise any similar affectation. I observed also the simplicity of style in his letters, particularly in that which he wrote to my mother from Sinuessa. I learned from him to be easily appeased, and to be readily reconciled with those who had displeased me or given cause of offence, so soon as they inclined to make their peace; to read with care; not to rest satisfied with a slight and superficial knowledge; nor quickly to assent to great talkers. I have him to thank that I met with the discourses of Epictetus, which he furnished me from his own library. 8. From Apollonius I learned true liberty, and tenacity of purpose; to regard nothing else, even in the smallest degree, but reason always; and always to remain unaltered in the agonies of pain, in the losses of children, or in long diseases. He afforded me a living example of how the same man can, upon occasion, be most yielding and most inflexible. He was patient in exposition; and, as might well be seen, esteemed his fine skill and ability in teaching others the principles of philosophy as the least of his endowments. It was from him that I learned how to receive from friends what are thought favours without seeming humbled by the giver or insensible to the gift. 9. Sextus was my pattern of a benign temper, and his family the model of a household governed by true paternal affection, and a steadfast purpose of living according to nature. Here I could learn to be grave without affectation, to observe sagaciously the several dispositions and inclinations of my friends, to tolerate the ignorant and those who follow current opinions without examination. His conversation showed how a man may accommodate himself to all men and to all companies; for though companionship with him was sweeter and more pleasing than any sort of flattery, yet he was at the same time highly respected and reverenced. No man was ever more happy than he in comprehending, finding out, and arranging in exact order the great maxims necessary for the conduct of life. His example taught me to suppress even the least appearance of anger or any other passion; but still, with all this perfect tranquillity, to possess the tenderest and most affectionate heart; to be apt to approve others yet without noise; to have much learning and little ostentation. 10. I learned from Alexander the Grammarian to avoid censuring others, to refrain from flouting them for a barbarism, solecism, or any false pronunciation. Rather was I dexterously to pronounce the words rightly in my answer, confining approval or objection to the matter itself, and avoiding discussion of the expression, or to use some other form of courteous suggestion. 11. Fronto made me sensible how much of envy, deceit and hypocrisy surrounds princes; and that generally those whom we account nobly born have somehow less natural affection. 12. I learned from Alexander the Platonist not often nor without great necessity to say, or write to any man in a letter, that I am not at leisure; nor thus, under pretext of urgent affairs, to make a practice of excusing myself from the duties which, according to our various ties, we owe to those with whom we live. 13. Of Catulus I learned not to condemn any friend's expostulation even though it were unjust, but to try to recall him to his former disposition; to stint no praise in speaking of my masters, as is recounted of Domitius and Athenodorus; and to love my children with true affection. 14. Of Severus, my brother, I learned to love my kinsmen, to love truth, to love justice. Through him I came to know Thrasea, Helvidius, Cato, Dion, and Brutus. He gave me my first conception of a Commonwealth founded upon equitable laws and administered with equality of right; and of a Monarchy whose chief concern is the freedom of its subjects. Of him I learned likewise a constant and harmonious devotion to Philosophy; to be ready to do good, to be generous with all my heart. He taught me to be of good hope and trustful of the affection of my friends. I observed in him candour in declaring what he condemned in the conduct of others; and so frank and open was his behaviour, that his friends might easily see without the trouble of conjecture what he liked or disliked. 15. The counsels of Maximus taught me to command myself, to judge clearly, to be of good courage in sickness and other misfortunes, to be moderate, gentle, yet serious in disposition, and to accomplish my appointed task without repining. All men believed that he spoke as he thought; and whatever he did, they knew it was done with good intent. I never found him surprised or astonished at anything. He was never in a hurry, never shrank from his purpose, was never at a loss or dejected. He was no facile smiler, but neither was he passionate or suspicious. He was ready to do good, to forgive, and to speak the truth, and gave the impression of unperverted rectitude rather than of a reformed character. No man could ever think himself despised by Maximus, and no one ever ventured to think himself his superior. He had also a good gift of humour. 16. I learned from my father gentleness and undeviating constancy in judgments formed after due reflection; not to be puffed up with glory as men understand it; to be laborious and assiduous. He taught me to give ready hearing to any man who offered anything tending to the common good; to mete out impartial justice to every one; to apprehend rightly when severity and when clemency should be used; to abstain from all impure lusts; and to use humanity towards all men. Thus he left his friends at liberty to sup with him or not, to go abroad with him or not, exactly as they inclined; and they found him still the same if some urgent business had prevented them from obeying his commands. I learned of him accuracy and patience in council, for he never quitted an enquiry satisfied with first impressions. I observed his zeal to retain his friends without being fickle or over fond; his contentment in every condition; his cheerfulness; his forethought about very distant events; his unostentatious attention to the smallest details; his restraint of all popular applause and flattery. Ever watchful of the needs of the Empire, a careful steward of the public revenue, he was tolerant of the censure of others in affairs of that kind. He was neither a superstitious worshipper of the Gods, nor an ambitious pleaser of men, nor studious of popularity, but in all things sober and steadfast, well skilled in what was honourable, never affecting novelties. As to the things which make the ease of life, and which fortune can supply in such abundance, he used them without pride, and yet with all freedom: enjoyed them without affectation when they were present, and when absent he found no want of them. No man could call him sophist, buffoon, or pedant. He was a man of ripe experience, a full man, one who could not be flattered, and who could govern himself as well as others. I further observed that he honoured all who were true philosophers, without upbraiding the rest, and without being led astray by any. His manners were easy, his conversation delightful, but not cloying. He took regular but moderate care of his body, neither as one over fond of life or of the adornment of his person, nor as one who despised these things. Thus, through his own care, he seldom needed any medicines, whether salves or potions. It was his special merit to yield without envy to any who had acquired any special faculty, as either eloquence, or learning in the Law, in ancient customs, or the like; and he aided such men strenuously, so that every one of them might be regarded and esteemed for his special excellence. He observed carefully the ancient customs of his forefathers, and preserved, without appearance of affectation, the ways of his native land. He was not fickle and capricious, and loved not change of place or employment. After his violent fits of headache he would return fresh and vigorous to his wonted affairs. Of secrets he had few, and these seldom, and such only as concerned public matters. He displayed discretion and moderation in exhibiting shows for the entertainment of the people, in his public works, in largesses and the like; and in all those things he acted like one who regarded only what was right and becoming in the things themselves, and not the reputation that might follow after. He never bathed at unseasonable hours, had no vanity in building, was never solicitous either about his food or about the make or colour of his clothes, or about the beauty of his servants. His dress came from Lorium--his villa on the coast--and was of Lanuvian wool for the most part. It is remembered how he used the tax-collector at Tusculum who asked his pardon, and all his behaviour was of a piece with that. He was far from being inhuman, or implacable, or violent; never doing anything with such keenness that one could say he was sweating about it, in all things he reasoned distinctly, as one at leisure, calmly, regularly, resolutely, and consistently. A man might fairly apply that to him which is recorded of Socrates: that he could both abstain from and enjoy these things, in want whereof many show themselves weak, and, in the possession, intemperate. To be strong in abstinence and temperate in enjoyment, to be sober in both--these are qualities of a man of perfect and invincible soul, as was shown in the sickness of Maximus. 17. To the Gods I owe it that I had good grandfathers and parents, a good sister, good teachers, good servants, good kinsmen, and friends, good almost all of them. I have to thank them that I never through haste and rashness offended any of them; though my temper was such as might have led me to it had occasion offered. But by their goodness no such concurrence of circumstances happened as could discover my weakness. I am further thankful that I was not longer brought up with my grandfather's concubine, that I retained my modesty, and refrained even longer than need have been from the pleasures of love. To the Gods it is due that I lived under the government of such a prince and father as could take from me all vain glory, and convince me that it was not impossible for a prince to live in a court without guards, gorgeous robes, torches, statues, or such pieces of state and magnificence; but that he may reduce himself almost to the state of a private man, and yet not become more mean or remiss in those public affairs wherein power and authority are requisite. I thank the Gods that I have had such a brother as by his disposition might stir me to take care of myself, while at the same time he delighted me by his respect and love. I thank them that my children neither wanted good natural dispositions nor were deformed in body. I owe it to their good guidance that I made no greater progress in rhetoric and poetry, and in other studies which might have engrossed my mind had I found myself successful in them. By the Gods' grace I forestalled the wishes of those by whom I was brought up, in promoting them to the dignities they seemed most to desire; and I did not put them off with the hope that, since they were but young, I would do it hereafter. I owe to the Gods that I ever knew Apollonius, Rusticus and Maximus; that I have had occasion often and effectually to meditate with myself and enquire what is truly the life according to Nature. And, as far as lies within the dispensation of the Gods to give suggestion, help, or inspiration, there is nothing to prevent my having already realized that life. I have fallen short of it by my own fault, and because I gave no heed to the inward monitions and almost direct instructions of the Gods, to whom be thanks that my body hath so long endured the stress of such a life as I have led. By their goodness I never had to do with either Benedicta or Theodotus; and afterwards, when I fell into some foolish passions, I was soon cured. I give thanks that, having often been displeased with Rusticus, I never did anything to him which afterwards I might have had occasion to repent; that, though my mother was destined to die young, she lived with me all her latter years; that, as often as I inclined to succour any who were either poor or had fallen into some distress, I was never answered that there was not ready money enough to do it, and that I myself never had need of the like succour from another. I must be grateful, too, that I have such a wife, so obedient, so loving, so ingenuous; that I had choice of fit and able men to whom I might commit the education of my children. I have received divine aids in dreams; as in particular, how I might stay my spitting of blood and cure my vertigo; which good fortune happily fell to me at Caieta. The Gods watched over me also when I first applied myself to philosophy. For I fell not into the hands of any Sophist, nor sat poring over many volumes, nor devoted myself to solving syllogisms, or star-gazing. That all these things should so happily fall out there was great need both for the help of fortune and for the aid of the Gods. IN THE COUNTRY OF THE QUADI, BY THE GRANUA. END OF THE FIRST BOOK. BOOK II. 1. Say this to yourself in the morning: Today I shall have to do with meddlers, with the ungrateful, with the insolent, with the crafty, with the envious and the selfish. All these vices have beset them, because they know not what is good and what is evil. But I have considered the nature of the good, and found it beautiful: I have beheld the nature of the bad, and found it ugly. I also understand the nature of the evil-doer, and know that he is my brother, not because he shares with me the same blood or the same seed, but because he is a partaker of the same mind and of the same portion of immortality. I therefore cannot be hurt by any of these, since none of them can involve me in any baseness. I cannot be angry with my brother, or sever myself from him, for we are made by nature for mutual assistance, like the feet, the hands, the eyelids, the upper and lower rows of teeth. It is against nature for men to oppose each other; and what else is anger and aversion? 2. All that I am is either flesh, breath, or the ruling part. Cast your books from you; distract yourself no more; for you have not the right to do so. Like one at the point of death despise this flesh, this corruptible bone and blood, this network texture of nerves, veins, and arteries. Consider, too, what breath is--mere air, and that always changing, expelled and inhaled again every moment. The third is the ruling part. As to this, take heed, now that you are old, that it remain no longer in servitude; that it be no more dragged hither and thither like a puppet by every selfish impulse. Repine no more at what fate now sends, nor dread what may befall you hereafter. 3. Whatever the Gods ordain is full of wise forethought. The workings of chance are not apart from nature, and not without connexion and intertexture with the designs of Providence. Providence is the source of all things; and, besides, there is necessity, and the utility of the Universe, of which you are a part. For, to every part of a being, that is good which springs from the nature of the whole and tends to its preservation. Now, the order of Nature is preserved in the changes of elements, just as it is in the changes of things that are compound. Let this suffice you, and be your creed unchangeable. Put from you the thirst of books, that you may not die murmuring, but meekly, and with true and heartfelt gratitude to the Gods. 4. Think of your long procrastination, and of the many opportunities given you by the Gods, but left unused. Surely it is high time to understand the Universe of which you are a part, and the Ruler of that Universe, of whom you are an emanation; that a limit is set to your days, which, if you use them not for your enlightenment, will depart, as you yourself will, and return no more. 5. Hourly and earnestly strive, as a Roman and a man, to do what falls to your hand with perfect unaffected dignity, with kindliness, freedom and justice, and free your soul from every other imagination. This you will accomplish if you perform each action as if it were your last, without wilfulness, or any passionate aversion to what reason approves; without hypocrisy or selfishness, or discontent with the decrees of Providence. You see how few things it is necessary to master in order that a man may live a smooth-flowing, God-fearing life. For of him that holds to these principles the Gods require no more. 6. Go on, go on, O my soul, to affront and dishonour thyself! The time that remains to honour thyself will not be long. Short is the life of every man; and thine is almost spent; spent, not honouring thyself, but seeking thy happiness in the souls of other men. 7. Cares from without distract you: take leisure, then, to add some good thing to your knowledge; have done with vacillation, and avoid the other error. For triflers, too, are they who, by their activities, weary themselves in life, and have no settled aim to which they may direct, once and for all, their every desire and project. 8. Seldom are any found unhappy from not observing what is in the minds of others. But such as observe not well the stirrings of their own souls must of necessity be unhappy. 9. Remember always what the nature of the Universe is, what your own nature is, and how these are related--the one to the other. Remember what part your qualities are of the qualities of the whole, and that no man can prevent you from speaking and acting always in accordance with that nature of which you are a part. 10. In comparing crimes together, as, according to the common idea, they may be compared, Theophrastus makes the true philosophical distinction, that those committed from motives of pleasure are more heinous than those which are due to passion. For he who is a prey to passion is clearly turned away from reason by some spasm and convulsion that takes him unawares. But he who sins from desire is conquered by pleasure, and so seems more incontinent and more effeminate in his vice. Justly then, and in a truly philosophical spirit, he says that sin, for pleasure's sake, is more wicked than sin which is due to pain. For the latter sinner was sinned against, and so driven to passion by his wrongs, while the former set out to sin of his own motion, and was led into ill-doing by his own lust. 11. Do every deed, speak every word, think every thought in the knowledge that you may end your days any moment. To depart from men, if there be really Gods, is nothing terrible. The Gods could bring no evil thing upon you. And if there be no Gods, or if they have no regard to human affairs, why should I desire to live in a world void of Gods and without Providence? But Gods there are, and assuredly they regard human affairs; and they have put it wholly in man's power that he should not fall into what is truly evil. And of other things, had any been bad, they would have made provision also that man should have the power to avoid them altogether. For how can that make a man's life worse which does not corrupt the man himself? Presiding Nature could not in ignorance, or in knowledge impotent, have omitted to prevent or rectify these things. She could not fail us so completely that, either from want of power or want of skill, good and evil should happen promiscuously to good men and to bad alike. Now death and life, glory and reproach, pain and pleasure, riches and poverty--all these happen equally to the good and to the bad. But, as they are neither honourable nor shameful, they are therefore neither good nor evil. 12. It is the office of our rational power to apprehend how swiftly all things vanish; how the corporeal forms are swallowed up in the material world, and the memory of them in the tide of ages. Such are all the things of sense, especially those which ensnare us with pleasure or terrify us with pain, or those things which vanity trumpets in our ears. How mean, how despicable, how sordid, how perishable, how dead are they! What are they whose opinions and whose voices bestow renown? What is it to die? Your mind can tell you that, did a man think of it alone, and, by close consideration, strip it of its ghastly trappings, he would no longer deem it anything but a work of Nature. To dread a work of Nature is a childish thing, and this is, indeed, not only Nature's work, but beneficial to her. Your reason tells you how man reaches God, and through what part, and what is the state of that part, when he has attained unto him. 13. Nothing, says the poet, is more miserable than to range over all things, to spy into the depths of the earth, and search, by conjecture, into the souls of those around us, yet not to perceive that it is enough for a man to devote himself to that divinity which is within him, and to pay it genuine worship. And this worship consists in keeping it pure from every passion and folly, and from repining at anything done by Gods or men. The work of the Gods is to be reverenced for its excellence. The works of men should be dear for the sake of the bond of kinship, or pitied, as we must pity them sometimes, for their lack of the knowledge of good and evil. And men are not less maimed by this defect than by their want of power to know white from black. 14. Though you should live three thousand ears or as many myriads, yet remember that no man loses any other life than that which now lives, nor lives any other than that which he is now losing. The longest and the shortest lives come to one effect. The present moment is the same for all men, and their loss, therefore, is equal, for it is clear that what they lose in death is but a fleeting instant of time. No man can lose either the past or the future, for how can a man be deprived of what he has not? These two things then are to be remembered: First, that all things recur in cycles, and are the same from everlasting, and that, therefore, it matters nothing whether a man shall contemplate these same things for one hundred years, or for two hundred, or for an infinite stretch of time: and, secondly, that he who lives longest and he who dies soonest have an equal loss in death. The present moment is all of which either is deprived, since that is all he has. No man can be robbed of that which he has not. 15. Beyond opinion there is nothing. The objections to this saying of Monimus the Cynic are obvious. But obvious also is the utility of what he said, if one accept his pleasantry as far as truth will warrant it. 16. Man's soul dishonours itself, firstly and chiefly when it does all it can to become an excrescence, and as it were an abscess on the Universe. To fret against any particular event is to revolt against the general law of Nature, which comprehends the order of all events whatsoever. Again it is dishonour for the soul when it has aversion to any man, and opposes him with intention to hurt him, as wrathful men do. Thirdly, it affronts itself when conquered by pleasure or pain; fourthly, when it does or says anything hypocritically, feignedly or falsely; fifthly, when it does not direct to some proper end all its desires and actions, but exerts them inconsiderately and without understanding. For, even the smallest things should be referred to the end, and the end of rational beings is to follow the order and law of the venerable state and polity which comprehends them all. 17. The duration of man's life is but an instant; his substance is fleeting, his senses dull; the structure of his body corruptible; the soul but a vortex. We cannot reckon with fortune, or lay our account with fame. In fine, the life of the body is but a river, and the life of the soul a misty dream. Existence is a warfare, and a journey in a strange land; and the end of fame is to be forgotten. What then avails to guide us? One thing, and one alone--Philosophy. And this consists in keeping the divinity within inviolate and intact; victorious over pain and pleasure; free from temerity, free from falsehood, free from hypocrisy; independent of what others do or fail to do; submissive to hap and lot, which come from the same source as we; and, above all, with equanimity awaiting death, as nothing else than a resolution of the elements of which every being compounded. And, if in their successive interchanges no harm befall the elements, why should one suspect any in the change and dissolution of the whole? It is natural, and nothing natural can be evil. AT CARNUNTUM. END OF THE SECOND BOOK. BOOK III. 1. Man must consider, not only that each day part of his life is spent, and that less and less remains to him, but also that, even if he live longer, it is very uncertain whether his intelligence will suffice as heretofore for the understanding of his affairs, and for grasping that knowledge which aims at comprehending things human and divine. When dotage begins, breath, nourishment, fancy, impulse, and so forth will not fail him. But self-command, accurate appreciation of duty, power to scrutinize what strikes his senses, or even to decide whether he should take his departure, all powers, indeed, which demand a well-trained understanding, must be extinguished in him. Let him be up and doing then, not only because death comes nearer every day, but because understanding and intelligence often leave us before we die. 2. Observe what grace and charm appear even in the accidents that accompany Nature's work. Thus some parts of a loaf crack and burst in the baking; and this cracking, though in a manner contrary to the design of the baker, looks well and invites the appetite. Figs, too, gape when at their ripest, and in ripe olives the very approach to rotting adds a special beauty to the fruit. The droop of ears of corn, the bent brows of the lion, the foam at a boar's mouth, and many other things, are far from comely in themselves, yet, since they accompany the works of Nature, they make part of her adornment, and rejoice the beholder. Thus, if a man be sensitive to such things, and have a more than common penetration into the constitution of the whole, scarce anything connected with Nature will fail to give him pleasure, as he comes to understand it. Such a man will contemplate in the real world the fierce jaws of wild beasts with no less delight than when sculptors or painters set forth for him their presentments. With like pleasure will his chaste eyes behold the maturity and grace of old age in man or woman, and the inviting charms of youth. Many such things will strike him, things not credible to the many, but which come to him alone who is truly familiar with the works of Nature and near to her own heart. 3. Hippocrates, who had healed many diseases, himself fell sick, and died. The Chaldeans foretold the fatal hours of multitudes, and afterwards fate carried themselves away. Alexander, Pompey, and Gaius Caesar, who so often razed whole cities, and cut off in battle so many myriads of horse and foot, at last departed from this life themselves. Heraclitus, after his many speculations on the conflagration of the world, died, swollen with water and plastered with cow-dung. Vermin destroyed Democritus; Socrates was killed by vermin of another sort. What of all this? You have gone aboard, made your voyage, come to harbour. Disembark: if into another life, there will God be also; if into nothingness, at least you will have done with bearing pain and pleasure, and with your slavery to this vessel so much meaner than its slave. For the soul is intelligence and deity, the body dust and corruption. 4. Waste not what remains of life in consideration about others, when it makes not for the common good. Be sure you are neglecting other work if you busy yourself with what such a one is doing and why, with what he is saying, thinking, or scheming. All such things do but divert you from the steadfast guardianship of your own soul. It behoves you, then, in every train of thought to shun all that is aimless or useless, and, above all, everything officious or malignant. Accustom yourself so, and only so, to think, that, if any one were suddenly to ask you, "Of what are you thinking-now?" you could answer frankly and at once, "Of so and so." Then it will plainly appear that you are all simplicity and kindliness, as befits a social being who takes little thought for enjoyment or any phantom pleasure; who spurns contentiousness, envy, or suspicion; or any passion the harbouring of which one would blush to own. For such a man, who has finally determined to be henceforth among the best, is, as it were, a priest and minister of the Gods, using the spirit within him, which preserves a man unspotted from pleasure, unwounded by any pain, inaccessible to all insult, innocent of all evil; a champion in the noblest of all contests--the contest for victory over every passion. He is penetrated with justice; he welcomes with all his heart whatever befalls, or is appointed by Providence. He troubles not often, or ever without pressing public need, to consider what another may say, or do, or design. Solely intent upon his own conduct, ever mindful of his own concurrent part in the destiny of the Universe, he orders his conduct well, persuaded that his part is good. For the lot appointed to every man is part of the law of all things as well as a law for him. He forgets not that all rational beings are akin, and that the love of all mankind is part of the nature of man; also that we must not think as all men think, but only as those who live a life accordant with nature. As for those who live otherwise, he remembers always how they act at home and abroad, by night and by day, and how and with whom they are found in company. And so he cannot esteem the praise of such, for they enjoy not their own approbation. 5. In action be neither grudging, nor selfish, nor ill-advised, nor constrained. Let not your thought be adorned with overmuch nicety. Be not a babbler or a busybody. Let the God within direct you as a manly being, as an elder, a statesman, a Roman, and a ruler, standing prepared like one who awaits the recall from life, in marching order; requiring neither an oath nor the testimony of any man. And withal, be cheerful, and independent of the assistance and the peace that comes from others; for, it is a man's duty to stand upright, self-supporting, not supported. 6. If in the life of man you find anything better than justice, truth, sobriety, manliness; and, in sum, anything better than the satisfaction of your soul with itself in that wherein it is given to you to follow right reason; and with fate in that which is determined beyond your control; if, I say, you find aught better than this, then turn thereto with all your heart, and enjoy it as the best that is to be found. But if nothing seems to you better than the divinity seated within you, which has conquered all your impulses, which sifts all your thoughts, which, as Socrates said, has detached itself from the promptings of sense, and devoted itself to God and to the love of mankind; if you find every other thing small and worthless compared with this, see that you give place to no other which might turn, divert, or distract you from holding in highest esteem the good which is especially and properly your own. For it is not permitted to us to substitute for that which is good in reason or in fact anything not agreeable thereto, such as the praise of the many, power, riches, or the pursuit of pleasure. All these things may seem admissible for a moment; but presently they get the upper hand, and lead us astray. But do you, I say, frankly and freely choose the best, and keep to it. The best is what is for your advantage. If now you choose what is for your spiritual advantage, hold it fast; if what is for your bodily advantage, admit that it is so chosen, and keep your choice with all modesty. Only see that you make a sure discrimination. 7. Never esteem aught of advantage which will oblige you to break your faith, or to desert your honour; to hate, to suspect, or to execrate any man; to play a part; or to set your mind on anything that needs to be hidden by wall or curtain. He who to all things prefers the soul, the divinity within him, and the sacred cult of its virtues, makes no tragic groan or gesture. He needs neither solitude nor a crowd of spectators; and, best of all, he will live neither seeking nor shunning death. Whether the soul shall use its surrounding body for a longer or shorter space is to him indifferent. Were he to depart this moment he would go as readily as he would do any other seemly and proper action, holding one thing only in life-long avoidance--to find his soul in any case unbefitting an intelligent social being. 8. In the soul of the chastened and purified man you would find nothing putrid, foul, or festering. Fate does not cut off his life before its proper end; as one would say of an actor who left the stage before his part was ended, or he had reached his appointed exit. There remains nothing servile or affected, nothing too conventional or too seclusive, nothing that fears censure or courts concealment. 9. Hold in honour the faculty which forms opinions. It depends on this faculty alone that no opinion your soul entertains be inconsistent with the nature and constitution of the rational being. It ensures that we form no rash judgments, that we are kindly to men, and obedient to the Gods. 10. Cast from you then all other things, retaining these few. Remember also that every man lives only this present moment, which is a fleeting instant: the rest of time is either spent or quite unknown. Short is the time which each of us has to live, and small the corner of the earth he has to live in. Short is the longest posthumous fame, and this preserved through a succession of poor mortals, soon themselves to die; men who knew not themselves, far less those who died long ago. 11. To these maxims add this other. Accurately define or describe every thing that strikes your imagination, so that you may see and distinguish what it is in naked essence, and what it is in its entirety; that you may tell yourself the proper name of the thing itself, and the names of the parts of which it is compounded, and into which it will be resolved. Nothing makes mind greater than the power to enquire into all things that present themselves in life; and, while you examine them, to consider at the same time of what fashion is the Universe, and what is the function in it of these things, of what importance they are to the whole, of what to man who is a citizen of that highest city of which all other cities are but households. Consider what is this thing that now makes an impression on you, of what it is composed, and how long it is destined to endure. Consider also for what virtue it calls; whether it be gentleness, courage, truthfulness, fidelity, simplicity, independence, or any other. Say, therefore, of each event: "This comes from God:" or "This comes from the conjunction and intertexture of the strands of fate, or from some chance or hazard of that kind:" or "This comes from one of my own tribe, from my kinsman, from my friend. He is, indeed, ignorant of what accords with nature; but I am not, and will therefore use him kindly and justly, according to the natural and social law. As to things indifferent, I strive to appraise them at their proper value." 12. If you discharge your present duty with firm and zealous, yet kindly, observance of the laws of reason; if you regard no by-gains, but keep pure within you your immortal part, as if obliged to restore it at once to him who gave it; if you hold to this with no further desires or aversions, and be content with the natural discharge of your present task, and with the heroic sincerity of all you say or utter, you will live well. And herein no man can hinder you. 13. As surgeons have ever their knives and instruments at hand for the sudden emergencies of their art, so do you keep ready the principles requisite for understanding things divine and human, and for doing all things, even the least important, in the remembrance of the bond between the two. For in neglecting this, you will scant your duty both to Gods and men. 14. Cease your wandering, for you are not like to read again your own memoirs, or the deeds of the ancient Greeks and Romans, or those collections from the writings of others that you laid up for your old age. Hasten then to your proper end. Fling away vain hopes, and, if you have any care for yourself, fly to your own succour while yet you may. 15. Men understand not all that is signified by the words--to steal, to sow, to buy, to rest, to see what is to be done. For it is not the bodily eye but another sort of sight that must discern these things. 16. We have body, soul, and intelligence. To the body belong the senses, to the soul the passions, to the intelligence principles. To be affected by the imagery of sense belongs to the beasts of the field no less than to us. To be swayed by gusts of passion is common to us with the wild beasts, with the most effeminate wretches, with Nero and with Phalaris. Moreover, the possession of a mind to guide us to what seems fitting is shared by us, with atheists, with traitors to their country, and with such as shut their doors and sin. If, then, all the rest is common as we have seen, there remains to the good man this special excellence; to welcome with pleasure all that happens or is ordained, not to defile the divinity enthroned in his breast, not to perturb it with a crowd of images, but to preserve it in tranquillity, and obey it as a God: to observe truth in all he says, and justice in his every action. And though others may not believe that he lives thus in simplicity, modesty, and contentment, he neither takes this unbelief amiss from any one, nor quits the road which leads to the true end of life, at which he ought to arrive pure, calm, ready to take his departure, and accommodated without compulsion to his fate. END OF THE THIRD BOOK. BOOK IV. 1. The power which rules within us, when its state is accordant with nature, so acts in every occurrence as easily to adapt itself to all present or possible situations. It requires no set material to work upon, but, under proper reservation, needs but the incitement to pursue, and makes matter for its activities out of every opposition. Even so a fire masters that which is cast upon it, and though a small flame would have been extinguished, your great blaze quickly makes the added fuel its own, consumes it, and grows mightier therefrom. 2. Let no action be done at random, nor otherwise than in complete accordance with the principles involved. 3. Men seek retirement in the country, on the sea-coast, in the mountains; and you too have frequent longings for such distractions. Yet surely this is great folly, since you may retire into yourself at any hour you please. Nowhere can a man find any retreat more quiet and more full of leisure than in his own soul; especially when there is that within it on which, if he but look, he is straightway quite at rest. And rest I hold to be naught else but perfect order in the soul. Constantly, therefore, allow yourself this retirement, and so renew yourself. Have also at hand thoughts brief and fundamental, which readily may occur; sufficing to shut out the discordant clamour of the world, and to send you back without fretting at the task to which you return. For at what do you fret? At the wickedness of mankind. Recollect the maxim that all reasoning beings are created for one another, that to bear with them is a part of justice, and that they cannot help their sin. Remember how many of those who lived in enmity, suspicion, and hatred, at daggers drawn, have been stretched on their funeral pyres, and turned to ashes. Remember and cease from your complaints. Is it your allotted part in the world's destiny that chagrins you? Be calm, and renew your knowledge of the alternative, that "Either providence directs the world, or there is nothing but unguided atoms;" and recollect the many proofs that the Universe is as it were a state. Do the ills of the body still have power to touch you? Reflect that the mind, once withdrawn within itself, once grown conscious of its own power, has no concern with the motions, rough or smooth, of the breathing body. Remember, too, all that you have heard and assented to concerning pain and pleasure. Are you distracted by the poor thing called fame? Think how swiftly all things are forgotten. Behold the chaos of eternity which besets us on either side. Think how empty is the noisy echo of acclamation; how fickle and how scant of judgment are they who would seem to praise us, and how narrow the bounds within which their praise is confined. All the earth is but a point in the Universe; how small a corner of that little is inhabited, and even there how few are they and of how little worth who are to praise us! Remember then that there ever remains for you retirement into the little field within. And, above all, be neither distraught nor overstrained. Hold fast your freedom: consider all things as a man of courage, as a human being, as a citizen, as a mortal. Readiest among the principles to which you look let there be these two: Firstly, things external do not touch the soul, but remain powerless without; and all trouble comes from what we think of them within. Secondly, all things visible change in a moment, and are gone for ever. Recollect all the changes of which you have yourself been a witness. The world is a succession of changes: life is but thought. 4. If mind be common to us all, the reason in virtue of which we are rational is also common; so too is the power which bids us do or not do. Therefore we have all a common law; and if so, we are fellow-citizens and members of some common polity. The Universe, then, must in a manner be a state, for of what other common polity can all mankind be said to be members? Wherefore it is from this common state that we derive our intellectual power, our reason, and our law; or whence do we derive them? For that which is earthy in me is derived from earth, my moisture from some other element, my breath and what is warm or fiery from their proper sources. And therefore, as nothing can arise from nothing or return thereto, my intellectual part has also a source. 5. Death, like birth, is a mystery of nature; the one a compounding of elements, the other a resolution into the same. In neither is there anything shameful or against the nature of the rational animal, or contrary to the law of its constitution. 6. It is fate that such actions should come from such men. He who would have it otherwise would have figs without juice. This, too, you should remember: that in a very short time both you and he must die; and a little after not even the name of either shall remain. 7. Suppress the thought; and the cry "I am hurt!" is gone. Suppress "I am hurt!" and you suppress the injury. 8. What makes not a man worse than he was, makes not his life worse, nor hurts him without or within. 9. The law of utility must act so. 10. All that happens, happens right: you will find it so if you observe narrowly. I mean not only according to a natural order, but according to our idea of justice, and, as it were, by the action of one who distributes according to merit. Go on then observing this as you have begun, and whatever you do, let your aim be goodness, goodness as it is rightly understood. Hold to this in every action. 11. Think not as your insulter judges or wishes you to judge: but see things as they truly are. 12. For two things be ever ready: First, to do that only which reason, the sovereign and legislative faculty, suggests for the good of mankind: Secondly, to change your course on meeting any one who can correct and alter your opinion. But let the change be made because you really believe it to be in the interest of justice or the public good, or such like, and not with any view to pleasure or glory for yourself. 13. Have you reason? I have. Why then do you not use it? When it performs its proper office what more do you require? 14. You exist as part of a whole. You will disappear again in that which produced you; or rather you will change and be resumed again into the productive intelligence. 15. Many grains of frankincense are laid on the same altar. One falls soon, another later. It makes no difference. 16. Within ten days, if you return to the observance of moral principles and to the cult of reason, you will appear a God to them who now esteem you a wild beast or an ape. 17. Order not your life as though you had ten thousand years to live. Fate hangs over you. While you live, while yet you may, be good. 18. How much he gains in leisure who looks not to what his neighbours say, or do, or intend; but considers only how his own actions may be just and holy, looking not, as Agathon says, to the moral example of others, but running a straight course and never turning therefrom. 19. He who is careful and troubled about the fame which is to live after him considers not that each one of those who remember him must very soon die himself, and thereafter also the succeeding generation, until every memory of him, handed on by excited and ephemeral admirers, dies utterly away. Grant that your memory were immortal, and those immortal who retain it; yet what is that to you? I ask not, what is that to the dead? But to the living what is the profit in praise, except it be in some convenience that it brings? And you now abandon what nature has put in your power in order to set your hopes upon the report of others. 20. Whatever is beautiful at all is beautiful in itself. Its beauty ends there, and praise has no part in it. Nothing is the better or the worse for being praised; and this holds also of what is beautiful in the common estimation: of material forms and works of art. Thus true beauty needs nothing beyond itself, any more than law, or truth, or kindness, or honour. For none of these gets a single grace from praise or one blot from censure. Does the emerald lose its virtue if one praise it not? Can one by scanting praise depreciate gold, ivory, or purple, a lyre or a dagger, a flower or a shrub? 21. If our souls survive us, how, you ask, has the air contained them from eternity? How, I answer, does the earth contain so many bodies buried during so long a time? Just as corpses, after remaining for a while in the earth, change, and are dissipated to make room for others; so also the souls, liberated into air, remain for a little, and then are changed, diffused, rekindled, and resumed into the universal productive spirit; and so give way to others who come to take their places. This may serve for an answer, on the supposition that the soul survives the body. But we have not merely to consider the number of bodies thus buried in the earth. There are also all the living creatures eaten day by day by ourselves and other animals. How great a multitude of them is thus consumed, and as it were buried in the bodies of those who feed upon them. Yet there is ever space to contain them, owing to the changes into blood, air, and fire. What, then, is the key to this enquiry? Discrimination of matter and cause. 22. Swerve not from your path. In every impulse render justice its due, and in all thinking be sure that you understand. 23. I am in tune with all that is of thy harmony, O Nature. For me nothing is too early and nothing is too late that comes in thy good time. All is fruit to me, O Nature, that thy seasons bring. From thee are all things, thou comprehendest all, and all returns to thee. The poet says, "O dear City of Cecrops!" Shall I not say, "Dear City of God!" 24. "Do few things," says the philosopher, "if you would have quiet." This is perhaps a better saying, "Do what is necessary, do what the reason of the being that is social in its nature directs, and do it in the spirit of that direction." By this you will attain the calm that comes from virtuous action, and that calm also which comes from having few things to do. Most things you say and do are not necessary. Have done with them, and you will be more at leisure and less perturbed. On every occasion, then, ask yourself the question, Is this thing not unnecessary? And put away not only unnecessary deeds but unnecessary thoughts, for by so doing you will avoid all superfluous actions. 25. Make trial how the life of a good man succeeds with you, the life of one who is content with the lot appointed him by Providence, and satisfied with the justice of his own actions and the benevolence of his disposition. 26. You have seen the other state, make trial also of this. Avoid perplexity; seek simplicity. Has a man sinned? He bears his own sin. Has aught befallen you? It is well; for all that befalls you is an ordained part in the weaving of the destiny of all things from the beginning. In sum, life is short. Make the best of the present in reason and in justice. Be sober in your relaxation. 27. The Universe is either an ordered whole or a confusion. But, although a mixture of phenomena, it is certainly an ordered whole. Or, do you think that there can be order in you and confusion in the Universe, and that too when all things, though diffused and separated, are all in sympathy, one with another? 28. Consider the deformity of these characters: the black or malicious, the effeminate, the savage, the beastly, the childish, the brutish, the stupid, the false, the ribald, the knavish, the tyrannical. 29. He is a foreigner, and not a citizen of the world, who knows not what the world contains; and he, too, who knows not what happens in it. He is a deserter who flies from the reason that rules this polity. He is blind, whose intellectual eye is closed. He is a beggar, who needs the gifts of others, and has not from himself all that is necessary for life. He is an excrescence on the scheme of things, who withdraws and separates himself from the reasoned constitution of the nature in which he shares, by discontent with what befalls. That same nature which produces this event produced thee. He is the seditious citizen who separates his particular soul from the one soul of all reasonable beings. 30. One acts the philosopher without a coat, another without books, a third half-naked. Says one, "I have not bread, and yet I hold to reason." Says another, "I have not even the spiritual food of instruction, and yet I hold to it." 31. Love the art which you have learned, humble though it be, and in it find your recreation. And spend the remainder of your life as one who with all his heart commits his concerns to the Gods, and neither acts the tyrant nor the slave to any of mankind. 32. Recall, for example, the age of Vespasian. It is as the spectacle of our own time. You will see men marrying, bringing up children, sick and dying, warring and feasting, trading and farming. You will see men flattering, obstinate in their own will, suspecting, plotting, wishing for the death of others, repining at fortune, courting mistresses, hoarding treasure, pursuing consulships and kingdoms. Yet all that life is spent and gone. Come down to Trajan's days. Again all is the same; and again, that life, too, is dead. Consider, likewise, the records of other times and nations, and see how, after their fit of eagerness, all quickly fell, and were resolved into the elements. But most of all, remember those whom you yourself have known, men who were distracted about vain things, men who neglected the course which suited their own nature, neither holding fast to it nor finding their contentment there. And, herein, forget not that care is to be bestowed on any enterprise only in proportion to its proper worth. For if you keep this in mind you will not be disheartened from over concern with things of less account. 33. The familiar phrases of old days are now strange and obsolete; and, likewise, the names of such as were once much celebrated now sound strangely in our ears. Camillus, Caeso, Volesus, Leonnatus; after them Scipio and Cato; lastly, Augustus, Hadrian, and Antonine--all are forgotten. All things hasten to an end, shall speedily seem old fables, and then be buried in oblivion. This I say of those who have shone with the brightness of their fame. The rest of men, as soon as they expire, are unknown and forgotten. What, then, is it to be remembered for ever? A wholly empty thing. For what should we be zealous? For this alone, that our souls be just, our actions unselfish, our speech ever sincere, and our disposition such as may cheerfully embrace whatever happens, seeing it to be inevitable, familiar, and sprung from the same source and origin as we ourselves. 34. Willingly resign yourself to Clotho, permitting her to spin her thread of what yarn she may. 35. All things are for a day, both what remembers and what is remembered. 36. Observe continually that all things exist in change; and keep this thought ever with you, that Nature loves nothing more than changing what things now are, and making others like them. For what now is, is in a manner the seed of what shall be. Therefore, conceive not that that alone is seed which is cast into the earth or the womb, for that is the thought of ignorance. 37. You are presently to die, and yet you have not attained to simplicity or calm, or to disbelief that you can be hurt by things external. You have not learned to be kindly to all men, or to count just dealing the whole of wisdom. 38. Scan closely that which governs men; see what are their cares, and what they pursue or shun. 39. That which is evil for you exists not in the soul of another; nor in any change or alteration of the body which surrounds you. Where, then, is it? It lies in that part of you by which you apprehend what evil is. Stay the apprehension, and all is well. And though the poor body to which it is so closely bound be cut and burned, though it suppurate or mortify, yet let the apprehension remain inactive: that is, let it judge nothing either bad or good which can happen equally to the bad man and to the good. For that which befalls equally him who lives in accord, and him who lives in discord with Nature, can neither be natural nor unnatural. 40. Ever consider this Universe as one living being, with one material substance and one spirit. Observe how all things are referred to the one intelligence of this being; how all things act on one impulse; how all things are concurrent causes of all others; and how all things are connected and intertwined. 41. "Thou art a poor soul, saddled with a corpse," said Epictetus. 42. There is no evil for things which subsist in change; and there can be no good for things which subsist without it. 43. Time is a river, a violent torrent of things coming into being. Each one, as soon as it has appeared, is swept away: it is succeeded by another which is swept away in its turn. 44. All that happens is as natural and familiar as a rose in spring, or fruit in summer. Such are disease and death, calumny and treachery, and all else which gives fools joy or sorrow. 45. Consequents follow antecedents by virtue of a special and necessary connexion. This relation is not that which exists in a mere enumeration of independent things, and depends merely on some arbitrary convention. It is a rational relationship. And just as things now existing are ranged harmoniously together, so those which come into existence display no bare succession, but a wonderful harmony with what preceded. 46. Remember always the sayings of Heraclitus: that the death of earth is to become water, the death of water to become air, and the death of air to become fire; and so conversely. Remember in what a case he is who forgets whither the way leads: that men are frequently at variance with their close and constant companion, the reason which rules all: that men count strange that which they meet every day: that we should neither act nor speak as though in slumber, although even in slumber we seem to act and speak; nor yet like children learning from their parents, with a mere acceptance of everything just as we are told it. 47. If some God were to inform you that you must die tomorrow, or the next day at farthest, you would take little concern whether it was to be tomorrow or the next day; that is if you were not the most miserable of cowards. For how small is the difference? Wherefore, account it of no great moment whether you die after many years or tomorrow. 48. Constantly consider how many physicians are dead and gone, who frequently knitted their brows over their patients; how many astrologers, who foretold the deaths of others with great ostentation of their art; how many philosophers, who wrote endlessly on death and immortality; how many warriors, who slew their thousands; and how many tyrants, who used their power of life and death with cruel wantonness, as though they had been immortal. How many whole cities, if I may so speak, are dead: Helice and Pompeii and Herculaneum, and others past counting. Tell over next all those you have known, one after the other: think how one buried his fellow, then lay dead himself, to be buried by a third. And all this within a little time. In sum, look upon human things, and behold how short-lived and how vile they are; mucus yesterday, tomorrow ashes or pickled carrion. Spend, then, the fleeting remnant of your time in a spirit that accords with Nature, and depart contentedly. So the olive falls when it is grown ripe, blessing the ground from whence it sprung, and thankful to the tree that bore it. 49. Be like a promontory against which the waves are always breaking. It stands fast, and stills the waters that rage around it. "Wretched am I," says one, "that this has befallen me." "Nay," say you, "happy am I who, though this has befallen me, can still remain without sorrow, neither broken by the present nor dreading the future." The like might have befallen any one; but every one would not have endured it unpained. Why, then, should we dwell more on the misfortune of the incident than on the felicity of such strength of mind? Can you call that a misfortune for a man which is not a miscarriage of his nature? And can you call anything a miscarriage of his nature which is not contrary to its purpose? You have learned its purpose, have you not? Then does this accident debar you from justice, magnanimity, prudence, wisdom, caution, truth, honour, freedom, and all else in the possession of which man's nature finds its full estate? Remember, therefore, for the future, upon all occasions of sorrow, to use the maxim: this thing is not misfortune, but to bear it bravely is good fortune. 50. It is a vulgar meditation, and yet very effectual for enabling us to despise death, to consider the fate of those who have been most earnestly tenacious of life, and enjoyed it longest. Wherein is their gain greater than that of those who died before their time? They are all lying dead somewhere or other. Cadicianus, Fabius, Julian, Lepidus, and their fellows, saw the corpses of multitudes carried to the grave, and then themselves were carried thither. In sum, how small was the difference of time, spent painfully amid what troubles, among what worthless men, and in how mean a carcase! Think it not a thing of value. Rather look back into the eternity that gapes behind, and forward into the other abyss of immensity. Compared with such infinity, small is the difference between a life of three days and one of three ages like Nestor's. 51. Run ever the short way. The short way is the way according to Nature. Therefore speak and act according to the soundest rule; for this resolution will free you from much toil and warring, and from all artful management and ostentation. END OF THE FOURTH BOOK. BOOK V. 1. In the morning, when you find yourself unwilling to rise, have this thought at hand: I arise to the proper business of man, and shall I repine at setting about that work for which I was born and brought into the world? Am I equipped for nothing but to lie among the bed-clothes and keep warm? "But," you say, "it is more pleasant so." Is pleasure, then, the object of your being, and not action, and the exercise of your powers? Do you not see the smallest plants, the little sparrows, the ants, the spiders, the bees, all doing their part, and working for order in the Universe, as far as in them lies? And will you refuse the part in this design which is laid on man? Will you not pursue the course which accords with your own nature? You say, "I must have rest." Assuredly; but nature appoints a measure for rest, just as for eating and drinking. In rest you go beyond these limits, and beyond what is enough; but in action you do not fill the measure, and remain well within your powers. You do not love yourself; if you did, you would love your nature and its purpose. Others, who love the art that they have made their own, exhaust themselves with labouring at it unwashed and unfed. But you honour your own nature less than the carver honours his carving, less than the dancer honours his dancing, the miser his gold, or the vain man his empty fame. These men, when desire takes them, count food and sleep well lost if they can better realize the object of their longings; and shall the pursuit of the common good seem less precious in your eyes and worthy of a lesser zeal? 2. How easy it is to thrust away and blot out each impression that is disturbing and unfit; and forthwith to enjoy perfect tranquillity. 3. Judge no speech or action unworthy of you which is consistent with nature. Be not dissuaded by any consequent criticism or censure from others; but, if the speech or action be honourable, judge yourself worthy to say or do it. Those who criticize you have their own conscience and their own motives. These you are not to regard, but follow a straight course, guided by your own nature and the nature of the Universe, both of which point the same way. 4. I walk the way which is Nature's, until at last I shall fall and be at rest; breathing out my breath into the air wherefrom I daily drew it, falling on that earth whence my father drew his seed, my mother her blood, and my nurse the milk which nourished me; on that earth which has given me my daily food and drink through all these years, which sustains my footsteps, and bears with me--her manifold abuser. 5. Men cannot admire you for your shrewdness. Be it so. But there is many another quality of which you cannot say, "It is not in me." Display these; they are wholly in your power. Be sincere, be dignified, be painstaking; scorn pleasure, repine not at fate, need little; be kind and frank; love not exaggeration and vain talk; strive after greatness. Do you not see how many virtues you might show, of which you are yet content to fall short, though you have not the excuse that they are absent, or that you are unfit for them? Are you driven by some want in your equipment to be querulous, to be miserly, to be a flatterer, to reproach your body with your own faults, to cringe to others, to be vainglorious, to have all this restlessness in your soul? No, by the Gods, you might have escaped these vices long ago. All your fault, then, is that you are somewhat slow and dull of comprehension. This you should strive to correct by exercise; neither neglecting your dulness nor taking a mean pleasure in it. 6. Some men, when they have done you a favour, are very ready to reckon up the obligation they have conferred. Others, again, are not so forward in their claims, but yet in their minds consider you their debtor, and well know the value of what they have done. A third sort seem to be unconscious of their service. They are like the vine, which produces its clusters and is satisfied when it has yielded its proper fruit. The horse when he has run his course, the hound when he has followed the track, the bee when it has made its honey, and the man when he has done good to others, make no noisy boast of it, but set out to do the same once more, as the vine in its season produces its new clusters again. "Should we, then, be among those who in a manner know not what they do?" Assuredly. "But this very thing implies intelligence; for it is a property of the unselfish man to perceive that he is acting unselfishly, and, surely, to wish his fellow also to perceive it." True, but if you misapprehend my saying, you will enter the ranks of those of whom I spoke before. They, too, are led astray by specious reasonings. But if you have the will to understand what my principle truly means, fear not that in following it you will neglect the duty of unselfishness. 7. This is a prayer of the Athenians: "Rain, rain, dear Zeus, on the plains and ploughlands of the Athenians." Man should either not pray at all, or pray after this frank and simple fashion. 8. Just as one says that Aesculapius has prescribed a course of riding for some one, or the cold bath, or walking bare-footed; so it may be said that the guiding Mind prescribes for a man, disease, or mutilation, or losses, or the like. "Prescribed," in the first case, means that such treatment was enjoined on the patient as might coincide with the needs of his health: in the second case it means that each man's fortune is appointed to coincide with the purposes of fate. Now, the very word "coincidence" implies something like that correspondence of squared stones in a wall or pyramid, which workmen speak of when they fit them together in some structure. All things are united in one bond of harmony; and just as all existing bodies go to make the visible world what it is, so destiny, as the general cause, is compounded of all particular causes. The most unphilosophical grasp my meaning, for they say, "Fate gave this to so-and-so: this was appointed or prescribed for him." Let us, then, receive the decrees of Fate as we receive the prescriptions of Aesculapius. He prescribes many things for us, and some of them are harsh medicines. Yet we obey him gladly in the hope of health. Conceive therefore that, for Nature, the doing of her work and the fulfilling of her purposes are, as it were, her health; and welcome all that happens, even should it seem hard fortune, because it tends to the health of the Universe, and to the prosperity and felicity of Zeus. He would not have brought this or that on any man did it not contribute to the good of the whole, nor does any part of Nature's system bring aught to pass which suits not with her government. For two reasons, then, you should content yourself with what befalls you. The first is, that it was created and ordained for you, and was in a manner related to you from the beginning, in the weaving of all destinies from the great first causes. The second is, that even what happens severally to each man contributes to the well-being and prosperity of the Mind which governs all things, and, indeed, even to its continued existence. For the whole is maimed if you break in the slightest degree this continuous connexion, whether of parts or causes. And this you are doing your best to break and to destroy whenever you repine at fate. 9. Fret not, neither despond nor be disheartened, if it be not always possible for you to act according to your principles of perfection. If you are beaten off, return again to the effort, and content yourself that your conduct is generally such as becomes a man. Love the good to which you return; and come back to Philosophy, not as one who comes to a master, but as one whose eyes ache recurs to sponge and egg, as another has recourse to plasters, or a third to fomentation. And thus you will make no empty show of obeying reason; but find that it gives you rest. Remember that Philosophy demands no more than what your nature requires. But you are wont to desire other things which accord not with your nature. "For what," you say, "can be more delightful than such things?" Is not this the very snare which Pleasure sets for us? Yet consider if magnanimity, frankness, simplicity, kindness, and piety be not even greater delights. And what is sweeter than wisdom itself, when you are conscious of security and felicity in your powers of apprehension and reason? 10. The natures of things are so covered up from us, that to many philosophers, and these no mean ones, all things seem incomprehensible. The Stoics themselves own that it is difficult to comprehend anything with certainty. All our assent is inconsistent, for where is the consistent man? Consider, too, the objects of our knowledge: how transitory are they, and how mean! How often they are in the possession of the debauchee, of the harlot, of the robber! Review again the morals of your contemporaries: it is scarcely possible to tolerate the best-mannered among them; not to say that a man can scarcely tolerate himself. Amid such darkness and filth, in this perpetual flux of substance, of time, of motion, and of things moved, I can perceive nothing worthy of esteem or of desire. On the contrary, we should comfort ourselves as we await our natural dissolution, and not be vexed at the delay, but find rest in these thoughts: first, that nothing can befall us which is not in accord with the nature of all things; second, that it is always in our power not to do anything against the divine spirit within us: to this no force can compel us. 11. To what end am I using my soul? Let me examine myself as to this on all occasions, and consider what is passing now in that part of me which men call the ruler of the rest. Let me think, too, whose is the soul that I have. Is it a child's? Is it a youth's, a timorous woman's, or a tyrant's; the soul of a tame beast or of a savage one? 12. Of what value the things are which the many account good you may judge from this: If a man has conceived certain things, such as prudence, temperance, justice, or courage, to be good in the real sense, he cannot, while he is of this mind, readily listen to the traditional gibe about a superabundance of good things. It will not fit the case. But when he has in mind things which seem good in the eyes of the multitude, he is perfectly willing to hear and accept as quite appropriate the raillery of the comic poet. Thus even the ordinary mind perceives the difference. For if this were not so, we would not in the first case repudiate the jest as offensive, nor would we salute it as a happy witticism when applied to wealth or to the opulence which produces luxury and ostentation. Proceed then, and put the question whether these things are to be valued and esteemed good of which we have such an opinion that we may aptly say of their possessor: "He has so many possessions about him that he has no place wherein to ease himself." 13. I consist of a formal and a material element. Neither of these two shall die and fade into nothingness, since neither came into being out of nothing. Every part of me, then, will be transformed and ranged again in some part of the Universe. That part of the Universe will itself be transmuted into another part, and so on for all time coming. By some such change as this I came into being, likewise my progenitors, and so back from all time past. There is no objection to this theory, even though the world be governed by determined cycles of revolution. 14. Reason, and the art of thinking, are powers which are complete in themselves, and in their special processes. They start from their own internal principle, and proceed to their appointed end. Such mental acts are called right, to indicate that the course of thought is right or straight. 15. Nothing should be said to be part of a man which is not part of his human nature. Things that are not part of his essence cannot be required of him, and have no part in the promise or the fulfilment of his nature. Therefore, in such things lies neither the end of man nor the good which crowns that end. Moreover, if anything were really part of a man, it would not be proper for him to despise it or revolt against it, nor would he be praiseworthy who made himself independent thereof. If non-essential things were indeed good, he could be no good man who stinted himself in the use of them; but, as we see, the more a man goes without them, and the more he endures the want of them, the better a man he is. 16. The character of your most frequent impressions will be the character of your mind. The soul takes colour from its impressions, therefore steep it in such thoughts as these:--Wherever a man can live, he can live well. A man can live in a court, therefore he can live well there. Again everything works towards that for which it was created, and that to which anything works is its end; and in the end of everything is to be found the advantage and the good of it. Now, for reasoning beings, Society is the highest good, for it has long since been proved that we were brought into the world to be social. Nay, was it not manifest that the inferior kinds were formed for the superior, and the superior for each other? Now, the animate is superior to the inanimate, and beings that reason to those that only live. 17. To pursue impossibilities is madness; and it is impossible that the wicked should not act in some such way as this. 18. Nothing can befall any man which he is not fitted by nature to bear. The like events befall others, and either through ignorance that the event has happened, or from ostentation of magnanimity, they stand firm and unhurt by them. Strange then that ignorance or ostentation should have more strength than wisdom! 19. Material things cannot touch the soul at all, nor have any access to it: neither can they bend or move it. The soul is bent or moved by itself alone, and remodels all things that present themselves from without in accordance with whatever judgment it adopts within. 20. In one respect man is nearest and dearest to me; in so far, that is, as I must do good to him and bear with him. But in so far as some men obstruct me in my natural activities, man enters the class of things indifferent to me, no less than the sun, the wind, or the wild beast. By these indeed some special action may be impeded, but no interference with my purpose or with my inward disposition can come from them, thanks to my exceptive and modifying powers. For the mind can convert and change everything that impedes its activity into matter for its action; hindrance in its work becomes its real help, and every obstruction makes for its progress. 21. Reverence that which is most excellent in the Universe, and the most excellent is that which employs all things and rules all. Likewise reverence that which is most excellent in yourself. It is of the same nature as the former, for it is that which employs all else that is in you, and that by which your whole life is ordered. 22. That which harms not the city cannot harm the citizen. Apply this rule whenever you have the idea that you are hurt. If the state be not hurt by this, neither am I harmed, and if the state be hurt we should not be wrathful with him who hurt it. Consider where lay his oversight. 23. Consider frequently how swiftly things that exist or are coming into existence are swept by and carried away. Their substance is as a river perpetually flowing; their actions are in continual change, and their causes subject to ten thousand alterations. Scarcely anything is stable, and the vast eternities of past and future in which all things are swallowed up are close upon us on both hands. Is he not then a fool who is puffed up with success in the things of this world, or is distracted, or worried, as if he were in a time of trouble likely to endure for long. 24. Keep in mind the universe of being in which your part is exceeding small, the universe of time of which a brief and fleeting moment is assigned to you; the destiny of things, and how infinitesimal your share therein. 25. Does another wrong me? Let him look to that. His character and his actions are his own. So much is in my present possession as is dispensed to me by the nature of things, and I act as my own nature now bids me. 26. Let the leading and ruling part of your soul stand unmoved by the stirrings of the flesh, whether gentle or rude. Let it not commingle with them, but keep itself apart, and confine these passions to their proper bodily parts; and if they rise into the soul by any sympathy with the body to which it is united, then we must not attempt to resist the sensation, seeing that it is of our nature; but let not the soul, for its part, add thereto the conception that the sensation is good or bad. 27. Live with the Gods. And he lives with the Gods who continually displays to them his soul, living in satisfaction with its lot, and doing the will of the inward spirit, a portion of his own divinity which Zeus has given to every man for a ruler and a guide. This is the intelligence, the reason that abides in us all. 28. Are you angry with one whose armpits smell or whose breath is foul? What is the use? His mouth or his arm-pits are so, and the consequence must follow. But, you say, man is a reasonable being, and could by attention discern in what he offends. Very well, you too have reason. Use your reason to move his; instruct, admonish him. If he listens, you will cure him, and there will be no reason for anger. You are neither actor nor harlot. 29. As you intend to live at your going, so you can live here. But, if men do not permit you, then depart from life, yet so as if no misfortune had befallen you. If my house be smoky, I go out, and where is the great matter? So long as no such trouble drives me out, I remain at my will, and no one will prevent me from acting as I will. And my will is the will of a reasonable and social being. 30. The intelligence of the Universe is social. It has therefore made the inferior orders for the sake of the superior; and has suited the superior beings for one another. You see how it hath subordinated, and co-ordinated, and distributed to each according to its merit, and engaged the nobler beings to a mutual agreement and unanimity. 31. How have you behaved towards the Gods, towards your parents, your brothers, your wife, your children, your teachers, those who reared you, your friends, your intimates, your slaves? Can it be said that you have ever acted towards all of them in the spirit of the line:-- He wrought no harshness, spoke no unkind word? Recollect all you have passed through, all that you have had strength to bear. Your life is now a tale that is told, and your service is all discharged. Recall the fair sights you have seen, the pleasures and the pains you have despised, the so-called glory that you have foregone, the unkindly men to whom you have shown kindness. 32. How is it that unskilled and ignorant souls disturb the skilful and intelligent? What, I ask, is the skilful and intelligent soul? It is that which knows the beginning and the end, and the reason which pervades all being, and by determined cycles rules the Universe for all time. 33. In a little space you will be only ashes and dry bones and a name, perhaps not even that. A name is but so much empty sound and echo, and the things which are so much prized in life are empty, mean, and rotten. We are as puppies that snap at one another, as children that quarrel, laugh, and presently weep again. But integrity, modesty, justice, and truth, Up from the wide-wayed earth have soared to heaven. What then should detain you here? Things sensible are ever changing and unstable. The senses are dull and easily deceived. The poor soul itself is a mere exhalation from blood. Fame in such a world is a thing of naught. What then? You await calmly extinction or transformation, whichever it may be. And till the fulness of the time be come what is to suffice you? What else than a life spent in fearing and praising the Gods, and in the practice of benevolence, toleration and forbearance towards men? And whatsoever lies beyond the bounds of flesh and breath, remember that it is neither yours nor in your power. 34. A prosperous life may be yours if only you can take the right path, and keep to it in all you think or do. Two advantages are common to Gods, to men, and to every rational soul. In the first place, nothing external to themselves has power to hinder them. In the second, their happiness lies in having mind and conduct disposed to justice, and in the power to make that the end of all desire. 35. If the fault be not my sin, nor a consequence of it, if there be no damage to the common good, why am I perturbed about it? Wherein is the harm to the common good? 36. Be not incautiously carried away by sentiment, but aid him that needs it according to your power and his desert. If his need be of the things which are indifferent, think not that he is harmed thereby, for so to think is an evil habit. But as, in the Comedy, the old man begs to have his fosterchild's top for a keepsake, though he knows well that it is a top and nothing more, so should you act also in the affairs of life. You mount the rostra and cry aloud, "O man, have you forgotten what is the real value of what you seek?" "No, but the many are keen in their pursuit of it." "Are you then to be a fool because they are?" In whatever case I had been left I could have made my fortune: for what is it to make a fortune but to confer good things upon one's self; and true good things are a worthy frame of mind, worthy impulses, worthy actions. END OF THE FIFTH BOOK. BOOK VI. 1. The substance of the Universe is docile and pliable. The mind which governs it has in itself no source of evil-doing. It has no malice: it does no ill, and nothing is hurt by it. By its guidance all things come to be, and fulfil their being. 2. Act the part which is worthy of you, regarding not whether you be stiff with cold or comfortably warm; whether you be drowsy or refreshed with sleep; whether you be in good report or bad; whether you be dying or upon some other business. For death also is one piece of the business of life, and, here as elsewhere, it is enough to do well what comes to our hand. 3. Look within. Let not the proper quality or value of anything escape you. 4. All that exists will very speedily change; by rarefaction, if all substance be one; otherwise by dispersion. 5. The guiding mind knows what its own condition is, how, and upon what matter its work is done. 6. The best revenge is not to copy him that wronged you. 7. Find your sole delight and recreation in proceeding from one unselfish action to another, with God ever in mind. 8. The ruling part of you is that which rouses and steers itself, making itself what it wishes to be, and making all that happens take such appearance as it will. 9. All things are accomplished according to the will of universal nature. There is no other nature to influence them which either comprehends the former from without, or is contained within it, or exists externally, and independent of it. 10. The Universe is either a confusion ravelled and unravelled again, or else a unity compact of order and forethought. If it be the former, why should I wish to linger amid this aimless chaos and confusion, or have any further care than "how to become earth again"? Nay, why am I disturbed at all? Dissolution will overtake me, do what I please. But, if the latter be the case, I adore the Ruler of all things, I stand firm, and put my trust in him. 11. Whenever your situation forces trouble upon you, return quickly to yourself, and interrupt the rhythm of life no longer than you are compelled. Your grasp of the harmony will grow surer by continual recurrence to it. 12. Had you at one time both a step-mother and a mother, you would respect the former, yet you would be more constantly in your mother's company. Your court and your philosophy are step-mother and mother to you. Return then frequently to your true mother, and recreate yourself with her. Her consolation can make the court seem bearable to you, and you to it. 13. Keep these thoughts for meats and eatables: This that is before me is the dead carcase of a fish, a fowl, a hog. This Falernian is but a little grape juice. Think of your purple robes as sheep's wool stained in the blood of a shell-fish. Such conceptions, which touch reality so near, and set forth the sum and substance of these objects, are powerful indeed to display to us their despicable value. In this spirit we should act throughout life; and when things of great apparent worth present themselves, we should strip them naked, view their meanness, and cast aside the glowing description which makes them seem so glorious. Vanity is a great sophist, and most imposes on us when we believe ourselves to be busy about the noblest ends. Remember the saying of Crates about Xenocrates himself. 14. Most objects of vulgar admiration may be referred to certain general classes. There are, first, those which hold together by cohesion or by some organic unity, such as stone, timber, figs, vines or olives. The things which men, a shade more reasonable, admire are referred to the class which possesses animal life such as is seen in flocks and herds. When man's taste is still more cultured his admiration turns to things which can show a rational intelligence. But he admires this intelligence not as a universal principle, but only so far as he finds it expressed in art or industry, or, indeed, sometimes merely so far as it is exhibited by his retinue of artist slaves. But he who values rational intelligence as a universal thing, and as a social force, will care nothing for these other objects of admiration. He will, above all things, strive to preserve his own mind in all its rational and social instincts and activities; and to this end he will co-operate with any of his kind. 15. Some things hasten into being. Some hasten to be no more. Even as a thing is born some part of it is already dead. Flux and change are constantly renewing the world, just as the unbroken flow of time ever presents to us some new portion of eternity. In this vast river, on whose bosom there is no tarrying, what is there among the things that sweep by us that is worth the prizing? It is as if a man grew fond of one among a passing flight of sparrows, when already it had vanished from his sight. Our life itself is much like a vapour of the blood or a drawing in of air. Our momentary actions of inhalation and exhalation are one in kind with that whole power of breathing which, yesterday or the day before, we received at birth, and which we must restore again to the source from whence we drew it. 16. It is a small privilege to transpire like plants, or even to breathe as cattle or wild beasts do. To feel the impressions of sense, to be swayed like puppets by passion, to herd together and to live by bread; all this is no great thing. There is nothing here superior to our power of discharging our superfluous food. What, then, is of value? To be received with clapping of hands? No. Neither, therefore, is the applause of tongues more valuable, for the praises of the multitude are naught but the idle clapping of tongues. Dismiss the vanity called fame, and what remains to be prized? This, I think: in all things to act, or to restrain yourself from action, as best suits the particular structure of your nature. This is the end of all arts and studies, for every art aims at making what it produces well adapted to the work for which it was designed. The gardener, the vine-dresser, the horse-breaker, the dog-trainer all try for this; and what else is the aim of all education and teaching? Here, then, is what you may truly value: this well won, you will seek for nothing more. Will you, then, cease valuing the multitude of other things? If you do not, you will never attain to freedom, self-sufficiency, or tranquillity. You cannot escape envying, suspecting, and striving against those who have the power to deprive you of your cherished objects, nor plotting against men who are in possession of that on which you set your heart. The man who lacks any of these things must, of necessity, be distracted, and be for ever complaining against the Gods. But reverence and respect for your own intelligence will bring you to agreement with yourself, into concord with mankind, and into harmony with the Gods, whom you will praise for all their good gifts and guidance. 17. Upward, downward, round and round run the courses of the elements. But the course of virtue is like none of these; it follows a diviner path, well-directed in a way that is hard for us to understand. 18. Strange are the ways of men! They can speak no good word of the contemporaries with whom they live; yet they count it a great thing to gain the praises of a posterity whom they never saw nor shall see. As well might we grieve because we cannot hear the praises of our ancestors. 19. If a thing seems to you very difficult to accomplish, conclude not that it is beyond human power. But, if you see that anything is within man's power, and part of his proper work, conclude that you also may attain to it. 20. In the gymnasium, if some one scratches us with his nails, or in a sudden onset bruises our head, we express no resentment; we are not offended; nor do we suspect him for the future as one who is plotting against us. We are on our guard against him, it is true, but not as against an enemy or a suspected person. In all good humour we simply keep out of his way. Let us thus behave in other affairs of life, and overlook the many injuries which are done to us, as it were, by our antagonists in the gymnasium of the world. As I said, we may keep out of their way, but without suspicion or hatred. 21. If any one can convince or shew me that I am wrong in thought or deed, I will gladly change. It is truth that I seek; and truth never yet hurt any man. What does hurt is persistence in error or in ignorance. 22. I do my duty, and for the rest am not distracted by anything which is inanimate or irrational, or which has lost or ignores the proper way. 23. Use the brute creation, and also all material things, in the spirit of magnanimity and freedom which becomes him who has reason in using that which has it not. Towards men, who have reason, act in a social spirit. In every business call the Gods to aid thee, nor trouble how long this business shall endure; three hours spent therein may suffice you. 24. Alexander of Macedon and his muleteer, when they died, were in a like condition. They were either alike resumed into the seminal source of all things, or alike dispersed among the atoms. 25. Consider all the many things, both physical and spiritual, that are adoing within each of us at the very same instant of time; and you will wonder the less at the far greater multitudes of things, even all that is, which exist together in the one-and-all which we call the Universe. 26. Should some one ask you how the name Antoninus is written, would you not carefully pronounce to him each one of the letters? Should he then begin an angry dispute about it, would you also grow angry, and not rather mildly count over the several letters to him? Thus in life remember that each duty is made up of a number of elements. We should observe all these calmly; and, without anger at those who are angry with us, we should set about accomplishing the task which lies before us. 27. Is it not cruel to restrain men from pursuing what appears to be their own advantage? And yet, in a manner, you deny them this liberty when you shew anger at their errors. Men are assuredly attracted to what seems to be their own advantage. "Yes," you say, "but it is not their advantage." Instruct them, then, and make this evident to them, but without anger. 28. Death is the cessation of the sensual impressions, of the impulses of the passions, of the questionings of reason, and of the servitude to the flesh. 29. It is shame and dishonour that, in any man's life, the soul should faint from its duty while the body still holds out. 30. See to it that you fall not into Caesarism: avoid that stain, for it may come to you. Guard your simplicity, your goodness, your sincerity, your dignity, your reticence, your love of justice, your piety, your kindliness, your affection for your kin, and your constancy to your duty. Endeavour earnestly to continue such as philosophy would make you. Reverence the Gods, and help mankind. Life is short, and the one fruit of it in this world is a pure mind and unselfish conduct. Be in all things the disciple of Antonine. Imitate his resolute constancy to rational action, his level equability, his godliness, his serenity of countenance, his sweetness of temper, his contempt of vainglory, his keen attempts to comprehend things. Remember how he never quitted any subject till he had thoroughly examined it and understood it, and how he bore with those who blamed him unjustly, without making any angry retort: how he was never in a hurry; how he discouraged calumny; how closely he scanned the manners and actions of men; how cautious he was in reproaching any man; how free from fear, suspicion, or sophistry; how little contented him in the matter of house, furniture, dress, food, servants; how patient he was of labour, and how slow to anger. So abstemious was his life that he could hold out until evening without relieving himself, except at the usual hour. What a firm and loyal friend he was; how patient of frank opposition to his opinions; how glad if any one could set him right! How religious he was, and yet how free from superstition! Follow in his steps that your last hour may find you with a conscience as easy as his. 31. Sober yourself, recall your senses. Shake sleep from you, and know that it was a dream that troubled you; and, now that you are broad awake again, regard the waking world as you did the dream. 32. I am made up of a frail body and a soul. To the body all things are indifferent, because it cannot distinguish them; and to the mind all things are indifferent also which arise not from its own activities. All these are indeed in its own power, but it is concerned with only such of them as are present. Its past and future activities are indifferent to it now. 33. No toil for hand or foot is against Nature, so long as it is proper for hand or foot to do. No more, then, is toil contrary to the nature of man, as man, so long as he is doing work appointed for man to do; and if it be not contrary to his nature it cannot be evil for him. 34. How many are the pleasures that have been enjoyed by robbers, rakes, parricides, and tyrants! 35. Do you not see how common artificers, though they may humour the public to a certain extent, cling to the rules of their art, and cannot endure to depart from them? Is it not grievous, then, that the architect and the physician should shew greater respect for the rules of their several professions, than man shews for his own reason, which he possesses in common with the Gods? 36. Asia and Europe are mere corners of the Universe: the whole sea is but a drop, Athos a clod. All the present is but an instant in eternity. All things are small, changeable, and fleeting. Everything proceeds from the universal intelligence, either directly or as a consequence. Thus, the jaws of lions, poisons, all evil things such as thorns or mire, are the consequences of the grand and the beautiful. Do not, then, imagine that they are foreign to that which you revere, but consider well the source of all things. 37. He who has seen the present has seen all that either has been from all eternity, or will be to all eternity, for all things are alike in kind and form. 38. Consider frequently the connexion of all things in the Universe, and their relation to each other. All things are in a manner intermingled with one another, and are, therefore, mutually friendly. For one thing comes in due order after another, by virtue of local movements, and of the harmony and unity of the whole. 39. Adapt yourself to the things which your destiny has given you: love those with whom it is your lot to live, and love them with sincere affection. 40. A tool, an instrument, a utensil, is in good case when it is fit for its proper work: yet its maker remains not by it. But within the organisms of Nature there remains and resides the power which made them. You ought, therefore, to reverence this power the more, believing that if you act in deference to its will, all will happen to you in reason; for so in reason the Universe ranges all. 41. Whenever we imagine that anything which lies not in our power is good or evil for us, if the evil befall us or if we miss the good, we inevitably blame the Gods, and hate the men who are, or whom we suspect to be, the cause of our disaster or our loss. Our solicitude about such things leads to much injustice; but if we judge only the things that are in our power to be good or evil, there is no reason left for accusing the Gods or for hating men. 42. We are all co-operating in one great work, some with knowledge and understanding, others ignorantly and without design. It is in this sense, I think, that Heraclitus says that men are working even while they sleep, working together in all that is being done in the Universe. Each works in a different way; and even those contribute abundantly who murmur and try to oppose and to frustrate the course of nature. The world has need even of such as these. It remains then for you to make sure which is the class in which you rank yourself. The presiding mind will assuredly use you to good purpose one way or other; and will enlist you among its labourers and fellow-workers. But see to it that the part that falls to you lie not in the vulgar comic passage of the play, of which Chrysippus has spoken. 43. Does the sun pretend to perform the work of the rain, or Aesculapius that of Ceres? What of the several stars? Are they not different, yet all jointly working for the same end? 44. If the Gods took counsel about me and what should befall me, doubtless then-counsel was good. It is difficult to imagine Gods wanting in forethought, and what could move them to do me wilful harm? What advantage would thence accrue, either to themselves or to the Universe which is their special care? If they have not taken counsel about me in particular, they certainly have done so about the common interest of the Universe, and I therefore should accept cheerfully and contentedly the fate which is the outcome of their ordinance. If, indeed, they take no counsel about anything (which it were impious to believe), then let us quit our sacrifices, our prayers, and our oaths, and all acts of devotion which we now perform as if they lived and moved amongst us. But, granting that the Gods take no thought for my affairs, I may still deliberate about myself. It is my business to consider my own interest. Now, each man's interest is that which agrees with the structure of his nature, and my nature is rational and social. As Antoninus, my city and my country is Rome; as a human being it is the world. That alone, then, which profits these two cities can profit me. 45. All that happens to the individual is of profit to the whole. This would suffice. But if you consider closely you will see that it is also a general truth that all that happens to one man is of profit to the rest of mankind. "Profit" here should be taken in a somewhat general sense, as referring to things indifferent. 46. In the amphitheatre and other such resorts the same or similar spectacles, continually presented, cloy at last. It is even so in all our experience of life. All things, first and last, are alike, and like derived. When shall the end be? 47. Think continually of all the men that are dead and gone, men of every sort and condition, of all manner of pursuits, and of every nation. Return back to Philistion, Phoebus, and Origanion. Pass down to other generations of the dead. We must all change our habitation and go to that place whither so many great orators, so many venerable philosophers, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Socrates, and so many heroes have gone before, and so many generals and princes have followed. Add to these Eudoxus, Hipparchus, Archimedes, and other keen, great, laborious, cunning and arrogant spirits; yea, such as have wittily derided this fading mortal life which is but for a day, as did Menippus and his brethren. Consider that all these are long since in their graves. And wherein here is the harm for them; or even for men whose names are not remembered? The one precious thing in life is to spend it in a steady course of truth and justice, with kindliness even for the false and the unjust. 48. When you would cheer your heart, consider the several excellencies of those that live around you. Consider the activity of one, the modesty of another, the generosity of a third, and the other virtues of the rest. Nothing rejoices the heart so much as instances, the more the better, of goodness manifested in the characters of those around us. Let us, therefore, have such instances ever present for reflection. 49. Are you grieved that you weigh only these few pounds, and not three hundred? If not, is there greater reason to sorrow if you live only so many years and no longer? You are satisfied with your allotted quantity of matter; content yourself then likewise with the span of time appointed you. 50. Try to persuade men to agree with you; but whether they agree or not, pursue the course you have marked out when the principles of justice point that way. Should one oppose you by force, act with resignation, and shew not that you are hurt, use the obstruction for the exercise of some other virtue, and remember that your purpose involved the reservation that you were not to aim at impossibilities. What, after all, was your aim? To make some good effort such as this. Well, then, you have succeeded, even though your first purpose be not accomplished. 51. The vain-glorious man places his happiness in the action of others. The sensualist finds it in his own sensations. The wise man realizes it in his own work. 52. You have it in your power to form no opinion about this or that, and so to have peace of mind. Things material have no power to form our opinions for us. 53. Accustom yourself to attend closely to what is said by others, and as far as possible to penetrate into the mind of the speaker. 54. What profits not the swarm profits not the bee. 55. If the sailors revile their pilot, or the sick their physician, whom will they follow or obey? And how will the one secure safety to the crew, or the other health to the patients? 56. How many who entered the world with me are already departed! 57. To the jaundiced, honey seems bitter; and water is a thing of dread to those bitten by mad dogs. To boys a ball is a glorious thing. Why, then, am I angry? Has error in the mind less power than a little bile in the jaundiced, or a little poison in him who is bitten? 58. No man can prevent you from living according to the plan of your nature; and nothing can befall you which is contrary to the plan of the nature of the Universe. 59. Consider what men are; whom they seek to please; what they expect to gain, and how they go about to compass their ends. Think how soon eternity will shroud all things, and how much is already shrouded. END OF THE SIXTH BOOK. BOOK VII. 1. What is vice? It is what you have often seen. In every instance of it keep in mind that you have often seen the like before. Search up and down; you will find sameness everywhere. Among the events which fill the history of ancient, middle, and present ages; among the things of which our cities and our households are full to-day, nothing is new, all is familiar and fleeting. 2. How can the great principles of life become dead if the impressions which correspond to them be not extinguished? These impressions you may still rekindle. I can always form the proper opinion of this or that; and, if so, why am I disturbed? What is external to my mind is of no consequence to it. Learn this, and you stand upright; you can always renew your life. See things again as once you saw them, and your life is made new again. 3. Your vain concern for shows, for stage plays, for flocks and herds, your little combats, are as bones cast for the contention of puppies, as baits dropped into a fishpond, as the toil of ants and the burdens that they bear, as the scampering of frightened mice, or the antics of puppets jerked by wires. It is then your duty amid all this to stand firm, kindly and not proud, yet to understand that a man's worth is just the worth of that which he pursues. 4. In conversation we should give good heed to what is said, and in every enterprise we should attend to what is done. In the latter case, at once look to the end in view, and, in the former, note the meaning intended. 5. Is my understanding sufficient for this business or not? If it be sufficient, I use it for the work in hand as an instrument given to me by nature. If it be not sufficient, I either give place to one better fitted for the achievement, or, if for some reason this be not a proper course, I do it as best I can, taking the aid of those who, by directing my mind, can accomplish something fit and serviceable for the common good. For all that I do, whether by myself or with the help of others, should be directed solely towards what is fit and useful for the public service. 6. How many of those who were once so mightily acclaimed are delivered up to oblivion! And how many of those who acclaimed them are dead and gone this many a day! 7. Be not ashamed of taking assistance. It is laid upon you to do your part, as on a soldier when the wall is stormed. What, then, if you are lame, and cannot scale the battlements alone, but can with another's help? 8. Be not troubled about the future. You will come to it, if need be, with the same power to reason, as you use upon your present business. 9. All things are twined together, in one sacred bond. Scarce is there one thing quite foreign to another. They are all ranged together, and leagued to form the same ordered whole. The Universe, compact of all things, is one; through all things runs one divinity; being is one; and law, which is the reason common to all intelligent creatures; and truth is one as well, that is if there be but one sort of perfection possible to all beings which are of the same nature and partake of the same rational power. 10. Everything material is soon engulfed in the matter of the whole, and every active cause is swiftly resumed into the Universal reason. The memory of all things is quickly buried in eternity. 11. In the reasoning being to act according to nature is to act according to reason. 12. Be upright either by nature or by correction. 13. In an organic unity bodily members play the same part as reasoning beings among separate existences, since both are fitted for one joint operation. This thought will come home to you the more vividly if you say often to yourself: "I am a member of the mighty organism which is made up of reasoning beings." If, instead of a member, you say that you are merely a part, you have not as yet attained to a heartfelt love of mankind. As yet you love not well-doing for its own sake alone, and you still perform your bare duty, with no thought that you are your own benefactor by the deed. 14. From the world without let what will affect whatever parts are subject to such affection. Let the part which suffers complain, if it will, of the suffering. But I, if I admit not that the hap is evil, remain uninjured. Not to admit it is surely in my power. 15. Let any one say or do what he pleases, I must be a good man. It is just as gold, or emeralds, or purple might say continually: "Let men do or say what they please, I must be an emerald, and retain my lustre." 16. The soul which rules you vexes not itself. It does not, for example, awake its own fears or arouse its own desires. If another can raise grief or terror in it, let him do so. By its own impressions it will not be led into such emotions. Let the body take thought, if it can, for itself, lest it suffer anything, and complain when it suffers. The soul, by means of which we experience fear and sorrow, and by means of which, indeed, we receive any impression of these, will admit no suffering. You cannot force it to any such opinion. The ruling part is, in itself, free from all dependence, unless it makes itself dependent. Similarly, it may be free from all disturbance and obstruction, if it does not disturb and obstruct itself. 17. To have good fortune is to have a good spirit, or a good mind. What do you here, Imagination? Be gone, I say, even as you came. I have no need for you. You came, you say, after your ancient fashion: I am not angry with you, only, be gone! 18. Do you dread change? What can come without it? What can be pleasanter or more proper to universal nature? Can you heat your bath unless wood undergoes a change? Can you be fed unless a change is wrought upon your food? Can any useful thing be done without changes? Do you not see, then, that this change also which is working in you is even such as these, and alike necessary to the nature of the Universe? 19. Through the substance of the Universe, as through a torrent, all bodies are borne. They are all of the same nature, and fellow-workers with the whole, even as our several members are fellow-workers with one another. How many a Chrysippus, how many a Socrates, how many an Epictetus hath the course of ages swallowed up! Let this thought be with you about every man, and upon all occasions. 20. For this alone I am concerned; that I do nothing that suits not the nature of man, nothing as man's nature would not have it, nothing that it wishes not yet. 21. The time is at hand when you shall forget all things, and when all shall forget you. 22. It is man's special business to love even those who err; and to this love you attain, if it is borne in upon you that even these sinners are your kin, and that they offend through ignorance and against their will. Remember also that in a little while both you and they must die: remember before all things that they have not harmed you, for they have not made your soul worse than it was before. 23. Presiding nature from the universal substance, as from wax, now forms a horse, now breaks it up again, making of its matter a tree, afterwards a man, and again something different. Each of these shapes subsists but for a little. Yet there is nothing dreadful for the chest in being taken to pieces, any more than there formerly was in being put together. 24. A wrathful look is completely against nature. When the countenance is often thus deformed, its beauty dies, in the end is quenched for ever, and cannot be revived again. Seek to comprehend from this very fact that it is against reason. And if the sense of moral evil be gone as well, why should a man wish to remain alive? 25. In a little space Nature, the supreme and universal ruler, will change all things that you behold; out of their substance she will make other things, and others again out of the substance of these, so that the Universe may be ever new. 26. Whenever someone offends you, consider straightway how he has erred in his conceptions of good or evil. When you see where his error lies you will pity him, and be neither surprised nor angry. Indeed you yourself perhaps still wrongly count good the same things as he does, or things just like them. Your duty then is to forgive. And, if you cease from these false ideas of good and bad, you will find it the easier to grant indulgence to him who is still mistaken. 27. Dwell not on what you lack so much as on what you have already. Select the best of what you have, and consider how passionately you would have longed for it had it not been yours. Yet be watchful, lest by this joy in what you have you accustom yourself to value it too highly; so that, if it should fail, you would be distressed. 28. Retire within yourself. The reasoning power that rules you naturally finds contentment with itself in just dealing, and in the calm which such dealing brings. 29. Blot out imagination. Check the brutal impulses of the passions. Confine your energies to the present time. Observe clearly all that happens either to yourself or to another. Divide and analyse all objects into cause and matter. Take thought for your last hour. Let another's sin remain where the guilt lies. 30. Apply your mind to what is said. Penetrate all happenings and the causes thereof. 31. Rejoice yourself with simplicity, modesty, and indifference to all things that lie between good and bad. Love mankind, and obey God. "All things," says someone, "go by law and order." But what if there be naught beyond the atoms? Even if that be so, suffice it to remember that all things, save very few, are swayed by law. 32. Concerning death: If the Universe be a concourse of atoms, death is a scattering of these; if it be an ordered unity, death is an extinction or a translation to another state. 33. Concerning pain: Pain which cannot be borne brings us deliverance. Pain that lasts musts needs be bearable. The mind can abstract itself from the body, and the soul takes no hurt. As to the parts which suffer by pain, let them, if they can, make their own protest. 34. Concerning glory: Consider the understanding of men, what they shun, and what they pursue. And reflect that, as heaps of sand are driven one upon another, and the later drifts bury and hide those that went before, so, too, in life the former ages are soon buried by the next. 35. This from Plato: "'To the man who has true grandeur of mind, and who contemplates all time and all being, can human life appear a great matter? 'Impossible,' says the other. 'Can then such a one count death a thing of dread?' 'No, indeed.'" 36. It is a saying of Antisthenes, that it is the part of a king to do good and reap reproach. 37. It is a shameful thing that the countenance should obey the mind, should compose and order itself as the mind bids it, while the mind cannot compose and order itself as it wills. 38. Vain is all anger at external things For they regard it nothing.-- 39. Give joy to us and to the immortal Gods. 40. For life is, like the laden ear, cut down; And some must fall and some unreaped remain. 41. Me and my children, if the Gods neglect, It is for some good reason. 42. For I keep right and justice on my side. 43. Weep not with them, and still these throbs of woe. 44. From Plato:--"I would make him this just answer, 'You are mistaken, my friend, to think that a man of any worth should count the chances of living and dying. Should he not rather, in all he does, consider simply whether he is acting justly or unjustly, whether he is playing the part of a good man or a bad?'" 45. He says again:--"In truth, Athenians, the matter stands thus: Wheresoever a man has chosen his stand, judging it the fittest for him, or wheresoever he is stationed by his commander, there, I think, he should stay at all hazards, making no account of death, or any other evil but dishonour." 46. Again:--"Consider, my friend, whether the truly noble and the truly good be not something quite apart from saving and being saved. The man who is a man indeed should not set his heart on living through a few more years of life, nor should he make that the end of his desire. Rather he should commit the matter to the will of God; assenting to the maxim which even women use, that 'no man can elude his destiny,' and studying in addition how he may spend the life that remains to him for the best." 47. Contemplate the courses of the stars, as one should do that revolves along with them. Consider also without ceasing the changes of elements, one into another. Speculations upon such things cleanse away the filth of this earthly life. 48. It is a good thought of Plato's, that when we discourse of men we should "look down, as from a high place," on all things earthly; on herds and armies; on husbandry and marriage; on partings, births, and deaths; on the tumults of the courts of justice; on the desert places of the earth; on the varied spectacle of savage nations; on feasting and lamentation; on traffic; on the medley of all things, and the order which emerges from their contrariety. 49. Consider the past, and the revolutions of so many Empires; and thence you may foresee what shall happen hereafter. It will be ever the same in all things; nor can events leave the rhythm in which they are now moving. Wherefore it is much the same to view human life for forty, as for a myriad of years. What more is there to see? 50. To earth returns whatever sprang from earth, But what's of heavenly seed remounts to heaven. This imports either the loosing of a knot of atoms, or a similar dispersion of immutable elements. 51. By meats and drinks, and charms and magic arts Death's course they would divert, and thus escape. . . . . . . . The gale that blows from God we must endure, Toiling, but not repining..... 52. He is a better wrestler than you, but not more public-spirited, more modest, or better prepared for the accidents of fate; not more gentle toward the short-comings of his neighbours. 53. Wherever we can act conformably to the reason which is common to Gods and men, there we have nothing to dread. Where we can profit by prosperous activity which proceeds in agreement with the constitution of our nature, we need suspect no harm. 54. In all places, and at all times you may devoutly accept your present fortune, and deal in justice with your present company. You may take pains to understand all arising imaginations, that none may steal upon you before you comprehend them. 55. Pry not into the souls of others; but rather look straight to the goal whither nature is leading you; whither the nature of the Universe by external events, and whither your own nature by the tendency of your own action. Each being must perform the part for which it was created. Now all other beings are created for the sake of those among them which have reason; as all lower things exist for the sake of things superior to them; and reasoning beings were created for one another. The leading principle in man's nature, then, is the social spirit; and the second is victory over the solicitations of the body. For it is proper to the workings of reason to set bounds to themselves, and never to be overpowered by the calls of sense or by the stirrings of passion, both of which are animal in their nature. The intellect claims to reign over these, and never to be subjected to them; and rightly, because it is equipped to command and use all the lower powers. The third element in the constitution of a reasoning being is caution against rashness and error. Let the soul go forth straight upon her way in the possession of these principles, and she stands seized of her full estate. 56. Consider yourself as dead, your life as finished and past. Live what yet remains according to Nature's laws, as an overplus granted to you beyond your hope. 57. Love that only which is your hap, which comes upon you as your part in Fate's great spinning. What, indeed, can fit you better? 58. Upon every accident keep in view those to whom the like has happened. They stormed at the event, wondered and complained. But now where are they? They are gone for ever. Why should you act the like part? Leave these unnatural commotions to fickle men who change and are changed. Yourself take thought how you may make good use of such events. Good use for them there is; they will make matter for good actions. Let it be your sole effort and desire to gain your own approval in every action; and remember that the material objects of both that effort and of that desire are things indifferent. 59. Look inward. Within is the fountain of Good. Dig constantly and it will ever well forth. 60. Keep the body steady, without irregularity, whether in its motions or in its postures. For, as the soul shews itself in the countenance by a wise and graceful air, it should require the same expressive power of the whole body. But all this must be practised without affectation. 61. The art of Life is more like that of the wrestler than of the dancer; for the wrestler must always be ready on his guard, and stand firm against the sudden, unforeseen efforts of his adversary. 62. Consider constantly what manner of men they are whose approbation you desire, and what may be the character of their souls. Then you will neither accuse such as err unwillingly, nor need their commendation when you look into the springs of their opinions and their desires. 63. "Every soul," says Plato, "parts unwillingly with truth." You may say the same of justice, temperance, good-nature, and every virtue. It is most necessary to keep this ever in mind; for, if you do, you will be more kindly towards all men. 64. In all pain keep in mind that there is no baseness in it, that it cannot harm the soul which guides you, nor destroy that soul as a reasoning or as a social force. In most pain you may find help in the saying of Epicurus, that "pain is neither unbearable nor everlasting, if you bear in mind its narrow limits, and allow no additions from your imagination." Remember also that we are fretted, though we see it not, by many things which are of the same nature as pain, things such as drowsiness, excessive heat, want of appetite. When any of these things annoy you, say to yourself that you are giving in to pain. 65. Look to it that you feel not towards the most inhuman of mankind, as they feel towards their fellows. 66. Whence do we conclude that Telauges had not a brighter genius than Socrates? 'Tis not enough that Socrates died more gloriously or argued more acutely with the sophists; or that he kept watch more patiently through a frosty night; or because, when ordered to arrest the innocent Salaminian, he judged it more noble to disobey; or because of any stately airs and graces he assumed in public, in which we may very justly refuse to believe. But, assuming all this true, when we consider Socrates, we must ask what manner of soul he had. Could he find contentment in acting with justice towards men, and with piety towards the Gods, neither vainly provoked by the vices of others, nor servilely flattering them in their ignorance; counting nothing strange that the Ruler of the Universe appointed, not sinking under anything as intolerable, and never yielding up his soul in surrender to the passions of the flesh. 67. Nature has not so blended the soul with the body that it cannot fix its own bounds, and execute its own office by itself. It is very possible to be a God among men, and yet be recognised by none. Remember that always, and this as well, that the happiness of life lies in very few things. And though you despair of becoming great in Logic or in Science, you need not despair of becoming a free man, full of modesty and unselfishness, and of obedience unto God. 68. It is in your power to live superior to all violence, and in the greatest calm of mind, were all men to rail against you as they pleased; and though wild beasts were to tear asunder the wretched members of this fleshly mass which has grown with your growth. What is to hinder the soul amid all this from preserving itself in all tranquillity, in just judgments about surrounding things, and in ready use of whatever is cast in its way? Judgment may say to accident:-- "Your real nature is this or that, though you appear otherwise in the eyes of men." Use may say to circumstance:--"I was looking for you. To me all that is present is ever matter for rational and social virtue, in sum, for that art which is proper both to man and God. All that befalls is fit and familiar for the purposes of God or man. Nothing is either new or intractable, but everything is well known and fit to work upon." 69. It is the perfection of morals to spend each day as if it were the last of life, without excitement, without sloth, and without hypocrisy. 70. The Gods, who are immortal, are not vexed that in a long eternity they must ever bear with the wickedness and the multitude of sinners. Nay, they even lavish on them all manner of loving care. But you, who are presently to cease from being, can, forsooth, endure no more, though you are one of the sinners yourself! 71. It is ridiculous that you flee not from the vice that is in yourself, as you have it in your power to do; but are still striving to flee from the vice in others, which you can never do. 72. Whatever the rational and social faculty finds fit neither for rational nor for social ends, it justly ranks as inferior to itself. 73. When you have done a kind action, another has benefited. Why do you, like the fools, require some third thing in addition--a reputation for benevolence or a return for it. 74. No man wearies of what brings him gain, and your gain lies in acting according to nature. Be not weary, therefore, of gaining by the act which gives others gain. 75. Nature set about making an ordered universe; and now, either all that is follows a law of necessary consequence and connexion, or we must admit that there is least rationality in the things which are most excellent, and which appear to be most special objects for the impulses of the universal mind. Remembrance of this will give you calmness on many an occasion. END OF THE SEVENTH BOOK. BOOK VIII. 1. For repressing vain glory, it serves to remember that it is no longer in your power to make your whole life, even from your youth onwards, a life worthy of a philosopher. It is known to many, and you yourself know also, how far you are from wisdom. Confusion is upon you, and it now can be no easy matter for you to gain the reputation of a philosopher. The conditions of your life are against it. Now therefore, as you see how the matter truly lies, put from you all thoughts of reputation among men; and let it suffice you to live so long as your nature wills, though that be but the scanty remnant of a life. Study, therefore, the will of your nature, and be solicitous about nothing else. You have made many efforts and wandered much, but you have nowhere found happiness; not in syllogisms, not in riches, not in fame or pleasure, not in anything. Where, then, is it? In acting that part which human nature requires. How can you act that part? By holding principles as the source of your desires and actions. What principles? The principles of good and evil: That nothing is good for a man which does not make him just, temperate, courageous, and free; and that nothing can be evil which tends not to make him the contrary of all these. 2. Upon every action ask yourself, what is the effect of this for me? Shall I never repent of it? I shall presently be dead, and all these things gone. What more should I desire if my present action is becoming to an intelligent and a social being, subject to the same law with Gods? 3. Alexander, Caesar, Pompey, what were they compared with Diogenes, Heraclitus, Socrates? These knew the nature of things, their causes and their matter, and the minds within them were at one. As to the former, how many things they schemed for, and to how many were they enslaved! 4. Men will go their ways none the less, though you burst in protest. 5. Before all things, be not perturbed. Everything comes to pass as directed by universal Nature, and in a little time you will be departed and gone, like Hadrianus and Augustus. Then, scan closely the nature of what has befallen, remembering that it is your duty to be a good man. Do unflinchingly whatever man's nature requires, and speak as seems most just, yet in kindliness, modesty, and sincerity. 6. It is Nature's work to transfer what is now here into another place, to change things, to carry them hence, and set them elsewhere. All is change, yet is there no need to fear innovation, for all obey the laws of custom, and in equal measure all things are apportioned. 7. For every nature it is sufficient that it goes on its way, and prospers. The rational nature prospers while it assents to no false or uncertain opinion, while it directs its impulses to unselfish ends alone, while it aims its desires and aversions only at the things within its power, and while it welcomes with contentment all that universal Nature ordains. The nature of each of us is part of universal Nature, as the leaf is part of the tree; the leaf, indeed, is part of an insensible and unreasoning system which can be obstructed in its workings; but human nature is part of that universal system which cannot be impeded, and which is intelligent and just. Hence is meted out, suitably to all, our proper portions of time, of matter, of active principle, of powers, and of events. Yet look not to find that each several thing corresponds exactly with any other. Consider rather the whole nature and circumstances of the one, and compare them with the whole of the other. 8. You lack leisure for reading; but leisure to repress all insolence you do not lack. You have leisure to keep yourself superior to pleasure and pain and vain glory, to restrain all anger against the ungrateful, nay, even to lavish loving care upon them. 9. Let no man any more hear you railing on the life of the court; nay, revile it not to your own hearing. 10. Repentance is a self-reproving, because we have neglected something useful. Whatever is good must be useful in some sort, and worthy of the care of a good and honourable man. Now, such a man could never repent of neglecting some opportunity of pleasure. Pleasure, then, is neither useful nor good. 11. Of each thing ask: What is this in itself and by its constitution? What is its substance or matter? What is its cause? What is its business in the Universe? How long shall it endure? 12. When you are reluctant to be roused from sleep, remember that it accords with your constitution and with human nature to perform social actions. Sleep is common to us with the brutes. Now, whatever accords with the nature of each species must be most proper, most fitting, and most delightful to it. 13. Constantly, and, if possible, on every occasion, apply to your imaginations the methods of Physics, Ethics, and Dialectic. 14. Whomsoever you meet, say straightway to yourself:--What are this man's principles of good and evil? For if he holds this or that doctrine concerning pleasure and pain, and the causes thereof, concerning glory and infamy, death and life, it will seem to me neither strange nor wondrous that this or that should be his conduct. I shall bear in mind that he has no choice but to act so. 15. Remember that, as 'tis folly to be surprised that a fig-tree bears figs, so is it equal folly to be surprised that the Universe produces those things of which it was ever fruitful. It is folly in a physician to be surprised that a man has fallen into a fever; or in a pilot that the wind has turned against him. 16. Remember that to change your course, and to follow any man who can set you right is no compromise of your freedom. The act is your own, performed on your own impulse and judgment, and according to your own understanding. 17. If the doing of this be in your own power, why do it thus? If it be in another's, whom do you accuse? The atoms or the Gods? To accuse either is a piece of madness. Therefore accuse no one. Set right, if you can, the cause of error; if you cannot, correct the result at least. If even that be impossible, what purpose can your accusations serve? Nothing should be done without a purpose. 18. That which dies falls not out of the Universe. If then it stays here, here too it suffers a change, and is resolved into those elements of which the world, and you too, consist. These also are changed, and murmur not. 19. The horse, the vine--all things are formed for some purpose. Where is the wonder? Even the sun saith, "I was formed for a certain work;" and similarly the other Gods. For what end are you formed? For pleasure? Look if your soul can endure this thought. 20. Nature has an aim in all things, in the end and surcease of them no less than in their beginning and continuance. It is even as a man casting a ball. Where, then, is the good for the ball in its rising; where the harm in dropping; where even is the harm when it has fallen down? Where is the bubble's good while it holds together, where is the evil when it is broken? So it is with the lamp which now burns and anon goes out. 21. Turn out the inner side of this body, and view it as it is. What shall it become when it grows old, or sickly, or decayed? The praiser and the praised, the rememberer and the remembered are of short continuance, and that in a mere corner of this narrow region, where, narrow though it be, men cannot live in concord, no, not even with themselves. And yet the whole world is but a point. 22. Attend well to what is before you, whether it be a principle, an act, or a word. This your suffering is well merited, for you would rather become good to-morrow than be good to-day. 23. Am I doing aught? Let me do it in a spirit of service to mankind. Does aught befall me? I accept it and refer it to the Gods, the universal source from which come all things in the chain of consequence. 24. The accompaniments of bathing: oil, sweat, filth, foul water--how nauseous are they all! Even so is every part of life, and everything that meets us. 25. Lucilla buried Verus, and soon followed him to the grave. Secunda saw the death of Maximus, and soon herself died. Epitynchanus buried Diotimus, and then Epitynchanus was buried. Antoninus mourned Faustina, and thereafter Antoninus was mourned. Celer buried Hadrian, and then Celer was buried. All go the same way. The cunning men who foretold the fates of others, or who swelled with pride--where are they now? Where are these keen wits, Charax, and Demetrius the Platonist, and Eudaemon, and their like? All were for a day, and are long dead and gone; some scarce remembered even for a little after death; some turned to fables; some faded even from the memory of tales. Wherefore remember this: either the poor mixture which is you, must be dispersed, or the faint breath of life must be quenched, or removed and brought into another place. 26. The joy of man is to do his proper business. And his proper business is to be kindly to his fellows, to rise above the stirrings of sense, to be critical of every plausible imagination, and to contemplate universal Nature and all her consequences. 27. We have all of us three relations: the first to the manifold occasions of our state; the second to the supreme divine cause from which proceed all things unto all men; the third to those with whom we live. 28. Pain is either an evil to the body; and then let the body so declare it; or an evil to the soul. But the soul can maintain her own serenity and calm; and refuse to conceive pain as an evil. All judgment, intention, desire and aversion are within the soul, to which no evil can ascend. 29. Blot out false imaginations, and say often to yourself:--It is now in my power to preserve my soul free from all wickedness, all lust, all confusion or disturbance. And then, as I truly discern the nature of things, I can use them all in due proportion. Be ever mindful of this power which Nature has given you. 30. Speak, whether in the Senate or elsewhere, with dignity rather than elegance; and let your words ever be sound and virtuous. 31. The court of Augustus, his wife, his daughter, his descendants and his ancestors; his sister, and Agrippa; his kinsmen, familiars and friends; Areius and Maecenas; his physicians and his flamens--death has them all. Think next of the death of a whole house, such as Pompey's, and of what we meet sometimes inscribed on tombs: He was the last of his race. Last of all, consider the solicitude of the ancestors of such men to leave a succession of their own posterity. Yet, at the end, one must come the last, and with him dies all that house. 32. Order your life in its single acts, so that if each, as far as may be, attains its end, it will suffice. In this no one can hinder you. But, you say, may not something external withstand me?--Nothing can keep you from justice, temperance, and wisdom.--Yet, perhaps some other activity of mine may be obstructed.--True, but by yielding to this impediment, and by turning with calmness to that which is in your power, you may happen on another course of action equally suited to the ordered life of which we are speaking. 33. Receive the gifts of fortune without pride; and part with them without reluctance. 34. You have seen a hand, a foot, or a head, cut off from the rest of the body, and lying dead at a distance from it. Even such as these does he make himself, so far as he can, who repines at what befalls, who severs himself from his fellow-men, or who does any selfish deed. Are you cast forth from the natural unity? Nature made you to be a part of the whole, but you have cut yourself off from it. Yet here there is the glorious provision that you may re-unite yourself if you will. In no other case has God granted the privilege of re-union to a separated or severed part. Yet behold the goodness and bounty with which God hath honoured mankind. He first puts it in their power not to be severed from this unity; and then, even when they are thus severed, he suffers them to return once more, to take their places as parts of the whole, and to grow one with it again. 35. Universal Nature, as she has imparted to each rational being almost all its faculties and powers, has given to us this one in particular among them. As Nature converts to her use, ranges in destined order, and makes part of herself all that withstands or opposes her; so each rational being can make every impediment in his way a proper matter for himself to act upon, and can use it for his guiding purpose, whatever it may be. 36. Do not confound yourself by considering the whole of life, and by dwelling upon the multitude and greatness of the pains and troubles to which you may probably be exposed. As each presents itself ask yourself: Is there anything intolerable and insufferable in this? You will be ashamed to own it. And then recollect that it is neither the past nor the future that can oppress you, but always the present only. And the ills of the present will be much diminished if you restrict it within its own proper bounds, and take your soul to task if it cannot bear up even against this one thing. 37. Does Panthea or Pergamus now sit mourning at the tomb of Verus, or Chabrias or Diotimus at the tomb of Hadrian? Absurd! And if they were still mourning could their masters be sensible of it? Or if they were sensible of it, would it give them any pleasure? Or if they were pleased with it, could the mourners live for ever? Was it not fate that they should grow old men and women, and then die? What, then, would become of the illustrious dead when these faithful souls were gone? And all this toil for a vile body, naught but blood and corruption! 38. If you have keen sight, says the philosopher, use it in discretion and in wisdom. 39. In the constitution of the rational being I discern no virtue made to restrain justice; but I see continence made to restrain sensual pleasure. 40. Take away your opinion about the things that seem to give you pain, and you stand yourself upon the surest ground. What is that self?--It is reason.--I am not reason, you say.--So be it; then let not reason pain itself, but leave any part of you which suffers to its own opinions of the pain. 41. Obstruction of any sense is an evil for the animal nature; so is the obstruction of any of its impulses. There are other kinds of obstruction which are evil for the nature of plants. For the rational nature in like manner, therefore, obstruction of the understanding is evil. Apply all this to yourself. Do pain and pleasure affect you? Let the senses look to it. Does anything hinder your designs? If you have designed without the proper reservations, that in itself is an evil for you as a reasoning being. If you designed under the general reservation, you are neither hurt nor hindered. No man can hinder the proper work of the mind. Nor fire, nor sword, nor tyrant, nor calumny can reach it, nor any other thing, when it is become even as a sphere, complete and perfect within itself. 42. I have no right to vex myself who never yet willingly vexed any one. 43. Each man has his own pleasure. Mine lies in having my ruling part sound; without aversion to any man, or to any hap that may befall mankind. Yet let me look on all things with kindly eyes. Let me accept and use them all according to their worth. 44. See that you secure the benefit of the present time. They who pursue a fame which is to live after them reflect not that posterity will be men even as are those who vex them now, and that they too will be mortal. And afterwards, what shall signify to you the clatter of their voices, or the opinions they shall entertain about you? 45. Take me up and cast me where you will; I shall have my own divinity within me serene, that is, satisfied while its every state and action is according to the law of its proper constitution. Is any event of such account that my soul should suffer for it or be the worse; that my soul should become abject and prostrate as a mean suppliant, or should be affrighted? Shall you find anything that is worth all this? 46. Nothing can befall a man which is not human fortune. Nothing can happen to an ox, to a vine, or to a stone which is not the natural destiny of their species. If, then, that alone can befall anything which is usual and natural, what cause is there for indignation? Universal Nature hath brought nothing upon you which you cannot bear. 47. When you are grieved about anything external it is not the thing itself which afflicts you, but your judgment about it. This judgment it is in your power to efface. If you are grieved about anything in your own disposition, who can prevent you from correcting your principles of life? If you are grieved because you do not set about some work which seems to you sound and virtuous, go about it effectually rather than grieve that it is undone.--But some superior force withstands.--Then grieve not, for the fault of the omission lies not in you.--But life is not worth living with this undone.-- Quit life then, in the same kindly spirit as though you had done it, and with goodwill even to those who withstand you. 48. Remember that the governing part becomes invincible when, collected into itself, it is satisfied in refusing to do what it would not, even when its resistance is unreasonable. What then will it be when, after due deliberation it has fixed its judgment according to reason? The soul, thus free from passions, is a strong fort; nor can a man find any stronger to which he can fly and become henceforth invincible. The man who has not discerned this is ignorant. He who has discerned and flies not thither is miserable. 49. Pronounce no more to yourself than what appearances directly declare. It is told you that so-and-so has spoken ill of you. This alone is told you, and not that you are hurt by it. I see my child is sick; this only I see. I do not see that he is in danger. Dwell thus upon first appearances; add nothing to them from within, and no harm befalls you: or rather add the recognition that all is part of the world's lot. 50. Is the gourd bitter? Put it from you. Are there thorns in the way? Walk aside. That is enough. Do not add, "Why were such things brought into the world?" The naturalist would laugh at you, just as would a carpenter or a shoemaker, if you began fault-finding because you saw shavings and parings from their work strewn about the workshop. These craftsmen have places where they can throw away this rubbish, but universal Nature has no such place outside her sphere. Yet the wonder of her art is that, having confined herself within certain bounds, she transforms into herself all things within her scope which seem to be corrupting, or waxing old and useless; and out of them she makes other new forms; so that she neither needs matter from without nor a place where to cast out her refuse. She is satisfied with her own space, her own material, and her own art. 51. Be not languid in action, nor confused in conversation, nor vague in your opinions. Let there be no sudden contractions or forth-sallyings of your soul. In your life be not over-hurried. Men slay you, cut you to pieces, pursue you with curses. What has this to do with your soul remaining pure, prudent, temperate, and just? What if some one, standing by a clear sweet fountain, should reproach it? It would not cease to send forth its refreshing waters. Should he throw into it mud or dung, it will speedily scatter them and wash them away, and be in nowise stained thereby. How then shall you get this perpetual living fount within you? If you reserve yourself unto liberty every hour you live, in a spirit of calmness, simplicity, and modesty. 52. He who knows not what the Universe is knows not what is his place therein. He who knows not for what end it was created, knows not himself and knows not the world. He who is deficient in either of these parts of knowledge cannot even say for what end he himself was created. What sort of man then does he appear to you who pursues the applause or dreads the anger of those who know neither where nor what they are? 53. Do you wish to be praised by a man who curses himself thrice within an hour? Can you desire to please one who is not pleased with himself? Can he be pleased with himself who repents of almost everything he does? 54. No longer be content to breathe in harmony with the air which surrounds you; but set about feeling in sympathy with the intelligence which embraces all things. For the power of that intelligence is no less diffused, and no less pervasive for all who can draw it in, than is the virtue of the air for him who can breathe it. 55. There is no universal wickedness to hurt the world; and the particular wickedness of any individual hurts not another. It hurts himself alone, and even he has this gracious privilege that, as soon as he desires it, he may be free from it altogether. 56. To my will the will of another is as indifferent as his poor breath and flesh. And how much soever we were formed for the sake of each other, yet the governing part of each of us has its own proper power; otherwise the vice of another might become my own misery. God thought fit that this should not be; lest it should be in another's power to make me unhappy. 57. The sun seems to us diffused everywhere, pervasive of all things, yet never exhausted. This diffusion is a sort of extension, and hence the Greek word for rays is thought to be derived. You may observe the nature of a ray if you see it entering through some small hole into a darkened chamber. Its direction is straight; and it is reflected around when it falls upon any solid body, which shuts it off from the air beyond. There it stands and does not slip or fall. Now, such should be the flow and diffusion of the understanding; never exhausted, always extending; not violently or furiously dashing against the obstacles that meet it, nor falling aside, but resting there and illuminating whatever will receive it. That which will not transmit the light does but deprive itself of radiance. 58. He who dreads death dreads either the extinction of all sense or the experience of a new one. If all sense be extinguished, there can be no sense of evil. If a different sort of sense be acquired you become a different creature, and do not cease to live. 59. Men were created the one for the other. Teach them better then, or bear with them. 60. Mind moves in one way, and an arrow in another. The mind, when cautiously proceeding, or when casting round in deliberation about what to pursue, is nevertheless carried onward straight toward its proper mark. 61. Penetrate into the governing part of others; and also allow others to enter into your own. END OF THE EIGHTH BOOK. BOOK IX. 1. He who does injustice commits impiety. For since universal Nature has formed the rational animals for one another; each to be useful to the other according to his merit, and never hurtful; he who transgresses this her will is clearly guilty of impiety against the most ancient and venerable of the Gods. He who lies sins against the same divinity. For the nature of the whole is the nature of all things which exist; and things which exist are akin to all that has come to be. Nature, indeed, is called truth, and is the first cause of all truths. He, then, that lies willingly is guilty of impiety, in so far as by deceiving he works injury: and he also who lies unwillingly, in so far as he is out of tune with universal Nature, and in so far as he works disorder in the Universe by fighting against its design. He is at war with Nature who sets himself against the truth. He has neglected the means with which Nature furnished him, and cannot now distinguish false from true. He, too, who pursues pleasure as good, and shuns pain as evil, is guilty of impiety. Such a one must needs frequently blame the common nature for unseemly awards of fortune to bad and to good men. For the bad often enjoy pleasures and possess the means to attain them, and the good often meet with pain and with what causes pain. Again, he who dreads pain must sometimes dread a thing which will make part of the world order, and this is impious. And he who pursues pleasure will not abstain from injustice, and this is clear impiety. In those things to which the common nature is indifferent (for she had not made both, were she not indifferent to either), he who would follow Nature ought, in this also, to be of like mind with her, and shew the like indifference. And whoever is not indifferent to pain and pleasure, life and death, glory and ignominy, all of which universal Nature uses indifferently, is clearly impious. By Nature using them indifferently, I mean that they befall indifferently all beings which exist, and ensue upon others in the great chain of consequence which began in the primal impulse of Providence. Providence, in pursuance of this impulse, and starting from a definite beginning, set about this fair structure of the universe when she had conceived the plan of all that was to be, and appointed the distinct powers which were to produce the several substances, changes, and successions. 2. It were the more desirable lot to depart from among men, unacquainted with falsehood, hypocrisy, luxury, or vanity. The next choice were to expire when cloyed with these vices. Have you then chosen rather to abide in evil; or has experience not yet persuaded you to fly from amidst the plague? For a corruption of the mind is far more a plague than any pestilential distemper or change in the surrounding air we breathe. The one is pestilence to animals as animals: but the other to men as men. 3. Despise not death; but receive it well content, as one of the things which Nature wills. For even as it is to be young, to be old, to grow up, to be full grown; even as it is to breed teeth, and beard, and to grow grey, to beget, to go with child, to be delivered; and to undergo all the effects of nature which life's seasons bring; such is it also to be dissolved in death. It becomes not therefore a man of wisdom to be careless, or impatient, or ostentatiously contemptuous about death; he should rather await its coming as one of the operations of nature. Even as now you await the season when the child of your wife's body shall issue into the light, await the hour when your soul shall fall out of these its teguments. If you wish for the common sort of comfort, here is a thought which goes to the heart. You will be completely resigned to death if you consider the things you are about to leave, and the morals of that confused crowd from which your soul is to be disengaged. It is far from right to be offended with them. It is even your duty to have a tender care for them, and to bear with them mildly. Yet remember that the parting, when it comes, will not be with men who think as you think. For the only thing which, if it might be, could hold you back and detain you in life, would be to live with those who had reached the same principles of life as you. But, as it is, you, seeing how great is the fatigue and toil arising from the jarring courses of those who live together, may cry: "Haste, death! lest I, too, should forget myself." 4. The sinner sins against himself. The wrong-doer wrongs himself by making himself evil. 5. Men are often unjust by omissions as well as by actions. 6. Be satisfied with your present opinion, if certain; with your present course of action, if social; with your present mood, if well pleased with all that comes upon you from without. 7. Wipe out impression; stay impulse; quench desire; and keep the governing part master of itself. 8. The soul distributed among the irrational animals is one. Rational beings, on the other hand, partake of one reasoning intelligence. Even so, there is one earth to all things earthy; and, for all of us who are endowed with sight and breath, there is one light by which to see, one air to breathe. 9. All things that share a common quality are strongly drawn to that which is of their own kind. The earthy tends towards the earth; fluids flow together, aerial bodies likewise; and naught but force prevents their confluence. Fire rises upward on account of the elemental fire; and it is so ready to join in kindling with all the fire that is here that any matter pretty dry is easily set on fire, because that which hinders its kindling is the weaker element in its composition. Thus also, then, whatever partakes of the common intellectual nature hastens in like manner, or even more markedly, towards that which is akin to it. For the more it excels other natures, the stronger is its tendency to mix with and adhere to its kind. Accordingly, among irrational creatures we find swarms of bees, herds of cattle, nurture of the young, and love, of a sort. For even in animals there is a soul; and in the more noble natures a mutual attraction is found to be at work, such as does not exist in plants, or stones, or wood. Among the rational animals, again, there are societies and friendships, families and assemblies; and, in war, treaties and truces. Among beings still more excellent, there subsists, though they be placed far asunder, a certain kind of union, as among the stars. Thus ascent in the scale can produce a sympathy even in things that are widely distant. But mark what happens among us. It is only intellectual beings who forget the social concern for one another, and the mutual tendency to union. Here alone the social confluence is not seen. Yet are they environed and held by it, though they strive to escape; and nature always prevails. Observe and you will see my meaning: for sooner may one find some earthy thing which joins with nothing earthy, than a man severed and separate from all men. 10. Man, God, and the Universe, all bear fruit; and each in their own season. Custom indeed has appropriated the expression to vines and the like; but that is nothing. Reason has its fruit both for all men and for itself, and produces just such other things as reason itself is. 11. If you can, teach men better. If not, remember that the virtue of charity was given you to be used in such a case. Nay, the Gods are patient with them, and even aid them in their pursuit of some things such as health, wealth, and glory, so gracious are they! You may be so too. Who hinders you? 12. Bear toil and pain, not as if wretched under it, nor as courting pity or admiration. Wish for one thing only; always to act or to refrain as social wisdom requires. 13. To-day I have escaped from all trouble; or rather I have cast out all trouble from me. For it was not without but within, in my own opinions. 14. All things are, in our experience, common; in their continuance but for a day; and in their matter sordid. All things now are as they were in the times of those we have buried. 15. Things stand without, by themselves, neither knowing or declaring aught to us concerning themselves. What is it then that pronounces upon them? The ruling part. 16. It is not in passive feeling, but in action, that the good and evil of the rational animal formed for society consists. Similarly his virtue or his vice lies not in feeling but in action. 17. To the stone thrown up it is no evil to fall; no good to rise. 18. Penetrate the souls of men, and you will see what judges you fear, and how they sit in judgment on themselves. 19. All things are in change. You yourself are under continual transmutation, and, in some sort, corruption. So is the whole universe. 20. Another's sin you must leave with himself. 21. The ceasing of any action, the extinction of any keen desire, or of any opinion, is as it were a death to them. This is no evil. Think again of the ages of your life; childhood, youth, manhood, old age. Each change of these was a death. Is there anything to dread here? Think now of your life as it was, first under your grandfather, then under your mother, then under your father; and, as you find there many other alterations, changes, and endings, ask yourself: Is there anything to dread here? Thus neither is there anything to dread in the cessation, ending, and change of your whole life. 22. Make swift appeal to your own ruling part, to that of the Universe, and to his who has offended you. To your own, that you may make it a mind disposed to justice; to that of the Universe, that you may remember of what you are a part; and to his, that you may know whether he has acted in ignorance or by design, and that you may also reflect that he is your kinsman. 23. You yourself are a part of a social system necessary to complete the whole. Accordingly, let your every action be a similar part of the social life. And if any action has not its reference, either immediate or distant, to the common good as its end, this action disorders your life and frustrates its unity. It is sedition like that of the man who, in a commonwealth, does all in his power to sever himself from the general harmony and concord. 24. Children's quarrels! Child's play! Poor spirits carrying about dead corpses! Such is our life. The 'Masque of the Dead' is intelligible by comparison. 25. Go to the quality of the cause; abstract it from the material, and contemplate it by itself. Determine then the time: how long, at furthest, this thing, of this peculiar quality, can naturally subsist. 26. You have endured innumerable sufferings by not being satisfied with your own ruling part when it does the things which it was formed to do. Enough then of that. 27. When another reproaches or hates you, or utters anything to that purpose; go to his soul; enter in there; and look what manner of man he is. You will see that you need not trouble yourself to make him think well or ill of you. Yet you should be kindly towards such men, for they are by nature your friends: and the Gods, too, aid them in all ways; by dreams, by oracles, and even in the things about which they are most eager. 28. The course of things in the world is ever the same; a continual rotation; up and down, from age to age. Either the Universal Mind exerts itself in every particular event, in which case you must accept what comes immediately from it: or it has exerted itself once and for all, and, as a result, all things go on for ever, in a necessary chain of consequence: or again atoms and indivisible particles are the origin of all things. In fine, if there be a God, all is well; and if there be only chance, you at least need not act by chance. The earth will presently cover us all; and then this earth will itself be changed into other forms, and these again into others, and so on without end. And, if any one considers how swiftly those changes and transmutations roll on, like one wave upon another, he will despise all things mortal. 29. The universal cause is like a winter torrent. It sweeps all along with it. How very little worth are those poor creatures who pretend to understand affairs of state, and imagine they unite in themselves the statesman and the philosopher! The frothy fools! Do you, O man! that which Nature now requires of you. Set about it if you have the means; and look not around you to see if any be taking notice, neither hope to realize Plato's Republic. Be satisfied if the smallest thing go well. Consider even such an event as no small matter. For who can change the opinions of men? And without change of opinion what is their state but a slavery, under which they groan, while they pretend to obey? Come now; speak of Alexander, Philip, and Demetrius of Phalerum. They know best whether they understood what the common nature required of them, and whether they trained themselves accordingly. But, if they designed only to play the tragic hero, no one has condemned me to do the like. The work of philosophy is simple and modest. Lead me not astray in pursuit of a vainglorious stateliness. 30. Look down, as from some eminence, upon the innumerable herds, the countless solemn festivals, the voyaging of every sort, in tempests and in calms; the different states of those who come into life, enter upon life's associations, and leave it in the end. Consider, too, the life which others have lived formerly, the life they will live after you, and the life that barbarous peoples are now living. How many of these know not even your name; how many will quickly forget it; how many are there who perhaps praise you now, but will shortly blame you. Reflect, then, that neither is surviving fame a thing of value; nor present glory; nor anything at all. 31. Let nothing due to a cause outside yourself disturb your calm. In the workings of the active principle within you let there be justice: that is a bent of will and a course of action which have social good as their one end, and so are suited to your nature. 32. You can suppress many of the superfluous troubles which beset you, for they lie wholly in your own opinion. By this you will give ample room and ease to your life. You may compass this end by comprehending the whole Universe in your judgment; by contemplating eternity; and by reflecting on the swift changes of individual things, thinking how short is the time from their birth to their dissolution, how immense the space of ages before that birth, how equally infinite the eternity which shall succeed that dissolution. 33. All things that you see will quickly perish; and those who behold them perishing are very soon themselves to die. And he who dies oldest will be in like case with him who dies before his time. 34. What manner of souls have these men? What is the end of their striving; and on what accounts do they love and honour? Imagine their souls naked before you. When they fancy that their censures hurt, or their praises profit us, how great is their self-conceit! 35. Loss is naught but change; in change is the joy of universal Nature, and by her all things are ordered well. From the beginning of ages they have been shaped alike, and to all eternity they will be the same. How then can you say that all things have been, and ever will be evil; that among so many Gods there has been found no power to rectify; but that the Universe is condemned to endure the burden of never-ending ill? 36. How corrupt is the material substance of every thing, water, dust, bones, and foulness! Again; marble is but the concrete humour of the earth, gold and silver its heavy dregs. Our garments are but hair, the purple dye blood. All else is of a like nature. Breath, too, is just the same, ever changing from this to that. 37. Enough of this wretched life: enough of repining and apish trifling. Why are you disturbed? Are any of these troubles new? What excites you so? Is it the cause? Then view it well. Is it the matter? View it also well. Besides these there is nothing. Wherefore at last act with more simplicity and goodness towards the Gods. Whether you look on this spectacle for a hundred years or for three it is the same. 38. If he has done wrong, the evil is with him: and perhaps, too, he has not done wrong. 39. Either all things proceed from one source of intelligence and come together in one body, in which case the part must not complain of what comes about for the benefit of the whole; or all is atoms, and there is nothing else but confused mixture and dissipation. Why then are you disturbed? Say to your soul: "Thou art dead: thou art rotten: thou hast turned beast, joined the herd, and dost feed along with them." 40. Either the Gods have power or they have none. If they have no power, why do you pray? If they have power, why do you not choose to pray to them for power neither to fear, nor to desire, nor to be grieved over any of these external things, rather than for their presence or their absence? Surely, if the Gods can aid man at all, they can aid him in this. But perhaps you will say "the Gods have put this in my own power." Then is it not better to use that which is in your own power and preserve your liberty, than to set your heart on what is beyond your power and become an abject slave? And who has told you that the Gods aid us not in these things also which are in our power? Begin to pray about them and you will see. One man prays: "May I possess that woman!" Do you pray: "May I have no wish to possess her!" Another prays: "May I be delivered from so and so!" Pray you: "May I not need to be delivered from him!" A third cries: "May I not lose my child!" Let your prayer be: "May I not fear to lose him!" In fine, turn your prayers this way, and observe what comes of it. 41. Epicurus says: "In my sickness my conversations were not about the diseases of this poor body; nor did I speak of any such things to those who came to me. I continued to discourse as before on the principles of natural Philosophy, and was chiefly intent on the problem of how the mind, though it partakes in the violent commotions of the flesh, might remain undisturbed and keep guard on its own proper excellence. I permitted not the physicians," he continues, "to magnify their office, and vaunt themselves as if they were doing-something of great moment, but my life continued pleasant and happy." What he did then, in sickness, do you also if ye fall ill, or suffer any other misfortune. Never to depart from your philosophy whatever befalls you, never to join in the folly of the vulgar and the ignorant, is a maxim common to all the schools. Give your mind only to the business now in hand and to the means whereby it is to be accomplished. 42. When you are offended by the shamelessness of any man, straightway ask yourself: Can the world exist without shameless men? It cannot. Therefore do not demand what is impossible. Your enemy also is one of these shameless people who must needs be in the universe. Have the same question also at hand when you are shocked at craft, or perfidy, or any other sin. For while you remember that it is impossible that the class should not exist, you will be more charitable to each particular individual. It is useful also to have this reflection ready: What virtue has nature given to man wherewith to combat this fault? Against unreason she has given meekness as an antidote; against another weakness another power. You are also at full liberty to set right one who has wandered; now every wrong-doer is missing his proper aim and has gone astray. And then, in what are you injured? You will find that none of those at whom you are exasperated have done anything whereby your intellectual part was like to be the worse. Now anything which can really harm or hurt you has its subsistence there, and there alone. And wherein is it strange or evil that the man untaught acts after his kind? Look if you ought not rather to blame yourself for not having laid your account with his being guilty of such faults. Your reason gave you the means to conclude that it was probable that he would do this wrong; you forgot, and yet wonder that he has done it. But above all, when you are blaming any one for faithlessness or ingratitude, turn to yourself. The fault lies manifestly with you, if you trusted that a man of such a disposition could keep faith; or if, when you granted the favour, you did not grant it without ulterior views, and on the principle that the complete and immediate reward of your action lay in the doing of it. What would you more, when you have done a man a kindness? Is it not enough for you that you have acted in this according to your nature? Do you ask a reward for it? It is as if the eye were to ask a reward for seeing, or the feet for walking. For just as these parts are formed for a certain purpose, which when they fulfil according to their proper structure, they attain their proper end; so man, formed by nature to do kindness to his fellows, whenever he acts kindly, or in any other way works for the common good, has fulfilled the purpose of his creation, and has possession of what is his own. END OF THE NINTH BOOK. BOOK X. 1. Wilt thou ever, O my soul, be good and single, and one, and naked, more open to view than the body which surrounds thee? Wilt thou ever taste of the loving and satisfied temper? Wilt thou ever be full and without wants, setting thy heart on nothing, animate or inanimate, for the enjoyment of pleasure; not desiring time for longer enjoyment; nor place, nor country, nor fine climate, nor congenial company? Wilt thou be satisfied with thy present state, and well pleased with every present circumstance? Wilt thou persuade thyself that all things are thine; that all is well with thee; that all comes to thee from the Gods; and that what is best for thee is what they are pleased to give, now and henceforth, for the preservation of that perfected being, which is good, just, and beautiful; which generates, combines, embraces, and includes all fleeting things that dissolve to bring forth others like themselves? Wilt thou never be able to live a fellow citizen with Gods and men, approving them and by them approved? 2. In so far as you are governed by nature only, observe carefully what nature demands; then do that freely, if thereby your nature as a living being be not made worse. Next you must consider what the nature of a living being demands, and allow yourself everything of this kind by which your nature as a rational being is not made worse. Now it is plain that what is rational is also social. Therefore follow these rules and trouble no further. 3. Whatever happens, Nature has either formed you able to bear it or unable. If able, then bear it as Nature has made you able, and fret not. If unable, yet do not fret, for when the trial has consumed you it too will pass away. Remember, however, that Nature has made you able to bear whatever it is in the power of your own opinion to make endurable or tolerable, if only you conceive it profitable or fit to be borne. 4. If a man is going wrong, instruct him kindly, and shew him his mistake. If you are unable to do this, blame yourself or none. 5. Whatever happens to you was prearranged for you from all eternity; and the concatenation of causes had from eternity interwoven your existence with this contingency. 6. Whether all be atoms, or there be a universal Law of Nature, let it be laid down first that I am a part of the whole which is governed by Nature; secondly, that I am associated with other parts like myself. Mindful of this, since I am a part, I shall not be dissatisfied with anything appointed me by the whole. For nothing is hurtful to the part which is profitable to the whole, since the whole contains nothing unprofitable to itself. All natural systems have this law in common, and the system of the Universe has another law besides; namely that it cannot be forced by any external cause to produce anything hurtful to itself. If therefore I remember that I am part of such a whole, I shall be satisfied with all that flows therefrom. And, inasmuch as I am associated with parts like myself, I will do nothing unsocial; but rather draw to my kind, turn my every endeavour to the public good, and shun the contrary. In such a course my life must needs run well, just as you would hold that the life of a citizen runs well when he passes on from one public-spirited action to another, and throws himself heartily into every task appointed him by the State. 7. The parts of the whole, I mean the parts which are contained in the Universe, must necessarily perish; "perish," let us say, meaning change. Now, if it be a necessary evil for the parts to perish, it could not be well for the whole that its parts should tend to change and be constructed to perish in various ways. Did Nature then set out to injure her own constituent parts, making them so that they are liable to evil and of necessity fall into it; or did it escape her notice that this comes to pass? Both suppositions are incredible. And if, dropping the notion of Nature, one were merely to put it that things are constituted so, then how ridiculous at the same time to say that the parts of the Universe are constituted so as to change, and also to wonder and fret at change or dissolution, as if it were something against the course of Nature; especially as everything is dissolved into the elements out of which it arose. For there is either a scattering of the elements of which a thing was constructed, or a conversion of these, of the solid into earth, of the spiritual into air. So that these constituents are resumed into the system of the Universe, which either undergoes periodical conflagration, or is renewed by never-ending changes. And do not imagine that you had all your earthy and aerial matter from your birth. For the whole of this was an accession of yesterday or the day before, from your food and from the air you breathed. It is this accession which changes, and not what your mother bore. And granting that this recent accession may incline you more to what is individual in your constitution; yet, I think, it alters nothing of what has just been said. 8. Having taken to yourself these titles: good, modest, true, prudent, even-tempered and magnanimous, look to it that you change them not; and, if you should come to lose them, seek them straightway again. And remember that prudence means for you reasoned observation of all things, and careful attention; even temper, cheerful acceptance of the lot appointed by universal Nature; magnanimity, the exaltation of the thinking part above any pleasant or painful commotions of the flesh, above vain-glory, above death and all such things. If you steadfastly maintain yourself in these titles, with no hankering after hearing them given to you by others, you will be a new man, and a new life will open for you. For to continue as you have been till now, in the same life of distraction and defilement, would mark you as a man devoid of sense, who clings to life like the half-eaten beast-fighters, who, though covered with wounds and gore, do yet appeal to be reserved until tomorrow, to be cast again in their wretchedness to the claws and fangs that lacerated them before. Take your stand then on these few titles; and if you are able to abide in them, abide, as one removed to the Islands of the Blest. But if you perceive that you are falling away, and cannot prevail; have the courage to retire into some corner where you may hope to prevail, or else depart from life altogether, not in anger but in all simplicity, freedom, and modesty, having done at least one thing in life well, by so leaving it. Now it will greatly help you to be mindful of your titles, if you recollect that the Gods desire not adulation, but that reasoning beings should grow in likeness to themselves; and further that a fig tree is set to bear figs, a dog to hunt, a bee to gather honey, and a man to do a man's work. 9. Mimes, war, panic, sloth, servility, will wipe out the sacred maxims which you have gathered by observing Nature and stored in your mind. You ought to look and act in every case so that not only shall the task before you be accomplished, but also your theoretic faculty exercised, and the self-confidence which springs from special knowledge preserved without ostentation or affected concealment. Will you ever attain to simplicity; to dignity; to a perfect discrimination in every case as to what a thing really is, what its true place in the Universe, what the time it may endure, what its composition, to whom it may belong, and who can give and take it away? 10. The spider exults when he has captured a fly; one man because he has taken a little hare, another because he has netted an anchovy, another because he has hunted down a wild boar or a bear; and another because he has conquered the Sarmatians. But are they not brigands all, if you look to their principles. 11. Acquire a method of perceiving how all things change into one another. Pursue this branch of Philosophy and continually exercise yourself therein. There is nothing so proper as this for cultivating greatness of mind. He who does so has already put off the body; and, having realized how soon he must depart from among men and leave all earthly things behind him, he resigns himself entirely to justice in all his own actions, and to the law of the Universe in everything else which happens. As for what any one may say or think of him or do against him, he gives it not a thought, but contents himself with these two things: to do justly what he has in hand, and to love the lot appointed for him. Such a man has thrown off all hurry and bustle; and has no other will but this, to keep the straight path according to the law, and to follow God whose path is ever straight. 12. What need for suspicion when it is open for you to consider what ought to be done? If you see your way, proceed in it calmly, inflexibly. If you do not see it, pause and consult the best advisers. If any other obstacle arise, proceed with prudent caution, according to the means you have; keeping always close to what appears just. That is the best to which you can attain: and failure in that is the only proper miscarriage. He who in everything follows reason is always at leisure, yet ever ready for action, always cheerful, yet composed. 13. As soon as you awake ask yourself: Will it be of consequence to you if what is just and good be done by some other man? It will not. Have you forgotten what manner of men in bed and at table are those who make such display in praise and blame of others; what they do, what they shun and what they pursue; how they steal and how they rob, not with hands and feet but with their most precious part, whereby, if a man will, he may gain faith, modesty, truth, law, a good directing spirit? 14. To Nature, which gives and again resumes all things, the well-instructed, modest man will say: "Give what thou wilt; take again what thou wilt." And this he says, not with ostentation, but out of pure obedience and good will to Nature. 15. What remains to you of this life is little. Live as on a mountain. For it makes no difference whether we live here or there, provided we live like citizens everywhere in the world. Let men see and know you as a man indeed, living according to Nature. If they cannot endure you, let them slay you. It is better so than to live as they live. 16. Discourse no more of what a good man should be; but be one. 17. Constantly imagine all time and all existence; and think that every individual thing is in substance a fig seed, and in time the turn of an auger. 18. Consider each of the things around you as already dissolving, in a state of change, and as it were corrupting and being dissipated, or as, one and all, formed by Nature to die. 19. What sort of men are they when they are eating, sleeping, procreating, easing nature, and the like? Then see them lording it over their fellows, puffed up with pride, angry, or issuing judgments from on high! To how many were they slaves but lately, and why! And in what case will they shortly be? 20. That is for the advantage of every man which is brought by universal Nature; and for his advantage at the very time at which she brings it. 21. "Earth loves the rain;" "and the majestic Ether loves." The Universe loves to bring about whatever is coming to be. I then will say to the Universe: "What thou lovest I love." Is it not a common saying that, "so-and-so loves to happen?" 22. Either you are living here your accustomed life; or you are going abroad, and that at your own will: or you are dying, and your public office is discharged. Now, besides these there is nothing. Be therefore of good courage. 23. Keep this ever clear before you: that a country retreat is just like any other place. All things here go the same as on a mountain top, or on the sea beach, or where you will. You may always find that life of the wise man who, in Platonic phrase, "makes the city wall serve him for a shepherd's fold on the mountains." 24. What is my soul to me? What am I making of it, and to what purpose am I now using it? Is it void of understanding? Is it loosened and rent from the great community? Is it glued to, and mingled with, the flesh so as to follow each fleshly motion? 25. Whoever flies from his master is a runaway. Our master is the law, and the law-breaker is a runaway; and so is he also who through grief, or anger, or fear will not acquiesce in something that has happened, is happening, or will happen, in the course of things predestined by the all-ruling power which is the law, laying down for every man what is proper for him. He then who is afraid or grieved or angry, is a runaway. 26. He who has cast seed into the womb departs; another cause takes and works upon it and completes the child. How wonderful the result from such a beginning! The child, again, takes food down its throat; another cause takes and transforms it into sensation, motion, in a word into life and strength and other things, how many and surprising! Consider then these things happening in such hidden ways, and view the power which produces them just as we perceive the gravitation and levitation of bodies; not indeed with our eyes, yet none the less clearly. 27. Continually reflect that all that is happening now happened exactly in the same way before; and reflect that the like will happen again. Place before your eyes all that you have ever known from your own experience or from ancient history; dramas and scenes, all similar; such as the whole court of Hadrianus, the whole court of Antoninus, the whole court of Philip, of Alexander, of Croesus. All these were similar, only the actors different. 28. Imagine every one who is grieved or storms about anything whatever, to be like the pig in a sacrifice, which kicks and screams under the knife. Such, too, is he who, on his couch, deplores in silence, by himself, that we are all tied to our fate. Reflect also that only to a rational being is it given to submit to what happens willingly; the bare submission is a necessity upon all. 29. Look attentively on each particular thing you do, and ask yourself if death be a terror because it deprives you of this. 30. When you are offended at any one's fault, turn at once to yourself and consider of what similar fault you yourself are guilty; such as esteeming for good things, money, pleasure, a little glory, or the like. By fixing your attention on this you will speedily forget your anger, especially if it occur to you that he acts under compulsion and cannot do otherwise; else, if it be in your power, relieve him from the compulsion. 31. When you have seen Satyrio the Socratic, think of Eutyches or Hymen; when you have seen Euphrates, think of Eutychio or Silvanus. When Alciphron comes before you, think of Tropaeophorus; and when Xenophon think of Crito or Severus. When you look upon yourself think of any of the Caesars, and with every man likewise. Then let this occur to you: Where, now, are these? Nowhere; or who can tell? For thus you will see all human things to be smoke and nothingness; especially if you call to mind that what has once been changed will never exist again through all the infinity of time. Why then this concern? And why does it not suffice you to live out your short span in well ordered wise? What material, what a subject for Philosophy you are shunning! For what are all earthly things but exercises for the rational power, when it has viewed all things that occur in life accurately and in their natural order? Abide then until you have assimilated all these things, as a strong stomach assimilates every variety of food, as a bright fire turns whatever you throw upon it into flame and radiance. 32. Let no man have it in his power to say with truth of you that you are not a man of simplicity, candour, and goodness. But let him prove to be mistaken who holds any such opinion of you. This is quite in your power; for who shall hinder you from being good and single-hearted? Only do you determine to live no longer if you cannot be such a man; for neither does reason require, in that case, that you should. 33. In the present matter what is the soundest that can be done or said? For, whatever that may be, you are at liberty to do or say it. Make no excuses as if hindered. You will never cease from groaning until your disposition is such that what luxury is to men of pleasure, that to you is doing what is suitable to the constitution of man on every occasion that is thrown or falls in your way. You should regard as enjoyment everything which you are at liberty to do in accordance with your own proper nature; and this liberty you have everywhere. Now to the cylinder it is not given to move everywhere with its proper motion; nor to water, nor to fire, nor to any other thing that is governed by a natural law only, or by a soul irrational; for there are many circumstances which constrain and stop them. But intelligent reason can pursue through every obstacle the course for which it was created, and which it wills to follow. Set before your eyes this ease with which reason makes its way through all obstacles, as fire goes upwards, a stone downwards, or a cylinder down a slope, and seek for nothing further. The rest of man's difficulties are merely of the body, the lifeless part of him; or else they are such as cannot crush, or in any way injure him save through opinion, or the surrender of reason itself: otherwise he who suffered by them would himself straightway become evil. In the case of all other organisms, when mishap befalls, the sufferer is thereby rendered worse. But in this respect it may be said that a man becomes better and more praiseworthy by rightly using his circumstances. In fine, remember that nothing which hurts not the city hurts the man who is by nature a citizen; nor does that hurt the city which hurts not the law. Now, none of the things called misfortunes can hurt the law. Accordingly, what hurts not the law can hurt neither city nor citizen. 34. To the man who is penetrated with true principles, the shortest, the most common hint is a sufficient memorial to keep him free of sorrow and fear. Such as:-- Some leaves the winds blow down: the fruitful wood Breeds more meanwhile, which in springtide appear. Of men thus ends one race, while one is born. Your children are leaves; leaves, too, the creatures who confidently cry aloud and deal out eulogy, or, it may be, curses; or who carp and jeer in secret. Leaves, likewise, are they who transmit our fame to posterity. All these "in springtide appear;" then the wind shakes them down, and the forest grows more to take their places. Shortness of life is common to all things, yet you shun and pursue them, as though they were to have no ending. But a little and you will fall asleep; and anon others shall mourn for him who carried your bier. 35. The healthy eye ought to look on everything visible, and not to say, "I want green," like an eye that is diseased. Sound hearing or sense of smell ought to be ready for all that can be heard or smelt; and the healthy stomach should be equally disposed for all sorts of food, as a mill for all that it was built to grind. So also the healthy mind should be ready for all things that happen. That mind which says, "Let my children be spared, and let men applaud my every action," is as an eye which begs for green, or as teeth which require soft food. 36. There is no man so happily fated but that when he is dying some bystander will rejoice at the doom which is coming upon him. Were he a virtuous and wise man; will not some one at the last say within himself: "At last I shall breathe freely, unoppressed by this pedagogue. He was not indeed hard on any of us; but I always felt that he tacitly condemned us"? This they would say of a good man. But, in my own case, how many more reasons are there why a multitude would rejoice to be rid of me? You will reflect on this when dying, and depart with the less regret when you consider: "I am leaving a life from which my very partners, for whom I toiled, and prayed, and planned, are wishing me to begone; hoping, it may be, to gain some additional advantage from my departure." Why then should one strive for a longer sojourn here? Yet let not your parting with them be less pleasant on this account. Preserve your own character, remain to them friendly, benevolent, gracious. On the other hand, depart from your fellow-men, not as if torn away; but let your going be like that of one who dies an easy death, whose soul is gently released from the body. Nature knit and cemented you to your fellows, but now she parts you from them. I part, then, as from relations, not reluctant, but unconstrained. For death, too, is a thing accordant with nature. 37. Accustom yourself as much as possible, when any one takes any action, to consider only: To what end is he working? But begin at home; and examine yourself first of all. 38. Remember that the mover of the puppet strings is the hidden principle within. It is that which is eloquence; that which is life; that, if I may say so, which is the man. Never, in your imagination, confound that principle with the surrounding earthen vessel and the little organs that are kneaded on to it. Excepting that they grow upon us, they are like the carpenter's axe; since, without the moving and restraining principle, none of these parts in itself is of any greater service than the shuttle to the weaver, the pen to the writer, or the whip to the charioteer. END OF THE TENTH BOOK. BOOK XI. 1. These are the characteristics of the rational soul: It beholds itself; it regulates itself in every part; it fashions itself as it wills; the fruit it bears itself enjoys, whereas the products of plants and of the lower animals are enjoyed by others. It reaches its individual end, wheresoever the close of life may overtake it. In a dance or an actor's part any interruption spoils the completeness of the whole action. Not so with the rational soul. At whatever point in its action, or wheresoever it is overtaken by death, it makes its part complete and all-sufficient; so that it can say, "I have received what is mine." Also it ranges through the whole universe, and the void around it, and discerns its plan. It stretches forth into limitless eternity, and grasps the periodical regeneration of all things, seeing and comprehending that those who come after us will see nothing new, and that those that went before saw no more than we have seen. Nay, a man of forty, of any tolerable understanding, has, because of the uniformity of things, seen, in a manner, all that has been or will be. Characteristic of the rational soul also are:--Love to all around us, truth, modesty; and respect for itself above all other things, which is characteristic also of the general law. Thus there is no discordance between right reason and the reason of justice. 2. You will think little of a pleasing song, a dance, or a gymnastic display, if you analyse the melody into its separate notes, and ask yourself regarding each, "Does this impress me?" You will blush to own it; and so also if you analyse the dance into its single motions and postures, and if you similarly treat the gymnastic display. In general then, except as regards virtue and virtuous action, remember to recur to the constituent parts of things, and by dissecting to despise them; and transfer this practice to life as a whole. 3. How happy is the soul that stands ready to part from the body when it must, and either to be extinguished or to be scattered, or to survive! But let this readiness arise from individual judgment, not from mere obstinacy, as with the Christians, but deliberately, with dignity, and with no affected air of tragedy; so that others may be led to a like disposition. 4. Have I done anything for the common good? Is not this itself my advantage? Let this thought be ever with you, and desist not. 5. What is your art? Well doing. And how else can this come than from sound general principles regarding Nature as a whole, and the constitution of man in particular? 6. First of all, tragedy was introduced to remind us that certain events happen, and are fated to happen as they do; and to teach us that what entertains us on the stage should not grieve us on the greater stage of the world. You see that such things must be accomplished; and that even they bore them who cried aloud, O Cithaeron! Our dramatic poets have said some excellent things; especially the following:-- Me and my children, if the Gods neglect, It is for some good reason-- and again, Vain is all anger at external things; and, To reap our life like ears of ripened corn-- and the like. And after tragedy came the Old Comedy, using a schoolmaster's freedom of speech, and employing plain language with great profit to inculcate the duty of humility. To this end Diogenes used a method much the same. Next consider the nature of the Middle Comedy; and lastly for what purpose the New was introduced, which gradually degenerated into the mere ingenuity of artificial mimicry. It is well known that some useful things were said by the New Comic Writers; but what useful end had they in view in all their accumulated poetry and playmaking? 7. How manifest it is that no other course of life was more adapted to the practice of philosophy than that which now is yours. 8. A branch cut off from its adjacent branch must necessarily be severed from the whole tree. Even so a man, parted from any fellow-man, has fallen away from the whole social community. Now a branch is cut off by some external agency; but a man by his own action separates himself from his neighbour--by hatred and aversion, unaware that he has thus torn himself away from the universal polity. Yet there is always given us the good gift of Zeus, who founded the great community, whereby it is in our power to be reingrafted on our kind, and to become once more, natural parts completing the whole. Yet the frequent happening of such separations, makes the reunion and restoration of the separated member more and more difficult. And in general a branch which has grown from the first upon a tree, and remained a living part of it, is not like one which has been cut and reingrafted; as the gardeners would say, they are of the same growth but of different persuasion. 9. As those who oppose you in the path of right reason have no power to divert you from sane action, so let them not turn you away from amenity towards themselves. Be watchful alike to persist in stable judgment and action, and in meekness towards those who would hinder or otherwise molest you. It is equally weak to grow angry with them or to desist from action and submit to defeat. Both are equally deserters-- he who runs away, and he who refuses to stand by friend and kinsman. 10. Nature cannot be inferior to Art. The Arts are but imitations of Nature. If this be so, that Nature which is the most perfect and comprehensive of all cannot be inferior to the best artistic skill. Now all Arts use inferior material for higher purposes; so also then does universal Nature. Hence the origin of justice, from which again the other virtues spring. Justice cannot be preserved if we are solicitous about things indifferent, if we are easily deceived, rash, and changeable. 11. If those things, the pursuit and avoidance of which trouble you, come not to you; but, as it happens, you go to them; then let your judgment be at peace concerning them, they will remain motionless, and you will no more be seen pursuing or avoiding them. 12. The sphere of the soul attains to perfect shape when it neither expands to what is without, nor contracts upon what is within; neither wrinkles nor collapses, but shines with a radiance whereby it discerns the truth of all things, both without itself and within. 13. Does any man contemn me? Let him look to that. And let me look to it that I be found doing or saying nothing worthy of his contempt. Does any one hate me? That is his affair. I shall be kind and good-natured to every one, and ready to shew his mistake to him that hates me; not in order to upbraid him, or to make a show of my patience, but from genuine goodness, like Phocion, if he indeed was sincere. Your inward character should be such that the Gods may see you neither angry nor repining at anything. What evil is it for you now to act according to your nature, and to accept now what is seasonable to the nature of the Universe; you, a man appointed to do some service for the common good? 14. Although they despise, yet they flatter one another. Although they desire to overtop, yet they cringe to one another. 15. How rotten and insincere is his profession who says, "I mean to deal straightforwardly with you." What are you doing, man? There is no need for such a preface. It will appear of itself. Such a profession should be written clearly on your forehead. A man's character should shine forth clearly from his eyes; as the beloved sees that he is so in the glances of those that love him. The straightforward, good man should be like one of rank odour who can be recognised by the passer by as soon as he approaches, whether he will or no. The ostentation of straightforwardness is the knife under the cloak. Nothing is baser than wolf-friendship. Shun it above all things. The good, straightforward, kindly man bears all these qualities in his eyes, and is not to be mistaken. 16. To live the best life is within the power of the soul, if it be indifferent to indifferent things. And it will be indifferent if it looks on all such things, severally and wholly, with discrimination; mindful that not one of them can impose upon us an opinion concerning itself, or can come of itself to us. Things stand motionless without; and it is we that form opinions about them within, and, as it were, write these opinions upon our hearts. We may avoid so writing them; or, if one has crept in unawares, we may instantly blot it out. 'Tis but for a short time that we shall need this vigilance, and then life will cease. For the rest, why should we hold this to be difficult? If it be according to Nature, rejoice in it, and it will become easy for you. If it be contrary to Nature, search out what suits your nature, and follow it diligently, even though it be attended with no glory; for every man will be forgiven for seeking his own proper good. 17. Consider whence each thing came, of what it was compounded, into what it will be changed, how it will be with it when changed, and that it will suffer no evil. 18. As to those who offend me, let me consider: First, how I am related to mankind; that we are formed, the one for the other; and that, in another respect, I was set over them as the ram over the flock, and the bull over the herd. Consider yet more deeply, thus:--There is either an empire of atoms, or an intelligent Nature governing the whole. If the latter, the inferior beings are created for the superior, and the superior for each other. Secondly: Consider what manner of men they are at table, in bed, or elsewhere; and especially by what principles they hold themselves bound, and with what arrogance they entertain them. Thirdly: If they act rightly, we ought not to take it amiss; and, if not rightly, manifestly they do so without intention and in ignorance. For no soul is willingly deprived of truth, or of the faculty of treating every man as he deserves. Accordingly men are grieved to be called unjust, ungrateful, greedy, and, in short, sinners against their neighbours. Fourthly: You yourself do often sin, and are no better than another. And, if you abstain from certain sins, still you have the disposition to commit them, even if through cowardice, fear for your character, or other meanness, you hold back. Fifthly: You cannot even be perfectly sure that wrong has been done, for many things admit of justification. And, generally speaking, a man must have learned much before he can pronounce surely upon the conduct of others. Sixthly: When you are vexed or worried overmuch, remember that man's life is but for a moment, and that in a little we shall all be laid to rest. Seventhly: It is not the acts of others that disturb us. Their actions reside in their own souls. Our own opinions alone disturb us. Away with them then; will that you entertain no thought of calamity befallen you, and the anger is gone. But how remove them? By reasoning that there is no dishonour; for, if you hold not that dishonour alone is evil, verily you must fall into many crimes, you may become a robber, or any sort of villain. Eighthly: How much worse evils we suffer from anger and grief about certain things than from the things themselves about which these passions arise. Ninthly: Meekness is invincible if it be genuine, without simper or hypocrisy. For what can the most insolent of men do to you, if you persist in civility towards him; and, if occasion offers, admonish him gently and deliberately, shew him the better way at the very moment that he is endeavouring to harm you? "Nay, my son; we were born for something better. No hurt can come to me; it is yourself you hurt, my son." And point out to him delicately, and as a general principle, how the matter stands; that bees and other gregarious animals do not act like him. But this must be done without irony or reproach, rather with loving-kindness and no bitterness of spirit; not as though you were reading him a lesson, or seeking admiration from any bystander, but as if you designed your remarks for him alone, though others may be present. Remember these nine precepts as gifts received from the Muses; and begin now to be human for the rest of your life. Beware equally of being angry with men and of flattering them. Both are unsocial and lead to mischief. In all anger recollect that wrath is not becoming to a man; but that meekness and gentleness, as they are more human, are also more manly. Strength and nerves and courage are the portion of the meek and gentle man; and not of the irascible and impatient. For the nearer a man attains to freedom from passion, the nearer he comes to strength. A weak man in grief is like a weak man in anger. Both are hurt, and both give way. If you want a tenth gift, from the Leader of the Muses, take this:-- To expect the wicked not to sin is madness. It is to expect an impossibility. But to allow them to injure others, and to forbid them to injure you, is foolish and tyrannical. 19. There are four states of the soul against which you must continually and especially be upon your guard; and which, when detected, should be effaced, by remarking thus of each. "This thought is unnecessary. This tends to social dissolution. You could not say this from your heart; and to speak otherwise than from the heart you must regard as the most absurd conduct." And, fourthly, whatever causes self-reproach is an overpowering or subjection of the diviner part within you to the less honourable and mortal part, the body, and to its grosser tendencies. 20. The serial and igneous parts of which you are compounded, although they naturally tend upwards, nevertheless obey the general law of the Universe, and are retained here in composition. The earthy and humid parts of you, though they naturally tend downwards, are nevertheless supported and remain where they are, although not in their natural situation. Thus the elements, wheresoever placed by the superior power, obey the whole; waiting till the signal shall sound again for their dissolution. Is it not grievous that the intellectual part alone should be disobedient, and fret at its function? Yet is no violence done to it, nothing imposed contrary to its nature. Still it is impatient, and tends to opposition. For all its tendencies towards injustice, debauchery, wrath, sorrows, and fears are so many departures from Nature. And, when the soul frets at any particular event, it is deserting its appointed station. It is formed for holiness and piety toward God, no less than for justice. These last are branches of social goodness even more venerable than the practice of justice. 21. He whose aim in life is not always one and the same cannot himself be one and the same through his whole life. But singleness of aim is not sufficient, unless you consider also what that aim ought to be. For, as there is not agreement of opinion regarding all those things which are reckoned good by the majority, but only as regards some of them such as are of public utility; so your aim should be social and political. For he alone who directs all his personal aims to such an end can reach a uniform course of conduct, and thus be ever the same man. 22. Remember the country mouse and the town mouse; and how the latter feared and trembled. 23. Socrates called the maxims of the vulgar hobgoblins, bogies to frighten children. 24. The Spartans at their public shows set seats for strangers in the shade, but sat themselves where they found room. 25. Socrates made this excuse for not going to Perdiccas upon his invitation: "Lest I should come to the worst of all ends, by receiving favours which I could not return." 26. In the writings of the Ephesians there is a precept, frequently to call to remembrance some of those who cultivated virtue of old. 27. The Pythagoreans recommended that we should look at the heavens in the morning, to put us in mind of beings that go on doing their proper work uniformly and continuously; and of their order, purity and naked simplicity; for there is no veil upon a star. 28. Think of Socrates clad in a skin, when Xanthippe had taken his cloak and gone out; and what he said to his friends, who were ashamed, and would have left him when they saw him dressed in such an extraordinary fashion. 29. In writing and reading you must be led before you can lead. Much more is this so in life. 30. Yourself a slave, your speech cannot be free. 31. And my heart laughed within me. 32. Virtue herself they blame with harshest words. 33. To look for figs in winter is madness; and so it is to long for a child that may no longer be yours. 34. Epictetus said that, when you kiss your child, you should whisper within yourself: "To-morrow perhaps he may die." "Ill-omened words!" say you. "The words have no evil omen," says he, "but simply indicate an act of Nature. Is it of evil omen to say the corn is reaped?" 35. The green grape, the ripe cluster, the dried grape are all changes, not into nothing, but into that which is not at present. 36. No man can rob you of your liberty of action; as has been said by Epictetus. 37. He tells us also that we must find out the true art of assenting; and in treating of our impulses he says that we must be vigilant in restraining them, that they may act with proper reservation, with public spirit, with due sense of proportion; also that we should refrain utterly from sensual passion; and not be restive in matters where we have no control. 38. The contention is not about any chance matter, said he, but as to whether we are insane or sane. 39. What do you desire? says Socrates. To have the souls of rational beings or of irrational? Rational. Rational of what kind, virtuous or vicious? Virtuous. Why then do you not seek after such souls? Because we have them already. Why then do you fight and stand at variance? END OF THE ELEVENTH BOOK. BOOK XII. 1. All that you desire to compass by devious means is yours already, if you will but freely take it. That is to say, if you will leave behind you all that is past, commit the future to Providence, and regulate the present in piety and justice. In piety that you may love your appointed lot; for Nature gave it to you and you to it. In justice, that you may speak the truth with-out constraint or guile; that you may do what is lawful and proper; that you may not be hindered by the wickedness of others, or by their opinion, or their talk, or by any sensation of this poor surrounding body, for the part concerned may look to that. If then, now that you are near your exit, setting behind you all other things, you will hold alone in reverence your ruling part, the spirit divine within you; if you will cease to dread the end of life, but rather fear to miss the beginning of life according to Nature, you will be a man, worthy of the ordered Universe that produced you; you will cease to be a stranger in your own country, gaping in wonder at every daily happening, caught up by this trifle or by that. 2. God beholds all souls bare and stripped of these corporeal vessels, husk, and refuse. By his intelligence alone he touches that only which has been instilled by him and has emanated from himself. If you would but inure yourself to do the like, you would be eased of many a torment. For he who regards not the surrounding flesh will not waste his leisure in thinking about vesture, house, or fame, or other mere external furniture or accoutrement. 3. Three parts there are of which you are compact; body, soul, intelligence. Of these the two first are yours in so far as they must have your care; the third only is properly your own. And if you will cast away from yourself, that is from your mind, all that others do or say, all that you yourself have done or said, all your fears for the future, all the uncontrollable accompaniments of the body that envelops you and of its congenital soul, and all that is whirled in the besieging vortex that races without, so that your intellectual power, made pure, and set above the accidents of fate, may live its own life in freedom, just, resigned, veracious; if, I repeat, you cast out from your soul all comes of excessive attachment either to the past or to the future, then you will become in the words of Empedocles, A faultless sphere rejoiced in endless rest. You will study to live the only life there is to live, to wit the present; and you will be able, till death shall come, to spend what remains of life in noble tranquillity, at peace with the spirit within. 4. I have wondered often how it comes that, while every man loves himself beyond all others, yet he holds his own opinion of himself in less esteem than the opinion of others. Yet, if a God or some wise teacher came and ordered a man to conceive and design nothing which he would not utter the moment it occurred to him, he would not abide the ordeal for a single day. Thus we stand in greater awe of our neighbours' opinion of us than we do of our own. 5. How can it be that the Gods, who have ordered all things well for man's advantage, overlooked one thing only, to wit that some of the best of mankind, who have held the closest relations with things divine, and by pious works and holy ministry become intimate with the Divinity, once dead, should arise no more, but be altogether extinguished? If this be truly so, be well assured that, if it ought to have been otherwise they would have made it otherwise. Had it been right it would have been practicable; and had it been according to Nature, Nature would have effected it. From its not being so, if it really be not so, be persuaded that it ought not to have been. You see that, in debating this matter, you are pleading a point of justice with the Gods. Now we would not thus plead with the Gods were they not perfectly good and just. And, if they are so, they have left nothing unjustly and unreasonably neglected in their administration. 6. Essay even tasks that you despair of executing. The left hand, which in other things is of little value for want of use, yet holds the bridle more firmly than the right, for in this it has practice. 7. Consider how death ought to find you, both as to body and as to soul. Think of the shortness of life, of the eternities before and after, and of the infirmity of all material things. 8. Contemplate the fundamental causes stripped of disguises. Think what pain is, what pleasure is, what death, and what fame. Consider how many are themselves the causes of all the disquiet that they suffer; how no man may be hindered by another; how all is matter of opinion. 9. In the use of principles we should be like the pugilist rather than the swordsman. For when the latter drops the sword which he uses he is undone. But the former has his hand always by him and needs but to wield it. 10. Consider well the nature of things, distinguishing between matter, cause, and purpose. 11. What a glorious power is given to man, never to do any action of which God will not approve, and to welcome whatever God appoints for him! 12. As to what happens in the course of nature, the Gods are not to be blamed. They never do wrong, willingly or unwillingly. Neither are men to be blamed, for they do no wrong willingly. There is therefore none to blame. 13. How ridiculous, and how like a foreigner, is he who is surprised at anything which happens in life! 14. There is either a fatal necessity, an unalterable order, or a placable Providence, or a blind confusion without a governor. If there be an unalterable necessity, why strive against it? If there be a Providence admitting of propitiation, make yourself worthy of the divine aid. If there be an ungoverned confusion, be comforted; seeing that in this tempest you have within yourself a guiding intelligence. And, if the wave should carry you away, let it carry away the carcase and the animal life, for the intellectual part of you it will not carry away. 15. If the light of a lamp shine and lose not its radiance until it be extinguished, shall truth, justice, and temperance be extinguished in you before your own extinction. 16. When you have the impression that a man has sinned, say to yourself: "How do I know that this is sin?" And, if he has sinned, consider that he stands self-condemned: and thus, as it were, has torn his own face. He that would wish the wicked not to sin is like one who would have the fig tree not have juice in its figs, would have infants not cry, horses not neigh, and other inevitable things not happen. What shall the wicked man do, having a wicked disposition? If you are so keen, cure it. 17. If a thing be not becoming, do it not; if not true, say it not. 18. Endeavour always to see in everything what it is that causes your impression; and unfold it by distinguishing the cause, the matter, the relation to other things, and the period within which it must cease to exist. 19. Perceive at last that there is within you something better and more divine than the immediate cause of your sensations of pleasure and pain; something, in short, beyond the strings which move the puppet. What is now my thought? Is it fear? Suspicion? Lust? Or any such passion? 20. In the first place, let nothing be done at random or without an object. In the second let your object never be other than the common good. 21. Yet a little, and you shall be no more; nor shall any of these things remain which you now behold, nor any of those who are now living. It is the nature of all things to change, to turn, and to corrupt; in order that other things may, in their course, spring out of them. 22. Reflect that everything is matter of opinion; and opinion rests with yourself, suppress then your opinion, what time you will, and like one who has doubled the cape and reached the bay, you will have calm and stillness everywhere, never a wave. 23. Any one natural operation, ending at its proper time, suffers no ill by ceasing, nor does the agent therein suffer any ill by its thus ceasing. In like manner, as to the whole series of actions which is life, if it ends in its season it suffers no ill by ceasing, nor is he who thus completes his series, in any evil case. The season and the term are assigned by Nature; sometimes even by your own nature, as in old age; but always by the nature of the whole, by the interchange of whose parts the Universe still remains fresh and in its bloom. Now, that is always good and seasonable which is advantageous to the nature of the whole. Wherefore the ceasing of life cannot be evil to the individual. There is no turpitude in it, since it is beyond our power, and contains nothing contrary to the common advantage. Nay, it is good, since it is seasonable and advantageous to the whole, and, congruent with the order of the Universe. Thus, too, he is led by God who goes the same way with God, and that by like inclination. 24. Have these three thoughts always at hand: First, as to your action, do nothing inconsiderately, or otherwise than justice herself would have acted. As for external events, they either happen by chance or by providence; now, no man should quarrel with chance or censure providence. Second, examine what each thing is, from its seed to its quickening; and from its quickening to its death; of what materials it is composed, and into what it will be resolved. Third, reflect that could you be raised on high, and from thence behold all human affairs, you would discern their great variety, conscious at the same time of the crowds of serial and etherial inhabitants around us; but were you so raised ever so often, you would always see the same things, all uniform and of brief duration. Can we set our pride on such matters? 25. "Cast away opinion, and you are saved." Who then hinders you from casting it away? 26. When you fret at anything, you have forgotten that all happens in accordance with the nature of the Universe, and that the wrong done was another's. This, too, that whatever happens has happened, and will happen, and is now happening everywhere. You have also forgotten how great is the bond between any man and all the human race, a bond not of blood and seed, but of common intelligence. You have forgotten that the intelligence of every man is divine, and an efflux from God; also that no man is proprietor of anything: his children, his body, his very life are given of God. You have forgotten, too, that everything is matter of opinion; and that it is the present moment only that one can live or lose. 27. Bring to frequent recollection those who have grieved about anything overmuch, those who have been pre-eminent in the extreme of glory or misfortune, in feuds or other circumstances of fate. Then stop and ask, Where are they all now? Smoke and ashes, and an old tale; or perhaps not even a tale. Pass them all in review: Fabius Catullinus in the country, Lucius Lupus in his gardens, Stertinius at Baiae, Tiberius at Capreae, Velius Rufus, and, in fine, all eminence attended with the high regard of men. How cheap is all that is so eagerly pursued? And how much better does it become a philosopher to show himself, in the part of the material world allotted to him, just, temperate, and obedient to the Gods; and this with simplicity; for most intolerable of all is the pride of false humility. 28. To those who ask, "Where have you seen the Gods, and how assured yourself of their existence, that you worship them?" make this reply: First, they are visible, even to the eye. Again, my own soul I cannot see, and yet I reverence it. Thus, too, as regards the Gods, I continually feel their power; and so I know that they exist, and I worship them. 29. The safety of life is to see the whole nature of everything, and to discern the matter and the form of its constitution; also to do justice with all your heart, and to speak the truth. What remains but to enjoy life, adding one good to an another, so as not to lose the smallest interval? 30. There is but one light of the sun, although it be scattered upon walls and hills, and a myriad other objects. There is but one common substance, although it be divided among ten thousand bodies having as many different qualities. There is but one soul, though it be distributed among countless different natures and individual forms. There is but one intelligent spirit, though it may seem to be divided. The other parts of these individuals of which we have spoken, such as breath and matter, are void of perception and of mutual affection; yet even they are held together by the intelligent spirit and gravitate together. But intelligence has a special tendency to its kind, and unites therewith, and the community of feeling is not broken. 31. What do you desire? To live on? Or is it to feel or to desire? To grow and to decay again? To speak or think? Which of all these seems worthy to be desired? And, if each and all of them is despicable, proceed to the last that remains, to follow reason and God. Now, it is repugnant to reverence for reason and for God to grieve at the loss by death of these other despicable things. 32. How small a part of the boundless immensity of the ages is allotted to each of us, and presently that will vanish in eternity! How little is ours of the universal substance; how little of the universal spirit! On what a little clod of the whole earth do we creep! Considering all this, reckon nothing great except to act as your nature leads you, and to endure what universal Nature brings to pass. 33. How is it with your ruling part? On this all depends. All other things, within or without our control, are but corpses, dust, and smoke. 34. This most of all must rouse you to despise death: That even those who held pleasure to be good and pain to be evil nevertheless despised it. 35. To him who holds that alone to be good which comes in proper season, who cares not whether he has acted oftener or less often according to right reason; to whom it makes no difference whether he behold the universe for a longer time or a shorter--for this man death also has no terror. 36. You have lived, O man, as a citizen of this great city; of what consequence to you whether for five years or for three? What comes by law is fair to all. Where then is the calamity, if you are sent out of the city, by no tyrant or unjust judge, but Nature herself who at first introduced you, just as the praetor who engaged the actor again dismisses him from the stage? "But," say you, "I have not spoken my five acts, but only three." True, but in life three acts make up the play. For he sets the end who was responsible for its composition at the first, and for its present dissolution. You are responsible for neither. Depart then graciously; for he who dismisses you is gracious. THE END. 
55761	----	Gutenberg (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Books project.) THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY A Modern Philosophy of Life Developed by Scientific Methods By RUDOLF STEINER Ph.D. (Vienna) Being an Enlarged and Revised Edition of "The Philosophy of Freedom," together with the Original Thesis on "Truth and Science" AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION BY Professor & Mrs. R. F. ALFRED HOERNLÉ G. P. Putnam's Sons London & New York EDITOR'S NOTE The following pages are a translation of Dr. Steiner's Philosophie der Freiheit, which was published in Germany some twenty years ago. The edition was soon exhausted, and has never been reprinted; copies are much sought after but very difficult to obtain. The popularity of Dr. Steiner's later works upon ethics, mysticism, and kindred subjects has caused people to forget his earlier work upon philosophy in spite of the fact that he makes frequent references to this book and it contains the germs of which many of his present views are the logical outcome. For the above reasons, and with the author's sanction, I have decided to publish a translation. I have had the good fortune to have been able to secure as joint translators Mrs. Hoernlé, who, after graduating in the University of the Cape of Good Hope, continued her studies in the Universities of Cambridge, Leipzig, Paris, and Bonn, and her husband, Mr. R. F. Alfred Hoernlé, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University, U.S.A., formerly Jenkyns Exhibitioner, Balliol College, Oxford, their thorough knowledge of philosophy and their complete command of the German and English languages enabling them to overcome the difficulty of finding adequate English equivalents for the terms of German Philosophy. I am glad to seize this opportunity of acknowledging my indebtedness to these two, without whom this publication could not have been undertaken. HARRY COLLISON. March 1916. EDITOR'S NOTE TO SECOND EDITION In 1918 Dr. Steiner published a revised edition of the Philosophie der Freiheit. For the translation of the new passages added to, and of the incidental changes made in, this revised edition I am indebted to Mr. Hoernlé, now Professor of Philosophy in the Armstrong College (Newcastle-upon-Tyne), University of Durham. At the author's request I have changed the title to Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, and throughout the entire work "freedom" should be taken to mean "spiritual activity." Dr. Steiner's Ph. D. Thesis on "Truth and Science," originally published as a prelude to The Philosophy of Freedom, has, with his consent, been translated for this edition and been added at the end of this volume. H. C. March 1921. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION (1918) XI THE THEORY OF FREEDOM I CONSCIOUS HUMAN ACTION 1 II WHY THE DESIRE FOR KNOWLEDGE IS FUNDAMENTAL 14 III THOUGHT AS THE INSTRUMENT OF KNOWLEDGE 24 IV THE WORLD AS PERCEPT 48 V OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORLD 73 VI HUMAN INDIVIDUALITY 101 VII ARE THERE LIMITS TO KNOWLEDGE? 109 THE REALITY OF FREEDOM VIII THE FACTORS OF LIFE 137 IX THE IDEA OF FREEDOM 146 X MONISM AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY 178 XI WORLD-PURPOSE AND LIFE-PURPOSE (THE DESTINY OF MAN) 190 XII MORAL IMAGINATION (DARWIN AND MORALITY) 198 XIII THE VALUE OF LIFE (OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM) 213 XIV THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE GENUS 250 ULTIMATE QUESTIONS XV THE CONSEQUENCES OF MONISM 259 TRUTH AND SCIENCE I PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS 277 II THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM OF KANT'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 280 III THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE SINCE KANT 291 IV THE STARTING-POINTS OF THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 304 V KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY 319 VI THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE WITHOUT PRESUPPOSITIONS VERSUS FICHTE'S THEORY OF SCIENCE 329 VII CONCLUDING REMARKS: EPISTEMOLOGICAL 347 VIII CONCLUDING REMARKS: PRACTICAL 351 APPENDICES I ADDITION TO REVISED EDITION OF "THE PHILOSOPHY OF FREEDOM" 1918 357 II REVISED INTRODUCTION TO "THE PHILOSOPHY OF FREEDOM" 368 III PREFACE TO ORIGINAL EDITION OF "TRUTH AND SCIENCE" 374 IV INTRODUCTION TO ORIGINAL EDITION OF "TRUTH AND SCIENCE" 381 PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION (1918) There are two fundamental problems in the life of the human mind, to one or other of which everything belongs that is to be discussed in this book. One of these problems concerns the possibility of attaining to such a view of the essential nature of man as will serve as a support for whatever else comes into his life by way of experience or of science, and yet is subject to the suspicion of having no support in itself and of being liable to be driven, by doubt and criticism, into the limbo of uncertainties. The other problem is this: Is man, as voluntary agent, entitled to attribute freedom to himself, or is freedom a mere illusion begotten of his inability to recognise the threads of necessity on which his volition, like any natural event, depends? It is no artificial tissue of theories which provokes this question. In a certain mood it presents itself quite naturally to the human mind. And it is easy to feel that a mind lacks something of its full stature which has never once confronted with the utmost seriousness of inquiry the two possibilities--freedom or necessity. This book is intended to show that the spiritual experiences which the second problem causes man to undergo, depend upon the position he is able to take up towards the first problem. An attempt will be made to prove that there is a view concerning the essential nature of man which can support the rest of knowledge; and, further, an attempt to point out how with this view we gain a complete justification for the idea of free will, provided only that we have first discovered that region of the mind in which free volition can unfold itself. The view to which we here refer is one which, once gained, is capable of becoming part and parcel of the very life of the mind itself. The answer given to the two problems will not be of the purely theoretical sort which, once mastered, may be carried about as a mere piece of memory-knowledge. Such an answer would, for the whole manner of thinking adopted in this book, be no real answer at all. The book will not give a finished and complete answer of this sort, but point to a field of spiritual experience in which man's own inward spiritual activity supplies a living answer to these questions, as often as he needs one. Whoever has once discovered the region of the mind where these questions arise, will find precisely in his actual acquaintance with this region all that he needs for the solution of his two problems. With the knowledge thus acquired he may then, as desire or fate dictate, adventure further into the breadths and depths of this unfathomable life of ours. Thus it would appear that there is a kind of knowledge which proves its justification and validity by its own inner life as well as by the kinship of its own life with the whole life of the human mind. This is how I conceived the contents of this book when I first wrote it twenty-five years ago. To-day, once again, I have to set down similar sentences if I am to characterise the leading thoughts of my book. At the original writing I contented myself with saying no more than was in the strictest sense connected with the fundamental problems which I have outlined. If anyone should be astonished at not finding in this book as yet any reference to that region of the world of spiritual experience of which I have given an account in my later writings, I would ask him to bear in mind that it was not my purpose at that time to set down the results of spiritual research, but first to lay the foundations on which such results can rest. The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity contains no special results of this spiritual sort, as little as it contains special results of the natural sciences. But what it does contain is, in my judgment, indispensable for anyone who desires a secure foundation for such knowledge. What I have said in this book may be acceptable even to some who, for reasons of their own, refuse to have anything to do with the results of my researches into the Spiritual Realm. But anyone who finds something to attract him in my inquiries into the Spiritual Realm may well appreciate the importance of what I was here trying to do. It is this: to show that open-minded consideration simply of the two problems which I have indicated and which are fundamental for all knowledge, leads to the view that man lives in the midst of a genuine Spiritual World. The aim of this book is to demonstrate, prior to our entry upon spiritual experience, that knowledge of the Spiritual World is a fact. This demonstration is so conducted that it is never necessary, in order to accept the present arguments, to cast furtive glances at the experiences on which I have dwelt in my later writings. All that is necessary is that the reader should be willing and able to adapt himself to the manner of the present discussions. Thus it seems to me that in one sense this book occupies a position completely independent of my writings on strictly spiritual matters. Yet in another sense it seems to be most intimately connected with them. These considerations have moved me now, after a lapse of twenty-five years, to re-publish the contents of this book in the main without essential alterations. I have only made additions of some length to a number of chapters. The misunderstandings of my argument with which I have met seemed to make these more detailed elaborations necessary. Actual changes of text have been made by me only where it seemed to me now that I had said clumsily what I meant to say a quarter of a century ago. (Only malice could find in these changes occasion to suggest that I have changed my fundamental conviction.) For many years my book has been out of print. In spite of the fact, which is apparent from what I have just said, that my utterances of twenty-five years ago about these problems still seem to me just as relevant today, I hesitated a long time about the completion of this revised edition. Again and again I have asked myself whether I ought not, at this point or that, to define my position towards the numerous philosophical theories which have been put forward since the publication of the first edition. Yet my preoccupation in recent years with researches into the purely Spiritual Realm prevented my doing as I could have wished. However, a survey, as thorough as I could make it, of the philosophical literature of the present day has convinced me that such a critical discussion, alluring though it would be in itself, would be out of place in the context of what my book has to say. All that, from the point of view of the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, it seemed to me necessary to say about recent philosophical tendencies may be found in the second volume of my Riddles of Philosophy. RUDOLF STEINER. April 1918. THE THEORY OF FREEDOM I CONSCIOUS HUMAN ACTION Is man free in action and thought, or is he bound by an iron necessity? There are few questions on which so much ingenuity has been expended. The idea of freedom has found enthusiastic supporters and stubborn opponents in plenty. There are those who, in their moral fervour, label anyone a man of limited intelligence who can deny so patent a fact as freedom. Opposed to them are others who regard it as the acme of unscientific thinking for anyone to believe that the uniformity of natural law is broken in the sphere of human action and thought. One and the same thing is thus proclaimed, now as the most precious possession of humanity, now as its most fatal illusion. Infinite subtlety has been employed to explain how human freedom can be consistent with determinism in nature of which man, after all, is a part. Others have been at no less pains to explain how such a delusion as this could have arisen. That we are dealing here with one of the most important questions for life, religion, conduct, science, must be clear to every one whose most prominent trait of character is not the reverse of thoroughness. It is one of the sad signs of the superficiality of present-day thought, that a book which attempts to develop a new faith out of the results of recent scientific research (David Friedrich Strauss, Der alte und neue Glaube), has nothing more to say on this question than these words: "With the question of the freedom of the human will we are not concerned. The alleged freedom of indifferent choice has been recognised as an empty illusion by every philosophy worthy of the name. The determination of the moral value of human conduct and character remains untouched by this problem." It is not because I consider that the book in which it occurs has any special importance that I quote this passage, but because it seems to me to express the only view to which the thought of the majority of our contemporaries is able to rise in this matter. Every one who has grown beyond the kindergarten-stage of science appears to know nowadays that freedom cannot consist in choosing, at one's pleasure, one or other of two possible courses of action. There is always, so we are told, a perfectly definite reason why, out of several possible actions, we carry out just one and no other. This seems quite obvious. Nevertheless, down to the present day, the main attacks of the opponents of freedom are directed only against freedom of choice. Even Herbert Spencer, in fact, whose doctrines are gaining ground daily, says, "That every one is at liberty to desire or not to desire, which is the real proposition involved in the dogma of free will, is negatived as much by the analysis of consciousness, as by the contents of the preceding chapters" (The Principles of Psychology, Part IV, chap. ix, par. 219). Others, too, start from the same point of view in combating the concept of free will. The germs of all the relevant arguments are to be found as early as Spinoza. All that he brought forward in clear and simple language against the idea of freedom has since been repeated times without number, but as a rule enveloped in the most sophisticated arguments, so that it is difficult to recognise the straightforward train of thought which is alone in question. Spinoza writes in a letter of October or November, 1674, "I call a thing free which exists and acts from the pure necessity of its nature, and I call that unfree, of which the being and action are precisely and fixedly determined by something else. Thus, e.g., God, though necessary, is free because he exists only through the necessity of his own nature. Similarly, God knows himself and all else as free, because it follows solely from the necessity of his nature that he knows all. You see, therefore, that for me freedom consists not in free decision, but in free necessity. "But let us come down to created things which are all determined by external causes to exist and to act in a fixed and definite manner. To perceive this more clearly, let us imagine a perfectly simple case. A stone, for example, receives from an external cause acting upon it a certain quantity of motion, by reason of which it necessarily continues to move, after the impact of the external cause has ceased. The continued motion of the stone is due to compulsion, not to the necessity of its own nature, because it requires to be defined by the impact of an external cause. What is true here for the stone is true also for every other particular thing, however complicated and many-sided it may be, namely, that everything is necessarily determined by external causes to exist and to act in a fixed and definite manner. "Now, pray, assume that this stone during its motion thinks and knows that it is striving to the best of its power to continue in motion. This stone which is conscious only of its striving and is by no means indifferent, will believe that it is absolutely free, and that it continues in motion for no other reason than its own will to continue. Now this is that human freedom which everybody claims to possess and which consists in nothing but this, that men are conscious of their desires, but ignorant of the causes by which they are determined. Thus the child believes that he desires milk of his own free will, the angry boy regards his desire for vengeance as free, and the coward his desire for flight. Again, the drunken man believes that he says of his own free will what, sober again, he would fain have left unsaid, and as this prejudice is innate in all men, it is difficult to free oneself from it. For, although experience teaches us often enough that man least of all can temper his desires, and that, moved by conflicting passions, he perceives the better and pursues the worse, yet he considers himself free because there are some things which he desires less strongly, and some desires which he can easily inhibit through the recollection of something else which it is often possible to recall." It is easy to detect the fundamental error of this view, because it is so clearly and definitely expressed. The same necessity by which a stone makes a definite movement as the result of an impact, is said to compel a man to carry out an action when impelled thereto by any cause. It is only because man is conscious of his action, that he thinks himself to be its originator. In doing so, he overlooks the fact that he is driven by a cause which he must obey unconditionally. The error in this train of thought is easily brought to light. Spinoza, and all who think like him, overlook the fact that man not only is conscious of his action, but also may become conscious of the cause which guides him. Anyone can see that a child is not free when he desires milk, nor the drunken man when he says things which he later regrets. Neither knows anything of the causes, working deep within their organisms, which exercise irresistible control over them. But is it justifiable to lump together actions of this kind with those in which a man is conscious not only of his actions but also of their causes? Are the actions of men really all of one kind? Should the act of a soldier on the field of battle, of the scientific researcher in his laboratory, of the statesman in the most complicated diplomatic negotiations, be placed on the same level with that of the child when he desires milk? It is, no doubt, true that it is best to seek the solution of a problem where the conditions are simplest. But lack of ability to see distinctions has before now caused endless confusion. There is, after all, a profound difference between knowing the motive of my action and not knowing it. At first sight this seems a self-evident truth. And yet the opponents of freedom never ask themselves whether a motive of action which I recognise and understand, is to be regarded as compulsory for me in the same sense as the organic process which causes the child to cry for milk. Eduard von Hartmann, in his Phänomenologie des Sittlichen Bewusstseins (p. 451), asserts that the human will depends on two chief factors, the motives and the character. If one regards men as all alike, or at any rate the differences between them as negligible, then their will appears as determined from without, viz., by the circumstances with which they come in contact. But if one bears in mind that men adopt an idea as the motive of their conduct, only if their character is such that this idea arouses a desire in them, then men appear as determined from within and not from without. Now, because an idea, given to us from without, must first in accordance with our characters be adopted as a motive, men believe that they are free, i.e., independent of external influences. The truth, however, according to Eduard von Hartmann, is that "even though we must first adopt an idea as a motive, we do so not arbitrarily, but according to the disposition of our characters, that is, we are anything but free." Here again the difference between motives, which I allow to influence me only after I have consciously made them my own, and those which I follow without any clear knowledge of them, is absolutely ignored. This leads us straight to the standpoint from which the subject will be treated here. Have we any right to consider the question of the freedom of the will by itself at all? And if not, with what other question must it necessarily be connected? If there is a difference between conscious and unconscious motives of action, then the action in which the former issue should be judged differently from the action which springs from blind impulse. Hence our first question will concern this difference, and on the result of this inquiry will depend what attitude we ought to take up towards the question of freedom proper. What does it mean to have knowledge of the motives of one's actions? Too little attention has been paid to this question, because, unfortunately, man who is an indivisible whole has always been torn asunder by us. The agent has been divorced from the knower, whilst he who matters more than everything else, viz., the man who acts because he knows, has been utterly overlooked. It is said that man is free when he is controlled only by his reason, and not by his animal passions. Or, again, that to be free means to be able to determine one's life and action by purposes and deliberate decisions. Nothing is gained by assertions of this sort. For the question is just whether reason, purposes, and decisions exercise the same kind of compulsion over a man as his animal passions. If, without my doing, a rational decision occurs in me with the same necessity with which hunger and thirst happen to me, then I must needs obey it, and my freedom is an illusion. Another form of expression runs: to be free means, not that we can will what we will, but that we can do what we will. This thought has been expressed with great clearness by the poet-philosopher Robert Hamerling in his Atomistik des Willens. "Man can, it is true, do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills, because his will is determined by motives! He cannot will what he wills? Let us consider these phrases more closely. Have they any intelligible meaning? Does freedom of will, then, mean being able to will without ground, without motive? What does willing mean if not to have grounds for doing, or striving to do, this rather than that? To will anything without ground or motive would mean to will something without willing it. The concept of motive is indissolubly bound up with that of will. Without the determining motive the will is an empty faculty; it is the motive which makes it active and real. It is, therefore, quite true that the human will is not 'free,' inasmuch as its direction is always determined by the strongest motive. But, on the other hand, it must be admitted that it is absurd to speak, in contrast with this 'unfreedom,' of a conceivable 'freedom' of the will, which would consist in being able to will what one does not will" (Atomistik des Willens, p. 213 ff.). Here, again, only motives in general are mentioned, without taking into account the difference between unconscious and conscious motives. If a motive affects me, and I am compelled to act on it because it proves to be the "strongest" of its kind, then the idea of freedom ceases to have any meaning. How should it matter to me whether I can do a thing or not, if I am forced by the motive to do it? The primary question is, not whether I can do a thing or not when impelled by a motive, but whether the only motives are such as impel me with absolute necessity. If I must will something, then I may well be absolutely indifferent as to whether I can also do it. And if, through my character, or through circumstances prevailing in my environment, a motive is forced on me which to my thinking is unreasonable, then I should even have to be glad if I could not do what I will. The question is, not whether I can carry out a decision once made, but how I come to make the decision. What distinguishes man from all other organic beings is his rational thought. Activity is common to him with other organisms. Nothing is gained by seeking analogies in the animal world to clear up the concept of freedom as applied to the actions of human beings. Modern science loves these analogies. When scientists have succeeded in finding among animals something similar to human behaviour, they believe they have touched on the most important question of the science of man. To what misunderstandings this view leads is seen, for example, in the book Die Illusion der Willensfreiheit, by P. Ree, 1885, where, on Page 5, the following remark on freedom appears: "It is easy to explain why the movement of a stone seems to us necessary, while the volition of a donkey does not. The causes which set the stone in motion are external and visible, while the causes which determine the donkey's volition are internal and invisible. Between us and the place of their activity there is the skull cap of the ass.... The causal nexus is not visible and is therefore thought to be non-existent. The volition, it is explained, is, indeed, the cause of the donkey's turning round, but is itself unconditioned; it is an absolute beginning." Here again human actions in which there is a consciousness of the motives are simply ignored, for Ree declares, "that between us and the sphere of their activity there is the skull cap of the ass." As these words show, it has not so much as dawned on Ree that there are actions, not indeed of the ass, but of human beings, in which the motive, become conscious, lies between us and the action. Ree demonstrates his blindness once again a few pages further on, when he says, "We do not perceive the causes by which our will is determined, hence we think it is not causally determined at all." But enough of examples which prove that many argue against freedom without knowing in the least what freedom is. That an action of which the agent does not know why he performs it, cannot be free goes without saying. But what of the freedom of an action about the motives of which we reflect? This leads us to the question of the origin and meaning of thought. For without the recognition of the activity of mind which is called thought, it is impossible to understand what is meant either by knowledge of something or by action. When we know what thought in general means, it will be easier to see clearly the role which thought plays in human action. As Hegel rightly says, "It is thought which turns the soul, common to us and animals, into spirit." Hence it is thought which we may expect to give to human action its characteristic stamp. I do not mean to imply that all our actions spring only from the sober deliberations of our reason. I am very far from calling only those actions "human" in the highest sense, which proceed from abstract judgments. But as soon as our conduct rises above the sphere of the satisfaction of purely animal desires, our motives are always shaped by thoughts. Love, pity, and patriotism are motives of action which cannot be analysed away into cold concepts of the understanding. It is said that here the heart, the soul, hold sway. This is no doubt true. But the heart and the soul create no motives. They presuppose them. Pity enters my heart when the thought of a person who arouses pity had appeared in my consciousness. The way to the heart is through the head. Love is no exception. Whenever it is not merely the expression of bare sexual instinct, it depends on the thoughts we form of the loved one. And the more we idealise the loved one in our thoughts, the more blessed is our love. Here, too, thought is the father of feeling. It is said that love makes us blind to the failings of the loved one. But the opposite view can be taken, namely that it is precisely for the good points that love opens the eyes. Many pass by these good points without notice. One, however, perceives them, and just because he does, love awakens in his soul. What else has he done except perceive what hundreds have failed to see? Love is not theirs, because they lack the perception. From whatever point we regard the subject, it becomes more and more clear that the question of the nature of human action presupposes that of the origin of thought. I shall, therefore, turn next to this question. II WHY THE DESIRE FOR KNOWLEDGE IS FUNDAMENTAL Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust, Die eine will sich von der andern trennen; Die eine hält, in derber Liebeslust, Sich an die Welt mit klammernden Organen; Die andre hebt gewaltsam sich vom Dust Zu den Gefilden hoher Ahnen. [1] Faust I, 1112-1117. In these words Goethe expresses a trait which is deeply ingrained in human nature. Man is not a self-contained unity. He demands ever more than the world, of itself, offers him. Nature has endowed us with needs; among them are some the satisfaction of which she leaves to our own activity. However abundant the gifts which we have received, still more abundant are our desires. We seem born to dissatisfaction. And our desire for knowledge is but a special instance of this unsatisfied striving. Suppose we look twice at a tree. The first time we see its branches at rest, the second time in motion. We are not satisfied with this observation. Why, we ask, does the tree appear to us now at rest, then in motion? Every glance at nature evokes in us a multitude of questions. Every phenomenon we meet presents a new problem to be solved. Every experience is to us a riddle. We observe that from the egg there emerges a creature like the mother animal, and we ask for the reason of the likeness. We observe a living being grow and develop to a determinate degree of perfection, and we seek the conditions of this experience. Nowhere are we satisfied with the facts which nature spreads out before our senses. Everywhere we seek what we call the explanation of these facts. The something more which we seek in things, over and above what is immediately given to us in them, splits our whole being into two parts. We become conscious of our opposition to the world. We oppose ourselves to the world as independent beings. The universe has for us two opposite poles: Self and World. We erect this barrier between ourselves and the world as soon as consciousness is first kindled in us. But we never cease to feel that, in spite of all, we belong to the world, that there is a connecting link between it and us, and that we are beings within, and not without, the universe. This feeling makes us strive to bridge over this opposition, and ultimately the whole spiritual striving of mankind is nothing but the bridging of this opposition. The history of our spiritual life is a continuous seeking after union between ourselves and the world. Religion, Art, and Science follow, one and all, this goal. The religious man seeks in the revelation, which God grants him, the solution of the world problem, which his Self, dissatisfied with the world of mere phenomena, sets him as a task. The artist seeks to embody in his material the ideas which are his Self, that he may thus reconcile the spirit which lives within him and the outer world. He, too, feels dissatisfied with the world of mere appearances, and seeks to mould into it that something more which his Self supplies and which transcends appearances. The thinker searches for the laws of phenomena. He strives to master by thought what he experiences by observation. Only when we have transformed the world-content into our thought-content do we recapture the connection which we had ourselves broken off. We shall see later that this goal can be reached only if we penetrate much more deeply than is often done into the nature of the scientist's problem. The whole situation, as I have here stated it, meets us, on the stage of history, in the conflict between the one-world theory, or Monism, and the two-world theory, or Dualism. Dualism pays attention only to the separation between the Self and the World, which the consciousness of man has brought about. All its efforts consist in a vain struggle to reconcile these opposites, which it calls now Mind and Matter, now Subject and Object, now Thought and Appearance. The Dualist feels that there must be a bridge between the two worlds, but is not able to find it. In so far as man is aware of himself as "I," he cannot but put down this "I" in thought on the side of Spirit; and in opposing to this "I" the world, he is bound to reckon on the world's side the realm of percepts given to the senses, i.e., the Material World. In doing so, man assigns a position to himself within this very antithesis of Spirit and Matter. He is the more compelled to do so because his own body belongs to the Material World. Thus the "I," or Ego, belongs as a part to the realm of Spirit; the material objects and processes which are perceived by the senses belong to the "World." All the riddles which belong to Spirit and Matter, man must inevitably rediscover in the fundamental riddle of his own nature. Monism pays attention only to the unity and tries either to deny or to slur over the opposites, present though they are. Neither of these two points of view can satisfy us, for they do not do justice to the facts. The Dualist sees in Mind (Self) and Matter (World) two essentially different entities, and cannot therefore understand how they can interact with one another. How should Mind be aware of what goes on in Matter, seeing that the essential nature of Matter is quite alien to Mind? Or how in these circumstances should Mind act upon Matter, so as to translate its intentions into actions? The most absurd hypotheses have been propounded to answer these questions. However, up to the present the Monists are not in a much better position. They have tried three different ways of meeting the difficulty. Either they deny Mind and become Materialists; or they deny Matter in order to seek their salvation as Spiritualists; or they assert that, even in the simplest entities in the world, Mind and Matter are indissolubly bound together, so that there is no need to marvel at the appearance in man of these two modes of existence, seeing that they are never found apart. Materialism can never offer a satisfactory explanation of the world. For every attempt at an explanation must begin with the formation of thoughts about the phenomena of the world. Materialism, thus, begins with the thought of Matter or material processes. But, in doing so, it is ipso facto confronted by two different sets of facts, viz., the material world and the thoughts about it. The Materialist seeks to make these latter intelligible by regarding them as purely material processes. He believes that thinking takes place in the brain, much in the same way that digestion takes place in the animal organs. Just as he ascribes mechanical, chemical, and organic processes to Nature, so he credits her in certain circumstances with the capacity to think. He overlooks that, in doing so, he is merely shifting the problem from one place to another. Instead of to himself he ascribes the power of thought to Matter. And thus he is back again at his starting-point. How does Matter come to think of its own nature? Why is it not simply satisfied with itself and content to accept its own existence? The Materialist has turned his attention away from the definite subject, his own self, and occupies himself with an indefinite shadowy somewhat. And here the old problem meets him again. The materialistic theory cannot solve the problem; it can only shift it to another place. What of the Spiritualistic theory? The pure Spiritualist denies to Matter all independent existence and regards it merely as a product of Spirit. But when he tries to apply this theory to the solution of the riddle of his own human nature, he finds himself caught in a tight place. Over against the "I," or Ego, which can be ranged on the side of Spirit, there stands directly the world of the senses. No spiritual approach to it seems open. It has to be perceived and experienced by the Ego with the help of material processes. Such material processes the Ego does not discover in itself, so long as it regards its own nature as exclusively spiritual. From all that it achieves by its own spiritual effort, the sensible world is ever excluded. It seems as if the Ego had to concede that the world would be a closed book to it, unless it could establish a non-spiritual relation to the world. Similarly, when it comes to acting, we have to translate our purposes into realities with the help of material things and forces. We are, therefore, dependent on the outer world. The most extreme Spiritualist, or, if you prefer it, Idealist, is Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He attempts to deduce the whole edifice of the world from the "Ego." What he has actually accomplished is a magnificent thought-picture of the world, without any empirical content. As little as it is possible for the Materialist to argue the Mind away, just as little is it possible for the Idealist to do without the outer world of Matter. When man directs his theoretical reflection upon the Ego, he perceives, in the first instance, only the work of the Ego in the conceptual elaboration of the world of ideas. Hence a philosophy the direction of which is spiritualistic, may feel tempted, in view of man's own essential nature, to acknowledge nothing of spirit except this world of ideas. In this way Spiritualism becomes one-sided Idealism. Instead of going on to penetrate through the world of ideas to the spiritual world, idealism identifies the spiritual world with the world of ideas itself. As a result, it is compelled to remain fixed with its world-view in the circle of the activity of the Ego, as if it were bewitched. A curious variant of Idealism is to be found in the theory which F. A. Lange has put forward in his widely read History of Materialism. He holds that the Materialists are quite right in declaring all phenomena, including our thoughts, to be the product of purely material processes, but, in turn, Matter and its processes are for him themselves the product of our thinking. "The senses give us only the effects of things, not true copies, much less the things themselves. But among these mere effects we must include the senses themselves together with the brain and the molecular vibrations which we assume to go on there." That is, our thinking is produced by the material processes, and these by our thinking. Lange's philosophy is thus nothing more than the philosophical analogon of the story of honest Baron Münchhausen, who holds himself up in the air by his own pigtail. The third form of Monism is that which finds even in the simplest real (the atom) the union of both Matter and Mind. But nothing is gained by this either, except that the question, the origin of which is really in our consciousness, is shifted to another place. How comes it that the simple real manifests itself in a two-fold manner, if it is an indivisible unity? Against all these theories we must urge the fact that we meet with the basal and fundamental opposition first in our own consciousness. It is we ourselves who break away from the bosom of Nature and contrast ourselves as Self with the World. Goethe has given classic expression to this in his essay Nature. "Living in the midst of her (Nature) we are strangers to her. Ceaselessly she speaks to us, yet betrays none of her secrets." But Goethe knows the reverse side too: "Mankind is all in her, and she in all mankind." However true it may be that we have estranged ourselves from Nature, it is none the less true that we feel we are in her and belong to her. It can be only her own life which pulses also in us. We must find the way back to her again. A simple reflection may point this way out to us. We have, it is true, torn ourselves away from Nature, but we must none the less have carried away something of her in our own selves. This quality of Nature in us we must seek out, and then we shall discover our connection with her once more. Dualism neglects to do this. It considers the human mind as a spiritual entity utterly alien to Nature and attempts somehow to hitch it on to Nature. No wonder that it cannot find the coupling link. We can find Nature outside of us only if we have first learnt to know her within us. The Natural within us must be our guide to her. This marks out our path of inquiry. We shall attempt no speculations concerning the interaction of Mind and Matter. We shall rather probe into the depths of our own being, to find there those elements which we saved in our flight from Nature. The examination of our own being must bring the solution of the problem. We must reach a point where we can say, "This is no longer merely 'I,' this is something which is more than 'I.'" I am well aware that many who have read thus far will not consider my discussion in keeping with "the present state of science." To such criticism I can reply only that I have so far not been concerned with any scientific results, but simply with the description of what every one of us experiences in his own consciousness. That a few phrases have slipped in about attempts to reconcile Mind and the World has been due solely to the desire to elucidate the actual facts. I have therefore made no attempt to give to the expressions "Self," "Mind," "World," "Nature," the precise meaning which they usually bear in Psychology and Philosophy. The ordinary consciousness ignores the sharp distinctions of the sciences, and so far my purpose has been solely to record the facts of everyday experience. I am concerned, not with the way in which science, so far, has interpreted consciousness, but with the way in which we experience it in every moment of our lives. III THOUGHT AS THE INSTRUMENT OF KNOWLEDGE When I observe how a billiard ball, when struck, communicates its motion to another, I remain entirely without influence on the process before me. The direction and velocity of the motion of the second ball is determined by the direction and velocity of the first. As long as I remain a mere spectator, I can say nothing about the motion of the second ball until after it has happened. It is quite different when I begin to reflect on the content of my observations. The purpose of my reflection is to construct concepts of the process. I connect the concept of an elastic ball with certain other concepts of mechanics, and consider the special circumstances which obtain in the instance in question. I try, in other words, to add to the process which takes place without my interference, a second process which takes place in the conceptual sphere. This latter process is dependent on me. This is shown by the fact that I can rest content with the observation, and renounce all search for concepts if I have no need of them. If, therefore, this need is present, then I am not content until I have established a definite connection among the concepts, ball, elasticity, motion, impact, velocity, etc., so that they apply to the observed process in a definite way. As surely as the occurrence of the observed process is independent of me, so surely is the occurrence of the conceptual process dependent on me. We shall have to consider later whether this activity of mine really proceeds from my own independent being, or whether those modern physiologists are right who say that we cannot think as we will, but that we must think exactly as the thoughts and thought-connections determine, which happen to be in our minds at any given moment. (Cp. Ziehen, Leitfaden der Physiologischen Psychologie, Jena, 1893, p. 171.) For the present we wish merely to establish the fact that we constantly feel obliged to seek for concepts and connections of concepts, which stand in definite relation to the objects and processes which are given independently of us. Whether this activity is really ours, or whether we are determined to it by an unalterable necessity, is a question which we need not decide at present. What is unquestionable is that the activity appears, in the first instance, to be ours. We know for certain that concepts are not given together with the objects to which they correspond. My being the agent in the conceptual process may be an illusion; but there is no doubt that to immediate observation I appear to be active. Our present question is, what do we gain by supplementing a process with a conceptual counterpart? There is a far-reaching difference between the ways in which, for me, the parts of a process are related to one another before, and after, the discovery of the corresponding concepts. Mere observation can trace the parts of a given process as they occur, but their connection remains obscure without the help of concepts. I observe the first billiard ball move towards the second in a certain direction and with a certain velocity. What will happen after the impact I cannot tell in advance. I can once more only watch it happen with my eyes. Suppose someone obstructs my view of the field where the process is happening, at the moment when the impact occurs, then, as mere spectator, I remain ignorant of what goes on. The situation is very different, if prior to the obstructing of my view I have discovered the concepts corresponding to the nexus of events. In that case I can say what occurs, even when I am no longer able to observe. There is nothing in a merely observed process or object to show its relation to other processes or objects. This relation becomes manifest only when observation is combined with thought. Observation and thought are the two points of departure for all the spiritual striving of man, in so far as he is conscious of such striving. The workings of common sense, as well as the most complicated scientific researches, rest on these two fundamental pillars of our minds. Philosophers have started from various ultimate antitheses, Idea and Reality, Subject and Object, Appearance and Thing-in-itself, Ego and Non-Ego, Idea and Will, Concept and Matter, Force and Substance, the Conscious and the Unconscious. It is, however, easy to show that all these antitheses are subsequent to that between Observation and Thought, this being for man the most important. Whatever principle we choose to lay down, we must either prove that somewhere we have observed it, or we must enunciate it in the form of a clear concept which can be re-thought by any other thinker. Every philosopher who sets out to discuss his fundamental principles, must express them in conceptual form and thus use thought. He therefore indirectly admits that his activity presupposes thought. We leave open here the question whether thought or something else is the chief factor in the development of the world. But it is at any rate clear that the philosopher can gain no knowledge of this development without thought. In the occurrence of phenomena thought may play a secondary part, but it is quite certain that it plays a chief part in the construction of a theory about them. As regards observation, our need of it is due to our organisation. Our thought about a horse and the object "horse" are two things which for us have separate existences. The object is accessible to us only by means of observation. As little as we can construct a concept of a horse by mere staring at the animal, just as little are we able by mere thought to produce the corresponding object. In time observation actually precedes thought. For we become familiar with thought itself in the first instance by observation. It was essentially a description of an observation when, at the beginning of this chapter, we gave an account of how thought is kindled by an objective process and transcends the merely given. Whatever enters the circle of our experiences becomes an object of apprehension to us first through observation. All contents of sensations, all perceptions, intuitions, feelings, acts of will, dreams and fancies, images, concepts, ideas, all illusions and hallucinations, are given to us through observation. But thought as an object of observation differs essentially from all other objects. The observation of a table, or a tree, occurs in me as soon as those objects appear within the horizon of my field of consciousness. Yet I do not, at the same time, observe my thought about these things. I observe the table, but I carry on a process of thought about the table without at the same moment observing this thought-process. I must first take up a standpoint outside of my own activity, if I want to observe my thought about the table, as well as the table. Whereas the observation of things and processes, and the thinking about them, are everyday occurrences making up the continuous current of my life, the observation of the thought-process itself is an exceptional attitude to adopt. This fact must be taken into account, when we come to determine the relations of thought as an object of observation to all other objects. We must be quite clear about the fact that, in observing the thought-processes, we are applying to them a method which is our normal attitude in the study of all other objects in the world, but which in the ordinary course of that study is usually not applied to thought itself. Someone might object that what I have said about thinking applies equally to feeling and to all other mental activities. Thus it is said that when, e.g., I have a feeling of pleasure, the feeling is kindled by the object, but it is this object I observe, not the feeling of pleasure. This objection, however, is based on an error. Pleasure does not stand at all in the same relation to its object as the concept constructed by thought. I am conscious, in the most positive way, that the concept of a thing is formed through my activity; whereas a feeling of pleasure is produced in me by an object in a way similar to that in which, e.g., a change is caused in an object by a stone which falls on it. For observation, a pleasure is given in exactly the same way as the event which causes it. The same is not true of concepts. I can ask why an event arouses in me a feeling of pleasure. But I certainly cannot ask why an occurrence causes in me a certain number of concepts. The question would be simply meaningless. In thinking about an occurrence, I am not concerned with it as an effect on me. I learn nothing about myself from knowing the concepts which correspond to the observed change caused in a pane of glass by a stone thrown against it. But I do learn something about myself when I know the feeling which a certain occurrence arouses in me. When I say of an object which I perceive, "this is a rose," I say absolutely nothing about myself; but when I say of the same thing that "it causes a feeling of pleasure in me," I characterise not only the rose, but also myself in my relation to the rose. There can, therefore, be no question of putting thought and feeling on a level as objects of observation. And the same could easily be shown of other activities of the human mind. Unlike thought, they must be classed with any other observed objects or events. The peculiar nature of thought lies just in this, that it is an activity which is directed solely on the observed object and not on the thinking subject. This is apparent even from the way in which we express our thoughts about an object, as distinct from our feelings or acts of will. When I see an object and recognise it as a table, I do not as a rule say, "I am thinking of a table," but, "this is a table." On the other hand, I do say, "I am pleased with the table." In the former case, I am not at all interested in stating that I have entered into a relation with the table; whereas, in the second case, it is just this relation which matters. In saying, "I am thinking of a table," I adopt the exceptional point of view characterised above, in which something is made the object of observation which is always present in our mental activity, without being itself normally an observed object. The peculiar nature of thought consists just in this, that the thinker forgets his thinking while actually engaged in it. It is not thinking which occupies his attention, but rather the object of thought which he observes. The first point, then, to notice about thought is that it is the unobserved element in our ordinary mental life. The reason why we do not notice the thinking which goes on in our ordinary mental life is no other than this, that it is our own activity. Whatever I do not myself produce appears in my field of consciousness as an object; I contrast it with myself as something the existence of which is independent of me. It forces itself upon me. I must accept it as the presupposition of my thinking. As long as I think about the object, I am absorbed in it, my attention is turned on it. To be thus absorbed in the object is just to contemplate it by thought. I attend, not to my activity, but to its object. In other words, whilst I am thinking I pay no heed to my thinking which is of my own making, but only to the object of my thinking which is not of my making. I am, moreover, in exactly the same position when I adopt the exceptional point of view and think of my own thought-processes. I can never observe my present thought, I can only make my past experiences of thought-processes subsequently the objects of fresh thoughts. If I wanted to watch my present thought, I should have to split myself into two persons, one to think, the other to observe this thinking. But this is impossible. I can only accomplish it in two separate acts. The observed thought-processes are never those in which I am actually engaged but others. Whether, for this purpose, I make observations on my own former thoughts, or follow the thought-processes of another person, or finally, as in the example of the motions of the billiard balls, assume an imaginary thought-process, is immaterial. There are two things which are incompatible with one another: productive activity and the theoretical contemplation of that activity. This is recognised even in the First Book of Moses. It represents God as creating the world in the first six days, and only after its completion is any contemplation of the world possible: "And God saw everything that he had made and, behold, it was very good." The same applies to our thinking. It must be there first, if we would observe it. The reason why it is impossible to observe the thought-process in its actual occurrence at any given moment, is the same as that which makes it possible for us to know it more immediately and more intimately than any other process in the world. Just because it is our own creation do we know the characteristic features of its course, the manner in which the process, in detail, takes place. What in the other spheres of observation we can discover only indirectly, viz., the relevant objective nexus and the relations of the individual objects, that is known to us immediately in the case of thought. I do not know off-hand why, for perception, thunder follows lightning, but I know immediately, from the content of the two concepts, why my thought connects the concept of thunder with that of lightning. It does not matter for my argument whether my concepts of thunder and lightning are correct. The connection between the concepts I have is clear to me, and that through the very concepts themselves. This transparent clearness in the observation of our thought-processes is quite independent of our knowledge of the physiological basis of thought. I am speaking here of thought in the sense in which it is the object of our observation of our own mental activity. For this purpose it is quite irrelevant how one material process in my brain causes or influences another, whilst I am carrying on a process of thought. What I observe, in studying a thought-process, is, not what process in my brain connects the concept of thunder with that of lightning, but what is my reason for bringing these two concepts into a definite relation. Introspection shows that, in linking thought with thought, I am guided by their content, not by the material processes in the brain. This remark would be quite superfluous in a less materialistic age than ours. To-day, however, when there are people who believe that, when we know what matter is, we shall know also how it thinks, it is necessary to affirm the possibility of speaking of thought without trespassing on the domain of brain physiology. Many people to-day find it difficult to grasp the concept of thought in its purity. Anyone who challenges the account of thought which I have given here, by quoting Cabanis' statement that "the brain secretes thoughts as the liver does gall or the spittle-glands spittle, etc." simply does not know of what I am talking. He attempts to discover thought by the same method of mere observation which we apply to the other objects that make up the world. But he cannot find it in this way, because, as I have shown, it eludes just this ordinary observation. Whoever cannot transcend Materialism lacks the ability to throw himself into the exceptional attitude I have described, in which he becomes conscious of what in all other mental activity remains unconscious. It is as useless to discuss thought with one who is not willing to adopt this attitude, as it would be to discuss colour with a blind man. Let him not imagine, however, that we regard physiological processes as thought. He fails to explain thought, because he is not even aware that it is there. For every one, however, who has the ability to observe thought, and with good will every normal man has this ability, this observation is the most important he can make. For he observes something which he himself produces. He is not confronted by what is to begin with a strange object, but by his own activity. He knows how that which he observes has come to be. He perceives clearly its connections and relations. He gains a firm point from which he can, with well-founded hopes, seek an explanation of the other phenomena of the world. The feeling that he had found such a firm foundation, induced the father of modern philosophy, Descartes, to base the whole of human knowledge on the principle, "I think, therefore I am." All other things, all other processes, are independent of me. Whether they be truth, or illusion, or dream, I know not. There is only one thing of which I am absolutely certain, for I myself am the author of its indubitable existence; and that is my thought. Whatever other origin it may have in addition, whether it come from God or from elsewhere, of one thing I am sure, that it exists in the sense that I myself produce it. Descartes had, to begin with, no justification for reading any other meaning into his principle. All he had a right to assert was that, in apprehending myself as thinking, I apprehend myself, within the world-system, in that activity which is most uniquely characteristic of me. What the added words "therefore I am" are intended to mean has been much debated. They can have a meaning on one condition only. The simplest assertion I can make of a thing is, that it is, that it exists. What kind of existence, in detail, it has, can in no case be determined on the spot, as soon as the thing enters within the horizon of my experience. Each object must be studied in its relations to others, before we can determine the sense in which we can speak of its existence. An experienced process may be a complex of percepts, or it may be a dream, an hallucination, etc. In short, I cannot say in what sense it exists. I can never read off the kind of existence from the process itself, for I can discover it only when I consider the process in its relation to other things. But this, again, yields me no knowledge beyond just its relation to other things. My inquiry touches firm ground only when I find an object, the reason of the existence of which I can gather from itself. Such an object I am myself in so far as I think, for I qualify my existence by the determinate and self-contained content of my thought-activity. From here I can go on to ask whether other things exist in the same or in some other sense. When thought is made an object of observation, something which usually escapes our attention is added to the other observed contents of the world. But the usual manner of observation, such as is employed also for other objects, is in no way altered. We add to the number of objects of observation, but not to the number of methods. When we are observing other things, there enters among the world-processes--among which I now include observation--one process which is overlooked. There is present something different from every other kind of process, something which is not taken into account. But when I make an object of my own thinking, there is no such neglected element present. For what lurks now in the background is just thought itself over again. The object of observation is qualitatively identical with the activity directed upon it. This is another characteristic feature of thought-processes. When we make them objects of observation, we are not compelled to do so with the help of something qualitatively different, but can remain within the realm of thought. When I weave a tissue of thoughts round an independently given object, I transcend my observation, and the question then arises, What right have I to do this? Why do I not passively let the object impress itself on me? How is it possible for my thought to be relevantly related to the object? These are questions which every one must put to himself who reflects on his own thought-processes. But all these questions lapse when we think about thought itself. We then add nothing to our thought that is foreign to it, and therefore have no need to justify any such addition. Schelling says: "To know Nature means to create Nature." If we take these words of the daring philosopher of Nature literally, we shall have to renounce for ever all hope of gaining knowledge of Nature. For Nature after all exists, and if we have to create it over again, we must know the principles according to which it has originated in the first instance. We should have to borrow from Nature as it exists the conditions of existence for the Nature which we are about to create. But this borrowing, which would have to precede the creating, would be a knowing of Nature, and would be this even if after the borrowing no creation at all were attempted. The only kind of Nature which it would be possible to create without previous knowledge, would be a Nature different from the existing one. What is impossible with Nature, viz., creation prior to knowledge, that we accomplish in the act of thought. Were we to refrain from thinking until we had first gained knowledge of it, we should never think at all. We must resolutely think straight ahead, and then afterwards by introspective analysis gain knowledge of our own processes. Thus we ourselves create the thought-processes which we then make objects of observation. The existence of all other objects is provided for us without any activity on our part. My contention that we must think before we can make thought an object of knowledge, might easily be countered by the apparently equally valid contention that we cannot wait with digesting until we have first observed the process of digestion. This objection would be similar to that brought by Pascal against Descartes, when he asserted we might also say "I walk, therefore I am." Certainly I must digest resolutely and not wait until I have studied the physiological process of digestion. But I could only compare this with the analysis of thought if, after digestion, I set myself not to analyse it by thought, but to eat and digest it. It is not without reason that, while digestion cannot become the object of digestion, thought can very well become the object of thought. This then is indisputable, that in thinking we have got hold of one bit of the world-process which requires our presence if anything is to happen. And that is the very point that matters. The very reason why things seem so puzzling is just that I play no part in their production. They are simply given to me, whereas I know how thought is produced. Hence there can be no more fundamental starting-point than thought from which to regard all world-processes. I should like still to mention a widely current error which prevails with regard to thought. It is often said that thought, in its real nature, is never experienced. The thought-processes which connect our perceptions with one another, and weave about them a network of concepts, are not at all the same as those which our analysis afterwards extracts from the objects of perception, in order to make them the object of study. What we have unconsciously woven into things is, so we are told, something widely different from what subsequent analysis recovers out of them. Those who hold this view do not see that it is impossible to escape from thought. I cannot get outside thought when I want to observe it. We should never forget that the distinction between thought which goes on unconsciously and thought which is consciously analysed, is a purely external one and irrelevant to our discussion. I do not in any way alter a thing by making it an object of thought. I can well imagine that a being with quite different sense-organs, and with a differently constructed intelligence, would have a very different idea of a horse from mine, but I cannot think that my own thought becomes different because I make it an object of knowledge. I myself observe my own processes. We are not talking here of how my thought-processes appear to an intelligence different from mine, but how they appear to me. In any case, the idea which another mind forms of my thought cannot be truer than the one which I form myself. Only if the thought-processes were not my own, but the activity of a being quite different from me, could I maintain that, notwithstanding my forming a definite idea of these thought-processes, their real nature was beyond my comprehension. So far, there is not the slightest reason why I should regard my thought from any other point of view than my own. I contemplate the rest of the world by means of thought. How should I make of my thought an exception? I think I have given sufficient reasons for making thought the starting-point for my theory of the world. When Archimedes had discovered the lever, he thought he could lift the whole cosmos out of its hinges, if only he could find a point of support for his instrument. He needed a point which was self-supporting. In thought we have a principle which is self-subsisting. Let us try, therefore, to understand the world starting with thought as our basis. Thought can be grasped by thought. The question is whether by thought we can also grasp something other than thought. I have so far spoken of thought without taking any account of its vehicle, the human consciousness. Most present-day philosophers would object that, before there can be thought, there must be consciousness. Hence we ought to start, not from thought, but from consciousness. There is no thought, they say without consciousness. In reply I would urge that, in order to clear up the relation between thought and consciousness, I must think about it. Hence I presuppose thought. One might, it is true, retort that, though a philosopher who wishes to understand consciousness, naturally makes use of thought, and so far presupposes it, in the ordinary course of life thought arises within consciousness and therefore presupposes that. Were this answer given to the world-creator, when he was about to create thought, it would, without doubt, be to the point. Thought cannot, of course, come into being before consciousness. The philosopher, however, is not concerned with the creation of the world, but with the understanding of it. Hence he is in search of the starting-point, not for creation, but for the understanding of the world. It seems to me very strange that philosophers are reproached for troubling themselves, above all, about the correctness of their principles, instead of turning straight to the objects which they seek to understand. The world-creator had above all to know how to find a vehicle for thought; the philosopher must seek a firm basis for the understanding of what is given. What does it help us to start with consciousness and make it an object of thought, if we have not first inquired how far it is possible at all to gain any knowledge of things by thought? We must first consider thought quite impartially without relation to a thinking subject or to an object of thought. For subject and object are both concepts constructed by thought. There is no denying that thought must be understood before anything else can be understood. Whoever denies this, fails to realise that man is not the first link in the chain of creation but the last. Hence, in order to explain the world by means of concepts, we cannot start from the elements of existence which came first in time, but we must begin with those which are nearest and most intimately connected with us. We cannot, with a leap, transport ourselves to the beginning of the world, in order to begin our analysis there, but we must start from the present and see whether we cannot advance from the later to the earlier. As long as Geology fabled fantastic revolutions to account for the present state of the earth, it groped in darkness. It was only when it began to study the processes at present at work on the earth, and from these to argue back to the past, that it gained a firm foundation. As long as Philosophy assumes all sorts of principles, such as atom, motion, matter, will, the unconscious, it will hang in the air. The philosopher can reach his goal only if he adopts that which is last in time as first in his theory. This absolutely last in the world-process is thought. There are people who say it is impossible to ascertain with certainty whether thought is right or wrong, and that, so far, our starting-point is a doubtful one. It would be just as intelligent to raise doubts as to whether a tree is in itself right or wrong. Thought is a fact, and it is meaningless to speak of the truth or falsity of a fact. I can, at most, be in doubt as to whether thought is rightly employed, just as I can doubt whether a certain tree supplies wood adapted to the making of this or that useful object. It is just the purpose of this book to show how far the application of thought to the world is right or wrong. I can understand anyone doubting whether, by means of thought, we can gain any knowledge of the world, but it is unintelligible to me how anyone can doubt that thought in itself is right. ADDITION TO THE REVISED EDITION (1918). In the preceding discussion I have pointed out the importance of the difference between thinking and all other activities of mind. This difference is a fact which is patent to genuinely unprejudiced observation. An observer who does not try to see the facts without preconception will be tempted to bring against my argumentation such objections as these: When I think about a rose, there is involved nothing more than a relation of my "I" to the rose, just as when I feel the beauty of the rose. There subsists a relation between "I" and object in thinking precisely as there does, e.g., in feeling or perceiving. Those who urge this objection fail to bear in mind that it is only in the activity of thinking that the "I," or Ego, knows itself to be identical, right into all the ramifications of the activity, with that which does the thinking. Of no other activity of mind can we say the same. For example, in a feeling of pleasure it is easy for a really careful observer to discriminate between the extent to which the Ego knows itself to be identical with what is active in the feeling, and the extent to which there is something passive in the Ego, so that the pleasure is merely something which happens to the Ego. The same applies to the other mental activities. The main thing is not to confuse the "having of images" with the elaboration of ideas by thinking. Images may appear in the mind dream-wise, like vague intimations. But this is not thinking. True, someone might now urge: If this is what you mean by "thinking," then your thinking contains willing, and you have to do, not with mere thinking, but with the will to think. However, this would justify us only in saying: Genuine thinking must always be willed thinking. But this is quite irrelevant to the characterisation of thinking as this has been given in the preceding discussion. Let it be granted that the nature of thinking necessarily implies its being willed, the point which matters is that nothing is willed which, in being carried out, fails to appear to the Ego as an activity completely its own and under its own supervision. Indeed, we must say that thinking appears to the observer as through and through willed, precisely because of its nature as above defined. If we genuinely try to master all the facts which are relevant to a judgment about the nature of thinking, we cannot fail to observe that, as a mental activity, thinking has the unique character which is here in question. A reader of whose powers the author of this book has a very high opinion, has objected that it is impossible to speak about thinking as we are here doing, because the supposed observation of active thinking is nothing but an illusion. In reality, what is observed is only the results of an unconscious activity which lies at the basis of thinking. It is only because, and just because, this unconscious activity escapes observation, that the deceptive appearance of the self-existence of the observed thinking arises, just as when an illumination by means of a rapid succession of electric sparks makes us believe that we see a movement. This objection, likewise, rests solely on an inaccurate view of the facts. The objection ignores that it is the Ego itself which, identical with the thinking, observes from within its own activity. The Ego would have to stand outside the thinking in order to suffer the sort of deception which is caused by an illumination with a rapid succession of electric sparks. One might say rather that to indulge in such an analogy is to deceive oneself wilfully, just as if someone, seeing a moving light, were obstinately to affirm that it is being freshly lit by an unknown hand at every point where it appears. No, whoever is bent on seeing in thought anything else than an activity produced--and observable by--the Ego has first to shut his eyes to the plain facts that are there for the looking, in order then to invent a hypothetical activity as the basis of thinking. If he does not wilfully blind himself, he must recognise that all these "hypothetical additions" to thinking take him away from its real nature. Unprejudiced observation shows that nothing is to be counted as belonging to the nature of thinking except what is found in thinking itself. It is impossible to discover the cause of thinking by going outside the realm of thought. IV THE WORLD AS PERCEPT The products of thinking are concepts and ideas. What a concept is cannot be expressed in words. Words can do no more than draw our attention to the fact that we have concepts. When someone perceives a tree, the perception acts as a stimulus for thought. Thus an ideal element is added to the perceived object, and the perceiver regards the object and its ideal complement as belonging together. When the object disappears from the field of his perception, the ideal counterpart alone remains. This latter is the concept of the object. The wider the range of our experience, the larger becomes the number of our concepts. Moreover, concepts are not by any means found in isolation one from the other. They combine to form an ordered and systematic whole. The concept "organism," e.g., combines with those of "development according to law," "growth," and others. Other concepts based on particular objects fuse completely with one another. All concepts formed from particular lions fuse in the universal concept "lion." In this way, all the separate concepts combine to form a closed, conceptual system within which each has its special place. Ideas do not differ qualitatively from concepts. They are but fuller, more saturated, more comprehensive concepts. I attach special importance to the necessity of bearing in mind, here, that I make thought my starting-point, and not concepts and ideas which are first gained by means of thought. These latter presuppose thought. My remarks regarding the self-dependent, self-sufficient character of thought cannot, therefore, be simply transferred to concepts. (I make special mention of this, because it is here that I differ from Hegel, who regards the concept as something primary and ultimate.) Concepts cannot be derived from perception. This is apparent from the fact that, as man grows up, he slowly and gradually builds up the concepts corresponding to the objects which surround him. Concepts are added to perception. A philosopher, widely read at the present day (Herbert Spencer), describes the mental process which we perform upon perception as follows: "If, when walking through the fields some day in September, you hear a rustle a few yards in advance, and on observing the ditch-side where it occurs, see the herbage agitated, you will probably turn towards the spot to learn by what this sound and motion are produced. As you approach there flutters into the ditch a partridge; on seeing which your curiosity is satisfied--you have what you call an explanation of the appearances. The explanation, mark, amounts to this--that whereas throughout life you have had countless experiences of disturbance among small stationary bodies, accompanying the movement of other bodies among them, and have generalised the relation between such disturbances and such movements, you consider this particular disturbance explained on finding it to present an instance of the like relation" (First Principles, Part I, par. 23). A closer analysis leads to a very different description from that here given. When I hear a noise, my first demand is for the concept which fits this percept. Without this concept, the noise is to me a mere noise. Whoever does not reflect further, hears just the noise and is satisfied with that. But my thought makes it clear to me that the noise is to be regarded as an effect. Thus it is only when I combine the concept of effect with the percept of a noise that I am led to go beyond the particular percept and seek for its cause. The concept of "effect" calls up that of "cause," and my next step is to look for the agent, which I find, say, in a partridge. But these concepts, cause and effect, can never be gained through mere perception, however many instances we bring under review. Perception evokes thought, and it is this which shows me how to link separate experiences together. If one demands of a "strictly objective science" that it should take its data from perception alone, one must demand also that it abandon all thought. For thought, by its very nature, transcends the objects of perception. It is time now to pass from thought to the thinker. For it is through the thinker that thought and perception are combined. The human mind is the stage on which concept and percept meet and are linked to one another. In saying this, we already characterise this (human) consciousness. It mediates between thought and perception. In perception the object appears as given, in thought the mind seems to itself to be active. It regards the thing as object and itself as the thinking subject. When thought is directed upon the perceptual world we have consciousness of objects; when it is directed upon itself we have self-consciousness. Human consciousness must, of necessity, be at the same time self-consciousness, because it is a consciousness which thinks. For, when thought contemplates its own activity it makes an object for study of its own essential nature, it makes an object of itself as subject. It is important to note here that it is only by means of thinking that I am able to determine myself as subject and contrast myself with objects. Therefore thinking must never be regarded as a merely subjective activity. Thinking transcends the distinction of subject and object. It produces these two concepts just as it produces all others. When, therefore, I, as thinking subject, refer a concept to an object, we must not regard this reference as something purely subjective. It is not the subject, but thought, which makes the reference. The subject does not think because it is a subject, rather it conceives itself to be a subject because it can think. The activity of consciousness, in so far as it thinks, is thus not merely subjective. Rather it is neither subjective nor objective; it transcends both these concepts. I ought never to say that I, as an individual subject, think, but rather that I, as subject, exist myself by the grace of thought. Thought thus takes me out of myself and relates me to objects. At the same time it separates me from them, inasmuch as I, as subject, am set over against the objects. It is just this which constitutes the double nature of man. His thought embraces himself and the rest of the world. But by this same act of thought he determines himself also as an individual, in contrast with the objective world. We must next ask ourselves how the other element, which we have so far simply called the perceptual object and which comes, in consciousness, into contact with thought, enters into thought at all? In order to answer this question, we must eliminate from the field of consciousness everything which has been imported by thought. For, at any moment, the content of consciousness is always shot through with concepts in the most various ways. Let us assume that a being with fully developed human intelligence originated out of nothing and confronted the world. All that it there perceived before its thought began to act would be the pure content of perception. The world so far would appear to this being as a mere chaotic aggregate of sense-data, colours, sounds, sensations of pressure, of warmth, of taste, of smell, and, lastly, feelings of pleasure and pain. This mass constitutes the world of pure unthinking perception. Over against it stands thought, ready to begin its activity as soon as it can find a point of attack. Experience shows that the opportunity is not long in coming. Thought is able to draw threads from one sense-datum to another. It brings definite concepts to bear on these data and thus establishes a relation between them. We have seen above how a noise which we hear is connected with another content by our identifying the first as the effect of the second. If now we recollect that the activity of thought is on no account to be considered as merely subjective, then we shall not be tempted to believe that the relations thus established by thought have merely subjective validity. Our next task is to discover by means of thought what relation the above-mentioned immediate sense-data have to the conscious subject. The ambiguity of current speech makes it advisable for me to come to an agreement with my readers concerning the meaning of a word which I shall have to employ in what follows. I shall apply the name "percepts" to the immediate sense-data enumerated above, in so far as the subject consciously apprehends them. It is, then, not the process of perception, but the object of this process which I call the "percept." I reject the term "sensation," because this has a definite meaning in Physiology which is narrower than that of my term "percept." I can speak of feeling as a percept, but not as a sensation in the physiological sense of the term. Before I can have cognisance of my feeling it must become a percept for me. The manner in which, through observation, we gain knowledge of our thought-processes is such that when we first begin to notice thought, it too may be called a percept. The unreflective man regards his percepts, such as they appear to his immediate apprehension, as things having a wholly independent existence. When he sees a tree he believes that it stands in the form which he sees, with the colours of all its parts, etc., there on the spot towards which his gaze is directed. When the same man sees the sun in the morning appear as a disc on the horizon, and follows the course of this disc, he believes that the phenomenon exists and occurs (by itself) exactly as he perceives it. To this belief he clings until he meets with further percepts which contradict his former ones. The child who has as yet had no experience of distance grasps at the moon, and does not correct its first impression as to the real distance until a second percept contradicts the first. Every extension of the circle of my percepts compels me to correct my picture of the world. We see this in everyday life, as well as in the mental development of mankind. The picture which the ancients made for themselves of the relation of the earth to the sun and other heavenly bodies, had to be replaced by another when Copernicus found that it contradicted percepts which in those early days were unknown. A man who had been born blind said, when operated on by Dr. Franz, that the idea of the size of objects which he had formed before his operation by his sense of touch was a very different one. He had to correct his tactual percepts by his visual percepts. How is it that we are compelled to make these continual corrections in our observations? A single reflection supplies the answer to this question. When I stand at one end of an avenue, the trees at the other end, away from me, seem smaller and nearer together than those where I stand. But the scene which I perceive changes when I change the place from which I am looking. The exact form in which it presents itself to me is, therefore, dependent on a condition which inheres, not in the object, but in me, the percipient. It is all the same to the avenue where I stand. But the picture of it which I receive depends essentially on my standpoint. In the same way, it makes no difference to the sun and the planetary system that human beings happen to perceive them from the earth; but the picture of the heavens which human beings have is determined by the fact that they inhabit the earth. This dependence of our percepts on our points of observation is the easiest kind of dependence to understand. The matter becomes more difficult when we realise further that our perceptual world is dependent on our bodily and mental organisation. The physicist teaches us that within the space in which we hear a sound there are vibrations of the air, and that there are vibrations also in the particles of the body which we regard as the cause of the sound. These vibrations are perceived as sounds only if we have normally constructed ears. Without them the whole world would be for us for ever silent. Again, the physiologist teaches us that there are men who perceive nothing of the wonderful display of colours which surrounds us. In their world there are only degrees of light and dark. Others are blind only to one colour, e.g., red. Their world lacks this colour tone, and hence it is actually a different one from that of the average man. I should like to call the dependence of my perceptual world on my point of observation "mathematical," and its dependence on my organisation "qualitative." The former determines proportions of size and mutual distances of my percepts, the latter their quality. The fact that I see a red surface as red--this qualitative determination--depends on the structure of my eye. My percepts, then, are in the first instance subjective. The recognition of the subjective character of our percepts may easily lead us to doubt whether there is any objective basis for them at all. When we know that a percept, e.g., that of a red colour or of a certain tone, is not possible without a specific structure of our organism, we may easily be led to believe that it has no being at all apart from our subjective organisation, that it has no kind of existence apart from the act of perceiving of which it is the object. The classical representative of this theory is George Berkeley, who held that from the moment we realise the importance of a subject for perception, we are no longer able to believe in the existence of a world apart from a conscious mind. "Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind that man need only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be, viz., that all the choir of heaven and the furniture of the earth--in a word, all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world--have not any subsistence without a mind; that their being is to be perceived or known; that consequently, so long as they are not actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all or else subsist in the mind of some Eternal Spirit" (Berkeley, Of the Principles of Human Knowledge, Part I, Section 6). On this view, when we take away the act of perceiving, nothing remains of the percept. There is no colour when none is seen, no sound when none is heard. Extension, form, and motion exist as little as colour and sound apart from the act of perception. We never perceive bare extension or shape. These are always joined with colour or some other quality, which are undoubtedly dependent on the subject. If these latter disappear when we cease to perceive, the former, being connected with them, must disappear likewise. If it is urged that, even though figure, colour, sound, etc., have no existence except in the act of perception, yet there must be things which exist apart from perception and which are similar to the percepts in our minds, then the view we have mentioned would answer, that a colour can be similar only to a colour, a figure to a figure. Our percepts can be similar only to our percepts and to nothing else. Even what we call a thing is nothing but a collection of percepts which are connected in a definite way. If I strip a table of its shape, extension, colour, etc.--in short, of all that is merely my percepts--then nothing remains over. If we follow this view to its logical conclusion, we are led to the assertion that the objects of my perceptions exist only through me, and only in as far as, and as long as, I perceive them. They disappear with my perceiving and have no meaning apart from it. Apart from my percepts I know of no objects and cannot know of any. No objection can be made to this assertion as long as we take into account merely the general fact that the percept is determined in part by the organisation of the subject. The matter would be far otherwise if we were in a position to say what part exactly is played by our perceiving in the occurrence of a percept. We should know then what happens to a percept whilst it is being perceived, and we should also be able to determine what character it must possess before it comes to be perceived. This leads us to turn our attention from the object of a perception to the subject of it. I am aware not only of other things but also of myself. The content of my perception of myself consists, in the first instance, in that I am something stable in contrast with the ever coming and going flux of percepts. The awareness of myself accompanies in my consciousness the awareness of all other percepts. When I am absorbed in the perception of a given object I am, for the time being, aware only of this object. Next I become aware also of myself. I am then conscious, not only of the object, but also of my Self as opposed to and observing the object. I do not merely see a tree, I know also that it is I who see it. I know, moreover, that some process takes place in me when I observe a tree. When the tree disappears from my field of vision, an after-effect of this process remains, viz., an image of the tree. This image has become associated with my Self during my perception. My Self has become enriched; to its content a new element has been added. This element I call my idea of the tree. I should never have occasion to talk of ideas, were I not aware of my own Self. Percepts would come and go; I should let them slip by. It is only because I am aware of my Self, and observe that with each perception the content of the Self is changed, that I am compelled to connect the perception of the object with the changes in the content of my Self, and to speak of having an idea. That I have ideas is in the same sense matter of observation to me as that other objects have colour, sound, etc. I am now also able to distinguish these other objects, which stand over against me, by the name of the outer world, whereas the contents of my perception of my Self form my inner world. The failure to recognise the true relation between idea and object has led to the greatest misunderstandings in modern philosophy. The fact that I perceive a change in myself, that my Self undergoes a modification, has been thrust into the foreground, whilst the object which causes these modifications is altogether ignored. In consequence it has been said that we perceive, not objects, but only our ideas. I know, so it is said, nothing of the table in itself, which is the object of my perception, but only of the changes which occur within me when I perceive a table. This theory should not be confused with the Berkeleyan theory mentioned above. Berkeley maintains the subjective nature of my perceptual contents, but he does not say that I can know only my own ideas. He limits my knowledge to my ideas because, on his view, there are no objects other than ideas. What I perceive as a table no longer exists, according to Berkeley, when I cease to look at it. This is why Berkeley holds that our percepts are created directly by the omnipotence of God. I see a table because God causes this percept in me. For Berkeley, therefore, nothing is real except God and human spirits. What we call the "world" exists only in spirits. What the naïve man calls the outer world, or material nature, is for Berkeley non-existent. This theory is confronted by the now predominant Kantian view which limits our knowledge of the world to our ideas, not because of any conviction that nothing beyond these ideas exists, but because it holds that we are so organised that we can have knowledge only of the changes within our own selves, not of the things-in-themselves which are the causes of these changes. This view concludes from the fact that I know only my own ideas, not that there is no reality independent of them, but only that the subject cannot have direct knowledge of such reality. The mind can merely "through the medium of its subjective thoughts imagine it, conceive it, know it, or perhaps also fail to know it" (O. Liebmann, Zur Analysis der Wirklichkeit, p. 28). Kantians believe that their principles are absolutely certain, indeed immediately evident, without any proof. "The most fundamental principle which the philosopher must begin by grasping clearly, consists in the recognition that our knowledge, in the first instance, does not extend beyond our ideas. Our ideas are all that we immediately have and experience, and just because we have immediate experience of them the most radical doubt cannot rob us of this knowledge. On the other hand, the knowledge which transcends my ideas--taking ideas here in the widest possible sense, so as to include all psychical processes--is not proof against doubt. Hence, at the very beginning of all philosophy we must explicitly set down all knowledge which transcends ideas as open to doubt." These are the opening sentences of Volkelt's book on Kant's Theory of Knowledge. What is here put forward as an immediate and self-evident truth is, in reality, the conclusion of a piece of argument which runs as follows. Naïve common sense believes that things, just as we perceive them, exist also outside our minds. Physics, Physiology, and Psychology, however, teach us that our percepts are dependent on our organisation, and that therefore we cannot know anything about external objects except what our organisation transmits to us. The objects which we perceive are thus modifications of our organisation, not things-in-themselves. This line of thought has, in fact, been characterised by Ed. von Hartmann as the one which leads necessarily to the conviction that we can have direct knowledge only of our own ideas (cp. his Grundproblem der Erkenntnistheorie, pp. 16-40). Because outside our organisms we find vibrations of particles and of air, which are perceived by us as sounds, it is concluded that what we call sound is nothing more than a subjective reaction of our organisms to these motions in the external world. Similarly, colour and heat are inferred to be merely modifications of our organisms. And, further, these two kinds of percepts are held to be the effects of processes in the external world which are utterly different from what we experience as heat or as colour. When these processes stimulate the nerves in the skin of my body, I perceive heat; when they stimulate the optical nerve I perceive light and colour. Light, colour, and heat, then, are the reactions of my sensory nerves to external stimuli. Similarly, the sense of touch reveals to me, not the objects of the outer world, but only states of my own body. The physicist holds that bodies are composed of infinitely small particles called molecules, and that these molecules are not in direct contact with one another, but have definite intervals between them. Between them, therefore, is empty space. Across this space they act on one another by attraction and repulsion. If I put my hand on a body, the molecules of my hand by no means touch those of the body directly, but there remains a certain distance between body and hand, and what I experience as the body's resistance is nothing but the effect of the force of repulsion which its molecules exert on my hand. I am absolutely external to the body and experience only its effects on my organism. The theory of the so-called Specific Nervous Energy, which has been advanced by J. Müller, supplements these speculations. It asserts that each sense has the peculiarity that it reacts to all external stimuli in only one definite way. If the optic nerve is stimulated, light sensations result, irrespective of whether the stimulation is due to what we call light, or to mechanical pressure, or an electrical current. On the other hand, the same external stimulus applied to different senses gives rise to different sensations. The conclusion from these facts seems to be, that our sense-organs can give us knowledge only of what occurs in themselves, but not of the external world. They determine our percepts, each according to its own nature. Physiology shows, further, that there can be no direct knowledge even of the effects which objects produce on our sense-organs. Through his study of the processes which occur in our own bodies, the physiologist finds that, even in the sense-organs, the effects of the external process are modified in the most diverse ways. We can see this most clearly in the case of eye and ear. Both are very complicated organs which modify the external stimulus considerably, before they conduct it to the corresponding nerve. From the peripheral end of the nerve the modified stimulus is then conducted to the brain. Here the central organs must in turn be stimulated. The conclusion is, therefore, drawn that the external process undergoes a series of transformations before it reaches consciousness. The brain processes are connected by so many intermediate links with the external stimuli, that any similarity between them is out of the question. What the brain ultimately transmits to the soul is neither external processes, nor processes in the sense-organs, but only such as occur in the brain. But even these are not apprehended immediately by the soul. What we finally have in consciousness are not brain processes at all, but sensations. My sensation of red has absolutely no similarity with the process which occurs in the brain when I sense red. The sensation, again, occurs as an effect in the mind, and the brain process is only its cause. This is why Hartmann (Grundproblem der Erkenntnistheorie, p. 37) says, "What the subject experiences is therefore only modifications of his own psychical states and nothing else." However, when I have sensations, they are very far as yet from being grouped in those complexes which I perceive as "things." Only single sensations can be transmitted to me by the brain. The sensations of hardness and softness are transmitted to me by the organ of touch, those of colour and light by the organ of sight. Yet all these are found united in one object. This unification must, therefore, be brought about by the soul itself; that is, the soul constructs things out of the separate sensations which the brain conveys to it. My brain conveys to me singly, and by widely different paths, the visual, tactual, and auditory sensations which the soul then combines into the idea of a trumpet. Thus, what is really the result of a process (i.e., the idea of a trumpet), is for my consciousness the primary datum. In this result nothing can any longer be found of what exists outside of me and originally stimulated my sense-organs. The external object is lost entirely on the way to the brain and through the brain to the soul. It would be hard to find in the history of human speculation another edifice of thought which has been built up with greater ingenuity, and which yet, on closer analysis, collapses into nothing. Let us look a little closer at the way it has been constructed. The theory starts with what is given in naïve consciousness, i.e., with things as perceived. It proceeds to show that none of the qualities which we find in these things would exist for us, had we no sense-organs. No eye--no colour. Therefore, the colour is not, as yet, present in the stimulus which affects the eye. It arises first through the interaction of the eye and the object. The latter is, therefore, colourless. But neither is the colour in the eye, for in the eye there is only a chemical, or physical, process which is first conducted by the optic nerve to the brain, and there initiates another process. Even this is not yet the colour. That is only produced in the soul by means of the brain process. Even then it does not yet appear in consciousness, but is first referred by the soul to a body in the external world. There I finally perceive it, as a quality of this body. We have travelled in a complete circle. We are conscious of a coloured object. That is the starting-point. Here thought begins its construction. If I had no eye, the object would be, for me, colourless. I cannot, therefore, attribute the colour to the object. I must look for it elsewhere. I look for it, first, in the eye--in vain; in the nerve--in vain; in the brain--in vain once more; in the soul--here I find it indeed, but not attached to the object. I recover the coloured body only on returning to my starting-point. The circle is completed. The theory leads me to identify what the naïve man regards as existing outside of him, as really a product of my mind. As long as one stops here everything seems to fit beautifully. But we must go over the argument once more from the beginning. Hitherto I have used, as my starting-point, the object, i.e., the external percept of which up to now, from my naïve standpoint, I had a totally wrong conception. I thought that the percept, just as I perceive it, had objective existence. But now I observe that it disappears with my act of perception, that it is only a modification of my mental state. Have I, then, any right at all to start from it in my arguments? Can I say of it that it acts on my soul? I must henceforth treat the table of which formerly I believed that it acted on me, and produced an idea of itself in me, as itself an idea. But from this it follows logically that my sense-organs, and the processes in them are also merely subjective. I have no right to talk of a real eye but only of my idea of an eye. Exactly the same is true of the nerve paths, and the brain processes, and even of the process in the soul itself, through which things are supposed to be constructed out of the chaos of diverse sensations. If assuming the truth of the first circle of argumentation, I run through the steps of my cognitive activity once more, the latter reveals itself as a tissue of ideas which, as such, cannot act on one another. I cannot say that my idea of the object acts on my idea of the eye, and that from this interaction results my idea of colour. But it is necessary that I should say this. For as soon as I see clearly that my sense-organs and their activity, my nerve- and soul-processes, can also be known to me only through perception, the argument which I have outlined reveals itself in its full absurdity. It is quite true that I can have no percept without the corresponding sense-organ. But just as little can I be aware of a sense-organ without perception. From the percept of a table I can pass to the eye which sees it, or the nerves in the skin which touches it, but what takes place in these I can, in turn, learn only from perception. And then I soon perceive that there is no trace of similarity between the process which takes place in the eye and the colour which I see. I cannot get rid of colour sensations by pointing to the process which takes place in the eye whilst I perceive a colour. No more can I re-discover the colour in the nerve- or brain-processes. I only add a new percept, localised within the organism, to the first percept which the naïve man localises outside of his organism. I only pass from one percept to another. Moreover, there is a break in the whole argument. I can follow the processes in my organism up to those in my brain, even though my assumptions become more and more hypothetical as I approach the central processes of the brain. The method of external observation ceases with the process in my brain, more particularly with the process which I should observe, if I could treat the brain with the instruments and methods of Physics and Chemistry. The method of internal observation, or introspection, begins with the sensations, and includes the construction of things out of the material of sense-data. At the point of transition from brain process to sensation, there is a break in the sequence of observation. The theory which I have here described, and which calls itself Critical Idealism, in contrast to the standpoint of naïve common sense which it calls Naïve Realism, makes the mistake of characterising one group of percepts as ideas, whilst taking another group in the very same sense as the Naïve Realism which it apparently refutes. It establishes the ideal character of percepts by accepting naïvely, as objectively valid facts, the percepts connected with one's own body; and, in addition, it fails to see that it confuses two spheres of observation, between which it can find no connecting link. Critical Idealism can refute Naïve Realism only by itself assuming, in naïve-realistic fashion, that one's own organism has objective existence. As soon as the Idealist realises that the percepts connected with his own organism stand on exactly the same footing as those which Naïve Realism assumes to have objective existence, he can no longer use the former as a safe foundation for his theory. He would, to be consistent, have to regard his own organism also as a mere complex of ideas. But this removes the possibility of regarding the content of the perceptual world as a product of the mind's organisation. One would have to assume that the idea "colour" was only a modification of the idea "eye." So-called Critical Idealism can be established only by borrowing the assumptions of Naïve Realism. The apparent refutation of the latter is achieved only by uncritically accepting its own assumptions as valid in another sphere. This much, then, is certain: Analysis within the world of percepts cannot establish Critical Idealism, and, consequently, cannot strip percepts of their objective character. Still less is it legitimate to represent the principle that "the perceptual world is my idea" as self-evident and needing no proof. Schopenhauer begins his chief work, The World as Will and Idea, with the words: "The world is my idea--this is a truth which holds good for everything that lives and knows, though man alone can bring it into reflective and abstract consciousness. If he really does this, he has attained to philosophical wisdom. It then becomes clear and certain to him that what he knows is not a sun and an earth, but only an eye that sees a sun, a hand that feels an earth; that the world which surrounds him is there only in idea, i.e., only in relation to something else, the consciousness which is himself. If any truth can be asserted a priori, it is this: for it is the expression of the most general form of all possible and thinkable experience, a form which is more general than time, or space, or causality, for they all presuppose it ..." (The World as Will and Idea, Book I, par. 1). This whole theory is wrecked by the fact, already mentioned above, that the eyes and the hand are just as much percepts as the sun and the earth. Using Schopenhauer's vocabulary in his own sense, I might maintain against him that my eye which sees the sun, and my hand which feels the earth, are my ideas just like the sun and the earth themselves. That, put in this way, the whole theory cancels itself, is clear without further argument. For only my real eye and my real hand, but not my ideas "eye" and "hand," could own the ideas "sun" and "earth" as modifications. Yet it is only in terms of these ideas that Critical Idealism has the right to speak. Critical Idealism is totally unable to gain an insight unto the relation of percept to idea. It cannot make the separation, mentioned on p. 58, between what happens to the percept in the process of perception and what must be inherent in it prior to perception. We must therefore attempt this problem in another way. V OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORLD From the foregoing considerations it follows that it is impossible to prove, by analysis of the content of our perceptions, that our percepts are ideas. This is supposed to be proved by showing that, if the process of perceiving takes place in the way in which we conceive it in accordance with the naïve-realistic assumptions concerning the psychological and physiological constitution of human individuals, then we have to do, not with things themselves, but merely with our ideas of things. Now, if Naïve Realism, when consistently thought out, leads to results which directly contradict its presuppositions, then these presuppositions must be discarded as unsuitable for the foundation of a theory of the world. In any case, it is inadmissible to reject the presuppositions and yet accept the consequences, as the Critical Idealist does who bases his assertion that the world is my idea on the line of argument indicated above. (Eduard von Hartmann gives in his work Das Grundproblem der Erkenntnistheorie a full account of this line of argument.) The truth of Critical Idealism is one thing, the persuasiveness of its proofs another. How it stands with the former, will appear later in the course of our argument, but the persuasiveness of its proofs is nil. If one builds a house, and the ground floor collapses whilst the first floor is being built, then the first floor collapses too. Naïve Realism and Critical Idealism are related to one another like the ground floor to the first floor in this simile. For one who holds that the whole perceptual world is only an ideal world, and, moreover, the effect of things unknown to him acting on his soul, the real problem of knowledge is naturally concerned, not with the ideas present only in the soul, but with the things which lie outside his consciousness, and which are independent of him. He asks, How much can we learn about them indirectly, seeing that we cannot observe them directly? From this point of view, he is concerned, not with the connection of his conscious percepts with one another, but with their causes which transcend his consciousness and exist independently of him, whereas the percepts, on his view, disappear as soon as he turns his sense-organs away from the things themselves. Our consciousness, on this view, works like a mirror from which the pictures of definite things disappear the very moment its reflecting surface is not turned towards them. If, now, we do not see the things themselves, but only their reflections, we must obtain knowledge of the nature of the former indirectly by drawing conclusions from the character of the latter. The whole of modern science adopts this point of view, when it uses percepts only as a means of obtaining information about the motions of matter which lie behind them, and which alone really "are." If the philosopher, as Critical Idealist, admits real existence at all, then his sole aim is to gain knowledge of this real existence indirectly by means of his ideas. His interest ignores the subjective world of ideas, and pursues instead the causes of these ideas. The Critical Idealist can, however, go even further and say, I am confined to the world of my own ideas and cannot escape from it. If I conceive a thing beyond my ideas, this concept, once more, is nothing but my idea. An Idealist of this type will either deny the thing-in-itself entirely or, at any rate, assert that it has no significance for human minds, i.e., that it is as good as non-existent since we can know nothing of it. To this kind of Critical Idealist the whole world seems a chaotic dream, in the face of which all striving for knowledge is simply meaningless. For him there can be only two sorts of men: (1) victims of the illusion that the dreams they have woven themselves are real things, and (2) wise men who see through the nothingness of this dream world, and who gradually lose all desire to trouble themselves further about it. From this point of view, even one's own personality may become a mere dream phantom. Just as during sleep there appears among my dream-images an image of myself, so in waking consciousness the idea of my own Self is added to the idea of the outer world. I have then given to me in consciousness, not my real Self, but only my idea of my Self. Whoever denies that things exist, or, at least, that we can know anything of them, must also deny the existence, respectively the knowledge, of one's own personality. This is how the Critical Idealist comes to maintain that "All reality transforms itself into a wonderful dream, without a life which is the object of the dream, and without a mind which has the dream; into a dream which is nothing but a dream of itself." (Cp. Fichte, Die Bestimmung des Menschen.) Whether he who believes that he recognises immediate experience to be a dream, postulates nothing behind this dream, or whether he relates his ideas to actual things, is immaterial. In both cases life itself must lose all scientific interest for him. However, whereas for those who believe that the whole of accessible reality is exhausted in dreams, all science is an absurdity, for those who feel compelled to argue from ideas to things, science consists in studying these things-in-themselves. The first of these theories of the world may be called Absolute Illusionism, the second is called Transcendental Realism [2] by its most rigorously logical exponent, Eduard von Hartmann. These two points of view have this in common with Naïve Realism, that they seek to gain a footing in the world by means of an analysis of percepts. Within this sphere, however, they are unable to find any stable point. One of the most important questions for an adherent of Transcendental Realism would have to be, how the Ego constructs the world of ideas out of itself. A world of ideas which was given to us, and which disappeared as soon as we shut our senses to the external world, might provoke an earnest desire for knowledge, in so far as it was a means for investigating indirectly the world of the self-existing Self. If the things of our experience were "ideas," then our everyday life would be like a dream, and the discovery of the true facts like waking. Even our dream-images interest us as long as we dream and, consequently, do not detect their dream character. But as soon as we wake, we no longer look for the connections of our dream-images among themselves, but rather for the physical, physiological, and psychological processes which underlie them. In the same way, a philosopher who holds the world to be his idea, cannot be interested in the reciprocal relations of the details within the world. If he admits the existence of a real Ego at all, then his question will be, not how one of his ideas is associated with another, but what takes place in the Soul which is independent of these ideas, while a certain train of ideas passes through his consciousness. If I dream that I am drinking wine which makes my throat burn, and then wake up with a fit of coughing (cp. Weygandt, Entstehung der Träume, 1893) I cease, the moment I wake, to be interested in the dream-experience for its own sake. My attention is now concerned only with the physiological and psychological processes by means of which the irritation which causes me to cough, comes to be symbolically expressed in the dream. Similarly, once the philosopher is convinced that the given world consists of nothing but ideas, his interest is bound to switch from them at once to the soul which is the reality lying behind them. The matter is more serious, however, for the Illusionist who denies the existence of an Ego behind the "ideas," or at least holds this Ego to be unknowable. We might very easily be led to such a view by the reflection that, in contrast to dreaming, there is the waking state in which we have the opportunity to detect our dreams, and to realise the real relations of things, but that there is no state of the self which is related similarly to our waking conscious life. Every adherent of this view fails entirely to see that there is, in fact, something which is to mere perception what our waking experience to our dreams. This something is thought. The naïve man cannot be charged with failure to perceive this. He accepts life as it is, and regards things as real just as they present themselves to him in experience. The first step, however, which we take beyond this standpoint can be only this, that we ask how thought is related to perception. It makes no difference whether or no the percept, as given to me, has a continuous existence before and after I perceive it. If I want to assert anything whatever about it, I can do so only with the help of thought. When I assert that the world is my idea, I have enunciated the result of an act of thought, and if my thought is not applicable to the world, then my result is false. Between a percept and every kind of judgment about it there intervenes thought. The reason why, in our discussion about things, we generally overlook the part played by thought, has already been given above (p. 31). It lies in the fact that our attention is concentrated only on the object about which we think, but not at the same time on the thinking itself. The naïve mind, therefore, treats thought as something which has nothing to do with things, but stands altogether aloof from them and makes its theories about them. The theory which the thinker constructs concerning the phenomena of the world is regarded, not as part of the real things, but as existing only in men's heads. The world is complete in itself even without this theory. It is all ready-made and finished with all its substances and forces, and of this ready-made world man makes himself a picture. Whoever thinks thus need only be asked one question. What right have you to declare the world to be complete without thought? Does not the world cause thoughts in the minds of men with the same necessity as it causes the blossoms on plants? Plant a seed in the earth. It puts forth roots and stem, it unfolds into leaves and blossoms. Set the plant before yourselves. It connects itself, in your minds, with a definite concept. Why should this concept belong any less to the whole plant than leaf and blossom? You say the leaves and blossoms exist quite apart from an experiencing subject. The concept appears only when a human being makes an object of the plant. Quite so. But leaves and blossoms also appear on the plant only if there is soil in which the seed can be planted, and light and air in which the blossoms and leaves can unfold. Just so the concept of a plant arises when a thinking being comes into contact with the plant. It is quite arbitrary to regard the sum of what we experience of a thing through bare perception as a totality, a whole, while that which thought reveals in it is regarded as a mere accretion which has nothing to do with the thing itself. If I am given a rosebud to-day, the percept that offers itself to me is complete only for the moment. If I put the bud into water, I shall to-morrow get a very different picture of my object. If I watch the rosebud without interruption, I shall see to-day's state gradually change into to-morrow's through an infinite number of intermediate stages. The picture which presents itself to me at any one moment is only a chance section out of the continuous process of growth in which the object is engaged. If I do not put the bud into water, a whole series of states, the possibility of which lay in the bud, will not be realised. Similarly, I may be prevented to-morrow from watching the blossom further, and thus carry away an incomplete picture of it. It would be a quite unscientific and arbitrary judgment which declared of any haphazard appearance of a thing, this is the thing. To regard the sum of perceptual appearances as the thing is no more legitimate. It might be quite possible for a mind to receive the concept at the same time as, and together with, the percept. To such a mind it would never occur that the concept did not belong to the thing. It would have to ascribe to the concept an existence indivisibly bound up with the thing. Let me make myself clearer by another example. If I throw a stone horizontally through the air, I perceive it in different places at different times. I connect these places so as to form a line. Mathematics teaches me to distinguish various kinds of lines, one of which is the parabola. I know a parabola to be a line which is produced by a point moving according to a certain well-defined law. If I analyse the conditions under which the stone thrown by me moves, I find that the line of its flight is identical with the line I know as a parabola. That the stone moves exactly in a parabola is a result of the given conditions and follows necessarily from them. The form of the parabola belongs to the whole phenomenon as much as any other feature of it. The hypothetical mind described above which has no need of the roundabout way of thought, would find itself presented, not only with a sequence of visual percepts at different points, but, as part and parcel of these phenomena, also with the parabolic form of the line of flight, which we can add to the phenomenon only by an act of thought. It is not due to the real objects that they appear to us at first without their conceptual sides, but to our mental organisation. Our whole organisation functions in such a way that in the apprehension of every real thing the relevant elements come to us from two sources, viz., from perception and from thought. The nature of things is indifferent to the way I am organised for apprehending them. The breach between perception and thought exists only from the moment that I confront objects as spectator. But which elements do, and which do not, belong to the objects, cannot depend on the manner in which I obtain my knowledge of them. Man is a being with many limitations. First of all, he is a thing among other things. His existence is in space and time. Hence but a limited portion of the total universe can ever be given to him. This limited portion, however, is linked up with other parts on every side both in time and in space. If our existence were so linked with things that every process in the object world were also a process in us, there would be no difference between us and things. Neither would there be any individual objects for us. All processes and events would then pass continuously one into the other. The cosmos would be a unity and a whole complete in itself. The stream of events would nowhere be interrupted. But owing to our limitations we perceive as an individual object what, in truth, is not an individual object at all. Nowhere, e.g., is the particular quality "red" to be found by itself in abstraction. It is surrounded on all sides by other qualities to which it belongs, and without which it could not subsist. For us, however, it is necessary to isolate certain sections of the world and to consider them by themselves. Our eye can seize only single colours one after another out of a manifold colour-complex, our understanding only single concepts out of a connected conceptual system. This isolation is a subjective act, which is due to the fact that we are not identical with the world-process, but are only things among other things. It is of the greatest importance for us to determine the relation of ourselves, as things, to all other things. The determining of this relation must be distinguished from merely becoming conscious of ourselves. For this self-awareness we depend on perception just as we do for our awareness of any other thing. The perception of myself reveals to me a number of qualities which I combine into an apprehension of my personality as a whole, just as I combine the qualities, yellow, metallic, hard, etc., in the unity "gold." This kind of self-consciousness does not take me beyond the sphere of what belongs to me. Hence it must be distinguished from the determination of myself by thought. Just as I determine by thought the place of any single percept of the external world in the whole cosmic system, so I fit by an act of thought what I perceive in myself into the order of the world-process. My self-observation restricts me within definite limits, but my thought has nothing to do with these limits. In this sense I am a two-sided being. I am contained within the sphere which I apprehend as that of my personality, but I am also the possessor of an activity which, from a higher standpoint, determines my finite existence. Thought is not individual like sensation and feeling; it is universal. It receives an individual stamp in each separate human being only because it comes to be related to his individual feelings and sensations. By means of these particular colourings of the universal thought, individual men are distinguished from one another. There is only one single concept of "triangle." It is quite immaterial for the content of this concept whether it is in A's consciousness or in B's. It will, however, be grasped by each of the two minds in its own individual way. This thought conflicts with a common prejudice which is very hard to overcome. The victims of this prejudice are unable to see that the concept of a triangle which my mind grasps is the same as the concept which my neighbour's mind grasps. The naïve man believes himself to be the creator of his concepts. Hence he believes that each person has his private concepts. One of the first things which philosophic thought requires of us is to overcome this prejudice. The one single concept of "triangle" does not split up into many concepts because it is thought by many minds. For the thought of the many is itself a unity. In thought we have the element which welds each man's special individuality into one whole with the cosmos. In so far as we sense and feel (perceive), we are isolated individuals; in so far as we think, we are the All-One Being which pervades everything. This is the deeper meaning of our two-sided nature. We are conscious of an absolute principle revealing itself in us, a principle which is universal. But we experience it, not as it issues from the centre of the world, but rather at a point on the periphery. Were the former the case, we should know, as soon as ever we became conscious, the solution of the whole world problem. But since we stand at a point on the periphery, and find that our own being is confined within definite limits, we must explore the region which lies beyond our own being with the help of thought, which is the universal cosmic principle manifesting itself in our minds. The fact that thought, in us, reaches out beyond our separate existence and relates itself to the universal world-order, gives rise to the desire for knowledge in us. Beings without thought do not experience this desire. When they come in contact with other things no questions arise for them. These other things remain external to such beings. But in thinking beings the concept confronts the external thing. It is that part of the thing which we receive not from without, but from within. To assimilate, to unite, the two elements, the inner and the outer, that is the function of knowledge. The percept, thus, is not something finished and self-contained, but one side only of the total reality. The other side is the concept. The act of cognition is the synthesis of percept and concept. And it is only the union of percept and concept which constitutes the whole thing. The preceding discussion shows clearly that it is futile to seek for any other common element in the separate things of the world than the ideal content which thinking supplies. All attempts to discover any other principle of unity in the world than this internally coherent ideal content, which we gain for ourselves by the conceptual analysis of our percepts, are bound to fail. Neither a personal God, nor force, nor matter, nor the blind will (of Schopenhauer and Hartmann), can be accepted by us as the universal principle of unity in the world. These principles all belong only to a limited sphere of our experience. Personality we experience only in ourselves, force and matter only in external things. The will, again, can be regarded only as the expression of the activity of our finite personalities. Schopenhauer wants to avoid making "abstract" thought the principle of unity in the world, and seeks instead something which presents itself to him immediately as real. This philosopher holds that we can never solve the riddle of the world so long as we regard it as an "external" world. "In fact, the meaning for which we seek of that world which is present to us only as our idea, or the transition from the world as mere idea of the knowing subject to whatever it may be besides this, would never be found if the investigator himself were nothing more than the pure knowing subject (a winged cherub without a body). But he himself is rooted in that world: he finds himself in it as an individual, that is to say, his knowledge, which is the necessary supporter of the whole world as idea, is yet always given through the medium of a body, whose affections are, as we have shown, the starting-point for the understanding in the perception of that world. His body is, for the pure knowing subject, an idea like every other idea, an object among objects. Its movements and actions are so far known to him in precisely the same way as the changes of all other perceived objects, and would be just as strange and incomprehensible to him if their meaning were not explained for him in an entirely different way.... The body is given in two entirely different ways to the subject of knowledge, who becomes an individual only through his identity with it. It is given as an idea in intelligent perception, as an object among objects and subject to the laws of objects. And it is also given in quite a different way as that which is immediately known to every one, and is signified by the word 'will.' Every true act of his will is also at once and without exception a movement of his body. The act of will and the movement of the body are not two different things objectively known, which the bond of causality unites; they do not stand in the relation of cause and effect; they are one and the same, but they are given in entirely different ways--immediately, and again in perception for the understanding." (The World as Will and Idea, Book 2, § 18.) Schopenhauer considers himself entitled by these arguments to hold that the will becomes objectified in the human body. He believes that in the activities of the body he has an immediate experience of reality, of the thing-in-itself in the concrete. Against these arguments we must urge that the activities of our body become known to us only through self-observation, and that, as such, they are in no way superior to other percepts. If we want to know their real nature, we can do so only by means of thought, i.e., by fitting them into the ideal system of our concepts and ideas. One of the most deeply rooted prejudices of the naïve mind is the opinion that thinking is abstract and empty of any concrete content. At best, we are told, it supplies but an "ideal" counterpart of the unity of the world, but never that unity itself. Whoever holds this view has never made clear to himself what a percept apart from concepts really is. Let us see what this world of bare percepts is. A mere juxtaposition in space, a mere succession in time, a chaos of disconnected particulars--that is what it is. None of these things which come and go on the stage of perception has any connection with any other. The world is a multiplicity of objects without distinctions of value. None plays any greater part in the nexus of the world than any other. In order to realise that this or that fact has a greater importance than another we must go to thought. As long as we do not think, the rudimentary organ of an animal which has no significance in its life, appears equal in value to its more important limbs. The particular facts reveal their meaning, in themselves and in their relations with other parts of the world, only when thought spins its threads from thing to thing. This activity of thinking has always a content. For it is only through a perfectly definite concrete content that I can know why the snail belongs to a lower type of organisation than the lion. The mere appearance, the percept, gives me no content which could inform me as to the degree of perfection of the organisation. Thought contributes this content to the percept from the world of concepts and ideas. In contrast with the content of perception which is given to us from without, the content of thought appears within our minds. The form in which thought first appears in consciousness we will call "intuition." Intuition is to thoughts what observation is to percepts. Intuition and observation are the sources of our knowledge. An external object which we observe remains unintelligible to us, until the corresponding intuition arises within us which adds to the reality those sides of it which are lacking in the percept. To anyone who is incapable of supplying the relevant intuitions, the full nature of the real remains a sealed book. Just as the colour-blind person sees only differences of brightness without any colour qualities, so the mind which lacks intuition sees only disconnected fragments of percepts. To explain a thing, to make it intelligible, means nothing else than to place it in the context from which it has been torn by the peculiar organisation of our minds, described above. Nothing can possibly exist cut off from the universe. Hence all isolation of objects has only subjective validity for minds organised like ours. For us the universe is split up into above and below, before and after, cause and effect, object and idea, matter and force, object and subject, etc. The objects which, in observation, appear to us as separate, become combined, bit by bit, through the coherent, unified system of our intuitions. By thought we fuse again into one whole all that perception has separated. An object presents riddles to our understanding so long as it exists in isolation. But this is an abstraction of our own making and can be unmade again in the world of concepts. Except through thought and perception nothing is given to us directly. The question now arises as to the interpretation of percepts on our theory. We have learnt that the proof which Critical Idealism offers for the subjective nature of percepts collapses. But the exhibition of the falsity of the proof is not, by itself, sufficient to show that the doctrine itself is an error. Critical Idealism does not base its proof on the absolute nature of thought, but relies on the argument that Naïve Realism, when followed to its logical conclusion, contradicts itself. How does the matter appear when we recognise the absoluteness of thought? Let us assume that a certain percept, e.g., red, appears in consciousness. To continued observation, the percept shows itself to be connected with other percepts, e.g., a certain figure, temperature, and touch-qualities. This complex of percepts I call an object in the world of sense. I can now ask myself: Over and above the percepts just mentioned, what else is there in the section of space in which they are? I shall then find mechanical, chemical, and other processes in that section of space. I next go further and study the processes which take place between the object and my sense-organs. I shall find oscillations in an elastic medium, the character of which has not the least in common with the percepts from which I started. I get the same result if I trace further the connection between sense-organs and brain. In each of these inquiries I gather new percepts, but the connecting thread which binds all these spatially and temporally separated percepts into one whole, is thought. The air vibrations which carry sound are given to me as percepts just like the sound. Thought alone links all these percepts one to the other and exhibits them in their reciprocal relations. We have no right to say that over and above our immediate percepts there is anything except the ideal nexus of precepts (which thought has to reveal). The relation of the object perceived to the perceiving subject, which relation transcends the bare percept, is therefore purely ideal, i.e., capable of being expressed only through concepts. Only if it were possible to perceive how the object of perception affects the perceiving subject, or, alternatively, only if I could watch the construction of the perceptual complex through the subject, could we speak as modern Physiology, and the Critical Idealism which is based on it, speak. Their theory confuses an ideal relation (that of the object to the subject) with a process of which we could speak only if it were possible to perceive it. The proposition, "No colour without a colour-sensing eye," cannot be taken to mean that the eye produces the colour, but only that an ideal relation, recognisable by thought, subsists between the percept "colour" and the percept "eye." To empirical science belongs the task of ascertaining how the properties of the eye and those of the colours are related to one another; by means of what structures the organ of sight makes possible the perception of colours, etc. I can trace how one percept succeeds another and how one is related to others in space, and I can formulate these relations in conceptual terms, but I can never perceive how a percept originates out of the non-perceptible. All attempts to seek any relations between percepts other than conceptual relations must of necessity fail. What then is a percept? This question, asked in this general way, is absurd. A percept appears always as a perfectly determinate, concrete content. This content is immediately given and is completely contained in the given. The only question one can ask concerning the given content is, what it is apart from perception, that is, what it is for thought. The question concerning the "what" of a percept can, therefore, only refer to the conceptual intuition which corresponds to the percept. From this point of view, the problem of the subjectivity of percepts, in the sense in which the Critical Idealists debate it, cannot be raised at all. Only that which is experienced as belonging to the subject can be termed "subjective." To form a link between subject and object is impossible for any real process, in the naïve sense of the word "real," in which it means a process which can be perceived. That is possible only for thought. For us, then, "objective" means that which, for perception, presents itself as external to the perceiving subject. As subject of perception I remain perceptible to myself after the table which now stands before me has disappeared from my field of observation. The perception of the table has produced a modification in me which persists like myself. I preserve an image of the table which now forms part of my Self. Modern Psychology terms this image a "memory-idea." Now this is the only thing which has any right to be called the idea of the table. For it is the perceptible modification of my own mental state through the presence of the table in my visual field. Moreover, it does not mean a modification in some "Ego-in-itself" behind the perceiving subject, but the modification of the perceiving subject itself. The idea is, therefore, a subjective percept, in contrast with the objective percept which occurs when the object is present in the perceptual field. The false identification of the subjective with this objective percept leads to the misunderstanding of Idealism: The world is my idea. Our next task must be to define the concept of "idea" more nearly. What we have said about it so far does not give us the concept, but only shows us where in the perceptual field ideas are to be found. The exact concept of "idea" will also make it possible for us to obtain a satisfactory understanding of the relation of idea and object. This will then lead us over the border-line, where the relation of subject to object is brought down from the purely conceptual field of knowledge into concrete individual life. Once we know how we are to conceive the world, it will be an easy task to adapt ourselves to it. Only when we know to what object we are to devote our activity can we put our whole energy into our actions. ADDITION TO THE REVISED EDITION (1918). The view which I have here outlined may be regarded as one to which man is led as it were spontaneously, as soon as he begins to reflect about his relation to the world. He then finds himself caught in a system of thoughts which dissolves for him as fast as he frames it. The thoughts which form this system are such that the purely theoretical refutation of them does not exhaust our task. We have to live through them, in order to understand the confusion into which they lead us, and to find the way out. They must figure in any discussion of the relation of man to the world, not for the sake of refuting others whom one believes to be holding mistaken views about this relation, but because it is necessary to understand the confusion in which all first efforts at reflection about such a relation are apt to issue. One needs to learn by experience how to refute oneself with respect to these first reflections. This is the point of view from which the arguments of the preceding chapter are to be understood. Whoever tries to work out for himself a theory of the relation of man to the world, becomes aware of the fact that he creates this relation, at least in part, by forming ideas about the things and events in the world. In consequence, his attention is deflected from what exists outside in the world and directed towards his inner world, the realm of his ideas. He begins to say to himself, It is impossible for me to stand in relation to any thing or event, unless an idea appears in me. From this fact, once noticed, it is but a step to the theory: all that I experience is only my ideas; of the existence of a world outside I know only in so far as it is an idea in me. With this theory, man abandons the standpoint of Naïve Realism which he occupies prior to all reflection about his relation to the world. So long as he stands there, he believes that he is dealing with real things, but reflection about himself drives him away from this position. Reflection does not reveal to his gaze a real world such as naïve consciousness claims to have before it. Reflection reveals to him only his ideas; they interpose themselves between his own nature and a supposedly real world, such as the naïve point of view confidently affirms. The interposition of the world of ideas prevents man from perceiving any longer such a real world. He must suppose that he is blind to such a reality. Thus arises the concept of a "thing-in-itself" which is inaccessible to knowledge. So long as we consider only the relation to the world into which man appears to enter through the stream of his ideas, we can hardly avoid framing this type of theory. Yet we cannot remain at the point of view of Naïve Realism except at the price of closing our minds artificially to the desire for knowledge. The existence of this desire for knowledge about the relation of man to the world proves that the naïve point of view must be abandoned. If the naïve point of view yielded anything which we could acknowledge as truth, we could not experience this desire. But mere abandonment of the naïve point of view does not lead to any other view which we could regard as true, so long as we retain, without noticing it, the type of theory which the naïve point of view imposes on us. This is the mistake made by the man who says, I experience only my ideas, and though I think that I am dealing with real things, I am actually conscious of nothing but my ideas of real things. I must, therefore, suppose that genuine realities, "things-in-themselves," exist only outside the boundary of my consciousness; that they are inaccessible to my immediate knowledge; but that they somehow come into contact with me and influence me so as to make a world of ideas arise in me. Whoever thinks thus, duplicates in thought the world before him by adding another. But, strictly he ought to begin his whole theorising over again with regard to this second world. For the unknown "thing-in-itself," in its relation to man's own nature, is conceived in exactly the same way as is the known thing of the naïvely realistic point of view. There is only one way of escaping from the confusion into which one falls, by critical reflection on this naïve point of view. This is to observe that, at the very heart of everything we can experience, be it within the mind or outside in the world of perception, there is something which does not share the fate of an idea interposing itself between the real event and the contemplating mind. This something is thinking. With regard to thinking we can maintain the point of view of Naïve Realism. If we mistakenly abandon it, it is only because we have learnt that we must abandon it for other mental activities, but overlook that what we have found to be true for other activities, does not apply to thinking. When we realise this, we gain access to the further insight that, in thinking and through thinking, man necessarily comes to know the very thing to which he appears to blind himself by interposing between the world and himself the stream of his ideas. A critic highly esteemed by the author of this book has objected that this discussion of thinking stops at a naïvely realistic theory of thinking, as shown by the fact that the real world and the world of ideas are held to be identical. However, the author believes himself to have shown in this very discussion that the validity of "Naïve Realism," as applied to thinking, results inevitably from an unprejudiced study of thinking; and that Naïve Realism, in so far as it is invalid for other mental activities, is overcome through the recognition of the true nature of thinking. VI HUMAN INDIVIDUALITY Philosophers have found the chief difficulty in the explanation of ideas in the fact that we are not identical with the external objects, and yet our ideas must have a form corresponding to their objects. But on closer inspection it turns out that this difficulty does not really exist. We certainly are not identical with the external things, but we belong together with them to one and the same world. The stream of the universal cosmic process passes through that segment of the world which, to my perception, is myself as subject. So far as my perception goes, I am, in the first instance, confined within the limits bounded by my skin. But all that is contained within the skin belongs to the cosmos as a whole. Hence, for a relation to subsist between my organism and an object external to me, it is by no means necessary that something of the object should slip into me, or make an impression on my mind, like a signet-ring on wax. The question, How do I gain knowledge of that tree ten feet away from me, is utterly misleading. It springs from the view that the boundaries of my body are absolute barriers, through which information about external things filters into me. The forces which are active within my body are the same as those which exist outside. I am, therefore, really identical with the objects; not, however, I in so far as I am subject of perception, but I in so far as I am a part within the universal cosmic process. The percept of the tree belongs to the same whole as my Self. The universal cosmic process produces alike, here the percept of the tree, and there the percept of my Self. Were I a world-creator instead of a world-knower, subject and object (percept and self) would originate in one act. For they condition one another reciprocally. As world-knower I can discover the common element in both, so far as they are complementary aspects of the world, only through thought which by means of concepts relates the one to the other. The most difficult to drive from the field are the so-called physiological proofs of the subjectivity of our percepts. When I exert pressure on the skin of my body, I experience it as a pressure sensation. This same pressure can be sensed as light by the eye, as sound by the ear. I experience an electrical shock by the eye as light, by the ear as sound, by the nerves of the skin as touch, and by the nose as a smell of phosphorus. What follows from these facts? Only this: I experience an electrical shock, or, as the case may be, a pressure followed by a light, or a sound, or, it may be, a certain smell, etc. If there were no eye present, then no light quality would accompany the perception of the mechanical vibrations in my environment; without the presence of the ear, no sound, etc. But what right have we to say that in the absence of sense-organs the whole process would not exist at all? All those who, from the fact that an electrical process causes a sensation of light in the eye, conclude that what we sense as light is only a mechanical process of motion, forget that they are only arguing from one percept to another, and not at all to something altogether transcending percepts. Just as we can say that the eye perceives a mechanical process of motion in its surroundings as light, so we can affirm that every change in an object, determined by natural law, is perceived by us as a process of motion. If I draw twelve pictures of a horse on the circumference of a rotating disc, reproducing exactly the positions which the horse's body successively assumes in movement, I can, by rotating the disc, produce the illusion of movement. I need only look through an opening in such a way that, at regular intervals, I perceive the successive positions of the horse. I perceive, not separate pictures of twelve horses, but one picture of a single galloping horse. The above-mentioned physiological facts cannot, therefore, throw any light on the relation of percept to idea. Hence, we must seek a relation some other way. The moment a percept appears in my field of consciousness, thought, too, becomes active in me. A member of my thought-system, a definite intuition, a concept, connects itself with the percept. When, next, the percept disappears from my field of vision, what remains? The intuition, with the reference to the particular percept which it acquired in the moment of perception. The degree of vividness with which I can subsequently recall this reference depends on the manner in which my mental and bodily organism is working. An idea is nothing but an intuition related to a particular percept; it is a concept which was once connected with a certain percept, and which retains this reference to the percept. My concept of a lion is not constructed out of my percepts of a lion; but my idea of a lion is formed under the guidance of the percepts. I can teach someone to form the concept of a lion without his ever having seen a lion, but I can never give him a living idea of it without the help of his own perception. An idea is therefore nothing but an individualised concept. And now we can see how real objects can be represented to us by ideas. The full reality of a thing is present to us in the moment of observation through the combination of concept and percept. The concept acquires by means of the percept an individualised form, a relation to this particular percept. In this individualised form which carries with it, as an essential feature, the reference to the percept, it continues to exist in us and constitutes the idea of the thing in question. If we come across a second thing with which the same concept connects itself, we recognise the second as being of the same kind as the first; if we come across the same thing twice, we find in our conceptual system, not merely a corresponding concept, but the individualised concept with its characteristic relation to this same object, and thus we recognise the object again. The idea, then, stands between the percept and the concept. It is the determinate concept which points to the percept. The sum of my ideas may be called my experience. The man who has the greater number of individualised concepts will be the man of richer experience. A man who lacks all power of intuition is not capable of acquiring experience. The objects simply disappear again from the field of his consciousness, because he lacks the concepts which he ought to bring into relation with them. On the other hand, a man whose faculty of thought is well developed, but whose perception functions badly owing to his clumsy sense-organs, will be no better able to gain experience. He can, it is true, by one means and another acquire concepts; but the living reference to particular objects is lacking to his intuitions. The unthinking traveller and the student absorbed in abstract conceptual systems are alike incapable of acquiring a rich experience. Reality presents itself to us as the union of percept and concept; and the subjective representation of this reality presents itself to us as idea. If our personality expressed itself only in cognition, the totality of all that is objective would be contained in percept, concept and idea. However, we are not satisfied merely to refer percepts, by means of thinking, to concepts, but we relate them also to our private subjectivity, our individual Ego. The expression of this relation to us as individuals is feeling, which manifests itself as pleasure and pain. Thinking and feeling correspond to the two-fold nature of our being to which reference has already been made. By means of thought we take an active part in the universal cosmic process. By means of feeling we withdraw ourselves into the narrow precincts of our own being. Thought links us to the world; feeling leads us back into ourselves and thus makes us individuals. Were we merely thinking and perceiving beings, our whole life would flow along in monotonous indifference. Could we only know ourselves as Selves, we should be totally indifferent to ourselves. It is only because with self-knowledge we experience self-feeling, and with the perception of objects pleasure and pain, that we live as individuals whose existence is not exhausted by the conceptual relations in which they stand to the rest of the world, but who have a special value in themselves. One might be tempted to regard the life of feeling as something more richly saturated with reality than the apprehension of the world by thought. But the reply to this is that the life of feeling, after all, has this richer meaning only for my individual self. For the universe as a whole my feelings can be of value only if, as percepts of myself, they enter into connection with a concept and in this roundabout way become links in the cosmos. Our life is a continual oscillation between our share in the universal world-process and our own individual existence. The farther we ascend into the universal nature of thought where the individual, at last, interests us only as an example, an instance, of the concept, the more the character of something individual, of the quite determinate, unique personality, becomes lost in us. The farther we descend into the depths of our own private life and allow the vibrations of our feelings to accompany all our experiences of the outer world, the more we cut ourselves off from the universal life. True individuality belongs to him whose feelings reach up to the farthest possible extent into the region of the ideal. There are men in whom even the most general ideas still bear that peculiar personal tinge which shows unmistakably their connection with their author. There are others whose concepts come before us as devoid of any trace of individual colouring as if they had not been produced by a being of flesh and blood at all. Even ideas give to our conceptual life an individual stamp. Each one of us has his special standpoint from which he looks out on the world. His concepts link themselves to his percepts. He has his own special way of forming general concepts. This special character results for each of us from his special standpoint in the world, from the way in which the range of his percepts is dependent on the place in the whole where he exists. The conditions of individuality here indicated, we call the milieu. This special character of our experience must be distinguished from another which depends on our peculiar organisation. Each of us, as we know, is organised as a unique, fully determined individual. Each of us combines special feelings, and these in the most varying degrees of intensity, with his percepts. This is just the individual element in the personality of each of us. It is what remains over when we have allowed fully for all the determining factors in our milieu. A life of feeling, wholly devoid of thought, would gradually lose all connection with the world. But man is meant to be a whole, and knowledge of objects will go hand-in-hand for him with the development and education of the feeling-side of his nature. Feeling is the means whereby, in the first instance, concepts gain concrete life. VII ARE THERE ANY LIMITS TO KNOWLEDGE? We have established that the elements for the explanation of reality are to be taken from the two spheres of perception and thought. It is due, as we have seen, to our organisation that the full totality of reality, including our own selves as subjects, appears at first as a duality. Knowledge transcends this duality by fusing the two elements of reality, the percept and the concept, into the complete thing. Let us call the manner in which the world presents itself to us, before by means of knowledge it has taken on its true nature, "the world of appearance," in distinction from the unified whole composed of percept and concept. We can then say, The world is given to us as a duality (Dualism), and knowledge transforms it into a unity (Monism). A philosophy which starts from this basal principle may be called a Monistic philosophy, or Monism. Opposed to this is the theory of two worlds, or Dualism. The latter does not, by any means, assume merely that there are two sides of a single reality, which are kept apart by our organisation, but that there are two worlds totally distinct from one another. It then tries to find in one of these two worlds the principle of explanation for the other. Dualism rests on a false conception of what we call knowledge. It divides the whole of reality into two spheres, each of which has its own laws, and it leaves these two worlds standing outside one another. It is from a Dualism such as this that there arises the distinction between the object of perception and the thing-in-itself, which Kant introduced into philosophy, and which, to the present day, we have not succeeded in expelling. According to our interpretation, it is due to the nature of our organisation that a particular object can be given to us only as a percept. Thought transcends this particularity by assigning to each percept its proper place in the world as a whole. As long as we determine the separate parts of the cosmos as percepts, we are simply following, in this sorting out, a law of our subjective constitution. If, however, we regard all percepts, taken together, merely as one part, and contrast with this a second part, viz., the things-in-themselves, then our philosophy is building castles-in-the-air. We are then engaged in mere playing with concepts. We construct an artificial opposition, but we can find no content for the second of these opposites, seeing that no content for a particular thing can be found except in perception. Every kind of reality which is assumed to exist outside the sphere of perception and conception must be relegated to the limbo of unverified hypotheses. To this category belongs the "thing-in-itself." It is, of course, quite natural that a Dualistic thinker should be unable to find the connection between the world-principle which he hypothetically assumes and the facts that are given in experience. For the hypothetical world-principle itself a content can be found only by borrowing it from experience and shutting one's eyes to the fact of the borrowing. Otherwise it remains an empty and meaningless concept, a mere form without content. In this case the Dualistic thinker generally asserts that the content of this concept is inaccessible to our knowledge. We can know only that such a content exists, but not what it is. In either case it is impossible to transcend Dualism. Even though one were to import a few abstract elements from the world of experience into the content of the thing-in-itself, it would still remain impossible to reduce the rich concrete life of experience to those few elements, which are, after all, themselves taken from experience. Du Bois-Reymond lays it down that the imperceptible atoms of matter produce sensation and feeling by means of their position and motion, and then infers from this premise that we can never find a satisfactory explanation of how matter and motion produce sensation and feeling, for "it is absolutely and for ever unintelligible that it should be other than indifferent to a number of atoms of carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen, etc., how they lie and move, how they lay or moved, or how they will lie and will move. It is in no way intelligible how consciousness can come into existence through their interaction." This conclusion is characteristic of the whole tendency of this school of thought. Position and motion are abstracted from the rich world of percepts. They are then transferred to the fictitious world of atoms. And then we are astonished that we fail to evolve concrete life out of this principle of our own making, which we have borrowed from the world of percepts. That the Dualist, working as he does with a completely empty concept of the thing-in-itself, can reach no explanation of the world, follows from the very definition of his principle which has been given above. In any case, the Dualist finds it necessary to set impassable barriers to our faculty of knowledge. A follower of the Monistic theory of the world knows that all he needs to explain any given phenomenon in the world is to be found within this world itself. What prevents him from finding it can be only chance limitations in space and time, or defects of his organisation, i.e., not of human organisation in general, but only of his own. It follows from the concept of knowledge, as defined by us, that there can be no talk of any limits of knowledge. Knowledge is not a concern of the universe in general, but one which men must settle for themselves. External things demand no explanation. They exist and act on one another according to laws which thought can discover. They exist in indivisible unity with these laws. But we, in our self-hood, confront them, grasping at first only what we have called percepts. However, within ourselves we find the power to discover also the other part of reality. Only when the Self has combined for itself the two elements of reality which are indivisibly bound up with one another in the world, is our thirst for knowledge stilled. The Self is then again in contact with reality. The presuppositions for the development of knowledge thus exist through and for the Self. It is the Self which sets itself the problems of knowledge. It takes them from thought, an element which in itself is absolutely clear and transparent. If we set ourselves questions which we cannot answer, it must be because the content of the questions is not in all respects clear and distinct. It is not the world which sets questions to us, but we who set them to ourselves. I can imagine that it would be quite impossible for me to answer a question which I happened to find written down somewhere, without knowing the universe of discourse from which the content of the question is taken. In knowledge we are concerned with questions which arise for us through the fact that a world of percepts, conditioned by time, space, and our subjective organisation, stands over against a world of concepts expressing the totality of the universe. Our task consists in the assimilation to one another of these two spheres, with both of which we are familiar. There is no room here for talking about limits of knowledge. It may be that, at a particular moment, this or that remains unexplained because, through chance obstacles, we are prevented from perceiving the things involved. What is not found to-day, however, may easily be found to-morrow. The limits due to these causes are only contingent, and must be overcome by the progress of perception and thought. Dualism makes the mistake of transferring the opposition of subject and object, which has meaning only within the perceptual world, to pure conceptual entities outside this world. Now the distinct and separate things in the perceptual world remain separated only so long as the perceiver refrains from thinking. For thought cancels all separation and reveals it as due to purely subjective conditions. The Dualist, therefore, transfers to entities transcending the perceptual world abstract determinations which, even in the perceptual world, have no absolute, but only relative, validity. He thus divides the two factors concerned in the process of knowledge, viz., percept and concept, into four: (1) the object in itself; (2) the percept which the subject has of the object; (3) the subject; (4) the concept which relates the percept to the object in itself. The relation between subject and object is "real"; the subject is really (dynamically) influenced by the object. This real process does not appear in consciousness. But it evokes in the subject a response to the stimulation from the object. The result of this response is the percept. This, at length, appears in consciousness. The object has an objective (independent of the subject) reality, the percept a subjective reality. This subjective reality is referred by the subject to the object. This reference is an ideal one. Dualism thus divides the process of knowledge into two parts. The one part, viz., the production of the perceptual object by the thing-in-itself, he conceives of as taking place outside consciousness, whereas the other, the combination of percept with concept and the latter's reference to the thing-in-itself, takes place, according to him, in consciousness. With such presuppositions, it is clear why the Dualist regards his concepts merely as subjective representations of what is really external to his consciousness. The objectively real process in the subject by means of which the percept is produced, and still more the objective relations between things-in-themselves, remain for the Dualist inaccessible to direct knowledge. According to him, man can get only conceptual representations of the objectively real. The bond of unity which connects things-in-themselves with one another, and also objectively with the individual minds (as things-in-themselves) of each of us, exists beyond our consciousness in a Divine Being of whom, once more, we have merely a conceptual representation. The Dualist believes that the whole world would be dissolved into a mere abstract scheme of concepts, did he not posit the existence of real connections beside the conceptual ones. In other words, the ideal principles which thinking discovers are too airy for the Dualist, and he seeks, in addition, real principles with which to support them. Let us examine these real principles a little more closely. The naïve man (Naïve Realist) regards the objects of sense-experience as realities. The fact that his hands can grasp, and his eyes see, these objects is for him sufficient guarantee of their reality. "Nothing exists that cannot be perceived" is, in fact, the first axiom of the naïve man; and it is held to be equally valid in its converse: "Everything which is perceived exists." The best proof for this assertion is the naïve man's belief in immortality and in ghosts. He thinks of the soul as a fine kind of matter perceptible by the senses which, in special circumstances, may actually become visible to the ordinary man (belief in ghosts). In contrast with this, his real, world, the Naïve Realist regards everything else, especially the world of ideas, as unreal, or "merely ideal." What we add to objects by thinking is merely thoughts about the objects. Thought adds nothing real to the percept. But it is not only with reference to the existence of things that the naïve man regards perception as the sole guarantee of reality, but also with reference to the existence of processes. A thing, according to him, can act on another only when a force actually present to perception issues from the one and acts upon the other. The older physicists thought that very fine kinds of substances emanate from the objects and penetrate through the sense-organs into the soul. The actual perception of these substances is impossible only because of the coarseness of our sense-organs relatively to the fineness of these substances. In principle, the reason for attributing reality to these substances was the same as that for attributing it to the objects of the sensible world, viz., their kind of existence, which was conceived to be analogous to that of perceptual reality. The self-contained being of ideas is not thought of by the naïve mind as real in the same sense. An object conceived "merely in idea" is regarded as a chimera until sense-perception can furnish proof of its reality. In short, the naïve man demands, in addition to the ideal evidence of his thinking, the real evidence of his senses. In this need of the naïve man lies the ground for the origin of the belief in revelation. The God whom we apprehend by thought remains always merely our idea of God. The naïve consciousness demands that God should manifest Himself in ways accessible to the senses. God must appear in the flesh, and must attest his Godhead to our senses by the changing of water into wine. Even knowledge itself is conceived by the naïve mind as a process analogous to sense-perception. Things, it is thought, make an impression on the mind, or send out copies of themselves which enter through our senses, etc. What the naïve man can perceive with his senses he regards as real, and what he cannot perceive (God, soul, knowledge, etc.) he regards as analogous to what he can perceive. On the basis of Naïve Realism, science can consist only in an exact description of the content of perception. Concepts are only means to this end. They exist to provide ideal counterparts of percepts. With the things themselves they have nothing to do. For the Naïve Realist only the individual tulips, which we can see, are real. The universal idea of tulip is to him an abstraction, the unreal thought-picture which the mind constructs for itself out of the characteristics common to all tulips. Naïve Realism, with its fundamental principle of the reality of all percepts, contradicts experience, which teaches us that the content of percepts is of a transitory nature. The tulip I see is real to-day; in a year it will have vanished into nothingness. What persists is the species "tulip." This species is, however, for the Naïve Realist merely an idea, not a reality. Thus this theory of the world finds itself in the paradoxical position of seeing its realities arise and perish, while that which, by contrast with its realities, it regards as unreal endures. Hence Naïve Realism is compelled to acknowledge the existence of something ideal by the side of percepts. It must include within itself entities which cannot be perceived by the senses. In admitting them, it escapes contradicting itself by conceiving their existence as analogous to that of objects of sense. Such hypothetical realities are the invisible forces by means of which the objects of sense-perception act on one another. Another such reality is heredity, the effects of which survive the individual, and which is the reason why from the individual a new being develops which is similar to it, and by means of which the species is maintained. The soul, the life-principle permeating the organic body, is another such reality which the naïve mind is always found conceiving in analogy to realities of sense-perception. And, lastly, the Divine Being, as conceived by the naïve mind, is such a hypothetical entity. The Deity is thought of as acting in a manner exactly corresponding to that which we can perceive in man himself, i.e., the Deity is conceived anthropomorphically. Modern Physics traces sensations back to the movements of the smallest particles of bodies and of an infinitely fine substance, called ether. What we experience, e.g., as warmth is a movement of the parts of a body which causes the warmth in the space occupied by that body. Here again something imperceptible is conceived on the analogy of what is perceptible. Thus, in terms of perception, the analogon to the concept "body" is, say, the interior of a room, shut in on all sides, in which elastic balls are moving in all directions, impinging one on another, bouncing on and off the walls, etc. Without such assumptions the world of the Naïve Realist would collapse into a disconnected chaos of percepts, without mutual relations, and having no unity within itself. It is clear, however, that Naïve Realism can make these assumptions only by contradicting itself. If it would remain true to its fundamental principle, that only what is perceived is real, then it ought not to assume a reality where it perceives nothing. The imperceptible forces of which perceptible things are the bearers are, in fact, illegitimate hypotheses from the standpoint of Naïve Realism. But because Naïve Realism knows no other realities, it invests its hypothetical forces with perceptual content. It thus transfers a form of existence (the existence of percepts) to a sphere where the only means of making any assertion concerning such existence, viz., sense-perception, is lacking. This self-contradictory theory leads to Metaphysical Realism. The latter constructs, beside the perceptible reality, an imperceptible one which it conceives on the analogy of the former. Metaphysical Realism is, therefore, of necessity Dualistic. Wherever the Metaphysical Realist observes a relation between perceptible things (mutual approach through movement, the entrance of an object into consciousness, etc.), there he posits a reality. However, the relation of which he becomes aware cannot be perceived but only expressed by means of thought. The ideal relation is thereupon arbitrarily assimilated to something perceptible. Thus, according to this theory, the world is composed of the objects of perception which are in ceaseless flux, arising and disappearing, and of imperceptible forces by which the perceptible objects are produced, and which are permanent. Metaphysical Realism is a self-contradictory mixture of Naïve Realism and Idealism. Its forces are imperceptible entities endowed with the qualities proper to percepts. The Metaphysical Realist has made up his mind to acknowledge in addition to the sphere for the existence of which he has an instrument of knowledge in sense-perception, the existence of another sphere for which this instrument fails, and which can be known only by means of thought. But he cannot make up his mind at the same time to acknowledge that the mode of existence which thought reveals, viz., the concept (or idea), has equal rights with percepts. If we are to avoid the contradiction of imperceptible percepts, we must admit that, for us, the relations which thought traces between percepts can have no other mode of existence than that of concepts. If one rejects the untenable part of Metaphysical Realism, there remains the concept of the world as the aggregate of percepts and their conceptual (ideal) relations. Metaphysical Realism, then, merges itself in a view of the world according to which the principle of perceptibility holds for percepts, and that of conceivability for the relations between the percepts. This view of the world has no room, in addition to the perceptual and conceptual worlds, for a third sphere in which both principles, the so-called "real" principle and the "ideal" principle, are simultaneously valid. When the Metaphysical Realist asserts that, beside the ideal relation between the perceived object and the perceiving subject, there must be a real relation between the percept as "thing-in-itself" and the subject as "thing-in-itself" (the so-called individual mind), he is basing his assertion on the false assumption of a real process, imperceptible but analogous to the processes in the world of percepts. Further, when the Metaphysical Realist asserts that we stand in a conscious ideal relation to our world of percepts, but that to the real world we can have only a dynamic (force) relation, he repeats the mistake we have already criticised. We can talk of a dynamic relation only within the world of percepts (in the sphere of the sense of touch), but not outside that world. Let us call the view which we have just characterised, and into which Metaphysical Realism merges when it discards its contradictory elements, Monism, because it combines one-sided Realism and Idealism into a higher unity. For Naïve Realism, the real world is an aggregate of percepts; for Metaphysical Realism, reality belongs not only to percepts but also to imperceptible forces; Monism replaces forces by ideal relations which are supplied by thought. These relations are the laws of nature. A law of nature is nothing but the conceptual expression for the connection of certain percepts. Monism is never called upon to ask whether there are any principles of explanation for reality other than percepts and concepts. The Monist knows that in the whole realm of the real there is no occasion for this question. In the perceptual world, as immediately apprehended, he sees one-half of reality; in the union of this world with the world of concepts he finds full reality. The Metaphysical Realist might object that, relatively to our organisation, our knowledge may be complete in itself, that no part may be lacking, but that we do not know how the world appears to a mind organised differently from our own. To this the Monist will reply, Maybe there are intelligences other than human; and maybe also that their percepts are different from ours, if they have perception at all. But this is irrelevant to me for the following reasons. Through my perceptions, i.e., through this specifically human mode of perception, I, as subject, am confronted with the object. The nexus of things is thereby broken. The subject reconstructs the nexus by means of thought. In doing so it re-inserts itself into the context of the world as a whole. As it is only through the Self, as subject, that the whole appears rent in two between percept and concept, the reunion of those two factors will give us complete knowledge. For beings with a different perceptual world (e.g., if they had twice our number of sense-organs) the nexus would appear broken in another place, and the reconstruction would accordingly have to take a form specifically adapted to such beings. The question concerning the limits of knowledge troubles only Naïve and Metaphysical Realism, both of which see in the contents of mind only ideal representations of the real world. For, to these theories, whatever falls outside the subject is something absolute, a self-contained whole, and the subject's mental content is a copy which is wholly external to this absolute. The completeness of knowledge depends on the greater or lesser degree of resemblance between the representation and the absolute object. A being with fewer senses than man will perceive less of the world, one with more senses will perceive more. The former's knowledge will, therefore, be less complete than the latter's. For Monism, the situation is different. The point where the unity of the world appears to be rent asunder into subject and object depends on the organisation of the percipient. The object is not absolute but merely relative to the nature of the subject. The bridging of the gap, therefore, can take place only in the quite specific way which is characteristic of the human subject. As soon as the Self, which in perception is set over against the world, is again re-inserted into the world-nexus by constructive thought, all further questioning ceases, having been but a result of the separation. A differently constituted being would have a differently constituted knowledge. Our own knowledge suffices to answer the questions which result from our own mental constitution. Metaphysical Realism must ask, What is it that gives us our percepts? What is it that stimulates the subject? Monism holds that percepts are determined by the subject. But in thought the subject has, at the same time, the instrument for transcending this determination of which it is itself the author. The Metaphysical Realist is faced by a further difficulty when he seeks to explain the similarity of the world-views of different human individuals. He has to ask himself, How is it that my theory of the world, built up out of subjectively determined percepts and out of concepts, turns out to be the same as that which another individual is also building up out of these same two subjective factors? How, in any case, is it possible for me to argue from my own subjective view of the world to that of another human being? The Metaphysical Realist thinks he can infer the similarity of the subjective world-views of different human beings from their ability to get on with one another in practical life. From this similarity of world-views he infers further the likeness to one another of individual minds, meaning by "individual mind" the "I-in-itself" underlying each subject. We have here an inference from a number of effects to the character of the underlying causes. We believe that after we have observed a sufficiently large number of instances, we know the connection sufficiently to know how the inferred causes will act in other instances. Such an inference is called an inductive inference. We shall be obliged to modify its results, if further observation yields some unexpected fact, because the character of our conclusion is, after all, determined only by the particular details of our actual observations. The Metaphysical Realist asserts that this knowledge of causes, though restricted by these conditions, is quite sufficient for practical life. Inductive inference is the fundamental method of modern Metaphysical Realism. At one time it was thought that out of concepts we could evolve something that would no longer be a concept. It was thought that the metaphysical reals, which Metaphysical Realism after all requires, could be known by means of concepts. This method of philosophising is now out of date. Instead it is thought that from a sufficiently large number of perceptual facts we can infer the character of the thing-in-itself which lies behind these facts. Formerly it was from concepts, now it is from percepts, that the Realist seeks to evolve the metaphysically real. Because concepts are before the mind in transparent clearness, it was thought that we might deduce from them the metaphysically real with absolute certainty. Percepts are not given with the same transparent clearness. Each fresh one is a little different from others of the same kind which preceded it. In principle, therefore, anything inferred from past experience is somewhat modified by each subsequent experience. The character of the metaphysically real thus obtained can therefore be only relatively true, for it is open to correction by further instances. The character of Von Hartmann's Metaphysics depends on this methodological principle. The motto on the title-page of his first important book is, "Speculative results gained by the inductive method of Science." The form which the Metaphysical Realist at the present day gives to his things-in-themselves is obtained by inductive inferences. Consideration of the process of knowledge has convinced him of the existence of an objectively-real world-nexus, over and above the subjective world which we know by means of percepts and concepts. The nature of this reality he thinks he can determine by inductive inferences from his percepts. ADDITION TO THE REVISED EDITION (1918). The unprejudiced study of experience, in perceiving and conceiving, such as we have attempted to describe it in the preceding chapters, is liable to be interfered with again and again by certain ideas which spring from the soil of natural science. Thus, taking our stand on science, we say that the eye perceives in the spectrum colours from red to violet. But beyond violet there lie rays within the compass of the spectrum to which corresponds, not a colour perceived by the eye, but a chemical effect. Similarly, beyond the rays which make us perceive red, there are rays which have only heat effects. These and similar phenomena lead, on reflection, to the view that the range of man's perceptual world is defined by the range of his senses, and that he would perceive a very different world if he had additional, or altogether different, senses. Those who like to indulge in far-roaming fancies in this direction, for which the brilliant discoveries of recent scientific research provide a highly tempting occasion, may well be led to confess that nothing enters the field of man's observation except what can affect his senses, as these have been determined by his whole organisation. Man has no right to regard his percepts, limited as these are by his organisation, as in any way a standard to which reality must conform. Every new sense would confront him with a different picture of reality. Within its proper limits, this is a wholly justified view. But if anyone lets himself be confused by this view in the unprejudiced study of the relation of percept and concept, as set forth in these chapters, he blocks the path for himself to a knowledge of man and the world which is rooted in reality. The experience of the essential nature of thought, i.e., the active construction of the world of concepts, is something wholly different from the experience of a perceptible object through the senses. Whatever additional senses man might have, not one would give him reality, if his thinking did not organise with its concepts whatever he perceived by means of such a sense. Every sense, whatever its kind, provided only it is organised by thought, enables man to live right in the real. The fancy-picture of other perceptual worlds, made possible by other senses, has nothing to do with the problem of how it is that man stands in the midst of reality. We must clearly understand that every perceptual picture of the world owes its form to the physical organisation of the percipient, but that only the percepts which have been organised by the living labour of thought lead us into reality. Fanciful speculations concerning the way the world would appear to other than human souls, can give us no occasion to want to understand man's relation to the world. Such a desire comes only with the recognition that every percept presents only a part of the reality it contains, and that, consequently, it leads us away from its own proper reality. This recognition is supplemented by the further one that thinking leads us into the part of reality which the percept conceals in itself. Another difficulty in the way of the unprejudiced study of the relation we have here described, between percept and concept as elaborated by thought, may be met with occasionally, when in the field of physics the necessity arises of speaking, not of immediately perceptible elements, but of non-perceptible magnitudes, such as, e.g., lines of electric or magnetic force. It may seem as if the elements of reality of which physicists speak, had no connection either with what is perceptible, or with the concepts which active thinking has elaborated. Yet such a view would depend on self-deception. The main point is that all the results of physical research, except illegitimate hypotheses which ought to be excluded, have been gained through perceiving and conceiving. Entities which are seemingly non-perceptible, are referred by the physicists' sound instinct for knowledge to the field in which actual percepts lie, and they are dealt with in thought by means of the concepts which are commonly applied in this field. The magnitudes in a field of electric or magnetic force are reached, in their essence, by no other cognitive process than the one which connects percept and concept.--An increase or a modification of human senses would yield a different perceptual picture, an enrichment or a modification of human experience. But genuine knowledge could be gained out of this new experience only through the mutual co-operation of concept and percept. The deepening of knowledge depends on the powers of intuition which express themselves in thinking (see page 90). Intuition may, in those experiences in which thinking expresses itself, dive either into deeper or shallower levels of reality. An expansion of the perceptual picture may supply stimuli for, and thus indirectly promote, this diving of intuition. But this diving into the depth, through which we attain reality, ought never to be confused with the contrast between a wider and a narrower perceptual picture, which always contains only half of reality, as that is conditioned by the structure of the knower's organism. Those who do not lose themselves in abstractions will understand how for a knowledge of human nature the fact is relevant, that physics must infer the existence, in the field of percepts, of elements to which no sense is adapted as it is to colour or sound. Human nature, taken concretely, is determined not only by what, in virtue of his physical organisation, man opposes to himself as immediate percept, but also by all else which he excludes from this immediate percept. Just as life needs unconscious sleep alongside of conscious waking experience, so man's experience of himself needs over and above the sphere of his sense-perception another sphere--and a much bigger one--of non-perceptible elements belonging to the same field from which the percepts of the senses come. Implicitly all this was already laid down in the original argument of this book. The author adds the present amplification of the argument, because he has found by experience that some readers have not read attentively enough. It is to be remembered, too, that the idea of perception, developed in this book, is not to be confused with the idea of external sense-perception which is but a special case of the former. The reader will gather from what has preceded, but even more from what will be expounded later, that everything is here taken as "percept" which sensuously or spiritually enters into man's experience, so long as it has not yet been seized upon by the actively constructed concept. No "senses," as we ordinarily understand the term, are necessary in order to have percepts of a psychical or spiritual kind. It may be urged that this extension of ordinary usage is illegitimate. But the extension is absolutely indispensable, unless we are to be prevented by the current sense of a word from enlarging our knowledge of certain realms of facts. If we use "percept" only as meaning "sense-percept," we shall never advance beyond sense-percepts to a concept fit for the purposes of knowledge. It is sometimes necessary to enlarge a concept in order that it may get its appropriate meaning within a narrower field. Again, it is at times necessary to add to the original content of a concept, in order that the original thought may be justified or, perhaps, readjusted. Thus we find it said here in this book: "An idea is nothing but an individualised concept." It has been objected that this is a solecism. But this terminology is necessary if we are to find out what an idea really is. How can we expect any progress in knowledge, if every one who finds himself compelled to readjust concepts, is to be met by the objection: "This is a solecism"? THE REALITY OF FREEDOM VIII THE FACTORS OF LIFE Let us recapitulate the results gained in the previous chapters. The world appears to man as a multiplicity, as an aggregate of separate entities. He himself is one of these entities, a thing among things. Of this structure of the world we say simply that it is given, and inasmuch as we do not construct it by conscious activity, but simply find it, we say that it consists of percepts. Within this world of percepts we perceive ourselves. This percept of Self would remain merely one among many other percepts, did it not give rise to something which proves capable of connecting all percepts one with another and, therefore, the aggregate of all other percepts with the percept of Self. This something which emerges is no longer a mere percept; neither is it, like percepts, simply given. It is produced by our activity. It appears, in the first instance, bound up with what each of us perceives as his Self. In its inner significance, however, it transcends the Self. It adds to the separate percepts ideal determinations, which, however, are related to one another, and which are grounded in a whole. What self-perception yields is ideally determined by this something in the same way as all other percepts, and placed as subject, or "I," over against the objects. This something is thought, and the ideal determinations are the concepts and ideas. Thought, therefore, first manifests itself in connection with the percept of self. But it is not merely subjective, for the Self characterises itself as subject only with the help of thought. This relation of the Self to itself by means of thought is one of the fundamental determinations of our personal lives. Through it we lead a purely ideal existence. By means of it we are aware of ourselves as thinking beings. This determination of our lives would remain a purely conceptual (logical) one, if it were not supplemented by other determinations of our Selves. Our lives would then exhaust themselves in establishing ideal connections between percepts themselves, and between them and ourselves. If we call this establishment of an ideal relation an "act of cognition," and the resulting condition of ourselves "knowledge," then, assuming the above supposition to be true, we should have to consider ourselves as beings who merely apprehend or know. The supposition is, however, untrue. We relate percepts to ourselves not merely ideally, through concepts, but also, as we have already seen, through feeling. In short, the content of our lives is not merely conceptual. The Naïve Realist holds that the personality actually lives more genuinely in the life of feeling than in the purely ideal activity of knowledge. From his point of view he is quite right in interpreting the matter in this way. Feeling plays on the subjective side exactly the part which percepts play on the objective side. From the principle of Naïve Realism, that everything is real which can be perceived, it follows that feeling is the guarantee of the reality of one's own personality. Monism, however, must bestow on feeling the same supplementation which it considers necessary for percepts, if these are to stand to us for reality in its full nature. For Monism, feeling is an incomplete reality, which, in the form in which it first appears to us, lacks as yet its second factor, the concept or idea. This is why, in actual life, feelings, like percepts, appear prior to knowledge. At first, we have merely a feeling of existence; and it is only in the course of our gradual development, that we attain to the point at which the concept of Self emerges from within the blind mass of feelings which fills our existence. However, what for us does not appear until later, is from the first indissolubly bound up with our feelings. This is how the naïve man comes to believe that in feeling he grasps existence immediately, in knowledge only mediately. The development of the affective life, therefore, appears to him more important than anything else. Not until he has grasped the unity of the world through feeling will he believe that he has comprehended it. He attempts to make feeling rather than thought the instrument of knowledge. Now a feeling is entirely individual, something equivalent to a percept. Hence a philosophy of feeling makes a cosmic principle out of something which has significance only within my own personality. Anyone who holds this view attempts to infuse his own self into the whole world. What the Monist strives to grasp by means of concepts the philosopher of feeling tries to attain through feeling, and he looks on his own felt union with objects as more immediate than knowledge. The tendency just described, the philosophy of feeling, is Mysticism. The error in this view is that it seeks to possess by immediate experience what must be known, that it seeks to develop feeling, which is individual, into a universal principle. A feeling is a purely individual activity. It is the relation of the external world to the subject, in so far as this relation finds expression in a purely subjective experience. There is yet another expression of human personality. The Self, through thought, takes part in the universal world-life. Through thought it establishes purely ideal (conceptual) relations between percepts and itself, and between itself and percepts. In feeling, it has immediate experience of the relation of objects to itself as subject. In will, the opposite is the case. In volition, we are concerned once more with a percept, viz., that of the individual relation of the self to what is objective. Whatever in the act of will is not an ideal factor, is just as much mere object of perception as is any object in the external world. Nevertheless, the Naïve Realist believes here again that he has before him something far more real than can ever be attained by thought. He sees in the will an element in which he is immediately aware of an activity, a causation, in contrast with thought which afterwards grasps this activity in conceptual form. On this view, the realisation by the Self of its will is a process which is experienced immediately. The adherent of this philosophy believes that in the will he has really got hold of one end of reality. Whereas he can follow other occurrences only from the outside by means of perception, he is confident that in his will he experiences a real process quite immediately. The mode of existence presented to him by the will within himself becomes for him the fundamental reality of the universe. His own will appears to him as a special case of the general world-process; hence the latter is conceived as a universal will. The will becomes the principle of reality just as, in Mysticism, feeling becomes the principle of knowledge. This kind of theory is called Voluntarism (Thelism). It makes something which can be experienced only individually the dominant factor of the world. Voluntarism can as little be called scientific as can Mysticism. For both assert that the conceptual interpretation of the world is inadequate. Both demand, in addition to a principle of being which is ideal, also a principle which is real. But as perception is our only means of apprehending these so-called real principles, the assertion of Mysticism and Voluntarism coincides with the view that we have two sources of knowledge, viz., thought and perception, the latter finding individual expression as will and feeling. Since the immediate experiences which flow from the one source cannot be directly absorbed into the thoughts which flow from the other, perception (immediate experience) and thought remain side by side, without any higher form of experience to mediate between them. Beside the conceptual principle to which we attain by means of knowledge, there is also a real principle which must be immediately experienced. In other words, Mysticism and Voluntarism are both forms of Naïve Realism, because they subscribe to the doctrine that the immediately perceived (experienced) is real. Compared with Naïve Realism in its primitive form, they are guilty of the yet further inconsistency of accepting one definite form of perception (feeling, respectively will) as the exclusive means of knowing reality. Yet they can do this only so long as they cling to the general principle that everything that is perceived is real. They ought, therefore, to attach an equal value to external perception for purposes of knowledge. Voluntarism turns into Metaphysical Realism, when it asserts the existence of will also in those spheres of reality in which will can no longer, as in the individual subject, be immediately experienced. It assumes hypothetically that a principle holds outside subjective experience, for the existence of which, nevertheless, subjective experience is the sole criterion. As a form of Metaphysical Realism, Voluntarism is open to the criticism developed in the preceding chapter, a criticism which makes it necessary to overcome the contradictory element in every form of Metaphysical Realism, and to recognise that the will is a universal world-process only in so far as it is ideally related to the rest of the world. ADDITION TO THE REVISED EDITION (1918). The difficulty of seizing the essential nature of thinking by observation lies in this, that it has generally eluded the introspecting mind all too easily by the time that the mind tries to bring it into the focus of attention. Nothing but the lifeless abstract, the corpse of living thought, then remains for inspection. When we consider only this abstract, we find it hard, by contrast, to resist yielding to the mysticism of feeling, or, again, to the metaphysics of will, both of which are "full of life." We are tempted to regard it as odd that anyone should want to seize the essence of reality in "mere thoughts." But if we once succeed in really holding fast the living essence of thinking, we learn to understand that the self-abandonment to feelings, or the intuiting of the will, cannot even be compared with the inward wealth of this life of thinking, which we experience as within itself ever at rest, yet at the same time ever in movement. Still less is it possible to rank will and feeling above thinking. It is owing precisely to this wealth, to this inward abundance of experience, that the image of thinking which presents itself to our ordinary attitude of mind, should appear lifeless and abstract. No other activity of the human mind is so easily misapprehended as thinking. Will and feeling still fill the mind with warmth even when we live through them again in memory. Thinking all too readily leaves us cold in recollection; it is as if the life of the mind had dried out. But this is really nothing but the strongly marked shadow thrown by its luminous, warm nature penetrating deeply into the phenomena of the world. This penetration is effected by the activity of thinking with a spontaneous outpouring of power--a power of spiritual love. There is no room here for the objection that thus to perceive love in the activity of thinking is to endow thinking with a feeling and a love which are not part of it. This objection is, in truth, a confirmation of the view here advocated. If we turn towards the essential nature of thinking, we find in it both feeling and will, and both these in their most profoundly real forms. If we turn away from thinking and towards "mere" feeling and will, these lose for us their genuine reality. If we are willing to make of thinking an intuitive experience, we can do justice, also, to experiences of the type of feeling and will. But the mysticism of feeling and the metaphysics of will do not know how to do justice to the penetration of reality which partakes at once of intuition and of thought. They conclude but too readily that they themselves are rooted in reality, but that the intuitive thinker, untouched by feeling, blind to reality, forms out of "abstract thoughts" a shadowy, chilly picture of the world. IX THE IDEA OF FREEDOM The concept "tree" is conditioned for our knowledge by the percept "tree." There is only one determinate concept which I can select from the general system of concepts and apply to a given percept. The connection of concept and percept is mediately and objectively determined by thought in conformity with the percept. The connection between a percept and its concept is recognised after the act of perception, but the relevance of the one to the other is determined by the character of each. Very different is the result when we consider knowledge, and, more particularly, the relation of man to the world which occurs in knowledge. In the preceding chapters the attempt has been made to show that an unprejudiced examination of this relation is able to throw light on its nature. A correct understanding of this examination leads to the conclusion that thinking may be intuitively apprehended in its unique, self-contained nature. Those who find it necessary, for the explanation of thinking as such, to invoke something else, e.g., physical brain-processes, or unconscious spiritual processes lying behind the conscious thinking which they observe, fail to grasp the facts which an unprejudiced examination yields. When we observe our thinking, we live during the observation immediately within the essence of a spiritual, self-sustaining activity. Indeed, we may even affirm that if we want to grasp the essential nature of Spirit in the form in which it immediately presents itself to man, we need but look at our own self-sustaining thinking. For the study of thinking two things coincide which elsewhere must always appear apart, viz., concept and percept. If we fail to see this, we shall be unable to regard the concepts which we have elaborated in response to percepts as anything but shadowy copies of these percepts, and we shall take the percepts as presenting to us reality as it really is. We shall, further, build up for ourselves a metaphysical world after the pattern of the world of percepts. We shall, each according to his habitual ideas, call this world a world of atoms, or of will, or of unconscious spirit, and so on. And we shall fail to notice that all the time we have been doing nothing but erecting hypothetically a metaphysical world modeled on the world we perceive. But if we clearly apprehend what thinking consists in, we shall recognise that percepts present to us only a portion of reality, and that the complementary portion which alone imparts to reality its full character as real, is experienced by us in the organisation of percepts by thought. We shall regard all thought, not as a shadowy copy of reality, but as a self-sustaining spiritual essence. We shall be able to say of it, that it is revealed to us in consciousness through intuition. Intuition is the purely spiritual conscious experience of a purely spiritual content. It is only through intuition that we can grasp the essence of thinking. To win through, by means of unprejudiced observation, to the recognition of this truth of the intuitive essence of thinking requires an effort. But without this effort we shall not succeed in clearing the way for a theory of the psycho-physical organisation of man. We recognise that this organisation can produce no effect whatever on the essential nature of thinking. At first sight this seems to be contradicted by patent and obvious facts. For ordinary experience, human thinking occurs only in connection with, and by means of, such an organisation. This dependence on psycho-physical organisation is so prominent that its true bearing can be appreciated by us only if we recognise, that in the essential nature of thinking this organisation plays no part whatever. Once we appreciate this, we can no longer fail to notice how peculiar is the relation of human organisation to thought. For this organisation contributes nothing to the essential nature of thought, but recedes whenever thought becomes active. It suspends its own activity, it yields ground. And the ground thus set free is occupied by thought. The essence which is active in thought has a two-fold function: first it restricts the human organisation in its own activity; next, it steps into the place of that organisation. Yes, even the former, the restriction of human organisation, is an effect of the activity of thought, and more particularly of that part of it which prepares the manifestation of thinking. This explains the sense in which thinking has its counterpart in the organisation of the body. Once we perceive this, we can no longer misapprehend the significance for thinking of this physical counterpart. When we walk over soft ground our feet leave deep tracks in the soil. We shall not be tempted to say that the forces of the ground, from below, have formed these tracks. We shall not attribute to these forces any share in the production of the tracks. Just so, if with open minds we observe the essential nature of thinking, we shall not attribute any share in that nature to the traces in the physical organism which thinking produces in preparing its manifestation through the body. [3] An important question, however, confronts us here. If human organisation has no part in the essential nature of thinking, what is its function within the whole nature of man? Well, the effects of thinking upon this organisation have no bearing upon the essence of thinking, but they have a bearing upon the origin of the "I," or Ego-consciousness, through thinking. Thinking, in its unique character, constitutes the real Ego, but it does not constitute, as such, the Ego-consciousness. To see this we have but to study thinking with an open mind. The Ego is to be found in thinking. The Ego-consciousness arises through the traces which, in the sense above explained, the activity of thinking impresses upon our general consciousness. The Ego-consciousness thus arises through the physical organisation. This view must not, however, be taken to imply that the Ego-consciousness, once it has arisen, remains dependent on the physical organisation. On the contrary, once it exists it is taken up into thought and shares henceforth thought's spiritual self-subsistence. The Ego-consciousness is built upon human organisation. The latter is the source of all acts of will. Following out the direction of the preceding exposition, we can gain insight into the connection of thought, conscious Ego, and act of will, only by studying first how an act of will issues from human organisation. [4] In a particular act of will we must distinguish two factors: the motive and the spring of action. The motive is a factor of the nature of concept or idea; the spring of action is the factor in will which is directly determined in the human organisation. The conceptual factor, or motive, is the momentary determining cause of an act of will; the spring of action is the permanent determining factor in the individual. The motive of an act of will can be only a pure concept, or else a concept with a definite relation to perception, i.e., an idea. Universal and individual concepts (ideas) become motives of will by influencing the human individual and determining him to action in a particular direction. One and the same concept, however, or one and the same idea, influence different individuals differently. They determine different men to different actions. An act of will is, therefore, not merely the outcome of a concept or an idea, but also of the individual make-up of human beings. This individual make-up we will call, following Eduard von Hartmann, the "characterological disposition." The manner in which concept and idea act on the characterological disposition of a man gives to his life a definite moral or ethical stamp. The characterological disposition consists of the more or less permanent content of the individual's life, that is, of his habitual ideas and feelings. Whether an idea which enters my mind at this moment stimulates me to an act of will or not, depends on its relation to my other ideal contents, and also to my peculiar modes of feeling. My ideal content, in turn, is conditioned by the sum total of those concepts which have, in the course of my individual life, come in contact with percepts, that is, have become ideas. This, again, depends on my greater or lesser capacity for intuition, and on the range of my perception, that is, on the subjective and objective factors of my experiences, on the structure of my mind and on my environment. My affective life more especially determines my characterological disposition. Whether I shall make a certain idea or concept the motive for action will depend on whether it gives me pleasure or pain. These are the factors which we have to consider in an act of will. The immediately present idea or concept, which becomes the motive, determines the end or the purpose of my will; my characterological disposition determines me to direct my activity towards this end. The idea of taking a walk in the next half-hour determines the end of my action. But this idea is raised to the level of a motive only if it meets with a suitable characterological disposition, that is, if during my past life I have formed the ideas of the wholesomeness of walking and the value of health; and, further, if the idea of walking is accompanied by a feeling of pleasure. We must, therefore, distinguish (1) the possible subjective dispositions which are likely to turn given ideas and concepts into motives, and (2) the possible ideas and concepts which are capable of so influencing my characterological disposition that an act of will results. The former are for morality the springs of action, the latter its ends. The springs of action in the moral life can be discovered by analysing the elements of which individual life is composed. The first level of individual life is that of perception, more particularly sense-perception. This is the stage of our individual lives in which a percept translates itself into will immediately, without the intervention of either a feeling or a concept. The spring of action here involved may be called simply instinct. Our lower, purely animal, needs (hunger, sexual intercourse, etc.) find their satisfaction in this way. The main characteristic of instinctive life is the immediacy with which the percept starts off the act of will. This kind of determination of the will, which belongs originally only to the life of the lower senses, may, however, become extended also to the percepts of the higher senses. We may react to the percept of a certain event in the external world without reflecting on what we do, and without any special feeling connecting itself with the percept. We have examples of this especially in our ordinary conventional intercourse with men. The spring of this kind of action is called tact or moral good taste. The more often such immediate reactions to a percept occur, the more the agent will prove himself able to act purely under the guidance of tact; that is, tact becomes his characterological disposition. The second level of human life is feeling. Definite feelings accompany the percepts of the external world. These feelings may become springs of action. When I see a hungry man, my pity for him may become the spring of my action. Such feelings, for example, are modesty, pride, sense of honour, humility, remorse, pity, revenge, gratitude, piety, loyalty, love, and duty. [5] The third and last level of life is to have thoughts and ideas. An idea or a concept may become the motive of an action through mere reflection. Ideas become motives because, in the course of my life, I regularly connect certain aims of my will with percepts which recur again and again in a more or less modified form. Hence it is that, with men who are not wholly without experience, the occurrence of certain percepts is always accompanied also by the consciousness of ideas of actions, which they have themselves carried out in similar cases or which they have seen others carry out. These ideas float before their minds as determining models in all subsequent decisions; they become parts of their characterological disposition. We may give the name of practical experience to the spring of action just described. Practical experience merges gradually into purely tactful behaviour. That happens, when definite typical pictures of actions have become so closely connected in our minds with ideas of certain situations in life, that, in any given instance, we omit all deliberation based on experience and pass immediately from the percept to the action. The highest level of individual life is that of conceptual thought without reference to any definite perceptual content. We determine the content of a concept through pure intuition on the basis of an ideal system. Such a concept contains, at first, no reference to any definite percepts. When an act of will comes about under the influence of a concept which refers to a percept, i.e., under the influence of an idea, then it is the percept which determines our action indirectly by way of the concept. But when we act under the influence of pure intuitions, the spring of our action is pure thought. As it is the custom in philosophy to call pure thought "reason," we may perhaps be justified in giving the name of practical reason to the spring of action characteristic of this level of life. The clearest account of this spring of action has been given by Kreyenbühl (Philosophische Monatshefte, vol. xviii, No. 3). In my opinion his article on this subject is one of the most important contributions to present-day philosophy, more especially to Ethics. Kreyenbühl calls the spring of action, of which we are treating, the practical a priori i.e., a spring of action issuing immediately from my intuition. It is clear that such a spring of action can no longer be counted in the strictest sense as part of the characterological disposition. For what is here effective in me as a spring of action is no longer something purely individual, but the ideal, and hence universal, content of my intuition. As soon as I regard this content as the valid basis and starting-point of an action, I pass over into willing, irrespective of whether the concept was already in my mind beforehand, or whether it only occurs to me immediately before the action, that is, irrespective of whether it was present in the form of a disposition in me or not. A real act of will results only when a present impulse to action, in the form of a concept or idea, acts on the characterological disposition. Such an impulse thereupon becomes the motive of the will. The motives of moral conduct are ideas and concepts. There are Moralists who see in feeling also a motive of morality; they assert, e.g., that the end of moral conduct is to secure the greatest possible quantity of pleasure for the agent. Pleasure itself, however, can never be a motive; at best only the idea of pleasure can act as motive. The idea of a future pleasure, but not the feeling itself, can act on my characterological disposition. For the feeling does not yet exist in the moment of action; on the contrary, it has first to be produced by the action. The idea of one's own or another's well-being is, however, rightly regarded as a motive of the will. The principle of producing the greatest quantity of pleasure for oneself through one's action, that is, to attain individual happiness, is called Egoism. The attainment of this individual happiness is sought either by thinking ruthlessly only of one's own good, and striving to attain it even at the cost of the happiness of other individuals (Pure Egoism), or by promoting the good of others, either because one anticipates indirectly a favourable influence on one's own happiness through the happiness of others, or because one fears to endanger one's own interest by injuring others (Morality of Prudence). The special content of the egoistical principle of morality will depend on the ideas which we form of what constitutes our own, or others', good. A man will determine the content of his egoistical striving in accordance with what he regards as one of life's good things (luxury, hope of happiness, deliverance from different evils, etc.). Further, the purely conceptual content of an action is to be regarded as yet another kind of motive. This content has no reference, like the idea of one's own pleasure, solely to the particular action, but to the deduction of an action from a system of moral principles. These moral principles, in the form of abstract concepts, may guide the individual's moral life without his worrying himself about the origin of his concepts. In that case, we feel merely the moral necessity of submitting to a moral concept which, in the form of law, controls our actions. The justification of this necessity we leave to those who demand from us moral subjection, that is, to those whose moral authority over us we acknowledge (the head of the family, the state, social custom, the authority of the church, divine revelation). We meet with a special kind of these moral principles when the law is not proclaimed to us by an external authority, but comes from our own selves (moral autonomy). In this case we believe that we hear the voice, to which we have to submit ourselves, in our own souls. The name for this voice is conscience. It is a great moral advance when a man no longer takes as the motive of his action the commands of an external or internal authority, but tries to understand the reason why a given maxim of action ought to be effective as a motive in him. This is the advance from morality based on authority to action from moral insight. At this level of morality, a man will try to discover the demands of the moral life, and will let his action be determined by this knowledge. Such demands are (1) the greatest possible happiness of humanity as a whole purely for its own sake, (2) the progress of civilisation, or the moral development of mankind towards ever greater perfection, (3) the realisation of individual moral ends conceived by an act of pure intuition. The greatest possible happiness of humanity as a whole will naturally be differently conceived by different people. The above-mentioned maxim does not imply any definite idea of this happiness, but rather means that every one who acknowledges this principle strives to do all that, in his opinion, most promotes the good of the whole of humanity. The progress of civilisation is seen to be a special application of the moral principle just mentioned, at any rate for those to whom the goods which civilisation produces bring feelings of pleasure. However, they will have to pay the price of progress in the destruction and annihilation of many things which also contribute to the happiness of humanity. It is, however, also possible that some men look upon the progress of civilisation as a moral necessity, quite apart from the feelings of pleasure which it brings. If so, the progress of civilisation will be a new moral principle for them, different from the previous one. Both the principle of the public good, and that of the progress of civilisation, alike depend on the way in which we apply the content of our moral ideas to particular experiences (percepts). The highest principle of morality which we can conceive, however, is that which contains, to start with, no such reference to particular experiences, but which springs from the source of pure intuition and does not seek until later any connection with percepts, i.e., with life. The determination of what ought to be willed issues here from a point of view very different from that of the previous two principles. Whoever accepts the principle of the public good will in all his actions ask first what his ideals contribute to this public good. The upholder of the progress of civilisation as the principle of morality will act similarly. There is, however, a still higher mode of conduct which, in a given case, does not start from any single limited moral ideal, but which sees a certain value in all moral principles, always asking whether this or that principle is more important in a particular case. It may happen that a man considers in certain circumstances the promotion of the public good, in others that of the progress of civilisation, and in yet others the furthering of his own private good, to be the right course, and makes that the motive of his action. But when all other grounds of determination take second place, then we rely, in the first place, on conceptual intuition itself. All other motives now drop out of sight, and the ideal content of an action alone becomes its motive. Among the levels of characterological disposition, we have singled out as the highest that which manifests itself as pure thought, or practical reason. Among the motives, we have just singled out conceptual intuition as the highest. On nearer consideration, we now perceive that at this level of morality the spring of action and the motive coincide, i.e., that neither a predetermined characterological disposition, nor an external moral principle accepted on authority, influence our conduct. The action, therefore, is neither a merely stereotyped one which follows the rules of a moral code, nor is it automatically performed in response to an external impulse. Rather it is determined solely through its ideal content. For such an action to be possible, we must first be capable of moral intuitions. Whoever lacks the capacity to think out for himself the moral principles that apply in each particular case, will never rise to the level of genuine individual willing. Kant's principle of morality: Act so that the principle of your action may be valid for all men--is the exact opposite of ours. His principle would mean death to all individual action. The norm for me can never be what all men would do, but rather what it is right for me to do in each special case. A superficial criticism might urge against these arguments: How can an action be individually adapted to the special case and the special situation, and yet at the same time be ideally determined by pure intuition? This objection rests on a confusion of the moral motive with the perceptual content of an action. The latter, indeed, may be a motive, and is actually a motive when we act for the progress of culture, or from pure egoism, etc., but in action based on pure moral intuition it never is a motive. Of course, my Self takes notice of these perceptual contents, but it does not allow itself to be determined by them. The content is used only to construct a theoretical concept, but the corresponding moral concept is not derived from the object. The theoretical concept of a given situation which faces me, is a moral concept also only if I adopt the standpoint of a particular moral principle. If I base all my conduct on the principle of the progress of civilisation, then my way through life is tied down to a fixed route. From every occurrence which comes to my notice and attracts my interest there springs a moral duty, viz., to do my tiny share towards using this occurrence in the service of the progress of civilisation. In addition to the concept which reveals to me the connections of events or objects according to the laws of nature, there is also a moral label attached to them which contains for me, as a moral agent, ethical directions as to how I have to conduct myself. At a higher level these moral labels disappear, and my action is determined in each particular instance by my idea; and more particularly by the idea which is suggested to me by the concrete instance. Men vary greatly in their capacity for intuition. In some, ideas bubble up like a spring, others acquire them with much labour. The situations in which men live, and which are the scenes of their actions, are no less widely different. The conduct of a man will depend, therefore, on the manner in which his faculty of intuition reacts to a given situation. The aggregate of the ideas which are effective in us, the concrete content of our intuitions, constitute that which is individual in each of us, notwithstanding the universal character of our ideas. In so far as this intuitive content has reference to action, it constitutes the moral substance of the individual. To let this substance express itself in his life is the moral principle of the man who regards all other moral principles as subordinate. We may call this point of view Ethical Individualism. The determining factor of an action, in any concrete instance, is the discovery of the corresponding purely individual intuition. At this level of morality, there can be no question of general moral concepts (norms, laws). General norms always presuppose concrete facts from which they can be deduced. But facts have first to be created by human action. When we look for the regulating principles (the conceptual principles guiding the actions of individuals, peoples, epochs), we obtain a system of Ethics which is not a science of moral norms, but rather a science of morality as a natural fact. Only the laws discovered in this way are related to human action as the laws of nature are related to particular phenomena. These laws, however, are very far from being identical with the impulses on which we base our actions. If we want to understand how man's moral will gives rise to an action, we must first study the relation of this will to the action. For this purpose we must single out for study those actions in which this relation is the determining factor. When I, or another, subsequently review my action we may discover what moral principles come into play in it. But so long as I am acting, I am influenced, not by these moral principles, but by my love for the object which I want to realise through my action. I ask no man and no moral code, whether I shall perform this action or not. On the contrary, I carry it out as soon as I have formed the idea of it. This alone makes it my action. If a man acts because he accepts certain moral norms, his action is the outcome of the principles which compose his moral code. He merely carries out orders. He is a superior kind of automaton. Inject some stimulus to action into his mind, and at once the clock-work of his moral principles will begin to work and run its prescribed course, so as to issue in an action which is Christian, or humane, or unselfish, or calculated to promote the progress of culture. It is only when I follow solely my love for the object, that it is I, myself, who act. At this level of morality, I acknowledge no lord over me, neither an external authority, nor the so-called voice of my conscience. I acknowledge no external principle of my action, because I have found in myself the ground for my action, viz., my love of the action. I do not ask whether my action is good or bad; I perform it, because I am in love with it. My action is "good" when, with loving intuition, I insert myself in the right way into the world-nexus as I experience it intuitively; it is "bad" when this is not the case. Neither do I ask myself how another man would act in my position. On the contrary, I act as I, this unique individuality, will to act. No general usage, no common custom, no general maxim current among men, no moral norm guides me, but my love for the action. I feel no compulsion, neither the compulsion of nature which dominates me through my instincts, nor the compulsion of the moral commandments. My will is simply to realise what in me lies. Those who hold to general moral norms will reply to these arguments that, if every one has the right to live himself out and to do what he pleases, there can be no distinction between a good and a bad action; every fraudulent impulse in me has the same right to issue in action as the intention to serve the general good. It is not the mere fact of my having conceived the idea of an action which ought to determine me as a moral agent, but the further examination of whether it is a good or an evil action. Only if it is good ought I to carry it out. This objection is easily intelligible, and yet it had its root in what is but a misapprehension of my meaning. My reply to it is this: If we want to get at the essence of human volition, we must distinguish between the path along which volition attains to a certain degree of development, and the unique character which it assumes as it approaches its goal. It is on the path towards the goal that the norms play a legitimate part. The goal consists in the realisation of moral aims which are apprehended by pure intuition. Man attains such aims in proportion as he is able to rise at all to the level at which intuition grasps the ideal content of the world. In any particular volition, other elements will, as a rule, be mixed up, as motives or springs of action, with such moral aims. But, for all that, intuition may be, wholly or in part, the determining factor in human volition. What we ought to do, that we do. We supply the stage upon which duty becomes deed. It is our own action which, as such, issues from us. The impulse, then, can only be wholly individual. And, in fact, only a volition which issues out of intuition can be individual. It is only in an age in which immature men regard the blind instincts as part of a man's individuality, that the act of a criminal can be described as living out one's individuality in the same sense, in which the embodiment in action of a pure intuition can be so described. The animal instinct which drives a man to a criminal act does not spring from intuition, and does not belong to what is individual in him, but rather to that which is most general in him, to that which is equally present in all individuals. The individual element in me is not my organism with its instincts and feelings, but rather the unified world of ideas which reveals itself through this organism. My instincts, cravings, passions, justify no further assertion about me than that I belong to the general species man. The fact that something ideal expresses itself in its own unique way through these instincts, passions, and feelings, constitutes my individuality. My instincts and cravings make me the sort of man of whom there are twelve to the dozen. The unique character of the idea, by means of which I distinguish myself within the dozen as "I," makes of me an individual. Only a being other than myself could distinguish me from others by the difference in my animal nature. By thought, i.e., by the active grasping of the ideal element working itself out through my organism, I distinguish myself from others. Hence it is impossible to say of the action of a criminal that it issues from the idea within him. Indeed, the characteristic feature of criminal actions is precisely that they spring from the non-ideal elements in man. An act the grounds for which lie in the ideal part of my individual nature is free. Every other act, whether done under the compulsion of nature or under the obligation imposed by a moral norm, is unfree. That man alone is free who in every moment of his life is able to obey only himself. A moral act is my act only when it can be called free in this sense. So far we are concerned here with the presuppositions under which an act of will is felt to be free; the sequel will show how this purely ethical concept of freedom is realised in the essential nature of man. Action on the basis of freedom does not exclude, but include, the moral laws. It only shows that it stands on a higher level than actions which are dictated by these laws. Why should my act serve the general good less well when I do it from pure love of it, than when I perform it because it is a duty to serve the general good? The concept of duty excludes freedom, because it will not acknowledge the right of individuality, but demands the subjection of individuality to a general norm. Freedom of action is conceivable only from the standpoint of Ethical Individualism. But how about the possibility of social life for men, if each aims only at asserting his own individuality? This question expresses yet another objection on the part of Moralism wrongly understood. The Moralist believes that a social community is possible only if all men are held together by a common moral order. This shows that the Moralist does not understand the community of the world of ideas. He does not realise that the world of ideas which inspires me is no other than that which inspires my fellow-men. This identity is, indeed, but a conclusion from our experience of the world. However, it cannot be anything else. For if we could recognise it in any other way than by observation, it would follow that universal norms, not individual experience, were dominant in its sphere. Individuality is possible only if every individual knows others only through individual observation. I differ from my neighbour, not at all because we are living in two entirely different mental worlds, but because from our common world of ideas we receive different intuitions. He desires to live out his intuitions, I mine. If we both draw our intuitions really from the world of ideas, and do not obey mere external impulses (physical or moral), then we cannot but meet one another in striving for the same aims, in having the same intentions. A moral misunderstanding, a clash of aims, is impossible between men who are free. Only the morally unfree who blindly follow their natural instincts or the commands of duty, turn their backs on their neighbours, if these do not obey the same instincts and the same laws as themselves. To live in love of action and to let live in understanding of the other's volition, this is the fundamental maxim of the free man. He knows no other "ought" than that with which his will intuitively puts itself in harmony. How he shall will in any given case, that will be determined for him by the range of his ideas. If sociability were not deeply rooted in human nature, no external laws would be able to inoculate us with it. It is only because human individuals are akin in spirit that they can live out their lives side by side. The free man lives out his life in the full confidence that all other free men belong to one spiritual world with himself, and that their intentions will coincide with his. The free man does not demand agreement from his fellow-men, but he expects it none the less, believing that it is inherent in human nature. I am not referring here to the necessity for this or that external institution. I refer to the disposition, to the state of mind, through which a man, aware of himself as one of a group of fellow-men for whom he cares, comes nearest to living up to the ideal of human dignity. There are many who will say that the concept of the free man which I have here developed, is a chimera nowhere to be found realised, and that we have got to deal with actual human beings, from whom we can expect morality only if they obey some moral law, i.e., if they regard their moral task as a duty and do not simply follow their inclinations and loves. I do not deny this. Only a blind man could do that. But, if so, away with all this hypocrisy of morality! Let us say simply that human nature must be compelled to act as long as it is not free. Whether the compulsion of man's unfree nature is effected by physical force or through moral laws, whether man is unfree because he indulges his unmeasured sexual desire, or because he is bound tight in the bonds of conventional morality, is quite immaterial. Only let us not assert that such a man can rightly call his actions his own, seeing that he is driven to them by an external force. But in the midst of all this network of compulsion, there arise free spirits who, in all the welter of customs, legal codes, religious observances, etc., learn to be true to themselves. They are free in so far as they obey only themselves; unfree in so far as they submit to control. Which of us can say that he is really free in all his actions? Yet in each of us there dwells something deeper in which the free man finds expression. Our life is made up of free and unfree actions. We cannot, however, form a final and adequate concept of human nature without coming upon the free spirit as its purest expression. After all, we are men in the fullest sense only in so far as we are free. This is an ideal, many will say. Doubtless; but it is an ideal which is a real element in us working up to the surface of our nature. It is no ideal born of mere imagination or dream, but one which has life, and which manifests itself clearly even in the least developed form of its existence. If men were nothing but natural objects, the search for ideals, that is, for ideas which as yet are not actual but the realisation of which we demand, would be an impossibility. In dealing with external objects the idea is determined by the percept. We have done our share when we have recognised the connection between idea and percept. But with a human being the case is different. The content of his existence is not determined without him. His concept of his true self as a moral being (free spirit) is not a priori united objectively with the perceptual content "man," so that knowledge need only register the fact subsequently. Man must by his own act unite his concept with the percept "man." Concept and percept coincide with one another in this instance, only in so far as the individual himself makes them coincide. This he can do only if he has found the concept of the free spirit, that is, if he has found the concept of his own Self. In the objective world, a boundary-line is drawn by our organisation between percept and concept. Knowledge breaks down this barrier. In our subjective nature this barrier is no less present. The individual overcomes it in the course of his development, by embodying his concept of himself in his outward existence. Hence man's moral life and his intellectual life lead him both alike to his two-fold nature, perception (immediate experience) and thought. The intellectual life overcomes his two-fold nature by means of knowledge, the moral life succeeds through the actual realisation of the free spirit. Every being has its inborn concept (the laws of its being and action), but in external objects this concept is indissolubly bound up with the percept, and separated from it only in the organisation of human minds. In human beings concept and percept are, at first, actually separated, to be just as actually reunited by them. Someone might object that to our percept of a man there corresponds at every moment of his life a definite concept, just as with external objects. I can construct for myself the concept of an average man, and I may also have given to me a percept to fit this pattern. Suppose now I add to this the concept of a free spirit, then I have two concepts for the same object. Such an objection is one-sided. As object of perception I am subject to perpetual change. As a child I was one thing, another as a youth, yet another as a man. Moreover, at every moment I am different, as percept, from what I was the moment before. These changes may take place in such a way that either it is always only the same (average) man who exhibits himself in them, or that they represent the expression of a free spirit. Such are the changes which my actions, as objects of perception, undergo. In the perceptual object "man" there is given the possibility of transformation, just as in the plant-seed there lies the possibility of growth into a fully developed plant. The plant transforms itself in growth, because of the objective law of nature which is inherent in it. The human being remains in his undeveloped state, unless he takes hold of the material for transformation within him and develops himself through his own energy. Nature makes of man merely a natural being; Society makes of him a being who acts in obedience to law; only he himself can make a free man of himself. At a definite stage in his development Nature releases man from her fetters; Society carries his development a step further; he alone can give himself the final polish. The theory of free morality, then, does not assert that the free spirit is the only form in which man can exist. It looks upon the freedom of the spirit only as the last stage in man's evolution. This is not to deny that conduct in obedience to norms has its legitimate place as a stage in development. The point is that we cannot acknowledge it to be the absolute standpoint in morality. For the free spirit transcends norms, in the sense that he is insensible to them as commands, but regulates his conduct in accordance with his impulses (intuitions). When Kant apostrophises duty: "Duty! Thou sublime and mighty name, that dost embrace nothing charming or insinuating, but requirest submission," thou that "holdest forth a law ... before which all inclinations are dumb, even though they secretly counterwork it," [6] then the free spirit replies: "Freedom! thou kindly and humane name, which dost embrace within thyself all that is morally most charming, all that insinuates itself most into my humanity, and which makest me the servant of nobody, which holdest forth no law, but waitest what my inclination itself will proclaim as law, because it resists every law that is forced upon it." This is the contrast of morality according to law and according to freedom. The philistine who looks upon the State as embodied morality is sure to look upon the free spirit as a danger to the State. But that is only because his view is narrowly focused on a limited period of time. If he were able to look beyond, he would soon find that it is but on rare occasions that the free spirit needs to go beyond the laws of his state, and that it never needs to confront them with any real contradiction. For the laws of the state, one and all, have had their origin in the intuitions of free spirits, just like all other objective laws of morality. There is no traditional law enforced by the authority of a family, which was not, once upon a time, intuitively conceived and laid down by an ancestor. Similarly the conventional laws of morality are first of all established by particular men, and the laws of the state are always born in the brain of a statesman. These free spirits have set up laws over the rest of mankind, and only he is unfree who forgets this origin and makes them either divine commands, or objective moral duties, or--falsely mystical--the authoritative voice of his own conscience. He, on the other hand, who does not forget the origin of laws, but looks for it in man, will respect them as belonging to the same world of ideas which is the source also of his own moral intuitions. If he thinks his intuitions better than the existing laws, he will try to put them into the place of the latter. If he thinks the laws justified, he will act in accordance with them as if they were his own intuitions. Man does not exist in order to found a moral order of the world. Anyone who maintains that he does, stands in his theory of man still at that same point, at which natural science stood when it believed that a bull has horns in order that it may butt. Scientists, happily, have cast the concept of objective purposes in nature into the limbo of dead theories. For Ethics, it is more difficult to achieve the same emancipation. But just as horns do not exist for the sake of butting, but butting because of horns, so man does not exist for the sake of morality, but morality exists through man. The free man acts morally because he has a moral idea, he does not act in order to be moral. Human individuals are the presupposition of a moral world order. The human individual is the fountain of all morality and the centre of all life. State and society exist only because they have necessarily grown out of the life of individuals. That state and society, in turn, should react upon the lives of individuals, is no more difficult to comprehend, than that the butting which is the result of the existence of horns, reacts in turn upon the further development of the horns, which would become atrophied by prolonged disuse. Similarly, the individual must degenerate if he leads an isolated existence beyond the pale of human society. That is just the reason why the social order arises, viz., that it may react favourably upon the individual. X MONISM AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY The naïve man who acknowledges nothing as real except what he can see with his eyes and grasp with his hands, demands for his moral life, too, grounds of action which are perceptible to his senses. He wants some one who will impart to him these grounds of action in a manner that his senses can apprehend. He is ready to allow these grounds of action to be dictated to him as commands by anyone whom he considers wiser or more powerful than himself, or whom he acknowledges, for whatever reason, to be a power superior to himself. This accounts for the moral principles enumerated above, viz., the principles which rest on the authority of family, state, society, church, and God. The most narrow-minded man still submits to the authority of some single fellow-man. He who is a little more progressive allows his moral conduct to be dictated by a majority (state, society). In every case he relies on some power which is present to his senses. When, at last, the conviction dawns on someone that his authorities are, at bottom, human beings just as weak as himself, then he seeks refuge with a higher power, with a Divine Being, whom, in turn, he endows with qualities perceptible to the senses. He conceives this Being as communicating to him the ideal content of his moral life by way of his senses--believing, for example, that God appears in the flaming bush, or that He moves about among men in manifest human shape, and that their ears can hear His voice telling them what they are to do and what not to do. The highest stage of development which Naïve Realism attains in the sphere of morality is that at which the moral law (the moral idea) is conceived as having no connection with any external being, but, hypothetically, as being an absolute power in one's own consciousness. What man first listened to as the voice of God, to that he now listens as an independent power in his own mind which he calls conscience. This conception, however, takes us already beyond the level of the naïve consciousness into the sphere where moral laws are treated as independent norms. They are there no longer made dependent on a human mind, but are turned into self-existent metaphysical entities. They are analogous to the visible-invisible forces of Metaphysical Realism. Hence also they appear always as a corollary of Metaphysical Realism, which seeks reality, not in the part which human nature, through its thinking, plays in making reality what it is, but which hypothetically posits reality over and above the facts of experience. Hence these extra-human moral norms always appear as corollaries of Metaphysical Realism. For this theory is bound to look for the origin of morality likewise in the sphere of extra-human reality. There are different possible views of its origin. If the thing-in-itself is unthinking and acts according to purely mechanical laws, as modern Materialism conceives that it does, then it must also produce out of itself, by purely mechanical necessity, the human individual and all that belongs to him. On that view the consciousness of freedom can be nothing more than an illusion. For whilst I consider myself the author of my action, it is the matter of which I am composed and the movements which are going on in it that determine me. I imagine myself free, but actually all my actions are nothing but the effects of the metabolism which is the basis of my physical and mental organisation. It is only because we do not know the motives which compel us that we have the feeling of freedom. "We must emphasise that the feeling of freedom depends on the absence of external compelling motives." "Our actions are as much subject to necessity as our thoughts" (Ziehen, Leitfaden der Physiologischen Psychologie, pp. 207, ff.). [7] Another possibility is that some one will find in a spiritual being the Absolute lying behind all phenomena. If so, he will look for the spring of action in some kind of spiritual power. He will regard the moral principles which his reason contains as the manifestation of this spiritual being, which pursues in men its own special purposes. Moral laws appear to the Dualist, who holds this view, as dictated by the Absolute, and man's only task is to discover, by means of his reason, the decisions of the Absolute and to carry them out. For the Dualist, the moral order of the world is the visible symbol of the higher order that lies behind it. Our human morality is a revelation of the divine world-order. It is not man who matters in this moral order but reality in itself, that is, God. Man ought to do what God wills. Eduard von Hartmann, who identifies reality, as such, with God, and who treats God's existence as a life of suffering, believes that the Divine Being has created the world in order to gain, by means of the world, release from his infinite suffering. Hence this philosopher regards the moral evolution of humanity as a process, the function of which is the redemption of God. "Only through the building up of a moral world-order on the part of rational, self-conscious individuals is it possible for the world-process to approximate to its goal." "Real existence is the incarnation of God. The world-process is the passion of God who has become flesh, and at the same time the way of redemption for Him who was crucified in the flesh; and morality is our co-operation in the shortening of this process of suffering and redemption" (Hartmann, Phänomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins, § 871). On this view, man does not act because he wills, but he must act because it is God's will to be redeemed. Whereas the Materialistic Dualist turns man into an automaton, the action of which is nothing but the effect of causality according to purely mechanical laws, the Spiritualistic Dualist (i.e., he who treats the Absolute, the thing-in-itself, as a spiritual something in which man with his conscious experience has no share), makes man the slave of the will of the Absolute. Neither Materialism, nor Spiritualism, nor in general Metaphysical Realism which infers, as true reality, an extra-human something which it does not experience, have any room for freedom. Naïve and Metaphysical Realism, if they are to be consistent, have to deny freedom for one and the same reason, viz., because, for them, man does nothing but carry out, or execute, principles necessarily imposed upon him. Naïve Realism destroys freedom by subjecting man to authority, whether it be that of a perceptible being, or that of a being conceived on the analogy of perceptible beings, or, lastly, that of the abstract voice of conscience. The Metaphysician, content merely to infer an extra-human reality, is unable to acknowledge freedom because, for him, man is determined, mechanically or morally, by a "thing-in-itself." Monism will have to admit the partial justification of Naïve Realism, with which it agrees in admitting the part played by the world of percepts. He who is incapable of producing moral ideas through intuition must receive them from others. In so far as a man receives his moral principles from without he is actually unfree. But Monism ascribes to the idea the same importance as to the percept. The idea can manifest itself only in human individuals. In so far as man obeys the impulses coming from this side he is free. But Monism denies all justification to Metaphysics, and consequently also to the impulses of action which are derived from so-called "things-in-themselves." According to the Monistic view, man's action is unfree when he obeys some perceptible external compulsion; it is free when he obeys none but himself. There is no room in Monism for any kind of unconscious compulsion hidden behind percept and concept. If anybody maintains of the action of a fellow-man that it has not been freely done, he is bound to produce within the visible world the thing or the person or the institution which has caused the agent to act. And if he supports his contention by an appeal to causes of action lying outside the real world of our percepts and thoughts, then Monism must decline to take account of such an assertion. According to the Monistic theory, then, man's action is partly free, partly unfree. He is conscious of himself as unfree in the world of percepts, and he realises in himself the spirit which is free. The moral laws which his inferences compel the Metaphysician to regard as issuing from a higher power have, according to the upholder of Monism, been conceived by men themselves. To him the moral order is neither a mere image of a purely mechanical order of nature nor of the divine government of the world, but through and through the free creation of men. It is not man's business to realise God's will in the world, but his own. He carries out his own decisions and intentions, not those of another being. Monism does not find behind human agents a ruler of the world, determining them to act according to his will. Men pursue only their own human ends. Moreover, each individual pursues his own private ends. For the world of ideas realises itself, not in a community, but only in individual men. What appears as the common goal of a community is nothing but the result of the separate volitions of its individual members, and most commonly of a few outstanding men whom the rest follow as their leaders. Each one of us has it in him to be a free spirit, just as every rosebud is potentially a rose. Monism, then, is in the sphere of genuinely moral action the true philosophy of freedom. Being also a philosophy of reality, it rejects the metaphysical (unreal) restriction of the free spirit as emphatically as it acknowledges the physical and historical (naïvely real) restrictions of the naïve man. Inasmuch as it does not look upon man as a finished product, exhibiting in every moment of his life his full nature, it considers idle the dispute whether man, as such, is free or not. It looks upon man as a developing being, and asks whether, in the course of this development, he can reach the stage of the free spirit. Monism knows that Nature does not send forth man ready-made as a free spirit, but that she leads him up to a certain stage, from which he continues to develop still as an unfree being, until he reaches the point where he finds his own self. Monism perceives clearly that a being acting under physical or moral compulsion cannot be truly moral. It regards the stages of automatic action (in accordance with natural impulses and instincts), and of obedient action (in accordance with moral norms), as a necessary propædeutic for morality, but it understands that it is possible for the free spirit to transcend both these transitory stages. Monism emancipates man in general from all the self-imposed fetters of the maxims of naïve morality, and from all the externally imposed maxims of speculative Metaphysicians. The former Monism can as little eliminate from the world as it can eliminate percepts. The latter it rejects, because it looks for all principles of explanation of the phenomena of the world within that world and not outside it. Just as Monism refuses even to entertain the thought of cognitive principles other than those applicable to men (p. 125), so it rejects also the concept of moral maxims other than those originated by men. Human morality, like human knowledge, is conditioned by human nature, and just as beings of a higher order would probably mean by knowledge something very different from what we mean by it, so we may assume that other beings would have a very different morality. For Monists, morality is a specifically human quality, and freedom the human way being moral. 1. ADDITION TO THE REVISED EDITION (1918). In forming a judgment about the argument of the two preceding chapters, a difficulty may arise from what may appear to be a contradiction. On the one side, we have spoken of the experience of thinking as one the significance of which is universal and equally valid for every human consciousness. On the other side, we have pointed out that the ideas which we realise in moral action and which are homogeneous with those that thinking elaborates, manifest themselves in every human consciousness in a uniquely individual way. If we cannot get beyond regarding this antithesis as a "contradiction," and if we do not recognise that in the living intuition of this actually existing antithesis a piece of man's essential nature reveals itself, we shall not be able to apprehend in the true light either what knowledge is or what freedom is. Those who think of concepts as nothing more than abstractions from the world of percepts, and who do not acknowledge the part which intuition plays, cannot but regard as a "pure contradiction" the thought for which we have here claimed reality. But if we understand how ideas are experienced intuitively in their self-sustaining essence, we see clearly that, in knowledge, man lives and enters into the world of ideas as into something which is identical for all men. On the other hand, when man derives from that world the intuitions for his voluntary actions, he individualises a member of the world of ideas by that same activity which he practises as a universally human one in the spiritual and ideal process of cognition. The apparent contradiction between the universal character of cognitive ideas and the individual character of moral ideas becomes, when intuited in its reality, a living concept. It is a criterion of the essential nature of man that what we intuitively apprehend of his nature oscillates, like a living pendulum, between knowledge which is universally valid, and individualised experience of this universal content. Those who fail to perceive the one oscillation in its real character, will regard thinking as a merely subjective human activity. For those who are unable to grasp the other oscillation, man's activity in thinking will seem to lose all individual life. Knowledge is to the former, the moral life to the latter, an unintelligible fact. Both will fall back on all sorts of ideas for the explanation of the one or of the other, because both either do not understand at all how thinking can be intuitively experienced, or, else, misunderstand it as an activity which merely abstracts. 2. ADDITION TO THE REVISED EDITION (1918). On page 180 I have spoken of Materialism. I am well aware that there are thinkers, like the above-mentioned Th. Ziehen, who do not call themselves Materialists at all, but yet who must be called so from the point of view adopted in this book. It does not matter whether a thinker says that for him the world is not restricted to merely material being, and that, therefore, he is not a Materialist. No, what matters is whether he develops concepts which are applicable only to material being. Anyone who says, "our action, like our thought, is necessarily determined," lays down a concept which is applicable only to material processes, but not applicable either to what we do or to what we are. And if he were to think out what his concept implies, he would end by thinking materialistically. He saves himself from this fate only by the same inconsistency which so often results from not thinking one's thoughts out to the end. It is often said nowadays that the Materialism of the nineteenth century is scientifically dead. But in truth it is not so. It is only that nowadays we frequently fail to notice that we have no other ideas than those which apply only to the material world. Thus recent Materialism is disguised, whereas in the second half of the nineteenth century it openly flaunted itself. Towards a theory which apprehends the world spiritually the camouflaged Materialism of the present is no less intolerant than the self-confessed Materialism of the last century. But it deceives many who think they have a right to reject a theory of the world in terms of Spirit, on the ground that the scientific world-view "has long ago abandoned Materialism." XI WORLD-PURPOSE AND LIFE-PURPOSE (THE DESTINY OF MAN) Among the manifold currents in the spiritual life of humanity there is one which we must now trace, and which we may call the elimination of the concept of purpose from spheres to which it does not belong. Adaptation to purpose is a special kind of sequence of phenomena. Such adaptation is genuinely real only when, in contrast to the relation of cause and effect in which the antecedent event determines the subsequent, the subsequent event determines the antecedent. This is possible only in the sphere of human actions. Man performs actions which he first presents to himself in idea, and he allows himself to be determined to action by this idea. The consequent, i.e., the action, influences by means of the idea the antecedent, i.e., the human agent. If the sequence is to have purposive character, it is absolutely necessary to have this circuitous process through human ideas. In the process which we can analyse into cause and effect, we must distinguish percept from concept. The percept of the cause precedes the percept of the effect. Cause and effect would simply stand side by side in our consciousness, if we were not able to connect them with one another through the corresponding concepts. The percept of the effect must always be consequent upon the percept of the cause. If the effect is to have a real influence upon the cause, it can do so only by means of the conceptual factor. For the perceptual factor of the effect simply does not exist prior to the perceptual factor of the cause. Whoever maintains that the flower is the purpose of the root, i.e., that the former determines the latter, can make good this assertion only concerning that factor in the flower which his thought reveals in it. The perceptual factor of the flower is not yet in existence at the time when the root originates. In order to have a purposive connection, it is not only necessary to have an ideal connection of consequent and antecedent according to law, but the concept (law) of the effect must really, i.e., by means of a perceptible process, influence the cause. Such a perceptible influence of a concept upon something else is to be observed only in human actions. Hence this is the only sphere in which the concept of purpose is applicable. The naïve consciousness, which regards as real only what is perceptible, attempts, as we have repeatedly pointed out, to introduce perceptible factors even where only ideal factors can actually be found. In sequences of perceptible events it looks for perceptible connections, or, failing to find them, it imports them by imagination. The concept of purpose, valid for subjective actions, is very convenient for inventing such imaginary connections. The naïve mind knows how it produces events itself, and consequently concludes that Nature proceeds likewise. In the connections of Nature which are purely ideal it finds, not only invisible forces, but also invisible real purposes. Man makes his tools to suit his purposes. On the same principle, so the Naïve Realist imagines, the Creator constructs all organisms. It is but slowly that this mistaken concept of purpose is being driven out of the sciences. In philosophy, even at the present day, it still does a good deal of mischief. Philosophers still ask such questions as, What is the purpose of the world? What is the function (and consequently the purpose) of man? etc. Monism rejects the concept of purpose in every sphere, with the sole exception of human action. It looks for laws of Nature, but not for purposes of Nature. Purposes of Nature, no less than invisible forces (p. 118), are arbitrary assumptions. But even life-purposes which man does not set up for himself, are, from the standpoint of Monism, illegitimate assumptions. Nothing is purposive except what man has made so, for only the realisation of ideas originates anything purposive. But an idea becomes effective, in the realistic sense, only in human actions. Hence life has no other purpose or function than the one which man gives to it. If the question be asked, What is man's purpose in life? Monism has but one answer: The purpose which he gives to himself. I have no predestined mission in the world; my mission, at any one moment, is that which I choose for myself. I do not enter upon life's voyage with a fixed route mapped out for me. Ideas are realised only by human agents. Consequently, it is illegitimate to speak of the embodiment of ideas by history. All such statements as "history is the evolution of man towards freedom," or "the realisation of the moral world-order," etc., are, from a Monistic point of view, untenable. The supporters of the concept of purpose believe that, in surrendering it, they are forced to surrender also all unity and order in the world. Listen, for example, to Robert Hamerling (Atomistik des Willens, vol. ii, p. 201): "As long as there are instincts in Nature, so long is it foolish to deny purposes in Nature. Just as the structure of a limb of the human body is not determined and conditioned by an idea of this limb, floating somewhere in mid-air, but by its connection with the more inclusive whole, the body, to which the limb belongs, so the structure of every natural object, be it plant, animal, or man, is not determined and conditioned by an idea of it floating in mid-air, but by the formative principle of the more inclusive whole of Nature which unfolds and organises itself in a purposive manner." And on page 191 of the same volume we read: "Teleology maintains only that, in spite of the thousand misfits and miseries of this natural life, there is a high degree of adaptation to purpose and plan unmistakable in the formations and developments of Nature--an adaptation, however, which is realised only within the limits of natural laws, and which does not tend to the production of some imaginary fairy-land, in which life would not be confronted by death, growth by decay, with all the more or less unpleasant, but quite unavoidable, intermediary stages between them. When the critics of Teleology oppose a laboriously collected rubbish-heap of partial or complete, imaginary or real, maladaptations to a world full of wonders of purposive adaptation, such as Nature exhibits in all her domains, then I consider this just as amusing----" What is here meant by purposive adaptation? Nothing but the consonance of percepts within a whole. But, since all percepts are based upon laws (ideas), which we discover by means of thinking, it follows that the orderly coherence of the members of a perceptual whole is nothing more than the ideal (logical) coherence of the members of the ideal whole which is contained in this perceptual whole. To say that an animal or a man is not determined by an idea floating in mid-air is a misleading way of putting it, and the view which the critic attacks loses its apparent absurdity as soon as the phrase is put right. An animal certainly is not determined by an idea floating in mid-air, but it is determined by an idea inborn in it and constituting the law of its nature. It is just because the idea is not external to the natural object, but is operative in it as its very essence, that we cannot speak here of adaptation to purpose. Those who deny that natural objects are determined from without (and it does not matter, in this context, whether it be by an idea floating in mid-air or existing in the mind of a creator of the world), are the very men who ought to admit that such an object is not determined by purpose and plan from without, but by cause and law from within. A machine is produced in accordance with a purpose, if I establish a connection between its parts which is not given in Nature. The purposive character of the combinations which I effect consists just in this, that I embody my idea of the working of the machine in the machine itself. In this way the machine comes into existence as an object of perception embodying a corresponding idea. Natural objects have a very similar character. Whoever calls a thing purposive because its form is in accordance with plan or law may, if he so please, call natural objects also purposive, provided only that he does not confuse this kind of purposiveness with that which belongs to a subjective human action. In order to have a purpose, it is absolutely necessary that the efficient cause should be a concept, more precisely a concept of the effect. But in Nature we can nowhere point to concepts operating as causes. A concept is never anything but the ideal nexus of cause and effect. Causes occur in Nature only in the form of percepts. Dualism may talk of cosmic and natural purposes. Wherever for our perception there is a nexus of cause and effect according to law, there the Dualist is free to assume that we have but the image of a nexus in which the Absolute has realised its purposes. For Monism, on the other hand, the rejection of an Absolute Reality implies also the rejection of the assumption of purposes in World and Nature. ADDITION TO THE REVISED EDITION (1918). No one who, with an open mind, has followed the preceding argument, will come to the conclusion that the author, in rejecting the concept of purpose for extra-human facts, intended to side with those thinkers who reject this concept in order to be able to regard, first, everything outside human action and, next, human action itself, as a purely natural process. Against such misunderstanding the author should be protected by the fact that the process of thinking is in this book represented as a purely spiritual process. The reason for rejecting the concept of purpose even for the spiritual world, so far as it lies outside human action, is that in this world there is revealed something higher than a purpose, such as is realised in human life. And when we characterise as erroneous the attempt to conceive the destiny of the human race as purposive according to the pattern of human purposiveness, we mean that the individual adopts purposes, and that the result of the total activity of humanity is composed of these individual purposes. This result is something higher than its component parts, the purposes of individual men. XII MORAL IMAGINATION (DARWIN AND MORALITY) A free spirit acts according to his impulses, i.e., intuitions, which his thought has selected out of the whole world of his ideas. For an unfree spirit, the reason why he singles out a particular intuition from his world of ideas, in order to make it the basis of an action, lies in the perceptual world which is given to him, i.e., in his past experiences. He recalls, before making a decision, what some one else has done, or recommended as proper in an analogous case, or what God has commanded to be done in such a case, etc., and he acts on these recollections. A free spirit dispenses with these preliminaries. His decision is absolutely original. He cares as little what others have done in such a case as what commands they have laid down. He has purely ideal (logical) reasons which determine him to select a particular concept out of the sum of his concepts, and to realise it in action. But his action will belong to perceptible reality. Consequently, what he achieves will coincide with a definite content of perception. His concept will have to be realised in a concrete particular event. As a concept it will not contain this event as particular. It will refer to the event only in its generic character, just as, in general, a concept is related to a percept, e.g., the concept lion to a particular lion. The link between concept and percept is the idea (cp. pp. 104 ff). To the unfree spirit this intermediate link is given from the outset. Motives exist in his consciousness from the first in the form of ideas. Whenever he intends to do anything he acts as he has seen others act, or he obeys the instructions he receives in each separate case. Hence authority is most effective in the form of examples, i.e., in the form of traditional patterns of particular actions handed down for the guidance of the unfree spirit. A Christian models his conduct less on the teaching than on the pattern of the Saviour. Rules have less value for telling men positively what to do than for telling them what to leave undone. Laws take on the form of universal concepts only when they forbid actions, not when they prescribe actions. Laws concerning what we ought to do must be given to the unfree spirit in wholly concrete form. Clean the street in front of your door! Pay your taxes to such and such an amount to the tax-collector! etc. Conceptual form belongs to laws which inhibit actions. Thou shalt not steal! Thou shalt not commit adultery! But these laws, too, influence the unfree spirit only by means of a concrete idea, e.g., the idea of the punishments attached by human authority, or of the pangs of conscience, or of eternal damnation, etc. Even when the motive to an action exists in universal conceptual form (e.g., Thou shalt do good to thy fellow-men! Thou shalt live so that thou promotest best thy welfare!), there still remains to be found, in the particular case, the concrete idea of the action (the relation of the concept to a content of perception). For a free spirit who is not guided by any model nor by fear of punishment, etc., this translation of the concept into an idea is always necessary. Concrete ideas are formed by us on the basis of our concepts by means of the imagination. Hence what the free spirit needs in order to realise his concepts, in order to assert himself in the world, is moral imagination. This is the source of the free spirit's action. Only those men, therefore, who are endowed with moral imagination are, properly speaking, morally productive. Those who merely preach morality, i.e., those who merely excogitate moral rules without being able to condense them into concrete ideas, are morally unproductive. They are like those critics who can explain very competently how a work of art ought to be made, but who are themselves incapable of the smallest artistic production. Moral imagination, in order to realise its ideas, must enter into a determinate sphere of percepts. Human action does not create percepts, but transforms already existing percepts and gives them a new character. In order to be able to transform a definite object of perception, or a sum of such objects, in accordance with a moral idea, it is necessary to understand the object's law (its mode of action which one intends to transform, or to which one wants to give a new direction). Further, it is necessary to discover the procedure by which it is possible to change the given law into the new one. This part of effective moral activity depends on knowledge of the particular world of phenomena with which one has got to deal. We shall, therefore, find it in some branch of scientific knowledge. Moral action, then, presupposes, in addition to the faculty of moral concepts [8] and of moral imagination, the ability to alter the world of percepts without violating the natural laws by which they are connected. This ability is moral technique. It may be learnt in the same sense in which science in general may be learnt. For, in general, men are better able to find concepts for the world as it is, than productively to originate out of their imaginations future, and as yet non-existing, actions. Hence, it is very well possible for men without moral imagination to receive moral ideas from others, and to embody these skilfully in the actual world. Vice versa, it may happen that men with moral imagination lack technical skill, and are dependent on the service of other men for the realisation of their ideas. In so far as we require for moral action knowledge of the objects upon which we are about to act, our action depends upon such knowledge. What we need to know here are the laws of nature. These belong to the Natural Sciences, not to Ethics. Moral imagination and the faculty of moral concepts can become objects of theory only after they have first been employed by the individual. But, thus regarded, they no longer regulate life, but have already regulated it. They must now be treated as efficient causes, like all other causes (they are purposes only for the subject). The study of them is, as it were, the Natural Science of moral ideas. Ethics as a Normative Science, over and above this science, is impossible. Some would maintain the normative character of moral laws at least in the sense that Ethics is to be taken as a kind of dietetic which, from the conditions of the organism's life, deduces general rules, on the basis of which it hopes to give detailed directions to the body (Paulsen, System der Ethik). This comparison is mistaken, because our moral life cannot be compared with the life of the organism. The behaviour of the organism occurs without any volition on our part. Its laws are fixed data in our world; hence we can discover them and apply them when discovered. Moral laws, on the other hand, do not exist until we create them. We cannot apply them until we have created them. The error is due to the fact that moral laws are not at every moment new creations, but are handed down by tradition. Those which we take over from our ancestors appear to be given like the natural laws of the organism. But it does not follow that a later generation has the right to apply them in the same way as dietetic rules. For they apply to individuals, and not, like natural laws, to specimens of a genus. Considered as an organism, I am such a generic specimen, and I shall live in accordance with nature if I apply the laws of my genus to my particular case. As a moral agent I am an individual and have my own private laws. [9] The view here upheld appears to contradict that fundamental doctrine of modern Natural Science which is known as the Theory of Evolution. But it only appears to do so. By evolution we mean the real development of the later out of the earlier in accordance with natural law. In the organic world, evolution means that the later (more perfect) organic forms are real descendants of the earlier (imperfect) forms, and have grown out of them in accordance with natural laws. The upholders of the theory of organic evolution believe that there was once a time on our earth, when we could have observed with our own eyes the gradual evolution of reptiles out of Proto-Amniotes, supposing that we could have been present as men, and had been endowed with a sufficiently long span of life. Similarly, Evolutionists suppose that man could have watched the development of the solar system out of the primordial nebula of the Kant-Laplace hypothesis, if he could have occupied a suitable spot in the world-ether during that infinitely long period. But no Evolutionist will dream of maintaining that he could from his concept of the primordial Amnion deduce that of the reptile with all its qualities, even if he had never seen a reptile. Just as little would it be possible to derive the solar system from the concept of the Kant-Laplace nebula, if this concept of an original nebula had been formed only from the percept of the nebula. In other words, if the Evolutionist is to think consistently, he is bound to maintain that out of earlier phases of evolution later ones really develop; that once the concept of the imperfect and that of the perfect have been given, we can understand the connection. But in no case will he admit that the concept formed from the earlier phases is, in itself, sufficient for deducing from it the later phases. From this it follows for Ethics that, whilst we can understand the connection of later moral concepts with earlier ones, it is not possible to deduce a single new moral idea from earlier ones. The individual, as a moral being, produces his own content. This content, thus produced, is for Ethics a datum, as much as reptiles are a datum for Natural Science. Reptiles have evolved out of the Proto-Amniotes, but the scientist cannot manufacture the concept of reptiles out of the concept of the Proto-Amniotes. Later moral ideas evolve out of the earlier ones, but Ethics cannot manufacture out of the moral principles of an earlier age those of a later one. The confusion is due to the fact that, as scientists, we start with the facts before us, and then make a theory about them, whereas in moral action we first produce the facts ourselves, and then theorise about them. In the evolution of the moral world-order we accomplish what, at a lower level, Nature accomplishes: we alter some part of the perceptual world. Hence the ethical norm cannot straightway be made an object of knowledge, like a law of nature, for it must first be created. Only when that has been done can the norm become an object of knowledge. But is it not possible to make the old a measure for the new? Is not every man compelled to measure the deliverances of his moral imagination by the standard of traditional moral principles? If he would be truly productive in morality, such measuring is as much an absurdity as it would be an absurdity if one were to measure a new species in nature by an old one and say that reptiles, because they do not agree with the Proto-Amniotes, are an illegitimate (degenerate) species. Ethical Individualism, then, so far from being in opposition to the theory of evolution, is a direct consequence of it. Haeckel's genealogical tree, from protozoa up to man as an organic being, ought to be capable of being worked out without a breach of natural law, and without a gap in its uniform evolution, up to the individual as a being with a determinate moral nature. But, whilst it is quite true that the moral ideas of the individual have perceptibly grown out of those of his ancestors, it is also true that the individual is morally barren, unless he has moral ideas of his own. The same Ethical Individualism which I have developed on the basis of the preceding principles, might be equally well developed on the basis of the theory of evolution. The final result would be the same; only the path by which it was reached would be different. That absolutely new moral ideas should be developed by the moral imagination is for the theory of evolution no more inexplicable than the development of one animal species out of another, provided only that this theory, as a Monistic world-view, rejects, in morality as in science, every transcendent (metaphysical) influence. In doing so, it follows the same principle by which it is guided in seeking the causes of new organic forms in forms already existing, but not in the interference of an extra-mundane God, who produces every new species in accordance with a new creative idea through supernatural interference. Just as Monism has no use for supernatural creative ideas in explaining living organisms, so it is equally impossible for it to derive the moral world-order from causes which do not lie within the world. It cannot admit any continuous supernatural influence upon moral life (divine government of the world from the outside), nor an influence either through a particular act of revelation at a particular moment in history (giving of the ten commandments), or through God's appearance on the earth (Divinity of Christ [10]). Moral processes are, for Monism, natural products like everything else that exists, and their causes must be looked for in nature, i.e., in man, because man is the bearer of morality. Ethical Individualism, then, is the crown of the edifice that Darwin and Haeckel have erected for Natural Science. It is the theory of evolution applied to the moral life. Anyone who restricts the concept of the natural from the outset to an artificially limited and narrowed sphere, is easily tempted not to allow any room within it for free individual action. The consistent Evolutionist does not easily fall a prey to such a narrow-minded view. He cannot let the process of evolution terminate with the ape, and acknowledge for man a supernatural origin. Again, he cannot stop short at the organic reactions of man and regard only these as natural. He has to treat also the life of moral self-determination as the continuation of organic life. The Evolutionist, then, in accordance with his fundamental principles, can maintain only that moral action evolves out of the less perfect forms of natural processes. He must leave the characterisation of action, i.e., its determination as free action, to the immediate observation of each agent. All that he maintains is only that men have developed out of non-human ancestors. What the nature of men actually is must be determined by observation of men themselves. The results of this observation cannot possibly contradict the history of evolution. Only the assertion that the results are such as to exclude their being due to a natural world-order would contradict recent developments in the Natural Sciences. [11] Ethical Individualism, then, has nothing to fear from a Natural Science which understands itself. Observation yields freedom as the characteristic quality of the perfect form of human action. Freedom must be attributed to the human will, in so far as the will realises purely ideal intuitions. For these are not the effects of a necessity acting upon them from without, but are grounded in themselves. When we find that an action embodies such an ideal intuition, we feel it to be free. Freedom consists in this character of an action. What, then, from the standpoint of nature are we to say of the distinction, already mentioned above (p. 8), between the two statements, "To be free means to be able to do what you will," and "To be able, as you please, to strive or not to strive is the real meaning of the dogma of free will"? Hamerling bases his theory of free will precisely on this distinction, by declaring the first statement to be correct but the second to be an absurd tautology. He says, "I can do what I will, but to say I can will what I will is an empty tautology." Whether I am able to do, i.e., to make real, what I will, i.e., what I have set before myself as my idea of action, that depends on external circumstances and on my technical skill (cp. p. 200). To be free means to be able to determine by moral imagination out of oneself those ideas (motives) which lie at the basis of action. Freedom is impossible if anything other than I myself (whether a mechanical process or God) determines my moral ideas. In other words, I am free only when I myself produce these ideas, but not when I am merely able to realise the ideas which another being has implanted in me. A free being is one who can will what he regards as right. Whoever does anything other than what he wills must be impelled to it by motives which do not lie in himself. Such a man is unfree in his action. Accordingly, to be able to will, as you please, what you consider right or wrong means to be free or unfree as you please. This is, of course, just as absurd as to identify freedom with the faculty of doing what one is compelled to will. But this is just what Hamerling maintains when he says, "It is perfectly true that the will is always determined by motives, but it is absurd to say that on this ground it is unfree; for a greater freedom can neither be desired nor conceived than the freedom to realise oneself in proportion to one's own power and strength of will." On the contrary, it is well possible to desire a greater freedom and that a true freedom, viz., the freedom to determine for oneself the motives of one's volitions. Under certain conditions a man may be induced to abandon the execution of his will; but to allow others to prescribe to him what he shall do--in other words, to will what another and not what he himself regards as right--to this a man will submit only when he does not feel free. External powers may prevent me from doing what I will, but that is only to condemn me to do nothing or to be unfree. Not until they enslave my spirit, drive my motives out of my head, and put their own motives in the place of mine, do they really aim at making me unfree. That is the reason why the church attacks not only the mere doing, but especially the impure thoughts, i.e., motives of my action. And for the church all those motives are impure which she has not herself authorised. A church does not produce genuine slaves until her priests turn themselves into advisers of consciences, i.e., until the faithful depend upon the church, i.e., upon the confessional, for the motives of their actions. ADDITION TO REVISED EDITION (1918). In these chapters I have given an account of how every one may experience in his actions something which makes him aware that his will is free. It is especially important to recognise that we derive the right to call an act of will free from the experience of an ideal intuition realising itself in the act. This can be nothing but a datum of observation, in the sense that we observe the development of human volition in the direction towards the goal of attaining the possibility of just such volition sustained by purely ideal intuition. This attainment is possible because the ideal intuition is effective through nothing but its own self-dependent essence. Where such an intuition is present in the mind, it has not developed itself out of the processes in the organism (cp. pp. 146 ff.), but the organic processes have retired to make room for the ideal processes. Observation of an act of will which embodies an intuition shows that out of it, likewise, all organically necessary activity has retired. The act of will is free. No one can observe this freedom of will who is unable to see how free will consists in this, that, first, the intuitive factor lames and represses the necessary activity of the human organism, and then puts in its place the spiritual activity of a will guided by ideas. Only those who are unable to observe these two factors in the free act of will believe that every act of will is unfree. Those who are able to observe them win through to the recognition that man is unfree in so far as he fails to repress organic activity completely, but that this unfreedom is tending towards freedom, and that this freedom, so far from being an abstract ideal, is a directive force inherent in human nature. Man is free in proportion as he succeeds in realising in his acts of will the same disposition of mind, which possesses him when he is conscious in himself of the formation of purely ideal (spiritual) intuitions. XIII THE VALUE OF LIFE (OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM) A counterpart of the question concerning the purpose and function of life (cp. pp. 190 ff.) is the question concerning its value. We meet here with two mutually opposed views, and between them with all conceivable attempts at compromise. One view says that this world is the best conceivable which could exist at all, and that to live and act in it is a good of inestimable value. Everything that exists displays harmonious and purposive co-operation and is worthy of admiration. Even what is apparently bad and evil may, from a higher point of view, be seen to be a good, for it represents an agreeable contrast with the good. We are the more able to appreciate the good when it is clearly contrasted with evil. Moreover, evil is not genuinely real; it is only that we perceive as evil a lesser degree of good. Evil is the absence of good, it has no positive import of its own. The other view maintains that life is full of misery and agony. Everywhere pain outweighs pleasure, sorrow outweighs joy. Existence is a burden, and non-existence would, from every point of view, be preferable to existence. The chief representatives of the former view, i.e., Optimism, are Shaftesbury and Leibnitz; the chief representatives of the second, i.e., Pessimism, are Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann. Leibnitz says the world is the best of all possible worlds. A better one is impossible. For God is good and wise. A good God wills to create the best possible world, a wise God knows which is the best possible. He is able to distinguish the best from all other and worse possibilities. Only an evil or an unwise God would be able to create a world worse than the best possible. Whoever starts from this point of view will find it easy to lay down the direction which human action must follow, in order to make its contribution to the greatest good of the universe. All that man need do will be to find out the counsels of God and to act in accordance with them. If he knows what God's purposes are concerning the world and the human race, he will be able, for his part, to do what is right. And he will be happy in the feeling that he is adding his share to all the other good in the world. From this optimistic standpoint, then, life is worth living. It is such as to stimulate us to co-operate with, and enter into, it. Quite different is the picture Schopenhauer paints. He thinks of ultimate reality not as an all-wise and all-beneficent being, but as blind striving or will. Eternal striving, ceaseless craving for satisfaction which yet is ever beyond reach, these are the fundamental characteristics of all will. For as soon as we have attained what we want, a fresh need springs up, and so on. Satisfaction, when it occurs, endures always only for an infinitesimal time. The whole rest of our lives is unsatisfied craving, i.e., discontent and suffering. When at last blind craving is dulled, every definite content is gone from our lives. Existence is filled with nothing but an endless ennui. Hence the best we can do is to throttle all desires and needs within us and exterminate the will. Schopenhauer's Pessimism leads to complete inactivity; its moral aim is universal idleness. By a very different argument Von Hartmann attempts to establish Pessimism and to make use of it for Ethics. He attempts, in keeping with the fashion of our age, to base his world-view on experience. By observation of life he hopes to discover whether there is more pain or more pleasure in the world. He passes in review before the tribunal of reason whatever men consider to be happiness and a good, in order to show that all apparent satisfaction turns out, on closer inspection, to be nothing but illusion. It is illusion when we believe that in health, youth, freedom, sufficient income, love (sexual satisfaction), pity, friendship and family life, honour, reputation, glory, power, religious edification, pursuit of science and of art, hope of a life after death, participation in the advancement of civilisation--that in all these we have sources of happiness and satisfaction. Soberly considered, every enjoyment brings much more evil and misery than pleasure into the world. The disagreeableness of "the morning after" is always greater than the agreeableness of intoxication. Pain far outweighs pleasure in the world. No man, even though relatively the happiest, would, if asked, wish to live through this miserable life a second time. Now, since Hartmann does not deny the presence of an ideal factor (wisdom) in the world, but, on the contrary, grants to it equal rights with blind striving (will), he can attribute the creation of the world to his Absolute Being only on condition that He makes the pain in the world subserve a world-purpose that is wise. But the pain of created beings is nothing but God's pain itself, for the life of Nature as a whole is identical with the life of God. An All-wise Being can aim only at release from pain, and since all existence is pain, at release from existence. Hence the purpose of the creation of the world is to transform existence into the non-existence which is so much better. The world-process is nothing but a continuous battle against God's pain, a battle which ends with the annihilation of all existence. The moral life for men, therefore, will consist in taking part in the annihilation of existence. The reason why God has created the world is that through the world he may free himself from his infinite pain. The world must be regarded, "as it were, as an itching eruption on the Absolute," by means of which the unconscious healing power of the Absolute rids itself of an inward disease; or it may be regarded "as a painful drawing-plaster which the All-One applies to itself in order first to divert the inner pain outwards, and then to get rid of it altogether." Human beings are members of the world. In their sufferings God suffers. He has created them in order to split up in them his infinite pain. The pain which each one of us suffers is but a drop in the infinite ocean of God's pain (Hartmann, Phänomenologie des Sittlichen Bewusstseins, pp. 866 ff.). It is man's duty to permeate his whole being with the recognition that the pursuit of individual satisfaction (Egoism) is a folly, and that he ought to be guided solely by the task of assisting in the redemption of God by unselfish service of the world-process. Thus, in contrast with the Pessimism of Schopenhauer, that of Von Hartmann leads us to devoted activity in a sublime cause. But what of the claim that this view is based on experience? To strive after satisfaction means that our activity reaches out beyond the actual content of our lives. A creature is hungry, i.e., it desires satiety, when its organic functions demand for their continuation the supply of fresh life-materials in the form of nourishment. The pursuit of honour consists in that a man does not regard what he personally does or leaves undone as valuable unless it is endorsed by the approval of others from without. The striving for knowledge arises when a man is not content with the world which he sees, hears, etc., so long as he has not understood it. The fulfilment of the striving causes pleasure in the individual who strives, failure causes pain. It is important here to observe that pleasure and pain are attached only to the fulfilment or non-fulfilment of my striving. The striving itself is by no means to be regarded as a pain. Hence, if we find that, in the very moment in which a striving is fulfilled, at once a new striving arises, this is no ground for saying that pleasure has given birth to pain, because enjoyment in every case gives rise to a desire for its repetition, or for a fresh pleasure. I can speak of pain only when desire runs up against the impossibility of fulfilment. Even when an enjoyment that I have had causes in me the desire for the experience of a greater, more subtle, and more exotic pleasure, I have no right to speak of this desire as a pain caused by the previous pleasure until the means fail me to gain the greater and more subtle pleasure. I have no right to regard pleasure as the cause of pain unless pain follows on pleasure as its consequence by natural law, e.g., when a woman's sexual pleasure is followed by the suffering of child-birth and the cares of nursing. If striving caused pain, then the removal of striving ought to be accompanied by pleasure. But the very reverse is true. To have no striving in one's life causes boredom, and boredom is always accompanied by displeasure. Now, since it may be a long time before a striving meets with fulfilment, and since, in the interval, it is content with the hope of fulfilment, we must acknowledge that there is no connection in principle between pain and striving, but that pain depends solely on the non-fulfilment of the striving. Schopenhauer, then, is wrong, in any case, in regarding desire or striving (will) as being in principle the source of pain. In truth, the very reverse of this is correct. Striving (desire) is in itself pleasurable. Who does not know the pleasure which is caused by the hope of a remote but intensely desired enjoyment? This pleasure is the companion of all labour, the results of which will be enjoyed by us only in the future. It is a pleasure which is wholly independent of the attainment of the end. For when the aim has been attained, the pleasure of satisfaction is added as a fresh thrill to the pleasure of striving. If anyone were to argue that the pain caused by the non-attainment of an aim is increased by the pain of disappointed hope, and that thus, in the end, the pain of non-fulfilment will still always outweigh the utmost possible pleasure of fulfilment, we shall have to reply that the reverse may be the case, and that the recollection of past pleasure at a time of unsatisfied desire will as often mitigate the displeasure of non-satisfaction. Whoever at the moment when his hopes suffer shipwreck exclaims, "I have done my part," proves thereby my assertion. The blessed feeling of having willed the best within one's powers is ignored by all who make every unsatisfied desire an occasion for asserting that, not only has the pleasure of fulfilment been lost, but that the enjoyment of the striving itself has been destroyed. The satisfaction of a desire causes pleasure and its non-satisfaction causes pain. But we have no right to infer from this fact that pleasure is nothing but the satisfaction of a desire, and pain nothing but its non-satisfaction. Both pleasure and pain may be experienced without being the consequence of desire. All illness is pain not preceded by any desire. If anyone were to maintain that illness is unsatisfied desire for health, he would commit the error of regarding the inevitable and unconscious wish not to fall ill as a positive desire. When some one receives a legacy from a rich relative of whose existence he had not the faintest idea, he experiences a pleasure without having felt any preceding desire. Hence, if we set out to inquire whether the balance is on the side of pleasure or of pain, we must allow in our calculation for the pleasure of striving, the pleasure of the satisfaction of striving, and the pleasure which comes to us without any striving whatever. On the debit side we shall have to enter the displeasure of boredom, the displeasure of unfulfilled striving, and, lastly, the displeasure which comes to us without any striving on our part. Under this last heading we shall have to put also the displeasure caused by work that has been forced upon us, not chosen by ourselves. This leads us to the question, What is the right method for striking the balance between the credit and the debit columns? Eduard von Hartmann asserts that reason holds the scales. It is true that he says (Philosophie des Unbewussten, 7th edition, vol. ii. p. 290): "Pain and pleasure exist only in so far as they are actually being felt." It follows that there can be no standard for pleasure other than the subjective standard of feeling. I must feel whether the sum of my disagreeable feelings, contrasted with my agreeable feelings, results in me in a balance of pleasure or of pain. But, notwithstanding this, Von Hartmann maintains that "though the value of the life of every being can be set down only according to its own subjective measure, yet it follows by no means that every being is able to compute the correct algebraic sum of all the feelings of its life--or, in other words, that its total estimate of its own life, with regard to its subjective feelings, should be correct." But this means that rational estimation of feelings is reinstated as the standard of value. [12] It is because Von Hartmann holds this view that he thinks it necessary, in order to arrive at a correct valuation of life, to clear out of the way those factors which falsify our judgment about the balance of pleasure and of pain. He tries to do this in two ways: first, by showing that our desire (instinct, will) operates as a disturbing factor in the sober estimation of feeling-values; e.g., whereas we ought to judge that sexual enjoyment is a source of evil, we are beguiled by the fact that the sexual instinct is very strong in us, into pretending to experience a pleasure which does not occur in the alleged intensity at all. We are bent on indulging ourselves, hence we do not acknowledge to ourselves that the indulgence makes us suffer. Secondly, Von Hartmann subjects feelings to a criticism designed to show, that the objects to which our feelings attach themselves reveal themselves as illusions when examined by reason, and that our feelings are destroyed from the moment that our constantly growing insight sees through the illusions. Von Hartmann, then, conceives the matter as follows. Suppose an ambitious man wants to determine clearly whether, up to the moment of his inquiry, there has been a surplus of pleasure or of pain in his life. He has to eliminate two sources of error that may affect his judgment. Being ambitious, this fundamental feature of his character will make him see all the pleasures of the public recognition of his achievements larger than they are, and all the insults suffered through rebuffs smaller than they are. At the time when he suffered the rebuffs he felt the insults just because he is ambitious, but in recollection they appear to him in a milder light, whereas the pleasures of recognition to which he is so much more susceptible leave a far deeper impression. Undeniably, it is a real benefit to an ambitious man that it should be so, for the deception diminishes his pain in the moment of self-analysis. But, none the less, it falsifies his judgments. The sufferings which he now reviews as through a veil were actually experienced by him in all their intensity. Hence he enters them at a wrong valuation on the debit side of his account. In order to arrive at a correct estimate, an ambitious man would have to lay aside his ambition for the time of his inquiry. He would have to review his past life without any distorting glasses before his mind's eye, else he will resemble a merchant who, in making up his books, enters among the items on the credit side his own zeal in business. But Von Hartmann goes even further. He says the ambitious man must make clear to himself that the public recognition which he craves is not worth having. By himself, or with the guidance of others, he must attain the insight that rational beings cannot attach any value to recognition by others, seeing that "in all matters which are not vital questions of development, or which have not been definitely settled by science," it is always as certain as anything can be "that the majority is wrong and the minority right." "Whoever makes ambition the lode-star of his life puts the happiness of his life at the mercy of so fallible a judgment" (Philosophie des Unbewussten, vol. ii, p. 332). If the ambitious man acknowledges all this to himself, he is bound to regard all the achievements of his ambition as illusions, including even the feelings which attach themselves to the satisfaction of his ambitious desires. This is the reason why Von Hartmann says that we must also strike out of the balance-sheet of our life-values whatever is seen to be illusory in our feelings of pleasure. What remains after that represents the sum-total of pleasure in life, and this sum is so small compared with the sum-total of pain that life is no enjoyment and non-existence preferable to existence. But whilst it is immediately evident that the interference of the instinct of ambition produces self-deception in striking the balance of pleasures and thus leads to a false result, we must none the less challenge what Von Hartmann says concerning the illusory character of the objects to which pleasure is attached. For the elimination, from the credit-side of life, of all pleasurable feelings which accompany actual or supposed illusions would positively falsify the balance of pleasure and of pain. An ambitious man has genuinely enjoyed the acclamations of the multitude, irrespective of whether subsequently he himself, or some other person, recognises that this acclamation is an illusion. The pleasure, once enjoyed, is not one whit diminished by such recognition. Consequently the elimination of all these "illusory" feelings from life's balance, so far from making our judgment about our feelings more correct, actually cancels out of life feelings which were genuinely there. And why are these feelings to be eliminated? He who has them derives pleasure from them; he who has overcome them, gains through the experience of self-conquest (not through the vain emotion: What a noble fellow I am! but through the objective sources of pleasure which lie in the self-conquest) a pleasure which is, indeed, spiritualised, but none the less valuable for that. If we strike feelings from the credit side of pleasure in our account, on the ground that they are attached to objects which turn out to have been illusory, we make the value of life dependent, not on the quantity, but on the quality of pleasure, and this, in turn, on the value of the objects which cause the pleasure. But if I am to determine the value of life only by the quantity of pleasure or pain which it brings, I have no right to presuppose something else by which first to determine the positive or negative value of pleasure. If I say I want to compare quantity of pleasure and quantity of pain, in order to see which is greater, I am bound to bring into my account all pleasures and pains in their actual intensities, regardless of whether they are based on illusions or not. If I credit a pleasure which rests on an illusion with a lesser value for life than one which can justify itself before the tribunal of reason, I make the value of life dependent on factors other than mere quantity of pleasure. Whoever, like Eduard von Hartmann, puts down pleasure as less valuable when it is attached to a worthless object, is like a merchant who enters the considerable profits of a toy-factory at only one-quarter of their real value on the ground that the factory produces nothing but playthings for children. If the point is simply to weigh quantity of pleasure against quantity of pain, we ought to leave the illusory character of the objects of some pleasures entirely out of account. The method, then, which Von Hartmann recommends, viz., rational criticism of the quantities of pleasure and pain produced by life, has taught us so far how we are to get the data for our calculation, i.e., what we are to put down on the one side of our account and what on the other. But how are we to make the actual calculation? Is reason able also to strike the balance? A merchant makes a miscalculation when the gain calculated by him does not balance with the profits which he has demonstrably enjoyed from his business or is still expecting to enjoy. Similarly, the philosopher will undoubtedly have made a mistake in his estimate, if he cannot demonstrate in actual feeling the surplus of pleasure or, as the case may be, of pain which his manipulation of the account may have yielded. For the present I shall not criticise the calculations of those Pessimists who support their estimate of the value of the world by an appeal to reason. But if we are to decide whether to carry on the business of life or not, we shall demand first to be shown where the alleged balance of pain is to be found. Here we touch the point where reason is not in a position by itself to determine the surplus of pleasure or of pain, but where it must exhibit this surplus in life as something actually felt. For man reaches reality not through concepts by themselves, but through the interpenetration of concepts and percepts (and feelings are percepts) which thinking brings about (cp. pp. 82 ff.). A merchant will give up his business only when the loss of goods, as calculated by his accountant, is actually confirmed by the facts. If the facts do not bear out the calculation, he asks his accountant to check the account once more. That is exactly what a man will do in the business of life. If a philosopher wants to prove to him that the pain is far greater than the pleasure, but that he does not feel it so, then he will reply: "You have made a mistake in your theorisings; repeat your analysis once more." But if there comes a time in a business when the losses are really so great that the firm's credit no longer suffices to satisfy the creditors, bankruptcy results, even though the merchant may avoid keeping himself informed by careful accounts about the state of his affairs. Similarly, supposing the quantity of pain in a man's life became at any time so great that no hope (credit) of future pleasure could help him to get over the pain, the bankruptcy of life's business would inevitably follow. Now the number of those who commit suicide is relatively small compared with the number of those who live bravely on. Only very few men give up the business of life because of the pain involved. What follows? Either that it is untrue to say that the quantity of pain is greater than the quantity of pleasure, or that we do not make the continuation of life dependent on the quantity of felt pleasure or pain. In a very curious way, Eduard von Hartmann's Pessimism, having concluded that life is valueless because it contains a surplus of pain, yet affirms the necessity of going on with life. This necessity lies in the fact that the world-purpose mentioned above (p. 216) can be achieved only by the ceaseless, devoted labour of human beings. But so long as men still pursue their egoistical appetites they are unfit for this devoted labour. It is not until experience and reason have convinced them that the pleasures which Egoism pursues are incapable of attainment, that they give themselves up to their proper task. In this way the pessimistic conviction is offered as the fountain of unselfishness. An education based on Pessimism is to exterminate Egoism by convincing it of the hopelessness of achieving its aims. According to this view, then, the striving for pleasure is fundamentally inherent in human nature. It is only through the insight into the impossibility of satisfaction that this striving abdicates in favour of the higher tasks of humanity. It is, however, impossible to say of this ethical theory, which expects from the establishment of Pessimism a devotion to unselfish ends in life, that it really overcomes Egoism in the proper sense of the word. The moral ideas are said not to be strong enough to dominate the will until man has learnt that the selfish striving after pleasure cannot lead to any satisfaction. Man, whose selfishness desires the grapes of pleasure, finds them sour because he cannot attain them, and so he turns his back on them and devotes himself to an unselfish life. Moral ideals, then, according to the opinion of Pessimists, are too weak to overcome Egoism, but they establish their kingdom on the territory which previous recognition of the hopelessness of Egoism has cleared for them. If men by nature strive after pleasure but are unable to attain it, it follows that annihilation of existence and salvation through non-existence are the only rational ends. And if we accept the view that the real bearer of the pain of the world is God, it follows that the task of men consists in helping to bring about the salvation of God. To commit suicide does not advance, but hinders, the realisation of this aim. God must rationally be conceived as having created men for the sole purpose of bringing about his salvation through their action, else would creation be purposeless. Every one of us has to perform his own definite task in the general work of salvation. If he withdraws from the task by suicide, another has to do the work which was intended for him. Somebody else must bear in his stead the agony of existence. And since in every being it is, at bottom, God who is the ultimate bearer of all pain, it follows that to commit suicide does not in the least diminish the quantity of God's pain, but rather imposes upon God the additional difficulty of providing a substitute. This whole theory presupposes that pleasure is the standard of value for life. Now life manifests itself through a number of instincts (needs). If the value of life depended on its producing more pleasure than pain, an instinct would have to be called valueless which brought to its owner a balance of pain. Let us, if you please, inspect instinct and pleasure, in order to see whether the former can be measured by the latter. And lest we give rise to the suspicion that life does not begin for us below the sphere of the "aristocrats of the intellect," we shall begin our examination with a "purely animal" need, viz., hunger. Hunger arises when our organs are unable to continue functioning without a fresh supply of food. What a hungry man desires, in the first instance, is to have his hunger stilled. As soon as the supply of nourishment has reached the point where hunger ceases, everything has been attained that the food-instinct craves. The pleasure which is connected with satiety consists, to begin with, in the removal of the pain which is caused by hunger. But to the mere food-instinct there is added a further need. For man does not merely desire to restore, by the consumption of food, the disturbance in the functioning of his organs, or to get rid of the pain of hunger, but he seeks to effect this to the accompaniment of pleasurable sensations of taste. When he feels hungry, and is within half an hour of a meal to which he looks forward with pleasure, he avoids spoiling his enjoyment of the better food by taking inferior food which might satisfy his hunger sooner. He needs hunger in order to get the full enjoyment out of his meal. Thus hunger becomes for him at the same time a cause of pleasure. Supposing all the hunger in the world could be satisfied, we should get the total quantity of pleasure which we owe to the existence of the desire for nourishment. But we should still have to add the additional pleasure which gourmets gain by cultivating the sensibility of their taste-nerves beyond the common measure. The greatest conceivable value of this quantity of pleasure would be reached, if no need remained unsatisfied which was in any way connected with this kind of pleasure, and if with the smooth of pleasure we had not at the same time to take a certain amount of the rough of pain. Modern Science holds the view that Nature produces more life than it can maintain, i.e., that Nature also produces more hunger than it is able to satisfy. The surplus of life thus produced is condemned to a painful death in the struggle for existence. Granted that the needs of life are, at every moment of the world-process, greater than the available means of satisfaction, and that the enjoyment of life is correspondingly diminished, yet such enjoyment as actually occurs is not one whit reduced thereby. Wherever a desire is satisfied, there the corresponding quantity of pleasure exists, even though in the creature itself which desires, or in its fellow-creatures, there are a large number of unsatisfied instincts. What is diminished is, not the quantity, but the "value" of the enjoyment of life. If only a part of the needs of a living creature find satisfaction, it experiences still a corresponding pleasure. This pleasure is inferior in value in proportion as it is inadequate to the total demand of life within a given group of desires. We might represent this value as a fraction, the numerator of which is the actually experienced pleasure, whilst the denominator is the sum-total of needs. This fraction has the value 1 when the numerator and the denominator are equal, i.e., when all needs are also satisfied. The fraction becomes greater than 1 when a creature experiences more pleasure than its desires demand. It becomes smaller than 1 when the quantity of pleasure falls short of the sum-total of desires. But the fraction can never have the value 0 so long as the numerator has any value at all, however small. If a man were to make up the account before his death and to distribute in imagination over the whole of life the quantity belonging to a particular instinct (e.g., hunger), as well as the demands of this instinct, then the total pleasure which he has experienced might have only a very small value, but this value would never become altogether nil. If the quantity of pleasure remains constant, then with every increase in the needs of the creature the value of the pleasure diminishes. The same is true for the totality of life in Nature. The greater the number of creatures in proportion to those which are able fully to satisfy their instincts, the smaller is the average pleasure-value of life. The cheques on life's pleasure which are drawn in our favour in the form of our instincts, become increasingly less valuable in proportion as we cannot expect to cash them at their full face value. Suppose I get enough to eat on three days and am then compelled to go hungry for another three days, the actual pleasure on the three days of eating is not thereby diminished. But I have now to think of it as distributed over six days, and this reduces its "value" for my food-instinct by half. The same applies to the quantity of pleasure as measured by the degree of my need. Suppose I have hunger enough for two sandwiches and can only get one, the pleasure which this one gives me has only half the value it would have had if the eating of it had stilled my hunger. This is the way in which we determine the value of a pleasure in life. We determine it by the needs of life. Our desires supply the measure; pleasure is what is measured. The pleasure of stilling hunger has value only because hunger exists, and it has determinate value through the proportion which it bears to the intensity of the hunger. Unfulfilled demands of our life throw their shadow even upon fulfilled desires, and thus detract from the value of pleasurable hours. But we may speak also of the present value of a feeling of pleasure. This value is the smaller, the more insignificant the pleasure is in proportion to the duration and intensity of our desire. A quantity of pleasure has its full value for us when its duration and degree exactly coincide with our desire. A quantity of pleasure which is smaller than our desire diminishes the value of the pleasure. A quantity which is greater produces a surplus which has not been demanded and which is felt as pleasure only so long as, whilst enjoying the pleasure, we can correspondingly increase the intensity of our desire. If we are not able to keep pace in the increase of our desire with the increase in pleasure, then pleasure turns into displeasure. The object which would otherwise satisfy us, when it assails us unbidden makes us suffer. This proves that pleasure has value for us only so long as we have desires by which to measure it. An excess of pleasurable feeling turns into pain. This may be observed especially in those men whose desire for a given kind of pleasure is very small. In people whose desire for food is dulled, eating easily produces nausea. This again shows that desire is the measure of value for pleasure. Now Pessimism might reply that an unsatisfied desire for food produces, not only the pain of a lost enjoyment, but also positive ills, agony, and misery in the world. It appeals for confirmation to the untold misery of all who are harassed by anxieties about food, and to the vast amount of pain which for these unfortunates results indirectly from their lack of food. And if it wants to extend its assertion also to non-human nature, it can point to the agonies of animals which, in certain seasons, die from lack of food. Concerning all these evils the Pessimist maintains that they far outweigh the quantity of pleasure which the food-instinct brings into the world. There is no doubt that it is possible to compare pleasure and pain one with another, and determine the surplus of the one or the other as we determine commercial gain or loss. But if Pessimists think that a surplus on the side of pain is a ground for inferring that life is valueless, they fall into the mistake of making a calculation which in actual life is never made. Our desire, in any given case, is directed to a particular object. The value of the pleasure of satisfaction, as we have seen, will be the greater in proportion as the quantity of the pleasure is greater relatively to the intensity of our desire. [13] It depends, further, on this intensity how large a quantity of pain we are willing to bear in order to gain the pleasure. We compare the quantity of pain, not with the quantity of pleasure, but with the intensity of our desire. He who finds great pleasure in eating will, by reason of his pleasure in better times, be more easily able to bear a period of hunger than one who does not derive pleasure from the satisfaction of the instinct for food. A woman who wants a child compares the pleasures resulting from the possession of a child, not with the quantities of pain due to pregnancy, birth, nursing, etc., but with her desire for the possession of the child. We never aim at a certain quantity of pleasure in the abstract, but at concrete satisfaction of a perfectly determinate kind. When we are aiming at a definite object or a definite sensation, it will not satisfy us to be offered some other object or some other sensation, even though they give the same amount of pleasure. If we desire satisfaction of hunger, we cannot substitute for the pleasure which this satisfaction would bring a pleasure equally great but produced by a walk. Only if our desire were, quite generally, for a certain quantity of pleasure, would it have to die away at once if this pleasure were unattainable except at the price of an even greater quantity of pain. But because we desire a determinate kind of satisfaction, we experience the pleasure of realisation even when, along with it, we have to bear an even greater pain. The instincts of living beings tend in a determinate direction and aim at concrete objects, and it is just for this reason that it is impossible, in our calculations, to set down as an equivalent factor the quantities of pain which we have to bear in the pursuit of our object. Provided the desire is sufficiently intense to be still to some degree in existence even after having overcome the pain--however great that pain, taken in the abstract, may be--the pleasure of satisfaction may still be enjoyed to its full extent. The desire, therefore, does not measure the pain directly against the pleasure which we attain, but indirectly by measuring the pain (proportionately) against its own intensity. The question is not whether the pleasure to be gained is greater than the pain, but whether the desire for the object at which we aim is greater than the inhibitory effect of the pain which we have to face. If the inhibition is greater than the desire, the latter yields to the inevitable, slackens, and ceases to strive. But inasmuch as we strive after a determinate kind of satisfaction, the pleasure we gain thereby acquires an importance which makes it possible, once satisfaction has been attained, to allow in our calculation for the inevitable pain only in so far as it has diminished the intensity of our desire. If I am passionately fond of beautiful views, I never calculate the amount of pleasure which the view from the mountain-top gives me as compared directly with the pain of the toilsome ascent and descent; but I reflect whether, after having overcome all difficulties, my desire for the view will still be sufficiently intense. Thus pleasure and pain can be made commensurate only mediately through the intensity of the desire. Hence the question is not at all whether there is a surplus of pleasure or of pain, but whether the desire for pleasure is sufficiently intense to overcome the pain. A proof for the accuracy of this view is to be found in the fact, that we put a higher value on pleasure when it has to be purchased at the price of great pain than when it simply falls into our lap like a gift from heaven. When sufferings and agonies have toned down our desire and yet after all our aim is attained, then the pleasure is all the greater in proportion to the intensity of the desire that has survived. Now it is just this proportion which, as I have shown (p. 233), represents the value of the pleasure. A further proof is to be found in the fact that all living creatures (including men) develop their instincts as long as they are able to bear the opposition of pains and agonies. The struggle for existence is but a consequence of this fact. All living creatures strive to expand, and only those abandon the struggle whose desires are throttled by the overwhelming magnitude of the difficulties with which they meet. Every living creature seeks food until sheer lack of food destroys its life. Man, too, does not turn his hand against himself until, rightly or wrongly, he believes that he cannot attain those aims in life which alone seem to him worth striving for. So long as he still believes in the possibility of attaining what he thinks worth striving for, he will battle against all pains and miseries. Philosophy would have to convince man that striving is rational only when pleasure outweighs pain, for it is his nature to strive for the attainment of the objects which he desires, so long as he can bear the inevitable incidental pain, however great that may be. Such a philosophy, however, would be mistaken, because it would make the human will dependent on a factor (the surplus of pleasure over pain) which, at first, is wholly foreign to man's point of view. The original measure of his will is his desire, and desire asserts itself as long as it can. If I am compelled, in purchasing a certain quantity of apples, to take twice as many rotten ones as sound ones--because the seller wishes to clear out his stock--I shall not hesitate a moment to take the bad apples as well, if I put so high a value on the smaller quantity of good apples that I am prepared, in addition to the purchase price, to bear also the expense for the transportation of the rotten goods. This example illustrates the relation between the quantities of pleasure and of pain which are caused by a given instinct. I determine the value of the good apples, not by subtracting the sum of the good from that of the bad ones, but by the fact that, in spite of the presence of the bad ones, I still attach a value to the good ones. Just as I leave out of account the bad apples in the enjoyment of the good ones, so I surrender myself to the satisfaction of a desire after having shaken off the inevitable pains. Supposing even Pessimism were in the right with its assertion that the world contains more pain than pleasure, it would nevertheless have no influence upon the will, for living beings would still strive after such pleasure as remains. The empirical proof that pain overbalances pleasure is indeed effective for showing up the futility of that school of philosophy, which looks for the value of life in a surplus of pleasure (Eudæmonism), but not for exhibiting the will, as such, as irrational. For the will is not set upon a surplus of pleasure, but on whatever quantity of pleasure remains after subtracting the pain. This remaining pleasure still appears always as an object worth pursuing. An attempt has been made to refute Pessimism by asserting that it is impossible to determine by calculation the surplus of pleasure or of pain in the world. The possibility of every calculation depends on our being able to compare the things to be calculated in respect of their quantity. Every pain and every pleasure has a definite quantity (intensity and duration). Further, we can compare pleasurable feelings of different kinds one with another, at least approximately, with regard to their intensity. We know whether we derive more pleasure from a good cigar or from a good joke. No objection can be raised against the comparability of different pleasures and pains in respect of their intensity. The thinker who sets himself the task of determining the surplus of pleasure or pain in the world, starts from presuppositions which are undeniably legitimate. It is possible to maintain that the Pessimistic results are false, but it is not possible to doubt that quantities of pleasure and pain can be scientifically estimated, and that the surplus of the one or the other can thereby be determined. It is incorrect, however, to assert that from this calculation any conclusions can be drawn for the human will. The cases in which we really make the value of our activity dependent on whether pleasure or pain shows a surplus, are those in which the objects towards which our activity is directed are indifferent to us. If it is a question whether, after the day's work, I am to amuse myself by a game or by light conversation, and if I am totally indifferent what I do so long as it amuses me, then I simply ask myself: What gives me the greatest surplus of pleasure? And I abandon the activity altogether if the scales incline towards the side of displeasure. If we are buying a toy for a child we consider, in selecting, what will give him the greatest pleasure, but in all other cases we are not determined exclusively by considerations of the balance of pleasure. Hence, if Pessimistic thinkers believe that they are preparing the ground for an unselfish devotion to the work of civilisation, by demonstrating that there is a greater quantity of pain than of pleasure in life, they forget altogether that the human will is so constituted that it cannot be influenced by this knowledge. The whole striving of men is directed towards the greatest possible satisfaction that is attainable after overcoming all difficulties. The hope of this satisfaction is the basis of all human activity. The work of every single individual and the whole achievement of civilisation have their roots in this hope. The Pessimistic theory of Ethics thinks it necessary to represent the pursuit of pleasure as impossible, in order that man may devote himself to his proper moral tasks. But these moral tasks are nothing but the concrete natural and spiritual instincts; and he strives to satisfy these notwithstanding all incidental pain. The pursuit of pleasure, then, which the Pessimist sets himself to eradicate is nowhere to be found. But the tasks which man has to fulfil are fulfilled by him because from his very nature he wills to fulfil them. The Pessimistic system of Ethics maintains that a man cannot devote himself to what he recognises as his task in life until he has first given up the desire for pleasure. But no system of Ethics can ever invent other tasks than the realisation of those satisfactions which human desires demand, and the fulfilment of man's moral ideas. No Ethical theory can deprive him of the pleasure which he experiences in the realisation of what he desires. When the Pessimist says, "Do not strive after pleasure, for pleasure is unattainable; strive instead after what you recognise to be your task," we must reply that it is human nature to strive to do one's tasks, and that philosophy has gone astray in inventing the principle that man strives for nothing but pleasure. He aims at the satisfaction of what his nature demands, and the attainment of this satisfaction is to him a pleasure. Pessimistic Ethics, in demanding that we should strive, not after pleasure, but after the realisation of what we recognise as our task, lays its finger on the very thing which man wills in virtue of his own nature. There is no need for man to be turned inside out by philosophy, there is no need for him to discard his nature, in order to be moral. Morality means striving for an end so long as the pain connected with this striving does not inhibit the desire for the end altogether; and this is the essence of all genuine will. Ethics is not founded on the eradication of all desire for pleasure, in order that, in its place, bloodless moral ideas may set up their rule where no strong desire for pleasure stands in their way, but it is based on the strong will, sustained by ideal intuitions, which attains its end even when the path to it is full of thorns. Moral ideals have their root in the moral imagination of man. Their realisation depends on the desire for them being sufficiently intense to overcome pains and agonies. They are man's own intuitions. In them his spirit braces itself to action. They are what he wills, because their realisation is his highest pleasure. He needs no Ethical theory first to forbid him to strive for pleasure and then to prescribe to him what he shall strive for. He will, of himself, strive for moral ideals provided his moral imagination is sufficiently active to inspire him with the intuitions, which give strength to his will to overcome all resistance. If a man strives towards sublimely great ideals, it is because they are the content of his will, and because their realisation will bring him an enjoyment compared with which the pleasure which inferior spirits draw from the satisfaction of their commonplace needs is a mere nothing. Idealists delight in translating their ideals into reality. Anyone who wants to eradicate the pleasure which the fulfilment of human desires brings, will have first to degrade man to the position of a slave who does not act because he wills, but because he must. For the attainment of the object of will gives pleasure. What we call the good is not what a man must do, but what he wills to do when he unfolds the fulness of his nature. Anyone who does not acknowledge this must deprive man of all the objects of his will, and then prescribe to him from without what he is to make the content of his will. Man values the satisfaction of a desire because the desire springs from his own nature. What he attains is valuable because it is the object of his will. If we deny any value to the ends which men do will, then we shall have to look for the ends that are valuable among objects which men do not will. A system of Ethics, then, which is built up on Pessimism has its root in the contempt for man's moral imagination. Only he who does not consider the individual human mind capable of determining for itself the content of its striving, can look for the sum and substance of will in the craving for pleasure. A man without imagination does not create moral ideas; they must be imparted to him. Physical nature sees to it that he seeks the satisfaction of his lower desires; but for the development of the whole man the desires which have their origin in the spirit are fully as necessary. Only those who believe that man has no such spiritual desires at all can maintain that they must be imparted to him from without. On that view it will also be correct to say that it is man's duty to do what he does not will to do. Every Ethical system which demands of man that he should suppress his will in order to fulfil tasks which he does not will, works, not with the whole man, but with a stunted being who lacks the faculty of spiritual desires. For a man who has been harmoniously developed, the so-called ideas of the Good lie, not without, but within the range of his will. Moral action consists, not in the extirpation of one's individual will, but in the fullest development of human nature. To regard moral ideals as attainable only on condition that man destroys his individual will, is to ignore the fact that these ideals are as much rooted in man's will as the satisfaction of the so-called animal instincts. It cannot be denied that the views here outlined may easily be misunderstood. Immature youths without any moral imagination like to look upon the instincts of their half-developed natures as the full substance of humanity, and reject all moral ideas which they have not themselves originated, in order that they may "live themselves out" without restriction. But it goes without saying that a theory which holds for a fully developed man does not hold for half-developed boys. Anyone who still requires to be brought by education to the point where his moral nature breaks through the shell of his lower passions, cannot expect to be measured by the same standard as a mature man. But it was not my intention to set down what a half-fledged youth requires to be taught, but the essential nature of a mature man. My intention was to demonstrate the possibility of freedom, which becomes manifest, not in actions physically or psychically determined, but in actions sustained; by spiritual intuitions. Every mature man is the maker of his own value. He does not aim at pleasure, which comes to him as a gift of grace on the part of Nature or of the Creator; nor does he live for the sake of what he recognises as duty, after he has put away from him the desire for pleasure. He acts as he wills, that is, in accordance with his moral intuitions; and he finds in the attainment of what he wills the true enjoyment of life. He determines the value of his life by measuring his attainments against his aims. An Ethical system which puts "ought" in the place of "will," duty in the place of inclination, is consistent in determining the value of man by the ratio between the demands of duty and his actual achievements. It applies to man a measure that is external to his own nature. The view which I have here developed points man back to himself. It recognises as the true value of life nothing except what each individual regards as such by the measure of his own will. A value of life which the individual does not recognise is as little acknowledged by my views as a purpose of life which does not spring from the value thus recognised. My view looks upon the individual as his own master and the assessor of his own value. ADDITION TO THE REVISED EDITION (1918). The argument of this chapter is open to misapprehension by those who obstinately insist on the apparent objection, that the will, as such, is the irrational factor in man, and that its irrationality should be exhibited in order to make man see, that the goal of his moral endeavour ought to be his ultimate emancipation from will. Precisely such an illusory objection has been brought against me by a competent critic who urged that it is the business of the philosopher to make good what animals and most men thoughtlessly forget, viz., to strike a genuine balance of life's account. But the objection ignores precisely the main point. If freedom is to be realised, the will in human nature must be sustained by intuitive thinking. At the same time we find that the will may also be determined by factors other than intuition, and that morality and its work can have no other root than the free realisation of intuition issuing from man's essential nature. Ethical Individualism is well fitted to exhibit morality in its full dignity. It does not regard true morality as the outward conformity of the will to a norm. Morality, for it, consists in the actions which issue from the unfolding of man's moral will as an integral part of his whole nature, so that immorality appears to man as a stunting and crippling of his nature. XIV THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE GENUS The view that man is a wholly self-contained, free individuality stands in apparent conflict with the facts, that he appears as a member of a natural whole (race, tribe, nation, family, male or female sex), and that he acts within a whole (state, church, etc.). He exhibits the general characteristics of the community to which he belongs, and gives to his actions a content which is defined by the place which he occupies within a social whole. This being so, is any individuality left at all? Can we regard man as a whole in himself, in view of the fact that he grows out of a whole and fits as a member into a whole? The character and function of a member of a whole are defined by the whole. A tribe is a whole, and all members of the tribe exhibit the peculiar characteristics which are conditioned by the nature of the tribe. The character and activity of the individual member are determined by the character of the tribe. Hence the physiognomy and the conduct of the individual have something generic about them. When we ask why this or that in a man is so or so, we are referred from the individual to the genus. The genus explains why something in the individual appears in the form observed by us. But man emancipates himself from these generic characteristics. He develops qualities and activities the reason for which we can seek only in himself. The generic factors serve him only as a means to develop his own individual nature. He uses the peculiarities with which nature has endowed him as material, and gives them a form which expresses his own individuality. We seek in vain for the reason of such an expression of a man's individuality in the laws of the genus. We are dealing here with an individual who can be explained only through himself. If a man has reached the point of emancipation from what is generic in him, and we still attempt to explain all his qualities by reference to the character of the genus, then we lack the organ for apprehending what is individual. It is impossible to understand a human being completely if one makes the concept of the genus the basis of one's judgment. The tendency to judge according to the genus is most persistent where differences of sex are involved. Man sees in woman, woman in man, almost always too much of the generic characteristics of the other's sex, and too little of what is individual in the other. In practical life this does less harm to men than to women. The social position of women is, in most instances, so low because it is not determined by the individual characteristics of each woman herself, but by the general ideas which are current concerning the natural function and needs of woman. A man's activity in life is determined by his individual capacity and inclination, whereas a woman's activity is supposed to be determined solely by the fact that she is just a woman. Woman is to be the slave of the generic, of the general idea of womanhood. So long as men debate whether woman, from her "natural disposition," is fitted for this, that, or the other profession, the so-called Woman's Question will never advance beyond the most elementary stage. What it lies in woman's nature to strive for had better be left to woman herself to decide. If it is true that women are fitted only for that profession which is theirs at present, then they will hardly have it in them to attain any other. But they must be allowed to decide for themselves what is conformable to their nature. To all who fear an upheaval of our social structure, should women be treated as individuals and not as specimens of their sex, we need only reply that a social structure in which the status of one-half of humanity is unworthy of a human being stands itself in great need of improvement. [14] Anyone who judges human beings according to their generic character stops short at the very point beyond which they begin to be individuals whose activity rests on free self-determination. Whatever lies short of this point may naturally become matter for scientific study. Thus the characteristics of race, tribe, nation, and sex are the subject-matter of special sciences. Only men who are simply specimens of the genus could possibly fit the generic picture which the methods of these sciences produce. But all these sciences are unable to get as far as the unique character of the single individual. Where the sphere of freedom (thinking and acting) begins, there the possibility of determining the individual according to the laws of his genus ceases. The conceptual content which man, by an act of thought, has to connect with percepts, in order to possess himself fully of reality (cp. pp. 83 ff.), cannot be fixed by anyone once and for all, and handed down to humanity ready-made. The individual must gain his concepts through his own intuition. It is impossible to deduce from any concept of the genus how the individual ought to think; that depends singly and solely on the individual himself. So, again, it is just as impossible to determine, on the basis of the universal characteristics of human nature, what concrete ends the individual will set before himself. Anyone who wants to understand the single individual must penetrate to the innermost core of his being, and not stop short at those qualities which he shares with others. In this sense every single human being is a problem. And every science which deals only with abstract thoughts and generic concepts is but a preparation for the kind of knowledge which we gain when a human individual communicates to us his way of viewing the world, and for that other kind of knowledge which each of us gains from the content of his own will. Wherever we feel that here we are dealing with a man who has emancipated his thinking from all that is generic, and his will from the grooves typical of his kind, there we must cease to call in any concepts of our own making if we would understand his nature. Knowledge consists in the combination by thought of a concept and a percept. With all other objects the observer has to gain his concepts through his intuition. But if the problem is to understand a free individuality, we need only to take over into our own minds those concepts by which the individual determines himself, in their pure form (without admixture). Those who always mix their own ideas into their judgment on another person can never attain to the understanding of an individuality. Just as the free individual emancipates himself from the characteristics of the genus, so our knowledge of the individual must emancipate itself from the methods by which we understand what is generic. A man counts as a free spirit in a human community only to the degree in which he has emancipated himself, in the way we have indicated, from all that is generic. No man is all genus, none is all individuality; but every man gradually emancipates a greater or lesser sphere of his being, both from the generic characteristics of animal life, and from the laws of human authorities which rule him despotically. In respect of that part of his nature for which man is not able to win this freedom for himself, he forms a member within the organism of nature and of spirit. He lives, in this respect, by the imitation of others, or in obedience to their command. But ethical value belongs only to that part of his conduct which springs from his intuitions. And whatever moral instincts man possesses through the inheritance of social instincts, acquire ethical value through being taken up into his intuitions. In such ethical intuitions all moral activity of men has its root. To put this differently: the moral life of humanity is the sum-total of the products of the moral imagination of free human individuals. This is Monism's confession of faith. ULTIMATE QUESTIONS XV THE CONSEQUENCES OF MONISM An explanation of Nature on a single principle, or, in other words, Monism, derives from human experience all the material which it requires for the explanation of the world. In the same way, it looks for the springs of action also within the world of observation, i.e., in that human part of Nature which is accessible to our self-observation, and more particularly in the moral imagination. Monism declines to seek outside that world the ultimate grounds of the world which we perceive and think. For Monism, the unity which reflective observation adds to the manifold multiplicity of percepts, is identical with the unity which the human desire for knowledge demands, and through which this desire seeks entrance into the physical and spiritual realms. Whoever looks for another unity behind this one, only shows that he fails to perceive the coincidence of the results of thinking with the demands of the instinct for knowledge. A particular human individual is not something cut off from the universe. He is a part of the universe, and his connection with the cosmic whole is broken, not in reality, but only for our perception. At first we apprehend the human part of the universe as a self-existing thing, because we are unable to perceive the cords and ropes by which the fundamental forces of the cosmos keep turning the wheel of our life. All who remain at this perceptual standpoint see the part of the whole as if it were a truly independent, self-existing thing, a monad which gains all its knowledge of the rest of the world in some mysterious manner from without. But Monism has shown that we can believe in this independence only so long as thought does not gather our percepts into the network of the conceptual world. As soon as this happens, all partial existence in the universe, all isolated being, reveals itself as a mere appearance due to perception. Existence as a self-contained totality can be predicated only of the universe as a whole. Thought destroys the appearances due to perception and assigns to our individual existence a place in the life of the cosmos. The unity of the conceptual world which contains all objective percepts, has room also within itself for the content of our subjective personality. Thought gives us the true structure of reality as a self-contained unity, whereas the multiplicity of percepts is but an appearance conditioned by our organisation (cp. pp. 178 ff.). The recognition of the true unity of reality, as against the appearance of multiplicity, is at all times the goal of human thought. Science strives to apprehend our apparently disconnected percepts as a unity by tracing their inter-relations according to natural law. But, owing to the prejudice that an inter-relation discovered by human thought has only a subjective validity, thinkers have sought the true ground of unity in some object transcending the world of our experience (God, will, absolute spirit, etc.). Further, basing themselves on this prejudice, men have tried to gain, in addition to their knowledge of inter-relations within experience, a second kind of knowledge transcending experience, which should reveal the connection between empirical inter-relations and those realities which lie beyond the limits of experience (Metaphysics). The reason why, by logical thinking, we understand the nexus of the world, was thought to be that an original creator has built up the world according to logical laws, and, similarly, the ground of our actions was thought to lie in the will of this original being. It was overlooked that thinking embraces in one grasp the subjective and the objective, and that it communicates to us the whole of reality in the union which it effects between percept and concept. Only so long as we contemplate the laws which pervade and determine all percepts, in the abstract form of concepts, do we indeed deal only with something purely subjective. But this subjectivity does not belong to the content of the concept which, by means of thought, is added to the percept. This content is taken, not from the subject, but from reality. It is that part of reality which is inaccessible to perception. It is experience, but not the kind of experience which comes from perception. Those who cannot understand that the concept is something real, have in mind only the abstract form, in which we fix and isolate the concept. But in this isolation, the concept is as much dependent solely on our organisation as is the percept. The tree which I perceive, taken in isolation by itself, has no existence; it exists only as a member in the immense mechanism of Nature, and is possible only in real connection with Nature. An abstract concept, taken by itself, has as little reality as a percept taken by itself. The percept is that part of reality which is given objectively, the concept that part which is given subjectively (by intuition; cp. pp. 90 ff.). Our mental organisation breaks up reality into these two factors. The one factor is apprehended by perception, the other by intuition. Only the union of the two, which consists of the percept fitted according to law into its place in the universe, is reality in its full character. If we take mere percepts by themselves, we have no reality but only a disconnected chaos. If we take the laws which determine percepts by themselves, we have nothing but abstract concepts. Reality is not to be found in the abstract concept. It is revealed to the contemplative act of thought which regards neither the concept by itself nor the percept by itself, but the union of both. Even the most orthodox Idealist will not deny that we live in the real world (that, as real beings, we are rooted in it); but he will deny that our knowledge, by means of its ideas, is able to grasp reality as we live it. As against this view, Monism shows that thought is neither subjective nor objective, but a principle which holds together both these sides of reality. The contemplative act of thought is a cognitive process which belongs itself to the sequence of real events. By thought we overcome, within the limits of experience itself, the one-sidedness of mere perception. We are not able by means of abstract conceptual hypotheses (purely conceptual speculation) to puzzle out the nature of the real, but in so far as we find for our percepts the right concepts we live in the real. Monism does not seek to supplement experience by something unknowable (transcending experience), but finds reality in concept and percept. It does not manufacture a metaphysical system out of pure concepts, because it looks upon concepts as only one side of reality, viz., the side which remains hidden from perception, but is meaningless except in union with percepts. But Monism gives man the conviction that he lives in the world of reality, and has no need to seek beyond the world for a higher reality. It refuses to look for Absolute Reality anywhere but in experience, because it recognises reality in the very content of experience. Monism is satisfied with this reality, because it knows that our thought points to no other. What Dualism seeks beyond the world of experience, that Monism finds in this world itself. Monism shows that our knowledge grasps reality in its true nature, not in a purely subjective image. It holds the conceptual content of the world to be identical for all human individuals (cp. pp. 84 ff.). According to Monistic principles, every human individual regards every other as akin to himself, because it is the same world-content which expresses itself in all. In the single conceptual world there are not as many concepts of "lion" as there are individuals who form the thought of "lion," but only one. And the concept which A adds to the percept of "lion" is identical with B's concept except so far as, in each case, it is apprehended by a different perceiving subject (cp. p. 85). Thought leads all perceiving subjects back to the ideal unity in all multiplicity, which is common to them all. There is but one ideal world, but it realises itself in human subjects as in a multiplicity of individuals. So long as man apprehends himself merely by self-observation, he looks upon himself as this particular being, but so soon as he becomes conscious of the ideal world which shines forth within him, and which embraces all particulars within itself, he perceives that the Absolute Reality lives within him. Dualism fixes upon the Divine Being as that which permeates all men and lives in them all. Monism finds this universal Divine Life in Reality itself. The ideal content of another subject is also my content, and I regard it as a different content only so long as I perceive, but no longer when I think. Every man embraces in his thought only a part of the total world of ideas, and so far, individuals are distinguished one from another also by the actual contents of their thought. But all these contents belong to a self-contained whole, which comprises within itself the thought-contents of all men. Hence every man, in so far as he thinks, lays hold of the universal Reality which pervades all men. To fill one's life with such thought-content is to live in Reality, and at the same time to live in God. The thought of a Beyond owes its origin to the misconception of those who believe that this world cannot have the ground of its existence in itself. They do not understand that, by thinking, they discover just what they demand for the explanation of the perceptual world. This is the reason why no speculation has ever produced any content which has not been borrowed from reality as it is given to us. A personal God is nothing but a human being transplanted into the Beyond. Schopenhauer's Will is the human will made absolute. Hartmann's Unconscious, made up of idea and will, is but a compound of two abstractions drawn from experience. Exactly the same is true of all other transcendent principles. The truth is that the human mind never transcends the reality in which it lives. Indeed, it has no need to transcend it, seeing that this world contains everything that is required for its own explanation. If philosophers declare themselves finally content when they have deduced the world from principles which they borrow from experience and then transplant into an hypothetical Beyond, the same satisfaction ought to be possible, if these same principles are allowed to remain in this world to which they belong anyhow. All attempts to transcend the world are purely illusory, and the principles transplanted into the Beyond do not explain the world any better than the principles which are immanent in it. When thought understands itself, it does not demand any such transcendence at all, for there is no thought-content which does not find within the world a perceptual content, in union with which it can form a real object. The objects of imagination, too, are contents which have no validity, until they have been transformed into ideas that refer to a perceptual content. Through this perceptual content they have their place in reality. A concept the content of which is supposed to lie beyond the world which is given to us, is an abstraction to which no reality corresponds. Thought can discover only the concepts of reality; in order to find reality itself, we need also perception. An Absolute Being for which we invent a content, is a hypothesis which no thought can entertain that understands itself. Monism does not deny ideal factors; indeed, it refuses to recognise as fully real a perceptual content which has no ideal counterpart, but it finds nothing within the whole range of thought that is not immanent within this world of ours. A science which restricts itself to a description of percepts, without advancing to their ideal complements, is, for Monism, but a fragment. But Monism regards as equally fragmentary all abstract concepts which do not find their complement in percepts, and which fit nowhere into the conceptual net that embraces the whole perceptual world. Hence it knows no ideas referring to objects lying beyond our experience and supposed to form the content of purely hypothetical Metaphysics. Whatever mankind has produced in the way of such ideas Monism regards as abstractions from experience, whose origin in experience has been overlooked by their authors. Just as little, according to Monistic principles, are the ends of our actions capable of being derived from the Beyond. So far as we can think them, they must have their origin in human intuition. Man does not adopt the purposes of an objective (transcendent) being as his own individual purposes, but he pursues the ends which his own moral imagination sets before him. The idea which realises itself in an action is selected by the agent from the single ideal world and made the basis of his will. Consequently his action is not a realisation of commands which have been thrust into this world from the Beyond, but of human intuitions which belong to this world. For Monism there is no ruler of the world standing outside of us and determining the aim and direction of our actions. There is for man no transcendent ground of existence, the counsels of which he might discover, in order thence to learn the ends to which he ought to direct his action. Man must rest wholly upon himself. He must himself give a content to his action. It is in vain that he seeks outside the world in which he lives for motives of his will. If he is to go at all beyond the satisfaction of the natural instincts for which Mother Nature has provided, he must look for motives in his own moral imagination, unless he finds it more convenient to let them be determined for him by the moral imagination of others. In other words, he must either cease acting altogether, or else act from motives which he selects for himself from the world of his ideas, or which others select for him from that same world. If he develops at all beyond a life absorbed in sensuous instincts and in the execution of the commands of others, then there is nothing that can determine him except himself. He has to act from a motive which he gives to himself and which nothing else can determine for him except himself. It is true that this motive is ideally determined in the single world of ideas; but in actual fact it must be selected by the agent from that world and translated into reality. Monism can find the ground for the actual realisation of an idea through human action only in the human being himself. That an idea should pass into action must be willed by man before it can happen. Such a will consequently has its ground only in man himself. Man, on this view, is the ultimate determinant of his action. He is free. 1. ADDITION TO THE REVISED EDITION (1918). In the second part of this book the attempt has been made to justify the conviction that freedom is to be found in human conduct as it really is. For this purpose it was necessary to sort out, from the whole sphere of human conduct, those actions with respect to which unprejudiced self-observation may appropriately speak of freedom. These are the actions which appear as realisations of ideal intuitions. No other actions will be called free by an unprejudiced observer. However, open-minded self-observation compels man to regard himself as endowed with the capacity for progress on the road towards ethical intuitions and their realisation. Yet this open-minded observation of the ethical nature of man is, by itself, insufficient to constitute the final court of appeal for the question of freedom. For, suppose intuitive thinking had itself sprung from some other essence; suppose its essence were not grounded in itself, then the consciousness of freedom, which issues from moral conduct, would prove to be a mere illusion. But the second part of this book finds its natural support in the first part, which presents intuitive thinking as an inward spiritual activity which man experiences as such. To appreciate through experience this essence of thinking is equivalent to recognising the freedom of intuitive thinking. And once we know that this thinking is free, we know also the sphere within which will may be called free. We shall regard man as a free agent, if on the basis of inner experience we may attribute to the life of intuitive thinking a self-sustaining essence. Whoever cannot do this will be unable to discover any wholly unassailable road to the belief in freedom. The experience to which we here refer reveals in consciousness intuitive thinking, the reality of which does not depend merely on our being conscious of it. Freedom, too, is thereby revealed as the characteristic of all actions which issue from the intuitions of consciousness. 2. ADDITION TO THE REVISED EDITION (1918). The argumentation of this book is built up on the fact of intuitive thinking, which may be experienced in a purely spiritual way, and which every perception inserts into reality so that reality comes thereby to be known. All that this book aimed at presenting was the result of a survey from the basis of our experience of intuitive thinking. However, the intention also was to emphasise the systematic interpretation which this thinking, as experienced by us, demands. It demands that we shall not deny its presence in cognition as a self-sustaining experience. It demands that we acknowledge its capacity for experiencing reality in co-operation with perception, and that we do not make it seek reality in a world outside experience and accessible only to inference, in the face of which human thinking would be only a subjective activity. This view characterises thinking as that factor in man through which he inserts himself spiritually into reality. (And, strictly, no one should confuse this kind of world-view, which is based on thinking as directly experienced, with mere Rationalism.) But, on the other hand, the whole tenor of the preceding argumentation shows that perception yields a determination of reality for human knowledge only when it is taken hold of in thinking. Outside of thinking there is nothing to characterise reality for what it is. Hence we have no right to imagine that sense-perception is the only witness to reality. Whatever comes to us by way of perception on our journey through life, we cannot but expect. The only point open to question would be whether, from the exclusive point of view of thinking as we intuitively experience it, we have a right to expect that over and above sensuous perception there is also spiritual perception. This expectation is justified. For, though intuitive thinking is, on the one hand, an active process taking place in the human mind, it is, on the other hand, also a spiritual perception mediated by no sense-organ. It is a perception in which the percipient is himself active, and a self-activity which is at the same time perceived. In intuitive thinking man enters a spiritual world also as a percipient. Whatever within this world presents itself to him as percept in the same way in which the spiritual world of his own thinking so presents itself, that is recognised by him as constituting a world of spiritual perception. This world of spiritual perception we may suppose to be standing in the same relation to thinking as does, on the sensuous side, the world of sense-perception. Man does not experience the world of spiritual perception as an alien something, because he is already familiar in his intuitive thinking with an experience of purely spiritual character. With such a world of spiritual perception a number of the writings are concerned which I have published since this present book appeared. The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity lays the philosophical foundation for these later writings. For it attempts to show that in the very experience of thinking, rightly understood, we experience Spirit. This is the reason why it appears to the author that no one will stop short of entering the world of spiritual perception who has been able to adopt, in all seriousness, the point of view of the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. True, logical deduction--by syllogisms--will not extract out of the contents of this book the contents of the author's later books. But a living understanding of what is meant in this book by "intuitive thinking" will naturally prepare the way for living entry into the world of spiritual perception. TRUTH AND SCIENCE [15] I PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS Theory of Knowledge aims at being a scientific investigation of the very fact which all other sciences take for granted without examination, viz., knowing or knowledge-getting itself. To say this is to attribute to it, from the very start, the character of being the fundamental philosophical discipline. For, it is only this discipline which can tell us what value and significance belong to the insight gained by the other sciences. In this respect it is the foundation for all scientific endeavour. But, it is clear that the Theory of Knowledge can fulfil its task only if it works without any presuppositions of its own, so far as that is possible in view of the nature of human knowledge. This is probably conceded on all sides. And yet, a more detailed examination of the better-known epistemological systems reveals that, at the very starting-point of the inquiry, there is made a whole series of assumptions which detract considerably from the plausibility of the rest of the argument. In particular, it is noticeable how frequently certain hidden assumptions are made in the very formulation of the fundamental problems of epistemology. But, if a science begins by misstating its problems, we must despair from the start of finding the right solution. The history of the sciences teaches us that countless errors, from which whole epochs have suffered, are to be traced wholly and solely to the fact that certain problems were wrongly formulated. For illustrations there is no need to go back to Aristotle or to the Ars Magna Lulliana. There are plenty of examples in more recent times. The numerous questions concerning the purposes of the rudimentary organs of certain organisms could be correctly formulated only after the discovery of the fundamental law of biogenesis had created the necessary conditions. As long as Biology was under the influence of teleological concepts, it was impossible to put these problems in a form permitting a satisfactory answer. What fantastic ideas, for example, were current concerning the purpose of the so-called pineal gland, so long as it was fashionable to frame biological questions in terms of "purpose." An answer was not achieved until the solution of the problem was sought by the method of Comparative Anatomy, and scientists asked whether this organ might not be merely a residual survival in man from a lower evolutionary level. Or, to mention yet another example, consider the modifications in certain physical problems after the discovery of the laws of the mechanical equivalents of heat and of the conservation of energy! In short, the success of scientific investigations depends essentially upon the investigator's ability to formulate his problems correctly. Even though the Theory of Knowledge, as the presupposition of all other sciences, occupies a position very different from theirs, we may yet expect that for it, too, successful progress in its investigations will become possible only when the fundamental questions have been put in the correct form. The following discussions aim, in the first place, at such a formulation of the problem of knowledge as will do justice to the character of the Theory of Knowledge as a discipline which is without any presuppositions whatever. Their secondary aim is to throw light on the relation of J. G. Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre to such a fundamental philosophical discipline. The reason why precisely Fichte's attempt to provide an absolutely certain basis for the sciences will be brought into closer relation with our own philosophical programme, will become clear of itself in the course of our investigation. II THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM OF KANT'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE It is usual to designate Kant as the founder of the Theory of Knowledge in the modern sense. Against this view it might plausibly be argued that the history of philosophy records prior to Kant numerous investigations which deserve to be regarded as something more than mere beginnings of such a science. Thus Volkelt, in his fundamental work on the Theory of Knowledge, [16] remarks that the critical treatment of this discipline took its origin already with Locke. But in the writings of even older philosophers, yes, even in the philosophy of Ancient Greece, discussions are to be found which at the present day are usually undertaken under the heading of Theory of Knowledge. However, Kant has revolutionised all problems under this head from their very depths up, and, following him, numerous thinkers have worked them through so thoroughly that all the older attempts at solutions may be found over again either in Kant himself or else in his successors. Hence, for the purposes of a purely systematic, as distinct from a historical, study of the Theory of Knowledge, there is not much danger of omitting any important phenomenon by taking account only of the period since Kant burst upon the world with his Critique of Pure Reason. All previous epistemological achievements are recapitulated during this period. The fundamental question of Kant's Theory of Knowledge is, How are synthetic judgments a priori possible? Let us consider this question for a moment in respect of its freedom from presuppositions. Kant asks the question precisely because he believes that we can attain unconditionally certain knowledge only if we are able to prove the validity of synthetic judgments a priori. He says: "Should this question be answered in a satisfactory way, we shall at the same time learn what part reason plays in the foundation and completion of those sciences which contain a theoretical a priori knowledge of objects;" [17] and, further, "Metaphysics stands and falls with the solution of this problem, on which, therefore, the very existence of Metaphysics absolutely depends." [18] Are there any presuppositions in this question, as formulated by Kant? Yes, there are. For the possibility of a system of absolutely certain knowledge is made dependent on its being built up exclusively out of judgments which are synthetic and acquired independently of all experience. "Synthetic" is Kant's term for judgments in which the concept of the predicate adds to the concept of the subject something which lies wholly outside the subject, "although it stands in some connection with the subject," [19] whereas in "analytic" judgments the predicate affirms only what is already (implicitly) contained in the subject. This is not the place for considering the acute objections which Johannes Rehmke [20] brings forward against this classification of judgments. For our present purpose, it is enough to understand that we can attain to genuine knowledge only through judgments which add to one concept another the content of which was not, for us at least, contained in that of the former. If we choose to call this class of judgments, with Kant, "synthetic," we may agree that knowledge in judgment form is obtainable only where the connection of predicate and subject is of this synthetic sort. But, the case is very different with the second half of Kant's question, which demands that these judgments are to be formed a priori, i.e., independently of all experience. For one thing, it is altogether possible [21] that such judgments do not occur at all. At the start of the Theory of Knowledge we must hold entirely open the question, whether we arrive at any judgments otherwise than by experience, or only by experience. Indeed, to unprejudiced reflection the alleged independence of experience seems from the first to be impossible. For, let the object of our knowledge be what it may--it must, surely, always present itself to us at some time in an immediate and unique way; in short, it must become for us an experience. Mathematical judgments, too, are known by us in no other way than by our experiencing them in particular concrete cases. Even if, with Otto Liebmann, [22] for example, we treat them as founded upon a certain organisation of our consciousness, this empirical character is none the less manifest. We shall then say that this or that proposition is necessarily valid, because the denial of its truth would imply the denial of our consciousness, but the content of a proposition can enter our knowledge only by its becoming an experience for us in exactly the same way in which a process in the outer world of nature does so. Let the content of such a proposition include factors which guarantee its absolute validity, or let its validity be based on other grounds--in either case, I can possess myself of it only in one way and in no other: it must be presented to me in experience. This is the first objection to Kant's view. The other objection lies in this, that we have no right, at the outset of our epistemological investigations, to affirm that no absolutely certain knowledge can have its source in experience. Without doubt, it is easily conceivable that experience itself might contain a criterion guaranteeing the certainty of all knowledge which has an empirical source. Thus, Kant's formulation of the problem implies two presuppositions. The first is that we need, over and above experience, another source of cognitions. The second is that all knowledge from experience has only conditional validity. Kant entirely fails to realise that these two propositions are open to doubt, that they stand in need of critical examination. He takes them over as unquestioned assumptions from the dogmatic philosophy of his predecessors and makes them the basis of his own critical inquiries. The dogmatic thinkers assume the validity of these two propositions and simply apply them in order to get from each the kind of knowledge which it guarantees. Kant assumed their validity and only asks, What are the conditions of their validity? But, what if they are not valid at all? In that case, the edifice of Kantian doctrine lacks all foundation whatever. The whole argumentation of the five sections which precede Kant's formulation of the problem, amounts to an attempt to prove that the propositions of Mathematics are synthetic. [23] But, precisely the two presuppositions which we have pointed out are retained as mere assumptions in his discussions. In the Introduction to the Second Edition of the Critique of Pure Reason we read, "experience can tell us that a thing is so and so, but not that it cannot be otherwise," and, "experience never bestows on its judgments true or strict universality, but only the assumed and relative universality of induction." [24] In Prologomena, [25] we find it said, "First, as regards the sources of metaphysics, the very concept of Metaphysics implies that they cannot be empirical. The principles of Metaphysics (where the term 'principles' includes, not merely its fundamental propositions, but also its fundamental concepts), can never be gained from experience, for the knowledge of the metaphysician has precisely to be, not physical, but 'metaphysical,' i.e., lying beyond the reach of experience." Lastly Kant says in the Critique of Pure Reason: "The first thing to notice is, that no truly mathematical judgments are empirical, but always a priori. They carry necessity on their very face, and therefore cannot be derived from experience. Should anyone demur to this, I am willing to limit my assertion to the propositions of Pure Mathematics, which, as everybody will admit, are not empirical judgments, but perfectly pure a priori knowledge." [26] We may open the Critique of Pure Reason wherever we please, we shall always find that in all its discussions these two dogmatic propositions are taken for granted. Cohen [27] and Stadler [28] attempt to prove that Kant has established the a priori character of the propositions of Mathematics and Pure Natural Science. But all that Kant tries to do in the Critique may be summed up as follows. The fact that Mathematics and Pure Natural Science are a priori sciences implies that the "form" of all experience has its ground in the subject. Hence, all that is given by experience is the "matter" of sensations. This matter is synthesised by the forms, inherent in the mind, into the system of empirical science. It is only as principles of order for the matter of sense that the formal principles of the a priori theories have function and significance. They make empirical science possible, but they cannot transcend it. These formal principles are nothing but the synthetic judgments a priori, which therefore extend, as conditions of all possible empirical knowledge, as far as that knowledge but no further. Thus, the Critique of Pure Reason, so far from proving the a priori character of Mathematics and Pure Natural Science, does but delimit the sphere of their applicability on the assumption that their principles must become known independently of experience. Indeed, Kant is so far from attempting a proof of the a priori character of these principles, that he simply excludes that part of Mathematics (see the quotation above) in which, even according to his view, that character might be called in question, and confines himself to the part in which he thinks he can infer the a priori character from the bare concepts involved. Johannes Volkelt, too, comes to the conclusion that "Kant starts from the explicit presupposition" that "there actually does exist knowledge which is universal and necessary." He goes on to remark, "This presupposition which Kant has never explicitly questioned, is so profoundly contradictory to the character of a truly critical Theory of Knowledge, that the question must be seriously put whether the Critique is to be accepted as critical Theory of Knowledge at all." Volkelt does, indeed, decide that there are good grounds for answering this question in the affirmative, but still, as he says, "this dogmatic assumption does disturb the critical attitude of Kant's epistemology in the most far-reaching way." [29] In short, Volkelt, too, finds that the Critique of Pure Reason is not a Theory of Knowledge free from all assumptions. In substantial agreement with our view are also the views of O. Liebmann, [30] Holder, [31] Windelband, [32] Ueberweg, [33] Eduard von Hartmann, [34] and Kuno Fischer, [35] all of whom acknowledge that Kant makes the a priori character of Pure Mathematics and Physics the basis of his whole argumentation. The propositions that we really have knowledge which is independent of all experience, and that experience can furnish knowledge of only relative universality, could be accepted by us as valid only if they were conclusions deduced from other propositions. It would be absolutely necessary for these propositions to be preceded by an inquiry into the essential nature of experience, as well as by another inquiry into the essential nature of knowing. The former might justify the first, the latter the second, of the above two propositions. It would be possible to reply to the objections which we have urged against the Critique of Pure Reason, as follows. It might be said that every Theory of Knowledge must first lead the reader to the place where the starting-point, free from all presuppositions, is to be found. For, the knowledge which we have at any given moment of our lives is far removed from this starting-point, so that we must first be artificially led back to it. Now, it is true that some such mutual understanding between author and reader concerning the starting-point of the science is necessary in all Theory of Knowledge. But such an understanding ought on no account to go beyond showing how far the alleged starting-point of knowing is truly such. It ought to consist of purely self-evident, analytic propositions. It ought not to lay down any positive, substantial affirmations which influence, as in Kant, the content of the subsequent argumentation. Moreover, it is the duty of the epistemologist to show that the starting-point which he alleges is really free from all presuppositions. But all this has nothing to do with the essential nature of that starting-point. It lies wholly outside the starting-point and makes no affirmations about it. At the beginning of mathematical instruction, too, the teacher must exert himself to convince the pupil of the axiomatic character of certain principles. But no one will maintain that the content of the axioms is in any way made dependent on these prior discussions of their axiomatic character. [36] In exactly the same way, the epistemologist, in his introductory remarks, ought to show the method by which we can reach a starting-point free from all presuppositions. But the real content of the starting-point ought to be independent of the reflections by which it is discovered. There is, most certainly, a wide difference between such an introduction to the Theory of Knowledge and Kant's way of beginning with affirmations of quite definite, dogmatic character. III THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE SINCE KANT Kant's mistaken formulation of the problem has had a greater or lesser influence on all subsequent students of the Theory of Knowledge. For Kant, the view that all objects which are given to us in experience are ideas in our minds is a consequence of his theory of the a priori. For nearly all his successors, it has become the first principle and starting-point of their epistemological systems. It is said that the first and most immediate truth is, simply and solely, the proposition that we know our own ideas. This has come to be a well-nigh universal conviction among philosophers. G. E. Schulze maintains in his Ænesidemus, as early as 1792, that all our cognitions are mere ideas and that we can never transcend our ideas. Schopenhauer puts forward, with all the philosophical pathos which distinguishes him, the view that the permanent achievement of Kant's philosophy is the thesis that "the world is my idea." To Eduard von Hartmann this thesis is so incontestable, that he addresses his treatise, Kritische Grundlegung des Transcendentalen Realismus, exclusively to readers who have achieved critical emancipation from the naïve identification of the world of perception with the thing-in-itself. He demands of them that they shall have made clear to themselves the absolute heterogeneity of the object of perception which through the act of representation has been given as a subjective and ideal content of consciousness, and of the thing-in-itself which is independent of the act of representation and of the form of consciousness and which exists in its own right. His readers are required to be thoroughly convinced that the whole of what is immediately given to us consists of ideas. [37] In his latest work on Theory of Knowledge, Hartmann does, indeed, attempt to give reasons for this view. What value should be attached to these reasons by an unprejudiced Theory of Knowledge will appear in the further course of our discussions. Otto Liebmann posits as the sacrosanct first principle of the Theory of Knowledge the proposition, "Consciousness cannot transcend itself." [38] Volkelt has called the proposition that the first and most immediate truth is the limitation of all our knowledge, in the first instance, to our own ideas exclusively, the positivistic principle of knowledge. He regards only those theories of knowledge as "in the fullest sense critical" which "place this principle, as the only fixed starting-point of philosophy, at the head of their discussions and then consistently think out its consequences." [39] Other philosophers place other propositions at the head of the Theory of Knowledge, e.g., the proposition that its real problem concerns the relation between Thought and Being, and the possibility of a mediation between them; [40] or that it concerns the way in which Being becomes an object of Consciousness; [41] and many others. Kirchmann starts from two epistemological axioms, "Whatever is perceived is," and, "Whatever is self-contradictory, is not." [42] According to E. L. Fischer, knowledge is the science of something actual, something real, [43] and he criticises this dogma as little as does Goering who asserts similarly, "To know means always to know something which is. This is a fact which cannot be denied either by scepticism or by Kant's critical philosophy." [44] These two latter thinkers simply lay down the law: This is what knowledge is. They do not trouble to ask themselves with what right they do it. But, even if these various propositions were correct, or led to correct formulations of the problem, it would still be impossible to discuss them at the outset of the Theory of Knowledge. For, they all belong, as positive and definite cognitions, within the realm of knowledge. To say that my knowledge extends, in the first instance, only to my ideas, is to express in a perfectly definite judgment something which I know. In this judgment I qualify the world which is given to me by the predicate "existing in the form of idea." But how am I to know, prior to all knowledge, that the objects given to me are ideas? The best way to convince ourselves of the truth of the assertion that this proposition has no right to be put at the head of the Theory of Knowledge, is to retrace the way which the human mind must follow in order to reach this proposition, which has become almost an integral part of the whole modern scientific consciousness. The considerations which have led to it are systematically summarised, with approximate exhaustiveness, in Part I of Eduard von Hartmann's treatise, Das Grundproblem der Erkenntnistheorie. His statement, there, may serve as a sort of guiding-thread for us in our task of reviewing the reasons which may lead to the acceptance of this proposition. These reasons are physical, psycho-physical, physiological, and properly philosophical. The Physicist is led by observation of the phenomena which occur in our environment when, e.g., we experience a sensation of sound, to the view that there is nothing in these phenomena which in the very least resembles what we perceive immediately as sound. Outside, in the space which surrounds us, nothing is to be found except longitudinal oscillations of bodies and of the air. Thence it is inferred that what in ordinary life we call "sound" or "tone" is nothing but the subjective reaction of our organism to these wave-like oscillations. Similarly, it is inferred that light and colour and heat are purely subjective. The phenomena of colour-dispersion, of refraction, of interference, of polarisation, teach us that to the just-mentioned sensations there correspond in the outer space certain transverse oscillations which we feel compelled to ascribe, in part to the bodies, in part to an immeasurably fine, elastic fluid, the "ether." Further, the Physicist is driven by certain phenomena in the world of bodies to abandon the belief in the continuity of objects in space, and to analyse them into systems of exceedingly minute particles (molecules, atoms), the size of which, relatively to the distances between them, is immeasurably small. Thence it is inferred that all action of bodies on each other is across the empty intervening space, and is thus a genuine actio in distans. The Physicist believes himself justified in holding that the action of bodies on our senses of touch and temperature does not take place through direct contact, because there must always remain a definite, if small, distance between the body and the spot on the skin which it is said to "touch." Thence it is said to follow that what we sense as hardness or heat in bodies is nothing but the reactions of the end-organs of our touch- and temperature-nerves to the molecular forces of bodies which act upon them across empty space. These considerations from the sphere of Physics are supplemented by the Psycho-physicists with their doctrine of specific sense-energies. J. Müller has shown that every sense can be affected only in its own characteristic way as determined by its organisation, and that its reaction is always of the same kind whatever may be the external stimulus. If the optical nerve is stimulated, light-sensations are experienced by us regardless of whether the stimulus was pressure, or an electric current, or light. On the other hand, the same external phenomena produce quite different sensations according as they are perceived by different senses. From these facts the inference has been drawn that there occurs only one sort of phenomenon in the external world, viz., motions, and that the variety of qualities of the world we perceive is essentially a reaction of our senses to these motions. According to this view, we do not perceive the external world as such, but only the subjective sensations which it evokes in us. Physiology adds its quota to the physical arguments. Physics deals with the phenomena which occur outside our organisms and which correspond to our percepts. Physiology seeks to investigate the processes which go on in man's own body when a certain sensation is evoked in him. It teaches us that the epidermis is wholly insensitive to the stimuli in the external world. Thus, e.g., if external stimuli are to affect the end-organs of our touch-nerves on the surface of our bodies, the oscillations which occur outside our bodies have to be transmitted through the epidermis. In the case of the senses of hearing and of sight, the external motions have, in addition, to be modified by a number of structures in the sense-organs, before they reach the nerves. The nerves have to conduct the effects produced in the end-organs up to the central organ, and only then can take place the process by means of which purely mechanical changes in the brain produce sensations. It is clear that the stimulus which acts upon the sense-organs is so completely changed by the transformations which it undergoes, that every trace of resemblance between the initial impression on the sense-organs and the final sensation in consciousness must be obliterated. Hartmann sums up the outcome of these considerations in these words: "This content of consciousness consists, originally, of sensations which are the reflex responses of the soul to the molecular motions in the highest cortical centres, but which have not the faintest resemblance to the molecular motions by which they are elicited." If we think this line of argument through to the end, we must agree that, assuming it to be correct, there survives in the content of our consciousness not the least element of what may be called "external existence." To the physical and physiological objections against so-called "Naïve Realism" Hartmann adds some further objections which he describes as philosophical in the strict sense. A logical examination of the physical and physiological objections reveals that, after all, the desired conclusion can be reached only if we start from the existence and nexus of external objects, just as these are assumed by the ordinary naïve consciousness, and then inquire how this external world can enter the consciousness of beings with organisms such as ours. We have seen that every trace of such an external world is lost on the way from the impression on the sense-organ to the appearance of the sensation in our consciousness, and that in the latter nothing survives except our ideas. Hence, we have to assume that the picture of the external world which we actually have, has been built up by the soul on the basis of the sensations given to it. First, the soul constructs out of the data of the senses of touch and sight a picture of the world in space, and then the sensations of the other senses are fitted into this space-system. When we are compelled to think of a certain complex of sensations as belonging together, we are led to the concept of substance and regard substance as the bearer of sense-qualities. When we observe that some sense-qualities disappear from a substance and that others appear in their place, we ascribe this event in the world of phenomena to a change regulated by the law of causality. Thus, according to this view, our whole world-picture is composed of subjective sensations which are ordered by the activity of our own souls. Hartmann says, "What the subject perceives is always only modifications of its own psychic states and nothing else." [45] Now let us ask ourselves, How do we come by such a view? The bare skeleton of the line of thought which leads to it is as follows. Supposing an external world exists, we do not perceive it as such but transform it through our organisation into a world of ideas. This is a supposition which, when consistently thought out, destroys itself. But is this reflection capable of supporting any positive alternative? Are we justified in regarding the world, which is given to us, as the subjective content of ideas because the assumptions of the naïve consciousness, logically followed out, lead to this conclusion? Our purpose is, rather, to exhibit these assumptions themselves as untenable. Yet, so far we should have found only that it is possible for a premise to be false and yet for the conclusion drawn from it to be true. Granted that this may happen, yet we can never regard the conclusion as proved by means of that premise. It is usual to apply the title of "Naïve Realism" to the theory which accepts as self-evident and indubitable the reality of the world-picture which is immediately given to us. The opposite theory, which regards this world as merely the content of our consciousness, is called "Transcendental Idealism." Hence, we may sum up the outcome of the above discussion by saying, "Transcendental Idealism demonstrates its own truth, by employing the premises of the Naïve Realism which it seeks to refute." Transcendental Idealism is true, if Naïve Realism is false. But the falsity of the latter is shown only by assuming it to be true. Once we clearly realise this situation, we have no choice but to abandon this line of argument and to try another. But are we to trust to good luck, and experiment about until we hit by accident upon the right line? This is Eduard von Hartmann's view when he believes himself to have shown the validity of his own epistemological standpoint, on the ground that his theory explains the phenomena whereas its rivals do not. According to his view, the several philosophical systems are engaged in a sort of struggle for existence in which the fittest is ultimately accepted as victor. But this method appears to us to be unsuitable, if only for the reason that there may well be several hypotheses which explain the phenomena equally satisfactorily. Hence, we had better keep to the above line of thought for the refutation of Naïve Realism, and see where precisely its deficiency lies. For, after all, Naïve Realism is the view from which we all start out. For this reason alone it is advisable to begin by setting it right. When we have once understood why it must be defective, we shall be led upon the right path with far greater certainty than if we proceed simply at haphazard. The subjectivism which we have sketched above is the result of the elaboration of certain facts by thought. Thus, it takes for granted that, from given facts as starting-point, we can by consistent thinking, i.e., by logical combination of certain observations, gain correct conclusions. But our right thus to employ our thinking remains unexamined. There, precisely, lies the weakness of this method. Whereas Naïve Realism starts from the unexamined assumption that the contents of our perceptual experience have objective reality, the Idealism just described starts from the no less unexamined conviction that by the use of thought we can reach conclusions which are scientifically valid. In contrast to Naïve Realism, we may call this point of view "Naïve Rationalism." In order to justify this term, it may be well to insert here a brief comment on the concept of the "Naïve." A. Döring, in his essay Über den Begriff des Naiven Realismus, [46] attempts a more precise determination of this concept. He says, "The concept of the Naïve marks as it were the zero-point on the scale of our reflection upon our own activity. In content the Naïve may well coincide with the True, for, although the Naïve is unreflecting and, therefore, uncritical or a-critical, yet this lack of reflection and criticism excludes only the objective assurance of truth. It implies the possibility and the danger of error, but it does not imply the necessity of error. There are naïve modes of feeling and willing as there are naïve modes of apprehending and thinking, in the widest sense of the latter term. Further, there are naïve modes of expressing these inward states in contrast with their repression or modification through consideration for others and through reflection. Naïve activity is not influenced, at least not consciously, by tradition, education, or imposed rule. It is in all spheres (as its root nativus, brings out), unconscious, impulsive, instinctive, dæmonic activity." Starting from this account, we will try to determine the concept of the Naïve still more precisely. In every activity we may consider two aspects--the activity itself and our consciousness of its conformity to a law. We may be wholly absorbed in the former, without caring at all for the latter. The artist is in this position, who does not know in reflective form the laws of his creative activity but yet practises these laws by feeling and sense. We call him "naïve." But there is a kind of self-observation which inquires into the laws of one's own activity and which replaces the naïve attitude, just described, by the consciousness of knowing exactly the scope and justification of all one does. This we will call "critical." This account seems to us best to hit off the meaning of this concept which, more or less clearly understood, has since Kant acquired citizen-rights in the world of philosophy. Critical reflection is, thus, the opposite of naïve consciousness. We call an attitude "critical" which makes itself master of the laws of its own activity in order to know how far it can rely on them and what are their limits. Theory of Knowledge can be nothing if not a critical science. Its object is precisely the most subjective activity of man--knowing. What it aims at exhibiting is the laws to which knowing conforms. Hence, the naïve attitude is wholly excluded from this science. Its claim to strength lies precisely in that it achieves what many minds, interested in practice rather than in theory, pride themselves on never having attempted, viz., "thinking about thought." IV THE STARTING-POINTS OF THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE At the beginning of an epistemological inquiry we must, in accordance with the conclusions we have reached, put aside everything which we have come to know. For, knowledge is something which man has produced, something which he has originated by his activity. If the Theory of Knowledge is really to extend the light of its explanation over the whole field of what we know, it must set out from a point which has remained wholly untouched by cognitive activity--indeed which rather furnishes the first impulse for this activity. The point at which we must start lies outside of what we know. It cannot as yet itself be an item of knowledge. But we must look for it immediately prior to the act of cognition, so that the very next step which man takes shall be a cognitive act. The method for determining this absolutely first starting-point must be such that nothing enters into it which is already the result of cognitive activity. There is nothing but the immediately-given world-picture with which we can make a start of this sort. This means the picture of the world which is presented to man before he has in any way transformed it by cognitive activity, i.e., before he has made the very least judgment about it or submitted it to the very smallest determination by thinking. What thus passes initially through our minds and what our minds pass through--this incoherent picture which is not yet differentiated into particular elements, in which nothing seems distinguished from, nothing related to, nothing determined by, anything else, this is the Immediately-Given. On this level of existence--if the phrase is permissible--no object, no event, is as yet more important or more significant than any other. The rudimentary organ of an animal, which, in the light of the knowledge belonging to a higher level of existence, is perhaps seen to be without any importance whatever for the development and life of the animal, comes before us with the same claim to our attention as the noblest and most necessary part of the organism. Prior to all cognitive activity nothing in our picture of the world appears as substance, nothing as quality, nothing as cause or as effect. The contrasts of matter and spirit, of body and soul, have not yet arisen. Every other predicate, too, must be kept away from the world-picture presented at this level. We may think of it neither as reality nor as appearance, neither as subjective nor as objective, neither as necessary nor as contingent. We cannot decide at this stage whether it is "thing-in-itself" or mere "idea." For, we have seen already that the conclusions of Physics and Physiology, which lead us to subsume the Given under one or other of the above heads, must not be made the basis on which to build the Theory of Knowledge. Suppose a being with fully-developed human intelligence were to be suddenly created out of Nothing and confronted with the world, the first impression made by the world on his senses and his thought would be pretty much what we have here called the immediately-given world-picture. Of course, no actual man at any moment of his life has nothing but this original world-picture before him. In his mental development there is nowhere a sharp line between pure, passive reception of the Given from without and the cognitive apprehension of it by Thought. This fact might suggest critical doubts concerning our method of determining the starting-point of the Theory of Knowledge. Thus, e.g., Eduard von Hartmann remarks: "We do not ask what is the content of consciousness of a child just awakening to conscious life, nor of an animal on the lowest rung of the ladder of organisms. For, of these things philosophising man has no experience, and, if he tries to reconstruct the content of consciousness of beings on primitive biogenetic or ontogenetic levels, he cannot but base his conclusions on his own personal experience. Hence, our first task is to determine what is the content of consciousness which philosophising man discovers in himself when he begins his philosophical reflection." [47] But, the objection to this view is that the picture of the world with which we begin philosophical reflection, is already qualified by predicates which are the results solely of knowledge. We have no right to accept these predicates without question. On the contrary, we must carefully extract them from out of the world-picture, in order that it may appear in its purity without any admixture due to the process of cognition. In general, the dividing line between what is given and what is added by cognition cannot be identified with any single moment of human development, but must be drawn artificially. But this can be done at every level of development, provided only we divide correctly what is presented to us prior to cognition, without any determination by thinking, from what is made of it by cognition. Now, it may be objected that we have already piled up a whole host of thought-determinations in the very process of extracting the alleged primitive world-picture out of the complete picture into which man's cognitive elaboration has transformed it. But, in defence we must urge that all our conceptual apparatus was employed, not for the characterisation of the primitive world-picture, nor for the determination of its qualities, but solely for the guidance of our analysis, in order to lead it to the point where knowledge recognises that it began. Hence, there can be no question of the truth or error, correctness or incorrectness, of the reflections which, according to our view, precede the moment which brings us to the starting-point of the Theory of Knowledge. Their purpose is solely to guide us conveniently to that point. Nobody who is about to occupy himself with epistemological problems, stands at the same time at what we have rightly called the starting-point of knowledge, for his knowledge is already, up to a certain degree, developed. Nothing but analysis with the help of concepts enables us to eliminate from our developed knowledge all the gains of cognitive activity and to determine the starting-point which precedes all such activity. But the concepts thus employed have no cognitive value. They have the purely negative task to eliminate out of our field of vision whatever is the result of cognitive activity and to lead us to the point where this activity first begins. The present discussions point the way to those primitive beginnings upon which the cognitive activity sets to work, but they form no part of such activity. Thus, whatever Theory of Knowledge has to say in the process of determining the starting-point, must be judged, not as true or false, but only as fit or unfit for this purpose. Error is excluded, too, from that starting-point itself. For, error can begin only with the activity of cognition; prior to this, it cannot occur. This last proposition is compatible only with the kind of Theory of Knowledge which sets out from our line of thought. For, a theory which sets out from some object (or subject) with a definite conceptual determination is liable to error from the very start, viz., in this very determination. Whether this determination is justified or not, depends on the laws which the cognitive act establishes. This is a question to which only the course of the epistemological inquiry itself can supply the answer. All error is excluded only when I can say that I have eliminated all conceptual determinations which are the results of my cognitive activity, and that I retain nothing but what enters the circle of my experience without any activity on my part. Where, on principle, I abstain from every positive affirmation, there I cannot fall into error. From the epistemological point of view, error can occur only within the sphere of cognitive activity. An illusion of the senses is no error. The fact that the rising moon appears to us bigger than the moon overhead is not an error, but a phenomenon fully explained by the laws of nature. An error would result only, if thought, in ordering the data of perception, were to put a false interpretation on the "bigger" or "smaller" size of the moon. But such an interpretation would lie within the sphere of cognitive activity. If knowledge is really to be understood in its essential nature, we must, without doubt, begin our study of it at the point where it originates, where it starts. Moreover, it is clear that whatever precedes its starting-point has no legitimate place in any explanatory Theory of Knowledge, but must simply be taken for granted. It is the task of science, in its several branches, to study the essential nature of all that we are here taking for granted. Our aim, here, is not to acquire specific knowledge of this or that, but to investigate knowledge as such. We must first understand the act of cognition, before we can judge what significance to attach to the affirmations about the content of the world which come to be made in the process of getting to know that content. For this reason, we abstain from every attempt to determine what is immediately-given, so long as we are ignorant of the relation of our determinations to what is determined by them. Not even the concept of the "immediately-given" affirms any positive determination of what precedes cognition. Its only purpose is to point towards the Given, to direct our attention upon it. Here, at the starting-point of the Theory of Knowledge, the term merely expresses, in conceptual form, the initial relation of the cognitive activity to the world-content. The choice of this term allows even for the case that the whole world-content should turn out to be nothing but a figment of our own "Ego," i.e., that the most extreme subjectivism should be right. For, of course, subjectivism does not express a fact which is given. It can, at best, be only the result of theoretical considerations. Its truth, in other words, needs to be established by the Theory of Knowledge. It cannot serve as the presupposition of that theory. This immediately-given world-content includes everything which can appear within the horizon of our experience, in the widest sense of this term, viz., sensations, percepts, intuitions, feelings, volitions, dreams, fancies, representations, concepts, ideas. Illusions, too, and hallucinations stand at this level exactly on a par with other elements of the world-content. Only theoretical considerations can teach us in what relations illusions, etc., stand to other percepts. A Theory of Knowledge which starts from the assumption that all the experiences just enumerated are contents of our consciousness, finds itself confronted at once by the question: How do we transcend our consciousness so as to apprehend reality? Where is the jumping-board which will launch us from the subjective into the trans-subjective? For us, the situation is quite different. For us, consciousness and the idea of the "Ego" are, primarily, only items in the Immediately-Given, and the relation of the latter to the two former has first to be discovered by knowledge. We do not start from consciousness in order to determine the nature of knowledge, but, vice versa, we start from knowledge in order to determine consciousness and the relation of subject to object. Seeing that, at the outset, we attach no predicates whatever to the Given, we are bound to ask: How is it that we are able to determine it at all? How is it possible to start knowledge anywhere at all? How do we come to designate one item of the world-content, as, e.g., percept, another as concept, a third as reality, others as appearance, as cause, as effect? How do we come to differentiate ourselves from what is "objective," and to contrast "Ego" and "Non-Ego?" We must discover the bridge which leads from the picture of the world as given to the picture of it which our cognitive activity unfolds. But the following difficulty confronts us. So long as we do nothing but passively gaze at the Given, we can nowhere find a point which knowledge can take hold of and from which it can develop its interpretations. Somewhere in the Given we must discover the spot where we can get to work, where something homogeneous to cognition meets us. If everything were merely given, we should never get beyond the bare gazing outwards into the external world and a no less bare gazing inwards into the privacy of our inner world. We should, at most, be able to describe, but never to understand, the objects outside of us. Our concepts would stand in a purely external, not in an internal, relation to that to which they apply. If there is to be knowledge, everything depends on there being, somewhere within the Given, a field in which our cognitive activity does not merely presuppose the Given, but is at work in the very heart of the Given itself. In other words, the very strictness with which we hold fast the Given, as merely given, must reveal that not everything is given. Our demand for the Given turns out to have been one which, in being strictly maintained, partially cancels itself. We have insisted on the demand, lest we should arbitrarily fix upon some point as the starting-point of the Theory of Knowledge, instead of making a genuine effort to discover it. In our sense of the word "given," everything may be given, even what in its own innermost nature is not given. That is to say, the latter presents itself, in that case, to us purely formally as given, but reveals itself, on closer inspection, for what it really is. The whole difficulty in understanding knowledge lies in that we do not create the world-content out of ourselves. If we did so create it, there would be no knowledge at all. Only objects which are given can occasion questions for me. Objects which I create receive their determinations by my act. Hence, I do not need to ask whether these determinations are true or false. This, then, is the second point in our Theory of Knowledge. It consists in the postulate that there must, within the sphere of the Given, be a point at which our activity does not float in a vacuum, at which the world-content itself enters into our activity. We have already determined the starting-point of the Theory of Knowledge by assigning it a place wholly antecedent to all cognitive activity, lest we should distort that activity by some prejudice borrowed from among its own results. Now we determine the first step in the development of our knowledge in such a way that, once more, there can be no question of error or incorrectness. For, we affirm no judgment about anything whatsoever, but merely state the condition which must be fulfilled if knowledge is to be acquired at all. It is all-important that we should, with the most complete critical self-consciousness, keep before our minds the fact that we are postulating the very character which that part of the world-content must possess on which our cognitive activity can begin to operate. Nothing else is, in fact, possible. As given, the world-content is wholly without determinations. No part of it can by itself furnish the impulse for order to begin to be introduced into the chaos. Hence, cognitive activity must issue its edict and declare what the character of that part is to be. Such an edict in no way infringes the character of the Given as such. It introduces no arbitrary affirmation into science. For, in truth, it affirms nothing. It merely declares that, if the possibility of knowledge is to be explicable at all, we need to look for a field like the one above described. If there is such a field, knowledge can be explained; if not, not. We began our Theory of Knowledge with the "Given" as a whole; now we limit our requirement to the singling out of a particular field within the Given. Let us come to closer grips with this requirement. Where within the world-picture do we find something which is not merely given, but is given only in so far as it is at the same time created by the cognitive activity? We need to be absolutely clear that this creative activity must, in its turn, be given to us in all its immediacy. No inferences must be required in order to know that it occurs. Thence it follows, at once, that sense-data do not meet our requirement. For, the fact that they do not occur without our activity is known to us, not immediately, but as an inference from physical and physiological arguments. On the other hand, we do know immediately that it is only in and through the cognitive act that concepts and ideas enter into the sphere of the Immediately-Given. Hence, no one is deceived concerning the character of concepts and ideas. It is possible to mistake a hallucination for an object given from without, but no one is ever likely to believe that his concepts are given without the activity of his own thinking. A lunatic will regard as real, though they are in fact unreal, only things and relations which have attached to them the predicate of "actuality," but he will never say of his concepts and ideas that they have come into the world without his activity. Everything else in our world-picture is such that it must be given, if it is to be experienced by us. Only of our concepts and ideas is the opposite true: they must be produced by us, if they are to be experienced. They, and only they, are given in a way which might be called intellectual intuition. Kant and the modern philosophers who follow him deny altogether that man possesses this kind of intuition, on the ground that all our thinking refers solely to objects and is absolutely impotent to produce anything out of itself, whereas in intellectual intuition form and matter must be given together. But, is not precisely this actually the case with pure concepts and ideas? [48] To see this, we must consider them purely in the form in which, as yet, they are quite free from all empirical content. In order, e.g., to comprehend the pure concept of causality, we must go, not to a particular instance of causality nor to the sum of all instances, but to the pure concept itself. Particular causes and effects must be discovered by investigation in the world, but causality as a Form of Thought must be created by ourselves before we can discover causes in the world. If we hold fast to Kant's thesis that concepts without percepts are empty, it becomes unintelligible how the determination of the Given by concepts is to be possible. For, suppose there are given two items of the world-content, a and b. In order to find a relation between them, I must be guided in my search by a rule of determinate content. Such a rule I can only create in the act of cognition itself. I cannot derive it from the object, because it is only with the help of the rule that the object is to receive its determinations. Such a rule, therefore, for the determination of the real has its being wholly in purely conceptual form. Before passing on, we must meet a possible objection. It might seem as if in our argument we had unconsciously assigned a prominent part to the idea of the "Ego," or the "personal subject," and as if we employed this idea in the development of our line of thought, without having established our right to do so. For example, we have said that "we produce concepts," or that "we make this or that demand." But these are mere forms of speech which play no part in our argument. That the cognitive act is the act of, and originates in, an "Ego," can, as we have already pointed out, be affirmed only as an inference in the process of knowledge itself. Strictly, we ought at the outset to speak only of cognitive activity without so much as mentioning a cognitive agent. For, all that has been established so far amounts to no more than this, (1) that something is "given," and (2) that at a certain point within the "given" there originates the postulate set forth above; also, that concepts and ideas are the entities which answer to that postulate. This is not to deny that the point at which the postulate originates is the "Ego." But, in the first instance, we are content to establish these two steps in the Theory of Knowledge in their abstract purity. V KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY Concepts and ideas, then, though themselves part of the Given, yet at the same time take us beyond the Given. Thus, they make it possible to determine also the nature of the other modes of cognitive activity. By means of a postulate, we have selected a special part out of the given world-picture, because it is the very essence of knowledge to proceed from a part with just this character. Thus, we have made the selection solely in order to be able to understand knowledge. But, we must clearly confess to ourselves that by this selection we have artificially torn in two the unity of the given world-picture. We must bear in mind that the part which we have divorced from the Given still continues, quite apart from our postulate and independently of it, to stand in a necessary connection with the world as given. This fact determines the next step forward in the Theory of Knowledge. It will consist in restoring the unity which we have destroyed in order to show how knowledge is possible. This restoration will consist in thinking about the world as given. The act of thinking about the world actually effects the synthesis of the two parts of the given world-content--of the Given which we survey up to the horizon of our experience, and of the part which, in order to be also given, must be produced by us in the activity of cognition. The cognitive act is the synthesis of these two factors. In every single cognitive act the one factor appears as something produced in the act itself and as added to the other factor which is the pure datum. It is only at the very start of the Theory of Knowledge that the factor which otherwise appears as always produced, appears also as given. To think about the world is to transmute the given world by means of concepts and ideas. Thinking, thus, is in very truth the act which brings about knowledge. Knowledge can arise only if thinking, out of itself, introduces order into the content of the world as given. Thinking is itself an activity which produces a content of its own in the moment of cognition. Hence, the content cognised, in so far as it has its origin solely in thinking, offers no difficulty to cognition. We need only observe it, for in its essential nature it is immediately given to us. The description of thinking is also the science of thinking. In fact, Logic was never anything but a description of the forms of thinking, never a demonstrative science. For, demonstration occurs only when there is a synthesis of the products of thinking with a content otherwise given. Hence, Gideon Spicker is quite right when he says in his book, Lessing's Weltanschauung (p. 5): "We have no means of knowing, either empirically or logically, whether the results of thinking, as such, are true." We may add that, since demonstration already presupposes thinking, thinking itself cannot be demonstrated. We can demonstrate a particular fact, but we cannot demonstrate the process of demonstrating itself. We can only describe what a demonstration is. All logical theory is wholly empirical. Logic is a science which consists only of observation. But if we want to get to know anything over and above our thinking, we can do so only with the help of thinking. That is to say, our thinking must apply itself to something given and transform its chaotic into a systematic connection with the world-picture. Thinking, then, in its application to the world as given, is a formative principle. The process is as follows. First, thinking selects certain details out of the totality of the Given. For, in the Given, there are strictly no individual details, but only an undifferentiated continuum. Next, thinking relates the selected details to each other according to the forms which it has itself produced. And, lastly, it determines what follows from this relation. The act of relating two distinct items of the world-content to each other does not imply that thinking arbitrarily determines something about them. Thinking waits and sees what is the spontaneous consequence of the relation established. With this consequence we have at last some degree of knowledge of the two selected items of the world-content. Suppose the world-content reveals nothing of its nature in response to the establishment of such a relation, then the effort of thinking must miscarry, and a fresh effort must take its place. All cognitions consist in this, that two or more items of the Given are brought into relation with each other by us and that we apprehend what follows from this relation. Without doubt, many of our efforts of thinking miscarry, not only in the sciences, as is amply proved by their history, but also in ordinary life. But in the simple cases of mistake which are, after all, the commonest, the correct thought so rapidly replaces the incorrect, that the latter is never, or rarely, noticed. Kant, in his theory of the "synthetic unity of apperception," had an inkling of this activity of thought in the systematic organisation of the world-content, as we have here developed it. But his failure to appreciate clearly the real function of thinking is revealed by the fact, that he believes himself able to deduce the a priori laws of Pure Natural Science from the rules according to which this synthetic activity proceeds. Kant has overlooked that the synthetic activity of thinking is merely the preparation for the discovery of natural laws properly so-called. Suppose we select two items, a and b, from the Given. For knowledge to arise of a nexus according to law between a and b, the first requirement is that thinking should so relate a and b, that the relation may appear to us as given. Thus, the content proper of the law of nature is derived from what is given, and the sole function of thinking is to establish such relations between the items of the world-picture that the laws to which they are subject become manifest. The pure synthetic activity of thinking is not the source of any objective laws whatever. We must inquire what part thinking plays in the formation of our scientific world-picture as distinct from the merely given one. It follows from our account that thinking supplies the formal principle of the conformity of phenomena to law. Suppose, in our example above, that a is the cause, b the effect. Unless thinking were able to produce the concept of causality, we should never be able to know that a and b were causally connected. But, in order that we may know, in the given case, that a is the cause and b the effect, it is necessary for a and b to possess the characteristics which we mean when we speak of cause and effect. A similar analysis applies to the other categories of thought. It will be appropriate to notice here in a few words Hume's discussion of causality. According to Hume, the concepts of cause and effect have their origin solely in custom. We observe repeatedly that one event follows another and become accustomed to think of them as causally connected, so that we expect the second to occur as soon as we have observed the first. This theory, however, springs from a totally mistaken view of the causal relation. Suppose for several days running I observe the same person whenever I step out of the door of my house, I shall gradually form the habit of expecting the temporal sequence of the two events. But, it will never occur to me to think that there is any causal connection between my own appearance and that of the other person at the same spot. I shall call in aid essentially other items of the world-content in order to explain the coincidence of these events. In short, we determine the causal nexus of two events, not according to their temporal sequence, but according to the essential character of the items of the world-content which we call, respectively, cause and effect. From this purely formal activity of our thinking in the construction of the scientific picture of the world, it follows that the content of every cognition cannot be fixed a priori in advance of observation (in which thinking comes to grips with the Given), but must be derived completely and exhaustively from observation. In this sense, all our cognitions are empirical. Nor is it possible to see how it could be otherwise. For, Kant's judgments a priori are at bottom, not cognitions, but postulates. On Kant's principles, all we can ever say is only this, that if a thing is to become the object of possible experience, it must conform to these laws. They are, therefore, rules which the subject prescribes to all objects. But, we should rather expect cognitions of the Given to have their source, not in the constitution of the subject, but in that of the object. Thinking makes no a priori affirmations about the Given. But it creates the forms, on the basis of which the conformity of phenomena to law becomes manifest a posteriori. From our point of view, it is impossible to determine anything a priori about the degree of certainty belonging to a judgment which embodies knowledge thus gained. For, certainty, too, derives from nothing other than the Given. Perhaps it will be objected that observation never establishes anything except that a certain nexus of phenomena actually occurs, but not that it must occur, and will always occur, in like conditions. But, this suggestion, too, is in error. For any nexus which I apprehend between elements in the world-picture is, on our principles, nothing but what is grounded in these elements themselves. It is not imported into these elements by thinking, but belongs to them essentially, and must, therefore, necessarily exist whenever they themselves exist. Only a view which regards all scientific research as nothing but the endeavour to correlate the facts of experience by means of principles which are subjective and external to the facts, can hold that the nexus of a and b may to-day obey one law and to-morrow another (J. S. Mill). On the other hand, if we see clearly that the laws of nature have their source in the Given, and that, therefore, the nexus of phenomena essentially depends upon, and is determined by, them, we shall never think of talking of a "merely relative universality" of the laws which are derived from observation. This is, of course, not to assert that any given law which we have once accepted as correct, must be absolutely valid. But when, later, a negative instance overthrows a law, the reason is, not that the law from the first could be inferred only with relative universality, but that it had not at first been inferred correctly. A genuine law of nature is nothing but the formulation of a nexus in the given world-picture, and it exists as little without the facts which it determines, as these exist without it. Above, we have laid down that it is the essence of the cognitive activity to transmute, by thinking, the given world-picture by means of concepts and ideas. What follows from this fact? If the Immediately-Given were a totality complete in itself, the work which thinking does upon it in cognition would be both impossible and unnecessary. We should simply accept the Given, as it is, and be satisfied with it as such. Cognitive activity is possible only because in the Given something lies hidden which does not yet reveal itself so long as we gaze at the Given in its immediacy, but which becomes manifest with the aid of the order which thinking introduces. Prior to the work of thinking, the Given does not possess the fulness of its own complete nature. This point becomes still more obvious by considering in greater detail the two factors involved in the act of cognition. The first factor is the Given. "Being given" is not a quality of the Given, but merely a term expressing its relation to the second factor in the act of cognition. This second factor, viz., the conceptual content of the Given, is found by our thought in the act of cognition to be necessarily connected with the Given. Two questions arise: (1) Where are the Given and the Concept differentiated? (2) Where are they united? The answer to these two questions is to be found, beyond any doubt, in the preceding discussions. They are differentiated solely in the act of cognition. They are united in the Given. Thence it follows necessarily that the conceptual content is but a part of the Given, and that the act of cognition consists in re-uniting with each other the two parts of the world-picture which are, at first, given to it in separation. The given world-picture thus attains its completion only through that mediate kind of givenness which thinking brings about. In its original immediacy the world-picture is altogether incomplete. If the conceptual content were from the first united with the Given in our world-picture, there would be no cognition. For, no need could ever arise of transcending the Given. So, again, if by thinking and in thinking we could create the whole world-content, once more there would be no cognition. For, what we create ourselves we do not need to cognise. Hence, cognition exists because the world-content is given to us originally in a form which is incomplete, which does not contain it as a whole, but which, over and above what it presents immediately, owns another, no less essential, aspect. This second aspect of the world-content--an aspect not originally given--is revealed by cognition. Pure thinking presents in the abstract, not empty forms, but a sum of determinations (categories) which serve as forms for the rest of the world-content. The world-content can be called REALITY only in the form which it acquires through cognition and in which both aspects of it are united. VI THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE WITHOUT PRESUPPOSITIONS VERSUS FICHTE'S THEORY OF SCIENCE So far, we have determined the idea of knowledge. This idea is given immediately in the human consciousness whenever it functions cognitively. To the "Ego," as the centre [49] of consciousness, are given immediately external and internal perceptions, as well as its own existence. The Ego feels impelled to find more in the Given than it immediately contains. Over against the given world, a second world, the world of thinking, unfolds itself for the Ego and the Ego unites these two by realising, of its own free will, the idea of knowledge which we have determined. This accounts for the fundamental difference between the way in which in the objects of human consciousness itself the concept and the Immediately-Given unite to form Reality in its wholeness, and the way in which their union obtains in the rest of the world-content. For every other part of the world-content we must assume that the union of the two factors is original and necessary from the first, and that it is only for cognition, when cognition begins, that an artificial separation has supervened, but that cognition in the end undoes the separation in keeping with the original and essential unity of the object-world. For consciousness the case is quite otherwise. Here the union exists only when it is achieved by the living activity of consciousness itself. With every other kind of object, the separation of the two factors is significant, not for the object, but only for knowledge. Their union is here original, their separation derivative. Cognition effects a separation only because it must first separate before it can achieve union by its own methods. But, for consciousness, the Concept and the Given are originally separate. Union is here derivative, and that is why cognition has the character which we have described. Just because in consciousness Idea and Given appear in separation, does the whole of reality split itself for consciousness into these two factors. And, again, just because consciousness can bring about the union of the two factors only by its own activity, can it reach full reality only by performing the act of cognition. The remaining categories (ideas) would be necessarily united with the corresponding lands of the Given, even if they were not taken up into cognition. But the idea of cognition can be united with the Given which corresponds to it, only by the activity of consciousness. Real consciousness exists only in realising itself. With these remarks we believe ourselves to be sufficiently equipped for laying bare the root-error of Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre and, at the same time, for supplying the key to the understanding of it. Fichte is among all Kant's successors the one who has felt most vividly that nothing but a theory of consciousness can supply the foundation for all the sciences. But he never clearly understood why this is so. He felt that the act which we have called the second step in the Theory of Knowledge and which we have formulated as a postulate, must really be performed by the "Ego." This may be seen, e.g., from the following passage. "The Theory of Science, then, arises, as itself a systematic discipline, just as do all possible sciences in so far as they are systematic, through a certain act of freedom, the determinate function of which is, more particularly, to make us conscious of the characteristic activity of intelligence as such. The result of this free act is that the necessary activity of intelligence, which in itself already is form, is further taken up as matter into a fresh form of cognition or consciousness." [50] What does Fichte here mean by the activity of the "intelligence," when we translate what he has obscurely felt into clear concepts? Nothing but the realisation of the idea of knowledge, taking place in consciousness. Had this been perfectly clear to Fichte, he ought to have expressed his view simply by saying, "It is the task of the Theory of Science to bring cognition, in so far as it is still an unreflective activity of the 'Ego,' into reflective consciousness; it has to show that the realisation of the idea of cognition in actual fact is a necessary activity of the 'Ego.'" Fichte tries to determine the activity of the "Ego." He declares "that the being, the essence of which consists solely in this that it posits itself as existing, is the Ego as absolute subject." [51] This positing of the Ego is for Fichte the original, unconditioned act "which lies at the basis of all the rest of consciousness." [52] It follows that the Ego, in Fichte's sense, can likewise begin all its activity only through an absolute fiat of the will. But, it is impossible for Fichte to supply any sort of content for this activity which his "Ego" absolutely posits. For, Fichte can name nothing upon which this activity might direct itself, or by which it might be determined. His Ego is supposed to perform an act. Yes, but what is it to do? Fichte failed to define the concept of cognition which the Ego is to realise, and, in consequence, he struggled in vain to find any way of advancing from his absolute act to the detailed determinations of the Ego. Nay, in the end he declares that the inquiry into the manner of this advance lies outside the scope of his theory. In his deduction of the idea of cognition he starts neither from an absolute act of the Ego, nor from one of the Non-Ego, but from a state of being determined which is, at the same time, an act of determining. His reason for this is that nothing else either is, or can be, immediately contained in consciousness. His theory leaves it wholly vague what determines, in turn, this determination. And it is this vagueness which drives us on beyond Fichte's theory into the practical part of the Wissenschaftslehre. [53] But, by this turn Fichte destroys all knowledge whatsoever. For, the practical activity of the Ego belongs to quite a different sphere. The postulate which we have put forward above can, indeed, be realised--so much is clear--only by a free act of the Ego. But, if this act is to be a cognitive act, the all-important point is that its voluntary decision should be to realise the idea of cognition. It is, no doubt, true that the Ego by its own free will can do many other things as well. But, what matters for the epistemological foundation of the sciences is not a definition of what it is for the Ego to be free, but of what it is to know. Fichte has allowed himself to be too much influenced by his subjective tendency to present the freedom of human personality in the brightest light. Harms, in his address on The Philosophy of Fichte (p. 15), rightly remarks, "His world-view is predominantly and exclusively ethical, and the same character is exhibited by his Theory of Knowledge." Knowledge would have absolutely nothing to do, if all spheres of reality were given in their totality. But, seeing that the Ego, so long as it has not been, by thinking, inserted into its place in the systematic whole of the world-picture, exists merely as an immediately-given something, it is not enough merely to point out what it does. Fichte, however, believes that all we need to do concerning the Ego is to seek and find it. "We have to seek and find the absolutely first, wholly unconditioned principle of all human knowledge. Being absolutely first, this principle admits neither of proof nor of determination." [54] We have seen that proof and determination are out of place solely as applied to the content of Pure Logic. But the Ego is a part of reality, and this makes it necessary to establish that this or that category is actually to be found in the Given. Fichte has failed to do this. And this is the reason why he has given such a mistaken form to his Theory of Science. Zeller remarks [55] that the logical formulæ by means of which Fichte seeks to reach the concept of the Ego, do but ill disguise his predetermined purpose at any price to reach this starting-point for his theory. This comment applies to the first form (1794) which Fichte gave to his Wissenschaftslehre. Taking it, then, as established that Fichte, in keeping with the whole trend of his philosophical thinking, could not, in fact, rest content with any other starting-point for knowledge than an absolute and arbitrary act, we have the choice between only two ways of making this start intelligible. The one way was to seize upon some one among the empirical activities of consciousness and to strip off, one by one, all the characteristics of it which do not follow originally from its essential nature, until the pure concept of the Ego had been crystallised out. The other way was to begin, straightway, with the original activity of the Ego, and to exhibit its nature by introspection and reflection. Fichte followed the first way at the outset of his philosophical thinking, but in the course of it he gradually switched over to the other. Basing himself upon Kant's "synthesis of transcendental apperception," Fichte concluded that the whole activity of the Ego in the synthesis of the matter of experience proceeds according to the forms of the judgment. To judge is to connect a predicate with a subject--an act of which the purely formal expression is a = a. This proposition would be impossible if the x which connects predicate and subject, did not rest upon a power to affirm unconditionally. For, the proposition does not mean, "a exists"; it means, "if a exists, then there exists a." Thus, a is most certainly not affirmed absolutely. Hence, if there is to be an absolute, unconditionally valid affirmation, there is no alternative but to declare the act of affirming itself to be absolute. Whereas a is conditioned, the affirming of a is unconditioned. This affirming is the act of the Ego which, thus, possesses the power to affirm absolutely and without conditions. In the proposition, a = a, the one a is affirmed only on condition of the other being presupposed. Moreover, the affirming is an act of the Ego. "If a is affirmed in the Ego, it is affirmed." [56] This connection is possible only on condition that there is in the Ego something always self-identical, which effects the transition from the one a to the other. The above-mentioned x is this self-identical aspect of the Ego. The Ego which affirms the one a is the same Ego as that which affirms the other a. This is to say Ego = Ego. But this proposition, expressed in judgment-form, "If the Ego is, it is," is meaningless. For, the Ego is not affirmed on condition of another Ego having been presupposed, but it presupposes itself. In short, the Ego is absolute and unconditioned. The hypothetical judgment-form which is the form of all judgments, so long as the absolute Ego is not presupposed, changes for the Ego into the form of the categorical affirmation of existence, "I am unconditionally." Fichte has another way of putting this: "the Ego originally affirms its own existence." [57] Clearly, this whole deduction is nothing but a sort of elementary school-drill by means of which Fichte tries to lead his readers to the point at which they will perceive for themselves the unconditioned activity of the Ego. His aim is to put clearly before their eyes that fundamental activity of the Ego in the absence of which there is no such thing as an Ego at all. Let us now look back, once more, over Fichte's line of thought. On closer inspection, it becomes obvious that it contains a leap--a leap, moreover, which throws grave doubts upon the correctness of his theory of the original act of the Ego. What precisely is it that is absolute in the affirmation of the Ego? Take the judgment, "If a exists, then there exists a." The a is affirmed by the Ego. So far there is no room for doubt. But, though the act is unconditioned, yet the Ego must affirm something in particular. It cannot affirm an "activity in general and as such"; it can affirm only a particular, determinate activity. In short, the affirmation must have a content. But, it cannot derive this content from itself, for else we should get nothing but affirmations of acts of affirmation in infinitum. Hence, there must be something which is realised by this affirming, by this absolute activity of the Ego. If the Ego does not seize upon something given in order to affirm it, it can do nothing at all, and, consequently, it cannot affirm either. This is proved, too, by Fichte's proposition, "the Ego affirms its own existence." "Existence," here, is a category. Thus, we are back at our own position: the activity of the Ego consists in that it affirms, of its own free will, the concepts and ideas inherent in the Given. If Fichte had not unconsciously been determined to exhibit the Ego as "existing," he would have got nowhere at all. If, instead, he had built up the concept of cognition, he would have reached the true starting-point of the Theory of Knowledge, viz., "The Ego affirms the act of cognition." Because Fichte failed to make clear to himself what determines the activity of the Ego, he fixed simply upon the affirmation of its own existence as the character of that activity. But, this is at once to restrict the absolute activity of the Ego. For, if nothing is unconditioned except the Ego's affirmation of its own existence, then every other activity of the Ego is conditioned. Moreover, the way is cut off for passing from the unconditioned to the conditioned. If the Ego is unconditioned only in the affirmation of its own existence, then at once there is cut off all possibility of affirming by an original act anything other than its own existence. Hence, the necessity arises to assign a ground for all the other activities of the Ego. But Fichte, as we have seen above, sought for such a ground in vain. This is the reason why he shifted to the second of the two ways, indicated above, for the deduction of the Ego. Already in 1797, in his Erste Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre, he recommends self-observation as the right method for studying the Ego in its true, original character. "Observe and watch thyself, turn thy eye away from all that surrounds thee and look into thyself--this is the first demand which philosophy makes upon its disciple. The topic of our discourse, is, not anything outside thyself, but thyself alone." [58] This introduction to the Theory of Science is, in truth, in one way much superior to the other. For, self-observation does not make us acquainted with the activity of the Ego one-sidedly in a fixed direction. It exhibits that activity, not merely as affirming its own existence, but as striving, in its many-sided development, to comprehend by thinking the world-content which is immediately-given. To self-observation, the Ego reveals itself as engaged in building up its world-picture by the synthesis of the Given with concepts. But, anyone who has not accompanied us in our line of thought above, and who, consequently, does not know that the Ego can grasp the whole content of reality only on condition of applying its Thought-Forms to the Given, is liable to regard cognition as a mere process of spinning the world out of the Ego itself. Hence, for Fichte the world-picture tends increasingly to become a construction of the Ego. He emphasises more and more that the main point in the Wissenschaftslehre is to awaken the sense which is able to watch the Ego in this constructing of its world. He who is able thus to watch stands, for Fichte, on a higher level of knowledge than he who has eyes only for the finished construct, the ready-made world. If we fix our eyes only on the world of objects, we fail to perceive that, but for the creative activity of the Ego, that world would not exist. If, on the other hand, we watch the Ego in its constructive activity, we understand the ground of the finished world-picture. We know how it has come to be what it is. We understand it as the conclusion for which we have the premises. The ordinary consciousness sees only what has been affirmed, what has been determined thus or thus. It lacks the insight into the premises, into the grounds why an affirmation is just as it is and not otherwise. To mediate the knowledge of these premises is, according to Fichte, the task of a wholly new sense. This is expressed most clearly in the Einleitungsvorlesungen in die Wissenschaftslehre. [59] "My theory presupposes a wholly novel inward sense-organ, by means of which a new world is given which does not exist for the ordinary man at all." Or, again, "The world of this novel sense, and thereby this sense itself, are hereby for the present clearly determined: it is the world in which we see the premises on which is grounded the judgment, 'Something exists'; it is the ground of existence which, just because it is the ground of existence, cannot, in its turn, be said to be or to be an existence." [60] But, here, too, Fichte lacks clear insight into the activity of the Ego. He has never worked his way through to it. That is why his Wissenschaftslehre could not become what else, from its whole design, it ought to have become, viz., a Theory of Knowledge as the fundamental discipline of philosophy. For, after it had once been recognised that the activity of the Ego must be affirmed by the Ego itself, it was very easy to think that the activity receives its determination also from the Ego. But how else can this happen except we assign a content to the purely formal activity of the Ego? If the Ego is really to import a content into its activity which, else, is wholly undetermined, then the nature of that content must also be determined. For, failing this, it could at best be realised only by some "thing-in-itself" in the Ego, of which the Ego would be the instrument, but not by the Ego itself. If Fichte had attempted to furnish this determination, he would have been led to the concept of cognition which it is the task of the Ego to realise. Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre proves that even the acutest thinker fails to make fruitful contributions to any philosophical discussion, unless he lays hold of the correct Thought-Form (category, idea) which, supplemented by the Given, yields reality. Such a thinker is like a man who fails to hear the most glorious melodies which are being played for him, because he has no ear for tunes. If we are to determine the nature of consciousness, as given, we must be able to rise to, and make our own, the "idea of consciousness." At one point Fichte is actually quite close to the true view. He declares, in the Einleitungen zur Wissenschaftslehre (1797), that there are two theoretical systems, viz., Dogmatism, for which the Ego is determined by the objects, and Idealism, for which the objects are determined by the Ego. Both are, according to him, established as possible theories of the world; both can be developed into self-consistent systems. But, if we throw in our lot with Dogmatism, we must abandon the independence of the Ego and make it dependent on the "thing-in-itself." If we do not want to do this, we must adopt Idealism. The philosopher's choice between these two systems is left by Fichte wholly to the preference of the Ego. But he adds that if the Ego desires to preserve its independence, it will give up the belief in external things and surrender itself to Idealism. But, what Fichte forgot was the consideration that the Ego cannot make any genuine, well-grounded decision or choice, unless something is presupposed which helps the Ego to choose. All the Ego's attempts at determination remain empty and without content, if the Ego does not find something wholly determinate and full of content, which enables it to determine the Given, and thereby also to choose between Idealism and Dogmatism. This "something wholly determinate and full of content" is, precisely, the world of Thought. And the determination of the Given by thinking is, precisely, what we call cognition. We may take Fichte where we please--everywhere we find that his line of thought at once gets meaning and substance, as soon as we conceive his grey, empty activity of the Ego to be filled and regulated by what we have called "the process of cognition." The fact that the Ego is free to enter into activity out of itself, makes it possible for it, by free self-determination, to realise the category of cognition, whereas in the rest of the world all categories are connected by objective necessity with the Given which corresponds to them. The investigation of the nature of free self-determination will be the task of Ethics and Metaphysics, based on our Theory of Knowledge. These disciplines, too, will have to debate the question whether the Ego is able to realise other ideas, besides the idea of cognition. But, that the realisation of the idea of cognition issues from a free act has been made sufficiently clear in the course of our discussions above. For, the synthesis, effected by the Ego, of the Immediately-Given and of the Form of Thought appropriate to it, which two factors of reality remain otherwise always divorced from each other in consciousness, can be brought about only by an act of freedom. Moreover, our arguments throw, in another way, quite a fresh light on Critical Idealism. To any close student of Fichte's system it will appear as if Fichte cared for nothing so much as for the defence of the proposition, that nothing can enter the Ego from without, that nothing can appear in the Ego which was not the Ego's own original creation. Now, it is beyond all dispute that no type of Idealism will ever be able to derive from within the Ego that form of the world-content which we have called "the Immediately-Given." For, this form can only be given; it can never be constructed by thinking. In proof of this, it is enough to reflect that, even if the whole series of colours were given to us except one, we should not be able to fill in that one out of the bare Ego. We can form an image of the most remote countries, though we have never seen them, provided we have once personally experienced, as given, the details which go to form the image. We then build up the total picture, according to the instructions supplied to us, out of the particular facts which we have ourselves experienced. But we shall strive in vain to invent out of ourselves even a single perceptual element which has never appeared within the sphere of what has been given to us. It is one thing to be merely acquainted with the world; it is another to have knowledge of its essential nature. This nature, for all that it is closely identified with the world-content, does not become clear to us unless we build up reality ourselves out of the Given and the Forms of Thought. The real "what" of the Given comes to be affirmed for the Ego only through the Ego itself. The Ego would have no occasion to affirm the nature of the Given for itself, if it did not find itself confronted at the outset by the Given in wholly indeterminate form. Thus, the essential nature of the world is affirmed, not apart from, but through, the Ego. The true form of reality is not the first form in which it presents itself to the Ego, but the last form which it receives through the activity of the Ego. That first form is, in fact, without any importance for the objective world and counts only as the basis for the process of cognition. Hence, it is not the form given to the world by theory which is subjective, but rather the form in which the world is originally given to the Ego. If, following Volkelt and others, we call the given world "experience," our view amounts to saying: The world-picture presents itself, owing to the constitution of our consciousness, in subjective form as experience, but science completes it and makes its true nature manifest. Our Theory of Knowledge supplies the basis for an Idealism which, in the true sense of the word, understands itself. It supplies good grounds for the conviction that thinking brings home to us the essential nature of the world. Nothing but thinking can exhibit the relations of the parts of the world-content, be it the relation of the heat of the sun to the stone which it warms, or the relation of the Ego to the external world. Thinking alone has the function of determining all things in their relations to each other. The objection might still be urged by the followers of Kant, that the determination, above-described, of the Given holds, after all, only for the Ego. Our reply must be, consistently with our principles, that the distinction between Ego and Outer World, too, holds only within the Given, and that, therefore, it is irrelevant to insist on the phrase, "for the Ego," in the face of the activity of thinking which unites all opposites. The Ego, as divorced from the outer world, disappears completely in the process of thinking out the nature of the world. Hence it becomes meaningless still to talk of determinations which hold only for the Ego. VII CONCLUDING REMARKS: EPISTEMOLOGICAL We have laid the foundations of the Theory of Knowledge as the science of the significance of all human knowledge. It alone clears up for us the relation of the contents of the separate sciences to the world. It enables us, with the help of the sciences, to attain to a philosophical world-view. Positive knowledge is acquired by us through particular cognitions; what the value of our knowledge is, considered as knowledge of reality, we learn through the Theory of Knowledge. By holding fast strictly to this principle, and by employing no particular cognitions in our argumentation, we have transcended all one-sided world-views. One-sidedness, as a rule, results from the fact that the inquiry, instead of concentrating on the process of cognition itself, busies itself about some object of that process. If our arguments are sound, Dogmatism must abandon its "thing-in-itself" as fundamental principle, and Subjective Idealism its "Ego," for both these owe their determinate natures in their relation to each other first to thinking. Scepticism must give up its doubts whether the world can be known, for there is no room for doubt with reference to the "Given," because it is as yet untouched by any of the predicates which cognition confers on it. On the other hand, if Scepticism were to assert that thinking can never apprehend things as they are, its assertion, being itself possible only through thinking, would be self-contradictory. For, to justify doubt by thinking is to admit by implication that thinking can produce grounds sufficient to establish certainty. Lastly, our theory of knowledge transcends both one-sided Empiricism and one-sided Rationalism in uniting both at a higher level. Thus it does justice to both. It justifies Empiricism by showing that all positive knowledge about the Given is obtainable only through direct contact with the Given. And Rationalism, too, receives its due in our argument, seeing that we hold thinking to be the necessary and exclusive instrument of knowledge. The world-view which has the closest affinity to ours, as we have here built it up on epistemological foundations, is that of A. E. Biedermann. [61] But Biedermann requires for the justification of his point of view dogmatic theses which are quite out of place in Theory of Knowledge. Thus, e.g., he works with the concepts of Being, Substance, Space, Time, etc., without having first analysed the cognitive process by itself. Instead of establishing the fact that the cognitive process consists, to begin with, only of the two elements, the Given and Thought, he talks of the Kinds of Being of the real. For example, in Section 15, he says: "Every content of consciousness includes within itself two fundamental facts--it presents to us, as given, two kinds of Being which we contrast with each other as sensuous and spiritual, thing-like and idea-like, Being." And in Section 19: "Whatever has a spatio-temporal existence, exists materially; that which is the ground of all existence and the subject of life has an idea-like existence, is real as having an ideal Being." This sort of argument belongs, not to the Theory of Knowledge, but to Metaphysics, which latter presupposes Theory of Knowledge as its foundation. We must admit that Biedermann's doctrine has many points of similarity with ours; but our method has not a single point of contact with his. Hence, we have had no occasion to compare our position directly with his. Biedermann's aim is to gain an epistemological standpoint with the help of a few metaphysical axioms. Our aim is to reach, through an analysis of the process of cognition, a theory of reality. And we believe that we have succeeded in showing, that all the disputes between philosophical systems result from the fact that their authors have sought to attain knowledge about some object or other (Thing, Self, Consciousness, etc.), without having first given close study to that which alone can throw light on whatever else we know, viz., the nature of knowledge itself. VIII CONCLUDING REMARKS: PRACTICAL The aim of the preceding discussions has been to throw light on the relation of our personality, as knower, to the objective world. What does it signify for us to possess knowledge and science? This was the question to which we sought the answer. We have seen that it is just in our knowing that the innermost kernel of the world manifestly reveals itself. The harmony, subject to law, which reigns throughout the whole world, reveals itself precisely in human cognition. It is, therefore, part of the destiny of man to elevate the fundamental laws of the world, which do indeed regulate the whole of existence but which would never become existent in themselves, into the realm of realities which appear. This precisely is the essential nature of knowledge that in it the world-ground is made manifest which in the object-world can never be discovered. Knowing is--metaphorically speaking--a continual merging of one's life into the world-ground. Such a view is bound to throw light also on our practical attitude towards life. Our conduct is, in its whole character, determined by our moral ideals. These are the ideas we have of our tasks in life, or, in other words, of the ends which we set ourselves to achieve by our action. Our conduct is a part of the total world-process. Consequently, it, too, is subject to the universal laws which regulate this process. Now, every event in the universe has two sides which must be distinguished: its external sequence in time and space, and its internal conformity to law. The apprehension of this conformity of human conduct to law is but a special case of knowledge. Hence, the conclusions at which we have arrived concerning the nature of knowledge must apply to this sort of knowledge, too. To apprehend oneself as a person who acts is to possess the relevant laws of conduct, i.e., the moral concepts and ideals, in the form of knowledge. It is this knowledge of the conformity of our conduct to law which makes our conduct truly ours. For, in that case, the conformity is given, not as external to the object in which the action appears, but as the very substance of the object engaged in living activity. The "object," here, is our own Ego. If the Ego has with its knowledge really penetrated the essential nature of conduct, then it feels that it is thereby master of its conduct. Short of this, the laws of conduct confront us as something external. They master us. What we achieve, we achieve under the compulsion which they wield over us. But this compulsion ceases, as soon as their alien character has been transformed into the Ego's very own activity. Thereafter, the law no longer rules over us, but rules in us over the actions which issue from our Ego. To perform an act in obedience to a law which is external to the agent is to be unfree. To perform it in obedience to the agent's own law is to be free. To gain knowledge of the laws of one's own conduct is to become conscious of one's freedom. The process of cognition is, thus, according to our arguments, the process of the development of freedom. Not all human conduct has this character. There are many cases in which we do not know the laws of our conduct. This part of our conduct is the unfree part of our activity. Over against it stands the part the laws of which we make completely our own. This is the realm of freedom. It is only in so far as our life falls into this realm that it can be called moral. To transform the actions which are unfree into actions which are free--this is the task of self-development for every individual, this is likewise the task of the whole human race. Thus, the most important problem for all human thinking is to conceive man as a personality grounded upon itself and free. APPENDICES APPENDIX I ADDITION TO THE REVISED EDITION OF "THE PHILOSOPHY OF FREEDOM," 1918. Various criticisms on the part of philosophers with which this book met immediately upon its publication, induce me to add to this Revised Edition the following brief statement. I can well understand that there are readers who are interested in the rest of the book, but who will look upon what follows as a tissue of abstract concepts which to them is irrelevant and makes no appeal. They may, if they choose, leave this brief statement unread. But in philosophy problems present themselves which have their origin rather in certain prejudices on the thinker's part than in the natural progression of normal human thinking. With the main body of this book it seems to me to be the duty of every one to concern himself, who is striving for clearness about the essential nature of man and his relation to the world. What follows is rather a problem the discussion of which certain philosophers demand as necessary to a treatment of the topics of this book, because these philosophers, by their whole way of thinking, have created certain difficulties which do not otherwise occur. If I were to pass by these problems entirely, certain people would be quick to accuse me of dilettantism, etc. The impression would thus be created that the author of the views set down in this book has not thought out his position with regard to these problems because he has not discussed them in his book. The problem to which I refer is this: there are thinkers who find a particular difficulty in understanding how another mind can act on one's own. They say: the world of my consciousness is a closed circle within me; so is the world of another's consciousness within him. I cannot look into the world of another's mind. How, then, do I know that he and I are in a common world? The theory according to which we can from the conscious world infer an unconscious world which never can enter consciousness, attempts to solve this difficulty as follows. The world, it says, which I have in my consciousness is the representation in me of a real world to which my consciousness has no access. In this transcendent world exist the unknown agents which cause the world in my consciousness. In it, too, exists my own real self, of which likewise I have only a representation in my consciousness. In it, lastly, exists the essential self of the fellow-man who confronts me. Whatever passes in the consciousness of my fellow-man corresponds to a reality in his transcendent essence which is independent of his consciousness. His essential nature acts in that realm which, on this theory, is equally beyond consciousness. Thus an impression is made in my consciousness which represents there what is present in another's consciousness and wholly beyond the reach of my direct awareness. Clearly the point of this theory is to add to the world accessible to my consciousness an hypothetical world which is to my immediate experience inaccessible. This is done to avoid the supposed alternative of having to say that the external world, which I regard as existing before me, is nothing but the world of my consciousness, with the absurd--solipsistic--corollary that other persons likewise exist only within my consciousness. Several epistemological tendencies in recent speculation have joined in creating this problem. But it is possible to attain to clearness about it by surveying the situation from the point of view of spiritual perception which underlies the exposition of this book. What is it that, in the first instance, I have before me when I confront another person? To begin with, there is the sensuous appearance of the other's body, as given in perception. To this we might add the auditory perception of what he is saying, and so forth. All this I apprehend, not with a passive stare, but by the activity of my thinking which is set in motion. Through the thinking with which I now confront the other person, the percept of him becomes, as it were, psychically transparent. As my thinking apprehends the percept, I am compelled to judge that what I perceive is really quite other than it appears to the outer senses. The sensuous appearance, in being what it immediately is, reveals something else which it is mediately. In presenting itself to me as a distinct object, it, at the same time, extinguishes itself as a mere sensuous appearance. But in thus extinguishing itself it reveals a character which, so long as it affects me, compels me as a thinking being to extinguish my own thinking and to put its thinking in the place of mine. Its thinking is then apprehended by my thinking as an experience like my own. Thus I have really perceived another's thinking. For the immediate percept, in extinguishing itself as sensuous appearance, is apprehended by my thinking. It is a profess which passes wholly in my consciousness and consists in this, that the other's thinking takes the place of my thinking. The self-extinction of the sensuous appearance actually abolishes the separation between the spheres of the two consciousnesses. In my own consciousness this fusion manifests itself in that, so long as I experience the contents of the other's consciousness, I am aware of my own consciousness as little as I am aware of it in dreamless sleep. Just as my waking consciousness is eliminated from the latter, so are the contents of my own consciousness eliminated from my perception of the contents of another's consciousness. Two things tend to deceive us about the true facts. The first is that, in perceiving another person, the extinction of the contents of one's own consciousness is replaced not, as in sleep, by unconsciousness, but by the contents of the other's consciousness. The other is that my consciousness of my own self oscillates so rapidly between extinction and recurrence, that these alternations usually escape observation. The whole problem is to be solved, not through artificial construction of concepts, involving an inference from what is in consciousness to what always must transcend consciousness, but through genuine experience of the connection between thinking and perceiving. The same remark applies to many other problems which appear in philosophical literature. Philosophers should seek the road to unprejudiced spiritual observation, instead of hiding reality behind an artificial frontage of concepts. In a monograph by Eduard von Hartmann on "The Ultimate Problems of Epistemology and Metaphysics" (in the Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, Vol. 108, p. 55), my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity has been classed with the philosophical tendency which seeks to build upon an "epistemological Monism." Eduard von Hartmann rejects this position as untenable, for the following reasons. According to the point of view maintained in his monograph, there are only three possible positions in the theory of knowledge. The first consists in remaining true to the naïve point of view, which regards objects of sense-perception as real things existing outside the human mind. This, urges Von Hartmann, implies a lack of critical reflection. I fail to realise that with all my contents of consciousness I remain imprisoned in my own consciousness. I fail to perceive that I am dealing, not with a "table-in-itself," but only with a phenomenon in my own consciousness. If I stop at this point of view, or if for whatever reasons I return to it, I am a Naïve Realist. But this whole position is untenable, for it ignores that consciousness has no other objects than its own contents. The second position consists in appreciating this situation and confessing it to oneself. As a result, I become a Transcendental Idealist. As such, says Von Hartmann, I am obliged to deny that a "thing-in-itself" can ever appear in any way within the human mind. But, if developed with unflinching consistency, this view ends in Absolute Illusionism. For the world which confronts me is now transformed into a mere sum of contents of consciousness, and, moreover, of contents of my private consciousness. The objects of other human minds, too, I am then compelled to conceive--absurdly enough--as present solely in my own consciousness. Hence, the only tenable position, according to Von Hartmann, is the third, viz., Transcendental Realism. On this view, there are "things-in-themselves," but consciousness can have no dealings with them by way of immediate experience. Existing beyond the sphere of human consciousness, they cause, in a way of which we remain unconscious, the appearance of objects in consciousness. These "things-in-themselves" are known only by inference from the contents of consciousness, which are immediately experienced but for that very reason, purely ideal. Eduard von Hartmann maintains in the monograph cited above, that "epistemological Monism"--for such he takes my point of view to be--is bound to declare itself identical with one or other of the above three positions; and that its failure to do so is due only to its inconsistency in not drawing the actual consequences of its presuppositions. The monograph goes on to say: "If we want to find out which epistemological position a so-called Epistemological Monist occupies, all we have to do is to put to him certain questions and compel him to answer them. For, out of his own initiative, no Monist will condescend to state his views on these points, and likewise he will seek to dodge in every way giving a straight answer to our questions, because every answer he may give will betray that Epistemological Monism does not differ from one or other of the three positions. Our questions are the following: (1) Are things continuous or intermittent in their existence? If the answer is 'continuous,' we have before us some one of the forms of Naïve Realism. If the answer is 'intermittent,' we have Transcendental Idealism. But if the answer is: 'They are, on the one hand, continuous, viz., as contents of the Absolute Mind, or as unconscious ideas, or as permanent possibilities of perception, but, on the other hand, intermittent, viz., as contents of finite consciousness,' we recognise Transcendental Realism. (2) When three persons are sitting at a table, how many distinct tables are there? The Naïve Realist answers 'one'; the Transcendental Idealist answers 'three'; but the Transcendental Realist answers 'four.' This last answer does, indeed, presuppose that it is legitimate to group together in the single question, 'How many tables?' things so unlike each other as the one table which is the 'thing-in-itself' and the three tables which are the objects of perception in the three perceivers' minds. If this seems too great a licence to anyone, he will have to answer 'one and three,' instead of 'four.' (3) When two persons are alone together in a room, how many distinct persons are there? If you answer 'two'--you are a Naïve Realist. If you answer 'four,' viz., in each of the two minds one 'I' and one 'Other,' you are a Transcendental Idealist. If you answer 'six,' viz., two persons as 'things-in-themselves' and four persons as ideal objects in the two minds, you are a Transcendental Realist. In order to show that Epistemological Monism is not one of these three positions, we should have to give other answers than the above to each of these three questions. But I cannot imagine what answers these could be." The answers of the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity would have to be: (1) Whoever apprehends only what he perceives of a thing and mistakes these percepts for the reality of the thing, is a Naïve Realist. He does not realise that, strictly, he ought to regard these perceptual contents as existing only so long as he is looking at the objects, so that he ought to conceive the objects before him as intermittent. As soon, however, as it becomes clear to him that reality is to be met with only in the percepts which are organised by thinking, he attains to the insight that the percepts which appear as intermittent events, reveal themselves as continuously in existence as soon as they are interpreted by the constructions of thought. Hence continuity of existence must be predicated of the contents of perception which living thought has organised. Only that part which is only perceived, not thought, would have to be regarded as intermittent if--which is not the case--there were such a part. (2) When three persons are sitting at a table, how many distinct tables are there? There is only one table. But so long as the three persons stop short at their perceptual images, they ought to say: "These percepts are not the reality at all." As soon as they pass on to the table as apprehended by thinking, there is revealed to them the one real table. They are then united with their three contents of consciousness in this one reality. (3) When two persons are alone together in a room, how many distinct persons are there? Most assuredly there are not six--not even in the sense of the Transcendental Realist's theory--but only two. Only, at first, each person has nothing but the unreal percept of himself and of the other person. There are four such percepts, the presence of which in the minds of the two persons is the stimulus for the apprehension of reality by their thinking. In this activity of thinking each of the two persons transcends the sphere of his own consciousness. A living awareness of the consciousness of the other person as well as of his own arises in each. In these moments of living awareness the persons are as little imprisoned within their consciousness as they are in sleep. But at other moments consciousness of this identification with the other returns, so that each person, in the experience of thinking, apprehends consciously both himself and the other person. I know that a Transcendental Realist describes this view as a relapse into Naïve Realism. But, then, I have already pointed out in this book that Naïve Realism retains its justification for our thinking as we actually experience it. The Transcendental Realist ignores the true situation in the process of cognition completely. He cuts himself off from the facts by a tissue of concepts and entangles himself in it. Moreover, the Monism which appears in the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity ought not to be labelled "epistemological," but, if an epithet is wanted, then a "Monism of Thought." All this has been misunderstood by Eduard von Hartmann. Ignoring all that is specific in the argumentation of the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, he has charged me with having attempted to combine Hegel's Universalistic Panlogism with Hume's Individualistic Phenomenalism (Zeitschrift für Philosophie, vol. 108, p. 71, note). But, in truth, the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity has nothing whatever to do with the two positions which it is accused of trying to combine. (This, too, is the reason why I could feel no interest in polemics against, e.g., the Epistemological Monism of Johannes Rehmke. The point of view of the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is simply quite different from what Eduard von Hartmann and others call "Epistemological Monism.") APPENDIX II REVISED INTRODUCTION TO "PHILOSOPHY OF FREEDOM." The following chapter reproduces, in all essentials, the pages which stood as a sort of "Introduction" in the first edition of this book. Inasmuch as it rather reflects the mood out of which I composed this book twenty-five years ago, than has any direct bearing on its contents, I print it here as an "Appendix." I do not want to omit it altogether, because the suggestion keeps cropping up that I want to suppress some of my earlier writings on account of my later works on spiritual matters. Our age is one which is unwilling to seek truth anywhere but in the depths of human nature. [62] Of the following two well-known paths described by Schiller, it is the second which will to-day be found most useful: Wahrheit suchen wir beide, du aussen im Leben, ich innen In dem Herzen, und so findet sie jeder gewiss. Ist das Auge gesund, so begegnet es aussen dem Schöpfer Ist es das Herz, dann gewiss spiegelt es innen die Welt. [63] A truth which comes to us from without bears ever the stamp of uncertainty. Conviction attaches only to what appears as truth to each of us in our own hearts. Truth alone can give us confidence in developing our powers. He who is tortured by doubts finds his powers lamed. In a world the riddle of which baffles him, he can find no aim for his activity. We no longer want to believe; we want to know. Belief demands the acceptance of truths which we do not wholly comprehend. But the individuality which seeks to experience everything in the depths of its own being, is repelled by what it cannot understand. Only that knowledge will satisfy us which springs from the inner life of the personality, and submits itself to no external norm. Again, we do not want any knowledge which has encased itself once and for all in hide-bound formulas, and which is preserved in Encyclopædias valid for all time. Each of us claims the right to start from the facts that lie nearest to hand, from his own immediate experiences, and thence to ascend to a knowledge of the whole universe. We strive after certainty in knowledge, but each in his own way. Our scientific theories, too, are no longer to be formulated as if we were unconditionally compelled to accept them. None of us would wish to give a scientific work a title like Fichte's A Pellucid Account for the General Public concerning the Real Nature of the Newest Philosophy. An Attempt to Compel the Readers to Understand. Nowadays there is no attempt to compel anyone to understand. We claim no agreement from anyone whom a distinct individual need does not drive to a certain view. We do not seek nowadays to cram facts of knowledge even into the immature human being, the child. We seek rather to develop his faculties in such a way that his understanding may depend no longer on our compulsion, but on his will. I am under no illusion concerning the characteristics of the present age. I know how many flaunt a manner of life which lacks all individuality and follows only the prevailing fashion. But I know also that many of my contemporaries strive to order their lives in the direction of the principles I have indicated. To them I would dedicate this book. It does not pretend to offer the "only possible" way to Truth, it only describes the path chosen by one whose heart is set upon Truth. The reader will be led at first into somewhat abstract regions, where thought must draw sharp outlines, if it is to reach secure conclusions. But he will also be led out of these arid concepts into concrete life. I am fully convinced that one cannot do without soaring into the ethereal realm of abstraction, if one's experience is to penetrate life in all directions. He who is limited to the pleasures of the senses misses the sweetest enjoyments of life. The Oriental sages make their disciples live for years a life of resignation and asceticism before they impart to them their own wisdom. The Western world no longer demands pious exercises and ascetic practices as a preparation for science, but it does require a sincere willingness to withdraw oneself awhile from the immediate impressions of life, and to betake oneself into the realm of pure thought. The spheres of life are many and for each there develops a special science. But life itself is one, and the more the sciences strive to penetrate deeply into their separate spheres, the more they withdraw themselves from the vision of the world as a living whole. There must be one supreme science which seeks in the separate sciences the elements for leading men back once more to the fullness of life. The scientific specialist seeks in his studies to gain a knowledge of the world and its workings. This book has a philosophical aim: science itself is here infused with the life of an organic whole. The special sciences are stages on the way to this all-inclusive science. A similar relation is found in the arts. The composer in his work employs the rules of the theory of composition. This latter is an accumulation of principles, knowledge of which is a necessary presupposition for composing. In the act of composing, the rules of theory become the servants of life, of reality. In exactly the same way philosophy is an art. All genuine philosophers have been artists in concepts. Human ideas have been the medium of their art, and scientific method their artistic technique. Abstract thinking thus gains concrete individual life. Ideas turn into life-forces. We have no longer merely a knowledge about things, but we have now made knowledge a real, self-determining organism. Our consciousness, alive and active, has risen beyond a mere passive reception of truths. How philosophy, as an art, is related to freedom; what freedom is; and whether we do, or can, participate in it--these are the principal problems of my book. All other scientific discussions are put in only because they ultimately throw light on these questions which are, in my opinion, the most intimate that concern mankind. These pages offer a "Philosophy of Freedom." All science would be nothing but the satisfaction of idle curiosity did it not strive to enhance the existential value of human personality. The true value of the sciences is seen only when we are shown the importance of their results for humanity. The final aim of an individuality can never be the cultivation of any single faculty, but only the development of all capacities which slumber within us. Knowledge has value only in so far as it contributes to the all-round unfolding of the whole nature of man. This book, therefore, does not conceive the relation between science and life in such a way that man must bow down before the world of ideas and devote his powers to its service. On the contrary, it shows that he takes possession of the world of ideas in order to use them for his human aims, which transcend those of mere science. Man must confront ideas as master, lest he become their slave. APPENDIX III PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION OF "TRUTH AND SCIENCE" Contemporary philosophy suffers from a morbid belief in Kant. To help towards our emancipation from this belief is the aim of the present essay. It would indeed be criminal to try and minimise the debt which the development of German philosophy owes to Kant's immortal work. But it is high time to acknowledge that the only way of laying the foundations for a truly satisfying view of the world and of human life is to put ourselves in decisive opposition to the spirit of Kant. What is it that Kant has achieved? He has shown that the transcendent ground of the world which lies beyond the data of our senses and the categories of our reason, and which his predecessors sought to determine by means of empty concepts, is inaccessible to our knowledge. From this he concluded that all our scientific thinking must keep within the limits of possible experience, and is incapable of attaining to knowledge of the transcendent and ultimate ground of the world, i.e., of the "thing-in-itself." But what if this "thing-in-itself," this whole transcendent ground of the world, should be nothing but a fiction? It is easy to see that this is precisely what it is. An instinct inseparable from human nature impels us to search for the innermost essence of things, for their ultimate principles. It is the basis of all scientific enquiry. But, there is not the least reason to look for this ultimate ground outside the world of our senses and of our spirit, unless a thorough and comprehensive examination of this world should reveal within it elements which point unmistakably to an external cause. The present essay attempts to prove that all the principles which we need in order to explain our world and make it intelligible, are within reach of our thought. Thus, the assumption of explanatory principles lying outside our world turns out to be the prejudice of an extinct philosophy which lived on vain dogmatic fancies. This ought to have been Kant's conclusion, too, if he had really enquired into the powers of human thought. Instead, he demonstrated in the most complicated way that the constitution of our cognitive faculties does not permit us to reach the ultimate principles which lie beyond our experience. But we have no reason whatever for positing these principles in any such Beyond. Thus Kant has indeed refuted "dogmatic" philosophy, but he has put nothing in its place. Hence, all German philosophy which succeeded Kant has evolved everywhere in opposition to him. Fichte, Schelling, Hegel simply ignored the limits fixed by Kant for our knowledge and sought the ultimate principles, not beyond, but within, the world accessible to human reason. Even Schopenhauer, though he does declare the conclusions of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason to be eternal and irrefutable truths, cannot avoid seeking knowledge of the ultimate grounds of the world along paths widely divergent from those of his master. But the fatal mistake of all these thinkers was that they sought knowledge of ultimate truths, without having laid the foundation for such an enterprise in a preliminary investigation of the nature of knowledge itself. Hence, the proud intellectual edifices erected by Fichte, Schelling and Hegel have no foundation to rest on. The lack of such foundations reacts most unfavourably upon the arguments of these thinkers. Ignorant of the importance of the world of pure ideas and of its relation to the realm of sense-perception, they built error upon error, one-sidedness upon one-sidedness. No wonder that their over-bold systems proved unable to withstand the storms of an age which recked nothing of philosophy. No wonder that many good things in these systems were pitilessly swept away along with the errors. To remedy the defect which has just been indicated is the purpose of the following investigations. They will not imitate Kant by explaining what our minds can not know: their aim is to show what our minds can know. The outcome of these investigations is that truth is not, as the current view has it, an ideal reproduction of a some real object, but a free product of the human spirit, which would not exist anywhere at all unless we ourselves produced it. It is not the task of knowledge to reproduce in conceptual form something already existing independently. Its task is to create a wholly new realm which, united with the world of sense-data, ends by yielding us reality in the full sense. In this way, man's supreme activity, the creative productivity of his spirit, finds its organic place in the universal world-process. Without this activity it would be impossible to conceive the world-process as a totality complete in itself. Man does not confront the world-process as a passive spectator who merely copies in his mind the events which occur, without his participation, in the cosmos without. He is an active co-creator in the world-process, and his knowledge is the most perfect member of the organism of the universe. This view carries with it an important consequence for our conduct, for our moral ideals. These, too, must be regarded, not as copies of an external standard, but as rooted within us. Similarly, we refuse to look upon our moral laws as the behests of any power outside us. We know no "categorical imperative" which, like a voice from the Beyond, prescribes to us what to do or to leave undone. Our moral ideals are our own free creations. All we have to do is to carry out what we prescribe to ourselves as the norm of our conduct. Thus, the concept of truth as a free act leads to a theory of morals based on the concept of a perfectly free personality. These theses, of course, are valid only for that part of our conduct the laws of which our thinking penetrates with complete comprehension. So long as the laws of our conduct are merely natural motives or remain obscure to our conceptual thinking, it may be possible from a higher spiritual level to perceive how far they are founded in our individuality, but we ourselves experience them as influencing us from without, as compelling us to action. Every time that we succeed in penetrating such a motive with clear understanding, we make a fresh conquest in the realm of freedom. The relation of these views to the theory of Eduard von Hartmann, who is the most significant figure in contemporary philosophy, will be made clear to the reader in detail in the course of this essay, especially as regards the problem of knowledge. A prelude to a Philosophy of Spiritual Activity--this is what the present essay offers. That philosophy itself, completely worked out, will shortly follow. The ultimate aim of all science is to increase the value of existence for human personality. Whoever does not devote himself to science with this aim in view is merely modelling himself in his own work upon some master. If he "researches," it is merely because that happens to be what he has been taught to do. But not for him is the title of a "free thinker." The sciences are seen in their true value only when philosophy explains the human significance of their results. To make a contribution to such an explanation was my aim. But, perhaps, our present-day science scorns all philosophical vindication! If so, two things are certain. One is that this essay of mine is superfluous. The other is that modern thinkers are lost in the wood and do not know what they want. In concluding this Preface, I cannot omit a personal observation. Up to now I have expounded all my philosophical views on the basis of Goethe's world-view, into which I was first introduced by my dear and revered teacher, Karl Julius Schröer, who to me stands in the very forefront of Goethe-students, because his gaze is ever focussed beyond the particular upon the universal Ideas. But, with this essay I hope to have shown that the edifice of my thought is a whole which has its foundations in itself and which does not need to be derived from Goethe's world-view. My theories, as they are here set forth and as they will presently be amplified in the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, have grown up in the course of many years. Nothing but a deep sense of gratitude leads me to add that the affectionate sympathy of the Specht family in Vienna, during the period when I was the tutor of its children, provided me with an environment, than which I could not have wished a better, for the development of my ideas. In the same spirit, I would add, further, that I owe to the stimulating conversations with my very dear friend, Miss Rosa Mayreder, of Vienna, the mood which I needed for putting into final form many of the thoughts which I have sketched provisionally as germs of my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. Her own literary efforts, which express the sensitive and high-minded nature of a true artist, are likely before long to be presented to the public. Vienna, December, 1891. APPENDIX IV INTRODUCTION TO ORIGINAL EDITION OF "TRUTH AND SCIENCE" The aim of the following discussions is to reduce the act of cognition, by analysis, to its ultimate elements and thus to discover a correct formulation of the problem of knowledge and a way to its solution. They criticise all theories of knowledge which are based on Kant's line of thought, in order to show that along this road no solution of the problem of knowledge can ever be found. It is, however, due to the fundamental spade-work which Volkelt has done in his thorough examination of the concept of experience, [64] to acknowledge that without his preliminary labours the precise determination, which I have here attempted of the concept of the Given would have been very much more difficult. However, we are cherishing the hope that we have laid the foundations for our emancipation from the Subjectivism which attaches to all theories of knowledge that start from Kant. We believe ourselves to have achieved this emancipation through showing that the subjective form, in which the picture of the world presents itself to the act of cognition, prior to its elaboration by science, is nothing but a necessary stage of transition which is overcome in the very process of knowledge itself. For us, experience, so-called, which Positivism and Neo-Kantianism would like to represent as the only thing which is certain, is precisely the most subjective of all. In demonstrating this, we also show that Objective Idealism is the inevitable conclusion of a theory of knowledge which understands itself. It differs from the metaphysical and absolute Idealism of Hegel in this, that it seeks in the subject of knowledge the ground for the diremption of reality into given existence and concept, and that it looks for the reconciliation of this divorce, not in an objective world-dialectic, but in the subjective process of cognition. The present writer has already once before advocated this point of view in print, viz., in the Outlines of a Theory of Knowledge (Berlin and Stuttgart, 1885). However, that book differs essentially in method from the present essay, and it also lacks the analytic reduction of knowledge to its ultimate elements. NOTES [1] Two souls, alas! reside within my breast, And each withdraws from, and repels, its brother. One with tenacious organs holds in love And clinging lust the world in its embraces; The other strongly sweeps, this dust above, Into the high ancestral spaces. Faust, Part I, Scene 2. (Bayard Taylor's translation.) [2] Knowledge is transcendental when it is aware that nothing can be asserted directly about the thing-in-itself but makes indirect inferences from the subjective which is known to the unknown which lies beyond the subjective (transcendental). The thing-in-itself is, according to this view, beyond the sphere of the world of immediate experience; in other words, it is transcendent. Our world can, however, be transcendentally related to the transcendent. Hartmann's theory is called Realism because it proceeds from the subjective, the mental, to the transcendent, the real. [3] The way in which the above view has influenced psychology, physiology, etc., in various directions has been set forth by the author in works published after this book. Here he is concerned only with characterising the results of an open-minded study of thinking itself. [4] The passage from page 146 down to this point has been added, or rewritten, for the present Revised Edition. (1918). [5] A complete catalogue of the principles of morality (from the point of view of Metaphysical Realism) may be found in Eduard von Hartmann's Phänomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins. [6] Translation by Abbott, Kant's Theory of Ethics, p. 180; Critique of Pure Practical Reason, chap. iii. [7] For the manner in which I have here spoken of "Materialism," and for the justification of so speaking of it, see the Addition at the end of this chapter. [8] Only a superficial critic will find in the use of the word "faculty," in this and other passages, a relapse into the old-fashioned doctrine of faculties of the soul. [9] When Paulsen, p. 15 of the book mentioned above, says: "Different natural endowments and different conditions of life demand both a different bodily and also a different mental and moral diet," he is very close to the correct view, but yet he misses the decisive point. In so far as I am an individual, I need no diet. Dietetic means the art of bringing a particular specimen into harmony with the universal laws of the genus. But as an individual I am not a specimen of a genus. [10] The Editor would call the reader's attention to the fact that this book was written in 1894. For many years Dr. Steiner's efforts have been chiefly concentrated in upholding the Divinity of Christ consistently with the broader lines of the Christian Churches. [11] We are entitled to speak of thoughts (ethical ideas) as objects of observation. For, although the products of thinking do not enter the field of observation, so long as the thinking goes on, they may well become objects of observation subsequently. In this way we have gained our characterisation of action. [12] Those who want to settle by calculation whether the sum total of pleasure or that of pain is bigger, ignore that they are subjecting to calculation something which is nowhere experienced. Feeling does not calculate, and what matters for the real valuing of life is what we really experience, not what results from an imaginary calculation. [13] We disregard here the case where excessive increase of pleasure turns pleasure into pain. [14] Immediately upon the publication of this book (1894), critics objected to the above arguments that, even now, within the generic character of her sex, a woman is able to shape her life individually, just as she pleases, and far more freely than a man who is already de-individualised, first by the school, and later by war and profession. I am aware that this objection will be urged to-day, even more strongly. None the less, I feel bound to let my sentences stand, in the hope that there are readers who appreciate how violently such an objection runs counter to the concept of freedom advocated in this book, and who will interpret my sentences above by another standard than that of man's loss of individuality through school and profession. [15] The Preface and Introduction to the original edition of "Truth and Science" are printed as Appendix III and Appendix IV at the end of this volume. [16] l.c., p. 20. [17] cf. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Intr. to 2nd edit., Section vi. [18] Prolegomena, Section v. [19] Critique of Pure Reason, Intr., Section iv. [20] cf. his Analyse der Wirklichkeit, Gedanken und Tatsachen. [21] "Possible" here means merely conceivable. [22] cf. Die Welt als Wahrnehmung und Begriff, pp. 161 ff. [23] This attempt, by the way, is one which the objections of Robert Zimmermann (Über Kant's mathematisches Vorurteil und dessen Folgen) show to be, if not wholly mistaken, at least highly questionable. [24] Critique of Pure Reason, Intr. to 2nd edit., Section ii. [25] cf. Kant's Theorie der Erfahrung, pp. 90 ff. [26] l.c., Section v. [27] cf. Kant's Theorie der Erfahrung, pp. 90 ff. [28] cf. Die Grundsätze der reinen Erkenntnistheorie in der Kantischen Philosophie, p. 76. [29] l.c., p. 21. [30] Zur Analyse der Wirklichkeit, pp. 211 ff. [31] Darstellung der Kantischen Erkenntnistheorie, p. 14. [32] Vierteljahrsschrift für Wissenschaftliche Philosophie, 1877, p. 239. [33] System der Logik, 3rd edit., pp. 380 ff. [34] Kritische Grundlagen des Transcendentalen Realismus, pp. 142-172. [35] Geschichte der Neueren Philosophie, Vol. v., p. 60. Volkelt is mistaken about Fischer when he says (Kant's Erkenntnistheorie, p. 198, n.) that "it is not clear from Fischer's account whether, in his opinion, Kant takes for granted only the psychological fact of the occurrence of universal and necessary judgments, but also their objective validity and truth." For, in the passage referred to above, Fischer says that the chief difficulty of the Critique of Pure Reason is to be found in the fact that "its fundamental positions rest on certain presuppositions" which "have to be granted if the rest is to be valid." These presuppositions consist for Fischer, too, in this, that "first the fact of knowledge is affirmed," and then analysis reveals the cognitive faculties "by means of which that fact itself is explained." [36] How far our own epistemological discussions conform to this method, will be shown in Section iv, "The Starting-points of the Theory of Knowledge." [37] l.c., Preface, p. x. [38] Zur Analyse der Wirklichkeit (Strassburg, 1876), p. 28. [39] Kant's Erkenntnistheorie, Section i. [40] A. Dorner, Das menschliche Erkennen (Berlin, 1887). [41] Rehmke, l.c. [42] Die Lehre vom Wissen (Berlin, 1868). [43] Die Grundfragen der Erkenntnistheorie (Mainz, 1887) p. 385. [44] System der kritischen Philosophie, I. Teil, p. 257. [45] Das Grundproblem der Erkenntnistheorie, p. 37. [46] Philosophische Monatshefte, Vol. xxvi (1890), p. 390. [47] Das Grundproblem der Erkenntnistheorie, p. 1. [48] By "concept" I mean a rule for the synthesis of the disconnected data of perception into a unity. Causality, e.g., is a "concept." By "idea" I mean nothing but a concept of richer connotation. "Organism," taken quite generally, is an example of an "idea." [49] It ought not to be necessary to say that the term "centre," here, is not intended to affirm a theory concerning the nature of consciousness, but is used merely as a shorthand expression for the total physiognomy of consciousness. [50] Fichte's Sämtliche Werke, Vol. I, p. 71. [51] l.c., Vol. I, p. 97. [52] l.c., Vol. I, p. 91. [53] l.c., Vol. I, p. 178. [54] l.c., Vol. I, p. 91. [55] Geschichte der Philosophie, p. 605. [56] Fichte, Sämtliche Werke, Vol. I, p. 94. [57] l.c., Vol. I, p. 98. [58] l.c., Vol. I, p. 422. [59] Delivered in the autumn of 1813 at the University of Berlin. See Nachgelassene Werke, Vol. I, p. 4. [60] l.c., Vol. I, p. 16. [61] cf. his Christliche Dogmatik, 2nd edit., 1884-5. The epistemological arguments are in Vol. I. An exhaustive discussion of his point of view has been furnished by E. von Hartmann. See his Kritische Wanderungen durch die Philosophie der Gegenwart, pp. 200 ff. [62] Only the very first opening sentences (in the first edition) of this argument have been altogether omitted here, because they seem to me to-day wholly irrelevant. But the rest of the chapter seems to me even to day relevant and necessary, in spite, nay, because, of the scientific bias of contemporary thought. [63] Truth seek we both--Thou in the life without thee and around; I in the heart within. By both can Truth alike be found. The healthy eye can through the world the great Creator track; The healthy heart is but the glass which gives Creation back. Bulwer. [64] Erfahrung und Denken, Kritische Grundlegung der Erkenntnistheorie, von Johannes Volkelt (Hamburg und Leipzig, 1886). 
38117	----	The Book _of_ Life UPTON SINCLAIR THE BOOK OF LIFE _The_ Book of Life _By_ UPTON SINCLAIR VOLUME ONE: MIND AND BODY VOLUME TWO: LOVE AND SOCIETY UPTON SINCLAIR PASADENA, CALIFORNIA WHOLESALE DISTRIBUTORS _THE PAINE BOOK COMPANY_ CHICAGO COPYRIGHT, 1921, 1922 BY UPTON SINCLAIR _All Rights Reserved._ _To_ Kate Crane Gartz in acknowledgment of her unceasing efforts for a better world, and her fidelity to those who struggle to achieve it. INTRODUCTORY The writer of this book has been in this world some forty-two years. That may not seem long to some, but it is long enough to have made many painful mistakes, and to have learned much from them. Looking about him, he sees others making these same mistakes, suffering for lack of that same knowledge which he has so painfully acquired. This being the case, it seems a friendly act to offer his knowledge, minus the blunders and the pain. There come to the writer literally thousands of letters every year, asking him questions, some of them of the strangest. A man is dying of cancer, and do I think it can be cured by a fast? A man is unable to make his wife happy, and can I tell him what is the matter with women? A man has invested his savings in mining stock, and can I tell him what to do about it? A man works in a sweatshop, and has only a little time for self-improvement, and will I tell him what books he ought to read? Many such questions every day make one aware of a vast mass of people, earnest, hungry for happiness, and groping as if in a fog. The things they most need to know they are not taught in the schools, nor in the newspapers they read, nor in the church they attend. Of these agencies, the first is not entirely competent, the second is not entirely honest, and the third is not entirely up to date. Nor is there anywhere a book in which the effort has been made to give to everyday human beings the everyday information they need for the successful living of their lives. For the present book the following claims may be made. First, it is a modern book; its writer watches hour by hour the new achievements of the human mind, he reaches out for information about them, he seeks to adjust his own thoughts to them and to test them in his own living. Second, it is, or tries hard to be, a wise book; its writer is not among those too-ardent young radicals who leap to the conclusion that because many old things are stupid and tiresome, therefore everything that is old is to be spurned with contempt, and everything that proclaims itself new is to be taken at its own valuation. Third, it is an honest book; its writer will not pretend to know what he only guesses, and where it is necessary to guess, he will say so frankly. Finally, it is a kind book; it is not written for its author's glory, nor for his enrichment, but to tell you things that may be useful to you in the brief span of your life. It will attempt to tell you how to live, how to find health and happiness and success, how to work and how to play, how to eat and how to sleep, how to love and to marry and to care for your children, how to deal with your fellow men in business and politics and social life, how to act and how to think, what religion to believe, what art to enjoy, what books to read. A large order, as the boys phrase it! There are several ways for such a book to begin. It might begin with the child, because we all begin that way; it might begin with love, because that precedes the child; it might begin with the care of the body, explaining that sound physical health is the basis of all right living, and even of right thinking; it might begin as most philosophies do, by defining life, discussing its origin and fundamental nature. The trouble with this last plan is that there are a lot of people who have their ideas on life made up in tabloid form; they have creeds and catechisms which they know by heart, and if you suggest to them anything different, they give you a startled look and get out of your way. And then there is another, and in our modern world a still larger class, who say, "Oh, shucks! I don't go in for religion and that kind of thing." You offer them something that looks like a sermon, and they turn to the baseball page. Who will read this Book of Life? There will be, among others, the great American tired business man. He wrestles with problems and cares all day, and when he sits down to read in the evening, he says: "Make it short and snappy." There is the wife of the tired business man, the American perfect lady. She does most of the reading for the family; but she has never got down to anything fundamental in her life, and mostly she likes to read about exciting love affairs, which she distinguishes from the unexciting kind she knows by the word "romance." Then there is the still more tired American workingman, who has been "speeded up" all day under the bonus system or the piece-work system, and is apt to fall asleep in his chair before he finishes supper. Then there is the workingman's wife, who has slaved all day in the kitchen, and has a chance for a few minutes' intimacy with her husband before he falls asleep. She would like to have somebody tell her what to do for croup, but she is not sure that she has time to discuss the question whether life is worth living. Yet, I wonder; is there a single one among all these tired people, or even among the cynical people, who has not had some moment of awe when the thought came stabbing into his mind like a knife: "What a strange thing this life is! What am I anyhow? Where do I come from, and what is going to become of me? What do I mean, what am I here for?" I have sat chatting with three hoboes by a railroad track, cooking themselves a mulligan in an old can, and heard one of them say: "By God, it's a queer thing, ain't it, mate?" I have sat on the deck of a ship, looking out over the midnight ocean and talking with a sailor, and heard him use almost the identical words. It is not only in the class-room and the schools that the minds of men are grappling with the fundamental problems; in fact, it was not from the schools that the new religions and the great moral impulses of humanity took their origin. It was from lonely shepherds sitting on the hillsides, and from fishermen casting their nets, and from carpenters and tailors and shoemakers at their benches. Stop and think a bit, and you will realize it does make a difference what you believe about life, how it comes to be, where it is going, and what is your place in it. Is there a heaven with a God, who watches you day and night, and knows every thought you think, and will some day take you to eternal bliss if you obey his laws? If you really believe that, you will try to find out about his laws, and you will be comparatively little concerned about the success or failure of your business. Perhaps, on the other hand, you have knocked about in the world and lost your "faith"; you have been cheated and exploited, and have set out to "get yours," as the phrase is; to "feather your own nest." But some gust of passion seizes you, and you waste your substance, you wreck your life; then you wonder, "Who set that trap and baited it? Am I a creature of blind instincts, jealousies and greeds and hates beyond my own control entirely? Am I a poor, feeble insect, blown about in a storm and smashed? Or do I make the storm, and can I in any part control it?" No matter how busy you may be, no matter how tired you may be, it will pay you to get such things straight: to know a little of what the wise men of the past have thought about them, and more especially what science with its new tools of knowledge may have discovered. The writer of this book spent nine years of his life in colleges and universities; also he was brought up in a church. So he knows the orthodox teachings, he can say that he has given to the recognized wise men of the world every opportunity to tell him what they know. Then, being dissatisfied, he went to the unrecognized teachers, the enthusiasts and the "cranks" of a hundred schools. Finally, he thought for himself; he was even willing to try experiments upon himself. As a result, he has not found what he claims is ultimate or final truth; but he has what he might describe as a rough working draft, a practical outline, good for everyday purposes. He is going to have confidence enough in you, the reader, to give you the hardest part first; that is, to begin with the great fundamental questions. What is life, and how does it come to be? What does it mean, and what have we to do with it? Are we its masters or its slaves? What does it owe us, and what do we owe to it? Why is it so hard, and do we have to stand its hardness? And can we really know about all these matters, or will we be only guessing? Can we trust ourselves to think about them, or shall we be safer if we believe what we are told? Shall we be punished if we think wrong, and how shall we be punished? Shall we be rewarded if we think right, and will the pay be worth the trouble? Such questions as these I am going to try to answer in the simplest language possible. I would avoid long words altogether, if I could; but some of these long words mean certain definite things, and there are no other words to serve the purpose. You do not refuse to engage in the automobile business because the carburetor and the differential are words of four syllables. Neither should you refuse to get yourself straight with the universe because it is too much trouble to go to the dictionary and learn that the word "phenomenon" means something else than a little boy who can play the piano or do long division in his head. CONTENTS PART ONE: THE BOOK OF THE MIND PAGE CHAPTER I. THE NATURE OF LIFE 3 Attempts to show what we know about life; to set the bounds of real truth as distinguished from phrases and self-deception. CHAPTER II. THE NATURE OF FAITH 8 Attempts to show what we can prove by our reason, and what we know intuitively; what is implied in the process of thinking, and without which no thought could be. CHAPTER III. THE USE OF REASON 12 Attempts to show that in the field to which reason applies we are compelled to use it, and are justified in trusting it. CHAPTER IV. THE ORIGIN OF MORALITY 17 Compares the ways of Nature with human morality, and tries to show how the latter came to be. CHAPTER V. NATURE AND MAN 21 Attempts to show how man has taken control of Nature, and is carrying on her processes and improving upon them. CHAPTER VI. MAN THE REBEL 27 Shows the transition stage between instinct and reason, in which man finds himself, and how he can advance to a securer condition. CHAPTER VII. MAKING OUR MORALS 31 Attempts to show that human morality must change to fit human facts, and there can be no judge of it save human reason. CHAPTER VIII. THE VIRTUE OF MODERATION 37 Attempts to show that wise conduct is an adjustment of means to ends, and depends upon the understanding of a particular set of circumstances. CHAPTER IX. THE CHOOSING OF LIFE 42 Discusses the standards by which we may judge what is best in life, and decide what we wish to make of it. CHAPTER X. MYSELF AND MY NEIGHBOR 50 Compares the new morality with the old, and discusses the relative importance of our various duties. CHAPTER XI. THE MIND AND THE BODY 53 Discusses the interaction between physical and mental things, and the possibility of freedom in a world of fixed causes. CHAPTER XII. THE MIND OF THE BODY 61 Discusses the subconscious mind, what it is, what it does to the body, and how it can be controlled and made use of by the intelligence. CHAPTER XIII. EXPLORING THE SUBCONSCIOUS 67 Discusses automatic writing, the analysis of dreams, and other methods by which a new universe of life has been brought to human knowledge. CHAPTER XIV. THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY 74 Discusses the survival of personality from the moral point of view: that is, have we any claim upon life, entitling us to live forever? CHAPTER XV. THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 81 Discusses the data of psychic research, and the proofs of spiritism thus put before us. CHAPTER XVI. THE POWERS OF THE MIND 91 Sets forth the fact that knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery, and what science means to the people. CHAPTER XVII. THE CONDUCT OF THE MIND 98 Concludes the Book of the Mind with a study of how to preserve and develop its powers for the protection of our lives and the lives of all men. PART TWO: THE BOOK OF THE BODY CHAPTER XVIII. THE UNITY OF THE BODY 105 Discusses the body as a whole, and shows that health is not a matter of many different organs and functions, but is one problem of one organism. CHAPTER XIX. EXPERIMENTS IN DIET 115 Narrates the author's adventures in search of health, and his conclusions as to what to eat. CHAPTER XX. ERRORS IN DIET 123 Discusses the different kinds of foods, and the part they play in the making of health and disease. CHAPTER XXI. DIET STANDARDS 134 Discusses various foods and their food values, the quantities we need, and their money cost. CHAPTER XXII. FOODS AND POISONS 145 Concludes the subject of diet, and discusses the effect upon the system of stimulants and narcotics. CHAPTER XXIII. MORE ABOUT HEALTH 156 Discusses the subjects of breathing and ventilation, clothing, bathing and sleep. CHAPTER XXIV. WORK AND PLAY 163 Deals with the question of exercise, both for the idle and the overworked. CHAPTER XXV. THE FASTING CURE 169 Deals with Nature's own remedy for disease, and how to make use of it. CHAPTER XXVI. BREAKING THE FAST 177 Discusses various methods of building up the body after a fast, especially the milk diet. CHAPTER XXVII. DISEASES AND CURES 182 Discusses some of the commoner human ailments, and what is known about their cause and cure. PART ONE THE BOOK OF THE MIND CHAPTER I THE NATURE OF LIFE (Attempts to show what we know about life; to set the bounds of real truth as distinguished from phrases and self-deception.) If I could, I would begin this book by telling you what Life is. But unfortunately I do not know what Life is. The only consolation I can find is in the fact that nobody else knows either. We ask the churches, and they tell us that male and female created He them, and put them in the Garden of Eden, and they would have been happy had not Satan tempted them. But then you ask, who made Satan, and the explanation grows vague. You ask, if God made Satan, and knew what Satan was going to do, is it not the same as if God did it himself? So this explanation of the origin of evil gets you no further than the Hindoo picture of the world resting on the back of a tortoise, and the tortoise on the head of a snake--and nothing said as to what the snake rests on. Let us go to the scientist. I know a certain physiologist, perhaps the greatest in the world, and his eager face rises before me, and I hear his quick, impetuous voice declaring that he knows what Life is; he has told it in several big volumes, and all I have to do is to read them. Life is a tropism, caused by the presence of certain combinations of chemicals; my friend knows this, because he has produced the thing in his test-tubes. He is an exponent of a way of thought called Monism, which finds the ultimate source of being in forms of energy manifesting themselves as matter; he shows how all living things arise from that and sink back into it. But question this scientist more closely. What is this "matter" that you are so sure of? How do you know it? Obviously, through sensations. You never know matter itself, you only know its effects upon you, and you assume that the matter must be there to cause the sensation. In other words, "matter," which seems so real, turns out to be merely "a permanent possibility of sensation." And suppose there were to be sensations, caused, for example, by a sportive demon who liked to make fun of eminent physiologists--then there might be the appearance of matter and nothing else; in other words, there might be mind, and various states of mind. So we discover that the materialist, in the philosophic sense, is making just as large an act of faith, is pronouncing just as bold a dogma as any priest of any religion. This is an old-time topic of disputation. Before Mother Eddy there was Bishop Berkeley, and before Berkeley, there was Plato, and they and the materialists disputed until their hearers cried in despair, "What is Mind? No matter! What is Matter? Never mind!" But a century or two ago in a town of Prussia there lived a little, dried-up professor of philosophy, who sat himself down in his room and fixed his eyes on a church steeple outside the window, and for years on end devoted himself to examining the tools of thought with which the human mind is provided, and deciding just what work and how much of it they are fitted to do. So came the proof that our minds are incapable of reaching to or dealing with any ultimate reality whatever, but can comprehend only phenomena--that is to say, appearances--and their relations one with another. The Koenigsberg professor proved this once for all time, setting forth four propositions about ultimate reality, and proving them by exact and irrefutable logic, and then proving by equally exact and irrefutable logic their precise opposites and contraries. Anybody who has read and comprehended the four "antinomies" of Immanuel Kant[A] knows that metaphysics is as dead a subject as astrology, and that all the complicated theories which the philosophers from Heraclitus to Arthur Balfour have spun like spiders out of their inner consciousness, have no more relation to reality than the intricacies of the game of chess. [A] See Paulsen: "Life of Kant." The writer is sorry to make this statement, because he spent a lot of time reading these philosophers and acquainting himself with their subtle theories. He learned a whole language of long words, and even the special meanings which each philosopher or school of philosophers give to them. When he had got through, he had learned, so far as metaphysics is concerned, absolutely nothing, and had merely the job of clearing out of his mind great masses of verbal cobwebs. It was not even good intellectual training; the metaphysical method of thought is a _trap_. The person who thinks in absolutes and ultimates is led to believe that he has come to conclusions about reality, when as a matter of fact he has merely proved what he wants to believe; if he had wanted to believe the opposite, he could have proven that exactly as well--as his opponents will at once demonstrate. If you multiply two feet by two feet, the result represents a plain surface, or figure of two dimensions. If you multiply two feet by two feet by two feet, you have a solid, or figure of three dimensions--such as the world in which we live and move. But now, suppose you multiply two feet by two feet by two feet by two feet, what does that represent? For ages the minds of mathematicians and philosophers have been tempted by this fascinating problem of the "fourth dimension." They have worked out by analogy what such a world would be like. If you went into this "fourth dimension," you could turn yourself inside out, and come back to our present world in that condition, and no one of your three-dimension friends would be able to imagine how you had managed it, or to put you back again the way you belonged. And in this, it seems to me, we have the perfect analogy of metaphysical thinking. It is the "fourth dimension" of the mind, and plays as much havoc with sound thinking as a physical "fourth dimension" would play with--say, the prison system. A man who takes up an absolute--God, immortality, the origin of being, a first cause, free will, absolute right or wrong, infinite time or space, final truth, original substance, the "thing in itself"--that man disappears into a fourth dimension, and turns himself inside out or upside down or hindside foremost, and comes back and exhibits himself in triumph; then, when he is ready, he effects another disappearance, and another change, and is back on earth an ordinary human being. The world is full of schools of thought, theologians and metaphysicians and professors of academic philosophy, transcendentalists and theosophists and Christian Scientists, who perform such mental monkey-shines continuously before our eyes. They prove what they please, and the fact that no two of them prove the same thing makes clear to us in the end that none of them has proved anything. The Christian Scientist asserts that there is no such thing as matter, but that pain is merely a delusion of mortal mind; he continues serene in this faith until he runs into an automobile and sustains a compound fracture of the femur--whereupon he does exactly what any of the rest of us do, goes to a competent surgeon and has the bone set. On the other hand, some devoted young Socialists of my acquaintance have read Haeckel and Dietzgen, and adopted the dogma that matter is the first cause, and that all things have grown out of it and return to it; they have seen that the brain decays after death, they declare that the soul is a function of the brain--and because of such theories they deliberately reject the most powerful modes of appeal whereby men can be swayed to faith in human solidarity. The best books I know for the sweeping out of metaphysical cobwebs are "The Philosophy of Common Sense" and "The Creed of a Layman," by Frederic Harrison, leader of the English Positivists, a school of thought established by Auguste Comte. But even as I recommend these books, I recall the dissatisfaction with which I left them; for it appears that the Positivists have their dogmas like all the rest. Mr. Harrison is not content to say that mankind has not the mental tools for dealing with ultimate realities; he must needs prove that mankind never will and never can have these tools, I look back upon the long process of evolution and ask myself, What would an oyster think about Positivism? What would be the opinion of, let us say, a young turnip on the subject of Mr. Frederic Harrison's thesis? It may well be that the difference between a turnip and Mr. Harrison is not so great as will be the difference between Mr. Harrison and that super-race which some day takes possession of the earth and of all the universe. It does not seem to me good science or good sense to dogmatize about what this race will know, or what will be its tools of thought. What does seem to me good science and good sense is to take the tools which we now possess and use them to their utmost capacity. What is it that we know about life? We know a seemingly endless stream of sensations which manifest themselves in certain ways, and seem to inhere in what we call things and beings. We observe incessant change in all these phenomena, and we examine these changes and discover their ways. The ways seem to be invariable; so completely so that for practical purposes we assume them to be invariable, and base all our calculations and actions upon this assumption. Manifestly, we could not live otherwise, and the spread of scientific knowledge is the further tracing out of such "laws"--that is to say, the ways of behaving of existence--and the extending of our belief in their invariability to wider and wider fields. Once upon a time we were told that "the wind bloweth where it listeth." But now we are quite certain that there are causes for the blowing of the wind, and when our researches have been carried far enough, we shall be able to account for and to predict every smallest breath of air. Once we were told that dreams came from a supernatural world; but now we are beginning to analyze dreams, and to explain what they come from and what they mean. Perhaps we still find human nature a bewildering and unaccountable thing; but some day we shall know enough of man's body and his mind, his past and his present, to be able to explain human nature and to produce it at will, precisely as today we produce certain reactions in our test-tubes, and do it so invariably that the most cautious financier will invest tens of millions of dollars in a process, and never once reflect that he is putting too much trust in the permanence of nature. In many departments of thought great specialists are now working, experimenting and observing by the methods of science. If in the course of this book we speak of "certainty," we mean, of course, not the "absolute" certainty of any metaphysical dogma, but the practical certainty of everyday common sense; the certainty we feel that eating food will satisfy our hunger, and that tomorrow, as today, two and two will continue to make four. CHAPTER II THE NATURE OF FAITH (Attempts to show what we can prove by our reason, and what we know intuitively; what is implied in the process of thinking, and without which no thought could be.) The primary fact that we know about life is growth. Herbert Spencer has defined this growth, or evolution, in a string of long words which may be summed up to mean: the process whereby a number of things which are simple and like one another become different parts of one thing which is complex. If we observe this process in ourselves, and the symptoms of it in others, we discover that when it is proceeding successfully, it is accompanied by a sensation of satisfaction which we call happiness or pleasure; also that when it is thwarted or repressed, it is accompanied by a different sensation which we call pain. Subtle metaphysicians, both inside the churches and out, have set themselves to the task of proving that there must be some other object of life than the continuance of these sensations of pleasure which accompany successful growth. They have proven to their own satisfaction that morality will collapse and human progress come to an end unless we can find some other motive, something more permanent and more stimulating, something "higher," as they phrase it. All I can say is that I gave reverent attention to the arguments of these moralists and theologians, and that for many years I believed their doctrines; but I believe them no longer. I interpret the purpose of life to be the continuous unfoldment of its powers, its growth into higher forms--that is to say, forms more complex and subtly contrived, capable of more intense and enduring kinds of that satisfaction which is nature's warrant of life. If you wish to take up this statement and argue about it, please wait until you have read the chapter "Nature and Man," and noted my distinction between instinctive life and rational life. For men, the word "growth" does not mean _any_ growth, _all_ growth, blind and indiscriminate growth. It does not mean growth for the tubercle bacillus, nor growth for the anopheles mosquito, nor growth for the house-fly, the spider and the louse. Neither do we mean that the purpose of man's own life is _any_ pleasure, _all_ pleasure, blind and indiscriminate pleasure; the pleasure of alcohol, the pleasure of cannibalism, the pleasure of the modern form of cannibalism which we call "making money." We have survived in the struggle for existence by the cooperative and social use of our powers of judgment; and our judgment is that which selects among forms of growth, which gives preference to wheat and corn over weeds, and to self-control and honesty over treachery and greed. So when we say that the purpose of life is happiness, we do not mean to turn mankind loose at a hog-trough; we mean that our duty as thinkers is to watch life, to test it, to pick and choose among the many forms it offers, and to say: This kind of growth is more permanent and full of promise, it is more fertile, more deeply satisfactory; therefore, we choose this, and sanction the kind of pleasure which it brings. Other kinds we decide are temporary and delusive; therefore we put in jail anyone who sells alcoholic drink, and we refuse to invite to our home people who are lewd, and some day we shall not permit our children to attend moving picture shows in which the modern form of cannibalism is glorified. The reader, no doubt, has been taught a distinction between "science" and "faith." He is saying now, "You believe that everything is to be determined by human reason? You reject all faith?" I answer, No; I am not rejecting faith; I am merely refusing to apply it to objects with which it has nothing to do. You do not take it as a matter of faith that a package of sugar weighs a pound; you put it on the scales and find out--in other words, you make it a matter of experiment. But all the creeds of all the religious sects are full of pronouncements which are no more matters of faith than the question of the weighing of sugar. Is pork a wholesome article of food or is it not? All Christians will readily acknowledge that this is a matter to be determined by the microscope and other devices of experimental science; but then some Jew rises in the meeting and puts the question: Is dancing injurious to the character? And immediately all members of the Methodist Episcopal Church vote to close the discussion. What is faith? Faith is the instinct which underlies all being, assuring us that life is worth while and honest, a thing to be trusted; in other words, it is the certainty that successful growth always is and always will be accompanied by pleasure. The most skeptical scientist in the world, even my friend the physiologist who proves that life is nothing but a tropism, and can be produced by mixing chemicals in test-tubes--this eager friend is one of the most faithful men I know. He is burning up with the faith that knowledge is worth possessing, and also that it is possible of attainment. With what boundless scorn would he receive any suggestion to the contrary--for example, the idea that life might be a series of sensations which some sportive demon is producing for the torment of man! More than that, this friend is burning up with the certainty that knowledge can be spread, that his fellow men will receive it and apply it, and that it will make them happy when they do. Why else does he write his learned books in defense of the materialist philosophy? And that same faith which animates the great monist animates likewise every child who toddles off to school, and every chicken which emerges from an egg, and every blade of grass which thrusts its head above the ground. Not every chicken survives, of course, and all the blades of grass wither in the fall; nevertheless, the seeds of grass are spread, and chickens make food for philosophers, and the great process of life continues to manifest its faith. In the end the life process produces man, who, as we shall presently see, takes it up, and judges it, and makes it over to suit himself. You will note from this that I am what is called an optimist; whereas some of the great philosophers of the world have called themselves pessimists. But I notice with a smile that these are often the men who work hardest of all to spread their ideas, and thus testify to the worthwhileness of truth and the perfectibility of mankind. There has come to be a saying among settlement workers and physicians, who are familiar with poverty and its effects upon life, that there are no bad babies and good babies, there are only sick babies and well babies. In the same way, I would say there are no pessimists and optimists, there are only mentally sick people and mentally well people. Everywhere throughout life, both animal and vegetable, health means happiness, and gives abundant evidence of that fact. All healthy life is satisfactory to itself; when it develops reason, it tries to find out why, and this is yet another testimony to the fact that having power and using it is pleasant. When I was in college the professor would propound the old question: "Would you rather be a happy pig or an unhappy philosopher?" My answer always was: "I would rather be a happy philosopher." The professor replied: "Perhaps that is not possible." But I said: "I will prove that it is!" CHAPTER III THE USE OF REASON (Attempts to show that in the field to which reason applies we are compelled to use it, and are justified in trusting it.) The great majority of people are brought up to believe that some particular set of dogmas are objects of faith, and that there are penalties more or less severe for the application of reason to these dogmas. What particular set it happens to be is a matter of geography; in a crowded modern city like New York, it is a matter of the particular block on which the child is born. A child born on Hester Street will be taught that his welfare depends upon his never eating meat and butter from the same dish. A child born on Tenth Avenue will be taught that it is a matter of his not eating meat on Fridays. A child born on Madison Avenue will be taught that it is a question of the precise metaphysical process by which bread is changed into human body and wine into human blood. Each of these children will be assured that his human reason is fallible, that it is extremely dangerous to apply it to this "sacred" subject, and that the proper thing to do is to accept the authority of some ancient tradition, or some institution, or some official, or some book for which a special sanction is claimed. Has there ever been in the world any revelation, outside of or above human reason? Could there ever be such a thing? In order to test this possibility, select for yourself the most convincing way by which a special revelation could be handed down to mankind. Take any of the ancient orthodox ways, the finding of graven tablets on a mountain-top, or a voice speaking from a burning bush, or an angel appearing before a great concourse of people and handing out a written scroll. Suppose that were to happen, let us say, at the next Yale-Harvard football game; suppose the news were to be flashed to the ends of the earth that God had thus presented to mankind an entirely new religion. What would be the process by which the people of London or Calcutta would decide upon that revelation? First, they would have to consider the question whether it was an American newspaper fake--by no means an easy question. Second, they would have to consider the chances of its being an optical delusion. Then, assuming they accepted the sworn testimony of ten thousand mature and competent witnesses, they would have to consider the possibility of someone having invented a new kind of invisible aeroplane. Assuming they were convinced that it was really a supernatural being, they would next have to decide the chances of its being a visitor from Mars, or from the fourth dimension of space, or from the devil. In considering all this, they would necessarily have to examine the alleged revelation. What was the literary quality of it? What was the moral quality of it? What would be the effect upon mankind if the alleged revelation were to be universally adopted and applied? Manifestly, all these are questions for the human reason, the human judgment; there is no other method of determining them, there would be nothing for any individual person, or for men as a whole to do, except to apply their best powers, and, as the phrase is, "make up their minds" about the matter. Reason would be the judge, and the new revelation would be the prisoner at the bar. Humanity might say, this is a real inspiration, we will submit ourselves to it and follow it, and allow no one from now on to question it. But inevitably there would be some who would say, "Tommyrot!" There would be others who would say, "This new revelation isn't working, it is repressing progress, it is stifling the mind." These people would stand up for their conviction, they would become martyrs, and all the world would have to discuss them. And who would decide between them and the great mass of men? Reason, the judge, would decide. It is perfectly true that human reason is fallible. Infallibility is an absolute, a concept of the mind, and not a reality. Life has not given us infallibility, any more than it has given us omniscience, or omnipotence, or any other of those attributes which we call divine. Life has given us powers, more or less weak, more or less strong, but all capable of improvement and development. Reason is the tool whereby mankind has won supremacy over the rest of the animal kingdom, and is gradually taking control of the forces of nature. It is the best tool we have, and because it is the best, we are driven irresistibly to use it. And how strange that some of us can find no better use for it than to destroy its own self! Visit one of the Jesuit fathers and hear him seek to persuade you that reason is powerless against faith and must abdicate to faith. You answer, "Yes, father, you have persuaded me. I admit the fallibility of my mortal powers; and I begin by applying my doubts of them to the arguments by which you have just convinced me. I was convinced, but of course I cannot be sure of a conviction, attained by fallible reason. Therefore I am just where I was before--except that I am no longer in position to be certain of anything." You answer in good faith, and take up your hat and depart, closing the door of the good father's study behind you. But stop a moment, why do you close the door? You close the door because your reason tells you that otherwise the cold air outside will blow in and make the good father uncomfortable. You put your hat on, because your reason has not yet been applied to the problem of the cause of baldness. You step out onto the street, and when you hear a sudden noise, you step back onto the curbstone, because your reason tells you that an automobile is coming, and that on the sidewalk you are safe from it. So you go on, using your reason in a million acts of your life whereby your life is preserved and developed. And if anybody suggested that the fallibility of your reason should cause you to delay in front of an automobile, you would apply your reason to the problem of that person and decide that he was insane. And I say that just as there is insanity in everyday judgments and relationships, so there is insanity in philosophy, metaphysics and religion; the seed and source of all this kind of insanity being the notion that it is the duty of anybody to believe anything which cannot completely justify itself as reasonable. Nowadays, as ideas are spreading, the champions of dogma are hard put to it, and you will find their minds a muddle of two points of view. The Jewish rabbi will strive desperately to think of some hygienic objection to the presence of meat and butter on the same plate; the Catholic priest will tell you that fish is a very wholesome article of food, and that anyhow we all eat too much; the Methodist and the Baptist and the Presbyterian will tell you that if men did not rest one day in seven their health would break down. Thus they justify faith by reason, and reconcile the conflict between science and theology. Accepting this method, I experiment and learn that it improves my digestion and adds to my working power if I play tennis on Sunday. I follow this indisputably rational form of conduct--and find myself in conflict with the "faith" of the ancient State of Delaware, which obliges me to serve a term in its state's prison for having innocently and unwittingly desecrated its day of holiness! If you read Professor Bury's little book, "A History of Freedom of Thought," you will discover that there has been a long conflict over the right of men to use their minds--and the victory is not yet. The term "free thinker," which ought to be the highest badge a man could wear, is still almost everywhere throughout America a term of vague terror. In the State of California today there is a Criminal Syndicalism Act, which provides a maximum of fourteen years in jail for any person who shall write or publish or speak any words expressive of the idea that the United States government should be overthrown in the same way that it was established--that is, by force; only a few months ago the writer of this book was on the witness stand for two days, and had the painful, almost incredible experience of being battered and knocked about by an inquisitive district attorney, who cross-examined him as to every detail of his beliefs, and read garbled extracts from his published writings, in the effort to make it appear that he held some belief which might possibly prejudice the jury against him. The defendant in this case, a returned soldier who had spent three years as a volunteer in the trenches, and had been twice wounded and once gassed, was accused, not merely of approving the Soviet form of government, but also of having printed uncomplimentary references to priests and religious institutions. Nowadays it is the propertied class which has taken possession of the powers of government, and which presumes to censor the thinking of mankind in its own interest. But whether it be priestcraft or whether it be capitalism which seeks to bind the human mind, it comes to the same thing, and the effort must be met by the assertion that, in spite of errors and blunders, and the serious harm these may do, there is no way for men to advance save by using the best powers of thinking they possess, and proclaiming their conclusions to others. Speaking theologically for the moment, God has given us our reasoning powers, and also the impulse to use them, and it is inconceivable that He should seek to restrict their use, or should give to anyone the power to forbid their use. It is His truth which we seek, and His which we proclaim. In so doing we perform our highest act of faith, and we refuse to be troubled by the idea that for this service He will reward us by an eternity of sulphur and brimstone. Throughout the remainder of this book it will be assumed that the reader accepts this point of view, or, at any rate, that he is willing for purposes of experiment to give it a trial and see where it leads him. We shall proceed to consider the problems of human life in the light of reason, to determine how they come to be, and how they can be solved. CHAPTER IV THE ORIGIN OF MORALITY (Compares the ways of nature with human morality, and tries to show how the latter came to be.) Seventy years ago Charles Darwin published his book, "The Origin of Species," in which he defied the theological dogma of his time by the shocking idea that life had evolved by many stages of progress from the diatom to man. This of course did not conform to the story of the Garden of Eden, and so "Darwinism" was fought as an invention of the devil, and in the interior of America there are numerous sectarian colleges where the dread term "evolution" is spoken in awed whispers. Only the other day I read in my newspaper the triumphant proclamation of some clergyman that "Darwinism" had been overthrown. This reverend gentleman had got mixed up because some biologists were disputing some detail of the method by which the evolution of species had been brought about. Do species change by the gradual elimination of the unfit, or do they change by sudden leaps, the "mutation" theory of de Vries? Are acquired powers transmitted to posterity, or is the germ plasm unaffected by its environment? Concerning such questions the scientists debate. But the fact that life has evolved in an ordered series from the lower forms to the higher, and that each individual reproduces in embryo and in infancy the history of this long process--these facts are now the basis of all modern thinking, and as generally accepted as the rotation of the earth. You may study this process of evolution from the outside, in the multitude of forms which it has assumed and in their reactions one to another; or you may study it from the inside in your own soul, the emotions which accompany it, the impulse or craving which impels it, the _élan vital_, as it is called by the French philosopher Bergson. The Christians call it love, and Nietzsche, who hated Christianity, called it "the will to power," and persuaded himself that it was the opposite of love. You will find in the essays of Professor Huxley, one entitled "Evolution and Ethics," in which he sets forth the complete unmorality of nature, and declares that there is no way by which what mankind knows as morality can have originated in the process of nature or can be reconciled to natural law. This statement, coming from a leading agnostic, was welcome to the theologians. But when I first read the essay, as a student of sixteen, it seemed to me narrow; I thought I saw a standpoint from which the contradiction disappeared. The difference between the morality of Christ and the morality of nature is merely the difference between a lower and a higher stage of mental development. The animal loves and seeks by instinct to preserve the life which it knows--that is to say, its own life and the life of its young. The wolf knows nothing about the feelings of a deer; but man in his savage state develops reasoning powers enough to realize that there are others like himself, the members of his own tribe, and he makes for himself taboos which forbid him to kill and eat the members of that tribe. At the present time humanity has developed its reason and imaginative sympathy to include in the "tribe" one or two hundred million people; while to those outside the tribe it still preserves the attitude of the wolf. How came it that a mind so acute as Huxley's went so far astray on the question of the evolution of morality? The answer is that this was the factory age in England, and the great scientist, a rebel in theological matters, was in economics a child of his time. We find him using the formulas of bourgeois biology to ridicule Henry George and his plea for the freeing of the land. "Competition is the life of trade," ran the nineteenth century slogan; and competition was the god of nineteenth century biology. Tennyson summed it up in the phrase: "Nature red in tooth and claw with ravin;" and this was found convenient by Manchester manufacturers who wished to shut little children up for fourteen hours a day in cotton mills, and to harness women to drag cars in the coal mines, and to be told by the learned men of their colleges and the holy men of their churches that this was "the survival of the fittest," it was nature's way of securing the advancement of the race. But now we are preparing for an era of cooperation, and it occurs to our men of science to go back to nature and find out what really are her ways. If you will read Kropotkin's "Mutual Aid as a Factor in Evolution," you will find a complete refutation of the old bourgeois biology, and a view of nature which reveals in it the germs of human morality. Kropotkin points out that everywhere throughout nature it is the social and not the solitary animals which are most numerous and most successful. There are many millions of ants and bees for every hawk or eagle, and certainly in the state of nature there were thousands of deer for every lion or tiger that preyed upon them. And all these social creatures have their ways of being, which it requires no stress of the imagination to compare with the tribal customs and the moral codes of mankind. The different animals prey upon one another, but they do not prey upon their own species, except in a few rare cases. The only beast that makes a regular practice of exploiting his own kind is man. By hundreds of interesting illustrations Kropotkin shows that mutual aid and mutual self-protection are the means whereby the higher forms of being have been evolved. Insects and birds and fish, nearly all the herbivorous mammals, and even a great many of the carnivores, help one another and protect one another. The chattering monkeys in the treetops drove out the saber-tooth tiger from the grove because there were so many of them, and when they saw him they all set up a shriek and clamor which deafened and confused him. And when by and by these monkeys developed an opposed thumb, and broke off a branch of a tree for a club, and fastened a sharp stone on the end of it for an axe, and fell upon the saber-toothed tiger and exterminated him, they did it because they had learned solidarity--even as the workers of the world are today learning solidarity in the face of the beast of capitalism. Man has survived by the cunning of his brain, we are told, and that is true. But first among the products of that cunning brain has been the knowledge that by himself he is the most helpless and pitiful of creatures, while standing together and forming societies and developing moralities, he is master of the world. He has not yet learned that lesson entirely; he has learned it only for his own nation. Therefore he takes the highest skill of his hand and the subtlest wit of his brain, and uses them to manufacture poison gases. At the present hour he is painfully realizing that his poison formulas all become known to the tribes whom he calls his enemies, and so it is his own destruction he is engaged in contriving. In other words, man has come to a time when his mechanical skill, his mastery over the forces of nature, has developed more rapidly than his moral sense and his imaginative sympathy. His ability to destroy life has become dangerously greater than his desire to preserve it. So he confronts the fair face of nature as an insane creature, wrecking not merely everything that he himself has built up, but everything that nature has built in the ages before him. He is striving now with infinite agony to make this fact real to himself, and to mend his evil ways; and the first step in that process is to root out from his mind the devil's doctrine which in his blindness and greed he has himself implanted, that there is any way for him to find real happiness, or to make any worth while progress on this earth, by the method of inflicting misery and torment upon his fellow men. CHAPTER V NATURE AND MAN (Attempts to show how man has taken control of nature, and is carrying on her processes and improving upon them.) If the argument of the preceding chapter is sound, human morality is not a fixed and eternal set of laws, but is, like everything else in the world, a product of natural evolution. We can trace the history of it, just as we trace the story of the rocks. It is not a mysterious or supernatural thing, it is simply the reaction of man to his environment, and more especially to his fellow men. The source of it is that same inner impulse, that love of life, that joy in growing, that faith which appears to be the soul of all being. Man is a part of nature and a product of nature; in many fundamental respects his ways are still nature's ways and his laws still nature's laws. But there are other and even more significant ways in which man has separated himself from nature and made himself something quite different. In order to reveal this clearly, we draw a distinction between nature and man. This is a proper thing to do, provided we bear in mind that our classification is not permanent or final. We distinguish frogs from tadpoles, in spite of the fact that at one stage the creature is half tadpole and half frog. We distinguish the animal from the vegetable kingdom, despite the fact that in their lower forms they cannot be distinguished. What, precisely, is the difference between nature and man? The difference lies in the fact that nature is apparently blind in her processes; she produces a million eggs in order to give life to one salmon, she produces countless millions of salmon to be devoured by other fish apparently no better than salmon. Poets may take up the doctrine of evolution and dress it out in theological garments, talking about the "one far off divine event towards which the whole creation moves," but for all we can see, nature, apart from man, is just as well satisfied to move in circles, and to come back exactly where she started. Nature made a whole world of complicated creatures in the steamy, luke-warm swamps of the Mesozoic era, and then, as if deciding that the pattern of a large body and a small brain was not a success, she froze them all to death with a glacial epoch, and we have nothing but the bones to tell us about them. No one understands anything about evolution until he has realized that the phrase "the survival of the fittest" does not mean the survival of the best from any human point of view. It merely means the survival of those capable of surviving in some particular environment. We consider our present civilization as "fit"; but if astronomical changes should cause another ice age, we should discover that our "fitness" depended upon our ability to live on lichens, or on something we could grow by artificial light in the bowels of the earth. So much for our ancient mother, nature. But now--whether we say with the theologians that it was divine providence, or with the materialist philosophers that it was an accidental mixing of atoms--at any rate it has come about that nature has recently produced creatures who are conscious of her process, who are able to observe and criticize it, to take up her work and carry it on in their own way, for better or for worse. Whether by accident or design, there has been on parts of our planet such a combination of climate and soil as has brought into being a new product of nature, a heightened form of life which we call "intelligence." Creation opens its eyes, and beholds the work of the creator, and decides that it is good--yet not so good as it might be! Creation takes up the work of the creator, and continues it, in many respects annulling it, in other respects revising it entirely. Whether a sonnet is a better or a higher product than a spider is a question it would be futile to discuss; but this, at least, should be clear--nature has produced an infinity of spiders, but nature never produced a sonnet, nor anything resembling it. Man, the creature of God, takes over the functions of God. This fact may shock us, or it may inspire us; to the metaphysically minded it offers a great variety of fascinating problems. Can it be that God is in process of becoming, that there is no God until he has become, in us and through us? H. G. Wells sets forth this curious idea; and then, of course, the bishops and the clergy rise up in indignation and denounce Mr. Wells as an upstart and trespasser upon their field. They have been worshipping their God for some three or four thousand years, and know that He has been from eternity; He created the world at His will, and how shall impious man presume to rise up and criticize His product, and imagine that he can improve upon it? Man, with his cheap and silly little toys, his sonnets and scientific systems, his symphony concerts and such pale imitations of celestial harmonies! Mr. Wells, in his character of God in the making, has created a bishop of his own, and no doubt would maintain the thesis that he is a far better bishop than any created by the God of the Anglican churches. We will leave Mr. Wells' bishop to argue these problems with God's bishops, and will merely remind the reader of our warning about these metaphysical matters. You can prove anything and everything, whichever and however, all or both; and discussions of the subject are merely your enunciation of the fact that you have your private truth as you want it. It may be that there is an Infinite Consciousness, which carries the whole process of creation in itself, and that all the seeming wastes and blunders of nature can be explained from some point of view at present beyond the reach of our minds. On the other hand it may be that consciousness is now dawning in the universe for the first time. It may be that it is an accident, a fleeting product like the morning mist on the mountain top. On the other hand, it may be that it is destined to grow and expand and take control of the entire universe, as a farmer takes control of a field for his own purposes. It may be that just as our individual fragments of intelligence communicate and merge into a family, a club, a nation, a world culture, so we shall some day grope our way toward the consciousness of other planets, or of other states of being subsisting on this planet unknown to us, or perhaps even toward the cosmic soul, the universal consciousness which we call God. But meantime, all we can say with positiveness is this: man, the created, is becoming the creator. He is taking up the world purpose, he is imposing upon it new purposes of his own, he is attempting to impose upon it a moral code, to test it and discipline it by a new standard which he calls economy. To the present writer this seems the most significant fact about life, the most fascinating point of view from which life can be regarded. The reader who wishes to follow it into greater detail is referred to a little book by Professor E. Ray Lankester, "The Kingdom of Man"; especially the opening essay, with its fascinating title, "Nature's Insurgent Son." In what ways have the reasoned and deliberate purposes of man revised and even supplanted the processes of nature? The ways are so many that it would be easier to mention those in which he has not done so. A modern civilized man is hardly content with anything that nature does, nor willing to accept any of nature's products. He will not eat nature's fruits, he prefers the kinds that he himself has brought into being. He is not content with the skin that nature has given him; he has made himself an infinite variety of complicated coverings. He objects to nature's habit of pouring cold water upon him, and so he has built himself houses in which he makes his own climate; he has recently taken to creating for himself houses which roll along the ground, or which fly through the air, or which swim under the surface of the sea; so he carries his private climate with him to all these places. It was nature's custom to remove her blunders and her experiments quickly from her sight. But man has decided that he loves life so well that he will preserve even the imbeciles, the lame and the halt and the blind. In a state of nature, if a man's eyes were not properly focused, he blundered into the lair of a tiger and was eaten. But civilized man despises such a method of maintaining the standard of human eyes; he creates for himself a transparent product, ground to such a curve that it corrects the focus of his eyes, and makes them as good as any other eyes. In ten thousand such ways we might name, man has rebelled against the harshness of his ancient mother, and has freed himself from her control. But still he is the child of his mother, and so it is his way to act first, and then to realize what he has done. So it comes about that very few, even of the most highly educated men, are aware how completely the ancient ways of nature have been suppressed by her "insurgent son." It is a good deal as in the various trades and professions which have developed with such amazing rapidity in modern civilization; the paper man knows how to make paper, the shoe man knows how to make shoes, the optician knows about grinding glasses, but none of these knows very much about the others' specialties, and has no realization of how far the other has gone. So it comes about that in our colleges we are still teaching ancient and immutable "laws of nature," which in the actual practice of men at work are as extinct and forgotten as the dodo. In all colleges, except a few which have been tainted by Socialist thought, the students are solemnly learning the so-called "Malthusian law," that population presses continually upon the limits of subsistence, there are always a few more people in every part of the world than that part of the world is able to maintain. At any time we increase the world's productive powers, population will increase correspondingly, so there can never be an end to human misery, and abortion, war and famine are simply nature's eternal methods of adjusting man to his environment. Thus solemnly we are taught in the colleges. And yet, nine out of ten of the students come from homes where the parents have discovered the modern practice of birth control; all the students are themselves finding out about it in one way or another, and will proceed when they marry to restrict themselves to two or three children. In vain will the ghost of their favorite statesman and hero, Theodore Roosevelt, be traveling up and down the land, denouncing them for the dreadful crime of "race suicide"--that is to say, their presuming to use their reason to put an end to the ghastly situation revealed by the Malthusian law, over-population eternally recurring and checked by abortion, war and famine! In vain will the ghost of their favorite saint and moralist, Anthony Comstock, be traveling up and down the land, putting people in jail for daring to teach to poor women what every rich woman knows, and for attempting to change the entirely man-made state of affairs whereby an intelligent and self-governing Anglo-Saxon land is being in two or three generations turned over to a slum population of Italians, Poles, Hungarians, Portuguese, French-Canadians, Mexicans and Japanese! Likewise in every orthodox college the student is taught what his professors are pleased to call "the law of diminishing returns of agriculture." That is to say, additional labor expended upon a plot of land does not result in an equal increase of produce, and the increase grows less, until finally you come to a time when no matter how much labor you expend, you can get no more produce from that plot of land. All professors teach this, because fifty years ago it was true, and since that time it has not occurred to any professor of political science to visit a farm. And all the while, out in the suburbs of the city where the college is located, market gardeners are practicing on an enormous scale a new system of intensive agriculture which makes the "law of diminishing returns" a foolish joke. As Kropotkin shows in his book, "Fields, Factories and Workshops," the modern intensive gardener, by use of glass and the chemical test-tube, has developed an entirely new science of plant raising. He is independent of climate, he makes his own climate; he is independent of the defects of the soil, he would just as soon start from nothing and make his soil upon an asphalt pavement. By doubling his capital investment he raises, not twice as much produce, but ten times as much. If his methods were applied to the British Isles, he could raise sufficient produce on this small surface to feed the population of the entire globe. So we see that by simple and entirely harmless devices man is in position to restrict or to increase population as he sees fit. Also he is in position to raise food and produce the necessities of life for a hundred or thousand times as many people as are now on the earth. But superstition ordains involuntary parenthood, and capitalism ordains that land shall be held out of use for speculation, or shall be exploited for rent! And this is done in the name of "nature"--that old nature of the "tooth and claw," whose ancient plan it is "that they shall take who have the power, and they shall keep who can"; that ancient nature which has been so entirely suppressed and supplanted by civilized man, and which survives only as a ghost, a skeleton to be resurrected from the tomb, for the purpose of frightening the enslaved. When a predatory financier wishes a fur overcoat to protect himself from the cold, or when he hires a masseur to keep up the circulation of his blood, you do not find him troubling himself about the laws of "nature"; never will he mention this old scarecrow, except when he is trying to persuade the workers of the world to go on paying him tribute for the use of the natural resources of the earth! CHAPTER VI MAN THE REBEL (Shows the transition stage between instinct and reason, in which man finds himself, and how he can advance to a securer condition.) In the state of nature you find every creature living a precarious existence, incessantly beset by enemies; and the creature survives only so long as it keeps itself at the top of its form. The result is the maintenance of the type in its full perfection, and, under the competitive pressure, a gradual increase of its powers. Excepting when sudden eruptions of natural forces occur, every creature is perfectly provided with a set of instincts for all emergencies; it is in harmonious relationship to its environment, it knows how to do what it has to do, and even its fears and its pains serve for its protection. But now comes man and overthrows this state of nature, abolishes the competitive struggle, and changes at his own insolent will both his environment and his reaction thereto. Man's changes are, in the beginning, all along one line; they are for his own greater comfort, the avoidance of the inconveniences of nature and the stresses of the competitive struggle. In a state of nature there are no fat animals, but in civilization there are not merely fat animals, but fat men to eat the fat animals. In a state of nature no animal loafs very long; it has to go out and hunt its food again. But man, by his superior cunning, compels the animals to work for him, and also his fellow men. So he produces unlimited wealth for himself; not merely can he eat and drink and sleep all he wants, but he builds a whole elaborate set of laws and moral customs and religious codes about this power, he invents manners and customs and literatures and arts, expressive of his superiority to nature and to his fellow men, and of his ability to enslave and exploit them. So he destroys for his imperious self the beneficent guardianship which nature had maintained over him; he develops a thousand complicated diseases, a thousand monstrous abnormalities of body and mind and spirit. And each one of these diseases and abnormalities is a new life of its own; it develops a body of knowledge, a science, and perhaps an art; it becomes the means of life, the environment and the determining destiny of thousands, perhaps millions, of human beings. So continues the growth of the colossal structure which we call civilization--in part still healthy and progressive, but in part as foul and deadly as a gigantic cancer. What is to be done about this cancer? First of all, it must be diagnosed, the extent of it precisely mapped out and the causes of it determined. Man, the rebel, has rejected his mother nature, and has lost and for the most part forgotten the instincts with which she provided him. He has destroyed the environment which, however harsh to the individual, was beneficent to the race, and has set up in the place of it a gigantic pleasure-house, with talking machines and moving pictures and soda fountains and manicure parlors and "gents' furnishing establishments." Shall we say that man is to go back to a state of nature, that he shall no longer make asylums for the insane and homes for the defective, eye-glasses for the astigmatic and malted milk for the dyspeptic? There are some who preach that. Among the multitude of strange books and pamphlets which come in my mail, I found the other day a volume from England, "Social Chaos and the Way Out," by Alfred Baker Read, a learned and imposing tome of 364 pages, wherein with all the paraphernalia of learning it is gravely maintained that the solution for the ills of civilization is a return to the ancient Greek practice of infanticide. Every child at birth is to be examined by a committee of physicians, and if it is found to possess any defect, or if the census has established that there are enough babies in the world for the present, this baby shall be mercifully and painlessly asphyxiated. You might think that this is a joke, after the fashion of Swift's proposal for eating the children of famine-stricken Ireland. I have spent some time examining this book before I risk committing myself to the statement that it is the work of a sober scientist, with no idea whatever of fun. If we are going to think clearly on this subject, the first point we have to understand is that nature has nothing to do with it. We cannot appeal to nature, because we are many thousands of years beyond her sway. We left her when the first ape came down from the treetop and fastened a sharp stone in the end of his club; we bade irrevocable good-bye to her when the first man kept himself from freezing and altered his diet by means of fire. Therefore, it is no argument to say that this, that, or the other remedy is "unnatural." Our choice will lie among a thousand different courses, but the one thing we may be sure of is that none of them will be "natural." Bairnsfather, in one of his war cartoons, portrays a British officer on leave, who got homesick for the trenches and went out into the garden and dug himself a hole in the mud and sat shivering in the rain all night. And this amuses us vastly; but we should be even more amused if any kind of reformer, physician, moralist, clergyman or legislator should suggest to us any remedy for our ills that was really "according to nature." Civilized man, creature of art and of knowledge, has no love for nature except as an object for the play of his fancy and his wit. He means to live his own life, he means to hold himself above nature with all his powers. Yet, obviously, he cannot go on accumulating diseases, he cannot give his life-blood to the making of a cancer while his own proper tissues starve. He must somehow divert the flow of his energies, his social blood-stream, so to speak, from the cancer to the healthy growth. To abandon the metaphor, man will determine by the use of his reason what he wishes life to be; he will choose the highest forms of it to which he can attain. He will then, by the deliberate act of his own will, devote his energies to those tasks; he will make for himself new laws, new moral codes, new customs and ways of thought, calculated to bring to reality the ideal which he has formed. So only can man justify himself as a creator, so can he realize the benefit and escape the penalties of his revolt from his ancient mother. And then, perhaps, we shall make the discovery that we have come back to nature, only in a new form. Nature, harsh and cruel, wasteful and blind as we call her, yet had her deep wisdom; she cared for the species, she protected and preserved the type. Man, in his new pride of power, has invented a philosophy which he dignifies by the name of "individualism." He lives and works for himself; he chooses to wear silk shirts, and to break the speed limit, and to pin ribbons and crosses on his chest. Now what he must do with his new morality, if he wishes to save himself from degeneration, is to manifest the wisdom and far vision of the old mother whom he spurned, and to say to himself, deliberately, as an act of high daring: I will protect the species, I will preserve the type! I will deny myself the raptures of alcoholic intoxication, because it damages the health of my offspring; I will deny myself the amusement of sexual promiscuity for the same reason. I will devise imitations of the chase and of battle in order that I may keep my physical body up to the best standard of nature. Because I understand that all civilized life is based upon intelligence, I will acquire knowledge and spread it among my fellow men. Because I perceive that civilization is impossible without sympathy, and because sympathy makes it impossible for me to be happy while my fellow men are ignorant and degraded, therefore I dedicate my energies to the extermination of poverty, war, parasitism and all forms of exploitation of man by his fellows. Professor William James is the author of an excellent essay entitled "A Moral Equivalent for War." He sets forth the idea that men have loved war through the ages because it has called forth their highest efforts, has made them more fully aware of the powers of their being. He asks, May it not be possible for man, of his own free impulse, born of his love of life and the wonderful potentialities which it unfolds, to invent for himself a discipline, a code based, not upon the destruction of other men and their enslavement, but upon cooperative emulation in the unfoldment of the powers of the mind? That this can be done by men, I have never doubted. That it will be done, and done quickly, has been made certain by the late world conflict, which has demonstrated to all thinking people that the progress of the mechanical arts has been such that man is now able to inflict upon his own civilization more damage than it is able to endure. CHAPTER VII MAKING OUR MORALS (Attempts to show that human morality must change to fit human facts, and there can be no judge of it save human reason.) Assuming the argument of the preceding chapters to be accepted, it appears that human life is in part at least a product of human will, guided by human intelligence. Man finds himself in the position of the crew of a ship in the middle of the ocean; he does not know exactly how the ship was made, or how it came to be in its present position, but he has discovered how the engines are run, and how the ship is steered, and the meaning of the compass. So now he takes charge of the ship, and keeps it afloat amid many perils; and meantime, on the bridge of the vessel, there goes on a furious argument over the question what port the ship shall be steered to and what chart shall be used. It is not well as a rule to trust to similes, but this simile is useful because it helps us to realize how fluid and changeable are the conditions of man's life, and how incessant and urgent the problems with which he finds himself confronted. The moral and legal codes of mankind may be compared to the steering orders which are given to the helmsman of the vessel. Northeast by north, he is told; and if during the night a heavy wind arises, and pushes the bow of the vessel off to starboard, then the helmsman has to push the wheel in the opposite direction. If he does not do so, he may find that his vessel has swung around and is going to some other part of the world. Next morning the passengers may wake up and find the ship on the rocks--because the helmsman persisted in following certain steering directions which were laid down in an ancient Hebrew book two or three thousand years ago! If life is a continually changing product, then the laws which govern conduct must also be continually changing, and morality is a problem of continuous adjustment to new circumstances and new needs. If man is free to work upon this changing environment, he must be free to make new tools and devise new processes. If it is the task of reason to choose among many possible courses and many possible varieties of life, then clearly it is man's duty to examine and revise every detail of his laws and customs and moral codes. This is, of course, in flat contradiction to the teachings of all religions. So far as I know there is no religion which does not teach that the conduct of man in certain matters has been eternally fixed by some higher power, and that it is man's duty to conform to these rules. It is considered to be wicked even to suggest any other idea; in fact, to do so is the most wicked thing in the world, far more dangerous than any actual infraction of the code, whatever it may be. Let us see how this works out in practice. Let us take, for a test, the Ten Commandments. These commandments were graven upon stone tablets some four thousand years ago, and are supposed to have been valid ever since. "Thou shalt not kill," is one; others phrase it, "Thou shall do no murder"; and in this double version we see at once the beginnings of controversy. If you are a Quaker, you accept the former version, while if you are a member of the military general staff of your country you accept the latter. You maintain the right to kill your fellow men, provided that those who do the killing have been previously clad in a special uniform, indicating their distinctive function as killers of their fellow men. You maintain, in other words, the right of making war; and presently, when you get into making war, you find yourself maintaining the right to kill, not merely by the old established method of the sword and the bullet, but by means of poison gases which destroy the lives of women and children, perhaps a whole city full at a time. And also, of course, you maintain the right to kill, provided the killing has been formally ordered and sanctioned by a man who sits upon a raised bench and wears a black robe, and perhaps a powdered wig. You consider that by the simple device of putting this man into a black robe and a powdered wig, you endow him with authority to judge and revise the divine law. In other words, you subject this divine law to human reason; and if some religious fanatic refuses to be so subjected, you call him by the dread name "pacifist," and if he attempts to preach his idea, you send him to prison for ten or twenty years, which means in actual practice that you kill him by the slow effects of malnutrition and tubercular infection. If he is ordered to put on the special costume of killing, and refuses to do so, you call him a "C. O.," and you bully and beat him, and perhaps administer to him the "water cure" in your dungeons. Or take the commandment that we shall not commit adultery. Surely this is a law about which we can agree! But presently we discover that unhappily married couples desire to part, and that if we do not allow them to part, we actually cause the commission of a great deal more adultery than otherwise. Therefore, our wise men meet together, and revise this divine law, and decide that it is not adultery if a man takes another wife, provided he has received from a judge an engraved piece of paper permitting him to do so. But some of the followers of religion refuse to admit this right of mere mortal man. The Catholic Church attempts to enforce its own laws, and declares that people who divorce and remarry are really living in adultery and committing mortal sin. The Episcopal Church does not go quite so far as that; it allows the innocent party in the divorce to remarry. Other churches are content to accept the state law as it stands. Is it not manifest that all these groups are applying human reason, and nothing but human reason, to the interpreting and revising of their divine commandments? Or take the law, "Thou shalt not steal." Surely we can all agree upon that! Let us do so; but our agreement gets us nowhere, because we have to set up a human court to decide what is "stealing." Is it stealing to seize upon land, and kill the occupants of it, and take the land for your own, and hand it down to your children forever? Yes, of course, that is stealing, you say; but at once you have to revise your statement. It is not stealing if it was done a sufficient number of years ago; in that case the results of it are sanctified by law, and held unchangeable forever. Also, we run up against the fact that it is not stealing, if it is done by the State, by men who have been dressed up in the costume of killers before they commit the act. Again, is it stealing to hold land out of use for speculation, while other men are starving and dying for lack of land to labor upon? Some of us call this stealing, but we are impolitely referred to as "radicals," and if we venture to suggest that anyone should resist this kind of stealing, we are sentenced to slow death from malnutrition and tubercular infection. Again, is it stealing for a victim of our system of land monopoly to take a loaf of bread in order to save the life of his starving child? The law says that this is stealing, and sends the man to jail for this act; yet the common sense of mankind protests, and I have heard a great many respectable Americans venture so far in "radicalism" as to say that they themselves would steal under such circumstances. One could pile up illustrations without limit; but this is enough to make clear the point, that it is perfectly futile to attempt to talk about "divine" rules for human conduct. Regardless of any ideas you may hold, or any wishes, you are forced at every hour of your life to apply your reason to the problems of your life, and you have no escape from the task of judging and deciding. All that you do is to judge right or to judge wrong; and if you judge wrong, you inflict misery upon yourself and upon all who come into contact with you. How much more sensible, therefore, to recognize the fact of moral and intellectual responsibility; to investigate the data of life with which you have to deal, the environment by which you are surrounded, and to train your judgment so that you will be able to fit yourself to it with quickness and certainty! "But," the believer in religion will say, "this leaves mankind without any guide or authority. How can human beings act, how can they deal with one another, if there are no laws, no permanent moral codes?" The answer is that to accept the idea of the evolution of morality does not mean at all that there will be no permanent laws and working principles. Many of the facts of life are fixed for all practical purposes--the purposes not merely of your life and my life, but the life of many generations. We are not likely to see in our time the end of the ancient Hebrew announcement that "the sins of the father are visited upon the children"; therefore it is possible for us to study out a course of action based upon the duty of every father to hand down to his children the gift of a sound mind in a sound body. The Catholic Church has had for a thousand years or more the "mortal sin" of gluttony upon its list; and today comes experimental science with its new weapons of research, and discovers autointoxication and the hardening of the arteries, and makes it very unlikely that the moral codes of men will ever fail to list gluttony as a mortal sin. Indeed, science has added to gluttony, not merely drunkenness, but all use of alcoholic liquor for beverage purposes; we have done this in spite of the manifest fact that the drinking of wine was not merely an Old Testament virtue, but a New Testament religious rite. To say that human life changes, and that new discoveries and new powers make necessary new laws and moral customs, is to say something so obvious that it might seem a waste of paper and ink. Man has invented the automobile and has crowded himself into cities, and so has to adopt a rigid set of traffic regulations. So far as I know, it has never occurred to any religious enthusiast to seek in the book of Revelation for information as to the advisability of the "left hand turn" at Broadway and Forty-second Street, New York, at five o'clock in the afternoon. But modern science has created new economic facts, just as unprecedented as the automobile; it has created new possibilities of spending and new possibilities of starving for mankind; it has made new cravings and new satisfactions, new crimes and new virtues; and yet the great mass of our people are still seeking to guide themselves in their readjustments to these new facts by ancient codes which have no more relationship to these facts than they have to the affairs of Mars! I am acquainted with a certain lady, one of the kindest and most devoted souls alive, who seeks to solve the problems of her life, and of her large family of children and grand-children, according to sentences which she picks out, more or less at random, from certain more or less random chapters of ancient Hebrew literature. This lady will find some words which she imagines apply to the matter, and will shut her devout eyes to the fact that there are other "texts," bearing on the matter, which say exactly the opposite. She will place the strangest and most unimaginable interpretations upon the words, and yet will be absolutely certain that her interpretation is the voice of God speaking directly to her. If you try to tell her about Socialism, she will say, "The poor ye have always with you"; which means that it is interfering with Divine Providence to try to remedy poverty on any large scale. This lady is ready instantly to relieve any single case of want; she regards it as her duty to do this; in fact, she considers that the purpose of some people's poverty is to provide her with a chance to do the noble action of relieving it. You would think that the meaning of the sentence, "Spare the rod and spoil the child," would be so plain that no one could mistake it; but this good lady understood it to mean that God forbade the physical chastisement of children, and preferred them "spoiled." She held this idea for half a lifetime--until it was pointed out to her that the sentence was not in the Bible, but in "Hudibras," an old English poem! CHAPTER VIII THE VIRTUE OF MODERATION (Attempts to show that wise conduct is an adjustment of means to ends, and depends upon the understanding of a particular set of circumstances.) Some years ago I used to know an ardent single tax propagandist who found my way of arguing intensely irritating, because, as he phrased it, I had "no principles." We would be discussing, for example, a protective tariff, and I would wish to collect statistics, but discovered to my bewilderment that to my single tax friend a customs duty was "stealing" on the part of the government. The government had a right to tax land, because that was the gift of nature, but it had no right to tax the products of human labor, and when it took a portion of the goods which anyone brought into a country, the government was playing the part of a robber. Of course such a man was annoyed by the suggestion that in the early stages of a country's development it might possibly be a good thing for the country to make itself independent and self-sufficient by encouraging the development of its manufactures; that, on the other hand, when these manufactures had grown to such a size that they controlled the government, it might be an excellent thing for the country to subject them to the pressure of foreign competition, in order to lower their value as a preliminary to socializing them. The reader who comes to this book looking for hard and fast rules of life will be disappointed. It would be convenient if someone could lay down for us a moral code, and lift from our shoulders the inconvenient responsibility of deciding about our own lives. There may be persons so weak that they have to have the conditions of their lives thus determined for them; but I am not writing for such persons. I am writing for adult and responsible individuals, and I bear in mind that every individual is a separate problem, with separate needs and separate duties. There are, of course, a good many rules that apply to everybody in almost all emergencies, but I cannot think of a single rule that I would be willing to say I would apply in my life without a single exception. "Thou shalt not kill" is a rule that I have followed, so far without exception; but as soon as I turn my imagination loose, I can think of many circumstances under which I should kill. I remember discussing the matter with a pacifist friend of mine, an out-and-out religious non-resistant. I pointed out to him that people sometimes went insane, and in that condition they sometimes seized hatchets and killed anyone in sight. What would my pacifist friend do if he saw a maniac attacking his children with a hatchet? It did not help him to say that he would use all possible means short of killing the maniac; he had finally to admit that if he were quite sure it was a question of the life of the maniac or the life of his child, he would kill. And this is not mere verbal quibbling, because such things do happen in the world, and people are confronted with such emergencies, and they have to decide, and no rule is a general rule if it has a single exception. There is a saying that "the exception proves the rule," but this is very silly; it is a mistranslation of the Latin word "probat," which means, not proves, but tests. No exception can prove a rule. What the exception does is to test the rule by showing that the result does not follow in the exceptional case. The only kind of rule which can be laid down for human conduct is a rule in such general terms that it escapes exceptions by leaving the matter open for every man's difference of opinion. Any kind of rule which is specific will sooner or later pass out of date. Take, by way of illustration, the ancient and well-established virtue of frugality. Obviously, under a state of nature, or of economic competition, it is necessary for every man to lay by a store "for a rainy day." But suppose we could set up a condition of economic security, under which society guaranteed to every man the full product of his labor, and the old and the sick were fully taken care of--then how foolish a man would seem who troubled to acquire a surplus of goods! It would be as if we saw him riding on horseback through the main street of our town in a full suit of armor! I devote a good deal of space to this question of a fixed and unchangeable morality, because it is one of the heaviest burdens that mankind carries upon its back. The record of human history is sickening, not so much because of blood and slaughter, but because of fanaticism; because wherever the mind of man attempts to assert itself, to escape from the blind rule of animal greed, it adopts a set of formulas, and proceeds to enforce them, regardless of consequences, upon the whole of life. Consider, for example, the rule of the Puritans in England. The Puritans glorified conscience, and it is perfectly proper to glorify conscience, but not to the entire suppression of the beauty-making faculties in man. Macaulay summed up the Puritan point of view in the sentence that they objected to bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. As a result of applying that principle, and lacing mankind in a straight-jacket by legislation, England swung back into a reaction under the Cavaliers, in which debauchery held more complete sway than ever before or since in English life. This is a hard lesson, but it must be learned: there is no virtue that does not become a vice if it is carried to extremes; there is no virtue that does not become a vice if it is applied at the wrong time, or under the wrong circumstances, or at the wrong stage of human development. In fact, we may say that most vices are virtues misapplied. The so-called natural vices are simply natural impulses carried to excess, while the unnatural vices result from the suppression and distortion of natural impulses. The Greeks had as their supreme virtue what they called "sophrosuné." It is a beautiful word, worth remembering; it means a beautiful quality called moderation. We shall find, as we come to investigate, that life is a series of compromises among many different needs, many different desires, many different duties; and reason sits as a wise and patient judge, and appoints to each its proper portion, and denies to it an excess which would starve the others. Such is true morality, and it is incompatible with the existence of any fixed code, whether of human origin or divine. The fixed morality is a survival of a far-off past, of the days of instinct and servitude. Human reason has developed but slowly, and perhaps only a few people are as yet entirely capable of taking control of their own destiny; perhaps it is really dangerous to think for oneself! But if we investigate carefully, we may decide that the danger is not so much to ourselves as it is to others. The most evil of all the habits that man has inherited from his far-off past is the habit of exploiting his fellows, and in order to exploit them more safely the ruling castes of priests and kings and nobles and property owners have taken possession of the moralities of the world and shaped them for their own convenience. They have taught the slave virtues of credulity and submission; they have surrounded their teachings with all the terrors of the supernatural; they have placed upon rebellion the penalties, not merely of this world, but of the next, not merely of the dungeon and the rack, but of hellfire and brimstone. I do not wish to go to extremes and say that the moral codes now taught in the world are made wholly in this evil way. As a matter of fact they are a queer jumble of the two elements, the slave terrors of the past and the common sense of the present. There is not one moral code in the world today, there are many. There is one for the rich, and an entirely different one for the poor, and the rich have had a great deal more to do with shaping the code of the poor than the poor have had to do with shaping the code of the rich. There is one code for governments, and an entirely different one for the victims of governments. There is one code for business, and an entirely different one, a far more human and decent one, for friendship. Above all, there is one code for Sunday and another code for the other six days of the week. Most of our idealisms and our sentimental fine phrases we reserve for our Sunday code, while for our every-day code we go back to the rule of the jungle: "Dog eat dog," or "Do unto others as they would do unto you, but do it first." When you attempt to suggest a new moral code to our present day moral authorities, it is the fine phrases of the Sunday code they bring out for exhibition purposes; and perhaps you are impressed by their arguments--until Monday morning, when you attempt to apply this code at the office, and they stare at you in bewilderment, or burst out laughing in your face. What I am trying to do here is to outline a code that will not be a matter of phrases but a matter of practice. It will apply to all men, rich as well as poor, and to all seven days of the week. I am not so much suggesting a code, as pointing out to you how you can work out your own code for yourself. I am suggesting that you should adopt it, not because I tell you to, but because you yourself have taken it and tested it, precisely as you would test any other of the practical affairs of your life--potatoes as an article of diet, or some particular sack of potatoes that a peddler was trying to sell to you. It is not yet possible for you to be as sure about everything in your life as you can be about a sack of potatoes; human knowledge has not got that far; but at least you can know what is to be known, and if anything is a matter of uncertainty, you can know that. Such knowledge is often the most important of all--just as the driver of an automobile wants to know if a bridge is not to be depended on. So I say to you that if you want to find happiness in this life, look with distrust upon all absolutes and ultimates, all hard and fast rules, all formulas and dogmas and "general principles." Bear in mind that there are many factors in every case, there are many complications in every human being, there are many sides to every question. Try to keep an open mind and an even temper. Try to take an interest in learning something new every day, and in trying some new experiment. This is the scientific attitude toward life; this is the way of growth and of true success. It is inconvenient, because it involves working your brains, and most people have not been taught to do this, and find it the hardest kind of work there is. But how much better it is to think for yourself, and to protect yourself, than to trust your thinking to some group of people whose only interest may be to exploit you for their advantage! CHAPTER IX THE CHOOSING OF LIFE (Discusses the standards by which we may judge what is best in life, and decide what we wish to make of it.) We have made the point about evolution, that it may go forward or it may go backward. There is no guarantee in nature that because a thing changes, it must necessarily become better than it was. On the contrary, degeneration is as definitely established a fact as growth, and it is of the utmost importance, in studying the problem of human happiness and how to make it, to get clear the fact that nature has produced, and continues to produce, all kinds of monstrosities and parasites and failures and abortions. And all these blunders of our great mother struggle just as hard, desire life just as ardently as normal creatures, and suffer just as cruelly when they fail. Blind optimism about life is just as fatuous and just as dangerous as blind pessimism, and if we propose to take charge of life, and to make it over, we shall find that we have to get quickly to the task of deciding what our purpose is. "Choose well, your choice is brief and yet endless," says Carlyle. You are driven in your choice by two facts--first, that you have to choose, regardless of whether you want to or not; and second, that upon your choice depend infinite possibilities of happiness or of misery. The interdependence of life is such that you are choosing not merely for the present, but for the future; you are choosing for your posterity forever, and to some extent you are choosing for all mankind. Matthew Arnold has said that "Conduct is three-fourths of life"; but I, for my part, have never been able to see where he got his figures. It seems to me that conduct is practically everything in life that really counts. Conduct is not merely marriage and birth and premature death; it is not merely eating and drinking and sleeping: it is thinking and aspiring; it is religion and science, music and literature and art. It is not yet the lightning and the cyclone, but with the spread of knowledge it is coming to be these things, and I suspect that some day it may be even the comet and the rising of the sun. We are now going to apply our reason to this enormous problem of human conduct; we are going to ask ourselves the question: What kind of life do we want? What kind of life are we going to make? What are the standards by which we may know excellence in life, and distinguish it from failure and waste and blunder in life? Obviously, when we have done this, we shall have solved the moral problem; all we shall have to say is, act so that your actions help to bring the desirable things into being, and do not act so as to hinder or weaken them. We shall not be able to go to nature to settle this question for us. This is our problem, not nature's. But we shall find, as usual, that we can pick up precious hints from her; we shall be wise to study her ways, and learn from her successes and her failures. We are proud of her latest product, ourselves. Let us see how she made us; what were the stages on the way to man? First in the scale of evolution, it appears, came inert matter. We call it inert, because it looks that way, though we know, of course, that it consists of infinite numbers of molecules vibrating with speed which we can measure even though we cannot imagine it. This "matter" is enormously fascinating, and a wise man will hesitate to speak patronizingly about it. Nevertheless, considering matter apart from the mind which studies it, we decide that it represents a low stage of being. We speak contemptuously of stones and clods and lumps of clay. We award more respect to things like mountains and tempest-tossed oceans, because they are big; in the early days of our race we used to worship these things, but now we think of them merely as the raw material of life, and we should not be in the least interested in becoming a mountain or an ocean. Almost everyone would agree, therefore, that what we call "life" is a higher and more important achievement of nature. And if we wish to grade this life, we do so according to its sentience--that is to say, the amount and intensity of the consciousness which grows in it. We are interested in the one-celled organisms which swarm everywhere throughout nature, and we study the mysterious processes by which they nourish and beget themselves; we suspect that they have a germ of consciousness in them; but we are surer of the meaning and importance of the consciousness we detect in some complex organism like a fish or bird. We learn to know the signs of consciousness, of dawning intelligence, and we esteem the various kinds of creatures according to the amount of it they possess. We reject mere physical bigness and mere strength. Joyce Kilmer may write: "Poems are made by men like me, But only God can make a tree"-- And that seems to us a charming bit of fancy; but the common sense of the thing is voiced to us much better in the lines of old Ben Jonson: "It is not growing like a tree In bulk doth make man better be." If we take two animals of equal bulk, the hippopotamus and the elephant, we shall be far more interested in the elephant, because of the intelligence and what we call "character" which he displays. There are good elephants and bad elephants, kind ones and treacherous ones. We love the dog because we can make a companion of him; that is, because we can teach him to react to human stimuli. Of all animals we are fascinated most by the monkey, because he is nearest to man, and displays the keenest intelligence. Someone may say that this is all mere human egotism, and that we have no way of really being sure that the life of elephants and hippopotami is not more interesting and significant than the life of men. Never having been either of these animals, I cannot say with assurance; but I know that I have the power to exterminate these creatures, or to pen them in cages, and they are helpless to protect themselves, or even to understand what is happening to them. So I am irresistibly driven to conclude that intelligence is more safe and more worth while than unintelligence; in short, that intelligence is nature's highest product up to date, and that to foster and develop it is the best guess I can make as to the path of wisdom--that is, of intelligence! When we come to deal with human values, we find that we can trace much the same kind of evolution. Back in the days of the cave man, it was physical strength which dominated the horde; but nowadays, except in the imagination of the small boy, the "strong man" does not cut much of a figure. We go once, perhaps, to see him lift his heavy weights and break his iron bars, but then we are tired of him. Mere strength had to yield in the struggle for life to quickness of eye and hand, to energy which for lack of a better name we may call "nervous." The pugilist who has nothing but muscle goes down before his lighter antagonist who can keep out of his reach, and the crowd loves the football hero who can duck and dodge and make the long runs. One might cite a thousand illustrations, such as the British bowmen breaking down the heavily armored knights, or the quick-moving, light vessels of Britain overcoming the huge galleons of Spain. And as society develops and becomes more complex, the fighting man becomes less and less a man of muscle, and more and more a man of "nerve." Alexander, Cæsar and Napoleon would have stood a poor chance in personal combat against many of their followers. They led, because they were men of energy and cunning, able to maintain the subtle thing we call prestige. Now the world has moved into an industrial era, and who are the great men of our time, the men whose lightest words are heeded, whose doings are spread upon the front pages of our newspapers? Obviously, they are the men of money. We may pretend to ourselves that we do not really stand in awe of a Morgan or a Rockefeller, but that we admire, let us say, an Edison or a Roosevelt. But Edison himself is a man of money, and will tell you that he had to be a man of money in order to be free to conduct his experiments. As for our politicians and statesmen, they either serve the men of money, or the men of money suppress them, as they did Roosevelt. The Morgans and the Rockefellers do not do much talking; they do not have to. They content themselves with being obeyed, and the shaping of our society is in their hands. And yet, some of us really believe that there are higher faculties in man than the ability to manipulate the stock market. We consider that the great inventor, the great poet, the great moralist, contributes more to human happiness than the man who, by cunning and persistence, succeeds in monopolizing some material necessity of human life. "Poets," says Shelley, "are the unacknowledged legislators of mankind." If this strange statement is anywhere near to truth, it is surely of importance that we should decide what are the higher powers in men, and how they may be recognized, and how fostered and developed. What is, in its essence, the process of evolution from the lower to the higher forms of mental life? It is a process of expanding consciousness; the developing of ability to apprehend a wider and wider circle of existence, to share it, to struggle for it as we do for the life we call our "own." The test of the higher mental forms is therefore a test of universality, of sympathetic inclusiveness; or, to use commoner words, it is a test of enlightened unselfishness. Every human individual has the will to life, the instinct of self-preservation, which persuades him that he is of importance; but the test of his development is his ability to realize that, important though he may be, he is but a small part of the universe, and his highest interests are not in himself alone, his highest duties are not owed to himself alone. And as the life becomes more of the intellect, this fact becomes more and more obvious, more and more dominating. Men who monopolize the material things of the world and their control are necessarily self-seeking; but in the realm of the higher faculties this element, in the very nature of the case, is forced into the background. It is evident that truth is not truth for the Standard Oil Company, nor for J. P. Morgan and Company, nor yet for the government of the United States; it is truth for the whole of mankind, and one who sincerely labors for the truth does so for the universal benefit. There may be, of course, an element of selfishness in the activities of poets and inventors. They may be seeking for fame; they may be hoping to make money out of their discoveries; but the greatest men we know have been dominated by an overwhelming impulse of creation, and when we read their lives, and discover in them signs of petty vanity or jealousy or greed, we are pained and shocked. What touches us most deeply is some mark of self-consecration and humility; as, for example, when Newton tells us that after all his life's labors he felt himself as a little child gathering sea-shells on the shore of the great ocean of truth; or when Alfred Russel Wallace, discovering that Darwin had been working longer than himself over the theory of the origin of species, generously withdrew and permitted the theory to go to the world in Darwin's name. There are three faculties in man, usually described as intellect, feeling and will. According as one or the other faculty predominates, we have a great scientist, a great poet, or a great moralist. We might choose a representative of each type--let us say Newton, Shakespeare and Jesus--and spend much time in controversy as to which of the three types is the greatest, which makes the greatest contribution to human happiness. But it will suffice here to point out that the three faculties do not exclude one another; every man must have all three, and a perfectly rounded man should seek to develop all three. Jesus was considerable of a poet, and we should pay far less heed to Shakespeare if he had not been a moralist. Also there have been instances of great poets and painters who were scientists--for example, Leonardo and Goethe. The fundamental difference between the scientist and the poet is that one is exploring nature and discovering things which actually exist, whereas the other is creating new life out of his own spirit. But the poet will find that his creations take but little hold upon life, if they are not guided and shaped by a deep understanding of life's fundamental nature and needs--in other words, if the poet is not something of a scientist. And in the same way, the very greatest discoveries of science seem to us like leaps of creative imagination; as if the mind had completed nature, through some intuitive and sympathetic understanding of what nature wished to be. The point about these higher forms of human activity is that they renew and multiply life. We may say that if Jesus had never lived, others would have embodied and set forth with equal poignancy the revolutionary idea of the equality of all men as children of one common father. And perhaps this is true; but we have no way of being sure that it is true, and as we look back upon the last nineteen hundred years of human history, we are unable to imagine just what the life of mankind during those centuries would have been if Jesus had died when he was a baby. We do not know what modern thought might have been without Kant, or what modern music might have been without Beethoven. We are forced to admit that if it had not been for the patient wisdom and persuasive kindness of Lincoln, the Slave Power might have won its independence, and America today might have been a military camp like Europe, and the lives and thoughts of every one of us would have been different. Or take the activities of the poet. Many years ago the writer was asked to name the men who had exercised the greatest influence upon him, and after much thought he named three: Jesus, Hamlet and Shelley. And now consider the significance of this reply. One of these people, Shelley, was what we call a "real" person; that is, a man who actually lived and walked upon the earth. Concerning Hamlet, it is believed there was once a Prince of Denmark by that name, but the character who is known to us as Hamlet is the creation of a poet's brain. As to the third figure, Jesus, the authorities dispute. Some say that he was a man who actually lived; others believe that he was God on earth; yet others, very learned, maintain that he is a legendary name around which a number of traditions have gathered. To me it does not make a particle of difference which of the three possibilities happens to be true about Jesus. If he was God on earth, he was God in human form, under human limitations, and in that sense we are all gods on earth. And whether he really lived, or whether some poet invented him, matters not a particle so far as concerns his effect upon others. The emotions which moved him, the loves, the griefs, the high resolves, existed in the soul of someone, whether his name were Jesus or John; and these emotions have been recorded in such form that they communicate themselves to us, they become a part of our souls, they make us something different from what we were before we encountered them. In other words, the poet makes in his own soul a new life, and then projects it into the world, and it becomes a force which makes over the lives of millions of other people. If you read the vast mass of criticism which has grown up about the figure of Hamlet, you learn that Hamlet is the type of the "modern man." Shakespeare was able to divine what the modern man would be; or perhaps we can go farther and say that Shakespeare helped to make the modern man what he is; the modern man is more of Hamlet, because he has taken Hamlet to his heart and pondered over Hamlet's problem. Or take Don Quixote. No doubt the follies of the "age of chivalry" would have died out of men's hearts in the end; but how much sooner they died because of the laughter of Cervantes! Or take "Les Miserables." Our prison system is not ideal by any means, but it is far less cruel than it was half a century ago, and we owe this in part to Victor Hugo. Every convict in the world is to some degree a happier man because of this vision which was projected upon the world from the soul of one great poet. No one can estimate the part which the writings of Tolstoi have played in the present revolution in Russia, but this we may say with certainty: there is not one man, woman or child in Russia at the present moment who is quite the same as he would have been if "Resurrection" had never been written. In discussing the highest faculties of man we have so far refrained from using the word "genius." It is a word which has been cheapened by misuse, but we are now in position to use it. The things which we have just been considering are the phenomena of genius--and we can say this, even though we may not know exactly what genius is. Perhaps it is, as Frederic Myers asserts, a "subliminal uprush," the welling up into the consciousness of some part of the content of the subconscious mind. Or perhaps it is something of what man calls "divine." Or perhaps it is the first dawning, the first hint of that super-race which will some day replace mankind. Perhaps we are witnessing the same thing that happened on the earth when glimmerings of reason first broke upon the mind of some poor, bewildered ape. We cannot be sure; but this much we can say: the man of genius represents the highest activity of the mind of which we as yet have knowledge. He represents the spirit of man, fully emancipated, fully conscious, and taking up the task of creation; taking human life as raw material, and making it over into something more subtle, more intense, more significant, more universal than it ever was before, or ever would have been without the intervention of this new God-man. CHAPTER X MYSELF AND MY NEIGHBOR (Compares the new morality with the old, and discusses the relative importance of our various duties.) So now we may say that we know what are the great and important things in life. Slowly and patiently, with infinite distress and waste and failure, but yet inevitably, the life of man is being made over and multiplied to infinity, by the power of the thinking mind, impelled by the joy and thrill of the creative action, and guided by the sense of responsibility, the instinct to serve, which we call conscience. To develop these higher faculties is the task we have before us, and the supreme act to which we dedicate ourselves. So now we are in position to define the word moral. Assuming that our argument be accepted, that action is moral which tends to foster the best and highest forms of life we know, and to aid them in developing their highest powers; that is immoral which tends to destroy the best life we know, or to hinder its rapid development. Let us now proceed to apply these tests to the practices of man; first as an individual, and then as a social being. What are my duties to myself, and what are my duties to the world about me? You will note that these questions differ somewhat from those of the old morality. Jesus told us, first, that we should love the Lord our God, and, second, that we should love our neighbor as ourself. Some would say that modern thought has dismissed God from consideration; but I would prefer to say that modern thought has decided that the place where we encounter God most immediately is in our own miraculously expanding consciousness. Our duty toward God is our duty to make of ourselves the most perfect product of the Divine Incarnation that we can become. Our duty to our neighbor is to help him to do the same. Of course, as we come to apply these formulas, we find that they overlap and mingle inextricably; the two duties are really one duty looked at from different points of view. We decide that we owe it to ourselves to develop our best powers of thinking, and we discover that in so doing we make ourselves better fitted to live as citizens, better equipped to help our fellow men. We go out into our city to serve others by making the city clean and decent, and we find that we have helped to save ourselves from a pestilence. The most commonly accepted, or at any rate the most commonly preached, of all formulas is the "golden rule," "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." This formula is good so far as it goes, but you note that it leaves undetermined the all-important question, what _ought_ we to want others to do unto us. If I am an untrained child, what I would have others do unto me is to give me plenty of candy; therefore, under the golden rule, my highest duty becomes to distribute free candy to the world. The "golden rule" is obviously consistent with all forms of self-indulgence, and with all forms of stagnation; it might result in a civilization more static than China. Or let us take the formula which the German philosopher Kant worked out as the final product of his thinking: "Act so that you would be willing for your action to become a general rule of conduct." Here again is the same problem. There are many possible general rules of conduct. Some would prefer one, some others; and there is no possible way of escape from the fact that before men can agree what to do, they must decide what they wish to make of their lives. To the formula of Jesus, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," the answer is obvious enough: "Suppose my neighbor is not worthy of as much love as myself?" To be sure, it is a perilous thing for me to have to decide this question; nevertheless, it may be a fact that I am a great inventor, and that my neighbor is a sexual pervert. There is, of course, a sense in which I may love him, even so; I may love the deeper possibilities of his nature, which religious ecstasy can appeal to and arouse. But in spite of all ecstasies and all efforts, it may be that his disease--physical, mental and moral--has progressed to such a point that it is necessary to confine him, or to castrate him, or even to asphyxiate him painlessly. To say that I must love such a man as myself is, to say the least, to be vague. We can see how the indiscriminate preaching of such a formula would open the flood-gates of sentimentality and fraud. Modern thinking says: Thou shalt love the highest possibilities of life, and thou shalt labor diligently to foster them; moreover, because life is always growing, and new possibilities are forever dawning in the human spirit, thou shalt keep an open mind and an inquiring temper, and be ready at any time to begin life afresh. Such is the formula. It is not simple; and when we come to apply it, we find that it constantly grows more complex. When we attempt to decide our duty to ourselves, we find that we have in us a number of different beings, each with separate and sometimes conflicting duties and needs. We have in us the physical man and the economic man, and these clamor for their rights, and must have at least a part of their rights, before we can go on to be the intellectual man, the moral man, or the artistic man. So our life becomes a series of compromises and adjustments between a thousand conflicting desires and duties; between the different beings which we might be, but can be only to a certain extent, and at certain times. We shall see, as we come to investigate one field after another of human activity, that we never have an absolute certainty, never an absolute right, never an absolute duty; never can we shut our eyes, and go blindly ahead upon one course of action, to the exclusion of every other consideration! On the contrary, we sit in the seat of self-determination as a highly trained and skillful engineer. We keep our eyes upon a dozen different gauges; we press a lever here and touch a regulator there; we decide that now is a time for speed, and now for caution; and knowing all the time that the safety, not merely of ourselves, but of many passengers, depends upon the decisions of each moment. CHAPTER XI THE MIND AND THE BODY (Discusses the interaction between physical and mental things, and the possibility of freedom in a world of fixed causes.) It is our plan, so far as possible, to discuss the problems of the mind in one section of this book, and the problems of the body in another; but just as we found that we could not separate our duties to ourself from our duties to our neighbors, so we find that the mind and the body are inextricably interwoven, and that whenever we probe deeply into one, we discover the other. The interaction of the mind and the body is a fascinating problem into which we must look for a moment, not because we expect to solve it, but because it illuminates the whole subject. The human body is a machine. It takes in carbon and oxygen, and burns them, and gives out carbon dioxide and other waste products, and develops energy in proportion to the amount of carbon it consumes. This machine has its elaborate apparatus of action and reaction, its sensory organs where outside stimuli are received, its nerves like telegraph wires to carry these impressions, its brain cells to store them and to transform them into reactions. We know to some extent how these brain cells work. We know what portions of the brain are devoted to this or that activity. We know that if we stick a pin into a certain spot we shall paralyze the left forefinger. We know that by injecting a certain drug, or by breathing a certain gas, we can cause this or that sensation or reaction, such as laughing or weeping or mania. We know what poisons are generated in the system by anger, and what chemical changes take place in a muscle that is tired. All this is part of a vast new science which is called bio-chemistry, or the chemistry of life. Our bodies, therefore, are part of the material universe, and subject to the laws or ways of being of this universe. The first of these laws that we know is the law of causation. Every change in the universe has its cause, and that in turn had another cause; this chain is never broken, no matter how far we go, and the same causes universally produce the same effects. If you see a ball move on a billiard table, you know that the ball did not move itself; you know that something struck the ball or tilted the table. You discover that the motion of the ball moves the air around it, and the waves of that motion are spread through the room. They strike the walls, and the motion is carried on through the walls, and if we had instruments sensitive enough, we could feel the motion of that billiard ball at the other side of the world, and a few million years from now at the most remote of the stars. This is what is called the law of the conservation of energy, and when we discover something like radium which seems to violate that law by giving out unlimited quantities of energy, we investigate and discover a new form of energy locked up in the atom. In the disintegration of the atom we have a source of power which, when we have learned to use it, will multiply perhaps millions of times the powers we are now able to use on this earth. But energy, no matter how many times it is transformed, and in what strange ways it reappears, always remains, and is never destroyed, and never created out of nothing. My friend the great physiologist once took me into his laboratory and showed me a little aquarium in which some minute creatures were wiggling about--young sea-urchins, if I remember. The physiologist took a bottle containing some chemical, and dropped a single drop into the water, and instantly all these little black creatures, which had been darting aimlessly in every direction through the water, turned and swam all in one direction, toward the light. They swam until they touched the walls of the aquarium, and there they stuck, trying their best to swim farther. "And now," said my friend, "that is what we call a 'tropism,' and all life is a tropism. What you see in that aquarium means that some day we shall know just what combination of chemicals causes a human being to move this way or that, to do this thing or that. When bio-chemistry has progressed sufficiently, we shall be able to make human qualities, perhaps in the sperm, perhaps in the embryo, perhaps day by day by means of diet or injection." Said I: "Some day, when bio-chemistry has progressed far enough, you will know what combination of chemicals causes a man to vote the Democratic or Republican ticket." "Why not?" answered my friend. (He has a sense of humor about all things except this sacred bio-chemistry.) Said I: "When you have got to that stage, keep the secret carefully, and we will fix up a scheme, and a few days before election we will release some gas in our big cities, and sweep the country for the Socialist ticket." But jesting aside: if the human body is a material thing, existing in the material world and subject to causation, there must be material reasons for the actions of human bodies, just the same as for the moving of billiard balls. We hear the sound of a billiard ball striking the cushion, and we are prepared to accept the idea that the thing we call hearing in us is caused by the impinging of sound waves upon our eardrums. And if we investigate human beings in the mass, we find every reason to believe that they act according to laws, and that there are material causes for their acts. If you get up and shout fire in a theater, you know how the audience will behave. If you study statistics, you can say that in any large city a certain fixed number of human beings are going to commit suicide every month; you can even say that more are going to commit suicide in the month of June than in any other month. You can say that more people are going to die at two o'clock in the morning than at any other hour. You know that certain changes in the weather will cause all human beings to behave in the same way. You know that an increase of prices or an increase of unemployment will cause a certain additional number of men to commit crimes, and a certain additional number of women to become prostitutes. You know that if a man overeats, his thoughts will change their color; he will have what he calls "the blues." I might cite a thousand other illustrations to prove that human minds are subject to material laws, and therefore to investigation by the bio-chemists. But now, stop a moment. Here you sit reading a book. Something in the book pleases you, and you say, "Good!" Perhaps you slap your knee or clench your fist. Now here is a motion of your hand, which stirs the air about you, and which, according to the laws of energy, will spread its effects to the other side of the world, and even to the farthest of the stars. Or perhaps the book makes you angry, and you throw it down in disgust; an entirely different motion, which will affect the other side of the world and the farthest of the stars in an entirely different way. The machine of the universe will be forever altered because of that slapping of your knee or that throwing down of your book. And what was the cause of these things? So far as we can see, the material cause was exactly the same in each case--the reading of certain letters. Two human beings, sitting side by side and reading exactly the same letters, might be affected in exactly opposite ways. It seems hardly rational to maintain that the material difference of two pairs of eyes, moving over exactly the same set of letters, could have resulted in two such different motions of the hands. As a matter of fact, the very same letters may affect the same person in different ways. The composer, Edward MacDowell, once told me how on his birthday his pupils sent him a gift, with a card containing some lines from the opera "Rheingold," beginning, "O singe fort"--that is, "Oh, sing on." But the composer happened, when glancing at the card, to think French instead of German, and got the message, "Oh, powerful monkey!" This, of course, was disconcerting to a famous piano performer, and his pupils, if they had been watching his face, would have seen an unexpected reaction. It seems manifest, does it not, that the cause of this difference of reaction was not any difference of the letters, but purely a difference of _thought_? So it appears that thoughts may change the material universe; they may break the chain of causation, and interfere with material events. Compare the two things, a state of consciousness and say, a steam shovel. They are entirely different, and so far as we can see, entirely incompatible and unrelated. Can anyone imagine how a thought can turn into a steam shovel, or a steam shovel into a thought? We can understand how a steam shovel lifts a mass of earth out of the ground, and we can understand how a human hand moves a lever which causes the shovel to act; but we are unable to conceive how a state of mind--whether it be a desire for pay, or an ideal of service, or a vision of the Panama Canal--can so affect a steam shovel as to cause it to move. We can sit and think motion at a billiard ball for a thousand years, and it does not move; but when we think motion at our hand, it moves instantly, and passes on the motion to the billiard ball or the steam shovel. When fire touches our hand it sends some kind of vibration to the brain, and in some inconceivable way that vibration is turned into a state of consciousness called pain, and that is turned, "as quick as thought," into another kind of motion, the jerking back of our hand. So it seems certain that consciousness really does "butt in" on the chain of natural causation. And yet, just see in what position this leaves the scientist who is investigating life! Imagine if you can, the plight of a doctor who wanted to prescribe a diet for a sick person, if he knew that every piece of chicken and every piece of fish were free to decide of its own impulse whether or not it would be digested in the human stomach. But the plight of this doctor would be nothing to the plight of the chemist or the biologist or the engineer who was asked to do his thinking and his planning in a world containing a billion and a quarter human beings, each one a lawless agent, each one a source of new and unforeseeable energies, each one acting as a "first cause," and starting new chains of activity, tearing the universe to pieces according to his own whims. What kind of a universe would that be? It would simply be a chaos; there could be no thinking, there could be no life in it; there could be no two things the same in it, and no laws of any sort. So then we fall back into the hands of the "determinists," who assert one unbreakable chain of natural causation, and regard the human body as an automaton. We go back to the bio-chemist, who purposes some day to ascertain for us just exactly what molecules of matter in just what positions and combinations in the brain cells of William Shakespeare caused him to perpetrate a mixed metaphor. We go back to the belief that human beings act as they must act, because the clock of life, wound up and started, must move in such and such a fashion. But now, let us see what are the implications of that theory! Here am I writing a book, appealing to men to act in certain ways. Of course, I know that not all will follow my advice. Some will be foolish--or what seems to me foolish. Others will be weak, and will resolve to act in certain ways, and then go and act in other ways. But some will be just; some will be free; some will use their brains--because, you see, I am convinced that they _can_ use their brains! I am convinced that ideas will affect and stir them, in complete defiance of the bio-chemist, who tells me that they act that way because of certain chemicals in their brain cells, and that I write my book because of other chemicals, and that my idea that I am writing the book because I want to write it is a delusion, and that the whole thing is happening just so because the universe was wound up that way. Now, this an unsolved problem, and I have no solution to offer. What I have set forth is in substance one of the four "antinomies" of Kant, and you can see for yourself how it is possible to prove either side, and impossible to be sure of either. Perhaps there is really a duality in life. Perhaps there are two aspects of the universe, the material and the spiritual, and perhaps they do not really interact as they seem to, but both are guided and determined by some higher reality of life of which we know nothing. In that case there would really be a chemical equivalent for every thought, and there would be a trace of consciousness for every material atom in the universe. Maybe the theologians are right, and in the universal consciousness of God the whole future exists predetermined. Maybe to God there is no such thing as time; the past, the present, and the future are all alike to Him. There is nothing more painful to the human mind than to have to confess its own impotence. Yet I can see no escape from the dilemma we are here facing. There is not a man alive who does not assume the freedom of the will, who does not show in all his acts that he agrees with old Dr. Samuel Johnson: "We know we are free and there's an end on't." Without a belief in freedom we cannot get beyond the animal, we cannot become the masters of our own souls. And yet, the man who swallows that idea whole, and goes out into the world and preaches personal morality to the neglect of the fundamental economic facts, the facts of the body in its relationship to all other bodies--we know what happens to that man; he becomes a shouting fool. Unless he is literally a fool, or a knave, he quickly discovers his own futility, and proceeds to use his common sense, in spite of all his theories. "Come to Jesus!" cried William Booth, and he went out in the streets of London to save souls with a bass drum; but presently, in day by day contact with the degradation of the London slums, he realized that he could not save souls so long as those souls were dwelling in starved and lousy bodies. So William Booth with his Salvation Army took to starting night shelters and cast-off clothing bureaus! And of exactly the same sort is the bewilderment which falls to the lot of the scientist who is honest and willing to face the facts. The bio-chemist with his test tubes and his microscopes and his complex apparatus of research sits himself down and accumulates a mass of information about the human body. He investigates the diseases of the body and learns in detail just how these diseases spread and sometimes how they are caused; he can present you with a diagnosis, showing the exact stage to which the degeneration of a certain organ has proceeded, and perhaps he can suggest to you a change of diet or some drug which will, for a time at least, check the process of the breakdown. But in other cases he will be perfectly helpless; he will be, as it were, buried under the mass of detail which he has accumulated; he will find the vital energy depressed, and he will not know any way to renew it. But along will come some mental specialist, who in a half hour's talk with the patient, by a simple change in the patient's _ideas_, will completely make over the patient's life, and set going a new vital process which will restore the body to its former health. A religious enthusiast may do this, a psychotherapist may do it, a moral genius may do it; and the physician with all his learning will find himself like a man on the outside of a house, peering in through the windows and trying in vain to find out something about the life of the family and its guests. This is humiliating to the chemist and the medical man, but they have to face it, because it is a fact. In the seat of authority over the human body there sits a higher being which, without any religious implications, we may call the soul; or, if it is impossible to get away from the religious implication of that word, we will call it the consciousness, or the personality. This master of the house of life is in many ways dependent upon the house. If the furnace goes out he freezes, and if the house takes fire and burns up--well, he disappears and leaves no address. But in other ways the master of the house is really master, and is a worker of miracles. He does things which we do not at all understand, and cannot yet even foresee, but which often completely make the house over. William James, a scientist of real authority, has a wonderful essay, "The Powers of Men," in which he sets forth the fact that human beings as a general rule make use of only a small portion of the energies which dwell in their beings, and that one of our problems is to find the ways by which we can draw upon stores of hidden energy which we have within us. Also, in a fascinating book, "Varieties of the Religious Experience," James has endeavored to study and analyze the phenomena which hitherto the physician and the biologist have been disposed to ridicule and neglect. But unless I am mistaken, every scientist in the end will be forced to come back to the central fact, that life is a unity, and that the heart of it is the spirit; that what we call the will is not an accident, not a delusion, not some by-product of nature, but is the very secret of life; and that behind it is a vast ocean of power, which now and then sweeps away all dykes, and floods into the human consciousness. The writer of this book is now a patient and plodding teacher of a certain economic doctrine, a preacher of what he might call anti-parasitism. He has come to the conclusion that the habit of men to enslave their fellows and exploit them and draw their substance from them without return--that this habit is destructive to all civilization, and is incompatible with any of the higher forms of life, intellectual, moral or artistic. He has come to the conclusion that there is no use attempting to build a structure of social life until there is a sound foundation; in other words, until the capitalist system has been replaced by cooperation. But in his youth he was, or thought he was, a poet, and touched upon that strange and wonderful thing which we call genius. He saw his own consciousness, as it were a leaf driven before a mighty tempest of spiritual energy. And he believes that this experience was no delusion, but was a revelation of the hidden mysteries of being. He still has memories of this startling experience, still hints of it in his consciousness; something still leaps in his memory, like a race-horse, or like the war-horse of Revelations, which "scenteth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains and the shouting." Because of these things he can never accept any philosophy which shackles the human spirit, he will never in his thought attempt to set bounds to the possibilities of human life. The very heart of life beats in us, the wonder of it and the glory of it swells like a tide behind us. New universes are born in us, or, if you prefer, they are made by us; and the process is one of endless joy, of rapture beyond anything that the average man can at present imagine, or that any instruments invented by science can weigh or measure. CHAPTER XII THE MIND OF THE BODY (Discusses the subconscious mind, what it is, what it does to the body, and how it can be controlled and made use of by the intelligence.) The importance of the mind in matters of health becomes clearer when we understand that what we commonly call our minds--the mental states which confront us day by day in our consciousness--are really but a small portion of our total mind. In addition to this conscious mind there is an enormous mass of our personality which is like a storehouse attached to our dwelling, a place to which we do not often go, but to which we can go in case of need. This storehouse is our memory, the things we know and can recall at will. And then there is another, still vaster storehouse--no one has ever measured or guessed the size of it--which apparently contains everything that we have ever known, perhaps also everything that our ancestors have known. A common simile for the human mind is that of an iceberg; a certain portion of it appears above the surface of the sea, but there is seven times as much of it floating out of sight under the water. This subconscious mind seems to be the portion most closely united with the body. It has its seat in the back parts of the brain, in the spinal cord and the greater nervous ganglia, such as the solar plexus. It is the portion of our mind which controls the activities of our body, all those miraculous things which went on before we first opened our eyes to the light, and which go on while we sleep, and never cease until we die. When we cut our finger and admit foreign germs to our blood, some mysterious power causes millions of our blood corpuscles to be rushed to this spot, to destroy and devour the invading enemy. We do not know how this is done, but it is an intelligent act, measured and precisely regulated, as much so as a railroad time-table. When the supply of nourishment in the body becomes low, something issues a notice by way of our stomach, which we call hunger; when we take food into the stomach, something pours out the gastric juice to digest it; when this digested food is prepared and taken up in the blood stream, something decides what portion of it shall be turned into muscle, what into brain cells, what into hair, what into finger nails. Sometimes, of course, mistakes are made and we have diseases. But for the most part all this infinitely intricate process goes on day and night without a hitch, and it is all the work of what we might call "the mind of the body." And just as our material bodies are the product of an age-long process of development repeated in embryo by every individual, so is this mental life a product of long development, and carries memories of this far-off process. In our instincts there dwells all the past, not merely of the human race, but of all life, and if we should ever succeed in completely probing the subconscious mind and bringing it into our consciousness, it would be the same as if we were free to ramble about in all the past. Huxley set forth the fact that all the history of evolution is told in a piece of chalk; and we probably do not exaggerate in saying that all the history of the universe is in the subconscious mind of every human being. When the partridge which has just come out of the egg sees the shadow of the hawk flit by and crouches motionless as a leaf, the partridge is not acting upon any knowledge which it has acquired in the few minutes since it was hatched. It is acting upon a knowledge impressed upon its subconscious mind by the experience of millions of partridges, perhaps for tens of thousands of years. When the physician lifts the newly born infant by its ankle and spanks it to make it cry, the physician is using his conscious reason, because he has learned from previous experience, or has been taught in the schools that it is necessary for the child's breathing apparatus to be instantly cleared. But when the child responds to the spanking with a yell, it is not moved by reasoned indignation at an undeserved injury; it is following an automatic reaction, as a result of the experience of infants in the stone age, experience which in some obscure way has been registered and stored in the infant cerebellum. Science is now groping its way through this underworld of thought. Obviously we should have here a most powerful means of influencing the body, if by any chance we could control it. We are continually seeking in medical and surgical ways to stimulate or to retard activities of the body, which are controlled entirely by this subconscious mind. If we are suffering intense pain in a joint, we put on a mustard plaster, what we call a counter-irritant, to trouble the skin and draw the congested blood away from the place of the pain. On the other hand, we may stimulate the functions of the intestines by the application of hot fomentations, to bring the blood more actively to that region. But if by any means we could make clear our wishes to the subconscious mind, we should be dealing with headquarters, and should get quicker and more permanent results. Can we by any possibility do this? To begin with, let me tell you of a simple experiment that I have witnessed. I once knew a man who had learned to control the circulation of his blood by his conscious will. I have seen him lay his two hands on the table, both of the same color, and without moving the hands, cause one hand to turn red and the other to turn pale. And, obviously, so far as this man is concerned, the problem of counter-irritants has been solved. He is a mental mustard plaster. And what was done by this man's own will can be done to others in many ways. The most obvious is a device which we call hypnotism. This is a kind of sleep which affects only the conscious control of the body, but leaves all the senses awake. In this hypnotic sleep or "trance" we discover that the subconscious mind is a good deal like the Henry Dubb of the Socialist cartoons; it is faithful and persistent, very strong in its own limited field, but comically credulous, willing to believe anything that is told it, and to take orders from any one who climbs into the seat of authority. You have perhaps attended one of the exhibitions which traveling hypnotists are accustomed to give in country villages. You have seen some bumpkin brought upon the stage and hypnotized, and told that he is in the water and must swim for his life, or that he is in the midst of a hornets' nest, or that his trousers are torn in the seat--any comical thing that will cause an audience to howl with laughter. These facts were first discovered nearly a hundred and fifty years ago by a French doctor named Mesmer. He was a good deal of a charlatan, and would not reveal his secrets, and probably the scientific men of that time were glad to despise him, because what he did was so new and strange. There is a certain type of scientific mind which sits aloft on a throne with a framed diploma above its head, and says that what it knows is science and what it does not know is nonsense. And so "mesmerism" was left for the quacks and traveling showmen. But half a century later a French physician named Liébault took up this method of hypnotism, without all the fakery that had been attached to it. He experimented and discovered that he could cure not merely phobias and manias, fixed ideas, hysterias and melancholias; he could cure definite physical diseases of the physical body, such as headache, rheumatism, and hemorrhage. Later on two other physicians, Janet and Charcot, developed definite schools of "psychotherapy." They rejected hypnotism as in most cases too dangerous, but used a milder form which is known as "hypnoidization." You would be surprised to know how many ailments which baffle the skill of medical men and surgeons yield completely to a single brief treatment by such a mental specialist. All that is necessary is some method to tap the subconscious mind. In many cases the subconsciousness knows what is the matter, and will tell at once--a secret that is completely hidden from the consciousness. For example, a man's hands shake; they have been shaking for years, and he has no idea why, but his subconscious mind explains that they first began to shake with grief over the death of his wife; also, the subconscious mind meekly and instantly accepts the suggestion that the time for grief is past, and that the hands will never shake again. Or here is a woman who has become convinced that worms are crawling all over her. Everything that touches her becomes a worm, even the wrinkles in her dress are worms, and she is wild with nervousness, and of course is on the way to the lunatic asylum. She is hypnotized and sees the operator catching these worms one by one and killing them. She is told that he has killed the last, but she insists, "No, there is one more." The operator clutches that one, and she is perfectly satisfied, and completely cured. Her husband writes, expressing his relief that he no longer has to "sleep every night in a fish pond." This instance with many others is told by Professor Quackenbos in his book, "Hypnotic Therapeutics." Among the most powerful means to influence the subconscious personality is religious excitement. Religion has come down to us from ancient times, and its fears and ecstasies are a part of our instinctive endowment. Those who can sway religious emotions can cure disease, not merely fixed ideas, but many diseases which appear to be entirely physical, but which psycho-analysis reveals to be hysterical in nature. Of course these religious persons who heal by laying on of hands or by purely mental means deny indignantly that they are using hypnotism or anything like it. I am aware that I shall bring upon myself a flood of letters from Christian Scientists if I identify their methods of curing with "animal magnetism" and "manipulation," and other devices of the devil which they repudiate. All I can say is that their miracles are brought about by affecting the subconscious mind; there is no other way to bring them about, and for my part I cannot see that it makes a great difference whether the subconscious mind is affected by a hand laid on the forehead, or by a hand waved in the air, or by an incantation pronounced, or by a prayer thought in silence. If you can persuade the subconscious mind that God is operating upon it, that God is omnipotent and is directing this particular healing, that is the most powerful suggestion imaginable, and is the basis of many cures. But if in order to achieve this, it is necessary for me to persuade myself that I can find some meaning in the metaphysical moonshine of Mother Eddy--why, then, I am very sorry, but I really prefer to remain sick. But such is not the case. You do not have to believe anything that is not true; you simply have to understand the machinery of the subconscious, and how to operate it. We are only beginning to acquire that knowledge, and we need an open mind, free both from the dogmatism of the medical men and the fanaticism of the "faith curists." A few years ago in London I met a number of people who were experimenting in an entirely open-minded way with mental healing, and I was interested in their ideas. I happened to be traveling on the Continent, and on the train my wife was seized by a very dreadful headache. She was lying with her head in my lap, suffering acutely, and I thought I would try an experiment, so I put my hand upon her forehead, without telling her what I was doing, and concentrated my attention with the greatest possible intensity upon her headache. I had an idea of the cause of it; I understood that headaches are caused by the irritation of the sensory nerves of the brain by fatigue poisons, or other waste matter which the blood has not been able to eliminate. I formed in my mind a vivid picture of what the blood would have to do to relieve that headache, and I concentrated my mental energies upon the command to her subconscious mind that it should perform these particular functions. In a few minutes my wife sat up with a look of great surprise on her face and said, "Why, my headache is gone! It went all at once!" That, of course, might have been a coincidence; but I tried the experiment many times, and it happened over and over. On another occasion I was able to cure the pain of an ulcerated tooth; I was able to cure it half a dozen times, but never permanently, it always returned, and finally the tooth had to come out. My wife experimented with me in the same way, and found that she was able to cure an attack of dyspepsia; but, curiously enough, she at once gave herself a case of dyspepsia--something she had never known in her life before. So now I will not allow her to experiment with me, and she will not allow me to experiment with her! But we are quite sure that people with psychic gifts can definitely affect the subconscious mind of others by purely mental means. We are prepared to believe in the miracles of the New Testament, and in the wonders of Lourdes, as well as in the healings of the Christian Scientists and the New Thoughters, which cannot be disputed by any one who is willing to take the trouble to investigate. We can face these facts without losing our reason, without ceasing to believe that everything in life has a cause, and that we can find out this cause if we investigate thoroughly. CHAPTER XIII EXPLORING THE SUBCONSCIOUS (Discusses automatic writing, the analysis of dreams, and other methods by which a whole new universe of life has been brought to human knowledge.) One of the most common methods of exploring the subconscious mind is the method of automatic writing. I have never tried this myself, but tens of thousands of people are sitting every night with a "ouija" in front of them, holding a pencil on a piece of paper and letting their subconscious minds write what they please. Most of them are hoping to get messages from the dead--a problem which we shall discuss in the next chapter. Suffice it for the moment to say that automatic writing and table rapping and other devices of mediumship have opened up to us a vast mass of subconscious mentality. A part of the scientific world still takes a contemptuous attitude and calls this all humbug, but many of our greatest scientists have been persuaded to investigate, and have become convinced that in this mass of subconsciousness there is mingled, not merely the mind of the medium, but the minds of all those present, and possibly other minds as well. For my part, I do not see how any one can study disinterestedly the proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research and not become convinced that telepathy at least is one of the powers of the subconscious mind. Telepathy is what is popularly known as "thought transmission." Every one must know people who are what is called "psychic," and will know what is happening to some friend in another part of the world, or will go upstairs because they "sense" that some one wants them, or will go to the door because they "have a hunch" that some one is coming. And maybe these things are only chance, but you will be unscientific if you do not take the trouble to read and learn what modern investigators have brought out on such subjects. This much is certain, and is denied by no competent investigator: whatever has been in your mind is there still, and it is possible to find a way of tapping the buried memory. An old woman, delirious with fever, begins to babble in a strange language, and it is discovered that she is talking ancient Hebrew. The woman is entirely illiterate, and her conscious memory knows no language but her own, her conscious mind has no ideas beyond those of her domestic life and the gossip of the village. But investigation is made, and it is discovered that when this woman was a girl, she worked in the home of a Hebrew scholar, and heard him reading aloud. She did not understand a word of what she heard, and was not consciously listening to it; nevertheless, every syllable of it had been stored away forever by her subconscious mind. Innumerable cases of this sort have been established; and, as a matter of fact, we might have been prepared for such discoveries by the memory-feats of the conscious mind. It is well known that Mozart, when a child, could listen to a new opera, and go home and play it over note for note. At present there is a child in America, giving exhibitions in public, carrying on thirty games of chess at the same time. There have been others who do sums of mental arithmetic, such as multiplying thirty-two figures by thirty-two figures, or reciting the Bible backwards. All this seems incredible; and yet there is something still more incredible. Suppose that these same powers, which are stored in our subconscious minds, were stored also in the minds of animals! A few years ago Maurice Maeterlinck published a book, "The Unknown Guest," in the course of which he tells about his experiments with the so-called Elberfeld horses: two animals which had been trained for years by their owner to give signals by moving their forefeet, and which apparently could count and divide and multiply large sums, and extract square and cube root, and spell out names, and recognize sounds, scents and colors, and read time from the face of a watch. Of course, it is easy to say that this is absurd, that the horses must have got some signals from their trainer; but, as it happened, they would do their work in the absence of their trainer; they would do it in the dark, or with a sack over their heads, and the best scientific minds of Germany were unable to suggest any test conditions which could not be met. There have been many gigantic frauds in the world, and this may have been one of them; on the other hand, there have been many new discoveries, and for my part I will finish exploring the miracles of the subconscious mind of man, before I presume to say that anything is impossible in the subconscious mind of a horse or a dog. Also I will wait for some learned person to explain to me how the subconscious minds of horses and dogs know enough to build and repair their bones and teeth, so cleverly that modern architectural and engineering science could teach them nothing. I ask, also, if it is possible to find a region in the subconsciousness which is common to two people, why is it absurd to suggest that there might be a region common to a man and a horse? Why is this any more absurd than that they should eat the same food and breathe the same air and feel the same affection and be frightened at the same dangers? The only persons who will be dogmatic about such subjects are the persons who are ignorant. Those who take the trouble to investigate, discover more wonderful things every day, and they realize that we have here a whole universe of knowledge, to which we have as yet barely opened the doors. Consider, for example, the facts which we are acquiring on the subject of personality and what it means. You would say, perhaps, that if there is anything you know positively, it is that you are one person, and have never been anybody else, and that your body belongs to you, and that nobody else ever has used or ever can use it. But what would you say if I told you that tomorrow "you" might cease to be, and somebody else might be in possession of your body, walking it around and wearing its clothes and spending its money? What if I were to tell you that there might be in "you," or in your body, half a dozen different personalities which you have never known or dreamed of, and that tomorrow there might break out a war between them and "you," as to which of the half dozen people should hear with your ears and speak with your tongue and walk about with your clothes on? Unless you are familiar with the literature of multiple personality, you would surely say that this was unbelievable--quite as much so as a mathematical horse! Let us begin with the case of the Reverend Ansel Bourne, who was many years ago a perfectly respectable clergyman in a Rhode Island town. One day he disappeared, and his family did not hear of him. A year or two later there was a store-keeper in a town in Pennsylvania, who suddenly came to himself as the Reverend Ansel Bourne, not knowing what he had been in the meantime, or how he came to be keeping a store. Under hypnotism it developed that he had in him two personalities, and his trance personality recollected all that had been happening in the meantime and told about it freely. Or take the still more fascinating case of the young lady who is known in the literature of psychotherapy as Miss Beauchamp. Her story is told in a book, "The Dissociation of a Personality," by Dr. Morton Prince of Boston. Some thirty years ago Miss Beauchamp, a very conscientious and dignified young lady, became nervous and ill, and took to doing strange things, which were a source of shame and humiliation to her. Under hypnotism it was discovered to be a case of multiple personality. The other personality, who finally gave herself the name of Sally, was entirely different in character from Miss Beauchamp, being mischievous, vain, and primitive as a child. She conceived an intense dislike for Miss Beauchamp, whom she called by abusive names; at times when she could get possession of Miss Beauchamp's body, she delighted in playing humiliating tricks upon her enemy, spending her money, running her into debt, breaking her engagements, disgracing her before her friends. Sally was always well and Miss Beauchamp was always ill, and Sally would take the body, for which they fought for possession, and take it for long and exhausting walks, and leave it cold and miserable, lost and penniless, in the possession of Miss Beauchamp! And of course this made Miss Beauchamp more and more a wreck, and Sally took possession of more and more of her time. Sally knew everything that Miss Beauchamp did and thought, but Miss Beauchamp did not know about Sally. She only knew that there were gaps in her life, during which she did things she could not explain. And because she did not want her friends to think her insane, she would try to hide this dreadful condition of affairs; but Sally would spoil her plans by writing letters to her friends, and also by writing insulting letters for Miss Beauchamp to find when she took possession again. Then one day, after several years of treatment, there appeared yet another personality, who knew nothing about Miss Beauchamp or Sally either, and only knew what Miss Beauchamp had known up to some years before. Miss Beauchamp had a college education, and wrote and spoke French; Sally knew no French, and tried in vain to learn it; the new personality did not have a college education at all. Nevertheless, after long experiment, the story of which is as fascinating as any novel you ever read, Dr. Prince discovered that this was the real Miss Beauchamp; the others were "split off" personalities. He traced the cause to a severe mental shock, and succeeded in the end in combining the first Miss Beauchamp with the last, and in suppressing the obstinate and wanton Sally. As you read this story, you watch him mentally murdering a human being; "Sally" clamors pitifully for life, but he condemns her to death, and relentlessly executes his sentence. It is a "movie" thriller with a happy ending, and I should think it would make disconcerting reading to persons who believe that each of us is one immortal soul, or "has" one immortal soul, and is responsible for it to a personal God. There is never any end to the problems of these multiple personalities, and each case is a test of the judgment and ingenuity of the specialist. He will try to make one personality "stick," and will fail, and will have to accept another, or a combination of two. In one case, he found that he could not get the right personality to "stick" except under hypnosis, so he decided to leave the man in a mild state of trance, and the new personality lived all the rest of its life in that condition. If you wish to know more about this subject you can find books in any well-equipped library. I mention one, "The Riddle of Personality," by H. Addington Bruce, because it contains in the appendix an excellent list of the literature of the subconscious in all its many aspects. There is another, and most fascinating method of exploring this underworld of the mind, and that is the study of dreams. Some fifteen years ago a psychotherapist in New York told me about the discoveries of a physician in Vienna, and gave me some pamphlets, written in very difficult and technical German. Since then this Professor Freud has been translated, and has become a fad, and the absurdities of his followers make one a little apologetic for him. But we do not give up Jesus because of the torturers and bigots who call themselves Christians, and in the same way we have no right to blame Freud for all the absurdities of the psychoanalysts. Probably there never was a time in human history when there were not people who interpreted dreams, and you can still buy "dream books" for twenty-five cents, and learn that a white horse means that you are going to get a letter from your sweetheart tomorrow; then you can buy another dream book, telling you that a white horse means there is going to be a death in your family within the year. Naturally this prejudices thinking people against dream analysis; yet, dreams are facts, and every fact has its cause, and if you dream about a white horse, there must assuredly be some reason for your dreaming this particular thing. Of course we know that if you eat mince-pie and welsh-rabbit at midnight, you will dream about something terrible; but will it be snakes, or will it be a railroad wreck, or will it be white horses trampling over you? Obviously, it may be a million different unpleasant things; and what is it that picks out this or that from the infinite store of your memory, and brings it into the region of half-consciousness which we call the dream? Professor Freud's discovery is in brief that the dream is a wish-fulfillment. Our instincts present to our consciousness a great mass of impulses and desires, and among these the consciousness selects what it pleases, and represses and refuses to recognize or to act upon the others. But maybe these decisions are not altogether satisfactory to the subconsciousness. The mind of the body is in rebellion against the mind--shall we say of reason, or shall we say of society? The mind of society, otherwise known as the moral law, says that you shall be a good little boy, and shall go to school and learn what you are told, and on Sunday go to church and sit very still through a long sermon; whereas, the body of a boy would rather be a savage, hunting birds' nests and scalping enemies and exploring magic caves full of precious jewels. So the subconsciousness of the boy, balked and miserable, awaits its time, and finds its satisfaction when the boy is asleep and his moral censor has relaxed its control. This dream mind is not a logical and orderly thing like the conscious mind; it is not business-like and civilized, it does not deal in abstractions. It is far more interested in things than in words; it does not present us with formulas, but with pictures, and with stories of weird and wonderful happenings. It is like the mind of the race, which we study in legends and religions. It does not tell us that the sun is a mass of incandescent hydrogen gas, so and so many miles in diameter; it tells us that the sun is a cosmic hero who slays the black dragon of night. So the mind of our body presents us with innumerable pictures and symbols, exactly such as we find in poetry. There may be, and frequently is, dispute as to just what a poet meant by this or that particular image, but if we read all the work of any particular poet, we get a certain impression of that poet's individuality. If he is always talking about the perfume of women's hair and the gleam of the white flesh of nymphs in the thickets, we are not left in doubt as to what is wrong with this poet. And just so, when the expert sets to work to examine all the dreams that any one person can remember, day after day, sooner or later the expert observes that these dreams hover continually about one particular subject; and by questioning the person, he can find out what is the secret which is troubling the person, perhaps without the person himself being aware of it. Of course there are many people who like nothing so much as to talk about themselves; and many are spending their time and their money on the latest fad of being "psyched," who would, in any properly organized world, be put to work at hoeing weeds or washing their own clothes. Nevertheless, it is a fact that there are real mental disorders in the world, and innumerable honest and earnest people who have something the matter with them which they do not understand. Here is one way by which the conscientious investigator can find out what the trouble is, and make it clear to them, and by establishing harmony between their conscious and their subconscious minds, can many times put them in the way of health and happiness. Through psychoanalysis we are enabled to understand the "split" personality and its cause. We discover that almost everyone has more or less rudimentary forms of multiple personality hidden within him; made out of desires and traits which he does not like, or which the world forces him to drive into the deeps of his being. These may be evil impulses, of sex or violence; they may be the most noble altruisms, or artistic yearnings, ridiculous things in a world of "hustle." A quite normal man or woman may keep a separate self, apart from the world, living a Jekyll life of business propriety and a Hyde life of religious or musical ecstasy. Or again, the repressed impulses may integrate themselves in the unconscious, and you may have genius or lunacy or both--"great wits to madness near allied." The modern knowledge on such dark mysteries you may find in Hart's "The Psychology of Insanity." CHAPTER XIV THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY (Discusses the survival of personality from the moral point of view: that is, have we any claim upon life, entitling us to live forever?) As we explore the deeps of the subconsciousness, our own and other people's, we find ourselves confronting the strange question: Is it all our own mind, and that of other living people, or are we by any chance dealing with the minds of those who are dead? A great many earnest people, and some very learned people, are fully convinced that the latter is the case, and we have now to consider their arguments. When I was a little boy I used to read and hear ghost stories, and would shudder over them; but I was given to understand that all this was just imagination, I must not take ghosts seriously, any more than fairies or dragons or nymphs or satyrs. For an educated person to take ghosts seriously--well, such a person would be almost as comical as that supremely comical person, the flying-machine man. Would you believe it, in those days there actually were people who believed they could learn to fly in the air, and spent their time manufacturing machines for this purpose! There was a scientist in Washington who had this "bug," and built himself a machine and started to fly, and fell into the Potomac river. We all laughed at him--we laughed so long and so loud that we killed the poor man; and then, a few years later, somebody took that machine of Professor Langley's and actually did fly with it! But that was after I had grown up a bit more, and was not quite so ready to laugh at an idea because it was new. I remember vividly my first meeting with a man who believed in ghosts. He was a Unitarian clergyman, the Reverend Minot J. Savage of New York. I was sixteen years old, and just breaking out of my theological shell, and Doctor Savage helped to pry me loose. He was a grave and kindly man, of great learning and intelligence, and I remember vividly my consternation when one day he told me--oh, yes, he had seen many ghosts, he was accustomed to talk with ghosts every now and then. There was no doubt whatever that ghosts existed! He told me many stories. I remember one so well that I do not have to go back to his books to look up the details. It was in the days before the Atlantic cable, and he had a friend who took a steamer to England. One night Doctor Savage was awakened and found the ghost of his friend standing by his bedside. The ship had gone down off the Irish coast, so the ghost declared, but the friend did not want Doctor Savage to think that he had suffered from the pangs of drowning; he had been struck on the left side of the head by a beam of the ship and had been killed instantly. Doctor Savage wrote down these circumstances and had them witnessed by a number of people, and two or three weeks later he received word that the body of his friend had been found on the Irish coast, with the left side of the head crushed in. So then, of course, I studied the subject of ghosts. I have studied it off and on ever since, and have read most of the important new discoveries and arguments of the psychic researchers. To begin with, I will mention the contents of two large volumes, Gurney's "Phantasms of the Living." In this book are narrated many hundreds of cases, of which Doctor Savage's story is a type. It appears that persons at the moment of death, or in times of great mental stress, do somehow have the power to communicate with other people, even at the other side of the world. A few such cases might be attributed to coincidence or to fraud, but when you have so many cases, attested in minute detail by so many hundreds of otherwise honest people, you are not being scientific but simply stupid if you dismiss the whole subject with contempt. Gurney discusses the phenomenon and its probable causes. We know, of course, that hallucinations are among the most common of psychic phenomenon. Your subconscious mind can be caused to see and hear and feel anything; likewise it has power to cause you to see and hear and feel anything. In practically all cases of multiple personality some of the split-off personalities can cause the others to see and hear and feel. And the consciousness, you must understand, takes these things to be just as real as real things; there is no way you can tell an hallucination from reality--except to ask other people about it. And if we admit the idea of telepathy, we may say that phantasms are hallucinations caused by this means; that is, the subconscious mind of your wife or your mother or your friend who is ill or dying, transmits to your subconscious mind some vivid impression, which causes your own subconscious mind to present to your consciousness a perfect image of that person, walking and talking with you, and your consciousness has no way of telling but that the image is real. So much for phantasms of the living. But are there any phantasms of the dead? Are there any cases in which the time of the appearance can be proven to be subsequent to the time of death? Even this would not prove survival, of course; it is perfectly possible that the telepathic impulse might be delayed in our own minds, it might not flash into consciousness until our own state of mind made it possible. Can we say that there are cases in which the facts communicated are such as to convince us that the person was already dead, and was telling us something as a dead person and not as a living one? Before we go into this question, let us clear the ground for the subject by discussing the survival of personality from a more general standpoint. What is it that we want to prove? What are the probabilities of its being true? What would be the consequences of its not being true? Have we any grounds, other than those of psychic research, for thinking that it is true, or that it may be true, or that it ought to be true? What, so to speak, are the morals of the doctrine of immortality? Well, to begin with, the survival of the soul after death and forever is one of the principal doctrines of the Christian religion. Many devout Christians will read this book, and I will seem to them blasphemous when I say that this argument does not concern me. I count myself one of the lovers and friends of Jesus, I am presumptuous enough to believe that if he were on earth, I would understand him and get along with him excellently; but I do not know any reason why I should believe this, that, or the other doctrine about life because any religious sect, founded upon the name of Jesus, commands me so to believe. I see no more reason for adopting the idea of heaven because it is a Christian idea than I see for adopting the idea of reincarnation because it is a precious and holy idea to hundreds of millions of Buddhists. I have some very good friends who are Theosophists, and are quite convinced of this idea of reincarnation; that is, that the soul comes back into life over and over again in many different bodies, thus completing itself and renewing itself and expiating its sins. My Theosophist friends have a most elaborate and complicated body of what they consider to be knowledge on this subject; yet I have to take the liberty of saying that I cannot see that it has any relation to reality. It seems to me as completely unproven as any other fairy story, or myth, or legend--for example, the seven infernos of Dante, and the elaborate and complicated torments that are suffered there. But, it will be argued, Jesus rose from the dead, and thus proved the immortality of the soul. Now, in the first place, there are many learned investigators who consider there is insufficient evidence for believing that Jesus ever lived; and certainly if this be so, it will be difficult to prove that he rose from the dead. Again, it was a common occurrence for crucified men not to die; sometimes it happened that their guards allowed them to be spirited away--even nowadays we have known of prison guards being bribed to allow a prisoner to escape. Again, the events of the return of Jesus may have been just such psychic phenomena as we are trying in this chapter to explain. Or, once more, they may have been purely legends. A very brief study will convince a thinking person that the people of that time were ready to believe anything, and to accept facts upon such authority, and to make them the basis for a scientific conclusion, is simply to be childish. I shall be told, of course, that it is in the Bible, and therefore it must be true. The Bible is inspired, you say; and perhaps this is so. But then, a great deal of other literature is inspired, and that does not relieve me of the task of comparing these various inspirations, and judging them, and picking out what is of use to me. The Bible is the literature of the ancient Hebrews for a couple of thousand years. It represents what the race mind of a great people for one generation after another judged worth recording and preserving. You may get an idea what this means, if you will picture to yourself a large volume of English literature, containing some Teutonic myths, and the Saxon chronicles, and the "Morte d'Arthur," and several of Chaucer's stories, and some Irish fairy tales, and some of Bacon's essays, and Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis," and the English prayer book, and the architect's specifications for Westminster Abbey, and a good part of "Burke's Peerage"; also Blackstone's "Commentaries," a number of Wesley's hymns, and Pope's "Essay on Man," and some chapters of Carlyle's "Past and Present," and Gladstone's speeches, and Blake's poems, and Captain Cook's story of his voyage around the world, and Southey's "Life of Nelson," and Morris's "News from Nowhere," and Blatchford's "Merrie England," and scores of pages from Hansard, which is the equivalent of our Congressional Record. You may find this description irreverent, but do not think it is meant so. Do me the honor to get out your Bible and look it over from this point of view! But, you say, if we die altogether when we finish this earthly life, what becomes of moral responsibility and the punishment of sins? What shall we say to the wicked man to make him be good, if we cannot reward him with a heaven and frighten him with a hell? Well, my first answer is that we have been trying this process for a couple of thousand years, and the results seem to indicate that we might better seek out some other method of inducing men to behave themselves. They do not believe so completely in heaven and hell these days, but there were times in history when they did believe completely, and not merely were the believers just as cruel, they were just as treacherous and just as gluttonous and just as drunken. If you want to satisfy yourself on this point, I refer you to my book "The Profits of Religion," page 129. Now, as a matter of fact, I think I can discern the outlines of a system of rewards and punishments automatically working in the life of men. I am not sure that I can prove that the wicked always get punished and the virtuous always rewarded; yet, when I stop and think, I am sure that I would not care to change places with any of the wicked people that I know in this world. Life may not always be "getting" them, but it has a way of "getting" their descendants, and I could not be entirely happy if I knew that my son and his sons were going to share the fate which I now observe befalling, for example, the grand dukes of Russia and their children. Life is one thing, and it does not exist for the individual, but for the race; its causes and effects do not always manifest themselves in one individual, but in a line of descendants. "Why are they called dynasties?" asked one of my professors of history; and a student brought the session to an end by answering: "Because that is what they always seem to do!" But this is not perfect justice, you will argue. It is not perfect, from the point of view of you or me; but then, I ask, what else is there in the world that is perfect from that point of view? Why should our justice be any more perfect than, for example, our health or our thinking or our climate or our government? And, may it not very well be that our justice is up to us, in precisely the same way that some of these other things are up to us? Maybe what we have to do is to set to work to see to it that virtue does always get rewarded and vice does always get punished, right here and now, instead of waiting for an omnipotent God to attend to it in some hypothetical heaven. I find this life of mine very wonderful, and enormously interesting. I am willing to take it on the terms that it is given, and to try to make the best of it; and I do not see that I have any right to dictate what shall be given me in some future life. If my father gives me a Christmas present, I am happy and grateful; and, of course, if I know that he is going to give me another present next Christmas, I am still more happy; but I do not see that I have any right to argue that because he gives me one Christmas present, he must give me an unlimited number of them, and I think it would be very ungrateful of me to refuse to thank him for a Christmas present until I had made sure that I was to get one next time! Neither do I find myself such a wonderful person that I can assert that the morality of the universe absolutely depends upon the fact that I am immortal. Of course, I should like to live forever, and to know all the wonderful things that are going to happen in the world, and if it is true that I am so to live, I shall be immensely delighted. But I cannot say that it _must_ be true, and all I can do is to investigate the probabilities. On this point my view is stated in a sentence of Spinoza's: "He who would love God rightly must not desire that God love him in return." To sum up, the question of immortality is purely a question of fact. It is one to be approached in a spirit of open-minded inquiry, entirely unaffected by hopes or fears or dogmas or moral claims. It is worth while to get clear that we may be immortal, even though we do not now know it and cannot now prove it; it is possible that all psychic research might end in telepathy, and still, when we die, we might wake up and find ourselves alive. It might possibly be that some of us are immortal and not all of us. It might be that some parts of us are immortal and not the rest. It might be that our subconsciousness is immortal and not our consciousness. It might be that all of us, or some part of us, survive for a time, but not forever. This last is something which I myself am inclined to think may be the case. Also, it seems worthwhile to mention that it is no argument against immortality that we cannot imagine it, that we cannot picture a universe consisting of uncountable billions of living souls, or what these souls would do to pass the time. It may very well be that among these souls there is no such thing as time. It may be that they are thoroughly occupied in ways beyond our imagining, or again, that they are not occupied, and under no necessity of being occupied. Let the person who presents such arguments begin by picturing to you how the brain cells manage to store up the uncounted millions of memories which you have, the thousands of words and combinations of words, and the thoughts which go with them, musical notes and tunes, colors and odors and visual impressions, memories of the past and hopes of the future and dreams that never were. Where are all those hundreds of millions of things, and what are they like when they are not in our consciousness, and how do they pass the time, and where were they in the hundreds of millions of years before we were born, and where will they be in the hundreds of millions of years of the future? When our wise men can answer these questions completely, it will be time enough for them to tell us about the impossibility of immortality. CHAPTER XV THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL (Discusses the data of psychic research, and the proofs of spiritism thus put before us.) Let us now take up the question of survival of personality after death from the strictly scientific point of view; let us consider what facts we have, and the indications they seem to give. First, we know that to all appearances the consciousness and the subconsciousness are bound up with the body. They grow with the body, they decline with the body, they seem to die with the body. We can irretrievably damage the consciousness by drawing a whiff of cyanogen gas into the lungs, or by sticking a pin into the brain, or by clogging one of its tiny blood vessels with waste matter. It is terrible to us to think that the mind of a great poet or prophet or statesman may be snuffed out of existence in such a way; but then, it is no argument against a fact to say that it is terrible. Insanity is terrible, war is terrible, pestilence is terrible, so also are tigers and poisonous snakes; but all these things exist, and all these things have power over the wisest and greatest mind, to put an end to its work on this earth at least. And now we come with the new instrument of psychic research, to probe the question: What becomes of this consciousness when it disappears? Can we prove that it is still in existence, and is able by any method to communicate with us? Those who answer "Yes" argue that the mind of the dead person, unable to use its own bodily machinery any longer, manages in the hypnotic trance to use the bodily machinery of another person, called a "medium," and by it to make some kind of record to identify itself. This, of course, is a strange idea, and requires a good deal of proof. The law of probability requires us not to accept an unlikely explanation, if there is any more simple one which can account for the facts. When we examine the product of automatic writing, table-tipping, and other psychic phenomena, we have first to ask ourselves, Is there anything in all this which cannot be explained by what we already know? Then, second, we have to ask, Is there any other supposition which will explain the facts, and which is easier to believe than the spirit theory? These "spirits" apparently desire to convince us of their reality, and they tell us many things which are expected to convince us; they tell us things which we ourselves do not know, and which spirits might know. But here again we run up against the problem of the subconsciousness, with its infinite mass of "forgotten" knowledge. It is not so easy for the "spirits" to tell us things which we can be sure our subconscious mind could not possibly contain. Also, there comes the additional element of telepathy. It appears to be a fact that under trance conditions, or under any especially exciting conditions of the consciousness, one mind can reach out and take something out of another mind, or one mind can cause something to be passed over to another mind; and so information can be communicated to the mind of a medium, and can appear in automatic writing, or in clairvoyance, or in crystal gazing. One of the most conscientious and earnest of all the investigators of this subject was the late Professor Hyslop, who many years ago sought to teach me "practical morality" (from the bourgeois point of view) in Columbia University. Professor Hyslop worked for fifteen years with a medium by the name of Mrs. Piper, who was apparently sincere and was never exposed in any kind of fraud. In Professor Hyslop's books you will find innumerable instances of amazing facts brought out in Mrs. Piper's trances. You will find Professor Hyslop arguing that the only way telepathy can account for these facts is by the supposition that there is a universal subconscious mind, or that the subconscious mind of the medium possesses the power to reach into the subconscious mind of every other living person and take out anything from it. But for my part, I cannot see that the case is quite so difficult. Professor Hyslop recites, for example, how Mrs. Piper would tell him facts about some long dead relative--facts which he did not know, but was later able to verify. But that proves simply nothing at all, because there could be no possible way for Professor Hyslop to be sure that he had never known these facts about his relatives. The facts might have been in his subconscious mind without having ever been in his conscious mind at all; he might have heard people talking about these matters while he was reading a book, or playing as a boy, paying no attention to what was said. And then came Sir Oliver Lodge with his investigations. I will say this for his work--he was the first person who was able to make real to my mind the startling idea that perhaps after all the dead might be alive and able to communicate with us. You will find what he has to say in his book, "The Survival of Man," and it seems fair that a great scientist and a great man should have a chance to convince you of what seem to him the most important facts in the world. Sir Oliver's son Raymond was killed in the war, and it is claimed that he began at once to communicate with his family. Among other things, he told them of the existence of a picture, which none of them had ever seen or heard of, a group photograph which he described in detail. But, of course, other people in this group knew of the existence of the photograph, and so we have again the possibility that some member of Sir Oliver's family may have taken into his subconscious mind without knowing it an impression or description of that picture. If you care to experiment, you will find that you can frequently play a part in the dreams of a child by talking to it in its sleep; and that is only one of a thousand different ways by which some member of a family might acquire, without knowing it, information of the existence of a photograph. There is another possibility to be considered--that a portion of the consciousness may survive, and not necessarily forever. We are accustomed when death takes place to see the body before us, and we know that we can preserve the body for thousands of years if we wish. Why is it not possible that when conscious life is brought to a sudden end, there may remain some portion of the consciousness, or of the subconsciousness, cut off from the body, and slowly fading back into the universal mind energy, whatever we please to call it? There is a hard part of the body, the skeleton, which survives for some time; why might there not be a central core of the mind which is similarly tough and enduring? Of course, if consciousness is a function of the brain, it must decay as the brain decays; but how would it be if the brain were a function of the consciousness--which is, so far as I can see, quite as likely a guess. I find many facts which seem to indicate the plausibility of this idea. I notice that in trance phenomena it is the spirits of those recently dead which seem to manifest the most vitality. Of course, you can go to any seance in the "white light" district of your city and receive communications from the souls of Cæsar and Napoleon and Alexander the Great and Pocahontas, and if the medium does not happen to be literary, you can communicate with Hamlet and Don Quixote and Siegfried and Achilles; but you will not find much reality about any of these people, they will not tell you very much about the everyday details of their lives. This fact that so much of what the "spirits" tell us is of our own time tends to cast doubt on the idea that the dead survive forever. How simple it would be to convince us, if the spirit of Sophocles would come back to earth and tell us where to dig in order to find copies of his lost tragedies! You would think that the soul of Sophocles, seeing our great need of beauty and wisdom, would be interested to give us his works! From genius, operating under the guidance of the conscious mind, we get sublimity, majesty and power; but what the trance mediums give us suggests, both in its moral and intellectual quality, the operation of the subconscious. It is exactly like what we get, for example, from dissociated personalities. There are, to be sure, the books of Patience Worth, produced by the automatic writing of a lady in St. Louis, who tells us in evident good faith that her conscious personality is entirely innocent of Patience, and all her thought and doings. Patience writes long novels and dramas in a quaint kind of old English, and the lady in St. Louis knows nothing about this language. But does she positively know that when she was a child, she never happened to be in the room with someone who was reading old English aloud? Nothing seems more likely than that her subconscious mind heard some quaint, strange language, and took possession of it, and built up a personality around it, and even made a new language and a new literature from that starting point. That is precisely the kind of thing in which the subconscious revels. It creates new characters, with an imagination infinite and inexhaustible. Who has not waked up and been astounded at the variety and reality of a dream? Who has not told his dreams and laughed over them? The subconscious will play at games, it will act and rehearse elaborate rôles; it will put on costumes, and delight in being Cæsar and Napoleon and Alexander the Great and Pocahontas and Hamlet and Don Quixote and Siegfried and Achilles. Yes, it will even play at being "spirits"! It will be mischievous and impish; it will be swallowed up with a sense of its own importance, taking an insolent delight in convincing the world's most learned scientists of the fact that its play-acting is reality. It will call itself "Raymond" to move and thrill a grief-stricken family; it will call itself "Phinuit" and "Dr. Hodgson," and cause an earnest professor of "practical morality" to give up a respectable position in Columbia University and write books to convince the world that the dead are sending him messages. Consider, for example, the multiple personality of Miss Beauchamp. Remember that here we are not dealing with any guess work about "spirits"; here we have half a dozen different "controls," none of them the least bit dead, but all of them a part of the consciousness of one entirely alive young lady. A specialist has spent some six years investigating the case, day after day, week after week, writing down the minute details of what happens. And now consider the miscreant known as "Sally." Sally is just as real as any child whom you ever held in your arms. Sally has love and hate, fear and hope, pain and delight--and Sally is a little demon, created entirely out of the subconsciousness of a highly refined and conscientious young college graduate of Boston. Sally spends Miss Beauchamp's money on candy, and eats it; Sally pawns Miss Beauchamp's watch and deliberately loses the ticket; Sally uses Miss Beauchamp's lips and tongue to tell lies about Miss Beauchamp; Sally strikes Miss Beauchamp dumb, or makes her hear exactly the opposite of what is spoken to her. Yes, and Sally pleads and fights frantically for her life; Sally enters into intrigues with other parts of Miss Beauchamp, and for years deliberately fools Doctor Prince, who is her Recording Angel and Heavenly Judge! And can anybody doubt that Sally could have fooled a grieving mother, and made that mother think she was talking to the ghost of a long lost child? Can anybody doubt that Sally could and would play the part of any person she had ever known, or of any historic character she had ever read about? And don't overlook the all-important fact that the conscious Miss Beauchamp was absolutely innocent of all this, and was horrified when she was told about it. So here you have the following situation, no matter of guesswork, but definitely established: your dearest friend may act as a medium, and in all good faith may bring to the surface some part of his or her subconsciousness, which masquerades before you in a hundred different rôles, and plays upon you with deliberate malice the most subtle and elaborate and cruel tricks. And how much worse the situation becomes when to this there is added the possibility of conscious fraud! When the medium is a person who is taking your money, and thrives by making you believe in the "spirits" she produces! You may go to Lily Dale, in New York state, the home of the Spiritualists, where they have a convention every summer, and in row after row of tents you may hear, and even see, every kind of spirit you ever dreamed of, ringing bells and shaking tambourines and dancing jigs. And you may see poor farmers' wives, with tears streaming down their cheeks, listening to the endearments of their dead children, and to wisdom from the lips of Oliver Wendell Holmes speaking with a Bowery accent. This kind of thing was exposed many years ago by Will Irwin in a book called "The Medium Game"; and then--after traveling from one kind of medium to another, and studying all their frauds, Irwin tells how he went into a "parlor" on Sixth Avenue, and there by a fat old woman who had never seen him before, was suddenly told the most intimate secrets of his life! It has recently been announced that Thomas A. Edison is at work upon a device to enable spirits to communicate with the living, if there really are spirits seeking to do this. It is Edison's idea that spirits may inhabit some kind of infinitely rarefied astral body, and he proposes to manufacture an instrument which is sensitive to an impression many millions of times fainter than anything the human body can feel. This should make it easier for the spirits, and should constitute a fairer test, possibly a decisive one. When that machine is perfected and put to work by scientific men, I wish to suggest a few tests which will convince me that there really are spirits, and that the results are not to be explained by telepathy. First, assuming that the spirits live forever, there are some useful things which were known to the people of ancient time, and are not known to anyone living now. For example, let one of the Egyptian craftsmen come forward and tell us the secret of their glass-staining, which I understand is now a lost art. And then Sophocles, as I have already suggested, will tell us where we can find his lost dramas; or if he doesn't know where any copies are buried, let him find in the spirit world some scribe or librarian or book-lover who can give us this priceless information. All over the ancient lands are buried and forgotten cities, and in those cities are papyrus scrolls and graven tablets and bricks. Infinite stores of knowledge are thus concealed from us; and how simple for the ancient ones who possess this information to make it known to us, and so to convince us of their reality! Or, again, supposing that spirits are not immortal, but that they slowly fade from life as do their bodies. Suppose that a Raymond Lodge or other recently dead soldier wishes to communicate with his father and to convince his father that it is really an independent being, and not simply a part of the father's subconscious mind--let him try something like this. Let the father write six brief notes, and put them in six envelopes all alike, and shuffle them up and put them in a hat and draw out one of them. Now, assuming that the experimenter is honest, there is no living human being who knows the contents of that envelope, and if the medium is dipping into the subconscious mind of the experimenter, the chances are one in six of the right note being hit upon. Assuming that spirits may not be able to get inside an envelope and read a folded letter, there is no objection to the experimenter, provided he is honest, and provided there are no mirrors or other tricks, holding the envelope behind his back, and tearing it open, and spreading it out for the convenience of the spirit. And now, if the spirit can read that letter correctly every time, we shall be fairly certain that whatever force we are dealing with, it is not the subconscious mind of the experimenter. Or, let us take another test. Let us have a roulette wheel in a covered box, or hidden away so that no one but the spirit can see it. We spin the wheel, and any one of the habitues of Monte Carlo can figure out the chance of the little ball dropping into any particular number. If now the spirit can tell us each time where we shall find the ball, we shall know that we are dealing with knowledge which does not exist either in the conscious or the subconscious mind of any living human being. Among the things that "spirits" have been accustomed to do, since the days when they first made their appearance with the Fox sisters in America, are the lifting of tables and the ringing of bells and the assuming of visible forms. These are what is known as "materializations," and when I was a boy, and used to hear people talking about these things, there was always one test required: let the materializations manifest themselves upon recording instruments scientifically devised; let photographs be taken of them, let them be weighed and measured, and so on. Well, time has moved forward, and these tests have been met, and it appears that "materializations" are facts--although it is still as uncertain as ever what they are materializations of. An English scientist, Professor Crawford, has published a book entitled "The Reality of Psychic Phenomena," in which he tells the results of many years of testing materializations by the strictest scientific methods. When the medium "levitates" a table--that is, causes it to go up in the air without physical contact--it appears that her own weight increases by exactly the weight of the table. When she exerts any force, which apparently she can do at a distance, the recording instruments show the exact counter-force in her own body. The results of these investigations are calculated at first to take your breath away. It begins to appear that the theosophists may be right, and that we may have one or more "astral" bodies within or coincident with the physical body; and that under the trance conditions we mold and make over this "astral" body in accordance with our imaginations, precisely as a sculptor molds the clay. At any rate, our subconsciousness has the power to project from it masses of substance, and to cause these to take all kinds of forms, for example, human faces, which have been photographed innumerable times. Or the body can shoot out long rods or snaky projections, which lift tables, and exert force which has been recorded upon pressure instruments and weighed by scales. As I write, a friend lends me a fifteen-dollar volume, a translation just published of an elaborate work by Baron von Schrenck-Notzing, a physician of Munich, giving minute details of four years' experiments in this field. So rigid was this investigator in his efforts to exclude fraud, that not merely was the medium stripped and sewed up in black tights, but the "cabinet" in which she sat was a big sack of black cloth, everywhere sewed tight by machine. Every crevice of the medium's body was searched before and after the tests, and every inch of the "cabinet" gone over. The investigators sat within a couple of feet of the medium, and would draw back the curtains, and while holding her hands and her feet, would watch great masses of filmy gray and white stuff exude from the medium's mouth, from her armpits and breasts and sides. This would happen in red light of a hundred candle power, by which print could be easily read; and the medium would herself illuminate the phenomena with a red electric torch. The investigators would be privileged to examine these "phantom" forms, to touch them gently, and be touched by them--soft and slimy, like the tongue of an animal; but sometimes the things would misbehave, and strike them in the eye, hurting them. The medium, a young French girl living in the home of the wife of a well-known French playwright, had begun with spiritualist ideas, but came to take a matter-of-fact attitude to what happened, and in her trances would labor to mold these emanations into hands or faces, as requested by those present. She finally succeeded in allowing them to separate the soft mucous stuff from her body, and keep it for chemical and bacteriological examination. All this time she would be surrounded by a battery of cameras, nine at once, some of them inside the cabinet; and when the desired emanation was in sight, all these cameras would be set off by flashlight, and in the book you have over two hundred such photographs, showing faces and hands from every point of view. There are even moving-pictures, showing the material coming out of her mouth and going back! It is evident that we have here a whole universe of unexplored phenomena; and it seems that many of the old-time superstitions which were dumped overboard have now to be dragged back into the boat and examined in the light of new knowledge. What could smack more of magic and fraud than crystal-gazing? Yet it appears that the subconsciousness has power to project an image of its hidden memories into a crystal ball, where it may be plainly seen. We find so well-recognized an authority as Dr. Morton Prince using this method to enable one of the many Miss Beauchamps to recall incidents in her previous life which were otherwise entirely lost to her. Likewise this exploration of the disintegration of personality enables us to watch in the making all the phenomena of trance and ecstasy which have had so much to do with the making of religions. We know now how Joan of Arc heard the "voices," and we can make her hear more voices or make her stop hearing voices, as we prefer. Also we know all about demons and "demoniac possession." We can cast out demons--and without having to cause them to enter a herd of swine! We may some day be prepared to investigate the wonder stories which the Yogis tell us, about their ability to leave their physical bodies in a trance, and to appear in England at a few moments' notice for the transaction of their spiritual business! But we want things proven to us, and we don't want the people with whom we work to be animated either by religious fanaticism or by money greed. We are ready to unlimber our minds, and prepare for long journeys into strange regions, but we want to move cautiously, and choose our route carefully, and be sure we do not lose our way! We want to deal rationally with life; we don't want to make wild guesses, or to choose a complicated and unlikely solution when a simple one will suffice. But, on the other hand, we must be alive to the danger of settling down on our little pile of knowledge, and refusing to take the trouble to investigate any more. That is a habit of learned men, I am sorry to say; the law of inertia applies to the scientist, as well as to the objects he studies. The scientists of our time have had to be prodded into considering each new discovery about the subconscious mind, precisely as the scientists of Galileo's time had to be prodded to watch him drop weights from the tower of Pisa. When he told them that the earth moved round the sun instead of the sun round the earth, they tortured him in a dungeon to make him take it back, and he did so, but whispered to himself, "And yet it moves." And it did move, of course, and continued to move. And in exactly the same way, if it be true that we have these hidden forces in us, they will continue to manifest themselves, and masses of people will continue to flock to Lily Dale, and to pay out their hard-earned money, until such a time as our learned men set to work to find out the facts and tell us how we can utilize these forces without the aid of either superstition or charlatanry. CHAPTER XVI THE POWERS OF THE MIND (Sets forth the fact that knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery, and what science means to the people.) We have now completed a brief survey of the mind and its powers. Whatever we may have proved or failed to prove, this much we may say with assurance: the reader who has followed our brief sketch attentively has been disabused of any idea he may have held that he knows it all; and this is always the first step towards knowledge. The mind is the instrument whereby our race has lifted itself out of beasthood. It is the instrument whereby we hold ourselves above the forces which seek to drag us down, and whereby we shall lift ourselves higher, if higher we are to go. How shall we protect this precious instrument? How shall we complete our mastery of it? What are the laws of the conduct of the mind? The process of the mind is one of groping outward after new facts, and digesting and assimilating them, as the body gropes after and digests and assimilates food. The senses bring us new impressions, and we take these and analyze them, tear them into the parts which compose them, compare them with previous sensations, recognize difference in things which seem to be alike, and resemblances in things which seem to be different; we classify them, and provide them with names, which are, as it were, handles for the mind to grasp. Above all, we seek for causes; those chains of events which make what we know as order in the world of phenomena. And when the mind has what seems to be a cause, it proceeds to test it according to methods it has worked out, the rules and principles of experimental science. It is a comparatively small number of sensations which the body brings to the mind of itself; it is a narrow world in which we should live if our minds adopted a passive attitude toward life. But some minds possess what we call curiosity; they set out upon their own impulse to explore life; they discover new laws and make new experiences and new sensations for themselves. The mind forms an idea, and at first, after the fashion of the ancient Greek philosophers, it glorifies that idea and sets it in the seat of divinity. But presently comes the empirical method, which refuses authority to any idea unless it can stand the test of experiment, and prove that it corresponds with reality. Nowadays the thinker amasses his facts, and forms a theory to explain them, and then proceeds to try out this theory by the most rigid method that he or his critics can devise. If the theory doesn't "work"--that is, if it doesn't explain all the facts and stand all the tests--it is thrown away like a worn-out shoe. So little by little a body of knowledge is built up which is real knowledge; which will serve us in our daily lives, which we can use as foundation-stones in the structure of our civilization. By this method of research man is expanding his universe beyond anything that could have been conceived in the pre-scientific days. Hour by hour, while we work and play and sleep, the mind of our race is discovering new worlds in which our posterity will dwell. For uncounted ages man walked upon the earth, surrounded by infinite swarms of bacterial life of whose existence he never dreamed. The invisible rays of the spectrum beat upon him, and he knew nothing of what they did to him, whether good or evil. He lifted his head and saw vast universes of suns, in comparison with which his world was a mere speck of dust; yet to him these universes were globes or lanterns which some divinity had hung in the sky. One of the most fascinating illustrations of how the mind runs ahead of the senses is the story of the planet Uranus, which, less than two hundred years ago, had never been beheld by the eye of man. A mathematician seated in his study, working over the observations of other planets, their motions in relation to their mass and distance, discovered that their behavior was not as it should be. At certain times none of them were in quite the right place, and he decided that this variation must be due to the existence of an unknown body. He worked out the problem of what must be the mass and the exact orbit of this body, in order for it to be responsible for the variations observed; and when he had completed these calculations, he announced to the astronomical world, "Turn your telescopes to a certain spot in the heavens at a certain minute of a certain night, and you will find a new planet of a certain size." And so for the first time the human senses became aware of a fact, which by themselves they might not have discovered in all eternity. Now, the importance of exact knowledge concerning a new planet may not be apparent to the ordinary man; but if the thing which is discovered is, for example, an unknown ray which will move an engine or destroy a cancer, then we realize the worthwhileness of research, and the masters of the world's commerce are willing to give here and there a pittance for the increase of such knowledge. But men of science, who have by this time come to a sense of their own dignity and importance, understand that there is no knowledge about reality which is useless, no research into nature which is wasted. You might say that to describe and classify the fleas which inhabit the bodies of rats and ground-squirrels, and to study under the microscope the bacteria which live in the blood of these fleas--that this would be an occupation hardly worthy of the divinity that is in man. But presently, as a result of this knowledge about fleas and flea diseases being in existence and available, a bacteriologist discovers the secret of the dread bubonic plague, which hundreds of times in past history has wiped out a great part of the population of Europe and Asia. Mark Twain tells in his "Connecticut Yankee" how his hero was able to overcome the wizard Merlin, because he knew in advance of an eclipse of the sun. And this was fiction, of course; but if you prefer fact, you may read in the memoirs of Houdin, the French conjurer, how he was able to bring the Arab tribes into subjection to the French government by depriving the great chieftains of their strength. He gathered them into a theatre, and invited their mighty men upon the stage, and there was an iron weight, and they were able to lift it when Houdin permitted, and not to lift it when he forbade. These noble barbarians had never heard of the electro-magnet, and could not conceive of a force that could operate through a solid wooden floor beneath their feet. Such things, trivial as they are, serve to illustrate the difference between ignorance and knowledge, and the power which knowledge gives. The man who knows is godlike to those who do not know; he may enslave them, he may do what he pleases with their lives, and they are powerless to help themselves. Anyone who would help them must begin by giving them knowledge, real knowledge. There is no such thing as freedom without knowledge, and it must be the best knowledge, it must be new knowledge; he who goes against new knowledge armed with old knowledge is like the Chinese who went out to meet machine-guns with bows and arrows, and with umbrellas over their heads. Once upon a time knowledge was the prerogative of kings and priests and ruling castes; but this supreme power has been wrested from them, and this is the greatest step in human progress so far taken. "Seek and ye shall find," is the law concerning knowledge today. "Knock, and it shall be opened unto you." In this, my Book of the Mind, I say to you that knowledge is your priceless birthright, and that you should repudiate all men and all institutions and all creeds and all formulas which seek to keep this heritage from you. Beware of men who bid you believe something because it is told you, or because your fathers believed it, or because it is written in some ancient book, or embodied in some ancient ceremonial. Break the chains of these venerable spells; and at the same time beware of the modern spells which have been contrived to replace them! Beware of party cries and shibboleths, the idols of the forum, as Plato called them, the prejudices which are set as snares for your feet. Beware of cant--that paraphernalia of noble sentiments, artificially manufactured by politicians and newspapers for the purpose of blinding you to their knaveries. Remember that you live in a world of class conflicts; at every moment of your life your mind is besieged by secret enemies, it is exposed to poison gas-clouds deliberately released by people who seek to make use of you for purposes which are theirs and not yours. In the fairy-tales we used to love, the hero was provided with magic protection against the perils of those times; but what hero and what magic will guard the modern man against the propaganda of militarism, nationalism, and capitalist imperialism? The mind is like the body in that it can be trained, it can be taught sound habits, its powers can be enormously increased. There are many books on mind and memory training, some of which are useful, and some of which are trash. There is an English system widely advertised, called "Pelmanism," of which I have personally made no test, but it has won endorsements of a great many people who do not give their endorsements lightly. This is the subject of applied psychology, and just as in medicine, or in law, or in any of the arts, there is a vast amount of charlatanry, but there is also genuine knowledge being patiently accumulated and standardized. When the United States government had to have an army in a hurry it did not make its millions of young men into teamsters or aviators at random. It used the new methods of determining reaction times, and testing the coordination of mind and body. Recently I visited the Whittier Reform School in California, where delinquent boys are educated by the state. A boy had been set to work in the tailor shop, and it had been found that he was unable to make the buttons and the buttonholes of a coat come in the right place. For nine years the state of California, and before it the state of Georgia, had been laboring to teach this boy to make buttons and buttonholes meet; the effort had cost some five thousand dollars, to say nothing of all the coats which were spoiled, and all the mental suffering of the victim and his teachers. Finally someone persuaded the state of California to spend a few thousand dollars and install a psychological bureau for the purpose of testing all the inmates of the institution; so by a half hour's examination the fact was developed that this boy was mentally defective. Although he was eighteen years old in body, his mind was only eight years old, and so he would never be able to achieve the feat of making buttons and buttonholes meet. This is a new science which you may read about in Terman's "The Measurement of Intelligence." By testing normal children, it is established that certain tasks can be performed at certain ages. A child of three can point to his eyes, his nose and his mouth; he can repeat a sentence of six syllables, and repeat two digits, and give his family name. Older children are asked to look at a picture and then tell what they saw; to note omissions in a picture, to arrange blocks according to their weight, to arrange words into sentences, to note absurdities in statements, to count backwards, and to make change. Children of fifteen are asked to interpret fables, to reverse the hands of a clock, and so on. Of course there are always variations; every child will be better at some kinds of tests than at others. But by having a wide variety, and taking the average, you establish a "mental age" for the child--which may be widely different from its physical age. You may find some whose minds have stopped growing altogether, and can only be made to grow by special methods of education. Enlightened communities are now conducting separate schools for defective children--replacing the old-fashioned schoolmaster who wore out birch-rods trying to force poor little wretches to learn what was beyond their power. In the same way psychology can be applied in industry, and in the detection of crime. Here, too, there is a vast amount of "fake," but also the beginning of a science. Our laws do not as yet permit the use of automatic writing and the hypnotic trance in the investigation of crime, but they have sometimes permitted some of the simpler tests, for example, those of memory association. The examiner prepares a list of a hundred names of objects, and reads those names one after another, and asks the person he is investigating to name the first thing which is suggested to him by each word in turn. "Engine" will suggest "steam," or perhaps it will suggest "train"; "coat" will suggest "trousers," or perhaps it will suggest "pocket," and so on. The examiner holds a stop-watch, and notes what fraction of a second each one of these reactions takes. The ordinary man, who is not trying to conceal anything, will give all his associations promptly, and the reaction times will be approximately alike. But suppose the man has just murdered somebody with an axe, and buried the body in a cellar with a fire shovel, and taken a pocketbook, and a watch, and a locket, and a number of various objects, and climbed out of the cellar window by breaking the glass; and now suppose that in his list of a hundred objects the psychologist introduces unexpectedly a number of these things. In each case the first memory association of the criminal will be one which he does not wish to give. He will have to find another, and that inevitably takes time. One or two such delays might be accidental; but if every time there is any suggestion of the murder, or the method or scene of the murder, there is noticed confusion and delay, you may be sure that the conscious mind is interfering with the subconscious mind. The difference between the conscious and the subconscious mind is always possible to detect, and if you are permitted to be thorough in your experiments, you can make certain what is in the subconscious mind that the conscious mind is trying to conceal. Here, as everywhere in life, knowledge is power, and expert knowledge confers mastery over the shrewdest untrained mind. The only trouble is that under our present social system the trained mind is very apt to be working in the interest of class privilege. The psychologist who is employed by a great corporation, or by a police department, may be as little worthy of trust as a chemist who is engaged in making poison gases to be used by capitalist imperialism for the extermination of its rebellious slaves. But what this proves is not that scientific knowledge is untrustworthy, but merely that the workers must acquire it, they must have their own organizations and their own experiments in every field. To give knowledge to the masses of mankind, slow and painful as the process seems, is now the most important task confronting the enlightened thinker. The method of psychoanalysis gives us also much insight into the phenomena of genius, and the hope that we may ultimately come to understand it. At present we are embarrassed because genius is so often closely allied to eccentricity; the supernormal appears in connection with the subnormal--and it is often hard to tell them apart. Great poets and painters in revolt against a world of smug commercialism, adopt irresponsibility as their religion; they live in a world of their own, they dress like freaks, they refuse to pay their debts, or to be true to their wives. They are followed by a host of disciples, who adopt the defects of the master as a substitute for his qualities. And so there grows up a perverted notion of what genius is, and wholly false standards of artistic quality. There is nothing mankind needs more than sure and exact tests of mental superiority; not merely the ability to acquire languages and to solve mathematical equations, but the ability to carry in the mind intense emotions, while at the same time shaping and organizing them by the logical faculty, selecting masses of facts and weaving them into a pattern calculated to awaken the emotion in others. This is the last and greatest work of the human spirit, and to select the men who can do it, and foster their activity, is the ultimate purpose of all true science. CHAPTER XVII THE CONDUCT OF THE MIND (Concludes the Book of the Mind with a study of how to preserve and develop its powers for the protection of our lives and the lives of all men.) Someone wrote me the other day, asking, "When is the best time to acquire knowledge?" I answer, "The time is now." It is easier to learn things when you are young, but you cannot be young when you want to be, and if you are old, the best time to acquire knowledge is when you are old. It is true that the brain-cells seem to harden like the body, and it is less easy for them to take on new impressions; but it can be done, and just as Seneca began to learn Greek at eighty, I know several old men whom the recent war has shaken out of their grooves of thought and compelled to deal with modern ideas. But if you are young, then so much the better! Then the divine thrill of curiosity is keenest; then your memory is fresh, and can be trained; your mind is plastic, and you can form sound habits. You can teach yourself to respect truth and to seek it, you can teach yourself accuracy, open-mindedness, flexibility, persistence in the search for understanding. First of all, I think, is accuracy. Learn to think straight! Let your mind be as a sharp scalpel, penetrating unrealities and falsehoods, cutting its way to the facts. When you set out to deal with a certain subject, acquire mastery of it, so that you can say, "I know." And yet, never be too sure that you know! Never be so sure, that you are not willing to consider new facts, and to change your way of thinking if it should be necessary. I look about me at the world, and see tigers and serpents, dynamite and poison gas and forty-two centimeter shells--yet I see nothing in the world so deadly to men as an error of the mind. Look at the mental follies about you! Look at the prejudices, the delusions, the lies deliberately maintained--and realize the waste of it all, the pity of it all! Every man, it seems, has his pet delusions, which he hugs to his bosom and loves because they are his own. If you try to deprive him of those delusions, it is as though you tore from a woman's arms the child she has borne. I have written a book called "The Profits of Religion," and never a week passes that there do not come to me letters from people who tell me they have read this book with pleasure and profit, they are grateful to me for teaching them so much about the follies and delusions of mankind, and it is all right and all true, save for two or three pages, in which I deal with the special hobby which happens to be their hobby! What I say about all the other creeds is correct--but I fail to understand that the Mormon religion is a dignified and inspired religion, a gift from on high, and if only I would carefully study the "Book of Mormon," I would realize my error! Or it is all right, except what I say about the Christian Scientists, or the Theosophists, or perhaps one particular sect of the Theosophists, who are different from the others. Today there lies upon my desk a letter from a man who has read many of my books, and now is grief-stricken because he must part company from me; he discovers that I permit myself to speak disrespectfully about the Seventh Day Adventist religion, whereas he is prepared to show the marvels of biblical prophecy now achieving themselves in the world. How could any save a divinely revealed religion have foreseen the present movement to establish the Sabbath by law? Yes, and presently I shall see the last atom of the prophecy fulfilled--there will be a death penalty for failure to obey the Sabbath law! Cultivate the great and precious virtue of open-mindedness. Keep your thinking free, not merely from outer compulsions, but from the more deadly compulsions of its own making--from prejudices and superstitions. The prejudices and superstitions of mankind are like those diseased mental states which are discovered by the psychoanalyst; what he calls a "complex" in the subconscious mind, a tangle or knot which is a center of disturbance, and keeps the whole being in a state of confusion. Each group of men, each sect or class, have their precious dogmas, their shibboleths, their sacred words and stock phrases which set their whole beings aflame with fanaticism. They have also their phobias, their words of terror, which cannot be spoken in their presence without causing a brain-storm. At present the dread word of our time is "Communist." You can scarcely say the word without someone telephoning for the police. And yet, when you meet a Communist, what is he? A worn and fragile student, who has thought out a way to make the world a better place to live in, and whose crime is that he tells others about his idea! Or perhaps you belong to the other side, and then your word of terror is the word "Capitalist." You meet a Capitalist, and what do you find? Very likely you find a man who is kindly, generous in his personal impulses, but bewildered, possibly a little frightened, still more irritated and made stubborn. So you realize that nearly all men are better than the institutions and systems under which they live; you realize the urgent need of applying your reasoning powers to the problem of social reorganization. Cultivate also, in the affairs of your mind, the ancient virtue of humility. There is an oldtime poem, which perhaps was in your school readers, "Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" My answer is, for innumerable reasons. The spirit of mortal should be proud and must be proud because life throbs in it, and because life is a marvelous thing, and the excitement of life is perpetual. Yesterday I met a young mother; and of what avail is all the pessimism of poets against the pride of a young mother? "Oh!" she cried, and her face lighted up with delight. "He said 'Goo'!" Yes, he said "Goo!"--and never since the world began had there been a baby which had achieved that marvel. Presently it will be, "Look, look, he is trying to walk!" Then he will be getting marks at school, and presently he will be displaying signs of genius. Always it will take an effort of the mind of that young mother to realize that there are other children in the world as wonderful as her own; and perhaps it will take many generations of mental effort before there will be young mothers capable of realizing that some other child is more wonderful than her child. In other words, it is by a definite process of broadening our minds that we come to realize the lives of others, to transfer to them the interest we naturally take in our own lives, and to admit them to a state of equality with ourselves. This is one of the services the mind must render for us; it is the process of civilizing us. And there is another, and yet more important task, which is to make clear to us the fact that we do not altogether make this life of ours, that there is a universe of power and wisdom which is not ours, but on which we draw. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," said the Psalmist. We know now that fear is an ugly emotion, destructive to life; but it may be purified and made into a true humility, which every thinking man must feel towards life and its miracles. Also the man will have joy, because it is given him to share the high, marvelous adventure of being. To the pleasures of the body there is a limit, and it comes quickly; but the pleasures of the mind are infinite, and no one who truly understands them can have a moment of boredom in life. To a man who possesses the key to modern thought, who knows what knowledge is and where to look for it, the life of the mind is a panorama of delight perpetually unrolled before him. To the minds of our ancestors there was one universe; but to our minds there are many universes, and new ones continually discovered. The only question is, which one will you choose? Will you choose the universe of outer space, the material world of infinity? Consider the smallest insect that you can see, crawling upon the surface of the earth; small as that insect is in relation to the earth, it is not so small, by millions of times, as is the earth in relation to the universe made visible to our eyes by the high-power telescope, plus the photographic camera, plus the microscope. If you want to know the miracles of this world of space, read Arrhenius' "The Life of the Universe," or Simon Newcomb's "Sidelights on Astronomy." Suffice it here to say that we have a chemistry of the stars, by means of the spectroscope; that we can measure the speed and direction of stars by the same means; that we have learned to measure the size of the stars, and are studying stars which we cannot even see! And then along comes Einstein, with his theories of "relativity," and makes it seem that we have to revise a great part of this knowledge to allow for the fact that not merely everything we look at, but also we ourselves, are flying every which way through space! Or will you choose the universe of the atom, the infinity of the material world followed the other way, so to speak? Big as is the universe in relation to our world, and big as is our world in relation to the insect that crawls on it, the insect is bigger yet in relation to the molecules which compose its body; and these in turn are millions of millions of times bigger than the atoms which compose them; and then, behold, in the atom there are millions of millions of electrons--tiny particles of electric energy! We cannot see these infinitely minute things, any more than we can see the electricity which runs our trolley cars; but we can see their effects, and we can count and measure them, and deal with them in complicated mathematical formulas, and be just as certain of their existence as we are of the dust under our feet. If you wish to explore this wonderland, read Duncan's "The New Knowledge," or Dr. Henry Smith Williams' "Miracles of Science." Or will you choose the universe of the subconscious, our racial past locked up in the secret chambers of our mind? Or will you choose the universe of the superconscious, the infinity of genius manifested in the arts? By the device of art man not merely creates new life, he tests it, he weighs it and measures it, he tries experiments with it, as the physicist with the molecule and the astronomer with light. He finds out what works, and what does not work, and so develops his moral and spiritual muscles, training himself for his task as maker of life. Written words can give but a feeble idea of the wonders that are found in these enchanted regions of the mind. Here are palaces of splendor beyond imagining, here are temples with sacred shrines, and treasure-chambers full of gold and priceless jewels. Into these places we enter as Aladdin in the ancient tale; we are the masters here, and all that we see is ours. He who has once got access to it--he possesses not merely the magic lamp, he possesses all the wonderful fairy properties of all the tales of our childhood. His is the Tarnhelm and the magic ring which gives him power over his foes; his is the sword Excalibur which none can break, and the silver bullet which brings down all game, and the flying carpet upon which to travel over the earth, and the house made of ginger-bread, and the three wishes which always come true, and the philter of love, and the elixir of youth, and the music of the spheres, and--who knows, some day he may come upon heaven, with St. Peter and his golden key, and the seraphim singing, and the happy blest conversing! PART TWO THE BOOK OF THE BODY CHAPTER XVIII THE UNITY OF THE BODY (Discusses the body as a whole, and shows that health is not a matter of many different organs and functions, but is one problem of one organism.) The reader who has followed our argument this far will understand that we are seldom willing to think of the body as separate from the mind. The body is a machine, to be sure, but it is a machine that has a driver, and while it is possible for a sound machine to have a drunken and irresponsible driver, such a machine is not apt to remain sound very long. Frequently, when there is trouble with the machine, we find the fault to be with the driver; in other words, we find that what is needed for the body is a change in the mind. If you wish to have a sound body, and to keep it sound as long as possible, the first problem for you to settle is what you want to make of your life; you must have a purpose, and confront the tasks of life with energy and interest. What is the use of talking about health to a man who has no moral purpose? He may answer--indeed, I have heard victims of alcoholism answer--"Let me alone. I have a right to go to hell in my own way." I am aware, of course, that the opposite of the proposition is equally true. A man cannot enjoy much mental health while he has a sick body. It is a good deal like the old question, Which comes first, the hen or the egg? The mind and the body are bound up together, and you may try to deal with each by turn, but always you find yourself having to deal with both. Most physicians have a tendency to overlook the mind, and Christian Scientists make a religion of overlooking the body, and each pays the penalty in greatly reduced effectiveness. My first criticism of medical science, as it exists today, is that it has a tendency to concentrate upon organs and functions, and to overlook the central unity of the system. You will find a doctor who specializes in the stomach and its diseases, and is apt to talk as if the stomach were a thing that went around in the world all by itself. He will discuss the question of what goes into your stomach, and overlook to point out to you that your stomach is nourished by your blood-stream, which is controlled by your nervous system, which in turn is controlled by hope, by ambition, by love, by all the spiritual elements of your being. A single pulse of anger or of fear may make more trouble with the contents of your stomach than the doctor's pepsins and digestive ferments can remedy in a week. Of course, you may do yourself some purely local injury, and so for a time have a purely local problem. You may smash your finger, and that is a problem of a finger; but neglect it for a few days, and let blood poison set in, and you will be made aware that the human body is one organism, and also that, in spite of any metaphysical theories you may hold, your body does sometimes dominate and control your mind. Some one has said that the blood is the life; and certainly the blood is both the symbol and the instrument of the body's unity. The blood penetrates to all parts of the body and maintains and renews them. If the blood is normal, the work of renewal does not often fail. If there is a failure of renewal--that is, a disease--we shall generally find an abnormal condition of the blood. The distribution of the blood is controlled by the heart, a great four-chambered pump. One chamber drives the blood to the lungs, a mass of fine porous membranes, where it comes into contact with the air, and gives off the poisons which it has accumulated in its course through the body, and takes up a fresh supply of oxygen. By another chamber of the heart the blood is then sucked out of the lungs, and by the next chamber it is driven to every corner of the body. It takes to every cell of the body the protein materials which are necessary for the body's renewal, and also the fuel materials which are to be burned to supply the body's energy; also it takes some thirty million millions of microscopic red corpuscles which are the carriers of oxygen, and an even greater number of the white corpuscles, which are the body's scavengers, its defenders from invasion by outside germs. There are certain outer portions of the body, such as nails and the scales of the skin, which are dead matter, produced by the body and pushed out from it and no longer nourished by the blood. But all the still living parts of the body are fed at every instant by the stream of life. Each cell in the body takes the fuel which it needs for its activities, and combines it with the oxygen brought by the red corpuscles; and when the task of power-production has been achieved, the cell puts back into the blood-stream, not merely the carbon dioxide, but many complex chemical products--ammonia, uric acid, and the "fatigue poisons," indol, phenol and skatol. The blood-stream bears these along, and delivers some to the sweat glands to be thrown out, and some to the kidneys, and the rest to the lungs. All of this complicated mass of activities is in normal health perfectly regulated and timed by the nervous system. You lie down to sleep, and your muscles rest, and the vital activities slow up, your heart beats only faintly; but let something frighten you, and you sit up, and these faculties leap into activity, your heart begins to pound, driving a fresh supply of blood and vital energy. You jump up and run, and these organs all set to work at top speed. If they did not do so, your muscles would have no fresh energy; they would become paralyzed by the fatigue poisons, and you would be, as we say, exhausted. All the rest of the body might be described as a shelter and accessory to the life-giving blood-stream; all the rest is the blood-stream's means of protecting itself and renewing itself. The stomach is to digest and prepare new blood material, the teeth are to crush it and grind it, the hands are to seize it, the eyes are to see it, the brain is to figure out its whereabouts. Man, in his egotism, imagines his little world as the center of the universe; but the wise old fellow who lives somewhere deep in our subconsciousness and looks after the welfare of our blood-stream--he has far better reason for believing that all our consciousness and our personality exist for him! Now, disease is some failure of this blood-stream properly to renew itself or properly to protect itself and its various subsidiary organs. When you find yourself with a disease, you call in a doctor; and unless this doctor is a modern and progressive man, he makes the mistake of assuming that the disease is in the particular organ where it shows itself. You have, let us say, "follicular tonsilitis." (These medical men have a love for long names, which have the effect of awing you, and convincing you that you are in desperate need of attention.) Your throat is sore, your tonsils are swollen and covered with white spots; so the doctor hauls out his little black bag, and makes a swab of cotton and dips it, say in lysol, and paints your tonsils. He knows by means of the microscope that your tonsils are covered and filled with a mass of foreign germs which are feeding upon them; also he knows that lysol kills these germs, and he gives you a gargle for the same purpose, puts you to bed, and gradually the swelling goes down, and he tells you that he has cured you, and sends you a bill for services rendered. But maybe the swelling does not go down; maybe it gets worse and you die. Then he tells your family that nature was to blame. Nature is to blame for your death, but it never occurs to anyone to ask what nature may have had to do with your recovery. I do not know how many thousands of diseases medical science has now classified. And for each separate disease there are complex formulas, and your system is pumped full of various mineral and vegetable substances which have been found to affect it in certain ways. Perhaps you have a fever; then we give you a substance which reduces the temperature of your blood-stream. It never occurs to us to reflect that maybe nature has some purpose of her own in raising the temperature of the blood; that this might be, so to speak, the heat of conflict, a struggle she is waging to drive out invading germs; and that possibly it would be better for the temperature to stay up until the battle is over. Or maybe the heart is failing; then our medical man is so eager to get something into the system that he cannot wait for the slow process of the mouth and the stomach, he shoots some strychnine directly into the blood-stream. It does not occur to him to reflect that maybe the heart is slowing up because it is overloaded with fatigue poisons, of which it cannot rid itself, and that the effect of stimulating it into fresh activity will be to leave it more dangerously poisoned than before. We are dealing here with processes which our ancient mother nature has been carrying on for a long time, and which she very thoroughly understands. We ought, therefore, to be sure that we know what is the final effect of our actions; more especially we ought to be sure that we understand the cause of the evil, so that we may remove it, and not simply waste our time treating symptoms, putting plasters on a cancer. This is the fundamental problem of health; and in order to make clear what I mean, I am going to begin by telling a personal experience, a test which I made of medical science some twelve or fourteen years ago, in connection with one of the simplest and most external of the body's problems--the hair. First I will tell you what medical science was able to do for my hair, and second what I myself was able to do, when I put my own wits to work on the problem. I had been overworking, and was in a badly run down condition. I was having headaches, insomnia, ulcerated teeth, many symptoms of a general breakdown; among these I noticed that my hair was coming out. I decided that it was foolish to become bald before I was thirty, and that I would take a little time off, and spend a little money and have my hair attended to. I did not know where to go, but I wanted the best authority available, so I wrote to the superintendent of the largest hospital in New York, asking him for the name of a reliable specialist in diseases of the scalp. The superintendent replied by referring me to a certain physician, who was the hospital's "consulting dermatologist," and I went to see this physician, whose home and office were just off Fifth Avenue. He examined my scalp, and told me that I had dandruff in my hair, and that he would give me a prescription which would remove this dandruff and cause my hair to stop falling out. He charged me ten dollars for the visit, which in those days was more money than it is at present. Being of an inquiring turn of mind, I tried to get my money's worth by learning what there was to learn about the human hair. I questioned this gentleman, and he told me that the hair is a dead substance, and that its only life is in the root. He explained that barbers often persuade people to have their hair singed, to keep it from falling out, and that this was an utterly futile procedure, and likewise all shampooing and massage, which only caused the hair to fall out more quickly. It was better even not to wash the hair too often. All that was needed was a mixture of chemicals to kill the dandruff germs; and so I had the prescription put up at a drug store, and for a couple of years I religiously used it according to order, and it had upon my hair absolutely no effect whatever. So here was the best that medical science could do. But still, I did not want to be bald, so I went among the health cranks--people who experiment without license from the medical schools. Also, I experimented upon myself, and now I know something about the human hair, something entirely different from what the rich and successful "consulting dermatologist" taught me, but which has kept me from becoming entirely bald: First, the human hair is made by the body, and it is made, like everything else in the body, out of the blood-stream. It is perfectly true that the dandruff germ gets into the roots, and makes trouble, and that the process of killing this germ can be helped by chemicals; but it does not take a ten-dollar prescription, it only takes ten cents' worth of borax and salt from the corner grocery. (Put a little into a saucer, moisten it, rub it into the scalp, and wash it out again.) But infinitely more important than this is the fact that healthy hair roots are a product of healthy blood, and that unhealthy blood produces sick hair roots, which cannot hold in the hair. Most important of all is the fact that in order to make healthy hair roots the blood must flow fully and freely to these hair roots; whereas I had been accustomed for many hours every day of my life to clap around my scalp a tight band which almost entirely stopped the circulation of the life-giving blood to my sick hair roots. In other words, by wearing civilized hats, I was literally starving my hair to death. As soon as I realized this I took off my civilized hat, and have never worn one since. As a rule, I don't wear anything. On the few occasions when I go into the city, I wear a soft cap. Now and then I experience inconvenience from this--the elevator boy in some apartment house tells me to come in by the delivery entrance, or the porter of a sleeping-car will not let me in at all. I remember discussing these embarrassments with Jack London, who went even further in his defiance of civilization, and wore a soft shirt. It was his custom, he said, to knock down the elevator boys and sleeping-car porters. I answered that that might be all right for him, because he could do it; whereas I was reduced to the painful expedient of explaining politely why I went about without the customary symbols of my economic superiority. The "consulting dermatologist" had very solemnly and elaborately warned me concerning the danger of moving my hair too violently, and thus causing it to come out; but now my investigations brought out the fact that moving the hair, that is, massaging the scalp, increases the flow of blood to the hair roots, and further increases resistance to disease. As for causing the hair to fall out, I discovered that the more quickly you cause a hair to fall out, the greater is the chance of your getting another hair. If a hair is allowed to die in the root, it kills that root forever, but if it is pulled out before it dies, the root will make a new hair. Every "beauty parlor" specialist knows this; she knows that if a hair is pulled, it grows back bigger and stronger than ever, and so to pull out hair is the last thing you must do if you want to get rid of hairs! I know a certain poet, who happens to have been well-endowed with physical graces by our mother nature. He finds it worth while to preserve them--they being accessory to those amorous experiences which form so large a part of the theme of poetry. Anyhow, this poet values his beautiful hair, and you will see him sitting in front of his fireplace, reading a book, and meanwhile his fingers run here and there over his head, and he grabs a bunch of hair and pulls and twists it. He has cultivated this habit for many years, and as a result his hair is as thick and heavy as the "fuzzy-wuzzies" of Kipling's poem. It is a favorite sport of this poet to lure some rival poet into a contest. He will mildly suggest that they take hold of each other's hair and have a tug of war. The rival poet, all unsuspecting, will accept the challenge, and my friend will proceed to haul him all over the place, to the accompaniment of howls of anguish from the victim, and howls of glee from the victor, who has, of course, a scalp as tough as a rhinoceros hide. I am not a poet, and it is not important that I should be beautiful, and I have been too busy to remember to pull my hair; but by giving up tight hats, and by limiting the amount of my overworking, I have managed to keep what hair I had left when the hair specialist had got through with me. I tell this anecdote at the beginning of my discussion of health, because it illustrates so well the factors which appear in every case of disease, and which you must understand in seeking to remedy the trouble. We have a phrase which has come down to us from the ancient Latins, "vis medicatrix naturae," which means the healing power of nature. So long ago men realized that it is our ancient mother who heals our wounds, and not the physician. Out of this have grown the cults of "nature cure" enthusiasts; and according to the fashion of men, they fly to extremes just as unreasonable and as dangerous as those of the "pill doctors" they are opposing. I have in mind a man who taught me probably more than any other writer on health questions, and with whom I once discussed the subject of typhoid, how it seemed to affect able-bodied men in the prime of their physical being. This, of course, was contrary to the theories of nature cure, and my friend had a simple way of meeting the argument--he refused to believe it. He insisted that, as with all other germ infections, it must be a question of bodily tone; no germ could secure lodgment in the human body unless the body's condition was reduced. "But how can you be sure of that?" I argued. "You know that if you go into the jungle, you are not immune against the scorpion or the cobra or the tiger. There is nothing in all nature that is safe against every enemy. What possible right have you to assert that you are immune against every enemy which can attack your blood-stream?" We shall find here, as we find nearly always, that the truth lies somewhere between the extremes of two warring schools. Our race has been existing for a long time in a certain environment, and its very existence implies superiority to that environment. The weaklings, for whom its hardships were too severe, were weeded out; hostile parasites invaded their blood-stream and conquered and devoured them. But those who survived were able to make in their blood-stream the substances known as anti-bodies, the "opsonins," to help the white blood corpuscles devour the germs. As the result of their victory, we carry those anti-bodies in our system, which gives us immunity to those particular diseases, or at any rate gives us the ability to have the diseases without dying. Every time we go into a street car, we take into our throat and lungs the germs of tuberculosis. Examination proves that we carry around with us in our mouths the germs of all the common throat and nose diseases, colds, bronchitis, tonsilitis. No matter what precautions we might take, no matter if we were to gargle our throats every few minutes, we could never get rid of such germs. And they wage continual war upon the body's defenses; they batter in vain upon the gates of our sound health. But take us to some new environment to which we are not accustomed; take us to Panama in the old days of yellow fever, or take us to Africa, and let the tsetse fly bite us, and infect us with "sleeping sickness." Here are germs to which our systems are not accustomed; and before them we are as helpless as the ancient knights-at-arms, who had conquered everything in sight, and ruled the continent of Europe for many hundreds of years, but were wiped off the earth by a chemist mixing gunpowder. In the Marquesas Islands, in the South Seas, there lived a beautiful and happy race of savages, believed to have been descended, long ages ago, from Aryan stock. From the point of view of physical perfection, they were an ideal race, living a blissful outdoor life, which you may read about in Melville's "Typee," and in O'Brien's "White Shadows in the South Seas." This race conformed to all the requirements of the nature enthusiast. They went practically naked, their houses were open all the time, they lived on the abundant fruits of the earth. To be sure, they were cannibals, but this was more a matter of religious ceremony than of diet. They ate their war captives, but this was only after battle, and not often enough to count, one way or the other, in matters of health. They had lived for uncounted ages in perfect harmony with their environment; they were happy and free; and certainly, if such a thing were possible to human beings, they should have been proof against germs. But a ship came to one of these islands, and put ashore a sailor dying of tuberculosis, and in a few years four-fifths of the population of this island had been wiped out by the disease. What tuberculosis left were finished by syphilis and smallpox, and today the Marquesans are an almost extinct race. But there is another side to the argument--and one more favorable to the nature cure enthusiast. We civilized men, by soft living, by self-indulgence and lack of exercise, may reduce the tone of our body too far below the standard which our ancestors set for us; and then the common disease germs get us, then we have colds, sore throats, tuberculosis. The nature cure advocate is perfectly right in saying that there is no use treating such diseases; the thing is to restore the body to its former tone, so that we may be superior to our normal environment and its strains. You know the poem of the "One Hoss Shay," which was so perfectly built in every part that it ran for fifty years and then collapsed all at once in a heap. But the human body is not built that way. It always has one or more places which are weaker than the others, and which first show the effects of strain. In one person it will take the form of dyspepsia, in another it will be headaches, in another colds, in another decaying teeth, in another hardening of the arteries or stiffening of the joints. But whatever the symptoms may be, the fundamental cause is always the same, an abnormal condition of the blood-stream, and a consequent lowering of the body's tone. Therefore, studying any disease and its cure, you have first the emergency question, are there any germs lodged in the body, and if so, how can you destroy them? As part of the problem, you have to ask whether your blood-stream is normal, and if not, what are the methods by which you can make it normal and keep it so? Also you have to ask, what are the reasons why your trouble manifests itself in this or that particular organ? Is there some weakness or defect there, and can the defect be remedied, or can your habits be changed so as to reduce the strain on that organ? Are there any measures you can take to increase the flow of blood to that organ, and to promote its activity? In the study of your health, you will find that circumstances differ, and the importance of one factor or the other will vary; but you will seldom find any problem in which all these factors do not enter, and you will seldom find an adequate remedy unless you take all the factors into consideration. CHAPTER XIX EXPERIMENTS IN DIET (Narrates the author's adventures in search of health, and his conclusions as to what to eat.) Students of the body assure us that every particle of matter which composes it is changed in the course of seven years. It is obvious that everything that is a part of the body has at some time to be taken in as food; so the problem of our diet today is the problem of what our body shall consist of seven years from now, and probably a great deal sooner. I begin this discussion by telling my own personal experiences with food. I am not going to recommend my diet for anyone else; because one of the first things I have to say about the subject is that every human individual is a separate diet problem. But I am going to try to establish a few principles for your guidance, and more especially to point out the commonest mistakes. I tell about my own mistakes, because it happens that I know them more intimately. I was brought up in the South, where it is the custom of people to give a great deal of time and thought to the subject of eating. Among the people I knew it was always taken for granted that there should be at least one person in the kitchen devoting all her time to the preparing of delicious things for the family to eat. This person was generally a negress, and, needless to say, she knew nothing about the chemistry of foods, nothing about their constituents or nutritive qualities. All she knew was about their taste; she had been trained to prepare them in ways that tasted best, and was continually being advised and exhorted and sometimes scolded by the ladies of the family on this subject. At the table the family and the guests never failed to talk about the food and its taste, and not infrequently the cook would be behind the door listening to their comments; or else she would wait until after the meal, for the report which somebody would bring her. In addition to this, the ladies of the family were skilled in what is called "fancy cooking." They did not bother with the meats and vegetables, but they mixed batter cakes, and made all kinds of elaborate desserts, and exchanged these treasures and the recipes for them with other ladies in the neighborhood. In addition to this, there were certain periods of the week and of the year especially devoted to the preparing and consuming of great quantities of foods. Once every seven days the members of the family expressed their worship of their Creator by eating twice as much as usual; and at another time they celebrated the birth of their Redeemer by overeating systematically for a period of two or three weeks. Needless to say, of course, the children brought up in such an environment all had large appetites and large stomachs, and their susceptibility to illness was recognized by the setting apart for them of a whole classification of troubles--"children's diseases," they were called. In addition to children's diseases, there were coughs and colds and sore throats and pains in the stomach and constipation and diarrhea, which the children shared with their adults. I had a little more than my share of all these troubles. Always a doctor would be sent for, and always he was wise and impressive, and always I was impressed. He gave me some pills or a bottle of liquid, a teaspoonful every two hours, or something like that--I can hear the teaspoon rattle in the glass as I write. I had a profound respect for each and every one of those doctors. He was wisdom walking about in trousers, and whenever he came, I knew that I was going to get well; and I did, which proved the case completely. Then I grew up, and at the age of eighteen or nineteen became possessed of a desire for knowledge, and took to reading and studying literally every minute of the day and a good part of the night. I seldom let myself go to sleep before two o'clock in the morning, and was always up by seven and ready for work again. I did this for ten years or so, until nature brought me to a complete stop. During these ten years I was a regular experiment station in health; that is, I had every kind of common ailment, and had it over and over again, so that I could try all the ways of curing it, or failing to cure it, and keep on trying until I was sure, one way or the other. I came recently upon a wonderful saying by John Burroughs, which will be appreciated by every author. "This writing is an unnatural business. It makes your head hot and your feet cold, and it stops the digesting of your food." This trouble with my digestion began when I was writing my second novel, camping out on a lonely island at the foot of Lake Ontario. I went to see a doctor in a nearby town, and he talked learnedly about dyspepsia. The cause of it, he said, was failure of the stomach to secrete enough pepsin, and the remedy was to take artificial pepsin, obtained from the stomach of a pig. He gave me this pig-pepsin in a bottle of red liquid, and I religiously took some after each meal. It helped for a time; but then I noticed that it helped less and less. I got so that a simple meal of cold meat and boiled potatoes would stay in my stomach for hours, in spite of any amount of the pig-pepsin; I would lie about in misery, because I wanted to work, and my accursed stomach would not let me. All the time, of course, I was using my mind on this problem, groping for causes. I found that the trouble was worse if I worked immediately after eating. I found also that it was worse when I was writing books. When I got sufficiently desperate, I would stop writing books and go off on a hunting trip. I would tramp twenty miles a day over the mountains, looking for deer, and I would come back at night too tired to think, and in a week or two every trace of my trouble would be gone. So my life regimen came to be--first the writing of a book, and then a hunting trip to get over the effects of it. But as time went on, alas, I noticed that the recuperation was more slow and less certain. The working times grew shorter, and the hunting times grew longer, until finally I had got to a point where I couldn't work at all; I would go to pieces in a few days if I tried it. It was apparently the end of my stomach, and the end of my sleeping, and the end of my writing books. My teeth were decaying, not merely outside but inside; I would have abscesses, and most frightful agonies to endure. I would lie awake all night, and it would seem to me that I could feel my body going to pieces--an extremely depressing sensation! I had been trying experiments all this time. I had been going to one doctor after another, and had got to realize that the doctors only treated symptoms; they treated the "diseases" when they appeared--but nobody ever told you how to keep the "diseases" from appearing. Why could there not be a doctor who would look you over thoroughly, and tell you everything that was wrong with you, and how to set it right? A doctor who would tell you exactly how to live, so that you might keep well all the time! I was studying economics, and becoming suspicious of my fellow man; it occurred to me that possibly it might be embarrassing to a doctor, if he cured all his patients, and taught them how to live, so that none of them would ever have to come to him again. It occurred to me that possibly this might be the reason why "preventive medicine," constructive health work, was getting so little attention from the medical fraternity. Two things that plagued me were headache and constipation, and they were obviously related. For constipation, the world had one simple remedy; you "took something" every night or every morning, and thought no more about it. My stout and amiable grandmother had drunk a glass of Hunyadi water every morning for the last thirty or forty years, and that she finally died of "fatty degeneration of the heart" was not connected with this in the mind of anyone who knew her. As for the headaches, people would tell you this, that, and the other remedy, and I would try them--that is, unless they happened to be drugs. I was getting more and more shy of drugs. I had some blessed instinct which saved me from stimulants and narcotics. I had never used tea, coffee, alcohol or tobacco, and in my worst periods of suffering I never took to putting myself to sleep with chloral, or to stopping my headaches with phenacetin. At the end of six or eight years of purgatory, I came upon a prospectus of the Battle Creek Sanitarium. This seemed to me exactly what I wanted; this was constructive, it dealt with the body as a whole. So I spent a couple of months at the "San," and paid them something like a thousand dollars to tell me all they could about myself. The first thing they told me was that meat-eating was killing me. It was perfectly obvious, was it not, that meat is a horrible feeding place for germs, that rotten meat is dreadfully offensive, and likewise digested meat--consider the excreta of cats, for example! I listened solemnly while Doctor Kellogg read off the numbers of billions of bacteria per gram in the contents of the colon of a carnivorous person. It certainly seemed proper that the author of "The Jungle" should be a vegetarian, so I became one, and did my best to persuade myself that I enjoyed the taste of the patent meat-substitutes which are served in hundred calory portions in the big Sanitarium dining-room. There also I met Horace Fletcher, and learned to chew every particle of food thirty-two times, and often more. I exercised in the Sanitarium gymnasium, and watched the sterilized dancing--the men with the men and the women with the women. I was patiently polite with the Seventh Day Adventist religion, and laid in a supply of postage stamps on Friday evening. Finally, and most important of all, I went once a day to the "treatment rooms," and had my abdomen doctored alternately with hot cloths and ice. By this means I kept up a flow of blood in the intestinal tract, and stimulated these organs to activity; so my constipation was relieved, and my headaches were less severe--so long as I stayed at the Sanitarium, and was boiled and frozen once every day. But when I left the Sanitarium, and abandoned the treatments, the troubles began to return. Meantime, however, I had written a book in praise of vegetarianism--a book which has got into the libraries, and cannot be got out again! I went on to a new variety of health crank, the real "nature cure" practitioners. Vegetarianism was not enough, they insisted; the evil had begun long before, when man first ruined his food and destroyed its nutritive value by means of fire. There was only one certain road to health, and that was by the raw food route, the monkey and squirrel diet. I had gone out to California for a winter's rest, and decided I would give this plan a thorough trial. For five months I lived by myself, and the only cooked food I ate was shredded wheat biscuit. For the rest I lived on nuts and salads and fresh and dried fruits; and during this period I enjoyed such health as I had never known in my life before. I had literally not a single ailment. I was not merely well, but bubbling over with health. I had a friend who said it cheered him up just to see me walk down the street. I thought that it was entirely the raw food, and that I had solved the problem forever; but I overlooked the fact that during those five months I had done no hard brain work, no writing. I went back to writing again, and things began to go wrong; my wonderful raw foods took to making trouble in my stomach--and I assure you that until you try, you have no idea the amount of trouble that can be made in your stomach by a load of bananas and soaked prunes which has gone wrong! For a year or two I agonized; I could not give up my wonderful raw food diet, because I had always before me the vision of those months in California, and could not understand why it was not that way again. But the time came when I would eat a meal of raw food, and for hours afterwards my stomach would feel like a blown-up football. Then somebody gave me a book by Dr. Salisbury on the subject of the meat diet. Of all the horrible things in the world, a meat diet sounded to me the worst; I had been a vegetable enthusiast for three years, and thought of eating meat as you would think of cannibalism. But there has never been a time in my life when I would not hear something new, and give it a trial if it sounded well; so I read the books of Doctor Salisbury, which have long been out of print, and have been curiously neglected by the medical profession. Salisbury was a real pioneer, an experimenter. He wrote in the days before the germ theory, and so missed his guess regarding tuberculosis, but he perceived that most of the common diseases are caused by dietetic errors, and he set to work to prove it. He showed that hog cholera and army diarrhea are the same disease, and come from the same cause. He took a squad of men and fed them on army biscuit for two or three weeks, until they were nearly dead, and then he put them on a diet of lean beef and completely cured them in a few days. He did this same thing with one kind of food after another, and in each case he would bring his men as near to death as he dared, and then he would cure them. He showed that meat is the only food which contains all the elements of nutrition, the only food upon which a person can live for an unlimited period. As Salisbury said, "Beef is first, mutton is second, and the rest nowhere." It was his idea that tuberculosis of the lungs is caused by spores of fermenting starch clogging the minute blood vessels. He claimed that there is an early stage of tuberculosis, in which the spores are floating in the blood stream; he put large numbers of patients upon a diet of lean beef, ground and cooked, and he cured them of tuberculosis, and if one of them would break the diet and yield to a craving for starch or sugar, Salisbury claimed that he could find it out an hour or two later by examining a drop of their blood under the microscope. In his books he described vividly the effects of an excess of starch and sugar in the diet. He called it "making a yeast-pot of your stomach"; and you can imagine how that hit my stomach, full of half digested bananas and prunes! I tried the Salisbury diet, and satisfied myself of this one fact, that lean meat is for brain-workers the most easily assimilated of all foods. Salisbury claimed that you could not overeat on meat, but I do not believe there is any food you cannot overeat on, nor do I believe that anyone should try to live on one kind of food. We are by nature omnivorous animals. Our digestive tracts are similar to those of hogs and monkeys, which eat all varieties of food they can get. One of the common errors of the nature cure enthusiast is to cite the monkey and the squirrel as fruit and nut-eating animals, when the fact is that monkeys and squirrels eat meat when they can get it, and the ardor with which they go bird-nesting is evidence enough that they crave it. If there is any race of man which is vegetarian, you will find that it is from necessity alone. The beautiful South Sea Islanders, who are the theme of the raw fooders' ecstasy, spend a lot of their time catching fish, and sometimes they kill a pig, and celebrate the event precisely as Christians celebrate the birth of their Redeemer. From this you may be able to guess my conclusions, as the result of much painful blundering and experimenting. So far as diet is concerned, I belong to no school; I have learned something from each one, and what I have learned from a trial of them all is to be shy of extreme statements and of hard and fast rules. To my vegetarian friends who argue that it is morally wrong to take sentient life, I answer that they cannot go for a walk in the country without committing that offense, for they walk on innumerable bugs and worms. We cannot live without asserting our right to subject the lower forms of life to our purposes; we kill innumerable germs when we swallow a glass of grape juice, or for that matter a glass of plain water. I shall be much surprised if the advance of science does not some day prove to us that there are rudimentary forms of consciousness in all vegetable life; so we shall justify the argument of Mr. Dooley, who said, in reviewing "The Jungle," that he could not see how it was any less a crime to cut off a young tomato in its prime, or to murder a whole cradleful of baby peas in the pod! There is no question that meat-eating is inconvenient, expensive, and dirty. I have no doubt that some day we shall know enough to be able to find for every individual a diet which will keep him at the top of his power, without the maintenance of the slaughter-house. But we do not possess that knowledge at present; at least, I personally do not possess it. I happen to be one of those individuals--there are many of them--with whom milk does not agree; and if you rule out milk and meat, you find yourself compelled to get a great deal of your protein from vegetable sources, such as peas, beans and nuts. All these contain a great deal of starch, and thus there is no way you can arrange your diet to escape an excess of starch. Excess of starch, so my experience has convinced me, is the deadliest of all dietetic errors. It is also the commonest of errors, the cause, not merely of the common throat and nose infections, but of constipation, and likewise of diarrhea, of anemia, and thus, through the weakening of the blood stream, of all disorders that spring from this source--decaying teeth and rheumatism, boils, bad complexion, and tuberculosis. Starch foods are the cheapest, therefore they form the common diet of the poor, and are responsible for the diseases of undernourishment to which the poor are liable. On the other hand, of course, there are perfectly definite diseases of overnourishment; high blood pressure, which culminates in apoplexy; kidney troubles, which result from the inability of these organs to eliminate all the waste matter that is delivered to them; fatty degeneration of the heart, or of the liver, or any of the vital organs. You may cause a headache by clogging the blood stream through overeating, or you may cause it by eating small quantities of food, if those foods are unbalanced, and do not contain the mineral elements necessary to the making of normal blood. Whatever the trouble with your health, it is my judgment that in two cases out of three you will find it dates back to errors in diet. I do not think I exaggerate in saying that a knowledge of what to eat and how much to eat is two-thirds of the knowledge of how to keep yourself in permanent health. CHAPTER XX ERRORS IN DIET (Discusses the different kinds of foods, and the part they play in the making of health and disease.) It is my purpose in this chapter to lay down a few general principles to aid you in the practical problem of selecting the best diet for yourself. But it must be made clear at the outset that there can be no hard and fast rule. All human bodies are more or less alike, but on the other hand all are more or less different. Modern civilization has given very few bodies the chance to be perfect; nearly all have some weakness, some abnormality, and need some special modification in diet to fit their particular problem. The ideal in each case would be a complete study of the individual system. Some day, no doubt, medical science will analyze the digestive juices and the gland secretions and the blood-stream of every human being, and say, you need a certain percentage of starch and a certain percentage of protein; you need such and such proportion of phosphorus and iron; you should avoid certain acids--and so on. But at present we are devoting our science to the task of killing and maiming other people, instead of enabling ourselves to live in health and happiness; so it is that most of those who read this book will be too poor to command the advice of a diet specialist. The best you can do is to get a few general ideas and try them out, watching your own body and learning its peculiarities. Human food contains three elements: proteins, fats and carbohydrates. The proteins are the body-building material, and the foods which are rich in proteins are lean meat, the white of eggs, milk and cheese, nuts, peas and beans. A certain amount of this kind of food is needed by the body. If it is missing, the body will gradually waste away. If too much of it is taken, the body can turn it into energy-making material, but this is a wasteful process, and the best evidence appears to be that it is a strain upon the system. Experiments conducted by Professor Chittenden of Yale have proven conclusively that men can live and maintain body weight upon much less protein food than previous dietetic standards had indicated. The fats are found in fat meats and dairy products, and in nuts, olives, and vegetable oils. The body is prepared to digest and assimilate a certain amount of fat, no one knows how much. I have found in my own case that I require a great deal less than people ordinarily eat. I have for many years maintained good health upon a diet containing no more fat than one gets with lean meat once or twice a day. I never use butter or olive oil, nor any fat in cooking. My reason for this is that fats are the most highly concentrated form of food, and the easiest upon which to overeat. Excess of fat is a cause, not merely of obesity, but also of boils and pimples and "pasty" complexion, and other signs of a clogged blood-stream. The third variety of food is the carbohydrates, and of these there are two kinds, starches and sugars. Starch is the white material of the grains and tubers; the principal food element of bread and cereals, rice, potatoes, bananas, and many prepared substances such as corn-starch, tapioca, farina and macaroni. Starchy foods compose probably half the diet of the average human being. In my own case, they compose about one-sixth, so you see to what extent my beliefs differ from the common. Starch is not really necessary in the diet at all. I have a friend who is subject to headaches, and finds relief from them by a diet of meat, salads, and fresh fruits exclusively. The first thing that excess of starch or sugar does is to ferment in the system, and cause flatulence and gas. But strange as it may seem, if the excess of starch is perfectly digested and assimilated into the system, the condition may be worse yet, because you may have a great quantity of energy-producing material, without the necessary mineral elements which the body requires in the handling of it. If you cremate a human body and study the ashes chemically, you find a score or more of mineral salts. You find these in the blood, and no blood is normal and no body can be kept normal which does not contain the right percentage of these elements. It is not merely that they are needed to build bones and teeth; they are needed at every instant for the chemistry of the cells. Every time you move a muscle, you fill the cells of that muscle with a certain amount of waste matter. You may prove how deadly this matter is by binding a tight cord about your arm, and then trying to use the arm. We are only at the beginning of understanding the subtle chemistry of the body; but this much we know, the cells transform the waste products, and they are thrown out of the system as ammonia, uric acid, etc.; and for this process the blood must have a continual supply of many mineral salts. So vital are they, and so fatal to health is their absence, that it is far better for you to eat nothing at all than to eat improperly balanced foods, or foods which are deficient in the organic salts. You may prove this to yourself by a simple experiment. Put two chickens in separate pens, where nobody can feed them but yourself. Feed one of them on water and white bread, or corn starch, or sugar, or any energy-making substance which contains little of the mineral elements. Feed the other chicken on plain water. You will find that the one which has the food will quickly become droopy and sickly; its feathers will fall out, it will have what in human beings would be known as headaches, colds, sore throats, decaying teeth and boils. At the end of a couple of weeks it will be a dead chicken. The one which you feed on water alone will not be a happy chicken, neither will it be a fat chicken, but it will be a live chicken, and a chicken without disease. I am going later on to discuss the subject of fasting. For the present I will merely say that a chicken which has nothing but water is living upon its own flesh, and therefore has a meat diet, containing the mineral elements necessary to the elimination of the fatigue poisons. I am going to try not to be dogmatic in this book, and not to say things that I do not know. I confess to innumerable uncertainties about the subject of diet; but one thing I think I do know, and that is that human beings should eliminate absolutely from their food those modern artificial products, which look so nice, and are so easy to handle, and are put up in packages with pretty labels, and have been in some way artificially treated to remove the wastes and impurities--including the vital mineral salts. Among such food substances I include lard and its imitations made from cottonseed oil, white flour, all the prepared and refined cereals, polished rice, tapioca, farina, corn starch, and granulated and powdered sugar. Any of these substances will kill a chicken in a couple of weeks, and the only reason they take a longer time to kill you is because you mix them with other kinds of foods. But to the extent that you eat them, your diet is deficient; and do not console yourself with the idea that the mineral elements will be made up from other foods, because you don't know that, and nobody else knows it. Nobody knows just how much of any particular organic salt the body needs. All we know is that the primitive races, which ate natural foods, enjoyed vigorous health, while the American people, who consume the greatest proportion of the so-called "refined" foods, have the very best dentists and the very worst teeth in the world. There are many kinds of sugar, found in the sugar-cane and the beet, and in all fruits. Sugar may also be made from any form of starch; this is glucose, which is put up in cans and sold as an imitation of maple syrup. The ordinary granulated and powdered sugar is made by taking from the natural syrup every trace of mineral elements; so I have no hesitation in saying that the ordinary cane sugar and beet sugar of our breakfast tables and our confectionery stores is not a food, but a slow poison. The causes of the wonderful progress of American dentistry, which is the marvel of the civilized world, are cane sugar, white flour, and the frying-pan, each of which dietetic crimes I shall take up in turn. We have the richest country in the world; we eat more food, probably by 50 per cent, and we waste more food, probably by 500 per cent, than any other people in the world; and yet, go to any small farming community in America, and what do you find? You find the teeth of the young children rotting in their heads, and having to be pulled out before their second teeth come. You find these second teeth rotting often before the age of twenty. A friend of mine, who knows the American farmer, sums it up this way: "He has two things that he requires if he is to be really respectable and happy. First, he wants to get all the fireplaces in his home boarded up, and all the windows nailed tight; and second, he wants to get all his teeth out, and an artificial set installed. Out of the farmers' wives in my neighborhood, not one in ten keeps her own teeth until she is thirty." If you go to the Balkans, where the peasants live on sour milk, with grains which they grind at home; or to southern Italy and Sicily, where they live on cheese and black bread and olives; or among savage people, where they hunt and fish and gather the natural fruits, you find old men without a single decayed tooth. There must be some reason for this, and the reason is found in our denatured grocery-store foods. The farmer's wife will gather up her eggs and her butter and cheeses, and take them to the store and bring back cans of lard and packages of sugar. The farmer will sell his perfectly good wheat and corn meal, and bring back in his wagon cases of "refined" cereal foods, for which he has paid ten times the price of the grain! Dentists will tell you that the way candy injures the teeth is by sticking to them and fermenting, forming acids, which destroy the tooth structure. And that may be a part of the reason. But the principal reason why the teeth decay is because the blood-stream is abnormal, and is unable to keep up the repairs of the body. Your teeth are living structures, just as much as any other part of you, and they will resist decay if you supply them with the proper nourishment. You need sugar; you need a considerable quantity of it every day. Nature provides this sugar in combination with the organic salts, and also with the precious vitamines, whose function in the body we are only beginning to investigate. All the mineral substances which give the color and flavor to oranges, apples, peaches, grapes, figs, prunes, raisins--all these you take out when you make sugar. Or perhaps you put in some imitations of them, made from coal tar chemicals, and drink them at your soda fountains! So little appreciation has the American farmer's wife of natural fruits, that when she preserves them, she considers it necessary to fill them full of cane sugar; in fact, she has a notion that they won't keep unless she cooks them up with sugar! So snobbish are we Americans about our eating, that we make the best of our foods into bywords. We make jokes in our comic papers about the "boarding-house prune"; and yet prunes and raisins are among the wholesomest foods we have, and if we fed them to our children instead of cakes and candy and coal-tar flavorings, our dental industry would rapidly decline. And the same thing is true of bread. When I was a boy, I thought I had to have hot bread at least twice a day, and if I were called upon to eat bread that was more than a day old, I felt that I was being badly abused by life. I used to read fairy stories, in which something called "black bread" was mentioned, something obscure and terrible; the symbol of human misery was Cinderella sitting in the ashes and eating a crust of dry "black bread." But now since I have studied diet, I have taken my place with Cinderella. I can afford to buy whatever kind of bread I want; I can have the best white bread, piping hot, three times a day, if I want it; but what I eat three times a day is a crust of hard dry "black bread." "Black bread" is the fairy story name for bread made of the whole grain. It is eaten that way by the peasant because he has no patent milling machinery at his disposal, to fan away the life-giving elements of his food. Nearly all the mineral elements of the grain are contained in the outer, dark-colored portion. The white part is almost pure starch; and when you use white flour, you are not merely starving your blood-stream, your bones, and your teeth, you are also depriving the digestive tract of the rough material which it is accustomed to handle, and which it needs to stimulate it to action. I am aware that whole grain products are a trifle less easy of digestion, but we should not pamper and weaken our digestive tract any more than we let our muscles get flabby for lack of action. We should require our stomachs to handle the ordinary natural foods, precisely as we accustom our body to react from cold water, and to stand honest hard work. For ages the Japanese peasants have lived on rice, with a little dried fish. Quite recently there began to spread throughout Japan a mysterious disease known as beri-beri. It was especially prevalent in the army, and so the scientists of Japan set out to discover the cause, and it proved to be the modern practice of polishing rice, which takes off the outer coating of the grain. Rice is one of the most wholesome of foods, if it is eaten in the natural state; but in order to get it in that state in this country, you have to find a special food store of the health cranks, and have to pay a special price for it. You have to pay a higher price for whole wheat bread--because ninety-nine people out of a hundred are ignorant, and insist upon having their foodstuffs pretty to look at! Probably you have read sea stories, and know of the horrors of scurvy. Scurvy and beri-beri are similar diseases, with a similar cause. The men on the old sailing ships used to have to live on white biscuit and salt meat, and they always knew that to recover from their gnawing illness, they must get to port and get fresh vegetables and fruits, especially onions and lemons, which contain the vitamines as well as the salts. But you will see the modern housewife going into the grocery store, and surveying the shelves of "package" goods, and in her ignorance picking out the scurvy-making products, and frequently paying for them a much higher price than for the health-making ones! Then, when she has got her white flour, and her cane sugar, and her lard, she will take it home, and mix it up, and put it in the frying pan, and serve it hot to her husband and children. Nature has so constituted her husband and children that they digest starch before they digest fat; that is to say, the starch is digested mainly in the stomach, while the fat is digested mainly after the food has been passed on into the small intestine. But by frying the starch before it is eaten, the housewife carefully takes each grain of the starch and protects it with a little covering of fat. Thus the digestive juices of the stomach cannot get at the starch, and the starch goes down into the small intestine a good part undigested. If some evil spirit, wishing to make trouble for the human organism, had charge of the laying out of our diet, he could hardly devise anything worse than that. And yet it would be no exaggeration to say that the average American, especially the average farmer, eats out of a frying-pan. If his potatoes have to be warmed over, they go into the frying-pan; his precious batter-cakes and doughnuts are cooked in a frying-pan, and all his precious hot breads are mixed with lard. If it were not for the fact that you cannot broil a beefsteak over a modern gas range, I would tell you that the first step toward health for the average American would be to throw the frying-pan out of the window, and to throw the cook-book after it. The whole modern art of cooking is largely a perversion; a product of idleness, vanity, and sensuality. It is one of the monstrous growths consequent upon our system of class exploitation. We have a number of idle people with nothing to do but eat, and who demonstrate their superiority to the rest of us by their knowledge of superior foods, and superior ways of preparing them. They have the wealth of the world at their disposal, also the services of their fellow man without limit, and they set their fellow man to work to enable them to give elaborate banquets, and to sit in solemn state and gorge themselves, and to have a full account of their behavior published in the next morning's newspapers. A great part of this perverse art we owe to what is called the "ancient régime" in France--a régime which starved the French peasantry until they were black skinned beasts hiding in caves and hollow trees. So it comes about that our modern food depravity parades itself in French names, and American snobbery requires of its devotees a course in the French language sufficient to read a menu card. Needless to say, this elaborate gastronomic art has been developed without any relation to health, or any thought of the true needs of the body. It is one of the products of the predatory system which we can say is absolute waste. Having done my own cooking for the past twenty-five years, I make bold to say that I can teach anybody all he needs to know about cooking in one lesson of half an hour, and that the total amount of cooking required for a large family can be done by one person in twenty minutes a day. In the first place, a great many foods do not have to be cooked at all, and are made less fit by cooking. In the next place, the only cooking that is ever required is a little boiling, or in the case of meat, roasting or broiling. In the next place, the art of combining foods in cooking is a waste art, because no foods should be combined in cooking. Every food has its own natural flavor, which is lost in combination, and if anybody is unable to enjoy the natural flavors of simply cooked foods, there is one thing to say to that person, and that is to wait until he is hungry. Let him take a ten-mile walk in the open air, and he will have more interest in his next meal. I am not a fanatic, and have no desire to destroy the pleasures of life; I am recommending to people that they should seek the higher pleasures of the intellect, and those pleasures are not found in standing over a cook stove, nor in compelling others to stand over a cook stove. Moreover, I know that the artificial mixing of foods to tempt peoples' palates is one of the principal causes of overeating, and therefore of ill health, and therefore of the ultimate destruction of the pleasures of life. I went out from the world of cooks before I was twenty. I wanted to write a book, and to be let alone while I was doing it. I lived by myself, and found out about cooking by practical experience. On a few occasions since then, I have lived in a house with a servant, and had some cooking done for me, but it was always because somebody else wanted it, and against my protest. In the last ten years we have had no servant in our home, and because I want my wife to give her energy to more important things than feeding me, I do my share of getting every meal. We have worked out a system of housekeeping by which we get a meal in five minutes, and when we finish it, it takes three minutes to clear things away. If I tell you what I eat, please do not get the impression that I am advising you to eat these same things. My diet consists of the foods which I have found by long experience agree with me. There are many other foods which are just as wholesome, but which I do not eat, either because they don't happen to agree with me, or because I don't care for them so much. I am fond of fruit, and eat more of that than of anything else. It is not a cheap article of diet, but you can save a good deal if you buy it in quantities, as I do. A little later I am going to discuss the prices of foods. For breakfast I eat a slice of whole wheat bread, three good-sized apples, stewed, and eight or ten dates. It takes practically no time to prepare this breakfast. The bread has to be baked, of course, but this is done wholesale; we buy four loaves at a time, and it is just as good at the end of a couple of weeks as when we buy it. When I lived in the world of cooks, I would call for apple sauce; which meant that somebody had to pare apples, cut them up, stew them, mix them with sugar, grate a little nutmeg over them, set them on ice, and serve them to me on a glass dish, with a little pitcher of cream. But now what happens is that I put a dozen apples in a big sauce-pan and let them simmer while I am eating. We have a rule in our family that we do not do any cooking except while we are eating, because if we try it at any other time of the day, we get buried in a book or in a manuscript, and forget about it until the smoke causes somebody in the street to summon the fire department. So the apples for my breakfast were cooked during last night's supper; and during the breakfast there will be some vegetable cooking for lunch. At this lunch, which is my "square meal," I eat a large slice of beefsteak, say a third of a pound. Jack London used to say that the only man who could cook a beefsteak was the fireman of a railway locomotive, because he had a hot, clean shovel. The best imitation you can get is a hot, clean frying-pan; and when you are sure that it is hot, let it get hotter. The whole secret of cooking meat is to keep the juices inside, and to do that you must cook it quickly. When you slap it down on a hot frying-pan, the meat is seared, and the juices stay inside, and if you do not turn it over until it is almost ready to burn, you don't need to cook it very long on the other side. That is the one secret of cooking worth knowing; it doesn't cost anything, and saves time instead of wasting it. As I have never found anybody else capable of learning it, I reserve the cooking of the beefsteak as one of my family duties. To continue the lunch, a slice of whole wheat bread, and a large quantity of some fresh salad, such as celery, or lettuce and tomatoes, without dressing. For a part of this may be substituted a vegetable, one or two beets or turnips, cooked during a previous meal, and warmed up in a couple of minutes; and we do not throw away the tops of the turnips and beets and celery, we put them on and cook them, and they serve for the next day's meal. If you would eat a large quantity of such "greens" once a day, you would escape many of the ills that your flesh is at present heir to. Finally, for dessert, an orange and a small handful of raisins, or one or two figs. The evening meal will be the same as the breakfast; except once in a while when I am especially hungry, and want some meat. I am writing in the winter season, so the fruits suggested are those available in winter. The menu will be varied with every kind of fruit at the season when it is cheapest and most easily obtained. The beefsteak will appear at about three meals out of four; occasionally it will be replaced by the lean meat of pork or mutton, or by fish. The bread may be replaced by rice, or boiled potatoes, either white or sweet, and occasionally by graham crackers. I know that these contain a little fat and sugar, but I try not to be fanatical about my diet, and the rules I suggest do not carry the death penalty. There was a time when I used to allow my friends to make themselves miserable by trying to provide me with special foods when they invited me to a meal, but now I tell them to "forget it," and I politely nibble a little of everything, and eat most of what I find wholesome; if there is nothing wholesome, I content myself with the pretense of a meal. If I find myself in a restaurant, I quite shamelessly get a piece of apple or pumpkin pie, omitting most of the crust. As I don't go away from home more than once or twice a month, I do not have to worry about such indulgence. The main thing is to arrange one's home diet on sound lines, and learn to enjoy the simple and wholesome foods, of which there is a great variety obtainable, and at prices possible to all but the wretchedly poor. In conclusion, since everybody likes to have a feast now and then, I specify that my diet regimen allows for holidays. Assuming that I am your guest for a day, and that you wish to "blow" me, regardless of expense, here will be the menu. Breakfast, some graham crackers, a bunch of raisins, a can of sliced pineapple in winter, or a big chunk of watermelon in summer. Dinner, or lunch, roast pork, a baked apple, a baked sweet potato and some spinach. Supper, lettuce, dates, and a dish of popcorn flavored with peanut butter. Try this next Christmas! P. S. After this book had been put into type, I chanced to be looking over Herbert Quick's illuminating book, "On Board the Good Ship Earth." Discussing the importance of certain organic salts to the body, Dr. Quick states: "Animals have been fed, as an experiment, on foods deficient in phosphorus. For a while they seemed to do well. Then they collapsed. It takes only three months of a ration without phosphorus to wreck an animal. Individual creatures were killed after a month of this diet, and it was found that the flesh was taking the phosphate--for the phosphorus exists in the body in that form--from the bones to supply its need. In other words, the body was eating its own bones! When this process had robbed the bones to the limit, the collapse came, and the animal could never recover." CHAPTER XXI DIET STANDARDS (Discusses various foods and their food values, the quantities we need, and their money cost.) I think there is no more important single question about health than the question of how much food we should eat. It is one about which there is a great deal of controversy, even among the best authorities. We shall try here for a common-sense solution. At the outset we have to remind ourselves of the distinction we tried to draw between nature and man. To what extent can civilized man rely upon his instincts to keep him in perfect health? Let us begin by considering the animals. How is their diet problem solved? Horses and cattle in a wild state are adjusted to certain foods which they find in nature, and so long as they can find it, they have no diet problem. Man comes, and takes these animals and domesticates them; he observes their habits, and gives to them a diet closely approaching the natural one, and they get along fairly well. But suppose the man, with his superior skill in agriculture, taking wild grain and planting it, reaping and threshing it by machinery, puts before his horse an unlimited quantity of a concentrated food such as oats, which the horse can never get in a natural state--will that horse's instincts guide it? Not at all. Any horse will kill itself by overeating on grain. I have read somewhere a clever saying, that a farm is a good place for an author to live, provided he can be persuaded not to farm it. But once upon a time I had not heard that wise remark, and I owned and tried to run a farm. I had two beautiful cows of which I was very proud, and one morning I woke up and discovered that the cows had got into the pear orchard and had been feeding on pears all night. In a few hours they both lay with bloated stomachs, dying. A farmer told me afterwards that I might have saved their lives, if I had stuck a knife into their stomachs to let out the gas. I do not know whether this is true or not. But my two dead cows afford a perfect illustration of the reason why civilized man cannot rely upon his instincts and his appetites to tell him when he has had enough to eat. He can only do this, provided he rigidly restricts himself to the foods which he ate in the days when his teeth and stomach and bowels were being shaped by the process of natural selection. If he is going to eat any other than such strictly natural foods, he will need to apply his reason to his diet schedule. In a state of nature man has to hunt his food, and the amount that he finds is generally limited, and requires a lot of exercise to get. Explorers in Africa give us a picture of man's life in the savage state, guided by his instincts and very little interfered with by reason. The savages will starve for long periods, then they will succeed in killing a hippopotamus or a buffalo, and they will gorge themselves, and nearly all of them will be ill, and several of them will die. So you see, even in a state of nature, and with natural foods, restraint is needed, and reason and moral sense have a part to play. What do reason and moral sense have to tell us about diet? Our bodily processes go on continuously, and we need at regular intervals a certain quantity of a number of different foods. The most elementary experiment will convince us that we can get along, maintain our body weight and our working efficiency upon a much smaller quantity of food than we naturally crave. Civilized custom puts before us a great variety of delicate and appetizing foods, upon which we are disposed to overeat; and we are slow observers indeed if we do not note the connection between this overeating and ill health. So we are forced to the conclusion that if we wish to stay well, we need to establish a censorship over our habits; we need a different diet regimen from the haphazard one which has been established for us by a combination of our instincts with the perversions of civilization. Up to a few years ago, it was commonly taken for granted by authorities on diet that what the average man actually eats must be the normal thing for him to eat. Governments which were employing men in armies, and at road building, and had to feed them and keep them in health, made large scale observations as to what the men ate, and thus were established the old fashioned "diet standards." They are expressed in calories, which is a heat unit representing the quantity of fuel required to heat a certain small quantity of water a certain number of degrees. In order that you may know what I am talking about, I will give a rough idea of the quantity of the more common foods which it takes to make 100 calories: one medium sized slice of bread, a piece of lean cooked steak the size of two fingers, one large apple, three medium tablespoonfuls of cooked rice or potatoes, one large banana, a tablespoonful of raisins, five dates, one large fig, a teaspoonful of sugar, a ball of butter the size of your thumbnail, a very large head of lettuce, three medium sized tomatoes, two-thirds of a glass of milk, a tablespoonful of oil. You observe, if you compare these various items, how little guidance concerning food is given by its bulk. You may eat a whole head of lettuce, weighing nearly a pound, and get no more food value than from a half ounce of olive oil which you pour over it. You may eat enough lean beefsteak to cover your plate, and you will not have eaten so much as a generous helping of butter. A big bowl of strawberries will not count half so much as the cream and sugar you put over them. So you may realize that when you eat olive oil, butter, cream, and sugar, you are in the same danger as the horse eating oats, or as my two cows in the pear orchard; and if some day a surgeon has to come and stick a knife into you, it may be for the same reason. The old-fashioned diet standards are as follows: Swedish laborers at hard work, over 4,700 calories; Russian workmen at moderate work, German soldiers in active service, Italian laborers at moderate work, between 3,500 and 3,700 calories; English weavers, nearly 3,500 calories; Austrian farm laborers, over 5,000 calories. Some twenty years ago the United States government made observations of over 15,000 persons, and established the following, known as the "Atwater standards": men at very hard muscular work, 5,500 calories; men at moderately active muscular work, 3,400 calories; men at light to moderate muscular work, 3,050 calories; men at sedentary, or women at moderately active work, 2,700 calories. In the last ten or fifteen years there has arisen a new school of dietetic experts, headed by Professors Chittenden and Fisher of Yale University. Professor Chittenden has published an elaborate book, "The Nutrition of Man," in which he tells of long-continued experiment upon a squad of soldiers and a group of athletes at Yale University, also upon average students and professors. He has proved conclusively that all these various groups have been able to maintain full body weight and full working efficiency upon less than half the quantity of protein food hitherto specified, and upon anywhere from one-half to two-thirds the calory value set forth in the former standards. When I first read this book, I set to work to try its theories upon myself. During the five or six months that I lived on raw food, I took the trouble to weigh everything that I ate, and to keep a record. It is, of course, very easy to weigh raw foods exactly, and I found that I lived an active life and kept physical health upon slightly less than 2,500 calories a day. I have set this as my standard, and have accustomed myself to follow it instinctively, and without wasting any thought upon it. Sometimes I fall from grace; for I still crave the delightful cakes and candies and ice cream upon which I was brought up. I always pay the penalty, and know that I will not get back to my former state of health until I skip a meal or two, and give my system a chance to clean house. The average man will find the regimen set forth in this book austere and awe-inspiring; I do not wish to pose as a paragon of virtue, so perhaps I should quote a sarcastic girl cousin, who remarked when I was a boy that the way to my heart was with a bag of ginger-snaps. I live in the presence of candy stores and never think of their existence, but if someone brings candy into the house and puts it in front of me, I have to waste a lot of moral energy in letting it alone. A few years ago I had a young man as secretary who discovered this failing of mine, and used to afford himself immense glee by buying a box of chocolates and leaving it on top of my desk. I would give him back the box--with some of the chocolates missing--but he would persist in "forgetting it" on my desk; he would hide and laugh hilariously behind the door, until my wife discovered his nefarious doings, and warned me of them. Professor Chittenden states quite simply the common sense procedure in the matter of food quantity. Find out by practical experiment what is the very least food upon which you can do your work without losing weight. That is the correct quantity for you, and if you are eating more, you certainly cannot be doing your body any good, and all the evidence indicates that you are doing it harm. You need not have the least fear in making this experiment that you will starve yourself. Later on, in a chapter on fasting, I shall prove to you that you carry around with you in your body sufficient reserve of food to keep you alive for eighty or ninety days; and if you draw on a small quantity of this you do not do yourself the slightest harm. Cut down the amount of your food; eat the bulky foods, which contain less calory value, and weigh yourself every day, and you will be surprised to discover how much less you need to eat than you have been accustomed to. One of the things you will find out is that your stomach is easily fooled; it is largely guided by bulk. If you eat a meal consisting of a moderate quantity of lean meat, a very little bread, a heaping dish of turnip greens, and a big slice of watermelon, you will feel fully satisfied, yet you will not have taken in one-third the calory value that you would at an ordinary meal with gravies and dressings and dessert. The bulky kind of food is that for which your system was adapted in the days when it was shaped by nature. You have a large stomach, many times as large as you would have had if you had lived on refined and concentrated foods such as butter, sugar, olive oil, cheese and eggs. You have a long intestinal tract, adapted to slowly digesting foods, and to the work of extracting nutrition from a mass of roughage. You have a very large lower bowel, which Metchnikoff, the Russian scientist, one of the greatest minds who ever examined the problems of health, declares a survival, the relic of a previous stage of evolution, and a source of much disease. The best thing you can do with that lower bowel is to give it lots of hay, as it requires; in other words, to eat the salads and greens which contain cellulose material. This contains no food value, and does not ferment, but fills the lower bowel and stimulates it to activity. If you eat too much food, three things may happen. First, it may not be digested, and in that case it will fill your system with poisons. Second, it may be assimilated, but not burned up by the body. In that case it has to be thrown out by the kidneys or the sweat glands, and this puts upon these organs an extra strain, to which in the long run they may be unequal. Or third, the surplus material may be stored up as fat. This is an old-time trick which nature invented to tide you over the times when food was scarce. If you were a bear, you would naturally want to eat all you could, and be as fat as possible in November, so that you might be able to hunt your prey when you came out from your winter's sleep in April. But you are not a bear, and you expect to eat your regular meals all winter; you have established a system of civilization which makes you certain of your food, and the place where you keep your surplus is in the bank, or sewed up in the mattress, or hidden in your stocking. In other words, a civilized man saves money, and the habit of storing globules of grease in the cells of his body is a survival of an old instinct, and a needless strain upon his health. Not merely does the fat man have to carry all the extra weight around with him, but his body has to keep it and tend it; and what are the effects of this is fully shown by life insurance tables. People who are five or ten per cent over weight have five or ten per cent more chance of dying all the time, while people who are five or ten per cent under weight have five or ten per cent more than the average of life expectation. There is no answer to these figures, which are the result of the tabulation of many hundreds of thousands of cases. The meaning of them to the fat person is to put himself on a diet of lean meat, green vegetables and fresh fruits, until he has brought himself down, not merely to the normal fatness of the civilized man, but to the normal leanness of the athlete, the soldier on campaign, and the student who has more important things to think about than stuffing his stomach. There is, of course, a certain kind of leanness which is the result of ill health. There are wasting diseases; tuberculosis, for example, and anemia. There are people who worry themselves thin, and there are a few rare "spiritual" people, so-called, who fade away from lack of sufficient interest in their bodies. That is not the kind of leanness that I mean, but the active, wiry leanness, which sometimes lives a hundred years. Nearly always you will find that such people are spare eaters; and you will find that our ideal of rosy plumpness, both for adults and children, is a wholly false notion. We once had in our home as servant an Irish girl, who was what is popularly called "a picture of health," with those beautiful flaming cheeks that Irish and English women so often have. She was in her early twenties, and nobody who knew her had any idea but that her health was perfect. But one morning she was discovered in bed with one side paralyzed, and in a couple of weeks she was dead with erysipelas. The color in her cheeks had been nothing but diseased blood vessels, overloaded with food material; and with the blood in that condition, one of the tiny vessels in the brain had become clogged. In the same way I have seen children, two or three years old, plump and rosy, and considered to be everything that children should be; but pneumonia would hit them, and in two or three days they would be at death's door. I do not mean that children should be kept hungry; on the contrary, they should have four or five meals a day, so that they do not have a chance to become too hungry. But at those meals they should eat in great part the bulky foods, which contain the natural salts needed for building the body. If a child asks for food, you may give it an apple, or you may give it a slice of bread and butter with sugar on it. The child will be equally well content in either case; but it is for you, with your knowledge of food values, to realize that the bread with butter and sugar contains two or three times as much nutriment as the apple, but contains practically none of the precious organic salts which will make the child's bones and teeth. So far I have discussed this subject as if all foods grew on bushes outside your kitchen door, and all you had to do was to go and pick off what you wanted. But as a matter of fact, foods cost money, and under our present system of wage slavery, the amount of money the average person can spend for food is strictly limited. In a later book I am going to discuss the problem of poverty, its causes and remedies. All that I can do here is to tell you what foods you ought to have, and if society does not pay you enough for your work to enable you to buy such foods, you may know that society, is starving you, and you may get busy to demand your rights as human beings. Meantime, however, such money as you do have, you want to spend wisely, and the vast majority of you spend it very unwisely indeed. In the first place, a great many of the simplest and most wholesome foods are cheap--often because people do not know enough to value them. We insist upon having the choice cuts of meats, because they are more tender to the teeth, but the cheaper cuts are exactly as nutritious. We insist upon having our meats loaded with fat, although fatness is an abnormal condition in an animal, and excess of fat is a grave error in diet. I live in a country where jack rabbits are a pest, and in the market they sell for perhaps one-fourth the cost of beef, and yet I can hardly ever get them, because people value them so little as food; they prefer the meat of a hog which has been wallowing in a filthy pen, and has been deliberately made so fat that it could hardly walk! I have already spoken of prunes, a much despised and invaluable food. All the dried fruits are rich in food values, and if we could get them untreated by chemicals, they would be worth their cost. I was brought up to despise the cheaper vegetables, such as cabbage and turnips; I never tasted boiled cabbage until I was forty, and then to my great surprise I made the discovery that it is good. Raw cabbage is as valuable as any other salad; it is a trifle harder to digest for some people, but I do not believe in pampering the stomach. Both potatoes and rice are cheap and wholesome, if only we would get unpolished rice, and if we would leave the skins on the potatoes until after they are cooked. Nearly all the mineral salts of the potato are just under the outer skin, and are removed by the foolish habit of peeling them. The prices of food differ so widely at different seasons and in different parts of the world, that there is not much profit in trying to figure how cheaply a person can live. I have found that I spend for the diet I have indicated here, from sixty to eighty cents a day. I do not buy any fancy foods, but on the other hand, I do not especially try to economize; I buy what I want of the simple everyday foods in their season. Most everyone will find that it is a good business proposition to buy the foods which he needs to keep in health. If the average workingman would add up the money he spends, not merely in the restaurants, but in the candy stores, the drug stores, the tobacco stores, and the offices of doctors and dentists, he would find, I think, that he could afford to buy himself the necessary quantity of wholesome natural foods. For a family of three, in the place where I live, enough of these foods can be purchased for a dollar a day, and this is about one-fourth what common labor is being paid, and one-eighth of what skilled labor is being paid. I will specify the foods: a pound and a half of shoulder steak, a loaf of whole wheat bread or a box of shredded wheat biscuit, a head of cabbage, a pound of prunes, and four or five pounds of apples. There are many ways of saving in the purchase of food if you put your mind upon it. If you are buying prunes, you may pay as high as fifty cents or a dollar a pound for the big ones, and they are not a bit better than the tiny ones, which you can buy for as low as eight cents a pound in bulk. When bread is stale, the bakers sell it for half price, despite the fact that only then has it become fit to eat. If you buy canned peaches, you will pay a fancy price for them, and they will be heavy with cane sugar; but if you inquire, you find what are known as "pie peaches," put up in gallon tins without sugar, and at about half the price. The butcher will sell you what he calls "hamburg steak" at a very low price, and if you let him prepare it out of your sight, he will fill it with fat and gristle; but let him make some while you watch, and then you have a very good food. One of my diet rules is that I do not trust the capitalist system to fix me up any kind of mixed or ground or prepared foods. I have not eaten sausage since I saw it made in Chicago. Also there is something to know about the cooking of foods, since it is possible to take perfectly good foods and spoil them by bad cooking. Once upon a time our family discovered a fireless cooker, and thought that was a wonderful invention for an absent-minded author and a wife who is given to revising manuscripts. But recent investigations which have been made into the nature of the "vitamines," food ferments which are only partly understood, suggest that prolonged cooking of food may be a great mistake. The starch has to be cooked in order to break the cell walls by the expansion of the material inside. Twenty minutes will be enough in the case of everything except beans, which need to be cooked four or five hours. Meat should be eaten rare, except in the case of pork, which harbors a parasite dangerous to the human body; therefore pork should always be thoroughly cooked. The white of eggs is made less digestible by boiling hard or frying. Eggs should never be allowed to boil; put them on in cold water, and take them off as soon as the water begins to boil. It is not necessary to cook either fresh fruit or dried. The dried fruits may be soaked and eaten raw, but I find that several fruits, especially apples and pears, do not agree with me well if they are eaten raw, so I stew them for fifteen or twenty minutes. I have no objection to canned fruits and vegetables, provided one takes the trouble in opening them to make sure there is no sign of spoiling. If you put up your own fruits, do not put in any sugar. All you have to do is to let them boil for a few minutes, and to seal them tightly while they are boiling hot. The whole secret of preserving is to exclude the air with its bacteria. If you live on a farm, you will have no trouble in following the diet here outlined, for you can produce for yourselves all the foods that I have recommended; only do not make the mistake of shipping out your best foods, and taking back the products of a factory, just because you have read lying advertisements about them. Take your own wheat and oats and corn to the mill, and have it ground whole, and make your own breads and cereals. Try the experiment of mixing whole corn meal with water and a little salt, and baking it into hard, crisp "corn dodgers." I do not eat these--but only because I cannot buy them, and have no time to make them. Another common article of food which I do not recommend is salted and smoked meats. I do not pretend to know the effects of large quantities of salt and saltpetre and wood smoke upon the human system, but I know that Dr. Wiley's "poison squad" proved definitely that a number of these inorganic minerals are injurious to health, and I prefer to take fresh meat when I can get it. I use a moderate quantity of common salt on meat and potatoes, because there seems to be a natural craving for this. I know that many health enthusiasts insist that I am thus putting a strain on my kidneys, but I will wait until these health enthusiasts make clear to me why deer and cattle and horses in a wild state will travel many miles to a salt-lick. I have learned that it is easy to make plausible statements about health, but not so easy to prove them. For example, I was told that it is injurious to drink water at meals, and for years I religiously avoided the habit; but it occurred to some college professor to find out if this was really true, and he carried on a series of experiments which proved that the stomach works better when its contents are diluted. The only point about drinking at meals is that you should not use the liquid to wash down your food without chewing it. I can suggest two other ways by which you may save money on food. One is by not eating too much, and another is by eating all that you buy. The amount of food that is wasted by the people of America would feed the people of any European nation. The amount of food that is thrown out from any one of our big American leisure class hotels would feed the children of a European town. I think it may fairly be described as a crime to throw into the garbage pail food which might nourish human life. In our family we have no garbage pail. What little waste there is, we burn in the stove, and my wife turns it into roses. It consists of the fat which we cannot help getting at the butcher's, and the bones of meat, and the skins of some fruits and vegetables. It would never enter into our minds to throw out a particle of bread, or meat, or other wholesome food. If we have something that we fear may spoil, we do not throw it out, but put it into a saucepan and cook it for a few minutes. If you will make the same rule in your home, you will stop at least that much of the waste of American life; and as to the big leisure class hotels, and the banquet tables of the rich--just wait a few years, and I think the social revolution will attend to them! CHAPTER XXII FOODS AND POISONS (Concludes the subject of diet, and discusses the effect upon the system of stimulants and narcotics.) A few years ago there died an old gentleman who had devoted some twenty years of his life to teaching people to chew their food. Horace Fletcher was his name, and his ideas became a fad, and some people carried them to comical extremes. But Fletcher made a real discovery; what he called "the food filter." This is the automatic action of the swallowing apparatus, whereby nature selects the food which has been sufficiently prepared for digestion. If you chew a mouthful of food without ever performing the act of swallowing, you will find that the food gradually disappears. What happens is that all of it which has been reduced to a thin paste will slip unnoticed down your throat, and you may go on putting more food into your mouth, and chewing, and can eat a whole meal without ever performing the act of swallowing. Fletcher claimed that this is the proper way to eat, and that you can train yourself to follow this method. I have tried his idea and adopted it. One of my diet rules, to which there is no exception, is that if I haven't the time to chew my food properly, I haven't the time to eat; I skip that meal. The habit of bolting food is a source of disease. To be sure, the carnivorous animals bolt their food, but they are tougher than we are, and do not carry the burden of a large brain and a complex nervous system. If you swallow your meals half chewed, and wash them down with liquids, you may get away with it for a while, but some day you will pay for it with dyspepsia and nervous troubles. And the same thing applies to your habit of jumping up from meals and rushing away to work, whether it be work of the muscles, or of brain and nerves. Proper digestion requires the presence of a quantity of blood in the walls of the stomach and digestive tract. It requires the attention of your subconscious mind, and this means rest of muscles and brain centers. If you cannot rest for an hour after meals, omit that meal, or make it a light one, of fruit juices, which are almost immediately absorbed by the stomach, and of salads, which do not ferment. You may rest assured that it will not hurt you to skip a meal, and make up for it when you have time to be quiet. I have been many times in my life under very intense and long continued nervous strain; for example, during the Colorado coal strike, I led a public demonstration which kept me in a state of excitement all the day and a good part of the night several weeks. During this period I ate almost nothing; a baked apple and a cup of custard would be as near as I would go to a meal, and as a result I came through the experience without any injury whatever to my health. I lost perhaps ten pounds in weight, but that was quickly made up when I settled back to a normal way of life. I have been on camping trips when I had a great deal of hard work to do, carrying a canoe long distances on my back, or paddling it forty miles a day. On the mornings of such a trip I have seen a guide cook himself an elaborate breakfast of freshly baked bread, bacon, and even beans, and make a hearty meal and then go straight to work. My meal, on the contrary, would consist of a small dish of stewed prunes, or perhaps some huckleberries or raspberries, if they could be found. I will not say that I could do as much as the guide, because he was used to it, and I was not. But I can say this--if I had eaten his breakfast at the start of the day, I would have been dead before night; and I mean the word "dead" quite literally. I know a man who started to climb Whiteface mountain in the Adirondacks. He climbed half way, and then ate lunch, which consisted of nine hard boiled eggs. Then he started to climb the rest of the mountain, and dropped dead of acute indigestion. There are few poisons which can affect the system more quickly, or more dangerously, than a mass of food which is not digested. The stomach is an ideal forcing-house for the breeding of bacteria. It provides warmth and moisture, and you, in your meal, provide the bacteria and the material upon which they thrive. Under normal conditions, the stomach pours out a gastric juice which kills the bacteria; but let this gastric juice for any reason be lacking--because your nervous energy has gone somewhere else, or because your blood-stream, from which the gastric juice must be made, has been drawn away to the muscles by hard labor; then you have a yeast-pot, with great quantities of gases and poisons. In acute cases the results are evident enough: violent pains and convulsions, followed by coma and the turning black of the body. But what you should understand is that you may produce a milder case of such poisoning, and may do it day after day habitually, and little by little your vital organs will be weakened by the strain. It does not make any difference at what hour of the twenty-four you take the great bulk of your food. It is one of the commonest delusions that you get some strengthening effect from your food immediately, and must have this strength in order to do hard work. To be sure, there are substances, such as grape-sugar, which require practically no digesting; you can hold them in the mouth, and they will be digested by the saliva, and absorbed at once into the blood-stream. But unless you have been starved for a long period you do not need to get your strength in this rush fashion. If you ate your normal meals on the previous day, your blood-stream is fully supplied with nutriment which has been put through a long process of preparation, and you can get up in the morning and work all day, if necessary, upon what is already in your system. To be sure, you may feel hungry, and even faint, but that is merely a matter of habit; your system is accustomed to taking food and expects it. But if you are a laborer doing hard work, you can easily train yourself to eat a light meal in the morning, and another light meal at noon, and to eat a hearty meal when your work is done and you can rest. Two light meals and a hearty meal are all that any system needs, and you can prove it to yourself by trying it, and watching your weight once a week. I have tried many experiments, and the conclusion to which I have come is that there is no virtue in any particular meal-hours or any particular number of meals. For several years I tried the experiment of two meals a day. I was living a retired life, and had little contact with the world, and I would make a hearty meal at ten o'clock in the morning, and another at five in the afternoon. But later on I found that inconvenient, and now I take a light breakfast, and two moderate-sized meals at the conventional hours of lunch and dinner. I can arrange my own time, so after meal times is when I get my reading done. Sometimes, when I am tired, I feel sleepy after meals, but I have learned not to yield to this impulse. I do not know how to explain this; I have observed that animals sleep after eating, and it appears to be a natural thing to do; but I know that if I go to sleep after a meal, nature makes clear to me that I have made a mistake, and I do not repeat it. I never eat at night, and always go to bed on an empty stomach, so I am always hungry when I open my eyes in the morning. I never know what it is not to be hungry at meal times, and my habits are so regular that I could set my watch by my stomach. Another common habit which is harmful is eating between meals. I have known people who are accustomed to nibble at food nearly all the time. Shelley records that he tried it as an experiment, thinking it might be a convenient way to get digestion done--but he found that it did not work. The stomach is apparently meant to work in pulses; to do a job of digesting, and then to rest and accumulate the juices for another job. It will accustom itself to a certain régime, and will work accordingly, but if, when it has half digested a load of food, you pile more food in on top, you make as much trouble as you would make in your kitchen if you required your cook to prepare another meal before she has cleaned up after the last one. Three times a day is enough for any adult to eat. Children require to eat oftener, because their bodies are more active, and they not merely have to keep up weight, but to add to it. The simplest way to arrange matters with children is to give them three good meals at the hours when adults eat, and then to give them a couple of pieces of fruit between breakfast and lunch, and again between lunch and supper. I have never seen a child who would not be satisfied with this, when once the habit was established. I have already spoken of the cooking and serving of food. I consider that the "gastronomic art," as it is pompously called, is ninety-nine per cent plain rubbish. To be sure, if foods are appetizingly prepared, and look good and smell good and taste good, they will cause the gastric juices to flow abundantly, as the Russian scientist Pavlov has demonstrated by practical experiment with the stomach-pump. But I know without any stomach-pump that the best thing to make my gastric juices flow is hard work and a spare diet. When I come home from five sets of tennis, and have a cold shower and a rub-down, my gastric juices will flow for a piece of cold beefsteak and a cold sweet potato, quite as well as for anything that is served by a leisure class "chef." Needless to say, I want food to be fresh, and I want it to be clean, but I have other things to do with my time and money than to pamper my appetites and encourage food whims. If you have a grandmother, or ever had one, you know what grandmothers tell you about "hot nourishing food"; but I have tried the experiment, and satisfied myself that there is absolutely no difference in nourishing qualities between hot food and cold food. If you chew your food sufficiently, it will all be ninety-eight and six-tenths degree food when it gets to your stomach, and that is the way your stomach wants it. Of course, if you have been out in a blizzard, and are chilled, and want to restore the body temperature, a hot drink will be one of the quickest ways, and if the emergency is extreme, you may even add a stimulant. On the other hand, if you are suffering from heat, it is sensible to cool your body by a cold drink. But you should use as much judgment with yourself as you would with a horse, which you do not permit to drink a lot of cold water when he is heated up, and is going into his stall to stand still. I have mentioned the word "stimulants," and this opens a large subject. There are drugs which affect the body in two different ways: some excite the nerves, and through the nerves the heart and blood-stream, to more intense activity; others have the effect of deadening the nerves, and dulling the sense of exhaustion and pain. One of these groups is called stimulants, and the other is called narcotics; but as a matter of fact the stimulants are really narcotics, because they operate by dulling the nerves whose function it is to prevent the over-accumulation of fatigue poisons; in other words, they keep the nerves and muscles from knowing that they are tired, and so they go on working. It is possible, of course, to conceive of an emergency in which that is necessary. Once upon a time, on a hunting trip, I had been traveling all day, and was caught in a rain storm, and exhausted and chilled to the bone; I had to make camp without a fire, so when I got the tent up I wrapped myself in blankets and drank a couple of tablespoons full of whiskey. That is the only time I have ever taken whiskey in my life, and it warmed me almost instantly, and did me no harm. In the same way there were two or three occasions when I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and could not sleep, and let the doctor give me a sleeping powder. But in each case I knew that I was fooling with a dangerous habit, and I did no more fooling than necessary. No one should make use of either stimulants or narcotics except in extreme emergency, and never but a few times in a lifetime. What you should do is to change your habits so that you will not need to over-strain. All these drugs are habit forming; that is to say, they leave the body no better, and with a craving for a repetition of the relief. When you are tired, it is because your muscles and nerves are storing up fatigue poisons more rapidly than your blood-stream can get rid of them. You need to know about this condition, and exhaustion and pain are nature's protective warning. If you put a stop to the warning, you are as unintelligent as the Eastern despots who used to cut off the head of the messenger who brought bad tidings. If, when you have a headache, you go into a drug store and let the druggist mix you one of those white fizzy drinks, what you are doing is not to get rid of the poisons in your blood-stream, but merely to reduce the action of your heart, so as to keep the blood from pressing so fast into the aching blood vessels and nerves. You may try that trick with your heart a number of times, but sooner or later you will try it once too often--your heart will stop a little bit quicker than you meant it to! Drugs are poisons, and their action depends upon their poisoning some particular portion of the body, and temporarily paralyzing it. And bear this in mind, they are none the less poisonous because they are "natural" products. You can kill yourself by cyanide of potassium, which comes out of a chemist's retort; but you can kill yourself just as dead with laudanum, which comes out of a plant, or with the contents of the venom sac of a snake. You are poisoning yourself none the less certainly if you use alcohol, which is made from the juices of beautiful fruits, and has had hosts of famous poets writing songs about it; or you can poison yourself with the caffein which you get in a lovely brown bean which comes from Brazil, fragrant to the nostrils and delicious to the taste. You may drink wine and tea and coffee for a hundred years, and have your picture published in the newspapers as a proof that these habits conduce to health; but nothing will be said about the large number of people who practiced these habits, and didn't live so long, and about how long they might have lived if they hadn't practiced these habits. I was brought up in the South, and my "elders" belonged to a generation which had grown up in war time. For this reason many of the men both drank and smoked to excess, and in my boyhood I lived among them and watched them, and with the help of advice from a wise mother, I conceived a horror of every kind of stimulant. The alcoholic poets could not fool me; I had been in the alcoholic wards of the hospitals. I had seen one man after another, beautiful and kindly and gracious men, dragged down into a pit of torment and shame. Alcohol is, I think, the greatest trap that nature ever set for the feet of the human race. It is responsible for more degradation and misery than any other evil in the world; and I say this, knowing well that my Socialist friends will cry, "What about Capitalism?" My answer is that I doubt if there ever would have been any Capitalism in the world, if it had not been for alcohol. If the workers had not been systematically poisoned, and all their savings taken from them by the gin-mill, they would never have submitted to the capitalist system, they would have built the co-operative commonwealth at the time they were building the first factories. I listen to the arguments of my radical friends about "personal liberty," but I note that in Russia, when it was a question of making a practical revolution and keeping it alive, the first thing the leaders did was to drag out the contents of the wine-cellars of the palaces, and smash them in the gutters. Tea and coffee are, of course, much milder in their effects than alcohol; you can play with them longer, and the punishment will be less severe. But if you make habitual use of them, you will pay the penalty which all drugs exact from the system. Your brain and your nerve centers will be less sensitive, less capable of working except under the influence of drugs; their reacting power will be dulled, and they will wear out more quickly. I have watched the slaves of the "morning cup of coffee," and know how they suffer when they do not get it. Likewise, I have watched the tea drinkers. It is comical to live in England, and see all the able-bodied men obliged to leave their work at four o'clock in the afternoon, and seek the regular stimulus for their tired nerves. If you are to meet anybody, it is always for "tea" that the ceremony is set, and if you refuse to drink tea, your hostess will be uncomfortable, unable to talk about anything but the strange, incredible notion that one can live without tea. I discovered after a while the solution of this problem; I would say that I preferred a little hot water, if you please, and so my hostess would pour me a cup of hot water, and I would sit and gravely sip it, and everybody would be perfectly content: I was conforming to the outward appearance of normality, which is what the British conventions require. I have never drunk a cup of coffee, so I do not know what its effect on me would be. But some fifteen years ago I drank a glass of very weak iced tea at eight o'clock in the evening, and did not get to sleep until four or five the next morning. So I know that there is really a drug in tea. I know also that I might accustom my system to it, just as I might learn to poison my lungs with nicotine without being made immediately and suddenly ill; but why should I wish to do this? Life is so interesting to me that I do not need to stimulate my brain centers in order to appreciate the thrill of it. And when I am tired, I can rest myself by listening to music, or by reading a worth-while novel--things which I have found do not leave the after effects of nicotine. I remember the first time I met Jack London. Our meeting consisted in good part of his "kidding" me, because I was lacking in the congenial vices of the café. He told me how much I had missed, because I had never been drunk; One ought to try the great adventure, at least once! Poor Jack is gone, because his kidneys gave out at forty; and nothing could seem more ungracious than to point out that I am still alive, and finding life enjoyable. Yet, in this book we are trying to find out how to live, and if there are habits which wreck and destroy a magnificent physique, and bring a great genius to death at the age of forty--surely the rest of us want to know about it, and to be warned in time. I mention Jack London in this connection, because he has said the last word on the subject of alcohol. Read "John Barleycorn," and especially read between the lines of it, and you will not need my argument to persuade you to be glad that the Eighteenth Amendment has been written into the Constitution, and that it is your duty as a Socialist, not merely to obey it, but to vote for its enforcement. I am proceeding on the assumption that your life is of importance to you; that you have a job to do which you know to be worth while, and to which you desire to apply your powers. You agree with me that the workers of the world are suffering, and that it is necessary for them to find their freedom, and that this takes hard work and hard thinking. You may say that I exaggerate the amount of harm that is done to the system by tea and coffee, alcohol and tobacco. Well, let us assume that in moderate quantities they do no harm at all: even so, I have the right to ask you to show that they do some good; otherwise, surely, it is a mistake for the workers to spend their savings upon them. Consider, for example, the amount of money which the wage slaves of the world spend upon tobacco. Suppose they could be persuaded for two or three years to spend this amount upon good reading matter--do you not think there would be an improvement in their condition? Surely you cannot maintain that the use of tobacco is necessary to the activities of the brain! Surely you do not think that a man has to have a cigarette in order to stimulate his thoughts, or to smoke a pipe to rest himself after his work is done! I offer myself as evidence in such a controversy; I have written as many books as any man in the radical movement, and the sum total of my lifetime smoking amounts to one-half of one cigarette. I tried that when I was eight years old, and somebody told me a policeman would arrest me if he caught me, and I threw away the cigarette, and ran and hid in an alley, and have not yet got over my scare. In the "Journal for Industrial Hygiene" for October, 1920, is an article entitled "Fatigue and Efficiency of Smokers in a Strenuous Mental Occupation." Experiments were conducted among telegraph operators, and the result showed that "the heavy smokers of the group show a higher output rate at the beginning of the day than the light smokers, but their rate falls off more markedly in the late hours, and their production for the whole day is definitely less than that of the light smokers. The heavy smokers also show less ability than the light smokers to respond to increasing pressure of work in the late hours of the day by handling their full share of the work presented." One point upon which every medical authority agrees is--that the use of nicotine is of deadly effect upon the immature organism. Half-grown youths who smoke cigarettes will never be full-sized men; they will never have normal lungs or a normal heart. And likewise, all authorities agree about the effect of smoking upon the organism of women. I gave what little help I could to the task of helping to set women free, and to make them the equals of men; but I was always pained when I discovered that some of my feminist friends understood by woman's emancipation no more than her right to adopt men's vices. I would say to these ardent young female radicals, who cultivate the art of dangling a cigarette from their lower lip, and sip cocktails out of coffee-cups in Greenwich Village cafés, that they will never be able to bear sound children; but I know that this would not interest them--they don't want to bear any children at all. So I say that they will never be able to think straight thoughts, and will be nervous invalids when they are thirty. We went to war to make the world safe for democracy, and we put several millions of our young men into armies, and if there were any of them who did not already know how to smoke cigarettes, they learned it under official sanction. So now we have a national tobacco bill that runs up to two billions, and will insure us a new generation of "Class C" rating. Speaking to the young radicals who are reading my books, I say: We want to make the world over, to make it a place of freedom and kindness, instead of the hell of greed and hate that it is today. For that purpose we need a new moral code, and we can never win our victory without it. I have attended radical conventions, sitting in unventilated halls amid clouds of tobacco smoke, and listening to men wrangle all through the day and a great part of the night; I have watched the fatal dissensions in the movement, the quarrelings of the right wingers and the left wingers and all stages and degrees in between, and I have wondered--not jestingly, but in pitying earnest--how much of all those personalities and factional misunderstanding had their origin in carbon dioxide and nicotine. There is no use suggesting such ideas to the older men, whose habits are fixed; but a new generation is coming on, with a new vision of the enormous task before it; and is it too much to expect of these young men and women, that they shall realize in advance the grim tasks they have to do, and shall learn to run the machine of their body so as to get out of it the maximum amount of service? Is it too much to hope for, that some day we shall have a race of young fighters for truth and justice, who are willing to live abstemious lives, and consecrate themselves to the task of delivering mankind from wage slavery and war? CHAPTER XXIII MORE ABOUT HEALTH (Discusses the subjects of breathing and ventilation, clothing, bathing and sleep.) In discussing the question of health, we have given the greater part of the space to the subject of diet, for the reason that experience has convinced us that diet is two-thirds of health, and that nearly always in disease you find errors of diet playing a part. There are, however, other important factors of health, now to be discussed. Everything of which the body makes use is taken in the form of food and drink, with the exception of one substance, the oxygen we get out of the air. Every time we draw a breath we take in a certain amount of oxygen, and every time we expel a breath, we drive out a certain amount of a gas called carbon dioxide, which is what the body makes of the fuel it burns. The body can get along for several days without water, and for two or three months without food, but it can only get along for two or three minutes without oxygen. It should be obvious that when the body expels carbon dioxide, with a slight mixture of other more poisonous gases, and sucks back what it expects will be a fresh supply of oxygen, it wants to get oxygen, and not the same gases it has just expelled, nor gases which have been expelled from the lungs of other people. In the days when primitive man lived outdoors, he did not have to think about this problem. When he breathed poison from his lungs, the moving air of nature blew it away, and the infinite vegetation of nature took the carbon dioxide and turned it back into oxygen. And even when man built himself shelters, he was not cunning enough to make them air-tight; he had to leave a big hole for the smoke to get out, and smaller holes through which to get light. But now our wonderful civilization has solved these problems; we make our walls of air-tight plaster, and we have invented a substance which will admit light without admitting air. So we have the "white plague" of tuberculosis, and so we have innumerable minor plagues of coughs and colds and sore throats. In the summer time the solution of the problem is easy. Have as many doors and windows in your home as possible, and keep them open, and have nothing in your home to make dust or to retain dust. But then comes stormy and cold weather, and you have to close your doors and windows, and keep your home at a higher temperature than the air outside. How shall you do this, and at the same time get a continual supply of fresh air? I will take the various methods of heating one by one. The problem in each case is simple and can be made clear in a sentence or two. First, the open fireplace. This is a perfect solution, if you have enough fuel, and do not have to worry about the waste of heat. An open fireplace draws out all the air in the room in a short time, and you do not have to bother about opening doors or windows; you may be sure that the air is getting in through some cracks, or else the fire would not burn. Second, a wood or coal or gas stove in the room, provided with a proper vent, so that all the gases of combustion are drawn up the chimney. This changes the air more slowly than an open fireplace, but it does the work fairly well. All that you have to be careful about is that your vent is sufficiently large and is working properly. If your fire does not "draw," you will have smoke or coal-gas in the house, and this is bad for the lungs; but worse for the lungs is a gas that you can neither see nor smell nor taste, the deadly carbon monoxide. This gas is produced by incomplete combustion, and whenever you see yellow flames from gas or coal, you are apt to have this poisonous substance. Small quantities of it are sufficient to cause violent headaches, and repeated doses of it are fatal. Men who work in garages which are not properly ventilated run this risk all the time, because carbon monoxide is one of the products of imperfect combustion in the gas engine. Next, the furnace. A furnace sends fresh warm air into your house; the only trouble is that it takes out all the moisture, and some authorities say that this is bad for the lungs and throat. I do not know whether this is true, but all furnaces are supposed to have a water chamber to supply moisture to the air, and you should keep a pan of water on every stove or radiator in your house. Next, steam heat, which includes hot-water heating. This is one of the abominations of our civilization, and one of the methods by which our race is committing suicide. There is nothing wrong about steam heat in itself; the room is warmed in a harmless way; but the trouble is it stays warm only so long as the doors and windows are kept shut. You are in an air-tight box, and can be warm provided you do not mind being suffocated. The moment you open a door or window, you have a cold draft on your feet, and if you wish to change the air entirely you have to let out all the heat; so, of course, you never do change it entirely, but go on breathing the same air over and over, and every time you breathe it the condition of your body is a little more reduced. The solution of this problem is not to heat the air in the room, but to use your steam coils to heat fresh air, and then drive this air, already warmed, into the room, at the same time providing a vent through which the old air can be pushed out. This is the hot air system of heating, and it requires some kind of engine or dynamo, and therefore is expensive. It has been installed in a few office buildings and theaters. One of the most perfect systems I ever inspected is in the building of the New York Stock Exchange, where the air is warmed in winter, and cooled in summer, and freed from dust, and exactly the right quantity is supplied. It is a humorous commentary upon our civilization that we take perfect care of the breathing apparatus of our stock-gamblers, but pay no attention to the breathing apparatus of our senators and congressmen, whose one business in life is to use their lungs. The stately old building with its white marble domes looks impressive in moving pictures and on illustrated postcards, but it has no system of ventilation whatever, and is a death-trap to the poor wretches who are compelled to spend their days, and sometimes their nights, within its walls. This contrast is one symptom of the rise of industrial capitalism and the collapse of political democracy. We have reserved to the last a method of heating which is the worst, and can only be described as a crime against health: the use of gas and oil stoves set out in the middle of the room, without a vent, and discharging their fumes into the room. These stoves are simply instruments of slow death, and their manufacture should be prohibited by law. In the meantime, what you have to do is to refuse to live in a room or to work in an office where such stoves are used. I have heard dealers insist that this or the other kind of gas or oil stove was so contrived as to consume all the fumes. Do not let anybody fool you with such nonsense. There has never been any form of combustion devised which consumes all the fumes. No such thing can be, because the products of combustion are not combustible. The so-called "wickless blue flame" stoves do burn all the oil, and a properly regulated gas stove will burn all the gas, but that simply means that it turns the oil and gas into carbon dioxide, the very substance which your lungs are working day and night to get out of your body. Moreover, there is no oil or gas stove which ever burns perfectly all the time, either because there is too much gas or insufficient air. Oil and gas stoves sometimes give a partly yellow flame. You can cause them to give a yellow flame at any time by blowing air against them, and that yellow flame means imperfect combustion, and a probability of the deadly carbon monoxide. These facts are known to every chemist and to every student of hygiene, and the fact that civilized people continue to burn such oil and gas stoves in their homes and offices is simply one more proof that our civilization values human welfare and health at nothing whatever in comparison with profits. Not merely should you see that you have a continuous supply of fresh air in your home, but you should try to keep down dust in your home, and especially fine particles of lint. Once upon a time our ancestors were unable to make houses and floors tight, and so they put rugs on the floors and hung tapestries on the walls to keep out the wind. We civilized people are able to make both floors and walls absolutely tight, and yet we continue to use rugs and curtains, it being the first principle of our education that propriety requires us to continue to do the things which our ancestors did. I am unable to think of a more silly or stupid thing in the world than a rug or a curtain, but I have lived in the house with them all my life, because, alas, the ladies cannot be happy otherwise. They want their homes to be "pretty," and so they continue to set dust traps, and to set themselves futile jobs of house cleaning and shopping. Not all of us are able to be out of doors as much as we ought to be, but all of us spend seven or eight hours out of every twenty-four in sleep, and this time at least we ought to spend out of doors. I understand that this is futile advice to give to the very poor. I was poor myself for many years, and had to put all my clothes on at night in order to keep warm, and even then I could not always do it. Nevertheless, from the time I first realized the importance of ventilation I never slept in a room with a closed window. I say, sleep outdoors if you possibly can. You do not have to be afraid of exposure, for cold will not hurt you if you keep your body in proper condition. I have slept out in a rubber blanket, with the rain beating on my head and face; I have spread a rubber blanket on a hummock in the midst of a swamp, and waked up in the morning with my hair and face soaked in cold, white fog, but I never caught cold from such things; there is no harm whatever in dampness or in "night air," if you are in proper condition. Of course, you may get your ears frostbitten in the middle of winter, but you can have a sleeping hood to remove that danger. The "nature cure" enthusiasts, who lay so much stress upon an outdoor life, also insist that the wearing of clothes is a harmful civilized custom. They urge us to take "sun baths" and to "ventilate the skin." Now, as a matter of fact, the skin does not breathe, it merely gives out moisture, and it does not give out any less because we have clothing on us, provided the clothing is dry and clean, and will absorb moisture. But bye and bye the clothing becomes loaded with the waste substances given out by the skin, and then it will absorb no more, and if you do not change your clothing, no doubt it may have some effect upon health. But the principal evil of civilized clothing is that it binds the body and prevents the free play of the muscles, and, more important yet, stops the free circulation of the blood. I have already discussed hats, which are the principal cause of baldness. I will go to the other extremity of the body, and mention tight shoes, which, strange as it may seem, cause headaches and colds. You will be able to find a few civilized men with normal feet, but you will hardly ever find a woman whose toes are not crowded together and misshapen. I have said that the human body is one organism, and that it is fed and its health maintained by the blood-stream; I say now that the circulation of the blood is one thing, and if you block it at any one place, you block it everywhere. Of course, not all the blood-stream goes down into the feet, but some of it does, and if it is clogged in the feet, and the blood vessels cramped and crowded, there is a certain amount of poison kept in the system, which the system should have got rid of. Why do women wear tight shoes? Because the leisure class members of their sex have been kept in harems and used as the playthings of men. To be fragile and delicate was the thing admired by the masters of wealth, and to have small hands and feet was a sign that women belonged to this parasite class. Therefore at all hazards women's feet must be kept small, even at the expense of their health and happiness; and so they put themselves up on several inches of heels, which cause them to toddle around like marionettes on a stage, with all their toes crowded down into a lump. Why do men wear tight bands around their scalps, which cause their hair to drop out, and tight, stiff columns around their necks, which stop the circulation of the blood into their heads, and cause them to have headaches instead of ideas? The reason is that for ages the rulers of the tribe have wished to demonstrate publicly their superiority to the common herd, which does the menial tasks. In England all gentlemen wear tall black silk band-boxes on their heads, and in America they have a choice among several varieties of round tight boxes. All men who work in offices wear stiffly starched collars and cuffs, as a means of demonstrating their superiority to the common workers, who have to sweat at their necks. I think it is not too much to hope that when class exploitation is done away with, we shall also get rid of these class symbols, and choose our clothing because it is warm and comfortable, and not according to the perverted imbecilities of "style." The skin gives out perspiration which is greasy; also the skin is constantly growing, putting out layers of cells which dry up and are worn off. We need to bathe with soap to remove the grease, and we need to rub with a towel to brush away the dead cells of the skin, so that the pores may be kept open. No one is taking care of his body who does not wash and rub it once every twenty-four hours, and once or twice a week with warm water and soap. It is often stated that hot baths are weakening, but I have never found it so; however, I think it is a bad practice to pamper the body, which should be accustomed to the shock of cold water. The rule as to bathing, both as to temperature and time, is simple. If, after the bath and rub-down, your body has reacted and you feel vigorous and fresh, that bath has done you good. If, on the other hand, you feel chilled and depressed, then you have been too long in the water, or its temperature was too low. Every person has to find his own rules in such matters. The only general rule is that as one grows older the body reacts less quickly. All day, as we work and think, we store up more poisons in our cells than the body can get rid of, and the time comes when the cells are so loaded with poisons that we have to stop for a while, and let our blood-stream clean house. The quantity of sleep one needs is a problem like that of cold water; each person has to find his own rule. In general, one needs less and less sleep as one grows older. Infants sleep the greater part of the time; growing children should sleep ten or eleven hours, adults seven or eight, and old people, unless they have let themselves get fat, generally do not want to sleep more than six, and part of this in short naps. When you sleep, your bodily energies relax, and you make less heat, therefore you need extra clothing; but this clothing should never cover the mouth and nose, nor should it be so heavy as to make breathing a burden. If you are in good condition, it will do you no harm to be chilly when you sleep, except that you do not sleep so soundly. Sleeping too much is just as harmful as sleeping too little. Nature will tell you that. The important thing, as in all other problems of health, is to have something interesting to think about, some exciting work to do in the world, and then you will sleep as little as you have too. CHAPTER XXIV WORK AND PLAY (Deals with the question of exercise, both for the idle and the overworked.) In discussing the important question of exercise, there is one fundamental fact to begin with: that our present civilization divides men sharply into two classes, those who do not get enough exercise, and those who get too much. Obviously it would be folly to make the same recommendations to the two classes. I begin with those who get too much exercise. They include a great number, probably the majority of those who do the manual work of the world. They include the farmers and the farm-hands, who work from dawn to sunset, and sometimes by lantern light. They include also the farmers' wives, the kitchen slaves of whom the old couplet tells: "Man's work ends from sun to sun, But woman's work is never done." I am aware that men have worked that way for countless ages, and yet the race is still surviving; but I am aware also that men wither up with rheumatism, and contract chronic diseases of the kidneys and the blood vessels, consequent upon the creation of greater quantities of fatigue poisons than the body can regularly eliminate. I have very little interest in the past, and none whatever in finding fault with it. My purpose is to criticize the present for the benefit of the future, and therefore I say that modern machinery and the whole development of modern large-scale production make it absolutely unnecessary that women should slave all their waking hours in kitchens, or that men should slave all day. I say it is monstrous folly that men should work for twelve-hour stretches in steel mills, and for ten and eleven hours in factories and mines. Organized labor has adopted the slogan, "Eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, eight hours for play"; but my slogan is "Four hours for work, four hours for study, eight hours for sleep, and eight hours for play." I know, and am prepared to demonstrate to any thinking man, that modern civilization can produce, not merely all the necessities, but all the comforts of life for every man, woman and child in the community, by the expenditure of four hours a day work of the adult, able-bodied men and women. So to all the wage slaves of the factories and mines, the fields and the kitchens, I say that too much exercise is what is the matter with you, and what you need is to get off in a quiet nook in the woods and read a good novel, not merely for a few hours, but for a few months, until you get over the effects of capitalist civilization. I know that not many of you can get away as yet, but I urge you to insist upon getting away, to fight for the chance to get away; and I will here suggest a few of the novels for you to read when finally you do get away. I choose the easy ones, which the dullest and most tired of you will love; I say, make up your mind to read these thirty-two books before you die, and do not let the world cheat you out of your chance! Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Charles D. Stewart: The Fugitive Blacksmith. W. Clark Russell: The Wreck of the Grosvenor. R. L. Stevenson: Treasure Island, Kidnapped. Jack London: The Sea Wolf, The Call of the Wild, Martin Eden. Joseph Conrad: Youth. H. G. Wells: The War of the Worlds, When the Sleeper Wakes, The Sea Lady, The History of Mr. Polly, The Food of the Gods, The Island of Dr. Moreau. Upton Sinclair: The Jungle, King Coal, Jimmie Higgins, 100 Per Cent. Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie. George Moore: Esther Waters. Frank Norris: The Octopus. Brand Whitlock: The Turn of the Balance. De Foe: Robinson Crusoe. Fielding: Tom Jones, Jonathan Wild the Great. Thackeray: The Adventures of Barry Lyndon. Marmaduke Pickthall: The Adventures of Hadji Baba. Blasco Ibanez: The Fruit of the Vine. Frank Harris: Montes the Matador. Frederik van Eeden: The Quest. Tolstoi: Resurrection. And now for the people who do not get enough exercise. In the armies of King Cyrus it was the law that every man was required to sweat once every twenty-four hours, and that is still the law for every business man and office-worker and writer of books. There is no substitute for it, and there is no health without it. I have heard Dr. Kellogg say that the modern woman sends out her health with her washing, and I have heard the leisure class ladies at the Sanitarium discuss this cryptic utterance and wonder what he meant by it. I know that there is use telling leisure class ladies what exercise at the wash-tub would do for their abdomens and backs. I will only tell them that unless they can find some kind of vigorous activity which keeps them in a free perspiration for an hour or two each day, they will never be really well, and will never bear children without agony and abortion. For myself, I have found that the minimum is three or four times a week. Unless I get that much hard exercise I am soon in trouble. So my advice to the business man is to take off his coat and collar and turn out and help his truck-man; my advice to the white collar slave is to get a part-time job, and dig ditches the rest of the time. To the man who has cares which pursue him, and likewise to the ardent student and brain-worker, I say that they should find, not merely exercise, but play. The distinction between the two things is important. There can be play that is not exercise, for example cards and chess; and, of course, there can be exercise that is not play. What you must have is something that is both play and exercise; something that not merely causes your heart to beat fast, and your lungs to pump fast, and your sweat glands to throw out poisons from your body, but something that fully occupies your mind and gives your higher brain centers a chance to relax. Our civilization has very largely destroyed the possibility of play and the spirit of play. We civilized people no longer know what play is, and regard the desire to play as something abnormal--a form of vice. We allow children to play after school hours, and on Saturdays; but for grown-up, serious-minded men and women to want to play would be almost as disreputable as for them to want to get drunk. What could foe more pitiful than the spectacle of tens of thousands of men crowding into our baseball parks and amusement fields to watch other men play for them! Imagine, if you can, a crowd of people gathering in a restaurant or theater to watch other people _eat_ for them! Imagine yourself a man from Mars, coming down to a world with so many people in want, and finding whole classes of men forbidden to do any work, under penalty of disgrace, and compelled, in order to exercise their muscles, to pull on rubber straps and lift weights and wave dumb-bells and Indian clubs in the air--methods of expending their muscular energy which are respectable because they accomplish nothing! When I was a boy, I was fond of all kinds of games. I was a good tennis player, and in the country an incessant hunter and fisherman. When on the city streets we boys could not find any other game to play, we would get up on the roofs of the houses and throw clothes-pins and snow-balls at the "Dagoes" working in the nearby excavations; so we had the fine game of being chased by the "Dagoes," with the chance, real or imaginary, of having a knife stuck into us. But then, as I grew older, and became aware of the pain and misery of the world, I lost my interest in games, and for ten years or so I never played; I did nothing but study and write. So my health gave way, and I had the problem of restoring it, and I spent some twenty years wrestling with this problem, before I thoroughly convinced myself on the point that there can be no such thing as sound and permanent health without a certain amount of play. I don't think there is any kind of hard physical work I failed to try, in the course of my experiments. I rode horseback, and took long walks, and climbed mountains, and swam, and dug gardens, and chopped down whole groves of trees and cut them up and carried them to the fireplace. I have done this latter work for a whole winter in the country, several hours every day, and it has done my health no good to speak of; I have been ready for a breakdown at the end of it. The reason is that all the time I was doing these things with my body, I was going right on working my brain. While I was swimming or climbing a mountain or galloping on horseback, I was absorbed in the next chapter of the book I was writing, so that I literally did not know where I was. I would make up my mind that I would not think about my work, and would make desperate efforts not to do so; but it was like walking along the edge of a slippery ditch--sooner or later I was bound to fall in, and go floundering along, unable to get out again! And the same thing applies to all gymnastic work. I have experimented with a dozen different systems of exercises, and with all kinds of water treatments; I have used dumb-bells and Indian clubs and Swedish gymnastics, MacFadden's exercises in bed, and the Yogi breathing exercises, and more kinds of queer things than I can remember now; but for me there is only one solution of the problem, which is to have an antagonist. It may be a deer I am trying to shoot, or some trout I am trying to lure out of their holes; it may be some boys I am trying to beat at football or hockey, or it may be the game I know best and find most convenient, which is tennis. If it is tennis, then it has to be someone who can make me work as hard as I know how; for if it is someone I can beat easily, why, before I have been playing ten minutes, I am busily working out the next chapter of a book, or answering letters I have just got in the mail. Recently I came upon a book, "The Psychology of Relaxation," by Dr. Patrick, in which the theory of this is set forth. Civilized man is working his higher brain centers more than his body can stand; his brain is running away with him, absorbing a constantly increasing share of his energies. True relaxation is only possible where the higher brain centers are lulled, and the back lobes of the brain brought into activity. One of the means of doing this is alcohol, and that is why through the ages all races of men have craved to get drunk. There is a method which is harmless, and does not break down the system, and that is play. When we become really interested in play, we are as children, or as primitive man; we do all the things that our race used to do many ages ago; we hunt and fight, we pit our wits against the wits of our enemies, and struggle with desperation to get the better of them. If our play is physical play, if we are absorbed in a game or bodily contest, then we are exerting and developing all those portions of us which civilization tends to atrophy and deaden. There are people who will dispute with you about Socialism, and ask, how we are going to provide incentives if we do away with wage slavery. When you tell them that activity is natural to human beings, and that if there were no work, men and women would have to make some, they shake their heads mournfully and tell you about the problem of "human nature." But consider games and sports: men do not have to work their bodies, yet they go out and deliberately hunt for trouble! They invent themselves subtle and complicated games, and are not content until they find people who can beat them at it, or at any rate can make them work to the limit of their strength, until they are in a dripping perspiration and thoroughly exhausted! I may be too optimistic about "human nature," but I believe that this is the attitude every normal human being takes toward the powers, both mental and physical, which he possesses; he wants to use them, and for all they are worth. If you don't believe it, just take any group of youngsters, give them a baseball and bat, turn them loose in a vacant lot, and watch them "choose up sides" and fall to work, screaming and shouting in wild excitement! There are some races of the earth which do not yet know baseball, but the Filipinos and the Japanese have learned it, and even the war-worn "Poilus" and the supercilious "Tommies" condescended to experiment with it. And if you think it is only physical competition that young human animals enjoy, try them at putting on a play, or printing a magazine, or conducting a debate, or building a house--anything whatever that involves healthy competition, and is related to the big things of life, but without being for the profit of some exploiter! Get clear the plain and simple distinction between work and play: play is what you want to do, while work is what the profit system makes you do! CHAPTER XXV THE FASTING CURE (Deals with nature's own remedy for disease, and how to make use of it.) We have next to consider the various human ailments, what causes them, and how they can be remedied. As it happens, I know of a cure that comes pretty near being that impossible thing, a "cure-all." At any rate, it is so far ahead of all other cures, that a discussion of it will cover three-fourths of the subject. When I was a boy living in New York, there was a man by the name of Dr. Tanner, who took a forty-day fast. He was on public exhibition at the time, and was supposed to be watched day and night; the newspapers gave a great deal of attention to the story, and crowds used to come to gaze at him. I remember very well the conversations I heard about the matter. People were quite sure that it couldn't be true. The man must be getting something to eat on the sly; he must have some nourishment in the water he drank; no human being could fast more than five or six days without starving to death. In the year 1910 I published in the United States and England a magazine article telling how on several occasions I had fasted ten or twelve days, and what I had accomplished by it. I found that I had the same difficulty to confront as old Dr. Tanner; I received scores of letters from people who called me a "faker," and I read scores of newspaper editorials to the same effect. The New York Times published a dispatch about three young ladies on Long Island who were trying a three-day fast, and the Times commented editorially to the effect that these young ladies were "the victims of a shallow and unscrupulous sensationalist." The notion that human beings can perish for lack of food in a few days is deeply rooted in people's minds. Recently a group of eleven Irishmen in jail set to work to starve themselves to death, as a protest against British rule in their country. Day after day the newspapers reported the news from Cork prison, and at about the twentieth day they began to state that the prisoners were dying, that the priest had been sent for, that their relatives were gathered on the prison steps. Day after day such reports continued, through the thirties, and the forties, and the fifties, and the sixties, and the seventies. One man died on the eighty-eighth day, and MacSwiney died on the seventy-fourth. The other nine gave up after ninety-four days and were all restored to health. I watched carefully the newspaper and magazine comment on this incident, yet I did not see a single remark on the medical aspects of it; I could not discover that scientific men had learned anything whatever about the ability of the body to go without food for long periods. Get this clear at the outset: Nobody ever "starved to death" in less than two months, and it is possible for a fat person to go without food for as long as three or four months. People who "starve to death" in shorter times do not die of starvation, but of fright. The first time I fasted happened to be at the time of the Messina earthquake. I was walking about, perfectly serene and happy, having been without food for three days, and I read in my newspaper how the rescue ships had reached Messina, and found the population ravenous, in the agonies of starvation, some of the people having been without food for seventy-two hours! (It sounds so much worse, you see, when you state it in hours.) The second point to get clear is that the fast is a physiological process; that is to say, it is something which nature understands and carries through in her own serene and efficient way. When you take a fast, you are not carrying out a freak notion of your own, or of mine; you are discovering a lost instinct. Every cat and dog knows enough not to take food when it is ill; it is only in hospitals conducted by modern medical science that the custom prevails of serving elaborate "trays" to invalids. I remember a story about a man who made himself a reputation and a fortune by curing the pet dogs of the rich. These beautiful little creatures, which sleep between silken covers, and have several servants to wait upon them, and are fed from gold and silver dishes upon rich and elaborately cooked foods, fall victim to as many diseases as their mistresses, and they would be brought to this specialist, who conducted his dog hospital in an old brickyard. In each one of the compartments of the brick kiln he would shut up a dog with a supply of fresh water, a crust of stale bread, a piece of bacon rind, and the sole of an old shoe; and after a few days he would go back and find that the dog had eaten the crust of bread, and then he would write to the owner that the dog was on the high road to recovery. He would go back a few days later and find that the dog had eaten the piece of bacon rind, and then he would write that the dog was very nearly cured. He would wait until the dog had eaten the piece of shoe leather, and then he would write that the dog was completely cured, and the owner might come and take it away. Just what is the process of the fast cure? I do not pretend to know positively. I can only make guesses, and wait for science to investigate. I believe that the main source of the diseases of civilized man is improper nutrition, and the clogging of the system with food poisons in various stages. And when you fast you do two things: first, you stop entirely the fresh supply of those food poisons, and second, you allow the whole of the body's digestive and assimilative tract to rest--to go to sleep, as it were--so that all the body's energy may go to other organs. The body carries with it at all times a surplus store of nutriment, which can be taken up and used by the blood stream, apparently with much less trouble than is required to convert fresh food to the body's uses. In other words, the body can feed on its own tissues more easily than it can feed from the stomach. In the fast you may lose anywhere from half a pound to two pounds in weight per day, and this will be taken, first from your store of fat, and then from your muscular tissues. Every part of your muscular tissue will be taken, before anything is taken from your vital organs, your nerves or your blood-stream. So long as there is a particle of muscular material left, so long as you can make even the slightest movement of one finger, you are still fasting, and it is only when your muscular tissue is all gone that you begin at last to starve. So far as I know, the cases of MacSwiney and the other Irishman are the only cases on record where fasters have died of starvation. What the body does during the fast is quite plain, and can be told by many symptoms. It begins a thorough house-cleaning, throwing out poisonous material by every channel. The perspiration and the breath become offensive, the tongue becomes heavily coated, so that you can scrape the material off with a knife. I have heard vegetarians explain this by saying that when the body is living off its own tissues, it is following a cannibal diet; but that is all nonsense, because you can live on meat exclusively, and quickly satisfy yourself that none of these symptoms occurs. It is evident that the body is taking advantage of the opportunity to get rid of waste products; and this will go on for ten days, for twenty days, in some cases for as long as forty or fifty days; and then suddenly occurs a strange thing: in spite of the "cannibal diet" the symptoms all come to a sudden end. The tongue clears, the breath becomes sweet, the appetite suddenly awakens. During the period of a normal fast you lose all interest in food. You almost forget that there is such a thing as eating; you can look at food without any more desire for it than you have to swallow marbles and carpet tacks. But then suddenly appetite returns, as I have explained, and you find that you can think of nothing but food. This is what students of the subject describe as a "complete fast," and while I do not want to go to extremes and say that the "complete fast" will cure every case of every disease, I can certainly say this: in the letters which have come to me from people who tried the fast at my suggestion, there are cases of every kind of common disease. In my book, "The Fasting Cure," I give the results in cases reported to me after the publication of my first magazine article. I quote two paragraphs: "The total number of fasts taken was 277, and the average number of days was six. There were 90 of five days or over, 51 of ten days or over, and six of 30 days or over. Out of the 119 person who wrote to me, 100 reported benefit, and 17 no benefit. Of these 17 about half give wrong breaking of the fast as the reason for the failure. In cases where the cure had not proved permanent, about half mentioned that the recurrence of the trouble was caused by wrong eating, and about half of the rest made this quite evident by what they said. Also it is to be noted that in the cases of the 17 who got no benefit, nearly all were fasts of only three or four days. "Following is the complete list of diseases benefited--45 of the cases having been diagnosed by physicians: indigestion (usually associated with nervousness), 27; rheumatism, 5; colds, 8; tuberculosis, 4; constipation, 14; poor circulation, 3; headaches, 5; anaemia, 3; scrofula, 1; bronchial trouble, 5; syphilis, 1; liver trouble, 5; general debility, 5; chills and fever, 1; blood poisoning, 1; ulcerated leg, 1; neurasthenia, 6; locomotor ataxia, 1; sciatica, 1; asthma, 2; excess of uric acid, 1; epilepsy, 1; pleurisy, 1; impaction of bowels, 1; eczema, 2; catarrh, 6; appendicitis, 3; valvular disease of heart, 1; insomnia, 1; gas poisoning, 1; grippe, 1; cancer, 1." There are many diseases with many causes, and some yield more quickly than others to the fast. In the first group I put the diseases of the digestive and alimentary tract. Stomach and bowel troubles, and the nervous disorders occasioned by these, stop almost immediately when you fast. Next come disorders of the blood-stream, which are generally a second stage of digestive troubles. Everything immediately due to impurities of the blood, pimples, boils, and ulcers, inflammation, badly healing wounds, etc., respond to a few days of fasting as to the magic touch of the old-time legends. When it comes to diseases caused by germ infections, you have a double aspect of the problem, and must have a double method of attack. I would not like to say that fasting could cure such a disease as sleeping sickness, to the germs of which our systems are not accustomed, and against which they may well be helpless. On the other hand, in the case of common infections, such as colds and sore throats, the fast is again the touch of magic. Having been plagued a great deal by these ailments in past times, I am accustomed to say that I would not trade my knowledge of fasting for everything else that I know about health. The first thing you must do if you want to take a fast is to read the literature on the subject and make up your mind that the experiment will do you no injury. You should also try to get your relatives to make up their minds, because you are nervous when you are fasting, and cannot withstand the attacks of the people around you, who will go into a panic and throw you into a panic. As I said before, it is quite possible for people to die of panic, but I do not believe that anybody ever died of a fast. I have known of two or three cases of people dying while they were fasting, but I feel quite certain that the fast did not cause their death; they would have died anyhow. You must bear in mind that among the people who try the fast, a great many are in a desperate condition; some have been given up by the doctors, and if now and then one of these should die, we may surely say that they died in spite of the fast, and not because of it. There is no physician who can save every patient, and it would be absurd to expect this. I have read scores of letters from people who were at the point of death from such "fatal" diseases as Bright's disease, sclerosis of the liver, and fatty degeneration of the heart, and were literally snatched out of the jaws of death by beginning a fast. I would not like to guess just what percentage of dying people in our hospitals might be saved if the doctors would withdraw all food from them, but I await with interest the time when medical science will have the intelligence to try that simple experiment and report the results. Just the other day in the Los Angeles county jail, a chiropractor went on hunger strike, as a protest against imprisonment, and he fasted 41 days. Then he broke his fast, the reason being given that his pulse was down to 54, and he was afraid of dying. I smiled to myself. The normal pulse is 70. I have taken my pulse many times at the end of a ten-day fast, and it has been as low as 32, and I am not dead yet, and if I wait to die from the symptoms of a fast, I expect to live a long time indeed! The first time I fasted, I felt very weak, and lay around and hardly cared to lift my head; if I walked from my bed to the lawn, I was tired in the legs. But since then I have grown used to fasting. I have fasted for a week probably twenty or thirty times, and on such occasions I have gone about my business as if nothing were happening. Of course I would not try to play tennis, or to climb a mountain, but it is a fact that on the seventh day of a fast in New York, I climbed the five or six flights of stairs to the top of the Metropolitan Opera House, and felt no ill effects from doing this. I climbed slowly, and was careful not to tire myself. The simple rule is not to have anything that you must do on the fast, and then do what you feel like doing. Lie down and rest, and read a book, and take as much exercise as you find you enjoy. Keep your mind quiet and free from worries, and lock out of the house everybody who tells you that your heart is going to stop beating in the next few minutes, and that you must have an injection of strychnine to start it, and some beefsteak and fried onions to "restore your strength." Give yourself up to the care of your wise old mother nature, who will attend to your heart just as securely and serenely as she attended to it in the days before you were born. By fasting I mean that you take no food whatever. I know some nature cure teachers who practice what they call a "fruit fast." All I know is that if I eat nothing but fruit, I soon have my stomach boiling with fermentation, and also I suffer with hunger; whereas, if I take a complete fast, I promptly forget all about food. You must drink all the water you can on the fast. This helps nature with her house-cleaning; it is well to drink a glass of water every half hour at least. Do not try to go without water, and then write me that the fasting cure is a failure. Also please do not write and ask me if it will be fasting if you take just a little crackers and milk, or some soup, or something else that you think doesn't count! I recommend a dose of laxative to clean out the system at the beginning of a fast, because the bowels are apt to become sluggish at once, and the quicker you get the system cleansed, the better. It does no good to take laxatives if you are going to pile in more food, but if you are going to fast, that is a different matter. You should take a full warm enema every day during the fast, so long as it brings any results. There are some people whose bowels are so frightfully clogged that I have known the enema to bring results even in the second and third weeks. On the other hand, if there is no solid matter to be removed, a small enema every day will suffice. Take a warm bath every day; and needless to say, you should get all the fresh air you can, and should sleep as much as you can. You may have difficulty in sleeping, because the fast is apt to make you nervous and wakeful. I have known people who could not fast because they could not sleep, and I have taught them a little trick, to put a hot water bottle at the feet, and another on the abdomen, to draw the blood away from the head. So they would quickly fall asleep, and they got great benefit from their fasts. You should supply yourself with good music if you can, and with plenty of good reading matter. You will be amazed to find how active your mind becomes; perhaps you had never known before what a mind you had. Your blood has always been so clogged with food poisons that you didn't know you could think. My three act play, "The Nature Woman," was conceived and written in two days and a half on a fast; but I do not recommend this kind of thing--on the contrary, I strongly urge against it, because if you work your brain on a fast, you do not get the good from your fast, and do not recover so quickly. Put off all your problems until you have got your health back, and seek only to divert your mind while fasting. CHAPTER XXVI BREAKING THE FAST (Discusses various methods of building up the body after a fast, especially the milk diet.) There remains the question of how to break the fast, and this is the most important part of the problem. You may undo all the good of your fast by breaking it wrong, and you are a thousand times as apt to kill yourself then, as while you are fasting. When your hunger comes back, it comes back with a rush, and some people have not the will power to control it. I do not advocate a complete fast in any case except of serious chronic disease, and then only under the advice of someone with experience; but I advocate a short fast of a week or ten days for almost every common ailment, and I know that such a fast will help, even where it may not completely cure. You may go on fasting so long as you are quiet and happy; but when you find you are becoming too weak for comfort, or for the peace of mind of your family physician and your friends, you may break your fast, and show them that it is possible to restore your strength and body weight, and then they won't bother so much when you try it again! Take nothing but liquid foods in the breaking of a fast; I recommend the juices of fruits and tomatoes, also meat broths. If you have fasted a week or two, take a quarter of a glass; if you have fasted a month, take a tablespoonful, and wait and see what the results are. Remember that your whole alimentary tract is out of action, and give it a chance to start up slowly. Take small quantities of liquid food every two hours for the first day. Then you can begin taking larger quantities, and on the next day you can try some milk, or a soft poached egg, or the pulp of cooked apples or prunes. Do not take any solid food until you are quite sure you can digest it, and then take only a very little. Do not take any starchy food until the third day. I have known people to break these rules. I knew a man who broke his fast on hamburg steak, and had to be helped out with a stomach pump. Once I broke a week's fast with a plate of rich soup, because I was at a friend's house and there was nothing else, and I yielded to the claims of hospitality, and made myself ill and had to fast for several days longer. The easiest way to break a fast is upon a milk diet. I have seen hundreds of people take this diet, and very few who did not get benefit. The first time I fasted, which was twelve days, I lost 17 pounds, and I took the milk diet for 24 days thereafter, and gained 32 pounds. I took it at MacFadden's Sanitarium, where I had every attention. Since then, I have many times tried to take a milk diet by myself, but have never been able to get it to agree with me. I do not know how to explain this fact; I state it, to show how hard it is to lay down general rules. On the milk diet you take into your system two or three times as much food as you can assimilate, and this is a violation of all my diet rules; but it appears that the bacteria which thrive in milk produce lactic acid, which is not harmful to the system, and if you do not take other foods you may safely keep the system flooded with milk. After a fast you should begin with small quantities of milk, and by the third day you may be taking a full glass of warm milk every half hour or every twenty minutes, until you have taken seven or eight quarts per day. It is better to take it warm, but sometimes people take it just as well without warming. Dr. Porter, who has a book on the milk diet, insists upon complete rest, and makes his patients stay in bed. MacFadden, on the other hand, recommends gymnastics in the morning before the milk, and during the afternoon he recommends a rest from the milk for a couple of hours, followed by abdominal exercises to keep the bowels open. This is very important during a fast, because you are taking great quantities of material into your system and it must not be permitted to clog. Therefore take an enema daily, if necessary to a free movement. Also take a warm bath daily. Take the juice of oranges and lemons if you crave them. Upon one thing everyone who has had experience with the milk diet agrees, and that is the necessity of absolute mental rest. If you become excited, or nervous, or angry on a milk diet, you may turn all the contents of your stomach into hard curds, and may put yourself into convulsions. The wonderful thing about the milk diet is the state of physical and mental bliss it makes possible. It is the ideal way of breaking a fast, because it leaves you no chance to get hungry; you have all the food you want, and your system is bathed in happiness, a sense of peace and well-being which is truly marvelous and not to be described. You gain anywhere from half a pound to two pounds a day, and you feel that you have never before in your life known what perfect health could be. The fast sets you a new standard, you discover how nature meant you to enjoy life, and never again are you content with that kind of half existence with which you managed to worry along before you discovered this remedy. But let me hasten to add that I do not recommend the fast as a regular habit of life. The fast is an emergency measure, to enable the body to cleanse itself and to cure disease. When you have got your body clean and free from disease, it is your business to keep it that way, and you should apply your reason to the problem of how to live so that you will not have to fast. If you find that you continue to have ailments, then you must be eating wrongly, or overworking, or committing some other offense against nature; either that, or else you must have some organic trouble--a bone in your spine out of place, as the osteopaths tell you, or your eyes out of focus, or your appendix twisted and infected. I do not claim that the fasting cure will supplant the surgeons and the oculists and the dentists. It will not mend your bones if you break them, and it will not repair your teeth that are already decayed; but it will help to keep your teeth from decaying in the future, and it will help you to prepare for a surgical operation, and to recover from it more quickly. I had to undergo an operation for rupture a couple of years ago, and I fasted for two days before the operation, and for three days after it, and I had no particle of nausea from the ether, and was able to tend to my mail the day after the operation. There is one disease for which I hesitate to recommend the fast, and that is tuberculosis, because I have been told of cases in which the patient lost weight and did not recover it. However, in my tabulation of 277 cases, you will note four cases of tuberculosis, and in my book is given a letter from a patient who claimed great benefit. If I had the misfortune to contract tuberculosis, I would take a three or four day fast, followed by a milk diet for a long period. The milk diet is pleasant to take, and it cannot possibly do any harm. If it did not effect a cure, I would try the Salisbury treatment--that is, lean meat ground up and medium cooked, and nothing else, except an abundance of hot water between meals. Prof. Irving Fisher wrote me that there is urgent need of experiment to determine proper diet in tuberculosis; and until these experiments have been made, we can only grope. I am quite sure that the "stuffing system," ordinarily used by doctors, is a tragic mistake. In the case of any other disease whatever, even though I might take medical or surgical treatment, I would supplement this by a fast, because there is no kind of treatment which does not succeed better with the blood in good condition. In the case of emergencies, accidents, wounds, etc., I would rest assured that recovery would be more prompt if I were fasting. When David Graham Phillips was shot, I wrote a letter to the New York Call, saying that his doctors had killed him, because they had fed him while he was lying in a critical condition in the hospital. To take nutriment into the body under such circumstances is the greatest of blunders. The fast will help children, just as it helps adults, only they do not need to fast so long. It will help the aged and make them feel young. (You need not be afraid to fast, no matter how old you are.) It is, of course, an immediate cure for fatness, and strange as it may seem, it is also a cure for unnatural thinness. People with ravenous appetites are just as apt to be thin as to be fat, because it is not what you eat that builds up your body, but only what you assimilate, and if you eat too much, you can make it impossible to assimilate anything properly. If you take a fast and break it carefully, your body will come to its normal weight, and all your functions to their normal activity. A physician wrote me, taking me to task for listing among the cures reported in my tabulation a case of locomotor ataxia. This disease, he explained, is caused because a portion of a nerve has been entirely destroyed, and it is a disease that is absolutely and positively and forever incurable. I answered that I knew this to be the teaching of present day medical science, but I invited him to consider for a moment what happens in nature. When a crab loses a claw, we do not take it as a matter of course that the crab must go about with one claw for the balance of its life; nature will make that crab another claw. Man has lost the power of replacing a lost leg, but he stills retains the power of replacing tissue which has been cut away by a surgeon's knife, and medical science takes this as a matter of course. How shall anybody say that nature has forever lost the power of rebuilding a bit of nervous tissue? How shall anyone say that if the blood-stream is cleansed of poisons, and the energy of the whole body restored, one of the results may not be the repairing of a broken nerve connection? I invite my readers who have ailments, and especially I invite all medical men among my readers, to make a fair test of the fasting cure. The results will surprise them, and they will quickly be forced to revise their methods of treating illness. XXVII DISEASES AND CURES (Discusses some of the commoner human ailments, and what is known about their cause and cure.) I begin with the commonest of all troubles, known as a "cold." This name implies that the cause of the trouble lies in exposure or chill. All the grandmothers of the world are agreed about this. They have a phrase--or at least they had it when I was a boy: "You will catch your death." Every time I went out in the rain, every time I played with wet feet, or sat in a draft, or got under a cold shower, I would hear the formula, "You will catch your death." And, on the other hand, there are the "health cranks," who declare vehemently that the name "cold" is a misnomer and a trap for people's thoughts. Cold has nothing to do with it, they say, and point to arctic explorers who frequently get frozen to death, but do not "catch cold" until they get back into the warm rooms of civilization. As for drafts, the "health cranks" aver that a draft is merely "fresh air moving"; which is supposed to settle the matter. However, when you come to think about it, you realize that a cyclone is likewise merely "fresh air moving," so you have not decided the question by a phrase. While I was writing these chapters on health I contracted a severe cold--which was a joke on me. The history of this cold is as clear in my mind as anything human can be, and it will serve for an illustration, showing how much truth the grandmothers have on their side, and how much the "health cranks" have. To begin with, I had been overworking. All sorts of appeals come to me; hundreds of people write me letters, and I cannot bear to leave them unanswered. I accepted calls to speak, and invitations where I had to eat a lot of stuff of which my reason disapproves; so one morning I woke up with a slight sore throat. I fasted all day, and by evening felt all right. But there came another call, and I consented to take a long automobile ride on a cold and rainy night, and when I got back home, after five or six hours, I was thoroughly chilled, and my "cold" came on during the night. This explanation will, I imagine, be satisfactory to all the grandmothers of the world. All the dear, good grandmothers know that an automobile ride on a cold, rainy night is enough to give any man "his death." But listen, grandmothers! I have lain out watching for deer all night in the late fall, with only a thin blanket to cover me, and gotten up so stiff with cold that I could hardly move; yet I did not "catch cold." When I was a youth, I have ridden a bicycle twenty miles to the beach in April, with snow on the ground, and plunged into the surf and swam, and then ridden home again. I have bathed in the sea when I had to run a quarter of a mile in a bathing suit along a frost-covered pier, and with an icy wind blowing through my bones; yet I never took cold from that, and never got anything but a feeling of exhilaration. So it must be that there is some reason why exposure causes colds at one time and not at another. The explanation takes you over to the "health cranks." They understand that your blood-stream must be clogged, your bodily tone reduced by bad air and lack of exercise, and more especially by over-eating, or by an improperly balanced diet. But then most of them go to extremes, and insist that the automobile ride and the chilled condition of my body had nothing to do with my cold. But I know otherwise--I have watched the thing happen so often. In times when I was run down, the slightest exposure would cause me a cold, literally in a few minutes. I have got myself a sore throat going out to the wood-pile on a winter day with nothing on my head. I have got a cold by sitting still with wet feet, or by sitting in a draft on a warm summer day, when I had been perspiring a little. How to explain this I am not sure, but my guess is that you drive the blood away from the surface of the body at a time when it is weakened and exposed to infection, and you drive away the army of the white corpuscles, and give the battlefield of your body to the germs. I know there are nature curists who argue that germs have nothing to do with disease; but they have never been able to convince me--germs are too real, and too many, and too easy to watch. If you leave a piece of meat exposed to the air in warm temperature, the germs in the air will settle upon it and begin to feed upon it and to multiply; the meat, being dead, is powerless to protect itself. But your nose and throat are also meat, and just as good food for the germs. The only difference is that this meat is alive, there is a living blood-stream circulating through it, and several score billions of the body's own kind of germs, the blood corpuscles. If these blood corpuscles are sound and properly nourished, and are brought to the place of infection, they are able to destroy all the common germs; so it is that you do not have diseases, but instead have health. But your health always implies a struggle of your organism against other organisms, and it is the business of your reason to watch your body and give all the help you can in protecting it. Coughs and colds, sore throats and headaches, are the first warnings that your defenses are being weakened. As a rule these ailments are not serious in themselves, but they are signs of a wrong condition, and if you neglect this condition, pretty soon you will find that you have to deal with something deadly. My cure for a cold is to take an enema and a laxative, eat nothing for twenty-four hours, and drink plenty of water. If you have a severe cold or sore throat, you will be wise to lie in bed for a day or two, by an open window. You may also use sprays and gargles if you wish, but you will find them of little use, because the germs are deep in your mucous membranes, and cannot all be reached from the outside. In the old sad days of my ignorance I would get a cold, and go to the doctor, and have my throat and nose pumped full of black and green and yellow and purple liquids, which did me absolutely no good whatever; the cold would stay on for two or three weeks, sometimes for eight or ten weeks, and I would be miserable, utterly desperate. I was dying by inches, and not one of the doctors could tell me why. The next most common ailment is a headache, and this means poisons in your blood-stream. It may be from improper diet, from alcohol, or drugs, or bad air, or nervous excitement. If it is none of these things, then you should begin to look for some organic difficulty, eye-strain, for example, or perhaps defects in the spine. The osteopaths and the chiropractors specialize on the spine, and have made important discoveries. Their doctrine is, in brief, that the nervous force which directs the blood-stream is carried to the organs of the body by nerves which leave the spinal cord through openings between the vertebrae. If any of these openings are pinched, you have a diminished nerve supply, which means ill-health in that part of the body to which the nerve leads. That such trouble can be corrected by straightening the bones of the spine, seems perfectly reasonable; but like most people with a new idea, the discoverers proceed to carry it to absurd extremes. I have before me an official chiropractic pamphlet which states that vertebral displacement is "the physical and perpetuating cause of ninety-five per cent of all cases of disease; the remaining five per cent being due to subluxations of other skeletal segments." Naturally people who believe this will devote nearly all their study to the bones and the nervous system. But surely, there are other parts of your body which are necessary besides bones and nerves! And what if some of these parts happen to be malformed or defective? What if your eyes do not focus properly, and you are continually wearing out the optic nerve, thus giving yourself headaches and neurasthenia? What if you have an appendix that has been twisted and malformed from birth, and is a center of infection so long as it remains in the body? Several years ago I had an experience with the appendix, from which I learned something about one of the commonest of human ailments, constipation, or sluggishness of the bowels. This is a cause of innumerable chronic ailments grouped under the head of auto-intoxication, or the poisoning of the body by the absorption into the system of the products of fermentation and decay in the bowels. The bowels should move freely two or three times every day, and the movements should be soft. I suffered from constipation for some twenty years, and tried, I think, every remedy known both to science and to crankdom. In the beginning the doctors gave me drugs which by irritating the intestinal walls cause them to pour out quantities of water, and hurry the irritating substances down the intestinal tract. That is all right for an emergency; if you have swallowed a poison, or food which is spoiled, or if you have overeaten and are ill, get your system cleaned out by any and every device. But if you habitually swallow mild poisons, which is what all laxatives are, you weaken the intestinal tract, and you have to take more and more of these poisons, and you get less results. We may set down as positive the statement that drugs are not a remedy for constipation. Next comes diet. Eat the rough and bulky foods, say the nature curists, and stimulate the intestinal walls to activity. I tried that. I listened to the extreme enthusiasts, and boiled whole wheat and ate it, and consumed quantities of bran biscuit, and of a Japanese seaweed which Dr. Kellogg prepares, and of petroleum oil, and even the skins of oranges, which are most uncomfortable eating, I assure you. I would eat things like this until I got myself a case of diarrhea--and so was cured of constipation for a time! Strange as it may seem to you, there are even people who tell you to eat sand. I listened to them, and ate many quarts. Then there is exercise. MacFadden taught me a whole series of exercises for developing the muscles of the abdominal walls and the back, which are greatly neglected by civilized man. The fundamental cause of constipation is a sluggish life, and to exercise our bodies is a duty; but to me it was always an agony of boredom to lie on a bed and wiggle my abdomen for a quarter of an hour. The same thing applies to hot water treatments, which are effective, but a nuisance and a waste of time. I never could keep them up except when I was in trouble. Three or four years ago I began to notice a continual irritating pain in my right side, which I quickly realized must lie in the appendix. I tried massage, and hot and cold water treatments, and my favorite remedy, a week's fast. The pain disappeared, but it returned, so finally I decided, to the dismay of my physical culture friends, to have the appendix out. For years I had been reading the statements of nature curists, that the appendix is an important and vital part of the body, which pours an oil or something into the intestinal tract, and so helps to prevent constipation. Well, evidently my appendix wasn't doing its job, so I took it to a good surgeon. What I found was that it had been twisted and malformed from birth, so that it was a center of continuous infection. From the time I had that operation, I have never had to think about the subject of constipation. This experience suggests to me how easy it is for people to make statements about health which have no relationship to facts. I do not recommend promiscuous surgery, and I perfectly well realize that if human beings would take proper care of their health, the great proportion of surgical operations would be unnecessary. I realize, also, that surgeons get paid by the job, and therefore have a money interest in operating, and it is perfectly futile to expect that none of them will ever be influenced by the profit motive. Nevertheless, it is true that sometimes surgical operations are necessary, and that by standing a little temporary inconvenience you can save yourself a life-time of discomfort. Take, for example, rupture. The human body has here a natural weakness, from which there results a dangerous and uncomfortable affliction. Hundreds of thousands of men are going around all their lives wearing elaborate and expensive trusses which are almost, if not entirely useless, and trying advertised "cures" which are entirely fakes. An operation takes an hour or two, and two or three weeks in bed, and when our government drafted its young men into the army and found that fourteen in every thousand of them had rupture, it shipped them into the hospitals wholesale and sewed them up. It happens that rupture affords one case where scar tissue is stronger than natural tissue, and there were practically no returns from the great number of army cases. Likewise you find extreme statements repeated concerning the evils of vaccination; but if you will read Parkman's "History of the Jesuits in North America," you will see the horrible conditions under which the Indians lived in the United States--noble savages, you understand, entirely uncontaminated by civilized white men, and whole populations regularly wiped out every few years by epidemics of smallpox. That these epidemics ceased was due to the discovery that by infecting the body with a mild form of the disease, it could be made to develop substances which render it immune to the deadly form. Here in California we have a law which makes vaccination for school children optional, and so we may some day have another epidemic to test the theories of the anti-vaccinationists. I know, of course, the dreadful stories of people who have been given syphilis and other diseases by impure vaccines. I don't know whether such stories are true; but I do know that people who live in houses are sometimes killed by earthquakes and by lightning, yet we do not cease to live in houses because of this chance. It seems to me that the remedy for such vaccination evils is not to abolish vaccination, but to take more care in the manufacture of our vaccines. This danger is removed by using vaccines which are sterile, and are made especially for each person. Germs are taken from the sick person, and injected into an animal. The body of the animal develops with great rapidity the "anti-bodies" necessary to resistance to the germs; and as these "anti-bodies" are chemical products, not affected by heat, we can take a serum from the animal, sterilize it, and then inject it into the system of the patient, thus increasing resistance to the disease. I admit that the best way to increase such resistance is to take care of your health; but sometimes we confront an emergency, and must use emergency remedies. We have serums that really cure diphtheria and meningitis, and one that will prevent lock-jaw; anyone who has ever seen with his own eyes how the deadly membranes of diphtheria melt away as a result of an injection, will be less dogmatic about the efforts of science to combat disease. Of course it is much pleasanter if you can destroy the source of the disease, and keep it from getting into the human body. Every few years the southern part of our country used to be devastated by yellow fever epidemics. Every kind of weird and fantastic remedy was tried; people would go around with sponges full of vinegar hung under their noses; they would burn the clothing and bedding of those who died of the disease; they would wear gloves when they went shopping, so as not to touch the money with their hands. But at last medical experimenters traced the disease to a certain kind of mosquito, and now, if we drain the swamps and screen our houses and stay in doors after sundown, we do not get yellow fever, nor malaria either. In the same way, if we keep our bodies clean with soap and hot water, we do not get bitten by lice, and so do not die of typhus. If we take pains with our drains and water supply, so that human excrement does not get into it, and if we destroy the filth-carrying housefly, we do not have epidemics of typhoid. But under conditions of battle it is not possible for men to take these precautions, and so when they go into the army they get a dose of typhoid serum. And this illustrates the difference between a true or hygienic remedy for disease, and a temporary or emergency remedy. If you say that you want to abolish war, and with it the need for typhoid vaccination, I cheerfully agree with you in this. All that I am trying to do is to point out the folly of flying to extremes, and rejecting any remedy which may help. What is the use of making the flat statement that vaccinations and serums never aid in the cure of disease, when any man can see with his own eyes the proof that they do? In the Spanish war, before typhoid vaccination, many times more soldiers died of this disease than died of bullets; but in the late war there was practically no typhoid at all in the army camps. On the other hand, it was noticed that the men who had just come in, and who therefore had just been vaccinated, were considerably more susceptible to influenza; which shows that vaccination does reduce the body condition for a time. The reader may say that in this case I am trying to sit on both sides of the fence; but the truth is that I am trying to keep an open mind, and to consider all the facts, and to avoid making rash statements. One of the statements you hear most frequently is that drugs can never remedy disease, or help in remedying it. Now, I abhor the drugging system of the orthodox medical men; I have talked with them, and heard them talk with one another, and I know that they will mix up half a dozen different substances, in the vague hope that some one of them will have some effect. Even when they know definitely the effects they are producing, they are in many cases merely suppressing symptoms. On the other hand, however, it is a fact that medical science has had for a generation or two a specific which destroys the germs of one disease in the blood, without at the same time injuring the blood itself. That disease is malaria, and the drug is quinine. Of course, the way to avoid malaria is to drain the swamps; but you cannot do that all at once, nor can you always screen your house and stay in at sundown. When you first go into a country, you have no house to screen, and some emergency will certainly arise that exposes you to mosquito bites. So you will need quinine, and will be foolish not to use it, and know how to use it. Recently medical chemists discovered another remedy, this time for syphilis. It is called salvarsan, and while it does not always cure, it frequently does. In laboratories today men are working over the problem of constructing a combination of molecules which will destroy the germ of sleeping sickness, without at the same time injuring the blood. If they find it, they will save hundreds of millions of lives. I do not see why we cannot recognize such a possibility, while at the same time making use of physical culture, of diet and fasting. When the manuscript of this book was sent to the printer, there appeared in this place a paragraph telling of the work of Dr. Albert Abrams of San Francisco, in the diagnosis and cure of disease by means of radio-active vibrations. As the book is going to press, the writer finds himself in San Francisco, attending Dr. Abrams' clinics; and so he finds it possible to give a more extended account of some fascinating discoveries, which seem destined to revolutionize medical science. If I were to tell all that I have seen with my own eyes in the last twelve days, I fear the reader would find his powers of credulity overstretched, so I shall content myself with trying to tell, in very sober and cautious language, the theory upon which Abrams is working, and the technic which he has evolved. Modern science has demonstrated that all matter is simply the activity of electrons, minute particles of electric force. This is a statement which no present-day physicist would dispute. The best evidence appears to indicate that a molecule of matter is a minute reproduction of the universe, a system of electrons whirling about a central nucleus. No eye has ever beheld an electron, for it is billions of times smaller than anything the microscope makes visible; but we can see the effects of electronic activity, and all modern books of physics give photographs of such. It is possible to determine the vibration rates of electrons, and to Dr. Abrams occurred the idea of determining the vibration rates of diseased tissue and disease germs. He discovered that it was invariably the same; not merely does all cancerous material, for example, yield the same rate, but the blood of a person suffering from cancer yields that rate, at all times and under all circumstances. The vibration of cancer, of tuberculosis, of syphilis--each is different, uniform and invariable. Likewise in the blood are other vibrations, uniform and dependable, which reveal the sex and age of the patient, the virulence of the disease and the period of its duration--yes, and even the location in the body, if there be some definite infected area. So here is a modern miracle, an infallible device for the diagnosis of disease. Dr. Abrams does not have to see the patient; all he has to have is a drop of blood on a piece of white blotting paper, and he sits in his laboratory and tells all about it, and somewhere several thousand miles away--in Toronto or Boston or New Orleans--a surgeon operates and finds what he has been told is there! And that is only the beginning of the wonder; because, says Abrams, if you know the vibration rate of the electrons of germs, you can destroy those germs. It used to be a favorite trick of Caruso to tap a glass and determine its musical note, and then sing that note at the glass and shatter it to bits. It is well known that horses, trotting swiftly on a bridge, have sometimes coincided in their step with the vibration of the bridge and thus have broken it down. On that same principle this wizard of the electron introduces into your body radio-activity of a certain rate--and shall I say that he cures cancer and syphilis and tuberculosis of many years standing in a few treatments? I will not say that, because you would not and could not believe me. I will content myself with telling what my wife and I have been watching, twice a day for the past twelve days. The scene is a laboratory, with rows of raised seats at one side for the physicians who attend the clinic. There is a table, with the instruments of measurement, and Dr. Abrams sits beside it, and before him stands a young man stripped to the waist. The doctor is tapping upon the abdomen of this man, and listening to the sounds. You will find this the weirdest part of the whole procedure, for you will naturally assume that this young man is being examined, and will be dazed when some one explains that the patient is in Toronto or Boston or New Orleans, and that this young man's body is the instrument which the doctor uses in the determining of the vibration rates of the patient's blood. Dr. Abrams tried numerous instruments, but has been able to find nothing so sensitive to electronic activity as a human body. He explains to his classes that the spinal cord is composed of millions of nerve fibres of different vibration rates; hence a certain rate communicated to the body, is automatically sorted out, and appears on a certain precise spot of the body in the form of increased activity, increased blood pressure in the cells, and hence what all physicians know as a "dull area," which can be discovered by what is known as "percussion," a tapping with a finger. To map out these areas is merely a matter of long and patient experiment; and Abrams has been studying this subject for some twenty years--he is author of a text-book on what is known as the "reactions of Abrams." So now he provides the world with a series of maps of the human body; and he sits in front of his "subject," and his assistant places a specimen of blood in a little electrically connected box, and sets the rheostat at some vibration number--say fifty--and Dr. Abrams taps on a certain square inch of the abdomen of his "subject," and announces the dread word "cancer." Then he places the electrode on another part of the "subject's" body, and taps some more, and announces that it is cancer of the small intestine, left side; some more tapping, and he announces that its intensity is twelve ohms, which is severe; and pretty soon there is speeding a telegram to the physician who has sent this blood specimen, telling him these facts, and prescribing a certain vibration rate upon the "oscilloclast," the instrument of radio-activity which Dr. Abrams has devised. Now, you watch this thing for an hour or two, and you say to yourself: "Here is either the greatest magician in the history of mankind, or else the greatest maniac." You may have come prepared for some kind of fraud, but you soon dismiss that, for you realize that this man is desperately in earnest about what he is doing, and so are all the physicians who watch him. So you seek refuge in the thought that he must be deluding himself and them, perhaps unconsciously. But you talk with these men, and discover that they have come from all over the country, and always for one reason--they had sent blood specimens to Abrams, and had found that he never made a mistake; he told them more from a few drops of the patient's blood than they themselves had been able to find out from the whole patient. And then into the clinic come the doctor's own patients--I must have heard sixty or eighty of them tell their story and many of them have been lifted from the grave. People ten years blind from syphilis who can see; people operated on several times for cancer and given up for dying; people with tumors on the brain, or with one lung gone from tuberculosis. It is literally a fact that when you have sat in Abrams' clinic for a week, all disease loses its terrors. This, you see, is really the mastery of life. If we can measure and control the minute universe of the electron and the atom, we have touched the ultimate source of our bodily life. I might take chapters of this book to tell you of the strange experiments I have seen in this clinic--showing you, for instance, how these vibrations respond to thought, how by denying to himself the disease the patient can for a few moments cancel in his body the activity of the harmful germs; showing how the reactions differ in the different sexes and at different ages, and how they respond to different colors and different drugs. Abrams' method has revealed the secret of such efficacy as drugs possess--their work is done by their radio-activity, and not by their chemical properties. Also the problem of vaccination has been solved--for Abrams has discovered a dread new disease, which is bovine syphilis, originally caused in cattle by human inoculation, and now reintroduced in the human being by vaccination, and becoming the agent which prepares the soil of the body for such disorders as tuberculosis and cancer. And it appears that we can all be rendered immune to these diseases, by a few electronic vibrations, introduced into our bodies in childhood; so is opened up to our eyes a wonderful vision of a new race, purified and made fit for life. So here at last is science justified of her optimism, and our faith in human destiny forever vindicated. Take my advice, whoever you may be that are suffering, and find out about this new work and help to make it known to the world. There are many romances of medical science, some of them fascinating as murder mysteries and big game hunting. Turn to McMasters' "History of the People of the United States" and read his account of the terrible epidemic of yellow fever in Philadelphia a hundred years ago; I have already referred to the weird and incredible things the people did in their effort to ward off this plague--sponges of vinegar under their noses and "fever fires" burning in the streets; and then a mosquito would fly up and bite them, and in a few hours they would be dead! Or what could be stranger than the tracing of the bubonic plague, which has cost literally billions of human lives, to a parasite in the blood of fleas which live on the bodies of rats! Or what could be more unexpected than the tracing of our rheumatic aches and twinges to the root canals of the teeth! One of the common ailments which afflict poor humanity is rheumatism, a cause of endless suffering. It was supposed to be due to damp climate and exposure, and this is true to a certain extent, in the same way that colds are due to exposure. But the investigators realized that there must be some bodily condition rendering one susceptible, and they set to work to trace this condition down. The pains of rheumatism are caused by uric acid settling in the joints of the body. What causes the uric acid? Well, there is uric acid in red meat, so let us forbid rheumatic people to eat it! But this is overlooking the fact that the human body itself is a uric acid factory; and also the fact that uric acid taken into the stomach may not remain uric acid by the time it gets to the blood-stream. We know that you may eat a great deal of fruit acid without necessarily making acid blood. On the other hand, you can make acid blood by eating a lot of sugar! So you see it isn't as simple as it sounds. Rheumatism has been traced to its lair, which is found to be the roots of the teeth. Here is a part of the body difficult to get at, and as a consequence of bad diet and unwholesome ways of living, infections will start there, and pus sacs be formed, and the poisons absorbed into the blood-stream and distributed through the body. The first thought is to draw the infected teeth; but that is a serious matter, because you need your teeth to chew your food. So the dentist has to go through a complicated process of opening up the tooth and cleaning out the root canals, and treating the infected spots at the roots. Then he has to fill the tooth all the way down to the roots, leaving no place for infection to gather. This, of course, takes time and costs money, and is one more illustration of the fact that there is one health law for the rich and another health law for the poor. All the time that I write these chapters about health I feel guilty. I know that the wholesome food I recommend costs money, and I know that surgery and dentistry cost money--yes, even sunlight and fresh air and recreation; even a fast, because you have to rest while you take it, and you have to have a roof over your head, and warmth in winter time, and somebody to wait upon you when you are weak. I know that for a great many of the people who read what I write, all these things are impossible of attainment; I know that for the great majority of the common people the benefits of science do not exist. Science discovers how to prevent disease, but the discoveries are not applied, because the profit system controls the world, and the profit system wants the labor of the poor, regardless of what happens to their health. If the people fall ill, they are thrown upon the scrap heap, and the profit system finds others to take their place. Take, for example, tuberculosis. Tuberculosis is a germ infection, but it practically never gets hold upon a human body except when the body is reduced by undernourishment and lack of fresh air. Tuberculosis, therefore, is a disease of slums and jails. It is definitely and indisputably a disease of poverty. It could be wiped off the face of the earth in a single generation; and the same is true of typhus and typhoid. There is another whole host of ailments which could be wiped out by measures of public hygiene, plus education. This includes all the infant diseases, and the deadly venereal diseases. But the profit system stands in the way; and so, in these closing paragraphs of this Book of the Body, I say that there is one disease which is the deadliest of all, and the source of all others, and that disease is poverty. I know a certain physician to the rich, who is an honest and conscientious man. He said, "I loath my work. I am wasting my time. I am called in by these fat, over-fed rich people in their leisure class hotels, and what am I to say to them? Shall I say to them, 'You are living an abnormal life, and you can never be well until you cut out root and branch all your habits of self indulgence which are destroying you?' But no, I can't say that--not one time in a thousand. I am expected to be polite and serious, and to listen to them while they tell the long tiresome story of their symptoms, and I have to encourage them, and give them some temporary device that will remove some of the symptoms of their trouble." And what should one say to this honest physician? Should one tell him to go and be a physician to the poor? Would he be any happier there? He could tell the poor the causes of their diseases, and they would listen patiently--they are trained to listen, and to accept what they are told. Here is a girl living in an inside bedroom in a tenement, and working ten or eleven hours a day in an unventilated factory, and she is ill with tuberculosis. The physician tells her that she needs plenty of fresh air and rest, and a lot of eggs and milk in her diet. He tells her that, and he knows that she has as much chance of carrying out his orders as of flying to the moon. Or maybe he comes upon a typhoid epidemic, and discovers, as happened to a friend of mine in Chicago, that there is defective plumbing in some houses owned by the political leader of the district. Or maybe it is a case of venereal disease, in a young man who was drafted into the army and turned loose amid the joys of Paris. Maybe it is just a commonplace, every-day story of a room full of school children, 22 per cent of them undernourished, as is the case in New York City, and the parents out of work a part of the time, and with no possibility in their lives of ever earning enough to feed the children properly. When you confront these universal facts of our present social order, you realize that the problem of disease is not merely a problem of the body, but is a problem of the mind as well; a problem of politics and religion and philosophy, of the whole way of thinking of the so-called civilized world. A book of health which did not point out these facts would be, not a book of health, but a book of sham. But meantime, while we are trying to change the world's ideas, we have to live, and we can do our work better if we keep as well as possible. I have tried to point out the way; it is, as you can see, a matter in part of the body and in part of the mind. All the bodily régime here laid out has its basis in mental habits; all wise and wholesome ways of life can, at the age when our minds are plastic, be made into "second nature"--things which we do automatically, without effort or temptation to do otherwise. This is the real secret of true happiness in the conduct of our personal lives; to acquire self-control, to rule our desires and our passions, not harshly and spasmodically, but serenely, as one drives a car which he thoroughly understands. It is in vain that we preach freedom to men who have not this self-mastery; as the poet tell us: "The sensual and the dark rebel in vain, slaves of their own compulsion." And of all the personal possessions which man can attain on this earth, the most precious is the one of a sound mind controlling a sound body. I close this book by quoting some verses written by Sir Henry Wotton three hundred years ago, which I have all my life considered one of the noblest pieces of poetry in our heritage: THE CHARACTER OF A HAPPY LIFE How happy is he born and taught That serveth not another's will; Whose armour is his honest thought And simple truth his utmost skill! Whose passions not his masters are, Whose soul is still prepared for death, Not tied unto the world with care Of public fame, or private breath. Who envies none that chance doth raise Or vice; who never understood How deepest wounds are given by praise; Nor rules of state, but rules of good: Who hath his life from rumours freed, Whose conscience is his strong retreat; Whose state can neither flatterers feed, Nor ruin make accusers great: Who God doth late and early pray More of His grace than gifts to lend; And entertains the harmless day With a well-chosen book or friend; --This man is freed from servile bands Of hope to rise, or fear to fall; Lord of himself, though not of lands; And having nothing, yet hath all. INDEX Abrams, Dr., 190 Adultery, 33 Adventist, 99 Agriculture, 25 Alcohol, 151 Anti-bodies, 188 Antinomies, 58 Appendix, 186 Arnold, 42 Arrhenius, 101 Automatic writing, 67 Bairnsfather, 29 Bathing, 162 Battle Creek Sanitarium, 118 Beauchamp, 70, 85, 89 Beethoven, 47 Bergson, 17 Beri-beri, 128 Bible, 77 Bio-chemist, 59 Black bread, 128 Blood, 106 Body, 53, 105 Booth, 58 Bourne, 69 Bruce, 71 Bury, 15 Caffein, 150 Calories, 135 Candy, 137 Capitalist, 100 Carbohydrates, 124 Carbon monoxide, 157 Children, 140, 180 Chiropractors, 174, 184 Chittenden, 136 Christian Scientists, 5, 65, 105 Clothing, 160 Coffee, 151 Colds, 183 Commandments, 32 Communist, 99 Complete fast, 172 Comstock, 25 Conduct, 42 Consciousness, 56 Constipation, 185 Cooking, 129, 142 Crawford, 88 Cyrus, 164 Dandruff, 109 Dante, 77 Darwin, 17, 46 Dentistry, 126, 190 Determinists, 57 Diet, 131 Diet Standards, 135 Digestion, 145 Diphtheria, 188 Diseases, 107, 117 Dogs, 17 Draft, 182 Drugs, 118, 150, 185, 189 Dubb, 63 Duncan, 102 Dyspepsia, 117 Eddy, 65 Edison, 45, 86 Einstein, 101 Elberfeld horses, 68 Evolution, 8, 17 Exercise, 163 Faith, 9 Faith curists, 65 Fast cure, 171 Fatness, 139 Fats, 124 Fever, 108 Fireless cooker, 142 Fireplace, 157 Fisher, 136 Fletcher, 119, 145 Food filter, 145 Fourth dimension, 5 Free thinker, 15 Freud, 71 Fruit fast, 175 Frugality, 38 Frying-pan, 129 Furnace, 157 Gargles, 184 Gastronomic art, 148 Genius, 49, 60 George, 18 Germs, 183 God, 22, 50 Goethe, 47 Golden rule, 51 Greens, 132 Gymnastic work, 166 Hair, 109 Hallucinations, 75 Hamlet, 48 Happiness, 9 Harrison, 6 Hats, 110 Headache, 122, 150, 184 Health cranks, 182 Heart, 108 Houdin, 93 Hugo, 48 Huxley, 17, 62 Hyslop, 82 Iceberg, 61 Infanticide, 28 Instincts, 134 Intelligence, 22 Immortality, 79 Irwin, Will, 86 James, 30, 59, 60 Jesus, 47, 48, 50, 51, 76 John Barleycorn, 152 Johnson, 58 Jonson, 44 Kant, Immanuel, 4, 47, 51, 58 Kellogg, Doctor, 118, 164, 186 Kilmer, Joyce, 44 Knowledge, 94 Kropotkin, 18, 26 Langley, 74 Lankester, Prof. E. Ray, 23 Laxatives, 175, 185 Leanness, 139 Leonardo, 47 Liébault, 64 Life, 3 Lily Dale, 86, 90 Lincoln, 47 Locomotor ataxia, 180 Lodge, Sir Oliver, 83 Lodge, Raymond, 87 London, Jack, 152 Macaulay, 39 MacDowell, Edward, 56 MacFadden, 178, 186 MacSwiney, 170 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 68 Malaria, 189 Malthusian law, 25 Marquesans, 113 Materializations, 88 Matter, 3 Meal-hour, 147 Measurement of Intelligence, Terman's, 95 Meat, 121 Medical science, 105 Mesmer, 63 Messina earthquake, 170 Metaphysics, 4 Metchnikoff, 138 Milk diet, 128 Moderation, 39 Monism, 3 Morality, 21, 31, 34, 50 Morgan, 45 Mormon, 99 Mozart, 68 Multiple personality, 69 Mutation, 17 Myers, 49 Nature, 21, 24, 29 Nature cure, 160 Nature Woman, 176 Neighbor, 50 Newcomb, Simon, 101 Newton, 47 New York Times, 169 Nicotine, 154 Nietzsche, 17 Novels, 164 Nutrition of Man, 136 Oil stoves, 158 Opsonins, 112 Optimism, 42 Osteopaths, 184 Ouija, 67 Overeating, 134 Oxygen, 156 Patrick, Dr., 167 Pavlov, 148 Phantasms, 75 Phillips, David Graham, 180 Piper, Mrs., 68 Play, 165 Poisons, 146 Pork, 142 Porter, Dr., 178 Positivists, 6 Poverty, 194 Prices of food, 141 Prince, Dr. Morton, 70, 89 Profits of Religion, 78, 99 Proteins, 123 Prunes, 127 Psychology, 96 Psychotherapy, 64 Puritans, 39 Quackenbos, 64 Quinine, 188 Quixote, 48 Raisins, 127 Raw food, 119 Read, Alfred Baker, 28 Reason, 13 Refined foods, 126 Relaxation, 167 Religion, 32 Reincarnation, 76 Rest, 146 Revelation, 12 Rheumatism, 193 Rice, 128 Rockefeller, 45 Roosevelt, Theodore, 25, 45 Rugs, 159 Rupture, 187 Sabbath, 99 Salisbury, 120 Sally, 70, 85 Salt, 143 Meats, salted, 143 Salts, 124 Salvarsan, 189 Savages, 135 Savage, Rev. Minot J., 74 Schrenck-Notzing, 88 Scurvy, 128 Seneca, 98 Shakespeare, 47 Shelley, 45, 48 Sleep, 162 Sleeping sickness, 113, 173 Smokers, 153 Socialism, 167 Sophocles, 87 Sore throat, 183 Spencer, 8 Spinoza, 79 Spirits, 82 Spiritualists, 86 Starch, 122, 124 Stealing, 33 Steam heat, 158 Stimulant, 149 Stock Exchange, 158 Stomach, 105, 138, 148 Style, 161 Subconscious mind, 61 Sunday code, 40 Sugar, 126 Surgery, 186 Survival, 81 Survival of the fittest, 22 Syndicalism, 15 Syphilis, 189 Tanner, Dr., 169 Tariff, 37 Tea, 151 Teeth, 127, 193 Telepathy, 67, 75 Theosophists, 76 Tight shoes, 161 Tobacco, 153 Tolstoi, 49 Tonsilitis, 107 Trance, 63 Tropism, 54 Tuberculosis, 112, 120, 179, 194, 195 Twain, Mark, 93 Typhoid, 112, 188, 192 Uranus, 92 Uric acid, 193 Vaccination, 187, 189 Vaccines, 188 Vegetarian, 121 Vitamines, 127, 142 Wallace, 46 Wells, H. G., 22 Williams, Dr. Henry Smith, 102 Worth, Patience, 84 Yellow fever, 188 Yogis, 90 THE BOOK OF LIFE VOLUME TWO: LOVE AND SOCIETY _To_ Kate Crane Gartz in acknowledgment of her unceasing efforts for a better world, and her fidelity to those who struggle to achieve it. CONTENTS PART THREE: THE BOOK OF LOVE PAGE CHAPTER XXVIII. THE REALITY OF MARRIAGE 3 Discusses the sex-customs now existing in the world, and their relation to the ideal of monogamous love. CHAPTER XXIX. THE DEVELOPMENT OF MARRIAGE 8 Deals with the sex-relationship, its meaning and its history, the stages of its development in human society. CHAPTER XXX. SEX AND YOUNG AMERICA 15 Discusses present-day sex arrangements, as they affect the future generation. CHAPTER XXXI. SEX AND THE "SMART SET" 23 Portrays the moral customs of those who set the fashion in our present-day world. CHAPTER XXXII. SEX AND THE POOR 29 Discusses prostitution, the extent of its prevalence, and the diseases which result from it. CHAPTER XXXIII. SEX AND NATURE 33 Maintains that our sex disorders are not the result of natural or physical disharmony. CHAPTER XXXIV. LOVE AND ECONOMICS 36 Maintains that our sex disorders are of social origin, due to the displacing of love by money as a motive in mating. CHAPTER XXXV. MARRIAGE AND MONEY 40 Discusses the causes of prostitution, and that higher form of prostitution known as the "marriage of convenience." CHAPTER XXXVI. LOVE VERSUS LUST 46 Discusses the sex impulse, its use and misuse; when it should be followed and when repressed. CHAPTER XXXVII. CELIBACY VERSUS CHASTITY 51 The ideal of the repression of the sex-impulse, as against the ideal of its guidance and cultivation. CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE DEFENSE OF LOVE 55 Discusses passionate love, its sanction, its place in life, and its preservation in marriage. CHAPTER XXXIX. BIRTH CONTROL 60 Deals with the prevention of conception as one of the greatest of man's discoveries, releasing him from nature's enslavement, and placing the keys of life in his hands. CHAPTER XL. EARLY MARRIAGE 66 Discusses love marriages, how they can be made, and the duty of parents in respect to them. CHAPTER XLI. THE MARRIAGE CLUB 71 Discusses how parents and elders may help the young to avoid unhappy marriages. CHAPTER XLII. EDUCATION FOR MARRIAGE 75 Maintains that the art of love can be taught, and that we have the right and the duty to teach it. CHAPTER XLIII. THE MONEY SIDE OF MARRIAGE 79 Deals with the practical side of the life partnership of matrimony. CHAPTER XLIV. THE DEFENSE OF MONOGAMY 83 Discusses the permanence of love, and why we should endeavor to preserve it. CHAPTER XLV. THE PROBLEM OF JEALOUSY 89 Discusses the question, to what extent one person may hold another to the pledge of love. CHAPTER XLVI. THE PROBLEM OF DIVORCE 93 Defends divorce as a protection to monogamous love, and one of the means of preventing infidelity and prostitution. CHAPTER XLVII. THE RESTRICTION OF DIVORCE 97 Discusses the circumstances under which society has the right to forbid divorce, or to impose limitations upon it. PART FOUR: THE BOOK OF SOCIETY CHAPTER XLVIII. THE EGO AND THE WORLD 103 Discusses the beginning of consciousness, in the infant and in primitive man, and the problem of its adjustment to life. CHAPTER XLVIX. COMPETITION AND CO-OPERATION 107 Discusses the relation of the adult to society, and the part which selfishness and unselfishness play in the development of social life. CHAPTER L. ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY 115 Discusses the idea of superior classes and races, and whether there is a natural basis for such a doctrine. CHAPTER LI. RULING CLASSES 119 Deals with authority in human society, how it is obtained, and what sanction it can claim. CHAPTER LII. THE PROCESS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION 122 Discusses the series of changes through which human society has passed. CHAPTER LIII. INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 126 Examines the process of evolution in industry and the stage which it has so far reached. CHAPTER LIV. THE CLASS STRUGGLE 132 Discusses history as a battle-ground between ruling and subject classes, and the method and outcome of this struggle. CHAPTER LV. THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM 136 Shows how wealth is produced in modern society, and the effect of this system upon the minds of the workers. CHAPTER LVI. THE CAPITALIST PROCESS 142 How profits are made under the present industrial system and what becomes of them. CHAPTER LVII. HARD TIMES 145 Explains why capitalist prosperity is a spasmodic thing, and why abundant production brings distress instead of plenty. CHAPTER LVIII. THE IRON RING 148 Analyzes further the profit system, which strangles production, and makes true prosperity impossible. CHAPTER LIX. FOREIGN MARKETS 151 Considers the efforts of capitalism to save itself by marketing its surplus products abroad, and what results from these efforts. CHAPTER LX. CAPITALIST WAR 155 Shows how the competition for foreign markets leads nations automatically into war. CHAPTER LXI. THE POSSIBILITIES OF PRODUCTION 158 Shows how much wealth we could produce if we tried and how we proved it when we had to. CHAPTER LXII. THE COST OF COMPETITION 162 Discusses the losses of friction in our productive machine, those which are obvious and those which are hidden. CHAPTER LXIII. SOCIALISM AND SYNDICALISM 166 Discusses the idea of the management of industry by the state, and the idea of its management by the trade unions. CHAPTER LXIV. COMMUNISM AND ANARCHISM 170 Considers the idea of goods owned in common, and the idea of a society without compulsion, and how these ideas have fared in Russia. CHAPTER LXV. SOCIAL REVOLUTION 175 How the great change is coming in different industries, and how we may prepare to meet it. CHAPTER LXVI. CONFISCATION OR COMPENSATION 179 Shall the workers buy out the capitalists? Can they afford to do it, and what will be the price? CHAPTER LXVII. EXPROPRIATING THE EXPROPRIATORS 183 Discusses the dictatorship of the proletariat, and its chances for success in the United States. CHAPTER LXVIII. THE PROBLEM OF THE LAND 188 Discusses the land values tax as a means of social readjustment, and compares it with other programs. CHAPTER LXIX. THE CONTROL OF CREDIT 192 Deals with money, the part it plays in the restriction of industry, and may play in the freeing of industry. CHAPTER LXX. THE CONTROL OF INDUSTRY 198 Discusses various programs for the change from industrial autocracy to industrial democracy. CHAPTER LXXI. THE NEW WORLD 202 Describes the co-operative commonwealth, beginning with its money aspects; the standard wage and its variations. CHAPTER LXXII. AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION 206 Discusses the land in the new world, and how we foster co-operative farming and co-operative homes. CHAPTER LXXIII. INTELLECTUAL PRODUCTION 210 Discusses scientific, artistic, and religious activities, as a superstructure built upon the foundation of the standard wage. CHAPTER LXXIV. MANKIND REMADE 215 Discusses human nature and its weaknesses, and what happens to these in the new world. PART THREE THE BOOK OF LOVE CHAPTER XXVIII THE REALITY OF MARRIAGE (Discusses the sex-customs now existing in the world, and their relation to the ideal of monogamous love.) Just as human beings through wrong religious beliefs torture one another, and wreck their lives and happiness; just as through wrong eating and other physical habits they make disease and misery for themselves; just so they suffer and perish for lack of the most elementary knowledge concerning the sex relationship. The difference is that in the field of religious ideas it is now permissible to impart the truth one possesses. If I tell you there is no devil, and that believing this will not cause you to suffer in an eternity of sulphur and brimstone, no one will be able to burn me at the stake, even though he might like to do so. If I advise you that it is not harmful to eat beefsteak on Friday, or to eat thoroughly cooked pork any day of the week, neither the archbishops nor the rabbis nor the vegetarians will be able to lock me in a dungeon. But if I should impart to you the simplest and most necessary bit of knowledge concerning the facts of your sex life--things which every man and woman must know if we are to stop breeding imbecility and degeneracy in the world--then I should be liable, under federal statutes, to pay a fine of $5,000, and to serve a term of five years in a federal penitentiary. Scarcely a week passes that I do not receive a letter from someone asking for information about such matters; but I dare not answer the letters, because I know there are agencies, maintained and paid by religious superstition, employing spies to trap people into the breaking of this law. I shall tell you here as much as I am permitted to tell, in the simplest language and the most honest spirit. I believe that human beings are meant to be happy on this earth, and to avoid misery and disease. I believe that they are given the powers of intelligence in order to seek the ways of happiness, and I believe that it is a worthy work to give them the knowledge they need in order to find happiness. At the outset of this Book of Love we are going to examine the existing facts of the sex relationships of men and women in present-day society. We shall discover that amid all the false and dishonest thinking of mankind, there is nowhere more falsity and dishonesty than here. The whole world is a gigantic conspiracy of "hush," and the orthodox and respectable of the world are like worshippers of some god, who spend their day-time burning incense before the altar, and in the night-time steal the sacred jewels and devour the consecrated offerings. These worshippers confront you with the question, do you believe in marriage; and they make the assumption that the institution of marriage exists, or at some time has existed in the world. But if you wish to do any sound thinking about this subject, you must get one thing clear at the outset; the institution of marriage is an ideal which has been preached and taught, but which has never anywhere, in any society, at any stage of human progress, actually existed as the general practice of mankind. What has existed and still exists is a very different institution, which I shall here describe as marriage-plus-prostitution. By this statement I do not mean to deny that there are many women, and a few men, who have been monogamous all their lives; nor that there are many couples living together happily in monogamous marriage. What I mean is that, considering society as a whole, wherever you find the institution of marriage, you also find, co-existent therewith and complementary thereto, the institution of prostitution. Of this double arrangement one part is recognized, and written into the law; the other part is hidden, and prohibited by law; but those who have to do with enforcing the law all know that it exists, and practically all of them consider it inevitable, and a great many derive income from it. So I say: if you believe in marriage-plus-prostitution, that is your right; but if marriage is what you believe in, then your task is to consider such questions as these: Is marriage a possible thing? Can it ever become the sex arrangement of any society? What are the forces which have so far prevented it from prevailing, and how can these forces be counteracted? It is my belief that monogamous love is the most desirable of human sex relationships, the most fruitful in happiness and spiritual development. The laws and institutions of civilized society pretend to defend this relationship, but the briefest study of the facts will convince anyone that these laws and institutions are not really meant to protect monogamous love. What they are is a device of the property-holding male to secure his property rights to women, and more especially to secure himself as to the paternity of his heirs. In primitive society, where land and other sources of wealth were held in common, and sex monogamy was unknown, there was no way to determine paternity, and no reason for doing so. But under the system of private property and class privilege, it is necessary for some one man to support a child, if it is to be supported; and when a man has fought hard, and robbed hard, and traded hard, and acquired wealth, he does not want to spend it in maintaining another man's child. That he should let himself be fooled into doing so is one of the greatest humiliations his fellowmen can imagine. If you read Shakespeare's plays, and look up the meaning of old words, so as to understand old witticisms and allusions, you will discover that this was the stock jest of Shakespeare's time. In order to protect himself from such ridicule, the man maintained in ancient times his right to kill the faithless woman with cruel tortures. He maintains today the right to deprive her of her children, and of all share in his property, even though she may have helped to earn it. But until quite recent times, the beginning of the revolt of women, there was never any corresponding penalty for faithlessness in husbands. Under the English law today, the husband may divorce his wife for infidelity, but the wife must prove infidelity plus cruelty, and the courts have held that the cruelty must consist in knocking her down. While I was in England, the highest court rendered a decision that a man who brought his mistress to his home and compelled his wife to wait upon her was not committing "cruelty" in the meaning of the English law. This is what is known as the "double standard," and the double standard prevails everywhere under the system of marriage-plus-prostitution, and proves that capitalist "monogamy" is not a spiritual ideal, but a matter of class privilege. It is a breach of honor for the ruling class male to tamper with the wife of his friend; it is frequently dangerous for him to tamper with the young females of his own class; but it is in general practice taken for granted that the young females of lower classes are his legitimate prey. In England a man may have a marriage annulled, if he can prove that the woman he married had what is called a "past"; but everybody takes it for granted that the man has had a "past"; it is covered by the polite phrase, "sowing his wild oats." Wherever among the ruling class you find men bold enough to discuss the facts of the sex order they have set up, you find the idea, expressed or implied, that this "wild oats" is a necessary and inevitable part of this order, and that without it the order would break down. The English philosopher, Lecky, making an elaborate study of morals through the ages, speaks of the prostitute in the following frank language: "Herself the supreme type of vice, she is ultimately the most efficient guardian of virtue. But for her, the unchallenged purity of countless happy homes would be polluted, and not a few who, in the pride of their untempted chastity, think of her with an indignant shudder, would have known the agony of remorse and despair. On that one degraded and ignoble form are concentrated the passions that might have filled the world with shame. She remains, while creeds and civilizations rise and fall, the eternal priestess of humanity, blasted for the sins of the people." I invite you to study these sentences and understand them fully. Remember that they are the opinion of the most learned historian of sex customs who has ever written in English; a man whose authority is recognized in our schools, whose books are in every college library. William Edward Hartpole Lecky is not in any sense a revolutionist; he is a conventional English scholar, an upholder of English law and order and patriotism. He is not of my school of thought, but of those who now own the world and run it. I quote him, because he tells in plain language what kind of world they have made; I invite you to study his words, and then judge my statement that the sex arrangement under which we live in modern society is not monogamous love, but marriage-plus-prostitution. It is my hope to point the way to a higher system. I should like to call it marriage; but perhaps it would be more precise to call it marriage-minus-prostitution. In working it out, we shall have to think for ourselves, and discard all formulas. It is obvious that our present-day religious creeds, ethical ideals, legal codes, and social rewards and punishments have been powerless to protect marriage, or to make it the rule in sex relationships. So we shall have to begin at the beginning and find new reasons for monogamous love, a new basis of marriage other than the protection of private property. We shall have to inform ourselves as to the fundamental purposes of sex; we shall have to ask ourselves: What are the factors which determine rightness and wrongness in the sex relationship? What is love, and what ought it to be? These questions we shall try to approach without any fixed ideas whatever. We shall decide them by the same tests that we have used in our thinking about God and immortality, health and disease. We shall ask, not what our ancestors believed, not what God teaches us, not what the law ordains, not what is "respectable," nor yet what is "advanced," according to the claim of modern sex revolutionists and "free lovers." We shall ask ourselves, what are the facts. We shall ask, what can be made to work in practice, what can justify itself by the tests of reason and common sense. CHAPTER XXIX THE DEVELOPMENT OF MARRIAGE (Deals with the sex-relationship, its meaning and its history, the stages of its development in human society.) What, in the most elemental form, is sex? It is a difference of function which makes it necessary for two organisms to take part in the reproduction of the species. The purpose, or at any rate the effect, of this sex difference is the mixing of characteristics and qualities. If the sex relationship were unnecessary to reproduction, variations might begin, and be propagated and carried to extremes in one line of inheritance, without ever affecting the rest of the species. Very soon there would be no species, or rather an infinity of them; each line of descent would fly apart, and become a group all by itself. You have perhaps heard people comment on the fact that blondes so frequently prefer brunettes, and that tall men are apt to marry short women, and vice versa. This is perhaps nature's way of keeping the type uniform, of spreading qualities widely and testing them thoroughly. Nature is continually trying out the powers of every individual in every species, and by the process of sexual selection she chooses, for the reproduction of the species, the individuals which are best fitted for survival. This, of course, refers to nature, considered apart from man. In human society, as I shall presently show, sexual selection has been distorted, and partly suppressed. Sex differentiation and sexual selection exist almost universally throughout the animal and vegetable kingdoms, everywhere save in the lowest forms of being. They take strange and startling forms, and like everything else in nature manifest amazing ingenuity. People who wish to prove this or that about human sex relations will advance arguments from nature; but as a matter of fact we can learn nothing whatever from nature, except her determination to preserve the products of her activity and to keep them up to standard. Sometimes nature will give the precedence in power, speed and beauty to the male, and sometimes to the female. She is perfectly ruthless, and willing in the accomplishment of her purpose to destroy the individuals of either sex. She will content the most rabid feminist by causing the female spider to devour her mate when his purpose has been accomplished; or by causing the male bee to fall from his mating in the air, a disemboweled shell. As for man, he has won his supremacy over nature by his greater power to combine in groups; by his more intense gregarious, or herd instincts, which enabled him to fight and destroy creatures which would have exterminated him if he had fought them alone. So in primitive society everywhere, we find that the individual is subordinated to the group, and the "folkways" give but little heed to personal rights. Very thorough investigations have been made into the life of primitive man in many parts of the world, and the anthropologists are now arguing over the exact meaning of the data. We shall not here attempt to decide among them, but rest content with the statement that communism and tribal ownership is a widespread social form among primitive man, so much so as to suggest that it is an early stage in social evolution. And this communism includes, not merely property, but sex. In the very earliest days there was often no barrier whatever to the sex relationship; not even between brothers and sisters, nor between parents and children. In fact, we find savages who do not know that the sex relationship has anything to do with procreation. But as knowledge increases, sex "tabus" develop, some wise, and some foolish. From causes not entirely clear, but which we discuss in Chapter XLVIII, there gradually evolves a widespread form of sex relationship of primitive man, the system of the "gens," as it is called. This is the Latin word for family, but it does not mean family in the narrow sense of mother and father and children, but in the broad sense of all those who have blood relationship, however far removed--uncles and aunts and cousins, as far as memory can trace. In primitive communism a man is not permitted to enter into the sex relationship with a woman of the same gens, but with all the women of some other gens. It is difficult for us to imagine a society in which all the men named Jones would be married to all the women named Smith; but that was the way whole races of mankind lived for many thousands of years. In that primitive communist society, the woman was generally the equal of the man. It is true that she did the drudgery of the camp, but the man, on the other hand, faced the hardships of battle and the chase on land and sea. The woman was as big as the man, and except when handicapped by pregnancy, as strong as the man; she was as much respected, if not more so. Her children bore her name, and were under her control, and she was accustomed to assert herself in all affairs of the tribe. In Frederick O'Brien's "White Shadows in the South Seas," you may read a comical story of a journey this traveler made into the interior of one of the cannibal islands. Everywhere he was treated with courtesy and hospitality, but was embarrassed by continual offers from would-be wives. In one case a powerful cannibal lady, whose advances he rejected, picked him up and proceeded to carry him off, and he was quite helpless in her grasp; he might have been a cannibal husband today, if it had not been for the intervention of his fellow travelers. The basis of this sex equality under primitive communism is easy to understand. All goods belonged to the tribe, and were shared alike according to need. Children were the tribe's most precious possession; therefore the woman suffered little handicap from having a child to bear and feed. Primitive woman would bear her child by the roadside, and pick it up in her arms, and continue her journey; and when she needed food, she did not have to beg for it--if there was food for anyone, there was food for her and her child. She did her share of the gathering and preparing of food, because that was the habit and law of her being; she had energies, and had never heard of the idea of not using them. This primitive communism generally disappears as the tribe progresses. We cannot be sure of all the stages of its disappearance, or of the causes, but in a general way we can say that it gives way before the spread of slavery. In the beginning primitive man does not have any slaves, he does not have sufficient foresight or self-restraint for that. When he kills his enemies in battle, he builds a fire and roasts their flesh and eats them; and those whom he captures alive, he binds fast and takes with him, to be sacrificed to his voodoo gods. But as he comes to more settled ways of living, and as the tribe grows larger, it occurs to the chiefs in battle that the captives would be glad to give their labor in return for their lives, and that it would be convenient to have some people to do the hard and dirty work. So gradually there comes to be a class at the bottom of society, and another class at the top. Those who capture the slaves and keep them at work lay claim to the products of their labor--at first better weapons and personal adornments, then separate homes for the chiefs and priests, separate gardens, separate flocks and herds, and--what more natural?--separate women. This process becomes complete when the tribe settles down to agriculture, and the ruling classes take possession of the land. When once the land is privately owned, classes are fixed, and class distinctions become the most prominent fact in society. And step by step as this happens, we see women beaten down, from the position of the cannibal lady, who could ask for the man she wanted and carry him off by force if necessary, to the position of the modern woman, who is physically weak, emotionally unstable, economically dependent, and socially repressed. You may resent such phrases, but all you have to do is to read the laws of civilized countries, written into the statute books by men to define the rights and duties of women; you will see that everywhere, before the recent feminist revolt, women were classified under the law with children and imbeciles. Maternity imposes on woman a heavy burden, and before the discovery of birth control, a burden that is continuous. For nine months she carries the child in her body, and then for a year or two she carries it in her arms, or on her back; and by that time there is another child, and this continues until she is broken down. Having this burden, she cannot possibly compete with the unburdened male for the possession of property. So wherever there is economic competition; wherever certain individuals or classes in the tribe or group are allowed to seize and hold the land; wherever the products of labor cease to be the community property, and become private property, the objects of economic strife; then inevitably and by natural process, woman comes to be placed among those who cannot protect themselves--that is, among the children and the imbeciles and the slaves. Of course, some children are well cared for, and so are some imbeciles, and some slaves, and some women. But they are cared for as a matter of favor, not as a matter of their own power. They proceed no longer as the cannibal lady, but by adopting and cultivating the slave virtues, by making themselves agreeable to their masters, by flattering their masters' vanity and sensuality--in other words by exercising what we are accustomed to call "feminine charm." From early barbaric society up to the present day, we observe that there are classes of women, just as there are classes of men. The position of these classes changes within certain limits, but in broad outline the conditions are fixed, and may be easily defined. There is, first of all, the ruling class woman. She must have birth; she may or may not have wealth, according as to whether the laws of that society or tribe permit her to have possessions of her own, or to inherit anything from her parents. If she has no wealth, then she will need beauty. She is the woman who is selected by the ruling class man to bear his name and his children, and to have charge of the household where these children are reared, and trained for the inheriting of their father's wealth and the carrying on of his position. This confers upon the ruling class woman great dignity, and makes her a person of responsibility. She rules, not merely over the slaves of the household, but over men of inferior social classes, and in a few cases an exceptionally able woman has become a queen, and ruled over men of her own class. This ruling class woman has been known through all the ages by a special name, and the ways and customs regarding her have been studied in an entertaining book, "The Lady," by Emily James Putnam. Next in privilege and position to the "lady" is the mistress, the woman who is selected by the ruling class man, not primarily to bear his children, but to entertain and divert him. She may, of course, bear children also. In barbaric societies, and up to quite recent times, the importance of the ruling class man was indicated by the number of concubines he had, and the position of these women was hardly inferior to that of the wife or queen. In the days of the French monarchy, the king's mistress was frequently more important than the queen; she was a woman of ability, maintaining her supremacy in the intrigues of the court. In ancient Greek society, the "hetairae" were a recognized class, and Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles, was the most brilliant and most conspicuous woman in Athens. In modern France, the position of the mistress is recognized by the phrase "demi-monde," or half-world. The American plutocracy has developed upon a superstructure of Puritanism, and therefore, in America, hypocrisy is necessary. But in the great cities of America, the vast majority of the ruling class men keep mistresses before marriage, and a great many keep them afterwards; and these mistresses are coming to be more and more openly flaunted, and to acquire more and more of what is called "social position." It is possible now in the "smart set" for a lady to accept the status of mistress, delicately veiled, without losing caste thereby, and actresses and other free lance women who got their start in life by taking the position of mistress, are coming more and more to be recognized as "ladies," and to be received into what are called the "best circles." There remains to be considered the position of the lower class women. In barbarous society these women were very little different from slaves. They had no rights of their own, except such rights as their master man chose to allow them for his own convenience. They were sold in marriage by their parents, and they went where they were sold, and obeyed their new master. They became his household drudges, and reserved their affections for him; if they failed to do this, he stoned them to death, or strangled them with a cord and tied them in a sack and threw them into the river. And, of course, the rights of the master man yielded to the rights of men of higher classes. The king or nobleman could take any woman he wished at any time, and he made laws to this effect and enforced them. In feudal society the lord of the manor claimed the right of the first night with the wives of his serfs; this was one of the ruling class privileges which was abolished in the French revolution. Wherever the French revolution did not succeed in affecting land tenure, the right of the land owner to prey upon his tenant girls continues as a custom, even though it is not written in the law, and would be denied by the hypocritical. It prevails in Poland, as you may discover by reading Sienkiewicz's "Whirlpools"; it prevails in England, as you may discover from Hardy's "Tess of the d'Urbervilles." You will find that it prevails in every part of the world where women have poverty and men have wealth and prestige, dress suits and automobiles. You will find it wherever there are leisure class hotels, or colleges, or other gatherings of ruling class young males. You will find it in the theatrical and moving picture worlds. It is well understood in the theatrical world of Broadway that the woman "star" in the profession gets her start in life by becoming the mistress of a manager or "angel." In the moving picture world of Southern California it is a recognized convention, known to everyone familiar with the business, that a young girl parts with her virtue in exchange for an important job. CHAPTER XXX SEX AND YOUNG AMERICA (Discusses present-day sex arrangements, as they affect the future generation.) Our first task is to consider how people actually behave in the matter of sex--as distinguished from the way they pretend to behave. The first and most necessary step in the cure of any disease is a correct diagnosis, and in this case we have not merely to make the diagnosis, but to prove it; because the most conspicuous fact about our present sex-arrangements is a mass of organized concealment. Not merely do teachers and preachers for the most part suppress all mention of these subjects; but the defenders of our present economic disorder are accustomed to acclaim the private property régime as the only basis of family life. So long as people hold such an idea, there is no use trying to teach them anything on the subject. There is no use talking to them about monogamous love, because all they understand is hypocrisy. In this chapter, therefore, we shall proceed to hold up the mirror in front of capitalist morality. I pause and consider: Where shall I begin? At the top of society, or at the bottom? With the city or the country? With the old or the young? I think you care most of all about your boys and girls, so I am going to tell you what is happening to the youth of America in these days of triumphant reaction. I have a son, about whom naturally I think a great deal; just now he is a student at one of our state universities, and he wrote me the other day: "I went to a dance, and believe me, father, if you knew what these modern dances mean, you would write something about them." I know what they mean. They have come to us straight from the brothels of the Argentine, among the vilest haunts of vice in the world. Others have come from the jungle, where they were natural. The poor creature of the jungle has his sex-desire and nothing else; he is not troubled with brains, he does not have a complicated social organism to build up and protect, consequently he does not need what are called "morals." But we civilized people need morals, and we are losing them, and our society is disintegrating, going back to the howling and fighting and cannibalism of the jungle. Prof. William James, America's greatest psychologist, tells us that going through the motions appropriate to an emotion automatically causes that emotion to be felt. If you watch an actor preparing to rush on the stage in an emotional scene, you will see him walking about, clenching his fists, stamping his feet, making ferocious faces, "working himself up." And now, what do you think is going on in the minds of young men and women, while with their bodies they are going through procedures which are nothing and can be nothing but imitations of sexual contact? The parents, it appears, are ignorant and unsophisticated, and have left it for the children to find out what these dances mean. In Rhode Island, one of our oldest states, is Brown College, chosen by New England's aristocracy for the education of its sons; and these boys go to social affairs in the best homes in Providence, and they call them "petting-parties." And here is what they write in their college paper: "The modern social bud drinks, not too much, often, but enough. She smokes unguardedly, swears considerably, and tells 'dirty' stories. All in all, she is a most frivolous, passionate, sensation-seeking little thing." This statement, published in a college paper, causes a scandal, and a newspaper reporter goes to interview the college boy who edits the paper, and this boy talks. He tells how he met a lovely girl at a dance, and his heart was thrilled with the rapture of young love. "Frankly, between you and me, I was pretty smitten with this particular little lady. Felt about her, don't you know, like a real guy feels about the girl he could imagine himself married to. Thought she was too nice to touch, almost; you know the grave sort of love affair a man always has once in a lifetime. Well, we walked a bit, and I guess I didn't say much, for a while. I felt plenty--respectfully--just the same. And as we turned the corner of one of the buildings here, she grasped my hand. Hers was trembling. 'Love and let love is my motto, dearie,' said this seraph of my dreams; 'come, we're losing a lot of time getting started.' That girl thought I was dead slow. She didn't know that just then I imagined the great love of my life was just entering the door. It was cruel the way she got down from the pedestal I had built for her." Suppose I should ask you to name the influence that is having most to do with shaping the thoughts of young America--what would you answer? Undoubtedly, the moving pictures. It is from the "movies" that your children learn what life is; if I can show you that a certain thing is in the "movies," you can surely not deny that it is passing every day and night into the hearts and minds of millions of our boys and girls. Take a vote among the girls, what would they consider the most delightful destiny in life; surely nine out of ten would answer, to become a screen star, and pose before a world of admirers, and be paid a million dollars a year. Make a test and see; and put that fact together with the one I have already stated, that in order to get an important job in the "movies," a girl must regularly and as a matter of course part with her virtue. You will be told, no doubt, that this is a slanderous statement, so let me give you a little evidence. I happened within the past year to be in the private office of a well known moving picture producer, a man who is married, and takes care to tell you that he loves his wife. He was producing a play, the heroine of which was supposed to be a daughter of Puritan New England. To play this part he had engaged a chaste girl, and as a result was in the midst of a queer trouble, which he poured out to me. His "leading man" had refused to act with this girl, insisting that no girl could act a part of love unless she had had passionate experience; no such thing had ever been heard of in moving pictures before. Likewise, the director agreed that no girl who is chaste could act for the screen, and the producer asked my advice about it. Mr. William Allen White, of Kansas, was present in the office, and authorizes me to state that he substantiates this anecdote. We both advised the producer to stand by the girl, and he did so; and the picture went out, and proved to be what in trade parlance is termed a "frost"; that is to say, your children didn't care for it, and it cost the producer something like a hundred thousand dollars to make this attempt to defy the conventions of the moving picture world. I will tell you another story. I have a friend, a prominent man in Los Angeles, who was appealed to by a young lady who wished to act in the "movies." My friend introduced this young lady to a very prominent screen actor, who in turn introduced her to one of the biggest producers in America, one of the men whose "million dollar feature pictures" are regularly exploited. The producer examined the young lady's figure, and told her that she would "do"; he added, quite casually, and as a matter of course, that she would be expected to "pay the price." The young lady took exception to this proposition, and gave up the chance. She told my friend about it, and he, being a man of the world, accustomed to dealing with the foibles of his fellowmen, wrote a note to the actor, explaining that inasmuch as this young lady had been socially introduced to him, and by him socially introduced to the manager, she should not have been expected to "pay the price." To this the actor answered that my friend was correct, and he would see the manager about it. The manager conceded the point, and the young lady got her chance in the "movies" and made good without "paying the price." This story tells you all you need to know about the difference in sex ethics that society applies to the "lady" and to the daughter of the common people. You know, of course, what is the stock theme of all moving pictures--the virtuous daughter of the people, who resists all temptations, and is finally rescued from her would-be seducer by the strong and sturdy arm of a male doll. Could one ask a more perfect illustration of capitalist hypocrisy than the fact that the girl who plays this role is required to pay with her virtue for the privilege of playing it! And if you know anything about young girls, you can watch her playing it on the screen, and see from her every gesture that what I am telling you is true. My wife knows young girls, and I took her, the other day, to see a moving picture. She said: "I have solved a problem. When I come home on the street-cars, it happens that I ride with a lot of young girls from the high school. I have been watching them, and I couldn't imagine what was the matter with them. All simple, girlish straightforwardness is gone out of them; they are making eyes, in the strangest manner--and at nobody; just practicing, apparently. They wear yearning facial expressions; when they start to walk, they do not walk, but writhe and wiggle. I thought there must be some nervous eye and lip disease got abroad in the school. But now, when I go to a moving picture, I discover what it means. They are imitating the 'stars' on the screen!" In these pictures, you know, there are "ingenues," young girls engaged in making a happy ending to the story by capturing a rich lover; and then there are "vamps," engaged in seducing young men, or breaking up some happy home. In old-style melodrama it was possible to tell the "ingenue" from the "vamps"; the former would trip lightly, and glance coyly out of the corners of her eyes, while the "vamp" moved with slow, languished writhing, blinking heavy-lidded, sinister eyes. But now-a-days the "vamps" have learned to pose as "ingenues," and the "ingenues" are as vicious as the "vamps"; they both make the same glances, and culminate in the same sensual swoon. It is all sex, and nothing else--except revolvers and fighting, and wild rushing about. And then, too, there are the musical comedies, made wholly out of sex, being known as "girl shows," or more frankly still, "leg shows." A row of half naked women, prancing and gyrating on the stage, and in front of them rows of bald-headed old men, gazing at them greedily; also college boys, or boys too imbecile to get through college, sending in their cards with boxes of costly flowers. You will be shocked as you read my plain statements of fact, but if you are the average American, you will take your family to a musical show which has come straight from the brothels of Paris, every allusion of which is obscene. I remember once being in a small town in the South, when one of these "road shows" arrived from New York, and I realized that this institution was simply a traveling house of ill fame; the whole male portion of the town was a-quiver with excitement, a mixture of lust and fear. I live in Southern California, one of many places in America where the idle rich gather for their diversion. The country is dotted with palatial hotels, and a golden flood of pleasure-seekers come in every winter. I have talked with some of the college boys in this part of the country, and also with teachers who try to save the boys; they report these "swell" hotels as hot-beds of vice, haunted by married women with automobiles, and nothing to do, who wish to go into the canyons for sexual riots. Even elderly women, white-haired women, old enough to be your grandmother! I have had them pointed out to me in these hotels, their cheeks and lips covered with rouge, with pink silk tights on their calves, and nothing else almost up to their knees and nothing at all half way down their backs. These old women seek to prey on boys, wanting their youth, and being willing to lavish money upon them. They are preying on your boys--you prosperous business men, who have preached the gospel of "each for himself," and are proud of your skill to prey upon society. You heap up your fortunes, and call it success, and are secure and happy. You have made your children safe against want, you think; but how are you going to make them safe against the "vamps" who prey upon the overwhelming excitements of youth, and betray your sons before your very eyes--teaching them lust in their youth, so that love may never be born in their stunted hearts? All the haunts of "gilded vice" are thriving, and somebody's boy is paying the interest on the capital, to say nothing of paying the police. Many years ago I paid a call upon Anthony Comstock, head of the Society for the Prevention of Vice. Comstock was an old-style Puritan, and many insist that he was likewise an old-style grafter. However that may be, he had a collection of the literature of pornography which would cause any man to hesitate in condemning his activities. There is a vast traffic in this kind of thing; it is sold by pack-peddlers all over the country, and it is sold in little shops in the neighborhood of public schools. You may be sure that in your school there are some boys who know where to get it, even though they will not tell what they know. I will describe just one piece that a school boy brought to me, a catalogue of obscene literature, for sale in Spain, and to be ordered wholesale. You know how men with wares to sell will expend their imaginations and exhaust their vocabulary in describing to you the charms of each particular article for sale. Here was a catalogue of one or two hundred pages, listing thousands of items, pictures, pamphlets and books, and various implements of vice, all set forth in that imitation ecstasy of department stores and seed catalogues: here was "something neat," here was a "fancy one," this one was "a peach," and that one was "a winner." When I was a lad, I was tramping in the Adirondack mountains and was picked up by an itinerant photographer. We rode all day together, and he became friendly, and showed me some obscene pictures. Presently he discovered that he was dealing with a young moralist, and apparently it was the first time he had ever had that experience; he talked honestly, and we became friends on a different basis. This man had a wife and children at home, but he traveled all over the mountains, and was like the sailor with a girl in every port. Also he was thoroughly familiar with all forms of unnatural vice, and took this also as a matter of course, and spread it on his journeys. The other day I read a statement by a prominent physician in New York; he had been talking with a police captain, and had asked him to state what in his opinion was the most significant development in the social life of New York. The answer was, "The spread of male prostitution." Here is a subject to which I have to admit my courage is unequal. I cannot repeat the jokes which I have heard young men tell about these matters, and about the attitude of the police to them. Suffice it to say that these hideous forms of vice are now the commonplace of the under-world of all our great cities. The other day a friend of mine was talking with a prostitute who had left a high-class resort, where the price charged was ten dollars, and gone to live in a "fifty-cent house," frequented by sailors. She was asked the reason, and her explanation was, "The sailors are natural." Dr. William J. Robinson has written in his magazine an account of the haunts in Berlin which are frequented by the victims of unnatural vice, there allowed to meet openly and to solicit. Frank Harris, in his "Life of Oscar Wilde," tells how when that scandal was at its height, and further exposure threatened, swarms of the most prominent men in England suddenly discovered that it was advisable for them to travel on the Continent. The great public schools of England are rotten with these practices; the younger boys learn them from the older ones, and are victims all the rest of their lives. And the corruption is creeping through our own social body--and you think that all you have to do is not to know about it! My friend Floyd Dell, reading this manuscript, insists that this chapter and the one following are too severe. In case others should agree with him, I quote two newspaper items which appear while I am reading the proofs. The first is from an interview with H. Gordon Selfridge, the London merchant, telling his impressions of America. He tells about the "flappers," and then about the "shifters." "The other is the newly exploited 'shifters.' The 'shifters' are an organization of mushroom growth among high school girls and boys which is spreading through the eastern States and winning converts among youngsters. It is described as the 'flapper Ku Klux,' and its emblem, if worn by a girl, according to high school teachers and children's society leaders who oppose it, to be nothing more nor less than an invitation to be kissed. "To call it an organization even is exaggeration, for the 'shifters' are better described as a secret understanding without any responsible head. "From being a seemingly harmless group whose emblem was originally a brass paper clip fastened in the coat lapel it has developed by rapid strides. Manufacturers of emblems are coining money by the sale of hands, palm outstretched. The significance is take what you want or, as the motto of the order says, 'be a good fellow; get something for nothing.' One of the principles is to 'do' one's parents, referred to as 'they.'" The second item is an Associated Press despatch: "ST. LOUIS, March 10.--In reiterating his statement that a girls' and a boys' secret organization requiring that all applicants must have violated the moral code before admission was granted, existed in a local high school, Victor J. Miller, president of the Board of Police Commissioners, tonight named the Soldan High School as the one in which the alleged immoral conditions exist. The school is attended largely by children of the wealthy West End citizens. CHAPTER XXXI SEX AND THE "SMART SET" (Portrays the moral customs of those who set the fashion in our present-day world.) We have discussed what is happening to our young people; let us next consider what our mature people are doing. Having mentioned conditions in England, I will give a glimpse of London "high life" two years before the war. As a visiting writer, I was invited to luncheon at the home of a woman novelist, whose books at that time were widely read both in her country and here. Present at the luncheon was a prominent publisher, who I afterwards learned was the lady's lover; also the lady's grown and married son. The publisher looked like a buxom hunting squire, but the lady told me that he was very unhappy, because his wife would not divorce him. The lady had just come from a week-end party at the home of an earl, who at this moment occupies one of the highest posts in the gift of the British Empire. Things had gone comically wrong at this country house party, she said, because the hostess had failed to remember that Lord So-and-so was at present living with Lady Somebody-else. One of the duties of hostesses at house parties, it appears, is to know who is living with whom, in order that they may be put in connecting rooms. In this case his Lordship had been grouchy, and everybody's pleasure had been spoiled. This produced a discussion of the subject of marriage, and the son remarked that marriage was like an old slipper; you wore it, because you had got used to it, but you did not talk about it, because it was unimportant and stupid. I went away, and happened to mention these matters to a friend, who had met this woman novelist in Nice. The novelist had there, in a group of people, been introduced to a young girl who was suffering from neurasthenia. "My dear," said the novelist, affectionately, "what you need is to have an illegitimate baby." This, you will say, is the "old world," and you always knew that it was corrupt. If so, let me tell you a few things that I have seen among the "upper circles" of our own great and virtuous democracy. My first acquaintance with New York "society" came after the publication of "The Jungle." As the author of that book I was a sensation, almost as much so as if I had won the heavy-weight championship of the world. Out of curiosity I accepted an invitation for a weekend amid what is called the "hunting set" of Long Island. Here was a gorgeous palace with many tapestries, and soft-footed servants, and decanters and cocktails at every stage of one's journey about the place, like coaling stations on the trade routes of the British Empire. One of the first sights that caught my young eye was a large and stately lady in semi-undress, smoking a big black cigar. If I were to mention her name, every newspaper reader in America would know her; and before I had been introduced to her, I heard two young men in evening dress make an obscene remark about her, and what she was waiting for that evening. I discovered quickly that, while there was a great deal of sex among these people, there was very little love. There was principally a wish to score cleverly and subtly at the expense of another person's feelings. It is called the "smart set," you understand, and I will give you an idea of how "smart" it is. I was walking down a passage with a lady, and on a couch sat another lady, side by side with a certain very famous lawyer, whose golden eloquence you have probably listened to from platforms, and whom for the purpose of this anecdote I will name Jones. Mr. Jones and the lady on the sofa were sitting very close together, and my companion, with a bright smile over her shoulder, called out: "Be careful, Mary; you'll be scattering a lot of little Joneses around here if you don't watch out!" Quite "continental," you perceive; and a long way from the Puritanism of our ancestors! From there I went to the billiard-room, and observed a young man of fashion trying to play billiards when he was half drunk. It was a funny spectacle, and they took away his cigarette by force, for fear he would drop it on the cloth of the billiard table. Pretty soon he was telling about a racing meet, and an orgy with negro women in a stable. Therefore I returned to where the ladies were gathered, and one middle-aged matron, who had read widely, including some of my books, engaged me in serious conversation. I came later on to know her rather well, and she told me her views of love; the source of all the sex troubles of humanity was that they took the relationship seriously. Modern discoveries made it unnecessary to attach importance to it. She herself, acting upon this theory, probably had had relations with--my friends, reading the proofs of this book, beg me to omit the number of men, because you would not believe me! You may argue that this is not typical; say that I fell into the clutches of some particular group of degenerates. All I can tell you is that these people are as "socially prominent" as any in New York City. I will say furthermore that I have sat in the home of the best known corporation lawyer in America, who was paid a million dollars to organize the steel trust--the late James B. Dill, at that time a member of the Court of Appeals of New Jersey--and have heard him "muck-rake" his business friends by the hour with stories of that sort. I have heard him tell of the "steel crowd" hiring a trolley car and a load of prostitutes and champagne, and taking an all-night trip from one city to another, smashing up both the car and the prostitutes. I have heard him tell of sitting on the deck of a Sound steamer, and overhearing two of his Wall Street associates and their wives arranging to trade partners for the night. I have mentioned a lady who had a great many lovers. Once in the dining-room of a club on Fifth Avenue, commonly known as "the Millionaires'," a companion pointed out various people, many of whom I had read about in the newspapers, and told me funny stories about them. "See that old boy with a note-book," said my host. "That is Jacob So-and-so, and he is entering up the cost of his lunch. He keeps accounts of everything, even of his women. He told me he had had over a thousand, and they had cost him over a million." It is impossible to say what is the most terrible thing in capitalist society, but among the most terrible are assuredly the old men. The richest and most powerful banker in America was in his sex habits the merry jest of New York society. He took toward women the same attitude as King Edward VII; if he wanted one, he went up and asked for her, and it made no difference who she was, or where she was. This man's personal living expenses were five thousand dollars a day, and all women understood that they might have anything within reason. When I was a boy, living in New York, there was a certain aged money-lender about whom one read something in the newspapers almost every day. He was a prominent figure, because he was worth eighty millions, yet wore an old, rusty black suit, and saved every penny. Every now and then you would read in the paper how some woman had been arrested for attempting to blackmail him in his office. It seemed puzzling, because you wouldn't think of him as a likely subject for blackmail. Some years later I met Dorothy Richardson, author of "The Long Day," a very fine book which has been undeservedly forgotten. Miss Richardson had been a reporter for the New York _Herald_, and had been sent to interview this old money-lender. She was ushered into his private office, and as soon as the attendant had gone out and closed the door, the old man came up, and without a word of preliminaries grabbed her in his arms like a gorilla. She fought and scratched, and got out, and was wise enough to say nothing about it; therefore there was nothing published about another attempt to blackmail the aged money-lender! What this means is that men of unlimited means live lives of unbridled lust, and then in their old age they are helpless victims of their own impulses. There was a certain enormously wealthy United States Senator from West Virginia, who came very near being Vice President of the United States. This doddering old man would go about the streets of Washington with a couple of very decorous and carefully trained attendants; and whenever an attractive young woman would pass on the street, or when one would approach the Senator, these two attendants would quietly slip their arms into his and hold him fast. They would do this so that the ordinary person would not suspect what was going on, but would think the old man was being supported. You do not have to take these things on my word; the newspapers are full of them all the time, and they are proven in court. Just now as I write, the president of the most powerful bank in America is claiming in court that his children are not his own, but that their father is an Indian guide. His wife, on the other hand, is accusing the banker of having played the role of husband to several other women. He would take these women traveling on his yacht, which, quaintly enough, was termed the "Modesty." Also the papers have been full of the "Hamon case." Here is a wealthy man, Republican National Committeeman from Oklahoma, who is about to go to Washington to advise our new President whom to appoint to office from that state. Before he goes, he casts off his mistress, and she shoots him. She was his secretary, it appears, and helped him to make his fortune; she has made many friends, and a million dollars is spent to save her life. The prosecuting attorney calls her a "painted snake," and accuses her of having sat week after week "displaying to the jury twenty-four inches of silk stockinged shin-bone." The jury, apparently unable to withstand this allurement, acquits the woman, and she announces that she intends to bring suit under the man's will to get his money! Also, she is going into the "movies," and tells us that it is to be "for educational purposes." Everything in our capitalist society must be "educational," you understand. It was P. T. Barnum who discovered that the American people would flock to look at a five-legged calf, if it was presented as "educational." The moving pictures and the theatres are the honey-pots which gather the feminine beauty and youthful charm of our country for the convenience of rich men's lust. These girls swarm in the theatrical agencies, and in the artists' studios; they starve for a while, and finally they yield. In every great city there are thousands of men of wealth, whose only occupation is to prey upon such girls. I know a certain theatrical manager, the most famous in the United States, a sensual, stout little Jew. He is a man of culture and subtle insight, and in the course of his conversation he described to me, quite casually and as a matter of course, the charm of deflowering a virgin. Nothing could equal that sensation; the first time was the last. Many years ago there was a horrible scandal in New York. The most famous architect in America was murdered, and the newspapers probed into his life, and it was revealed to us that many of the most famous artists and men about town in New York maintained elaborate studios, equipped with every luxury, all the paraphernalia of all the vices of the ages; and through these places there flowed an endless stream of beautiful young girls. In every large city in America you will find an "athletic club," and if you go there and listen to the gossip, you discover that there are scores of idle rich men with automobiles and private apartments, and a staff of procurers used in preying, not merely upon young girls, but also upon young boys. And these are not merely the children of the poor, they are the children of all but the rich and powerful. In the "movies" you see pictures of girls lured into automobiles, and carried out into the country, or seduced by means of "knock-out drops," and you think this is just "melodrama"; but it is happening all the time. In every big city of our country the police know that hundreds of young girls disappear every year. At a recent convention of police chiefs in Washington, it was stated, from police records, that sixty thousand girls disappear every year in the United States, leaving no trace. Unless the parents happen to be in position to make a fuss, not even the names of the girls are published in the newspapers. I do not ask you to believe such things on my word; believe District Attorney Sims of Chicago, who made the most thorough study of this subject ever made in America, and wrote: "When a white slave is sold and landed in a house or dive she becomes a prisoner.... In each of these places is a room having but one door, to which the keeper holds the key. Here are locked all the street clothes, shoes and ordinary apparel.... The finery provided for the girls is of a nature to make their appearance on the street impossible. Then in addition to this handicap, the girl is placed at once in debt to the keeper for a wardrobe.... She cannot escape while she is in debt, and she can never get out of debt. Not many of the women in this class expect to live more than ten years--perhaps the average is less. Many die painful deaths by disease, many by consumption, but it is hardly beyond the truth to say that suicide is their general expectation." CHAPTER XXXII SEX AND THE POOR (Discusses prostitution, the extent of its prevalence, and the diseases which result from it.) It is manifest that the rich cannot indulge in vices, without drawing the poor after them; and in addition to this, the poor have their own evil instincts, which fester in neglect. There were several hundred thousand dark rooms, that is rooms without light or ventilation, in New York City before the war. Now the country is reported to be short a million homes, and in New York City working girls are sleeping six or eight in a room. In the homes of the poor in the slums, parents and children and boarders all sleep in one room indiscriminately, and the world moves back to that primitive communism, in which incest is an everyday affair, and little children learn all the vices there are. I have in my hand a pamphlet by a physician, in charge of a hospital in New York, who in fifteen years has examined nine hundred children who have been raped, and the age of the youngest was eight months! I have another pamphlet by a settlement worker, who discusses the problem of the thousands of deserted wives, most of them with children, many with children yet unborn. As I write, there are millions of men out of work in our country, and these men are desperate, and they quit and take to the road. They join the army of the casual workers, the "blanket stiffs"; and, of course, the more there are of these men, the more prostitutes there have to be, and the more homosexuality there will inevitably be. Also the girls are out of work, and are on the streets. Many years ago I visited the mill towns of New England, "she-towns" they are called, and one of the young fellows said to me that you could buy a girl there for the price of a sandwich. Read "The Long Day," to which I have previously referred, and see how our working girls live. Dorothy Richardson describes her room-mate, who read cheap novels which she found in the gutter weeklies. She read them over and over; when she had got to the bottom of the pile, she began again, because her mind was so weak that she had forgotten everything. And then one day Miss Richardson happened to be groping in a corner of a closet, and came upon a great pile of bottles, and examined them, and was made sick with horror--abortion mixtures. Dr. William J. Robinson, an authority on the subject, estimates that there are one million abortions in the United States every year. Some of these are accidental, caused by venereal disease, but the vast majority are deliberate acts, crimes under the law, murder of human life. Dr. Robinson also estimates, from the many thousands of cases which come to him, that ninety-five per cent of all men have at some time practiced self-abuse. He is a strenuous opponent of what he calls "hysteria" on the subject of venereal disease, and insists that its prevalence is exaggerated; that instead of one person in ten being syphilitic, as is commonly stated, the proportion is only one in twenty. He insists that the percentage of persons having had gonorrhea is only twenty-five per cent, instead of seventy-five or eighty-five. I find that other authorities generally agree in the statement that fifty per cent of young men become infected with some venereal disease before they reach the age of thirty. The Committee of Seven in New York estimated in 1903 that there were two hundred thousand cases of syphilis in the city, and eight hundred thousand of gonorrhea. There were villages in France before the war in which twenty-five per cent of the inhabitants were syphilitic, and in Russia there were towns in which it was said that every person was syphilitic. We may safely say that these latter are the only towns in Europe in which there was not an enormous increase of this disease during and since the war. What are the consequences of these diseases? The consequences are frightful suffering, not merely to persons guilty of immorality, but to innocent persons. Dr. Morrow, generally recognized as the leading authority on this subject, estimates that ten per cent of all wives are infected with venereal disease by their husbands; he estimates that thirty per cent of all the infected women in New York were wives who had got the disease from their husbands. It is estimated that thirty per cent of all the births, where either parent has syphilis, result in abortions. It is estimated that fifty per cent of childlessness in marriage is caused by gonorrhea, and twenty-five per cent of all existing blindness. In Germany, before the war, there were thirty thousand persons born blind from this cause. It is estimated that ninety-five per cent of all abdominal operations performed upon women are due to gonorrhea. And any of these horrors may fall upon persons who lead lives of the strictest chastity. There was a case reported in Germany of 236 children who contracted venereal disease from swimming in a public bath. All these things are products of our system of marriage-plus-prostitution. They are all part of that system, and no study of the system is complete without them. Everywhere throughout modern civilization prostitution is an enormous and lucrative industry. In New York it is estimated to give employment to two hundred thousand women, to say nothing of the managers, and the runners, and the men who live off the women. There are thousands of resorts, large and small, high-priced and cheap, and the police know all about it, and derive a handsome income from it. And you find it the same in every great city of the world; in every port where sailors land, or every place where crowds of men are expected. If there is to be a football game, or a political convention, the managers of the industry know about it, and while they may never have heard the libel that Socialism preaches sexual license, they all know that capitalism practices it, and they provide the necessary means. In the United States there are estimated to be a half a million prostitutes, counting the inmates of houses alone. During the late war, at the army bases in France, the British government maintained official brothels; but if you published anything about this in England, you ran a chance of having your paper suppressed. During the occupation of the Rhine country, the French sent in negro troops, savages from the heart of Africa, whose custom it is to cut off the ears of their enemies in battle; and the French army compelled the German population to supply white women for these troops. I have quoted in "The Brass Check" a pious editorial from the Los Angeles _Times_, bidding the mothers of America be happy, because "our boys in France" were safe in the protecting arms of the Y. M. C. A. and the Knights of Columbus. I dared not publish at this time a passage which I had clipped from the London _Clarion_, in which A. M. Thompson told how he watched the "doughboys" in the cafés of Paris, with a girl on each knee, and a glass of wine in each hand. I will add one little anecdote, giving you a glimpse of the sex conventions of war. The American army made desperate efforts to keep down venereal disease, and required all men to report to their regimental surgeon immediately after having had sex relations. Our army moved into Coblentz, and the regulations strictly forbade any fraternizing with the inhabitants. But immediately it was discovered that there was an increase of disease, and investigation was made, and revealed that men had been ceasing to report to the surgeons, because they were afraid of being punished for having "fraternized with the enemy." So a new order was issued, providing that having sexual intercourse would not be considered as "fraternizing." I do not know any better way to distinguish my ideal of morality from the military ideal, than to say that according to my understanding of it, the sex relationship should always and everywhere imply and include "fraternizing." Finally, in concluding this picture of our present-day sex arrangements, there is a brief word to be said about divorce. In the year 1916, the last statistics available as I write, there were just over a million marriages in the United States, and there were over one hundred and twelve thousand divorces. This would indicate that one marriage in every nine resulted in shipwreck. But as a matter of fact the proportion is greater, because the marriages necessarily precede the divorces, and the proportion of divorces in 1916 should be calculated upon the number of marriages which took place some five or ten years previously. Of the one million marriages in 1916, we may say that one in seven or one in eight will end in the divorce courts. Let this suffice for a glimpse of the system of marriage-plus-prostitution--a field of weeds which we have somehow to plow up and prepare for a harvest of rational and honest love! CHAPTER XXXIII SEX AND NATURE (Maintains that our sex disorders are not the result of natural or physical disharmony.) Elie Metchnikoff, one of the greatest of scientists, wrote a book entitled "The Nature of Man," in which he studied the human organism from the point of view of biology, demonstrating that in our bodies are a number of relics of past stages of evolution, no longer useful, but rather a source of danger and harm. We have, for example, in the inner corner of the eye a relic of that third eyelid whereby the eagle is enabled to look at the sun. This is a harmless relic. But we have also an appendix, a degenerate organ of digestion, or gland of secretion, which now serves as a center of infection and source of danger. We have likewise a lower bowel, a survival of our hay-eating days, and a cause of autointoxication and premature death. Among the sources of trouble, Metchnikoff names the fact that the human male possesses a far greater quantity of sexual energy than is required for purposes of procreation. This becomes a cause of disharmony and excess, it causes man to wreck his health and destroy himself. Manifestly, this is a serious matter; for if it is true, our efforts to find health and happiness in love are doomed to failure, and Lecky is right when he describes the prostitute as the "guardian of virtue," the eternal and necessary scapegoat of humanity. But I do not believe it is true; I think that here is one more case of the endless blundering of scientists and philosophers who attempt to teach physiology, politics, religion and law, without having made a study of economics. I do not believe that the sex troubles of mankind are physiological in their nature, but have their origin in our present system of class privilege. I believe they are caused, not by the blunders of nature, but by the blunders of man as a social animal. Let us take a glimpse at primitive man. I choose the Marquesas Islands, because we have complete reports about them from numerous observers. Here was a race of people, not interfered with by civilization, who manifested all that overplus of sexual energy to which Metchnikoff calls attention. They placed no restraint whatever upon sex activity, they had no conception of such an idea. Their games and dances were sex play, and so also, in great part, was their religion. Yet we do not find that they wrecked themselves. Physically speaking, they were one of the most perfect races of which we have record. Both the men and women were beautiful; they were active and strong from childhood to old age, and--here is the significant thing--they were happy. They were a laughing, dancing, singing race. They hardly knew grief or fear at all. They knew how to live, and they enjoyed every process and aspect of their lives, just as children do, naively and simply. This included their sex life; and I think it assures us that there can be no such fundamental physical disharmony in the human organism as the great Russian scientist thought he had discovered. Is it not a fact that throughout nature a superfluity of any kind of energy or product may be a source of happiness, rather than of distress? Consider the singing of the birds! Or consider nature's impulse to cover a field with useless plants, and how by a little cunning, we are able to turn it into a harvest for our own use! In the life of our bodies one may show the same thing again and again. We have within us the possibility of and the impulse toward more muscular activity than our survival makes necessary; but we do not regard this additional energy as a curse of nature, and a peril to our lives--we turn out and play baseball. We have an impulse to see more than is necessary, so we climb mountains, or go traveling. We have an impulse to hear more, so we go to a concert. We have an impulse to think more, so we play chess, or whist, or write books and accumulate libraries. Never do we think of these activities as signs of an irrevocable blunder on the part of nature. But about the activities of love we feel differently; and why is this? If I say that it is because we have an unwholesome and degraded attitude toward love, because, as a result of religious superstition we fear it, and dare not deal with it honestly, the reader may suspect that I am preparing to hint at some self-indulgence, some form of sex orgy such as the "turkey trot" and the "bunny hug" and the "grizzly bear," the "shimmy" and the "toddle" and the "cuddle." I hasten to explain that I do not mean any of the abnormalities and monstrosities of present-day fashionable life. Neither do I mean that we should set out to emulate the happy cannibals in the South Seas. In the Book of the Mind I set forth as carefully as I knew how, the difference between nature and man, the life of instinct and the life of reason. It is my conviction that if civilized life is to go on, there must be a far wider extension of judgment and self-control in human affairs; our lost happiness will be found, not by going "back to nature," but by going forward to a new and higher state, planned by reason and impelled by moral idealism. But we find ourselves face to face with horrible sex disorders, and a great scientist tells us they are nature's tragic blunder, of which we are the helpless victims. Manifestly, the way to decide this question is to go to nature, and see if primitive people, having the same physical organism as ours, had the same troubles and spent their lives in the same misery. If they did, then it may be that we are doomed; but if they did not, then we can say with certainty that it is not nature, but ourselves, who have blundered. Our task then becomes to apply reason to the problem; to take our present sex arrangements, our field of bad-smelling weeds, and plow it thoroughly, and sow it with good seed, and raise a harvest of happiness in love. It is my belief that, admitting true love--honest and dignified and rational love--it is possible to pour into it any amount of sex energy, to invent a whole new system of beautiful and happy love play. CHAPTER XXXIV LOVE AND ECONOMICS (Maintains that our sex disorders are of social origin, due to the displacing of love by money as a motive in mating.) If the cause of our sex disorders is not physiological, what is it? Everything in nature must have a cause, and this includes human nature, the actions and feelings of men, both as individuals and as groups. We hear the saying: "You can't change human nature"; but the fact is that human nature is one of the most changeable things in the world. We can watch it changing from age to age, for better or for worse, and if we had the intelligence to use the forces now at our command, we could mold human nature, as precisely as a brewer converts a carload of hops into a certain brand of beer. Voltaire was author of the saying, "Vice and virtue are products like vinegar." Our civilization is based upon industrial exploitation and class privilege, the monopoly of the means of production and the natural sources of wealth by a group. This enables the privileged group to live in idleness upon the labor of the rest of society; it confers unlimited power with practically no responsibility--a strain which not one human being in a thousand has the moral strength to endure. History for the past five thousand years is one demonstration after another that the conferring upon a class of power without responsibility means the collapse of that class and the downfall of its civilization. So far as concerns the ruling class male, what the system of privilege does is to give him unlimited ability to indulge his sex desires. What it does for the female is to submit her to the male desires, and to abolish that mutuality in sex, that interaction between male and female influence, which is the very essence of its purpose. Woman, in a predatory society, is subject to a double enslavement, that of class as well as of sex, and the result is the perverting of sexual selection, and a constantly increasing tendency towards the survival of the unfit. In a state of nature the males compete among themselves for the favor of the female. The female is not raped, nor is she kidnapped; on the contrary, she exercises her prerogative, she inspects the various male charms which are set before her, and selects those which please her, according to her deeply planted instincts. The result is that the weak and unfit males seldom have a chance to reproduce themselves, and the procreating is done by the highest specimens of the type. But now we have a world which is ruled by money, in which opportunity, and indeed survival, depend upon money, and the whole tendency of society is to make money standards supreme. We do not like to admit this, of course; our instincts revolt against it, and our higher faculties reinforce the revolt, so we carefully veil our money motives, and invent polite phrases to conceal them. You will hear people deny it is money which determines admission into what is called "society," the intimate life of the ruling class. They will tell you that it is not money, it is "good taste," "refinement," "charm of personality," and so on. But if you analyze all these things, you speedily discover that they are made out of money; they are symbols of the possession of money, devised by those who possess it, as a means of keeping themselves apart from those who do not possess it. I would safely defy a member of the ruling class to name a single element in what he calls "refinement," or "good taste," that is not in its ultimate analysis a symbol of the possession of money. Let it be the pronunciation of a word, or the cut of a coat, or the method of handling a fork--whatever it may be, it is part of a code, revealing that the person, or more important yet, the ancestors of the person, have belonged to the leisure class, and have had time and opportunity to learn to do things in a certain precise conventional way. I say "conventional," for very frequently these tests have no relationship whatever to reality. Considered as a matter of common sense and convenience, it is a great deal better to eat peas with a spoon than with a fork, and to use both a knife and fork in eating lettuce; but if you eat peas with a spoon, or use a knife on lettuce, every member of the ruling class will instantly know that you are an interloper, as much so as if you took to throwing the china at your hostess. Our culture is a money culture, our standards are money standards, and our sex decisions are based upon money, not upon love. Any man can have money in our society, provided the accident of birth favors him, and it is everywhere known that any man who has money can get a wife. It is certainly not true that any man with _no_ money can get a wife, and it is true that most men who have little money have to take wives who have less--that is, who belong to a lower class, according to the world's standards. The average young girl of the propertied classes is trained for marriage as for any other business. She is taught to be sexually cold, but to imitate sexual excitement deliberately, so as to arouse it in the male, and to keep herself surrounded with a swarm of males; this being the basis of her prestige, the factor which will cause the "eligible" man, the "catch," to desire her. In polite society this proceeding is known as "coquetry," or "charm," and it would be no exaggeration to say that seventy-five per cent of all the novels so far written in the world are expositions of this activity; also that when we go to the theater, we go in order to watch and sympathize with these manifestations of pecuniary sexuality. As a rule the young girl knows what she is doing, but she is taught to camouflage it, to preserve her "innocence." She would not dream of marrying for money; she wants to marry something "distinguished"--that is to say, something which has received the stamp of approval from a world which approves money. She wants to marry somebody who is "elegant," who is in "good form"; she wants to marry without having to think about the horrid subject of money at all, and so she is carefully chaperoned, and confined to a world where nothing but money is to be met. In Tennyson's poem, "The Northern Farmer," the old fellow is coaching his son on the subject of marriage, and they are driving along a road, and the farmer listens to his horses' hoofs, and they are saying, "Proputty, proputty, proputty!" The farmer sums up in one sentence the doctrine of pecuniary marriage as it is taught to the ruling class virgin: "Doän't thee marry for money, but goä wheer money is." In this process, of course, the ruling class virgin must spend a great deal of money in order to keep up her own prestige; and when she is married, she must spend it to keep up the prestige of her unmarried sisters, and then of her children. As a result of this, the only ruling class males who can afford to marry are the rich ones. There are always some who are richer, and these are the most desirable; so the tendency with each generation is to put the period of marriage further off; the man has to wait until he has accumulated enough "proputty" to satisfy the girl of his desires--a girl whom he admires because of her pecuniary prestige. He delays, and meantime he satisfies his passions with the daughters of the poor. As a result of this, when he does finally come to marry, he is apt to be unlovely and unlovable. The woman frequently does not love him at all, but takes him cold-bloodedly because he is "eligible"; in that case she is a cold and "sexless" wife. Or else, after she has married him she discovers his unloveliness, and either decides that all men are selfish brutes, and reconciles herself to a celibate life, or else she goes out and preys upon the domestic happiness of other women. CHAPTER XXXV MARRIAGE AND MONEY (Discusses the causes of prostitution, and that higher form of prostitution known as the "marriage of convenience.") I realize that all these sex problems are complicated. Every case is individual, and in no two cases can you give exactly the same explanation. But it is my thesis that whatever the cause, if you trace down the causes of the cause, you will find economic inequality and class privilege. It is evident in the lives of the rich, and it is even more evident in the lives of the poor, who are not permitted the luxury of pretense. The poor live in a world dominated by forces which they seldom understand, subjected to enormous pressure which crushes and destroys them, without their being able to see it or touch it. In the world of the poor there is first of all poverty; there is insecurity of employment and insufficiency of wage, and the daily and hourly terror of starvation and ruin. Above this is a world of power and luxury, a wonderland of marvels and thrills, seen through a colored mist of romance. The working-class girl, born to drudgery and perpetual child-bearing, has a brief hour in which her cheeks are red and her beauty is ripe; and out of the heaven above her steps a male creature panoplied in the armor of ruling class prestige--that is to say, a dress suit--and scattering about him a shower of automobile rides, jewelry and candy and flowers. She opens her arms to him; and then, when her brief hour of rapture is past, she becomes the domestic drudge of some workingman, or else the inmate of a brothel. It is a custom of social workers and church people, seeking data about these painful subjects, to interview numbers of prostitutes, and question them as to the causes of their "fall"; so you read statistics to the effect that seventeen per cent of prostitution has an economic cause, that twenty-six per cent is caused by love of finery, etc. These pious people, employed by the ruling class to maintain ruling class prestige by demonstrating that wage slavery has nothing to do with white slavery, attain their purpose by restricting the word "economic" to food and shelter; forgetting that young girls do not live by bread alone, but also by ribbons, and silk stockings, and moving picture shows, and trips to Coney Island, and everything else that gives a momentary escape from drudgery into joy. We all understand, of course, that the daughters of the rich are entitled to joy, and we provide them with it as a matter of course; but the daughters of the poor are supposed to work in a cotton mill ten or eleven hours a day from earliest childhood, and the joy we provide for them is vicarious. As a woman poet sets it forth: "The golf links lie so near the mill That almost every day The laboring children can look out And see the men at play." Some years ago my wife and I were invited to meet Mrs. Mary J. Goode, a keeper of brothels in the "Tenderloin," who had revolted against the system of police graft, and had exposed it in the newspapers. My wife questioned her closely as to the psychology of people in her business, and she insisted that the majority of prostitutes were not oversexed, nor were they feeble minded; they were women who had loved and trusted, and had been "thrown down." As Mrs. Goode phrased it, they said to themselves: "Never again! After this, they'll pay!" As a matter of fact, the causes of prostitution are so largely economic that the other factors are hardly worth mentioning. The sale of sex is unknown in savage society, and would be unknown in a Socialist society. If here and there some degenerate individual would rather sell her sex than do her share of honest labor in a free and just world, such an individual would become a patient in the psychopathic ward of a public hospital. Economic forces drive women to prostitution, first, by direct starvation, and second, by teaching them money standards of prestige, the ideal of living without working, which is the heaven achieved by the rich and longed for by the poor. Contributory to the process are policemen, politicians, and judges who protect the property of the rich, and prey upon the disinherited; also newspaper editors, college professors, priests of God and preachers of Jesus, who attribute the social evil to "original sin," or the "weakness of human nature." So far as men are concerned, economic forces operate by three main channels; late marriage, loveless marriage, and drudgery in wives. You will find patronizing and maintaining the brothels the following kinds of males; first, young boys who have been taught that it is "manly" to gratify their sex impulses; second, young men who take it for granted that they cannot afford to marry; third, old bachelors who have looked at marriage and decided that it is not a paying proposition; fourth, married men who have been picked out for their money, and have come to the conclusion that "good women" are necessarily sexless; and finally, married men whose wives have lost the power to charm them by continuous childbearing, and the physical and nervous strain of domestic slavery. This latter applies not merely to the wives of the poor. It applies to members of the middle classes, and even of the richer classes, because the job of managing many servants is often as trying as the doing of one's own work. To explain how domestic drudgery is caused by economic pressure would require a little essay in itself. The home is the place where the man keeps his sex property apart under lock and key, and it is, therefore, the portion of our civilization least influenced by modern ideas. Women still drudge in separate kitchens and nurseries, as they have drudged for thousands of years. They cook their dinners over separate fires, and have each their own little group of children, generally ill cared for, because the work is done by an untrained amateur. Moreover, the prestige of this home has to be kept up, because the social position and future prosperity of the man depend upon it. The children must be dressed in frilled and starched clothing, which makes them miserable, and wears out the tempers and pocketbooks of the mothers. Costly entertainments must be given, and twice a day a meal must be prepared for the father of the family--all good wives have learned the ancient formula for the retention of masculine affections: "Feed the brute!" Living in a world of pecuniary prestige, every particle of the woman's surplus energy must go into some form of ostentation, into buying or making things which are futile and meaningless. In such a blind world, dazed by such a struggle, women become irritable, they lose their sex charm, they forget all about love; so the husband gives up hoping for the impossible, accepts the common idea that love and marriage are incompatible, and adopts the formula that what his wife doesn't know will not hurt her. And step by step, as economic evolution progresses, as vested wealth becomes more firmly established and claims for itself a larger and larger share of the total product of society--so step by step you find the pecuniary ideals becoming more firmly established, you find marriage becoming more and more a matter of property, and less and less a matter of love. In European countries there may still be some love marriages among the poor, but in the upper classes there is no longer any pretense of such a thing, and if you spoke of it you would be considered absurd. In countries of fresh and naive commercialism, like America, the women select the men because of their money prestige; but in Germany, the process has gone a step further--the men are so firmly established in their class positions that they insist upon being bought with a fortune. The same is true when titled foreigners condescend to visit our "land of the dollar." They will stoop to a vulgar American wife only in case her parents will make a direct settlement of a fortune upon the husband, and then they take her back home, and find their escape from boredom in the highly cultivated mistresses of their own land. Everywhere on the Continent, and in Great Britain also, it is accepted that marriages are matters of business, and only incidentally and very slightly of affection. The initiative is commonly taken, not by the young people, but by the heads of the families. Preliminary protocols are exchanged, and then the family solicitors sit down and bargain over the matter. If they were making a deal for a carload of hams, they would be governed by the market price of hams at the moment, also by the reputation of that particular brand of ham; and similarly, in the case of marriage, they are governed by the prestige of the family names, and the market price of husbands prevailing. Always the man exacts a cash settlement, and in Catholic countries he becomes the outright owner of all the property of his wife, thus reducing her completely to the status of a chattel. If any young couple dares to break through these laws of their class, the whole class unites to trample them down. One of the greatest of English novelists, George Meredith, wrote his greatest novel, "The Ordeal of Richard Feverel," to show how, under the most favorable circumstances, the union of a ruling class youth with a farmer's daughter could result in nothing but shipwreck. The country in which the property marriage is most firmly established is probably France; and in France the rights of nature are recognized in a kind of supplementary union, which constitutes what is known as the "domestic triangle," or in the French language, "_la vie trois_." The young girl of the French ruling classes is guarded every moment of her life like a prisoner in jail. She is sold in marriage, and is expected to bear her husband an heir, possibly two or three children. After that, she is considered, not under the law or by the church, but by the general common sense of the community, to be free to seek satisfaction of her love needs. Her husband has mistresses, and she has a lover, and to that lover she is faithful, and in her dealings with him she is guided by an elaborate and subtle code. Practically all French fiction and drama deal with this "life in threes," and the complications and tragedies which result from it. I name one novel, simply because it happens to be the last that I myself have read, "The Red Lily," by Anatole France. Of course, every human being knows in his heart that this is a monstrous arrangement, and there are periods of revolt when real feeling surges up in the hearts of men, and we have stories of true love, young and unselfish love, such for example as Goethe's "Hermann and Dorothea," or St. Pierre's "Paul and Virginia," or Halévy's "L'Abbe Constantin." Everybody reads these stories and weeps over them, but everybody knows that they are like the romantic shepherds and shepherdesses of the ancient régime; they never had any existence in reality, and are not meant to be taken seriously. If anybody attempts to carry them into action, or to preach them seriously to the young, then we know that we are dealing with a disturber of the foundations of the social order, a dangerous and incendiary villain, and we give him a name which sends a shudder down the spine of every friend of law and order--we call him a "free-lover." I see before my eyes the wretch cowering upon the witness stand, and the virtuous district attorney, who has perhaps spent the previous night in a brothel, pointing a finger of accusing wrath into his face, and thundering, "Do you believe in free love?" The wretch, if he is wise, will not hesitate or parley; he will not ask what the district attorney means by love, or what he means by freedom. Here in very truth is a case where "he who hesitates is lost!" Let the wretch instantly answer, No, he does not believe in free love, he believes in love that pays cash as it goes; he believes in love that investigates carefully the prevailing market conditions, decides upon a reasonable price, has the contract in writing, and lives up to the bargain--"till death do us part." If the witness be a woman, let the answer be that she believes in slave love; that she expects to be sold for the benefit of her parents, the prestige of her family and the social position of her future offspring. Let her say that she will be a loyal and devoted servant, and will never do anything at any time to invalidate the contract which is signed for her by her parents or guardians. CHAPTER XXXVI LOVE VERSUS LUST (Discusses the sex impulse, its use and misuse; when it should be followed and when repressed.) We have considered the sex disorders of our age and their causes. We have now to grope our way towards a basis of sanity and health in these vital matters. Consider man, as Metchnikoff describes him, with his overplus of sex energy. From early youth he is besieged by impulses and desires, and as a rule is left entirely uninstructed on the subject, having to pick up his ideas from the conversation of older lads, who have nothing but misinformation and perversions to give him. Nearly all these older lads declare and believe that it is necessary to gratify the sex impulse, that physically it is harmful not to do so. I have even heard physicians and trainers maintain that idea. Opposed to them are the official moralists and preachers of religion, who declare that to follow the sex impulse, except when officially sanctioned by the church, is to commit sin. At different times in my life I have talked with all kinds of people, young and old, men and women, doctors and clergymen, teachers and trainers of athletes, and a few wise and loving mothers who have talked with their own boys and other boys. As a result I have come to agree with neither side in the debate. I believe that there is a distinction which must be drawn, and I ask you to consider it carefully, and bear it in mind in all that I say on the problem of happiness and health in sex. I believe that a normal man is one being, manifesting himself in various aspects, physical, emotional, intellectual. I believe that all these aspects of human activity go normally together, and cannot normally be separated, and that the separation of them is a perversion and source of harm. I believe that the sex impulse, as it normally manifests itself, and would manifest itself in a man if he were living a normal life, is an impulse which includes every aspect of the man's being. It is not merely physical desire and emotional excitement; it is intellectual curiosity, a deep and intense interest, not merely in the body, but in the mind and heart and personality of the woman. I appreciate that there is opportunity for controversy here. As a matter of psychology, it is not easy to separate instinct from experience, to state whether a certain impulse is innate or acquired. Some may argue that savages know nothing about idealism in sex, neither do those modern savages whom we breed in city slums; some may make the same assertion concerning a great mass of loutish and sensual youths. We have got so far from health and soundness that it is hard to be sure what is "normal" and what is "ideal." But without going into metaphysics, I think we can reasonably make the following statement concerning the sex impulse at its first appearance in the average healthy youth in civilized societies; that this impulse, going to the roots of the being, affecting every atom of energy and every faculty, is accompanied, not merely by happiness, but by sympathetic delight in the happiness of the woman, by interest in the woman, by desire to be with her, to stay with her and share her life and protect her from harm. In what I have to say about the subject from now on, I shall describe this condition of being and feeling by the word "love." But now suppose that men should, for some reason or other, evolve a set of religious ideas which denied love, and repudiated love, and called it a sin and a humiliation; or suppose there should be an economic condition which made love a peril, so that the young couple which yielded to love would be in danger of starvation, or of seeing their children starve. Suppose there should be evolved classes of men and women, held by society in a condition of permanent semi-starvation; then, under such conditions, the impulse to love would become a trap and a source of terror. Then the energies of a great many men would be devoted to suppressing love and strangling it in themselves; then the intellectual and spiritual sanctions of love would be withdrawn, the beauty and charm and joy would go out of it, and it would become a starving beggar at the gates, or a thief skulking in the night-time, or an assassin with a dagger and club. In other words, sex would become all the horror that it is today, in the form of purchased vice, and more highly purchased marriage, and secret shame, and obscure innuendo. So we should have what is, in a civilized man, a perversion, the possibility of love which is physical alone; a purely animal thing in a being who is not purely animal, but is body, mind and spirit all together. So it would be possible for pitiful, unhappy man, driven by the blind urge of nature, to conceive of desiring a woman only in the body, and with no care about what she felt, or what she thought, or what became of her afterwards. That purely physical sex desire I will indicate in our future discussions by the only convenient word that I can find, which is lust. The word has religious implications, so I explain that I use it in my own meaning, as above. There is a great deal of what the churches call lust, which I call true and honest love; on the other hand, in Christian churches today, there are celebrated innumerable marriages between innocent young girls and mature men of property, which I describe as legalized and consecrated lust. We are now in position to make a fundamental distinction. I assert the proposition that there does not exist, in any man, at any time of his life, or in any condition of his health, a necessity for yielding to the impulses of lust; and I say that no man can yield to them without degrading his nature and injuring himself, not merely morally, but mentally, and in the long run physically. I assert that it is the duty of every man, at all times and under all circumstances, to resist the impulses of lust, to suppress and destroy them in his nature, by whatever expenditure of will power and moral effort may be required. I know physicians who maintain the unpopular thesis that serious damage may be done to the physical organism of both man and woman by the long continued suppression of the sex-life. Let me make plain that I am not disagreeing with such men. I do not deny that repression of the sex-life may do harm. What I do deny is that it does any harm to repress a physical desire which is unaccompanied by the higher elements of sex; that is to say, by affection, admiration, and unselfish concern for the sex-partner and her welfare. When I advise a man to resist and suppress and destroy the impulse toward lust in his nature, I am not telling him to live a sexless life. I am telling him that if he represses lust, then love will come; whereas, if he yields to lust, then love may never come, he may make himself incapable of love, incapable of feeling it or of trusting it, or of inspiring it in a woman. And I say that if, on the other hand, he resists lust, he will pour all the energies of his being into the channels of affection and idealism. Instead of having his thoughts diverted by every passing female form, his energies will become concentrated upon the search for one woman who appeals to him in permanent and useful ways. We may be sure that nature has not made men and women incompatible, but on the contrary, has provided for fulfillment of the desires of both. The man will find some woman who is looking for the thing which he has to offer--that is, love. And now, what about the suppression of love? Here I am willing to go as far as any physician could desire, and possibly farther. Speaking generally, and concerning normal adult human beings, I say that the suppression of love is a crime against nature and life. I say that long continued and systematic suppression of love exercises a devastating effect, not merely upon the body, but upon the mind and all the energies of the being. I say that the doctrine of the suppression of love, no matter by whom it is preached, is an affront to nature and to life, and an insult to the creator of life. I say that it is the duty of all men and women, not merely to assert their own right to love, but to devote their energies to a war upon whatever ideas and conventions and laws in society deny the love-right. The belief that long continued suppression of love does grave harm has been strongly reinforced in the last few years by the discovery of psycho-analysis, a science which enables us to explore our unconscious minds, and lay bare the secrets of nature's psychic workshop. These revelations have made plain that sex plays an even more important part in our mental lives than we realized. Sex feeling manifests itself, not merely in grown people, but in the tiniest infants; in these latter it has of course no object in the opposite sex, but the physical sensations are there, and some of their outward manifestations; and as the infant grows, and realizes the outside world, the feelings come to center upon others, the parents first of all. These manifestations must be guided, and sometimes repressed; but if this is done violently, by means of terror, the consequences may be very harmful--the wrong impulses or the terrors may survive as a "complex" in the unconscious mind, and cause a long chain of nervous disorders and physical weaknesses in the adult. These things are no matter of guesswork, they have been proven as thoroughly as any scientific discovery, and are used in a new technic of healing. Of course, as with every new theory, there are unbalanced people who carry it to extremes. There are fanatics of Freudianism who talk as if everything in the human unconsciousness were sex; but that need not blind us to the importance of these new discoveries, and the confirmation they bring to the thesis that sane and normal love, wisely guided by common sense and reasoned knowledge, is at a certain period of life a vital necessity to every sound human being. CHAPTER XXXVII CELIBACY VERSUS CHASTITY (The ideal of the repression of the sex impulse, as against the ideal of its guidance and cultivation.) There are two words which we need in this discussion, and as they are generally used loosely, they must now be defined precisely. The two words are celibacy and chastity. We define celibacy as the permanent and systematic suppression of love. We define chastity, on the other hand, as the permanent and systematic suppression of lust. Chastity, as the word is here used, is not a denial of love, but a preparing for it; it is the practice and the ideal, necessary especially in the young, of consecrating their beings to the search for love, and to becoming worthy for love. In that sense we regard chastity as one of the most essential of virtues in the young. It is widely taught today, but ineffectively, because unintelligently and without discrimination; because, in other words, it is confused with celibacy, which is a perversion of life, and one of humanity's intellectual and moral diseases. The origin of the ideal of celibacy is easy to understand. At a certain stage in human development the eyes of the mind are opened, and to some man comes a revelation of the life of altruism and sympathetic imagination. To use the common phrase, the man discovers his spiritual nature. But under the conditions then prevailing, all the world outside him is in a conspiracy to strangle that nature, to drag it down and trample it into the mire. One of the most powerful of these destructive agencies, as it seems to the man, is sex. By means of sex he is laid hold upon by strange and terrible creatures who do not understand his higher vision, but seek only to prey upon him, and use him for their convenience. At the worst they rob him of everything, money, health, time and reputation; at best, they saddle him and bridle him, they put him in harness and set him to dragging a heavy load. In the words of a wise old man of the world, Francis Bacon, "He who marries and has children gives hostages to fortune." In a world wherein war, pestilence, and famine held sway, the man of family had but slight chance of surviving as a philosopher or prophet or saint. Discovering in himself a deep-rooted and overwhelming impulse to fall into this snare, he imagined a devil working in his heart; so he fled away to the desert, and hid in a cave, and starved himself, and lashed himself with whips, and allowed worms and lice to devour his body, in the effort to destroy in himself the impulse of sex. So the world had monasteries, and a religious culture, not of much use, but better than nothing; and so we still have in the world celibate priesthoods, and what is more dangerous to our social health, we have the old, degraded notions of the essential vileness of the sex relationship--notions permeating all our thought, our literature, our social conventions and laws, making it impossible for us to attain true wisdom and health and happiness in love. I say the ideal of celibacy is an intellectual and moral disease; it is a violation of nature, and nature devotes all her energies to breaking it down, and she always succeeds. There never has been a celibate religious order, no matter how noble its origin and how strict its discipline, which has not sooner or later become a breeding place of loathsome unnatural vices. And sooner or later the ideal begins to weaken, and common sense to take its place, and so we read in history about popes who had sons, and we see about us priests who have "nieces" and attractive servant girls. Make the acquaintance of any police sergeant in any big city of America, and get him to chatting on friendly terms, and you will discover that it is a common experience for the police in their raids upon brothels to catch the representatives of celibate religious orders. As one old-timer in the "Tenderloin" of New York said to me, "Of course, we don't make any trouble for the good fathers." Nor was this merely because the old sergeant was an Irishman and a Catholic; it was because deep down in his heart he knew, as every man knows, that the craving of a man for the society and companionship of a woman is an overwhelming craving, which will break down every barrier that society may set against it. There is another form of celibacy which is not based upon religious ideas, but is economic in its origin, and purely selfish in its nature. It is unorganized and unreasoned, and is known as "bachelorhood"; it has as its complements the institutions of old maidenhood and of prostitution. Both forms of celibacy, the religious and the economic, are entirely incompatible with chastity, which is only possible where love is recognized and honored. Chastity is a preparation for love; and if you forbid love, whether by law, or by social convention, or by economic strangling, you at once make chastity a Utopian dream. You may preach it from your pulpits until you are black in the face; you may call out your Billy Sundays to rave, and dance, and go into convulsions; you may threaten hell-fire and brimstone until you throw whole audiences into spasms--but you will never make them chaste. On the contrary, strange and horrible as it may seem, those very excitements will turn into sexual excitements before your eyes! So subtle is our ancient mother nature, and so determined to have her own way! The abominable old ideal of celibacy, with its hatred of womanhood, its distrust of happiness, its terror of devils, is not yet dead in the world. It is in our very bones, and is forever appearing in new and supposed to be modern forms. Take a man like Tolstoi, who gained enormous influence, not merely in Russia, but throughout the world among people who think themselves liberal--humanitarians, pacifists, philosophic anarchists. Tolstoi's notions about sex, his teachings and writings and likewise his behavior toward it, were one continuous manifestation of disease. All through his youth and middle years, as an army officer, popular novelist, and darling of the aristocracy, his life was one of license, and the attitude toward women he thus acquired, he never got out of his thoughts to his last day. Gorky, meeting him in his old age, reports his conversation as unpleasantly obscene, and his whole attitude toward women one of furtive and unwholesome slyness. But Tolstoi was in other ways a great soul, one of the great moral consciences of humanity. He looked about him at a world gone mad with greed and hate, and he made convulsive efforts to reform his own spirit and escape the power of evil. As regards sex, his thought took the form of ancient Christian celibacy. Man must repudiate the physical side of sex, he must learn to feel toward women a "pure" affection, the relationship of brother and sister. In his novel, "Resurrection," Tolstoi portrays a young aristocrat who meets a beautiful peasant girl and conceives for her such a noble and generous emotion; but gradually the poison of physical sex-desire steals into his mind, he seduces her, and she becomes a prostitute. Later in life, when he discovers the crime he has committed, he humbles himself and follows her into exile, and wins her to God and goodness by the unselfish and unsexual love which he should have maintained from the beginning. It was Tolstoi's teaching that all men should aspire toward this kind of love, and when it was pointed out to him that if this doctrine were to be applied universally, the human race would become extinct, his answer was that there was no reason to fear that, because only a few people would be good enough and strong enough to follow the right ideal! Here you see the reincarnation of the old Christian notion that we are "conceived in sin and born in iniquity." We may be pure and good, and cease to exist; or we may sin, and let life continue. Some choose to sin, and these sinners hand down their sinful qualities to the future; and so virtue and goodness remain what they have always been, a futile crying out in the wilderness by a few religious prophets, whom God has sent to call down destruction upon a world which He had made--through some mistake never satisfactorily explained! It is easy nowadays to persuade intelligent people to laugh at such a perverted view of life; but the truth is that this attitude toward sex is written, not merely into our religious creeds and formulas, but into most of our laws and social conventions. It is this, which for convenience I will call the "monkish" view of love, which prevents our dealing frankly and honestly with its problems, distinguishing between what is wrong and what is right, and doing anything effective to remedy the evils of marriage-plus-prostitution. That is why I have tried so carefully to draw the distinction between what I call love and what I call lust; between the ideal of celibacy, which is a perversion, and the idea of chastity, which must form an essential part of any regimen of true and enduring love. CHAPTER XXXVIII THE DEFENSE OF LOVE (Discusses passionate love, its sanction, its place in life, and its preservation in marriage.) I have before me as I write a newspaper article by Robert Blatchford, a great writer and great man. He is dealing with the subject of "Love and Marriage," and his doctrine is summed up in the following sentences: "There is a difference between loving a woman and falling in love with her. The love one falls into is a sweet illusion. But that fragrant dream does not last. In marriage there are no fairies." This expresses one of the commonest ideas in the world. Passionate love is one thing, and marriage is another and different thing, and it is no more possible to reconcile them than to mix oil and water. Our notions of "romantic" love took their rise in the Middle Ages, from the songs and narratives of the troubadours, and this whole tradition was based upon the glorification of illegitimate and extra-marital love. That tradition has ruled the world of art ever since, and rules it today. I do not exaggerate when I say that it is the conventional view of grand opera and the drama, of moving pictures and novels, that impassioned and thrilling love is found before marriage, and is found in adultery and in temptations to adultery, but is never found in marriage. I have a pretty varied acquaintance with the literature of the world, and I have sat and thought for quite a while, without being able to recall a single portrait of life which contradicts this thesis; and certainly anyone familiar with literature could name ten thousand novels and dramas and grand operas which support the thesis. English and American Puritanism have beaten the tradition down to this extent: the novelist portrays the glories and thrills of young love, and carries it as far as the altar and the orange blossoms and white ribbons and showers of rice--and stops. He leaves you to assume that this delightful rapture continues forever after; but he does not attempt to show it to you--he would not dare attempt to show it, because the general experience of men and women in marriage would make him ridiculous. So he runs away from the issue; if he tells you a story of married life, it is a story of a "triangle"--the thrills of love imperiling marriage, and either crushed out, or else wrecking the lives of the victims. Such is the unanimous testimony of all our arts today, and I submit it as evidence of the fact that there must be something vitally wrong with our marriage system. Personally, I am prepared to go as far as the extreme sex-radical in the defense of love and the right to love. I believe that love is the most precious of all the gifts of life. I accept its sanctions and its authority. I believe that it is to be cherished and obeyed, and not to be run away from or strangled in the heart. I believe that it is the voice of nature speaking in the depths of us, and speaking from a wisdom deeper than we have yet attained, or may attain for many centuries to come. And when I say love, I do not mean merely affection. I do not mean merely the habit of living in the same home, which is the basis of marriage as Blatchford describes it. What I mean is the love of the poets and the dreamers, the "young love" which is thrill and ecstasy, a glorification and a transfiguration of the whole of life. I say that, far from giving up this love for marriage, it is the true purpose of marriage to preserve this love and perpetuate it. To save repetition and waste of words, let us agree that from now on when I use the word love, I mean the passionate love of those who are "in love." I believe that it is the right of men and women to be "in love," and that there is no true marriage unless they are "in love," and stay "in love." I believe that it is possible to apply reason to love, to learn to understand love and the ways of love, to protect it and keep it alive in marriage. Blatchford writes the sentence, "Matrimony cannot be all honeymoon." I answer that assuredly it can be, and if you ask me how I know, I tell you that I know in the only way we really know anything--because I have proven it in my own life. I say that if men and women would recognize the perpetuation of the honeymoon as the purpose of marriage, and would devote to that end one-hundredth part of the intelligence and energy they now devote to the killing of their fellow human beings in war, we might have an end to the wretched "romantic tradition" which makes the most sacred emotion of the human heart into a sneak-thief skulking in the darkness, entering our lives by back alleys and secret stairways--while greed and worldly pomp, dullness and boredom, parade in by the front entrance. In the first place, what is love--young love, passionate love, the love of those who "fall in"? I know a certain lady, well versed in worldly affairs, who says that it is at once the greatest nonsense and the deadliest snare in the world. This lady was trained as a "coquette"; she, and all the young ladies she knew, made it their business to cause men to fall in love with them, and their prestige was based upon their skill in that art. So to them "love" was a joke, and men "in love" were victims, whether ridiculous or pitiable. To this I answer that I know nothing in life that cannot be "faked"; but an imitation has value only as it resembles something that is real, and that has real value. I am aware that it is possible for a society to be so corrupted, so given up to the admiration of imitations, of the paint and powder and silk-stocking-clad-ankle kind of love, that true and genuine love interest, with its impulse to self-sacrifice and self-consecration, is no longer felt or understood. I am aware that in such a society it is possible for even the very young to be so sophisticated that what they take to be love is merely vanity, the worship of money, and the grace and charm which the possession of money confers. I have known girls who were "head over heels" in love, and thought it was with a man, when quite clearly they were in love with a dress suit or a social position. In such a society it is hard to talk about natural emotions, and deep and abiding and disinterested affections. Nevertheless, amid all the false conventions, the sham glories and cowardices of our civilization, there abides in the heart the craving for true love, and the idea of it leaps continually into flame in the young. In spite of the ridicule of the elders, in spite of blunders and tragic failures, in spite of dishonesties and deceptions--nevertheless, it continues to happen that out of a thousand maidens the youth finds one whose presence thrills him with a new and terrible emotion, whose lightest touch makes him shiver, almost makes his knees give way. If you will recall what I have written about instinct and reason, you will know that I am not a blind worshipper of our ancient mother nature. I am not humble in my attitude toward her, but perfectly willing to say when I know more than she does. On the other hand, when I know nothing or next to nothing, I am shy of contradicting my ancient mother, and disposed to give respectful heed to her promptings. One of the things about which we know almost nothing at present is the subject of eugenics. We are only at the beginning of trying to find out what matings produce the best offspring. Meantime, we ought to consider those indications which nature gives us, just as we consider her advice about what food to eat and what rest to take. It is not my idea that science will ever take men and women and marry them in cold blood, as today we breed our cattle. What I think will happen is that young men and women will meet one another, as they do at present, and will find the love impulse awakening; they will then submit their love to investigation, as to whether they should follow that impulse, or should wait. In other words, I do not believe that science will ever do away with the raptures of love, but will make itself the servant of these raptures, finding out what they mean, and how their precious essence may be preserved. I perfectly understand that the begetting of children is not the only purpose of love. The children have to be reared and trained, which means that a home has to be founded, and the parents have to learn to co-operate. They have to have common aims in life, and temperaments sufficiently harmonious so that they can live in the house together without tearing each other's eyes out. This means that in any civilized society all impulses of love have to be subjected to severe criticism. I intend, before long, to show just how I think parents and guardians should co-operate with young people in love; to help them to understand in advance what they are doing, and how it may be possible for them to make their love permanent and successful. For the moment I merely state, to avoid any possible misunderstanding, that I am the last person in the world to favor what is called "blind" love, the unthinking abandonment to an impulse of sex passion. What I am trying to show is that the passionate impulse, the passionate excitement of the young couple, is the material out of which love and marriage are made. Passion is a part of us, and a fundamental part. If we do not find a place for it in marriage, it will seek satisfaction outside of marriage, and that means lying, or the wrecking of the marriage, or both. Passion is what gives to love and marriage its vitality, its energy, its drive; in fact, it gives these qualities to the whole character. It is a vivifying force, transfiguring the personality, and if it is crushed and repressed, the whole life of that person is distorted. Yet it is a fact which every physician knows, that millions of women marry and live their whole lives without ever knowing what passionate gratification is. As a consequence of this, millions of men take it for granted that there are "good" women and "bad" women, and that only the latter are interesting. This, of course, is simply one of the abnormalities caused by the supplanting of love by money as a motive in marriage. Love becomes a superfluity and a danger, and all the forces of society, including institutionalized religion, combine to outlaw it and drive it underground. Or we might say that they lock it in a dungeon--and that the supreme delight of all the painters, poets, musicians, dramatists and novelists of all climes and all periods of history, is to portray the escape of the "young god" from these imprisonments. The story is told in six words of an old English ballad: "Love will find out the way!" Is it not obvious that there must be something vitally wrong with our institutions and conventions in matters of sex, when here exists this eternal war between our moralists and our artists? Why not make up our minds what we really believe; whether it is true that poets are, as Shelley said, "the unacknowledged legislators of mankind," or whether they are, as Plato declared, false teachers and seducers of the young. If they are the latter, let us have done with them, let us drive them from the state, together with lovers and all other impassioned persons. But if, on the other hand, it is truth the poets tell about life, then let us take the young god out of his dungeon, and bring him into our homes by the front door, and cast out the false gods of vanity and greed and worldly prestige which now sit in his place. CHAPTER XXXIX BIRTH CONTROL (Deals with the prevention of conception as one of the greatest of man's discoveries, releasing him from nature's enslavement, and placing the keys of life in his hands.) I assume that you have followed my argument, and are prepared to consider seriously whether it may be possible to establish love in marriage as the sex institution of civilized society. If you really wish to bring such an institution into existence, the first thing you have to do is to accomplish the social revolution; that is, you must wipe out class control of society, and prestige based upon money exploitation. But that is a vast change, and will take time, and meanwhile we have to live, and wish to live with as little misery as possible. So the practical question becomes this: Suppose that you, as an individual, wish to find as much happiness in love as may now be possible, what counsel have I to offer? If you are young, you wish this advice for yourself; while if you are mature, you wish it for your children. I will put my advice under four heads: First, marriage for love; second, birth control; third, early marriage; fourth, education for marriage. The first of these we have considered at some length. A part of the process of social revolution is personal conversion; the giving up by every individual of the worldly ideal, the surrender of luxury and self-indulgence, the consecrating of one's life to self education and the cause of social justice. And do not think that that is an easy thing, or an unimportant thing, a thing to be taken for granted. On the contrary, it is something that most of us have to struggle with at every hour of our lives, because respect for property and worldly conventions has become one of our deepest instincts; our whole society is poisoned with it, and I can count on the fingers of one hand the people I have known in my life who have completely escaped from it. It is not merely a question of refusing to marry except for love, it is a question of refusing to love except for honest and worthy qualities. It is a question of saving our children from the damnable forces of snobbery, which lay siege to their young minds and destroy the best impulses of their hearts, while we in our blindness are still thinking of them as babies. Of the other three topics that I have suggested, I begin with birth control, because it is the most fundamental and most important. Without birth control there can be no freedom, no happiness, no permanence in love, and there can be no mastery of life. Birth control is one of the great fundamental achievements of the human reason, as important to the life of mankind as the discovery of fire or the invention of printing. Birth control is the deliverance of womankind, and therefore of mankind also, from the blind and insane fecundity of nature, which created us animals, and would keep us animals forever if we did not rebel. Ever since the dawn of history, and probably for long ages before that, our race has been struggling against this blind insanity of nature. Poor, bewildered Theodore Roosevelt stormed at what he called "race suicide," thinking it was some brand new and terrible modern corruption; but nowhere do we find a primitive tribe, nowhere in history do we find a race which did not seek to save itself from overgrowth and consequent starvation. They did not know enough to prevent conception, but they did the best they could by means of abortion and infanticide. And because today superstition keeps the priceless knowledge of contraception from the vast majority of women, these crude, savage methods still prevail, and we have our million abortions a year in the United States. Assuming that something near one-fourth our population consists of women capable of bearing children, we have one woman in twenty-five going through this agonizing and health-wrecking experience every year. They go through with it, you understand, regardless of everything--all the moralists and preachers and priests with their hell fire and brimstone. They go through with it because we have both marriage without love, and love without marriage; also because we permit some ten or twenty per cent of our total population to suffer the pangs of perpetual starvation, because more than half our farms are mortgaged or occupied by tenants, and some ten or twenty per cent of our workers are out of jobs all the time. Some of our women know about birth control. They are the rich women, who get what they want in this world. They object to the humiliations and inconveniences of child bearing, and some of them raise one or two children, and others of them raise poodle dogs. Also, our middle classes have found out; our doctors and lawyers and college professors, and people of that sort. But we deliberately keep the knowledge from our foreign populations, by the terrors which the church has at its command. And what is the practical consequence of this procedure? It is that while all our Anglo-Saxon stock, those who founded our country and established its institutions, are gradually removing themselves from the face of the earth, our ignorant and helpless populations, whether in city slums or on tenant farms, are multiplying like rabbits. Read Jack London's "The Valley of the Moon" and see what is happening in California. You will find the same thing happening in any portion of the United States where you take the trouble to use your own eyes. Now, I try to repress such impulses toward race prejudice as I find in myself. I am willing to admit for the sake of this argument that in the course of time all the races that are now swarming in America, Portuguese and Japanese and Mexican and French-Canadian and Polish and Hungarian and Slovakian, are capable of just as high intellectual development as our ancestors who wrote the Declaration of Independence. But no one who sees the conditions under which they now live can deny that it will take a good deal of labor, teaching them and training them, as well as scrubbing them, to accomplish that result. And what a waste of energy, what a farce it makes of culture, to take the people who have already been scrubbed and taught and trained for self-government, and exterminate them, and raise up others in their place! It seems time that we gave thought to the fundamental question, whether or not there is something self-destroying in the very process of culture. Unless we can answer this we might as well give up our visions and our efforts to lift the race. Theodore Roosevelt stormed at birth control for something like ten years, and it would be interesting if we could know how many Anglo-Saxon babies he succeeded in bringing into the world by his preachments. If what he wanted was to correct the balance between native and foreign births, how much more sensible to have taught birth control to those poor, pathetic, half-starved and overworked foreign mothers of our slums and tenant farms! I can wager that for every Anglo-Saxon baby that Theodore Roosevelt brought into the world by his preachings, he could have kept out ten thousand foreign slum babies, if only he had lent his aid to Margaret Sanger! Ah, but he wanted all the babies to be born, you say! I see before me the face of a certain devout old Christian lady, known to me, who settles the question by the Bible quotation, "Be fruitful and multiply." But what avails it to follow this biblical advice, if we allow one out of five of the new-born infants to perish from lack of scientific care before they are two years old? What avails it if we send them to school hungry, as we do twenty-two per cent of the public school children of New York City? What avails it if we allow venereal disease to spread, so that a large percentage of the babies are deformed and miserable? What avails it if, when they are fully grown, we can think of nothing better to do with them than to take them by millions at a time and dress them up in uniforms and send them out to be destroyed by poison gases? Would it not be the part of common sense to establish universal birth control for at least a year or two--until we have learned to take care of our newly born babies, and to feed our school children, and to protect our youths from vice, and to abolish poverty and war from the earth? These are the social aspects of birth control. There are also to be considered what I might call the personal aspects of it. Because young people do not know about it, and have no way to find out about it, they dare not marry, and so the amount of vice in the world is increased. Because married women do not know about it, love is turned to terror, and marital happiness is wrecked. Because the harmless and proper methods are not sensibly taught, people use harmful methods, which cause nervous disorders, and wreck marital happiness, and break up homes. Thorough and sound knowledge about birth control is just as essential to happiness in marriage as knowledge of diet is necessary to health, or as knowledge of economics is necessary to intelligent action as a voter and citizen. The suppression by law of knowledge of birth control is just as grave a crime against human life as ever was committed by religious bigotry in the blackest days of the Spanish Inquisition. Now this law stands on the statute books of our country, and if I should so much as hint to you in this book what you need to know, or even where you can find out about it, I should be liable to five years in jail and a fine of $5,000, and every person who mailed a copy of this book, or any advertisement of this book, would be in the same plight. But there is not yet a law to prohibit agitation against the law, so the first thing I say to every reader of this book is that they should obtain a copy of the _Birth Control Review_, published at 104 Fifth Avenue, New York, and also should join the Voluntary Parenthood League, 206 Broadway, New York. Get the literature of these organizations and circulate them and help spread the light! As to the knowledge which you need, the only advice I am allowed to give is that you should seek it. Seek it, and persist in seeking, until you find it. Ask everyone you know; and ask particularly among enlightened people, those who are willing to face the facts of human life and trust in reason and common sense. I do not know if I am violating the law in thus telling you how to find out about birth control. One of the charming features of this law, and others against the spreading of knowledge, is that they will never tell you in advance what you may say, but leave you to say it and take your chances! I believe that I am not violating any law when I tell you that there are half a dozen simple, inexpensive, and entirely harmless methods of preventing undesired parenthood without the destruction of the marital relationship. I am one of those who for many years believed that the destruction of the marital relationship was the only proper and moral method. I was brought up to take the monkish view of love. I thought it was an animal thing which required some outside justification. I had been taught nothing else; but now I have had personal experience of other justifications of love, and I believe that love is a beautiful and joyful relationship, which not merely requires no other justification, but confers justification upon many other things in life. I used to believe in that old ideal of celibacy, thinking it a fine spiritual exercise. But since then I have looked out on life, and have found so many interesting things to do, so much important work calling for attention, that I do not have to invent any artificial exercises for my spirit. I have looked at humanity, and brought myself to recognize the plain common sense fact--that whatever superfluous energy I may have to waste upon artificial spirituality, the great mass of the people have no such energy to spare. They need all their energies to get a living for themselves and for their wives and little ones. They have their sex impulses, and will follow them, and the only question is, shall they follow them wisely or unwisely? The religious people decide that sexual indulgence is wrong, and they impose a penalty--and what is that penalty? A poor, unwanted little waif of a soul, which never sinned, and had nothing to do with the matter, is brought into a hostile world, to suffer neglect, and perhaps starvation--in order to punish parents who did not happen to be sufficiently strong willed to practice continence in marriage! I used to believe that there was benefit to health and increase of power, whether physical or mental, in the celibate life. I have tried both ways of life, and as a result I know that that old idea is nonsense. I know now that love is a natural function. Of course, like any other function it can be abused; just as hunger may become gluttony, sleeping may become sluggishness, getting the money to pay one's way through life may become ferocious avarice. But we do not on this account refuse ever to eat or sleep or get money to pay our debts. I do not say that I believe, I say I know, that free and happy love, guided by wisdom and sound knowledge, is not merely conducive to health, but is in the long run necessary to health. People who condemn birth control always argue as if one wished to teach this knowledge indiscriminately to the young. Perhaps it is natural that those who oppose the use of reason should assume that others are as irrational as themselves. All I can say is that I no more believe in teaching birth control to the young than I believe in feeding beefsteak to nursing infants. There is a period in life for beefsteaks--or, if my vegetarian friends prefer, for lentil hash and peanut butter sandwiches; in exactly the same way there is a time for teaching the fundamentals of sex, and another time for teaching the art of happiness in marriage, which includes birth control. That brings me, by a very pleasant transition, to the other two subjects which I have promised to discuss: early marriage and education for marriage. CHAPTER XL EARLY MARRIAGE (Discusses love marriages, how they can be made, and the duty of parents in respect to them.) I have shown how economic forces in our society make for later and later marriage; and at the present time economic forces are so overwhelming that all other forces are hardly worth mentioning in comparison. You are, let us say, the mother of a boy of eighteen, and you have what you call "common sense"--meaning thereby a grasp of the money facts of life. If your darling boy of eighteen should come to you with a grave face and announce, "Mother dear, I have met the girl I love, and we have decided that we want to get married"--you would consider that the most absurd thing you had ever heard in all your born days, and you would tell the lad that he was a baby, and to run along and play. If he persisted in his crazy notion, you and your husband and all the brothers and sisters and relatives and friends both of the boy and the girl would set to work, by scolding and ridiculing, to make life a misery for them, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred you would break down the young couple's marital intention. But now, let us try another supposition. Let us suppose that your darling boy of eighteen should come to you again and say, "Mother dear, some of the boys are going to spend this evening in a brothel, and I have decided to go along." Would you think that was the most absurd thing you had ever heard in all your born days? Or would you answer, "Yes, of course, my boy; that is what I had in mind when I made you give up the girl you loved"? No, you would not answer that. But here is the vital fact--it doesn't matter what you would answer, for you would never have a chance to answer. When a mother's darling wants to get married, he comes and asks his mother's blessing; but never does a mother's darling ask a blessing before he goes with the other boys to a brothel. He just goes. Maybe he borrows the money from some other fellow, and next day tells you he went to a theater. Or maybe he picks up some poor man's daughter on the street, and takes her into the park, or up on the roof of a tenement. Some such thing he does, to find satisfaction for an instinct which you in your worldly wisdom or your heavenly piety spurn and ridicule. I do not wish to exaggerate. If you are an exceptionally wise and tactful mother, you may keep the confidence of your boy, and guide him day by day through his temptations and miseries, and keep him chaste. But the more you try that, the more apt you will be to come to my conclusion, that late marriage is a crime against the race; the more aware you will be of the danger, either that his boy friends may break him down, or that some lewd woman may come to his bedroom in the night-time. Never will you be able to be quite sure that he is not lying to you, because of his shame, and the pain he cannot bear to inflict upon you. Never will you be quite sure that he is not hiding some cruel disease, sneaking off to some quack who takes his money and leaves him worse than before--until finally he shoots off his head, as happened to a nephew of an old and dear friend of mine. Such is the problem of the mother of a son; and now, what about the mother of a daughter? This seems much simpler; because your daughter is not generally troubled with sex cravings, and if you teach her the proprieties, and see that she is carefully chaperoned, you may reasonably hope that she will be chaste. But some day you expect that she will marry; and then comes your problem. If you are the usual mother, you are looking for some one who can maintain her in the state of life to which she is accustomed. If a fairy prince would come along, or a plaster saint, you would be pleased; but failing that, you will take a successful business man, one who has made his way in the world and secured himself a position. But turn back to the figures I gave you a while ago. If this man is thirty years of age, there is at least a fifty-fifty chance that he has had some venereal disease; and while the doctors claim to cure these diseases absolutely, we must bear in mind that doctors are human, and sometimes claim more than they perform. Every doctor will admit, if you pin him down, that these diseases burrow deeply into the tissues, and many times are supposed to be cured when they are only hidden. Here is, in a nutshell, the problem of the mother of a daughter. If you marry your daughter at seventeen to a lad of her own age, you have a very good chance of marrying her to a person who is chaste. If you marry her to a man of twenty-five, you have perhaps one chance in a hundred. If you marry her to a man of thirty-five, you have perhaps one chance in ten thousand. You may not like these facts; I do not like them myself; but I have learned that facts are none the less facts on that account. You know the average society bud of eighteen, and her attitude to a boy of the same age. She regards him as a child; and you think, perhaps, that it is natural for a girl to be interested in men of thirty-five and even forty-five. But I tell you that it is not natural, it is simply one of the perversions of pecuniary sex. The girl is interested in such men, because all her young life she has been carefully coached for the marriage market; because she is dressed for it, and solemnly brought out, and introduced to other players of this exciting game of marriage for money, with its incredible prizes of automobiles and jewels and palaces full of servants, and magic check-books that never grow empty. But suppose that, instead of regarding her as a prize in a lottery, you let her grow up naturally, and taught her the truth about herself, both body and mind; suppose that, instead of dressing her in ways deliberately contrived to emphasize her sex, you put her in a simple uniform, and taught her to be honest and straightforward, instead of mincing and coy; suppose she played athletic games with boys of her own age, and invited them to her home, not for "jazz" dancing and stuffing cake and candy, but for the sharing of good music and literature and art--don't you think that maybe this girl might become interested in a lad of her own age, and choose him with some understanding of his real self? You take it for granted that young people should not marry until they can "afford it." But stop and consider, is not this a relic of old days? Always it takes time, and deliberate effort of the reason, to adjust our conventions to new facts; so face this fact--marriage today does not necessarily mean children, it may just mean love. It involves little more expense, because the young people need cost no more together than they cost in the separate homes of their parents. If they are children of the poor, they are already taking care of themselves. If they are children of the moderately well off, their parents expect to support them while they are getting an education; and why can they not just as well live together, and the parents of each contribute their share? Let the parents of the boy give him, not merely what it costs to keep him at home, but also the sums which otherwise the boy would pay to the brothels. By this argument I do not mean that I favor keeping young people financially dependent upon their parents. My own son is working his own way through college, and I should be glad to see every young man doing the same. All that I am saying is that if parents are going to support their children while they are getting an education, they might just as well support them married as single, instead of penalizing matrimony by making all allowances cease at that point. I know a certain ardent feminist, who is all for late marriage for women, and abhors my ideas on this subject. She wants women to get a chance to develop their personalities; whereas I want to sacrifice them to the frantic exigencies of the male animal! Young things of seventeen and eighteen have no idea what they are, or what they want from life; the mating impulse is a blind frenzy in them, and they must be taught to control it, just as they are taught not to kill when they are angry! In the first place, I point out that young ladies in colleges and in ballrooms give a lot of time and thought to sex, even though they do not call it by that inelegant term. I very much question whether, if we should apply our wisdom to the task of getting our young people happily mated before we sent them off to college, we should not get a lot more serious study out of them than we now do, with all their "fussing" and flirting and dancing. Second, I am willing to make heroic moral efforts, where I see any chance of adequate results, but I have examined the facts, and definitely made up my mind that it is not worth while, in our present stage of culture, to preach to the mass of men the doctrine that they should abstain from sex experience until they are twenty-five or thirty years of age. You may storm at them, but they only laugh at you; you may pass laws, and try to put them in jail, but you only provide a harvest for blackmailers and grafters. As to sacrificing the girl, my answer is simply that I believe in love; and in this I think the girl will agree with me, if you will let her! I have never heard any qualified person maintain that it hurts a girl to respond to love at the age of seventeen or eighteen; nor do I think that it hurts a boy, provided that he is taught the virtues of moderation and self-restraint. Without these, it will hurt him to eat; but that is no argument for starving him. As for the question of his maturity and power to judge, we are able at present to keep him from marrying anybody, so I think we might reasonably hope to keep him from marrying a wanton or a slut. Certainly we might find somebody better than the peroxide blonde he now picks up in front of the moving picture palace. The question, at what ages we shall advise our young couple to have children, is a separate one, depending upon many circumstances. First, of course, they should not have any until they are able financially to maintain them. As to the age at which it is physically advisable, that is a question to be settled by physicians and physiologists. I myself had the idea that the proper age would be when the woman had attained her full stature; but my friend Dr. William J. Robinson sends me some statistics from the Johns Hopkins Hospital _Bulletin_, which startle me. This publication for January, 1922, gives the results in five hundred childbirths, in which the mother's age was from twelve to sixteen years inclusive. It appears that pregnancy and labor at these ages are no more dangerous than in older women; but on the other hand, the duration of the labor is actually shorter, and the size of the children is not inferior. These facts are so contrary to the general impression that I content myself with calling attention to them, and leave the commenting to be done by feminists and others who oppose themselves to the idea of early marriage. CHAPTER XLI THE MARRIAGE CLUB (Discusses how parents and elders may help the young to avoid unhappy marriages.) I will make the assumption that you would like to have a trial of my cure for prostitution. You would like to do something right here and now, without waiting for the social revolution. Very well: I propose that you shall find a few other parents of boys and girls who are in revolt against our system of hidden vice, and that you will meet and form a modern marriage club. Only you won't call it that, of course; you will tactfully describe it as a literary society, or a social circle, or an Epworth League. The parents who run it will know what it is for, just as they do today; the only difference being that it will exist to promote love matches instead of money matches. It happens that I am myself a tactless sort of a person, not skillful at avoiding saying what I mean. So, in this chapter, I shall content myself with setting forth exactly what this marriage club will do, and leaving it to more clever people to supply the necessary camouflage. This club will begin by correcting the most stupid of all our educational blunders, the assumption of the necessary immaturity of the young. Our young people nowadays have ten times as much chance to learn and ten times as much stimulus to learn as we had; and it is a generally safe assumption that they know much more than we think they do, and are ready to learn every sensible and interesting thing. I am carrying on an epistolary acquaintance with a little miss of twelve, who has read half a dozen of my books--among the "worst" of them--and writes me letters of grave appreciation. I have talked on Socialism to a thousand school children, and had them question me for an hour, and heard just as worth while questions as I have heard from an audience of bankers. Never in my life have I talked about real things with children that I did not find them proud to be treated seriously, and eager to show that they were worthy of that honor. A great part of our foolishness with children is due to the emptiness of our own heads. These parents will delegate one man and one woman to make a thorough study of the sex education of the young. Of course, there is knowledge about sex which has to be given to the very youngest child, and more and more must be given as they grow older and ask more questions. But what I have in mind here is that detailed and precise knowledge which must be given to the young when they approach the period of puberty. At this age of fourteen or fifteen the man will take each of the boys apart, and the woman will take each of the girls, and will explain to them what they need to know. This duty will not be trusted to parents, for parents have an imbecile fear of talking straight to their children, and try to get by with rubbish about bees and flowers. Let every child know that the days of the hole-and-corner sex business is forever past, and that here is an instructed person, who talks real American, and knows what he is talking about, and will deal with facts, instead of with evasions. This club will help to educate the youngsters, and also to give them a good time, developing both their minds and bodies, and learning to know them thoroughly. When they are sixteen each one will have another talk, this time about marriage and what it means; learning that it is not merely flirtations and delicious thrills, but a business partnership, and the deepest and best of all friendships. So when John finds that he likes Mary best of all the girls he knows, this won't be a subject for "kidding" and sly innuendo, and blushes and simpering on Mary's part, but an occasion for decent and sensible talk about what each of them really is, and what each thinks the other to be. If they think they are in love, then there will be a council of the elder statesmen, to consider that case, and what are the chances of happiness in that love. This may sound forbidding, but it is exactly what is done at present--only it is not done honestly and frankly, and therefore does not carry proper weight with the young people. I am an opponent of long engagements, but I am also an opponent of no engagements at all; I know no truer proverb than "Marry in haste and repent at leisure." It would be my idea that a very young couple should announce their engagement, and then wait six months, and be consulted again about the matter, and have a chance to withdraw with no hard feelings, if either party thought best. If they wished to go on, they might be asked to wait another six months, if their elders felt very certain there were reasons to doubt the wisdom of the match. There are, of course, people who, because of disease or physical defect, should never be allowed to marry; and others who might marry, but should not be allowed to have children. There should be laws providing for such cases, requiring physical examination before marriage, and in extreme cases providing for a simple and harmless surgical operation to prevent the hopelessly unfit from passing on their defects to the future. But dealing for the moment with normal young persons, members of our modern marriage club, I should say that if, after they have listened to the warning of their elders, and have waited for a decent interval to think things over, they still remain of the opinion that they can make a successful marriage, then it is up to the elders to wish them luck. I have known of young couples who have refused to heed warnings, and regretted it; but I have known of others who went ahead and had their own way and proved they were right. There is a form of wisdom called experience and there is another form called love. I hear the worldly and cynical rail at the blindness of "young love," and I can see the truth in what they say; but also I can see the deeper truth in the magic dreams of the young soul. Here is a youth who adores a girl, and you know the girl, and it is comical to you, because you know she is not any of the things the youth imagines. But who are you that claim to know the last thing about a human soul? Look into your own, and see how many different things you are! Look back, if you can, to the time when you were young, and remember the visions and the hopes. They have lost all reality to you now; but who can say how many of them you might have made real if there had been one other person who believed in them, and loved them, and would not give them up? I write this; and then I think of the other side--the fools that I have known in love! The trusting women, marrying rotten men to reform them! The pitiful people who think that fine phrases and sentimentality can take the place of facts! I implore my young couples to sit down and face the realities of their own natures, to decide what they are, and what they want to be--and if there is going to be any change, let it be made and tried out before marriage! I implore them to begin now to control their desires by their reason and judgment; to begin, each of them at the very outset, to carry their share of the burdens and do their share of the hard work. I implore them to value independence and self-reliance in the other, and never above all things to marry from pity, which is a worthy emotion in its place, but has nothing to do with sex, which should be an affair between equals, a matter of partnership and not of parasitism. I think that, on the whole, the most dreadful thing in love is the use of it for preying, for the securing of favors and advantages of any sort, whether by men or by women. CHAPTER XLII EDUCATION FOR MARRIAGE (Maintains that the art of love can be taught, and that we have the right and the duty to teach it.) I assume now that our young couple have definitely made up their minds, and that the wedding day is near. They are therefore, both the man and the woman, in position to receive information as to the physical aspects of their future experience. This information is now for the most part possessed only by pathologists--who impart it too late, after people have blundered and wrecked their lives. The opponents of birth control ask in horror if you would teach it to the young; I am now able to answer just when I would teach it; I would teach it to these young couples about to marry. I would make it by law compulsory for every young couple to attend a school of marriage, and to learn, not merely the regulation of conception, but the whole art of health and happiness in sex. Perhaps the words, "a school of marriage," strike you as funny. When I was young I remember that Pulitzer founded a school of journalism, and all newspaper editors made merry--they knew that journalism could only be learned in practice. But nowadays every city editor gives preference to an applicant who has taken a college course in reporting; they have learned that journalism can be taught, just like engineering and accounting. In the same way I assert that marriage can be taught, and the art of love, physical, mental, moral, and even financial; I think that the day will come when enlightened parents would no more dream of trusting their tender young daughter to a man who had not taken a course in sex, than they would go up in an aeroplane with a pilot who knew nothing about an engine. The knowledge which I possess upon the art of love I would be glad to give you in this book; but unfortunately, if I were to do so, my book would be suppressed, and I should be sent to jail. Some ten or twelve years ago I received a pitiful letter from a man who was in state's prison in Delaware, charged with having imparted information as to birth control. Under our amiable legal system, a perfectly innocent man may be thrown into jail, and kept there for a year or two before he is tried, and if he is without money or friends, he might as well be buried alive. I went to Wilmington to call on the United States attorney who had caused the indictment in this case, and had an illuminating conversation with him. The official was anxious to justify what he had done. He assured me that he was no bigot, but on the contrary an extremely liberal man, a Unitarian, a Progressive, etc. "But Mr. Sinclair," he said, "I assure you this prisoner is not a reformer or humanitarian or anything like that. He is a depraved person. Look, here is something we found in his trunk when we arrested him; a pamphlet, explaining about sex relations. See this paragraph--it says that the pleasure of intercourse is increased if it is prolonged." I looked at the pamphlet, and then I looked at the attorney. "Do you think you have stated the matter quite fairly?" I asked. "Apparently the purpose is to explain that the emotions of women are more slow to be aroused than those of men, and that husbands failing to realize this, often do not gratify their wives." "Well," said the other, "do you consider that a subject to be discussed?" "Pardon me if I discuss it just a moment," I replied. "Do you happen to know whether the statement is a fact?" "No, I don't. It may be, I suppose." "You have never investigated the matter?" The legal representative of our government was evidently annoyed by my persistence. "I have not," he answered. "But then, suppose I were to tell you that thousands of homes have been broken up for lack of just that bit of knowledge; that tens of thousands of marriages are miserable for lack of it." "Surely, Mr. Sinclair, you exaggerate!" "Not at all. I could prove to you by one medical authority after another, that if the desire of a woman in marriage is roused, and then left ungratified, the result is nervous strain, and in the long run it may be nervous breakdown." The above covers only one detail of the pamphlet in question. I read some pages of it, and argued them out with the attorney. It was a perfectly simple, straightforward exposition of facts about the physiology of sex; and one of the reasons a man was to be sent to jail for several years was--not that he had circulated such a pamphlet, not that he had showed it to young people, but merely that he had it in his trunk! There is an honest and very useful book, written by an English physician, Dr. Marie C. Stopes, entitled "Married Love," published by Dr. Wm. J. Robinson of New York, a specialist of authority and integrity. The book deals with just such vital facts in a perfectly dignified and straightforward manner; yet Dr. Robinson has been hounded by the postoffice department because of it; he was convicted and forced to pay a fine of $250, and the book was barred from the mails! I have so much else of importance to say in this Book of Love that it would not be sensible to jeopardize it by causing a controversy with our official censors of knowledge. Therefore I will merely say in general terms that men and women differ, not merely as a sex, but as individuals, and every marriage is a separate problem. Every couple has to solve it in the intimacy of their love life, and for this there are needed, first of all, gentleness on the part of the man, especially in the first days of the honeymoon; and on the part of both at all times consideration for the other's welfare and enjoyment, and above all, frankness and honesty in talking out the subject. Reticence and shyness may be virtues elsewhere, but they have no place in the intimacies of the sex life; if men and women will only ask and answer frankly, they can find out by experience what makes the other happy, and what causes pain. We are dealing here with the most sacred intimacy of life, and one of the most vital of life's problems. It is here, in the marriage bed, that the divorce problem is to be settled, and likewise the problem of prostitution; for it is when men and women fail to understand each other, and to gratify each other, that one or the other turns cold and indifferent, perhaps angry and hateful--and then we have passions unsatisfied, and ranging the world, breaking up other homes and spreading disease. So I would say to every young couple, seek knowledge on this subject. Seek it without shame from others who have had a chance to acquire it. Seek it also from nature, our wise old mother, who knows so much about her children! Be natural; be simple and straightforward; and beware of fool notions about sex. If you will look in the code of Hammurabi, which is over four thousand years old, you will see the provision that a man who has intercourse with a menstruating woman shall be killed. In Leviticus you will read that both the man and the woman are to be cast out from their people. You will find that most people still have some such notion, which is without any basis whatever in health. And this is only one illustration of many I might give of ignorance and superstition in the sex life. I would give this as one very good rule to bear in mind; your love life exists for the happiness and health of yourself and your partner, and not for Hammurabi, nor Moses, nor Jehovah, nor your mother-in-law, nor anybody else on the earth or above it. Great numbers of people believe that women are naturally less passionate than men, and that marital happiness depends upon men's recognizing this. Of course, there are defective individuals, both men and women; but the normal woman is every bit as passionate as a man, if once she has been taught; and if love is given its proper place in life, and monkish notions not allowed to interfere, she will remain so all through life, in spite of child-bearing or anything else. I say to married couples that they should devote themselves to making and preserving passionate gratification in love; because this is the bright jewel in the crown of marriage, and if lovers solve this problem, they will find other problems comparatively simple. CHAPTER XLIII THE MONEY SIDE OF MARRIAGE (Deals with the practical side of the life partnership of matrimony.) So far we have discussed marriage as if it consisted only of love. But it is manifest that this is not the case. Marriage is every-day companionship, and also it is partnership in a complicated business. In our school of marriage therefore we shall teach the rights and duties of both partners to the contract, and shall face frankly the money side of the enterprise. One of the first facts we must get clear is that the economics of marriage are in most parts of the world still based upon the subjection of woman, and are therefore incompatible with the claims of woman as a partner and comrade. They will never be right until the social revolution has abolished privilege, and the state has granted to every woman a maternity endowment, with a mother's pension for every child during the entire period of the rearing and education of that child. Until this is done, the average woman must look to some man for the support of her child, and that, by the automatic operation of economic force, makes her subject to the whims of the man. What women have to do is to agitate for a revision of the property laws of marriage; and meantime to see that in every marriage there is an extra-legal understanding, which grants to the woman the equality which laws and conventions deny her. When I was a boy my mother had a woman friend who, if she wanted to go downtown, would borrow a quarter from my mother. This woman's husband was earning a generous salary, enough to enable him to buy the best cigars by the box, and to keep a supply of liquors always on hand; but he gave his wife no allowance, and if she wanted pocket money she had to ask him for it, each time a separate favor. Yet this woman was keeping a home, she was doing just as hard work and just as necessary work as the man. Manifestly, this was a preposterous arrangement. If a woman is going to be a home-maker for a husband, it is a simple, common-sense proposition that the salary of the husband shall be divided into three parts--first, the part which goes to the home, the benefit of which is shared in common; second, the part which the husband has for his own use; and third, the part which the wife has for hers. The second and third parts should be equal, and the wife should have hers, not as a favor, but as a right. If the two are making a homestead, or running a farm, or building up a business, then half the proceeds should be the woman's; and it should be legally in her name, and this as a matter of course, as any other business contract. If the woman does not make a home, but merely displays fine clothes at tea parties, that is of course another matter. Just what she is to do is something that had better be determined before marriage; and if a man wants a life-partner, to take an interest in his work, or to have a useful work of her own, he had better choose that kind of woman, and not merely one that has a pretty face and a trim ankle. The business side of marriage is something that has to be talked out from time to time; there have to be meetings of the board of directors, and at these meetings there ought to be courtesy and kindness, but also plain facts and common sense, and no shirking of issues. Love is such a very precious thing that any man or woman ought to be willing to make money sacrifices to preserve it. But on the other hand, it is a fact that there are some people with whom you cannot be generous; the more you give them, the more they take, and with such people the only safe rule is exact justice. Let married couples decide exactly what contribution each makes to the family life, and what share of money and authority each is entitled to. I might spend several chapters discussing the various rocks on which I have seen marriages go to wreck. For example, extravagance and worldly show; clothes for women. In Paris is a "demi-monde," a world of brutal lust combined with riotous luxury. The women of this "half-world" are in touch with the world of art and fashion, and when the rich costumers and woman-decorators want what they call ideas, it is to these lust-women they go. The fashions they design are always depraved, of course; always for the flaunting of sex, never for the suggestion of dignity and grave intelligence. At several seasons of the year these lust-women are decked out and paraded at the race-courses and other gathering places of the rich, and their pictures are published in the papers and spread over all the world. So forthwith it becomes necessary for your wife in Oshkosh or Kalamazoo to throw away all the perfectly good clothes she owns, and get a complete new outfit--because "they" are wearing something different. Of course the costume-makers have seen that it is extremely different, so as to make it impossible for your wife and children to be happy in their last season's clothes. I have a winter overcoat which I bought fourteen years ago, and as it is still as good as new I expect to use it another fourteen years, which will mean that it has cost me a dollar and a half per year. But think what it would have cost me if I had considered it necessary each year to have an overcoat cut as the keepers of French mistresses were cutting theirs! But then, suppose you put it up to your wife and daughters to wear sensible clothes, and they do so, and then they observe that on the street your eyes turn to follow the ladies in the latest disappearing skirt? The point is, you perceive, that you yourself are partly to blame for the fashions. They appeal to a dirty little imp you have in your own heart, and when the decent women discover that, it makes them blazing hot, and that is one of the ways you may wreck your domestic happiness if you want to. Unless I am greatly mistaken, when the class war is all over we are going to see in our world a sex war; but it is not going to be between the men and the women, it is going to be between the mother women and the mistress women, and the mistress women are going to have their hides stripped off. Men wreck marriage because they are promiscuous; and women wreck it because they are parasites. Woman has been for long centuries an economic inferior, and she has the vices of the subject peoples and tribes. Now there are some who want to keep these vices, while at the same time claiming the new privileges which go with equality. Such a woman picks out a man who is sensitive and chivalrous; who knows that women suffer handicaps, pains of childbirth, physical weakness, and who therefore feels impelled to bear more than his share of the burdens. She makes him her slave; and by and by she gets a child, and then she has him, because he is bowed down with awe and worship, he thinks that such a miracle has never happened in the world before, and he spends the rest of his life waiting on her whims and nursing her vanities. I note that at the recent convention of the Woman's Party they demanded their rights and agreed to surrender their privileges. There you have the final test by which you may know that women really want to be free, and are prepared to take the responsibilities of freedom. CHAPTER XLIV THE DEFENSE OF MONOGAMY (Discusses the permanence of love, and why we should endeavor to preserve it.) So far in this discussion we have assumed that love means monogamous love. We did so, for the reason that we could not consider every question at once. But we have promised to deal with all the problems of sex in the light of reason; and so we have now to take up the question, what are the sanctions of monogamy, and why do we refuse sanction to other kinds of love? First, let us set aside several reasons with which we have nothing to do. For example, the reason of tradition. It is a fact that Anglo-Saxon civilization has always refused legal recognition to non-monogamous marriage. But then, Anglo-Saxon civilization has recognized war, and slavery, and speculation, and private property in land, and many other things which we presume to describe as crimes. If tradition cannot justify itself to our reason, we shall choose martyrdom. Second, the religious reason. This is the one that most people give. It is convenient, because it saves the need of thinking. Suffice it here to say that we prefer to think. If we cannot justify monogamy by the facts of life, we shall declare ourselves for polygamy. What are the scientific and rational reasons for monogamy? First among them is venereal disease. This may seem like a vulgar reason, but no one can deny that it is real. There was a time, apparently, when mankind did not suffer from these plagues, and we hope there may be such a time again. I shall not attempt to prescribe the marital customs for the people of that happy age; I suspect that they will be able to take care of themselves. Confining myself to my lifetime and yours, I say that the aim of every sensible man and woman must be to confine sex relations to the smallest possible limits. I know, of course, that there are prophylactics, and the army and navy present statistics to show that they succeed in a great proportion of cases. But if you are one of those persons in whose case they don't succeed, you will find the statistics a cold source of comfort to you. John and Mary go to the altar, or to the justice of the peace, and John says: "With all my worldly goods I thee endow." But the formula is incomplete; it ought to read: "And likewise with the fruits of my wild oats." Marriage is a contract wherein each of the contracting parties agrees to share whatever pathogenic bacteria the other party may have or acquire; surely, therefore, the contract involves a right of each party to have a say as to how many chances of infection the other shall incur. John goes off on a business trip, and is lonesome, and meets an agreeable widow, and figures to himself that there is very little chance that so charming a person can be dangerous. But maybe Mary wouldn't agree with his calculations; maybe Mary would not consider it a part of the marriage bargain that she should take the diseases of the agreeable widow. What commonly happens is that Mary is not consulted; John revises the contract in secret, making it read that Mary shall take a chance at the diseases of the widow. How can any thinking person deny that John has thus committed an act of treason to Mary? I know that there are people who don't mind running such chances; that is one reason why there are venereal diseases. All I can say is that the sex-code set forth in this book is based upon the idea that to deliver mankind from the venereal plague, we wish to confine the sex relationship within the narrowest limits consistent with health, happiness and spiritual development; and that to this end we take the young and teach them chastity, and we marry them early while they are clean, and then we call upon them to make the utmost effort to make a success of that union, and to make it a matter of honor to keep the marital faith. We do this with some hope of effectiveness, because we have made our program consistent with the requirements of nature, the genuine needs of love both physical and spiritual. The second argument for monogamy is the economic one. We have dreamed a social order where every child will be guaranteed maintenance by the state, and where women will be free from dependence on men. What will be the love arrangements of men and women under this new order is another problem which we leave for them to decide, in the certainty that they will know more about it than we do. Meantime, we are for the present under the private property régime, and have to love and marry and raise our children accordingly. The children must have homes, and if they are to be normal children, they must have both the male and female influence in their lives; which means that their parents must be friends and partners, not quarreling in secret. This argument, I know, is one of expediency. I have adopted it, after watching a great number of people try other than monogamous sex arrangements, and seeing their chances of happiness and success wrecked by the pressure of economic forces. To rebel against social compulsion may be heroism, and again it may be merely bad judgment. For my part, the world's greatest evil is poverty, the cause of crime, prostitution and war. I concentrate my energies upon the abolishing of that evil, and I let other problems wait. The third reason is that monogamy is economical of human time and thought. The business of finding and wooing a mate takes a lot of energy, and adjustment after marriage takes more. To throw away the results of this labor and do it all over again is certainly not common sense. Of course, if you bake a cake and burn it, you have to get more material and make another try; but that is a different matter from baking a cake with the deliberate intention of throwing it away after a bite or two. The advocates of varietism in love will here declare that we are begging the question. We are assuming that love and the love chase are not worthy in themselves, but merely means to some other end. Can it be that love delights are the keenest and most intense that humans can experience, and that all other purposes of life are contributory to them? Certainly a great deal of art lends support to this idea, and many poets have backed up their words by their deeds. As Coleridge phrased it: "All thoughts, all passions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame, All are but ministers of Love And feed his sacred flame." This is a question not to be played with. Experimenting in love is costly, and millions have wrecked their lives by it. The sex urge in us is imperious and cruel; it wants nothing less than the whole of us, body, mind and spirit, and ofttimes it behaves like the genii in the bottle--it gets out, and not all the powers in the universe can get it back. I have talked with many men about sex and heard them say that it presents itself to them as an unmitigated torment, something they would give everything they own to be free of. And these, mind you, not men living in monasteries, trying to repress their natural impulses, but men of the world, who have lived freely, seeking pleasure and taking it as it came. The primrose path of dalliance did not lead them to peace, and the pursuit of variety in love brought them only monotony. I stop and think of one after another of these sex-ridden people, and I cannot think of one whom I would envy. I know one who in a frenzy of unhappiness seized a razor and castrated himself. I think of another, a certain classmate in college whom I once stopped in a conversation, remarking: "Did you ever realize what a state you have got your mind into? Everything means sex to you. Every phrase you hear, every idea that is suggested--you try to make some sort of pun, to connect it somehow or other with sex." The man thought and said, "I guess that's true." The idea had never occurred to him before; he had just gone on letting his instincts have their way with him, without ever putting his reason upon the matter. That was a crude kind of sex; but I think of another man, an idealist and champion of human liberty. One of the forms of liberty he maintained was the right to love as many women as he pleased, and although he was a married man, one hardly ever saw him that he was not courting some young girl. As a result, his mental powers declined, and he did little but talk about ideas. I do not know anyone today who respects him--except a few people who live the same sort of life. The thought of him brings to my mind a sentence of Nietzsche--a man who surely stood for freedom of personality: "I pity the lovers who have nothing higher than their love." A question like this can be decided only by the experience of the race. Some will make love the end and aim of life, and others will make it the means to other ends, and we shall see which kind of people achieve the best results, which kind are the most useful, the most dignified, the most original and vital. I have seen a great many young people try the experiment of "free love," and I have seen some get enough of it and quit; I could name among these half a dozen of our younger novelists. I know others who are still in it--and I watch their lives and find them to be restless, jealous, egotistical and idle. My defense of monogamy is based upon the fact that I have never known any happy or successful "free lovers." Of course, I know some noble and sincere people who do not believe in the marriage contract, and refuse to be bound by law; but these people are as monogamous as I am, even more tightly bound by honor than if they were duly married. It seems to be in the very nature of true and sincere love to imagine permanence, to desire it and to pledge it. If you aren't that much in love, you aren't really in love at all, and you had better content yourself with strolling together and chatting together and dining together and playing music together. So many pleasant ways there are in which men and women can enjoy each other's company without entering upon the sacred intimacy of sex! You can learn to take sex lightly, of course, but if you do so, you reduce by so much the chances that true and deep love will ever come to you; for true and deep love requires some patience, some reverence, some tending at a shrine. The animals mate quickly and get it over with; but the great discoveries about love, and the possibilities of the human soul in love, have come because men and women have been willing to make sacrifices for it, to take it seriously--and more especially to take seriously the beloved person, the rights and needs and virtues of that person. From the lives of such we learn that love is nature's device for taking us out of ourselves, and making us truly social creatures. Early in my life as a writer I undertook to answer Gertrude Atherton, in her glorification of the sex-corruptions of capitalist society. She indicted American literature for its "bourgeois" qualities--among these the fact that American authors had a prejudice in favor of living with their own wives. Mrs. Atherton set forth the joys of sex promiscuity as they are understood by European artists, and I ventured in replying to remark that "one woman can be more to a man than a dozen can possibly be." That sounds like a paradox, but it is really a profound truth, and the person who does not understand it has missed the best there is in the sex relation. There is a limit to the things of the body, but to those of the mind and spirit there is no limit, and so there is no reason why true love should ever fall prey to boredom and satiety. CHAPTER XLV THE PROBLEM OF JEALOUSY (Discusses the question, to what extent one person may hold another to the pledge of love.) Once upon a time I knew an Anarchist shoemaker, the same who had me sent to jail for playing tennis on Sunday, as I have narrated in "The Brass Check." I remember arguing with him concerning his ideas of sex, which were of the freest. I can hear the very tones of his voice as he put the great unanswerable question: "What are you going to do about the problem of jealousy?" And I had no response at hand; for jealousy is truly a most cruel and devastating and unlovely emotion; and yet, how can you escape it, if you are going to preserve monogamy? The Anarchist shoemaker's solution was to break down all the prejudices against sexual promiscuity. Free and unlimited license was every person's right, and for any other person to interfere was enslavement, for any other person to criticize was superstition. But the power of superstition is strong in the world, and the shoemaker found men resentful of his teachings, and disposed to confiscate the rights of their wives and daughters. Hence the shoemaker's disapproval of jealousy. Other men, less purely physiological in their attitude to sex, have wrestled with this same problem of jealousy. H. G. Wells has a novel, "In the Days of the Comet," in which he portrays two men, both nobly and truly in love with the same woman. One in a passion of jealousy is about to murder the other, when a great social transformation is magically brought about, and the would-be murderer wakes up to universal love, and the two men nobly and lovingly share the same woman. Shelley also dreamed this dream, inviting two women to share him. I have known others who tried it, but never permanently. I do not say that it never has succeeded, or that it never can succeed. In this book I am renouncing the future--I am trying to give practical advice to people, for the conduct of their lives here and now, and my advice on this point is that polygamous and polyandrous experiments in modern capitalist society cost more than they are worth. I once knew a certain high school teacher, who believed religiously in every kind of freedom. When she married, she and her husband, an artist, made a vow against jealousy; but as it worked out, this vow meant that the wife had a steady job and took care of the husband, while he loafed and loved other women. When finally she grew tired of it, he accused her of being jealous; also, she had brought it down to the matter of money! I know another woman, an Anarchist, widely known as a lecturer on sex freedom. She laid down the general principle of unlimited personal freedom for all, and she tried to live up to her faith. She entered into a "free union" with a certain man, and when she discovered that he was making love to another woman, in the presence of a friend of mine she threw a vase of flowers at his head. You see, her general principles had clashed with another general principle, to the effect that a person who feels deep and strong love inevitably desires that love to endure, and cannot but suffer to see it preyed upon and destroyed. Let us first consider the question, just what are the true and proper implications of monogamous love? The Roman Catholic church advocates "monogamy," and understands thereby that a man and woman pledge themselves "till death do us part," and if either of them cancels this arrangement it is adultery and mortal sin. I hope that none of my readers understands by "monogamy" any such system of spiritual strangulation. My own idea is rather what some churchman has sarcastically described by the term "progressive polygamy." I believe that a man and woman should pledge their faith in love, and should keep that faith, and endeavor with all their best energies to make a success of it; they should strive each to understand the other's needs, and unselfishly to fulfill them, within the limits of fair play. But if, after such an effort has been truly made, it becomes clear that the union does not mean health and happiness for one of the parties, that party has a right to withdraw from it, and for any government or church or other power to deny that right is both folly and cruelty. Now, on the basis of this definition of monogamy--or, if you prefer, of progressive polygamy--we are in position to say what we think about jealousy. If two people pledge their faith, and one breaks it, and the other complains, we do not call that jealousy, but just common decency. Neither do we call it jealousy if one expects the other to avoid the appearance of guilt; for love is a serious thing, not to be played with, and I think that a person who truly loves will do everything possible to make clear to the beloved that he is keeping and means to keep the plighted faith. You may say that I am using words arbitrarily, in endeavoring thus to distinguish between justifiable and unjustifiable jealousy, and calling the former by some other name. It does not make much difference about words, provided I make clear my meaning. I could point out a whole string of words which have good meanings and bad meanings, and cannot be discussed without preliminary explanations and distinctions; religion, for example, and morality, and aristocracy, and justice, to name only a few. Most people's thinking about marriage and love has been made like soup in a cheap restaurant, by dumping in all kinds of scraps and notions from such opposite poles of human thought as Christian monkery and Renaissance license, absurdly called "romance." So before you can do any thinking about a problem like jealousy, you have to agree to use the word to mean something definite, whether good or bad. We shall take jealousy as a "bad" word, and use it to mean the setting up, by a man or woman, of some claim to the love of another person, which claim cannot be justified in the court of reason and fair play. This includes, in the first place, all claims based upon a courtship, not ratified by marriage. It is to the interest of society and the race that men and women should be free to investigate persons of the other sex, and to experiment with the affections before pledges of marriage are made. If sensible customs of love and just laws of marriage were made, there would be no excuse for a woman's giving herself to a man before marriage; she should be taught not to do it, and then if she does it, the risk is her own, and the disgusting perversion of venality and greed known as the "breach of promise suit" should be unknown in our law. The young should be taught that it is the other person's right to change his mind and withdraw at any time before marriage; whatever pains and pangs this may cause must be borne in silence. The second kind of jealousy is that which seeks to keep in the marriage bond a person who is not happy in it and has asked to be released. The law sanctions this kind of cowardly selfishness, which manifests itself every day on the front pages of our newspapers--a spectacle of monstrous and loathsome passions unleashed and even glorified. Husbands set the bloodhounds of the law after wives who have fled with some other man, and send the man to a cell, and drag the woman back to a loveless home. Wives engage private detectives, and trail their husbands to some "love nest," and then ensue long public wrangles, with washing of filthy linen, and the matter is settled by a "separation." The virtuous wife, who may have driven the man away by neglect or vanity or stupidity, is granted a share of his earnings for the balance of her life; and two more people are added to the millions who are denied sexual happiness under the law, and are thereby impelled to live as law violators. For this there is only one remedy conceivable. We have banned cannibalism and slavery and piracy and duelling, and we must ban one more ancient and cruel form of human oppression, the effort to hold people in the bonds of sex by any other power save that of love. I am aware that the reactionaries who read this book will take this sentence out of its context and quote it to prove that I am a "free lover." I shall be sorry to have that done, but even so, I was not willing to live in slavery myself, and I am not willing to advocate it for others. I am aware that there are degenerate and defective individuals, and that we have to make special provision for them, as I shall presently set forth; but the average, normal human being must be free to decide what is love for him, and what is happiness for him. Every person in the world will have to deny himself the right to demand love where love is not freely given, and all lovers in the world will have to hold themselves ready to let the loved one go if and when the loved one demands it. I am aware that this is a hard saying, and a hard duty, but it is one that life lays upon us, and one that there is no escaping. CHAPTER XLVI THE PROBLEM OF DIVORCE (Defends divorce as a protection to monogamous love, and one of the means of preventing infidelity and prostitution.) You will hear sermons and read newspaper editorials about the "divorce evil," and you will find that to the preacher or editor this "evil" consists of the fact that more and more people are refusing to stay unhappily married. It does not interest these moralizers if the statistics show that it is women who are getting most of the divorces, and that the meaning of the phenomenon is that women are refusing to continue living with drunken and dissolute men. To the clergy, the breaking of a marriage is an evil _per se_, and regardless of circumstances. They know this because God has told them so, and in the name of God they seek to keep people tied in sex unions which have come to mean loathing instead of love. Now, I will assert it as a mathematical certainty that a considerable percentage of marriages must fail. It is essential to progress that human beings should grow, both mentally and spiritually, and manifestly they cannot all grow in the same way. If they grow differently, must they not sometimes lose the power to make each other happy in the marital bonds? Who does not know the man who masters life and becomes a vital force, while his wife remains dull and empty? If such a man changes wives, the world in general denounces him as a selfish beast; but the world does not know nor does it care about those thousands of men who, not caring to be branded as selfish beasts, fulfill the needs of their lives by keeping mistresses in secret. I knew a certain country school teacher, one of the most narrowly conventional young women imaginable, who was engaged to a middle-aged business man. He went to New York on a business trip, and stayed a couple of months, and wrote her that he had met some Anarchists, and had discovered that all he had read about them in the newspapers was false, and that they were the true and pure idealists to whom the rest of his life must be devoted. The young lady was horrified; nor was she any happier when she came to New York and met her fiancé's new friends. She ought in common sense to have broken the engagement; but she was in love, and she married, as many another fool woman does, with the idea of "reforming" the man. She failed, and was utterly and unspeakably wretched. I know another man, a conservative capitalist of narrow and aggressive temper, whose wife turned into an ardent Bolshevik. The man thinks that all Bolsheviks should be shut up in jail for life, while the wife is equally certain that all jails should be razed to the ground and all Bolsheviks placed in control of the government. These two people have got to a point where they cannot sit down to the breakfast table without flying into a quarrel. I know another case of a modern scientist, an agnostic, whose wife, a half-educated, sentimental woman, took to dabbling in mysticism, and drove him wild by setting up an image of Buddha in her bedroom, and consorting with "swamis" in long yellow robes. I know another whose wife turned into an ultra-pious Catholic, and turned over the care of his domestic life to a priest. Is it not obvious that the only possible solution of such problems lies in divorce? Unless, indeed, we are all of us going to turn over the care of our domestic lives to the priests! Our grandfathers and grandmothers believed one thing, and believed the same thing when they were seventy as when they were twenty; so it was possible for them to dwell in domestic security and permanence till death did them part. But we are learning to change our minds; and whether what we believe is better or worse than what our ancestors believed, at least it is different. Also we are coming to take what we believe with more seriousness; the intellectual life means more and more to us, and it becomes harder and harder for us to find sexual and domestic happiness with a partner who does not share our convictions, but, on the contrary, may be contributing to the campaign funds of the opposition party. I do not mean by this that people should get a divorce as soon as they find they differ about some intellectual idea; on the contrary, I have advocated that they should do everything possible to understand and to tolerate each other. But it is a fact that intellectual convictions are the raw material out of which characters and lives are made, and it is inevitable that some characters and lives that fit quite well at twenty should fit very badly at thirty or forty. When we refuse divorce under such circumstances we are not fostering marriage, as we fondly imagine; we are really fostering adultery. It is a fact that not one person in ten who is held by legal or social force in an unhappy sex union will refrain from seeking satisfaction outside; and because these outside satisfactions are disgraceful, and in some cases criminal, they seldom have any permanence. Therefore it follows that "strict" divorce laws, such as the clerical propaganda urges upon us, are in reality laws for the promotion of fornication and prostitution. There is a short story by Edith Wharton, in which the "divorce evil" is exhibited to us in its naked horror; the story called "The Other Two," in the volume "The Descent of Man." A society woman has been divorced twice and married three times, and by an ingenious set of circumstances the woman and all three of the men are brought into the same drawing-room at the same time. Just imagine, if you can, such an excruciating situation: a woman, her husband, and two men who used to be her husbands, all compelled to meet together and think of something to say! I cite this story because it is a perfect illustration of the extent to which the "divorce problem" is a problem of our lack of sense. Mrs. Wharton will, I fear, consider me a very vulgar person if I assert that there is absolutely no reason whatever why any of those four people in her story should have had a moment's discomfort of mind, except that they thought there was. There is absolutely nothing to prevent a man and woman who used to be married from meeting socially and being decent to each other, or to prevent two men from being decent to each other under such circumstances. I would not say that they should choose to be intimate friends--though even that may be possible occasionally. I know, because I have seen it happen. In Holland I met a certain eminent novelist and poet, a great and lovable man. I visited his home, and met his wife and two little children, and saw a man and woman living in domestic happiness. The man had also two grown sons, and after a few days he remarked that he would like me to meet the mother of these young men. We went for a walk of a mile or so, and met a lady who lived in a small house by herself, and who received us with a friendly welcome and talked with us for a couple of hours about music and books and art. This lady had been the writer's wife for ten years or so, and there had been a terrible uproar when they voluntarily parted. But they had refused to pay attention to this uproar; they understood why they did not wish to remain husband and wife any longer, but they did not consider it necessary to quarrel about it, nor even to break off the friendship which their common interests made possible. The two women in the case were not intimate, I gathered, but they frequently met at the homes of others, and found no difficulty in being friendly. I suggest to Mrs. Wharton that this story is at least as interesting as the one she has told; but I fear she will not care to write it, because apparently she considers it necessary that people who are well bred and refined should be the helpless victims of destructive manias. CHAPTER XLVII THE RESTRICTION OF DIVORCE (Discusses the circumstances under which society has the right to forbid divorce, or to impose limitations upon it.) We have quoted the old maxim, "Marry in haste and repent at leisure," and we suggested that parents and guardians should have the right to ask the young to wait before marriage, and make certain of the state of their hearts. We have now the same advice to give concerning divorce; the same claim to enter on behalf of society--that it has and should assert the right to ask people to delay and think carefully before breaking up a marriage. What interest has society in the restriction of divorce? What affair is it of any other person if I choose to get a divorce and marry a new wife once a month? There are many reasons, not in any way based upon religious superstition or conventional prejudice. In the first place, there are or may be children, and society should try to preserve for every child a home with a father and a mother in it. Second, there are property rights, of which every marriage is a tangle, and the settlement of which the law should always oversee. Third, there is the question of venereal disease, which society has an unquestionable right to keep down, by every reasonable restriction upon sexual promiscuity. And finally, there is the respect which all men and women owe to love. It seems to me that society has the same right to protect love against extreme outrage, as it has to forbid indecent exposure of the person on the street. There is in successful operation in Switzerland a wise and sane divorce law, based upon common sense and not upon superstition. A couple wish to break their marriage, and they go before a judge, and in private session, as to a friendly adviser, they tell their troubles. He gives them advice about their disagreement, and sends them away for three months to think it over. At the end of three months, if they still desire a divorce, they meet with him again. If he still thinks there is a chance of reconciliation, he has the right to require them to wait another three months. But if at the end of this second period they are still convinced that the case is hopeless, and that they should part, the judge is required to grant the divorce. You may note that this is exactly what I have suggested concerning young couples who become engaged. In both cases, the parties directly interested have the right to decide their own fate, but the rest of the world requires them to think carefully about it, and to listen to counsel. Except for grave offenses, such as adultery, insanity, crime or venereal disease, I do not think that anyone should receive a divorce in less than six months, nor do I think that any personal right is contravened by the imposing of such a delay. Next, what are we going to say to the right, or the claim to the right, on the part of a man or woman, to be married once a year throughout a lifetime? In order to illustrate this problem, I will tell you about a certain man known to me. In his early life he spent a couple of years in a lunatic asylum. He lays claim to extraordinary spiritual gifts, and uses the language of the highest idealism known. He is a man of culture and good family, and thus exerts a peculiar charm upon young women of refinement and sensitiveness. To my knowledge he was three times married in six years, and each time he deserted the woman, and forced her to divorce him, and to take care of herself, and in one case of a child. In addition, he had begotten one child out of marriage, and left the mother and child to starve. For ten years or so I used to see him about once in six months, and invariably he had a new woman, a young girl of fine character, who had been ensnared by him, and was in the agonizing process of discovering his moral and mental derangement. Yet there was absolutely nothing in the law to place restraint upon this man; he could wander from state to state, or to the other side of the world, preying upon lovely young girls wherever he went. This particular man happens to call himself a "radical"; but I could tell you of similar men in the highest social circles, or in the political world, the theatrical world, the "sporting" world; they are in every rank of life, and are just as definitely and certainly menaces to human welfare and progress as pirates on the high seas or highwaymen on the road. Nor are they confined to the males; the world is full of women who use their sex charms for predatory purposes, and some of them are far too clever for any law that you or I can contrive at present. But I think we might begin by refusing to let any man or woman have more than two divorces in one lifetime, in any state or part of the world. If any man or woman tries three times to find happiness in love, and fails each time, we have a right to assume that the fault must lie with that person, and not with the three partners. I think we may go further yet; having made wise laws of love and marriage, taking into consideration all human needs, we have a right to require that men and women shall obey the laws. At present the great mass of the public has sympathy for the law-breaker; just as, in old days, the peasants could not help admiring the outlaw who resisted unjust land laws and robbed the rich, or as today, under the capitalist régime, we can not withhold our sympathy from political prisoners, even though they have committed acts of violence which we deplore. But when we have made sex laws that we know are just and sensible--then we shall consider that we have the right to restrain sex criminals, and in extreme cases we shall avail ourselves of the skill of science to perform a surgical operation which will render him unable in future to prey upon the love needs of people who are placed at his mercy by their best qualities, their unselfishness and lack of suspicion. We clear out foul-smelling weeds from our garden, because we wish to raise beautiful flowers and useful herbs therein. There lives in California a student of plant life, who has shown us what we can do, not by magic or by superhuman efforts, but simply by loving plants, by watching them ceaselessly, understanding their ways, and guiding their sex-life to our own purposes. We can perform what to our ignorant ancestors would have seemed to be miracles; we can actually make all sorts of new plants, which will continue to breed their own kind, and survive forever if we give them proper care. In other words, Luther Burbank has shown us that we can "change plant nature." There flash back upon my memory all those dull, weary, sick human creatures, who have repeated to me that dull, weary, sick old formula, "You cannot change human nature." I do not think I am indulging either in religious superstition or in blind optimism, but am speaking precisely, in saying that whenever human beings get ready to apply experimental science to themselves, they can change human nature just as they now change plant nature. By putting human bodies together in love, we make new bodies of children more beautiful than any who have yet romped on the earth; and in the same way, by putting minds and souls together, we can make new kinds of minds and souls, different from those we have previously known, and greater than either the man-soul or the woman-soul alone. Also, by that magic which is the law of mind and soul life, each new creation can be multiplied to infinity, and shared by all other minds and souls that live in the present or may live in the future. We have shown elsewhere how genius multiplies to infinity the joy and power of life by means of the arts; and one of the greatest of the arts is the art of love. Consider the great lovers, the true lovers, of history--how they have enriched the lives of us all. It does not make any difference whether these men and women lived in the flesh, or in the brain of a poet--we learn alike from Dante and Beatrice, from Abélard and Héloïse, from Robert and Elizabeth Browning, from Tristan and Isolde, from Romeo and Juliet, what is the depth and the splendor of this passion which lies hidden within us, and how it may enrich and vivify and glorify all life. PART FOUR THE BOOK OF SOCIETY CHAPTER XLVIII THE EGO AND THE WORLD (Discusses the beginning of consciousness, in the infant and in primitive man, and the problem of its adjustment to life.) We have now to consider the relationship of man to his fellows, with whom he lives in social groups. Upon this problem floods of light have been thrown by the new science of psycho-analysis. I will try to give, briefly and in simple language, an idea of these discoveries. One of the laws of biology is that every individual, in his development, reproduces the history of the race; so that impulses and mental states of a child reveal to us what our far-off ancestors loved and feared. The same thing is discovered to be true of neurotics, people who have failed in adjusting themselves to civilized life, and have gone back, in some or all of their mental traits, to infantile states. If we analyze the unconscious minds of "nervous patients," and compare them with what we find in the minds of infants, and in savages, we discover the same dreams, the same longings and the same fears. The mental life of man begins in the womb. We cannot observe that life directly, but we know that it is there, because there cannot be organic life without mind to direct it, and just as there is an unconscious mind that regulates the bodily processes in adults, so in the embryo there must be an unconscious mind to direct the flow of blood, the building of bones, muscle, eyes and brain. The mental life of that unborn creature is of course purely egotistical; it knows nothing outside itself, and it finds this universe an agreeable place--everything being supplied to it, promptly and perfectly, without effort of its own. But suddenly it gets its first shock; pain begins, and severe discomfort, and the creature is shoved out into a cold world, yelling in protest against the unsought change. And from that moment on, the new-born infant labors to adjust itself to an entirely new set of conditions. Discomforts trouble it, and it cries. Quickly it learns that these cries are answered, and satisfaction of its needs is furnished. Somehow, magically, things appear; warm and dry covering, a trickle of delicious hot milk into its mouth. At first the infant mind has no idea how all this happens; but gradually it comes to realize objects outside itself, and it forms the idea that these objects exist to serve its wants. Later on it learns that there are particular sounds which attach to particular objects, and cause them to function. The sound "Mama," for example, produces a goddess clothed in beauty and power, performing miracles. So the infant mind arrives at the "period of magic gestures" and the "period of magic words"; corresponding to a certain type of myth and belief which we find in every race and tribe of human being that now exists or ever has existed on earth. All these stories about magic wishes and magic rings and magic spells of a thousand sorts; and nowhere on earth a child which does not listen greedily to such fancies! The reason is simply that the child has passed through this stage of mental life, and so recently that the feelings are close to the surface of his consciousness. But gradually the infant makes the painful discovery that not everything in existence can be got to serve him; there are forces which are proof against his magic spells; there are some which are hostile, and these the infant learns to regard with hatred and fear. Sometimes hatred and fear are strangely mixed with admiration and love. For example, there is a powerful being known as "father," who is sometimes good and useful, but at other times takes the attention of the supremely useful "mother," the source of food and warmth and life. So "father" is hated, and in fancy he is wished out of the way--which to the infant is the same thing as killing. Out of this grows a whole universe of fascinating mental life, which Freud calls by the name "the [OE]dipus complex"--after the legend of the Greek hero who murdered his father and committed incest with his mother, and then, when he discovered what he had done, put out his own eyes. There is a mass of legends, old as human thought, repeating this story; we cannot be sure whether they have grown out of the greeds and jealousies of this early wish-life of the infant, or whether they had their base in the fact that there was a stage in human progress in which the father really was killed off by the sons. This latter idea is discussed by Freud, in his book, "Totem and Taboo." It appears that primitive man lived in hordes, which were dominated by one old male, who kept all the women to himself, and either killed the young males, or drove them out to shift for themselves; so the young men would combine and murder their father. The forming of human society, of marriage and the family, depended upon one factor, the decision of the young victors to live and let live. The only way they could do this was to agree not to quarrel over the women of their own group, but to seek other women from other groups. This may account for what is known as "exogamy," an almost universal marriage custom of primitive man, whereby a man named Jones is barred by frightful taboos from the women named Jones, but is permitted relations with all the women named Smith. To return to our infant: he is in the midst of a painful process of adjusting himself to the outside world; discovering that sometimes all his magic words and gestures fail, his wishes no longer come true. There are beings outside him, with wills of their own, and power to enforce them; he has to learn to get along with these beings, and give up his pleasures to theirs. These processes which go on in the infant soul, the hopes and the terrors, the griefs and the angers, are of the profoundest significance for the later adult life. For nothing gets out of the mind that has once got into it; the infantile cravings which are repressed and forgotten stay in the unconscious, and work there, and strive still for expression. The conscious mind will not tolerate them, but they escape in the form of fairy-tales and stories, of dreams and delusions, slips of the tongue, and many other mental events which it is fascinating to examine. Also, if we are weakened by ill health or nervous strain, these infantile wishes may take the form of "neuroses," and fully grown people may take to stammering, or become impotent, or hysterical, or even insane, because of failures of adjustment to life that happened when they were a year or two old. These things are known, not merely as a matter of theory, but because, as soon as by analysis these infant secrets are brought into consciousness and adjusted there, the trouble instantly ceases. So it appears that the whole process of human life, from the very hour of birth, consists of the correct adjustment of men and women in relation to their fellows. Not merely is man a social being, but all the prehuman ancestors of men, for ages upon geologic ages, have been social beings; they have lived in groups, and their survival has depended upon their success in fitting themselves snugly into group relationships. Failure to make correct adjustments means punishment by the group, or by enemies outside the group; if the failure is serious enough, it means death. We may assert that the task of understanding one's fellow men, and making one's self understood by them, is the most important task that confronts every individual. And if we look about the world at present, the most superficial of us cannot fail to realize that the task is far from being correctly performed. So many people unhappy, so many striving for what they cannot get! So many having to be locked behind bars, like savage beasts, because they demand something which the world is resolved not to let them have! So many having to be killed, by rifles and machine-guns, by high explosive shells and poison gas--because they misunderstood the social facts about them, and thought they could fulfill some wishes which the rest of mankind wanted them to repress! As I read the psycho-analyst's picture of the newly born infant with its primitive ego, its magic cries and magic gestures, I cannot be sure how much of it is sober science and how much is mordant irony--a sketch of the mental states of the men and women I see about me--whole classes of men and women, yes, even whole nations! The effort of the following chapters will be to interpret to men and women the world which they have made, and to which they are trying to adjust themselves. More especially we shall try to show how, by better adjustments, men may change both themselves and the world, and make both into something less cruel and less painful, more serene and more certain and more free. CHAPTER XLVIX COMPETITION AND CO-OPERATION (Discusses the relation of the adult to society, and the part which selfishness and unselfishness play in the development of social life.) Pondering the subject of this chapter, I went for a stroll in the country, and seating myself in a lonely place, became lost in thought; when suddenly my eye was caught by something moving. On the bare, hot, gray sand lay a creature that I could see when it moved and could not see when it was still, for it was exactly the color of the ground, and fitted the ground tightly, being flat, and having its edges scalloped so that they mingled with the dust. It was a lizard, covered with heavy scales, and with sharp horns to make it unattractive eating. At the slightest motion from me it vanished into a heap of stones, so quickly that my eye could scarcely follow it. This creature, you perceive, is in its actions and its very form an expression of terror; terror of devouring enemies, of jackals that pounce and hawks that swoop, and also of the hot desert air that seeks to dry out its few precious drops of moisture. Practically all the energies of this creature are concentrated upon the securing of its own individual survival. To be sure, it will mate, but the process will be quick, and the eggs will be left for the sun to hatch out, and the baby lizards will shift for themselves--that is to say, they will be incarnations of terror from the moment they open their eyes to the light. The jackal seeks to pounce upon the lizard, and so inspires terror in the lizard; but when you watch the jackal you find that it exhibits terror toward more powerful foes. You find that the hawk, which swoops upon the lizard, is equally quick to swoop away when it comes upon a man with a gun. This preying and being preyed upon, this mixture of cruelty and terror, is a conspicuous fact of nature; if you go into any orthodox school or college in America today, you will be taught that it is nature's most fundamental law, and governs all living things. If you should take a course in political economy under a respectable professor, you would find him explaining that such cruelty-terror applies equally in human affairs; it is the basis of all economic science, and the effort to escape from it is like the effort to lift yourself by your boot-straps. The professor calls this cruelty-terror by the name "competition"; and he creates for his own purposes an abstract being whom he names "the economic man," a creature who acts according to this law, and exists under these conditions. One of the professor's formulas is the so-called "Malthusian law," that population presses always upon the limits of subsistence. Another is "the law of diminishing returns of agriculture," that you can get only so much product out of a certain piece of land, no matter how much labor and capital you put into it. Another is Ricardo's "iron law of wages," that wages cannot rise above the cost of living. Another is embodied in the formula of Adam Smith, that "Competition is the life of trade." The professor enunciates these "laws," coldly and impersonally, as becomes the scientist; but if you go into the world of business, you find them set forth cynically, in scores of maxims and witticisms: "Dog eat dog," "the devil take the hindmost," "business is business," "do others or they will do you." Evidently, however, there is something in man which rebels against these "natural" laws. In our present society man has set aside six days in the week in which to live under them, and one day in the week in which to preach an entirely different and contradictory code--that of Christian ethics, which bids you "love your neighbor," and "do unto others as you would they should do unto you." Between these Sunday teachings and the week-day teachings there is eternal conflict, and one who takes pleasure in ridiculing his fellow men can find endless opportunity here. The Sunday preachers are forbidden to interfere with the affairs of the other six days; that is called "dragging politics into the pulpit." On the other hand, incredible as it may seem, there are professors of the week-day doctrine who call themselves Christians, and believe in the Sunday doctrine, too. They manage this by putting the Sunday doctrine off into a future world; that is, we are to pounce upon one another and devour one another under the "iron laws" of economics so long as we live on earth, but in the next world we shall play on golden harps and have nothing to do but love one another. If anybody is so foolish as to apply the Sermon on the Mount to present-day affairs, we regard him as a harmless crank; if he persists, and sets out to teach others, we call him a Communist or a Pacifist, and put him in jail for ten or twenty years. In the Book of the Mind, I have referred to Kropotkin's "Mutual Aid as a Factor in Evolution," which I regard as one of the epoch-making books of our time. Kropotkin clearly proves that competition is not the only law of nature, it is everywhere modified by co-operation, and in the great majority of cases co-operation plays a larger part in the relations of living creatures than competition. There is no creature in existence which is entirely selfish; in the nature of the case such a creature could not exist--save in the imaginations of teachers of special privilege. If a species is to survive, some portion of the energies of the individual must go into reproduction; and steadily, as life advances, we find the amount of this sacrifice increasing. The higher the type of the creature, the longer is the period of infancy, and the greater the sacrifice of the parent for the young. Likewise, most creatures make the discovery that by staying together in herds or groups, and learning to co-operate instead of competing among themselves, they increase their chances of survival. You find birds that live in flocks, and other birds, like hawks and owls and eagles, that are solitary; and you find the co-operating birds a thousand times as numerous--that is to say, a thousand times as successful in the struggle for survival. You find that all man's brain power has been a social product; the supremacy he has won over nature has depended upon one thing and one alone--the fact that he has managed to become different from the "economic man," that product of the imagination of the defenders of privilege. It is evident that both competition and co-operation are necessary to every individual, and the health of the individual and of the race lies in the proper combination of the two. If a creature were wholly unselfish--if it made no effort to look after its own individual welfare--it would be exterminated before it had a chance to reproduce. If, on the other hand, it cannot learn to co-operate, its progeny stand less chance of survival against creatures which have learned this important lesson. We have a nation of a 110,000,000 people, who have learned to co-operate to a certain limited extent. Some of us realize how vastly the happiness of these millions might be increased by a further extension of co-operation; but we find ourselves opposed by the professors of privilege--and we wish that these gentlemen would go out and join the lizards of the desert sands or the sharks of the sea, creatures which really practice the system of "laissez faire" which the professors teach. The plain truth is that we cannot make a formula out of either competition or co-operation. We cannot settle any problem of economics, of business or legislation, by proclaiming, for example, that "Competition is the life of trade." Competition may just as well turn out to be the death of trade; it depends entirely upon the kind of competition, and the stage of trade development to which it is applied. In the early eighteenth century, when that formula of Adam Smith was written, competition was observed to keep down prices and provide stimulus to enterprise, and so to further abundant production. But the time came when the machinery for producing goods was in excess, not merely of the needs of the country, but of the available foreign markets, and then suddenly the large-scale manufacturers made the discovery that competition was the death of trade to them. They proceeded, as a matter of practical common sense, and without consulting their college professors, to abolish competition by forming trusts. We passed laws forbidding them to do this, but they simply refused to obey the laws. In the United States they have made good their refusal for thirty-five years, and in the end have secured the blessing of the Supreme Court upon their course. So now we have co-operation in large-scale production and marketing. It is known by various names, "pools," "syndicates," "price-fixing," "gentlemen's agreements." It is a blessing for those who co-operate, but it proves to be the death of those who labor, and also of those who consume, and we see these also compelled to combine, forming labor unions and consumers' societies. Each side to the quarrel insists that the other side is committing a crime in refusing to compete, and our whole social life is rent with dissensions over this issue. Manifestly, we need to clear our minds of dead doctrines; to think out clearly just what we mean by competition, and what by co-operation, and what is the proper balance between the two. I have been at pains in this book to provide a basis for the deciding of such questions. It is a practical problem, the fostering of human life and the furthering of its development. We cannot lay down any fixed rule; we have to study the facts of each case separately. We shall say, this kind of competition is right, because it helps to protect human life and to develop its powers. We shall say, this other kind of competition is wrong because it has the opposite effect. We shall say, perhaps, that some kind was right fifty years ago, or even ten years ago, because it then had certain effects; but meantime some factor has changed, and it is now having a different effect, and therefore ought to be abolished. There has never been any kind of human competition which men did not judge and modify in that way; there is no field of human activity in which ethical codes do not condemn certain practices as unfair. The average Englishman considers it proper that two men who get into a dispute shall pull off their coats, and settle the question at issue by pummeling each other's noses. But let one of these men strike his opponent in the groin, or let him kick his shins, and instantly there will be a howl of execration. Likewise, an Anglo-Saxon man who fights with the fists has a loathing for a Sicilian or Greek or other Mediterranean man who will pull a knife. That kind of competition is barred among our breeds; and also the kind which consists of using poisons, or of starting slanders against your opponent. If you look back through history, you find many forms of competition which were once eminently respectable, but now have been outlawed. There was a time, for example, when the distinction we draw between piracy and sea-war was wholly unknown. The ships of the Vikings would go out and raid the ships and seaports of other peoples, and carry off booty and captives, and the men who did that were sung as heroes of the nation. The British sea-captains of the time of Queen Elizabeth--Drake, Frobisher, and the rest of them--are portrayed in our school books as valiant and hardy men, and the British colonies were built on the basis of their activities; yet, according to the sea laws in force today, they were pirates. We regard a cannibal race with abhorrence; yet there was a time when all the vigorous races of men were cannibals, and the habit of eating your enemies in battle may well have given an advantage to the races which practiced it. On the other hand, you find sentimental people who reject all competition on principle, and would like to abolish every trace of it from society, and especially from education. But stop and consider for a moment what that would mean. Would you abolish, for example, the competition of love, the right of a man to win the girl he wants? You could not do it, of course; but if you could, you would abolish one of the principal methods by which our race has been improved. Of course, what you really want is, not to abolish competition in love, but to raise it to a higher form. There is an old saying, "All's fair in love and war," but no one ever meant that. You would not admit that a man might compete in love by threatening to kill the girl if she preferred a rival. You would not admit that he might compete by poisoning the other man. You would not admit that he might compete by telling falsehoods about the other man. On the other hand, if you are sensible, you admit that he has a right to compete by making his character known to the girl, and if the other man is a rascal, by telling the girl that. Would you abolish the competition of art, the effort of men to produce work more beautiful and inspiring than has ever been known before? Would you abolish the effort of scientists to overthrow theories which have hitherto been accepted? Obviously not. You make these forms of competition seem better by calling them "emulation," but you do not in the least modify the fact that they involve the right of one person to outdo other persons, to supplant them and take away something from them, whether it be property or position or love or fame or power. In that sense, competition is indeed the law of life, and you might as well reconcile yourself to it, and learn to play your part with spirit and good humor. Also, you might as well train your children to it. You will find you cannot develop their powers to the fullest without competition; in fact, you will be forced to go back and utilize forms of competition which are now out of date among adults. I have told in the Book of the Body how I myself tried for ten years or more to live without physical competition, and discovered that I could not; I have had to take up some form of sport, and hundreds of thousands of other men have had the same experience. What is sport? It is a deliberate going back, under carefully devised rules, to the savage struggles of our ancestors. The very essence of real sport is that the contestants shall, within the rules laid down, compete with each other to the limit of their powers. With what contempt would a player of tennis or baseball or whist regard the proposition that his opponent should be merciful to him, and let him win now and then! Obviously, these things have no place in the game, and to be a "good sport" is to conform to the rules, and take with enjoyment whatever issue of the struggle may come. But then again, suppose you are competing with a child; obviously, the conditions are different. You no longer play the best you can, you let the child win a part of the time; but you do not let the child know this, or it would spoil the fun for the child. You pretend to try as hard as you know how, and you cry out in grief when you are beaten, and the child crows with delight. And yet, that does not keep you from loving the child, or the child from loving you. The purpose of this elaborate exposition is to make clear the very vital point that a certain set of social acts may be right under some conditions, and desperately wrong under other conditions. They may be right in play, and not in serious things; they may be right in youth, and not in maturity; they may be right at one period of the world's development, while at another period they are destructive of social existence. If, therefore, we wish to know what are right and wrong actions in the affairs of men, if we wish to judge any particular law or political platform or program of business readjustment, the first thing we have to do is to acquire a mass of facts concerning the society to which the law or platform or program, is to be applied. We need to ask ourselves, exactly what will be the effect of that change, applied in that particular way at that particular time. In order to decide accurately, we need to know the previous stages through which that society has passed, the forces which have been operating in it, and the ways in which they have worked. But also we must realize that the lessons of history cannot ever be accepted blindly. The "principles of the founders" apply to us only in modified form; for the world in which we live today is different from any world which has ever been before, and the world tomorrow will be different yet. We are the makers of it, and the masters of it, and what it will be depends to some extent upon our choice. In fact, that is the most important lesson of all for us to learn; the final purpose of all our thought about the world is to enable us to make it a happier and a better world for ourselves and our posterity to live in. CHAPTER L ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY (Discusses the idea of superior classes and races, and whether there is a natural basis for such a doctrine.) In the letters of Thomas Jefferson is found the following passage: "All eyes are open or opening to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God." This, which Jefferson, over a hundred years ago, described as a "palpable truth," is still a long way from prevailing in the world. We are trying in this book not to take anything for granted, so we do not assume this truth, but investigate it; and we begin by admitting that there are many facts which seem to contradict it, and which make it more difficult of proof than Jefferson realized. It is not enough to point out the lack of saddles on the backs, and of boots and spurs on the feet of newly born infants; for the fact is that men are not exploited because of saddles, nor is the exploiting accomplished by means of boots and spurs. It is done by means of gold and steel, banks and credit systems, railroads, machine-guns and battleships. And while it is not true that certain races and classes are born with these things on them, they are born to the possession of them, and the vast majority of mankind are without them all their lives, and without the ability to use them even if they had them. The doctrine that "all men are created equal," or that they ought to be equal, we shall describe for convenience as the democratic doctrine. It first came to general attention through Christianity, which proclaimed the brotherhood of all mankind in a common fatherhood of God. But even as taught by the Christians, the doctrine had startling limitations. It was several centuries before a church council summoned the courage to decide that women were human beings, and had souls; and today many devout Christians are still uncertain whether Japanese and Chinese and Filipinos and Negroes are human beings, and have souls. I have heard old gentlemen in the South gravely maintain that the Negro is not a human being at all, but a different species of animal. I have heard learned men in the South set forth that the sutures in the Negro skull close at some very early age, and thus make moral responsibility impossible for the black race. And you will find the same ideas maintained, not merely as to differences of race and color, but as to differences of economic condition. You will find the average aristocratic Englishman quite convinced that the "lower orders" are permanently inferior to himself, and this though they are of the same Anglo-Saxon stock. For convenience I will refer to the doctrine that there is some natural and irremovable inferiority of certain races or classes, as the aristocratic doctrine. I will probably startle some of my readers by making the admission that if there is any such natural or irremovable inferiority, then a belief in political or economic equality is a blunder. If there are certain classes or races which cannot think, or cannot learn to think as well as other classes and races, those mentally inferior classes and races will obey, and they will be made to obey, and neither you nor I, nor all the preachers and agitators in the world, will ever be able to arrange it otherwise. Suppose we could do it, we should be committing a crime against life; we should be holding down the race and aborting its best development. Is there any such natural and irremovable inferiority in human beings? When we come to study the question we find it complicated by a different phenomenon, that of racial immaturity, which we have to face frankly and get clear in our minds. One of the most obvious facts of nature is that of infancy and childhood. We have just pointed out that if you are competing with a child, you do it in an entirely different way and under an entirely different set of rules, and if you fail to do this, you are unfair and even cruel to the child. And it is a fact of our world that there are some races more backward in the scale of development than other races. You may not like this fact, but it is silly to try to evade it. People who live in savage huts and beat on tom-toms and fight with bows and arrows and cannot count beyond a dozen--such people are not the mental or moral equals of our highly civilized races, and to treat them as equals, and compete with them on that basis, means simply to exterminate them. And we should either exterminate them at once and be done with it, or else make up our minds that they are in a childhood stage of our race, and that we have to guide them and teach them as we do our children. There is no more useful person than the wise and kind teacher. But suppose we saw some one pretending to be a teacher to our children, while in reality enslaving and exploiting them, or secretly robbing and corrupting them--what would we say about that kind of teacher? The name of that teacher is capitalist commercialism, and his profession is known as "the white man's burden"; his abuse of power is the cause of our present racial wars and revolts of subject peoples. A fair-minded man, desirous of facing all the facts of life, hardly knows what stand to take in such a controversy; that is, hardly knows from which cause the colored races suffer more--the white man's exploitation, or their own native immaturity. To say that certain races are in a childhood stage, and need instruction and discipline, is an entirely different thing from saying they are permanently inferior and incapable of self-government. Whether they are permanently inferior is a problem for the man of science, to be determined by psychological tests, continued possibly over more than one generation. We have not as yet made a beginning; in fact, we have not even acquired the scientific impartiality necessary to such an inquiry. In the meantime, all that we can do is to look about us and pick up hints where we can. In places like Massachusetts, where Negroes are allowed to go to college and are given a chance to show what they can do, they have not ousted the white man, but many of them have certainly won his respect, and one finds charming and cultured men among them, who show no signs of prematurely closed up skulls. And one after another we see the races which have been held down as being inferior, developing leadership and organization and power of moral resistance. The Irish are showing themselves today one of the most vigorous and high-spirited of all races. The Hindus are developing a movement which in the long run may prove more powerful than the white man's gold and steel. The Egyptians, the Persians, the Filipinos, the Koreans, are all devising ways to break the power of capitalist newspaper censorship. How sad that the subject races of the world have to get their education through hatred of their teachers, instead of through love! Of course, these rebel leaders are men who have absorbed the white man's culture, at least in part; practically always they are of the younger generation, which has been to the white man's schools. But this is the very answer we have been seeking--as to whether the race is permanently inferior, or merely immature and in need of training. It is not only among the brown and black and yellow races that progress depends upon the young generations; that is a universal fact of life. In the course of this argument we shall assume that the Christian or democratic theory has the weight of probability on its side, and that nature has not created any permanently and necessarily inferior race or class. We shall assume that the heritage of culture is a common heritage, open to all our species. We shall not go so far as the statement which Jefferson wrote into the Declaration of Independence, that "all men are created free and equal"; but we shall assert that they are created "with certain inalienable rights," and that among these is the right to maintain their lives and to strive for liberty and happiness. Also, we shall say that there will never be peace or order in the world until they have found liberty, and recognition of their right to happiness. CHAPTER LI RULING CLASSES (Deals with authority in human society, how it is obtained, and what sanction it can claim.) It is possible to conceive an order of nature in which all individuals were born and developed exactly alike and with exactly equal powers. Such is apparently the case with lower animals, for example the ants and the bees. But among human beings there are great differences; some are born idiots and some are born geniuses. Even supposing that we are able to do away with blindness and idiocy, it is not likely that we can ever make a race of uniform genius. There will always be some more capable minds, who will discover new powers of life, and will compel the others to learn from them. It is to the interest of the race that this learning should be done as quickly as possible. In other words, the great problem of society is how to recognize superior minds and put them in authority. We look back over history, and discover a few wise men, and many rulers; but very, very rarely does it happen that the ruler is a wise man, or a friend of wise men. Far more often we find the ruler occupied in suppressing the wise man and his wisdom. There was a ruler who allowed the mob to crucify Jesus, and another who ordered Socrates to drink the hemlock, and another who tortured Galileo, and another who chopped off the head of Sir Walter Raleigh--and so on through a long and tragic chronicle. And even when the accident of a wise ruler occurs he is apt to be surrounded by a class of parasites and corrupt officials who are busy to thwart his will. The general run of history is this: some group seizes power by force, and holds it by the same means, and seeks to augment and perpetuate it. Those who win the power are frequently men of energy and practical sense, and do fairly well as governors; but they are never able to hand on their virtues, and their line becomes corrupted by sensuality and self-indulgence, and the subject classes are plundered and driven to revolt. Often the revolt fails, but in the course of time it succeeds, and there is a new dynasty, or a new ruling class, sometimes a little better than the old, sometimes worse. How shall one judge whether the new régime is better or worse? Obviously, this is a most important question; it has to do, not merely with history, but with our daily affairs, our voting. As one who has read some tens of thousands of pages of history, and has pondered its lessons with heart-sickness and despair, I lay down this general law by which revolts and changes of power may be judged: If the change results in the holding of power by a smaller number of people, it is a reaction; but if the change results in distributing the power among a larger group of the community, then that community has made a step in advance. I have seen a sketch of the history of some Central American country--Guatemala, I think--which showed 130 revolutions in less than a hundred years. Some rascal gets together a gang, and seizes the government and plunders its revenue. When he has plundered too much, some other rascal stirs up the people, and gets together another gang. Such "revolutions" we regard as subjects for comic opera, and for the Richard Harding Davis type of fiction; but we do not consider them as having any relationship to progress. We describe them as "palace" revolutions. But compare with this the various English revolutions. We write learned histories about them, and describe England as "the Mother of Parliaments." The reason for this is that when there was political discontent in England, the protesting persons proceeded to organize themselves, and to understand their trouble and to remedy it. They had the brain power to do this; they maintained their right to do it, and when by violence or threats of violence they forced the ruling class to give way, they brought about a wider extension of liberty, a wider distribution of power. Tennyson has pictured England as a state "where freedom slowly broadens down from precedent to precedent." We today, reading its history, are inclined to put a sarcastic emphasis on the word "slowly"; but Tennyson would answer that it is better for a community to move forward slowly than to move forward rapidly and then move backward nearly as far. We have pointed out several times the important fact of biology that change does not necessarily mean progress from any rational or moral point of view. Degeneration is just as real a fact as progress, and it does not at all follow that because things change they are changing for the better. It is worth while to repeat this in discussing human society, for it is just as true of governments and morals as of living species. A nation may pile up wealth, and multiply a hundredfold the machinery of wealth production, and only be increasing luxury and wantonness and graft. A nation may change its governmental forms, its laws and social conventions, and boast noisily of these changes in the name of progress, while as a matter of fact it is following swiftly the road to ruin which all the empires of history have traced. So far as I can discover, there is one test, and only one, by which you can judge, and that is the test already indicated: Is the actual, effective power of the state wielded by a larger or a smaller percentage of the population than before the change took place? You will note the words "actual, effective power." Nothing is more familiar in human life than for forms to survive after the spirit which created them is dead; and nothing is more familiar than the use of these forms as masks to deceive the populace. There have been many times in history when people have gone on voting, long after their votes ceased to count for anything; there have been many times when people have gone through the motions of freedom long after they have been slaves. Mexico under Diaz had one of the most perfect of constitutions, and was in reality one of the most perfect of despotisms; and we Americans are sadly familiar with political democracies which do not work. Shall we, therefore, join the pessimists and say that history is a blind struggle for useless power, and that the notion of progress is a delusion? I do not think so; on the contrary, I think it is easily to be demonstrated that there has been a steady increase in the amount of knowledge possessed by the race, and in the spread of this knowledge among the whole population. I think that through most of the period of written history we can trace a real development in human society. I think we can analyze the laws of this development, and explain its methods; and I think this knowledge is precious to us, because it enables us to accelerate the process and to make the end more certain. This task, the analysis of social evolution, is the task we have next to undertake. CHAPTER LII THE PROCESS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION (Discusses the series of changes through which human society has passed.) We have now to consider, briefly, the history of man as a social being, the groups he has formed, and the changes in his group systems. Everything in life grows, and human societies are no exception to the rule. They have undergone a long process of evolution, which we can trace in detail, and which we find conforms exactly to the law laid down by Herbert Spencer; a process whereby a number of single and similar things become different parts of one complex thing. In the case of human societies the units are men and women, and social evolution is a process whereby a small and simple group, in which the individuals are practically alike, grows into a large and complex group, in which the individuals are widely different, and their relations one to another are complicated and subtle. There are two powerful forces pressing upon human beings, and compelling them to struggle and grow. The first of these forces is fear, the need of protection against enemies; the second is hunger, the need of food and the means of producing and storing food. The first causes the individual to combine with his fellows and establish some form of government, and this is the origin of political evolution. The second causes him to accumulate wealth, and to combine industrially, and this is the origin of economic evolution. Because the first force is a little more urgent, we observe in the history of human society that evolution in government precedes evolution in industry. I made this statement some twenty years ago, in an article in "Collier's Weekly." I wrote to the effect that man's first care was to secure himself against his enemies, and that when he had done this he set out to secure his food supply. "Collier's" called upon the late Professor Sumner of Yale University, a prize reactionary and Tory of the old school, to answer me; and Professor Sumner made merry over my statement, declaring that man sought for food long before he was safe from his enemies. Some years later, when Sumner died, one of his admirers wrote in the New York "Evening Post" that he had completely overwhelmed me, and I had acknowledged my defeat by failing to reply--something which struck me as very funny. It was, of course, possible that Sumner had overwhelmed me, but to say that I had considered myself overwhelmed was to attribute to me a degree of modesty of which I was wholly incapable. As a matter of fact, I had had my usual experience with capitalist magazines; "Collier's Weekly" had promised to publish my rejoinder to Sumner, but failed to keep the promise, and finally, when I worried them, they tucked the answer away in the back part of the paper, among the advertisements of cigars and toilet soaps. Professor Sumner is gone, but he has left behind him an army of pupils, and I will protect myself against them by phrasing my statement with extreme care. I do not mean to say that man first secures himself completely against his enemies, and then goes out to hunt for a meal. Of course he has to eat while he is countering the moves of his enemies; he has to eat while he is on the march to battle, or in flight from it. But ask yourself this question: which would you choose, if you had to choose--to go a couple of days with nothing to eat, or to have your throat cut by bandits and your wife and children carried away into slavery? Certainly you would do your fighting first, and meantime you would scratch together any food you could. While you were devoting your energies to putting down civil war, or to making a treaty with other tribes, or to preparing for a military campaign, you would continue to get food in the way your ancestors had got it; in other words, your economic evolution would wait, while your political evolution proceeded. But when you had succeeded in putting down your enemies, and had a long period of peace before you, then you would plant some fields, and domesticate some animals, or perhaps discover some new way of weaving cloth--and so your industrial life would make progress. It is easy to see why Professor Sumner wished to confuse this issue. He could not deny political evolution, because it had happened. He despised and feared political democracy, but it was here, and he had to speak politely to it, as to a tiger that had got into his house. But industrial democracy was a thing that had not yet happened in the world; it was only a hope and a prophecy, and therefore a prize old Tory was free to ridicule it. I remember reading somewhere his statement--the notion that democracy had anything to do with industry, or could in any way be applied to industry, was a piece of silliness. So, of course, he sought to demolish my idea that there was a process of evolution in economic affairs, paralleling the process of political evolution which had already culminated in democracy. Let us consider the process of political evolution, briefly and in its broad outlines. Take any savage tribe; you find it composed of individuals who are very much alike. Some are a little stronger than others, a little more clever, more powerful in battle; but the difference is slight, and when the tribe chooses someone to lead them, they might as well choose one man as another. They all have a say in the tribe councils, both men and women; their "rights" in the tribe are the same. They are, of course, slaves to ignorance, to degrading superstition and absurd taboos; but these things apply to everyone alike, there is no privileged caste, no hereditary inequality. But little by little, as the tribe grows in numbers, and in power and intelligence, as it comes to capture slaves in battle, and to unite with other tribes, there comes to be an hereditary chieftain and a group of his leading supporters, his courtiers and henchmen. When the society has evolved into the stage which we call barbarism, there is a permanent superior caste; there are hereditary priests, who have in their keeping the favor of the gods; and there is a subject population of slaves. The society moves on into the feudal stage, in which the various grades and classes are precisely marked off, each with its different functions, its different privileges and rights and duties. The feudal principalities and duchies war and struggle among themselves; they are united by marriage or by conquest, and presently some stronger ruler brings a great territory under his power, and we have what is called a kingdom; a society still larger, still more complex in its organization, and still more rigid in its class distinctions. Take France, under the ancient régime, and compare a courtier or noble gentleman with a serf; they are not only different before the law, they are different in the language they use, in the clothes they wear, in the ideas they hold; they are different even in their bodies, so that the gentleman regards the serf as an inferior species of creature. The kings warred among themselves and emperors arose. The ultimate ideal in Europe was a political society which should include the whole continent, and this ideal was several times almost attained. But it is the rule of history that wherever a large society is built upon the basis of privilege and enslavement, the ruling classes prove morally and intellectually unequal to the burden put upon them; they become corrupted, and their rule becomes intolerable. This happened in Europe, and there came political revolutions--first in England, which accomplished it by gradual stages, and then in the French monarchy, and quite recently in a dozen monarchies and empires, large and small. What precisely is this political revolution? Let us consider the case of France, where the change was sudden, and the issues precisely drawn. King Louis XIV had said, "I am the state." To a person of our time that might seem like boasting, but it was merely an assertion of the existing political fact. King Louis was the state by universal consent, and by divine authority, as all men believed. The army was his army, the navy was his navy, and wars, when he made them, were his wars. Everyone in the state was his subject, and all the property of the state was his personal, private property, to dispose of as he pleased. The government officials carried out his will, and members of the nobility held the land and ruled in his name. But now suddenly the people of France overthrew the king, and put him to death, and drove the nobles into exile; they seized the power of the French state, and proclaimed themselves equal citizens in the state, with equal voices in its government and equal rights before the law. So we call France a republic, and describe this form of society as political democracy. It is the completion of the process of political evolution, and you will see that it moves in a sort of spiral; having completed a circle and got back where it was before, but upon a higher plane. The citizens of a modern republic are equal before the law, just as were the members of the savage tribe; but the political organization is vastly larger, and infinitely more complicated, and every individual lives his life upon a higher level, because he shares in the benefits of this more highly organized and more powerful state. CHAPTER LIII INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION (Examines the process of evolution in industry and the stage which it has so far reached.) And now let us consider the process of industrial evolution. We shall find it to be exactly the same thing, reproducing the changes in another field of activity. You may picture two gigantic waves sweeping over the ocean. In some places the waves are far apart, and in other places they are closer together; for a time they may mingle, and perhaps their bases always mingle. It would be easy for a critic to point out how political affairs play a leading part in industrial evolution, and vice versa; it would be easy to argue that property rules the political state, or again, that the main function of the political state is to protect property. As I have said, man has to fight his enemies, and he has to seek food, and often he has to do the two things at the same time; but nevertheless, broadly speaking, we observe two great waves, sweeping over human society, and most of the time these waves are clearly separated and easily distinguished. Industry in a savage tribe is, like government, simple and uniform; all the members of the tribe get their living in the same way. One may be a little more expert as a fisherman, another as a gatherer of cocoanuts, but the fisherman gathers cocoanuts and the cocoanut-gatherer fishes. In the days of primitive communism there is little economic strife and little change; but as slavery comes in, and the private property system, there begins industrial war--the members of the tribe trade with one another, and argue over prices, and gradually some get the better of others, they accumulate slaves and goods, and later on they appropriate the land to their private use. Of course, the men who do this are often the rulers of the tribe, and so politics and industry are mixed; but even assuming that the state never interfered, assuming that the government allowed business affairs to work themselves out in their own way, the tendency of competition is always to end in monopoly. The big fish eat the little fish, the strong gain advantage over the weak, the rich grow richer, and the poor grow relatively poorer. As the amount of trading increases, and men specialize in the arts of bargaining, we see again and again how money concentrates in the hands of a few. It does this, even when the political state tries to prevent it; as, for example, when the princes and dukes of the Middle Ages would torture the Jewish money-lenders and take away their treasure, but the Jews never failed to grow rich again. It is when political evolution has completed itself, and a republic has been set up, that a free field is given to economic forces to work themselves out to their logical end. We have seen this in the United States, where we all started pretty much on the same economic level, and where political tyranny has had little hold. Our civilization is a civilization of the trader--the business man, as we call him; and we see how big business absorbs little business, and grows constantly larger and more powerful. We are familiar with what we call "graft," the use by business men of the powers of government to get trade advantage for themselves, and we have a school of old-time thinkers, calling themselves "Jeffersonian Democrats," who insist that if only there had never been any government favors, economic equality and democracy would have endured forever in our country. But it is my opinion that government has done far more to prevent monopoly and special privilege in business than to favor it; and nevertheless, monopoly has grown. In other words, the tendency toward concentration in business, the absorption of the small business by the big business, is an irresistible natural process, which neither can be nor should be hindered. The condition of competition, whether in politics or in industry, is never a permanent one, and can never be made permanent; it is a struggle which automatically brings itself to an end. Large-scale production and distribution is more economical than small-scale, and big business has irresistible advantages of credit and permanence over little business. As we shall presently show, the blind and indiscriminate production of goods under the competitive system leads to the glutting of markets and to industrial crises. At such times the weaker concerns are weeded out and the strong ones take their trade; and as a result, we have the modern great corporation, the most powerful machine of production yet devised by man, and which corresponds in every aspect to the monarchy in political society. We are accustomed to speak of our "captains of industry," our "coal kings," and "beef barons" and "lords of steel," and we think we are using metaphors; but the universality of these metaphors points to a fundamental truth in them. As a matter of fact, our modern captain of industry fills in the economic world exactly the same functions as were filled in ancient days by the head of a feudal state. He has won his power in a similar struggle, and he holds it by similar methods. He rules over an organization of human beings, arranged, economically speaking, in grades and classes, with their authorities and privileges and duties precisely determined, as under the "ancient régime." And just as King Louis said, "I am the state," so Mr. Armour considers that he is Armour & Co., and Mr. Morgan considers that he is the house of Morgan, and that the business exists for him and is controlled by him under divine authority. If I am correct in my analysis of the situation, this process of industrial evolution is destined to complete itself, as in the case of the political state. The subject populations of industry are becoming more and more discontented with their servitude, more and more resentful of that authority which compels them to labor while others reap the benefit. They are organizing themselves, and preparing for a social transformation which will parallel in every detail the revolution by which our ancestors overthrew the authority of King George III over the American colonies, and made inhabitants of those colonies no longer subjects of a king, but free and equal citizens of a republic. I expect to see a change throughout the world, which will take the great instruments of production which we call corporations and trusts, out of the hands of their present private owners, and make them the property, either of the entire community, or of those who do the work in them. This change is the "social revolution," and when it has completed itself, we shall have in that society an Industrial Republic, a form of business management which constitutes economic democracy. The history of the world's political revolutions has been written almost exclusively by aristocratic or bourgeois historians; that is to say, by men who, whatever their attitude toward political democracy, have no conception of industrial democracy, and believe that industrial strife and enslavement are the normal conditions of life. If, however, you will read Kropotkin's "Great French Revolution," you will be interested to discover how important a part was played in this revolution by economic forces. Underneath the political discontent of the merchants and middle classes lay a vast mass of social discontent of the peasants and workers. It was the masses of the people who made the revolution, but it was the middle classes who seized it and turned it to their own ends, putting down attempts toward economic equality, and confining the changes, so far as possible, to the political field. And everywhere throughout history, if you study revolutions, you find that same thing happening. You find, for example, Martin Luther fighting for the right to preach the word of God without consulting the Pope; but when the peasants of Germany rose and sought to set themselves free from feudal landlords, Luther turned against them, and called upon the princes to shoot them down. "The ass needs to be beaten, and the populace needs to be controlled with a strong hand." The landlords and propertied classes of England were willing to restrict the power of the king, and to give the vote to the educated and well-to-do; but from the time of Jack Cade to our own they shoot down the poor. But meantime, the industrial process continues; the modern factory system brings the workers together in larger and larger groups, and teaches them the lesson of class consciousness. So the time of the workers draws near. The first attempt in modern times to accomplish the social revolution and set up industrial democracy was in the Paris Commune. When the French empire collapsed, after the war with Germany in 1871, the workers of Paris seized control. They were massacred, some 50,000 of them, and the propertied classes of France established the present bourgeois republic, which has now become the bulwark of reaction throughout the Continent of Europe. Next came the Russian revolution of 1905, and this was an interesting illustration of the relation between the two waves of social progress. Russia was a backward country industrially, and according to theory not at all prepared for the social revolution. But nowadays the thoughts of men circulate all over the world, and the exiles from Russia had absorbed Marxian ideas, and were not prepared to accept a purely political freedom. So in 1905, after the Japanese war, when the people rose and forced the Czar to grant a parliament, the extremists made an effort to accomplish the social revolution at the same time. The peasants began to demand the land, and the workers the factories; whereupon the capitalists and middle classes, who wanted a parliament, but did not want Socialism, went over to the side of reaction, and both the political and social revolutions were crushed. But then came the great war, for which Russia with her incompetent government and her undeveloped industry was unprepared. The strain of it broke her down long before the other Allies, and in the universal suffering and ruin the Russian people were again forced to rise. The political revolution was accomplished, the Czar was imprisoned, and the Douma reigned supreme. Middle class liberalism throughout the world gave its blessings to this revolution, and hastened to welcome a new political democracy to the society of nations. But then occurred what to orthodox democratic opinion has been the most terrifying spectacle in human history. The Russian people had been driven too far towards starvation and despair; the masses had been too embittered, and they rose again, overthrowing not only their Czar and their grand dukes, but their capitalists and land-owners. For the first time in history the social revolution established itself, and the workers were in control of a great state. Ever since then we have seen exactly what we saw in Europe from 1789 onward, when the first political republic was established, and all the monarchies and empires of the world banded themselves together to stamp it out. We have witnessed a campaign of war, blockade, intrigue and propaganda against the Soviet government of Russia, all pretending to be carried on in the name of the Russian people, and for the purpose of saving them from suffering--but all obviously based upon one consideration and one alone, the fear that an effort at industrial self-government might possibly prove to be a success. Whether or not the Soviets will prove permanent, no one can say. But this much is certain; just as the French revolution sent a thrill around the world, and planted in the hearts of the common people the wonderful dream of freedom from kings and ruling classes, just so the Russian revolution has brought to the working masses the dream of freedom from masters and landlords. Everywhere in capitalist society this ferment is working, and in one country after another we see the first pangs of the new birth. Also we see capitalists and landlords, who once found "democracy," "free speech" and "equality before the law" useful formulas to break down the power of kings and aristocrats, now repudiating their old-time beliefs, and going back to the frankest reaction. We see, in our own "land of the free," the government refusing to reprint the Declaration of Independence during the war, and arresting men for quoting from it and circulating it; we even see the Department of Justice refusing to allow people to reprint the Sermon on the Mount! CHAPTER LIV THE CLASS STRUGGLE (Discusses history as a battle-ground between ruling and subject classes, and the method and outcome of this struggle.) There is a theory of social development, sometimes called the materialistic interpretation of history, and sometimes the economic interpretation of history. It is one of the contributions to our thought which we owe to Karl Marx, and like all the rest of Marxian theory, it is a subject of embittered controversy, not merely between Socialists and orthodox economists, but between various schools of revolutionary doctrine. For my part, I have never been a great hand for doctrine, whether ancient or modern; I am not much more concerned with what Marx taught than I am with what St. Paul taught, or what Martin Luther taught. My advice is to look at life with your own eyes, and to state in simple language the conclusions of your own thinking. Man is an eating animal; he has also been described as a tool-making animal, and might be described as an ideal-making animal. There is a tendency on the part of those who specialize in the making of ideals to repudiate the eating and the tool-making sides of man; which accounts for the quarrel between the Marxians and the moralists. All through history you find new efforts of man to develop his emotional and spiritual nature, and to escape from the humiliating limitations of the flesh. These efforts have many of them been animated by desperate sincerity, but none of them have changed the fundamental fact that man is an eating animal, an animal insufficiently provided by nature against cold, and with an intense repugnance to having streams of cold water run down back of his neck. The religious teachers go out with empty purse, and "take no thought for the morrow"; but the forces of nature press insistently upon them, and little by little they make compromises, they take to shelter while they are preaching, they consent to live in houses, and even to own houses, and to keep a bank account. So they make terms with the powers of this world, and the powers of this world, which are subtle, and awake to their own interests, find ways to twist the new doctrine to their ends. So the new religion becomes simply another form of the old hypocrisy; and it comes to us as a breath of fresh air in a room full of corruption when some one says, "Let us have done with aged shams and false idealisms. Let us face the facts of life, and admit that man is a physical animal, and cannot do any sane and constructive thinking until he has food and shelter provided. Let us look at history with unblinking eyes, and realize that food and shelter, the material means of life, are what men have been seeking all through history, and will continue to seek, until we put production and distribution upon a basis of justice, instead of a basis of force." Such is, as simply as I can phrase it, the materialistic interpretation of history. Put into its dress of scientific language it reads: the dominant method of production and exchange in any society determines the institutions and forms of that society. I do not think I exaggerate in saying that this formula, applied with judgment and discrimination, is a key to the understanding of human societies. Wherever man has moved into the stage of slavery and private property there has been some group which has held power and sought to maintain and increase it. This group has set the standards of behavior and belief for the community, and if you wish to understand the government and religion, the manners and morals, the philosophy and literature and art of that community, the first thing you have to do is to understand the dominant group and its methods of keeping itself on top. This statement applies, not merely to those cultural forms which are established and ordained by the ruling class; it applies equally well to the revolutionary forms, the behavior and beliefs of those who oppose the ruling class. For men do not revolt in a vacuum, they revolt against certain conditions, and the form of their revolt is determined by the conditions. Take, for example, primitive Christianity, which was certainly an effort to be unworldly, if ever such an effort was made by man. But you cannot understand anything about primitive Christianity unless you see it as a new form of slave revolt against Roman imperialism and capitalism. The theory of the class struggle is the master key to the bewilderments and confusions of history. Always there is a dominant class, holding the power of the state, and always there are subject classes; and sooner or later the subject classes begin protesting and struggling for wider rights. When they think they are strong enough, they attempt a revolt, and sometimes they succeed. If they do, they write the histories of the revolt, and their leaders become heroes and statesmen. If they fail, the histories are written by their oppressors, and the rebels are portrayed as criminals. One of the commonest of popular assumptions is that if the rebels have justice on their side, they are bound to succeed in the long run; but this is merely the sentimental nonsense that is made out of history. It is perfectly possible for a just revolt to be crushed, and to be crushed again and again; just as it is possible for a child which is ready to be born to fail to be born, and to perish miserably. The fact that the Huguenots had most of the virtue and industry and intelligence of France did not keep them from being slaughtered by Catholic bigots, and reaction riveted upon the French people for a couple of hundred years. The fact that the Moors had most of the industry of Spain did not keep them from being driven into exile by the Inquisition, and the intellectual life of the Spanish people strangled for three hundred or four hundred years. Some eight hundred years ago our ancestors in England brought a cruel and despotic king to battle, and conquered him, and on the field of Runnymede forced him to sign a grant of rights to Englishmen. That document is known as Magna Carta, or the Great Charter, and everyone who writes political history today recognizes it as one of the greatest of man's achievements, the beginning of a process which we hope will bring freedom and equality before the law to every human being on earth. And now we have come to the stage in our industrial affairs, when the organized workers seek to bring the monarchs of industry into the council chamber, and force them to sign a similar Great Charter, which will grant freedom and self-government to the workers. Just as King John was forced to admit that the power to tax and spend the public revenue belonged to the people of England, and not to the ruler; just so the workers will establish the principle that the finances of industry are a public concern, that the books are to be opened, and prices fixed and wages paid by the democratic vote of the citizens of industry. If that change is accomplished, the historian of the future will recognize it as another momentous step in progress; and he will heed the protests of the lords of industry, that they are being deprived of their freedom to do business, and of their sacred legal rights to their profits, as little as he heeded the protests of King John against the "treason" and "usurpation" and infringement of "divine right" by the rebellious barons. CHAPTER LV THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM (Shows how wealth is produced in modern society, and the effect of this system upon the minds of the workers.) In the beginning man got his living by hunting and fishing. Then he took to keeping flocks and herds, and later by slow stages he settled down to agriculture. With the introduction of slavery and the ownership of the land by ruling classes, there came to be a subject class of workers, who toiled on the land from dawn to dark, year in and year out, and got, if they were fortunate, an existence for themselves and their families. Whether these workers were called slaves or serfs or peasants, whether their product was taken from them in the form of taxes by the king, or of rent by the landlord, made no difference; the workers were bound to the soil, like the beasts with which they lived in intimate contact. They were drafted into armies, and made to fight for their lords and masters; they suffered pestilence and famine, fire and slaughter; but with infinite patience they would rebuild their huts, and dig and plant again, whether for the old master or for a new one. In the early days these workers made their own crude tools and weapons; but very early there must have been some who specialized in such arts, and with the growth of towns and communications came a new kind of labor, based upon a new system. Some enterprising man would buy slaves, or hire labor, and obtain a supply of raw material, and manufacture goods to be bartered or sold. He would pay his workers enough to draw them from the land, and would sell the product for what he could get, and the difference would be his profit. That was capitalism, and at first it was a thing of no importance, and the men who engaged in it had no social standing. But princes and lords needed weapons and supplies for their armies, and the men who could furnish these things became more and more necessary, and the states which encouraged them were the ones which rose to power. Merchants and sea-traders became the intimates of kings, and by the time of the Roman empire, capitalism was a great world power, dominating the state, using the armies of the state for its purposes. It went down with the rest of Roman civilization, but in the Middle Ages it began once more to revive, and by the end of the eighteenth century the merchants and money lenders of France, with their retainers, the lawyers and journalists, were powerful enough to take the control of society. Then, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, came the invention of machinery and of the power process. Capitalism began to grow like a young giant among pygmies. In the course of a century it has ousted all other methods of production, and all other forms of social activity. A hundred years ago the British House of Commons was a parliament of landlords; today it is a Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association. Out of the 707 members of the British House of Commons, 361 are members of the "Federation of British Industries," the labor-smashing organization of British "big business." And the same is true of every other parliament and congress in the modern capitalist state. Practically all the wealth of the world today is produced by the capitalist method, and distributed under capitalist supervision, and therefore capitalist ideas prevail in our society, to the practical exclusion of all other ideas. I have shown in "The Profits of Religion" how these ideas dominate the modern church, and in "The Brass Check" how they dominate the modern press. I plan to write two books, to show how they dominate education and literature. A hundred years ago an industry consisted of a half a dozen or a dozen men, working under the personal supervision of an owner, and using crude hand tools. Today it consists of a gigantic trust, owning and managing scores and perhaps hundreds of mills and factories, each employing thousands of workers. A corporation like the Steel Trust owns enough of the sources of its raw material to give it practical monopoly; it owns a fleet of vessels especially designed for ore-carrying; it owns its private railroads, to deliver the ore to the mills. Through its system of dummy directorates it has practical control of the main railroads over which it distributes its products; also of banks and trust companies and insurance companies, to gather the money of the public to finance its undertakings. It owns huge office buildings, and vast tracts of land upon which the homes of its workers are built. It has a private army for the defense of its property--a complete army of cavalry, infantry and artillery, including a large and highly efficient secret service department, with a host of informers and spies. It has newspapers for the purpose of propaganda, and it controls the government of every village, town and city in which it has important interests. If you will take the trouble to visit a "steel town," and make inquiries among public officials, newspaper men, and others who are "on the inside," you will discover that those in authority consider it necessary and proper that "steel" should control, and are unable to conceive any other condition of affairs. If you go to other parts of the country, where other great industries are located, you find it taken for granted that "copper" should control, or "lumber," or "coal," or "oil," or whatever it may be. Under the system of large scale capitalism, labor is a commodity, bought and sold in the market like any other commodity. Some years ago Congress was requested to pass a law contradicting this fundamental fact of world capitalism. Congress passed a law, very carefully worded so that no one could be sure what it meant, and a few years later the Supreme Court nullified the law. But all through this political and legal controversy the status of labor remained exactly the same; there was a "labor market," consisting of those members of the community who, in the formula of Marx, had nothing but their labor power to sell. These competed for recognition at the factory gates, and highly skilled foremen selected those who offered the largest quantity of labor power for the stated wage. So entirely impersonal is this process that there are great industries in America in which ninety per cent of the common labor force is hired and fired all over again in the course of a year. These men are put to work in gangs, under a system which enables one picked man to set the pace, and compel all the others to keep up with him, under penalty of being discharged. This process is known as "speeding up," and its purpose is to obtain from each worker the greatest quantity of energy in exchange for his daily wage. In the steel industry men work twelve hours a day for six days in the week, and then finish with a twenty-four-hour day. If they do not work so long in other industries, it is because experience has proven that the greatest quantity of energy can be obtained from them in a shorter time. There are very few men who can stand this pace for long. Those who are not crippled or killed in accidents are broken down at forty, and all the great corporations recognize this fact. Their foremen pick out the younger men, and practically all concerns have an age rule, and never hire men above forty or forty-five. I shall not in this book go into details concerning the fate of the worker under the profit system. I have written two novels, "The Jungle" and "King Coal," in which the facts are portrayed in detail, and it seems the part of common sense to refer the reader to these text-books. It will suffice here to set forth the main outlines of the situation. In every capitalist country of the world the masses of the people are herded into industries, in whose profits they have no share, and in whose welfare they have no interest. They do not know the people for whom they work; they have no human relationship, either with their work or with their employers. They see the surplus of their product drawn off to maintain a class of idlers, whose activities they know only through the scandals of the divorce courts and the luxury-love of the moving picture screen. They compete with one another for jobs, and bid down one another's wages; and if they attempt to organize and end this competition, their efforts are broken by newspaper propaganda and policemen's clubs. At the same time they know that monopoly, open or secret, prevails in the fixing of prices, and so they find the struggle to "get ahead" a losing one. In America it used to be possible for the young and energetic to "go West"; but now the wave of capitalism has reached the Pacific coast and been thrown back, and there is no more frontier. The man who works on the land has been through all the ages a solitary man. He is better friends with his horse and his cow than with his fellow humans. He is brutalized by incessant toil, he lives amid dirt and the filth of animals, he is, in the words of Edwin Markham: "A thing that grieves not and that never hopes, Stunted and stunned, a brother to the ox." He is a victim of natural forces which he does not understand, and inevitably therefore he is superstitious. Being alone, he is helpless against his masters, and only utter desperation drives him to revolt. But consider the capitalist system--how different the conditions of its workers! Here they are gathered into city slums, and their wits are sharpened by continual contact with their fellows. The printing press makes cheap the spread of information, and the soap-box makes it even cheaper. Any man with a grievance can shout aloud, and be sure of an audience to listen, and he can get a great deal said before the company watchman or the policeman can throttle him. Moreover, the modern worker is not struggling with drought and tempest and hail; he does not see his labors wiped out by volcanic eruption or lightning stroke; he is dealing with machinery, something that he himself has made, and that he fully understands. If a machine gets out of order, he does not fall down upon his knees and pray to God to fix it. All the training of his life teaches him the relationship of cause and effect, the adjustment of means to ends. So the modern worker, as a necessary consequence of his daily work, is practical, skeptical, and unsentimental in his psychology. And what is more, he is making all the rest of society of the same temperament. He is building roads out into the country, and building machines to roll over them; he is running telephone lines and sending newspapers and magazines and moving picture shows to the peasant and the farmer; so the young peasants and farmers hunger for the city, and they learn to fix machinery instead of praying to God. Such is the psychology of the modern working class; and the supreme achievement of their sharpened wits is an understanding of the capitalist process. As a matter of fact they did not make this discovery for themselves; it was made for them by middle-class men, lawyers and teachers and writers--Fourier, Owen, Marx, Lassalle. The modern doctrine is called by various names: Socialism, Communism, Anarchism, Bolshevism, Syndicalism, Collectivism. Later on I shall define these various terms, and point out the distinctions between them. For the moment I emphasize the factor they all have in common, and which is fundamental: they wish to break the power of class ownership and control of the instruments and means of production; they wish to replace private capitalism by some system under which the instruments and means of production are collectively owned and operated; and they look to the non-owning class, the proletarian, as the motive power by which this change is to be compelled. I shall in future refer to this as the "social revolutionary" doctrine; taking pains to explain that the word "revolutionary" is to be divested of its popular meaning of physical violence. It is perfectly conceivable that the change may be brought about peaceably, and I shall try to show before long that in modern capitalist states the decision as to whether it is brought about peaceably or by violence rests with the present masters of industry. CHAPTER LVI THE CAPITALIST PROCESS (How profits are made under the present industrial system and what becomes of them.) We have next to examine the structure of the capitalist order, basing our argument on facts which are admitted by everyone, including the most ardent defenders of the present system. All men have to have certain material things which we describe as goods. As these goods do not produce themselves, it is necessary that some should work. The workers must have tools; also they must have access to the land and the sources of raw materials. These means of production are owned by some individuals in the community, and this ownership gives them power to direct the work of the rest. Those who own the land and the natural sources of wealth we call capitalists, or business men, and those who do not own these things, or whose share in them is insignificant, are the proletariat, or working class. If you state to the average American that there is a capitalist class and a proletariat in this country, he will point out that many who are now members of the capitalist class were originally members of the proletariat; they have worked hard and saved, and accumulated property. But this is merely confusing the issue. The fact that some proletarians turn into capitalists and some capitalists into proletarians is important to the individuals concerned, but it does not alter the fact that there are two classes, capitalist and proletarian. Consider, by way of illustrating, a field with trees growing on it; we have earth, and we have trees, and the distinction between them is unmistakable. The roots of the trees go down into the earth, and take up portions of the earth and turn it into tree. The leaves and the dead branches fall, and in the course of time are turned once more to earth. There are all sorts of stages between earth and tree, and between tree and earth; but you would not therefore say that the word "earth" and the word "tree" are misnomers. The working men go to the business man and apply for work. The business man gives them work, and takes their product, and offers it in the market at a price which allows him a profit above cost. If he can sell at a profit, he repeats the process, and the worker has a job. If he cannot sell at a profit, the worker is out of a job. Here and there may be a benevolent business man who, rather than turn his workers out of a job, will sell his goods at cost, or even for a short time at a loss; but if he keeps the factory going simply for the benefit of his workers, and with no expectation of ever making a profit, that is a form of charity, and not the common system under which our business is now carried on. So it appears that the worker is dependent for his wages upon the ability of the business man to make a profit. The worker's life is inextricably bound up with the profit of the capitalist--no profit for the capitalist, no life for the worker. The capitalist, going out to look for markets for his goods, is seeking, not merely profit for himself, but life for his workers. Now, the business man pays a certain percentage of his total receipts for labor, another percentage for raw materials, another percentage for his overhead charges, and the rest is profit in various forms, rent to the landlord, interest to the bondholder, dividends to the stockholder. All this total sum goes to human individuals, and each has thus a certain amount of money to spend. They pay it over to other individuals for goods or services, and so the money keeps circulating, and business keeps going. That is as deep as the average mind probes into the process. But let us probe a little deeper. It is evident that, in the course of all this exchanging of goods, some individuals get a larger share than other individuals. Our government collects an income tax, and thus we have statistics representing what people are willing to admit about the share they get. In 1917 it appeared that, speaking roughly, one family out of six had an income of over $1,000 a year, and one family out of twelve had an income of over $2,000. But there were 19,000 families which admitted incomes of over $50,000 a year, and 300 with over $1,000,000 a year. Now the families that get less than a thousand dollars a year obviously have to spend the greater part of their income upon their immediate living expenses. But the families that get $50,000 a year do not need to spend everything, and most of them take the greater part of their income and reinvest it--that is, they spend it upon the creating of new machinery of production, railroads, mills, factories, office buildings, the whole elaborate structure of capitalist industry. Exactly what proportion of the total product of industry is thus taken and reinvested no one can say; but this we know, our cities are growing at an enormous rate, our manufacturing power is increasing by leaps and bounds, we are perfecting processes which enable one man to do the work of a hundred men, which increase the product of one man's labor a hundredfold. All this goes on blindly, automatically; a Niagara of goods of all sorts is poured out, and we call it "prosperity." But then suddenly a strange and bewildering thing happens. All at once, and without warning, orders fall off, values begin to drop, business collapses, factories are shut down, and millions of men are thrown out of jobs. Merchants look at one another with blanched faces; each one has been counting on paying his bills with the profits he was going to make, and now his profits are gone, and he can't pay. The newspapers and magazines keep insisting that it can't be true, that business is going to revive next week, that prosperity is just ahead. But the factories stay shut, and the millions of men stay idle. This is the condition in which we find ourselves as I write this book. It has been happening regularly in our history every ten years or so, ever since America started; we have had a hundred years to reflect upon it and to probe into the causes of it, and such is business intelligence in the most enlightened country in the world, you may search the pages of our newspapers from the first column of millionaire divorce suits to the last column of "situations wanted," and nowhere can you find one word to explain this mysterious calamity of "hard times"--how it comes to happen to our social system, or what could be done to prevent it! To supply this deficiency in present day thinking is our next task. CHAPTER LVII HARD TIMES (Explains why capitalist prosperity is a spasmodic thing, and why abundant production brings distress instead of plenty.) Let us picture a small island inhabited by six men. One of these men fishes, another hunts, another gathers cocoanuts, another raises goats for clothing, and so on. The six men among them produce by their labor all the necessities of their lives, and they exchange their products with one another. The island is productive, and each of the men is free, and makes his exchanges on equal terms; on that basis the industry of the island can continue indefinitely, and there will never be any trouble. There may sometimes be over-production, but it will not cause anyone to starve. If the fisherman is unusually lucky one day, he will be able to take a vacation for a few days, living on his fish and the products he exchanges for his fish. For the sake of convenience in future reference, I will describe this happy island as a "free" society; meaning that each of the members of this society has access on equal terms to the sources of wealth, and each owns the product of his own labor, without paying tribute to any one else for the right to labor, or to exchange his products. But now let us suppose that one of the men on the island is strong and aggressive; he takes a club and knocks down the other five men, and compels them to sign a piece of paper agreeing that hereafter he is the president of the land development company of the island, the chief stockholder in the goat-raising company, and owner of the fishing concession and the cocoanut grove; also, that hereafter goods shall not be bartered in kind, but shall be exchanged for money, and that he is the banker, and also the government, with the right to issue money. In this society you will find that the real work, the actually productive work, is done by five men, instead of by six, and these five do not get the full value of their labor. The fisherman will fish, but his product will no longer belong to himself; he will get part of it as wages, while the "business man" takes charge of the balance. So when there is a lucky day, there will be prosperity in the fishing industry, but this prosperity will not benefit the fisherman; he will have only his wage, and when he has caught too many fish, he will not have a few days' vacation, but will be out of a job. And exactly the same thing will happen to the goat-herd. He will probably have work all the year round, because goats have to be tended, but he will get barely enough to keep him alive, and the surplus skins and milk will go to the owner of the no-longer-happy island. Perhaps it will occur to the owner that the man who raises cocoanuts might also keep an eye on the goats, and so the goat-herd will be permanently out of a job, and will turn into what is called a tramp, or vagrant. Inasmuch as everything to eat on the island belongs to the owner, the ex-goat-herd will be tempted to become a criminal, and so it will be necessary for the owner to arm the cocoanut man with a club and make him into a policeman; or perhaps he will organize the fisherman and the hunter into a militia for the preservation of law and order. They will be glad to serve him, because, owing to the extreme productivity of the island, they will be out of jobs a great part of the time, and but for the generosity of the business man, would have no way of earning a living. But suppose that the cocoanut man should invent a machine for gathering a year's supply of nuts in a week; suppose the fisherman should devise a scheme to fill his boat with fish in a few minutes; and suppose that as a result of these inventions the business man got so rich that he moved to Paris, and no longer saw his workers, or even knew their names. Under these conditions you can see that overproduction and unemployment might increase on the island; and also the business man might seem less human and lovable to his wage slaves, and might need a larger police force. It might even happen that he would discover the need of a propaganda department, in order to keep his police force loyal, and a secret service to make sure that agitators did not get into the schools. The five islanders, having filled all the barns and storehouses, would be turned out to starve; and when they asked the reason, they would be told it was because they had produced a surplus of food. This may sound grotesque, but it is what is being said to 5,000,000 men in America as I write. There are clothing-workers who are going about in rags, and they are told it is because they have produced too much clothing. There are shoe-workers whose shoes are falling off their feet, and they are told it is because they have produced too many shoes. There are carpenters who have no homes, and they are told that a great many homes are needed, but unfortunately it doesn't pay the builders to go ahead just now. This may sound like a caricature, but it happens to be the most prominent single fact in the consciousness of 5,000,000 Americans at the close of the year 1921. No wonder they are discontented with the present order. The solution of the mystery is so simple that the 5,000,000 unemployed cannot be kept permanently from understanding it. The reason the five men on the island are starving is because one man owns the island and the others own nothing. If the island were community property, the five men would each own a share of the contents of the barns and storehouses, and would not be starving. If the 100,000,000 people of America owned the productive machinery of America, then instantly the unemployment crisis would pass like an evil dream. The farm-workers who need shoes would exchange their food with the starving shoe-workers, and the starving shoe-workers would have jobs. They would want clothing, and so the clothing-makers would start to work; and so on all the way down the line. There is only one thing necessary to make this possible, and that is the thing which we have agreed to call the social revolution. CHAPTER LVIII THE IRON RING (Analyzes further the profit system, which strangles production, and makes true prosperity impossible.) We have seen that in an exploiting society there is a surplus which is taken by the exploiter; and that under the modern system this surplus must be sold at a profit before production can continue. The vital fact in such a society is that the worker has not the money to buy back all that he produces; therefore it is inevitable that a surplus product should accumulate. When this happens, production must be cut down, and during that period the worker is without a job, and without means of living. The fact that he needs the product does not help him; the point is that he has not the money to buy it. In such a society the productive machinery is never used to the full. The machinery is controlled by a profit-seeking interest, seeking an opportunity to make sales, and restricting production according to the prospect of sales. So the actual product bears no relationship to the possible product, and people who live in an exploiting society can form no conception of true prosperity. For, you see, the market is limited by the competitive wage system. We have seen that in our own rich, prosperous country only one family out of six has more than $1,000 a year income; only one family out of twelve has $2,000 a year. It does not make any difference that the warehouses are bursting with goods; a family constitutes a market of so many dollars a year, and then, so far as the profit system is concerned, that family is non-existent; that family stops consuming, and the productive machinery is halted to that extent. I have been accustomed to portray the profit system under the simile of an iron ring riveted about the body of a baby. That ring would cause the baby some discomfort at the beginning, but it would not be serious, and the baby would get used to it. But as the baby grew the trouble caused by the ring would increase, and finally there would come a time when the baby would be suffering from a whole complication of troubles, and for each of these troubles there would be but one remedy--break the ring. Does the baby cry all the time? Break the ring! Is its digestion defective? Break the ring! Is it threatened with convulsions or with blood poisoning? Break the ring! Here is our industrial society, growing at a rate never equalled by any human baby; and here is this iron ring riveted about its middle. Here is poverty, here is unemployment, here is graft, here is crime, here is war and plague and famine; and for all these evils there is but one cause, and but one remedy. Break the ring! Set production free from the strangulation of the profit system. I will admit that there may have been a time in the history of the social infant when this ring was necessary. I admit that if the great industrial machine was to be constructed, it was necessary that the mass of the people should consume only part of what they produced, and should allow the balance to be reinvested as capital. But now it has been done, and the process is complete. We have a machine capable of producing many times more than we can consume; shall we still go on building that machine? Shall we go on starving ourselves, to save the money, to multiply over and over again the products, in order that we may be thrown out of work, and be starved even more completely? A few generations ago we had in colonial America a society that in part at least was "free." In that society everybody got the necessities of life. They did not have the modern Sunday supplement and the moving picture show, but they had bread and meat and good substantial clothing, and furniture so well made that we still preserve it. The children in those days grew up to be strong and sturdy men and women, who would have seen nothing to envy in the bodies or minds of the slum population of New York and Chicago. In short, they had all the true necessities of life; and yet their work was done by hand, the power process was unknown and undreamed of. Now comes modern machinery, and multiplies the productive power of the hand laborer by five, by ten, sometimes by a hundred. Here, for example, is the "Appeal to Reason" selling millions of cheap books for ten cents apiece, and making a profit on it; installing a gigantic press which takes paper, sheet after sheet, prints 128 pages of a book at one impression, and folds and stitches and binds the books, all in one process, and turns them out complete at the rate of 10,000 copies per hour. Here is a factory which turns out 100,000 automobiles a month. Here is a mill which turns out many millions of yards of cloth a month. If our colonial ancestors had been told about these marvels, they would have said instantly: "Then, of course, everybody in that society will have all the books they want, and all the clothing they want, and all the automobiles. Everybody in that society will have five or ten or one hundred times as much goods as we have." Imagine the bewilderment of our colonial ancestor if he had been told: "The majority of the people in that society will not have so much of the real necessities of life as you have. They will have a few cheap trinkets, designed to tickle their senses; they will have cheap newspapers, carefully contrived to keep their minds vacant and to keep them contented with their lot; they will have moving picture shows constructed for the same purpose; but all their material things will be flimsy, put together for show and not for permanence; their food will be adulterated, their clothing will be shoddy, everything they have will be made, not for their service, but for the profit of some one who lives by selling to them. The average wage earned by those who do the work of this new machine civilization will be less than half the amount necessary to purchase the necessities of a decent life, and one-tenth of the total population will be living in such poverty that they are unable to maintain physical fitness, or to rear their children into full sized men and women." CHAPTER LIX FOREIGN MARKETS (Considers the efforts of capitalism to save itself by marketing its surplus products abroad, and what results from these efforts.) If our analysis of present-day society is correct, we have the enormous populations of the modern industrial countries, living always on the verge of starvation, their chance for survival depending at all times upon the ability of their employers to find a profitable market for a surplus of goods. At first the employer seeks that market at home; but when the home markets are glutted, he goes abroad; and so develops the phenomenon of foreign trade and rivalry for foreign trade, as the basic fact of capitalism, and the fundamental cause of modern war. Let us get clear a simple distinction concerning foreign trade. There is a kind of trade which is normal, and would thrive in a "free" society. In the United States we can produce nearly all the necessities of life, but there are a few which we cannot produce--rubber, for example, and bananas, and good music. These things we wish to import. We buy them from other countries, and incur a debt, which we pay with products which the other countries need from us; wheat, for example, and copper, and moving pictures with cowboys in them. This is equal exchange, and a natural phenomenon. A "free" society would produce such surplus goods as were necessary to procure the foreign products that it desired. When it had produced that much, the workers would stop and take a vacation until they wanted more foreign products. But under capitalism we have an entirely different condition--we produce a surplus of goods which we _have_ to sell in order to keep our factories running, and to keep our working population from starving. And note that it does not help us to get back an equal quantity of foreign goods in exchange. We must have what we call "a favorable balance"; that is, we must have other people going into debt to us, so that we can be continually shipping out more goods than we take back; continually piling up credits which we can "negotiate," or turn into cash, so that we can go on and repeat the process of making more goods, selling them for more profits, and putting the surplus into the form of more machinery, to make still more goods and still more profits. And then, after a while, we come upon this embarrassing phenomenon; nations which buy and do not sell must either do it by sending us gold, or by our giving them credit. The sending of gold cannot go on indefinitely, because then we should have all the gold, and if other nations had none that would destroy their credit. On the other hand, business cannot be done by credit indefinitely; for the very essence of credit is a promise to pay, and payment can only be made in goods, and how can we take the goods without ruining our own industry? Fifteen years ago I pointed this out in a book. The argument was irrefutable, and the conclusion inescapable, but the few critics who noted it repeated their usual formula about "dreamers and theorists." Now, however, the business mills have ground on, and what was theory has become fact before our eyes. We have trusted the nations of Europe for some $10,000,000,000 worth of goods, and they are powerless to pay, and if they did pay, they would bankrupt American industry. France wishes to collect an enormous indemnity from Germany, but nobody can figure out how this indemnity can be paid without ruining French industry. The French have demanded coal from Germany, and have got more than they can use, and are "dumping" it in Belgium and Holland, with the result that the British coal industry is ruined. The French clamor that the Germans must pay for the destruction they wrought in Northern France, and the Germans offer to send German workmen to rebuild the ruined towns; but the French denounce this as an insult--it would deprive French workingmen of their jobs! So I might continue for pages, pointing out the manifold absurdities which result from a system of industry for the profit of a few, instead of for the use of all. Ever since I first began to read the newspapers, some twenty-five or thirty years ago, all our political life has been nothing but the convulsions of a social body tortured by the constricting ring of the profit system. Everywhere one group struggling for advantage over another group, and politicians engaged in playing one interest against another interest! My boyhood recollections of public life consist of campaign slogans having to do with the tariff: "production and prosperity," "reciprocity," "the full dinner pail," "the foreigner pays the tax," etc. The workingman, under the profit system, is like a man pounding away at a pump. He can get a thin trickle of water from the spout of the pump if he works hard enough, but in order to get it he has to supply ten times as much to some one who has tapped the pipe. But the tapping has been done underground, where the workingman cannot see it. All the workingman knows is that there is no job for him if the products of "cheap foreign labor" are allowed to be "dumped" on the American market. That is obvious, and so he votes for a tax on foreign imports, high enough to enable his own employer to market at a profit. He does not realize that he is thus raising the price of everything that he buys, and so leaving himself worse off than he was before. All governments are delighted with this tariff device, because they are thus enabled to get money from the public without the public's knowing it. "The foreigner pays the tax," we are told, and as a result of this arrangement the steel trust just before the war was selling its product at a high price to the American people, and taking its surplus abroad and selling it to the foreigner at half the domestic price. And we see this same thing in every line of manufacture, and all over the world. We see one nation after another withdrawing itself as a market for manufactured products, and entering the lists as a marketer. One more nation now able to fill all its own needs, and going out hungrily to look for foreign customers, adding to the glut of the world's manufactured products and the ferocity of international competition! At the close of the Civil War the total exports of the United States averaged approximately $300,000,000, and the total imports were about the same. In 1892 the exports first touched $1,000,000,000, while the imports were about nine-tenths of that sum. In the year 1913 the exports were nearly $2,500,000,000, while the imports were $600,000,000 less; and in the year 1920 our exports were over $8,000,000,000 and our imports a little over $5,000,000,000! So we have a "favorable balance" of almost $3,000,000,000 a year--and as a result we are on the verge of ruin! This "iron ring" of overproduction and lack of market exercises upon our industrial body a steady pressure, a slow strangling. But because the body is in convulsions, struggling to break the ring, the pressure of the ring is worse at some times than at others. We have periods of what we call "prosperity," followed by periods of panic and hard times. You must understand that only a small part of our business is done by means of cash payments, whether in gold or silver or paper money. Close to 99% of our business is done by means of credit, and this introduces into the process a psychological factor. The business man expects certain profits, and he capitalizes these expectations. Business booms, because everybody believes everybody else's promises; credit expands like a huge balloon, with the breath of everybody's enthusiasm. But meantime real business, the real market, remains just what it was before; it cannot increase, because of the iron ring which restricts the buying power of the mass of the people by the competitive wage. So presently the time comes when somebody realizes that he has over-capitalized his hopes; he curtails his orders, he calls in his money, and the impulse thus started precipitates a crash in the whole business world. We had such a crash in 1907, and I remember a Wall Street man explaining it in a magazine article entitled, "Somebody Asked for a Dollar." We learned one lesson by that panic; at least, the big financial men learned it, and had Congress pass what is called the "Federal Reserve Act," a provision whereby in time of need the government issues practically unlimited credit to banks. This, of course, is fine for the banks; it puts the credit of everybody else behind them, and all they have to do is to stop lending money--except to the big insiders--and sit back and wait, while the little men go to the wall, and the mass of us live on our savings or starve. We saw this happen in the year 1920, and for the first time we had "hard times" without having a financial panic. But instead we see prices staying high--because the banks have issued so much paper money and bank credits. CHAPTER LX CAPITALIST WAR (Shows how the competition for foreign markets leads nations automatically into war.) In a discussion of the world's economic situation, published in 1906, the writer portrayed the ruling class of Germany as sitting in front of a thermometer, watching the mercury rising, and knowing that when it reached the top, the thermometer would break. This thermometer was the German class system of government, and the mercury was the Socialist vote. In 1870 the vote was 30,000, in 1884 it was 549,000, in 1893 it was 1,876,000, in 1903 it was 3,008,000, in 1907 it was 3,250,000, in 1911 it was 4,250,000. Writing between 1906 and 1913, I again and again pointed out that this increase was the symptom of social discontent in Germany, caused by the overproduction of invested capital throughout the world, and the intensification of the competition for world markets. I pointed out that a slight increase in the vote would be sufficient to transfer to the working class of Germany the political power of the German state; and I said that the ruling class of Germany would never permit that to happen--when it was ready to happen Germany would go to war, to seize the trade privileges of some other nation. There was a time when wars were caused by national and racial hatreds. There are still enough of these venerable prejudices left in the world, but no student of the subject would deny that the main source of modern wars is commercial rivalry. In 1917 we sent Eugene V. Debs to prison for declaring that the late world war was a war of capitalist greed. But two years later President Wilson, who had waged the war, declared in a public speech that everybody knew it had been a war of commercial rivalries. The aims of modern war-makers are two. First, capitalism must have raw materials, including coal and oil, the sources of power, and gold and silver, the bases of credit. Parts of the world which are so unfortunate as to be rich in these substances become the bone of contention between rival financial groups, organized as nations. Some sarcastic writer has defined a "backward" nation as one which has gold mines and no navy. We are horrified to read of the wars of the French monarchs, caused by the jealous quarrels of mistresses; but in 1905 we saw Russia and Japan go to war and waste a million lives because certain Russian grand dukes had bribed certain Chinese mandarins and obtained concessions of timber on the Yalu River. We now observe France and Germany vowed to undying hate because of iron mines in Lorraine, and the efforts of France to take the coal mines of Silesia from Germany, and give them to Poland, which is another name for French capitalism. The other end sought by the war-makers is markets for manufactured products, and control of trade routes, coaling stations and cables necessary to the building up of foreign trade. England has been "mistress of the seas" for some 300 years, which meant that her traders had obtained most of these advantages. But then came Germany, with her newly developed commercialism, shoving her rival out of the way. The Englishman was easy-going; he liked to play cricket, and stop and drink tea every afternoon. But the German worked all day and part of the night; he trained himself as a specialist, he studied the needs of his customers--all of which to the Englishman was "unfair" competition. But here were the populations of the crowded slums, dependent for their weekly wage and their daily bread upon the ability of the factories to go on turning out products! Here was the ever-blackening shadow of unemployment, the mutterings of social discontent, the agitators on the soap-boxes, the workers listening to them with more and more eager attention, and the journalists and politicians and bankers watching this phenomenon with a ghastly fear. So came the great war. Social discontent was forgotten over night, and England and France plunged in to down their hated rival, once and for all time. Now they have succeeded: Germany's ships have been taken from her, and likewise her cables and coaling stations; the Berlin-Bagdad Railroad is a forgotten dream; the British sit in Constantinople, and the traffic goes by sea. American capitalism wakes up, and rubs its eyes after a debauch of Presbyterian idealism, and discovers that it has paid out some $20,000,000,000, in order to confer all these privileges and advantages upon its rivals! Ever since I can remember the world, there have been peace societies; I look back in history and discover that ever since there have been wars, there have been prophets declaiming against them in the name of humanity and God. As I write, there is a great world conference on disarmament in session in Washington, and all good Americans hope that war is to be ended and permanent peace made safe. All that I can do at this juncture is to point out the fundamental and all-controlling fact of present-day economics: that for the ruling class of any country to agree to disarmament and the abolition of war, is for that class to sign its own death warrant and cut its own throat. American capitalism can survive on this earth only by strangling and destroying Japanese capitalism and British capitalism, and doing it before long. The far-sighted capitalists on both sides know that, and are making their preparations accordingly. What the members of the peace societies and the diplomats of the disarmament conferences do is to cut off the branches of the tree of war. They leave the roots untouched, and then, when the tree continues to thrive, they are astounded. I conclude this chapter with a concrete illustration, cut from my morning newspaper. We went to war against German militarism, and to make the world safe for democracy--meaning thereby capitalist commercialism. We commanded the German people to "beat their swords into plough-shares"; that is, to set their Krupp factories to making tools of peace; and they did so. We saddled them with an enormous indemnity, making them our serfs for a generation or two, and compelling them to hasten out into the world markets, to sell their goods and raise gold to pay us. And now, how does their behavior strike us? Do we praise their industry, and fidelity to their obligations? Here are the headlines of a news despatch, published by the Los Angeles Times on December 10, 1921, at the top of the front page, right hand column, the most conspicuous position in the paper. Read it, and understand the sources of modern war! _NEW ATTACK BY BERLIN_ * * * * * DUMPING GOODS BY WHOLESALE * * * * * Cheap German Trash Puts Thousands of Americans Out of Employment * * * * * Glove Plants Shut Down and Potash Industry Killed by Teuton Intrigue CHAPTER LXI THE POSSIBILITIES OF PRODUCTION (Shows how much wealth we could produce if we tried, and how we proved it when we had to.) One of the commonest arguments in defense of the present business system runs as follows: The amount of money which is paid to labor is greatly in excess of the amount which is paid to capital. Suppose that tomorrow you were to abolish all dividends and profits, and divide the money up among the wage workers, how much would each one get? The sum is figured for some big industry, and it is shown that each worker would get one or two hundred dollars additional per year. Obviously, this would not bring the millennium; it would hardly be worth while to take the risk of reducing production in order to gain so small a result. But now we are in position to realize the fallacy of such an argument. The tax which capital levies upon labor is not the amount which capital takes for itself, but the amount which it prevents labor from producing. The real injury of the profit system is not that it pays so large a reward to a ruling class; it is the "iron ring" which it fastens about industry, barring the workers from access to the machinery of production except when the product can be sold for a profit. Labor pays an enormous reward to the business man for his management of industry, but it would pay labor to reward the business man even more highly, if only he would take his goods in kind, and would permit labor, after this tax is paid, to go on making those things which labor itself so desperately needs. But, you see, the business man does not take his goods in kind. The owner of a great automobile factory may make for himself one automobile or a score of automobiles, but he quickly comes to a limit where he has no use for any more, and what he wants is to sell automobiles and "make money." He does not permit his workers to make automobiles for themselves, or for any one else. He reserves the product of the factory for himself, and when he can no longer sell automobiles at a profit, he shuts the workers out and automobile-making comes to an end in that community. Thus it appears that the "iron ring" which strangles the income of labor, strangles equally the income of capital. It paralyzes the whole social body, and so limits production that we can form no conception of what prosperity might and ought to be. Consider the situation before the war. We were all of us at work under the competitive system, and with the exception of a few parasites, everybody was occupied pretty close to the limit of his energy. If any one had said that it would be possible for our community to pitch in and double or treble our output, you would have laughed at him. But suddenly we found ourselves at war, and in need of a great increase in output, and we resolved one and all to achieve this end. We did not waste any time in theoretical discussions about the rights of private capital, or the dangers of bureaucracy and the destruction of initiative. Our government stepped in and took control; it took the railroads and systematized them, it took the big factories and told them exactly what to make, it took the raw materials and allotted them, where they were needed, it fixed the prices of labor, and ordered millions of men to this or that place, to this or that occupation. It even seized the foodstuffs and directed what people should eat. In a thousand ways it suppressed competition and replaced it by order and system. And what was the result? We took five million of our young men, the very cream of our industrial force, and withdrew them from all productive activities; we put them into uniforms, and put them through a training which meant that they were eating more food and wearing more clothing and consuming more goods than nine-tenths of them had ever done in their lives before. We built camps for them, and supplied them with all kinds of costly products of labor, such as guns and cartridges, automobiles and airplanes. We treated two million of them to an expensive trip to Europe, and there we set them to work burning up and destroying the products of industry, to the value of many billions of dollars. And not only did we supply our own armies, we supplied the armies of all our allies. We built millions of dollars worth of ships, and we sent over to Europe, whether by private business or by government loans, some $10,000,000,000 worth of goods--more than ten years of our exports before the war. All the labor necessary to produce all this wealth had to be withdrawn from industry, so far as concerned our domestic uses and needs. It would not be too much to say that from domestic industry we withdrew a total of ten million of our most capable labor force. I think it would be reasonable to say that two-thirds of our productive energies went to war purposes, and only one-third was available for home use. And yet, we did it without a particle of real suffering. Many of us worked hard, but few of us worked harder than usual. Most of us got along with less wheat and sugar, but nobody starved, nobody really suffered ill health, and our poor made higher wages and had better food than ever in their lives before. If this argument is sound, it proves that our productive machinery is capable, when properly organized and directed, of producing three times the common necessities of our population. Assuming that our average working day is nine hours, we could produce what we at present consume by three hours of intelligently directed work per day. Let us look at the matter from another angle. Just at present the hero of the American business man is Herbert Hoover; and Mr. Hoover recently appointed a committee, not of Socialists and "Utopians," but of engineering experts, to make a study of American productive methods. The report showed that American industry was only thirty-five or forty per cent efficient. Incidentally, this "Committee on Waste" assessed, in the case of the building industry, sixty-five per cent of the blame against management and only twenty-one per cent against labor; in six fundamental industries it assessed fifty per cent of the blame against management and less than twenty-five per cent against labor. Fifteen years ago a professor of engineering, Sidney A. Reeve by name, made an elaborate study of the wastes involved in our haphazard and planless industrial methods, and embodied his findings in a book, "The Cost of Competition." His conclusion was that of the total amount of energy expended in America, more than seventy per cent was wasted. We were doing one hundred per cent of work and getting thirty per cent of results. If we would get one hundred per cent of results, we should produce three and one-third times as much wealth, and the income of our workers would be increased one or two thousand dollars a year. Robert Blatchford in his book, "Merrie England," has a saying to the effect that it makes all the difference, when half a dozen men go out to catch a horse, whether they spend their time catching the horse or keeping one another from catching the horse. Our next task will be to point out a few of the ways in which good, honest American business men and workingmen, laboring as intelligently and conscientiously as they know how, waste their energies in keeping one another from producing goods. CHAPTER LXII THE COST OF COMPETITION (Discusses the losses of friction in our productive machine, those which are obvious and those which are hidden.) The United States government is by far the largest single business enterprise in the United States; and a study of congressional appropriations in 1920, made by the United States Bureau of Standards, reveals the fact that ninety-three per cent of the total income of the government went to paying for past wars or preparing for future wars. We have shown that modern war is a product of the profit system, and if civilized nations would put their industry upon a co-operative basis, they could forget the very idea of war, and we should then receive fourteen times as much benefit from our government as we receive at present; we should have fourteen times as good roads, fourteen times as many schools, fourteen times as prompt a postoffice and fourteen times as efficient a Congress. What it would mean to industry to abolish war is something wholly beyond the power of our imagination to conceive; for along with ninety-three per cent of our government money there goes into military preparation the vast bulk of our intellectual energy and inventive genius, our moral and emotional equipment. Next, strikes and the losses incidental to strikes, and the costs of preparing against strikes. This includes, not merely the actual loss of working time, it includes police and militia, private armies of gunmen, and great secret service agencies, whose total income runs up into hundreds of millions of dollars per year. Industrial warfare is simply the method by which capitalists and workers determine the division of the product of industry; as if two men should co-operate in raising poultry, and then fall to quarrelling over the ownership of the eggs, and settle the matter by throwing the eggs at each other's heads. Next, bankruptcy. Statistics show that regularly some ten per cent of our business enterprises fail every year. Take any block occupied by little business men, grocers and haberdashers and "notions," and you will see that they are always changing. Each change represents a human tragedy, and the total is a frightful waste of human energy; it happens because we can think of no better way to distribute goods than to go through the work of setting up a business, and then discover that it cannot succeed because the neighborhood is already overstocked with that kind of goods. Next, fires which are a result of bankruptcy. You may laugh, perhaps, thinking that I am making a joke; but every little man who fails in business knows that he has a choice of going down in the social scale, or of setting fire to his stock some night, and having a big insurance company set him on his feet again. The result is that a certain percentage of bankrupts do regularly set fire to their stores. Some fifteen years ago there was published in "Collier's Weekly" a study of the costs to society of incendiary fires. The Fire Underwriters' Association estimated the amount as a quarter of a billion dollars a year; and all this cost, you understand, is paid out of the pockets of those who insure their homes and their stores, and do not burn them down. From this follows the costs of insurance, and the whole insurance industry, which is inevitable under the profit system, but is entire waste so far as true production is concerned. Big enterprises like the Steel Trust do not carry insurance, and neither does the United States Postoffice. They are wealthy enough to stand their own losses. A national co-operative enterprise would be in the same position, and the whole business of collecting money for insurance and keeping records and carrying on lawsuits would be forgotten. Next, advertising. It would be no exaggeration to say that seventy per cent of the material published in American newspapers and magazines today is pure waste; and therefore seventy per cent of the labor of all the people who cut down forests and manufacture and transport paper and set up type and print and distribute publications is wasted. There is, of course, a small percentage of advertising that is useful, but most of it is boasting and falsehood, and even where it tells the truth it simply represents the effort of a merchant to persuade you to buy in his store instead of in a rival store--an achievement which is profitable to the merchant, but utterly useless to society as a whole. This same statement applies to all traveling salesmen, and to a great percentage of middlemen. It applies also to a great part of delivery service. If you live in a crowded part of any city, you see a dozen milk wagons pass your door every morning, doing the work which could be done exactly as well by one. That is only one case out of a thousand I might name. Next, crime. I have already discussed the crime of arson, and I might discuss the crimes of pocket-picking, burglary, forgery, and a hundred others in the same way. I am aware of the fact that there may be a few born criminals; there may be a few congenital cheats, whom we should have to put in hospitals. But we have only to consult the crime records, during the war and after the war, in order to see that when jobs are hunting men there are few criminals, and when men are hunting jobs there are many criminals. I have no figures as to the cost of administering justice in the United States--policemen, courts and jails--but it must be hundreds of millions of dollars every year. I have discussed at great length the suppression of the productive power of society. I should not fail to mention the suppression of the inventive power of society, a factor less obvious, but probably in the long run even greater. Every one familiar with the inside of a big industry knows that hundreds and even thousands of useful processes are entirely suppressed, because it would not pay one particular concern to stand the expense of the changes involved. You know how, during the war, our government brought all the makers of engines together and perfected in triumph a "Liberty motor." But now we have gone back to private interest and competition, and each concern is jealously engaged in guarding its own secrets, and depriving industry as a whole of the benefit of everything that it learns. Each is spying upon the others, stealing the secrets of the others, stealing likewise from those who invent new ideas--and thus discouraging them from inventing any more. I use this word "discourage," and I might write a chapter upon it. What human imagination can conceive the amount of social energy that is lost because of the factor of discouragement, directly caused by the competitive method? Who can figure what it means to human society that a great percentage of the people in it should be haunted by fear of one sort or another--the poor in fear of unemployment, sickness and starvation, the little business man in fear of bankruptcy and suicide, the big business man in fear of hard times and treachery of his competitors, the idle rich in fear of robbery and blackmail, and the whole community in fear of foreign war and domestic tumult! Anyone might go on and elaborate these factors that I have named, and think of scores of others. Anyone familiar with business life or with industrial processes would be able to put his finger on this or that enormous saving which he would be able to make if he and all his rivals could combine and come to an agreement. This has been proven over and over again in large-scale industry; it is the fact which has made of large-scale industry an overwhelming power, sucking all the profits to itself, reaching out and taking in new fields of human activity, and setting at naught all popular clamor and even legal terrors. How can anyone, seeing these facts, bring himself to deny that if we did systematize production and make it one enterprise, precisely adapted to one end, we should enormously increase the results of human labor, and the benefit to all who do the world's work? A good deal of this waste we can stop when we get ready, and other parts of it our bountiful mother nature will replace. When in a world war we kill some ten or twenty millions of the flower of our young manhood, we have only to wait several generations, and our race will be as good as ever. But, on the other hand, there is some waste that can never be repaired, and this is the thing truly frightful to contemplate. When we dig the iron ore out of the bowels of the earth and rust it away in wars, we are doing something our race can never undo. And the same is true of many of our precious substances: phosphorus, sulphur, potash. When we cut down the forests from our mountain slopes, and lay bare the earth, we not merely cause floods and washouts, and silt up our harbors, we take away from the surface of our land the precious life-giving soil, and make a habitable land into a desert, which no irrigating and reforesting can ever completely restore. The Chinese have done that for many centuries, and we are following in their footsteps; more than six hundred million wagon-loads of our best soil are washed down to the sea every year! If you wish to know about these matters, I send you to a book, "On Board the Good Ship Earth," by Herbert Quick. It is one of the most heart-breaking books you ever read, yet it is merely a quiet statement of the facts about our present commercial anarchy. CHAPTER LXIII SOCIALISM AND SYNDICALISM (Discusses the idea of the management of industry by the state, and the idea of its management by the trade unions.) Let us now assume that we desire to abolish the wastes of the competitive method, and to put our industry on a basis of co-operation. How should we effect the change, and how should we run our industry after it was done? Let us take the United States Steel Corporation. What change would be necessary to the socializing of this concern? United States Steel is owned by a group of stockholders, and governed by a board of directors elected by them. The owners are now to be bought out with government bonds, and the board of directors retired. It may also be necessary to replace a certain number of the higher executive officials, who are imbued entirely with the point of view of this board, and have to do with finance, rather than with production. Of course, some other governing authority would have to be put in control. What would this authority be? There are several plans before the world, several different schools of thought, which we shall consider one by one. First, the Socialist program. The Socialist says, "Consider the postoffice, how that is run. It is run by the President, who appoints a Postmaster-General as his executive. Let us therefore turn the steel industry over to the government, and let the President appoint another member of his cabinet, a Director of Steel; or let there be a commission, similar to the Interstate Commerce Commission, or the various war industry boards." Any form of management of the steel industry which provides for its control and operation by our United States government is Socialism of one sort or another. There has been, of late, a great deal of dissatisfaction with government, on the part of the general public, and also of labor. The postoffice clerks, for example, complain that they are inadequately paid and autocratically managed, deprived of their rights not merely as workers but as citizens. The steel workers complain that when they go on strike against their masters, the government sends in troops and crushes their strike, regardless of the rights or wrongs of it. In order to meet such tactics, labor goes into politics, and elects here and there its own representatives; but these representatives become mysteriously affected by the bureaucratic point of view, and even where they try hard, they do not accomplish much for labor. Therefore, labor becomes disgusted with the political process, and labor men do not welcome the prospect of being managed by government. If you ask such men, they will say: "No; the politicians don't know anything about industry, and can't learn. The people who know about industry are those who work in it. The true way to run an industry is through an organization of the workers, both of hand and brain. The true way to run the Steel Trust is for all the workers in it, men and women, high and low, to be recognized by law as citizens of that industry; each shop must elect its own delegates to run that shop, and elect a delegate to a central parliament of the industry, and this industry in turn must elect delegates to a great parliament or convention of all the delegates of all the industries. In such a central gathering every one would be represented, because every person would be a producer of some sort, and whether he was a steel worker or a street sweeper or a newsboy, he would have a vote at the place where he earns his living, and would have a say in the management of his job. The great central parliament would elect an executive committee and a president, and so we should have a government of the workers, by the workers, for the workers." This idea is known as Syndicalism, derived from the French word "syndicat," meaning a labor union. Since the Russian revolution it has come to be known as soviet government, "soviet" being the Russian word for trade council. Now, taking these two ideas of Socialism and Syndicalism, it is evident that they may be combined in various ways, and applied in varying degrees. It is perfectly conceivable, for example, that the people of the United States might elect a president pledged to call a parliament of industry, and to delegate the control of industry to this parliament. He might delegate the control to a certain extent, and provide for its extension, step by step; so our society might move into Syndicalism by the way of Socialism. You have only to put your mind on the possibilities of the situation to realize that one method shades into the other with a great variety of stages. Consider next the stages between capitalism and Socialism. We have in the United States some industries which are purely capitalistic; for example, the Steel Trust, which is privately owned, and has been powerful enough, not merely to suppress every effort of its workers to organize, but every effort of the government to regulate it. On the other hand, the United States Postoffice represents State Socialism; although the workers have been forbidden to organize, and the management of the industry is so arbitrary that I have always preferred to call it State Capitalism. Likewise the United States army and navy represent State Socialism. When we had the job of putting the Kaiser out of business, we did not hire Mr. Rockefeller to do it; it never once occurred to our advocates of "individualism," of "capitalist enterprise and initiative," to suggest that we should hire out our army and navy, or employ the Steel Trust or the Powder Trust to organize its own army and navy to do the fighting for us. Likewise, for the most part, we run the job of educating our children by the method of municipal Socialism. We run our libraries in the same way, and likewise our job of fire protection. It is interesting to note how in every country the line between capitalism and Socialism is drawn in a different place. In America we run practically all our libraries for ourselves, but it would seem to us preposterous to think of running our theatres. In Europe, however, they have state-owned theatres, which set a far higher standard of art than anything we know at home. Also, they have state-owned orchestras and opera-houses, something we Americans leave to the subscriptions of millionaires. In Europe it seems perfectly natural to the people that the state should handle their telegrams in connection with the postoffice; but if you urge government ownership of the telegraphs in the United States, they tell you that the proposition is "socialistic," and that saves the need of thinking about it. We take it for granted that our cities could run the libraries--even though we were glad when Carnegie came along and saved us the need of appropriating money for buildings. Just why a city should be able to run a library, and should not be able to run an opera-house, or a newspaper, is something which has never been made clear to me. Let us next examine the stages between capitalism and Syndicalism. A great many large corporations are making experiments in what they call "shop management," allowing the workers membership in the boards of directors and a voice in the conditions of their labor. This is Syndicalism so far as it goes. Likewise it is Syndicalism when the clothing workers and the clothing manufacturers meet together and agree to the setting up of a permanent committee to work out a set of rules for the conduct of the industry, and to fix wages from time to time. Obviously, these things are capable of indefinite extension, and in Europe they are being developed far more rapidly. For example, in Italy the agricultural workers are organized, and are gradually taking possession of the great estates, which are owned by absentee landlords. They wage war upon these estates by means of sabotage and strikes, and then they buy up the estates at bargain prices and develop them by co-operative labor. This has been going on in Italy for ten years, and has become the most significant movement in the country. It is a triumph of pure Syndicalism; and such is the power of pure capitalism in the United States that the American people have not been allowed to know anything about this change. Next, what are the stages between Socialism and Syndicalism? These also are infinite in number and variety. As a matter of fact, there are very few Socialists who advocate State Socialism without any admixture of Syndicalism. The regular formula of the Socialist party is "the social ownership and democratic control of the instruments and means of production;" and what the phrase "democratic control" means is simply that you introduce into your Socialist mixture a certain flavoring of Syndicalism, greater or less, according to your temperament. In the same way there are many Syndicalists who are inclined toward Socialism. In every convention of radical trade unionists, such as, for example, the I. W. W., you find some who favor political action, and these will have the same point of view as the more radical members of the Socialist party, who urge a program of industrial as well as political action. CHAPTER LXIV COMMUNISM AND ANARCHISM (Considers the idea of goods owned in common, and the idea of a society without compulsion, and how these ideas have fared in Russia.) The Russian revolution has familiarized us with the word Communism. In the beginning of the revolutionary movement Communism denoted what we now call Socialism; for example, the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels became the platform of the Social-democratic parties. But because most of these parties supported their governments during the war, the more radical elements have now rejected the word Socialism, and taken up the old word Communism. In the Russian revolution the Communists went so far as to seize all the property of the rich, and so the word Communism has come to bear something of its early Christian significance. It is obvious that here, too, it is a question of degree, and Socialism will shade into Communism by an infinite variety of stages, depending upon what forms of property it is decided to socialize. The Socialist formula commonly accepted is that "goods socially used shall be socially owned, and goods privately used shall be privately owned." If you own a factory, it will be taken by the state, or by the workers, and made social property like the postoffice; but no Socialist wants to socialize your clothing, or your books, any more than he wants to socialize your toothbrush. But when you come to apply this formula, you run quickly into difficulties. Suppose you are a millionaire, and own a palace with one or two hundred rooms, and a hundred servants. Do you use that socially, or do you use it privately? And suppose there is a scarcity of houses, and thousands of children are dying of tuberculosis in crowded tenement rooms? You own a dozen automobiles, and do you use them all privately? I point out to you that in time of emergency the capitalist state does not hesitate over such a problem; it seizes your palace and turns it into a hospital, it takes all your cars and uses them to carry troops. It should be obvious that a proletarian state would be tempted by this precedent. The Communists also have a formula, which reads: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his necessity." I do not see how any sensitive person can deny that this is an extremely fine statement of an ideal in social life. We take it quite for granted in family life; if you knew a family in which that rule did not apply, you would consider it an unloving and uncivilized family. I believe that when once industry has been socialized, and we have a chance to see what production can become, we shall find ourselves quickly adopting that family custom as our law, for all except a few congenital criminals and cheats. We shall find that we can produce so much wealth that it is not worth while keeping count of unimportant items. If today you meet someone on the street and ask him for a match or a pin, you do not think of offering to pay him. This is an automatic consequence of the cheapness of matches and pins. Once upon a time you were stopped on the road every few miles and made to pay a few cents toll. I remember seeing toll-gates when I was a boy, but I don't think I have seen one for twenty years. In exactly the same way, under socialized industry, we shall probably make street-car traffic free, and then railroad traffic; we shall abolish water meters and gas meters and electric light meters, also telephone charges, except perhaps for long distances, and telegraph tolls for personal messages. Then, presently, we shall find ourselves with such a large wheat crop that we shall make bread free; and then music and theatres and clothing and books. At present we use furniture and clothing as a means of manifesting our economic superiority to our fellowmen. One of the most charming books in our language is Veblen's "Theory of the Leisure Class," in which these processes are studied. We shall, of course, have to raise up a new generation, unaccustomed to the idea of class and of class distinction, before we could undertake to supply people with all the clothing they wanted free of charge. The Russian theorists made haste to carry out these ideas all at once; they tried to leap several centuries in the evolution of Russian society. They ordained complete Communism in land; but the peasants would have nothing to do with such notions--each wanted his own land, and what he produced on it. The Soviets have now been forced to give way, not merely to the peasants, but to the traders; and so we see once again that it is better to take one step forward than to take several steps forward and then several steps backward. The Russian revolution is not yet completed, so no one can say how many steps backward it will be forced to take. This revolution was an interesting combination of the ideas of Socialism and Syndicalism. The trade unionists seized the factories, and made an effort at democratic control of industry. At the same time the state was overthrown by a political party, the Bolsheviks, who set up a dictatorship of the proletariat. Because of civil war and outside invasion, the democratic elements in the experiment have been more and more driven into the background, and the authority of the state has correspondingly increased. This causes us to think of the Soviet system as necessarily opposed to democracy, but this is not in any way a necessary thing. There is no inevitable connection between industrial control by the workers and a dictatorship over the state. In Germany the state is proceeding to organize a national parliament of industry, and to provide for management of the factories by the labor unions. The Italian government has promised to do the same thing. These, of course, are capitalist governments, and they will keep their promises only as they are made to; but it is a perfectly possible thing that in either of these countries a vote of the people might change the government, and put in authority men who would really proceed to turn industry over to the control of the workers. That would be the Soviet or Syndicalist system, brought about by democratic means, without dictatorship or civil war. Another group of revolutionary thinkers whose theories must be mentioned are the Anarchists. The word Anarchy is commonly used as a synonym for chaos and disorder, which it does not mean at all. It means the absence of authority; and it is characteristic of people's view of life that they are unable to conceive of there being such a thing as order, unless it is maintained by force. The theory of the Anarchist is that order is a necessity of the human spirit, and that people would conform to the requirements of a just order by their own free will and without external compulsion. The Anarchist believes that the state is an instrument of class oppression, and has no other reason for being. He wishes the industries to be organized by free associations of the people who work in them. Some of the greatest of the world's moral teachers have been Anarchists: Jesus, for example, and Shelley and Thoreau and Tolstoi, and in our time Kropotkin. These men voiced the highest aspirations of the human spirit, and the form of society which they dreamed is the one we set before us as our final goal. But the world does not leap into perfection all at once, and meantime here we have the capitalist system and the capitalist state, and what attitude shall we take to them? There are impassioned idealists who refuse to make any terms with injustice, or to submit to compulsion, and these preach the immediate destruction of capitalist government, and capitalist government responds with prison and torture, and so we have some Anarchists who throw bombs. There are those who call themselves "philosophic" Anarchists, wishing to indicate thereby that they preach this doctrine, but do not attempt to carry it into action as yet. Some among these verge toward the Communist point of view, and call themselves Communist-anarchists; such was Kropotkin, whose theories of social organization you will find in his book "The Conquest of Bread." There are others who call themselves Syndicalist-anarchists, finding their centers of free association in the radical labor unions. After the Russian revolution, the Anarchists found themselves in a dilemma, and their groups were torn apart like every other party and class in Russia. Here was a new form of state set up in society, a workers' state, and what attitude should the Anarchists take toward that? Many of them stood out for their principles, and resisted the Bolshevik state, and put the Bolsheviks under the embarrassing necessity of throwing them into jail. We good orthodox Americans, who are accustomed to dump Socialists and Communists and Syndicalists and Anarchists all together into one common kettle, took Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman and shipped them over to Russia, where we thought they belonged. Now our capitalist newspapers find it strange that these Anarchists do not like the Russian government any better than they like the American government! On the other hand, a great many Anarchists have suddenly found themselves compelled by the Russian situation to face the facts of life. They have decided that a government is not such a bad thing after all--when it is your own government! Robert Minor, for example, has recanted his Anarchist position, and joined the Communists in advocating the dropping of all differences among the workers, all theories as to the future, and concentrating upon the immediate task of overthrowing capitalist government and keeping it overthrown. In every civilized nation the Russian revolution has had this effect upon the extreme revolutionists. It has given them a definite aim and a definite program upon which they can unite; it has presented to capitalist government the answer of force to force; it has shown the masters of industry in precise and definite form what they have to face--unless they set themselves immediately and in good faith to the task of establishing real democracy in industry. CHAPTER LXV SOCIAL REVOLUTION (How the great change is coming in different industries, and how we may prepare to meet it.) From a study of the world's political revolutions we observe that a variety of governmental forms develop, and that different circumstances in each country produce different institutions. Suppose that back in the days of the French monarchy some one asked you how France was going to be governed as a political republic; how would elections be held, what would be the powers of the deputies, who would choose the premier, who would choose the president, what would be the duties of each? Who can explain why in France and England the executive is responsible to the parliament and must answer its questions, while in the United States the executive is an autocrat, responsible to no one for four years? Who could have foreseen that in England, supposed to remain a monarchy, the constitution would be fluid; while in America, supposed to be a democracy, the constitution would be rigid, and the supreme power of rejecting changes in the laws would be vested in a group of reactionary lawyers appointed for life? There will be similar surprises in the social revolution, and similar differences between what things pretend to be and what they are. I used to compare the social revolution to the hatching of an egg. You examine it, and apparently it is all egg; but then suddenly something begins to happen, and in a few minutes it is all chicken. If, however, you investigate, you discover that the chicken had been forming inside the egg for some time. I know that there is a chicken now forming inside our social egg; but having realized the complexity of social phenomena, I no longer venture to predict the exact time of the hatching, or the size and color of the chicken. Perhaps it is more useful to compare the social revolution to a child-birth. A good surgeon knows what is due to happen, but he knows also that there are a thousand uncertainties, a thousand dangerous possibilities, and all he can do is to watch the process and be prepared to meet each emergency as it arises. The birth process consists of one pang after another, but no one can say which pang will complete the birth, or whether it will be completed at all. Karl Marx is author of the saying that "force is the midwife of progress," so you may see that I am not the inventor of this simile of child-birth. There are three factors in the social revolution, each of which will vary in each country, and in different parts of the country, and at different periods. First, there is the industrial condition of the country, a complex set of economic factors. The industrial life of England depends primarily on shipping and coal. In the United States shipping is of less importance, and railroads take the place. In the United States the eastern portion lives mainly by manufacture, the western by agriculture, while the south is held a generation behind by a race problem. In France the great estates were broken up, and agriculture fell into the hands of peasant proprietors, who are the main support of French capitalism. In Prussia the great estates were held intact, and remained the basis of a feudal aristocracy. In America land changes hands freely, and therefore one-third of our farms are mortgaged, and another third are worked by tenants. In Russia there was practically no middle class, while in the United States there is practically nothing but middle class; the rich have been rich for such a short while that they still look middle class and act middle class, in spite of all their efforts, while the working class hopes to be middle class and is persuaded that it can become middle class. Such varying factors produce in each country a different problem, and make inevitable a different process of change. The second factor is the condition of organization and education of the workers. This likewise varies in every country, and in every part of every country. There is a continual struggle on the part of the workers to organize and educate themselves, and a continual effort on the part of the ruling class to prevent this. In some industries in America you find the workers one hundred per cent organized, and in other industries you find them not organized at all. It is obvious that in the former case the social change, when it comes, will be comparatively simple, involving little bloodshed and waste; in the latter case there will be social convulsions, rioting and destruction of property, disorganization of industry and widespread distress. The third factor is the state of mind of the propertied classes, the amount of resistance they are willing to make to social change. I have done a great deal of pleading with the masters of industry in my country; I have written appeals to Vincent Astor and John D. Rockefeller, to capitalist newspapers and judges and congressmen and presidents. I have been told that this is a waste of my time; that these people cannot learn and will not learn, and that it is foolish to appeal either to their hearts or their understanding. But I perceive that the class struggle is like a fraction; it has a numerator and a denominator, and you can increase the fraction just as well by decreasing the denominator as by increasing the numerator. To vary the simile, here are two groups of men engaged in a tug of war, and you can affect the result just as decisively by persuading one group to pull less hard, as by persuading the other group to pull harder. Picture to yourself two factories. In factory number one the owner is a hard-driving business man, an active spirit in the so-called "open-shop" campaign. He believes in his divine right to manage industry, and he believes also in the gospel of "all that the traffic will bear." He prevents his men from organizing, and employs spies to weed out the radicals and to sow dissensions. When a strike comes, he calls in the police and the strike-breaking agencies, and in every possible way he makes himself hated and feared by his workers. Then some day comes the unemployment crisis, and a wave of revolt sweeping over the country. The workers seize that factory and set up a dictatorship of the proletariat and a "red terror." If the owner resists, they kill him; in any case, they wipe out his interest in the business, and do everything possible to destroy his power over it, even to his very name. They run the business by a shop committee, and you have for that particular factory a Syndicalist, or even Anarchist form of social reconstruction. Now for factory number two, whose owner is a humane and enlightened man, studying social questions and realizing his responsibility, and the temporary nature of his stewardship. He gives his people the best possible working conditions, he keeps open books and discusses wages and profits with them, he educates the young workers, he meets with their union committees on a basis of free discussion. When the unemployment crisis comes and the wave of revolt sweeps the country, this man and his workers understand one another. He says: "I can no longer pay profits, and so I can no longer keep going under the profit system; but if you are ready to run the plant, I am ready to help you the best I can." Manifestly, this man will continue the president of the corporation, and if he trains his sons wisely, they will keep his place; so, instead of having in that factory a dictatorship and a terror, you will have a constitutional monarchy, gradually evolving into a democratic republic. CHAPTER LXVI CONFISCATION OR COMPENSATION (Shall the workers buy out the capitalists? Can they afford to do it, and what will be the price?) The problem of whether the social revolution shall be violent or peaceable depends in great part upon our answer to the question of confiscation versus compensation. We are now going to consider, first, the abstract rights and wrongs of the question, and, second, the practical aspects of it. There is a story very popular among single taxers and other advocates of freedom of the land. An English land-owner met a stranger walking on his estate, and rebuked him for trespassing. Said the stranger, "You own this land?" Said the other, "I do." "And how did you get it?" "I inherited it from my father." "And how did your father get it?" "He inherited it from his father." So on for half a dozen more ancestors, until at last the Englishman answered, "He fought for it." Whereupon the stranger took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves and said, "I'll fight you for it." This is all there is to say on the subject of the abstract rights of land titles. There is no title to land which is valid on a historical basis. Everything rests upon fraud and force, continued through endless ages of human history. We in the United States took most of our land from the Indians, and in the process our guiding rule was that the only good Injun was a dead Injun. We first helped the English kings to take large sections of our country from the French and Spanish, and then we took them from the English king by a violent revolution. We purchased our Southwestern states from Mexico, but not until we had taken the precaution of killing some thousands of Mexicans in war, which had the effect of keeping down the purchase price. It would be a simple matter to show that all public franchises are similarly tainted with fraud. Proudhon laid down the principle that "property is theft," and from this principle it is an obvious conclusion that society has the right to scrap all paper titles to wealth, and to start the world's industries over again on the basis of share and share alike. But stop and consider for a moment. "Property is theft," you say. But go to your corner grocery, and tell the grocer that you deny his title to the sack of prunes which he exhibits in front of his counter. He will tell you that he has paid for them; but you answer that the prunes were raised on stolen land, and shipped to him over a railroad whose franchise was obtained by bribery. Will that convince the grocer? It will not. Neither will it convince the policeman or the judge, nor will it convince the voters of the country. Most people have a deeply rooted conviction that there are rights to property now definitely established and made valid by law. If you have paid taxes on land for a certain period, the land "belongs" to you; and I am sure you might agitate from now to kingdom come without persuading the American people that New Mexico ought to be returned to Mexico, or the western prairies to the Indian tribes. Such are the facts; now let us apply them to the right of exploitation, embodied in the ownership of a certain number of bonds or shares of stock in the United States Steel Corporation. "Pass a law," says the Socialist, "providing for the taking over of United States Steel by the government." At once to every owner comes one single thought--are you going to buy this stock, or are you going to confiscate it? If you attempt confiscation, the courts will declare the law unconstitutional; and you either have to defy the courts, which is revolutionary action, or to amend the constitution. If you adopt the latter course, you have before you a long period of agitation; you have to carry both houses of Congress by a two-thirds majority, and the legislatures of three-fourths of the States. You have to do this in the face of the most bitter and infuriated opposition of those who are defending what they regard as their rights. You have to meet the arguments of the entire capitalist press of the country, and you have the certainty of widespread bribery of your elected officials. The prospect of doing all this under the forms of law seems extremely discouraging; so come the Syndicalists, saying, "Let us seize the factories, and stop the exploitation at the point of production." So come the Communists, saying, "Let us overthrow capitalist government, and break the net of bourgeois legality, and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat, which will put an end to privilege and class domination all at once." What are we to say to these different programs? Suppose we buy out the stockholders of United States Steel, and issue to them government bonds, what have we accomplished? Nothing, say the advocates of confiscation; we have changed the form of exploitation, but the substance of it remains the same. The stockholders get their money from the United States government, instead of from the United States Steel Corporation; but they get their money just the same--the product, not of their labor, but of the labor of the steel workers. Suppose we carried out the same procedure all along the line; suppose the government took over all industries, and paid for their securities with government bonds. Then we should have capitalism administered by a capitalist government, instead of by our present masters of industry; we should have a state capitalism, instead of a private capitalism; we should have the government buying and selling products, and exploiting labor, and paying over the profits to an hereditary privileged class. The capitalist system would go on just the same, except that labor would have one all-powerful tyrant, instead of many lesser tyrants, as at present. So argue the advocates of confiscation. And the advocates of purchase reply that in buying the securities of United States Steel, we should fix the purchase price at the present market value of the property, and that price, once fixed, would be permanent; all future unearned increment of the steel industry would belong to the government instead of to private owners. Consider, for example, what happened during the world war. When I was a boy, soon after the Steel Trust was launched, its stock was down to something like six dollars, and I knew small investors who lost every dollar they had put in. But during the war, steel stock soared to a hundred and thirty-six dollars per share; it paid dividends of some thirty per cent per year, and accumulated enormous surpluses besides. The same thing was true of practically all the big corporations. According to Secretary of the Treasury McAdoo, there were coal companies which paid as high as eight hundred per cent per year; that is to say, the profits in one year were eight times the total investment. Assuming that our government bonds paid five per cent, it appears that the owners of these coal companies got one hundred and sixty times as much under our present private property system as they would have got under a system of state purchase. Even completely dominated by capitalism as our courts are today, they would not dare require us to pay for industries more than six per cent on the market value of the investment; and from what I know of the inside graft of American big business that would be restricting the private owners to less than one-fourth of what they are getting at present. We have already pointed out the economies that can be made by putting industry under a uniform system. But all these, important as they are, amount to little in comparison with the one great consideration, which is that by purchasing large scale industry, we should break the "iron ring"; we should thenceforth be able to do our manufacturing for use instead of for profit, and so we should put an end to unemployment. Our cheerful workers would throng into the factories, to produce for themselves instead of for masters; and in one year of that we should so change the face of our country that a return to the system of private ownership would be unthinkable. In one year we could raise production to such a point that the interest on the bonds we had issued would be like the crumbs left over from a feast. CHAPTER LXVII EXPROPRIATING THE EXPROPRIATORS (Discusses the dictatorship of the proletariat, and its chances for success in the United States.) I am aware that the suggestion of paying for the industries we socialize will sound tame and uninspiring to a lot of ardent young radicals of my acquaintance. They will shake their heads sadly and say that I am getting middle-aged and tired. We have seen in Russia and Hungary and other places, so many illustrations of the quick and easy way to expropriate the expropriators that now there is in every country a considerable group of radicals who will hear to no program less picturesque than barricades and councils of action. In considering this question, I set aside all considerations of abstract right or wrong, the justification for violence in the overthrow of capitalist society. I put the question on the basis of cash, pure and simple. It will cost a certain amount of money to buy out the owners, and that money will have to be paid, as it is paid at present, out of the labor of the useful workers. The workers don't want to pay any more than they have to; the question they must consider is, which way will they have to pay most. The advocates of the dictatorship of the proletariat are lured by the delightful prospect of not having to pay anything; and if that were really possible it would undoubtedly be the better way. But we have to consider this question: Is the program of not having to pay anything a reality, or is it only a dream? Suppose it should turn out that we have to pay anyhow, and that in the case of violent revolution we pay much more, and in addition run serious risk of not getting what we pay for? Here are enormous industries, running at full blast, and it is proposed that some morning the workers shall rise up and seize them, and turn out the owners and managers, and run the industries themselves. Will anybody maintain that this can be done without stopping production in those factories for a single day? Certainly production must stop during the time you are fighting for possession; and the cruel experience of Russia proves that it will stop during the further time you are fighting to keep possession, and to put down counter-revolutionary conspiracies. Also, alas, it will stop during the time you are looking for somebody who knows how to run that industry; it will stop during the time you are organizing your new administrative staff. You may discover to your consternation that it stops during the time you are arranging to get other industries to give you credit, and to ship you raw materials; also during the time you are finding the workers in other industries who want your product, and are able to pay for it with something that you can use, or that you can sell in a badly disorganized market. And all the time that you are arranging these things, you are going to have the workers at your back, not getting any pay, or being paid with your paper money which they distrust, and growling and grumbling at you because you are not running things as you promised. You see, the mass of the workers are not going to understand, because you haven't made them understand; you have brought about the great change by your program of a dictatorship, of action by an "enlightened minority"; and now you have the terror that the unenlightened majority may be won back by their capitalist masters, and may kick you out of control, or even stand you up against a wall and shoot you by a firing squad. And all the time you are worrying over these problems, who can estimate the total amount the factory might have been producing if it had been running at full blast? Whatever that difference is, remember, it is paid by the workers; and might that sum not just as well have been used to buy out the owners? If we were back in the old days of hand labor and crude, unorganized production, I admit that the only way to benefit the slaves might be to turn out the masters by force. But here we have a social system of infinite complexity, a delicate and sensitive machine, which no one person in the world, and no group of persons understands thoroughly. In the running of such a machine a slight blunder may cost a fortune; and certainly all the skill, all the training, all the loyal services of our expert engineers and managers is needed if we are to remodel that machine while keeping it running. The amount of wealth which we could save by the achieving of that feat would be sufficient to maintain a class of owners in idleness and luxury for a generation; and so I say, with all the energy and conviction I possess, _pay them_! Pay them anything that is necessary, in order to avoid civil war and social disorganization! Pay them so much that they can have no possible cause of complaint, that the most hide-bound capitalistic-minded judge in the country cannot find a legal flaw in the bargain! Pay them so that every engineer and efficiency expert and manager and foreman and stenographer and office-boy will stay on the job and work double time to put the enterprise through! Pay them such a price that even Judge Gary and John D. Rockefeller will be willing to help us do the job of social readjustment! "Ah, yes," my young radical friends will say, "that sounds all very beautiful, but it's the old Utopian dream of brotherhood and class co-operation. That will never happen on this earth, until you have first abolished capitalism." My answer is, it could happen tomorrow if we had sufficient intelligence to make it happen. That it does not happen is simply absence of intelligence. And will anyone maintain that it is the part of an intelligent man to advocate a less intelligent course than he knows? What is the use of our intelligence, if we abdicate its authority, and give ourselves up to programs of action which we know are blind and destructive and wasteful? We may see a great vessel going on the rocks; we may feel certain that it is going, in spite of everything we can do; but shall we fail to do what we can to make those in the vessel realize how they might get safely into the harbor? We have had the Russian revolution before us for four years. Mankind will spend the next hundred years in studying it, and still have much to learn, but the broad outlines of the great experiment are now plain before our eyes. Russia was a backward country, and she tried to fight a modern war, and it broke her down. She had practically no middle class, and her ruling class was rotten, and so the revolutionists had their chance, and they seized it. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that they came to the rescue of Russia, saving her from the hands of those who were trying to force her to fight, when she was utterly exhausted and incapable of fighting. Anyhow, here was your dictatorship of the proletariat. It turned out all the executive experts, or nearly all of them, because they were tainted with the capitalist psychology; and then straightway it had to call them back and make terms with them, because industry could not be run without them. And of course these engineers and managers sabotaged the revolution--every non-proletarian sabotaged it, both inside Russia and outside. You denounced this, and protested against this, but all the same it happened; it was human nature that it should happen, and it is one of the things you have to count on, in any and every country where you attempt the social revolution by minority action. They have got power in Russia, and they dream of getting power in America in the same way. But there is no such disorganization in our country as there was in Russia, and it would take a generation of civil strife to bring us to such a condition. We have a middle class, powerful, thoroughly organized, and thoroughly conscious. Moreover, this class has ideals of majority rule, which are bred in its very bones; and while they have never realized these ideals, they think they have, and they are prepared to fight to the last gasp in that belief. All that the leaders of Moscow have to do is to bring about an attempt at forcible revolution, and they will discover in American society sufficient power of organization and of brutal action to put their movement out of business for a generation. A hundred years ago we had chattel slavery firmly fixed as the industrial system of one-half of these United States. To far-seeing statesmen it was manifest that chattel slavery was a wasteful system, and that it could not exist in competition with free labor. There was a great American, Henry Clay, who came forward with a proposition that the people of the United States, through their government, should raise the money, about a billion dollars, and compensate the owners of all the slaves and set them free. For most of his lifetime Henry Clay pleaded for that plan. But the masters of the South were making money fast; they knew how to handle the negro as a slave, they could not imagine handling him as a free laborer, and they would not hear to the plan. On the other side of Mason and Dixon's line were fanatical men of "principle," who said that slavery was wrong, and that was the end of it. There is a stanza by Emerson discussing this question of confiscation versus compensation: Pay ransom to the owner And fill the bag to the brim. Who is the owner? The slave is owner, And ever was. Pay him. This, you see, is magnificent utterance, but as economic philosophy it is reckless and unsound. The abolitionists of the North took up this poem, and the slave power of the South answered with a battle-song: War to the hilt, Theirs be the guilt, Who fetter the freeman to ransom the slave! And so the issue had to be fought out. It cost a million human lives and five billions of treasure, and it set American civilization back a generation. And now we confront exactly the same kind of emergency, and are coming to exactly the same method of solution. We have white wage-slaves clamoring for their freedom, and we have business men making money out of them, and exercising power over them, and finding it convenient and pleasant. They are going to fight it out in a civil war, and which side is going to win I am not sure. But when the historians come to write about it a couple of generations from now, let them be able to record that there were a few men in the country who pleaded for a sane and orderly and human solution of the problem, and who continued to voice their convictions even in the midst of the cruel and wasteful strife! CHAPTER LXVIII THE PROBLEM OF THE LAND (Discusses the land values tax as a means of social readjustment, and compares it with other programs.) The writer of this book has been watching the social process for twenty years, trying to figure out one thing--how the change from competition to co-operation can be brought about with the minimum of human waste. He has come to realize that the first step is a mental one; to get the people to want the change. That means that the program must be simple, so that the masses can understand it. As a social engineer you might work out a perfect plan, but find yourself helpless, because it was hard to explain. As illustration of what I mean, I cite the single tax, a theory which has a considerable hold in America, but which politically has been utterly ineffective. A few years ago a devoted enthusiast in Southern California, Luke North, started what he called the "Great Adventure" to set free the idle land. In the campaign of 1918 I gave my help to this movement, and when it failed I went back and took stock, and revised my conclusions concerning the single tax. Theoretically the movement has a considerable percentage of right on its side. Land, in the sense that single taxers use it, meaning all the natural sources of wealth, is certainly an important basis of exploitation, and if you were to tax land values to the full extent, you would abolish a large portion of privilege--just how large would be hard to figure. I was perfectly willing to begin with that portion, so I helped with the "Great Adventure." But a practical test convinced me that it could never persuade a majority of the people. The single tax proposal is to abolish all taxes except the tax on land values. Then come the associations of the bankers and merchants and real estate speculators, crying in outraged horror, "What? You propose to let the rich man's stocks and bonds go free? You propose to put no tax on his cash in the vaults and on his wife's jewels? You propose to abolish the income tax and the inheritance tax, and put all the costs of government on the poor man's lot?" Now, of course, I know perfectly well that the rich man dodges most of his income tax and most of his inheritance tax. I know that he pays a nominal pittance on his cash in the bank and on his wife's jewels, and likewise on his stocks and bonds. I know that the corporations issuing these stocks and bonds would be far more heavily hit by a tax on the natural resources they own; they could not evade this tax, and they know it, and that is why they are moved to such deep concern for the fate of the poor man and his lot. I know that the tax on the poor man's lot would be infinitesimal in comparison with the tax on the great corporation. But how can I explain all this to the poor man? To understand it requires a knowledge of the complexities of our economic system which the voters simply have not got. How much easier to take the bankers and speculators at their word! To answer, "All right, gentlemen, since you like the income and inheritance taxes, the taxes on stocks and bonds and money and jewels, we will leave these taxes standing. Likewise, we assent to your proposition that the poor man should not pay taxes on his lot, while there are rich men and corporations in our state holding twenty million acres of land out of use for purposes of speculation. We will therefore arrange a land values tax on a graduated basis, after the plan of the income tax; we will allow one or two thousand dollars' worth of land exempt from all taxation, provided it is used by the owner; and we will put a graduated tax on all individuals and corporations owning a greater quantity of land, so that in the case of individuals and corporations owning more than ten thousand dollars' worth of land, we will take the full rental value, and thus force all idle land into the market." Now, the provision above outlined would have spiked every single argument used by the opposition to the "Great Adventure" in California in 1918; it would have made the real intent of the measure so plain as to win automatically the additional votes needed to carry the election. But I tried for three years, without being able to persuade a single one of the "Great Adventure" leaders to recognize this plain fact. The single taxer has his formula, the land values tax and no other tax, and all else is heresy. Actually, the president of a big single tax organization in the East declared that by the advocacy of my idea I had "betrayed the single tax!" We may take this as an illustration of the difference between dogmatism and science in the strategy of the class struggle. I first suggested my program immediately after the war, with the provision that the land thrown on the market should be purchased by the state, and used to establish co-operative agricultural colonies for the benefit of returned soldiers. But we have preferred to have our returned soldiers stay without work, or to displace the men and women who had been gallantly "doing their bit." By this means we soon had five million men out of work, and many other millions bitterly discontented with their wages. Again I took up the proposition for a graduated land tax, with the suggestion that the money should be used to provide a pension, first for every dependent man or woman over sixty years of age in the country, and second for every child in the country whose parents were unable properly to support it, whether because they were dead or sick or unemployed. You may note that in advocating this program, you would not have to convert anybody to any foreign theories, nor would you have to use any long words; you would not have to say anything against the constitution, nor to break any law, nor to give occasion for patriotic mobs to tar and feather you. To every poor man in your state you could say, "If you own your own house and lot, this bill will lift the taxes from both, and therefore it will mean fifty or a hundred dollars a year in your pocket. If you do not own a home, it will take millions of idle acres out of the hands of the speculators, and break the price of real estate, so that you can have either a lot in the city or a farm in the country with ease." Furthermore, you could say, "This measure will have the effect of drawing the unemployed from the cities at once, and so stopping the downward course of wages. At the same time that wages hold firm, the cost of food will go down, because there will be millions more men working on the land. In addition to that, the state will have an enormous income, many millions of dollars a year, taken exclusively from those who are owning and not producing. This money will be expended in saving from suffering and humiliation the old people of the country, who have worked hard all their lives and have been thrown on the scrap-heap; also in making certain that every child in the country has food enough and care enough to make him into a normal and healthy human being, so that he can do his share of work in the world and pay his own way through life." I submit the above measure to those who believe that the road to social freedom lies by some sort of land tax. But before you take it up I invite you to consider whether there may not be some other way, even easier. There is a homely old saying to the effect that "molasses catches more flies than vinegar"; and I am always looking for some way that will get the poor what they want, without frightening the rich any more than necessary. I know a certain type of radical whom this question always exasperates. He answers that the opposition will be equally strong to any plan; the rich will do anything for the poor except get off their backs--and so on. In reply I mention that among the most ardent radicals I know are half a dozen millionaires; I know one woman who is worth a million, who pleads day and night for social revolution, while the people who work for her are devoted and respectful wage slaves. Herbert Spencer said that his idea of a tragedy was a generalization killed by a fact. I shall not say that the existence of millionaire Socialists and parlor Bolsheviks kills the theory of the class struggle, but I certainly say it compels us to take thought of the rich as well as of the poor in planning the strategy of our campaign. And manifestly, if we want to consider the rich, the very last device we shall use is that of a tax. Nobody likes to pay taxes; everybody agrees in classifying taxes with death. Each feels that he is paying more than his share already; each knows that the government which collects the tax is incompetent or worse. Stop and recall what we have proven about the "iron ring"; the possibilities of production latent in our society. Realize the bearings of this all-important fact, that we can offer to mankind a social revolution which will make everybody richer, instead of making some people poorer! Exactly how to do this is the next thing we have to inquire. CHAPTER LXIX THE CONTROL OF CREDIT (Deals with money, the part it plays in the restriction of industry, and may play in the freeing of industry.) How is it that the rich are becoming richer? The single taxer answers that it is by monopoly of the land, the natural sources of wealth; the Socialist answers that it is by the control of the machinery of production. But if you go among the rich and make inquiry, you speedily learn that these factors, large as they are, amount to little in comparison with another factor, the control of credit. There are hosts of little capitalists and business men who deal in land and produce goods with machinery, but the men who make the real fortunes and dominate the modern world are those who control credit, and whose business is, not the production of anything, but speculation and the manipulation of markets. "Money makes the mare go," our ancestors used to say; and money today determines the destiny of empires. What is money? We think of it as gold and silver coins, and pieces of engraved paper promising to pay gold and silver coins. But the report of the U. S. Comptroller of the Currency for 1919 shows that the business of the country was done, 5% by such means and 95 % by checks; so, for practical purposes, we may say that money consists of men's willingness to trust other men, or groups or organizations of men, when they make written promise to pay. In other words, money is credit; and the control of credit means the control of industry. The problem of social readjustment is mainly but the problem of taking the control of credit out of the hands of private individuals, and making it a public or social function. Who controls credit today? The bankers. And how do they control it? We give it to them; we, the masses of the people, who take them our money and leave it with them. A very little real money in hand becomes, under our banking system, the basis of a great amount of imaginary money. The Federal Reserve law requires that banks shall hold in reserve from seven to thirteen per cent of demand deposits; which means, in substance, that when you leave a dollar with a banker, the banker is allowed, under the law, to turn that dollar into anywhere from seven to thirteen dollars, and lend those dollars out. In addition, he deposits his reserves with the Federal Reserve bank, and that bank keeps only thirty-five per cent in reserve--in other words, the seven to thirteen imaginary dollars are multiplied again by three. Under the stress of war, this process of credit inflation has been growing like the genii let out of the bottle. Under the law, the Federal Reserve banks are supposed to hold a gold reserve of 40% to secure our currency. But in December, 1919, these banks held a trifle over a billion dollars' worth of gold, while our paper money was over four billion. In addition, our banks have over thirty-three billions of deposits, and all these are supposed to be secured by gold; in addition, there are twenty-five billions of government bonds, and uncounted billions of private notes, bonds and accounts, all supposed to be payable in gold. So it appears that about one per cent of our outstanding money is real, and the rest is imaginary--that is, it is credit. The point for you to get clear is this: The great mass of this imaginary money is created by law, and we have the power to abolish it or to change the ownership of it at any time we develop the necessary intelligence. Let us consider the ordinary paper money, the one and two and five and ten dollar "bills," with which we plain people do most of our business. These are Federal Reserve notes, and there are about three billions of them; how do they come to be? Why, we grant to the national banks by law the right to make this money; the government prints it for them, and they put it into circulation. And what does it cost them? They pay one per cent for the use of the money; in some cases they pay only one-half of one per cent; and then they lend it to us, the people--and what do they charge us? The answer is available in a recent report of the U. S. Comptroller of the Currency, as follows: "I have the record of the loans made by one Texas national bank to a hard-working woman who owned a little farm a few miles from town. She borrowed, in the aggregate, $2,375, making about thirty loans during the year. Listen to the details of the robbery: $162.50 for 30 days at 36 per cent; $377. for 34 days at 44 per cent; $620.25 for 23 days at 77 per cent; $11. for 30 days at 120 per cent; $21.50 for 30 days at 90 per cent; $33. for 2 days at 93 per cent; $27. for 15 days at 195 per cent; $110. for 30 days at 120 per cent--that was to buy a horse for her plowing; $20 for 48 days at 187 per cent; $6 for 10 days at 720 per cent; $7 for 3 days at 2,000 per cent, and so on; every cent paid off by what sweat and struggle only God knows." In Oklahoma, where the legal rate of interest is six per cent, with ten per cent as the maximum under special contract, harassed farmers paid all the way from 12 to 2400 per cent, with 40 per cent as the average. In the case of one bank, the Comptroller proved that not a single solitary loan had been made under fifteen per cent. He cited one particular case that he asked to be regarded as typical. In the spring the farmer went to the bank and arranged for a loan of $200. Out of his necessity he was compelled to pay 55 per cent interest charge. Unable to meet the note at maturity, he had to agree to 100 per cent interest in order to get the renewal. The next renewal forced him up to 125 per cent. For four years the thing went on, and all the drudgery of the father and the mother and the six children could never keep down the terrible interest or wipe out the principal. As a finish the bank swooped down and sold him out; the wretched man, barefoot and hungry, went to work clearing a swamp, caught pneumonia and died; the county buried him, and neighbors raised a purse to send the widow and children back to friends in Arkansas. This is the thing called the Money Trust in action, and this is the power we have to take out of private control. It is our first job, and all other jobs are in comparison hardly worth mentioning. How are we going to do it? The farmers of North Dakota have shown one way. They took the control of their state government into their own hands, and the most important and significant thing they did was to start a public bank. The interests fought them tooth and nail; not merely the interests of North Dakota, not merely of the Northwest, but of the entire United States. They fought them in the law courts, up to the United States Supreme Court, which decided in favor of the people of North Dakota. Therefore, make note of this vital fact--the most important single fact in the strategy of the class struggle--every state can, under the constitution, have a public bank; every city and town can have one, and no court can ever forbid it! Therefore, I say to all Socialists, labor men and social reformers of every shade and variety, nail at the top of your program of action the demand for a public bank in your community, to take the control of credit out of the hands of speculators and use it for the welfare of the people. Make it your first provision that every dollar of public money shall be deposited in this bank and every detail of public financing handled by this bank; make it your second provision that the purpose of this bank shall be to put all private banks out of business, and take over their power for the people. At present, you understand, it is taken for granted that the first purpose of the government is to foster the private credit system. Take, for example, the postal savings bank. The private banks fought this for a generation, and finally they allowed us to have it, on condition that it should be turned into a device for collecting money for them. Our postal bank turns over all its money to the private banks, at the grotesque rate of two per cent interest; and recently I read of the director of the postal bank appearing before a convention of bankers, asking for some small favor, and humbly explaining that it was not his idea to make the postal bank a rival of the private savings banks. Why should he not do so? Let us nail it to our radical program that the postal savings bank is to fight for business, just as do the private banks, and lend its funds direct to the people on good security. Let our Federal banking system also become the servant of the public welfare, and let its energy be devoted to breaking the strangle-hold of predatory finance on our industry. Let the government issue all money, and use it for the transfer of industry from private into public hands. Do we want to socialize our railroads, our coal mines, our telegraphs and telephones? Do we want to buy them, in order to avoid the wastes of civil war and insurrection? We have agreed that we do; and here we have the way of doing it. If the bankers can create, out of our willingness to trust them, billions upon billions of imaginary money, then so can we, the people of the United States, create money out of our willingness to trust ourselves. And do not let anybody fool you for a single second by talking about "fiat money" and "inflation of the currency." If you are paying twice as much for everything as you did before the war, you are paying it because the bankers have doubled the amount of money in circulation--for that reason and that alone. That double money the bankers own; the only question now to be decided is, who is to own the double money that will be created tomorrow? Make note of the fact that it costs nothing to start a public bank. If you want to put the steel trust out of business by competition, you have several hundred thousand dollars worth of rolling mills and ore land to buy; but the banks can be put out of business by nothing but a law. The material parts of a bank, the white marble columns and bronze railings and mahogany trimmings, are as nothing compared with the inner soul of a bank, its control of the life-blood of your business and mine; and this we can have for the taking. We can keep our own "credit"; instead of sending it to Wall Street, where speculators use it to bleed us white, we can set it to building up our own community, under the direction of officials whom we select. Also, we can have our gigantic national bank, controlling all our thirty-three billions of dollars of deposits, and likewise the hundreds of billions of credit built upon them. The first time you suggest this plan to a banker or business man, you will be told that increase of money by the government does not benefit labor or the general consumer; "inflation of the currency" causes prices to go up correspondingly. To this I will furnish an effective reply: that at the same time the government issues new money, the government will also fix prices; and then watch the face of your banker or business man! If he is a man who can really think, and is not just repeating like a parrot the formulas he has learned from others, he will perceive that the combination of currency inflation and price-fixing would catch him as the two parts of a nut-cracker catch a nut; and he will know that you can take the meat out of him any time you please. He may argue that it is not fair; but point out to him that it is exactly what the big banks and the trusts have been doing to us right along--increasing the amount of money in circulation, and at the same time raising the prices we pay for goods, and so taking out the meat from us nuts! We have agreed that we do not mean to be unfair either to the banker or the manufacturer; we are simply going to stop their being unfair to us. We are going to convince them that their power to catch us in a nut-cracker is forever at an end. We allow them six per cent on their investments, and guarantee them this by turning over to them some of our new money--that is, government bonds. When we have thoroughly convinced them that they can't get any more, they will take these bonds and quit; and thus simply, without violence or destruction of property, we shall slide from our present system of commercial cannibalism into the new co-operative commonwealth. We have had "cheap money" campaigns in the United States many times, and as this book is written, it becomes evident that we are to have another. Henry Ford is advocating the idea, and so is Thomas A. Edison. The present writer would like to make plain that in supporting such a program, he does it for one purpose, and one only--the taking over of the industries by the community. The creation of state credit for that purpose is the next step in the progress of human society; whereas the creation of state credit for the continuance of the profit system is a piece of futility amounting to imbecility. This distinction is fundamental, and is the test by which to judge the usefulness of any new program, and the intelligence of those who advocate it. CHAPTER LXX THE CONTROL OF INDUSTRY (Discusses various programs for the change from industrial autocracy to industrial democracy.) The program of the railway workers for the democratic management of their industry is embodied in the Plumb plan. You may learn about it by addressing the weekly paper of the railway brotherhoods, which is called "Labor," and is published in Washington, D. C. It appears that our transportation industry can be at once socialized, because of a clause in the constitution which gives the national government power over "roads and communications." Through decades of mismanagement under the system of private greed, the railroads have been brought to such a financial condition that they will be forced into nationalization, whenever we stop them from dipping their fingers into the public treasury. Under the Plumb plan the government is to purchase the roads from their present owners, paying with government bonds. The management is to be under the control of a board consisting in part of representatives of the government, and in part of the workers--this being a combination of the methods of Socialism and Syndicalism. The same program can be applied constitutionally to telegraphs and telephones, to interstate trolley systems, express companies, oil pipe lines, and all other means of interstate communication and distribution. The Plumb plan also deals with coal and steel and other great industries. These could not be nationalized without a constitutional amendment, but it appears that in the majority of the constitutions of the states are provisions that all corporate charters are held subject to the power of the legislature to amend, modify, or revoke the same. That gives us a right to take over these corporations through state action. The only preliminary is to elect state administrations which will represent us, instead of representing the corporations. Also, most state constitutions contain the provision that "no corporation shall issue its stocks or bonds, except for money, labor, or property actually received." The word "labor" gives the opening wedge for the Plumb plan. The state can purchase these industries, giving bonds in exchange, and can issue to the workers labor stock, which stock will carry part control of the industry. Also, the railroad brotherhoods have started their own bank, in Cleveland, Ohio, and it is proving an enormous success. Make note of this point; every large labor union can have its own bank, to finance its industries and its propaganda. Stop and consider how preposterous it is that the five million organized workers of the United States should deposit their hundreds of millions of savings in capitalist banks, to be used to finance private undertakings which crush unions and hold labor in bondage. Let every big labor union have its own building, its own banking and insurance business, its own vacation camp in the country, its own school for training its future leaders. Also, let every labor council in every big city start a labor daily, to tell the workers the truth and point the way to freedom. Let every farmers' organization follow suit; and let these groups get together, to exchange their products upon a co-operative basis. Already the railway men are arranging with the farmers, to buy the farm products and distribute them co-operatively; they are getting together with the clothing workers, to have the latter make clothing for them, and with the shoe-workers to make shoes. This is the co-operative movement, which has become the largest single industry in Great Britain, and is the backbone of industrial democracy and sound radicalism. It is spreading rapidly in America now. It is taking the money of the people out of the control of the profit system, and diverting it into channels of public service. It is training men to believe in brotherhood instead of in greed. It is giving them business experience, so that when the time comes the taking over of our industrial machine will not have to be done by amateurs, but by men who know what co-operation is, and how to make a success of it. This work will go on more rapidly yet when the workers have united politically, and brought into power a government which will assist them instead of assisting the bankers. A most interesting program for the development of working-class financial credit is known as the "Douglas plan," which is advocated by a London weekly, the "New Age," and is explained in two books, called "Economic Democracy" and "Credit Power and Democracy," by Douglas and Orage. This program is in brief that the furnishing of credit shall become a function of organized labor, based upon the fact that the true and ultimate basis of all credit is the power of hand and brain labor to produce wealth. The labor unions, or "guilds," shall pay the management of industry and pay capital for the use of the industrial plant, and shall finance production and new industrial development out of their "credit power," their ability to promise production and to keep their promises. This "Douglas plan" seeks to break the Money Trust by the method of Syndicalism. Another method of breaking it, through state regulation of bank loans, you will find most completely set forth in an extremely able book, "The Strangle Hold," by H. C. Cutting, an American business man, whom you may address at San Lorenzo, California. Another method, utilizing the third factor in industry, the consumer, is the method of banking by consumers' unions. Such are the Raffeisen banks, widely known in Germany, and a specimen of which exists in the single tax colony at Arden, Delaware. Those who wish to know about the co-operative bank, or other forms of co-operation, may apply to the Co-operative League of America, 2 West 13th Street, New York, whose president is Dr. James P. Warbasse. Information concerning public ownership may be had from the Public Ownership League, 127 N. Dearborn Street, Chicago; also from the Socialist party, 220 South Ashland Boulevard, Chicago, and from the Bureau of Social Research of the Rand School of Social Science, New York. Also, I ought to mention the very interesting plan for social reconstruction set forth by Mr. King C. Gillette, inventor of the safety razor. This plan you may find in your public library in two encyclopedic volumes, "Gillette's Social Redemption," and "Gillette's World Solution." The politician seeks to solve the industrial problem by means of the state, and the labor leader seeks to solve it by the unions; it is to be expected that Mr. Gillette, a capitalist, should seek to solve it by means of the corporation. He points out that the modern "trust" is the greatest instrument of production yet invented by man; and he asks why the people should not form their own "trust," to handle their own affairs, and to purchase and take over the industries from their present private masters. It is interesting to note that Mr. Gillette's solution is fully as radical and thorough-going as those of the State Socialists or the Syndicalists. The "People's Corporation" which he projects and plans some day to launch upon the world would be a gigantic "consumers' union," whose "credit power" would speedily dominate and absorb all other powers in modern society; it would make us all stockholders, and give us our share of the benefits of social productivity. CHAPTER LXXI THE NEW WORLD (Describes the co-operative commonwealth, beginning with its money aspects; the standard wage and its variations.) It has been indicated that the new society will be different in different countries and in different parts of the same country, in different industries and at different times. No one can predict exactly what it will be, and anyone who tries to predict is unscientific. But every man can work out his own ideas of the most economical and sensible arrangements for a co-operative society, and in these final chapters I set forth my ideas. One of the first things people ask is, "Will there be money in the new society, or how will labor be rewarded and goods paid for?" I answer that there will be money, and the business methods of the new society will be so nearly the same as at present that in this respect you would hardly realize there had been any change. The only difference will be that in the new society you will be paid several times as much for your labor; or, if you prefer to put it the other way, you will be able to buy several times as much with your money. Why should we waste our time working out systems of "credit-cards," when we already have a system in the form of gold and silver coins and paper currency? Why should we bother with "labor checks," when we have a banking and clearing-house system, understood by everyone but the illiterate? The only difference we shall make is that nobody can get gold and silver coins or paper currency, except by performing labor to pay for them; nobody can have money in the bank and draw checks against it, until he has rendered to society an equivalent amount of service. When you have earned your money in the new world, you will spend it wherever you please, and for whatever you please; the only difference being that the price you pay will be the exact labor-cost of producing that article, with no deduction for any form of exploitation. As I wrote sixteen years ago in "The Industrial Republic," you will be able to get, if you insist upon it, a seven-legged spider made of diamonds, and the only question society will ask is, Have you performed services equivalent to the material and labor necessary to the creating of that unusual article of commerce? Of course, society won't put it to you in that complicated formula; it will simply ask, "Have you got the price?" Which, you observe, is exactly the question society asks you at present. The next thing that everybody wants to know is, "Shall we all be paid the same wages?" I answer, yes and no, because there will be three systems of payment. There will be a basic wage, which everybody will get for every kind of useful service necessary to production; this will be, as it were, the foundation of our economic structure. On top of this will be built a system of special payments for special services, which are of an intellectual nature, and cannot be standardized and dealt with wholesale. In addition, there will be for a time a third arrangement, applying to agricultural work, which is in a different stage of development, and to which different conditions apply. Let us take, first, our standard wage. The census of our Utopian commonwealth reveals that we have ten million able-bodied workers engaged in mining, manufacturing, and transportation; this including, of course, office-work and management--everything that enters into these industries. By scientific management, the best machinery, and the elimination of all possible waste, we find that they produce eighty million dollars worth of goods an hour. A portion of this we have to set aside to pay for the raw materials which they do not produce, and for the upkeep of the plant, and for margin of error--what our great corporations call a surplus. We find that we have fifty million dollars per hour left, and that means that we can pay for labor five dollars per hour, or twenty dollars for the regular four-hour day. This is our standard wage, received by all able-bodied workers. But quickly we find that our industries are not properly balanced. A great many men want to work at the jobs which are clean and pleasant, such as delivering mail, and very few want to work at washing dishes in restaurants and cleaning the sewers. There is no way we can adjust this, except by paying a higher wage, or by reducing the number of hours in the working day, which is the same thing. The only other method would be to have the state assign men to their work, and that would be bureaucracy and slavery, the essence of everything we wish to get away from in our co-operative commonwealth. What we shall have, so far as concerns our basic industries, is a government department, registering with mathematical accuracy the condition of supply and demand in all the industries of the country. Our demand for shoes is increasing, for some reason or other; a thousand more shoe-workers are needed, therefore the price of labor in the shoe industry is increased five cents per day--or whatever amount will draw that number of workers from other occupations. On the other hand, there are too many people applying for the job of driving trucks, therefore we reduce slightly the compensation for this work. There are more men who want jobs in Southern California than in Alaska, therefore the payment for the same grade of work in Alaska has to be higher. All this is not merely speculation, it is not a matter of anybody's choice; it is an automatic, self-adjusting system, subject to precise calculations. The only change from our present system is from guesswork to exact measurement. At present we do not know how many shoes our country will require next season, neither do we know how many shoes are going to be made, neither do we know how many people can make shoes, nor how many would like to learn, nor how many would like to quit that job and take to farming. It would be the simplest matter in the world to find out these things--far simpler that it was to register all our possible soldiers, and examine them physically and mentally, and train them and feed them and ship them overseas to "can the Kaiser." Of course, we drafted the men for this war job; but in the new world nobody is drafted for anything. It is any man's privilege to starve if he feels like it; it is his privilege to go out into the mountains and live on nuts and berries if he can find them. Nobody makes him go anywhere, or makes him work at anything--unless, of course, he is a convicted criminal. To the free citizen all that society has to say is, if he buys any products, he must pay for those products with his own labor, and not with some other man's labor. Of course, he may steal, or cheat, as under capitalism; our new world has laws against stealing and cheating, and does its best to enforce them. The difference between the capitalist world and our world is merely that we make it impossible for any man to get money _legally_ without working. Under these conditions the average man wishes to work, and the only question remaining is, how shall he work? If he wants to work by himself, and in his own way, nobody objects to it. He is able to buy anything he pleases, whether raw materials or finished products. If he wants to buy leather and make shoes after his own pattern, no one stops him, and if he can find anyone to buy these shoes, he can earn his living in that way. He is able to get land for as long a time as he wants it, by paying to the state the full rental value of that land, and if he wants to farm the land, he can do so, and sell his products. As a matter of theory, he is perfectly free to hire others to farm the land for him, or with him. There is no law to prevent it, neither is there any law to prevent his renting a factory and buying machinery, and hiring labor to make shoes. But, as a matter of practical fact, it is impossible for him to do this, because the community is in the business of making shoes, and on an enormous scale, with great factories run democratically by the workers, and there is very small chance of any private business man being able to draw the workers away from these factories. The community factories have all the latest machinery; they apply the latest methods of scientific management, and they turn out standard shoes at such a rate that private competition is unthinkable. Of course, there may be some special kind of shoes, involving an intellectual element, in which there can be private competition. This kind of manufacture is covered in our second method of payment; but before we discuss it, let us settle the problem of our most important basic industry, which is agriculture. CHAPTER LXXII AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION (Discusses the land in the new world, and how we foster co-operative farming and co-operative homes.) Farming the land is a very ancient industry, and while its tools have been improved, its social forms have been the same for a long time. The worker on the land is conservative, and the Russian Bolsheviks, who tried to rush their peasants into Communism, found that they had only succeeded in stopping the production of food. We make no such blunder in our new society. We have found a way to abolish speculation in land, and exploitation based on land-ownership, while leaving the farmer free to run his business in the old way if he wants to. In our new society we take the full rental value of all land which is not occupied and used by the state. The farmer and the city dweller alike "own" their land, in the sense that they have the use of it for as long as they please, but they pay to the state the rental value of the land, minus the improvements. So they cannot speculate in the land or rent it out to others; they can only use it, and they only pay for what they actually use. They may put improvements on the land, with full assurance of having the use and benefit thereof, and they may sell the improvements, and the new owner enters into possession, with no obligation but to pay the rental value of the unimproved land to the state. The farmer goes on raising his products, and if he wants to drive to town and deliver them to his customers, he may do so; but he finds it cheaper to market them through the great labor co-operatives and state markets. As there is no longer any private interest involved in these activities, no one has any interest in cheating him, and he gets the full value of the products, less the cost of marketing. If the farmer wishes to continue all his life in his old style individualistic method of working the land, he is free to do so. But here is what he sees going on within a few miles of his place: The state has bought a square mile of land, and has taken down the fences and established an agricultural co-operative for purposes of experiment and demonstration. The farm is run under the direction of experts; the soils are treated with exactly the right fertilizers for each crop, the best paying crops are raised, the best seed is used, and the best machinery. The workers of this new agricultural co-operative receive the standard wage, and they live in homes specially built for them, with all the conveniences made possible by wholesale production. Also, these co-operators live in a democratic community; they determine their own conditions of labor, being represented on the governing board, along with the experts appointed by the state. The farmer watches this experiment, at first with suspicion; but he finds that his sons have less suspicion than he has, and his sons keep pointing out to him that their little farm is not making the standard wage or anything like it; and, moreover, the standard wage is constantly increasing, whereas, the price of farm-products is dropping. And here is the state, ready to direct new co-operative ventures, inviting a score of farmers in the community to combine and buy out the unwilling ones, and establish a new co-operative. Sooner or later the old farmer gives way; or he dies, and his sons belong to the new world. So ultimately we have our national agricultural system, in which all the requirements of our people are studied, and all the possibilities of our soil and climate, and the job of raising the exact quantities of food that we need, both for our own use and for export, is worked out as one problem. We know how much lumber we need, and we raise it on all our hillsides and mountain slopes, and so protect ourselves from floods and the denuding of our continent. We know where best to raise our wheat, and where best to raise our potatoes and our cabbages, and we do not do this by crude hand-labor, nor by the labor of women and children from daybreak till dark. We have special machines that plant each crop, and other machines that reap it or dig it out of the ground and prepare it for market. A few days ago I read a discussion in the Chamber of Commerce of Calcutta. Some one called attention to the wastes involved in the current method of handling rubber. One consignment of rubber had been sold more than three hundred separate times, and the cost of these transactions amounted to three times the value of the rubber. This is only one illustration, and I might quote a thousand. If you doubt my figures as to the possibility of production in the new society, remind yourself that a large percentage of the things you use have been bought and sold many scores of times before you get them. Consider the cabbage, for which you pay six or eight cents a pound in the grocery store, and for which the farmer gets, say, half a cent a pound. In this new world the state has an enormous income, derived from its tax on land values. It no longer has to send around men once a year to ask you how many diamond rings your wife has, and to tax you on your honesty, if you have any. It no longer has to make its money by such lying devices as a tariff, therefore its moral being is no longer poisoned by a tariff-lobby. It taxes every citizen for the right to use that which nature created, and leaves free from taxation that which the citizens' own labor created; this kind of taxation is honest, and fair to all, because no one can evade it. The state uses the proceeds of this land tax in the public services, the libraries and research laboratories and information bureaus; in free insurance against fire and flood and tempest; and in a pension to every member of society above the working age of fifty-five, or below the working age of eighteen. Of course, the state might leave it to every man to save up for his old age, but not all men are this wise, and the state cannot afford to let the unwise ones starve. It is more convenient for the state to figure that all men, or nearly all, are going to be old, and to hold back some of their money while they are young and strong, in the certainty that when they are old, they will appreciate this service. Also the state takes care of the sick and incapacitated, and the mentally or physically defective. But we do not leave these latter loose in the world to reproduce their defects; we have in our new world some sense of responsibility to the future, and there is nothing to which we devote more effort than making certain that nothing unsound or abnormal is allowed entrance into life. The problem of the care of children is a complicated one, and our new society is in process of solving it. We look back on the old world in which the having of children was heavily taxed, in the form of an obligation to care for these children until they were old enough to work. Then the parents were allowed to exploit the labor of the children, so that among the very poor the raising of children was a business speculation, like the raising of slaves or poultry. But in our new world we consider the interest of the child, and of the society in which that child is to be a citizen. We decide that this society must have citizens, and that the raising of the future citizens is a work just exactly as necessary and useful as the raising of a crop of cabbages. Therefore, we pay a pension to all mothers while they are raising and caring for children. At the same time we assert the right to see that this money is wisely spent, and that the child is really cared for. If it is neglected, we are quick to take it away from its parents, and put it in one of our twenty-four-hour-a-day schools. We realize that the home is an ancient industry, even more ancient than agriculture, and we do not try to socialize it all at once. But just as we demonstrate to farmers that the individual farm does not pay, so we demonstrate to mothers the wastefulness of the single laundry, the single kitchen, the single nursery. We establish community laundries, community kitchens, community nurseries, and invite our women to help in these activities, and to learn there, under expert guidance, the advantages of domestic co-operation. We convince them by showing better results in the health and happiness of the children, and in the time and strength of the mothers. So, little by little, we widen the field of co-operative endeavor, and increase the total product of human labor and the total enjoyment of human life. CHAPTER LXXIII INTELLECTUAL PRODUCTION (Discusses scientific, artistic and religious activities, as a superstructure built upon the foundation of the standard wage.) Karl Kautsky, intellectual leader of the German Social-democracy, gives in his book, "The Social Revolution," a useful formula as to the organization of the future society. This formula is: "Communism in material production, Anarchism in intellectual production." It will repay us to study this statement, and see exactly what it means. Material production depends directly upon things; and as there is only a limited quantity of things in the world, if any one person has more than his share, he deprives some other person to that extent. So there have to be strict laws concerning the distribution of material products. But with intellectual things exactly the opposite is the case. There is no limit in quantity, and any one person can have all he wants without interfering with anybody else. Everybody in the world can perform a play by Shakespeare, or play a sonata by Beethoven, and everybody can enjoy it as much as he pleases without keeping other people from enjoying it all they please. Also, material production can be standardized; we can have great factories to turn out millions of boxes of matches, each match like every other match, and the more alike they are the better. But in intellectual affairs we want everyone to be different, or at least we want everyone to be free to be different, and if some one can become much better than the others, this is the most important kind of production in the world, for he may make over our whole intellectual and moral life. For the production of material things our new society has great factories owned in common, and run by majority vote of the workers, and we place the products of that factory at the disposal of all members of society upon equal terms. That is our "Communism in material production." On the other hand, in our intellectual production we leave everybody free to live his own life, and to associate himself with others of like aims, and we place as few restrictions as possible upon their activities. This is the method of free association, or "Anarchism in intellectual production." Our problem would be simple if material and intellectual production never had to mingle. But, as it happens, every kind of intellectual production requires a certain amount of material, and every kind of material production involves an intellectual element. Therefore, our two methods have to be combined, and we have a complex problem which we have to solve in a variety of different ways, and upon which we must experiment with open minds and scientific temper. First, let us take the intellectual elements involved in the production of purely material things, such as matches and shoes and soap. Let us take invention. Naturally, we do not want to go on making matches and shoes and soap in the same old way forever. On the contrary, we want to stimulate all the workers in these industries to use their wits and improve the processes in every possible way. The whole of society has an interest in this, and the soap workers have an especial interest. Our soap industry has an invention department, with a group of experts appointed by the executive committee of the national council of soap workers. All soap workers are taxed, say five cents a day, for the support of this activity. Likewise the state contributes a generous sum out of its income toward the work of soap research. In addition to this, the soap industry offers prizes and scholarships for suggestions as to the improvement of every detail of the work, and at meetings of every local of soap workers somebody makes new suggestions as to methods of stimulating their intellectual life--not merely as regards soap, but as regards citizenship, and art and literature, and human life in general. Our soap workers, you must understand, are no longer wage-slaves, brutalized by toil and poverty; they are free citizens of a free society. Our soap workers' local in every city has its own theatre and concert hall and lecture bureau, and publishes its own magazine. Every industry has its immediate intellectual problems, its trade journals in which these are discussed, and its research boards in which they are worked out. The ambitions of the young workers in that industry are concentrated upon getting into this intellectual part of their trade. Examinations are held and tests are made to discover the most competent men, and written suggestions are considered by boards of control. It is, of course, of great importance to every worker that the channels of promotion should be kept open, and that the man who really has inventive talent shall get, not merely distinction and promotion, but financial reward, so that he may have time and materials to continue his experiments. This research department, you perceive, is a sort of superstructure, built upon the foundation of our standard wage; and this same simile applies to numerous other forms of intellectual production. For example, our community paper mills turn out paper, and our community printers are prepared to turn out millions of books. How shall we determine what is to be the intellectual content of these material books? There are many different methods. First, there is the method of individualism. A man has something to say, and he writes a book; he works in the soap factory, and saves a part of his standard wage, and when he has money enough he orders the community printers to print his book, and the community booksellers to handle it for him, and the community postoffice to deliver it for him. Again, a group of men organize themselves into an association, or club, or scientific society, and publish books. The Authors' League takes up the work of publishing the writings of its members, and the Poetry Society does the same. This is the method of Anarchism, or free association. But there is no reason why we should not have along side it the method of Socialism; there is no reason why we should not have state publishing houses, just as we have state universities and state libraries. The state should certainly publish standard works of all sorts, bibles and dictionaries and directories, and cheap editions of the classics. In this new world our school boards are not chosen by business men for purposes of graft, they are chosen by the people to educate our children; so it seems to us perfectly natural that the National Educational Association should conduct a publication department, and order the printing of the school books which the children use. In the same way, anyone is free to write a play, or to put on a play, and invite people to come and see it. But, like the individual farmers and the individual mothers of families, the play-producer in our society is in competition with great community enterprises, which set a high standard and make competition difficult. The same thing applies to the opera, and to concerts, and to all the arts and sciences. You can start a private hospital if you wish, but you will be in competition with public institutions, and you can only succeed if you are a man of genius--that is, if you have something to teach, too new and startling for the public boards of control to recognize. You try your new method, and it works, and that becomes a criticism of the public boards of control, and before long the people by their votes turn out the old board of control and put you in. That is politics, you say; but we in our new world do not use the word politics as one of contempt. We really believe that public sentiment is in the long run the best authority, and the appeal to public sentiment is at once a social privilege and a social service. What we strive to do is to clear the channels of appeal, and avoid favoritism and stagnation. To that end we maintain, in every art and every science and every department of human thought, endless numbers of centers of free, independent, co-operative activity, so that every man who has an inspiration, or a new idea, can find some group to support him or can form a new group of his own. This is our "Anarchism in intellectual production," and it is the method under which in capitalist society men organize all their clubs and societies and churches. Devout members of the Roman Catholic Church will be startled to be told that theirs is an Anarchist organization; but nevertheless, such is the case. The Catholic Church owns a great deal of property, and speculates in real estate, and to that extent it is a capitalist institution. It holds a great many people by fear, and to that extent it is a feudal institution. But in so far as members of the church believe in it and love it and contribute of their free will to its support, they are organizing by the method which all Anarchists recommend and desire to apply to the whole of society. Anarchist clubs and Christian churches are both free associations for the advocacy of certain ideas, the only difference being in the ideas they advocate. In our new world such organizations have been multiplied many fold, and form a vast superstructure of intellectual activity, built upon the foundation of the standard wage. In this new world all the people are free. They are free, not merely from oppression, but from the fear of oppression; they have leisure and plenty, and they take part naturally and simply in the intellectual life. The old, of course, have not got over the dullness which a lifetime of drudgery impressed upon them, but the young are growing up in a world without classes, and in which it seems natural that everyone should be educated and everyone should have ideas. They earn their standard wage, and devote their spare time to some form of intellectual or artistic endeavor, and spend their spare money in paying writers and artists and musicians and actors to stimulate and entertain them. These latter are the ways of distinction in our new society; these are the paths to power. The only rich men in our world are the men who produce intellectual goods; the great artists, orators, musicians, actors and writers, who are free to serve or not to serve, as they see fit, and can therefore hold up the public for any price they care to charge. Just now there is eager discussion going on in our world as to whether it is proper for an opera singer, or a moving picture star, or a novelist, to make a million dollars. Our newspapers are full of discussions of the question whether anyone can make a million dollars honestly, and whether men of genius should exploit their public. Some point out that our most eminent opera singer spends his millions in endowing a conservatory of art; but others maintain that it would be better if he lowered his prices of admission, and let the public use its money in its own way. The extremists are busy founding what they call the Ten-cent Society, whose members agree to boycott all singers and actors who charge more than ten cents admission, and all moving picture stars who receive more than a hundred thousand dollars a year for their service. These "Ten-centers" do not object to paying the money, but they object to the commercializing of art, and declare especially that the moral effect of riches is such that no rich person should ever, under any circumstances, be allowed to influence the youth of the nation. In this some of the greatest writers join them, and renounce their copyrights, and agree to accept a laureateship from some union of workers, who pay them a generous stipend for the joy and honor of being associated with their names. The greatest poet of our time began life as a newsboy, and so the National Newsvenders' Society has adopted him, and taken his name, and pays him ten thousand dollars a year for the privilege of publishing his works. CHAPTER LXXIV MANKIND REMADE (Discusses human nature and its weaknesses, and what happens to these in the new world.) We have briefly sketched the economic arrangements of the co-operative commonwealth. Let us now consider what are the effects of these arrangements upon the principal social diseases of capitalism. The first and most dreadful of capitalism's diseases is war, and the economic changes here outlined have placed war, along with piracy and slavery, among the half-forgotten nightmares of history. We have broken the "iron ring," and are no longer dependent upon foreign concessions and foreign markets for the preservation of our social system and the aggrandizement of a ruling class. We can stay quietly at home and do our own work, and as we produce nearly everything we need, we no longer have to threaten our neighbors. Our neighbors know this, and therefore they do not arm against us, and we have no pretext to arm against them. We take toward all other civilized nations the attitude which we have taken toward Canada for the past hundred years. We have a small and highly trained army, a few regiments of which are located at strategic points over the country. This army we regard and use as we do our fire department. When there is widespread damage by fire or flood or storm or earthquake, we rush the army to the spot to attend to the work of rescue and rebuilding. Also, we have a small navy in international service; for, of course, we are no longer an independent and self-centered nation; we have come to realize that we are part of the world community, and have taken our place as one state in the International Socialist Federation. We send our delegates to the world parliament, and we place our resources at the disposal of the world government. However, it now takes but a small army and navy to preserve order in the world. We govern the backward nations, but the economic arrangements of the world are such that we are no longer driven to exploit and oppress them. We send them teachers instead of soldiers, and as there are really very few people in the world who fight for the love of fighting, we have little difficulty in preserving peace. We pay the backward peoples a fair price for their products which we need. Our world government takes no money out of these countries, but spends it for the benefit of those who live in the countries, to teach them and train their young generations for self-government. Next, what are the effects of our new arrangements upon political corruption and graft? The social revolution has broken the prestige of wealth. Money will buy things, but it no longer buys power, the right to rule other men; it no longer buys men's admiration. Everybody now has money, and nobody is any longer afraid of starvation. It is no longer the fashion to save money--any more than it is the fashion to carry revolvers in drawing-rooms or to wear chain mail in place of underclothing. So our political life is cleansed of the money influence. People now get power by persuading their fellows, not by buying them or threatening them. The world is no longer full of men ravenous for jobs, and ready to sell their soul for a "position." So it is no longer possible to build up a "machine" based on desire for office. The changes have resulted in an enormous intensification of our political activities. We have endless meetings and debates; we have so many propaganda societies that we cannot keep track of them. And some of these societies, like the Catholic Church, have a large membership, and large sums of money at their disposal. But a few experiments at carrying elections by a "campaign-chest" have convinced everybody that to have the facts on your side is the only permanent way to political power. Our new society is jealous of attempts to establish any sort of ruling class, and the surest way to discredit yourself is to advocate any form of barrier against freedom of discussion, or the right of the people's will to prevail. Next, what is the status of crime? We have too recently escaped from capitalism to have been able to civilize entirely our slum population, and we still have occasional crimes of violence, especially crimes of passion. But we have almost entirely eliminated those classes of crime which had to do with property, and we have discovered that this was ninety-five per cent of all crime. We have eliminated them by the simple device of making them no longer profitable. Anybody can go into our community factories, and under clean and attractive working conditions, and without any loss of prestige or social position, can earn the means of satisfying his reasonable wants by three hours work a day. Almost everybody finds this easier than stealing or cheating. But more important yet, as a factor in abolishing crime, is the abolition of class domination and the prestige of wealth. We no longer have in our community a ruling class which lives without working, and which offers to the weak-minded and viciously inclined the perpetual example of luxury. We no longer set much store on jewels and fine raiment; we do not make costly things, except for public purposes, where all may enjoy them; and nobody stores great quantities of money, because everyone has a guarantee of security from the state. So we are gradually putting our policemen and jailers and judges and lawyers to constructive work. Next, what about disease? The diseases of poverty are entirely done away with. We are now able to apply the knowledge of science to the whole community, and so we no longer have to do with tuberculosis and typhoid, or with rickets and anæmia in children, or with heavy infant mortality. We have sterilized our unfit, the degenerates and the defectives, and so do not have to reckon with millions of children from these wretched stocks. We now give to the question of public health that prominence which in the old days we used to give to war and the suppression of crime and social protest. Our public health officers now replace our generals and admirals, and we really obey their orders. Next, as to prostitution. Just as in the case of crime, we are still too close to capitalism not to have among us the victims of social depravity, both men and women. We still have a great deal of vice which springs from untrained animal impulse, and we have some cultivated and highly sophisticated pornography. But we have entirely done away with commercial vice, and we have done it by cutting the root which nourished it. Women in our communities are really free; and by that we do not mean the empty political freedom which existed in the days of wage slavery--we mean that women are permanently delivered from economic inferiority, by the recognition on the part of the state of the money value of their special kind of work, the bearing and training of children. This kind of work not merely receives the standard wage, it also receives the best surgical and nursing treatment free. Housework and home-making are legally recognized services; and the woman before marriage and after her children have been nursed is free to go into the community factories and earn for herself the standard wage, with no loss of social position. Consequently, no woman sells her sex, and no man buys it. This does not mean, of course, that we have solved the sex problem in our new society. There are two great social problems with which we have to deal, the first of these being the sex problem, and the second the race problem. Our scientists are occupied with eugenics, and we are finding out how to guide our young people in marriage, so that our race may be built up, and the ravages of capitalism remedied as quickly as possible. Also we are trying to find out the laws of happiness and health in love. We are founding societies for the purpose of protecting love, and, as hinted in the Book of Love, we have a determined social struggle between two groups of women--the mother-women and the mistress-women--those who take love gravely, as a means of improving the race, and those who take it as a decoration, a form of play. Our men are embarrassed by having to choose between these groups, and occupy themselves with trying to keep the struggle from turning into civil war. Second, the race problem. Our economic changes have, of course, done away with some of the bitterest phases of this strife. White workingmen in the North no longer mob and murder negro workingmen for taking their jobs, and in the South our land values tax prevents the landlord from exploiting either white or negro labor. But our white race is still irresistibly bent upon preserving its integrity of blood, and the more far-seeing among the negroes have come to realize that there can never be any real happiness for them in a society where they are denied the higher social privileges. There is a movement for the development of a genuine Negro Republic in Africa, and for mass emigration. Also there is a proposition, soon to be settled at an election, for the dividing of the United States into three districts upon racial lines. First, there are to be, in the Far South, three or four states which are inhabited and governed solely by negroes, and to which white men may come only as temporary visitors; a large group of states in the North which are white states, and to which negroes may come only as visitors; and finally, a middle group of states, in which both whites and black are allowed to live, as at present, but with the proviso that no one may live there who takes part in any form of racial strife or agitation. This program gives to race-conscious negroes their own land, their own civilization, their own chance of self-realization; it gives to race-conscious white men the same opportunity; and it leaves to those who are not troubled by the problem, a country where black and white may dwell in quiet good fellowship. Finally, what has been the effect of our economic changes upon the purely personal vices which gave us so much trouble and unhappiness in the old days? What, for example, has been the effect upon vanity? You should see our new crop of children in our high schools! There are no longer any social classes among them; the rich ones do not arrive in private automobiles, to make the poor ones envious, and they do not isolate themselves in little snobbish cliques. They arrive in community automobiles, and all wear uniforms--one of the simple devices by which we repress the impulse of the young toward display of personal egotism. They are all full of health and happy play, and their heads are busily occupied with interesting ideas. Our girls are trained to thinking, instead of to personal adornment; they are developing their minds, instead of catching a rich husband by sexual charms. So we have been able, in a single generation of training, to make a real and appreciable difference in the amount of vanity and self-consciousness to be found among our young people. And the same thing applies to a score of other undesirable qualities, which, under the system of competitive commercialism, were overstimulated in human beings. In those old days everyone was seeking his own survival, and certain qualities which had survival value became the principal characteristics of our race. Those qualities were greed and persistence in acquisitiveness, cunning and subtlety, also bragging and self-assertiveness. In that old world people destroyed their fellows in order to make their own safety and power; they wasted goods in order to be esteemed, to preserve what they called their "social position." But now we have cut the roots of all these vile weeds. We have so adjusted the business relationships of men that we do not have to have hysterical religious revivals in order to keep the human factors alive in their hearts. We have established it as a money fact, which everyone quickly realizes, that it pays better to co-operate; there is more profit and less bother in being of service to others. So we have prepared a soil in which virtues grow instead of vices, and we find that people become decent and kindly and helpful without exhortation, and with no more moral effort than the average man can comfortably make. Of course, we have still personal vices to combat, and new virtues to discover and to propagate; but this has to do with the future, whereas we are here confining ourselves to those things which have been demonstrated in our new society. INDEX Abortion, 61 Abortions, 30 Advertising, 163 Agricultural co-operative, 206 Anarchism, 210 Anarchist, 89, 90 Anarchy, 172 Anglo-Saxon, 62, 111 "Appeal to Reason", 149 Aristocratic doctrine, 116 Armour, 128 Atherton, Gertrude, 87 Babies, 63 Bachelorhood, 52 Bacon, Francis, 51 Banking system, 192 Bankruptcy, 162 Barbarism, 124 Barnum, P. T., 27 Berkman, Alexander, 173 Biology, 103 Birth control, 61, 76 Birth Control Review, 64 Blatchford, Robert, 55, 161 "Blind" love, 58 Bolsheviks, 172 Breach of promise suit, 91 Brothel, 66 Brothels, 31 Burbank, Luther, 99 Business man, 143 Capital, 158 Capitalism, 136, 168 Capitalists, 142 Carnegie, 168 Catholic Church, 213, 216 Celibacy, 51, 52, 64 Chastity, 51 Chattel slavery, 186 Childbirths, 70 Children, 70, 72, 85, 208 Christianity, 115, 133 "Clarion", 31 Class struggle, 133, 177 Clay, Henry, 186 Coleridge, 85 "Collier's Weekly", 122, 163 Committee on Waste, 160 Commune, 129 Communism, 10, 170, 210 Compensation, 179 Competition, 108, 127 Competitive wage system, 148 "Complex", 49 Comstock, Anthony, 20 Confiscation, 179 Congress, 138 Contraception, 61 Co-operation, 109, 199, 200 Coquetry, 38 Corporation, 127 Courtship, 91 Credit, 152, 154, 192, 200 Credit-cards, 202 Crime, 164, 216 Culture, 62 Cutting, H. C., 200 Dances, 15 Debs, Eugene V., 155 Degeneration, 121 "Demi-monde", 80 Democratic doctrine, 115 Dictatorship, 180, 183, 185 Dill, James B., 25 Disarmament, 157 Discouragement, 164 Disease, 217 Divorce, 32, 93, 97 Double standard, 5 "Douglas plan", 199 "Dumping", 152 Economic evolution, 123 Economic man, 108 Emerson, 186 Emulation, 112 Engagements, 72 England, 120, 156, 175 Eugenics, 58 Evolution, 122 Exogamy, 105 Exploitation, 181 Exploiting, 148 Exports, 153 Factory system, 129 Farming, 206 "Favorable balance", 151 Fear, 122, 164 Federal Reserve Act, 154 Feminist, 69 Feudal stage, 124 Fires, 163 Foreign trade, 151 "Free love", 44, 87 "Free lover", 92 France, 175 France, Anatole, 44 Freud, 104 Gens, 9 Germany, 155, 156 Gillette, King C., 200 Goldman, Emma, 173 Gonorrhea, 30 Goode, Mary J., 41 Government, 166 "Graft", 127, 216 "Great Adventure", 188 Hammurabi, 78 "Hamon case", 26 "Hard times", 144 Hardy, 13 Harris, Frank, 21 "High life", 23 Home, 42, 209 Honeymoon, 56 Hoover, Herbert, 160 House of Commons, 137 Huguenots, 134 Human nature, 99 Hunger, 122 Ideals, 132 Imports, 153 Income tax, 143, 188 Industrial evolution, 126 Infant, 103 Infanticide, 61 Inflation, 196 Inheritance tax, 188 "Ingenues", 19 Instinct, 57 Insurance, 163 Intellectual production, 211 "Iron ring", 158 Island, 145 I. W. W., 169 James, William, 16 Jealousy, 89 Jews, 127 Kautsky, Karl, 210 "King Coal", 139 Kropotkin, 109, 129, 173 Labor, 158 Labor checks, 202 Labor union, 199 Laissez faire, 110 Land tax, 190 Land titles, 179 Land values, 208 Late marriage, 67 Lecky, 6, 33 Leviticus, 78 Liberty motor, 164 London, Jack, 62 Los Angeles Times, 157 Love, 34, 47, 100, 112, 218 Lust, 48 Luther, Martin, 129 Luxury, 60 Machinery, 149 "Magic gestures", 104 Magna Carta, 134 Malthusian law, 108 Markham, Edwin, 139 Marquesas Islands, 33 Marriage, 4 Marriage club, 71 Marriage market, 68 Marx, Karl, 132, 138, 176 Materialistic interpretation, 132 Material production 210 Maternity endowment 79 Meredith, George 43 "Merrie England" 161 Metchnikoff, Elie 33, 46 Mexico 121 Middle class 176, 186 Minor, Robert 173 Mistress 12 Money 37, 192, 202 Money Trust 194 Monogamy 5, 83, 90 Moors 134 Moralists 59 Morgan 128 Mother's pension 79 Moving pictures 17 Negro 218 Negroes 116 Neuroses 105 Neurotics 103 North Dakota 194 North, Luke 188 O'Brien, Frederick 10 Oedipus complex 104 "Open-shop" 177 Panic 154 Parasitism 74 Passion 58 Permanence 87 Piracy 111 Pity 74 Plumb plan 198 Political evolution 123 Political revolution 125 Politics 213 Pornography 20 Postal savings bank 195 Poverty 40 Primitive man 9 Privilege 36 Professor Sumner 122 Profit system 148, 158 "Progressive polygamy" 90 Proletariat 142 Promiscuity 87 Property marriage 44 Prosperity 144 Prostitute 6 Prostitution 4, 31, 41, 217 Proudhon 179 Psycho-analysis 49, 103 Public bank 194 Publishing 212 Quick, Herbert 165 Race prejudice 62 Race problem 218 Racial immaturity 116 Raffeisen bank 200 Reeve, Sidney A. 160 Republic 125 Research 212 "Resurrection" 53 Revolt 134 Ricardo 108 Richardson, Dorothy 26 Ring 148 Robinson, Dr. William, J, 21, 30, 70, 77 Roman Catholic church 90 "Romance" 91 "Romantic" love 55 Roosevelt 61 Rulers 119 Russia 129, 185 Sanger, Margaret 63 School of marriage 75 Selection 8 Sex 8 Sex education 72 Sex impulse 46 Sex problem 218 Sex urge 86 Sex war 81 Shelley 59, 89 "She-towns" 29 Shop management 168 Sienkiewicz 13 Sims, District Attorney 28 Single tax 188 Slavery 10, 126, 136 "Smart set" 24 Smith, Adam 108 Snobbery 61 Socialism, 166 Social revolution, 128, 147, 175 Soviets, 130, 171 "Speeding up", 138 Spencer, Herbert, 122 Spirituality, 64 Sport, 113 Standard wage, 203 Steel Trust, 137 Stopes, Dr. Marie C., 77 Strikes, 162 Syndicalism, 167 Syphilis, 30 Tabu, 9 Tariff, 153 Taxes, 191 Tennyson, 38, 120 "The Brass Check", 31, 137 "The Conquest of Bread", 173 "The Cost of Competition", 160 "The Industrial Republic", 202 "The Jungle", 139 "The Lady", 12 "The Long Day", 26, 29 "The Nature of Man", 33 "The Profits of Religion", 137 "The Social Revolution", 210 "The Strangle Hold", 200 Thompson, A. M., 31 Tolstoi, 53 "Totem and Taboo", 104 "Triangle", 56 Unconscious, 105 Unemployment, 147 "Vamps", 19 Vanity, 219 Varietism, 85 Venereal disease, 30, 67, 83 Voltaire, 36 Voluntary Parenthood League, 64 War, 162 Wars, 155 Waste, 165 Wells, H. G., 89 Wharton, Edith, 95 "Wild oats", 6 White man's burden, 117 White, William Allen, 17 Worker, 140 Workers, 176 Working class, 140 Woman, 12 "Young love", 56, 73 * * * * * BOOKS BY UPTON SINCLAIR Published by the Author, Pasadena, California Trade Distributors: The Paine Book Co., Chicago, [I]. The Brass Check A Study of American Journalism Who owns the press and why? When you read your daily paper, are you reading facts or propaganda? And whose propaganda? Who furnishes the raw material for your thoughts about life? Is it honest material? No man can ask more important questions than these; and here for the first time the questions are answered in a book. The first edition of this book, 23,000 copies, was sold out two weeks after publication. Paper could not be obtained for printing, and a carload of brown wrapping paper was used. The printings to date amount to 144,000 copies. The book is being published in Great Britain and colonies, and in translations in Germany, France, Holland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Hungary and Japan. HERMANN BESSEMER, _in the "Neues Journal," Vienna_: "Upton Sinclair deals with names, only with names, with balances, with figures, with documents, a truly stunning, gigantic fact-material. His book is an armored military train which with rushing pistons roars through the jungle of American monsterlies, whistling, roaring, shooting, chopping off with Berserker rage the obscene heads of these evils. A breath-taking, clutching, frightful book is 'The Brass Check.'" (=Prices of all books, unless otherwise stated, cloth $1.20, 3 copies $3, 10 copies $9; paper 60c, 3 copies $1.50, 10 copies $4.50. All prices postpaid.=) THE BOOK OF LIFE A book of practical counsel. Volume One--Mind and Body. Discusses truth and its standards, and the basis of health, both mental and physical. Tells people how to live, in order to avoid waste and pain, and to find happiness and achieve progress. Volume Two--Love and Society. Discusses health in sex; love and marriage, chastity, monogamy, birth control, divorce. Explains modern economic problems, Socialism, revolution, industrial democracy, and the future society. Prices of volumes one and two bound in one, cloth $1.50, paper $1.00. Either of the two volumes separately, cloth $1.20, paper 60c. THE JUNGLE This novel, first published in 1906, caused an international sensation. It was the best selling book in the United States for a year; also in Great Britain and its colonies. It was translated into seventeen languages, and caused an investigation by President Roosevelt, and action by Congress. The book has been out of print for ten years, and is now reprinted by the author at a lower price than when first published, although the cost of manufacture has since more than doubled. "Not since Byron awoke one morning to find himself famous has there been such an example of world-wide celebrity won in a day by a book as has come to Upton Sinclair."--_New York Evening World._ "It is a book that does for modern industrial slavery what 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' did for black slavery. But the work is done far better and more accurately in 'The Jungle' than in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.'"--ARTHUR BRISBANE, _in the New York Evening Journal_. KING COAL A novel of the Colorado coal country. "Clear, convincing, complete."--LINCOLN STEFFENS. "I wish that every word of it could be burned deep into the heart of every American."--ADOLPH GERMER. DEBS AND THE POETS: Edited by Ruth Le Prade, with an introduction by Upton Sinclair. A collection of poetry about Debs. SYLVIA: A novel of the South. SYLVIA'S MARRIAGE: A sequel. (Both in cloth only.) 100% A STORY OF A PATRIOT Would you like to go behind the scenes and see the "invisible government" of your country saving you from the Bolsheviks and the Reds? Would you like to meet the secret agents and provocateurs of "Big Business," to know what they look like, how they talk and what they are doing to make the world safe for democracy? Several of these gentlemen have been haunting the home of Upton Sinclair during the past three years and he has had the idea of turning the tables and investigating the investigators. He has put one of them, Peter Gudge by name, into a book, together with Peter's ladyloves, and his wife, and his boss, and a whole group of his fellow-agents and their employers. _From_ LOUIS UNTERMEYER, _Author of "Challenge," etc._: "Upton Sinclair has done it again. He has loaded his Maxim (no Silencer attached), taken careful aim, and--bang!--hit the bell plump in the center. "First of all, '100%' is a story; a story full of suspense, drama, 'heart interest,' plots, counterplots, high life, low life, humor, hate and other passions--as thrilling as a W. S. Hart movie, as interest-crammed as (and a darned sight more truthful than) your daily newspaper." THEY CALL ME CARPENTER: A TALE OF THE SECOND COMING Narrates how Jesus came to Los Angeles in the year 1921, and what happened to Him. To be published in September, 1922. THE CRY FOR JUSTICE An anthology of the literature of social protest, with an introduction by Jack London, who calls it "this humanist Holy-book." Thirty-two illustrations, 891 pages. Cloth, $1.50; paper, $1.00. "It should rank with the very noblest works of all time. You could scarcely have improved on its contents--it is remarkable in variety and scope. Buoyant, but never blatant, powerful and passionate, it has the spirit of a challenge and a battle cry."--LOUIS UNTERMEYER. "You have marvelously covered the whole ground. The result is a book that radicals of every shade have long been waiting for. You have made one that every student of the world's thought--economic, philosophic, artistic--has to have."--REGINALD WRIGHT KAUFFMAN. THE PROFITS OF RELIGION A study of supernaturalism as a source of income and a shield to privilege. The first investigation of this subject ever made in any language. "You have put a lot of work into it and you have marshalled your facts in, masterly fashion."--WILLIAM MARION REEDY. * * * * * The following typographical errors have been corrected by the text transcriber: worshiping=>worshipping changes takes place=>changes take place is an impuse=>is an impulse center of continous=>center of continuous a starvling beggar at the gates=>a starving beggar at the gates of fool nations about sex=>of fool notions about sex any personal right in contravened=>any personal right is contravened industrial evoluton=>industrial evolution to the poeple=>to the people Social revoluton=>Social revolution her hands and and feet=>her hands and her feet Liebault=>Liébault Sienkewicz's "Whirlpools"=>Sienkiewicz's "Whirlpools" Magna Charta, 134=>Magna Carta, 134 
43719	----	LIFE'S BASIS AND LIFE'S IDEAL BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE MEANING AND VALUE OF LIFE Translated by W. R. BOYCE GIBSON Crown 8vo, cloth, price 3s. 6d. net. * * * * * And by W. R. BOYCE GIBSON RUDOLF EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE Second Edition, crown 8vo, cloth, price 3s. 6d. net. * * * * * A. AND C. BLACK, 4 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W. AGENTS: AMERICA THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 64 & 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK AUSTRALASIA OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 205 FLINDERS LANE, MELBOURNE CANADA THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LTD. ST. MARTIN'S HOUSE, 70 BOND STREET, TORONTO INDIA MACMILLAN & COMPANY, LTD. MACMILLAN BUILDING, BOMBAY 309 BOW BAZAAR STREET, CALCUTTA LIFE'S BASIS AND LIFE'S IDEAL THE FUNDAMENTALS OF A NEW PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE BY RUDOLF EUCKEN PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF JENA TRANSLATED, WITH INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY ALBAN G. WIDGERY FORMERLY SCHOLAR OF ST. CATHARINE'S COLLEGE, AND BURNEY STUDENT, CAMBRIDGE, AND MEMBER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF JENA [Illustration] LONDON ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK 1912 _First published December 1911_ _Second and Revised Edition, February 1912_ CONTENTS PAGE TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTORY NOTE vii AUTHOR'S PREFACE xxi I. INTRODUCTORY: THE PHILOSOPHIES OF LIFE IN THE PRESENT DAY 1 PRELIMINARY REMARKS 3 I. STATEMENT AND CRITICISM OF INDIVIDUAL SYSTEMS OF LIFE 6 (a) The Older Systems 6 1. The Religious System 6 2. The System of Immanent Idealism 15 (b) The Newer Systems 22 1. The Naturalistic System 24 2. The Socialistic System 41 3. The System of Æsthetic Individualism 61 II. Consideration of the Situation as a Whole, and Preliminaries for Further Investigation 81 (a) The Nature of the New as a Whole and its Relation to the Old 81 (b) The Condition of the Present 86 (c) The Form of the Problem 92 II. THE OUTLINE OF A NEW PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 99 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS AND CONSIDERATIONS 101 I. THE MAIN THESIS 110 (a) The Ascent to the Main Thesis 110 1. Man as a Being of Nature 110 2. The Growth of Man beyond Nature 113 3. The Inner Contradiction of the New Life 134 (b) The Development of the Main Thesis 144 1. The Main Thesis and the Possibility of a New System of Life 144 (a) _The Development of the Spiritual Life to Independence_ 144 (b) _The Demands of a New System of Life_ 150 (c) _The Spiritual Basis of the System of Life_ 152 (d) _Human Existence_ 161 (e) _Results and Prospects_ 166 2. The Transformation and the Elevation of Human Life 168 (a) _Aims and Ways_ 168 (b) _The Nature of Freedom_ 174 (c) _The Beginnings of the Independent Spiritual Life_ 183 (d) _The Transcending of Division_ 187 i. _The Spiritual Conception of History_ 188 ii. _The Spiritual Conception of Society_ 196 (e) _The Elevation of Life above Division_ 201 II. THE MORE DETAILED FORM OF OUR SPIRITUAL LIFE 216 (a) The Problem of Truth and Reality 216 (b) Man and the World 226 (c) The Movement of the Spiritual Life in Man 233 (d) The Emergence of a New Type of Life 240 1. _Life's Attainment of Greatness_ 240 2. _The Increase of Movement_ 247 3. _The Gain of Stability_ 251 (e) Activism, a Profession of Faith 255 III. THE SPIRITUAL LIFE IN MAN IN CONFLICT AND IN VICTORY 262 (a) Doubt and Prostration 262 (b) Consideration and Demand 267 (c) The Victory 273 III. APPLICATION TO THE PRESENT: CONSEQUENCES AND REQUIREMENTS 287 _Introductory Considerations_ 289 I. REQUIREMENTS FOR THE FORM OF LIFE AS A WHOLE 298 (a) The Character of Culture 298 (b) The Organisation of the Work of Culture 315 II. THE FORM OF THE INDIVIDUAL DEPARTMENTS 322 _Preliminary Remarks_ 322 (a) Religion, Morality, Education 324 1. Religion 324 2. Morality 335 3. Education and Instruction 343 (b) Science and Philosophy 345 (c) Art and Literature 354 (d) Social and Political Life 358 (e) The Life of the Individual 369 CONCLUSION 373 INDEX 375 TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTORY NOTE With the consent of the author the title "Life's Basis and Life's Ideal" has been adopted for this translation of "Die Grundlinien einer neuen Lebensanschauung," with the hope that thereby the purpose of the work will be more directly indicated than by a literal translation of the German title. It is hoped, further, that the title adopted will make an appeal to the general reading public. To make such an appeal is not the desire of every writer on philosophical subjects: but in the present instance it is the case. The author feels that he has a message for the present time, and one that is vital to the true interests of all. It has been remarked, and the present writer would be among the first to acknowledge the truth of the statement, that the voice is that of a prophet in the sense of an ethical teacher, rather than that of a philosopher in the more technical sense. Nevertheless, the use of a philosophical terminology, and the constant implicit reference to the results of philosophical endeavour in the past and present, combined with the peculiarities of the author's own views, make it difficult to understand his message. To non-philosophical readers who are not already acquainted with the more popular works which have been translated under the titles of "Christianity and the New Idealism," "The Life of the Spirit," and "The Meaning and Value of Life," the present work will appear of considerable difficulty. Difficulty in such a work is, however, by no means necessarily an evil, for it may compel more careful reading and thought. The present work is the latest and best general statement, by the author, of his philosophical position. By some reference here to certain ideas, principles, and aims of the philosophy, the attention of the reader may be drawn to those aspects which, in personal contact with the author, one comes to feel are regarded by him as of most importance. It is not invariably so, but in this case to know the man is to gain immensely in the power to understand and appreciate the message. He inspires us with his confidence and enthusiasm, even when we have doubts as to the adequacy of his philosophical creed. His philosophy is, indeed, the outcome of an attitude of life. To know the man is to understand more fully than from all his written works what he means when he speaks of the development of _personality_ and _spiritual individuality_. Whatever may be the value of what is written about Professor Eucken's position, no substitute can be found for reading his own words in as many of his different expositions as possible. Should anyone seek in this work for a systematic discussion of philosophical problems on the lines of traditional Rationalism, which, though often assumed to be dead, still asserts a strong influence upon us, he will not only look in vain but will also lose much that is of value in that which is offered. The aim of the philosophy is not to discuss the basis and ideal of thought, but to probe to the depth of life in all its complexity, and to advance to an all-inclusive ideal. The starting-point for us all is life as we experience it, not an apparent ultimate, such as the _cogito ergo sum_ of Descartes, the _I ought_ of Kant, or the _pure being_ of Hegel. At the outset, therefore, it is necessary to note the nature of the relation between philosophy and life. Philosophy arises within life as an expression of its nature and general import. Life may assume various forms, may be, that is, of different types; with different individuals and societies it is organised in divers ways. Life so organised, having certain definite tendencies, is called by Professor Eucken a _system of life_. In the philosophies of life which arise in these types or systems of life, life becomes more explicitly conscious of its own nature. Further, a philosophy of life is also a means of justification and defence of one system of life in opposition to other systems. Life as experienced, as organised in some way, is prior to any definite intellectual or conceptual expression of it. On the other hand a type of life may be influenced and modified by changes in the accepted philosophy of life, or by the adoption of a new philosophy. A philosophy, therefore, is to be judged by the system of life it represents and by its spiritual fruitfulness. As the roots of the differences between philosophies are in the systems of life from which the philosophies arise, the conflict is primarily not between theories, but between systems of life. The ground of the author's general appeal thus becomes apparent. The problem is a vital one; in one form or another, at one time or another, everyone is faced with it: how shall I mould my life? And it is here that we must insist upon the importance of Professor Eucken's contention that we have to make our decision for one system of life as a whole, and thus for one philosophy of life as a whole, as against other systems and other philosophies taken as wholes. Life as experienced is a process, a growth; and in this growth it oversteps the bounds of the philosophy in which at an earlier stage it expressed itself, and according to which it strove to fashion itself. The need for a new philosophy is then felt. Generally, the need is for a philosophy more comprehensive and more clearly defined than any of the previous philosophies. Now, Professor Eucken contends that none of the philosophies of life which are common among us in the present time are adequate to represent and guide our life at this stage of its development. He calls us to turn for a few moments from the rush and turmoil of modern life to "come and reason together" as to life's basis and ideal. In justification of his view, and in accordance with his own principle that we must start with life as we experience it, he considers in the first place the common philosophies of life of the present time in relation to the systems of life from which they spring. Few will disagree with his negative view that Religion--at least as ecclesiastically presented--Immanent Idealism, Naturalism, Socialism, and Individualism involve limitations, and sometimes unjustifiable tendencies and claims, and are inadequate to satisfy the age. His next and chief endeavour is to indicate the direction in which a new philosophy is to be sought, and also tentatively to sketch the outlines of such a philosophy. In the nature of the case--as life is a process--no such philosophy can be regarded as complete. It can and should strive to take up into itself all that is of value in the discarded philosophies. Any attempt to outline a "new" philosophy will be judged by how far, with the incompleteness on all hands, it takes the different threads of life, and blending them into a unity aids their growth individually and as a whole. Brief reference maybe made here to an attitude, common in the present time especially among English-speaking peoples, which the author does not explicitly mention. I mean the attitude of Agnosticism. This, he would contend and it would seem rightly, is in the main theoretical and does not, as such, correspond to or represent a system of life. The agnostic's system of life is formed of aspects of the systems discussed, with a strong tendency to Naturalism. The case of Huxley, who coined the term _Agnosticism_, is an excellent example: notwithstanding his frequently insisting with considerable force upon truths essentially idealistic, no one can doubt the predominant naturalistic tendency of his thought. As a rule the adoption of the attitude of Agnosticism is an attempt, as Dr. Ward has so clearly and forcibly argued in his "Naturalism and Agnosticism,"[1] to escape from the difficulties of Naturalism, which in the end it betrays. Agnosticism is, in fact, only an assumed absence of a theory of life. Professor Eucken would insist that the instability of the position is intolerable in actual life. Life's demand for unification, for consciousness of a meaning and a value, drives us beyond it. "Mere research," he writes, p. 272, "can tolerate a state of hesitation between affirmation and negation; it must often refrain from a decision in the case of special problems. Life, however, cannot endure any such intermediary position; for life, such hesitation in arriving at a decision must result in complete stagnation, and this would help the mere negation to victory." The great objection to all the systems of life mentioned is that they are too narrow, and in some aspects superficial. The new system must unite comprehensiveness with depth. The insufficiency of intellectualism is now generally recognised: the desire of the age is to do justice to the content of experience. Though the new system of life is to include all that is of value of earlier systems, it is by no means an eclecticism, for it has its integrating principle. This we shall best see by considering the method and the result of the philosophy. Life as experienced has already been referred to as the starting-point. To whatever extent we may seem, on the surface of experience, to be under the antithesis of subject and object, when we probe deeper we recognise that both are within life: they are a duality in unity. Here again reference may be made to the above-mentioned work[2] of Dr. Ward, in which probably the best exposition in English of this same truth is to be found. Life as experienced is not simply the empirical states of consciousness: its basis lies deeper. The method of the philosophy is in consequence described as _noölogical_ in distinction from the _psychological_ method, which treats of man out of relation to a world, and ends with the examination of psychical states; and from the _cosmological_ method, which treats the world out of relation to man and aims chiefly at comprehension in universals of thought. Expressed in another way, life is fundamentally spiritual. Self-consciousness is the unifying principle: it is only by relation to life as self-conscious that we can predicate meaning or value. All that is regarded as true and valuable in all the above-mentioned systems presupposes this relation. The self-conscious life is not to be confused with the subjective life of the "mere" individual. In fact, there is no "mere" individual, for in all there are tendencies which transcend the limits of individual experience. For example, life includes the relation of man and world; and the life of society is more than a mere sum of the lives of the individuals. Perhaps a more correct way to state the author's position is to say that the individual shares the self-conscious, or, otherwise expressed, the spiritual life which transcends nature, the individual, and society. This world-pervading and world-transcending self-conscious life--_the Independent Spiritual Life_--may be regarded as an absolute or universal life. The pursuit of the ideals of truth, goodness, and beauty carries us far beyond considerations of the welfare of the individual, or the society, or even humanity as a whole. In our activities we often attain something quite different from and far better than that at which we aim. Nevertheless, unless truth, goodness, beauty, and all tendencies leading to them are self-consciously experienced they have neither meaning nor value: viewed universally, they presuppose the Independent Spiritual Life. The highest development of the spiritual life known to us is personality, our "being-for-self," which is not to be identified with subjective individuality. We are not personalities to begin with, but have the potentiality to become such through our own effort. Personality is our highest ideal: in it, as self-conscious experience all other values for us are included. The author calls us, therefore, from that excessive occupation with the environment in which we forget ourselves, to spiritual concentration and the pursuit of spiritual ideals. The spirit of his message may be expressed in words familiar to all: "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul." Remembering that life is fundamentally self-conscious or spiritual, it may be said that life's basis and life's ideal is life itself--life completely self-conscious and following out its own necessities. The basis of man's life is the Independent Spiritual Life which is appropriated but not created by him in his striving for a comprehensive and harmonious personality. The ideal of man's life is such a personality. The more man "loses his life" in the pursuit of the ideals of truth, goodness, and beauty, the more surely will he "save it," the more comprehensive, harmonious, and spiritual in nature will he become. Then he will realise himself as a personality, and become conscious of his unity with the Independent Spiritual Life. The dominant Idealism of this philosophy of life is evident: but the meanings of truth, goodness, and beauty are different from what they appear to be in many of the older presentations of Idealism. Truth, goodness and beauty are not abstract ideals but concrete experiences. The present writer has long been of the opinion that much of contemporary idealistic philosophy, including that of Professor Eucken, might be better termed _Spiritualism_ than _Idealism_. If life as experienced is a process, it is not difficult to understand that importance should be attributed to history. In the author's exposition not only is constant reference made to historical development, but the nature of history is made a definite subject of discussion. I would call attention to this aspect of the author's work: it appears a means of doing more justice to the content of experience than is done in most forms of Idealism. On the one hand a Rationalism which tends to shut out the historical as transient and merely appearance is avoided, and on the other a Historical Relativism which denies all stability and permanence is strenuously opposed. While the absolute and eternal--the Independent Spiritual Life--is the presupposition of the temporal manifestation of the spiritual life in man, for man the historical is real. The form of our spiritual life is due to our own acts and decisions. It is in this connection that the fundamental nature of our spiritual effort may best be seen. The author's voice is that of a prophet in so far as his whole exposition is presented as an endeavour to arouse men from their apathy and from the pursuit of what they themselves know to be unsatisfying ideals. The importance attached to spiritual effort in his philosophy leads Professor Eucken to adopt the term "_Activism_" as a definite philosophical badge. The activistic note is evident throughout, much more so perhaps in the present volume than in those which have preceded it. The significance of this emphasis is most clear in its bearing upon our relation to the past and the present. The present is neither to be dominated by the past nor sacrificed to the future, but the past is to be appropriated by our activity in the present, and the present, while possessing reality and value in itself, looks forward to the future. Historical content, spiritual endeavour in past, present, and future, must be unified by a common task. The past is ours only so far as we appropriate it. Spiritual inheritance is not the same as natural inheritance. We may by our spiritual effort adopt or reject ideas or a system of life which have come to us from the past. The character which the past will have for us will depend on our present spiritual condition. All spiritual progress involves a break with the past. In the same way we may take up an attitude of antagonism to the confusions which exist in modern life, and we may follow a new course. All this is not to deny the value of history in itself and for our present efforts: the reverse of such a denial is nearer the truth. For if we realise the depths and independence of our own life we are not only in a position to understand and appreciate the movement of history, but, by the nature of life, we are then driven beyond the mere present. The past relives with a new spiritual meaning in the consciousness that makes it its own. History is more than a succession of facts; it must be revalued as a present experience. Life is not subjectively individual, and to realise it we must find our place in universal tendencies which are working themselves out in history. The content of history cannot be pressed into the narrow scheme of moral effort and attainment, as that is usually conceived, but in it all spheres of life assert their independent right. History is not an evolution of categories, but a conflict of concrete realities, of systems of life, of personalities. Though the great man cannot be understood out of relation to his time, he is not simply a product of the social environment. The great man strives to raise the time to his own level. It may be said that in order adequately to appreciate the author's position in regard to history the book translated into English under the title of "The Problem of Human Life as viewed by the Great Thinkers from Plato to the Present Time" should be read in the light of the general principles of his philosophy. The reality of evil and of antitheses in life are fully acknowledged; but by the spiritual life being thereby called to assert its independence and to strive to overcome them they may be a factor leading to good. Evil, so regarded, is not explained away, but the solution is essentially a practical one. The theoretical problem of evil remains an enigma to us. The author's message is positive, not negative: it is a call to pursue definite positive aims rather than to eradicate painful experiences. "Not suffering, but spiritual destitution is man's worst enemy" (p. 314). It has been said with, it would seem, a large amount of truth, that the philosophy of Hegel has been most fruitfully studied on English soil. There is reason to believe that it will be somewhat the same in the case of Professor Eucken's philosophy. His debts to Kant and Hegel are obvious, but it is interesting to notice that the points in which he more especially diverges from Hegelianism are largely the same as have been emphasised in England. The importance he attaches to personality and ethical activity, his insistence upon human endeavour as a determining factor in reality, and his emphasis on the dialectic as being not one of categories but of concrete realities, are in accord with much of the best of recent English philosophical thought. In the present work there is much of value for those who--while dissenting from such perversions as Pragmatism--hold what is commonly termed a "Personal Idealism." The position of our author is not the same as that of English Personal Idealism, nevertheless his work aids it in many ways, and especially in its insistence upon the distinction between personality and subjective individuality. A comparison of some of the views of the three philosophical writers who have been most discussed in our time--the late Professor James, M. Bergson, and our author--would be of interest. To enter upon a systematic and exhaustive comparison here is far from my intention, but a few points may be suggested. The modes of exposition, which in a greater or less degree indicate the respective methods, manifest striking contrasts: in many respects the positions of M. Bergson and Professor Eucken appear totally dissimilar. The acquaintance with natural science, and the constant reference to its data, that we find in the works of M. Bergson, are not found in those of our author. Their place is taken, however, by what some will regard as more interesting, and even more important, an acquaintance with the present condition of human life, and also a constant reference to history. Common to these writers is a reaction against formalism and intellectualism, and in one form or another there is in their writings a strong element of empiricism. Freedom in some sense is insisted upon by all; though so far as we may judge from their published expositions there seem to be considerable differences of view in this matter. Together with this assertion of the reality of Freedom, both M. Bergson and our author definitely acknowledge the reality of Necessity and recognise the importance of struggle in development. Neither writer claims that we can gain more than the knowledge of a direction in which the solution of the problem may be sought. Our author himself might quite well have said, though with application in the main to different classes of facts, what M. Bergson has said: "It seems to me that in a great number of different fields there is a great number of collections of facts, each of which, considered apart, gives us a direction in which the answer to the problem may be sought--a direction only. But it is a great thing to have even a direction, and still more to have several directions, for at the precise point where these directions converge might be found the solution we are seeking. What we possess meanwhile are lines of facts.[3]..." "But what is this new reality," writes Professor Eucken (p. 135), "and this whole to which the course of the movement trends? The more we reflect over the question the more strongly we feel that it is a direction rather than a conclusion that is offered to us in this matter...." There is another passage from M. Bergson the quotation of which in the present context is justified by its harmony with so much that Professor Eucken himself says with regard to man's ideal of life: "If, then, in every province, the triumph of life is expressed by creation, ought we not to think that the ultimate reason of human life is a creation which, in distinction from that of the artist or the man of science, can be pursued at every moment and by all men alike; I mean the creation of self by self, the continual enrichment of personality by elements which it does not draw from outside, but causes to spring forth from itself?"[4] Whether in the works of the late Professor James there is evidence of a lurking desire for an Absolute may be left undiscussed. M. Bergson certainly gives more than a hint of something like an Absolute. Of the absolutist (not rationalistic) tendency in the philosophy of our author there can be no doubt. Notwithstanding the antagonism to intellectualism shown in this philosophy, the influence of Hegel seems evident in its absolutist tendency. Dr. Ward has justly said that, "with Hegel, the Absolute seems at one time to be a perfect Self with no hint of aught beside or beyond its own completed self-consciousness, and at another not to be a self at all, but only the absolutely spiritual--art, religion, and philosophy--the over-individual ends, as they are sometimes called, which become realised in subjective spirits: not self-conscious Spirit, but simply the impersonal Spirit in all spirits."[5] How far a corresponding criticism is applicable to the ideas of the Independent Spiritual Life, and the spiritual life in humanity and the world, in the present philosophy, its readers must be left to decide. The relation of philosophy to life as Professor Eucken conceives it may justify him in treating primarily of what may be called in a special sense the problems of life. The difficulty of the problems of the theory of knowledge no one will deny, though many are impatient of considerations of them. In any general appeal such as we have to do with in this work it is almost impossible to deal seriously with them. Still the problems of the theory of knowledge force themselves upon us, and will not be thrust on one side. The late Professor James did his best to leave us in no doubt as to his position in this matter: we have more than a glimpse of the attitudes of M. Bergson and Professor Eucken. We await, however, as likely to aid us in a fuller understanding and estimate of the philosophy, the volume the author has promised us on the theory of knowledge. Whatever the points of similarity may be in the views of those mentioned, we cannot fail to note the differences--to some of these in the case of Pragmatism the author has himself called our attention; further, we cannot mistake the dominant Idealism of the philosophy of life here presented to us. One word must be said as to the author's attitude towards Mysticism; an attitude that has not always been understood. The Mysticism he opposes is of the type that is virtually the negation of the Activism which is to him fundamental. But when that is recognised, the careful reader cannot fail to see that, ultimately, the philosophy is essentially mystical. As I understand it, the suggestion that our author's philosophy would form a rallying-point for Idealists of various kinds is a tribute to its unity and comprehensiveness, of which there can be no doubt. Roughly, we may take up one of two attitudes to the work of a philosopher. We may accept his general point of view, his main principles, in a word his "system," however tentative, and modify it in detail. On the other hand we may reject his main position, and yet find much to accept in his working out of various aspects of detail, and we may incorporate this in some other general system. It is not for me to state here the attitude I take towards, or the difficulties I feel in, the philosophy; I think that there will be few who will not gain much from the inspiration and originality which are shown by the author. For his own philosophy of life he seeks no other treatment than that which he has meted to others: a sincere endeavour to understand its basis and its ideal. His hope is that however much its limitations may be pointed out, the truth in it may be acknowledged and appropriated, if possible in a higher view. The acquisition of a higher view would cause no one more real joy than Professor Eucken. I have to thank the author for his personal kindness in the discussion of some difficult points and in the revision of a portion of the proof sheets. At his suggestion or with his consent a number of small alterations, as, for example, in the titles of sections, have been made from the present German text. Owing to an accident, the time for the preparation of this translation was unfortunately curtailed: I should be indebted for any suggestions for its improvement. I am indebted to the Rev. Felix Holt, B.A., for reading through the whole in manuscript and making many valuable suggestions. For all defect and error I alone am responsible. ALBAN G. WIDGERY CAMBRIDGE, _October 1911_ FOOTNOTES: [1] "Naturalism and Agnosticism." 3rd Edition, 1906. Vols. I. and II. A. & C. Black. [2] _Ibid._ Vol. II. Lects. xiv.-xx. [3] _Hibbert Journal_, October 1911: p. 26. [4] _Ibid._ p. 42. [5] "The Realm of Ends; or, Pluralism and Theism" (1911), p. 46. NOTE TO SECOND EDITION I have taken the opportunity given by reprinting to revise the whole. I have made a number of alterations rendering the author's meaning more clear. My thanks are again due to Mr. Holt for his help. ALBAN G. WIDGERY CAVERSWALL, STOKE-ON-TRENT, _January 1912_ AUTHOR'S PREFACE We may hope for a friendly reception of our investigation only by those who acknowledge that that which occupies us here is a real problem. It is hardly open to dispute that life in the present time displays a serious incongruity between an incalculably rich and fruitful activity with regard to the material, and complete uncertainty and destitution in respect of the spiritual, side of life. Attempt after attempt is made to deliver us from this state of perplexity, and to give more soul and unity to a culture which outwardly is so imposing. But in the main these attempts are far too irresolute in their advance from superficiality to depth, and from individual appearances to the whole: in their innermost nature they are under the influence of the temporary conditions beyond which they wish to lead us. In truth, we cannot make an advance in relation to our life as a whole unless we win a new basis for it. This, however, we cannot do without raising the problem of our relation to reality, and, if it is in any way possible, moulding this relationship in a new way: further, we can be of service in the satisfaction of the needs of the time only when we gain an independence of it and a superiority to it. Here, therefore, so far as the realm of conviction is concerned, we have a task for philosophy. The confusion that reigns, however, makes the way difficult for philosophy also; and sets insuperable limits to its power. We do not meet in immediate experience with facts upon which a new type of life might be based: much toil and trouble are necessary to arrive at that, which, when it is once attained, may seem to be simple and easy. He who finds the problem too complex, and shirks to expend the necessary effort, can do nothing else than resign himself submissively to the prevailing confusion. To-day we are unable at first to sketch more than the outlines and to indicate fundamentals: we must be quite sure of the basis and the main tendency of life if we would undertake the construction of systems; and yet it is just these things which are to-day the subject of agitation and conflict. Not for a moment do we doubt the imperfection of our own attempt; we can but hope that others will take up and pursue the matter further. Notwithstanding these limitations and this trouble, an urgent inner necessity compels us to recognise that there can be no enduring life of genuine culture unless humanity is inwardly united by common aims. More and more clearly this main question is seen to be involved in all the particular questions of the time; more and more does it become evident to us that our achievement in individual matters can be but insignificant, if life as a whole is in a state of stagnation and exhaustion. Though some who may already have taken up a definite course, or who in their attention to work in some special sphere have lost all sense for the whole, may refuse to consider the matter, yet wherever life is still flowing, and where fresh impulse resists the tendency to division which deprives it of all soul, to deal with the problem will be felt to be a necessity. Above all, therefore, we trust in the young, who, among all cultured nations, are striving for a deeper and nobler life. The more successful this striving, the sooner shall we advance from a state of confusion to one of order and clearness, from a realm of illusions to the kingdom of truth, and in face of the chaotic whirl of appearances we shall attain stability within ourselves. RUDOLF EUCKEN JENA, _Christmas 1906_ I INTRODUCTORY THE PHILOSOPHIES OF LIFE IN THE PRESENT DAY PRELIMINARY REMARKS He who strives after a new philosophy of life confesses himself thereby to be of the conviction that the philosophies of the present no longer satisfy mankind; and so we must begin by giving reasons for sharing this conviction. In doing this we hope to be able to take a positive survey of the present situation as a whole, and also to gain a firm starting-point for the course in which the new is to be sought, and not simply to remain fixed in a mere negative attitude. A precise statement of the question is the first condition for a correct answer; to satisfy this requirement is the chief concern of the first part of our treatise. Philosophies of life, representations of human life as a whole, surround us to-day in abundance and court our adherence. The fusion of rich historical development with active reflection gives occasion to the most diverse combinations and makes it easy for the individual to project a representation corresponding to his circumstances and his mood. Thus, to-day, the philosophies of life of individuals whirl together in chaotic confusion, gain and lose the passing favour, displace one another, and themselves change kaleidoscopically. It is not the concern of philosophy to occupy itself more closely with opinions so accidental and so fleeting. There are, however, philosophies of life of another kind, conceptions of life, which unite and dominate large numbers of people, hold up a common ideal for their activity, and constitute a power in the life of universal history. These philosophies of life are rooted in particular concrete forms of life, in actual combinations of working and striving, which with dominating power surround the individual and point out his course. With such ascendancy they may seem to him to be unassailable and a matter of natural necessity; in reality they are a product of the industry of universal history, and from this point of view appear merely as attempts to comprehend the boundless stream of life and to win a character for our otherwise indefinite existence. For at first we stand defenceless and helpless in face of the wealth of impressions and suggestions which throng upon us and draw us in opposite directions. Only in one way are we able to prevail: life must concentrate and acquire a controlling centre within itself, and from that begin a process of counteraction. We lack distinction of centre and environment; we need an inner aspiration, an aspiration which seeks to draw the whole of existence to itself and to mould it in its own particular way. This, however, is impossible, unless at the same time a philosophy of life, a profession of faith as to the nature of the whole, a justification of our undertaking, is evolved. A philosophy of life established in this manner will be incomparably more powerful, and fuller in content, than the mere foam on the surface of time. Nevertheless, with all its advantages, such a philosophy of life, like the corresponding system of life itself, is not ultimate truth: it remains an attempt, a problem which, ever anew, divides men into opposing camps. For the experience of history teaches us that the effort after concentration and an inner synthesis of life does not follow one clear, direct course throughout, but that different possibilities offer themselves and, in course of time, struggle upwards to reality. Different systems thus advance by the side of and in opposition to one another, each making the claim to undivided supremacy, to a superiority over all others. Philosophies of life now become means and instruments to justify and to establish such claims. They must enter into the severest conflict one with another, and the strife keeps up a powerful tension and pressure because here, by means of the ideas, tendencies of life compete with one another; because not mere representations of reality but realities themselves struggle together. It is manifest from the existence of these last problems that we do not grow up in a finished world, but have first to form and build up our world. We are concerned not merely with interpreting a given reality, but first of all with winning the true, primary, and all-comprehensive reality. By this our life is made uncertain and laborious, but it is raised at the same time to an inner freedom and a more genuine independence. And now for the first time we see in its true light the fact that its own views of life can become inadequate to an age. For the fact that an age lacks an inner unity, that cogent reasons drive it beyond the extant syntheses, is now a sign that it is not clear and certain as to its own life. To open up a way for a new synthesis, to organise life more adequately, becomes the most pressing of all demands, the question of questions. Even the most cautious and most subtle reflection will not lead us far in this matter; all hope of success depends upon our life containing greater depths, which hitherto have not been fully grasped, and more especially upon a transcendent unity present in it, which hitherto has not come to complete recognition. All thought and reflection is thus called to direct itself to the comprehension of such depths and of such a unity. Everything here depends on facts; on facts, however, which do not come to us opportunely from without, but which reveal themselves only to the eye of the spirit and to aspiration. I. STATEMENT AND CRITICISM OF INDIVIDUAL SYSTEMS OF LIFE It must be admitted that the first glance at the present conditions of life shows a chaotic confusion. A more careful examination, however, soon discloses a limited number of schemes of life, which, although they are often combined by individuals, are in their nature distinct and remain differentiated. We recognise five such systems of life: those of Religion and of Immanent Idealism on the one hand, and those of Naturalism, Socialism, and Individualism on the other hand. For, two main groups may be clearly distinguished: one, older, which gives to life an invisible world for its chief province; and one, newer, which places man entirely in the realm of sense experience; within these groups, the ways again lead in diverse directions. Let us see what each of these organisations makes out of life; on what each supports itself; and what each accomplishes. Let us see also where each meets with opposition and in what it finds its limits; and this not according to our individual opinion, but according to the experiences of the age. (a) THE OLDER SYSTEMS 1. THE RELIGIOUS SYSTEM The religious organisation of life has influenced us in the past with especial power. This has worked in the form of Christianity, which, as an ethical religion of redemption, occupies a thoroughly unique position among religions. As a religion it unites life to a supernatural world, and subjects our existence to its supremacy; as a religion of redemption it heightens the contrast between the two worlds to such a degree of harshness that a complete revolution becomes a necessity; as an ethical religion it regards the spiritual life as a power of positive creation and self-determination, and insists upon a complete change of the heart. Arising in an age of decay, an age weary of life, it confidently took up the conflict against this faintness; it did not carry on this conflict, however, by a further development of the natural world and of culture, but through the revelation of a supernatural order, of a new community of life, which, through the building up of an invisible Kingdom of God--which wins a visible expression in the Church--becomes to man in faith and hope the most certain presence. Christianity ratified an affirmation of life; still, it did not accomplish this immediately, but by the most fundamental and definite negation; and thus to a cursory consideration it might appear to be a flight from the world. In reality, it unites the negation and the affirmation, flight from, and renewal of, the world; the deepest feeling of, and the happiest deliverance from, guilt and suffering, and thereby gives to life a greater breadth as well as a ceaseless activity in search of its true self. Religion does not mean a special domain by the side of others; its intention is rather to be the innermost soul and the supreme power of the whole life. Through its ideals and its standards it lends to the whole sphere of life a distinctive character; it leads to a definite organisation of mankind and offers powerful opposition to all dissipation, all merely individual caprice. It comes to the individual as a supreme power which brings to him salvation and truth, shapes him for the highest ends, and connects his thought and feeling with an invisible world. With such an undertaking Christianity has exercised most deep-reaching influences on the course of history; in the first place it implanted a new vitality in an exhausted humanity; then in the Middle Ages it worked to the education of a new race; and now that it has become mature it has not ceased to exercise strong, though quieter, influences: considering all the facts, it appears to be the most powerful force in history. But all the greatness of past achievement could not prevent a strong movement from arising in the Modern Age against Christianity; a movement which still continues to increase in power and which undermines the position of Christianity, where outwardly it still appears quite secure. It is true that there never was a period when it was not opposed by individuals, but through the lack of any spiritual import these isolated oppositions had never combined so as to produce a united effect. An effect of this kind was first produced with the emergence of new systems of thought and new streams of life since the beginning of the seventeenth century; as long, however, as this movement was limited to the cultured classes and left the masses untouched, that which existed in it as a menace did not produce its full effect. It was the conviction of Bayle, that the spirit of the Enlightenment would never permeate the masses. In the nineteenth century this "unexpected" happened, and the nature of spiritual endeavour and the disposition of men join together in an assault upon Christianity; an assault which no one with insight will call anything but dangerous. The thing most evident and most talked of is the subversion of the old conception of the world; a conception which is usually associated with Christianity. This conception is less and less able to assert itself in face of the triumphant onward march of modern science. The representation of nature, like that of human history, has been broadened immeasurably and at the same time has acquired inner unity, law, and order; a direct intervention of a supernatural power is felt more and more to be an intolerable derangement. The earth, hitherto the centre of the whole and the chief platform upon which the destiny of the universe was decided, sinks to a position of more correct proportion, and man is much more closely linked to nature and fitted into a common order. How then can that which takes place in him decide what shall be the destiny of the whole? If we would withdraw from this shattered conception of the world, as from a mere external matter, to the substance of Christianity, this substance must be much more clearly and much more forcibly present to us than it really is. For, in this change we are concerned not simply with individual phrases, but with the whole mode of thought. We have learnt to think far more causally and critically; we perceive the peculiarity of the historical circumstances in which Christianity arose, and, along with this, become aware of a wide disparity from the circumstances of the present. We question all historical tradition as to its grounds, and so overthrow the weight of authority; our thought has become throughout less naïve and we strive to transcend the form of the immediate impression. From this point of view it comes about quite easily that the religious mode of thought appears to be a mere anthropomorphism, a childlike, imaginative interpretation of the world, which, to an intelligence equipped with the clearness of objective consideration, can pass only for a stage in evolution, which has once for all been overcome. Such is the teaching of Positivism, and it is just in this reference to religion that its influence extends far beyond the limits of the positivistic school. The change of thought would not be so far-reaching and so dangerous if it did not give expression to a change of life as a whole; but this is what it really does: the Modern Age through the whole course of its development sets a universal--a system--over against the religious system of life. That all departments of life should subordinate themselves to Religion, that every activity has value only so far as it either directly or indirectly furthers Religion, appears to the Modern Age a much too narrow conception, and one which is a mischievous denial of the truth that these departments of life contain. So the different branches of the spiritual life--for example, science and art, politics and economics--liberate themselves radically from the supremacy of Religion, and this is felt to be an incalculable gain in freedom and breadth. Since, unimpeded, the new life increases in comprehensiveness, and draws the whole content of reality into itself, it seems to rest firmly and securely in itself and to need no completion of any kind whatever. Religion, however, must first seek a place in this new life. It finds this place with greater difficulty, in that modern life, as it works out its own peculiar characteristics, ever more directly and ever more harshly opposes Christianity. The initial assumptions of the two are fundamentally different. Early Christianity spoke to a generation which had become perplexed concerning the rationality of the universe and concerning its own capacity; a generation which could attain to an affirmation of life only through the building up of a new world in contrast to that of sense impression. The world, then disdained, has acquired in the Modern Age an ever-increasing power of attraction. New peoples and epochs have grown up, which have a feeling of power and wish to exert the force of their youth in work upon the surrounding world; this world meets such a desire since it shows itself to be still in the midst of change and full of problems. If formerly the world surrounded man as an unchangeable fate, it now proves to be capable of change and of upward development; man can work and strive to transform it into a kingdom of reason. The more that power and object unite in this, the more victorious is the advance of work; the nearer the world is brought to man's inner life, the more does it become to him his true and only home. The idea of immanence comes to have a magical sound; everything which oversteps the boundary marked out by the work of the world soon comes to be regarded as a flight into a realm of shadows, into an "other" world. Satisfaction is obtained in life in grappling with realities; in the display of masculine strength: while the religious attitude to life, with its waiting and hope, and its expectation of supernatural aid, seems lifeless, feeble, and altogether lacking in spirit. At the same time, all capacity for understanding the world in which Christianity set the soul of man disappears. That world was one of pure inwardness, a world in which the fundamental relation of life was that of the spiritual life to its own ideal conception, to absolute spirit; a world in which the questions of character and of the determination of the will were the chief problems. To earlier Christianity that world was anything but a mere "other" world; rather it constituted that which was nearest and most certain; the chief basis of life, from which the world of sense first received its truth and its value. But the more significant the world of sense becomes to man, and the more powerfully it draws his affections to itself, the more does the relation to this world become the fundamental relation of life; the more does that pure inner world fade, and the more it appears to be something artificial, shadowy, something added as an afterthought; and the turning to it comes to be regarded as a flight into an "other" world. Christianity must necessarily be alien and unintelligible to anyone who feels the world which was to Christianity the chief world to be a mere "other" world; for him all the contentions of Christianity are inevitably distorted, and every element of joyful affirmation and heroic victory which it contains obscured; the whole must present a miserable and morbid picture. Now that the centre of life has changed its position in relation to the world, is it possible to avoid the consequences of a growing tendency to displace and dissolve Christianity? The inner world was to Christianity essentially a realm of conviction and decision, a relation of will to will, of personality to personality: free action, in power and love, in guilt and reconciliation, formed the essence of all events and gave to the world a soul. Only as ethical, personal power did the spiritual life appear to find its own depth and to be able to govern the world. Here again the Modern Age takes a directly antagonistic course. Its work is considered most of all to lead beyond the subjectivity of man to the content and under the objective necessity of things. For we seem first to attain genuine truth when we place ourselves in the world of fact, reveal its relations, and take part in its movements; we have to follow the objective and immanent necessities of things; to interpret every particular case from the standpoint of these necessities and to harmonise our own conduct with them. Life seems to acquire greatness and universal significance only insomuch as the process comes before the effect, the law before freedom, fixed relations before the resolution into individual occurrences. To the Modern Age, not only has nature been transformed into a continuous causal chain, but in its spiritual activity also the age forms great complexes, which, through the force of logical necessity, are placed beyond the influence of all caprice, and of all the interests of the narrowly human. From the point of view of such an evolution the realm of ethical life appears to be a mere subjective sphere; a tissue of human opinion and striving; something which falls outside of genuine reality and which can never be forced into its structure. To continue in the position of early Christianity is looked upon as a remaining at a lower level of life; conceptions such as freedom of the will and moral judgment are regarded as childish delusions which are the more decidedly rejected the more the new life displays its fundamental character. Again, with a transvaluation of all values, that which to Christianity was the highest in life and dominated the whole is regarded as a mere accompanying appearance; indeed, a danger to the energy and truth of life. Hence a mode of life has arisen which not only regards the answers of Christianity with indifference, but does not even recognise its problems; and this mode of life is attracting to itself more and more the convictions and energies of mankind. Even now the antithesis which the centuries have prepared is being forced with unmistakable clearness into prominence. It was possible for us to deceive ourselves with regard to its implacability so long as a rationalistic and pantheistic way of thinking presented Christianity in the most general way, and tried to comprehend its nature as something universal, and at the same time placed nature and the universe in the transfiguring light of speculative consideration. But, in the course of further experience, that mode of thought has been severely shaken and appears more and more to be a mere aggregate of phrases; and so the antitheses face one another unreconciled and a decision is not to be evaded. In this matter mankind is under the influence of a strong reaction against the religious, and especially the Christian, mode of life. Throughout many centuries Christianity has given life a unity and has thrown light upon reality from its standpoint: further, it has presented its way as the only possible one; one to which everything which in any way strives spiritually upward has to adapt itself. If the truth of the whole now falls into doubt, everything which was intended to give to life stability and character is soon felt to be heavily oppressive and intolerably narrow; and everything which in that mode of life was accidental, temporal, and human advances into the foreground. We clearly perceive that much passed current as true only because we had become unaccustomed to ask questions concerning it, and also that many things owed their acceptance not to their inner necessity, but only to social sanction. With such feelings it may come to be considered a great deliverance to shake off the whole, and a necessary step towards truthfulness of life to eliminate every aspect of that mode of life which through custom or authority continues to exist. These tendencies are tendencies of reaction with all their one-sidedness. But can we deny that a great change of life has been accomplished, a change which reaches far beyond these tendencies, and which is still working itself out? That which previously was most proximate to us is now made to recede; what held currency as absolutely certain must now be laboriously proved, and, through continual reflection, loses all freshness and power to convince; immediate experience, axiomatic certainty, immovable conviction are lacking. The self-evident certainties in the light of which earlier ages lived and worked are wanting, and we are compelled to acknowledge that some things become uncertain, even impossible, when they cease to be self-evident. Again, it cannot fail to be recognised that we are tired of a merely religious way of life; we feel its limitations; new needs are awakened and seek new forms of life and expression; even the traditional terminology displeases us; even the acutest dialectic cannot lend to the old the power of youth. Of course the matter is not finally settled by these judgments of the age. For, a later age is not the infallible judge of an earlier; much which to us moderns seems certain may soon become problematic; much which satisfies us may soon be shown to be inadequate. It may be that the old is capable of asserting the ultimate depth of life in contrast to the new; that the world of inner spiritual experience which it discloses may finally show itself superior to every assault. But, in any case, the new contains a wealth of fact not only in individual results but in the whole of its being; through its emergence it has transformed the whole condition of things; it is impossible to decry it as a mere apostasy and to appeal to the consciences of individuals. It may be that spiritual power here stands against spiritual power in a titanic struggle for the soul of man: victory must fall to the power which penetrates to the primary depths of life and is capable of taking possession of what is true in the others. But if in this the older view of life is inwardly superior, it can develop such superiority only by its own complete renewal and energetic inward elevation, through the most fundamental settlement with everything antagonistic in an all-comprehensive whole of life. Yet how deeply the age is still involved in its search! How far it is from the conclusion! For the present, as far as the life of culture is concerned, Religion has fallen into complete uncertainty; its chief support and realm lie not within but outside of that life. It is this which makes all affirmation of Religion weak and all negation strong; it is this which threatens to stamp, as something subjective and false, every conception of a "supernatural." Religion has become uncertain to us not merely in single doctrines and tendencies, but in the whole of its being, in its fundamental contention as to the nature of life; and what it offers in the traditional form in which it has come to us no longer satisfies a life which has been aroused to greater breadth and freedom. 2. THE SYSTEM OF IMMANENT IDEALISM By the side of the religious system of life, for thousands of years, now as supplementary, now as contradictory, there has been another which may be designated as Immanent Idealism. The latter system is not so fixed and overawing a structure as the former, but with a quieter force it penetrates the whole of life. It is not of a simple nature, but is found in many different forms; still, there exists so much in common in these that they clearly exhibit and emphasise one common tendency. Like the religious system, this Idealism also places life primarily in a world of thought, from which it organises sense experience; it is distinguished from the former system, however, in that it never separates the two worlds one from the other, but conceives them as related elements or aspects of a single whole. They are related to one another as appearance and reality, as cause and effect, as animating and animated nature (_natura naturans_ and _naturata_). The divine is not so much a power transcending the world as one permeating it and living in it; not something specific outside of things, but their connection in a living unity; it does not make demands and present us with problems so much as give to the world its truth and depth. Thus, reality appears as an inwardly co-ordinated whole: the individual finds his genuine being only as a part of this whole. And so, here, the fundamental relation of life is that to the invisible whole of reality; with the development of this relation, that which seems lifeless becomes animated; the elements which seem isolated are brought together; and the world discloses an infinite content and gives it to man for a joyous possession. But it would be impossible for man to accomplish the transition from appearance to reality, if he were not rooted in the fundamental permanencies and if, in the comprehending of the world, he did not find his own being. If this is the case, however, and if, through courageous turning from the superficiality to which he in the first place belongs, he is able to set himself in the depth of reality, then a magnificent life with the widest prospects opens out before him. For, now, he may win the whole of infinity for his own and set himself free from the triviality of the merely human without losing himself in an alien world; he may direct the movement of life to a positive gain, since he guides it from within and from the whole. This life will find its centre in the activities which bring man into relation with the whole and broaden him from within to the whole; thus, in science and art spiritual creation becomes the chief concern; its forceful development allows us to hope for an ennobling of the whole of existence. With this creative activity as centre, the rest is regarded as its environment, its means, its presupposition; but there remain a clear distinction and gradation between that which a creative life evolves immediately, and that which forms a mere condition for this and may never become an aim in itself. Thus, the beautiful is separated sharply from the merely useful; the inner life from all preservation of physical existence; a genuine spiritual culture, as the revelation of the depth of things, from all perfecting of natural and social conditions, from mere civilisation. Here life finds an aim and a task in itself; they are not presented to it from a transcendent world; but it can evolve a morality in the sense of taking up the whole into one's own volition, the subjection of caprice to the necessity of things. A life thus full of content and joyous activity arose when Greek culture was at its height, and exercised its influence through the course of the centuries; Christianity also soon laid aside its original suspicion against this life and joined it to itself. This life, however, first attained complete independence and self-consciousness in modern culture so far as this culture followed the way of Idealism. It is felt to be superior to Religion and hopes to be able to shape the world of man more satisfactorily than Religion can. In this system formulated conceptions and perplexing doctrines of the divine are not necessary, as they are in Religion, because the divine is present immediately in the process of life and surrounds man on all sides. Man's powers are not drawn in a particular direction and nothing is discarded, but everything is to be uniformly developed and unified in an all-inclusive harmony; natural instincts are restrained and ennobled through their relations in a larger whole. A power of organisation is displayed which reaches the finest vein of the soul, throws the genuinely human into relief in contrast with environment and tradition, and makes it the matter of chief concern: with all this it deepens life in itself and finds incalculable treasure in such depth. Everywhere there is powerful effort and creative activity on the part of man, but at the same time the consciousness of an invisible order; a joyful affirmation of life, but at the same time a deliverance from unrestrained curiosity and coarse enjoyment; a breadth and a freedom of life, and with this a clear consciousness of the greatness but also of the limitations of man. Such was the state of conviction in the classical period of German literature. This form of life has, with remarkable quickness, been relegated into the distance; with all its external proximity it has become inwardly more alien to us than the world of Religion. All this has come to pass, however, not so much through direct conflict, which its free and comprehensive nature could scarcely provoke, as through inner changes of conditions and strivings, which have now thrust other facts into prominence and driven men to other tasks. The transformation could hardly have been effected so quickly and so fundamentally if this mode of life did not involve fixed limits and problematic presuppositions which we have now become fully conscious of for the first time. It is the aristocratic nature of this Immanent Idealism which first awakens suspicion and opposition. Spiritual creation, from which it expects complete salvation, can take possession of and satisfy the whole soul only where it breaks forth spontaneously with great and powerful effect, where, with overwhelming power, it raises man above himself. An incontrovertible experience shows us that this takes place only in rare and exceptional cases; there must be a union of many forces before man can rise to such a height and be swayed by the compulsion of this creation. Now, it is true that the gain of such red-letter days carries its effect into ordinary days and that from the heights light pours down upon lower levels. But in such transmission there is a serious and inevitable loss in power and purity; indeed, in veracity: that which fills the life of those producing it and arouses it to its highest passion easily becomes to the receiver a subsidiary matter, a pleasant accompanying experience. Thus we see epochs of organisation follow upon times of creation, but we see that such organisation sinks more and more into a reflective and passive reproduction. Such organisation tends to become mere imagination; the man imbued with the spirit of such organisation easily seems to himself more than he is; with a false self-consciousness talks and feels as though he were at a supreme height; lives less his own life than an alien one. Sooner or later opposition must necessarily arise against such a half-life, such a life of pretence, and this opposition will become especially strong if it is animated by the desire that all who bear human features should participate in the chief goods of our existence and freely co-operate in the highest tasks. It must be observed that this longing is one which, at the present time, is found to be irresistible. And so the aristocratic character of Immanent Idealism produces a type of life rigidly exclusive, harsh and intolerable. But not only does this type of life lack complete power and truthfulness in regard to mankind as a whole; it is subject to similar limitations in relation to the world and to things. All success in our relation to the world and to things depends on the spiritual constituting the thing's own depth, on things finding their genuine being in it, and where this depth is reached, on the visible world uniting with it willingly, indeed joyfully, and moulding itself solely and completely for spiritual expression. Spirit and world must strive together in mutual trust and each must finally be completely involved one in the other; reality must build itself up, if not at one stroke, at any rate in ceaseless advance as a kingdom of reason. A solution at once so simple and so easy bluntly contradicts the experiences of the last century. Both without and within the soul of man an infinite concreteness makes itself evident, which withstands all derivation from general principles, all insertion into a comprehensive scheme, obstinately asserts its particularity, forms its own complexes, and follows its own course. The realistic mode of thought of the Modern Age has brought this aspect of reality to full recognition. If the spiritual life cannot take complete possession of things, if a realm of facts continues to exist over against it, it may be doubted whether the spiritual is of the ultimate being of the world and reveals the reality of things, or whether it merely comes to them from without and only touches their surface. In the latter case external limitation becomes the cause of an inward convulsion. This is a fact which we find corroborated when we come to reflect that Immanent Idealism treats the spiritual life in man much too hastily and boldly as absolute spiritual life; that it attributes to human capacity, without further consideration, that which belongs to spiritual life in general. The experiences of modern life place the particularity and insignificant of man more and more before our eyes; they enable us to see with what difficulty and how slowly any kind of spiritual life whatever has emerged in the human sphere, and with what toil it maintains itself there; they insist that, if the spiritual life is not to sink down to a mere appearance to man, a sharp distinction must be made between the substance of the spiritual life and the form of its existence in man; in every sphere modern life puts questions which lead beyond the position of Immanent Idealism. Immanent Idealism seems to treat the problem of life much too summarily and not to penetrate sufficiently to ultimate depths. The conflict between Immanent Idealism and modern life is still more keen in regard to the problem whether reality is rational. It is essential to this Idealism to affirm this rationality; it need not conceive it as present in a complete state, but it must be sure of an advance to it; the movement of reality, with its antitheses and conflicts, must pass in elements of reason. Immanent Idealism tolerates no inner division of the spiritual life; wherever spiritual movement emerges, there can be no doubt concerning the aim; the development of power must bring the right disposition with it; every limitation can come only from weakness or misunderstanding; there can be no radical evil. With an optimism of this kind the leading minds of German classical literature are imbued; but how much, in the midst of all the progress of civilisation, in the nineteenth century the appearance of the world has been darkened! We see now with complete clearness the indifference of the forces of nature towards the aims of the spirit; we see the incessant crossing of the work of reason by blind necessity; we see the spiritual life divided against itself, eminent spiritual powers drawn into the service of lower interests, and carried away by unrestrained passion. In a time of extraordinary increase of technical and social culture, we see the spiritual life win scarcely anything, in fact, seriously recede; we see it become perplexed concerning its main direction, and oscillate in uncertainty between different possibilities. We experience in every sphere a violent convulsion of the spirit. How can Immanent Idealism satisfy us under such circumstances; how can it assure to our life a firm basis? Indeed, we may now doubt whether Immanent Idealism signifies a type of life at all; whether it is not simply a compromise between a religious shaping of life and a life turned towards sense experience; a _via media_, which as merely transitional is only able to maintain itself for a time. The historical experience of the Modern Age seems to show that the latter hypothesis is the true one. At the beginning of the epoch Religion stood in secure supremacy and the divine acted on man from a sovereignty that was supreme over the world. Then the divine came ever closer to the world that it might spread itself over it and permeate it, till finally there was no longer any separation, and God and world blended together in a single whole. At first this seemed a pure and a great gain: the divine put off all rigid sovereignty and spoke to us immediately out of the whole extent of life; the world was related, through the power of the divine, to an inner whole and, illuminated by it, received a transfigured appearance. And yet this solution was only apparent; it contained an inner contradiction, which ultimately was bound to break forth with a power of destruction. The divine had developed its power and its depth in opposition to the world; will it retain that power and that depth if the opposition ceases; will not the renunciation of supremacy, the fusion with things, rob it of all distinctive content? As a matter of fact, with this increase in proximity and extension, the divine fades and dissolves more and more; ever less power proceeds from it: and so the world is ever less transformed and elevated by it; its transfiguring light is dissipated and its inner relations are broken. From being a life-penetrating power Pantheism becomes more and more a vague disposition; indeed, an empty phrase. The living whole, which in the beginning raised things to itself, has finally become a mere abstraction which cannot hold its ground before vigorous thought. Thus, with an immanent dialectic, such as historical life often enough shows, the movement, since it strove for breadth, has been destroyed in its life-giving root; it has abandoned the basis from which it derived its truth and power. Immanent Idealism shows itself to be one great contradiction; a fascinating illusion, which, instead of reality, presents us with mere appearance. Of course, Immanent Idealism is not finally refuted by such doubts and difficulties; it puts forward demands which need to be satisfied in some way; it contains truths which in some manner must be acknowledged. What would become of human life if it should abandon its striving forwards to the whole; its spiritual penetration of the world; its advance in greatness and breadth; its joyous and vigorous nature; the excellence of its disposition? But the indispensable truth that is involved in Immanent Idealism must be brought into wider relations, and thus made clear and modified, so that it may be more secure and more fruitful in its effect. Meanwhile, we see that here also we are in complete uncertainty; that which was intended to give a firm support, and to point out a clear course to our life, has itself become a difficult problem. (b) THE NEWER SYSTEMS No attack from without and no relaxation from within could have brought the older systems of life into the state of chaos which we actually find them to be in, if the experience of sense had not become far more to man and had not given him far more to do than in earlier times. Hitherto genuine spiritual life seemed to be able to unfold itself only in energetic detachment from the world of sense; it reduced this world to a subordinate sphere which received its position and value only from a transcendent order; thus, all tarrying with the things of sense seemed to be a sign of a lower disposition, a falling from the heights of human life. This view has been radically altered by the course of the Modern Age. When the invisible world became uncertain to man and the life directed towards it shadowy, an intense thirst for reality, for a life out of the abundance and truth of things, arose, and only the visible world seemed to promise satisfaction. This world had been seen previously in a particular light which is now felt to be artificial and distorting; if this light fails and the world can unfold itself unaffected, it shows a far richer content, far firmer relations, far greater tasks. All this is more especially because the world no longer appears to be something finished, but as still in process and as capable of a thorough-going elevation; because great possibilities which human power is able to awaken still lie dormant in it. In diverse directions sense experience advances far beyond the older form; Natural Science analyses the visible world into its single components and makes it penetrable to our thought, and at the same time technical skill wins power over its forces. In the political and social sphere men find new tasks not only in regard to isolated questions, but throughout the whole of its organisation, and great hopes of an essential elevation of life are raised. The individual also appears more powerful and richer, in that the decay of traditional ties gives him complete freedom for his development. Even if, in the struggle for the control of life, these movements in many ways fall into contradiction one with another, still, in the first place they unite in advancing the world of sense in man's estimation, in fixing his love and his work there, and in also making men more and more disinclined to consider the life-systems rooted in the invisible. Sense experience presents itself ever more decidedly as something which can tolerate neither partner nor rival; the life directed towards it loses more and more the nature of being an opponent, which it hitherto had, and it undertakes to shape our whole existence characteristically in positive achievement and also to satisfy the spiritual needs of man completely. All this signifies an entire reversal of the order of life; for, since the world which formerly had seemed secondary now becomes predominant, indeed exclusive, all standards and values are changed, and the old possession appears also as a new gain. It is true that the new mode of thought misses the advantages which a long tradition gave to the old: but in place of this, it has the charm of searching and finding for itself, the joy of first discovery and successful exertion; here an infinite horizon is disclosed; before the research and effort of man lies an open way. Endeavour derives particular power and confidence from the conviction that the new is nothing else than the old and genuine, but hitherto misunderstood, nature: it is a return of life to itself, to its plain and pure truth, which permits us to expect a new world epoch. And so mankind, exalted in mind and with cheerful courage, enters upon the course which promises so much. 1. THE NATURALISTIC SYSTEM The movement towards giving sole attention to the world of sense cannot make sure progress without a more definite decision concerning the main agents and the main direction of work. Different possibilities here offer themselves; three, however, in particular. In reality, these have all evolved, sometimes blending together and strengthening one another, at other times crossing and hindering one another. None of these movements has displayed more energy and exercised more power than that which makes the sense experience of surrounding nature its basis, and strives to include man's entire being within this experience. This is Naturalism, which, starting out from the mechanical conception of nature, which has been developed in the Modern Age, applies the ideas thus obtained to everything, and subordinates even the life of the soul to them. The movement originated at the dawn of the seventeenth century, when an independence and autonomy of nature began to be acknowledged. Nature had been covered with a veil of explanation, mainly æsthetic or religious in character, which gave it a colour corresponding to the prevailing disposition, but at the same time excluded the possibility of a scientific comprehension. A comprehension of this kind could only be attained by getting rid of all subjective addition which had been made by man, and by investigating nature purely by itself. Since Descartes and Galileo that has been accomplished, and nature now appears as an immense web of single threads, as a complex of fundamentally mobile, but soulless, elements, whose movements take simple basal forms, while the combination of these elements produces all constructions, even the most complicated. This mighty machinery never points beyond, and as it runs its course solely within itself, so it requires to be understood solely from itself. Everything spiritual is thus eliminated; this realm of fact has no implication of aims, or of a meaning of events. This new scientific conception of nature had first, with much toil and difficulty, to wrestle with the traditional, naïvely human, representation; this was chiefly a matter of reducing first appearances to their simple elements, and of constructing the world anew from these. By this process, nature at the same time became accessible to the operation of man. For, the technical control of nature presupposes the analytic character of research; only such a research, with its discovery of the single elements and tendencies, places man in a relation of activity towards nature; while in earlier times only an attitude of contemplation had been granted to him. Natural Science thus created a new type of life, a life energetic, masculine, pressing forward unceasingly. This life, like science itself, in the first place forms a special part of a wider whole. As the expulsion of the soul from nature at first brought about a strengthening of the soul in itself, nature was the less immediately able to govern the whole. The individual of modern times strengthened and asserted himself against nature, and insisted upon a realm of independent inwardness. The contest was a severe one; yet the more nature was seen to extend, on the one hand, to the infinitely great, and, on the other, to the infinitely small, the more fixed relations it showed, so much the more overwhelmingly did it draw man to itself, the more did its conception tend to include the inner aspects of the soul also. The final blow in the struggle was given by the modern theory of descent, since this theory asserts man to be the product solely of natural forces, and maintains that everything which man ascribes to himself as characteristic and distinctive is derived from a gradual development of natural factors. And so nature is exalted as an all-comprehensive world--nature, that is, as represented in the modern mechanistic theory, which is thus transformed into a final theory of the world, a naturalistic metaphysic. The human and spiritual world, which hitherto had been felt to be an independent realm in contrast with nature, appears henceforth as its mere continuation, as something which fits completely into a wider conception of nature. A conviction of this kind must fundamentally alter the position of the spiritual life, as well as its magnitudes and values: and this conviction is no mere theory, but desires and strives to take possession of the whole of existence and to change its form completely. Indeed, a particular naturalistic type of life arises and wins a powerful influence over the thought and activity of the time. Naturalism denies all independence of the spiritual life, which it regards as nothing more than an adjunct to the realm of nature, and one that can only exist along with sense existence, as a part of or as a supplement to it. Spirituality has, therefore, to subordinate itself and conform entirely to the life of nature; it can never produce and guide a movement from itself, never evolve a basal and comprehensive activity, never withdraw itself into its own sphere as into an independent realm. All self-existent spirituality fades to a world of mere shadows; whatever makes itself felt in us can only become a complete reality by winning flesh and blood through the appropriation of physical forces. Life, thus understood, possesses nothing in itself; it receives everything from its relations to the environment with which it is bound up: thought brings forth no new ideas; all ideas are merely abbreviations of sense impressions. Effort can never realise purely spiritual values; the essence of all happiness is sensuous enjoyment, however refined that may in some cases be. The naturalistic system of life receives a more definite delineation from the representation of nature, which the mechanical theory, together with a theory of descent adapted to it, sketches and impressively holds up to the present age. By this theory nature is completely resolved into a co-existence of individual forces, which, within the narrow bounds of existence, must clash violently together, and assert themselves one against the other in ceaseless conflict. This conflict, however, is a source of progressive movement, in that it brings together, establishes, and employs everything useful for self-preservation; it keeps life in a state of youthful freshness, in that new conditions continually arise and demand new accommodations with respect to the biologico-economic environment. A biologico-economic mode of thought is evolved which revolutionises all previous estimations of values. Everything intrinsically valuable disappears from the world; its expulsion seems a deliverance from a confused, indeed a meaningless, conception of things; the useful, that which promotes the interests of living beings, each after its kind, in the struggle for existence, becomes the all-dominating value. No mysterious being of things is apprehended in the True; but those presentations and systems of thought are called true which ensure that the best accommodation to the conditions of life shall be attained, and which just in this way hold the individuals together. No longer does a Good speak to man with austere demand from a transcendent sovereignty; but that is good which, within our experience, is of service to the preservation of life. The Beautiful, also, is subordinated to the useful, and it is solely by its value in relation to this that it asserts itself. In everything, it is only one's own welfare, the interest of individual preservation, that directly inspires conduct; but real life shows man in so many relations, so closely implicated with his environment, that he can strive for nothing for himself without also striving for others. This extension of interests has no limits; there is nothing in the whole of infinity which could not in this way become to man, indirectly, a means of self-preservation and thus an object of desire. The naturalistic type of life extends from the most general of impulses to every branch of activity, and forms every department of life in a distinctive fashion. Knowledge depends entirely upon experience; every speculative element must be excluded as a subjective delusion; in all its branches knowledge is nothing else than a broadened Natural Science. Art may not pursue imaginary ideals; it finds its single task in the faithful and simple reproduction of the natural environment. Social life and endeavour will develop, above all, natural powers, and will seek to adapt itself to the conditions given by nature, and, rejecting all aims based upon mere imagination, it will care chiefly for the physical welfare of the whole, as the source of all power and of all success. It is not difficult to understand how this form of life was able to win and carry away the minds of its contemporaries. In the first place it has the character of simplicity and immediacy, which, in contrast with the complexity and the remoteness of the traditional position, appears a great advantage. For, in this scheme, life, with all its multiplicity, is dominated and unified by the idea of natural self-preservation; and the things which immediately affect us, which lie physically and psychically near to us, come most directly into relation to this aim. It is a further tendency of this scheme of life to bring the whole of existence into a state of activity and restless advance. For the state of conflict which prevails under the naturalistic system allows nothing to persist merely because of its present existence or through the weight of tradition, but everything must always be reasserting its right to existence; it must stretch and extend itself in order to be useful in the life of the present. That which cannot satisfy this test is unmercifully thrown over as a dead weight. It is also of great importance to the theory in question that nature and the world are involved in ceaseless change, and that, along with the conditions of life, the requirements also alter: the matter is one of continually accommodating oneself anew; and so life is placed entirely in the present, and the fixity of an absolute conception and treatment of change yields to the instability of a relative one. Last of all, and most especially, life according to its own conviction bears the character of truth. For human striving appears to attain the firm basis of reality, and to become truthful in itself only when it is definitely related to the surrounding world; while, so long as it trusted to the capacity of the subject--which fondly imagined itself independent--it fell into unspeakable error. Only when delivered from subjectivity, only when fixed within the web of the whole of nature, does life seem to awaken out of a dream, and to become fully real, a genuine, securely grounded life. The energy of negation which this theory employs and with which it drives out everything which has become old adds strength to the elements of assertion and positive achievement in these changes. In this theory there is nothing indefinite which could soften the opposition, nothing mediatory which could overcome it, but, distinctly and harshly, affirmation and negation stand face to face and call for a plain decision between them. Whatever remains in doubt and under suspicion is forced into the background, indeed eliminated altogether, through the victorious onward march of modern Natural Science and the increasing triumphs of technical skill, which seem to demonstrate, immediately, the truth of the naturalistic type of life. Thus, this movement spreads in a mighty flood through humanity, and seizes with a particular power the classes which are struggling upward, and which meet science and culture with a faith yet undisturbed. In matters temporal there is hardly anything which seems able to withstand such an attack. Nevertheless, that which gains the support of many contemporaries is not thereby proved to be the supreme power and the final truth. In that movement there may be far more, and something far more important than it itself admits. It may be that it achieves that which it does achieve only with the help of elements of another kind; perhaps, indeed, it is able to maintain its truth only in so far as it enters into broader relations in a wider whole and thereby changes its meaning essentially. Whether such is the case can be ascertained not by reference to subjective opinion, but by an examination of the life of humanity. Now, the first movement of opposition is produced in just that sphere which seemed Naturalism's strongest bulwark, that is, Natural Science, the Natural Science based on mathematics and physics. Only the most fleeting survey can lead to the confusion of Natural Science with Naturalism; in reality, the naturalistic thinker cannot with justice acknowledge any exact Natural Science, and a natural scientist cannot be naturalistic in thought in consequence of his science, but only in spite of it. For, Natural Science is anything but a mere copy of the sense impressions which we experience; its origin and progress are due to the fact that thought fundamentally acts upon and transforms those impressions. If our intellect were no more than Naturalism can logically make it out to be, it could, at most, only refine the animal presentations a little; it never could have advanced beyond the single presentations to a representative conception of the world as a whole. Such an advance can be achieved only by thought raising itself above the stream of appearances and placing itself over against it; but how could a mere bundle of perceptions, to which Naturalism reduces the intellect, achieve this? Incomparably more unity of being and freedom of operation are necessary for this achievement than such a bundle could produce. In earlier times, no doubt, man went very much astray in the interpretation of his environment; he transferred his immediate feelings into it; he coloured the whole world in human colours, and associated with its realities as with beings of the same nature as himself. But even the error shows a seeking and an interpretation; the simple putting of the question proclaims a being becoming superior to mere nature. The most important thing, however, is that man has not regarded the matter as finally settled with this anthropomorphism; he has come to regard it as inadequate and has pressed forward to a new way of thinking. What could drive him to that change but a desire for truth, and how is such a conception as _truth_ attainable from nature? And if thought has succeeded in breaking through the misty veil of anthropomorphism and seeks things in their own relations; if an objective consciousness of the world has emerged, a consciousness which is as different from the immediacy of sense impressions as the sky is distant from the earth, has not man also grown in himself beyond mere sense impression; is it not a work of thought which supports and governs the whole construction, and differentiates genuine nature from appearance? How much power of comprehension and of relating together is exhibited even by Natural Science, in that it analyses the sense presentation of the environment into its single elements, ascertains the laws of these, and traces the movement from the simplest beginnings right up to its present stage of development. All activity of thought is thus subject to a certain reproach in that it must continually bring itself into relation to perception: nevertheless it will interweave all that is imparted to it by perception into a framework of thought--transform it, in fact, into a realm of thought. Spirituality is bound; but how dull an individual must be to confuse such a bound spirituality with mere sensuousness! The error of Naturalism is obvious; concerned solely with the object and its form, it entirely leaves out of account the psychical activity which is involved in the perception of an object; it overlooks the life-process within which alone we can have knowledge of an object and occupy ourselves with it. As soon, however, as we regard the object from this point of view, it will be transformed and will assume far more spiritual traits. Reality will then burst asunder the framework into which Naturalism desires to press it. The type of life which Naturalism gives rise to also contains more than Naturalism is able to explain. At first sight it seems as though man is taken up completely into a wider conception of nature; as though his life obeys its forces and impulses exclusively; as though all his asserted superiority to nature is simply imaginary. As a matter of fact, in this turning to nature, man, with his spiritual activity, stands not within, but above, nature. For he does not appear as a mere piece of nature, but experiences it and thinks over it: its kingdom, its organisation, its stability become to him a joyful possession and a widening of his being. The spiritual life has developed in relation to nature; nature has not welded it together. The same may be said of the idea of the increase of power, which constitutes the main gain of life in the naturalistic system. For, in the naturalistic type of life power is not directed towards externals, as in nature, but is experienced and enjoyed, and only thus does it constitute a source of happiness; yet how could it be that, without an organisation of life in an inner unity which transcends individual occurrences? Thus, the intellectual and the technical control of nature which the Modern Age has acquired attracts men and prevails over them chiefly as a growth of life, as an increase of self-reliance. Even material goods, wealth and property, do not determine the endeavour of the man of culture so much through sensuous enjoyment, the limit of which is soon reached, as through their possibilities as means to activity and creation, to the advancement of human capacity. It is this in particular which has filled the material civilisation of the present with the spirit of restlessness and extravagance, and gives it its demoniacal power over men. It is this relation alone which explains and justifies the present estimate of material goods, so much higher as that is in modern culture than it was in the older systems of thought, which branded as unworthy all endeavour directed to the acquirement of such things. In short, even Naturalism in no way eliminates the subject with its inwardness; rather in its own development it everywhere presupposes the subject. It does not shape life out of mere and pure nature, but out of a close union of a transcendent spiritual life with nature, and out of an energetic insistence upon elements of nature within the soul. However, man experiences not so much the things themselves as himself in the things; the relating together, the surveying, the experiencing of the whole is always a spiritual performance. This performance makes something different out of nature, just as the naturalistic culture that is striven for is different from the state of nature that is found at the beginning. The misconception of the relation of nature to the mind; the postulation of nature without mind, in place of nature with mind, makes Naturalism self-contradictory and untenable. Naturalism therefore struggles vainly against the following dilemma: if it is really in earnest in the elimination of spiritual realities, it must inevitably destroy its own fundamental basis and, as a system of life, must break down; while if it in any way acknowledges a transcendence of nature, and a transcendence just in that which is fundamental to it, then it is necessarily driven beyond itself. But such contradiction in the basal position must be present through the whole development of Naturalism and must make all its factors variating in colour and double in meaning, since at one and the same time they involve the spiritual element and reject it, eliminate it and bring it into the foreground, the former openly and explicitly, the latter concealedly and implicitly. Such is the case, in particular, with the fundamental conception of the _struggle for existence_. In the context of Naturalism, this conception can signify nothing else than the preservation of natural existence, of mere life; such a conception, however, is as incapable of comprehending the whole wealth of the work of civilisation and culture as it is of developing within itself. If the preservation of existence in this sense were really the highest aim, then, all the work of humanity, incalculable and great as it is, all the toil and creative activity of history, would be without result; in no way would it lead beyond the starting-point; we should, of course, have life, but nothing along with and in life. Indeed, the movement would be a continual retrogression, for the experience of the present shows us clearly enough that the conflict of life becomes ever more difficult, toilsome, and embittered. If all this toil does not yield more than was possessed in the original condition, that is, physical existence, then this implies that we have to make an ever greater detour to establish that which formerly devolved upon us immediately. In such a case our life would be a continual sinking, a toil continually increasing in difficulty, in order that we might simply be something, without being anything in particular. Or, will anyone assert that there is no retrogression when the achievement of the same aim costs ever more effort, ever more labour and turmoil of spirit? The fact is that Naturalism also gives to life, which is seen to be thus immersed in conflict, some kind of content, which it conceives as increasing continually in the course of the movement, and as attaining for us through the conflict an ever richer and more comprehensive existence. But how can a conception such as that of the _content of life_ originate in mere nature? How can it be even conceived unless life possesses some consciousness of itself, unless there is a transformation of what is external into something internal--a thing which nature can never accomplish? With the conception of the _struggle for existence_, the useful becomes the preponderant power of life; it attempts a transvaluation of all values, since it lays stress rather on the relation of things to us than on their own nature. The conception won acceptance from and power over the minds of men because it was a complete change from the generally accepted explanation, and at the same time seemed to simplify matters greatly. Unfortunately, on further consideration this transformation proves to be a complete reversal of the general scheme of life, indeed a destruction of it. Man, it is true, does not preserve his physical existence without toil; he must continually win it anew, and nothing can occupy him which does not acquire some relation to this necessity and make itself consistent with it. But the further question arises, whether anxiety for the useful is also able to crush out that which is distinctive and characteristic in the world of humanity. If we recognise the limits of the endeavour after the useful, we shall soon become doubtful concerning its claim to be the sole aim of conduct. That endeavour is spent solely on the welfare of the individual; it can never free itself from reference to the individual, and never, beyond that perceived, can it take up anything as an aim in itself. Interest is centred solely upon the external products of the activity of men and of the process of nature, and not at all upon what men and nature are in themselves. We find here nothing but isolated spheres of existence which are devoid alike of inner relation to themselves and to one another. Now, Naturalism can appeal in its own defence to the fact that real life shows its individual departments to have thousands of inter-relationships, so that the welfare of the individual is inseparably bound up with that of his environment, his family, his home, his state; and that therefore, in order to prosper himself, his endeavour must be for the good of these also. It may even serve his own interest to give up a direct advantage in favour of a greater indirect one. Further, Naturalism is able to assert that, however little the inner disposition of others may affect us directly, this disposition can acquire a value for us in so far as its persistence alone assures to us a continuance of achievement. As considerations of this kind may be extended without limit, there is nothing in the whole breadth of existence which the utilitarian view of life need reject. But, in the midst of all this extension in breadth, this development of life retains a fixed limitation in its inner nature, which cannot be transcended: we can never strive for the alien, the other, the whole, for its own sake, but only as a means for our own welfare; everything inward becomes a matter of indifference if, sooner or later, it is not transformed into an external result. Human life, however, through its own development has grown beyond this limitation; if not in the breadth of existence, yet in its inner nature and at its highest, it manifests something significantly more. Man is capable of a love which values another, not because it hopes for this or that which is useful from him, but because with the whole of his existence he is valuable to it. Man is capable of a love which can lead him to the willing subordination, indeed the joyful sacrifice, of his own existence; of a love in which the first self dies and a new self is born. "Love is the greatest of all contradictions, and one which the understanding cannot solve, since there is nothing more impenetrable than this individuality of self-consciousness, which is negated, and which yet I should retain as positive" (Hegel). Into what a state of poverty humanity would fall if a genuine love of this kind were struck out of the number of its possessions! But can Naturalism in any way understand and estimate such an inner expansion of the heart, such a _Stirbe und Werde_ [a dying to live], to use the words of Goethe? A deliverance of life from the mere _ego_ is effected in another direction in work. Of course, work also stands in close relation to the preservation of life; it must demonstrate itself to be in some way useful. But work would never fill the soul and attain to anything great if it did not also become an aim in itself; if it were not carried on in complete submission to the object and according to its requirements. How low all educational endeavour, personal guardianship, all work for humanity would sink; how humanity would lack all self-forgetting devotion to it, all bold pressing forward; and how unintelligible the joy in a life's vocation would be, if the idea of utility solely and entirely determined conduct, if the chief concern were always how the work paid! Should we not sink, in such a case, into a slavery which would enthral man far more oppressively than any command which a tyrant could be capable of? It is true that on the average level of existence much is turned to the service of the merely useful which was produced from love and work, and this reversal of spiritual goods may be the first thing which comes definitely under our notice. In order, however, even to be so applied and reversed, they must originally have been generated in some manner, and this original generation can never proceed from the useful, but only out of the inner force and compulsion of the object, as, for example, in the case of the great transitions of thought, of artistic creation, and of religious conviction. And, as these have proceeded from inner movements, so they have also brought about powerful inner changes. They have not altered this or that in a given world in order to make it more comfortable to man, but with an energetic revolution have transformed our world from its very foundations, and have constructed a new world in contrast to that which immediately surrounds us. How much or how little individual men, or indeed even mankind as a whole, have appropriated of this; how far man has corresponded and still corresponds to the necessities of his own nature, is a matter and a question in itself: in the spiritual life of humanity the new magnitudes are extant, and they operate here as norms for testing all achievement. At the same time, they show that our life and our nature are of a kind different from what Naturalism represents them to be. However much Naturalism may boast that it is possible for even the highest to be drawn into the service of the merely human, with all its boasting it has not explained the origin of the highest: can a thing proceed from its own shadow? The naturalistic attempt to trace everything back to the useful really reverses the condition of affairs and results in inner destruction wherever disposition stands first. For conduct changes its character completely according as it is regarded as a mere means, or as an end in itself; according as its aim is striven for directly or only indirectly. Do such things as love, fidelity, honour deserve these names if the thought of selfish advantage is their motive power? It lies in the nature of certain things that they must be treated as ends in themselves and as matters of primary concern: to degrade them to a subsidiary position is in their case only a finer kind of destruction; to be opposed to utility is an attribute inseparable from their very being. Where disposition is valued only as a pre-condition of achievement, as in Naturalism, at the highest only a tolerable appearance, a substitute for a genuine disposition, can be reached in the whole moral sphere. Naturalism affords us an example of such a substitution when it sets up an altruistic action, that is, an action which produces something useful to another, in place of an inner expansion of life, which takes the other up inwardly into our own volition and being, and which alone leads beyond egoism. Naturalism is able to overlook all this; is able to make what is the secondary view of things the primary one; the derived, the original; is able to put the relation to human perception in place of the thing itself, only because its interest is so completely occupied with external relations that it does not independently evaluate the inner; and again, because a reflection that appeals to the understanding hinders all immediate relation and spontaneous appropriation. Otherwise, it also would feel how deep, how intolerable, a degradation of man ensues if his innermost experience, his striving after truth, his wrestling for unity within himself, his love, and his suffering are made a mere means to physical self-preservation, and are thus regarded from the point of view of utility. If we glance over the life of universal history, we see that a history of a distinctively human character extricates itself from the machinery of nature only through man's acquiring an independence over against his environment, evolving a life conscious of itself and from it exerting a transforming power upon all presented to it. Only thus does a civilisation grow up in contrast with the mere state of nature. In civilisation and culture man enters into conflict with the infinity of the external world, but he cannot carry on this conflict victoriously without setting an inner infinity in opposition to that external one. In the struggle between these two worlds the life of man is transformed no less than the appearance of reality. More and more the visible world becomes an expression of an invisible one; more and more life draws the world into itself and finds the chief problems in its own sphere. Thus life becomes raised above simple physical preservation; that which serves in this preservation is regarded as a condition only and as something preliminary. Among the peoples situated nearest to us, this tendency has taken different forms; but the separation of creative spiritual activity from all mere utility is common to all. Thus, Greek culture gave birth to a life resting in its own movement, a life satisfied in itself. In the sharpest manner it marked off the beautiful, that which could produce pleasure immediately and of itself, from the merely useful, everything which served something else. It lauded the life filled with the perception and appreciation of the beautiful as the only free life, and pronounced every other way of life to be servile. Further, if in Christianity, in the comprehensiveness of its relations, the care for the welfare of the narrowly human takes up a great amount of attention, and a utilitarianism of a religious kind is evolved, the height of its creation and disposition is not affected: in it the winning of a new life superior to all selfishness, the becoming one with the divine, is the one end in itself. If Clement of Alexandria could say that, if it was a matter of choosing between the knowledge of God and eternal bliss, he would have, without hesitation, to renounce the latter, or if Thomas à Kempis said, "I would rather be poor for Thy sake than rich without Thee. I choose rather to be a pilgrim with Thee on the earth, than without Thee to possess heaven. For where Thou art, there is heaven; but where Thou art not, there is death and hell"--then these are not merely the lofty sayings of individuals, but a faithful expression of that which gave to the whole system its world-penetrating and world-reviving power. The Modern Age, too, which has conceded so much to utilitarian striving, is in the innermost essence of its effort far removed from the spirit of mere utility. For, from the two poles of its life, from the subject as from the object, it breaks through all that is simply "given" and forms a new, self-existent world. In modern times the subject frees itself from the environment, places itself proudly over against it, and finds its securest experience in the self-certainty of its own life. At the same time it in no way renounces the surrounding world; but through the activity of thought it reconstructs that world, and in this conceptualises and idealises all its magnitudes. The more the subject becomes assured of seeing all things spiritually and scientifically by means of its own organisation, the more true is it that all sense experience is sustained and modified by spiritual power. Natural self-preservation cannot possibly satisfy the striving of the subject. For this striving can never be reduced to a mere means, but finds its power, as its joy, in becoming a world in itself; in the proud maintenance and establishment of its own nature in face of every opposition; in the impression of its particularity upon the infinity of things. On the other hand, over against the circumstantiality of man, great systems of thought are formed; evolve a characteristic content and independent powers; and, as forces in the life of universal history, press forward their consequences with inevitable necessity. These systems seek to bring reality under their sway, and do not manifest the least concern with regard to the continuance and the interests of man. Science and art and the political and economical aspects of life afford examples of what we mean. Accordingly, in the modern world and in the modern man, two movements towards infinity clash together, and from these there arise great commotion and violent unrest. Whatever may remain enigmatical in this, the fact of the transformation of the first, the sense experience of things, is beyond doubt. It is also beyond doubt that man, regarded spiritually, does not find himself a member of a given world, but must first seek and make clear his fundamental relations to the world. From this position Naturalism, with its naïve assertion of the finality and permanence of the sense impression, appears to be an intolerable dogmatism. Naturalism is seen to be far below the highest point of universal historical development; it cannot appropriate the experiences and results of that development; it consists of a confusion of naïve and scientific modes of thought, which win the adherence of many individuals, but which, through their contradictions, can never guarantee to life genuine stability and a clear course. Only because it evolves in the atmosphere of a world of another kind, and thereby imperceptibly enhances its own conceptions, does it appear at all plausible. Nevertheless, even so, it is a mischievous confusion of thought which must act detrimentally upon conduct. Those especially will be opposed to it who recognise in human life great tasks and severe perplexities, and desire that the highest powers and clearest thought shall be called forth for the accomplishment of those tasks and the solution of those perplexities. But Naturalism, obscuring, as it does, the inner problems of life; with its backwardness in the movement of universal history; and with its attempt to take from human life all proud and free self-consciousness, indeed all soul, can tend only to reduce the energy of life. The rejection of Naturalism by no means signifies failure to appreciate the increased attention to nature, out of the wrong interpretation of which Naturalism has proceeded. Not only has visible nature become more to our knowledge; it has also become incomparably more to our life. The fact that we feel ourselves conditioned by it, and have become more closely associated with it, can be fully appreciated and must force us to a radical revision of the traditional form of life. Such a revision, however, can be successful in achieving its aim only if the new experiences are systematised to form a consistent whole with the remaining facts in a comprehensive, universal life; spiritual endeavour is solely and alone capable of offering this universality and of accomplishing this task. 2. THE SOCIALISTIC SYSTEM The socialistic system of life is often closely bound up with the naturalistic, and blends with it so well as almost to form a single whole; indeed, there is so much affinity in their fundamental principles that the one may appear to be the completion of the other. But when we come to details, we find that a different character and a different emotional life are yielded according as the relation to nature or to human society governs life; especially as we are parts in an infinite nature, or as we place our own province in the foreground and seek a new form for it. On the one hand knowledge takes the lead, on the other activity. While the former, according to its nature, is more concerned with reaching a consistent whole, the latter feels the contradictions of experience most intensely. With the one progress appears to be a gradual accumulation, with the other it does not seem possible to dispense with a radical change; while the former is broader in its outlook, the latter has more warmth of enthusiasm. Through the domination of thought and life by the problems of society, a distinctive form of culture may therefore be expected. In modern life different motives have led to a closer unity of men on the basis of experience. Religion no longer accords to the individual firm support as in earlier times, and with every advance of scientific research nature is removed inwardly further from us; ceaseless criticism and reflection tend to prevent us more and more from comprehending the whole as a unity. Man, thus isolated in the whole, seems to himself to be lost, unless he succeeds in discovering relations between himself and others of the same nature as himself, and unless in co-operation with them he helps to build up an independent realm of their own, which may lend support and value to the life of the individual. In the Modern Age social life has tended to this end under the influence of fresh impressions and new prospects. Hitherto that life was under the influence of an invisible world of thought, especially of one of a religious kind. The union of men had particular presuppositions and was realised in a particular manner; here, the more closely a certain group held together, the more sharply was it separated from others; the calling forth of power in one particular direction meant diverting it from other tasks. A changed mode of thought was also able to take exception to the view that the ties which bind men together came from a transcendent order, which is now felt as an "other" world and is the subject of doubt. At first, therefore, we are apt to think it a pure gain if modern society no longer concerns itself with these invisible bonds, and regards the union as arising solely and entirely out of the immediate experience of life. For then there is nothing to hinder the balanced development of all the relationships of men among themselves; the social life serves no other end, but finds its task and happiness in itself, and in its actuality is disturbed by no kind of doubt. With this deliverance from all external constraint, a positive advance of the life of society on the basis of the Modern Age is associated. A life more free in conduct, and which through progress in the arts ceaselessly expands, brings men nearer to one another, and forces them into closer union; action and reaction accelerate each other. The opinions and strivings of the masses are determined more easily and exercise more influence; the whole and its influence upon the individual become incomparably stronger. At the same time, the energetic attention that men bestow upon the surrounding reality throws into bold relief relations which have existed from the earliest times, but which hitherto have not been prominent, and enables them to acquire a greater value for life. Since the old appears in a new light, and the new arises, diverse streams of social life are formed, and through their diversity operate to the strengthening of the main tendency. Modern Sociology shows the individual to be far more dependent upon the social environment, upon general conditions, than we are wont to assume from the first impression, which usually throws differences into relief and overlooks common traits, generally fails to pay sufficient attention to the growth of the individuals, and is too apt to take the positions which they possess as essentially the result of their own work. In contrast to this, the one thing which now has power to impress us is the fact that the dependence reaches back to the earliest beginnings; that the individual has become what he has become through the overpowering influences of heredity, education, and environment. Further, the conviction that the differences lie within ascertainable limits, and that there is a certain average level throughout all the multiplicity of life, is gaining a firmer hold. To ascertain these average levels now becomes the chief problem of knowledge, and to realise them the chief task of practical political provision. Inner changes are also brought about. The fact that, with these changes, responsibility, guilt, and desert are transferred more and more from the individual to the society tends to call forth more humane sympathy and more mildness of judgment, and tends to discredit the excessive self-esteem of a self-righteous Pharisaism. At the same time it constitutes a powerful motive to work for the whole; to strive to raise the whole, morally and physically; to develop a social morality and a strong feeling of solidarity. To the modern man, therefore, the life of the State advances through changes in content and form. The State, which in the Middle Ages had to leave all problems of inner training to the Church, in its new function of culture State now assumes all tasks, influences the whole life of the individual, and is confident in its power to transform our existence more and more into a realm of reason. Along with this there is a strong tendency to place the State increasingly on the power and insight of individuals; all through the nineteenth century this tendency won an ever more overwhelming power. The more activity we bestow upon a particular sphere of work, the more valuable does it become to us, the nearer does it stand to our inner nature. Thus, the ancient mode of thought, that the individual is a mere member of the political organism, and that he receives his tasks and obtains his power from it, was able to be revived. With this the stronger emphasis laid upon national peculiarities, and the more definite self-assertion and more vigorous development of nations are associated. Formerly national character had been veiled and, as far as the spiritual ideals of humanity are concerned, as though lost. Now nations appear as points where the spiritual life manifests itself and concentrates distinctively. To work out their peculiarities clearly, and manfully to assert them in the competition of peoples, promises great gain for the organisation and energising of life; for the first time, the divine seems to pass into daily toil on earth. Most of all, the modern organisation of labour, with its enhancing of technique and its advance beyond the capacity of production of the mere individual, heightens the power of impression of the picture as a whole. Work brings about a deliverance from the passivity of the subject; it organises itself into independent complexes, which develop into a state entirely foreign to our nature. It produces its own motive powers and necessities, and requires from the individual the strictest obedience. The performance of the individual attains a value only in definitely ordered co-operation with others; it loses all worth if he attempts to ignore this relation. This is shown with particular clearness in the evolution of the factory with its production by machinery. It is shown further in every specifically modern work in administrative government, in military organisation, in knowledge and education. Everywhere we find great organisations; an enormous growth in the capacity of the whole, but a sinking of the individual to a mere link of the great chain, a proscribing of all individual will. If all thus depends upon the whole, the success of endeavour and the happiness of life will be decided chiefly by the organisation of the whole. It is not to be wondered at, then, if the antitheses which arise in reference to this organisation agitate people in the strongest degree; if a faith in the omnipotence of political and social forms grows up, and if over these the keenest fight rages. In this connection there is no problem which gives rise to greater complications and severer conflicts than that in regard to the preservation and raising of the standard of material existence. If, in general, we attribute incomparably more value to the material in life than was done formerly, so here also the problems of modern labour reach their climax. The organisation and concentration of labour have made by far their greatest progress in this matter; a gigantic accumulation of capital on the one side and of labour power on the other has intensified to the uttermost the opposition between man and man. In this conflict more than in any other the whole being of man comes into play; here, therefore, the most powerful passions flame up. No wonder that, if the thought of a fundamental re-organisation rises to the surface, it wins an influence amounting to fascination, arouses the hope of an essential advancement of the whole of human existence, and impels men to vigorous activity. Thus, then, this sphere, in which fact is regarded as principle, and in which the problem of the development of society is elevated to a position of importance above all others, and seeks to impress its stamp upon the whole of life, is first and foremost. From this point of view the organisation of society is the central problem of all culture, and a distinctive social culture, a social system of life, is evolved. But that which emerges at this point with especial power and clearness would not have been able to win men so quickly and influence them so strongly if it did not constitute a high-water mark of a wider movement, of a general tendency of the modern man to regard the social relation as being of the essence of life, and to shape life anew from this. Viewed historically, this tendency arose as a reaction against the practice of placing the individual in the foreground, a practice which since the beginning of the Modern Age had been resorted to in the most diverse departments of life. What was felt to be unconditionally right in opposition to the bondage of the Middle Ages has, in the course of time, shown a reverse side. Many painful experiences have led us to favour a movement in the direction of the whole again; and so it comes about that all hope of amelioration is able to be regarded as inevitably bound up with the complete victory of this movement. A distinctive social type of life can be formed and can strive for supremacy only if great problems arise within society and if its position in the whole of our life is capable of and in need of change. It will soon be seen that the case is so in respect of both these things; and also that two movements, one more general in kind, and another more precise but also more uncertain as to its goal, are connected. The point at which the new development of life institutes a new demand is the relation of the individual to the means of existence and the goods of culture. Formerly an aristocratic order preponderated, which allowed only a few to share in the abundance of these goods, while it was only afterwards that the many were able to partake of the poor remains. In material, as in spiritual, things man was concerned less with the equitable distribution of the possessions of humanity than with increasing them. The matter of chief importance, and this with regard to questions of inward culture also, appeared to be in some way to incorporate the contents and goods within the sphere of human existence, and to fix them there; the extension of these goods among men was a matter of secondary consideration, and often one that was only very lightly thought of. The limitation to a small chosen class, indeed, seemed to be quite indispensable for a secure and worthy organisation of life. Thus, this culture acquired its character at the highest levels of society, and from there descended in diminishing degrees to lower levels: it was regarded as inevitable that in this descent much should be lost, and that the less privileged classes must perforce be satisfied with very little. A movement in opposition to this state of things arose in the first place among the individuals who were placed in the background by such an organisation, and who, not convinced of the validity of the doctrine of the immutability of their fate, began to make comparisons and to ask questions. Their desire was not merely for more happiness, but for spiritual advance also. In humanity there is an energetic striving and advance, and in this a far greater spirituality and a far keener thirst for truth are often shown in the classes of the people who are struggling upward and pressing forward than in those classes which from early times have had possession of power and wealth and which are hampered by a feeling of self-satisfaction. That which at first is striven for by merely a part of mankind acquires, through its inner necessities, a power over others also, and becomes a requirement of the whole. We experience here what earlier was called the power of ideas in history, that is, the fact that in certain periods certain thoughts and demands acquire an overwhelming power of penetration and impel men to a line of conduct which is even opposed to their special interests. We may so far speak of the supremacy of the social idea in the present, as not only in the disposition of individuals but also through organisation and legislation there is an endeavour to bring help to the poor and the weak, to raise those who are struggling upward, and to convey as directly as possible both material and spiritual goods to all who bear human features. It is not only that this appears a matter of justice; a rejuvenation and an energising of the whole of culture are also hoped for. Without a radical rejection of all that which in the traditional position has decayed, become alien, or is now artificial; without a deep-reaching simplification and a greater proximity to the soul, how could all partake of culture, and how could it become a concern of all? The old demand of leading educationalists, of Comenius and Rousseau, of Pestalozzi and Froebel, the desire for a rejuvenation of our culture antiquated as it is in many respects, seems to be approaching its fulfilment now that the matter is a concern of the whole of mankind. However, this striving, which in itself cannot be rejected, enters upon a narrow course and at the same time upon much that is problematical, in that it unites with the positivistic tendencies of the age in the rejection of all invisible connections and in the restriction of life to the experience of sense. Instead of the whole, we now have the average and the masses, and instead of a creation from the whole, a building up from below; the needs of the masses are the main motive power of life. But as with the masses the chief questions are those of the physical preservation of life, and of economic existence, it seems as if, with their solution, with the deliverance from oppressing cares and necessity through a radical revolution, a complete state of happiness and a ceaseless spiritual advance of humanity are assured. Material welfare, which in earlier organisations of life was so depreciated, in the new system becomes the matter of chief concern; it is regarded as that which more than anything else leads to the development of every power and makes culture the truth for the whole of humanity. The life of society is thus seen to be full of problems. Nevertheless, the position of society in our life as a whole has been changed and raised. We have become far more uncertain concerning our relation to ultimate and universal reality; we doubt the possibility and the validity of first winning, through religion or speculation, a world beyond human experience, of the conveying it to that experience, and from the point of view of such a world giving the human its light and setting it its task. In short, the centre of life has changed from the object to the subject; we know that we cannot abstract from our own nature our spiritual organisation, but that we carry it into every aspect of the whole; that we see and form the world through man. With such a transition, the movement from man to world becomes the chief movement of life; and the conception of man will decide the nature of the conceptions of life and of reality. Henceforth greatness may be attributed to these only if human nature is capable of an advance beyond what it appears to be in the first impression. That, however, will scarcely be possible unless humanity is conceived as a whole and, with such a unity, has more power and depth than it has as it exists immediately before us. This also will operate to the strengthening of the social order, in which sense experience controls thought. Thus, many different factors unite to make the condition of mankind as it is, that is, the state of society on the basis of experience, the starting-point and final aim of all endeavour, and the relation of man to surrounding men the fundamental relation of his life. But, as in the case of culture as a whole, the individual departments of life must also win a distinctive character if the welfare of the social whole, the achievement for man and the influence on man, becomes the all-controlling task which sets the aim and points out the way for all activity. In this context science does not reveal hidden depths of things, but aids man in winning power over appearances; it leads him to a more zealous and a more active life. Art does not lift him into an ideal world; but, within experience, softens the pressure of existence and fills life with pure joys. Morality does not subject our conduct to an invisible order, but directs man beyond himself to men around him; it develops the feeling of solidarity and raises the standard of the inner relationships of society. For religion as the revelation of an "other" world there is no room; this world shows in humanity an object worthy of reverence; so understood, religion also must work to the inner elevation of society. In everything that which distinguishes the individual is thrust into the background to make way for that which is common; work has in the first place to concern itself with that which is common to all. In that here science makes man the chief study of man, it considers him especially as a social being and finds its chief theme in the knowledge of social conditions. Similarly, the chief subject of art is not, as was formerly the case, the doings and experience of individuals, but the forceful representation of these social conditions. The raising of the general level becomes the chief care of all practical activity, as also of education. According to this scheme the individual is of consequence and of worth only through those elements of the common life which he brings to expression, and through the way in which he reacts upon that life. The industry of universal history is understood, therefore, not from that which relates primarily to individuals, but from that relating to the movements and destinies of society. Such an estimate of the whole involves a conviction which seldom finds expression, but which silently exerts its influence everywhere: the belief in a summation of reason by the organisation of individuals into a whole. Only a belief of this kind is able to establish the supremacy of the mass over against the individuals, also in spiritual things; only such a belief is able to justify the hope of a victory of the good in the sphere of humanity. The net result of all these ideas and tendencies is a co-ordinated system of thought, a distinctive type of life. In this system man is first and foremost a member of society; he originates in it; he remains in it; and his activity carries implications far beyond his own life. Not community of labour only joins him with his fellows, but also the general tone of thought and feeling. This type of life is not one without sacrifice; for it has to give up many things which in earlier times seemed a secure possession and were a source of joy. Yet these things were only illusions which vanished, and mankind seems to find a compensation, more than equivalent for all that has been lost, in that it is more closely united and through this wins new powers; and henceforth out of its own capacity can venture to take up the struggle against every irrationality of existence, and to advance its own well-being without constraint. A life is therefore evolved, conscious of its limits, but at the same time active and courageous. In this manner, then, transcending all subjective opinions and wishes, a distinctive social culture has arisen, and its growth and results are clearly evident to us. Through combination of forces and through diligent activity on behalf of one another, and this with the aid of a highly evolved technique, we have brought about a magnificent elevation of our being; necessity and disease have been successfully fought against; the standard of education and the amount and kind of joy in life have been raised in many ways; in life and suffering men have been drawn together inwardly and associated together with a greater degree of solidarity. If one accepts the creed of the socialistic movement in the narrower sense: that human society can be placed on a new basis and at the same time raised essentially in its achievement, one can conceive that social culture may grow to the comprehensiveness of culture in general, and arouse the hope of a kingdom of reason among men. * * * * * But here also there is a limit set to things, not from without, but from within; not from a rationalising criticism, but through the actual facts of the life of humanity. This limit appears with especial clearness when we consider the relation of the individual, together with his work, to the society in which he stands. If social culture should be regarded as absolute culture, the individual must spend himself solely and entirely in relation to his environment; all his activity and endeavour must be exerted in achievement for this culture--must, indeed, be regarded as a mere part of a common work. In such a system man could never attain an independent position and a superior right in opposition to society. Let us examine whether the experience of history establishes the truth of this system or whether it does not much rather show the opposite to be more correct. It was only in the earliest state of culture, and under very simple conditions of life, that the individual was solely and entirely bound up with the social organism, simply a member of family, of tribe, and such like; entirely swayed by custom, authority, and tradition. All further evolution was a differentiation and led to the greater independence of the individual. There came a time, however, when, in contrast with his mere membership of the society, the individual felt himself to have arrived at a state of maturity; when he questioned the right of the traditional order, and ultimately found himself coming into opposition with the whole of society; his own thought thus became the chief basis of his life and the measure of all things. At first that may have appeared an impious break and a destructive negation; in reality, the positive results which have been thus effected could never have been produced out of a mere revolt. For, a deepening of life in all its branches went hand in hand with the individual's attainment of independence; now, for the first time, Religion developed a personal religious experience, and Art filled man's whole soul; now only did Science set a distinctive world of thought in opposition to the traditional presentation; and so the whole of life gained enormously in independence, mobility, and depth. How could this point have been reached if an immediate relation to reality had not emerged in the soul of man; if an inner world had not been formed from this reality, as the representative of which the individual might feel superior to the society and, from inner necessities, criticise the prevailing condition of things? The fact is that all deepening of culture, all awakening of life to self-consciousness, is a rising above the life of society, a summoning of the individual to creative activity. Never have real advances in Religion, Science, and Art, or great transformations of life, originated out of a combination of the activities of the majority. Only in isolated cases has an incomparable individuality, supreme in the entire range of creative activity, been reached, and spiritual tasks been treated as ends in themselves, without which there is nothing great. Only out of the necessity of spiritual self-preservation, only as an overcoming of intolerable contradictions within our own being, could creative activity find a sure direction and a lofty self-confidence in order to lead the whole of humanity along new paths. The individuals in whom this was accomplished were, to be sure, under many influences from historico-social life; but, to overlook the essential elevation above the entire domain of merely human interests into a realm of self-conscious truth, which was accomplished by these individuals, one must confuse the conditions with spiritual activity itself. As this spiritual life has transcended social life from the beginning, in the same way its effects are by no means exhausted in that life. It has, it is true, exerted its activity upon the social environment, and, after the initial opposition has been overcome, has often been superabundantly honoured; but even so, it has been accepted in isolated and external relations rather than in the whole of its being, and in its appropriation through society it is apt to lose what is best in it. Ever anew, even after centuries and centuries, it has attracted aspiring souls to itself, and has always been able to offer something new to them; in fact, in its essence it stands not in time but above it. The more such genuine creative activity and production in all its spheres become unified, the more a kingdom of truth spreads like an arch over the whole machinery of human history, and, measured by the standards of that truth, human standards are seen to be extremely low, like the size of the earth when contrasted with the region of the fixed stars. This realm of eternal truth, however, reveals itself immediately only to the soul of the individual, who must convey it to society. Such an estimate of spiritual depth in the individual is quite compatible with the fact that in the course of history the individual has often fallen into utter uncertainty; has felt destitute and lonely, and has passionately sought a support in society. For the individual may cut himself adrift from the invisible connections in which his greatness is rooted; he may base himself on his own isolated power and groping intellect. When he has indeed done this, he has soon perceived and experienced his insufficiency; after such experience he has longed for the building up of a new society by spiritual activity, and when this has been attained he has fled to it as to a sure haven. Men strove for such a society in the later period of Antiquity; one such was founded by Early Christianity, by which the centre of life was transferred from the individual to the society. But in this transition the individual did not again become simply a member of society. For the new union that was sought could not come to men from without, but could proceed only as a result of spiritual endeavour; for its origin and in the early stages of its life it required great creative personalities of the kind of Augustine; for its preservation it needed appropriation by individuals, who unless they made an independent decision could not come to a complete knowledge of the truth. Wherever such individual activity languished, the inwardness of life at once became weak; the whole threatened to lose its spiritual nature and to be transformed into mere mechanism. But after, in the course of history, the individual has developed so far as experience shows him to have done; after that, as microcosm, he has found an immediate relation to reality and to himself, his transcendence may for a time be obscured, but he can never be deprived of it. As the individual has grown strong only as the representative and champion of a culture that is spiritual, as opposed to one that is merely human, so at the same time that spiritual culture asserts itself and criticises all which limits man to his own sphere. After having attained a greater comprehensiveness, a pure self-existence, and other standards toilsomely enough, a narrowly social culture must be absolutely intolerable to us. This assertion is valid especially in regard to the social culture of the present. That culture, as we saw, makes significant and justifiable demands which have arisen from historical conditions; but its right gives place to error, if these demands are made the central point of life as a whole, and everything else subordinated to them. The unsatisfactoriness of this system of culture and the impossibility of achieving its aims would be still more manifest if it did not constantly supplement its own results out of the other organisations of life, and did not boldly and unjustifiably idealise the man of experience. This social culture may be shortly described in some of its tendencies: (1) Work for society was the compelling motive in the shaping of this life of social utility. Some such social principle may suffice for the distribution of goods; it never suffices for their original production. We saw how spiritual experience can arise only from the compulsion of an inner self-preservation, in which man does not think in the least of the effects on others, but of himself and the object. Only that effort which has sprung up without regard to its mere utility has been able to achieve great things. If, therefore, merely social culture rigidly binds up vital energy with the direction of all thoughts on the effect, in the long run it must seriously degrade life. Can we deny that in the chief departments of the spiritual life the present already clearly shows tendencies to such a degradation? And can this be otherwise when we only more widely diffuse the inherited possession, but are unable to increase it through our own activity? (2) Social culture makes the judgment of the society the test of all truth and requires from the individual a complete subordination. It can do this, as we saw, only under the assumption that reason is summed in a judgment by the people as a whole; but, in face of the experiences of history and the impressions of the present time, can this assumption be ratified? Upon its emergence, truth has nearly always been championed by a minority so small as to be hardly discernible; and what in its case is called victory is usually nothing else than the transforming of the struggle from an external into an internal one. He who continues firm in his faith in the victory of truth does so because he trusts, not so much in the wisdom of the majority as in a reason transcending all that is empirically human, and which begets a truth with power to constrain. The present gives us the opportunity of testing this assertion by an example. We see movements of the masses in plenty, but where do we see great spiritual creations arise from the resulting chaos? Even Socialism in the narrower sense has to thank but a few men for its vital power and character, as, for example, Marx; the masses are indeed a condition and an environment, but never as such the bearers of creative activity. (3) Where man, as he is, governs all thought, his well-being, his complacency, an existence as free from care as possible, and as rich as possible in pleasure, will become the highest of all aims. But would not one find an inner emptiness, a monotony, even more intolerable than any suffering if this aim were reached and life were freed from all pain and necessity? Intelligible as it is that, to the classes whose life is spent in hard struggle against necessity and care, the deliverance from these appears the highest good and an assurance of complete happiness, it is just as unintelligible that anyone who is conscious of the work of universal history and the inner movement of humanity can share such a belief. For that movement has given rise to difficult problems and severe conflicts within the soul of man; a wrestling for a truth and a content of life, where we now drift hither and thither on the surface of appearance; a longing for infinity and eternity, where now a finitude and a past fascinate and charm us; a clashing together of freedom and destiny, of nature and spirit. The tendencies and tasks which this movement produces may for a time be thrust into the background, but they continually reappear and claim their right. It is a foolish undertaking to try to make man happy by directing him to give up what is distinctive in him, and to give his striving a less worthy character. (4) From a radical improvement of the conditions of life, the socialistic way of thinking expects a continuous advance of culture and an increasing ennoblement of man. To some extent this expectation would be justified if a strong spiritual impulse and a sure tendency towards the good were found everywhere; if it were only a matter of opening the door to an inner striving that was everywhere operative; only a matter of removing restrictions. The actual picture of human conditions corresponds but little to such an optimism. How small a place spiritual impulse has in human conduct and effort! How wearisome to the indifferent and reluctant average man any thought of spiritual goods becomes, and what severe restrictions moral development meets with in selfishness, avarice, and jealousy! The impressions which reality gives speak too plainly in regard to this for even the believers in socialistic culture to be able to hide the facts from themselves; but it is noteworthy enough that not that which they see with their eyes and grasp with their hands determines their judgment, but that which, unconsciously, they add to it: an invisible humanity, a greatness and a dignity of human nature, a nobility in the depths of the soul; conceptions for which, in this context, there is not the least justification. All these considerations show clearly enough the limits of simply socialistic culture, and the sharp contradictions of its adherents. This culture only throws man back increasingly upon the merely human, and unmercifully holds him firmly fixed in it. It chains him to his own appearance and suppresses all tendencies towards depth. It knows nothing of life's consciousness of itself; it knows no inner problems, no infinite development of the soul; it cannot acknowledge a common life of an inner kind, but must derive all from external relations. At the same time it excludes all understanding of the movement of universal history; for the chief content of this movement constitutes just those problems which Socialism regards as foolish delusions. To be sure, the striving after an inner independence of life has brought much error with it, and it may involve much that is problematical. But that a longing after such independence should arise at all and prove itself able to call forth so much endeavour sufficiently demonstrates that man is more than a mere being of society; more than a member of a social organism. Ultimately, socialistic culture presupposes, in its own development, a greater depth of life than it is itself able to produce. It can make so much out of its data only because it assumes in them a more comprehensive and a deeper world of thought. Like Naturalism, Socialism reaches a tolerable conclusion only by much plagiarism from the old Idealism, before the principal conceptions of which it crosses itself as before something atrocious. This inner inconsistency of socialistic culture, its remaining bound up with something which inwardly it contradicts, is most plainly shown by the historical experience of the Modern Age. Men were at first led to take up the movements towards the strengthening of society chiefly by the expectation that the invisible forces in human existence would be invigorated, and by the hope that the inner life of men would be raised. The more they have cut themselves adrift from these invisible connections and have placed themselves simply on the basis of experience the more have they lost in spiritual content. The movement towards the modern free State arose in association with religious strivings; the desire for political independence attached itself to and inwardly grew from the longing for more complete equality before God. The more this relation to Religion and, further, to an invisible realm receded into the background, the more difficult did it become to guard the striving for freedom from being diverted in the interests of individuals, classes, and parties; the more did the movement inwardly lose by external expansion. We saw that the idea of nationality acquired power from the conviction that there results in an independent people an individualisation of the spiritual and divine which is the first thing to ensure to existence a definite character and a firm support. So long as this conviction predominated, each people had a great inner task in reaching the highest point of development of its nature, and, what is more important, did not need to direct its energies upon externals. With the obscuring or the complete surrender of this spiritual foundation, a blind adoration of one's own country, an increase of unfruitful pride of race, a passionate struggle for external expansion and power, inevitably accompanied by the surrender of humanity and justice, threatens us. When in the nineteenth century the modern idea of the State again came into currency, the State came to be regarded--as, for example, in the system of Hegel--as the realisation of an absolute reason, and desired to be honoured as something "earthly divine." Its leading administrators, however, men of the kind of Altenstein, were imbued with the philosophic spirit; were men who could be regarded as philosophers in Plato's sense. To-day we still hear of such spiritual bases of the State, in syllabuses of courses of study; but we count so little on a philosophical training that when anyone gives any sign of such a training he is regarded with astonishment as a rare exception. Even the socialistic movement in the narrower sense, the longing for an economic revolution, at first stood in close connection with philosophical endeavours, and the hope of an inner ennobling of humanity, the hope of raising the whole of culture, worked in it as a powerful motive force. More and more, out of this a mere desire for power and enjoyment has developed, a passionate struggle of class against class, of interest against interest, and how this might lead to an inner elevation of humanity is not apparent. The more socialistic culture, in its pressing forward, has cut itself loose from a richer and more inward culture and has trusted solely to its own resources, the more distinct have its limitations become, the more has its incapacity to include the whole of human existence been made evident. To assert this does not mean to depreciate the significance of the facts which the social tendency has made us conscious of and the tasks which it has imposed upon us. Not only do the advance into prominence of the economic side of life, and the desire for a more energetic realisation of a social organisation in this direction, remain unimpeached, but there are demands of an imperative kind which extend beyond the scope of this narrow conception. The increasing isolation and separation of individuals make us feel the desire for reunion more and more strongly. Man, with that which is near him and in him, acquires an ever greater significance for the shaping of our life and our world; from no other point of departure than from him can we attempt to reach the depths of reality and from these to build up a realm of reason. Socialistic culture, however, treats these problems, to which it gives rise, far too externally and too meanly to hold out any hope that its method can lead to their solution; and so, as we see it immediately before us, it brings truth and error into a melancholy mixture. Only a broader conception of life could bring about a differentiation and give to each factor its right. In this case also the promised solution of the problem is seen to be itself a problem. 3. THE SYSTEM OF ÆSTHETIC INDIVIDUALISM The naturalistic and socialistic tendencies unite in the modern life of culture for action in common. How near they stand to each other, notwithstanding all their differences, our accounts of them will have shown. Not only do both make the world of sense the sole world of man, but both also find life entirely in the relation to the environment, be it nature or society. Again, both maintain that all happiness arises from work upon this environment, whether the work be in the main scientific and technical, or practical and political. Thus the culture of both systems bears throughout the character of a culture of work; in one as in the other great complexes of work arise, and draw the individual to themselves; all trouble and effort are for the sake of the result; in both a restless progressive movement surrounds us and directs all reflection and thought to a better future. With such a tendency we have grown closer to the environment and we have ascribed more value to the world and to life. With an ever-increasing activity, a proud self-consciousness has developed in humanity. But the limitations and defects of such a culture, centred as it is upon results, could not remain concealed. The age, alert and fond of reflecting upon its own nature, has been compelled more and more to perceive the negation that accompanied the assertion made in that system. The striving for results alone made care for the soul impossible; the being fitted into a complex whole impaired the development to complete individuality. The more industrial and social activities have become specialised, the less significant has that part of human existence become which is embodied in the individual as such, the more have all aspects of his nature other than those involved in his work degenerated. The continual thought of the future, the impetuous movement ever onward and onward, also threatens to destroy all appreciation of the present, all self-consciousness and independence of life. If we exist merely in order to serve as means and instruments to a soulless process of culture, does not the whole enormous movement finally amount to nothing, if it is not experienced and appropriated? Once such questions arise and make man concerned about the meaning and the happiness of his life, a sudden change must soon take place. Man may at all times fall into error concerning the aims of the culture of work; indeed, concerning work itself. It may appear to him as something which, originally his own creation, has broken loose from him, placed itself in opposition to him, enslaved him, and finally, like a gigantic spider, threatens to suck his life's blood. From this point of view it may be regarded as the most important of all tasks again to become master of work, and to preserve a life inwardly conscious of itself, in contrast with the tendency of work to occupy itself solely with externals; to realise a true present in contrast with the restless hurry onward and onward; a quietness and a depth of the soul in contrast with work's bustle and agitation. To those with such a conviction the culture of work must seem sordid, secular, profane, and in contrast a longing for more inspiration, more soul, more permanent splendour of life will arise. Many movements of this kind make themselves apparent in the present; the longing for a return of life to itself, for more joy and more depth in life, grows ever stronger and stronger. Of all these movements, however, one stands out with definite achievement--one which, upon the basis of the present and with the means of sense experience, seeks a remedy which, while in these two aspects it shares the general initial assumption of the culture of work, within the limits of this assumption is entirely opposed to this culture of work. We mean the system of Subjectivism and Individualism. In that this system is blended with a kind of art of its own, and gains strength from this, it boldly undertakes to govern and shape our whole existence. He who wishes to rise above the culture of work without transcending the region of experience will scarcely discover any other basis than the individual with his self-consciousness, his "being-for-self." For, however far work with its influences may penetrate into the innermost recesses of the soul, there always remains something which is able to resist it. Something original seems to spring up here, which fits into no scheme and bows down to no external power. If, therefore, a newly aroused longing for greater immediacy and happiness in life drives man once more to the subjective and to the individual, he can emphasise this factor conceptually in order to depreciate the other systems of life. For, whether the individual belongs to an invisible world of thought or to a visible structure, his task and his worth is then assigned to him by the whole; his activity will have a definite direction determined by the whole, and his power will be called into play only so far as it fitted into the framework of the whole organisation. If all such relation to the whole is discarded, and the individual becomes bold enough to place himself simply upon his own capacity, and to acknowledge no other standard than his own decision, an infinite course seems to open up before him. What lies in him is now able to develop with complete freedom, and he need take neither a visible nor an invisible order into anxious consideration. The individual, raised to such sovereignty, will make far more out of himself, and will mean far more than the narrow and often over-awed individual of earlier ages. True, even in earlier times opposition from the individual was not lacking, but the circumstances of the Modern Age are especially conducive to his development and recognition. We know how the modern man extricated himself from the ties which bound him, and how he boldly placed himself in opposition to the world. We know how much more freely thought rules in modern life; how much more deeply an over-subtle reflection penetrates everywhere and takes all stability from things. We know, too, how the external form of civilisation, with its acceleration of intercourse, and its development in a thousand directions, sets the individual more free. Is it to be wondered at if the modern individual regards himself as the centre and undertakes to shape the whole of life from himself? The individual can attain complete independence only when he liberates his soul from all external connections, from every objective relation, and, as a free subject, simply lives his own states of consciousness. This is achieved above all in the disposition--transcending all form and shape and bound to no particular object--which has obtained an independent position chiefly as a result of the Romantic movement. In this a complete detachment of life, an inward infinity, and a complete independence seem attained; every individual has his own course and his own truth; no limit is set to life, no command given, but he can with the utmost freedom develop every impulse and exhaust its possibilities according to its nature. Thus a life arises, profuse and extremely active: a life fine and delicate in nature; a life which is in no way directed beyond itself. But all agitation, profuseness, and refinement could hardly have prevented this emotional life from becoming hollow, if, when it turned to the individual, it had not united to itself another movement, which is flowing with a powerful current through the age. We mean the movement towards art, and beyond that towards an æsthetic conception of life. From ancient times there has always been an antithesis of an ethical and an æsthetical fashioning of life: of a preponderance on the one hand of the active, on the other hand of the contemplative relation to reality. Emphasis on the activity of man has led to the formation in modern systems of life of a culture of work and utility. An æsthetical, contemplative mode of thought can with good reason feel itself superior to that culture. In contrast to utility, it promises beauty; over against the heaviness and weariness of the way of life of a culture of work, it promises a joy and a lightness; in opposition to effort, hurriedly and continually striving further and further, it promises an independent self-consciousness, and an inward calm. But, as this movement towards art blends with that towards the subject it lapses into a narrow course and assumes a distinctive character. Here, art has less to comprehend the object than to stimulate and please the subject; it will strive less after content and a further construction than with lyrical cadences, to give expression to changing moods. It has a difficult task given to it which can only approximately be solved--the task of expressing something fundamentally inexpressible and resisting all attempts to give it form. But in that art undertakes such an impossibility, and exerts its power to the uttermost, it brings about a refinement of the soul as well as an enrichment of expression. It enables much to be grasped and comprehended which, without it, passes like a fleeting shadow. It permits the observation of the most delicate vibrations of the soul, and throws light into depths which would otherwise be inaccessible. A distinctive type of life is thus formed from the side of literature and art, and this feels securely supreme over all the embarrassments of the culture of work and of the masses. The centre of life is transferred into the inner tissue of self-consciousness. With the development of this self-consciousness, life appears to be placed entirely on its own resources and directed simply towards itself. Through all change of circumstances and conditions it remains undisturbed; in all the infinity of that which happens to it, it feels that it is supreme. All external manifestation is valuable to it as an unfolding of its own being; it never experiences things, but only itself--that is, its own passive states of consciousness--in the things. A life of such a kind gives rise, in different directions, to distinctive tendencies, which, through their antithesis to the traditional forms, are sharply accentuated. This system thinks especially to turn the whole of human existence into something positive, to limit it on none of its sides, to raise it everywhere to activity, joy, and pleasure. In the older systems of life, especially in the religious, it finds far too much feeble renunciation, far too much sad negation: such a depreciation of life is henceforth to give way to a complete and joyful affirmation. But an affirmation appears to be possible because in this system, through that reference to and excitement of subjectivity, all that in any way affects man is transformed in activity and advance; because before all else the subject feels its own life in every experience and takes pleasure in this. It must be added that the self-refinement of life, its mobility and delicacy, free it from all the heaviness of existence, and that the free play of forces which exist here transforms the whole of existence into something lightly poised. We find this to be especially the case when we turn to art, which joins beauty to power, or, rather, strengthens life in itself through its embodiment in the beautiful. This free, joyous, and as it would seem purely self-conscious life is throughout of an aristocratic and individual character. In that it is adapted to the old experience, that to only a few is given the power and the disposition for independent creation and independent life, it addresses itself to these few and summons them to the greatest possible development of the individuality of their nature, to the most decisive detachment from the characterless average of the masses. For, without a completely developed consciousness of individuality, without an energetic differentiation and isolation, life does not seem to attain its greatest height. Thus the matter is one of making all the relations and all the externals of life as individual as possible. Everything which places the development of life under universal standards, and, through these, limits that development, is rejected as an unwarrantable limitation and an intolerable restriction. This individualising of our existence extends also to the matter of our relation to time. One moment may not be sacrificed to another; the present may not be degraded to the status of being a mere preparation for the future, but every moment should be an end in itself, and, with this, life is considered as being solely in the present. And so life is a ceaseless change, a perpetual self-renewal, a continuous transition; but it is just this which preserves to life its youthful freshness and gives to it the capacity to attract through every new charm. Hence this system presents the most definite contrast to the interminable chain and the gigantic construction which the culture of work makes out of the activities of the individuals. Æsthetic Individualism appears most distinctive in the way it represents the relation between the spiritual and the sensuous. It cannot take its attention from the external world, in order to centre it upon human perception, without strengthening the psychical. But, as its own system is based upon sense experience, it is impossible for it to acknowledge an independent spirituality and to contrast it with the sensuous; the spirituality which it recognises always remains bound and blended with the sensuous. For it an entirely mutual interpenetration is the highest ideal, a spiritualising of the sensuous, and a sensualising of the spiritual to an exactly equivalent degree. This high estimate of the sensuous, and the endeavour to harmonise the spiritual with it, put this new system of life in the sharpest opposition to the older systems, especially to religious Idealism, in which the supremacy of the spiritual is essential. From such a basal character this system evolves a distinctive relation to the individual values and spheres of life. Artistic literary creation becomes the soul of life; the source of the influences for the fashioning of a new man. The social, political, sphere is reduced to the level of a mere outside world, which urges less to activity on our own part than provokes a sceptical and critical attitude. The lack of attention to all that which fits man into a common order, be it into the State with its laws, or the civic community with its customs and arrangements, permits the free relation of individual to individual in social contact, friendship and love, to develop so much more forcefully. In particular, it is the inter-relationship of the sexes, with its many-sidedness and its inseparable interweaving of spirituality with sensuousness, which occupies thought and dominates literary production. Strike out the erotic element from specifically modern literature, and how insignificant the remainder would appear! It is also in the relation of the sexes that this scheme of life insists on the fullest freedom. There is a marked tendency to regard an acknowledgment of fixed standards and of traditional morals in this connection as a sign of weakness and of a narrow-minded way of thinking. Since this scheme seeks to realise an æsthetic conception of life and an artistic culture in opposition to all the restraint of tradition and environment, it will come into particularly severe conflict with traditional religion and morality. It must reject religion, or at least what hitherto has been called religion, because, with its blending together of the spiritual and the sensuous in a single world, it can by no means acknowledge a world of independent spirituality; its thought is much too "monistic" for that. It must reject religion also for the reason that, with its immediate affirmation of life, it cannot in the least understand the starting-point of religion, the experience and perception of harsh inner contradictions in our existence. Religion, with all the heroism that it truly shows, is here regarded as a mere lowering of vital energy; a chimera which pleases the weak. In relation to morality the matter is not much different. A foundation of morality in the necessity of its own nature is lacking in this system. What motive could move a man who whole-heartedly accepted Æsthetic Individualism to acknowledge something external to the subject as a standard, and in accordance with this standard to put a check upon his natural impulses? Indeed, with the denial of spiritual activity and the division of the world into for and against, the entire antithesis of good and evil loses its meaning and its justification. Reality appears from the point of view of this system to be rent in twain in an unwarrantable manner at the command of a human authority. What is usually called morality is considered to be only a statute of the community, a means by which it seeks to rob the individual of his independence and to subordinate him to itself. All this reasoning presents itself as an offspring of our own time, and wishes to establish the correctness of its claims on its own ground through its results. Yet it by no means lacks historical relations: often in the course of the centuries the subject has shaken off every constraint and sought a solution to life's problems in its own realm. This happened, first among the Sophists; then in a form less marked and with more direct attention to happiness in Epicureanism; later, in proud exaltation and in a titanic struggle with the world, in the Renaissance; and again in a more delicate and more contemplative manner in the Romantic period. Tendencies from all these operate in the Æsthetic Individualism of the present time and enrich it in many ways, though their contributions are not always free from contradiction. But, even with these historical elements, Æsthetic Individualism is essentially a modern product; and it cannot be denied that it has won a great power in the present; a movement of culture in this direction is unmistakeable. It is the very nature of this scheme of life not to hasten to a definite form, and for this reason it does not manifest itself with very definite features; but, with invisible power, it is everywhere present and creates a spiritual atmosphere from which it is difficult to withdraw ourselves. Notwithstanding all the attacks it is subjected to and the doubts as to its validity, it draws power continually from both the main tendencies which it unites; from the evolution of the subject and from the growth of art. Thus, here again we are concerned not with mere subjective willing and wishing, but with an actual movement in universal history. Whether this movement be the primary and the all-dominant remains to be examined by consideration of the total possessions of humanity. Such an examination is in this case peculiarly difficult, because in Individualism and Subjectivism diverse forms mingle together and give to the movement very different levels. There is, therefore, an obvious danger that, viewing these forms from the position of an average level, at which we may attempt to arrive, we may judge one too severely and another too leniently. And yet we cannot dispense with the assumption of such an average level; only, it must not be applied mechanically to the individual forms which are so numerous. In forming our judgment in this matter, it is necessary in the first place to distinguish the aims and the methods of the scheme of life. There can hardly be any doubt or dispute concerning the aims. For, if we are called to give to life an independence, a content and a value; to raise it to complete power; to press forward from anxious negation to joyful affirmation; to reduce the monotony of existence; to organise the whole realm of individuality so that it shall be fully clear; and if, at the same time, the fact of the degeneration of the inner life through a culture of work lends to such demands the impressiveness and the voice of a present need, it is difficult to see how this system is to be effectively opposed. Æsthetic Individualism here appears as the champion of truths which may be obscured for a time, but which, nevertheless, continually gain in significance in human evolution as a whole. A further question is whether its aims, which cannot be rejected, are attainable along the ways which Individualism follows and beyond which it is not able to go; whether the means suffice for the attainment of the end. If this should not be the case, we are in presence of a great difficulty, in that something, in itself of the highest necessity, is desired, but is desired in a way which not only is inadequate to the aim, but directly contradicts it. And yet that is how the matter really stands. It is essential to Individualism--with this it stands or falls--that it lead to an independent life, to a self-consciousness; that it transform our whole condition into something of positive value on the basis of sense experience. That the actual condition of human reality, the nature of human experience, inexorably resists such a transformation, and that on this account the individualistic scheme of life is contradictory, we intend to indicate more in detail. Man desires a self-conscious life, a deliverance from all external ties, a removal of all oppressions. This desire is a lofty one, but one which, as things are, is very difficult of attainment. For not only in what happens to us, but also in the innermost depths of the soul--in our spiritual constitution--we are bound up with an overwhelming and impenetrable world. The mechanism of nature as well as the organisation of society surrounds and visibly and invisibly coerces us. At first sight we are no more than parts of an immense whole, and appear to be completely determined by that which happens in this whole; we come from it and sink back into it, and every moment we are dependent upon that which takes place around us. What is Individualism able to do against such forces, and what does it succeed in achieving towards life's attainment of independence? The means it employs are the arousing of an unrestrained mood, and the withdrawal of life to the greatest possible concentration in its own passive states of consciousness. Because by these means man is in some measure relieved from the oppression of things, he imagines himself to be fully free. But is he free simply because he appears to himself to be so; free, to take the example of Spinoza, in the way in which the stone thrown up into the air might during its motion suppose itself to be free? As a matter of fact, as everyday experience shows us, it is just in his moods that man is least stable and least lord of his own soul, and that the most diverse circumstances, physical and psychical, visible and invisible, great and small, influence and compel him. The transitoriness of appearances, which form the matter of fact as far as moods are concerned, is lacking in all firm relation, all inner construction of life; for nothing is more mobile, nothing more subject to sudden changes, than mood--nothing except the surface of the rolling sea, or a reed shaking in the wind. The life of mood is, in reality, a purely superficial life; a projection of the psychical nature on to the surface of the immediate passive states of consciousness. Life in this case attains no depth, content, or independence, but only subjective opinion, the mere semblance of independence. We shall see that Individualism so persistently offers the semblance instead of the real thing that it has come to believe that with the production of the semblance it has acquired the reality. Life can only attain a real independence when it has been widened to a realm in itself, when inner relations, antitheses, problems thus become evident; and when, through the exercise of activity upon these, an inner world is raised up, which confidently places itself in opposition to the endlessness of the soulless world and is able to take up the struggle with it. We must show unrelenting hostility to any attempt to identify mood with inner spirituality, with the soul's self-consciousness; for, really, there is no greater contrast than that between simple disposition and spiritual depth, between the man of mere sentiment, with his dependence and vacillation, and the personality rooted in an inner infinity. And so the independence and the predominance of the individual over the social environment, which Individualism asserts, are nothing more than an appearance. For what is offered in this system is far less a self-conscious life and an undisturbed pursuance of our own course than the inclination to say and do the opposite of that which is said and done by the majority of those who surround us. It is easy to see that life, as a matter of fact, always remains related to its environment and to the standard of that environment; and that what is represented here as independence is nothing but a different kind of dependence, an indirect dependence. To the endeavour of Individualism to provide a free course for the individual with his particularity it is scarcely possible to offer any opposition. Unfortunately, however, intention and realisation are different things, and Individualism is apt to assume as something simple and self-evident that which of all things is the most difficult, that is, individuality itself. Just as Socialism promises a sure advance of life as a result of the removal of external hindrances, so Individualism expects a magnificent advance of an inexhaustible individualistic culture, if only the statutes by which the community oppresses and limits the individual are annulled. What, then, is the real state of the matter? Are men so full of spiritual impulse that it is only necessary to open up a course for it? And further, does that which is peculiar in a man signify, as a matter of course, that he is an individuality with some sort of value?--and is it at once capable of forming a centre of life? How indefinite and how lacking in consistency the psychical nature of man usually is! How much that is lofty and how much that is mean, how much that is noble and how much that is vulgar, is found here! Shall this chaos display itself and be extolled as an individuality? In truth, an inner unity appertains to a genuine individuality, and the ascertaining and realisation of this are not simply a gift from nature, but a result of spiritual endeavour. To attain to a genuine individuality requires an energetic concentration of life; an overcoming of the spirit of indifference; a unifying of the multiplicity of experience; often, also, a transcending of sharp contradictions. How difficult it has been for even the most prominent individualities--men such as Luther, Kant, Goethe--to find their true selves, that is, the essence of their being, the aspect in which their strength lay! How great a problem, and what an object of the keenest conflict, their genuine individuality formed to them! How could a task of such difficulty find fulfilment, and life a unification and elevation, in superficial and fleeting mood? If in order to make men independent individuals it sufficed to declare them so, we should indeed be much further advanced than unfortunately is the case. The new life ought not to be simply autonomous, independent and individual, it should also be powerful and great. Is the mere evolution and cultivation of sentiment able to give such power and greatness to an unrestrained passivity? Of course, in its own estimation unrestrained mood can raise itself high above the whole world, and so magnify the supposed independence as to give rise to a feeling of supreme power; but again, it is only a representation of power, a semblance of power, and not a real power, that is reached. Mere mood and genuine power constitute an irreconcilable antithesis. Attention to and cultivation of sentiment may refine life; it will at the same time weaken and dissipate it. Power develops and grows only in grappling with resistances, whether they be outside or within one's own soul. Life will acquire a powerful character only where an active spirituality is acknowledged, which, drawing from its own nature, holds up standards and aims to the actual condition of reality, especially to its own soul, and undertakes to change this condition in accordance with the requirements set by these standards and aims. Æsthetic Individualism, however, as we saw, conceives of the spiritual life as chiefly receptive and contemplative; as an appropriation, a mirroring and an enjoyment of an existent reality. Thus for it the spiritual life might be closely connected with this existent reality, indeed might be one with it; but at the same time the view robs that life of the power of arousing and elevating, of independent construction and secure advance. An aristocratic character, the separation of an exoteric and an esoteric sphere, has been distinctive of an æsthetic conception of life from ancient times even until now. The fact appealed to in justification of its assumption of this character is beyond doubt: it is that, not only in art but in all spiritual creation, only few among those creating or reproducing stand high; that genuine creation always comes about in opposition to the mediocre; that if it identified itself with the interests and conditions of the majority it would be deeply degraded, indeed inwardly destroyed. But this is a contrast between spiritual creation and human circumstances, not a division of humanity according to two sets of circumstances; in truth, fewer of the really great than of those great in their own estimation have boasted of greatness. For the genuinely great have been occupied far too much by the demands of their task, and been too deeply conscious of the inadequacy of human capacity, to have been able to indulge in a reflection upon and a vain enjoyment of themselves. The infinity of the task by which, rather than by other men, they measured themselves made even the highest result appear inadequate to them. It is necessary to Individualism to represent the unmistakeable distinction between a culture that is genuinely spiritual and one that is merely human, as a difference between two classes of men; and it is only because it knows no objective restraint, no inner necessities, and can measure men only with men, that it is able to believe itself justified in looking down upon other men from its standpoint--as though the mere profession of faith in its programme at once effected an elevation of nature. The undertaking to transform life completely into something of positive value, suddenly and directly to advance to complete affirmation of life, is associated with the desire for power. So far as this is simply a desire to abandon an irresolute and narrow mode of thought, false humiliation and self-belittlement, and mere accommodation to circumstances in tasks where the beginning is difficult and calls for great effort, we may frankly admit its justification. But the matter is not so simple as it is represented in this train of thought. Ultimately no spiritual movement which would win mankind can give up its claim to a final affirmation of life. Even the most completely pessimistic systems, systems of absolute negation--as, for example, the original Buddhism--could not conquer wider areas without making that negative milder and transforming it into an affirmative. But the question is whether, after all that humanity has experienced and suffered, a quick and immediate affirmation is possible; whether the way to a final affirmation does not lead rather through an energetic negation. So long as the restriction which life felt seemed to come from outside only, and not to reach the inner recesses of the soul, as the prevailing mode of thought in Antiquity represented the case to be, the decisive rejection of all suffering, the proud armouring of the soul against all pain, could be accepted as the crown of all virtues. In face, however, of actual experience, Antiquity could not continue to hold such a conviction. For good or for evil, it was compelled to regard suffering as something more important and to occupy itself more with it, and, until Christianity opened up new paths, it fell into the danger of losing all vital energy. Whatever position one may take up with regard to the dogma and the tendencies of Christianity, the fact cannot be struck out of history that it has laid bare infinite perplexities in the soul of man in regard to his relation to the world, and at the same time has taken up suffering into the centre of life, not to perpetuate it, but to rise above it by the revealing of a world of spirit and of love. This has not made life easier, but more difficult; yet at the same time it has made it greater, deeper, and more inwardly determined. Every scheme of life which light-heartedly professes to be able to lead us quickly over suffering and to cast it off proves itself to be intolerably superficial, if not frivolous. Superficiality easily triumphs over men and becomes their first opinion; men seem to welcome first every way of thinking which makes life comfortable and presents no demands of any sort. But the problems of our existence, and the longing for genuine and not merely illusory happiness, remain, and in face of the seriousness of these problems it soon proves to be fleeting and vain to try to find satisfaction in that which is simply comfortable. The case is no different in regard to Individualism and the problem of morality. The value of an energetic opposition to laws of convention and external etiquette is beyond question; but it should not be forgotten that such a conflict has been carried on within the sphere of morality and religion from ancient times; that in every age that which was spiritually highest has forcibly withstood the efforts of men illegitimately to claim absolute validity for their statutes and tendencies. But Individualism commits the error of asserting that the mean morality which is reached at the average level of humanity constitutes the essence of morality, and in so doing excludes from itself the feeling for everything great and deep which lies within morality. With all its talk of greatness and breadth, Individualism makes life narrow, since it leads man solely to the cultivation and unfolding of his own passive states of consciousness, and permits the pleasure-seeking _ego_ to draw everything to itself and hold it fast there. Everything, however, which exists beyond his sphere it interprets as a mere "other" world, and thus declares all submission to the object for its own sake, all forgetfulness of self, all becoming more comprehensive, and all renewal through genuine love, to be only delusory. Further, in this system, in which natural impulse governs everything, the conceptions of responsibility and guilt, and with this the antithesis of good and evil, must be held to be the result of a narrowly human way of thinking, as something which, though serving no real purpose, still alarms men and overawes life. Yet through the development of a spiritual activity which places it in a more inward and free relation to reality, humanity has really advanced beyond the position in which man acted as a part of mere nature. In this, too, Christianity also marks a great advance; we have only to picture to ourselves the life-work of Augustine in order to have a clear example of the separation of a genuine morality, as the expression of a new world based upon freedom, from the attention to and cultivation of natural instincts. The greatest thinker of the Modern Age, Kant, has only established this distinction in a newer form. In this connection responsibility and guilt, as transcending nature, also become a witness of greatness; they give expression to the fact that man is an independent co-operator in the universe, and regards the world as in some sense his own; to the fact that life does not simply happen to him, but also through him. For, along with freedom and its world, the old world of given existence remains and holds us fast, not merely externally but inwardly also; life is a severe conflict between higher and lower, between freedom and destiny. With so much that is complicated and perplex, life must be regarded as in the highest degree unfinished. But just because of this it involves an incalculable tension, and even in its constraints and pains it leaves the self-preservation and the welfare of the mere subject at a level far beneath itself. When, therefore, Individualism, neglecting the movement of universal history, wishes to limit us to this mere subject, and, effacing all dividing lines, calls upon us to submit to every force which plays upon us, and to enter into the glad enjoyment of life, there is really no difference between this and advising a man, who has gone through the many and difficult experiences of life, to throw to the winds all he has thus gained, and to please himself again with the games of childhood. The position is similar with regard to the relation of the spiritual and the sensuous, as Individualism represents it. It is rightly opposed to both a monkish asceticism and a conventional, feigned, low estimate of the sensuous; it is indeed with good reason that Æsthetic Individualism defends the right of the sensuous. But to give the sensuous its right does not mean to permit it to be joined together in an undifferentiated unity with the spiritual, as though it were of equal value. Naïve ages were able to strive for a perfect balance of spiritual and sensuous; but, with the increasing depth of the life of the soul, a division has resulted which no toil and no art can simply remove again. Now, therefore, either the spiritual will be dominant over the sensuous or the sensuous over the spiritual. In Individualism, with its amalgamation of the spiritual and the sensuous, by which all claim to spiritual activity, and therefore to all independence of spiritual life, is given up, the sensuous will inevitably dominate over the spiritual. The result is simply a degeneration of the spiritual, a refined sensuousness; and it is defenceless against an intrusion of vulgar pleasure. Will any one seriously assert that we find ourselves to-day in a naïve position in relation to sense? In this respect, as in all others, the strength of Individualism lies chiefly in criticism; its refined perception makes it especially capable of apprehending clearly the errors of the traditional conceptions of life. Its influence, however, suffers from the contradiction which it involves, in that it purposes to solve the problems, to which only an independent and self-determining spiritual life is equal, with the means of sense experience. Such a spiritual life is to be attained only by transcending this sense experience. Owing to the fact that Individualism places its sole attention upon the surface of sense experience, its aims, in themselves of the highest necessity, must be distorted and grossly misrepresented. Independence, greatness, and certainty--ever hovering before life--cannot be attained by Individualism in reality, but only in picture and semblance. And it can lend to this appearance a moderate power of conviction only because, just in the same way as the other modern organisations of life, it enriches itself imperceptibly from the same traditional modes of thought and of culture, in opposition to which it stands, and of which the impelling motives are to it a sealed book. Thus, in truth, it does not offer mere and pure subjectivity, but subjectivity on the basis of a rich life of culture, which it is itself unable to produce, but without which it would lapse at once into complete emptiness. The æsthetic-individualistic scheme of life proves to be a phenomenon, accompanying a ripe, indeed an over-ripe, culture. An independent culture, with its labour and its sacrifice, it is unable to produce. To reject Æsthetic Individualism means to attack modern art and its service to life just as little as to reject Naturalism and Socialism is to estimate meanly modern natural science and present social endeavour. On the contrary, it may be said that, as Naturalism has no keener antagonist than modern natural science, so modern art, with the energy which is bestowed upon it and with its many-sided expansion of the soul, stands not in agreement with but in opposition to Æsthetic Individualism. For, indeed, a creative artist of the first rank has never subscribed to a merely æsthetic conception of life. Still, however much artistic endeavour and a merely æsthetic conception of the world may be associated by the individual, in their nature they remain differentiated, and no appreciation of art is able to justify the æsthetic conception of life, which subjects all life to a contradiction; works against life in striving to attain its own ends; neglects the development through the centuries; and, instead of the substance hoped for, offers only opinion and appearance. How can life find a support in this? II. CONSIDERATION OF THE SITUATION AS A WHOLE AND PRELIMINARIES FOR FURTHER INVESTIGATION (a) THE NATURE OF THE NEW AS A WHOLE AND ITS RELATION TO THE OLD From the description that has been given of the modern systems of life, we have seen that the Modern Age is by no means homogeneous, and that the conception "modern" has more than one meaning. Culture, in particular, has a character fundamentally different according as life finds its basis on the one hand in something external to itself, in nature, or in society, or on the other hand in the subjective states of consciousness. But that a common striving is present in spite of every difference, indeed of every antithesis, is proved by the energy with which all deny and reject the older form of culture and its transcendence of sense experience; by the vigour of the struggle against that which is regarded by the more modern systems as mere phantasy and deception, but which nevertheless continues to dominate social life. The kinship of these systems extends, beyond a common acquiescence in a negation, to a common affirmation. On all sides a thirst after a more forceful reality, and a more imposing immediacy of life, is to be found. Sense experience manifests itself throughout as fuller in content and more plastic; and so the chief point of support is found within it, and, though in different ways, the whole of life is organised from it. Still, granted that this could be effected only in opposition to the traditional conduct of life, the new is by no means desirous of remaining in a state of mere opposition. It seeks rather to unite the opposing elements to itself, to adapt them to itself, and to satisfy to the fullest extent the ideal demands of human nature. It is an attempt entirely to renew and completely to revolutionise life--a vast undertaking! Whether it has succeeded, or whether it is still engaged in bringing the attempt to a successful issue, is the problem that we had to investigate. As far as our chief question is concerned, our result was a decided negative. True, much that is great and much that may not be lost again has been achieved. The new systems of life have indeed appropriated whole groups of facts; have invigorated whole groups with new powers; have revealed new tasks of the most fruitful kind, not only in the individual but also for the whole; and have given to life dominating impulses and a powerful impetus. But all this becomes a doubtful gain, indeed it threatens to become a loss, if particular experience and achievement desire to govern the whole of life, and to impress upon it their own peculiar stamp. Not only does life become intolerably one-sided in such a case, but its wealth of experience is cut down in order to fit it into the given framework. We also saw that a serious inner inconsistency originates. For a long period this inconsistency may be concealed, but where any great energy is present in life, it must break forth with a disturbing force and become intolerable. Since the modern systems regard the whole of life as arising from relation, whether it be to the environment or to the subjective states of consciousness, they must reduce everything inward and universal to the level of a derived and secondary product; they must repudiate and oppose an original and independent spirituality, a self-conscious inner world. Such an inner spiritual experience has evolved through the whole of history, and transcends all forms of life-organisation: it is impossible to explain it away. The modern systems must themselves experience this. For they could not possibly transform the abundance of diverse appearances into an organised whole; they could not pass from universal to universal, without presupposing and employing the same transcendent and encompassing inner world, which directly they attack. At the same time, however, they give to every factor of life a position and a depth wholly inconsistent with what they are justified in doing with their own mode of thought. They cannot perform their own tasks without drawing incessantly upon another kind of reality, one richer and more substantial. In truth, they are something other, and something far more than they believe themselves to be. Does this not show, beyond possibility of refutation, that they do not fill the whole of life? The contradiction immanent in the modern systems of life is especially apparent in the fact that they are unable to banish supersensual powers and to limit life to sense experience, without attributing to sense experience more content and more value than that which experience itself justifies, and which, to be consistent, they should not overstep. The naturalistic thinker ascribes unperceived to nature, which to him can be only a co-existence of soulless elements, an inner connection and a living soul. Only thus can he revere it as a higher power, as a kind of divinity; only thus can he pass from the fact of dependence to a devotional surrender of his feelings. The socialist bases human society, with its motives mixed with triviality and passion, on an invisible community, an ideal humanity, which he clothes with the splendour of a power and dignity that transfigures the immediate appearance of society. It is only in this way that he is able to direct his whole effort upon the welfare of mankind, and to expect a pure victory of reason within its sphere. The individualist in his conception exalts the individual to a height far more lofty than is justified by the individual as he is found in experience; for his thought, the individual is far more powerful and far more prominent and noble than immediate impressions indicate. Only thus is he able, from the freedom and the development of the individual, to hope for the beginning of a new epoch. In these newer systems of life the conception of reality as a whole is also subjected to the same groundless and, likewise, false idealisation. As in these systems nothing may be acknowledged which transcends sense experience, there can be no universal which pervades and holds together the manifold. This being the case, reality must be a co-existence of single pieces; but no one will readily confess himself of this opinion. A pantheism, vague to the highest degree, is therefore seized upon as a cure-all, that man may have something which permeates and connects; but of this something, however, all more detailed description is lacking, and is carefully avoided. A conception so vague allows us at the same time to think and not to think something; at the same time to affirm and to deny. It seems to accomplish so much and to demand so little; it makes the impossible possible; and offers the most convenient asylum to all indefiniteness and confusion. It is a pity that in all this it is not a reality that surrounds us, but a mere _fata morgana_ which deceives. And a conception so vague is to displace religion and accord support to the new life! Truly, this requires a stronger faith than that with which the older religions were satisfied. The modern systems of life desire a more forceful reality; in this they set work an aim which cannot be rejected. The course they have entered upon, however, does not bring them nearer to this aim, but rather removes them further from it. Neither the self-evidence of the senses nor the oscillation of mood can ever represent genuine reality to a being who, for good or for evil, has once learned to think. Many and varied impressions may come and go in sense experience; but their abundance cannot prevent the chief conceptions, by which they are here accompanied, from receiving a character abstract and vague in the highest degree. We hear continually of the whole, of reason, of power, of evolution; but all these conceptions have no stability and little content; they are like shadows and phantoms which vanish as soon as we wish to take hold of them. So, by an irony of fate, just those modes of thought whose chief impulse was the desire for more reality dissipate, dissolve reality. We see that the spiritual life may be denied by the individual, but not driven from the work of culture. It is true that immediate experience, outer and inner, has become much more to the present age than it was to earlier ages; but it has become so only through spiritual endeavour. If, therefore, the Modern Age now turns definitely against this spiritual activity, to rob it of all independence, it destroys that which first gave it its own power. The modern systems of life have raised the standard of human existence enormously in regard to power and content; but they have done this at the cost of its spiritual concreteness. They have suppressed the life of inner spiritual experience and denied the problems of man's inner nature. They know of no grappling of man either with the infinite or with his own nature; they recognise no conflict between freedom and fate, and no inner development of the soul. And all this because their view of life as a whole takes away all depth, and transforms existence into a mere series of appearances. Thus, for anyone who regards such depth as the basis of life, and who, therefore, will not reject the experience and the result of the work of universal history, it becomes a necessity to reject and oppose the modern systems as guides of life. The more explicitly and exclusively they are presented, the more decided must his opposition be. For, what shall all the gain on the circumference of life profit man if through attention to that the centre of his life becomes empty and weak, if there emerges no content and no meaning in life itself? What is the value of all the advancing and refining of human existence if it does not bring with it a genuine spiritual culture and an inward elevation of mankind? The increasing experience and perception of such limitations in the new may lead men to give more attention again to the old. The striving to transcend mere sense experience can no longer appear as a mere flight into an "other" world of dreams, or as due to a feeble and cowardly disposition; it may now be admitted rather as a deeply rooted endeavour to reach greater depths of life. Yet such a relaxation of the opposition to the old, and such an inclination to estimate it more highly, by no means justifies us in simply taking it up again in the form in which it lies before us. For to this not merely the modern system of life, but the whole development of life and work, is opposed. The contradictions and doubts which have grown up in the course of this development are not in the least overcome by the failure of the modern systems of life. For we do not find ourselves confronted here with an "either--or," in which the invalidity of the one alternative immediately establishes the validity of the other; but both may be inadequate. So we remain surrounded by the old and the new, under powerful influences from both, but not in a position to accept either the one or the other exclusively. (b) THE CONDITION OF THE PRESENT This situation, with its juxtaposition of the new and the old, is so full of confusion and perplexity that only a feeble disposition is capable of acquiescing in it. In the old we respect or surmise a depth; but this depth does not know how to give itself a form suitable to the present, or to influence us with the means available in our own time. The new directs all our attention to the immediate present and fills us with its intuitions; but this present becomes superficial to us, and with increasing power a desire for more substance and soul in life rises up in opposition to it. The old lifted us to the proud height of a new world, but this height showed signs of becoming severed from the rest of existence, and lapsed therefore into a state of painful insecurity. The new builds up from the experience of sense, but it finds no conclusion without going beyond this experience and thus contradicting itself. The old regarded the spiritual life of man, if not man himself, as occupying the centre of all and thereby fell into the danger of a hastened conclusion and of an anthropomorphic conception of reality. The new takes from man every position by which he is especially distinguished, and ignores all connection with ultimate depths, but in so doing it overthrows more than it intends; it undermines nothing less than the possibility of all spiritual work, all science, all culture. And so we find ourselves in the midst of contradictions, drawn first in one direction, then in another: that we are at a crisis in life as a whole and in culture, that we are in state of spiritual need, cannot fail to be recognised. This crisis is made all the more acute through the peculiarity of the historical circumstances which have led up to it and the social conditions which surround us. Historically, we are under the influences of two cultures: one older, which up to the seventeenth century was in undisputed supremacy and which has asserted its authority up to the present day, especially in regard to the arrangements of social life; and one newer, which, after the influence of many varied preliminary tendencies, has arisen since that time with the energy of youth, and which, in the minds of individuals, has easily become the dominant power. The two cultures had different starting-points and followed different main courses. The old culture carried within itself the experiences of Greek life, the inner progress of which may be seen especially in the development of its philosophy. In the old culture endeavour was driven more and more beyond the world of sense to a world of thought, in which it went on from a universal to an ethical and ultimately to a religious conviction. To the thought of Greece, as she grew old, the world of sense experience sank more and more in reality and value, and life found its basis and chief realm of experience in a region transcending sense. Christianity definitely established this view of life, and made the invisible Kingdom of God the true home of man, the most immediate and the most secure that this life knows. New peoples then grew up in this way of thinking; peoples who still had their work before them; to these, the break with the world of sense came more as the imposition of an overpowering authority than as due to their own experience. This fact constituted a point of weakness in every way; but no serious complication arose so long as these peoples were not yet ripe for spiritual independence. As soon, however, as this was the case, it was inevitable that contradictions should manifest themselves, and that a newly awakened impulse should urge the movement into an entirely opposite direction. That is what really happened; the main tendency of life is now directed just as much upon the world as earlier it went beyond it; it has been transferred from the invisible to the visible, from the supernatural to the natural. We see this most clearly in the case of religion, which, as though with immanent necessity, runs through the sequence of a predominant transcendent Theism, a Panentheism, a Pantheism--gradually becoming colourless--an Agnosticism, and a Positivism. Everything supernatural disappears from thought, and life is concerned solely with sense experience. Thus, finally, we appear to have arrived at the same point as that from which the Greeks started out: the Monism of the most modern coining, for example, is hardly to be distinguished from the Hylozoism of the ancient Ionian thinkers. But is the whole result of the movement of universal history really only a deception? Has it simply brought us back again, from the false paths that we have tried, without according us any kind of positive profit whatever? We have become men of another kind; we think and feel differently; we have built up a rich culture, have transformed the world, have created a spiritual atmosphere; and we are capable of striving after infinite life and ultimate truth. Could all of this spring out of mere error? If that were so, should we not be compelled to reject the whole of this as phantasy and deception? But if the error was a means and an instrument in the attainment of truth, and if mankind in its going out from itself and in its return to itself is inwardly developed, where does the boundary between truth and error lie, and what is the meaning of the whole? So here again we lapse into uncertainty; history, to other ages a secure support, leads us into still greater doubt. Finally, we must add to this crisis of culture the onward march of the social movement, which continually increases in power; the passionate longing of ever-growing groups of men for immediate participation in culture and the joys of life. Such movements may accomplish themselves within a fixed and acknowledged sphere of culture and of life; what changes they then bring lie within this sphere; they do not place the whole in question. Thus, the democratic movements of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries left certain principles of religious conviction untouched; they left the conception of the world entirely unchanged. But the matter is quite otherwise when a movement of this kind comes in contact with a culture which is inwardly unstable and which is growing uncertain concerning its final aims. We cannot fail to recognise what a great danger of degeneration there is under such circumstances. The masses, thus struggling upward, then seek their own way of life, and in so doing they naturally concentrate their attention upon that which lies immediately before their eyes and affects their immediate well-being. From this position they will advance all the more quickly to a certain conclusion, in that they are unconcerned with the experiences and perplexities of the work of universal history, and therefore, with unclouded enthusiasm, expect complete truth and pure happiness from freer exercise of their powers and the rejection of all authority. If we wish to ignore the dangers to culture which thus grow up, we must either estimate man as he is too highly, or spiritual tasks too meanly. Until the present, an independent spiritual life, making man more comprehensive in being, raising and freeing him, has manifested itself only at individual points; in the first place in chosen individuals, from whom it has been conveyed to the common life. The spiritual world made its appearance as a power superior to the interests and the opinions of individuals and of the masses. Only in such transcendence of the merely human did it develop any characteristic content, find an inner unity, arouse respect, and lead man beyond mere nature. If all this should now become different, if man in the mass should come to feel himself to be the measure of all things, and should relate all to his perception as the centre of infinity, would not a severe contradiction arise between human enterprise and spiritual necessity, and would not the full development of this opposition threaten the whole state of culture with a violent convulsion? Ultimately the inner necessities of our being would certainly win the day against all errors of superficiality, but what severe conflicts and losses the division must cost! The consideration of all these facts reveals us under the power of different, indeed antagonistic, movements, and most especially in the midst of the great struggle for supremacy between the visible and invisible world, as the conflict between Positivism and Idealism gives expression to it. Life for us contains two movements, one of which starts from the centre and the other from the circumference; the former cannot embrace the fullness of reality, and its basis is also insecure; the latter gives no inner unity to life and lowers the standard of the whole. As each of these main tendencies again divides, movements the most varied surround us, tear us asunder, and crush our souls under their oppositions. God and reason have become uncertain to us, and the substitutes that are offered--nature, society, the individual--fail to satisfy us. The unrest and uncertainty that arise from this are not limited to a single sphere, they extend to the ultimate basal principles of life. The new mode of thought declares the chief world of the ancients to be a delusion; but we saw its own world dissolved in shadows and schemes by spiritual activity. Since the one dissolves the reality of the other, we are threatened with the loss of all definite results; our own being becomes a dark problem to us; we know neither what we are nor what we are not. The impression that we get of the condition of the present as a whole may also be represented in the following manner: the historical movement of humanity unfolds an incalculable wealth of life; this life, however, cannot reach its own highest point and cannot win a character of a spiritual kind unless it organises itself into a whole, unless it attains an inner synthesis transcending all isolated states. Such syntheses have been realised, and have led to distinctive organisations of life; but these organisations have all proved to be too insignificant and too narrow, and none has been able to overcome the rest and to embrace the whole wealth of life. So life as a whole has broken them down; and since it has thus lost all inner structure, it must inevitably fall into a state of rapid degeneration, and must threaten to lose all content and meaning. The evil effects on the development of life that are caused by this convulsion and division, and by the lack of a dominant tendency; how this condition leads to the destruction of everything simple and self-evident, and lends to an unrestrained reflection an unwarrantable power; how it robs endeavour of all its main tendencies, and permits true and untrue, good and evil, to run confusedly together, all this and much else is to-day so much and so widely discussed, and presents itself with such overpowering clearness to our vision, that its description need not detain us even for a moment. Ought we to submit to this disintegration and degradation of life as to an inevitable destiny, or is it possible to work against it and to strive after a unity transcending the division? The fact that the division makes so strong an impression on us and that we feel it to be so intolerable is at once in favour of the latter alternative. How could this experience be possible if all multiplicity did not fall within a comprehensive whole of life--if our nature were not superior to the oppositions and did not drive us compulsorily to seek a unity? The life which, in distinct contrast to decaying Antiquity, flows through our age in a powerful, ceaselessly swelling flood; the unwearied activity of this age; the excellence of its work; its passionate longing for more happiness and fullness of life, all forbids a hasty and light renunciation. It is true that there are hard contradictions, and that spiritual power is at present not equal to cope with them; but this power is not a given and fixed magnitude: it is capable of an incalculable increase. Thus we ought not to be too ready to assert that the limitations of the age are identical with the bounds of humanity, and we ought not faint-heartedly to discontinue the struggle for a unity and a meaning in life. This problem cannot be acknowledged without at the same time being admitted as the most important and the most urgent of all problems. For, on the decision concerning the whole, that concerning the spiritual character of life depends, and, as this character extends through the whole of life, every single matter will be differently decided according to the decision concerning the whole. Only purely technical and merely formal matters of work may remain unaffected by the problem, but wherever a content comes into question it will at once arise and manifest its urgency. This problem, therefore, will not suffer itself to be thrust into the background; we can neither dally with it nor turn aside from it. The individual, indeed, in his sphere of free decision and of independent action can withdraw himself from the question, but he can do so only at the price of the debasement of the quality of his life, only in that, from an independent co-operator in the building up of the ages, he becomes a dependent under-worker. (c) THE FORM OF THE PROBLEM Only a few words are now necessary to come to a more definite understanding concerning the form of the problem, which, with compelling force, rises into prominence out of all this complexity. Where the convulsion is such a fundamental and universal one as it shows itself to us to be, it is of the first importance to rise above the existing chaos, and to avoid all that which, even indirectly, would lead us back to it. Many of the aids which would-be healers of the time's evils recommend with vigour therefore need not be considered. Every attempt to make a direct compromise between the different forms of life, to appropriate eclectically this aspect from one and that aspect from another, is inadequate. The view that none of the systems of life could have won so much power over mankind without containing some kind of truth, which may not be lost, has, to be sure, a good deal of truth in it. It is first necessary, however, to attain a position from which this truth in each case may be ascertained and rightly appreciated; and we can only reach such a position in opposition to the confusion which surrounds us. A recourse to history and an adherence to a high achievement of the past promise just as little help. One thing is certain: history cannot be eliminated from our life; its highest achievements invite us to consider them again and again. But what is to be accepted by us as "high," indeed, what as "spiritual" history, is not at all definite without further consideration. It is what is esteemed in our own conviction as true and great which decides in this matter. We look at history from the position of the present and with the spirit of the present. If, therefore, as we saw, the present has fallen inwardly into a state of complete uncertainty and doubt, our consideration of history must be affected in the same way; and, of course, not its external data, but its inner spiritual content and meaning must be made uncertain. At the same time, we cannot fail to recognise that in reference to the central problem with which we are concerned, the present situation is quite peculiar, and lacks historical parallel. Sharp contrasts have always been found in human experience; and in transitional periods in history they have been felt with painful acuteness. But never did they so extend over the whole of life and so deeply affect fundamentals; never was there so much uncertainty with regard to what should be the main direction of endeavour, and the meaning of all human existence and man's relation to the universe, as in the present. Everything which to earlier ages appeared an inviolable possession has become to us a problem. What gain, therefore, in respect of the chief matter could a return to the past bring? In his investigation of the far-off ages the scholar may for a time forget the present: the attitude of mind which may result in bringing him fame for his work would be dangerous and destructive as a disposition of the whole of mankind. For we cannot treat that which is foreign to our nature as something of our own, without losing our distinctive character and degrading our own life to one of mere imitation. Further, it has become impossible to strive for the ideal by selecting from the realm of experience a single point and treating it as an archimedean point, as absolutely fixed, and shaping our life from it. Descartes attempted to do this with his "I think," and Kant with his "I ought." But it is very doubtful whether there is an archimedean point in man; whether to make such an assumption is not to over-estimate man. The experience of history shows further that that which some have taken as absolutely primary and axiomatic has been regarded by others as derivative, and has been explained in an entirely different manner. The presentationalist does not deny the actuality of thought, or the naturalistic thinker conscience; but he understands it as a subsidiary phenomenon, and therefore can find no support in it. How then can that overcome all doubt which itself calls forth serious doubt? A whole sphere can be withdrawn from the confusion and used to overcome it just as little as can a single leading point. For the uncertainty with regard to the whole extends far into every individual sphere; and such a sphere may appear, to one in one way, and to another in another. Science is not infrequently treated as though it were enthroned on high, supreme above all the struggles and the doubts of existence, and as though, from its sovereign capacity, it were able to give a secure content of truth to life. It is true that science has much in its forms and in its work which is not the subject of dispute; but that with which we are here concerned--its intrinsic value, its spiritual character, and its place in life as a whole--is by no means a matter beyond dispute. As a matter of fact, every system of life has its own assertion in reference to this problem: to each to know signifies something different and is capable of something different. Whoever decides for one of these assertions concerning the nature of knowing has at the same time made a decision concerning the systems of life. He stands not outside, but in the midst, of the struggle. The same thing holds good with regard to morality, which is often welcomed as a secure refuge from the doubts of science. For, however certain it may be that in this sphere also there is no difference of opinion in respect of many things, as, for example, concerning the goodness or badness of certain types of conduct, still, the more we come to be concerned with principles the more do problems arise. In the immediate present the fact is most unmistakably clear that in this field also the fight does not rage around the interpretation of a given and acknowledged fact, but around the fact itself. What a different purport and meaning morality has in the systems of Religion, Immanent Idealism, Naturalism, Socialism, and Individualism respectively! Finally, the attempt to give to life stability and peace by turning to the subject, to personality, as to a point removed from all perplexity, also fails. We should be the last to place a low estimate upon personality, but the conception receives its meaning and value only in its spiritual connections, and without these it soon becomes nothing more than a mere term, which blurs and blunts the great antithesis of existence. If that which is called personality exists as a merely individual point by the side of things, then we can never discover how occupation with things is capable of transforming life as a whole. If, however, in this activity we should win an inward relation to infinity and a spontaneity of life, then this admission involves a confession concerning reality as a whole which can never be justified by a theory which regards the mere individual as the starting-point. That the idea of personality implies a problem rather than a fact is indicated by the different conceptions of it which we meet in the different systems of life. In considering personality, Religion thinks of the immediate relation of the soul to God; Immanent Idealism, of the presence of the infinite at the individual point; Individualism, of the supremacy of the free subject over against the social environment. It is only by reason of the common terminology that we fail to recognise how great the differences are in the thought on the matter; how that which one regards as of value in personality is severely attacked by another. All these attempts therefore prove to be inadequate because they lead back to the state of uncertainty they were meant to overcome. To reject them, however, involves us in a certain assertion, which to some extent points out the main direction which further investigation must follow. No external compromise can help us, but only the winning of a transcendent position which is capable of giving to each factor its right without reduction; no flight into history can lead us to the truth, but only an activity of the present, not, however, of the present of the mere moment, but which embraces the work of universal history; no placing a single point or sphere into a supreme and all-dominant position can help us to overcome division, but only a conflict for a new whole; no mere turning to personality is of value before a sure basis is given to it from the whole! All leads us to this conclusion: we must strive for a new system of life. And to achieve this is not impossible, for, as we saw, a system of life is not imposed upon us by fate, but must arise from our own activity. If the systems which have previously been formed no longer satisfy, why cannot mankind evolve others? Or is it proved that the existent forms exhaust all possibilities? A too narrow conception of life was seen to be a common defect of all these systems; its richness broke through the attempted unifications, and with this they fell into irreconcilable contradiction. Should not a synthesis be possible which would do more justice to the whole extent of life; which need not deny and exclude so much; and which might also unite what at first seems absolutely contradictory? Doubtless such a synthesis would not be achieved all at once; it is inevitable that growing life should involve many discords and movements within itself. Yet this synthesis would present itself at least in a manner similar to that of the extant systems; and, since it strives after something human, it must always be mindful of its limits. Should such a universal synthesis be at all possible, it must certainly be something which is to be found and disclosed rather than something which simply is to be produced from ourselves. How could we hope to advance to it if it were not somehow involved in the depth of our being, and in our fundamental relation to the world, and if it did not already exist here in some way? It is a matter, therefore, of arousing to fuller independence and at the same time of raising inwardly something which exists within us; of recognising something new and even astonishing in the old and the supposedly self-evident, so that the truth of the universe may become our truth and give power to our life. A task of this kind is a matter of the whole soul and not merely of the understanding; it is a concern of humanity, not of the individual alone. Of that which the single individual may contribute towards the attainment of the aim it is hardly possible to think humbly enough. And yet each has to use his power to the best of his ability; if in cases of great necessity and of ill-fortune in matters of an external kind the individual considers it only right to hasten to help, how could he withdraw himself where the task is the satisfying of a spiritual need of mankind? Still less than in the former case is he able to disregard the matter as something alien and indifferent to himself. For, in the struggle for the whole, he fights at the same time for the unity of his own being, for a meaning for his own life. II THE OUTLINE OF A NEW PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE INTRODUCTORY REMARKS AND CONSIDERATIONS Our inquiry ended in a definite negation; it showed the present condition of things to be marked by severe internal conflict and in danger of dissolution from within. Many movements of thought and life cross, disturb, limit, and oppose one another. Since what to one seems a wholesome truth seems to another pernicious error, all inner community of life disappears, and with it all firmness of conviction and joy of creative activity. The more these conflicting tendencies develop the more do they crush and destroy all the traditional elements of our life; the more are the spiritual contents and goods, which the necessities of life compel us to adhere to, deprived of their basis in the depths of the soul. The confusion which prevails in the present time, with its continual change, its rapid alteration of circumstances, its power to convey the most diverse impressions, its production of ever new combinations, might even attract and entertain us if it were no more than a drama. But if the confusion is more than this, if it includes our destiny and is meant to signify the whole of our life, then, by reason of its detrimental effects upon the whole of life and upon man's inwardness, and by reason of its lack of content and soul, it must completely fail to satisfy us, and must provoke an energetic resistance. True, a condition of things so full of contradictions has also its advantages; it accords to the activity of the individual the greatest liberty and gives him a feeling of supremacy; its dissolution of everything previously regarded as fixed enables uncontrolled feeling and unstable mood to acquire power, and at one time to flatter man pleasantly, and at another to carry him away impetuously. The individual's attainment of freedom, however, gives as yet no content to life; and the feeling of supremacy is as yet not a real supremacy. These feelings and tendencies, which, within a wider whole of life, certainly serve to add to its animation, inevitably lead to a state of vagueness and emptiness when they put themselves forward as the whole. The supposed aids which are offered us are no more than mere pretences; and they become dangerous and harmful so far as they deceive us concerning the seriousness and tension of the situation. The feeling of tension was increased through the historical treatment which accompanied our inquiry. For, from the point of view of history, the present confusion shows itself to be not a temporary obscuring of an indisputable truth, or a tendency on the part of man to become feeble and weary in the appropriation of such a truth, but to involve in doubt the basal nature of truth itself: the meaning of our life as a whole was seen to have fallen into uncertainty. The systems of thought, in the light of which we have hitherto regarded reality and steered the oncoming flood of appearances, have broken up and dissolved. We have become defenceless in face of the impressions of the environment which affect us with increasing force, and impel us now in one direction, now in another. It is not simply this or that aspect in human existence, but the whole of man's nature which has become problematical in this dissolution. Formerly, the chief result of the effort of universal history had seemed to be that man rises more and more above nature and builds for himself a realm with new contents and new values. Now, the desire to be something higher than nature appears to be a bold presumption; the idea that man has a special position is ably contested, and every distinctive task is denied him. Man appears to be far too insignificant and to possess far too little freedom to be able to take up arms against the world and to obtain the mastery of it. Doubts such as these are all the more painful because they are the result of our own work; in that we toiled, investigated, and pressed forward, we undermined the foundations of our own life; our work has turned with destroying power against ourselves. With the increase of external results, life as a whole has become increasingly hollow; it has no longer an organising and governing centre. Is it to be wondered at if the finer spirits of our age are weary, disheartened, and repelled by the feeling of the disharmony of the whole of present culture, which calls for so much effort from man and yields him so little genuine happiness; speaks of truth and lives from semblance and pretence; assumes an imposing mien and utterly fails to satisfy when confronted with ultimate problems? Is not the power of attraction, which the figure of St. Francis of Assisi was recently able to acquire, an eloquent witness to the reality of the longing for more plainness and simplicity in life? And yet we cannot take up again the position occupied by an earlier age; we cannot take up a past phase unchanged. No return to the conditions of the past can bring satisfaction to the spiritual needs of the present, for a device of this kind always leads by a detour back again to the starting-point. Ultimately, it is from ourselves alone that help can come; and we can have recourse to no means other than those of the living present. First of all, our state of necessity must be admitted to the full, and the danger of a further degeneration of life in respect of its spiritual nature adequately estimated. It is always a gain to obtain a clear idea of the condition of the matter in question and to grasp the problem as a whole. For, through this, we are saved not only from illusions leading to error, but also from the authority of the mere present and from a feeling of anxiety and fear in the presence of contemporary opinion. If this age is in a state of such uncertainty; if it achieves so little for that which concerns the foundations of our spiritual existence, then neither its agreement can impress us, nor its opposition appal us; but the endeavour to make life firm again can seek confidently what is needful for it, and, with care in regard to what it shall affirm and deny, can follow the way which its own necessities point out. One fact in particular must tend to increase our confidence in this endeavour: the fact, namely, that a negative result, which proceeds from our own work, cannot be a mere negation, but must contain an affirmative element within it. From what reason could the traditional systems of life have become inadequate to man other than that they do not satisfy a demand that we ourselves make upon them, and must make upon them? It is plain that we need and seek more than we possess, and this seeking betrays that our being is wider or deeper than was assumed in those systems. Why did each of the different systems become inadequate, unless it was that life itself rejected as too narrow the standard involved in them? Why was it impossible to regard the different systems as having a certain validity, to allow them to continue side by side, and divide our existence amongst them, if not because we cannot possibly give up all claim to an inner unity? If, then, the present confusion is rooted in a wrong relation between our desire and our achievement, we need not faint-heartedly surrender ourselves to it. It is plain that there is something higher in us, which we have to arouse to life and realise to its fullest extent. We may be confident that the necessity of our being, which gave rise to the desire, will also reveal some way by which it may be satisfied. A closer consideration of the results of our inquiry leaves no doubt with regard to the direction which research has to take to accomplish its task. Diverse, fundamentally different systems passed in review before us; each came forward as the unadorned and true expression of a reality that seemed common to them all; their struggle appeared to be a conflict concerning the interpretation of this reality. It became evident, however, that the conflict is, on the contrary, in regard not to the interpretation but the fundamental nature of reality; different realities arise which are irreconcilably opposed. The systems do not originate in a common and secure basis: the basis itself is sought, and may assume various forms. The conflict therefore is much more over ultimate problems than is usually supposed; it arises primarily out of the nature of life itself, out of the inner movement which advances against the illimitable world around us, and seeks to gain the mastery over it. Our life and our world acquire a definite character only by our taking up such a movement of counteraction, the particular nature of which decides over all further moulding of life. We have seen that when we ourselves became active we took up and emphasised one of the possibilities which lie within the range of our life, and held it as supreme over all the rest; we took as the fundamental relation one of the relations of which our life is capable, as, for example, the relation to God, to the immanent reason of the universe, to nature, to society, to one's own individuality. A particular sphere of life was thus marked out; a scheme of life was yielded which appeared capable of taking up all experience into itself: according to the starting-point adopted, we sketched a distinctive outline and sought to include the whole content of human industry, man's universe of work--as we might call it--in order to lead to our own perfection. This scheme, assumed to be true, then had to show what it was capable of; a powerful effort was brought forth to overcome the resistance of a world which, even when it was grasped from within, still remained alien to our nature; and, ultimately, to form the whole into a unity. We were not, as it were, an empty vessel into which a content flows from outside, but we generated from within a movement which went onward and onward, and desired to take up everything in itself; it was a matter of radically transforming the external into an inner life. We could succeed in this only in that life self-consciously pressed forward to win new powers; formed connections, branches, and graduations; accomplished an inner construction; and with progressive self-elevation became an all-inclusive whole, which did not possess a reality by the side of itself, but itself became complete reality. Thus, life took possession of the world only in that it widened itself from within to the world, and, in the appropriation of everything alien to it, advanced from the original outline to full concreteness. According to the results of our inquiry, the chief decision in the struggle with regard to the nature of the world also depends upon our type of life. We convinced ourselves that there was no conception of life common to the different systems, but that from its starting-point, throughout its whole development, each of them shaped life differently from the others; and we saw that the differences even went as far as complete opposition. Each system of life had its own kind of experience; each formed its own instruments for the appropriation of the world; each saw of the infinite that in particular which corresponded to the main direction of its own movement. A consideration of all the facts makes it quite clear that a decision depends neither upon externals nor upon the individual, but upon the inner life and the whole; and further, that cognition does not give a solution to the problems of life, but that life itself has to reach a solution through its own organisation and construction, its own advance and creative activity. However, that which was the compelling and deciding power in the systems of the present day--the struggle for life itself--has not attained to complete recognition in them. Rather, they were too quick to begin to occupy themselves with objects, and sought to show themselves superior in this respect to their rivals; the attention to results prevented the correct appreciation and estimation of experience itself. The impossibility of coming to an agreement concerning the object then forced us back to the life-process; and we were led to the view that the object appeared different because we ourselves placed something different into it, and that we saw less the object itself than ourselves and our life in the object. Thus we were induced to place our attention chiefly on the subject; but then there was a strong tendency to leave the world outside as a special realm; and the division of work between subject and object drove us still further into uncertainty. In the midst of such confusion, we did not come to the point of making a decision; we did not attain the position from which alone an agreement is possible; at one time one system, at another time another carried us away. We failed to recognise that, however much we come into contact externally, we live spiritually in separate worlds; that, while using the same expressions, we speak different languages, and therefore cannot possibly understand one another. The gain is by no means an insignificant one, and a distinctive treatment arises, if we become clearly conscious of the fact that the shaping of the process of life itself is the chief object of conflict; that the movement is not one between world and life, but lies entirely within life; and that the essential matter is the perfecting of life itself. The recognition of this fact leads us to an immanent mode of treatment that has many advantages. The facts involved are now seen to lie deeper. The source of experiences is not so much the relation to the environment as the movement and expansion of life itself. Striving and conduct may now involve a certain concreteness; indeed, the actual experiencing of limitations and negations may lead to an elevation above them. The type of life does not seek to justify itself, to show its truth, through harmony with an external world; it is justified by its own advance, its increase in strength, and its upward growth. It is only a justification of this kind, a justification within its own realm, that can acquire a power to convince and to restore again to life that concreteness of which, in opposition to the excess of unrestrained reflection and vague feeling, it is to-day in the direst need. If we desire to arise above this state of division, and to attain a greater unity, we can achieve our aim only by the power of an inner unification of our life. Instead, therefore, of considering the internal from the point of view of the external, we must consider the external from the point of view of the internal; our knowledge must be essentially a knowledge of self, our experience an experience of self, if we would come any nearer to the attainment of the aim. Our inner nature is not given to us as something complete; it has first to be aroused to life and developed; we need to attain to a state of self-determining activity if we would reach the highest that we are capable of. From the recognition of the necessity of greater activity, and of seeking the roots of the problem at greater depths, we become aware of a new relation of thought to life. Although thought may involve certain fundamental forms, and may adhere to them in all its activity, it is life in its totality, as we understand it, which first gives to thought its more detailed form, a characteristic nature, clear aims and sure tendencies. Thought, therefore, is inseparable from the movement and the advance of life; all hope of progress rests on the hope of a further deepening of life; a revealing of new relations, and a development of new powers. It is not from mere knowledge, but only from the movement of life as a whole that we can make any advance; but the life here referred to is one that includes knowledge, and not one that takes up a position independent of knowledge, and, in opposition to it, bases itself on supposed practical needs. A treatment such as the one we have indicated has to be followed in the investigation upon which we are about to enter. The chief aim of this investigation is to reveal and to call forth life; it is not its chief aim to interpret life in conceptual terms. It is from this position, therefore, that we ask the question--which the conflict of the different systems of life forced upon us--whether a unity transcending the oppositions exists in us and can be aroused to life through our self-determining activity. It is from this position also that we ask the further question--which springs out of the struggle between the older and the newer modes of thought--whether ultimately man must give up the superior position which from early times he has adjudged himself, or whether an inner elevation is possible which gives him the power to cope with new tasks and new conditions. Whether such a treatment leads to a positive result is a question of fact; and what the answer to this is cannot be decided by a preliminary consideration, but only by the actual investigation. I. THE MAIN THESIS (a) THE ASCENT TO THE MAIN THESIS The most expeditious way of arriving at a comprehensive conception of human life is to begin with the impression which we get of it as a whole; ascertain what problems arise from this, and seek to make what headway we can in solving them until we reach a stage where the necessity of a particular assertion becomes apparent. From the outset, however, the attention will be centred chiefly upon that which differentiates human life from other forms of life existing within our knowledge; it is from a consideration of this that we shall most readily see the whole in its proper light. 1. MAN AS A BEING OF NATURE No one doubts that human life forms the highest point of development that comes within our experience; that it is in some way more than mere animal life. But what it is that is characteristic in human life as distinct from animal life, and how it is to be interpreted, is a matter of dispute. From the earliest times there has been a great diversity of opinion and conviction concerning this matter, and absolutely contradictory views have been maintained. Some thinkers have believed it possible to regard human life, in spite of its uniqueness, as essentially the same as that of the animal, and to trace back all difference to a difference in the quantity of the fundamental nature which they all possess; these thinkers did not concern themselves with presenting the higher as developed from the lower by a gradual growth. Others, on the contrary, regarded human life as something essentially new and in its very nature distinct--the beginning of another kind of world--and denied to the uttermost a derivation from lower forms; these held it to be impossible to avoid the recognition of a break between animal and human life. According to which of these positions was accepted, life obtained a fundamentally different prospect and a fundamentally different task; activity necessarily had different aims and sought different paths; the conflict around this problem affected the whole sphere of existence. As a result of the movements and experiences of the nineteenth century, this conflict has entered upon a new stage. In earlier times the decision had generally been made as a result of the immediate impression of the civilised man who was conscious of his superiority; it did not seem possible for him to lift himself far enough above his environment; the life of his soul, through its distinctive spiritual character, seemed to be as distinct from every impulse which nature exhibited as the sky is distant from the earth. Science and art, morality and religion were accepted as an original possession of man and as the power which had dominated his life from the beginning. He appeared to be a higher being; and to direct all thought and endeavour towards the strengthening of the distinctively human was regarded as the chief requirement of life. The movements which have arisen in the Modern Age have led to a radical change in our treatment of this question: this change is chiefly due to science. Modern science breaks down the authority of the immediate impression, and, in contrast with it, projects a new representation of the world. Man is no longer looked upon as occupying a position of lonely elevation, but is seen to be in the closest concatenation with nature around him, and is regarded, finally, as a mere part of its machinery. Many movements of thought tend toward this conclusion and support one another. The physical relationship which exists between man and the animals could not have been so clearly perceived, and traced with such exactitude of detail by modern science had not the fixed boundaries, which in our representation had hitherto divided the life of the human soul from that of the animals, been abolished. The new view was further supported by the results of a keener investigation into the nature of psychical life, since in this investigation the traditional conception was analysed into its individual constituents, and it was sought to explain from their combinations even the highest spiritual achievements. The result of this modification of ideas was that the inner life of man was assimilated much more closely to nature than before; the juxtaposition and the succession of occurrences gained in significance; it was recognised that relations did not hold from the beginning but are developed gradually. The forces and impulses which were operative in this development seemed to have arisen from an actual process of nature, without any co-operation of human caprice. Our psychical life appeared to be nothing more than a continuation of nature. The great divergence between the heights attained in experience, and the theories that were formulated to account for them, caused no misgivings because the idea of a gradual evolution during an indefinite period of time was sufficient to bridge the widest gulf. At the same time the conception of society allied itself with that of history and lent its support to the general tendency. Every higher aspect of life that was accepted formerly as a proof of a supernatural order now became a witness to historico-social relationship and, with its new interpretation, lost its old mysteriousness. All this was, of course, only on the assumption that human life brings nothing essentially new with it. Not the least doubt as to the validity of this assumption came to those who entered upon this train of thought. Thought was able to follow this course with the greater confidence because it went hand in hand with a change in practical life. By reason of the development of modern life, man's relations to the environment have become increasingly significant to man. Modern industry and physical science have led him from a preponderatingly contemplative relation to his environment to an active one; infinite prospects have been disclosed; the forces of nature have been pressed more and more into the service of mankind. But even in the service which they render man these forces have won a power over him, since with a determining power they keep his activity and his thought bent upon themselves. The material side of life has escaped from the mean estimation in which it had previously been held, if not in the conduct of individuals, yet at the height of spiritual culture: to the present age it has become the indispensable basis of all development. The social movement, with its summoning of the masses to complete participation in happiness and culture, supports the tendency to estimate material goods more highly. With the cessation of oppression and necessity, and with the increase of material well-being, a general advance and an inner development of life seem assured. The whole tendency which we have considered exhibits man as solely and entirely a part of nature, even though nature may be conceived of more broadly than it was formerly; and the life of the society and of the individual as being determined by natural forces and subject to natural laws. How, along with this tendency, the traditional conception of the world has been completely transformed; how biology, in the sense of natural science, has been taken as the leading point of view for the explanation of life, it is unnecessary to follow further, since our consideration of the naturalistic system of life has already given us an insight into this matter. 2. THE GROWTH OF MAN BEYOND NATURE But even after we had seen an older type of life disappear and a new one with the power of youth rise up, gain mastery over souls, and transform conditions, despite all its triumphs the new movement manifested limitations--limitations which did not arouse the criticism of the thinker, but with the compulsion of an actual power the opposition of the developing life of mankind. That which we became aware of in this connection will become even more clear to us, and impel us to seek for new aims, if we now concentrate our attention upon the process of life and follow it throughout its experiences. There cannot be the least doubt that we belong to nature: no one can fail to recognise that it penetrates deep into the life of the soul, and to a marked extent impresses its own form upon that life: the boundary therefore is not between man and nature, but within the soul of man itself. But whether nature is able to claim the whole life of the soul, or whether at some point there does not arise an insuperable opposition to such a claim, is another question. Even the most zealous champion of the claims of nature cannot deny that man achieves something distinctive: we not only belong to nature, we also have knowledge of the fact; and this knowledge is in itself sufficient to show that we are more than nature. For in knowledge, be it in the first place however meanly conceived, however much concerned with the simple representation of external occurrences, there is a kind of life other than that which is shown in the simultaneity and succession of events at the level of nature. For it is a characteristic of knowledge that in it we hold the single points present together and connect them into a chain; but how could we do that without in some way rising above the mere succession and surveying it from a transcendent point? In this survey we pass from earlier to later, from later to earlier; and at the same time we are able to hold the multiplicity together: there must be a unity of some kind ruling within us; but the mechanism of nature can never produce such a unity. A transcendence of nature therefore is already accomplished in the process of thought, even when it only represents nature, only displays it to our consciousness. Intellectual achievement, however, is by no means exhausted in the representation of nature. The development of a new scientific conception of nature sufficiently demonstrates, as we saw reason to believe, that thought has far more independence than such representation implies; that in arranging and transforming phenomena it opposes itself to the environment. For the scientific conception of nature is not offered to us immediately as something complete; it has to be won from the naïve view with toil and difficulty. In order to arrive at this scientific conception, thought must have a position antecedent to the impressions, must become conscious of itself, realise its own strength, and in its activity lead from universal to universal. The work of thought is not simply transitional: without its continuance that which has been gained would be quickly lost. Mere existence gives to nature no present reality for our thought and life. To follow the pathway to reality involves the overthrow of manifold delusions; and this necessitates such a longing for truth, and a power to gain truth, as only a thought, which transcends the sense impression, can produce. Not only is transcendence of nature demonstrated through the fact of the existence of thought with such independence, thought also carries within its being unique demands, measures the life of nature by their standard, and in that life recognises limitations not simply on this side and that, but also in the inner being of the whole. Thought cannot possibly be satisfied with the state of things as they are presented; it desires to illuminate, penetrate, and comprehend it; it asks "Whence?" and "Why?"--it insists that events must have a meaning and be rational. And from this point of view it feels the mere actuality of nature--which excites no opposition within its own sphere--to be a painful limitation and constraint, something dark and meaningless. To thought, a life which is swayed by blind natural impulse must be inadequate, indeed intolerable. Similar conflicts arise in other directions. Thought embraces a whole and demands a whole; it cannot refrain from passing a judgment upon the whole. If this treatment is applied by thought to nature, the predominant concentration of life in the single individuals and their juxtaposition will appear to be a serious defect; all the passionate strivings of the individual beings cannot deceive us concerning the inner emptiness of the whole. For in nature there is nothing that experiences the whole of this movement as a whole; makes the experience self-conscious and something of value in itself. In the movement of nature everything individual is sacrificed; and there seems to be nothing to which this sacrifice brings results which are experienced as a good. The same holds good of a culture that resolves human social relationship into a simple co-existence of individuals, regards them as battling together in the struggle for existence, and believes all progress of the whole to be dependent upon their ceaseless and pitiless conflict. Even if such a conflict leads to further external results, there is no spiritual product: the results are experienced by no one as an inner gain. The indescribable meanness of this whole culture, swayed as it is solely by the spirit of egoism; the slavish dependence to which this culture condemns man; the rigour of the individualism that rules in it, cannot possibly escape from the criticism of thought. Thought, in transforming this condition of things into an experience--that is, in making us conscious of it--at the same time makes it impossible for man to accept it as final. Since it makes us more conscious of the limitations of this state of life, thought demonstrates--and that through this very consciousness of its limitations itself--that our whole existence is not exhausted by that individualisation and detachment, but that there is a tendency of some sort within us which strives towards the unity of the whole. Problems no less complex arise in relation to time. Looked at from the point of view of nature, no inconsistency is felt in the fact that only a short span of time is granted to the life of individuals; that they come and go in most rapid succession. For here the individuals do not rise to the consideration of anything beyond their own time; their presentation and desire are exhausted in the present; they feel no longing for a continuation of life. The position is radically changed with the entrance of thought. Thought does not drift along with time: as certainly as it strives to attain truth, it must rise above time and its treatment must be timeless: a timeless validity appertains to truth, a comprehension of things "under the form of eternity" (_sub specie aeternitatis_). To a being who, in his thought, rises to comprehension of experience from the point of view of the eternal, all temporal limitation, and especially the short duration of human life, is a source of surprise and a contradiction. The rapid sequence of generations, the perpetual decay of all that impels us so forcibly to desire life and holds us so firmly to it, seem to deprive our endeavour of all its value, and give to the whole of existence a shadowy, phantom-like character. Feelings of this kind have been aroused anew in our own time. The restlessness of the activities of our civilisation and the lack of real meaning in this civilisation, which to the present age seems to constitute the whole of life, need only to be clearly and forcibly comprehended by thought, and all its bustle and all its passion cannot prevent the emergence of an acute feeling of its dream-like nature. The feeling of the lack of reality and depth in the life of nature will become the keener in proportion to the degree of independence thought evolves. For the more thought finds its own basis in itself, the more will it treat nature as an appearance, the more clearly will it recognise that sense, with all its obviousness and palpability, does not guarantee the possession of truth; for truth comes to us only through thought. In thought, therefore, the world of nature loses its immediacy and becomes a realm of appearances and phantoms. A consideration of all the facts leads us to the result that a life consisting solely of nature and intelligence involves an intolerable inconsistency: form and content are sharply separated from each other; thought is strong enough to disturb the sense of satisfaction with nature, but is too weak to construct a new world in opposition to it. Life is in a state of painful uncertainty, and man is a "Prometheus bound" in that he must needs experience all the constraint and meaninglessness of the life of nature, and must suffer therefrom an increasing pain without being able to change this state in any way. The experience of our time confirms this conclusion in no indefinite manner. Since, with regard to the material and the technical, we have attained heights never before reached, the bonds between us and our environment have increased a thousandfold, and our work has united us more closely with the world, we seem now for the first time to attain a sure hold of reality. At the same time, however, the activity of thought, and with it unrestrained reflection, have also increased immeasurably in modern life. This reflection forbids all naïve submission to the immediacy of nature; destroys all feeling of security; and comes between us and our own soul, our own volition. We are thrown back once more on to the world of sense, that we may seek in it a support and a scope for our life and effort; and from the point of view of this world the work of thought appears to be a formation of clouds. But this formation persists; draws us back again to itself and, with all its insubstantiality, proves strong enough to make us regard the physical as appearance. Our life is divided into two parts which cannot and will not coalesce. The emergence of a new life, which can do nothing but comprehend the other in thought, and which, while it is indeed capable of depreciating the other, cannot itself advance further, is seen to involve a monstrous inconsistency. If the union of nature and intelligence produces so much confusion, we are inevitably led to ask whether man does not possess in himself more than thought; whether thought is not rooted in a deeper and a more comprehensive life, from which it derives its power. It is not necessary that such a life should be manifest to us in all its completeness; we shall also be compelled to acknowledge it as a fact even if in the first place it has to struggle up in face of opposition; however, in its development it must show distinctive contents and powers which could not be the work of a subjective reflection. If there is a life and a development of this kind, it will be necessary for us to comprehend it in its various aspects and tendencies, and only when we have accomplished this may we endeavour to obtain a representation of the whole. Now, developments of life which defy limitation by the mechanism of nature and set a new kind of being in opposition to it do, in truth, appear. We recognise such developments in the processes by which life liberates itself from bondage to an individualism and its subjectivity, and afterwards attains a self-conscious inwardness. We may consider both these developments somewhat more in detail. So far as man belongs to nature, his conduct is determined solely by the impulse to self-preservation; every movement must either directly or indirectly tend to the welfare of the individual; everything may be traced back to what happens to the individuals. This by no means indicates a distinct separation of man from his environment. For even the mechanism of nature closely unites that which happens to the individual with that which happens around him; the individual can progress only in so far as he is united with others: he cannot advance his own well-being without advancing that of others. Even in a "state of nature" man takes his family, his nation, and the whole of humanity indeed, up into his interests; and as this tendency is not bounded from without, but may be immeasurably refined and extended in an indefinite number of directions, it easily comes to appear that this involves an inner deliverance from self, and that another is of value to us for his own sake. But it is no more than an appearance; for with all the external agreement the inward separation is far greater, and amounts to opposition. Within the limits of nature we can certainly concern ourselves with something which is only indirectly useful to us; but we can never be concerned with anything which is devoid of all use to ourselves; we cannot take such a direct interest in the welfare of others as will tend to our own disadvantage. If experience gives evidence of such an activity and such an interest, in so doing it demonstrates a transcendence of nature. Now, experience does give such evidence, and indeed with irresistible clearness. A witness to this is seen in the zeal with which man habitually attempts to give to his struggles for mere self-preservation a better appearance, a semblance of conduct performed out of genuine regard for the interests of others. To what purpose all this trouble to acquire such an appearance; for what reason this hypocrisy which permeates the whole of human life; and whence this appearance itself if we belong solely and entirely to nature? Further, whatever elements of semblance there may be in the general state of human life, the development of that life is by no means nothing but semblance. The social life of man is not explicable as a simple collection of individuals related to one another in different ways; but in the family, in the state, in humanity as a whole there is evolved an inner unity, a sphere of life with distinctive values and contents. And as it is of the nature of these to transcend the ends and aims of the individuals, to arouse other feelings and stimulate to other efforts, so their demands may be directly opposed to those of individual self-preservation. Man sees himself compelled to decide whether he will pursue his own welfare or that of the whole: from the necessity of a decision it is impossible to escape. However much in the majority of cases self-interest may preponderate, we cannot dispute the possibility of his acting in direct and conscious opposition to his own interest; of his subordinating and sacrificing himself; and of his doing this "not grudgingly nor of necessity," but willingly and gladly; of his feeling this subordination to be not a negation and a limitation, but an affirmation and an expansion of his life. All who strive for some essential renewal and elevation of human life base their hope and trust upon such a disposition. A renewal and an elevation of life involve far too much toil, conflict, and danger; they demand a renunciation and a sacrifice far too great for them to be commended to us by consideration of our own welfare, or for them to dispense with the necessity of counting upon an unselfish submission, a sincere sympathy, a genuine love. That which was produced with glowing passion in heroic beginnings must with a quieter warmth pervade all progress also. An inner community of minds is indispensable if the whole of culture is not to become a soulless mechanism and inwardly alien to us. It is true that the external way of regarding the facts of life often fuses together as one, lower and higher, a continuation of nature and the beginning of a new life. Language also supports this tendency, since it indicates fundamentally different psychical states with the same terms. Yet the love in which the union with others is sought only in order to advance one's own interests, and the love which finds in this union a release from the limitations of the natural _ego_, and gains a new life, remain distinct. The sympathy which feels the sufferings of others to be unpleasant because one's own complacency is disturbed by them, and which in consequence fades away and disappears as soon as the sight of the suffering comes to an end, is absolutely separated from a sympathy which extends to the soul of the other, and possessing which, in order to contribute to the relieving of the other's need, one willingly sacrifices one's own complacency: a sympathy, therefore, which extends its interest and help without limit beyond all that simply has to do with the relation to the environment. How much real love and genuine sympathy the experience of humanity shows is a question in itself. Even as possibilities of our being, as matters of thought which occupy our attention, and as tasks and problems, they give evidence of a development of our life beyond the limits of nature. This forgetfulness of self is a kind of deliverance of life from the limitations and the interests of the individual: a new relation of man to man, of person to person, thus arises and brings about an essential change, indeed a complete transformation of aims and feelings. The deliverance is effected in another direction with the emergence of a new relation to things, to the object. In the realm of nature everything that is external has a value for man only as a means and an instrument to the advancement of his own welfare; from the point of view of nature, it is impossible to understand how a thing could attract us on account of a content and a value of its own. As a matter of fact, the object does attract us and acquire a power over us in this manner, and this not merely here and there but over a wide area in movements which affect and transform the whole of life. Nothing else differentiates work--viewed spiritually--from other activity, and nothing else elevates work above other activity than this: that in work the object is inwardly present; and that man may make its moulding and extension a motive, and find this a source of joy. This seems to be something self-evident, only because it happens daily to us and around us; and we do not recognise a new type of life in it, simply because in human life it is usual to find that work only gradually attains complete independence. For it is the pressing necessity of life, the impulse to self-preservation, that first arouses us from our natural inactivity and compels us to occupy ourselves with things; and in this change from inactivity to activity it is our own advantage that we first seek. But that which to us, to commence with, was simply a means; that which was perhaps most unwillingly done, begins to attract and hold us more and more for its own sake; becomes an end in itself, and is able so to charm us that it forces the idea of utility completely into the background. It is possible for work to become so attractive, and of such a value in our estimation, that to ensure its success we can make sacrifices, and can pursue it in direct opposition to our own welfare. Only when the object is regarded and treated in this manner can it win an inner proximity to us; reveal to us its relations; develop characteristic laws; make demands upon us and call forth our power to meet them. In this way it constrains us, but the constraint is not exerted upon us from without, but proceeds from our own decision and activity. We do not feel the relation to be an oppression, but rather as a witness to our freedom; in the subordination to the object we feel that we are caught up into a life more comprehensive, clearer and richer than any we can develop from the subjective. We reach a stability and a calm in ourselves, and have within our own being a support against all vacillation and error. Work, therefore, produces relations which on the one hand unify the endeavour of the individual and fashion his life as a definite whole; and on the other, bind humanity into a creative community. In the former case we have vocation, with its demands and its limitations, it is true, but with them also its strengthening and its elevation of life; in the latter complexes of work develop in whole departments of life, in which the individuals find themselves side by side and are ultimately united into the community of an all-inclusive whole of culture. From this something is evolved which is independent not only of the choice but also of the interests of mere man: a kingdom of truth, a world of thought transcending all human subjectivity is formed. Thus we see something grow up within the human sphere which leads man beyond himself, and which is valid not simply for him but even in opposition to him. The whole matter bristles with problems: from the point of view of the life of nature this new life must appear to be an insoluble riddle; and yet it has far too much value and certitude to be banished as imaginary. Along with this detachment of life from the mere individual and the mere subjectivity of man, there is a liberation from external ties, and the development of a self-conscious spirituality. As at the level of nature life is spent in the development of relations with the environment, in action and reaction, so the form of life in man remains bound, since the life of the soul cannot dissociate itself from the experience of sense. The apparent inwardness that is evolved at this level is simply an after-effect of sensuous feelings and desires. So far as the life of nature extends, the forces and laws of the life of the soul will only refine what the external world exhibits in coarser features. The mechanism of nature also extends into human life; natural impulses of conduct, as well as association of ideas, reveal the fact that the life of the soul is in complete dependence upon natural conditions. From this point of view it seems impossible that inwardness should ever become independent. The actual experience of human life, however, shows that what is thus regarded as impossible is indisputably real. The detachment from the mere subjectivity of the _ego_ and the development of universal values, which exist over against us, can be effected only if the basis of life lies deeper than the contact with the environment. It was a work of thought which brought about the transition and gave birth to the new life; only with the help of thought did it ever become possible to form relations of a new kind and to rouse man's interest in them. The realities which arose were not of sense but conceptual, ideal. The more this movement increased in extent, the more human existence was transformed into realities of thought. Is not such a transformation evident when in ourselves we see before all else, not the sensuous being of nature, but a personality or an individuality; when in relationship with one another we form the idea of the state, and feel that we are ourselves members of the state; when we regard and value the cognate beings around us from the conception of humanity? As a matter of fact, a strong tendency in this direction runs through the whole history of humanity: sense does not disappear, but is taken up more and more into something conceptual; the world of thought gives us increasingly the point of view from which we fashion our lives. We find a progressive spiritualisation of religion, of morality, of law, of the whole life of culture. In everything life seeks a deeper basis; an inwardness wins an independence of the environment, and exercises on the environment a transforming power. The relations and the order of the realities of thought manifest a law different from that of sense presentations with their mere juxtaposition. For in the former case an inner unity, an objective relation is evolved, and the significance of the individual member is estimated according to its position in the whole. The distinctive attributes in a conception form no mere collection, and the statement of a syllogism no mere sequence; rather, in both, a comprehending act of thought grasps the manifold and arranges the separate elements according to their relationship within the whole. The course of presentation with its mere succession is by no means simply suppressed through this development of thought; it persists and governs consciousness on the surface. But the surface is not the totality of the intellectual life; through it and transcending it an activity of thought manifests itself, forms new connections, and maintains itself against all opposition. Accordingly, the power that thought exercises is fundamentally different from the physical power of association, or even of custom. In the case of thought there is an insistence upon a consistent and related whole which, even though externally insignificant, produces most powerful effects. If contradictions exist in our world of thought and condition of life, they may become intolerable, and the desire to remove them lead to the emergence of impetuous movements. If, on the other hand, we recognise that certain things which formerly seemed to be unrelated, even though they existed side by side, are really inwardly related; or if, again, an assertion involves a consequence that has not hitherto been deduced, then the demand, that these things shall be unified and this consequence developed, is capable of breaking down even the strongest opposition. In this matter an invisible is capable of more than a visible power. Of course, thought in isolation has not such a power; it acquires it only through its relation to a wider life and in championing the cause of that life. For thought is wont to defend the life of the individual, of a people, a historical situation of humanity, on the one hand from an abundance of inconsistencies, and on the other from dissolution and incompleteness, without any conflict growing out of it. Life as we experience it immediately is anything but a regular logic of the schools. In itself simple perception of the fact that an inconsistency exists, or that ideas which have been regarded as valid require further development, need not arouse the feeling of man and lead him to assert his activity; he can acquiesce, and leave the condition of things unaltered; he can voluntarily resign himself to the inconsistencies and incompleteness. But, nevertheless, there is a point at which this condition of inconsistency can be endured no longer, at which to transcend it becomes the dominant task of life. This point is reached when the confusion is no longer something external to us which we contemplate, but enters into the substance of our life, so that the inconsistency becomes a division, and an attitude of inconsequence towards it a limitation of our own being. The solving of the problem then becomes an essential part of our spiritual preservation. And in that it commands the whole energy and passion of such preservation it can do that of which thought, with its necessity, is not in itself capable, it can rouse our whole life to activity and break down even the strongest opposition. It is from the inner presence of a determining and moulding process of life that thought itself first obtains a characteristic form, and is able to impress it upon things, and so subject them to itself. A spiritual self-preservation of this kind is fundamentally different from all physical self-preservation: for the former, it is not a matter of the self asserting its place in the co-existence of things, but of becoming an independent inward nature, and of establishing a distinctive whole of life. The exact significance of spiritual self-preservation is for the present obscure enough; but whatever it may be, it derives its power from within and not from contact with the environment. How deeply these inner movements are rooted in human life the so-called historical ideas show with particular clearness. Certain thought complexes, or rather certain tendencies of life, arise, and win an overwhelming power in opposition to all narrowly human concerns. They force the activity of mankind into particular channels; they follow out their consequences with pitiless rigour; they speak to us in a tone of command, and require absolute obedience. Neither the interests of individuals nor those of whole classes prevail against them; every consideration of utility vanishes before their inner necessity. The history of religions, for example, has often shown such an astonishing consistency in the following of characteristic tendencies that their adherents could see in it the working of a divine spirit. Similarly, the Enlightenment, in its time with overpowering might seized minds and penetrated deeply into every department of life; to-day we have a similar experience in the case of the social movement. On all sides something is acknowledged as an imperative requirement, as indispensable for the spiritual persistence of man--something which cannot be brought in from outside, and which may indeed be entirely inconsistent with external conditions. Has not the conflict of inner necessities with the external circumstances that were opposed to them been a leading motive power in history, and is not all genuine progress achieved through such an opposition? Again, the great force that has been exerted in the movement of history in the detection and the elimination of contradictions can be explained only in this context. Logic, as we saw, played an unassuming rôle in this matter, and the indolence of man always inclined to easy accommodation and compromise. It was the increased vital energy, the adoption of a particular issue as the main issue, that made movements, which had long existed in a state of harmony and peace, irreconcilable enemies, and drove them to a life-and-death struggle. With a lower level of spiritual activity the Middle Ages unsuspiciously united a religion of ecclesiastical organisation with a religion of personal feeling and disposition; and it did not feel that there was an inconsistency in their union so much as that one was the completion of the other. As soon and so far, however, as in the Modern Age spirituality won more independence and more self-consciousness, and felt itself to be the centre of the whole, it was inevitable that a dependence upon an external order should be experienced only as an intolerable oppression; and the division of life between the one and the other became an impossibility. It was necessary only that a powerful and passionate personality, like that of Luther, should take up the problem, and make it the sole object of his effort, and the hour of revolution had come. How meanly they think of the controlling forces of history who would trace back such changes to the selfishness or the vanity of individuals! Looked at from our point of view, the inner changes within the life of universal history often appear to be simplifications--cases of energetic concentration on the essential, and of fundamental separation of the subsidiary. The truly great carry on a ceaseless conflict against the chaotic confusion which the life of the majority is wont to produce ever anew--a condition in which matters of the first importance are confused with those that are subsidiary; all inner gradation is lacking; and the great is treated as something insignificant, and the insignificant as something great. There is a struggle to secure a clear differentiation and gradation; to establish a centre, and to transform life into a genuinely self-conscious life. Have not all the principal revivals of religion, of morality, of education, been simplifications? These movements show life in a particular form; something emerges in it which, unconcerned with the weal and the woe of man, follows its own course and makes absolute demands; and, more than anything else, disturbs and destroys his calmness and complacency. How heavily Germany has had to pay for the movement of the Reformation by being thrown back politically, nationally, and economically! It is inevitable that all movements of an ideal kind, the social movement of the present included, should appear from the point of view of natural well-being, troublesome and pernicious disturbances. They can be regarded as something higher only when we acknowledge that life does not consist entirely in external relations, or in the endeavour to attain harmony with the environment, but that an inner task grows out of life itself, and first gives to human existence a value and a dignity. In the development of a self-consciousness and of a movement of life itself, we rise above the motive of utility, by which nature is swayed. It is a moral element in the widest sense; it is the consciousness of something objectively necessary, unconditionally transcending the ends of the narrowly human, that first gives to convictions axiomatic certainty and to conduct the right energy. This moral element attains to a more independent display in the moral self-judgment of man that is called "conscience." True, this conception has been the subject of much error and has been much over-estimated. Not only has the moral judgment less power over man than is frequently assumed, but that which is called conscience is often--generally, in fact--nothing more than a by-product of custom and of accommodation in human social life. In this case the inner life has still attained no independence, but remains dependent upon the environment; and the disposition thus produced is nothing more than a feeling of aversion to the results of conduct, nothing more nor less than concealed fear of punishment--a state of the soul which the most prominent thinkers have, with good reason, stigmatised as a manifestation of weakness and cowardice. But, however much that is foreign to it and of an inferior order may have been associated with conscience, nevertheless, judging conduct, as it does, according to the inward disposition and not according to consequences, conscience is a unique, original phenomenon. To whatever extent conscience, as we know it, may have had its source in something external, and in however great a degree it may depend upon changing circumstances, it is nevertheless impossible to explain the fundamental fact by reference to the environment. For, if our life depended solely and entirely upon the environment and no movement arose from within, all influence from without could do nothing but subdue us by sheer force; there could never be an independent recognition and acceptance of the command addressed to us; never the feeling of an inner responsibility for conduct; never an independent extension of the original precept; and yet all these phenomena are in fact found in human experience. True, we are affected very greatly by external forces; but that they may achieve what they do a movement from within must meet them, take them up, and carry them further. The enormous amount of pretence which flourishes amongst us with regard to matters of morality, and which so easily obscures our vision for the chief matter, would be unintelligible if the spiritual did not manifest some kind of independence in the moral judgment. Unless there is such a development towards independence, the moral judgment must also, as far as its content is concerned, be determined by the condition of the social environment: it could never follow a course of its own; never give rise to anything new; never enter into inner conflict with the environment. Yet, as a matter of fact, we find these tendencies in abundance. The individual is able, in the light of his own moral conviction, to approve and value something which all around him reject; and conversely, to condemn and reject something which all around him esteem and respect; and this he is able to do under the compulsion of inner necessity, and not simply out of a love of vain paradox. This opposition of individuals to the condition of things in the social environment has been the main source of all inner progress in matters of morality. For it is in matters of morality, in particular, that that which hitherto had given no offence has become intolerable to individuals; and that new and imperative demands such as had never been made before have emerged with constraining power. Or did the idea of humanity, the abolition of slavery, and the commandment to love one's enemies, for example, arise in some other way? If in respect of such matters as these that which on its first appearance was paradoxical quickly came to be regarded as self-evident, what else was operative in bringing about this result than an inner necessity, from which, when once we become conscious of it, we can never again escape? Suitable conditions in the social environment were, of course, also necessary for the fulfilment and the extension of those moral requirements; but they could never have originated from the environment, or have derived from it their unconditional nature, their certainty of victory, and their indifference to all external consequences: qualities without which they could not have effected what they have. In the life of the individual the moral judgment manifests its power in affirmation as well as in negation. If it approves one's disposition and conduct, it gives to life a greater stability and joyfulness; if it condemns, then existence is paralysed by division. In this experience it is implicitly assumed that the distinction of good and evil has its source neither in the preferences of the human individual nor in those of the human society; but that in this antithesis a new order that is present only to the inner nature is revealed. We see, therefore, that in contrast with its attachment to the external, life attains an independent inwardness which we are compelled to acknowledge, however mysterious the inward may at present be to us, and however little we may be able to define its nature more closely. Earlier in our investigation we were led to recognise a movement of life from the narrowness of the individual to the comprehensiveness of the whole. It is obvious that our two results are closely connected with each other and refer to each other. For we attain a unity, as contrasted with the juxtaposition of the elements of the visible world, only through a powerful activity from within; but this activity cannot emerge unless life forms a whole in contrast with its dissipation into disconnected points. These two developments are obviously sides of the same life--a life which bears a totally different character from that of the psychical life which forms a mere continuation of nature. Within the soul itself there is a distinction between two levels, of which that other than nature may in agreement with established usage be called "spiritual," however little may be implied by this expression; however mysterious, indeed, the conception may for the present be. In contrast with the old, this new level is unmistakably at a disadvantage. The old seems to include the whole range of human existence; the new, on the other hand, must toilsomely struggle for a place of some kind. Nevertheless, in spite of its external insignificance, the spiritual gives birth to a movement of no mean character; in face of all opposition it seeks to form a centre of life of its own, and to make this the chief basis of effort; it is to be found thus in the life of mankind as revealed in history, and also in that of the individual. Within the conception of culture we comprehend all achievements distinctive of man. But what is culture if it does not assure to man a position independent of nature; if it does not set up ideals which can arise only out of a new life? Ultimately the chief motive-power of culture is the longing of mankind for a new kind of being in contrast to that of nature. Culture necessarily becomes superficial and empty when it directs human striving to external objects and does not lead through all occupation with externals to its own development and to the advance of its own being. The work of culture is genuine and powerful only when man seeks in it his own true and ultimate self. How every development of the spiritual advances towards the attainment of a new unity of life may be more clearly seen in the case of the individual, in relation to whom we meet with the conceptions of personality and of spiritual individuality. However much confusion there may be in the ordinary use of these conceptions, the conception of personality merits the estimation in which it is held only if it is regarded as the bearer of a new life in contrast to that of nature, and not simply as something added to nature. The development is more evident with the conception of spiritual individuality. For such an individuality is by no means something given to a man in the natural characteristics which he brings with him into life. Within this particular nature, as a rule, many things, significant and insignificant--things which are original in himself and things which are due to external influence--are chaotically confused; and, as it lacks an inner unity and an adjustment of the different aspects, one aspect may directly contradict another. If the individual is no more than these natural characteristics, he can become active as a whole only through a summation of the multiplicity, and not through a dominating and organising unity. With the transition to the new kind of life a desire for such a unity awakens and gives rise to a definitely characteristic movement. A unity must be found within us in some manner; it must be included in the range of possibilities open to us. But in order to obtain supremacy it must be grasped, be appropriated and strengthened by our self-activity. We ourselves therefore become a task in the treatment of which it is possible to fall into serious error. Looked at from this point of view our spiritual nature is seen to be the product of our own activity. We cannot fail to recognise a peculiar interweaving of freedom and fate in our existence. The inner history of all creative minds shows how great may be the inspiration and the tension which arise in this striving to realise a spiritual nature; an inspiration and a tension which are evident even when the main direction for the realisation of this nature has been easily found and only the more detailed form has to be sought: they are still more apparent when the main direction itself is in question. How toilsome it has often been for a man to come to that in which his strength lay, and with the aid of reflection to attain a state of secure creative activity; to unite all forces to a common achievement; and to make a distinct advance beyond the traditional position of the spiritual life! Life was by no means a completed gift and something to be easily enjoyed, even in the case of natures lavishly equipped by destiny--as, for example, Goethe: it was in a struggle for itself that it won a complete independence and a proud superiority over everything external. This struggle was being fought in all his cares, in all thought for natural and social well-being, all utilitarian considerations in regard to the externals of life. It gave to the man amid all his doubts and agitations the certainty of being something unique, something indispensable; at the same time it lifted him into an invisible world, and enabled him to understand his own life as an end complete in itself. How different this is from the struggle for existence, for the preservation of physical life; and how clearly a new life, another kind of reality, arises in these movements! The new life does not by any means appear only at the heights of spiritual creation; rather it would be true to say that the life which is present in the whole of human existence becomes most easily discernible at these heights. The movement towards a spiritual individuality may be begun in the most simple conditions; and it is not to be estimated according to the degree of its achievement. For, where world stands against world, everything depends upon the decision with regard to the fundamental principle, and this may be made at any point. The mere possibility of making such a decision testifies here irrefutably to a reality: the reality of a new order of things. 3. THE INNER CONTRADICTION OF THE NEW LIFE The conclusion we are led to is that a new life distinct from that of nature arises in our soul. With a great diversity of manifestations, it surrounds us with an indisputable actuality; no one can fail to recognise that something of importance, something distinctive comes to pass in us. But as soon as we try to comprehend these manifestations as a whole, and to ascertain the meaning of the whole, a difficult problem arises. It is comparatively easy, however, to come to an understanding as to the negative aspect of the matter. It is obvious that the new life is not an embellishment or a continuation of nature; it would bring with it something essentially new. Again, it is obvious that it is not a product of a single psychical function, such as thought or feeling; it would form a whole transcending the psychical functions, and from this whole determine the form of each function distinctively. But what is this new reality and this whole to which the course of the movement trends? The more we reflect over the question the more strongly we feel that it is a direction rather than a conclusion that is offered to us in this matter; something higher, something inward and so on is to evolve, but what is embedded in the inward and in what this supremacy is based is at present not apparent. Further, every attempt at a more definite orientation at once reveals to us a wide gulf, indeed a harsh contradiction, between the content of that which is sought and the form of existence from which it is sought. The chief impulse of the spiritual life is that it wills to liberate us from the merely human; to give us a share in the life of the whole; to remove us from a happening between things to their fundamental happening. Seen from within, the history of humanity is primarily an increasing deliverance of life from bondage to the narrowly human, an emergence of something more than human, and an attempt to shape our life from the point of view of this: it is an increasing conflict of man with himself. At the same time, however, it is a taking up of the whole into himself; since man in all his planning and striving is related to the whole, it seems to him that his own nature must remain alien to himself if the whole does not disclose itself to him and allow him to participate in a life which has its source in ultimate depths; if in the life of the whole he does not find a purer and a more genuine self. The idea of truth impels us beyond all the limitations to which a particular being is subject, beyond all communication of things from without. There must be nothing between us and reality; the inner life of reality must become ours, and thus our life will emerge for the first time from a shadowy existence to full reality, from the narrowness of the mere individual to the comprehensiveness of infinity. The idea of the good makes similar demands. To the spiritual movement, the advancement of merely human well-being is far too mean an aim. This movement makes us clearly conscious of the triviality of mere happiness; of the oppressive and destructive effect of a continual reference to our own subjectivity; and of the unworthiness of treating love and justice as only means to our welfare. It becomes at the same time an urgent duty to break through the narrow limitations of the natural ego, and to conduct our life from the point of view of objective truth and comprehensiveness, and so for the first time to become capable of genuine love and justice. It is true that these aims are lofty, and, we feel we have the right to say, aims that may not be rejected. But it is not at all evident how they are to be reached from the position of man; it is not at all clear how man shall press forward from mere existence to the creative basis, from the part to the whole: for his particularity and his mere existence hold him fixed. But in his existence nature preponderates by far: individual tendencies of a new order do appear; but how could they in their state of isolation and weakness bring about a revolution and place life on a new foundation? As a matter of fact, we usually find these impulses to a new life drawn into the service of natural and social self-preservation, and, over against the passionate struggle for existence, condemned to complete impotence and shadowiness. The whole life of culture makes us clearly conscious of this perplexity. The essence of that life consists in this, and by this alone can it be held as true--that it wills to build up a new, spiritual reality within the sphere of humanity. But to what extent is such a reality recognisable on the basis of experience? In and with all civilisation man continues obstinately bent upon the attainment of his own ends: the struggle for material goods exerts an immense influence upon and controls men; an indescribable amount of pretence and hypocrisy accompanies and surrounds the spiritual movement. Between that which man really strives for, and that which he asserts that he is striving for, and which perhaps it is his intention to strive for, there is great divergence. Falsehood like this is not limited to individuals; our whole culture is one monstrous deception in so far as it promises to develop humanity to something new and higher, while in reality the new is occupied mostly with polishing up the old, the life of nature, to give it a glittering appearance. It is on this account that in times of criticism and introspection so much opposition has been offered to culture; that such passionate scorn has been aroused against the hypocrisy and pretence which pervades its whole life. But although we are fully aware of its deplorable state, we do not break its power over us. It is perhaps the most bitter of all our experiences that we are held fast under the spell of a condition of things concerning the vanity and futility of which no one with any insight has the slightest doubt. However, in moralising over this state of things we ought to guard ourselves from becoming too passionate. For it is a question whether it could be otherwise; whether the fault is in any way in our will, and is not solely and entirely in the nature of our being itself. For it is certainly a contradiction throughout that man, who is an individual being existing by the side of others, and whose life belongs to the domain of experience, should set himself in a universal life transcending all particularity and live from the bases of reality. How can that which is primarily a part of a given world build up a new world? Ideas like those of the true and the good are, from this point of view, simply delusions, manifest impossibilities; man may trouble and weary himself with them, but all his endeavour only leads him into a state of greater confusion. These ideas are to him for ever an "other" world; he may expand himself and develop, but he does not come a step nearer by doing so. It is true that in striving for truth, man advances beyond sense presentation to the activity of thought; but the thoughts always remain his--thoughts of mere man. However much he may widen his own sphere as a consequence of his reflection upon them, he does not go beyond it. In history also the striving for a scientific comprehension of truth appears to be a vain struggle; the passing through different phases has not brought it nearer its aim so much as, with ever-increasing clearness, it has manifested the impossibility of attaining what is sought. The ancient conception of truth, with its belief in a relationship of the being of man with the whole; with it assumption of an easy transference of life from one to the other; with its view of truth as an agreement of thought with an external reality, has through the course of life become untenable; it has been rejected through the influence of the tendency of our being to become more inward. For this tendency necessarily led to a detachment from the environment of the world, and to a separation of the two sides of our experience. We became clearly conscious of this separation at the beginning of the Modern Age. We saw that, if we were not to give up all claim to truth, only one course remained possible: to make a division within the human domain, a division between a merely human and something else which might be regarded as the presence of universal and genuine life in man. And so Spinoza distinguished an objective thought from the springs of the emotions; Kant distinguished practical reason from the theoretical which is bound up with the limitations of human nature; and Hegel elevated the thought-process, which manifests itself in the work of universal history, far above the opinions and the wishes of individuals. Each of these championed a distinctive conception of truth and a characteristic form of the spiritual life; but with regard to all attempts we come to doubt whether even that proclaimed as more than human is not still within the domain of man; whether in every case we do not wrongly declare the last point which we reach to be the deepest basis of reality. The position is somewhat similar with regard to the idea of the good. In the attempts to which we have referred, it passed current as a deliverance from all selfish happiness, which was felt to be intolerably narrow. A new, purer, and more comprehensive life is to proceed from the winning of a new position. Now, there are many different conceptions of happiness, and higher levels are distinguished plainly from lower. But the highest level does not transcend human desire; man must bring all into relation with his own well-being. He cannot in opposition to his own well-being adopt something alien as an end in itself; his activity can be aroused for nothing which has not some value for himself. In this case also, therefore, the bounds of his life hold him fast, and, unless these bounds are transcended, the good cannot be distinguished from the useful. Of this a clear confirmation is furnished by the experiences of religions. In their origin they wished to free man from himself and to set him in a new life--whether they promised tranquillity in a surrender to the infinite whole or won a positive content by the revelation of a kingdom of divine love. How soon the succession of events has led back to a quest of happiness! How soon has it become evident that the religions have far less revealed a new world to the majority of mankind than chained them more firmly to the old; and that they easily arouse to greater power the raw instinct of life, which they desired to overcome! We seem to be shut in on all sides: it seems a monstrous inconsistency to wish to build up from man a world transcending man; to remove him into a world other than that of a man. A world of this kind is, however, essential to the spiritual life; with its abandonment that life is only a delusion; and the less intelligent people who reject as a meaningless folly all striving for the true and the good seem to be right. * * * * * Why do we refuse to adopt this view, and to discontinue an endeavour the aims of which appear to be unattainable? In the first place, because the movement cannot be given up so easily as those critics imagine who adopt this view; for it does not consist simply of explanations and theories that might be completely refuted by rigorous argument, but a certain reality has been evolved, desires aroused, forces called into life, and movements inaugurated. Even if they halt in their course they were something; they do not disappear therefore before the attacks of Scepticism; further, however mean their results may be, they prove to be strong enough to indicate the limitations in the life of nature, and to make it inadequate for us. The matter is the more mysterious in that the striving is anything but a product of the natural desire for happiness. For the movement disturbs all our complacency; it leads man to be discontented with that which hitherto had fully satisfied him; it surrounds him with fixed organisations; desires from him much labour and sacrifice, and makes existence, not easier, but more difficult for him. Delusions are wont to deceive us by pleasing pictures; to attract us with the promise of pleasure and enjoyment. How does a delusion, that imposes so much toil and trouble upon us, win so much power over us? There is another matter to be considered in this connection. A complete renunciation can appear possible only because it is not clearly perceived how much which we cannot give up and which ultimately we have no desire to give up is involved in it. Only a want of clearness of thought, and still more a weakness of character, could wish to retain in the particular case what was given up as a whole; could affirm as effect what it denied as cause. As soon as this course is recognised to be impossible, it becomes evident that with the rejection of the spiritual life everything is abandoned which gives to our life dignity, greatness, and inner unity, and joins us to others with an inward bond. Realities such as love and honour, truth and right, must be regarded as empty forms; and even science must come to an end, because there is no longer any inner unity of work, no objective necessity. Such considerations again show us that a complete negation is impossible; and it seems that we must remain for ever in painful suspense between an unattainable affirmation and an impossible negation. We might be able to endure this condition of affairs if it concerned a problem which arose in reference to something of little importance to our life, something that we could relegate to the background, and simply permit to lie there, without compromising our life. But our problem lies at the centre of life; is, in fact, itself the centre. To be left in suspense here means to condemn life as a whole to a state of paralysis, to surrender it to complete dissolution. Against this everyone who has any vital energy in him will contend; with his whole might he will seek to escape from a condition so intolerable; he will not hold back from making a bold venture, mindful of the words of Goethe, "Necessity is the best counsellor." In seeking a way out of the contradiction, it is essentially necessary not to forget the source of the contradiction. We saw that source to be in the fact that the spiritual life would set up a new world, and at the same time remains bound up with the merely human and presents itself as an endeavour of mere man. To the spiritual life a universal character is indispensable; of this claim nothing can be abated. There must therefore be a change as regards man; it must be that more comes to pass in him than the first impression makes evident. It must be that the spiritual within him, which seems at first to be his own product, is a participation in wider connections; the spiritual must be operative in man, but not originate out of the merely human. It is true that this makes a reversal of the traditional position necessary, and not merely of its representations; and such a reversal provokes serious doubt. Modern science, however, has taught us sufficiently often that the first appearance of anything need not be the ultimate one; that there may be cogent reasons for regarding something that at first seems based in itself as the proof of something existing beyond. Thus, modern natural science has transformed the world of sense into a world present only to the eyes of research. Certainly, science accomplishes these changes within the bounds of experience: on the contrary, in regard to our problem, in which the fundamental form of reality is in question, it is indispensable that we should transcend these bounds; without a change in respect of the whole, and hence without a resort to metaphysics, it is not possible to accomplish our purpose. It is quite clear that the tendency of our time is opposed to appeals to metaphysics: yet it is a question how far this attitude is justified. So far as metaphysics assumes the same form as in the past--that of conceptual speculation of a thought hovering unrestrained over the existing world--then it is rightly opposed. But the attitude is unjustifiable which assumes that with the overthrow of the older metaphysics all metaphysics may be ignored. For a metaphysic can proceed also from the whole life, and need not be a product of mere thought. The implication therefore is this, that the centre of life itself must be changed, and thus a revolution of the previous condition accomplished; that an actuality already operative in life is to be given its rightful place and brought to its full effect. The business of metaphysics, therefore, is not to add something in thought to a reality which lies before us, or to weave such a reality into a texture of conceptions; but to seek to grasp reality in itself, and to rouse it to life in its entire depth for ourselves. Every change of thought then rests on a change of life. Such a metaphysic may appeal to the saying of Hebbel, "Only fools will banish metaphysic from the drama; it makes a great difference, however, whether life evolves out of metaphysic or metaphysic out of life." Even if our age rejects a metaphysic of this kind also, if it surrenders itself without resistance to the inconsistencies of the world of sense, this would be the last thing which could deter us from an appeal to metaphysic. For the inner cleavages and the superficiality of the life of our time--and we saw reason to believe that these are facts--stand in the closest relation to the rejection of metaphysics: this rejection has made the age inwardly insignificant. If an indirect proof of the necessity of a revolutionary transformation of life, and at the same time of a metaphysic may be offered, our age furnishes one quite sufficient in its own experiences; its opposition can be only a recommendation of an appeal to metaphysic. The one main thesis which it is essentially necessary to establish is analysed in sufficient detail throughout the whole course of our investigation; it simply sums up that which has already been advanced point by point. The intolerable contradiction arises, as we saw, from this, that the spiritual life with its new world should be a product of mere man, and that that life should remain within man and at the same time lead in its essence beyond him. This contradiction cannot be overcome otherwise than by our recognising and acknowledging in the spiritual life a universal life, which transcends man, is shared by him, and raises him to itself. That this transition brings with it a change in the appearance of life and of the world as a whole, and that as a result our striving is brought under entirely different conditions, needs more detailed presentation. (b) THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MAIN THESIS 1. The Main Thesis and the Possibility of a New System of Life (a) _The Development of the Spiritual Life to Independence_ Our investigation reached its highest point in the demand that the spiritual life should become independent of man. Man cannot produce a spiritual life of his own capacity: a spiritual world must impart itself to him and raise him to itself. It must be shown that this does not by any means signify only a change of name, a new labelling of an old possession, but implies far-reaching changes, and indeed involves a complete reversal of the first condition. At the same time the course of the investigation must establish that this transition to the spiritual life is not something subsequently inferred or offered simply for the explanation of an otherwise unintelligible fact, but that it would overcome a false appearance, and help a misunderstood truth to its right. The fact that is affirmed should become an immediate experience of one's own and should advance life rather than knowledge. Only the whole investigation and not an introductory consideration can furnish a proof of our contention. There are within our own soul distinctive movements tending in directions different from those of nature. We recognised that there is a life which proceeds from some kind of comprehensive whole; a life which transcends the opposition of subject and object, and evolves a self-consciousness in contrast with the relation to externals. All these features present a quite different appearance, form a more coherent whole, and will occupy a more definite position in the representation of reality, if in them an independent life superior to mere man is recognised and acknowledged. The principal reason for this is that it is only by means of that deliverance from the simply human that the new life is able to express its own nature clearly and to realise as part of its own nature what otherwise seemed to have its source in something external. The individual traits that we become aware of are the revelation of a universal life, if they are no longer regarded as limited by the idiosyncrasies of the human. With this acknowledgment they can gain ascendancy over man and prove their power upon him. We saw that it is characteristic of the spiritual life that it is lived from the whole; the elements are fashioned by a comprehensive unity; the different complexes and tendencies which arise in this life strive ultimately towards a single aim. We saw also that it was absolutely impossible that the tendency to universality should be originated by man, whose chief movement is towards differentiation and division; and, further, that it should be realised by him in face of the opposition of nature, which extends to the immeasurable in matters great and small. The unity that is necessary for this cannot arise out of the many as an ultimate result; it must be original and be operative from the beginning. We may postulate such a unity only if the spiritual life is itself a universal life transcending that of the isolated individuals; if it bears in itself a unity which takes the multiplicity up into itself. And so the whole from an abstract conception is for the first time raised to a living reality; and only on thus becoming a reality can it exercise a distinctive power upon individuals and in contrast to individuals; and inwardly unite and essentially raise them. Only in this way is it conceivable that another kind of activity having its source within the soul may exert itself in opposition to the mechanism of nature and transcend it; and that selfishness and spiritual weakness may in some way be overcome. Man, so far as he shares in the spiritual life, is more than a mere individual; a universal life becomes his own and works within him as a power of his life. Further, the taking up of the object into the life-process, the transcendence of the antithesis of subject and object, is characteristic of the spiritual life. But this remained an inner contradiction, a complete impossibility so long as the spiritual life was regarded as an occurrence in a being who, with a closed nature, stands over against things as though they were alien; and who can take up nothing into himself without accommodating it to his own particular nature. The contradiction is removed only when the spiritual becomes independent; for then both sides of the antithesis come to belong to each other and are related to each other in a single life; and a life transcending the division may develop, a life that produces the antithesis from within, lives in the different sides and seeks in them its own perfection. The life-process is now seen to be a movement that is neither from object to subject, nor from subject to object; neither the subject's attainment of content from the object, nor the object's becoming controlled by the subject, but an advance of a self-conscious life in and through the antithesis. Life, by this movement, ceases to be a single, thin thread; it wins breadth; it expands to an inner universality. At the same time a depth is manifested in that a persistent and comprehensive activity emerges which lives in the antithesis. In this manner life first becomes a life in a spiritual sense, a self-conscious and self-determining life, a self-consciousness. That this change is possible and brings with it a new type of life is shown with complete clearness by experience in the separate departments of the spiritual life. Thus, artistic creation at its highest is neither the production of the truest possible copy of an external object, the artist painfully abstaining from all subjective addition; nor a presentation of subjective situations and moods, the artist endeavouring to the utmost to avoid everything objective; but a transcendence of the opposition of soulless objectivity and empty subjectivity by an art that is sovereign, autonomous, and with a character of its own; the creative activity belonging to which gives life from the soul to the object, and moulds the soul by means of the object. This kind of artistic creation is directed primarily towards an inner truth, not towards a truth that is produced by the object, but one that arises only in the contact of the object with the soul. It is manifest that creation is effected here not as an interaction between subject and object, but above and through this antithesis; it is only by transcending the antithesis that the artist can give himself in his work, lend to it a soul, place an infinity within it. In this respect conduct manifests a character similar to that of creation. Conduct would never attain an inner stability and enter upon an independent course, if it could not raise itself above the opposition of a submission to orders that are forced upon it from without, and a mere play of subjective inclination; if it were not able to become the self-assertion and self-development of a life transcending that opposition. At this point also the acknowledgment of an independent spiritual life teaches us to comprehend as a whole that which, in a many-sided development, the different departments of life show to be real. The obscurity in which the conception of inwardness was hitherto involved begins to disappear when the spiritual life is no longer regarded as supplementary but as an independent life. It cannot be denied that, within humanity, there is an endeavour to develop the life of the soul to a state of self-determining activity and, at the same time, to free that life from the bondage to sense in which it remains at the level of nature. Yet, definite affirmation that shall correspond to the negation of sense has been lacking; it has not been clear how inwardness might find content and characteristic forms; there has been no advance from the subjective to the substantial. But since a universal activity is operative within the multiplicity and through the division, and since it sets itself in the division and from this returns to itself, a self-conscious inwardness becomes conceivable which has a life of its own with new experiences. Since within this life "to receive" presupposes the comprehending power and the self-determining activity of a vital whole, something other than sense is able to evolve and through all the persistence of sense to become the chief matter. The spiritual life is not directed to a reality adjacent to it, but evolves a reality out of itself; or rather, it evolves as a reality, a kingdom, a world; and so it advances from vague outline to more complete development; it struggles for itself, for its own perfection, not for anything external. It is directly implied in the above conception that the spiritual life is something different from single psychical functions, such as cognition, volition, and the like; and that man, so far as he shares in it, is more than one such function or a sum of such functions. For these functions come under the antithesis of subject and object, while the spiritual life transcends it. It is also clear that the spiritual life does not change this or that in a life which already exists, or add this or that to it, but that it introduces a new kind of life--a life by which man is distinguished clearly from everything inferior to him. If the spiritual life is an evolution of a reality in the life-process, then the question arises as to how this reality is related to the world that immediate experience shows us to be surrounded by. As surely as man in his subjective reflection is able to free himself from the world and to place himself in opposition to it, so there can be no doubt that the spiritual life belongs to the permanent reality of the world and, as we see it, grows up out of its movement. The transition to an independent inwardness is not something which happens externally to the world but within it: no special sphere, separate from all the rest, is originated; but reality itself evolves an inner life: it is the world itself that reveals a spiritual depth, or, as we might say, a soul. We are not justified in doubting and attacking this view simply because the spiritual life meets us only in man, and thus, in contrast with the infinity of nature, is in its external manifestation so insignificant. For something essentially new appears in it, something that involves another order of things: the fact that little falls within our range of vision is in this connection not at all relevant. If anyone is disturbed and driven to denial by the external insignificance of the manifestations of the spiritual life, he shows only that he misunderstands what is distinctive and revolutionising in that life. The spiritual life is not to be thought of merely in reference to the experiences of the individual, but also to the work of humanity, to history, to the advance of culture. All these show us a development of life that presents the world from a new side; and this must be an important factor in the estimation of the world, especially if the spiritual is recognised as having a life independent of man. The inward must necessarily present itself as the fundamental and the comprehensive; as that which in its invisibility sustains, dominates, and unifies the visible world. Nature, which there was a tendency to regard as the whole, is now of the essence of a wider reality and a stage in its development; and it is impossible for the conception formed from it to be regulative of the whole. Ultimately, therefore, reality cannot be regarded as something dead, detached, and given: it signifies to us something living, something experienced in itself, something sustained by incessant activity. At the same time, the lateness of the appearance of the spiritual life within our realm and the many ways in which this appearance is conditioned force us to acknowledge that the life of the world as a whole has a history. The conception of history that we have become familiar with in its application to nature and to the spiritual life throughout is now extended to the relation between the two. However many mysteries it yet involves, definite progress in our conception of the world must be admitted. Most of all it is man with his life and endeavour that appears in a new light. Two worlds meet together in him, and, indeed, not merely in such a manner that he provides the place in which they meet and enter into conflict, but so that he acquires an independent participation in the new world, and through his own decision co-operates in its development. For spiritual life, with its self-determining activity, can never become itself as a mere effect; to become this it must be apprehended and roused to activity as cause. But it is cause and animating power only in its being as a whole; so, as a whole it must be present to man and become his own life. Thus, in contrast to the particularity of his natural existence, a life having its source in the infinite grows up within him: in the former a mere part of a world; in the latter he becomes a world in himself: in the one, bound up with the particular nature of man; in the other, he is elevated above all particularity to something more than human, to something cosmic. To such changes in the content of life there must be corresponding changes in its form. Empirical consciousness with its discreteness and succession of presentations and states cannot possibly comprehend the new life; to do that the soul must acquire a greater depth. It must be capable of an activity which, with single phases, extends into this consciousness, but which as a whole and in its creative work must transcend it. With the acknowledgment of an independent spiritual life in man two questions giving rise to different methods of treatment necessarily become distinguished: the one as to the nature and extent of the spiritual that is revealed in him; and the other, how, under the specific conditions of his nature, it emerges and establishes itself. It will become evident how important it is to distinguish these sufficiently, and yet on the other hand to associate them closely. (b) _The Demands of a New System of Life_ If the acknowledgment of an independent spirituality thus alters the view of reality as a whole, and in particular of man, we are faced with the question whether we may not attain a new synthesis through this spirituality, and whether it does not begin a characteristic formation of our world. Our treatment of the philosophies of life of the present day makes it possible for us to approach this question with definite demands. We saw life branch off in different movements, each of which took up into itself a wealth of fact; but we found none of them strong enough to absorb the others into itself, or even able to estimate them. If life is not finally to fall into dissolution, it needs, in contrast to these movements, one more universal in character, and this can be more than a weak compromise only when there is a still more fundamental relation of life than that which the developments that we have considered proffered. In that case the more original basal relation ought to be able to manifest itself as a presupposition of those developments; it should make intelligible how divisions can originate in the condition of man; in particular it should illuminate the opposition between the idealistic and the naturalistic systems of life--an opposition which, like a deep gulf, divides the life of the present. In short, it should depend upon whether the change that results with the acknowledgment of the independence of the spiritual life makes it possible for us permanently to transcend those oppositions and to work towards their reconciliation. But we ought then to see that, with its universality, the system of life striven for does not fall into a state vague and lacking in character. Through its whole being, in affirmation and in negation, the system of life must definitely express itself; it must synthesise and differentiate, elevate and exclude. But it will be able to do this only if it produces a new kind of life-process and a new web of life: only thus can essentially new evaluations and tasks, new experiences and genuine developments, originate; only thus can life as a whole be definitely raised. Of course, this new cannot signify something that has just been discovered and that has arisen suddenly. How could it be a truth which gives to us security, and how could it dominate our life, if it is not rooted in our being, and if it had not exerted an influence at all times? But it makes a great difference whether the new has been concealed, obscure and against the tendency of our own activity; or whether it is taken up fully in our own self-determining activity and thereby essentially advanced. If, on the one hand, the new must be something old, on the other hand the old must become something new if it is to liberate, strengthen, and elevate our life where its needs are so urgent. (c) _The Spiritual Basis of the System of Life_ There can be no doubt that the acknowledgment of the independence of the spiritual life involves the recognition of a new fundamental relation of our life. This relation is no other than that of man to the spiritual world, which is immanent in him and at the same time transcends him. It is more original than the relations implied in the systems of the present day; for these, even though contrary to their own knowledge and intention, all presuppose this fundamental relation to the spiritual life. Religion could not be so violently attacked and so zealously denied by so many, if the relation of life to God were the absolute relation and were present before all others. The value of religion depends essentially upon the content of the spiritual life which it serves. With the mere relation of life to a supernatural power, the nature of which is not more closely defined--with mere blind devotion--nothing of value is attained. An honest religious attitude of a formal kind can go together, on the one hand, with spiritual poverty and blindness, and, on the other, with hatred and passion. How sad the condition of things in general has often been even when religion has shown a strong development of power! How often the help of divine power has been invoked even in the commission of crime! If, however, the value of religion and its effect on the substance of life are measured according to its spiritual content, then this content necessarily becomes the chief object of attention and conduct. We can assure ourselves of the relation to a supernatural power only from the experiences of the spiritual life, and not previously to this life and independently of it. The relation of life to the spiritual life must therefore necessarily precede its relation to God; life must be certain of a universal spiritual character before it can assume a truly religious one. We find the case to be no different as regards the system of Immanent Idealism. It is open to considerable doubt whether the world as it lies before us can be looked upon as a pure unfolding of the spiritual life, as this Idealism asserts. In any case, for the spiritual life to comprehend the world within itself it must itself be established as a universal power, and clearly distinguished from mere man. Otherwise the way of Immanent Idealism leads to an anthropomorphism of a more refined kind; and there is a danger that the whole world which this system champions may be criticised hostilely and rejected as simply human. Immanent Idealism, therefore, also points to the problem of substantial spiritual life. The naturalistic systems do the same thing in a different way, and this, indeed, in contradiction to their main contention. For, when they attempted to produce a system from themselves, they could achieve their object only in that they were implicitly based upon the spiritual life, and introduced again indirectly that which they had previously rejected. They are developments of the spiritual life in particular directions and under particular circumstances: they think that they are able to accomplish out of their own resources something which they accomplish only with the help of a fundamental spiritual life; and so the more consistent they are in their denial of an independent spirituality the more inevitably they lose all internal coherence. Thus from whatever point we start we come to the question of an independent spirituality; an answer to this question is involved in every system of life. But as its implications are not distinctly recognised, it does not receive its proper due. If we consider the question adequately, it will be found that a universal life must precede all differentiation and division; and that from this life each movement must receive a new elucidation. A multiplicity within the whole is quite intelligible, because it is a development of the spiritual life, not absolutely, that is in question, but in relation to the position of man and under the conditions to which he is subject. The desire to give greater stability to our life in opposition to the never-ceasing flow of appearances that constitutes our immediate existence, also compels us strongly to emphasise the importance of the relation to the spiritual life, which is acknowledged as independent. Without an elevation above this constant change all spiritual work must inevitably become disintegrated, and no truth of any kind would be possible to us. In the Modern Age especially there is a keen desire for a firm basis, as a secure support of life as a whole. But it is useless to seek this basis in life as we immediately experience it, whether in thought, in activity, or in anything else; for in the whole life of immediate experience there is nothing that is free from change. To seek this basis in a particular point is also to no purpose, even if one could be raised to a position above change; for it could not operate beyond itself in such a way as to support the rest of life. If, therefore, we would not submit to a dissolution of life, we must seek a basis for it beyond its immediate state and in a whole of life. Such a whole of life is offered only by the spiritual life, which, transcending man, is also immanent in him. Of course this cannot be taken possession of immediately at the beginning of the journey of life; but it is held up to us as an aim, and we can only gradually approach it. But how could it operate within us thus, if our life had not some kind of participation in it from the beginning; if our life were not in some way based in the spiritual life, and in progressive activity only developed the spiritual that is in it? For unless we are based in the spiritual life we should drift helplessly to and fro in uncertainty, and our endeavour would never be intelligible. From this point of view also, our relation to the spiritual life is seen to be the fundamental problem that must precede all others. If there can be no doubt that the problem of life is comprehended most universally when we view it in relation to the spiritual life, there may be all the more uncertainty whether all characteristic form and, with it, all deep-reaching effect are not lost by reason of this universality. If the conception of the spiritual life involved its usual vagueness, this would in reality be the case, for recourse to it would not effect any fundamental transformation of the immediate condition of life; and we should not rise above the mere combination of its various movements. The case is quite otherwise if the spiritual life is distinguished clearly from the human and is acknowledged to be an independent world. So understood, it must show a particular content, a new structure of life, and must give a distinct form to everything that it takes up into itself. It is necessary to consider, also, its relation to the world of sense, and we may expect to be faced in this matter with complications and problems that will agitate our life in its whole extent, and set it in a new light. In the spiritual life we recognised a new world, a realm of inwardness, which has become independent. Within this realm life cannot be directed to something alien, but can be occupied only with itself, with its own development. Its experiences cannot be related to externals; they must lie in itself. Now, have we any knowledge of a movement that reaches back in this manner to the elements of life? We perceive a movement of this kind clearly enough. In the first place, all development of the spiritual life shows, even within the individual, the attribute that a universal mode of thought, conviction, disposition, sets itself in the single function and continues present within it. The tendencies and manifestations of the spiritual are not all at the same level of development, but since a universal activity, a comprehensive and persistent deed, is present in the particular manifestation, the process acquires a depth, and a single act is able to give expression to a tendency of the whole as well as to react upon it. But this movement extends beyond the immediate state of the soul of the individual to spiritual work, and gives it a particular form. Life as a whole, as reality's consciousness of itself, may be regarded as throughout capable of a multiplicity, as containing within itself different sides and possibilities. Since its evolution produces this multiplicity, life as a whole can express itself in the individual aspects and tendencies; expand them till they become different departments; experience itself in particular ways in these departments, and in so doing achieve a development of its own; it is able also to bring these departments and their developments into their relation to one another. Since thus, within the world as a whole, life concentrates in different ways, and the particular tendencies which thus arise meet and enter into conflict with one another, and since their conflict is in particular a contest to determine the form of the whole, there is revealed the prospect of a wealth of experiences which come not from without but out of the movement of life itself, and spring from its occupation with itself. The conflict between the different movements of life must bring the whole into a state of tension and lead it to further development. In the progressive formation of itself, in the development of a reality conscious of itself, life through its movement finds itself and develops a content. This movement will summon all the psychical powers of man to activity; it cannot possibly proceed from them. If we are to take part in the building up of that inner world, a spiritual creative activity from the basis of our being must be operative through these psychical functions, uniting them, and applying them as means and instruments. If, for us men, life becomes conscious of its content only through movement and conflict, nevertheless this content may not be regarded as ultimately proceeding from them. If, as a whole, life did not transcend movement and conflict, if the latter were not included within a self-conscious and self-determining life, then they could yield no inner result, and could not lead to the further development of the whole. The attempts to derive this self-conscious and self-determining life from ontological conceptions such as "being," "whole," "movement," and so on, as the older metaphysics often undertook to do; or the tendency to treat it only as a supplement to them, are to be dismissed most decisively. The fundamental qualities that the spiritual life evolves always presuppose a self-conscious life and become intelligible only in relation to it. Without it, the conceptions of the true and the good remain in complete obscurity, as will be shown later in more detail. If our human reflection often advances from the indefinite to the definite, from the abstract to the concrete, this does not involve that the latter is originated from the former: the advance could not be achieved unless that which comes at the end was operative from the beginning as its basis and presupposition. If a self-conscious life unfolds itself with an increasing content through all departments and activities of life, then these departments will have their meaning and their value primarily in that which they accomplish for the further development of that life, and in the particular tendencies that they add to it: this yields a treatment and a standard of value different from those which we are led to if we make the psychical states of the individual our starting-point. The treatment of religion, for example, as a mere occurrence of an unrestrained psychical life may understand by religion a particular agitation of this or that psychical function; but with this we do not obtain a spiritual content. Again, it is not evident how a world of thought formed from such an individual psychical life could acquire an independence of man, and lift him above the position in which it finds him. The problem of religion attains quite a different basis if the spiritual movements and contents which emerge with it are emphasised; with this it develops and discloses the reality of the spiritual life more deeply. Then through it we may discover and win something that alters the condition of life, transcends the immediate life of the soul, and is able to exert an elevating influence upon man. The value and the truth of a particular religion will be judged in the first place by the nature of the spiritual substance that it offers, and the degree in which, in its advance, it is able to join itself to the movement of life as a whole and to guide it further. A great divergence is possible between this spiritual substance and the movement and passion that call forth a religion on the basis of humanity: the real is, in human relations, by no means without further consideration to be regarded as rational. The case of the other departments of life is the same as that of religion: the character and the value of all achievement depend entirely upon the range and the kind of substantial spirituality that they evolve. The same is valid of whole epochs and cultures, of peoples and individuals. The exertion of the greatest energy upon externals and the most revolutionary transformation of human conditions cannot protect us from becoming inwardly destitute, or lead us beyond mere appearance to genuine reality. On the contrary, the experience of history shows often enough that spiritual revivals have been accompanied in their origin and growth by manifestations externally insignificant; and that something which struggles against the broad stream of human life fundamentally changes the standards and values of our existence. Our whole spiritual life, therefore, constitutes a problem; it is an indefatigable seeking and pressing forward. In self-consciousness the framework is given which has to be filled; in it we have acquired only the basis upon which the superstructure has to be raised. We have to find experiences in life itself, to reveal something new, to develop life, to increase its range and its depth. The endeavour to advance in spirituality, to win itself through struggle, is the soul of the life of the individual and of the work of universal history: where there is no endeavour of this kind, there is no true life and no genuine history; our activity in relation to the world as a whole assumes a different form, and the world is represented differently and presents to us different problems according to that which is attained here in the basal structure of life. Life's struggle for itself, for its own content, its own truth, is the greatest and most intense of all struggles. The passion which animates all the endeavour after a revelation of life and to win life itself is no other than the desire for a genuine reality: for a being within the activity, for a full as opposed to an empty life. If the formation of reality from within once begins, and the desire for a substantial inwardness gains the day over the merely subjective, then the intolerable inadequacy of all that is usually called life is bound to be strongly felt. The growth of intelligence has led man beyond the life of nature and its blind actuality. In intelligence, the inner life already proves far too independent to be satisfied with being a mere appearance accompanying nature. With this evolution the psychical powers win a greater freedom, and man is able to face his environment more boldly: indeed, in his thought he can grasp an infinity; and in arousing and using all his powers he may hope from his own position, in the interaction of subject and environment, to give to life a content, and thus to make it a genuine life. But here the limitation of man and the contradictory character of life as it is immediately experienced soon come to be felt. All the rousing of forces, all the passing backwards and forwards between subject and object that we experience in the immediate condition of life, does not lead beyond interaction, and yields no content: it does not raise life to a self-conscious and self-determining life; so that, in spite of all its activity, our life in this condition remains inwardly alien. There is thus an enormous disparity between the means that are offered and the aims that are reached; an inward unrest; an incessant conflict, without any prospect of victory, against the ever-recurring tendency to become spiritually destitute; a state of dissatisfaction in the midst of all results of an external kind. Only the revelation of a self-conscious life, a life which itself evolves as a reality, can be the source of progress, and lead from appearances and shadows to a genuine life. It is apparent that with such an aim a task is presented that dominates and comprehends the whole extent of our existence. We have to take up everything into that self-conscious and self-determining life and to transform the condition of life as it lies immediately before us. A demand of this kind is not limited to a change of this or that; it implies a complete transformation and renewal. It not only involves the whole multiplicity of life, but it must also itself tend to bring about an increase in the multiplicity; indeed, this task first gives the multiplicity a firm foundation and an inner value. For the development and the formation of self-conscious life, it is essential, as we saw, that life concentrate in particular tendencies and departments; that the whole place itself in them, and return to itself from them; and that by this they develop a life of their own and give rise to their own experiences. To act thus, to advance the whole in its own development, the individual concentrations of life must possess an inner spiritual unity which comprehends and dominates all multiplicity. This is seen in the case of individuals, peoples, epochs, and whole civilisations: only by overcoming the state of confusion and division in which they at first find themselves do they come to wrestle with the spiritual life as a whole and win a spiritual character. These unities of life, however, will enter into the most diverse relations with the whole and with one another; and since in so doing they further self-conscious and self-determining life, they develop reality without limit. From all the facts we have considered we see that, with the attainment of independence by the spiritual life, there emerges a distinctive kind of being which everywhere exerts its activity, holds up a new aim, and desires a transformation: life is for the first time placed on a firm foundation, and taken possession of in the deepest source of its movement. (d) _Human Existence_ For the construction of a new system of life, this independent nature of the spiritual life is primary and most essential. Such construction is dependent in the second place upon the relation in which the development of the self-conscious and self-determining life of reality stands to the position and to the activity of man; in particular whether it wins this position and activity for itself with ease or meets with definite opposition. Now, there cannot be any doubt that the recognition of the fact of the development of the spiritual life to independence of man, as we traced it, must make us feel that the state of things at the usual level of human life is most unsatisfactory. It is not that one or another aspect is inadequate, but that as a whole it is definitely opposed to the requirements of an independent spiritual life. For the spirituality that is evolved here is treated for the most part as a mere means in the pursuit of human welfare. Civilisation, at the level at which we are most accustomed to it, lifts man above mere nature, but at the same time it forces him into rivalry and conflict with his equals, and leads him to expect happiness from victory. This is the case not only among individuals but also among nations. Since the desire and the conflict for more generate an indescribable amount of excitement and passion, life seems to be full, whereas in reality it is entirely lacking in content, and behind the tumult is felt to be empty. But man has no intention of giving up all claim to a share in genuine spirituality: and so he gives a better outward appearance to his endeavour and his conduct, and practises deceit upon himself as well as upon others. Genuine spiritual life cannot possibly proceed from circumstances so contradictory and so confused. Neither can such circumstances produce the concentration of life that is necessary for the strengthening and advancement of the spiritual life. It is not the abuse of some one thing that provokes attack: it is not a particular failing, but the ordinary daily course which, unresistingly, man is accustomed to accept as his world, that shows in its successes no less than in its failures the greatest divergence from genuine spirituality. It is just at the point where man becomes proud of his own doings and makes much ostentatious display that he can least of all conceal the spiritual poverty and the foolishness of his way of thinking. Attempts to attribute the responsibility of all limitation to man and his will, to find the root of all evil in the moral failings of humanity, have not been wanting. Universal religions have given these attempts an embodiment. It has seemed as though the harmony of reality is only disturbed by man, and as though his moral restoration were the only thing necessary to lead to all good. To be sure, such a way of thinking manifests a disposition of great seriousness, and it may appeal to the fact that the perplexity of our existence is nowhere more real than in reference to the ethical problem. Still, there is no possibility of doubt for the man of the Modern Age that this conception is too narrow; that it not only contradicts indisputable impressions and experiences, but also takes the question much too subjectively and too anthropomorphically, and thus falls into the danger of doing harm to the cause that it wishes to serve. It is not simply our disposition, it is our being as a whole and the circumstances that we are in, which obstinately oppose the emergence and the development of an independent spiritual world. It is the most elementary forms of life themselves that prevent the elevation of our existence to the level of a genuine spiritual life. We cannot blind ourselves to the fact that the greater part of our life is bound up with a form of existence in which it is not able to embrace the spiritual life. Any kind of appropriation of the spiritual--if it is at all possible--can be effected therefore only in opposition to that form of existence. In genuine spiritual life all movement should proceed from the whole and should be sustained by the whole, even when it is concentrated in the individual departments and tendencies. Human existence presents the spectacle of individuals ranged side by side; and if a movement to overcome the original inertia is to begin at all, their impulses, their desire for happiness, and their conflicts are necessary. The spiritual life knows no limits; it works and creates from the infinite whole: the individual is narrowly limited, and with all his activity and work constitutes but a tiny point in the infinite whole. The spiritual life presents its content as transcending time; even if for us it is only gradually revealed, time is in this a mere means to the presentation of an eternal and immutable truth: man, however, drifts with time; is dependent upon the momentary situation, and experiences himself in an incessant change: how can he comprehend the eternal? Spiritual creation is effected in the transcending of the antithesis of subject and object: human endeavour is conditioned by this antithesis. The former with its self-determining activity overcomes from within the attachment to sense: man even in the highest flight of his endeavour cannot withdraw himself from it. From the altitudes occupied by the spiritual life submission to the impulses and the goods of sense seems to be something mean and base: and yet without these man cannot possibly preserve his life; he has not conferred sensuous needs and desires upon himself by an act of will, but finds himself endowed with them from the beginning. Spiritual life with its formation from within banishes from itself all mechanism; all compulsion of blind actuality: without a mechanism in thought and in conduct, without habits and methods determined by custom, human life cannot attain to an enduring stability either in the case of the individual or in that of society. Thus, through the ever-present necessity of self-preservation and self-renewal, human life is compulsorily related to something, bound to something, that not only is not adequate to fulfil the tasks of an independent spiritual life, but is directly opposed to them. There is something in our life which we cannot dispense with, yet which, from the spiritual point of view, it is an imperative duty to shake off. We see clearly enough that it is not merely our will that is in play, but that two worlds conflict within us, and that the world to which we primarily belong, according to the testimony of experience, holds us fixed with superior power, and draws back to itself all movement which strives upward. If, in particular, the dimness and the weakness of the spiritual life in man; its severance from its source; its disintegration into isolated powers; and, finally, the moral perversity which human existence exhibits, and the debasement of spiritual power to a mere means for natural or social self-preservation, become clear to us, then it is evident that a compromise between such a pitiable and shallow confusion and a genuine spiritual life is absolutely impossible. The acknowledgment of an independent spiritual world tends only to increase the contradiction and make us more clearly conscious of it. A clear consciousness of the inadequacy of the human is especially important and necessary in contrast to the utter confusion which reigns with regard to the spiritual life and vitiates the whole of the endeavour of the present. The increasing transference of life to the world of sense has led the present age to abandon all inner bonds of mankind. The endeavour of Antiquity to lift our life above the insignificantly human by giving it a share in the greatness and magnificence of the whole, and the attempt of Christianity to give a new nature to life from the relation to God, appear to the present age to be Utopian. Since the faith of modern Idealism in the immanent universal reason has become more and more dim, man is thrown back more and more exclusively upon himself, upon man as he is, upon empirical society. There has grown up a strong belief that this empirical existence is quite sufficient in itself, and is able to satisfy our spiritual needs from itself. The ennobling of man, the improvement of his condition within this existence, becomes the aim of aims. Now, this presupposes that within the province of man, the good, even if it does not entirely preponderate, is still confident of a triumphant advance. It presupposes, further, that the establishment of a certain state of life will bring complete happiness with it. At the same time, all that is disagreeable in human experience--the power of selfishness and pride; the weakness of love; the feebleness of all spiritual impulse; the incessant increase of the struggle for existence, with the consequent degeneration of the inwardness of the whole--appears with dazzling clearness to the more refined perception of the modern man. After even a little consideration he cannot doubt that, if, in spite of all limitations, an unclouded state of human well-being could be established; if all pain could be banished from our life, life would fall into the power of the other and worse enemy--emptiness and monotony. As a refuge from such perplexities there is a tendency to flee to society and history. From the point of view of humanity as a whole and with the thought of a better future, all defects and losses of individuals seem to vanish; the hope of an unceasing progressive development rises above the feeling of the unsatisfactoriness of the condition of the moment. But what are these relations of empirical humanity other than those of a mere collection of individuals who never become an inner community, and what is empirical history other than a mere succession which never produces an inner unity of movement? In the appeal to the former, as in that to the latter, it is only surreptitiously that something essential can appear to be acquired. In reality, conceptions are here made use of which in other relations have a meaning, but which here signify nothing more than empty abstractions, simply subjective constructions of thought. However, notwithstanding all the glossing over, the real state of things must ultimately assert itself: pessimism must then be the last word, and the belief in a rationality in human existence must finally be given up. The faith in the greatness of the empirical man is, indeed, of all faiths the boldest. For, if the other faiths proclaim a new reality in contrast with the world of sense, they have the possibility of one in an invisible world. In the case that we are considering, however, experience itself must offer more than mere experience; we must not only be certain of a thing that we do not see, but that which we do not see must coincide with that which exists immediately before us. Such a position is no longer a faith, but a gross contradiction, a complete absurdity. (e) _Results and Prospects_ The immediate experience of man may by no means be rejected as a whole on this account; if it were, spiritual work itself would degenerate and lack content. However, we only need to take up into a whole the impressions and experiences which each in his sphere acknowledges to be indisputable, and it will be clear that a movement toward spiritual independence can never proceed from such a pitiable state of confusion as that which is thereby seen to exist. It is essential that the movement toward spiritual independence have an independent starting point, and proceed on its own course. Only then is it able to select and appropriate the spirituality that exists in those confused experiences, and at the same time purify and strengthen it. We may most decisively reject all presumption to sovereignty on the part of the human realm; nevertheless, for the construction of a spiritual world that realm cannot be dispensed with. For this construction is not peacefully and securely accomplished through the self-development of a spiritual power placed in us, as was supposed by those who attempted to represent reality as a whole as a cosmic process of thought. If through the joyfulness of its faith and the definiteness of its undertaking this attempt captivated the minds of men for a time, at last it was frustrated by the fact that we men do not find ourselves immediately in the atmosphere of reason, but have first through toil to raise ourselves into it; that we have to do not with absolute spiritual life, but with spiritual life under the conditions and limitations of human existence. Thus, in the first place an independent spiritual life, a universal self-consciousness, must work in us and be changed in our activity; and this can be accomplished only by a revolutionary transformation of life as we immediately experience it; only by the attainment of a new point of view. But if at this point of view certain fundamentals of a new world become evident, they are as yet only fundamentals, and, without the help of a world of immediate existence, without recourse to the movements and experiences of human life, they cannot be completely developed and embodied. The complete development of a self-conscious reality is by no means made possible by combining an original spiritual movement with the world of sense brought to meet it. For the spiritual life can be furthered by coming into contact with that world only so far as the spiritual life takes it up and transforms it; the situation is rather that the spiritual movement wrests a content from sense experience and at the same time is raised in itself; it is a realisation of self through the other. The further the movement advances the more one may win one's own in what is apparently alien; the more that which is really alien may be separated and opposed. Thus we have a characteristic picture of the spiritual life in man; only the more detailed treatment can confirm it. The matter of greatest importance to the whole, and the one upon which all hope of success rests, is that the movement towards an independent spirituality, to the building up of a new world, should, in spite of the opposition of immediate circumstances, become manifest also in the human sphere in characteristic operation, and that it should establish stable bases in this sphere and rise upon them to the highest by means of work. We have now to investigate more closely, to demonstrate more exactly, and as far as possible to show that at all the chief points of life such movements begin; that one such movement advances another; and that all are associated in a community of striving, and that from here the spiritual movement that we see in history is lit up, strengthened, and for the first time rendered practicable. 2. The Transformation and the Elevation of Human Life (a) _Aims and Ways_ The question before us is whether any kind of transcendence of the gulf between the spiritual world and man is effected; whether that world, in spite of its antithesis to the world of sense, manifests itself also with a characteristic effect in our sphere, and thereby inaugurates a movement which takes possession of our whole life and advances it. Only on the result of such an inquiry can we judge whether man is able again to establish his position, which has been so shaken in the course of modern culture; and to save the courage and faith of life from violent changes and convulsions. At the same time we must ascertain whether the representation of the spiritual life that we have sketched is true in reference to things as they are found in the human sphere. To be sure, proof or verification through experience is, in the case of this problem, in the highest degree peculiar. No definite reality spreads itself before us by which we must test the validity of our representations of thought. Representation and object cannot be simply brought into coincidence, but as life, which we wish to comprehend, is found in movement, and as, further, in immediate experience genuine fact and the form assumed by it in the idea of man are confused, so the revelation of the spiritual life does not come to us immediately, but has first to be extricated and wrested from the most diverse errors and half-truths. Every attempt to obtain proof from experience rests on the conviction that a movement of the kind, the recognition of which is being fought for by us, is already in some way in process everywhere where human life goes beyond mere nature; and that only the clear comprehension of the aim and the taking it up with complete self-conscious and self-determining activity are lacking. If now the aim which is presented is the right one, that is, that which is implied in the spiritual movement of life itself, then its acknowledgment and appropriation must tend to the elucidation, the unification, and the strengthening of all endeavour tending in the direction of this movement; it must lead to a development and an elevation of life above the condition in which it is immediately experienced. In the first place, it must be shown that the connections, preparations, directions in life in its general condition, tend towards the new according to its chief demands; and, further, it must be shown that the existing condition is raised essentially through becoming comprehended by the revealed universal movement, and is led to its own perfection. Again, it has to be shown that thus life wins a more precise content and a greater power in its every aspect: that which is present in all human endeavour as a necessary requirement must now become more intelligible, and at the same time from something impossible of fulfilment to something possible, and reveal new aspects and new tasks. Further, those elements which at first sight exist unconnected side by side and tend to limit one another must unite, and must strengthen one another. On the other hand, divisions must arise: it is as necessary energetically to reject that which follows wrong aims as to come to a peaceful settlement with that which errs only in the means. The antitheses which the work of humanity contains must also become intelligible, and at the same time a way must be prepared by which these antitheses may be overcome, not one by which merely a compromise between them may be arrived at. The breaking forth of the new must tend always toward the self-elevation of life; with arousing and strengthening power, it must take up the whole of life into its movement: it must demonstrate a transcendence of all the reflection and subjectivity of man, and this can be accomplished only through the disclosure of new forms and contents of life. Accordingly attention must in the first place be centred upon the pointing out of such new forms and contents. The union of the spiritual life with man, its being firmly rooted in him, is seen to be at the same time something old and something new--something old in so far as it must have been existent and in some way effective from the beginning, something new in so far as its distinct emergence and its transition to a state of self-determining activity must alter the condition of things essentially; in fact, must turn life as a whole into a problem. Where the reality of man is reduced, as by Hegel, solely to an unfolding of thought and cognition, the present may find its most important task in the complete clarification and appropriation of the past; life comes to complete satisfaction in the drawing of historical achievement to itself. Where it is a question of the building up of a reality based on self-conscious and self-determining activity, when we ourselves share in such activity, we must find ourselves in an essentially different relation to things; and with all the connection with the past, life will press forward, changing and elevating in contrast with the whole past. * * * * * A contact, indeed a union, must therefore be established between the independent spiritual world--which in some way must be operative in us--and the activity of our own which struggles upward; and, through the gain of such a contact, that world must be led to more complete organisation, and that which strives upward made secure, unified, and advanced. In this it is essential that the movements and the demands which the fundamental idea of the spiritual life contains be present to our minds. The spiritual life appears, so we saw reason to believe, in the first place, to be something essentially new in contrast to the life of nature. The spiritual life is not the product of a gradual development from the life of nature, but has an independent origin, and evolves new powers and standards: new beginnings must, therefore, be recognisable in us if the spiritual life is to become our life. The new, however, manifested a development of the inner life to independence in opposition to its state of subjection at the level of nature, and so thus in man also the inner life must in some way come to itself and attain to freedom. We saw, further, that this development to independence cannot be brought about through new achievements in a given world, but that it needs the building up of a new world--a new basis for life: it extends even to the final basal forms; not any kind of activity could suffice, but a being within the activity, or, rather, a division of activity into something sustaining and comprehending on the one hand, and something demonstrating and producing on the other, is necessary. It is only thus that life becomes turned toward itself and elevated to a self-conscious life; activity to self-determining activity; experience to self-conscious experience. Man could not participate in such a self-conscious and self-determining life, if in him also a new life, a spiritual self, had not begun to be in some way. It is impossible for this self to be merely individual in nature: it can change the form of things and convey a new world only if it encompasses the multiplicity and experiences it as its own. An infinite self-conscious and self-determining life must not only include man within itself; it must become his own life, his true self. To realise this life, this self, in more detail and to pass from mere impulse to fruitful work, such as the building up of a new reality necessitates, man must in some way transcend in his own sphere the mere juxtaposition of individual powers. Connections must be formed within the realm of man that somehow deal with that task and advance towards its accomplishment in a way that is beyond the capacity of individuals. A transcendence of the antithesis of subject and object, that dominates the greater part of life, is also essential to the new life; an energetic revolution must raise life to a state of resting upon itself, to autonomy: and so in man also movements must appear in opposition to this antithesis--condensations and concentrations, in which life from being a movement hither and thither becomes a forming of reality from within. In these connections only out of a self-development of life has a reality arisen at all; and its content was not there complete at the outset, but was yielded only through the continuance of that self-development: it must be shown, therefore, that in man also life begins to turn toward itself, and that this makes it possible to attempt tasks which to our capacity are otherwise inaccessible. It is necessary to acknowledge that in all the spiritual movement which appears in the domain of man, there is a revelation of the spiritual world: as merely human power cannot lead the whole to new heights, in all development of the spiritual life the communication of the new world must precede the activity of man. At the same time, where we are concerned with a life that is independent, and of which the activity is conscious and self-determined, the change cannot possibly simply _happen to_ man: it must be taken up by his own activity; it needs his own decision and acceptance. We shall consider the question of the possibility of this almost immediately: so much, however, is certain--that this necessity of a decision by man himself makes the matter far more complex and of far greater risk. The establishment of an independent spiritual life in man finds its chief enemy not in nature, but in the limitation and perversion of spiritual impulse through man's subordinating it to his own ends. The chief conflict is not between spirit and nature, but between real and false spirituality. Thus thought emerges in man, seeks a representation of the world and would in this attain to truth; but when this striving first appears, man is wont to treat himself as the central point of the whole, to measure the whole of infinity according to what it achieves in relation to him, and to see reflections of himself throughout its whole extent. And so we have the anthropomorphic way of thinking, the nature of which we have become aware of only through toil during the progress of the work of culture; a way of thinking from which it has needed even more toil to protect ourselves, and which, in forms often hardly noticeable, is ever ready to appear again and to draw the spiritual movement into its paths. With the emergence of the spiritual life, man becomes more free in relation to his environment; more free also in relation to the necessities of mere nature: his activity can exert itself more independently, concern itself with lofty aims, strive towards the infinite. But all this capacity becomes drawn into the service of the human; the wishes and the desires of the individual grow to an enormous extent. Since out of the struggle for existence, with its natural limitation, an interminable struggle for more existence arises, naïve self-preservation becomes transformed into an unrestricted egoism. That the more-than-human which appears in the domain of man should be employed to the advancement of the merely human is a danger that is present even at the highest stages of development: at one time man would prove his own power in the more-than-human; at another, and this more especially, he treats it as a means to attain his material welfare. Religion, for example, would reveal to man a new depth of reality, and so create a new life for him; and yet, how often even this new reality is degraded to a means for the preservation of his insignificant personality, and regarded as something which on his behalf guides the whole world aright! The development of the spiritual life in the human sphere can thus be seen to be anything but a sure and steady progress; every step forward brings new dangers; unutterable confusion arises through the use and the perversion of the new in the interests of man. But, if the development of the spiritual life within man is thus an unceasing conflict against human error, this conflict, despite its exhibition of the littleness of man, is at the same time a witness to his greatness. For it shows not only that the spiritual movement needs the active co-operation of man, but also that there is a conflict within humanity itself against the perversion of the spiritual; that there must be more within man and operative in him than the narrowly human. Indeed, in nothing does man seem greater than in this development of a more-than-human within the domain of man, in this severe and untiring conflict with himself. How could this conflict arise and become the soul of universal history if man did not possess a life and being transcending his particularity, and if he did not realise more in himself than we at the first glance see in him? The error of Positivism is that, although it shows most clearly how this spiritual movement dissolves the forms of life as it is immediately experienced, it does not perceive and value the fact that, at the same time, a new life, an inner life emerges; that, indeed, the negation itself is possible only through a more comprehensive spiritual revelation. To consider the negative and the positive in their relation to each other, and to weigh them one against the other, is the indispensable condition for the adequate understanding of human life. (b) _The Nature of Freedom_ The arousing of a new world to life within man is a problem and a task: it cannot be effected unless the spontaneity and self-determining activity that are distinctive of this world also manifest themselves within him. Further, it cannot be effected unless within man, who with the greater part of his being belongs primarily to nature, a deliverance from nature is accomplished and the centre of life is removed to its spiritual side; and this cannot happen without the co-operation of man. We need freedom, therefore, in two senses: as the presence of an independent inner life, and as man's capacity to change--and we cannot fail to recognise that these are closely related. Now, the impressions and experiences of modern life are opposed to freedom in both of these senses; indeed, with apparently insuperable force they oppose freedom in every sense. Modern science most clearly shows that man belongs to a great world-whole and world-movement; his life and work seem to be completely determined through his relations in this whole; his whole life is subject to an irresistible destiny, and in all his undertakings and conduct he can only follow the course directed by it. This destiny assumes for us the most diverse forms; and through this diversity surrounds us on all sides. Through the power of heredity we enter life with a definite nature: in the family, the state, and the society a particular kind of environment surrounds us and gives to our nature its more detailed colouring: the age meets us with particular tendencies, takes us up into itself with a supreme power, and just as decidedly directs us towards certain ends as it diverts us from others. Even in earlier times all this was not ignored, so far as the individual aspects are concerned; but the Modern Age was the first to conceive the problem as a whole, and with this it has pursued the idea of determination even into the inner structure of the life of the soul, with the demonstration that here also nothing is spontaneous, nothing unmeditated, but that even down to the most primary impulse everything depends upon something else, and proceeds from definite relations. From this point of view the idea of freedom, and in particular that of a freedom of choice, appears to be only a remnant of an unscientific way of thinking. The fact that man feels--as an immediate impression--free in cases of hesitation between different possibilities has lost its power to convince the individual of the Modern Age. For the new mode of thought has evolved point for point along with an increasing divergence from the naïve manner of representation, and it has won its greatest victories in opposition to this manner of representation. The revolution that Copernicus accomplished in the representation of the world has become typical of the whole of modern work; and as regards our problem also, dissent from ordinary opinion is less a cause for doubt than a recommendation. However, our attitude in regard to this problem has, indeed, been essentially changed by modern thought. There can be no further talk of a vague freedom of the will, of a capacity to act in one manner or another unaffected by anything that preceded and by the whole environment; the fact of the subjection of man to a destiny, both external and internal, is forced upon us with overwhelming power. Whether the idea of freedom in every sense is shown to be invalid is another question; perhaps the problem is not so much solved as put on one side. In any case, if a fundamental problem--one that has been discussed from the earliest times--is suddenly declared to be finally solved, the suspicion must soon arise that the solution appears to be self-evident only because certain presuppositions which are in no way self-evident are implicitly assumed in it. The surrender of every kind of freedom meets in the first place with the suspicion that thereby far more is lost than we think or intend; that much is lost to which it is impossible to surrender all claim. Great trouble is taken to prove that the denial of freedom by no means does away with the possibility of an ethical moulding of life. Yet it might be shown without difficulty that, in attempts of this kind, either the freedom, rejected in its ordinary sense, finds entrance again altered and deepened--as, for example, in the philosophy of Spinoza--or the ethic that remains after freedom has been denied retains only the name, and in itself signifies something merely mechanical. But why do we insist upon the ethical; why does so much depend upon its continuance? For this reason: that upon it depends whether life merely _happens to_ us or also _from_ us; whether we are simply parts of a rigid world-mechanism or self-determining co-operators in the building up of reality. If the former hypothesis is true, we are no more than the platform upon which events become connected; and we can possess no other unity than a summation of the multiplicity. A unity of this kind could not possibly attain to independence and transcendence; could not make an inner judgment upon events; could not take up a conflict in opposition to the condition of life as it is immediately experienced. The conception of conduct would inevitably be degraded to that of mere occurrence. We should cease to have inner unity and be comprehensive selves; we should not be able to speak of disposition and conviction: for it is of the essence of all these things that they cannot be imparted, but must arise newly and spontaneously just in the individual, and for this a concentration of life, an elevation to self-conscious and self-determining activity, is necessary. Where inner unity and such an activity are lacking, a true present does not exist. For if, through the all-dominant relation of cause and effect, that which comes later proceeds in certain sequence from that which came earlier, our whole existence is only a stream of occurrences, and that which is called present is nothing more than the point of transition from the past to the future. Now, a real present can be reached from such an apparent present only if an independent task originates at this point, and a decision has to be made: the more our whole life and being here become a problem again, the more securely might we trust to the possibility of advancing beyond all previous achievement, and of a spontaneous breaking forth of new powers, the more will our life be transformed into a genuine present. A genuine present does not exist within the sequence, but above it; it cannot come to us opportunely, but must be attained through our own activity: it is our own work. It is, therefore, not a common and equal possession, but is differently constituted according to the individual. The present is the more real and comprehensive for us the more spiritual power we evolve and the more spiritual content we give to life. Thus the present is not a mere point in the succession of times, a mere ripple in the stream of appearances, but involves a counteraction to this flow; its formation is to be accomplished only by the placing of life in the region of the spontaneous, the independent, the time-transcendent. All the losses in individual matters are, however, only appearances and parts of a universal loss that the surrender of freedom involves. This loss is no other than that of an independent nature-transcending spiritual life in general. Spontaneity is no subsidiary quality, the disappearance of which might only involve a modification; with it, the spiritual life as a whole stands or falls. The experience of history also shows clearly enough that that which has in any way reached a spiritual height never persists by simply existing, but that, if it is not to degenerate rapidly, it must proceed ever anew from spontaneous creative activity. The law of nature, that everything remains in its existent state of rest or motion until it is acted upon from without, is not true of the spiritual: of it nothing abides that is not continually brought forth anew. The surrender of freedom, therefore, means no less than the inner destruction of the spiritual life. And before we submit to this we shall feel compelled to make a more careful inquiry, to see whether the arguments against freedom are really so cogent as they are represented. They do exert a compelling force, but only so long as their presuppositions are admitted and held to be unassailable. That they are not unassailable will become evident as soon as we clearly recognise their nature and implications. If the world forms a closed and "given" system, in which every particular is determined completely by its position in the whole, there is no place for spontaneity. The question of freedom has no meaning for man if he belongs solely and entirely to such a world, and within it has only to weigh aims one against another. But in accordance with the results of our investigation we contest these two presuppositions most decidedly. To an investigation that begins with the life-process as the basis of its treatment, it is certain that a "given" world never can be primary, but only secondary. That it may attain to an inner present it needs a life that is not itself "given," but with its activity encompasses a multiplicity, unifies, and makes it definite; for anything to be experienced as "given" a self-conscious and self-determining activity is necessary. If this self-determining activity can struggle upwards to complete power and consciousness only slowly, still it is the first and the sustaining world; and at the same time it can never be asserted that the forms of its life are only ideas and appearances. Life is not formed from existing individual points, and does not pass between such points, but all multiplicity is sustained by an active whole, and from this whole animated ever anew. This active whole may not be conceived as dependent upon another, and it is quite capable of advance. We have endeavoured to show that the matter is not one of subtleties of thought, but of different natures of the world and of activity; and that with the attainment of independence a new world emerges. We have also shown that in us the new world must first wrestle with another, to which we primarily belong; that inner changes must take place in us; and that, if all our toil is not to be in vain, the relation of the two worlds must be changed. Man, therefore, has a special significance in that the two worlds meet together within him, and in that there can be no change in their relation to each other at this point without his co-operation. The problem of his life concerns more than his conduct, it extends to his being; the question is, how far the different worlds may become his own world, his life. The matter is one of shifting the centre of life from the position in which it is in immediate experience. Thus, the tension and the conflict involve the ultimate elements: each of the worlds has its own tasks and evaluations; things do not affect man with a given and fixed value, but they receive their value first from their relation to the main course upon which his life enters; and so all conflict concerning particular matters implies a decision concerning the whole. Of course, such a decision is not being made from moment to moment; and more especially, it is not made simply by reflection, but it is involved in the whole of life. Only that which in him, in endeavour and work, participates in such decision is true life; individual acts of external conduct only bring to expression that which has happened and still continues to happen inwardly and in the whole. In all this the possibility of an inner elevation is presupposed. Everyone who strives for an inner development of man; everyone who, with clear insight into the meanness of the general condition of human affairs, unswervingly continues to strive for the advancement of humanity, relies on this possibility: without it there is no hope of a development and a growth of one's own life, of an elevation of it above the condition in which it is first experienced. And so without this possibility endeavour loses all its true tension, and all that we are able to accomplish in ourselves and in others is no more than a dexterous use of existent forces. But is this condition of the matter, spiritually discerned, more than a mere discipline? It is true that the possibility of an elevation has its fixed conditions; it necessitates particular convictions with regard to the world and to man. We must view the world as being still in a state of flux and regard man as not being simply a closed and limited individual. The infinite spiritual life must be present as a whole to him, and arouse a new world to life in him; his conduct must be rooted in the power and content of the infinite life: only thus can we understand that in man also a movement begins and a change is brought about. And so it remains ever an inderivable, original phenomenon, which we must acknowledge as a fact, that a spontaneous life breaks forth in man, a new and relatively independent life-centre originates. We always come back in the long run to original phenomena; the origin of living being in general is also an original phenomenon. May we deny the fact of such original phenomena, because they make our representation of the world less uniform and simple? To do so would be nothing else than to make our previously formed conceptions the measure of reality; it would be a new, specifically modern anthropomorphism. This freedom, with its requirement of a world of inner life that introduces new contents, and also that we belong in some way to this world, is by no means a capacity to make a decision capriciously at any moment; it is not a denial of the power of necessity. Of course, it implies that there may be some kind of counteraction to this necessity; and that if this counteraction can attain success only as a result of the activity of life as a whole, even the individual moment need not be a matter of indifference. For, as the spiritual life has always to win its own height anew, so the present in its relations is not a mere consequence of the past: times of temptation can come repeatedly when all that which has been achieved becomes doubtful again; but times of elevation also come when an advance is made beyond that previously achieved. It is not possible for us simply to reject the present existence and all the conditions which constrain us, and to choose for ourselves a new kind of existence, instead of the one we have; from that it is impossible to free ourselves: in all further endeavour we have to take it into account, to make our peace with it. Nevertheless, life can attain to a transcendent point of view, from which the world of sense becomes the object of judgment and of adaptation; from which, to be regarded as completely ours, it needs acknowledgment and appropriation by us; and from which it is seen not to constitute our whole life, as that which is ultimate. Indeed, the tendencies within us which are concerned with nature, first reach their highest through such acknowledgment and appropriation by us: placed on a spiritual basis they lose their rigid exclusiveness and become unified; our particular nature no longer constitutes our whole being, but becomes the central point of a more comprehensive life, which extends further and further to infinity. Our life, therefore, is a conflict between fate and freedom, between being "given" and spontaneity; and this conflict may be followed through all life's divisions. The conflict appears primarily in the individual in the development towards personality and spiritual individuality. For, as personality, unless life has a spontaneous source, is an empty word, so also spiritual individuality does not come to anyone, but has first to be won by the work of life essentially elevating that which destiny brings: so far, it is our own work; but it is not entirely our own work, because that which comes to us from nature, and the condition of life gives us fixed points of support and points out a certain course. Similarly, peoples have in their nature, environment, and history definite conditions of their being, from which they cannot withdraw. But spiritual creation and inward greatness do not grow simply out of these conditions, however favourable they may be, but out of a spontaneous activity which takes up that which has been presented to it, gives it a central point, and from this develops it. The deciding question is always whether and how far individuals and peoples attain to and preserve such a self-determining activity. This activity alone makes it possible for life to be unified inwardly; for its elements to be distinguished and separated, and for some to be brought into prominence and others relegated to the background; for life to be made secure and elevated, and as the result of all for a spiritual individuality to be formed. The same thing holds good of the condition of a particular time, and man's relation to it. At first man appears to be a child of his age, a slave of his age. But by the spiritual life he is able to win an independence of the age, and to make himself its lord. Again, he cannot free himself from the problems of the age; he cannot alter them just as he likes, cannot divert into an opposite direction the power which they exert upon him. But there is always an "either--or," either submission to the succession of experience, or the beginning of an opposition from spiritual self-determining activity: in this, also, the possibility of calling new powers to life presents itself. From this spiritual point of view activity centred upon the concerns of the particular age is no longer regarded as the whole life; the particular age with its work is comprehended in an infinite life. As through all its different stages and constituents, so ultimately humanity as a whole also carries on a struggle for a spiritual being, an advance to a new level. Humanity may not be regarded as something finished; it must evolve to a nature other than its present one, bring about a transformation of its life, and win a spiritual individuality: the life of humanity is in a state of motion and it must become self-determined. The idea of freedom thus reveals far-reaching prospects and the greatest tasks; it manifests its truth and power in taking possession of common experiences and illuminating them, and in the arousing and re-organisation of our life. With the acknowledgment and the adequate appreciation of freedom, with the revelation of its universal relations, man is elevated in the most essential manner, for it manifests the new world as active in the midst of his life and capable of appropriation by him: it calls him to independent co-operation in the conflict of the worlds; it gives to the simply human and the apparently commonplace an incomparable greatness. However powerful destiny may be, it does not determine man entirely; for, even in beginning opposition to it there is a liberation from it. However mean man's activity, it carries in it a decision between worlds; however vanishing the moment, it is not entirely lost. True, the idea of freedom involves definite presuppositions: it involves, indeed, a profession of faith concerning life and reality as a whole, a profession of faith that contradicts every form of Naturalism and Intellectualism, and, in opposition to their representations of the world, champions another. But this profession of faith does not concern this problem only; it is involved in our work as a whole, and so the whole may support and confirm it. (c) _The Beginnings of the Independent Spiritual Life_ As the problem of freedom gains in clearness and depth in the relations which have been discussed, so also the beginnings of independent spiritual life which are manifested in the domain of man become much clearer in them. Without such beginnings, which represent a new order in contrast to nature, and which oppose the degeneration of life to the narrowly human, a movement towards independent spirituality could never emerge in us. They are really intelligible and acquire power only when they are unified and acknowledged as the activity of a new life and being. These beginnings appear in an elevation of life accessible to every individual, an elevation above the forms as well as the content of mere nature. We perceive this in the norms with which the research of the present is busily occupied. Our life does not consist entirely of simple matters of fact, but in certain directions qualities and forms are presented to it which are able to contradict the immediate state of things and to exercise a certain power over it. Thus the norms of thought, the norms of conduct and of artistic creation are evolved, each making particular demands, and being different in the manner of its operation. However, we are concerned here not with the aspects of difference, but with that which is common to all; and this consists in the working of an actuality in us that is something other than natural occurrence, an actuality that needs our acknowledgment, and through this acknowledgment first wins power over us. The demands which these norms make upon us are in no way convenient to us; they limit our caprice; they often cost hard toil and heavy sacrifice; our desire for natural happiness does not commend them to us. How is it then that we do not simply reject them? what is it that gives to them a constraining power over us? If they remained isolated and impenetrable experiences, if they adhered to us as something alien in nature, were foreign elements in our being, their power would be unintelligible. It is to be explained only upon the hypothesis that they are unfoldings of our own life, which by these unfoldings is proved to be something other than a life of nature. Unless they are rooted in our own life, these norms are like misty forms in the air. They obtain complete reality and motive power first as movements of our self, which then is no mere point by the side of other points, but an independent manifestation of life of the spiritual world. This is in particular clearly the case in the idea of duty, the elucidation of the inner meaning of which is Kant's greatest and most enduring service. A duty is always a command; it presents itself as independent of all caprice. At the same time, however, it can never be forced upon us by an external power; it needs our own assent and acknowledgment. Our own volition and being must operate in it, and, in this, being must present itself otherwise than it appears to be at the first glance. We must bear and maintain within us a new world; in submission to its orders we must assert and develop ourselves. In this manner alone can we explain the joyfulness which accompanies all genuine performance of duty, and without which duty is no more than a task forced upon us. How much power duty, and the norms in general, may acquire in the greater part of human life is a question in itself; but they could not exist for us even as ideas and possibilities if they were not in some way based in our own being. However, as they show this being in a new light, it follows that they must themselves gain in clearness and in power and become more closely unified if they are understood and treated as developments and modes of self-preservation of our own life. It is with regard to content as well as to form that beginnings of a new life appear. At the level of nature only that which serves the self-preservation and the advancement of the life of the individual being is estimated as a good; all that is involved in this may be comprehended under the conception of utility. But notwithstanding its great power over man the consideration of utility does not form the only motive of his life. For a detailed treatment of this matter we may refer to what was said in the discussion of "The Growth of Man beyond Nature." At present we are concerned especially with the view that the new that appears in us should be acknowledged to be the manifestation of a new world and the expression of our real being. In the growing of man beyond nature negation usually preponderates; he must limit the impulses of his natural _ego_, acknowledge and respect the rights of others, be ready to subordinate and sacrifice himself. It is for the most part not evident what can commend such a negation to him and give it power over him; and an impulse aroused to clear consciousness and strong desire may, therefore, feel this entire connection with a new world to be an unwarrantable limitation, and reject it as a violent intimidation and a degradation of life. The matter is seen in its right light only when negation is regarded as the reverse side of affirmation, and even then only if the winning of a new life and being is acknowledged in this affirmation. The positive impulse of self-preservation is indispensable to complete vital-energy, but mere self-assertion on the part of an individual in opposition to others does not constitute a genuine self; a genuine self is constituted only by the coming to life of the infinite spiritual world in an independent concentration in the individual. Only thus does life, which otherwise were empty, acquire a content. Then the individual is no longer compelled to develop his powers in conflict with other individuals, but in directing his life towards this infinite spiritual world, in its complete appropriation and organisation. Hence, only that which raises the spiritual content of life can be regarded as good, and goods will be compared in value in accordance with this standard. The more they lead beyond mere results to the development of a new being and self, the more essential they are to spiritual self-preservation; everything else becomes a means or a preliminary condition. Negation, also, has greater significance and importance from this point of view. The new affirmation can acquire no complete truth and no real power in man without a fundamental deliverance of life from mere nature and its particularity. Without earnestness of renunciation the new life sinks back to the old or both are combined in an undifferentiated unity, with the consequence that the new life loses its power to stimulate to new endeavour. As human beings are, this negation must always be a sharp one. In this connection, it may be said that life needs the stage of law which restricts natural impulse, and constrains to the acknowledgment of superior organisations of life; but from the stage of law there must be progress to the stage of love, which for the first time reveals an inner relation to reality and reacts upon the stage of law, giving it a soul. On the other hand, a love that would be genuine comes not to destroy the law, but to fulfil, to take it up into itself. As love and law are indisputable powers in the life of humanity, so they also proclaim the emergence of a new world and the development of a new being within the domain of humanity. (d) _The Transcending of Division_ A particularly severe conflict with regard to the problem of the unity of life arises between the natural condition of man and the requirements of an independent spiritual life. The spiritual life demands an enduring whole which includes all multiplicity within itself and of which the movement originates within: human existence is primarily a juxtaposition of individuals and a succession of moments; no union seems to be more than that which is constituted by a mere collection of the individuals. If the division were not in some way transcended no spiritual life could grow up within humanity, and man have no share in the building up of a spiritual world. The nineteenth century gave a confident answer to the problem: it contended that history and society of their own capacity bind the elements of life into stable forms which take up all multiplicity into themselves and raise our existence to spirituality. We most emphatically deny the validity of this contention, and hope to show that history and society themselves involve difficult problems; further, that only when we conceive them in a particular way are they able to help in the unification of life and then only in a limited manner; and lastly, that they do not so much produce a spiritual life as presuppose it, as essential to their own existence. Naturalism and Intellectualism have also confused the outlook; if we free it from this confusion, history and society will take a secondary place in our estimation; they will themselves be seen to be deeper and more comprehensive and to involve movements which extend further than appears in immediate experience; and they will become witnesses to the living presence of the spiritual life within humanity. (i.) _The Spiritual Conception of History_ The nineteenth century transmitted to us a conception of history that is far more peculiar in nature and far more open to attack than is usually recognised: history is represented as a great stream which takes up all individual achievements into itself, unites them, and, regardless of all human error and caprice, leads surely to its end. No genuine achievement is lost, and all gain seems to be permanent; beyond all the trouble and uncertainty of the moment appeal is made to the power which, directing and elevating, permeates the movement, clarifies and refines it. In this conception the necessity of a process that has the power of determining its own activity and making its own decision is primary. The fact that the matter is not so simple as this conception of history represents is shown by the experience of the age itself, which directly contradicts it. For according to this conception the whole past should discharge itself into the present and so impart its whole result immediately to us, and the direction that our activity ought to take should be pointed out to us with complete certainty by history. But we are distinctly aware of the extent to which this direction is a matter of question and doubt, and of the uncertainty into which we have fallen with regard to the relation of the present to the past: in the process of our investigation we saw this in particular in the division and conflict between the different systems of life. History is seen to be a difficult problem far more than a secure fact; and we are compelled to take up a new consideration of the question. In this consideration a distinct delimitation of the achievements characteristic of man is primarily necessary. Modern science already recognises a history of nature, and much that was formerly regarded as complete is now seen to be in a state of flux and movement. Since every event leaves effects behind, in the course of ages the results accumulate, develop, and act upon one another, that which comes later is conditioned by the influence of the earlier and is intelligible only in relation to it, a distinctive historical method gains currency. Geology presents to us with particular clearness a history of this type. In so far as man belongs to nature and the spiritual life has not yet developed to any degree of independence in him, he is also the subject of such a history. That which happens within him leaves behind effects that become the conditions of later occurrence. This conception of history, as determined solely by mechanical causes, is still maintained in some quarters in spite of further developments of thought. But it is not apparent from this point of view how, even with the greatest accumulation of effects, history could yield anything of gain to an inner unity, to a life from the whole: for that, man must bring with him something essentially new; and as a matter of fact this is what he does. Not only do events happen to us and change our condition, but with our own activity we are able to hold fast to these events, to give to them an inner permanence, to bring them ever anew from the dim distance into the living present. We do not drift onward with the stream of time, but withstand it; seek to wrest something fixed from "becoming" and change, and salvation in the eternal. We cannot do this without altering the whole view of things and manifesting a new spiritual capacity. The retention in mind of individual events by means of annals, monuments and similar methods is the beginning of a history of a higher kind: even so much shows a greater activity, since it involves a judgment of the significance of events, and on the basis of this judgment begins to wage war against the destroying power of "cormorant devouring time." The achievement is incomparably higher, if certain spiritual unities and tendencies are adhered to and are given permanent currency: thus religion in particular gave a stability to life and delivered men from the tyranny of the mere moment. The matter remains simple so long as the movement is within a single people or a definite sphere of culture. But in its progress it goes far beyond these limits. New peoples arise; the state of culture undergoes great changes, indeed revolutions; life is taken up from new starting points, from which everything of importance to earlier ages loses its value. But it is lost only for a time; a desire to return to it and to bring it into complete harmony with the new is soon felt. The circle of vision is thus increasingly widened, and all multiplicity is finally united into a whole. This retention of the past is primarily a matter of knowledge and of intellectual appropriation. But it is not limited to this; it would operate not only in the extension of knowledge but beyond this in the development of life. Whatever has been won by human power is to be preserved, unified, and used to advance the present. Thus, there arises a historical culture; an education on a historical basis; religion and philosophy, art and law derive power and content from the work of universal history, and life as a whole seems to win a greater comprehensiveness and stability. And so it has come to appear as though the past imparts its whole result to the present without any effort on the part of man and without incurring him in any risk. In reality the case is entirely different. The stream of the ages becomes spiritually significant to us only in so far as we develop an independence of it. The stream does not itself, automatically and independently of us, select the elements of value which it contains or unite the ages to a harmonious result: we ourselves must achieve this. Spiritually regarded, we do not from the beginning stand upon a sure foundation, on which we might peacefully build; we must first acquire such a foundation through endeavour, and in this matter we see doubt and violent change continually make that uncertain which is apparently most secure, and make it necessary to seek greater depths. For this treatment of history, involving, as it does, self-determining activity, an elevation above time is essential. Without in some way transcending time we could not survey individual events and unite them in one representation. But we would do far more than that; we would select and take up into our own life that which is valuable in the earlier, in order thereby to enrich and strengthen our life, and to lead it as far as possible from the present of the mere moment to a present encompassing the ages. How could this come to pass unless we were able to secure an independent vantage ground transcending the stream of the ages; a vantage ground from which we may survey and judge the ages, appropriate some elements from them and reject others? Experience shows clearly enough that the tendency and the content of life with which we meet the past, decide what shall be its spiritual representation, and how we shall stand in relation to it. For experience shows that each main tendency of life has its own view of history and its own treatment of history; it shows further that every change in life which is in any way far-reaching involves an alteration in our relation to the past; gives prominence to the new, and relegates the old to the background. There arises therefore a history of history; a history, for example, of that which in the life of Antiquity has seemed essential and valuable to the different later ages. For us, therefore, history, in regard to its spiritual nature, is involved in constant change. The past does not decide concerning the present so much as the present concerning the past; the past is not something dead and fixed behind us; ever anew it becomes the object of passionate conflict. But does not this dependence of the past upon the present deprive history of all independence and of all value? Does it not surrender life completely to the contingency of the changing moments? Does it not destroy all inner unity of the ages? This would, in fact, be the case if the matter remained on a simply human basis; if a spiritual life transcending time were not manifested through all the changes of the ages; if a spiritual history could not be distinguished from a narrowly human one. Spiritual history is concerned with that which through all human activity and endeavour reveals a self-conscious inner life and which, as such a revelation, is valid not only for a particular age but through all ages and independently of all ages. Spiritual history would be impossible unless there is active within us from the beginning an independent spiritual life which first realises its content through the historical process. Such a transcendent nature is most evident at those highest points of human development which we call "classical," not because they should dominate and bind all ages, but because in them the spiritual life attained to a complete independence over against man, lifted him above himself into the fire and flood of creative activity, and made it possible for him to produce characteristic contents. These classical achievements are especially important for the development of life if they not only bring something new in individual departments and in particular directions, but also shape and present the whole to us in a distinctive manner, and seek to appropriate to themselves, and in the appropriation to elevate, the spiritual impulse that exists in man; if a new being, in contrast to nature and society, emerges and would become lord of the whole. Life as a whole is thus transformed into a problem and a conflict. The question is whether this movement is able to take up everything into itself and to lead life to its highest level, or whether it meets with an insuperable resistance. In this matter life tests itself by itself, by its own development--a thing which is possible only if its experiences arise out of its being as a whole. If in a particular case it proves that essential requirements remain unsatisfied, that the movement is not able to include the spiritual life within itself, a severe convulsion is inevitable, the spiritual life as a whole comes to a standstill, and there can be no advance until life concentrates anew and the new concentration gains ground. It is to be expected that a new concentration will bring forward and develop that, in particular, which formerly did not find complete satisfaction. In the first place, therefore, there is an abrupt break and the emergence of an apparently irreconcilable opposition: the old is relegated to the background; tested by the new, the old soon comes to be regarded as a complete mistake. In reality it is not so. For, as certainly as spontaneous creative activity was operative in the old and produced characteristic contents, it involves something which, superior to all the change of time, will survive convulsion and doubt, and assert itself in some way in a more comprehensive life. But the old will not survive and re-assert itself unless the timeless reality within it separates itself from all human and temporary addition; unless it manifests what lies behind the historical form. The same thing happens in the case of the new movement that arises. With all its greatness of achievement, limitations become manifest in it; then, more comprehensive forms arise; and so in the historical movement as a whole the spiritual life is revealed in forms continually increasing in content. In opposition to the tendency for one age to be separated from another, however, a desire for unity, for a life which in some way embraces the multiplicity of movements and concentrations of life, and binds them into a whole, makes itself felt. A unity can hardly be achieved by simply regarding the different concentrations and tendencies as on the same level and making a compromise between them; rather it is necessary that the different concentrations and different movements contend with one another; it is just their conflict which may elevate and deepen life. The movement to secure this unity and to retain elements from the past is not an accumulation of elements and tendencies in time, but an increasing deliverance from time, the establishment of a timeless truth independent of the change of things. Experiences, of which the external manifestations no longer exist, are again called to life, and preserved for all time by spiritual power; indeed, that which is lost in immediacy by the absence of the external manifestation is more than compensated for by an advance to the source of the power: things which in their temporal form are a mere co-existence are transformed into an organised whole. Movements, which in history have often been engaged in passionate conflict, may enter into a relation of interaction, and may be regarded as a sequence of stages, in which the earlier prepares for the later, and the later presupposes the earlier; in which all give life to and further one another. A universal life thus progressively arises within the domain of man; the individual achievements unite more and more to the building up of a new, enduring world; the whole realises itself in the individual occurrence, and through the development of a time-inclusive present transcends the mere moment. This movement of life in history involves more unrest, conflict and doubt, than the nineteenth-century doctrine of evolution implied. For this doctrine saw in the historical movement the unfolding of a spiritual life, sure as regards its foundation and its main direction; the antitheses within that movement seemed to be involved in a single process, which determined the limits of each tendency in relation to the others; a transcendent necessity was regarded as leading to the development of all in their relation to one another. As a fact, the conflict is also concerning the substance and the main direction of the whole; the spiritual life must first realise itself within the region of mankind, and it is realised through the toil and work of man himself. It is just the fact that the problem is an ultimate one, that even the fundamental forms of life develop only in conflict and experience, and that we are concerned not with winning simply this or that in life, but genuine life itself, that makes history significant. At the same time, this brings man into a more inward relation to the spiritual life, and this life is made more his own life and being than if he were surrounded by the power of physical or intellectual processes. Nothing makes humanity as a whole more significant than that in its province and through its work the new world begins to develop. With such a conception of history, the philosophical treatment of it must direct its attention chiefly to the independent spirituality which in the course of the centuries, and especially in great changes, is evolved in contrast with the narrowly human; and to the main direction which is given to life by this spirituality. The philosophical treatment of history ought first of all to trace the liberation of life from the simply human; the inner elevation of our being to a more-than-human. Antiquity at the height of its spiritual development began to desire a universal truth independent of man; a moulding of life in accordance with an inner right; and an order of things beyond the power of human caprice, as was shown by the giving symmetry and harmony precedence in art, and justice in conduct. Christianity brought about a liberation of the innermost disposition, the root of endeavour and of love, from purely natural impulse, however ennobled; and in this way brought men into new relationships and set them before new tasks. The Modern Age on the part of science began a relentless conflict against the anthropomorphism of the mode of life as immediately experienced; thus it has made the spiritual life even in its form independent of man, in that it has created spiritual complexes and has recognised in them movements and inner necessities of their own. Through the whole of this movement of universal history life frees itself more and more from its dependence upon mere man, and from the bondage to "given" presuppositions and "given" natural impulses, and from a "given" world in general. Life is based more and more upon its own independent nature, and from its position of independence develops a new kind of being. It is this gain of a new world through struggle that alone gives to history a meaning and an inner unity. If history thus accomplishes the formation of great spiritual complexes, and if there is an endeavour to fit these with all their antitheses into an all-comprehensive whole, if it unites all ages and all powers with the bond of a universal task, it is a clear witness to the living presence of the spiritual life within the human sphere. Apart from this presence all these achievements would be impossible, and the whole movement must vanish into thin air. The estimate of history here given is valid only when a spiritual history is clearly distinguished from merely human history. Only when history as a whole gains a soul and a support from this spiritual history are the non-spiritual factors able to attain to any rational significance; only then can history have a meaning and transcend the relativity from which otherwise it cannot escape. On the one hand, history demands for its own existence the presence of a spiritual world within humanity; on the other, it testifies to this presence by that which is characteristic in its own content; by that which can be understood only as a progressive disclosure of such a world. (ii.) _The Spiritual Conception of Society_ The problem of society is closely akin to that of history. In the life around us a certain union is attained in that men dwell together, but this immediate union does not simply of itself produce a spiritual unity, a spiritual whole: if society manifests such a unity, then in it, also, a distinctive revelation of the spiritual must be acknowledged. Modern science shows clearly and distinctly that the individual is not an isolated atom, but exists in relation with a social environment; and that, even to the innermost recesses of his being, he is determined by the constitution of this environment. But science falls into serious error if it goes beyond the truth of this contention and attempts to represent spiritual creation as the result of the mere inter-relation and accumulation of individual powers. For between spiritual creation and this inter-relation and accumulation of individual powers, in spite of all their external proximity, there is the widest divergence. Spiritual creation requires to be treated as an end complete in itself, and must follow the laws of its own being; it claims an inalienable supremacy above all trivial human interests, which yet for a time dominate the common life. Further, it cannot succeed without the development of an inner unity which maintains and characteristically forms a whole of life. The existence of men side by side gives rise to a variety of opinions, strivings, dispositions, which mingle confusedly together; the usual condition of things that arises from this confusion has anything but a definite character. The condition of our own time must convince everyone who is unprejudiced, how little this pitiable confusion can of itself produce anything spiritual and associate men together in an inner unity. For in the epoch of railways, telegraphs and newspapers, of large towns and of factories, movements of the masses are certainly not lacking; they surround the individual and influence him more strongly than ever before. But where, out of all the fluctuation of public opinion, out of the confusion and bustle of life, does creative spiritual activity arise, give to life an inner content, and unite humanity in an inner community? Rather, we see humanity continually split up into opposing factions; we see the strife tend more and more to affect the foundation of our existence. However, in spite of the spiritual impotency of the movements of the masses, creative spiritual activity has emerged in humanity, has overcome the separation of the individuals and inwardly unified the forces of life. It must not only be possible to effect, but we must actually effect a unity which transcends the individuals, a union which has its source in the spiritual life itself. In reality the experience of humanity shows such a union. Of primary importance in this connection is the fact of the power of so-called "ideas" in history--the fact that certain aims transcending natural welfare win power over the whole domain of culture, bind men together and lift them above their selfish interests. To be sure, in the movements which arise to carry out these ideas much that is insignificantly human is introduced; and the interests of individuals and of classes often largely preponderate, but the origin and the progress of these movements cannot be accounted for by the merely human; they are only to be explained as due to man feeling directly within himself the necessity of spiritual tasks. If he feels this necessity only under particular conditions, and if it is only for a short time that it asserts itself at its highest, still it extends its influence over life as a whole, and is everywhere a unique phenomenon, even when limited and confused by much that is alien to it. Further, the fact that whole peoples have developed distinctive national characters is of importance in this connection. Such a character is distinguished essentially from all mere participation of common conditions, not only physical but also psychical, that social life brings with it. For the development of such a character life must rise to energetic activity and become unified; there must be an advance towards a common goal; an active relation must be taken up not only towards the environment but also towards itself. A national character is not "given," but is attained through the work of history; it develops only through common experiences, sufferings, and triumphs: in its origin and its continuance it involves an elevation above the aims of physical and social preservation, a development of pure inwardness. Finally, no inner relation of humanity proceeds from the physical association of men, from their meeting in a common world. If a vital whole, a common truth, did not exist within us, all our relations would be external: we could not follow common aims in life and endeavour or have common experiences; we could not think and live for one another, or develop spiritual contents in different departments, such as those of law and religion, science and art, and give to them a cognate spiritual character. It is always the presence of a self-conscious reality that binds humanity together inwardly. We can be as certain in our acknowledgment of this presence as we can that our experience shows such an inner unity in important achievements and in the formation of whole departments of work and other complexes. With its acknowledgment we avoid the severe contradiction that is shown in the contemporary estimate and conception of humanity. To our more dispassionate consideration of things the disagreeable aspect of the social machinery, the growing sharpness of the conflict, the passionate eagerness of the desire for more, the inconsistency between the enormous amount of subjective excitement and the spiritual poverty, are clear. Logically, this confused and self-contradictory state of affairs ought to lead to a rejection of the whole, and to a pronounced pessimism. Yet humanity is regarded as noble and worthy of respect; it is made the value of all values; the object of our faith and our hope; all our efforts are directed towards its well-being. And this is done without it being perceived that thus the basis of experience is forsaken and that the impression of humanity obtained from experience is bluntly contradicted: the introduction of an abstract conception seems to alter everything and to lead to its being regarded as good. In the shattering of beliefs at least this one has remained: belief in the power of abstractions. He who would abandon this belief and at the same time hold fast to the high estimate of humanity must admit that a spiritual world is active in man, and in so doing acknowledge that man is more than he appears in immediate experience. Such a one will feel increasingly the necessity of actively comprehending and definitely distinguishing from the medley of trivial social concerns every manifestation of a spiritual world in man. It is not out of society but in conflict with it that everything great has grown. And yet that which is great is rooted in a whole of life. Spiritual work must have its basis in this invisible whole, not in mere society; and from this position it must protest against the presumptuous claim of society to evolve the spiritual life of its own power. The community that proceeds from a spiritual union will be primarily an invisible one; but whether this invisible unity could not realise itself better and be effective also in the visible world is a serious and difficult question that continually becomes more urgent. If the conviction that we have here given an account of definitely contradicts the historico-social view of life which was so potent in the nineteenth century, and which deeply degraded the spiritual life and its self-conscious and self-determining activity, it by no means fails to recognise the significance of history and society; and has no intention of taking up again the mode of thought common in the period of the Enlightenment. History and society are indispensable means for the development of the spiritual life in humanity: from mere individuals and from individual moments it could attain neither content nor power. But to declare for this reason that history and society are the generating basis of the spiritual life was a definite error; though in the historical movement of the problem it certainly finds an explanation and an excuse. The higher estimate of history and society has grown up on the basis of Idealism; to Idealism the spiritual life seemed to live and first to attain to its complete truth in history and society. Later on, attention and activity were diverted from a world of thought chiefly to the world of sense; and with this change history and society lost their spiritual foundation and their animating soul. Nevertheless, their claim to produce the spiritual life remained; they were expected to achieve of their own power more than was possible even with the greatest exertion. In truth they can bring forth spiritual contents, and serve the development of the spiritual life within man, only under the presupposition of the presence of a transcendent spiritual life. At the same time their achievement in the combination of forces and in the production of spiritual results is a witness to the reality of the spiritual life. (e) _The Elevation of Life above Division_ We saw that the spiritual life attains an independence only if it does not simply bring about an effect upon a world independent of it, but produces a reality from itself; concentrates so as to become a reality itself. At the first glance man seems by no means to satisfy this demand. For his life, after, in its progress, rising above its initial stages, in which it was undifferentiated from the environment, is subject to the antithesis of man and world, of subject and object, and the divergence seems to increase continually in the course of his development. The more power the life of the soul wins, the more it produces a characteristic content, the freer and more active reflection becomes, the more does the world recede before man, the more definitely is immediate contact with the world prevented. The gulf is not bridged by the epistemological consideration that that over against which we place ourselves must also, fundamentally, belong to our own life, be in some way included within it: this treatment signifies a removal of the antithesis to another region rather than an inner transcendence of it. A genuine transcendence cannot be effected without an expansion and development of life, evolving new connections which transcend the division, and lifting us into a sphere above mere subjectivity. Connections such as these are, as a fact, brought about by an expansion and development of life; but these connections which in their individual appearances are evident to all are seldom adequately estimated as a whole, and in respect of the problems to which they give rise. These connections are effected in work, in work as a spiritual occurrence. We have already seen how in work the object loses its alien nature and is taken up into our own life; we must now follow more closely the process by which work is extended and deepened; produces a characteristic sphere of life and establishes a spiritual reality in the domain of man. At first we are occupied in work with an abundance of individual tasks that have no inner relation to one another. But the more work advances from an external contact with objects to an inner change of them, the more necessary is it that these tasks should be unified so as to form a whole; and that each task should have its position in this whole, and represent in itself a particular aspect of the whole. The proof of greatness in a "work" is just that the nature of the individual aspects is determined fundamentally by their relation within the whole; that what is characteristic in the work as a whole is manifested even in its simplest elements; thus, for example, every independent thinker has particular views with regard to the nature of the fundamental forms of logical thought such as the concept and the judgment; in the same way every independent artist creates his own language of forms. Work not only leads to a unity of life in the case of individuals; but, further, without a union of individual forces for a common end, without an organisation of all human work, we should stand defenceless in face of the infinity of the world, and we could never advance to a state of culture. In such community of work man creates a new sphere of existence for himself; he forms his world of work and sets it in contrast to everything which does not come within it. This world of work transcends the individual; and yet it is our world; it is sustained by human power and, directing and forming, reacts upon man. For, the more unity this world of work acquires and the more control it wins over the object, the more definite departments and relations it evolves in itself, the more does it manifest characteristic laws and methods which, with superior power, prescribe to human activity its nature and direction, but which can originate nowhere else than in the domain of man. And so within the domain of man we rise above all caprice and subjectivity: since the law of the object determines man's work, his life is raised above the antithesis between soul and object. Work is not something that man, essentially perfect, undertakes incidentally and as something supplementary, but it is that through which he first develops a spiritual life; through which he acquires a spiritual existence; and the character of the work determines at the same time the nature of this existence. As the individual departments of work evolve characteristic modes of thought and conviction, so out of work as a whole a particular spiritual nature arises which does not exist in relation to a world external to it, but contains within itself a world formed by its own activity. All this, in conformity with our fundamental conviction, involves the implication that man is not a spiritual being from the beginning, but only has the potency to become one. Such a raising of the aim which is set to work involves an increase in the amount of toil that it necessitates, and the dangers which are incurred: the object and the encompassing life are subject to these dangers. For the complete success of work and the formation of a genuine self, it is as necessary that the object be taken up entirely into the process of work as that there should not be another vital unity more ultimate than the self which grows up in the work, but that the self should form the final conclusion: whatever is not taken up into the process of work lessens its content, weakens its power, endangers its truth, and prevents just that from being achieved which is here in question. If, however, we consider the opposition that arises at different points, genuine work is seen to be a high ideal, an infinite task which even in favourable cases is only approximately fulfilled. At the same time it is a witness to the sway of elevating and modifying powers within the domain of man. The object is concealed from man chiefly by his own inclination to treat himself as the centre of reality; to transform the environment into a reflection of his own being; and to measure the infinite by the standard of his own well-being. Along with this humanising of the environment, man develops the most diverse forms of occupation with it, but however far such occupation may be extended, it does not lead man beyond his own domain; it does not aid him in his spiritual progress. It is possible for occupation upon the environment to aid spiritual progress only when things attain an independence, and from this firmly resist the tendency of man to represent them in accordance with his subjective wishes. Only such independence of the objective makes it possible for it to arouse new powers in man and for his life to be based on something deeper than immediate feeling and desire, and to begin an inner transformation. But this movement has various levels which differ distinctly from one another; and from the position of a higher level it is difficult to regard the achievement at a lower one as genuine and complete work. The Modern Age with its exact research often cannot regard the work of early natural science as work of high value. A similar gradation is evident in the striving for happiness; for the raising of human well-being. So long as endeavour is directed to attaining and preserving mere subjective states of feeling, and so long as a movement beyond this subjectivity is not acknowledged to exist within man himself, and the requirements of this movement are not satisfied--as is the case with Epicureanism and Utilitarianism--endeavour, earnest as it may be, does not acquire the character of spiritual work; it does not essentially advance life, and therefore in the long run does not satisfy human needs. Epicureanism and Utilitarianism with all their results inevitably become insipid and empty to him. If there are powerful hindrances to this endeavour for something more than the subjective, there is at the same time a wealth of movement which bids defiance to them, and the course of history shows continuous expansion and development of this movement; it shows that man is able to take up a conflict against the trivially human, and, in the building up of a new world, to raise himself essentially above his original condition. Exact science breaks away from the object of perception, removes it to a distance, analyses it there, ascertains its laws, and then restores it in changed form to men: in this it also advances human life in itself, in that thought rises more freely above perception, and a system of pure thought sustains the whole world of sense. A further divergence between the struggle for physical existence and the building up of a new world appears in history in the endeavour for happiness and a significant content of life. In the experience of humanity, morality and religion, looked at inwardly, assume two fundamentally different forms. On the one hand they are looked upon as a mere means to support man in a given world; to bring him into congenial relation with the world; and so to organise this world that it may achieve as much as possible for human well-being. This form governs human experience at its general level, and easily comes to be regarded as the only form. At higher levels of creative activity, however, a totally different form made its appearance: there was a break with the whole world of sense and well-being as though with something intolerably narrow, and in a self-conscious life a new world arose and brought forth characteristic contents; the appropriation of this world raised life above all mere particularity and subjectivity; at the same time this appropriation became an infinite task and work for man and for humanity as a whole. If this form of religion and morality has been manifested with complete clearness only at high levels of life in history, from these heights this form has also exerted an influence upon the rest of life, animating and raising it; indeed, it is only this genuine conception of religion and morality which first gives to them an independence and a value in themselves. Thus, notwithstanding the inadequacy of human achievement we cannot but recognise that life transcends mere subjectivity and the separation that it involves. In another direction complexities arise in that something objective is evolved and established which, however, is not brought sufficiently into relation with life as a whole and united with it. Then, work may progress within its own province constantly and vigorously, but it loses touch with our soul; we do not realise or develop ourselves in it. With all the feverish tension of individual powers work is then inwardly alien to us, and its power over us may become a heavy oppression. Through such a detachment from life as a whole work loses soul and is nothing more than mechanical; in short, we have all those results of division between work and soul which we may feel with particular acuteness in the contemporary state of culture. Experiences rising from this division lead us to demand that work shall be so organised as to be capable of taking up life as a whole into itself, and with this of becoming our true self. Again, life as a whole cannot enter upon work as complete, for then it would force something alien upon work, and by this pervert it; life as a whole can be evolved only from the unification and elevation of work itself. We do not begin and carry on work as a fixed individuality, but we form individuality first through work by the continual overcoming of the opposition of subjective disposition and object. Spiritual contents are not produced by a communication of something that is in itself complete to something else that is in itself complete, an interaction of disposition and object; rather must we say that genuine work sets both sides in motion and with elevating power unites them in a single life. So understood, every movement which tends to the development of spirituality in individuals, peoples, ages, and finally of humanity as a whole, is a witness to the possibility of a transcendence of this opposition, of the emergence of a reality within the life-process. We cannot give work a spiritual nature in this way, and make it the instrument of a new reality, without being compelled to acknowledge that there is much less genuine work among men than we are accustomed to assume. On the other hand, we must also recognise that the little that there is signifies much more, and indicates much greater advances of life than it is usual to admit. Nothing differentiates individuals and ages more from one another than the extent to which they take part in genuine work; the degree to which they transform their life in such work. Mere reflection and good will can accomplish very little in this matter; without an energetic nature, a strong inner disposition with a definite tendency, as well as the favour of destiny, not much can be achieved. What is usually called "life" is only a will to live, a straining after life; it yields but an outward appearance and a shadow of life: genuine life is first brought forth by that transformation. But the less human existence in general immediately includes genuine work, the more indispensable is it that there should be firmly rooted tendencies to such work in the basis of our being, and that these tendencies should be developed to greater clearness of form and to greater effect in the work of universal history. So that our work may not be split up and destroyed, we need definite syntheses that establish a structure of life. On the one hand we must accomplish an analysis into individual tendencies and departments of life which, operating independently, generate life; and on the other hand we must find a unity of endeavour among these tendencies and departments; a movement from one to another; a common activity directed towards the building up of a new world. These syntheses must be an immediate experience at each point; they must be involved in all division of work; everywhere set distinctive tasks; produce characteristic achievements; and in energetic organisation of existence elevate it to the level of a characteristic system of life, full of power, which presses forward to further development. Only thus could a movement originate which might expand to a real whole and be capable of establishing this whole against the world as it is for immediate experience; only thus could humanity defend itself against the power of the environment and of destiny. Experience alone can decide whether our life contains such syntheses, and whether by means of them it forms a whole: the movement of universal history shows that there are such syntheses. The natures of these syntheses give to the chief epochs of culture their distinctive characters, by which the natures of their elements and of the relations between them are determined; and man acquires a definite relation to the world and can make a judgment upon it. Such a synthesis, with its life-penetrating and life-forming power, certainly contains some truth; it is not a product of narrowly human reflection and imagination. The course of time and the changes of history, therefore, cannot simply break it down completely; rather with the truth that it contains such a synthesis elevates life above time into the eternal. But it has not been demonstrated that life is capable of only one synthesis, or that it may not produce a variety of such: life does not necessarily realise its unity in simply establishing a single synthesis; it can seek unity in the supremacy of a chief synthesis above others. That experience in our own sphere of culture shows the latter to be the case we intend to indicate in a few lines. A characteristic synthesis first made its appearance at the height of classical Antiquity. It was art, chiefly plastic art, that determined the nature of this synthesis. Form as a unifying and systematising power is at the centre of life, takes possession of matter and organises it, transforms chaos into a cosmos; and in this exercise of power it realises itself, even though its fundamental nature is regarded as transcending all change and variation. Spiritual work is formative and selective; it is the triumphant realisation of form; it is necessary that life in all its stages of development should be permeated by this formative spiritual activity. There are numerous independent centres of life, but the tendencies from each are towards the realisation of the whole, and find their perfection in it alone. Thought, independent of the world, must extract from the medley of first impressions permanent forms, and unite these into a consistent representation of the whole; it finds the acme of its achievement in bringing this representation clearly to consciousness in a form that is complete and free from subjective addition. In conduct, an organisation and a unifying of the elements so as to produce a harmonious effect is the chief thing. From the chaotic mass of individuals, the state by constitution and law forms a living work of art, a differentiated organism. For the individual the chief matter in conduct is to bring the diverse forces in the soul into the right relation of order and gradation, to reach the highest of all harmonies, the harmonious life. All this involves particular estimates of value, a characteristic solution of the problems and a harmonising of the oppositions of our existence. It is a matter of general knowledge how this synthesis has elevated and ennobled life, and is still increasingly felt as an influence tending to further development and harmony. But it is equally well known how the progress of life has rebuffed the claim of this system of life to be the only valid one. We have become aware of contradictions which do not find sufficient acknowledgment in this system: a gulf deeper than it is able to transcend has made its appearance between man and his environment: in particular, the supremacy of form, which constitutes the basis of the system, has been shaken. Antiquity, at its highest development, had, without much consideration, given to form a living soul; its later course dissolved this union, the soul degenerated more and more into an inwardness of feeling, and gave up all claim, if not to the world, yet to its organisation and formation: form, deprived of soul, threatened to become superficial, and to change life into play and enjoyment. It was at this point that Christianity intervened with a powerful effect, but it has not, in the sense with which we are here concerned, produced an organised system of life. Such a system was first produced in the Modern Age, and more particularly in the period of the Enlightenment. This system makes force the centre of life; to increase force without limit is the task of tasks. The elements of reality are centres of force; but these elements are not isolated, because force is called forth only by force, and the amount of life depends on the degree to which relations are developed. Since in this way one tends towards another, they become interweaved and joined, and the many are united. For this system the world does not appear as a work of art which rests in itself, but as a process that ceaselessly increases in volume: the main achievement of spiritual work is, with complete consciousness and self-determining activity, to take possession of this process, which actually surrounds us; to change its infinite life as much as possible into our own life, and to co-operate to the best of our capacity for its advancement. Since here spiritual work never tolerates a state of inactive peace, never accepts the world as a rigid destiny, but is concerned to develop the world, to analyse the world as it first appears into its elements in order to reach the forces that move it, life acquires a more active relation to the environment than it does in the earlier, more contemplative system, and feels itself to be more in the workshop of reality. The relation of knowledge and life is changed from its traditional character. Research cannot transform the world from the apparent calm and completeness of the immediate impression into movement and development, without analysing the representation offered into its ultimate elements; ascertaining their laws, and finally, with the help of the idea of unlimited time, reconstructing from the beginning the world, which it had first of all destroyed. With such destruction and reconstruction modern research brings the world much nearer to us, and gives us more power over it than does the earlier type. Corresponding to the understanding of reality from its evolution, man finds his own life in a progressive movement. Human society is regarded less as a well-arranged work of art than as a complex of forces, which come to full development and make sure progress only in their relation. The chief demand is for the greatest amount of freedom of movement; the greatest number of relations between individuals, and a ceaseless increase of the stream of life, that should take up into itself all that bear human features. The individual also must realise his existence as one of "becoming" and motion; he is not bound by a closed standard of nature. Through the power of his spiritual nature he is able to assimilate ever new capacity, and to grow without limit: nothing gives more proud courage and joyous force to his life than this consciousness of an inner infinitude. A characteristic ideal of culture and education is formed: all individual departments of spiritual work are now regarded primarily as means to the increase of human power, and must assume a form corresponding to this. And so life everywhere becomes more active and more powerful: it finds its aim within itself, in its own elevation, and has therefore no need to seek it in something external; the whole existence of man becomes more his own work. As work comes more deeply into touch with the nature of things the development of power becomes at the same time a controlling of the world. It was not to be wondered at, therefore, when the modern man, with the development of this system of life, believed that for the first time he had left a childlike condition of constraint and limitation, and entered a state of freedom and maturity. But the further development of life shows clearly enough that this system, which makes force and movement its leading principles, is not the final stage of human endeavour: the leading idea of our whole investigation is that human endeavour is more than this. We have seen that a system of mere force and movement gives no soul to work and does not lead life to self-consciousness and self-determination. A rushing stream seizes us and carries us along with it, but we reach no position independent of it; and so we cannot unify the multiplicity, nor gain a content from its immeasurable achievement; indeed, the increasing extension of life divides us more and more into single forces, and deprives us of a self that transcends the movement. At first this was not fully perceived, since the soul was implicitly assumed to be force and the extension of movement was regarded as a pure gain to the life of the soul. But the further development and the keener emphasis on the new state attained could not but clearly indicate the contradiction here involved; could not but lead to a separation between soul and work, and force them into conflict. Hence there is a danger of work becoming mechanical, and of the life of the soul, which, with this separation, is thrown back entirely upon the subjective, being lost in indefiniteness. These experiences of mechanical work and indefinite subjectivity give birth to a new situation, in which the problem of the soul, a problem which in the earlier systems remained in the background, is forced into prominence. The task of life is seen to be a more fundamental one; it is a matter not so much of altering a given reality in one way or another as of first discovering a genuine reality, of advancing beyond all mere activity to a being which exists within the activity. It has become evident to us in many ways that from the recognition of this a characteristic form of life proceeds. The only question is whether the change is capable of bringing about a thorough organisation of life, whether it can produce independent centres of life and unite them into a community of life, and thus lead to the development of a system of life. We ourselves most resolutely maintain the view that this is really possible; that life is in process of forming itself into a new whole, and that with the clearer establishment of this, problems which have existed from early times receive full explanation, and a definite advance is made in their solution. We saw that, in its highest stages of development, life concentrates at particular points, and that a characteristic sphere of life is in this way brought forth, as, for example, in spiritual individualities, national character, and so on. As soon as these developments are acknowledged to be spiritual and are sufficiently distinguished from simply natural existence, as soon as the manifestation of a new world is recognised in them, they become a great problem. Then they cannot be regarded as a mere product of a particular part of nature, but must be accepted as primarily a creation from the spiritual life as a whole, a creation which at the same time must maintain itself and transform in its own activity that which it receives. The relation to the spiritual world as a whole is the fundamental relation of life, and yet the further development of life does not follow immediately from the relation to the whole, but from the relation to the innumerable other centres of life; the infinitude that the individual being acquires from the relation to the whole receives that which is particular in its organisation and its content only from the experience of the relation to others. The relation to others, however, is not produced by nature, but as spiritual, only from the spiritual world as a whole and must be continually sustained by the whole. The relations of individual to individual will therefore be included within the whole, and through the presence of the whole will be essentially advanced beyond the capacity of mere nature. The love that arises here is fundamentally different from all the love which arises from natural impulse; and, understood in this manner, notwithstanding all that may be doubtful in respect of its fulfilment in individual matters, there is much point in the demand of Augustine, that, in the relation of man to man, not man but God should be set in the first place, and that man is to be loved only through God. However, it is not an increase of activity alone that is sought in the multiplicity of relations, but a growth of being--a being not beyond all activity, but existent within it. It is necessary not only that the life-process achieve more, but also that it grow in itself, change that which is alien to it into its own, and display more reality within itself; life must experience every single activity as the manifestation of the activity of the whole, and thus, along with unlimited extension, preserve self-consciousness. The demand for a self-conscious life, the demand for an elevation of activity to the organisation and development of being, by no means excludes other forms of activity, if only for the reason that this demand presents a high ideal to which man can only very slowly approximate. But this ideal constitutes an aim and a standard for all other activity; the giving of form and the increasing of force must aid in the development towards this aim if they are not to become devoid of real worth. The more necessary it is to insist upon an animation of reality through the development of self-conscious life, the more must we guard against the danger of anthropomorphism, which, when we are hasty and impatient, inevitably finds an entrance to and corrupts the whole of our thought and life. Only with much toil and with continual self-criticism can life be brought to the point where the transition to self-consciousness is possible; and even then the whole cannot, under human circumstances, be attained at one stroke; but at first life must endeavour to concentrate, to form a nucleus so that in this way it may acquire a firm basis, and from this take up a struggle for its further spiritualisation. The same thing is to be seen in the differentiation and the gradation of life: everywhere a movement towards self-consciousness begins, but the emergence of this movement forces an antithesis into prominence, and life is completely transformed into work and conflict. Thought cannot be satisfied with representing the world as a work of art or as a process; thought must seek self-consciousness in the world. This it finds in the emergence of an independent spiritual life and in reality's coming-to-itself; at the same time the difference between spirit and nature becomes more pronounced, and all the divergences in life increase. Men can find their highest unity neither in joining together so as to form a whole as a work of art, nor in a system of progressive increase of force. Neither alone could prevent society from becoming spiritually destitute, nor could both together. Society also needs a self-consciousness and acquires it only through the development of a spiritual content and spiritual character; but this must be won by continual struggle from the medley which constitutes the general condition of social life. Again, the individual does not attain a content for his life through an immediate combination of his powers so as to form a harmonious whole, or through increasing them without limit; the individual also must by activity concentrate his life and so gain the basis of a new world: never is he in his life, as a whole, personality and spiritual individuality. True, there lies within him the potentiality to become such a spiritual individuality, and this potentiality may be transformed in his own activity; and the existence thus acquired can affect the rest of life, arousing and elevating it. Thus the ideal is set completely in the distance; it is seen that we do not live our life from a given basis, but that, on the contrary, we have first to acquire the basis and to preserve it by continuous work; it is not a particular direction of life, but a genuine life itself and with this a spiritual being that is in question. We appear, therefore, more imperfect than ever before. But in this connection the imperfection itself is a witness that important tasks are set before us, and that superior forces rule in us. In the midst of all that is obscure it cannot fail to be recognised that there is a movement towards the development of a new self-conscious reality above the capacity and the interests of mere man. This movement has been manifested in great historical achievements, in the formation of fruitful systems of life which at the same time were developments of the life of the individual. It has brought forth ever new creations; now it sets before us the task of developing a new system of life which does complete justice to self-consciousness, and in accordance with its main idea must also transform all individual aspects and departments. Where we recognise so much to do, we are certainly far removed from opinion and pretence. II. THE MORE DETAILED FORM OF OUR SPIRITUAL LIFE (a) THE PROBLEM OF TRUTH AND REALITY Whatever there is peculiar in our conception of the spiritual life must be manifested and proved in reference to the problem of truth and reality. In the first place our conception decidedly rejects the widely held view of truth as a correspondence of our thought with an external reality. For the attainment of independence by the inner life makes it impossible for something externally existing to be taken up into life without undergoing an essential change. It is also inconceivable from this point of view how something beyond us could in any way attract and arouse us. The problem of truth can do this only if it originates within our own life: it can become a compelling power only if the attainment of truth aids us to transcend a division within ourselves which has become intolerable. The representation of life, that we have given, makes it quite evident that such a division does spring up within us. Within our own life a certain activity begins, which becomes wider and wider, and which would signify our whole being. But this activity finds limits and contradiction within ourselves: much takes place in our experience independent of this activity and apparently without our co-operation; a certain condition of things exists, and asserts a rigid actuality; and, so far as this condition extends, we are bound; we bear something impenetrable within us. So long as these two sides of our being remain separated life is not complete and genuine: activity lacks a foundation, a content, and a direction that is sure of its aim; and all the bustle of free movements, all effort of reflection cannot conceal the state of spiritual poverty. On the other hand, the fact that we bear so much within us that only half belongs to us and that presses upon us like a fate must cramp and oppress us. And so life does not experience itself as a unity; it lacks an inner truth, since activity presents itself as a whole and yet is not one. Life itself is therefore a problem. The problem must be felt to be the more serious the stronger the desire for a self-consciousness becomes. However, self-consciousness cannot possibly be reached without a transcendence of the division between activity and the given condition of things. Life has first to seek itself, its unity, its perfection; and it is just this that is the problem of truth: and in this problem life is turned not towards externals, but towards itself. We understand now how the desire for truth can exert such an enormous power, for, in this struggle for truth, we fight not for something alien, but for our own being. This conception of truth determines also the nature of the effort to attain truth. The task cannot be to subordinate one side of life to the other, and to derive one side as far as possible from the other; that is, to transform the given condition of life as far as possible into free activity, or to adapt activity to the given condition in such a way that activity is merged into it; but the task is one of pressing forward to a transcendent active whole which unites the two sides, and develops them both; and in mutual relation gives to activity a content and to the given condition a soul. We have seen how a movement to attain such a unity runs through history and extends into the soul of the individual. That life is in general able to unify and raise itself is the presupposition of all striving after truth: the proof of this, however, is to be found in the actual furtherance of life, in the new contents which are thus obtained. Such a way of regarding truth, that is, as an upward endeavour of life to its own unity, a unity not forced upon it but immanent, exhibits its unique nature especially in its opposition to the intellectualistic conception of truth, which, notwithstanding that it has been rejected and attacked so often, still continues to assert a mighty power. According to the intellectualist, cognition should treat the problem and solve it of its own capacity; it seems that the synthesis that is sought must be found in the first place in the realm of thought, and thence imparted to the rest of life. As a fact, however, knowledge itself is affected with particular severity by the division of free activity and fixed given condition; and from its own capacity thought cannot attain to a state of full creative activity which alone is able to overcome the division, but for the attainment of this is referred to an advance of life as a whole which alone can reach an essentially new position. To be sure, cognition has particular fundamental logical principles which regulate all its work. But to regulate and to produce are two different things. The most scrupulous adherence to these principles does not lead beyond reflection to an inner relation to the object, to an inner transcendence, a penetration, and an appropriation of the object; it leaves us still in the position of simply attempting to know, in a state of mere reflection and search. All real knowledge involves a spiritual creation, an advance, and a self-formation of life as a whole. The chief epochs of culture have therefore given a distinctly unique character to the inner nature and the fundamental texture of knowledge; the character given to it by one epoch being entirely different from that given to it by another. Modern knowledge does not differ from earlier knowledge only in a quantitative way: as soon as its connection with the chief synthesis characteristic of modern life is revealed, it can no longer be regarded as absolute knowledge, but only as a particular kind of knowledge beyond which there are possibilities of further developments. From life as a whole the conflict will extend into all its individual departments, and give to the activity in them a greater intensity. Religion, art, and human society all have first to overcome the opposition of subjective power and alien given condition, and thereby to win a truth. In no case does truth mean a taking up of things which are presented to the activity of life--it means rather an advance of life to its own perfection. In accordance with this conception of truth, that which claims to be true will not be able to prove its right otherwise than through its power, that is, through its capacity to embrace life as a whole and to raise it above opposition into the state of complete activity. Every such attempt must prove its power and its right in opposition to rivals by being able to wrest from them the truth contained by them, and in new relationships to lead beyond the state they reach, and to change life more into a self-consciousness than they are able. Hence the endeavour after truth here shows more movement, more freedom, more multiplicity: different starting points and different ways may be chosen, and the correctness of the one need not involve the incorrectness of the other. The only indispensable thing is that the movement pass beyond the state of division and reflection to one of complete activity; only in that way can the content of life gain through the movement of life. And so we see the great significance of progress in work, in spiritual work; according as it succeeds, genuine life is distinguished from the mere will to live. To be sure, each piece of work that is here undertaken is a venture; it is far easier and far more secure to continue in the state of mere reflection and reasoning. But the latter does not lead us to an experience and a decision in a matter concerning the development of life, and therefore does not bring us a step further in this chief matter. Work with its failures is better than all subtle contemplation which leads to no activity; for failure can lead us beyond itself to truth, while feebleness and inactivity keep us in the old position. In our conception of it truth is anything but a system of universal propositions out of which, by deduction, all detail might be derived. Rather the organisation of life into an inner unity, upon which in this view of truth everything depends, will exclude all that is only general and turn towards the differentiation of the whole. The more life progresses in this direction the less is it a mere application of general principles; the less does it find its consummation after the manner of a conclusion from given premises; the more does it become a progressive activity, a new formation and an elevation. In this conception, there is also room for a truth peculiar to the single individuals. As the comprehensive life-synthesis can permeate every individual detail of existence, so it is necessary for every individual life-centre to realise its own particular synthesis, and that every individual should fight for his inner unity and thus, also, for a truth of his own; he must, however, realise this unity and truth in every particular activity. A truth which is not my truth is, for me, not a complete truth. Only it is necessary that such individualisation be effected within the whole, not independent of it; it must result from the inner necessity of creative activity, not out of a vain wish to excel. In any case, it follows here that, as the immanent and universal form of truth requires more activity and power, it is also able to grant more free movement and multiplicity. Truth and freedom have been thought opposed to one another in the course of history; if the former seemed to require unconditional submission, the latter had a strong tendency to shake off every tie as an oppressive yoke. If we see that truth of life can be reached only through freedom, and also that freedom acquires a content and a spiritual character only through its relation to truth, the opposition by no means entirely disappears, but a basis is won upon which we may strive to attain an agreement and a fruitful interaction between the two. * * * * * So understood, the problem of truth has the closest connection with that of reality: with regard to the one as to the other we are concerned in a conflict against the external conception common to a naïve state of life, which, though far surpassed by the inner movement of the work of history, obstinately asserts itself through the evidence of the senses in single individuals and hardly ceases to impress men with its apparent self-evidence. The naïve way of thinking understands reality as a space which encompasses men and things; reality seems to be presented, "given," to man through the senses; only that which is exhibited to man in these sense-relations passes current as real. In this Ptolemaic form of life, dominated by sense impression, everything other than sense fades to a mere illusion, and this includes the spiritual life itself, although in it alone is reality known. Now, however, as science has with no mean power led beyond this Ptolemaic representation of nature, so the development of life has led beyond the Ptolemaic reality. Life could not emancipate itself from its attachment to the environment and develop an inwardness without effecting a revolution in this problem. The inward becomes the first and surest experience, with which all that is to pass current as real must show itself to be in consistent relation: everything external loses its proximity and becomes a problem; it can be established as real only through that which it achieves for the inner nature and in accordance with the standards of that nature. The power to convince possessed by sense impression is now based, not on its obviousness, but on the spiritual activity that it arouses. Here also, only the experiences of the spiritual life itself can lead to the experience of something less than spiritual. As such a revolution brings clearly to consciousness the spiritual achievement in the formation of reality, so at the same time it gives the object more movement and transforms it in spiritual endeavour. Two things are necessary to the conception of reality: an independence of man, and a realisation of the many as a unity. Now, since that which lies wholly beyond experience must for that reason be inaccessible to us, this assertion of independence can have no other meaning than that, within life itself, something becomes detached from the stream of consciousness and fixes and asserts itself as independent of it. The power thus to transcend the time-process is a characteristic mark of all spiritual activity; this activity evolves within us something in opposition to us, and in so doing accomplishes a marvellous expansion. This is most clearly seen within the sphere of thought. For all the functions peculiar to thought receive their differentiating characteristic only through such a detachment from the flow of sense-presentation and by establishing themselves as independent of it: the concept presents its content as something fixed in contrast to the stream of presentations; the judgment proclaims its connection of concepts to be something that does not pass away with the act of connecting them but persists in face of all the changes of the psychical life. Life accomplishes a gradation within itself and lifts itself above the mere stream of change. Only because life establishes within itself a fixed nucleus, and in this manner wins an independence of its own momentary condition, can it oppose a world to itself, and set itself the task of appropriating this world--that, further, that independent nucleus should remain no mere collection, but should be inwardly unified is again a requirement and an achievement of the spiritual life. How far that requirement will be fulfilled depends upon the nature and the degree of the development of the spiritual life. Reality, therefore, is to be found chiefly in the self-consciousness of the spiritual life; from this self-consciousness we build up our reality. Since spiritual requirement is from this point of view the measure of human undertaking, our activity is judged by the degree to which the state of the world is changed in it and has thus become our reality. How far our capacity reaches in this matter cannot be decided by preliminary consideration, but only by the progress of life itself: in particular it is not permissible to assume things-in-themselves independent of us and thus to reduce our world to a realm of mere appearances. For, so far as that independence reached, things could never enter our life, and never be inwardly appropriated; at most they could concern us only in their effects. As far as the conception of nature as a mechanism is concerned, which regards all occurrence as a texture of related individual points which exist, inaccessible, behind it, there is much to be said for the view that things are only known in their effects; but this view is an intolerable limitation--dogmatic in the highest degree--if it is meant to represent our fundamental relation to reality and to ourselves. For then we should be related to ourselves as to something alien; all the self-consciousness of life would be destroyed; there could be no development of being in contrast to single acts, but we must be completely resolved in the stream of appearances; there would be no advance in the striving after reality. As a matter of fact, we are concerned primarily with the content that life is able to give to itself; how far it presses forward to reality. Our world is to be measured more especially by the degree in which life becomes deepened. But from the beginning man, so far as he shares in the spiritual life, is not a being adjacent to reality, but within it. He would never be able to attain to a reality if he did not bear it within himself and needed only to develop it. Thus ultimately he does not look inwards from outside, but outwards from within; and his limitation is not the chief thing, but the secondary. The inner structure of our life corresponds with this conviction. It is characteristic of all spiritual life that it does not pass hither and thither between individual points, but includes and develops a multiplicity within a transcendent unity; by this the spiritual life grows within itself, and more and more acquires a self-consciousness. And it is just in this way that it evolves to a reality. Reality, therefore, here is not a fixed and completed magnitude, but is of different degrees. In the first place there is a difference in the energy which maintains a union of the manifold and a transcendence of the division: according to the nature of this energy the self appears, sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker; its power of changing, at one time greater, at another smaller. Again, the force of the resistance that the given condition to be appropriated offers, differs according to the amount of its positive power; and the clash of the given condition and free activity will be harder or more gentle according to this power. One man finds intolerable contradictions where to another all is plain and smooth; one believes that things are transformed in their own being where another holds that only their surface is affected: and so, that which one regards as reality may seem to another only a realm of shadows. Mere energy, however, is too subjective to be able to obtain a genuine reality from life: for that, a transformation of life in work, an elevation to full activity, is necessary; but the preceding paragraph has shown that this transformation and elevation is of different kinds and of different degrees. The system of the formation of being promises to give to life the most fundamental organisation and the most forceful reality. For into the single elements embraced by the movement of life it is able to breathe a life of their own, to confer upon them an incomparably greater independence than in those systems in which they are regarded as lifeless objects which are acted upon, and which only set isolated forces in motion. When within a comprehensive life different centres of life meet, and in their interaction the activity of the whole wins an ever richer content and a more stable nature, genuine reality must increasingly unfold itself. Looked at from this position, reality is not a fact but a problem and an ideal; it does not lie at the beginning but at the end of the course: it is different with different individuals, peoples, and times; each in its particular nature and work has its own reality. Thus we cannot comprehend the problem of reality from experience without conceiving reality as existing in flux: the assertion of an independent spiritual life, transcendent over all human undertaking, is a sufficient safeguard against a destructive relativism. It is one of the most troublesome appearances in the conflicts of minds that they fail to recognise the many-sidedness and fluidity of our conceptions of reality; that each takes his conception as the self-evident one and urges it upon the others. In this way originate the many unfruitful disputes concerning this world and the next, immanence and transcendence, in which the most external and superficial conception is usually presented as self-evident; while yet, according to the fundamental relation and the chief basis of life, very different conceptions arise, and as a fact, systems of thought nowhere come into more severe conflict than with regard to their conceptions of reality. Only to a mode of thought which, without further consideration, accepts the world of sense as the genuine and only reality, can philosophy and religion, for example, appear to be occupied with things implying an "other" world, and which, therefore, are incomprehensible. On the contrary, Augustine thought to attain to genuine reality and at the same time a true life only by elevation to a realm above sense, so that to him the world of sense was secondary and derivative. To-day we are again deeply concerned with the problem of reality. Notwithstanding all the passionate agitation of forces in the incalculable extension of and the breathless haste in work, a genuine reality fails us; our life lacks the proper character of being real; and so, in the midst of all the external results of our work, our life, spiritually discerned, threatens to become destitute and unreal. An eager desire for reality exists in our time; it is often thought possible to satisfy it by the closest possible connection with sense impression and impulse, and by expelling as far as possible all elements of thought. But thought is there, and cannot be expelled; with its power to analyse, it steps continually between us and things, takes away from them the proximity they have for us, and dissolves them into mere pictures and shadows. As a fact, the problem of reality lies primarily within the spiritual life; and it cannot be solved otherwise than in that the spiritual life advances within itself from division to unity, from the movement of forces to self-determining activity, from all mere activity to a formation of being. If thus our life becomes transformed into a self-preservation, if in it we unfold and assert a spiritual being, we become certain of a reality and feel a satisfaction. Never, however, can reality come to us from without. (b) MAN AND THE WORLD Through our whole investigation we have expressed the conviction that man acquires a secure relation to the world only through his belonging to a spiritual life acknowledged as independent; otherwise, all entrance to the world is shut off. The growing independence of the inner life has broken down the immediate connection which dominates the naïve way of thinking: if, however, man once finds himself set in a position of independence of the world, he can hardly draw it back to himself simply of his own capacity. All appeal to subtlety and reflection seems only to widen the gulf still more. Only the acknowledgment of an independent spiritual life offers a way out of such a desperate situation: if in the spiritual life the world attains to a self-consciousness, and if, on the other hand, the spiritual life is present and active within man, there is a possibility that man and the world are united; and that, at the same time, human life also becomes cosmic. But it is a question how far the possibility comes to be realised; how far the union that exists in the innermost basis can be developed and transformed within us in the work of life. Only the actual experience of life can answer this question. We must ascertain whether there are any particular developments of life which are not productions of the human, but which manifest the operation of a transcendent world; and, further, whether these developments are able to find a more detailed formation in their contact with the world around us, and to adapt themselves to the multiplicity of this world. Such a turning to the individual thing would be impossible if a complete life-form ruled within us and impressed itself on things only from the outside. For in this case this form must inevitably be uniformly effective in its whole extent; in appropriating the multiplicity it could not itself advance to greater concreteness. If such an advance is effected, there is a contact within life between the one and the other; and so the world acquires an inner connection with our activity, and the spiritual movement can take possession of the breadth of our life and with its differentiation gain a greater intuitiveness. An immediate union of man and world is indeed opposed to the fact that the spiritual life which should unite them always exists, for us, in its particular form in human existence and that this form cannot be projected beyond man into the whole. The form of human existence constitutes an insuperable boundary; if it governed our life as a whole, then man could never overstep his narrow, particular sphere. But it is a conviction that is fundamental to our investigation that our whole life does not come under this form, but that there are tendencies in life which are operative beyond this form of existence, and attain to an independence of it. So far as these life-tendencies may be detached and developed, man may confidently take up the problem of the world, and feel related to the world around him; he can try to transform its life into his own. The particularity of his manner of presentation and perception then simply sets the limitation, that that which may be admitted to be certain and true in its fundamental content can be presented only through the medium of human peculiarity; the more detailed amplification of the representation is always only of a symbolic character. We see from this fact that there is a contradiction ever present within our life that prevents it from ever gaining an ultimate conclusion; however, it does not take from us the possibility of an inner union and a community with the whole. Indeed, the contradiction itself, and the powerful movement that it calls forth, are to the train of thought here indicated a witness to a fundamental expansion of our life. An attempt to unite our life with the whole appears in the first place in thought, in its work of obtaining knowledge. This emergence of thought involves a transformation of life that could never be occasioned by mere man, but can be understood only as the revelation of a new stage of universal life. In thought, the intellect, otherwise bound to the mechanism of the sequence of presentations, attains an independence. It places itself in a position independent of the world, and seeks to comprehend it as a whole, to appropriate it as a whole. The primary connection with things is dissolved, to become established anew upon a higher level and with an important transformation of its nature; through the deviation a real appropriation is achieved. All this is incomparably more than a merely becoming conscious of a given world, which is an experience that could arise in some way at isolated points; thought contains a development of the world which ultimately can proceed only from the power of the world itself. How can the individual matter be elucidated if the whole remain obscure? How can the desire for enlightenment obtain such a power over man, and assert itself in him in opposition to the interests of his physical self-preservation, if a universal movement were not operative in him? Man does not elucidate the world, but the world elucidates itself within him. What is thus reached is valid not for him alone, but universally; the development of this universal movement of thought enables him to win a closer relation to the world, a life embracing the world. Our thought cannot advance in the definite work of building up science without producing and employing a definite logical structure with fixed principles: these principles are immanent in the work of thought; they are above all the caprice and all the differences of the individuals. This logical structure cannot be carried over and applied to the world around us, as all scientific research carries it over and applies it, without implicitly presupposing an objective logic of things, a conceivability of experience: in this, man does not simply project externally and apply mechanically forms already existing in a complete and final state within him. For the multiplicity of things not only gives to those principles a particular form, in the production of which they must themselves participate, but through the relation to the world the fundamental forms are also further developed in their nature as a whole; it is only with the co-operation of both sides that the thought-structure achieves what is ultimately reached. The chief thing is that thought actually transcends the state of contemplative reflection, and advances to fully active work; that out of the movement of our thought proceed further developments, which extend to the object also; that, moreover, we come under the compulsion of inner necessities, and, possessing the highest freedom, are raised securely above all caprice. This creative thought in us, which is at the same time our own thought, constitutes a witness to a meeting of our thought with a thought that has its basis in things and in the whole. Inability to imagine such a thought should never lead to the denial of an absolute logic, with which all scientific research stands or falls. The disclosure of this relation, however, gives to our thought, in the midst of all doubt, a firm foundation, a joyful certainty, an infinite task. Artistic creation and appreciation brings another characteristic unfolding of life; and this also demonstrates an inner relation of man to the world, and can be developed only when this relation is acknowledged. In the first place, for this creation and appreciation a deliverance of life from the turmoil of ends and interests, which at first sway our existence, is essential; artistic creation and appreciation involves a resting and a tarrying in itself. If the world were no more than this turmoil, if it did not in some way attain to self-consciousness, how could such a deliverance be brought about? If a self-conscious life were not present in man, how could a longing for an artistic moulding of life arise in him? But an arousing of an inner life in things, the revelation of a soul, is accomplished not through imparting something from without, but through a meeting together of things and human endeavour. On the other hand, the spiritual expresses itself in a visible form and in doing so moulds itself. The chief thing in this connection is not mere beauty, a preparation for idle enjoyment, but a truth, a revelation of contents, a further development of life through and above the antithesis. How could something invisible and something visible, to express the matter briefly, find a common ground and combine together in a common action if nature were not more than the mere web of relations into which the mechanistic conception of it transforms it; if spiritual life were not more than the subjective form of life that it is supposed to be, according to general opinion; if from that form of life an inner life did not arise, and beyond all subjectivity attain to a full activity, and thus to the building up of a reality within its own province? That we do not simply become aware of a movement within ourselves, and then read it into nature, but only take up and lead to its own truth that which strives upward in nature, is again testified by the inner advance of this striving through its contact with the world, and by the infinite abundance of particular contents which are revealed to us in the world and which continually aid in our development. Again, our life experiences the most important elevation in that it takes up and carries further a movement of the whole, and is liberated from the narrowness of the particular sphere, without merging into a vague infinity. To realise clearly that we belong to the world, and energetically to amplify this relation, is of the greatest significance for artistic creation and appreciation. For it is only by becoming firmly established in these relations that artistic endeavour is able to resist the tendency to degenerate into play and pleasure--a tendency which threatens it with inner destruction; as in a similar manner the work of thought must guard itself from degenerating into mere reflection. In the realms of thought and art there remains much that is alien, ever surmise and symbol; but even symbol is not to be disdained, if it serves an important truth. A universal character is shown most clearly by the movements that co-operate towards the ethical moulding of life. Without freedom there is no such moulding; but we saw above that freedom requires a world of spontaneous life and its presence within man. However, when freedom is thought of in these relations, it is elevated above the usual conception of it and also above the usual criticism. All moral life is pretence and delusion without the arousing and fundamental idea of duty. But where is the truth more clearly expressed than in duty, that what man does by no means concerns himself alone; and that nothing can constrain him but what he acknowledges as his own will, his own being? As duty is concerned ultimately not with something isolated but with a whole, not with a performance within the old order but with the creation of a new order, so in the moral life a whole new world appears to be taken up into man's own will and being. Duty exhibits the new world particularly in relation and in opposition to the old; the new world appears in itself to be pre-eminently a kingdom of love. Love is primarily not a subjective emotion, but an expansion and a deepening of life, through life setting itself in the other, taking the other up into itself; and in this movement life itself becomes greater, more comprehensive and noble. Love is not a mere relation of given individuals, but a development and a growing in communion, an elevation and an animation of the original condition. And this movement of love has no limits; it has all infinity for its development; it extends beyond the relation to persons to the relation to things; for things also reveal their innermost being only to a disposition of love. Again, the striving after truth in science and art cannot succeed without love and an animation that proceeds from it, without inwardly becoming one with the object. How could this unity and activity in the whole be possible, how could it even become an object of desire, if the whole itself did not strive? And how could such a wealth of cultures proceed out of this movement if that which was striven towards at one time was not taken up and carried further by other times; how could the single movements tend together without the unifying and elevating power of a universal life? As a phenomenon to the individual, the movement involves a definite contradiction: wherever it has been further and more freely developed it has been directed to a kingdom of love; and this has necessarily been thought of as the soul of reality, and a severe conflict has been taken up against the world of self-assertion. Thus in the realm of morality also we find ourselves in world-movements, we create out of the whole, work towards the whole, and are borne on the flood of infinite life. Accordingly, life-developments of various and related kinds arise: with their manifold experiences they strive to attain to a harmony and a union with one another. They can seek these only on the basis of a self-consciousness of reality; find them only through their unification in a universal life, to which each individual tendency leads. Representations of the whole are attempted at the highest points of creative activity by philosophy, religion, and art; these representations accompany, indeed govern, the work in these spheres of life through history. But the limitations of our capacity, through which we are unable to give a suitable form to necessary contents, and through which we attribute and must attribute human traits to that which should lead us beyond the human, are of particular force in this matter of forming a representation of the whole; and, indeed, this is the more so the further we remove ourselves from that which may be immediately transformed in work. These representations of the whole are, therefore, inadequate; their content of truth is clothed in a wrapping of myth, and humanity lies under the danger of taking the myth for the chief thing and thus of obscuring the truth, and this must produce an incalculable amount of error and strife. Still, it is impossible to give up all claim to these representations of the whole; for they alone make the fact of our belonging to the whole and of the presence of the whole in our life quite clear and enable it to exert a far-reaching influence. Only with their help can the degeneration of life to the intolerable insignificance of the narrowly human be resisted; only with their help can a movement from whole to whole begin. Thus it is a matter not so much of abandoning these representations of the whole as of referring them continually to their essence; to those unfoldings of life which are experienced by us; to test them by these and to renew them from these. It was the error of the earlier position--much too indulgent to Intellectualism-that it did not sufficiently maintain the relation with these living sources, and so fell into the danger of having no definite tendency, or even of failing to recognise the relativity of the myth. If a more energetic direction of life upon its own content and experiences teaches us to preserve these connections better and to develop them more forcefully, a new type of representation of the whole is yielded in contrast to the old, and far more different from it than may appear at the first glance. We may hope that with its development the truth will be seen more clearly through the myth, and that the striving, which we cannot give up, to win a universal life may not lead us astray into a world of dreams. (c) THE MOVEMENT OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE IN MAN The question as to in which direction the spiritual life moves in man is implied through our whole investigation, and in it receives an answer. Nevertheless, it requires to be definitely stated and treated by itself, so that the distinctive character of the movement and its influence in the moulding of life may be fully acknowledged. It has become clearly evident to us that an independent and, therefore, genuine spiritual life cannot arise out of life in its usual condition, but only in opposition to this condition. For, however little this condition of life may lack spiritual elements, they are mixed and bound up with other elements far too much to be able to bind themselves immediately into a whole, and to display an independent power. That the spiritual life must and can gain a basis independent of this condition of life is the indispensable, fundamental idea of Idealism. But such attainment of independence of the usual condition would help little if the spiritual life which is based upon itself had not a particular nature of its own, and if from this it did not oppose everything alien and partly alien to itself. The doctrines of innate ideas, of an _a priori_, and so on, which have occupied humanity for thousands of years did not intend anything different from this. The details of the conception of these were indeed often open to criticism: it was sought to exhibit individual conceptions and propositions as existing complete at the beginning, where rather movements or tendencies are in question, which can find their realisation only within the work of life. Again, the _a priori_ was limited to the intellectual sphere, whereas it is indispensable to all spiritual activity; for example, how can morality, rising above merely natural preservation and rejecting all mere utility, as it does, be conceived without such an _a priori_? To deny to spiritual life an original nature and power--an _a priori_ in this more comprehensive sense--means nothing else than to eliminate that life as an independent factor, and to reduce it to the position of a secondary product. For without an original nature the spiritual life would be like soft wax that may be shaped in one form or another to suit our own pleasure: then the spiritual life could not possibly follow its own aims, could not possibly attain to an independence in the inner life, in which we recognised the characteristic nature of the inner life. As certain as it is that there is a spiritual life at all, so certainly does it bring certain fundamental tendencies and movements with it; as surely as it develops in particular directions--and that it does this we have seen--so surely is this _a priori_ also differentiated. To trace this fundamental state of spiritual activity in all its relations and multiplicity is an especially important task of philosophic research. The revelation of such an original fundamental activity of the spirit must induce us to undertake to form our whole world from this activity, and to produce from it or to transform into it that which exists over against activity as an independent realm of experience. This has been attempted for thousands of years with the summoning of an enormous amount of spiritual power and the arousing of a proud self-consciousness. But failure was inevitable because it was not recognised that the development of the spiritual life in man is conditioned. However certain it may be that original spiritual movements must be active within us, they are not so with organised content and overwhelming power from the beginning, but they acquire content and power only through the process of life itself, only in grappling with the oppositions of experience and in the appropriation of the tasks and stimuli which experience brings to them. The incompleteness and the mutability of what was accepted earlier as a fixed and unchangeable racial possession of the spiritual life is to-day quite clearly perceived. What great changes morality, for example, has undergone in the course of the ages; how toilsomely has much been won which later ages have considered self-evident! To be sure, morality remains, even through all such changes, an original spiritual phenomenon, which can never be derived from an external source, but which could emerge and establish itself only as an inner necessity of the spiritual life in opposition to the realm of mere utility. But the actuality of this original phenomenon gives rise to a difficult problem, for the solution of which a closer contact with the environment, a fundamental arrangement with experience, is necessary. And so the problem is traced to a more ultimate source, and, though this makes the matter less simple, it gives a higher significance to our work and to the movement of history. Even the fundamental forms of thought which are often accepted as of everything the most fixed share in this gradual amplification. Man, so far as he participates in spiritual impulse, thinks, of course, in conceptions; he gives to appearances fixed points of support by the establishing of things, and relates events causally. But all this is full of problems and is comprehended only in its upward endeavour; it raises more problems than it solves; and around the solution of these the whole work of science moves. What different things the "idea" meant to Plato and to Kant, and to ancient and to modern thought generally: how every thinker of moment has given a particular conception of substance and of causality; how whole epochs have exhibited their particular nature in the treatment of these problems! For the sake of its own perfection, therefore, the spiritual life must continually turn back to the realm of experience, from which, at first, it tore itself free. Attempts to evolve the whole life from that _a priori_ have always given as a result something of a bloodless nature, abstract in the highest degree, a mere web of formulæ, in so far as experience, which had been relegated to the background, has not indirectly asserted its right again, and infused the formulæ with life. Accordingly, our life does not spend itself in one direction, but bears within it the counter-tendencies of a tearing oneself free from the world of sense and a returning back to it, of a detachment from it and an appropriation of it to oneself. But, in this, independent life and bound life do not become combined; how could that be the case without the loss of all inner unity? A basis is necessary; and it is furnished only by self-determining activity. Experience acquires a spiritual content and value only so far as it is based upon this activity, and is taken up into a spiritual movement. Experience does not share something with the spiritual life, but, through stimulation and opposition, it forces that life to further development within itself. The state in which the world of sense is first found undergoes an inner elevation in that appropriation: sense presentation, for example, is to scientific work something quite different from what it is to naïve perception; even if it obstinately withstands a complete resolution into magnitudes of pure thought, it takes up more and more thought elements; it enters into conceptual relations; it answers questions which the work of thought sets. To the whole sphere of sense science gives the background of a world of thought, and transforms mere sense into a spatially bound spirituality. The same thing is valid with regard to the things of value in life; in these, also, sense and spirit are not simply combined; but something of sense becomes a spiritual good only so far as it serves the spiritual life in some way; it cannot do this, however, without itself undergoing a transformation. This is to be seen nowhere more clearly than in economics. Money and estate had at all times a value for self-preservation and enjoyment, but in the doctrine of economics and political economy they could obtain acknowledgment only after a power to advance the spiritual life had been recognised in them. As culture in the ancient world had not yet reached this point of view, it branded all endeavour after material wealth as inferior, and as far as possible checked such endeavour. Only since the Modern Age has recognised in money and estate an indispensable means of gaining control over the surrounding world and of increasing human power have they secured a place within the spiritual life, and as a result of this have become more highly estimated. At the same time, however, they have been changed inwardly in the process, since that which they achieve, not towards ostentatious display and enjoyment, but towards the increase of human power over things has become the chief matter. As in this way the content and the value of that which is offered by the world of sense shows its dependence upon the condition of the spiritual life, so in science also a similar relation between experience and the spiritual life is found. Science appeals to experience with particular zeal, more especially after it has first accomplished far-reaching changes in its own thought constructions; only then does experience give anything new to knowledge and exhibit a greater depth. Experience can answer only in the measure in which it is questioned; the question, however, varies according to the stage of development of the spiritual life. Such a view fully appreciates the significance of life-work, and must strive energetically to gain its acknowledgment. This work is not a carrying out of a complete scheme in a given condition of things, an application of firmly rooted principles to particular cases, but a self-realisation and self-perfecting of the spiritual life which builds up a self-conscious reality. In this our life is not divided between two different realms, but, in a comprehensive spiritual world, different stages of reality meet together, which must be brought into relation and developed. To be sure, the world of sense retains a certain independence; it resists a complete transformation into spiritual magnitudes, and our life, therefore, retains a certain restriction and impenetrability. But the self-consciousness of the spirit becomes more and more the chief basis and sphere of life: this self-consciousness continually takes up more into itself; it makes the world that was to us at first primary, indeed the only world, more and more secondary and subordinate. This increasing spiritualisation of human life never becomes a sure possession that calls for no toil; ever anew it demands our attention and activity; it has continually to be won anew as a whole. As soon as the tension slackens, the world of experience with its appeal to sense preponderates, and it soon appears to be man's sole world, one which cannot tolerate anything beyond itself. For the spiritualisation of human life, a longing rooted in the whole being is primarily necessary; for with the keen feeling of the vanity of the world of sense experience, this leads to the removal of the centre of life into the invisible world of self-determining activity. Further, a clear presentation of this invisible world is needed; and in this the help of the visible is not to be dispensed with. For its own establishment the realm of the invisible must borrow means of expression from the visible, which now governs human presentation; must transform and refine them for its aims; prepare out of them an impressive presentation of the whole. Along with the energy of turning to the spiritual life a creative imagination is required, through which the invisible may become equal to holding its own against the visible. The help of such imagination is indispensable for religion, in order that the supernatural world advocated by it may gain an effective presence in the province of humanity. And so with bold upward flights of imagination the heroes of religion have projected a new condition of reality as a whole, a kingdom of justice or of love, and have judged human existence by the standard of this new condition. Similarly, philosophy did not become an independent world of thought without the help of imagination; and of how indispensable it is to art we need not speak at all. Again, work in political, social, educational matters, at least as far as radical renewals are concerned, has really been taken up and carried on, and has won a triumphant power, only where the state striven for has been presented as something visible and clearly present; this alone has united the multiplicity, and has led with compelling force beyond the extant situation as though that were something intolerable. Humanity as a whole must be present in an ideal condition to our minds for us to be aroused sufficiently from our indolence. Our life, therefore, contains movements which tend in opposite directions: there are a pressing forward and a turning backward, a detachment from experience and a taking up again of experience; and so we may well speak of an action and reaction within its movement. But the antitheses that arise aid in advancement only so long as they are encompassed by a whole of activity. In that the course of history increases far more than it diminishes the antitheses, the dangers grow more and more, the possibilities and the tasks of human existence, however, also grow. (d) THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW TYPE OF LIFE The conception of the spiritual life here developed gives rise to a particular type of life which can bring about a transformation and elevation of man from two main positions: the union of man with the spiritual life is much closer, and the spiritual life in itself is incomparably more, than is represented by the customary conception of that life. For in our conception man does not merely enter into some kind of relation with the spiritual life, but finds his own being in it, and becomes so completely united with it that it is able to determine him immediately as his own self. The spiritual life is not a particular function among others, not a part or an aspect of a more comprehensive world, but is itself a world, and, indeed, a world in which life first attains to self-consciousness and becomes a complete reality. If this world becomes the immediate possession of man himself, his life must experience a deep-reaching change, indeed a revolution of its usual condition: to trace the main tendencies of this revolution is our immediate task. (1) _Life's Attainment of Greatness_ The placing of man in the spiritual life, becoming aware of its own independence, must make the forms of this life his own, and in this way bring about a reversal of the commonplace of every day. Life is transposed from the narrowness of its merely particular nature to infinity; what was hitherto alien and hostile to man is changed into his own possession, and is able to arouse an animating and elevating love. At the same time a deliverance from subjectivity and its web of interests and ideas is effected, to the advantage of a life-process that takes up the object into itself, and thus advances to independence and sovereign creation; a life is attained that is not spent in movement to and fro between antitheses, but unfolds a content through them. As this life attains to complete independence only because it produces a universal activity in contrast to individual activities, so participation in this life must lead man beyond division to a comprehensive unity. It is this that is sought in the idea of personality--an idea which is often quite obscure and superficial, but which can in this context be elucidated, manifest its complete significance, and prove its power of development. As the spiritual life is a self-consciousness, so man also wins from it a life that is not exhausted by activity directed upon anything external to this life, and that does not expect its content from outside like an empty vessel, but would be itself and realise the possibilities lying within itself. So far as such a life extends man does not stand on the border of things but in the centre, in the formation and creation of the whole; he experiences the world not as something external but from within. The question of the limits of this life is no longer primary but secondary, and the answer to this question is to be expected from the experience of life, not from preliminary reflections. Since, in this, life has a content in itself and develops this content through its movement, it distinctly grows above all the play of forces with which it is often confused; if such a play of forces suffices for a lower stage it cannot suffice for further development. For the feeling of joyous excitement which accompanies the exertion of power is not sufficient in opposition to the serious perplexities that accompany all spiritual work; indeed, not even against the cares and needs that are involved in the mere preservation of existence in an advancing culture. Life then easily comes to be regarded as full of trouble and of work, and becomes a burden from which one wishes to be delivered. Life is not from the beginning a good, but it must prove itself to be such by its more detailed development. In the spiritual life this comes to pass, since it produces a reality out of itself; it does not become valuable first in its relation to the external world, but it carries a value in itself, as is clearly shown by the joy that permeates all experience of the true, the good, and the beautiful. This joy must be further increased if all the multiplicity of this experience is regarded as the unfolding of a comprehensive and persistent fundamental life. A life of this kind is no indefinite impulse; it cannot become an independent reality without penetrating into every aspect and making the ordinary state of things everywhere inadequate, indeed intolerable. Since the independent spirituality and spiritual character that is acquired, and that which the particular thing and activity signifies in the spiritual life as a whole, everywhere constitutes the most important question, the problem of truth will be raised at each point; and in this way a sharp division will be made between the genuine and the spurious; everything that strives within us in the direction of the spirit will unite and acquire a more stable basis; everything that would satisfy man in other ways will be seen to be empty and vain. Life now acquires a deeper reality, but this must first be reached and brought to complete effect. New forms, in contrast to the ordinary representations, must also make their appearance if life is to be equal to the task of developing content and character. Life in the individual must have roots deeper than the immediate psychical life; for psychical life cannot itself produce and make clear that which occurs in it, for this reason at least, that it involves the antithesis of individual and environment, of subject and object, beyond which spiritual creation results. The spiritual impulse that the immediate life of the soul manifests can be based only upon deeper realities and more comprehensive relations. And so a _noölogical_ treatment is to be distinguished from the psychological, not in order to displace or limit the latter, but rather to complete it; and it is a problem to show the point of transition in the immediate life of the soul. The significance of the individual life, as far as content is concerned, will depend upon whether an independent spirituality arises within it, and constitutes it a distinctive life-centre. According to the new standards a free spiritual activity does not suffice, however extended it may be, and however sustained by subjective emotion. For all such activity may be without spiritual substance, and in spite of all external results the life that is nothing but this activity may remain spiritually destitute: how shallow many individuals are whose achievements deserve and obtain the highest appreciation! The inwardness that the spiritual life requires is not simply a reflex of work in the soul--from that little is gained--but the forming of a characteristic spiritual self-consciousness that lifts us above all mere achievement, and also by giving to activity a soul first makes it complete. We have often seen how the acknowledgment of an independent spiritual life forces us to make a sharper distinction between human history and human society and all merely natural history and merely natural co-existence of men. At the same time, in that which is called history and society, a distinction between an esoteric and an exoteric kind is also required. The value of individual epochs and of history as a whole depends upon the spiritual substance that grows up in them; everything else, to whatever extent it may, with commotion and external result, assume the air of being the chief thing, is only environment or supplement. Similarly, in the case of society, the spiritual content, if it has one at all, and human fortune and conduct must become more distinctly separated. There is far less genuine history and society than is usually assumed; but this little signifies incomparably more than both would imply without the spiritual life. Similarly, with the acknowledgment of an independent spiritual life in us, a new light is shed upon the individual departments of life, and new tasks are set them. They have now, primarily, not to further human well-being, to be of service in the attainment of narrowly human aims, but they are characteristic unfoldings of the spiritual life. The particular nature of these departments has its basis in that life, and they must prove their capacity by advancing it. They are concerned with man only so far as he participates in the spiritual life; and so they will not so much strengthen him in his human nature as elevate him spiritually, and remould him more and more to the form of the spiritual life. A deliverance from the confusion of that which is narrowly human with the spiritual is also necessary, and, along with this, life as a whole must be more energetically based upon the spiritual life, and the spiritual life itself must be given a more distinct form. From the position of this life, that which has been handed down to us must be evaluated and new paths must be opened up for the future. Religion could obtain no content, and all change in it would be only an advance from a more crude to a more refined anthropomorphism, if it were based solely upon human needs and aided man to attain a supposed happiness. Religion rises above such a condition of doubt only if it exhibits its roots in an independent spiritual life and is able to show its actuality and its power by aiding the development of the spiritual life. At its highest religion has always been concerned with winning a new world and a new humanity, not with the achievement of something within the old world and for the old humanity. And as we need a religion of the spiritual life, we also need a morality, an art, and, finally, an all-comprehensive spiritual culture, through which something really new may be produced and man be elevated in this being, and not simply circle round and round continually in the old paths. Everywhere the matter is one of advance and revelation; from this point of view the complexes of every day must also be seen in a new light, and in what is apparently simple and self-evident great achievements and tasks become manifest. We now, for the first time and in another sense, win again that which we thought we already possessed; indeed, by the revolution to the spiritual life, life as a whole is transformed into a task. Every individual has such a life-embracing task in the cultivation of a genuine personality and a spiritual individuality. Humanity as a whole has such a task in the building up of a kingdom of reason within its domain, in the furtherance of the movement which comes to it from the whole and summons it to co-operation. Human life by participation in the spiritual life finds its basis in the inward and spontaneous, in the infinite and eternal. The development and the experiences of the spiritual life and its conflict with a world, which is only being won, are here the chief content of human life and unite individuals inwardly; the destinies of individuals receive their particular nature from such a common life. As this life of independent spirituality is possible only by detachment from the chaotic condition of life as we find it at its general level, the development of the spiritual life must make us clearly conscious of the spiritual destitution of the majority; and especially must it oppose the attempt on the part of such a life as that of the majority to present itself as the whole, and to make itself the standard of human endeavour. In such an attempt the trivially human inevitably preponderates, and this now, at its highest points, invests itself with ostentatious pomp and a feeling of power; now, almost as a whole, relies on the reason of the masses, which loudly and noisily proclaims that those things which according to human opinion are valuable are of all things the highest; confidently makes its judgment and its task the standard of truth; and, with arrogant presumption, demands a reverence towards itself that is due solely to the spiritual world. From of old there have been many indictments of this, but as long as a new life, based in the spiritual world in contrast with merely human life, was not attained to, these indictments did not lead to a deliverance. Under the guidance of religion humanity has evolved such a life and for thousands of years has found support in it. However, humanity has lost this life and this support, in its old form, and the loss was inevitable. If humanity will strive after a new form and at the same time transcend mere appearance, it can attain to this only on the basis of the spiritual life, that is acknowledged to be independent. Only on this basis can it enter into the conflict on the side of gods against idols, for truth against appearance and emptiness. The new life cannot develop without elevating the individual in his spiritual nature above all environment. For, as surely as the construction of a spiritual reality within humanity needs a union of all powers, there is a spontaneous springing up of the independent spiritual life only within the soul of the individual. All social and all historical life that does not unceasingly draw from this source falls irrecoverably into a state of stagnation and desolation. The individual can never be reduced to the position of a mere member of society; of a church, of a state; notwithstanding all external subordination he must assert an inner superiority; each spiritual individual is more than the whole external world. But as the individual does not derive this superiority from himself, not from a natural particularity and peculiarity in distinction from others, but only from the presence of a spiritual world, so he is securely guarded from all vain self-assurance and the arrogance of the idea of the Superman, which grotesquely distorts the great fact of the revelation of a universal life at individual points. The desire for the presence of the infinite at the individual point may be characterised as an approximation to mysticism. Indeed, we need both a metaphysic and a mysticism; but we want both in a new form, not in the old. It seems to us preposterous to declare that necessary demands of the spiritual life are finally disposed of, because the older solution has become inadequate. If man does not in some way succeed in appropriating the spiritual life, if it is not actively present as a whole within him and animating him, then his relation to the spiritual life remains for ever an external one; and this life cannot acquire a complete spontaneity in him, can never become a genuine life of his own. But the older mysticism was the offspring of a worn-out age, which primarily reflected upon quietness and peace, and was under the influence of a philosophy that sought the truth in striving towards the most comprehensive universal, and saw in all particularity a defect (_omnis determinatio negatio_). And so, to be completely merged in the formless infinite could be regarded as the culmination of life. As the spiritual life is to us, on the contrary, an increasing activity and creation, a world of self-determining activity, so its being called to life at individual points is a rousing of life to its highest energy; in this also, a continual appropriation is necessary. Further, the movement of the spiritual life does not appear to us as an advance from particular to universal, but as one from differentiation to the living whole; from the indefiniteness of the beginnings to complete organisation and distinctive form. The inwardness that we advocate is not a feeble echo and a yearning for dissolution, but is of an active and masculine nature, and rests on ceaseless self-determining activity. One may or may not call this mysticism; in any case mysticism of such a kind cannot be charged with that which now appears to us to be defect or error in the older form. (2) _The Increase of Movement_ As certainly as a universal life must surround us and, with efficient power, in some way be implanted within us, yet only our own activity can appropriate and amplify that life for us. As the transition to the independent spiritual life changes the problem so that no achievement in a given world will satisfy it, but only the winning of a new world, our existence must become much more active; our life must be made not only much more comprehensive but also inwardly transformed and deepened. Naïve opinion is accustomed to presuppose a fixed sphere for our activity; it is possible for it to do this only because it confuses the spiritual and that which is less than the spiritual and leaves them undifferentiated. Since the attainment of independence by the spiritual life makes this confusion impossible, it may at the same time be recognised that the fixed relations in which we seem to be are also in reality due to our own activity. From this fact a method of treatment is justified, the introduction of which constitutes one of the greatest services of Kant. This method in his own terminology is the transcendental method. Unlike ordinary opinion, it does not regard the relation of the departments of life and all its activities as being self-evident, but it enquires into the inner possibility of this relation, that is, it indicates the conditions without which the union of the manifold could not be accomplished; it reveals the spiritual activity that exists in the whole. It reveals a far finer texture of life; it shows syntheses from the whole to the elements; it indicates clearer limits and makes us more definitely recognise what differentiates the individual departments. This is what Kant did in the case of scientific knowledge, of morality, and of the realm of the beautiful. The transcendental method itself is first indisputably justified and given a secure foundation with the acknowledgment that a world of independent spirituality emerges in man, and this through his own activity, not by a mere favour and gift of destiny. For, when this independent spiritual world is acknowledged it first becomes a matter beyond doubt that the basis, and the bonds which unite the whole, could not be given, but must proceed from our own activity. The transcendental method must therefore be applied not only to the individual branches but also to the whole, and the possibility of a spiritual life in man in general made a problem. Then from the whole the method must also be extended to the departments that are not brought into prominence by Kant; it must discuss, for example, the possibility of history in a characteristically human sense. Since our reality is thus dependent in the first place upon our own activity, life and movement acquire a wider scope and a greater value. The movement of life also tends to be increased by the fact that in our conviction the more detailed form of the spiritual life itself must first be won by our activity, and that this detail can be acquired only little by little through attempts, experiences, convulsions; that for man the spiritual life with its actuality forms a difficult problem. What more particularly separates us from the Enlightenment is that while for it the ultimately valid form of the spiritual life appeared to be immediately present and to need only an energetic working out, we extend the historical treatment not only to the representation, but also to the nature, of the spiritual life; and so the ultimately valid form of the spiritual life appears to be a high ideal, to which man can only gradually approximate. The fact that endeavour is centred not upon externals but primarily upon our own being must make our activity far more significant and more intense; and this leads to a higher estimate of history as well as of a historical treatment. As hence epochs are no longer distinguished simply by their achievements, but by the nature of their spiritual life, so the life of the present must also be given its place in the moving stream, and so our innermost nature also depends on spiritual work. If with such an increase of movement much is mutable that otherwise seemed to be as firm as a rock; and if, in particular, the foundations of life themselves also suffer change, life seems to lose all support and to fall into an unlimited relativism. Indeed, life must thus lose all stability if in the spiritual sphere movement does not involve something in opposition to change: and this as a fact it does involve. As the spiritual life cannot develop a content without presenting it as timeless, there is no great achievement in history that does not include some kind of timeless truth, and the movement of the spiritual life is not merely a flowing onward with time but also an elevation above time. In spiritual work, therefore, the achievements of the ages can be surveyed and examined; indeed, in distinguishing between past and not past the sequence of times can be transformed into a timeless present. Of course this is valid only with the presupposition of an absolute spiritual life, which is present in all the uncertainty and change of human undertaking, and does not allow it to become fixed in error. Unless an immanence of the absolute spiritual life is acknowledged, an essential characteristic of the spiritual work of the Modern Age remains absolutely unintelligible, namely, its critical character. Modern work is not completely objective, and occupation with the object does not completely exhaust that work; but activity realises its independence of the object, investigates its relation to the object, surveys that which has been achieved, and tests it by transcendent standards. Such a critique belongs especially to the fundamental nature of the Enlightenment, to the proud self-confidence of which a conscientious self-examination forms a necessary antithesis. The critical method reached its highest point in Kant, and we can never go back again upon the transformation of life that has been effected by it. But how could the critique be justified and exercise such far-reaching influence as it has done, if it were not more than a product of a subjective reflection that accompanies the object, and that has to do with the object externally? The critique could effect an inner transformation and elevation of work only because it set new forces in motion. And it did this in that it measured all human achievement by the demands of a transcendent spiritual life and out of it developed inner necessities, to which all achievement had to correspond. So the movement was not lost through the lack of an aim; and life did not flow onward with the stream of presentations, but found a support in itself; it was able to exert a powerful counteraction; it did not need to acknowledge anything that had not proved its validity before the judgment-seat of immanent reason. This emergence of the question of validity in contrast to that of actuality must inwardly raise and ennoble the movement of life; it reveals to man an active relation not only to the environment but primarily to himself; it leads to a ceaseless differentiation and examination of the quality of life. It is true that the Enlightenment, which acknowledged that alone to be true which was clearly and distinctly cognised, exercised this critique in a too narrow manner; yet notwithstanding all that may be problematical in its application to details, the right and the necessity of the fundamental idea are not thereby overthrown: the question remains; it can be fully justified only in the relations that we have indicated; but at the same time it must be transferred from the merely intellectual to the spiritual as a whole, and form in relation to the whole that which in the state of culture contains and develops an independent spirituality and a self-conscious life; but by this it gains a content of truth. This self-consciousness alone can be regarded as essence and genuine reality, while everything else is reduced to mere environment and becomes matter of secondary importance, if not of mere appearance. Task after task is revealed, more especially for the present; we see how, with the attainment of independence by the spiritual life, the movement is not only extended, but also grows inwardly and tends towards the elevation of life. (3) _The Gain of Stability_ The movement of the spiritual life as not only directed towards the outside but also turned inwards towards itself gained for us a greater independence. But even that which emerges from within exists only in the process of formation, and in this that which satisfies us to-day may to-morrow be uncertain; and so we cannot dismiss the question whether the spiritual life lacks the necessary stability; whether, in the midst of all becoming and change, caprice and subjectivity are not without the necessary opposition. In any case, the question of fixation must have a different appearance within a system of life based upon activity from that it would have within a system which proceeded from a given world: in the former, that which is fixed cannot be introduced from outside, but must exist within the movement itself; it can manifest itself only through a movement of a kind and form which transcend the utmost capacity of the mere subject. Our investigation as a whole contends that the fixity is of this kind; and at this point only a short revision and a summing up are required. All spiritual activity is, as we saw, a transcendence of the antithesis of subject and object; it is progressive and formative universal activity. But this activity cannot be produced and formed according to desire or fancy; we must be elevated into it; and, as a result of this, we feel that we are under the compulsion of an inner necessity, which distinctly counteracts the caprice of the mere subject. We saw, further, that within the life-process spiritual contents are raised out of the stream of events, and that they unite so as to form a world in contrast with that stream, a world greater and more comprehensive, which nevertheless continues within our life. This applies to all the branches of our work; everywhere the deciding step to joyful advance is when activity proceeds from mere search and contemplation under the necessity of the object. No resolution, however, or even the most sincere volition, can of itself force us to this decisive step. Man must be taken possession of by a spiritual activity and power, and elevated above the state of groping and doubt. This is shown in all scientific work and artistic creation; everywhere success does not appear to be the work of the human, but a gift and a grace from higher forces; everywhere those who have created have felt guided and sustained by such forces. Beyond individuals humanity as a whole develops complexes in science, in law, and so on, which evolve inner necessities and require their recognition and fulfilment by man, and follow courses of their own regardless of the weal or the woe of individuals; so far as life follows these tendencies, it is elevated above doubt to a state of stability and joyfulness. Such movements appear at first as a multiplicity, and are most directly effective through that which is distinctive in the particular departments of life. But through all multiplicity and above it, there is a striving towards a comprehensive unity; every advance towards this unity is an immediate gain in stability and certainty. Nothing helps the individual to become inwardly firm more than the unification of his life in a whole of activity, more than becoming certain of an inward all-comprehensive task in the development of a spiritual individuality. The development of a spiritual individuality is a task that comes to him from within, and which, while it is more than anything else his own, is yet above all caprice. This task may tend little to promote that which is usually called happiness; the striving to fulfil it may transform the whole of existence into a state of toil and trouble, of conflict and care; and yet it alone gives to life a meaning and a value, a sure direction and a secure self-consciousness, and by assuring man of a spiritual existence of his own makes him certain of the spiritual life as a whole. Such a unification of the manifold activities so as to form a life-work, an incomparable kind of spiritual being, is something entirely axiomatic, which is in no way derived from outside. Again, this unification does not depend upon particular representations of the world; only the fanaticism of party can bind it to definite doctrines of the human and the divine. It itself, however, is a secure starting-point for the development of convictions; its acknowledgment involves the acknowledgment of a spiritual world independent of and operative within us, and summoning us to co-operation, even though this implication is often concealed from consciousness. Where our own life lacks such a fountain-head the conviction of a spiritual life never attains to axiomatic certainty, but depends on the thin threads of reasons and proofs, and therefore is most easy to overthrow. And so, for the overcoming of doubt and faintheartedness everything depends upon attaining to a unity of activity and creation which inwardly embraces life as a whole, and with this, upon being something, not simply doing something. What is valid of individuals is valid also of peoples and epochs, of humanity as a whole. Whether a people feels certain of a spiritual life, and is thereby elevated to a state of inward joyfulness, depends primarily upon whether it recognises and acknowledges in itself a common spiritual task: if this is not the case, the acutest apologetic cannot prevent the increase of doubt and faintness of heart. Similarly, the disposition and life-feeling of epochs is decided primarily by whether their endeavour unites them inwardly or whether it is divided, and at the same time becomes inconsistent. The endeavour of our own time does suffer from such division and inconsistency; it is this in particular that gives the negative tendency so much power over us and in the midst of all greatness of achievement in external matters makes us inwardly despondent. Humanity as a whole can attain to a stable spiritual life which is more than that of the particular times and peoples only by the revelation and appropriation of an all-comprehensive task which governs it with inner necessities. Such a task alone makes life a preservation of spiritual character; and gives conviction an unshakable firmness, and a joyous confidence of victory. And so everywhere only the formation of life itself is able to guarantee to it inner stability; the movement itself by its elevation above all caprice and its inner unity is alone able to overcome the dangers which the transformation of life into activity brings with it. (e) ACTIVISM: A PROFESSION OF FAITH The system of life here developed receives its distinctive colour and tone chiefly because it brings into prominence the fact that we do not belong to a world of reason, which from the beginning had only to be perceived and enjoyed, but that we have first to advance to such a world; and for this we require a revolution of the first condition of things. The basis of true life must continually be won anew; and even the individual achievement always contains a decision between one and another type of life. Only through ceaseless activity can life remain at the height to which it has attained; that which life experiences and receives is judged according to the more precise form of activity. Since it gives this precedence to activity, to such activity, this system may be called "Activism." Activism, however, demonstrates its unique character and develops its capacity only if it is definitely distinguished from all other apparently related tendencies. Neither a sudden resolution nor even a mere incitement of power brings us at once into the condition of activity. For at first we are surrounded and embraced by a world of inflexible nature and of feeble spirituality, which is at the same time mixed with human pretence: this world binds us so strongly, and suppresses all independence with such force, that the mere individual remains entirely powerless in opposition to it, and could soar to no higher wisdom than that of an involuntary submission to it. Activity without release from the given world is an absurdity; but such release is attainable only through the living presence of a world of self-determining activity; the power of such a world alone is able to arouse the individual to self-determining activity. But how could man appropriate this world to himself without changing its life into his own; without acknowledging its content as valid for himself also; without making its laws norms of his conduct? Activity in this way acquires an ethical character; it is this which draws the boundary line between spiritual activity and merely natural impulse, and distinguishes genuine from imaginary self-determining activity. Ethical relation does not mean a submission to alien and unsympathetic regulations, but a taking up of the infinite spiritual world into our own volition and being: this relation brings things close to us and reveals them, so that they are able to impart their life to us, and we are able to grow with their growth. So understood, ethical relation is primarily not regulative but productive; it is not merely being prepared to fulfil certain demands, when they are made upon us, to live in accordance with strict regulations, but it involves the motive of aiding in the development of the world, of advancing everything good and true: it requires an untiring forward endeavour and advance to the building up of a kingdom of reason and love. If in this way conduct is lifted above the pursuit of that which pleases and interests the mere subject, this is not on behalf of something alien, but for the elevation of our own being, for the sake of this genuine being, for the sake of our spiritual self. It is this inner elevation and this demand for a new world that distinguishes Activism from all mere Voluntarism and Pragmatism, to which it appears to approximate, and with which, in its negative aspect, it is, indeed, associated. For it shares with them the rejection of an intellectualistic view of life, in which cognition is regarded as finding truth of its own power and as conveying it to the rest of life. Further, Activism desires, as do Voluntarism and Pragmatism also, the basing of truth upon a more spontaneous and essential activity. But the flight to the will is more a reaction against Intellectualism than an overcoming of the difficulty. As such the will does not yield a new world and a transcendent power; it may, therefore, be that mere volition is implicitly transformed into a self-determining activity encompassing the whole extent of life. Pragmatism, also, which has recently made so much headway among English-speaking peoples and beyond them, is more inclined to shape the world and life in accordance with human condition and needs than to invest spiritual activity with an independence in relation to these, and apply its standards to the testing and sifting of the whole content of human life. But after the experiences of history the claim to this latter can scarcely be given up. After man has been seen to be particular and limited in nature, as things first present themselves, he no longer suffices for the starting-point of the endeavour for truth, but to attain to this starting-point an elevation above the human into a universal spiritual life is necessary. And that is the intention of Activism. The unique character of Activism becomes clearer especially in comparison with organisations of life, of which one indeed makes activity the chief thing, but gives to it the character of a mere process; while another thinks of the fundamental relation of man to reality in general not under the ideas of conduct and progress but under those of contemplation and enjoyment. The idea that life constitutes a process transcending all human endeavour and decision has shown a strong power of attraction in the Modern Age; and, in the system of Hegel especially, has found an imposing embodiment. This idea is asserted most definitely in the evolutionary conception of history, since it regards the motive power of history as striving to its aim, certain of accomplishing it, and unaffected by human opinion and preference. By this deliverance from the insignificance of human motives and the variations of human conditions the object seemed to gain incomparably in greatness; but it was considered that this deliverance from man involved an elevation above the ethical conception, which then appeared to be something subjectively human. But not only does this conception of a process that ceaselessly advances with compelling necessity contradict the actual state of things as they are found in history, which shows so much stagnation and retrogression, and so many different spheres of culture existing side by side indifferent to one another, but the transformation of life into a mere process, if consistently carried out, must also destroy or seriously debase its spiritual character. If life were a mere process it would be nothing other than a soulless mechanism; only in the case of such a mechanism can one phase proceed immediately from the others without at the same time a whole of life becoming active and exercising an animating power within the whole process. As a fact, the process is usually supplemented in thought by a universal life unifying, sustaining, and controlling the individual phases; however, so far as such a life does not simply come to us, but needs our own activity, the deed comes before the process; and a new world reveals itself to us. The disregard of the ethical element by the systems which make mere process their fundamental idea is explained by the fact that they understand the ethical only as a decision and turning of man, accompanying the spiritual life, not as the motive and progressive power of the spiritual life itself. They know only a human ethic, not an ethic of the spiritual life--as a self-assertion and a self-elevation, through which it first attains its complete freedom and independence. Still, to trace this further is the less necessary since this mode of thought lives rather from earlier achievements than works from fresh impulse springing up in the present. The relation of Activism to the æsthetic mode of thought requires closer consideration; we indicated at the beginning of our investigation that Æstheticism forms one of the chief streams of the life of the present day; at this point, only its relation to Activism need be examined. This Æstheticism has its definite conditions. Where the contemplation and enjoyment of the world and its beauty are to constitute the essence of life, we must be assured that the world is a kingdom of reason and beauty, so that the condition in which it is incites us to no far-reaching change. Further, there must be no perplexities in our soul, and no deep conflicts within our being, so that this contemplation may occupy us completely, and be a source of happiness. Lastly, we must be closely and surely united with the world so that a change of life may be accomplished easily and smoothly. If one of these requirements is not satisfied; if, instead of this harmony, the world manifests severe conflicts and harsh contradictions; if such exist also within our soul; if, lastly, there appears to be a deep gulf between us and the whole, then the æsthetic solution of the problem of life is an impossibility. If in spite of these contradictions we attempt to entertain this solution, our life will become insincere, and will lose all spiritual productivity, and, as a whole, our life will be spent in subjective mood, empty enjoyment, and become feeble. Now, however, the Modern Age develops in a direction which is directly opposed to the requirements of the æsthetic form of life. The great world appears to us to be a meaningless machine; and in the struggle for existence the earlier harmony is forgotten. We perceive in man far too much that is insignificant and far too much selfishness, emptiness, and mere show for us to be able to regard him as being inwardly complete. Lastly, the modern strengthening of the subject and the ceaseless growth of reflection have so fundamentally overthrown the immediate relation of man to the world that only a far-reaching transformation of life can prepare for a reunion. If our life is so full of problems and tasks; if we do not find ourselves in a completed world of reason; but if we must, with all our powers, work toward such a world, we shall turn to Activism as the only help possible. But we shall resolutely reject Æstheticism as a veiling of the real condition of things and a too facile solution of the great problems of life. Activism does not imply that immediately and at one stroke our life may be transformed into spiritual activity and may quickly establish a positive relation to reality: that would be to fail to recognise the conditions under which man exists, and the necessity of undergoing experiences and changes. Such an attitude might easily lead to the formation of syntheses of life that would be much too hasty and far too narrow; and the necessary breaking up of these would arouse a keen distrust of the whole undertaking. The power which the Romantic movement from time to time wins over minds is based on the fact that it warns us against an over-estimation of our activity; that it demands that the soul should be open to the influences of the world; that its impressions should be appropriated without restriction and permitted to fade away completely; that in opposition to all the limitation and organisation of life, it still longs for the infinite; and that it also to some extent satisfies by turning to unrestrained feeling. At the same time, the Romantic movement makes us clearly conscious of the power of destiny, the transcendence of external and internal necessities above all human intention and utilitarian conduct. In this way life acquires a much greater comprehensiveness and freshness; it seems to return to its source, to retain far more immediacy. But it is one thing to acknowledge the importance of this, another to make it the essence of life. When such precedence is given to this Romantic tendency life threatens to become delicate, feeble, effeminate; it knows no energetic opposition to the flow of presentations; instead of a definite union it offers aphoristic thoughts and stimuli; through the lack of logical acuteness it falls into the direst contradictions; it sacrifices all distinct form and organisation to a revelling in vague moods. As in such a state of weakness the spiritual life does not succeed in gaining complete independence in face of the natural conditions of our existence, so it does not attain the necessary ascendancy over sense. Sense, in its own province entirely incontestable, raises doubts in us in that it flows together with the spiritual, is undifferentiated from it, brings it under itself, and turns it from its course. And, in this, sense does not possess the naïve freshness and the natural limitation of its original state, but it is over-refined and too full of excitement. To recognise all this clearly is at the same time to acknowledge the superiority of Activism over all mere Romanticism. However much may still be lacking in Activism, through the fact that man often regards the difficult and complicated task as easy and simple, and thus sets too low an estimate upon the distance between himself and the spiritual world, there is still the objective necessity of the requirement to transform our life as far as possible into a state of independence, to achieve independence in opposition to a world confused and only half rational. Such a self-determining activity is by no means simply a matter of subjective disposition; it requires a particular form of life. In opposition to the desultoriness and change of the life of sense it needs a powerful unification and organisation. It advances to methods and laws of the object in contrast to playful caprice; to a logic of the object in opposition to a persistence in contradiction; to a further construction of the first impression in contrast to comfortable complacency; to a courageous continuation and building up of life in opposition to a complacent acceptance of destiny. It gives to life a dramatic character in contrast to a lyrical, sentimental one, and along with this it can acknowledge fully that a genuine drama usually contains much that is lyrical. It is detrimental to Activism itself if it takes the problem of life lightly. It is vital that it should not forget or underestimate the fact that the effort to solve the problems of life meets with great difficulties, that the solution costs incalculable trouble and work, and that even when the best is achieved it is only approximate. When Activism recognises this fact it may acknowledge a certain validity in the positions of its opponents and may learn from them. But there is a harsh contradiction that extends to the innermost basis of life, an implacable "either--or," whether man simply receives the world and accompanies it with his own mood, or whether he finds courage and power to take up a conflict against confusion and irrationality, to co-operate in the building up of a kingdom of reason. For the latter, the affirmation of reason in the innermost basis of reality as a whole and of his own being is necessary. Whether men and times find a way to such an inner establishment, to such transcendence of all external and internal limitation, is that which decides the main tendency of their life. III. THE SPIRITUAL LIFE IN MAN IN CONFLICT AND IN VICTORY We intend to make the following section as short as possible, as we have treated this subject so much in detail in "The Truth of Religion" and also in "The Struggle for a Concrete Spiritual Experience." We must refer those who wish for a closer consideration of the subject to those works: the subject will be treated of here only so far as is necessary for a representation of life as a whole; a concise statement may have distinct advantages. (a) DOUBT AND PROSTRATION It is a leading idea of our whole investigation, and one which has held good in every branch of it, that for us men spiritual life is evolved only in opposition to a world other than spiritual; that reality does not surround us from the beginning, but forms a high ideal in contrast to the customary want of purpose and energy in life. The existence of a world lower than the spiritual, and the late appearance of that which arises from within as the primary and the all-dominant reality, must give birth to many questions and much doubt; from early times these facts have occupied and much disturbed reflective thought. Man might place the problem on one side without incurring any risk, if the spiritual life when it comes to the fore assumes the guidance of life and manifests itself as world-transcendent power--externally, in that it subordinates to itself and takes up into itself everything else; internally, in that with certain progress it presses forward in the human province, wins the whole soul of man, and becomes more and more his only world. In particular, where the spiritual life is regarded, as we regard it, as the self-consciousness of reality; where, therefore, that which apparently stands in opposition to the spiritual life must ultimately have its basis within it, the demands of the spiritual life have a coercive power. And so when experiences a thousandfold, new and old, present a picture which contradicts these demands we must feel the state of things to be a particularly painful one. That, however, is what really happens: it is the case in the relation of the spiritual life to nature, as well as in its relation to humanity; it happens, therefore, in our whole experience. If the spiritual life constitutes the fundamental nature of reality; if, in it, reality first attains to self-consciousness, it is to be expected that when the spiritual life appeared it would create for itself an independent form of existence in contrast to that of nature, and would exercise a superior power in this form of existence, to which nature must accommodate itself. But, as a fact, this is so far from being the case that even the attempt to imagine the spiritual in any way leads immediately to the quixotic. In the experience of humanity the spiritual life is related in its entirety to a natural basis; in no way does it seem able to free itself from this, but in all its activity it remains dependent upon nature. If nature simply follows its own tendencies; if, indifferent to value and lack of value, without aim and ideal, nature lives its life of soulless movement, union with an order so alien and impenetrable must most seriously affect the spiritual life. The world goes on its course unconcerned with the weal or the woe, the persistence or the disappearance of spiritual being, of spiritual relations, indeed of spiritual life in general. Not only do great catastrophes, as in earthquakes, storms, and floods, show how indifferent the existence or the non-existence of spiritual life is to the forces of nature, but the commonplaces of everyday experience and of individual destiny also show the same indifference. In nature we find no difference of treatment in accordance with any distinction of good and evil, great and mean, noble and vulgar. Even the most eminent personality, who may be almost indispensable to our spiritual welfare, is subject to the same contingency, the same fate as all others. Regarded from the point of view of the world of sense, all spiritual life is a chaotic confusion of fleeting appearances, all of which are dependent; it is not an independent world, but a subsidiary addition to a world which is other than spiritual. Experience of the impotence of the spiritual life in relation to nature has been the cause of mental disquiet from early times. But this experience was not necessarily oppressive so long as mankind was called upon to transform nature into a realm of reason, and so long as there was hope of accomplishing this. For the contrast with the cold and rigid external world has deepened the inwardness of human relationship and made us conscious of the dignity and greatness of spiritual creation. In culture, humanity has formed a characteristic sphere of life, and in doing this has aided the spiritual life to attain a certain reality. In culture, spiritual factors and values win power; and a new order of life in contrast to that of nature is evolved. It cannot be doubted that a new reality makes its appearance; but it is an open question whether this new reality fulfils the hopes which have been placed upon it; and, further, whether perplexities and confusions, which make it doubtful whether anything has been gained, do not arise out of its further development. This question is certainly not answered lightly in the affirmative by the conviction that regards the spiritual life as a turning of reality towards its own truth, which therefore in its development must insist primarily on complete spontaneity and independence. For, if in culture the spiritual life attains an independence over against nature, it is at the same time drawn so deeply into the particularity and limitation of human life, and is associated so much with the merely human, that culture as a whole is anything but the unfolding of a realm of pure, or even of only preponderating, spirituality. In the first place, the spiritual life does not introduce a definite and fixed content into our experience, and it does not follow paths independent of human striving and error; but arises through hard toil and only slowly finds any unity: in its further endeavour it by no means follows the same tendency, but effects great changes, indeed revolutions, into states the exact opposite of its previous states. When it is so uncertain as to its own aim the spiritual life becomes seriously involved in the seeking and vacillation, in the needs and passions, of man: instead of giving to man an immovable support and pointing out a definite aim for his activity, it seems itself unable to pass beyond a state of uncertain groping and error. Corresponding to this uncertainty as to its content, there is a want of power on the part of the spiritual life within man. Instead of controlling the conduct of man directly, the spiritual life generally determines it through that which it contributes towards the attainment of his aims. If this is so in the case of the individual, it is even more so in the case of social life, for in it spiritual activity is regarded chiefly as a means to obtain advantages over others, and to advance socially. And so that of which it is the nature to be an end complete in itself is treated as a means to other ends; it is not itself active, and its own power is not a motive force; but even for its own maintenance it needs the help and support of things alien to itself: the artificial mechanism of social organisation must bring forth toilsomely that which, unless it flows immediately from its source, cannot be fresh or genuine. Such a state of human affairs remains far below the aims of the spiritual life; it produces insincerity, a luxuriant growth of hypocrisy and pretence. For all striving for the true and the good involves the assertion that the object is desired for its own sake: if the object really serves the aims of mere man, there inevitably originates a wide divergence between what is willed and what is alleged to be willed. In respect of this, one cannot, with the moralists, lay the blame simply on the will. For, in man, spiritual impulse in general is insignificant; without the compulsion of the social environment it would hardly prevail at all against nature. This social compulsion, therefore, notwithstanding its defects, cannot be dispensed with; however clearly we may see its inadequacy, we cannot renounce it altogether. Society cannot exert such coercive power without presenting itself as the champion of pure reason; without desiring an infallibility for its decisions. This attitude naturally arouses the opposition of individuals and a keen struggle ensues, but as one side may be right the condition of the spiritual life is not much improved by the struggle. The state of life, uncertain of its aims and inadequate in its means, is rather a paltry substitute for a realm of reason than such a realm itself. A noisy and self-conscious agitation, much unrest and excitement, but little substance and soul; a ceaseless anxiety concerning the means of life and hurried pursuit of them, and in the occupation with the means forgetfulness and neglect of life itself; much self-glorification and ostentation, and little reverence for the spiritual life--such is social life in general. Where the vanity, emptiness, and falsehood of the social machinery have come to be clearly perceived, man has become absolutely wearied and satiated, and has often fled from society to nature, to seek therein simple truth and enduring peace. But he could believe it possible to find such in nature only because he read this truth and peace into it from himself; as, nevertheless, he must ultimately return to those of the same nature as himself: thus he remains in a state of vacillation between nature, which is indifferent to the spiritual life, and humanity, which corrupts the spiritual life by drawing it down to the level of the narrowly human. If the spiritual life nowhere attains to pure unfolding and certain effect within our experience, how can the spiritual life be accepted by us in this experience as the essence of reality? In the midst of such doubt, the original suspicions, which may have receded before the hope of the emergence of a new world, also become felt again--the insignificance of the external manifestation of the spiritual life in contrast with the immeasurableness of nature; the late appearance of the spiritual life in the world-process, and its probable disappearance as a result of the expected changes in the conditions of nature. Does not everything tend to give us the impression that the spiritual life signifies no more than an episode in the world-process; an episode which passes fleetingly, and does not affect the fundamental nature of reality at all? The necessity of such a conclusion remains concealed so long as man, in an undeveloped state of life, is able to fill the world with forms similar to himself, and to understand the control of nature on an analogy with human conduct. But the progress of culture and especially the growth of scientific knowledge have, with irresistible power, taken us beyond that state; have led us from dream and illusion to a state of complete alertness. Has not all independence of the spiritual life become doubtful with this progress of culture and scientific knowledge, and must we not give up all claim to subject our existence to its sovereignty, and to determine our life and effort spiritually? For there cannot be any doubt that, with the spiritual life, the characteristic organisation of our existence also falls. It may be that we have thought superficially and confusedly enough to declare something to be in itself falsehood and deceit, and at the same time to give to it the guidance of our life. (b) CONSIDERATION AND DEMAND The previous train of thought may appear to be a plain and straightforward negation, a complete renunciation of the spiritual life as the most adequate solution of our problem. But that train of thought is itself the result of a superficial treatment; every deeper consideration inevitably contradicts such a summary procedure. A contradiction of that train of thought is found especially in the fact which governs the whole course of our investigation, that with the transition to the spiritual life there appear essentially new magnitudes and values, new forms and contents of life, which advance beyond not only the nature but also the capacity of mere man. Whence all these, if spiritual life is only delusion? The new in us may be never so powerless; still, the fact that it emerges in our world of thought and hovers before us as a possibility proves that it has a certain reality also within us. Further, is the spiritual life, ultimately, in every sense so powerless as it at first appears? That it does not pass by as a phantom among our presentations is shown by the fact that we do not simply receive the existing condition of things, and its degrading oppression of the spiritual life, but we feel it to be a cause of harm and of pain to us. Could we experience this if we belonged entirely to that condition of things; and is not Hegel right when he says that he who feels a limitation is already in some way above it? We feel the insufficiency, the feebleness, the threadbareness of all human morality; could we feel this if we did not experience a longing for a more genuine morality? And whence arises this longing in opposition to an entirely different world, if not from a spirituality implanted within our own being? We perceive the limitations in our knowledge; a growing insight into all its conditions and oppositions may lead us in this matter almost to complete scepticism: but whence came the desire for an inner elucidation of reality; and how did even the idea of it originate, if we belong entirely to the darkness of a nature that is less than spiritual, and if there is no fight at all within us? We feel that the rapid flow of time, its change and course, its sudden revolutions sometimes even into the complete opposite of the previous state, is a defect, a source of serious danger to truth: could we feel this to be so if our whole being were centred in the passing moment; if we did not survey and compare the different times; if our being did not participate in something super-temporal? And lastly, if the feeling that culture is inadequate and indeed nothing but a pretence is so strong and so painful, then here again we set ourselves in a position independent of the condition of things, and judge that condition by a transcendent standard which only our own being can supply. If all these aims were only invented by man and applied to life in an external manner, failure to realise them could not agitate us as it does. Besides, the matter is not by any means at an end with the feeling of the inadequacy of our position; a movement in opposition to this condition is also not lacking. For, as has been seen throughout our whole treatment, spiritual operation, creative activity is to be found within human experience. It meets us with especial clearness at the heights of the work of history; but these also belong to humanity as a whole, and the light kindled there is not entirely lost in the mist of the commonplace circumstances of every day. In relation with these heights of endeavour there is, in humanity as a whole, a movement in opposition to the tendency of mediocre culture to fill life entirely; a longing for a more spontaneous, a purer, and a more genuine life. Our own power of creation may be dormant; only the advent of a strong suggestion, or a serious convulsion, is necessary and it breaks forth forcefully, and shows distinctly that there is more spirituality in man than the circumstances of every day allow us to perceive. The spiritual movement manifests itself also in private life and in the relation of individual to individual. He who does not measure spiritual greatness by physical standards will often find more genuine greatness in the simplicity of these relations than in the famous deeds of history; and at the same time he will find that through these relations an effective presence of the spiritual life within human experience is strengthened. If in its opposition to human perversion of it genuine spiritual life does not always reach a definite positive result, the operation of that life as the law and the judge of human things is all the more distinct. Man may try to withdraw himself from the spiritual life; he may reject and mock at that which the age presents to him as an aim; he may seek to fill his life completely with human interests and inclinations: but he cannot do this without degenerating into a state of destitution, which even he himself soon finds to be intolerable, and without being forced, with the compulsion of necessity, to surrender much which it is impossible for him to surrender. The catastrophes of history in which that which has been found insignificant sinks, and that which carries a spiritual necessity within it rises, careless, as it seems, of the weal or the woe of man, show in letters of brass that the spiritual life may not be modified by man at his pleasure, in this way or that, in accordance with his circumstances and his mood. When we consider all the facts together, we do not get the impression that the spiritual life is simply a fleeting illusion that may easily be banished; but rather, that there are serious complications, out of which we cannot find our way; and that something occurs within us, something is begun within us, that is unaffected by mood and caprice, and that shows us to be in relations much more comprehensive, though obscure in the highest degree. In particular, for a treatment that starts out from the life-process, and sees the spiritual movement chiefly in strivings, collisions, and even in failures, there can be no doubt concerning the actuality of this movement, the emergence of a new life, and thus of a new stage of reality in man. When we recognise the actuality of the spiritual movement the relation of the spiritual life to nature and to the world is also to be regarded differently from the manner in which the negative mode of thought represents it. It is now impossible, as it often happens, more particularly among philosophising natural scientists, to consider the representation of nature as a complete representation of reality, and to leave the spiritual life out of attention as something supplementary and subsidiary. The spiritual life is now itself acknowledged to be a reality, and must help to determine the representation of reality as a whole. Nature must be more than a soulless machine if its evolution is to lead, as it does, to the point where a self-conscious life emerges. Within our own experience points of transition are not lacking where nature produces something that becomes elevated to the spiritual, and furthers the spiritual life. The difference of the sexes, for example, is primarily a matter of natural organisation, and what a rich source of spiritual animation it is! Nothing manifests the union between nature and the spiritual life more convincingly than the beautiful, when, in accordance with the result of our investigation, it is regarded as a characteristic unfolding of the spiritual life, and not as something which merely fascinates man and is a source of pleasure to him. For how could the external receive a characteristic soul by being taken up into the inner life; how could the inward need an external form for its perfection if the two realms were not united, if a comprehensive reality did not transcend the antithesis? Lastly, it should not be forgotten that it is modern science, especially in its latest phases, with its destruction of the supposed self-evidence of the sense impression of nature, that has placed the relation of nature to the spiritual life in a more favourable light than it was placed by the dogmatic mechanistic theory, which in earlier times seemed to be the ultimate solution of the problem of their relation. Nature has again become far more of a problem to us, and we recognise that our conception of it is a work of the spirit. The old facts of the connection and interaction of phenomena, of the conformity to law on the part of occurrences, of the developments of form, and of a progress to even more artistic complexes and ever finer organisation, once more make us feel, and far more keenly than before, that they involve difficult problems. It is more clearly evident to us than it was formerly that every attempt to make these facts intelligible is made by the spiritual life and by analogy with the spiritual life. If in such analogy we do not go beyond symbols, yet the symbols themselves betray a depth and a secret of reality. At the present time when scientific work is at its highest stage of development, the shallowness and the rashness of a radical negation are distinctly recognised. It is true that for the particular life-problem that we are considering we have not yet gained much from this recognition; to perceive the impossibility of an absolute negation does not in itself imply the victory of a joyful affirmation. For all the perplexities that previously occupied us still remain, as do the limitation and the curtailment of the spiritual life which proceeded from these perplexities; the whole movement also remains in its state of stagnation. As certainly as on the one hand there is too much of the spiritual life presented to us to allow of negation, so on the other it is by no means sufficient for the removal of all doubt. Mere research can tolerate a state of hesitation between affirmation and negation; it must often refrain from a decision in the case of special problems. Life, however, cannot endure any such intermediary position; for life, such hesitation in arriving at a decision must result in complete stagnation, and this would help the negation to victory. If life is faced with an "either--or" the affirmation has a prospect of victory only if the situation previously described may be in some way transformed in its favour. This cannot come to pass unless the spiritual movement can transcend the limitations which appear in human life, and unless a further development can proceed out of the limitations themselves. Only such an advance can help the endangered affirmation to victory. But whether the spiritual movement does transcend these limitations, not a logical consideration of concepts but only the experience of life will decide; let us enquire therefore whether life offers what we seek. (c) THE VICTORY The questions that are given rise to in the consideration of human life as it is are answered in the affirmative with joyful certainty by the religions. The religions do this in that they announce to man the help of a transcendent order; an appearance of divine power and goodness in the domain of man. But after the far-reaching changes of life and of conviction that we have experienced, can this confidence still be justified? And have we a place for this assertion of help from a transcendent order when we acknowledge the reality of the independent spiritual life? Everything of a religious character and even that which is related to it meets, at least upon the surface, in the present the keenest opposition. This opposition is aroused in the first place by anthropomorphism--the indulgence in merely human representations and desires--which is often found associated with religion. If the essence of religion were inseparable from such anthropomorphism, the dissolution and submergence of religion could hardly be prevented. But according to the witness of history, an energetic conflict against all such mere anthropomorphism has been carried on within religion itself and, in its highest stages of development, religion has demanded a complete surrender of everything narrowly human: anthropomorphism and religion are, therefore, not absolutely identical. Our investigation, emphasising as it does the radical distinction between the substance of the spiritual life and its appropriation by man, counselled us to be cautious in reference to this matter, and warned us against a hasty rejection of religion. The essence of religion is still less affected by the charge that modern natural science in conceiving of the spatial world as infinite leaves no room for a visible heaven. For, to take such a criticism seriously, we must not only think of religion as at a primitive stage which, in the development of its spiritual content, it has overstepped, but we must also completely ignore the fundamental revolution that modern philosophy and the whole tendency of modern thought have accomplished in the representation of the visible world. Modern thought has destroyed the self-evidence that the naïve man attributed to that representation, by the experience and the proof that the visible world around us does not come to us completely as we represent it, but that we form the representation from our point of view, and under the conditions of our spiritual nature. Our own activity is embodied in the representation; and it will depend upon the value of this activity how far the representation may be accepted as reality as a whole and the ultimate and absolute world. Now, as in the visible world the spiritual life is always bound up with something alien and which cannot be completely transformed by the activity of that life, so every assertion of an independent spiritual life is a protest against the view that the world of sense is the only world. But in that, unless the spiritual life is independent, there is neither science nor culture, the priority of a world other than that of sense cannot be in any way a matter of doubt to philosophy. But a world other than the world of sense is by no means the transcendent world of religion; such a world as the latter could be reached only by a continuation of the life-process beyond the position yet attained; the course of our investigation, however, has left no uncertainty concerning the direction in which such a world is to be sought. We saw that the spiritual life could not acquire an independence without becoming a universal life: only the immediate presence of this universal life at the individual point arouses and preserves a spiritual life in it. In spite of this immediate presence of the whole, the life of man receives its more detailed organisation and development from his relation to the environment and in the building up of a world; the unity that exists in the whole reveals itself at first only in relation to the multiplicity. There is, therefore, still the possibility that a new and characteristic life should evolve out of an exclusive relation to the whole; such a life, in contrast to that building up of a world, would bear a world-transcendent character. This possibility constitutes the only way of advancing beyond the position hitherto reached. Now, however much work in the world forms the main part of our life and asserts itself to be such, yet, as a fact, our life is not taken up entirely by such work. In the striving of humanity and in the soul of the individual there is a movement towards a world-transcendent life, a life that first attains to a complete inwardness when it becomes world-transcendent. Only such an inwardness offers a firm support, a spirituality unperverted by the perplexities of the world; but this is not possible otherwise than by man's gaining participation in a world-transcendent spiritual life which is purely and absolutely self-conscious: this life must become man's own life, and spirituality in this way self-consciously advance towards divinity. This makes it for the first time intelligible how life, even when it suffers complete failure in its work in the world, even when the activity exerted upon the world is completely frustrated, by no means degenerates into a state of destitution and ruin. For a new task is now revealed to man in his own attitude to the spiritual life as a whole, a relation which may in different cases be very different in character, and he may find in the solution of the task incalculable difficulties. Here activity also changes its character, since without any external manifestation it can become complete and purely inward: character can free itself of everything passive and become fully active; from being a mere accompaniment it can become an active whole. All this, however, is possible only if life is directed toward a world-transcendent spirituality and only by the power of such a spirituality. As this new kind of life does not make its appearance suddenly, but is prepared by the whole evolution of spiritual life, which we have previously considered, so its main individual tendencies are also related to this evolution. Essential qualities of the spiritual life are manifested in work in the world, but in this they do not come to pure formation and victorious establishment: only the elevation to the world-transcendent self-consciousness makes possible that with which the spiritual life as a whole cannot well dispense, indeed in which it has its essential nature. The striving itself, and its arousing and motive power, could not be explained if the end were not operative within our life: "Thou wouldst not seek me, if thou hadst not already found me" (Pascal). The spiritual life in man could have no hope of acquiring truth if it were not rooted in a life which transcends all error and which in some way imparts to us this transcendence. If the spiritual life in man did not know of certain truth sustained at one innermost point, a truth that exerts a directing power on all human undertaking, and prevents it from becoming fixed in error, man would lose all confidence in truth in face of the obscurities and errors of life as they are shown by the work of culture. Further, for the maintenance of the spiritual life, the preservation of spontaneity, a possibility of overcoming all restriction by nature and of defying destiny is absolutely necessary. But in work in the world this spontaneity is subject to the most severe limitations; the power of fate surrounds man on all sides: in the natural course of things even his own work becomes a rigid destiny to him, and chains him with inexorable necessity. As in the case of the individual, so also in that of humanity as a whole, life is a gradual narrowing, an ever further exclusion of original possibilities; and this tendency is continually felt as an increasing oppression in its opposition to the freedom of the will and an independent present. How may the spiritual life be prevented from growing feeble and senile, if new pure beginnings cannot be produced from a fundamental relation transcending the relation with the world, if from this fundamental relation a spontaneous life cannot spring up ever anew? The fact that humanity is able not only to transform the nature of culture in its particular aspects, but also to fall into error concerning culture as a whole, without surrendering itself, is an indication that the life of humanity is not exhausted in work in the world. The spiritual life must unite in an inner community all who participate in it; and this is impossible unless the spiritual life leads man to a point where all walls of partition and all differences fall away. But spiritual work increases rather than diminishes these differences; with culture the differentiation of men also grows. We must sink ever deeper in such differentiation; lose more and more the possibility of a mutual understanding, of a life and feeling with one another and for one another, if this movement toward differentiation does not come into contact with a transcendent power that counteracts it, if some power does not unite us inwardly. What other power could this be than the spiritual life itself, and how could it effect this result otherwise than in the revelation of a world-transcendent self-conscious life which thus presents itself as an Absolute? For, then a removal of differences in negative and in positive matters becomes possible: in negative matters so far as all achievements in the human sphere, however distant they may be from one another, appear equally inadequate when they are judged by the standard of an absolute life: in positive matters so far as the absolute life produces something at each point transcending all complexity, by which the movement is freed from its restrictions and resumes its flow, and by the imparting of which to man in the innermost depth of his being, reveals a new life in which all may in like manner participate. The possibility of a finally valid affirmation of life is first attained when this world-transcendent self-conscious life is acknowledged. Without turning to the absolute life, life could not withdraw from its perplexities; suffering and guilt would crush man. With this turning, however, he acquires, not in his merely human nature, but so far as he is taken up into the absolute life, part in the perfection, infinity, and eternity of that life: in the midst of all change and becoming something immovable is disclosed to him; in the midst of all dependence upon the world, a sure world-transcendence; in the midst of all darkness and suffering, a state of incalculable bliss. From the ultimate depths the Yes triumphs over the No, which, at the first glance, seems so easily its superior. This transition derives a power to convince primarily from the union of the individual tendencies so as to form a vital whole of world-transcendent inwardness. Such a whole, thoroughly characteristic in its nature, is never a work of mere man, a product of critical reflection; it can proceed only from the spiritual life itself. Looked at from the point of view of that life this whole cannot be regarded as something later and as something supplementary; but it will be seen that that which for us first attains complete clearness through suffering and convulsion must be effective from the beginning, and already exist in the work upon the world. If, however, it becomes our possession only when it takes precedence, then the whole prospect of reality must be altered and deepened, and for us life will be divided into the stages of the establishing, struggling, triumphing of spirituality. It is this fact of transcendent spirituality that the religions take up and develop, and seek to bring near to humanity. The doctrines they contain are ultimately only the framework or the outward manifestation of that world-transcendent inwardness; they desire to realise its power of deliverance and elevation completely. They themselves have their support and justification in this transcendent spiritual life, and the precedence of one to the others will be judged by the degree to which in affirmation and negation they develop this spiritual life in its world-transcending sovereignty and in its world-penetrating power. From the point of view of that life, religion as a whole must maintain its truth and its indispensable nature: where that life is lacking, religion is simply a delusion, a folly the absurdity of which is hardly conceivable; but where it is developed religion must pass current as that which, of all things, is the most certain, as the fundamental axiom of the whole spiritual life. Between this "either--or" there is no middle course; historical experience shows that religion has been to men and ages either the most certain of all things or the one about which there has been most dispute. We can now return to the question that led us to this discussion, to the question of the rationality of our reality. To be sure, even after the further revelation of the spiritual life, the answer is not so easy as the adherents of religion often think. For they often believe that with the acknowledgment of a world-transcendent spirituality, its triumphant manifestation within our world is immediately assured; and with this conviction they attempt to present this world as a kingdom of justice, even if not of love. But all endeavour, however energetic, and all recourse to subtlety of thought, yield no satisfactory conclusion: at most, the possibility is reached that that which seems irrational may acquire some rationality in more comprehensive relations; but even if that is so, we are not free from irrationality; and those mere possibilities are far from being equal to counteracting the strong impression of the reality of evil. Even religion, which would bring about a transition to the better, is itself deeply involved in this irrationality; a painful martyrdom has often been imposed upon its heroes, and its form has continually degenerated in the course of history through the influence of human error and passion. Since in the latter the restriction is presented as an opposition to the divine, the view of the world as it immediately appears is darkened rather than illuminated. Nevertheless, through the revelation that the world has a deeper basis, the perplexity concerning life and reality is essentially changed. Evil is not removed; the external view of things is not altered; the good is perhaps strengthened, and, indeed, life in its innermost depth withdrawn from all power of perplexity and led to a new stage. So far, the irrationality may appear in another light from this point of view, as hence the conflicts and the convulsions may themselves be factors which help life to realise its own ideal and to establish it in the new world. In history, suffering has been regarded as absolutely irrational, and has been unconditionally rejected only where man has been regarded as essentially complete. But if an immense problem is recognised in suffering, then suffering also, by rousing us to activity and by making us less inflexible, may acquire a positive value and be of service in the development of being. This, however, does not give us a theodicy; it justifies neither philosophy nor religion in trying to act as advocate for the Deity. To us evil is an insoluble riddle: no formula can make it intelligible why a powerful and clear reason is implanted in our world and that at the same time the lower most obstinately asserts itself in opposition, treats it as a matter of indifference, offers an insurmountable resistance to it. Thus we can hardly reach a decision in regard to our last conviction by way of intellectual consideration; rather, in the decision concerning the "either--or" which is the question here, our whole being is involved. On the one side there is the external impression of the world, the weakness of the good, its perversion into evil, the apparent indifference of the world-process towards the aims of the spirit, the apparent futility of all that would advance beyond nature. Can anything that is aroused within our inner being, and with so much toil finds any form, arise in opposition to this immeasurable world? This will be possible only when a movement of the world itself, and not a mere product of man, is recognised in that which is aroused within man: for only then will its extension be a matter of complete indifference, and, however mean an extension it shows in the human sphere, a turning of the whole would be proved, a revolution of the whole accomplished. Then that which for us emerges on the edge of our life must nevertheless be regarded as the sustaining basis and the controlling power of reality as a whole. Our whole investigation has championed the view that the turning to the spiritual life implies a movement of the world: wherever the independence of the spiritual life is acknowledged the supremacy of reason cannot be doubted. But it is one thing to acknowledge such a thesis to be necessary, another to give it the power to convince and impress, without which it does not leave the realm of phantoms, and does not become a living power. This is possible only where the spiritual life is taken up as our own life, and developed as our own life; where, therefore, its vindication attains to the overwhelming power and the axiomatic certainty of self-preservation. The centre of reality will be changed for us only if we change the centre of our own life, and find true immediacy no longer in sense impression, but in self-determining activity. The acknowledgment of a self-conscious inwardness, of a world-transcendent spirituality, together with the recognition of another kind of world, full of oppositions, must give a characteristic form to our conception of our reality. Here, a rational solution of the world-problem is for ever excluded, and the world present to man must be accepted as a particular kind of reality, which cannot be regarded as the only and ultimate one. From this point of view the whole life of humanity must appear to be a mere link in a great chain; an act of a drama, the course of which we are unable to survey; the fundamental idea of which, however, glimmers through sufficiently clearly to point out a direction to our life. Through the emergence of a world-transcendent inwardness there appear characteristic tasks and complications, also for the more detailed development of our life. Unqualified esteem for that inwardness has often led religions to demand that life should be placed solely and entirely in that transcendent sphere, in the realm of faith and of disposition, and to free life as far as possible from the work of the world; the former life seemed to excel the latter as the divine the human. But this comparison does not hold good; for the divine is to us not only a world-transcendent sovereignty but also a world-pervading power: to honour the former preponderatingly may be the only salvation for times and individuals in a state of prostration and collapse, and in this way life would be given a preponderatingly religious character; but this form of life can never be accepted as the normal one and the one alone worth striving for. For one thing, that transcendent world, as far as its contents and tasks are concerned, is presented to us only in outline; all its more detailed nature must result from the world of our activity, and must retain a symbolic character. If the connection of the spiritual world with the empirical world is broken it falls into the danger of becoming destitute; so that religion may come to be simply a revelling in feeling; or a devotion, indifferent to all content and which, therefore, judged by spiritual standards, is worthless. It is by hard work alone, in relation to men and things, that our life acquires a spiritual character. Religion does, indeed, elevate life above work, and give to life its full depth. Still, movement and differentiation must be included within a vital whole; and the relation to activity which is the chief factor in life cannot be given up even at its greatest depth. The high estimate of spirituality may not rightly lead to a mean estimate of nature, to a conflict with nature such as has been the case in the realm of religion in the tendency to asceticism. For as certainly as our acknowledgment of an independent spirituality involves a subordination of nature, this subordination does not imply a mean estimate, still less a rejection. Asceticism which appears to be the attainment of a high level of spiritual life soon leads to an inward degeneration. For in asceticism the chief task is not the powerful development and courageous advance of spirituality, but simply a negation and suppression of sense. Reflection and thought will thus be centred upon just those things beyond which the spiritual movement wishes to lead. Particular temporary circumstances may make the tendency to asceticism comprehensible; such times were over-refined and diseased, and the diseased may not rightly give to life its rule. But if, in this way, we oppose a specifically religious or ascetic form of life we are not prevented from acknowledging the strong and fruitful influence of a world of transcendent inwardness upon life as a whole. For its perfect health and breadth, our life needs two tendencies which, though they directly contradict each other, must, nevertheless, within us be complementary to each other: it needs an energetic conflict against all that is irrational, and at the same time to be elevated into a sphere in which everything is rational, into a realm of peace and perfection. Within the spiritual life itself, tasks are given their form and are estimated on the one hand from the human point of view, and on the other from an ultimate, one might say an absolute, view of things. The significance of this distinction is to be seen most clearly in history, and, perhaps, in the contrast between the Greek and the Christian character. The former places man in the midst of the world, and requires him energetically to take up the struggle for the cause of rationality and decisively to reject the irrational. Suffering and pain were to be avoided; man was never to submit to them. Courage appeared to be the chief quality of this form of life, and in relation to others justice was its determining idea. But if this idea demands that each should receive according to his achievement, then the higher and the lower, the noble and the common, must be distinctly separated and never allowed to be confused. That the noble form a small minority, and that history hardly promises any change in this matter, is a fact that has not escaped perception; and the permanence of the antithesis of an esoteric and an exoteric form, therefore, appears to be inevitable. The difference that exists is regarded as due primarily to nature, not to free decision. To make nature completely active, and to unify that which it offers in a scattered and an unsystematic manner, appears to be our whole life-work. The result, therefore, is a powerful, active, self-conscious life, which not only affects us by its results but to which we must assign a permanent significance. But as the only and exclusive form of life, it involves great restrictions and rigour; its limitations may remain hidden in days of joyful creative activity and in the highest circles of society, but they must be keenly felt if life falls into a condition of stagnation, and man, as man, asks questions with regard to the happiness of life. This destiny may then become an intolerable compulsion; mere courage, an over-exertion of human power; mere justice, severity and unmercifulness; the sharp distinction between men, an actual separation, which tends on the one side to proud haughtiness and on the other to doubt and depression. A keen perception of such limitations and dangers must necessarily force life into new paths. The counter movement has won the victory in Christianity, which makes not work in the world but the relation to a world-transcendent spiritual life the chief thing. Man does not in the first place trust a nature that safely leads him but at the same time limits him; but his nature seems full of problems, and to need a complete transformation, which only a miracle of grace can accomplish. Men are not regarded as being separated by fixed differences, but in comparison with the divine perfection all differences vanish, and from the relation to God the feeling of equality and brotherhood is evolved. Thought of in relation to the requirement of a pure inwardness of the whole being, differences in achievement are totally insignificant: justice gives place to an infinite love that dispels all harshness, makes all differences consistent and harmonious, and tolerates no feeling of hostility. The antithesis of a nature which is operative within the world and which elevates above the world must permeate life as a whole and must give rise to opposite tendencies in every part of life. On the one hand, there is a distinct formation in finite relations, an insistence upon plastic organisation and complete consciousness of life; on the other, an aspiration towards the infinite, a more submissive faith, a more unrestrained disposition, a higher estimate of the naïve and the childlike. In the former, man, full of confidence in his own power, himself produces a rationality of reality, and disdains all aids alien to himself; in the latter, life is sustained by a trust in an infinite good and power which, in a way transcending the capacity of man, guides to the attainment of the best; in short, as a whole and in its individual aspects each is a fundamentally different type of life from the other. The type of life advocated by Christianity has resulted in a great deepening of life; it cannot possibly be given up again in favour of an earlier type. But this Christian type also does not suffice for the moulding of life as a whole. Most severe complications would ensue if the position of Christianity were taken up as an ultimate conclusion and an absolute evaluation in the conditions which at present exist, and its principles without further consideration were applied to our life as a whole. The annulling of all differences, even of spiritual capacity; the displacement of justice through pity; the cessation of the conflict against evil; the low estimate of man's own power, would all endanger most severely the rational character of life; an adoption of this type of life in its entirety would lead to the discontinuance of the work of culture; in particular, it is inconsistent with any kind of political organisation. Finite conditions are not to be judged by infinite standards; and we men are, after all, in the finite and remain so. And so, from the earliest times since Christianity, from being merely one of opposing systems, became the dominant power, compromises have been sought. The system of the development of power and of justice has nevertheless asserted its influence, and though Christianity has had an external supremacy, this system has forced characteristically Christian life to be regarded as a matter of mere subjective disposition and of private life. But as such compromises do not fully and truly express spiritual necessity, they easily lead to falsity. To rise above this tendency to make such compromises, the acknowledgment of the right and of the limits of each type, the acknowledgment of the necessity of both within a comprehensive whole, is necessary. Such a whole and along with it a common ground, upon which the movements meet together, and can strive to understand one another, is given to us by the spiritual life, acknowledged in its independence. It is not for us to force our life into a finished scheme, but to develop fully and to acknowledge the movements and oppositions which exist in our life. True, life will ever remain unfinished, but can we wish to make it more complete than it can be, and can the incompleteness cause us anxiety, when we are sure of its main direction? III APPLICATION TO THE PRESENT CONSEQUENCES AND REQUIREMENTS _Introductory Considerations_ With a consideration of the present we set out: to the present we now return. The convictions at which we have arrived, and which have led us to a characteristic philosophy of life, must now be considered in relation to the needs of the present; we must see whether this philosophy proves to be true in this connection, and this by its own development, as well as by the simplification of the condition of a time, which, as it is immediately experienced, is confused in the highest degree. But, at the outset of our treatment of this problem, we perceive how difficult it is for the acknowledgment of an independent spirituality to determine our relation to the temporal environment; we see how this acknowledgment transforms that relation into a problem. The conception of the "present" is by no means simple and certain, even as far as its external boundary is concerned. The mere to-day is obviously too short a period to constitute the present; but how much is to be added and where must it cease in order that we may have a genuine present? True, the present must involve a characteristic content that associates the moments and unites them so as to produce a common effect; but does our time give us such a content? The first glance at the state of life in our time reveals a chaotic confusion, which includes the most diverse endeavours, now in passionate union, now in complete indifference to one another, and yet again in harsh hostility; further, there is a constant displacement of the individual elements by a process of elevation and of degradation. Even if something common and permanent is operative in the present, its close amalgamation with this change and movement prevents it from being purely developed: the truth contained in the present state of life is inseparably mixed with human error and passion. And yet this is not an experience simply of the present, but one common to all ages. For fundamental spiritual creation has always been effected in the direst contradiction to the social environment. What harsh judgments, and judgments that set its value at nil, have been passed upon society with regard to its capacity not only in religion but also in philosophy and art! How severe a conflict has been carried on in all departments of life against the presumption of society! The present, especially, is troubled by these problems, because, as has become evident to us from the beginning of our investigation, it carries within it movements of a diverse and contradictory nature, so that it can hardly produce a consistent impression of the whole, still less attain to a definite character. Human interests and parties seek with all their energy to impress upon the time their own character; they call that modern which is useful to and in harmony with themselves. The most diverse tendencies cross one another; experiences in particular departments of life determine the conception of the whole; the different classes of society follow different courses in accordance with their different interests; much that is accidental is regarded as vital and is allowed to influence us: the extreme has the advantage of being able to make an impression upon us; and the superficial and the negative creep into favour through the easiness of the conclusion presented by them: in short, in this state of the time, that which arises in human opinion is incapable of offering to spiritual endeavour a secure support and an orientation concerning its aims. This uncertainty cannot be removed by turning our attention to history, by taking an interest in past ages. For, with whatever clearness a highly developed science of history may present the whole course of the ages to us, to believe that our own life is enriched and made more stable by this, we must confuse knowledge and life, the mere present representation of earlier times and the appropriation of them by our own activity--a danger into which the purely academic mode of thought easily falls. The power and the tendency of life in the present determine the nature of our appropriation of the past and of its transformation in self-determining activity. If this life stagnates, then we are helpless in face of the stream of earlier systems of thought. Even if these systems attract us to themselves, and carry us with them for a time, finally they will manifest their antitheses and throw us back again upon ourselves: we cannot escape from ourselves; we can never find a substitute from outside for want of conviction and power of our own. It is a fundamental error, not, indeed, of historical research but of a feeble historical relativism, to expect us to form a conviction of our own by concerning ourselves with the past; and to think that the later stage in history proceeds from the earlier as a self-evident final result. By taking such an attitude to the past we should only fall into the half-will and half-life common to an age of decadence. If the present is thus uncertain in the heart of its spiritual nature, and it is not possible to escape from this uncertainty by resorting to the past, it may appear to be essential that we should be completely delivered from the tyranny of time, and that we should take up an attitude of entire unconcern of its affirmation and its negation of spiritual endeavour. But a rejection of the immediate relation to time by no means settles the matter. If spiritual work were completely dissociated from the temporal environment and the historical movement, it would be dependent solely upon the capacity of the mere individual and upon the passing moment; all relation, all community of work, would thus be given up, and the performance of others could not be anything to us, nor our achievement anything to others; there would be no inner building up of life, and no hope of reaching greater depths. Not only is it impossible to abandon such aims, but our experience of spiritual work itself contradicts the disintegration of life into nothing but isolated points. If all spiritual creation is effected in contradiction to time, what is denied in this contradiction is rather that which lies upon the surface of time than that which is deeper; rather human accommodation to than the spiritual content of time. All who believe that distinctive human history is sustained by the activity of a spiritual life will attribute to time such a spiritual content. Every age, therefore, in virtue of the presence of this spiritual life, will contain characteristic spiritual motives, movements, and demands, and will be especially qualified to convey certain contents to man, to open up certain experiences to him, and to point out certain directions. All these must be appropriated by anyone who wishes to transcend the original state of emptiness, and to advance to spiritual creation and to a spiritual fashioning of life. In consequence of this a more friendly attitude may be taken up towards time; and we shall be far more grateful to it--though perhaps not with explicit consciousness, perhaps even in contradiction to definite purpose--than we could ever be with regard to the experiences on the surface of time. However low, for example, the estimate Plato may have formed of "the many" around him; and though with the whole passion of his soul he may have insisted upon a transformation of the immediate condition of life, what he offered of his own and the new that he required, with all its originality and uniqueness, contradicts neither the natural spirit of the Greek nor the contemporary Greek culture: Plato can be regarded only as a Greek of a particular time. His conflict with the time is not the conflict of an incomparable individuality with his environment, but a selection and a unification of the possibilities existing in time; it is an arousing to life of the deeper realities of time against its superficialities, of spiritual necessities in opposition to the conduct and interests of men. In this manner the great man also is a child of his age, and is unintelligible out of relation to it. Could one think of Goethe as living in the Middle Ages, or of Augustine as living in the age of the Enlightenment? Indeed, we may carry our contention further, and say that the great has been just that which has had the closest relation with the time; and that it has reached a permanent significance, just because it expressed the unique nature and the inner longing of the time, that which was incomparable and inderivable in it. That which has been able to work permanently beyond the time in which it made its appearance was born not from a timeless consideration of things, but from the deepest feeling of the needs of the time; only thus can we escape from the feeling of unreality which otherwise accompanies the striving after spirituality. This consideration must commend to spiritual work the closest possible relation with the time, and the spiritual life may hope for an essential advance of its own striving as a result of this relation. Still, the matter is not so simple as it is often thought to be. The spiritual content of the ages is not a complete fact that permeates life with a sure and definite effect, so that it could be taken up by activity. Rather, that which is great and characteristic in the ages is found only in creative spiritual activity, abstracted from which it is no more than a possibility; a suggestion that is inevitably lost, if an advancing spiritual activity is lacking. Spiritual creation is not a mere copy, an employment of an existent time-character. Rather, time first attains a spiritual character through spiritual activity, and by spiritual creation possibility first becomes complete reality. This spiritual creation is not simply a summation but a potentialisation, an essential elevation of that which exists in time. Without this activity the spiritual elements in time remain merely coexistent, and have no living unity; they realise no life of the whole, no being within the activity, nothing that means to us development of being. Temporal life then remains only a half-life, a life of pretence; it lacks complete self-consciousness and true stability and joy, and at the same time it lacks a genuine present. To attain such a present thus appears to be a difficult task, the performance of which is not so much presupposed by the different branches of spiritual life as is an object of their work. Art, for example, is rightly required to express the feeling of the life of the time; yet it does not find such a feeling of life already existent, but it must first wrest it from the chaos of the general condition of life. Art is great in giving to the time that which it did not already possess, but which is, nevertheless, necessary to the complete reality of its life. Spiritual work, therefore, is not something just added in time, but that which first gives to time a genuine life and a genuine present. This task may be achieved with quite different degrees of success; it is not all times that reach this elevation and attain to a genuine present; those that do so we call great and "classical" times. The general state of our life--which, however, does not imply time as a whole--appears from this point of view to be especially afflicted with the defect and fault of insincerity; our age does not so much live a life of its own as a strange life; and yet this life is represented as being a life of our own. And it is especially so in our own time, when along with a state of division in our own purposes we are inundated by systems of thought alien to us. We are thus in danger of becoming half-hearted and living a life of pretence: in religion we assert the profession of faith and the feelings of times long gone by to be our own conviction and feelings; we build our cathedrals in styles that correspond to another spiritual condition and another tendency of life; in philosophy we hang upon systems and problems of other times; in everything we lack sincerity. But why is this so, and why do we renounce all claim to a life in accordance with our own nature? Certainly not because our time lacks problems and tasks of its own, or because it is deficient in spiritual possibilities and necessities; for, of these there is an abundance; in this matter our time is not behind any other. But there predominates a wrong relation between these tasks and the central power of the spiritual life, which is equal to cope with them and out of the possibilities create a reality. In any case spiritual work has a great deal to do with the time; and in regard to this it finds itself in no simple situation. Spiritual work must acknowledge a given condition, which it cannot alter to suit its own preferences; but it can make something else out of this condition and also see something else in it than immediately meets the eye. The possibilities of a time are revealed only in spiritual work, and through it alone are they separated from the human additions that usually overgrow them. These possibilities cannot become clearly evident, unless a close relation to history is won: they are not suggestions simply of the moment, for they have been prepared by the whole work of history. History acquires quite a different--a far more positive--meaning when the spiritual life is acknowledged to be independent, and when it is admitted that spiritual life is not just the embellishment of a reality other than spiritual, but the formation of the only genuine and substantial reality, the transition to a self-consciousness of life. For, as such a formation of reality, this creative activity extends beyond the particular time in which it originates, and becomes part of a time-transcending present. True, this activity always appears in a garment that seems simply temporary; but this garment does not constitute its being: the imperishable in it, its fundamental life, remains inwardly near and present even after great changes of temporal condition; and within the sphere of spiritual work is always capable of new effect. Christianity, for example, in spite of the attacks that are and have been made upon it, still asserts itself as a living power. Yet there cannot be the slightest doubt that in everything that lies on the surface of our life we are as far as possible removed from the centuries of its formation; that not only the view of the world but also the tasks of life and the nature of feeling and disposition have become radically different. But life is not exhausted in these activities on the surface, which must be regarded as external manifestations that proceed from an inner unity. That which these centuries have performed for the essence of life: the realisation of a freedom of spiritual inwardness, the acknowledgment of an independent spiritual world with great aims and tasks, may, indeed, become obscured for the consciousness of individuals and of whole periods; it remains, however, an essential part, a presupposition of all further spiritual life. As in this manner in the case of Christianity, spiritual reality has also been evolved otherwise in some creative epochs; and in the movement of history they have all together produced a certain condition of spiritual evolution which constitutes the invisible basis of our own activity, and from which it is first possible to elucidate the spiritual nature of a particular time. This universal, historical state of spiritual evolution indicates a level, to which must correspond all work, which desires not simply to attain the aim of the moment but also to serve in the building up of a spiritual reality within the domain of humanity. This historical condition of the spiritual life is not conferred upon us by history; rather history only mediates an incentive that must first be transformed by our own activity and conviction. Only a mode of thought which transcends the movement of history can recognise a spiritual content in history and in our own time, and use this content for our own striving. Spiritual work, therefore, and philosophy as part of it, has a twofold relation to time, a negative and a positive: it must possess an independence of time, and it must seek an intimate relation with it. The "modern," according to the sense in which it is taken, will arouse us at one time to energetic opposition, at another to the closest intimacy; the former when it desires to subject us to the contemporary conditions with all their contingency, the latter when it champions the spiritual possibilities of the time and the state of spiritual evolution in contrast with the human. We are concerned in a conflict for genuine against false time; we are to distinguish clearly between the merely human and the spiritual present; the spiritual life must first give a genuine reality to time, and in doing this must advance in itself. Every particular philosophic conviction must justify itself in its treatment of this problem; it must be in a position to wrest the truth from the error in time; to understand and to estimate the endeavour of the time without yielding to it; to comprehend as a whole the manifold elements of truth in the life of the present, and to elucidate them from a transcendent unity. Without doubt great problems and fruitful possibilities exist in the time, but we often feel the most painful contrast between their demands and the achievements of man. To diminish this divergence; for the time to attain more to its own perfection and become a genuine present, is an urgent task in the performance of which philosophy also must co-operate; and by this endeavour philosophy can also gain much for itself. I. REQUIREMENTS FOR THE FORM OF LIFE AS A WHOLE (a) THE CHARACTER OF CULTURE The term "culture" received its present meaning in the latter half of the eighteenth century; culture itself reaches back to the beginning of the Modern Age. The whole evolution of the Modern Age is a striving beyond the religious form of life which prevailed in the Middle Ages, and which began to be felt to be narrow and one-sided. In opposition to this type of life a new type arose, increased in strength, and finally we became fully conscious of it in the idea of culture. The new type has been felt to be far superior to the old in many ways; it is not limited to one side of human nature, but desires to take it, and to develop it as a whole; it does not refer man to any kind of external aid, but makes his life depend as much as possible upon his own power, and finds an aim fully sufficient in the limitless extension of this power; it directs man's perception and endeavour not so much beyond the world as to it, and hopes by this means to give a stability to his striving, and a close relation with the abundance of things. The movement has brought about a far-reaching transformation of life: that which was lying dormant has been aroused; the rigid made plastic; the manifold woven into a whole of life; the whole range of life has acquired more spontaneous freshness and inner movement. The result of the work of history now becomes for the first time a complete possession, since above everything contingent and accidental it elevates an essential, and above everything tending to separation and hostility, a common humanity. The animating and ennobling influence of modern culture is nowhere more manifest than in the life-work of Goethe. For we recognise the greatness of his nature primarily in that, with the acutest vision and the greatest freedom, he entered into the multiplicity of experience and events; with placid yet powerful dominance stripped off all that was mere semblance and pretence, all that was simply conventional and partial, and fully realised the genuine, the freshness of life, and the purely human. (_V._ "The Problem of Human Life.") His treatment of Biblical narratives is a good example of this: that a king reigned in Egypt who knew not Joseph suggests to him how quickly even the most magnificent human achievements are forgotten; that Saul went forth to find his father's she-asses, and found a kingdom, symbolises to him the truth that we men often reach something totally different from, and also much better than, that for which we strove and hoped; the miracle of the walking on the water is to him a parable of unflinching faith--the holding fast to apparent impossibilities--without which there can be no great creation. If, with this achievement, modern culture may have the feeling of being the fulfilment of the strivings of the ages, yet its own course has produced oppositions, and engendered perplexities that culminate in a dangerous crisis. Culture, as it was represented at the height of German spiritual life, was directed chiefly towards the inner development of man; it was called with especial satisfaction "spiritual culture." Its adherents were concerned not so much with finding a better relation to the environment as with growing in the realm of their own soul, and with employing whatever the experience of life brought in the development of a self-conscious personality, of pure inwardness. Only in this way did they seem to advance from the previous state of limitation to the complete breadth of existence, and the exercise of all their powers. A joy in life, a firm confidence in the rationality of reality gave this inner culture a soul; and a bold flight bore it far above the narrowness and heaviness of daily life; æsthetic literary creation became the chief sphere of its work, and the chief means for the development and self-perfecting of personality. Inner culture has by no means vanished from our life; effects of many kinds are felt from it in the present. But it has been forced to resign its supremacy in favour of a realistic culture, which makes the relation to the environment the chief matter, and removes the centre of life to the intellectual and practical control of this environment. In realistic culture the inner development of work, of work in the direction of natural science and technical art, as well as in politics and social endeavour, is less occupied with the acquiring of a powerful individuality than with the establishment of an agreeable condition of society as a whole. Since activity is related more and more closely with things, and receives laws and directions from them, culture is freed from dependence upon man and his subjectivity. Culture is an impersonal power in contrast with man; it does not lead ultimately to a good to him so much as make him simply a means and an instrument of its progressive movement. An immeasurable structure of life, a ceaseless self-assertion and self-advancement, an arousing and an exertion of all powers that can bring man into relation with the environment, are manifest in this culture: but at the same time there is an increasing transformation of our life into a mere life of relation and mediation, a deprivation and a vanishing of self-consciousness. In the midst of the magnificent triumphs in external matters there is an increasingly perceptible contrast between an astonishing development of the technical, and a pitiful neglect of the personal side of life: in regard to the former we surpass all other times, as much as we fall below most in regard to the latter. Along with a ceaseless increase of technical capacity, there is a rapid degeneration of personal life, a pauperising of the soul. Where the matter is one of a technical nature there is a magnificent condition, definite progress in all departments, work conscious of its aim; but there is a painful groping and helpless hesitation, a stagnation of production, an emptiness that is only just hidden by a veneer of academic education, where powerful personalities and impressive individualities are required. For a time we were carried away entirely by the tendency to place our attention solely upon the environment, and we seemed to be satisfied absolutely by it. But the inner life that has been evolved within human experience by the work of thousands of years, and through severe convulsions, prevents this condition being accepted as a conclusion; that which has once become an independent centre cannot possibly permit itself to be degraded to the position of a mere means and an instrument. It is impossible to give up all claim to self-conscious and self-determining life and a satisfaction of this life. Our spiritual nature compels us to ask questions and to make claims; if they are not satisfied, then, notwithstanding all the wealth of experiences, the feeling of poverty spreads and we seek for aids, and, first, we turn back to that inner culture from which we had turned away. But we find the ways shut off; a direct return is impossible. This culture had characteristic principles and presuppositions; and the course of modern life itself has, if not overthrown them, involved them in serious doubt. We have become clearly conscious of the limitations which this inner culture had without itself feeling them; movements which it united have now separated, and have become hostile. Inner culture rested on a firm faith in the power of reason in reality, and this faith begot a joyful confidence. For it the world was sustained and determined by inner forces: we feel the rigid actuality of occurrences, the indifference of the machinery of the world towards the aims of the spirit, and the contradictions of existence. In the former case the greatness of man was the predominant faith; and this greatness was sought in his freedom: we, however, feel much more our bondage to obscure powers and at the same time our insignificance. In the former again, it aroused no opposition to call only a chosen part of humanity, the creative, to full and complete life, and to assign a most meagre portion to the majority: we cannot possibly renounce the concern for all mankind and for the welfare of every individual. In the former, morality and art were harmoniously united in the ideal of life; in our time they have separated and are at deadly enmity with one another. Everywhere life has given rise to more problems, more inconsistencies, more obscurities; thus, with all its external proximity, the joyfully secure ideal of life of our classical writers is inwardly removed far from us; without insincerity we cannot proclaim it to be our profession of faith. In particular the resort to Goethe, as to one with a secure standard of life, is in general no more than an expression of perplexity, no more than a flight from a clear decision of our own: the universality and the flexibility of his spirit permit a point of contact with him to be found by those whose views directly contradict those of one another, and allows each to abstract, and make a profession of faith of that which is preferable and pleasing to himself. Thus to-day we are in a state of uncertainty and indefiniteness in reference to the problem of culture. Since the new does not suffice, and the old cannot be taken up again, we are in doubt with regard to the whole conception of culture; we know neither what we have of it nor what it demands from us. We cannot give up our claim to being something more than nature, without sinking again to the level of the mere animal; but in what this "more" consists and how it is at all possible to surpass nature is to us completely obscure. A developed historical consciousness and the free unfolding of the powers of the present permit many things to rush in upon us; and we are involved in much inconsistency. We have seen diverse systems of life arise and attract man to themselves; their conflict relegates to the background all that is common to them, produces the greatest uncertainty, and gives rise to the inclination, in order to avoid all perplexities, to regard life as being made up entirely of that which occurs within sense experience; and to acquire aims from this experience, as well as to derive powers from it. But in this we fall into the danger of idealising sense experience falsely, and of expecting achievements from movements within it which are possible only if these movements flow from deeper sources. We flee to morality to become free from all religion and metaphysics; as though morality, elevating man, as it does, above simply physical preservation and the compulsion of mere instinct, is not itself a metaphysic, and as though it does not of necessity require the existence of an order superior to nature. Then we flee to the subject with its unrestrained inwardness and contrast this inwardness with all the restricting relations of life; as though the subject had any content and any value without an independent inner world, the recognition of which involves a complete revolution of the representation of reality; as then according to the witness of history also humanity has reached such an inner world only through wearisome toil and forceful resolutions. The whole course of Antiquity had been leading up to this inner world, but the collision of Antiquity at the time of its decay, with Christianity which was then arising, first developed it clearly. Such an inner world must ever be justified anew; and for this our own activity and conviction are necessary. If we surrender its basis, it becomes dead capital which, little by little, is inevitably spent, and then the appeal to the subject that has lost its spiritual content is but a mere semblance of help, which deceives us concerning the seriousness of the situation with sweet-sounding words like "personality," "individuality," and so forth. If the spiritual life is not strengthened and does not energetically counteract this tendency, then, notwithstanding all external progress, we must inwardly sink lower and lower. It is obvious that there is already such a counteraction in existence; otherwise, how could spiritual destitution and the insignificance of the merely human be so keenly felt in the present; how could so ardent a desire for an inner elevation spread amongst men as we experience it around us? There is no lack of attempts and endeavours after new aims and new ways. But much is still lacking for these attempts to be equal to satisfy the requirements of the matter. We place far too much hope in external reforms, instead of primarily strengthening the inner basis of life; we fix our attention far too much upon individual tasks instead of seizing the whole; we have far too much faith that we can rise to a new life out of this chaotic condition, instead of insisting upon an attainment of independence in relation to this condition. How could independence be attained except by an energetic reflection of man upon himself, upon his fundamental relation to reality, upon the life dwelling in him, in short, except by self-consciousness? It is not the first time that, in the course of the ages, to satisfy such a demand has become the most urgent of all tasks. The work of history has not unshakable foundations from the beginning; but the spiritual nature of epochs always involves the activity and the decisions of man; it involves, therefore, presuppositions that for a long period may be accepted as established truths, and which, yet, finally become problematic. At the beginning of the Modern Age, especially in the transition to the Enlightenment, apparently established truths became problematic in this way: the present is in a similar situation. The threads that we have hitherto followed break; all external help is rejected, as is also the authority of history; nothing else remains to us than our own capacity, and the hope to find in it a new support and the basis for a new construction. Only by our own power, and after a break with the immediate present, shall we be able to strive after a new idea of culture which corresponds to the historical position of spiritual evolution, and which can take up into itself the experiences of humanity. Such times of error, of vacillation, of searching, of necessary renewal, are disagreeable and severe, but it depends only on the summoning of spiritual power whether they become great and fruitful. For, with regard to these central questions the times do not make men, but men make the times, not, of course, in accordance with their own preferences, but by seizing and realising the necessities that exist in the spiritual condition of the time. Now, as scarcely anything else in life is more called upon to co-operate in the renewing of culture than philosophy, so the system here concisely presented is placed in the service of this task; it attempts a construction chiefly by the union of three demands and points of attack: it requires a more energetic development and a complete unification of the life-process; it requires the acknowledgment and development of a spiritual life of independent nature present to us; and lastly, it requires that this life shall be understood and treated as the world's consciousness of itself and thus as the only reality. All these demands must tend towards an essential alteration of the existent state of culture; they make much inadequate that previously sufficed; but they also reveal an abundance of new prospects and the possibility of a thorough inner elevation. It is a leading idea of our whole investigation that only from the life-process itself are we able to orientate ourselves in relation to ourselves and the world; and this idea is in agreement with the present mode of thought in science. But to apply to our own time that which is already acknowledged in general ideas is by no means simple. To give the life-process such a position in our thought and to estimate it so highly is possible only when life is distinctly distinguished from the states of the mere subject, from the mere reflex of the environment in the individual. This detachment cannot be accomplished unless we comprehend as a whole that which exists in individual manifestations of life; distinguish different levels in life, indicate relations and movements within them, and thus advance to new experiences of life; reveal a union of fact, a distinctive synthesis in life, which from a transcendent unity shapes the multiplicity that it contains. But if in general it is difficult to free ourselves so much from the condition of life in which we find ourselves, to be able to illuminate this condition in this way, and to throw its inner framework into relief; for us there is also to be added the immeasurable expansion that directs the interests and the vision to the outside, and is accustomed to treat, as a mere supplement, a mere means and instrument, the life that in reality sustains all infinity. A culture that has made the attainment of results the chief thing has been detrimental to the spiritual, which no longer trusts itself to encompass these achievements and to change them in a development of life, to take up the conflict for dominion over reality. It willingly flees to the passivity of the subject, where sooner or later it expires in complete destitution. If inwardness is so feeble and external relations so overwhelm us, life necessarily receives its content from outside, and seems to be determined essentially by that which happens around us. It is this that lends so much power to-day to a superficial enlightenment that centres in natural science, and expects life to be advanced without limit, and man to be revived and ennobled, simply by reaching a more valid representation of the environment. We do not ask here how far the representations proposed overcome the difficulties of the older representations, or whether new and more difficult problems do not arise from the solutions offered; but we do ask whether life can obtain its aim and content from outside, and whether it can be treated simply as an addition to nature without degenerating inwardly, and losing all inner motive. We ask what the theories based chiefly on externals make of man, and what they achieve for his soul. We summon him to an examination, to see whether the picture that is held up to him by these theories agrees with what he longs for, and, by a compelling necessity of his being, must long for. To-day it will also be evident that the final decision does not rest with the intellect, but with life as a whole. For, little as intellectual achievement is absent from truth, the masses--and to the masses belong those at the average level of all classes, higher as well as lower--will always hold fast to the external impression. The advance beyond this impression and the appreciation of the inner conditions of knowledge will always remain a concern of the minority. There is, however, a point where the problem becomes real to each individual, and where each can offer his opinion: this is in reference to the question of the happiness and the content of life. The more this question is felt, the greater will be the thirst for a substantial truth in contrast with the shadows of the Enlightenment; the more will the question concerning the nature of life as a whole receive its due consideration, and the perception of things externally will give place to a comprehension of their inner reality. Only with such a revolution can our life and we ourselves be transformed from a state of spiritual destitution to one of independent energy; only thus can we discover the wealth that is within us; only thus can culture, from being an occupation with things, become a preservation and an unfolding of our own selves; only thus can we strive for more simplicity in contrast to the complexity that would otherwise be our condition; and only thus can we wrest from what would otherwise be chaos, fundamentals and tendencies. Our demand, therefore, that the starting-point should be the life-process itself is in harmony with the innermost longing of the time--even if this longing is often indefinite--after a deepening of life and an attainment of its independence. If the turning to the life-process puts the question, the assertion of an independent spiritual life gives the answer to it: however strange this assertion may seem in relation to superficial temporal experience, it meets a deep longing. For we are completely satiated with narrowly human culture; the movements and experiences of the Modern Age, and in particular of the present, make us so clearly conscious of all that is trivial, simply apparent, disagreeable, feeble, shallow, empty, and futile in human conduct, that all hope of finding satisfaction in this conduct, and of advancing life essentially by its means and powers, must be abandoned. We have, therefore, to face the following alternative: either absolute doubt and the cessation of all effort, or the acknowledgment of a "more" in man; there is no third possibility. But in the context of our investigation no discussion is required to show that this "more" cannot consist in an individual's elevation of himself above others; that it cannot consist in a so-called Superman--a view that only involves us more in the narrowly human. Either the "more" sought for is only imaginary, a covering of tinsel with which we conceal our nakedness, or a world transcending the merely human, a new stage of reality, reveals itself to man, which can become his own life. As it is this transcendent world alone that engenders a universal life within us and opposes the insignificantly human; so also from this alone, and as its manifestation, can culture become independent in relation to man. Only when it is understood in this way can culture include aims and tasks that do not strengthen man in his narrowness, but free him from it, and make him spiritually greater. Not only the conception but the whole nature of that which is called culture is an unstable hybrid. It should elevate man above nature, and give to his life a characteristic spiritual content; but at the same time we have a dread of a detachment from the experience of sense and of the construction of an independent world, because these must lead to that which, of all things, is the cause of most alarm, to a change of a metaphysical character, to a transformation of existence. In truth, in the work of humanity two tendencies are usually undistinguished, which, if life is to continue to advance, need to be distinctly separated: a spiritual culture and a merely human culture. The former reveals new contents and aims; with it a new world emerges within man, and transforms his life from its basis: the latter uses that which a higher organisation has given us, solely as a means for the advancement of our natural and social existence. Merely human culture turns the spiritual into a mere means to increase narrowly human happiness, whereas the spiritual by its very nature makes us feel the whole of this happiness to be too insignificant, indeed intolerable. The difference of a merely human and a spiritual culture extends from the fundamental disposition to all the separate departments of life. Religion, for example, is to the former a means by which the individual may make himself as comfortable and as secure as possible in an existent world, and conduct his own insignificant _ego_ through all dangers; to the latter, it signifies a radical break with that world and the gain of a new life, in which care for that _ego_, or even the state of society, is relegated completely into the background. To the one, morality is simply a means in the organisation of human social life, in the accommodation of the individual to his environment; to the other, it discloses a new fundamental relation to reality, and in the transformation of existence in self-determining activity allows life to win an inner union with the infinite and its self-consciousness. On the one hand, art, science, the life of the state, education, and so forth are the idols of utility, of expediency, the adornments of a given existence; on the other, they are the gods of truth, of inner independence, of world-renewing spontaneity. That there should be an end to the confusion of the worship of idols and of gods; that spiritual culture should be distinguished from merely human culture; that the spiritual content of the individual departments of life should be energetically developed, and the spiritual poverty of merely human culture made clear--all this is the urgent demand of the present, without the fulfilment of which its state of confusion cannot be overcome. Yet spiritual culture can never become independent unless the spiritual world is independent. Only the presence of this spiritual world makes it possible for culture, at the level at which it is generally found, to be tested by a transcendent standard to see how much spiritual substance, how much content and value, it contains. This test will prove that we possess far less spirituality than we think; and that the most of what is called culture is no more than the semblance of culture, no more than imagination and presumption. But at the same time we recognise and gain in the little spirituality that remains to us incomparably more; we win the presence of a new world, and by this, depth of life and the possibility of an inner renewal. Our life would be indescribably shallow if it were to pass on one level and were to be exhausted in the experiences at that level. The acknowledgment of an independent spiritual life saves us from this shallowness, in that it shows an inner gradation within our own province and sets life as a whole a task. If the acknowledgment of a spiritual world, inwardly present to us, gives to culture a distinctive character, this character receives a further modification from the particular manner in which the spiritual life makes its appearance and becomes established within our existence; at the same time, from this position there is also the possibility of different sides and tasks within an all-comprehensive work of culture. Of special significance in reference to this modification is the circumstance that the spiritual life does not possess man as a natural fact, does not operate within him with complete power and sure direction from the beginning, but is present to him at first only as a possibility, and as a transcendence of the general condition of things. In accordance with this, although the spiritual belongs to our nature, it is not so much "given" to us as set as a task; for its realisation it needs our own attention and appropriation; all development of the spiritual life within us, therefore, involves our own activity and so receives an ethical character. The spiritual life also has such an ethical character because, transcending our original condition, it must be conveyed to us, and must be maintained by an imparting and an activity. In the spiritual life we find ourselves in a sphere of activity and of freedom in contrast with that of nature; in this way our life becomes our work, our own life in a much more real sense. We see this in the case of the fundamental form of the spiritual life that is called "personality." We men are by no means personalities from the beginning; but we bear within us simply the potentiality of becoming a personality. Whether we shall realise our personality is decided by our own work; it depends primarily upon the extent to which we succeed in striving beyond the given existence to a state of self-determining activity. The fact that we thus take part in the formation of our own being proves that we are citizens of a new world--a world other than nature--and shows that we are incomparably more than we could become simply as parts of nature. Neither philosophy nor religion will convince one who, at this point, does not recognise an elevation to a higher power, indeed a transformation of existence. But one who recognises this will desire such a transformation and such an elevation of culture also; he will not come to an easy compromise with the given condition of things and draw the greatest possible amount of pleasure from this condition; but he will set culture an objective ideal; arouse it from the prevailing state of indolence; fully acknowledge the antitheses of experience, and will be provoked rather to make further exertions than disposed to abandon himself to these antitheses. Life finds its main problem in itself, solely in the development of an ethical character, and attains to complete independence and a transcendence of nature only when the spiritual takes precedence. Every culture that does not treat the ethical task, in the widest sense, as the most important of tasks and the one that decides all, sinks inevitably to a semblance of culture, a half-culture, indeed a comedy. The æsthetic system, with its transformation of life into play and pleasure, with its beautiful language and its spiritual poverty, is such a life. To-day, therefore, we can revive and strengthen culture only by establishing such an ethical conviction. Only a culture of an ethical character can develop an independent and positive spirituality; only such a culture can free the impulse of life from being directed simply to natural self-preservation, and in doing this not make the impulse weaker, but stronger. In nothing have minds been more divided and in nothing will they become more divided than with regard to the question whether, after the perception of the inadequacy of mere nature and society, a new world reveals itself to them, or whether this negation is the ultimate conclusion; the former will be possible only through that which we call ethical. The conception that we have here presented of the spiritual life and of its relation to man also makes it for the first time possible to understand and acknowledge the manifold and opposing elements in our time without falling into a shallow eclecticism. Realism advances in power, and Idealism seems to be endangered in respect not only of its form but also of its innermost nature. Idealism is indeed in danger so long as the spiritual life has not attained to independence in relation to man; for, so long as the spiritual life is regarded as a production of man the knowledge of man's relation to nature and his animal origin must lead to a serious prostration, to a complete dissolution of Idealism. If, on the other hand, it is established that with the spiritual life a new order transcending the power of man makes its appearance within him, then the recognition of human incapacity becomes a direct witness to the independence of the spiritual life. We must, therefore, cease to treat spiritual developments, such as religion, art, morality, as the natural attributes of all called men. Man's natural character simply offers tendencies and relations which can find a spiritual character only by the revelation of a spiritual world. The decisive point of transition is not between man and animal, but between nature and spirit. But even where culture is supposed to be at its highest, human existence is for the most part at the level of nature--and is only embellished in some degree. In Idealism a religious shaping of life is to be distinguished from an immanent shaping of life by spiritual creation, especially in art and science. The demand for a universal spiritual system involves the rejection of the specific religious system as being in many ways too narrow and open to hostile criticism; this universal system, however, as it is presented when the spiritual life is acknowledged to be independent, is closely related to religion. Not only is all spirituality within us dependent upon a universal spiritual life, but this spiritual life within us always presents itself as something transcendent and is not coincident with our life. This religious character must be the more clearly emphasised the greater the toil with which the spiritual life must defend itself from a world apparently alien and hostile. Immanent Idealism, filling life as it does through art and science, cannot possibly be the whole and conclusive--for this reason at least, that it has too little with which to counteract the perplexities of spiritual and of material life, and because it concentrates life too little within itself. But a scientific character is indispensable to a universal spiritual culture, in order that life may not pass in subjective feeling and presentation, and that life may have an objective character, and be led to the clearness of a universal consciousness. An æsthetic form and creative activity pertain also to this life; for, otherwise, no representation of reality as a whole could be obtained from the confused impressions of immediate experience; the spiritual could attain to no clear present, and could not permeate reality with ennobling power, and change all that is deformed and indifferent to it in the original condition of things. From the point of view of spiritual culture the movements in the direction of Realism also may be regarded as of value, if only they do not desire to dominate life and to impress their form directly upon it. The tendency to place a low estimate upon the natural and material conditions of life and of human social relationship has everywhere revenged itself upon the spiritual life, since it has allowed that life to fall into a state of weakness and effeminacy, and prevented it from realising its full power and strength. The acknowledgment of the multiplicity of tasks that are involved in all the departments must be a source of great danger to life, if every department of human experience does not serve the development of an independent spiritual life. The more power the spiritual life acquires, the more securely will it tend to prevent division. Nevertheless, everything is in a state of movement; man must first win a coherent character for his life. But it is already a great gain that we are not defenceless in face of the antitheses within the human sphere, that the presence of an independent spiritual life elevates us inwardly above them and only allows an inner unity to take up a conflict. We may also briefly consider how the conception of the spiritual life as a coming of reality to itself, as a formation and development of being, must tend to deepen and strengthen the work of culture. How much more this work must become to us, how much more indispensable must it be, if it is not simply a matter of giving an existent material a new form, of arousing dormant powers, but if in it we first advance from a life that is only a half-life and a life of pretence to a real and genuine life; if we struggle not for one thing or another within existence, but for our being as a whole! If once life is awakened to reflect upon itself, and if at the same time it makes a claim to self-consciousness and a content, it cannot doubt the poverty of the life of mere nature and just as little that of the life of mere society; in the former, as in the latter, there are only suggestions of a genuine life, only possibilities, most of which do not come to be realised. Not suffering, but spiritual destitution is man's worst enemy. From this position the outlook of the life of the majority can be only a cloudy one, its value only mean. If we abstract from the experience of man that which is due to the necessity of self-preservation and to social training, how much inner movement, how much life of his own, how much that is spiritual remains in him! How many dead souls there are in all classes of society; how many who, allowing their powers to lie dormant, drift about aimlessly! Nevertheless other possibilities exist in man, and even if they are not positively developed, still they prevent him from feeling satisfied in that state of spiritual poverty, and always keep him in an insecure state of suspension. The less we think of the immediate welfare and capacity of man, the more will the spiritual life transcend us and the more urgent will the task of the spiritual life become--to preserve to human existence in the midst of all externality and pretence some kind of substance and some kind of soul. However, we have already occupied ourselves with the question of the nature and significance of truth and reality in the spiritual life. (b) THE ORGANISATION OF THE WORK OF CULTURE A problem from which no system of life can escape is that of the organisation of culture, the question how the work of culture can be divided into different departments and at the same time preserve a unity. To-day we are in a state of great perplexity in this matter; an old solution has become untenable, and a new one has not yet been found. The Middle Ages handed down to us a system of culture that may be described as a hierarchy, in the widest sense of that term. The multiplicity of life was united into a whole; but this whole was dominated by distinctive religious and philosophic convictions, which assigned to each individual department its place in the whole and set it its task; these departments attained to a complete independence as little as that system had an independence for individual forms. The Modern Age has evolved and has realised a system of freedom in increasing opposition to the earlier system. How this everywhere effects an emancipation is demonstrated by our problem of the increasing development to independence by the individual departments of life. The state and society, science and art, find their tasks more and more within themselves, in their own development; they engender distinctive laws and methods of their own; they seem to be able to reach their aims of their own capacity. Effort is directed more and more into individual departments, and there is a feeling of complete satisfaction in this tendency. Our life has gained immensely in comprehensiveness and breadth by the transition to this modern system: it comes more closely into touch with the realm of fact; it produces a greater diversity of movement, since the different departments have their own starting-points, enter upon distinctive paths, and direct their powers into these paths. The attainment of independence by the individual departments of life constitutes one of the chief gains of modern culture, and it cannot again be given up. But the attainment of independence by the individual departments brings great perplexities with it, which make a definite counter-movement necessary. At first the tendencies characteristic of the individual departments directly contradict one another; indeed, this is inevitable, if they are not systematised in some way. For, particular experiences of human life are present in each department: one feels our greatness more, another our weakness; one is moved more by the harmony of existence, another more by the antitheses; one tends rather to exert power upon the environment, the other to concentration in itself; from these experiences there must originate different modes of life and different representations of the world. In this condition of life it is impossible for the different tendencies not to cross one another and to clash together; and this threatens to divide our life, and to rob it of all its inner unity. A glance at the condition of life in the present is sufficient to convince us that such dangers are more than fancies. To the difficulty in respect of the relations of the different departments among themselves, we must add another, if anything greater, in respect of the relation of each department to life as a whole. To be well organised each department needs a co-operation of form and content, of the technical and the personal; the former gives the department its particular nature; for the latter a relation with life as a whole is necessary. The work of science, for example, follows certain forms of thought, which it evolves from itself, and which are equally valid for all times and parties. But even the most conscientious following of these laws does not give to science a content and a character; science can acquire these only in relation with a movement of life as a whole, which, in its striving from whole to whole, takes up the experiences of humanity and unites them into a whole. Only in this way does science, from being simply an arrangement and accumulation, become knowledge, an inner appropriation of things. If in accordance with this the individual departments are detached more and more from life as a whole, and are made dependent solely upon their own capacity, it can hardly be otherwise than that in the midst of all perfection in execution they lose more and more all spiritual content and all definite character. At the same time, it may soon follow that the effect upon humanity as a whole will become subsidiary and a matter of indifference; the individual departments will become exclusively a matter of a circle of specialists, and strive for an effect within this circle only. In this way an art arises which, in the artist, forgets the man, and which does not so much convey new content to human life, or help the time to attain to a characteristic feeling of life, and elevate it above the meaninglessness and the confusion of commonplace everyday experience, but which is for the most part mindful of refinement in execution, and so, easily degenerates into the complicated and the virtuoso. In the case of science we find the same thing. It may, through exaggerating the independence necessary to it, assume an air of proud self-satisfaction, and, by detachment from the movement of life as a whole, that which is its main concern, namely, knowledge, may suffer. For it soon tends to become mere erudition, which treats problems as something half-alien, gains no inner relation to things, does not understand how to animate reality, indeed even rejects, as unscientific, all striving after such animation. This tendency produces, to use an expression of Hegel's, excellent "counter-servers," who do not look after business of their own, but only that of others. No people are more threatened by the danger of this tendency than we Germans; more especially because the tendency is closely related with a most advantageous quality of our nature--willing subordination to the object, fidelity to and conscientiousness in our work. But since we follow this one tendency, aspects and tendencies which are absolutely necessary to a complete life stagnate and decay. We do not sufficiently develop a personal life independent of the object; we do not encompass and transform it from its very base by a transcendent life-process; and so we are occupied too much with the material, and do not completely spiritualise it; we do not bring into relief simple lines in the infinite abundance, which we require and must maintain complete. How many excellent scholars our time possesses, who are equipped with an astonishing capacity for work, who are masters of even the most complicated technical matters, and yet how few spiritual types there are among them; how few who have anything to say to humanity, and who will exert their influence in this way beyond the present! The history of German formative art also indicates a painful divergence between the amount of untiring work and the carefulness of execution, and the creation of simple and pure forms that would increase the spiritual possessions of humanity, and be permanent factors in its movement. However, the trait is rooted far too deeply in our being for even the most determined resolution to be able directly to achieve much to counteract it. Nevertheless, it is not a matter of indifference whether we give ourselves complacently up to this one-sidedness, and fortify ourselves proudly in it; or whether we oppose it to the best of our ability. We find ourselves therefore in the present in a difficult situation with regard to the organisation of culture. To give up the independence of the individual departments, or even only to limit it in any way, would be an enormous and impossible retrogression; on the other hand, some kind of inner unity of life must be obtained. A transcendence of the antithesis must, therefore, be sought; and this needs a distinctive structure of life. The spiritual life offers such a structure in so far as it constitutes the development of being. For we saw how independent centres and characteristic movements arise in an all-comprehensive life. Between these movements there may be manifold relations and antitheses, but they are within a vital whole and with their experiences can aid its further development. Viewing the departments of life from this position, it will be necessary to show that each individual department has a root in life as a whole and a significance for this life; only thus can the power of this whole life be exerted in the individual departments, and penetrate them. But the department does not receive its form simply from the whole by way of derivation; but it can take up and treat the problem independently, and with its own means; that which exists in the whole as an affirmation may be only a question and a suggestion in the individual department. Yet this is in no way without value: for, nevertheless, it leads us beyond the indefiniteness of the original condition, and guides effort in circumscribed paths. What gives work in the individual departments special significance and intensity is the fact that they take up the problem of the whole in a particular sphere, and can treat that problem in a characteristic manner; that they are not mere aids and assistants, but independent co-operators. In this connection it is of especial importance that the spiritual life is not conferred upon man in a finished form; but that within him it must first be worked towards with great toil and through doubt and error, from indefinite outlines to more detailed development. It is obvious that the form of the whole will ever be questionable; and that the individual departments must co-operate in the examination and justification of the forms proposed. Indeed, it is just the mark of great achievements in the individual departments that, while they transform their own sphere, they at the same time develop the whole. It is this that distinguishes Leibniz from Wolff, and Kant from Herbart. Such an organisation gives to life a movement in two directions: it must be conducted from whole to part, and from part to whole. The individual departments must be developed far enough to reveal their particularity and to produce a characteristic tendency of their own; but they must remain within a whole, to receive from it and to lead back to it. The relations between the individual departments will be distinctive in such a system; the influence of one upon another will be without suspicion, and advantageous, only when it is exerted through the mediation of the whole; while disturbances are inevitable, when one conveys immediate experiences to another and imposes its nature upon another. It was necessary, for example, to reject the earlier encroachments of religion upon other departments of life; art, too, often found it necessary to resist the tendency to subordinate it to morality; and to-day there is a strong inclination to shape every department of life in accordance with the instructions of natural science. Yet although such encroachments must be rejected, and the independence of each in relation to the others preserved, the changes that are effected in one department are by no means indifferent and lost to the other departments. For, if through these changes life as a whole is developed, then the effect of the change must extend to the other departments. In this manner of mediation religion has exercised a strong influence upon the other departments of life; and in this sense, to-day, an influence of natural science upon the whole circle of existence will be readily acknowledged. But this does not involve a limitation or an enslaving of other departments, because the change in life as a whole must now be ascertained first; and, besides, each individual department must test by its own experiences the suggestion coming from the whole. When we take all these facts into consideration we see that the organisation of culture is a difficult problem and that our organisation is unstable. In culture, different tendencies will cross one another; antitheses cannot be avoided, and collisions will not be lacking. But that which life loses in completeness and exclusiveness, it gains in wealth and movement; and division need not be a cause of anxiety so long as a powerful spiritual life embraces and unifies the multiplicity. Without such a counteraction by the spiritual life we must drift towards ever greater specialisation; and, with this, we should not only see life become more and more disintegrated, but we should also become less and less spiritual, and be transformed into a soulless mechanism. II. THE FORM OF THE INDIVIDUAL DEPARTMENTS _Preliminary Considerations_ Before we proceed to discuss the individual departments of life we may briefly consider the common task that is imposed upon them all by the distinctive condition of the time: they must become independent in relation to the earlier as well as to the more modern conceptions of them, and, if necessary, take up a conflict against both. The course of our investigation can have left no doubt with regard to the state of prostration of the older forms of life: the uncertainty affects the whole and the fundamental principles much more than it has ever done before. Formerly the struggle was concerned rather with individual departments or individual tendencies of life; it was carried on more in reference to the conception and meaning of fundamental truths than with regard to the validity of those truths themselves. The passionate struggles of the period of the Reformation left the fundamentals of Christianity untouched; in a similar manner the later attacks upon ecclesiastical religion usually had a basis of firm faith in morality, and derived their power more especially from it. To-day the authority of morality is just as seriously shaken as that of religion; and the conception of truth is itself in the same condition of uncertainty. In this condition of things an appeal to history cannot be employed as proof of any position; a patchwork of our own and of something alien gives us still less a position above perplexity: there is no other way than to take up the problem with the means of the present itself. For this the acknowledgment of the independence of the spiritual life forms a fit foundation. The spiritual life is not dependent upon and fixed to particular temporal conditions; ever anew it can break forth spontaneously, and from the particularity of the time advance to eternal truths. It is to us a source of joy that a time has come again when we need not follow other paths, but must go our own; when nothing can bind us but that which has been approved by our own being and our own conviction. It is not necessary for a time such as this to take up an attitude of hostility towards the whole past; rather--and especially when it thinks worthily of itself--it will seek a friendly relationship with history. But this is possible only when the present has attained complete independence, and only from this independent position; only when an eternal content is revealed in that which history conveys to us. In opposition to submission to authority such a time makes a demand for unlimited freedom and complete spontaneity; such freedom and spontaneity are essential if life is again to find the truthfulness and the inner power that we so painfully miss. Such a requirement of life and thought arising out of the immediate present may easily lead us to separate from those to whom the crisis does not seem so serious, and who believe that it is possible to transform the old in a quiet and inhostile manner into the new. The conflict will be far more acute with those who, with us, make the demand for an independent present; but who, by the conceptions of an independent present, freedom and spontaneity, understand something totally different from that which we ourselves understand by them from the point of view of an independent spiritual life. In all times of spiritual revival the freedom and immediacy which the spiritual life needs for itself have been usurped by mere man as though they were a right pertaining to him: and then it appears that only the complete emancipation of individuals, a severance of all connections, unconditional submission to the passing moment, are necessary in order to lead life to truth and greatness, and man to a glorious state of happiness. Such a movement cannot spread without making the antitheses of life appear less acute, concealing its problems and its depths, and falsely idealising man with all the contingency of his experience: with all the bustle of its preparation and all its agitation the movement must terminate in a state of spiritual destitution; it threatens life with inner destruction. With a modernity of this kind we have nothing in common. We must, therefore, with all our power, wage war against the narrowly human and imaginary freedom on behalf of one that is genuine and spiritual: this conflict is exceptionally complicated and difficult, because real life does not make such a clear distinction between the genuine and the false as the conceptions do, but rather allows them to be confused. For this reason the conflict will be carried on not only on the right hand and on the left, but also against the confusion that obscures the great "either--or," without the distinct presence of which a spontaneous life does not acquire power and consciousness. A way must be found by which, notwithstanding manifold dangers and complications, we may advance to a life that combines depth with freedom, stability with movement: this is an inner necessity of the age, and once it is recognised and taken up as such, it will in some way be realised. (a) RELIGION, MORALITY, EDUCATION 1. RELIGION In no sphere of life is there more inner division and uncertainty at the present time than in that of religion. To one, the rejection of all religion seems to be indispensable to the sincerity of life and to the attainment of healthy conditions, because, as a pernicious legacy from past ages, it oppresses our life, confuses our thought, paralyses our power of activity, and provokes men to the greatest hatred of one another. To another, on the contrary, religion seems to be the only firm support in face of the needs and confusions of the age--the only thing that inwardly unites men and elevates each individual above himself, the only thing that reveals a depth in life and allows life to share in the infinite and the eternal. The adherents to each of these views show the greatest earnestness and zeal; we cannot treat the negation lightly and dispose of it with the convenient catchword "unbelief," if only for the reason that on the part of many this negative attitude is due to a sincere anxiety for the truthfulness of life. To rise above this conflict in regard to religion we must, in the first place, estimate the points at issue impartially; and nothing else is more called upon to do this than philosophy. Philosophy will not make light of the prostration of religion; for a survey of history shows that the state of life has undergone a complete change since the epoch when religion exercised an undisputed supremacy. At that time the world and human life received all meaning and value from their relation to an invisible and supernatural order. The course of the Modern Age has made the world that surrounds us ever more significant, and since man has directed his activity upon this world, the world of faith has been allowed to recede more and more. The movement that led to our present position attained increasing power and consciousness through three stages: at the height of the Renaissance the divine was revered less in its world-transcendent sovereignty than in its world-pervading operation; then, the Pantheism of a speculative and æsthetic culture associated the world and God together in one reality; finally, in the investigation of inimitable nature and the formation of political and social relations the world of sense gives man so much to do, fetters his power so much, and gives him at the same time such a proud consciousness of this power, that the conception of a transcendent world fades entirely; and an Agnosticism that rejects as superfluous and unfruitful all reflection upon and care concerning such a world gains ground. This change in the direction and in the disposition of life must itself have forced religion more or less out of the field of our attention. But it is fraught with far more dangers to religion that the work of the Modern Age in all its main tendencies is directed against the principles of the life upon which the development of religion rests. Modern natural science has dispossessed man of the central position that he formerly attributed to himself, and has deprived nature of its soul. The modern science of history, with its demonstration of ceaseless change in all that is human, has undermined the faith in an absolute truth. At the same time, with regard to the beginnings of Christianity, there is a wide divergence between the traditional conception of faith and the new conception obtained by historical research. The tendency of modern culture has been to make the increasing of power, in work upon things and in their control, the highest ideal; from the point of view of this ideal of impersonal power, the world of pure inwardness, the home of Christianity, has been able to appear to be simply a subjective and subsidiary accompaniment of the life-process. He who estimates rightly the fact that all these tendencies of modern life work together and strengthen one another cannot fail to recognise that they force religion from the centre of life to its circumference, and transform it from an impregnable fact into a difficult problem; they destroy that self-evidence of religion which previously made life secure and calm. If, however, religion no longer springs up in the consciousness of contemporaries from a necessity of their own life, it is not difficult to understand that the complications of the problem are too great for many of them; that the burden of obsolete forms over-balances the power of their own impulse, and thus, by a sudden revolution, to reject it seems the only way to save truth. Then religion seems to be only a delusion that arose in a past age--a delusion similar to astrology and alchemy; one which, in face of growing enlightenment, must ultimately be completely dispelled. But if the philosophic treatment understands the negation rightly, it can only warn us against being hasty in our acceptance of it. To be sure, quite apart from all the caprice and purpose of man, the condition of life has become very much changed; but it was less the state of affairs itself that permitted the changes to clash so irreconcilably with religion than the interpretation which it received and the exclusiveness which was attributed to it. The decision in this matter has depended in particular upon what is called the spirit of the age, which is often nothing more than the inclination and disposition of man; such inclination, as history shows, may change into the direct opposite; it does not form a sure touchstone of truth. These considerations, indeed, do not make much headway in opposition to the storm and stress of the movements of the age: that which operates far more strongly in favour of religion is the experience and the feeling that the attempted negation of religion by no means easily and directly solves the problem of life; and, further, that along with religion much becomes untenable to which even the modern man cannot lightly renounce all claim. Whatever there may be in religion, it has brought man into union with the deepest basis of reality, and at the same time revealed to him a life of pure inwardness: it has set a task for life as a whole and has given to life a meaning and a value; it has counteracted the lower impulses and the egoism of mere self-preservation; and has organised humanity spiritually. These aims have hardly become superfluous and worthless: even without religion, and after abandoning its principles, it would be necessary to accomplish these aims in other ways. It is in the attempts at reconstruction that the futility of the negation of religion becomes painfully evident. Phrases concerning the greatness and noble-mindedness of all that bear human features; a blind faith in the elevating power of intellectual enlightenment or even of external organisation; a confusion of thought which, unobserved, rejects and elevates its own principles, and so maintains in the conclusion that which it rejected in the premises; all these things can deceive him alone concerning the spiritual poverty and the complete powerlessness of what is offered in them, whose zeal in his antagonism to religion has deprived him of balance of feeling and impartiality of judgment. If it is inquired what content and value human life still retains after the surrender of all relation to the whole and of all inner relation, it will be recognised that the complete negation of religion consistently carried out must lead to an appalling convulsion of human existence as a whole. But if such considerations counsel us to be cautious in regard to the negation of religion, they do not justify an adherence to its traditional form. The far-reaching changes of life that we are aware of cannot possibly be explained away or their significance lessened; they must be estimated, and brought into relation with religion. The boundary between the eternal and the temporal, the substance and the outward form in religion, has been made uncertain by these changes; in particular they forbid philosophy to treat the religious problem from the point of view of a dogmatic confession. The antithesis between Catholicism and Protestantism is the offspring of an age that preceded the development of modern culture, with all its deep-reaching revolutions. The main problem of religion at the time when the antithesis made its appearance was differently stated from the way in which we now state it. For then it was a question whether Christianity was to be formed from society or from personality; while to-day Christianity fights for its existence as a whole, and must defend its fundamental truths against a time in which activity is directed into other paths. The present antithesis cannot possibly be regarded as ultimately identical with the former one; and it is for this reason impossible to take up the present conflict concerning religion under the banner of a particular dogmatic confession. Such an ante-dating of the conflict also has the disadvantage that it prevents the great antitheses which are involved to-day both in Catholicism and Protestantism from being clearly displayed. Two different streams have been present in Catholicism from its beginning: to the one, the power of the ecclesiastical system is the main thing; while to the other, on the contrary, the religious disposition is of supreme importance. The influences of modern culture have increased this difference, both directly and indirectly, and, chiefly outside of Germany, there are signs of the beginning of a stronger movement towards a more inward Catholicism. Protestantism carries within it an antithesis of the old ecclesiastical form of religion, which adheres as much as possible to the state of things in the sixteenth century, and a form transformed by the Idealism in modern culture more into the universal, the free, the purely human, but also not infrequently into vagueness and superficial optimism. But so long as the bitterness of sectarian prejudice diverts the attention of men from the chief thing, these antitheses are not clearly expressed and energetically developed. There are serious contradictions involved in these views of religion, and they cannot be developed without giving rise to parties. Philosophy must strive with all its energy to bring it about that these parties shall be formed in relation to the present situation, and not from the point of view of a past age; and that the conflict shall be raised to a higher level, to truth and greatness, by bringing itself into relation with the needs of the age. The task of philosophy is not limited to estimating as impartially as possible the state of things as we immediately experience it; that task also includes a positive treatment of the religious problem. That which is characteristic in the philosophy of life advocated in this treatise, Noëtism, as it might be called, must also find a definite expression and show what capacity it has, in the fulfilment of this task. In accordance with its fundamental relation to history, which has been much discussed, Noëtism cannot make history most important, even in religion, and cannot read into history as much as possible of what the present demands; it must regard any such procedure as a weakness and a half-truth. Noëtism must insist upon religion's justifying itself and establishing its reality before the tribunal of the spiritual life: only then can the truth that exists in history and that which, through progressive differentiation, promotes the cause of transcendent truth and brings it nearer to humanity as a whole, be elucidated. We have not for a moment lost sight of the fact that it is essential to religion to be related not to single individuals but to all; and that religion can evolve no power without compelling men to some kind of unity. Now, for the treatment of the religious problem, Noëtism offers first a position from which demands are made compatible which are otherwise directly opposed to one another. Religion is concerned with experiences which at one and the same time must possess a universal character, belong to our own life, and be immediately accessible to each. The attempt of speculative philosophy to establish religion by deduction from the nature of the whole has the required universal character; but it introduces religion to the soul from outside, and remains a mere intellectual gain. The contrary attempt to base religion in the individual soul developed an inwardness; but this attempt shows that the soul does not know how to build up a world and to contrast it with the subject, to present this world as something transcendent; it makes no sure progress beyond the fluctuation and undulation of feeling. Only an independent spiritual life, inwardly present to us, elevates us above this division of subjective feeling and a transcendent world, and inaugurates universal experiences in our own domain. How with the spiritual life new realities are manifested; how a world-whole which transcends human existence becomes evident, has already been discussed, and it is not necessary to make any repetition here. Every acknowledgment of an independent spiritual life is favourable to religion in so far as this acknowledgment makes us clearly perceive the inadequacy, the illusoriness, and the vanity of all narrowly human conduct and occupation, its futility in matters both small and great. So long as attention is fixed on individual matters, and so long as we may expect some improvement in these in the present or in the future, we may not be aware of the futility of this conduct; but as soon as the situation is grasped as a whole and estimated as a whole, such human conduct is found to be entirely inadequate, these external aids are found wanting, and there remains only the inexorable "either--or": either the power of a new world is operative in man, and makes him strong outwardly and inwardly, or the whole life of man is spiritually lost--one great delusion, one great error. If from the point of view of the spiritual life the contour of a new world is acquired, we may turn back to history, and ask how far it indicates a movement which tends in the direction of such a world. The spiritual life itself brings a distinctive standard for this inquiry: the fundamental fact is not a single factor within life, but the existence of a self-conscious whole of life, of a spiritual process itself. From the point of view of the spiritual life, the chief thing in religions will be the kind of life they reveal; what they make of the life-process; how through the relation to an absolute life they evolve the life-process to a higher stage. Only so far as they express this life-process, and not in themselves, are the doctrines and practices of religion of value. If we apply this test to the individual religions, Christianity distinctly shows itself to be far superior to the others. More than any of the other religions, Christianity fulfils the demands which are made by the nature of the spiritual life and its relation to the world; and so far as Christianity satisfies these demands, but not in its historical form as a whole, it may assert itself to be absolute. If Christianity as a religion of redemption requires that we should tear ourselves from the old world and aspire to a new one, this demand receives a distinctive significance by the more detailed conception which Christianity forms of it. As evil and that which is to be overcome is regarded not, as among the Hindus, as mere appearance, but as moral guilt, which disorganises the world, it is not the fundamental reality of the world but a particular conception of it that is rejected; and so there remains the possibility of life being given a positive character; and in this the main thing is not intellectual enlightenment, but radical moral renewal, an elevation into a world of love, grace, and reverence. This view of the world makes it impossible to base life simply upon affirmation or negation; but affirmation and negation must be present within it, and thus life is given an inner comprehensiveness and an inner movement which it would not otherwise possess. Christianity included the innermost basis of human life in this movement and transformation, since it not only regarded the divine as influencing the human by individual manifestations of its power, but proclaimed a complete union of both, and maintained this through its whole development. A wearied and exhausted age may have formulated this fundamental truth in the most unfortunate manner in the doctrine of the divine humanity of Christ; nevertheless, the effectiveness of the truth involved was not prevented by this. Only from the power of a conception of a union of the divine and the human can religion acquire the character of pure and complete inwardness, of a spiritual self-consciousness: otherwise the relation of the divine and the human remains a more or less external one. But this is not the place to trace how the Christian type of life has been visibly embodied in the course of history in the personality and the life of its founder, and in the common labours of centuries, in which the Semitic and Germanic natures have been harmonised, and great peoples and personalities have given their best to the world: here we may only remark further that the whole is not a work completed at one particular point in time, but a continuous task of all ages; and that, in the fundamental life transcending all mere time, a fixed standard is offered by which to test the achievement of all particular ages, and to differentiate the results of the work of history as far as they correspond with the fundamental character of religion. Religion must maintain the fundamental character of the life that it advocates, in face of all change in the state of culture, just as decidedly as for its development in detail it remains dependent upon the help of the work of culture. Religion in the present, therefore, has great and difficult tasks. For one thing, religion must energetically maintain the supremacy, in opposition to modern culture, of the type of life that it advocates. The fact that there are points of direct antagonism between the religious type of life and modern culture ought neither to be denied nor in any way obscured. On the one hand, we have an ideal of a life of the pure inwardness of ethical disposition; on the other, the ideal of spiritual power: in the former the tendency is to personal, in the latter to impersonal life: in the one case there is a positive development only by a complete transformation; in the other the immediate impulse of life is the ruling motive power of the whole. It shows only superficiality and confusion to seek an agreeable compromise between these antitheses; for, in truth, either the one or the other must assume the guidance of the whole. The whole course of our investigation permits of no doubt as to our own attitude in this matter. But it is impossible to defend the supremacy of the type of life advocated by Christianity without recognising the necessity that this type of life must be in a form which appropriates to itself the long experience of humanity and corresponds to the present stage of spiritual evolution. The changes necessitated by this evolution are far too great for the traditional form of Christianity to be able to express them; in order to develop their own power, and to establish themselves triumphantly in opposition to a hostile world, they must acquire an independent form for themselves. There are three kinds of changes that are especially necessary to the form of Christianity in the present. (1) The representation of the world found in the older form of Christianity has become absolutely untenable: in this matter we must not seek weak compromises between the old and the new, but without fear we must fully acknowledge the elements of fact that exist in the new. We cannot do this unless we make deep changes in the way we regard religion; we must find the courage and the power for such a renewal. (2) The whole movement of modern life has made us feel that the realities with which traditional religion has to do are far too insignificant and too narrow; a rigid insistence upon them threatens to involve us in a degeneration to the narrowly human and subjective. The conceptions of "inwardness," "personality," and "morality," in particular, need to be interpreted more comprehensively and deeply; the soul's "being for self" must be based upon a self-consciousness of the spiritual life. Religion must take up the conflict with the world spiritually, and through this grow in greatness in its whole effect and government. (3) The older form of Christianity was the product of an exhausted and faint-spirited age; hence its fundamental attitude is predominantly passive and negative. It shows a strong tendency to depreciate human nature, and to leave the salvation of man entirely to God's mercy: in emphasising man's redemption from evil it is apt to forget the elevation of his nature toward the good. The joyousness of the Christian life is insufficiently dwelt upon; and the raising of men from their prostration and perplexities falls short of a restoration to a free and self-determining activity. What is needed is a thorough-going reconstruction which shall emphasise the importance of action and joyousness in Christian morality, without in any way weakening the opposition to all systems of natural morality based on the rights of force. In a word, with all respect to Christianity, we demand its expression in a new form. We require that Christianity shall identify itself more definitely with a religion of the spiritual life as opposed to a religion which merely ministers to human frailty, and that it shall show greater decision in casting off the antiquated accessories that hamper its movement. We ask that it shall make prominent those simple and fundamental features of its system which have value for all time, and in this way restore sincerity and settled confidence to life. We can hardly expect that the reunion of man on a religious basis will take place all at once, but it would be a great gain if we could only clearly realise what the oppositions are which still keep us apart. Such insight would help to check that insincerity in religious matters which must first be got rid of, if there is to be any source of spiritual health in us. 2. MORALITY. From the perplexities of religion many flee to morality as to something secure and untouched by dissension. The position of morality is, indeed, different from that of religion. Of atheists there are many; but there are few, if any, who deny the validity of all moral values: that fidelity is better than deceit, love better than hate, concerning this there is no dispute. But it is a question how far this agreement extends and how much we may gain from it. Within the same sphere of culture at least it is with very little difficulty that we come to agreement in respect of individual matters of morality; if ethical societies limited themselves to practical morality, and did not at the same time wish to settle questions of principle, they would find scarcely any opposition. But, as soon as we comprehend the individual matters as a whole and ask for a foundation for the whole, problem after problem makes its appearance, and it soon becomes clear that we can neither establish nor distinctively form morality without a conviction concerning life as a whole and our fundamental relation to reality. If, therefore, there is so much uncertainty in the present concerning life as a whole and our fundamental relation to reality, we must inevitably become doubtful and unclear with regard to morality. In fact, the position may be described in this way: we lack a morality which has a secure basis and a definite character; in morality, also, after-effects of the past mingle with the impulses of the present; and we are accustomed to conceal the poverty of our own possessions by historical knowledge and mere learning--so much is this the case that we are able even in a state of disgraceful poverty to think ourselves rich. There are no less than five types of morality which seek our adherence and the guidance of our soul: we may suppose that in each of these there is some truth, but no single one is able to win our acceptance entirely; each leads to a certain point, and then we recognise a limit. We have a religious morality, in which our volition is related to and our destiny is determined by a divine power; but this endangers the spiritual independence of man, and has a strong tendency to make his life too passive; besides, in this case, the prostration of religion also weakens the power of morality and its power to direct life. We have a morality of culture, which directs all power towards increasing the progress of humanity, and subordinates all subjective preference to the requirements of an objective operation and creation; but the ceaselessly increasing differentiation of work makes this form of morality a danger to the soul as a whole; man is in danger of being made a mere means and instrument of a soulless process of culture. We have a social morality, which makes the welfare of society the chief thing, and which, by strengthening the feeling of solidarity, produces humane efforts in abundance, but is unable to include life as a whole; in this form of morality there is a great danger of overestimating external conditions of life, and of levelling and weakening life. Certain great thinkers have advocated a morality of pure reason, which elevates man above the sphere of the useful and the pleasant; and gives to him an inner independence; but with all its greatness this morality is too formal and too abstract for us; and, besides, we lack to-day the certainty of an invisible world, which alone can give a secure foundation to this type of morality. Lastly, we have an individualistic morality, a morality of beautiful souls, which regards the complete development of one's own particular nature, the harmonious cultivation of the whole range of one's powers, as the aim of conduct, but which not only necessitates individuals who are far greater and far more characteristic in nature than we find in experience in general, but also has little power to arouse us to effort, and, if accepted exclusively, soon tends to degenerate into a refined self-enjoyment and vain self-reflection. The presence of all these tendencies and motives in morality subjects us to-day to an abundance of ethical stimuli; but it does not give us an ethic. At the most it conceals the fact that the multiplicity of activities do not form for us a universal task, which could counteract the separation into individuals, parties, particular departments, and give us the consciousness of serving in our work aims that transcend the well-being and preference of mere man. We are in need of a morality that proceeds from our own life; and in this we need much more than we are conscious of needing. For we have no universal aim that we might take up in our disposition, and by which we might test all individual activities; and so life must become disunified and inwardly alien; we lose all spiritual relation to the world. The world surrounds us in the first place as a dark and immovable fate; we do not make ourselves masters of this fate, just because we give ourselves too much to do with things. Rather, to accomplish this, we must transform reality from its very foundation by our own activity and decision; we must wage war against obscurity and irrationality, and this conflict must tend to divide our whole existence into friend and enemy, good and evil, but along with this first give to life complete activity, and lead it to world-embracing greatness. Only in this way does man, from being simply a spectator, become a co-operator in the building up of the world; only thus does that which occurs within him become in the fullest sense his own. Everything which obscures the ethical character of human life involves, therefore, a loss in greatness and dignity; a degeneration to a state of servitude, to being a mere part of an alien whole. Particular parties may be in agreement with and find satisfaction in this condition; humanity as a whole will not rest content with it. As certainly as humanity confidently maintains that its life has meaning and value, so certainly will it take up the problem of morality ever anew against all attempted intimidation. If to-day we are again to take up this problem, then in the first place the conditions and the requirements of the problem must be quite clear. We can never acquire a morality from the troubled confusion of social life; on the contrary, morality involves a transcendence of this; it necessitates distinctive convictions concerning the world as a whole and our position in it. There is no independent morality, no morality in itself; morality involves a fundamental whole of life, which is appropriated in it and by this appropriation first attains to perfection. In contrast to the existing condition of things a new condition must first be raised in ideas that precede conduct. The new condition acquires a moral character only through requiring on the one hand moral freedom as opposed to the mechanism of natural impulse, on the other a transcendent ideal in opposition to mere self-preservation. These two together reveal a new order of things distinct from nature; they must seem impossible from the point of view of the world of sense, not only freedom with its apparent annulling of all connections, but also the freeing of conduct from bondage to mere nature. For how would one conceive an activity that did not tend ultimately to the good of the agent, and so aid in his self-preservation? Does it not involve a contradiction for him to exert his power for something alien to himself? If in the present we feel such problems in the fullness of their force, and if we must fight for morality as a whole, we must go back to the foundations of our existence, and seek primarily for a secure position in contrast with the instability of temporal experiences. In accordance with the whole course of our investigation, we can find such a position, and by further development a distinctive morality also, only in an independent spiritual life, which first conducts the world to self-consciousness and so to genuine reality. The two requirements discussed above cause no difficulty from the point of view of an independent spiritual life. We convinced ourselves in a previous section of the reality of freedom in the spiritual life; in morality also conduct can free itself from the natural _ego_ without degenerating into a state of emptiness, because the spiritual life reveals a new and the alone genuine self. Thus here activity is not spent upon something alien to us, something presented to it from outside, but is within our own being, which here, indeed, includes the whole infinity within it. Activity in the spiritual life serves true self-preservation, which has only the name in common with natural self-preservation. Wherever it is acknowledged that the spiritual life involves a turning of reality to complete independence and spontaneity, morality must take a significant, indeed the central, position. For it is clear that only the taking up in our own activity and conviction, only complete appropriation, can bring life to the highest degree of perfection. Morality does not find in existence a life-content which it must convey to the individual subject, but is itself within the life-process; a complete self-consciousness of the spiritual life is attained first in morality, and morality must develop the content of that life. It is not that man in morality turns toward the spiritual life, but that the spiritual life elevates itself in the whole of its nature; all human morality must have its basis in a morality of the spiritual life. With such a basis in the innermost nature, morality must concern the whole multiplicity of life; it can include and estimate the most diverse relations and experiences of our existence. But whatever is thus brought under the sway of the morality of the spiritual life must undergo an essential change, and must be elevated above the nature of that which is not taken up in this manner. By an ethical formation and development of art and science we do not mean that the individual should be loyal and straightforward in their pursuit, and should follow honest aims; this conception would be much too narrow. But it is that we should take possession of and treat as our own life and being that which otherwise remains outside as something half alien to us; that the work should acquire the power and fervour of self-preservation; and that in this unification the necessity of the object becomes a definite demand of our life, and the gain of the object an advance of our life. Only such a life which transcends the antithesis of subject and object gives to the object a soul, and freedom a content. The experience of history also makes it clearly evident to us that the spiritual life first acquires a secure position and an indisputable supremacy over nature by its acknowledgment and appropriation in self-determining activity. For history shows that wherever morality is not central, the spiritual life, even in the midst of the most magnificent results in external matters, languishes inwardly and loses its hold. With individuals also the final decision concerning the problems of the world and of life always depends upon whether they do or do not recognise that man has an inner moral task in his nature as a whole. If this is acknowledged, then--and this just in oppositions and conflicts--a realm of inwardness is assured us which all apparently contrary experiences of the external world cannot expel from its central position; but if there is no such acknowledgment, the triumph of these experiences and the collapse of the spiritual life cannot be avoided. The morality of the spiritual life, as we advocate it, will have distinctive features in comparison with other conceptions of morality; of these we can mention but a few here. The acknowledgment of an independent spiritual life makes life as a whole a task, since it requires that as a whole it should be changed into a state of self-determining activity; that everything must be aroused and set in motion. Thus the morality of the spiritual life is constructive and progressive, and not simply regulative in character; it is not its purpose simply to place life under regulations and to let activity wait until there is an opportunity to fulfil them; but, calling forth all our powers, morality must work and create, arouse and prepare the opportunities, so that in everything the realm of the spirit may be increased within the province of humanity. Like the spiritual life itself, the morality proceeding from it must be of a transcendent nature. To-day or to-morrow may not be considered beyond good and evil; morality may not sink to being a mere means of realising the wishes of the time. If, however, morality transcends time, and is able to separate the transitory and the eternal in time, then, within its task, it may very well acknowledge distinctive situations and problems, and present different sides; indeed, only by a close relation with the time and by penetrating deeply into the experiences of the time will morality acquire the necessary proximity and impressiveness. To this extent, therefore, we also insist upon a modern morality, however decidedly we reject that which to-day is called "modern" morality, and which for the most part is no more than a surrender of morality to the wishes and moods of the individual. If in these features the morality of the spiritual life already manifests a distinctive character, this distinctiveness is further increased by the particular nature of the actual relation of man to the moral task, as it appears here. The highering of the ideal will necessarily increase its divergence from man, as he is. It will become quite evident that morality is not a continuation of nature, a natural attribute of man, or a product of social relationship, but the most pronounced expression of a great change in the direction of life, the institution of a new order of things. If at the same time life is to be fashioned morally, a conflict is inevitable; and the general outlook of life and of conduct will depend upon where we find the centre of opposition and what is the main direction of the conflict. In the first place, morality must take up a definite attitude towards the sense-nature of man; that nature must be subordinated to the aims of the spirit. But we have already seen that there is a danger that the ethical task will lose its depth, and that life as a whole will be perverted, if the rights of nature are misunderstood and there arises the desire to suppress it completely, and if, in a tendency to asceticism, this suppression is made the chief concern. The chief moral task is the development and establishment of a genuine and real spiritual life, as opposed to a false and merely apparent one, which is found in human conditions, not only in the state of society but also in the soul of the individual: thus a mere transition from society to the individual can never give any aid. The condition in which life is generally found evolves no independent spiritual life; but it uses the spiritual impulse that is present within it simply as a means to other ends, and thus the result is an inner perversion; at the same time man is generally zealously occupied with giving himself the appearance of intending to follow the spiritual for its own sake, and of sacrificing everything to it. In opposition to such radical insincerity, to acquire a sincere and genuine life is the chief task and the chief desire of morality; for the establishment of sincerity and truth in face of an opposing world the soul needs before all else loyalty and courage. And so morality involves life in a great division: it cannot possibly take up a friendly attitude towards everything and readily admit everything: its chief task must be to arouse life from its confusion and apathy. But this does not prevent a morality of the spiritual life striving for universality in its inner nature. The morality of the spiritual life must, therefore, establish a definite relationship on the basis of the present with the prevailing types of morality which were previously mentioned. If the morality of the spiritual life is certain of its own nature, it is quite possible for it to recognise a certain validity in every other kind of morality without degenerating into a feeble eclecticism. The relation that we recognised between the spiritual life and religion also makes religion valuable to morality: the moral significance of culture may be especially acknowledged where a universal character is desired for the spiritual life; the relation of man to man may also become inwardly important where it is necessary to the inner construction of the life of society. Again the morality of the spiritual life fully agrees with the demand for an independence of morality and for an elevation above narrowly human aims, in the manner that the morality of reason advocates; finally, individuality also can obtain its due in the spiritual life. All this, however, is valid only with the presupposition that we acquire a position above the antitheses of experience and not between them, and an inner independence in relation to the chaos of time. Only from this position and this independence can we advance in any way, even within time. 3. EDUCATION AND INSTRUCTION Education and instruction are especially affected by the difficulties that are engendered by the lack of a main tendency in life and of a transcendence of the superficiality of time. For the lively interest which its questions provoke, the incalculable amount of work and activity that is called forth in this department, do not produce their full result, because we do not possess enough life of our own of a definite character to be able to test and sort, to clarify and deepen, that which is presented to us. And so in conflict with one another we use up much power without making much progress in the most important matter. Educational reform is the catchword, but we have no philosophy of education that is based upon a securely established conviction concerning life as a whole, and we trouble ourselves very little to obtain one. We wish to improve education, and yet we have not come to an understanding with regard to its ideals, its possibility, and its conditions. Education must be fundamentally different in character, according as man is regarded as a particular and exclusively individual being, or as a being in whom a new and universal life seems to emerge; according as he is only an elevated being of nature or in the highest degree possible a spiritual being; according as the higher proceeds from the lower gradually and surely after the manner of organic growth, or we must find a new starting-point and accomplish a revolution. Further, an individualistic training, as it dominated the classical systems of pedagogy, is no longer sufficient; the relation to society must also be fully appreciated, and be effective. But attention to this requirement involves us in the danger of treating the problem of education too externally, and of bringing all more or less to the same level; and this danger must be overcome. Yet how can it be overcome, unless we possess securely a depth, unless we acknowledge the presence of the infinite within the human being, as it is comprehended in our conviction of the spiritual life? The form of instruction suffers from the ceaseless onflow of new material, the constant increase in the number of claims. In itself each single demand may be quite justifiable; but whether it is better than the others can be decided only from an idea which governs the whole. If no such idea exists, a gain in the individual departments may be a loss to the whole; and an enrichment in one department may lead to a decline of the whole. In face of that which has been handed down from the past and that which arises in the present, it is difficult to come to a balanced judgment; the parties may be right in their attacks one upon another, but this does not imply that they are right in their own assertions. The immediate impression tends to give the balance in favour of the requirements of the present; from the point of view of the immediate impression, all occupation with the past may appear to be a flight from the living to the dead. The advocate of the claims of history may reply to this that man as a spiritual being is not a child of the mere moment, and that we concern ourselves with the past not on account of what is transitory in it, but for its eternal content. But he who thinks thus must throw the eternal content into relief and separate it sharply from that which is simply temporal; he must establish a relation between this content and his own life, and make that which is externally alien his inward possession. This does indeed come to pass in a few cases; but can we say that it comes to pass generally or predominantly? We Germans in particular have far too strong a tendency to substitute scholarly occupation for inner animation, and instead of spiritual substance to offer academically correct knowledge. It is therefore not without good reason if Classical Antiquity does not so much inspire as weary our youth; yet the blame for this does not rest upon Antiquity, but on ourselves, and upon the manner in which we treat it with calm scholarship, without transforming it into our own possession. For how could that influence the whole man which does not come from the whole man? Everything points again and again to the same thing--we lack spiritual independence, inner transcendence of history and environment, we lack a characteristic life as a whole. The contact with the incalculable abundance of impressions that we experience must therefore remain an external one; and with all our increasing wealth of knowledge we threaten to become spiritually poorer. (b) SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY Science, with its innumerable branches and its powerful penetration of life, is indisputably a strong feature of the age. Its effect is not exhausted in the abundance of particular achievements; by the objectivity of its work it has brought the world much nearer to us, has led our life to greater clearness, has made us more alert, and given us a secure dominion over things. Science, therefore, must also be a factor in the determination of a philosophy of life, and must raise the whole position of man. Of course, as soon as we survey and estimate its work from the life-process we find that there is no lack of difficult problems in science. Since the magnificent results of the natural sciences often give rise to the tendency to force their particular bent and methods on the human sciences, to which our conception of the spiritual life gives a characteristic sphere of their own, there is a danger that the balanced development of the individual sciences and the complete organisation of what is distinctive in them will be prevented. However, we do not lack energetic resistance of this danger; and ultimately it is less science itself than the movement to popularise it that falls into this danger. Further, the results of science with regard to the object easily tend to obscure the subjective element, the spiritual activity, the characteristic synthesis, which forms an organised collection of pieces of knowledge into the unity of a science. It is apt to appear as though science needs only to construct further on a given basis and in a given direction; while both of these are open to much dispute: different possibilities, prospects, types may be revealed; the work of history has run through different stages, and has certainly not already exhausted its possibilities. Nevertheless, the subjective element with its freedom, mobility, and many-sidedness is becoming more adequately appreciated, and there is no reason to fear that science will become dogmatically pursued in paths that have become fixed. Finally, the problem of the relation of thought to life is the source of much perplexity: we Germans, for example, have a strong tendency to take mere knowledge for inner appropriation of the object, and instead of spiritual substance to offer an abundance of scholarship. This, however, is not a defect in science itself, but an error on the part of man, who has no life of his own with which to meet the onflow of impressions from the environment; and so our estimate of science and our acknowledgment of its magnificent achievement cannot be affected by this charge. Philosophy is in quite a different position: its present state cannot satisfy anyone who seeks rather for a universal science than for an academic discipline. For our philosophical efforts lack a common aim and close relation with the innermost need of the time; they do not even show any definite and energetic attempt to overcome the confusion from which our world of thought suffers. A great stream of philosophic effort came to an end with the speculative philosophy of the first decade of the nineteenth century. After a temporary ebb of this philosophic effort, we now wish to take up the work again with fresh power, but we have not yet acquired inner independence; and therefore, in sifting and collecting, we are unable to direct the age to definite aims, or radically expel the inconsistencies into which an indefinite relation to the past has led the present. There are three main streams of thought which come to us from the past, and we can neither completely take them up nor withdraw ourselves from them: the Enlightenment, with its philosophic summit in Descartes; the critical philosophy of Kant; and speculative philosophy, with its consummation in Hegel. It has been thought that the Enlightenment, with its starting out from the subject, its unadorned intellectualism, its formal ratiocination, its rejection of everything that is not comprehended in clear and distinct ideas, was transcended at the height of German classical literature, because at that time a life rich in content was set in contrast with it. But, as a fact, no adequate settlement with the Enlightenment has been arrived at; the supposed transcendence is not final, because the elements of truth in the Enlightenment, especially its turning from history to the immediacy and independence of spiritual life, were not properly acknowledged. But to-day it is less the elements of truth of the Enlightenment that are a force than that which is trivial and narrowly human in it--the ratiocination of the subject which, the more empty it is, the more it feels itself to be the measure of all things, and, rejoicing in negation, applies the results of the natural sciences in an attempt to bring about the greatest possible suppression of all spiritual relations. In this form the Enlightenment gains acceptance by the masses, which formerly had seemed inaccessible to it; and thus it becomes an instrument by which life is dissipated and made shallow. From its position of research, philosophy looks down upon this tendency with contempt; but it produces no movement that is able to take up the struggle with this tendency to shallowness, and pass through the struggle victoriously. Kant is often lauded as the spiritual guide of our time; and it is overlooked how much that was certain for him has become doubtful; how many new facts, new problems, new prospects, which cannot be lost to the world of thought we have received from the nineteenth century with its historico-social culture and its overwhelming widening of the horizon. Kant's critique of the reason is based on a conception of science; on a faith in the possibility of a knowledge of truth; on a conviction of a spiritual organisation of man, which are rather in contradiction than in harmony with the main tendencies of the present. His absolute ethic, the pillar of his constructive thought, is incompatible with the empirical and social treatment of morality to which the present does homage. But at the same time we cannot free ourselves from the influence of Kant. For we cannot refute his critique of the reason, breaking up, as it does, the old representation and conception of truth; and, without his ethic, our ethic would lose the appearance of truth and greatness. In the judgment of the present, Hegel experiences a treatment that is just the opposite of that which Kant receives: if in reference to the latter we do not notice what divides us, so in reference to the former we fail to recognise what joins us. For if Hegel's exaggeration of the power of the human spirit and his identification of spirit and thought appear alien to us, yet his idea of evolution, which embraces all multiplicity, and represents all realities and conceptions as in a state of flux; his elevation of spiritual factors to the form of independent powers which develop and establish their own necessities undeterred by the preference of man; his emphasis on the fact of the power of contradiction and opposition in history--all this, often in spite of our own conceptions, exerts an enormous influence over us; and we cannot shake it off without surrendering a considerable portion of our spiritual possession. These tendencies all whirl confusedly together and draw us now in one direction, now in another; we can get beyond the state of decadence only when we have succeeded in giving to the world of thought an independent character, which corresponds with the spiritual condition of the present, and which can do justice to the old as well as the new experiences. After the whole course of our investigation, only a brief account is necessary to indicate the directions the system of life here advocated points out to reach this; a fuller treatment would make a particular theory of knowledge necessary. We must bring into prominence three of the chief points. (1) Only the life-process can be the starting-point of philosophy, not some kind of being more ultimate than this process, whether we conceive of such being as an external world or as a subject existing independent of the world: the ideas of "world" and "subject," as also that of "being," can be evolved and made clear only within the life-process; at the same time, they remain in a state of flux, and never are so directly opposed to one another as modern thought has represented them as being. Philosophy, with this starting-point, would, however, attain an independence in relation to the special sciences only if it were possible within the life-process to form a unity and a distinctive synthesis, which should deepen our view of reality and set it as a whole in a new light. (2) Such a synthesis must transcend the state of change of all the relations and caprice of men; this is possible only by the revelation and appropriation of an independent spiritual life withdrawn from the life of sense. Without such a spiritual life there is no release from the chaos of subjective experiences and opinions; only from the position of the spiritual life is it possible for a spiritual occurrence to be revealed in the province of man, so that we do not need to infer from man to the world, but that within him a universal life can be immediately experienced. (3) As, on the one hand, the spiritual life is an indispensable presupposition, so on the other it is an infinite task; the former as far as the fundamental fact is concerned, the latter in reference to its detailed content. This content can be acquired only through the movement of history as a whole; thus a constructive philosophy--and not merely a critical one--could arise only where the spiritual life as a whole had acquired a characteristic form. In this case, philosophy was not simply an offspring of life, not merely something for life to occupy itself with. By its demand for a thorough clarification of our ideas and life, and by its raising the question of absolute truth, philosophy has exercised no little influence upon the progress of life. But that which it achieved of a fruitful nature, it achieved not in detachment from, but only in relation to, life, and by interaction with it, however much this relation may be concealed at the first glance. Such a connection of philosophy with life as a whole is by no means new; it has existed in all times. Never has the world of thought acquired a distinctive character except in close relation with life as a whole: it is only from life as a whole that thought has received its problems, the nature of its procedure, and the demarcation of its work. A survey of the history of philosophy makes it evident that the leading thinkers differ mostly, and differ from the beginning, in that which they regard as the essence of life. In what they regard as the essence of life they have found the firm point of support for their work; from that the direction of their research has been determined; and from that the questions arose to which they required an answer from the universe. And we all know that in these matters the question often implies more than the answer, that it often carries the answer within itself. If, therefore, this connection of philosophy with the life-process signifies an old and indisputable truth, this truth is not sufficiently acknowledged. Its adequate acknowledgment gives rise to a new situation; indeed, it tends to the development of a new type of philosophy. With the critical tendency of the Modern Age, this type shares the desire not to surrender thought to a state of defencelessness in face of the stream of appearances, but would primarily concentrate it in itself, and in an inner independence find a standard for all further undertaking. But this attainment of independence in thought is not accomplished by turning to the mere subject, but to a central occurrence, transcending the antithesis of subject and object. If thought cannot begin from such an occurrence, and understand the movement of life as an unfolding and perfecting of this comprehensive occurrence, then there is no truth for man. Truth, as a relation of two series absolutely alien to each other, is an absolutely nonsensical conception: truth must be immanent, in the sense that one life embraces both subject and object, and that in the movement of life there is as much a coming together of subject and object as a coming together of activity from the centre and from the circumference. That in this we have to do with a peculiar formation of knowledge and not with a merely formal modification is shown by the following considerations. If thought, in the manner previously supposed, takes its starting-point in a world existing independently of the subject, then in order to subordinate reality spiritually thought will comprehend it in the most general conceptions. Ultimately, the being of things will be sought in formal ontological magnitudes, as, for example, in "pure being." If the whole abundance of reality appears to be derived simply from these general conceptions, it is in danger of being transformed into nothing but schemes and shadows, and of losing all genuine life. If, as opposed to this, the subject alone is taken as the starting-point, then more life and more movement is indeed assured, and a more varied prospect will be acquired, but there is no possibility of distinguishing between that which is only contingent to the individual and that which forms a common inner world; there is no possibility of a rejection of the narrowly human, or even of extricating a realm of ideas from the abundance of impressions: if in the former case knowledge lost all content, in the present case it threatens to be completely dissolved. If, further, on the one hand abstract universal conceptions, and on the other the subjective states of individuals, form the stem of knowledge, then neither in one nor in the other does the fullness of spiritual reality attain its due--the reality that exists in the building up of a genuine spiritual culture. But in the type of philosophy advocated by us this is the chief thing; since in contrast to the psychological and the cosmological treatment this philosophy develops a noölogical treatment, and sees the central domain of philosophical research in the elucidation and unification of facts which, in the construction of a spiritual world in the province of man, appear in the whole and in every branch. In this connection the conception of fact is something more ultimate and universal in its relations; but it is just that which makes it more valuable for the conviction as a whole. This conception of its task will bring philosophy into a closer relation with personal life, as well as with the work of history, without making it the mere instrument either of the one or the other. Otherwise it would seem irrational, and a tendency from which one must free oneself as much as possible, that in philosophy, personality, not only in creative activity but also in appropriation, signifies so much. The object, on the contrary, acquires a positive value, if we are certain that the standard of life is ultimately also the standard of knowledge; if with this the degree of the development of life at a particular point necessarily decides the nature of the work of thought there achieved. The near relation of the thinker to the proximate and the more distant culture environment is explained from this position in a manner no less satisfactory: the relation can then remain close, even if in the first place it appears to be one of conflict and opposition. Similarly, the whole movement of history acquires a greater significance for knowledge; far-reaching changes of life transform the temporal situation, since they permit us to experience, see, and seek something else; all these changes, however, demand from thought an attention to and an appreciation of the whole. Nothing other than this is involved in the requirement that thought must correspond with the historical state of spiritual evolution. This acknowledgment of personal and of historical life by philosophy makes it intelligible why philosophy manifests so much diversity and opposition, and why on the surface it shows so little unity. Where the conviction of an independent spiritual life rules, the faith in a unity of truth can be shaken by this fact just as little as the courage to creative activity can be paralysed. The basing of thought upon the spiritual life also has the advantage that the main types of thought can be derived from the different positions which may be taken up towards the spiritual life, and thus a limit may be set to the otherwise indefinite abundance. From this point of view there are for us five chief types of thought and world-conception. Minds first divide on the question whether we can unify life at all, and at the same time whether we may venture to make an assertion concerning reality as a whole. He who rejects this as impossible and readily surrenders himself to the conflict of immediate impressions might be called an indifferentist. If, however, a striving towards unity is admitted, then the question whether a spiritual life with a reality and values of its own in contrast with nature may be acknowledged or not becomes the point of decision, and the basis of division into opposing camps. He who gives a negative answer to the question, and regards nature as the whole of reality, becomes an advocate of Naturalism. He, however, who answers in the affirmative, and may be called an idealist, is immediately confronted with a new problem. He cannot acknowledge the spiritual life without at the same time giving it the supremacy; but now the doubt arises whether this supremacy may be easily and peacefully established, or whether it meets with strong opposition. When the existence of these oppositions is denied, or they are regarded as being easy to overcome, there grows up an optimistic, contemplative form of Idealism, which to the holders of other forms inevitably seems abstract and shallow. If, on the contrary, the oppositions are fully acknowledged, the final division originates with the question whether finally we are to submit to the state of stagnation brought about by these oppositions, or whether by some kind of reinforcement of the counteraction to this state of stagnation life may once more be set in progress: the former gives rise to Scepticism and Pessimism, the latter to Activism, as it has been discussed by us in an earlier section. It is easy to see what distinctive lines of conflict and what kinds of conflict must arise between the indifferentist, the naturalistic thinker, the optimist, the sceptic, and the activist. However, we cannot allow this to detain us; it must, nevertheless, be pointed out here, that in philosophy the possibilities are not yet exhausted, and that to avail ourselves of these possibilities nothing is more necessary than a close relation of its work with the life-process, and a firmer grounding in the independent spiritual life. (c) ART AND LITERATURE Nowhere does modern life throb more violently and more strongly than in art and literature. That which in this department has a claim to permanence acquires especial power from the fact that this department had to establish itself anew in opposition to an attempt to curtail it. For who could deny that a culture of work and of utility had a tendency to reduce artistic literary creation to the position of an accompaniment and a fringe of another kind of life, to a diversion for idle hours? The more we feel the limitations of the life of work and utility the more do art and literature become independent tasks. From art and literature we expect more lightness, more agility, and more joy in life; they should conduct life from too great an attention to externals to self-consciousness, and in this way give life a soul. They should strengthen individuality in opposition to the levelling tendency of the culture of the masses, wrest simple fundamentals from chaotic confusion of life, and aid the time in reaching a comprehensive vital-feeling and a synthesis transcending its inconsistencies. In opposition to that which oppresses us and degrades us to instruments of a meaningless machinery, we desire some kind of province where life rests in itself and purposes nothing else but itself; where it springs up with complete spontaneity; and where it can express itself with complete freedom, and in this expression find its highest joy. From such a longing a new art that permeates our life has arisen. Art must seek new means of expression for the new situation; it cannot serve the development of a new life-content without bringing about liberation from all conventional statutes; it cannot prevent a threatened tendency of life to become stagnant without desiring a fully free place for the subject, and for the development of his individuality. He who sees chiefly the dangers in everything forgets that nothing new and great can arise without bringing dangers with it. From the point of view of the system that we champion, we can quite well understand the significance of the æsthetic movement of the present, acknowledge the deliverance of life which it has accomplished, and in general we can go a good distance with it. But there comes a point where the courses diverge; not because we think less of the capacity of art, but we believe that we think more highly of its task. This deliverance from the culture of work, this turning to individuality, promises an essential elevation of life only if a new kind of being, a new world, is able to break forth in the soul that depends upon itself; if the individual in his conflicts aids the development of the infinite life; if, through all transformations and prostrations, man wins an inner relation to the whole and to things, and by this grows beyond the narrowly human. If this does not come to pass, the movement remains on the surface of sense experience and related to the activity and occupation of mere man; and so it cannot make anything higher or essentially new of us; it remains subject to the oppositions of the age instead of becoming superior to them. We are, indeed, enriched by the most diverse forms of expression: even the most concealed circumstances, the most delicate pulsations of the soul, cannot withdraw themselves from being represented. None the less, the description of the world-environment acquires the most striking clearness and penetration, and in the incalculable wealth of individual forms of art virtuosi are not lacking at whose capacity of execution we are astonished. But all this gives to art no spiritual content and no real greatness. It can, indeed, bring an inexhaustible abundance of stimuli to bear upon individuals and spread a shiny gloss over existence and life, but it cannot raise life essentially. The care of the mere individual, with his changing circumstances, prevents art from taking up sufficiently the problems of the present situation as a whole; of the spiritual condition of humanity as a whole. And so art in this form is not able to grasp the epoch with its spiritual movement as a whole, and to further humanity in the struggle for spiritual existence, in which to-day all individual problems are included. Humanity is in a serious crisis; the old foundations of life are about to give way, and the new are not yet secured. The world has rejected the standards which man had imposed upon it; it turns against him, and leaves him nothing more in particular. To be assured of a distinctive significance man needs a strengthening, and at the same time an aroused reflection forbids him all help from outside. The fact that that which is hostile and threatens to degrade and to annihilate man takes possession of his own province of life and penetrates into it gives a particular acuteness to these problems. We are not only surrounded externally by a dark fate, but our soul also degenerates in it, and becomes more and more a soulless mechanism. Indeed, our own activity becomes the most dangerous opponent of the soul, since in forming and taking part in complexes of work which ever become greater it turns against us and takes the soul from the soul. An art which has its basis in the individual and which does not advance to spiritual substance cannot possibly prevent the threatened dissolution of life. Even the most wonderful expression of disposition, even the most delicate and most fluid representations of conditions, do not free us from the chaos of the time: they might easily bind us still more strongly to it, since they weaken the power, indeed the tendency to energetic concentration, and increase the tendency to degenerate into a state of weakness and decay; while to overcome these dangers it is necessary primarily to increase our activity, to win again an active relation to reality. Art cannot free itself from that condition of feebleness without entering into a close relation with the central task of life and acknowledging a spirituality transcending the subjective circumstances and interests of mere man. If these requirements are not satisfied, no talent can prevent a decline of art into a more refined Epicureanism. But where such a spiritual life is acknowledged, and at the same time there arises the task of winning for man a new life, a new spiritual reality, art inevitably acquires a great significance, and becomes absolutely indispensable. Without the liberation which it brings, and its presentation of things in a harmony, how could a whole with definite character be raised? How could the new that hovers before us acquire form and exert a penetrating power without the help of a constructive imagination which precedes its realisation? How could the soul's innermost experience permeate life as a whole, and ennoble its whole structure without the help of art? The higher we place the ideal of life, the more does the spiritual content which immediate existence manifests become a mere sense form, the more is æsthetic activity necessary to prevent disunion of life, in the midst of all oppositions to give it some kind of unity, and in the midst of the passion of conflict some rest within itself. But, to achieve this, art may not purpose to form an oasis in a wilderness of life, but, hand-in-hand with other activities, must fight for spiritual experience and a genuine meaning of life as a whole. (d) POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE To treat of the complicated problems of the political and social life of the present does not come within our purpose; we can consider them only so far as the task of the construction of an independent spiritual world is affected either for good or evil by the nature of their solution. In contrast to the epoch of the Enlightenment, the nineteenth century brought about a transition from the individual to society: social life has developed in numerous branches, has disclosed a superabundance of new facts, and has set us new tasks. But this development has also brought much perplexity with it. It becomes evident in this development also, that each spiritual movement that attains power experiences in its further course limitations, and is degraded by its contact with human conditions. Along with the social movement there has been the often-discussed change by which life from being centred in an invisible world becomes occupied with the visible one, and by which all departments of life are given a naturalistic, realistic character and tendency. There has been no lack of opposition to the movement to make society the first consideration; the opposition has gone even so far as to dispute the right of the whole. Further, the earlier and the later conception of society, the idealistic and the realistic, are often confused; and from this confusion contradictions arise that not only confuse our ideas but also degrade our life. There is a danger that a zealous and excited occupation with nothing but individual tasks may take our attention from the whole, and that the problems which the inner condition of man involves may not obtain due consideration. This turning to society is most manifest in the powerful advance of the state. In this, an inner longing for a more social life, as Hegel especially philosophically advocated it; and actual changes of conditions operated together, and strengthened one another. The more definite manifestation of individuality on the part of nations and the sharper division between them; the active interest of wider circles in political problems; the mechanical organisation of work, with its more exact differentiation and its more rigid organisation of forces; but primarily the longing, which grows out of the ceaselessly increasing economical and social perplexities, for a power superior to the parties in dispute and acting as arbitrator--all these have immeasurably increased the power of the state in different degrees among different peoples, but in general through the whole civilised world. The freedom of the individual, therefore, cannot but suffer from manifold limitations; there arises a danger that the individual may gradually lose all initiative, and expect all stimulation from the state. The spontaneity and the wealth of life suffer from the tendency to increase the power of the state, and a bureaucracy which delights in correct forms, but which spiritually is entirely unproductive, indeed even indifferent, appropriates more and more to itself. The substance of the spiritual life is also threatened by the fact that the omnipotent state is inclined to treat that life, with all its branches, as a mere means in the attainment of its own particular aims; to look upon science and art, and chiefly religion and education, especially with regard to that which they achieve for the aims of the state, and to shape them as much as possible in accordance with these aims. There is also a strong tendency to follow the same course to accomplish the ends of the contemporary form of government. An independent and genuine spiritual life can hardly offer too great an opposition to such a perversion, with its deification of human forms. But the matter is by no means simple; for not the will of single individuals and parties, but the whole tendency of modern life has given this power to the state; indeed, on the economic side the state will soon experience a further increase of power. The more the guidance on this side belongs to the state, the more necessary is a free movement of spiritual culture in opposition to it; the more urgent is the demand that the amalgamation of church and state should be discontinued--an amalgamation which, by the growing disputes that arise from it, forces religion into an undignified position; the more definitely is a greater independence to be desired for school organisation in all its branches. The Germans especially have much to do in this matter; and there is much at stake. For, with the limitations of our spatial extension, we can be a permanent determining factor in world-culture only by giving our culture the greatest intensity; but this requires a calling forth of the complete power and of the spontaneity of individuals. Ultimately, in this matter also, the chief thing proves to be the taking up again of central problems and the realisation of human being in its innermost depths as an unconditional end in itself and the bearer of an infinite life. No conception can guard us from sinking to the position of puppets of the soulless mechanism of the state, if we do not find the power to give soul to our life and to maintain it against all attempted limitation. The longing for more freedom and independence has therefore an indisputable validity. But this acknowledgment may easily lead to new complications by freedom and independence being conceived in a manner much too external, and also by a really questionable association of these ideas with the problem of equality. The conviction of the modern man concerning the world on the one hand, and the demands of life on the other, are often in direct contradiction with regard to the conception of equality. We become aware of our limitation on all sides: we are represented simply as a product of heredity and environment: all possibility of making a decision for ourselves is rejected as a delusion. If thus we are deprived of all independence and all spontaneity of life, then even in social life we shall become mere bearers of a _rôle_ imposed upon us by a dark fate. One does not see how freedom could retain a value, arouse enthusiasm, and lead to sacrifice in such a case. If the whole is a soulless mechanism, in which only the excess of existent power is the cause of decisions, then we ourselves cannot be exceptions. Other complications have their origin in the democratic tendency which permeates not only our political endeavour but also our whole life of culture. How far-reaching a change, indeed how complete a revolution, has been accomplished by this tendency in opposition to a condition of things which has stood for hundreds or rather thousands of years, is but seldom fully appreciated. In the earlier form of social life spiritual work was the chief matter only of a limited and exclusive circle; to the people as a whole it was only secondary, and the benefit that they received from it was often of the most meagre character. Even the Reformation left this aristocratic form of life as it was; for as certainly as it made the care for every individual member of the church more urgent, that care was bestowed from above in an authoritative manner. The earlier Enlightenment, as it was represented, for example, by Bayle, was of the conviction that the deliverance from delusion and superstition would always be limited to a small circle of those standing spiritually high, and would never reach the masses. We know how this has changed; how the masses are determined to form a mere dependent body of the so-called higher classes no longer, but to take the problem of life independently into their own hands, and how they obtain their representation of the world and the task of their life from that which is more immediately present to them and directly concerns their welfare; and how in this way they are inclined to look upon themselves as the whole of humanity. We have already referred to the danger that culture as a whole will thus be made shallow--a danger that arises from the fact that here the decision is made by those who scarcely participate in the work of history, and who depend almost entirely upon the immediate impression. Further, we have already contended that only a simplification and rejuvenation of culture are able to cope with this danger. The fact is important that this democratic movement appeals to the equality of all who bear human features. Here again there appears to be a direct contradiction between theoretical conviction and actual conditions. Experience everywhere shows a pronounced inequality among men; it shows this not only in the traditional social relationships but also in the organisation of modern industry. More, however, than all social arrangements, nature shows the greatest inequality amongst men; and the actual relation of individuals in work and idleness, in love and hate, in independent thinking and blind subordination shows it none the less. From the point of view of experience the idea of equality seems to be an empty phrase. If it is more than this, if we recognise in it a truth that we cannot afford to lose, then it implies the conviction that humanity has spiritual relations; that each has a significance in a spiritual nature, and that there is a universal life present everywhere which opposes the guilt and folly of the individual and even in spite of himself gives him a value. Thus we have seen that in history, religion and ideal culture were the first to bring the idea of equality into good repute. But to-day the champions of equality turn with particular keenness against religion and ideal culture, and are not aware that in so doing they are destroying the foundations of their own belief. These inconsistencies are not felt, chiefly because of the power which abstractions usually exercise over men in the present day. A faith in abstractions reigns amongst us which is capable of far greater things than faith in religion or faith in reason. We are surrounded by the bustle of a fierce and ceaselessly increasing struggle for existence: ideas are overgrown by interests; the motives of people in general are trivial, and all spiritual aspiration is feeble, and along with this there is an unutterable amount of pretence which permeates and distorts all conduct. Yet the disagreeable aspect of this condition seems to vanish as soon as the mere word "humanity" is mentioned. But what is humanity from the point of view of Naturalism other than a collection of beings of nature? How can a power to elevate and to strengthen proceed from this conception, which in the naturalistic context signifies no more than the subjective unification of the individuals? Or, again, the idea of a ceaseless progress of humanity is placed in opposition to the confusions which exist in the present. But how can this idea be established if a compelling reason is not active within man? How could the present be so incomplete and so full of perplexity as it seems, especially to the advocates of the idea of progress, if century after century had made progress upon progress? Rather, if man has such a noble nature as he is assumed to have, life should be full of reason and bliss. The old faith saved man by resorting to an invisible world; it required a firm confidence in that which one did not see. The new faith, which denies an invisible world, desires more: it desires that we should be convinced of the direct opposite of that which we see and comprehend. These considerations in no way signify a depreciation on our part of the effort to attain freedom and equality--an effort that has an indisputable validity. But this validity must be based upon a whole of life and be more definitely determined, otherwise the effort is stifled by the inconsistencies in which the conceptions of freedom and equality are involved in the minds of their advocates. The independence of the individual and the spontaneity of the spiritual life are endangered not only by the mechanism of a bureaucracy indifferent to spiritual values but also none the less by the movements of the masses, which in modern life in particular surround and browbeat the individual. The man of the present day often believes that he has gained freedom when in reality he has only changed the nature of his dependence. What makes the movements of the masses, with their so-called public opinion, so irksome is the falsehood that is generally contained in this opinion, which is presented as proceeding from the experience and decision of a great majority, and therefore as having a definite presupposition of truth. The fact, as a rule, is that a few venture an assertion and urge it upon the others with unobserved compulsion, since they proclaim as already existent the agreement that they are only seeking. Of course sometimes there is much more in public opinion; it may be the expression of a spiritual necessity which subjects to itself the dispositions of men. Whether public opinion is to be an interpreter of truth or a mere product of man remains to be decided; and this decision can rest only with the individual. He will be equal to making this decision if he possesses a spiritual experience, and has in this a touchstone by which to distinguish the genuine from the false. Philosophy can maintain the rights of the individual only so far as he is rooted in spiritual relationships and derives power from them; it must absolutely oppose all glorification of the natural, spiritually destitute individual. We find such a glorification to-day more especially in that which, with particular emphasis, is called "modern" morality, but which in fact threatens rather to be a complete negation of morality; even though this negation is against the intentions of its advocates, mostly women, who display great enthusiasm for this "modern" morality. It seems as though life is limited and degraded because society, particularly in the matter of the sexual life, prescribes rigid statutes which, if they were not irrational at the beginning, have nevertheless become irrational, and tend to brand the right as wrong and the wrong as right. The shaking off of these restrictions and of the pressure of society in general seems to promise a form of life incomparably more powerful, sincere, and individual: this life is also to offer more beauty, for to-day generally the idea of beauty is emphasised with great partiality where life has no clear ideas and no significant content. This criticism of the statutes of society is not entirely without reason. Such statutes do not in themselves constitute a morality, as it is easy to imagine they do; but they only advocate a morality; as life undergoes such far-reaching changes, these statutes must continually be examined anew as to their validity and value. But this relativity does not make them worthless, and does not justify their complete rejection in favour of an absolute freedom on the part of individuals. We could expect an elevation of life by such an effort for freedom only if we might assume that the individuals are thoroughly noble, energetic, and spiritually rich, and if in the relations between the sexes a state of paradisiacal innocence reigned which only the evil arrangements of society had disturbed. But this is a way of thinking which does more honour to the hearts than to the heads of its advocates. He who takes men as they really are and does not paint them in romantic colours, and who at the same time recognises the dangers of a highly developed, pleasure-seeking, and over-refined state of culture, will not despise those social arrangements, notwithstanding their relativity, but value them as an indispensable safeguard against the selfishness, the greed for pleasure, and the instability of the mere individual--a safeguard not only against the tyranny of externals but also for the individual against himself. It is unfortunate enough that such safeguards are necessary; but, as they are necessary, it is better to preserve and improve them as much as possible than to reject them, and to expose humanity to dangers that might throw it back into the condition of the animals. Man is not better because he is painted more beautifully; rather Pascal is right when he says: "L'homme n'est ni ange ni bête, et le malheur veut, que qui veut faire l'ange fait la bête." The tendency to think that man may be transformed inwardly and the whole condition of life raised by changes in external organisation is most definitely felt in the social movements of the age. In this there is a clearly marked opposition to the earlier mode of thought, which, placing a low estimate upon everything external, and finding greatness too easily in disposition, overlooked how much the organisation of the conditions of life means for men in whom the spiritual is only in process of development; and, further, failed to notice that there is also a strong movement from external to internal. Nevertheless, the fact cannot be denied, notwithstanding all this, that the problems of the whole and of man's inner nature require to be treated as of chief importance. Otherwise, as Aristotle suggested, notwithstanding all the alteration of conditions, the old problems will continually make their appearance anew, and the substance of life might easily suffer from that which was intended to improve its condition. In conclusion, we may briefly consider the problems that have been raised in the nineteenth century by the increased emphasis on the idea of nationality. Influences of an idealistic nature first raised the cultivation and establishment of a particular national character to the position of a matter of the greatest importance. This character appeared to be an extremely valuable form of individualisation of the spiritual life, a form in which that life attains to concreteness and greater definiteness and penetration. The co-existence of these individual nationalities gave promise of an incomparably richer formation of the life of humanity as a whole: the inner development of their peculiar natures, and their lofty rivalry, also promised to bring a wealth of arousing and elevating motives. The nineteenth century has, indeed, won an incalculable amount through this movement; to take up an abstract cosmopolitanism again would be decidedly retrograde. But the more the idea of nationality has been brought from its high place in the realm of thought to the domain of human circumstance, the more has it been debased and the more dangers has it produced. If previously the cultivation of an ideal type of life was most prominent, and if the nations could thus permit one another to follow their own courses peacefully, this has become less and less the case in face of the desire and effort for power and expansion in the visible world; and owing to the narrowness of physical space occupied by the nations, the different strivings have clashed together more and more severely. If this tendency continues without the counteraction of an inner task common to humanity as a whole, and of unifying and elevating ideas, it is hardly possible to avoid mutual hostility, a degeneration into obstinacy and injustice. The idea of nationality may therefore become a danger to the ethical character of life. This is the case if, by milder or by severer means, one nation tries to force its own character and speech upon another. The mode of thought based on the old _cujus regio ejus natio_ is in no way better than that based on the old _cujus regio ejus religio_, which we are now accustomed to regard with contempt as a piece of barbarism. The desire for external power at the same time tends to lessen the attention to the inner development and unification of nationality, without which ultimately little progress can be made in the development of power. It is through a common national character, with its unification of the feelings and efforts of the individuals, that a people is first elevated into a genuine nation; it is a character such as this that gives to a people a power of influencing humanity as a whole; it is a character such as this that gives to the individuals the consciousness of being "members one of another," and with this a stability and a joy in life and activity. Such a national character necessitates certain natural conditions, that are like the veins in marble which prescribe a certain direction to the work of the artist. But these conditions must first be organised and by the complete elevation of their nature spiritually unified; and this cannot be achieved otherwise than through our own work, which through common events and experiences follows its ideal. So far, therefore, national character is not a gift of nature but a task which presents itself distinctively to each people according to its nature and conditions. In this matter a people must always in the first place realise a unity in its own nature. In the fulfilment of this task hardly any other people has had to contend with keener opposition, both external and internal, than the Germans. Our physical environment does not direct us so definitely into distinctive paths as is the case with other peoples. But our inner nature contains, before all else, harsh antitheses. Our strength lies chiefly in arousing to life depths of the soul otherwise undreamt of. Thus in music and in poetry we have been able to surpass all other peoples; again, we have been able to give to religion a wonderful inwardness, and in education to evolve the leading ideas. At the same time, however, we are driven to the physical world to take possession of and to shape things; we are not the Hindus of Europe, as other people indeed previously called us. We came into history by achievements in war, and the desire for conflict and victory has been maintained through all the phases of our varied history. By the continued diligence of our citizens in work we have subordinated the world around us to our aims; our capacity for organisation has been most marked, as the present state of industry and trade shows. However, not only have these movements towards inwardness, and towards the world, a strong tendency to oppose one another, but also, in contrast with these magnificent gifts, there are many defects and tendencies that make the development of a powerful and unified life exceedingly difficult. We show a want of form and taste, a heaviness and formality, a tendency to occupation with detail and, in general, with what is petty in life, and, as a result of this, an uncultured "Philistinism" in all spheres of society, and along with this the inclination on the part of individuals to insist on the correctness of their positions, and thus to cause division; finally--and this is the worst of all--much envy and jealousy. None of these features can be denied. There is an infinite amount which must be altered and overcome amongst us if we are to become what we are capable of becoming, and if we are to reach the highest in our nature. The limitations that have been brought about by our history, which on the whole has not been a happy one, constitute an important determining factor in this matter. The more problems we bear within us, the more possibilities of genuine creation that exist within us, and the more we may be to humanity in the future, the more painful is it if attention and activity are diverted from the chief task, and if an externalising of the idea of nationality allows us to consider ourselves great rather than lead us to strive for true greatness. The people that has produced Luther and Bach, Kant and Goethe, cannot be devoid of true greatness, if it only remains faithful to its own nature, and if it concentrates its power and treats the chief thing really as such. (e) THE LIFE OF THE INDIVIDUAL The problems and antitheses that are to be found in the life of the present penetrate deeply into the life of the individual, and often make their appearance within him with a particular power. The antithesis that exists between the conceptions of the world and the demands of life is especially harsh. The tendency of the age is to form a conception of the world which reduces the status of the individual in the greatest degree: from the point of view of nature and of society, he seems to be no more than a fleeting appearance, a matter of indifference, and to show no independence, and never to be able to take part with spontaneous activity in the course of events. On the other hand, the contemporary form of life demands the greatest independence and freedom of the individual. We see in him the chief bearer of life, and we expect salvation from the severe perplexities of the time, primarily from his strengthening. This state of inconsistency cannot be tolerated for long; either the degradation of the individual, that is found in the conceptions of the world, must be applied to life, and lead it to a resigned submission to an impenetrable world-process, or the positive estimate of the individual which governs conduct must be acknowledged in the conviction concerning reality as a whole: only a weakness of disposition and a feebleness of thought can divide our existence between the one conviction and the other. The course which our investigation has taken cannot leave any possible doubt as to the direction which our conviction points out to us in this matter: however much we also demand an energetic development of the individual, that the stagnation of the age may be overcome, at the same time we insist upon a necessary condition of this, on his inner strengthening by an inner world present to him, on his elevation by a spirituality transcending nature. Only if he thus acquires an inner relation to infinity, and becomes an independent centre of life, can he satisfy the demands that are generally made upon him, and, remarkably enough, especially by those who theoretically deny the inner world as a whole, and hail a most shallow Naturalism as a deliverance. Of course that inner elevation of the individual by no means lifts him gently and simply out of all the confusion that the experience of our existence shows; at the first glance it may even seem to make the confusion greater. For, if each individual can become a co-operator in the building up of a new world, and if his activity thereby acquires a value for the whole, then the complete indifference with which, according to our human impression, the individual is treated by the course of the physical world, the inflexibility and injustice that he often experiences in this world, the defect of love and justice in this world, in which the bad so often obtain the victory and the good are led to destruction, are all the greater mystery. The more the development of the spiritual life widens the field of vision; the more it leads us beyond a lifeless resignation to the question of the rationality of events and compels us to compare the destiny of one man with that of another, the deeper must that feeling of mystery become. All attempts at a theodicy founder on this difficulty; we must inevitably submit to the view that with regard to this problem all is obscure to the eyes of man. There is, however, no need on this account to doubt and to regard our life as hopeless; our investigation also has shown this. For, in contrast with the obscurity of the world around us, we are able to set the fact of the emergence of a new world within us. Great things take place within us; not only does a new world appear, but we are called by an inner necessity of our own being to co-operate in its development, and this co-operation is not limited to individual activities, but involves our being as a whole. For it was just in this that we were able to recognise the development of being as the essence of the spiritual life--that the chief movement of our life is to win a genuine being, and that in the development of personality and spiritual individuality such a being is in question. We saw clearly enough that we are not personalities and individuals from the beginning; but that nature gives us only the possibility of becoming this. To realise this possibility our own activity is necessary; and this activity is not a sudden resolution, but requires a revolution of our being and the development of a new nature; and this can only be achieved by a faithful and zealous life-work, and even then only approximately. Thus life as a whole is a task which includes all multiplicity within it, the task of winning our own being completely, and just in this way to increase the kingdom of the spirit at our point. This task cannot be completely recognised and adopted without making a great divergence from the aim, harsh oppositions and difficult conflicts, manifest in the inner recesses of the soul. If our life, therefore, appears to be in the highest degree incomplete, a mere beginning, then this increase of the task demonstrates more than anything else that, in this matter, we are concerned not with phantoms and imaginations, but with realities: so here, notwithstanding all our incompleteness, we can obtain the certainty of a spiritual existence, and even become strengthened by the direct resistance of the external world, because that world is henceforth reduced to the secondary position. Thus, as we saw, the question upon which minds separate into irreconcilable opposition is whether they acknowledge in the inwardness of being itself not merely individual problems but a universal task; if this is the case, the seriousness of the task will give to them an unshakable stability of possession and a security superior to all attacks; if it is not the case, the spiritual world is an unintelligible paradox, because the want of an independent inner life means that there is no basis for the development of an organ for the comprehension of a world of inwardness. In this matter there is no possibility of a direct agreement; only the proof of the spirit and of power can decide. But where the life of the individual acquires a genuine being and a connection with the realm of self-consciousness, then, notwithstanding all that is fleeting and insubstantial, the individual cannot regard himself as a transitory appearance in the whole, even in the ultimate basis of his being. Where, in contrast with all the meaninglessness of mere nature and all the pretence of mere society, a movement towards inner unity and substantial being emerges, the individual will be elevated into a time-transcendent order, and must necessarily acquire some position within it. The whole movement towards spirituality in the human sphere would be vain, and all distinctively human life would be a meaningless contradiction, if the individuals in whom alone the spiritual life breaks forth spontaneously were included solely and entirely in the stream of the process of nature. If the spiritual life has once revealed itself to us, so far as to begin an independent and distinctive being within us, then this being will assert itself in some way. This does not imply agreement with the usual belief in immortality, which would preserve man just as he is through all eternity, and thus condemn him to the torture of rigid continuance in the same form; a state that would, indeed, be as unbearable as the pain of the traditional hell. As the world as a whole is in the highest degree mysterious to us, so our future is veiled in the deepest obscurity. But, if with the essence of our being we are elevated into a universal spiritual life, and if in the innermost basis of our life we participate in an eternal order, then the time-transcendence of this life assures to us also some kind of time-transcendence in our being. _So löst sich jene grosse Frage Nach unserm zweiten Vaterland, Denn das Beständige der ird'schen Tage Verbürgt uns ewigen Bestand._ GOETHE CONCLUSION In conclusion a few words will suffice. The last section showed that the present sets great problems and reveals possibilities in every department of life; but that we men are very far from being equal to cope with these problems. We are limited especially by the fact that we are incapable of elevating ourselves inwardly above the present; that we do not take possession of it sufficiently as a whole, and find an inner independence in relation to it; and that therefore we do not enter with the necessary vigour into the conflict against the trivial and the poor-spirited, the decadent and the sceptical that the present contains. To point out the way to attain such independence appeared to us to be the chief task of philosophy in the present. In the service of this task, which cannot be achieved without the manifestation of a new actuality, without a fundamental deepening of our reality, we have made our investigation, which contains a distinctive conception of the spiritual life. In that everywhere we have pressed back from the results to the experience, and from the wealth of achievement to the generating basis, we have seen nature, history, culture, and human nature as a whole in a new light. We have hoped, by widening and strengthening life itself from within, to supply a substitute for the external supports that life has lost. How far we have succeeded in our endeavour is another question; we shall be satisfied even if our work only contributes to bring the present to a clearer consciousness of the state of spiritual crisis in which it exists and concerning the seriousness of which it deceives itself in a thousand ways. There is an enormous amount of vigorous activity and efficient work, of honest endeavour and serious disposition, in our time, and the tendency to make life more spiritual is also evident. But the movement is still far from attaining the depth which is necessary to the chief question of our spiritual existence; thus the conflict, instead of being between whole and whole, is divided; that which is significant and valuable in the endeavour of the time is in danger of becoming problematic, and of producing the opposite of what it purposes, because it does not fit itself into a universal life, and in this realise its limitations and at the same time its right. A more energetic concentration of life in itself is therefore the first condition of transcending the chaos of the life of the present and of preventing spiritual degeneration in the midst of too intense an occupation with externals. As for the rest, we may say with Plotinus: "The doctrine serves to point the way and guide the traveller; the vision, however, is for him who will see it." INDEX Abstractions; their power in modern life, 362 ff. Activism; profession of faith in, 255 ff.; how it differs from a system of mere force, 255 ff.; its ethical character, 256; how it differs from Voluntarism and Pragmatism, 256 ff. Æsthetic Individualism, 61 ff. Æstheticism; its antithesis to Activism, 258 ff. Antiquity; its distinctive synthesis of life, 208 ff. _A priori_; its validity and its limitations, 234 Archimedean point in the spiritual life; its impossibility, 94 ff., 154 Art and literature, condition and tasks in the present, 354 ff. Ascetic organisation of life; rejected, 281 ff. Being, development of; as a system of life, 212 ff., 314 Catholicism; different tendencies in, 328 ff. Christianity; its unique character, 6; the opposition to, 7 ff.; its permanent truth, 331 ff.; changes necessary to it, 332 ff.; Christian and Greek forms of life, 283 ff. "Classical," the; its significance, 192 Concentration of life (within the whole), 156 ff., 160 Conscience; its significance, 129 ff. Critical character of modern work; its presuppositions, 250 ff. Culture, 110 ff.; genuine and apparent, 269 ff.; requirements of a new type, 298 ff.; organisation of, 315 ff. Democratic tendency of modern culture, 361 ff. Departments of life; their relation to life as a whole, 316 ff. Dogmatic sectarian point of view; rejected, 328 Duty; significance of the idea, 184 ff., 231 Education; problems in the present state of, 343 ff. Enlightenment, the; its synthesis of life, 209 ff.; how far problematic, 249; relation of the present to it, 347 ff. Equality; problems of the present conception of, 362 Eternity; how far implied in the life of the individual, 372 Ethical character of life; how to be understood, 256, 258; of spiritual culture, 309 ff.; its necessity, 337 ff. Ethics (morality); different types in the present time, 336 ff.; conditions of a morality, 338 ff.; requirements of morality in a spiritual culture, 339 ff. Evil; the problem of, 263 ff.; the way in which it is solved, 279 ff. Evolution, doctrine of; spiritual, its limitations, 194 ff., 257 ff. Experience; its significance for the spiritual life in man, 235 ff. Freedom; its nature, 174 ff.; its conflict with destiny, 181 ff.; genuine and false, 323 ff.; inconsistency in contemporary treatment of the problem, 360 ff. German character; its greatness and its dangers, 317 ff., 368 ff. Goethe; characteristic influence, 299 Good, the (idea of the good); how it differs from the Useful, 119 ff.; apparent inconsistency, 138 ff.; more detailed determination, 185 ff. Great man, the; his relation to his time, 292 Greek and Christian forms of life, 283 ff. Hegel; relation of the present to him indefinite, 348 Historical and social organisation of life; its limitations, 200 Historical Relativism; rejected, 290 ff., 323 ff. History; the spiritual conception of, its conditions, 188 ff.; esoteric and exoteric history, 243 ff. Human life; how far it is from the spiritual life, 161 ff. Idealisation, false; of immediate existence, 83 ff., 362 ff. Idealism and Realism; their unification in a spiritual culture, 312 ff. Ideas in history; their unique character, 126 ff., 188 ff. Imagination; indispensable in all departments of life, 239 Immanent Idealism, its rise and fall, 15 ff. Immanental treatment (from the life-process), 107 ff. Individual, the, and the Society; problems of their relation, 364 ff. Individual, the; his significance in the new relations, 246, 369 ff. Individual, life of the; its form in the new system, 369 ff. Individuality (spiritual); as a problem, 132 ff., 181 ff., 370 Instruction; problems in the present time with reference to, 343 ff. Inwardness; its attainment of independence in man, 123 ff., 146 ff.; as the inner life of reality, 148 ff.; inwardness and the inner world, 303 Irrationality, of existence; in what manner overcome, 279 Kant; inconsistency in the relation to him in the present time, 348 Knowledge; its form in the new system, 351 Life; its detachment from the mere individual, 119 ff.; the two movements in it, 282 ff. Life-process; as the fundamental principle of investigation, 104 ff., 305 ff., 349 ff. Life's attainment of greatness, 240 ff. Life-work; its significance in acquiring stability, 253 Love; as a witness to the union with the whole, 231 Man; as a being of nature, 110 ff.; growing beyond nature, 113 ff.; his union with the whole, 226 ff. Masses, the culture of the; its problems, 89 ff. Mass-movements; their dangers and limitations, 363 ff. Metaphysic; in what sense necessary, 141 ff. "Modern," the; double meaning, 296 Modern Age, the (in a broad sense); the characteristic in its nature, 9 ff. "Modern" Morality; discussed and rejected, 364 ff. Movement, of the spiritual life in man; its uniqueness, 233 ff.; its increase in the new system of life, 247 ff. Mysticism; in what sense justifiable, 246 National Character, 198, 367 ff. Nationality, the idea of; its problems, 366 ff. Naturalism; its significance and its limitations, 24 ff. Nature and Spirit, 270 ff. Negation; impossibility of an absolute, 267 ff. Newer Systems of Life; what they have in common, 22 ff., 81 ff. Noölogical Method; distinguished from the psychological and the cosmological, 243, 352 Norms; their significance, 184 Pantheism; vague character of the general conception of it, 84 Past; impossibility of flight to the, 93 ff. People and nation, 366 ff. Personal conviction, concerning reality as a whole; where the decision is made, 253, 281, 311 ff., 340, 372 Personality; the difficulty of the conception, 95 ff.; no mere gift of nature, 311, 370 Philosophy; its present position, 346 ff.; its three main tendencies in the present time, 347 ff.; chief demands, 349 ff. Philosophy of life; the conception of a, 3 ff. Political and social life; condition and tasks in the present time, 358 ff. Present, the; difficulties of determining its extent, 289 ff. Protestantism; the different tendencies in it, 329 Public opinion; manner of its formation, 364 Reality; difficulty of the conception, 84 ff.; longing for, 159 ff.; new conception of, 220 ff. Relation (fundamental), of man to reality; new, from the point of view of the spiritual life, 152 ff. Religion; the system of life of, 6 ff.; its form and its justification, 273 ff.; its necessity in a spiritual culture, 312 ff.; its present condition, 324; its requirements in a spiritual culture, 330 ff.; specific religious system of life rejected, 281 ff. Romanticism; its significance and its limitations, 258 ff. Science; its present greatness and problems, 345 ff. Self-preservation, spiritual; distinguished from natural self-preservation, 126 Sense; its estimate, 260 Simplification (in revivals), 128 Socialistic system; its significance and its limitations, 41 ff. Society; the spiritual conception of, 196 ff.; emphasis upon society in the nineteenth century, 358 ff. Spiritual culture, and human culture, 308 ff. Spiritual life; its independence a necessity, 141 ff.; as the fundamental principle of a new organisation of the individual departments of life, 157 ff., 244 ff. Spiritual work; its relation to time, 290 ff. Stability in life; how won, 251 ff. State, the; the greater emphasis upon it in the nineteenth century, 359 ff. Suffering and spiritual destitution, 314 Syntheses of life; in history, 207 ff. Theodicy; rejected, 279 ff., 371 Thought; its relation to life, 108, 126 ff., 141 ff., 349 ff.; its unique operation (in distinction from association), 125 ff. Time; fundamental relation of man to, 116 ff. Transcendent Spirituality; as the fundamental principle of religion, 278 ff. Transcendental method; in what sense justifiable, 248 Truth, conception of; its history, 138; new conception, 216 ff. Work; its distinctive character, 122; its power to develop, 201 ff.; the world of work, 201 ff. World, conceptions of the; chief types, 353 ff. Printed by BALLANTYNE & COMPANY LTD Tavistock Street Covent Garden London BY RUDOLF EUCKEN THE MEANING AND VALUE OF LIFE TRANSLATED BY LUCY JUDGE GIBSON & W. R. BOYCE GIBSON, M.A. SECOND EDITION Crown 8vo, By Post Cloth Price 3s. 6d. net 3s. 9d. FROM THE TRANSLATORS' PREFACE Eucken's influence as a thinker has for long been felt far beyond the borders of his native land. Translations of his books have appeared in many foreign languages, including French, Italian, Swedish, Finnish and Russian. In our own country such articles on Eucken's works as have appeared quite recently in the _Times_, the _Guardian_, and the _Inquirer_ are significantly sympathetic and appreciative. 'It seems likely,' writes the reviewer in the _Guardian_, 'that for the next decade Eucken will be the leading guide for the pilgrims of thought who walk on the Idealist Road.' _PRESS OPINION_ "There are scores of passages throughout the volume one would like to quote--the thinking of a man of clearest vision and loftiest outlook on the fabric of life as men are fashioning it to-day. It is a volume for Churchmen and politicians of all shades and parties, for the student and for the man of business, for the workshop as well--a volume for every one who is seriously interested in the great business of life."--_Aberdeen Journal._ PUBLISHED BY ADAM & CHARLES BLACK. 4 SOHO SQUARE. LONDON, W. RUDOLF EUCKEN'S PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE By W. R. BOYCE GIBSON LECTURER IN PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL THIRD EDITION With Frontispiece Portrait of Rudolf Eucken Crown 8vo, By Post Cloth Price 3s. 6d. net 3s. 9d. SUMMARY OF CONTENTS The New Idealism: Eucken's Philosophy a Rallying-point for Idealistic Effort His Theory of Knowledge His Philosophy of History The Meaning of a Historical Fact The Break with Aristotelianism and Aquinism Eucken's Criticism of the Naturalistic Syntagma The Great Alternative: Individuality or Personality The Category of Action Eucken's View of Revelation The Problem of the Union of Human and Divine The New Spiritual Immediacy The Spiritual Life as Eucken conceives it: its Intrinsically Oppositional Character Eucken's Philosophy as a Philosophy of Freedom The New Idealism as a Religious Idealism "No reader should fail to find pleasure in a book so full of fresh and stimulating thought, expressed with great felicity of language." _The Scottish Review_ "It is done with just the proper combination of sympathy and criticism."--_The British Weekly_ PUBLISHED BY ADAM & CHARLES BLACK. 4 SOHO SQUARE. LONDON, W.