THE LIBRARY 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 IRVINE 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Jake and Josephine 
 Zeltlln 
 
 ^m^m'^
 
 :^.
 
 ?)'■ 
 
 J^ 
 
 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 Ou^- ^\^^
 
 AGENTS IK AilERICA 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 66 Fifth Avenue, New York
 
 THE 
 
 ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 AND 
 
 fit 
 
 OTHER ADDEESSES AND ESSAYS 
 
 / 
 
 BY 
 
 KARL PEARSON, F.R.S. 
 
 FORMERLY FELLOW OF KING's COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE ; PROFESSOR OF APPLIED 
 MATHEMATICS AND MECHANICS, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON 
 
 }- 
 
 Freiheit, aber vereint mit der Freiheit immer den edlen 
 Ernst und die Strenge des Lebeus, die heilige Sitte 
 
 Hamerlinq 
 
 SECOND EDITION (REVISED) 
 
 LONDON 
 
 ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK 
 
 1901
 
 First EditiiMi, issued 1SS7, dated 1S88. 
 Second Edition, revised 1901.
 
 TO THE 
 
 iE^mtes of IRxng's CH^oUeg^, Catnbritrge 
 
 AS 
 
 A SLIGHT TOKEN OF GRATITUDE 
 
 FOR SEVERAL SUNNY YEARS 
 
 OF COLLEGE LIFE 
 
 AND SOME INVALUABLE FRIENDSHIPS
 
 And what wealth then shall be left ns when none shall gather gold 
 
 To buy his friend in the market, and pinch and pine the sold ? 
 
 Nay, what save the lovely city, and the little house on the hill, 
 
 And the wastes and the woodland beauty, and the happy fields we till. 
 
 And the homes of ancient stories, and the tombs of the mighty dead ; 
 
 And the wise men seeking out marvels, and the poet's teeming head ; 
 
 And the painter's hand of wonder ; and the marvellous fiddle-bow, 
 
 And the banded choirs of music : — all those that do and know. 
 
 For all these shall be ours and all men's, nor shall any lack a share 
 
 Of the toil and the gain of living in the days when the world grows fair. 
 
 William Morris.
 
 PEEFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 I HAVE allowed the original preface to this work, as well as 
 one or two essays, to be again reprinted with but slight revision, 
 not because they express exactly what I think to-day, but 
 because read together they may explain to some readers the 
 circumstances, partly historical and partly personal, under 
 which these lectures and essays were written. During the years 
 1880 and 1881 comparatively few lectures on Socialism were 
 to be heard at working men's clubs, and I well remember 
 what curious questions would then be put as to the teaching 
 of Lassalle and Marx. The last twenty years have changed 
 this entirely — one of the chief features being the excellent 
 educational work of the Fabian Society. Twenty years ago 
 the discussion of sex-problems was equally unusual. Now a 
 considerable literature on the subject has sprung into exist- 
 ence. Occasionally we come across a morbid outgrowth, but 
 on the whole what has been written is thoughtful, whole- 
 some, and sane in its conclusions. 
 
 The fourteen years which have elapsed since the first 
 edition of this work may be looked upon by the social 
 reformer as years of steady, if somewhat slow, progress. The 
 problems of labour and of sex arc now recognised as the 
 problems of our generation, and the discussion of them, so 
 recently held in bad repute, appears likely to be soon a mark 
 of fashion.
 
 viii THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 lu Freethought the advance has been real, but it is far less 
 apparent. Freethinkers act too much as units ; what we 
 need to-day is a Society of Freethinkers, which might easily 
 do the same good work now, that the Society of Friends did 
 of old, and that the Unitarians and Positivists did as they in 
 turn came to stand in the front rank of intellectual progress. 
 The importance of such a union is much emphasised by the 
 recrudescence of theological disputation, the renewed outbreak 
 of " reconciling " metaphysics, the successful attempts to evade 
 the spirit of the Tests Act, and the revival of various forms 
 of superstition under the names of theosophy and " Christian 
 science." In view of these by no means negligible signs of at 
 least a transitory reaction, the republication of this Ethic of 
 Freethought may not seem to some without its justification. 
 
 I have to thank heartily my friend Dr. W. E. Macdonell 
 for reading the proofs and pointing out to me many inaccuracies 
 and blunders. 
 
 KAEL PEAESON. 
 
 Througham, Juhj 1901.
 
 PKEFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION, 1887 
 
 The lectures included in this selection have been delivered 
 to Sunday and other audiences, and the essays have been 
 published in magazine or pamphlet form during the past eight 
 years. The only paper written especially for this volume 
 is a criticism of the President of the Koyal Society's recent 
 contribution to Natural Theology ^ ; some few of the others 
 in the section entitled " Sociology " have been revised or 
 partially rewritten. 
 
 A few words must be said about the method and scope of 
 my book. The reader will find that neither the sections nor 
 the individual papers are so widely diverse as a glance at their 
 titles might lead him to suspect. There is, I venture to think, 
 a unity of purpose and a similarity of treatment in them all. 
 I set out from the standpoint that the mission of Freethought 
 is no longer to batter down old faiths ; that has been long 
 ago effectively accomplished, and I, for one, am ready to put 
 a fence round the ruins, that they may be preserved from 
 desecration and serve as a landmark. Indeed I confess that 
 a recent vigorous inditement of Christianity ^ only wearied me, 
 and I promptly disposed of my copy to a young gentleman who 
 was anxious that I should read a work entitled : Natural Lavj 
 in the Spiritual World, which he told me had given quite a 
 
 ^ Sir George Gabriel Stokes was I'lesident when these words were written. 
 ^ By the late Mr. Cotter Morrison.
 
 X THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 new width to the faith of his childhood. Starting then from 
 the axiom, that the Christian " verities " are quite outside the 
 field of profitable discussion, the first five papers of this volume 
 endeavour to formulate the opinions which a rational being 
 of to-day may hold with regard to the physical and intellec- 
 tual worlds. They advocate — with what measure of success I 
 must leave the reader to judge — a rational enthusiasm and a 
 rational basis of morals. They insist on the almost sacred 
 nature of doubt, and at the same time emphasise scientific and 
 historical study as the sole path to knowledge, the only safe 
 guide to right action. The Freethinker's position differs to 
 some extent from that of the Agnostic. While the latter 
 asserts that some questions lie beyond man's power of solution, 
 the former contents himself with the statement that on these 
 points he does not know at present, but that, looking to the 
 past, he can set no limit to the knowledge of the future. He 
 has faith in the steady investigation of successive generations 
 solving most problems, and meanwhile he will allow no myth 
 to screen his ignorance. The Freethinker is not an Atheist, 
 but he vigorously denies the possibility of any god hitherto put 
 forward, because the idea of one and all of them by contradict- 
 ing some law of thought involves an absurdity. He further 
 considers that in the present state of our knowledge and of our 
 mental development, the attempt to create self-consistent gods 
 is doomed to failure. It is mere waste of intellectual energy. 
 The second or historical group of papers regards one or 
 two phases of past thought and life from the Freethinker's 
 standpoint. The selection was here somewhat more difficult, 
 as I had more material to choose from. The first two papers 
 are related fairly closely to points treated in the first section. 
 The last three deal with a period in which the forces tending 
 to revolutionise society were in many respects akin to those 
 we find in action at the present time. The man of the study, 
 the demagogue, the Utopian, and the fanatic were all busily
 
 PEEFACE TO THE FIKST EDITION xi 
 
 at work in early sixteenth-century Germany, and to mark the 
 success and failure of their respective efforts ought not to be 
 without interest for us to-day. 
 
 The last section of this book is the one which is most 
 likely to meet with severe criticism and disapproval. It 
 deals with great race problems, which, in my opinion, are 
 becoming daily more and more urgent. The decline of our 
 foreign trade must inevitably force upon us economic questions 
 which reach to the very roots of our present family and 
 social life. It is the very closeness of these matters to our 
 personal conduct and to our home privacy which renders it 
 necessary and yet immensely difficult to speak plainly. For 
 another generation ' Society ' may hold up its hands in 
 astonishment at any free discussion of matters which are 
 becoming more and more pressing with the great mass of 
 our toiling population ; deprecation may be possible, I re- 
 peat, for another generation, but in two — if respectability is 
 still sitting on the safety-valve — well, then it is likely to 
 learn too late that prejudice and false modesty will never 
 suffice to check great folk-movements, nor satisfy pressing folk- 
 needs. There are powerful forces at work likely to revolutionise 
 social ideas and shake social stability. It is the duty of those, 
 who have the leisure to investigate, to show how by gradual 
 and continuous changes we can restrain these forces within 
 safe channels, so that society shall emerge strong and 
 efficient again from the difficulties of our nineteenth -century 
 Eenascence and Reformation. This possibility will depend to 
 a great extent, I believe, on the Humanists of to-day keeping 
 touch with the feelings and needs of the mass of their fellow- 
 countrymen, otlierwise our society is likely to be shipwrecked 
 by a democracy trusting for its spiritual guidance to the 
 Salvation Army, and for its economic theories to the Social- 
 Democratic Federation. One word more: the last papers of 
 this section are essentially tentative ; they endeavour to point 
 
 /
 
 xii THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 out problems rather than offer final solutions. Their purpose 
 will be fulfilled if they induce some few earnest men and 
 women to investigate and discuss ; to prepare the path for 
 the social reformer and the statesman of the future. 
 
 KARL PEARSON. 
 
 Saig, Septenibcr 1887.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 T. FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 1. The Ethic of Freethought 
 
 2. Matter and Soul ........ 
 
 3. The Prostitution of Science 
 
 4. The Ethic of Renunciation ...... 
 
 5. The Enthusiasm of the Market-place and of the Study 
 
 PAGE 
 1 
 
 21 
 
 45 
 
 66 
 
 103 
 
 II. HISTORY 
 
 6. Maimonides and Spinoza . . . . . .'125 
 
 7. Meister Eckehart the Mystic 143 
 
 8. Humanism in Germany . . . . . . .161 
 
 Note on Jacob "Wimpfeling . . . .185 
 
 9. The Influence of Martin Luther on the Social and 
 
 Intellectual Welfare of Germany . . .193 
 10. The Kingdom of God in Munster .... 246 
 
 III. SOCIOLOGY 
 
 11. The Moral Basis of Socialism 
 
 12. Socialism in Theory .vnd Pii.\ctice 
 
 13. The Woman's Question 
 
 14. Sketch of the Relations of Sex in Germany 
 
 15. Socialism and Sex ...... 
 
 301 
 330 
 354 
 379 
 411
 
 FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 The order of Mind is one with the order of Matter ; hence that Mind 
 alone is free which finds itself in Nature, and Nature in itself.
 
 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT^ 
 
 Tlie truth is that Nature is due to the statuting of Mind. — Hegel. 
 
 It is not without considerable hesitation that I venture to 
 address you to-night. There are periods of a man's life 
 when it is better for him to be silent — to listen rather 
 than to preach. The world at the present time is very full 
 of prophets ; they crowd the market-places, they set theii' 
 stools at every possible corner, and perched thereon, they 
 cry out the merits of their several wares to as large a 
 crowd of folk as their enthusiasm can attract, or their 
 tongues reach. Philosophers, scientists, orthodox Christians, 
 freethinkers — wise men, fools, and fanatics — are all shouting 
 on the market-places, teaching, creating, and destroying, 
 perhaps working, through their very antagonism to some 
 greater truth of whose existence they, one and all, are alike 
 unconscious. Amidst such a hubbub and clatter of truth 
 and of falsehood, of dogma and of doubt — what right has 
 any chance individual to set up his stool and teach his 
 doctrine ? Were it not far better for him, in the language 
 of Uncle Remus, to " lie low " ? Or if he do chance to 
 mount, that a kindly friend ""^ sliould pull his stool from 
 under him ? 
 
 I feel that no man has a right to address his fellows on 
 
 1 This lecture was deHveied at South Place Institute ou March G, 18S3, and 
 was afterwards ])riiited as a paiuplilet. 
 
 ''' [Accornjilislied iu the discussion whicli followed the lecture by G.B.S., then 
 perhaps as unknown to fame as he was to the lecturer.] 
 
 I
 
 2 THE ETHIC OF FlIEETHOUGHT 
 
 oue of wluit Carlyle would have termed the ' Intiuities ' or 
 ' Eternities ' unless he feels some special call to the task — 
 unless he is deeply conscious of some truth which he rmist 
 communicate to others, some falsehood which he ■niust sweep 
 away. The power of speech is scarcely to be exercised in 
 private without wholesome fear ; in public it becomes a most 
 sacred trust which ought to be used by few of us, and then 
 only on the rarest occasions. 
 
 Hence my hesitation in addressing you this evening. I 
 have no new truth to propound, no old falsehood to sweep 
 away ; much of what / can tell you, you have all probably 
 heard liefore in a truer and clearer note from those who rank 
 as tiie leaders of our modern thought. I come here to learn 
 rather than to teach, and my excuse for being here at all 
 is the discussion which usually follows these papers. I am 
 egotistical enough to hope that that discussion will be rather 
 a sifting of your views than a criticism of mine — that it 
 sliould take rather the form of debate than of mere question 
 and answer. "With this end in view I shall endeavour to 
 avoid all controversy. I do not understand by a discussion 
 on Ereethought an attack on orthodox Christianity ; the 
 emancipated intelligence of our age ought to have advanced 
 in the consciousness of its own strength far beyond such 
 attacks ; its mission is to educate rather than to denounce — to 
 create rather than to destroy. I shall assume, therefore, 
 that the majority of my audience are freethinkers ; that they 
 do not accept Christianity as a divine or miraculous re- 
 velation ; and I would ask all, who holding other views 
 may chance to be here to-night, to try and accept for the 
 time oiu* standpoint in order to grasp how the world looks 
 to us from it. For only by such sympathy can they dis- 
 cover the ultimate truth or falsehood of our respective creeds ; 
 only such sympathy distinguishes the thinker from the 
 bigot. 
 
 In order to explain the somewhat criticised title of my 
 lecture I am going to ask you to accept for the present my 
 definitions of Religion, Freethought, and Dogmatism. I do 
 not ask you to accept these definitions as binding, but only
 
 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 3 
 
 to adopt them for the purpose of following my reasoning. I 
 shall begin with an axiom — which is, I fear, a dogmatic pro- 
 ceeding — yet I think the majority of you will be inclined to 
 accept it. My axiom runs as follows : " The whole is not 
 identical with a part." This axiom leads us at once to a 
 problem : What relation has the part to the whole ? Ap- 
 plying this to a particular case, we state : The individual is 
 not identical with the universe ; and we ask : What relation 
 has the individual to the universe ? Now I shall not 
 ^'enture to assert that there is any aim or end in the universe 
 whatever ; all I would ask you to grant me is that its con- 
 figuration alters, whether that alteration be the result of 
 mere chance, or of a law inherent in matter, or of a cogitative 
 superior being, is for my present purpose indifferent. I simply 
 assert that the universe alters, is ' becoming ' ; what it is 
 becoming I will not venture to say. Next I will ask you 
 to grant that the individual too is altering, is not only a 
 ' being,' but also a ' becoming.' These alterations, what- 
 ever their nature, be it physical or spiritual (if there be in- 
 deed any distinction) I shall — merely for convenience — term 
 life. We may then state our problem as follows : What 
 relation has the life of the individual to the life of the 
 universe ? — Now without committing ourselves to any definite 
 dogma I think we may recognise the enormous disparity of 
 those two expressions, the ' life of the individual ' and the ' life 
 of the universe.' The former is absolutely subordinate, utterly 
 infinitesimal compared with the latter. The ' becoming ' 
 of the latter bears no apparent relation to the ' becoming ' 
 of the former. In other words, the life of the universe does 
 not appear to possess the slightest ratio to the life of the in- 
 dividual. The one seems finite, limited, temporal, the other 
 by comparison infinite, boundless, eternal. This disparity 
 has forced itself upon the attention of man ever since his 
 first childlike attempts at thought. The ' Eternal Wliy ' 
 then began to haunt his mind. ' Why, eternally wliy am i 
 here ? ' he asked. What relation do T, a part, bear to the 
 whole, to the sum of all things material and spiritual ^ What 
 connection has the finite with the infinite ? the temporal
 
 4 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 with the eternal ? rrimitive mau eudeavoured to answer 
 this question oft'-Iiand. He found a power within himself 
 capable apparently of reviewing the whole ; he rushed to 
 the satisfactory conclusion that that power must be itself 
 infinite ; that he, man, was not altogether finite, and so 
 he developed a doctrine of the soul and its immortality. 
 Then grew up myths, superstitions, primitive religions, 
 do^nnas, whereby the infinite was made subject to the finite 
 — floating on this huge bladder of man's supposed immor- 
 tality. The universe is given a purpose, and that purpose 
 is man, the whole is made subordinate to the part. 
 That is the first solution of the problem, the keystone of 
 most concrete religions. I do not intend to discuss the 
 validity of this solution. I have advanced so ftir merely 
 to arrive at a definition, and that is the following : Religion 
 is the relation of the finite to the infinite. Note that I say 
 religion is the relation. You will mark at once that if there 
 be only one relation, there can be only one religion. Any 
 given concrete system of religion is only so far true as it 
 actually explains the relation of the finite to the infinite. 
 In so far as it builds up an imaginary relation between 
 finite and infinite it is false. Hence, since no existing 
 religion lays out before us fully the relation of finite and 
 infinite, all systems of religion are of necessity but half 
 truths. I say half truths, not whole falsehoods, for many 
 religious may have made some, if small, advance towards 
 the solution of the problem. 
 
 The great danger of most existing systems lies in this : 
 that not content with our real knowledge of the relation 
 of the finite to the infinite, they slur over our vast ignorance 
 by the help of the imagination. Myth supplies the place of 
 true knowledge where we are ignorant of the connection 
 between finite and infinite. Hence we may say that most 
 concrete systems of religion present us with a certain small 
 amount of knowledge but a great deal of myth. Now our 
 knowledge of the relation of finite to infinite, small as it 
 may be, is still continually increasing ; science and philo- 
 sophy are continually presenting us with broader views of
 
 THE ETHIC OF EEEETHOUGHT 5 
 
 the relation of man to Nature and of individual thought to 
 abstract thought. It follows at once therefore that, since 
 our knowledge of the relation between the finite and the in- 
 finite, that is, our acquaintance with the one true religion, is 
 bj however small degrees ever increasing, so in every con- 
 crete religion the knowledge element ought to increase and 
 the myth element to decrease, or, as we may express it, every 
 concrete religion ought to be in a state of development. 
 Is this a fact ? To a certain small extent it is. Christianity, 
 for example, to-day is a very different matter to what it was 
 eighteen himdred years ago. But small as our increase in 
 knowledge may be, concrete systems of religion have not 
 kept pace with it. They persist in explaining by myth, 
 portions of the relation of the finite to the infinite, con- 
 cerning which we have true knowledge. Hence we see the 
 danger, if not the absolute evil, of any myth at all. An 
 imaginary explanation of the relation of finite to infinite too 
 often impedes the spread of the true explanation when man has 
 found it. This gives rise to the so-called contests of religion 
 and science or of religion and philosophy — those unintelligible 
 conflicts of ' faith ' and ' reason ' which can only arise in the 
 minds of persons who cannot perceive clearly the distinction 
 between myth and knowledge. The holding of a myth ex- 
 planation of any problem whereon mankind has attained, or 
 may hereafter attain, true knowledge is what I term enslaved 
 thought or dogmatism. Owing to the slow rate of development 
 of most concrete religions, they are all more or less dogmatic. 
 The rejection of all myth explanation, the frank acceptance of 
 all ascertained truths with regard to the relation of the finite to 
 the infinite, is what I term freeniouyht or true religious 
 knowledge. In other words, the freethinker, in my sense of 
 the term, possesses more real religion, knows more of the 
 relation of the finite to the infinite than any believer in myth ; 
 his very knowledge makes him in the highest sense of the 
 words a religious man. 
 
 I hope you will note at once the extreme difficulty accord- 
 ing to this definition of obtaining freedom of thought. Free- 
 thought is rather an ideal than an actuality ; it is, also, a
 
 6 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 progressive ideal, one advancing with every advance of posi- 
 tive knowledge. The freethinker is not one who thinks 
 things as he will, but one who thinks them as they must be. 
 To become a freethinker it is not suflicient to throw off all 
 forms of dogmatism, still less to attack them with coarse 
 satire ; this is but negative action. The true freethinker 
 must be in the possession of the highest knowledge of his 
 day ; he must stand on the slope of his century and mark 
 what the past has achieved, what the present is achieving ; 
 still better if he himself is working for the increase of human 
 knowledge or for its spread among his fellows — such a man 
 may truly be termed a high priest of freethought. You will 
 see at once what a positive, creative task the freethinker has 
 before him. To reject Christianity, or to scoff at all concrete 
 religion, by no means constitutes freethought, nay, is too 
 often sheer dogmatism. The true freethinker must not only 
 be aware of the points wherein he has truth, but must recog- 
 nise the points wherein he is still ignorant. Like the true 
 man of science, he must never be ashamed to say : Here I am 
 ignorant, this I cannot explain. Such a confession draws the 
 attention of thinkers, and causes research to be made at the 
 dark points in our knowledge ; it is not a confession of weak- 
 ness, but really a sign of strength. To slur over such points 
 with an assumed knowledge is the dogmatism of philosophy 
 or the dogmatism of science, or rather of false philosophy and 
 false science — ^just as dangerous as the dogmatism of a concrete 
 religion. Were I to tell you that certain forces were inherent 
 in matter, that these forces sufficed to explain the union of 
 atoms into molecules, the formation out of molecules of 
 chemical compounds, that certain chemical compounds were 
 identical with protoplasm, and hence build up life from a 
 primitive cell even to man,^ — were I to tell you all this and 
 not put down my finger every now and then and say : This is 
 an assumption, here we are really ignorant ; this is possible, 
 but as yet we have on this point no exact knowledge ; were I 
 to do this I should be no true naturalist ; it would be the 
 
 ' A well-known Secularist had made statements to this effect from the 
 same platform a few weeks jireviously.
 
 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 7 
 
 dogmatism of false science, of false freethought, — every bit 
 as dangerous as that religious dogmatism which would explain 
 all things by the existence of a personal god or of a triune 
 deity. Hence, materialism in so far as by dogmatism it slurs 
 over scientific ignorance ; atheism in so far as it is merely 
 negative; 'positivism while it declares the relation of the 
 finite to the infinite to be beyond solution ; and 2^essimism 
 which also treating the problem as beyond solution, replaces 
 belief by no system of enthusiastic human morality — these 
 one and all are not identical with freethought. 
 
 True freethought never slurs over ignorance by dogmatism; 
 it is not only destructive but creative ; it believes the problem 
 of life to be in gradual process of solution; it is not the 
 apotheosis of ignorance, but rather that of knowledge. Thus 
 I cannot help thinking that no true man of science is ever a 
 materialist, a positivist, or a pessimist. If he be the first, he 
 must be a dogmatist ; if he be either of the latter, he must hold 
 his task impossible or useless. I do not by this identify free- 
 thought with science. Far from it ! Freethought, as we have 
 seen, is knowledge of the relation of the finite to the infinite, 
 and science, in so far as it explains the position of the indi- 
 vidual with regard to the whole, is a very important element, 
 but not the totality of such knowledge. 
 
 I trust you will pardon the length at which I have dis- 
 cussed Religion, Freethought, and Dogmatism. I want to 
 succeed in conveying to you what I understand by these terms. 
 Religion I have defined as the relation of the finite to the 
 infinite ; Freethought as our necessarily partial knowledge of 
 this one true religion ; and Dogmatisin as that mental habit 
 which replaces the known by the mythical, or at least supple- 
 ments the known by products of the imagination, — a habit in 
 every way impeding the growth of freethought. 
 
 You will say at once that it is an extremely difficult, if not 
 impossible, task to be a freethinker. I cannot deny it. It is 
 extremely difficult to approach closely any religious ideal. 
 How many perfect Christians have there been in the last 
 nineteen hundred years ? Answer that, and judge how many 
 perfect freethinkers fall to the lot of a century! No more
 
 8 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 than baptism really makes a man a Christian, will shaking off 
 dogmatism make a man a freethinker. It is the result of 
 long thought, of patient study, the labour of a life, — it is the 
 single-eyed devotion to truth, even though its acquirement 
 may destroy a previously cherished conviction. There must 
 be no interested motive, no working to support a party, an 
 individual, or a theory ; such action but leads to the distortion 
 of knowledge, and those who do not seek truth from an 
 unbiassed standpoint are, from the freethinker's standpoint, 
 ministers in the devil's synagogue. The attainment of perfect 
 freethought may be impossible, for all mortals are subject to 
 prejudice, and are more or less dogmatic, yet the approach 
 towards this ideal is open to all of us. In this sense our 
 greatest poets, philosophers, and naturalists, men such as 
 Goethe, Spinoza, and Darwin, have all been freethinkers ; they 
 strove, regardless of dogmatic belief, and armed with the 
 highest knowledge and thought of their time, to cast light on 
 the one great problem of life. We, who painfully struggle in 
 their footsteps, can well look to them as to the high priests of 
 our religion. 
 
 Having noted what I consider the essence of freethought, 
 and suggested the difficulty of its attainment, I wish, before 
 passing to what I may term its mission, to make a remark 
 on my definition of religion. Some of you may feel inclined 
 to ask : " If you assert the existence of religion, surely you 
 must believe in the existence of a God, and probably of the 
 so-called immortality of the soul ? " Now I must request 
 you to notice that I have made no assertion whatever on these 
 points. By defining religion as the relation of the finite 
 to the infinite, I have not asserted the existence of a deity. 
 In fact, while that definition makes religion a necessary and 
 logical category, it only gives God a contingent existence. My 
 meaning will be perhaps better explained by reference to a 
 concrete religion, which places entirely on one side the exist- 
 ence of God and the hope of immortality. I refer to 
 Buddhism, and take the following sentences from Rhys Davids' 
 lectures : — 
 
 " Try to get as near to wisdom and goodness as you can
 
 THE ETHIC OF EKEETHOUGHT 9 
 
 in this life. Trouble not yourself about the gods. Disturb 
 yourself not by curiosities or desires about any future ex- 
 istence. Seek only after the fruit of the noble path of self- 
 culture and self-control." 
 
 The discussion of the future of the soul is called the 
 "walking in delusion," the "jungle," the "puppet-show," and 
 the " wilderness." " Of sentient beings," we are told, " nothing 
 will survive save the result of their actions ; and he who 
 believes, who hopes in anything else, will be blinded, hindered, 
 hampered in his religious growth by the most fatal of delusions." 
 Such notions render Buddhism perhaps the most valuable 
 study among concrete religious systems to the modern free- 
 thinker. 
 
 I can now proceed to consider what seems to me the 
 mission of the freethought I have just defined. In the 
 beginning of my lecture I endeavoured to point out how the 
 disparity between the finite and the infinite, — between the 
 individual and the universe, — forces itself upon the attention 
 of man. Struggle against it as he may, the ' Eternal Why ' 
 still haunts his mind. If he sees no answer to this question, 
 or rather if he discovers no method by which he may attempt 
 its solution, he is not seldom driven to despair, to pessimism, 
 to absolute spiritual misery. Note, too, that this spiritual 
 misery is something quite distinct from that physical misery, 
 that want of bread and butter, which, though little regarded, 
 is yearly crying out louder and louder in this London of 
 ours ; though distinct, it is none the less real. The relief of 
 physical misery is a question of morality, of the relation of 
 man to man, an urgent question just now, pressing for 
 immediate attention, yet beyond the limits of our present 
 discourse. The relief of spiritual misery, also very prevalent 
 nowadays, owing to the rapid collapse of so many concrete 
 religious systems, that is the mission of freethought. I 
 do not think I am assuming anything very extravagant in 
 asserting that it is the duty of humanity to lessen in every 
 possible way the misery of humanity ; it is really only a truer 
 expression of the basis of utilitarian morality. Hence the 
 mission of freethought to relieve spiritual misery is the con-
 
 10 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 uectiDg link lietweeu fieothought as concrete religion and free- 
 thought us morality. Let us examine a little more closely 
 the meaning of this mission. 
 
 The individual freethinker, except in very rare cases, 
 can advance but little our partial knowledge of the relation 
 between the linite and the infinite. He must content him- 
 self with assimilating so far as in him lies the already ascer- 
 tained truth. Now, although this portion of truth be but an 
 infinitesimal part of the truth yet undiscovered, nevertheless 
 the amount of truth added to our stock in any generation is 
 in itself insignificant compared with what we liave received 
 from the past. In other words, the greater portion of our 
 knowledge is handed down to us from the past, it is our 
 heritage — the liirthright of each one of us as men. Every 
 freethinker, then, owes an intense debt of gratitude to the 
 past ; he is necessarily full of reverence for the men who 
 have preceded him ; their struggles, their failures, and their 
 successes, taken as a whole, have given him the great mass of 
 his knowledge. Hence it is that he feels sympathy even 
 with the very failures, the false steps of the men of the past. 
 He never forgets what he owes to every stage of past mental 
 development. He can with no greater reason jeer at or abuse 
 such a stage than he can jeer at or abuse his ancestors or the 
 anthropoidal apes. Even when he finds his neighbour still 
 halting in such a past stage of mental development, he lias 
 no right to abuse, he can only endeavour to educate. The 
 freethinker must treat the past with the deepest sympathy 
 and reverence. Herein lies, I think, a crucial test of much 
 that calls itself freethought. A tendency to mock stages of 
 past development, to jeer at neighbours still in the bondage 
 of dogmatic faith, has cast an odium over the name free- 
 thinker which it will l)e difficult to shake off. To mock and 
 to jeer can never be the true mission of freethought. 
 
 Let us now suppose our ideal freethinker has educated 
 himself By this I mean that he has assimilated the results 
 of the highest scientific and philosophical knowledge of his 
 day. It is not impossible that even then you may turn 
 round upon me and say he has not yet solved the problem of
 
 THE ETHIC OF EEEETHOUGHT 11 
 
 life. I admit it. Still in so far as he is in possession of 
 some real knowledge, that is, of some truth, he has made a 
 beginning of his solution. For this very word truth itself 
 denotes some fixed and clear relation between things, and 
 therefore a connection between the finite and the infinite. But 
 not only has he made a beginning of his solution ; he has 
 started himself also in the right direction, wherein he must 
 continue to labour, if he would help to solve life's problem. 
 No myth, no dogmatism can then lead him astray. The 
 freethinker of to-day has this advantage over the believer of 
 the past, that where he is ignorant, he confesses it, and this 
 in itself increases the rate at which the problem of life is 
 being worked out. At every step there will not be the ever 
 renascent myth to be swept away ; at every turn our own 
 dogmatism will not act as a drag upon our progress. 
 
 Hence it seems to me that the true freethinker can relieve 
 a vast amount of spiritual misery ; he can point out how 
 much of the problem, albeit little, has been solved ; he can 
 point out the direction in which further solution is to be 
 sought. Thus we may determine his mission — the spread 
 of actually acquired truth — the destruction of dogmatism 
 beneath the irresistible logic of fact. It is an educational, a 
 creative, and not merely a destructive mission. Do not think 
 this mission a light one ; it is simply appalling how the mass 
 of truth already acquired has remained in a few minds; it 
 is not spread broadcast among the people. I do not speak so 
 much of the working -classes, who, so far as the present serf- 
 dom of labour allows, are beginning to inquire and to think 
 for themselves, but rather of those who are curiously termed 
 the 'educated.' Take the average clergyman of whatever 
 denomination, the church or chapel-going lawyer, merchant, 
 or tradesman, and as a rule you will find absolute ignorance 
 of the real bearings of modern philosophy and of modern 
 science on social conduct. Here freethought has an endless 
 task of education. A remedy seems scarcely possible till 
 science and philosophy are made essential parts of the cur- 
 riculum of all our schools and universities. 
 
 The mission of freethought, however, lies not only in the
 
 12 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 propagation of existing, but in the discovery of new truth. 
 Here we find its noblest function, its deepest meaning. This 
 pursuit of knowledge is the true worship of man — the union 
 between finite and infinite, the highest pleasure of which the 
 human mind is capable. It is hard for us to appreciate the 
 intense delight which nmst follow upon the discovery of some 
 great trutli. Kepler, after years of observation, deducing the 
 laws which govern the planetary system ; Newton, after long 
 puzzling, hitting upon the principle of gravitation ; or Sir 
 W. E. Hamilton, as the conclusion of complicated analysis, 
 finding the existence of conical refraction and verifying the 
 wave theory of light — in all these and many other cases the 
 conviction of truth must have brought unbounded pleasure. 
 Even as Spinoza has said, " He who has a true idea is aware 
 at the same time that he has a true idea, and cannot doubt 
 of the thing." So with truth conies conviction and the 
 consequent pleasure. Yet this is no self-complacency, but an 
 enthusiastic desire to convey the newly -acquired truth to 
 others, the intense wish to spread the new knowledge, to 
 scatter its light into dark corners, to sweep away error and 
 with it all the cobwebs of myth and ignorance. Hence it is 
 that those from whom freeth ought has received the greatest 
 services have been, as a rule, either philosophers or scientists, 
 for such men have done most to extend the limits of existing 
 knowledge ; it is to them that freethought must look for its 
 leaders and teachers. Here note, too, a very remarkable 
 difference between freethought and the older concrete re- 
 ligious ; the priest of freethought must be fully acquainted 
 with the most advanced knowledge of his day ; it will no 
 longer be possible to send the duffer of the family to make a 
 living out of religion ; only the thinker can appeal to the 
 reason of men, although the semi -educated has too often 
 served to influence their undisciplined emotion. 
 
 But I have wandered somewhat from my point, that 
 portion of the mission of freethought which relates to the 
 discovery of new truth. It is in this aspect that the essen- 
 tially religious character of freethought appears. It is not a 
 stagnant religious system with a crystallised and unchangeable
 
 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 13 
 
 creed, forced to reject all new truth which is not in keeping 
 with its dogma, but one which actually demands new truth, 
 the sole end of which is the growth and spread of human 
 knowledge, and which must perforce adopt every great dis- 
 covery as essentially a portion of itself From this pursuit of 
 religious truth ought to arise the enthusiasm of freethought ; 
 from this source it ought to find a continuous supply of fuel 
 which no dogmatic faith can draw upon. If freethought 
 once grasped this aspect of its mission, I cannot help thinking 
 the consequent enthusiasm would soon carry it as the domi- 
 nant religious system through all grades of society. So long 
 as freethought is merely the cynical antagonism of individuals 
 towards dogma, so long as it is merely negative and destruc- 
 tive, it will never become a great living force. To do so, it 
 must become strong in the conviction of its own absolute 
 Tightness, creative, sympathetic with the past, assured of the 
 future, above all enthusiastic. No world -movement ever 
 spread without enthusiasm. In the words of the greatest of 
 recent German poets — 
 
 Wisset, iin Schwarmgeist brauset das Wehen des ewigen Geistes ! 
 Was da Grosses gesclieh'ii, das Tliaten auf Erden die Schwarmer ! 
 
 It is no insignificant future which I would paint for this new 
 religious movement, yet it is perhaps the only one which has a 
 future ; all others are of the past. It will have to shake 
 itself free of many faults, of many debasing influences, to take 
 a broader and truer view of its mission and of itself. Yet 
 the day I believe wiU come when its evangelists will spread 
 through the country, be heard in every house, and be seen on 
 every street preaching and teaching the only faith which is 
 consonant with the reason, with the dignity of man. Not by 
 myth, not by guesses of the imagination is the problem of life 
 to be solved ; but by earnest application, by downright hard 
 work of the brain, spread over the liietime of many men — 
 nay, of many centuries of men, extending even to the lifetime 
 of the world ; for the solution of the problem is identical with 
 the mental development of humanity, and none can say where 
 that shall end. Such then seems to me the mission of free-
 
 14 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 thought, and the freethinker who is conscious of this mission 
 may say proudly in tlie words of the prophet of Galilee, " I 
 came not to destroy but to fulfil." 
 
 There still remains a point in which, perhaps, above all 
 others, my ethic of freethought may seem to you vague and 
 unmeaning. I refer to the nature of that truth, that know- 
 ledge of the relation between the tinite and infinite, which it 
 is the principal duty of freethought to seek after. 
 
 If we could assert that all things are chaos, that there is 
 no invariable relation between one finite thing and another 
 finite thing ; that precisely the same set of circumstances 
 leads to-day to a different effect from what it did yesterday ; 
 that the lives of worlds and of nations, phases of being and of 
 civilisation, are ever passing without ordered beginning or end 
 into nothingness ; that on all sides mighty upheavals and vast 
 revolutions are for ever starting, for ever ceasing without co- 
 ordination and as the mocking playwork of chaos, — were this 
 the case, all hope of connecting the finite and the infinite 
 would be impossible. Not only the recorded experience of our 
 own and every past age tells us that this is not the case, but 
 I ventm'e to assert that it is absolutely impossible it should 
 be the case : and for the very simple reason that no man can 
 conceive it. The very existence of such chaos would render 
 all thought impossible, conception itself must cease in such 
 a world. Once obtain a clear conception of any finite thing, 
 say water, and another clear conception of any other finite 
 thing, say wine ; then if one day these conceptions may be 
 different and the next day the same — it is obvious that all 
 clear thinking will be at an end, and if this confusion reigns 
 between all finite things, it will be impossible for man to form 
 any conceptions at all, impossible for him to think.^ 
 
 The very fact that man does think seems to me sufficient 
 to show that there is a definite relation, a fixed order between 
 one finite thing and another. This definite relation, this 
 finite order is what we term Laav, and hence follows that 
 
 ^ [This dependence of thought, the power of drawing conceptions, upon per- 
 sistence in the secjueuce of oui- sensations, I have emphasised and more fully 
 developed in my Grammar of Science, 2nd edit., 1899.]
 
 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 15 
 
 axiom without which it is impossible for any knowledge, any 
 thought, to exist, namely : " The same set of causes always 
 produces precisely the same effect." That is the very essence 
 of the creed of freethought, and the rule by which every man 
 practically guides his conduct. What is the nature of this 
 Law, this ordered outcome of cause in effect ? Obviously it is 
 not a finite changeable thing, it is absolute, infinite, inde- 
 pendent of all conceptions of time or change, or' particular 
 groups of finite things. Hence it is what we have been seek- 
 ing as the relation between finite and infinite. It is that 
 which binds together the individual and the universe, giving 
 him a necessary place in its life. Law makes his ' becoming ' 
 a necessary part of the ' becoming ' of the universe ; neither 
 could exist without the other. Knowledge, therefore, of the 
 relation of the finite to the infinite is a knowledge of law. 
 Eeligion according to the definition I have given you to-night 
 is law,^ and the mission of freethought is to spread acquired 
 knowledge and gain new knowledge of this law.^ 
 
 Let me strive to explain my meaning more clearly by an 
 example. Supposing you were to grant me the truth of the 
 principles of gravitation and the conservation of energy as 
 appKed to the planetary system. Then I should be able to 
 tell you, almost to the fraction of a second, the exact rate of 
 motion and the position at a given time of each and all the 
 planetary bodies. Nay, I might go further, and describe the 
 ' becoming ' of each individual planet, its loss of external 
 motion, motion of translation and rotation ; then, too, its loss 
 of internal motion, motion of vibration, or heat, etc. All this 
 would follow necessarily from the principles you had granted 
 me, and the complicated work of mathematical analysis would 
 be verified by observation. Now note, every step of that 
 mathematical analysis follows a definite law of thought, one 
 step does not follow another chaotically, but of absolute logical 
 
 1 A fact dimly gi-asped ])y the Jews, and even suggested by tlie Latin 
 reltgi'j. 
 
 '^ [I should now-a-days place the necessity of causation in the first place in tlie 
 thinker, neither in plienomena nor in ' things-in-tliemselves.' The possibility of 
 a conceptual model being devised to fit percejitual experience I sliould now 
 attribute to the correlated growths of the perceptual and rational faculties.]
 
 16 THE ETHIC OF EKEETHOUGHT 
 
 necessity. I can think the succession in one way only, and 
 that one way is what ? "Why, the very method in which the 
 phenomena appear to me to be occurring in so-called Nature ! 
 This enables me to di'aw your attention to another phase 
 of law, namely, the only possible way in which we can think 
 things seems to be identical with the actual way in which 
 they appear to us to occur. When the thought-relation does 
 not agree with the fact-relation the incongruity is always the 
 result either of unclear thinking, or of unclear facts — false 
 thought or false perception of facts. Let me explain more 
 closely my meaning. When we say that two and two make 
 four, we recognise at once a principle which, if contradicted, 
 would render all thinking impossible. Now it is precisely a 
 like aspect of the so-called laws of nature which I wish to 
 bring into prominence. Take, for example, Kepler's laws of 
 planetary motion ; these he discovered by the tedious com- 
 parison of long series of observations. At first sight they 
 appear as merely laws inherent in the planetary system — 
 empirical laws which regulate that particular portion of the 
 material universe. But mark what happens : Newton invents 
 the law of gravitation ; then thought can only conceive the 
 planets as moving in the manner prescribed by Kepler's laws. 
 In other words, the planets move in the only way thought can 
 conceive them as moving. Kepler's laws cease to be empirical, 
 they become as necessary as a law of thought. The law of 
 gravitation being granted, the mind must consider the planets 
 to move precisely as they do, even as it must consider that 
 two and two make four. You may perhaps object : " But at 
 least the law of gravitation is an empirical law, a mere de- 
 scription of a blind force inherent in matter ; it might have 
 varied as the inverse cube or any other power, just as well as 
 the inverse square." Not at all ! It is not my object to 
 explain to you to-night how near physicists seem to be to a 
 conceptual proof of the necessity of the law of gravitation, — 
 what wondrous conceptions the very existence of an universal 
 fluid medium forces upon them. But as a hypothetical case I 
 may mention that, if we were to conceive matter as idtimately 
 consisting of spherical atoms capable of surface pulsations, —
 
 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 17 
 
 and there is much to confirm such a supposition — then, owing 
 to their mere existence in the fluid medium, thought would be 
 compelled to conceive them as acting upon each other in a 
 certain definite manner, and as a result of analysis this manner 
 turns out to be something very akin to the so-called law of 
 gravitation. Thus gravitation itself, granted the atom and 
 the medium, would become as necessary mentally as that two 
 and two make four ! We should have another link in the 
 thought-chain, another stage in that statuting of mind, which 
 is the source of sequence in Nature. 
 
 At present our positive knowledge is far too small to 
 allow us to piece together the whole universe in this fashion. 
 Many of our so-called laws are merely empirical laws, the 
 result of observation ; but the progress of knowledge seems to 
 me to point to a far-distant time when all the finite things of 
 the universe shall be shown to be united by law, and that law 
 itself to be the only possible law which thought can conceive. 
 Suppose the highly developed reason of some future man to 
 start, say, with clear conceptions of the lifeless chaotic mass of 
 60,000,000 years ago, which now forms our planetary system, 
 then from those conceptions alone he will be able to think out 
 a 60,000,000 years' history of the world, with every finite 
 phase which it would pass through ; each would have its 
 necessary place, its necessary course in this thought system. 
 And what of the total history he would have thought out ? — 
 It would be identical with the actual history of the world ; 
 for that history has evolved in the one sole way conceivable. 
 The universe is what it is, because that is the only conceivable 
 fashion in which it could be, — in which it could be thought. 
 Every finite thing in it is what it is, because that is the only 
 possible way in which it coiild be. It is absurd to ask why 
 things are not other than they are, because were our ideas 
 sufficiently clear, we should see that they exist in the only 
 way in which they are thinkable. Equally absurd is it to 
 ask why any finite thing or any finite individual exists — the 
 existence is a logical necessity — a necessary step or element in the 
 complete thought-analysis of the universe, and without that step 
 our thought-analysis, the universe itself, could have no existence.
 
 18 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 There is another standpoint from which we may view this 
 relation of law to the individual thinker. There has long been 
 apparent antagonism between two schools of philosophical 
 thinkers — the Materialists and the Idealists. The latter in 
 their latest development have made the individual ' I ' the only 
 objective entity in existence. The ' I ' knows nought but its 
 own sensations, whence it forms the subjective notions which 
 we may term the idea of the ' I ' and the idea of the universe. 
 The relation of these two ideas is, as in all systems of philo- 
 sophy, the gn:eat problem. But in this idealism the idea of 
 the ' I ' and the idea of the universe are, as it were, absolutely 
 under the thumb of the individual 'I' — it is objective, they 
 are subjective ; it proudly dictates the laws, which they must 
 obey. It is the pure thought -law of the 'I' which deter- 
 mines the relation between the idea of the ' I ' and the idea 
 of the universe. On the other hand, the materialist finds in 
 nature certain unchangeable laws, which he supposes in some 
 manner inherent in his undefinable reality, matter ; these laws 
 do not appear in any way the outcome of the individual ' I,' 
 but something outside it, with regard to which the ' I ' is 
 subjective, — which, regardless of the thought of the ' I,' 
 dictates its relation to the universe. Is the antagonism 
 between these two methods of considering the ' I ' and the 
 universe so great as it at first sight appears ? Or rather, is 
 not the distinction an idle one of the schools ? Let us return 
 to our idealist. Having made his thought the proud ruler of 
 the relation betw^een the idea of the ' I ' and the idea of the 
 universe, he is compelled, in order to grasp his own position 
 and regulate his own conduct in life, to place himself — his ' I ' 
 — in the subjective attitude of the idea of the ' I ' ; to identify 
 himself with the idea of the ' I.' This act is the abnegation 
 of his objectivity, he becomes subjective, and the objective 
 entity which rules his relation to the universe is an abstract 
 ' I,' — pure thought — it is this which determines the connection 
 between the ' I ' and all other finite things, — between finite 
 and infinite. In other words, idealism forces upon us the 
 conception that the law which binds the finite to the infinite 
 is a pure law of thought, that the only existing objectivity is
 
 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 19 
 
 the ' logic of pure thought.' But this is precisely the result 
 to which materialism, as based on physical science, seems to 
 point, — namely, that all so-called material or natural laws will 
 ultimately be found to be the only laws thought can conceive ; 
 that so-called natural laws are but steps in the ' logic of pure 
 thought.' Thus, with the growth of scientific knowledge, all 
 distinction between Idealism and Materialism seems destined 
 to vanish. 
 
 Eeligion, then, or the relation of the finite to the infinite, 
 must be looked upon as essentially law ; not the mindless law 
 of ' matter,' but the law of thought, even akin to : " Nothing 
 can both be and not be." We have to look upon the universe 
 as one vast intellectual process, every fact corresponds to a 
 conception, and every succession of facts to an inevitable 
 sequence of conceptions ; as thought progresses in logical order 
 of intellect only, so only does fact. The law of the one is 
 identical with the law of the other. To assert, therefore, that 
 a law of the universe may be interfered with or altered, is to 
 assert that it is possible to conceive a thing otherwise than in 
 the only conceivable way. Hence arises the indifference of 
 the true freethinker to the question of the existence or non- 
 existence of a personal God. Such a being can stand in no 
 relation whatever of active interference to the law of the 
 universe ; in other words, so far as man is concerned, his 
 existence cannot be a matter of the least importance. To 
 repeat Buddha's words, " Trouble yourselves not about the 
 gods ! " If, like the frogs or the Jews, who would have a 
 king, you insist upon having a God, then call the universe, 
 with its vast system of unchangeable law, God — even as 
 Spinoza. You will not be likely to fall into much error con- 
 cerning his nature. 
 
 Lastly, let me draw your attention to another point which 
 has especial value for the religion of freethought. We have 
 seen how the disparity between finite and- infinite tends to 
 depress man to the lowest depth of spiritual misery, such a 
 depth as you will find portrayed in James Thomson's City of 
 Dreadful Night. This misery is too often the result of the 
 first necessary step towards freedom of thought, namely, the
 
 20 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 complete rejection of all forms of dogmatic faith. It can only 
 be dispelled by a recognition of the true meaning of the 
 problem of life, the relation of the finite to the infinite. But 
 in the very nature of this problem, as I have endeavoured to 
 express it to-night, lies a strange inexpressible pleasure ; it is 
 the apparently finite mind of man which itself rules the 
 infinite ; it is human thought which dictates the laws of the 
 universe ; only what man can tJiink, can possibly he} The 
 very immensities which appal him, are they not in a sense his 
 own creations ? Nay, paradoxical as it may seem, there is 
 much truth in the assertion, that : It is the mind of man which 
 rules the universe. Freethought in making the freethinker 
 master of his own reason renders him lord of the world. That 
 seems to me the endless joy of the freethinker's faith. It is 
 a real and a living faith, which creative, sympathetic, and 
 above all, enthusiastic, is destined to be the creed of the 
 future." 
 
 Do you smile at the notion of freethought linked to 
 enthusiasm ? Eemember the lines of the poet : — 
 
 Enthusiasts tliey will call us — aye, enthusiasts even we must be : 
 Has not long enough ruled the empty word and the letter ? 
 Stand, oh, mankind, on thine own feet at last, tliovi overgrown child ! 
 And canst thou not stand — not even yet — must thou still fall to the 
 
 ground 
 Without crutches, then Tall to the ground, for thou art not worthy to 
 
 stand ! 
 
 {Hamerling.) 
 
 ^ It does not, of comse, follow that everything that is, has yet been thought. 
 We have as yet got only a very small way in the intellectual analysis of Nature. 
 But this little encourages the belief that the remainder is also capable of 
 intellectual analysis. 
 
 2 While still heartily assenting to what may be termed the ethical portion 
 of this lecture, I should now state somewhat differently the relations between 
 natural law and thought — not so much changing the conclusions as the phrase- 
 ology. My more fully developed views are expressed in The Grammar of 
 Science, 2ud edit., 1899.
 
 II 
 
 MATTEE AND SOUL^ 
 
 On earth there's nothing great but man, in man there's nothing great 
 but mind. — Sir William Hamilton. 
 
 I DO not think I shall be making a great assumption if I 
 suppose the majority of my audience to have read or at least to 
 have heard about Mr. Gladstone's recent article in the Nineteenth 
 Century. It is not my intention to criticise that defence of 
 what our late Prime Minister terms the " majestic process " 
 of creation described in the first chapter of Genesis. The 
 writer exhibits throughout such a hopeless ignorance of the 
 real aims and methods of modern science, that even the 
 humblest of her servants may be excused for treating his 
 article not as a matter for criticism, but as an interesting 
 psychological study. It unveils for us the picture of a mind 
 which is not uncommon at the present time. A mind, 
 whose emotional needs require it to imagine behind natural 
 phenomena a will and an intellect similar in kind, if differing 
 in degree, from the human will and the human intellect ; 
 which places behind nature an anthropopathetic, if not an 
 anthropomorphic deity. On the other hand, this mind finds 
 in what science has to say of the growth of the universe only 
 a ' mechanical process.' It is longing for the ' intellectual,' 
 it finds the ' mechanical.' From this feeling arises the revolt 
 against modern scientific thought. Such a mind refuses to 
 
 ^ This lecture was delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society at St. 
 George's Hall, December 6, 1885. It was afterwards published by the Society 
 as a pamphlet.
 
 22 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 allow tliat the universe is nought but ' bits of matter attracting 
 and repelling each other,' and we have the remarkable spectacle 
 of a person, to whom at least our nineteenth century know- 
 ledge and cidture is not a forbidden field, preferring the 
 " majestic process " of the Mosaic account of creation to all 
 that truth which the world's great thinkers have been slowly 
 discovering from the age of Galilei to that of Darwin. Ee- 
 markable indeed is the spectacle of a mind which finds it 
 almost a catastrophe that the myth of a semi-barbaric people 
 should be replaced by the knowledge gained by centuries of 
 patient research ! 
 
 I venture to think that this confusion of ideas, which is 
 of undoubted psychological interest, is really due first to the 
 want of a clear conception as to what meanings must be 
 attached to the words ' intellectual ' and ' mechanical,' and 
 secondly to a very slight acquaintance with the actual concepts 
 of modern science. If for a moment I were to use the word 
 mechanical in what appears to be Mr. Gladstone's sense, as 
 something opposed to spiritual, I should be compelled to de- 
 scribe the " majestic process " of the Mosaic creation as 
 mechanical, while the theories of modern science as to the 
 development of nature, so far from being mechanical would 
 appear to me spiritual. They would for the first time raise 
 the universe to an intelligible entity. From them I should 
 for the first time be led to suspect that intellectual sequence 
 and natural law do not differ toto ctelo ; that thought and the 
 sequence of physical phenomena cannot in any way be scientifi- 
 cally opposed ; that so far from stuff and soul, matter and mind, 
 having in reality utterly different attributes, the little we have 
 yet learnt of them points rather to similarity than difference. 
 What if it be the function of modern science to show that the 
 old distinction of the schools between idealism and materialism 
 is merely historical and not logical ? What, if after analysing 
 the concepts of matter peculiar to modern science, we find that 
 the only thing with which we are acquainted that at all 
 resembles it, is mind ? Surely tliis will be rendering the 
 world intelligible rather than mechanical — using the latter 
 word not in the scientific, but in Mr. Gladstone's sense. To
 
 MATTEE AND SOUL 23 
 
 show that possibly idealism and materialism are not opposite 
 mental poles, that possibly matter and spirit are not utterly 
 distinct entities, will be the endeavour of my present lecture. 
 Its thesis, then, is : That science, so far from having in the 
 popular sense materialised the world, has ideahsed it ; for the 
 first time rendered it possible for us to regard the universe as 
 something intelHgible rather than material. 
 
 Let us begin our investigations by striving to ascertain 
 what science has crot to tell us of matter. But first I must 
 warn you that science, Like theology, has had an historical 
 past. She has retained some prejudices, even some dogmas, from 
 the past, and is only to-day throwing off these old confused 
 ideas, and distinguishing what she really knows from plausible 
 theory, and plausible theory from gratuitous assumption. 
 There is no fundamental conception of science about which 
 more gratuitous assumptions have been made than matter, and 
 curiously enough matter is a thing which physical science 
 could afford to entirely neglect. It does require a physical 
 concept called mass, but it has been a misfortune of the 
 historical evolution of science that mass has been connected 
 with matter. This connection was ratified by Newton in his 
 famous definition of mass as the quantity of matter in a body. 
 As every physicist knows what mass is, and no physicist can 
 offer anything but plausible theories as to what matter may 
 be, the magnitude of the misfortune must be obvious to all. 
 If I may be allowed to express my own opinion, I should say 
 that matter was a popular superstition which had forced itself 
 upon physical science, much as the popular, or at least 
 theological superstition of soul has forced itself upon mental 
 science. In order to explain to you more clearly what I 
 mean, let me endeavour to analyse the popular superstition 
 with regard to matter. 
 
 To the ordinary mind matter is something everywhere 
 tangible, something hard, impenetrable, that which exerts /orce. 
 The ordinary mind cannot exactly define, but it is quite sure 
 that it understands matter — it is a fact of everyday experience. 
 This deliciously naive conception has reacted upon science, and 
 more than one recent writer describes matter as " one of the
 
 24 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 inevitable primary conceptions of the mind." If all the 
 primary conceptions of the mind were so confused as this one 
 of matter, I venture to think the mind would make very little 
 progress indeed ; science would be mere dogma, based upon 
 confused ideas. If we question what is meant by the terms 
 hard and impenetrable, we are thrown back on the conception 
 of pressure, or of resistance to motion ; we are thus finally 
 driven to the last refuge of the materialists — force. Matter is 
 that which exerts force ; matter and force are two entities 
 always occun-ing together, by means of which we can explain 
 the whole working of the universe. In order, therefore, 
 that we may approach matter, we must understand force. 
 Let us see if we can understand force, or if it can in any way 
 help us in our difficulties. If any of my audience were to ask 
 the first person they meet after leaving this lecture hall, wliy 
 the earth describes an orbit about the sun, I have little doubt 
 that the answer would be : Because of the law of gravitation. 
 Being further questioned as to what the law of gravitation 
 might be, the answer would not improbably consist in the 
 statement that a force varying inversely as the square of the 
 distance, and directly as the product of the masses, acts between 
 the sun and the earth. Now I boldly assert that Newton has 
 not told us why the earth describes an orbit about the sun any 
 more than Kepler did. The man who can tell us why the 
 earth describes an orbit about the sun will be even a greater 
 philosopher than Newton. I should be loth to say the problem 
 is insoluble, but it is very far from being solved at present. 
 Kepler described hoio the earth moved round the sun, and that 
 is precisely what Newton did too, only with far greater clear- 
 ness and generality. The law of gravitation is a descrvption and 
 not an explanation of a certain motion. The motion of the 
 earth, said Newton, is such that its change can be described in 
 such and such a fashion. But why does its motion change in 
 this fashion ? Newton did not answer that question. Nobody 
 has yet answered it ; and he who fully answers it will have 
 probably discovered the relation between matter and mind. 
 Force is not then a real cause of change in motion, it is merely 
 a description of change in motion. Force is a how and not a
 
 MATTER AND SOUL 25 
 
 why. It is a description of how bodies change their motion, 
 and how they change their motion we can only discover by 
 observation. Force is, then, not a physical entity, but a state- 
 ment of experimental fact. Could anything be more com- 
 pletely absurd that the definition : " Matter is that which 
 exerts a statement of experimental fact " ? 
 
 But force being the ' how of a motion ' may naturally 
 suggest that matter is that which moves. This is a suggestion 
 well worth considering, although it has brought us very far 
 from the popular conception of a hard, impenetrable, force- 
 exerting entity. There can, in fact, be little doubt that all 
 the sensations which a thing, a so-called external body, pro- 
 duces in us — its visible form, its smell, its taste, its touch — are 
 attributed by the physicist to various phases of motion which 
 he supposes to exist in it. Once put an end to those motions, 
 and we should have no sensations, the thing for us would cease 
 to exist. It is no dogma, but downright common sense to 
 assert that if everything in the universe were brought to rest, 
 the universe would cease to be perceptible, or for all human 
 purposes we may say it would cease to be. The sensible 
 existence of matter is entirely dependent on the existence of 
 motion. Force having failed us, let us nov^ see if we can 
 approach matter better through motion. I do not think it is 
 necessary for me to explain to you what we understand by 
 position and shape, — these are things of which the mind can 
 form very clear ideas ; it can also form clear conceptions of 
 change of position and change of shape ; but such changes are 
 what we term motion. Motion is something, then, which is 
 intelligible to all of us, although all of us may not be able to 
 measure it with scientific accuracy. Can we now state any 
 great law of motion which, without requiring us to dogmatise 
 as to matter, will help us on our way ? I think we can. 
 Suppose we take two bodies and let them in any way influence 
 each other, what do we observe ? Why, that they change 
 each other's motions. This is the great fact of all physical 
 experience : Bodies are able to change each other's motions. 
 So sure is this fact, that we might even make a general 
 statement and say that everything in the universe is to a
 
 26 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 greater or less extent chauging the motion of every other 
 thing. JVliy is everything in the universe changing the 
 motion of every other thing in the universe ? The scientist 
 does not know, and he says so ; the metaphysician does not 
 know, but he does not say so. How is everything in the 
 universe changing the motion of every other thing ? The 
 scientist knows in a great many cases, and he says so ; it 
 is, in fact, the whole object of the physical sciences to describe 
 this how. The metaphysician does not know, but he generally 
 asserts he does, and for this reason he is worth reading — like 
 Mr. Gladstone, as a psychological study. 
 
 Physicists, solely by the processes of experiment and reason- 
 ing upon experiment, have discovered certain rules by which 
 bodies change each other's motion. These rules are merely 
 empirical rules, but they have so invariably given true results, 
 that no sane person would hesitate to accept them. One of 
 the most remarkable and valuable of these rules is the follow- 
 ing : If any two bodies change each other's motion, then the 
 ratio of the rates of change in their motion is a number, 
 which remains the same for the same two bodies however 
 they may influence each other; that is to say, whether one 
 is placed upon the other, or they are tied together by a string, 
 or charged with electricity, or whatever the relation may be. 
 Tliis rule is the great law of motion that we have been seek- 
 ing for, and is the basis of most physical science. There are 
 many rules subsidiary to this which have been discovered by 
 experiment connecting the numbers which represent the ratios 
 of rates of change for different bodies, but upon these I shall 
 not now enter. It will suffice here to add that physicists 
 give a name to these numbers ; they term the inverse of such 
 number the ratio of the masses of the two particular bodies with 
 which the number is associated. The point to which I wish 
 particularly to draw your attention is this, that the only thing 
 a scientist knows of mass is that it is a ratio of changes of 
 motion. This is perfectly intelligible ; motion is a clear idea, 
 rate of change of motion is a clear idea, and a number repre- 
 senting what multiple one rate of change of motion is of 
 another is also a perfectly clear conception. We can all
 
 MATTER AND SOUL 27 
 
 understand motion, we can all understand mass or this ratio 
 of the rates of change of motion. But upon motion and 
 mass the whole theory of modern physics depends. You will 
 see at once, if this be true, that such obscure ideas as force 
 and matter are quite unnecessary to modern physics, and you 
 may be pretty certain that, if any one describes the universe 
 to you as consisting of portions of matter exerting force upon 
 each other, and supposes therewith that he has given an ex- 
 planation, he is still labouring with confused ideas ; he is 
 still under the influence of the old superstitions, the old con- 
 ceptions of matter and force. Of matter we know nothing, 
 and such knowledge is not necessary for physical science ; of 
 force we can say that it never tells us ivkij anything happens, 
 but is only the description of a certain kind of motion dis- 
 covered by experiment or observation. 
 
 Science has indeed reduced the universe, not to those un- 
 intelligible concepts matter and force, but to the very intellig- 
 ible concept motion ; for, all we can understand at present or 
 require to understand of mass, is its measurement by motion. 
 iSTewton's assertion that ' mass is the quantity of matter in a 
 body ' is gratuitous. It endeavours to explain something of 
 which we can form a clear idea by something of which we 
 know absolutely nothing. How then did it arise? Merely 
 from a singular result of experiment being linked with the 
 old superstition of an impenetrable something — matter— fill- 
 ing space. The singular result of experiment is this: that 
 the numbers we have called the masses of bodies are found 
 for bodies of the same material to be proportional to their 
 sizes. Hence, mass for such bodies being proportional to 
 size, it was taken to be a measure of the stuff which was 
 supposed to fill size. By ' bodies of the same material,' I 
 only mean bodies, every element of which produces in us the 
 same characteristic sensations, whether chemical or physical. 
 So long as we consider the universe made up of things moving, 
 and altering each other's motion, we are on safe ground. But 
 you will ask : Why not call the things which move matter ? 
 Is it not a mere quibble as to terms ? I have no objection to 
 calling the moving things matter, but we must ever bear in
 
 28 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 miud tliat the moving things may be the last things in the 
 world which accord with the popular conception of matter, 
 they may even be its negation. What if the ultimate atom 
 upon which we build up the apparently substantial realities 
 of the external world be an absolute vacuum ? or, what if 
 matter be only non-matter in motion ? I do not say that the 
 moving thing is of this kind, because nobody as yet knows 
 what it really is, but let us endeavour to imagine something 
 of the kind. It will help us if we examine one or two atomic 
 hypotheses. Descartes, great geometrician as he was, held 
 extension not impenetrability the essence of matter. " Give 
 me extension and motion, and I will construct the world," he 
 cried. There is much to be said for this view of the moving 
 thing ; that all matter is shape, and not shape necessarily 
 tilled with something, approaches very near some of our 
 modern hypotheses. " Give me motion, and space capable 
 of changing its shape, and I will explain the universe to you," 
 is far more rational and much less mere boast than Kant's 
 " Give me matter and I will create the world." For, matter 
 being granted, not much universe is left to be explained. 
 
 But there have been hypotheses of matter — hypotheses 
 which have played no inconsiderable part in scientific theory 
 — which denied it even extension. We may especially note 
 that of Boscovitch. For him the ultimate elements of matter 
 were mathematical points, that is, points without extension ; 
 these points he endowed with attractive and repulsive forces. 
 Eemembering that all w^e can understand of force is a de- 
 scription of motion, we must consider the universe of Bosco- 
 vitch as made up of points which move in certain fashions. 
 Boscovitch's matter — a point without extension — would thus 
 only be distinguished from non-matter by the fact of its 
 motion, or we might well describe it as non-matter in motion. 
 
 A more probable and more recent hypothesis is the vortex- 
 atom theory of Sir William Thomson.^ There are very strong 
 reasons for believing that all the intervals and spaces between 
 what we term matter are filled up by something, which, while 
 it does not perceptibly resist the motion of matter, is yet itself 
 
 1 [Now Lord Kelvin.]
 
 MATTEE AND SOUL 29 
 
 capable of motion. The existence of this medium, capable of 
 conveying motion, is specially suggested, almost proven, by 
 certain phenomena of light. Now this medium, or ether as it 
 is termed, is quite intangible, it does not seem to influence the 
 motion of what is generally termed matter, and we are com- 
 pelled to treat it either as non-matter or else as a second and 
 totally different kind of matter. This dualism bears in itself 
 something unscientific, and the brilliant idea occurred to Sir 
 "William Thomson that matter might only be a particular 
 phase of motion in the ether. The form of motion suggested 
 by him was the vortex ring ; the atom was a vortex ring of 
 ether moving in the ether, somewhat as a smoker might blow 
 a smoke-ring into an atmosphere of smoke. The reason the 
 vortex ring was chosen was because it has been shown that in 
 a certain kind of fluid such a motion once started is, hke 
 the atom, indestructible. Sir William Thomson thus treated 
 what we popularly term matter as ether in motion. Could we 
 once stop this motion, the universe would be reduced to that 
 apparent void which separates our planet from the sun. In 
 popular language this is again very like asserting that matter 
 is non-matter in motion. Unfortunately Sir William Thom- 
 son's ether vortex rings do not appear to move in exactly the 
 same fashion as that in which we require our atoms to move. 
 The whole theory is still, however, sub j'udice. 
 
 Immaterial as the ether seems to be, we might even sug- 
 gest the possibility that an atom is a small portion of space 
 in which there is no ether, or in other words void of anything, 
 even the immaterial ether. A theory which supposes the 
 boundaries of these voids to be endowed with a certain 
 amount of energy will indeed account for some of the pheno- 
 mena of gravitation and cohesion. I only refer to this theory 
 as showing how delusive may be the common conceptions of 
 matter ; what we term the atom, the ultimate basis of matter, 
 may be the negation of all that is currently termed material, 
 it may be a void capable of motion. 
 
 Finally, let me mention a hypothesis suggested, but never 
 worked out, by the late Professor Clifford. Suppose I were to 
 take a flexible tube of very fine bore ; if I held it out straight
 
 30 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 it might be possible for me to drop a thin straight piece of 
 wire right through it. On the other hand, if I were to make 
 a bend in it, the wire would not go through unless it pushed 
 the bend before it. Now let us suppose the bit of wire 
 replaced by a worm, or some being which can only conceive 
 motion fonvards, not sideways. If the worm were in the 
 straight tube it could move ahead, and as it never had moved 
 sideways it might seem to itself to have perfect freedom of 
 motion — there would be no obstacle in its space. Now let us 
 suppose a ^vriukle or bend in the straight tube ; then if the 
 worm itself were perfectly flexible, it could go forwards and 
 find no obstacle in its space, notwithstanding the wrinkle. 
 But, alas ! for the worm if it were like the bit of wire, in- 
 capable of bending; when it came to the wrinkle, the 
 tube, its space, would appear perfectly open before it, but it 
 would find itself incapable of advancing further. The worm 
 must either push the bend before it, or else regard it as some- 
 thing impenetrable, as something which, however intangible, 
 still opposed its motion. The worm would look upon the 
 bend very much as we look upon matter. Yet the bend is 
 reaUy geometrical, not material ; it is a change in the shape 
 of space. Such an example may faintly suggest to your minds 
 how Clifford looked upon matter; matter was something in 
 motion, but that something was purely geometrical, it was 
 change in the shape of our space. You will note that in this 
 hypothesis space itself takes the place of the ether filling 
 space ; instead of a vortex ring in the ether, we shall have a 
 particular bend, possibly a geometrical twist-ring in space as 
 an element of matter. Matter would not necessarily cease to 
 be, because motion ceased, but would at once cease if space 
 became even, if all the bends, wrinkles, and twists were 
 smoothed out of it. Matter would only differ from non- 
 matter in its shape. 
 
 "Without laying stress upon any of the theories of matter 
 which I have briefly described to you, I would yet draw your 
 attention to a common feature of them all. They one and all 
 endeavour to reduce that obscure idea, matter, to something of 
 which we have a clearer conception, to our ideas of motion or
 
 MATTER AND SOUL 31 
 
 to our ideas of shape. Matter is non-matter in motion, or 
 matter is non-matter shaped. The ultimate element of matter 
 is something beyond the reach of experiment ; it is obvious 
 that these theories of matter are really only attempts to 
 describe our sensations by reducing them to motion and ex- 
 tension, categories of which we can form clear conceptions. 
 The sensible universe is for us built up of extension and 
 motion ; observation of the manner in which bodies influence 
 each other's motion enables us to lay down laws of motion 
 by which we render intelligible many physical phenomena. 
 Theories of matter are but attempts to render intelligible the 
 various kinds of motion which bodies produce in each other, 
 to explain the why of motion. No theory of matter can be 
 considered as a satisfactory, or at least as a final solution, 
 which only reduces matter of one kind to matter of another. 
 Thus, if the vortex-atom theory of Sir William Thomson be 
 true, we are only thrown back on the question : What is the 
 ether that it acts like a perfect fluid ? Or in other words, 
 what is it that causes the parts of the ether to exert pressure 
 on each other, or to change each other's motion ? We are 
 again thrown back on the why of a particular kind of motion. 
 The fact that it is impossible to explain matter by matter, to 
 deduce the laws which govern motion from bodies which them- 
 selves obey the laws of motion, has not always been clearly 
 recognised. It is no real explanation of gravitation and 
 cohesion, if I deduce them from the motion of the parts of 
 an ether, which again requires me to explain why its parts 
 mutually act upon each other. I may invent another ether 
 for this purpose, but where is the series to stop i To explain 
 matter on mechanical principles seems to me a hopeless task, 
 since our next stej) would be to deduce those mechanical 
 principles from the characteristics of our matter. The laws 
 of motion must flow from the nature of matter, and cannot 
 themselves explain matter. Hence if we explain our atom by 
 the laws of motion we may have gone back a useful and a 
 necessary stage, but we can be quite sure that the atom we are 
 considering is not the ultimate element of matter. 
 
 The problem of matter may be insoluble, but at least it
 
 32 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 cannot be solved on mechanical principles. If the laws of 
 motion are ever to be raised from the empirical to the 
 intelligible, we must tind the source of mechanism behind 
 matter. As to w^hat the nature of that source may be, science 
 is at present agnostic ; the source may be of the nature of 
 mind, or it may be of a nature at present inconceivable to 
 us ; it cannot, however, be material, nor can it be mechanical, 
 for that would be merely explaining matter by matter, 
 mechanism by mechanism. 
 
 Now although science must as yet remain purely agnostic 
 with regard to this problem, it is still of value to keep in 
 view every possibility as to the natm-e of matter. We find, 
 although we are in no way able to account for it, that two 
 bodies in each other's presence influence each other's motion. 
 We have often been able to state the hoiv, but never as yet 
 the ivhy. Is there any other phenomenon of which we are 
 conscious that at all resembles this apparently spontaneous 
 change of motion ? There is one which bears considerable 
 resemblance to it. I raise my hand, the change of motion 
 appears to you spontaneous ; the how of it might be explained 
 by a series of nerve-excitements and muscular motions, but 
 the why of it, the ultimate cause, you might possibly attribute 
 to something you termed my will. The will is something 
 which at least appears capable of changing motion. But 
 something moving is capable of changing the motion of some- 
 thing else. It is not a far step to suggest from analogy that 
 the something moving, namely matter, may be will. This 
 step was taken by Schopenhauer, who asserted that the basis 
 of the '-universe, the reality popularly termed matter, is will. 
 I must confess that I cannot fully understand the arguments 
 by which Schopenhauer arrived at this conclusion. It seems 
 to me as pure a bit of dogmatism as Boscovitch's mathematical 
 point. Still, dogma as it is, there is nothing absolutely absurd 
 in such a h}^othesis ; it at least does not attempt to explain 
 matter through matter. As a mere suggestion it will serve 
 to remind us of the possible nature of this unknown, if not 
 unknowable, entity matter. 
 
 We are now in a better position to form general con-
 
 MATTER AND SOUL 33 
 
 elusions as to the part matter plays in the scientific conception 
 of the universe. 
 
 1. The scientific view of the physical universe is based 
 upon motion and mass, the latter being merely a ratio of rates 
 of change of motion, hence we may say it is based simply on 
 motion. The rational theory of the physical universe deduced 
 from this view depends upon certain experimental laws of 
 motion. Once grant these laws, and science is capable of 
 rendering intelligible the most complex physical phenomena. 
 
 2. With regard to the nature of matter science is at 
 present entirely agnostic. It recognises, however, that if the 
 nature of matter could be discovered, the laws of motion ^ 
 would cease to be merely empirical and become rational. 
 
 We may, I think, add to these statements the following: — 
 
 3. It does not seem possible to explain matter on 
 mechanical principles, because to do so is merely to throw 
 back a gross matter on a possibly less gross matter, and is in 
 reality no explanation. 
 
 4. But, while science is entirely agnostic with regard to 
 matter, it is right for us to bear in mind the various attempts 
 which have been made to render matter intelligible ; notably, 
 Clifford's, which attempts to explain matter not on mechanical 
 but on geometrical principles — which would deduce mechanism 
 from geometry ; and Schopenhauer's, which attempts to explain 
 matter by the analogy of will. 
 
 Science is not indeed called upon at present to declare for 
 Clifford, Schopenhauer, or any other matter theorist ; yet it is 
 as well to remember that their theories open the door to the 
 possibilities of an infinite beyond. Were Clifford's theory 
 true, we must assert the existence of a space of four dimensions, 
 for otherwise we could not conceive a bend in our own space 
 we throw back the problem of matter upon a universe outside 
 our own of which we can know nothing — we can only assert 
 its existence. Were Schopenhauer's theory true, we should be 
 
 ^ The term "laws of motion " in tliis lecture is used in a wider sense tliau 
 that of dynamical text-books. It includes the hoioa of the I'undamental motions, 
 or what are usually termed the laws of gravitating, cohesive, magnetic, and 
 other forces.
 
 34 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 thrown back on the psychological problem of will, and might 
 possibly have to assert universal consciousness. Luckily, 
 science is not called upon at present to take any such leap 
 into obscurity ; it contents itself with recognising this vast 
 unknown as a problem of the future, and steadily refuses to 
 accept any solution, whether based upon a mechanical, a meta- 
 physical, or a theological dogma. 
 
 If I have in any way placed before you the true scientific 
 view of the universe, I think you will agree with me that the 
 popular conception of matter, as a hard, dead something, is 
 merely a superstition. The very essence of matter is motion, 
 and motion of such a kind that although we can describe 
 liow it takes place, we in no single case have yet discovered 
 why. "VVe do not say that the motion induced by two 
 particles of the ether in each other is really, but at least 
 it appears spontaneous. We do not say, when we see a 
 man raising his arm, that the motion is really, but at least 
 it appears spontaneous, — the outcome of what we term his 
 will. We are accustomed to associate apparently spontaneous 
 motion with life. Is there not, then, something extremely 
 absurd in terming matter dead ? 
 
 Let us take the most primitive organism possible, a simple 
 organic cell — what do we find in it at first sight ? A com- 
 bination of apparently spontaneous motions ; we believe 
 those motions are possibly not spontaneous, but we can only 
 say that we are unable at present to explain them. Let us 
 take the ultimate form of matter — if gross matter is going 
 to be explained by the ether, then a particle of the ether — 
 what do we find ? Why, that this particle has motion, and 
 is capable in some way of influencing the motion of other 
 particles. Where is it possible to draw the line between the 
 ultimate germ of life and the ultimate element of matter ? 
 Some of you may feel inclined to answer : But the ultimate 
 germ of life can reproduce itself. What does this exactly 
 mean ? It means that, if placed under favourable conditions, 
 it can collect other particles of matter and endow them with 
 movements similar to its own. But is there in this any- 
 thing more wonderful, more peculiarly a sign of life, than
 
 MATTER AND SOUL 35 
 
 there is in atoms collecting to form molecules, in molecules 
 collecting to form chemical compounds, and in chemical com- 
 pounds massing to form nebulae and eventually new planets ? 
 Why is one a more ' material ' process than the other ? 
 
 All life is matter, say some. This statement may mean 
 anything or nothing, according as to the dogma held with 
 regard to matter. But I venture to assert that the converse 
 means just as much, or just as little : — All matter is life, is not 
 a whit more absurd or dogmatic than : All life is matter. Our 
 ultimate element of matter has certain motions and capacities 
 for influencing motion, which we have not explained, so has 
 our ultimate germ of life. What then ? Shall we explain 
 life by mechanism ? Certainly, if we find that dogma satis- 
 factory, but remember that we have still to explain in what 
 mechanism consists. On the other hand, why not explain 
 mechanism by life ? Certainly, if we find that dogma more 
 satisfactory than the first, but remember that no one has yet 
 discovered what life is ! 
 
 But I fancy one of you objecting : This may be very true, 
 but it neglects the fundamental distinction between matter 
 and life, namely the phenomenon of consciousness. Very good, 
 my dear sir, let us endeavour to analyse this phenomenon 
 of consciousness, and see whether denying consciousness to 
 matter may not be just as dogmatic as asserting that matter 
 possesses it. Now let me ask you a question : Do you think 
 I am a conscious being, and if so, why ? The only answer you 
 can give to that question will be agnostic. You really do not 
 know whether I am conscious or not. Each individual ego can 
 assert of itself that it is conscious, but to assert that that 
 gTOup of sensations which you term me is conscious, is an 
 assumption, however reasonable it may appear. For you, sir, I 
 and the rest of the external world are automata, pure bits of 
 mechanism ; it may be practically advisable for you to endow 
 us with consciousness, but how can you prove it ? You will 
 reply : I see spontaneous actions on your part, similar to those 
 I can produce myself. I am compelled by analogy to endow 
 you with will and consciousness. Good ! you argue by analogy 
 that 1 have consciousness ; you will doubtless grant it to the
 
 36 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 animal world ; now you cannot break the chain of analogy any- 
 where till you have descended through the whole plant world 
 to the simple cell, there you find apparently spontaneous 
 motion and argue life — consciousness. Now I carry your 
 argument a step further and tell you that I find in the ulti- 
 mate atom of matter most complex phases of motion and 
 capacity for influencing the motion of others. All these things 
 are to me inexplicable. They api^ear spontaneous motion ; 
 ergo by analogy, dear sir, matter is conscious. 
 
 Now the only thing, which I am certain is conscious, is 
 my own individual ego ; I find nothing, however, more absurd 
 in the assertion that matter is conscious, than in the asser- 
 tion that the simple cell is conscious, or working upwards 
 that you are conscious. They are all at present unproven 
 assertions. That matter is conscious is no more nonsense 
 than that life is mechanism ; possibly some day, as the human 
 intellect develops with the centuries, we may be able to show 
 that one or other of these statements is true, or more probably 
 that both are true. 
 
 Those of you who have followed what I have said as to 
 force and matter will recognise that to consider the universe 
 capable of explanation on the basis of matter and force is to 
 endeavour to explain it by obscure terms, and is therefore 
 utterly unscientific. To the man of science, force is the 
 description of hoiu a motion changes, and tells him nothing 
 of the lohy. To the man of science, matter is something 
 which is behind mechanism ; if he knew its nature he could 
 explain why motions are changed, but he does not know. For 
 aught science can say, matter may be something as spiritual as 
 life, as mental as consciousness. How absurd, then, is the cry 
 of the theologian and the theologically minded, that modern 
 science would reduce the universe to a dead mechanism, to 
 ' little bits of matter exerting force on each other.' Modern 
 science has been striving to render the universe intelligible, to 
 replace the dead mechanism of the old creation -tales by a 
 rational, an intelligible process of evolution. What, then, if 
 she at present halts at the empirical laws of motion ? Is she 
 not quite sure that if she can but discover the nature of matter,
 
 MATTER AND SOUL 37 
 
 mechanism will be an intelligible and rational result of that 
 nature ? I admit a certain danger here ; so long as there was 
 no physical science, theologian and metaphysician rushed in, and 
 ' explained ' by dogma and with obscure definition the whole 
 physical universe. If men of science once clearly assert that 
 they are at present quite ignorant as to the nature of matter, 
 that the one thing they are sure of is that it is not 
 mechanism, but explains mechanism, then will not the 
 retreating band of theologians and metaphysicians take 
 refuge in this unknown land, and offer great opposition to the 
 true discoverers, the true colonists of the unknown, when 
 they finally approach its shores ? Something of this kind is 
 very likely to happen, but I do not apprehend much danger. 
 So long as the human intellect is in its present state of 
 development there will be theologians, and metaphysicians 
 will come into being, and it is perhaps as well they should 
 have some out-of-the-way corner to spin their cobwebs in. 
 Matter is perhaps as good a spot for them as soul, and might 
 keep them w^ell occupied for some time. Further, the possibility 
 of resistance in this sort of folk to the progress of knowledge 
 is now not very great ; its back has been broken in the 
 contest wherein scientific thought won for itself the physical 
 universe. The theologians of Galilei's era were all-powerful, 
 they could be aggressive and force him to recant ; the theo- 
 logians of to-day in congress assembled mourn over the pro- 
 gress of knowledge, but they cannot resist it. Let them make 
 what they will of matter ; science can only say : At present I 
 am ignorant, but I will not accept your dogma. If the day 
 comes, as I believe it will, when I shall know, then you and 
 your cobwebs will be promptly swept out. Not by inspira- 
 tion, not by myth, is the problem of matter to be solved, but 
 by the patient investigation and thought of trained minds 
 spread over years, possibly over centuries. What is im- 
 possible to the human intellect of to-day, may be easy for the 
 human intellect of the future. Each problem solved, not 
 only marks a step in the sum of human knowledge, but in 
 general connotes a corresponding widening in the capacity 
 of the human mind. The greater the mass of knowledge
 
 38 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 acquired, the more developed will be the faculty which has 
 been employed in acquiring such knowledge. We can look 
 fearlessly to the future, if we but fully cultivate and employ 
 our intellectual faculties in the present. 
 
 Let us now turn from matter to soul, and inquire how far 
 we can make any definite assertions with regard to soul. I have 
 used the word ' soul ' in my lecture, although mind would have 
 better suited my pm*pose, because had I spoken only of mind 
 you might have been led to imagine I admitted the existence 
 of a soul in the theological sense apart from mind. Now as 
 we are trying to discover facts and avoid imaginings, we must 
 dismiss from our thoughts at once all theological or meta- 
 physical dogma with regard to the soul. It may be matter of 
 myth, or of revelation, or of belief in any form, that the soul is 
 immortal, but it is not a matter of science — that is, of know- 
 ledge ; on the whole it is a delusive, if not a dangerous hyjDO- 
 thesis. Aristotle, in his great work on the soul, practically 
 identifies it with life {De Anima ii. 3). So also does his 
 disciple, the great Jewish philosopher, Maimonides, who even 
 grants a soul to the plant world {Eight Cliapters. Cha2:)ter I.). 
 It remained for Christian theology with dogmatic purpose to 
 distinguish soul from life. Hegel has defined the soul as the 
 notion of life, and though we must accept the definition of a 
 metaphysician with great caution, yet I do not think we shall 
 go far wrong in foUow-ing him, at least on this point. For, if 
 we begin to inquire what we mean by the notion of life, we 
 are inevitably thrown back on the phenomena of consciousness 
 and of will, — in fact, upon those ap'parently spontaneous 
 motions, which we have before referred to. Wherever we find 
 the notion of Life, there we postulate consciousness, or the possi- 
 bility of consciousness, and, except in the case of our indi- 
 vidual selves, we judge of consciousness only by apparently 
 spontaneous motions. If we accept the soul as the notion of 
 life, we cannot deny soul to any living thing, it must exist in 
 the most primitive organism ; but, as we have seen, it is mere 
 dogmatism which asserts that there is a qualitative difference 
 between the simplest cell and the ultimate vibrating atom. 
 We cannot say what is the ultimate element of matter ; it is
 
 MATTEE AND SOUL 39 
 
 equally idle to say, iu the present state of our knowledge, 
 ' matter is conscious,' or ' matter is unconscious.' If this be 
 so, and the possibility of consciousness be our notion of life, 
 or of soul, then it is nonsense for any one at the present time 
 to assert either that ' soul is matter,' or ' matter is soul.' We 
 must on this point be absolutely agnostic, hut we must at the 
 same time remember that all persons who draw a distinction 
 between soul and stuff, between matter and mind, are pure 
 dogmatists. There may be a distinction or there may not ; 
 we certainly cannot assert that there is. So far, then, from 
 idealism and materialism being opposed methods of thought, 
 it is within the range of possibility that they represent an 
 idle distinction of the schools. To assert that mind is the 
 basis of the universe and to assert that matter is the basis of 
 the universe are not necessarily opposed propositions, because 
 for aught w^e can say to the contrary mind and matter may 
 be at the bottom one and the same thing, or at least be only 
 different manifestations of one and the same thing. To assert 
 that ' mind is matter,' or that ' matter is mind,' is purely 
 meaningless, so long as we remain in our present complete 
 ignorance of the nature of the ultimate element of either. 
 Both are dogmas which can only be confirmed or refuted by 
 the growth of positive knowledge. 
 
 If om" consideration of matter and mind has been of any 
 value, it will have at least led us to admit the possibility of 
 the same element being at the basis alike of the physical and 
 of the mental universe. Let us inquire, in conclusion, whether 
 this possibility is in any way denied or confirmed by our 
 conceptions of physical and of mental law. 
 
 We may best reach our goal by a concrete example. The 
 old Greek astronomers, by observations as careful as the 
 means then possible allowed, discovered something of the 
 character of the motion of the sun, the earth, and the moon ; 
 this motion they represented with a certain degree of accuracy 
 Ijy a complex system of circles, by eccentric and epicycle. 
 This was a result which satisfies the notion still widely 
 current that a physical law is a mere statement of physical 
 fact. Experiment and observation give us a class of facts
 
 40 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 which we can embrace under one general statement. We 
 have before our experiment no reason for saying the statement 
 will be of one kind rather than another, and after our experi- 
 ment the only reason for the statement is the sensilJe fact on 
 which we base it. Such a physical statement is termed an 
 empirical law, its discovery depends not on reason, but on 
 observation. Physical science abounds in such empirical laws, 
 and their existence has led certain confused thinkers to look 
 upon the physical universe as a complex of empirical law, not 
 as an intelligible whole. At this point the mathematician 
 steps in and says there is something behind your empirical 
 laws, they are not independent statements, but flow rationally 
 one from the other. Tell me the laws of motion and I will 
 rationally deduce the physical universe ; the physical universe 
 no longer shall appear a complex of empirical law, you shall 
 see it as an intelligible whole. If Newton's description of 
 the manner in which sun, earth, and moon fall towards each 
 other be the true one, then they must move in such and such 
 a fashion. The Greek eccentric and epicycle are no longer 
 empirical descriptions of motion, they have become intellectual 
 necessities, the logical outcome of Newton's description of 
 planetary motion. Grant for a moment that Newton's law of 
 gravitation is the whole truth, then I say earth, sun, and 
 moon must move in such and such a fashion. So great is our 
 confidence in the power of the reason, that when it leads us 
 to a result which has not been confirmed or discovered by 
 physical observation, we say : Look more carefully, get better 
 instrmnents, and you will find it must be so. There are 
 several instances of reason discovering before observation the 
 existence of a new physical phenomenon. 
 
 Now in this process of rendering the universe an in- 
 telligible whole, a very important fact comes to hght, to 
 which I wish to draw your special attention. Let us grant 
 for a moment that we have in Newton's law of gravitation 
 the whole truth as to the way earth, sun, and moon are 
 falling towards each other. We work out on our paper the 
 whole of their most complex motions, and we find that the 
 results agree completely with the physical phenomena. But
 
 MATTEE AND SOUL 41 
 
 why should they ? Why should the intellectual, rational 
 process on our paper coincide absolutely with the physical 
 process outside ? Why is it not possible for one empirical law 
 of the universe to be logically contrary to another ? Starting 
 from one empirical law, why should we not by reasoning 
 thereon arrive at a result opposed to another ? But you will 
 answer : This is absurd, Nature cannot contradict herself. I 
 can only say my experience teaches me she never does con- 
 tradict herself, but that does not explain why she never does. 
 
 When we say that Nature cannot contradict herself, we 
 are really only asserting that experience teaches us that 
 Natui-e never contradicts, not herself, but our logic. In 
 other words, the laws of the physical universe are logically 
 related to each other, flow rationally the one from the other. 
 This is really the greatest result of human experience, the 
 greatest triumph of the human mind. TJie laivs of the 
 physical iiniverse folloio the logical processes of the human mind. 
 The intellect — the human mind — is the keynote to the 
 physical universe. To contrast a law of matter and a law of 
 mind is as dogmatic as to contrast matter and mind. It is 
 true that we are a long way yet from that glorious epoch 
 when empirical laws will be dismissed from science. Even if 
 we deduced aU such laws from the simplest laws of motion, 
 we should have still to show how those laws of motion are a 
 rational result of the nature of matter ; we have still to dis- 
 cover what matter is, before we render the whole physical 
 universe intelligible. But did we know the nature of matter, 
 there is little doubt that we could rationally create the whole 
 universe ; every step would be a logical, a mental process. 
 It is a strong argument for the possible identity of matter 
 and mind, if from one and from the other alike the whole 
 physical universe can be deduced. Externally, matter appears 
 as the basis of a world, every process of which is in logical 
 sequence ; internally, mind pictures a similar world following 
 exactly the same sequence. It is difficult to deny the piossi- 
 bility of both having their ultimate element of a like quality. 
 This identity of the physical and the rational processes is the 
 greatest truth mankind has learnt from experience. So great
 
 42 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 is our confidence in this truth that we reject any statement 
 of a physical fact which opposes our clear reasoning. To state 
 that a physical fact is opposed to reason, is, nowadays, to 
 destroy the possibility of thought. We argue at once that 
 our senses have deceived us, that the fact is a delusion, a 
 misstatement of what took place. Any physical fact which is 
 opposed to a physical law is opposed to a mental law ; we 
 cannot think it, — it is impossible. 
 
 That is all the man of science means when he says that for 
 a dead man to arise out of his tomb and talk is nonsense ; he 
 would have to cease thinking, were such things possible. My 
 law of thought is to me a greater truth, a greater necessity of 
 my being than the God of the theologian. If that God, 
 according to the theologian, does something which is contrary 
 to my law of thought, I can only say I rate my mind above 
 his God. I prefer to treat the world as an intelligible whole, 
 rather than to reduce it to what it seems to me the theologian 
 ought in his own language to term a ' blind mechanism.' 
 To any one who tells me that he only means by God the 
 spiritual something which is at the basis of physical pheno- 
 mena, I reply : ' Very good, your God then will never con- 
 tradict my reason, and the best guide I can adopt in life is 
 my reason, which, when rightly applied, will never be at 
 variance with your God.' Nay, I might even suggest a 
 further possibility. What we call the external, the pheno- 
 menal world, is for us but a succession of sensations; of 
 the ultimate cause of those sensations, if there be one, we 
 know nothing. All we can say is, that when we analyse 
 those sensations we find more than a barren succession, we 
 find a logical sequence. This logical sequence is for us the 
 external world as an intelligible whole. But what if it be 
 the mind itself which gives this logical sequence to our 
 sensations ? AVhat if our sensating faculty must receive its 
 images in the logical order of mind ? We know too well that 
 when the mind fails the sensations no longer follow a logical 
 order. To the madman and the idiot there is no real 
 world, no intelligible universe as we know it. May it not be 
 the human mind itself which brings the intelligible into
 
 MATTEE AND SOUL 43 
 
 phenomena ? Then they who call the intelKgible which they 
 find in the laws of the physical universe God will be lut 
 deifying the human mind. It is but a possibility I have 
 hinted at, but one full of the richest suggestions for our life 
 and for our thought. The mind of man may be that which 
 creates for him the intelligible world ! At least it suggests a 
 worship and a religion which cannot lead us far away from 
 the truth. 
 
 If for a moment we choose to use the old theological terms, 
 hallowed as they are with all the feelings and emotions of the 
 past, how rich they appear once more with these new and 
 deeper meanings ! Symbols which may raise in the men of the 
 future an enthusiasm as great as the symbols of Christianity 
 have raised in the men of the past ! Keligious devotion would 
 become the pursuit of knowledge, worship the contemplation of 
 what the human mind has achieved and is achieving; the 
 saints and priests of this faith would be those who have worked 
 or are working for the discovery of truth. Theology, no longer 
 a dogma, would develop with the thought, with the intellect 
 of man. No room here for dissent, no room here for sect ; 
 not belief variable as the human emotions, but knowledge 
 single as the human reason would dictate our creed. Nothing 
 assuming, neither fearing to confess our ignorance, nor hesi- 
 tating to proclaim our knowledge, surely we all might worship 
 in one church. Then, again, the Church might become 
 national ; nay, universal, for 07ie Eeason existeth in all men. 
 Cultivate only that one God we are certain of, the mind in 
 man ; and then surely we may look forward in the future to 
 a day when the churches shall be cleared of their cobwebs, 
 when loud-tongued ignorance shall no longer brazen it in their 
 pulpits, nor meaningless symbols be exposed upon their altars. 
 Then will come the day when we may blot out from then- 
 portals : " He is dead and has arisen ; I believe because it is 
 impossible ; " and may inscribe thereon (as Sir William 
 Hamilton over his class-room) : " On earth there's nothing 
 great but man : in man there's nothing great but 
 mind " — "I believe because I understand." Not to con- 
 vert the world into a ' dead mechanism,' but to give to
 
 44 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 humanity in the future a religion worthy of its intel- 
 lect, seems to me the mission which modern science has 
 before it. 
 
 Note to Pages 16 and 23. — The old idea of matter affords an ex- 
 cellent example of how it is impossihle to think things other than they 
 really are without coming to an ' unthought,' — a self-contradictory concept. 
 ' Matter is that Avhich exerts force and is characterised by extension.' 
 ' Mass is the quantity of matter in a body.' ' An Atom is the ultimate 
 indivisible element of Matter.' But the j^hysicist endows his atom with 
 mass ; hence the basis of material sensations itself possesses matter, i.e., 
 is extended. We tlius find it impossible to conceive it as indivisible or 
 ultimate. Professor E. du Bois-Reymond, in his well-known lecture 
 {Ueber die Grenzen des Naturerkennens, Leipzig, 1876, pp. 14, 15), finds 
 here an xmloslicher Widerspruch, and despairing over this limit to our 
 understanding, cries : lynorabimus ! But what can we expect but an 
 intellectual chaos, if we start from the hj^iothesis that : ' the material 
 world will be scientifically intelligible so soon as Ave have deduced it from 
 atomic motions caused by the mutual action of central atomic forces ? ' 
 
 [The writer, although he had at this date thrown off the materialism 
 embodied in a phenomenal matter and force, still — with the majority of 
 physicists — had failed to recognise the conceptual character of motion. 
 He had not realised all science as a description, and physical concepts as 
 symbols. He still looked upon them as images of phenomenal realities.]
 
 Ill 
 
 THE PEOSTITUTION OF SCIENCE^ 
 
 How fertile of resource is the theologic method, when it once has clay 
 for its wheel ! — Clifford. 
 
 An interesting psychological study might well be based on a 
 comparison of the mental characteristics of the present and the 
 late Presidents of the Ptoyal Society. The former unrivalled 
 in his analysis of intricate physical problems, demands absolute 
 accuracy in mathematical reasoning, and is ever ready to 
 destroy the argument from analogy or the flimsy hypothesis — 
 witness his earlier polemic against the pseudo-hydrodynamicists. 
 The latter has spent the greater part of his energies on the 
 investigation and elucidation of a branch of science which as 
 yet has hardly developed beyond the descriptive stage. Place 
 before these two men a complex problem needing the most 
 cautious reasoning, the most careful balancing of all the 
 arguments that can be brought forward, and the most stringent 
 logic — can there be a doubt that the mathematically trained 
 mind will see farther and more clearly than the mind of the 
 descriptive scientist? The argument from analogy, while 
 shunned by the former, will seem natural to the latter, who has 
 been accustomed to qualitative rather than quantitative 
 distinctions. Yet how totally opposed to this plausible con- 
 clusion is the actual state of the case! How much more 
 than scientific training is evidently needed to give the mind 
 logical accuracy when dealing with intellectual problems ! It 
 is Professor Huxley, wlio, well versed in what the thinkers of 
 
 1 Written in 1887.
 
 46 THE ETHIC OF EKEETHOUGHT 
 
 the past have contributed to human knowledge, shatters with 
 irresistible logic the obscure cosmical speculations of Ezra and 
 Mr. Gladstone. It is Professor Stokes/ who like a resuscitated 
 Palej, discovers in the human eye an evidence of design, and 
 startles the countrymen of Hume with a physico- theological 
 proof of the existence of the deity ! Poor Scotland ! What 
 with yearly Burnett Lectures and three Gifford iProfessors of 
 Natural Theology, her people will either be driven into blatant 
 atheism or have their mental calibre reduced to the level of a 
 Bridgewater treatise ! It is true Professor Drummond has 
 written a work wherein, by the light of analogy, dogma is seen 
 draped in the mantle of science — a work, the sale of which by 
 the tens of thousands is, like the Society for Psychical Eesearch, 
 gratifying evidence of an almost desperate craving for a last 
 stimulant to supersensuous belief. It is true the neo-Hegehans 
 of Glasgow can deduce the Trinity by an ontological process 
 almost as glibly as their brethren of Balliol ; yet it remained 
 for Professor Stokes to present Scotland with a new edition of 
 the rare old " argument from design." " We doubt whether 
 his fellow natural theologians will thank the Professor for the 
 gift, for they are already well on the road to the discovery 
 of a hitherto neglected category which shall supersede causa- 
 tion — at least for the physiologists. It is worth while, 
 however, to consider this gift a little more closely because it 
 is quite certain that if the ' natural theologian ' does not re- 
 gard it with favour, the supernatural theologian, in other 
 words the workaday parson, will be only too glad (like the 
 mediaeval schoolman who cancelled one set of twenty -five 
 authorities by a second twenty-five) to cancel one president of 
 the Eoyal Society by a second. 
 
 Let us approach the problem by trying to state briefly 
 what is legitimately deducible from the ' order ' of the 
 universe, and then expose the fallacies of Professor Stokes' 
 reasoning. The first and the only fundamentally safe con- 
 clusion we can draw from the apparently invariable sequence 
 
 1 [Now Sir George Gabriel Stokes.] 
 
 2 On the Beiwficial Effects of Light. Burnett Lectures, By George Gabriel 
 Stokes, M.A., F.R.S., etc. Fourth lecture, pp. 78-97.
 
 THE PKOSTITUTION OF SCIENCE 47 
 
 or ' order ' of natural phenomeua, is that : Like sensations 
 invariably occur to us in similar groupings. This is no 
 absolute knowledge of natural phenomena, but a knowledge 
 of our own sensations. Further, our knowledge of the 
 ' invariability ' is only the result of experience, and is 
 based, therefore, upon probability. The probability deduced 
 from the sameness experienced in the sequences of one 
 repeated group of sensations is not the only factor, however, 
 of this invariability. There is an enormous probability in 
 favour of a general sameness in the sequences of all repeated 
 groups of sensations. In ordinary language this is expressed 
 in the fundamental scientific law : " The same causes will 
 always produce the same effects." In any case where a new 
 group of causes produces a novel effect, we do not want to repeat 
 this new grouping an enormous number of times in order to be 
 sure that the like effect always follows. We repeat the group- 
 ing only so often as will suffice to acquaint us with the exact 
 sequence of cause and effect, and then we are convinced that 
 the effect will always follow owing to the enormous probability 
 in favour of the inference as to sameness in the sequence of a 
 repeated grouping.^ Our confidence in the ' order ' of natural 
 phenomena is thus proportional to our knowledge of its enormous 
 probability ; this is based upon wide experience in the sameness of 
 the sequences which groupings of sensations adopt whenever they 
 are repeated. The ' order,' so far as we are able to trace it back, 
 lies in the sameness of the sensational sequences, not necessarily 
 in the Dinge an sich. The sensations reach the perceptive 
 faculty under the fundamental forms of time and space ; 
 sequence of sensations in time, and sometimes apparent con- 
 junction in space, have led mankind to formulate the category 
 of causation. If the sensation A invariably follows B, or even 
 if B is invariably found associated with A, we sj)eak of them 
 as cause and effect. But as yet there is not the slightest 
 evidence that the ' order ' extends beyond our perceptive faculty 
 
 1 A good example of this is the solidification of hydrogen, which has perhaps 
 only been accomplished (1886) two or three times, yet no scientist doubts its 
 possibility. The criticism of Boole on the proliability basis of our knowledge of 
 sequence in natural phenomena (Luivs of Thwiuj/ht, pp. 370-75) has been, I think, 
 sufficiently met by Professor ¥. Y, Edgeworth {Mind, 1885).
 
 48 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 and the mode of our perception to the Dinge an sich. The 
 ' order ' of the universe maij arise from my having to perceive 
 it, if I perceive it at all, under the forms of space and time. 
 My perceptive faculty may put the * order ' into my sensations. 
 To argue that because this order exists there must be an 
 organising faculty is perfectly legitimate. To proceed, how- 
 ever, from the human mind to the order in sensations, and then 
 assert that the order we find in the universe (or rather in the 
 sum of our sensations) requires a ' universe orderer ' on an 
 infinite scale, is the obvious fallacy of what Kant has termed 
 the physico-theological proof of the existence of a deity. It is 
 to throw the human mind into phenomena, and then let it be 
 reflected out of them into the unreachable or unknowable God ; 
 to argue like savages, because we see om'selves in a mirror, 
 that there is an unknown being on the other side ! From our 
 sensations we can only deduce something of the same order as 
 our sensations, or of the perceptive faculty which co-ordinates 
 them ; from finite perceptions and conceptions we can only pass 
 to finite perceptions and conceptions ; from ' physical facts ' to 
 physical facts of the same quality.^ We cannot put into 
 them anything of an order not involved in their nature. From 
 sequence in sensations we can reach a perceptive faculty of the 
 finite magnitude of the human, and nothing more ; we cannot 
 logically formulate a creator of matter, a single world organiser, 
 an infinite mind, nor a moral basis of the universe such as the 
 theologian, the reconciler, or even Kant himself really requires. 
 An ontological, never a physico-theological process may attempt 
 to deduce the existence of a moral basis. The dogma of 
 identifying the human with the divine mind will, indeed, 
 enable us to get out of the argument from design a pantheistic, 
 but never a moral basis of the universe. The last page of 
 Professor Stokes' work proves that he was himself dimly 
 conscious of not having ' deduced ' exactly the sort of deity he 
 was in search of. By a series of assumptions, not to say 
 fallacies, he could reach a deity, either ' too anthropomorphic ' 
 or else a ' sort of pantheistic abstraction ' ; as he only started 
 
 1 Kant, Der einzig mwjliche BncrAsgrund zi', eiTier Demonstration fur das 
 Basein Gottes. Ausg. Hartenstein. Bd. ii. pp. 165, 203, etc.
 
 THE PEOSTITUTION OF SCIENCE 49 
 
 with the humau mind, these results are not surprising. To 
 obtain the divine being of the theologians he must finally 
 appeal to revelation. We need scarcely remark that had he 
 begun with it, he would have saved us some bad logic and 
 left his own position quite unassailable ; the theologian, who 
 fences himself in behind belief in revelation, and disregards 
 natural theology and the neo-Hegelian ontology of our modern 
 schoolmen, is beyond our criticism, and at least deserves our 
 respect, in that he does not seek to strengthen his conviction 
 in the accuracy of Peter and Paul's evidence by arraying 
 dogma in the plumes of science and philosophy. 
 
 If the law of causation, the ' order ' of the universe, be 
 really, as we have stated above, a result of the human per- 
 ceptive faculty always co-ordinating sensations in the same 
 fashion, it is obvious that the basis of the ' order ' in the 
 universe must be sought in the perceptive faculty, and not in 
 the sensations themselves ; the ultimate law of phenomena, as 
 we perceive them, will be a law of the perceptive faculty, and 
 more akin to a law of thought than a law of matter in the 
 ordinary sense of the term. Indeed no so-called law of nature 
 based upon observation of our sensations is anything more than 
 a description of their sequence ; it is never, as is often vulgarly 
 supposed, the cause of that sequence. Although Professor 
 Stokes undoubtedly recognises this, there are one or two 
 phrases in his book not unlikely to encourage the vulgar belief. 
 Thus he speaks in one place (p. 79) of " matter obeying the 
 law of gravitation," and in another of gravitation " as holding 
 together the components of the most distant double star as 
 well as maintaining in their orbits the planets of our system," 
 The careless reader might be led to look upon the law of 
 gravitation as the cause of planetary motion, although this 
 is, of course, not Professor Stokes' intention. The law of 
 gravitation answers no loJiy, only tells us a hoiv ; it is a purely 
 descriptive account of the sequence in our sensations of the 
 planets ; it tells us more fully and generally than Kepler's 
 so-called laws the hoio oi planetary motion ; it tells us that 
 the planetary and otlier bodies are changing the velocities with 
 which they move about each other in a certain fashion. 
 
 4
 
 50 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 IVTiy they thus change their velocities it does not attempt to 
 tell us, and the explanation of the law of gravitation, which 
 we are all waiting for, will only throw us back on a still 
 wider, but none the less a descriptive law of the motion of the 
 parts of the universe. Even if we were able to throw back 
 the whole complex machinery of the universe on the simplest 
 motion of its simplest parts, our fundamental physical law 
 could only, as dealing with sensations, be a descriptive one. 
 To pass from that descriptive law to its cause we should be 
 thrown back upon the perceptive faculty, and be compelled to 
 answer why it must co-ordinate under change in time and 
 place, or under the category of motion (and in this case 
 motion of a particular kind), the simplest conceptions to which 
 it can reduce the universe, or the sum of its sensations. 
 Granted that I do see one and not a series of coloured images 
 of an object, it is obviously necessary that when I come to 
 study the build of my eye I must find it a fairly achromatic 
 combination, otherwise one series of sensations would be 
 opposed to another ; our perceptions would contradict each 
 other, and thought become impossible. I can only think 
 according to the law that contradictions cannot exist, and 
 there is no more wonder that I find the eye a fairly achromatic 
 combination than that I see only one image. Given that I 
 have a sensation of a single image of an object, my perceptive 
 faculty compels my sensations of the structure of the eye to 
 be in harmony with the former sensation. To argue from the 
 harmony existing among my sensations to a like harmony and 
 order in the Dinge an sich is to multiply needlessly the causes 
 of natural phenomena, and so break Newton's rule of which 
 Professor Stokes himself expresses approval. If the human 
 perceptive faculty is capable of so co-ordinating sensations 
 that all the groups maintain their own sequence, and are in 
 perfect harmony with each other, shortly that ' order ' and 
 ' design ' appear in natural phenomena, what advantage do we 
 gain by needlessly multiplying causes and tlirowing back the 
 * order ' and harmony of our sensations upon the Dinge an sich, 
 and an unknowable intellectvial faculty behind them ? 
 
 To sum up then the conclusions of this brief treatment
 
 THE PEOSTITUTION OF SCIENCE 51 
 
 of the problem, in order to investigate by their light Professor 
 Stokes' fourth lecture, we find : — 
 
 1. That nothing can be deduced from our sensations, 
 which is not of the same order as those sensations or the 
 faculty which perceives them ; we can deduce only the physical 
 (or descriptive law) and the perceptional (or true causative) 
 law of sequence. 
 
 2. That there may or may not be order and harmony in 
 the Dinge an sich. It is a problem we have not the least 
 means of answering by physical or psychological investigation. 
 To assume, however, that the order of our sensations connotes 
 a like order in the Binge an sich is to " multiply needlessly 
 the causes of natural phenomena." 
 
 3. That physical science must remain agnostic with regard 
 to such order and with regard to an infinite mind behind it 
 among the unknowable bases of our sensations. 
 
 4. That theology cannot obtain aid from science in this 
 matter because the latter deals only with the sensational, and 
 cannot proceed from that to quantities of an entirely different 
 nature — to the supersensational. To reach the supersensa- 
 tional, theology must take the responsibility on her own 
 shoulders of asserting the unthinkable — of asserting a revela- 
 tion, an occurrence which lies entirely outside the sensations 
 and the percipient with which alone science has to deal. 
 Theology must cry with Tertullian : Credo quia ahsurdum est. 
 
 It will be seen from the above that revelation and matter 
 — the Dinge an sich — are the unknowable wherein the theo- 
 logian can safely take refuge from the scientist. Let him 
 remember that our only conception of matter is drawn from 
 the sensation of motion, and that the ultimate phase of this 
 motion we can only describe, not explain, then he will have no 
 hesitation in shaking hands with Ludwig Biichner, and sharing 
 the unknowable with that prince of dogmatists. Strange as 
 it may seem, it is nevertheless true, that in materialism lies 
 the next lease of life for theology. 
 
 Let us now turn to the remarkable fourth lecture of the 
 third Burnett course. Had the President of the lloyal Society 
 been writing on a purely scientific as distinguished from a
 
 52 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 theosophical subject, there is little doubt what Ms method 
 woidd have beeu. He would have referred to what previous 
 researchers had ascertained on the subject, he would have 
 clearly stated the relation of his own work to theirs, and if in 
 any case he had come to conclusions differing from those of 
 first-class thinkers, he would have been careful to state the 
 reasons for his divergence, and shown that he had not lightly 
 put aside their results. Why should Professor Stokes, when 
 he approaches an intricate intellectual problem, think he may 
 discard the scientific and scholarly method ? When an argu- 
 ment, which orthodox and heterodox philosophical thinkers 
 aUke have set aside for nearly a century as valueless, is drawn 
 in a state of rust from the intellectual armoury, and, without 
 any pretence to much furbishing, is hurled at the head of our 
 trusty Scot, surely we must demand some explanation, and not, 
 like a distinguished Scottish mathematician, hail as an " ex- 
 ceedingly clear statement " ^ a lecture which gives no evidence 
 whatever that the writer has duly weighed the lucid dialogues 
 of Hume, or the elaborate arguments of Kant and the post- 
 Kantians. Whatever may have been Hume's own opinion, 
 whether he thoroughly agreed with Cleanthes as he states, or 
 merely used Cleanthes as a mask for his real opinions as pro- 
 pounded by Philo, there can be no doubt that Cleanthes gives 
 no valid reply to Philo's arguments ; and as Professor Huxley 
 has observed, Hume has dealt very unfairly to the reader if 
 he knew of such a reply and concealed it {Hume, p. 180). 
 As for Kant, he found, even in his pre-critical days, that the 
 " only possible proof " for the existence of a deity was onto- 
 logical, and the process by which, in his post-critical period, 
 he deduced the second " only possible proof " of the existence 
 of a deity from the need of a moral world -orderer (when, 
 transcending the limit of the human understanding, he dis- 
 covered the Dinge an sich to be Will), was the very reverse of 
 the argument from design. As for Hegel, let us for once 
 quote from a metaphysician a paragraph which we can approve, 
 
 ' Professor P. G. Tait, in a characteristic article in Nature, June 2, 1887t 
 But then the author of The Unseen Universe probably means by a ' clear state- 
 ment ' one which is suggestive but does not involve a logical proof.
 
 THE PEOSTITUTION OF SCIENCE 53 
 
 and which Professor Stokes would do well to take to 
 heart : 
 
 " Teleological modes of investigation often proceed from a 
 well-meant desire of displaying the wisdom of God, especially 
 as it is revealed in nature. Now in thus trying to discover 
 final causes, for which the things serve as means, we must 
 remember that we are stopping short at the finite, and are 
 liable to fall into trifling reflections. An instance of such 
 triviaHty is seen when we first of all treat of the vine solely in 
 reference to the well-known uses which it confers upon man, 
 and then proceed to view the cork-tree in connection with the 
 corks which are cut from its bark to put into wine-bottles. 
 Whole books used to be written in this spirit. It is easy to 
 see that they promoted the genuine interest neither of religion 
 nor of science. External design stands immediately in front 
 of the idea ; but what thus stands on the threshold often for 
 that reason gives the least satisfaction."^ 
 
 " Whole books used to be written in this spirit," Hegel 
 tells us, and now Professor Stokes gives us a whole lecture 
 without so much as suggesting that his method of argument 
 has been subjected to the most severe criticism. But perhaps 
 this absence of reference to previous writers is excusable; it 
 may be that Professor Stokes' own arguments are so con- 
 clusive that the criticism of the past falls entirely short of 
 them. Let us investigate this point. Our lecturer commences 
 by telling us that he is going to devote his last lecture to the 
 illustration afforded by his subject to the theme proposed by 
 old John r>m'nett in his original endowment (1784), namely — 
 
 " That there is a Being, all-powerful, wise, and good, by 
 whom everything exists ; and particularly to obviate difficulties 
 regarding the wisdom and goodness of the Deity ; and this, in 
 the first place, from considerations independent of written 
 revelation," — and so on. 
 
 It must be confessed that the only way we see, in which 
 old John Burnett's bequest could have been made available 
 for obviating the before -mentioned difficulties, would be the 
 proper encouragement of internal illumination, so that the 
 
 ^ The Loffic of Hcgcl, trans. Wallace, p. 299.
 
 54 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 world might possibly have been provided witli oral revelation 
 of a more modern type than that ' written revelation,' which 
 in the first place is to be neglected. However, Professor 
 Stokes has thought otherwise, and in the Beneficial Effects of 
 Light he hopes to obviate our intellectual difficulties as to 
 this all-powerful, wise, and good Being. 
 
 He commences by telling us of the order which the law 
 of gravitation has introduced into our conceptions of the 
 planetary system, and how, if we went no further than that 
 treatment of the subject which concentrates the planets into 
 particles, and so deals only approximately with one side of 
 their motion, we could predict indefinite continuance in time 
 to come for the planetary system. All this is admirable 
 truth, or very nearly truth. Then we are told how the 
 physical condition of the planetary bodies no longer treated 
 as particles, but as worlds, is solely but surely changing ; the 
 sun is losing its heat, the planets their volcanic energies, the 
 earth her rotation owing to tidal friction, — shortly, the 
 physical condition of the solar system is changing even as its 
 position in the stellar universe. Again very true, and what 
 is the just conclusion ? Obviously : That solar systems may 
 be built up, develop physically for billions of years, and then 
 collapse ; perhaps in long ages to form again parts of other 
 systems. So much we may conclude, and nothing more. 
 But what has our lecturer to say on this point ? Let us 
 quote his own words : 
 
 " The upshot is that even if we leave out of account all 
 organisation, whether of plants or animals, we fail to find in 
 the material system of nature that which we can rest on as 
 self-existent and uncaused. The earth says it is not in me, 
 and the sun saith it is not in me " (p. 82). 
 
 That worlds may come into existence and again pass away, 
 and that the period during which human life can exist upon them 
 is limited, are truths which have long been evident to every 
 one except the endless progress worshippers of the Positivist 
 type. But what is there in the evolution of worlds more than 
 in the birth and death of a cock-sparrow to justify us in 
 assuming that the one more than the other is ' caused ' ? The
 
 THE PROSTITUTION OF SCIENCE 55 
 
 shape and physical constitution of the universe at one instant 
 differ from what they are at the next ; and to say that no phase 
 of universal life is self-existent, is merely to say that universal 
 life is ever changing. The human being is continually gain- 
 ing new cells and losing old ones, but shall we argue from the 
 fact that these cells are not self- existent, that the human 
 being also is not self- existent ? Because the universe loses 
 one solar system and gains another, is this any evidence that 
 the universe is not self-existent ? If it be, we may at least 
 content ourselves with the modest example of a cock-sparrow 
 whose death is a more obvious fact than the decay of the 
 planetary system to the ordinary observer. 
 
 "When, from the contemplation of mere dead matter, we 
 pass on to the study of the various forms of life, vegetable 
 and animal, the previous negative conclusion at which we 
 had arrived is greatly strengthened." Although Professor 
 Stokes sees the possibility of the evolution of worlds without 
 a definite act of creation, he still speaks of a iwevious conclusion 
 (as if any real conclusion had been reached at all !), and pro- 
 ceeds to confirm it by showing that animal and vegetable life 
 is not self- existent or uncaused. Before we examine this 
 next stage in the argument, we would draw attention to the 
 almost Gladstonian phrase, ' mere dead matter.' As we have 
 previously pointed out, we know nothing whatever of the 
 nature of matter, our simplest physical conceptions are those 
 of motion ; physicists describe the ultimate elements of the 
 universe as in motion, Imt why they are in motion, and 
 apparently uncaused motion,^ no one has the least means of 
 determining. Self-existent motion is not exactly what we 
 associate with death, and in fact the whole phrase, ' mere dead 
 matter,' might lead the uninitiated to suppose we had a com- 
 plete knowledge of the cause of our sensations, while in fact 
 we are in absolute ignorance with regard to it. 
 
 Having disposed of dead, let us turn to living matter. 
 Here there are two problems to be investigated. What is 
 the origin of life in any form on the earth ? and, What is the 
 origin of the diverse forms of life that we find upon it ? 
 
 ' For exam I lie, the internal vibrational energy of the concept 'atom.'
 
 56 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 These are problems to which science has not yet given 
 final answers ; we at present deal only with probable 
 hypotheses, but these hypotheses we must judge according 
 to Newton's rule, " which," in the words of Professor Stokes, 
 " forbids us needlessly to multiply the causes of natural 
 phenomena." In attempting to answer the first question we 
 must keep the following possibilities before us : 
 
 1. There never was any origin to life in the universe, it 
 having existed from all time like the matter which is vulgarly 
 contrasted with it ; it has changed its form, but never at any 
 epoch begun to be. 
 
 2. Life has originated " spontaneously from dead matter." 
 
 3. Life has arisen from the " operation in time of some 
 ultra-scientific cause." 
 
 These possibilities, which we may term the perpetuity, 
 the spontaneous generation, and the creation of life, are not 
 very clearly distinguished by Professor Stokes. He appears 
 to hold that life must necessarily have had an origin, because 
 we have ample grounds for asserting that those phases of 
 life with which we are at present acquainted, could not have 
 existed in certain past stages of the earth's development. 
 Eecognising only known types of life, he proceeds to question 
 whether their germs might not have been brought to earth by 
 Sir William Thomson's meteorite — an hypothesis which he 
 not unnaturally dismisses. But granted the meteorite, Professor 
 Stokes continues : 
 
 " Of course such a supposition, if adopted, would leave un- 
 touched the problem of the origin of life ; it would merely 
 invalidate the argument for the origination of life on our 
 earth within geological time" (p. 85). 
 
 We see clearly that the writer supposes life, even if it did 
 not originate on the earth, must have had an origin. But 
 why may not life in some type or other be as perpetual as 
 matter ? We know life which assimilates carbon and elimi- 
 nates oxygen ; we know also life which assimilates oxygen 
 and eliminates carbon — yet between the lowest forms of these 
 lives we cannot draw a rigid line. Shall we dogmatically 
 assert, then, that types of life which could survive the gaseous
 
 THE PROSTITUTION OF SCIENCE 57 
 
 and thermal changes in the condition of our planet are im- 
 possible ? The word azoic, as applied to an early period of 
 our earth's history, can only refer to types of life with which 
 we are now acquainted. There is a distinct possibility of 
 other types of life, and of these types gradually evolving, 
 owing to climatological change, into the types of which we 
 are cognisant. Some of the most apparently simple forms of 
 life with which we are acquainted must really have an 
 organism of a most complex kind. The spermatozoon, bear- 
 ing as it does all the personal and intellectual characteristics 
 of a parent, must have a far more complex organism than its 
 physiological description would lead us to believe ; the poten- 
 tiality of development must in some way denote a complexity 
 of structure. Size thus appears to be only a partial measure 
 of complexity, and the minuteness and apparent simplicity of 
 certain microscopic organisms by no means prove that they 
 are the forms of life which carry us back nearest to the so- 
 called azoic period. For aught we can assert to the con- 
 trary, the types of life extant then may have been complex 
 as the spermatozoon and as small as the invisible germ, if 
 one exists, of the microscopic organisms found in putrefying 
 substances. It is obvious that of such types of Ufe the geo- 
 logical record would bear no trace, and we cannot argue from 
 their absence in that record to the impossibility of their exist- 
 ence. That no life such as we know it could exist in the 
 molten state of our planet may be perfectly true, but that is 
 no proof that germs of a different type of life may not have 
 survived in the gaseous mass, and developed into known forms 
 of life as the climato- physical conditions changed. With 
 regard, then, to the hypothesis of the perpetuity of life, the 
 scientist can only remain agnostic, and cannot draw any 
 evidence of the " operation in time of some ultra -scientific 
 cause," as Professor Stokes seems to think. The perpetuity of 
 Life is, however, a more plausible hypothesis than the creation, 
 as it does not " needlessly multiply the causes of natural 
 phenomena." Professor Stokes simply extends his premise, 
 ' no living things that we see around us could exist in 
 the incandescent period/ to 'no living things at all,' and
 
 58 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 thus arrives at the origin of life in an ' ultra -scientific 
 cause.' 
 
 Passing on to the hypothesis of spontaneous generation, 
 we may note again the same logical fallacy : 
 
 " The result of the experiments which have been made in 
 this subject by the most careful workers is such that most 
 persons are, I think, now agreed that the evidence of experi- 
 ment is very decidedly against the supposition that even these 
 minute creatures can be generated spontaneously." 
 
 The minute creatures in question are the microscopic 
 organisms in putrefying matter. The statement may be 
 perfectly true, but before it would allow us logically to reject 
 the possiljility of the spontaneous generation of life, we should 
 have to show — (1) that the organisms in question were the only 
 types of life which could be supposed to have generated spon- 
 taneously ; theu' ' minuteness ' is certainly no evidence of this, 
 unless, accepting the doctrine of evolution, we have shown that 
 these organisms are with great probability the earliest types of 
 life known to us, and therefore nearest the type which arose after 
 the ' azoic ' period ; (2) that we have reproduced in our experi- 
 ments the physical conditions extant at the time when life 
 may be supposed to have been generated. There is no evid- 
 ence to show that a turnip or urine wash, subjected to a very 
 high temperature and preserved in a hermetically sealed vessel, 
 at all represents the physical and climatological conditions of 
 the earth at the close of the azoic period. It is obvious that 
 these conditions can hardly be fulfilled in experiment ; we 
 cannot imitate the climato-physical state which possibly only 
 in long com'se of millions of years produced a type of life 
 totally different from anything known to us, and which type, 
 if reproduced, would not necessarily fall within the limits of 
 our organs of sense. No negative experiment can lead us to 
 reject the hypothesis of spontaneous generation, however much 
 a positive experiment might prove it. Hence, when Professor 
 Stokes postulates a commencement of life on earth, negatives 
 spontaneous generation, and arrives at a cause "which for 
 anything we can see, or that appears probable, lies altogether 
 outside the ken of science," he is simply piling Pelion upon
 
 THE PEOSTITUTION OF SCIENCE 59 
 
 Ossa, one dogma upon another, and so ruthlessly thrusting 
 aside the logically agnostic attitude of the true scientist. As 
 to the third hypothesis, that of creation, the only arguments 
 that can be produced in its favour are (1) from the process of 
 exhaustion — i.e., the logical negation of all other hypotheses, 
 or the proof that all such destroy the harmony existing 
 between various groups of our sensations ; (2) from the evid- 
 ence of revelation. This latter we are not called upon to deal 
 with under the heading of natural theology. 
 
 When we turn for a moment from descriptive science, or 
 the classification of sensations, to the simplest intellectual 
 concepts that the mind has formed with regard to the ulti- 
 mate elements of life and matter, we find very little to 
 separate the one from the other, certainly nothing which 
 enables us to assert that there is perpetuity in the one more 
 than in the other. We analyse our sensations of both, and 
 find our ultimate concepts very similar. In the ultimate 
 element of matter, apparently self-existent motion, and capa- 
 city, owing to this motion, of entering into combination with 
 other elements; our conception of the ultimate element of 
 life might almost be described in the same words. Why 
 this self-existent motion is our ultimate concept, is at present 
 an unanswered problem, but, as we have pointed out, its 
 solution is more likely to be reached by a scrutiny of the 
 perceptive faculty, and the forms under which that faculty 
 must perceive, than by any results to be drawn from de- 
 scriptive science. Be this as it may, it is sufficient to note 
 that there is nothing in the perpetuity or, on the other hand, 
 in the spontaneous generation of life (which is really only 
 another name for the perpetuity, as the universe will probably 
 always possess some one or other planet in the zoic stage) 
 that contradicts the harmony of our sensations, or brings 
 confusion into our concepts of life and matter. 
 
 Professor Stokes next devotes one brief page to statement, 
 and another to criticism, of the doctrine of evolution. His 
 second problem Ijeing the origin of the variety in living types, 
 we have next to inr^uire what natural theology has to say 
 about it ? Apjjarently it is content, after stating the stock
 
 GO THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 objections, such as small amount of transmutation of form in 
 actual experiment, the absence of connecting links, and the 
 deterioration (or degeneration, as Professor Eay Lankester has 
 termed it) of types of life, to remain agnostic in the matter. 
 The concluding remarks of Professor Stokes on this point are, 
 however, suggestive of his real opinion : 
 
 " Suffice it to observe that if, as regards the first origin of 
 life on earth, science is powerless to account for it, and we 
 must have recourse to some ultra -scientific cause, there is 
 nothing unphilosophical in the supposition that this ultra- 
 scientific cause may have acted subsequently also" (p. 89). 
 
 The fallacies in this reasoning are almost too obvious to 
 need comment. It assumes (1) that life has had an origin; 
 (2) that because science has not hitherto explained something 
 (which possibly never existed), therefore it must alway remain 
 unable to do so; (3) that if we have recourse in one case to 
 an ultra-scientific cause, there is nothing unphilosophical in 
 doing so again. Indeed there is an obvious rejoinder which 
 seems strangely to have escaped the lecturer — namely, that it 
 would not accordingly be unphilosophical to attribute all 
 natural phenomena we have not yet fully explained to ultra- 
 scientific causes, and so do away with the Royal Society 
 and other scientific bodies as useless and expensive in- 
 stitutions, ' unnecessarily multiplying the causes of natural 
 phenomena ! ' 
 
 The argument may be paralleled by the following, which 
 we may suppose drawn from the lecture-room of a mediaeval 
 schoolman : Since science is powerless to explain why the sun 
 goes round the earth, and we must have recourse to some 
 ultra-scientific cause, there is nothing unphilosophical in sup- 
 posing the same cause to raise the tides. Ergo, God daily 
 raises the tides. 
 
 From this point onwards the lecturer turns more especially 
 to the argument from design, and takes as his example the 
 extremely complex structure of the human eye. Contem- 
 plating all the intricate portions of this organism and its 
 adaptability to the uses to which it is put, Professor Stokes 
 finds it " difficult to understand how we can fail to be im-
 
 THE PEOSTITUTION OF SCIENCE 61 
 
 pressed with the evidence of Design thus imparted to us." 
 This evidence from design goes, we suppose, to prove the 
 existence of old John Burnett's "all-powerful, wise, and 
 good Being." We wonder if Professor Stokes' audience would 
 have been equally impressed with the evidence from design had 
 he chosen as his example the leprosy lacillus, which is also 
 wonderfully adapted to the use to which it is put, and the 
 organisation and life of which are equally evidence from design 
 of the most interesting kind. But perhaps, notwithstanding 
 the term ' beneficial,' it is not the anthropomorphic qualities of 
 wisdom and goodness in the deity which are to be deduced 
 from the evidence from design. It is only the existence of 
 ' constructive mind.' If this be so, we may well inquire 
 whether complexity of construction is always evidence of 
 mind, and we cannot prove the fallacy of the argument 
 better than by citing the words in which Philo demolishes 
 Cleanthes.^ 
 
 " The Brahmins assert that the world arose from an infinite 
 spider, who spun this whole complicated mass from his bowels, 
 and annihilates afterwards the whole or any part of it by 
 absorbing it again, and resolving it into his own essence. 
 Here is a species of cosmogony which appears to us ridiculous, 
 because the spider is a little contemptible animal, whose 
 operations we are never likely to take for a model of the whole 
 universe. But still here is a new species of analogy, even in 
 the globe. And were there a planet wholly inhabited by 
 spiders (which is very possible), this inference would there 
 appear as natural and irrefragable as that which in our planet 
 ascribes the origin of all things to design and intelligence as 
 explained by Cleanthes. Why an orderly system may not be 
 spun from the belly as well as from the brain, it will be 
 difficult for him to give a satisfactory reason." 
 
 The absurdity of the argument from analogy is well 
 brought out in these lines. Till l*rofessor Stokes has proved 
 beyond all question that it is not the human perceptive 
 faculty which produces harmony and order in its world of 
 sensations, it seems idle to suggest that at the basis of that 
 
 ^ Dialogues concernhuj Natural lieligiun. Partvi. Green's edition, p. 425,
 
 62 THE ETHIC OF EREETHOUGHT 
 
 harmony and order there may be something analogous to 
 the human mind. The basis of those sensations — the Ding 
 an sick — may after all be a gigantic spider who spins from the 
 belly, not the brain. 
 
 But even if we adopt for the sake of argument the crude 
 realism which separates a ' dead matter ' from something 
 else which it terms ' mind/ we find in the ' law of the 
 survival of the fittest ' an apparently sufficient cause for the 
 adaption of structure to function. Professor Stokes remarks, 
 it is true, that even if this probable hypothesis were proved, it 
 would not follow that no evidence of design was left ; but it 
 would follow that the remnant of Professor Stokes' natural 
 theology, so far as he has expounded it in this work, would 
 collapse. The evidence for design would be thrown back on 
 those great physical laws which a certain school of thinkers 
 delight to describe as ' inherent in dead matter,' rather than as 
 forms of the perceptive faculty. Although Professor Stokes 
 gives us no real arguments against the possibility of the law 
 of the survival of the fittest being able to explain the adaption 
 of structure to function, still he tells us what he helieves ; 
 namely, that this law may account for some (if for some, why 
 not for all ?) features of a complex whole, " but that we want 
 nothing more to account for the existence of structures so 
 exquisite, so admirably adapted to their functions, is to my 
 mind incredible. I cannot help regarding them as evidences 
 of design operating in some far more direct manner, I know 
 not what ; and such, I believe, would be the conclusion of most 
 persons." 
 
 In other words, the last standpoint of natural theology is 
 belief, and belief as to what the belief of the majority of 
 persons may be. 
 
 Natural theology having thus thrown up a plausible 
 hypothesis as to the orderly arrangement of phenomena in 
 exchange for a belief in, not a proof of an ultra-scientific cause, 
 its further stages are easily marked. Eeturning to its 
 unproven dogmas that neither matter nor life is self-existent 
 — dogmas based on a misinterpretation of the obvious facts 
 that planetary systems decay, and life, such as we know it, was
 
 THE PROSTITUTION OF SCIENCE 63 
 
 once non-extant in the world — natural theology concludes 
 that the mind, found by analogy in the order of the universe, 
 is self-existent, and therefore God, But the self-existence 
 thus deduced as an attribute of the deity is precisely what 
 revelation has foretold us : "I AM hath sent me unto you." 
 Here is the unity between science and revelation we have 
 been in search of ! Here natural theology finds itself in 
 unison with Moses' views as to the nature of his tribal god. 
 " It is noteworthy," remarks Professor Stokes, " that it is 
 precisely this attribute of self-existence that God himself chose 
 for his own designation." The identification of the ' ultra- 
 scientific cause,' of the Jewish tribal god, and of God (with a 
 capital G), is complete ! 
 
 It is needless for me to follow Professor Stokes through his 
 remaining pages; having once got on to the ground of revela- 
 tion, it is not for me to pursue him further. We should expect 
 to find, and do find, arguments from analogy, and a repetition 
 of the dogmas deduced by a false logical process ; e.g., " We 
 have seen that life can proceed only from the living " (when 
 and where ?) — by analogy, why not mind only from mind ? 
 " The sense of right and wrong is too universal to be attributed to 
 the result of education" (but why not to the survival of the fittest 
 in the internecine struggle of human societies ?) — and so forth ! 
 
 In my whole treatment of this contribution to natural 
 theology I have endeavoured to keep clearly in view the 
 function which this absurd ' science ' sets before itself, 
 namely, to deduce from the physical and finite sensation a 
 jproof of the supersensuous and infinite. It disregards the 
 possible infliuence of the laws of the human perceptive 
 faculty on the sensations which that faculty co-ordinates ; it 
 argues from present scientific ignorance to the impossibility 
 of knowledge. It neglects entirely a rule of equal import- 
 ance with Newton's, which may be thus stated : That where 
 we have not hitherto discovered a sufficient physical or per- 
 ceptive origin for natural phenomena, it is more philosophical 
 to wait and investigate than seek refuge in ultra -scientific 
 causes. Such ultra-scientific causes may be matter for belief 
 based on revelation, they can never be deduced from a study
 
 64 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 of our sensations. From tlie urder and harmony of our sensa- 
 tions we can only proceed to the law descriptive of their 
 sequence, to the law of physical cause — to this and nothing 
 more. I cannot help Lhinkiiig it regrettable that the doyen 
 of English science, a man to whom every mathematician 
 and physicist looks with a sense of personal gratitude, should 
 have closed a most suggestive course of lectures on light by 
 what appears to me a perversion of the true aims of science. 
 He has endeavoured to deduce the self-existence of the deity 
 by a method of argument long since discarded by thinkers ; 
 he has only achieved his object by a series of logical fallacies 
 based on erroneous extension of terms. Authority weighs 
 more than accurate reasoning with the majority of men, and 
 on this account the course taken by Professor Stokes is 
 peculiarly liable to do serious harm. If the human race has 
 now reached a stage when more efiicient conceptions of 
 morality than the Christian are beginning to be current ; 
 when more fruitful fields for research and thought than the 
 theological are open to mankind ; when the inherited instinct 
 of human service is growing so strong that its gratification is 
 one of the chief of human pleasures ; then, assuredly he who 
 attempts to bolster up an insufficient theory of morals, an 
 idle occupation for the mind, and a religious system which 
 has become a nigh insupportable tax on the national resources 
 — assuredly this one will be cursed by posterity for his 
 theology, where it would otherwise have blessed him for 
 his science ! " You have stretched out your hands to save 
 the dregs of the sifted sediment of a residuum. Take heed 
 lest you have given soil and shelter to the seed of that awful 
 plague which has destroyed two civilisations, and but barely 
 failed to slay such promise of good as is now struggling to 
 live among men." ^ So cried Clifford to two scientists of 
 repute who stooped in 1875 to dabble in the mire of 'natural 
 theology.' It is a noteworthy and melancholy proof of the 
 persistency of human prejudice that in 1887 it is necessary 
 again to repeat his words. 
 
 ^ Fortnightly Review, June, 1875.
 
 THE PEOSTITUTION OF SCIENCE 65 
 
 Note to Page 59. — It seems to me possible that a ^vave representing 
 the zoic stage moves from the lesser sun outwards across each planetary- 
 system. Such a wave would have now reached our earth, and, following 
 the physical development, would pass on to the external planets, leaving 
 at most a fossil-record behind it. The motion of this wave would depend 
 on the physical conditions of the individual sun and its planets, and 
 might be only a ripple of a larger wave which flowed outward through 
 stellar space from a more central sun accompanying the dissipation of 
 energy.
 
 IV 
 
 THE ETHIC OF EENUNCLVTION ^ 
 
 But if tliy mind no longer finds delight 
 
 In sights and sounds, and things that please the taste, 
 
 What is it, in the world of men or gods. 
 
 That thy heart longs for ? Tell me that, Kassapa. 
 
 That ' man is born to trouble even as the sparks fly up- 
 wards'; that endowed by race -development with passions 
 and desires, he is yet placed in a phenomenal world where 
 their complete gratification is either impossible or attended 
 with more than a counterbalancing measure of misery, — 
 these are facts which age by age have puzzled alike philo- 
 sopher and prophet. They have driven thinkers to seek 
 within themselves for some quiet haven, for some still waters 
 of peace, which they could by no means discover in that 
 stormy outer world of phenomena. The apparent slave of 
 his sensations, man in the world of sense seems ever subjective 
 and suffering ; only mentally, in the inner consciousness, does 
 there appear a field for free action, for objective creation. 
 Here man may find a refuge from those irresistible external 
 forces which carry him with such abrupt transition from the 
 height of joy to the depth of sorrow. Is it not possible for 
 the mind to cut itself adrift from race-prejudice, from clogging 
 human passions, from the body's blind slavery to phenomena, 
 and thus, free from the bondage of outward sensation, rejoice 
 in its own objectivity ? Cannot man base his happiness on 
 
 ' This essay was written hi 1883, but was pubUshed for the first time in 
 1888.
 
 THE ETHIC OF EEXUNCIATION 67 
 
 something else than the transitory forms of the phenomenal 
 world ? By some rational process on the one hand, or some 
 transcendental rebirth on the other, cannot man render him- 
 self indifferent to the ever -changing phases of phenomenal 
 slavery, and withdraw himself from the world in which fate 
 has placed him ? The means to this great end may be fitly 
 termed, Benunciation, — renunciation of hmnan passions to 
 avoid human slavery. At first sight, for a man to renounce 
 human passions appears to be a process akin to that of 
 ' jumping out of his own skin,' yet the great stress which the 
 foremost thinkers of many ages have laid upon the need of 
 renunciation justifies a closer investigation of its meaning. I 
 propose to examine, under the title of ' Ethic of Eenunciatiou,' 
 a few of the more important theories which have been pro- 
 pounded. 
 
 The earliest and perhaps the greatest philosopher who has 
 propounded a doctrine of renunciation is Gotama the Buddha. 
 In considering his views I shall adopt a course which I shall 
 endeavour to pursue throughout this paper, namely, to ascer- 
 tain first, as clearly as possible, what it is that the philosopher 
 wishes men to renounce, and secondly, what he supposes will 
 be the result of this renunciation. In the Buddhist theory 
 it is the ' sinful grasping condition of mind and heart ' which 
 has to be extinguished. This condition is variously described 
 as Trishna — eager yearning thirst — and Upadana — the grasp- 
 ing state.^ The origin of the Trishna is to be found in the 
 sensations which the individual experiences as a portion of 
 the phenomenal world. When the individual is ignorant of 
 the nature of these sensations, and does not subordinate them 
 to his reasoned will, they act upon him as sensuous causes, 
 and produce in him, as in a sensuous organism, sensuous 
 effects, namely, sensuous passions and desires of all kinds. 
 Besides present ignorance as a factor of desire, we have also 
 to remember the existence of past ignorance ; past ignorance 
 either of the race or individual has created a predisposition to 
 the Trishna. The sources, then, of the ' sinful grasping con- 
 
 ^ Here, as elsewhere, my description of the Biiddliiat doctrine is drawn 
 almost entirely from Professor Rhys Davids' well-known works on the subject.
 
 68 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 dition of mind and heart ' may be concisely described as 
 ignorance and predisposition which have cuhninated in 
 irrational desire. In order that the individual may free 
 himself from this condition of slavery he must renounce his 
 desires, his delusions ; the only means to this end is the 
 extermination of ignorance and predisposition. The Buddhist 
 doctrine, then, by no means asserts that man can free himself 
 from the sensational action of the phenomenal world, only 
 that it is possible for him to renounce the delusive desires 
 created by that action. It may be concisely defined as a 
 rational renunciation of the mere sensuous desire which the 
 uncontrolled influence of sensations tends to produce. The 
 method of renunciation viewed as destructive of ignorance is 
 termed self-culture, viewed as destructive of desire, self-control. 
 From these combined standpoints the method is fitly described 
 as ' the noble path of self-culture and self-control.' 
 
 Let us consider the desires or delusions which, according 
 to the Buddha, form the elements of the ' sinful grasping 
 condition,' and whose immediate cause is to be sought in 
 ignorance and predisposition. The three principal delusions 
 upon which corresponding desires are based are termed 
 sensuality, individuality, and ritualism. These are the 
 sources from which human sorrow springs. Sensuality may 
 be supposed, for our present purpose, to include sensuousness, 
 delight in all forms of pleasure produced by the influence of 
 the phenomenal world upon the senses. The grosser kinds at 
 least of sensuality are certainly irrational, and causes of the 
 greater proportion of human misery. Gotama seems to have 
 condemned all sensuality, all love of the present world, as a 
 fetter to human freedom. In this point he was practically 
 in agreement with the early and medieval Christian ascetics. 
 Both condemned the pleasures of sense — the Christian because 
 he considered them to interfere with the ordering of his life 
 as dictated by revelation ; the Buddha because he saw much 
 sorrow arising from them, and could find no rational argument 
 for their existence. Both were alike ignorant of their 
 physiological value, and rushed from Scylla on Chary bdis. 
 The true via media seems in this case to have been taught by
 
 THE ETHIC OF EENUNCIATION 69 
 
 Maimonides, another philosopher of renunciation — namely, 
 that the pleasures of sense, although renounced as jmr'pose, 
 are to be welcomed as means, means to maintain the body in 
 health, and so the mind in full energy. Sensuality ceasing 
 to be master was to do necessary work as a servant. The 
 Egyptian physician had a truer grasp of the physiological 
 origin and value of ' desire ' than the Indian philosopher. 
 
 The second of the great delusions to which Gotama 
 attributed human misery is individuality. The belief in 
 Attavada, — the doctrine of self, — is a primary heresy or delu- 
 sion ; it is one of the chief Upadanas, which are the direct 
 causes of sorrow in the world. Gotama compared the human 
 individual to a chariot, which is only a chariot so long as 
 it is a complex of seat, axle, wheels, pole, etc. ; beneath or 
 beyond there is no substratum which can be called chariot. So 
 it is with the individual man, he is an ever -changing com- 
 bination of material properties. At no instant can he say, 
 ' This is I,' and to do so is a delusion fraught with endless pain. 
 It follows that when a self is denied to the individual man, no 
 such entity as soul can be admitted, and it is logical that all 
 questions as to a future life should be termed a ' puppet show ' 
 or ' walking in delusion.' That the doctrine of Attavada has 
 been productive of infinite human misery is indisputable. The 
 belief in the immortality of the soul, and so in a future state, 
 has led men in the present to endure and inflict endless pain. 
 To the Christian such pain appears justifiable, it is but a 
 means to an end. Pushed to its logical outcome it might be a 
 sin to render a poor man comfortable and well-to-do for fear 
 of weakening his chances of heaven. It would be highly 
 criminal to refuse sending one man to the stake in order to save 
 the souls of a hundred others. The Buddhist finds in all this 
 nothing but that misery which is the outcome of delusion. 
 For him the man who believes in a future state is hindered in 
 his spiritual growth by the most galling chain, the most fatal 
 Upadana. The Christian, on the one hand, trusting to 
 revelation, does not demand a rational basis for his belief in 
 the existence of the soul ; the Buddhist, on the other, has been 
 charged by Gotama to accept nothing which his reasoning
 
 70 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 powers do not commend to his belief. Experience 
 teaches us that here reason can prove nothing. It 
 is beyond the limits of the theoretical reason, and the 
 assertions of the practical reason are at best but belief 
 based upon recognised, but unanalysed desire. So far 
 Gotama's position seems to me to be correct, the Attavada is 
 the outcome of desire or of predisposition. But a far more 
 important step has to be taken before it can be declared a 
 delusion ; the historical origin of the predisposition, the growth 
 of the desire must be traced. It may be that the origin is as 
 natural, and yet as irrational, as the origin of the mediaeval 
 belief that the sun goes round the earth. In that case the 
 predisposition will probably disappear with the knowledge of 
 its cause. It will be classed as a myth produced by mis- 
 understood sensations ; the seemingly objective action of the 
 phenomenal world will have been misinterpreted by the 
 subjective centre, and the error perpetuated have given rise to 
 a predisposition. Such a necessary criticism was, of course, 
 not undertaken by Gotama ; it is doubtful whether anthro- 
 pology and the science of comparative religion are even yet 
 sufficiently advanced to enable us to trace the development of 
 this predisposition to Attavada. We may certainly lay it 
 down that, at some stage in the evolution of life, organisms 
 were not conscious of any belief in the existence of a soul ; it 
 is not, however, necessary to assert that the belief originated 
 in man as we know him. Between that early stage and man 
 as he now is the predisposition has arisen. Until every 
 element of that ' between ' is mapped out it will be impossible 
 t02>fove that a theory of instantaneous implantation is fallacious, 
 however contrary it may be to our general experience of the 
 growth of ideas. The argument that, as the predisposition 
 exists, man must satisfy it in order that he may not be 
 miserable, is by no means valid. Besides the fact that many 
 individuals live happily after rational renunciation of the 
 desire for immortality, and so afford a proof that education and 
 self-culture can free men from the predisposition, we must also 
 remark that the acceptation of a belief recognised intellectually 
 as groundless cannot in the long run tend to intellectual
 
 THE ETHIC OF EENUNCIATION 71 
 
 happiness. Even if, for an instant, we grant that without 
 belief in the immortality of the soul our views of life must be 
 pessimistic, — nay, that life without such belief is insupportable 
 — still this admission is no proof of immortality ; it only 
 shows that man, or at all events man in his present phase of 
 development, is not well fitted to his phenomenal surroundings. 
 With regard, then, to this second great factor of human pain, 
 we notice that Gotama proceeds rather dogmatically than 
 logically when he asserts that it is a delusion. It is true that 
 the belief in individuality cannot be rationally deduced, 
 but the existing predisposition to that belief cannot, on the 
 other • hand, be validly put aside until it has received critical 
 and historical investigation. I must remark, however, that if 
 Gotama had firmly convinced himself that the belief in 
 individuality was a fetter on man's progress towards righteous- 
 ness, he was justified in calling upon men to renounce that 
 doctrine without demonstrating its absolute falsity. It is not 
 impossible that the Buddha's conviction, that the belief in 
 some personal happiness hereafter is destructive of true 
 spiritual growth, was what led him to denounce the Attavada 
 as the most terrible of delusions. " However exalted the 
 virtue, however clear the insight, however humble the faith, 
 there is no arahatship if the mind be still darkened by any 
 hankering after any kind of future life. The desire for a 
 future life is one of the fetters of the mind, to have broken 
 which constitutes ' the noble salvation of freedom.' Such a 
 hope is an actual impediment in the way of the only object we 
 ought to seek — the attainment in this world of the state of 
 mental and ethical culture summed up in the word arahatship " 
 {Hihhert Lectures). Obviously only a philosopher, who has 
 had deep and bitter experience of the destruction of " mental 
 and ethical culture " by the sacrifice of this life to some 
 emotional process of preparation for another life, could give 
 vent to such a strong condemnation of the belief in indi- 
 viduality. 
 
 If we compare Gtjtama's two first Upadanas we see that 
 there is between them a qualitative difference ; the one is a 
 direct physical desire, the other a mental craving only indirectly
 
 72 THE ETHIC OF EEEETHOUGHT 
 
 the result of the influence of the phenomenal world on man. 
 According to the Buddhist theory we ought to renounce both. 
 We have shown above some reason why, following Maimonides, 
 the first desire, renounced as an end, should be adopted as a 
 means to physical health. While a man can admittedly 
 control and to some extent mould his physical existence, he 
 cannot without injury wholly subdue his physical wants nor 
 leave unsatisfied his physical desires. Hence the renunciation 
 of the first Upadana in its broadest sense is impossible. On 
 the other hand, it is possible to destroy belief, to eradicate 
 mental cravings. The mind is in itself an exceedingly plastic 
 organism, subject to endless variations as the result of educa- 
 tion, and capable at every period of changing its desires under 
 the influence of self-culture and rational thought. There is 
 always a possibility, then, of renouncing a mental predisposition. 
 Such a predisposition cannot, of course, be driven out by force, 
 it can only be destroyed by a growth of knowledge. Only the 
 mind replete with intelligence can free itself from the delusion 
 of individuality. Knowledge is for Gotama the key to the 
 higher life ; it alone can free men from the delusions which 
 produce their misery. Here his teaching is in perfect 
 harmony with that of Maimonides and Spinoza. It is this 
 which makes his theory of renunciation a rationalistic system, 
 which raises him from a prophet to a philosopher. He strongly 
 inculcates philosophical doubt ; he holds that all which cannot 
 be rationally deduced has no claim on belief. " I say unto all 
 of you," he replied once to his disciples, " do not believe in 
 what ye have heard ; that is, when you have heard any one 
 say this is especially good or extremely bad ; do not reason 
 with yourselves that if it had not been true, it would not 
 have been asserted, and so believe in its truth ; neither have 
 faith in traditions, because they have been handed down for 
 generations and in many places. Do not believe in anything 
 because it is rumoured and spoken of by many ; do not think 
 that that is a proof of its truth. Do not believe because the 
 written statement of some old sage is produced : you cannot 
 be sure that the writing has ever been revised by the said 
 sage, or can be relied upon. Do not believe in what you have
 
 THE ETHIC OF EENUNCIATION 73 
 
 fancied, thinking that because it is extraordinary it must have 
 been implanted by a Dewa or some wonderful being." -^ 
 
 The words quoted in the preceding paragraph show exactly 
 Gotama's method of treating ideas. When no rational origin 
 can be discovered, the idea is treated as a delusion." It is 
 true that the philosopher himself strangely neglected to apply 
 this test to the dogma of transmigration, and thus evolved 
 from it his wondrous theory of Karma. But in the third 
 delusion, that of ritualism, to which I now turn, the test has 
 been rigorously applied, and the result deduced : that gods, 
 if they [exist, are things about which it is a delusion to 
 trouble oneself We may define ritualism as a formal worship 
 rendered to a being supposed capable of influencing the lives 
 of men. Gotama satisfied himself that such ritualism was a 
 delusion without entering into any discussion as to the exist- 
 ence or non-existence of divine beings. Such a discussion 
 ought of course to follow the same lines as that on the 
 Attavada. The impossibility of any rational proof of the 
 existence of a deity would become manifest, and the whole 
 question would then turn upon a critical investigation of the 
 historical origin of the predisposition. The Buddha seems to 
 have been so impressed with the absolute validity of the law 
 of change, that for him the very gods under its influence sunk 
 into insignificance ; they were but as butterflies in the ever- 
 growing, ever-decaying cosmos. Could there be any rational 
 basis for the worship of such gods ? Is it not a mere ignorant 
 delusion to suppose them eternal ? Shortly, the predisposition 
 to ritualism is only a debasing superstition, the outcome of 
 those misinterpreted sensations which the phenomenal world 
 produces in ignorant man. Piitualism, like the belief in 
 individuality, is a most fatal hindrance to man's mental and 
 moral growth. Here, as in the previous case, we notice that 
 the Buddha's proof is insufficient, and that he dogmatically 
 asserts ritualism to be a delusion without critically examining 
 the growth of the predisposition. After once settling his 
 
 ' Alabaster, Wheel of the Lav), p. 35. 
 
 - It will be at ouce seen why Buddhism is so much more symi)athetic than 
 Christianity to the modern Freethinker.
 
 74 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 summum honum, however, it is possible for him to condemn 
 ritualism a priori, having regard to the enormous evil it has 
 brought mankind ; for all evil hampers the entrance on that 
 noble path which ends in arahatship. 
 
 Let us endeavour to sum up the results of Gotama's 
 theory of renunciation. It calls upon man to renounce three 
 predispositions which liave influenced, and in the majority of 
 cases still do enormously influence, the course of men's actions 
 in the phenomenal world. Without sensuous pleasure would 
 life be endurable ? Without belief in immortality can man 
 be moral ? Without worship of a god can man advance to- 
 wards righteousness ? Yes, replies Gotama ; these ends can 
 be attained, and only attained, by knowledge. Knowledge 
 alone is the key to the higher path ; the one thing worth 
 pursuing in life. Sensuality, individuality, and ritualism are, 
 like witchcraft and fetish -worship, solely the delusions of 
 ignorance, and so must fetter man's progress towards know- 
 ledge. The pleasures of sense subject man to the phenomenal 
 world and render him a slave to its evils. Morality is not 
 dependent upon a belief in immortality; its progress is 
 identical with the progress of knowledge. Righteousness is 
 the outcome of self-culture and self-control, and ritualism only 
 hinders its growth. Knowledge is that which brings calmness 
 and peace to life, which renders man indifferent to the storms 
 of the phenomenal world. It produces that state which alone 
 can be called blessed : 
 
 Beneath the stroke of life's changes, 
 The mind that shaketh not, 
 Without grief or passion, and secure, 
 This is the greatest blessing.^ 
 
 The knowledge which Gotama thus makes so all-important is 
 not to be obtained by a transcendental or miraculous process 
 as that of the Christian mystics, it is purely the product of 
 the rational and inqumng intellect. Such knowledge the 
 Buddha, in precisely the same fashion as Maimonides, Averroes, 
 
 ^ Mangala Sutta, quoted by Rhys Davids : Buddhism, p. 127.
 
 THE ETHIC OF RENUNCIATION 75 
 
 and Spinoza, installs as the coping-stone of his theory of 
 renunciation. 
 
 If we turn from the Buddhist to the early Christian 
 doctrine, we find a no less marked, although extremely different 
 conception of renunciation. It is a conception which is by 
 no means easily expressed as a philosophical system, for it 
 claims revelation, not reason, as its basis. We must content 
 ourselves here with a few desultory remarks, and leave for 
 another occasion a more critical examination of the fuller form 
 of the Christian theory as it is philosophically expressed in 
 the writings of Meister Eckehart. The Christian, as decisively 
 as the Buddhist doctrine proclaims sensuality a delusion. 
 The phenomenal world is essentially a world of sin, it is the 
 fetter which hinders man's approach to righteousness. Until 
 the sensuous world has been renounced, until the ' flesh ' with 
 all its impulses and desires has been crucified, there can be no 
 entry into the higher life. This renunciation is termed the 
 ' rebirth.' The rebirth is the entrance to the new moral life, 
 to the spiritual well-being, to that mystic union with God 
 which is termed righteousness. The rebirth cannot be attained 
 by human wisdom or knowledge, it is a transcendental act of 
 divine grace for which man can only prepare himself by faith 
 and by good works. Christianity made no more attempt than 
 Buddhism to reconcile the sensuous and the spiritual in man. 
 The early fathers looked upon the sensuous nature of humanity 
 as the origin of universal sin, and went some way towards 
 deadening moral feeling by bidding men fly from the very 
 sphere where moral action is alone possible. They make, of 
 course, no attempt to prove rationally that the sensuous desire 
 is a delusion ; when once it is admitted that the mystic rebirth 
 requires renunciation, renunciation follows as a categorical 
 imperative. 
 
 The position taken by the Christian with regard to the 
 two other great desires differs widely from that of Gotama. 
 So far from their being delusions for him, they are the terms 
 which regulate the whole conduct of his Life ; they are precisely 
 what induces him to renounce the world of sense. The 
 Christian seeks no rational deduction of individuality and
 
 76 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 ritualism, he accepts them as postulated by revelation. The 
 key to his path of righteousness is faith, not knowledge. If 
 the human reason oppose the Christian revelation, this only 
 shows that the human reason is corrupt. The early Christian 
 looked upon all rational thought, as he did upon all sensuous- 
 ness, as an extremely dangerous thing. Nay, he did not 
 hesitate to assert that Christianity was in contradiction with 
 human wisdom and culture. Et mortuus est dei filius ; prorsus 
 credibile est, quia ineptum est. Et sepultus resurrexit ; certum 
 est, quia imp)0ssilile est. The philosophers are but the 
 patriarchs of heretics, and their dialectic a snare. " There 
 is no more curiosity for us, now that Christ has come, nor 
 any occasion for further investigation, since we have the 
 gospel. We are to seek for nothing which is not contained 
 in the doctrine of Christ." Shortly, the only true gnosis is 
 based upon revelation. Spinoza, following Maimonides, has 
 identified all knowledge with knowledge of God. To the early 
 Christian, God was incomprehensible, could not form the subject 
 of human knowledge ; and every attempt at rational investiga- 
 tion of his nature must lead to atheism. Human perception 
 of God was only attained by a transcendental process in which 
 God himself assisted. 
 
 That the reader may fully recognise how this view of 
 Christian renunciation propounded by the early Latin fathers 
 is essentially identical with that of mediaeval theology, 
 it may not be amiss to quote one or two passages from 
 a writer whose teaching has met with the approval of 
 nearly all shades of Christian thought. I refer to Thomas 
 k Kempis. 
 
 " Eestrain that extreme desire of increasing Learning, 
 which at the same time does but increase Sorrow by involving 
 the mind in much perplexity and false delusion. For such 
 are fond of being thought men of Wisdom, and respected as 
 such. And yet this boasted learning of theirs consists in 
 many things, which a man's mind is very little, if at all, the 
 better for the knowledge of. And sure, whatever they may 
 think of the matter, he who bestows his Time and Pains 
 upon things that are of no service for promoting the Happi-
 
 THE ETHIC OF EENUNCIATION 77 
 
 ness of his Soul, ought by no means to be esteemed a wise 
 man " (B. i., chap. ii.). 
 
 " Why should we, then, with such eager Toil, strive to be 
 Masters of Logical Definitions ? Or what do our abstracted 
 Speculations profit us ? He whom the Divine AVord instructs 
 takes a much shorter cut to Truth ; for from this Word alone 
 all saving knowledge is derived, and without this no man 
 imderstands or judges aright. But he who reduces all his 
 studies to, and governs himself by this Eule, may establish his 
 mind in perfect Peace, and rest himself securely upon God " 
 (B. i., chap. iii.). 
 
 For Thomas a Kempis as for TertuUian there is a ' shorter 
 cut to truth' than knowledge and learning, there is a mystic 
 or transcendental process of ' instruction by the Divine Word ' 
 which brings 'perfect peace.' The revelation is an all-suffi- 
 cient basis for the act of renunciation. The phenomenal 
 world is for Thomas just as destructive of human freedom as 
 Gotama has painted it. The earth is a field of tribulation 
 and anguish ; we must daily renounce its pleasui'es and crucify 
 the flesh with all its lusts (cf. B. ii., chap. xii.). He will hold 
 no parley with the " strong tendencies to pleasures of sense " ; 
 " true peace and content are never to be had by obeying the 
 appetites, but by an obstinate resistance to them " (B. i., 
 chap. vi.). It will be seen that the writer of the Imitatio is 
 on aU essential points in agreement with the Latin father, and 
 we may not unfairly take the like statements of two such 
 diverse and distant writers as the real standpoint of Christian 
 thought. With this assumption we are now to some extent 
 in a position to formulate the Christian doctrine of renuncia- 
 tion.^ 
 
 As in Buddhism, it is the sensuous desires which are to be 
 renounced. This renunciation is not based on rational, but 
 on emotional grounds. The Christian arahatship or rebirth 
 cannot be attained by a purely intellectual process, but only by 
 passing through a peculiar phase of emotion, transcendental 
 in character. Herein it differs toto ccelo from the Buddhist 
 
 ^ The reader will find the Christian docLiiiie more fully discussed in the 
 paper on Meister Eckehart.
 
 78 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 conception. The object of renunciation is in both cases the 
 game — to attain blessedness, — but in the one case the blessed- 
 ness is mundane and temporal, in the other celestial and 
 eternal. The Christian admits tliat by accepting his revelation 
 — or, in other words, by believing in the Buddhist delusions — 
 he reduces this world to a sphere of sorrow and trial — a 
 result foretold by Gotama ; yet, on the other hand, sure of 
 the after-life, he holds the sacrifice more than justified. The 
 Buddhist, finding no rational ground for the Christian's belief 
 in individuality, endeavours to attain his blessedness in this 
 world, and tries to free himself from the sorrow and pain which 
 the Christian willingly endures for the sake of his faith. The 
 one finds in knowledge, the other in the emotions, a road to 
 salvation. Both renounce the same sensuous desires, but the 
 one on what he supposes to be rational grounds, the other on 
 what he considers the dictates of revelation. Such seem to be 
 the distinguishing features in the ethic of renunciation as 
 taught by the two great religious systems of the world. 
 
 From this Christian doctrine let us turn to a mediaeval 
 Eastern doctrine of renunciation. Here we find ourselves 
 once more on rational as opposed to emotional ground ; here 
 Jewish thought stands contrasted with Christian. What 
 influence Indian philosophy may have had over Hebrew and 
 Arabian it is hardly possible at present to determine, yet the 
 Arabs were at least acquainted with more than that life of 
 Gotama which, received by Christianity, led to his canonisation. 
 AVhatever the influence, there can be no doubt that the Bo 
 Tree, the tree of knowledge, rather than the Cross, the tree 
 of mystic redemption, has been the symbol of what we may 
 term Eastern philosophy. Indian, Arab, and Jew alike have 
 declared that the fruit of the Bo Tree is the fruit of the tree 
 of life ; that a knowledge of good and evil leadeth to beatitude 
 rather than to sin. From this tree Gotama went forth to 
 give light to those who sit in darkness, to prepare a way of 
 salvation for men. The religion of the philosopher, Averroes 
 tells us, consists in the deepening of his knowledge ; for man 
 can offer to God no worthier cultus than the knowledge of his 
 works, through which we attain to the knowledge of God
 
 THE ETHIC or EENUNCIATION 79 
 
 himself in the fuhiess of his essence. From the cognition of 
 things suh specie ceternitatis — from the knowledge of God — 
 arises, in the opinion of both Maimonides and Spinoza, the 
 highest contentment of mind, the beatitude of men. On the 
 extent of men's wisdom depends their share in the life eternal.^ 
 Let it be noted that this wisdom lays claim to no transcendental 
 character ; occasionally it may have been obscured by mystical 
 language or the dogma of a particular revelation, but in 
 the main it pretends to be nought but the creation of the 
 active human intellect. At first we might suppose that there 
 exists a broad distinction between a doctrine like the 
 Buddhist, wherein the name of God is only mentioned as 
 forming the basis of a delusion, and systems like those of 
 Maimonides and Spinoza, which take the conception of God 
 for their keystone. The distinction, however, lies rather in 
 appearance than in reality, Spinoza's conception of the deity 
 differing to to ccelo from the personal gods of the Christian or 
 the Brahmin, and being quite incapable of giving rise to the 
 delusion of ritualism. God is for him the sum of all things, 
 and at the same time their indwelling cause ; he is at once 
 matter and the laws of matter — nescio,cur materia divind naturd 
 indigna esset {Ethica i. 15, Schol.), not the ponderous matter 
 of the physicist, but that reality which must be recognised as 
 forming the basis of the phenomenal world; not the mere 
 ' law of nature,' as stated by the naturalist, but the law of 
 the phenomenon recognised as an absolute law of thought ; 
 shortly, the material world realised as existing by and 
 evolved from intellectual necessity. Such a conception must 
 have been as necessary to Gotama as to Spinoza; for the 
 former it is the ' law of change,' which is immeasurably more 
 powerful than any gods yet conceived; the latter has only 
 chosen to call it God. The formal worship of such a God is 
 
 1 Maimonides, Yad Hackazakah, Bernard, 1832, pp. 307-8. See the essay 
 on Maimonides and Spinoza, where the identity between the views of both 
 philosophers is pointed out. The resemblance to Eckehart is also noteworthy. 
 The immortality of the soul consists in the eternity of its vorgt^iule^bild in the 
 mind of God. By the higlier knowledge or union with God the soul becomes 
 conscious of this reality, or realises its eternity. Hell consists in an absence of 
 thia consciousness.
 
 80 THE ETHIC OF EREETHOUGHT 
 
 obviously impossible. Spinoza recognised as fully as the 
 Buddha what evils spring from the delusion of ritualism ; 
 far more critically than Gotama he investigates the causes 
 from which the predisposition to ritualism arises. Noting 
 that there are many prcejudicia which impede men's knowledge 
 of the truth, he adds : Et quoniam omnia qucc hie indicare 
 suspicio prcejudicia pendent ah hoc una, quod scilicet communiter 
 supponant homines, omnes res naturales, ut ipsos, propter finem 
 agere, imo ipsum Deuni omnia ad certum aliquem finem dirigere, 
 'pro certo statuant : dicunt eniin, Deum omnia propter hominem 
 fecisse, hominem autem, ut ipsum coleret {Ethica i., Appendix ; 
 Van Vloten, vol. i. p. 69). Very carefully does Spinoza 
 endeavour to show the falseness of this fundamental prejudice ; 
 he points out hoio men have come to believe the world was 
 created for them, and that God directs all for their use ; hoiu 
 it arises : lit unusquisque diver sos Deum colendi modos ex suo 
 ingenio excogitaverit, ut Dcus eos supra reliquos diligeret, et 
 totam Naturam in usum cmcm illorum cupiditutis et insatiahilis 
 avaritice dirigeret. So has the prejudice turned into super- 
 stition, and struck its roots deep in the minds of men (Van 
 Vloten, vol. i. p. 71). He paints blackly enough the resulting 
 communis vidgi persuasio : the mob bears its religion as a 
 burden, which after death, as the reward of its slavery, it 
 trusts to throw aside ; too often it is influenced in addition by 
 the unhealthy fear of a terrible life in another world. These 
 wretched men, worn out by the weight of their own piety, 
 would, but for their belief in a future life, give free play to 
 all their sensual passions (Ethica v. 41, Schol.). Gotama 
 could not have better described the outcome of the superstition 
 among ignorant men ; he nowhere displays such critical 
 acumen in endeavouring to show that all worship of God is a 
 delusion (see especially the whole Appendix to Ethica i.). 
 These remarks apply, though in a lesser extent, to Maimonides' 
 conception of God. The philosophy of Maimonides is struggling 
 at every point with his dogmatic faith, and he finds it 
 impossible to hide the antagonism between his conceptions of 
 God as the world-intellect and as the personal Jehovah of his 
 religion. The general impression one draws from his writings
 
 THE ETHIC OF RENUNCIATION 81 
 
 is, however, that he held with Averroes that the true worship 
 of God is the attainment of wisdom, or the knowledge of his 
 works. With regard, then, to the delusion of ritualism, we 
 find that Spinoza, and at heart Maimonides, are in agreement 
 with Gotama ; the belief in the worship of the deity is a 
 prejudice which must be renounced ; it is chief cause of the 
 ignorance which impedes men's knowledge of the true nature 
 of God (i.e. the intellectual basis of reality). 
 
 If we turn to the second Buddhist delusion, we find Mai- 
 monides and Spinoza in essential agreement with, although 
 formally differing from, Gotama. Both Jewish philosophers 
 base man's immortality on his possession of wisdom, his 
 knowledge of the deity ; the older with some obscurity,^ the 
 later with direct reference to a theory of ideal reality existing 
 in God. The scholastic variation of the Platonic doctrine 
 of ideas, which placed all things secundum esse intelligihile in 
 the mind of God,'- was not without great influence on the 
 thought of Spinoza. He found in the esse intelligihile an in- 
 destructible element of the human soul ; this idea in God, or 
 the individual sub specie ceternitatis, was the conception which 
 led him to assert that aliquid remanet, quod ccternmn est 
 {Ethica v. 22, 23). The realisation by the mind of its own 
 esse intelligihile, that is, its knowledge of God (v. 30), is laid 
 down as the quantitative measure of the mind's immortality 
 (cf. the passage : Sapiens . . . sui et Dei . . . conscvus, nunquam 
 esse desinit, Ethica v. 42, Schol.). We may ask how far 
 this possible eternity of the mind can affect men's actions. 
 In the case of both Maimonides and Spinoza the quantum of 
 eternity is based on the quantum of wisdom ; not by any 
 ritual, not by any particular line of conduct, not by any 
 faith — solely by the possession of wisdom can the eternity of 
 the mind be realised. Imagination, memory, personality, 
 cease with death ; no material duration belongs to the 
 eternity of the mind (v. 23, Schol., and 34, Schol.). Surely 
 this is denouncing with Gotama individuality as a delusion ! 
 
 ^ A comparison of the doctrines of Spinoza anrl Maimonides on the immor- 
 tality of the soul is ((iven in the sixth paper of this volume. 
 
 2 This form of tlie Platonic idealism is precisely that laid down hy Wyclif 
 in the first book of the Triuluyan. 
 
 6
 
 82 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 Such eternity is no reward for virtue ; we do not attain 
 beatitude because we restrain our sensuality, but we realise 
 our eternity in this world by the higher cognition ; and it is 
 this knowledge, this beatitude, which enables us to control 
 our passions (v. 42). Surely Spinoza's beatitude is but 
 another name for the Buddhist Nirvana ! What Spinozist 
 could ever be driven by a theory of reward hereafter to re- 
 ligious persecution, to asceticism, or to that religious nihilism 
 which scorns reason ? He rejects such evils, and discards the 
 Attavilda as decisively as Gotama himself.^ 
 
 If we turn to the third groat Buddhist delusion, the 
 pleasures of sense, we find the Jewish philosophers by no 
 means so unrestrictedly call for its renunciation as the 
 followers of Gotama and Jesus. The great goal of human 
 life, according to their philosophy, is the attainment of 
 wisdom, and renunciation is to be of those things only which 
 are a hindrance in the path of intellectual development. 
 Unsatisfied desire may be as real an obstacle as the same 
 desire converted into the rule of life ; to make the renuncia- 
 tion of such desires the chief maxim of conduct is to raise 
 the secondary phenomenal above the primary intellectual. 
 Fitness of body is an essential condition for fitness of mind, 
 and the passage of life's span, mens sana in corpore sano, is 
 the requisite for human happiness {Ethica v. 39). To re- 
 nounce, then, the gratification of certain sensuous desires, 
 which have a physiological value, is merely by an unfit body 
 to hamper the progress of the mind. To make these sensuous 
 desires the motive of human conduct is equally reprehensible ; 
 the sole method of escape lies in the via media. Clearly 
 enough does Maimonides reject ascetic renunciation : " Per- 
 chance one will say : since jealousy, lust, ambition, and the 
 like passions are bad, and tend to put men out of the world, 
 I will part with them altogether, and remove to the other 
 
 1 I may cite a passage thoroughly Spinozist in character: "Buddhism 
 takes as its ultimate fact the existence of the material world and of conscious 
 beings lix'ing ^\'ithin it ; and it holds that everything is constantly, though 
 imperceptibly, changing. There is no place where tliis law does not operate ; 
 no heaven or hell, therefore, in the ordinary sense " (Rhys Davids : Buddhism, 
 p. 87).
 
 THE ETHIC OF EENUNCIATION 83 
 
 extreme — and in this he might go so far as even not to eat 
 meat, not to drink wine, not to take a wife, not to reside in a 
 fine dwelling-house, and not to put on any fine garments, but 
 only sackcloth, or coarse wool or the like stuff, just as the 
 priests of the worshippers of idols do ; this, too, is a wicked 
 way, and it is not lawful to walk in the same " ( Yacl Racka- 
 zakah, Bernard, p. 170). The keynote to all sensuous pleasure 
 is to be found in its treatment as medicine, whereby the body 
 may be preserved in good health.^ In precisely similar 
 fashion Spinoza tells us that only superstition can persuade 
 us that what brings us sorrow is good, and again, that what 
 causes joy is evil. " Cum igitur res illae sint bonse, quae 
 corporis partes juvant, ut suo officio fimgantur, et Lsetitia in 
 eo consistat, quod hominis potentia quatenus Mente et Cor- 
 pora constat juvat vel augetur ; sunt ergo ilia omnia, quae 
 Lsetitiam afferunt, bona. Attamen, quoniam contra non eum 
 in finem res agunt, ut nos Lcetitia afficiant, nee earum agendi 
 potentia ex nostra utilitate temperatur, et denique quoniam 
 Leetitia plerumque ad unam Corporis partem potissimum 
 refertur ; habent ergo plerumque Lastitife affectus {nisi Ratio 
 et vigilantia adsit), et consequenter Cupiditatis etiam, quae ex 
 iisdem generantur, excessum " (Uthica iv.. Appendix, cc. 30, 
 31). These quotations must suffice to show how different 
 the Hebrew standpoint is to the Buddhist or Christian ; it 
 approaches nearer the Greek. It consists in the rational 
 satisfaction (not renunciation) of sensuous desires as a neces- 
 sary step towards bodily health and consequent mental fitness 
 (see Maimonides, Yad, pp. 167-169 ; Spinoza, Ethica iv. 38, 
 39, and Appendix, c. 27). 
 
 1 The following passage is so characteristic of the Hebrew standpoint, that 
 it deserves to be cited : " When a man eats or drinks, or has sexual intercoui'se, 
 his purpose in doing these things ought to be not merely that of enjoying him- 
 self, so that he should eat or drink that only which is pleasant to the palate, 
 or have sexual intercourse merely for the sake of enjoyment ; but his purpose 
 whilst eating or drinking ought to be solely that of preserving his body and 
 limbs in good health" {Yad, B. 173). The {)osition is thoroughly opposed to 
 Christian asceticism, which Maimonides probably had in his mind when speak- 
 ing above of the "priests of the worshippers of idols." It was doubtless in 
 Spinoza's thoughts, too, when he wrote: " Multi, pra; uimia scilicet animi 
 impatientia, falsoque religionis studio, inter brutu potius (juani inter homines 
 vivere maluerunt."
 
 84 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 The reader may feel inclined to ask on what grounds we 
 have classed Spinoza and Maimonides as philosophers of 
 renunciation. What do they call upon their disciples to 
 renounce, if they wish to be free from the slavery of the 
 phenomenal world ? Do they teach no rebirth by which 
 men may approach beatitude ? Most certainly they do. 
 They call upon their disciples to renounce not individuality, 
 ritualism, and sensuality, but obscure ideas on these as on 
 all other matters. They teach how, by that higher know- 
 ledge which sees the true causes of things, man is born afresh, 
 born from slavery to freedom. Such is the rebirth which 
 Spinoza terms the idea of God making man free, and Mai- 
 monides the Holy Spirit coming to dwell with man (see the 
 paper on Maimonides and Spinoza). We must content our- 
 selves here with a short investigation of Spinoza's doctrine. 
 What does that philosopher understand by obscure ideas ? 
 What by the ' idea of God making man free ' ? In his system, 
 God, we have seen, is identified with the reality of things, not 
 things regarded as phenomena, but as links in an infinite 
 chain of intellectual causality. He is the \6<yo<i which dwells 
 in and is all existence ; ' laws of nature ' are only the sensuous 
 expression of the laws of the divine intellect ; the story of 
 the world is only the phenomenalising of the successive steps 
 in the logic of pure thought. Spinoza, then, assumes that 
 the thought attribute in the deity is qualitatively the same as 
 that in the human mind.^ From this it follows, since God's 
 capacity for thinking and his causation are identical, that it 
 is theoretically ijossible for the human mind to grasp things 
 as they exist in their intellectual necessity. Such knowledge 
 of things is fitly termed a knowledge of God or an under- 
 standing of things suh specie ceternitatis ; it is seeing phenomena 
 as they exist in eternal necessity. Now, external objects 
 
 1 Wyclif (who, by the bye, also identified the divine percei)tiou and 
 creation) makes the same assumption : " Et sic intellectus divinus ac ejus 
 notitia sunt paris ambitus, si cut intellectus creatus et ejus notitia ; et sic 
 falsum assurais quod multa intelligis, qu?e Deus non potest intelligere. Imo 
 quamvis omne illud intelligis, (|Uod Deus potest intelligere et e contra, tamen 
 infinitum imperfectiori modo, quara Deus potest intelligere" {Trialogus, Ed. 
 Lechler, p. 70).
 
 THE ETHIC OF RENUNCIATION 85 
 
 produce in the individual certain sensations, which excite 
 definite emotions followed by desires in the mind. These 
 emotions arise from causes ' external ' to ourselves ; with re- 
 gard to them we are passive or suffer ; they are what Spinoza 
 has termed passions. These are the causes of man's misery 
 in the phenomenal world, the fetters whence human slavery 
 arises {Etiiica iii. ; Def. 1, 2 ; iv. 2-5). By what means 
 may man free himself from the mastery of these passions ? 
 They are harmful to him because they arise from causes 
 external to him, he is not their adequate cause. But, argues 
 Spinoza, man is a part of nature, and can suffer no changes 
 except those which can be understood by his own nature, and 
 of which it is the adequate cause {Ethica iv. 4). In other 
 words, if a man only understands a thing clearly, he becomes 
 its adequate cause. The human mind, in so far as it perceives 
 things truly {sub specie ceternitatis), is a part of the infinite 
 intelligence of God ; the thing is dissevered from its external 
 cause and seen as a necessary outcome of the human (and 
 divine) intelligence. Henceforth the emotion ceases to be a 
 passion (ii. 11, v. 3, etc.). In replacing obscure ideas by clear 
 ideas we renounce our passions, and are reborn from human 
 slavery to human freedom by ' the idea of God ' — that is, by 
 our knowledge of things sub specie ceternitatis. Henceforth we 
 have the power ordinandi et concatenandi corporis affectiones 
 secundum ordinem ad intellectum (v. 10); we are no longer 
 blind suffering implements in the hands of phenomenal 
 causality. Here, then, we have the Spinozist renunciation 
 and rebirth. Like the Buddhist road to Arahatship, it is the 
 destruction of ignorance by knowledge, the replacing of con- 
 fused by clear ideas. It is only to be attained by intellectual 
 labour, and not by a transcendental mystery. It sets the 
 attainment of wisdom as the goal of human existence, for by 
 this alone can humanity free itself from slavery to the 
 phenomenal world. Difficult is the path which leads to the 
 Spinozist Arahatship, yet the philosopher himself at least 
 phenomenalised his system, and taught us to appreciate 
 qvM,ntum sapiens pallia t, potiorque sit ignaro, qui sola libidine 
 agitur.
 
 86 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 Since Spinoza there has been no great philosopher who 
 has made a doctrine of renunciation the centre point of his 
 system. The old difficulties as to the phenomenal world, 
 the old consciousness of human slavery, have been ever 
 present in the thoughts of men, but their attention has been 
 directed more and more to a critical investigation of the 
 relation of the human mind to the phenomenal world. This 
 is a necessary preliminary to any theory of practical conduct 
 whereby man may free himself from phenomenal subjectivity. 
 The founder of the critical school has, however, enunciated a 
 theory of rebirth which it is all the more interesting to examine, 
 as it possesses marked analogies to Eckehart's, and is an 
 attempted return from the intellectual Hebrew to the mystic 
 or transcendental Christian standpoint. Before inquiring into 
 the meaning of the Kantian Wiedergeburt, it may not be 
 without profit to mark a connecting link between the Spinozist 
 and Kantian theories, which is to be found in the poet Goethe.^ 
 Like Spinoza, Goethe believed that God was the inner cause 
 working and existing in all things ( Weltseele), or, as he 
 expresses it : 
 
 Was war' ein Gott, der nur von aiissen stiesse, 
 Im Kreis das All am Finger laufen liesse, 
 Ihm ziemt's, die Welt ini Innern zu bewegen, 
 Natur in Sicli, Sich in Natur zu hegen, 
 So dass, was in Ilim lebt und webt imd ist, 
 Nie Seine Kraft, nie Seinen Geist vermisst. 
 
 Gott und Welt. Proemion. 
 
 But this identification of God with the universe, like all 
 forms of pantheism, renders it impossible for man to look 
 upon the w^orld as a mere field for his moral action, its pain 
 and sorrow as mere means to his own Willenslduterung , and 
 sensuous desires as mere material for that renunciation which 
 leads to beatitude. The laws of God's nature cease to be 
 either good or bad ; it is impossible to assert a moral principle 
 
 1 On the philosophy of Goethe, cf. E. Caro : La pJdlosophie de Goethe, Paris, 
 1866. Especially for our present purpose, Chapitre vii., Les conce^itio^is sur la 
 destivAe humaim.
 
 THE ETHIC OF EENUNCIATION 87 
 
 as the basis of the world.^ How, then, is man to reo-ard 
 those sensuous impressions which alternately elevate and 
 depress him ? Shall he strive, as Buddha and Eckehart 
 teach, to renounce all sensuous existence ? By no means, 
 replies Goethe ; the real freedom of men does not consist 
 in asceticism, but in rational enjopnent of all the world 
 produces. Life is no valley of tears ; man shall not hate 
 it and fly into the wilderness because he cannot realise all 
 his dreams {Prometheus, v. 6) ; there is room enough for happy, 
 joyous existence : 
 
 Den Sinneu hast du dann zu trauen ; 
 Kein Falsches lassen sie dich scliauen, 
 Wenn dein Verstand dich wach erhcilt. 
 Mit frischem Blick bemerke freudig, 
 Und waiidle, siclier wie gesclimeidig, 
 Durch Auen reich liegabter Welt. 
 Geniesse massig Fiill' und Segen ; 
 Vernunft sey iiherall zugegen, 
 Wo Leben sich des Lebens freut. 
 Dann ist Vergangenlieit bestandig, 
 Das Kiinftige voraus lebendig, 
 Der Augenblick ist Evvigkeit. 
 
 Gott und Welt. Vermdchtniss. 
 
 With true Greek spirit Goethe is yet practically taking the 
 same view as Maimonides and Spinoza ; sensuality is not an 
 unqualified delusion. But the phenomenal world is not 
 always so kind to man, it is not always possible for him to 
 enjoy it : there is pain, there is grief, there is death. In the 
 moment of joy man is cast into the lowest depths of misery ; 
 how shall man preserve his freedom when, in the midst of 
 delight in the sensuous world, its great forces may turn and 
 
 1 Denn unfiihlend 
 Ist die Natur : 
 Es leuchtet die Sonne 
 IJber Biis' und Gute, 
 Und dein Verbrecher 
 Glanzen, wie dem Besten, 
 Der Mond und die Sterne. 
 
 Das Gottlkhc.
 
 88 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 crush him ? ^ How can such a man free himself from the 
 slavery of the phenomenal ? Here Goethe adopts the Spinozist 
 doctrine of renunciation : clear ideas of nature and man's 
 relation to it will render him immovable amidst the storm of 
 external circumstance. Only let man recognise the eternal 
 necessity which rules all being — 
 
 Nach ewigen, ehi'nen, 
 Grossen Gesetzen 
 Miissen wir alle 
 Unseres Daseyns 
 Kreise vollenden. 
 
 Das Gottliche — 
 
 and he will put aside all childlike grief, that the world is not 
 ' as it ought to be.' Let him only see things suh specie 
 ceternitatis and he will recognise that all phenomena, in- 
 cluding humanity itself, are but passing changes on the 
 surface of the eternal. " When this deeper insight into the 
 eternal nature of things has firmly established itself in our 
 reason, what are those accidents which throw into despair 
 the thoughtless and the commonplace? A necessary detail 
 of the order of the universe, wherein death is the nourishment 
 of life ; in which law, ever replete in change, destroys all to 
 renew all." ' Every step in growth is a stage in decay. 
 
 Und unizuschaffen das GescliafFne, 
 Damit sich's nicht ziim Starren waffne, 
 Wirkt ewiges, lebendiges Thun. 
 
 Es soil sieh regeii, schaffeiid handeln, 
 Erst sich gestalten, dann venvandeln ; 
 Nur scheinbar steht's Momente still. 
 Das Ewige regt sich fort in alien ; 
 Denn Alles muss in Nichts zerfallen, 
 Wenn es im Seyn beharren will. 
 
 Gott unci JVclt. Eins und Alles. 
 
 1 Well expressed by Schleiermacher : " Der Mensch kenne nichts als sein 
 Dasein in der Zeit, und dessen gleitenden Wandel hinab von der soiniigen 
 Hiihe des Genusses in die furchtbare Nacht der Vernichtung " (Monologcn, l, 
 Betrachtuiuj). 
 
 2 Caro, p. 192.
 
 THE ETHIC OF EENUNCIATION 89 
 
 In this knowledge of the eternal nature of things is to be 
 found that contentment of mind which raises man above 
 temporal sorrow, frees him from the bondage of the pheno- 
 menal.^ Even as Spinoza deduced an eternity for those minds 
 which had realised -the eternal essence of things and of them- 
 selves, so Goethe supposed an immortality for those beings 
 who by clearness of vision had approached spiritual perfection. 
 Here in this nineteenth century Goethe we find, on the one 
 hand, the strongest recognition of the Buddhist law of 
 universal dissolution and composition ; on the other, the 
 fullest acceptation of the Spinozist doctrine that the knowledge 
 of things in their eternal aspect is the true means to that 
 peace of mind which constitutes the Arahatship of Indian 
 and of Jew alike. Strange is this enunciation of the Eastern 
 intellectual doctrine at the very time when Kant was busy 
 reconstructing a transcendental Christian system ! Yet 
 Goethe is in a certain sense nearer to Kant than Spinoza ; his 
 belief tends, it is true, rather to a scientific naturalism than 
 to a transcendental idealism, but yet where his reason does 
 not carry him, he finds it unnecessary to contest the rights of 
 faith. He is a poet, and finds no inconsistency between his 
 rational pantheism and a semi -mystical acceptation of the 
 Christian dogma. It is here that Kant's position is logically 
 stronger than Goethe's, and his reconciliation of reason and 
 the Christian revelation of a more satisfactory character, 
 because he has not by pantheistic premises previously denied 
 the possibility of transcendental mystery.^ 
 
 We must now turn to Kant's theory of the Christian 
 Wiedergeburt. Proceeding on the same lines as Meister 
 Eckehart, he separates a phenomenal world, or world as it 
 
 ' The thought is agcain well expressed by Schleiermacher. He is referring to 
 the crushing eiiect of the phenomenal on the absolutely insignificant individual, 
 and then to the effect of the 'higher knowledge' : " Erfass' ich nlcht mit 
 nieiner Sinne Kraft die Aussenwelt ? trag' ich nicht; die ewigen Formen der 
 Dinge ewig in mir ? und erkenn' ich sie nicht nur als den hellen Si)iegc'l 
 meines Innern " (Monologen, i.). 
 
 2 The ' reconciliation ' is a noteworthy fact of the ' critical ' philosoi)hy. It 
 might well be termed "transcendental scholasticism," if the name did not 
 suggest an unfavourable comparison with the depth, logical consistency, and 
 single-mindedness of Thomas Aquinas.
 
 90 THE ETHIC OF EEEETHOUGHT 
 
 appears in the sensuous perception of the human mind, from a 
 world of reality, the so-called Dinge cm sich. The latter he does 
 not, like the mystic, identify with the intellect (or will) of God. 
 He identifies it with the sphere of freedom or self-determined 
 will. Let us endeavour to grasp hy what process he arrives 
 at this conclusion. Man is one of the phenomena of the 
 sensuous world, and as such is subject to the causality of its 
 empirical laws. He feels the influence of sensuous causes 
 impelling him to act after a certain fashion ; his Wollen is 
 produced by physical causes over which he has no control. 
 On the other hand, the man is conscious within himself, not 
 by sensuous perception, but by mere apperception {durch 
 hlosse Apperception), of a certain power of self-determination, 
 there is something in him of an ' intelligible ' character. 
 He finds in practical life that certain imperatives appear to 
 rule his action as well as sensuous causes. There is a 
 Sollen as well as a Wollen. The Sollen, according to Kant, 
 expresses a necessity which exists nowhere else in the 
 phenomenal world. " Es mogen noch so viel Naturgriinde 
 sein, die mich zum Wollen antreiben, noch so viel sinnliche 
 Anreize, so konnen sie nicht das Sollen hervorbringen, 
 sondern nur ein noch lange nicht notwendiges, sondern 
 jederzeit bedingtes Wollen, dem dagegen das Sollen, das 
 die Vernunft ausspricht, Maass und Ziel, ja Verbot und 
 Ansehen entgegen setzt." ^ The existence of this Sollen is 
 not deduced by reason, it is a fact based upon the common 
 consciousness of men. Here Kant and Goethe are in perfect 
 accord : 
 
 Sofort nun wende dicli nacli innen, 
 Das Centrum findest du da drinnen, 
 Woran kein Edler zweifeln mag. 
 Wirst keine Kegel da vermissen : 
 Denn das selbststandige Gewissen 
 Ist Sonne deinem Sittentag. 
 
 Gott und Welt. Vermachtniss. 
 
 Kant makes no attempt to question whether this Sollen may 
 
 ^ Kritik d. r. Vernunft. Elementarlelire II., Th. ii., Abth. ii.,- Buch 2, 
 Hauptst. 9, Abschn. iii., Mocjlichkeit der Causalit'dt durch Freiheit,
 
 THE ETHIC OF EENUNCIATION 91 
 
 not be an innate Wollen, an hereditary predisposition, the 
 outcome of racial experience in the past ; one of the con- 
 ditions by which the human type maintains its position in 
 the struggle for existence, and which it has consequently 
 impressed upon all its members. Independent of the im- 
 mediate phenomenal, he assumes its existence not to be due 
 to sensuous causes. From the existence of this Sollen, this 
 absolute Sittengesetz, Kant deduces the possibility of freedom ; 
 the Sollen denotes a Konnen. In other words, the freedom of 
 the will, its causality, is asserted. Now the conception of 
 causality carries with it the conception of law ; the empirical 
 causality connotes natural laws ; this intelligible causality 
 connotes laws also unchangeable ; but in order that the free 
 will may not be chimerical (ein Unding), it must be regarded 
 as self-determinative, as a law to itself. " Der Satz aber : der 
 Wille ist in alien Handlungen sich selbst ein Gesetz, bezeichnet 
 nur das Princip, nach keiner anderen Maxime zu handeln, 
 als die sich selbst auch als ein allgemeines Gesetz zum 
 Gegenstande haben kann. Dies ist aber gerade die Formel 
 des kategorischen Imperativs und das Princip der Sittlichkeit ; 
 also ist einfreier Wille und ein Wille unter sittlichen Gesetzen 
 einerlei} It will be seen that Kant identifies the idea of 
 freedom with the sphere of the moral law ; the will is only so 
 far free as it obeys the fundamental principle of morality, 
 and obeys it, not from any phenomenal desire, but solely be- 
 cause it is the fundamental principle." Accordingly we find the 
 world of intelligible causality identified with the moral world ; 
 but this self-determining will, wherein freedom consists, cannot 
 exist in time and space ; it cannot be phenomenal, for if it were 
 it must be subject to empirical causality. "We are compelled 
 to identify it with the Dinge an sich. " Folglich, wenn man 
 sie (die Freiheit) noch retten will, so bleibt kein Weg ubrig, 
 
 • Gruivdlegung zur Mctaphysik der Sitten, Abschnitt iii. Der Begriff der 
 Freiheit (Hartenstein, iv.'pp. 294, 295). 
 
 '^ This fundamental principle is the well-known Kantian extension of the 
 Christian " Do unto others as you would that tlicy should do to you," namely, 
 "Handle nur nach derjenigen Maxime, durch die du zugleich wollen kannst, 
 dass sie ein allgemeines Gesetz werde " {ihid. Abschn. ii. Cf. especially the 
 paragraiihs Die Aulonomie and Die Hetcronomie des Willcns).
 
 92 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 als das Daseiu eiues Dinges, sofern es in der Zeit bestimmbar 
 ist, folglich auch die Causalitiit nach dem Gesetze der Natur- 
 notwendigheit bios der Erscheinungen, die Freiheit aber 
 ebendemselben Wesen, als Dinge an sich selbst, beizulegeu." ^ 
 Such, then, is the outline of the process by which Kant 
 identifies the Divge an sich with the world as will, or the 
 sphere of the moral law. 
 
 We have next to inquire what is the process of Wieder- 
 geburt whereby man is enabled to disregard the pain and 
 sorrow of the phenomenal world. Here we are concerned with 
 a portion of the ' critical scholasticism,' i.e. Kant's deduction 
 of the Christian doctrine. In the disposition of the will, and 
 in that alone, is to be found the basis upon which we may 
 define good and evil. The good disposition is that which 
 takes the moral maxim as its sole motive {das Gesetz allein 
 zur hinreichenden Triehfeder in sich aufgenommen hat) ; the evil 
 disposition is that which rejects this motive entirely, or is 
 influenced by others in addition.^ The passage, then, from 
 evil to good denotes an entire change of disposition ; it is an 
 alteration in the very foundation of character ; but an evil 
 disposition can never will anything but evil. So (according 
 to Kant) there can be no process of bettering, no passage 
 from good to evil by a gradual reform. " Wie es nun moglich 
 sei, dass ein natiirlicher Weise boser Mensch sich selbst zum 
 guten Menschen mache, das iibersteigt alle unsere Begriffe, 
 denn wie kann ein boser Baum gute Friichte bringen ? " ^ 
 But even as there exists an ' ought ' to become good, so 
 there must exist a means. Such means must accordingly 
 be transcendental — quite beyond human comprehension. 
 The change from good to evil disposition is termed the 
 Wiedergebtirt.'^ Man is conscious only that it is impossible 
 for him unaided to make the change ; the change is to 
 him incomprehensible. It needs some supersensuous aid, a 
 
 ^ Kntik der p. Vernunft, Th. i., B. 1, Hauptst. iii. (Hartenstein, v. 
 p. 100). 
 
 2 Rcligimi infierh. d. Grenzen d. hlossen Vernunft, i. Stiick 2. Von dem 
 Hang zum Bosen (Hartenstein, vi. p. 123, ct seq.). 
 
 3 Ibid. Allg. Anm. p. 139. 
 ■^ Ibid. Allg. Anm. p. 141.
 
 THE ETHIC OF EENUNCIATION 93 
 
 mystery to accomplish it. This mystery must be the action of 
 God. The moral law tells him that he miist, and therefore 
 can, become good ; but without the assistance of God the 
 mysterious process is impossible ; it depends on the action of 
 the divine grace.^ Here is the limit to which the mere 
 reason can go in matters of religion. The Wiedergehurt is, 
 then, a transcendental change of disposition ; as such it takes 
 place not in the phenomenal, but in the intelligible. It is 
 not a temporal act, but an act of the intelligible character. 
 On the existence of this intelligible world (the Binge an 
 sich) depends the moral change in man and (according to 
 Kant) the Christian doctrine of redemption.^ 
 
 If we suppose the Wiedergehurt to have taken place, the 
 question next arises, how the redemption can follow upon it ? 
 The Wiedergeburt has only effected a change in disposition, it 
 has by no means wiped out the guilt consequent upon the 
 old evil. This guilt can only be expiated by corresponding 
 punishment ; such is absolutely necessary to the conception of 
 divine justice. In this form of punishment for moral evil, 
 a primary condition for its being expiatory is the recognition 
 that it is deserved. Hence there can be no such punishment 
 so long as the disposition has not changed. The expiatory 
 punishment must take place after the Wiedergeburt.^ The 
 new man must offer himself up as propitiation for the old. 
 " Der Ausgang aus der verderbten Gesinnung in die gute ist 
 als (" das Absterben am alten Menschen, Kreuzigung des 
 Fleisches ") an sich schon Aufopferung und Antretung einer 
 langen Keihe von tJbeln des Lebens, die der neue Mensch in 
 der Gesinnung des Sohnes Gottes, namlich bios um des Guteu 
 willen iibernimmt ; die aber doch eigentlich einem andern, 
 namlich dem alten (denn dieser ist moralisch ein anderer), als 
 Strafe geblihrten." Shortly ; after the Wiedergeburt, all the 
 
 * "Jeder, so viel als in seinen Kraftcn ist, thun miisse um cin besserer 
 Mensch zu werden ; . . . (er kann dann liotlen, dass,) was niclit in seinem Ver- 
 mogen ist, werde durch hijliere Mitwirkung ergiinzt werden " (;ibid. Allg. Anm. 
 p. 146). 
 
 2 On this somewhat obscure point in Kant's treatise on Religion, cf. Kuno 
 Fischer, Geschichte d. n. Philosophie, Bd. iv. p. 419, ct seq., 2 Ausg. 
 
 ^ Itelifjif/n, innerh. d. Grenzen d. hlosscn Vernanft, ii. Stlick 1, Absch. c. 
 (Hartenstein, vi. p. 166, et seq.).
 
 94 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 pain and evil of life, all the phenomenal subjectivity of man, 
 recognised as merited punishment, are gladly endured because 
 therein the new-born man finds moral blessedness. The 
 lasting consciousness that they are merited is to him a proof 
 of the strength and persistency of his disposition to the good ; 
 he endures them gladly, because on them he bases his hope of 
 final forgiveness for his sins. Thus Kant supposes man, by 
 means of the renunciation of the evil disposition in the mystic 
 Wiedergeburt, to arrive at a position from which he can re- 
 gard his phenomenal slavery even as a cause of moral 
 blessedness.^ 
 
 We cannot now criticise this fantastic system of Kant's, 
 which supposes the whole phenomenal world produced as a 
 means whereby man may purify his will, — the goal of uni- 
 versal existence to be the production of morally perfect 
 humanity. It must suffice here to note its relation to the 
 doctrines of renunciation previously considered. In its general 
 lines it agrees with those Christian types we have had under 
 consideration ; the state of blessedness, Arahatship, is reached 
 not by an intellectual, but by a supersensuous or mystical pro- 
 cess. Kant, however, differs from Eckehart in that he does 
 not suppose the state of blessedness to be attained by even a 
 transcendental form of knowledge. It is not the ' higher 
 knowledge ' of the real nature of things as they exist in the 
 mind of God, which brings peace, but that willing submission 
 to punishment which follows on acknowledged moral delin- 
 quency. If we turn to Spinoza's purely intellectual stand- 
 point we find Kant is at the very opposite pole of thought. 
 For Spinoza only the wise can attain blessedness, for Kant 
 only the moral. Nor does the latter philosopher by any 
 means suppose morality a mere component part of wisdom ; it 
 is based upon a universal moral apperception common to the 
 
 1 The following statement is very suggestive of Kant's intensely anthropo- 
 morphic position : ' ' Alle libel in der Welt im Allgemeinen als Strafen fiir 
 begangene Ubertretungen anziisehen . . . liegt vermutlich der menschlichen 
 Vernnnft sehr nahe, welche geneigt ist, den Lauf der Natiir an die Gesetze der 
 Moralitiit anznkuiipfen, nnd die daraus den Gedanken sehr uatiirlich hervor- 
 bringt, dass wir zuvor bessere Menschen zu werden suchen sollen, ehe wir 
 verlangen konnen, von den Ubeln des Lebens befreit zu werden, oder sie 
 durch iiberwiegendes Wohl zu vergiiteu " (ibid., footnote, p. 168).
 
 THE ETHIC OF EENUNCIATION 95 
 
 ignorant as well as to the wise. Understanding, judgment, 
 knowledge, do not tend to produce a ' good will,' and are not 
 necessary : " uin zu wissen, was man zu thun habe, um ehrlich 
 und gut, ja sogar um weise und tugendhaft zu sein." ^ Could 
 a greater gulf be well imagined than exists between these two 
 philosophical systems ? The one, Ptolemneau, causes the whole 
 universe to revolve about man's moral nature ; the other, 
 Copernican, does not even allow that nature to be the sun of 
 its own insignificant system. Only once, when both consider 
 the freedom of God to consist not in indeterminism, but in 
 absolute spontaneity, do they seem for an instant to approach. 
 But even here Kant is regarding the inner moral necessity, 
 Spinoza the inner intellectual necessity of God's action.^ 
 Needless is it to compare the Buddhist with the critical 
 philosophy. So far from Gotama and Kant being at oppo- 
 site poles of thought, they do not even think on the same 
 planet ! 
 
 "With Kant we must draw to a conclusion this brief review 
 of some of the various doctrines of renunciation which have 
 been propounded with the aim of relieving man from his 
 phenomenal slavery. Hitherto we have contented ourselves 
 with endeavouring to put them clearly before the reader, and 
 leaving him as a rule to judge of their logical consistency. 
 Apart from this, however, there is a deeper question as to 
 their practical value. In how far is the Buddhist, the Chris- 
 tian, or the Spinozist really superior to the sorrow, the pain, 
 above all to the passion of the sensuous world ? The lives of 
 Buddhist monks, of Christian ascetics and pietists, of the 
 lens-polisher of Amsterdam, prove sufficiently that men can 
 render themselves more or less indifferent to the storm of 
 outward sensation.^ Is such, however, the result of any phase 
 
 ' Cf. the Erster Ahschnilt of the Grundlegung ~ur Metaphysik der Sitten 
 (Hartenstein, \'i. p. 241), which treats especially of this point. 
 
 ^ Religion innerhalb der Cfrenzen der blossen Vernuvft, Stiick 1, Allrj. 
 Anm. (Hartenstein, vi. p. 144, footnote). Cf. Spinoza, Elhtca, i. 17, and 
 Defn. 7. 
 
 2 It is hardly necessary to argue with those who would deny the possibility 
 of man freeing himself froin the intensity of outward sensation. It is matter 
 of common experience. "Der Mensch vergisst sich selbst : er vcrliert das 
 Maass der Zeit und seiner siunlichen Kriifte, wenu ihn ein hoher Gedanke
 
 96 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 of theory, or rather an emotional state peculiar to certain 
 indivaduals ? Again, may we not question whether the re- 
 nuuciaut obtains the greatest joy from life ? May not he 
 who drinks deeper from the cup of existence find in greater 
 joy more than sufficient recompense for greater pain ? Nay, 
 may we not ask with Herder, whether man has any ' right ' 
 to remove himself into this blessed indifference, whether it 
 must not destroy that sympathy for his fellows which can 
 only arise from like passions, wliether it does not ' rob the 
 world of one of its most beautiful phenomena — man in his 
 natural and moral grandeur ' ? ^ We cannot now enter upon 
 any analysis of these doubts ; we refer merely to those philo- 
 sophers who do not absolutely renounce sensuous pleasures, 
 as giving at least a j^^L'^'i'^ii^ solution, and shall conclude our 
 ethic by a short investigation of the term ' phenomenal 
 slavery,' which will perhaps serve as a basis for criticising 
 any future doctrine of renunciation which may lay claim to 
 logical consistency. 
 
 I'henomena in a variety of ways are capable of holding 
 in bondage the individual man. All we understand by 
 ' phenomenal slavery ' is, that phenomena directly or in- 
 directly produce certain effects in man which he is apparently 
 incapable of controlling. So long as these effects tend to 
 preserve his existence or favour his growth, he finds them 
 causes of happiness, and does not recognise them as slavery. 
 (In the normal state no one objects to being subjected to the 
 sun's light and heat.) When, however, these effects tend to 
 destroy existence or check human growth, then they become 
 sources of pain, and are at once recognised as limiting human 
 
 aufruft, und er denselben verfolgt. Die scheusslichsten Qualen des Kcirpers 
 haben durch eine einzige lebendige Idee unterdriickt werden konnen, die 
 danials in dor Seele lierrschte. Menschen die von einem Atl'ekt, insonderheit 
 von dera lebhaftesten reinsten Affekt unter alien, der Liebe Gottes, ergriffen 
 ^vu^den, haben Leben und Tod nicht geachtet und sich in diesen Abgriinde 
 aller Ideen wie ini Himniel gefiihlt " (Herder : J'hilosophie der GeschicMe der 
 MenschhcU, i., Buch v., Absch. iv.). 
 
 ^ If any f'omi of Arahatship became common we should cease to meet in 
 practical life those Hamlets and Fausts M'ho add so much to its richness and 
 depth. The pious and the resigned are in some respects the most uninteresting 
 of mortals. It is the restless and the rebellious, the protestant an^ the doubter 
 who have created modern literature and even modern civilisation.
 
 THE ETHIC OF EENUXCIATION 97 
 
 freedom. (The heat of the sun may be so great as to produce 
 sunstroke.) Besides acting as direct sources of pain and pleasure, 
 phenomena, either immediately or by continuous repetition, 
 are capable of producing in man certain desires, predis- 
 positions, and prejudices. These are not the sources of any 
 direct pain or pleasure, but become the standard according 
 to which future sensations will be judged as pleasur- 
 able or painful. To the first kind of phenomenal slavery, 
 to that which favours man's growth, only the extreme and 
 of coui'se irrational ascetic can raise any objections. The 
 extent of these pleasurable phenomena is to the theologian 
 ' the argument from design ' ; to the evolutionist, evidence of 
 the extent to which mankind and its surroundings have in the 
 com'se of their development been mutually adapted. The direct 
 pain-producing sensations, however, are those which peculiarly 
 convince man of his absolute subjectivity to the phenomenal 
 world. The theologian, regarding man as the centre of the 
 universe, finds his rationale for pain in the supersensuous,^ — - 
 it is means to a Willenslduterung with transcendental effects ; 
 the evolutionist considers that it merely marks the limit to 
 which the present human type has adapted itself to its surround- 
 ings. Here the evolutionist can bring less comfort than the 
 theologian, for the latter teaches the individual that he is 
 bearing pain with a purpose, i.e. with a view to future 
 pleasure. Can the philosopher of renunciation also offer 
 any remedy? A painful sensation is not like a sensuous 
 desire ; there can be no possibility of directly renouncing it. 
 If we turn to the theories of most of the thinkers we have 
 examined, we find them asserting that a knowledge of the real 
 nature and cause of the painful sensation — the wider insight 
 which recognises man's true relation to the universe wherein 
 he is placed — will make him indifferent to his personal 
 discomfort, and so free him from this phenomenal slavery. 
 This is the practically identical view of Eckehart, Spinoza, 
 and Goethe. The intellect ceases to chafe against what it 
 recognises as an absolute necessity. To the vulgar mind it 
 might apyjear that an earthquake would be none the less 
 crushing a phenomenon, were its causes calculable, and the 
 
 7
 
 98 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 catastrophe recognised as an absolutely necessary step iu the 
 cosmic development ; nor, again, is it apparent how a tooth- 
 ache is the less painful because its origin and pathology are 
 exactly understood. Nevertheless there can be small doubt 
 that the mental condition has a great influence over the 
 manner iu which pain is endured. Not only is illness often 
 cured by mental excitement, but, what is more to our purpose, 
 consciousness of pain is lost. Where faith and superstition 
 are recognised as influencing factors, is it not perhaps con- 
 ceivable that knowledge too may have its value ? Such at 
 least has been the opinion of more than one of the world's 
 great thinkers, and the problem is on this account worth the 
 investigation of the scientific psychologist. 
 
 If we turn to the last type of phenomenal influence we 
 have referred to, namely, that which leads to the creation of 
 desires and predispositions, whereby a standard of individual 
 pleasure and pain is produced — we find ourselves in the 
 peculiar sphere of the renunciant. Here it seems perfectly 
 possible that the renunciation of a predisposition or desire 
 may diminish pain, and so lessen the positive or hostile side of 
 phenomenal slavery. In order to ascertain how renunciation 
 is possible we must examine briefly the origin of such pre- 
 dispositions and desires. These affections arise from the peculiar 
 ' set ' of either mind or body. Under the term ' set ' I refer to 
 the result of influences such as race -development, social or 
 physical environment, whereunder the individual is to a great 
 extent purely subjective. In so far as the mind comes to any 
 conclusions of its own, and by these conclusions guides the body 
 or itself, — in so far as it adopts a reasoned system of life and 
 belief — it cannot be called subjective. Here there is no 
 question of phenomenal slavery. What we have to consider 
 is the tendency of the phenomenal world to form affections in 
 the individual. For the sake of brevity we shall term the 
 mental set, a predisposition ; the bodily set, a desire. First, 
 with regard to the desire : as a general rule, it is the out- 
 come of the past development of the race. To this extent it 
 is almost beyond the power of the individual to renounce it. 
 His body and the desire are the outcome of a common growth
 
 THE ETHIC OF KENUNCIATION 99 
 
 — the desire is a physiological need. It is impossible to 
 renounce the desire to sleep, or to eat, or to have sexual 
 intercourse. On the other hand, these ' racial ' desires may 
 to a certain extent be varied, be diminished or exaggerated. 
 This variation in the desire is capable of becoming as 
 ' mental habit ' a standard of pleasure or pain. Here in the 
 variation is the sphere of the renunciant. To him the 
 problem which direction of variation he shall foster, which 
 he shall repress, becomes all-important. The answer to this 
 problem can only be ascertained by investigating the nature 
 of the particular desire, it becomes a matter of psychological 
 and physiological knowledge ; a clear insight into the causes 
 of the desire will point out which form of gratification is physio- 
 logically useful, which is harmful. The man is freed from 
 phenomenal slavery by that renunciation which is hased on 
 knowledge. The term ' harmful ' must be understood to refer 
 not only to direct injury to the individual, but to that which 
 is indirectly harmful to him by producing injury to his 
 fellows. It will indeed be found on investigation that as the 
 human tyx3e has been persistent in the struggle for exist- 
 ence chiefly by its development of the social instinct, so that 
 variation which is harmful to others is in general checked by 
 the fact that it brings direct injury to the varying individual. 
 Finally, let us turn to the predisposition. The field for 
 inquiry is here so extensive, that it must suftice to note one 
 or two aspects of the subject. Predispositions exercise an 
 enormous influence over the life and the thought of the 
 human race ; it is within the bounds of possibility that the 
 individual actually comes into the world disposed to accept 
 the beliefs and modes of thought customary to his forefathers. 
 But at any rate long before he arrives at years when he can 
 investigate for himself, the customary methods of thought 
 and belief have been engrained in his mind ; his mind has 
 received a permanent set. Social and religious prejudices are 
 so grafted Ijy youthful surroundings and early training upon 
 his nature that man docs not stop to inquire whether they have 
 any rational bases, they have become predispositions, and he 
 treats them much as he does his innate physical desires. As
 
 100 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 examples of such predispositions we may mention the beliefs 
 in the immortality of the soul and in the existence of a 
 masterful personal God — in short, the two Buddhist delusions 
 of individuality and ritualism. These predispositions have 
 led the theologian to assert the truth of the belief owing to 
 the universality of its existence ; the anthropologist to inquire 
 whether man will not always arrive at the same mental con- 
 ceptions under the influence of similar forces of development ; 
 and the evolutionist to suggest that something in these pre- 
 dispositions may tend in the struggle for existence to preserve 
 the groups that possess them. For example, the tribe which 
 has evolved in some random manner the conception of immor- 
 tality may be more fearless in battle than its neighbours, and 
 thus be the more likely to predominate ; or, again, a second 
 tribe which has attained to a strong belief in the existence of 
 a personal god, and thus possesses a centre for common worship 
 and a symbol for united action, may thereby be placed in a 
 position of advantage with regard to other groups having a 
 less definite religion, or no religion at all. We thus see how 
 a tribe with a prejudice may possibly tend to be a surviving 
 variation.^ A predisposition or a prejudice having absolutely 
 no rational basis, may have a social value and tend to pre- 
 serve an individual or group of individuals in the struggle for 
 existence. Do we not here catch a glimpse of how a nearly 
 universal predisposition may exist without our being able to 
 give it a rational basis ? We can perhaps trace its historical 
 growth, we may see how it took root, and the mode in which 
 it has developed ; but the utmost we can assert is, that its 
 origin and permanence are due to the assistance it gives the 
 human race in the struggle for life. What is true of such pre- 
 dispositions, and of the resulting prejudices or beliefs in the 
 mind of mankind as a whole, applies equally well to the 
 customary beliefs of smaller sections of human society. Such 
 beliefs may have absolutely no rational basis, may indeed be 
 demonstrably false, but the race, the tribe, the society may 
 
 ' There is little doubt in my own mind, that the survival of the Jewish 
 race has heen largely due to two ii-rational beliefs, the one in the special efficacy 
 of their tribal god, and the other in the value of circumcision.
 
 THE ETHIC or EENUNCIATION 101 
 
 in the long run force them upon all or upon the majority of its 
 members, — those who do not accept the belief being destroyed, 
 expelled, or ostracised. The deeper knowledge, the clearer 
 insight may show the individual that many beliefs are due 
 only to racial predispositions ; that they are intellectually 
 false and productive of pain and misery to the individual. 
 Re may go so far as to renounce for himself all the Buddhist 
 delusions, but can such renunciation become a general rule ? 
 May not the non-renouncing sections of humanity ultimately 
 survive ? Will the race always force its predispositions as 
 factors of permanence upon the great mass of its members ? 
 For the sake of race survival may not the individual be com- 
 pelled to believe what is intellectually absurd ? We can free 
 ourselves by study from our predispositions, but may we not 
 thus be opposing the interests of the race by eliminating 
 certain factors of its permanency ? As in the days of early 
 Christianity, mankind may again come to look upon the intellect 
 as prejudicial to its welfare. A movement akin to that of the 
 Salvation Army might carry society over a critical period when 
 its very existence hung in the balance, and humanity might 
 again believe with Luther that intellect is the devil's archwhore. 
 Herein lies one of the deepest and most momentous problems 
 of renunciation, and one which the philosophers of renuncia- 
 tion have but lightly touched upon. This is the secret of our 
 modern pessimism and optimism, — they are involved in the 
 impossibility or the possibility of permanent intellectual 
 progress for all classes. The answer given to this problem 
 will determine the value to be placed upon a life of intellectual 
 activity and the wisdom or folly of those who attempt to 
 enlarge the sphere of human knowledge. Does the human 
 mind, as the centuries roll by, tend to free itself from irrational 
 beliefs, and grasp things in their true relation to their sur- 
 roundings ? Does it more and more succeed in casting off 
 phenomenal slavery by reducing its sensations to an intelligible 
 sequence ? Do human predispositions tend to take the firmer 
 basis of intellect, or must the individual always be ultimately 
 sacrificed to everything which, regardless of its intellectual truth 
 or falsehood, contributes to the preservation of the race ? Does
 
 102 THE ETHIC OF EREETHOUGHT 
 
 or does not surviving belief approximate more and more to 
 rational insight ? On the answers which are given to these 
 questions must largely depend the possibility of man's freedom 
 from ' phenomenal slavery.' We shall not have long to wait 
 for these answers as far as concerns our own folk. In the 
 great social and religious changes which are looming so 
 large in the near future, will intellect or market-place 
 rhetoric guide our people ?
 
 THE ENTHUSIASM OF THE MAEKET-PLACE 
 AND OF THE STUDY i 
 
 ' Who will absolve you bad Christians ? ' ' Study,' I replied, ' and 
 Knowledge.' — Conrad Muth in a letter to Peter Eberbach, circa 1510 
 
 There are two types of human character which must have 
 impressed themselves even upon those least observant of the 
 phases of life which surround us. Nor is it only in observing 
 the present, but also in studying the past, that we find the 
 same two types influencing, each in its own peculiar fashion, 
 the growth of human thought and the forms of human society. 
 By ' studying the past ' I do not mean reading a popular 
 historical work, but taking a hundred, or better fifty, years in 
 the life of a nation, and studying thoroughly that period. 
 Each one of us is capable of such a study, although it may 
 require the leisure moments, not of weeks, but of years. It 
 means understanding, not only the politics of that nation 
 during those years ; not only what its thinkers wrote ; not 
 only how the educated classes thought and lived ; but in 
 addition how the mass of the folk struggled, and what aroused 
 their feeling or stirred them to action. In this latter respect 
 more may often be learnt from folk-songs and broadsheets 
 than from a whole round of foreign campaigns. Any one 
 who has made some such study as I have suggested, will not 
 only have recognised these two opposing types of human 
 
 ' This lectuie was delivered at South Place Institute, on Sunday, November 
 29, 1885, and afterwards jirinted as a pamphlet, dedicated to Henry Bradshaw, 
 a genuine ' man of the study.'
 
 104 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 chariictor, but be better able to judge of the parts which they 
 have played iu human development. Without asserting that 
 one of these types is thoroughly harmful, and that the other 
 is alone of real social value, we may still inquire whether the 
 one be not of more service to humanity than the other, and 
 whether we ought not to try and repress the one and cultivate 
 the other. If, on examining longer periods of human history, we 
 find that in tlie more developed extant societies the first type 
 is tending to recede before the second, we shall be considerably 
 aided in arriving at a judgment of their relative social value. 
 
 The two types which I am desirous of placing before you 
 this morning I term the " Man of the Market-Place," and the 
 " ]\Ian of the Study." Let me endeavour to explain to you 
 what meanings I attach to these names. 
 
 In the earlier forms of human society impulses to certain 
 lines of social conduct are transmitted from generation to 
 generation, either by direct contact between old and young, 
 or possibly by some hereditary principle. Upon these im- 
 pulses the stability of the society depends ; they have been 
 evolved in the race-struggle for existence. Looked at from 
 an outside point of view, they form the social custom and 
 the current morality of that stage of society. Without them 
 the society would decay, and yet no man in that primitive state 
 understands when or how they have arisen. A^iewed on the one 
 side as indispensable to the race, and on the other appearing 
 to have no origin in human reason or human power, it is not to 
 be wondered at if we find morality and custom in these early 
 forms of civilisation associated with the superhuman. To 
 give the strongest possible sanction to morality — for on that 
 sanction race -existence depends — it is associated with the 
 supersensuous, it becomes part of a religious cult. Immorality, 
 the only rational meaning of which is something anti- 
 social, becomes sin; it plays a part in the relation of each 
 individual to the supernatural. Xor is it hard to under- 
 stand how such a superstition might be a valuable factor in 
 race -preservation. On the scientific and historical basis 
 there is no difficulty whatever in explaining how morality 
 has come to have a supernatural value, nor why the belief in
 
 THE MAEKET-PLACE AND THE STUDY 105 
 
 a supernatural sanction should be so widespread. You may 
 be inclined to object : But every reasoning person considers 
 immorality as another term for what is anti-social ! This 
 may be quite true, but reasoning persons are not to be met with 
 on every Sabbath day's journey ; and I find vast numbers of 
 those with whom I come in contact still talk of morality 
 and immorality, of good and evil, as if they had an absolute or 
 abstract value, and were not synonymous with what is social 
 and anti-social. "WTien a great modern thinker like Kant can 
 lay down the absurd proposition that the world exists in 
 order that man may have a field for moral action ; when from 
 thousands of voices in this land, from the platform and the press, 
 we hear vague cries for justice and morality, for human rights, 
 and for divine retribution, then indeed we become conscious 
 how widespread is the delusion that there is an absolute code 
 of morality or justice which is hidden somewhere in the 
 inner consciousness of each individual. In judging of 
 Christianity, not as a revelation, but as a system of morality, 
 we are often apt to give it too high praise, forgetting that to 
 the teaching of Jesus the Christ, carried to its legitimate 
 outcome in the Latin Fathers, modern Europe owes the 
 superstition that life is created for morality, not morality 
 created for life. I assert, that life exists for wider purposes 
 than mere morality; morality is only a condition which 
 renders social life possible. I am moral, not because such is 
 the object of my life, but because by being so I gratify the 
 social impulses impressed upon me by early education, and 
 by hereditary instinct. Gratification of impulse brings 
 pleasure, and pleasure in life is one of the conditions necessary 
 to our grasping it and working it to the full extent of its rich 
 possibilities. 
 
 If we agree, then, that morality is what is social, and 
 immorality what is anti-social, that neither has an absolute 
 or supernatural value, we shall be led to inquire of any course 
 of action how it affects the welfare of society ; not only the 
 welfare of those towards whom the action may be directed, but 
 of him who is its source, for both alike belong to society. 
 To judge whether an action be moral or not we must investi-
 
 lOG THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 gate its efiects, uot only on otltcrs, but on self. Now if the 
 things we had to deal with were all as simple as murder or 
 brute-sensuality, there would be no difficulty in judging their 
 effect on others or on self, — in determining their anti-social 
 character. But most of our conduct in human life is far 
 more difficult of analysis, far more complex in its bearings 
 on others and on self. In addition conduct often requires 
 an immediate decision. When a man decides rapidly on 
 his course of action, we say he is a man of character ; when 
 his decisions prove in the sequel to have been generally 
 correct, we attribute to him insight or wisdom. We look 
 upon him as a wise man, and endeavour to imitate him, or 
 to learn from him. The insight or wisdom we have thus 
 spoken of, and which is so intimately connected with 
 character, is the result of training, of mental discipline, or of 
 what in the broad sense of the word we may term education. 
 It is not only experience of men, but still more a knowledge 
 of the laws which govern human society, of the effects of 
 certain courses of action as manifested in history, nay even 
 of natural laws, whether mechanical or physiological, which 
 govern man because he is a part of nature ; it is all this which 
 makes up education. But more, this knowledge, this education, 
 in itself is not sufficient to form what we term a wise man ; 
 each truth learnt from science or history must have become 
 a part of man's existence ; the theoretical truth must form 
 such a part of his very being, that it influences almost 
 unconsciously every practical action ; the comparatively 
 trivial doings of each day must all be consistent with, I will 
 even say dictated by, those general laws which have been 
 deduced from a study of history and from a study of science. 
 Then and then only a man's actions become certain, har- 
 monious, and definite in purpose ; then we recognise that we 
 have to deal with a man of character ; with a man whose 
 morality is something more than a superstition — it is an 
 integral part of his thinking being. If a theory of life is 
 worth studying, let its propounder give evidence that it has 
 moulded his own clmracter, that it has been the mainspring of 
 his own actions. There is no truer touchstone of the value
 
 THE MAEKET-PLACE AND THE STUDY 107 
 
 of a philosophical system. Examine the lives of the great 
 German metaphysicians, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, you 
 will find them men who were petulant, irritable, even cowardly 
 in action. Examine the life of a Spinoza and you will for the 
 first time understand his philosophy ; it was an element of 
 his being. 
 
 Lecturing from this platform nearly three years ago, I 
 described freethought not merely as the shaking off of dog- 
 matism, but as the single-minded devotion to the pursuit of 
 truth. Deep thought, patient study, even the labour of a 
 whole life might be needed before a man obtained the right 
 to call himself a freethinker. Some of my audience, in the 
 discussion which followed, strongly objected to such a system 
 as leaving no place for morality, for the play of the emotions. 
 I was much struck by the objections at the time, as it showed 
 me what a gulf separated my conception of morality from that 
 of some of my audience. Practical morality was then, and is 
 still to me the gratification of the social passion in one's 
 actions. But in what fashion must this gratification take 
 place ? On the basis of those principles of human conduct 
 which we have deduced hy study from history and from 
 science. As I said then the ignorant and the imeducated 
 cannot be freethinkers ; so I say now the ignorant and the 
 uneducated cannot be moral. As I said then freethought is 
 an ideal to which we can only approximate, an ideal which 
 expands with every advance of our positive knowledge ; so 
 I say now morality is an ideal of human action to which 
 we can only approximate — an ideal which expands with 
 every advance of our positive knowledge. As the true free- 
 thinker must be in possession of the highest knowledge of 
 his time, so he will be in possession of all that is known of 
 the laws of human development. He, and he only, is 
 capable of fulfilling his social instinct in accordance with 
 those laws. He, and he only, is capable of being really moral. 
 Morality is not the blind following of a social impulse, but a 
 habit of action based upon character, a habit moulded by that 
 knowledge of truth which must become an integral part of 
 our being.
 
 108 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 I^t me give you one or two examples of what I mean by 
 the relation of morality to knowledge. The question of 
 compulsory vaccination is one which can only be answered 
 by investigation of general laws and particular statistics, not 
 always easily accessible or easily intelligible when accessible ; 
 yet, notwithstanding this, the question has been dragged on 
 to the hustings, made a matter of ' human right,' ' individual 
 liberty,' and those other vague generalities which abound on 
 the market-place. Another good example is that of sexual 
 morality ; here the most difficult questions arise, which are 
 intimately connected with almost every phase of our modern 
 social life. These questions are extremely hard to answer ; 
 they involve not only a wide study of comparative history, 
 but frequently of the most complex problems in biology ; often 
 problems which that science, still only in its infancy, has 
 not yet solved. Such questions we ought to approach with 
 the most cautious, the most impartial, the most earnest minds, 
 because their very nature tends to excite our prejudices, 
 to thrust aside our intellectual rule, and so, to warp our 
 judgment. But what do we find in actual life ? These 
 questions are brought on to the market-place ; they are made 
 the subject of appeal on the one side to the supernatural, or to 
 some absolute code of morality, — on the other side to strong 
 emotions, which, utterly untutored, are the natural outcome 
 of our strong social impulses. Where we might expect a calm 
 appeal to the results of science and the facts of human history, 
 we are confronted with the deity, absolute justice, the moral 
 rights of man, and other terms which are calculated to excite 
 strong feeling, while they successfully screen the yawning void 
 of our ignorance. 
 
 As a last example, let me point to a problem which is 
 becoming all -important to our age — the great social change, 
 the economic reorganisation, which is pressing upon us. 
 "We none of us know exactly what is coming ; we are only 
 conscious of a vast feeling of unrest, of discontent with our 
 present social organisation, which manifests itself, not in one 
 or two little groups of men, but throughout all the strata of 
 society. The socialistic movement in England would have
 
 THE I^iAEKET-PLACE AND THE STUDY 109 
 
 little meaning if we were to weigh its importance by the 
 existing socialist societies or their organs in the press. It is 
 because we find throughout all classes a decay of the old 
 conceptions of social justice and of the old principles of 
 social action — a growing disbelief in once accepted economic 
 laws — a tendency to question the very foundations of our 
 social system ; it is because of these manifestations that we 
 can speak of a great social problem before us. This problem 
 is one of the hardest which a nation can have to work out ; 
 one which requires all its energy, and all its intellect ; it is 
 fraught with the highest possibilities and the most terrible 
 dangers. Human society cannot be changed in a year, 
 scarcely in a hundred years ; it is an organism as complex 
 as that of the most differentiated type of physical life ; you 
 can ruin that organism as you can destroy life, but remould 
 it you cannot without the patient labour of generations, even 
 of centuries. That labour itself must be directed by know- 
 ledge, knowledge of the laws which have dictated the rise 
 and decay of human societies, and of those physical influences 
 which manifest themselves in humanity as temperament, im- 
 pulse, and passion. No single man, no single group of men, 
 no generation of men can remodel human society ; their in- 
 fluence when measured in the future will be found wondrously 
 insignificant. They may, if they are strong men of the 
 market-place, produce a German Preformation or a French 
 Kevolution ; but when the historian, not of the outside, but 
 of the inside, comes to investigate that phase of society before 
 and after the movement, what does he find ? A great deal of 
 human pain, a great deal of destruction. And of human 
 creation ? The veriest little ; new forms here and there 
 perhaps, but under them the old slave turning the old wheel ; 
 humanity toiling on under the old yoke ; the same round of 
 human selfishness, of human misery, of human ignorance — 
 touched here and there, as of old, by the same human beauty, 
 the same human greatness. 
 
 It is because the man of the study recognises how little is 
 the all which even extended insight will enable him to do for 
 social change that he condemns the man of the market-place,
 
 110 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 who not only thinks he understands the terms of the social 
 problem, but has even found its solution. The man of the 
 study is convinced that o-eally to change human society re- 
 quires long generations of educational labour. Human pro- 
 gress, like Nature, never leaps ; this is the most certain of all 
 laws deduced from the study of human development. If this 
 be formulated in the somewhat obscure phase : " Social growth 
 takes place by evolution not by revolution," the man of the 
 market-place declares in one breath that his revolution is an 
 evolution, and in the next either sings some glorious chant, 
 a blind appeal to force, or informs you that he can shoulder 
 a rifle, and could render our present society impossible by 
 the use of dynamite, with the properties of which he is 
 well acquainted. Poor fellow ! would that he were as well 
 acquainted with the properties of human nature ! 
 
 The examples I have placed before you may be sufficient 
 to show how much morality is a question not of feeling but 
 of knowledge and study. In a speech at the recent Church 
 Congress a theologian, a man of the market-place, declared 
 that he considered questions of ethics as lying outside the 
 field of the intellect ; that is one of the most immoral state- 
 ments I have ever come across.^ It causes one almost to 
 despair of one's country and its people, when it is possible 
 for the holders of such views to be raised to positions of 
 great social and educational influence ! 
 
 You will feel, I know, that it is a very hard saying : The 
 ignorant cannot he moral. It is so opposed to all the Chris- 
 tian conceptions of morality in which we ourselves have been 
 reared, and which have been impressed upon our forefathers 
 for generations. Morality with the Christian is a matter of 
 feeling ; obedience to a code revealed by a transcendental 
 manifestation of the deity. The hundreds of appeals made 
 weekly from the pulpits of this country, urging mankind to a 
 moral course of life, are appeals to the emotions, not to the 
 reason. In my sense of the words, they are made by men of 
 the market-place, not by men of the study. The Christian 
 
 1 [While the anarchist of the preceding paragraph has sunk into the abysm. 
 the theologian of this has now reached a bishopric]
 
 THE MAEKET-PLACE AND THE STUDY 111 
 
 movement, as Mark Pattison has well pointed out, arose 
 entirely outside the sphere of educated thought. Unlike 
 modern freethought, it was not the outcome of the knowledge 
 and culture of its age. In its neglect of the great Greek 
 systems of philosophy, it was a return to blind emotion, even 
 to barbarism. This opposition of Christianity and Eeason 
 reached its climax in the second century, possibly with Ter- 
 tullian. " What," writes this Father, " have the philosopher 
 and Christian in common ? The disciple of Greece and the 
 disciple of heaven ? What have Athens and Jerusalem, the 
 Church and the Academy, heretics and Christians, in common ? 
 There is no more curiosity for us, now that Christ has come, 
 nor any occasion for further investigation, since we have the 
 Gospel. . . . The Son of God is dead ; it is right credible, 
 because it is absurd ; being buried, he has arisen ; it is certain, 
 because it is impossible." 
 
 Although there have been periods of history when Chris- 
 tianity has stood in the van of intellectual progress, we must 
 yet hold that she has on the whole, and perhaps not un- 
 naturally, exhibited a suspicion of human reason. She has 
 preferred the methods of the market-place to those of the 
 study ; men of words, prophets, and orators may be picked up 
 at every street corner ; the scholar, the man of thought re- 
 quires a lifetime in the making, and, being made, will he any 
 longer be a Christian ? If, and if only, he finds Christianity 
 to be one with the highest knowledge of his age. 
 
 I have endeavoured to emphasise this relation of Chris- 
 tianity to the intellect, because our current morality is essen- 
 tially Christian — is essentially a matter of blind feeling — and 
 hence it comes about that we find the statement : The ignorant 
 cannot he moral, such a very hard saying. The freethinker, 
 placing on one side the supernatural, finding an all-sufficient 
 religion in the pursuit of truth, in the investigation of law, 
 will surely not be content to accept the old Christian con- 
 ception of morality ? To leave his reason on this point out 
 of account, and to appeal to feeling as a test of truth ? Let 
 him remember what other teachers, in their way as great as or 
 greater than Jesus — greater if we measure them by intel-
 
 112 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 lectual power — have taught. With Gotama the Buddha 
 knowledge was the key to the higher life ; right living the 
 outcome of self-culture. Moses the son of Maimon, chief of 
 Jewish philosophers, tells us that evil is the work of infirm 
 souls, and that infirm souls shall seek the wise, the physicians of 
 the soul. Averroes, the greatest of mediaeval freethinkers, whom 
 Christian art depicted with Judas crushed in the Jaws of 
 Satan, asserted that knowledge is the only key to perfect 
 livino-. That Spinoza taught that all evil arises from confused 
 ideas, from ignorance, is more generally known. If the philo- 
 sophers, as Tertullian has declaimed, are the patriarchs and 
 prophets of heretics, then surely we freethinkers should attend 
 to what they have taught ! But I can give you a still more 
 striking instance of how the men of the study have based 
 morality upon knowledge. I refer to that little band of real 
 workers, to the Humanists of the early sixteenth century. 
 Men like Erasmus, Sebastian Brant, and Conrad Muth were 
 working for a real reformation of the German people on the 
 basis of education, of knowledge, of that progress which alone 
 is sure, because it is based on the reason. These men, one 
 and all, identified immorality with ignorance ; the immoral 
 man with the fool. Feared on the one side by the monks, 
 abused on the other by the Lutherans, they were asked : ' Who 
 will absolve you bad Christians ? ' ' Study,' they replied, ' and 
 Knowledge.' It were instructive, had we time, to see how 
 the labour of these men of the study was swept away by the 
 popular passion roused by the men of the market-place. 
 Suffice it to say that Luther described evil-doing as dis- 
 obedience to a supernatural code ; sin as a want of belief in 
 Jesus the Christ ; and reason as the ' archwhore ' and ' devil's 
 bride.' Appealing to popular ignorance and blind emotion, 
 he reimposed upon half Europe the Christian conception of 
 morality ; and we freethinkers of to-day have again to start 
 from the standpoint of the Humanists : Study and Knowledge 
 alone absolve from sin ; morality is impossible to the ignorant. 
 If you will agree with me, at least for the purposes of my 
 present lecture, that the ideal moral nature is a character 
 moulded by study and knowledge — a mind which is not only
 
 THE MAEKET-PLACE AND THE STUDY 113 
 
 in possession of facts, but in which the laws drawn from 
 these facts have become modes of thought inexplicably wound 
 up with its being, then we may proceed further and inquire : 
 How can this ideal be approached ? What is the motive 
 force behind it ? How does it affect our practical conduct ? 
 
 Hoio can this ideal he approached ? If immorality be one 
 with ignorance, this question is not hard to answer. The moral 
 life to the freethinker is like the religious life, it is a growth 
 — a growth in knowledge. As the freethinker's religion is the 
 pursuit of truth and his sole guide the reason, so his morality 
 consists in the application of that truth to the practical side of 
 life. The freethinker's morality is a part of his religious nature, 
 even as much as the Christian's is part of his. More than 
 once a Christian has said to me : "I do not deny that you 
 present freethinkers may be moral. You have been brought 
 up in the Christian faith, and its morality still influences 
 your lives. How will it be, however, with your children and 
 your children's children, who have never felt that influence ? " ^ 
 " Never felt that influence ? " I reply. " No ! but the 
 influence of something more human, something which is 
 matter not of belief, but of knowledge ; something which can 
 guide their life infinitely more surely than a supernatural code. 
 The morality which springs from the human, the rational 
 guidance of the social impulse, is ten times more stable than 
 the morality which is based upon the emotional appeals of a 
 dogmatic faith." When the Christian comes to me and prates 
 of his morality, the enthusiasm of the market-place masters me, 
 I feel like Hamlet scorning Laertes' love for Ophelia — 
 
 Why, I will fight with him upon this theme 
 Until my eyelids -will no longer wag. 
 
 'Swounds, show me what thou'lt do : 
 
 Woo't weep ? woo't fight ? woo't fast ? woo't tear thyself ? 
 
 Woo't drink up eisel ? eat a crocodile ? 
 
 I'll do it. Dost thou come here to whine ? 
 
 1 This remarkable arf^mient, were it valid, would demonstrate tliat there 
 was no morality before Clnist, or among heathen nations, whereas no herd of 
 men, however savage, can continue to exist without a social code, a morality of 
 some sort. 
 
 8
 
 114 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 To outface me -with leaping in her grave ? 
 Be buried quick with her, and so will I : 
 And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw 
 Millions of acres on us, till our ground, 
 Singeing his pate against the burning zone, 
 Make Ossa like a wart ! Nay, an thou'lt mouth, 
 I'll rant as well as thou. 
 
 That we freethinkers have no moral code, or only the 
 remnants of an antique faith — prejudices gained from a 
 Christian education which cling like limpets to the rock of 
 our intellectual being — is the libel of ignorance. We have 
 a morality, and those who hold it assert that it stands above 
 the Christian dispensation, as the Christian above the Hebrew. 
 Like the Hebrew, however, it is a matter of law, and the law- 
 giver is Reason. Eeason is the only lawgiver, by whom the 
 intellectual forces of the nineteenth century can be ordered 
 and disciplined. The only practical method of making society 
 as a whole approach the freethinker's ideal of morality is to 
 educate it, to teach it to use its reason in guiding race instincts 
 and social impulses. Understand what I mean by the end of 
 education. I do not mean mere knowledge of scientific or historic 
 facts; but these facts co-ordinated into laws, and these laws made 
 so much a mode of thought, that they are the received rules of 
 human action. The learned man may be in no sense of the 
 word educated, and is thus frequently immoral. Often what 
 we are accustomed to call education is merely the means to its 
 attainment. You must give your folk — if you wish it to be 
 moral, to have social stability — not only the means of educa- 
 tion, but the leisure to pursue that means to its end. Let us 
 put this statement in a more direct form. Society depends for 
 its stability on the morality of the individual. The morality 
 of the individual is co-ordinate with his education. It is there- 
 fore a primary function of society to educate its members. 
 
 It may even seem to some of you a platitude when I say 
 that to improve the morality of society you must improve its 
 education. Yet how far is this principle carried into practice 
 by our would-be moral reformers ? Do they set themselves 
 down to the life -long task of slowly but surely educating 
 their fellows? Or do they rush out into the market-place,
 
 THE MAKKET-PLACE AND THE STUDY 115 
 
 proclaim that God bids men do this or that; that this or 
 that com-se of action is virtuous, is righteous, is moral, without 
 once troubling to define their words? How many such 
 moral reformers have made that study of science and history, 
 have gained that knowledge of social and physical law which 
 would enable them to be moral themselves, to say nothing of 
 guiding their fellows ? In many of the complex problems of 
 modern life, we freethinkers can only say, that we are 
 strugglino; towards the light, that we are endeavouring to 
 gain that knowledge which will lead us to their solution. 
 And yet how often does the man of the market-place rush 
 by us proclaiming what he thinks an obvious truth, appealing 
 to the blind passions of the ignorant mass of humanity, and 
 drawing after him such a flood of popular energy that those 
 germs of intellectual life and rational action which for years 
 we may have been laboriously implanting disappear in the 
 torrent ! After the flood has subsided, when human life has 
 returned, as history shows us it invariably does, to its old 
 channels, the men of the study come back to what may be 
 left of their old labours and begin afresh their endless process 
 of education. Some few will be disheartened and lose all faith, 
 but the many know that the work in which they are engaged 
 requires the slow evolution of centuries, — not to accomplish, 
 because there is no end to human knowledge, no end to the 
 discovery of truth, but even — to manifest itself in its results. 
 The man of the study has no desire to leave a name as the 
 propounder of an idea; he is content to have enjoyed the 
 fulness of life, to have passed a life religious, because it is 
 rational, — because it has been spent in accordance with the 
 highest knowledge of his day, — and moral, because it has been 
 directed to social ends, to the purposes of education, to the 
 discovery and spread of truth. 
 
 It is easy to see how the man who has time for education, 
 for self-culture, may strive towards tlie freethinker's standard 
 of morality. But what about the toiler, the man whose days 
 are spent in the hard round of purely mechanical labour? I 
 can only reply that so long as such a man has no time for 
 the development of his intellectual nature, he cannot be
 
 116 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 moral in my sense of the word. He may follow instinctively a 
 certain course of action, wliich may not in ordinary matters be 
 directly anti- social, but in the complex problems of life he 
 will as often go wrong as go right. The existence of large 
 masses of men in our present society incapable of moral action 
 is one of the gravest questions of the time ; it indicates the 
 instability of our social forms. It places at the disposal of 
 the men of the market-place a power of stirring up popular 
 passion, the danger of which it is hard to exaggerate. That 
 cduc<ation is now a privilege of class, is the strongest argument 
 which our socialistic friends could adopt if they knew how to 
 use it aright, but it is not one with which they can appeal to 
 the blind feeling of the masses. If all social reform be, as I 
 am convinced it is, the outcome of increased morality alone, 
 and if morality be a matter of education and of knowledge, 
 then all real social reform can only proceed step by step with 
 the slow, often hardly perceptible, process of popular education. 
 What a field of social action lies here for all who wish to 
 enjoy the fulness of life ! Here the freethinker's mission is at 
 once religious and moral. His morality — not perhaps in the 
 sense of the market-place, but at least in that of the study 
 — is socialism, his religious cult is that pursuit of truth, 
 which, when obtained, directs his moral, his social action. 
 Would that more men of learning were so educated as to recog- 
 nise this new code of social action ! We want education for 
 the masses, not that the workman may make ten good screws 
 where he formerly made nine bad ones, but that every member 
 of society may be capable of moral, that is, of social action. 
 Men of science are always asserting the need of technical 
 education for the English artisan, if he is to survive in the 
 battle for existence with German and American rivals. A more 
 pitiable plea for technical education could hardly be imagined. 
 Freethinkers demand technical education for the workman, 
 because we believe that it enables him to replace a mechanical 
 routine by a series of intelligent acts ; we believe that when 
 he is accustomed to intelligent, rather than to empirical 
 action in handicraft, he will no longer be content with an 
 unreasoned code of social action ; he will begin to inquire and
 
 THE MARKET-PLACE AND THE STUDY 117 
 
 to investigate ; — his morality also will become a matter of 
 thought and of knowledge, no longer of faith and of custom. 
 That would indeed be a great step towards social reform, a 
 great advance in social stability. To the freethinkers of the 
 old school, who fancy their sole mission is to destroy Chris- 
 tianity, we of the new school cry : ' Go and study Christianity ; 
 learn what it, as a purely human institution, has in 1900 
 years done and failed to do, then only will you be in a position 
 in destroying to create ; — to create that religion which alone 
 can play a great part in the future.' To the socialists of the 
 old school, who think that revolutionary agitation, paper 
 schemes of social reconstruction, and manifestoes appealing to 
 class passion, are the only possible modes of action, we of the 
 new school cry : ' Go out and educate, create a new morality, 
 the basis of which shall be knowledge, and socialism will 
 come, although in a shape which none of us have imagined. 
 It may need the labour" of centuries, but it is the one method 
 of action, which at each step gives us sure foothold. To the 
 firm ground of reason trusts the man who would build for 
 posterity.' 
 
 So much, then, in answer to our first question of the 
 method by which we can approach the moral ideal. 
 
 Our second question: What is the motive force behind this 
 morality ? leads me to a point, which has given the title to 
 this lecture, and presents undoubted difficulty to those who 
 have thrown aside all appeal to the emotions as the motive 
 force in conduct. The energy which enables a man of the 
 market-place to carry out his projects, may be measured by 
 the amount oL.^nik.usiasm he is capable of raising among his 
 fellow men. ( To create enthusiasm by an appeal to the 
 emotions, andVdJrect it to a definite goal, is essentially the 
 method of the man of the market-place.X He does not try 
 to move men through their reasons7~he does not try to 
 educate them, but he strives to influence their feelings, to 
 excite their passions, and, in so doing, to raise their enthu- 
 siasm for the cause he has at heart. Party passion, super- 
 stition, religious hatred, national prejudices, class - feeling, 
 every phase of individual desire or of race-impulse, is made
 
 118 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 use of by the man of the market-place to raise the excite- 
 ment necessary for the accomplishment of his purpose. 
 Where can the man of the study find a motive force, an 
 enthusiasm like this ? How can his calm appeal to the 
 reason, his slow process of education, ever produce the 
 enthusiasm needful for the achievement of a great end ? Is 
 there no enthusiasm of the study which can be compared 
 with the enthusiasm of the market-place ? This is the 
 question we have to answer. Here is the void which so 
 many have felt in the freethinker's faith, in that morality 
 which is based on knowledge. What is there in the calm 
 pursuit of truth to call forth enthusiasm, what great social 
 heroism can be based on a study of the laws of human life ? 
 
 I do not know whether any of you ever read the sermons 
 of Christian divines, but for me they form a frequent source 
 of amusement and instruction. They afford an insight into 
 human character, human ignorance, and human striving, 
 such as hardly manifests itself elsewhere. A theologian, 
 preaching before the University of Cambridge a few years 
 since, made use of the following words : — 
 
 " But what is enthusiasm, but, as the term imports, the 
 state of one who is habitually eV^eo?, possessed by some 
 power of God ? " 
 
 The sentence is interesting, not only as bearing upon the 
 character of the preacher, who could dismiss with a philo- 
 logical quibble the possibility of an enthusiasm among free- 
 thinkers, but also as clearly marking the gulf which separates 
 the enthusiasm of the market-place from that of the study. 
 Perhaps, indeed, the gulf is so great that we ought not to 
 call the two things by the same name, yet to do so is con- 
 venient if only for the sake of the contrast. 
 
 The enthusiasm of the market-place is, as our theologian 
 expresses it, the state of one who is possessed (or rather 
 imagines he is possessed) by some superhuman power. It 
 is not a state of rational inspiration, but rather of frenzy, 
 of religious, social, or political fanaticism. It is the state of 
 excitement to which the ignorant may be aroused — on the 
 one hand, by confused ideas taking possession of their fancy.
 
 THE MAEKET-PLACE AND THE STUDY 119 
 
 or, on the other hand, by a rhetorical appeal to their pre- 
 judice and to their passion. Enthusiasm of the market- 
 place is so prevalent to-day that we have not to go far in 
 search of samples. It is rampant in our political and social 
 life. The politicians to whom we entrust the destinies of our 
 country are essentially men of the market-place ; men who 
 have won their present positions by appeal to class prejudice 
 and to passionate ignorance. The politician who discusses a 
 bUl considering its social value, who does not speak from 
 a party standpoint, and who tries to reason in the House, is 
 scarcely yet known. The present Prime Minister raises 
 enthusiasm among a section of his countrymen by express- 
 ing his horror at the ' wave of infidelity ' which he tells us is 
 sweeping across the land ; the late Prime Minister raises 
 enthusiasm in another section of his countrymen by employ- 
 ing his leisure in defending what he terms the ' majestic 
 process ' of creation described in the first chapter of Genesis. 
 When a writer talks of " the detachment and collection of 
 light, leaving in darkness as it proceeded the still chaotic 
 mass from which it was detached," — we recognise how 
 hopelessly ignorant he is of the conceptions of modern 
 science as to light. We demand what intellectual right he 
 has to criticise what he describes as the vain and boastful 
 theories of modern thought. We cry : ' Understand, go 
 into the school and learn, before you come into the market- 
 place and talk.' Mr. Gladstone, in his recent article in the 
 Nineteenth Century, writes again that : " We do not hear the 
 authority of Scripture impeached on the ground that it 
 assigns to the Almighty eyes and ears, hands, arms, and 
 feet ; nay, even the emotions of the human being." Now, 
 these are precisely the strongest arguments which free- 
 thinkers at present use against Scripture, and which many 
 great philosophers have used in the past : " The under- 
 standing, will, and intelligence, ascribed to God," says 
 Spinoza, " can have no more in common with our human 
 faculties than the Dog a sign in the heavens has with the 
 barking animal we call a dog on earth." Is Mr. Gladstone 
 ignorant alike of past and present ? Those of you who wish
 
 120 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 to study euthusiusiu of the market-place should read his 
 article, notably the last two pages, wherein he tilts at the 
 scientific doctrine of evolution as Don Quixote tilted at 
 the windmill. The language is magnificent, the rlietoric is 
 unsurpassed, only there is an utter absence of logical thought, 
 or of the spirit of scliolarly investigation. If our political 
 leaders make such statements, what sliall we say of them ? 
 Are they intellectually inferior men, or are they intellectually 
 dishonest ? Let us content ourselves by describing them as 
 men of the market-place. 
 
 Such enthusiasm as I have described — an enthusiasm in 
 the sense of the Cambridge theologian — based upon prejudice, 
 not upon reason, is an impossibility for the man of the study. 
 If this is all enthusiasm means, then the ideal freethinker 
 must be without it. But is there nothing which can take its 
 place ? Nothing which can be termed enthusiasm of the 
 study? I think there is, although as its strength lies in 
 calmness not in fanaticism, in persistence rather than petu- 
 lance, it is not easy to make it manifest to those who have 
 not experienced it as a motive power in action. 
 
 The enthusiasm of which I speak springs from the desire 
 of knowledge. You cannot deny the existence of this desire, 
 amounting in many cases to an absolute passion. Men have 
 sacrificed everything, even their life, in the pursuit of truth. 
 Nor was the spirit which moved all of them ambition : many 
 neither sought nor knew anything of fame. Granted that 
 knowledge plays a great part in the struggle for existence, it 
 is not hard to understand how the pursuit of truth has become 
 a passion in a portion of mankind. All life which does not 
 grasp the laws of the social and physical world surround- 
 ing it, is of necessity cramped and suffering; its sphere of 
 action is limited, and it cannot enjoy existence to the full. 
 Increased knowledge brings with it increased activity; life 
 becomes an intelligible whole, every physical law without is 
 found to be one with a mental process within ; crude con- 
 ceptions of a distinction between matter and spirit fade 
 away. That process of science which Mr. Gladstone speaks 
 bitterly of as converting the world into a huge mechanism,
 
 THE MAEKET-PLACE AND THE STUDY 121 
 
 is grasped as the one process by which the world becomes 
 intelligible — spiritual, if you will. Physical law and social 
 law become as much facts of the intellect as any mental 
 process. The truth gained by study becomes a part of a 
 man's intellectual nature, and it is as impossible for him to 
 contradict it in action as to destroy a part of his own body. 
 The man of the study would as soon think of breaking through 
 a social law the truth of which he had discovered by historical 
 research, as of acting contrary to a physical law ; both would 
 be alike destructive of a pai't of his intellectual nature. It 
 is this consistency of action, this uniform obedience to rational 
 law, which gives the man of the study character, raises his 
 morality from a matter of feeling to a matter of reason. The 
 steady persistency which arises when knowledge of truth, 
 social and physical, has become a part of man's intellectual 
 nature, is what I term the enthusiasm of the study. It is 
 this enthusiasm of the study which, I believe, must be at the 
 back of all really social action. Enthusiasm of the market- 
 place may for the moment appear to move mountains, but it 
 is an appearance only. The reaction comes, and when the flood 
 has subsided we find how little the religious, the social, or 
 the political fanatic has in truth accomplished ! The froth 
 remains — the name, the institution, the form — but the real 
 social good is too often what the mathematician terms a 
 negative quantity. The long, scarcely perceptible swell of 
 the sea may be more dangerous to an ironclad than the storm 
 which breaks over it. So it is that the scarcely perceptible 
 influence of enthusiasm of the study may with the centuries 
 achieve more than all the strong eloquence of the market- 
 place. It is faith in this one principle which makes us 
 struggle towards the ideal of freethouj^ht, which makes us 
 proclaim reason and knowledge as the sole factors of moral 
 action ; nay, which makes us believe that the future may 
 bring a social regeneration for our folk, if in the social storms 
 of the future it trusts for guidance to the enthusiasm of 
 the study rather than to the enthusiasm of the market- 
 place. 
 
 If I have made my meaning in the least clear to you, it
 
 122 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 would seem almost itUe to attempt an answer to my third 
 question : What effect should these doctrines have on our 
 practical conduct ? To cultivate in ourselves the persistent 
 enthusiasm of the study; to endeavour by every means in 
 our power to assist the education of others who have not the 
 like means of intellectual development ; to insist that moral 
 problems shall be solved not on the basis of customary 
 morality or individual prejudice, but solely by a thorough 
 investigation of physical and social law ; to repress so far as 
 lies in our power those men of the market-place, who render 
 our political life an apotheosis of ignorance, not a field for 
 the display of a nation's wisdom ; to recollect that inspiration 
 and blind will, the prophet and the martyr, are not wanted in 
 this our nineteenth century, that they belong to the past ; to 
 refuse, should any man cry out that he has discovered a great 
 truth, to listen to any emotional appeal, but to demand the 
 rational grounds of his faith, however great be his name or 
 respected his authority ; to refuse belief to any opinion, 
 although it be held by the many, until we find a rational 
 basis for its existence ; shortly, to consider all things which 
 are not based on the firm ground of reason subject to the 
 sacred right of doubt ; to treat all mere belief as delusion, and 
 to reckon the unknown not as a field for dogma, but as a 
 problem to be solved ; — to act thus and think thus, surely 
 is to allow the doctrines of freethought to influence our 
 practical conduct ? It is to convert the market-place into the 
 study. And if his life be spent in only struggling towards 
 these ideals, in the long task of learning how to Hve, may we 
 not at least place as an epitaph over our freethinker, Robert 
 Browning's lines to the old Humanist who perished before he 
 had satisfied his craving for knowledge : — 
 
 Did not he magnify the mind, show clear 
 Just what it all meant ? 
 
 That low man seeks a little thing to do, 
 
 Sees it and does it : 
 This high man, with a great thing to pursue, 
 
 Dies ere he knows it.
 
 HISTORY 
 
 Alle walire GescMclite liat iiberall zuerst einen religiosen Zweck gehabt, 
 
 und ist von religiosen Ideen ausgegangen, 
 
 Schleiermacher.
 
 VI 
 
 MAIMONIDES AND SPINOZA' 
 
 Prof. Schaaeschmidt, in his excellent preface to Spinoza's 
 Korte Verhandeling van God, etc. (Amsterdam, 1869), has 
 drawn attention to the somewhat one-sided view usually 
 taken of Spinoza's position in the evolution of thought : the 
 importance attributed to the influence of Descartes, and the 
 slight weight given to the Jewish writers. He concludes 
 his considerations with the remark : — " Attamen in gravis- 
 simis rebus ab eo (Cartesio) differt et his ipsis cum Judaeorum 
 philosophia congruit, quorum quidem orthodoxiam repudi- 
 avit, ingenium ipsum et mentem retinuit." (Prsefatio xxiv.) 
 
 The subject is all the more important because even an 
 historian like Kuno Fischer (Gesch. der ne^iern Fhilos., 3rd 
 ed., 1880) still regards Spinoza as a mere link after Descartes 
 in the chain of philosophical development, rejecting the view that 
 he belongs rather to Jewish than to Christian Philosophy. 
 The hypothesis that Spinoza was very slightly influenced by 
 Hebrew thouglit has become traditional, and is to be found 
 in the most recent English works on Spinoza. Mr. Pollock 
 writes that the influence of Maimonides on the pure philo- 
 sophy of Spinoza was comparatively slight (p. 94). Dr. 
 Martineau tells us somewhat dogmatically that " no stress 
 can be laid on the evidence of Spinoza's indebtedness to 
 liabbinical philosophy" (p. 56). These opinions seem in 
 part based on a perusal of Maimonides' More JVehichiyn and 
 
 ' Reprinted from Mind : a ^Hiarterly Review of Psychology and Pliilosophy. 
 No. 31.
 
 126 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 of Joiil's Zur Genesis dcr Lehre Spinozas (1871), taken in 
 conjunction with Mr. W. R. Sor ley's " Jewish Mediaeval 
 Philosophy and Spinoza " in Mind, No. 1 9. Neither Mr. 
 Pollock nor Dr. Martineau seems acquainted with Maimonides' 
 Yad Hachazalcah. It is the relation of this work to Spinoza's 
 Ethica to which I wish at present to refer.^ 
 
 Maimonides (1135-1204) completed his More Neluchim 
 about 1190, its aim being to explain on the ground of reason 
 the many obscure passages of Scripture and apparently 
 irrational rites instituted by Moses. Hence the book was 
 termed the " Guide of the Perplexed," being intended to 
 lighten the difficult path of Biblical study. As might easily 
 be supposed, it is only concerned in the second place with 
 philosophical ethics. The influence of such a book on 
 Spinoza is, as we might anticipate, most manifest in the 
 TractatiLS Theologico-Politicus. The Yad Hacltazakah, how- 
 ever, or the " Mighty Hand," written some ten years 
 previously, has far greater importance for the student of 
 Spinoza's Ethica. Its author originally termed it " The 
 Twofold Law," i.e. the written and the traditional law — Bible 
 and Talmud, — and under fourteen headings or books con- 
 sidered some of the most important problems in theology 
 and ethics. Portions of the Yad were in 1832 translated by 
 Herman Hedwig Bernard, and published in Cambridge 
 imder the title : — The Main Principles of the Creed and Ethics 
 of the Jews exhibited in selections from the Yad HachazaTcah of 
 Maimonides. Of this book I propose to make use in the 
 following remarks on the intellectual resemblance between 
 Spinoza and Maimonides.^ I shall omit all matter which 
 
 ^ While on the subject of works concerning Spinoza and Jewish Philosophy 
 I may give the following titles : — E. Saisset : " Mairaonide et Spinoza," Itevue 
 lies deux Mondes, 1862 ; Salomo Rubinus : S2nnoza und Mamumides, Vienna, 
 1868. 
 
 2 Two other translations of the First Book of the Yad may be mentioned, 
 both "edited" by the Polisli Rabin, Elias Soloweyczik. The first — into German 
 (Kbnigsberg, 1846) — omits the last or fifth part of the First Book containing : 
 " The Precepts of Repentance. " The second — into English (Nicholson, 1863) — 
 nominally contains all five parts, but really omits many of their most interesting 
 sub-chaptei-s {e.g., Part III., cc. v.-vii., on the relation of a scholar to his teacher 
 and on respect for the wise). This English edition, too, loses nmcli of its 
 scientific value owing to the omission or 2>erversion of many i^aragraphs where
 
 MAIMONIDES AND SPINOZA 127 
 
 has no direct bearing on Spinoza's Ethica, however interesting 
 it may otherwise be, and endeavour to make allowance for 
 the age and theologico- philosophical language in which 
 Maimonides wrote. We have rather to consider the spirit 
 in which Spinoza read the Yad than that in which the Yad 
 itself was composed. 
 
 Let us first of all consider Maimonides' conception of 
 God. This is contained in the " Precepts relating to the 
 Foundations of the Law," and the " Precepts relating to 
 Eepentance," especially in the chapters entitled by Bernard 
 "On the Deity and the Angels" (p. 71), and "On the Love 
 of God and the true way of serving him" (p. 314), which 
 correspond roughly to Ethica i. and v. of Spinoza. Maimo- 
 nides, to start with, sweeps away all human attributes and 
 affections from the Godhead. God has neither body nor 
 frame, nor limit of any kind ; he has none of the accidental 
 
 the editor has with a very false modesty thought Maimonides too outspoken for 
 modern readers. On the title-page stand the words : Translated from the 
 Hebrew into English by several Learned Writers." The chief of these 
 "Learned Writers" is Bernard, who has been freely used without apparent 
 acknowledgment. Portions of the remainder appear to be translated from 
 the German, and not directly from the Hebrew. Appended to this English 
 edition is a translation of the fifth Chapter of Book xiv. of the Yad: i.e. 
 "Laws concerning Kings and their Wars." Whatever may have been the 
 causes which gave rise to this so-called English translation, it must be 
 noted that Soloweyczik's German translation is an independent work 
 suffering from none of these faults, and of considerable value to the student of 
 Maimonides. 
 
 Before entering upon a comimrison of the intellectual relation of Maimonides 
 to Spinoza, I may refer to a close connection between Spinoza's method of life 
 and Maimonides' theory of how a wise man should earn his livelihood. It 
 seems to me the keynote of Spinoza's life at the optical bench, — his refusal of the 
 professorial chair. " Let," writes Maimonides, " thy fixed occupation be the 
 study of the Law" (i'.e. divine wisdom), "and thy worldly jairsuits be of 
 secondary consideration." After stating that all business is only a means to 
 study, in that it provides the necessities of life, he continues: "He who 
 resolves upon occupying himself solely with the study of the Law, not attending 
 to any work or trade, but. living on cliarity, defiles the sacred name and heaps 
 up contumely upon the Law. Study must have active lal)our joined with it, or 
 it is worthless, produces sin, and leads tlic man to injure his neighbour." . . . 
 " It is a cardinal virtue to live by the work of one's hands, and it is one of the 
 great characteristics of the pious of yore, even that whereby one attains to all 
 respect and felicity in this and tiie future world." (After !SoloweycziL:, Part 
 III., chap. iii. 5-11.) Why does Spinoza's life stand in sucli contrast to 
 that of all other modern pliilosojjhcrs ? Because his life at least, if not his 
 philosophy, has an oriental cliaracter !
 
 128 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 qualities of bodies — " neither composition nor decomposition ; 
 neither place nor measure ; neither ascent nor descent ; 
 neither right nor left ; neither before nor behind ; neither 
 sitting nor standing ; neither does he exist in time, so that 
 he should have a beginning or an end or a number of years ; 
 nor is he liable to change, since in liim there is nothing 
 which can cause a change in him" (B. 78). Add to this, 
 God is one, but this unity is not that of an individual or a 
 material body, " but such an One that there is no other 
 Unity like his in the Universe" (B. 73). That God has 
 similitude or form iu the Scripture is due only to an 
 " apparition of prophecy " ; while the • assertion that God 
 created man in his own image refers only to the soul or 
 intellectual element in man. It has no reference to shape 
 or to manner of life, but to that knowledge which consti- 
 tutes the "quality" of the soul (B. 106). The "pillar of 
 wisdom " is to know that this first Being exists, and " that 
 he has called all other beings into existence, and that 
 all things existing, heaven, earth, and whatever is between 
 them, exist only through the truth of his existence, so that 
 if we were to suppose that he did not exist, no other thing 
 could exist" (B. 71). Among the propositions which Spinoza, 
 in the Appendix to Ethica i., tells us that he has sought to 
 prove are these : — that God exists necessarily ; " quod sit 
 unicus ; . . . quod sit omnium rerum causa libera, et quo- 
 modo ; quod omnia in Deo sint, et ab ipso ita pendeant, ut 
 sine ipso nee esse nee concipi possint," — words which might 
 almost stand as a translation of Maimonides. Compare also 
 Ethica i. 14 and Corollary, and 15. 
 
 That God is not divisible (B. 73) Spinoza proves, i. 13 ; 
 that he is without limit, i. 19, or better, Frincipia Cartesii, 19 ; 
 that God is incapable of change, i. 20, Coroll. 2 ; the notion 
 that God has body or form is termed a " childish fancy," i. 15, 
 Scholium ; while the infinite and eternal nature of God is 
 asserted at the very commencement of the Ethica. Add to 
 this that Maimonides' conception of the Deity, without being 
 professedly pantheistic, is yet extremely anti - personal and 
 diffused. Still more striking is the coincidence when we turn
 
 jMAIMONIDES and SPINOZA 129 
 
 to the denial of human affections. Maimonides tells us that 
 with God " there is neither death nor life like the life of a 
 living body : neither folly nor wisdom, like the wisdom of a 
 wise man ; neither sleep nor waking ; neither anger nor 
 laughter ; neither joy nor sorrow ; neither silence nor speech, 
 like the speech of the sons of men" (B. 79). Compare with 
 this Spinoza's assertions that the intellect of God differs toto 
 ccelo from human intellect (i. 17, Schol), and that "God is 
 without passions, and is not affected by any emotion of joy or 
 sorrow" — "He neither loves nor hates any one" (v. 17 and 
 CoroU.). 
 
 Curiously enough, while both Maimonides and Spinoza 
 strip God of all conceivable human characteristics, they yet 
 hold it i possible for the mind of man to attain to some, if an 
 imperfect, knoidedge of God, and make the attainment of such 
 knowledge the highest good of life. There would be some 
 danger of self-contradiction in this matter, if their conception 
 of the Deity had not ceased to be a personal one, and become 
 rather the recognition of an intellectual cause or law running 
 through all phenomena — which, showing beneath a material 
 succession an intellectual sequence or mental necessity, is for 
 them the Highest Wisdom, to be acquainted with which 
 becomes the end of human life. This intellectual relation of 
 man to God forms an all-important feature in the ethics of 
 both Maimonides and Spinoza ; it is in fact a vein of mystic 
 gold which runs through the great mass of Hebrew thought.^ 
 
 Before entering upon Maimonides' conception of the rela- 
 tion of God to man, it may be as well to premise what he 
 understands by intelligence. The Kabbinical writers oppose 
 the term quality (or inoinrty) to the term matter (B. Note, 
 
 1 The Talmudic picture of the world to come, where "the righteous sit with 
 their crowns on their heads delighting in the shining glory of the Shechiuah " 
 is thus interpreted : their crowns denote intelligence or wisdom, while 
 "delighting in the glory of the Shechinah " signifies that they know more of 
 the truth of God than while in this dark and abject body. The attainment of 
 Adsdom as the self-sufficient end of life is one of the highest and most cnijihasised 
 lessons of the Talnmd and its commentators. The strong reaction against a 
 merely formal knowledge at the beginning of our era led the founder of 
 Christianity and his earlier followers to a somewhat one-sided view of life which 
 neglected this all-important truth.
 
 130 THE ETHIC OF EEEETHOUGHT 
 
 p. 82) ; most frequently, and in the Yad invariably, when these 
 terms are opposed, the former signifies intelligence or thought ; 
 so that in the language of Sx)inoza we may very well call them 
 thought and extension. If we leave out of account the angels, 
 to whom Maimonides, rather on doctrinal and theological 
 than on philosophical grounds, assigned an anomalous position, 
 we find that all things in the universe are composed of matter 
 and quality {i.e. extension and thought), though possessing 
 these attributes in different degrees. These degrees form the 
 basis of all classification and individuality (B. 82-84). We 
 now arrive at a proposition which may be said to form the 
 very foundation of Spinoza's Ethica : " You can never see 
 matter without quality, nor quality without matter, and it is 
 only the understanding of man which abstractedly parts the 
 existing body and knows that it is composed of matter and 
 quality" (B. 105). This coexistence of matter and quality, 
 or extension and thought, is carried, as in Spinoza's case, 
 throughout all being. Even " all the planets and orbs are 
 beings possessed of soul, mind, and understanding " (B. 9 7). 
 Spinoza, in the Scholium to Ethica ii. 13, remarking on the 
 union of thought and extension in man, continues — " nam ea, 
 quse hucusque ostendimus, admodum communia sunt, nee 
 magis ad homines quam ad reliqiia Individua pertinent, quse 
 omnia, quamvis diversis gradihus, animata tamen sunt." The 
 parallelism is all the more striking in that in this very 
 Scholium a classification is suggested based on the degrees 
 wherein the two attributes are present in individuals. Dr. 
 Martineau, in a note on this passage (p. 190), remarks on a 
 superficial resemblance between Giordano Bruno and Spinoza : 
 " Bruno animates things to get them into action ; Spinoza to 
 fetch them into the sphere of intelligence." It will be seen at 
 once how Spinoza coincides on this point with Maimonides, 
 who wished to explain how it is that all things in their 
 degree know the wisdom of the Creator and glorify him. 
 Each intelligence, according to the latter philosopher, can in 
 its degree know God ; yet none know God as he knows him- 
 self From this it follows that the measure of man's know- 
 ledge of God is his intellitrence. With regard to this intelli-
 
 MAIMONIDES AND SPINOZA 131 
 
 gence Maimonides — speaking of it as that " more excellent 
 knowledge which is found in the soul of man " — identifies it 
 with the "quality" of man, i.e. his thought-attribute; this 
 " quality " of man, indeed, is for him identical with the soul 
 itself (B. 105). The bearing of all this on Spinoza's theo- 
 sophical conceptions must be apparent ; yet it is but a stage 
 to a far more important coincidence, which lies in the prin- 
 ciple : — that the knowledge of God is always associated in an 
 equal degree with the love of God. This is what Spinoza 
 termed the " Amor Dei intellectualis." Understanding the 
 work of God is " an opening to the intelligent man to love 
 God," writes Maimonides (B. 82). Further, " a man, however, 
 can love the Holy One, blessed be he ! only by the knowledge 
 which he has of him ; so that his love will be in proportion 
 to his knowledge : if this latter be slight, the former will also 
 be slight ; but if the latter be great, the former also will be 
 great. And therefore a man ought solely and entirely to 
 devote himself to the acquisition of knowledge and under- 
 standing, by applying himself to those sciences and doctrines 
 which are calculated to give such an idea of his Creator as it 
 is in the power of the intellect of man to conceive " (B. 321). 
 This intellectual love of God is for Maimonides the highes*^ 
 good ; the bliss of the world to come will consist in the 
 knowledge of the truth of the Shechinah ; the greatest worldly 
 happiness is to have time and opportunity to learn wisdom 
 {i.e. knowledge of God), and this maximum of earthly peace 
 will be reached when the Messiah comes, for his government 
 will give the required opportunities (B. 308, 311, etc.). 
 Furthermore, the intensity of this intellectual love of God, of 
 this pursuit of wisdom, is often insisted upon ; the whole soul 
 of the man must be absorbed in it — " it cannot be made fast 
 in the heart of a man unless he be constantly and duly 
 absorbed in the same, and unless he renounce everything in 
 the world except this love " (B. 320). It will be seen at once 
 how closely this approaches Spinoza's "Ex his clare intelligimus, 
 qua in re nostra salus, scu Beatitudo, seu Libertas consistit ; 
 nempe in constanti et ieterno erga Deum Aniore " (v. 36, 
 Schol.), and " Hie erga Deum Amor summum bouum est, quod
 
 132 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 ex dictamine Kationis appetere possumus " (v. 20). Spinoza's 
 " third kind of intellection," his knowledge of God, is associated 
 with the renunciation of all worldly passions, all temporal 
 strivings and fleshly appetites ; it is the replacing of the 
 obscure by clear ideas, the seeing things under the aspect of 
 eternity, i.e. in their relation to God. There is in fact in 
 Spinoza's system a strong notion of a ' renunciation ' or 
 ' rebirth,' by means of which a man becomes free, thenceforth 
 to be led " by the Spirit of Christ, that is, hj the idea of God, 
 which alone is capable of making man free" (iv. 68, Schol.). 
 This notion of rebirth or renunciation has very characteristic 
 analogues in the ' Nirvana ' of Buddha and the ' Ewige 
 Geburt ' of Meister Eckehart. It is, however, peculiarly 
 strong in the theosophy of Maimonides. First recalling to 
 the reader's mind that the contemplation of the highest 
 truths of the Godhead has been figuratively termed by 
 Kabbinical writers, " walking in the garden," I proceed to 
 quote the Yad : — 
 
 " The man who is replete with such virtues, and whose 
 bodily constitution, too, is in a perfect state on his entering 
 into the garden and on his being carried away by those great 
 and extensive matters, if he have a correct knowledge so as to 
 understand and comprehend them — if he continue to keep 
 himself in holiness — if he depart from the general manner of 
 people, who walk in the darkness of temporary things — if he 
 continue to be solicitous about himself, and to train his mind 
 so that it should not think at all of any of those p)erishdble 
 things, or of the vanities of time and its devices, but should 
 have its thoughts constantly turned on high, and fastened to 
 the Throne so as to comprehend those holy and pure intelli- 
 gences and to meditate on the wisdom of the Holy One ; . . . 
 and if by these means he come to know His excellency — then 
 the Holy Spirit immediately dwells with him ; and at the time 
 when the spirit rests on him, his soul mixes with the degree 
 of those angels called Ishim, so that he is changed into 
 another man. Moreover he himself perceives from the state 
 of his knowledge that he is not as he was" (B. 112). 
 
 Separate the notions of this paragraph from their Talmudic
 
 MAIMONIDES AND SPINOZA 133 
 
 language and they contain almost the exact thoughts of 
 Spinoza — the passage from obscure to clear ideas, and the 
 consequent attainment to a knowledge of God. Maimonides' 
 assertion that the man himself perceives that he has attained 
 this higher knowledge is perfectly parallel with Spinoza's 
 proposition, that the man who has a true idea is conscious 
 that he has a true idea, and cannot doubt its truth (ii. 43), 
 The parallel between this mediaeval Jewish philosophy and 
 Christian theology is of course evident, and is probably due 
 to the fact that both had a common source, — if the analogy 
 of Buddhism does not point to a still wider foundation in 
 human nature. 
 
 I will cite one point more in the relation of God and man, 
 wherein Maimonides and Spinoza follow the same groove of 
 thought. With the former the " cleaving to the Shechinah," the 
 striving after God, is identified with the pursuit of wisdom. The 
 attainment of wisdom is in itself the highest bliss — it is as 
 well the goal as the course of true human life ; wisdom is not 
 to be desired for an end beyond itself — for the sake of private 
 advantage or from fear of evil, above all not owing to dread 
 of future punishment or hope of future reward — but only in 
 and for itself because it is truth, because it is wisdom. Only 
 "rude folk" are virtuous out of fear (B. 314). Spinoza 
 expresses the same thought in somewhat different words : he 
 tells us that the man who is virtuous owing to fear does not 
 act reasonably. The perfect state is not the reward or goal of 
 virtue, but is identical with virtue itself The perfect state is 
 one wherein there is a clear knowledge and consequent in- 
 tellectual love of God ; and this is in itself the end and not 
 the means (iv. 63 and v. 42, etc.). 
 
 "We may now pass to a subject which, in the case of both 
 philosophers, is beset with grave difficulties — namely, God's 
 knowledge and love of himself "We have seen that in both 
 systems the knowledge of God is always accompanied by a 
 corresponding love of God ; we should expect tlierefore to find 
 God's knowledge of himself accompanied by a love of himself 
 This inference, however, as to God's intellectual love of him- 
 self seems to have been drawn only by Spinoza ; Maimonides
 
 134 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 is, ou the other hand, particularly busied with God's know- 
 ledge of himst'lf. To begin with, we are told : that God, 
 because he knows himself, knows everything. This assertion 
 is brought into close connection with another : all existing 
 things, from the first degree of intelligences to the smallest 
 insect which may be found in the centre of the earth, exist 
 by the power of God's truth (B. 87). Some light will perhaps 
 be cast on the meaning of these propositions by a remark 
 previously made as to Maimonides' conception of the Deity 
 as an intellectual cause or law. Behind the succession of 
 material phenomena is a succession of ideas following logically 
 the one on the other. This thought-logic is the only /orm 
 wherein the mind can co-ordinate phenomena because it is 
 itself a thinking entity, and so subject to the logic of thought. 
 The ' pure thought ' which has a logic of its own inner 
 necessity is thus the cause, and an intellectual one, of all 
 phenomena. That system which identifies this ' pure thought ' 
 with the Godhead may be fitly termed an intellectual 
 pantheism or a pantheistic idealism. It is obvious how in 
 such a pantheistic idealism the propositions — that God in 
 knowing himself knows everything, and that all things exist 
 by the power of God's truth — can easily arise. Such a 
 passage as the following, too, becomes replete with very deep 
 truth : — " The Holy One . . . perceives his own truth and 
 knows it just as it really is. And he does not knoio with a 
 hnoiiiedge distinct from himself as we know ; because we and 
 our knowledge are not one ; but . . . his knowledge and his 
 life are one in every possible respect, and in every mode of 
 imity. . . . Hence you may say that he is the knower, the 
 knoion, and knowledge itself all at once. . . . Therefore he 
 does not perceive creatures and know them by means of the 
 creatures as we know them ; but he knows them by means of 
 himself; so that, by dint of his knowing himself, he knows 
 everything ; because everything is supported by its existing 
 through him" (B. 87). What fruit such conceptions bore in 
 the mind of Spinoza must be at once recognised by every 
 student of the Ethica. 
 
 Let us compare these conceptions with their Spinozistic
 
 MAIMONIDES AND SPINOZA 135 
 
 equivalents. " All things exist by the power of God's truth." 
 To this Mhica i. 15 corresponds — " Quicquid est, in Deo est, 
 et nihil sine Deo esse neque concipi potest." 
 
 " God in knowing himself knows everything." I am not 
 aware of any passage in the Mhica where this proposition is 
 distinctly stated, yet it follows immediately from Spinoza's 
 fundamental principles, and is implied in i. 25, Schol. and 
 Coroll., and elsewhere (ii. 3, etc.). It is of course involved in 
 God's infinite intellectual love of himself (v. 35). 
 
 " God does not know with a knowledge distinct from him- 
 self." " His knowledge and his life are one." " He is the 
 knower, the known, and knowledge itself" " His perception 
 differs from that of creatures." Compare the following state- 
 ments of Spinoza. " Si intellectus ad divinam naturam 
 pertinet, non poterit, uti noster intellectus, posterior (ut 
 plerisque placet), vel simul natui'a esse cum rebus intellectis, 
 quandoquidem Deus omnibus rebus prior est causalitate ; sed 
 contra Veritas et formalis rerum essentia ideo talis est, quia 
 taKs in Dei intellectu existit objective. Quare Dei intellectus, 
 quatenus Dei essentiam constituere concipitur, est re vera 
 causa rerum, tam earum essentice quam earum existentise " 
 (i. 17, Schol.). These words are followed by the remark that 
 this is the opinion of those " who hold the knowledge, will, 
 and power of God to be identical," which probably refers to 
 Maimonides. " Omnia quie sub intellectum infinitum cadere 
 possunt necessario sequi debent " (i. 16). " Sicuti ex necessi- 
 tate divinee naturae sequitur, ut Deus seipsum intelligat, eadem 
 etiam necessitate sequitur, ut Deus infinita infinitis modis 
 agat. Deinde, i. 34, ostendimus Dei potentiam nihil esse, 
 prseterquam Dei actuosam essentiam " (ii. 3, Schol.). Such 
 expressions sufficiently show that God's knowledge, i.e. his 
 " intellectus," and his action, i.e. his life, are one and the 
 same. " Nam intellectus et voluntas, qui Dei essentiam con- 
 stituerent, a nostro intellectu et voluntate toto ccelo differre 
 deberent " (i. 1 7, Schol.) ; this sufficiently marks the diffiirence 
 between the divine and human intellect. Shortly, although 
 in certain formal assertions of the Etlcica this view is some- 
 what obscured, yet I venture to suggest that the only con-
 
 136 THE ETHIC OF EKEETHOUGHT 
 
 sistent iuterpretatiou of Spinoza's system is summed up in the 
 following words : — That the intellect of God is all ; his 
 thought is the existence of things ; to be real is to exist in 
 the divine thought ; that very intellect is itself existence ; it 
 does not understand things like the creature-intellect because 
 it is one with them} This is the equivalent of Maimonides' 
 proposition that God is " the knower, the known, and know- 
 ledge itself." 
 
 As a step from theology to anthropology we may compare 
 the views of the two philosophers on the immortality of the 
 sold. "We have seen that Maimonides identities the soul with 
 the " quality," i.e. the thought-attribute in man. This quality 
 not being composed of material elements cannot be decomposed 
 with them ; it stands in no need of the breath of life, of the 
 body, but it proceeds from God (the infinite intellect). This 
 quality is not destroyed with the body, but continues to know 
 and comprehend those intelligences that are distinct from all 
 matter (i.e. it no longer has knowledge of material things, and 
 therefore must lose all trace of its former individuality), and 
 it lasts for ever and ever (B. 106). A certain crude resem- 
 blance to Ethica v. 23 and Schol. will hardly be denied to 
 this view of immortality ; but a still closer link may be dis- 
 covered in the question whether this immortality is shared 
 by all men alike. From the above it would seem that for 
 Maimonides this question must be answered in the affirmative, 
 but when we come to examine his notion of future life we 
 shall find this l)y no means the case. For him goodness and 
 wisdom — wickedness and ignorance — are synonymous terms.^ 
 He classifies all beings from the supreme intelligence down to 
 the smallest insect according to their wisdom, the degree of 
 " quality " in them. The wise man who has renounced all 
 clogging passions, and received the Holy Spirit, is classed 
 even with a peculiar rank of angel — " the man-angel." On 
 the other hand, the fool, the evil man, may be in possession 
 
 1 Cf. also Kuno Fischer's identification of Spinoza's Substance with Causality. 
 
 2 Many passages miglit be nuoted from the Yad to prove this. A some- 
 what similar though not quite identical distinction of good and evil occurs in 
 the More Nchuchim (b. i., c. 1), where they are held equivalent to true and 
 false respectively.
 
 MAIMONIDES AND SPINOZA 137 
 
 of no " quality," aud therefore incapable of immortality. The 
 future life of the soul of the wise is a purely intellectual one ; 
 it consists in that state of bliss which Spinoza would describe 
 as perceiving things by the " third kind of intellection " : it 
 lies in perceiving more of the truth of God than was possible 
 while in the dark and abject body ; it is increased knowledge 
 of the Shechinah ; or again, to use Spinoza's words, a more 
 perfect "Amor Dei intellectualis " (B. 296). On the other 
 hand, the reward of the evil man is, that his soul is cut off 
 from this life ; it is that destruction after which there is no 
 existence ; " the retribution which awaits the wicked consists 
 in this, that they do not attain unto that life, but that they 
 are cut off and die" (B. 294). Shortly, Hell and Tophet are 
 the destruction and end of all life ; there is no immortality for 
 the wicked. I will only place for comparison by the side of this 
 a portion of the very remarkable Scholium with which Spinoza 
 concludes the Ethica : — " Ignarus enim, prseterquam a causis 
 externis multis modis agitatur, nee unquam vera animi 
 acquiescentia potitur, vivit prseterea sui et Dei et rerum 
 quasi inscius, et simul ac pati desinit, simul etiam esse desinit. 
 Cum contra sapiens, quatenus ut talis consideratur, vix animo 
 movetur, sed sui et Dei et rerum seterna quadam necessitate 
 conscius, nunquam esse desinit, sed semper vera animi acquies- 
 centia potitur." Ob\dously Spinoza recognised some form of 
 immortality in the wise man, which the ignorant could not 
 share ; the one ceased, the other never could cease to be.^ 
 
 The influence of Maimonides on Spinoza becomes far less 
 
 ^ It is a curious fact that the last words of the Ethica are very closely related 
 to a paragraph in the last chapter of the More Nebuchim, wherein we are told 
 that it is knowledge of God only which gives immortality. The soul is only so 
 far immortal as it possesses knowledge of God, i.e. msdom. To perceive things 
 under their intelligible aspect is the gi-eat aim of every human individual, it 
 gives him true perfection and renders his soul immortal. In striking corre- 
 spondence with this is chap. 23 of the 2ud part of the Koi'te Verlutiideliwj van 
 God, etc. We are told that the soul can only contiiuie to exist in so far as it is 
 united to tlie body or to God. (1) When it is united only to the l)otly it must 
 perish with the body. (2) In so far as it is united with an unchangeable 
 object, it must in itself be unchangeable. That is, in so far as it is united to 
 God, it cannot perish. This "union with God" is what Spinoza afterwards 
 termed the "knowledge of God." The coincidence has been noted l)y Joiil {Zur 
 Oenesis der Lchm Spinuzas).
 
 138 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 obvious when we turn to his doctrine of the human affections. 
 On the one hand, this is perhaps the most thought-out, 
 finished portion of Spinoza's work ; on the other hand, Mai- 
 monides' somewhat crude " Precepts relating to the Govern- 
 ment of the Temper " are an unsystematic mass of moral 
 precepts, exegesis, and interpretation of the Talmud ; added 
 to which only certain portions are yet available in translation. 
 Nevertheless, we may find several points of contact and even 
 double contact. 
 
 According to Spinoza the great end of life — the bliss 
 which is nothing less than repose of the soul — springs from 
 the knowledge of God. The more perfect the intellect is, the 
 greater is the knowledge of God. The great aim, then, of 
 the reasoning man is to regulate all other impulses to the 
 end that he may truly understand himself and his surround- 
 ings — that is, know God (iv. Appendix, c. 4). All things, 
 therefore, all passions, are to be made subservient to this one 
 end — the attainment of wisdom. Following up this concep- 
 tion Spinoza proves that all external objects, all natural affec- 
 tions, are to be so treated or encouraged, that the body may 
 be maintained in a state fit to discharge its functions, for by 
 this means the mind will be best able to form conceptions of 
 many things (iv. Appendix, c. 27, taken in conjunction with 
 iv. 38 and 39). For this reason laughter and jest are good 
 in moderation ; so also eating and drinking, etc. ; music and 
 games are all good so far as they serve this end ; " quo 
 majori Lietitia afficimur, eo ad majorem perfectionem transi- 
 mus, hoc est, eo nos magis de natura divina particijjare 
 necesse est" (iv, 45, Schol.). Nay, even marriage is consis- 
 tent with reason, if the love arises not from externals only, 
 but has for its cause the "libertas animi " (iv. App., c. 20). 
 Shortly, Spinoza makes the gratification of the so-called 
 natural passions reasonable in so far as it tends to the health 
 of the body, and hence to the great end of life — the perfect- 
 ing of the understanding or the knowing of God. We may 
 gather a somewhat similar idea from Maimonides. I have 
 already pointed out that in the terminology of the latter's 
 philosophy " to be wise," to " delight in the Shechinah " or
 
 MAIMONIDES AND SPINOZA 139 
 
 " to serve the Lord " are synonymous. Kemembering this, 
 the following passage is very suggestive : — " He who lives 
 according to rule, if his object be merely that of preserving 
 his body and his limbs whole, or that of having children to 
 do his work and to toil for his wants — his is not the right 
 way ; but his object ought to be that of preserving his body 
 whole and strong, to the end that his soul may be fit to know 
 the Lord, ... it being impossible for him to become intelli- 
 gent or to acquire wisdom by studying the sciences whilst he 
 is hungry or ill, or whilst any one of his limbs is ailing. . . . 
 And consequently he who walks in this way all his days will 
 be serving the Lord continually even at the time when he 
 trades, or even at the time when he has sexual intercourse ; 
 because his purpose in all this is ' to obtain that which is 
 necessary for him to the end that his mind may be perfect to 
 serve the Lord" (B. 174). Elsewhere Maimonides tells us 
 that a man should direct all his doings — trading, eating, 
 drinking, marrying a wife — so that his body may be in per- 
 fect health, and his mind thus capable of directing its energies 
 to knowledge of God (B. 172). 
 
 Other points of coincidence may be noted. Spinoza attri- 
 butes all evil to confused ideas, to ignorance. Maimonides 
 states that desire for evil arises from an infirm soul (here it 
 must be remembered that soul is the " quality " of a man, 
 his thinking attribute). " Now what remedy is there for 
 those that have infirm souls ? They shall go to the tvise, who 
 are the physicians of soul" (B. 159). Here evil is brought 
 into close connection with ignorance as its cause.^ The char- 
 acteristic of the wise man is that he avoids all opposite 
 extremes, and takes that middle stage which is found in all 
 the dispositions of man ; the rational man calculates his dis- 
 positions (i.e. his affections or emotions) and directs the same 
 
 1 It may be worth while remarking how the keynote to the moral Reformers 
 who preceded the so-called Reformation is the conception that the wicked man 
 and the fool are one and the same person. In woodcuts (cf. tliose in the 
 No/rrcnsdiiff, 1494, and the recently discovered Block-book, c. 1470) and in 
 words (cf. Sebastian Brand, Geiler von Kaiserbcrg, and Thomas Murner) it is 
 the ever-inculcated lesson. It is curious that this re-est;il>lishment of morality 
 on a higher inlellcdwd basis in preference to the old penal tlieory lias ever — 
 from Solomon to Spinoza — found such strong support in Hebrew philosophy.
 
 140 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 " in the intermediate way to the end that he may preserve a 
 perfect harmony in his bodily constitution" (B. 152). There 
 is an echo of this in Spinoza's " Cupiditas quoe ex Eatione 
 oritur, excessum habere nequit " (iv. Gl). Maimonides holds 
 haughtiness and humility extremes ; the wise man will steer 
 a middle course between them (B. 154). Spinoza tells us: 
 " Humilitas virtus non est, sive ex Eatione non oritm- " (iv. 
 53). In the Yad we read, when a man is in a country where 
 the inhabitants are wicked (i.e. ignorant), " he ought to abide 
 quite solitarily by himself" (B. 176). In the Ethica : " Homo 
 liber, qui inter iguaros vivit, eorum, quantum potest beneficia 
 declinare studet" (iv. 70). According to Spinoza all the 
 emotions of hate, for example vengeance, can only arise from 
 confused ideas, they have no existence for the rational man 
 who marks the true causes of things. Maimonides writes of 
 vengeance that it shows an evil mind, " for with intelligent 
 men all worldly concerns are but vain and idle things, such 
 as are not enough to call forth vengeance" (B. 197). Spinoza 
 terms the passions obscure ideas (iii. final paragraph), and in 
 so far as the mind has obscure or inadequate ideas its power of 
 acting or existing is decreased. Curiously enough Maimonides, 
 speaking of the passion anger, says : " Passionate men cannot 
 be said to live" (B. 164). 
 
 Taken individually these coincidences might not be of much 
 weight, yet taken in union, I think, they show that Spinoza was 
 even in his doctrine of the human affections not uninfluenced by 
 Maimonides, albeit to a lesser degree than in his theosophy. 
 
 It may not be uninteresting to note one point of diverg- 
 ence, namely, on the insoluble problem of free-will. Spinoza 
 reduces man's free-will to an intellectual recognition of, and 
 hence a free submission to, necessity. Maimonides, on the 
 other hand, tells us distinctly that "free-will is granted to 
 every man " ; that there is no predestination ; every man 
 can choose whether he will be righteous or wicked, a wise 
 man or a fool (B. 263). With regard to the question of 
 God's pre-knowledge, and whether this must not be a pre- 
 destination, Maimonides writes : " Know ye that with regard 
 to the discussion of this problem, the measure thereof is
 
 MAIMONIDES AND SPINOZA 141 
 
 longer than the earth and broader than the sea." He hints, 
 however, that its solution must probably be sought in the fact 
 that God's knowledge is not distinct from himself, but that he 
 and his knowledge are one (" the knower, the known, and the 
 knowledge itself are identical "). Maimonides cautiously adds 
 that it is impossible for man fully to grasp the truth regarding 
 the natm-e of God's knowledge ; and, while granting God pre- 
 knowledge, still concludes : " But yet it is known so as not to 
 admit of any doubt that the actions of a man are in his own 
 power, and that the Holy One, blessed be he ! neither attracts 
 him nor decrees that he should do so and so" (B. 270). 
 Perhaps the ordinaiy workaday mortal will j5nd Maimonides' 
 evasion of the problem as useful as Spinoza's attempted solution ! 
 In the above remarks I have considered only the Yad 
 Hctchazahah, because hitherto attention seems to have been 
 entirely directed to the More Nebucliim (cf Joel, Sorley, and 
 others). It is not impossible that in the intervening ten 
 years Maimonides somewhat altered his views. I should not 
 be surprised to hear that the More was held more ' orthodox ' 
 than the Yad. The latter, despite much Talmudic verbiage 
 and scriptural exegesis, notwithstanding many faults and in- 
 consistencies, yet contains the germs of a truly grand philo- 
 sophical system, quite capable of powerfully influencing the 
 mind even of a Spinoza. Such a reader would, while rejecting 
 the exegesis, recognise the elements of truth in the pure 
 theosophy (cf. Joiil, Zur Genesis, p. 9), and this is the point 
 wherein the two philosophers approach most closely. In the 
 second place, I have confined myself entirely to the influence 
 of the Yad on the Etliica. Greater agreement would have 
 been found with the Korte Verhandeling van God, etc., while 
 Spinoza's views of Biblical criticism (especially his conceptions 
 of prophets and prophecy as developed in the Tractatus 
 21ieoloffico - Politicus) owe undoubtedly much to the Yad. 
 But I wished to show that the study of Maimonides was 
 traceable even in Spinoza's most finished exposition of his 
 philosophy. Those who assert that Spinoza was influenced 
 by Hebrew thought have not seldom been treated as though 
 they were accusing Spinoza of a crime. Yet no great work
 
 142 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 ever sprung from the head of its creator like Atheua from 
 the head of Zeus ; it has slowly developed within him, influ- 
 enced and moulded by all that has influenced and moulded 
 its shaper's own character. Had we but knowledge and 
 critical insight enough, every idea might be traced to the 
 germ from which it has developed. While recognising many 
 other influences at work forming Spinoza's method of thought, 
 it is only scientific to allow a certain place to the Jewish 
 predecessors with whom he was acquainted. Critical com- 
 parison must show how great that influence was. We natm-- 
 ally expect to find considerable divergences between any 
 individual Jewish philosopher and Spinoza ; these divergences 
 have been carefully pointed out by Mr. Sorley, but they are 
 insufficient to prove that Spinoza was not very greatly in- 
 fluenced by Hebrew thought. My aim has been to call in 
 question the traditional view of Spinoza's relation to Jewish 
 philosophy, i.e. that he learnt enough of it to throw it off 
 entirely. I am compelled to hold that, while Spinoza's form 
 and language were a mixture of medieval scholasticism and 
 the Cartesian philosophy, yet the ideas which they clothed 
 were not seldom Hebrew in their origin. He might be cast 
 out by his co-religionists, but that could not deprive him of 
 the mental birthright of his people — those deep moral and 
 theosophical truths which have raised the Hebrews to a place 
 hardly second to the Greeks in the history of thought. 
 
 Hebrew philosophy seems to have a history and a de- 
 velopment more or less unique and apart from that of other 
 nations ; once in the course of many centuries it will produce 
 a giant-thinker ; one who, not satisfied by the narrow limits 
 of his own nation, strives for a freer, wider field of action, 
 and grafts on to his Hebrew ideas a catholic language and a 
 broader mental horizon. He becomes a world-prophet, but is 
 rejected of his own folk. Such an one of a truth was 
 Spinoza, and another perhaps, albeit in a lesser degree, 
 Moses, the son of Maimon.^ 
 
 1 When the More Nehuchim became generally known, its author was looked 
 upon by a large section of the Jews as a heretic of the worst type, who had 
 "contaminated the religion of the Bible with the vile alloy of human reason " !
 
 VII 
 
 MEISTER ECKEHAET, THE MYSTIC^ 
 
 Diz ist Meister Eckehart 
 Dem Got nie niht verbarc. 
 
 — Old Scribe. 
 
 Students of mediEeval philosophy must often have been struck 
 by the unexpected occurrence of phases of thought, even in 
 Christian writers, which are utterly out of keeping with the 
 framework of scholastic theology witliin which they are usually 
 mounted. M. Eenan has done excellent service in showing 
 how many of these eccentricities may be attributed to the in- 
 fluence, to the fascination of the arch-sinner AveiToes. There 
 is, however, one field of Averroistic influence to which M, 
 Renan has only referred without entering on any lengthened 
 discussion ; this is the extremely interesting, but undoubtedly 
 obscure subject of fourteenth century mysticism. I purpose in 
 the following paper to present the English reader with a slight 
 sketch of the philosophical (or rather theosophical) system of 
 Meister Eckehai't, the Mystic," who may be accepted as the chief 
 exponent of the school. There are two points which ought 
 
 ' Reprinted from Mi7id : a Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosopliy, 
 vol. xi. No. 41. 
 
 2 The Germans possess an excellent book on Eckehart from the pen of Prof. 
 Lasson, but, for the purposes of this essay, I have made use only of Eckehart's 
 own wi'itings in the second volume of Pfeilfer's Deutsche Mysliker. Tliat my 
 results differ so often from those of Prof. Lasson is due principally to his strong 
 Hegelian standpoint ; at tlie same time I have to acknowledge the debt which I 
 owe, not so much to his book, as to the charm of liis personal teaching. English 
 readers will find a short account of Eckehart due to Prof. La.sson in Uebcrweg's 
 History of Philosophy.
 
 144 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 peculiarly to attract the student of modern philosophy to 
 Eckehart : the first lies in a possible (and by no means im- 
 probable) influence which his ideas may have exercised over 
 Kant ; the second consists in a peculiar spiritual relationship 
 to Spinoza. This can be in no way due to direct contact, but 
 has to be sought in a common spiritual ancestry. Nor is this 
 link in the past by any means difficult to find. The parallelism 
 of ideas in the writings of Averroes and Maimonides has led 
 some authors hastily to conclude an adoption by the latter of 
 the ideas of the former. The real relation is a like education 
 under the influences of the same Arabian school. On the one 
 hand, Maimonides was the spiritual progenitor of Spinoza ; on 
 the other, Averroes was the master from whom fourteenth 
 century German mysticism drew its most striking ideas. 
 During this century Averroism was the ruling philosophical 
 system at both the leading European universities — at Paris 
 and at Oxford. It was the result of Averroistic teaching 
 which produced two of the most characteristic thinkers of the 
 age. The theologico-philosophical system which John Wyclif, 
 the Oxford professor, develops in his Trialogus is unintelligible 
 without a knowledge of Averroistic ideas. The mysticism of 
 Eckehart, the far-famed Paris lecturer, owes its leading char- 
 acteristics to a like source. In 1317 the then Bishop of 
 Strasburg condemned Eckehart's doctrines ; in 1327 the Arch- 
 bishop and Inquisitors of Cologne renewed the condemnation, 
 and Eckehart recanted ; in 1329, a year after Eckehart's death, 
 a papal bull cited twenty-eight theses of the master and rejected 
 them as heretical. What a parallel does this offer to the pro- 
 ceedings of the hierarchy against Wyclif, culminating in his 
 posthumous condemnation by the Council of Constance ! Yet 
 what more natural, when both men were deeply influenced by 
 the ideas of the arch-sinner Averroes, whom later Christian art 
 was to place alongside Judas and Mahomet in the darkest 
 shades of hell ? ^ 
 
 1 A further Imk between Eckehart and Wyclif is jierhaps to be found in the 
 pseudo-Dionysius with his commentator Grossetete. Eckehart was acquainted 
 with " Lincohiiensis " {Deutsche Mystiker, ii. 363), whom "Wyclif regarded as 
 peculiarly his own precursor.
 
 MEISTER ECKEHART, THE MYSTIC 145 
 
 Wyclif and Eckehart each in their individual fashion 
 represent the Averroistic ideas under the garb of Christian 
 scholasticism ; in strange contrast with these thinkers we find 
 in Spinoza the like ideas treated with a rationalism which has 
 not yet, however, quite freed itself from the idealistic influence 
 of Hebrew theosophy. The contrast is one possibly as interest- 
 ing and instructive as could well be found in the whole history 
 of the development of human thought. 
 
 Before entering upon a discussion of Eckehart's ideas, it 
 may not be out of place to recall those features of Averroism 
 with which we shall be principally concerned, and at the same 
 time to prove by citations from a remarkable tractate of an 
 anonymous writer of the fourteenth century the direct con- 
 nection of Averroistic thought with German mysticism. 
 
 Aristotle in his Dg Anima (III. v. 1) distinguishes in man 
 a double form of reason, the active and the passive ; the first 
 is separated from the body, eternal, and passionless ; the second 
 begins and ends with the body and shares all its varied states. 
 Unfortunately Aristotle has nowhere clearly explained what he 
 understands by the relationship of these two reasons, and, as 
 Zeller remarks (Die Pliilos. der Griechen, ii. Abth., 2 Theil, p. 
 572), it is not possible to reconcile his various statements by 
 any consistent theory. Alexander of Aphrodisias endeavoured 
 to construct such a consistent theory by seeking the active 
 reason, not in the human soul, but in the divine spmt. This 
 view, although probably not the interpretation Aristotle would 
 have given of his own statements, was yet eagerly adopted by 
 the Arabian commentators, and the comparatively insignificant 
 distinction made by Aristotle became with Averroes the basis 
 of all that is original in his ideas. 
 
 While Alexander identifies the active reason or intellect, 
 which brings the images {^avrdafxara) before the passive 
 intellect, with the divine spirit, Averroes looks upon it as 
 emanating from the last celestial intelligence. He considers, 
 however, with Alexander, that it is possible for the human or 
 passive intellect to unite itself to the purely active intellect. 
 This union takes place, this perfection or blessedness is attained, 
 by long study, deep thought, and renunciation of material
 
 146 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 pleasures. This process, consisting in the widening of human 
 knowledge, is the religion of the philosopher. For what 
 worthier cult can man offer to God than the knowledge of his 
 works, through which alone he can attain to a knowledge of 
 God himself in the fulness of his essence ? ^ 
 
 But to recognise fully what is original in Eckehart we 
 must examine Averroes' views somewhat more closely. 
 
 Averroes holds that things perceived Ly the understanding 
 {intelligihilia) stand in the same relation to the material 
 intellect (passive reason) as things perceived by sensation 
 to the faculty of sensation. This faculty is purely recep- 
 tive, and pure receptivity belongs also to the material 
 intellect. Its nature is only in potentia, — it is a capacity for 
 intellectual perception. At this point Averroes introduces a 
 statement which disagrees with Aristotle and brings obscurity 
 into his theory ; he holds that, as this passive reason exists 
 only in potentia, it can neither come into being nor perish. 
 Alexander's view, that the material intellect is perishable, is 
 described as utterly false.- The statement was probably intro- 
 duced to quiet the scruples of the Arabian theologians, which 
 would be excited by anything appearing to destroy individual 
 immortality. The like inconsistency recurs with Eckehart. 
 Three premisses of Alexander are stated by Averroes to prove 
 how in the course of time it is possible for the material to 
 attain perfection through the separate intellect. In accordance 
 with these premisses (which are based on the analogy mentioned 
 above of the intellectual and sensatory faculties) we ought to 
 conclude that some portion of mankind can really contemplate 
 the separate intellect, and these men are they who by the 
 speculative sciences have perfected themselves. Perfection of 
 the spirit is thus to be obtained by knowledge, nor can it ever 
 again be lost. Often, however, it comes only in the moment 
 of death, since it is opposed to bodily (material) perfection. 
 
 The separate intellect (active reason) exercises two 
 activities. The one, because it is separate, consists in self- 
 
 1 Cf. Drei Abhandlungen uher die Conjunctic/a^des separaten Intellects mit 
 dcm Menschen von Averroes, herausgegeben von T. Hercz, Berlm, 1869. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 23.
 
 MEISTER ECKEHART, THE MYSTIC 147 
 
 contemplation or self-perception. This self-perception is the 
 mode of all separate intellects, because it is characteristic 
 of them that the intellectual and the intelligible are ab- 
 solutely one. The second activity is the perception of the 
 intelligihilia which are in the material intellect, that is, 
 the transition of the material intellect from possibility to 
 actuality. Thus the active intellect attaches itself to man 
 and is at the same time his form, and the man becomes by 
 means of it active — that is, he thinks. These statements 
 can hardly be said to be free from obscurity, but they receive 
 considerable light from Eckehart, who identifies the active 
 reason with the Deity, and explains the life of the universe 
 by his two activities : self-contemplation, wherein to think is 
 to create or act, and human contemplation, which is the 
 " bearing of the Son." 
 
 The question now arises as to what follows upon the 
 complete union of the separate and individual intellects. 
 What happens to the man for whom there no longer remains 
 any intelligibile in potentia to convert into an intelligibile in 
 actu ? Such an individual intellect then becomes in char- 
 acter like to the separate intellect ; its nature becomes pure 
 activity ; its self- consciousness is like that of the separate 
 intellect, in which existence is identified with its purpose 
 — uninterrupted activity. This statement Averroes holds to 
 be the most important that can be made concerning the 
 intellect. 
 
 While Eckehart himself makes no direct reference to 
 Averroes, a remarkable tractate written by one of his school 
 does not hesitate to cite the Arabian commentator as an 
 authority.^ A short sketch of the views contained in this 
 tractate will serve to link more clearly the preceding state- 
 ment of Averroes's theory witli our sketch of Eckehart's 
 theosoj)hy. 
 
 The writer ({uotes Meister Eckehart to the effect that 
 when two things are united one must suffer and tlie other 
 
 1 Fhiloso})hiscJoer Tradal von der wirklichen urul moy lichen Vernunft aus dem 
 vierzehnten Jahrhundert. This was printed by B. J. Docen in his Miscellanccn 
 zw Oeschichte der teutschen Literatur, Miinchen, 1809 : vol i. p. 138.
 
 148 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 act. For this reason human understanding must suffer 
 the " moulding of God " {tiberformvnge Gotz). Since God's 
 existence is his activity, the blessedness of this union can 
 only arise from the human understanding remaining in a 
 purely passive, receptive state. Only a spirit free from all 
 working of its own can suffer the " rational working " of God 
 {daz verminfiige iverch Gotz). The writer, after describing 
 the soul as a spark of the divine spirit, declares that the 
 union of this spark with God is possible, and that the process 
 of union is " God confessing himself, God loving himself, God 
 using himself" — a phraseology which is characteristic of 
 Eckehart and suggestive of Spinoza. After these theosophical 
 considerations, the tractate passes to the more psychological 
 side of the subject. There are two kinds of reason, an active 
 reason and a potential reason {ein wurchende vernwnft and 
 ein moglich vei'mmft). The latter is possessed by the spirit 
 at the instant when it reaches the body. If the potential 
 reason would simply subject itself to the active reason, the 
 man would be as blessed in this world as in the eternal life, 
 for " the blessedness of man consists in his recognition of his 
 own existence under the form of the active reason." That 
 is, it consists in contemplation of the individual essence in its 
 connection with and origin in the universal reason. The com- 
 plete capacity for understanding all things which this implies is 
 not possible to the potential reason. The potential reason has 
 only the capacity for receiving the moulding of the active reason. 
 There are certain beings whose existence is their activity, 
 and whose activity is their understanding. In other words, 
 to be, to act, and to think are one and the same process 
 with them — (their wesen, wurken, and verstan are one). 
 These beings are termed intelligences, and are nobler than 
 the angels ; they flow reasonably {vernunfticlilich) and in- 
 cessantly from and to God, the uncreated substance. They 
 belong, as it were, to the divine flow of thought (which is at 
 the same time active creation), and so are not substances like 
 the angels. Such an intelligence is the active reason (Docen, 
 pp. 146, 147). As proof that this particular intelligence is no 
 substance, but its existence is its activity, Averroes's com-
 
 MEISTEE ECKEHAET, THE MYSTIC 149 
 
 mentaiy on De Anima, iii. is quoted as authority. The 
 potential reason is filled with images (Jbilcle) wliich are for 
 it externality and temporality. So soon as by tlie grace of 
 God the potential reason is freed from these images, it is 
 supplanted or moulded by the active reason. Whereas the 
 potential reason takes things only from the senses as they 
 appear to exist, the active reason goes to the origin of tilings 
 and sees them as they are in reality — that is, in God. But 
 our writer is again hampered by the current theological con- 
 ceptions, although he twists them to his own theories ; he 
 asks : if the active reason be ever present, ready to be united 
 to the potential reason, when once it is freed of the images, 
 must it not also be present in hell ? The answer must 
 necessarily be af&rmitive ; but hell in truth is not what the 
 vulgar {grohe Ivte) believe it — fire ; the agony of hell consists 
 in the sufferer's unconsciousness of his own reason (irre aigen 
 vernunft) ; that is, he cannot contemplate himself as he 
 appears to the active reason, or as he exists in the divine 
 mind. This spiritual pain is the greatest of all pains. Hell 
 is thus identified with the absence of the higher insight. 
 Finally we may note that the author of the tractate seems 
 uncertain whether the potential reason can ever arrive at 
 perfect union with the active reason before it is separated 
 from all material things. 
 
 Distorted as are the ideas of Averroes in this work, we 
 cannot doubt that it is those ideas which are influencing its 
 author. A far more complete attempt to reconcile Averroism 
 with Christian theology is to be found in the system of 
 Eckehart, to which we now proceed. Many difficulties and 
 obscurities will arise, but some elucidation they will un- 
 doubtedly receive from this brief examination of the relationship 
 of Averroes to mediteval mysticism. 
 
 We shall be the better able to enter into Meister Ecke- 
 hart's system, if we first note a few leading characteristics 
 of his intellectual standpoint. Pamning throughout his 
 writings two strangely different theosophical currents may 
 be discerned — two currents which he fails entirely to har- 
 monise, and which account, for the most part, for those
 
 150 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 inconsistencies wherein he aboumls. On the one hand, his 
 mental predilection is towards a pantheistic idealism ; on 
 the other, his heart makes him a gospel, his education a 
 scholastic Christian. He speaks of God almost in the 
 terms of Spinoza, and describes the phenomenal world in 
 the language of Kant ; his theory of the esse intelligibile 
 is identical with Wyclif's, but he states the doctrines of 
 renunciation and of the futility of human knowledge in the 
 form at least of primitive Christianity. Is it to be wondered 
 at that the deepest thinker among the German mystics is 
 the least intelligible ? He is the focus from which spread 
 the ever-diverging rays of many mediaeval and modern philo- 
 sophical systems. 
 
 For our purpose it is first of all necessary to obtain 
 some conception of the relation which Eckehart supposed 
 to exist between the phenomenal world and God. Accord- 
 ing to our philosopher the active reason {diu ivirkende 
 vernunft) receives the impressions from external objects 
 (iXzewendiheit) and places them before the passive reason {diu 
 Itdende vernunft). These impressions or perceptions as pre- 
 sented by the active reason are formulated in space and 
 time, have a ' here and a now ' {hie unde nil). Man's know- 
 ledge of objects in the ordinary sense is obtained solely by 
 means of these impressions {hilde), he perceives things only 
 in time and space (Pfeiffer, Deutsche Mystiker, ii. 17, 19, 
 143, etc.). Of an entirely different character from human 
 knowledge is the divine knowledge. While the active 
 reason must separate its perceptions in time and space, the 
 Deity comprehends all things independently of these per- 
 ceptional frameworks. The divine mind does not pass from 
 one object to another, like the human mind, which can only 
 concentrate itself on one object at a time to the exclusion of 
 all others. It grasps all things in one instant and in one 
 point {(die mitenander in eime blicJce und in eime punte. — lb. 
 20, cp. 14, 15). Shortly, in the language of Kant, while the 
 human intellect reaches only the world of sense, the divine 
 is busied with the Dinge an sich. This higher knowledge is 
 of course absolutely unintelligible to the human reason. " All
 
 MEISTEE ECKEHAKT, THE MYSTIC 151 
 
 the truth which any master ever taught with his own 
 reason and understanding, or ever can teach till the last day, 
 will not in the least explain this knowledge and its nature " 
 {ih. 10). Shortly, the Dinge an sich form a limit to the 
 human understanding.^ But, just as Kant causes the 
 practical reason to transcend this limit, so Meister Eckehart 
 allows a mystical revelation or implantation of this higher 
 knowledge ; this process he terms the eternal birth (diu 
 eivige gehurt). The soul ceasing to see things under the 
 forms of time and space grasps them as they exist in the 
 mind of God, and finds therein the ultimate truth, the reality, 
 which cannot be reached in the phenomenal world (ib. 12). 
 The world as reahty is thus the world as it exists in God's 
 perception ; but, since God's will and its production are 
 absolutely identical (there being no distinction between the 
 moulding and the moulded — entgiezunge und entgozzenheit), we 
 arrive at the result that the world as reality is the world as 
 ivill. Thus both Eckehart and Kant find it necessary to 
 transcend the ' limit of the human understanding ' ; both 
 find reality in the world as will.^ The critical philosopher 
 is desirous of finding an absolute basis for morality in the 
 supersensuous, and accordingly links phenomena and the 
 Binge an sich by a transcendental causality, which somehow 
 bridges the gulf. The fourteenth-century mystic, desirous 
 of raising the idea of God from the contradictions of a 
 sensuous existence, places the Deity entirely beyond the 
 field of ordinary human reason. In order to restore God 
 again to man, he postulates a transcendental knowledge ; in 
 order to show God as ultimate cause even of the phenomenal, 
 he is reduced to interpreting in a remarkable manner the 
 chief Christian dogma. We shall see the meaning of this 
 more clearly if we examine somewhat more closely the concep- 
 tion Eckehart formed of God and his relation to the Dinge 
 
 ' Cp. Kritik der reinen Veniunft, Elementarlehre, ii. Tli., 1 Abth., 
 2 Bucl), 3 Hauptst. 
 
 2 This principle, usually identified with the Gfrober Philosuph, is clearly 
 expressed in the Krilik dci- praktl^chen Vernunft, i. Tlieil, 1 B., 3 
 Hauptst. The will, however, with Kant and Eckehart is very dilFerent in 
 character.
 
 152 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 an sich {rorgcndiu hilde, or ' prototypes ' as we may perhaps 
 translate the expression). 
 
 Things -in -themselves are things as they exist free from 
 space and time in God's perception {D. M. ii. 325, etc.). 
 Thus the prototype {vorgSndez Hid) of Eckehart corresponds 
 to the esse inteUigihile of Wyclif, who in like manner identifies 
 God's conception and his causation {Omne quod hahet esse 
 intelligibile, est in Deo, and Deus est ceque intellectivus, ut est 
 causativus, etc. Tricdogus, ed. Lechler, pp. 46-48).^ This 
 form in God is evidently quite independent of creature-exist- 
 ence, and, not bound by time or space, cannot be said to 
 have been created, or indeed to come into or go out of 
 existence. The form is in an ' eternal now ' {daz evjige nH). 
 To describe a temporal creation of the world is folly to the 
 intelligent man ; Moses only made use of such a description 
 to aid the ignorant. God creates all things in an ' ever- 
 present now' (in eime gegenwiirtigen ml. D. M. ii. 266, and 
 267)." The soul, then, which has attained to the higher 
 knowledge grasps things in an ' eternal now,' or, as we may 
 express it, sub specie ccternitatis. We can thus grasp rnore 
 clearly Eckehart's pantheistic idealism. By placing all 
 reality in the supersensuous, and identifying that super- 
 sensuous reality with God, he avoids many of the contra- 
 dictions of pantheistic materialism. God is the substance 
 of all things (ib. 163) and in all things, but as the reality of 
 things has not existence in space or time there can be no 
 question as to how the unchangeable can exist in the pheno- 
 menal (ib. 389). Since all things are what they are owing 
 to the peculiarity of God's nature, it follows that the indi- 
 vidual though a work of God is yet an essential element of 
 God's nature, and may be looked upon as productive with 
 God of all being (ib. 581). The soul, then, which has 
 attained the higher knowledge, sees itself in its reality as an 
 
 ^ This is absolutely identical with Spinoza, Ethica, i. 16, Omnia qux sub 
 iniMectum infinituni cadcre possinit, nccessario sequi debent. Cp. Prop. 17, 
 Scholium. 
 
 * Cp. Wyclif 8 Omne quod fuit vel crit, est, which is based upon the concep- 
 tion that things srctmdnm e^se intelligibile are ever in the time- and space-free 
 cognition of the Deity. {Trialogus, ed. Lechler, p. 53.)
 
 MEISTER ECKEHART, THE MYSTIC 153 
 
 element of the diviue nature ; it obtains a clear perception 
 of its own uncreated form (or vorgindez hild), which is in 
 reality its life ; it becomes one with God. The will of the 
 individual henceforth is identical with the will of God, and 
 the Holy Ghost receives his essence or proceeds from the 
 individual as from God {dd enpfdhet der Heilig Geist sin ivescn 
 unde sin iccrh iinde sin werden V07i mir als von Gote. lb. 55). 
 The soul stands to God in precisely the same relation as 
 Christ does ; nay, it attains to " the essence, and the 
 nature, and the substance, and the wisdom, and the joy, and 
 all that God has" (ib. 41, 204). "Have I attained this 
 blessedness, so are all things in me and in God (secundum 
 esse i7itel ligihil e ?), Sind where I am there is God" (ib. 32). 
 From this it follows that the ' higher knowledge ' of the soul 
 and God's knowledge are one.^ It is scarcely necessary to 
 remark that Eckehart defines this state of ' higher know- 
 ledge ' as blessedness. Thus both Spinoza and Eckehart base 
 their beatitude on the knowledge of God, but in how different 
 a sense ! Eckhehart's knowledge is a kind of transcendental 
 instinct of the soul steeped in religious emotion ; Spinoza's 
 knowledge is the result of an adequate cognition of the essence 
 of things — it is a purely intellectual (non -transcendental) 
 process. A striking corollary to this similarity may be found 
 in the two pliilosophers' doctrines of God's love. The love of 
 the mind towards God, writes Spinoza {Ethica, v. 36 and Cor.), 
 
 1 The whole of this may be most instructively compared with Spinoza's 
 Ethica, v., Prop. 22 : In Deo tamen datnr necessario idea (Eckehavt's 
 vorgendez hild), quae hujus et illius corporis humani essentiam (Eckehart's 
 'Azewendiges dAng) sub teternitatis specie exprimit. 
 
 Prop. 23 : Mens humana non potest cum corpora absolute destrui ; sed 
 ejus aliquid remanet, quod aeternum est (the vorgindez hild exists in an 
 twige nU). 
 
 Prop. 29 : Quicquid mens sub specie ajternitatis intelligit, id ex eo non 
 intelligit, quod corporis prtesentem actualem existentiam concipit ; sed ex eo, 
 quod corporis essentiam concipit sub sj)ecie ieternitatis. (The ' higher 
 knowledge ' of the soul is concerned with the vorgtidrz hild and not witli the 
 phenomenal world.) 
 
 Prop. 30 : Mens nostra, quatenus se et corpus .sub ix^tcrnitatis sjiecie 
 cognoscit, eatenus Dei cognitionem necessario habet, scitque se in Deo 
 esse et per Deum concipi — (a proposition agreeing entirely with Eckehart's). 
 
 After this it is hard to deny a link somewhere between these two 
 philosophers !
 
 154 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 is part of the love wherewith G.od. loves himself, aud con- 
 versely God, in so far as he loves himself, loves mankind. 
 The love of God towards men, says Meister Eckehart, is a 
 portion of the love with which he loves himself {D. M. ii. 
 145-146, 180). 
 
 In both cases God's self-love is intellectual — it arises 
 from the contemplation of his ovm perfection.^ Eckehart 
 perhaps even more strongly than Spinoza endeavom's to free 
 God from antliropomorphical qualities. His God, placed in 
 the sphere of Dinge an sick, is freed from extension, but this 
 by no means satisfies him — God must have no human at- 
 tributes ; he is not lovable, because that is a sensuous quality 
 — he is to be loved because he is not lovable. Nor does he 
 possess any of the spiritual powers such as men speak of in the 
 phenomenal world — nothing like to human will, memory, or 
 intellect ; in this sense he is not a spirit. He is nothing that 
 the human understanding can approach. One attribute only 
 can be asserted of him and of him only — namely, unity. Other- 
 wise he may be termed the nothing of nothing, and existing in 
 nothing. Alone in him the prototypes or uncreated forms 
 (vorge/idiic Ulcle) can be said to exist, but these are beyond the 
 human understanding and can only be reached l)y the higher 
 transcendental knowledge. " How shall I love God then ? 
 Thou shalt love him as he is, a non-god, a non-spirit, a non- 
 person, a non-form ; more, as he is an absolute pure clear one." 
 ( Wie sol ich in denne minnen .? Dilb salt in minnen als er ist, 
 ein nihtgot, ein nihtgeist, ein nihtpersone, ein nihtbild : mSr 
 als er ein liXter pAr Jclar ein ist, etc. lb. 320 ; cp. 319, 500, 
 506, etc.). Into this inconceivable nothing the soul finds 
 ' its highest beatitude in sinlcing. How is this to be accom- 
 plished ? What is the phenomenal world, and how can the 
 passage be made to the world of reality ? What is the price to 
 be paid for this surpassing joy ? These are the questions which 
 now rise before us, and which Eckehart endeavours to solve in 
 his theory of renunciation. 
 
 1 Wyclif, Trialogus, 56 ; Coynoscit et amat se ipsum. "Wyclif s whole theory 
 of the divine intellect as the sphere of reality, and cognition by God as the test 
 of possible existence, has strong analogy with Eckehart's.
 
 MEISTEE ECKEHART, THE MYSTIC 155 
 
 All important is it first to note how the philosopher 
 deduces the phenomenal from the real — the externality 
 (iXzewenclil'eit) from the prototypes {diu vorg^ndiu hilde). The 
 solution of this apparent impossibility is found in a singular 
 interpretation of the Christian mystery — ' The Word became 
 flesh'; the idea in God passing into phenomenal being is 
 the incarnation of the divine X0709. God's self-introspec- 
 tion, his " speaking " of the ideas in him, produces the 
 phenomenal world. " What is God's speaking ? The Father 
 regards himself with a pm'e cognition, and looks into the pure 
 oneness of his own essence. Therein he perceives the forms of 
 all creation {i.e. diu vorgendiu tilde), then he speaks himself 
 The Word is pure (self-)cognition, and that is the Son. God 
 speaking is God giving " birth." The real world in the divine 
 mind is " non-natured nature " {diu ungendtlXrte ndture) ; the 
 sensuous world which arises from this by God's self-introspec- 
 tion is " natured nature " {diu gendturte ndtiire)} In the 
 former we find only the Father, in the latter we first recognise 
 the Son {D. M. ii., 591, 537, 250). Of course this process of 
 " speaking the word " or giving birth to the Son is not temporal 
 but in an eternal now ; but we had better let Eckehart speak 
 for himself ; — " Of necessity God must work all his works. God 
 is ever working in one eternal now, and his working is 
 giving birth to his Son ; he bears him at every instant. 
 From this birth all things proceed, and God has such joy 
 therein, that he consumes all his power in giving birth {daz 
 er alle sine malit in ir verzert). God bears himself out of 
 himself into himself; the more perfect the Ijirth, the more is 
 bom. I say : God is at aU times one, he takes cognition 
 of nothing beyond himself Yet God, in taking cognition of 
 himself, must take cognition of all creatures. God bears 
 himself ever in his Son ; in him he speaks all things " {;ih. 
 254). Eckehart in identifying God's self-introspection with 
 the birth of the Son, and the " phenomenalising " of the real, 
 has rendered it extremely difficult to reconcile this divine 
 process in the ivjige wd with the historical fact of Christianity. 
 
 1 These are in close agreement wfth Spinoza's nalura naturuns and natura 
 nalurata. Cp. Elhica, i., Proi). 29, Scliol.
 
 156 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 The difficulty is still further increased wheu we remember that 
 the converse process, by which the individual soul passes from 
 the phenomenal to the higher or divine knowledge, is also 
 termed by Eckehart " God bearing the Son." The difficulty is 
 lightened, though not removed, by uniting the two processes. 
 Tlie soul may be compared to a mirror wliich reflects the light 
 of the sun back to the sun. In God's self-introspection the 
 real is " phenomenalised " (as the light passes from the sun to 
 the mirror) ; but the soul in its higher knowledge passes again 
 back to God, the phenomenal is realised (as the light is 
 reliected back to the sun). The whole process is divine — 
 " God bears himself out of himself into himself" (ih. 180-181). 
 Logically, the process ought to occur with every conscious 
 individual, for all have a like phenomenal existence. In order, 
 however, to save at least the moral, if not the historical side of 
 Christianity, Eckehart causes only certain souls to attain the 
 liigher knowledge ; the Son is only born in certain individuals 
 destined for salvation. Thus Eckehart's phenomenology is 
 shattered upon his practical theology ; it is but the recur- 
 rence of an old truth, that all forms of pantheism (idealistic 
 or materialistic) are inconsistent with the assertion of an 
 absolute morality as fundamental principle of the world. 
 The pantheist must boldly proclaim that morality is the 
 creation of humanity, not humanity the outcome of any 
 moral causality.^ 
 
 Let us now observe how the soul is to pass from the world 
 of phenomena to the world of reality. So long as the active 
 reason continues to present external objects to the soul, the 
 soul cannot possibly grasp those objects suh cetcrnitatis specie. 
 The human understanding which can only perceive things in 
 time and space is useless in this matter, nay, it is even harmful ; 
 the soul must try to attain absolute ignorance and darkness 
 {ein dunsterniisse iind ein umvizzen, D. M. ii. 26). Eckehart's 
 contempt for the creature-intellect is almost on a par with 
 Tertullian's, and is in marked contrast with the fashion in 
 
 ' That the world was created for the moral perfecting of mankind is a dogma 
 alike with Kant and Averroes {Drcl Abhandlangen, p. 63). It has been wisely 
 repudiated by Spinoza and Maimonides.
 
 MEISTEE ECKEHAET, THE MYSTIC 157 
 
 which Gotama, Maimonides, and Spinoza make it the guiding 
 star through renunciation to beatitude. The first step to the 
 eternal birth (ewige geburt) is the total renunciation of creature- 
 perception and creature -reason. The soul must pass through a 
 period of absolute unconsciousness as to the phenomenal world ; 
 all its powers must be concentrated on one object, on the 
 mystical contemplation of the supersensuous deity, — the 
 ' nothing of nothing,' of which the soul, if it seeks for true 
 union, cannot and must not form any idea {ih. 13-15). Not 
 by an intellectual development, but by sheer passivity, by 
 waiting for the transcendental action of God, can the soul 
 attain the liigher knowledge, pass through the eternal birth. 
 This intellectual nihilism, this ignorance, is not a fault, but the 
 highest perfection ; it is the only step the mind can take 
 towards its union with God {ib. 16). The soul must, so far as 
 in it lies, separate itself from the phenomenal world, renounce 
 all sensuous action, even cease to think under the old forms. 
 Then, when all the powers of the soul are withdrawn from their 
 works and conceptions {von alien irn werhen iind hildcn), when 
 all creature-emotions are discarded, God will speak his word, 
 the Son will be born in the soul {ib. 6-9). This renunciation 
 of all sensational existence {alle 'dzewendAkeit der creaturen) is 
 an absolutely necessary prelude to the rebirth {ewige gehurt, ih. 
 14). Memory, understanding, will, sensation, must be thrown 
 aside ; the soul must free itself from here and from now, from 
 matter and from manifoldness {liplichheit unde manicvaltikeit). 
 Poor in spirit, and having nothing, willing nothing, and knowing 
 nothing, even renouncing all outward religious works and 
 observances, the soul awaits the coming of God {ih. 24-25, 
 143, 296, 309, 280). Then arrives the instant when by a 
 transcendental process the higher knowledge is conveyed to 
 the soul, it attains its freedom by union with God. Hence- 
 forth God takes the place of the active reason, and is the 
 source whence the passive reason draws its conceptions. The 
 soul is no longer bound by matter and time ; it has tran- 
 scended these limits and grasped the reality beyond. Every- 
 where the soul sees God, as one who has long gazed on the 
 sun sees it in whatever direction he turns his glance {ih. 19,
 
 158 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 28-29). Such is the beatitude which follows the rebirth 
 {cwige geburt). " Holy and all holy are they who are thus 
 placed in the eternal now beyond time and place and form 
 and matter, unmoved by body and by pain and by riches and 
 by poverty" {ih. 75). Strange is this emotional Nirvana of 
 the German mystic, though it is a religious phenomenon not 
 unknown to the psychologist. This seclusion (Abgeschiedenhcit, 
 ib. 486-487), as Eckehart calls it, is pronounced to have 
 exactly the same results as the intellectual beatitude of 
 Gotama and Spinoza. The soul has returned to the state in 
 which it was before entering the phenomenal world ; it has 
 recognised itself as idea in God and thrown off all creature- 
 attributes (creatilrHchkeit), the remaining in which is what 
 Eckehart understands by hell ; it sees everything sub specie 
 ceternitatis. Secluded from men, free from all external objects, 
 from all chance, distraction, trouble, it sees only reality. To 
 all sensuous matters it is indifferent. " Is it sick ? It is as 
 fain sick as sound; as fain sound as sick. Should a friend 
 die ? In the name of God. Is an eye knocked out ? In the 
 name of God." It is complete submission to the will of God, 
 absolute indifferentism to heaven or hell, if they but come as 
 the result of that will (ib. 59-60, 203, etc.). This is the 
 state of grace wherein no joyous thing gives pleasure and no 
 painful thing can bring sadness. It is the extreme to which 
 Christian asceticism — Christian renunciation of the world of 
 sense — can well be pushed.^ 
 
 Putting aside the antinomy between Eckehart's pheno- 
 menology and practical theology, let us endeavour to see the 
 exact meaning of his theory of renunciation. He asserts that 
 it is possible by a certain transcendental process to attain a 
 " higher knowledge " ; that this higher knowledge consists of a 
 union with God, whereby the individual soul is able to 
 recognise and thus absolutely submit to the will of God. The 
 will and conception of God are identical. His conceptions are 
 the prototypes {yorgindiu bilde) or reality. Hence we might 
 well interpret Eckehart's mystical higher knowledge to refer 
 
 1 Meister Eckehart even goes so far as to assert that pain ought to be 
 received, not only willingly, but even eagerly ! (D. M. ii. 599.)
 
 MEISTEE ECKEHART, THE MYSTIC 159 
 
 to a knowledge of the reality which exists behind the pheno- 
 menal, and consequently the submission of the individual will 
 to the laws of that reality. Such a theory possesses a certain 
 degree of logical consistency, and is strikingly similar to 
 Spinoza's doctrine of the beatitude which flows from the 
 higher cognition of God. Spinoza's cognition, however, leads 
 to joy and peace in this world, while Eckehart's produces only 
 a pure indifferentism. Still more striking is the contrast 
 when we examine the methods by which the cognition is 
 supposed to be attained. Spinoza's is only to be reached by 
 a renunciation of obscure ideas, by a casting forth of blind 
 passion, by a laborious intellectual process. Eckehart declares, 
 on the other hand, that all knowledge of reality is only to be 
 gained by a transcendental act of the divine will ; the act 
 itself must occur during an emotional trance, wherein the 
 mind endeavours to free itself from all external impressions, to 
 disregard the action of all human faculties. Seclusion from 
 mankind, renunciation of all sensuous pleasure, the rejection 
 of all human knowledge and all human means of investigating 
 truth, are the preparations for the trance and the consequent 
 eternal birth {^wige gebilrt). Physiologically there can be 
 small doubt that such overwrought emotions as this trance 
 denotes cannot be conducive to physical health.^ To this, of 
 course, the mystic may reply that health is only a secondary 
 consideration in matters of religious welfare. A greater evil 
 than that of danger to health is the social danger which may 
 arise from ignorant fanatics, who suppose themselves to have 
 attained the " higher knowledge " by divine inspiration. They 
 are acquainted with absolute truth and are acting according 
 to the will of God. More than once in the world's history the 
 cry has gone up from such men that all human knowledge is 
 vain, and the populace believing them have destroyed the 
 weapons of intellect and checked for a time human progress. 
 What test have we, when once we discard reason and appeal 
 to emotion, of the truth of our own or others' assertions ? To 
 
 ' That great excitement might produce the trance can hardly be doubted. 
 The mystics seem at least to have been acquainted with .such ecstatical phases. 
 Cp. tlie curious tale of Swester Katrei Meister EkcJuirles Tohter {D.M. ii. 465). 
 Numerous instances occur also in the Life of Tauler.
 
 160 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 borrow the lauguage of theolog}', who shall be sure that God 
 and uot the Devil has been born afresh into the soul ? Harm- 
 less perhaps to the educated, whom it calls upon to renounce 
 their knowledge, Eckehart's doctrine becomes in the hands of 
 the ignorant a most dangerous weapon. In the place of 
 laborious toil, by which alone truth can be won, it allows the 
 individual consciousness to claim inspired insight ; the 
 emotions of the individual alone tell him whether he is in 
 possession of the " higher knowledge," and there ceases to be a 
 standard of truth outside individual caprice. Brilliant as are 
 portions of Eckehart's phenomenology, and powerful as his 
 language often is when expatiating on the goal of his practical 
 theology, there hangs over the whole a strangely oppressive 
 atmosphere of possible fanaticism which warns the thinker 
 against trusting in any such version of Christianity,^ in any 
 such perversion of the ideas of Averroes. 
 
 * On the eirects of an extreme form of ' rebirth ' under the influence of 
 strong emotional excitement, cp. Uollinger, Kirchc uiui Kirchen, 333, 340, etc. : 
 "The whole intellectual and moral character is ruined."
 
 VIII 
 HUMANISM IN GEEMANY 
 
 Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis ! 
 
 The forty years which preceded the Eeformation have long 
 been recognised as a period of intense intellectual activity, as 
 an age alike of conscious and unconscious protestation. 
 Everybody was protesting ; claiming for themselves freedom 
 of thought and freedom of action. Much of this protest, it is 
 true, was of a blind, clumsy character, yet the revolt against 
 established forms was none the less real. In every phase of 
 life there was a rebellion of the individual against the old 
 religious social system and its obsolete institutions. The old 
 method of teaching, the old theological philosophy, the old 
 legendary history, the old magical natural science — these, one 
 and all, with a myriad other matters, were to be rudely bundled 
 out of the way; they were so many restrictions on freedom of 
 learning, freedom of investigation, and freedom of thought, 
 which formed the goal towards which the new spirit of 
 individualism was, albeit unconsciously, striving. 
 
 The mediaeval theory and system of education were 
 entirely subservient to religious ends. All forms of knowledge 
 were ultimately to lead to the great mother of all learning — 
 Theology. As long as the Church was a progressive body, 
 as long as her theology was not definitely fixed, nor her 
 dogma thoroughly crystallised out, as long as monk and 
 
 ' R(;l)riutefl from the IVvstmiiister R'ivieio, A\n\\ 1, 1883. 
 II
 
 162 THE ETHIC OF EKEETHOUGHT 
 
 priest were the best educated men in the community, and, as 
 such, the great teachers of the folk — so long this system was 
 productive of good. For a time philosophy might well submit 
 to be handmaiden to theology ; while the latter was herself 
 developing, there was nothing to check absolutely philosophy's 
 own growth. 1 Philosophy, as the handmaiden of theology, is 
 usually termed^^holasticism. ' The fundamental principle of 
 the Schoolmen is that philosophy must submit to the 
 control of theology in all points of possible variance between 
 the two. The gain to Christian culture of early Scholasticism 
 can hardly be overrated ; Greek ] ihilosophy was adopted and 
 preserved for future generations, and was doubtless not without 
 its influence in moulding and expanding Catholic theology. 
 Such men as John Scotus, Anselm, and Abelard represented 
 the foremost thought of their day ; and the assertion that 
 true philosophy and true religion are one and the same was 
 historically, not so very preposterous, even when by true 
 religion mediaeval Christianity was understood. As the theology 
 of the Church took a more and more concrete and fixed form, 
 owing to a succession of heresies and the consequent need for 
 a sharply defined dogma, more drastic measm-es had to be 
 adopted to make philosophy dovetail with theology. The 
 teaching of Aristotle must be somewhat forcibly modified, 
 that it might give support to the doctrines of the Church. 
 Still there was a vast amount of genuine thought (nowadays 
 sadly neglected !) in the later Scholastics, such as Albert the 
 Great, the so - called " Universal Doctor," Thomas Aquinas 
 the " Angelic Doctor," Duns Scotus, the " Subtle Doctor," 
 and William of Occam, the " Invincible Doctor." These men 
 did probably all that was possible to harmonise natural and 
 revealed religion ; to preserve the peace between reason and 
 faith. With them Scholasticism exhausted itself. Philosophy 
 could go no further till she was free of theology. 
 
 As the general knowledge of man develops, his formulated 
 system of thought — liis philosophy — must develop too ; but 
 in this case his philosophy was stifled in a stagnant theology. 
 As Carlyle would express it, mankind was outgrowing its 
 youthful clothes. Yet the Church would not give up her theology
 
 HUMANISM IN GERMANY 163 
 
 ■ — that, in her eyes, was a fixed and eternal truth. Accord- 
 ingly the names of these old thinkers, of these universal, angehc, 
 subtle, and invincible doctors, were brandished about by monk- 
 learning, and w^ere used as a means of crushing any spark 
 of new truth which did not quite dovetail with a crystallised 
 theology. " You do not believe the Angehc Doctor ? You 
 say the Subtle Doctor is in error ? You have doubts as to 
 the incontestability of the Invincible Doctor ? You are a 
 heretic — this deserves to be purged with fire ! " Shortly, 
 although the theologians might themselves squabble over the 
 merits of their various learned and holy doctors, yet each 
 group gave their favourite a position of far greater importance 
 and authority than they were inclined to allow even to one 
 of the Evangelists. It is easy to note how the whole of 
 learning must, under such a system, fall into a dead formahsm ; 
 there was no place left for individual thought ; all ingenuity 
 was consumed in composing commentaries on the various great 
 Scholastics. On the small book of sentences of Peter the 
 Lombard alone, innumerable folios in the form of com- 
 mentaries were written — sufficient to stock a fair-sized library. 
 All intellectual power was fritted away in gloss and comment ; 
 all freedom of thought crushed beneath this scholastic bondage. 
 To speak lightly of the Angehc Doctor, or to laugh at Peter 
 the Lombard's sentences, was a crime worse than blasphemy. 
 What wonder that the intellect of man rose in revolt against 
 such a system ? — that a race of men grew up protesting 
 against this slavery, declaring that this dead formalism should 
 no longer obscure the light ? What wonder that, as this new 
 spirit grew stronger and stronger, and became more and more 
 conscious of its power, it waxed intolerant and even abusive 
 of the old monkish learning, held up its supporters to the 
 world's ridicule as " obscure men," and mocked the childish 
 petticoats which it had itself only just laid aside ? This 
 new spirit which was to shake off the old bondage and 
 divide Germany into two hostile camps was the so-called 
 Humanism; its adherents were the so-called Humanists, 
 or, from their proficiency in the classical languages, poets. 
 Their opponents were the monks or scholastic teachers.
 
 164 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 the " obscure men," or the " propagators of sophistry and 
 barbarism." 
 
 Such is the spiritual origin of Humanism ; its outward or 
 historical birth has been usually associated with the captm'e 
 of Constantinople by the Tiu'ks in 1453, whereby great 
 numbers of Greeks were scattered over Southern Europe, 
 especially Italy. These men endeavoured to earn a livelihood 
 by teacliing their language, and this gave rise to a considerable 
 number of Greek students. The Greek tongue, with its 
 glorious heathen literature, was new life to the souls of men 
 cramped in the old formal thought. The intellect of man 
 began to breathe afresh, taking in long draughts of this new 
 atmosphere. It found in Greek literature a truth and a 
 freedom which mediaeval Scholasticism no longer presented. 
 It discovered something which was worth studying for itself; 
 the end of which was not a barren theology — nay, which in 
 the end might be opposed to theology, for it would lead to a 
 new system of Biblical criticism and a new system of Biblical 
 exegesis, which would refuse to submit themselves to Catholic 
 dogma. The monks were not slow to recognise this feature 
 of Humanism. " He is a poet and speaks Greek, therefore 
 he is a bad Christian," cried the more ignorant of their 
 number. " The monk is a cowl-bearing monstrosity," retorted 
 the Humanist. 
 
 To Italy, however, those who would trace the outward 
 growth of German Humanism must turn. Eudolf Agricola, 
 the pupil of Thomas a Kempis and Father of German 
 Humanism, spends seven years in Italy, studying the classical 
 languages. " In autumn," writes Erasmus, " I shall, if possible, 
 visit Italy, and take my doctor's degree ; see you, in whom 
 is my hope, that I am provided with the means. I have 
 been giving my whole mind to the study of Greek, and as 
 soon as I get money I shall buy first Greek books, and then 
 clothes." 
 
 Eeuchlin, afterwards the great champion of German 
 Humanism, learns Greek from two exiles, the one in Basel 
 and the other in Paris. " To the Latin was then added the 
 Greek," he writes, " the knowledge of v^hich is absolutely
 
 HUMANISM IN GERMANY 165 
 
 necessary for a refined education. Thereby we are led back to 
 the philosophy of Aristotle, which can first be really grasped 
 when its language is imderstood. In this way we so won the 
 mind of aU those who, not yet wholly saturated with the 
 foolish old doctrines, longed for a purer knowledge, that they 
 streamed to us and deserted the trifling of the schools. The 
 old dried-up sophists, however, were enraged ; they said, that 
 what we taught was far from Romish purity, that it was for- 
 bidden to instruct anybody in the learning of the Greeks, 
 who had fallen away from the Church." 
 
 Such opinions sufficiently mark the connection between 
 the Humanists and the study of Greek. They show, too, 
 how the new culture must ultimately step into open anta- 
 gonism with the old Scholasticism. These Humanists will 
 soon discover a truth in classical literature which cannot be 
 subordinated to Catholic theology. For the first time in the 
 history of culture, Hebraism and Hellenism will step out as 
 conflicting truths. Men will for the first time become dimly 
 conscious that they owe as much to the Greek as to the Jew. 
 They will begin to feel with Erasmus that many saints are 
 not in the catalogue, and scarce forbear to cry with him, 
 " Holy Socrates, pray for us ! " They will hesitate to believe 
 that the souls of Horace and Virgil are not among the blest. 
 
 " Whatsoever is pious and conduces to good manners," 
 writes Erasmus, " ought not to be called profane. The first 
 place must indeed be given to the authority of the Scriptures ; 
 but, nevertheless, I sometimes find some things said or 
 written by the ancients, nay, even by the heathens, nay, by 
 the poets themselves, so chastely, so holily, and so divinely, 
 that I cannot persuade myself but that, when they wrote 
 them, they were divinely inspired, and perhaps the spirit of 
 Christ diffuses itself farther than we imagine ; and that there 
 are more saints than we have in our catalogue. To confess 
 freely among friends, I can't read Cicero on Old Age, on 
 Friendship, his Offices, or his Tusculan Questions without 
 kissing the book, without veneration towards that divine soul. 
 And, on the contrary, when I read some of our modern 
 authors, treating of Politics, Economics, and Ethics, good
 
 166 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 God ! how cold they are in comparisou with these ! Nay, 
 how do they seem to be insensible of what they write them- 
 selves ! So that I had rather lose Scotus and twenty more 
 such as he (fancy twenty subtle doctors !) than one Cicero 
 or Plutarch. Not that I am wholly against them either ; 
 but because, by the reading of the one, I find myself become 
 better, whereas I rise from the other, I know not how coldly 
 affected to virtue, but most violently inclined to cavil and 
 contention." 
 
 No words could paint better than these the protest of the 
 Humanists. 
 
 Whilst the revival of classical learning came to satisfy 
 man's growing desire for fresh fields of thought, it must be 
 noted that this revival would have been impossible had it not 
 been at first encouraged by the Church, had not its first pro- 
 moters been stout supporters of her dogma and her forms. The 
 theologians were not at once aware of their danger, they were 
 unconscious of what was involved in this new spirit of indi- 
 vidual investigation. They did not perceive that the final out- 
 come of an Agricola or a Wimpfeling would be a Crotus Eubianus 
 or an Ulrich von Hutten. Only experience taught them that 
 " the egg hatched by Luther had been laid by Erasmus " ; that 
 all forms of Humanism and all types of anti-popedom were alike 
 phases of one great revolt, one great protest which was the 
 necessary outcome of the birth of individualism. The relation 
 of the Humanists to the Church supplies us, however, with a 
 basis upon which we may divide the whole movement into 
 successive schools. We have first the so-called Older 
 Humanists. These men worked for the revival of classical 
 learning and a new system of education, but they remained 
 staunch supporters of the Church, and never allowed their 
 culture to lead them beyond the limits of Catholic dogma. 
 Secondly, there was a school of Humanists, whom I shall 
 term the Rational Humanists. They protested strongly against 
 the old Scholasticism ; they protested against the external 
 abuses of the Church ; they took a rationalistic view of 
 Christianity and its creed ; but they either did not support 
 Luther, or soon deserted him, being conscious that his move-
 
 HUMANISM IN GEEMANY 167 
 
 ment would lead to the destruction of all true culture. These 
 men were the most conscious workers for freedom of thought 
 among all the sixteenth -century Eeformers. The majority 
 of them still professed themselves members of the Catholic 
 Church ; rightly or wrongly, they held it possible to reform 
 that institution from within, and so to modify its doctrines 
 that they should embrace the natural expansion of man's 
 thought. The leaders of the Eational Humanists were Eeuchlin 
 and Erasmus. Their party and its true work of culture were 
 shipwrecked by the tempest of the Eeformation. Lastly, we 
 have the so-called Younger Humanists. A body of yoimger 
 men of great talent, but much smaller learning, who were 
 ready to " protest " against all things. The wild genius of 
 many of them hated any form of restraint, and their love of 
 freedom not infrequently degenerated into license. Some of 
 them were, in their fiery enthusiasm, self-destructive ; others 
 with age became either Eational Humanists or supporters of 
 Luther. The presiding spirit of this Younger Humanism 
 was Ulrich von Hutten. 
 
 In order to trace more clearly the bearings of these three 
 schools it may not be amiss to refer briefly to a few of their 
 members. Of the Older Humanists, first of all must be 
 noted the three pupils of Thomas a Kempis, namely, Eudolf 
 Agricola, Eudolf von Langen, and Alexander Hegius, after- 
 wards Eector of the Deventer School ; these men have been 
 not inappropriately termed the Fathers of German Humanism, 
 To them we may add the names of Wimpfeling, the 
 " Preceptor of Germany," who may be said to have revolu- 
 tionised the schools of Southern Germany ; and of Abbot 
 Tritheim, who helped to found the first German learned 
 society — the Ehenish Society of Literature — and whose 
 biographical dictionary of ecclesiastical writers is still a very 
 useful book. These men, one and all, worked for the revival 
 of learning, not only in the matter of the classical tongues, 
 but in all branches of knowledge. To them are in a great 
 measure due those few years of intense intellectual activity 
 which preceded the Eeformation, and caused Ulrich von 
 Hutten to exclaim : " century ! literature ! it is a joy to
 
 168 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 live, though uot yet to rest. Study ilourishes, the intellect 
 bestirs itself. Thou, Barbarism, take a halter, or make 
 up thy mind to banishment ! " But while the Older Human- 
 ists insisted on the importance, and worked for the spread, 
 of the new learning, they did not hold human culture to be the 
 end of their studies, but the means to a religious life. They 
 in nowise saw any innate opposition in classical literature to 
 the dogma of the Catholic Church. " All learning," writes 
 Hegius, " is pernicious which is attained with loss of piety." 
 " The final end of study," says Murmellius, another of their 
 number, " must be no other than the knowledge and honour 
 of God." In like spirit, Kudolf Agricola recommends the 
 study of the old philosophy and literature, but " one must 
 not content himself with the study of the ancients, since the 
 ancients either were utterly ignorant of the true aim of life, 
 or guessed it only darkly, as seeing through a cloud, so that 
 they speak, rather than are convinced, of it." Therefore one 
 must go higher, to the Holy Scriptures, which scatter all 
 darkness, and preserve from all deception and error ; according 
 to their doctrines we must guide our life. " The study 
 of the classics shall be applied to a proper understanding of 
 the Holy Scriptures." Wimpfeling tells us that the true 
 greatness of Agricola consisted in this : " that all literature 
 and learning only served him as aids to purify himself from 
 every passion, and to work by faith and prayer on the great 
 building of which God is the architect." When we note that 
 Hegius, by " piety," meant a child-like belief in the Catholic 
 faith ; that Murmellius, by " a knowledge of God," meant an 
 acquaintance with Catholic dogma, and that Wimpfeling 
 understood, by the " great building of which God is the 
 architect," the Catholic Church ; when we note these things, 
 we may be sure that the Older Humanists were very far 
 from throwing off the Scholastic bondage. The new learning 
 for them was to be subservient to the old theology; they 
 attempted to put new wine into the old skins. Perhaps 
 the inconsistency of their standpoint might be best expressed 
 by terming them Scholastic Humanists. 
 
 One of the most remarkable of these Scholastic Humanists,
 
 HUMANISM IN GEKMANY 169 
 
 a man whose immense learning almost made his scholasticism 
 a caricature, was the famous, much -abused opponent of 
 Luther — Dr. Johann Eck, This man, we are told by the 
 Protestants, was vain, ambitious, and wanting in all religious 
 principles : the sole aim of his life, according to D'Aubigne, 
 was to " make a sensation." On the other hand, the 
 Catholics tell us that he was a man of unusual talent, 
 possessing a rare freshness and elasticity of mind, and with 
 deep inner conviction of the truth of the Catholic faith. 
 How are we to judge the man whom Luther termed the 
 " organ of the devil," and Carlstadt the " father of asses," 
 but upon whose gravestone stands written that " great in 
 doctrine, great in intellect, he fought boldly in the army of 
 Christ," and whose University for long years preserved his 
 desk, his hood and cap, as valued relics of an honoured 
 master ? If there is anything which makes us inclined to 
 doubt the Protestant assertions, it is the abuse that party 
 poured upon him in the grave. Luther writes that the 
 impious man has died of four of the most terrible diseases, 
 including among them raving madness ; while the polished 
 Melanchthon does not scorn to mock the great opponent with 
 the epitaph : — 
 
 Multa vorans et multa bibens, mala plurima dicens, 
 Eccius hac posuit putre cadaver humo. 
 
 Let us at least be as just to the peasant's son of 
 Ottobeuern as we are to the peasant's son of Eisleben. In 
 Eck's writings there is, as a rule, a moderation of language 
 and a depth of research, from which Luther might have learnt 
 a lesson. That he employed all his learning and no little 
 talent in defending a narrow dogma is a charge which may 
 be brought against any professional theologian — certainly 
 against Luther. He was not unconscious of the abuses of the 
 Church ; but he believed in reformation from within : above 
 all, he held that her doctrines and her abuses were matters 
 to be kept distinct, and respect for the one did not involve 
 approval of the other. We, who naturally fail to sympathise 
 with this supporter of the old theological bondage, may at
 
 170 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 least allow that lie acted honestly, and fought for his real 
 convictions. The man who, in his youth, was the friend of 
 Brant, Eeuchlin, and "VVinipfeling, the leaders of German 
 thought ; who, in early manhood, helped to ' humanise ' the 
 University of Ingoldstadt, and who raised himself, by a life 
 of study, from the peasant ranks to the foremost place among 
 Catholic theologians, deserves at least our respect, though 
 he applied his talents in a forlorn cause. If we find in him 
 a certain pride in his own learning, which nowadays might 
 have earned him the title of " prig," the cause is obvious when 
 we read the account he himself gives us of his own education : — 
 " After I had learnt the elements, Cato was explained to 
 me together with the Latin Idioms of Paul Niavis, ^sop's 
 Fables, the Comedy of Aretin, the Elegy of Alda (?), and 
 Seneca's Treatise on Virtue ; then the letters of Gasparinus, 
 the Josephinus of Gerson, St. Jerome's prologue to the Bible ; 
 Boethius on discipline, Seneca's Ad Lucilium, the whole of 
 Terence, the first six books of Virgil's ^neid, and Boethius on 
 the Consolation of Philosophy. I was practised also in the 
 five treatises of Isidore on Dialectic. In the afternoons my 
 uncle read with me the legal and historical books of the Old 
 Testament, the four Gospels, and the Acts of the Apostles ; 
 I read also a work on the four last things, one on the soul, a 
 part of Augustine's speeches to the Hermits, Augustine of 
 Ancona on the power of the Church, an introduction to the 
 study of law, the four chapters of the third book of the 
 decretals with the glosses. Panormitanus' Eules of Law in 
 alphabetical order I learnt by heart. Over and above this I 
 heard in school the Bucolics of Virgil, Theodulus, and the six 
 tractates of Isidore. The curate of my uncle explained to me 
 the Gospels, Cicero's work on Friendship, St. Basil's introduction 
 to the study of literature, and Homer's Trojan War. Of my 
 own accord I read the whole History of Lombardy, the greater 
 part of the Fortress of the Faith, and many other scholastic 
 and German books, although at that time the study of literature 
 was not in its bloom." ^ 
 
 ^ Seneca de Virtutihus and Cato are the well-known medireval apocryphal 
 classics.
 
 HUMANISM IN GEEMANY 171 
 
 Having accomplished all this, Eck went at twelve years 
 old to the University of Heidelberg, and in his fifteenth year 
 was made Master of Arts by the University of Tiibingen. 
 Such an education must necessarily have a prig -creating 
 tendency. It may very profitably be compared with those of 
 Melanchthon some few years later, and of John Stuart Mill 
 in our own day. 
 
 Those who will take the trouble to investigate the course 
 of Eck's boyish studies will see at once why he combined 
 Scholasticism and Humanism. That he was a Scholastic, 
 subordinated all his culture to theology, his works sufficiently 
 prove ; that he was a Humanist the following quotation will 
 evidence ; it is not unworthy of Ulrich von Hutten : — " I 
 praise our century wherein, after we have given barbarism 
 notice to quit, the youth is instructed in the best fashion ; 
 throughout Germany the most excellent speakers of the Latin 
 and Greek languages are to be found. How many restorers 
 of the fine arts now flourish, who, removing the superfluous 
 and unneedful from the old authors, make all more brilliant, 
 purer, and more attractive ; men who bring the great authors 
 of the past again to light, who translate afresh the Greek and 
 Hebrew. Truly we may hold ourselves fortunate that we live 
 in such a century ! " 
 
 Other types of the Older Humanists, who present us with 
 instructive pictures, are the Abbot Tritheim and EudoK Agri- 
 cola. The worthy abbot seems to have been a universal 
 genius, who corresponded with the learned of Europe upon end- 
 less topics, and was never tired of collecting information of 
 every kind. Well versed in Hebrew and Greek, he did not 
 neglect to cultivate the natural sciences just bursting into life, 
 and he did it in no slavish way. Of astrology, to which men 
 of greater name than he have fallen prey (Melanchthon's 
 belief in the stars was a source of constant annoyance to 
 Luther), he would hear nothing. " The stars," said he, " have 
 no mastery over us." " The spirit is free, not subject to the 
 stars, it is neither influenced by them nor follows their 
 motions." In his library at Sponheim, the collection of 
 valuable books and manuscripts was the admiration of the
 
 172 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 learned world. Visitors from all parts of Europe, doctors, 
 masters of arts, nay, even princes, prelates, and the nobility 
 came to study therein, and were put up, even for months, free 
 of expense by the genial abbot. Eound him, too, under their 
 president Dalberg, gathered the distinguished members of the 
 Ehenish Society of Literature, Conrad Celtes, Eeuchlin, Wimp- 
 feling, Zasius, Peutiuger, and Pirkheimer, the two latter repre- 
 sentatives respectively of the cultm-e of the citzens of Augsburg 
 and Niirnberg. These men met together in a sort of discussion 
 club to criticise each other's writings and theories in all fields 
 of knowledge. For Tritheim, however, the authority of the 
 Church is to be decisive on all points, and the highest study is 
 theology. Strangely enough, he teaches that theology must 
 busy itself more with the Holy Scriptures ; he does not see how, 
 in so doing, he is raising the question whether the Bible and 
 Catholic theology are in perfect agreement — how he is preparing 
 the way for Luther with his : "I will believe no human insti- 
 tution, no human tradition, unless you can prove it in the 
 Bible." No, for Tritheim the Catholic Church and the Bible 
 confirm one another, and he tells us that the Church alone, 
 on doubtful points, must interpret Scripture, and he who dares 
 to reject her interpretation has denied the gospel of Christ. 
 The worthy abbot is clearly very far from protesting; he 
 cannot see that the ultimate outcome of the studies he fosters 
 will be to make each man think for himself; to make each 
 man priest, church, and pope of his own faith. Shortly, he is 
 unconscious of the coming freedom of thought. 
 
 Piudolf Agricola, termed by his contemporaries a second 
 Virgil, a man whose services to German Humanism have been 
 compared with those of Petrarca to Italian, was one of the 
 kindliest figures of the whole movement ; to spread culture in 
 his fatherland was the aim of his life ; not only the educated, 
 but the great mass of the folk should be made to feel the in- 
 fluence of the classical spirit. The great classics should be 
 brought before the masses in German translations and with 
 German footnotes.^ He recognised the need of cultivating the 
 
 1 Thucydides, Homer, Livy, Ovid, etc., appeared in German translations soon 
 after 1500, adorned with copious woodcuts.
 
 HUMANISM IN GEEMANY 173 
 
 language of the folk, for only through it could the folk be 
 made to participate in the newly acquired field of knowledge. 
 While many of the later Humanists were scarce able to speak 
 their native tongue, Agricola found time to compose German 
 songs, and loved to sing them to his zither. To him is prob- 
 ably due the impulse to the study of German history and 
 antiquity, which brought such rich fruits in Strasburg, under 
 the guiding hands of Wimpfeling and Brant. Perhaps thus 
 indirectly may be attributed to him the fact that Brant wrote 
 his Ship of Fools, the greatest German literary work of the 
 period, in the vulgar tongue. Such men must suffice as types 
 of the Older Humanists. 
 
 Their enthusiasm rapidly spread throughout Germany ; 
 everywhere sprang up new centres of intellectual activity ; the 
 men of all ranks and all occupations were beginning to think, 
 to demand a luhy for everything. "Within fifty years from 
 1456 new universities appeared at Greifswald, Basel, Freiburg, 
 Ingoldstadt, Trier, Tubingen, Mainz, Wittenberg, and Frankfurt- 
 on-the-Oder, while a great impulse was given to the develop- 
 ment of the old. Nor did this spirit reach the universities 
 alone, the imperial towns became centres for the spread of the 
 new culture. Eound Pirkheimer in Nlirnberg, who, though a 
 Kational Humanist, was in friendly communication with men of 
 the old type, gathered an unsurpassed group of men : Kegiomon- 
 tanus, the greatest astronomer of the time, Hartmann Schedel, 
 the historian and antiquary, and a host of lesser men of science 
 and literature ; these men were assisted in their work by a 
 noteworthy band of artists : Wolgemuth and his apprentices 
 prepared the woodcuts for Schedel's great historical work, and 
 Diirer engraved charts of the heavens for Eegiomontanus. On 
 all sides there was real intellectual activity. From Nlirnberg 
 there was a constant interchange of letters with the whole 
 Humanistic world ; not the least pleasing are those of Pirk- 
 heimer's sister, the Abbess Charitas, with the great men of her 
 brother's circle. This Humanistic nun seems to have been a 
 woman of surpassing power, and to have almost justified the 
 extravagant praise of Conrad Celtes. Her memoirs present us 
 with a most remarkable picture of womanly courage and per-
 
 174 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 severance under tlie 1 irutal persecutions which befell her cloister 
 in the Eeformation days. In all branches of art and technical 
 construction — nay, even in pure Humanism — Nllrnberg stood 
 second to none of the German towns or universities. A similar, 
 if not quite so famous, activity developed itself in Augsburg , 
 round Conrad Peutinger, who worked especially for the study 
 of German antiquity ; he edited the old German historians, and 
 and by his Sermones eonvivales de mirandis Germanice anti- 
 quitatihis created an interest for the national past. A lasting 
 witness to Peutinger's historical spirit is the monument in the 
 Franciscan church at Innsbruck to Kaiser Maximilian, the patron 
 of the Niirnberg and Augsburg Humanists. 
 
 These few remarks must suggest rather than fully picture 
 the extreme mental activity which was created throughout 
 Germany by the Older Humanists. We must, however, re- 
 member that these men were firm Catholics, and that this 
 intellectual movement was entirely in the hands of the 
 Church. The universities (Erfurt alone, perhaps, excepted) 
 were under her thumb, and the new thought was only allowed 
 in so far as it did not conflict with the old theology. All 
 knowledge might l^e pursued so far as it was conducive to 
 faith, but it must be at once suppressed if it proclaimed a new 
 truth beyond the old crystallised beliefs of past centuries. 
 This especially was the view of the leaders of the Strasburg 
 school of Older Humanists ; of WimpfeHng (see later pp. 185- 
 192); of Geiler von Kaiserberg, the folk-preacher; and of 
 Sebastian Brant, the author of the ShijJ of Fools. " Don't," 
 they cried to the folk, for such is the audience to which they 
 appealed, " be led away from the faith if dispute arises con- 
 cerning it, but believe in all simplicity what the Holy Church 
 teaches. Don't let your reason meddle with things it cannot 
 grasp. Go home and cure your own sins, your idleness, 
 drunkenness, luxury, love of dancing, of dress, and of gambling ; 
 when you have done that, which, however, is no light matter, 
 then go and fight for the unity and purity of the faith ; go 
 and fight for the defence of the Empire. Battle for Church 
 and Kaiser ! Eestore again the all-embracing Empire, and 
 the all-embracing Church to their old grandeur ! Study by
 
 HUMANISM IN GEEMANY 175 
 
 all means, if you can, but always remember the end of your 
 study is the understanding of Holy Scripture, the refutation of 
 heresy ; in all this you will have need of the unerring rules of 
 the Catholic faith." Such preaching shows us at once that for 
 these men the old religious and social notions were still suffi- 
 cient guides in life ; they still believed in Pope and Kaiser, and 
 tied culture to the apron-strings of theology. They still thought 
 it possible to revivify the old institutions. They were uncon- 
 scious of the import of the movement they had themselves set 
 going. They knew nothing of the protest, the revolt man's 
 reason was about to make against all the old forms of belief; 
 they did not see that religion is a thing which, like all thought, 
 grows and develops, and that the Christianity of yesterday will 
 no more suit the man of to-day than the clothes of his grand- 
 father suit him ; that the very culture they were themselves 
 propagating must ultimately oppose a theology which had 
 ceased to keep pace with the progress of thought. For this 
 reason we term them Scholastic Humanists, not from any 
 contempt, because they did good and necessary work, but since 
 they remained in the old bondage, and did not grasp the 
 coming struggle between the new culture and the old formal 
 religion. 
 
 Herein is the distinguishing mark betw^een the Older and 
 Rational Humanists — the latter declined to accept the old 
 theological tutelage. " We are going," said the Eationalists, 
 " to think over these matters for ourselves. We are not going 
 to submit oui- studies to any antiquated formalism." And, 
 after thinking over these matters, they ceased to have any 
 very great respect for the old institutions. For themselves 
 they threw off entirely the old mental yoke, but this did not 
 mean that they proposed the destruction of the Catholic 
 Church. No ! they held it possible that its framework might 
 be modified to suit the new state of affairs. To the folk, 
 who were incapable yet of thinking, they did not preach : 
 " These old forms are nonsense ; shake them off and destroy 
 their supporters." That sort of work was left to Wittenberg. 
 The Rational Humanists merely said : " Our first business is 
 to spread culture, to educate the folk, to tell them the truths
 
 176 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 we have discovered ; then it will be time enough for a vast 
 public opinion to react on the Catholic Church. All we insist 
 upon at present is the right to teach, to clear away ignorance 
 of all sorts, even that of monk and priest. The ' obscure men ' 
 shall not silence us, but we do not term them a ' devil's litter ' 
 to be destroyed by force. We are going to educate them, we 
 are going to educate the folk to understand something better ; 
 our labour is not that of a day, but of long years. Some 
 abuses, however, are so obvious, and strike so deeply at all 
 national life, that we shall insist upon their removal at once. 
 We must have the misuse of indulgences, pluralities, simony, 
 the misapplication of the Church's temporal power, seen to 
 immediately, please." Such is the teaching of the Rational 
 Humanists, varying, of course, in the individual from active 
 propaganda to quiet disbelief in the Catholic dogma. Of the 
 two leaders of this party, Eeuchlin and Erasmus, it is needless 
 to say anything now. We have already mentioned the names 
 of Pirkheimer and Celtes. One of the most remarkable 
 Rational Humanists, however, Conrad Muth, is less generally 
 known, and may be taken here as a type of the class. Like 
 so many of the first men of his time, Muth was educated 
 under Hegius at Deventer, and afterwards completed his 
 studies in Italy. He finally retired to Gotha, where he had 
 been presented to a small canonry, and devoted his life to 
 study. Attracted by his personal influence and the charm of 
 his character, a group of young men, whose names were soon 
 to be resounding through Germany, gathered round the genial 
 Canon. He may truly be termed the " Preceptor of Younger 
 Humanism." From the Canon's house, behind the church at 
 Gotha, spread the fiery youths who were to subvert all things, 
 and protest against all forms of discipline. Here might have 
 been found Eoban Hesse, who tried most things, but proved 
 faithful to poetry alone ; Crotus Rubianus, the devisor of that 
 immortal satire, the Einstolce Obscurorum Virorum ; Justus 
 Jonas, later secretary to Martin Luther ; Spalatin, afterwards 
 most respectable of Reformers ; and last, but greatest, we may 
 mention Ulrich von Hutten, the glowing prophet of Revolu- 
 tion. There this little band gathered round the older Canon,
 
 HUMANISM IN GEEMANY lYY 
 
 were fired by his eloquent talk, and adopted his radical and 
 rationalistic notions without tempering them by his learning. 
 From this centre was directed the battle of Humanism against 
 Scholasticism ; from thence went forth the biting satires in aid 
 of the Humanistic champion, Eeuchlin, in his contest with 
 obscurity; from thence the youthful Humanistic evangelists 
 spread through the German Universities, calling upon the 
 students to protest against the so-called "barbarism" and 
 " obscurity " of the theologians and monkish teachers. The 
 University of Erfurt, close at hand, was soon won for the good 
 cause, Heidelberg and Wittenberg followed ; everywhere, when 
 a " poet " commenced to lecture on the classics, his lecture- 
 room was crowded with students, and the theologians had to 
 expound the works of subtle and invincible doctors to empty 
 benches. Satirical dialogues, Latin epigrams, street mocking, 
 and even iU-usage, were cast in a perfect torrent upon the old 
 teachers. Youth, ever ready for something fresh and dimly 
 conscious of the barrenness of the old, seized upon this new 
 culture without fully grasping its meaning or penetrating to 
 its calmer delights. Students no longer desired to be bachelor 
 or master, but to be " poets," skilful composers of Latin verse 
 with pens ready in the wit of Horace and Juvenal. These 
 " Latin cohorts " despised everything savouring of German as 
 barbarism, even to their names, so that a Schneider became a 
 Sartorius, a Konigsberger a Eegiomontanus, and a Wacher a 
 Vigilius.^ With this youthful party Humanism degenerated, 
 and while Erasmus, Eeuchlin, and Muth viewed Luther's 
 propaganda with distrust, the younger Humanists flocked to 
 the new standard of protest and revolt, and so doing brought 
 culture into disgrace and shipwrecked the revival of learning 
 in Germany. (It was a foretaste of the future, when, in 1510, 
 as the outcome of an anti-scholastic riot of the Erfurt students, 
 the mob destroyed the university buildings, the colleges, and 
 bursaries, and, worst of all, the fine library with all its old 
 
 1 It is often extremely difficult to conceive how some of the poets aitived at 
 their classical names. Thus plain Johann Jiiger of Dorusheim became Crotus 
 Rubianus, and Theodorici, Ceratinus ! PeihajJS the most ingenious adaptation 
 was that of the Erfurt printer Knapp, wlio styled himself Cn. Appius.
 
 178 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 documents and charters ! It is only party bigotry which 
 induces Catholic historians to attribute these disasters to the 
 teaching of Erasmus and Muth ; they were the outcome of 
 that spirit of protest and revolt which accompanied the birth 
 of individualism. The Eational Humanists, while working for 
 freedom of thought, strove, as far as lay in their power, that 
 that freedom should be achieved by a gradual evolution ; the 
 more violent religious party produced a revolution. Nothing 
 will show more strongly the spirit of Eational Humanism than 
 a few quotations from the letters of the Canon of Gotha to his 
 youthful friends : — 
 
 " I will not lay before you a riddle out of Holy Scripture," 
 he writes to Spalatin, " but an open question, which may be 
 solved by profane studies. If Christ be the way, the truth, 
 and the life, what did men do for so many centuries before 
 his birth ? Have they gone astray, wrapt in the heavy dark- 
 ness of ignorance, or did they share salvation and truth ? I 
 will to thy help with my own view of the matter. The 
 religion of Christ did not commence with his becoming man, 
 but has existed for all time, even from Christ's first birth. 
 Since what is the true Christ, what the peculiar son of God, 
 if it be not, as St. Paul says, the wisdom of God ? that, not 
 only the Jews in a narrow corner of Syria, but even the 
 Greeks, Italians, and Germans possessed, although they had 
 different religious customs." " The command of God which 
 lights up the soul has two chief principles : love God and thy 
 neighbour as thyself. This law gives us the kingdom of 
 heaven ; it is the law of Nature, not hewn in stone as that of 
 Moses, not graven in brass as the Eoman, nor written upon 
 parchment or paper, but moulded in our hearts by the highest 
 teacher. Who enjoys with pious mind this memorable and 
 holy Eucharist does something divine, since the true body of 
 Christ is peace and unity, and no holier host exists than 
 reciprocal love." 
 
 In a letter to Urban ^ he writes : — 
 
 " Who is our redeemer ? Justice, peace, and joy, these are 
 
 ^ Not the better known Urbanus Rhegius, but Heinrich Urbanus, a very 
 interesting personality of the Gotha circle.
 
 HUMANISM IN GEEMANY 179 
 
 the Christ who has descended from heaven. If the food 
 of God is to obey the divine commandments, if the highest 
 commandment is to love God and our neighbour, so consider, 
 my Urban, if those fools rightly enjoy the food of the Lord, 
 who swallow holy wafers and yet against the Sacrament of 
 Christian love disturb the peace and spread discord. The 
 true Christ is soul and spirit, which can neither be touched 
 with the hands nor yet seen. Socrates said to a youth, 
 ' Speak, that I may see thee.' Now note, my Urban, that 
 we only reveal by our speech the spirit and the God which 
 dwells in us. Therefore we only share heaven, if we live 
 spiritually, philosophically, or in a Christian manner, obeying 
 the reason more than our desires." 
 
 In this letter Muth goes so far as to say the Mahomedans 
 are not so wrong, when they say that the real Christ was not 
 crucified. Another time he writes to Urban : — 
 
 " New clothes, new ceremonies are introduced, as if God 
 could be honoured by clothes or attire. In the Koran we 
 read : ' Who serves the eternal God and lives virtuously, 
 whether he be Jew, Christian, or Saracen, wins the grace of 
 God and salvation.' So God is pleased by an upright course 
 of life, not by new clothes ; since the only true worship of 
 God consists in not being evil. He is religious who is up- 
 right ; he is pious who is of a pure heart. All the rest is 
 smoke." 
 
 Yet again we read : — 
 
 " There is only one god and one goddess, but there are 
 many forms and many names — Jupiter, Sol, Apollo, Moses, 
 Christ, Luna, Ceres, Proserpine, Tellus, Mary. But be 
 cautious not to spread that. We must bury it in silence 
 like the Eleusinian mysteries. In matters of religion we 
 must use the cloak of fable and riddle. Do you with Jupiter's 
 grace, that is, with the grace of the best and greatest god, 
 silently despise all little gods. If I say Jupiter I mean 
 Christ and the true God. Yet enough of these all too high 
 matters." 
 
 Muth had need of caution ; the " godless painters " were 
 exiled even by the Protestants for much less than this ! A
 
 180 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 man who cast aside confession, neglected the services of the 
 Church, and laughed at fasting, had reason, even in the 
 neighbourhood of Erfurt, to be very careful. Another 
 interesting letter is almost as venturesome : — 
 
 " Only the stupid seek their salvation in fasting. I am 
 tired and stupid. That is due to the food of stupidity, to 
 say nothing more severe. Donkeys, forsooth donkeys they 
 are, who don't take their usual meals and feed on cabbage 
 and salt fish." " I laughed heartily," Muth writes to Peter 
 Eberbach, " when Benedict told me of your mother's lamenta- 
 tions because you so seldom went to church, would not fast, 
 and eat eggs contrary to the usual custom. I excused this 
 unheard-of and horrible crime in the following fashion : Peter 
 does wisely not to go to church, since the building might fall 
 in, or the images tumble down ; much danger is always at 
 hand. But he hates fasting for this reason, because he knows 
 what happened to his father, who fasted and died. Had he 
 eaten, as he was formerly accustomed to do, he would not 
 have died. As my hearer continued to knit his brows and 
 asked : ' Who will absolve you bad Christians ? ' I answered : 
 Study and Knoioledge." 
 
 Still a last quotation : — 
 
 "Where reason guides, we want no doctors. The school 
 is the grammarian's field of action ; theologians are of no 
 use there. Nowadays the theologians, the donkeys, seize 
 the whole school and introduce no end of nonsense. In a 
 university it were enough to have one sophist, two mathema- 
 ticians, three theologians, four jurists, five medical men, six 
 orators, seven Hebrew scholars, eight Greek scholars, nine 
 philologists, and ten right-minded philosophers as presidents 
 and governors of the entire learned body." 
 
 These extracts will perhaps convey some notion of the 
 man who gave the tone to Younger Humanism. AVith his 
 ridicule of fasting, saint -w^orship, and outward religion, we 
 might on the first thought suppose he would support Luther. 
 But, like Erasmus, he saw that the ' Pteformer's ' movement 
 would destroy all true freedom of thought, and he remained 
 formally in the Catholic Church. Luther's journey to Worms
 
 HUMANISM IN GEEMANY 
 
 181 
 
 was followed by the so-called "priest -riots," in which the 
 Lutheran mob stormed the house of the Canon of Gotha. 
 From this time Muth's circumstances grew worse and worse ; 
 a few years afterwards he appealed for a little bread and 
 money for necessaries to the Elector Friedrich, but no aid 
 came. Yet a little struggle with bitter poverty, and he 
 passed calmly away with the words, " Thy will be done,' 
 amidst the turmoil of the Peasant Eebellion — that first out- 
 come of the Eeformation. He found at last the " Beata 
 tranquillitas," which he had in vain inscribed over his door 
 at Gotha. His death is very typical of the C^isregarded 
 death of culture amid the noise of mob-protestation and the 
 braying of rival theological trumpets.*^ 
 
 But though this nigh-forgotten Canon of Gotha was the 
 preceptor, he was by no means the parent of Younger 
 Humanism. Strangely enough its spirit has a far longer 
 history than the renascence of the fifteenth century. The 
 Younger Humanists were the direct descendants of the stroll- 
 ing scholars, who, from the twelfth century onward, con- 
 tinued to protest in life and writings against the habits of 
 respectable society in general and of the Catholic hierarchy in 
 particular. These strolling scholars are the material out of 
 which the ' Latin cohort ' was formed. It preserved their tradi- 
 tions, their wild method of life, and later, in its battle with 
 monkdom and Eome, even adopted their satires and poems. It 
 is impossible now to consider at any length this most interest- 
 ing phenomenon of European history. A few remarks may serve 
 to show its relation to Younger Humanism. "We find these 
 strolling scholars in the thirteenth century at home in England, 
 France, Italy, and Germany ; they were banded together into 
 societies, as those of the Goliards and the ' Ordo Vagorum.' They 
 wandered about from school to school all over Europe. Latin 
 was their common language, and the capacity for drinking and 
 song-making the sole qualificationsTbr admissioh to the order. 
 At first all were clerks, but later they became less exclusive, 
 and their numbers were recuited from every class. They led 
 a wild, careless life, an open protest against all forms of 
 social order. A monk, a long beard, a jealous husband, were 

 
 182 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 the favourite subjects for their satire ; a good tavern, jovial 
 company, and a merry-eyed damsel their idols. Their hatred 
 for the Church was intense ; not so much for her dogma as 
 for the greed and stupidity of her priesthood. They poured 
 out line upon line of bitter satire against Eome and the 
 temporal power of the Pope ; they were in the field a century 
 before Wyclif, and yet did much for the propagation of his 
 opinions : traces of them may be found throughout the 
 fifteenth century, and Luther shows knowledge of their 
 songs. Their numerous writings against the dominion of Eome 
 are a curious memento of protestation and individualism 
 strusffling in dark corners for more than three centmdes 
 before the Eeformation. There is a genuine ring of true 
 poetry about some of their verses which makes them one of 
 the most valuable literary productions of mediaeval Latinity. 
 Strolling scholars, too, had their ' poets ' and ' archpoets ' 
 long before Humanism was thought of. The Church in 
 council and synod in vain issued decrees against them ; that 
 they should not be given charity ; that they should be ex- 
 cluded from mass ; that they should be imprisoned and 
 punished. They flourished all the same, they continued to 
 make satires on the Church, to lie about on the public 
 benches, to drink in the taverns, and make love to the 
 burghers' daughters. They read their Horace and Juvenal, 
 and filled themselves with the classical spirit, long before 
 the days of Humanism. They parodied the songs of the 
 Church in drinking songs ; they parodied the words of 
 Scripture : " In those days were many multitudes of 
 players of one soul and with no tunic ; " or, again, " In the 
 spring-time the wine-bibbers were saying to one another. Let 
 us cross over even to the tavern " ; or, " What is to be done 
 that we may gain money ? The Pope replied : It is written 
 in the law which I teach you : Love gold and silver with all 
 thy heart and with all thy soul and riches as thyself; do 
 this and live." 
 
 For these strolling scholars, as for Wyclif, Hus, and 
 Luther, the heads of the Catholic Church are the disciples 
 of Antichrist. More pleasing than their satires on Church
 
 HUMANISM IN GERMANY 183 
 
 and monk are their love and drinking songs; some of the 
 former possess surpassing grace, and the humour of the latter 
 in undeniable.^ There is no want of genius, but it is genius 
 which has sunk to the tavern, has joined the order of 
 vagabonds, and delights in roving over the face of the earth 
 and protesting against all forms of established order. Such 
 is the heritage of the Younger Humanists ; they are the 
 strolling scholars coming again into prominence. No one can 
 truly appreciate the spirit or understand the origin of the 
 Epistolcc Ohscurorum Virorum who has not read the satires of 
 the strolling scholars ; the one was a natural outcome of the 
 other. Such men as Ulrich von Hutten and Hermann von 
 dem Busche were really strolling scholars under a new name. 
 They led a restless, wild life, now listening in the halls of the 
 universities, now serving as soldiers, or even the day after 
 playing the highwaymen. There is a charm about their life 
 which it is difficult to cast aside;, there is the stamp of 
 genius, though it be too often saturated in wine or openly 
 dragged through the mire. If, in modern times, breaches of 
 social custom have been on more than one occasion cast into 
 the shade by the greatness of a poet's talent, we shall not find 
 it hard to forgive Ulrich von Hutten lesser offences, for he had a 
 wider and more enthusiastic genius. Such, then, is the spirit 
 of Younger Humanism — of the men who will by satire, wit, 
 and even violence destroy the old scholastic theology; they 
 will be among the first to protest, to revolt. They will join 
 Luther, they will join Von Sickingeu ; they will eagerly 
 deform and upset, but, unlike the Rational Humanists, they 
 are incapable of reconstructing. What the effect of such a 
 party gaining the mastery of the universities must be, is too 
 obvious. The old learning toppled over and carried the new 
 culture with it. Such was the end of Humanism and the 
 beginning of Protestantism — the meeting of Ulrich von 
 Hutten and Martin Luther. All energies, all intellectual vigour 
 were turned into theological channels. Culture in the higher 
 sense understood by an Erasmus or a Muth disappeared. 
 
 J Since the above was written, Mr. J. A. Symonds has, in Wine, Women, 
 and Hong (1884), translated some of these songs into EnyHsh verse.
 
 184 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 " All learned studies lie despised in the dust/' writes the 
 Eector of Erfurt in 1523, "the academic distinctions are 
 scorned, and all discipline has vanished from among the 
 students." " So deep are we sunk," moans even Eoban Hesse 
 himself, " that only the memory of our former power remains 
 for us ; the hope of again renewing it has vanished for ever. 
 Our university is desolate and we are despised." 
 
 In a like melancholy tone Melanchthon writes of the state 
 of affairs in Wittenberg : " I see that you feel the same pain 
 as I over the decay of our studies, which so recently raised 
 their heads for the first time, yet now begin to decline." 
 Surrounded by narrow uncultured spirits, ^Melanchthon declares 
 Wittenberg a desert without a congenial soul. 
 
 Not only utter dissoluteness and disorder ruled among 
 the students, but their numbers rapidly decreased at all the 
 universities. In the fourteen years before the Eeformation 
 (1522), 6000 students matriculated at Leipzig, in the fourteen 
 following years less than a third that number- In Basel, 
 after 1524, we are told the University lay as if it were dead 
 and buried, the chairs of the teachers and benches of the 
 students were alike empty. In Heidelberg, in 1528, there 
 were more teachers than students. In Freiburg the famous 
 jurist Zasius must content himself (1523) with six hearers, 
 and these French ! The University of Vienna, which formerly 
 numbered its 7000 students, was frequented only by a few 
 dozens, and some of the faculties were entirely closed. Every- 
 where the same complaint — no students, or useless students. 
 The old scholastic system was destroyed, but the study of the 
 ancients, which was to replace it, had disappeared likewise ; 
 / the minds of men were directed into one channel only/) Youth 
 \ had no thought of study, but w^as eager for religious dis- 
 \ putation, for theological wrangling. The rival trumpets 
 were resounding throughout the schools, and their noise was 
 rendering dumb all honest workers. Luther had brought back 
 a flood of theology on Europe, and men could and would no 
 longer delight in the sages of Greece and Eome. We grasp 
 fully what Erasmus meant when he declared that, " Wherever 
 Lutlieranism reigns, there learning perishes."
 
 HUMANISM IN GEEMANY 185 
 
 Note on Jacob Wimpfeling.i 
 
 It is impossible to aiDpreciate the work of a reformer witlioiit some con- 
 ception of the state of affairs he set himself to remedy. I shall, therefore, 
 describe briefly the type of school-books in existence before 1500. We 
 have seen that the chief aim of the schools was to teach Latin, and that 
 Latin was taught chiefly for theological ends. In the twelfth century 
 the generally accepted Latin grammar was that of Donatus ; at the 
 commencement of the thirteenth, rules from Priscian were turned into 
 hexameter verse by Alexander de Villa Dei. Both these books were 
 somewhat miserable productions ; still it was possible to learn some 
 Latin out of them, and for centuries they remained the standard school 
 grammars. Now, when Scholasticism lost its early vigour, and degenerated 
 into a mere drag on human thought, it not only produced enormous 
 folios on every line of the great ' doctors,' but even these poor school- 
 books, Donatus and Alexander, were absolutely buried beneath a mountain 
 of commentary and gloss. This was especially prevalent towai'ds the end 
 of the fifteenth century. The unfortunate scholars were not only compelled 
 to learn their Donatus by heart, but the whole of the commentary in 
 which he was embedded ! The absolute nonsense and idiocy of the 
 commentaries can nowadays hardly be conceived. All their absurdities 
 the children had to learn by heart, so that, as Luther said, " a boy might 
 spend twenty to thirty years over Donatus and Alexander and yet have 
 learnt nothing." For example, a certain commentary entitled : Exposition 
 of Donatus, with certain new and beautiful notes according to the manner 
 of the Holy Doctor (Thomas Aquinas), 1492, commences with ten con- 
 siderable paragraphs as to what Donatus meant by his title : Tlie Dialogue 
 of Donatus concerning the Eight Parts of Speech. Thus the expression of 
 Donatus is said to show that Donatus was the cause of the grammar ; but 
 then the poor schoolboy must distinguish whether Donatus as the cause 
 of the grammar was an efficient moving cause, or an efficient moved 
 cause, or a material cause, or a second cause, or an efficient first and 
 ultimate cause ; also the relation between God and Donatus as to the 
 creation of the book and its ultimate end and approximate end is con- 
 sidered. A like flood of nonsense accompanied every word of the 
 grammar ; a still worse muddle was made of Alexander. Long para- 
 graphs were written on the nature of the man who first wrote a grammar, 
 wherein it appeared that the first grammarian must have been a natural 
 philosopher with a knowledge of metaphysics. It is argued : " Before 
 the invention of grammar there was no grammar, therefore the first 
 inventor of the grammatic science was not a granmiarian. That is to 
 say, the firet inventor of the grammatic science had an imperfect grammar 
 by nature ; this he perfected by study and labour through his seuse of 
 
 1 This note was printed for students attending a course of lectures on 
 medijeval Germany, given in 1882.
 
 186 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 memory and experiment." What wonder that if boys learnt anything 
 at all from such a method of education, it was to quibble, wrangle, and 
 play with words ! School and university both led to the same result ; 
 argumentations and discussions were the order of the day. In these 
 discussions the great end was to catch your opponent in a word-trap — to 
 make him contradict himself even by the use of a double-meaning phrase 
 or the like. To wrangle was the great end of imiversity education ; and 
 a public wrangling would precede the conferring of all degrees. Such 
 a method has given its name to the Cambridge matliematical honoursmen ; 
 such a method of public dispute, the theological wrangle, forms a marked 
 feature in the Reformation. Catholic and Protestant held disputations. 
 Luther, Eck, Melanchthon, Carlstadt, Murner, publicly wrangled over the 
 various dogmas of their respective faiths. So hot did the wranglers often 
 grow, that in the Sorbonne a wooden barricade was erected between the 
 contending parties to prevent them appealing to physical argument. 
 Books were written to assist the student in "wrangling" — as for 
 example: The Incontestable Art; teaching how to dispute indifferently 
 concerning all things knowable (1490). Let us examine some incontestable 
 cases out of this latter book. The two wranglers are termed the opponent 
 and respondent. 
 
 Granted, the respondent will give something to drink to any one 
 who tells him the truth, and to no other. The opponent says to the 
 respondent : " You will not give me anything to drink." The question 
 is ■v\-hetlier the respondent ought to give anything to drink to the 
 opponent or not ? If he does give, then opponent has spoken falsely — 
 in which case he ought not to give. If he does not give, then opponent 
 has spoken the truth, and consequently the respondent ought to 
 give. 
 
 Suppose that Peter always runs till he meets some one telling a lie ; 
 and first, Paul meets Peter, and says : " Peter, you do not run." The 
 question is whether Paul has spoken truly or falsely ? 
 
 Granted that Plato says : " Sortes is cursed if he has cursed me ; " 
 and Sortes says : " Plato is cursed if he has not cursed me." The 
 question is whether Plato has cursed Sortes or not ? 
 
 Such are the quibbles which the schools taught and wherein the 
 universities delighted in the fifteenth century.^ The first to attack this 
 method of education was Laurentius Valla ; but the man who, working 
 on his lines, did the most for educational reform in Germany was 
 Jacob Wimpfeling ; Erasmus jiut the finishing touch to their labours. 
 Wimpfeling cut away the commentaries on Donatus and Alexander, and 
 prepared a practical reading book and grammar for schoolboys. " It is 
 madness," he writes, " to teach such superfluities while life is so brief." 
 Now I think we can grasp that it was no commoniilace when Wimp- 
 feling, in his epoch-making book, the Adolescentia, commenced with the 
 chajiter : " To the preceptors of boys, that they teach them useful 
 
 1 My guide is Zarncke : see his edition of the Narrenschiff, p. 346.
 
 HUMANISM IN GEEMANY 187 
 
 matters." Far from being a commonplace, it is the protest of tlie 
 educational reformer of Germany. 
 
 In this chapter he bids schoolmasters and instriictors of boys not to 
 devote great time and much study to obscure and difficult matters, which 
 are not necessary, but to care rather for straightforwaid things worthy of 
 knowledge : not for those only which strain the intellect, as the subtle 
 knots of dialectic, syllogisms with their first and second premises. 
 Parents and friends wish children educated so that their studies may 
 lead them to the salvation of their souls, the honour of God, and the 
 glory of the commonweal. The ready minds of the young are to be 
 excited to virtue, to honesty, to fear of God, to remembrance of death 
 and judgment, not to subtleties of logic. Do not encumber their tender 
 years with si^eculations, un^jroductive opinions, quilA)les of words, with 
 genera, species, and other universals. These very universals are taught 
 as though the Christian religion grew out of them, as though the worship 
 of God, our reverence, the enthusiasm of the soul, had their foundation 
 in universals — as though the knowledge of all arts and sciences flowed 
 from them ! " Just as if the use of body and soul, the government of 
 kingdoms and all principalities, the happy rule of all lands, the extension 
 of the commonweal, the defence of states, the excellence of the clergy, 
 the honour of the orders, the reformation of the Catholic Church, the 
 safety of the Roman hierarchy, the strength of virtue, the destruction of 
 vice, the glory of peace, the escape from war, the concord of Christian 
 princes, the vindication of Christian blood, the repulse of the Turks and 
 the foes of our religion, the end of human life, and the whole machine 
 even of the woiid would break down did it not depend on, consist in, 
 turn about universals ! " 
 
 Such is Wimpfeling's protest against Scholasticism in education ! 
 
 Let us consider his theory of education. Many of its precepts will 
 not seem new ; but they were new to the fifteenth century ; and not a 
 few of our public schools could study them with advantage to-day. 
 
 Children at an early age are to be handed over to discipline, as they 
 are then most susceptible. Parents and preceptors are always to ascer- 
 tain what is the nature of the child's capacity ; the mind of the child is 
 to be measured and examined in order to ascertain for what study it 
 seems best fitted. This method of varying education with the individuality 
 of a child is too often neglected to-day ; whatever the child's peculiar 
 bent may be, it is treated as uniform raw material, which is all passed 
 through the same educational macliine; and the result is too often disastrous. 
 Next, Wimijfeling tells us that children of high birth and position must 
 especially be educated in order that they may set a good examj)le to 
 others. (He is thinking peculiarly of the children of the robber nobility 
 of his own time ; but the remark still applies.) Tliey are not to be left 
 to idleness, to give themselves up to boorisli and violent amusements — 
 liere, as elsewhere, he is particularly bitter against those who spend theii' 
 time in hunting — Ijut to devote themselves to those studies wherein they 
 may excel their own subjects. Why sliould these nobles de8i)ise all the
 
 188 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 labours and exercises of the mind ? They ought rather to study the 
 customs of the ancients, the usages of tlieir own lands and history, so 
 that they may act wisely at liome and in war. 
 
 Then Ave are told the various signs by means of which the existence 
 of talent may be detected in a child. These are : (1) its being excited to 
 study by praise ; (2) its striving at the highest things in hope of glory ; 
 (3) its promptness in working and its shunning of idleness ; (4) its fear of 
 scolding and the rod, or rather looking upon them as a disgrace, so that on 
 reproof the child blushes, and on being birched gi'ows better ; (5) ita 
 love of teachers and its having no hatred of instruction ; and lastly (6) 
 obedience freely given, an absence of obstinacy. 
 
 Since youth is an age lightly given to sinning, and unless held in 
 clieck by the example and authority of elders, rapidly slips from bad to 
 worse, Wimpfeling gives us a list of the six good and the six bad 
 qualities of the youthful disposition, and suggests methods of encouraging 
 the one set and repressing the other. Thus the six good qualities are : 
 generosity, cheerfulness, high-spiritedness, open-heartedness — that is, not 
 being readily suspicious, — fulness of pity, the lightly feeling ashamed. 
 The six bad qualities are : sensuality, instal;>ility, lightly believing all 
 things, stubbornness, lying, and want of moderation. 
 
 It will be seen at once how Wimpfeling makes the keynote of 
 education, not the knowledge of Latin, but the inculcating of morality, 
 or, as he himself expresses it, the teaching of good conduct and morality. 
 He belongs essentially to the Strasburg School of Eeligious Humanists, 
 who hoped to reform religion by laying less stress on dogma and striving 
 for a new and purer morality. Such was the object of Sebastian Brant in 
 his Shii) of Fools, of Geiler von Kaisersberg in his sermons, and Wimp- 
 feling in his pedagogic works. This makes the following passage of the 
 Adolesccntia peculiarly characteristic ; it might stand for a manifesto of 
 the whole School : — " The instruction of boys and the young in good 
 morals is of the utmost importance for the Christian religion and for the 
 reformation of the Church. The reformation of the Catholic Church by 
 a return to its primitive pure morals ought to begin with the young, 
 because its deformation began with their evil and worthless instruction." 
 Strange to find in 1500 a strong Catholic recognising the deformation of 
 the Church, and its cause ; seeing also that its true reformation can only 
 be brought about by a process of genuine education ! Well if Luther, 
 seventeen years afterwards, had grasped this truth ! 
 
 Wimpfeling's four means of correction do not show much originality, 
 yet they prove that even here he had thought and classified. They are 
 as follows : Public attendance to hear the divine word, a private talking 
 to, corporeal correction where verbal has failed, and that peculiar to the 
 Catholic faith, namely, confession. 
 
 The old Scholastic system made Latin the chief subject of education 
 with a view to theolog)'. Wimpfeling, giving morality the first place, 
 introduced something beyond theology : " The instruction of youth in 
 good morals is highly conducive to the welfare of the civic and political
 
 HUMANISM IN GERMANY 189 
 
 community." This apparent commonplace was a veritable battering-ram 
 against tlie old Scholastic education. 
 
 Wimpfeling's so-called Laws for the Young possess perhaps more 
 value for the history of culture than for that of pedagogic ; but they are 
 not without interest for the latter. They run : — (1) To fear and rever- 
 ence God. (2) Not to swear. (3) To honour parents. (4) To respect 
 the aged, and seek their friendship and society. (5) To respect the clerg}' 
 (here the attention of the young is specially drawn to the state of the 
 Bohemians, owing to their disobedience to this law). (6) Not to speak ill 
 of men, especially those in authority (evil merits our compassion rather 
 than abuse, — Wimpfeling refers particularly to the Pope, and quotes 
 St. Paul about resisting the " powers ordained," — the very text which 
 Luther was afterwards to use as an argument for implicit obedience to the 
 princes in their opposition to Popedom !). (7) Bad society to be fled. 
 (8) Also covetousness. (9) To be cautious against talkativeness. (10) To 
 show modesty, — especially in matters of dress. The dress of the students 
 must often have been very improper to need the rebukes here ad- 
 ministered. Elsewhere in the book Wimpfeling makes propriety in 
 dress a point of religion ; long close-fitting tunics ought to be worn. 
 Other forms of dress are due to a total want of devotion and religion, or 
 at least to a desire to please shameless women. An improper dress 
 denotes improper morals ; the dress, no less than the tongue, belongs to 
 the inner man. Many years afterward Melanchthon, in an oration on 
 dress to the students of Wittenberg, harps on the same theme.^ (11) To 
 avoid idleness, and seek honest work. The famous Dalberg is here 
 quoted as example of such work ; his occupation, among other matters, 
 being the study of the ' vulgar tongue.' It was from the Strasburg circle 
 that the first impulse was given to the study of the German language 
 and history. (12) To be frugal (13) There are three virtues peculiarly 
 necessary for the young, both towards themselves and others, — namely, 
 that they should have firm guard over themselves ; that they should be 
 an example to others ; and lastly, that they should be loved sincerely 
 and in Christian fashion by all, especially the good. (14) We have a 
 law as to the means of increasing virtue and as to the eflicacy of habit in 
 a child. The ke3'note here is an expression of sympathy in all its 
 doings. We must accustom ourselves to be moved by childish grief and 
 childish pleasure, so that from the beginning even to the end of life 
 children may hate what ought to be hated, and love what is worthy of 
 love. Even as when we wish a Ijoy to be an architect we show pleasure 
 in his building toy-houses, so play is to be made use of to create and 
 confirm good habits in children. " We ought to strive in all matters, 
 even in playing, that we may turn the inclination and desire of children 
 towards those things of which we wish them to attain knowledge." This 
 precept itj^elf was epoch-making in the fifteenth century, yet even to 
 this day lias hardly been generally accepted as a leading principle of 
 
 1 1480-1580 is the century of Dress- Degeneration.
 
 190 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 education. (15) Against luxury ; especially against cliildren feeding and 
 drinking too extravagantly. (16) Against fo2")pery in general, but par- 
 ticularly against the curling of the hair. We are told it offends God, 
 injures the brain, disfigures the head, creates a "sylva pediculoruni," 
 deforms the face, ultimately makes the countenance hideous, shows that 
 the youth loves his hair more than his head, cultivates his curls rather 
 than his intellect ; and the saying of one Diether, an honest and valiant 
 knight, is quoted to the effect, that a curler will be excluded from the 
 kingdom of heaven, because the great and best God will not deem him 
 worthy of the kingdom of the saints, who, not content with His image, 
 His face, and His curls, with which He had endowed him, has not 
 blushed to create these spurious things for himself — a despiser and hater 
 of the divine gifts, and one who longs for strange matters. The just 
 Judge, on the Day of Judgment, will not be able to upbraid the curler 
 severely enough : " We did not fashion this man ; We did not give him 
 these features ; these are not the natural locks with which We furnished 
 him!" (17) Youth is to avoid all perturbations of the mind, violent 
 passions of all kinds, great hate, desire, anger. The child should be 
 taught to bridle itself in great and little matters alike. (18) Life is to 
 be corrected by others' example ; yet the child must not argue that what 
 others do is permitted to it. (19) The end of study : this is to learn the 
 best mode of life {optima ratio vivendi), and consists in the true per- 
 formance of the duties of social and civic life in this world and in the 
 preparation for the next. (20) And lastly, there must be willing sub- 
 mission to correction. A list of the vices to which the youth is inclined 
 follows, but it presents no very great originality or merit. Five things 
 to be observed by a child when in the presence of its elders or superiors 
 may be noted : " When you stand before your master you must observe 
 these five things — Fold the hands ; place the feet together ; hold the 
 head erect ; do not stare about ; and speak few words without being bid." 
 Much of the rest of the book is filled with quotations, proverbs, or 
 letters from friends and admirers ; these extend over such a wide field as 
 Horace, Seneca, Jerome, Gerson, Peti-arca, Solomon, ^'Eneas Sylvius, 
 Hermann von dem Busche, Sebastian Brant, homely satirist of human 
 folly, and the folk-preacher of Strasburg, Geiler von Kaisersberg. The 
 letter (;f the latter is peculiarly characteristic of this new didactic school. 
 He mourns that the age produces few lioets * like Jerome and Augustine, 
 but a host of Ovids and Catulluses. vGeiler finds in his own land an army 
 of theologians, but few theophils.T? It is the letter of a man of deep, 
 earnest, moral purjiose, but of somewhat narrow power. He is weary of 
 the Scholastic philosophy which is choking religion ; but his only 
 alternative seems to be the reduction of religion to the teaching of 
 morality. Wimpfeling caused this letter of Geiler's to be read before the 
 asseml)led University of Heidelberg ; and the reading resulted in the 
 professors and students setting to work to write epigrams on the various 
 
 1 Plato was termed ' poet ' by the Humanists.
 
 HUMANISM IN GERMANY 191 
 
 virtues aud vices, ■wliicli epigrams are inserted iu Wimpfeling's book. It 
 is ob^^oll3 that thus a great deal of padding is introduced which has very 
 little to do with education. Perhaps the only other matters which 
 possess any particular interest are certain short sentences of Wimpfel- 
 ing's own, containing maxims for children. These were first inserted in 
 later editions of the book. I translate some of them which seem to have 
 a more general value for folk-history : — Love God ; honour your parents ; 
 rise early in the morning ; make the sign of the cross in the name of the 
 Father, the Sou, and the Holy Ghost ; put on your clothes ; wash and 
 dry your hands ; rinse the mouth, the water being not too cold, as it 
 injures the teeth ; comb the hair, particularly with an ivory comb (if you 
 have one) ; rub the back of the head with a hard and coarse cloth ; say, 
 ■with bended knees, the prayer Christ taught his disciples ; repeat the 
 salutation which Gabriel bore to the Virgin Mary ; repeat the same 
 to your own guardian angel, or say this distich : " Angel, who' by 
 the grace of heaven art my giiardian, save, defend, guide me, who am 
 committed to thy charge." ^ After prayer gird thyself to study, because 
 " the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom " ; if there be time, 
 look through your next lesson before going to school ; pay great attention 
 to your master ; do not be ashamed to inquire of him or of another 
 wiser than yourself ; practice the Latin tongue frequently ; love Christ 
 who redeemed you on the Cross ; do not say, " by God, 'pon my soul, on 
 my oath, i' my faith " ; on Sunday and holy days read the lessons 
 appointed concerning the Lord ; in knocking do not violently shake the 
 door or bell, lest you be judged mad or a fool ; beware of horses and 
 water ; never carry a candle without a candlestick ; cairying a candle for 
 the purpose of showing the way, go first although a worthier follow you ; 
 do not place your hands upon your hips ; do not examine the letter, purse, 
 or table of another ; being called to meals, do not be late, content 
 yourself with the seat jonr host appoints, and do not bring a dog with 
 you ; meeting your superior, take his left side and leave his right free, do 
 not change this side ; passing the cup among those at meals, do not give 
 it into their hands, but place it upon the table ; do not enter unbid into 
 the kitchen of a prince (I suppose this means, do not go where you are 
 not bid, or you will be punished for it ; it may be connected with the 
 mediaeval German proverb ; " At court every seven years a kitchen knave 
 is devoured ") ; do not place on the plate bread you have touched with 
 your teeth ; pour wine rather into another's belly than your own ; put 
 
 ^ This notion of a guardian angel was very prevalent iu the fifteenth and 
 sixteenth centuries, and possesses much poetic beauty. In Geiler von Kaisersberg's 
 How to Act Vjith a Dying Man there is an invocation to the angels, with special 
 reference to the "good angel, my guardian." The good and bad angels 
 accompanied a man through life, the one assisting, the other tempting ; they 
 may be seen iu the woodcuts of the old law books on either side of the prisoner, 
 and they stand beside the dj'ing man in the well-known block-book, the Art of 
 Dying. What is now a delicate fantasy was, iu the fifteenth century, an article 
 of faith.
 
 192 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 all your tilings in their appointed and proper places ; avoid liot food ; do 
 not toucli the teeth -nath your knife ; wash after cake, honey, etc. ; he 
 who lends money to a friend loses friend and money ; the blood of 
 princes does not make good sausages, — with which enigmatical proverb 
 we will leave "Wimpfeling's short sentences. 
 
 Of the other educational works of Wimpfeling, I may mention : the 
 Isidoneus (1497), a vigorous criticism of the then usual methods of teach- 
 ings — the Germania (1501), with a description of an improved gymnasium 
 as well as general hints on the education of boys and girls, — and lastly, 
 the earlier Elegantiarum Medulla (1490). This latter is a Latin reading 
 and exercise -book for boys, and made at that time a revolution in school- 
 books. On the title page is a woodcut of a schoolmaster seated on a large 
 carved chair ; in his right hand a birch ; below him, on low stools, are 
 seated three pupils — one to the extreme left is apparently construing 
 from a book. 
 
 The slight sketch which I have given of Wimpfeling's educational 
 theories -n-ill, perhaps, be suflicient to indicate the excellent work he did 
 for German education.! He may be said to have humanised the schools ; 
 and his Adolescentia may be fitly termed the first great German — perhaps 
 the first great modern — book on education. His contemporaries, with 
 just admiration, termed him the " Preceptor of Germany," the " Father 
 of German Pedagogic." 
 
 His true value has hardly yet been recognised, partly owing to his 
 having been a Catholic, and thus passed over by Protestant historians ; 
 partly to the extreme scarcity of his works, several of which are wanting 
 even in a library like that of the British Museum. 
 
 For the present I must content myself with having indicated the 
 magnitude of Wimpfeling's educational labours. Germany, at least, owes 
 to its ' Preceptor ' a complete reprint of his pedagogic works. 
 
 Note.— The reader will find excellent material for the study of German 
 
 Humanism in the following works : — 
 J. Janssen: Geschichte des deutsdiea Volkes, vol. i. pp. 54-134 : vol. iL pp. 
 
 1-128. (Strong Catholic bias.) 
 K, Hagen : Dcutschlands Uterarische und religidseVerkdltnisse im Beforvwiions- 
 
 zeitalter. (Strong Protestant bias.) 
 L. Geiger : Johann Heuchlin. (Without bias.) 
 Th. Wiedemann : Dr. Johann Eck. (Catholic bias.) 
 D. r. Strauss : Vlrich von Hutten. (Slight Protestant bias.) 
 F. W. Kampschulte : Die UniversitatErfurt. (Without bias.) 
 C. Krause : Dcr Briefwechsel des Mutiaus Eufus. 
 B. Schwarz : Jacob Wimpfeling, der Altvater des deutschen Schitlwesens. 
 
 1 Within twenty years 30,000 copies of his pedagogic works were sold.
 
 IX 
 MAETIN LUTHEK^ 
 
 Vernunft ist des Teufels hochste Hure. 
 
 During the past year there has been so much talking and 
 so much writing concerning Luther that we might suppose 
 the majority of people, for whom direct historical research is 
 impossible, to have been provided with sufficient material for 
 arriving at a true judgment of the man and of the movement 
 wherein he was the principal actor. Probably more books 
 have been written about the Eeformation than about any 
 other period of history. Yet since the time when history 
 emerged from the mist of legend, such a mass of myth has 
 never grown up to obscure all true examination of fact. Not 
 only is this myth the predominant element in popular lives of 
 Luther, but its influence may be continually traced in works 
 having far greater claims on the consideration of scholars. 
 The origin and growth of this myth are perhaps not hard 
 to explain ; the upholders of a particular phase of religion 
 invariably invest its originator with a legendary perfection — 
 all the great achievements of mankind during his century, and 
 often those of an even more distant date, are attributed to 
 him ; all himuwi errors, all sins of the age, are thrust upon his 
 opponents. Clcuevery sect its founder becomes the saviour of 
 mankind, and his adversaries a generation of vipers/> So it 
 has arisen that numerous well-meaning folk look upon Luther 
 as almost a second St. Paul, and upon the Pope as undoubted 
 
 1 Reprinted from the Westminster Eevieiu, January, 1884. 
 13
 
 194 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 Antichrist. It is impossible to escape the dilemma : the 
 orthodox Christian must regard Luther either as nigh inspired 
 of God, or else as a child of the Devil. There can be no 
 reconciliation of Lutheranism and Catholicism ; if the teach- 
 ing of the one is true, the doctrine of the other is false. An 
 " Interim " would be no more successful to-day than it was in 
 1548. It may perhaps be suggested that the contradiction 
 is to be found in the Apostolic writings themselves ; yet the 
 orthodox Christian is hardly likely to make an admission 
 which would certainly deprive those writings of all claim to 
 inspiration. To be consistent, he must adopt one view or the 
 other ; and having done so, Luther at once appears to him 
 either as a prophet or a heretic — the discoverer of a long 
 forgotten truth, or the perverter of the teaching of Christ. 
 /As long as there is a shred of dogma left about Christianity, 
 
 / there is small chance that Christendom will not divide itself 
 / into two hostile parties — the admirers and the contemners of 
 
 X^uther. When we consider this fundamental distinction, and 
 the proverbial intensity of theological hatred, it is no wonder 
 that myth should survive and persistently obscure even the 
 most prominent facts of Reformation history. Again and 
 again scholars have shown that Luther's Bible was neither 
 the first translation, nor was it immeasurably superior to its 
 predecessors ; that vernacular hymns and sermons were common 
 long before the Reformation ; that Luther's methods were 
 entirely opposed to the spirit of Humanism ; that the German 
 Reformation was by no means a great folk-movement — yet 
 these and innumerable other facts have been persistently 
 contradicted in the flood of magazine and newspaper articles 
 
 ! which the centenary has brought into existence. Myths, 
 
 which were first invented to blacken the character of opponents, 
 
 and found a fitting receptacle in the scurrilous tracts of the 
 
 ' sixteenth century, are still dealt out to the public by journalists 
 
 and pseudo-historians as facts of the Reformation. We are 
 
 told that toleration was a part of the programme of the 
 
 ; German Reformers, a statement absolutely opposed to all 
 
 \ critical investigation ; we are told that Luther's coarseness 
 
 \and violence were only typical of his age, without the least
 
 MARTIN LUTHER 195 
 
 attempt to inquire whether the_greatest thinkers of the age 
 were really coarse and violent ; \we are told that the Reforma- 
 tion swept away intolerable abuses, yet we search in vain for 
 any scientific comparison of the moral and social conditions of 
 the clergy and laity at the beginning and at the middle of the 
 sixteenth century ; Ve are told that literature and learning 
 were fostered by the Reformation, and yet we find absolute 
 ignorance as to the intellectual collapse of Germany in the 
 sixteenth century ; lastly, we are told, on the one hand, that 
 the thought of to-day owes its freedom to Luther, while the 
 theologians insist, on the other, that Luther was by no means 
 the father of modern Rationalism. Here, the theologians, for 
 the most part guided by instinct rather than by research, are 
 undoubtedly right. (The whole history of Rationalism is as 
 much opposed to Liitheranism as to CatholicisiQ_. _, Rationalists 
 ought never to forget that thought could express itself far 
 more freely in Basel and Erfurt in 1500 than it could any- , 
 where in Europe by the middle of the century. Not from the j 
 doctrines of Lutheranism, but from the want of unity among] 
 theologians, has intellect again won for itself unlimited freedom. ' 
 To the Protestant, who asserts that all our nineteenth-centmy 
 culture is the outcome of Luther and his followers, the 
 Rationalist must reply : " Yes, but not to their teaching, only 
 to that squabbling which rendered them impotent to suppress." 
 It is sectarian prejudice which has hitherto obscured the history 
 of the Reformation, and has led a distinguished German critic 
 thus to conclude his review of the literature on the subject : — 
 " The field of history must be thoroughly cleared of all 
 such theological tendencies, whether they come from the right 
 or the left or the middle. A true history of the Reformation 
 must fundamentally and completely reject all theological and 
 ecclesiastical party considerations and party aims of whatever 
 character. A history of Luther is only possible for him who 
 contents himself with writing history, and without the smallest 
 reservation despises making propaganda for any theological 
 conception." ^ 
 
 ^ Maurenbrecher : Studien und Skizzen zur Geschichte d<:r Rifonnalionszeit, 
 p. 237, 1874.
 
 196 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 The object of the present essay is neither to write a 
 history of Luther, nor to endeavour to dispel all the myths 
 which obscure our view of the Eeformation. It will entirely 
 avoid theological discussion as to the truth or falsehood of any 
 particular dogma, or as to the degree of sacrifice in intellectual 
 and moral progress which ought to be made in order to attain 
 a phase of doctrine asserted to be most in accordance with 
 divine revelation. This essay will confine itself solely to the 
 effect of Luther's teaching on the social and intellectual 
 condition of the German people. It will endeavour to raise 
 the question : Can any progress whatever be made by a 
 violent reformation, or must it not always be the outcome of a 
 slow educational evolution ? It will ask whether the folk as 
 a body can ever be elevated by a vehement appeal to their 
 passions, or whether all advance does not depend on a gradual 
 intellectual development. 
 
 Let us endeavour to describe, as briefly as clearness will 
 permit, the position of affairs in the Catholic Church towards 
 the close of the fifteenth century. It must never be forgotten 
 that throughout the Middle Ages the Church was by no 
 means an institution concerned only with the spiritual element 
 of man's nature, it was besides the basis of the entire mediaeval 
 social system, and the keynote to the whole of mediaeval 
 intellectual life. All social combinations, whether for labour, 
 for trade, or for good fellowship — trade unions, mercantile 
 guilds, and convivial fraternities — were part of the Church 
 system. A higher spiritual side was thus given to the most 
 everyday transactions of both business and pleasure. It was 
 the Church which formed a link between man and man, 
 between class and class, between nation and nation. The 
 Church produced a unity of feeling between all men, a certain 
 meditcval cosmopolitanism, which it is hard for us to conceive 
 in these days of individualism and strongly marked nationalism. 
 So long as the Church was powerful, so long as it could make 
 its law respected, it stood between workman and master, 
 between peasant and lord, dealing out equity and hindering 
 oppression. The battle which arose in Germany in the latter 
 half of the fifteenth century between the Canon and the Eoman
 
 MAKTIN LUTHER 197 
 
 Laws was not a mere contest between Church and State for 
 supremacy, between ambitious ecclesiastic and grasping lay- 
 ruler. It involved the far more important question whether 
 the peasant should be a free man or a serf. The Eoman Law 
 had been created for a slave State ; the Canon Law, Eoman in 
 form, was yet Christian in spirit, and infinitely more in accord 
 with the Christianised folk-law of the German people. The 
 supporters of the " Eeception of the Eoman Law " were the 
 German princes, for it increased immensely their power and 
 importance ; each became a petty Eoman Emperor within 
 the boundaries of his own dominions. The opponents of 
 the Eeception were first and foremost the leading Catholic 
 preachers and theologians. AVimpfeling recognised in the 
 contest of the two laws " the most fruitful mother of future 
 revolutions." 
 
 " That among the heathen, slavery was at home and 
 the greater part of humanity reduced to an almost brute 
 service is, alas ! " writes the Abbot Tritheim, " only too true. 
 The light of Christendom had to shine for a long time before 
 it was able to scatter the heathen darkness, godlessness, and 
 tyranny. But what shall we say of Cliristians, who, appealing 
 to a heathen system of law, wish to introduce a new slavery, 
 and flatter the powerful of the earth that they, since they 
 possess the might, have also all right, and can measure out to 
 their subjects at will justice and freedom ! Surely this is a 
 hideous doctrine ! Its application has already given rise to 
 rebellion and rioting in many places, and in the near future 
 great folk-destroying wars will break out, unless an end l)e put 
 to it, and the old law of the Christian folk, the old freedom 
 and judicial security of the peasants and otlier labom'ing men, 
 be again restored." 
 
 That freedom was never restored ; the Eoman Law was 
 " received " throughout Germany, notwithstanding the advice 
 of Popes, the protests of the Catholic clergy and the nuinnurs 
 of the people. All who were interested in oppressing the 
 masses became eager workers for the introduction and spread 
 of Eoman Law. As the Catholic Churcli lost power, the 
 advance was more and more rapid, till it Ijccame all-victorious
 
 198 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 in the Keformation, culminating in Luther's doctrines of the 
 divine right of princes and of the duty of implicit obedience.-^ 
 Thus Tritheim's prophecy was fulfilled, and that " great folk- 
 destroying war," the Peasants' Ivebelliou, broke out. Only one 
 other point can be noted here with regard to the Eeception ; 
 the Eomau Emperor had been liead of the heathen religion ; 
 the new Jurists said to the German princelets ; — " You, too, 
 have a right to be Pope in your own land ! " Svich teaching 
 was not long in bearing fruit. 
 
 These few remarks may sufitice to show that, apart from 
 religious teaching pm-e and simple, the Catholic Church was 
 the foundation of mediieval society. Any violent attempt to 
 destroy that Church would in all probability be perilous to the 
 established social life — it would lead to the triumph of might 
 over all forms of right. Such, quite apart from dogmatic 
 considerations, was the effect of the German Eeformation ; it 
 consummated the degradation of the free peasant to the serf: 
 it destroyed or reduced to a mere shadow of their former 
 selves the innumerable guilds, partly by decrying them as 
 " Papist institutions," partly by removing the old Church 
 influence, the old moral restraints which prevented their 
 becoming selfish trade monopolies ; above all, by suddenly 
 weakening the old religious beliefs, it brought about what 
 might almost be described as a break-up of German society : 
 the immorality and dissoluteness of the German people in 
 the middle and second half of the sixteenth century are almost 
 indescribal)le. They only find their parallel in the almost com- 
 -plete disappearance of all true intellectual and artistic activity. 
 Such is no overdrawn description of what Mark Pattison has 
 fitly termed " the narrowing influence of Lutheran bigotry." 
 The reader must not suppose that we at all blind ourselves to 
 the abuses which had grown up in the Catholic Church in the 
 fifteenth century ; we recognise them to the full ; but in 
 return we ask : Did the Lutheran Church produce a purer and 
 more enlightened clergy ; did it increase the moral and social 
 welfare of the people ; was it foremost in the support of 
 
 ^ It is a siguificaut fact that Luther buiut, with the pai)al bull, a copy of 
 the Canon Law.
 
 MAETIN LUTHER 199 
 
 literature aud art ; was it more tolerant, more charitable, nay, 
 even more Christian, than that which it attempted to replace? 
 Shortly, did it reform more evil than it destroyed good ? To 
 none of these questions can we give an affirmative answer. 
 The Catholic Church needed reform urgently enough, but the 
 reform which it needed was that of Erasmus, not that of 
 Luther. Had the labours of Erasmus not been blighted by 
 the passionate appeals of Wittenberg, at first to the ignorance 
 of the masses, and then to the greed of the princes, we believe 
 that the Catholic Church might have developed with the 
 intellectual development of mankind, might possibly have 
 become the universal instrument of moral progress and mental 
 culture, and — dogmas gradually slipping into forgetfulness — 
 we should now be enjoying the blessings of a universal church, 
 embracing all that is best of the intellect of our time. If the 
 Church in 1500 could contain an Erasmus, a Eeuchlin, and a 
 Muth, who shall say that in our days Huxley and Matthew 
 Arnold might not have been numbered among its members ? 
 Luther, by insisting on details of dogma, dragged Europe into 
 a flood of theological controversy, and forced the Church into 
 a process of doctrinal crystallisation, from which it can now 
 never recover.'X This is probably what was passing through 
 the mind of tire greatest of German poets when he declared 
 that Luther threw back by centuries the civilisation of Europe. 
 Let us, however, examine still more closely the condition 
 of the Roman Church at the beginning of the sixteenth 
 century. What were the particular failings which pressed so 
 peculiarly for reform ? We may note first the ignorance of 
 both monks and clergy. It is quite true that the typical monk 
 was by no means that;^combination of stupidity and bestiality 
 which the Ejpistolcc Ohscurorum Virorum paints for us. There 
 were monasteries which preserved something of the old literary 
 spirit, and the schools of which were not utterly despical^le ; 
 there were still convents of both sexes where the old earnest 
 religious spirit was very far from dead, and which were broken 
 up only by the most violent methods of "reform." Nevertheless 
 the Church had ceased to represent the foremost culture, the 
 deepest thought of the time. She was no longer the intellec-
 
 200 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 tual giantess she Imd beeu iu earlier centuries — a certain 
 spiritual sloth had grown upon her, while wealth and power 
 had deadened her mental activity. She was behind the current 
 knowledge of her age and wanting in sympathy for its methods. 
 A second failing — almost more grave, but yet closely 
 linked with the former — was the moral collapse of the 
 spiritual members of the Church. Clergy, monks, and nuns 
 had lost consciousness of the meaning of their vows, and 
 the spiritual calling had become merely a means of obtaining 
 an easy subsistence. Let us grasp fully the very worst 
 that can be said on this point. Many monasteries were 
 little better than taverns ; occasionally nunneries approached 
 something still more repulsive. In an order of the Eegens- 
 burg administrator of 1508, we read of the clergy seated at 
 night in the public taverns, consuming wine to drunkenness, 
 playing at dice and cards, brawling with their neighbours, and 
 even fighting with knives or other weapons ; the dress, too, of 
 these tavern clergy, we are told, was luxurious and improper. 
 Erasmus bears faithful witness to the condition of many of the 
 monks and clergy in his day : " I know," he says through one 
 of his characters, " some monks so superstitious that they think 
 themselves in the jaws of the Devil, if by chance they are 
 without their sacred vestments ; but they are not at all afraid 
 of his claws, while they are lying, slandering, drunken, and 
 acting maliciously." Yet Erasmus does not indiscriminately 
 abuse clergy and monks ; he points out pious and worthy 
 examples of both, and such undoubtedly existed in far greater 
 numbers than Protestant polemic would allow us to believe, 
 even when Luther was pouring out his most violent anathemas 
 against the monastic life. Insults, threats and bribes were often 
 insufficient to break up the convents in Saxony and elsewhere. 
 The reforming Church Visitors frequently found a passive 
 resistance, which could only be the outcome of a deep religious 
 conviction, and which to the modern investigator throws all 
 charges of intolerance and bigotry upon the shoulders of the 
 reforming party. Noteworthy in this respect was the system 
 of insult and petty tyranny which the high-minded Abbess 
 Charitas Pirkheimer and her convent had to endure at the hands
 
 MARTIN LUTHER 201 
 
 of the coarse and fanatic Osiander. Her diaiy of these events 
 is one of the most interesting records extant of the methods 
 of Lutheran reformation.^ Yet her experience was by no means 
 unique ; we possess other records of a like kind which show 
 how unfounded were Luther's charges : that in no nunnery was 
 there daily reading of the Bible, and that among a thousand 
 nuns scarce one went with pleasure to divine service, or wore, 
 except under compulsion, the dress of her Order. Such asser- 
 tions as these, however, have, on the authority of Luther, been 
 handed down from writer to writer till they are quoted as 
 facts in modern history books. That the cloister life of the 
 early part of the sixteenth century needed much reform is 
 indisputable ; but that any real good was effected by absolutely 
 forbidding the members of the Orders to wear their distinctive 
 di-ess, by bribing the more worldly-minded to leave their 
 convents, by forcing the remainder to listen to Lutheran 
 preachers abusing the Catholic faith and the ascetic life in the 
 coarsest fashion, and finally by the appropriation as soon as 
 possible of the convent revenues, may very reasonably be 
 doubted. Considering how small a portion of those revenues 
 was ultimately devoted to educational or charitable purposes, 
 Cobbett's charge against the Reformation — that it was a 
 plundering of the heritage of the poor — is not without founda- 
 tion. The doctrine of salvation by faith alone may perhaps 
 be most in accordance with St. Faul's teaching, yet it is 
 perfectly certain that the belief that works are of assistance, 
 not only saved pre-Reformation Germany from a State pauper 
 system, but adorned her churches with the noblest works of 
 Christian art. Luther's doctrine, misunderstood if the reader 
 please to term it so, was immediately destructive of charity, 
 and endless were the lamentations of the Reformers that 
 people had ceased to give as they did in the dark ages of 
 Popery. 
 
 The third great evil under which the Church laboured 
 lay in the worldly aims of the hierarchy. The Church had 
 become not only a spiritual but a great social and even 
 
 ' Charitas Pirklieimer : Denkwurdigleitcn aus dcni Jic/urmalionszeUaltcr. 
 Bamberger Hist. Vereiii, Bd. iv. Edited by Hofler, 1852.
 
 202 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 political authority. The princes of the Church had power 
 equal to or greater than the lay rulers', and they needed a 
 princely revenue to support their state. Still more excessive 
 were the wants of the Papal Court, and the means by which 
 those wants were supplied was not at all calculated to make 
 Eome acceptable to the German people. The national unity 
 of France and Spain had enabled those countries to resist 
 successfully the Papal extortions, and to establish a fairly 
 equitable modiis vivendi with the head of the Church. But 
 national unity was the very thing wanted in Germany. Her 
 princes were eager for self-aggrandisement, and there was no 
 security for that permanent union which alone could dictate 
 terms to the Pope ; one and all of them were ever open to 
 the conviction of a bribe. This disimion of the German 
 princes rendered a solution of the question after the French 
 fashion impossible. The same grievances were expressed time 
 after time at successive Keichstage, but no genuine attempt 
 at self-help ever seems to have been made. The pocket has 
 usually far greater influence than the idea, hence it came to 
 pass that the mass of the people at first welcomed Luther as 
 their champion against the Eoman imposition ; they by no 
 means grasped that his enterprise would ultimately shake the 
 very foundations of their social life. The grievances of the 
 German nation against the Pope are very clearly expressed in 
 a document presented in 1518 by then Catholic Germany 
 to Kaiser Maximilian.^ The Pope, euphonisticaUy described 
 as " pious father, lover of his children, and faithful and wise 
 pastor," is warned to give heed to Germany's grievances, or 
 else there may be a rising against the priests of Christ, a 
 falling away from the Eoman Church even as in Bohemia. 
 The grievances are endless, the archbishops and bishops exact 
 terrible sums from their flocks to pay the Pope for the 
 pallium, the sign of his sanction to their appointment ; the 
 income from German fields, mines, and tolls, which might be 
 used for administering justice, exterminating robbers, and for 
 war against infidels, all goes to Eome. So-called " courtesans " 
 
 1 Gravamina Germanicoz Nationis cum remedvis et avisumentis ad Casaream 
 rnajestatcm, 1518.
 
 MAETIX LUTHER 203 
 
 — that is, the Pope's courtiers, his cardinals, notaries, and 
 officers — hold the best benefices in Germany, a land many of 
 them have never seen. The money of pious founders, which 
 should be used not only for the repair of churches aud 
 monasteries, but for hospitals, schools, paupers, widows, and 
 orphans, is grasped by avaricious Italians. These and other 
 ignorant priests add living to living. Learned and earnest 
 clergy, of whom Germany provides a sufficiency, can find no 
 fitting posts. The begging friars, mere agents of the Pope, 
 need to be sternly held within bounds. If Maximilian will 
 only remedy these, and a good many other ecclesiastical 
 grievances, he will be hailed as the deliverer of Germany, 
 the restorer of her liberty, the true father of his country! 
 It should be noted that these grievances are not in the least 
 matters of dogma, they are precisely the difficulties which 
 national unity enabled France and Spain to surmount. 
 
 On the other hand, it is well to mark the character of 
 the men into whose hands these ill-gotten revenues passed. 
 They were the patrons, the enthusiastic patrons of literature 
 and art ; they were by no means particular as to dogma, and 
 looked upon the Church rather as a means of social than 
 relisious sovernment. An anecdote of Benvenuto Cellini is 
 peculiarly characteristic of their conception of the relation 
 between religion and art. Notwithstanding that Cellini had 
 just committed what can only be termed a murder, the new- 
 Pope, Paul, sent for him, and prepared at once a letter of 
 pardon. One of the courtiers present remarked that it was 
 hardly advisible in the first days of office to pardon such an 
 offence. But the Pope turned sharply to him and said : — 
 " You do not understand this as well as I. Know that men 
 like Benvenuto, who are unique in their skill, are not l)ouud 
 by the law." The Pope then signed the letter of pardon, 
 and Cellini was received into the highest favour.^ Cellini's 
 autobiography presents us with no edifying picture of six- 
 teenth-century Popes, when we look upon them merely as 
 spiritual authorities. It is singular to mark the Pope jesting 
 over the power of the keys at the very time when Luther is 
 I Fita di Benvenuto Cellini ; Colonia, p. 99.
 
 204 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 forging iron bands of dogma for Northern Germany. But 
 these are the Popes who built St. I'eter's, and were the 
 patrons of Raphael and Michael Angelo, and the character of 
 their religion is essentially reflected in the works of those 
 artists. They were not insensible to the need of reformation 
 in the Church ; the Lateran Council shows sufficiently that 
 it was the ignorance of the monks and greed of the clergy 
 rather than the will of the Popes which hindered reform. 
 Yet they looked for improvement rather by education and 
 culture in the spirit of Erasmus, than by a sweeping destruc- 
 tion after the fashion of Luther. They were as a rule toler- 
 ant even to excess, and only the progress of Protestantism 
 forced the Roman See again into the path of bigotry, again to 
 lay stress upon subtle phases of dogma. 
 
 What the Popes were to Italy, such were the spiritual 
 princes in Germany. Cardinal Albrecht of Mainz, whom 
 Luther thought fit to class with Cain and Absalom, was one 
 of the most cultivated men of his time. His Court, under 
 the direction of Ulrich's cousin, Frowin von Hutten, may be 
 described as the centre of German art and literature. Here 
 men like Reuchlin, Ulrich von Hutten,^ Erasmus, Georg 
 Sabinus, Diirer, Griinewald, and Cranach, met with support 
 and sympathy. Albrecht was probably neither an exceed- 
 ingly moral nor a deeply religious ecclesiastic. There are 
 several pictures by Griinewald of St. Erasmus and the Mag- 
 dalene, which are portraits of the Cardinal and, as is supposed, 
 of the fair daughter of one Riidinger of Mainz. It is not so 
 many years ago since certain narrow zealots in Halle wished 
 to have Cranach's grand altar-piece removed from the Market- 
 Church, because they thought they recognised in the face of 
 the Virgin a portrait of the same lady. The table also, now 
 in the Louvre, which " the godless painter," Hans Sebald 
 Beham, prepared for Albrecht, breathes anything but a re- 
 ligious spirit." The leaders of the Church, both in Italy and 
 
 1 Hutten's Panrgijriais on Albrecht will be found in the Ojjcm, Ed. Biicking, 
 iii., p. 353. 
 
 2 Cf. Forster and Kugler's Kunstblatt : Dcr Kardinal Albrecht als Kwnst- 
 hcfordcrer, 1846, Nos. 32 and 33. Also Hefner Alteneck : Trachfen des christ- 
 liclien Mittelalters. Description to Plate 136, Bd. iii.
 
 MAETIN LUTHEE 205 
 
 Germany, were what we should nowadays term ' emancipated ' ; 
 they were enthusiastic encouragers of the fine arts and of all 
 forms of humanistic culture. Is it to be wondered at that 
 they could not sympathise with a movement which reintro- 
 duced doctrinal subtleties ; which completely checked the 
 spread of Humanism ; which in Augsburg,^ Braunschweig, 
 Hamburg, Frankfurt, Basel, Zurich, everywhere north and 
 south, handed over the noblest works of art to the fire and to 
 the hammer ; or which, as in Wurzen, by the direct orders 
 of Luther's patron, Johann Friedrich, the " Great-hearted," 
 caused the works of art, " so far as they were not inlaid with 
 gold, or represented serious subjects {ernstliche Historien), to 
 be chopped up, and the rest laid by in the crypt " ? These 
 are matters which must influence the cultured mind of to-day 
 when judging the Eeformation, however indifferent or even 
 justifiable they may have seemed or seem to the iconoclastic 
 zealots either of the past or present. 
 
 Granting, then, the existence of serious evils in the state 
 of the Church, we may ask, whether those evils were un- 
 recognised by the more thoughtful Catholics of the time ; 
 was there no attempt at reform, which might have avoided 
 that break-up of moral, intellectual, and artistic life which 
 followed upon the violent destruction of the mediieval church 
 system ? We reply that there was such a recognition and 
 such an attempt — a reform constructed on a far broader basis 
 than Luther was capable of conceiving ; this attempt at_ 
 reform Tias' been n6r"ifrappropriately named after its most 
 zealous supporter, the Erasmian Eeformation. A comparison 
 of the standpoints of Luther and Erasmus is of peculiar 
 importance at the present time, when we are so frequently 
 told that, apart from all theological questions, we owe our 
 modern intellectual freedom to Luther. The plans of 
 Erasmus were shipwrecked by the violence of the Lutheran 
 movement. We have to inquire whether our modern thought 
 
 1 "We have never either prayed to the saints or worsliipped tlieir images," 
 writes the Bishop of Augsburg. "These monuments and pictures might at 
 least have been preserved from destmction for the sake of their age and artistic 
 merit."
 
 206 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 Clias not been the outcome of a gradual return to the principles 
 of Erasmus, a continuous rejection one by one of every 
 dpctrine and every conception of Luther. Mr. Beard, in his 
 Ilibbert Lectures, remarks, with great truth, that while the 
 Eeformation of the past has been Luther's, that of the future 
 will be Erasmus's ; we venture to remind Mr. Beard that but 
 for Luther the Reformation of Erasmus would have been the 
 Reformation of the past as well as of the future. It is 
 impossible to reverse the course of history, but it is not idle 
 to point out the failures of mankind ; they form all-important 
 lessons for our conduct in the future. What was the means 
 then that the Humanistic party adopted to cure those two 
 great evils — the ignorance and the immorality of clergy and 
 monks? It may be shortly described as the revival of the 
 religious spirit by inoculating the Church with the humanistic 
 enthusiasm, by identifying Catholicism with the newly won 
 scholarship and its progressive culture. Ecclesiastical ignor- 
 ance could only be conquered by a gradual process of education, 
 not by driving monk and priest into stubborn opposition, but 
 by teaching them to appreciate at their true value the higher 
 intellectual pursuits. It required above all a reform in the 
 teaching of the schools and of the universities, especially in their 
 theological faculties. Wlien we look back now at the forty years 
 which preceded the so-called Reformation, we are astonished 
 at the amount of improvement which the party of educational 
 progress had in that time achieved. It must be stated at 
 once that the Erasmian Reformation was essentially rational 
 rather than emotional, it appealed to men's reason not to 
 their passions. On this ground it is interesting to mark 
 the great emphasis laid by the Humanistic moralists on 
 the identification of sin and folly. It is foUy, stupidity, 
 ifrnorance which are the causes of immorality and crime, 
 not the activity of the Devil, nor any theological conception 
 of an inherited impulse to evil. Once make men wise and 
 they wiU cease to commit sin. This is the keynote to 
 Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools (1494), to Wimpfeling's 
 pedagogic labours, but above all to Erasmus's Praise of 
 Folly. Like the great folk-preacher, Geiler von Kaisersberg,
 
 MAETIN LUTHEE 207 
 
 these men do not discard religion, but they lay stress upon 
 its ethical side in preference to the dogmatical. They see 
 well enough the abuses in the Church, but they do not there- 
 fore cry out for its destruction ; they lay ignorance and 
 folly bare with the most biting of satire. If we open the 
 sermons of Geiler on Brant's Ship of Fools, and mark how 
 he turns its satire into the deepest religious feeling, we are 
 convinced that the highest moral purpose is at the bottom 
 of these satirical productions. They are not written for the 
 reader's amusement, but to teach him the weightiest moral 
 truths. There is an intense earnestness about these men, 
 they are imbued with the one idea of reforming the Church, 
 of purifying and elevating both clergy and laity, and the 
 keynote of theh' method is education. Humanistic culture, 
 combined with a higher moral conception, shall bring back 
 vitality to the old ecclesiastical institutions. The spirit of 
 Geiler, Wimpfeling, and Brant was in the main the spirit of 
 Erasmus. He, too, satirises ignorance and folly ; he, too, 
 preaches a practical Christianity. The Enchiridion Militis 
 Christiani, he tells us, was written " as a remedy against the 
 error which makes religion depend on ceremonies and an 
 observance almost more than Judaic of bodily acts, while 
 strangely neglecting all that relates to true piety." Yet 
 Erasmus in this very work recognises throughout man's 
 capacity for good, and expresses his belief in the guidance of 
 the reason. The whole scope of life is to be Christ, but 
 Christ is not an empty name, he is charity, simplicity, 
 patience, purity — shortly, whatever Christ taught. Not of 
 food or drink but of mutual love was Christ's talk. While 
 rejecting merely formal works, Erasmus still places man's 
 salvation in the practice of Christian virtue ; he is very far 
 from accepting Luther's doctrine of justification by faith alone. 
 The book is full of practical piety ; there is no trace of 
 theological dogma, nor any regard to obscure theories of 
 redemption and original sin. Nevertheless it docs not 
 hesitate to attack superstition, the common abuses of the 
 Church, and the ignorance and stupidity of the monks. " To 
 be a Christian is not to be anointed or baptised, nor is to
 
 208 THE ETHIC OF EEEETHOUGHT 
 
 attend mass ; but to lay hold of Christ in one's inmost heart, 
 and show forth his spirit in one's life." Such is the keynote 
 to the religion of Erasmus, and it is precisely identical with 
 what Christianity means to the best minds of to-day. 
 
 The proposal of these Humanistic moralists was to reform 
 the Church by educating her. They believed that the more 
 the intellectual side of a man was developed, the less likely he 
 was to be selfish and bestial. They put faith in human reason. 
 In what a totally different fashion does Luther regard this 
 safeguard of human action! Without the pre -existence of 
 faith, reason, according to Luther, is the most complete vanity; 
 it is blind in spiritual matters, and cannot point out the way 
 of life. " In itself it is the most dangerous thing, especially 
 when it touches matters concerning the soul and God." 
 Luther saw in the reason the " arch-enemy of faitli," because 
 it led men to believe in salvation by works; nay, he went 
 further, and asserted that whoever trusted to his reason must 
 reject the dogmas of Christianity. In another passage he 
 describes the natural reason as the " archwhore and devil's 
 bride, who can only scoff and blaspheme all that God says 
 and does." Elsewhere, Luther declares that the reason can 
 only recognise in Christ the teacher and holy man, but not 
 the son of the living God ; and on this account he pours out 
 his wrath upon it. " Eeason or human wisdom and the devil 
 can dispute wondrous well, so that one might believe it were 
 wisdom, and yet it is not." " Since the beginning of the 
 world reason has been possessed by the devil, and bred un- 
 belief." This particular dislike of Luther for human reason 
 even found expression in his translation of the Bible, and he 
 has in several passages introduced the word reason, where 
 nothing of the kind is referred to in the original text, notably 
 in Colossians ii. 4, where he replaces " enticing words " by 
 " verniinftige Eeden." ^ It will be seen at once, then, that 
 the theologians are right in asserting that Luther was not 
 the father of modern Kationalism. He considered reason as 
 the chief instrument of the devil, unless its application had 
 been preceded by the mystical process of redemption, the 
 
 1 Cf. 2 Cor. X. 5 ; Eph. ii. 3 ; Col. i. 21, etc.
 
 MAETIN LUTHER 209 
 
 transcendental attainment of perfect faith. It is obvious 
 that such a condition destroys the only ground upon which 
 reason can be treated as a basis for truth common to all 
 mankind. Nothing marks more strikingly than this con- 
 tempt of human intellect the difference between Luther and 
 Erasmus ; it expresses exactly the difference of the methods 
 they proposed for the reformation of the Church. 
 
 Let us consider how this fundamental difference between 
 the Humanists of Erasmus's school and the Lutherans expresses 
 itself in their teaching. We have already noted what a 
 great step had been taken by the Humanistic moralists in 
 the identification of sin with folly ; it at once suggested a 
 rational method — namely, education — by which sin might be 
 diminished. What the Humanists, however, attributed to 
 folly, the Lutherans asserted to be the direct action of the 
 devil ; not by education, but only by divine grace was man 
 enabled to resist sin. It was the perpetuation, if not the 
 re -establishment, of the temporal government of a personal 
 devil and his assistants. Those human errors which in 
 the Praise of Folly and the Shi];) of Fools were attributed 
 to stupidity and ignorance, were as a result of the Lutheran 
 doctrine distributed to individual devils. The Lutheran 
 preachers wrote books on the Devil of Usury, the Devil 
 of Greed, the Devil of Pride, the Drink -Devil, the Devil 
 of Cursing, the Devil of Gambling, the Devil of Witch- 
 craft, nay, even of the Devils who make wives bad- 
 tempered and induce men to wear inordinately large 
 breeches.^ The Lutherans held that Satan was particularly 
 active against them, because they were the only hindrance to 
 his absolute rule. It was not a mere allegorical representa- 
 tion of evil, but a belief in an active set of personal devils, 
 who walked the face of the earth, and could do bodily as well 
 as spiritual harm to mankind. Not only were the people 
 taught from the pulpit that Catholic clergy and laity were 
 possessed of the devil, — "every German Bishop," preached 
 
 1 In the second half of the sixteenth century appeared a mass of works 
 under such titles as : — Geytz- und Wucherteufel, Uofftcuffel, Savffttiiffd, Huren- 
 teuffel, Eheleuffel, Fluchteuffel, Syidtcuffel, Haustcuffel, Uosenteuffcl, etc. 
 
 14
 
 210 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 Luther, "who went to the Augsburg lieichstag, took more 
 devils with him than a dog carries fleas " — but we know of 
 more than one instance where the stake or the sword was 
 the result of this supposed intercourse between anti- Pro- 
 testants and the devil. Children were taught, even in 
 Luther's catechism, that the devil not only brought about 
 quarrelling, murder, rebellion, and war, but by his instigation 
 came storm and hail, destruction of crops and cattle, 
 poisoning of the atmosphere. " Shortly, it annoys him that 
 any one should have a bit of bread from God, and if he had 
 it in his power, he would not leave a blade in the field, a 
 farthing in the house, not even an hour of a man's life." 
 Luther's writings and his Table-Talk teem with reference to 
 this active personal Devil. The hazel - nut tale and the 
 ink - pot tale of the Wartburg are common property ; but 
 many other anecdotes of how his friends and he put the devil 
 to flight have been expurgated from modern editions of his 
 works. There is no obscurity about his doctrine of demons. 
 Satan, he tells us, lays changelings and urchins in the 
 place of true children, in order to annoy people. " Since 
 magic is a shameful defection, wherein a man deserts God to 
 whom he is dedicated, and betakes himself to the Devil, 
 God's foe, so it is only reasonable that it should be punished 
 with body and life." " There are many devils in forests, 
 waters, wastes, and damp marshy places, in order to 
 damage wayfarers. Some are also in black and thick 
 clouds ; they raise storms, hail, and thunder, and poison 
 the air. Wlien this happens the philosophers and doctors 
 say it is Nature or the stars ! The doctors consider 
 diseases to arise only from natural causes, and attempt to 
 cure them with medicines and that rightly, but they forget that 
 the Devil originates the natural causes of these diseases. I 
 believe that my sicknesses were not all natural, but that Squire 
 Satan by magic practised his roguery upon me. God, how- 
 ever, rescues his elect from such evils." Again, in the year 
 1538, there was much talk of witches who stole eggs from 
 the hens' nests and milk and butter from the dairy. Luther 
 said, " No one should show mercy to such people ; I would
 
 MAETIN LUTHEK 211 
 
 myself burn them, even as it is written in the Bible that the 
 priests commenced stoning offenders." We shall be told 
 that all this was merely the current superstition of Luther's 
 age.-^ We allow that such beliefs were very general, but we 
 must, at the same time, point out that the Humanists were, 
 if perhaps not quite free, yet distinctly far more emancipated 
 on this point than Luther. Very strong is Brant against 
 those " fools " who beheve in days good for buying, for building, 
 for war, for marrying, and so forth. Great is the folly 
 of all kinds of fortune-telling, belief in the cry of birds, in 
 dreams, in seeking things by moonlight, and in all related to 
 the black arts. The printers, who spread such stuff among 
 the folk, are much to blame. Still more clearly does Erasmus 
 speak out his mind in the colloquy of the Exorcism which, 
 in the words of its argument, " detects the artifices of 
 impostors, who impose upon the credulous and simple by 
 framing stories of apparitions, of demons, and of ghosts and 
 divine voices." Perhaps the dulness of Erasmus's orthodox 
 opponents may be best shown by quoting the following satires 
 which they have used to prove his belief in witchcraft. 
 Once in Freiburg he was tormented with fleas, which were so 
 small that it was impossible to catch them ; they bit his neck, 
 filled his clothes and even his very shoes as he stood writing. 
 He used to tell his friends in a solemn tone that these were 
 not fleas but e\dl spirits. "This," he added, "is really no 
 joke, but a divination ; for some days ago a woman was burned 
 who had carried on an intercourse with an evil spirit, and 
 confessed, among other crimes, that she had sent some large 
 bags of fleas to Freiburg." On another occasion Erasmus 
 narrates with all gravity how in the town of Schiltach a 
 demon carried off a woman into the air and placed her upon 
 a chimney-top, then gave her a flask which by his command 
 she upset, and within a short time the town was reduced 
 to ashes. The following caustic remark is then added : 
 
 1 Osiander denied the existence of ghosts, but Luther remarked that the 
 said 0. must always have a crotcliet. He himself knew that persons were 
 possessed by devils, and that ghosts frightened people in their sleep. — Tischrcdcii, 
 Bd. iii. p. 337.
 
 212 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 " Whether all the reports about it are true I will not venture 
 to affirm, but it is too true that the town was burned, and the 
 woman executed after confessing." ^ We do not assert that 
 the Humanists were free from superstition, but their ration- 
 alistic tendency was distinctly opposed to it. The resusci- 
 tation by Luther of an active personal devil brought back 
 superstition in a flood upon Northern Europe. Nowhere were 
 witches so prevalent, nowhere were faggots and torture so 
 common as in the Protestant countries in the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries. It is not our present purpose to 
 enter into comparative statistics of the growth and preval- 
 ence of witch-superstition. We recognise the curse of such 
 books as the Witch - Hammer, but we note that it was 
 the Humanists not the Lutherans who were struggling 
 against such criminal ignorance. It must suffice here to 
 quote the words of a distinguished Protestant literary critic 
 with regard to one Protestant country — Braunschweig : — 
 
 " Eeligious fanaticism was revived by the introduction of 
 Protestant doctrine and kept well alive by the representa- 
 tives of the Church. This the district has to thank not only 
 for the increased severity of the laws against the Jews, but 
 for the inconceivable number of witch-trials conducted with- 
 out any regard to person. The devil appeared to be 
 peculiarly active where the Gospel was preached in its 
 greatest purity, and the contest against him more necessary 
 than ever. . . . Duke Heinrich Julius looked at the matter 
 simply as a jurist and confined himself to what torture 
 brought forth. . . . During his rule ten or twelve witches 
 were often burnt in one day, so that on the place of execution, 
 before the Lechenholz, near Wolfenbiittel, the stakes stood like 
 a small forest." ^ 
 
 Closely related to witchcraft is heresy ; it will be generally 
 
 1 It is worth noting that shrewd old Hans Sachs, who is always bringing 
 witches and the Devil on to the stage, yet remarks : — 
 
 "Devil's dames and devil's knights 
 Are only di-eam- and fancy-sprites ; 
 To ride a goat exceeds belief." 
 ' Tittmauu : Die Schauspiele des Eerzogs Heinrich Julius. Einleitung, 
 S. xxvii.
 
 MAETIN LUTHEE 213 
 
 found that superstition and intolerance are bred bj the same 
 causes. In the sixteenth century witches and heretics were 
 "alike treated as devil-possessed. Thus Erasmus tells us in 
 his Praise of Folly, how " an irrefragable and hair- 
 splitting theologian" had deduced from the Mosaic law — 
 " Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live " — the like law with 
 regard to a heretic, since " every male/icus or witch is to be 
 killed, but a heretic is maleficus, ergo, etc." For those who 
 would know, even nowadays, what true toleration means, 
 nothing can be more profitable than the study of Erasmus's 
 works. The keynote to his position ^ is contained in that 
 wonderful bit of satire in the Divinity Disputation of the 
 Praise of Folly. " Why should it be thought more proper 
 to silence all heretics by sword and faggot rather than correct 
 them by moderate and sober arguments ? " Such was the 
 spirit of toleration which Erasmus would have impressed, 
 and, we may add, was impressing upon the Catholic Church 
 when the Lutheran movement destroyed his labours. Note- 
 worthy also is the contempt which the younger Humanists 
 poured upon the Fortalitium Fidei. This remarkable work, 
 due to Alphonsus de Spina, may be looked upon as the 
 fortress of mediaeval bigotry and ignorance. Its first book 
 deals with the beauty of the Christian faith, its second with 
 the crime of heresy, its third and fourth are bitter tirades 
 against Jews and Saracens, while the last is concerned 
 with demons and witchcraft. The whole is not a bit too 
 strongly described in the Letters of the Obscure Men, as men- 
 dosus liber, et non valet ; et quod nemo allegat istum lihrum nisi 
 stidtus et fatuus} Yet its theory of witchcraft was accepted 
 by the Protestant party, and its language with regard to the 
 Jews can only be paralleled from the works of Luther ! 
 
 We have now to answer an all -important question : — 
 What were the views of Luther and his disciples with regard 
 
 ' Concisely expressed in a letter to Cardinal Canipeggio : — " Neminera 
 quidem conjeci in vincula, sed plus efficit qui medetur aninio quani qui 
 corpus affligit." — Monumenta licformationis Lntherancc, p. 306. 
 
 '^ Fortalitium Fidei is not the full title, but my early edition has no title 
 jiage. The Look is thus quoted in the EpislolcL. Obscurorum Virwnm, I. Epist. 
 xxii. ; II. Epist. xiii.
 
 214 THE ETHIC OF EKEETHOUGHT 
 
 to toleration ? We liave already stated that all Catholics 
 who did not desert their Church were, in the opinion of 
 Luther, children of the devil. Now, as such, they were 
 deserving of no charity, and must be removed from those 
 districts in which only ' pure gospel ' might be preached. 
 Had they been treated as heretics and burnt, the immediate 
 result would have been war with the German Catholic States, 
 in which the latter, during the earlier part of Luther's career 
 the stronger, would probably have prevailed, and so Pro- 
 testantism have been stamped out. Accordingly, in the early 
 days of the Eeformation, it was customary to banish Catholics, 
 while Anabaptists, who were a weak body, were imprisoned 
 and executed. When Protestantism was firmly established, 
 then there was no hesitation in sending Catholics to the stake 
 or to the block. There is nothing to choose in the matter of 
 toleration between either theological party ; Protestant and 
 Catholic were alike intolerant, alike opposed to the spirit of 
 Erasmus. It is simply ignorance of historical facts which 
 attributes toleration to the Eeformers. As early as the Saxon 
 Church Visitation of 1527 does bigotry break out. In the 
 Instructions we read that not only are the clergy, who do not 
 follow the prescribed code of teaching and ceremonial, to lose 
 their posts, but even the laity, who have given rise to any 
 suspicion as to their views on the Sacrament, or as to 
 their faith generally, are to be questioned concerning the same, 
 and instructed ; then if they do not reform their ways within 
 a given time, they must sell their goods and leave the country. 
 " For," remarked the Elector, " although it is not our intention 
 to dictate to any one what he shall believe or hold, yet we 
 will not allow any sect or separation in our land, in order that 
 there may be no riots or other disturbances." Such was the 
 mildest form of toleration to be found in any of the German 
 Protestant countries, and it soon changed to something con- 
 siderably more severe. But is not this a mere sarcasm on 
 the name ? This form of " toleration " was supported by a 
 noteworthy doctrine of Luther's. Before the Peasants' War, 
 when struggling to assert himself, Luther taught that heresy 
 could not be repressed by force, that no fire could burn it, and
 
 MAETIN LUTHER 215 
 
 no water drown it. Yet so soon as Luther saw other sectaries 
 springing up around him, and claiming the same privilege as 
 himself, he declared that as reheh to the State they deserved 
 punishment, even banishment and death. This, then, is 
 Luther's doctrine : — The State is the head of religion, and 
 all sectaries are rebels to the State. Luther invariably 
 associates his opponents with murderers and rebels. Those 
 sectaries who meet in secret for their primitive service " have 
 not only the false doctrine, but meet for murder and riot, 
 because such folk are possessed of the devil. . . . Such knaves 
 are to be forbidden by the severest punishment, in order that 
 every subject may avoid such conventicles, even as all subjects 
 are in duty bound to do, unless they themselves wish to be 
 guilty of murder and riot." ^ Still further did Martin Butzer, 
 afterwards distinguished as an English Eeformer, carry this 
 Lutheran doctrine. If thieves, robbers, and mm-derers are 
 severely punished, how much more harshly ought the followers 
 of a false religion to be treated, since the perversion of religion 
 is an infinitely graver offence than all the misdeeds of corporal 
 offenders. Government has the right to destroy with fire and 
 sword the followers of a false religion, aye, to strangle their 
 wives and children, even as God has ordered in the Old 
 Testament. Is it surprising after this to find another 
 Lutheran, namely Melanchthon, approving of the burning of 
 Servetus, and terming that hideous deed of Calvin's " a pious 
 and memorable example for all posterity " ? There are 
 passages in Luther's works which can be cited against the 
 execution of heretics ; but the expulsion of those not believing 
 in the State -creed was an essential characteristic of that 
 system of State - churches which he founded. Those wlio 
 will take the trouble to investigate the reports of the Church 
 Visitors in the young Protestant States will have some con- 
 ception of the extent and the accompanying misery of that 
 system of banishment which it was no small portion of the 
 Visitors' duty to organise. Nor was charity to each other 
 
 * Von den Schlcichem und Winckclprcdigcm, 1532. It sliouUl be 
 noted that at this time the Anabaptists were innocent of any political 
 schemes.
 
 216 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 any more a characteristic of the early Eeformers than tolera- 
 tion of their opponents ; the slightest divergence of view was 
 sufficient to raise infinite hatred and abuse. Luther terms 
 Butzer a " chatter-mouth, and his writings potwash," while 
 Zwingli, Oecolampadius, and Schwenkfeld are " in and in, 
 through and through, out and out, devil-possessed, blasphemous 
 hearts, and impudent liars." Flacius terms Melanchthon " a 
 papal brand of hell. . . . He and all his followers are nothing 
 other than servants of Satan : since the time of the apostles 
 there have been no such dangerous men in the Church." 
 Carlstadt, because he differs as to the Sacrament, is termed, 
 by his former Wittenberg colleagues, a " murderer, one who 
 wishes only bloodshed and riot." Still more ignorant, still 
 more violent and intolerant is Luther's judgment upon the 
 Jews. We must search the writings of Alphonsus de Spina 
 and of the renegade Pfefferkorn to find a parallel. That most 
 delectable bigot, Herr Hofprediger Stocker, has recently been 
 republishing Luther's words as an incitement to further anti- 
 Jewish riots. To begin with, Luther tells us that he will 
 give us his true counsel : — 
 
 " First, that the Jewish synagogues and schools be set on 
 fire, and what will not burn be covered with earth, that no 
 man ever after may see stick or stone thereof. . . . Secondly, 
 that their houses in like fashion be broken down and destroyed, 
 since they only carry on in them what they carry on in their 
 schools. Let them content themselves with a shed or a stall 
 like the gipsies, that they may know they are not lords in our 
 land. . . . Thirdly, all their prayer-books and Talmuds must 
 be taken from them, since in them idolatry, lies, cursing, and 
 blasphemy are taught. . . . Fourthly, that their Eabbis, on 
 penalty of death, be forbidden to teach. . . . Fifthly, that 
 safe conduct on the highways be denied to Jews entirely, since 
 they have no business in the country, being neither lords, 
 officials, nor traders, or the like ; they ought to remain at 
 home. . . . Sixthly, usury shall be forbidden them. All that 
 they have is stolen, and therefore it is to be taken from them, 
 and used for pensioning converts." 
 
 These are Luther's propositions for treating the Jews as
 
 MAETIN LUTHEE 217 
 
 he thinks they deserved, and which he tells us he would 
 carry out in earnest, if he only had the power of the princes ; 
 nay, he works himself up to a stronger pitch of passion than 
 this : — These " impudent lying devils " ought not to be allowed 
 to praise or pray to God, since " their praise, thanksgiving, 
 prayer, and teaching are mere blasphemy and idolatry." The 
 penalty for any act of worship on the part of a Jew should be 
 loss of life. Not only all their books, but even " the Bible to 
 its last leaf" shall be taken from them. Not only are their 
 synagogues to be burnt, but " let him, who can, throw pitch 
 and sulphur upon them ; if any one could throw hell-fire, it 
 were good, so that God might see our earnestness, and the 
 whole world such an example." ^ 
 
 In the face of such teaching we must solemnly protest 
 against that ignorance which terms Luther tolerant, or which 
 attributes to him the origin of our culture to-day. We refuse 
 to recognise in him either the prophet or the great moral 
 teacher. We could fill pages with infinitely harder sayings 
 against the Catholics,"^ but we have chosen the Jews as a 
 neutral sect, with whom Luther was not waging a life and 
 death battle. The effect of such teaching upon the people 
 can easily be imagined, and, as example, we have already 
 mentioned the increased severity of the laws against the 
 Jews in Braunschweig. How strangely, too, it stands in 
 contrast with the conduct of the Humanist Eeuchlin — a 
 man whose writings show a sympathetic study of Jewish 
 literature,^ and whose defence of the Hebrew books against 
 Pfefferkorn's violent pleas for their destruction brought down 
 upon him the wrath of the whole Dominican Order and was 
 the cause of that notable battle between the party of intel- 
 lectual progress and the party of ignorance and bigotry — 
 
 ^ Von den Jiulen und ihren Liigen, 1543. Siimmtl. Weike, Bd. xxxii. 
 
 2 For example: "If we punish the thief with the rope, the robber with tlie 
 sword, the heretic with fire, how much rather should we attack with every 
 weapon these masters of perdition, these cardinals, these pojies, this whole lilth 
 of the Roman Sodom, which corrupts without end God's church ; how much 
 rather wash our hands in their blood?" — Opera Lat.ina, v. a., Frankfurt, ii. 
 107. Perhaps the worst things are the indecent woodcuts by Oranach, with text 
 by Luther. These are too offensive to be either reproduced or exhibited. 
 
 ' De verba mirifico, 1494, and De arte cahalistka, 1617.
 
 218 THE ETHIC OF EREETHOUGHT 
 
 the "obscure men." Mr. Beard, in his Hibbert Lectures, 
 writes : — 
 
 "Luther used the weapons of faith to slay reason, lest 
 perchance reason should lure faith to her destruction. But 
 who can tell what might have been the effect upon the Ee- 
 formation, and the subsequent development of the intellectual 
 life of Europe, had Luther put himself boldly at the head of 
 the larger and freer thought of his time, instead of using all 
 the force of his genius, all the weight of his authority to crush 
 it? "(p. 170). 
 
 No truer words have ever been spoken with regard to 
 Luther, and yet this same writer blames us, because we refuse 
 to express any gratitude to the man who crushed all those 
 influences which we believe tend most to the progress of 
 humanity ! It is, perhaps, needless to add that the real 
 Luther, a man without culture and without intellectual insight, 
 could never have been the " head of the larger and freer thought 
 of his time." 
 
 We must briefly touch upon one or two other points con- 
 nected with intellectual development, before we consider the 
 social effects of the Eeformatiou. Under the influence of the 
 Humanists, Germany had at the beginning of the sixteenth 
 century attained to an unparalleled activity in art and litera- 
 ture.^ Those who have not visited the galleries at Miinchen 
 and Augsburg or the cathedral at Ulm, can form but a slight 
 conception of the artistic perfection of that age. Innumerable 
 art treasures perished in the iconoclastic storms of the sixteenth 
 century, but enough remain to show the wondrous activity, 
 which was brought to such an abrupt conclusion. On the one 
 hand, religious art almost ceased, and thus a great source of 
 occupation for the painter and the sculptor disappeared ; on 
 the other, wealth found baser demands upon it in the religious 
 wars which so soon devastated Germany. Holbein cannot find 
 a living in his fatherland ^ ; Cranach and others are reduced to 
 employing their genius on the coarsest and most repulsive of 
 
 * See the previous essay on German Humanism. 
 
 2 Note the expressive sentence: "God has cursed all who make pictures." 
 — Woltmann's Holbein, p. 356.
 
 MAETIN LUTHER 219 
 
 theological caricatures ; Diirer laments that " in our country 
 and time the art of painting should by some be much despised 
 and be asserted to serve only idolatry." Luther himself, in his 
 sermons against the iconoclasts, blames only the manner of re- 
 moving the works of art from the churches, not the removal 
 itself. " It should have been preached," he said, " that the 
 pictures were nothing, and that it was no service to God to 
 put them up ; if this had been done the pictures would have 
 disappeared of themselves." But others were far from being 
 as tolerant even as this : " It were ten thousand times better," 
 they cried, " that the pictures were in hell or in the hottest 
 oven rather than in the houses of God." And we hear of the 
 churches being stormed and the images and pictures trodden 
 under foot. Down in the south under the influence of Zwingli, 
 the works of art in the churches of Zurich, Bern, Basel, St. 
 Gallen, and other towns, were committed to the flames or the 
 melting-pot, in some cases by the Protestant mob, in others by 
 order of the authorities. Honest Hans Sachs, too, bemoans 
 the decay of art, though he does not recognise its cause : — 
 " Formerly art flourished, all corners were full of learned men, 
 skilful workers and artists, and books enough and to spare. 
 JSTow the arts are neglected and despised, few are their disciples, 
 and these looked upon as dreamers ; the world runs after 
 pleasure and money ; the Muses have deserted the Fatherland ! " 
 Still more mournful is another follower of the new Gospel : — 
 " God has by the peculiar divine ordinance of his holy word 
 now in our time in the whole German nation brought about a 
 noteworthy contempt for aU the fine and free arts." Only just 
 now in the nineteenth century are certain earnest workers 
 trying to rouse again among the masses that love for the 
 beautiful which gave art such a potent influence in mediasval 
 folk-education. 
 
 Equally destructive was the effect of the Wittenberg move- 
 ment on literature. All thought was directed into theological 
 channels, every pen was busied with doctrinal controversy, the 
 very printers refused to accept anything but controversial and 
 theological works, because those found the greatest or only 
 sale ; the more violent, the more mud-bespattering a tract was,
 
 220 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 the greater the number of authorised and of pirated editions. 
 Even the stage itself was perverted to sectarian purposes, and 
 a mass of plays concerned with abuse of the I'ope and the 
 Catholic Church, checked that advance which had been so 
 marked under Hans Sachs and his contemporaries. The 
 remarkable didactic literature and satire of folly ceased, or 
 rather was transformed into theological pasquinade, while, 
 according to Gervinus, folk-song and folk-book decayed rapidly 
 with the sixteenth century.-^ It has been occasionally stated 
 that if the vernacular literature of Germany was at a low ebb 
 in the sixteenth century, at least it produced one all-sufficing 
 writer — Luther. While recognising Luther's very great power 
 of language, we think that the oft-repeated statement, that 
 Luther was the founder of modern German literature, arises 
 rather from ignorance of preceding and contemporary writings, 
 than from any careful comparison. Luther was distinctly a 
 linguistic giant, but he was only a step in a long development, 
 and we are not prepared to admit that controversial theology 
 can ever take rank as pure literatm-e. That the Germans them- 
 selves do not think so, may perhaps be judged from the tardy 
 sale of the last edition of his works. If we turn to the more 
 , scholarly side of literature, we find no one to replace Erasmus 
 i and Eeuchlin. Protestantism after a time produced the 
 plodding critic, and ultimately the independent investigator 
 and man of letters arose, but arose not infrequently to throw off 
 Christianity, or at least Protestantism, altogether. Some will 
 perhaps be inclined to cite Casaubon, but even if we disregard the 
 fact that Casaubon was a Calvinist, and " Calvanism, intolerant 
 as it was, was not so narrow, nor had it so cramping an effect 
 on the mind as the contemporary Lutheranism," - it must still 
 be remembered that Casaubon was no Humanist, he had none 
 of the spirit of Erasmus. He approved of the burning of 
 Legatt, that " feeble imitation by the English Church of the 
 great crime of Calvin " ; he wished the body of Stapleton to be 
 dug up and burnt, because he had used extravagant expressions 
 
 1 The decay, such as it is, may be marked by a comparison of Eulenspiegel 
 and Dr. Faustus. We are not inclined to lay great stress upon it. 
 
 2 Of. Pattison's Isaac Casaubon, pp. 73, 244, 502, etc.
 
 MAKTIN LUTHER 221 
 
 with regard to the power of the Church. Shortly, he was 
 narrow in the extreme : — a man who could believe that the 
 Greek equivalents of Christ's Hebrew speeches were put directly 
 into the mouths of the Gospel writers by the Holy Ghost ! 
 But even Casaubon was French, and Scaliger thoroughly ex- 
 presses the state of Germany in the words : " It is Germany, h 
 look you, Germany, once the mother of learning and learned 
 jmen^Jihat is now turning the service of letters into brigandage." , 
 Closely connected with literature comes the subject of 
 education. The work of the Humanists in this direction 
 cannot be overrated. How far was it adopted by the Re- 
 formers ? The very sweeping reconstruction of the German 
 universities by the Humanists is too well known to need 
 comment here. One after another became centres for the new 
 culture, and their general intellectual activity is one of 
 the most pleasing characteristics of the age. Education was, 
 as we have before noted, the fundamental instrument by 
 which the Humanists hoped to reform the Church, and the 
 success of their educational efforts can hardly be questioned. 
 But they did not confine their endeavours to the universities. 
 Jacob Wimpfeling ^ was essentially a school-reformer. It was 
 he who broke down the old scholastic system, and declared 
 that grammar and dialectic were not the only or the best means 
 of expanding the youthful mind. He insisted on the need of 
 inculcating reverence and morality, while special subjects of 
 education were to be chosen suited to each individual child. 
 Noteworthy for om' purpose are his words in the Adolescentia ; 
 — " The instruction of boys and the young in good morals is 
 of the utmost importance to the Christian religion and the 
 reformation of the Church. The reformation of the Catholic 
 Church to its primitive purity ought to begin with the 
 young, because its deformation began with their evil and 
 worthless instruction." Could the Humanistic conception be 
 more clearly expressed ? The true reformation can only l)e 
 brought about by a i^rocess of genuine education. It would 
 have been well if Luther had fully grasped this law of develop- 
 ment ! It is one of the most striking examples of theological 
 1 See the Note upon Wiiniifcliug, pp. 185-192, above.
 
 222 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 bias, that the term " Preceptor of Germany " has been trans- 
 ferred from Wimpfeling to Melanchthon. It is true that 
 Melanchthon was one of the few cultured Lutheran teachers, 
 and that he wrote certain school-books, but it is very doubtful 
 whether even the titles of these works would have survived 
 had not their author won a name for himself in other ways. 
 How many have ever investigated Melanchthon's theory of 
 education at first hand, and of those who have done so, what 
 proportion have taken the trouble to compare his theory with 
 AVimpfeling's ? ^ Melanchthon's views as to the constitution 
 of a " reformed " school are given in the Instructions of the 
 Saxon Church Visitors (1528). None can fail to be 
 startled by the barren formalism of his system ; he has 
 nothing to propose beyond the old Latin Trivial School, and 
 he is years behind the Brethren of Deventer, and immeasur- 
 ably behind Wimpfeling. In this respect Luther is far 
 superior to Melanchthon ; his book " To the Town Councillors 
 of Germany upon the organising of Christian Schools" (1524), 
 contains many noble thoughts, and it was written before he 
 had learnt to despise and fear human reason. But the main 
 object even in this work was sectarian. Luther had recog- 
 nised the enormous power which the education of the young 
 confers on a church, and he was not slow in endeavouring to 
 avail himself of it. His gospel and church were to be the 
 first to profit by the proposed educational organisation. One 
 of the greatest difficulties of the Eeformers was to obtain men 
 of any cultm'e or learning as evangelical preachers ; it is the 
 constantly recurring dilemma of the Church Visitors that 
 they cannot dismiss the unfit or even Catholic clergy, because 
 they have no theologians to replace them. From Luther 
 downwards we have constant complaints that no one will 
 study divinity as a ^profession, and that the Protestant 
 universities do not furnish the necessary evangelical ministers. 
 Praiseworthy as Luther's attempts in 1524 were, they by no 
 means point to a great school reform. The Eeformers might 
 
 ^ How theological bias reacts even on independent WTiters may be noted in 
 Mr. 0. Browning's recent UUtory of Educational Tlieones, wherein we seek in 
 vain for even the name of Wimpfeling !
 
 MAKTIN LUTHER 223 
 
 have made the Humanistic education their own ; they did not 
 seize their opportunity. Mr. Browning has very truly observed, 
 in his History of Educational Theories, that had the Protestants 
 adopted the new method of instruction, they might have 
 advanced by a hundred years the intelligence of modern 
 Europe. They not only failed to adopt it, but by the turmoil 
 of their movement checked indefinitely the revival of learning 
 in Germany. Their universities and schools fell into decay, 
 and it is mournful to read their self- confessions, their con- 
 sciousness of the difference between past and present. 
 
 The outcome of the Eeformation, if not indeed of the later 
 teaching of Luther, was to hand over reason, bound and 
 chained, to an emotional faith ; all learning was to flow from 
 "aT"' natural light." Christians were taught immediately by 
 God ; the whole of the Aristotelian philosophy was a " creation 
 of the devil," and all speculative science sin and error. In 
 Strasburg the Protestants proclaimed that no other languages 
 or studies besides Hebrew were necessary ; others held that 
 there must be no study whatever but the Bible ; above all, 
 Latin and Greek were superfluous and harmful. Preachers 
 declared from the pulpit that the inexperienced youth must 
 be warned from studying, and that all learning was a deceit 
 of the devil. It is true that Melanchthon wrote that such 
 preachers ought to have their tongues cut out ; but were 
 they not the natural result of Luther's doctrine of the blindness 
 of the human reason ? Nay, had not Luther himself written : 
 " The universities deserve to be pulverised ; nothing savouring 
 more of hell or devil has come upon earth since the beginning 
 of the world. ... All the world thinks that they are the 
 springs whence flow those who should teach the folk ; that is 
 a hopeless error, for no more abominable thing has arisen 
 upon earth than the universities." What wonder that such 
 ■words — sometimes the outcome of transient passion — should 
 have been seized by the ignorant, and have led the folk to 
 despise education? Wliat wonder that cobbler and tinker 
 mounted the pulpit — too often quarrelling on the steps — and 
 proclaimed a new age, when learning should not be the result 
 of years of study, but a direct revelation of God to those of
 
 224 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 the true — their own — faith ? Erasmus, the apostle of culture, 
 was bitter iu his lamentatious over the decay of all earnest 
 study wherever the new 'piety appeared. Still later in the 
 century Dresser, Protestant Professor of Greek in Erfurt, 
 wrote : " There is no hope, no prospect of saving learning any 
 longer ; in this decrepit time its total decay and collapse 
 approach. Note how all learned occupations are laid aside, 
 the schools stand empty, knowledge is despised." The 
 Protestant Maior loses all hope when he thinks of the glowing 
 eagerness, the unrestrainable desire for knowledge in the old 
 dark Catholic days of his youth, and compares it with the 
 idleness and the neglect of study under the rays of the recently 
 kindled light of Protestantism. From 1550 to 1600 we 
 have endless complaints from the Protestants of the utter 
 decay and collapse of their schools.^ They could find (even as 
 Luther in Wittenberg had found) no other cause to which 
 they could attribute it than the direct interference of the 
 devil, for he must bear an intense hatred to men in possession 
 of the true gospel ! 
 
 Thus much follows then from a comparison of the methods 
 of the Erasmian and Lutheran Reformations : that, differing 
 totally in their aims, the one proposed a gradual educational 
 change, the other proceeded to a violent destruction. Before 
 we can judge between the two, we must endeavour to answer 
 the following questions : Had Erasmus any chance of success ? 
 And, secondly, admitting that some sacrifice of intellectual 
 progress may be justifiable, if it be accompanied by the 
 increased moral and social welfare of the masses, we have 
 still to ask : — Did the Eeformation improve the moral and 
 social condition of the German people ? 
 
 What chance of success had Erasmus ? It should be 
 remembered that the Humanistic proposals were not of a 
 revolutionary character, at least not those of the older party, 
 which fell more directly under the influence of Erasmus. 
 
 ^ The evidence for this decay has been collected by Dbllinger, Die Reforma- 
 tion, i. 420-545. Although his book, from its sectarian bias, must be read 
 ■with gi-eat caution, my own investigations are on this point in material agree- 
 ment with Dollinger's.
 
 MAETIN LUTHER 225 
 
 They embraced an educational reform, which must from its 
 very nature be a gradual change. To say, then, that Erasmus 
 was unsuccessful in his attempts because monkish abuses 
 still remained, is quite beside the point. The investigation 
 must turn on the progress which had been made, and the 
 probability of its advancing with increasing yet stable 
 rapidity. Neither a church nor a nation can be educated in 
 one man's lifetime ; it is the labour' of long years. Erasmus 
 wished to gradually reform existing institutions, that they 
 might aid the intellectual development of mankind, Luther 
 pulled them down ; but his attempt to reconstruct them 
 upon his own ideas was by no means a success. How far 
 did the older Humanists revivify ecclesiastical institutions ( 
 To a far greater degree, we hold, than is generally supposed. 
 The German schools and universities, with few exceptions, 
 had suffered a transformation, which, considering its magni- 
 tude and rapidity, can only be described as magical. There 
 was an unparalleled activity, and this of no narrow dog- 
 matical kind, from Vienna to Strasburg, and from Erfurt to 
 Basel.^ We have already pointed out how emancipated the 
 Pope and the Princes of the Church had become, how they 
 were the patrons of art and letters, and how thoroughly they 
 were in sympathy with the Erasmian spirit. We have evi- 
 dence enough that the Humanistic influence was beginning to 
 make itself felt not only in the cloisters, but among the clergy. 
 Great moral preachers arose among the people ; theology itself 
 could hardly be accused of sluggishness in an age which could 
 lay claim to such men as Cusanus, Heynlin von Stein, Tritheim, 
 Geiler von Kaisersberg, and Gabriel Biel, The consciousness 
 of the spiritual leaders of the people was again aroused ; 
 special preachers were appointed for the folk throughout the 
 various German towns ; in vernacular sermons and didactic 
 works increased stress was laid on the moral and practical side 
 of Christianity. The press served for the popularising of 
 religious ideas ; edition after edition of the Biblical books was 
 
 ' A most characteristic picture of the rise of a German university unch'r tlie 
 Humanists, and its collapse with the Refonnation, is given in Kampseliulto's 
 Die UniversUat Erfurty 1858-60. 
 
 15
 
 226 THE ETHIC OF FliEETHOUGHT 
 
 offered to the public tiiiJ eagerly bought up. Collections of 
 sermons, religious contemplations, prayer and confessional books 
 in the vernacular, followed each other in rapid succession, and 
 marked a revival of the religious spirit both in the clergy and 
 laity. A succession of cultured and high-minded bishops like 
 Johann von Dalberg arose in the C5erman Church at the close 
 of the fifteenth century. To quote an impartial writer : 
 
 " We note how the bishops compete with one another in 
 ^'isiting the convents in their dioceses, in order to effect in 
 ihem the re-establishment of the old discipline ; we see them 
 founding and extending educationnl establishments to forward 
 theological and theologico-humanistic studies ; we find that, 
 according to the canons of the Chm'ch, they hold periodical 
 synods to collect their clergy about them, and to issue detailed 
 instructions for their guidance. We note how the leading 
 spirits of the learned world are on terms of the most friendly 
 and confidential intimacy with the Princes of the Chiurch ; 
 how, in harmony as to the goal of their mission in life, they 
 labour and strive together with united powers." ■^ 
 
 Assuredly the reformation of Erasmus was a possible one, 
 and in 1517 had already made great progress. The union 
 between the leaders of the Church and the leaders of thought 
 was one of its most noteworthy features. But in the work for 
 the education of the clergy and for the elevation of the folk, the 
 general progress of knowledge was not forgotten. Noteworthy 
 was the battle between the Dominicans and the Humanists 
 for the freedom of study, which occupied the early years of 
 the sixteenth century. We cannot enter into the Pfefferkorn- 
 Eeuchlin controversy here, but we may note two facts con- 
 cerning it. The first is, that among the supporters of Keuchlin 
 were men whom the Eeformation was soon to convert into 
 the bitterest foes ; Erasmus and Hutten, Luther and Eck, 
 Melanchthon and Cochlajus, Spalatin and Carlstadt, all declared 
 themselves EeuchUnists. The second fact, which is of extreme 
 interest for our present purpose, is, that the first two judgments 
 of the leaders of the Church were in favour of the Humanists ; 
 
 ^ Manrenbrecher : Geschichte der kaOiolischcn Reformation, Bd. i. S. 80 ; also 
 S. 60-80 generally.
 
 MARTIN LUTHEE 227 
 
 only after Luther had commenced his battle against the 
 Church did Eome pronounce a third judgment against Reuchlin. 
 The revolt of Luther caused the Church to reject Humanism, 
 and was the death-blow of the Erasmian Eeformation. "What 
 else could the Chiurch have done ? Had not Luther expressed 
 his admiration for Eeuchlin, and in Luther's rebellion did it 
 not seem as if the whole body of Humanists were moving 
 against the Church ? In an instant Luther was hailed as a 
 deliverer by all classes of the people. The Humanists 
 believed he had come as a new champion of learning, who 
 would sweep away the ignorance and obstinacy of the 
 " obscure men." Pirkheimer, Ulrich von Hutten, Crotus 
 Eubianus, Muth, even Erasmus, welcomed Luther as a new 
 ally in their battle against monkish stupidity. Humanistic 
 moralists like Brant and Wimpfeling waited anxiously for the 
 result of what they thought only an attack on the immorality 
 of the clergy. The denizens of the towns and the German 
 people generally looked upon Luther as the giant who had 
 come to free them from ecclesiastical extortions, to put an end 
 to the "grievances of the German nation." The peasantry 
 hoped in some mysterious fashion that Luther would free them 
 from tithes and the growing oppressions of the newly ' received ' 
 Eoman Law. The princes and nobles were not slow to 
 recognise in Luther an instrument whereby they might satisfy 
 their own peculiar greeds. Lastly, there were some simple, 
 homely folk, who imagined that Luther was about to teach a 
 form of primitive Christianity, a general reign of brotherly 
 love, some hitherto unrealised union of communism and 
 pietism. This class was not infrequent among the peasantry; 
 it was the source of the various sects generally classed as Ana- 
 baptists, who were driven alike by Catholic and by Protestant 
 persecution into fanaticism. Those who would understand 
 the earlier writings of Luther must grasp clearly his relation 
 to these various groups, and his endeavours to satisfy each of 
 them. The Diet at Worms marks the extreme height of 
 Luther's popularity. Eobanus Hesse, Pirkheimer, Hutten and 
 other Humanists hailed his journey southwards. Franz von 
 Sickingen promised him more material aid in case of need ;
 
 228 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 the Elector of Saxony was his protector ; the well-to-do 
 burghers made his entries into Erfurt and Worms triumphal 
 processions; and on the very day after Luther's audience a 
 threat to march with 8000 men against his Papal foes was 
 found nailed to the door of the council house. It concluded 
 with the cry of peasant insurrection: — "Bundschuh, Bundschuh, 
 Bundschuh ! " 
 
 It is of peculiar importance, in judging the value of the 
 Eeformation, to mark how one by one the various parties we 
 have noted ceased to be supporters of- Luther. Gradually the 
 Humanists learned that the Reformation was not making for 
 learning and culture; that it was destroying the schools, 
 and introducing a race of theologians, who were as narrow 
 and as bitter as their old enemies the monks ; they saw the 
 " obscure men " perpetuated in a new class of dogmatists, 
 and ignorance and passion trampling knowledge under foot. 
 Erasmus withdrew the approval he had once given to Luther, 
 regretting that he had not exhibited the same zeal in avoiding 
 violence and preaching morality as he had in defending dogma. 
 Erasmus saw new tyrants, but not a spark of the gospel spirit. 
 Above all, he noted the increasing immorality of the people 
 and the collapse of true learning. Reuchlin, once the great 
 opponent of monkish bigotry, tried to recall his nephew 
 Melanchthon from Wittenberg, and, failing, withdrew from 
 him the promised legacy of his library. The author of the 
 Augensiyiel died in the Catholic Church. To that Church 
 Pirkheimer also was reconciled — Pirkheimer, whose satire on 
 Dr. Eck had caused him to be included in the Papal Bull 
 against Luther. " I confess," he writes, " that at first I was a 
 good Lutheran, even as our late Albrecht (Dlirer), since we 
 hoped that the Roman trickery, as well as the knavery of monk 
 and priest, would be lessened. But, as one sees, matters have 
 grown worse, so that these evangelical rogues make the former 
 ones appear pious. ... I hoped, to begin with, for a certain 
 spiritual freedom, but all is now obviously turned to pleasure 
 of the flesh, so that these later things are far worse than the 
 first." In like spirit, Crotus Rubianus, the Humanist, who 
 had conceived the bitterest satire ever written against monkdom,
 
 MAETIN LUTHEE 229 
 
 who had hailed with his chosen comrade Hutten the outbreak 
 of the Eeformation, returned to the Catholic faith, full of bitter- 
 ness at the growing immorality and the destruction of culture. 
 
 " In most places," he writes, " where the anti-papists rule, 
 severe laws have already been published against the professors 
 of the old religion. He who does not renounce all intercourse 
 with the papists must go to prison, or purchase his freedom 
 by a heavy fine. Woe to him who dares to enter a papist 
 Church, to hear a sermon there or attend mass, to confess to a 
 priest or perform any ecclesiastical rite ! The new dispensation, 
 which came from Heaven yesterday, has its watchful spies, 
 ^vith Argus eyes, ready to denounce the oflfender to the judge. 
 ... just law, so wholly eye and ear with regard to obser- 
 vation of ecclesiastical routine, but with regard to the 
 adulterer or the blasphemer struck with blindness, and sunk 
 in the deepest sleep ! " 
 
 Do not these words of Eubianus lay out clearly before us 
 the cause why the Humanists deserted Luther ? They had 
 wished for a " spiritual freedom," for a cessation of dogma, for 
 a new view of life and broader thought ; and they found 
 themselves treated to Augsburg Confessions and the pitiable 
 tyranny of evangelical church regulations. 
 
 Still worse fared the simple folk who had hoped to find in 
 the new gospel the foundation of a millennium of Christian 
 love and charity. Their pious enthusiasm was the stumbling- 
 block of the Lutherans ; they carried Luther's own gospel to 
 its logical outcome, and claimed in their turn that freedom of 
 belief which Luther had demanded from Eome for himself, but 
 which he practically refused to others. Luther saw that the 
 mass of the people were drawn rather to this primitive faith 
 than to his own doctrines, and as Melanchthon and he were 
 unable to convince these sectaries by argument, at first banish- 
 ment, and then the sword and stake, became the chief weapons 
 of Protestant logic.^ In such a book as Luther's tract of 1532 
 
 1 Luther attriLutes the oljstinacy of the early Anabaptists to the " influenco 
 of the devil." The writings of Luther, Melanchthon, and other Protestants 
 against these siniijle folk are the quintessence of bigotry and of the narrowest 
 theological intolerance.
 
 230 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 Upon Sneaks and Hole-and-Corner Preachers we have all the 
 hatred of an established and privileged church against any 
 trespassers on its domain. Closely related to the Anabaptists 
 were the oppressed peasants ; only these latter found out their 
 delusion at a somewhat earlier date and suffered more com- 
 plete discomfiture. In 1525 the brutal tyranny of princes 
 and nobles reached its height, and the peasants broke into 
 open rebellion. We have lying open before us now the 
 original Twelve Articles printed and circulated by the peasant 
 leaders. This curious tract tells its own tale of oppression 
 and delusion. It appeals throughout to the " Holy Evangely," 
 as Luther's teaching was then termed. Article 6 demands 
 that all parsons and vicars shaU be called upon to teach and 
 preach the " Gospel," and on their refusal shall be dismissed 
 from office. The claims of the peasants would appear to most 
 modern readers very far from unreasonable. Noteworthy is the 
 naming of umpires to decide between the peasants and their 
 oppressors ; immediately following the Imperial Stathalter are 
 placed Duke Friedrich of Saxony, together with Martin Luther, 
 Philip Melanchthon, and " Pomeran " (Bugenhagen). We have 
 thus the most : complete evidence of how the peasants inter- 
 preted Luther's teaching. From the purely historical stand- 
 point it is absolutely impossible to deny that the preaching 
 of Luther and his followers was the immediate cause of the 
 Peasant Rebellion. Doubtless Luther's doctrine of " evangelical 
 freedom " was grasped by the peasants in a cruder fashion than 
 he understood it, yet it was most certainly the spark which 
 set on fire the inflammatory material collected and heaped up 
 by oppression.^ A man who appeals to the unlearned masses 
 is responsible, not only for his direct statements, but for the 
 results which may arise from his being misinterpreted by his 
 audience. Luther's position was at the time of this outbreak 
 an extremely difficult one. In his first book on the Twelve 
 Articles he endeavours to act the part of imipire. He asserts 
 that the peasants' demand for the " pure gospel " is a most 
 justifiable one, and he does not hesitate to attribute the out- 
 
 1 This has been very sti'ongly expressed by llaurenbrecher : Die katholische 
 Ikformation, Bd. i. p. 257. Cf. also p. 275.
 
 MAETIN LUTHER 231 
 
 break to the conduct of the princes, nobles and — " more 
 especially to you, ye blind bishops, ye mad priests and monks." 
 On the other hand, he defends serfdom to the peasantry on 
 Biblical grounds. " There shall be no serf, since Christ has 
 made us all free ! What is that ? That is making Christian 
 freedom purely of the flesh. Had not Abraham and other 
 patriarchs and prophets serfs also ? Eead St. Paul what he 
 teaches of servants, who in his day were all serfs." " There- 
 fore this article is directly against the Gospel, and robbery, 
 since each takes from his lord that body which belongs to his 
 lord," But this position of umpire was impossible for Luther ; 
 it would in all probability have led to the collapse of his 
 Gospel between the two parties. After a few weeks' con- 
 sideration Luther threw in his lot with the princes. His 
 tract, Against the Murderous and Rapacious BahUe of Feasants 
 (1525), is the most terrible appeal to bloodshed ever published 
 by a minister of Christ's Church. It is the first manifesto of 
 the doctrine, afterwards generally adopted by the Reformers, 
 of the divine institution of all civil authority, and the duty of 
 implicit obedience on the part of all subjects, alike in matters 
 spiritual and temporal.^ 
 
 " A rebel," he writes in this book, " is outlawed by God 
 and Kaiser, therefore who can and will first slaughter such a 
 man does right well ; since upon such a common rebel every 
 man is alike judge and executioner. Therefore who can, shall 
 here openly or secretly smite, slaughter, and stab, and shall 
 hold that there is nothing more harmful, more poisonous, more 
 devilish than a rebellious man. ... Lord God, when such 
 spirit is in the peasants, it is high time that they were 
 slaughtered like mad dogs." 
 
 Luther tells the princes that they are commanded by the 
 Gospel, so long as the blood flows in their veins, to slay such 
 folk. Those who are killed in such attempt are true martyrs 
 before God. Carlyle has described Luther's conduct in the 
 
 * See, however, Luther's Fon weltlicher ObrlgkeU, 1523. Luther himself 
 declares that he was the first to state the divine origin of all civil power (Werke, 
 Bd. xxxi. S. 24). See also Melanclithoii's Wider die Artikd der Bmce)iiscJia/t, 
 where the ar;ranient is based on Korii. xiii. 1.
 
 232 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 matter of the Peasants' War as showing a " noble strensrth 
 very different from spasmodic violence." The sober historian 
 must agree with our opinion, " that it is the most terrible 
 appeal to bloodshed ever published by a minister of Christ's 
 Church." Nothing could excuse it, not even the news of the 
 Weinsberg atrocities, had it reached Wittenberg before the 
 publication of the book. It was the death-blow of Lutheranism 
 as a popular movement ; henceforth the Reformation was 
 carried out by the order and force of the temporal powers, 
 the folk being indifferent or even hostile ; henceforth Luther 
 depends for support on the greed of princes or on the rapacity 
 of town councillors. Before 1530 he has lost the sympathy 
 not only of the Humanists, the party of culture, but even 
 of the mass of the folk. The tyranny of petty princes has 
 received the sanction of the Eeformers, and learning has been 
 crushed under the heel of theological dogma. It remains for 
 us to consider how a Eeformation carried through under 
 such auspices affected the social and moral condition of the 
 people. 
 
 A comparison between the condition of the masses in 
 1500 and 1550 far exceeds anything which can possibly be 
 attempted within the limits of an essay of the present kind. 
 It is a question purely of statistics, and these often of the 
 dullest nature. Hitherto the topic has been entirely neglected 
 by Protestant historians, and we owe most of our information 
 on the subject to Catholic authors writing with an obvious 
 party tendency. Notwithstanding this, however, we have 
 evidence more than enough to show a remarkable breakdown 
 in the social and moral welfare of the German people. How 
 far this was due to the direct teaching of the Eeformers is a 
 matter of the utmost importance. If the Eeformation only 
 checked culture, if freedom of thought and the rational method 
 have only grown up in spite of the Eeformation — because the 
 theologians were not sufficiently united to suppress them — 
 then the influence of the Eeformation upon the social and 
 moral welfare of the people will be the crucial question which 
 must settle our judgment on Luther and his movement. Mr. 
 Beard has thought fit to refer to this crucial question in -a
 
 MAETIN LUTHEK 233 
 
 short note only to his Fourth Hibbert Lecture. He there comes 
 to the conclusion that " the Reformation did not at first carry 
 with it much cleansing force of moral enthusiasm." If Mr. 
 Beard is referring solely to Germany, we are compelled to add 
 that neither " at first " nor " at last " did the Lutheran move- 
 ment carry with it any force of moral enthusiasm. It reduced 
 the parts of Germany it reached to a moral torpor ; for almost 
 the whole of the two following centuries Germany's social as 
 well as literary life was " stale, flat, and unprofitable." Only 
 the emancipation of thought, the reaction against all religious 
 dogma in the eighteenth century, awoke Germany from her 
 slumbers. What Mr. Beard relegates to a note is, we hold, the 
 groimd upon which the Eeformation must ultimately be judged. 
 We have before remarked that the Catholic Church was the 
 basis of mediaeval social life ; we have drawn attention to the 
 triumph of the Eoman over the Canon Law, and the reduction 
 of the peasant to a serf; we have noted how intimately the 
 decay of the guild system was connected with the collapse of 
 the Church ; we have yet to place before the reader some 
 evidence of the direct influence of the Lutheran doctrines upon 
 the morality of the folk. We shall confine ourselves here to 
 two of them : the one relating to redemption by faith alone, 
 the other to the meaning of marriage. On both these points 
 we must again repeat a caution we have given above — namely, 
 that it is not sufficient excuse for Luther to say that his 
 doctrines were misunderstood. He did not publish them in a 
 form intended only for scholars, he thrust them into the hands 
 of the ignorant, and he must be held responsible for the results 
 of misinterpretation. 
 
 The emphasis which Luther laid upon the doctrine of 
 justification by faith alone has identified it for ever with the 
 Eeformation ; so greatly was he enamoured of it, that he 
 introduced in the ardour of his passion the word " alone " 
 into his translation of Eomans iii. 28, a passage which 
 certainly does not contain the word in the most corrupt of 
 manuscripts. Any dogma which lays, or appears to lay, 
 stress only on the inner faith of the individual, is liable to 
 most dangerous misconceptions. It misses what nowadays
 
 234 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 would be so generally acknowledged as the chief function of 
 religion — the insistence on an upright, neighbourly, pure life. 
 Instead of making it the first concern of man to live well in 
 this world, it occupies his time with some process whereby he 
 secures a satisfactory life hereafter. Tlie individual retires 
 into himself, he is satisfied that his faith will save his own 
 soul, he becomes almost, or quite regardless of the material 
 welfare of his neighbour. It is not surprising, then, to find 
 that sects grew up — even as under similar circumstances 
 they had done among the Mahomedans — who based upon 
 this doctrine the theory, that to the believer all things (even 
 the most immoral) are permitted. Luther, of course, would 
 have rejected any such enormity ; still it was the logical 
 outcome of his statement, that the works of the righteous, 
 or rather of the elect, are all alike good ; the most unimportant 
 actions, and the greatest self-sacrifice, have the same worth 
 before God. Obviously, such a tlieory destroys the possi- 
 bility of a moral ideal, towards which man can only approach 
 by a lifelong struggle. " God," said Luther, " does not ask 
 how many and how great are our works, but how great is 
 our faith ? . . . Thou owest God naught but confession and 
 belief. In all other matters thou art free to do as thou wilt, 
 without any danger of conscience." It is perfectly true that, 
 if real faith be defined as that which is always followed by 
 good works, such expressions are harmless. But the danger 
 of emphasising, as the key to salvation, a merely subjective 
 state of the emotions instead of a particular course of action, 
 can hardly be over-estimated in treating of the moral value of 
 a dogma. To tlie great uncultured masses it is all-important 
 to insist upon good works, upon a pure, charitable life, as the 
 means to redemption. Is it not easy to understand how 
 teaching like the following was misinterpreted by the folk ? 
 " The proposition that good works are needful for salvation 
 must be entirely rejected, since it is a false and deceptive 
 doctrine that good works are needful either to justification or 
 salvation." "There is no law sanctioned by God Himself 
 which demands a single work from the believer as necessary 
 for salvation." " Works do nothing ; only consider one thing
 
 MARTIN LUTHER 235 
 
 as needful — to hear God's Word and believe it — that suffices 
 and nothing else." How the folk understood these expres- 
 sions was very soon obvious. " Under Popery," Luther him- 
 self writes, "people were charitable and generous, but now 
 under the Gospel nobody gives any longer ; now every man 
 skins his brother, and each will have all for himself. The longer 
 the Gospel is preached, the deeper people sink in pride, greed, 
 and luxury." What a strange confession of failure lies in 
 this, though Luther hardly recognised its cause ! Such com- 
 plaints as to the absolute decay of charity are constantly 
 repeated by the Reformers ; they can obtain no support either 
 for the clergy, the churches, or the schools. Luther tells us 
 on another occasion, how every town, according to its size, 
 once supported several convents, to say nothing of mass-priests 
 and charitable foundations ; but now, under the new dispensa- 
 tion, men refuse to support two or three preachers and in- 
 structors of youth in a town, even when the cost does not fall 
 on their own property, but on that which has been left from 
 Popish times. It is a fact, which is no less true of Germany 
 than of England, that of the property of the old Church, which 
 passed into the hands of princes, nobles, and town councillors, 
 but very little was again applied to charitable or public 
 pui'poses. Most pitiable are the lamentations of the Church 
 Visitors over the decay of charity. The lower orders through- 
 out Saxony refused not only voluntary but even legal church 
 dues. In 1525, Luther wrote that unless very stringent 
 measures were taken there would soon be neither preachers 
 nor parsonages, neither schools nor scholars. In some villages 
 the religious spirit had entirely died out ; three or four persons 
 went to church, and the peasants marched about with drums 
 during the service ; in others, even the building itself had 
 been converted into a sheep-stall, or made a depository for 
 Whitsun beer ; in further instances we read of the beer-cans 
 being handed about during the sermon, or of the peasants 
 threatening to stone their parsons. The clergy themselves 
 were terribly degraded. One minister had three wives living, 
 another did not even know the Ten Commandments, a third 
 earned his livelihood as a weaver, while in many cases two or
 
 236 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 more cures had to be thrown together in order to obtain 
 support for one preacher. In several villages the Visitors 
 declared that the only remedy was the "executioner and the 
 stocks." The moral decay of both peasantry and clergy is 
 extraordinary ; both are given to drink, both to sexual vice. 
 In one small village alone there were fifteen illegitimate 
 children in one year. One parson is described as " tolerably 
 good," but he does not receive unqualified praise, because of 
 his passion for drinking. Most charitable foundations had 
 disappeared, to a great extent appropriated by the nobility ; 
 the revenues of the parsons had melted away ; the parsonages 
 were tumbling down, and cattle fed in the open churchyards. 
 The schools, where they continued to exist, were in a most 
 pitiable condition, while monastic teaching had of course 
 disappeared with the monks. Villages had sold their church 
 ornaments and vessels to pay the commune debts, or appro- 
 priated church funds for a like purpose. Scarcely anywhere 
 in the rural districts was there the faintest trace of enthusiasm 
 for the new dispensation. In one town, however, we find a 
 Lutheran Council had been elected ; they had bought out the 
 nuns, and shut up their convents ; they had dismissed the 
 eighteen monks with thirty gulden apiece, and their guardian 
 with double that sum. All the provisions or movables of the 
 convent had been given away or sold ; the windows had been 
 transferred to the " Kaufhaus " ; innumerable persons had 
 been found ready to take charge of the large stock of cheese 
 and lard left by the monks. " One sees," as the historian of 
 the events naively remarks, " in what a short time a town 
 government, inclined to Luther's views, could accomplish an 
 immense amount ; it is the towns peculiarly that we have to 
 thank for their great services in forwarding the Eeformation." ^ 
 Such was the state of the Saxon Church even under Luther's 
 nose in 1528. We by no means propose to thrust all these 
 failings upon his shoulders ; some of them were undoubtedly 
 a legacy from Papal times, others were a result of the Peasant 
 War (but even so indirectly due to the Eeformation) ; enough, 
 
 ^ Burkhardt : Geschichte der sachsischen Kirchen- unci Schulvisiiationen, 
 1879, p. 67, et ante.
 
 MAKTIN LUTHER 237 
 
 however, remains to show that the destruction of the Catholic 
 Church involved a break-up of social life in Saxony. It is 
 quite sufficient for our purpose if we can convince the reader 
 that the so-called Eeformation did not improve the condition 
 of the people, neither of clergy nor of laity ; if it did not, it 
 failed in its object. What we have here described, on the 
 report of the Visitors in 1528, is very closely akin to what 
 we learn from Church Visitations, until the Thirty Years' 
 War quite destroys the possibility of judging between cause 
 and effect. It is quite true that the number of " stubborn 
 Papists" with w^hom the Visitors met, became fewer and 
 fewer, but as one of the chief functions of successive Visita- 
 tions had been to get rid of them, this is scarcely to be 
 wondered at. In 1 5 3 9 we find the schools still in a miserable 
 condition, and the people themselves quite indifferent to 
 education. The general tendency of the time was, as Musa 
 reports, against learned, but especially against clerical occu- 
 pations ; above all, charity no longer provided for the poor 
 wandering scholar. The Eeformers found themselves in 
 absolute need of men of the most moderate education for 
 their church. In 1532, in the second Visitation, we find 
 the old complaints as to how unthankful the people are 
 towards the new gospel. By this time, uniformity has become 
 an absolute law. All who defend articles of belief, other than 
 appear in the printed " Instruction of the Visitors," are to be 
 banished from the country. The increasing moral decay of 
 the folk is to be checked by stringent regulations ; crime, 
 swearing, gambling, drunkenness, adultery, and the " passion- 
 ate discussion of the dogmas of religion in the taverns," are to 
 be investigated and punished by ecclesiastical superintendents. 
 We find the same difficulties as to the support of the clergy, 
 the same complaints as to the concession of churches and 
 church property; one church has become a granary, the 
 property of another has been used to build a tavern, and so 
 forth. Childish were the means the Visitors took to bring 
 people into the church ; for example, those who did not 
 attend the baptismal service were not to partake of the bap- 
 tismal feast, and irregular communicants were to be banished
 
 238 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 from the parish.^ We note the beginning of a second and 
 still worse ecclesiastical tyranny. 
 
 At the same time in the Wittenberg district itself matters 
 were still more deplorable. The laity were given not to 
 charity but to dissoluteness in its widest meaning ; many had 
 quarrelled with the clergy, and for long years abstained from 
 the Sacrament. Parsonages were in ruins, the cattle frequented 
 or were even driven into the churchyard. The villagers refused 
 the preacher his dues, or met together to consume them in 
 drink. In the lordship of Schwarzburg the Visitors found 
 forty-six Protestant preachers and seven Catholic priests. 
 Eight or nine Protestants, although permitted to marry, were 
 living with concubines, as also five of their Catholic brethren. 
 Not only are these early Church Visitations strong evidence 
 of the want of a " force of moral enthusiasm " in the Lutheran 
 movement, but they are the best record we have of the method 
 of the lleformers. Most strange is the picture of the manner 
 in which the evangelical faith was forced upon the semi- 
 dependent principalities and bishoprics ; they were compelled 
 to accept Lutheranism whether they would or not ; monks 
 and nuns were forbidden to wear the dress of their Order, 
 were pensioned off, or allowed to await their end in a convent 
 where the old religious routine was entirely prohibited. 
 Many, who thus found themselves deprived of the only 
 advantages of the ascetic life, returned again into the world, 
 or wandered into Catholic countries, thus assisting the rapid 
 process of secularisation. In 1535 we find much the same 
 condition of things ; the Visitors complain of an increase in 
 godlessness, of contempt for the Divine Word, of small 
 attendance at church, and almost total refraining from com- 
 munion. Then we hear of most indecent behaviour during 
 divine service, increase of vices of all kinds in a most marked 
 degree, and above all, of the sad collajise of conjugal relations} 
 Even the conduct of the clergy calls for the gravest reprobation. 
 Everywhere there was a want of spiritual supervision, which 
 had entirely ceased with the old Church. So much must suffice 
 to give the reader a conception of the Saxon clergy and laity 
 ' Buikhardt, p. 140. ? Ibid. pp. 198-9.
 
 MAETIN LUTHER 239 
 
 under the influence of the Eeformation. There was most 
 undoubtedly a break - up of social and moral relations, and 
 more than one Protestant of that day was bold enough to 
 attribute it directly to Luther's doctrine of redemption. 
 Noteworthy is the almost imanimous rejection of this doctrine 
 by the sects of primitive Christians, which so rapidly grew up 
 among the folk. They declared that Christ had given a 
 model for life, rather than a mere matter for belief. To this 
 " babble of faith " they attributed the increase in adultery, 
 greed, and drunkenness. We will conclude this subject by a 
 characteristic but by no means unique passage from the 
 writings of Schwenkfeld : — 
 
 " One may reasonably accuse the Lutherans of discarding 
 external matters as unnecessary for salvation, since they not 
 only teach that faith alone, sola fides, makes a man righteous 
 and holy, but with complete indiscretion write and have 
 written so sharply and severely against the good works of 
 faith that many have entirely discarded all good works and 
 godliness, and thus an atrocious and godless manner of 
 existence has become frequent. Alas ! it is everywhere 
 obvious that the masses do not know what to make of good 
 works. How can it be otherwise, since these men have taught 
 and written from the beginning that good works, even the 
 best, are sins : nay, even that a righteous man sins in all 
 good works ! " ^ 
 
 Turning to our second point, the theory of marriage, we 
 have first to note the historical fact, and then to search for 
 its cause. The undoubted fact is the decay of sexual morality, 
 the collapse of the sanctity of marriage in Germany during 
 the sixteenth centm-y. Not only do we find strange evidence 
 of this in the reports of the Visitors, but both Protestants 
 and Humanists bear witness to the same effect. In one 
 Protestant university we hear of the moral conduct being 
 such " as Bacchus and Venus might prescribe to their 
 following." Luther himself is continually crying out against 
 the moral collapse in Saxony itself, and even compares it 
 
 1 Many exiiressions in Lutlier's works quite justify what some might faucy 
 to be an exaggeration of Schwenkfeld's.
 
 240 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 unfavourably with the state oi" things under Popery. Weary 
 of battling against this increasing mass of disorder, he exclaims 
 in despair : " It would almost seem as if our Germany, after 
 the great light of the Gospel, had become possessed of the 
 devil." Melanchthon attributes the greater difficulties of 
 government to the increasing immorality of the folk. Luxury, 
 shamelessness, and riotousness are ever extending. Dugen- 
 hageu, Osiander, Mathesius, and other evangelical preachers 
 bear evidence to the decay of chaste manners ; they attribute 
 it, not to the collapse of the old religious sanctions, but to the 
 singular activity of the devil. The growth of little com- 
 munities and sects, who not only taught but practised 
 polygamy and even promiscuous intercourse, is one of the 
 peculiar features of the time. It is necessary to inquire 
 whether any ground can be found for these results in the 
 teaching of the Reformers. There has been much discussion 
 recently with regard to Luther's sermons on marriage, and 
 it is necessary to say a few words about them here. These 
 sermons bear dates varying from 1519 to 1545, and we may 
 state generally that the same conception of marriage runs 
 through all of them ; they contain Luther's views as a 
 Protestant, and are essentially opposed to the teaching of 
 the Catholic Church. The most characteristic of these sermons 
 were preached by Luther as an evangelical teacher from the 
 Wittenberg pulpit. They were likewise preached to an 
 audience mixed as to age and sex. We will say nothing 
 here of their coarseness, allowing that to be peculiar at least 
 to a certain section of his contemporaries ; ^ we have to con- 
 sider only their doctrine. The Catholic Church has always 
 taught that marriacje is a sacrament. We should be the 
 last to defend the truth of such a conception, but we must 
 call attention to the fact that it emphasised something beyond 
 
 1 Sebastian Brant set his face against all forms of coarseness. "A new 
 saint has arisen," he writes, "called Grobian, whom now all men worship and 
 honour on every side with coarse words and dissolute works." Of this passage, 
 Gervinus writes, " Tliere was something great in attempting to stem such a 
 torrent as this then was, and this aim Brant had." If the author of the Ship 
 of Fools could resist the tendency of his time, might we not demand the same 
 of the Eero as Priest ?
 
 MAKTIN LUTHEE 241 
 
 the physical in the sexual relation, it endowed it with a 
 spiritual side. The conception of marriage as a spiritual as 
 well as physical union seems to us the essential condition of 
 all permanent happiness between man and wife. The in- 
 tellectual union superposed on the physical is precisely what 
 raises human above brute intercom'se. Those marriages which 
 arise purely from instinctive impulse are notoriously the least 
 stable. We believe that the spiritual side must be kept 
 constantly in view, if the stability of the sexual relationship 
 is to be preserved. Here it is that Luther, rejecting the 
 conception of marriage as a sacrament, rushes with his usual 
 impetuosity into the opposite and more dangerous extreme. 
 He lays entire stress upon the physiological origin of the 
 sexual union. He teaches not only, truly, that chastity has no 
 peculiar value in the eyes of God or man, but also that it is 
 impossible and directly contrary to the divine mandate. The 
 vows of monks and nuns are void because they have vowed an 
 impossibility. He repeatedly proclaims from the pulpit that 
 neither man nor woman can control the sexual impulses. He 
 tells boys and girls that they cannot, and that God does not 
 bid them, resist their passions. They must either marry or do 
 worse. A boy must marry at latest when he is twenty, a 
 girl between fifteen and eighteen, and "let God take care 
 how the children are to be supported." This revolutionary 
 doctrine of the impossibility of chastity Luther carries into 
 the sanctity of wedded life, and makes statements at which 
 the modern reader can only shudder.^ What Luther taught 
 to the folk, old and young, man and woman, from the Wit- 
 tenberg pulpit was repeated throughout the Protestant churches 
 of Germany. Is it not necessary to connect the decay of 
 sexual morality with the propagation of doctrines such as 
 Luther's ? We are quite willing to allow that Luther's primary 
 aim was to sweep away the mass of corruption which un- 
 doubtedly existed in the cloisters, and for this purpose it was 
 needful to assert that the ascetic life was not a peculiarly 
 holy one. But Luther, with his usual love of extreme dogma, 
 propounded a doctrine which must be subversive of moral 
 1 See the essay iu this volume on the Relations of Se.x in Germany. 
 
 i6
 
 242 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 order. He took the lowest conceivable view of the relation of 
 man and woman, and the masses of the folk, ever ready to 
 accept a physical impulse as a divine commandment, did not 
 hesitate to embrace his theory, and carry it to most disastrous 
 results.^ 
 
 There is another point to which Luther's purely physical 
 conception of marriage led him — namely, to what we are 
 really justified in terming an approval of polygamy. It is 
 a common, but a quite erroneous opinion to suppose that Luther 
 only expressed his views on this matter in relation to the 
 bigamy of Philip of Hesse. As early as 1524 Luther 
 declared that polygamy is not forbidden by the word of 
 God, but to avoid scandal and preserve decency, it is 
 necessary to reject some things which are permitted to 
 Christians. " It is well that the husband himself should be 
 sure and certain in his own conscience that by the Word of 
 God this thing is allowable. ... I must forsooth confess 
 that I cannot prohibit any man from taking several wives, 
 nor is it repugnant to the Scriptures." Melanchthon went 
 still further, and advised our Henry VIII. not to divorce his 
 first wife, but to take another, because polygamy was not 
 forbidden by the divine law. We by no means assert that 
 either Luther or Melanchthon openly advocated polygamy ; but 
 they did not oppose it, and the result of their vacillation was 
 obvious in their followers. Carlstadt was not the only Protestant 
 who plainly expressed- approval of polygamy, and in the tragedy 
 of Miinster it was adopted and carried to the most anti-social 
 extremes. It is precisely in the spirit of the above quotations 
 that in 1540 Luther and Melanchthon replied to the Landgrave 
 of Hesse on his proposal to take a second wife. A special 
 dispensation may be granted to him, if bigamy be the only 
 means of preserving him from worse vices. Such bigamy is 
 allowed in the law of Moses, and is not forbidden in the Gospel. 
 At the same time, it would not be wise to allow polygamy to 
 
 1 In 1518 Luther still ^v^ote from the Catholic standpoint. He remarks 
 that God grants grace to unfruitful marriages, and concludes : — " Haec si quis 
 animadverteret, /a<nWf?nc concupiscentiam carnis refrenaret." — De Matrimonio. 
 Condones, Opera Latina. Wittenberg, 1545, i. fol. xc.
 
 MAETIN LUTHEK 243 
 
 the common folk on account of the scandal to which it would give 
 rise. On this ground it is necessary that the second marriage 
 should be kept an absolute secret. There is no mention 
 whatever that a second marriage is null and void, or tears 
 up by the very roots the hitherto accepted Christian theory of 
 marriage.^ Other Protestant divines, such as Bugenhagen 
 and Butzer, gave their sanction to this pitiable quibble ; and 
 Philip's court-chaplain preached after the ceremony on the 
 legality of polygamy ! We are forced to recognise in the matter 
 that doctrine of marriage which, disregarding the spiritual 
 lays all stress on the physical relation. The Protestant sanction 
 of polygamy did not arise merely from a special political 
 necessity ; for we have seen that Luther in 1524, and Melanch- 
 thon in 1531, expressed opinions of a similar kind. It 
 was not out of keeping with a movement which through- 
 out appealed rather to the passions than to the intellect, 
 which at every turn sacrificed reason to the dictates of 
 undisciplined emotion. With this slight reference to that 
 which even Protestant theologians admit to be a black spot 
 in the Eeformation, we must close our consideration of the 
 influence of that movement upon the moral condition of the 
 German folk. That influence, as we have endeavoured to show^ 
 was not in favour of moral progress. 
 
 The facts which we have now laid before the reader will, 
 we hope, enable him to form some judgment of how Luther 
 must be considered in relation to modern culture. We are 
 perfectly aware that it is possible to cite passages from his 
 writings full of truth and piety ; we leave to Catholic theo- 
 loo-ians the task of denouncing Luther as a knave, a sensualist, 
 or a heretic ; we decline to discuss whether his dogmas were 
 more or less in accordance with Holy Writ than those of 
 the Catholic Church ; we recognise to their full extent the 
 
 ' The point to be noticed here is, — not that these Reformers attacked lil'o- 
 long monogamic union, — Imt that they made tlic physical the sole criterion ol' 
 the social iitness of any type of niamage. They made no attempt to balance the 
 spiritual and the physical elements in the sex-union. Indeed, like James Hintoii 
 and other modern advocates of polygamy, tliey had not the courage to publicly 
 teach the final outcome of their creed of the physical,— it remained an esoteiiis 
 doctrine.
 
 244 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 abuses which that church presented in the sixteenth century ; 
 we only ask : Did Luther give the world anything of greater 
 purity ? Is it a fact that there was nothing to choose between 
 the immorality and bigotry of Catholic and of Protestant 
 clergy in the second half of the sixteenth century ? We 
 ask bluntly : What have we to thank Luther for ? For 
 a particular set of dogmas ? Dogmas are to us matters of 
 perfect indifference. For our freedom of thought ? We reply 
 that freedom of thought was more possible in 1500 than a 
 hundred years later, and that our present freedom is not 
 the residt of Luther's teaching any more than of Eck's. It 
 arises solely from the fact that Luther, Eck, and their 
 co-theologians could not agree. The Protestants banished the 
 freethinking painters from Niirnberg, they burnt Conrad ' in 
 der Gasse ' in Basel, they executed Krauth, MoUer, and other 
 Anabaptists in Jena and elsewhere ; they bvirnt Servetus in 
 Geneva, they beheaded Hetzer in Constance (it is said on a 
 charge of polygamy !). Shortly, their intolerance was, if 
 possible, even narrower than that of their Catholic brethren. 
 We owe our freedom not to their doctrine, but to their 
 impotence. Toleration has grown to be a leading factor of 
 our modern faith, in the very teeth of Protestant, or at least 
 Lutheran opposition. Again, does any one ask us to be 
 grateful to Luther for modern culture ? We answer, that 
 he checked the growth of culture ; that literature, and art, 
 and scholarship, decayed under the influence of the Lutheran 
 Church. Nay, if we are told that we must sacrifice intellec- 
 tual progress for the sake of the moral and social welfare of the 
 masses, we reply : Willingly ; but the German Reformation was 
 a moral catastrophe for the folk at large. We refuse entirely 
 to fall down and worship this man ; we do not recognise him 
 as a hero, nor proclaim him a great moral teacher. Where we 
 allow only the gradual influence of education to be effectual, 
 we see a reformation attempted by an appeal to passion. 
 We note the frustration of Erasmus's attempt at rational 
 reform by a violent conjuration of emotional ignorance. 
 History, it is true, cannot be rewritten ; but the reason why 
 we separate myth from fact is that we may learn history's true
 
 MAETIX LUTHER 245 
 
 lesson ; and the lesson of the Reformation is that all true 
 progress of the folk at large can be attained only by a gradual 
 process of education. If an appeal be made to popular passion, 
 then scholarship, culture, and true morality will be dragged 
 into contempt, while narrowness, intolerance, and ignorance 
 will triumph. It is because we believe in the former as true 
 essentials of human progress that we sympathise with 
 Erasmus, and see in his methods the methods of the future. 
 It is on this ground that we hail the recent refusal of the 
 University of Oxford^ — within whose walls Erasmus taught — 
 to take any part in the glorification of Luther, as a manifesto 
 of the modern historical spirit. We see in this decision no 
 victory of High Church over Low Church, but the triumph of 
 the party of progress over that of obscurity. 
 
 1 This was ■vvTitten in the year 1883.
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTER^ 
 
 Der Feind, den wir am tieffsten hassen, 
 Der uns umlagert schwarz und diclit, 
 Das ist der Unverstand der Massen, 
 Den nur des Geistes Schwert durclibiicht. 
 
 Arbeiter-Marseillaise. 
 
 Some few years before the end of the first quarter of the 
 sixteenth century the dawn of a brighter day seemed about 
 to burst upon the dark night of the myriad toilers in 
 Germany. A free peasantry had been forced into the most 
 galling serfdom by a brutal and ignorant nobility, whose 
 chivalry had degenerated into vulgar license, and whose 
 knightly spirit of adventure found profitable, if somewhat 
 hazardous, employment in highway robbery. The spirit of 
 selfishness growing rampant with the decay of the old 
 religious influences had led the German princelets to the 
 most detestable doctrines of petty autocracy, and they 
 welcomed with delight the Eoman jurists, who found no 
 place in their system for primitive folk - customs, village 
 jurisdiction, or the communal rights of a free peasantry. 
 The peasant could no longer fetch his firewood from the 
 forest, drive his cattle into the common meadow, nor kill the 
 game which destroyed his crops. His barns were burnt at 
 night, he was carried off for a pitiable ransom even on his 
 
 1 Reprinted from the Modern, Review, 1884.
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEE 247 
 
 way to mass, and if he did not fulfil his legal or imposed 
 obligations to the letter, he was punished in ■ a most 
 barbarous fashion, not infrequently culminating in death. 
 On the other hand, the mad craving for wealth in the towns 
 was destroying the old independence of the handicraftsman ; 
 the great extension of trade, the rise of commercial speculation, 
 and the perversion of the old guild system were making 
 him more and more a tool in the hands of the moneyed 
 classes. The Church, which for long had held in check with 
 its spiritual terrors the individual struggle for power, had 
 fallen into a state of corruption, which called forth the con- 
 tempt of the whole community. The poor and the helpless 
 no longer found in the established religion that spiritual 
 comfort which might have strengthened them to endure 
 their material misery. The great ideas of mediaeval Chris- 
 tianity were fast losing their influence o"'^er the minds of 
 men ; the spiritual seemed dying out in the folk, which was 
 rushing blindly along in its race for material prosperity, and 
 with the usual result — the stronger arm, the stronger head 
 went to the fore, but the weaker, the more ignorant were 
 forced closer and closer to their hopeless grinding toil. The 
 nobles hated the princelets, the towns detested both alike, 
 while the peasantry was bitter in its denunciation of all who 
 took refuge behind walls of stone. On every side were signs 
 of the decay of the social spirit, of the rise of a new 
 materialistic and selfish conception of life — irreligious in the 
 truest sense of the word. Self-sacrifice — which can arise 
 only from clearness of vision, or from a strong and fervid 
 social consciousness — was to all appearance dead. Every 
 man was hurrying along in the race for worldly prosperity, 
 and a Chui'ch no longer conscious of its mission, nay, which 
 scarcely blushed at its own impurity, was unable to cry, " Halt ! 
 — remember thy neighbour ! " In vain the poorer members of 
 the community sought around them for the cause of this 
 misery, they sat helplessly looking into the night and waiting 
 for a prophet ! And then Luther came — Luther, the son of 
 a peasant, boldly facing the indolent priest and the tyrannic 
 prince — preaching a new gospel, a ' pure evaugely,' full uf
 
 248 THE ETHIC OF EEEETHOUGHT 
 
 comfort for men's souls. What wonder that the dawn 
 seemed breaking for the folk, that tliey fancied the national 
 deliverer had arisen ? 
 
 For a short time peasant and craftsman, the humble toiler 
 of all sorts, looked to Luther as to a god. What could tliis 
 ' pure evangely ' mean — which proclaimed the Bible as sole 
 authority, and itself as the primitive Christian faith — if it did 
 not herald a return to brotherly love, mutual charity, and an 
 apostolic simplicity of life? What wonder that these poor 
 ignorant folk, when they read the fiery appeals wliich Luther 
 and his fellow-theologians cast abroad o'er the land, thought 
 the battle was not for a dogma, not for the letter, but for a 
 total change in men's habits of life. They did not want a new 
 set of doctrines, they did not want a new pope, they wanted a 
 richer life for the listless straggler in the city, a more joyous 
 home for the toiler on the land. They wanted the bread 
 of a new emotion in life, and they were given dogmatic 
 stones. 
 
 Worn out by generations of oppression the peasants banded 
 themselves together, and took as their password the 'pure 
 evangely ' ; throughout the district of the league this, and this 
 only should be proclaimed from the pulpit. Could the people, 
 could the princes once hear this divine word, there would be no 
 need of dispute, its very simplicity would bring conviction to 
 the minds of all. Poor simple peasants, the ' pure evangely ' 
 was clear enough to you, but it was hardly what the rulers of 
 men were inclined to accept ! Nevertheless you drew up your 
 twelve modest demands and based each one of them on an 
 appeal to Scripture and a plea of brotherly love. Brotherly 
 love indeed ! Were you not rebels disobeying the higher 
 powers — or worse, disobeying God, by whom all the powers 
 that be are ordained ? So Melanchthon told you, so Luther 
 told you. Nay, even if there were some shadow of justice in 
 your claims, you still deserved a fearful judgment for the 
 terrible sin of angering the powers that be. Even if all your 
 articles were in the 'pure evangely,' which Wittenberg was 
 not inclined to admit, still you must wait, sit down and wait 
 in your misery, till the ' pure evangely ' should develop itself.
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTER 249 
 
 That was the only consolation the new prophets had to offer 
 you !^ 
 
 It was little wonder that the peasants grew restless, that 
 the terrible wrongs of the past would be ever reminding the 
 present of its strength. Here and there the pent-up passion, 
 the blind brute impulse to revenge, broke its fetters, and an 
 awful judgment of blood fell upon the toilers' oppressors. 
 Then Luther gave tongue to words which shocked even his 
 own century : — "A rebel is outlawed of God and Kaiser, there- 
 fore who can and will first slaughter such a man does right 
 well, since upon such a common rebel every man is alike judge 
 and executioner. Therefore who can shall here openly or 
 secretly smite, slaughter and stab, and hold that there is 
 nothing more poisonous, more harmful, more devilish than a 
 rebellious man." Those words were the funeral knell of the 
 ' pure evangely ' in the hearts of the simple and ignorant 
 oppressed. The peasants were slaughtered by the thousand, 
 massacred as they stood nigh helpless with pitchfork and hoe 
 — racked, flayed, burnt, one or all — ay, any other refinement 
 of agony the scared ruler of men could contrive was eagerly 
 adopted. But note, from that day forth Luther might found 
 churches, but they were built on the will of the princes ; he 
 might still be a prophet, but not of the masses — he was a 
 prophet of the 'bo2crgeoisie.. 
 
 The peasant rebellion was repressed, and society breathed 
 again, conscious that it had got the turbulent stream once 
 more into its narrow bed, and, so long as it stayed there and 
 turned society's mill-wheels at the wonted pace, society re- 
 mained quite regardless of its chafings and eddyings and foam- 
 ings. Not so, however, the toilers, not so many others, who 
 were weary of the roimd of theological disputation, the tossing 
 about of dogmas, the religion of the letter. The longings, the 
 almost heart-sick yearning of the weary for a new spiritual 
 guide was not utterly blunted, not yet quite reduced to a dull 
 mechanical feeling of the hopelessness of life. If they had 
 thrown off the yoke of Antichrist, rejected the Roman Sodom, 
 could they not likewise discard the ' new pope of Wittenberg,' 
 
 ■ Alelanclitlion : jyidcr die Artikel der Bauernschaft, 1525.
 
 250 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 the priest of the letter ? — If the teachers had all gone astray, 
 could not the simple-minded build up a faith for themselves ; 
 and what better foundation than the Bible, the undoubted 
 word of God ? Here was a new world, a new light for the 
 folk — this Bible should be their priest and their church ; its 
 wondrous powers should illuminate the craftsman at his bench 
 and the peasant at his plough. Here was a theology without 
 need of learning, a faith without dogma. Each might draw 
 pure religion from the one book, and none dreamt that much 
 was unintelligible, or might be interpreted in a thousand 
 different fashions. The Bible spoke directly to men in the 
 voice of God ; nay, might not that voice itself speak once 
 again to them as to the faithful of old? So arose afresh the 
 conception of a strange mystic converse with God, — of the 
 Di\'ine Spirit within comforting the miserable and oppressed. 
 Even their very misery, the toil and burden of life might be 
 the origin of this strange union, — the very cause which carried 
 men heavenwards. How could those who held this creed 
 believe in Luther's dogma of justification by faith alone ? A 
 life of suffering, of labour, of self-repression, was the key to 
 their most spiritual emotions. With the failure of the Peasant 
 Eebellion they had given up all hopes of a social or political 
 reconstruction ; they awaited in patience for all the futm-e might 
 bring forth ; they would willingly have separated themselves 
 from the world, if the world had but left them, which it 
 would not, in poverty and peace. 
 
 " dear brothers and sisters, we know how false the Pope 
 is, but from those who should teach us this we hear nought 
 but quarrelling and abuse ; the whole world sees how they are 
 divided against each other. Almighty God, we appeal to 
 thee ! — I pray, in God's name, all men who desire salvation, 
 not to despise his message, since the times are very terrible ! 
 Every day we hear those who should teach the folk, say that 
 he whom God has ordained to sin must sin, and he whom God 
 has ordained to salvation must be saved. O most beloved 
 sisters and brothers, let us fly from this error ! Has not 
 Christ said : ' Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy 
 laden ' ? And shall not each one of us go and be saved ? Our
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTER 251 
 
 teachers have led us astray ; it is time that we turn from 
 them, and depart from this darkness. We believe no longer 
 in the mass, nor in the invocation of saints. We believe no 
 longer in the cloister, the priest, or aught of popedom. We 
 know they have long led us astray. We do not think long 
 prayers are good, as prayer has been hitherto ; if one only says 
 ' Our Father,' and understands it, 'tis enough. We do not 
 want pictures and images, nor should God be worshipped 
 in a temple built with human hands ; the only temple in 
 which he will dwell is the heart of man. dearest sisters 
 and brothers throughout the world, help me to pray fervently 
 to God for safety from these errors. Oh, how long we have 
 been living in sin ! But what did the folk who, ignorant of 
 the crucified One, had been living in sin, say to the Apostle ? 
 ' O dear friend, what shall we do ? ' And Peter answered 
 them : ' Eepent, repent, and let each one be baptised to the 
 forgiveness of sins in the name of Christ Jesus ! ' Then all 
 men went and were gladly baptised to the number of three 
 thousand. Shall we not do likewise ? dearest brothers 
 and sisters, take this book with patience and in fear of God, 
 since in my whole life I have not written a syllable against any 
 man — I speak in the truth which is God himself." ^ 
 
 Such is the simple spirit of these early Anabaptists ; there 
 is not a touch of the bitterness or abusive language of the 
 current theology ; there is an unmistakable, almost terrible 
 earnestness about it, which carries no ring of falsehood. For 
 such men the Catholic Church had in earlier days found an 
 outlet in new monastic orders ; this was now impossible. 
 Still less could the ' pope of Wittenberg ' give them a place in 
 his new evangelical Church, His justification by faith alone 
 and his serfdom of the human will were to them unintelligible 
 doctrines ; nay, the rapid spread of this simple-minded faith 
 threatened to destroy the 'purely evangely ' altogether; the 
 oppressed of all parties turned to the new brotherhood. The 
 enthusiasm which Luther had once evoked flowed into the new 
 channel ; here was a simple-minded piety, a brotherly love, an 
 
 1 Ein GoUlich vniui (jrilndtlich offenharuny ; von den warhafftigen wider- 
 teuffem : mil (fOtlicher VMrhuit anyezaujt. MDXXVII.
 
 252 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 apostolic Christianity, which the masses had sought for in 
 vain in the ' pure evangely,' With Bible as guide the 
 members of this new community separate themselves from the 
 rest of the world ; rebaptism shall l^e the passage from the old 
 world of sin to the new world of love. Simple in the extreme 
 are their tenets — community of earthly goods and a future 
 where there shall be no usury or tax. The brethren accept 
 no office, and carry no sword ; patience is to be their sole 
 weapon, and brotherly correction, followed, if necessary, by 
 expulsion from the community, the only punishment. Besides 
 baptism, their one ceremony is that of bread-breaking, a 
 communion of love and a reminder that all are brothers and 
 sisters in the Lord Christ. Simple, and yet almost grand in 
 its simplicity is this re-establishment of primitive Christianity 
 among the first Anabaptists. 
 
 The evangelical leaders, however, grow alarmed for the 
 safety of their own Churches : — Luther sees in it all the 
 direct agency of hell ; he has no sooner stopped one mouth 
 than the Devil opens ten others. The Anabaptists are 
 prophets of the Devil, and as heretics to the ' pure evangely ' 
 are rebels to be punished by the authorities. He has done 
 his duty in refuting them, and the blood of all who will not 
 listen to his advice must be upon their own heads.^ It is 
 painful nowadays to note how Luther utterly failed to grasp 
 the religious essence of this primitive faith. He saw neither 
 the want which called it forth, nor the earnest truth of its 
 followers. Had he been of a more tolerant, more broadly 
 sympathetic mind, the history of German Protestantism 
 might have had brighter chapters to record amidst its dreary 
 waste of theological wrangling. Zwingli, too, began to fear 
 for the safety of the Swiss Church. His toleration had 
 drawn many of the religious radicals to Zurich, and at first 
 he had condescended to dispute with them, leaving, as usual, 
 the decision to the Town Council. Town Council, indeed ! 
 What had these enthusiasts to do with such a body ? " God 
 has long ago given judgment," they cried ; " it is not in the 
 
 ^ Von der Wiederlaufe, an zicci Pfarrherrn, 1528. Von den Schleichern 
 v/iid JVinkelp-edujern, 1532.
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEK 253 
 
 power of men to judge." Then Zwingli began to talk about 
 heresy, and the need of extermination. " No one has a 
 right " he said, " to leave the church or follow any other 
 opinion than that of the majority — than that appointed by 
 the legal representatives of the community." Whereupon 
 the Anabaptists girded themselves about with rope, and, as if 
 prepared for a journey, wandered through the streets of 
 Zurich. In the market-place and in the open squares they 
 halted to preach, talked of the need of a better life, of justice 
 and of brotherly love. " Woe, woe upon Ziirich ! " they 
 cried, half threatening, half warning. What was to be 
 done with these fiery enthusiasts ? They were not criminals, 
 they were not rebels! Banishment, suggested Zwingli, and 
 banishment and repression followed throughout Switzer- 
 land. 
 
 Banishment scattered the sparks all over Southern Ger- 
 many from Strasburg to the Tyrol. The apostles of this 
 simple faith came like the early Christian teachers into the 
 homes of the poor. They entered with the greeting of peace, 
 and taught in plain, homely words, bringing new light, untold 
 comfort unto many a weary heart. The preacher arrived, 
 taught, aroused the listless spirit, baptised, took up his staff 
 and passed on. So in a few hours he might plant a little 
 community of the new faith on a spot where he had never 
 been seen before, and never might come again. The little 
 community chose its own head, who had the simple duties of 
 Bible-teaching, reproving, baptising, and bread-breaking. The 
 brethren and sisters would meet on Sundays for Bible-reading, 
 for mutual exhortation, and to celebrate their primitive form 
 of the Communion. Their clothing was simple and without 
 ornament, they saluted one another with a kiss and " Peace 
 be with you," while each termed the other brother or sister. 
 Their property was at the service of all members who might 
 need it, they prohibited the oath and the sword. None of 
 them might engage in a lawsuit or take a place of authority, 
 for all government to them was the rod of God sent to 
 chastise his folk ; the brethren should obey it, paying rather 
 too much than too little, patiently enduring suffering and
 
 254 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 persecution, awaiting the coming of the Lord.^ These primitive 
 Christians endeavoured to live apart from the world, avoided 
 the churches, the taverns, the social gatherings of citizens and 
 guilds, nay, even the greeting of unbelievers, for were they 
 not God's own folk, men who had taken up Christ's cross and 
 were determined to follow him ? Justification by faith alone, 
 indeed ! Was not a life of suffering itself their justification ? 
 Persecuted, deprived of all means of subsistence, or hunted 
 down like wild beasts, they had in truth a witness in their 
 lives which passed all the power of words. There was some- 
 thing far beyond Luther here. There was a depth of earnest 
 conviction about these Anabaptists which completely puzzled 
 the Lutherans, for whom even the very courage with which 
 they met a martyr's death was the work of the devil, or an 
 obstinacy born of passionate hatred to their persecutors ! In 
 Strasburg Capito saw the truth more clearly than Luther : " I 
 testify before God," he writes, " that I cannot say their con- 
 tempt of death arises from infatuation, much rather from a 
 divine impulse. There is no passion, no excitement to be 
 marked ; no, with deliberation aud wondrous endurance they 
 meet death as confessors of Christ's name." 
 
 Such was the material upon which persecution was brought 
 to bear, and it is one of the most instructive, although one of 
 the most terrible lessons of history to mark what persecution 
 made out of it. First and foremost let us obtain some con- 
 ception of what that persecution meant ; only then shall we 
 be able to judge truly of the catastrophe which followed. 
 Men are so apt to be shocked by the brutal outrages of a 
 great folk -upheaval that they cannot grasp to the full the 
 long years of oppression, the grinding torture, the bitter 
 injustice, what at last causes the repressed passions to break 
 forth in a torrent — as of molten lava — sweeping before it all 
 the bonds of customary morality and every restraint which 
 knits society together. Persecution first reached a head in 
 tlie Catholic districts, where Anabaptism was held a capital 
 offence. In the Tyrol we find in 1531 upwards of a thousand 
 
 ^ See Carl Alfred Cornelius : Gcschichte des Miiiisterischen Aufruhrs, a 
 most excellent book, which unfortunately remains incomplete.
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEE 255 
 
 persons executed ; at Linz alone, in six weeks, seventy-three. 
 Duke William of Bavaria gave orders that those who recanted 
 should be beheaded, those who would not were to be burnt. 
 The Swabian Bund organised bands of soldiers to hunt down 
 Anabaptists, and to kill on the spot, without trial, those 
 captured! As soon as the Evangelicals felt strong enough, 
 they, too, joined in this wild hunt. The Anabaptists had 
 introduced a partial community of goods among themselves ; 
 it was declared from the pulpit that they aimed at the con- 
 fiscation of all property ; their prophecies as to the end of the 
 world were declared open rebellion ; the darkest and most vile 
 political and social motives were attributed to them. Lutheran 
 preachers poured out the foulest abuse upon them, and en- 
 com-aged the growth of a religious hatred which sprang up 
 with its wonted rapidity and all its characteristic bitterness. 
 The Anabaptists were promptly declared political offenders. 
 They were beheaded in Saxony and drowned in Zurich. The 
 blood of leaders and disciples ilowed in streams upon the 
 land : Mantz was executed at Ziirich ; at Eottenburg Michael 
 Sattler was torn in pieces by red-hot pincers and then burnt ; 
 Hubmaier, comforted by his faithful wife, was bm*nt at Vienna : 
 Blaurock was burnt in the Tyrol, Einck was imprisoned for 
 life in Hesse, Hatzer beheaded at Constanz. In Salzburg, 
 however, the tide of brutality seems to have reached its flood. 
 Here a brotherhood had been founded which met on waste 
 spots, worshipped in a primitive fashion, and shared their 
 goods together. The sign of membership was rebaptism. 
 Thirty of its members being captured, their preacher and two 
 others were burnt alive in the Fronhof, becg,use they could by 
 no means be brought to confess their errors. A woman and a 
 ' bright maiden of sixteen years ' refused to recant, although 
 told their lives would be spared; the executioner dragged 
 them to the horse-pond, held them imder the water till they 
 were drowned, and then burnt their bodies. Two others, one 
 even of noble birth, the other a wallet-maker, were, on con- 
 fessing their error beheaded and burnt. A button-maker and 
 u belt -maker who remained obstinate were burnt on the 
 market-place ; we are told " they lived long and cried with all
 
 256 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 their hearts to God ; it was pitiable to hear them." Ten 
 women and several men who confessed were banished. " Upon 
 the following Wednesday, a town notary, a priest, and three 
 others, among them a young and handsome belt-maker, were 
 led out of the town to a house, where they had held their 
 services, and as they would not recant, but boldly defended 
 their opinions and had no fear of martyrdom, they were placed 
 inside the house, which was then set on fire ; they lived for a 
 long while, and cried piteously to one another. God help 
 them and us according to his pleasure." Not content with 
 destroying the persons of these poor folk, the very houses in 
 the town where they had met, we are told, were burnt down 
 for a memorial. " Forty-one persons still lie in gaol, no one 
 knows what will be done with them. God settle it for the 
 best."^ 
 
 Needless, perhaps, to collect further evidence of this 
 terrible baptism of blood ! Men, women, and even children, 
 went boldly singing psalms to the stake ; the very bonds 
 which bound the community together seemed to grow stronger 
 and stronger as the list of martyrs increased. Heart-rending 
 are the songs which the poor suffering peasants and handi- 
 craftsmen sent up to God from their prison houses ! Some 
 breathe a quiet spirit of resignation : " O God, to thee I must 
 appeal against the violence which in these evil days has 
 befallen me. For thy word's sake I suffer greatly, lying in 
 prison I am threatened with death. They led me bound 
 before their rulers, but with thy grace I was ready to confess 
 thy name. They asked me of our faith, and I told them it 
 was the word of Christ. They asked me who was our leader, 
 and I told them Christ and his teaching. He, our true 
 Saviour, has promised us peace. To that I hold fast ; that I 
 will seal with my blood." " He, who first sang this song was 
 named Johann Schlitz, and to strengthen his comrades he sent 
 it from the prison cell : Let man trust in God, however great 
 his need let him put faith in no other. He can give life for 
 death." Or again : " The world rages and palms off its false- 
 
 1 Newe Zeyttu'iig von den widderteuffern iind yhrer Sect Tiewlich erwachsen 
 yhm stifft zu Salzburg vjid an andem enden. MDXXVIII.
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTER 257 
 
 hoods upon us ; it terrifies us with its burning and slaughter. 
 We are scattered as the sheep who have lost their shepherd ; 
 we wander through the forests ; like the ravens we seek refuge 
 in cave and cleft. We are pursued like the birds of the air, 
 we are hunted down 'with dogs, and led like dumb lambs 
 captive and in bonds. Through the agony and sorrow of 
 death the bride of the Lord hastens to the marriage feast." 
 Other songs again show a spirit which, like the worm, will 
 turn at last. " O Lord, how long wilt thou be silent ? Judge 
 their pride, let the blood of thy saints ascend before thy 
 throne." Painfully intense hymns, evidently written for 
 congregational singing, call upon God for aid and, at last, for 
 vengeance.-^ Ballads of their martyrs, as that of the ' Two 
 Maidens of Beckum burnt by the tyrants of Burgundy,' 
 strengthened the faith in the hearts of the persecuted, and 
 fanned their conviction almost to the fanaticism of despair. 
 
 In vain we seek a justification for this reign of terror ; its 
 only cause lay in the ignorant, nay, rather brutish self- 
 assertion of the powerful of earth. They never troubled 
 themselves to examine the real beliefs of these simple-minded 
 folk ; they accepted every denunciation by their own narrow- 
 minded theologians as based on fact ; they saw rapidly 
 spreading what they were taught to believe was a vast political 
 conspiracy, and they stopped at no brutality which they 
 fancied might check its growth, at no bloodshed which could 
 assist the work of extermination. Persecution brought, as it 
 always does, a terrible retribution upon blind humanity. The 
 Anabaptists driven wild with cruelty began to take a harsher 
 view of their persecutors. Such horrors could only precede 
 the day of judgment. They were surely among the terrors of 
 the last days announced in the Book of the Revelation. God 
 would surely come to avenge the blood of his saints : — " Await 
 your Shepherd, since He is near who shall come at the end of 
 
 ^ See Auss Bwiidt, Etlkhe schiine christcnliche Liedcr, 1583 (Reprint, 1838), 
 and Miinsterische Geschkhten und Legcndcn, 1825. Inter alia, we may note the 
 song beginning — 
 
 " In diesen letzten Zeiten, 
 Wo wir auf heiden Seiten 
 Mit falschen Schlaugen streiten." (i.e. Luther and the rojic.) 
 
 17
 
 258 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 the world." " Eejoice with all your heart and all your soul, 
 thank God and praise him, since the Lord has revealed to us 
 brothers the time wherein he will punish those who have 
 persecuted and scattered you. Those who have slain with the 
 sword shall be themselves slain with the sword ; those, who 
 have hanged the faithful, shall themselves be hanged ; those 
 who have coudenmed the pious, shall meet with a like judg- 
 ment. So shall they also be condemned without mercy, 
 according to the terrible anger of the Lord." Let the 
 brethren be prepared to cross the Eed Sea, girded to leave 
 the land of Pharaoh. God is building a new Sion — a place 
 of comfort for his people. The day of redemption is at 
 hand.^ 
 
 / It is strange what very great influence the Book of Eevela- 
 tion has had in shaping many of the most characteristic 
 religious movements. The notions of a coming destruction, 
 of a terrible retribution upon the oppressors of men, of the 
 founding of a new and purer era — a kingdom of the good 
 alone — of the millennium of joy and of the coming of Christ, have 
 a wondrous attraction for the injured and the miserable ; such 
 is the reef-bound channel into which the thoughts and hopes of 
 Franciscan dreamers, of Lollards and of Anabaptists alike have 
 drifted. The allegory of some hysterical Jew becomes the 
 prophecy of an immediate future to all those who feel strongly 
 the need of a great reformation, a judgment on centuries of 
 abuse and intolerance ; they require a voice for their passionate 
 protest, and they find it in the Apocalypse. In its wild 
 demoniacal destruction of the past and its errors, in its 
 prophecy of a brighter future, they hear expressed, even in 
 the weird language of inspiration, the pent-up emotion of their 
 own dumb souls. Such was the first thought to which per- 
 secution drove the Anabaptists : — the Divine Avenger would 
 come and found a new Sion for His saints. But as the months 
 rolled by, and the bloody baptism of fire continued, a new- 
 idea began to spread among the community : — the Avenger 
 surely meant to use the righteous themselves as the sword 
 
 ^ Zwen wundcrscltzamen Scndbrieff ziceycr Widertauffer om ire Rotten gen 
 Av^sbwg gesandt. Verantwurtinig : durch Urianum Rhegiv.m, 1528.
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEE 259 
 
 of Gideon ; the saints should themselves arise and exterminate 
 the worshippers of idols, then they might found the kingdom 
 of righteousness and of love. The worm was beginning to 
 turn at last ! Let him, who will, east the first stone. He, 
 who shuts his eyes to the misery of one half the human race, 
 or he, who thinks its wretchedness is an eternal necessity of 
 all forms of human society, may smile cynically when they mark 
 the simple faith of these toilers rapidly developing into a self- 
 destructive fanaticism. Ignorant, misguided people, why did 
 you not keep the hand to the plough, the foot to the treadle, 
 and the body to its bench ? Why did you strive in your 
 darkness to build up a faith for yourselves, and take that 
 unfathomable Book for a basis ? That was work better left 
 to the priest, to the noisy theologian, to the professional 
 twister of words. Get you back to your toil, tliat the wheels 
 of the social machine may run smoothly along ! Your 
 brotherly love and justice are absurd impossibilities. Cannot 
 you see that the Book and actual life are quite different 
 matters, and society — at least, the civilised half of it — is by 
 no means inclined to your theory of Christian love and 
 brotherhood ? As the ass must be beaten, or it will not move, 
 so must the ruler drive, beat, hang, and burn the populace. 
 Sir Omnes, or it will get the bridle between its teeth ; the 
 YougIi7 ignorant Si?' Omnes must be driven as one drives swine.^ 
 Crudely put, but that was still the view of the " ine\dtable " 
 darkness of the toiling myriads taken then, as it is now, by 
 many a most worthy citizen. Why should he be responsible 
 for the outrages, grotesque and terrible, which spring from 
 the ignorance and folly of these " dregs of the folk " ? ^ 
 
 But the " dregs " do not always take the same view of 
 matters as the worthy citizen does, and in the last years of 
 the third decade the blood of the Anabaptists began to approach 
 boiling pitch. Their leaders were nearly all slaughtered ; their 
 organisation destroyed ; they could not meet together to 
 impart mutual advice or to seek mutual comfort. Each little 
 community went on its own way, and often that way was a 
 curious one. Nay, beyond the simple bread-breaking and 
 1 Luther. '^ So Zwingli termed tbeiii.
 
 260 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 adult baptism there was little in common among the various 
 groups; persecution drove each to fanaticism in its own 
 peculiar fashion. The ties of everyday morality were in 
 some cases cast to the winds. If Luther could find nothing 
 forbidding polygamy in the Bible, why should not Hatzer and 
 a few followers declare polygamy instituted by God ? ^ In 
 other cases madness broke out in its most extravagant forms. 
 Some grovelled upon the earth to free themselves from sin ; 
 some acted as little children, for the Gospel declared that to 
 be a stage to salvation ; Thomas Scheyger, at the command of 
 the Heavenly Father, beheaded his brother, with indeed 
 the brother's consent ; Magdalen Miillerin and her fellows 
 went about as Christ and the Apostles ; some, believing 
 themselves divinely freed from all the curses of flesh, made 
 their liberty an excuse for every license ; prophets arose, 
 interpreting wondrous dreams, and proclaiming the coming of 
 the Lord. Isolated as such outbreaks of fanaticism were, and 
 steadily as the majority preserved their primitive tenets of a 
 simple and moral piety, it was evident that any strong new 
 impulse, any enthusiastic prophet, might rouse the excited 
 Anabaptists into an unbridled furor either of religious 
 fanaticism or of social license. 
 
 Nor had either to wait long for an efficient motor. Eeli- 
 gious fanaticism found its prophet in Melchior Hofmann — 
 social license in his pupils the prophets of Leyden. These 
 men were the formal instruments, as persecution was the 
 essential cause, which changed the Anabaptists from passive 
 martyrs to ungovernable fanatics. "VVTiile the process of ex- 
 termination had driven the Anabaptists out of Upper Germany, 
 some had found refuge in Moravia ; others, with whom alone 
 we are concerned, had fled to Strasburg, where for a time 
 toleration ruled. Here they and other religious radicals had 
 gathered in such numbers that the Lutherans found comfort 
 in the thought, that Providence, in order to save the rest of 
 
 1 Luther's IVerke. Erlangen. Bd. 33, p. 322. It is needless, jierhaps, to 
 note that the views of Hiitzer were not generally accepted by the Anabaptists. 
 In their songs polygamy was at first repudiated as against the direct teaching of 
 Christ ; nor is it part even of the Miinsterisclie Apologie,
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTER 261 
 
 the world, had allowed the dregs of heresy to flow together into 
 the sink of Strasburg. Here, soon after 1530, Melchior 
 Hofmann appeared on the scene. 
 
 This man was a native of Halle in Suabia, and a skinner 
 by trade. At first he was an eager disciple of Luther's, but his 
 Biblical studies and his keen sympathy with the sufferings of 
 his fellow-toilers soon led him beyond the 'pure evangely.' 
 For seven years he passed a strange, adventurous life, preach- 
 ino- in almost all the countries of Northern Europe, but stiU 
 earning his bread by the work of his hands. Driven from town 
 to town and country to country, persecuted by both Lutheran 
 and Zwinghan, he wandered with wife and child from trouble 
 to trouble, ever persisting in his self-appointed task. We find 
 him at last in Strasburg, very busy with the Apocalypse, 
 and denouncing all evangehcal doctrines as mere faith of the 
 letter ; true Christianity is a religion of the meek, the humble, 
 and the suffering. What wonder that the Anabaptists welcome 
 him as their own ! From Strasburg he passes as the prophet 
 of Anabaptism into the Netherlands ; but the faith he teaches 
 is not the old brotherly love, not primitive Christianity ; its 
 leading doctrine is the immediate coming of Christ. He 
 appeals to an excited imagination, to a fancy overwrought 
 by persecution abroad and by suffering at home. Surrounded 
 by minor prophets, his life is half mysticism, half madness. 
 Strasburg is to be the New Sion, the chosen city of the Lord, 
 from which the 144,000 saints shall march out to preach the 
 word of God. He himself will then appear as Elias. Holland 
 and Westphalia soon become covered with a network of Ana- 
 baptist commimities. The poor, the handicraftsman, and the 
 peasant, are carried away by Melchior's enthusiasm. Louder 
 and louder, more and more earnest, grow his prophecies as the 
 year 1533 approaches, which is to end the rule of unrighteous- 
 ness and witness the coming of God. Eeturning to Strasburg 
 he stirs up the folk almost to an outbreak. He is imprisoned, 
 but preaches to the people in the town ditch through a window 
 in his tower. Ho is shut up in a cage, but he manages to 
 communicate with his disciples : — " The end of the world is at 
 hand, all the apocalyptic plagues are fuliilled except the venge-
 
 262 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 ance of the seventh angel. Babylon totters to its fall, and 
 Joseph and Solomon come to establish the kingdom of God." ^ 
 Wondrous are the reports of his doings which reach Holland, 
 where the excitement becomes intense. A second prophet and 
 witness, he who is to reveal himself as Enoch, arises, — Jan 
 Mathys, baker of Haarlem, fanatic of a deeper dye even than 
 Hofmann, a man who will lead the persecuted to break through 
 all restraints. Mathys's creed has a far more aggressive character 
 than Hofmann's. He teaches that the saints must themselves 
 prepare the way of the Lord. He curses all brothers who will 
 not hear his voice, and his fanaticism overpowers the scruples 
 of the hesitators. He points out the lesson of those nine 
 heads wagging on their poles over the harbour of Amsterdam. 
 He sends out apostles to baptise, and proclaims that the blood 
 of the innocent shall no longer be shed, that the tyrants and 
 the godless will shortly be exterminated. Everywhere is end- 
 less commotion, unlimited fermentation among the Anabaptists. 
 In Miinster Mathys's disciple, the youthful Jan Bockelson, has 
 won a strong foothold for the Anabaptist doctrines. The worm 
 is beginning to turn at last ; simple folk are grasping to the full 
 the notion that God's people must separate themselves, in order 
 that there may be a destruction of the godless. And then follows 
 persecution renewed and bitter throughout Holland ; the Ana- 
 baptists fly before it with one accord to Miinster. Jan Mathys 
 is with the fugitives, and he announces that God has chosen 
 Miinster for the New Sion, owing to the faithlessness of Strasburg. 
 There towards the beginning of the year 1534 are gathered 
 together men, women, and children, from all quarters and of 
 many classes, peasant, noble, trader, handicraftsman, monk and 
 nun. The majority, it is true, are poor, miserable, and per- 
 secuted ; the few, religious or political idealists ; all are bent on 
 establishing the rule of righteousness and love — the Kingdom 
 of God in Miinster. 
 
 Before entering on an account of this weird Kingdom of 
 God — this grotesque and yet terrible drama — it will simplify 
 matters to relate briefly the events which prepared the way 
 
 ^ See Cornelius, vol. ii. chaps, iii. and ix. The best account of Hofmann is 
 to be found in F. 0. zur Linden's Mdchior Hofmann, 1885.
 
 THE KINCtDOM of GOD IN MUNSTEE 263 
 
 for it in Miinster. From the very first the Eeformation in that 
 town took a strongly political character. On the one side we find 
 a jgrince-bishop, Graf Franz von Waldeck, personally utterly 
 indifferent alike to the old faith and to the new ' evangely,' 
 and ready to adopt one or the other, as it may serve his 
 purpose, — the maintenance of his autocratic authority. On the 
 other side we have a populace who fancy that the ' pure 
 evangely ' means the abolition of the bishop and the triumph 
 of self-government. We have the bishop, licentious, drunken, 
 grasping after power in order to support his concubines and 
 to enjoy his feastings to the full ; we have the populace eager for 
 freedom, ignorant, and full of contempt for the bishop and his 
 underlings ; between bishop and populace, the Town Council, 
 composed for the most part of the patrician burghers, and by 
 no means anxious for either bishop or democracy ; the bishop 
 supported by a corrupt chapter and an indolent, if not immoral 
 clergy — the democratic element introducing the preachers of 
 the ' pure evangely,' and the Council desirous of organising them 
 into a church, which while opposing the bishop shall yet remain 
 under its own thumb. Such is the state of Miinster. Among 
 the preachers who found their way into the town was Bernhardt 
 Kottmann — by no means a leader of men, incapable either oF 
 effectively giuding or of restraining the populace. His broad 
 sympathy with the oppressed classes, unchecked by a clear and 
 dispassionate reason, caused him to follow folk-opinion rather 
 than direct it ; while at the same time his power of language 
 marked him out as a chief advocate of the popular cause. Carried 
 along on the top of the stream he is the central object of attention 
 till he dashes with it over the precipice and is engulfed. At 
 first we find him preaching outside the gates of the city, as some 
 say, with the connivance of the bishop. He adopts the Lutheran 
 doctrine that faith alone can save mankind, all the rest — form 
 and ceremony — is the devil's own handiwork. In spite of tliis, 
 he has a large following in Miinster, and the handicraftsmen and 
 their wives flock out to hear him. His teaching is not without 
 effect, and on Good Friday of the year 1531 the mob during 
 the night storm the Church of St. Maurice outside the gates, 
 and destroy the altars, pictures, and carving. Eottmaun
 
 264 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 seems to have thought it better after this event to retire — not, 
 however, without the suggestion of a bribe from the Catholic 
 clergy.^ In the following year, notwithstanding, he returns 
 once more to Miinster, and altliough he is forbidden to preacli, 
 the folk erect a wooden pulpit for him in the churchyard of 
 St. Lambert inside the city, and at last, to prevent a riot, that 
 church itself is given up to him. The ' pure evangely ' having 
 thus obtained a sure footing, Eottmann writes to Marburg for 
 assistance, and we soon find six evangelical preachers in 
 Munster struggling to destroy the old faith. The Town Council 
 and the Syndic Van der Wieck favour the preachers, because with 
 their assistance they hope to free themselves from the obnoxious 
 dean and chapter. The six preachers prepare thirty articles, 
 and, with the connivance of the Council, force the Catholic 
 clergy to a disputation. The Evangelicals are declared to have 
 God and reason on their side, and the six parish churches are 
 surrendered to their preachers. Meanwhile the dean and 
 chapter have left the town and appealed to the prince-bishop. 
 The bishop at first attempts to play one party off against the 
 other, and even temporises with democracy. Finally, however, 
 he holds a council at the little town of Telgte on the Ems, and 
 determines to starve his sheep out of their ' pure evangely.' 
 Democracy laughs him to scorn, marches out guild-fashion to 
 Telgte by night, and surprises the bishop's court, the council, 
 and the dean and chapter — only unfortunately not his grace, 
 who happens to have left a few days before. The captives are 
 brought into Miinster, and handed over to the Town Council. 
 " Here we bring you the oxen ; hark how they bellow ! " The 
 bishop deprived of his ' oxen ' comes to terms ; the preachers 
 shall be recognised in Miinster, the cathedral alone reserved 
 for the Catholics. So the ' pure evangely ' seems to be 
 triumphantly established. 
 
 But democracy, having tasted ' evangelical freedom,' is by 
 no means disposed to stop here, and where it drifts Eottmann 
 will follow. As the Lutherans said : " The devil finding it 
 impossible to crush the ' pure evangely ' by means of the 
 
 1 Dorpius : Warhafftige histmie wie das Evangdium zu Munster ange- 
 fangen, etc.
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTER 265 
 
 priests, hunted up the Anabaptist prophets." Already Eott- 
 mann, the idol of the populace, has begun to be in bad odour 
 at Wittenberg. Luther writes to the Town Council : " God 
 has given you, as I hear, fine preachers, especially Master 
 Bernhardt. Yet it is fitting that all preachers be truly 
 admonished and checked, since the devil is a knave, and can 
 easily seduce even fine, pious, and learned preachers." Master 
 Bernhardt, it is true, had been instituting somewhat curious 
 ceremonies. The Holy Supper, he argued, was only a feast of 
 brotherly love, and accordingly he broke bannocks in a pan, 
 poured wine over them, and invited all who would to partake. 
 He preached from the pulpit against the "bread and wine 
 God" of the Catholics and Evangelicals alike. He found 
 that democracy was in perfect accord with Gospel teaching, 
 and the poor — the toilers — not only of Miinster, but from far 
 and wide, gathered round him. " His doctrine is wonderful," 
 wrote the Syndic Van der Wieck, "a miserable, depraved mob 
 gathers round him, none of whom, so far as I know, could 
 scrape together two hundred gulden to pay their debts ! " 
 Still the Syndic and Council grow anxious, the scum — the 
 toiling oppressed — the persecuted and now fanatical Ana- 
 baptists are gathering round " Bannock-Bernt " in Miinster. 
 Forced on by his more radical following, he begins to express 
 doubts as to infant baptism. Hermann Strapraede of Morse 
 declares from the pulpit that it is an "abomination before 
 God." The Council appeals to Luther and Melanchthon, but 
 these names have long lost all authority among the masses. 
 The Coimcil orders that the Anabaptist teachers shall be 
 driven out of the gate of the city, but the ' Spirit of the Lord ' 
 (or the devil, as the Evangelicals said) moves them to march 
 round the walls and re-enter at the opposite gate. The 
 Council, doubting its own strength, appeals to reason in the 
 shape of a disputation, and imports Hermann von dem Busche 
 to combat Bannock-Bernt. But Bannock-Bernt has by far 
 and away the glibber tongue, and, after he has spoken for 
 several hours, the Council breaks up the disputation in despair. 
 After a little further bickering, in which the power of the 
 radical preachers becomes more and more evident, the Council
 
 266 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 shuts up all the churches. The preachers are even more 
 effective outside their pulpits than in them. Eottmaun, with 
 the working classes and an ever-increasing mob of Anabaptists 
 at his back, scoffs at the Council. He will fulfil the duty 
 laid upon him by Grod, however stiff-necked be the authorities. 
 Then the Council try a new expedient ; they introduce into the 
 town the Catholic orator, Mumpert. Mumpert preaches 
 against Bannock-Bernt in the cathedral, Bannock-Bernt against 
 Mumpert in the Church of St. Servatius ; this only leads to 
 rioting and the banishment of Mumpert. In desperation the 
 Council strive to establish an ' evangelical church order,' and 
 import Lutheran preachers from Hesse. Eottmann and his 
 colleagues shall be banished. Crowds of women threaten the 
 burgomasters, and demand the restoration of their beloved 
 preacher and the ejection of the Hessians. Again the mob 
 triumphs ; the Evangelicals are driven from the churches, 
 even torn from the pulpit. Heinrich Eollius,^ formerly a 
 Lutheran, now a prophet, rushes through the town crying : 
 " Repent ! repent ! and be baptised ! " Many are baptised, 
 some for fear of God, others for fear of their property. 
 Suddenly the Anabaptists pour out of their holes and corners 
 and seize the market-place, the Rathhaus and the town- 
 cannon ; Catholics and Evangelicals entrench themselves by 
 the Church of ' Our Lady across the Water.' Yet the ' party 
 of order ' is still the stronger ; they march across the cathedral 
 close, and plant cannon facing the approaches of the market- 
 place. But then fear seizes them that the bishop will take 
 the opportunity of falling upon the town. The Anabaptists 
 find that they are still too few in nimibers, a truce is made ; 
 all men shall hold what faith they please. " The day of the 
 Lord has not yet come." Peace ! 
 
 Peace in a seething mass of fanaticism like this ? Nay ! 
 Miinster is to be the ' fortress of righteousness ' ; wait but a 
 while, till more of the saints have arrived. From that day 
 onward the saints continue to pour into Miinster, and the 
 ' party of order ' dwindles away, flying with all its portable 
 property out of the city. Bannock-Bernt declares he will 
 
 1 Shortly after Rollius was burnt as an Anabaptist at Maestricbt.
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEK 267 
 
 preach only to the elect. Haggard-looking faces and people 
 in strange garbs appear on the streets ; families are broken 
 up ; wives speak of their husbands as the ' godless/ and even 
 children leave their parents to become ' saints.' At midnight 
 the gun booms over Mlinster, calling the Anabaptists to 
 prayer ; prophets rush with the mien of madmen, shrieking 
 through the streets ; the power of the Council vanishes in the 
 whirlpool of fanaticism which, dark and terrible, is involving all 
 things. On the 31st of February 1534, the election of burgo- 
 masters falls entirely into the hands of the Anabaptists, and they 
 appoint their own leaders, KnipperdoUinch and Kibbenbroick. 
 From that date the Kingdom of God commences in Mlinster. 
 
 Of the fom- principal actors in this terrible judgment of 
 history we have marked the leading characteristics of Jan 
 Mathys and Eottmann ; it is necessary to say a few words of 
 the other two, KnipperdoUinch and Jan Bockelson of Leyden. 
 Bernt KnipperdoUinch was a draper of Mlinster, a favourite 
 with the folk, probably on account of his burly figure and 
 boisterous nature. Long before the outbreak he seems to have 
 got into difficulties with the bishop ; he had sung satirical 
 songs about him in the streets, and won folk-applause by his 
 somewhat ribald satires on the dean and chapter. At one 
 time the bishop had put him in gaol, and the burly draper 
 by no means forgave the insult ; he determined " to burn the 
 bishop's house about his head." Not in the least an enthusiast, 
 he yet pinned his faith to democracy; desirous himself of 
 power, he was yet not strong enough to be anything but the 
 tool of others. His fanaticism when once aroused tended 
 rather to sensual than spiritual manifestations. He represents 
 the brute, almost ape-like, element in the mad dance. He 
 seems at times to have been conscious of the grim humour 
 of this mock Kingdom of God; and it is difficult to grasp 
 whether his fanaticism was a jest, or his jests the outcome 
 of his fanaticism. Yet when captured and examined under 
 torture, he could only say that he had done all from a feeling 
 of right, all from a consciousness of God's will ! ^ Of a far 
 
 • See Die GeschicUsquellen des Bisthums Mumtcr, wheie the cuiifessioii is 
 given in full.
 
 268 THE ETHIC OF EEEETHOUGHT 
 
 different nature was Jan of Ley den. As the illegitimate son 
 of a tailor in that town — his mother was the maid of his 
 father's wife — Jan's early life was probably a harsh and bitter 
 one. Very young he wandered from home, impressed with 
 the miseries of his class and with a general feeling of much 
 injustice in the world. Four years he spent in England seeing 
 the poor driven off the land by the sheep ; then we find him 
 in Flanders, married, but still in vague search of the Eldorado ; 
 again roaming, he visits Lisbon and Lubeck as a sailor, ever 
 seeking and inquiring. Suddenly a new light bursts upon 
 him in the teaching of Melchior Hofmann ; he fills himself 
 with dreams of a glorious kingdom on earth, the rule of justice 
 and of love. Still a little while and the prophet Mathys 
 crosses his path, and tells him of the New Sion and the 
 extermination of the godless. Full of hope for the future, Jan 
 sets out for Miinster to join the saints. Still young, hand- 
 some, imbued with a fiery enthusiasm, actor by nature and 
 even by choice, he has no small influence on the spread of 
 Anabaptism in that city. The youth of twenty-three ex- 
 pounds to the followers of Eottmann the beauties of his ideal 
 kingdom of the good and the true. With his whole soul 
 he preaches to them the redemption of the oppressed, the 
 destruction of tyranny, the community of goods, and the rule 
 of justice and brotherly love. Women and maidens slip away 
 to the secret gatherings of the youthful enthusiast ; the glow- 
 ing young prophet of Leyden becomes the centre of interest in 
 Miinster. Dangerous, very dangerous ground, when the pui-e 
 of heart are not around him ; when the spirit " chosen by 
 God " is to proclaim itself free of the flesh. The world has 
 judged Jan harshly, condemned him to endless execration. It 
 were better to have cursed the generations of oppression, the 
 flood of persecution, which forced the toiler to revolt, the 
 Anabaptists to madness. Under other circumstances the noble 
 enthusiasm, with other suiToundiugs the strong will of Jan 
 of Leyden might have left a different mark on the page of 
 history. Dragged down in this whirlpool of fanaticism, 
 sensuaKty, and despair, we can only look upon him as a factor 
 of the historic judgment, a necessary actor in that tragedy of
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTER 269 
 
 Mlinster, which forms one of the most solemn chapters of the 
 Greater B ible. 
 
 All is enthusiasm, ready self-sacrifice, and prophetic joy 
 in the New Sion during the first few days of its establish- 
 ment. At every turn ' God be with you ! ' is heard in the 
 streets, and the cheery reply ' Amen, dear brother ! ' On 
 Saturday the new burgomasters had been elected ; on the 
 following Monday they at once proceeded to take steps for 
 the defence of the town. With 1500 saints they march out 
 from the St. Maurice Gate, and destroy the cloister of the 
 same name. The buildings and all their art treasures ascend 
 in flames to heaven, that they may not form a shelter for the 
 godless ; meanwhile bands of women carry into the town all 
 the provisions that can be found in the neighbourhood. 
 Then precautions are taken for the safety of the walls and 
 protection against surprise. No sooner is the new kingdom 
 safe from the godless without, than it befits the saints to 
 destroy the godless within. What are these pictures, these 
 carvings, these coloured windows to the chosen of God ? 
 Symbols, which have long lost their meaning, badges of a slavery 
 which is past, signs of a faith in the letter ; they are but cursed 
 idols in the light of the new freedom. Let the stone prophets 
 and apostles come crashing from their niches ; carry out these 
 painted semblances of God and his saints, and burn these 
 abominations on the market-place ! Have we not prophets 
 and apostles of real flesh and blood, are not the saints 
 of New Sion better than these tawdry fictions, for God is 
 enshrined in their hearts ? Away with these outward forms, 
 these altar trappings, these gorgeous missals, these sacra- 
 mental cups ! The Spirit of God works within us, why mask 
 it in idle display ? Let us show our contempt for such devilish 
 delusions in the coarsest and most forcible fashion. But 
 further, these archives and documents, what need can there 
 be for such legal distinctions in Sion ? Naught of the past 
 remains holy ; wliat are these bones to us — bones of bishops 
 and saints, relics of men who lived in the age of sin ? On 
 to the dunghill with them, for they cannot help us to the 
 light of day ! So thought the Anabaptists, and stormed
 
 270 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 the churches, cleared out the relics, the art treasures, and 
 the labour of many a generation; what for years men in 
 faith had been creating, the folk of New Sion in faith 
 and a night destroyed. Barbarous, fanatic, the world has 
 called it ! Yet, while the Anabaptists cast down stone 
 images and burnt forms of canvas and paint, your prince- 
 bishop also played the iconoclast, — only his images were of 
 flesh and of blood. He drowned five Anabaptist women at 
 Wolbeck, he burnt five at Bevergem, — ten helpless, ignorant 
 souls, yet panting as all souls for life. What wonder the 
 saints in Miinster grew mad in their fancies, and madder 
 in their deeds ! Not only was ornament in the churches 
 o-rievous to the saints, but even the churches themselves." 
 God will not be worshipped in a temple made by human 
 hands. Let, then, these masses of stone be turned to 
 fitting purpose ; the cathedral and its close becomes Mount 
 Sion, the gathering-place for God's elect; the Church of 
 St. Lambert becomes St. Lambert's stone quarry, whence 
 all may fetch stone for building their houses or repairing the 
 city walls. A like fate meets the other sacred buildings, 
 and over their portals are inscribed new names : — ' Our 
 Lady's Quarry,' and so forth. Woe to the brother whose 
 unlucky tongue lets slip the old name! As penance he 
 shall be forced to drink " einen pot watter " ! ^ The 
 destruction, however, does not stop here ; the innumerable 
 spires and towers of the city are not only dangerous as 
 marks for the enemy's cannon, but are also reminiscences of 
 an idolatry which has obscured the knowledge of God ; so 
 our chilcben of the New Sion are "mighty to the pulling 
 down of strongholds, casting down imaginations, and every 
 high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God." 
 The convents, too, can be turned to useful purposes, when 
 once the idols have been destroyed and the idolaters ejected ; 
 for a home can be found in them for the crowd of Anabaptist 
 strangers. Not that ejection is always necessary, since 
 the nuns of St. iEgidius soon flock to be baptised, and their 
 
 1 Hdnrich Gresbecks Bericht iu the GeschichtsquelUn des Bistlmms Miinster, 
 Bd. 2.
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEE 271 
 
 sisters of Overrat follow. The true spirit of aceticism is 
 long since dead, and in the New Sion the nuns hope to 
 unite holiness and the pleasures of sense. Nor are some 
 of the monks behindhand, for we hear at least of one old 
 convent guardian who, remaining, took unto himself in the 
 latter dajs of Sion four wives ! 'Tis a poor race of folk this, 
 with none of the noble aims of early Christian asceticism, a 
 very dangerous earthly element in the new kingdom of the 
 spirit. Nay, a stupid little abbess, who with her nuns refuses 
 baptism, can tell us but little of the doings of the saints. 
 She has no conception of the meaning of this great religious 
 fermentation. It is all very wicked, all very terrible, all 
 comes of a runaway Wittenberg monk saying mass in 
 German, and administering the communion under two forms. 
 So she fled with her nuns to Hiltorppe, and there on the 
 first night they found nothing to eat and drink, and some of 
 the sisters were so very thirsty that they were compelled 
 to drink — water ! ^ Both the saints and godless seem to have 
 had a horror of water. Still one more test follows of the 
 faith of the saints. On the night of Thursday, the 26th, the 
 prophet Mathys preaches against the letter, and calls upon 
 the folk to destroy all the books in Israel, all except the 
 Bible. Books it is that have led men astray, twisting with 
 words, and quibbling o'er phrases. The truth has been 
 strangled in a network of written lies, and God could not 
 reach the heart of man. Pile up the books in the market- 
 place, the kingdom of Sion is based on the spirit, not the 
 letter, and the wisdom of the past is idle delusion in the 
 light of the new day. Ascend in flame, ye vain strivings of 
 the human brain ; Sion starts unhampered by your dark 
 questionings ; her knowledge springs directly from God ; her 
 wisdom is the outcome of inspiration ; she has naught to 
 do with the toiling, erring reason of the past ! 
 
 But not even yet is Sion purified, not even yet are the 
 godless sejjarated from the saints. On Friday, the last day 
 of the first week of the establishment of God's kingdom in 
 Mlinster, the prophets rush inspired through the streets with 
 
 1 Chronik des Schwcslcrhauses Niesinck in the Geschichtsquellcn.
 
 272 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 the cry : " Eepent, repent, ye godless ! Out of the city of 
 the blessed, ye idolaters ! God is aroused to punish you ! " 
 On the same day the saints hunt the godless out of the town ; 
 all who will not be baptised must go. The poor unfortunate 
 Evangelicals escape from the fury of the Anabaptists only to 
 fall into the hands of the bishop. The Syndic Van der Wieck 
 and two Lutheran preachers are promptly beheaded without 
 trial. What wonder that many remain and are baptised ? 
 For three days the cry of " Out with the godless ! " resounds 
 through the streets, for three days the prophets stand 
 baptising in the market - place. Before each prophet is 
 placed a pitcher of water, and as the folk come up one by 
 one and kneel before him, he exhorts the converts to 
 brotherly love, to leave the evil and follow the good ; then 
 he baptises them with three handfuls of water in the name 
 of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Each new 
 brother or sister is given a metal token with the letters 
 D. W. W. F. inscribed upon it : " Das Wort ward Fleisch," 
 — the Word became Flesh. Even when the baptising in the 
 market-place is over, the prophets go round the town baptis- 
 ing the old and feeble. Every house is inspected, and if any 
 godless are found, their property is seized for the benefit of 
 the community, while the owners are driven from their 
 homes. So at last the New Sion is purified! What is the 
 value of such a purification ? It might purge the ' Kingdom 
 of God ' of human foes ; could it reach the germs of disease 
 within the hearts of the saints themselves ? We have yet to 
 note how the ' rule of righteousness ' prospered in Sion ; how 
 unchangeable are the laws of human development ; how 
 inexorable the judgments of historical evolution. 
 
 II 
 
 The saints and the godless had been separated, but still 
 the folk of New Sion were not quite one at heart. There 
 were religious fanatics, who thought that all alike must share 
 their enthusiasm for the kingdom of righteousness ; there 
 were knaves, who had joined it simply for plunder, and would
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTER 273 
 
 not hesitate to convert it into an earthly hell ; there were 
 cowards, whom fear had impelled, and whose hands would fail 
 when most needed ; finally, there were the simpletons, who at 
 first were stirred by words, the meaning of which they scarcely 
 grasped, to join a fool's paradise, but whose spirit would die, 
 when their material wants were not supplied, and who would 
 in the end be butchered with small resistance — ignorant 
 simple folk, conscious of some great injustice, easily guided by 
 the stronger will, and then finally left to bear the brunt of 
 outraged and relentless authority. It was not long before 
 the lukewarm spirit showed itself, and called forth a terrible 
 judgment. One Hubert, a smith, as he kept watch on the 
 walls at night, ventured to say to some of his comrades: — 
 " The prophets will prophesy till they cost us our necks, for 
 the devil is in them." ^ Small wonder that the enthusiastic 
 brethren of Sion were shocked to find the godless within their 
 very ranks, a traitor within the purified city ! The saints 
 gathered in the market-place, and the wretched smith — he 
 who had been the first to dim the bright hopes of the New 
 Jerusalem — was led out into their midst. Then the prophets 
 sat in judgment, and declared the poor trembling sinner 
 worthy of death. " He had scorned the chosen of God — God 
 whose will it was that there should be naught impure in the 
 city. All sin must be rooted up, for the Lord wanted a holy 
 folk." Let us try for an instant to feel as those prophets felt ; 
 to feel that if once a citizen of Sion could doubt their mission, 
 nay, if once a shadow of doubt were allowed to settle in their 
 own minds, if once the cold touch of reason should question 
 their inspiration, then all the glorious hopes of this Kingdom 
 of God would crumble into the dust. It was based solely on 
 the saints' belief in the prophets, and on the prophets' belief 
 in themselves; they were the direct means of communication 
 between God and His chosen folk. And here came one out of 
 the very fold in the dawn of the new era, and ventured to 
 doubt — to doubt where the very suspicion of doubt meant the 
 madness of recognised self-delusion ! Nay, after the prophets 
 
 1 GheHbeclcs Bericht. Dorpius has the more expressive ''Sic siiui scheissoide 
 Projjhelen." 
 
 i8
 
 274 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 had fallen, even when they were questioned under torture, 
 they replied : " We have failed, yet still we were tools in God's 
 hand." Awful is that first judgment in Sion, but not more 
 awful than the maiden drowned in the horse-pond at Salzburg. 
 In old Germanic days the priests had Ijeen the executioners, 
 and now the prophets took upon themselves the dread office. 
 The trembling smith was led to the cathedral — to the Mount 
 of Sion ; there Jan, the prophet of Leyden, took a halberd and 
 struck twice at him, but in vain ; Death grimly refused its 
 prey. Back to prison the wounded man was taken, and a 
 strange scene followed. God had deprived the arm of their 
 prophet of strength, and the saints grovelling on their faces 
 in the market-place shrieked that Sion had lost the grace of 
 God ! Then the prophet Mathys orders the prisoner again to 
 be brought out and placed against the cathedral wall ; but he 
 will not stand, falls crosswise on the ground, and begs for 
 mercy. Mercy there is none in Sion, and Mathys takes a 
 musket and shoots him through the back. And still he does 
 not die. Then say the prophets : ' 'Tis the Lord's will that 
 he live.' Live, however, he cannot, and he dies within the 
 week. Such is the first blood shed in Sion, foretaste of the 
 flood to come. Mad, raving mad, judged the world, when it 
 heard of this and the like. ' Shoot them down like wild 
 beasts ! ' it cried. And the world was right : 'twas the only 
 way to cure the pest. But the world never learnt the lesson 
 — will it ever ? — the judgment of history on the crimes of 
 the past. It forgot the butchered Anabaptists of the decade 
 before ; it forgot the ' laver of degeneration ' it had itself 
 administered in the baptism of blood. 
 
 But let us turn for a moment from the darker side of the 
 picture, which will soon enough demand all our attention, to 
 glance at what too often is forgotten — the social reconstruc- 
 tion in Sion. So soon as the labour of separating the saints 
 from all taint of the godless was completed, the leaders began 
 to organise the new kingdom of righteousness according to 
 their glowing ideals of human perfection. First, a community 
 of goods was proclaimed. " Dear brothers and sisters, now 
 that we are a united folk, it is God's will that we bring
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTER 275 
 
 together all our money, silver and gold ; one shall have as much 
 as another. Let each bring his money to the exchequer in 
 the Council House. There will the Council sit to receive it." 
 So the prophets and the preachers arise and speak of the 
 mercy of God, and of brotherly love, calling upon all the saints, 
 with terrible anathemas against defaulters, to bring their 
 wealth to the common stock. In each parish three deacons 
 are appointed to collect aU the food, which is then stored in 
 houses hard by the gates. Here the common meals are held 
 — the women at one table and the men at another — while 
 some youth reads the weird and soul-stirring prophecies of 
 Isaiah or Daniel. The deacons have the entire domestic 
 economy in their hands, particularly the charge of the common 
 food and property. So great is at first the enthusiasm for the 
 commonweal, that even little children run about pointing out 
 hidden stores.^ The doors of the houses are to be left open 
 day and night, that all who will may enter ; only a hurdle is 
 allowed to keep out the pigs. Some half-dozen schools are 
 founded for the children, wherein they are taught to read and 
 write, and to recite the psalms ; but above all they learn the 
 doctrine of brotherly love, and the glorious future in store for 
 Sion. Once a week the children march in pairs to the 
 cathedral, hear one of the preachers, sing one or two psalms, 
 and return home in like fashion. Money, too, is coined in 
 Sion, not, however, for its inhabitants, but to bribe the men- 
 at-arms who serve the godless. Twelve elders are appointed, 
 and they sit morning and noon in the market - place to hear 
 plaint and administer justice. Terrible is the justice of the 
 saints, for a thief is a traitor to the brotherhood, and even 
 soldiers in Sion are shot for forcibly tapping a barrel of 
 beer. 
 
 Not all, however, is stern earnest in the city ; in these 
 first weeks the joy of the folk shows itself in coarse jest at the 
 bishop's expense. An old broken-down mare is driven out of 
 the city towards the bishop's camp, and tied to her tail is the 
 treaty of peace with its great episcopal seal, whereby his grace 
 
 1 The Lutheran Dorpius terms them " maidens possessed of the Devil, who 
 betrayed what was hidden." — E. i.
 
 276 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 had recovered the ' oxen ' captured at Telgte. Then with 
 ringing of bells a procession is formed, and a straw-stuffed 
 dummy covered over and over with papal bulls and indulgences 
 is conducted out of the gates and despatched in like fashion 
 towards the enemy's lines. Another time it is a huge tun 
 which arrives on a waggon without driver ; great is the 
 curiosity of the bishop and his court to know its contents, — 
 being opened, they find themselves mocked with Anabaptist 
 excrement pure and simple ! Nor do the saints content 
 themselves merely with jests ; they make successful sorties, 
 carry off gunpowder and spike guns even under the very nose 
 of his episcopal grace. There is small discipline in the 
 bishop's camp, and the appeal to his neighbours for aid is but 
 slowly complied with. Later, diuing the siege, we hear of a 
 mock mass in the cathedral ; fools dressed in priest's raiment 
 officiate, while the folk offer rubbish, filth, and dead rats at 
 the altar ; and the whole is concluded with a sham fight in 
 the aisle. Upon another occasion the chancel is turned into 
 a stage, and the play of the rich man and Lazarus is given. 
 Merrily the three pipers play accompaniment, and the devil 
 fetching the rich man to hell causes the building to ring 
 with laughter. But this is in the latter days of Sion, when 
 Sion has chosen a king, and suspicion stalks darkly amid 
 the starving Anabaptists. The farce ends with tragedy. 
 Sion's ruler has reason to suspect the queen's lacquey who acts 
 the rich man ; and the rich man is dragged from hell to be 
 hanged on a tree in the market-place. There was small room 
 for jest in those latter days of Sion. 
 
 Yet at first even the most fanatical could unbend, and 
 we hear that when the sternest Anabaptists were together 
 " they sat joyously over the table, and all their talk was 
 not of the Lord, of Paul, or of the holiness of life." ^ Shortly 
 before Easter we find the arch-prophet Mathys with his wife 
 Divara — the young and the beautiful, for whom he had 
 thrown off a union of the flesh — at a marriage-feast. Who 
 shall say what dark thoughts had entered the mind of the 
 austere prophet ? Had he seen a glimpse of the spiritual 
 1 Greshecks Bericht.
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEE 277 
 
 decay which was soon to fall over the New Sion ? Had he 
 doubts as to the future, mistrust of himself ? Did the shadow 
 of the butchered smith haunt his mind ? Who shall say ? We 
 know only, that in the midst of the general joy, Mathys was 
 suddenly moved by the Spirit, he raised his hands above his 
 head, his whole frame shook, and it appeared as if the hour of 
 death were upon him. The bridal party sat in hushed fear. 
 Then the prophet arose and said with a sigh : " dear Father, 
 not as I will, but rather as thou wilt." Giving to each his 
 hand and a kiss, he added : ' God's peace be with you,' and 
 left the gathering. A few hours after the saints in Mtinster 
 learnt that their chief prophet seizing a pike, and crying like 
 a madman : " With the help of the heavenly Father I will 
 put the foe to flight and free Jerusalem," — had rushed out of 
 the gates, followed by a few fanatic enthusiasts, and had been 
 slaughtered by the bishop's troops. So the first and chief 
 prophet of Miinster, honest and true to his idea, died before 
 the moral decay of the saints. He may have been a fanatic, 
 his idea may have been false ; still he fought and died for a ^ 
 spiritual notion — his grace the bishop fought and triumphed <- 
 for himself ! 
 
 Strange scenes follow the death of Mathys. The prophets 
 and the folk gather in the market-place crying, " God, grant 
 us thy love ! O Father, give us thy grace ! " In the most 
 abject fashion the saints grovel on the ground. Women and 
 maidens go dancing through the streets with wild cries. 
 With loosened hair and disordered dress they dance and 
 shriek till their faces grow pale as death, and they fall 
 exhausted to the ground. There they strike their naked 
 breasts with clenched fists, tear out their hair in handfuls, 
 and roll in the mud. But the youthful Jan of Leyden arises 
 and proclaims that God will grant them a greater prophet 
 even than Mathys. For long ago he saw a vision, wherein 
 Mathys was bored through with a pike, and the voice of God 
 bade him take the lost prophet's wife as his own.^ So the 
 
 1 Even in his confession under torture Jan maintained the truth of this 
 vision, and his own wonder when it was fullilled. (/cschichlsquellcn des 
 Bisthums Miinster.
 
 278 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 folk cries, " Grant it, Father, grant it ! " and from this day Jan 
 is the chief ruler in Siou. Unfortunately, however, the young- 
 prophet is already wed to a serving-maid of Knipperdollinch's, 
 and how can he take in addition the beautiful Divara ? For 
 three days and three nights he remains in a state of trance, 
 and then the power of evil triumphs, the floodgates of social 
 license are thrown open, and Jan Bockelson awakes to preach 
 the gospel of sense. In tlie one scale arc the sensuous vigour 
 of youth, the feeling of power, the animal will ; in the other 
 the hope of a new future for men, the rule of human love, 
 the old moral restraints based on the experience of long 
 generations. Sensuous pleasure and the toil of self-renuncia- 
 tion, — 'tis an old struggle which has oft recurred in history, 
 and is like to recur, till centuries of progress shall perchance 
 harmonise the material and spiritual in man. And what 
 remains to restrain the youtliful tailor of Leyden, filled as 
 he is with the consciousness of will and of power ? There is 
 no respect for the slowly acquired wisdom of the past, for 
 the past is cursed with sin ; — no appeal to the common sense 
 of the folk is possible, for God dictates truth through the 
 prophets only. Nay, there is this great danger in Sion — 
 the women far outnumber the men — and in the hysterical 
 religion of the female saints the sensuous impulse is strong. 
 So it comes about that Jan preaches the gospel of sense. 
 The preachers and the twelve elders declare that a man may 
 have more wives than one. God has bid his chosen people 
 ' be fruitful and multiply.' None shall remain single, but 
 every Anabaptist bring up children to be saints in Sion. It 
 is said that at first even some of the saints resisted this new 
 license, but that the unmarried women themselves dragged 
 the cannon to the market-place, and were mainly instru- 
 mental in destroying all opposition. Be this as it may, it 
 is certain that on Good Friday, April 14, the prophet Jan, 
 amid the ringing of bells and the rejoicing of the folk, marries 
 Divara, widow of the prophet of Haarlem. From that date 
 onward the number of Jan's wives increases tiU they reach, 
 besides their chief, Divara, the goodly total of fourteen. 
 Eottmann had four wives, and Knipperdollinch and other
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN" MUNSTEE 2V9 
 
 leaders at least the same number. No woman might refuse 
 marriage, though she might reject any proposed husband. 
 Girls of tender age were given to the saints, and even the old 
 women in Miinster were distributed as wives among the folk, 
 who had to look after them and see they fully grasped the 
 great Anabaptist doctrines. " Dear brothers and sisters," 
 said the preachers, " all too long have ye lived in a heathen 
 state, and there has been no true marriage." Simple in the 
 extreme was the new ceremony. The man went with a few 
 friends to the home of the woman, and both taking hands in 
 the presence of their friends proclaimed themselves husband 
 and wife. But polygamy brings almost at once a grotesque 
 judgment on the saints of Sion, for the wives quarrel endlessly 
 with one another, and the saints have no peace at home. 
 Daily cases of fighting and disorder among the women come 
 before the twelve Elders, and imprisonment is found useless. 
 So at last Bannock-Bernt declares that the sword will be 
 tried, but the mere threat loses its force after a while, and 
 several women have to be executed. The leaders finding still 
 that no punishment avails, bid all the women, who will, come 
 to the Council House. There several hundred women who 
 have been forced into marriage or are tired of polygamy, give 
 in their names. Summoned a few days afterwards before 
 the Elders they are declared free from their husbands, and 
 the preachers rising in the market - place proclaim them 
 cursed of God, and body and soul the Devil's ! The veil is 
 best drawn over this plague-spot in Miinster ; suffice it, if the 
 reader remember that 'tis ever at work undermining the 
 Kingdom of Sion, that it leads to terrible abuses, and ends, 
 as that kingdom totters to its fall, in little short of sexual 
 anarchy. 
 
 EvenTn Miinster great social changes are not completed 
 without rebellion. A less fanatical group, aided by the native 
 saints, who by no means approve of the connnunity of goods, 
 suddenly rises, and, seizing the prophets and Knipperdollinch, 
 imprisons them in the Council House cellar. The uxorious 
 preacher Schlachtscliap is torn from the midst of liis wives, 
 and placed in the pillory, where women, witli old-fashioned
 
 280 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 ideas, pelt him with dung and stones, asking wlietlier he wants 
 more wives, or if he does not now think one enough ? The fate 
 of Sion hangs in the balance, and a messenger is despatched 
 to the bishop's camp. But before he is out of the town, the 
 strangers from Holland and Friesland have seized the gates, 
 and are marching six hundred strong upon the Council House. 
 There is a short but severe fight, the defenders firing from 
 the windows upon the strangers below ; but alas ! they have 
 been spending the night in drinking from the stores in 
 the town cellar, and the Dutchmen force their way in 
 and make some 120 prisoners. Terrible is the vengeance 
 of the enraged fanatics. Jan of Leyden, Knipperdolliuch, 
 the twelve Elders, and the prophets being released, cause 
 the rioters to be brought out daily in batches of ten ; 
 then some are shot, some beheaded, some stabbed with 
 daggers. Whoever desires to kill a traitor to Sion, may 
 take one and slay him as he pleases. For four or five days 
 the massacre lasts, the bodies being cast into two large pits 
 in the cathedral close. Awful is this dance of death, this 
 masquerade of loosened passion ; but those who will learn 
 its lesson must ever remember the ' baptism of blood.' At 
 last the fury of the fanatics is glutted, the remaining prisoners 
 are pardoned and taken into the cloister of St. George, where 
 many-wived Schlachtschap, mounted on a high stool, preaches 
 a sermon to them on their crime ; how they have acted against 
 the will of God and must thank him that they have received 
 grace. The preacher addresses each by name, and tells him 
 how he has sinned against the brothers and sisters in Sion. 
 They have been received into the fold again, may they duly 
 appreciate such mercy.^ There must have been many sore 
 hearts in Sion, many weary and sick of this Kingdom of 
 God, and yet enthusiasm was not dead, it wanted but 
 opportunity to show itself with all the force of old. 
 
 Since February the bishop had made but little progress, 
 and even within his camp he could not feel safe from the 
 fanaticism of these strange children of Sion. A curious 
 incident had happened about Easter. A maiden of the 
 
 ^ GreshecJcs Bericht.
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEE 281 
 
 Anabaptists, Hilla Feichen by name/ had heard the story of 
 Judith and Holofernes read aloud at the common meal. 
 Inspired by it, she determined to repeat the deed on the 
 shameless bishop in his camp at Telgte. She announced 
 this as the will of God to his prophets, and they allowed the 
 damsel to go. Dressed in her best and adorned with gold 
 rings, the present of Kuipperdollinch, she arrived at the hostile 
 camp. Only, poor deluded child, to fall into the hands of the 
 men-at-arms, to excite suspicion by her wondrous garb, to be 
 tortured, to confess, and pay for the wild vision with her life. 
 Why should her name not be remembered along with those 
 whose bearers have planned nobler, if less heroic deeds? 
 There was power, there was genius in Hilla, had the world 
 brought it to fairer bloom, had it not been poisoned in this 
 slough of profanation at Miinster ! By the following Whit- 
 suntide the bishop feels strong enough to attack the town by 
 storm ; and now an opportunity presents itself to the in- 
 habitants of Sion to show in mass the enthusiasm of Hilla. 
 Men, women, and children flock to the walls on the first 
 report ; only the aged and sick are left in the town. Out of 
 every hole and corner, from every rampart boiling oil and 
 water, melted lead and glowing lime — a perfect devil's broth, 
 is poiured upon the foe. Blazing wreaths of tar are thrown 
 round the necks of the bishop's soldiers, a hail of shot and 
 stones greets them as they approach. She-devils on the wall 
 batter with pitchforks the skulls of those who mount scaling 
 ladders. The folk of Sion are mad in their rage, as though 
 the oppression of years, the whole ' baptism of blood ' were to 
 be avenged in this one day. " Are ye come at last ? Three 
 or four nights have we baked and boiled for you ; the broth 
 has long been ready, had ye but come ! " Once, twice, thrice, 
 the men-at-arms rushed to the storm ; once, twice, thrice, a 
 shattered remnant retired. Theirs is the bull's love of fight, 
 but not the enthusiasm which springs from an idea. Tlieir 
 pluck fails and they retreat. The de lenders mockingly shout : 
 
 ' See her confession in Nicserts Munstcrischc Urkiindcnsamvilinuj, B<1. I., 
 and also the confessions of Jan of Leydeii and Knipperdollinch in the (leschichis- 
 quellcn.
 
 282 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 — " Come again, come again, will ye already fly ? surely the 
 storm might last the whole day." Tlien the Anabaptists 
 fall upon their knees and sing : " If the Lord himself had not 
 been on our side when men rose up against us, then they had 
 swallowed us up quick." Jan of Leyden and the minor 
 prophets go dancing and singing through the streets : " Dear 
 brothers, have we not a strong God ? He has helped us. It 
 has not been done by our own power. Let us rejoice, and 
 thank the Father." The inspired declare approaching de- 
 liverance ; Christ will come at once and found the 1000 years' 
 kingdom of the saints. There is new unity in Sion, fresh 
 hope and fresh enthusiasm. God has been but trying his 
 saints. His grace the bishop has also learnt a lesson, in 
 future he will adopt the surer method of blockade, he will 
 shut these fanatics up till starvation has won the battle for 
 him. So, as aid comes in from his allies, he completely cuts 
 Milnster off from the outer world, and Sion becomes the centre 
 of an impassable circle of blockhouses. 
 
 The victory seems to have brought new inspiration to Jan 
 Bockelson. Were but the hand of one strong man to guide 
 these enthusiasts, surely the kingdom of Sion might even now 
 be established, even now the elements of decay might be cut 
 off, and the baser, selfish passions of the saints subdued. The 
 thought in the man becomes the will of God in the prophet. 
 A revelation comes to Jan that he is called to be king of the 
 New Jerusalem — nay, king over the whole world, the viceroy 
 of God on earth ; a lord of righteousness, who shall punish 
 all unrighteousness throughout the world. Nor does the re- 
 velation come to Jan alone. On June 24 — Johannistag, 
 mysterious and holy sun-feast — Johann Dusentschuer, formerly 
 a goldsmith of Warendorff, but now a prophet of the Lord, 
 stumps, so fast as his lameness will allows through the streets 
 of Sion, crying to the folk to assemble in the market-place. 
 There the limping prophet throws himself upon the ground, and 
 declares the will of heaven. God has ordained that Jan of 
 Leyden, the holy prophet, shall be king over the whole world, 
 over all emperors, kings, princes, lords, and potentates. He 
 alone shall rule, and none above him. He shall take the
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MtJNSTEE 283 
 
 kingdom and the throne of David his father, till the Lord 
 God requires it again of him. Then the folk look to their 
 beloved prophet, and he, falling on his knees, tells them his 
 revelation. " God has chosen me for a king over the whole 
 earth. Yet further I say to you, dear brothers and sisters, I 
 would rather be a swineherd, rather take the plough, rather 
 delve, than thus be a king. What I do, I must do, since the 
 Lord has chosen me." Many another king has fancied himself 
 appointed by heaven with as little justification ; few have 
 been so successful in convincing their subjects of their divine 
 right. The bride Divara comes out among the people. The 
 limping prophet, taking a salve, anoints the new king, and 
 presents him with a huge sword of battle ; the twelve Elders 
 lay their weapons at his feet, and the tailor-monarch calls 
 upon heaven to witness his promise to rule his people in the 
 spirit of the Lord, and to judge them with the righteousness 
 of heaven. Then the excited folk dance round their king 
 and queen, singing: — "Honour alone to God on high!" 
 Mock - majesty forsooth ; but the divinity which hedges a 
 king has oft been more grotesque. Sion, like Israel, has 
 passed from a theocracy to an autocracy; but there is no 
 Nathan to check its ruler, because he himself is chief 
 prophet. 
 
 The sovereign of Sion — although ' since the flesh is dead, 
 gold to him is but as dung ' — yet thinks fit to appear in all 
 the pomp of earthly majesty. He appoints a court, of which 
 Knipperdollinch is chancellor, and wherein there are many 
 oflficers from chamberlain to cook. He forms a body-guard, 
 whose members are dressed in silk. Two pages wait upon 
 the king, one of whom is a son of his grace the bishop of 
 Milnster} The great officers of state are somewhat wondrously 
 attired, one breech red, the other grey, and on the sleeves of 
 their coats are embroidered the arms of Sion — the earth- 
 sphere pierced by two crossed swords, a sign of universal sway 
 and its instruments — while a golden finger-ring is token of 
 their authority in Sion. The king himself is magnificently 
 
 1 Newe ZeytuTig von den JFida-iUuffem zu Milnster, 1535. Usuiilly found 
 with Luther's preface : A^if die Ncwe Zajlung vmi Miinnter.
 
 284 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 arrayed iu gold and purple, and as insignia of his office, he 
 causes sceptre and spurs of gold to be made. Gold ducats are 
 melted down to form crowns for the queen and himself; and 
 lastly a golden globe pierced by two swords and surmounted 
 by a cross with the words ; " A King of Eighteousness o'er 
 all " is borne before him. The attendants of the Chancellor 
 KnipperdoUinch are dressed in red with the crest, a hand 
 raising aloft the sword of justice. Nay, even the queen and 
 the fourteen queenlets must have a separate court and brilliant 
 uniforms. Thrice a week the king goes in glorious array to 
 the market-place accompanied by his body-guards and officers 
 of state, while behind ride the fifteen queens. On the market- 
 place stands a magnificent throne with silken cushions and 
 canopy, whereon the tailor - monarch takes his seat, and 
 alongside him sits his chief queen. KnipperdoUinch sits at 
 his feet. A page on his left bears the book of the law, the 
 Old Testament ; another on his right an unsheathed sword. 
 The book denotes that he sits on the throne of David ; the 
 sword that he is the king of the just, who is appointed to 
 exterminate all unrighteousness. Bannock-Bernt is court- 
 chaplain, and preaches in the market-place before the king. 
 The sermon over, justice is administered, often of the most 
 terrible kind ; and then in like state the king and his court 
 return home. On the streets he is greeted with cries of: 
 " Hail in the name of the Lord. God be praised ! " There can 
 be small doubt that the show at first rouses the flagging 
 spirits of the saints in Sion. 
 
 The new government is more communistic even than the 
 old. To the limping prophet Dusentschuer God has revealed 
 how much clothing a Christian brother or sister ought to 
 possess. A Christian brother shall not have more than two 
 coats, two pair of breeches, and three shirts — a Christian sister 
 not more than one frock, a jacket, a cloak, two pair of sleeves, 
 two collars, two ' par hosen und vehr hemede ' ; while four pair 
 of sheets shall suffice for each bed. The deacons go around 
 the town with waggons to collect the surplus clothing : " God's 
 peace be with you, dear brothers and sisters. I come at the 
 bidding of the Lord, as his prophet has announced to you, and
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTER 285 
 
 must see what you have in your house. Have you more than 
 is fitting, that we must take from you in the name of the 
 Lord, and give it to those who have need. Have you want 
 of aught, that for the Lord's sake shall be given to you 
 according to your necessity." So the deacons return with 
 waggon-loads of clothes, which are distributed among the poorer 
 brethren, or stored for the use of the saints, whom God will 
 soon lead into Miinster.^ Then comes an order for the inter- 
 change of houses, for no brother must look upon anything as 
 his own, and it is but right that all should share in turn 
 whatever accommodation Sion provides. 
 
 But difiiculties are coming upon the Kingdom of God in 
 Mlinster, which no system of government will obviate, no 
 amount of show drive from the thoughts of the saints. 
 Provisions are becoming scarcer, and though the prophets 
 announce the relief of the town before the New Year, yet 
 they permit the pavements to be pulled up, and the streets 
 sown with corn and vegetables. As want becomes more 
 urgent, despair begins to find more willing votaries, and 
 fanaticism takes darker and more gloomy forms. Fits of 
 inspiration become more frequent and more general among 
 the saints ; while at the same time social restraint becomes 
 weaker, and the grotesque yet terrible union of the gospels 
 of sense and of righteousness presents us with stranger and 
 stranger phases of this human riddle. Two maidens, eight 
 or nine years old, go about begging from all the brothers 
 whom they meet their coloured knee - ribbons ; from the 
 sisters their ornamental tuckers; they pretend to be dumb, 
 and when they do not get what they want, they try to seize 
 it, or grow furious. What they do get they burn. The 
 same children are attacked by the ' spirit,' and in fits of 
 inspiration require each four women to hold them. The 
 prophets themselves, from the king downwards, are often 
 'possessed of God,' and rush through the streets with the 
 
 1 Tlie chief authority for the aljove account is Grcsbrck. His story of the 
 last days of Mlinster seems the fullest and least biassed. ' Two pair sleeves," 
 iwe, par mouiocn, would have heen more intelligible two centuries earlier, when 
 ladies used their enormous sleeves as wraiJpers.
 
 286 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 wildest cries ; or again they will give themselves up entirely 
 to pleasure, and throughout the night dance with their wives 
 to the sound of drum and pipe. Soon, too, a new freak of 
 fanaticism seizes the limping prophet. He declares that 
 after three trumpet blasts the Lord will relieve Sion, then 
 without clothes or treasure the saints shall march out of 
 Mlinster. At the third blast all shall assemble on Mount 
 Sion and take their last meal in the city. Twice the 
 stillness of the night is broken by the trumpet blast of the 
 limper. All wait the fortnight which must precede its last 
 peal. Again it is heard in Sion, and men, women, and 
 children collect in the cathedral close. Two thousand armed 
 men, some nine thousand women with bundles containing the 
 little treasures they have preserved from the grasp of the 
 deacons, and twelve hundred children await the will of God 
 on Mount Sion. Then the king comes in state with his 
 queens, and explains that 'tis only a trial of God to mark out 
 the faithful. ' Now, dear brothers, lay aside your arms, and 
 let each take his wives and sit at the tables, and be joyous in 
 the name of the Lord.' Long lines of tables, and benches 
 have been arranged in the close, and here the disappointed 
 saints sit themselves down. But the meal itself, though it 
 consists only of hard beef followed by cake — probably a rare 
 feast even in those days ^ — arouses the drooping spirits of 
 the Anabaptists. The king and his court wait upon the 
 populace, and the preachers go about talking to the brothers 
 and sisters. The limper proclaims that there are some on 
 the Mount of Sion who before the clock strikes twelve shall 
 have been alive and dead. Little notice is taken of the 
 prophecy, as the saints are cheered with the unwonted food 
 and drink. 'Tis true that KnipperdoUinch desires to be 
 beheaded by the king, as he feels confident of r(>surrection 
 within three days, but the king will not comply with his 
 request ; Jan has some other fiilfilment of the prophecy in 
 view. After the meal the king and queen break up wheat 
 cakes and distribute them among the populace, saying : ' Take, 
 eat and proclaim the death of the Lord.' Then they bring a 
 
 1 Newe Zeytmiq, die IViderteuffer zu Miinster belangende. MDXXXV.
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEE 287 
 
 can of wine and pass it round with the words : — ' Take and 
 drink ye of it, and let every one proclaim the death of the 
 Lord.' So all break bread and drink together, and then the 
 hymn is sung : — ' Honour alone to God on high.' After this 
 the limping prophet mounts a stool, and announces a new 
 revelation. He has in his hand a list of nearly all the 
 prophets in Sion, divided into four groups : — " Dear brothers, 
 I tell you as the word of God, you shall before night leave 
 this city, and enter Warendorff, and shall there announce the 
 peace of the Lord. If they will not receive your peace, so 
 shall the town be immediately swallowed up and consumed 
 with the fire of hell." Then he throws at the feet of the 
 prophets one -fourth of his list, with the names of eight 
 servants of God who are to proclaim the glory of Sion in 
 Warendorff. In like words he bids three other groups of 
 prophets go to the ' three other quarters of the world ' — 
 Ossenbrugge, Coisfelt, and Soist, he himself being among 
 the last. All declare that they will carry out God's will. 
 Then Jan the king mounts the stool, and cries to the folk 
 that owing to the anger of God he renounces the sceptre in 
 Sion, but the prophet Dusentschuer promptly replaces him, 
 and bids him punish the unjust. The king sets himself at 
 table with the twenty-four prophets who are about to depart 
 on their mission. As it grows dark the regal fanatic stands 
 up, and bids his attendants bring up a trooper captm'ed from 
 the bishop's army, and with him the sword of justice. The 
 word of God has come to him, this trooper has been present 
 at the meal of the Lord. He is Judas, and the king himself 
 will punish the unjust. In vain the trooper begs for mercy ; 
 he is forced upon his knees, and the tailor-king beheads him, 
 so fulfilling the limper's prophecy. Thus ends in bloodshed, 
 in dire fanaticism, the Lord's supper among his saints. 'Tis 
 autumn now, and yet no relief; can God have forgotten his 
 chosen folk in Miinster ? 
 
 What of the prophets that go forth ? Some fall at once 
 into the hands of the bishop, others arrive at the four towns 
 to which they were despatched and begin preaching in the 
 streets : " Kepent, repent, for the Lord is angry, and will
 
 288 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 punish mankind." They are seized at once by the authorities, 
 and examined under torture. They remain firm, and only 
 confess that since the time of the a])Ostles there have been 
 but two true prophets, Mathys of Haarlem, and Bockelson of 
 Leyden, and two false prophets, Luther and the Pope — and 
 of these Luther is more harmful than the Po'pe. So all the 
 twenty-four but one meet with a martyr's death. That one 
 — I'rophet Heinrich — had been despatched with two hundred 
 gulden and a ' banner of the righteous.' He was to place the 
 banner upon the bridge at De venter, and when the Ana- 
 baptists had flocked to his standard, he was to lead them to 
 the relief of Sion. So soon as the banner reappeared near the 
 blockhouses, the saints would flock out to meet it. Prophet 
 Heinrich, however, with his gulden and banner, goes straight 
 to the bishop, and writes to the town bidding the saints 
 surrender and receive the bishop's grace. But the saints are 
 not yet so hungry that they cannot scorn a traitor. Bannock- 
 Bernt preaches against the false prophet Heinrich : " Dear 
 brothers and sisters, let it not seem strange to you, that false 
 prophets should rise up amongst us. We are warned thereof 
 in Scripture. Such an one was Heinrich. "We have only 
 lost two hundred gulden with him." But the Anabaptists 
 are not content with sending out prophets. Bannock-Bernt 
 writes a book, the Restitution, painting the glories of Sion 
 and the wrath of God ; it is to be scattered among the 
 bishop's soldiers, in the hope that they may desert. He 
 writes another work also, the Book of Vengeance, which is to 
 be sent into Friesland and Holland. " Vengeance shall be 
 accomplished on the powerful of earth, and when accom- 
 plished, the new heaven and the new earth shall appear for 
 the folk of God." " God will make iron claws and iron horns 
 for his folk ; the ploughshare and the axe shall be made into 
 sword and pike. They will set up a leader, unfurl the 
 banner, and blow upon the trumpet. A wild, unmerciful 
 people will they stir up against Babylon ; in all shall they 
 requite Babylon for what she has done — yea doubly shall 
 Babylon be requited." " Therefore, dear brothers, arm your- 
 selves for battle, not only with the meek weapons of the
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTER 289 
 
 apostle for suffering, but with the noble armour of David for 
 vengeance, in order with God's strength and help to exter- 
 minate all the power of Babylon and all godlessness. Be 
 undaunted, and hazard wealth, wife, child, and life." ^ Some 
 thousand copies of this Booh of Vengeance are smuggled 
 through the bishop's lines. The Anabaptists in Holland 
 and Friesland begin to stir, and gather together in various 
 places, intending to march for the relief of Miinster. Poor 
 ignorant folk, ill-armed and undisciplined, they are shot down 
 and massacred wherever found. In Amsterdam they seize 
 the Council House, but are soon defeated and captured. 
 "While still living the prisoners have their hearts torn out 
 and flung in their faces, then they are beheaded, quartered, 
 and impaled. So a terrible sequel is added to Eottmann's 
 Book of Vengeance, and all hope of outside relief vanishes. 
 
 Worse and worse grow matters in Sion ; a new prophet 
 of the future, noiseless and yet awfully explicit, replaces the 
 twenty-four martyrs : Starvation begins to preach among the 
 saints. As despair increases, madness and lust stride forward 
 too. ' Let us enjoy while we can, for to-morrow we shall be 
 slain ' — becomes the watchword of a larger and larger party 
 in Sion. At the New Year the king prophesies sure deliver- 
 ance at Easter. " If salvation come not," he cries, " then hew 
 off my head, as I now hew off the head of him who stands 
 before me." Executions by the ' King of Eighteousness ' are 
 now commonplace to the saints. Everything is done to keep 
 the folk employed, to distract their attention from the grim 
 prophet. All preparations are made for the relief which is 
 impossible ; a waggon-camp is constructed to be used on the 
 march from Miinster. A sham battle is held on the market- 
 place ; a battalion of female saints is formed to assist in the 
 glorious campaign which approaches ; the folk is summoned 
 to tlie market-place and formed into two divisions, one of 
 which is to be left to guard Miinster. Twelve dukes are 
 named, and the lands of the world distributed among them ; 
 tailors, cobblers, pedlars, sword -makers and what-not are 
 appointed rulers of the world ; for the present they must 
 ' Tlieie is a icj)ririt of the Btricht van der Wrake, by Bouterwek, 1864. 
 
 19
 
 290 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 content themselves with small districts in the city, where 
 they strive to keep the people quiet. Poor, miserably poor 
 comfort this to the saints, who now are thinking the flesh of 
 horse and dog luxuries, who are eating bark, roots, and dried 
 grass ! The gilt, too, is wearing off from royalty in Sion. 
 One of the queenlets. Else Gewandscherer, grows sick of her 
 life, throws her trinkets at the feet of the king, and asks to 
 be allowed to leave Sion. Poor Jan ! Is enthusiasm utterly 
 dead among his nearest ? Shall they be examples of cowardice 
 and treachery to the lesser saints in Sion ? On to the 
 market-place with her and fetch the sword of righteousness ! 
 There let her bite the dust — the very corpse spurned by the 
 foot of its lord — example of disloyalty, of faithlessness to the 
 few who can take aught to heart in Miinster, So the 
 trembling wives of the king sing ' Honour alone to God on 
 high,' as they stand round the headless form of their fellow. 
 
 At last Easter comes, and of course no relief. The king 
 summons the folk to the market-place. He asks whether 
 they will venture to fix a time for God ? Not material relief 
 had been prophesied, but only salvation from sin. He, Jan 
 the prophet, has been laden with all their sins, and they in 
 heart and spirit are now free. It cannot last very much 
 longer, and not even a rule of terror will restrain for ever the 
 starving folk. Execute twenty a day, and treat the suspected 
 traitor with every horror you please — yet it must end at last. 
 A wild demoniac dance are these latter days of Sion. Terror 
 and jest trying to fight it out with starvation. Day by day 
 something new must be found to keep the folk engaged. 
 First a religious fete. Gaily attired their king reclines at a 
 window in the market-place, reads from the Book of Kings 
 how David fought, and how an angel from heaven came with 
 a glowing sword and slew his foes. " Dear brothers, that can 
 happen to us, 'tis the same God that still lives." ' StiU lives,' 
 and yet makes no move to help you, poor fanatics ? What 
 terrible doubt those words must have raised in the souls of 
 the starving saints of Miinster ! ' Still lives,' and leaves you 
 to perish, you misguided, mad, oppressed folk ! Peace, — you 
 are judged and condemned. Then the school-children come
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEE 291 
 
 with their teachers, and sing psalms — wan, pale little faces, 
 it were best not to sing, for singing only increases the void. 
 Finally Bannock-Bernt concludes with a sermon from the 
 window. But religious nourishment is a poor thing on an 
 empty stomach, and Jan tries next a more lively entertain- 
 ment. Another great folk-meal is held in the market-place, 
 but this time there is only bread and beer. After it is over, 
 the king and his officers, midst blowing of trumpets, ride 
 with spears at a wreath stuck on a pole, and marksmen fire 
 at a popinjay. Then the folk play at ball and all this : 
 because ' it is the will of God.' Home again they go, chant- 
 ing : ' Honour alone to God on high.' How hollow, how 
 mocking it sounds now, when it is compared with the 
 enthusiastic shout of the first weeks of Sion ! The next day 
 another section of the people is fed, and afterwards there is a 
 general dance on the market-place, the king and queen leading 
 off. Picture the emaciated, hunger -torn, lust -worn, and 
 passionate faces of those despairing Anabaptists, as they 
 danced before the Council House in Miinster. Grimmest of 
 jests — that dancing can stave off starvation ! Bannock-Bernt 
 preaches that ' it is God's will ' that those who can shall 
 dance and enjoy themselves. Every restraint has long since 
 vanished in Sion. But will any such sensuous, physical joy 
 stand as a substitute for bread ? 'Tis a dance of devils, not 
 of men — or rather, a dance of death where skeletons only 
 appear, to drag off themselves as prey. What a strange r6le 
 to be playing in the world's drama ; where shall we seek the 
 answer to this weird riddle ? 
 
 Yet another day and all the leaders of Sion seem them- 
 selves to enter into the dire humour of this very devil's jest. 
 The starving folk are again gathered in the market-place. 
 In vain the deacons have gone round searching every house, 
 and finding naught beyond pitiable scraps hidden in the 
 mattresses or under the eaves. Something must be done to 
 occupy the minds of the people. Suddenly Knipperdollinch 
 is moved by the spirit : " Holy, lioly, holy is the Lord ! " he 
 shouts, — " Holy is the Father, and we are a holy folk." Then 
 he begins to dance, and all the people wait in expectation, till
 
 292 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 he dances before the king, and cries to him : " Sir King, a 
 vision has come to me o'er night. I shall be your fool." 
 After a while he continues : — " Sir King, good-day to you ! 
 Why do you sit here, Sir King ? " Then KnipperdoUinch turns 
 to the king, sits down at his feet, and grins like a practised 
 jester : " Mark you well. Sir King, how we will march, when 
 we leave Mlinster to punish the godless." The new prophet- 
 fool now takes an axe, and struts about among the folk, 
 mocking them. He tumbles over the benches ; he proclaims 
 this or that man or woman holy, and kisses them : — " Thou 
 art holy, God has sanctified thee ! " He refuses to ' sanctify ' 
 the old women, and one who comes forward is threatened with 
 a cudgelling. He makes no attempt, however, to ' blow the 
 spirit of holiness ' into the king. But after awhile Jan liim- 
 self is moved by the spirit ; his sceptre falls from his hands, 
 and he drops from his throne upon the ground. Now the 
 women are all seized with inspiration, and shriek in chorus. 
 Knipperdolhnch comes and picks Jan up, replaces him upon 
 the throne, and blows the spirit into him. Then the king 
 arises and cries : " Dear brothers and sisters, what great joy I 
 see ! The town goes round and round, and you all appear as 
 angels. Each one of you is more glorious than the other, so 
 holy are you all at once become ! " The women shriek : 
 ' Father ! ' Again the spirit comes upon the king. He ex- 
 plains the fact of the ' town going round and round ' to mean 
 that the Anabaptists will march round the earth. In the 
 midst of his explanations, however, he spies a man among the 
 folk in a grey cap, and orders him to come up to the throne. 
 All expect he will behead him, but instead he puts the 
 trembling saint on his own seat, then he hugs him and blows 
 the spirit into him. Placing a ring on his finger, he declares 
 it all a revelation from God. Upon this the honoured saint 
 begins to dance, and behaves as one possessed of the devil, 
 till from sheer exhaustion he falls to the ground. • So ends 
 this wonderful day in Miinster ! ^ These starving Anabap- 
 tists are nigh madmen now ; religion has become an absolute 
 mockery ; morality is dead ; yet immorality is dying too, and 
 
 1 Gresbecls Bericht.
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MtJNSTEK 293 
 
 the starving man gazes wildly round on the half-dozen wives 
 who would share his crust. The sooner his grace the bishop 
 puts the epilogue to the tragic farce the better now. Let 
 him come in and butcher what remains. Again we ask : 
 What is the key to the riddle ? The finger of philosophic 
 history points unregarded to the generations of oppression, to 
 the baptism of blood. Will the world ever learn to educate 
 its toilers, and to redeem them from serfdom ? Or must the 
 old tale ever repeat itself — misery, dogmatic stones instead of 
 bread, uprising, and bloody repression by a shocked ' society ' ? 
 Are Peasant Eebellions, Kingdoms of God, French Eevolutions, 
 and Paris Communes to be periodically recurring chapters of 
 history ? Is the development of man the evolution of fate, 
 or can humanity roughly shape itself, if perforce it must leave 
 its final purpose to the mystery of futurity ? • 
 
 Scarce need to follow the story further ; its lesson is 
 written so that even they who run might read. Let us 
 hasten through the last days of Sion. Knipperdollinch 
 places himself on the throne of the King of Eighteousness — 
 in this mad dance, why should not a fool be king ? Jan 
 drags him off, and imprisons him for several days ' to do 
 penance ' ; even yet the prophet of Leyden can influence the 
 haggard saints in Miinster. But the gaunt prophet Starva- 
 tion has greater power than he ! Closer and closer the 
 siege-works creep. Hunger is lord of the saints. All grease 
 and oil are collected by the deacons ; shoes, grass, rats, and 
 mice are the meagre fuel of life in Sion. Then come the 
 women and the weaker brethren, in whom not a shadow of 
 faith is left, who have not even the wild strength of despair. 
 ' Out, we must out,' is all they cry to the king. And out 
 they are sent stripped to a shirt, traitors, but who has 
 strength to punish them now — even the fourteen queenlets 
 may go with the rest ! Out from the gates and towards the 
 bishop's blockhouses, but what mercy is like to meet you 
 there ? Poor starving shirted brothers, one and all of you, 
 are cut down. The women alone are driven back. Three 
 days and three nights they feed upon grass and roots between 
 blockhouses and gates, and then are allowed to pass. To
 
 294 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 pass whither and to what ? History has nought to tell us 
 of these wretched outcast women. Fancy in vain tries to 
 picture what became of the fourteen wives of the Xing of 
 Sion, The saints who are left determine to burn the city to 
 ashes and force their way through to Holland. But not even 
 so shall they die ! Treachery shall at last be successful in 
 Sion. On St. John's Day, 1535 — ^just one year after the 
 limping prophet had placed Jan of Ley den on the throne of 
 the New Jerusalem — Hensgin ' von der laugen Strasse ' and 
 Heinrich Gresbeck determine to introduce the bishop's 
 soldiers into Mlinster. In the night the former watchmaster 
 and the later historian of Sion lead three hundred of the 
 bishop's men-at-arms over a low part of the wall near the 
 Zwinger. Stealthily they creep on towards the Fish Market, 
 leaving St. Martin's Church on their right, onward through 
 the deserted streets to the very cathedral close. Then the 
 blast of trumpets tells the scared Anabaptists that Sion is 
 in the hands of the foe, and the bishop that the treachery is 
 successful. The saints rush to arms, the godless must be 
 forced out of Sion. Back they do force them, too, in bloodiest 
 of fights, back to St. Martin's Church — gaunt skeletons 
 struggling in the frenzy of despair. But the ' party of 
 order ' is pouring in over the deserted walls, and the king 
 and KnipperdoUinch already have fallen into the hands of 
 the bishop's men. Still the starving fanatics fight like 
 demons round the walls of St. Martin's. A truce — some 
 one sanctions a truce — the Anabaptists shall go to their 
 homes and await the bishop's coming. Home they go, 
 deceived to the last. No sooner scattered through the town, 
 than the soldiers enter the houses, drag them out one by 
 one, and hew them to pieces in the streets. Soon the whole 
 town is strewn with the bodies of Anabaptists, or half-dead 
 they crawl back to their holes, while their cries of agony 
 rend the air. The butchery ceases at last ; all that are 
 captured shall be brought before the commander and then be 
 — beheaded ! As for the women and children, drive them 
 out of the city, but not before due notice is given throughout 
 the surrounding district — notice put up on every church of
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEE 295 
 
 God — that whoever shaU succour these starving and helpless 
 folk shall be held a cursed Anabaptist himself and punished 
 accordingly. "So nobody knows what became of these 
 people, though some say the most crossed over to England." ^ 
 So in a second baptism of blood ends the Kingdom of God in 
 Miinster. " 'Twas not the rage of his grace the bishop," so 
 the Evangelicals said, " but the terrible vengeance of God, 
 which thus punished the devilish doctrines of Sion." When 
 will mankind learn that human selfishness ever brings down 
 its terrible curse, and that the future never forgets to enact 
 grimmest judgment on the sins of the past ? Earely that 
 judgment touches the individual defaulter ; humanity at 
 large must bear the burden of each man's peculiar sin. 
 
 What judgment his grace the bishop thinks fit to pass 
 on the leaders of Sion at least deserves record. Eottmann 
 has fallen by St. Martin's Church, fighting sword in hand, 
 but Jan of Leyden and Knipperdollinch are brought prisoners 
 before this shepherd of the folk. Scofifingly he asks Jan : 
 " Art thou a king ? " Simple, yet endlessly deep the reply : 
 " Art thou a bishop ? " Both alike false to their callings — 
 as father of men and shepherd of souls. Yet the one cold, 
 self-seeking sceptic, the other ignorant, passionate, fanatic 
 idealist. " Why hast thou destroyed the town and my folk ? " 
 " Priest, I have not destroyed one little maid of thine. Thou 
 hast again thy town, and I can repay thee a hundredfold." 
 The bishop demands with much curiosity how this miserable 
 captive can possibly repay him. " I know we must die, and 
 die terribly, yet before we die, shut us up in an iron cage, 
 and send us round through tlie land, charge the curious folk 
 a few pence to see us, and thou wilt soon gather together all 
 thy heart's desire." The jest is grim, but the king of Sion 
 has the advantage of his grace the bishop. Then follows 
 torture, but there is little to extract, for the king still holds 
 himself an instrument sent by God — thougli it were for the 
 punishment of the world. Sentence is read on these men — 
 
 ^ Warhafftiger bericht dcr vmnderiarliclien handlung dcr Teuffcr zu Miinster 
 in Wcstwden, etc., . . . with woodcut of Jan of Leyden, 'King of the New 
 Jerusalem and the whole world, EtaLcs 26.'
 
 296 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 placed in an iron cage they shall be shown round the bishop's 
 diocese, a terrible warning to his subjects, and tlien brought 
 back to Miinster ; there with glowing pincers their flesh shall 
 be torn from the bones, till the death-stroke be given with 
 red-hot dagger in throat and heart. For the rest let the 
 mangled remains be placed in iron cages swung from the 
 tower of St. Lambert's Church. On the 26 th of January, 
 1536, Jan Bockelson and KnipperdoUinch meet their fate. 
 A high scaffolding is erected in the market-place, and before 
 it a lofty throne for his grace the bishop, that he may glut 
 his vengeance to the full. Let the rest pass in silence. The 
 most reliable authorities tell us that the Anabaptists remained 
 calm and firm to the last.^ ' Art thou a king ? ' ' Art thou 
 a bishop ? ' The iron cages still hang on the church tower at 
 Miinster ; placed as a warning, they have become a show ; 
 perhaps some day they will be treasured as weird mentors of 
 the truth which the world has yet to learn from the story of 
 the Kingdom of God in Miinster.^ 
 
 Note on Bernhardt Hottmann's Writings 
 
 Hofmann and Rottmann reiiresented ojiposite poles of Anabaptist 
 thouglit,— the directions respectively of spiritual and sensual fanaticism. 
 David Joris, the author of T'wonderboeck, is the connecting link between 
 the two parties. This is strikingly brouglit out by the Anabaptist Con- 
 venticle held in Strasburg in 1538, when the followers of Ilofnianu 
 refused to accept the sensual elements of Joris's teaching (F. 0. zur Linden, 
 p. 393). It was a friend of Joris, Hendrik Niclaes of Miinster, who 
 established the Family of Love, and his disciple, Vitello, founded the first 
 English branch at Colchester in 1555. Niclaes himself came to England 
 aljout 1569, and it is to the Miinster fugitives, as reorganised by Niclaes, 
 that we must look for the origins of our own Anabaptists. The writings 
 of Rottmann and Thvonderboeck are thus of extreme interest for the 
 beginnings of English Anabaptism. As it is improbaljle that an essay I 
 had planned on Rottmann will now be completed, I append a list of his 
 writings : — 
 
 (1) Bekentnisse van beyden Sacramenten, Doepe vnde Nachtmaele, 
 
 1 The Lutherans declared that Jan confessed to two of their number that 
 he was an impostor ; the Catholics asserted that he went to the scaffold receiv- 
 ing the ministrations of a priest. 
 
 2 Since the above was ^mtten, the ca<:jes have been removed.
 
 THE KIXGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEE 297 
 
 der predicanten tho Munster. (November 8, 1533.) Extracts from this 
 Confession are given by Bouterwek : Zur Literatur und Geschichte der 
 Wiedertaiifer, Erster Beitrag, Bonn, 1864, pp. 6-10. 
 
 (2) Bekantnus des globens vnd lebens der gemein Cliriste to Munster. 
 The date of this Confession — printed by Cornelius as the Miinsterische 
 Apologie in his book Berichte der Augenzeugen iiber das Miinsterische 
 TViedertaiiferreich, 1853, pj). 445-464 — is not clearly determined, but it 
 preceded the Restitution (of Bouterwek, pp. 37-8). 
 
 (3) E}Tie Restitution, edder Eine wedderstellinge rechter vnde 
 gesunder christliker leer, gelouens vnde leuens vth Gades genaden durch 
 de gemeynte Christi tho Munster an den Dach gegeuen. (October, 1534.) 
 I possess one of the few extant copies of the original ; it shows the 
 difficulties the Anabaptists had in printing. The work was reprinted in 
 1574 in five hundred copies by the 'Second King of Sion,' Johann 
 Wilhelmsen, but aU the copies seem to have perished, and it has not been 
 again reprinted. An analysis will be found in Bouterwek, jjp. 18-33. 
 
 (4) Eyn gantz troestlick bericht van der Wrake vnde straffe des 
 Babilonischen gruwels, an alle ware Israeliten vnd Bmidtgenoten Christi, 
 hir vnde dar vorstroyet, durch de gemeinte Christi tho Munster. 
 (December, 1534.) No printed copy of this work appears to have sur- 
 vived. Bouterwek reprints it in full (pp. 66-101) from a manuscript 
 copy made in 1663, and now in the Diisseldorf archives. 
 
 (5) Von verborgenheitt der Schritft des Rickes Christi vnd von dem 
 dage des Herrn durch die gemeinde Christi zu Mmister. (February, 1535.) 
 Printed copies of this tract exist in the library at the Hague and in a few 
 other places. It has been reprinted from a manuscript in the Cassel 
 archives by H. Hochhuth in Bernhardt liottmanns Schriften, I., Gotha, 
 1857 — a publication which would have been very valuable, had it got 
 beyond the first fasciculus.
 
 SOCIOLOGY 
 
 Do I seem to say : ' Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die ' ? 
 Far from it ; on tlie contrary, I say : ' Let us take bands and help, for 
 this day we are alive together.' — Clifford.
 
 XI 
 
 THE MOKAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM^ 
 
 Iklachtig ist Eins nur auf Erden : die waltenden ewigen Miiclite, 
 Welche die Volker bewegen ; und was in schnoder Verblendung 
 Diesen entgegen sich stellt viiid verwegen auf menschliclie Macbt trotzt, 
 Oder auf giittliche hofft, eiu Koloss ist's auf thcinernen Fiissen ! 
 
 It is scarcely ten years since our daily papers, noting the 
 rapid growth of the Socialistic party in Germany, congratulated 
 their readers on the impossibility of a like movement in this 
 country. To-day Socialism in England has immeasurably 
 outgrown its German progenitor. While in Germany 
 Socialism has remained the vague protest of the oppressed 
 worker, suffering under the introduction of the factory system 
 of industry, in England it has become already a great social 
 factor tending to leaven our legislation, and likely, before 
 long, to revolutionise our social habits. In Germany it has 
 remained an ill-regulated political protest with an impracti- 
 cable programme. In England, owing partly to the vigorous 
 emotionalism of Carlyle and Euskin, but principally to our more 
 advanced economic development, it has become an economic 
 tendency and a moral force long before it has reached self- 
 consciousness and formulated itself as a recognised political 
 movement. As a recognised movement we shall find in the 
 first place that various crude manifestations will be singled 
 out for fierce condemnation, but that, after some contempt and 
 misrepresentation, not a little justified by the Utopian schemes 
 
 1 Originally written as a lecture, this i)ai>er, with some revision, waa 
 published as a pamphlet in June, 1887.
 
 302 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 of social reconstruction propounded by the earlier Socialistic 
 writers/ the doctrines of Socialism will be at least listened to 
 with respect, and finally exert an acknowledged influence on 
 all social and legislative changes. 
 
 I have spoken of Socialism as a recognised movement, but 
 it is essentially necessary to mark the characteristics which 
 distinguish it from other political movements of this century. 
 The difference lies in the fact that the new policy is based 
 upon a conception of morality differing in toto from the 
 old or the current Christian ideal, which it does not hesitate 
 to call anti-social and immoral. It is, however, this very fact 
 that Socialism is a morality in the first place, and a polity 
 only in the second, that has led to the introduction of the 
 absurd misnomer " Christian Socialist " for a section of the 
 Church party which vaguely recognises the moral aspect of 
 Socialism. As the old religious faith disappears, a new basis of 
 morals is required more consonant with the reasoning spirit of 
 the age. That view of life which, seeing in this world only 
 sorrow and tribulation, finds it a field of preparation for a 
 future existence, is more and more widely acknowledged to 
 be a superstition invented and accepted by the prevailing 
 pessimism of a decadent period of human development. 
 Harmful as the superstition has been, the common sense 
 of mankind has saved us from the logical consequences of its 
 full acceptance. At the very best, however, it has justified 
 poverty, misery, and asceticism of all kinds. The modern 
 Socialistic theory of morality is based upon the agnostic 
 treatment of the supersensuous. Man, in judging of con- 
 duct, is concerned only with the present life ; he has to 
 make it as full and as joyous as he is able, and to do this 
 consciously and scientifically with all the knowledge of the 
 present, and all the experience of the past, pressed into his 
 
 ' It seems to me extremely imadvisable for Socialists to formulate at the 
 present time, elaborate Socialistic organisations of the State. The future social 
 form is at i)resent quite beyond our ken ; it is sufficient for the time to trace 
 the probable etiect of the Socialistic movement in modifying existing institutions, 
 and in influencing the legislation of the near future. It is a waste of energy to 
 build in the air co-operative commonwealths, the destruction of which is no hard 
 task for the hostile critic ; it is even harmful, since it associates the universal 
 movement with the easily controverted dreams of the individual Utopian.
 
 THE MOEAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 303 
 
 service. Not from fear of hell, not from hope of heaven, 
 from no love of a tortured man-god, but solely for the sake 
 of the society of which we are members, and the welfare 
 of which is our welfare — for the sake of our fellow-men — 
 we act morally, that is, socially. Positivism has recognised 
 in a vague impracticable fashion this, the only possible basis 
 of a rational morality ; it places the progress of mankind in 
 the centre of its creed, and venerates a personified Humanity. 
 Socialism, as a more practical faith, teaches us that the first 
 duty of man is to no general concept of humanity, but to the 
 group of ' humans ' to which he belongs, and that man's 
 veneration is due to the State which personifies that social 
 group. Yet even thus there is sufficient ground for the 
 sympathy which is undoubtedly felt by Positivists for Socialism. 
 Can a greater gulf be imagined than really exists between 
 current Christianity and the Socialistic code ? Socialism 
 arises from the recognition (1) that the sole aim of mankind 
 is happiness in this life, and (2) that the course of evolution, 
 and the struggle of group against group, have produced a strong 
 social instinct in mankind, so that, directly and indirectly, the 
 pleasure of the individual lies in forwarding the prosperity of 
 the society of which he is a member. Corporate Society — the 
 State, not the personified Humanity of Positivism — becomes 
 the centre of the Socialist's faith. The polity of the Socialist 
 is thus his morality, and his reasoned morality may, in the 
 old sense of the word, be termed his religion. It is this 
 identity which places Socialism on a different footing to the 
 other political and social movements of to-day. Current 
 Christianity is not a vivifying political force ; it cannot be, 
 for it is the direct outcome of a pessimistic superstition, and 
 can never be legitimately wedded to a Hellenic rationalism. 
 Can we more strongly emphasise the distinction between the 
 old and the new moral basis ? To the thinkers of to-day 
 crucified gods, deified men, heaven and hell have become in- 
 tolerable nonsense, only of value for the light they have cast 
 on past stages of human development. These theories of the 
 supersensuous, which our forefathers have handed down to us, 
 deserve all the respect due to relics of the Past. They are
 
 304 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 invaluable landmarks of history, sign-posts to the paths of 
 man's mental growth. They were the banners under which 
 mankind has struggled, the symbols borne in the march across 
 the arid deserts of the Past, where the sources of knowledge 
 were few, and none ran copiously. Now that those deserts 
 are behind us, and we live in a fertile land, with wide fields 
 of truth only awaiting cultivation, with innumerable springs 
 of knowledge freely open to the thirsty, we can afford to lay 
 these symbols aside. Let us reverently hang these old 
 colours up in the great temple of human progress. Man- 
 kind, following them, has fought and won many an arduous 
 battle ; but the best energies of our time can no longer rally 
 round them. They belong to history, and not to the glorious 
 actuality of that century in which we live. We are, it is 
 true, only just at the preface of the great volume of reasoned 
 truth, wherein is endless work for many generations of men, 
 yet we have, at least, found the only legitimate basis of 
 knowledge, the only fruitful guide to conduct. Eejoicing in 
 that discovery, we can lay aside the weird images of the 
 childhood of mankind, for History has taught us their 
 origin, and Science their value. The images are beautiful, 
 but they are lifeless ; they are but idols carved by the ignor- 
 ance of the Past. Still, like the Greeks of old, we may 
 glory in the beauty of our idols, long after the Intellect has 
 ceased to bend her knee in worship, or to sacrifice herself 
 upon the altar erected by the vague aspirations of a dead 
 humanity to a splendid shadow of itself. Yes ! sympathy 
 with the Past we must have, but war, ceaseless war, with 
 that Past which seeks with its idols to crush the growth 
 of the Present! The right to re -shape itself is the chief 
 birthright of humanity, and the ' vested interests ' of priest 
 or of class, the sanctity of tradition and of law, will be of as 
 little avail in checking human progress as the gossamer in the 
 path of the king of the forest. 
 
 It is because the old bases of religion and morality have 
 become impossible to the Present, that Socialism, — which 
 gives us a rational motive for conduct, which demands of 
 each individual service to Society and reverence towards
 
 THE MOKAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 305 
 
 Society incorporated in the State, — is destined to play such 
 a large part in the re -shaping of human institutions. 
 Socialism, despite Hackel, despite Herbert Spencer, is 
 consonant with the whole teaching of modern Science, and 
 with all the doctrines of modern Eationalism. It lays down 
 no transcendental code of morality ; it accepts no divine 
 revelation as a basis of conduct ; it asserts the human origin, 
 the plastic and developable character, of morals ; it teaches 
 us that, as human knowledge increases, human society will 
 tend to greater stability, because History and Science will 
 show more and more clearly what makes for human welfare. 
 The new morality, while recognising the value of customary 
 modes of action and of inherited social instinct, still looks 
 upon knowledge and experience as the guides of human 
 conduct. It trusts in the main to human reason, not to 
 human emotion, to dictate the moral code. To give all a 
 like possibility of usefulness, to measure reward by the 
 efficiency and magnitude of socially valuable work, is surely 
 to favour the growth of the fittest within the group, and the 
 survival of the fittest group in the world-contest of societies. 
 Socialism no less earnestly than Professor Huxley demands 
 an open path from the Board School to the highest council 
 of the nation. It is as anxious to catch talent, and to profit 
 by its activity, as the most ardent disciple of Darwin. 
 
 It may seem to many of my readers that veneration for 
 personified Society, or the State, and the identification of 
 moral conduct with social action, are very old truths, which 
 the world has long recognised. I venture to doubt this, or 
 at least to think that, if recognised, they have never been 
 given their true value, or been pushed to their logical outcome. 
 I doubt whether all Socialists even yet grasp the large con- 
 sequences which flow from their full admission. I propose 
 to examine somewhat more closely these two fundamental 
 principles. 
 
 At the present time it can hardly be said that there is any 
 veneration whatever for personified Society, the State. The 
 State is brought to our notice, not as the totality of the 
 society in which we live, but as government, and government
 
 306 THE ETHIC OF EKEETHOUGHT 
 
 we are accustomed to look upou as a necessary evil ; we have 
 no faith in our statesmen's capacity for right ruling. To 
 sacrifice our lives for government appears utterly ridiculous ; 
 but to do so for the welfare of the State ought to be the truest 
 heroism. It is the loss of veneration for the State which has 
 made our government in all its forms something nigh despic- 
 able. We have been content to allow the State to be served 
 by self-seekers, by men whose all-absorbing object lias been to 
 fill the pockets of themselves or of their family, whose highest 
 patriotism has been to conserve the anti-social monopolies of 
 their class. We have chosen our senators neither for their 
 experience nor their wisdom, but for the glibness of their 
 tongues and the length of their purses. So it has come 
 about that the very name of politician is a term of reproach. 
 Our legislation, our government, has been a scarcely dis- 
 guised warfare of classes, the crude struggle of individual 
 interests, not the cautious direction of social progress by the 
 selected few. Veneration for the State has been stifled by 
 a not unjustifiable contempt for existing government ; it has 
 survived only on the one hand in an irrational feeling of 
 loyalty towards a puppet, degenerating into snobbism, and 
 on the other hand in a chauvinism, a claim to national pre- 
 eminence, chiefly advanced by those who are contributing 
 little to the fame of their country in art, literature, or science, 
 still less in hard fighting. To bring again to the fore a 
 feeling of genuine respect for personified Society, the State, 
 to purify executive government, is obviously a hard but 
 primary necessity of socialistic action. We must aristo- 
 cratise government at the same time as we democratise it ; 
 the ultimate appeal to the many is hopeless, unless the many 
 have foresight enough to place power in the hands of the fittest. 
 Government has become what it is, because our respect 
 for the State has grown so small, and not conversely. We 
 have had fit men, and we could have put them in places of 
 trust ; we could have demanded better action from our 
 rulers, had we had real veneration for the State. In early 
 Kome and at Athens such a feeling existed ; it was, indeed, 
 a direct outcome of the old group kinship, the gentile
 
 THE MOEAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 307 
 
 organisation of both those states. It is something more than 
 this respect for a widened family which w^e require to-day. 
 "With modern hahits of life, with the emancipation of women, 
 the strength of the family tie, one of the last binding links 
 of the old social structure, is disappearing. We must learn 
 to replace it in time by respect for personified Society, by 
 reverence for the State, The spirit of antagonism between 
 the Individual and the State must be destroyed. How low 
 our social spirit has faUen may be well measured by remark- 
 ing how few recognise the immorality of cheating the State 
 in any of its industrial departments, say the Post Office ; 
 how nearly all regard the tax-gatherer with a feeling akin 
 to that which mediaeval burghers bore to the city hangman. 
 The man who goes whistling along, and with a heavy stick 
 knocks off the ornamental ironwork in the Embankment 
 Gardens, would think it highly immoral to whittle the arm- 
 chair of his friend ; the woman who encloses a letter inside 
 a book-post packet would be indignant if you suggested that 
 she was capable of picking her neighbour's pocket. Yet in 
 both cases the offence against the State ought to be looked 
 upon as a far graver matter than the offence against 
 the individual. The clergyman who some years ago was 
 detected cutting out engravings from the books of a great 
 public library, ought to have been pilloried and publicly 
 ejected from society ; yet the matter was hushed up, 
 apparently because it was only an offence against the State. 
 Had he stolen his churchwarden's spoons, a much less 
 heinous matter, he would undoubtedly have found himself 
 in the police court. So long as there is a large group of 
 persons who find pleasure in ripping up the cushions of 
 public carriages, in defacing public statues, in tearing down 
 the hawthorn bushes in the parks, and in generally 
 destroying what is intended for the convenience or pleasure 
 of the whole community — above all, so long as the majority of 
 the community treat such offences liglitly, so long it is hope- 
 less to think of vastly extending the property of the State. 
 Socialists have to inculcate that spirit which would give 
 offenders against the State short shrift and the nearest
 
 308 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 lamp-post. Every citizen must learn to say with Louis XIV., 
 I! Hat cest moi ! The misfortune is tliat wealth ^ has become 
 so individualised since the Eeformation that the spirit of 
 communal ownership is almost dead. That spirit, the joint 
 responsibility for the safeguard of common wealth, is one of 
 the most valuable factors of social stability, and the sooner 
 we re-learn it, the better for our social welfare. To preach 
 afresh this old conception of the State, so fruitful in the 
 cities of ancient Greece and the towns of mediaeval Germany, 
 ought to be the primary educative mission of modern 
 Socialism. If the welfare of society be the touchstone of 
 moral action, then respect for the State — the State as res 
 "publica, as commonweal — ought to be the most sacred 
 principle of the new movement. 
 
 Let us turn to the other fundamental of socialistic morality 
 — the definition of moral conduct as socialised action — and, 
 commonplace as the definition may seem, inquire whether 
 this, any more than respect for the State, is a currently accepted 
 guide to conduct. I fear we can only answer in the negative. 
 Whether we turn to practice or to theory, we shall find that 
 the current notion of morality has reference to some absolute 
 and, I venture to think, unintelligible code. It is rarely, if 
 ever, based upon social wants as ascertained by past experience, 
 or upon an accurate study of the tendencies of present 
 social growth. We are very far indeed from recognising the 
 momentous consequences which logically flow from the 
 abandonment of the Christian morality and the Christian 
 conception of life. Darwin has destroyed the old Ptolemaic 
 system of the spiritual universe. We can no longer regard 
 all creation as revolving about man as its central sun. We 
 can no longer believe that the conduct of man is influencing 
 the birth or destruction of worlds, or that his ' salvation ' has 
 any relation to the great physical laws which regulate cos- 
 mical evolution. Man's morality has no bearing on the 
 
 1 It has become so entirely 'property.' When 'wealth' and 'goods' 
 were first used to describe that state of material prosperity which is wdl 
 and good, for men, individual ownership or property had not yet been 
 evolved.
 
 THE MORAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 309 
 
 ' infinite ' and the ' eternal,' but solely on his own temporal 
 welfare. Surely this Copernican view of human morality is 
 one of the most obvious, the most unassailable, and yet the 
 most revolutionary truths of our age. Yet how far we are 
 from accepting it fiilly and loyally! The whole parapher- 
 nalia of Christian worship, with its complete perversion of 
 the fimdamental principles of human conduct, and its deaden- 
 ing effect upon human morals, is still spread far and wide 
 over the land. Nay, what is even still more suggestive of 
 our bondage to the Past is the fact that a thinker, whose 
 writings have perhaps done as much to obscure — as they 
 probably have to enlighten — the ideas of our century, finds the 
 raison d'etre of the universe in the absolute necessity that 
 man should be provided with a field for moral action ! Thus 
 it is that Kant and the neo-Hegelian reconcilers have given a 
 new lease of life to a fallacious moral system by a process 
 which is superficially rational. The influence of this neo- 
 scholasticism, not only on the church, but on many of our 
 popular teachers, is a factor which it is hardly wise to dis- 
 regard. That it should have taken considerable root in a 
 rationalistic age proves how far the socialistic basis of morality 
 is from frank and universal acceptance. 
 
 At first sight the identification of morality and sociality 
 may seem a principle that even our most conservative friends 
 can accept. " If this is all Socialism means, we also are 
 Socialists," they say. " We too are desirous of improving the 
 condition of the poor." Let them follow the doctrine into its 
 consequences, however, and they will soon discover the cloven 
 hoof. They have not yet grasped that this view of life re- 
 places that select body they term ' Society ' (does not that 
 abuse of terms alone fully condemn them ?) by the whole 
 mass of the folk. It does not leave the welfare of large 
 sections of the community to the caprice of the few ; it takes 
 as of right what they would tithe for charity ; it will inevit- 
 ably touch not only their emotions, but their more sacred 
 pockets; it sweeps away an anti-social class monopoly, and 
 with it class-power. " You must either be working for the 
 community, or leave it," is the ultimatum of the socialistic
 
 310 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 moral code to each and to all. No amount of conscience- 
 money spent on the most ' philanthropic object ' can atone for 
 individual idleness. The progress and welfare of society 
 demand for common use not only the stored labour of the 
 past, but the labour-power of each existing individual. With- 
 out sharing in the social work of the present there shall be 
 no part for you in the goods of the present, or in the wealth 
 garnered by our forefathers. The socialistic toe tingles with 
 scarce restrainable impulse to eject in precipitate fashion 
 from the human hive the many endowed idlers who with 
 ineffable effrontery term themselves ' Society.' The member- 
 ship of Society, the moral right to enjoy the fruits of social 
 labour, can be based solely on the claim of contributing to 
 the welfare of Society in the present — to be still working, or 
 to have worked while the strength was there, physically or 
 intellectually, for the maintenance, progress, or pleasure of 
 our fellow -citizens. It is this fundamental conception of 
 modern Socialism, with its ennobling of all forms of labour, 
 which will revolutionise modern life, and, once accepted as 
 morality, will cause all political measures to be examined 
 from a new standpoint. From morality Socialism will become 
 a polity. It is a common accusation against Socialists that 
 they are capable only of destructive criticism ; but it is surely 
 of primary importance to cut away the old superstitions, the 
 old mistaken notions of human conduct, to create a wide-felt 
 want for a new basis of action, before any wooden and in- 
 flexible system of social reconstruction is propounded. The 
 time for constitution-mongers has not come, if, indeed, they 
 are not always a bar to progress. We want at present to 
 inculcate general principles, to teach new views of life. 
 Society will reconstruct itself pari passu with the spread of 
 these new ideas ; the rate at which they will become current, 
 while depending to some extent on the energy and enthusi- 
 asm of their propagators, will be chiefly influenced by the 
 failure of the old economic system, owing to the sweeping 
 industrial and commercial changes which are in progress, and 
 by the failure of the old Christian morality, owing to the 
 rapid growth of rational methods of thought.
 
 THE MOEAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 311 
 
 " Educate your workpeople," cry some of our leading 
 scientists, " if you wish to maintain a position among com- 
 peting nations in the world-markets." A falser reason for 
 education it is hard to conceive, unless our scientists are 
 prepared to prove that social welfare at home is impossible 
 without successful huckstering abroad. It is worthy rather 
 of the Lancashire cotton printer, who measures national 
 prosperity by the import of china-clay, than of the genuine 
 scientist. Let us educate our workpeople to face the diffi- 
 cvdties which our society at home has to encounter ; let us 
 train them to value intelligent labour as a means, not an end, 
 to grasp that the general progress of society here, the raising 
 of the common standard of comfort and intelligence, is of the 
 first importance. After all, restriction or removal of popu- 
 lation may be a more efficient aid to social progress than an 
 endless rivalry with other nations in the monotonous labour of 
 breeching the less civilised races of earth. 
 
 If I interpret socialistic ideal at all correctly, it 
 insists primarily on the moral need that each individual, 
 according to his powers, should work for the community. 
 The man or woman who does not labour, but, owing to a 
 traditional monopoly, is able to live on the labour of others, 
 or the stored labour of the community — which indeed requires, 
 as a rule, present labour to utilise it — will be treated as a 
 moral leper. The moment the majority have adopted this 
 code of morality — and the economic development, taken in 
 conjunction with the fact that the majority even at present 
 do labour, will render its adoption rapid — then the legislation 
 or measures of police, to be taken against the immoral and 
 anti- social minority, will form the political realisation of 
 Socialism. To some extent this political realisation of Socialism 
 has already, although blindly and unconsciously, begun. 
 Socialistic measures, — the limitation of the privileges of those 
 who live on the labour -power of others, or on the stored 
 labour of the past, — have become by no means an incon- 
 spicuous feature of current legislation, and a feature which 
 will yearly gain greater prominence. 
 
 There may be differences of opinion as to how the elimina-
 
 312 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 tion of idlers from the community may best take place, but the 
 majority of Socialists are convinced that, to destroy the private 
 ownership of the physical resources of the country and of the 
 stored labour of the past — to socialise the land and to socialise 
 the means of production — are the only efficient and permanent 
 means of restraining idleness, and the resulting misdirection of 
 the labour -power of the community. We believe that, by 
 destroying the pecuniary privileges of birth, and the class 
 exclusiveness of education, we shall in reality be removing a 
 great bar to the survival, or rather to the pre-eminence, of the 
 fittest. It is for the welfare of society that it should obtain 
 from all ranks the best heads and the best hands as its 
 directors and organisers. This can only be secured by giving 
 equal educational chances to all, by allowing no pecuniary 
 handicapping in favour of the feeble in mind or body. Here 
 Socialism is at one with modern Eadicalism, and is certainly 
 not opposed to the teachings of Evolution. 
 
 At the same time Socialists are fully aware of the diffi- 
 culties which lie in the realisation of their ideal, and the more 
 reasonable are fidly prepared to face, and duly weigh, the 
 arguments which may be brought against them. I propose to 
 devote the remainder of this paper to a brief consideration of 
 some of the more important of these arguments, which I may 
 state as follows : — 
 
 (1) Socialism would destroy the rewards of successful 
 competition, and so weaken the incentive to that inchvidual 
 energy, which is of such primary social value. 
 
 (2) No government can be trusted to conduct fitly the 
 vast task of organisation which Socialism would thrust 
 upon it. 
 
 (3) The proposed socialisation of land and of stored labour 
 would destroy confidence, and check enterprise, to an extent 
 which might have disastrous effects on the community long 
 before the socialised State could be got into working order. 
 
 (4) The increase of population would very soon render 
 nugatory any benefit to be derived from the socialisation of 
 surplus-labour. 
 
 (5) There is no means of measuring the value of an
 
 THE MOEAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 313 
 
 individual's contribution to the labour -stock of the com- 
 munity. 
 
 Let us take these objections in order ; all of them deserve 
 very careful consideration. 
 
 (1) Socialism would destroy the reioards of successful com- 
 petition, and so weaken the incentive to that individual energy, 
 which is of such primary social value. 
 
 If the result of socialistic reconstruction were to be the 
 deadening of individual energy, it would undoubtedly not 
 tend to the welfare of Society. But I believe that the 
 importance of real incentive is fully recognised by all 
 thinking Socialists, and that they would be the last to deny 
 the social value of especially rewarding transcendent talent, 
 or remarkable social energy. It is because the rewards at 
 present given to such talent and energy are far more than 
 sufficient to achieve their end, are utterly unsuitable in 
 character, and most frequently go to anti - social cunning 
 rather than to real worth, that I am compelled to look upon 
 these rewards of the present competitive system as little short 
 of disastrous to the community. I hold that public dis- 
 tinction, public gratitude, and State recognition, are the 
 only suitable recompense, and at the same time are quite 
 sufficient incentive to individual energy. There is no 
 necessity for endowing for an indefinite period the posterity 
 of a valuable member of society with a possibility of complete 
 idleness. Such rewards as large grants of public money 
 or land, perpetual pensions, or the accumulation by suc- 
 cessful industrial organisers of stored labour or any other 
 monopoly of the means of utilising existing labour -power, 
 are neither necessary, nor are they conducive to the general 
 welfare of society. These incentives did not produce an 
 Albrecht Diirer, a Newton, a Shakespeare, or a Watt, nor 
 induce them to do work of first-class social value. The 
 opportunity of a free education, given by a sizarship at 
 Trinity College, had more to do with the making of a 
 Newton than all the rewards of the competitive system. It 
 is the opportunity for self-development, the provision of a 
 field for its activity, and some amount of social recognition,
 
 314 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 which are really needed to produce, and utilise, all forms of 
 talent in the community. The German trader will display as 
 much energy, fertility of resource, and downright hard work 
 in making £500 a year as an English manufacturer in 
 clearing £50,000. I do not think any real danger to the 
 incentive to energy is involved in the socialisation of in- 
 dustry, when literature, science, and art have invariably 
 been found to thrive best with a minimum of pecuniary 
 honour, and a maximum of social recognition. The schools 
 of Athens and the Churches of the Middle Ages offer evidence 
 enough on this point, while Galilei, at the height of his 
 reputation, liad to yay for the printing of the De Sysiemate 
 Mundi. 
 
 Socialists assert that under a state-control of industry 
 the recognition of a new inventor by the State would be 
 as great an inducement to enterprise as the idea of twenty 
 per cent profit is held to be at present ; more especially will 
 such honour have weight in the educated community of the 
 future. No practical Socialist advocates in the present stage 
 of human development an equal distribution of the profits 
 of labour as advantageous to society. He even recognises 
 the importance, if necessary, of distinguishing by physical 
 rewards such energy and talent as are of great value to 
 the community. He is willing to admit that any one who 
 labours longer and better than another should reap a greater 
 return, but that this return shall be in its nature con- 
 sumable, not reproductive. It must not take the form of 
 a permanent tax (rent, interest, etc.) on the labour-power 
 and labour-store of the community. The socialisation of 
 aU means of production would render this impossible. It is 
 to the advantage of Society as a whole, when it has given 
 equal educational chances to its members, that the better 
 work should be encouraged by the better pay. The accept- 
 ance of Socialism, in short, does not involve approval of the 
 communistic principle of equalised distribution. It still 
 leaves room for the socially healthy rivalry of individual 
 workers, provided that rivalry does not result, as in the present 
 competitive form of industry, in the standard of life per-
 
 THE MOEAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 315 
 
 manently remaining for the great mass of toilers very close 
 to the point of bare subsistence. 
 
 (2) No government can he trusted to fitly conduct the vast 
 task of organisation which Socialisin would thrust upon it. 
 
 This objection has very real weight, as there cannot be a 
 doubt about the current distrust of all government under- 
 takings. I have akeady referred to the disrepute into which 
 the State executive has fallen, and endeavoured to point out 
 how serious a difficulty in the way of Socialism as polity is 
 this want of confidence in the State. Owing to the meagre 
 education of our present democratic Electorate, to the intel- 
 lectual and moral inferiority of the class of men who serve 
 as politicians, and to the resulting bad measures and wide- 
 spread corruption — owing to the monopoly of wealth, which, 
 placing time and opportunity for political action in the 
 hands of a class, fosters class-legislation — owing to these 
 and other concomitant causes the State at present is dis- 
 credited. It is the mission of Socialists to reintroduce the 
 true conception of the State, to revivify respect for per- 
 sonified Society ; to teach that the misappropriation of public 
 property is the first of crimes, and that the mismanagement 
 of public affairs is a disgrace, which, like the sin against the 
 Holy Ghost, can never be condoned. We must bring home 
 to each citizen the feeling of the Athenian vine -dresser, 
 or the craftsman of the mediaeval town. Such an educa- 
 tional change can only be gradual ; but, on the other hand. 
 Socialists neither strive for, nor expect, any but a gradual 
 assumption by the State of the means of production and 
 the stored labour of the Past. I may point to the 
 efi&ciency of the post-of&ce in Germany and to the scientific 
 perfection of the military organisation of the same country, 
 especially the readiness of both to discover and adopt real 
 advances, as evidence that the State can successfully under- 
 take and direct great enterprises. Even in our own country, 
 where faith in the State is much lower, it is difficult to 
 believe that a large railway company would be less efficiently 
 conducted if its directors were State officials, liable to 
 instant dismissal if failing in their duties, instead of being
 
 316 THE ETHIC OF FIIEETHOUGHT 
 
 private capitalists struggling to fill their own pockets. How 
 often is a false economy, or an anti-social line of action, adopted 
 with a view to immediate profit ? ^ Education is another of 
 the vast enterprises which the State has often undertaken 
 with the result of increased efficiency. It may be quite true 
 that in England there is a tendency in the State-code to 
 crystallise education, but even in this country, I firmly believe, 
 our Board Schools are on the average more efficient than 
 the private schools of the voluntary system.^ What is 
 wanted in matters educational, as in other State affairs in 
 our country, is their complete divorce from party politics. 
 We must educate the Electorate to such a degree that it 
 will not return stump-orators. This goal, I believe, will be 
 more and more nearly reached as the children who have been 
 educated in the State schools form a larger and larger part of 
 the Electorate. There is not, I contend, any inherent im- 
 possibility in the management by the State of large under- 
 takings ; the examples I have cited suffice to prove its possi- 
 bility. That many others have been only partially successful 
 can, I think, be accounted for by evils peculiar to our existing 
 form of government, and its singular anomalies. Socialists, 
 I cannot too often repeat, are not called upon to draw up 
 any constitution for an ideal socialised State. Like any other 
 party, they are quite justified in proposing a programme 
 of immediately possible legislative changes. They believe 
 that the realisation of their ideal will be very gradual, and 
 that, to be really efficient, it must be to a large extent tenta- 
 tive ; the possibility of central organisation, of organisation 
 by counties, towns, or communes, are certainly matters for 
 
 1 It is worth while noting that it is through the enterprise of private 
 companies that the lives of Londoners are endangered by a netvvork of over- 
 head telephone lines ; in London the State already carries its wires under- 
 ground. 
 
 2 The Girls' Public School Company has recently (1887) testified to the value of 
 our State system by the announcement that the majority of their scholarships are 
 annually gained by girls whose primary education is the work of Board Schools. 
 This Company has to some extent opened a path for the girl from State school 
 to the University. How long will it be before boys have a like advantage ? 
 [This want is now to some extent supplied by the County Council Senior Scholar- 
 ships ; unfortunately the method of selection seems to be very unsatisfactory in 
 its results.]
 
 THE MOEAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 317 
 
 discussion, but the comparative efficiency of each can be 
 tested only by experience. As yet we have not even the 
 results of a comprehensive system of local government to 
 guide us, and any attempt to picture a fully-developed 
 socialised commonweal is, I hold, unnecessary and ill- 
 advised. To demand it of Socialists is about as reasonable 
 as it would have been to ask Jesus, the Christ, when 
 propounding his new morality, to wait before he did so, 
 and draw up a constitution for that World-Church, which 
 was one day to include the Gentiles. There is little doubt 
 that he would not have hit upon the historical development 
 his teaching took in the Holy Catholic Church. He rightly 
 left the matter to after ages, when councils and constitutions 
 first became necessary. Socialism may well do likewise ; it 
 can content itself by showing that the State is not inherently 
 incapable of organising industry, and, strong in its convic- 
 tion of the moral truth of the new movement, it can well 
 leave the exact form of the socialised State to be worked 
 out in the future. 
 
 (3) Tlce i)ro])osed socialisation of land and of stored labour 
 will destroy confidence, and check enterprise, to an extent ivliich 
 may have disastrous effects on the coninmtnity long before the 
 socialised State can be got into working order. 
 
 It is suggested that these disastrous effects will result 
 from the existence of a strong political Socialist party, and 
 the adoption of socialistic legislation. There might very 
 possibly, at first, be a partial feeling of insecurity, followed by 
 some evil effects. At the same time any over-hasty phase of 
 socialistic legislation would produce sufficient industrial dis- 
 turbance to react quickly upon the labour Electorate, and so 
 upon the over-hasty legislator. It would tend to counteract 
 itself. Socialists recognise the fact that socialisation, for the 
 sake of the worker himself, can only be comparatively slow, 
 and will have as far as possible to use and absorb all existing 
 industrial enterprises and their management. Eevolutionary 
 measures, which would paralyse the industry of the country, 
 are simply impossible, because several millions of people would 
 never submit to the starvation which a few weeks of idleness
 
 318 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 would inevitably produce ; indeed the stored labour of the 
 community would hardly last weeks. We look forward, then, 
 to a gradual change, which will be accompanied by an educa- 
 tion, not only of the artisan, but of the capitalistic class. The 
 Socialist has to teach that social approbation and public honour 
 are worth more than pecuniary reward. The alteration of 
 the standard of enjoyment from purely physical luxury to more 
 intellectual forms of pleasure will do much to form a new goal 
 for ambition, and so very materially lessen the evil effects which, 
 it is asserted, must result from limiting tlie profits of private 
 enterprise and discouraging all monopoly of surplus-labour. 
 
 (4) The increase of j^opulation will very soon render nugatory 
 any benefit to he derived from the socialisation of surplus-latour. 
 
 Hitherto I have assumed that the increased welfare of 
 society, which Socialists hold would result from the socialisa- 
 tion of the means of production and of stored labour, would be 
 a permanent increase. Let us examine this question of per- 
 manency a little more closely. At each epoch in any given 
 community there is a certain amount of labour-power and a 
 certain amount of stored labour. Socialists assert that it is 
 for the general good of the community that this labour-power 
 and this stored labour, after providing the necessaries of 
 existence for the entire community, should then be utilised in 
 raising the standard of comfort of the whole body, and not 
 that of individual members. This application of what I term 
 ' surplus -labour ' is prevented by the traditional or legal 
 monopoly of individuals, which enables them to enforce upon 
 the labourer a different application, namely, that after a low 
 standard of comfort is provided for the masses, the surplus- 
 labour shall be applied to indefinitely raising the standard of 
 life of the monopolists themselves. The surplus energies of 
 society are expended on the luxuries of the few. This condi- 
 tion of affairs would to a large extent be destroyed by the 
 State ownership of capital and the State direction of labour- 
 power. The present monopolists would be driven to provide 
 themselves, by labour of social value, with such pleasures as 
 they could obtain as its equivalent. 
 
 But, although I hold that the surplus -labour, thus
 
 THE MOEAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 319 
 
 socialised, would go at the present time a long way towards 
 increasing the general comfort and pleasure of Society, I do 
 not think this gain would be permanent, if the change were 
 accompanied by an ever -increasing population. Up to a 
 certain limit each increase of labour-power may raise, if social- 
 istically organised, the general standard of comfort of a definite 
 group of persons ; by which I understand a group living on a 
 definite area, having definite internal resources, definite means 
 of communication with the outside world, and a definite series 
 of products to exchange with neighbouring groups. When 
 this limit, which is essentially local and temporal, is once 
 reached, each accession of fresh labour-power tends to lower 
 the general standard of comfort, and ultimately to force it 
 down to that bare level of subsistence at which the starvation 
 check abruptly brings it up. It is this " limit to efficient 
 population " which it is the duty of the statesman to discover, 
 and to maintain, as far as possible, at each period of social 
 growth. Eemoval of population, prohibition of immigration, 
 and, if necessary, limitation of the number of births, are the 
 means whereby the limit to efficient population may be 
 approximately conserved. Does the existing organisation of 
 Society regard this limit ? If not, would it be possible for a 
 socialised Society to so do ? These are the questions which 
 form the population problem, and demand our consideration. 
 The Socialist of the market-place, who ignores them, places 
 himself outside the field of useful discussion. We must 
 recognise the problem ; and, when carefully investigated, it 
 will be found to offer one of the strongest arguments in favour 
 of Socialism with which I am acquainted. We may even say 
 that Socialism is the logical outcome of the law of Malthus. 
 
 Let us consider how the present ecomonic structure of 
 society bears on the problem of population. To begin with, 
 we find that there exists a small body of thinkers, who believe 
 that much of the social misery of the present would be relieved, 
 were we, instead of attempting to transform the present 
 economic relation of capital and labour, to devote our energies 
 to inducing the working-classes to limit their numbers. Such 
 limitation, they hold, would, by increasing wages, raise the
 
 320 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 standard of comfort, and so, to a great extent, effect what 
 Socialists desire. The standard of comfort once raised would 
 be permanently maintained. To this I reply that, without an 
 extremely large and scarcely probable reduction in population, 
 the standard thus raised would be far below what would be 
 reached by the socialisation of surplus -labour, and that it 
 would still leave untouched other anomalies of class-monopoly. 
 Further, that there is absolutely no security that even such 
 standard, if reached, could be maintained. Indeed it would be 
 directly prejudicial to the capitalistic classes that it should be ; 
 the export price of a commodity, depending largely on the cost 
 of labour, would have to be lowered to the price fixed by that 
 manufacturing country where the standard of life is lowest. 
 The English trader would not only be unable to compete with 
 his foreign rival, but, without protection, the home-markets 
 would be flooded by the cheaper foreign ware. It cannot be 
 to the interest of the monopolist class that labour should be 
 dear, and there is not the slightest possibility that, under our 
 present system of production for profit, not for use, any 
 attempt on the part of the workers for limitation of population 
 will be effectual in raising the standard of life. The moment 
 the standard of living here is sensibly higher than abroad, 
 we have an invasion of foreign labour accustomed to a lower 
 standard of life, or a reduction in the home demand for labour 
 due to the impossibility of exporting at the higher prices. 
 Further, it is only natural that our capitalistic rulers should 
 show no signs of hindering any foreign labour invasion, nay, 
 they are often directly concerned in importing labour. We 
 are periodically sickened with false sentiment as to a free 
 country, as to free trade in labour, and the like — sentiment 
 which, in the mouths of the speakers, is not the outcome of a 
 well-thought-out social theory, but consciously or unconsciously 
 takes its origin directly in the feelings of their pocket. Under 
 a capitalistic form of Society the practical plutocracy which 
 results will never hinder the importation of foreign labour 
 with a lower standard of life ; it cannot for the sake of its 
 own existence take any real steps to preserve the limit of 
 efficient population.
 
 THE MORAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 321 
 
 It is one thing to limit population in order to maintain, 
 another, to limit population in order to raise, an existing 
 standard. The former is difficult enough, the latter almost 
 impossible, yet this latter is practically what the non- 
 socialistic Malthusians propose. The standard of life of a 
 great proportion of the working-classes is so near the bare 
 level of subsistence, beneath which even the workhouse system 
 does not allow it to fall, that there remains little to be main- 
 tained by restraint ; the attempt to raise the standard 
 requires, if it is to be effectual, united action on the part of so 
 many, and is, under our present social regime, so extremely 
 unlikely to be successful, that restraint is not calculated to 
 evoke much sympathy. 
 
 There is, indeed, little to induce the great mass of unskilled 
 labourers to limit their numbers, more especially if that limi- 
 tation imply an abstinence from one of the few pleasures 
 which lie within their reach ; a pleasure, too, which does not, 
 like drinking, appear immediately and directly to reduce the 
 weekly pittance. But the line between skilled and unskilled 
 labour is not so rigid that the amount of the latter does not 
 sensibly affect the wage -standard of the former; if skilled 
 labour is for a time highly paid, a new machine will too often 
 make it feel at once the whole weight of proletariat competi- 
 tion. The restraint of the skilled working-class avails little, 
 if there is no limitation of the proletariat, and if the capitalist 
 is always seeking to lower wages, and so the standard of life, 
 by the introduction of machinery. I think it is sufficiently 
 clear that the limitation of population in the capitalistic 
 organisation of Society will hardly be attempted, and, if 
 attempted, would not be successful. 
 
 Let us now investigate the possibility of maintaining the 
 limit of efficient population in the socialistic organisation of 
 the State. In the first place, by socialising surplus -labour 
 the standard of comfort would be raised without having 
 recourse to restraint as a means. Other than the merest 
 physical pleasures would thus be placed within the reach of 
 the worker ; this, in itself, would give him a standard worth 
 maintaining, and tend to limit population. Moral restraint
 
 322 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 by men with rational pleasures is far more likely to be effec- 
 tual than even a positive check in the present state of affairs. 
 But while I believe that the moral check will never in our 
 present social organisation become usual, except in those 
 classes whose standard of comfort is far above the level of 
 bare subsistence, I am inclined to doubt whether, under any 
 form of Society, it will be adopted by the great mass of man- 
 kind. We are dealing with one of the most imperious of the 
 animal instincts of man, and it may well be questioned, not 
 only whether such restraint is possible, but whether, having 
 due regard to the sanitary and social value of the instinct, it 
 is advisable to endeavour to restrain it. With the coming 
 emancipation of women, and the approaching decay of our foreign 
 trade, the problems of sex and of population will come more 
 and more into the foreground. It is becoming of really urgent 
 importance to discuss earnestly, scientifically, and from every 
 possible standpoint, the difficulties which present themselves ; 
 to calmly weigh all the theories which may be honestly 
 propounded, and not to dismiss every discussion as both 
 unpleasant and unfitting. The truly unpleasant and unfitting 
 conduct is to be brought daily face to face with these great 
 race-problems, and yet daily to ignore their existence, and 
 to condemn all, however earnest, consideration of them as 
 obscene and unprofitable. Yet this has been essentially the 
 spirit of our modern social and political leaders. They have 
 denied that these problems which are uppermost in fact and 
 thought have any existence, and those who would meet the 
 difficulties of the labouring classes have been professionally 
 reproved, socially ostracised, or legally silenced. There was 
 a time when any discussion of the population problem was 
 repressed ; time was when even mention of the moral restraint 
 of the disciples of Malthus was tabooed ; the time is still 
 when Neo-Malthusianism is treated as outside the field of 
 legitimate discussion. Far be it from me to assert that Neo- 
 Malthusianism will solve the problem ; ' but of this one thing 
 I feel certain that the problem will grow more and more 
 
 ' [Actually, I believe that any doctrine of restraint which does not distin- 
 guish between the fit and the unfit is a grave national danger.]
 
 THE MORAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 323 
 
 urgent, and that society will have to face and to solve it in 
 one way or another. No amount of hypocrisy will suffice to 
 hide its existence, and, if we are wise, we shaU consider, 
 while there is time, any solution which may be propounded 
 in all its bearings, physiological and social. We cannot 
 afford to reject any possible solution till we are scientifically 
 convinced that it must be anti-social in its results. 
 
 The apparent horror with which any discussion of this 
 matter has been met is, I fear, to no little extent due to our 
 present economical conditions. The same ultimate feeling of 
 pocket, which, to some extent perhaps unconsciously, demands 
 free trade in labour, demands also the repression of all free 
 discussion of this great race difficulty. For the same reason 
 that it is not to the interest of our modern plutocracy that 
 the wages of labour should be high, for this reason we 
 cannot hope, under the existing state of affairs, for any solution 
 of the complex problem of population. It is because, with a 
 socialisation of surplus -labour, there would cease to be a 
 class interested in the lowness of wages, that we trust to 
 Socialism for a thorough and earnest investigation of the 
 problems of sex. We are Socialists, because we believe that 
 Socialism alone will have the courage to find a satisfactory 
 solution. It alone can raise the standard of comfort to such 
 a height that the worker will be able to procure other than 
 the merest physical pleasures ; so long as he is tied down to 
 the bare means of subsistence it is idle, unreasonable, and 
 even impertinent, to suggest that he should renounce his one 
 unpaid-for excitement. Under Socialism alone shall we be 
 able to confine the importation of foreign labour to those few 
 skilled artizans who have really something to teach our own 
 workers. Under Socialism alone will it be possible to reap 
 the advantages of any limit of population, because one class 
 will not be interested in the over-production of another. 
 Then only will it be possible to consider dispassionately, and 
 without the suspicion of class bias, all the difficulties of the 
 problem. With the socialisation of surplus-labour it will be 
 to the interest of the whole community to maintain its labour- 
 power at that amount which gives the greatest surplus value,
 
 324 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 to discover and maintain the limit of efficient population. 
 Indeed, the socialistic seems the only form of community 
 which can morally demand, and, if necessary, legally enforce, 
 restraint of some kind upon its members. 
 
 Thus the possibility of meeting and solving the population 
 problem is seen to be closely connected with the socialisation 
 of surplus-labour. But the possibility of the continued exist- 
 ence of Socialism depends, as was long ago remarked by 
 John Stuart Mill, on the solution of this very population 
 problem.^ 
 
 (5) There is no means of measuring an individual's con- 
 trihution to the labour stock of the community. 
 
 "We have seen that it is a fundamental principle of the new 
 moral code that each individual shall undertake labour of 
 social value, that is, not merely labour, but labour which is 
 really useful to the community. The reward of any individual 
 is to depend on the quality and quantity of the labour which 
 he has contributed to the common stock. It is needful, 
 therefore, that there should be some general equality, some 
 practical coincidence, between this reward and the service 
 rendered to the community. Putting aside the labour of direc- 
 tion, education, and amusement, which requires special valuation, 
 the reward of productive labour has in some manner to be 
 made proportionate to the amount of production. By the 
 consumption of certain quantities of stored labour and of 
 labour -power a commodity is produced, and placed at the 
 disposal of the community. The utility of this commodity 
 to the community is to be in some manner equated to the 
 sacrifice of the individual, to the labour-power which he has 
 usefully expended. The measurement of value by useful 
 labour is the idea which naturally suggests itself. Protest 
 as the orthodox economists may, it is useful labour, which, I 
 firmly believe, can be the only moral, that is, socially advan- 
 tageous, basis of exchange. Without attempting, in the 
 brief space I have still at my disposal, any analysis of Karl 
 Marx's theory of value, still less entering upon its defence, 
 it yet may be profitable to inquire briefly whether even the 
 
 1 Political Economy (People's Edition), p. 226.
 
 THE MOKAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 325 
 
 admissions of its critics do not lead us to the same conclu- 
 sions as the great economist draws from his theory ; whether 
 these admissions, indeed, are not sufficient to justify us in 
 assuming that useful labour can be made a reasonable basis 
 of exchange. A criticism of Marx which has met with the 
 approval of some of our orthodox economists, and which is 
 certainly lucid, if it be not unanswerable, is that published 
 by Mr. P. H. Wicksteed in To-Bay (October, 1884). I propose 
 to refer to it in the following remarks. The really important 
 features of Marx's theory are : 
 
 (1) That the cost of labour-power (say for one day) to 
 the capitalist, when measured in labour-power, is less than 
 the amount of labour put into the commodities produced 
 by that labour-power in the same time (one day). 
 
 (2) That the exchange-value of a commodity is determined 
 by the average labour required for its production. 
 
 (3) That the difference between the cost of labour-power 
 in labour-power, and the exchange-value of the commodity 
 produced, the surplus value in Marx's theory (or, what it is 
 perhaps better to term the output of surplus -labour), goes 
 into the pocket of the capitalist. 
 
 The first point will probably be admitted, as well as the 
 third, if for a moment we use the word surplus-labour, and 
 do not complicate matters by identifying it at present with 
 surplus-value. These conclusions are, indeed, forced upon 
 us if we take the total result of the labour of the industrial 
 classes. This labom- is not only sufficient to procure or 
 prepare the bare necessaries of life for those classes, and 
 such measure of comfort as they enjoy {i.e. the cost of 
 labour -power in terms of labour -power), but at the same 
 time it provides the monopolist class with every imaginable 
 luxury and convenience which their fancy demands, or their 
 control of labour-power will extend to {i.e. the surplus-labour 
 is monopolised). It is oljvious that there is a vast amount of 
 such surxjlus-labour, the results of which are either stored for 
 future use, or at once consumed as luxuries by the monopolists 
 themselves. The monopoly, as opposed to tlie socialisation, 
 of this surplus -laljour is the great economic fact of our
 
 326 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 present social organisation. It does not stand or fall with 
 Marx's theory that the essence of exchange-value is labour, 
 but Marx's discussion of that theory has first placed the fact 
 clearly before us in all its full hideousness. Now I contend 
 that the all - important outcome of Marx's theory is really 
 accepted, if on other grounds, by his critic. Mr. Wicksteed 
 admits " the fact that a man can purchase as much labour- 
 force ^ as he likes at the price of bare subsistence" {To-Day, 
 p. 409), and further tells us that there is " a coincidence in 
 the case of ordinary manufactured articles between ' exchange- 
 value ' and 'amount of labour contained '" (p. 399). Thus 
 we see that, if the labourer can produce more than his bare 
 subsistence in a day of labour — a fact scarcely disputable — 
 Mr. Wicksteed himself really allows that the results of this 
 surplus -labour go, owing to the above coincidence, to the 
 capitalist. But this is precisely Marx's " inherent law of 
 capitalistic production." 
 
 Now our critic, by means of the laws first laid down 
 by Stanley Jevous (those " of indifference " and " of the 
 variation of utility ") logically ^ deduces that the coincidence 
 between exchange -value and amount of labour contained, 
 by which is meant socially useful labour, does really exist 
 for all ordinary articles of manufacture. Now these are the 
 very articles with which the socialised State would in the 
 first place have to deal, and this fortunate "coincidence," 
 whether it be deduced from a jelly theory of labour, or a jelly 
 theory of utility, is just the practical fact which we require in 
 order to measure, with some degree of approximation, the 
 services of each member of the community, the magnitude of 
 his contribution to the common labour-stock. Since in all 
 ordinary manufactured articles the value coincides with the 
 amount of labour contained, we are at liberty to take for such 
 articles labour as the standard of value. This standard will 
 
 ^ Rather Xahoviv-poiver ; we cannot purchase /orce, but only the cajtacity for 
 changing various motions, i.e. power. Force is not an entity at all, but a mode 
 of changing motion. The confusion has arisen from the double sense of the 
 German word ' Kraft.' 
 
 2 We are certainly not called upon to question this logic, if it leads our 
 opponents to a truth we were already on other grounds convinced of.
 
 THE MOKAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 327 
 
 in those cases be as convenient, and as legitimate, a medium 
 of exchange as o-old. If we now tiurn to other articles, the 
 supply and quality of which is uninfluenced by labour — the 
 "natural and artificial monopolies" of which Mr. Wick- 
 steed speaks — it is perfectly true that the labour theory of 
 value is inapplicable. But we do not think they would 
 introduce confusion into the exchange system of the socialised 
 State. Wlien we analyse these natural and artificial mono- 
 polies we find : 
 
 (1) That the exchange-value of many is fictitious, being 
 due to the survival of a barbaric taste, which would almost 
 certainly disappear with the spread of education {e.g. precious 
 stones, gold and silver utensils and ornaments). 
 
 (2) That others, which, owing to special artistic merit, 
 stand above competition from modern production, ought on 
 any sound socialistic theory to be removed from the field of 
 barter, and placed in local and national museums, or, at any 
 rate, used to adorn public buildings. 
 
 (3) That some few natural monopolies, as, for example 
 a limited local supply of water, or output of salt, would 
 require to have their distribution regulated by the State; 
 this is a not infrequent occurrence even under our present 
 organisation. 
 
 (4) That there is nothing to hinder, under a socialistic 
 system, disproportionate amounts of labour being given by 
 those who are inclined to do so for the majority of the re- 
 maining artificial monopolies. An enthusiastic china-maniac 
 might, in a socialistic community, devote the whole of a year's 
 labour to purchase an artistically valueless, but absolutely 
 unique pot — if he were so uneducated as to take pleasure in that 
 form of self-sacrifice. His doing so would doubtless be a 
 source of gratification to the supporters of the utility theory 
 of exchange ; it is not obvious how it would shake the founda- 
 tions of a socialistic community, except as evidence of that 
 want of common sense which is a primary condition for the 
 stability of any form of society. 
 
 It seems to me unnecessary for the Socialist to assert tliat 
 the common something in all commodities is the useful labour
 
 328 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 consumed in their production. It is sufficient if such labour 
 can, in all ordinary cases, and with the approximation really 
 sufficient in practical life, be taken as a measure of their value. 
 Socialism insists that in the relation of the individual to the 
 community the amount and quality of his contribution to the 
 labour-stock can faii'ly be taken as a measure of his reward, 
 since this contribution has practically a definite exchange- 
 value in terms of all ordinary manufactured articles. It is 
 this coiTicidence between the labour, or social value of an 
 individual and the exchange-value of wares, which is destined 
 to introduce the moral element into the industrial system of 
 the future. It suggests how Society can be as safely, and as 
 reasonably based upon laljour, upon the social energy of its 
 members, as upon the individual ownership of wealth, the 
 monopoly by a few of the surplus -labour of the whole com- 
 munity. 
 
 I have endeavoured to give in this paper a brief sketch 
 of the arguments with which, as it seems to me, a rational 
 Socialist may meet some of the principal objections raised to 
 the gradual reconstruction of society on Socialistic lines. Bud 
 such arguments will undoubtedly have far less weight in the 
 minds of our opponents than the stubborn logic of fact, than 
 those inexorable economic changes which the most obstinately 
 conservative temperament must at last recognise to be steadily 
 taking place, ever in the direction of socialisation. No appeal 
 to human or divine power, no custom or tradition, will check 
 the forces which are remoulding the wants and ideas of 
 human societies. They stand outside us ; we can investigate, 
 imderstand, and follow, but we cannot control. There are 
 some who interpret these changes as a national decadence, and 
 accordingly paint the future in the blackest colours. They 
 find the old religious notions toppling down like the old 
 mediaeval churches ; they do not see that both alike are W'Orn 
 out, and they would restore where they ought to rebuild. 
 Finding the old conceptions of morality, social and sexual, in 
 which they have been reared, unworkable in the present, they 
 cry that there is no light, when, if they were couched for the 
 cataract of prejudice, they could scarce face the gleams of the
 
 THE MORAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 329 
 
 sun. On the other hand, the Socialist finds in the moral and 
 economic changes in progress the development of mankind to 
 a fuller enjoyment of life, the substitution for superstition of a 
 faith in knowledge, the replacement of a worship of the un- 
 knowable by a reverence for concrete Society as embodied in 
 the State. The Socialist teaches that the aim of industry is not 
 in the first place supremacy in the world-markets, but is the 
 general welfare of the community, as evidenced by the raising of 
 the general standard of physical comfort and intellectual develop- 
 ment. Viewed from this standpoint, the changes which we see 
 in progress, bring a feeling of unmixed satisfaction, and throw 
 open a field of healthy social work and fruitful thought to all 
 who would partake of that activity w^hich is the joy of life. 
 So far from our age being an age of stagnation, or of decadence, 
 it is an age of greater movements than have been witnessed 
 since the sixteenth century, and it is in our own country that 
 two at least of these movements will more immediately bear 
 fruit, and most powerfully influence the development of the 
 rest of mankind. On the one hand to work out the emanci- 
 pation of women will be one of the gravest tasks, replete with 
 the most far-reaching consequences, that England has ever 
 taken upon herself. On the other hand we have received 
 Socialism from France and Germany as an ideal of Utopian 
 dreamers, we must strive to return it to them as a political 
 possibility, not as a blind protest of suffering toilers, but as a 
 workable social polity.
 
 XII 
 
 SOCIALISM: IN THEOEY AND PEACTICE ^ 
 
 Let him who will, praise your legislators, but I must say what I 
 think. — Plato. 
 
 In the course of last year there was a great deal of discus- 
 sion in the newspapers — and out of them — concerning the 
 dwellings of the so-called 'poor.' Numerous philanthropical 
 people ^vrote letters and articles describing the extreme misery 
 and unhealthy condition of many of our London courts and 
 alleys. The Prince of Wales got up in the House of Lords 
 and remarked that he had visited several of the most wretched 
 slums in the Holborn district, and found them " very deplor- 
 able indeed." The whole subject seemed an excellent one out 
 of which to make political capital. The leader of the 
 Conservatives wrote an article in a Tory magazine on 
 
 1 This lecture was originally delivered in February 1884 to a Deptford 
 working-men's club. It has since been twice printed as a pamphlet. The 
 following dedicatory note to the first edition may serve to explain its object and 
 its limitations : — 
 
 To E. C. 
 This lecture has been printed just as it was delivered. You would have 
 wished it carefully revised. Other labour lias hindered my touching it, and it 
 now seems better to let its homely language stand. It was addressed to simple 
 folk ; had it been intended for a middle-class audience it would have adopted a 
 more logical, but undoubtedly harsher tone. The selfishness of the 'upper' 
 classes arises to a great extent from ignorance, but these are times in which such 
 ignorance itself is criminal. The object of this pamphlet will be fulfilled should 
 it bring home even to one or two that truth which I have learned from you, 
 namely — that the higher Socialism of our time does not strive for a mere 
 political reorganisation, it is labouring for a moral renascence. K. P. 
 
 Inner Temple, Christmas Eve, 1884.
 
 SOCIALISM: IN THEORY AND PEACTICE 331 
 
 the dwellings of the poor. He told us that things are 
 much better in the country than they are in the towns, 
 that the great landlords look after the housing of the 
 agricultural labourers. It is the employers of labour, the 
 capitalists, who are at fault. They ought to provide proper 
 dwellings for their workpeople. This was the opinion of 
 Lord Salisbury, a great owner of land. But the Conservatives 
 having come forward as the friends of the working-mau, it 
 seemed impossible, with a view to future elections, to let the 
 matter rest there. Accordingly, Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, a 
 Eadical leader and capitalist, wrote another article in a 
 Liberal magazine, to show that it is no business whatever of 
 the employers of labour to look after the housing of their 
 workpeople. It is the duty of the owner of the land to see 
 that decent houses are built upon it. In other words, the 
 only men who under our present social regime could make 
 vast improvements, threw the responsibility off their own 
 shoulders. " Very deplorable indeed," said Lord Salisbury, 
 " but of course not the landlord's fault ; why does not that 
 greedy fellow, the capitalist, look after his workpeople?" 
 " Nothing could be more wretched ; I am sure it will lead to 
 a revolution," ejaculated Mr. Chamberlain, " but, of course, 
 it has nothing to do with the capitalist ; why does not that 
 idle person, that absolutely useless landlord, build more decent 
 houses ? " Then the landlord and capitalist smiled in their 
 sleeves, and agreed that it would be well to appoint a Eoyal 
 Commission, which meant, that after a certain amount of 
 philanthropic twaddle and a wide sea of political froth, the 
 whole matter would end in nothing, or an absolutely fruitless 
 Act of Parliament.^ Any change would have to be made at 
 the cost of either the landlord or the capitalist, or of both, and 
 whether we hke it or not, it is these two who now practically 
 govern this country. They are not likely to empty their 
 pockets for our benefit. It is generally known how strong 
 the interest of the landlords is in both Houses of Parliament, 
 but this is comparatively small when we measure the interests 
 
 ' [Sixteen years afterwards we see tliat it has ended in nothing ol' tlio least 
 practical value.]
 
 332 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 of the capitalists. You will be surprised, if you investigate 
 the matter, to find the largo proportion of the House of 
 Commons which represents the interests of capital. The 
 number of members of that House who are themselves 
 employers of labour, who are connected with great com- 
 mercial interests, who are chairmen or directors of large 
 capitalistic companies, or who in some other way are 
 representatives of capital (as well as of their constituents) is 
 quite astounding. It is said that one large railway company 
 alone could muster forty votes on a division ; while the railway 
 interests, if combined, might form a coalition which, in 
 conceivable cases, would be of extreme danger to the State. 
 I have merely touched upon this matter to remind you how 
 thoroughly we are governed in this country by a class. The 
 government of this country is not in the hands of the people. 
 It is mere self-deception for us to suppose that all classes 
 have a voice in the management of our affairs. The 
 educative class (the class which labours with its head) and the 
 productive class (the class which labours with its hands) have 
 little or no real influence in the House of Commons. The 
 governing class is the class of wealth, in both its branches 
 — owners of land and owners of capital. This class naturally 
 governs in its own interests, and the interests of wealth are 
 what we must seek for would we understand the motive for 
 any particular form of foreign or domestic policy on the part 
 of either great State party. 
 
 It may strike you that I have wandered very far from the 
 topic with which I started, namely, the- dwellings of the 
 poor, but I wanted to point out to you, by a practical example, 
 why it is very unlikely that a reform, urgently needed by one 
 class of the community, will be carried out efficiently by 
 another, a governing class, when that reform must be paid for 
 out of the latter's pockets. Confirmation of this view may 
 be drawn from the fact that the governing class pretend to 
 have discovered first in 1884, that the poor are badly housed. 
 There is something almost laughable in all the pother lately 
 raised about the housing of the poor. So far as my own 
 experience goes — and I would ask if it is not a fact — the
 
 SOCIALISM: IN THEORY AND PRACTICE 333 
 
 poor are not worse housed in 1884 than they were in 1874. 
 The evil is one of very old standing. It was crying out for 
 reform ten years ago, twenty years ago, forty years ago. 
 More than forty years ago — in 1842 — there was a report 
 issued by a " Commission on the sanitary condition of the 
 labouring population of Great Britain." The descriptions 
 there given are of a precisely similar character to what was 
 recently put before the public in the little tract entitled The 
 Bitter Cry of Outcast London. In that report we hear of 
 40,000 people in Liverpool alone living in cellars underground. 
 AVe are told that the annual number of deaths from fever, 
 generated by uncleanliness and overcrowding in the dwellings 
 of the poor, was then in England and Wales double the 
 number of persons killed in the battle of "Waterloo. We 
 hear of streets without drainage, of w^orkshops without 
 ventilation, and of ten to twenty people sleeping in the same 
 room, often five in a bed and rarely with any regard to sex. 
 The whole essence of that report went to show that, owing 
 to the great capitalistic industries, the working classes, if 
 they had not become poorer, had become more demoralised. 
 They had been forced to crowd together, and occupy unhealthy 
 and often ruinous dwellings. The governing class and the 
 public authorities scarcely troubled themselves about the 
 matter, but treated the working classes as machines rather 
 than as men. We see then that precisely the same evil 
 was crying as loudly for remedy in 1842 as it cries now in 
 1884. We ask : Why has there been no remedy applied during 
 all these years ? There can only be two answers to that 
 question : either no remedy is possible, or else those in whose 
 power the remedy lies refuse to apply it.^ 
 
 Is no remedy possible ? A thoughtful Conservative recently 
 stated that although he recognised the misery of the 
 poorer members of the working classes, he still held no 
 remedy was possible. The misery might become so intense 
 that an outbreak would result ; still, when the outbreak 
 was over, matters would sink back into their old course. 
 
 ' ' Applying a remedy ' connotes more than passing a Public Health Act. It 
 means forcing vestries and local boards to carry out its spirit.
 
 334 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 There must be poor, and the poor would be miserable.^ No 
 violent revolution, no peaceful reform, could permanently 
 benefit the poorer class of toilers. It was, so to speak, a 
 law of nature (if not of God) that society should have a basis 
 of misery. History proved this to be always the case. 
 
 It is to this latter phrase I want to call your attention — 
 History proved this to he always the case. Our Conservative 
 friend was distinctly right in his method when he appealed to 
 history. That is peculiarly the method which ought to be 
 used in the solution of all social and political problems. 
 It is of the utmost importance to induce the working classes 
 to study social and political problems from the historical 
 standpoint. Let us listen to no emotional appeals, nor to 
 the mere talk of rival political agitators. Let us endeavour, 
 if possible, to see how like problems have been treated 
 by other peoples in other ages, and with what measure of 
 success. The study of history is, I am aware, extremely 
 difficult, because the popular history books tell us only of 
 wars and of kings, and very little of the real life of the 
 people — how they worked, how they were fed, and how they 
 were housed. But the real mission of history is to tell us 
 how the great mass of the people toiled and lived ; to tell us 
 of their pleasure, and of their misery. That is the only 
 history that can help us in social problems. Does, then, 
 history tell us that there always has been, and therefore 
 always must be, a large amount of misery at the basis of 
 society ? The question is one really of statistics, and ex- 
 tremely difficult to answer ; but, after some investigation, I 
 must state that I have come to a conclusion totally different 
 from that of our Conservative friend. I admit, in the words 
 of the man who worked for the poor in Galilee, that at all 
 times and places " the poor ye have always with you" ; but the 
 amount of poverty, as well as the degree of misery attending 
 it, have varied immensely, I have made special investigation 
 of the condition of the artisan class in Germany some three 
 to four hundred years ago, and do not hesitate to assert that 
 
 ^ This seems to be also the doctrine recently expounded to " Church 
 Paraders," March, 1887.
 
 SOCIALISM: IN THEOEY AND PEACTICE 335 
 
 anything like the condition of the courts and dwellings of 
 poorer London was then totally unknown. If this be true, 
 the argument from history is false. The artisan class has 
 occupied a firmer and more substantial position in times gone 
 by than it at present occupies. If it has sunk in the scale of 
 comfort, it can certainly rise. In other words, a remedy for 
 the present state of things does seem to me possible. Should 
 any of you want to know why the working classes were better 
 off four hundred years ago than they are at present, I must 
 state it as my own opinion, that it was due to a better social 
 system. The social system of those old towns, so far as the 
 workman was concerned, depended on his guild, while the 
 political system was based as a rule upon the combined guilds. 
 Thus the union which organised the craftsmen and their 
 work, which also brought them together for social purposes, 
 was practically the same as that which directed the municipal 
 government of their city. If you would exactly understand 
 what that means, you must suppose the trades unions of to- 
 day to have a large share in the government of London. If 
 they had, how long do you think the dwellings of the poor 
 would remain what they are ? Do you believe the evil would 
 remain another forty years? or that in 1924 it would be 
 necessary to shuffle out of immediate action by appointing 
 another Eoyal Commission ? 
 
 As I have said, the guilds of working men had originally 
 a large share in municipal government. The City guilds, as 
 you know, are still very wealthy bodies, and have great 
 influence in the City. This is all that remains in London of 
 the old system of working-men's guilds taking a part in the 
 management of the City's affairs. 
 
 In old days, then, the labouring classes were united in 
 guilds, and these guilds had a considerable share in local 
 government. The social and political system was thus, to 
 some extent, based upon labour. Such an organisation of 
 society we call socialistic. The workmen of four hundred years 
 ago were better off than are the workmen of to-day, because 
 the old institutions were more socialistic ; in other words, 
 society was organised rather on the basis of labour than on the
 
 336 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 basis of wealth. A society based upon wealth, since it grants 
 power and place to the owners of somefhing which is now in 
 the hands of a few individuals, may be termed individualistic. 
 To-day we live in an individualistic state. I believe the 
 workman of four hundred years ago was better off than his 
 fellow now, because he formed part of a socialistic rather than 
 an individualistic system. I believe a remedy possible for the 
 present state of affairs, because history seems to teach us that 
 the artisan has a firmer and happier position under a socialism 
 than under an individualism. It also teaches us that some 
 forms of socialism have existed in the past, and may therefore be 
 possible in the present or in the future. I hold, and I would ask 
 you to believe with me, that a remedy is possible. If it is, we 
 are thrown back on the alternative that the governing class 
 has refused or neglected to apply it. We have seen that the 
 evil did not arise, or did not accumulate to such an extent, 
 where society was partly based upon labour ; we are, there- 
 fore, forced to the probable conclusion, that the evil has 
 arisen, and continues to subsist, because our social and 
 political system is based upon wealth rather than upon labour 
 — because we live under an individualism rather than under 
 a socialism. It is the fault of our present social system, and 
 not a law of history, that the toilers should be condemned to 
 extreme misery and poverty. 
 
 We have now to consider the following questions : — What 
 do we mean by labour and a social system based upon labour ? 
 By what means can we attempt to convert a system based 
 upon wealth to one based upon labour ; in other words, how 
 shall we proceed to convert our present individualism into a 
 socialism ? Under the latter question it will be necessary to 
 include the consideration of the attitude which the artisan class 
 should itself take with regard to organisations for socialistic 
 change, and how it should endeavour to take political action, 
 especially with regard to the two great capitalistic parties. 
 
 Let me first endeavour to explain what I understand by 
 labour. You may imagine at first, perhaps, that I refer only 
 to labour of the hand — such labour as is required to make a 
 pair of boots or turn a lathe. But I conceive labour to be
 
 SOCIALISM: IN THEOEY AND PEACTICE 337 
 
 something of far wider extent than this. I hold the term to 
 include all work, whether work of the head or of the hand, 
 which is needful or projfitable to the community at large. The 
 man who puts cargo into a ship is no more or less a labourer 
 than the captain who directs her course across the ocean ; 
 nor is either of them more of a labourer than the mathema- 
 tician or astronomer whose calculations and observations 
 enable the captain to know which direction he shall take when 
 he is many hundred miles from land. The shoemaker or the 
 postman are no more labourers than the clerk who sits in a 
 merchant's office or the judge who sits on the bench. The 
 schoolmaster, the writer, and the actor are all true labourers. 
 In some cases they may be overpaid ; in many they are 
 underpaid. Men of wealth have been known to pay the 
 governess who teaches their children less than they pay their 
 cook, and to treat her with infinitely less respect. I have laid 
 stress on the importance of labour of the head, because I 
 have met with certain working men who believed nothing but 
 labour of the hand could have any value ; that all but labourers 
 with the hand were idlers. You have doubtless heard of the 
 victory gained last year by English troops in Egypt. Now, 
 how do you suppose that victory was gained ? Were the 
 English soldiers a bit braver than the Arabs ? Were they 
 stronger ? Not in the least. They won the victory because 
 they were better disciplined, because they had better weapons, 
 — shortly, because what we may term their organisation was 
 better. That organisation was due to labour of the head. 
 Now, what happened in Egypt is going on in the world at 
 large every day. It is not always the stronger, but the 
 better organised, the better educated man who goes ahead. 
 What is true of individual men is true of nations. The 
 better organised, the better educated nation is victorious in 
 the battle of life. We English have been so successful 
 because we were well organised, because we were better 
 educated than the Egyptians, Zulus, and other races we have 
 conquered. You must never forget how much of that 
 organisation, that education, is due to labourers with the 
 head. Some of you may be indifferent to the great empire of
 
 338 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 England, to this superiority of Englishmen, but let me assure 
 you that, small as in some cases is the comfort of the English 
 working classes, it is on the average large compared with 
 that of an inferior race — compared, say, with the abject 
 condition of the Egyptian peasant. I want, if possible, to point 
 out to you the need for sympathy between labour of all kinds 
 — that labourers with the hand and labourers with the head 
 are mutually dependent. They are both true labourers as 
 opposed to the idlers — the drones, who, by some chance 
 having a monopoly of wealth, live on the labour of others. 
 I would say to every man — " Friend, what is your calling, 
 what are you doing for society at large ? Are you making 
 its shoes, are you teaching its children, are you helping to 
 maintain order and forward its business ? If you are follow- 
 ing none of these occupations, are you relieving its work hours 
 by ministering to its play ? Do you bring pleasure to the 
 people as an actor, a writer, or an artist ? If you are doing 
 none of these, if you are simply a possessor of wealth, 
 struggling to amuse yourself and pass through life for your 
 own pleasure, then — why, then, you are not wanted here, and 
 the sooner you clear out, bag and baggage, the better for us — 
 and perhaps for yourself." Do you grasp now the significance 
 of a society based upon labour ? The possessor of wealth, 
 simply because he has wealth, would have no place in such 
 a society. The workers would remove him even as the 
 worker bees eject the drone from their hive. 
 
 Society ought to be one vast guild of labourers — workers 
 with the head and workers with the hand ; and so organised 
 there would be no place in it for those who merely live on the 
 work of others. In a political or social system based upon 
 labour nobody on the mere ground of wealth could lay claim 
 to power. How far we are at present from such a Socialism 
 may be best grasped by noting that wealth has now almost 
 all political and social power; labour may have the name 
 but has little or none of the reality. 
 
 We have now reached what I conceive to be the funda- 
 mental axiom of Socialism. Society must he organised on the 
 basis of labour, and therefore political power, the power of
 
 SOCIALISM: IN THEOEY AND PKACTICE 339 
 
 organising, must be in the hands of labour. That labour, as 
 I have endeavoured to impress upon you, is of two kinds. 
 There is labour of the hand, which provides necessaries for 
 all society ; there is labour of the head, which produces all 
 that we term progress, and enables any individual society to 
 maintain its place in the battle of life — the labour which 
 educates and organises. I have come across a tendency in 
 some workers with the hand to suppose all folk beside them- 
 selves to be idlers, social drones, supported by their work. 
 I admit that the great mass of idlers are in what are termed 
 the ' upper and middle classes of society.' But this arises 
 from the fact that, society being graduated solely according 
 to wealth, the people with the most money, the richest and 
 the idlest, of course take their place in these viciously named 
 ' upper classes.' In a laborer scale they would naturally appear 
 at the very bottom, and form ' the dregs of population.' It 
 is true the labourer with the head is, as a rule, better clothed, 
 housed, and fed than the labourer with the hand, but this 
 often arises from the fact that he is also a capitalist. Still, 
 if the labourer with the head, whose labour is his sole source 
 of livelihood, is better clothed, housed, and fed than the 
 artisan, it does not show that in all cases he is earning more 
 than his due ; on the contrary, it may denote that the artisan 
 is earning far less than his due. The difference, in fact, often 
 represents the work which goes to support the drones of our 
 present social system. 
 
 At this point I reach what I conceive to be the second 
 great axiom of true Socialism. All forms of labour are equally 
 honourable. No form of labour which is necessary for society 
 can disgrace the man who undertakes it, or place him in a 
 lower social grade than any other kind of work. Let us look 
 at this point somewhat more closely, as it is of the first 
 importance. So long as the worker looks upon his work as 
 merely work for himself — considers it only as a means to his 
 own subsistence, and values it only as it satisfies his own 
 wants, so long one form of work will be more degrading than 
 another. To shovel mud into a cart will be a lower form of 
 work than to make a pair of shoes, and to make shoes will
 
 340 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 not be such high -class hibour as to direct a factory. But 
 there is another way of regarding work, in which all forms 
 of real labour appear of equal value, viz., when the labourer 
 looks at his work, not with regard to himself, but with regard 
 to society at large. Let him consider his work as something 
 necessary for society, as a condition of its existence, and then 
 all gradations vanish. It is quite as necessary for society that 
 its mud should be cleared from the streets, as it is that it 
 should have shoes, or that its factories should be directed 
 Once let the workman recognise that his labour is needful for 
 society, and, whatever its character, it becomes honourable at 
 once. In other words, from the social standpoint all labour 
 is equally honourable. We might even go so far as to assert 
 that the more irksome forms of labour are the more honour- 
 able, because they involve the greater personal sacrifice for 
 the need of society. Once let this second axiom of true 
 Socialism be recognised — the equality of every form of 
 labour — and all the vicious distinctions of caste, the false 
 lines which society has drawn between one class of workers 
 and another, must disappear. The degradation of labour 
 must cease. Once admit that labour, though differing in 
 kind, as the shoemaker's from the blacksmith's, is equal in 
 degree, and all class barriers are broken down. Thus, in a 
 socialistic state, or in a society based upon labour, there can 
 clearly be no difference of class. All labourers, whether of the 
 hand or the head, must meet on equal terms ; they are alike 
 needful to society ; their value will depend only on the fitness 
 and the energy with which they perform their particular duties. 
 Before leaving this subject of labour there is one point, 
 however, w^hich must be noticed. I have said that all forms 
 of labour are equally honourable, because we may regard 
 them as equally necessary for society. But still the effect on 
 the individual of various kinds of labour will be different. 
 The man who spends his whole day in shovelling up mud will 
 hardly be as intelligent as the shoemaker or the engineer. 
 His labour does not call for the same exercise of intelligence, 
 nor draw out his ingenuity to the same extent. Thus, although 
 his labour is equally honourable, it has not such a good in-
 
 SOCIALISM: IN THEOEY AND PEACTICE 341 
 
 fluence on the man himself. Hence the hours of labour in 
 such occupations ought to be as short as possible ; sufficient 
 leisure ought to be given to those engaged in the more 
 mechanical and disagreeable forms of toil to elevate and 
 improve themselves apart from their work. When we admit 
 that all labour is equally honourable, and therefore deserving 
 of equal wage, then to educate the labourer will not lead him 
 to despise his work. It will only lead him to appreciate and 
 enjoy more fully his leisure. This question of leisure is a 
 matter of the utmost importance. We hear much of the 
 demand for shorter hours of labour ; but how is the increased 
 spare time to be employed ? Many a toiler looks with envy 
 upon the extravagant luxury of the wealthy, and not un- 
 naturally cries: "What right have you to enjoy all this, 
 while I can hardly procure the necessaries of life ? " But 
 there is a matter for which I could wish the working classes 
 would envy the wealthy even more than they might reasonably 
 do for their physical luxury — namely, their power to procure 
 education. There is to me something unanswerable in the 
 cry which the workman might raise against the wealthy : 
 " What right have you to be educated, while I am ignorant ? " 
 Far more unanswerable than the cry — " What right have you 
 to be rich while I am poor ? " I could wish a cry for educa- 
 tion might arise from the toilers as the cry for bread went 
 up in the forties. It is the one thing which would render an 
 increase of leisure really valuable to the workers; which 
 would enable them to guide themselves, and assist society, 
 through the dangerous storms which seem likely to gather in 
 the near future. Leisure employed in education, in self 
 improvement, seems to me the only means by which the 
 difference in character between various forms of labour can 
 be equalised. This is a matter in which the labourers with 
 the head can practically assist those with the hand. Let the 
 two again unite for that mutual assistance which is so 
 necessary, if between them they are to reorganise society into 
 one vast guild of labour. 
 
 If we XJass for a moment from the possibilities of the 
 present to those of a more distant future, we miglit conceive
 
 342 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 the labourers with the hand to attain such a degree of 
 education that workers of both kinds might be fused together. 
 The same man might labour with his pen in the morning and 
 with his shovel after mid-day. That, I think, would be the 
 ideal existence in which society, as an entire body, would 
 progress at the greatest possible rate. I have endeavoured, 
 then, to lay before you what I understand by labour ; how 
 all true labour is equally honourable and deserving of an 
 equal wage. If many of the anomalies and much of the 
 misery of our present state of society would disappear, were 
 it organised on a socialistic or labour basis, it becomes 
 necessary to consider in what manner the labour basis differs 
 from, and is opposed to, the present basis of wealth. 
 
 In order to illustrate what the present basis of wealth 
 means, let me put to you a hypothetical case. Let us suppose 
 three men on an island separated from the rest of the world. 
 We will also suppose that there is a sufficient supply of seed, 
 ploughs, and generally of agricultviral necessaries. If, now, 
 one of the three men were to assert that the island, the 
 seed, and the ploughs belonged to him, and his two comrades 
 for some reason — or want of reason — accepted his assertion, 
 let us trace what would follow. Obviously, he would have 
 an entire monopoly of all the means of sustaining life 
 on the island. He could part with them at whatever rate 
 he pleased, and could insist upon the produce of all the 
 labour-power which it would be possible to extract from 
 these two men, in return for supplying them with the barest 
 necessities of existence. He would naturally do nothing ; 
 they would till the ground with his implements, and sow Ids 
 seed and store it in his barn. After this he might employ 
 them in work tending to increase his luxuries, in providing 
 him with as fine a house and as easy furnitm-e as they 
 were capable of producing. He would probably allow them 
 to build themselves shanties as protection from the weather, 
 and grant them sufficient food to sustain life. All their time, 
 after providing these necessaries for themselves, would be 
 devoted to his service. He would be landlord and capitalist, 
 having a complete monopoly of wealth. He could practically
 
 SOCIALISM: IN THEOEY AND PRACTICE 343 
 
 treat the other two men as slaves. Let us somewhat extend 
 our example, and suppose this relation to hold between the 
 one man and a considerable number of men on the island. 
 Then it might be really advantageous for all the inhabitants, 
 if the one man directed their labour. We may suppose him 
 to be a practical farmer, who thoroughly understood his 
 business ; so that, by his directing the others, the greatest 
 amount possible would be produced from the land. As such 
 a director of farming operations, he would be a labourer with 
 the head, and worthy as any man under him to receive his 
 hire. He would have as great a claim as any one he directed 
 to the necessaries of life produced by the labourers with the 
 hand. In a socialistic scheme he would still remain director ; 
 he would still receive his share of the produce, and the result 
 of the labour of the community would be divided according to 
 the labour of its members. On the other hand, if our farm- 
 director were owner of all things on the island, he might 
 demand not only the share due to him for his labour of the 
 head, but also that all the spare labour of the other inhabi- 
 tants should be directed to improving his condition rather 
 than their own. After providing for themselves the bare 
 necessities of life the other islanders might be called upon to 
 spend all the' rest of their time in ministering to his luxury. 
 He could demand this because he would have a monopoly of 
 all the land and all the wealth of the island. Such a state of 
 afiairs on the island would be an individualism, or a society 
 based upon wealth. I think this example will show clearly 
 the difference between a society based upon labour and one 
 based upon wealth. Commonplace as the illustration may 
 seem, it is one which can be extended, and yet rarely is 
 extended, to the state of affairs we find in our own country. 
 We have but to replace our single landowner Ijy a number 
 of landowners and capitalists, who as a group will have a 
 monopoly of laud and of wealth. They can virtually force 
 the labouring classes, who have neither land nor capital, to 
 minister to their luxiiry in return for the more needful 
 supports of life. The degree of comfort to which Ihcy can 
 limit the labouring classes will depend on the following con-
 
 344 THE ETHIC OF EREETHOUGHT 
 
 siderations, which, of course, vary from time to time : — First, 
 their own self-interest in keeping at least a sufficient supply 
 of labour in such decent health and strength that it can 
 satisfy their wants ; secondly, their fear that too great pinching 
 may lead to a violent revolution ; and, thirdly, a sort of feeling 
 — arising partly perhaps from religion, partly perhaps from in- 
 herited race-sympathy — of discomfort at the sight of suffering. 
 The greater demand there is for luxury on the part of 
 the wealthy, the smaller is the time that the labouring 
 classes can devote to the improvement of their own condition 
 and the increase of their own comfort. Let us take the following 
 case, which may not be the absolute truth, but which will 
 exemplify the law we have stated. Suppose that the labour- 
 ing classes work eight hours a day. Now, these eight hours 
 are spent not only in producing the absolute necessities of 
 existence, and the degree of comfort in which our toilers live, 
 but in producing also all the luxuries enjoyed by the rich. Let 
 us suppose, for example, that five hours suffice to sow and to 
 till, and to weave, and to fetch and carry — shortly, to produce 
 the food-supply of the country, and the average comfort which 
 the labourer enjoys as to house and raiment. What, then, 
 becomes of the other three hours' work ? It is consumed in 
 making luxuries of all kinds for the monopolists, fine houses, 
 elegant furniture, dainty food, and so forth. These three hours 
 are spent, not in improving the condition of the labourer's 
 own class, not in building themselves better dwellings or 
 weaving themselves better clothes, nor, on the other hand, are 
 they spent in public works for the benefit of the whole com- 
 munity, but solely in supplying luxuries for wealthy indi- 
 viduals. The wealthy can demand these luxuries because 
 they possess a monopoly of land and of capital — shortly, of 
 the means of subsistence. This monopoly of the means of 
 subsistence makes them in fact, if not in name, slave-owners. 
 Such is the result of the individualistic as opposed to the 
 socialistic system. "We see now why the houses of the poor 
 are deplorable — namely, because that surplus -labour which 
 should be devoted to improving them is consumed in supply- 
 ing the luxuries of the rich. We may state it, indeed, as a
 
 SOCIALISM: IN THEOEY AND PEACTICE 345 
 
 general law of a society based upon wealth : that the misery 
 of the labouring classes is directly proportiojial to the luxury of 
 the wealthy. This law is indeed a very old one; the only 
 strange thing is that it is every day forgotten. 
 
 Having noted, then, wherein the evil of the social system 
 based upon wealth lies, we have lastly to consider how far, 
 and by what means, it is possible to remedy it. 
 
 The only true method of investigating a question of this 
 kind is, I feel sure, the historical one. Let us ask ourselves 
 how in past ages one state of society has been replaced by 
 another, and then, if possible, apply the general law to the 
 present time. 
 
 Now, there are a considerable number of socialistic 
 teachers — I will not call them false Socialists — who are 
 never weary of crying out that our present state of society 
 is extremely mijust, and that it must be destroyed. They 
 are perpetually telling the labouring classes that the rich 
 unjustly tyrannise over them, and that this tyranny must be 
 thrown off. According to these teachers, it would seem as if 
 the rich had absolutely entered into a conspiracy to defraud 
 the poor. Now, although I call myself a Socialist, I must 
 tell you plainly that I consider such teaching not only very 
 foolish, but extremely harmful. It can arise only from men 
 who are ignorant, or from men who seek to win popularity 
 from the working classes by appealing to their baser passions. 
 So far from aiding true Socialism, it stirs up class-hatred, 
 and instead of bringing classes together, it raises a barrier of 
 bitterness and hostility between them. It is idle to talk of a 
 conspiracy of the rich against the poor, of one class against 
 another. A man is born into his class, and into the traditions 
 of his class. He is not responsible for his birth, whether it 
 be to wealth or to labour. He is born to certain luxuries, 
 and he is never taught to consider them as other than his 
 natural due ; he does as his class does, and as his fathers 
 have done before him. His fault is not one of malice, but of 
 ignorance. He does not know how his luxuries directly in- 
 crease the misery of the poor, because no one has ever brought 
 it home to him. Although a slave-owner, he is an unconscious
 
 346 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 slave-owner. Shortly, he wants educating ; not educating 
 quite in the same sense as the labouring classes want educat- 
 ing : he probably has book-learning enough. He wants teach- 
 ing that there is a higher social morality than the morality of a 
 society based upon wealth. Above all things he must be taught 
 that mere ownership has no social value at all — that the sole 
 thing of social value is labour, labour of head or labour of 
 hand ; and that individual ownership of wealth has arisen in 
 the past out of a very crude and superficial method of re- 
 warding such labour. The education of the so-called upper 
 or wealth -owning classes is thus an imperative necessity. 
 They must be taught a nevj morality. Here, again, is a point 
 on which we see the need of a union between the educational 
 and hand-working classes. The labourers with the head must 
 come to the assistance of the labourers with the hand by 
 educating the wealthy. Do not think this is a visionary 
 project ; at least two characteristic Englishmen, John 
 Euskin and "William Morris, are labouring at this task ;. 
 they are endeavouring to teach the capitalistic classes that 
 the morality of a. society based upon wealth is a mere im- 
 morality. 
 
 But you will tell me that education is a very long process, 
 and that meantime the poor are suffering, and must continue 
 to suffer. Are not the labouring classes unjustly treated, and 
 have they not a right to something better ? Shortly, ought 
 they not to enforce that right ? Pardon me, if I tell you 
 plainly that I do not understand what such abstract ' justice ' 
 or ' right ' means. I understand that the comfort of the 
 labouring classes is far below what it would be if society 
 were constituted on the basis of labour. I believe that on 
 such a basis there would be less misery in the world, and 
 therefore it is a result to be aimed at. But because this is a 
 result which all men should strive for, it does not follow that 
 we gain anything by calling it a ' right.' A ' right ' suggests 
 something which a man may take by force, if he cannot 
 obtain it otherwise. It suggests that the labouring classes 
 should revolt against the capitalistic classes, and seize what is 
 their ' right.'
 
 SOCIALISM: IX THEOEY AND PKACTICE 347 
 
 Let us consider for a moment what is the meaning of such 
 a revolt. I shall again take history as our teacher. History 
 shows us that whenever the misery of the labouring classes 
 reaches a certain limit, they always do break into open 
 rebellion. It is the origin, more or less, of all revolutions 
 throughout the course of time. But history teaches us just 
 as surely that such revolutions are accompanied by intense 
 misery both for the labouring and the idling classes. If this 
 infliction of misery had ever resulted in the reconstruction 
 of society we might even hope for good from a revolution ; 
 but we invariably find that something like the old system 
 springs again out of the chaos, and the same old distinction 
 of classes, the same old degradation of labour, is sure to re- 
 appear. That is precisely the teaching of the Paris Commune ; 
 or again of the Anabaptist Kingdom of God in Mlinster. 
 Apart from this, the labourers with the hand will never be 
 permanently successful in a revolution, unless they have the 
 labourers with the head with them ; they will want organisa- 
 tion, they will want discipline, and this must fail unless 
 education stands by them. Now, the labourers with the 
 head have usually deserted the labourers with the hand, 
 when the latter rise in revolt, because they are students of 
 history, and they know too well from history that revolution 
 has rarely permanently benefited the revolting classes. You 
 may accept it as a primary law of history, that no great change 
 ever occurs with a leap ; no great social reconstruction, which 
 will permanently benefit any class of the community, is ever 
 brought about by a revolution. It is the result of a gradual 
 growth, a progressive change, what we term an evolution. 
 This is as much a law of history as of nature. Try as you 
 will, you cannot make a man out of a child in a day : you 
 must wait, and let him grow, and gradually educate him and 
 replace his childish ideas by the thoughts of a man. Pre- 
 cisely so you must treat society ; you must gradually change 
 it by education if you want a permanent improvement in its 
 structure. Feeling, as I do, the extreme misery which is 
 brought a])out by the present state of society based upon 
 wealth, I should say to the working classes : Revolt, — if history
 
 348 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 did not teach us only too surely that revolution would fail in 
 its object. All progress towards a better state of things must 
 be gradual. Progress proceeds by evolution, not by revolu- 
 tion. For this reason I would warn you against socialistic 
 teachers who talk loudly of 'right' and 'justice' — who seek 
 to stir up class against class. Such teaching merely tends 
 towards revolution ; and revolution is not justifiable, because 
 it is never successful. It never achieves its end. Such 
 teachers are not true Socialists, because they have not studied 
 history, because their teaching really impedes our progress 
 towards Socialism. We may even learn again from our island 
 illustration with its landlord-capitalist tyrannising over the 
 other inhabitants. We have supposed him to be a practical 
 farmer capable of directing the labours of the others. Now, 
 suppose the inhabitants were to rise in revolt, and throw him 
 into the sea, what would happen ? Why, the very next year 
 they would not know what to sow, or how to sow it ; their 
 agricultural operations would fail, and there would very soon 
 be a famine on the island, which would be far worse than the 
 old tyranny. Something very similar would occur in this 
 country if the labouring classes were to throw all our capital- 
 ists into the sea. There would be no one capable of directing 
 the factories or the complex operations of trade and commerce ; 
 these would all collapse, and there would very soon be a 
 famine in this island also. You must bring your capitalist 
 to see that he is only a labourer, a labourer with the head, 
 and deserves wage accordingly. You can only do this by two 
 methods. The first is to educate him to a higher sociaHty, 
 the second is to restrict him by the law of the land. Now, 
 the law of the land is nothing more or less than the morality 
 of the ruling class, and so long as political power is in the 
 hands of the capitalists, and these are ' uneducated,' they are 
 not likely to restrict their own profits. 
 
 If, then, my view, that we can only approach Socialism by 
 a gradual change, be correct, we have before us two obvious 
 lines of conduct which we may pursue at the same time. 
 The first, and, I am inclined to think, the more important, is 
 the education of the wealthy classes ; they must be taught
 
 SOCIALISM: IN THEOEY AND PEACTICE 349 
 
 from childhood up that the only moral form of society is a 
 society based upon labour ; they must be taught always to 
 bear in mind the great law — that the misery of the poor is 
 ever directly proportional to the luxury of the rich. This 
 first object ought to be essentially the duty of the labourers 
 with the head. Let the labourer with the hand always regard 
 himself as working in concert with the labourer with the 
 head ; the two are in truth but members of one large guild, 
 the guild of labour, upon which basis we have to reconstruct 
 society. The second line of conduct, which is practically open 
 to all true Socialists, is the attainment of political power ; 
 wealth must cease to be the governing power in this country, 
 it must be replaced by labour. The educational classes and 
 the hand- workers must rule the country ; only so will it be 
 possible to replace the wealth basis by the labour basis. The 
 first step in this direction must necessarily be the granting 
 of the franchise to all hand-workers. This is a very practical 
 and definite aim to work for. Now, I have already hinted 
 that I consider both great political parties really to represent 
 wealth. Hence I do not believe that any true Socialist is 
 either Liberal or Conservative, but at present it would be idle 
 to think of returning Socialistic members to Parliament.^ 
 Socialists will best forward their aims by supporting at 
 present that party which is likely to increase the franchise. 
 So that to be a true Socialist means, I think, to support at 
 present the Liberal Government. This support is not given 
 because we are Liberals, but because by it we can best aid 
 the cause of Socialism. But with regard to the franchise, 
 there is a point which I cannot too strongly insist upon. If 
 the complete enfranchisement of the hand-worker is to forward 
 the Socialistic cause, he must be educated so as to use it for 
 that purpose. Now, we have laid it down as a canon of 
 Socialism that all labour is equally honourable ; in a society 
 
 1 This was wiitten in 1883. The extension of the franchise, inconijilete as 
 it is, has since considerably increased the possibility of retuiiiiiis Socialistic 
 members for at least one or two towns. Even where it would bo imitossible to 
 return .such members, a local Independent Labour Party may, like tiie boy on 
 the fulcrum of a see-saw, work wonders by controlling the ujis and downs of 
 Whig and Tory (1887).
 
 350 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 based upon labour there can be no distinction of class. Thus, 
 the true Socialist must be superior to class -interests. He 
 must look beyond his own class to the wants and habits of 
 society at large. Hence, if the franchise is to be really profit- 
 able, the hand-worker must be educated to see beyond the 
 narrow bounds of his own class. He must be taught to look 
 upon society as a vfhole, and respect the labour of all its varied 
 branches. He must endeavour to grasp the wants and habits 
 of other forms of labour than his own, whether it be labour of 
 the head or of the hand. He must recognise to the full that 
 all labour is equally honourable, and has equal claims on society 
 at large. The shoemaker does not despise the labour of the 
 blacksmith, but he must be quite siu:e that the labour of the 
 schoolmaster, of the astronomer, of the man who works 
 with his brains, is equally valuable to the community. Here, 
 again, we see how the labourer with the head can come to the 
 assistance of the labourer with the hand. In order that the 
 franchise may be practically of value to the artisan, he must 
 grasp how to use it for broader purposes than mere class aims. 
 To do this he requires to educate himself. I repeat that I 
 should like to hear a cry go up from the hand-workers for 
 education and leisure for education, even as it went up forty 
 years ago for bread ; for the mind is of equal importance witli 
 the stomach, and needs its bread also. Apart from the fran- 
 chise, there is another direction in which, I think, practical 
 steps might be taken, namely, to obtain for trades-unions, or 
 rather, as I should prefer to call them, labour-guilds — an 
 influence or share in municipal government. Let there be a 
 labour -guild influence in every parish, and on every vestry. 
 As I have said before, I cannot conceive that the housing of 
 the poor would be what it is if the trades-unions had been 
 represented in the government of London. Such a representa- 
 tion would be the first approach to a communal organisation 
 based upon labour, and ultimately to a society on the same 
 foundation. You can hardly support your trades-unions too 
 energetically, and you have in this respect taught the labourers 
 with the head a lesson. These labourers with the head are 
 just beginning to form their labour -guilds too — guilds of
 
 SOCIALISM: IN THEOEY AND PEACTICE 351 
 
 teachers and guilds of writers — and it is to these labour-guilds, 
 and to your trades-unions, that we must look for much useful 
 work in the future. 
 
 These surely are practical aims enough for the present, 
 but I may perhaps be allowed to point out to you what 
 direction I think legislative action should take, supposing 
 the franchise granted to all hand - workers. As I have 
 endeavoured to show, any sudden change would be extremely 
 dangerous ; it would upset our old social arrangements, and 
 would not give us any stable new institutions. It would 
 embitter class against class, and not destroy class altogether. 
 We must endeavour to pass gradually from the old to the new 
 state ; from the state in which wealth is the social basis to 
 one in which labour is the sole element by which we judge 
 men. Now, in order that wealth should cease to be 
 mistress, the individual monopoly of the means of subsist- 
 ence must be destroyed. In other words, land and capital 
 must cease to be in the hands of individuals. We must 
 have nationalisation of the land and nationalisation of 
 capital. Every Socialist is a land-nationaliser and a capital- 
 nationaliser. 
 
 It will be sufficient now to consider the first problem, the 
 nationalisation of the land. Mr. George says : Take the land 
 and give no compensation. That is what I term a revolu- 
 tionary measure ; it attempts to destroy and reconstruct in a 
 moment. If history teaches us anything, it tells us that all 
 such revolutionary measures fail; they bring more misery 
 than they accomplish good. Hence, although I am a land- 
 nationaliser — as every Socialist must be — I do not believe in 
 Mr. George's cry of ' No compensation.' Tlien we have 
 another set of land-nationalisers, who would buy the land- 
 lords out. Let us see what this means. The landlords 
 would be given, in return for their lands, a large sum of 
 money, which would have to be borrowed by the nation, and 
 the interest on which would increase for ever the taxes of 
 the country. In other words, we should be perpetuating the 
 wealth of the landlords and their claims to be permanently 
 supported by the classes that labour. That is not a socialistic
 
 352 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 remedy. It would seem, at first sight, as if there were no 
 alternative — either compensation or no compensation. Yet 
 I think there is a third course, if we would only try to legislate 
 for the future as well as for the present. Suppose a Bill 
 were passed to convert all freehold in land into a leasehold, 
 say, of 81 to 100 years, from the nation. Here there would 
 be no question of compensation, and little real injury to the 
 ^present landowner, because the difference between freehold 
 and a hundred years' leasehold (especially in towns) is com- 
 paratively small. At the end of a hundred years the nation 
 would be in possession of all land without having paid a penny 
 for it, and without violently breaking up the present social 
 arrangements. In less than a hundred years, with the land 
 slipping from their fingers, the children of our present land- 
 owners would have learnt that, if they want to live, they must 
 labour. That would be a great step towards true Socialism. 
 Precisely as I propose to treat the land, so I would treat most 
 forms of capital. With the land, of course, mines and 
 factories would necessarily pass into the hands of the nation. 
 Eailways would have to be dealt with in the same fashion. 
 The present companies would have a hundred years' lease 
 instead of a perpetuity of their property. 
 
 These are merely suggestions of how it might be possible 
 to pass to a stable form of society based upon labour — to a 
 true Socialism. The change would be stable because it 
 woidd be gradual ; the State would be Socialistic because it 
 would be based upon labour ; wealth, in its two important 
 forms — land and capital — would ultimately belong to the 
 entire community. 
 
 Some of you may cry out in astonishment : " But what is 
 the use of working for such a Socialism ? We shall never live 
 to see it ; we shall never enjoy its advantages." Quite true, 
 I reply, but there is a nobler calling than working for ourselves, 
 there is a higher happiness than self -enjoyment — namely, the 
 feeling that our labour will render posterity, will, perhaps, 
 render even our children, free from the misery through 
 which we ourselves have had to struggle ; the feeling that our 
 work in life has left the world a more joyous dwelling-place
 
 SOCIALISM: IN THEOEY AND PEACTICE 353 
 
 for mankind than we found it. The little streak of social 
 good which each man can leave behind him — the only- 
 immortality of which mankind can be sure — is a far nobler 
 result of labour, whether of hand or of head, than threescore 
 years of unlimited personal happiness. 
 
 23
 
 XIII 
 THE WOMAN'S QUESTION^ 
 
 The legislator ought to be whole and perfect, and not half a man 
 only ; he ought not to let the female sex live softly and waste money 
 and have no order of life, while he takes the utmost care of the male sex, 
 and leaves half of life only blest with happiness, when he might have 
 made the whole state happy. . . . There appears to be need of some bold 
 man who specially honours plainness of speech, and wiU say what is best 
 for the city and citizens, ordaining what is good and convenient for the 
 whole state, amid the corruptions of human souls, opposing the mightiest 
 lusts, and having no man his helper but himself, standing alone and 
 following reason only. — Plato. 
 
 The rapidity with which women in this country are obtaining 
 an independent social and political position — the near approach 
 of their complete emancipation — is one of the most marked 
 features of our age. Yet, like so many other social changes, 
 we allow it to take place in a tentative and piecemeal fashion, 
 without first intelligently investigating whither the movement 
 is leading us, or how far it may not be really undermining the 
 existing basis of our whole society. The remoulding of existing 
 institutions may be desirable in itself, but is it not also advan- 
 tageous that we should see the real bearing of what is taking 
 place in this revolution of the relations of sex, and endeavour, 
 so far as is humanly possible, to guide the movement into such 
 channels that it may gradually change the foundations of 
 society without at the same time depriving society of its 
 stability? It is the conviction that the emancipation of 
 women will ultimately involve a revolution in all our social 
 
 1 Read at a men and women's discussion club and printed for private circula- 
 tion in 1885.
 
 THE WOMAN'S QUESTION 355 
 
 institutions, which has led me to attempt a statement of some 
 of the numerous social and sesualogical problems with which 
 the woman's question abounds. These problems remain to a 
 great extent unsolved, partly on account of their difficult 
 nature, partly because the danger of being classed with char- 
 latans and quacks has restrained investigators of genuine 
 historical and scientific capacity. Not until the historical 
 researches of Bachofen, Girard Teulon, and McLennan, tog-ether 
 with the anthropological studies of Tylor and Ploss, have been 
 supplemented by careful investigation of the sanitary and 
 social effects of past stages of sex-development, not until we 
 have ample statistics of the medico-social results of the various 
 regular and irregular forms of sex -relationship, will it be 
 possible to lay the foundations of a real science of sexualogy. 
 "Without such a science we cannot safely determine whither 
 the emancipation of women is leading us, nor what is the true 
 answer which must be given to the woman's question. It is 
 the complete disregard of sexualogical difficulties which renders 
 so' superficial and unconvincing much of the talk which pro- 
 ceeds from the ' Woman's Eights ' platform. We have first 
 to settle what is the physical capacity of woman, what would 
 be the effect of her emancipation on her function of race- 
 reproduction, before we can talk about her ' rights,' which are, 
 after all, only a vague description of what may be the fittest 
 position for her, the sphere of her maximum usefulness in the 
 developed society of the future. The higher education of 
 women may connote a general intellectual progress for the 
 community, or, on the other hand, a physical degradation of 
 the race, owing to prolonged study having ill effects on 
 woman's child-bearing efficiency. This is only one example 
 of the many problems which are thrust upon us ; and those 
 who are the most earnest supporters of woman's independence 
 ought to be the first to recognise that her duty to society is 
 paramount. They must face sex-problems with sexualogical 
 and historical knowledge, and solve them, before they appeal 
 to the market-place with all the rhetorical flourish of 'justice' 
 and of ' right.' They must show that the emancipation will 
 tend not only to increase the stability of society and the
 
 356 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 general hap})iness of mankind, ])ut will favour the physique 
 and health of both sexes. It is this want of preliminary 
 sexualogical investigation which renders nugatory much of 
 what John Stuart Mill has written on the subject, and in a 
 somewhat less degree the more powerful work of Mary WoU- 
 stonecraft. With the view of strongly emphasising this need 
 of preliminary investigation I have put together the following 
 remarks ; I do not profess to give opinions, but to suggest 
 problems. It has been difficult to avoid individual bias, and 
 I cannot flatter myself that I have been really successful. I 
 shall be satisfied, however, if my paper should convince even 
 a small number of the earnest men and women who are 
 labouring for woman's freedom, that there are certain problems 
 which demand more than emotional treatment ; they require 
 careful collection of facts, and the interpretation of such facts 
 by scientific and impartial minds. 
 
 In order to group the problems I am about to suggest, I 
 shaU first draw attention to what I think will be generally 
 admitted as the fundamental distinction between man and 
 
 I woman. It lies in the capacity for child-bearing, not 
 solely in the activity, but in the potentiality as well of the 
 function. This capacity is the essence of the physiological 
 difference between men and women ; and the first problems 
 
 \ which arise before us spring from the effects of the child- 
 bearing potentiality on the physical and mental development 
 of woman. .^£e_jfches e ef fects of such a kind as to make a 
 fundamental distinction in- social and political position be- 
 tween man and woman ? ^ Do they connote a physical and 
 mental inferiority on her side ? The question is not so easily 
 answered as some old-fashioned folk and some new-fashioned 
 platform agitators seem to^maagiiie ; it must be treated from 
 the scientlKc'and historical bases only, and even then any 
 definite answer will not be easily obtained. Yet the problem 
 is radical, and without some solution it is difficult to see how 
 we can profitably advance in our discussion. Some have 
 argued that history shows the position of women to have 
 been always secondary ; others have pointed out that the 
 tendency towards women's emancipation has been steadily
 
 THE WOMAN'S QUESTION 357 
 
 growing of late years, and they have cited the generations it 
 took to convince mankind at large of the justice of slave- 
 emancipation. Here we may, however, note the argument 
 that the negro-emancipation has wrought its best effects in 
 an improved moral tone among the white population. The 
 negro, although free, re main s intellectually and morally the 
 white man s inferior, /we may ask whether the emancipa- 
 tion of women may nolT have a like excellent effect on the 
 moral tone of men, but in nowise raise women to an intel- 
 lectual eq uality. '^ Closely associated with this problem is 
 that oi-'tf^e like" or unlike inheritance by male and female 
 childi-en of their parents' intellectual capacity.-^ Is the girl 
 at a disadvantage in this respect as compared with the boy ? 
 Does she start life handicapped ? If we admit the inferiority 
 of women at the present time — and the tone of the great 
 mass of men, especially the characteristics they peculiarly 
 desire in a wife, is strong evidence of it — we have still to 
 determine whether it is a necessity for all women. Is child- 
 bearing a check on intellectual development, and thus the 
 subjection of child-bearing women a part of an inevitable 
 natural law ? How, again, are we to treat non-child-bearing 
 women ? Does a like inferiority exist here ? Or must we, 
 with a recent writer in the Westminster Bevieiv, draw a broad 
 distinction between the two classes ? This question is ex- 
 tremely important -^dth regard to the increasing number — now 
 roughly, twenty per cent — of single women in the community. 
 Ai-e these women hampered in their physical or intellectual 
 development by merely potential functions ? The writer of 
 a recent pamphlet^ has spoken of the stifled cry of the un- 
 married woman, the Eachel-like appeal, "Give me children, 
 or else I die." It is an open question how far there is a 
 physiological basis to this cry. It has, however, led certain 
 disciples of James Hinton to replace his chief argument for 
 polygamy, namely, the evil of unsatisfied sexual desire, by an 
 
 1 Some attempt to answer this problem will be found in tlie memoirs, 
 Heredity, Itegrcssion, ami Panmixia, I'hil. Tram. vol. 187, p. 253, ami On the 
 Inheritance of the Cephalic Index, Iloyal Society Proceedings, vol. 62, p. 413. 
 
 2 The Future of Marriage. An Eireuikon for a Question of To-day.
 
 358 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 appeal to the insatiable and passionate wish of women to give 
 society what they alone can give. Our present social arrange- 
 ments are such that there is no demand for children ; the 
 acquisition of a great tract of land is viewed by our governing 
 classes not as a field for fresh population, but as opening up 
 a new market for traders' profits. Hence, under our present 
 social system, woman's prerogative function — child-bearing — 
 is of small account, and would probably be exercised to a 
 much less extent than it is, were it not associated with the 
 gratification of sexual desire. If race-evolution has implanted 
 in women a physical craving for children, it is obvious that 
 it remains unsatisfied in more than twenty per cent of woman- 
 kind. We may ask whether this aftects the physical health 
 of women, whether as such it may not act as a check on 
 intellectual activity? Thus either cliild-beariiiy; or jtS- 
 absence may possibly be a liiudraucc to woman's development. 
 Such are" the sort of arguments which can be produced 
 against w^oman's being able to occupy an equal position with 
 man ; they are not arguments against her being admitted to 
 equality, but against her power of maintaining it. In most 
 historical forms of society the honour in which women have 
 been held depended to a considerable extent on the value 
 which society then placed on children. Hence we see the 
 extreme importance of social and political questions to 
 woman, notably those relating to great social changes and 
 to population ; but these are matters whereon she has hitherto 
 had little or no opinion, and wherein she has hitherto been 
 allowed no voice. /The creator of a new machine, which 
 / throws a quantity ~of labour upon the market, and so 
 decreases the demand for population, is at present deemed 
 a public benefactor ; the woman wjio can bring forth a 
 new human being is at a discount^ It is possibly due 
 to this fact, that the position of woman in America and 
 our colonies is admittedly superior to that of woman in 
 England. 
 
 I have, perhaps, said enough to point out the important 
 problems which centre round this prerogative function of 
 woman. For our present purposes I shall divide women into
 
 THE WOMAN'S QUESTION 359 
 
 two classes, child-bearing and non-child-bearing women ; ^ the 
 distinction is in some respects an evil one, but will perhaps 
 suffice to mark two different kinds of problems. Let us con- 
 sider first those which relate to the single woman. 
 
 If twenty per cent of womankind remain single, we must 
 consider whether it be not absurd on the face of it to talk of 
 woman's proper place being the home, and her sphere the 
 family ; to hold that the first duty of society is to educate 
 women to be mothers (We may question, however, whether 
 society either frequently, or fitly, performs this duty). Granted 
 that there is a large and increasing number of single women, we 
 shall have to consider whether they are hopelessly handicapped 
 by the present competitive constitution of society. Are they 
 merely surplus machines which cannot be turned to their 
 proper purpose, or do they form a contingent whose labour 
 will be ultimately of the utmost importance to the community ? 
 The problem as to the inferiority of the single woman can 
 be solved only by an investigation of her intellectual and 
 physical condition. If we put aside the question of any child- 
 bearing desu-e affecting her welfare, it seems probable that 
 she may be less, certainly not more, influenced by sexual 
 impulse than the single man. On the other hand, her 
 physical activity is probably more — though, perhaps, to a 
 less extent than is generally supposed — affected by her sexua- 
 logical life than man's activity by his. Whether a single woman 
 is physically — I use physically in its broadest sense, not 
 only of strength, but also of power of endurance — equal to the 
 single man, is a question which wants very fully investigating. 
 That the average woman — including both child and non- 
 child-bearing classes — is at present considered as physically 
 inferior to the man, is best evidenced by the smaller wages she 
 receives for manual labour. Whether the non-child-bearer 
 would not fetch as high a price in the labour market as man, 
 if the competition of child-bearing women, who are necessarily 
 at a disadvantage, and of prostitutes, who have other means 
 of subsistence, were removed, is an important problem. The 
 
 1 Corresponding to the parous and nulliiMroas women of gynaikological 
 writers.
 
 360 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 astounding powers of endurance exhibited by the peasant girls 
 of Southern Germany and Italy, and sometimes by domestic 
 servants in England, point to no physical inferiority, where 
 the physique has been developed. 
 
 AVlien we turn to the intellectual position of women we 
 find a condition of affairs which ought to occupy much 
 attention. Woman's past and present subjection probably 
 depends to as great an extent on her presumed intellectual 
 as on her presumed physical inferiority. We must face the 
 problem of her being naturally man's intellectual inferior ; 
 her prerogative function of child-bearing may possibly involve 
 this. If it be so, we can only accept the inferiority, and 
 allow woman to find compensation for it in other directions. 
 Possibly, however, the present average intellectual inferiority 
 may be due to centuries of suppression, which have produced 
 directly or by sexual selection an inherited inferiority. Mental 
 difference is closely related to physical ; and there seems as 
 much reason for woman's inheriting a less fully developed 
 mental organ than man, as for man's inheriting rudimentary 
 organs which are fully developed in the woman. But we 
 shall have further to consider — and here I fancy we approach 
 nearer the core of the matter — whether present suppression be 
 not a more potent cause than past ; whether the fact that, 
 bad as men's education undoubtedly is, the great mass of 
 women as yet receive nothing worthy of being called intel- 
 lectual training, is not the root of all this presumed mental 
 inferiority ? AVhat women can do when they compete with 
 men intellectually has been well brought out by their recent 
 college and university successes. At the same time I must note 
 that higher educational institutions at jjresent draw picked 
 wonien, but hardly picked men. Both of the reasons I have 
 given : inheritance of a less fully developed brain, and want of 
 intellectual training, deserve careful investigation, because it 
 seems probable that remedies may be found for both. The 
 intellectual and physical training of single women ought to 
 receive the special attention of the state, because to them wiU 
 fall in all probability much of the work of the community in 
 the future, because the great restrictions which are at present
 
 THE WOMAN'S QUESTION 361 
 
 placed on their development are such an obvious evil. The 
 general tone of the family, of society, of the state, with regard 
 to single women, is still at a very low level. The first 
 puts restrictions on individual study and activity by absurd 
 domestic and social demands ; the second checks to a great 
 extent freedom of action and intercourse by still more absurd 
 social prejudices ; while the third, the state, giving women no 
 voice in public affairs, leaves their interests practically un- 
 represented in legislature and executive. Nowadays neither 
 intellectual nor physical inferiority excludes from the franchise 
 — possibly they ought to do so. There must be some other 
 disc^ualification which deprives a George Eliot of the vote that 
 is granted to the dullest yokel ; the only obvious difference is 
 the child-bearing potentiality. Why it should exclude is by 
 no means clear. Yet there may be some deep race experience, 
 some more valid cause to be produced for this apparent self- 
 assertion of men than the historical origin of our institutions 
 in an age when might was right, and most women, being 
 child-bearers, were for this reason rendered dependent on and 
 subservient to men. Granted that woman's emancipation is 
 desirable, still I am not sure whether even its ardent advocates 
 have fully recognised the fact that her enfranchisement and 
 universal suffrage would at one stroke theoretically place the 
 entire power of government in her hands, for she possesses a 
 majority of upwards of half a million in this country. If 
 there were a proposal — which does not seem improbable in 
 the future — to create a woman's political party, this 
 would be indeed a momentous, I will not say an undesirable, 
 revolution. 
 
 Whether the throwing open of all public institutions and 
 professions to women be or be not advisable is a problem 
 for much consideration. In our joreseTii^ state of society (I 
 emphasise ^jr^sew^) it may not be so easily answered as some 
 at first may think. Is it or is it not possible for the sexes 
 to mix freely in all relations of life ? The hitherto almost 
 complete separation of the sexes in the business of life has 
 led to what appears to me a very artificial relation between 
 them. It is a fact which we have to face and to consider
 
 362 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 that, whereas friendship between a man and a married woman 
 is possible, close friendship between single men and women 
 is almost impossible. It; may be due to something inherent 
 in human nature, the existence of a sexual attraction pro- 
 duced by the struggle of group against group in the battle of 
 life, or it may be due to an artificial relation, the outcome of 
 a false social system. It may be needful that existing society 
 should put its veto on such friendships, but we may still 
 question whether this veto be not a real' hindrance to human 
 development. So far is this restriction carried in some ranks 
 of life at present that, if a single man and woman are once 
 seen walking alone together, society points its finger ; if they 
 are seen twice, society pronounces them engaged ; if this be 
 denied, on the thu-d occasion it damns, not the man's be it 
 noted, but the woman's reputation. The nigh complete 
 separation of the sexes from youth upwards in the upper 
 and middle classes of our present society is a point which 
 demands our careful investigation. Is it expedient ? may it 
 not hinder general progress ? is it even healthy ? The boy 
 at the public school and the university is kept, to a great 
 extent, from woman's society. He is then thrown into it in 
 an extremely artificial manner at a time when his sexual 
 impulses are most rapidly developing. George Eliot, I think, 
 felt this keenly when, in the last years of her life, she said 
 that far too much of family influence is " ruthlessly sacrificed 
 in the case of Englishmen by their pubhc school and uni- 
 versity education." The same process occurs to a great extent 
 with the girl. Xeither boy nor girl fully and clearly under- 
 stands what influences them ; and thus the making or the 
 marring of the whole future life too often depends entirely on the 
 jblind direction of a sudden sexual impulse. How many men, 
 jhow many women, wonder in after life what attached them to 
 their present partners? They try to believe that characters 
 have changed, because they are unwilling to admit that they 
 had not the inclination, nor the knowledge, nor the oppor- 
 Itunity to study character before marriage. 
 
 Whether the co-education of boys and giiis would not be 
 advantageous is a problem demanding thoughtful consideration.
 
 THE WOMAN'S QUESTION 363 
 
 Possibly the continuous association of men with women of equal 
 position and intelligence from childhood upwards might have a 
 good influence on the general moral tone ; it might lead some 
 men to understand that sex-friendship had other pleasant and 
 more worthy elements than mere sexual passion. It might 
 thus go some way in hindering prostitution, or, at any rate, in 
 enforcing some degree of refinement on the prostitute. To 
 this it may be replied that in our present social organisation it 
 would often lead to long engagements, against which there 
 appears to be considerable objection from the medical side. 
 
 If comparative separation of the sexes in youth be advis- 
 able, we have still to note the possible desmibihty of fuller 
 sexualogical knowledge, wdiich might be imparted by home or 
 school education. (Men and women are not only surprisingly 
 ignorant of each otfer's modes of thought and phases of feeling, 
 but, extremely often, of each other's constitution ; nay, not 
 only of each other's, but occasionally of their ownJ> The 
 question is an extremely difficult, but immensely important 
 one, especially for teachers and parents, having regard to what 
 is said to be a growing evil in boys' public and girls' private 
 schools. Some parents believe that ignorance is the best safe- 
 guard, but ignorance may hinder a child from knowing the 
 very danger into which it has fallen. Want of sexualogical 
 knowledge, or even a false sense of shame may prevent parents 
 speaking out freely upon these matters. It is a question w^hether 
 society has not through the schoolmastei;'a "right to interfere 
 here between parent and child. 
 
 We must not forget that the emancipation of woman, 
 while placing her in a position of social responsibility, will 
 make it her duty to investigate many matters of which she is 
 at present frequently assumed to be ignorant. It may be 
 doubted whether the identification of purity and ignorance has 
 had wholly good effects in the past;^ ijadeedjjtjbas frequently 
 been the false cry with which men liave sought to hide their 
 " own anti-social conduct. It is certain, however, that it cannot 
 last inlhe" future, and man will have to face the fact that 
 
 1 If we may tmst Alexandre Dumas fils, eighty i>er cent of marriages in France 
 are made in ignorance, and regretted within a month.
 
 364 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 woman's views and social action with regard to many sex- 
 problems may widely differ from his own. It is of the utmost 
 importance, then, that woman, not only on account of the part 
 she already plays in the education of the young, but also 
 because of the social responsibilities which her emancipation must 
 bring, should have a full knowledge of the laws of sex. Every 
 attempt hitherto made to grapple with prostitution has been a 
 failure — what will women do when they thoroughtly grasp the 
 problem, and have a voice in the attitude the state may 
 assume with regard to it ? At present hundreds do not know 
 of its existence ; thousands only know of it to despise those 
 who earn their livelihood by it ; one in ten thousand has 
 examined the causes which lead to it, has felt that degradation, 
 if there be any, lies not only in the prostitute, but in the society 
 where it exists ; not only in the women of the streets, but in 
 the thousands of women in society who are ignorant of the 
 problem, ignore it, or fear to face it. What will be the result 
 of woman's action in this matter ? Can it possibly be 
 effectual, or will it merely tend to embitter the relations of 
 men and women ? Possibly an expression of woman's opinion 
 on this point in society and in the press would do much, but 
 then it must be an educated opinion, one which recognises 
 facts, and knows the innumerable difficulties of the problem. 
 An appeal to chivalry, to a theological dogma, or to a Biblical 
 text, will hardly avail. The descriptions we have of Calvin's 
 Geneva show that puritanic suppression is w^holly idle. What 
 form will be taken by the opinion and reasoned action of 
 women, cognisant of historical and sexualogical fact ? 
 /^""rferhaps it may be that women when they fully grasp the 
 '^obl^m may despair, as raany men do, of its solution. They 
 may remark that prostitution has existed in nearly all historic 
 communities, and among nearly all races of men. It has existed 
 as an institution as long as monogamic marriage has existed, — 
 it may be itself the outcome of that marriage. I do not know 
 whether any trace of a like promiscuity has been found in 
 the animals nearest allied to man — I believe not. The 
 periodic instinct has probably preserved them from it. How 
 mankind came to lose the periodic instinct, and how that 
 
 ^
 
 THE WOMAN'S QUESTION 365 
 
 loss may probably be related to the solely human institution 
 of marriage, are problems not without interest. On the one 
 hand, it has been asserted that prostitution is a logical out- 
 come of our ^present social relations ; while, on the other hand, 
 it is held to be historically a survival of matriarchal licence, 
 and not a sine qud non of all forms of himian society. There 
 is very considerable evidence to show that a large percentage 
 of women are driven to prostitution by absolute want, or by 
 the extremities to which a seduced woman is forced by the 
 society which casts her out. This matter is all important. It 
 may, perhaps, be that our social system, quite as much as 
 man's supposed needs, keeps prostitution alive. The frequency 
 with which prostitutes for the sake of their own living seduce 
 comparative boys, may be as much a cause of the evil as male 
 passion itself. The socialists hold the sale of woman's person 
 to be directly associated with the monopoly of surplus-labour. 
 Is the emancipated woman likely to adopt this view ? and if 
 so, shall we not have a wide - reaching social reconstruction 
 forced upon us ? That emancipated woman would strive for 
 a vast economic reorganisation, as the only means of pre- 
 serving the self-respect and independence of her sex, is a 
 possibility having the gravest and most wide -reaching conse- 
 quences. We cannot emancipate woman without placing her 
 in a position of political and social influence equal to man's. 
 It may well be that she will regard economic and sexual 
 problems from a very different standpoint, and the result will 
 infallibly lead to the formation of a woman's j)arty and to a more 
 or less conscious struggle between the sexes. Would this end 
 in an increased social stability or in another subjection of sex ? 
 Woman may, however, conclude that the alternative is 
 true — that prostitution is not the outcome of our present 
 economic organisation, but a feature of all forms of human 
 society. She must, then, treat it as a necessary evil, or as a 
 necessary good. In the former case she will at least insist 
 on an equal social stigma attaching to both sexes, if she does 
 not demand, as in the case of any other form of anti- 
 social conduct, as far as practicable its legal repression. In 
 the latter case, that is, if its existence really tends in some
 
 366 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 way to the welfare or stability of society, women will have to 
 kdmit that prostitution is an honourable profession ; they 
 qannot shirk that conclusion, bitter as it might appear to 
 some. The ' social outcast ' would then have to be recognised 
 as fulfilling a social function, and the problem would reduce 
 to the amelioration of her life, and to her elevation in the 
 social scale. (Tliere is a means of practically abolishing prostitu- 
 tion, or both p^ticipators must be treated alike as anti-social, 
 or the prostitute is an honourable woman — no other possi- 
 bility suggestg^iigdj^^ Society has hitherto failed to find a 
 remedy, perhaps because only man has sought for one ; woman, 
 when she for the first time fully grasps the problem, must be 
 prepared with one, or must recognise the alternatives. There 
 cannot be a doubt, however, that in a matter so closely 
 concerning her personal dignity, she will take action ; and 
 then, if only in this one matter, her freedom will rajisjg___ 
 questions, which many would prefer to ignore, and whic^i, 
 when raised, will undoubtedly touch principles apparently 
 fundamental to our existing social organisation. 
 
 Hitherto I have roughly endeavoured to suggest problems 
 which arise from a consideration of the position of the non- 
 child-bearing woman only — I have, of course, only touched the 
 veriest fringe of a vast subject, but it is needful that I should 
 pass on to others more directly related to the second or 
 child-bearing class of women. 
 
 The recognised state of the child-bearing woman is, under 
 our present social conditions, marriage. Even if we admit 
 generally the advantages of this institution, we may ask 
 whether emancipated and economically independent woman- 
 hood will permit social stigma to be put upon those of their 
 number bearing children and upon the children born out of 
 marriage. They may demand that society and the legislature 
 shall reconsider the position of such women and children. 
 The demand, if granted, might involve very revolutionary 
 changes in our present views on the devolution of property, 
 and in the general laws of inheritance. It might ultimately 
 result in something like a return to the ancient matriarchal 
 principle of tracing descent through the female.
 
 THE WOMAN'S QUESTION 367 
 
 Turning to marriage itself, we may remark that the 
 permanency of the existing type has been questioned by more 
 than one recent writer. It has been argued that this institu- 
 tion is plastic, and that its present form is not necessarily the 
 fittest, but possibly only a phase in the evolution of sex. Indeed 
 a well-known modern advocate of polygamy has asserted its 
 unfitness by postulating prostitution as the necessary re- 
 ciprocal of monogamic marriage. Without being able to assent 
 in any way to the characteristically illogical arguments of 
 this advocate, I must yet confess that there seems to me no 
 prospect that the educated woman of the future will regard 
 marriage and its duties from the same standpoint that man 
 has done ; it is difiicult to conceive that she will sanction the 
 Church-Service view of the institution, that she will be pre- 
 pared to limit her sphere of activity to marriage, or her 
 function in life to child-bearing. The disgust generated by 
 the ecclesiastical conception of marriage will go far towards 
 destroying all faith in the religious character of the institu- 
 tion. Questions of its duration and of its form will not 
 seem beyond discussion, and a characteristic prop of existing 
 society may rightly or wrongly be shaken by the complete 
 emancipation of women. The religious sanction having col- 
 lapsed, and social welfare, rationally investigated, being the 
 only possible sanction left, a number of problems lying at the 
 very root of the institution will demand investigation. 
 Arguments of the following kind will have to be faced, con- 
 firmed, or refuted. It will be asked whether the binding of 
 man and woman together for life be either expedient or 
 necessary — whether it may not be a real hindrance to progress, 
 and this in more respects than one? Whether marriage, 
 after all, be not the last, the least-recognised, and therefore 
 the greatest, superstition which past barbarism has handed 
 down to the present ? We shall have to search for the true 
 social grounds upon which the institution may be defended.' 
 ^^n we argue that because monogamic lifelong union exists 
 among certain Christian peoples, whom we are accustomed to 
 look upon as in the van of civilisation, therefore it must be a 
 needful condition of progress ? Might not the same argument
 
 368 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 have been used at one time for slavery, at another for the 
 Holy Catholic Church, and even now be used for prostitution ? 
 Is not this last as much a social institution of oiu: Christian 
 civilisation as marriage ? It will not do to translate the law 
 of " survival of the fittest " into " whatever is surviving is 
 fittest." Fit possibly for the age in which it exists, but may not 
 that age be passing away ? Will or will not the independ- 
 ence of woman shake this institution ? I merely suggest the 
 problem ; this is not the time to attempt, were it possible, 
 any solution. I would only add that, personally, I see no 
 reason why two persons, who may be in no way responsible to 
 a third, should be bound together for life, whether they will 
 or no. The birth of a child undoubtedly makes them re- 
 sponsible to a third being, and may be a strong social reason 
 for making marriage permanent, at least till the child has 
 reached its majority. If we except the case, where young 
 children might suffer, may not the question be raised whether 
 marriage should not be a socially recognised but far more 
 easily dissoluble union ? Can marriage, lasting when the 
 sympathy which led to it has died out, do aught but make 
 two lives miserable ? The life-long tie may be needful so 
 long as society casts a slur on a woman who is separated 
 from her husband, so long as woman is not in as stable an 
 economic position as man — that is, so long as separation 
 would cast her helpless on the world, or so long as she is a 
 mere plaything with no individual activity. But let us put 
 the case of equal education, of equal power to earn a liveli- 
 hood, of equal social weight ; what woman, under these circum- 
 stances, would desire to continue a union which had become 
 distasteful to either party ? The union enforced in such cases 
 by our present system is surely a nightmare which even 
 Groethe's Wahlvervjandtschaften fails to paint. On the other 
 hand, so long as marriage is entered upon without any study 
 of character, upon the bidding of some slight sexual inclina- 
 tion or fancied sympathy — as so frequently happens at the 
 present day — any relaxation of the marriage tie would 
 certainly lead to an anti-social spread of sexual irregularity. 
 How will the self-dependent women of the future regard this
 
 THE WOMAN'S QUESTION 369 
 
 problem ? What line have such women taken in the past ? 
 With the past to guide us it seems not improbable that, when 
 woman is truly educated and equally developed with man, sheis. 
 will hold that the highest relationship of man and woman is akin \ 
 to that of Lewis and George Eliot, of Mary Wollstonecraft / 
 and Godwin ; that the highest ideal of marriage is a perfectly* 
 free, and yet, generally, a lifelong union. May it not be that 
 such a union is the only one in which a woman can preserve 
 her independence, can be a wife and yet retain her individual 
 liberty ? I suggest no solution to these problems, but I 
 believe that without facing them we cannot fully grasp 
 whither the emancipation of woman is likely to lead us. 
 
 Taking marriage as it is, we may ask how far it neces- 
 sarily cramps a woman's growth ? This is not a question 
 we can lightly answer. There are many women who distinctly 
 af&rm that it does. Even if we admit this to be true in the 
 present state of subjection, will it be possible to remedy the 
 evil in any state so long as the wife is a child- bearer ? Can 
 such a woman ever hope to equal intellectually the single 
 woman ? If not, how will it be possible for her to meet the 
 average man with an equal mental force, and so preserve her 
 individuality? The possibility of woman's individual develop- 
 ment after marriage is important ; all the more so, as certain 
 ardent advocates of woman's higher education have put for- 
 ward as a plea for it, the happiness which would arise if 
 woman were only educated so as to understand her husband's 
 ideas and enter into his pursuits. A baser argument for 
 woman's education it is hard to conceive. It denies her an 
 individuality, even as the Mahommedan denies her a soul. 
 
 But there is another problem of marriage, which is all- 
 important, and which the advocates for emancipation are 
 called upon to face. How will it ever be possible for the 
 child-bearing woman to retain individual freedom ? She 
 cannot during child-bearing and rearing preserve, except in 
 special cases, her economic independence ; she must become 
 dependent on the man for support, and this must connote a 
 limitation of her freedom, a subjection to his will. How is 
 this to be met, or does the very fact of child-bearing in- 
 
 24
 
 370 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 evitably produce the subjection of women ? The happiness 
 of any human being is commensurate with the sphere of 
 its individual activity, of its freedom to will ; how infinitely 
 narrowed this sphere is for woman in the average marriage is 
 obvious enough. How far woman's individuality can be pre- 
 served by a truer education of both sexes is a very complex 
 problem. By such means a more social tone might be intro- 
 duced into men's and women's conceptions of their mutual 
 relations and duties, into their respect for the individual's 
 sphere of freedom. Perfect legal and political equality might 
 strengthen this respect in the family, but I fail to see how, 
 / without perfect economic equality, the freedom of woman can 
 I ever be absolutely maintained. Yet without a complete 
 \ reorganisation of society how can there be economic indepen- 
 dence for the child-bearer ? Here again the emancipation of 
 \^man seems opposed to the economic basis of existing society. 
 It is not only the form of marriage, but the feelings and 
 objects, with which it is entered upon, that are likely to be 
 questioned and remoulded by the woman's movement. Pro- 
 testantism cannot be said to have formed an elevated con- 
 ception of the conjugal relation,^ and there can be little doubt 
 that the cultivated woman of the future will find herself com- 
 pelled to reject its doctrines on this point. It has repeatedly 
 taught that early marriage is a remedy for vice, and disregarded 
 the social misery which arises not only from improvidence, but 
 also from that ill-considered choice of life-partners, which is 
 customary to passionate youth. Only render early marriage 
 possible and then prostitution will disappear is a wide-spread 
 opinion, especially among the evangelical clergy. Let boys 
 and girls marry the moment they feel the sexual impulse, 
 insisted Luther, and we shall have no vice. The problem of 
 early marriage and the difficulties which stand in the way of 
 it, at least for many in our present social state, is undoubtedly 
 important ; but Luther's reason for early marriage seems to 
 me the most degrading ever discovered by the Christian 
 Church, which has never taken a very ideal view of wedlock. 
 
 1 See A Sketch of the Seo:- Relations in Primitive and Mediceval Germany below 
 for some accouut of the nature of Luther's teaching.
 
 
 THE WOMAN'S QUESTION 371 
 
 The passion which cannot be bridled out of marriage, will 
 ardly be bridled in m^rriage^ On this account early mar- 
 riage for the reason advocated by Luther, seems unlikely to 
 be the basis of a happy lifelong union, which requires some 
 sympathy of aim and much similarity of habit. It will hardly 
 aid the stability of society or the permanence of the institu- 
 tion. From Protestantism, indeed, has arisen divorce. 
 
 So long as monogamy subsists, restraint for the man is 
 as much a duty in as out of marriage, and Luther's cure for 
 prostitution is by no means a social one. To what extent 
 this restraint is not exercised, or again to what extent pros- 
 titution is a supplement to monogamic marriage, are points on 
 which it is difficult to obtain information, but which are not 
 without direct issue on the future position of woman. Evidence 
 of the resort of married men to prostitutes, as an almost re- 
 cognised custom among our rural population, was brought to 
 my notice some years ago ; further evidence of its frequency 
 among the working classes in London has been supplied to me 
 by hospital friends ; while its prevalence, to some extent in a 
 different form, among the upper classes can hardly be denied. 
 The early marriage theory as a remedy for sexual irregularity 
 has been pushed so far that various methods have been 
 suggested for rendering it economically possible under the 
 present pressure of population. The whole question of Neo- 
 Malthusianism is fraught with immense social and sexua- 
 logical difficulties. As a mode, indeed, of preserving the wife 
 from the cares of a large family, and of enabling her to retain 
 her economic independence, it may possibly commend itself 
 to the woman of the future. It raises, however, a very grave 
 problem of race-permanence : Will the material prosperity and 
 the individually greater efficiency of a limited population 
 counterbalance the advantages of unlimited production ? It 
 may require another Franco- German war to answer this prob- 
 lem to the satisfaction of the evolutionist. 
 
 If we now turn to the intellectual sympathy and similarity 
 of habit which alone appear likely to contribute to the stability 
 of marriage, we shall tind that historically they have been 
 much overshadowed by the more sensual side of which we
 
 372 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 have been treating. Sexual impulse (taken, however, in the 
 
 broadest sense) has almost always been the cause of marriage. 
 
 \The man or woman who quietly sat down to argue with 
 
 Jtheraselves whether such a one would or would not suit them 
 
 las a partner for life, would be the scorn of poet and of 
 
 I' moralist." If we take our modern poets, from Goethe 
 
 downwards, not one has represented a woman with whom an 
 
 intellectual man, in his saner moments, would think of 
 
 passing his life. Gretchen is a type of the whole round of 
 
 their creations ; and she, the poet's ideal of womanhood, is the 
 
 _^erfection of dolldom._ It may be questioned whether this 
 
 ^following of meres instinct, this want of intellectual influence, 
 
 has not reduced marriage to a mere lottery, and so brought it 
 
 into deserved contempt with many thinking men and women. 
 
 It is indeed hard to conceive how marriage can be otherwise, 
 
 unless greater freedom in friendship between single men and 
 
 women becomes possible and habitual. 
 
 If the ideas I have described are at all likely to replace 
 the old Protestant conception of marriage, then it is obvious 
 that the education and emancipation of woman will go far to 
 revolutionise both men's and women's sexual ideals. Yet we 
 may rightly demand that the new ideals shall be shown to be 
 consistent with race-permanence, before we possibly sacrifice 
 future efficiency to increasing the present freedom and happi- 
 ness of women. 
 
 Hitherto I have been suggesting problems which bear 
 essentially on the position of women, or which raise questions 
 of the relation of man to woman in a somewhat ideal future. 
 They are questions which only those will discuss who have 
 to some extent raised the veil of life; who allow that no 
 human institution can be so holy that it lies beyond the 
 Sacred right of human reason to test its foundations ; that the 
 'whole truth is to be reached only by the rational process 
 which starts with universal questioning ; that the conviction 
 of knowledge — the one true creed — can be attained only by 
 those who have completely grasped the catholicity of doubt. 
 But there are, besides, certain vital, if less exciting problems of 
 philosophical and scientific interest to which I may refer.
 
 THE WOMAN'S QUESTION 373 
 
 Thus there are some writers who assert that civilised man's 
 sexual instincts have been so abnormally developed that they 
 amount to a disease. I do not say that this opinion is true ; 
 I think possibly anthropological investigation would show it 
 to be false. Perhaps the very fact that the opinion is held 
 proves that these instincts are more restrained than of old ; 
 that we now term disease what formerly was held natural may 
 possibly be a sign of their decreased average vigour. We may 
 question whether the public tone has not changed since the 
 days when the highest honour a German town could show 
 its princely guests was to throw the public brothels open to 
 them free of charge. It may be that our princes are still 
 as sensual as in those days of old, but our towns offer up 
 turtle rather than women in honour of royalty. On the other 
 hand, there is something to be said from the evolutionary 
 standpoint for the increase in sexual instinct. Those nations 
 which have been most reproductive have, on the whole, been 
 the ruling nations in the world's history ; it is they who 
 have survived in the battle for life. The expansion of Eng- 
 land has depended not so much on the dull brains of the 
 average English man or woman as upon their capacity for 
 reproducing themselves. If race-predominance depends, then, 
 to any extent upon race-instinct for reproduction, that race 
 which survives will have this instinct strongly developed. 
 Strongly developed sexual instinct may accordingly be a con- 
 dition for race-jjermanence, and may thus tend to increase 
 among the surviving races. This is only a suggestion, which 
 we shall do well to bear in mind; there are, of course, many 
 other factors which help to turn the balance — race-physique, 
 energy, and foresight. It must also be sexual instinct not 
 abused, but manifesting itself in an increased birth-rate. There 
 remains, however, a possibility, and it is one which I think is 
 worthy of our attention, that sexual instinct may never tend 
 to decrease, but even to increase in the predominant races 
 of mankind. If child-bearing women must be intellectually 
 handicapped, then the penalty to be paid for race-predominance 
 is the subjection of women. In this respect we may remark 
 how in Greece the wives, or cliild-bearing women were iu
 
 374 THE ETHIC OF EREETHOUGHT 
 
 complete subjection, they were held in social honour merely 
 as legitimate child-bearers ; on the other hand, the prosti- 
 tute and the mistress, as a rule non-child-bearing, were often 
 the intellectual equals, the genuine comrades of the men. 
 The fact is noteworthy not only for the complete cliange 
 which has taken place in this latter relation in modern times, 
 but also for the light it throws on possible limitations to the 
 emancipation and education as well of child-bearing as of non- 
 child-bearing women. It almost suggests that child-bearing 
 will ultimately differentiate the female sex. 
 
 Another general problem arises from the law of inherited 
 characters. If it be true, that the more highly educated 
 members of a community have more or less restrained sexual 
 instinct, and so fewer children than their more animal fellows, 
 then there will always be a restriction on inherited intellectual 
 development. The race will not tend to develop greater brain 
 power nor a more refined nature. (^Mkj not this possibly be 
 the reason why the progress of the great mass of the people 
 is so dishearteuingly slowT) Our middle classes are now 
 filled with men whose intellectual powers would have 
 astounded a mediaeval philosopher ; but place a modern 
 working man beside a mediseval craftsman, and morally or 
 intellectually should we be able to mark an absolute progress ? 
 I doubt it. Both Darwin and Galton have emphasised the 
 loss to the Middle Ages produced by the ascetic life of its 
 best men and women — thousands of the noblest -minded of 
 those days left only a personal, not a transmitted influence 
 to posterity. Much the same tendency is visible to-day ; 
 educated men and women often do not marry or marry late. 
 The writer in the Westminster Review already referred to 
 holds that in the future the best women will be too highly 
 developed to submit to child-bearing ; in other words, the 
 continuation of the species will be left to the coarser and 
 less intellectual of its members. This seems to me a very 
 serious difficulty, demanding the most thorough investigation. 
 Educated men and women may even in this respect owe a 
 duty to society, wiiich society, as it is at present constituted, 
 hinders them from fulfilling. The riffht to bear children is
 
 THE WOMAN'S QUESTION 3V5 
 
 a sacred right, and in a better organised society than the 
 present, would it not be fitting that either the state should 
 have a voice in the matter, or else a strong public opinion 
 should often intervene ? Shall those who are diseased, shall 
 those who are nighest to the brute, have the power to re- 
 produce their like ? Shall the reckless, the idle, be they 
 poor or wealthy, those who follow mere instinct without 
 reason, be the parents of the future generation ? Shall the 
 pthisical father not be socially branded when he hands down 
 misery to his offspring, and inefficient citizens to the state ? 
 It is difficult to conceive any greater crime against the race. 
 Out of the law of inherited characters spring problems which 
 strike deeply into the very roots of our present social habits. 
 
 It is not one^ but a whole crop of questions which will 
 be raised when the old ideal of sex-relationship is shaken. 
 ' Themovemeut involves a change in the whole nature of woman's 
 occupations and enjoyments, and a corresponding outcry on 
 the part of those who have ministered to them or profited by 
 them. Picture the change which even the growth of a public 
 opinion among women will involve ; the old literature and 
 special press will become extinct, because social and political 
 questions will be of equal importance to both man and woman. 
 Damen - Lecture, that peculiar curse of the German woman, 
 would vanish into nothingness. That any gcnrval literature 
 should be written especially for woman's reading would be 
 too absurd to require criticism. Women and their views 
 would be influential factors in the public press, because 
 publishers and editors would soon recognise that for com- 
 mercial success they must respect the opinions of a moiety 
 of their possible customers. Not only journalistic literature, 
 but even the very appearance of the streets would mark the 
 change which must follow on woman's emancipation. Her , 
 assumption of definite social and political responsibilities ' 
 would revolutionise the sight which meets our eyes between ' 
 three and four in the afternoon in any fashionable London 
 thoroughfare. Hundreds of women — mere dolls — gazing j 
 intently into shop windows at various bits of coloured ribbon. 
 The higher education of women, so far as it has gone at
 
 376 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 present, has hardly touched the fringe of this great mass, 
 
 •-"PS^Eps nothing is more disheartening than this sight, except 
 
 L_the mob of women in these very same streets between twelve 
 
 and one at nigh t?N Both phenomena are calculated to make 
 
 us despair uttertyoi modern civilisation. Scorn and sympathy 
 
 are inexplicably mingled ; on the whole our scorn is greater 
 
 - for the woman of the day, and Our sympathy for the woman 
 
 of the night. The latter suggests a great race-problem, and 
 
 is an unconscious protest against tlie subjection of woman and 
 
 a decadent social organisation. Can as much be said of the 
 
 I former, the shopping doll, the anti-social puppet, whose wires 
 
 I (well hidden under the garb of custom and fashion) are really 
 
 (pulled by self-indulgence ? 
 How often do men take to heart the too obvious fact that 
 they are to a great extent responsible for the way in which 
 the life of the subject-sex has been moulded ? How to reach, 
 to influence the average man and woman is one of the most 
 difficult problems with which those who are working for 
 woman's emancipation can possibly concern themselves. 
 Those only who have endeavoured, without appeal to pre- 
 judice, to move the commonplace man or woman can fully 
 grasp what I mean. Put aside all dogmatic faith, all 
 dogmatic morality, regard the sexual relation as in itself 
 neither good nor evil, but only so in the misery it brings to the 
 individual or to the race : and then try to influence the average 
 . hmuan being ! If you have sufficient Hellenism in you to 
 1 regard all exercise of passion as good in moderation, provided 
 1 it be productive of no mediate or immediate misery ; if you 
 I see no virtue in asceticism, but only something as unworthy 
 "Tof humanity as excess, then how infinitely difficult you will 
 I find it to influence the average mortal ! 
 
 I I am very conscious that in mentioning the above problems 
 
 I have only skirted the great field of social difficulties. To 
 many with a wider experience, a more scientific training, and 
 a truer power of insight into human nature, there will appear 
 no problem where all is to me obscure. Especially to the 
 woman many of these difficulties will appear in a totally 
 different light ; while to her, others, which have remained un-
 
 THE WOMAN'S QUESTION 377 
 
 mentioned, may seem of far greater importance. I quite 
 recognise that man alone cannot understand or formulate the 
 difficulties which form the woman's question ; that " there 
 will be very little hope of real reforms unless men and women 
 know one another's aims and views in detail, and then accept 
 to some degree the same standard, the same ideal for the 
 community." We must not, however, for a moment forget 
 that the woman's question is essentially also a man's question. 
 It opens up great racial problems, and economically it goes 
 to the very basis of our existing social structure. I have 
 endeavoured to show that the complete emancipation of 
 woman connotes a revolutionary change in social habits and 
 in sexual ideals certainly not paralleled since that subversion 
 of mediaeval modes of thought and action which took place 
 between the years 1460 and 1530. Let us take warning 
 from the results of that revolution, and to-day endeavour to 
 see what we are doing and whither we are going. 
 
 In concluding this necessarily insufficient outline of a 
 difficult and complex subject, I would ask the reader to note 
 that every historical change in the relative position of man 
 and woman has been accompanied by great economic and 
 social changes. The sex-relationship has itself been the basis 
 of most of the rights of property. Social economy and sex- 
 relationship have changed together, ever in intimate association. 
 Hence it seems to me to follow that the present movement for 
 the emancipation of women cannot leave our social organisation 
 unaffected. Every change in sex-relation has brought moment- 
 ous changes to the family, and to the public weal as well. 
 The matriarchate and the patriarchate connote totally diverse 
 family and tribal organisations. It is difficult to imagine 
 that the perfect social and legal equality of men and women 
 — the goal to which we seem tending — will not be accom- 
 panied by the entire reconstruction of the family, if not of 
 the state. It may become still more important than at present 
 for the state to hold the balance between man and woman, to 
 interfere between parent and child, to restrain mere physique 
 from dominion in the field of la])our. There have been periods 
 in the world's history when there was an approach to equality
 
 378 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 between the two sexes, but those periods have been marked by 
 
 an equality in freedom, rather than by an equality in restraint. 
 
 " 3y restraint I do not mean asceticism, but such regulation 
 
 \ of the sex-relations as permits a folk to reproduce itself in 
 J sufficient numbers for permanence, and the older generation 
 '^to transmit its tribal knowledge and traditions to the younger. 
 These matters are necessary for the stability of the state, they 
 are incompatible with complete sexual freedom. The right 
 and wrong of the sex-relations (morality in its narrow sense) 
 is synonjTuous with the stability and instability of society. 
 If the growing sex-equality connote sex-freedom — a return to 
 general promiscuity — then it connotes a decay of the state, 
 and it will require a second Pauline Christianity and a second 
 subjection of one sex to restore stability. But sex-equality 
 must either be marked by the cessation of prostitution among 
 men, or, if it remains, by the like freedom to women. I see no 
 other alternative. We shall have the choice between equal 
 promiscuity and equal restraint. The misfortune for society 
 is that the former is a much easier course to take than the 
 latter, and one which history shows us has generally been 
 adopted. 
 
 Yet there is one ray of hope, which may after all forecast 
 the dawn of a new social era. If it does, then the equality of 
 the sexes may not again connote the return of a " swamp-age " 
 such as befell the tottering Eoman Empire. That the past 
 subjection of woman has tended largely to expand man's selfish 
 instincts I cannot deny ; but may it not be that this very 
 subjection has in itself so chastened woman, so trained her to 
 think rather of others than of herself, that after all it may 
 have acted more as a blessing than a curse to the world ? 
 
 ^„ May it not bring her to the problems of the future with a 
 purer aim and a keener insight than is possible for man ? She 
 may see more clearly than he the real points at issue, and as 
 she has learnt self-control in the past by subjecting her will 
 to his, so in the future she may be able to submit her liberty 
 to the restraints demanded by social welfare, and to the 
 conditions needed for race-permanence.
 
 XIV 
 
 A SKETCH OF THE SEX-KELATIONS IN PRIMITIVE 
 AND MEDIAEVAL GEEMANY^ 
 
 Die Mutter ! Mutter I — 's klingt so wunderlich ! — Goethe. 
 
 In tracing the historical growth of a folk, there are two 
 questions which it is needful to keep prominently before us, 
 namely, (1) 'V\Tiat were the successive stages in that growth ; 
 (2) What were the physical causes which produced this 
 succession ? 
 
 1 I have had considerable hesitation in printing this paper unaccompanied 
 by the analysis of German folklore, mythology, and hero-legend, upon which 
 the statements of the earlier pages are really based ; they appear merely 
 deductive, but are nevertheless the outcome of a lengthy, if some may hold ill- 
 directed, historical inquiry. The paper was ■\vi-itten some time ago, and 
 although, as the mass of material increases, I see reason to modify in one or 
 two points the statements I then made, still, the general drift of social growth 
 as it is here described has in my opinion been amply confirmed. The chief 
 point which requires modification is the want of sufficient stress laid upon group- 
 marricuje. This phase of social growth I now recognise has played an enormous 
 part in the development of pre-historic Germany, and the proofs I can adduce 
 of its existence and influence would, I think, have satisfied the sceptical 
 McLennan. I have determined to publish the paper in its present form because 
 it throws light on the preceding essay, and may help to explain the origin of 
 the ideas which are formulated in the succeeding one. It represents, to some 
 extent, the passage of the writer's mind from agnostic questioning through 
 historical inquiry to a more definite social theory. 
 
 My collection of facts bearing on the social condition of early Germany I 
 hope ultimately to classify and publish. But this will hardly be for some years. 
 Meanwhile I would ask the reader to take nothing on faith, to treat this pajier 
 as one of fanciful suggestions, till the s{>arse leisure moments of an otherwise 
 occupied life may have sufficiently accunmlated for me to convince him by 
 reasoned treatment of facts, that tlie suggestions have a real historical 
 basis. [A small part of them has since appeared in the essays in vol. ii. of my 
 Chances of Deatk and olJier Studies in Evolution, 1897.]
 
 380 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 The answer to the first question is embodied in what I 
 may term formal history. The formal historian has to con- 
 struct from language, from tradition (folklore and saga), from 
 ' archiBological finds,' and ultimately from monument and 
 document, the /or?/i of growth peculiar to a given folk. Only 
 when this very necessary formal history is in its broad out- 
 lines established, can the rational historian enter the field and 
 point out the physical and biological causes which have produced 
 each particular phase of development. This distinction 
 between formal and rational runs through all branches of human 
 knowledge. Formal history has made, of recent years, great 
 advances ; it may be said to have had its Kepler and Koper- 
 nicus, but the Newton or Darwin, who shall rationalise it, — 
 who shall formulate axioms of historic growth in complete har- 
 mony with the known laws of physical and biological science, — 
 has yet to arise. He awaits the completion of formal history.^ 
 
 Of one point we may be quite sure. Since the entire 
 development of our species is dependent on the sex-relations, 
 the rational historian of the future will appeal, to an extent 
 scarcely imagined in the present, to the science sexualogy 
 and to the formal history of sex. The formal history of sex 
 is becoming a recognised branch of research ; it is a neces- 
 sary preliminary to a science of sexualogy, and to the ultimate 
 acceptance of the laws of that science as factors in the 
 rationale of historic growth. What is this but to assert that 
 the higher statescraft of the future — historically and scientifi- 
 cally trained — will recognise the sex-relations as fundamental 
 in the organisation of the state ? 
 
 In the present paper I wish to place before you a slight 
 sketch of what I hold to be the formal history of sex among 
 the Germans. In the course of this sketch I shall suggest 
 various causes which have probably produced the development 
 described. I shall, in fact, make various excursions — possibly 
 of a rather idle character — into the field of rational history. 
 I cannot ask you at present to examine with me at any 
 length the material upon which I have based my formal history. 
 
 1 Herder attempted it, — and failed, — because pre-Darwinian, he was really 
 pre-scientific.
 
 THE SEX-EELATIONS IN GEEMANY 381 
 
 If many of the statements of my paper appear to you to 
 sound wonderful, exaggerated, or even impossible, I would ask 
 you to suspend judgment until you have analysed the evidence 
 I hope one day to place before you. 
 
 The Germans belong to a group of peoples which, common 
 features of language, custom and folklore, show to have sprung 
 at some distant date from a common stock.^ This folk- 
 group is usually termed Aryan, and the first home of the 
 Aryans was formerly .placed in Asia. This view has, of 
 recent years, been contested, and Northern Europe has replaced 
 Asia in the opinion of some first-class historians. Be this 
 true or not, we have to bear clearly in mind, that the Germans 
 probably did not pass through the preliminary stages of their 
 civilisation within their present geographical limits. 
 
 In the stone age, in the ages of cave and pile dwellings, 
 a race of men, which was not Aryan, occupied geographical 
 Germany — so much we know, if but little else, concerning them. 
 The Germans developed from brutedom towards manhood, 
 passed through the long centuries of primitive culture outside 
 geographical Germany. When we learn to know the Germans 
 historically they have reached a stage of fair civilisation — a 
 stage, however, which is not greatly in advance of what they 
 had received from the common Aryan stock. Let me recall 
 to your minds briefly what that Aryan civilisation amounted 
 to. It bred cattle, milked the cow and the goat, kept flocks 
 of sheep, swine, geese, and poultry, had tamed the dog, and 
 discovered butter and cheese. It sowed corn, prepared mead 
 out of honey, spun roughly, wove and sewed clothes out of 
 wool and flax ; it used roads and discovered fords ; it made 
 ships, waggons, and houses of wood, and also had learned the 
 potter's art. It had weapons, spear and shield, bow and 
 arrow, possibly only of stone and wood. It had villages, folk- 
 meetings, folk-customs, petty chiefs, and tribal organisation. 
 Further, it could count to nearly a thousand, reckoned time by 
 months and years, had the elements of medicine, a complex 
 mythology, and possibly believed in the immortality of the soul. 
 
 ' Common custom and folklore seem to me more valid argumonts for a 
 common Aryan parentage than languages sprung from a common stock.
 
 382 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 Above all, the family life was fairly developed, our usual 
 grades of relationship being recognised.^ 
 
 The Aryan migration must be looked upon, then, as that 
 of a semi-agricultural folk. An agricultural folk does not, 
 like a purely hunting folk, lightly leave its dwellings and 
 pastures. Possibly some social oppression, some subjection of 
 the ' plebs,' drove the Aryans from their first homes. Be this 
 as it may, we have to note that the Germans remained much 
 behind the Aryans who migrated further southwards. This, 
 very probably, may be accounted for by the nature of the 
 country into which stress of circumstances drove them ; the 
 huge forests of Northern Europe checked their development, 
 the hunting instincts of the people were encouraged or 
 resuscitated ; the growth of the patriarchate was thus delayed, 
 the complete annihilation of the matriarchate postponed. 
 Our first historic notices of the Germans bring before us clear 
 evidences of the existence of the mother-age ; the power of 
 woman, although no longer at its zenith, is far from the nadir ; 
 the contest betw^een man and woman for supremacy is not con- 
 cluded. The existence of that contest is one of the causes of 
 the rapid reception of Christianity by the Germans ; it was 
 the religious weapon needed by the man ; the old faith, if 
 remodelled by the man, had yet been invented by the w^oman 
 and did not admit of being readily used as a weapon against 
 her. It is this retardation in the subjection of women which 
 renders German primitive history of such value in the general 
 history of culture. The Aryan civilisation, if we except tribal 
 organisation and possibly herding of cattle and use of weapons, 
 is the civilisation of the woman — of the mother-age ; and, as 
 I have remarked, the German of Tacitus has not got immeasur- 
 ably beyond it. The development of sex-relations in mediaeval 
 Germany is only intelligible when we bear in mind that the 
 conflict between man and woman only terminated with the 
 complete subjection of the latter in the sixteenth century. 
 What the Greeks had accomplished in the age of Pericles — 
 the 'domestication' of the woman — the Germans achieved 
 only in the age of Luther. 
 1 [Much of this paragraph requires modification in the light of more recent work.]
 
 THE SEX-KELATIONS IN GEEMANY 383 
 
 Let us endeavour to form some rough scheme of the succes- 
 sive stages of sex-relationship in early Germanic culture. 
 Anthropology shows us that while many savage races have 
 passed through, or are passing through, similar phases, the 
 scheme does not provide us with a universal law of evolution. 
 Possibly it may not hold for every member of the Aryan stock ; 
 that it holds for the Greeks, has, to my mind, been sufficiently 
 proved by Bachofen,^ for the Slavs by Zmigrodzki," while all 
 that I have been able to glean with regard to the early 
 Hindoo sex-relations is, I venture to think, confirmatory. 
 
 The following are the stages to which I wish to draw 
 attention : — 
 
 (1) The Period of Promiscuity. 
 
 In this period mankind is not far from the brute stage. 
 There is no conception of relationship, and sexual intercourse 
 is absolutely promiscuous. The food of man is raw, whether 
 vegetable or animal, and he is a creature of the woods. 
 Sex-relations have the chance character of perfectly wild 
 nature. The plant drops its seed, and it fructifies or not 
 as surrounding circumstances admit. The man pursues 
 animals for his food, or woman in the breeding-season when 
 he would gratify his passions. Traces of this stage abound 
 in Aryan myth. The promiscuous period, or raw-food age, 
 has for essential characteristics the wood and the swamp. 
 God-conceptions, if such they can be called, are of the darkest, 
 most inhuman type. They are the natural forces of the 
 wood, particularly the nocturnal forces ; the creatures of the 
 swamp, which is the symbol of unregulated fertility. These 
 natural forces are the foes of mankind, particvdarly of com- 
 paratively helpless children and women ; they take the form 
 of beast, or half- beast, half-man. As they prey upon the 
 helpless, so arises later the conception of propitiating them by 
 the sacrifice of children and captives. These human sacrifices, 
 occasionally followed by cannibalism, are typical of a whole 
 group of myths, German, Greek, and Slavonic, which are only 
 reminiscences of the late promiscuous period. We find also- 
 
 ^ Bachofeii : iJo.s AhdterrecM, 1861. 
 
 ^ Zmigrodzki : Die Mutter bei den V'olkcm dcs ansclien Stummes, 1886.
 
 384 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 survivals from this age in the folk-lore of child-birth and of 
 marriage from every part of Germany. 
 
 Let us turn to the position of the woman who has been 
 rendered pregnant by the man, and then left by him to her 
 own devices for self-preservation. Granted that, at any rate 
 in an advanced state of pregnancy, she is no longer an object 
 of pursuit on the part of the male, still she has a difficult 
 task before her in self-preservation during the period of child- 
 birth. I put self-preservation in the first place, although 
 undoubtedly the mother-instinct to preserve the young would 
 be evolved by natural selection early in the course of develop- 
 ment ; the impulse, however, of self-preservation would 
 probably be foremost in an age when the mother was not 
 unaccustomed to the destruction of children. Further, we 
 must note that among primitive races the period of suckling 
 is extremely prolonged, amounting often to two or three 
 years — even more. During the whole of this time primitive 
 woman, obeying a well-known physiological law, abstains from 
 intercourse with the man. As she is of less value to him, so 
 she is largely left to provide for herself. We have, then, in 
 these facts, the prime factor in human culture. The 
 birth of civilisation must he sought in the attempts of the 
 woman at self -preservation during the times of pregnancy and 
 child-rearing. What the man achieved in the promiscuous 
 age was due to the contest for food with his fellows and with 
 wild beasts. He invented and improved weapons ; but the 
 woman, handicapped as she might appear to be by child- 
 bearing, became on this very account the main instrument in 
 human civilisation. The man's contributions in this early 
 period are a mere nothing as compared to the woman's. Take 
 the earliest German or Scandinavian mythology, remove all 
 the goddesses ; what is left ? An utterly impossible state. 
 No agriculture, no wisdom, no medicine, no tradition, no 
 family, no conception of immortality. Now take away all the 
 gods ; we have left quite a possible phase of civilisation, 
 without, however, war or sea-traffic; hunting remains, although 
 much less emphasised ; some, indeed, might even suggest 
 war — or at least occasional contest between man and
 
 THE SEX-EELATIONS IN GEKMANY 385 
 
 woman/ This social organisation is that of the mother-age, and 
 is the work of women. Women evolved it in their struggles 
 for self-preservation during pregnancy and child-nurture. The 
 part woman has played, and, I venture to think, will play, in 
 civilisation dijffers from man's part exactly in this element of 
 child-bearing. Take away this element, and the like character 
 of the struggle for existence will lead the non-child-bearing 
 woman along the same lines of development as man. What 
 woman has individually achieved for civilisation is, I think, 
 due to her child-bearing function. It raised her to intellectual 
 and inventive supremacy, it made her the teacher and guide 
 of man in the mother-age. 
 
 Let us attempt to sketch the rational side of this formal 
 change from promiscuity to the mother-age. 
 
 The pregnant woman owing to the instinct of self-pre- 
 servation seeks the cave, the den, or some retreat in the darkest 
 part of the forest ; there she collects leaves, sticks, or whatever 
 will protect her. She must shelter herself from man and 
 wild beasts. She must also hoard food for the days or weeks 
 when she can neither hunt nor seek roots and berries with the 
 former ease. Her task is the harder if the birth takes place 
 towards winter. Here are wants enough urging her towards 
 invention, developing her cunning and her positive knowledge. 
 The den or cave becomes the basis of the home, for the child 
 depends for a long period on the mother; she communicates 
 to the child her knowledge of roots, and her methods of 
 preserving food. She becomes the centre of traditional 
 culture ; she hands down to the child her primitive beliefs ; 
 she shapes religion and custom. Eound the den arise the first 
 attempts at agriculture ; roots and berries are thrown forth, 
 and collect alongside hmnan excrement and other refuse. 
 The fertility produced by a chance neighbourhood is ultimately 
 made use of as a basis for food-supply. Thus woman becomes 
 the first agriculturist; nor does the folklore of child-birth 
 forget to commemorate this fact. Probably long before the 
 first child can maintain itself, the mother is again pregnant, 
 not improbably by a different father; the woman has now 
 1 For a like result based upon Slavonic tradition, see Zmigrodzki, j>. 222. 
 
 25
 
 386 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 a double burden upon her, a double cull for invention and 
 ingenuity. The child -mortality is probably very great, 
 exposure of children and their sacrifice frequent ; still natural 
 selection points to the survival of that type of woman who 
 provided for several children ; we see the woman increasing 
 the capacities of the den, increasing her knowledge of roots 
 and of agriculture. I have already referred to the long 
 period of suckling among primitive races ; during this time 
 must have arisen a contest in the woman between duty 
 towards the child and sexual inclination. Probably in many 
 cases it ended in the desertion of the child, or in its formal 
 sacrifice by man or woman. But from this contest arises the 
 most marvellous stage in the mother-civilisation. Mankind 
 at some period of its growth has tamed the animals and used 
 their milk and flesh for its food-supply. To man or woman 
 do we owe this boon ? To those who have examined the 
 folklore of child-birth, there cannot be any hesitation as to the 
 answer. In great part, if not entirely, to woman. The cow, 
 swine, butter and milk, the cock and hen, are all associated 
 with the German and Slavonic child-birth traditions in a 
 fashion which admits of one interpretation only. The needs 
 of the child-bearing woman, her struggles for the preservation 
 of self and children, her desire to shorten the period of 
 suckling, led to the domestication of animals. The woman 
 suiTounded by a group of children becomes in the long lapse 
 of centuries the central civilising force. From this group 
 springs the family based on the mother alone ; the man learns 
 of the woman the elements of agriculture, the tending and 
 breeding of at least the smaller domestic animals, the 
 properties of roots and herbs. She forms religion and 
 tradition, and she naturally reverences women, not men — 
 goddesses, not gods. The oldest, the wisest, the most mysteri- 
 ously powerful of the Teutonic deities are female. The 
 Altvater Wuodan must sacrifice his eye to learn their mysterious 
 knowledge. I even find traces in ' Fru Gude,' an earth- 
 goddess, of a primitive female form of Wuodan himself. The 
 natural powers deified by the woman are of two kinds. She 
 has fled from the sight of man, she and he are at feud dm-ing
 
 THE SEX-KELATIONS IN GEKMANY 387 
 
 pregnancy and child-uui'tvire. She is guarded from man at 
 this time by beings of the den and cave, goddesses of the 
 dark and the night, at war with man. To approach the 
 pregnant woman is dangerous to the man, she is surrounded 
 by spirits hostile to him ; but there are other beings around 
 her too, hostile to her, the old nature forces, half-animal, half- 
 man, of the promiscuous period, ready to take her life and 
 that of her children. These are, as it were, the personified 
 difficulties with which she has to struggle for self-preservation. 
 Eouud the woman at child-birth collect a group of infernal 
 beings unfriendly to man and woman alike. Later folklore 
 represents them by a crowd of witches and devils eager to 
 destroy child and mother. How shall she escape them ? 
 Place against the door an axe, a broom, and a dung-fork ; 
 let her eat certain roots ; bring in sacred milk and cheese, or 
 slaughter a cock. Then they cannot touch her. These are 
 symbols of the means taken by the woman for self-preserva- 
 tion in the earliest ages — symbols of her work of civilisation. 
 They are more akin to the brighter spirits, who are there to 
 protect her, the prototypes of the goddesses we find in later 
 German mythology. Thus it comes about that the woman in 
 child-bed is to the German peasantry of to-day something at 
 the same time pure and impure. The witch is there ready to 
 harm both husband and wife ; but the angel, the good deity, is 
 there likewise, and the woman who dies in child-birth avoids 
 purgatory and goes straight to heaven. 
 
 Jacob Grimm said of the German goddesses, years before 
 modern investigations had brought the mother-age to light : 
 
 " In the case of the gods the previous investigation could 
 reach its goal by separating individuals; it seems advisable, 
 however, to consider the goddesses collectively as well as 
 individually, because a common idea lies at the basis of them 
 all, and will thus be the more clearly marked. They are con- 
 ceived of peculiarly as divine mothers {gottermutter), travelling 
 about and visiting mortals ; from them mankind has learnt 
 the business and the arts of housekeeping as well as agriculture, 
 spinning, weaving, watching the liearth, sowing and reaping. 
 These labours bring peace and rest to the land, and the
 
 388 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 memory of them remains firmer in pleasing traditions than 
 war and fighting, which, like women, the majority of the 
 goddesses shun." ^ 
 
 A truer, although quite unconscious, tribute to the civilis- 
 ing work of women can hardly be imagined. If we add to the 
 arts mentioned by Grimm, the art of healing, the elements of 
 relifrious faith as a tradition, and, as far as the Germans are 
 concerned, apparently the runic art of writing, we have a slight 
 picture of what women accomplished in the centuries which 
 intervened between the promiscuous period and the complete 
 establishment of the father-age. 
 
 (2) The Mother -Age {Matriarchate). 
 
 In this age raw food has been supplemented or replaced 
 by milk and butter ; hence the period has been called the 
 milk -and -butter period. The den has developed into the 
 home or house, of which the mother is the head. She is the 
 source of all traditional knowledge and of all relationship. 
 Her children are by different, and very probably unknown, 
 fathers ; such property as there is, descends through her. In 
 the earlier phases of the mother-age, when the food-supply 
 and the shelter of the den were limited, the boy would, as he 
 grew older, go off hunting for himself, and live freely like other 
 men. As the supply and comfort of the den increased to those 
 of the hut, there would undoubtedly be two types of men, the 
 huntsman who went forth, and the agriculturist who stayed 
 at home, remaining under the influence of his mother. As a 
 rule the daughter would also remain at home, and, when she 
 reached puberty, consort temporarily with some man. The 
 earliest Aryan names of relationship denote merely sex- 
 functions. Daughter and son are not correlated to father 
 and mother ; the one is simply the ' milk-giver,' the other 
 the ' begetter.' The word ' mother ' is connected with a root 
 signifying the ' quickening ' one. The conception of father 
 could hardly be very prominent during the promiscuous period 
 and the earlier portion of the mother-age. Its signification 
 is said to be double — the ' protector ' and the ' ruler ' ; this, if 
 correct, would point at least to the later mother-age, if not to 
 1 Deutsche Mythologie, i. p. 207.
 
 THE SEX-KELATIONS IN GEEMANY 389 
 
 the patriarchate, or father-age.^ Till the mother had estab- 
 lished the comparative comfort of the den, there was no 
 inducement for the father to stay by her and protect or rule 
 the offspring. The father-instinct has been evolved in some 
 animals, notably birds, in the struggle for existence. I do 
 not know whether it has been found in any carnivorous, and 
 therefore hunting mammal ; especially I doubt whether it 
 existed in man before the mother-age. 
 
 The above remarks will suggest the prominence of the 
 women in the primitive family. The man remains at first 
 outside it — he is a hunter. His w^hole knowledge is the 
 ' mother- wit ' he has received in the den. The woman stands 
 on a higher level ; she has become located, and has an interest 
 in the soil. No longer the swamp, but the field becomes the 
 symbol of sex-union. In both cases it is Mother Earth which 
 is productive, but it is no longer the unregulated fruition of 
 
 the swamp period : 
 
 Her plenteous womb 
 Expresseth its full tilth and huslmndry. 
 
 The conception of sexual union in folklore becomes tilth, 
 the goddess of child-birth is the goddess of agriculture. 
 
 The superior position of woman leads, as we have said, to a 
 division of mankind into two classes : the agriculturist stays 
 in the family, the huntsman leaves it, and remains in a lower 
 grade of culture. Probably the same promiscuous sexual 
 relations between the women, of what we may now venture 
 to call the family, and the men outside continue, but the 
 agriculturists, the men of the family, have now to be provided 
 for. This provision seems to have been made in a variety of 
 ways which we find clearly marked in early mythology and 
 folklore. I note the following : — 
 
 (1) They have promiscuous sexual relations, like the 
 
 hunter, with women of other families, still retaining their 
 
 place in their own. Their offspring are quite independent of 
 
 them, and belong to a family in which they have no position. 
 
 1 A. Kuhn : Zur dltesten Geschichte der iivdogermanischen Viilkcr, Bd. I., 
 18.50. Deecke : Die deutschc VcrimndtHchaftsnamcn, 1870. See also the 
 present writer's essay on group-marriage and the significance of names of relation- 
 ehip in The Charges of Death, vol. ii., 1897.
 
 390 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 (2) They have sexual relations with the women of their 
 own family, their sisters. Brother-sister marriage and group- 
 marriage are the very usual relations pointed to by German 
 as well as Greek mythology, folklore, and philology. 
 
 (3) They unite themselves to women of other families, 
 and transfer themselves to those families ; in this case their 
 position seems to have been unstable, if not dangerous, even 
 when they brought, as in later days, a dowry with them. 
 
 (4) They capture women from other families, and intro- 
 duce them into their own. This was probably also a danger- 
 ous method, if the women were not paid for. 
 
 With regard to the modes in which the agriculturists 
 satisfied their sexual instincts, (3) and (4) apparently belong 
 to a later state of development than (1) or (2). They pass 
 over into the father -age, and the fourth develops into the 
 ordinary forms of marriage by capture and by pvirchase. But 
 there is an important point to be recognised here : three out 
 of these four forms tend towards permanency in the sexual 
 relation, and limitation in its field, or ultimately to a lasting 
 monogamy. It is quite true that brother-sister and group- 
 marriages led in many cases to polygamy or polyandry, but 
 even here there was a permanent and limited system. The 
 Teutonic mythology dates from an age when brother -sister 
 marriage was becoming monogamic. The agriculturist in the 
 mother-age developed a regulated sex-relation on the side of 
 the man, and in our earliest traces of German culture we find 
 monogamy general, if not absolute. 
 
 But although the property in the wife can be shown by 
 her capture, and the husband-right thus established, it is a 
 different matter with the child. That the child foUows the 
 womb and that ownership is shown by the labours of child- 
 birth, was a principle which our forefathers held for centuries, 
 and found extremely difficult to circumvent, as with the decay 
 of the mother-age the sexual father rose into importance. The 
 same method of claiming father-rights has been discovered 
 among the natives of Africa, South America, and the Celts of 
 Strabo's time. It was that the husband also should simulate 
 the labours of child-birth, and take to bed at the same time as
 
 THE SEX-EELATIONS IN GERMANY 391 
 
 his wife, if he wished to be held as the father and proprietor 
 of the child. We find several traces of this naive device in 
 German folklore. It belongs to a period of development later 
 than that which we are at present considering, but it is 
 intimately connected with the marriages by purchase and 
 capture, which marked the end of the mother -age. Thus 
 Strabo tells us of the primitive people of Spain — that they 
 suffered a most ' foolish governaunce by women ' ; that the 
 women possessed the property, and it passed from mother 
 to daughter ; that the latter gave away their brothers in 
 marriage, and that the men took a dowry with them into 
 the houses of their wives ; that the women performed all 
 agricultural work, and became so hardened by it that child- 
 birth was nothing to them. ' Indeed,' Strabo remarks, ' they 
 on these occasions put their husbands to bed and %vait upon 
 them.' Strabo's account of the Oantabri has been ridiculed 
 by an unbelieving age. Modern research, however, and the 
 discovery of the matriarchate, are doing much to re-establish 
 the good faith, not only of Strabo, but even of that supposed 
 arch-liar Herodotus. 
 
 Let us return for a moment to the hunting, as distinguished 
 from the agricultural portion of the population. It presents, 
 as it were, the man's side of primitive civilisation. It has 
 improved its arms, become skilled in the artifices of the chase, 
 and, according to Lippert, domesticated herds of cattle, prob- 
 ably begmning, like the Egyptians, with the antelope or some 
 kindred form of easily tamed deer.^ From the huntsman 
 develops the nomad, and here arises the culture of the man 
 in opposition to the culture of the woman. Where no men, 
 or few, have become agriculturists, we have a distinction of 
 food between men and women ; they live apart and feed apart 
 — a state of affairs which evidently existed in some primitive 
 German tribes, and is still to be found in parts of Central 
 Africa. On the other hand, where the agricultural element 
 is strong, there arises a division and probably a conflict between 
 the nomadic and agricultural sections of primitive mankind. 
 Their interests are opposed, especially in matters of sex. The 
 1 JJie G'escfiichte der Familic, p. 41.
 
 392 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 primitive agriculturist reared among women has not the 
 fighting skill of the nomad. The nomad has not the easy- 
 access to women. With him woman must be captured, but 
 owing to the long period of suckling — without assuming any 
 great disparity in the number of men and women — we must 
 suppose sexually fit women to have been comparatively scarce. 
 Hence arise contests with the agriculturist, polyandry, and 
 often a comparatively inferior position of woman as a captive 
 or chattel among nomads. 
 
 The permanency of the sex -relation among the agricul- 
 turists, the necessity for organisation in matters of defence, 
 which must be entrusted to the men — these are the beginnings 
 of the father-age. But, as Lippert ^ has pointed out, the man 
 appears as tribal organiser, ruler, or tribe -father, before his 
 position as sexual father is recognised. The first conception 
 of father is ' ruler,' ' protector,' not progenitor. The first stage 
 towards the father -age is the need of a physical protector. 
 The mother still rules the house, but the ' Altvater ' rules the 
 fight, often indeed guided by the women. For woman is 
 still essentially the wise one, she is the som'ce of traditional 
 religion, and the charge of the gods is essentially hers. About 
 the hearth arise the first conceptions of ' altar ' and ' sanctuary.' 
 She writes with her staff in the ashes the will of the gods, 
 and her pots and kettles reappear in every witch-trial of the 
 Middle Ages. Her spirit lingers round the hearth even after 
 death, and to-day the solitary student sitting over his fire, or 
 the peasant when his family are out, will tell you they have 
 been mutter seelen allein, meaning absolutely alone. Unrecog- 
 nised relic of the mother-age, — they are alone at the hearth 
 with their mother's soul ! 
 
 If I might venture on a fanciful suggestion, which, how- 
 ever, seems to me to receive much confirmation from German 
 folklore, I should say, that it was a conflict between nomadic 
 and semi-agricultural populations, which drove the Germans, 
 if not all the Aryan stock, from their earlier dwelling-places. 
 Be this as it may, our first historical traces of the Germans 
 
 ^ Ihid., pp. 6, 7, 218, et seq. [I should not now accept this origin for the 
 'feed' root in/ather or pater. — 1901.]
 
 THE SEX-EELATIONS IN GEEMANY 393 
 
 are of a semi-agriciiltural people, among whom the mother-age 
 has not yet passed away ; the women are priestesses and 
 rulers of the house, the deities are in great part goddesses ; 
 learning— runic lore — is in the hands of the woman, and 
 folk -custom recognises her superiority to man at many points ; 
 the man may be Altvater, or tribal ruler, but as sexual father, he 
 is not yet fully recognised. But it is the period of struggle, 
 the man is asserting himself, a regulated sexual relation has 
 appeared, the possibility of a sexual father is there, and the 
 power of woman is on the decline. But the victory of man 
 is not easy ; it takes long centuries to fully confirm it, and 
 traces of the mother-age remain throughout mediaeval times. 
 The transition from the mother- to the father-age is, indeed, 
 marked by the appearance of women of gigantic stature and 
 nigh infernal nature. There is as yet no sanctity in the rela- 
 tion of wife and husband ; the wife is the result of purchase or 
 capture, and she does not lightly submit to the loss of the 
 mother-power. The old legends of contest between men and 
 women are not such idle fancies as some would have us 
 believe, and very dark shadows indeed do such figures as those 
 of Ildico, Fredegunde, and Brunliilde cast across the pages 
 of history. Such women, indeed, are only paralleled by the 
 Clytasmnestra and Medea of a like phase in Greek develop- 
 ment. Nor does the poet fail even among the Germans to 
 represent the contest between man and woman for the mastery ; 
 it is the victory of the new day- or light-gods over the old 
 night- or earth-goddesses. Wuodan replaces Hellja and Mother 
 Earth, Siegfried conquers Brunhilde, Beovulf defeats the off- 
 spring of the swamp goddess Grindel, and Thor fights with 
 Gialp and Greip, the daughters of Geirrod.^ 
 
 It is this struggle between the mother- and father-stages 
 of civilisation which is all-important in considering the develop- 
 ment of the sex-relations. As external marriage took the place 
 of group-marriage, the capture of the bride must have met with 
 active opposition on the part of the mother ; equally hostile 
 must she have been to the necessary changes in the customs 
 relating to tlie devolution of property. The mother-in-law, 
 ^ Corpus Boreale, Mythic Fragments, i. p. 127.
 
 394 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 or the chief-woman of the wife's family, becomes an object of 
 peculiar hatred to the husband ; she is his special foe, and, 
 in some primitive tribes, she and he never after the marriage 
 exchange a word or meet under the same roof.^ Evidence of 
 the like feeling is very apparent in Germanic folklore. To 
 such bitterness did the marriage by capture lead, to such blood 
 feuds, that we find in early German tradition great merit 
 ascribed to those rulers who ordered that the wife should 
 be obtained by 'purchase, not by capture. Driven from the 
 commanding position of house -mother, and deprived of her 
 mother -rights in the matter of property, the last fortress of 
 the Teutonic woman was her sacerdotal privileges. She 
 remained holy as priestess, she had charge of the tribal 
 sacrifice and the tribal religion. From this last refuge she 
 was driven by the introduction of Christianity among the 
 Germans. In the Eoman world that view of the sex-rela- 
 tions symbolised by the swamp had long given place to a 
 regulated sex-system, which had culminated in the strongest 
 father -rights possibly ever attained by any folk. The re- 
 action against these father -rights had led, in the coiurse of 
 centuries, to what appears, at least in Eome itself, as a 
 revival of the swamp -age. A regulated sex -relationship had 
 become impossible to the body social, for it had adopted equal 
 license, not equal restraint, as the keynote to sex-equality. 
 Upon this field appeared Christianity with the difficult 
 task of reconstruction and the terrible narrowness of the 
 Pauline doctrine. It succeeded, with the aid of Chrysostom 
 and Jerome, in damming out the swamp, but at the entire 
 cost of woman. Woman is to be, so long as she is con- 
 sidered a creature of sex, entirely subject to the man. She 
 is mentally and physically his inferior, and must obey him. 
 Considered as an asexual being, she can attain to a position 
 in the ecclesiastical world, but on this condition only. Thus 
 it is not the natural character of mother, but the artificial quality 
 of chastity which marks a woman as holy, or confers on her 
 religious importance as a saint. This may have been necessary 
 to dam the Eoman swamp, Ijut it was not a version of 
 
 ^ Lippert, quotiug from Nachiigals Heisen, pp. 44-45.
 
 THE SEX-EELATIONS IN GERMANY 395 
 
 Christianity likely to be popular with a folk still in the mother- 
 age, and it led to not a few eccentric heresies. Taking, however, 
 the Germans as we find them in the midst of the transition from 
 mother- to father-age, the Christianity of Paul and Jerome 
 was to the men by no means an unpleasant faith. There was 
 much in it w^hich favoured the spread of the father- power, and 
 when Christ was reduced to a warrior-chief, and the disciples 
 to his head-men — much as we find them in that earliest 
 German version of Christianity, the old Saxon Heliand — 
 then, indeed, it might be accepted as a suitable faith for the 
 father- or hero -age. On the other hand, the women, the 
 priestess - mothers of the old faith, were unlikely to receive 
 warmly these doctrines of subjection and chastity. They and 
 their deities became the object of hatred to the Christian 
 missionaries, and later of alternate scorn and fear to pious 
 ascetics and monks. The priestess-mother became something 
 impure, a creature associated with the devil, her lore an infernal 
 incantation, her cooking a brewing of poison ; nay, her very 
 existence a perpetual source of sin to man. Thus woman as 
 mother and priestess became woman as witch. The witch- 
 trials of the Middle Ages, wherein thousands of women were 
 condemned to the stake, were the last traces of a very real 
 contest between man and woman. For one man burned there 
 were at least fifty women, and when one reads the confessions 
 under torture of these poor wretches, a strange light is thrown 
 over the meaning of all this suffering. It is the last struggle 
 of women against complete subjection. There appears in these 
 confessions all the traditional lore of the mother-age ; the old 
 gods and goddesses are there, and the old modes of thought ; 
 nay, the very forms of sex-relationship due to the promiscuous 
 age and the mother-age reappear. Nor was it only tradition, 
 there can be little doubt of a sexual cult, and child-birth rites 
 lasting on into the father -age and even into the Christian 
 Middle Ages. I hope on another occasion to throw some 
 light upon this secret sexual cult as evidenced by German 
 witch-trials. 
 
 (3) The Father-Age (Patriarchate). 
 
 This age cannot be said to have been fully established
 
 396 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 among all Germanic folks until the reception of Christianity. 
 Of course, its essential features, the rule of the Altvater, the 
 capture or purchase of wives, the reckoning of descent by the 
 father's side, and the inheritance of property by sons only, are 
 all manifest in the heroic age — the age of the Germanic folk- 
 wanderings and of the Vikings. The hero -legends of the 
 Helderibuch and of the Edda testify to this state of affiiirs only 
 too clearly. But we find at the same time, even in these very 
 legends, as well as in early custom and law, an anomalous 
 position of the woman. The hero-age is a period of transition. 
 Christianity is necessary to make the father-age universal, and 
 complete the subjection of the woman. 
 
 But Christianity left a loophole to the woman, which is of 
 singular importance ; it allowed her to play a really impor- 
 tant part in the state on condition of her leading the ascetic 
 life. It threw open its schools to men and women alike ; and, 
 provided the woman retained her virginity, she might rise to 
 any degree of intellectual eminence. As abbess of an im- 
 portant nunnery she had a social and intellectual influence 
 which is not always sufficiently recognised. The history of cul- 
 ture in Germany shows a series of women like Hroswitha of 
 Gandersheim and Herrad of Landsberg, who were scarcely 
 equalled, certainly not surpassed, by any men of their time. 
 The popular theology of the age expressed the new position 
 of woman in the phrase, 'Eva (a mother and a wife) had 
 deprived man of paradise ; Ave {Ave = Maria (sic) — a virgin) 
 had restored salvation to him.' 
 
 We have thus again a great division drawn across woman- 
 kind ; the non-child-bearing woman is holy and has a career 
 before her ; the child-bearing woman is of an inferior caste, 
 and is a necessity of the weak and sinful nature of man. It 
 must not be supposed that this was merely the view of the 
 Church Fathers, or of scholastics and monks. It passed into 
 folk literature and the proverbial philosophy of the people, 
 and remained there long after it had ceased to be the opinion 
 of the educated. A comparison of monkish and folk writings 
 would, did space permit, bring this clearly before the reader. 
 If every peasant and burgher did not hold the same view of
 
 THE SEX-EELATIONS IN GEEMANY 397 
 
 wedlock as an ' endless penaunce,' which is expressed by a 
 mediaeval English poet who has been saved from the ' hell ' of 
 marriage when he to wed 'saught fyrst occasioun,' ^ still every 
 peasant and burgher looked upon the woman as an inferior 
 being, ever ready to contest his authority and lead him into 
 evil. Nor do I think, considering that the subjection of 
 woman, and the establishment of the father-age, were not of 
 remote date, that this feeling was by any means unreasonable. 
 Be this as it may, there is small doubt that the folk accepted 
 the theologian's views and divided woman into a higher and 
 lower order of beings, the virgin and the wife. For centuries 
 woman as wife almost disappears from the sphere of political 
 and social influence. 
 
 The contrast, however, between the beauty of virginity and 
 the comparative degradation of motherhood could not be main- 
 tained in human life, full as it was of sexual influences. The 
 way in which the contradiction was solved presents us with 
 one of the most remarkable instances of the close relation 
 which always seems to exist between intense religious 
 enthusiasm and sexual excitement. 
 
 The Germans were in far too primitive and natural a state 
 to shake off entirely tlieir old polytheistic faiths, and while, 
 on the one hand, witchcraft maintained its place, on the other 
 the influence of the old reverence towards women, due to the 
 mother-age, made itself felt in the new religion. Owing to 
 the Jews having chosen Jahveh, not Astoreth, as their tribal 
 deity Christianity presented the strange spectacle of a religion 
 without a goddess. As such we recognise that it is not the 
 production of an agricultural people, but of one among whom 
 women held a very secondary place. Jews and late Greeks 
 together were not likely to give to the world a religion of the 
 woman. Hence, when this religion of the man came among a 
 people still full of the beliefs and feelings of the mother-age, 
 althoui^h it came as an instrument workins: towards tlie sub- 
 
 1 But of his grace God hath me preserved 
 lie the wise coiincell of aungelis three ; 
 From hell gates they liave my silf con.served 
 III tyme of yerc, when lovers lusty Ije.
 
 398 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 jection of woman — yet the spirit of the folk was too strong 
 for it ; they demanded and obtained a goddess.^ If the ideal 
 woman be no longer the mother, at least a virgin goddess 
 shall be added to the Christian pantheon ; the tritheistic faith 
 shall become tetra-theistic, and ultimately polytheistic. Some 
 Protestants are apt to look upon this cliange in Christianity 
 as the mark of the Devil ; to me it seems the great triumph of 
 mediseval Christianity. With one stroke it threw off Hebraism 
 and the still more baneful late Hellenism, and became Germanic. 
 It became a matter of feeling and imagination ; it was possible 
 for a great art, a great literature, and a great theology to grow 
 up under it. It became the means by which the Germanic 
 element could influence civilisation as the Greek and the Indian 
 had done. The condition of the reception of Christianity by 
 the Germans was the fuller reception of the motlier-element by 
 Christianity — of the woman — even in the shape of a virgin. 
 
 The new goddess, once incorporated in the Christian 
 mythology rapidly replaced in affection and reverence the older 
 gods. Every virtue, every form of praise, was heaped 
 upon her, in the most exaggerated language. The ascetic 
 monk, deprived of the natural outflow for his sexual feelings, 
 gave expression to it in songs to the Virgin, which, as the 
 years rolled by, gained a stronger and stronger sensual colour- 
 ing ; the most remarkable, not to say dangerous, similes were 
 used ; all the ardour of the sexual passion is poured out in 
 these Latin Virgin-songs. Nor did the matter end here : 
 the strolling scholars adopted these Virgin -songs, modified 
 and extended them — so that we find occasionally the same 
 lines in a sacred hymn and in a rollicking, drinking love-song. 
 The virgin became merely a peg on which every expression of 
 the wildest passion could be hung. The hymn to the Virgin 
 became the basis of a new phase in sex-relationship. 
 
 In the cloister - manuscripts, among these extravagant 
 hymns to the Virgin, we find the first love-songs. Little 
 
 ^ Although the Geniians did not invent mariolatiy, which not improbably 
 had its origin in the direct transformation of the priestesses of Ceres into i)riestesses 
 of the Chn'st-AIother, yet mariolatry was from the earliest time an essential and 
 much emphasised feature of Germanic Christianity.
 
 THE SEX-EELATIONS IN GEEMANY 399 
 
 more than translations of the Latin Virgin-hymns, their scope 
 is yet obvious : whether used by the monks, or, what is very 
 probable, written by them for the knights, they are purely 
 songs of sexual love, songs in adoration of an earthly, and 
 not a heavenly, mistress. They are the germs of the Minne- 
 sang. We have reached the age of the German Minnesinger, 
 the beginning of what we in England term chivalry, but what 
 the Germans denote by Minne, a word which in the oldest 
 German signifies spiritual love as for the gods, but in Middle 
 Hio-h German has almost a purely sensual meaning. Woman 
 — at least in the upper classes of society — is to regain a place 
 of influence. She has, indeed, revenged herself upon the 
 theology which placed chastity above motherhood. But her 
 power over men is to be based not upon the rights of a 
 mother, but upon the charms of a mistress. Man is her 
 slave so long as she retains her beauty, or his fancy be not 
 sated. It is the Periclean period of German development ; 
 Hetairism triumphant, only with a difference — the woman is 
 paid for her sexual service in a more spiritual form. She 
 remains before the law and the church subject to man, but 
 she rules him through the senses. That is the strange out- 
 come of the father-age in Germany ! We are too apt to look 
 upon the chivalry of the Middle Ages from the standpoint 
 of nineteenth-century romance-writers — to consider it as the 
 single-minded service of a generous manhood towards a noble 
 but weaker womanhood. Such a service may be, I venture to 
 think occasionally is, a feature of nineteenth -century life, 
 certainly it was not a prominent factor of Minnedienst. It 
 was, indeed, a service on the part of the man, often arduous 
 and prolonged ; but there was always one end in view, and 
 that, the gratification of sensual passion. Those who have 
 studied the great Arthurian epics in their original forms, and 
 have some acquaintance with the vast mass of lyric poetry 
 due to the Minnesinger, will undoubtedly agree with this con- 
 clusion. It was, indeed, a time of unrestricted sexual in- 
 dulgence on the part of both men and women. The maiden, 
 the dmte, and the married woman were all alike the object of 
 homage on the part of the knight; but the favour which fair
 
 400 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 ladies gave to the victor in the tournay was of the most 
 material kind. Chastity was prudery, and long -continued 
 reserve on the part of either man or woman ill-breeding ; the 
 only disgrace, discovery and mutilation by an enraged husband ; 
 the only crime, forcible seduction. The dmie was received in 
 all knightly society, and free-love — only restrained in one or 
 two cases by a formal etiquette — the morality of the day. 
 Nay, even to the field, the dmie and the recognised prostitute 
 followed the knight. The crusaders were accompanied by a 
 second army of women, and such were the sexual extravagances 
 in the Holy Land, that the failure of the second crusade is 
 attributed by the old writers to license alone. 
 
 This marked cliaracteristic of courtly society was imitated 
 by the burgher, and to a less extent by the peasant, so that 
 the period is distinguished by a scarcely paralleled freedom in 
 matters of sex. The love of boys, probably arising in the 
 cloister, infected Germany, although it never appeared so 
 markedly as in England and France. Women, especially 
 married women, were perpetually found in intrigue with monk 
 and priest, who for their own sake preserved a secrecy which 
 the knight at the drinking bout might forget. Not a few 
 mediajval songs discuss the comparative merits of the sacerdotal 
 and knightly lovers, generally to the advantage of the former. 
 But I have said enough to indicate the character of the 
 period. At first sight it appears like a return to the swamp- 
 age — a period of social collapse like the last years of the 
 Eoman Empire. 
 
 But it is really something very different ; this age of 
 chivalry has given Germanic civilisation one of its noblest 
 factors, one which in our modern world has played a great 
 part in the sex-relationship. Let us recall the fact that we 
 are still in the father -age, that marriage by purchase has 
 only recently taken the place of marriage by capture ; that 
 the father has yet power to give or sell his daughter to 
 whom he pleases ; that even yet he occasionally offers her 
 to the victor in a tournay ; that every woman is legally in 
 some man's hand, or, as the Germans termed it, in mund. 
 Note all this, and then recognise the advance — when the
 
 THE SEX-EELATIONS IN GERMANY 401 
 
 woman is allowed to freely dispose of her person, when it is 
 once admitted that she has a choice in sexual matters. It 
 is indeed a great step towards the modification of the harsh 
 sex-relationship peculiar to the father-age. But this is not 
 all ; the century of the Hohenstaufen is the age of great 
 plastic development ; Germanic institutions were then moulded 
 to the form in which some of them have lasted even to the 
 present day. It was a freethinking age, as well as a free- 
 loving age. It was an age which built cathedrals, and fought 
 the pope. In architecture and decorative sculpture Germany 
 achieved what few nations have ever equalled. We talk 
 much of the Parthenon and its friezes, but how shall we 
 compare them with the western facjade of a Gothic minster ? 
 In epic and lyric poetry how little have after-ages that can 
 rival Tristan unci Isolt or the love-songs of Meister Walther ! 
 It was the boyhood of German vigour, and not the senility of 
 a dying empire, which produced this age of sense. The rela- 
 tion of man to woman was primarily sensual, but it was a 
 sensuality idealised by the highest phases of art. It was an 
 age of music and of song, of noble buildings, of flowing drapery 
 and graceful forms of dress. It was the peculiarity of this period 
 of German civilisation that, while as in Imperial Eome the 
 sex-relationship was marked by a free choice for both sexes, yet 
 also as in the Periclean age of Athens sensuality was idealised 
 by art. It was human sense superseding brute sense. Put 
 these two things together — sexual instinct guided by co-option 
 and idealised by artistic appeal to the emotions — and we 
 have the basis of that which, with a good many centuries of 
 spiritualising, has developed into what we now term love. There 
 is an element in the love of Romeo and Juliet — still more in 
 that of Faust and Gretchen, sensual as both alike are — which 
 I have never come across in the classical authors with whom 
 I am acquainted ; there is a certain inexplicable tenderness 
 which it is quite impossible for me to analyse, but wliich I 
 believe is due to medi;eval chivalry. 
 
 We have, then, towards the close of the thirteenth century 
 a new stage in the sex-rcilationsliip which is fairly widespread. 
 The woman was legally in comjilcte subjection to the man, 
 
 26
 
 402 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 but socially co-option had been established, and there was a 
 tendency to idealise sexual attraction. This result was not 
 obtained without a considerable weakening of the customary 
 sexual restraints. I now pass to the last period which I 
 shall lay before you ; this, from one of its leading features, I 
 shall characterise as : — 
 
 (4) The Age of Prostitution. 
 
 The prostitute, who Tacitus informs us had no existence 
 among the primitive German tribes, became a recognised 
 personage in the age of chivalry. It is not very easy to trace 
 what the exact causes were which led to the reimposition 
 of sexual restraint on the married woman ; they are, of 
 course, due partly to the re -establishment in the thirteenth 
 century of the influence of the Church, and to the purer 
 character of that influence ; partly to the decay of the old 
 knight - culture. The knights owing to their increasing 
 poverty could no longer indulge in the courtly gathering, in 
 music and in song ; the archer, and later the arquebusier, 
 made the knight useless in the field, and the man of learning 
 — the theologian or the jurist — was of more value at the 
 council-board. With the disappearance of chivalry and the 
 rise of burgher-culture came a new phase of the sex-relation ; 
 the woman had free option in the choice of a husband, but 
 once married she was legally, and to a large extent socially, 
 in complete subjection. On the other hand, the free sexual 
 relations of the age of chivalry continued to exist in the form 
 of prostitution. Prostitution began to play a great part in 
 the social life of the mediseval cities. It must also be noted 
 that at the same time the line between capitalist and worker 
 became more prominent, and a town proletariat first made its 
 influence felt. The prostitute in the mediieval city played a 
 singular part ; she was alternately honoured and contemned. 
 She was used to grace the banquet of the town-council or the 
 reception of the emperor ; but she was often compelled to wear 
 a distinctive dress, or was deprived of all legal rights. Nothing 
 is more characteristic of the absolute subjection of woman than 
 this treatment of prostitutes ; and the police regulations con- 
 cerning them in such towns as Nlirnberg, Frankfurt, and
 
 THE SEX-EEL ATIONS IN GERMANY 403 
 
 Augsburg present us with one of the most instructive examples 
 of the result of allowing men and men only to legislate on 
 matters of sex. The prostitute was treated in the first place 
 not as a woman, but as a necessary, although troublesome, 
 part of the town -property, which had to be dealt with as 
 might seem for the time most convenient. Only occasionally 
 had she to thank the Church for a little human consideration. 
 Long before the spread of venereal disease at the end of the 
 fifteenth century, the maintenance by the town-councils of 
 brothels, generally placed in charge of the hangman or the 
 town-beadle, had become universal. A typical instance of the 
 moral feeling of the time is the vote of public money by the 
 town -councils for the free opening and decoration of the 
 public brothels when they had a visit from distinguished 
 strangers. The historical study of this old town -life un- 
 doubtedly throws light on one or two problems of to-day. 
 
 It remains for me to note the influence of the Ee- 
 formation upon this last period, marked as it is by mono- 
 gamic marriage and organised prostitution. Let me first 
 state the exact results of chivalry following upon the father- 
 age. These are : — 
 
 (1) Free option for the woman in marriage, usually 
 accompanied by what we term love. After marriage complete 
 ' domestication ' of the wife ; she plays no part in the state 
 and has no function outside the home. 
 
 (2) Prostitution organised by men, with only the slightest 
 social or legal rights allowed to the prostitute. 
 
 (3) The ascetic life for both men and women, offering the 
 only means by which the middle -class woman could obtain 
 knowledge and power. The convents in the fifteenth century 
 show, in some cases, a remarkable revival of earnestness ; in 
 others, they have sunk to the level of brothels. 
 
 We are apt to look upon the Reformation as a purely 
 religious movement, neglecting the far more important social 
 revolution which produced and accompanied it. The begin- 
 ning of the sixteenth century is the birth of Individualism — 
 a pha.se of development which, while producing infinitely rich 
 results fur liuman knowledge, has in some respects been little
 
 404 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 less thau disastrous for the physical well-being of society. The 
 discovery of the New World and the concurrent decay of the 
 old faith led to an entire reconstruction of the relationship of 
 master and handicraftsman. The whole organisation of trade 
 and of labour was destroyed and remodelled. The age of 
 the capitalist, of the trading company, and of the speculator 
 began. Hochstetter and Welser of Augsburg formed ' rings ' 
 in the wine and corn markets ; Koberger of jSTiirnberg ruled 
 the publishing trade of Europe; capital started on its long 
 years of labour -exploitation, and the handicraftsman soon 
 felt the pinch of the new methods of production. The 
 Catholic Church with its strong socialistic doctrine, the Canon 
 Law with its exaltation of manual labour, and the semi- 
 relisrious builds — the bulwark of the handicraftsmen — were 
 driven out of the best part of Germany as snares of the 
 Antichrist. The evil first made itself felt in the decreased 
 capacity of large classes of the community to marry, and a 
 resulting increase in prostitution. As I have already pointed 
 out, the existing convents were of two kinds — the one class, 
 owing to the spirit of moralists like Geiler, Wimpfeling, and 
 Thomas a Kempis, was filled with really earnest men and 
 women ; the other class contained monks and nuns ready for, 
 or actually practising, every form of sexual indulgence. The 
 Eeformers made no distinction, they raged against all forms 
 of ascetic life as ' the service of the woman in scarlet ' ; they 
 demanded the closing of all convents alike. The effect of this 
 may be easily imagined. Monks and nuns of the inferior kind 
 rushed from their cloisters, and too often did penance for 
 their past ' sin ' of asceticism with all the ills which flow 
 from extreme sexual excess. It is no exaggeration to say 
 that throughout Germany more monks were converted to 
 Lutheranism by the strength of their sexual passions than 
 by their enthusiasm for the Wittenberg 'evangely.' The 
 sexual relations of the mass of early Protestant divines, and 
 even of some of the chief reformers, form a remarkable, 
 although little regarded side of Eeformation history. At 
 the same time with the licentious the earnest class of monks 
 and nuns were expelled from their homes. A woman
 
 THE SEX-EELATIONS IN GEEMANY 405 
 
 like Charitas Pirkheimer, driven with her nuns out of the 
 St. Clara nunnery at Niirnberg, is the last type of the 
 educated nun. In correspondence with the leading Humanists, 
 enthusiastic for the new knowledge and the old literature, 
 she was driven at the instigation of the uneducated and brutal 
 Osiander from her convent. Her diary is one of the most 
 suggestive books to which the modern reader can turn for 
 light on the dark problems of that time. It is the last 
 glimpse we get of the great value which the ascetic life even 
 in the sixteenth century had been to an enslaved womanhood. 
 Henceforward domestication and prostitution were the only 
 careers open to the German woman. 
 
 As I have remarked, the first result of closing the convents 
 was an increase in licentiousness. The economic changes in 
 progress during this period tended in the same direction. It 
 was impossible for the reformers to disregard this increase ; 
 they admitted it, attributing it, as they did many other 
 things, to the peculiar activity which their piety aroused in 
 the Devil. Like many good people of to-day, they held up 
 their hands in horror at the extent of what they termed vice, 
 they preached against it, and they got stringent laws passed 
 against it ; but they never took the trouble to investigate the 
 social causes which produced it. Once term sexual extrava- 
 gance sin, and attribute it to the Devil, then it is illogical to 
 seek for any further cause of its existence. The Devil was a 
 convenient whipping-post, and as the obvious manifestation of 
 his presence was the prostitute, the Protestant town-councils 
 were not long before they closed the town -brothels. The 
 prostitutes, like the nuns, were turned out upon the streets 
 and bade to go their way ; occasionally they were driven with 
 exemplary harshness out of the towns. Sucli action, since it did 
 not touch the real economic cause of the difiiculty, tended rather 
 to increase than decrease the rate at which licentiousness was 
 spreading. Luther, more clearly than any one else, seems to have 
 marked the social problem at the bottom of the sex-ditliculty, 
 and he ]jroposed a remedy — one of the most heroic kind. We 
 have seen that the Iteformatinn destroyed tlie ascetic life, 
 and more forcibly even than Catholicism branded the pros-
 
 406 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 titute as a social outcast ; we have, in the last place, to 
 consider its consequent teaching as to marriage. 
 
 Under the influence of chivalry marriage had become 
 a matter of co- option, and mere sexual instinct had been 
 ennobled by art, and to some extent s})iritualised. A good 
 deal of the love which ends in marriage has undoubtedly a 
 sensual basis, but the pure gratification of sexual appetite is 
 usually kept in the background, or remains quite in abeyance. 
 It was this factor in marriage which Luther did not hesitate 
 in the plainest of language to bring again to the fore. 
 " Marriage," said the early Christian Fathers, " is a lower 
 state than chastity. If man or woman cannot remain 
 chaste, let them marry for their bodies' sake." Wliile this 
 degraded marriage, it at least left an if to save humanity. 
 Luther left no if. "When God made man and woman He 
 blessed them and said to them, ' Increase and multiply.' 
 From this verse we are certain that man and woman shall 
 and must come together in order to multiply. . . . Since as 
 little as it stands in my power that I should not have the 
 form of a man, so little is it in my power to remain without 
 a woman. Further, so little as it stands in your power that 
 you should not have the form of a woman, so little is it 
 possible for you to remain without a man. Since this is not 
 a matter of free-will or advice, but a necessary, natural thing ; 
 what is man must have a woman, what is woman a man. This 
 word of God's : ' Increase and multiply,' is not a command, 
 but more than a command, namely, a divine work that it is 
 not possible for us to hinder or to neglect, but is even as 
 necessary as that I have the form of a man, and more 
 necessary than eating and drinking, bodily offices, sleeping 
 and waking." ^ 
 
 " If one promises to fly like a bird, and does so, then there 
 is a miracle from God. Now it is just as much when a man 
 or woman vows chastity. Since they are not created for 
 chastity, but as God said : ' To increase and multiply.' He 
 who must refrain from bodily easement, when he yet cannot ; 
 what would happen to him ? " ( Wer seinen Mist oder Ham 
 ^ Vom Ehelidien Leben, 1520.
 
 THE SEX-KELATIONS IN GEKMANY 407 
 
 halten miisste, so er's dock nicht kann; was soil aus dem tuerden?y 
 Luther asserts that chastity is possible for the impotent alone, 
 and that he who does not marry is perforce an adulterer, or 
 commits worse vices. 
 
 It may have been necessary at that time to stigmatise the 
 ascetic life in this fashion — I will not enter upon that now — 
 but the doctrine of the impossibility of restraint was certainly 
 calculated to increase the sexual license of the age. Sexual 
 intercourse, Luther tells us, is never without sin, but it is a 
 needful sin, and marriage renders it legitimate.' It is here 
 where the worst feature of the Reformation doctrine of 
 marriage comes in, — all sexual relations outside marriage are 
 criminal. Luther goes so far as to assert that the adulterer 
 ought to be stoned — (' Dead, dead with him to avoid the bad 
 example ' ! ^). Marriage is established for the legitimate 
 gratification of the sexual instinct — that is the basis of the 
 institution. The licentiousness of his age Luther proposes 
 to stem by early and general marriage : the primary object 
 of marriage is the satisfaction of the sexual appetite. It is 
 obvious that this doctrine raised the sexual appetite into an 
 irresistible natural force, and must in practice lead to most 
 disastrous results. Thus, when Philip of Hesse finds one 
 wife not sufficient, Luther allows him a second, because 
 appetite cannot be restrained ; when Marquard Schuldorp 
 marries his niece, Luther writes a book in his defence,^ 
 because appetite cannot be restrained ; when Henry VIII. 
 of England writes to Melanchthon on the matter of his 
 divorce, Melanchthon recommends him instead to take a 
 second wife, if his appetite cannot be restrained. Nay, this 
 teaching touches the inmost privacy of married life. The 
 wife is to be a mere breeder of children. " One sees how 
 weak and sickly are unfruitful women. But the fruitful are 
 sounder, fresher, and stronger. If a woman becomes weary 
 and at last dead from bearing, that matters not; let her only 
 
 1 Schreiben von August, 1.523, De Wctte, 2, 372. 
 
 2 Von dem ehelic/ien Stancle, p. 44. 
 
 3 Ihul. J). 28. 
 
 * (Jrundt vnd orsake looruji Marquardiis Schuldorp licfft syncr susUr dochUr 
 thor Ehc (jenamcn, 1526.
 
 408 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 die from bearing, she is there to do it. It is better to live a 
 short and sound life, than a long and sickly one." ^ If the 
 wife refuses to submit to such a life, what then ? " Then it 
 is time for the man to say : ' Will you not, so will I another ; 
 will not the wife, so let the maid come ' " — a doctrine which 
 is supported by the biblical example of Vashti and Esther.^ 
 I have remarked on the sexual license of the time, and on 
 the economic depression ; the Eeformers, advocating marriage 
 as the cure for license, were still obliged to recognise the 
 depression. How is early marriage possible when the handi- 
 craftsman has nothing to support a family with ? " We have 
 to meet a great and strong objection," preaches Luther. 
 " Yes, they say ; it were good to marry, but how shall I 
 support myself ? . . . This is, indeed, the greatest hindrance 
 to wedlock, its ruination, as well as the cause of all whore- 
 dom. But what shall I reply thereto ? It is unbelief and 
 doubt in God's goodness and truth. Hence, no wonder, where 
 it exists, that vain whoredom follows and every misfortune. 
 Here lies the rub : they wish first to be sure of property, 
 whence they can obtain food, drink, and clothes. They 
 want to draw their head from the noose, — 'In the sweat of 
 thy brow, thou shalt earn thy bread.' . . . Hence, to con- 
 clude, who does not find himself suited to chastity, let him 
 early find work and take to wedlock in God's name. A boy 
 at the latest when he's twenty, a girl at the latest when she's 
 fifteen or eighteen. Then they are still sound and fitted 
 thereto, and let God take care how they and their children are 
 to be supported. God creates children, and will certainly 
 support them." ^ These doctrines on marriage, which I have 
 exemplified from Luther, repeat themselves in the writings of 
 many reformers. It will be seen how much at variance they 
 are with the conceptions of the Catholic Church. St. Jerome 
 declared that virginity fills heaven; the Eeformers described 
 this as blasphemy.'^ "The smallest sin is theft, after that 
 comes adultery, then murder, and last the ascetic life." The 
 Catholic Church held marriage a sacrament — that is, it gave 
 
 1 Von dcm ehclichen Stande, p. 41. ^ /jj^. p. 29. ^ Ibid. p. 43. 
 
 * De servo ai'bitrio, Opera; Wittenberg, 1554, ii. 472.
 
 THE SEX-RELATIONS IN GERMANY 409 
 
 to the physical facts a spiritual meaning. " Marriage is an 
 outward bodily thing," said the Reformers, " as any other 
 worldly bargaining." This new conception of the sexual 
 relation was not only opposed to the Catholic standpoint, but 
 is, in my opinion, distinctly inferior to the faith of chivalry. 
 It reduced marriage to a merely sensual relationship — to a pure 
 physical union the idea of which would be repugnant to 
 every modern man and woman of cultme. It tended to 
 check the idealising of the sex -relationship, and, at the same 
 time, to degrade woman by treating her as a mere breeder of 
 children. The Reformation completed the subjection of woman 
 by destroying the cloister-life ; its view of woman may, in fact, 
 be summed up in the following words of its chief hero : — 
 
 " The woman's will, as God's says, shall be subject to the 
 man, and he shall be master (Gen. iii. 16) ; that is, the woman 
 shall not live according to her free-will, as it would have been 
 had Eve not sinned, for then she had ruled equally with 
 Adam, the man, as his colleague. Now, however, that she 
 has sinned and seduced the man, she has lost the governaunce ; 
 and must neither begin nor complete anything without the 
 man ; where he is, there must she be, and bend before him as 
 before her master, whom she shall fear, and to whom she shall 
 be subject and obedient." 
 
 This is the unqualified doctrine of the father-age, unblush- 
 ingly based on the Hebrew myth which in the early days of 
 the father-age man had called to his aid. 
 
 For three centuries after the Reformation the history of 
 woman in Germany is a blank. Domestication or prosti- 
 tution, subjection or social expulsion, were almost the only 
 possibilities for her. Perhaps no modern nation has been so 
 backward as Germany to start the work of emancipation, or 
 has been so lukewarm in the support it has given to the 
 higher education of women. It has organised a special class 
 of books for their feebler intellects, and many an ' educated ' 
 German will say to his women of the masterpieces of literature, 
 like the savage of Polynesia, Ai tabu — this food is forbidden 
 you. That is a cry which contrasts strangely with the mother- 
 wit of primitive man, with the literature of chivahy written
 
 410 THE ETHIC OF EEEETHOUGHT 
 
 in the service of the lady-love, or even with the select circle 
 of learned and earnest women to be found round several of 
 the early Fathers or the later Humanists. I do not attribute 
 the modern subjection of women to the teaching of the Ee- 
 formers, it is really an outcome of the father-age ; but the more 
 repulsive side of German courtship, and the more complete 
 domestication of the German woman are, I believe, in no small 
 degree due to the manner in which the ascetic life was in the 
 sixteenth century first abused and then rendered impossible.
 
 XV 
 
 SOCIALISM AND SEX^ 
 
 At last they came to where Eeflection sits, tliat strange old woman, 
 who has always one elbow on her knee, and her chin in her hands, and 
 who steals light out of the past to shed it on the future. 
 
 And Life and Love cried out : " Oh ! wise one, tell us, when first we 
 met, a lovely radiant thing belonged to us — gladness without a tear, sun- 
 shine without a shade. Oh ! how did we sin that we lost it ? Where 
 shall we go that we may find it ? " — Olive Schreiner. 
 
 There is a principle lying at the basis of all growth which 
 was first made manifest by the naturalist, but will one day 
 receive its most striking corroboration from the scientific 
 historian. This principle is somewhat misleadingly termed 
 ' the survival of the fittest.' A slight change for the better 
 would be made were we term it the ' survival of the fitter.' 
 In all forms of existence— in brute and human life, in brute 
 and human habits, in human institutions, religions and philo- 
 sophies — the fittest is never reached, has never come into 
 existence, and cannot therefore survive. When it does, evolu- 
 tion will cease, — a final epoch that may for the present be 
 classed with a certain catastrophe termed the ' day of judg- 
 ment,' which formerly played a conspicuous part in mediieval 
 cosmogony ; we may leave them both to that storeliouse of 
 
 1 This paper, written in 1886, was orij^nnally read to a small discussion club. 
 It was printed in yo-Z^w/ (February, 1887), and afterwards issued as a pamphlet. 
 Some points I should prohaljly jnit did'erently, were I to rewrite it now (st-e the 
 essay, " Woman and Labour," in The Chances of Bcath, vol. i.), but I allow it to 
 stand, because it describes what I still liold to bo the ideal of the near future, if 
 not the realisable of the immediate present. Its do<;iuatism may even do service 
 as an irritant, and cause those who disagieo with it to think for themselves.
 
 412 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 unintelligible lumber whence paradoxers and supernatural! sts 
 draw their material. I, the more matter-of-fact sensationalist/ 
 content myself with recognising that every form of life, every 
 liuman institution and mode of thought, is ever undergoing 
 change ; not change by hap incalculable, but to a great and 
 ever wider extent foreseeable and capable of measurement both 
 as to magnitude and direction. There is no absolute code of 
 morality, no absolute philosophy nor absolute religion ; each 
 phase of society has had its special morality, its peculiar 
 religion, and its own form of sex-relationship. Its morality and 
 its religion have often been stamped as immorality and supersti- 
 tion by later generations. Promiscuity, brother-sister marriage, 
 infanticide, the subjection of women, and the serfdom of 
 labour have all in turn been moral and again immoral. No 
 property, group-property, tribe-property, chief-property, and 
 individual property in both land and movables have all had 
 their day, and foolish indeed is the man who would term one 
 absolutely good and another absolutely bad. One thing only 
 is definite, the direction and rate of change of human society at 
 a particular epoch. It may be difficult to ascertain, but it is 
 none the less real and measureable. The moral or good action is 
 that which tends in the direction of the growth of a particular 
 society in a particular land at a particular time. In this 
 sense, to avoid all preconceptions of the absolute, I shall use 
 the word social for moral, and anti-social for immoral. An 
 action which is social (or moral) may have arisen from custom, 
 from feeling, or from faith, but to understand why it is social 
 or moral requires knowledge. It requires knowledge of the 
 historical growth and the consequent present tendency of a 
 particular phase of society. Hence we see why it is that 
 many actions arismg from feeling, custom, or faith are anti- 
 social ; if custom could dictate a moral code, I fear Socialism 
 would at present have little basis of support ; it must throw 
 itself back on rational judgment based on historical study. 
 
 1 I use this word to exclude on the one side the absurdities of materialism 
 of the Biichner type, and on the other the muddle-headed mysticism of some of 
 our neo-Hegelian friends. A sensationalist is one who does not attempt to get 
 beyond his sensations and theii- interrelations.
 
 SOCIALISM AND SEX 413 
 
 For this reason I cannot look upon Socialism as a mere scheme 
 of political change : it is essentially a new morality, it denotes 
 the subjection of all individual action to the welfare of society ; 
 this welfare can be ascertained only by studying the direction 
 of social growth. Socialists must claim to be, and act as, 
 preachers of a new morality, if they would create that 
 enthusiasm which only human love, not human hatred can 
 arouse. Therein lies the only excuse for the absurd title of 
 ' Christian Socialist.' ^ Socialism as a polity can only become 
 possible when Socialism as a morality has become general ; as 
 a polity it will then be only a matter of police, a law restrain- 
 ing a small anti-social minority. 
 
 In all social problems there are two questions which need 
 investigation : ( 1 ) What is the ideal we place before om'- 
 selves ? (2) How shall we act so as best to forward the 
 realisation of our ideal ? 
 
 Before I attempt to consider these questions in their 
 relation to the problem of sex, it is needful to explain what 
 I rmderstand here by the term ' ideal.' By ' ideal ' I do not 
 denote some glorious poet-dreamed Utopia, the outcome of 
 individual wishes, inspiration or prejudice, but solely the 
 direction wherein, the goal to which, it seems to me from the 
 history of the past that the history of the immediate future 
 must surely progress. Our ideal is the outcome of our read- 
 ing of the past, the due weighing, so far as lies in our power, 
 of the tendencies and forces at present developing humanity 
 in a definite direction. It is the one absolute we have got 
 upon which to form a judgment, and so the test of moral or 
 social action. We are students of history, not because we 
 are Socialists, but Socialists because we have studied history." 
 
 We have now to ask the following questions with regard 
 
 * It reminds me of a well-known lady doctor who terms herself Christian 
 physiologist, as if socialism and physiology were not the co-ordination of facts by 
 scientific laws independent of any form of religious faitli ! 
 
 ^ A leader of the ' Anarchist Group ' recently read a paper in my hearing 
 which deduced anarchy as a necessity of the coming ages by a metapliysical 
 ])roces8 quite unintelligible to me since the idealist days of (ierman student life. 
 I ventured to ask him if he thought tlie same conclusion would be reached by 
 the historical method. He Iiad not applied it, he said, but ho was (juite certain 
 that that method could not contradict bis proccsn.
 
 414 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 to the sex-relationship. Wh.at is its ideal form ? How can 
 we best work towards its attainment ? — that is — What will 
 in the future be the true type of social action in matters of 
 sex ? It is because I hold that the present sexual relation- 
 ship is far removed from the ideal (the relationship of the 
 near future), and that the present marriage law tends to 
 hinder our approach to the ideal, that I have written this 
 essay. 
 
 Briefly let me state here, for it is impossible at present to 
 enter on any lengthy historical investigation, that I believe 
 the forces and tendencies of the present as evidenced in the 
 history of the past are working strongly against our present 
 relationship of sex, and are not unlikely in the future to 
 sweep it as completely, and as roughly, out of existence as 
 rational knowledge is sweeping away metaphysics, freethought 
 Christian theology, and socialistic doctrines orthodox political 
 economy. I will try to enumerate shortly the tendencies I 
 have found at work, and point out how they must come into 
 conflict, and ultimately modify our present legal and customary 
 views on the sex-relationship. 
 
 I have spoken of one principle of the law of evolution, 
 the survival of the fitter. According to the Darwinian theory, 
 evolution is chiefly brought about by sexual selection and 
 the struggle for food. All-mastering as these factors are 
 easily seen to be in the development of the brute-world, they 
 appear at first sight insuflicient to explain the growth of man 
 and the changes in human institutions. The scientific student 
 of history, however, will find them just as forcibly at work 
 in directing the course of man's progress from barbarism to 
 /civilisation. The future Darwin of the history of civilisation 
 will probably recognise that his subject falls into two great 
 divisions — the history of sex and the history of property, 
 into the changes in sex-relationship and the changes in the 
 ownership of wealth. The explanation of these two main groups 
 of changes lies for the most part in sexual selection and 
 in the struggle for food.^ One by one various forms of sex- 
 
 1 Herder attempted a philosophy of history on t)ie basis of metaphysics and 
 naturally failed. The philosophy of history is only possible since Darmn, and
 
 SOCIALISM AND SEX 415 
 
 relationship have succeeded each other, there has been no 
 permanent type, and the historical growth of the relationship 
 has at each stage agreed closely with the state of development 
 of the other social and legal institutions of that stage. Legal- 
 ised life-long monogamy is in human history a thing but of 
 yesterday, and no unprejudiced person (however much it may 
 suit his own tastes) can suppose it a final form. Thus it is 
 that a certain type of sex-relationship and a certain mode of 
 ownership are essential features of the present stage of human 
 growth. In the past others have marked the successive 
 stages reached by man in his long course of evolution. To 
 each fresh type of sex-relationship has corresponded a different 
 mode of ownership — a special phase of human society. When 
 the sex-relationship was pure promiscuity, then possession was 
 based on finding and keeping as long as the tinder had strength 
 to retain the found ; with brother-sister marriage and with 
 group-marriage, property was held by the group, — communism 
 in the group ; with the matriarchate, at least in its zenith, 
 property could be held by individuals, but descended only 
 through women ; with the patriarchate property was held 
 only by the men, and descended through them, — woman was 
 a chattel without any right of ownership. With the centuries 
 as the last traces of the patriarchate vanish, as woman 
 obtains rights as an individual, when a new form of possession 
 is coming into existence, is it rational to suppose that history 
 will break its hitherto invariable law, and that a new sex- 
 relationship will not replace the old ? 
 
 The two most important movements of our era are without 
 doubt the socialistic movement and the movement for the 
 complete emancipation of women. Both of them go to the 
 very root of the old conception of property, and to the careful 
 observer connote a corresponding change in the old relationship 
 of sex. To the thoughtful (jnlooker the Socialist and the advocate 
 of ' woman's rights ' are essentially fighting the same battle, 
 however much they may disguise the fact to themselves. 
 
 the rationalisation of history hy tlie ' liitiirc Darwin ' will consi.st in tlio dcHcrip- 
 tion of human giowth in tenns ol Ihc action of jihy-sioal and aexualogical law3 
 upon varying human institutions.
 
 416 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 Change in the mode of possessing wealth connotes to the 
 scientific historian a change in the sex-relationship. It is 
 because I hold that Socialism will ultimately survive as the 
 only tenable moral code, that I am convinced that our present 
 marriage customs and our present marriage law are alike destined 
 to suffer great changes. It is not a question of the triumph 
 of sense nor of sexual experiment, but of indomitable law. 
 Variations are taking place in our views and actions with 
 regard to sex, which are but forerunners of a new stage ; a 
 stage which will possibly for many centuries hold the field. 
 Sexual experiments are not to be treated a ^priori as social 
 outrages, they are the variations from the normal type of the 
 present, some of which may be destined to survive as the 
 normal type in the future. 
 
 As far as may be possible in a paper of this kind, let me 
 examine the leading principle of modern Socialism as a moral 
 code, and its bearing on the current relationship of sex. I 
 may state this principle as follows : — 
 
 A human being, man or woman, unless physically or 
 mentally disabled, has no moral right to be a member of the 
 community unless he or she is labouring in some form or 
 another for the community — that is, unless he or she is con- 
 tributing to the common labour-stock. 
 
 By no ' moral right ' I simply mean that it is anti-social, 
 and therefore deserving of the strongest social censure, or 
 even punishment, if any person, not disabled, lives in, and 
 therefore on the labour of the community without contributing 
 to the labour-stock. 
 
 It follows as a necessary result of this first principle that 
 it is anti-social for the able-bodied : (a) to live on inherited 
 property, {V) to receive interest on accumulated property. 
 For, in doing either, the human being is in reality taxing the 
 labour of others for his or her support, and is not repaying 
 that taxation by an equal labour-contribution to the common 
 labour-stock. I am quite aware that these dictates under our 
 present social regime are very hard to accept, and impossible 
 to fully act up to, but I am convinced that they will have to 
 be accepted as the basis of the moral code of the future. A
 
 SOCIALISM AND SEX 417 
 
 human being may labour and acquire, but he has no moral 
 right to endow himself or his posterity with that idleness 
 which merely connotes a living on the labour of others.^ 
 There is a point here which deserves special notice, because it 
 bears on a remark I shall presently make of the wife and her 
 home life. The endowed idler is largely able, owing to his 
 monopoly of possession, to misdirect the labour of others and 
 to give it an anti-social direction ; he employs labour in creating 
 luxuries for himself, labour which ought to be employed 
 socially in improving the dwellings of the people, in the 
 ordering and beautifying of the public streets, in the build- 
 ing of public institutions, and for the like social purposes. 
 
 The society of the future will apply the above principle 
 as a test of right conduct to all its members, be they men or 
 women. But that men and women shall be able to live 
 socially there must be a field of genuine labour freely open 
 to them. This is only possible under two conditions: (1) 
 economic independence of the individual, and (2) a limitation, 
 when requisite, of population. Both these conditions go, I 
 think, to the very root of our present sex-relationship. They 
 denote an entire change in the position of husband and wife, 
 and a very possible interference of society (the state) in the 
 heart of the family, — at least in the family of the anti-social 
 propagators of inefficient and unnecessary human beings. 
 
 By ' economic independence of the individual,' a term 
 likely to be misunderstood, I denote a maintenance due to 
 the individual for genuine contributions to the labour-stock 
 of the community. The moral dignity of the individual is 
 preserved only so far as his or her labour is such a genuine 
 contribution, and not the fulfilment of somebody else's caprice 
 or anti-social desire for pure luxury. 
 
 In order that a woman, to use a theological expression, 
 
 1 Under our present individualism, the intere.st on accumulated property is 
 often the only provision possible for disablement, old age, or the eilucation 
 of children. In this case it may form a return for jiast contributions of the 
 individual to the common labour-stock of the comnninity. But it is often a 
 return very ba<lly jiroportioned to the service. In a socialistic state the old ago 
 pension, the pensions Ui the widow and to the children under ago granted in the 
 Indian Civil acrvice would approach far closer to the ideal. 
 
 27
 
 418 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 may save her own soul, may preserve her moral dignity, — in 
 order that she may fulfil the moral code of the future, — she 
 must have economic independence. I think men in this 
 respect are very apt to underrate the feelings of women. A 
 man might be quite willing to put half his income at the 
 disposal of a friend, but how few are the men with any social 
 feeling, who (unless such gift would enable them to perform 
 a recognised public service) would not feel a loss of moral 
 dignity in acceptmg it ! They so far obey the socialistic code, 
 that they refuse to live without return on the labours of others 
 who are their friends ; unfortunately they have rarely any 
 objection to live without return on the labour of others who are 
 not their friends. But it seems to me that the majority of 
 women under our present social system are bound to live on 
 men's labour. A man may be willing enough to give, but the 
 woman cannot morally afford to receive. Women must have 
 economic independence, because they cannot act honestly so long 
 as they depend for subsistence on father, brother, husband, or 
 lover, and not on their own labour. It may be suggested 
 that a woman often brings property to the husbaud, and con- 
 tributes as much as, or more than he to the joint estabhshment. 
 This might be rendered still more frequent were there likely in 
 the future to be a return, however partial, to the matriarchal 
 principle. Some signs of such a return are indeed to be found, 
 but I think it could only be of a very transitory kind, for it 
 seems opposed to the fundamental principle of Socialism, 
 namely, that the property of the individual shall not be in- 
 herited property, but the outcome of his or her own labour. 
 Very few, indeed, are the cases wherein the property a woman 
 brings in marriage is the outcome of her own labour ; it may 
 render her economically independent of her husband, but it 
 makes her economically dependent on the community. The com- 
 munity, not her husband, is thus supporting her ; this is a still 
 graver evil, if the support be not a return for the woman's 
 social service. The reader may suggest as a further plea for 
 woman's idleness, that her home duties are really her labour- 
 contribution to the community. So far as such duties have 
 to do with the rearing of children, I at once admit that they
 
 SOCIALISM AND SEX 419 
 
 may indeed form an all-important contribution to the social 
 stock. But the possibility of this depends entirely on the 
 social (moral) right of the particular man and woman to pro- 
 pagate under the present pressure of population. By physique 
 and mental power a particular man and woman may be fitted 
 to carry on the race, or they may not. If they are fitted, it 
 does not follow that they have a social right to an unlimited 
 family. Indeed the men and women who are socially fitted 
 to be parents of the future race, and at the same time rearers 
 and educators of that race, are not nearly so frequent as current 
 habits might lead us to imagine. The birth of children is a 
 responsibility, the moral gravity of which is far from being 
 properly weighed by the average husband and wife of to-day. 
 
 Let us put aside for the present the social value of such 
 part of woman's home labour as is spent in rearing and 
 educating children, a function which she may, indeed, often 
 exercise better on a wider field than that of the home. Let 
 us confine ourselves for the present to childless families, to 
 those where the children are not educated at home or have 
 left home, and to the home -life of single women. The 
 home duties of the woman are those towards husband, 
 father, brother, towards aged parents, or disabled rela- 
 tives. These are the labour -return the woman makes for 
 her support by the community, they form the basis on 
 which she can claim to be moral, the source from which her 
 feeling of independence, and her sense of contributing to 
 society something for what she receives from it, must arise. 
 It is difficult for me to suppose any man would accept cheer- 
 fully a similar dependence on the dearest friend, and it is 
 surprising that customary modes of thought allow so many 
 women to submit to such chattel-slavery. I have no hesita- 
 tion in asserting that the home duties of the non-child-bearing 
 woman do not in the great majority of cases satisfy the 
 standard of the socialistic code. If the woman is called upon 
 to labour, it is to labour beyond the household limits. The 
 great changes introduced into domestic economy (Uiiiiig tlio 
 last fifty years by machinery, by the wholesale production of 
 provisions, by the division of labour, by the llat-sysLcu), etc.,
 
 420 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 
 
 have revolutionised home life, and " what the housewife and 
 her attendants sixty or eighty years ago had good reason for 
 doing, has now become a pastime of no value, the machine 
 mocks the individual woman's hand." ^ The reader will prob- 
 ably be able to call to mind, not only several cases where a 
 single man or woman successfully manages his or her own 
 home, but instances where the husband and the non-child- 
 bearing wife follow their own professions, and yet their home 
 is not a scene of hopeless disorder. I could myself produce 
 much evidence on the same side from the life of the Swabian 
 and Baden peasantry. Many a farmer's wife undertakes not 
 only her home duties, but the whole business of a village inn ; 
 or, again, while her husband is occupied in the forest, she with 
 the aid of knave and maid manages entirely the little farm 
 and its homestead. I have seen her ploughing, dunging, 
 reaping and thrashing, milking and making butter ; I have 
 sat with her in the evening by the kitchen fire, and the home 
 did not seem neglected, nor her spiritual life utterly void. At 
 such times I have learnt that woman's labour has a social 
 value which must carry her in all classes beyond home duties. 
 Most of the time spent by women of the middle classes in 
 England in increasing the comforts and ornaments of home, 
 with the corresponding round of ' shopping ' and the purchase 
 of nicnacs and trifles, i^ simply anti-social, a misdirection of 
 the labours of others. ^ '^^ 
 
 There may indeed-'lje some who will say : " But you are 
 neglecting the value of home comforts and woman's function 
 in producing social happiness ? " To this I reply : If it be 
 not the function of woman to labour in the same manner as 
 men, but to be centres of comfort, sympathy, and happiness in 
 social life, then to be consistent we must apply this rule to all 
 women. We must stop every woman from receiving wages for 
 her labour. We must prohibit entirely her employment for 
 wages in factories, mills, offices, shops, and domestic service; 
 
 1 Marianne Hainisch : Die Brodfragc der Frau, Wien, 1875. 
 
 2 The euornious number of women of the middle classes doing nothing, or 
 busy over trivialities, is terrible to think of, when one sees in one branch of work 
 only— scientific research — how much might be done by organised workers of 
 every grade of capacity.
 
 SOCIALISM AND SEX 421 
 
 to be consistent we must prohibit paid prostitution and paid 
 literary work. Ai'e, then, the great mass of women who now 
 earn money to be left to chance dependence on men, or to be 
 supported by the state ? As woman's function would be different 
 from man's, and involve immunity from social labour, so there 
 would be for her a different code of morality. "Women would 
 indeed have a dehghtful time of ease were this millennium 
 ever reached ; my only regret is that men also could not share 
 it ! It seems to me, however, that all assumption of a 
 distinction in social function between men and women which 
 reaches beyond the physical fact of child-bearing, is absolutely 
 unwarranted, and calculated to reduce women again to the 
 position of toys, of creatures having no souls, and incapable of 
 acting according to the higher social code laid down for men. 
 The labour of woman is a fund of infinite value to the com- 
 munity,^ and her right to have educational and professional 
 institutions thrown open to her is based upon her duty to 
 contribute to the common labour-stock of the community. 
 The moral force behind the ' AVoman's Eights ' platform is 
 woman's duty to labour. Such labour, I am sure, in the case of 
 the great majority of non-child-bearing women is not synony- 
 lous with ' home duties.' 
 
 My argument, then, reduces itself to this : Economic inde- 
 pendence is essential to all human beings in order that they 
 may develop their full individuality, and freely obey the higher 
 code of moral conduct. The current ideal of sex-relationship 
 which confines the wife to the home, and encourages little, if 
 any, free action and free labour on her part, is inconsistent 
 with this economic independence, and therefore is an ideal 
 ultimately destined to extinction. The socialistic movement 
 with its new morality and the movement for sex -equality 
 will surely undermine our current social customs, and probably 
 alter the existing marriage laws. 
 
 So far I have treated tliis question from tlie woman's 
 standpoint, but to the thoughtful man surely the current view 
 
 * Were laljour socially orgiirji.sed, the iiitrodiictioii of tciiml<j laltour would 
 increase the niiinber of workcrw, and .so deercuHc the amount rc(|uircd of the 
 individual, without increasing the number of mouths to be fed.
 
 422 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 
 
 of sex-relationship must appear intolerable, almost repulsive. 
 The idea ivill suggest itself that the woman married him 
 possibly for a livelihood or for a position ; possibly she remains 
 with him for the same reason, or because she thinks she has 
 a duty towards one who has so long supported her ; or again, it 
 may be, because she feels the customary social ostracism follow- 
 ing on separation would be unbearable. The charm of friend- 
 ship lies in the spontaneity of its nature ; two human beings 
 remain friends as long as they find in each other a sympathetic 
 attraction ; it is the very danger of a rupture which produces 
 mutual forbearance, and renders friendship so frequently lifelong. 
 To be bound to treat a person as a friend after sympathy has 
 vanished would be intolerable, yet this is too often the outcome 
 of lifelong monogamy. Is it any wonder that there are men 
 as well as women who shrink from such a union ? Deprive life- 
 long legal monogamy of its monopoly of respectability, or men 
 and women of their sex-instincts, which can now only be 
 ' socially ' exercised in this mode, and I do not believe a single 
 man and woman would again sign the register which replaced 
 the freedom of friendship by a lifelong Siamese twinship. 
 The economic independence of women will for the first time 
 render it possible for the highest human relationship to become 
 again a matter of pure affection, raised above every suspicion 
 ^ of constraint, and every taint of commercialism. 
 t " IT we consider legalised monogamy necessary because 
 f women have not yet economic independence, and because man 
 is by nature so knavish that he must needs take advantage of 
 i woman's dependence — and this view has much evidence in its 
 1 favour — then we have obviously clear ends to work for in the 
 \ emancipation of women and the propagation of the socialistic 
 Vmorality. But one result of maintaining without exception 
 legalised monogamy may well be noted ; namely, that more 
 and more men and women, as we get nearer the epoch when 
 possession and sex-relationship will change in character, are 
 likely to remain unmarried ; the transition from one type to 
 the other will thus be more abrupt, more revolutionary than 
 evolutionary. It may well be doubted whether this mode of 
 change will be more advantageous to society as a whole, than
 
 SOCIALISM AND SEX 423 
 
 that whereby society would grow accustomed to the new 
 type by its appearance as a more and more frequent 
 variation. 
 
 1 am now in a position to state what I hold the new 
 ideal of sex-relationship will be, and how law or social opinion 
 will act with regard to it. I will start from the fundamental 
 principles — economic independence for women, and the duty 
 as well as right of all to labour, possibly involving as we have 
 seen a limitation of population. As other Socialists I demand 
 that all shall labour, and that a field of labour shall be pro- 
 vided for all. Differing, however, from the majority of 
 Socialists,^ I believe that the provision of such a field must 
 ultimately, if not at once, involve a limitation of population.^ 
 
 1 Marx by abusing Malthus has not solved the population difficulty. 
 Leroux's theory — that the food-supply is a question of dung, and that the 
 excrement of each individual if properly applied suffices to produce his quota of 
 
 food, and Duhring's doctrine — that each additional labourer increases the 
 
 labour-stock, and so the social capacity for producing food — are alike naive, as 
 they beg the question by presupposing a field for the dung and the labour. 
 Engels would apparently find such a field in the valley of the Mississippi, or he 
 suggests the remedy of emigration ; this remedy Hyndman, on the other hand, 
 declaims against as a capitalistic expatriation. Bebel's treatment of the prob- 
 lem is as wanting in logic and historical accuracy as tlie rest of his writings. 
 Champion has recently preached the pernicious doctrine that tlie country is 
 " frit'htfuUy under- populated ! " The minor Socialists will not face the problem, 
 but practically shelve it. The real solution is simi)ly that the limitation of 
 population without loss of national vigour is possible in a socialistic community, 
 but not in a capitalistic one. In our incseut capitalistic society the Neo- 
 Malthusians have by their teaching very sensibly lowered the birth-rate, but all 
 the evidence I can collect seems to sliow, that this lowering of the birth-rate is 
 at the expense of national vigour, for it has taken place among the physically 
 and mentally fitter. Kautsky seems to stand alone among Socialists in accept- 
 ing the Malthusian law and its consequences. 
 
 2 I have more fully on another occasion treated of the relation of Socialism 
 to the problem of population, and pointed out how the acceptance of the law 
 discovered by Malthus is an essential of any socialistic theory whicli pretends to 
 be scientific. I would, however, recommend to the reader the following passages 
 from John Stuart Mill's Folitical Juvnamy (Peoiile's Edition, pp. 2'20, 226) :— 
 "Every one has a right to live. We will suppose this granted. But no one 
 has a right to bring creatures into life, to be supported by other i)oo})le. Who- 
 ever means to stand upon the first of these rights must renounce all jirctensions 
 to the last. If a man cannot support even himself unless others help him, tlioae 
 others are entitled to say that they do not also undertake the 8Ui)port of any 
 olFspring which it is jihysically possible for liim to bring into the world. . . . 
 It would be jiossible for the state to guarantee emi-loymcnt at ample wages to 
 all who are born, liut if it does this, it is bound in so If- protect ion, an.l for tho 
 Bake of every purpose for whicli government exists, to provide that no person 
 shall be born without its consent, . . , One cannot wonder that silence on this
 
 424 THE ETHIC OF EKEETHOUGHT 
 
 It will profit little, however, that the social man and woman 
 without state-interference limit the number of tlieir offspring, 
 if large anti-social sections of society still continue to bring any 
 number of unneeded human beings into the world. Society 
 will have in some fashion to interfere and to restrict the anti- 
 social in the matter of child - bearing. For this reason I 
 think the sex-relationship of the future will not be regarded 
 as in the first place a union for the birth of children, but as 
 the closest form of friendship between man and woman. We 
 shall once and for all dismiss the Lutheran or Protestant 
 doctrine of marriage. Sex-friendship will mean infinitely more 
 than a union for reproducing mankind. 
 
 The union of the future will be accompanied by no child- 
 bearing and rearing, or by these in a much more limited 
 measure and with a far greater sense of responsibility than at 
 present. Hence one of the chief causes of woman's economic 
 dependence will disappear. Her sex - relationship will not 
 habitually connote incapacity for active labour and thus sex- 
 dependence. I must here make a distinction which appears 
 to me fundamental, although objections have been raised 
 against it, namely, between child-bearing and non-child-bear- 
 ing women. A woman may pass and repass from one class 
 to the other, but the position of society with regard to the 
 two classes is essentially different. With the sex-relationship, 
 so long as it does not result in children, I hold that the state 
 of the future will in no way concern itself; but when it does 
 result in children, then the state will have a right to interfere, 
 and this on two grounds : first, because the question of popula- 
 tion both in quantity and quality bears on the happiness 
 of society as a whole ; and secondly, because child-bearing 
 
 great department of human duty should produce unconsciousness of moral obliga- 
 tions, when it produces oblivion of physical facts. That it is possible to delay 
 marriage, and to live in abstinence while unmarried, most people are willing to 
 allow ; but M'hen persons are once married, the idea, in this country, never 
 seems to enter any one's mind tliat having or not having a family, or the 
 number of which it shall consist, is amenable to their own control. One would 
 imagine that children were rained down upon married people direct from lieaven, 
 without their being art or part in the matter ; that it was really, as the common 
 phrases liave it, God's will and not their own, which decided the numbers of 
 their offspring."
 
 SOCIALISM AND SEX 425 
 
 enforces for a longer or shorter interval economic dependence 
 upon the woman. 
 
 The reader will note that we have assumed that the 
 non-child-bearing woman of the future will possess economic 
 independence, and that there will be no legal or social dis- 
 tinction between such a woman and a man. It may be asked 
 whether such economic independence, such sex - equality is 
 really possible ? I believe it will be so in the future, I 
 doubt whether it is so in the present. The Post Office 
 employs women clerks, not because of their equality with 
 male clerks, but because their decreased efficiency and increased 
 sick-leave are more than compensated for by the diminished 
 wages. This fact lies at the basis of much of the employment 
 of female labour under our present system.^ But the lesser 
 physical strength and the smaller general intelligence of the 
 average woman of to-day are no real arguments for those who 
 would for ever maintain her present enslaved condition. The 
 student of the history of civilisation wiU find that there was a 
 time when the woman 2^^^ysically was quite on a par with the 
 man, while mentally she was much his superior.^ There is no 
 rigid natural law of feminine inferiority, and what we see now in 
 certain classes of our current society is largely the outcome of 
 woman's physique and intellect being little trained at present 
 and not severely selected in the immediate past. Every teacher 
 
 1 Examples of this are common enough ; I will only cite the following 
 striking instance just (1886) brought to my notice. A London firm of lemonade 
 manufacturers recently discharged twelve men to whom they had paid 4s. a day 
 per head, and replaced them by sixteen women who could do the same work, but 
 to whom they only paid Is. 8d. a day ;;cr head. The firm thus saved, by employing 
 in gieater numbers less efficient workers at starvation wages, lis. 4d. a day. 
 This was of course only an act of self-preservation on tiie part of the manu- 
 facturers ; the real sources of the evil lie much deeper, namely, in competitive 
 production and the unchecked increase of unskilled workers. Owing to these 
 influences more and more men in London are being sui)pi)rted by their women's 
 labour. This fact taken in conjunction with the great dispro])ortion of the sexes in 
 the metropolis points indeed to a painful form of return to the matriarchatc. 
 Were the capitalistic phase of society enduring, wo might expect to iiud 
 the male of the working classes ultimately reduced to the solo functiou of 
 drone, to the mere procreator of workers ! 
 
 2 The evidence I have collected on these points is far too complex and 
 copious to be reproduced here. Sufiiee it to .say tliat it .seems to me liiglily 
 probable that among the Aryans women were the first to practise agriculluro 
 to create primitive religion, and to discover the elements of medicino.
 
 426 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 or examiner who has had to deal with women students will 
 admit their capacity to grasp the same intellectual training 
 as men. The wanderer in the mountainous lands of Southern 
 Germany, Switzerland, and Northern Italy knows to what 
 an extent woman's physical strength can be developed by a 
 healthy outdoor life. I have often rested in a Tyrolese Alp, 
 miles away from tlie nearest hamlet, where for four or five 
 months two or three maidens had charge in all weathers of 
 forty to fifty cows. Morning and evening these cows had to 
 be milked, cheese had to be made, and occasionally butter 
 carried down into the valleys. Still early in the morning 
 after milking, some of these women might be seen one or two 
 thousand feet above the Alp, almost on the snow-line, mowing 
 green fodder, and later carrying it down in masses that many 
 a man would fail to lift. In bad weather, in mist and snow, 
 the cows had to be sought for and brought home ; at other 
 times they had to be driven to pastures which could only be 
 reached by crossing considerable snow -fields. Yet, notwith- 
 standing the physical severity of their task, these Tyrolese 
 Dirndl are among the healthiest, freshest, and happiest women 
 I have met. I am not pointing to any abnormal cases of 
 mental and physical power in women, they are merely types 
 of what training easily produces. I have faith, that, when 
 one or two generations of women have received a sound 
 intellectual training, when the physical education of girls is 
 as much regarded as that of boys, and when in sexual selection 
 men are guided more by the physique and mental capacity of 
 their mates than at present, then the non-child-bearing woman 
 will be the economic equal of man, and so be able to preserve 
 her independence ; she will be his physical and mental 
 equal in any sex-partnership they may agree to enter upon. 
 For such a woman I hold that the sex-relationship, both as to 
 form and substance, ought to be a pure question of taste, a 
 simple matter of agreement between the man and her, in 
 which neither society nor the state would have any need or 
 right to interfere. The economic independence of both man 
 and woman would render it a relation solely of mutual 
 sympathy and affection ; its form and duration would vary
 
 SOCIALISM AND SEX 427 
 
 according to the feelings and wants of individuals. This free 
 sexual union seems to me the ideal of the future, the outcome 
 of Socialism as applied to sex. Legal or state interference is 
 not to be advocated for its own sake, only when it appears 
 of social value as capable of checking the anti - social 
 oppression of one individual by a second more favourably 
 situated. Children apart, it is unbearable that church or 
 society should in any oiiicial form interfere with lovers. 
 "Were it not customary it would seem offensive ; it has 
 become customary as a protection for a subject class. ( When 
 marriage is no longer regarded as a profession for women, 
 and nigh the only way in whi(^ they can gain the comrade- 
 ship of men and a wider life,-Vwhen the relations of men 
 and women are perfectly free, and they can meet on an equal 
 footing, — then so far from this free sexual relationship leading 
 to sensuality and loose living, I hold it would be the best 
 safeguard against it. Men and w:omen having many friends 
 of the opposite sex with whom they were on terms of close 
 friendship, would be in far less danger of mistaking fancy or 
 friendship for love, and the relation of lovers would be far 
 less readily entered upon than at present, when in some social 
 circles man and woman must be lovers or exhibit no sign of 
 friendship. Every man and woman v^ould probably ultimately 
 choose a lover from their friends, but the men and women 
 who, being absolutely free, would choose more than one, would 
 certainly be the exceptions — exceptions, I believe, intinitely 
 more rare than under our present legalised monogamy, 
 accompanied as it is by socially unrecognised polygamy and 
 polyandry, by the mistress and the prostitute. But the 
 possibility of this ideal sex-relationship depends upon the 
 economic independence of the woman, and the acceptance of 
 the socialistic morality ; until these are in some measure 
 secured, such a union is only feasible to the Georges Sand 
 or to the George Lewis of to-day. 
 
 If the above, to any extent, express the future solution 
 of the sex-problem for the non-child-bearing woman, whose 
 economic independence will preserve her individuality, how 
 are socialists to regard her sister, the child-bearing woman ?
 
 428 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 
 
 Here again it seems to me needful that she should first be 
 rendered economically independent of the father and lover. In 
 the society of the future the birth of a child will be a social 
 gain or it will not. If the parentage warrants the expectation 
 of a healthy vigorous citizen, then I hold that the woman in 
 bearing such a child is fulfilling a high social function, and 
 on society at large, on the state, falls the correlative duty of 
 preserving her economic independence. The state, not the 
 individual, should in one form or another guard that its child- 
 bearing women do not lose their independence owing to their 
 incapacity to undertake other forms of social labour while 
 bearing and rearing its future citizens. Let not the reader 
 picture to himself huge state lying-in hospitals, free nurseries, 
 and the like; I see no reason why dismal barracks of this kind 
 should replace our ordinary home life, nor why the father's 
 affection for his children, even as it exists to-day, should be 
 based solely on the fact that he is bound to support their 
 mother ; there is surely a deeper root to it than that ! Nay, 
 I imagine that as friends dwell together now, so lovers will 
 seek to do in the future ; that as they will not have children 
 without the mature consideration and desire of at least the 
 woman, if not of both mates, so they will desire to have those 
 children about them, and form round themselves a home life. 
 But in this home life the wife, no longer a chattel, will possess 
 an economic independence assured by the state. 
 
 Let me take a purely hy'jjothetical example — on the details 
 of which I lay no stress, and which is not given to raise idle 
 discussion on its numerical value — let me suppose that on an 
 average three births to a union have been found sufficient at 
 any epoch to maintain the limit of efficient population.^ Some 
 
 * With an extensive system of state- colonisation (not the haphazard emigration 
 of individuals into colonies where the necessary land has been already bought 
 by individual or associated capitalists) as high a birth-rate as the present, if it 
 were levied on the jjhysically and mentally fitter classes of the community, might 
 still continue and yet increase for many generations the vigour and power of 
 the empire. A high birth-rate among the efficient classes, and the absorption 
 and state-colonisation of such parts of the world as will support whites, are far 
 more worthy of statesmen's attention than our present capitalistic policy of 
 encouraging the over-production of the unfit, and seizing, for the sake of trade 
 or other profits, uncolonisable territories, which are insecurely held against an 
 alien population.
 
 SOCIALISM AND SEX 429 
 
 women would doubtless have more, others less or none ; in 
 such cases there might well be a communal balance ; any- 
 individual might have a sanctioned addition to the local 
 average ; but for each sanctioned birth it would be the duty 
 of the commune or state to contribute a certain annual sum 
 for the maintenance of the mother while child-bearing and 
 rearing incapacitated her for other social labour ; and this not 
 with the view of decreasing the father's interest or responsi- 
 bility in his child, but solely to render the mother a free 
 individual. As the national wealth increased, a larger number 
 of births or a greater annual allowance for maternity might 
 be made. This seems to me the only satisfactory method 
 of placing the child-bearing woman of the future on a true 
 footing of economic equality with the man, of destroying her 
 chattel-slavery to the husband. Obviously births beyond the 
 sanctioned number would receive no recognition from the 
 state, and if times were ever to come of great over-population 
 it might even be needful to punish positively, as well as 
 negatively, both father and mother. That there is a possi- 
 bility of limiting the number of births the example of France 
 sufficiently testifies. With the general raising of the standard 
 of comfort, which would result from a socialisation of surplus- 
 labour,— with the increased independence of women, due to 
 their complete emancipation, — it is very probable that there 
 would be small occasion for the state to interfere in the 
 matter ; the number of births would fall, were it needful, as 
 it has done in France, It is sufficient here to note the possi- 
 bility ; the manner of checking the population lies outside the 
 sphere of this discussion. It is a problem requiring the careful 
 and scientific investigation of the state itself, — only by such 
 investigation shall we be able to determine what is social or 
 anti-social, what is healthy or unhealthy, in the proposals of 
 both old and new Malthusians. 
 
 Such, then, seems to me the socialistic solution of tlic sex- 
 problem of tlie future : complete freedom in the sex-rohition- 
 ship left to the judgment and taste of an economically eciual, 
 physically trained, and intellectually developed race of men 
 and women ; state interference if necessary in the matter of
 
 430 THE ETHIC OF FEEETPIOUGHT 
 
 child-bearing, in order to preserve intersexual independence 
 on the one hand, and the limit of efficient population on the 
 other. To those who see in these things an ideal of idle 
 dreamers and not a possibility of the future, I can only reply : 
 Measure well the forces which are at work in our age, mark 
 the number and character of the men and women who are 
 dissatisfied with the present, weigh carefully the enthusiasm 
 of the teachers of our new morality socialistic and sexual, then 
 you will not class them as dreamers only. To those who would 
 know their duty at the present, I can but say: The first steps 
 towards our ideal are the spread of Socialism as a morality, and 
 the complete emancipation of our sisters. To others who, like 
 the aged poet, halt and are faint at heart, seeing in the greatness 
 of our time only pettiness and lust, we must bid a sorrowful 
 but resolute farewell — " Father, thou knowest not our needs, 
 thy task is done, remain and rest, we must onward — farewell." 
 We are full of new emotions, new passions, new thoughts ; our 
 age is not one of pettiness and lust, but replete with clearer 
 and nobler ideas than the past, ideas that its sons will generate 
 and its daughters bring to birth. Dangers and difficulties 
 there are, misery, pain, and wrong-doing more than enough. 
 But we of to-day see beyond them ; they do not cause us to 
 despair, but summon us to action. You of the past valued 
 Christianity — aye, and we value freethought ; you of the 
 past valued faith — aye, and we value knowledge ; you have 
 sought wealth eagerly — we value more the duty and right 
 to labour ; you talked of the sanctity of marriage — we find 
 therein love sold in the market, and we strive for a remedy 
 in the freedom of sex. Your symbols are those of the past, 
 symbols to which civilisation owes much, great landmarks 
 in past history pointing the direction of man's progress, even 
 suggesting the future, our ideal. But as symbols for our 
 action to-day they are idle, they denote in the present serf- 
 dom of thought, and serfdom of labour, and serfdom of sex. 
 We have other ideals more true to the coming ages — 
 freedom of thought, and freedom of labour, and freedom of 
 sex — ideals based on a deeper knowledge of human nature 
 and its history than you, our fathers, could possess. Term
 
 SOCIALISM AND SEX 431 
 
 them impious, irrational, impure, if you will ; 'tis because 
 you have understood neither the time nor us. We must 
 leave you sorrowfully behind, and go forward alone. The 
 age is strong in knowledge, rich in ideas ; we hold the future 
 not so distant when oiu- symbols shall be the guides of con- 
 duct, and their beauty brought home to humanity by their 
 realisation in a renascent art. 
 
 His omnia, quae de Mentis Libertate ostendere volueram, absolvi. 
 
 Printed by K. & R. Ci.akic, I.imitbd, Edinburgh
 
 VIM ^ 2 ««« 
 
 University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 405 Hllgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 
 
 Return this material to the library 
 
 from which it was borrowed.
 
 L- 
 
 A 000 648 744 i